The Dare - 3

The doorknob stopped moving.

For a few long seconds, there was nothing—just the heavy, suffocating silence pressing against my ears. I sat there, knees to my chest, barely daring to breathe. I could feel it though… something was still out there.

Watching. Waiting. Listening.

My phone screen had dimmed to almost nothing. I didn’t want to move enough to turn it brighter. If I stayed perfectly still, maybe it would lose interest. Maybe it would go away.

Minutes passed. Or maybe it was hours—I couldn’t tell anymore. My muscles cramped, my throat was dry, and my pulse felt like a hammer in my chest.

Then I heard it.

A faint scratching sound.

Scritch… scritch… scritch.

It wasn’t at the door.

It was coming from behind me.

My body went cold. Slowly, I turned my head toward the back wall of the closet. My weak phone glow lit up the rough, wooden planks. The scratching was coming from behind them.

At first, I told myself it was a rat. Please, let it just be a rat. But the sound grew sharper, more deliberate. Then the wood creaked. A small, thin crack appeared between the planks.

Something poked through.

It was a finger—pale, small, and tipped with a broken, filthy nail. A child’s finger.

I bit back a cry as it wiggled, digging into the wood, widening the hole. The air turned colder, heavy with the smell of rot. Another plank bent inward, and a single eye appeared in the gap. Cloudy white. Lifeless. Yet somehow… aware.

The whisper came again, soft and excited, right through the hole.

“You’re it.”

My scream tore through the air as I slammed my shoulder into the closet door. The latch gave way, and I fell out onto the hallway floor. My phone flew from my hand, the light spinning crazily across the walls. For a split second, it caught something—a shape crawling out of the shadows, its limbs bending wrong, its grin too wide, its skin pale as wax.

I didn’t think. I ran.

The window near the front door was my only hope. I threw myself at it, covering my face as glass shattered around me. Pain tore through my arm, but I didn’t stop. I rolled onto the cold ground outside, gasping, and stumbled to my feet.

I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. I ran down the hill until my lungs burned and the Miller house was nothing but a dark dot against the sky.

---

The next morning, Jake and Liam laughed when I told them I’d gone in. They thought I was brave. I never told them the truth. I deleted the photo from my phone, but sometimes… when I’m scrolling late at night, I see it again. The picture.

And in the corner—where I thought it was just a coat stand—there’s a little hand pressed against the wall.

Now, every night, I hear the scratching again.

At first, it was faint. Then it moved closer—to the vent near my bed, to the closet in my room.

Last night, I heard that same cheerful whisper, drifting through the darkness:

“I’m it. So I get to hide now. Okay? Your house is bigger. This will be fun.”

The game isn’t over.

It just changed houses.

And this time…

I’m not the one who’s hiding.

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