The Ghost House of Shadow Village Part 3 -- The Entity That Haunts the Spirits
The Ghost House in the Village of Shadows, Part 3 -- The Entity That Inhabits the Spirits
The darkness that engulfed them this time was different. It wasn't just an absence of light; it was like a heavy blanket pressing down on their chests, making breathing difficult and movement slower. They didn't know how long it took before a faint light returned. It didn't come from a lamp or a flame, but from the walls of the house itself, as if they were slowly glowing like the beating of a huge heart surrounding them.
They stood in the same upper corridor, but something was different… The floor had darkened, as if it had absorbed blood or fluids whose source they couldn't understand. The walls were cracked, and from the cracks, wisps of black smoke spun into the air and then disappeared.
"We... the same night it all started," Sarah said, trying to control the trembling in her voice.
Ahmed was advancing slowly, his eyes scanning the ajar door. Previously, he'd felt fear, but this time there was a different feeling… a strange attraction, as if something inside him wanted to enter.
Laila suddenly grabbed his arm: "Ahmed, don't come closer... the house attracts you; you're not the one who decides."
But before she could finish her words, the door opened by itself. The room inside was different from their memory... There was no longer the covered bed or the old closet, but a huge mirror filling the opposite wall, its black glass reflecting only their featureless shadows.
Karim took a step forward, but stopped when he noticed their reflections moving slowly, out of sync with their movements. The reflections smiled, even when they didn't.
Then, a shadow emerged from the mirror that looked exactly like Ahmed, but its features were slightly slanted, and its eyes were lifeless. The shadow approached him, stood face to face, and smiled broadly. "Time to change," the shadow whispered in Ahmed's own voice.
In a fleeting moment, the glow on the walls went out, and the room was plunged into complete darkness. Then the light came back on... but Ahmed wasn't the same. His eyes were cloudy, and his voice when he said, "I'm fine," was cold and emotionless.
Karim realized it first, stepping back, but the floor beneath his feet cracked, and his fingers began to slip through it as if he were sinking into sand. Sara tried to pull him away, but the shadow that resembled Ahmed stood between them, blocking her with a single stare that made her body freeze.
Laila, still clutching the notebook, noticed that its pages were completely white, except for a single line written in dark red: "Whoever sees his face in the shadows... becomes him."
The other reflections in the mirror began to move freely, emerging one by one. A copy of Laila, a copy of Karim, and even a copy of Sara... all smiling the same crooked smile, slowly advancing towards them.
The floor shook, the walls cracked further, and the air grew heavier. A feeling of vertigo gripped them all, as if another consciousness was trying to enter their minds.
Laila screamed, "We have to break the mirror!"
Karim lunged at her with all his might, hitting her with an old chair, but the glass didn't break... Instead, it swallowed the chair like smoke and began to swallow the wall itself, forming a dark vortex that sucked everything in.
They felt an irresistible force, their bodies being dragged into the vortex, the sounds of the entities' laughter filling their ears, and the whispers repeated endlessly:
"You are one of us... You are one of us... You are one of us..."
At the last moment, before the shadows completely swallowed them up, the light suddenly opened, and they found themselves in the middle of the road leading to the village, in the pouring rain. There was no sign of the house... not even of the ground it had stood on.
They took deep breaths, trying to process what had happened, but when they looked at each other, they noticed one thing that made their blood freeze:
Each one of them had no shadow. To be continued……………
