Chapter 21
When the storm cut the power to Blackwood Cabin, there had been six of them.
Six friends huddled around a dying flashlight, laughing too loudly to hide their nerves as rain hammered against the windows.
“Classic horror movie setup,” Noah joked.
“Don’t say that,” Mia snapped.
The first knock came at midnight.
Three slow taps against the front door.
No one answered.
When Noah finally gathered enough courage to peek through the peephole, he stumbled backward, pale as the moon.
“There’s… someone out there.”
“Who?”
He swallowed hard.
“Me.”
The others rushed to look. Outside, standing beneath the porch light, was Noah.
The same face.
The same clothes.
The same terrified expression.
It smiled.
The cabin erupted into chaos. Doors were locked. Windows were covered. They argued, screamed, accused one another of sick jokes.
Then Ava disappeared.
No scream.
No footsteps.
One moment she was there.
The next, she wasn’t.
Five became four.
Four became three.
Each time someone vanished, another knock echoed through the cabin.
Three taps.
Always three.
And each time they searched the dark hallways, they caught glimpses of familiar faces where they shouldn’t have been—standing at the end of corridors, reflected in mirrors, staring from outside windows despite the freezing rain.
By dawn, only Mia remained.
The storm had passed.
The cabin stood silent.
Hands trembling, she opened the front door and stepped into the pale morning light.
No bodies.
No footprints.
No sign that her friends had ever existed.
Relief washed over her.
Then she heard it.
Three slow knocks.
Behind her.
From inside the cabin.
Mia turned toward the doorway.
Someone stood in the shadows.
It had her eyes.
Her face.
Her voice.
It tilted its head and smiled.
“You can go now,” it said softly. “And then there was one.”
Mia looked past it.
Inside the cabin, huddled around the dying flashlight, were six frightened friends.
Laughing too loudly.
As rain hammered against the windows.
As if none of this had happened before.
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