The dawn was gray, heavy with smoke and the acrid stench of charred wood. Gigi and Sheree stumbled through the overgrown field beyond the House of Drennin's ruins, their lungs burning, their skin raw from the fire's heat. The house was a smoldering skeleton behind them, its blackened beams jutting like bones against the sky. The pit in the yard had collapsed, swallowing the glowing slab, but Gigi felt no relief. The hum was gone, but something lingered—a pressure in her chest, a whisper at the edge of her mind.
Sheree collapsed to her knees, sobbing. "We did it," she gasped. "It's over."
Gigi didn't answer. She stared at the ruins, her knife still clutched in her hand, slick with the black ooze that had been Rene. The fire had felt like victory, but the house's final scream echoed in her bones. It wasn't done with them. Not yet.
"We need to keep moving," Gigi said, her voice hoarse. "The police will come. They'll ask questions we can't answer."
Sheree looked up, her face streaked with ash and tears. "Where do we go? We have nothing left."
Gigi didn't know. The house had been their world, their prison, for months. But staying wasn't an option. She helped Sheree to her feet, and they staggered toward the road, the morning mist curling around them like fingers.
They made it to a gas station a mile away, its fluorescent lights harsh against the dawn. The clerk, an older man with tired eyes, barely glanced at their disheveled state as Gigi bought water and a burner phone. She tried calling Cedric, hoping he'd escaped, but the number was disconnected. Shane, James, Vin, Rickus, Nicole, Rene—all gone. The weight of their loss pressed against her, but she pushed it down. Survival demanded focus.
Sheree sat on the curb, clutching the water bottle. "What if it follows us?" she whispered. "What if it's not the house? What if it's… us?"
Gigi's stomach twisted. She'd felt it too—the whisper, the pressure, the sense that the house's hunger had latched onto them. "We burned it," she said, more to herself than Sheree. "It's gone."
But as they waited for a bus to take them anywhere but here, Gigi noticed something: her shadow, cast by the gas station's lights, flickered unnaturally, as if something moved within it. She blinked, and it was gone. Just exhaustion, she told herself. Just trauma.
The bus arrived, and they boarded, sinking into seats at the back. As the ruins of Drennin faded into the distance, Gigi felt the whisper again, faint but unmistakable: You can't leave me.