The basement went quiet.
Sam stood completely still, listening to the
drip… drip… drip in the darkness.
Only it wasn't water. It had a rhythm—too
slow, too deliberate.
He lifted the flashlight.
The beam landed on a wall covered in
hundreds of Polaroids.
Every photo… was of him.
Sam at the grocery store.
Sam unlocking his apartment.
Sam asleep on his couch.
Some were taken from angles inside his home.
Sam's throat tightened.
Then he saw the most recent photo—
timestamped today.
Sam in this exact basement.
His hand on the doorknob.
His face frozen in confusion.
Someone had taken it seconds before he
entered.
He backed away, chest tightening. The floor
creaked behind him.
Sam turned—
Nothing.
But then he noticed something at his feet:
A notebook, opened intentionally to a page.
"ENTRY 197: He finally came downstairs.
He's slower than I predicted.
But now the real game begins."
The handwriting was calm. Precise.
Almost practiced.
Sam's pulse hammered as he scanned the next
line:
"Do not frighten him yet.
Let him think he is alone."
A sound whispered just behind him.
Not footsteps.
Not breathing.
Something worse—
the soft click of a camera shutter.
In the reflection of the flashlight glass, Sam
saw it—a figure standing behind him…
Out of focus.
Unmoving.
Watching.
The beam flickered.
The figure spoke in a voice that felt like it came
from inside Sam's own skull:
"Turn around. I want your picture to be
perfect."
Sam didn't turn around.
He couldn't.
His legs shook so violently he thought they
might give out.
The flashlight trembled in his hand, the beam
jittering across the floor—
—and stopping on something red.
A single dark drop.
Then another.
A thin trail of blood leading away from him…
deeper into the basement.
Sam's breath hitched.
The figure behind him didn't move. Didn't
breathe.
He forced himself to follow the blood trail with
the beam.
It curved around an old workbench…
…up the side of a cabinet…
…and finally ended at a handprint smeared
across the wall.
Fresh. Wet.
Long streaks dragged downward, as if someone
had been pulled away.
Sam swallowed hard.
Behind him, the figure whispered:
"Don't worry. That isn't yours."