Story 2
Echoes of blood …
PART : 1
THE MANSION CALLS
The road outside the city was silent, too silent.
Four friends walked together, their laughter trying to cover the fear in their hearts.
It was midnight, and the abandoned mansion stood at the edge of the forest like a beast waiting for prey.
Characters:
SARA : bold but curious
HAMID : always joking, never serious
NIMRA : shy, scared easily
USMAN : the leader of the group, strong but reckless
“Are you sure we should go in?” Nimra whispered, her voice shaking.
Hamid laughed. “Come on, it’s just an old house. Maybe we’ll find some ghosts who need friends.”
The gates screamed as Usman pushed them open.
The iron was red with rust, like dried blood.
The path was covered in dead leaves that crunched under their shoes.
Inside, the air was colder.
The walls were cracked, the windows broken, and somewhere deep inside the house, they heard water dripping.
Plip… plip… plip.
Sara’s torchlight landed on an old mirror in the hallway.
She gasped. Four figures were in the reflection, but they were not the same. Their faces were pale, twisted, and smiling with blood dripping from their eyes.
“Did you see that?” Sara whispered.
“No,” Usman replied firmly. “Don’t panic. It’s just dust and cracks.”
But then the whisper came. A voice so soft yet sharp enough to cut through their bones:
“You came… finally…”
Hamid’s laughter died instantly. “Who… who said that?”
The door behind them slammed shut. Lock clicked.
The house had swallowed them.
The whisper grew louder. Footsteps echoed on the upper floor even though nobody was there.
Nimra clutched Sara’s hand, her nails digging into skin.
Suddenly, something fell from the ceiling.
A bird? No.
A rotten hand, with flesh hanging, landed right in front of them.
Nimra screamed, and her voice bounced around the empty walls.
Then silence.
And in that silence, a new sound began.
A dragging noise. Something heavy, wet, being pulled across the wooden floor upstairs.
Sara felt her chest tighten. “Guys… we are not alone.”
PART : 2
FIRST BLOOD
The dragging sound grew louder.
Each step on the wooden floor above them creaked as if the house itself was breathing.
Hamid tried to joke, but his voice cracked. “Maybe it’s the wind… or an animal.”
Suddenly THUD.
Something hit the floor above so hard that the walls shook.
Dust rained from the ceiling.
Usman tightened his fists. “Stay close. Nobody move alone.”
They climbed the staircase, each step groaning under their weight.
The corridor stretched long and endless, lit only by the weak torch in Sara’s hand.
Paint peeled from the walls, revealing dark stains beneath stains that looked too much like blood.
Halfway down the hall, they saw it. A trail of red, thick and fresh, leading into a half-open door.
“Please, don’t,” Nimra whispered, tears forming in her eyes.
But Usman pushed the door open.
The room was empty except for an old wooden chair in the center.
On it, tied with rusty chains, was a mannequin. Its face was painted white, lips stretched into a bloody smile.
Hamid laughed nervously. “Oh, come on, it’s just a doll”
Before he could finish, the mannequin’s head snapped toward him with a cracking sound.
Its painted eyes bled black, and in a voice that was not human, it whispered:
“You should not have come.”
Hamid stumbled back, but the floor beneath him gave way.
He crashed into darkness with a scream that cut through the mansion.
“Hamid!” Sara yelled, rushing to the broken floor.
Down below, they saw him but not standing.
His body was twisted, his legs bent in impossible angles. Blood poured from his mouth as he tried to crawl away.
Something moved in the shadows behind him.
Long fingers, thin and pale, dragging sharp claws across the floor.
“Help me!” Hamid screamed, but before anyone could move, the creature grabbed his head and ripped it clean off.
Blood sprayed against the walls, his scream dying into a sickening silence.
Nimra collapsed, shaking. “Oh God… oh God…”
The whisper returned, louder this time, echoing through every wall of the mansion:
“First blood has been taken. Now… the rest of you.”
The lights of Sara’s torch flickered and died.
Darkness swallowed them whole.
PART : 3
THE CORRIDOR OF SHADOWS
The silence after Hamid’s death was unbearable.
Only the sound of Sara’s ragged breaths filled the void. Usman clenched his jaw, forcing everyone to move back from the hole.
“We can’t stop. If we freeze here, we die next,” he whispered.
But the house was alive. Each wall seemed to groan with hunger.
They walked deeper into the corridor.
With every step, the air grew heavier, colder, as if unseen hands pressed against their chests.
The weak emergency light hanging above flickered, buzzing like an insect about to die.
Nimra held Sara’s arm tightly, whispering prayers under her breath.
Then scratch… scratch… scratch.
The sound of claws dragged across the walls.
Sara raised the torch, trembling.
The beam caught a glimpse of something moving in the distance: a silhouette crawling on the ceiling, limbs bent backward, its head dangling, mouth stretched open wider than humanly possible.
“It’s following us,” Nimra sobbed.
Before they could run, the light exploded with a pop, plunging everything into black.
A scream ripped through the dark. Nimra’s hand was suddenly gone from Sara’s grip.
“Sara! Help me!” Nimra’s voice came from the left.
The sound of her shoes scraping the floor as she was dragged away.
Usman swung his lighter open for a split second, the flame revealed Nimra being pulled by her hair into a doorway.
A pale arm wrapped around her neck. She thrashed violently, but the door slammed shut before they could reach her.
The next sound made everyone freeze the sound of flesh tearing.
Nimra’s screams became wet gurgles.
Something slammed against the door again and again until silence fell. Blood seeped slowly from beneath the wood, spreading across the floor to their feet.
Sara clutched Usman’s arm, whispering, “She’s gone… she’s gone…”
But the house wasn’t done.
A cold breeze rushed through the corridor, and the whispers began again:
“One by one… one by one…”
Suddenly, a window at the end of the hall shattered inward. Glass rained across the floor.
And through the broken frame, another horror crawled inside a figure in a tattered black dress, its hair covering its face.
Its hands were not hands, but blades, dripping with fresh blood.
It let out a scream high-pitched, metallic, like knives scraping together.
Usman stepped in front, fists raised, but the creature moved faster than human eyes could follow.
In a blink, its blade hand pierced straight through his stomach.
Sara screamed.
Blood sprayed the walls as Usman gasped, coughing crimson.
The creature lifted him like a rag doll, impaling him higher on its arm, before slamming him into the wall with such force that his body stuck like a pinned insect.
His eyes rolled back, his blood dripping in thick streams down the cracked plaster.
Sara fell to her knees, her body shaking violently, unable to breathe.
The creature turned its faceless head toward her.
The whispers surrounded her now, coming from the walls, the floor, even the ceiling:
“Two are gone. The house is hungry. And you… will feed it next.”
Sara crawled back, tears blinding her vision, as the corridor stretched unnaturally long, the shadows closing in, leaving her trapped in the darkness with the monsters.
PART : 4
THE FEAST OF SHADOWS
Sara’s screams echoed down the endless corridor, but no one answered.
Nimra’s voice was gone, Usman’s body still pinned like a crucifix against the wall.
Only the dripping of blood filled the silence thick drops splattering onto the wooden floor.
She staggered backward, clutching the torch with trembling hands.
Its weak light flickered, barely cutting through the heavy dark.
Then she heard it.
Thump… thump… thump.
Footsteps. But not one pair. Many.
The sound came from every direction behind her, above her, beneath the very floor she stood on.
Whispers overlapped, hissing her name.
“Sara… Sara… feed us, Sara…”
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
She turned a corner and found herself in a dining hall.
The long wooden table stretched unnaturally far, covered in a decayed feast. Rotting meat, maggot-infested bread, goblets filled with black liquid that smelled of iron.
And around the table sat figures.
Dozens of them.
They looked like people at first, but as Sara stepped closer, her blood froze their skin was gray and paper-thin, their eyes stitched shut, their mouths sewn with black thread.
They sat perfectly still, as if waiting.
Then one of them moved.
Its head jerked toward her, the stitches on its mouth snapping open.
Blood poured from its torn lips as it whispered,
“Sit with us.”
The others twitched to life, heads cracking, threads snapping, all whispering together:
“Eat… eat with us…”
Sara stumbled back, but something grabbed her ankle.
She looked down a hand had crawled out from under the table, pale and rotting.
More hands followed, clawing at her legs, dragging her toward the feast.
She screamed, kicking wildly, but the hands were endless.
From the head of the table, a figure rose.
Taller than all the rest. Its face was nothing but a skull, but fresh skin dripped from its jaw as if it had been freshly torn. It carried a silver tray.
On it lay Hamid’s head. Eyes open, mouth twisted in eternal terror.
Sara’s scream broke into sobs.
The skull faced figure slammed the tray onto the table, rattling the dishes, and in a voice that rattled her bones, it said:
“The house does not forgive trespassers. You entered… now you belong to us.”
The stitched-mouth corpses surged forward, climbing across the table like spiders, jaws ripping open, teeth clattering together in hunger.
Sara yanked free from the hands and ran but the corridor behind her stretched longer, twisting like a serpent, leading her deeper, not out.
Her torchlight flickered and revealed the walls were now covered in blood.
Not stains fresh, warm blood, dripping, flowing, painting messages across the wood.
And written in the blood, in tall jagged letters:
“THREE ARE GONE. YOU ARE NEXT.”
The torch sputtered, then died.
Darkness swallowed Sara whole.
And in that suffocating void, she heard the chewing.
Dozens of mouths tearing flesh. The sound of her friends being devoured again and again.
Then, right beside her ear, a voice whispered, low and sharp:
“Run all you want, little lamb. The feast has only begun.”
PART :5
THE CURSE OF CRIMSON
Sara’s lungs burned as she ran blindly through the endless corridors.
Every turn led to the same walls rotting wood slick with blood, doors that vanished when she tried to open them.
It was as if the house itself twisted around her, laughing at her escape.
Her feet slipped on something wet. She looked down and froze.
A pool of blood.
And floating in it, Nimra’s face. Not her body just her face, ripped clean off, skin flapping like wet cloth.
Eyes wide, lips trembling as though still trying to scream. Sara staggered back, vomiting, but the face sank into the blood with a gurgle.
The air grew colder. Her breath came out in white mist.
And then… the portraits on the walls began to move.
Old paintings of men, women, and children once frozen, now alive. Their painted eyes rolled toward Sara, their mouths stretching open.
From every frame came whispers, layered with agony:
“We were like you…”
“We entered the house…”
“We fed it with our blood…”
Sara’s torch flickered back to life with a weak glow. She raised it and screamed.
One portrait at the end of the hall was different.
It showed a family seated together a father, mother, son, and daughter.
But their throats were slit, blood painted across their bodies, and beneath the frame, carved in black ash, were the words:
“The Crimson Offering.”
Suddenly, the walls cracked open. From the gaps seeped more blood, flowing like rivers, drowning the floor.
And out of the blood, a figure rose.
Tall, cloaked in crimson rags, its face hidden by a mask of bone carved with symbols.
It carried a butcher’s cleaver that glistened wet, as if freshly used.
Sara stumbled back, shaking her head.
“Please… please no…”
The masked figure tilted its head. Its voice was not one but many, layered screams echoing together:
“Long ago… this house was a temple.
A temple that demanded blood.
A family sacrificed themselves here, and their spirits were bound forever.
Now the house is hunger. It needs more. Always more.”
Sara backed into a corner, clutching her useless torch.
“Why us?!” she cried.
The figure’s bone mask cracked into a grin.
“Because you entered. And the house never lets anyone leave.”
Before she could move, the floor split beneath her feet.
Hands shot up, hundreds of them, grabbing, clawing, tearing at her clothes.
She was dragged halfway into the bloody pit.
Beside her, Usman’s mangled body was thrown from the wall. His chest cavity was open, ribs cracked like broken wings.
His heart was missing.
Sara screamed, thrashing wildly. But then she saw something in the blood pit.
A pale child’s face, eyes glowing white, smiling at her from below. The child whispered:
“Join us. Or be torn apart.”
The masked figure raised its cleaver, blood dripping in thick streams.
The whispers rose, filling the house like a storm:
“Four are gone. One remains. The offering must be complete.”
The cleaver came down.
And darkness swallowed Sara once again.
PART : 6
THE CRIMSON ALTAR
Sara jolted awake.
Her body was no longer in the corridor she was chained to a stone altar in the middle of a vast, blood-soaked hall.
The walls were not walls anymore.
They pulsed like living flesh, veins throbbing, blood dripping from cracks.
The air reeked of iron and rotting meat.
Candles burned around her, their flames black instead of gold.
The floor was painted with circles and symbols in fresh blood.
And standing around her… were her friends.
Hamid. Nimra. Usman.
But not alive.
Their broken corpses were stitched upright with barbed wire, eyes glowing red, mouths sewn open.
They moved like puppets, their limbs jerking unnaturally as if strings controlled them.
Sara’s throat closed in horror.
“No… no, this isn’t real”
Hamid’s stitched mouth snapped open, tearing wider, blood spraying as he rasped:
“Join us…”
Nimra’s corpse twitched forward, her torn face smiling grotesquely.
“We are family now…”
Sara thrashed against the chains, screaming until her voice cracked.
But the altar held her tight, the cold stone biting into her skin.
Then the masked figure appeared again. The Crimson Priest.
It carried a bowl overflowing with blood, inside which floated pieces of flesh a heart, an eye, fingers.
The priest dipped its hand in and smeared the blood across Sara’s face.
“The final sacrifice,” it intoned.
“The house is almost full. When your blood runs, the cycle renews.”
The corpses of her friends began chanting in broken, gurgling voices:
“Bleed. Bleed. Bleed.”
The priest raised the cleaver, its blade dripping with the blood of countless victims.
Sara’s heartbeat roared in her ears.
She could feel the house itself breathing, walls closing in, hungry for her life.
But then a crack.
The chain on her left wrist snapped loose.
The sound echoed like thunder.
Sara didn’t think. She grabbed the broken chain and swung it like a weapon, smashing Nimra’s corpse across the face.
Her head twisted backward, bones snapping, before the body collapsed.
The priest roared, its voice like an earthquake.
“YOU CANNOT ESCAPE!”
Sara swung again, the chain slicing into Hamid’s chest, ripping his stitched body apart.
She screamed, her voice filled with madness and rage, blood splattering across her skin.
She leapt from the altar just as the cleaver came down, sparks flying as it struck stone.
Sara ran, barefoot across the blood-slick floor, her hands shaking, her eyes wild.
Behind her, the corpses of her friends rose again, shrieking, chasing, their torn flesh slapping against the ground.
And the whispers grew louder, filling her skull:
“Five entered. None leave. None leave. None leave.”
She burst through a door into another endless corridor. But this one was different.
Every wall was covered with mirrors.
And in every reflection, Sara wasn’t herself.
She was the priest.
She was the killer.
Her reflection raised the cleaver, grinning with blood stained teeth.
And the mirrors whispered in unison:
“You cannot run, Sara. You are the house now.”
Sara fell to her knees, sobbing, as the glass around her began to crack…
PART : 7
THE MIRROR OF MADNESS
The mirrors trembled.
Cracks spread like spiderwebs until one by one they shattered with an ear-splitting shriek.
Shards rained down around Sara, cutting her arms and face.
Blood trickled down her cheeks, mixing with her tears.
But the reflections didn’t die.
Each shard on the ground still showed her face not screaming, not crying, but smiling.
Wide, monstrous, teeth sharp as knives.
Sara clutched her head, whispering,
“This isn’t me… this isn’t me…”
From the largest mirror stepped out her reflection but twisted. Its eyes were hollow black pits, its skin pale as ash.
In its hand was the cleaver, dripping fresh blood.
It tilted its head, grinning.
“You already killed them, Sara. Don’t you remember?”
Suddenly, flashes filled her mind. Nimra’s torn body, Hamid’s crushed skull, Usman’s heart ripped out but in every vision, it was not the priest.
It was Sara holding the weapon. Sara covered in blood. Sara laughing.
She screamed, falling back.
“No! That wasn’t me!”
Her reflection stepped closer, dragging the cleaver across the floor.
Sparks flew, the sound like nails on bone.
“It was always you. The house is inside you now.”
From the shards on the floor, more reflections began to crawl out.
Ten… twenty… fifty versions of Sara, all smiling, all carrying weapons chains, knives, butcher hooks.
They surrounded her in a circle, whispering in perfect unison:
“Kill. Kill. Kill.”
The corridor twisted, turning into a slaughterhouse.
Meat hooks dangled from the ceiling, dripping with blood. Torn limbs swung like decorations, eyes nailed into the walls.
A door burst open at the far end. From it, Nimra stumbled out again her real body this time, torn but alive, her eyes wide in terror.
“Help me, Sara! Please!”
But before Sara could move, one of her reflections lunged forward and slit Nimra’s throat from ear to ear.
Blood sprayed across the mirrors, and every reflection licked its lips.
Nimra collapsed, choking, clutching her neck as the floor swallowed her whole.
Sara screamed until her voice cracked, her body shaking violently.
“STOP IT! STOP IT!”
Her reflection leaned close, pressing the cleaver against her throat.
Its black eyes glowed brighter as it whispered:
“There’s no stopping. You don’t escape the house… you become it.”
The other reflections chanted louder and louder, their voices shaking the walls:
“One remains. One must feed. One must bleed.”
The cleaver lifted high.
And the mirrors around her shattered again, plunging Sara into a storm of glass and blood.
PART : 8
THE LAST OFFERING
Sara landed hard on cold stone. When her eyes opened, she was no longer in the mirror corridor.
She was in a cavernous chamber, walls made of pulsating flesh, veins glowing red.
The entire house had changed it was no longer a building, it was alive.
In the center stood the Crimson Priest, taller, stronger, its bone mask cracked to reveal a skull grinning with jagged teeth.
The floor beneath it was a massive circle of blood runes, glowing faintly like fire.
And on the circle lay her friends’ corpses.
Hamid. Nimra. Usman. Their bodies twitched, jerked, stitched back together with barbed wire, their heads turning unnaturally to stare at Sara.
The priest raised its cleaver high. Its voice thundered like a hundred screams:
“The offering is incomplete. One remains. The blood must flow.”
Sara’s body trembled violently. Her hands were drenched in cuts, her face streaked with blood.
She backed away, whispering,
“No… no, please… I can’t… I didn’t”
But the corpses lurched toward her, dragging themselves with broken limbs.
Their jaws unhinged, spilling teeth as they chanted:
“Bleed. Bleed. Bleed.”
Sara grabbed a rusted chain from the floor and swung wildly, smashing into Hamid’s skull.
His head caved in with a wet crunch but instead of dying, he laughed, black blood spraying from his mouth.
The Crimson Priest stepped forward, pointing its cleaver at her.
“Stop fighting, child. You were chosen. The house spared you this long because it wants you to finish the cycle.”
The walls pulsed, the ceiling dripped blood, and from every direction came the same whisper:
“Kill yourself Or kill again”
Sara’s mind cracked. She saw visions herself holding the cleaver, slaughtering her friends, laughing as she fed the house.
She saw her reflection grinning back at her, chanting:
“You are the house. You are the hunger.”
Sara dropped to her knees, clutching her head, screaming.
“NO! I’M NOT!”
The Crimson Priest loomed above her, pressing the cleaver into her hands.
Its skeletal fingers curled over hers, forcing her grip tight.
“Yes. You are.”
All around, her stitched friends closed in, whispering,
“Finish it… finish it…”
Sara’s heart hammered. Her eyes went wild.
And then… she lifted the cleaver.
With one final scream, she swung it down into her own chest.
The chamber shook violently.
Blood erupted in a fountain, drenching the walls, the corpses, the altar.
The Crimson Priest’s mask shattered as it roared in triumph.
The house devoured Sara’s body, sucking her into the floor until nothing remained but the cleaver, lying in a pool of crimson.
The whispers grew louder, filling every corner of the house:
“The offering is complete.
The cycle begins a new.”
Outside, the mansion stood silent, its windows dark.
To anyone passing by, it was just an abandoned ruin.
But deep within, fresh laughter echoed Sara’s laughter.
The house had a new voice now.
And it was hungry again…….