The Voice in the Hallway
Andrea had been told never to enter the old, abandoned house at the very end of town after midnight. But she went anyways with her sister.
It wasn’t long before she lost her sister down a hallway and heard her whispering her name from down the other end, so she went searching with only a flashlight. The corridor was empty, yet something cold settled upon her shoulders.
“Andrea! Turn around, I’m this way!” her sister’s voice pleaded from the darkness behind her at the end of the hallway.
Andrea froze. Every instinct screamed not to turn around—that she should run, but her feet refused to move. The voice sounded exactly like her sister’s—soft, frightened, familiar. Still, something was wrong. Her sister always would drag out the last syllable of Andrea’s name when she was afraid. This voice had spoken it too perfectly, as if it had learned the sound without understanding it.
Andrea tightened her grip on the flashlight. She wanted to believe the voice ahead was real. She wanted to turn toward it, to see her sister’s face and know she had not been alone in the dark. But the cold resting on her shoulders felt horribly deliberate, and the breathing behind her was slow, patient, like hands—but not her sister’s.
Behind her, something wearing her sister’s face leaned close. Its wide smile trembled against Andrea’s ear.
“Turn around, Andrea.”