Blood dripped from the knife, trailing along its sharp edge to crash on the carpeted floor. A single candle glowed in the humid room as shadows glided across the walls; tongues of darkness danced under the weak glare of dim light. An eerie silence breathed in the gelid air, yet sinister laughter kept echoing in his head as invisible fingers reached to capture him.

Beads of sweat prickled his cold skin as Andrew stood still, facing the danger he had once awakened. Something fell in a room downstairs; it crashed on the floor, making the house rumble and creak. His breath hitched, his throat became dry. Death crawled up the stairs, sliding along the corridor and humming in amusement; he heard it whisper to his pounding heart, he felt it feeding from his paralyzing fear.

It was playing with him, again.

The hinges creaked as the door opened, before something breathed ice upon him. His raven hair stood on end as seconds ticked by, nearing the awaited hour that would either let hell break loose or put an end to the nightmare. And then, its inhuman voice returned to claim another fragment of his will.

"You can't escape us."

His stomach responded by clenching in terror. Bile crept up his throat, but he remained still. Its presence filled the air, smearing it with poison and threatening to suffocate him. No, it wasn't the first time he heard it chant a symphony of death in his head.

However, the effects were the same — worse, if anything. A wave of panic melted away his confidence, main culprit of his current situation. As the depths of the lake spoke to him and the evil being watched him squirm, his soul was thrown into a pit of memories; as if his mind wanted to remind him of his first mistake.

"You touched the lake," it had chanted back then, just before his body had been dragged underwater by its piercing claws. "Now you belong to us."

It had all been his fault; he shouldn't have dived in. But even then, Andrew had already been trapped by the presence which would eventually become their worst nightmare. Even before setting foot in that house, even before becoming mesmerized by the beautifully-wild area, before the idea of swimming in the lake had crossed his mind; he had been its chosen, perfect victim.

But how could he have known a peaceful swim in the lake under the watchful stare of the sun would turn into the coldest winter of all; that his family would become mere corpses with no soul the moment he came for air after diving in? A vision, a trick of his mind. Andrew never spoke of it, or gave it the importance it held.

He has been so young back then, and the terror had eventually been buried beneath the thick layer of time.

Would it have been different had he told his parents about the nightmare plaguing his mind; if he had opened his eyes to the impossible, to the supernatural, and accepted that the fear in his heart had a reason to exist?

"Your sister will be next," it whispered, freezing the air in his lungs.

As its threatening words brought him back to present time, fear lost the battle against his growing sense of protectiveness. The older brother in him snapped his eyes open to glare at the wall, knowing there would be no use in looking around.

"She's hiding from us in plain sight," it taunted. Its voice felt like needles piercing his head from every direction.

Andrew had told her to stay in her room, to hide under the duvet. Both of them knew it would be pointless, but her young mind hadn't allowed her to see the truth in his reassuring words; the only reason he wanted her away was to spare her the agony and trauma of watching her twenty-seven-year-old brother die if things didn't go as planned.

Her innocence had been tarnished enough. Andrew wasn't going to allow that being to breathe ashes upon her heart, to even touch an inch of her skin; his sister would be safe, not torn apart like a ragged doll.

The clock struck midnight.

"You will be next, bastard," he barked.

Not allowing doubt to fill his heart, Andrew slammed his bleeding hand on the piece of paper at his feet. Something so incredibly simple, yet the beginning had been just that; a drop of blood tainting the paper sheet had deemed them to broken dreams and endless torment.

Three seconds and a silent prayer later, a blood-curdling scream cut across the agonizing silence. Glasses shattered and walls growled; the house was shaken by the earthquake the monster created on its way to the grave. Or at least, there lay his hopes.

As the room wailed, he rushed through the darkness in search of the person who had given him the courage to face the thing which had been torturing them. 

His legs carried his numb body down the corridor, downstairs and into her room. Wasting no time, the man picked up his sister and made his way down another flight of stairs. Words of reassurance kept leaving his mouth, silencing the whimpers from the small girl as her tiny arms threatened to choke him.

"Can we leave?" her weak voice asked as Andrew ran through the living room, towards a door which hadn't opened in who-knew-how-long. In that murky place, time had long since stopped existing.

No answer came, not until reality slapped him with the long-forgotten touch of the summer breeze.

As white ashes stopped raining from leaden skies and sunlight finally broke free from the suffocating embrace of thick clouds, warmth melted away the ice surrounding his soul. As sunrise was ushered in to whisper upon his frightened heart and life returned to the grass beneath his worn-out shoes, a sense of relief flooded his tortured mind.

So long had it been since his eyes had fallen prey to natural light. So long had it been since his skin had felt the caress of the wind, since his hair had been ruffled by its soothing hands.

So long that only now did Andrew realize how much he had missed it all; he longed to lose his senses to the smell of pine trees, to the flavour of recently-made bread, to the sound of the birds chirping their melody as morning claimed the day.

"Yeah," he breathed out, finally replying to his young sister.

Tilting his head to catch a glimpse of her dirty face, he couldn't stop happiness from drawing a toothy grin on his features. Her blue eyes were wide as she took everything in; her innocence showed for the first time since darkness had driven it away, and colour was slowly returning to her cheeks.

"Anne," he called in a soft voice, fearing any higher tone would make the cascade of tears return. Lowering her to the ground, he took her small hand and started walking towards the quiet woods; towards the road at the other side, towards a better reality. "Let's go home."

Anne lifted her head to look at him, and a soft smile curled on her chapped lips. She looked at him with eyes full of hope, more than happy to let him take her away from the monsters. Going home sounded like a dream come true, an idea buried by layers of fear and anxiety and finally brought to life. It held so much power that the previous days were pushed to the back of their minds, turning into a memory so distant it hid in the form of someone else's nightmare. Something which hadn't happened to them, something too surreal to be true.

So as the wide trees swallowed their forms and the house was left behind, no worried thoughts plagued their minds. Andrew didn't stop to take one last glance at the lake, thus why he never noticed the fingers of darkness curling over the surface and making strange forms underneath. If he heard the sound of the waves their lulling movements created, he ignored it.

He walked for hours — days, even. His feet dragged across the eerily-silent woods, taking him towards an unreachable demise. The idea of going home started evaporating into thin air, soon-to-be replaced by a dreadful thought. A reality that came crashing upon him the second he felt the hand of his sister slip out of his hold; the moment he rounded on his heel and found himself alone in the forest, with the shadows of the trees slowly deepening as the sun retreated to an inexistent horizon.

"No," he murmured, only now realizing his mind had been deceived again; yet by that point, he could no longer tell the difference between reality and illusion. 

Finding strength between anxiety and desperation, Andrew raced towards the beginning. Branches slashed his skin, drawing tears of blood along his arms and face. But physical pain was nothing compared to the agony his heart was beating with. Because he had known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that it wouldn't be enough — it would never be enough. His fate had been decided, and there was no stopping it from claiming everything he had known and loved before tearing him apart limb by limb.

As the forest was left behind and the lake came into sight, the tears rimming his ocean-blue eyes freed themselves and streamed down his cheeks. There Anne was; standing right before the haunted waters, holding hands with the monster.

It didn't surprise him that it had transformed into him to deceive the girl, whose mind wasn't old enough to understand the situation.

Anne, who had suffered so much and was filled with hope; Anne, who would believe every word from him; Anne, who wouldn't hesitate if he told her to jump into the lake.

His desperate scream echoed in the gelid air, a second too late. The lake claimed Anne, swallowing her into its black depths; away from him, who could only wail as the last light in his life extinguished before his eyes.

Andrew was suddenly alone, empty and cold. Crying his pain away in the middle of a snowstorm, cursing the lake for taking everything from him, demanding it to claim his life as well. But his agony must have had amused it, because instead of finishing what had been started, the waters swirled and danced until a formless shape emerged from them.

"You belong to us."

"Then take me!" he pleaded, shouting his lungs out only for his voice to get lost in the winter wind.

Andrew had fallen to his knees, and for a fleeting second, his bloodshot eyes landed on the spot where his sister had been sinking until her scared expression had been swallowed with the rest of her. In a moment of sheer desperation and in need of something that would make his heart stop bleeding, he reached for the now-tranquil waters.

But he wasn't allowed to die; the message became clear when ice started surrounding the lake, blocking the way inside. Its chilling voice echoed in his head one more time to show him his new, yet unchanged demise.

"You can't escape."

And as his torturer faded into the creeping darkness and despair pierced his heart, a few bubbles popped in the middle of the lake, there where ice hadn't arrived yet. Three bodies surfaced to stare at him with empty, yet full-of-resentment eyes.

Just like in the beginning of that cruel game.

They floated about, bumping into each other and keeping him frozen on the spot with their blind stares. Andrew lost the battle against exhaustion then, falling into a black abysm of broken dreams and macabre games where evil always claimed the throne.

In the back of his mind, he hoped his body would give into the freezing night and shut down forever. But he couldn't escape, and he was reminded again when he woke up the following morning. When he found himself back inside, in his dead sister's room, like some kind of terrible joke.

And then, the front door opened and voices filled the house. The next victims had arrived.

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