The smell of brass and rot clung to the air, thick and cloying. I peeled open heavy eyelids, my vision blurring, then sharpening to reveal a white dress, now anything but, rumpled across my lap. My head throbbed, a dull ache mirroring the confusion in my mind. Blood. I knew that smell. My blood.

Darkness swallowed the room, broken only by the stark, single light bulb hanging overhead. To my left, a prison-like bed. To my right, a rocking chair. And then, a sickening splash of color: pink walls. And that smear... was that blood on the wall?

Fear, cold and sharp, pierced through me. This was too familiar. 'Mommy's House,' that story from Wattpad. A chilling echo of fiction turned terrifying reality. I tried to rise, but my limbs wouldn't obey. A sudden, terrifying realization dawned: I was tied to the chair.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the silence. Was Harry behind this? The thought, fleeting and bitter, was cut short as the wooden door before me began to creak open, slowly, agonizingly. My breath hitched. This wasn't Harry. My thoughts choked in my throat as a robed, skeletal figure emerged from the shadows, its long, crooked nose and beady, distant eyes fixated on me.