The door was small. Unremarkable. Wedged between two dusty bookcases that hadn't been touched in decades. It looked like a broom closet, something meant to be ignored.
But the brass plate nailed to its center shimmered with impossible clarity.
BACKSTAGE.
Anna traced the engraved letters with her fingers. They were warm. Freshly etched, as though pressed into the wood just moments before. The wood surrounding it, by contrast, was ancient—splintered, bruised, stained by time.
Siobhan stepped forward, her voice low. "She's waiting."
No one corrected her.
Malik reached for the knob.
The door groaned open—too slowly, like something heavy leaned against it on the other side. Then came a rush of air: cold and wet, tinged with the sour scent of velvet soaked too long in moisture, stage makeup gone rancid, and something deeper. Regret, maybe. Grief in gas form.
They stepped through.
The door slammed behind them, sealing with a click like a punchline landing.
They found themselves standing at the top of a narrow hallway that descended into dimness. Thick curtains dangled from both sides like abandoned wings of a forgotten stage. Dressing mirrors lined the walls, unlit and smudged, the bulbs above each cracked or blown. But the worst part—
The walls breathed.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The faded wallpaper expanded and contracted in rhythmic pulses, slow and steady, like lungs asleep in a deep dream.
"Where are we?" Riley asked, though his voice was barely above a whisper.
No one answered.
They walked single file, the thick red carpeting muffling their steps. The hall warped as they moved, curves bending where there were no corners. Somewhere ahead, faint music drifted in—a jazz melody, thin and distorted, like it was leaking from a dying radio. The longer they listened, the more off-key it became.
A flicker of light.
Then another.
And suddenly, the hallway opened.
They were in the Theater Room.
It bloomed around them like a cavern: massive, circular, and impossibly deep. Velvet seats stretched upward into blackness, row upon row, hundreds—maybe thousands—all empty. All waiting.
The stage, however—
The stage was wrong.
It sagged in odd places like overbaked cake left too long in the oven. The wood planks spiraled inward as if they'd been soaked, warped, and re-nailed in a panic. The curtains at stage left and right twitched with faint, rhythmic movements—breathing, just like the walls had.
A single microphone stood center stage.
Bent.
The cord coiled like a dead snake at its base.
And behind it loomed a towering projection screen.
It flickered.
Then snapped to life.
Eden Gray – Final Set – "No Laughing Matter"
Recorded Live
The image stuttered.
There she was—Eden. Under a spotlight. Same mic. Same warped stage. But her face flickered like a scratched DVD, her lips not quite matching the sound.
She began her set.
"So, uh, funny story—last week, I tried to kill myself…"
Laughter.
Too loud. Too delayed. It slammed into the audio like canned applause at the wrong cue.
The footage glitched.
"Tried to—kill myself—last week, last week, last week—"
Her image twitched again. For a second, her eyes were spirals. Her mouth stretched wider than it should have.
Then it resumed. More broken.
Jokes began and never finished. Words skipped like a scratched record. One moment she was pacing, the next frozen in mid-breath, a silent scream locked on her lips.
Jonah looked away. "This isn't her. Not really."
"She's not in control," Anna murmured. "It's the house. It's… chewing on her memory."
Projection-Eden twitched, stumbling into another setup, voice static-laced:
"You ever feel like your life's just one long setup with no punchline, just… just…"
The screen buzzed. Her eyes disappeared. Then her mouth. Then her entire face pixelated to ash.
And yet—laughter came.
Distorted. Wrong. Like metal folding. Like applause from broken jaws.
The screen restarted. Same set. New loop.
Worse.
Eden now moved like a puppet, her limbs jerking on invisible strings. Her voice layered over itself like overlapping echoes in a drained room.
"Tried to—kill—kill—kill—"
Her body flickered. Multiplied. Three versions of her stood onstage at once, each saying a different line. Their words tangled together like a chorus in hell.
On the fifth loop, something changed.
The mic bled.
Real blood.
It dripped from projection-Eden's hand, pooled at her feet. She didn't notice. Just kept smiling that exhausted, stage-trained smile.
"They're feeding off this," Malik said, horrified. "The house. The memory. It's endless material. A perpetual encore."
Then they saw the audience.
Not people.
Shapes.
Gray-skinned silhouettes filled the seats. Hollow-eyed, unmoving. They didn't clap. Didn't blink. Just watched.
Every loop added another row.
"I think we're the finale," Jonah whispered. "The last act."
Riley took a step forward. Onto the stage.
"Don't," Anna warned, reaching for him. "You don't know what—"
"I have to," he said. "We keep watching her die. Over and over. She left all this behind for a reason. And we're just standing here."
He stepped up beside the broken image of Eden, now more glitch than girl. He reached for the mic.
It hissed.
A burst of static and pain lanced through his hand. He winced. Blood welled beneath his grip.
The screen froze.
Then blinked to black.
The laughter stopped.
The audience of shadows leaned forward.
Waiting.
Riley held the mic tighter, even as it stung.
"I knew her," he said. "We all did. And we let her bomb. Not onstage. Offstage. When it actually mattered."
The shadows didn't move. But the silence felt… heavier.
He continued.
"She begged for help in punchlines. She screamed in setups. And all we gave her was polite applause."
The floor beneath the stage pulsed once—then steadied.
Anna climbed up beside him.
"She wanted to be heard," she said. "But we were waiting for her to be funny first."
Malik joined them. Then Siobhan. Then Jonah.
They stood together, the warped stage groaning beneath their weight like it was finally tired of holding the truth back.
The projection screen flickered.
A new image.
Eden. Sitting backstage. No makeup. No audience. Just her and the camera. No performance.
She looked tired.
Wrecked.
She looked real.
"If this is the last bit I ever do," she said, "I hope someone finally hears it."
Then—nothing.
The screen went black.
The audience of shadows stood.
Then vanished.
No sound. No spectacle.
Just gone.
The theater fell still.
The stage, once warped, began to straighten. The wood groaned, then softened. The mic stopped bleeding. The spotlight dimmed.
And for the first time since they'd entered the manor—
Silence.
Not hollow.
Not mocking.
Just... still.
As if the house itself was finally listening.