The door creaked open, not hurriedly, not with panic, but with the slow groan of rusted hinges that had carried the sound of many nights of storms. Elvira slipped inside, her movements deliberate. She did not look up. She did not glance toward the swaying shadow that hung above, nor to the rope that strained against the ceiling fan with the weight of her mother’s lifeless body.

She walked straight to her wooden locker.

The room smelled of damp and something far sharper, something metallic and suffocating that clawed at the back of the throat. Death had a smell, and it was already curling through the air, clinging to the fabric of the curtains, the bedding, the wooden floorboards. Elvira, however, seemed immune to it.

Her eyes, hollow and cold, searched the cluttered shelves inside — not for answers, not for comfort, but for something small, metallic, and functional.

A lighter.

She moved with precision, as though time were stretched thin, her mind not allowing hesitation. Her mother’s head tilted slightly, the rope cracked, but she didn't flinched.

When she found the lighter, she flicked it open and shut, once. The flame danced for a heartbeat and vanished, leaving the faint smell of butane behind. Her eyes did not reflect it. They were as still as glass, as cold as the shadow looming above her.

Behind her, the silence was unbearable — the rhythmic creak of the ceiling fan, the whisper of a dead woman swaying with gravity, the suffocating quiet that only the presence of death can create.

The door slammed open.

Her younger sister, Evara staggered inside, her face flushed with the excitement of calling her name, but the sound froze in her throat. Her eyes shot upward.

“No…” The word escaped as a whimper, then sharpened into a scream. “Mom???..Mommmm..no...”

The scream cracked through the silence like glass shattering on stone. She rushed forward, nearly tripping over the stool, her hands shaking as she reached toward the dangling body as though she could somehow undo it, somehow pull her mother down and return breath to lungs already silent.

Her sobs rose like waves, each one louder, rawer, echoing against the walls.

But Elvira.. with the lighter stood unmoving. She did not turn, she did not cry. She only flicked the lighter open again, watching the flame grow, then vanish.

Her sister collapsed to her knees, clutching their mother’s legs, her tears soaking the fabric of the hanging dress. “Why! Why would you— Mumma, please!”

Her voice was shrill, desperate, a voice too young to carry the weight of death.

Elvira glanced once at her sister. Not with sympathy, not with contempt, but with the cold awareness of someone who had already accepted what was in front of them long before it happened.

Footsteps thundered down the hallway. Heavy. The door frame shook as their father, Damien Blackwood, appeared.

He froze.

For a moment, he looked like a man carved of stone, his face ashen, his eyes widening with the shock of seeing the woman he called his wife swaying gently from the ceiling.

Then his gaze dropped lower — to his daughters. One weeping, broken, clutching at their mother’s corpse. And the other… still, silent, flicking a lighter as though the flames fascinated her more than death itself.

Concern etched across his face, but something deeper burrowed in too. A heaviness, an old sorrow, a regret that clawed at him with invisible nails. His jaw tightened. His eyes lingered on his eldest daughter for a long, searching moment. There was no judgment there, but there was fear. And something like guilt.

“Girls…” His voice cracked, soft, uneven. “Girls, step back.”

The weeping sister didn’t listen, her cries louder, her body pressed against the cold legs of the corpse. He took one step inside, his hands trembling as if reaching for her, but he hesitated. His eyes flicked to the stool on the floor, then to the rope above, then finally back to the expressionless daughter standing with the lighter.

Before he could move further, another figure appeared in the doorway.

The brother.

He was older than the sisters, tall, shoulders sharp beneath his shirt, his face pale but controlled. His eyes scanned the room...the corpse, the rope, the stool, the crying sister...and finally landed on the girl with the lighter. His expression did not twist in horror, did not crumple with grief, but neither was it empty. There was something in the way he looked at her: quiet concern, watchful, careful.

But his face remained cold. Always cold.

He stepped forward, his movements slow, calculated, as if any sudden gesture might shatter what little remained of the room’s fragile silence. His sister’s sobs shook the air, the father’s breathing grew heavier, and the girl with the lighter finally closed it with a soft metallic snap.

“Get her down,” the brother said quietly, his voice low, steady, a whisper edged with command.

His coldness was not cruelty. It was armor. His voice, while steady, carried the same concern his father’s did, but wrapped tightly, hidden beneath restraint. His eyes lingered again on his sister, searching, as if trying to find something in her unflinching gaze.

She looked back at him. And for a brief, flickering moment, the lighter between her fingers almost clicked open again.

The rope creaked overhead, the corpse swayed, the younger sister wailed, the father’s regret clung to the air like smoke, and the brother’s cold concern held the room in its grip.

But the girl… she remained the stillness in the storm.

And in that stillness, the room became terrifying.