The Last Light The house at the end of the street had been abandoned for as long as Emma could remember. Its crooked silhouette loomed in the distance like a decaying monument to something forgotten, windows dark like lifeless eyes, and a rusted gate that groaned like it hadn't been moved in years. But tonight, as she walked home from her late shift, something was different. A flicker of light danced across the upper window. Faint, almost imperceptible at first—just a soft glow, like the fading embers of a dying fire. Emma's footsteps slowed, her heartbeat quickening in a rhythm she couldn't control. The house had always been empty. No one had dared approach it in years, not since the last tenants disappeared without a trace, swallowed whole by the mystery of the place. But now the window shone—just a crack of light cutting through the darkness. She stood frozen at the edge of the street, staring. The air felt colder than usual, and the wind carried something with it. A hum. Not a sound, but a sensation—something like a whisper, a tug at her mind, urging her toward that window, to that house. The front gate, which had been chained shut for as long as she could remember, creaked open by itself, the sound piercing the silence of the night. Emma could feel her pulse pounding in her throat, her instincts screaming at her to turn around, to get away. But the light. That damn light. It pulled her forward. Her feet moved before her brain could catch up. As she stepped up to the porch, the floorboards groaned beneath her, each step a small protest against the intrusion. The door, which had been sealed with a rusted lock for years, stood ajar, just wide enough for her to slip through. "Hello?" Her voice cracked as she called into the vast emptiness of the house. The words felt hollow, swallowed by the oppressive quiet. No answer. Only the echo of her own uncertainty. The hallway stretched before her, a cavernous maw of shadows, the walls peeling like the skin of something long dead. The air smelled stale—old dust and damp wood, mixed with something faintly metallic, like blood. A flicker of movement in the corner of her vision made her stomach lurch, but when she turned, nothing was there. Her breathing hitched. She wasn’t alone. As she moved deeper into the house, her footsteps echoed eerily off the walls. The light upstairs flickered again—dimming and then brightening as if beckoning her. She could almost feel the house watching her, an unseen presence lurking just beyond the edge of her vision. Every fiber of her being screamed at her to leave, but the light above was like a beacon, pulling her toward it. She didn’t want to, but her legs carried her up the stairs anyway, each step making the floorboards creak and groan under her weight. The staircase was narrow and steep, the wood worn with age, and with every step she took, the air grew colder, more suffocating. When she reached the top, the light was brighter now, spilling from a room at the very end of the hall. Her breath was ragged, her chest tight. Something was wrong—everything was wrong. Her eyes flicked over to the other rooms, their doors half open, the darkness within like yawning mouths, waiting to swallow her whole. She stepped forward, her fingers brushing the wall for support, and approached the door to the room with the light. As her hand touched the doorknob, it turned of its own accord, the wood creaking with a sound so old it seemed to reverberate through her bones. The room was small, sparsely furnished. The only object of note was an enormous mirror, framed in tarnished silver, its surface so still it was almost like glass. But it wasn’t. It was like a doorway—a passage to something else, something waiting. And there, standing in the mirror, was Emma. She froze. She knew it was her, but not quite. The reflection was too perfect—too still. Her image was too calm, her eyes wide, unnervingly bright. She blinked, and the reflection didn’t. Then it smiled. It was slow at first—a faint quiver at the corners of the mouth. But it stretched, wider and wider, until it was no longer her face. It was something… other. The eyes grew darker, hollow, as if all the light had been drained from them. The smile turned twisted, cruel, impossibly wide, pulling at the skin as though the face was too tight, suffocating under its own expression. Emma’s heart thudded painfully in her chest, her breath shallow, quickening. She tried to step back, but her body refused to move. The reflection in the mirror stayed fixed, its grin spreading farther, more unnatural, stretching beyond what a human face should be capable of. A voice, soft and serpentine, whispered in her ear. "Leave now, while you still can." The words were a hiss, not from her own lips but from somewhere deeper, somewhere darker. Emma’s pulse raced as a cold, unnatural draft wrapped around her. She turned, and as her eyes moved back to the mirror, the reflection was no longer standing still. It was moving. Her reflection stepped out of the glass. The thing that was once her grinned wider, its eyes black and empty, its skin ashen and stretched too tight. Its breath came in shallow, ragged gasps, like it had been starved for years. The floorboards creaked beneath its feet as it moved toward her, its arms outstretched, and a low, guttural sound filled the room. Emma's throat tightened. She tried to scream, but the sound was caught in her chest. Her legs were frozen in place, her body betraying her, the thing growing closer with every step. The creature’s voice rasped, sickly sweet, dripping with venom. "You’ve seen it now. There’s no turning back." Its cold hand reached out, grazing her cheek. The moment it touched her skin, something inside her snapped. The room grew colder, darker, the shadows bleeding into the walls, pulling the light away, suffocating everything. Emma gasped, but the air was thick, as though the house itself was drowning her. And then, everything went still. --- The house at the end of the street remains abandoned, yet there’s something different about it now. The light upstairs flickers sometimes—only when the wind howls and the moon is hidden behind dark clouds. And if you stand too close, just as the night falls, you might catch a glimpse of something in the window. A figure. Watching. Waiting. It’s the last light you’ll ever see.