My mother once told me a story about a man so lonely and angry at the world he built his home around him brick by brick, enclosing himself within it forever and shutting out the outside with the final swipe of plaster. He had given no thought to windows nor doors, but only to making true the concept of escape from the society that had abandoned him.

My mother’s lips had tugged forlornly when she told me this story, her once-beautiful fingers bent out of shape from arthritis and trembling as they had smoothed down my hair. She told me of the man who had closed off the world until one day he starved for sunlight, for the feeling of rainfall on his skin and for the quiet joy of spotting the first rainbow when the storm cleared, for the scents of grass and the rush of sea air at the beach. He had knocked on his thick walls, first hesitant and then desperate - but no one answered him and his hands grew bloodied and broken.

I remember I had asked my mother if the man ever escaped, if he ever saw the sunrise again, and her wise eyes had stared out at nothing. No, she had told me, no. He had remained trapped in a cage of his own making, isolated from people, stolen away from all beyond the walls he had crafted out of hatred and anger. It had been too late for him to realize he wished to be free, and he had become one with the home he had ardently built. His blood became the deep burgundy carpet, his bones the rafters of a high ceiling that seemed to breathe with silent warmth, his eyes the windows that had never been, his mouth the door he had never added before, a swinging panel of oddly off-white painted wood which opened freely to those who wished to step in but less easily opened to those that desired to leave.

My mother had appeared so very tired when she told me this story, still staring out at some faraway place, her hands shaking yet gentle against my head as she brushed her twisted fingers through my hair. I remember asking who the man was, why she would tell me this story as we waited out the inevitable. The machines by her bed had beeped low and quiet, and I had eyed the numbers ever-changing on the screens with hostility, daring them to pivot and drop, or escalate to levels no one could stop. They did and they had, but it had been many weeks before her hands had no longer provided their comforting warmth.

My mother had smiled, a sad smile that didn’t reach her eyes as she finally turned to face me. To remind you that even when the whole world is against you, you should always keep the door open or risk forgetting the beauty of what lies outside. I do not wish for you to stay behind your walls, Charlie. There is good out there, if only you’d let yourself find it. Don’t let your mind ensnare you in a trap that only hurts those who meet you.

I opened my eyes.

“Ah, Charlie! Nice of you to finally wake.”

Adrian sat cross-legged on top of the kitchen counter, my phone in his hands as he scrolled through something on the screen. He paused, his eyes flashing up towards me with that same polite yet sinister smile. Then he returned his focus to the phone, humming in approval at whatever he saw.

My head lolled to one side, my chin resting on my collarbone with such a weight I worried my skull would snap off my own neck. Why did everything ache? My body felt so lethargic as if stones had been tied to my limbs, dragging down every movement.

“No missed calls, no texts, no messages,” stated Adrian, carefully placing my phone on the counter beside him, the screen locked and dark. “No one wondering how your holiday is going, no updates or questions about work, not even a notification from group chats you never contributed to.”

I glared at him, my lips melded together as I fought to open my mouth to say something, anything, but my jaw wouldn’t even clench in response.

“No one,” he said, smiling. “No one at all. Only you and us. We are the only ones who care, Charlie. Only us.”

I really hoped my silent glare showed just how much I despised him and rejected his words, how my body shrunk in on itself and my skin crawled with disgust at his treacherous smile and the oozing confidence that seemed to have a physical form, a wet and heavy cloak wrapped around me. No, not a cloak - the figure. Its scrawny arms were clinging onto me, pulling me back against the wall. It was the only thing holding me up, its ragged pieces of clothing overlapping with mine, and the chill of its rigid body soaking into mine like shards of ice.

“Twenty-four hours,” Adrian declared, his own phone held up now with the screen pointed towards me. Once my eyes were back on him, he tapped to start the timer and I watched the seconds in the corner speed down, the minutes crawling at a steady pace to the end. “Only one day left until you become part of us.”

“N-no,” I managed to weakly spit out, horrified that my voice sounded like grating rusty steel with drops of blood flying from my lips, the metallic taste leaking over my tongue and dripping down my chin.

Adrian stiffened, his arm slowly lowering to hold his phone in his lap, the timer still pointed towards me. “No? You don’t really have a say in this, Charlie.”

I tried to laugh, a sarcastic and almost hysterical sound that died in my throat as I spluttered dark blood. “I think I have more than you.”

The figure twitched around me as Adrian’s smile faded, a frown settling in hard as he leaned forwards on the counter. “Time is running out for you,” he warned, or maybe promised.

I heaved myself against the thin arms holding me back, my head drooping forwards and hanging lifelessly as I struggled to lift my chin so I could keep my glare fixated on Adrian. “I’m leaving,” I told him, a vow I was prepared to keep.

He didn’t move but the figure shifted uneasily around me, trying to tug me back into place with erratic movements, but I used the exhausted weight of my body against it. I felt the crunch and creak of bitter bones and I wondered if they were my own or the figure’s, and I pressed harder. Blood rasped from my lips, a blade of pain in my chest that sharpened with each rapid heartbeat thundering beneath bruised ribs. My arms and legs seemed to peel away like a layer of skin from the figure and the wall behind us, and I stepped forwards.

I landed with a loud thud on the floor, my hands cutting open on the pieces of shattered glass from the sliding door, tendrils of blood and flesh clinging onto my limbs as if I had been merging with the body of the lodge, a strange paleness to my skin alike that of the figure’s.

Adrian shoved himself off the counter, his polished shoes striking the floor with each controlled step and stopped beside me as I gasped for air through the blood in my throat. He didn’t touch me but his mere presence alone made the hairs over my entire body stand on end, a solid pressure against my skin that almost pushed me flat to the ground.

“You can’t leave, Charlie,” he whispered, false concern etched into his tone. “You’ll only deny yourself the completeness of the lodge. You’ll be left hollow, forever.”

“Adrian…” I breathed, gingerly lifting myself off the floor and swaying with the effort as hot blood rushed to my head, stumbling gracelessly to my feet. “I needed a break away from work to recollect myself for the next thing to come, not a break away from life entirely.”

“Your life doesn’t require you,” he hissed, the figure echoing his words with a voice of chalk screeching on a board of ash and bone. “You don’t require your life out there. We welcome you, you only need to welcome us.”

The walls were no longer made of stone or wood but instead of bleeding flesh and pulsating arteries, the floor swam with dark crimson fluid, the doors gleamed like yellowed teeth, and the ceiling ballooned and shrunk like trembling lungs. A chilling breath covered my body, leaving a heat that sweltered for a mere moment before turning my skin blue in the next.

Faces revolved in a horrifying carousel, screaming soundlessly as swollen hands grasped out for me, and yet I felt no fear. “This isn’t my dead end,” I told the lodge.

Adrian’s face screwed up, contorting like melting wax that curled in on itself and gushed oily green liquid. “You will join us. It is what you need. You need to relax and think of nothing.”

I moved towards the hallway. “I’m leaving,” I repeated, firmer, stronger, even as I tripped over my own dragging feet as I struggled through the floating residues of rotten and forgotten humanity. “I’m leaving.” I was not going to become another victim to this goddamned lodge with its goddamned puppets of morbid fate. I was going home.

I entered the hallway, the walls convulsing with people shifting and reaching out, mouths open and eyes crying black tears, and yet the frames still hung, nails hammered into the very flesh of the lodge.

The people still featured their pasts in the photo frames, families and couples, others alone and others lonely, and now their present writhed within the foundations of the lodge. I turned to the painting at the end of the hallway. The lake glimmered with a sunrise, a myriad of reds and oranges that contrasted harmoniously with the silver shadow of the moon still visible in the morning sky. The deer stood at the water’s edge, antlers held high and proud, eyes gazing up contentedly at the warming horizon above the treeline. Its strong body crisscrossed with old scars, created by battles and mistakes, marked by enemies and friends, marred by its own paths and those it trod on. Some were ancient, grey and faded, the fur almost fully covering them, and others were fresh and still puckered a healing red, and others aged a year or so with an ache that only spiked at a reminding touch.

The brushstrokes shifted and the deer turned to me, watching me from within the painting with a gaze that demanded attention, and then my eyes watched me. My hand rose to point at the front door behind me, a gentle smile on my lips that promised a future despite and maybe because of everything that happened and will happen.

I returned to the beating gore of the hallway and coughed another ghastly clot of blood from my lungs. The figure twitched, barring my exit at the front door, with Adrian standing guard at the threshold of the kitchen, the blood pool lapping past his trousers with no stain crawling up the material as if he were never truly there.

“You have to stay the week,” he told me.

“You have no hold over me,” I replied with a feeble shake of my heavy head.

“You just need to sit down and relax. You’re sick, Charlie.”

I narrowed my eyes, my hands clenched into fists that dripped blood both my own and the lodge’s.

“It’s the stress getting to you,” he said with a cautious smile as if he were calming a wild animal. “I’m worried about you, about what you might do.”

“What?”

“This isn’t the answer, Charlie. You can’t run away from this, from yourself. We have to carry on.”

Oh. I laughed, the sound callous and humourless. “I see what you’re doing. It won’t work. I’m not mad, Adrian. I know what I see, what I know. I won’t become part of you and your lodge. I have a life I want to live, and you don’t get to decide where or when that ends.”

He dropped his new act with a sigh, his expression now sharp like a maw of fangs, his gaze burning like the infernos of hell. “If you won’t accept it, we’ll just have to force you.”

And then the figure charged.