The letter arrived on a Tuesday, three days after her mother's funeral.

Evelyn stood in the doorway of her childhood home, the envelope trembling in her hands. No return address. Just her name in elegant script that looked eerily familiar—her mother's handwriting, but sharper somehow. More deliberate.

She tore it open.

"Evelyn, if you're reading this, I'm dead. Good. That means the curse finally worked."

Evelyn's breath caught. Her mother had always been eccentric, collecting old books about folklore and spending hours in the attic with artifacts she'd never explain. But this?

"There are three things you need to know: First, I wasn't born in 1952. I was born in 1852. Second, our family has been keeping something locked away for generations. And third—it just woke up."

The lights flickered. Once. Twice.

From somewhere deep in the house, Evelyn heard a sound she'd never heard before—a low, rhythmic scraping, like something dragging itself across the attic floor.

She looked up at the ceiling.

The scraping stopped.

Then, distinctly, she heard footsteps. Heavy. Methodical. Moving toward the attic stairs.

Her mother's letter slipped from her fingers. At the bottom, in hastily scrawled ink, were the final words:

"Don't let it know you can hear it. And whatever you do—don't open the red door."

Evelyn had lived in this house for eighteen years. She'd explored every corner, every closet.

There had never been a red door.

Until now.

Because when she turned toward the stairs, there it was—painted crimson, impossibly old, standing where the linen closet should have been. And behind it, something was breathing.

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