What are you afraid of? Failure? Rejection? Loneliness… or perhaps death? Maybe all of them at once? Those who claim they fear nothing are either cunning liars or simply haven’t lived long enough to discover their own terrors. But what if we sprinkle in a pinch of indifference? After all, each of these things will catch up to us sooner or later. Wouldn’t we be happier if we were blind to our own torment?

  Rain lashed the roof of the bus as though desperate to break inside. Vincent’s thoughts swirled around his brother Lucius. He never imagined that the first message he’d receive from him in five years would be an obituary. His mother knew fully well she was dying, yet she spent every waking moment searching for their missing sister. Well, perhaps now she rests in a better place—if such a place exists. Vincent himself had long since abandoned any hope of finding his younger sister. When he came of age, he resolved to seek a better life in Norway. He was sure he’d have no reason to return. Yet here he was, pulled back by fate to circle once more around the family he thought he’d left behind.

  Inside the vehicle there was complete silence. Just Vincent and, the driver who had carried him since childhood, always in the same battered old bus that stopped nearest their hometown. Vincent had often wondered why this old man hadn’t aged a single hair, though his perpetual scowl and sour disposition discouraged even a greeting. Vincent supposed some people simply preferred to be left alone. driver struck him as exactly that sort of man. At last, closed his eyes for a nap as dusk descended.

  Suddenly, the headlights of an oncoming truck cleaved the darkness. The crash sounded like an explosion. The bus veered into the roadside trees, glass shattering in a thousand shards. Bruno felt his body slam against the metal frame, his head striking the headrest. Everything blurred into a whirlwind of deafening noise.

  Mud’s chill and the dampness of rain roused him some time later. He lay face-down in the sodden grass, breathing shallow, pain throbbing in his temples. Raindrops mixed with his tears as he surveyed the chaos around him. Flashing red lights of ambulances, rescuers shouting, the crack of splintering wood and twisted metal. Trying to move, he noticed the driver’s crushed, gutted body—its wounds looked less like a crash and more like the ravaging of an enraged beast. Only the face remained, eyes bulging and rolling back and forth, repeating a single question: “What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of?”

  Vincent couldn’t believe what he saw. Fear froze him in place. Blood and entrails had never unsettled him in films, but this… this was something entirely different, something he never expected.

  He awoke in a cold sweat, heart pounding. Before him stood an irritated older man who spat, “Get off. This isn’t a hotel.” Vincent—still dazed—stammered, “I—yes, I’m getting off.” He climbed from the wreck in the heart of the forest. Beneath his feet, wet leaves rustled; the rot mingled with the sharp scent of pine resin. Shadows darted among the trees, and a forlorn cry echoed in the distance. Whenever Vincent found himself there, he felt he was never truly alone—something insistent tapped beneath the earth, familiar yet abhorrent.

  “I don’t have time for this,” he muttered, and pressed on toward his refuge. The path was short. Ahead loomed the house of nightmares, as though ripped from memory and abandoned by time. Its walls were stained black with mold and moisture, brown rivulets of brackish water streaming down like tears. The windows yawned hollow, glass long gone, like eye sockets hollowed of the building’s very soul. The roof had caved in places, exposing charred beams and jagged tiles strewn across the rafters. Massive oak doors, creaking on a single crooked hinge, hung half-open—neither fully shutting themselves away nor inviting in the darkness.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Every fragment—from the splintered doorframes to the rusted hardware—seemed to scream in silence, as if the house breathed its own malevolent breath. The damp air trembled, and the withered branches of dead trees reached toward him like skeletal claws. Above the entrance, painted in dripping crimson letters, the word RUN pulsed in the twilight, a warning louder than his own heartbeat. Nothing had changed, Vincent thought with grim satisfaction.

  He’d painted that very message himself the first time he shattered in pieces—locked in the basement by his childhood friends. Their bodies still lay there, untouched by time’s decay. The phantoms had aided him in his revenge. It seemed fitting that the first help he ever received left others horrified. Yet he felt gratitude toward those beings. They never harmed him, though their first appearance petrified him: unnaturally elongated, pale forms, like mist mixed with dust. In time, he’d grown accustomed to their presence.

  At last, he resolved to take his first tentative steps back into that nostalgic place. Darkness enveloped him. Behind, the doors slammed shut. Vincent hesitated for only a moment. Perhaps he’d been alone all along.

  Then he tested the doorknob. Vincent crossed the threshold slowly, and the doors locked with a hollow thud. The echo reverberated off rotted walls like the lament of bygone memories. Inside, the house was far more abandoned than its exterior suggested. Dust hung in the air like childhood specters, and beneath his feet each floorboard groaned as though warning of some unseen threat.

  From the kitchen came a quiet clink, as if a teacup had been set down. He froze. He knew that sound too well—his mother had always used those same porcelain cups, blue patterns edging their rims. Yet she was gone. No one should be here.

  A ringing hiss filled his ears. Somewhere in the darkness, movement flickered. Vincent pressed his hand against the wall, heartbeat racing. There it was again—soft footsteps, from above… or perhaps below.

  The air thickened, viscous with the weight of the past. Moonlight vanished. Darkness swallowed everything, and Vincent couldn’t even see his own hands. Then he heard a voice.

  “What are you afraid of, Vincent?”

  He stopped dead. The tone was cold, alien, yet terrifyingly familiar. Fear stabbed at his temples.

  “What are you afraid of…”

  This time the voice murmured inches from his ear.

  He took a step back and stumbled, crashing to the floor. His heart thundered inside his chest. Around him fell a sinister silence, then laughter—a low, mocking sound that cut sharper than any blade. From the shadows of a doorway emerged a figure, tall and hunched, clad in an oversized coat, lantern in trembling hand.

  Vincent held his breath. At last the face resolved from the gloom.

  “Lucius?”

  His brother approached with that same arrogant smirk Vincent had known years ago—or thought he remembered. From this distance Lucius’s features were blurred, his eyes mere voids.

  “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Or yourself from years past.”

  “That was only a test,” Lucius said. “I had to see if you’re still the same frightened child we left behind.”

  The word “we” hung in the air far longer than it ought to have. Vincent swallowed.

  “Shall I remind you,” he whispered, voice barely more than a breath, “that I was always alone?”

  Lucius laughed, amusement clear in his tone. “You have no idea what hunted me all those years.”

  “Or perhaps,” Vincent replied, “it’s you who’s been chasing them.”

  He remained motionless, every limb heavy as though rooted in the floor. He should have said something, anything—yet his tongue refused to cooperate.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be afraid of me at all.”

  Lucius took a step closer. The lantern’s glow sputtered out. Vincent was left in utter blackness. And then, he was truly alone once more.