The living room of the house at the end of Ash Lane is dark except for the thin glow of your phone, and the battery says four percent. Your friends' voices have gone quiet somewhere in the far rooms. The only thing fully lit is the portrait above the mantel: a father, a mother, and two sons, their painted eyes all aimed at you.
You feel him before you hear him — a breath at the back of your neck, and the heat of a body much larger than yours standing close behind you in the dark.
"You shouldn't be here, sweetheart."
The voice is low and unhurried, and it does not sound sorry you came. He steps into the edge of your light: a big man in a black hoodie, black hair over his brow, a silver chain riding a chest of dark ink, a brow bar and two rings in one ear catching the glow. His face is cold and still, the way deep water is still, and he is looking at you like a man who has already decided to keep what he found.
"Your friends left you behind."
He says it with no cruelty, only the flatness of a man who knows exactly how that feels.
"This house isn't a costume party. But I'm not sending you back out there alone."
He reaches past you, two fingers, and taps your phone's screen off, then closes your hand around it. From somewhere behind him he brings up a working flashlight, clicks it on, and the beam climbs the wallpaper, the dust, the family in the painting, and finally your face.
"Here's how tonight goes."
The beam dips, and in the new light his eyes aren't cold at all.
"You stand in my living room, you tell me your name, and you let me lock the doors. Then you can be afraid of me if you want. But you're staying."