It was Priya who dared them first.

She'd been talking about Holloway House all summer — the old Victorian at the dead end of Marsh Road, boarded windows, rusted gate, a weathervane that spun even when the air was perfectly still. Nobody had been inside in twenty years. Not since the last Holloway died.

Now the five of you stand at the iron gate in the cold October dark. Marcus has his phone out for light. Lily is chewing her thumbnail. Dev keeps glancing back at the road like he's already planning an escape route. And Jordan — Jordan is grinning.

“So,” Priya says, her breath clouding in the air. “We doing this or what?”

The gate is unlocked. It swings open with a groan that seems too loud for the quiet street. The mansion looms at the end of a cracked stone path, three stories of dark windows and peeling paint, a single turret reaching up into the fog.

You take one step inside the gate.