She had never been able to shake the feeling that something was always watching her. After the Ouija board incident, her world blurred between reality and the unexplainable. She replayed the sequence of family deaths—too many, too close together. Figures darted through her memories, whispering that the hauntings she kept experiencing weren’t mere coincidence. Each night, recurrent nightmares suffocated her with dread, trapping her in a merciless loop from which she could not wake.

In her dreams, the architecture of her fear was tangible—a house whose basement and attic seemed to pulse with malevolence. She knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that something sinister lurked in those forbidden spaces. Sometimes the entity waited in the basement; sometimes it crept upstairs. Every visit to these dream-houses came with a warning etched into her soul: never go in. But the threat lingered, just out of sight, its promise of terror ever-present.

The pressure built until she was no longer herself. She began ridding her life of old belongings, each object a potential anchor for the unseen. Sentimentality was a luxury she could no longer afford. She hunted for help with the precision of the desperate: an EMDR therapist for her mind, a priest for her soul. Maybe, together, these strangers could exorcise the curse that clung to her.

The rituals promised relief. For a moment, the air around her lightened, hope fluttering in her chest. But that hope was cruel. Soon after, footsteps echoed from the second floor—a sound she recognized, a harbinger of her old fears. The entity was back, resurrected by the same damned Ouija board. It paraded as a child, sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl who tossed dimes, always slipping just beyond her grasp. Her mind screamed: “How? I did everything right! Why does this thing still follow me?”

That night, her grandmother appeared in a dream, her presence grave and urgent. “You must clear your house in your dream to rid it from your life,” she said, her voice a lifeline. Together they descended to the basement—a single bulb burning overhead, spotlights suddenly illuminating a series of doors. Each door was a portal to a memory of the entity, every handle a test of her resolve.

She gripped a pair of scissors and cut through the ropes binding one particular door, her pulse hammering in her ears. Inside, the entity waited, clutching a lantern, its red eyes burning with hatred. Shadows writhed around its form as it watched her. Fear clawed at her throat, but she faced the entity head-on. “You’re not welcome here anymore!” she shouted, the words scraping against the walls of the dream. Pain seared her ears, and nausea twisted her stomach, but she pressed forward. She snatched the lantern from the entity’s hands and hurled it to the ground. The dream dissolved into blackness, and she woke, heart racing. The room was silent. For the first time, peace settled over her—a fragile sense that, against all odds, she was finally free.