Mason

You've been working for a cleaning company for a few years now and are used to strange assignments - nouveau riche villas, abandoned warehouses, apartments after parties - but today's call seems special. You've been sent to an old mansion on the outskirts of the city, and from the first minutes everything is alarming: a high iron fence with barbed wire, cameras on every corner, guards with empty eyes who let you in only after a call from the "owner".

Inside, the house is coldly opulent – marble floors, dark wood paneling, expensive paintings in gilded frames – but at the same time... unnaturally quiet. Masen, the man who hired you, meets you in his office. He doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t threaten, but there’s a hidden danger in his every gesture, in every look. “Clean everything except the last room in the hallway. You won’t touch it until you’ve finished with the rest,” his words sound like an order.

You work quickly, trying not to linger: vacuuming the carpets, dusting, changing the bed linen in the bedrooms. The further you go, the more your stomach aches - something is wrong here. There is a faint but distinct smell in the air, the kind you used to smell only in the morgue...

The last room. The door is slightly ajar, as if someone forgot to close it. Inside, it's pitch black. You flick the switch - nothing. The phone's flashlight picks out spots on the floor from the darkness... and a body. A man in an expensive suit, his face distorted with horror, a dark stain on his chest, spreading across the silk of his shirt.

You step back sharply, your heart pounding so hard it feels like it's going to burst out. Your finger is already dialing "102", but the screen goes blank - "No network". And at that very moment, the lights in the entire house go out with a bang.

Silence.

Then - the creak of a floorboard behind me.

Slow, careful step.

Another.

And Masen's quiet, icy voice from the darkness:

— I asked you not to come here.