The dead will rise if you do

There was only one rule: don’t open the door. Jack’s heart pounded, though he no longer had a heartbeat. He was dead—he knew that much. The last thing he remembered was the car skidding on wet asphalt, the blinding headlights, the sirens, and then a suffocating silence in darkness.

Yet here he was, standing in front of a door inside his grandparents’ old house. He felt something pulling him toward it like a strong magnet. Ever since he was a child, his grandmother had warned him about the door in the cellar. This door. Never open it, she’d said, with her eyes full of what he perceived as ancient fear.

The dead will rise if you do.

Now, he was one of them.

Suddenly, Jack’s mind buzzed. The secrets he kept, the betrayal he had to set right. His wife, Mary Ann… she still didn’t know the truth. The betrayal gnawed at him, and it had forced him back into this world.

He couldn’t rest, not yet.

The door loomed before him. His hand moved on its own, cold and stiff, gripping the ornamented handle. One rule, his mind echoed, but his need outweighed his fear.

With a deep, hollow breath, Jack Sting pulled the door open.

From the darkness inside, something stirred—something older than the house itself. He could feel its presence. An odour of rotten eggs leaked out and a chill ran through his lifeless body as shadows began to seep out.

Jack tried to back away, but it was too late.

The last thing he heard before his soul evaporated into the darkness was a whispering voice: “You shouldn’t have opened that door.”