A chill attacked the skin on Raven's pale back as she felt the temperature drop. The tiny hairs on her arms stood up, and she wrapped they around her stomach, rubbing at herself to try to restore from warmth, but the bone-chilling air surrounding her seemed to get more intense. She had never been so cold, so cold it was painful and made her head hurt. Her icy teeth wouldn't listen to her when she told them to stop chattering, nor would her body stop shuddering violently.

Raven slammed her eyelids together, scrunching them tightly and wishing frantically that she had chosen to stay at home instead of being incredibly stupid and embarking on this pathetic adventure. If she didn't make it out of this house, it served her right for being so foolish. She hated herself for letting Nelly talking her into this, hated herself for getting into the car. In fact, more to the point, she hated Nelly for wanting to come to this house to do her pointless movie.

Her dark eyes flicked up to meet Nelly's, and Raven's face froze. She squinted, blinked and stared at her friend, to make sure what she was seeing was real and not a twisted, perverted hallucination like she was really hoping it was. Her breath caught in her throat, her heart stopped inside her chest as she gazed in horror at the crimson tears pouring out of Nelly's eyes her friend's face was distorted in agony; her pupils glazed white as she started gagging as coughing. Each splutter sprayed scarlet beads over her ghost-white frame, and over Raven when Nelly snatched at her shoulders in an attempt to steady herself.

"Nelly…" Raven's mind was too much in shock to think of anything else to say. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she panicked, helplessly reaching out to touch her friends hunched over back. "Oh god…" What was she supposed to do? She didn't know, and her friend was in pain and looked awful and there nothing she could think of doing to make things right. Her breathing quickened, and she tugged desperately at Nelly to make her sit up straight, but every time she did so it seemed that Nelly would huddle tighter, until she was almost hugging her trembling knees. Raven clasped at her shoulder, and with a bust of unexpected strength, forced Nelly to sit upright and turned the dark head to face hers.

Raven's eyes reached the size of golf balls and she choked on her sharp intake of breath before throwing open her mouth to release a petrified, sickening scream. She tore her hand from Nelly as if her friend was a burning white-hot coal and recoiled from her in stunned disgust. She continued screaming, backing away until her back slammed against the cool wall, causing her to jump. She watched as Braddock and Miles leapt to their feet, the rest of the group too absorbed in the horror to do anything expect back away.

The sockets where Nelly's eyes should have been were now gaping holes. There were streaky tribal marks from where her grasping hands had been desperately pulling at her bleeding face, and streams were now coming from her nose and mouth, running all the way down her neck and slowly turning her white night-gown red. Nelly's hands clawed wretchedly at the dirt-caked floorboards as she dragged her burden of a body towards Connor, fingers coiling around his shoe.

Raven's brother pulled back and stood up, stumbling backwards in a desperate effort to cast Nelly far from him. Raven reached out and pulled Connor towards her, wanting to get her sibling away from the frightening creature that Nelly had become. Her best friend hardly even looked human any more, and it terrified her. When she looked down at the gory face and blood-soaked body, she didn't see her film-making friend, but a hideous monster. She realised this, and it made her feel sick at herself, but it wasn't enough to her get over the fear.

This was the reason why, as her friend took her last breaths, Raven remained motionless, frozen to a statue in the corner. She watched Nelly's frame crumple, dark hair spilling over half of her face as her limp head flattened against the floor. The blood was still flowing from her face and collecting in vast pools on the floor. Raven moved her feet backwards, until she had no choice but to stand on her toes to avoid the blood. It almost seemed as if the red liquid was chasing her; leaving Nelly and heading towards Raven, intent on punishing the so-called friend who had stood and watched Nelly die.

 Raven tried not to scream, again, as the liquid immersed her toes, its putrid warmth making Raven turn her head and wretch. This caught her off guard, unbalancing her and forcing her feet down into the blood of her friend, a friend who, maybe, she could have saved if she'd done something other than stand by in shock. This may not have been true – there was probably nothing she could have done – but to Raven it felt real. She had just stood and watched some evil ghost or whatever murder her friend, and not even tried to help.

Raven slowly shook her head, the guilty thoughts burrowing further into her brain. She was practically a murderer. A cold-blooded murderer. She didn't deserve to be alive; she should be the one dead on the floor biting the dust. She was gonna burn in hell or some other really hot place for this. Raven trembled, and her knees collapsed beneath her and hit the floor.

Her hands splashed the liquid onto her face, and her goose-pimpled arms were shaking so furiously that a concerned Braddock knelt down beside her, making ripples in the blood that coated the floor. He put a strong hand on Raven's face to steady her, but she jerked away from him. She didn't deserve his sympathy; she didn't deserve anything.

Raven got up unsteadily, and staggered across the room to the door. She didn't know what she was doing, or where she was going, but she just knew that she had to get away from this. She need to get out – everyone needed to get out – before something else happened. As these thoughts rushed through her mind, Raven grabbed the door handle, then let out a surprised moan. The handle was boiling hot. It had left a ring of blisters on her palm, which all strung like hell.

"What?" Connor's scared voice broke through the thick silence that had settled in the room. As Raven spun around to answer him, she realised that he wasn't talking to her. He was bent over Ebony's tense form, looking frightened and yet world weary at the same time. As sudden as a bolt of lightning, Ebony's head and arm snapped up, the latter point straight in front of her.

Ebony's eyes were rolled back into her skull, her finger aimed accusingly at Nelly's lifeless form. She then moved jaggedly, as if controlled by strings, to indicate Braddock. Next her finger spun around to point at Ebony's own terrifying face, before swinging forwards to Connor and almost knocking him out, seeing as his face was so close to her. Raven snapped her eyes shut – she couldn't' watch any more of this without going insane – as Ebony began to point accusingly at Miles.

Over the sound of her own heart, she heard a thump on the ground, followed by a muffled sounding moan. She knew that she should open her eyes – who knew what was happening out in the wide world – but was too scared to do so. Watching Nelly die had been horrifying enough; she couldn't stand to view another death.

When she slid one eye open, Ebony was sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking around the room in a shocked daze. Raven blinked a few times, inspecting her friend suspiciously; she couldn't tell whether Ebony had totally finished with her manic pointing. Ebony's eyes had returned to normal; or, at least, as normal as they were ever going to be after watching Nelly be brutally slaughtered, and then having what Raven was going to describe as a fit.

Raven watched, her face still expressionless, as Ebony fell forwards into Connor's arms, and he held her so tightly that his knuckles went pale. Ebony was crying in hysteria, but the rest of them could only stand as still as the house itself. Raven could help but wonder what the hell had just happened. She cast her eyes from face to confused face, her eyes begging for an answer. The closest thing she got was from Miles, the newcomer.

"I think," Miles spoke slowly, as though he was still thinking of what he was about to say as the words left his mouth. Raven could hear him desperately trying to keep the fear from taking over his voice. "I think you were just possessed." The words didn't make sense to Raven. She understood what they were supposed to mean, but she couldn't register what he was talking about. Even after all that had just happened, possession seemed insane.

"No." Braddock was the one who eventually said – screamed – what they were all thinking. After months of dating the guy, Raven supposed that she should probably have expected him to be the one that lost it. It wasn't as though he had a tight lid on his temper. "This isn't real. This is what happens in horror movies, not in real life." Raven had to agree with him on that point, though her teeth were chattering too much, out of fear, for her to say anything. "This is not the fucking Exorcist." Braddock's voice rose, and Raven was surprised to see tears leaking out of his eyes. It would appear that Braddock was no longer the in-control athlete she had known; he was just as lost and scared as the rest of them.

"This is a trick; you're all fucking with my head!" The anger and fright was painfully apparent in his voice now, but Raven could hardly believe that he was still in denial over what was happening; had Nelly's death not been enough to persuade him that this was all too real? "All of you are. You're all bloody twisted." As these words came out of her boyfriend's mouth, Raven's body tensed as she felt the room grow cold again.