Emma Clarke had driven to this town to become a movie star, and now she stood on a rotting porch waiting for a man everyone told her to avoid. Rain dripped through a hole in the roof and landed on her audition binder. She had three lines memorized. She had one shot. Every other studio in the world had turned her away, but this one had answered her letter. The door opened before she knocked. The casting director filled the frame, short and broad, gray hair shoved back from a face that looked permanently disgusted. Vincent Morrow looked her up and down like she was a stain on his carpet. Rings crowded his fingers. Something dark stained the cuffs of his red jacket. "You're the one who keeps writing me," he said. Not a question. "Emma Clarke. You said you'd give me an audition." "I said I might." He didn't move from the doorway. "Girls come here every year thinking this town makes stars. It makes something. Rarely stars." Emma held out the binder. Her hand shook, and she hated that he saw it. "I drove eleven hours. I sold my car deposit to pay for gas. Please. Just let me read." He studied her for a long moment. Then he stepped back and waved her inside. The house was colder than the rain. Candles burned in the front room, though the sun was up. A single chair faced a black curtain. Vincent pointed at the chair. "Sit. Read the scene on the table." Emma picked up the pages. The lines weren't the ones she had practiced. This scene was different. A woman begged something in the dark to take her place. Emma's throat went tight. She read anyway, loud and clear, the way her acting teacher had drilled into her. When she finished, Vincent didn't clap. He didn't smile. He circled the chair slowly, rings clicking against each other. "That," he said, "was the best cold read I've heard in twenty years." Relief rushed through her. "So I got it? The part?" "You got a part." He slid a single sheet of paper across the table. A contract. The top read Silver Reel Studio. "My studio. My picture. Lead role. Filming starts tonight." Emma grabbed a pen before he could change his mind. She signed her name. Vincent watched the ink dry. Something shifted in his face. Not joy. Satisfaction, the kind a fisherman feels when a hook sets deep. "Wonderful," he said softly. "You should know one thing about my pictures, Emma." "What's that?" He folded the contract and tucked it inside his stained jacket. "My last three leading ladies never made it to the premiere." He walked to the black curtain and pulled it aside. Behind it waited a dark hallway, and cold air poured out. "But their films were unforgettable. Come. Your first scene is downstairs." Emma stood, contract signed, her name now his. She had wanted this more than anything. She followed him into the dark.

The curtain fell shut behind Emma, and the last of the candlelight vanished. The hallway swallowed her whole. She could hear Vincent's rings clicking somewhere ahead, but she could not see him. She could not see the floor. One wrong step in this dark could send her tumbling, and no one would come. "Keep close," Vincent said. His voice floated back to her, flat and bored. "The stairs are steep. My last girl learned that the hard way." Emma stopped. Her hand found a cold wall and pressed against it. She thought of the contract in his jacket, her name drying on the paper. She thought of three women who signed the same and never reached a premiere. Fear told her to freeze. But freezing in the dark was how people fell. She slid her free hand into her coat and found her phone. Her thumb woke the screen. A white glow spilled across the hallway. She turned on the flashlight. The light showed a narrow stairwell dropping into more dark. It showed Vincent, ten steps below, turning to squint up at her. And it showed the man standing three feet to her right. He wore blue coveralls and a pale mask with two black slits for eyes. He did not move. He held nothing, said nothing. He simply stood against the wall where the dark had hidden him, watching her the way a cat watches a door. Emma's breath stopped. She had walked past him blind. If she had reached out in the dark, she would have touched his sleeve. "Ah," Vincent said below. "You've met my other actor. He doesn't talk. He's very good at his job." The masked man tilted his head at her. Slow. Curious. Emma held the light on him and did not look away. Her acting teacher had a rule for stage fright. Pick one thing. Control it. She kept the beam steady on those black eye slits. "Down here," Vincent called. "Now, Emma. We're losing the night." She made a choice. She would not walk in the dark again, not with that thing behind her. She kept the flashlight raised and moved down the stairs, one hand on the wall, her eyes flicking back to the masked man with every step. He watched her go. He did not follow. Her shoe found each stair. The light held. She reached the bottom and stood on solid ground, breathing hard, phone shaking in her fist. She had crossed the dark. She had not fallen. Vincent smiled at her, and it was worse than his frown. "Good girl. You can see in the dark now." He gestured at a set on the studio floor, painted to look like a fairground ride, all steel curves and a great looping track. "That's a problem. My scenes work better when the girl can't." He reached up and flicked a switch. Every light in the room died at once.

The dark returned all at once. Emma stood on the studio floor, phone shaking in her hand, its white beam the only light left. The painted ride loomed at the edge of the glow, all steel curves and looping track. Vincent's voice came from the black beyond it. "Put the phone away," he said. His rings clicked as he stepped closer. "The scene needs your fear real. You can't act blind with a light in your fist." Emma kept the beam up. She swung it toward his voice. The casting director stopped in the glow, red jacket, gray hair, eyes half-shut against the light. He did not blink away. He smiled, patient, like a man who had won this argument three times before. "My other actor is already in place," Vincent said. "He works best when the girl can't see him coming. Turn it off, and you're my star. Keep it on, and I tear up your contract." Emma's throat went tight. The role was everything. She had signed for it, followed him underground for it. But her light had shown her the masked man on the stairs. Without it, she would not know when he moved. She made a choice. She would not go blind for him. But she would not lose the role either. "You want fear," Emma said. "I'll give you fear. But I control the light." She turned, sweeping the beam across the set. It caught a huge green backdrop stretched on a metal frame behind the ride, bright and flat. She stepped toward it, keeping her back to the vivid wall so nothing could hide there. Then she swept the beam wide, once, and killed it herself. Dark. She counted her breath. She snapped the light back on and pointed it fast into the shadows to her left. The masked man stood six feet away. Blue coveralls. Pale mask. Two black slits fixed on her. He had crossed half the floor in the dark, silent, closing the gap she'd guessed he would close. Emma did not scream. She held the beam on him and let her real terror shake into her voice. "That's my mark," she said, loud, for Vincent. "I light when I choose. I see him every time. And you get every second of this on film." Vincent was quiet. Then he laughed, low and pleased. "Clever girl." He clapped once. "Fine. Keep your little light. The camera loves a fighter more than a victim." Emma had won. The role was hers, the flashlight still in her hand. But the masked man had not stepped back. He tilted his head, studying her new rule, learning it. Vincent had agreed too easily. Somewhere above, a heavy door scraped shut, and the stairs behind her were gone from the dark.