The night refused to let them go.
Emma lay in bed, her body still, but her mind restless. The room was steeped in shadows, the kind that didn't move with the wind or shift with the candlelight. They were the sort of shadows that waited. The kind that knew your name.
The silence wasn't complete. It breathed—slowly, deliberately—through the old house's bones. Creaks in the floorboards. Rustles in the walls. The occasional groan, like air being forced through lungs long unused.
She tried closing her eyes, but each time she did, she saw the spiral etched into the wall of her thoughts. It pulsed there, as if it had found a home inside her.
Beneath her pillow, the spiral pendant she had found earlier felt like ice. She had tucked it away to forget about it, to keep it out of sight, but its coldness had seeped into her skin. She couldn't ignore it. Couldn't forget the way it had looked. Or the way it had made her feel—as if something old and hungry had recognized her.
A faint sound caught her attention.
A shuffle.
Not a creak or a settling groan, but footsteps. Bare feet brushing against old wood. Too light to be Greta's. Too slow to be Jessica. Too deliberate to be the house.
Emma sat up, heart quickening.
The candle on her nightstand had burned low, its flame barely alive. She didn't move to light another. Instead, she just listened.
The steps stopped outside her door.
She held her breath.
A shadow lingered there, just beyond the crack under the door. Not fully visible, but she knew it was there. She felt its weight pressing against the other side.
The doorknob turned slowly—metal grinding against itself in that slow, deliberate way that screamed intention.
But the door didn't open.
The knob released with a soft snap. And then… silence.
No. Not silence.
Whispers.
Emma strained to listen. They weren't voices exactly—not formed by language—but she could feel them. The emotion of them. Fear. Pain. Loss.
She swung her legs over the bed and stood, the floor cold beneath her feet. She moved slowly to the door and pressed her ear to the wood.
It was freezing. As if the door no longer led to a hallway but to something much colder, much older.
Then came the tapping.
Faint. Rhythmic.
Like fingers.
Emma jerked back, her breath catching in her throat. But nothing followed. The whispers faded. The tapping stopped.
Silence.
But it wasn't over. She knew she wouldn't sleep. She wouldn't even try.
Something was calling her.
Not aloud—but from somewhere deeper than thought.
She grabbed her sweater, pulling it over her thin shirt, and picked up the stub of the candle she'd brought up earlier. It flared to life with a single match, casting nervous light across the worn wallpaper.
She slipped quietly from her room.
The house felt different now.
It breathed around her—not in sound, but in feeling. Like the walls expanded and contracted with a rhythm not her own. The air was thick, pressing down on her skin, as if unseen hands guided her forward.
Each step was a negotiation between instinct and compulsion.
The corridor stretched ahead like a throat.
Emma passed closed doors. Each one a boundary. Each one holding secrets she no longer wanted to know. But she didn't stop. Her feet moved with a memory not her own.
She reached the far end of the hallway.
The hidden door waited.
The wallpaper here hung in jagged strips, revealing the pale wood beneath. The discoloration around the doorframe looked like bruises.
She reached out with trembling fingers and peeled back the
The hidden door yielded with a reluctant groan.
Cold air billowed out from the gap, and the candle in Emma's hand trembled as the flame strained against the draft. She held it closer to her chest, shielding it like a fragile secret.
The staircase revealed itself: steep, narrow, and seemingly endless. The wood was warped and splintered, and each step looked like it hadn't been touched by human feet in decades. Yet the dust was disturbed. Faint footprints—bare, like the ones she'd heard outside her door—marked the way down.
Emma hesitated.
Her pulse throbbed in her throat, in her ears, in her fingertips. But something stronger than fear moved her feet. Something pulled—not from the house, but from somewhere within her. The spiral beneath her pillow no longer felt like an object. It felt like an echo.
She took the first step. Then another.
The house exhaled behind her as if releasing her to something deeper, older.
Each creak beneath her feet sounded too loud, as if announcing her descent to whatever waited below. The candle flickered violently once, and the shadows rushed to greet her.
The air turned dense.
She tasted iron.
When she reached the bottom, she paused. The stairway ended at another corridor—but this one felt different from the one she had seen before. It wasn't just older—it was wrong. Like it belonged to a different place. A different time. The walls were lined with decaying wallpaper that curled like dried skin, and underneath, faint spiral carvings throbbed as if pulsing with a hidden heartbeat.
A whisper curled through the hallway—not in her ears, but inside her mind.
"You've already been here."
Emma's breath hitched.
She moved forward, her steps hesitant but steady. With every inch, the spiral markings became more erratic. Some were scratched in desperation, some painted in what looked horribly like blood. The candlelight danced over them, making them shimmer, twist, move.
She blinked. One of the spirals shifted.
No—melted.
Like it had eyes.
She kept going.
The hallway bent into a tight curve, and then, at the end, she saw it: another door.
This one was different. Not wood. Not stone. It looked… alive.
Its surface rippled, like stretched skin, and at the center, a single spiral pulsed outward like a heartbeat.
Emma reached for the handle—only to realize there wasn't one.
But her hand didn't stop.
It moved on its own, pressing flat against the door. The moment she touched it, pain shot up her arm—sharp, burning, like fire and ice at once.
She cried out, stumbling backward. The candle fell from her hand and rolled, casting spinning light across the walls. Shadows surged.
The door began to open—not outward, not inward—but apart, splitting like flesh.
Behind it, there was only blackness.
But within that blackness—something moved.
Something breathed.
Emma stood frozen, unable to pull her gaze away. The spiral inside her burned. She felt it now, not as a symbol, but as a presence. A hunger.
And then—
She heard her name.
Not spoken aloud, but placed into her mind like a memory she hadn't lived.
She backed away. Slowly. Step by trembling step.
The darkness didn't follow.
Not yet.
But it had seen her.
And now, it knew she was coming.