The house had not been there the day before.
Aelis knew this. Knew it the way you know your own name, or that fire burns, or that you're not supposed to hear your mother's voice calling from the mirror after she's been dead for seven years.
But now it stood in front of her.
Suburban. Quiet. Too clean for the world around it. No rust. No blood. No collapsed walls or dragging trails of human remains. Just a simple house with mint-green shutters and a door that looked recently painted. A single porch light buzzed above it. Electric. Impossible.
She didn't walk toward it.
Not at first.
Her feet decided without her.
And her hand reached for the doorknob before she realized she'd moved.
It was warm.
She didn't twist it.
It twisted her.
The door swung open, and she was inside.
Not standing in the doorway—inside, fully, the door gone behind her. Not shut. Gone. As if the walls had grown around her like muscle forming scar tissue. The house was dimly lit, shadows draped like old wallpaper. There was a smell—comforting, even nostalgic—burnt toast, cheap vanilla candles, something faintly citrus.
Something very wrong.
There was no sound.
Except for the faintest breathing. Not hers. Deeper. Slower. Coming from every direction.
She walked down a hallway that didn't end. Just stretched. Portraits lined the walls, but the faces inside were smeared, like someone had dragged their fingers through drying paint. Still, the eyes were sharp. Focused.
They followed her.
Aelis touched one. The canvas was damp. Not with paint. With blood. It warmed beneath her fingers, and pulsed once, like a heart.
She didn't scream.
She couldn't. Her voice felt like it had been packed in gauze and buried somewhere far away. She moved. Past doors that whispered when she passed.
"Why did you let her drown?"
"They're all dead because of you."
"Your skin doesn't belong to you."
Each one offered a different voice. A different version of her own guilt.
She tried to run.
But her legs felt like they were made of glass. One misstep and they might shatter.
Then came the stairs.
Not down. Not up.
Just… stairs. Spiraling inward. Tightening.
The breathing was louder now. A second pair joined it. Then a third. Different rhythms. Some wet. Some shallow. Some hiccupping like sobs.
And now the walls… were watching.
Tiny eyes. Embedded in the plaster. Blinking. Crying. Mouthing things she couldn't hear. One of them opened its lid wide enough to reveal teeth. A single incisor, yellow and cracked, buried in the red of its iris.
Aelis reached a landing. There was only one door.
It didn't have a knob.
It had a finger.
Her own.
A perfect match—her hand, buried up to the wrist in the wood, as if she had been pushed through and then cut off.
It twitched.
She didn't want to touch it. But her body disagreed.
She placed her palm against her own severed hand.
It clasped her back.
Pulled her in.
She stood in a nursery.
Rocking horse. Mobiles. An empty crib.
The mobile spun slowly, made of teeth instead of stars.
There was a sound from the crib.
Not a baby.
Not breathing.
Chewing.
She stepped closer, but the floor warped beneath her with each movement. Planks bending like backs, groaning. The mobile clattered—teeth knocking against each other like they were excited.
She looked into the crib.
There was nothing inside.
Nothing she could see.
But she could feel it—sitting behind her eyes. Crawling between her thoughts. And then the lullaby began:
🎵 Hush now, hush now, skin so thin,Let the bones all break within…Teeth to chew, and eyes to see,We made you wrong, you're meant to be… 🎵
The walls shrieked—short and high, like something laughing with a slit throat.
The house let her go.
Just like that.
She stood on the sidewalk.
It was dusk. The house was gone.
But her hands were different now.
More fingers than she remembered.