Chapter One: The House That Breathed
The road ended in mud.
Elias Mercer shut off the engine of his rusting Jeep and stared through the cracked windshield at the thing that loomed before him. It wasn't a house—not exactly. It was more like a wound in the forest, an old colonial manor, its blackened wood siding clinging to the bones of the structure like wet skin. It leaned slightly to one side, as though the forest itself were trying to swallow it back into the earth.
The air was thick with mist and pine and the faint, unmistakable scent of something rotting.
Elias sat motionless, one hand still on the wheel, the other resting on the notebook in his lap. The leather cover was worn and scuffed, its pages mostly blank. For the last year, every word he'd tried to write had turned to ash on the page.
A branch scraped across the hood with a long, dry screech. He blinked. Then sighed.
"Home sweet hell," he muttered.
He stepped out of the car. Mud sucked at his boots. Crows watched silently from twisted tree limbs overhead, their eyes like dark beads strung along a necklace of decay. His breath fogged in the air, too cold for June.
As he approached the porch, each board groaned under his weight. A weathered "For Rent" sign dangled from a nail, swinging slightly despite the still air. The key had been mailed in a plain envelope with no return address—just a typewritten note:
"Don't go below the stairs. No matter what you hear."
Elias had dismissed it as some small-town attempt at spookery. Now, standing before the door, the words returned uninvited.
The lock clicked. The door creaked open on its own.
He froze.
Wind? he thought. Then: There is no wind.
Inside, the air was stale, still, like a held breath. Dust hung in the beams of gray light cutting through the cracked windows. The wallpaper peeled like burnt skin. Portraits lined the hallway—faded, faceless things, their eyes scratched out.
He set his bag down, the sound startlingly loud in the silence.
Somewhere beneath the floorboards, something shifted.
A whisper—so soft he nearly missed it.
"Eli…"
His heart stopped. He spun around. Nothing behind him. No one outside.
Just the forest. Just the trees.
The house groaned.
He laughed it off. A dry, nervous chuckle.
"You're hearing things, old man," he said to himself, voice hoarse.
But even as he moved to unpack, the whisper came again—closer this time.
"Eli… you came back."