The house hadn't breathed in decades. Now it did.
Long after the ghostly figure vanished from the parlor, the air refused to settle. The storm's noise dulled to a distant hum, but inside the mansion, silence pressed against the walls like a living thing.
Clara sat close to the lamp, staring at the place where the apparition had stood. The corner was empty now—just dust motes drifting in the faint amber glow.
"You all saw that, right?" Marcy whispered.
No one answered.
Evan was fiddling with his camera again, replaying the photo he'd taken before the flash. "It's not there," he murmured. "I mean, it was there, but it's not in the picture. Just… shadows."
"Then maybe we imagined it," Ben said quickly. He rubbed his hands together, glancing toward the door. "Trick of the light, adrenaline, whatever. We're tired, we're soaked, and this place is—"
"—haunted," Marcy finished.
"Old," Ben snapped. "It's old. Old houses creak. Dust moves. You start seeing things."
Clara looked up at him. "Did you hear the door creak before we saw it?"
Ben hesitated. "No."
"Exactly."
Noah stood apart from them, near the fireplace. His eyes lingered on the portraits above the mantel—one of a man with an angular face, pale as parchment, and another of a woman draped in black lace. Her painted eyes gleamed faintly, reflecting the lamplight.
"Those people," he said softly, "look like they're listening."
Evan gave a strained laugh. "Yeah, to what? Us freaking out?"
But Noah wasn't joking. He stepped closer, tracing the frame of the portrait with his fingertips. "There's something behind this wall," he said. "Hollow."
He rapped his knuckles lightly against the paneling. The sound was dull, uneven.
Ben frowned. "You think there's a hidden room or something?"
Noah shrugged. "Could be. These old places had servants' passages, secret corridors. Keeps the help out of sight."
"Or something else out of sight," Marcy muttered.
The wind howled outside, shaking the windowpanes. The lamp flickered.
Clara stood. "If there's something behind that wall, we'll find it in the morning. For now, let's stick together. Pick a room, lock the door, try to sleep."
"Yeah," Ben said, "and in the morning, we'll find another way out."
They nodded, though none of them truly believed it.
The upstairs hallway smelled of mildew and old perfume. Their flashlight beams cut thin paths through the dust, and with each creak of the floorboards, the air seemed to tighten around them.
"Third door on the left," Clara said, testing a handle. It groaned but opened. Inside was a bedroom — small but intact. A canopied bed, its curtains moth-eaten; a wardrobe leaning at an angle; a cracked mirror that caught their reflections in pieces.
They set up camp as best they could. The lamp on the dresser still worked. The fireplace was cold, but dry enough for a small flame once Noah found wood from a broken chair.
By the time the fire caught, the warmth almost felt normal again. Almost.
Marcy sat on the bed, hugging her knees. "I hate this place," she said.
"You and me both," Evan replied, staring at the ceiling. "Feels like the walls are listening."
"They are," Noah said.
"Not helping, man."
Ben tossed him a glare. "You've been acting weird since we got here."
Noah didn't answer. He just stared into the fire, the light painting flickers of orange across his face.
Clara leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "No one sleeps alone tonight. We stay together."
The others nodded.
But none of them truly slept.
It was near midnight when Clara's eyes opened again. The fire had burned low, and the shadows stretched long and heavy across the floor.
Someone was whispering.
She sat up, heart pounding. The sound was faint—muffled, like voices through a wall. She looked toward the others. Marcy was asleep beside the fireplace. Ben snored quietly in the corner. Evan and Noah were nowhere to be seen.
Clara grabbed the flashlight. The door was ajar.
The voices grew clearer as she stepped into the hallway.
"…not safe… the journal…"
The light beam trembled in her hand. "Evan?" she hissed.
A shape moved at the far end of the hall. Evan turned, startled. "Clara—Jesus—you scared me."
She exhaled. "Where's Noah?"
"Right here," came Noah's voice. He emerged from a nearby doorway, holding something—an old candlestick. His eyes were shadowed, unreadable. "We heard something downstairs. Like a door opening."
"Could've been the storm," Clara said.
He shook his head. "The storm's gone."
She hadn't noticed it until then—the silence. The rain had stopped. No wind. No thunder. The whole world felt paused, as if the mansion itself was holding its breath.
"Come on," Evan said. "Let's check the noise and go back."
They descended the stairs quietly. The air had cooled again, damp and heavy. In the parlor, the fire was long dead, but something new lingered: a faint trail of dust disturbed on the floor, leading toward the east corridor.
Clara crouched beside it. "Footprints," she whispered. "Bare ones."
Noah followed the trail with his eyes until it disappeared near a tall grandfather clock. Its pendulum was still.
He set the candlestick down, ran a hand along the wall beside it—and froze.
There was a gap.
A hairline seam between two panels of wood.
"Help me with this," he said.
Together, they pried the panel loose. It gave with a dry crack, revealing a narrow passage beyond—black and cold, the smell of earth thick within it.
Ben's voice drifted from upstairs. "What are you idiots doing down there?"
"Found something," Clara called back.
"Of course you did," he muttered, his footsteps descending reluctantly.
The passage led into a cramped study, half-buried in dust. Shelves sagged under the weight of decaying books, and a desk stood at the center, its drawers swollen shut. Cobwebs hung like curtains.
Evan swept his light across the desk, then froze. "That," he said quietly, pointing.
A single book lay open. Not dusty—freshly disturbed. Its leather cover was cracked, its pages brittle, but someone—or something—had turned it recently.
Clara stepped closer, hesitating before touching it. "A journal."
Noah frowned. "You sure we should—"
She opened it.
The handwriting was fine, looping, deliberate. The ink had faded, but one entry remained legible:
March 12th — The voice beneath the house speaks again. I told Isolde we should never have called to it. It listens now. It learns. It has begun using our dreams.
The page ended abruptly, as though torn.
Marcy appeared in the doorway, her face pale. "Guys," she whispered, trembling. "Someone's in the hall."
They turned.
In the glow of the flashlight, a shape stood at the end of the corridor.
It wasn't a shadow this time. It was solid. Human-shaped—but wrong, somehow stretched at the edges, its head tilted too far to one side, like a doll's that had been handled carelessly.
The figure took a step forward.
The journal slipped from Clara's hands, its pages fluttering open as if gasping for air.