I couldn’t just stand there, a waiting target. So, I started down the stairs.
The old banister chilled my palm, polished smooth by decades of hands before mine, way back to my great grandfather on my mother’s side.
Each forward movement was met with a hollow crack that echoed into the black below.
Halfway down, I stopped; there it was—a sound.
Not the pipes. Definitely not the wind. A dragging step across the floorboards. Too deliberate to be accidental.
Too careful to not be human.
My throat closed reflexively. The old house shifted, leaning in closer, waiting to see what I’d do next. I forced myself to move, determined not to allow fear to dictate my actions.
Slowly, I descended and avoided each soft spot on the stairs. The house itself sometimes seemed to decay around me in real time. The living room gradually unfolded as my eyes partially adjusted to darkness.
Everything was cast in varied shades of black. The sagging couch, crooked shelves built by my grandfather, stacked with books which resembled rows of teeth.
Tall windows sealed against the night’s cold, but a shiver ran down my spine, nonetheless. Curtains stirred, too faint to be anything real. Too much like breath.
The sound was suddenly gone.
The worst part was how this would sound on the evening news. “Local therapist makes drafty Victorian for haunted mansion, more at eleven.”
I crossed into the kitchen with its lone overhead bulb flickering, occasionally holding steady. Its weak yellow glow spilled across linoleum that chilled my bare feet. Warm socks would’ve been a good idea, but they were in a noisy drawer which would’ve called attention to me.
A knife block sat by the sink, handles jutted out. Silent invitations to take one.
My hand hovered—then closed. I drew it; the blade flashed and reflected light. Silver trembled in my grip, even as I reprimanded it for doing so.
I wanted to be steady, calm. To practice what I preached.
I told myself the knife was for reassurance, proof I hadn’t imagined this weight pressing on me, holding me down. But when I turned back toward the door, I could have sworn the curtain shifted again.
A ripple, faint enough to mock me.
I was losing my damned mind.
I stepped closer toward the door, knife in hand, shaking anyway as my body ignored the memo that I was supposed to be the calm professional in the room. Glass panes in the back door mirrored back to me a fractured reflection, bare chest, hollow eyes. A blade that looked steadier than the hand grasping it for dear life.
Then I saw it. The door itself, unlatched.
Not even flush; slightly ajar.
A warped edge that yawned open as though the night itself had pried it loose. A vivid nightmare turned reality before it twisted back to nightmare again.
A mistake. Had to be.
Except… I didn’t ever make mistakes this careless.
Not me.
The radiator ticked in the living room next to me and stole my attention from the open door. This couldn’t have happened. I didn’t ever leave doors open. I checked locks twice. Sometimes more. Because the thought of forgetting gnawed at me if I didn’t.
My feet wouldn’t budge. The linoleum pressed its frozen chill straight to my bones and anchored me in place as I willed my limbs to move. But I could only fixate on the little sliver of darkness beyond the doorframe, blacker than anything I wished to name.
Something stood out there—a shoulder, a head.
Headlights swept past the front windows and cast a long, shadowy arm from the banister across the floor. The arm slid away.
