The Darkest House
By Mandika Turudic

Part I - 1313 62nd Avenue

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    In a quiet, out-of-the-way corner of the world, the kind of place you might pass without ever knowing it existed, the seasons came and went, slapping the trees with fiery oranges and burying the earth in heavy browns. There lived a man named Edward. He wasn’t young, not anymore, but he wasn’t ready to call himself old either; he was suspended in that uneasy middle ground where the years had carved their lines into your face but hadn’t quite stolen the fight from your bones. His eyes, a sharp, blue as glacier ice, colder than they had any right to be, stared out from the porch swing. They fixed themselves on the horizon, on the clouds scuttling across the mountains, as though those shifting shapes might cough up a story. Or maybe a warning.

    His house squatted at the dead end of 62nd Avenue, a place where the hum of yesteryear didn’t just linger, it was felt. The street was lined with elms so ancient they seemed to remember things better left forgotten. Their branches reached out across the road, not so much protective as possessive, the way a mother might hold on too tight and never let go. The leaves, once a fresh emerald, had burned themselves into a patchwork of blood-reds and funeral golds, rattling in the cool autumn breeze. The picture they painted was pretty enough, sure, but it was the kind of pretty that hides the rot underneath, the kind of scene that makes you wonder what might be watching from the spaces between the trees.

    Woodsmoke and syrupy sweetness of apple pies cooling on windowsills wrapped the air in a delightful blanket, a Norman-Rockwell-lie painted across the street. Inside those houses, firelight licked the walls while families curled close, safe and snug, pretending the world outside couldn’t touch them. But Edward’s eyes…they kept sliding back, to the house crouched at the far end of the street. He didn’t know why but he could never quite look away. It was as if the place had a pulse and it beat just for him, daring him to listen.

    On a particular day, when the last plastic skeletons and paper pumpkins were being shoved back into attics and the whispers of Thanksgiving began to stir in the belly of the town, Edward felt it, the world itself had shifted a hair off-kilter. Subtle as the first snowflake of winter, but colder and wronger. His eyes narrowed to slits, and his fingers clamped hard around the porch rail until the wood bit back. He kept staring at that damned house. The feeling was new, yes, but it carried the stink of something ancient, and it filled him with a queasy anticipation that felt far too much like dread.

    The town had always been a bastion of predictability, with its annual parades and high school football games. But today, it felt charged with an illicit type of energy. He knew that this was the harbinger of something, something that would alter the course of his life and the lives of those around him. He wasn't sure if it was a warning or a promise, but he knew he couldn't ignore it. He was a new transplant to town and had only arrived here in late Summer of that year. Ever since he got here, he had kept his eyes transfixed on that house. Maybe it was its gothic look which stood out in a neighbourhood full of cookie-cutter bright suburban homes, maybe it was its ominous address, maybe it was the strange lights that shone there some nights. It was just creepy. The rest of the folks in town didn’t seem too bothered by it, it’s as if the entire place had just accepted its dark existence. Edward’s head had a knack for invention, but not the harmless kind. At times, his imagination twisted free of his will, painting horrors he’d never asked to see.

    The chilly breeze picked up, carrying with it a flurry of leaves that pirouetted around him in a silent ballet. He watched them for a moment before they scattered, and then, with a deep breath, he stood from his swing, his eyes still riveted by the darkest house. His heart thumped in his chest with a morbid excitement. It was time for him to step away from the safety of his porch and into the pages of a story that was about to unfold before him. 

 

**********

    Edward’s house was a modest abode filled with a mélange of books and forgotten dreams; it all buzzed with the muted sounds of a world outside that didn't quite fit him anymore. The aroma of dust and solitude swirled around him, a scent that had become as comforting as an old duvet. His hand, rough and calloused from years of manual labor, hovered over the remote, flipping channels with an absent-minded rhythm that reflected the erratic nature of his thoughts.

    A knock at the door startled him, the sound ghosted through the empty space like a gunshot. He took a moment to gather his bearings; his heart raced in a way it hadn't for a long time. It was a rare disturbance to his quietude. Through the peephole, he saw the postwoman, her cap slightly askew, a small package in her hand. She waited patiently; a gust of wind played with loose strands of her hair. He sighed; his curiosity piqued and swung the door open. "Package for Mr. Kholl," she said with a smile. It was the same smile she reserved for everyone on her route, but today it felt heavier, as if it too carried a burden.

    With a nod of thanks, he took the package and closed the door, the finality of the click sat in his chest. The return address was smudged, but he could make out the name ‘Elizabeth’ scrawled in a familiar hand. The name stirred a tempest in his gut, one that brought with it a tide of memories he had worked so hard to keep at bay. The final word he’d ever gotten from her was a postcard out of Europe, its writing faded, its corners worn soft from years of handling. Prague, she’d said; Prague, the pink city, a rose carved out of stone. That was ages past, a whole other life, and yet it refused to let go.

    He carried the mysterious parcel to his kitchen counter; his steps deliberate and slow. The room was a testament to his frugal, bachelor lifestyle: a few dishes in the sink, a half-empty bag of stale bread on the counter, and a toaster that had seen better days. He filled the kettle and set it to boil; his mind raced with the possibilities of what lay inside the nondescript brown box. The whistle pierced the silence, and he poured the steaming water into a mug, watching the dark liquid rise and swirl like a storm in a teacup. No milk, he realized with a frown, but he had a feeling this was a moment that called for something stronger anyway. He rummaged through a cupboard, his hand finding a bottle of Jack, the amber liquid was like an old friend calling. 

    The enveloping silence was broken by the clink of the whiskey bottle against the ceramic mug; the sound sent a shiver throughout his entire body. He took a deep breath and picked up the package again. His heart pounded; he sliced through the tape with a knife that was rather dull. The flaps fell open, revealing a tattered notebook and a small key on a leather strap. The notebook was filled with Elizabeth's handwriting, a script that danced across the pages like a cipher he wasn’t meant to crack. The notebook was titled: Our Sister Janice. Janice had disappeared long ago when they were all children. They lived on 62nd avenue for a short time until Janice vanished on October 31st. The family abruptly moved leaving them with nothing but the ghost of the memories of a once-happy-family.

    The Jack burned his throat as he took a swig, the liquid fire chasing away the shadows that had started to gather in the room. The sun, a fiery orange orb, began its descent, painting the sky with a fiery kiss that mirrored the heat in his veins. The air got colder, a prelude to the night's embrace, and with it, the inexplicable pull towards 1313 62nd Avenue felt more forceful. He had dreams about this house. He was convinced that Janice was taken there. 

    With the setting sun as his beacon, Edward descended into his basement, down where it smelled of earth gone sour, damp wood, and that peculiar, throat-coating staleness you only find in places where time has stopped paying attention. He gathered a few essentials: an old flashlight, a sturdy knife that had once been his father's, a pack of batteries for the unpredictable, a lighter, some rolled-up newspapers, a gallon of water, and the whiskey, now his silent companion. The bottle clinked against the other items in the bag, a metallic lullaby to his racing thoughts. 

    The house on 1313 62nd avenue had stood tall and foreboding for as long as anyone could remember, a relic of a bygone era that had seen more than its fair share of tragedy. The number had an off-putting air, as though the mere suggestion of thirteen wasn’t quite dreadful enough, so they’d gone and driven the nail in twice, setting it in place above the threshold for all to see. Its windows were like vacant eyes, staring out at the world with a silent, knowing gaze. The ivy that strangled the walls rustled in the breeze, a dry, papery sound, like voices meant for the dead and not for the living.

    As Edward approached the house, the whiskey warming his blood, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. His boots crunched on the gravel driveway. The neighbourhood lay in a silence so deep it felt staged, the neat rows of houses stripped of their charm, standing instead like mausoleums in some forgotten city of the damned, far darker than the cheery little suburban hell he’d just signed up for. The door creaked open with a groan that seemed to resonate through the very bones of the house, beckoning him inside. The musty scent of decay filled his nose, a stark contrast to the crisp fall air outside. The interior was a maze of shadows and dust; the furniture shrouded in sheets like ghosts waiting to reveal themselves.

    The notebook in his pocket seemed to pulse with a strange energy. He knew he had to unravel the mystery of Janice’s disappearance. He ventured deeper into the bowels of the house and Jack Daniels lent him a false sense of courage. It was as if the very walls were holding their breath, waiting for him to make a mistake. His heart thumped in his chest, a cacophony of creaks and groans that sang out from every corner of the house. The boards beneath him cried out one after another, the sound carrying the unmistakable quality of a house with opinions: chief among them that he ought to leave well enough alone. But he was a man of determination, and Jack had loosened the knots of fear that had started to form. He advanced, his light carving uneasy spectres into the tattered wallpaper, ghosts of a life left to ashes. The bottle grew light in his hand as the night pressed heavier upon him, each swallow stiffening his resolve to unearth the truth behind Elizabeth’s cryptic note. And to once and for all find out the truth about Janice. 

    He stumbled across a door, the panels warped, the wood soft with rot. He grasped the knob, his hand unsteady, and pulled it open. A staircase fell away before him, turning endlessly into the depths. The blackness below did not sit silent but seemed to murmur, coaxing him downwards with the promise of knowledge long denied.
 

    Each step shrieked under Edward’s weight, counting him down like a gallows clock. At the bottom, the whispers broke loose into a racket, voices screaming at his skull, the house ready to choke him with every foul truth it had ever hoarded.

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Part II - Janice

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    As his foot hit the last stair, a memory unfurled like a dusty scroll in his mind. He saw himself, Elizabeth, and Janice, their eyes wide with terror, hiding behind a bush as they watched the shadows play out a macabre dance in the windows of the house of 1313. Janice had whispered something, her voice trembled, but he couldn't remember what they were. But he remembered that day, the memory was fuzzy and filled with holes. He reached the bottom of the stairs it was as if time suddenly stood still. He felt like he became a sort of warped time-traveler. 

    He remembered his sister Janice who was known as the girl who could climb the tallest tree faster than anyone else her age. Her mop of curly hair and quick grin became a familiar sight, especially as the long, lazy days of summer stretched out before her like a canvas waiting to be painted with adventure. She was the kind of kid who found magic in the most mundane of places: a forgotten corner of the local park, the dusty attic of her great-aunt's house, or even the alleyways where the neighbourhood cats held their secret meetings. She had a knack for stumbling into the kind of trouble that could only be solved by her own brand of daring and ingenuity. 

    One Autumn afternoon, she lay sprawled on the cool grass in her backyard, her thoughts as scattered as the clouds above. Her eyes wandered to the edge of the property line where the fence met the towering, overgrown bushes that separated her world from the mysterious house at 1313 62nd Avenue. It was a place that oozed secrets older than memory, where gloom pooled thick and brooding in every crevice. The house had endured through the turning of generations, stubborn and stern. It was a shadowed guardian, daring the world to come closer, as though some unseen eye observed with terrible patience. Edward, her older brother, sailed into view on a skateboard, his cheeks flushed with exertion and excitement. He screeched to a halt beside her, the wheels of the board kicking up a small cloud of dust that danced in the air before settling back down. 

    "You're not going to believe what I heard," he panted, his eyes wide with the thrill of gossip. "You know that weird house?" Janice sat up; her curiosity piqued. "Which one?" she asked with feigned nonchalance. 
 

    They both knew there was only one house on their street that could possibly be considered weird. 

    "Come on," Edward rolled his eyes. "1313. You know, the one that's always locked up tighter than a drum?" He leaned in closer, lowering his voice. "Some of the guys at school said they saw lights on inside last night. And they heard noises." "What kind of noises?" Janice whispered, her heart skipping a beat.

    "They wouldn't say," he replied, his voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur. "But they swore it sounded like someone was in there. And that's not all..." Their younger sister, Elizabeth popped up from behind the bush, her face flushed and eyes bright. "You guys are talking about the haunted house, aren't you?" 

    Edward groaned. "Lizzy, you're supposed to be inside!" "I heard you from the kitchen window," she said, her voice filled with the kind of glee that only comes from being included in a secret. "And I know something too. I heard Mom talking to Mrs. Stevens. She said that the new family moving in is super strange, and they don't talk to anyone." "So what?" Janice said, trying to play it cool, even though her imagination was already racing. "Strange people don't make a house haunted." But Edward was nodding, his gaze fixed on the house. "Maybe they're hiding something though." 

    Suddenly, he was ripped away from this memory and thrown violently back into the here and now in this dark basement. He held his flashlight tight and scanned his environment vowing to stay in the main room only. The basement was covered with dusty boxes and forgotten furniture. The air reeked of fetid odours as if the very walls exhaled malice. Black shadowy masses gathered and slithered, stretching long fingers toward him. His heart beat a frantic tattoo against his ribs, yet some pernicious compulsion drove him onward, deeper into a house that watched, waited, and hinted of truths too terrible for flesh and blood to endure.

    In the corner, a rocking chair swayed back and forth. He stepped over a torn piece of carpet, his boots sticking to the cold concrete floor. The chair's rhythm grew more insistent, and Edward felt his hand tighten even harder around the flashlight. A sudden creak made him jump, and the chair stopped moving. His heart in his throat, he shone the light around, searching for any sign of life. The room remained still, but the silence was anything but comforting. He approached the chair, its wooden frame groaning as if in protest of his proximity. Underneath it, a dusty photo album lay forgotten. He bent down to pick it up, the leather cover feeling cold and clammy in his hand. He flipped through the pages and the gaggle of voices grew clearer, forming into a series of ominous words.

    "Get out," they warned. He paused at a black and white photograph of a group of people dressed in black capes in a circle, grinning widely. They looked as if they were amid a ceremony or so he thought but the picture was worn and faded. He tried to make out more details but the only image that flashed into his mind was of Janice holding a doll, telling him it was a charm that would protect her against the "bad house."

    The flashlight died with a harsh click, and he was consumed by darkness. The album slipped from his grasp, the soft thud of its pages sounding like a heartbeat in the silence. Everywhere, phantom screams rose and fell, a tapestry of anguish. He stumbled backward, colliding with some unseen object, and fell with a sharp thud. Around him, a cold, malign presence seemed to coil and reach, as if intent on dragging him into the void.

    Panic set in, and he scrambled to his feet, desperately feeling his way towards the stairs. His hand brushed against the wall, and it felt slick with condensation or something else. His breaths came in ragged gasps, and his eyes burned with unshed tears. He climbed the stairs and the whispers grew fainter, retreating into the shadows from which they came. He reached the door, fumbling with the lock. With a final push, it swung open, and he staggered into the night, the cool air, a welcome relief against his sweat-drenched skin.

    The house loomed behind him, a symbol of the horrors that had once taken place within its walls. The voices had stopped, but Edward knew they would never truly leave him. The memories of 1313 62nd Avenue had been unearthed, and with them, the dark secrets of his childhood had come to claim him once more.

 

**********

    Once inside the commonplace dwelling, he now rented, Edward collapsed upon the sofa, eyelids drawn low by the weight of the day. Unscrewing the whiskey, he let the amber fluid burn its way down, a fire both comforting and cruel. Darkness clung to the room around him, the silence almost insolent against the clamour of his thoughts. Something remained unsettled, unquiet, as though the night itself had not finished its work. With a drawn-out sigh, he rested back, bottle upon his chest, haunted still by the cold imprint of 1313, lingering like frost upon his mind even as slumber approached.

    While he slept, a vision descended upon him. The walls of his living room melted into the ruined hallways of the damned house. From some distant corner of his mind came a muffled cry yet threaded with agony. He tried to bury it beneath the burn of alcohol, but the sound swelled, insistent and accusing, filling every blank space.

    He sprang upright, chest heaving. His gaze flicked about the parlour, hunting the disturbance that had torn him from his sleep. The whiskey bottle slipped from his hand, bursting against the boards in a dull crash. The silence that followed was burdensome, but the scream did not wholly depart; it lingered, reduced to a waspish drone within his ears. He rubbed hard at his eyes, muttering that it was no more than a dream’s foul residue. Then, from overhead, a board cracked. The sound cleaved the quiet like a blade. His blood chilled, his breath caught. The house was meant to be empty; yet it felt far from so. Shaking, he fumbled for the bat by the door. Sooner or later, he would have to see what waited in the dark above.

    Slowly he ascended, clutching his crude weapon as though it might hold the darkness at bay. Each step beneath him wailed in protest, clamouring for him to turn and flee. Yet onward he crept, compelled by a hideous need to confront what lay above. The gloom at the stair’s end just bung, breathing like a living adversary. His bedroom door sagged ajar, a pale blade of light carving a path into the void beyond. The air itself quivered with menace. The cry was no phantom, nor dream, issued now from within the very walls of his house. He drew nearer, his lungs rattling with shallow breath. A treacherous board cracked loud beneath his heel. At once, the wailing ceased. An awful silence descended, poised, listening. Then, against the will of every nerve in his body, he thrust the door open, surrendering himself to whatever lay within.
 

    Disarray greeted him: sheets in a tangle, drawers gutted and emptied to the floor. Something stirred in the corner; small, hunched, shuddering. A vile stench pervaded the chamber, clinging like mildew to his very skin. His hands clenched about the bat until his bones ached. 
"Show yourself!" he barked, but the courage in his words faltered. 

    The shape lifted its head. A girl’s face, pale as candlewax, emerged from the gloom; eyes wide and glistening, hair plastered in lank strands to her hollow cheeks. A frayed nightdress hung from her frame; her bare toes curled against the boards. 
 

"Please," she breathed, "do not let it come for me." 

    His mind buckled, she could not be here, yet she stood before him, as substantial as his terror. 
 

    He advanced a step. "What do you mean?" he said, the bat sagging a little in his grip. Her lips quivered." The shadow man," she whimpered. "He hunts me. He will have me."

    Edward felt the very marrow within him curdle, for something unseen had entered the room.
 

    By instinct alone he caught her hand. It was colder than any living thing ought to be. "We must get out of here, kid," he said, forcing steadiness into his tone. She clutched him with a desperate tenacity, and together they half-stumbled, half-fell down the stairs. His heart struck his ribs with a violence that seemed it might undo him, and yet worse was the sensation at his back, a presence drawing near, the darkness itself bending forward, reaching with hands not wholly of this world.

    At last, they reached the bottom, and with a desperation bordering on madness, he thrust her toward the threshold, wrenching the door wide as though wood and iron alone might sunder whatever spell held them. The night beyond yawned vast and indifferent while behind him something seemed to heave like a beast denied its prey.

    She stepped across the sill with a curious stillness, her eyes fixed on his, unblinking, almost beseeching. "Thank you, mister," she whispered. 

    Then she was gone, dissolving into the dark, not with the gait of one who leaves but with the sudden absence of one who is unmade. The air where she had stood felt gouged, raw, as though reality itself had been bent.

    Edward lingered, jaw hanging to the floor, his hand suspended in a hollow plea. And then, the recognition took him. That face, those eyes were not the features of a stranger. It was Janice. His sister Janice. But Janice had been gone these many years, gone to the earth.

    His eyes snapped open, and he found himself once more on the sofa, the familiar room bearing the weight of the unfamiliar. Shards of whiskey glass winked up at him, the fumes clawing at his nostrils, tangled now with a phantom scent that had no place in his home: the acrid reek of fear, girlish and sour.

    The screaming was gone. Janice was gone again. The shadow man, too. But absence is never emptiness, and Edward felt it. Something had crossed the threshold alongside him, and it sat now somewhere in the dark, biding its time.

    With trembling legs, he secured the door, though he sensed the bolt was useless, a child’s latch against a wolf. The bat remained clutched in his hand, its weight now oddly reassuring. The whiskey was nothing but glass and spilt spirit glittering on the floorboards.

    Moonlight spilled its ghastly balm across the room, and in its silver wash Edward’s thoughts circled. What had he seen? What had happened? What had he brought back? And why did Janice’s face burn so brightly in the murk of it all?

    The answers lay not here. They lay in that other house, that black-bellied place that had long ago stitched itself into the lining of all his nightmares. The house was calling him back, and he knew that he would go. That was inevitable.

    The decision had made itself known before he could hesitate. Edward would return to 1313 62nd Avenue, this time guided by the faint, untrustworthy beams of day. But light is a poor shield against the things that dwell in that house. He knew the shadow man did not confine itself to hours of sleep. If he failed to unearth the truth, the thing would gnaw at the edges of his mind, feasting upon him until all that was sane and familiar was devoured.

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Part III - The Return to 1313

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    Edward came to with a violent start. The room about him was all quiet respectability: blue walls, neat curtains barring out the moon. It should have been comfort. Yet his mind snagged: he had gone to sleep on the sofa; he was certain of it. Now here he lay in bed, as though carried. The calm of the room was counterfeit. The quiet mocked him, and the dread that laced his skin felt unusual; something the night had left upon him.

    The digital clock by his bedside pulsed its figure, 4:23, each blink like the slow beat of a dying heart. He brushed a clammy hand across his brow, his breath rasping in shallow draughts. The dream had come again, faithful as a parish bell, unyielding in its repetition. The same grim pageant, dragging him back to that day. The day Janice was swallowed by the world and never given back.

    He sat up, his sheets tangled around his legs like the weeds in the garden of that forsaken place. The silence of his room was suddenly pierced by the shrill ring of his phone. He fumbled for it on the bedside table, his hand trembled. The screen flashed with an unknown number. He answered with a croak, the sound of his own voice foreign and harsh in the stillness.

    "Hello?" he rasped.

    The line was static for a moment before a faint; eerie whisper reached his ear. "You're not the only one who remembers, Eddy." And then, the call ended. He stared at the phone, the disembodied words swirling in his mind.

    He had never told anyone about the house at 1313 62nd Avenue. The curse of that place had remained a secret, buried deep in the recesses of his soul. But now, it seemed the past was refusing to stay buried. The nightmare was bleeding into his reality, and the house was beckoning him back to unravel the mystery it had held for so long.

    He released a sigh, the sound of a man condemned, and let his legs spill from the bed. They shook, as though reluctant to bear his weight, but he stood all the same. The moment he had dodged for half a lifetime had arrived. He would look the darkness full in the face, peel back the veil of Janice’s fate, and stand within the walls that had haunted his sleep. The truth would cut him, he knew. But ignorance had been bleeding him dry for far longer.

    The quietness of the house was a stark contrast to the turmoil in his mind as he descended the stairs. His hand gripped the banister tightly; each step echoed through the emptiness. In the kitchen, he poured out coffee black as tar, though it soothed nothing. He sipped, yet every mouthful seemed to stir his empty stomach. He knew denial would return, soft and suffocating; if he was to act, it must be now.

    The house had never unchained him. He washed, dressed, and fled into the grey morning. The streets stretched vacant under the weak sun, each lamppost and hedge leaning in, listening. Closer and closer to 1313 he went, and with every step, its call grew louder, until the silence itself seemed to mouth his name.

    When at last he stood before it, the house bore the same ghastly aspect that had dogged his dreams: a carcass of brick and timber, its skin of paint flaking like old scabs, its windows blind yet accusing. The garden sprawled in riotous neglect, nettles and brambles tangled like a madman’s hair. The iron fence sagged in rust, its gate wheezing on one hinge, squealing at his touch in a voice too human. He stepped onto the path, the gravel shifting beneath his soles. The hollow eyes of the house stared back, brimming with reproach, and the burden of his guilt wrapped him tight, a winding-sheet of years. Here, perhaps, lay the chance to prise it off, or to be buried deeper beneath it.

    His hand hovered above the latch, unwilling to touch it. The house had the stillness of a tombstone, a thing meant to watch but never to welcome. With a grudging creak the door inched open, its cry tearing the silence. A breath of air exhaled from within, bearing with it unwanted gifts such as dust, mildew, and something copper-sharp that did not belong to the day. He stepped across, the boards beneath him moaning like sleepers disturbed. And then, faint as a phantom hand tugging at his sleeve, came the trill of Janice’s laughter. It flitted away before he could catch it, leaving only the rasp of his own breath. The parlour lay in tatters, gutted chairs and split wallpaper, but his eyes were drawn upwards. The staircase loomed, a spiral of shadows, twisting into a blackness that quivered like a living beast. A slow, merciless tension gathered, winding itself about him like a noose pulled taut.

    He braced himself and began to climb, every board beneath him was counting his trespasses. A creeping cold wrapped round his ankles, rising with him. Still, he climbed, because there was no turning back; Janice’s absence had eaten away at him for too long, and now It demanded an answer. The landing above offered a gauntlet of doors, all mute. He chose the first, pushed it wide, and stood at the threshold of an unremarkable bedroom, save for the wrongness of it. The bed lay unmade, impression fresh. In the corner, he saw it. A small bear, yellow, slouched and staring with glassy eyes that seemed to mourn. Janice’s bear. The very toy she had clasped the night she slipped from this world. His hand trembled toward it, his mind already ablaze with questions. How had it come here? Who had left it to wait for him? And worst of all, what else might have followed it?

    The moment his fingers closed round the bear, the floor betrayed him with a crack like musket-fire. It simply dropped away, and he was snatched by the dark beneath. And then it came: that laughter again and more omnipresent than ever. No longer dreamt but real, cascading through the timbers like church-bells rung mad, circling him, mocking him, it had been waiting for this hour.

    The fall had no end. He flailed, seeking purchase, but found only void. The ground finally seized him with a thunderous slam, rattling his bones and stealing his breath. 

    The dim light revealed a basement unlike any he remembered: shelves and walls sagging under the weight of dust and cobwebs, relics long abandoned, smelling of earth and something altogether sinister. The bear lay nearby, one eye catching the candle flicker, blinking at him with a knowing melancholy. He realized with a shiver that the house had shifted, or perhaps he had, a space familiar yet transformed. A glitch in the matrix where the building itself had secret compartments for its horrors.

    He pushed himself to his feet, pain flaring through his joints like sparks from iron. Before him, on a crude altar of splintered boards, lay a book bound in cracked, ancient leather. The pages had yellowed to the colour of dead skin, inscribed with a script that squirmed and slanted, recording incantations that smelled of midnight. It breathed, and it fed. Fear, guilt, despair: its diet had been decades in the making, and now it had him firmly in its grasp. The truth about Janice waited somewhere amid the timbers and the years, like prey hiding from a stalking predator.

    He swallowed hard and lifted the bear, its glass eyes glinting with a strange, almost sentient light. The surge of resolve that followed was fierce and brittle at once. He would find her. He would confront the horrors that pulsed in the very heart of this living house. Nothing, he vowed, would stop him. Not the darkness, not the fear, not the house itself.

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Part IV - The Black Mass

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    He pushed through the warped door into a room that had been hidden, quarantined from the living world. The wallpaper flaked away in ragged strips, layer upon layer, like the shedding of forgotten existence. A solitary bulb dangled overhead, swaying as though disturbed by some unseen breath, flinging grotesque silhouettes across the walls. In the room’s heart stood a crude altar, its surface scarred by a pentagram that glimmered faintly as if inked in something still wet. It was a far superior one that the first one he encountered. It looked more imposing and younger. A sound, half-buried, reached his ears: muffled chanting, words too blurred to catch. Edward felt his pulse falter. Curiosity pressed him closer, even as dread urged retreat. And then, without warning, the air fractured, and the scene was utterly transformed.

    A plaguing cold flooded the room, while the walls bloomed with pulses of pallid light, as though the house itself possessed a cancerous heart. The chanting swelled and Edward felt the years tear away. He was small again, bare-kneed, trembling. The room was no derelict husk; it thrummed with dreadful ceremony. A high priest cloaked in crimson presided over an altar where Janice lay bound, her throttled cries were the soundtrack of the ritual. Edward’s gorge rose as two figures approached, knives glimmering, candlelight caught on steel. When their faces turned toward him, his mind broke on recognition: Mother. Father. Their gaze, once his anchor, was hollow now, consumed by something feral, ablaze with a devotion to the unspeakable. He wanted to look away, but the scene hooked him, dragged him under. This was no dream. He was stitched into the rite, bound as surely as Janice. The house had him, pulling him backward into a past he was never meant to survive.

    Reality lurched with a vile jolt, and he crashed back into himself, sprawling on the boards like a puppet with its strings cut. The altar was once more a corpse of furniture, draped in dust and years, yet the air was swollen with ghost-sounds such as the hiss of chants, the muffled scream of a child. He staggered, meaning to run, to tear himself free of the house’s maw. But the place convulsed. The door slammed shut, a judge’s gavel upon his fate. The cold sank in, a cold not of weather but of catacomb. The crawling things drew long, impossibly long, until they merged into a single blot of darkness. He felt it watch him, not with eyes, but with a hunger older than man’s tongue. It had waited with the patience of eternity.

    He could not dismiss what he had seen; no idle dream had such weight. The house had unveiled its rot, and now it sought to graft him into its wicked fabric. His palm met the altar, the chill of the stone striking through flesh to bone. That pentagram burned upon his vision, etched as cruelly as a scar, its meaning tied to the heresies that had blackened his family. The boards grew slick beneath his feet; he slipped, spine rattling against the floor. The world reeled, sourness flooding his mouth. He thought only of escape, of warning someone of Janice and of his parents’ faith turned poisonous. But the house had other notions. The walls advanced army-like, slow and steady as coffin lids closing. His chest tightened to cracking point, his scream strangled beneath the rhythm of ghostly chanting. The beams groaned as though with glee. He clawed madly at the wallpaper, his fingers ripping it away in bloodied strips. And then came the laughter; his father’s sermon-voice, his mother’s soft croon, both twisted into a hideous hymn that filled the air. It all seemed saturated by an invisible yet suffocating mist of warped insanity. The kind that shatters all forms of matter and reality. 

    The room clotted with the stink of candle wax and something ranker, the stomach-turning perfume of flesh left to fester. He doubled over, dry heaving as the passage narrowed. Every door he clawed at was stubborn; every window sealed with a mason’s permanence. The house was awake, and its temper was foul. Then, as suddenly as it had seized him, it let him go. He stood, panting, in a bedroom that should have been balm to his eyes, his boyhood chamber. Yet it was wrong. The hues too lurid, the furniture too precise, as though a memory had been taxidermized and set to mock him. On the bed lay a still form. He froze when he saw the tatters of Janice’s dress, smeared dark with blood. With trembling pity, he stretched out his hand, but the flesh he sought to soothe dissolved beneath his touch, leaving only the hollowness of a spectre.

    He staggered, realising the house had stitched him into its nightmare tapestry, and that he was now no more than another thread. The atmosphere thickened like rancid breath, and a chill conviction settled in him; this was only the beginning. The cursed dwelling had feasted on his sister, and now it salivated over him. He could feel its craving in the walls, in the floor, in the bottomless ache of his chest. The corridors bent and coiled, a perverse puzzle designed by a mind steeped in cruelty. Doors multiplied, beckoned, and betrayed. His own memories leapt out at him. The chanting, once distant, now thundered through the brick-and-mortar beast’s very sinews, until the walls themselves convulsed. Then came the blood. At first a seep, a weeping from unseen wounds; then a deluge. Rivers of scarlet vomited from the plaster, sluicing down in hideous cataracts. The house was hemorrhaging dreamscapes of dread, and he was drowning in them.

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**********

 

    Movement teased the corner of his eye: quick, sly, and gone again. His chest wheezed, his grip on the torch whitening his knuckles to bone. He had to carry on. When he touched the handle, it betrayed him, turning of its own accord to reveal a stair that coiled into the dark like the inside of a shell. A draught rose from its depths, ripe with the unmistakable stench of carrion. He nearly retched, but he set one foot on the stair, then another. The steps protested beneath him with cavity-like groans, tolling out a dirge only he could hear. The whispers sharpened, clamoring like lunatics in a chapel, and the shadows knit together into one unbroken black. He stumbled on blood pooling the steps, thick and dark, forcing him to flail for balance. His body threatened to give, but some grim defiance kept him pressing upward, toward whatever waited in the total-blackness.

    At the foot of the stairs lay a chamber steeped in a jaundiced glow, a greenish haze that clung like mold to the walls. In the centre, upon a warped wooden lectern, sprawled a tome so ancient it looked dredged from a plague pit. Its cracked pages rustled of their own accord, as if gossiping blasphemies too foul for any mortal tongue. The susurrus of voices swelled into an ungodly chorus of howls, jeers, the broken laughter of the damned. He inched forward, each step a lament from the boards, and then, he ran. The letters crawled across the vellum, alive, defying sense, but he knew their meaning well enough: corruption, curse, binding. He reached for it, desperate to claim and destroy. At that instant the ground sighed, then gave way; he plunged once more into the underbelly of the house. The book snapped shut upon his hand, swallowing him into its leathery gullet. His scream never had the chance to escape.

    The chamber contracted, meaner with every breath, its chill soaking through to the marrow like damp in an old grave. The house’s will pressed upon him, sly and remorseless, insinuating itself into his very blood. Edward realised then, with the cold lucidity of a man at the gallows, that he would not depart this place alive. 62nd Avenue had laid claim to him, and its claim was final.

    With one last shudder, he prized his hand from the book’s obscene grip, pressing it tight against his breastbone like a soldier with a fatal wound. The walls leaned and met, the chamber sealing like a vault. He shaped a vow upon his breath, mute, stubborn, that he would send warning, if such things may be smuggled past death. Its murmurings ebbed, its shadows folded, and only the aftertaste of his ruin lingered, salted into the mortar of 1313 62nd Avenue.

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**********

 

    As Edward tumbled into the chasm below, the veil of his life’s ignorance tore away. The room bristled with townspeople in black robes with crimsons like fresh cuts, all silent but for the sounds that flitted through the air. His parents loomed at the front, faces stretched between pride and unhinged devotion. His mother caught his eye and nodded, a gesture that tasted of brimstone. On the altar, a goat was bound, its pupils rolled skyward in mute agony, as the town’s pastor read from the ancient, breathing bible. The symbols upon it writhed, indecipherable yet undeniably potent, and Edward felt their dark pulse clawing into him, promising knowledge and damnation alike.

    The town pastor looked up, his eyes meeting Edward's. "Welcome home, son," his tone was anything but warm. "We've missed you."

    His shoulder shivered beneath a touch that was at once intimate and unnatural. Turning, Edward beheld Janice, yet she was not the sister of memory; her form was warped, as though the town’s darkness had sculpted her from sorrow and flame. Her eyes glowed with malevolent clarity, and her voice poured from her lips like a chorus of unseen mouths. "It’s time," she said, and the very walls seemed to lean closer to hear her decree. It was clear to him in death that the cursed house had lured him here by taking the form of his beloved sister. 
 

    The congregation parted, revealing a portal suffused with that sickly, spectral light he had known only in nightmares. The townsfolk’s voices rose in a crescendo of lunacy, and unadulterated evil. Edward’s mind whirled, he had to get free, had to flee this place. But Janice’s hand, ice-cold and resolute, and the portal’s insidious pull told him the truth: he had run out of time.

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THE END