I finished my Dr Pepper and headed back to the kitchen for another. That’s when I noticed the back door was open. Not wide open, just cracked, like someone had forgotten to latch it properly. Except I distinctly remembered checking all the locks after Leo left.
The rational part of my brain said old house, settling wood, probably just popped open. The part of my brain that had watched too many horror movies said to grab a knife and call 911.
I grabbed a second Dr Pepper instead and approached the door cautiously. The elm tree stood in silhouette, its branches reaching toward the house like it wanted to come in.
I pushed the door open wider and stepped onto the back porch. The air was thick with humidity and the smell of growing things. Not dead things—the garden looked different somehow. Greener. The roses that had been brown and withered this afternoon showed hints of new growth. The vegetable garden looked less like a botanical battlefield and more like it was just enthusiastically overgrown.
“What the hell?”
I walked down the porch steps, drawn by something I couldn’t name. The grass was cool under my bare feet, and definitely green. Not brown like it had been hours ago. Green and soft and very much alive.
The elm tree loomed ahead, and as I got closer, I could see something carved into its trunk. Letters, old and worn but still visible. They weren’t in English—weren’t in any language I recognized. They seemed to shift when I wasn’t looking directly at them, rearranging themselves into almost-familiar patterns before scrambling back to nonsense.
I reached out to touch them, and the locket at my throat turned ice cold.
“Don’t,” a voice said, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
But there was no one there. Just me and the tree and the garden that was definitely not the same garden it had been this afternoon.
“I need more Dr Pepper,” I said to no one. “Or less. Or therapy. Definitely therapy.”
I backed away from the tree, and the carved letters seemed to fade, becoming just random marks in the bark. The locket warmed again, settling back to normal body temperature. The garden looked overgrown but mundane.
“Stress,” I told myself firmly. “It’s just stress and grief and too much caffeine on an empty stomach.”
I headed back to the house, but at the threshold, I turned back. The elm tree stood sentinel in the dying light, and for just a second, I could have sworn I saw a figure standing beneath it. Tall, made of shadows and starlight, there and gone before I could properly focus.
“Nope,” I said, and went inside, closing and locking the door firmly behind me.
But even inside, even surrounded by boxes and dolls and an unhealthy amount of lamps, I could feel it. Something had changed. Something had begun. The house that had been holding its breath was starting to exhale, and I had the unsettling feeling that it was waiting for me to breathe with it.
I ordered pizza, unpacked exactly one box (books, because priorities), and studiously ignored the way shadows seemed to gather in cornerswhere shadows shouldn’t be. By the time I went to bed, in Grandma Jo’s room because mine was still full of boxes, I’d almost convinced myself I’d imagined everything.
Almost.
The locket sat warm against my skin as I lay in the dark, and somewhere in the walls, the house sighed. It sounded like contentment. It sounded like finality.
It sounded like soon.
2
Elle
I woke to the sound of thunder that wasn’t thunder.
The house shook—not violently, more like it was shivering. Picture frames rattled on the walls, and somewhere in the kitchen, something fell and shattered. The sound was sharp, followed by a silence so complete I could hear my own heartbeat.
3:17 AM, according to the old digital clock on the nightstand, its red numbers the only light in the room.
The not-thunder came again, rolling through the walls like the house was a drum and something massive had just struck it. This time, the lights flickered once, twice, then died completely, plunging the room into darkness broken only by the clock’s dim red glow. But when I looked out the window, the night was clear. Stars scattered across the sky like spilled salt, no clouds in sight.
“Old house,” I whispered to myself. “Old pipes. Old… something.”
But I was already getting up, bare feet finding the cold wooden floor, because that wasn’t the sound of settling wood or temperamental plumbing. That was something else. Something that made the locket around my neck turn cold enough to burn.
I pulled on the ratty oversized t-shirt I’d thrown over a chair—one of Julian’s old shirts I’d kept out of spite more than sentiment—and padded toward the door. The hallway beyond was dark, but not normal dark. Thiswas the kind of dark that had weight, that pressed against your skin like velvet made of shadow.
The emergency flashlight I’d left on the dresser clicked on with reassuring brightness, cutting through the unnatural darkness. The beam showed nothing unusual—just the familiar hallway with its faded wallpaper and creaky floorboards. But the shadows seemed to recoil from the light, pulling back into corners with something that looked almost like disappointment.
