The house remember
The world felt... wrong.
Not just the trembling earth or the eerie silence—it was in the air, thick and electric, like a storm holding its breath. Behind them, the house loomed like a dead monument, its windows empty and unblinking. Something had shifted. Something had awakened.
Matt's breath caught in his throat. The knot in his gut coiled tighter, his pulse thundering in his ears.
"We need to go," Jess whispered, her voice trembling like a cracked bell in the silence. She clutched Max's arm, her fingers digging into him, desperate for grounding.
But Max wasn't with them—not fully. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, face pale, lips parted. He looked like he was listening to something only he could hear.
"This isn't right," Matt murmured, eyes narrowing at the house. "We should've been out of here hours ago."
Jess took a step back, her shoes dragging through the dirt as if the ground itself resisted her retreat. "You heard it," she said, her voice shaking. "The ritual... we never finished it. We left it open—"
The ground lurched, a tremor rippling beneath them like something massive stirring beneath the surface. Then came a sound—low and distant, like a giant stone door grinding open. Every head turned toward the house.
Its front door creaked ajar.
Then, a voice—not in the air, but in their minds. It slipped through their thoughts like oil, cold and invasive.
You shouldn't have come back.
A whisper, but heavy as thunder. It pressed against them, clawed at their nerves. Jess flinched, eyes wide and wild. "Did you hear that?"
Max's hand moved without thinking. From his pocket, he drew the locket—the one they'd found in the cellar. It pulsed with unnatural warmth in his palm. He opened it.
Inside, the photo had changed.
Still the four of them. Still smiling. But Mary was closer now—her figure subtly altered, her smile crooked, stretched too far. Behind her, the shadows curled and stretched, like tendrils reaching from another world.
Matt swallowed hard. "It's not done with us. It's waiting."
Then the sky cracked open.
Clouds twisted in chaotic spirals above them, swallowing the sun in an instant. The air turned to ice, and from the treeline, a thick, creeping fog rolled in—slow, deliberate, alive.
Max turned to the house. "We have to go back. We need to finish what we started."
"No." Matt's voice was raw, tight with fear. "You don't get it. Whatever's in there—it's not done playing with us."
But Jess had already started forward, her steps slow, unwilling. Her face was pale, her eyes blank with dread.
The fog reached their feet. The house groaned behind them, its frame shuddering, as though it were... breathing.
And then it came—the scream.
A shriek of pure, unfiltered agony. It tore through the fog and stabbed at their minds. A woman's voice. Broken. Familiar.
"Anna?" Jess gasped, barely a whisper.
But Max knew better. His lips moved before his mind could stop them. "Mary."
The scream came again, louder. Desperate. The fog parted, and a shape emerged.
A figure. Human in outline, but wrong in every way.
Mary.
But not the Mary they'd known.
Her skin was bleached bone-white, stretched like parchment. Her eyes were voids. Her mouth twisted into a grotesque, endless smile. Her fingers were distorted—too long, joints bent in impossible angles.
And the ground cracked beneath her every step.
Jess stumbled backward, face drained of color. "What happened to her?"
Max's voice shook. "She's not Mary anymore. She's a vessel. She's part of it now. The house, the mirror, the doll—it's all one. And it used her."
The thing that wore Mary's face laughed.
Low. Ancient.
"You never left," it said through cracked lips. "You only thought you did."
Matt grabbed Jess's hand. "We have to run. Now."
But Max stayed frozen, eyes locked on Mary—no, on it.
The locket in his hand pulsed again.
Inside, the photograph had changed once more. Mary was standing right beside them now, her smile pressed up against the glass. But something else had appeared behind her.
A shape.
Vast. Faceless. Crawling out of the dark.
A shadow older than memory.
Then, the earth shattered.
With a sound like bones breaking under weight, the ground split beneath their feet. Darkness surged up, cold and final. The last thing Matt saw was Mary's twisted grin, her hands reaching through the fog, drawing them down into the abyss.
Into the place where the story had never truly ended.