Iris didn't remember falling asleep, one moment she was sitting at the kitchen table staring at the old matchbox, the next she was waking up on the living room floor with the front door wide open and a metallic taste in her mouth.
The cold crept in from outside, sharper than it should have been for October.
She sat up, her body stiff and foreign, as if someone else had worn her skin while she slept.
Her fingers trembled as she reached for the door, slowly pushing it shut.
The wind moaned through the trees like something in mourning.
There were bootprints on the porch.
Not hers.
The prints were wet and wide, fresh from the forest beyond the tree line, stopping just short of the door.
Then they disappeared, no signs turning around, no walking away.
As if whoever had made them had simply vanished.
She bolted the door and backed away, her breath visible in the cold air despite the fireplace still glowing in the hearth.
She checked her phone, time 3:09 a.m, no calls or messages.
The closed matchbox was still on the kitchen table.
But she knew something had changed. She could feel it, like pressure behind her eyes, like a memory trying to surface.
Her mother's journal sat next to it, and Iris flipped to the next marked page.
The third match burns blue.
Don't light it unless you're ready to see what watches in the corners.
She snapped the journal shut.
"This is insane," she muttered, "It's just superstition."
But she didn't believe that, not anymore.
The house felt... occupied, not in the way it had when she first arrived, all dust and memory.
No, it felt like someone was in every room just before she entered, like breath had only just stopped the moment she stepped through the door.
She had to know.
Iris picked up the matchbox and walked into the hallway, she could hear the house settling above her, or maybe it was footsteps.
A floorboard sighed.
In the hallway mirror, she caught her own reflection.
Only, it wasn't hers.
The woman in the glass had her face but not her expression.
The eyes were hollowed out, bleeding dark tears.
Her mouth was a slash of silent agony, Iris starred until the image blinked—then it was just her again, pale and shaking.
She fled to the back porch, gasping as the woods loomed, black and swaying, the tree branches like gnarled fingers scraping the moon.
She lit the third match.
It flared blue, the fire hissed like it was alive, whispering secrets too ancient to understand.
It didn't burn like the others. It sang, and then everything around her stopped.
The air stilled, the wind froze, even the trees held their breath.
She turned.
Something was standing at the edge of the woods, tall and wrong.
Its body didn't move naturally and it shimmered, flickering like a broken reel of film.
She couldn't make out a face, only the long, spindled arms and the way its head tilted in curiosity.
The match burned down to her fingertips, and she dropped it with a gasp.
The figure vanished.
She ran back inside and locked every door, but the house wasn't a sanctuary anymore.
It was a trap, the third match hadn't just shown her something. It had opened something.
That night, she dreamed of her mother.
Not the warm version, not the one who kissed scraped knees and read fairy tales.
This version sat at the foot of Iris's bed, her face a mask of soot and hollow eye sockets, her fingers clutched around a box of matches.
"I had to see," her mother whispered, voice layered with static. "And now you do too."
Iris woke up screaming.
The journal was open on the bed beside her and she didn't remember bringing it upstairs.
Some matches aren't meant to be burned in this world, the page read.
Below that, a new line had been added in a different hand.
The fourth match burns without flame.
She didn't write it.
She didn't think her mother had either.
From downstairs, something creaked, heavy and wet.
And then came the sound of the front door unlatching itself.