The grandfather clock in the hallway struck midnight. Its heavy chimes echoed through the empty house like falling stones. Leo sat at his wooden desk, the single desk lamp casting a weak pool of yellow light over his open notebook. Outside, the wind howled, pressing against the glass pane like a cold, wet hand.
Leo lived alone at the edge of the old forest. For weeks, he had heard a faint scratching sound behind the bedroom drywall. At first, he blamed mice. But mice did not sound like breathing. Mice did not scrape with a rhythm that matched the pace of his own heartbeat.
He laid his pen down. The scratching started again. It was louder tonight, moving from the baseboard up toward the ceiling plaster. Leo stood up, his floorboards groaning under his weight. He picked up his heavy metal flashlight and clicked it on. The beam cut through the dark room, illuminating floating dust motes that looked like ash.
“Hello?” Leo called out. His voice sounded thin, swallowed instantly by the heavy air.
He walked into the cold hallway. The wallpaper peeled at the corners like dry skin. The air smelled of damp earth and iron, a metallic tang that made his tongue go dry. He reached the master bedroom at the end of the hall. The door stood wide open, though he was certain he had shut it that morning.
A shadow detached itself from the doorframe. It did not have the natural shape of a human form; it was too tall, its limbs bending at wrong, impossible angles. Leo froze. Terror pinned his boots to the floor. He tried to lift the flashlight, but his arm felt heavy, leaden.
From the centre of the dark room, a voice spoke. It sounded like his own mother’s voice, raspy and choked with cold water.
“You took too long to come back, Leo.”
Leo gasped. His mother had passed away ten years ago in the hospital downtown. He took a step backward, his heel catching on the threshold.
The floor beneath him vanished. He did not fall into the downstairs hallway. He dropped into total, suffocating blackness. There was no sound of impact, only the sensation of sinking through a thick, cold liquid. The air turned freezing. He clawed at his throat, but his fingers met only damp brick.
His flashlight beam flickered once, twice, and then died. In the last microsecond of light, he saw hundreds of white, eyeless faces pressed against the wet bricks of a narrow tunnel, their mouths open in silent screams. Their pale fingers reached out from the mortar, long and jagged.
Then, total dark.
A hand gripped his ankle—cold, skinless, and tight as a steel vise. He opened his mouth to scream, but the cold mud rushed in, filling his lungs.
Upstairs, in the empty room under the pale moonlight, the grandfather clock stopped ticking forever.