Chapter Two:
Lark didn’t scream.
She wanted to. Every inch of her body was urging her to open her mouth and let loose something primal and piercing. But something about the house the pressure in the air, the hum in the floorboards made her feel like if she screamed, it would hear her.
And she wasn’t ready for that.
The flashlight flickered again, dim and unstable. She aimed it around the room, heart hammering. Marcus was gone. Just gone. No thud of retreating footsteps, no shout for help. Just the cold, empty bedroom and that wretched doll, which had somehow moved three feet across the room.
The doll’s single glass eye glinted.
Lark took one slow step backward. Then another.
“Marcus?” she whispered, knowing it was useless.
Silence.
Except not really. Not when she focused.
There it was again.
The whispering.
More urgent now.
Not just her name anymore. There were other words. Fragmented and muffled, like voices speaking through water. Like the roots beneath the floor were remembering things and trying to speak them aloud.
“Beneath… buried… feed…”
She gripped the flashlight tighter. “Nope,” she muttered, her voice shaking. “Not staying here.”
She turned and bolted into the hallway. The stairs groaned under her feet as she flew down them, nearly missing a step and falling headlong into the entryway. Her breath came in gasps, and each inhale brought that same cloying metallic scent deeper into her lungs. She swore it was getting stronger.
At the base of the stairs, she stopped short.
Because now something was whispering aloud.
Not under the floor.
From the walls.
The wallpaper was bulging in places. Warped. Moving, almost. Like it was breathing behind the plaster. Like the house wasn’t just alive, but aware. Watching her.
Lark’s panic surged like a wave crashing over her. She needed to get out. Now.
She sprinted for the front door, but the second her hand touched the knob, she heard Marcus’s voice.
“Lark… don’t.”
She froze.
He sounded close. Very close. But the voice was wrong too flat, too measured. Like someone was trying to remember how he spoke and getting it just a little off.
“Where are you?” she called out.
“Downstairs.”
There was no basement. She was sure of it. They’d checked the exterior before coming in. No signs of a storm door, no cellar windows. But now, as she scanned the living room again, her flashlight landed on something she hadn’t noticed before.
A trapdoor.
It was tucked behind the sagging sofa, partially obscured by a collapsed bookshelf.
“No,” she whispered. “No way.”
But the trapdoor creaked open, slowly, on its own.
And a soft yellow light poured up from below.
“Lark…” the voice called again, more urgently this time. “Please.”
It sounded almost like him. Almost.
She should have run. She knew she should have run.
But curiosity is a cruel thing.
So is guilt.
She edged toward the trapdoor, flashlight flickering with every step, heart thudding like a drum in her throat. She knelt beside it and aimed the beam into the stairwell below.
Old wooden steps spiraled down into the earth. Farther than they should have. The light didn’t reach the bottom.
The roots lined the walls here, thick and dark, pulsing like veins in a dying creature. Some of them twitched at the edges of the light.
“Marcus?” she whispered.
Something moved down there.
And then he stepped into view.
It looked like Marcus. The shape was right. The same hoodie. The same posture. But his face…
There was something wrong with his face.
His eyes were too dark. Not just in color, but depth. Like the sockets behind them were hollowed out. His skin had a slight sheen, like it had been soaked in damp earth.
And when he smiled, it was too wide.
“Come down,” he said.
“What happened to you?” she asked, taking a step back.
“I saw it,” he replied, voice flat. “I saw what’s under the roots. And it saw me. It sees everything.”
“Marcus, you’re scaring me.”
He tilted his head. “You don’t remember yet. But you will.”
And then he reached up and grabbed the edge of the trapdoor.
His fingers weren’t fingers anymore.
They had split, branching off like twigs.
Like roots.
Lark screamed then. Finally.
She jumped back, heart in her throat, and slammed the trapdoor shut. Something thudded against it from below, hard enough to make dust rain from the rafters.
She scrambled to the door and yanked it open.
This time, it gave easily.
But the forest outside had changed.
Gone was the car. Gone was the gravel road. In their place stood a wall of trees. Gnarled. Black. Leaning closer than they had before. The fog was thicker now, almost opaque.
And the ground?
Covered in roots.
Pulsing.
Breathing.
The house groaned behind her, a deep sound like timbers cracking under the weight of memory. Lark turned, only for a second.
And the doll was there.
In the doorway.
Watching.
Its mouth was open.
Full of soil.
