Chapter 12
The hallway sagged under its own weight, walls warped with moisture and time, but it was the Ochre that made it truly wrong. Thick streaks of it clung to the ceiling beams like veins torn from a deeper anatomy, its color not quite black, not quite rust, but some choking blend of oil, blood, and […]
Chapter 11
Kim pulled the Ramcharger onto main street. It was the primary artery of Eden Falls and all roads broke off from it. The town was designed and built around the need to move heavy military industrial equipment as well as the massive logging trucks that came from Wychwood. Her shoulders were tense and she gripped […]
Chapter 10
What uh…,” the soldier carrying the radio stammered, “What brings you here tonight, Ma’am?” He carried the device with ease, unlike all of us that struggled with it, as we walked past the first gate and into the large substation. Mrs Nguyen used her I.D card to tap against a flat panel above the door […]
Chapter 9
Mrs Nguyen flung open the door and looked down the stairwell at us. I was standing with Ace at the bottom of the stairs, I had a badminton racket in hand, while Ace had taken up a dumbbell handle from the nearby, unused, rack. “Good, you’re all okay,” she said, scaling the stairs quickly and […]
Chapter 8
I don’t know how long we were down there, minutes maybe, silently listening to the thump upstairs and the scuttling across joists. The strange pressure in the air, like the whole house had filled with something thick and invisible, like we were underwater, clung to the basement. The walls of Katie’s basement didn’t have clocks, […]
Chapter 7
It had been two weeks since we left The Letter House and returned home, but nobody concerned themselves. Our parents were unaware of the entire ordeal, and Tony’s mom claimed that he had ran away and came back when he was hungry. It was the same line we heard time and time again, whenever a […]
Chapter 6
Tony’s room wasn’t cold. It wasn’t warm. It was something else. There was a presence, almost like a large room without air conditioning, a humidity that seemed to permeate everything in the room. “Tony?” Ace whispered, the name barely a breath. She took a hesitant step forward, her bat forgotten, her hand reaching out. “Don’t,” […]
Chapter 5
Elijah’s eyes, still distant, tracked something we couldn’t see.“It’s not just a voice,” he said, his voice raspy, like he was pulling the words from a deep well.“It’s… a ghost of a thought. A memory the house is playing.” He looked at Katie. “Like the pictures on the walls.” He shivered, a quick, violent tremor.“It […]
Chapter 4
Ace and I stood with our backs against the door, bracing for an impact that never came. When I looked up into the room, Elijah and Katie had taken up positions to defend from whatever would come through that door, but nothing did. No claws scraped.No growl carried through the wood.Only silence. Ace’s breath was […]
Chapter 3
The first room we stepped into was a parlor. Its antique furniture was perfectly preserved. There were paintings on the walls, portraits of John Eden and his family, an aerial view of Eden Falls, and, of course, The Letter House itself. Elijah walked in and knelt down by the fireplace, holding his hand over the […]