Thomas and Paige stared at me, both playing dumb.
Pretending they couldn’t hear Charlie’s ringtone. Oscar-worthy shit. But I didn’t have time to appreciate the performance. If Charlie was somehow in the basement, then she might be hurt, or worse. I needed to get down there, call the police, and find her - NOW.
Tucking away Paige’s phone, I started out of the kitchen.
“Eve, where are you going?” said Thomas.
Ignoring him, I hauled across the room, snagged the flashlight from the couch, and-
“-Eve, you can talk to us.” He grabbed me by the arm-
“-Don’t FUCKING touch me,” I wrenched free, stepped back. Silence. They just stared at me, wide-eyed, scared even. Good. They should be.
“Eve. What, what’s wrong?” he stammered, still giving a top-notch performance. Bravo.
Flashlight clenched in my hands like a weapon, I eased back towards the basement door. Slipping inside, I slammed it shut. Darkness. With both hands grasped around the knob, I braced for Thomas to follow, but… he didn’t. I listened for a moment, no footsteps. Only muffled voices. I pressed my ear to the door.
“What if she finds-” said Paige, but I couldn’t make out the rest. “Doesn’t matter now-” Thomas muttered a barely audible response. What were they talking about? Who knows - probably some death-cult fuckery - just find Charlie.
Convinced Thomas wouldn’t follow, I crept back, then spun around and hurried downward. At the base of the stairs, I pulled out Paige’s flip-phone and punched in 9-1-1. Two ringtones-
-A young woman answered, “Nine-one-one operator. What is your emergency?”
“Home invasion.”
“If you can, get outside or barricade yourself in a room.”
“Okay.” Sure, after I find Charlie.
“Name?”
“Eve. Eve Palmer.”
“Eve, are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Is the intruder still in the house?”
“Yes. There’s more than one actually.”
“Can you describe them?”
“A man, a woman and…” I trailed off. “Can you just send help?”
“And…?”
“Three kids…”
“Three kids?”
“Yes, they’re uh, a family.”
“And they’ve threatened you?”
“Yes. Well, not the kids, but the parents did.” Technically a lie. Sue me.
“Are they armed?”
“Possibly. I think they hurt my girlfriend, or they’re holding her hostage. There’s another woman in the attic too. She might be the guy’s sister, I don’t know. Just send help. Now.”
“Address?”
“3719 Heritage Lane.”
“Ma’am… a car has already been dispatched to your location.”
“Great. Thank you.”
“No, what I mean is, someone from this address has already called in a disturbance.”
“A disturbance?”
“Yes, a 51-50. Was that you?”
“No…” Let me guess: Thomas called it in - worthless piece of shit.
“Ma’am?”
Fuck. Did I say that last part out loud?
“Eve… I’d like you to stay on the line until police arrive. You should know, the storm has delayed response time and-”
-That’s when I noticed the blood. A trail of tiny red dots spattered on the ground. I lowered the phone to inspect and-
-Upstairs, a sudden CRASH. Followed by heavy scraping across the floor. A flood of footsteps. Like dozens of people marching around. Puffs of dust wheezed from straining floorboards above me. What the hell was going on up there?
Focus Eve.
I flipped the phone shut. Authorities were en route - that’s all that mattered. Even if Thomas called them in first, what would he say when they got here? ‘Uhm, it’s actually my house because I put a rocking chair in the living room.’ Good luck with that one buddy.
Following the trail of blood, I entered a long, narrow hallway. Doors on either side. Symmetrical. Numbered. It almost looked like a prison. The fuck? Flashlight in hand, I pushed forward. The scattered line of blood led straight ahead, past several doorways, and curved into an open room. A musty, brick-walled nook.
Continuing into the back corner, the blood ran over a pile of abandoned clutter. I beamed light through the mess. Behind it, a blocked doorway. I started grabbing debris and tossing it aside. Up above, the scraping and footsteps grew louder. A rickety, percussive drone. Finally, I cleared away the old trash and opened the door.
A long, uneven staircase receded downward into a darkened void. A basement within a basement. Come on. Suddenly, the sounds from upstairs cut short.
Silence.
Behind me, two quick shuffling scrapes. I spun around, aimed light into the doorway. Empty. Uneasy, I turned back and redialed Charlie’s phone. Two tones rang out-
-In the darkness beyond the bottom of the stairs, Ludwig’s classic riff chimed to life. Okay. Creepy sub-basement, here I come.
At the bottom of the steps, the trail of blood ended. Hard stop. Did it start or finish here? I stepped forward into a vast, shadowy room. Down here, Charlie’s ringtone pinged off the walls, echoing from every direction. Wary, I struggled to get my bearings. The circular glow from my flashlight revealed the room bit by bit - it almost looked like an abandoned mine. Cave-like, make-shift, bizarre.
Strained wooden beams struggled to keep the earth at bay. The room itself was filled with paintings - stacks and stacks of paintings. But none of them were hanging. They were just strewn on the ground - leaning against the dirt walls - piled up in the corners.
Charlie’s ringtone stopped, and for a moment, its echo lingered in the stagnant air. Silence. I redialed, but this time, calling from down here, it didn’t ring. I checked the screen: no service.
“Charlie…?” I called out. Nothing.
Determined, I wandered deeper. Maybe there was something here, something that would make sense of all of this insanity. But there were only paintings, and every single one was more or less the same. Depictions of this house in different contexts: half-built, fully renovated, abandoned, burnt down to a crisp. An exceptionally odd one portrayed the windows and doors swarmed with tiny black dots. Ants?
Who painted these? Was it Abigail? Did she make the one above the fireplace too? The smiling turtle in the attic?
As I crept forward, my light swept across a painting with people in it. I crouched down for a closer look. It was a family. Standing in front of the house, a Rockwellian couple with two children. Boy and girl. The father was nearly the spitting image of Thomas - right down to his perfect teeth. The young girl looked sad, despondent. The boy had Thomas’ eyes. This had to be his family, painted when he lived here as a kid. Thomas, his sister Abigail, and their parents. They looked so traditional, so serious, it almost made the family upstairs look fun in comparison. Almost.
I was about to step away, but… I squinted. In this painting, young Thomas looked out of place, like he was put there after the fact by a lesser artist. His dimensions weren’t quite right. His arms were just the slightest bit too long, his mouth the slightest bit too wide. Even his texture looked off. I pressed my thumb tip against his face. The paint for him felt different from the rest - cheap, acrylic, cold. Unnerved, I pulled away my hand, leaving behind a pinkish smear where young Thomas’ jaw used to be-
-A gleam caught my eye. I swiveled to look, but it was just an unlit oil lamp. It sat atop a cramped desk covered in stacks of black, leather journals. And above the desk, across a horizontal support beam, a message - scrawled with olive green paint:
THOMAS FOSTER IS NOT MY BROTHER
Okay… I crossed over. The desk lamp still had oil, and beside it lay an old pack of matches. I struck one and held it to the lamp until - a dim, flickering glow stammered to life. Shaking out the match, I looked around, absorbing the room in all its weirdness. Distorted, jittery shadows cast over precarious picture frame towers. In the far corner lay a dirt-stained mattress, overgrown with roots, covered in dust. Hadn’t been touched in years. Was Abigail sleeping down here? Above the bed hung a rope-ladder leading up to a hole in the ceiling. Did that connect to the dumbwaiter?
Turning back to the desk, I grabbed a journal from the nearest stack. Maybe this would explain what was going on here. I flipped through, but every single page was filled to the margins with:
Thomas Foster is not my brother. Thomas Foster is not my brother. Thomas Foster is-
-Useless. I tossed it aside, grabbed another one:
You are part of the house. You are part of the house. You are-
-worthless. I snagged the next one:
You are not who they say you are. You are not who they say you are. You are-
-nothing. Nothing but the meaningless ramblings of a seriously unstable person. I’d bet a thousand bucks the next one said: All work and no play makes Abigail a dull girl. But… what did she mean Thomas wasn’t her brother? I was about to turn away when - I noticed a solitary, deep-red journal, tucked away at the bottom of the furthest stack-
-I shimmied it out, cracked it open, and skimmed through. Entry after entry of young Abigail talking about moving into the new house. Her aspirations to become a painter. How she felt out of place in her own skin.
I kept flipping through, glimpsing hand-written moments of Abigail’s tragic life. All the while, looking for something, anything that would help me.
She wrote about the kids in school, how they tormented her for being ‘too tall’. How they called her: Drabby-Abby, Drabby-Abby, Drabby-Abby.
She wrote about the time she shaved her head. How her parents, as punishment, locked her up in the attic until all her hair grew back. How they sent her food rations up through the dumbwaiter chute. How on the first night locked away up there, she awoke covered in ants. Swarmed from head to toe.
She wrote about how she hated being an only child…
…an only child?
Then… she wrote about how Thomas was not her brother. How he came from the woods in the light of day. How he lived here before the house was even built. Before the trees were planted. How he was trying to drive her mad, and nobody believed her, not even her parents. How he was trying to turn her into-
-Something caught my periphery. I looked up.
Ants.
Above the desk, from a crack in the wooden beam, a trail of ants crawled out of the olive green ‘O’ in: THOMAS.
Okay. Slipping the red journal into my back pocket, I followed the trail as it disappeared behind a stack of rotting picture frames. They rounded a corner, and stretched down an ever-narrowing passage, receding into darkness. I raised the flashlight, flicked it on and-
-a woman.
Standing at the end of a dead-end passage with her back turned. Not Charlie - too tall. It was Abigail, had to be. Wearing an off-white hospital gown, just like in the attic. But somehow, it looked like she’d been standing there for years - almost rooted to the ground, like she’d become a part of the room itself. Paralyzed. Looming. Arms hanging limp.
Clutched in her left hand, a small hammer, the same one I’d used to pry nails out from above the fireplace. But now, it was covered in red. Blood…
…Then, she started shaking. A strange, soundless movement, somewhere between weeping and laughter. I stepped backward, and she looked over her shoulder towards me. Her face was pale, sunken cheeks. Her eyes were gently shut.
With surprising speed, the trail of ants climbed up the side of her leg, onto her back, over her shoulders, and began to circle around her neck - an unearthly choker. Her mouth twisted into a pained, toothy grimace and then, the ants started swarming her face. Crawling into her nostrils, her mouth. Writhing ants frantically forcing their way between the cracks of her gums, her teeth. But she remained unphased. Unmoving.
The sight was so terrible, so incomprehensible, I questioned if it was even real.
Then, the ants began to recede. Disappearing into her face until… there was only one ant left. Wriggling its way between her blood-red gums, writhing until, finally… it slipped through her teeth with an almost audible schlick-
-Abigail’s eyes snapped open. Cold and blue. Wide. Mystified. She looked down at the blood-drenched hammer in her hand. Face filling with a horrific mixture of terror, and unimaginable guilt, she whispered, “My name isn’t…”
I took a slow step backward.
“My name isn’t Eve.” She spun around, and took a step towards me - a sudden, unbalanced movement, as if puppeteered from above. Staggering forward, she raised the hammer back, wound up to strike and-
-I turned heel and hauled it the fuck out of there. Abigail in pursuit, I barreled up the stairs - out of the empty room - into the hallway and ran. Faster than I’d ever run in my entire goddamn life. Behind me, her bare feet SLAPPED against concrete. Gaining.
“WAIT,” she gasped.
Scrambling forward, I slid around a corner. Doors on either side blurred past. Numbered. Symmetrical. Wait, wasn’t I already here?
Ahead of me: a dead end. Above me: the ominous drones returned with a vengeance. Behind me: footfalls, getting closer.
Left with no choice, I shoved into the nearest room, pulled the door shut, and reached for the-
-no lock. Fuck. I scanned around, hunting for a weapon, something to bar the door, a place to hide, anything. But there wasn’t-
-Wait.
In the far corner: a shuttered-door wardrobe. Without thinking, I hurtled over, whipped inside, yanked the door shut, and held it there. All the while, the scraping sounds from upstairs grew louder. My heart pumped with short stuttering sprints.
Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-Shut the fuck up Eve. Calm down. Just, calm the fuck down. It’s only one person-
-yeah but she’s armed with a hammer and ants crawled into her face and she’s probably going to-
-STOP.
Just… stop. First off, turn the flashlight off. It’s lighting you up like a billboard.
My inner voice was starting to sound weirdly similar to a frustrated Charlie. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but… I switched off the flashlight.
Okay, it’s off?
Yeah.
Good. Now breathe. Inhale slowly through your nostrils… hold it… and then… exhale through your mouth.
I breathed in through my nose… held it… then exhaled through my mouth.
Did that help?
My heart still thumped like a stampede.
Do it again dipshit.
Okay, maybe my inner voice was a little meaner than Charlie. But it was actually helping. My heart-rate was slowing down. Continuing to focus on my breath, I peered out through the wardrobe shutters into the dark room. Now, the sounds from upstairs were unbearably loud. An ever-rising earthquake, getting stronger and stronger. Then… the door to the room swung open-
-Instant silence.
There she stood, bloody hammer in hand. Abigail.
Deeply regretting my choice of a hiding spot, I sucked in a spurt of air and held my breath. Be quiet.
Abigail loomed into the room, almost bending over as she passed through the door frame. Holy fuck, she was tall. Hammer at the ready, she crept deeper. “I… I’m sorry…” she trailed off, as she started circling the room like a caged animal.
“I’m sorry about Charlie,” she whimpered.. “She’s still alive but, Thomas said it was the only way I could leave…”
What did she mean? What happened to Charlie? Was that Charlie’s blood on the hammer? Questions raced through me, but my survival instinct pushed them back. Escape. Survive. Figure this out later. All the while, I was still holding my breath, still desperately trying not to make a sound. Pins and needles pricked across my face. Lungs growing tighter.
Abigail wandered around the room for what felt like an eternity. Then… she lurched to a stop, sighed, turned for the door, and drifted away - One. Painfully. Slow. Step. At. A. Time.
Every fiber of my being screamed: Don’t breathe. Don’t you fucking breathe. Just hang on a little longer. But-
-my lungs forced me to gasp in air. Abigail froze in the door frame - peered back over her shoulder - and looked directly at the wardrobe.
Then, she tilted her head. The exact same way the shadowy figure on the basement steps did. Head still cocked, she stepped back into the room. And out from her ear, down onto her neck, crawled a thin trail of ants…
Holy fucking Christ.
She took a step closer - and another one. “Eve, is that you?” she whispered, edging forward. Her voice was tinged with repressed excitement now, like she was about to pull off a horrific prank. “Eve don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay. We can help each other. You can help me leave. And I… I can help you find your Charlie.” Lips quivering, she stood right in front of the wardrobe now, staring at me through the shutters. Her eyes were empty - like a doll’s. Her cold breath brushed against my face. Frigid.
Slowly raising her hand, she slid her long fingers into the shutters, reaching for me. I leaned back as far as I could, but her jagged, overgrown fingernails scratched against my cheek. “It’s okay Eve,” she whispered again. The ants were now flooding off her hand, rushing down from her fingers, onto her nails and…
…onto my face. Swarming ants crept over my skin. Towards my mouth, towards-
-enough.
In one quick motion, I pressed my palm up against her outstretched fingers until they snapped back with a sickening CRACK. I drop-kicked the door open and-
-Abby wrenched to the side shrieking bloody murder - her mangled fingers still caught between the shutters. Trapped. The hammer flew from her hand and slid to a stop in the doorway.
Shooting across the room, I snagged the hammer and kept running - frantically spitting ants out of my mouth all the while. Behind me, Abigail screeched and wailed, struggling to yank her twisted hand out from the shutters. Good fucking luck.
Doors blurred past as I darted down the hallway, hunting for the stairs. Escape. Just escape. Behind me, her warbled screams echoed, getting louder. Closer. She was already free. Fuck.
She was gaining on me and this time, she was vengeful. Part of me wanted to turn around and smash her skull in, but I doubted I could bring myself to do it, even in self-defense. Plus I wasn’t sure if she was even human. So I just kept running…
Until finally, I came upon the stairs - still highlighted with the trail of blood. Sorry Charlie. But, if I don’t get out of here now, we’re both fucked.
I bounded upwards until behind me, Abigail’s cold writhing hands grasped at my heels, reached for my ankles, tried to pull me back into the darkness, but the door was just in sight. I was almost there. Almost free and-
-I burst into the living room, spun around, shoulder-slammed the door shut, expecting a struggle, but… there was nothing. No more footsteps. No more screaming. Only silence. Deafening silence.
“What’s wrong?” Thomas’ bewildered voice called out from behind. But I didn’t look. I was so intent on holding the door shut, I almost forgot the family was even there. Sure, they were god awful, but at least ants weren’t crawling out of their ears… not yet, anyway. Behind me, I could hear Thomas rise to a stand and march across the room. I didn’t look back - I kept holding the door.
Suddenly, he jerked me away, “What is going on-” -he blinked at me, stunned.
Then, I realized what he was looking at: the blood-soaked hammer in my hand. Reaching down, he yanked it away, “Where did you find this?” He held it up, but it was no longer covered in blood - it was spotless. Inexplicably spotless. He tossed it across the room. Hitting the floor, it slid to a stop in the quiet-corner. I was too shocked to even respond. Too exhausted to even fight back. It felt like the entire universe was slowly turning upside down.
“Were you hurting yourself again?” his voice was filled with distress, concern even. He began patting his hands over my neck, my shoulders, searching for injuries.
“Thomas,” Paige called from across the room. But he ignored her, still checking to make sure I wasn’t hurt, “Talk to me… what happened down there?”
“THOMAS,” Paige snapped so loud he almost jumped. He looked back.
She stared him down with a vicious glare, “Take her upstairs. You’re scaring the children.”
The kids were sitting in front of the fireplace, gaping at me with shock. And that’s when it finally hit me:
Everything was different.
Completely different. The furniture. The rug on the floor. The candles on the tables. The paintings on the walls. Everything. The house was now decorated like a throwback American dream home. I opened my mouth to speak, but only a sputtering wheeze escaped. What the fuck was happening?
Sighing, Thomas tightened his grip, pulled me away, and pushed me into the foyer. “I don’t know what happened down there, but I need you to listen to me.” He stared into my eyes, deadly serious. “You have to get yourself together, or I’m calling the ward. Do you understand, Abby? The kids can’t have their aunt running around the house like a lunatic.”
I stared up at him blankly. Abby? Their aunt? Was this really his plan? Was he really gonna try and convince me I was his sister all along? How fucking stupid did he think I was? That dumb shit might’ve worked on a twelve-year-old Abigail, but not on me. It would take a fuck-ton more than a redecorated house to make me believe I was a completely different person. I cleared my throat, “What… what did you do to my house?”
Ignoring the question, he took a new tact, smiling sadly, “You’re my sister. I’d do anything to help you, but I can’t put my family’s safety at risk any longer. Do you understand?”
For a moment… Part of me wondered if I truly was insane, if I might actually be his sister. But none of that made any sense. That’s not how hallucinations work, not how insanity works… right?
Besides, everything that happened so far was technically inside the realm of plausibility. Insanely fucked-up, yes, but not impossible. Maybe they were working with other people. Maybe they moved all the furniture inside while I was downstairs. Maybe they drugged me with hallucinogens after I hit my head. Or maybe…
…Maybe Abigail’s journal was right. Maybe Thomas really did live here before the house was even built. Before the trees were even planted. Maybe he came from the woods in the light of-
-Eve, those were just the ramblings of an unwell mind. He’s only a person. A psychopath. But a person nonetheless.
I refocused.
Play along until the police show up or, until you find the right moment to escape. Come back with help and save Charlie. Don’t escalate things. Yet.
Smiling back, I nodded gently.
“Good. Now,” he continued, “We were just about to have dinner, and I’d love for you to join us. Show the kids everything is okay. Tell them their aunt was just looking for something down in the basement and got lost, alright?”
“Okay.”
“We love you Abby, you’re a part of this family,” he reached out and touched my shoulder gently. I shuddered, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care. “You’ll get through this,” he continued, “you’ve gotten through worse.”
“Thanks Thomas…”
Smiling warmly, he turned back for the kitchen. Lingering behind, I watched him go, waited until he disappeared around the corner, and then-
-I dashed to the front door, grabbed the handle and-
-Locked. From the outside?
I went for the window. Barred. The adjacent room - every single window was barred. My house was like a prison now. How did they pull all this off so quickly?
“Abby?” he called out from the kitchen. “Ready for dinner?”
I stopped. Took a deep breath. Collected myself. Eve, you’re outnumbered. Play along until help shows up. If help doesn’t show, do whatever it takes to find Charlie.
Even if you have to burn this fucking house to the ground.
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