The darkness lasted for only a few seconds.
But in that time, I learned something about fear.
Fear is not always a scream.
Sometimes fear is standing completely still, afraid that if you move, something will notice.
I waited.
My eyes slowly adjusted.
The hallway returned.
The lights flickered back on.
The figure at the top of the stairs was gone.
I ran.
Not toward the front door.
Not toward the exit.
I ran deeper into the house.
Looking back, that was probably the first mistake I made.
The second was believing the house was empty.
The third was believing the thing upstairs was my brother.
I pushed through the nearest door and locked it behind me.
A bedroom.
Old furniture.
A bed covered in a white sheet.
A mirror.
And a small wooden box sitting on the dresser.
The box had my name carved into it.
MICHAEL.
I stared at it.
My hands felt numb.
I didn’t touch it.
I already knew what would happen.
But curiosity is a dangerous thing.
Especially when you are scared.
I opened it.
Inside was a collection of objects.
A toy car.
A broken watch.
A drawing.
My drawing.
I remembered making it when I was eight years old.
A picture of my family standing in front of our house.
Except there was something wrong.
The house in my drawing was this house.
I dropped it.
That was impossible.
I had never been here before.
At least...
I thought I hadn’t.
Then I saw the writing on the back.
A child’s handwriting.
Mine.
It said:
“Daniel says we have to forget.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Footsteps.
Slow.
Heavy.
Coming closer.
I backed away.
The bedroom door handle moved.
Once.
Twice.
Then stopped.
A voice spoke softly.
“Michael?”
My heart nearly stopped.
It was Daniel.
My brother.
Not the thing upstairs.
The real Daniel.
The same voice.
The same calm tone.
“Michael, open the door.”
I wanted to.
More than anything.
I wanted to see him.
I wanted to know this was some horrible misunderstanding.
But then I noticed something.
The footsteps outside were wrong.
There was only one person walking.
But I heard two sets of footsteps.
One set stopped outside my door.
The other continued down the hallway.
Walking away.
I stepped closer.
“Daniel?”
“Yes?”
“Are you alone?”
Silence.
A long silence.
Then:
“Michael…”
His voice changed.
Just slightly.
“Do you remember when we were kids?”
I didn’t answer.
“Do you remember the game we played?”
My stomach tightened.
Because I did.
Daniel and I had a game.
A stupid childhood game.
Whenever we were scared, we would hide in closets and whisper:
“The house can’t find us if we don’t breathe.”
A game.
Nothing more.
At least that’s what I thought.
The voice outside the door whispered:
“Michael…”
The doorknob slowly turned.
“Open the door.”
I stepped back.
“No.”
The hallway became silent.
Then the voice said something that froze my blood.
Something only Daniel would know.
Something nobody else could know.
“Mom told us never to go upstairs.”
I stopped breathing.
Because that was true.
When we were kids, our mother always warned us.
Never go upstairs in the old house.
There was no reason.
No explanation.
Just:
“Don’t go upstairs.”
And after my parents died, Daniel told me it was because she had been afraid of something.
Something she saw.
Something she never told us about.
The doorknob stopped moving.
Then the voice whispered:
“She was right.”
The door slowly opened.
Not from the outside.
From the inside.
The room behind me changed.
The wall beside the dresser cracked.
The wallpaper peeled away.
And behind it...
was another door.
A door that had not been there before.
It was covered in scratches.
Hundreds of them.
Some small.
Some deep.
Like someone had tried to escape.
A message was carved into the wood.
Not written.
Not painted.
Carved.
Over and over.
The same sentence:
LET ME OUT.
The door opened by itself.
And from inside came a child's voice.
My voice.
From when I was eight years old.
Crying.
Whispering.
Begging.
“Daniel…”
A pause.
Then:
“Daniel, don’t leave me here.”
My blood turned cold.
Because that was my voice.
And I remembered something.
Something buried.
Something my mind had hidden.
The night my parents died.
The night Daniel disappeared for three hours.
The night he came back alone.
He told everyone I had been asleep.
He told everyone nothing happened.
But that wasn't true.
I had been here before.
And the house had been waiting.
Twenty years.
Waiting for me to remember.
Then the child’s voice behind the door whispered:
“Michael…”
The door opened wider.
“Do you want to see what your brother did?”
A hand reached through.
Small.
Pale.
A child's hand.
And it was wearing my old watch.
The one sitting in the box.
The watch I lost when I was eight.
The watch that was never found.
The watch that was inside this house.
The hand pointed behind me.
Toward the bedroom mirror.
Slowly, I turned.
My reflection was standing there.
But I wasn’t.
It was smiling.
And it whispered:
“He left me here.”
End of Chapter 2 🕯️
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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