The house had gone still again, the kind of stillness that hums in your ears when the world forgets to breathe. I stayed on the floor for a long time, staring at the knife. The air around it pulsed faintly, like heat rising off asphalt.
Then a noise....faint, almost apologetic. Tick… tick… tick.Not a clock. The wall. Something inside the wall.
I stood, every joint shaking. My shoes left damp prints that didn't shine like water; they dulled, as if the floorboards were drinking them in. When I turned on the desk lamp, the light flickered once, twice, and died.
The whisper started after that. Not a voice exactly....more like a breath curling words it didn't want to say.
"You cut it wrong."
I spun toward the sound, but the room was empty except for the thin scar of red running along the wallpaper. I touched it. Dry. Flaky. Like someone had drawn a line there weeks ago and forgotten to clean it.
You've started, the knife had said.
Started what?
From the corner came another sound....a soft scraping, like chalk dragged on stone. When I turned, I saw marks appearing one by one on the wooden floor. Curves. Lines. Circles. A pattern that made no sense but felt horribly familiar.
I knelt beside it, tracing the nearest groove. The edge was warm. My fingers came away dark. Not wet...sticky. Metallic.
Blood.
But not mine.
The marks deepened as I watched, carved by nothing visible. The whisper came again, closer this time, brushing the inside of my ear.
"Follow the signs before he does."
I backed away until my shoulders hit the wall. The air pressed heavier now, thick with iron and something older, something breathing just behind the wallpaper.
From the hallway, the door handle rattled once. Then silence.
And then;three knocks. Slow. Even.
I stared at the handle. It didn't move again. But on the other side of the door, a faint voice repeated, calm and patient:
"You've been dreaming, haven't you?"
Tom's words. Exactly. The same rhythm, the same tone.
The whisper in my head rose to a hiss.
"Don't open it. Look at the carvings."
I forced my eyes downward. The circles on the floor had aligned into a single symbol now—something I almost recognized. The same symbol that had been burned into the back of my mother's locket.
The lamp flickered back on by itself. Just for a second.
And in that flash, the shadow on the opposite wall wasn't mine.