The gallery trembled. Not with sound—but with the kind of silence that swells before something breaks.
For a long, brittle moment, no one breathed. The whisper was gone, the tall figure had faded into the murk, and yet its weight remained, pressing down on them like the air before a thunderclap.
Then—softly, like old fabric tearing—one of the portraits moved.
The painted man inside shifted his head just slightly, the motion slow, syrup-thick, as if pushing through centuries of varnish. The crackle of old paint sounded almost like a sigh.
Clara stepped back, lantern jerking in her hand. "Did you see that?"
No one answered. They didn't need to.
Ben's painted double had turned its gaze toward her.
The real Ben let out a strangled sound and swung his arm, knocking a chair over. "No—no, no, no!" He grabbed a heavy iron candlestick from the mantel and hurled it at the painting.
The impact was solid—too solid. The canvas didn't tear. The glass didn't crack. Instead, the portrait rippled, the image warping like water disturbed by a stone. When it settled, Ben's reflection inside the frame was smiling.
Marcy screamed.
The lights flickered once, twice—and went out.
Darkness rushed in, thick as oil. The air was cold enough to sting the skin. For a few seconds there was only the scrape of their breathing, the shuffle of feet on old floorboards, the desperate whisper of Clara's voice: "Evan, light—light something—"
A spark, a trembling glow. Evan's lighter flicked alive. It cast a thin orange light that barely reached the nearest frame. The faces there had changed again—mouths open, as if mid-breath, mid-scream, mid-hunger.
Noah's voice was barely a whisper. "They're closer."
"What?"
He raised a shaking hand toward the far wall. "The portraits. They're… closer than before."
It was true. The nearest canvas, which had hung a few paces down the hall, now leaned against the floorboards, inches from them. The paint glistened wetly in the lighter's glow, the scent of oil and something sweeter—decay, perhaps—thick in the air.
Evan backed up until his shoulders hit the far wall. "We have to get out of here. Now."
But when Clara turned, the doorway they'd entered through was gone.
Not hidden. Gone.
Only a blank expanse of wall stretched behind them, wallpaper curling at the seams.
She pressed her palm against it. The surface pulsed faintly beneath her touch. Warm. Alive.
"Clara?" Marcy whispered.
Clara took her hand away slowly. "It's breathing."
The words hung in the air like smoke.
Then, from somewhere deeper in the house, came a sound. A dragging, rhythmic noise. Wet. Slow. Deliberate. Something large, moving through the walls.
Ben raised the candlestick again. "If that's the thing from the cellar—"
"It's in the walls," Noah said, voice cracking. "It's moving."
The dragging grew louder. The walls began to bulge inward, just slightly, like something pressing from behind the plaster. Fine dust sifted down from the ceiling. The portraits rattled in their frames.
Marcy was shaking uncontrollably. "It's coming this way."
Clara's lantern flickered again. In that brief flare of light, she saw the hallway beyond the gallery. It shouldn't have been visible—there was no door there before—but now it was. A narrow opening, where the wall had split just enough to reveal darkness beyond.
"Go!" she shouted.
They ran.
The floorboards groaned and dipped beneath their weight as they sprinted through the narrow passage. Behind them, something heavy scraped against the gallery floor—a wet, slithering sound that sent every instinct screaming.
Evan stumbled, nearly falling, but Noah caught him and pulled him onward. The corridor twisted without logic, folding back on itself, doubling in impossible angles. The wallpaper seemed to move beneath their hands, patterns shifting like muscle under skin.
A door appeared ahead—a massive oak thing bound in black iron.
Ben slammed into it with his shoulder. "It's locked!"
Clara lifted the lantern, eyes wild. "Move!" She drove the iron base of the lantern against the latch. Once. Twice. The third strike snapped the lock clean. The door flew open, and they stumbled through, slamming it shut behind them.
They collapsed to the floor, gasping.
The room they'd entered was smaller, quieter—a sitting room, perhaps, though it was hard to tell. The wallpaper here had peeled back in strips, revealing the bones of the house beneath: rotted beams, rusted nails, veins of something that was not wood.
Evan slumped against the wall, face pale and slick with sweat. "Tell me that was real," he said hoarsely. "Please tell me that wasn't just in my head."
Clara didn't answer. She still heard it—the faint, slow breathing of the house. The rhythmic pulse in the walls. The sense of being watched by something vast, ancient, and infinitely patient.
Marcy wiped at her face, smearing dirt across her cheek. "We can't go back there," she whispered. "The paintings—they knew us. They… wanted us."
Noah leaned his head against the wall, eyes distant. "It's not just remembering us. It's recreating us."
Ben turned toward him, confusion and terror warring in his face. "What does that even mean?"
But before Noah could answer, a sound filled the room—a slow, deliberate tap-tap-tap, from behind the walls.
Once.Twice.Then a third time.
And then, impossibly, a whisper that seemed to come from inside the wood itself:
"…your turn…"
The lantern dimmed.
The tapping began again, from the ceiling this time.
No one moved.
Then something above them shifted. A bulge spread through the plaster, widening, cracking. Dust fell like ash.
A single drop of thick, black liquid splashed onto Clara's hand.
She looked up.
A pale face—human, almost—was pressed against the ceiling from the other side, distorted by the thin layer of plaster. Its mouth was open, teeth bared, whispering soundlessly.
The plaster split.