The street behind Jamie twisted like a spinal cord, buildings bending with impossible angles, chimneys crooked like snapped fingers. He moved forward with no sense of direction, his shoes dragging across sidewalks that pulsed like muscle tissue. Each step seemed to echo too long, as though something in the ground was listening.
His breath came shallow, eyes darting to every window, every alley. But the town had gone quiet again, save for the occasional creak of unseen weight shifting above him or the soft sound of children giggling from no visible source. He tried to block it out, focusing only on Sadie. On her sewn mouth. On her eyes begging him.
He turned a corner and came face to face with a house that should not have been there.
It stood at the edge of a cul-de-sac, tall and narrow, wedged between two sagging rowhomes. Its exterior was pitch-black, charred like it had been in a fire, though there were no flames or smoke. The windows were lined with barbed wire. The door had no knob—only a bloody handprint where one should have been.
Jamie felt an invisible thread pull at his chest.
She's inside.
He didn't question how he knew.
His hand shook as he pressed it to the door.
The house inhaled.
Air rushed past him, yanking his shirt toward the blackness, and the door swung open with a meaty snap. Jamie stumbled inside, and the door slammed shut behind him with a sound like a coffin lid sealing.
Inside, the walls bled.
Rivulets of crimson seeped down the wallpaper, which peeled in long, skin-like strips. Every step Jamie took squelched. The floorboards were warm beneath his shoes, vibrating like a heartbeat. The stench of rot and burnt hair choked him, but he pressed forward.
Faint music played somewhere upstairs. A nursery lullaby, warbled and broken.
He passed through the hallway. Family photos lined the walls, but all the faces were blacked out with thick, oily smears. He paused in front of one: a little girl on a swing. Head missing. In her place, a stitched-on burlap sack with buttons sewn into its face.
His stomach flipped.
As he climbed the staircase, the house seemed to moan beneath his weight. He reached the second floor—and gasped.
A figure stood at the end of the hall.
It was Sadie.
No ropes this time. No sewn lips. She stood barefoot, eyes wide, one arm lifted like she was reaching for him.
"Jamie," she whispered. Her voice was raw. "You have to leave. You have to go. Before she—"
A snap like a whip cracked through the air.
Sadie was yanked backward into the shadows.
Jamie screamed and ran forward, but the hall stretched before him like elastic. No matter how far he ran, the door she had been pulled through grew farther away. The walls wept faster now, thick black ichor oozing from light fixtures, dripping onto his skin and burning like acid.
Then the ceiling opened.
Hands. Dozens of skeletal hands pushed through the plaster, fingers clawing, grasping. One caught Jamie by the ankle, sharp nails digging into his flesh. He kicked, screamed, fell—and crashed through the rotting floor.
He landed in the basement.
Or what remained of it.
It was a chamber of horrors.
Chains dangled from the ceiling, swaying despite the still air. Hooks glistened. A child's bicycle hung from one, red with dried blood. The walls were scrawled with thousands of names, some crossed out, some etched over with the word FORGOTTEN.
In the center of the room was a bed.
Strapped to it was a child.
Jamie crept closer, heart in his throat. The child's skin was pale and stretched too tight, like leather left to dry. Its mouth was a torn, red circle of silent screaming. No eyes. Only gauze soaked through with something dark and wet.
It turned its head toward him.
"Jamie," it gurgled. "She's coming."
A footstep behind him.
He spun around.
The figure that stood before him was taller than any adult. Its face was a void of gnashing teeth that rotated in concentric circles. Hair like shadowed wire dragged behind it, slick with gore. It moved slowly, head cocking with wet pops.
"My sweet boy," it cooed. "You're just in time."
Jamie screamed.
He ran, blind and breathless, down a narrow tunnel that hadn't been there seconds before. The walls contracted as he moved, as though the house was trying to swallow him. He clawed forward, crawling over bones, past dolls with slashed eyes and animals gutted and nailed to the walls.
He emerged into a nursery.
The wallpaper was made of stitched faces.
A crib stood in the center, and something inside was moving.
Jamie stepped forward and looked in.
Inside was an infant. No skin. Just red muscle, eyes like glass marbles. It looked at him, opened its mouth—and let out Sadie's scream.
He stumbled back into a chair. The moment he touched it, leather straps shot out and bound him in place. From the wall, the tall figure emerged again, dragging a long, serrated key behind it.
It leaned in close.
"Time to open what's inside."
It shoved the key into his chest.
White-hot pain.
Jamie screamed, the sound echoing through every floor of the bleeding house. The world shook. The walls split open. The floor buckled and gave way again—
And he woke up outside.
Back in the town. Again.
He lay in a pool of blood that wasn't his. A doll sat next to him, identical to Sadie, her head twisted backward. The house behind him stood still, untouched, normal.
But something had followed him out.
He felt its breath on the back of his neck.
And on his arm, freshly carved:
WELCOME HOME.