The cold behind her disappeared, but the feeling of being watched stayed.
Sarah didn't move.
Not at first.
Her fingers curled tighter around the edge of the desk she didn't remember touching.
The air in the room felt still but not empty. Heavy, like breath held in a chest that wasn't hers.
She stood still for almost a full minute, barely breathing. Slowly, she turned her head, then her whole body.
The room was exactly the same.
Empty.
Quiet.
Full of shadows that didn't belong to anything solid.
The mirror on the far wall was still covered by the black cloth she hadn't dared remove.
It drank the light like it was thirsty, soaking up what little glow came from the high window.
Dust floated in the air like tiny, suspended ghosts, catching the gold of the afternoon sun.
She told herself it was just a room.
Just old and dusty.
Just a place with cracked wallpaper and creaking floorboards and air that smelled faintly of mothballs and something medicinal.
Still hugging her arms around herself, Sarah walked over to her bed and opened her violin case. She didn't take the instrument out, just seeing it, perfectly nestled in its soft velvet lining, calmed her.
The smell of rosin and aged wood grounded her. Itreminded her of home, of her mother's hands tuning the strings, of recitals where the silence before she played felt like possibility, not dread.
Unpacking gave her something to do.
Something normal.
She moved stiffly, like a wind-up doll, placing things where they didn't belong but needed to be.
Clothes in the old wardrobe that smelled faintly of cough syrup and time. Her folded socks in the top drawer. Her toothbrush and soap beside the cracked porcelain sink in the corner.
She glanced at herself in the mirror above the sink.
The glass was warped and cracked, but it still caught her reflection and it made her pause.
She looked pale. Washed out. Like someone who'd stepped out of a dream and hadn't quite woken up. The faint outline of the red ribbon in her hair was the only color on her.
She looked like a ghost moving in.
Sarah blinked, turned away.
By the time she finished, there was nothing left to arrange.
No task left to pretend she wasn't alone.
And then night came fast, like someone had yanked a curtain across the sky. Her window turned into a black rectangle, reflecting her dim lamplight back at her. She hadn't brought any curtains.
The room grew colder.
She pulled on her hoodie, but it didn't help.
The chill didn't feel like weather, it felt like something else. Like the cold that creeps in when you're standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She sat on the bed, hugging her knees. And she listened.
At first, it sounded like any old building, groans in the walls, wind slipping through cracks.
The quiet thump of water pipes shifting in old bones, but then the noises began to line up.
They formed a rhythm.
It started with the pipes long, low groans. Like someone breathing slowly through their teeth. A deep inhale, a drawn-out exhale, a few seconds in…
…And out.
Then came the second sound, a steady thump.
Thump-thump.
Pause.
Thump-thump.
It was soft, but deep low, like it came from the ground itself. Like a heartbeat that wasn't hers.
She froze.
Sarah closed her eyes.
"It's just plumbing," she whispered to herself. "It's old heating, just the walls settling."
But it didn't feel mechanical.
It didn't feel like something a building was supposed to do, it felt alive.
She didn't move.
The longer she listened, the more it made sense.
The pipes weren't random, they were breathing. The thumping wasn't an accident, it was a pulse.
The building had a rhythm.
And she was inside it.
Eventually, she lay down, pulling the blanket up to her chin. Her bones felt cold, her chest felt hollow. The springs groaned under her like something shifting just beneath the mattress, but she didn't let her mind go there.
She closed her eyes and listened to the heartbeat.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
It was almost soothing, like a strange lullaby. Like she was being rocked by something bigger than her. She drifted and the dream came.
She was no longer in her bed. She was beneath it, beneath the floor, lying in dirt.The ceiling was gone, the bed frame was rotting wood.
She was staring up at the boards above, and she could smell the earth all around her. Damp and thick, clinging to her skin, curling into her nostrils and she couldn't breathe.
She was buried.
She tried to move, but her limbs were heavy like stone. She tried to scream, but her throat filled with dirt. She couldn't even gasp. Her lungs burned.
Panic wrapped around her like vines.
Then… movement.
There was something above her, crack in the wood and through that crack, came fingers.
Long, pale fingers.
They weren't clawing or scratching, they didn't punch through the floorboards in rage. They reached slowly, and desperately. Like they were asking for help, like they weren't trying to hurt her.
They just wanted to feel something warm, something breathing, something alive. The fingers spread wide.They reached for her breath, for her warmth, for her.
Sarah's eyes flew open with a gasp. Her chest heaved as if she'd just surfaced from deep water. She sat up so fast the blanket tangled around her legs.
Her body was slick with sweat, her hair clung to her neck, her throat burned like she'd been screaming, but her room was silent. Not even a whisper escaped her lips.
She stared into the dark, no sound, no heartbeat, no breathing walls, only stillness, but it wasn't peace. It was the kind of quiet that follows after something has stopped listening.
After it's heard what it needed and left or… moved closer.
Sarah didn't dare speak, her hands trembled, her back ached, her feet were ice-cold, but she didn't move them from under the covers.
She looked at the mirror across the room, still covered but she swore somewhere in that thick black fabric.
There was something looking back.