The attic felt smaller the moment Maya's foot touched the top step again.
The air had changed—thicker, colder, as though the room itself had inhaled sharply and refused to exhale. The single dormer window, which she had left cracked only minutes earlier, was now shut tight. Latched from the inside. Rain streaked down the glass in frantic rivulets, distorting the streetlight outside into smeared halos. The cedar chest still gaped open, Grandma Ruth's dresses spilling like bloodied silk, but the crimson velvet pouch that had cradled the brass key now lay empty on the floorboards—turned inside out.
Kai emerged behind her, silent as shadow. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. The way his shoulders tensed, the way his gaze swept every corner before settling on the wide floorboard they had just replaced, told her everything.
Someone—or something—had been here while they were below.
Maya's heart slammed against her ribs so hard she tasted copper. She took one step forward. Then another. The floorboards groaned under her weight—louder than they should have. She stopped.
The brass key lay where she had dropped it, inches from the second door's hidden entrance below. No glow. No warmth. Just cold metal that suddenly looked too ordinary, too innocent.
She bent to pick it up.
The moment her fingers closed around it, the iron key in Kai's hand flared hot—burning against his palm. He hissed and dropped it. The black key skittered across the boards, spinning until it stopped point-first toward the spot where the floorboard had been lifted.
A low, wet scrape sounded from beneath the house.
Not footsteps this time.
Something dragging.
Heavy. Slow. Deliberate.
Maya's mouth went dry. "That's not the hum," she whispered.
"No," Kai said. His voice had dropped an octave—rough, edged with something she hadn't heard before. Fear. "That's movement."
He stepped in front of her again—instinct, not thought. His back was to her, shoulders squared, every muscle coiled like a man who had once faced bayonets and still remembered how.
The scrape came again—closer.
Then silence.
Too long. Too complete.
Maya's phone buzzed in her pocket—sharp, insistent. She ignored it. The vibration felt obscene in the quiet.
Kai crouched beside the floorboard. He pressed his palm flat against the wood.
"It's warm," he said quietly. "Not hot. Just… alive."
Maya knelt beside him. She placed her hand next to his.
He was right. The wood pulsed—faint, irregular, like a heartbeat struggling under too much weight.
Then the board moved.
Not lifted.
Shifted.
Half an inch. Sideways.
Maya jerked back. Kai's hand shot out, pinning the board down with his full weight.
The movement stopped.
But the hum returned—deeper now, layered, as though two voices were trying to speak at once. One pleading. One furious.
Kai looked at Maya. His eyes were wide—not with terror, but with something worse.
Recognition.
"I know that second voice," he said. "I've heard it before. Not often. Not clearly. But in the darkest nights, when the silence became too heavy, something else would whisper. Always the same word."
He swallowed.
"Mine."
Maya stared at him.
"Yours?"
"My name. Over and over. Like someone trying to remember it. Or trying to take it."
The board beneath his palm shifted again—harder this time. Kai pressed down with both hands. The wood groaned.
Maya grabbed his arm. "We need to get out of here."
"Not yet." His jaw clenched. "If we leave now, whatever's down there will follow. It's already awake. It knows we're here."
"Then what do we do?"
Kai looked at the iron key on the floor. The warning engraving glinted in the dim light: *Do not open the second door.*
He reached for it—slow, careful, as though handling a live wire.
The moment his fingers closed around the black metal, the hum below fractured—splintered into a thousand jagged echoes, then snapped back into one clear, furious note.
The board bucked under his hand.
Kai lost his grip for half a second.
That was enough.
The floorboard slid sideways—fast, violent—revealing the dark mouth of the stairwell again.
But something was wrong.
The moss no longer glowed soft green-gold.
It burned red.
Deep, arterial crimson.
And rising from below—slow, deliberate—came smoke.
Not ordinary smoke.
Thick. Oily. Black at the edges but lit from within by that same angry red.
It smelled of wet iron and scorched earth.
Maya coughed, eyes watering. "Kai—"
He didn't hesitate.
He yanked her backward, away from the opening. They stumbled toward the attic door.
Behind them, the red smoke coiled upward—slow, questing, like fingers feeling for purchase. It reached the first step. Then the second.
The iron key in Kai's hand began to vibrate—violent, painful. He dropped it again. It clattered down the stairs, disappearing into the red glow.
The smoke paused.
Then surged.
Kai slammed the attic door shut behind them.
The hallway was dark—power still off. Maya's phone flashlight cut a thin white beam through the dust.
They ran.
Down the stairs—two at a time—feet pounding on wood that suddenly felt too alive. The house groaned around them—every creak louder, every settle deeper. Pictures rattled on the walls. A vase on the hall table tipped and shattered.
They reached the front door.
Maya fumbled with the knob.
It wouldn't turn.
She yanked harder.
Locked.
From the inside.
Kai spun her around. "The back door. Kitchen."
They bolted through the living room—knocking over a lamp, glass exploding behind them. The smoke had followed—thinner here, but faster, spreading along the ceiling like ink in water.
They burst into the kitchen.
The back door stood ajar—exactly as Maya had left it when she arrived.
Relief flooded her.
They ran outside.
Rain hit them like a slap—cold, hard, cleansing. The yard was dark, the banana trees whipping in the wind.
Maya turned back toward the house.
The windows glowed red.
Not firelight.
Not electricity.
The same arterial crimson that had burned in the moss.
Kai pulled her away from the porch. "Don't look."
But she couldn't stop.
Through the kitchen window she saw it—coiling, thickening, filling the rooms like blood in veins.
Then—impossibly—the front door opened.
By itself.
And standing in the doorway—silhouetted against the red glow—was a figure.
Tall. Thin. Featureless.
But familiar.
Maya's stomach dropped.
It wore the shape of a woman in a long dress—faded white, lace at the collar.
The same dress from the photograph in the attic.
Grandma Ruth's wedding dress.
But the face—
The face was wrong.
Too smooth. Too still.
And the eyes—
The eyes glowed the same red as the smoke.
Kai's grip on her arm turned bruising.
"Run," he said.
They ran.
Down the side yard, past the banana trees, over the low fence into the neighbor's lot. Rain blinded them. Mud sucked at their shoes. Lightning cracked overhead—white-hot, illuminating the street in stark flashes.
Behind them, the house groaned again—louder, deeper, like bones cracking.
They didn't stop until they reached the end of the block, lungs burning, hearts hammering.
Maya doubled over, hands on knees, gasping.
Kai pulled her upright, spun her to face him.
"Are you hurt?"
She shook her head. "No. You?"
"I'm fine." His voice was rough. "But we can't go back there. Not tonight."
Maya looked over her shoulder.
The house on St. Bernard Avenue stood dark again—no red glow, no smoke, no figure in the doorway.
Just an old shotgun double in the rain.
But she knew better.
Whatever had woken tonight hadn't gone back to sleep.
It had simply waited.
And it knew her name.
Kai took her face in both hands—gentle despite the urgency.
"We need somewhere safe," he said. "Somewhere it can't follow."
Maya nodded. "My car. It's parked two blocks over."
They moved fast—sticking to shadows, avoiding streetlights. The rain helped—washing footprints, muffling sound.
When they reached the car, Maya unlocked it with shaking fingers.
They slid inside.
She started the engine.
The heater blasted warm air. Neither of them relaxed.
Kai stared through the windshield at the rain-smeared street.
"I should have known," he said quietly. "I thought the curse was only about me. About keeping me locked away. I never thought there might be something else locked with me."
Maya gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles whitened.
"What do we do now?"
Kai looked at her—eyes steady despite the fear behind them.
"We find out what's behind that second door," he said. "Before it finds us."
Maya swallowed hard.
"And if it already has?"
He reached over and covered her hand with his.
"Then we face it together."
She nodded—once, sharp.
The engine idled.
Rain drummed on the roof.
Somewhere behind them, in the old house on St. Bernard Avenue, the second hum started again.
Softer now.
Patient.
Waiting.
But this time it wasn't calling Maya's name.
It was singing.
A slow, mournful melody—wordless, ancient, heartbreaking.
And it sounded exactly like a lullaby Maya's grandmother used to hum when she was small.
The same lullaby Grandma Ruth sang the night she died.
Maya's tears came again—silent, unstoppable.
Kai pulled her across the console into his arms.
They held each other in the dark car while the rain fell and the lullaby drifted through the night—faint, persistent, inescapable.
And somewhere deep beneath the old house, behind the second door, something smiled.
Because the circle was turning again.
And this time, it wasn't opening to let someone out.
It was opening to let something in.
(to be continued…)