Chapter 2: The Other Way In

The voice had deceived her. There were multiple ways in. Jaclyn stood rooted to the decaying floorboards, her breath trapped between her lungs and throat. The door lay silent—no knocking, no begging, no threats. Only the lingering memory of her brother’s voice, still curling in the air like smoke.

But the sound—the sound had shifted. It had moved upward, into the walls. Then, downward.

Something scraped beneath the floor.

The silence shattered.

It wasn’t a mouse. It wasn’t pipes. It was dragging—like fingers, too many fingers, pulling along wet wood. Slowly, purposefully, listening for her.

Jaclyn stumbled back from the center of the room, her hand outstretched, groping for the fireplace poker she had dropped. Her fingers found it just as a floorboard near the front door bulged—a soft rise, as if something was pushing up from underneath, testing the strength of the planks.

She clutched the iron rod in both hands.

Then, a whisper. Directly behind her ear.

“You left me in the dark.”

She spun, swinging wildly at empty air. The room flickered with shadows, but no one was there. The lamp’s flame danced like it was afraid.

“You buried me, Jaclyn. You let the forest consume me.”

The voice slithered through the cabin, from wall to wall, slipping behind the wallpaper, breathing down the chimney, leaking from the cracks in the ceiling.

It was her brother’s voice—but bloated, dead, and filled with things that shouldn’t have words.

Jaclyn backed toward the corner, toward the place her grandmother had forbidden her to go. Her heel struck the rug—the one that had always seemed too stiff, too perfectly placed. She dropped to her knees and ripped it aside.

The trapdoor stared back at her. Old, iron-rimmed. The wood around it was blackened with age—or maybe something worse.

Her hands shook as she drew out the key.

She hadn’t even noticed she was crying.
From behind her, an unsettling sound pierced through the air, unlike anything she had ever heard before. It was a chilling sound, like the scraping of wet skin against something still alive. A groan reverberated through the floorboards as they began to separate, splitting down the center like a mouth forced open.

Something was coming through.

A hand pushed up, and it was her brother’s. But it wasn’t. The fingers were too long, the skin was gray and papery, sloughing off in strips. The nails had grown into curved points, tapping the floor with unnatural patience.

The hand found the edge of the floorboard and gripped it tightly. Then, the face emerged—Jaclyn’s brother, but hollow and lifeless. The eyes weren’t eyes at all; they were black pits, boiling with movement. Inside them, things twisted and wriggled, insectile and wet. The mouth hung slack, stretched too far, and inside it—another face, grinning and waiting.

The creature smiled, not at her, but through her. It seemed to see something she couldn’t.

Jaclyn shoved the key into the trapdoor and twisted it with all her might. The lock let out a shriek—metal grinding against bone—and the trapdoor yawned open with a gust of stale, frozen air.

A whisper rose from below, but it didn’t speak in any language she knew. It sounded like children crying through radio static, yet it was pulling her towards it.

The creature was halfway out of the floor now, dragging itself with those too-long limbs. Bones cracked into place that didn’t exist, and its torso unfolded like a broken puppet. One shoulder popped loudly as it stretched upright.

“We missed you, Jaclyn,” the voice crooned.

Jaclyn didn’t think. She leapt into the darkness, the trapdoor slamming shut behind her. She landed hard on a damp stone floor, pain spiking up her side. For a moment, all was still.

Then, the sound of locks turning pierced through the silence. Not one, not two, but dozens. Somewhere above, metal chains began tightening, as if something was trying to follow her… and something else was trying to keep it out.

Or keep her in.

She stood, gasping, listening. No wind here, no forest, no cabin creaks. Only breathing—not hers. Dozens of soft breaths, all around her, in the darkness.
Then, a voice—not her brother’s, but someone older and hungrier—hungered. “Down here, Jaclyn,” it whispered from the darkness.

“The door isn’t the end; it’s the beginning.”

THE END.

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