The Shape of the House

The gravel crunched under Liam’s tires as he pulled off the main road and onto the long dirt drive. The sky hung dark blue with the last traces of daylight, while the fields around the house had already sunk into shadow. He cut the engine.

No porch light. No glow in the windows. Just the farmhouse silhouette, hunched and still. He checked his phone and noticed the battery. 10%

“No reception,” he said. They were too far out for that. Still, she knew he was coming. The place should’ve been lit up. A porch light, at least. Something. But the house sat dark and silent, like no one was home. She’d sounded off on the phone last week, voice small and crackling. Liam pocketed the phone, grabbed his overnight bag, and stepped out into the cooling air. The house loomed ahead with the front door cracked slightly open.

“Grandma?” he called. Nothing. Not even a rustle. He pushed the door wider and stepped inside. His boots creaked on the warped floorboards. The air smelled like cedar and old dust. And something metallic too. Rust, maybe.

The entryway was cloaked in shadow. He raised his phone and tapped the flashlight icon. Family photos lined the hallway. No sound but the house settling. Tick... wood cooling after a long fire.

“Grandma, it’s Liam! You here?” He went to the kitchen first. He moved carefully, the light from his phone barely stretching past the doorway. The cabinets were closed, the back window over the sink was open a crack, and a curtain was stirring.

He turned to the living room. The couch was empty and the fire had long gone cold. Ashes sat in the hearth, scattered and old. He glanced at the stairs. He turned back toward the hallway right before hearing a soft thump upstairs. Then again. Thump. Scrape. Creak.

He froze, light trembling slightly in his hand. Sounded too heavy to be a raccoon. But not quite human, either.

“Grandma?” he tried one more time. His voice was smaller now, swallowed up by the walls. Silence answered. Then the hallway light flickered once, then went dark again. He checked the battery. 8%

The house creaked again, louder this time. A sound like something dragging across the attic floor. He swallowed. Stepped toward the staircase. One foot on the bottom step. Up above, the thump came again.

He started up the stairs and the phone’s flashlight jittered with each step. The beam barely held shape anymore, its edges fraying into shadow. Each board groaned under his weight like it resented being disturbed. The air shifted. It was cooler up here, but still and stale. It pressed in from all sides, smelling of damp wood and something sour, like vinegar or meat starting to turn.

At the top, he paused. The hallway stretched longer than he remembered. His stomach tightened as he stared down it, unsure if he was misremembering or if the house had genuinely warped in his absence. It wasn’t just longer, it felt wrong. Too quiet and too narrow. Like it didn’t want him to notice it changing. The light from his phone swam over the walls, but the shadows seemed thicker now, clinging close.

Grandma’s house had always been small. There used to be three doors up here: guest room, bathroom, Grandma’s room. The hallway looked deeper, more narrow, like it had grown overnight while no one was watching. He told himself it was just the flashlight playing tricks. He knew he was lying to himself

He opened the guest room door. The air was thick with dust. Lace curtains drooped over the windows. On the wall were several picture frames. He stepped closer. Each one was empty and had faded outlines where photos used to be, as if someone had removed them recently and with care, like they didn’t want to leave fingerprints.

He shut the door and turned to where the bathroom should be but it wasn’t there. Just a stretch of blank wall. He blinked. Had he missed it? He tapped the battery icon. 6%

Trying to ignore the unease crawling up his spine, he opened the door to Grandma’s room. It looked normal at first. The bed was untouched, covered in her usual patchwork quilt. Her slippers sat neatly on the rug. He swept the light across the room. Her shawl hung limp on a hook. One dresser drawer was open with a single sock half-hanging out. The closet door was cracked. Nothing unusual.

He stepped back. He heard a low, deliberate knock from somewhere behind him.

He turned, expecting something, anything, but nothing had changed. The closet door still hung half open, still and silent. Maybe the house creaked. Maybe it was the wood settling. Even so, he walked to it, put a hand on the handle, held his breath, and yanked it open. Just coats. His flashlight flickered. He checked the phone. 4%

A dull clatter sounded downstairs. A door slamming? Maybe the wind? He tried to tell himself that, but it felt intentional. He left the room quickly, heart thudding. The hallway had changed again. He froze.

Where there should have been three doors, now there were more. The walls pressed in tighter. He turned to look behind him. The stairwell had been right there. Hadn’t it? He took a step, then another. Nothing looked familiar. He quickened his pace, muttering. “This is bullshit. I was just here.”

To his left, a new door. Rough wood with no paint. He didn’t remember passing it before. He walked past. Three sharp knocks. He stopped cold. Then his voice. From behind the door. “Grandma?” Not similar. Exact. Like a recording played back through the wood. Same tone. Same waver. He stumbled back, then turned and ran.

The hallway seemed to flex and breathe as he moved. Like the house was trying to inhale him. He found the stairwell again and took them steps two at a time, slipping near the bottom. He landed in the foyer. The front door was shut. Locked. The deadbolt looked rusted. There was no handle anymore.

He turned slowly. The family photos on the wall had changed. They were all of him now. One showed him outside the house, this house, caught mid-step on the porch, phone in hand, moments ago. He hadn’t seen anyone. Hadn’t heard a shutter. But there it was, printed and framed like it had always been there.

Some were grainy, others recent. All blurred just enough to feel wrong. Angles he didn’t recognize. Places he didn’t remember being. One photo had him looking directly into the lens, but he couldn’t recall when it was taken. He glanced at his battery. 3%. He knew he had to get out of here fast.

Behind him, something moved. Dragging slow and steady, like something enormous shifting just behind the walls, or beneath the floorboards, or above the ceiling. The house was changing. And it was done hiding.

Liam stood in the hallway, holding his phone tight enough to make his knuckles ache. A soft vibration pulsed once in his palm, and he glanced down. 2%. He stared at the number, trying not to panic, but it pressed against his chest anyway. The house was too quiet. Every breath or step felt like it echoed too far, like the walls were leaning in to listen.

He moved toward the front door, heart pounding. The brass knob was cold in his hand. He turned it. It opened. No fight, no delay. Outside, the air looked real. Trees swaying in the breeze, gravel driveway, the moonlight on his car’s roof. Everything exactly where it should be.

He stepped forward and his foot landed on carpet. He froze, looking down in disbelief. Not porch wood. Carpet. Patterned, stained, and unmistakable. He was still inside. He turned back to the door but it was gone. A framed painting he didn’t recognize hung where the door had been. A house with dark windows and a figure at the door.

His stomach churned. The air was warm and stale. He turned and walked, quickly now, past walls that felt closer than before. At the end of the hall was the living room. He moved quickly to it.

He grabbed the curtain and yanked it down. Behind it, the window was already cracked. He reached out slowly, touched the glass with the flat of his hand. It was ice-cold. A hairline fracture ran through the center. He pressed a little harder and the pane gave way with a soft, crumbling snap. Cold air slipped in around the edges, too cold for a room this sealed. But beyond the window wasn’t outside. It was another room.

Liam’s chest tightened, his thoughts slipping out of order. His mouth went dry. He wasn’t sure what had changed, but something had, and it was suddenly harder to breathe.

He leaned forward. The space beyond was shaped like the kitchen, but everything was reversed. The stove was on the wrong wall. The light switch was missing. He backed away. His throat was tight. Something groaned in the walls. Not a pipe. Not wood. Something deep.

He turned. The hallway behind him was shorter now. Only two doors. No light. He didn’t remember it being that short. Then the floor creaked, not beneath him but from deeper down, beneath the house itself.

He turned in place, looking for any door that hadn’t vanished, any opening that hadn’t sealed itself shut. The house gave him one. It didn’t emerge suddenly or creak open but it was just there now, like it had always been. A wide, wooden door stood at the end of the hallway, slightly bowed in the frame.

Liam didn’t want to go near it, but there wasn’t any discussion to have. There was nowhere else to go. He started down the hallway, footsteps slow and shallow. The floor gave slightly under his feet, like damp wood or carpet padding left too long in a flooded basement. The air felt thick and stale, hard to pull into his lungs. Shadows seemed to shift at the edges of his vision, like the hallway was narrowing with every step he took. He stepped closer. The doorknob was damp. His hand trembled. The door opened without a sound.

A stairwell led down into nothing. Cold air rose up in a wave, and it smelled of stone and rot and soil. He stood at the top for a moment, phone held out. The flashlight blinked once. 1%. Then black.

He didn’t call out. He didn’t cry. His mind had gone quiet in the worst way. It was blank, emptied by fear. There was nothing left to question. He took a sharp breath and started down, not because he wanted to, but because there was no longer any other direction to go.

He was halfway before he realized the steps were getting narrower, then steeper, until they stopped being steps entirely and became just slope, slick and continuous. Behind him, without a sound, the door closed.

Epilogue

Two weeks later, a local delivery driver noticed a car parked at the old farmhouse. It caught his eye because he passed that place nearly every day, and the driveway was always empty. Had been for years. He called it in as a possible abandoned vehicle.

The officer who checked it out found the house locked tight. No signs of forced entry. Inside, he found only a single item left behind, a dead phone sitting neatly on the living room carpet. 

As he walked back through the hallway toward the door, he passed the rows of faded photographs lining the wall. He didn't notice the new one at the end, a clear but grainy picture of himself taken just moments before, stepping into the farmhouse, radio in hand.