Welcome Home, Forever

The key slid into the lock like it never left. Claire hesitated, fingers trembling against the cold brass. This was supposed to be a fresh start—a return, not a retreat. She exhaled and pushed the door open.


The house greeted her with silence, absolute silence.


Twelve years. Twelve years since she fled this place at seventeen, barefoot, blood-slicked, and screaming into the dark woods. The neighbors said it was a gas leak. The police said it was a suicide pact. Claire knew better.


Her family didn’t die that night.


They changed.


And they’re still here.


The air inside smelled like cedarwood and faint decay. The furniture was just as she remembered: mother’s red velvet chair by the fireplace, father’s dusty pipe on the mantel, the crack in the corner wall shaped like a screaming face. Untouched, like time had been stitched shut.


She stepped in. The door clicked shut behind her.


The inheritance lawyer called last week: “Your family’s estate has been transferred o you.” A technicality. No bodies, no wills. Just rumors. She told herself she needed closure. But Claire knew the truth.


She had to face them.


---


In the kitchen, the table was set.


Four plates. Four crystal glasses filled with water.


She hadn’t told anyone she was coming.


She hadn’t touched the lights.


Yet the chandelier flickered above her, humming softly like it was thinking.


Claire’s fingers hovered above the back of her father’s chair. She remembered the last dinner clearly—the whispers, the wide-eyed silence, the taste of iron in the roast. Her brother’s grin, stretched too far. Her mother humming that horrible tune.


That same tune drifted now from upstairs.


She froze.


"Claire..."


A whisper.


Behind her.


She spun around.


Nothing.


Just the empty hallway. Just shadows that seemed a little too thick. She backed into the kitchen, breath catching on the sharp edge of memory. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A text:


WELCOME HOME.


No number. No name. Just two words.


And then: WE NEVER LEFT.


---


She ran for the front door.


Locked.


She hadn’t locked it.


Another buzz. A third message:


DINNER IS GETTING COLD.


A sudden clunk echoed from the dining room.


She turned.


The plates were full now.


Roast lamb, green beans, mashed potatoes.


Her family’s last meal.


Claire’s knees buckled. Her hand gripped the edge of the table to steady herself. The food steaming and aromatic.


She took a step back.


Then she heard it. Footsteps on the stairs. Heavy. Synchronized. Four pairs.


Claire fled down the hallway, past childhood portraits whose eyes seemed to follow her. She ducked into the basement and slammed the door.


Dark.


Musty.


A single chain-pull light above.


She yanked it.


The bulb flared—and revealed the circle.


Drawn in chalk on the floor. Symbols etched into the wood. A child's doll at its center, its head twisted backward.


She remembered this.


The night everything changed, her brother Tommy had brought a book home. "Found it in the woods," he said, eyes glittering. They played a game. Candles, chanting, giggling in the dark.


Only Claire had run when the wind started whispering back.


Now, twelve years later, the circle looked fresh.


Wet.


The chanting resumed above.


Low.


Unified.


She grabbed the doll—its eyes fluttered open.


“Welcome home.”


She screamed and hurled it across the room. The chanting grew louder. The light snapped off. A cold wind wrapped around her legs like fingers.


Claire bolted up the basement stairs.


---


At the top, the door creaked open on its own.


They were waiting in the foyer.


Her family.


Same clothes, same faces—preserved like porcelain.


But wrong.


Mother's eyes were too black. Father’s smile never moved. Tommy’s limbs bent the wrong way. And her little sister Emily, forever eight, hovered an inch off the floor.


“We’ve missed you,” her mother said, voice like splinters in honey.


“You left us,” Tommy hissed, tilting his head like a bird.


“We forgave you,” Emily whispered, drifting closer.


Claire stepped back.


"You’re not them," she said. “You’re not real.”


“We are now,” Father replied, lifting his pipe with a jerk, miming old habits. “You opened the door. You accepted the house. The pact is whole.”


“I never made a pact!” she shouted.


Tommy grinned. “You were part of the circle. Once marked, always marked.”


“We waited,” Mother crooned. “We practiced being human again. For you.”


They reached for her.


She ran.


---


Claire crashed into the fireplace, hands searching for the iron poker. She found it and swung wildly. Emily shrieked—a sound like breaking glass—and vanished in smoke. Father howled. Tommy lunged. She stabbed the poker into his side. No blood. Just shadows leaking out.


The house shrieked.


Ceiling cracked.


Walls wept.


The air turned heavy, like underwater.


“You can’t fight home,” Mother whispered, floating above the floor now. Her skin was cracking like porcelain, light bleeding from within.


“We just wanted dinner,” Father said. “And our family.”


“You were chosen, Claire,” Emily said behind her. “You should never have left.”


---


Claire stumbled back to the kitchen. The food was rotten now, crawling with worms.


She saw the bottle.


Still where she left it twelve years ago, hidden behind the spice rack: kerosene.


Shaking, she poured it in a wide circle. Across the floor. Up the stairs. Down the hallway.


The family shrieked.


“NO,” Mother howled. “You can’t destroy us. We are you.”


Claire lit a match.


Paused.


“I’m not.”


She dropped it.


The house shrieked again.


---


Outside, under the crescent moon, Claire watched as her childhood home burned.


Figures twisted in the flames—pleading, snarling, laughing.


She didn’t cry.


Not for the house. Not for them.


Not anymore.


---


Three days later, her phone buzzed again.


No name. No number.


YOU NEVER LEFT.


THE END