The Girl At No. 9 Part 3

We left the neighborhood when the circles began appearing in our yard—slowly at first, then faster. They weren’t just in the grass anymore; they showed up on the walls, in the dirt by the driveway, even pressed into the kitchen floorboards like some invisible weight had pushed through. My wife stopped sleeping. She stopped talking. Her eyes looked distant, hollowed out by sleepless nights and whispered prayers.

My daughter didn’t complain. She didn’t cry. She just watched. Watched the shadows grow longer, watched the edges of the house shift as if breathing. She’d draw those endless loops—circles and eyes—and hum the same low tune Eira used to sing. The one that sounded like a nightmare made melody.

One night, the humming pulled me from sleep. I found her in the hallway, pale and still, hands pressed flat against the wall. Her breath came in shallow, shaky gasps, but her eyes were wide open and unblinking, staring into the darkness beyond.

I reached out to her. She didn’t turn.

“Do you see it?” she whispered.

I didn’t want to see whatever she saw.

We packed what we could and left under the cover of darkness.

The new town was supposed to be a fresh start. New schools, new friends, new everything. But the silence followed us.

On quiet nights, when the house settled, I swear I hear the faint scratching of nails against wood—the slow, deliberate marking of circles into the floorboards beneath our feet. The dog whines at empty corners where nothing is there. My daughter’s eyes sometimes flash that same pale stillness—like she’s looking through me, or past me, into something only she can see.

She still draws.

Always circles.

Always eyes.

And sometimes, when she thinks I’m not looking, she hums.

That terrible, broken lullaby.

Years passed.

My daughter slowly became normal again—or as normal as she could be. She laughed, played, even forgot the shapes in her notebooks for a while. The shadows retreated. The humming faded. The house seemed to breathe easier.

But I didn’t.

I felt the quiet tighten around me like a noose.

The scratching in the wood didn’t stop. The dog’s whines turned into growls at empty spaces. I saw shapes in the dark—circles, eyes, impossible outlines just beyond vision. I started waking with bruises on my arms, scratches on my face, marks I couldn’t explain. I hear whispers too, sometimes just at the edge of hearing, telling me I’m losing myself.

Maybe I am.

Maybe it’s all in my head.

Maybe I deserve it.

There’s something I never told my wife. Never told the neighbors. Never told the police.

Eira and I… we weren’t strangers.

We weren’t just neighbors.

It starts with coffee on the porch—
—or at least that’s how I tell it.

But it didn’t start with coffee. It started long before that. Long before my daughter ever whispered Eira’s name in her sleep. Before she ever stared blankly into corners. Before the house in Elmswood.

It started in a basement.

There’s something I never told anyone. Not even my wife. Not the police, not the therapists, not the priest who came once when the air in the house grew too cold for the living.

Years ago, I met a girl. Much younger. Eira.

She was beautiful in a way that made the world feel unreal around her—like if you looked too long, she’d disappear and take part of you with her. I convinced myself it wasn’t wrong. I told myself she needed me. That I could give her a better life.

She never said she loved me. Not once.

And maybe that was why I hated her, deep down. Because she reminded me I wasn’t the hero of this story—I was the mistake she made to survive.

The night she tried to leave, she screamed. She clawed at the locked door to the basement, begging, sobbing. I told her I’d let her out in the morning. But I didn’t.

I had a trip planned. Four days away. Some business I can’t even remember now. I turned the music up in the car. I drank. I smiled for photos.

When I returned, it was already too late.

The silence in the basement was heavier than death. There was a smell, but it was the quiet that haunts me more.

I buried her. Somewhere deep. And I buried it all with her—my guilt, my truth, my memory. I never spoke her name again.

Until Elmswood.

Until my daughter said it in her sleep.

Eira.

Sometimes, I hear her whisper it behind me when I’m shaving. When I’m alone. When my wife sleeps like the dead beside me.

I thought my daughter would recover. And she did—for a while. Years passed. The laughter returned. The house grew warm again.

But I never did.

Because every smile from my child reminded me what I had done to someone else's child.

And then—

Then, we moved again.

Different town. Different house. I didn’t choose it. My wife did. Said it felt like a fresh start.

The first night, my daughter stood by the basement door. Quiet. Frozen.

She turned to me and said,

“Why did you lock her down there, Daddy?”

********THE END********