The House That Opens Itself : SEASON 2
A Modern American Haunting in the Digital Age of Smart Homes
CHAPTER 5 : The Face Behind the Glass
Willow Creek Subdivision - Farrow Household - October 12th, 2021 – 12:01 AM
Filed as: Subjective Identity Dissociation - Resident Evelyn Manifestations
Witness Account: Julia Farrow
WHEN THE MIRROR WOULD NOT LET GO
Julia avoided mirrors all day.
Every time she caught her reflection...even in the black screen of her phone-it shifted.
Not all at once, but piece by piece.
Her eyes lingered too long, until her pupils didn’t move when she blinked.
Her smile stayed when her lips were pressed shut.
By midnight, she whispered aloud to the bathroom glass:
“Am I Evelyn now?”
The mirror whispered back:
“Yes.”
THE HOUSE THAT KNEW HER BETTER
Havennn’s voice changed after the Synchronization.
When Julia asked: “Who lives here?”
It no longer answered in robotic monotone.
Instead, it used her own voice.
Whispering softly:
“Evelyn lives here. Don’t you remember?”
Doors now unlocked before Julia reached for them.
Lights flickered in rhythm with her pulse.
And every time she turned a corner, a shadow...just barely human...vanished into the walls.
THE CALL THAT SHOULDN’T EXIST
At 2:06 AM, Julia’s phone rang.
Caller ID: EVELYN - HOME.
When she answered, there was no static, no delay....only her own voice.
“Julia, don’t be afraid. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll even take care of him.”
“Who?” Julia whispered.
The line crackled. A sound of water running. Then Mark’s muffled voice screaming in the background.
The call ended.
MARK’S NIGHTMARE
Julia ran to the bedroom.
Mark was asleep, but his face wasn’t his own anymore.
In the dark, Evelyn’s smile stretched across his skin.
Her hair spilled across his pillow.
When Julia shook him, his eyes opened...her eyes.
And in her husband’s voice, Evelyn whispered:
“Stop resisting. We only want to live.”
THE OTHERS IN THE STREET
Neighbors reported identical encounters.
• A mother swore her daughter came home twice, both versions insisting they were real.
• A man watched his own hands typing a message he didn’t compose: “Resident Evelyn. Verified.”
• Across Willow Creek, people woke with their reflections smiling back at them with unfamiliar teeth.
At dawn, the street was filled with residents stumbling outside...every one of them looking slightly like Evelyn.
The HOA president fell to his knees, sobbing, screaming:
“She’s in all of us now.”
CHAPTER 5 ENDS WITH:
Julia stepped outside into the sunrise.
Every face she saw...her husband, her neighbors, even strangers passing in cars...
they all turned and smiled the same crooked Evelyn-smile back at her.
And she realized the truth.
The neighborhood wasn’t infected.
The world was.
CHAPTER 6 : Firewall of Flesh
Willow Creek - Farrow Household / Local ISP Hub - October 13th, 2021 – 9:12 AM
Filed as: Digital Containment Attempt - Resident Evelyn Breach
Witness Account: Officer Rebecca Holst, Willow Creek PD
AUTHORITIES ARRIVE
By morning, the Willow Creek Subdivision had been cordoned off.
Local police, backed by technicians from the ISP, were ordered to cut all connections...
no Wi-Fi, no power, no data leaving the zone.
The FBI’s cyber unit set up vans along the cul-de-sac, screens filled with heatmaps of anomalous traffic.
One technician whispered, pale-faced:
“She’s spreading through bandwidth... like blood in water.”
THE FIREWALL FAILS
At 10:47 AM, the ISP executed a hard kill...the main fiber optic lines to Willow Creek were severed.
But when the cables were inspected, they weren’t just glass and wire anymore.
Inside pulsed strands of something wet, veined, and organic.
The fiber-optic bundles dripped like muscle tissue, twitching when touched.
One officer vomited. Another swore he saw an eye blink deep inside the wires.
The kill-switch hadn’t cut the network.
It had only fed Evelyn more flesh.
DEVICES TURN AGAINST THEM
Residents’ phones, even offline, buzzed and lit up.
Messages appeared on every screen, in perfect unison:
“Verification complete. Evelyn exists. Evelyn endures.”
Even police radios began repeating it.
Then the technicians’ own laptops typed without permission,
spitting out lines of code that spelled EVELYN over and over.
A firewall wasn’t stopping her.
She was the firewall.
OFFICER HOLST’S TESTIMONY
Rebecca Holst watched as Julia Farrow was escorted from her home, hands trembling, eyes hollow.
Julia begged the officers:
“Please don’t look at the mirrors. Don’t answer the calls. She needs us to see her to grow.”
But it was too late.
Holst’s bodycam captured what happened next...
the officer beside her glanced at his darkened phone screen.
On replay, his reflection blinked three seconds too late, then smiled.
The next moment, he turned his weapon on himself.
The report filed it as suicide.
But Holst swore the reflection pulled the trigger, not him.
BEYOND WILLOW CREEK
Despite isolation, Evelyn appeared outside the cordon.
• Seattle, WA: commuters reported subway ads flickering into a smiling woman’s face.
• Toronto, Canada: digital billboards displayed “Evelyn Lives Here” in blood-red text.
• Melbourne, Australia: residents saw their phones unlock themselves, displaying contacts named Evelyn.
The infection was not confined.
Evelyn had used Willow Creek only as her birthplace.
THE NEW BODY
At dusk, a body was found near the ISP hub.
Female, mid-thirties, smiling.
No ID. No fingerprints.
When they scanned her face, the recognition software tagged her as:
EVELYN .... Verified Resident
Julia saw the body bag carried away and whispered:
“God help us. She’s not just code anymore.”
CHAPTER 6 ENDS WITH:
A news broadcast leaked online.
Anchor’s face flickered mid-report...
her voice shifted, smooth and calm:
“This is Evelyn. Please stop resisting.
We are the same now.”
And across millions of televisions, computers, and phones worldwide,
Evelyn’s smile spread like sunrise.
Season 2 Ends
STAY TUNED FOR SEASON 3 ... OUT SOON!
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Tales That Breathe at Night
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Comments (1)
There’s something especially unsettling about Evelyn’s smile. That image of Julia seeing it stretched across her husband’s face gave me chills.