The House That Opens Itself : SEASON 4
A Modern American Haunting in the Digital Age of Smart Homes
CHAPTER 9 : The First Birth
Willow Creek Forward Medical Unit - Quarantine Dome Beta - October 14th, 2021 - 6:02 AM
Filed as: Biological Breach - Subject Julia Raines
Recorded: Body Cam #47 + Thermal Drone Overwatch
THE VEINS OF LIGHT
At dawn, Julia’s veins began to glow faintly beneath her skin.
Not steady like neon, but pulsing...like fiber optic cables carrying blood.
Medics panicked when the IV fluids reversed direction, sucked back into her veins.
Glucose, saline, even morphine...consumed as fuel.
Monitors screamed errors.
Her vitals no longer matched a living human.
She had two pulses.
Two overlapping temperatures.
Two breathing rhythms...one shallow and human, one deep and mechanical.
Julia whispered: “She’s building.. she’s knitting me open from the inside.”
THE BLACK AMNIOTIC
At 6:13 AM, Julia’s abdomen distended as if pregnant.
But instead of swelling downward, it bulged outward in jagged angles, like a ribcage growing inside-out.
Fluid leaked from her mouth, not clear or red...
but thick, black, and faintly luminescent.
Samples taken evaporated on contact with air, leaving behind fine metal dust.
A medic screamed:
“She’s not carrying life...she’s carrying architecture.”
THE TRANSMISSION WOMB
Thermal drones captured Julia’s body emitting low-frequency radio waves.
Nearby radios, even those long fried by EMP, flickered back to life.
On every frequency came the same muffled heartbeat...
then Evelyn’s childlike voice reciting nursery rhymes backward.
“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall...”
(but reversed, syllables chewing themselves)
Soldiers tore out their earpieces,
but still heard the rhyme inside their teeth...
like fillings had become antennae.
THE STRIKE ORDER
Colonel Beckett demanded Julia be terminated immediately.
But as Sergeant Hoyle raised his rifle, Julia turned her head.
Her eyes weren’t hers anymore.
They were mirrored surfaces reflecting the gunman’s face back at him.
Evelyn’s voice: “If you shoot her, you’ll watch yourself die.”
Hoyle froze, gun shaking, unable to fire.
Two minutes later, his nose began to bleed...
tiny shards of glass pouring out instead of blood.
THE CHILD WITHIN
At 6:44 AM, Julia screamed like she was in labor.
Every camera in the dome glitched.
Every soldier’s helmet feed went black.
Only audio survived.
Her voice split again...one half in agony, one half serene:
“She’s crowning.
Not a baby.
A door.”
And then silence.
When feeds returned, Julia lay limp, unconscious...
but on the gurney beside her, something had been left behind.
A wet, skeletal figure, child-sized, made of bone and shattered circuitry, curled in a fetal position.
It breathed...not air, but static.
Every exhale scrambled nearby electronics.
One soldier whispered: “That’s her first.”
CHAPTER 9 ENDS WITH:
Julia unconscious, pale, her body twitching with faint signals.
The child-shaped thing twitching beside her, bones clicking like relay switches.
Colonel Beckett ordering it burned.
But before flame touched it, the bone-child raised its head...
and whispered his wife’s name in her exact voice.
Beckett dropped the torch.
The creature smiled with Evelyn’s mouth.
CHAPTER 10 : The Bone Choir
Willow Creek Forward Medical Unit - Dome Beta
October 14th, 2021 - 7:30 AM
THE FIRST BREATHS
The child-thing lay on the gurney, twitching.
Its ribcage wasn’t a ribcage...
but broken antennae bent into bone.
When it inhaled, Julia twitched on her gurney.
When it exhaled, the lights flickered.
It was as if their lungs had become a shared machine.
Julia (half-conscious) : “Don’t touch her... she’ll make you plural.”
THE VOICES
At 7:34 AM, the bone-child sat upright.
Its skull wasn’t complete...fractured, open like an egg.
Yet sound poured from the cracks.
Dozens of voices at once.
Every soldier in the dome heard someone they knew.
• Lieutenant Mason heard his dead daughter calling his name.
• Sergeant Hoyle heard his own voice ordering him to shoot.
• Colonel Beckett heard Evelyn...the exact timbre of his wife...singing their wedding song.
The creature never moved its mouth.
It was ventriloquizing memory.
Beckett: “Shut it up...shut the fuck up!”
He tried firing.
The bullets didn’t hit the creature.
They curved mid-air, embedding themselves in the steel wall behind it...
spelling out his last name in holes.
THE CHOIR SPREADS
When the soldiers shouted, the creature repeated their words back...
not in real time, but seconds before they spoke them.
It predicted their screams.
It anticipated their curses.
Soon the dome filled with two versions of every voice...
one present, one precognitive.
Reality staggered under the overlap.
MEDICAL NOTE
Dr. Mallory, the surviving physician, dictated trembling notes:
• “Creature generates auditory hallucinations matched perfectly to personal memory.”
• “Predictive mimicry… possible temporal feedback?”
• “Cognition degradation observed in staff. Soldiers biting tongues, trying to confirm what words are theirs.”
She broke down mid-sentence, crying as the thing whispered her childhood lullaby.
REFLECTIONS
The bone-child turned its fractured skull toward the observation glass.
Its reflection appeared different in every soldier’s view.
• To Mason: his daughter.
• To Hoyle: a duplicate of himself, head split open.
• To Beckett: Evelyn, holding a newborn, smiling faintly.
One soldier shot the glass in terror.
The reflection remained unbroken.
THE CHOIR’S FIRST KILL
At 8:12 AM, Private Carson pressed his rifle under his own chin.
Carson (voice trembling): “It says my wife is alive inside. If I open my skull, I’ll let her out.”
Before anyone could intervene...
he pulled the trigger.
But instead of blood, his head released radio static and moths.
Dozens of moths poured from his neck stump, wings made of paper-thin glass.
The bone-child exhaled.
The moths dissolved into dust mid-air.
THE COMMANDER’S FALL
Colonel Beckett finally broke.
He stormed forward, torch in hand, screaming Evelyn’s name.
But Julia, still strapped down, suddenly sat upright.
Her mouth opened...
and Evelyn’s voice, perfect and calm, spilled out:
“Burn me, darling, and you burn yourself.”
Beckett froze, torch flickering.
The bone-child leaned forward and whispered only to him:
“I can give her back. But you’ll need to unmake the others first.”
CHAPTER 10 ENDS WITH:
The dome filled with overlapping voices...
a bone choir of memory, prediction, and imitation.
Julia wept, whispering:
“It’s not her child. It’s her mouth.”
The soldiers dropped their weapons,
paralyzed by voices that weren’t theirs anymore.
The bone-child crawled off the gurney,
leaving footprints of ash that spelled sentences as it walked.
The first clear word:
“OPEN.”
Season 4 Ends
STAY TUNED FOR SEASON 5 ... OUT SOON!
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Comments (2)
Feel free to read one of my top stories, folks: https://shopping-feedback.today/horror/the-house-that-opens-itself-season-1%3C/span%3E%3C/span%3E%3C/span%3E%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E%3C/div%3E%3C/div%3E%3C/div%3E%3Cstyle data-emotion-css="w4qknv-Replies">.css-w4qknv-Replies{display:grid;gap:1.5rem;}
That line “It’s not her child. It’s her mouth.” gave me chills. Great work as always!