The Maw Beneath the Floorboards

They say the house was built in 1893 by a man named Eliah Grin, a reclusive preacher who claimed to have “seen the truth under God’s skin.” He built the house not for shelter—but as a cage.

The village of Halewick, tucked deep in the woods, never really acknowledged the house. You could live your whole life nearby and not even know it existed. It was like the trees themselves whispered to keep people away. But sometimes, when the moon was high and full, a strange, choking silence would settle over the trees. And that's when people would start seeing things.

Things with too many mouths.

It was on one of those nights that Mina dared her friends to visit the place. She wasn’t from Halewick, just a university student doing a research project on forgotten architecture. They told her no one went to the house. That it wasn’t forgotten, but deliberately erased.

But curiosity? It's louder than fear.

So she and three friends—Ashir, Dani, and Shahzeb—headed out into the woods under a broken sky. The moon peeked in and out of stormclouds, like it was trying to hide. The deeper they went, the quieter the forest became.

And then they saw it.

The house.

It wasn’t ruined. Not entirely. It looked…undead.
Cracked walls pulsing slightly, as if they were breathing.
Windows too dark, too deep.

No birds. No bugs. Just a black wind curling through the weeds.

Ashir was the first to laugh it off and step forward. “Looks like a set from a bad horror movie.” The others chuckled nervously and followed.

But Mina... she paused. She looked up.

The moon was gone.

No clouds, no cover. Just... darkness. As if the house had eaten it.

Inside, the house was worse.
Too cold.
Too clean.
As if someone—or something—was still keeping it.

Portraits lined the walls, but the faces were scratched out.
Stairs led up, but appeared to stretch too long—twisting into the dark like a spine.
The air stank of metal and earth.

Then they heard it: a soft, rhythmic sound.
Like breathing. But not from lungs.

From walls.

Dani screamed first—something had moved behind her. Not footsteps. A shuffle, like wet cloth being dragged. They tried to leave, but the front door was gone. Not locked. GONE. Replaced by more hallway.

Shahzeb ran upstairs.

They never heard him scream. Just a wet snap.

Mina’s flashlight flickered. In its brief beam, she saw the wallpaper crawling. Literal shapes under the surface, trying to push out. Fingers? Faces?

Ashir began muttering something from his Quran—desperate. But the house didn't care for holy words. A creak above them… and suddenly, a large section of the ceiling split open like a mouth.

It dropped something.

Shahzeb’s head.

Still blinking. Still mouthing “run.”

Mina and Dani sprinted into a side room. Inside: journals. Eliah Grin’s journals. Pages and pages of scribbled warnings:

> “It is not a demon. It is not a ghost. It is older than God and lives under the skin of this world.”
“The house is a wound in the earth. I built it to hold the wound shut.”
“But the wound is HUNGRY.”



Then: silence again.
Dani was gone.

Mina was alone.

She heard a creak behind her. Slowly turned.

The wall was peeling away… revealing a mirror.
But it didn’t reflect her.

It reflected something else—her, with no eyes, and a thousand grinning teeth where her chest should be.

She blinked.

The mirror was gone.

So was the door.

So was her name.

They never found Mina.
But Halewick locals say the house seems closer now.
Like it's moving.
Or growing.

And on nights when the sky should be bright… the moon just doesn’t show up.

Because somewhere, in the woods…

The house is still hungry.