Under the Skin

It began with a drip.

Nina first heard it the night after her grandmother’s funeral. She was staying in the old Victorian house to pack things up for the estate sale. The house, nestled at the edge of a dense forest in Vermont, had always felt strange to her—rooms colder than they should be, mirrors reflecting more than they should, silence thicker than comfort allowed.

That night, curled in a guest bed with boxes lining the hall outside, she heard the drip. Not from the faucet. It came from beneath her.

She got up, rubbed her eyes, and pressed her ear to the wooden floorboards. Drip. Drip. A slow, wet sound, impossibly deep, like it came from the bones of the house.

The basement.

She hadn’t been down there in years—not since she was a child and her grandmother had warned her never to go without her. “There are old things down there,” she used to say. “Things older than even me.”

Nina had always thought it was just junk or perhaps mold. Her grandmother was full of cryptic warnings—“Don’t let the forest in,” she’d say when the wind picked up. Or, “Never call out your own name at night.” That one used to make Nina laugh.

The next day, she ignored the drip. She sorted through heirlooms, dusty books, and faded photographs. But that night, the sound returned—louder, closer, more *insistent*.

She couldn’t sleep. So at 2:13 a.m., clutching a flashlight and an old iron poker from the fireplace, she went to the basement door.

It groaned open with the reluctant creak of a long-forgotten secret.

The stairs spiraled down farther than she remembered, the walls damp, the air stale. Her light flickered.

She reached the bottom, the drip echoing louder now. But it wasn’t water.

It was thicker. Like something *alive*.

The flashlight caught on a small wooden door in the far corner—half her height, with strange carvings along the frame. Runes? No. Symbols older than language. They shimmered faintly in the light, almost writhing.

She shouldn’t open it. But she did.

Beyond the door was a narrow stone tunnel that sloped downward, carved directly into the earth. The air was colder, and now the drip was joined by something else: a low hum, rhythmic and steady, like a chant too deep for human ears.

She followed it.

Minutes passed. Maybe more. The tunnel opened into a small chamber lit by a red glow pulsing from the walls themselves. And in the center of the room, suspended by roots or veins descending from the ceiling, was a shape.

It looked like a man—at first.

Then it moved.

Its limbs were too long, joints bending the wrong way, its skin translucent and wet. Its face… wasn’t a face. Just stretched skin over a void that opened and closed like breathing. The dripping came from the roots—blood, or something like it, running into the creature's open chest cavity.

She backed away.

It turned.

No eyes, but it *saw* her.

Then it spoke—not aloud, but *inside her*.

“Nina,” it said in a voice that sounded like her grandmother’s. “You came back. You always come back.”

Her knees buckled.

“What… what are you?”

It reached toward her, its fingers elongating.

“We are the roots beneath your blood. We are the sound you ignore. You were given the warnings. But you called your name.”

Nina remembered then. A week ago, drunk on wine and nostalgia, she had stood in the forest edge and shouted into the dark: “I’m home!”

She didn’t think it mattered.

“You called. We came. The flesh remembers.”

She screamed and ran—up the tunnel, up the stairs, back through the door—but something was wrong. The basement stairs led nowhere now. Just more stone. She turned. The little wooden door was gone.

The hum returned—louder, now *inside her head*.

She collapsed.

When she awoke, she was lying in the same guest bed. Morning light filtered through the curtains. She sat up, heart racing.

Had it been a dream?

She crept to the basement. No strange door. No tunnel. Just the smell of dust.

But something was off.

In the mirror by the hallway, her reflection didn’t move with her. It tilted its head *after* she did. Its smile was too wide. Its eyes… something blinked behind them.

Then it whispered, in that same buried voice: “We are under your skin now.”