Chapter 2: The Man Who Shouldn’t Have Come

The road ended long before the house appeared.

Elias Thorne sat in his dust-covered car, engine ticking like a wound trying to close, and stared at the narrow path that wound up the hillside like a scar. The trees on either side leaned in, gnarled and ancient, as if conspiring to keep secrets trapped between their trunks.

He hadn't meant to come back. In truth, he had never meant to return to anywhere. Cities blurred together when one traveled only to escape. But then came the letter. No return address. Just five words scribbled on yellowing paper:

"She waits at Willow House."

There was no signature. No explanation. Just the feeling that settled cold and sharp beneath his ribs—that someone knew. That something still watched.

Elias stepped out of the car, boots sinking into moss and wet earth. The air was heavy with damp and rot, like breath left to curdle in a closed room. The manor still wasn’t visible, but he felt it—like a pressure in the chest, a hum just outside the range of hearing.

He walked.

With each step, the world seemed to fold in on itself. Birds fell silent. The trees grew too still. Even the wind changed direction, tugging at his coat like fingers. Then—through the tangled branches—it emerged.

The Willow House.

It looked exactly as it did in the photograph he’d once found in his father’s desk drawer, the one he wasn’t supposed to see. The windows stared like blind eyes. The porch sagged under its own weight. Ivy coiled up the stone like veins on the back of a dying hand.

And yet…

A candle flickered in the upper window. Just one. A pinpoint of gold in the gray.

He didn’t remember lighting it. He hadn’t been inside yet.

Still, he climbed the steps. They groaned beneath his weight, but did not break. The front door opened on its own with a soft creak—as if the house had been holding its breath, and now, it exhaled.

Inside, the air was stale but warm. Dust curled in the shafts of light like ash. The furniture was still covered, but there were footprints in the layer of grime on the floor. Small ones. Bare.

Elias froze.

He hadn’t come alone.

Somewhere deeper in the house, a music box began to play. A slow, wheezing lullaby—off-key, but familiar.

He hadn’t heard it in twenty years.

The melody stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

Elias stood frozen at the threshold of the parlor, breath shallow, ears straining against the thick silence. The room was dim, lit only by the late afternoon light filtering through stained curtains, casting bruised colors on the dust-heavy air.

He stepped inside.

The room hadn’t been touched in decades—furniture draped in white sheets like ghosts awaiting resurrection. The scent of old wood and something sweeter—decaying lavender—clung to everything. But in the far corner, on a small table near the fireplace, something shone.

A music box.

It was porcelain, shaped like a carousel, painted with delicate ivy vines that mirrored the ones clawing up the outside walls. Elias stared at it, stomach tightening. He had seen this before. He knew he had. But how?

His fingers trembled as he reached for it. The top was warm. Not just recently played—warm like flesh. He drew back instinctively.

And then his eye caught something in the fireplace. He knelt.

Half-buried in ash and char was a blackened scrap of parchment. Carefully, he tugged it free.

Most of the writing was scorched(burnt) away, but a few words remained—written in a spidery, ink-heavy hand:

“…his blood will wake the house.”

Beneath it was a name, barely legible: J. Allerton

Elias's heartbeat grew louder in his ears. "Allerton" he hadn’t heard that name since he was a child—maybe not even truly heard it, just felt it, like a warning lodged deep in bone.

He folded the paper and slipped it into his coat pocket, trying to quiet the rising pulse in his throat.

The boards creaked behind him.

He spun around.

A girl stood in the hallway.

Pale. Barefoot. Wearing a faded blue nightgown. Her hair hung in tangled waves, and her eyes—too large for her face—were fixed on him with an expression that didn’t belong to a child. It was the kind of gaze one earns, not inherits. A watcher’s gaze.

Elias opened his mouth, but no sound came.

Then she spoke. Calm. Soft. Unblinking.

"You came too late."

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