Untitled Episode
477 Words
Three weeks after they fled Ashgrove Lane, the Carter family stopped speaking about the house.
Daniel buried himself in work.
Elise barely slept.
Sophie wore headphones constantly and refused to be alone.
Only Noah seemed normal.
Too normal.
He laughed more than before. Smiled at empty corners. Sometimes Elise caught him whispering beneath his breath in a voice too low to understand.
They rented a small apartment two towns away. Tiny. Bright. Safe.
At least that’s what Elise kept telling herself.
But safety ended the night the knocking returned.
Three slow knocks.
From inside the walls.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Elise froze in bed.
Daniel heard it too.
“No,” he whispered immediately, as though denying it would make it disappear.
Again.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
This time from the ceiling.
Sophie screamed from her room.
When they rushed in, her bedroom window was wide open despite being locked earlier.
Written across the fogged glass were four words:
YOU LEFT THE DOOR OPEN
Things escalated quickly after that.
Lights burst.
Mirrors cracked.
Noah began sleepwalking.
Every morning they found dirt on his feet.
One dawn Elise woke and discovered the apartment door standing open.
Noah was gone.
They found him outside in the parking lot staring into darkness.
Barefoot.
Smiling.
“He’s getting closer,” he whispered.
“Who?”
Noah’s expression shifted.
Not like a child pretending.
Like something wearing a child’s face.
“Mr. Vale.”
Daniel finally confessed the truth two nights later.
He hadn’t told Elise everything about the house.
The day they moved in, before the family arrived, he’d found something hidden in the basement wall:
An old journal.
The journal belonged to a preacher named Elias Vale.
According to the entries, Vale believed certain houses could become “mouths” for evil places beneath the earth. Ashgrove Lane was supposedly built atop one.
The final journal entry read:
The house feeds on families.
The children hear it first.
Once invited inside, it follows them forever.
Daniel admitted he burned the journal before they left.
“I thought if it was gone, this would end.”
Elise stared at him in horror.
“You brought something home with us.”
“No,” Daniel said weakly.
But even he no longer believed that.
The first death came during a thunderstorm.
Sophie vanished from her room.
No broken window.
No forced entry.
Only muddy footprints leading to the hallway mirror.
And written in condensation:
SHE STAYED
Police searched for weeks.
Nothing.
No body.
No clues.
No explanation.
Elise collapsed after that.
Daniel stopped shaving. Stopped sleeping. He spent hours staring at Noah, as though searching for traces of his son beneath the skin.
Because Noah kept changing.
His voice deepened at times.
He knew things he shouldn’t.
And every night at 3:13 a.m., he stood facing the apartment wall whispering:
“Almost open.”
- Writer
