October Sons

Chapter Two: The Drawing

The Mercer house was quiet, but not peaceful. It was the kind of quiet that felt watched—like the walls were listening, like the floorboards were waiting to speak.

Jesse woke to the sound of scratching.

It was faint, rhythmic, coming from the living room. He checked the clock: 3:17 a.m. Caleb wasn’t in bed.

He found his brother crouched beside their mother’s chair, a pencil gripped tight in his fist. The rocking had stopped. Their mother sat frozen, eyes wide, mouth slightly open like she was mid-scream but had forgotten how to finish it.

Caleb was drawing.

Not on paper. On the wall.

The wallpaper peeled in long curls as Caleb etched symbols into the plaster—circles, teeth, a spiral that seemed to pulse even after the pencil left it. Jesse didn’t speak. He just watched. The air felt thick, like breathing through syrup.

“What is that?” Jesse finally asked.

Caleb didn’t look up. “I saw it in my dream.”

Jesse stepped closer. The symbols weren’t random. They were precise. Measured. Like something copied from memory, not imagination.

“You were sleepwalking again?”

“No,” Caleb said. “I was called.”

Jesse felt it then—a low hum in the floorboards, like something alive beneath the house. He looked at their mother. Her eyes were locked on the drawing. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

Jesse reached for the pencil. Caleb didn’t resist. But as Jesse touched it, a jolt ran through his arm—cold, electric, wrong. He dropped it.

The symbols on the wall began to darken. Not from the pencil. From inside the wall. Like something was bleeding through.

Jesse grabbed Caleb by the arm and pulled him back. “We’re painting over that tomorrow.”

Caleb didn’t argue. He just smiled.

That morning, Jesse found a dead bird on the porch. Its beak was missing. Its eyes were gone. Its body was arranged in a spiral.

He didn’t tell Caleb.

He didn’t tell anyone.

But that night, he dreamed of teeth.