So around 2:17 a.m., after the whole house was dead with breath, I slipped out through the side door. The porch light clicked off the second my foot hit the grass.
The Mason house looked asleep. But wrong asleep.
The kind of sleep where the body's still, but the soul is pacing the floor upstairs.
I didn't go through the front. I cut around the back, through hedges so dense I swear they whispered when I pushed past them.
The back door was locked. The kitchen window? Also locked.
But the basement window—painted shut but cracked at the frame—had swollen from the last rain. With a little pulling and a lot of quietly whispered curses, I got it open just enough to slide in.
The basement smelled like coins and old paper. It wasn't dusty, though. It was clean. Scrubbed. Like someone wanted it to look old but not feel old.
I stepped carefully. Bare feet on cold tile.
Shelves lined the walls, but they weren't filled with books or tools.
They were filled with journals.
Hundreds of them.
Identical black covers. No labels. No dates. Just rows and rows of silent lives written down.
I reached for one—just one—and opened it.
"They changed her again today. Third time this month. Skin's starting to ripple. I don't think she remembers her own name anymore."
I turned the page.
"Eleanor looked at me today. But I don't think it was her."
Another page.
"We're not aging. We're being kept."
Footsteps!
Not above, not beside, below, i dropped the journal.
That's when I noticed it—the vent in the floor nears the back wall, barely visible. Not a normal one. This was wide. Square. The size of a dog door. But no air came from it.
From inside the vent, a soft, warbling voice rose:
"They're watching."
I didn't wait.
I bolted up the stairs, found the door to the main level—unlocked this time—and slipped through the hall. Portraits lined the walls: every Mason who ever lived, their eyes painted too carefully. All staring. All judging.
In the center of the hallway, under a low-hanging chandelier was Eleanor's portrait.
Except it wasn't a painting, it was a photograph.
And her face was scratched out. Not digitally—physically. Like someone had clawed the frame from the inside.
By the time I got out of the house and back into the chill of 3 a.m., I felt something I hadn't in years.
Watched, not by the house, by whatever the house was hiding.
By the time I made it back across the street, the world was pretending it never stopped breathing.
The wind came back. The leaves started moving again. Even the moths resumed their nervous orbit around the porch light like they hadn't just been frozen in time.
I slipped inside and shut the door behind me; leaning into it like that alone could hold back the weight of what I'd just seen. Heard. Read.
Basement shelves full of anonymous journals.
Whispers in vents.
A girl with no face left in her own portrait.
I stood there for a full minute before I realized something was waiting for me on the floor.
A Polaroid, tucked neatly under the edge of the hallway rug.
I picked it up with hands that weren't shaking—yet.
It was a picture of me.
Not recent. Not childhood. Tonight. From the basement. I was standing in front of the journals, turning a page. My back was to the camera. But it was me.
And written in marker on the white bottom strip was one sentence:
"You are not allowed to remember what doesn't belong.
I didn't sleep.
Not even pretend sleep. I just lay in bed with my eyes open until the sun came up and pretended everything hadn't changed.
At breakfast, Miss Carol asked if I'd like syrup on my waffles.
Mr. Drewson read the paper like the world wasn't falling apart in soft, whispered increments.
So I tested something.
"Did you hear Eleanor Mason's back in town?" Miss Carol didn't blink.
Mr. Drewson sipped his coffee.
Then, almost gently, she said, "Now Mclainvic… you know Eleanor's not here."
"I saw her last night."
"No," Mr. Drewson said without looking up, folding his paper clean in half. "You thought you saw her. But we don't talk about what's not here."
There it was.
The phrase I'd heard in whispers at school, from the mailman.
From the woman who ran the antique store and only ever sold empty frames.
We don't talk about what's not here.
It was more than superstition.
It was law.
Not the kind written down. The kind carved into people's behavior so deep they didn't even know it was there anymore.
I tried again.
"There was a picture of me… in the Mason house."
Miss Carol stood!
She didn't yell. She didn't argue, she picked up my plate, calmly, and said, "If it's not here, it's not real."
I looked at Mr. Drewson. He just nodded along. Like gravity agreed.
Later that Morning, I went back to school.
At my locker, someone had slipped a folded piece of paper through the vented slot.
It read:
"You went inside. Now it remembers you. Don't let it follow you home."
There was no name. No handwriting I recognized.
I looked around the hallway. Kids laughing. Teachers chatting. Fluorescent lights buzzing like they always had. Like nothing was happening.
But now I saw it.
A thin film of pretending over everything.
A town playing itself on loop.
A rule keeping reality tidy.
We don't talk about what's not here.
And somewhere, behind those ivy-covered walls, in a vent that breathed secrets like a second mouth—
Something remembered me.
I thought leaving WhiteHorse would help me breathe.
But Ashridge doesn't feel lighter.
It just feels quieter in a more practiced way.
People here smile like their faces were taught to.
The air smells like cut wood and old prayers.
And everything closes by eight, like darkness is something best left outside.
I thought leaving WhiteHorse would help me breathe.
But Ashridge doesn't feel lighter.
It just feels quieter in a more practiced way.
People here smile like their faces were taught to.
The air smells like cut wood and old prayers.
And everything closes by eight, like darkness is something best left outside.