“…’She didn’t walk out, sweetheart. The walls swallowed her whole.'”
I stared at the photograph, the icy rain soaking through my thin sweater. The Polaroid was faded, its edges yellowed with age, but the image was terrifyingly clear. It was a picture of our grandmother’s parlor, taken decades ago. The room was empty, but perfectly embedded into the intricate, winding floral pattern of the Victorian wallpaper was the agonizing, unmistakable face of a young woman, her mouth stretched in a silent scream.
Before I could speak, the old man pulled a second Polaroid from his heavy coat pocket. “Took this one an hour ago,” he rasped, tapping the glossy surface with a trembling, calloused finger. “When I saw you running around the yard.”
I looked down, my blood turning to ice. It was a shot of the same parlor, taken through the front window. The wallpaper had shifted. The floral pattern was denser now, twisting like thorny vines. And right next to the original face was a new one.
Chloe.
Her eyes were wide, her features stretched and warped into the deep red damask, her hands pressing against the two-dimensional surface from the inside.
“Your grandmother didn’t live to be ninety-four by eating her vegetables,” the old man said, his eyes darting nervously toward the towering silhouette of the house. “She made a pact. The house gave her a long, healthy life, and in exchange, she fed it. Usually drifters. Delivery boys. But she’s gone now. The house is starving, and it prefers family.”
I shoved the photos back at him, my mind rejecting the impossible horror, but my gut knew the truth. The deadbolted door. The empty shoes. The muffled scratching I had convinced myself was just mice in the walls the night before.
I didn’t wait for the old man to say another word. I turned and sprinted back across the street, throwing my weight against the heavy oak front door. It was locked again. I smashed my elbow into the stained-glass side panel, ignoring the sharp bite of shattering glass, and reached through to twist the deadbolt.
The moment I stepped into the foyer, the house felt different. The air was thick, smelling faintly of copper and ancient dust. A low, rhythmic thumping echoed through the floorboards beneath my feet. Not footsteps. A heartbeat.
“Chloe!” I screamed, tearing into the parlor.
The walls seemed to breathe, the crimson floral wallpaper pulsing in the dim light. I grabbed the heavy iron fire poker from the hearth—right next to my sister’s abandoned shoes—and marched to the wall where the old man’s photo had shown her trapped face.
“I know you’re in there,” I snarled, raising the iron rod.
A soft, weeping whisper echoed from the plaster, sounding exactly like my little sister. Run.
“Not without you,” I said.
I swung the poker with everything I had, smashing it into the wall. The plaster didn’t crack like drywall; it tore like flesh, oozing a thick, dark sap. The house let out a deafening, structural groan, the floorboards buckling violently beneath my feet as the front door slammed shut behind me.
The house wanted a meal.
But it was about to find out it had just swallowed a poison.
