Chapter 11

Four days had crawled by since the knocks. Four long, stretched thin days that felt heavier than anything the house had thrown at them before. By Wednesday morning, exhaustion clung to Elliot like a second skin. It clung to all of them. Sleep had become a fragile, unreliable thing: a handful of minutes here, a light doze there, never deep enough, never long enough, always broken by some new sound, some new shift in the air above the first-floor landing.

The house itself felt different now. Charged. Brimming with an energy that didn’t belong to any living thing. It sat thick in the hallways and corners, an almost inaudible hum building just behind the walls, like something waiting for its moment to push through.

Even the sunlight filtering through the kitchen window looked wrong. Thin, pale, watery, as if morning light refused to step fully into the house. Elliot stood in the doorway for a moment, staring at it, realising how much the atmosphere had changed. Before, morning had been a relief. A reassurance. Now if felt like a delay. A pause between hauntings rather than an end to them.

Room 6 had remained their sanctuary through it all. Elliot and Sam clinging to each other night after night, sleeping tangled up because neither felt safe apart anymore. They’d barely left the room except to eat or use the bathroom, moving through the corridors like the house might shift beneath their feet.

Wednesday morning didn’t feel like a new day. It felt like a continuation, the same dread stretched forward into another set of hours they weren’t sure they could face.

But they would face it anyway. Because what else could they do?

The days blurred together in a way Elliot had never experienced before. Not like tiredness, not like stress, but something bone-deep and strange, as if the house was siphoning rest from them. 

Most mornings started the same now: Sam curled up in the chair beside him as they focussed on their work, or the two of them cross-legged on the floor sorting her lecture notes into piles that never stayed neat for long. Sometimes they sat at the desk together, trading the space between them for an excuse to lean shoulders, arms, thighs closer.

They barely talked about the haunting anymore unless they had to. They tried to talk about anything else: Sam’s literature modules, Elliot's project work, terrible café playlists, how Sam was convinced her lecturer secretly hated marking. It didn’t matter what it was, as long as it wasn’t footsteps in the hallway or the knocks, or the voice.

When the house felt too heavy, and it often did, they fled outside. Long walks around the neighbourhood. Hours spent in a café with mismatched chairs and bad lighting. Sitting together on a bench in the park even when the weather turned cold.

Sam held his hand constantly. Fingers linked. Thumb brushing the side of his palm. Sometimes her knee bumped his when they sat together, her shoulder tucked against his arm, just so she could feel him there. Elliot realised she did it without thinking. He did too.

And Sam refused to shower unless he stayed in the bathroom with her. Not inside the shower, not touching her, just sitting on the closed toilet lid while she washed. It wasn’t about modesty anymore; it was about safety. She said the sound of the water drowning out everything else made her nervous. That the sudden silence when she turned it off made her stomach twist.

So he stayed. And she kept glancing at him through the glass, checking he was still there, still anchored, still hers.

Every creak of the house, every flutter of shadow against the banisters, reminded them why they clung to each other so tightly. Room 6 was a barrier between them and whatever the house was becoming. And they weren’t willing to face any part of it alone.

Harper and Jordan moved more gently around each other now, the raw edges of the last week’s argument still visible but softening day by day. They spent most of their time tucked away in Room 4, not hiding exactly, but choosing closeness while they rebuilt what had been shaken. From Elliot's glimpses of them in passing, the conversations were quieter, slower, often punctuated by long silences that weren’t uncomfortable, they were repairing.

Neither of them lingered on the first-floor landing for longer than they had to. Jordan, normally the first to crack a joke or swagger through a room, now walked briskly past Room 2 every single time. Even Sam noticed how tightened his jaw was. Harper pretended not to notice, but Elliot caught her glancing at him with that soft, knowing look she always had when she didn’t want to embarrass someone. And when the house made one of its too-frequent creaks, Jordan flinched, juat slightly, before smoothing a hand through his hair and muttering something under his breath.

David, meanwhile, felt like a ghost of a housemate these days, though for a very different reason. It was his early-shift week, but he hadn’t slept in the house since Friday. Instead, he stayed with his father, helping where he could, keeping an eye on medications, eating bowls of soup his stepmother reheated for him, and sending text updates to the group whenever he stepped outside for air.

“He’s doing better today.”

“I’ll be back soon.”

“Hope you guys are all okay.”

Elliot could read the truth between the lines: David didn’t want to admit how grateful he was not to be living inside the house right now. And none of them blamed him. They all felt that ripple of relief whenever they stepped outside, and the quiet dread when they had to return.

Harper kept saying he’d be back in a day or two. Elliot wasn’t so sure.

The house had fallen into an uneasy rhythm, a kind of half-life where everyone drifted through shared spaces like ghosts of themselves. Conversations, when they happened at all, stayed soft and short, as though speaking too loudly might wake whatever watched them from the first-floor landing. Even in daylight the air felt heavy, muffled, like the house was absorbing their voices before they fully formed.

Meals no longer happened around the table. Someone would cook something simple, toast, noodles, whatever didn’t take long, and the others would wander through the kitchen just long enough to eat something standing up. No one lingered. No one settled. Plates were rinsed immediately, as if staying in one place too long invited attention. The housemates kept glancing toward the doorway out of habit, half expecting another footstep to appear or a shadow to drift by.

When they crossed paths in the hallways or on the stairs, they offered each other quiet nods or faint, tired smiles. Not quite reassurance, more a silent acknowledgement of shared endurance. They were waiting, all of them. Every creak in the walls, every shift of the floorboards made shoulders stiffen and breath stall.

The activity hadn’t stopped, not even for a single day. It wasn’t dramatic, never enough to send them running into the street, but it was constant. A slow, grinding pressure that built behind their ribs and made every sound in the house feel suspect.

Sunday began it.

Just after sunrise, when the house was still wrapped in that dull grey morning light, Harper heard it first. Soft, hitching sobs drifting quietly from behind Room 2’s door. She told the others later, voice unsteady, that it sounded human. Not like pipes, or a floorboard, or anything she could rationalise. Just quiet crying on the other side of the wood.

Later that same morning, Elliot was heading to the bathroom when footsteps tore down the first-floor landing. Sharp, rapid. Like someone running. They stopped dead, right in front of the bedroom door. Elliot froze mid-step; breath caught in his throat. When he finally worked up the nerve to peek out… nothing. Just an empty corridor, utterly still.

Monday wasn’t kinder.

Jordan, on his way downstairs for a drink, felt a cold gust sweep down the staircase with enough force to ruffle his t-shirt. There were no open windows, no drafts. He’d stood there gripping the banister, staring upward as though something invisible had brushed past him on its way down.

Hours later, Harper and Sam both heard the distinctive creak of a mattress shifting in Room 2, as if someone had just sat on the edge of the bed. They’d been halfway along the landing when the noise drifted out. Sam had grabbed Harper’s arm immediately, both of them rooted in place until the silence returned and they forced themselves to keep walking.

Tuesday brought something worse.

Elliot and Jordan were passing each other on the landing when a dark shape glided across the hallway ahead of them. No footsteps. No sound. Just a smooth, silent movement. Elliot flicked the light switch instinctively, and the shadow dissolved the instant the bulb lit up, leaving nothing but empty air and the thundering in both their chests.

By late Tuesday afternoon, the housemates had retreated to Room 6, the only place where the air didn’t feel heavy with the house’s attention. Elliot sat at the rebuilt desk, the lamp casting a soft pool of light across the wood. Sam perched on the edge of the bed, legs tucked beneath her, while Harper took the other desk chair, turning it sound to sit facing him. Jordan leaned against the wardrobe door, arms folded, trying to look casual but failing; exhaustion and strain etched the corners of his eyes.

Elliot had only just walked in moments before, breath still uneven, holding the latest relic the house had offered. 

He lifted the paper carefully. It was yellowed, brittle around the edges, the ink uneven, faded to brown in some places, thick and smudged in others. The handwriting drifted across the page in wavering lines, as though the hand that wrote it trembled through every stroke.

Sam sat forward, fingertips pressing lightly into the duvet. “What does it say?”

Elliot swallowed, took a steadying breath, and began.

The first lines were barely readable, but he pieced them together slowly.

There were… more today. Three men… one called himself a healer… he held my hands too tight… said he felt the sickness in my blood… Thomas says they mean well… I want to believe him… They all promise so much…

Harper covered her mouth with her fingers, her brow knitting with equal parts sadness and horror.

They came into my room without knocking…

So many faces. I don’t know all of them…

They tell me to drink things that taste like metal…

One said he could draw the illness out with needles...

I don’t like needles…

The ink grew harsher toward the middle. Strokes pressed deeply enough that the pen likely tore the surface more than once.

Some lines overlapped entirely, the sentences nearly climbing over one another:

I am tired.

I feel wrong.

Why can’t I remember names?

Thomas holds my hands… says I am safe…

I don’t feel safe.

At the bottom, the handwriting deteriorated into jagged shapes; half-formed letters, repeated words, sentences that collapsed into scribbles. Elliot tried to decipher a few:

Please… please… no more… strangers…

I want… to go… home…

Thomas… Thomas… Thomas…

He stopped there.

There was more written beyond that. Dense patches of text where the handwriting became nothing more than erratic scratches, overlapping loops, and frantic ink blots. But it was unreadable. It looked like the last desperate spill of a mind deteriorating faster than the hand could communicate it.

Elliot lowered the page slowly to his lap.

The room was very quiet.

Harper broke the silence first, voice barely above a whisper. “It’s… heartbreaking. She must have been absolutely terrified. Strangers coming in and out, all of them pretending they could help, none of them actually stopping anything…”

Sam’s eyes shone with a sad, aching sympathy. “She didn’t understand what was happening to her.”

Jordan rubbed his face, looking suddenly years older. “And Thomas had to watch her get worse, while all these… con artists took advantage of them.”

Elliot set the paper gently on the desk, careful not to tear it.

Wednesday night settled over the house in muted greys, the kind that made the windows look colder then they should. The rain that had started earlier in the afternoon streaked in wavering lines down the glass, a soft steady tapping that filled the silences none of them wanted to acknowledge.

The whole day, the whole week, felt like it had funnelled into this moment. All the sleepless nights, all the footsteps, all the shadows slipping just out of sight. Every scrap of old paper appearing where it shouldn’t. everything that had driven them into their separate corners, clutching at scraps of normality, avoiding the landing outside Room 2 like it might reach out and grab them.

Now, as evening pressed in fully, they drifted back together.

Harper came downstairs first, wrapped in a loose cardigan she kept pulled tighter around herself. There was a crease between her brows, the kind she got when she’d been overthinking for too long. She moved quietly, like sound itself felt risky.

Jordan followed a minute later, eyes flicking back up the staircase before he even stepped off the last stair; a habit he hadn’t had before. His shoulders were tense, as though expecting the house to speak again at any second.

Sam and Elliot descended last from Room 6. They stayed close without thinking about it, fingers intertwined, their footsteps falling in sync. Days of shared fear had made them move as if tied by something more than just affection; a silent understanding that neither wanted to be more than arm’s length from each other.

Nobody planned the meeting. They all just arrived in the lounge, drawn by the same unspoken instinct: don’t be alone right now.

The room felt dim but safe enough, the lamps casting soft amber glows across the furniture. Sam curled onto the two-seater beside Elliot, pulling her legs gently beneath herself before leaning into him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders without hesitation, his thumb stroking small, steady lines across her upper arm.

Harper took her usual armchair nearest the lamp, legs tucked underneath her like she needed the smallest possible perimeter. Jordan shifted onto the larger sofa, elbows braced on his knees, staring at the floor like he was listening for danger beneath the boards.

No one spoke right away.

They simply breathed the same air, letting the room settle around them, sharing a heaviness that wasn’t quite despair… but wasn’t far from it.

A sudden gust scraped sharply along the brickwork, rattling at the old wooden frames of the lounge windows. The glass trembled faintly with each burst of wind. Harper glanced toward it, shoulders tightening; Jordan pretended not to notice, though the way he shifted in his seat gave him away.

The storm had been forecast all day, an amber weather warning ticking quietly across every news notification. But the atmosphere felt heavier than mere weather; a dense sort of pressure that settled in the bones, like the house itself was responding to something far beyond the walls.

Sam shifted closer against Elliot’s side, and he tightened his arm around her. The flicker of lightning outside cast pale light across the room, stretching shadows in unnatural ways for a heartbeat before fading back into gloom.

Harper stood from the sofa and asked softly, “Tea?”

Everyone nodded, not because they particularly wanted any, but because it felt like the sort of ordinary gesture they needed. Jordan followed her automatically, without being asked. Harper offered him a small, grateful smile, not happy, not relieved, just… appreciative. A sign that things between them were still delicate, still rebuilding.

In the lounge, Sam shifted closer to Elliot, murmuring something about how the rain was getting heavier. He replied quietly, his fingers brushing her knee, their voices low and warm under the steady rumble outside. From the kitchen came the muted clatter of mugs, the soft hum of the kettle, and Harper and Jordan’s muffled conversation, little fragments of normal life echoing through the house.

A moment later, Harper re-entered with a tray, Jordan close behind her. She bent down to set the mugs on the table, and something whispered through the room.

Not a word. Not even a sound with shape. Just a soft rush, like a breath brushing past their ears, close and distant all at once.

Everyone froze.

Sam’s hand clamped around Elliot's, her eyes snapping to the doorway. Harper’s spine stiffened, her fingers going still around the mug she was placing down.

Elliot felt the hair rise along the back of his neck.

Jordan swallowed and whispered, barely audible, “Please tell me I imagined that.”

No one spoke. No one moved.

The only sounds now were the rhythmic ticking of the lounge clock and the rain tapping insistently against the windows, steady, mundane noises that somehow made the silence between them feel even heavier.

They sat frozen for a moment after the whisper; four statues, breathing shallowly, eyes darting to corners of the room they were afraid to fully look at. No one said what they’d heard, no one tried to rationalise it. They just stayed still, listening to the house breathe around them.

Then Harper swallowed, too loud in the quiet, and murmured, “I-I need some light.”

It was all the permission they needed.

They rose in a loose cluster and left the lounge, not quite rushing but nor walking normally either. The corridor felt narrower, the shadows taller, and every creak of the floorboards tightened Sam’s grip around Elliot's hand. She didn’t let go, not even for a second, her fingers threaded firmly with his like she was afraid he might vanish if she loosened her hold.

They reached the kitchen, and the overhead lights flickered on with a sharp snap. The brightness felt intrusive after the dim hush of the lounge, but it was a relief; something solid, modern, un-haunted. The hum of the refrigerator. The patter of rain against the window. The faint drip of the tap that had been needing fixing for months. All of it felt absurdly comforting just because it was ordinary.

Sam exhaled shakily and leaned against Elliot's side as they stepped further in. The kitchen wasn’t safe, nowhere in the house really was, but it wasn’t the lounge. It wasn’t the whisper. It wasn’t Room 2.

Jordan was the first to move with purpose, crossing the kitchen tiles in a few long, determined strides before yanking the fridge door open. The bright interior light spilled over his face, washing out the tension etched into his features. He stared inside with the intensity of someone hunting for answers rather than food.

“Right,” he announced, voice flat but aiming for theatrical. “Let’s see what culinary treasures we’ve got before the ghosts take the leftovers too.”

Elliot joined him at the fridge, more because doing nothing felt unbearable, than anything else. The whisper still seemed to cling to the back of his spine. Moving, doing something, helped.

Sam hovered near the counter; arms wrapped around herself. Harper lingered by the kettle, watching them with worried eyes.

Jordan reached in and pulled out a half-used rotisserie chicken, holding it up like an exhibit. “Behold, the corpse of dinner past,” he said dramatically.

Sam groaned, rubbing her forehead. “Jordan, please. I’m still traumatised from… whatever that was in the lounge.”

“That’s why I’m providing quality entertainment,” he replied, dropping the chicken onto the counter with a dull thud. “Fear requires seasoning.”

“Your humour is the seasoning,” Elliot muttered. “The kind that’s expired.”

Jordan shot him a wounded look. “Rude. You’re on vegetable duty.”

Elliot snorted despite himself, turning back to the fridge. “Fine. What else do we have?”

Together they rummaged, pulling out spring onions, mushrooms, and a carton of eggs.

Sam, still pale, leaned on the fridge door as she passed Jordan a packet of noodles from the cupboard. “You realise you’re just making ramen up as you go along, right?”

“Sam,” Jordan said dryly, “all ramen is made up. It’s the one true art form. Now hand me the sesame seeds.”

Harper fetched them from the cupboard and slid the jar across the counter. “Here. Before Elliot tries to kill himself with boredom.”

“I’m right here,” Elliot said without looking up, peeling mushrooms with unnecessary precision. “Not deaf.”

Jordan shoulder-bumped him lightly, a gesture meant to anchor them both. “You’re helping me cook. That makes you an accomplice in chaos.”

Elliot rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched. “If this is chaos, I’ll take it.”

Jordan pretended to whisper conspiratorially to Sam and Harper. “He’s going soft. Sam’s fault.”

Sam crossed her arms, pretending indignation. “Yes, blame me for his emotional development.”

“That’s usually how it works,” Harper deadpanned.

The group shared the softest, most fragile exhale of laughter, thin but real. Even if Jordan’s jokes lacked their usual spark, even if his movements were stiff with nerves, the familiar dynamic was enough to loosen something in the air.

Elliot grabbed stock cubes from the pantry. Jordan set a pot of water on the hob. Sam laid the noodles out neatly on the counter like fragile relics. Harper sliced spring onions with slow, steady movements, as though grounding herself in the repetition.

The kitchen filled with small noises; water running, the knife tapping the board, the kettle humming. Ordinary sounds. Alive sounds. Human sounds,

For a moment, the whisper felt further away. And that, Elliot realised, was exactly why Jordan was trying so hard. He wasn’t just making ramen; he was trying to make normality. Trying to give them all something to hold on to so they didn’t slip into fear again.

The kitchen warmed quickly once they started moving with purpose.

Jordan flicked on the extractor fan with a sharp tap, then leaned over the pot of bubbling water. “Right,” he announced, picking up the packet of egg noodles Sam had placed on the counter like he was about to perform a delicate surgery, “noodles. Our first line of defence against existential terror.”

Elliot snorted under his breath, shaking his head as he set down the knife. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Thank you,” Jordan replied dryly, dropping the noodles into the water with a flourish that would’ve been dramatic if his hands weren’t trembling just slightly. “Please respect the artistic process.”

Sam, who had been quietly laying out bowls on the counter, let out a tiny exhale that might have been a laugh. She reached past Elliot to grab cutlery from the drawer, her shoulder brushing his arm, drawing him closer as though instinctively seeking anchor.

Across the kitchen, Harper leaned against the counter with a mug of tea cupped in both hands. She looked tired, dark shadows under her eyes, but the corners of her mouth lifted faintly as she watched Jordan attempting to restore some version of normal.

“Do you have to narrate everything you cook?” she asked.

Jordan didn’t look up. “Only when the audience is traumatised. Helps keep spirits high.”

“Spirits are not high,” Elliot said, slicing mushrooms with more pressure than necessary. “Spirits are, at best, limping along.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Jordan said, testing a noodle with his fork. “Your local moral support himbo.”

Sam nearly choked. “You’re not a himbo, Jordan.”

“Excuse you,” he replied, feigning offence. “I absolutely am. I just happen to also have a degree.”

“And a tax bracket,” Harper added dryly.

Jordan shot her a look over his shoulder. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I’m exhausted,” Harper sighed. “I’m on whichever side involves the least energy.

Elliot moved to the hob, checking the chicken stock simmering in the small pot next to the noodles. The warm, rich scent of garlic and broth filled the kitchen, pushing back the cold tension that had lived in the house all week. He stirred gently, trying to focus on the rhythm, clockwise, slow, and steady, letting the repetitive movements settle something inside him.

Sam nudged him gently with her elbow. “You’re stirring like your life depends on it.”

“It might,” he murmured. “Given this house.”

Jordan overheard and pointed dramatically with the slotted spoon. “Exactly! See? Ramen is comfort, and comfort is survival.”

“You’re mixing metaphors,” Harper said.

Jordan waved her off. “I’m mixing noodles. Shut up.”

Elliot couldn’t help it, he smiled,

Small normal moments like this had become precious. Real.

He turned the heat down, and Sam stepped in beside him to sprinkle sesame seeds into the broth. “There,” she said softly. “Looks good.”

Her hand brushed his wrist as she moved away, and he felt that touch all the way through his chest.

Jordan clapped his hands. “Alright. Veg in. Chicken in. We’re making the beautiful disaster that is comfort food.”

“Speak for yourself,” Harper muttered. “You’re a disaster. The food is fine.”

Jordan aimed a ladle at her, “That’s hate speech.”

“It’s accurate,” Harper shot back.

Sam leaned her head briefly on Elliot's shoulder, tensions easing, a tiny smile forming as she listened to the bickering. Elliot kissed the top of her hair without thinking.

For a moment, just a moment, the kitchen felt normal again. Warm. Human. Like they weren’t sitting inside a house that whispered to them. Jordan finally declared triumph. “It’s done. Serve yourselves before the demon gets first dibs.”

“Jordan,” Harper groaned. “Please. Not now.”

He winced. “Sorry. Too soon.”

Elliot stepped aside, letting Sam take a bowl first, then filled his own. Steam curled into the air in soft spirals, carrying the scent of chicken and garlic and something like safety.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to pull them all one inch back from the edge.

Jordan dropped into his chair with a sigh that bordered on theatrical, though even his dramatics were tired around the edges. “It this tastes awful,” he said, lifting his spoon, “you’re all contractually obligated to lie to me.”

Harper managed a ghost of a smile. “It smells good,” she murmured, blowing gently across the surface of her bowl.

Sam nudged her foot against Elliot's under the table, a small, steadying press of contact. He glanced at her; she gave him a faint, fragile smile that said I’m okay… just stay close.

The ramen was rich and salty, the broth warming them from the inside out. Mushrooms softened in their spoons, slices of egg gleamed pale gold, steam dampened their faces. Every mouthful felt like something loosening, shoulders lowering, breaths deepening.

Harper exhaled one long breath through her nose after her fourth bite, colour returning slowly into her cheeks. “God,” she whispered, “I didn’t realise how hungry I was.”

Jordan pointed at her with his spoon. “That’s because fear burns calories. We’re basically doing a high-intensity workout by living here.”

Elliot snorted into his bowl. Sam elbowed him lightly for almost spilling broth on himself, but her leg stayed pressed against his, warm and reassuring.

The kitchen still felt too bright, the house still too large beyond the doorway, but here, around the table, with food warming their hands and their stomachs, the tension stopped strangling quite so hard. No one rushed. No one scraped the bottom of their bowl too soon.

They ate slowly, letting the warmth and the normalcy bleed back into their muscles, one cautious mouthful at a time.

They had been eating in near silence for near minutes, the only sounds the soft scrape of chopsticks against ceramic and the gentle bubbling of rain against the kitchen window. The ramen’s warmth did the work of loosening everyone’s muscles one inch at a time.

It was Harper who finally spoke.

She lifted her head from her bowl, pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, and said, almost abruptly, “So I started watching that stupid show again.”

Jordan looked up first. “Which one?”

“The Butcher Detective,” Harper said, her voice still a touch raspy from the tension of the past hour. “You know; the series where the guy works in his dad’s butcher shop but ends up solving crimes because he can identify, like… obscure bones and cut patterns.”

Harper nodded, warming slightly as she spoke. “Oh yeah. There was this one episode where he solves a murder using the marbling pattern of a stolen steak-”

Jordan snorted into his bowl so suddenly he nearly choked. “Only you,” he wheezed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “only you would find comfort in a show about a forensic butcher.”

“It’s not comforting,” Harper protested, though her mouth fought a smile. “It’s funny. And ridiculous. And he’s weirdly endearing about the whole thing. He’ll be ankle-deep in a crime scene, pointing at a tibia going, ‘Oh, yes, that’s a textbook lamb shank cut.’”

Sam let out the softest laugh, covering her mouth with her hand. “That does sound ridiculous.”

“It is ridiculous,” Harper said, stirring her noodles absentmindedly. “But it makes me forget about this place. For at least twenty-five minutes at a time.”

Jordan shook his head fondly. “Harper’s coping mechanisms are something else.”

Elliot felt Sam’s foot slide gently along his under the table, a quiet signal saying, ‘this is helping.’ He reached over and brushed his knee against hers in return. Across from them, Harper continued describing a scene where the butcher detective accidentally seasoned evidence with peppercorns, her voice easing further, as though talking about anything mundane pulled her closer to herself again.

The conversation wasn’t effortless. It wobbled, dipped, then picked back up. But it was real.

And as they ate, listening to Harper animatedly reenact the butcher detective shouting “This cut is all wrong!” at a confused police officer, the kitchen felt almost safe. At least for a few minutes.

Jordan slurped a mouthful of noodles, wiped his lip with the back of his hand, then pointed his chopsticks toward Sam as if selecting the next conversational target. “So, Samira,” he said, tone intentionally casual, “how’s the whole degree thing? Still drowning in essays of just the normal level of academic misery?”

Sam let out a soft laugh, the first sound from her that didn’t feel like a strained whisper. She shifted in her chair, her knee bumping against Elliot's under the table. “A bit of both,” she said. “I submitted an essay on Monday. Victorian gothic symbolism. Fifty pages of people fainting and men in cloaks. I swear every author back then was obsessed with draughty corridors and candles going out at the worst moment.”

Jordan nodded seriously. “Sounds autobiographical at this point.”

Harper huffed a laugh into her tea.

Sam continued, warming up a little. “And my seminar leader, Dr. Graham, he forgets everyone’s names. Everyone. Entire cohort. Except mine for some reason. I think it’s because I answered one question too enthusiastically in week one and now he’s imprinted on me like a duck.”

Elliot grinned a mouthful of broth. “He probably just actually read your essay,” he said.

“No,” she shot back immediately, nudging his thigh under the table with her foot. “He definitely didn’t.”

Jordan leaned his elbows on the table, stirring his bowl lazily. “What about the new coursework? The one you were outlining last week?”

Sam groaned softly. “Don’t remind me. It’s another close-reading analysis. I have to compare depictions of grief in two texts, and of course I picked the longest books possible. I’m going to be buried under annotations.”

Elliot deadpanned, “You do that to yourself.”

Harper smiles sympathetically. “At least you’re doing well. You always sound organised.”

“Organised?” Sam scoffed. “Did you see the notes Elliot helped me write? Tell them,” she said, turning to Elliot with raised eyebrows.

Elliot blinked. “…They were legible.”

“They looked like a death metal album cover,” she retorted. She reached for her phone, thumb flicking across the screen before she held it out for everyone to see. “Look at this. Look.”

Jordan squinted. “Is that… a word? Or a werewolf mid-transformation?”

“It says ‘symbolism,’” Elliot muttered, feigning hurt.

“No, it doesn’t,” Sam insisted, even though she was smiling now. She tucked her leg more deliberately against his beneath the table, a quiet acknowledgment of comfort returning.

Conversation settled again, soft and slow, ramen still half-eaten. The tension in the room loosened one more notch; not gone, but held back for now by the warm broth, shared humour, and the simple relief of talking about something as normal as coursework.

Elliot was halfway through a mouthful of broth when Sam turned toward Harper, brightening just a little more. “Anyway,” she continued, “I missed Monday’s lecture because I had that online-”

The sound cut her off.

A scraping. Short, only two or three seconds, but unmistakably heavy, drawn-out, and deliberate. As though something wooden, something weighty, was being dragged slowly across a floor.

It came from above them.

Every person in the kitchen froze mid-motion.

Jordan’s spoon paused inches from his bowl. Harper’s fingers went rigid around her mug. Elliot instinctively reached for Sam, gripping her thigh under the table. Sam pressed into him so fast her chair creaked beneath them both.

The sound stopped as abruptly as it began.

Silence pooled into the room. The kind of silence that prickled along their arms and crawled up their spines.

Outside, the rain continued its steady tapping against the windows. The wind pushed and scraped lightly at the glass panes. The house itself settled in faint clicks.

But upstairs, where the scrape had some from, nothing.

A hollow waiting stillness.

Elliot's eyes lifted to the ceiling, heart pounding hard enough to hurt. He could picture the room above them: the black door, the cold boards, the room nobody had seen inside of.

Something had moved. Something big enough to make that noise.

Beside him, Sam’s breath trembled. She clutched his arm with both hands, knuckles a stark white against his deep blue sleeve.

Harper’s lips parted, barely a whisper escaping. “…when will it stop?”

No one answered her. They sat there listening, waiting for another scrape, another step, another sign.

Eventually, Harper pushed her half-finished bowl away with trembling fingers. “I… think I’m done.”

Nobody argued.

They cleaned up slowly, moving almost on autopilot. Chairs scraped softly against the floor; the tap ran only for a moment at a time, as though they feared running water for too long might mask another sound from upstairs.

Jordan washed the dishes with rigid, methodical movements. Harper hovered beside him, drying plates without looking up from the towel in her hands. Sam stacked the leftover ingredients back in their places with quiet care, her shoulders still tense. Elliot wiped the worktop, watching the streaks of condensation on the windows as the storm thickened outside.

No one dared mention Room 2.

When the kitchen was finally clean, Harper brushed her hair behind her ear and said, voice barely above a murmur, “Let’s… just go to bed.”

Jordan nodded, expression taut. They left together, stepping into the dim hallway like people edging into deep water. Sam touched Elliot’s wrist, a silent stay close, and the two of them followed after, a few steps behind.

Elliot and Sam paused at the foot of the second-floor stairs. Sam’s grip on his hand tightened; he didn’t need to ask why. Room 2 loomed just meters away, its door closed. Silent.

“Come on,” Elliot whispered.

Together the continued the climb to Room 6, their steps perfectly in sync. Neither wanted to be the first to turn their back on the landings below, so they entered the attic room together at the same moment. Elliot closed the door gently but firmly behind them.

It was close to midnight when it happened.

Rain hammered harder against the attic windows, still not quite the storm the forecast had promised but close; a steady, relentless drumming that filled every quiet moment. The wind rattled at the guttering and pushed thin drafts under the eaves, making the corners of Room 6 sigh.

Elliot had been whispering something to Sam, a soft, tired comment about trying to sleep, when everything stopped.

Not gradually, not fading out. Just stopped.

The rain itself was still there, but the house itself seemed to fall into absolute stillness. No creaks from the beams. No tick of pipes cooling. No distant footsteps from another room. Not even the faint hum of air moving through the hallway outside.

A silence so total it felt wrong, engineered, intentional.

Sam lifted her head from where she’d rested it against his chest. Elliot's words died in his throat as his whole body went rigid.

It felt, for a suspended, breathless moment, as if the house were holding itself perfectly still.

It began softly, so faint that Elliot almost mistook it for the house resuming its usual creaks. A muffled vibration, like someone speaking through a wall of thick fabric. He held his breath, waiting, listening. Sam’s fingers tightened around his arm.

The sound grew cleaner.

Drifting up through the door of Room 6, a man’s voice rose, strained, ragged, rhythmic as if pulled through lungs that barely worked.

Elliot sat upright.

It wasn’t English.

It wasn’t anything he recognised.

The language twisted in strange shapes, half-garbled syllables rolling together, some stretched, some snapped off sharply like bones breaking. A few words struck the air with painful clarity before sinking back into the unintelligible flow.

Sam flinched at one of them. “I… I don’t know why,” he whispered, voice trembling, “but that one… felt wrong.”

The tone behind the door left no room for doubt. Whoever, whatever, was speaking was desperate. Pleading. Words spilled like a man begging on his knees, hands outstretched toward someone slipping away.

Elliot’s stomach knotted. The voice scraped through the dark, rising, falling, gasping through syllables that didn’t belong in the world of the living. 

The voice continued, growing harsher, fore frantic, as if fighting to be understood.

And then, mid breath… it stopped. Cut off cleanly as if a hand had smothered it.

Sam’s grip tightened until her fingers dig through the fabric of her t-shirt, both hands locking around his arm as if anchoring herself. Elliot reacted instantly, pulling her close, wrapping his free arm around her and tucking her against his chest.

Her breathing came fast and shallow; he felt every tremor where her forehead pressed into his shoulder. It wasn’t the panicked shaking of before, it was quieter, more controlled, but constant, like her whole body was bracing against something unseen.

As soon as the voice cut out, the house seemed to exhale. The wind resumed its push against the gutters, the rain pattered steadily against the windows, and the familiar pops and creaks of settling wood drifted back through the walls, as if nothing unusual had happened at all.

Elliot's phone buzzed in the darkness.

Harper: We’re coming up.

A moment later, a door somewhere along the landing opened, a soft click, followed by the faint shuffle of hesitant footsteps. Then came a gentle knock at Room 6.

Sam and Elliot both turned toward the sound, frozen for half a heartbeat before Harper’s voice came softly through the door. “Elliot? Sam? It’s us.”

Elliot crossed the room and opened it.

Harper and Jordan stood there, pale, wide-eyed, both of them clearly shaken. Harper stepped inside first, wrapping her cardigan tighter around herself. Jordan followed silently, casting one terrified glance down the hallway in the direction of Room 2 before shutting the door quickly behind him.

Theyn joined Elliot near the bed, Jordan taking the desk chair, Harper sitting on the edge of the mattress beside them. The four of them looked like people recovering from an impact, breaths shallow, eyes wide, shoulders drawn tight.

Sam was curled closely against Elliot, her legs tucked under her, her fingers fisted gently in the fabric of his t-shirt. She hadn’t stopped trembling, not fully. Elliot kept an arm around her, steadying her without thinking about it, his thumbs brushing slow circled against her arm.

Harper rubbed her own arms briskly, as if trying to scrub away the chill that had settled under her skin. Her expression was pale and tight, her gaze fixed somewhere just past Elliot's shoulder. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded thin.

“I… could pick out three words,” she said.

Jordan straightened in the chair, his jaw tensing. “From… that language? He asked carefully.

Harper shook her head once, uncertain. “I don’t know if it was a language. Most of it sounded wrong. Like it was being dragged through something.” She swallowed, then looked up at them. “But three words. Three of them were definitely Latin.”

Elliot felt Sam stiffen against him. she looked up at Harper with wide, uneasy eyes.

“We didn’t pick out anything,” Elliot admitted quietly. “It just sounded… messed up. Like someone choking on their own words.”

Sam nodded quickly, voice small. “I didn’t recognise a single thing.”

Harper took a slow breath, steadying her shaking hands against her knees. “The words were ‘surge, servire, and oblatio.’” Each term left her mouth with weighted care, as though speaking them again felt dangerous.

Jordan looked between them all, brow furrowed. “And those mean…?

Haper hesitated. “Rise. Serve. Offering.” She didn’t add anything else; she didn’t need to. The room felt colder just from those three meanings hanging in the air.

Elliot tightened his arms around Sam as the implication settled like frost along his spine.

They settled in a loose circle around Room 6, the four of them instinctively closing ranks. Elliot sat at his desk with his laptop open, Sam pulled her own onto her knees beside him, and Harper and Jordan perched at the foot of the bed with their phones held like tiny torches against the uncertainty pressing in around them.

Harper took a steadying breath and said quietly, but firmly, “Okay… we’ll look the words up one at a time. No jumping ahead. Sam, you take the online Latin dictionaries. Elliot, you check the university archives. I’ll look at literary uses. Jordan, manuscripts.”

Jordan gave a shaky nod and opened a browser tab.

They all began typing.

The soft clatter of keys and thumb-taps filled the room; a strangely normal sound after everything that had happened. None of them said it aloud, but each one scrolled past links they didn’t want to see: anything involving ritual terminology, occult symbols, demonology. The brief flashes of those results were enough to make their stomachs twist.

They focussed on the safest sources: clear translations, academic notes, dusty manuscripts scanned in greyscale.

Sam leaned into Elliot's shoulder slightly as she worked, their screens reflecting pale light across the dim room. Harper sat cross-legged now without realising it, brow knit as she flicked through classical texts. Jordan swiped slowly through images of handwritten pages, squinting at ink faded by a century or more.

They agreed to go word by word; to keep it orderly as though structure itself might keep fear from slipping between them.

Outside the room, the house creaked once, soft and distant. 

No one looked toward the door.

Sam took the first work without needing to be prompted. “Surge,” she said quietly, fingers tapping on the laptop. She pulled up a pair of online dictionaries and began reading the entries aloud.

“Okay… here it is. It translates as: ‘rise,’” she said first, then, “‘stand up’, ‘awaken’, and sometimes ‘lift oneself.’”

The words lingered in the air. Simple. Clear. But the way Sam spoke them made Elliot feel each once settle like a small weight on the bed.

Harper cleared her throat gently. “I’m seeing it pop up in a few literary uses,” she said, scrolling through lines of text. “Here in a translation of The Aeneid, it’s used in a battle rally. And here… in a medieval sermon? The speaker tells the audience to ‘surge from idleness’. Like, rise from laziness, essentially.”

She kept scrolling, voice soft but steady. “And a Victorian novel uses it metaphorically. Emotional awakening.” Then she read the line she found particularly striking, her voice dipping with the rhythm of it: “…surge, anima mea… rise, my spirit…”

Jordan let out a low whistle. “Sounds dramatic,” he muttered, squinting at his screen. “Most of what I’m finding is handwritten. Marginal notes more than anything. Little devotional scribbles. Someone trying to motivate themselves, I guess.” He held his phone out so they could see a scan of a spidery handwritten page with surge underlined twice. “Nothing threatening.”

Sam leaned slightly toward Elliot as she found another excerpt. “Here’s a little phrase used in a few places.” And she read it aloud. “Surge, et ambula.”

She hesitated before translating.

“‘Rise, and walk.’”

The four of them exchanged a look.

Urgent, Elliot thought. Not sinister… but urgent. A word meant to push someone upward, awake, forward.

Not comforting. Not here. But not inherently dark, either.

“Okay,” Harper exhaled. “So, surge isn’t bad. It’s just intense.”

Elliot wished that alone made him feel better.

Sam was the first to speak again, her eyes flicking between tabs as she typed the second word into multiple dictionary sites.

“Okay… servire. It says here: ‘to serve,’ ‘to be in service to,’ ‘to be bound to serve,’ and sometimes just ‘to obey.’”

Her voice was steadier now, but Elliot could feel her shoulders tense slightly beside him.

Elliot scrolled through a string of academic PDFs on his screen. “Archives mostly use it in boring contexts,” he said, half-apologetic. “Roman servant contracts… tax records… civic duty stuff. He clicked another link. “There are also a few medieval references about serving one’s lord, but nothing dramatic.”

Across the room, Harper lifted her phone a little closer to her face. “I’m seeing it in literature, too,” she murmured. “A Renaissance play, someone pledging themselves in loyalty. A poem comparing love to service. And a treatise on honour and devotion.” She hesitated, then added, “Most of these aren’t sinister at all. They’re all about loyalty. Commitment.”

Jordan let out a slow breath as he peered at the dim medieval handwriting on his phone. “I’ve got an old monastic prayer,” he said. “Something about serving the community with humility. Honestly it looks… dutiful. Not creepy.” He swept his thumb across another faded photograph. “All the uses I’m seeing are pretty benign.”

Sam hovered over one dictionary’s example phrases, then clicked on a small audio icon that didn’t work before giving up and reading the excerpt aloud herself: “Servire est honorem.” Her voice softened into the glow of Elliot's bedside lamp. “To serve is an honour.”

No one commented at first. It wasn’t frightening the way the voice from Room 2 had been, nothing sharp or supernatural about it, but something about ‘service’ paired with ‘rise’ lingered uncomfortably in the air, a subtle tightening in all their chests as the meaning settled between them.

Sam struggled over the third word for a long moment, brow furrowed as she tried, unsuccessfully, to type it into the dictionary search bar. “Obla… oblat… oblate?” she muttered, cheeks warming.

Harper leaned over immediately. “O-b-l-a-t-i-o,” she spelled gently, tapping Sam’s laptop with her finger. “It’s trickier than it looks.”

Elliot glanced at his own screen and quietly retyped the word as well, relieved he hadn’t been the only one who wasn’t fully sure how to spell it. Jordan, on the bed, pretended he’s already known it, nodding sagely even though he hadn’t typed a single letter until Harper gave the spelling.

Harper ended up finding results first.

“It turns up in a lot of medieval literature,” she said, scrolling. “Here. Listen to this.” She read a few lines from an old poem where oblatio meant a symbolic gift, something offered freely rather than taken. Then another example from a historic novel where it referred to a political offering, a ceremonial presentation of loyalty. “Nothing dark,” she added, more for her own assurance than theirs.

Finally, Sam got her dictionary results to load. “Okay… right. It means ‘an offering,’ or ‘a presentation,’ or… ‘a gift.’” She paused, lips flattening. “Sometimes its translated as ‘a sacrifice offered,’ but” she grimaced. “I’m choosing not to focus on that one.”

Elliot broke the tension with the soft click of his trackpad. “University archives have similar stuff,” he said. “Descriptions of festival offerings, tributes in Roman courts… basically just people giving things. Gifts. Dedications.” He kept his tone neutral, factual, but Sam felt his arm tighten around her waist where she sat pressed to him.

Jordan finally chimed in, holding his phone out as if it behaved oddly. “I found it scribbled in the margins of some Roman manuscript. Looks like somebody was making a list of items given as tribute. Grain, cloth, wine. They wrote oblatio next to it.” He shrugged. “Could’ve been anything. A note to themselves. A reminder.”

Sam cleared her throat and read the short excerpt she’d found last: “Oblatio cordis mei.” Her voice softened as she translated. “An offering of my heart.”

The room fell quiet, not out of fear this time, but something slower and heavier; an awareness that none of these words were frightening on their own, yet together they pressed a weight into the air.

Elliot met Harper’s eyes, then Jordan’s, then finally Sam’s. nobody said it aloud, but they were all thinking the same thing: Whatever Thomas Caldwell had been saying behind that door… it hadn’t been random.

Harper rubbed her forehead with two fingers. “Okay… okay, look,” she said, trying to steady her voice and almost managing it. “Latin shows up everywhere. Old prayers, hymns, mottoes on crests. Maybe Thomas was a religious man. Maybe he picked up phrases from church.”

Jordan nodded quickly, too quickly. “Yeah. Or maybe he was just… I don’t know. Educated? Or liked old books? People back then used Latin for everything. Deeds, wills, even medical notes.”

Sam gave a shaky little nod, clinging to the idea. “Right. Yeah. That makes sense. Could be something completely normal. Not-” She cut herself off before saying ‘supernatural,’ as if naming it might summon more voices from behind Room 2’s door.

Elliot forced a small laugh, too thin to sound natural. “Or maybe it’s just… romantic stuff. You know?” he gestured vaguely at the laptop. “People write in Latin when they want to sound dramatic. Maybe Thomas was telling Eleanor how devoted he was. Like ‘I rise to any challenge between us,’ or whatever.” He swallowed. “Maybe he was literally saying he’d serve her, offer himself fully to her… that kind of thing.”

Sam leaned her cheek against his shoulder, grateful for any explanation that softened what they’d heard. “Some couples like that old-fashioned dramatic language,” she murmured. “Could’ve been a private thing between them.”

Jordan snorted weakly. “Yeah. My parents barely liked each other enough to speak English, let alone Latin.”

Harper huffed a breathy laugh, but her eyes flicked nervously toward the door. “Still… the way he said it…” She trailed off, chewing her lip.

Nobody jumped in to fill the silence.

Sam finally said what all of them were thinking, but in the smallest voice: “It didn’t sound like romantic Latin.”

Jordan rubbed his hands together, as if trying to warm them. “Yeah, well… maybe he was praying for her. People get desperate when someone they love is sick.”

Harper nodded, seizing the lifeline. “Exactly. Could’ve been a plea. Not… anything else.”

Elliot tightened his arm around Sam. He wanted to believe it. Really, he sis. “We’re probably overthinking this,” he said, though even he heard the doubt in his own voice.

The soon stayed quiet for a long time after that. No one seemed willing to be the first to break it.

Sam curled into Elliot's side, almost folding herself beneath his arm. He held her immediately, no hesitation, no shifting to get comfortable, just wrapping her in his warmth like he'd been waiting for her to move closer. Her fingers found the fabric of his t-shirt and clung, her forehead pressed against the base of his throat.

Harper sat at the end of the bed, arms wrapped around herself, gaze unfocussed. Jordan lingered beside her, leaning back on his palms, staring somewhere near the floor as though grounding himself by tracking the pattern of the carpet.

When Harper finally spoke, her voice was barely audible. “We need to know for sure what he was doing.”

No one disagreed.

A low rumble of thunder rolled across the house, long, distant, but enough to make the walls hum. Sam flinched at the sound, and Elliot tightened his hold around her, pulling her closer until her breath warmed the hollow of his collarbone.

Jordan rubbed a hand over his face and exhaled shakily. “We’re not splitting up tonight,” he said. It wasn’t a suggestion. “I’m not… I can’t sleep down there. Not after that.”

Harper nodded, looking equally unwilling to be alone.

“Stay here,” Elliot said. “Both of you.”

He eased away from Sam gently but kept one hand on her knee for a beat longer as if reassuring her he wasn’t leaving, when crossed to the plastic tote under the bed. He pulled out spare blankets, handing them to Sam who began unfolding them on instinct.

Elliot then moved to the wardrobe next and dragged out a stack of pillows from the bottom shelf, dropping them onto the carpet with a soft thump. “Here,” he said.

“We can make a little nest or whatever. And then-” Harper began before being cut off by Sam.

“Oh my god,” Sam laughed weakly as Elliot pulled out something else; a rolled-up black plastic bag with a pump clipped to the side. “You have an air mattress?”

Jordan blinked. “Wait. You’ve had an air mattress this whole time?”

The first genuine hint of humour cracked through the tension, thin but welcome.

Elliot shrugged one shoulder as he unbuckled the straps on the bag. “I’ve stayed in some weird placed on my way down here,” he said lightly. “Figured it was good to keep one handy.”

Jordan narrowed his eyes. “Define ‘weird places.’”

Sam chimed in, chin resting on Elliot's shoulder now they had drifted back together again. “Yeah. Weird how? Weird like… old B&Bs or weird like… prison cells? Cult houses? Abandoned barns?”

Elliot snorted, refusing to look at either of them as he began unrolling the mattress. “I’m not elaborating.”

“You can’t just say that and not give details,” Sam insisted, bumping him with her shoulder.

Jordan pointed at his accusingly. “This is suspicious behaviour.”

“That’s fine,” Elliot retorted, smirking despite how drained he looked. “I’m willing to be suspicious.”

They kept pushing, lightly, teasingly, and Elliot kept dodging, cheeks colouring but eyes brightened. It didn’t matter that the topic itself was nonsense. What mattered was that for a few minutes, the air felt almost normal again.

Together, they finished setting up the air mattress at the foot of the bed. Harper spread out the blankets while Jordan arranged the pillows with far more care than necessary, cracking jokes under his breath about “at least dying somewhere comfortable.”

When the lights flickered once, threatening a blackout, Sam grabbed Elliot's arm so tightly he felt her nails through her sleeve.

“It’s okay,” he whispered into her hair. “We’re all here.”

After a brief, silent vote, the lamp stayed on.

They settled in for the night, Harper and Jordan on the air mattress, Sam and Elliot sitting propped against the headboard until exhaustion finally began to pull at them.

Outside, thunder rolled again, and the four of them lay awake far longer than they admitted, listening for the next whisper.