Chapter 16

Morning came reluctantly.

Weak light filtered through the kitchen windows, thin and grey, as though even the sunrise didn’t want to intrude on whatever lingered inside the old house. It cast a muted sheen across the tiles floor, touching the edges of the oak cabinets but refusing to fully brighten the room. The air felt heavy, stale with the remnants of fear and revelation.

All five housemates sat gathered around the kitchen table, not because anyone called for it, but because none of them, not after the night they’d had, wanted to wake up alone.

Sam sat curled into her chair, her hand wrapped around a mug of coffee she hadn’t taken a sip from. The steam had long stopped rising. Red rims circled her eyes, not from crying necessarily, but from lack of sleep, the kind of exhaustion that lived behind the bones, beneath the skin. Elliot sat beside her, their knees touching beneath the table, one of his hands loosely tangled with hers. Every now and then his thumb brushed the side of her index finger, a small steadying motion, even though he looked like he needed steadying just as badly.

Across from sat Harper, tucked into herself in a way she rarely allowed. She held Thomas Caldwell’s journal in both hands, cradled like it was made of fragile porcelain instead of worn leather. Her posture was rigid, as if she feared even placing it on the table might disturb something. The faint shadows under her eyes were sHarper today, outlining the weight of the entry she had translated. Those Latin lines echoing in her head all night. She hadn’t slept. None of them had.

Jordan sat beside her, elbows braced on the table, his usually expressive face seemed oddly muted. His mug of coffee sat untouched; even the scent seemed too loud this morning. He’d tried, three times, to make a joke, to lift the tension the way he always did, but the words stuck in his throat each time. His voice wasn’t ready yet. Maybe hi heart wasn’t, either.

David took the seat nearest the doorway, posture straight, jaw clenched with a quiet, grim determination. His hands were wrapped around his mug like he meant to keep them busy and not think about the tools waiting in the shed, the crowbars he had cleaned last night, the gloves he had laid out neatly, the sets of screws he had organised by size. He had spent the whole night preparing, methodical, disciplined, as though arming himself for a battle he knew could not be avoided.

A plate of toast sat in the middle of the table, barely touched. Jordan, the house’s de facto chef, hadn’t cooked a real breakfast for the first time in a long time. He’d simply placed bread in the toaster, stared at it until it popped, and set the slices on the plate before walking away with a distant expression. Even now, he looked at the toast like it belonged in another century.

The silence in the room wasn’t empty. It carried a pulse, a weight, as though the house itself was holding its breath.

Elliot rubbed his forehead with the fingertips of his free hand, eyes unfocused on the grain of the table. Images from the journal, burned was, carved symbols, trembling Victorian handwriting, flashed behind his eyelids whenever he blinked. The phrase I dared lift my eyes replayed over and over, echoing like a heartbeat he didn’t want. Jhe exhaled slowly through his nose.

Harper shifted, the leather of the journal letting out a soft creak. Everyone’s gaze flicked toward it, then upward to her. Her voice when she finally spoke was small, frayed at the edges.

“Did anyone sleep?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

Jordan barked out a humourless laugh. “I left the bedside lamp on all night. Didn’t help.”

Sam shook her head. “I kept… feeling things,” she murmured. “Like cold spots. Like someone touching my arm.: She glanced at Elliot, and he understood instantly. He reached across her and squeezed her forearm gently.

“Same,” Elliot said. “I kept hearing… well. Not hearing, exactly. More like… something brushing past my thoughts.” He swallowed. “Like we stirred it up.”

Ne on asked what ‘it’ meant. They all knew.

David huffed out a breath. “I didn’t sleep either. Spent most of the night checking the tools. Over and over. Tidied the whole shed, reorganised everything in there.” He flexed one hand on his mug, knuckles whitening. “Felt like if I stopped moving, it would start… thinking at me.”

Sam shivered.

The house creaked somewhere, its usual groan of settling boards. But not today, the sound made all five stiffen, glancing instinctively toward the hallway.

No footsteps followed. No whispering. No cold breezes. But the absent felt worse.

Jordan finally looked up, eyes flicking from Sam and Elliot to Harper to David, then down to the journal. His voice came out low.

“It knows we know, doesn’t it?”

Harper’s fingers tensed. “Yes. The moment we read his last entry, something shifted.”

Sam’s voice cracked softly. “It feels… watchful. Like it’s waiting.”

Elliot squeezed her hand tighter. “Well, we’re not going to just sit here and let it keep Thomas trapped.” His tone was steady, but there was a tremor beneath it, anger, fear, and determination tangled together. “He asked for help. And we’re going to help him.”

Harper exhaled shakily, nodding. “We have to. He’s been bound for over a century.”

Jordan leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “And we’re burning that door today.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, a resigned conclusion.

David met his eyes. “Yes. We are.”

Silence settled in again, thicker than before. But this time it carried resolve.

Sam looked around the table, seeing exhaustion etched on all their faces, but also something else; fear braided with purpose. Her voice was quiet when she spoke.

“Thomas deserves peace.” She hesitated, then added, “And Eleanor.”

Elliot nodded beside her, jaw tight. “We free him today. No matter what happens.”

Jordan reached out and plucked a piece of toast from the plate. Not to eat it, but the fiddle with it, tearing it into anxious pieces. “Just…please. No one let me go flying into a wall if the demon throws a tantrum.”

Harper managed a tiny puff of air that was almost a laugh. Almost.

David pushed his mug aside and placed both palms flat on the table. His voice was steady. “Whatever the house throws at us,” he looked each of them in the eyes, one by one. “We face it together.”

A quiet hush followed.

The journal sat in the middle of them, still closed, still heavy with all the pain it held. And though no one reached for it, their gazes kept drifting back, drawn to the last plea scrawled inside it:

Help me undo what I have done.

Elliot’s thoughts drifted back to the moment everything shifted, the moment David closed the journal.

The room had been silent, breathless, the weight of that they’d just learned pressing into the lungs of every person present. David held the book like it might bite him, fingers curled around the spine, eyes unfocused behind his glasses as though he were still seeing Thomas's words scrawled across the final page.

It was Harper who broke the paralysis.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. Simply by inhaling, steadying herself, and saying in a quiet, tremoring voice, “Right. We need to divide tasks. Tonight.”

Everyone looked at her, even David, whose hands were still wrapped around the journal as if unsure how to let go.

Harper swallowed, lifting her chin, and began assigning roles with the practised efficiency of someone pushing through fear by organising it into neat categories.

 “Sam, Elliot,” Harper said, turning toward them, “you two research supernatural bindings. Any folklore, ritual mechanics, anything that resembles what Thomas described.”

Sam nodded instantly, already reaching for Elliot's wrist in a grounding gesture.

Harper continued, “Look for patterns: how bindings are made, how they’re broken. Focus on anything involving a physical vessel.”

Elliot found himself nodding before his mind had fully caught up.

Sam squeezed his hand. “We can do that,” she murmured.

Harper exhaled shakily. “Good.”

Jordan cleared his throat. “Uh… might want to avoid the dark web this time.”

Sam half-snorted. “No promises.”

They all stood at once, as if the movement kept panic from settling too deeply into their bones. Sam and Elliot slipped out of the Silent Lounge together, heading up toward Room 6 to grab their laptops.

As they passed Room 3, Sam’s room, both slowed instinctively. No cold draft. No whispering through the wood of Room 2. But the air still felt thick, like someone was standing just behind them.

Sam muttered, “God, this house is awful.”

Elliot kissed her temple before he could think. “We’re fixing it.”

They retrieved their laptops from Room 6 and returned downstairs. But as they re-entered the Silent Lounge, Elliot paused, hearing the distant clank of metal from somewhere deeper in the house. The back of the kitchen, maybe.

“David?” Elliot whispered.

Sam leaned in closer. “He must’ve gone for tools.”

Sure enough, the faint sound of the back door’s latch carried through the air. The creak of old hinges. Then a muffled thud as the shed door outside swung open.

David was in the shed.

And judging by the rhythmic scraping and shifting noises, he would be there a while.

Harper and Jordan had gone to their rooms to gather what materials they had from previous research: the scribbled notes, the articles, the doctor’s receipts, Eleanor’s journal, the memory book Elliot has retrieved, and the references they’d collected when first trying to understand the haunting.

When they returned to the Silent Lounge, Harper placed everything on the coffee table in meticulous stacks.

Jordan dumped his own things next to hers, far less organised. “Sorry. I work in… layers.”

Harper didn’t smile, but her eyes softened. “It’s fine. Help me sort these.”

They began flipping through receipts and notes, cross-referencing dates, comparing the descriptions of Eleanor’s symptoms. Harper scribbled patterns into her notebook, tapping the pen against her knee each time something clicked into place.

“The memory book,” she murmured, lifting it gently. “This isn’t Thomas documenting his own past. These are fragments taken from others. Different decades. Different voices.”

Jordan frowned deeply. “So, he wasn’t writing his own memories. He was… collecting.”

Harper nodded slowly. “The demon feeds on forgotten things. Thoughts people lose, fears they bury, memories that slip.”

“So, Thomas was basically its… librarian?”

Harper shut her eyes briefly. “More like its prisoner.”

Jordan’s jaw flexed. He opened another old folder and scanned the contents. “All these notes… the stuff we found earlier? All the weird inconsistencies? It all makes sense now. This thing has been eating people’s lives for a century.”

Harper breathed out, long and heavy. “Thomas had no choice. He was bound to keep filling its hunger.”

Jordan’s gaze flicked to the closed door of Room 2 down the hall. “Then we starve it.”

While the others returned with laptops and papers, David did not come back inside.

The shed door, somewhere behind the kitchen’s back wall, banged open again. tools clanked. Wood scraped against concrete.

Elliot glanced back at the doorway. “Should someone check on him?”

Harper shook her head firmly. “No. He needs to work through it.”

And indeed, David’s movements carried a rhythm Elliot recognised. The steady, efficient motions of someone compartmentalising emotion by turning it into physical labour. There was no panic in the sounds he made. Just method.

Metal scraping as he cleared space.

A toolbox lid clattering.

Something heavy lifted and set down again.

Jordan muttered, “He’d rearranging the whole shed, isn’t he?”

Harper’s lip twitched. “Yes.”

Sam leaned against Elliot's shoulder. “He’s preparing.”

“Over-preparing,” Jordan said, though the comment held respect rather than mockery.

Hours passed like that. The occasional echo of David shifting things in the shed, reorganising tools, probably reading labels on jars and putting them in alphabetical order simply because it kept him busy.

But he never returned to the house.

He was waiting. Ready. And perhaps needing a place where the walls didn’t whisper at him.

Sam and Elliot booted up their laptops, the click of keys soon filling the quiet room. Harper and Jordan murmured back and forth over documents, while David’s distant movements outside continued like a grounding heartbeat.

Elliot opened academic PDFs about folk bindings. Sam scanned blog posts written by amateur historians and occult researchers. They read aloud anything that sounded even vaguely relevant.

Elliot: “Here. ‘A spirit bound to a vessel cannot be freed until the vessel is destroyed. Burned or shattered.’”

Sam: “This one says, ‘If the tethering object remains intact, the spirit remains enslaved.” That’s… harsh.”

Elliot swallowed. “Thomas chose the door. He thought it was symbolic.”

Sam placed her hand atop his. “He didn’t know.”

Elliot nodded, throat tight. “No. he didn’t.”

Jordan interrupted with a low whistle, having found something among the notes. “Look at this. Your memory book? See how the handwriting shifts? Different people, different decades. But sometimes the ink… bleeds, like something tried to rewrite over it.”

Harper looked stricken, “The demon must absorb the words from the pages when it feeds, then Thomas writes new memories on the same pages.”

Sam shivered. “It’s like… like a parasite. Using the house as its nest.”

Elliot stared at the journal. “And Thomas is its caretaker.”

All five felt silent.

Even from outside, the shed went quiet, as though David had paused too, listening.

Over hours, the pattern became clearer:

A bound spirit is tied to an object. Destroying the object severs the bond. Fire is the most common method.

Every reference they found, every parallel case in folklore or paranormal studies, pointed to the same answer.

Sam was the first to say it aloud, softly but firmly:

“We have to burn the door.”

Jordan froze mid-note. Harper looked up slowly. Elliot felt the finality of the words settle into the room like dust.

No on argued.

The answer felt inevitable.

It was past midnight when the back door finally opened again. David stepped inside, hair tousled from the wind, smelling faintly of dust and old wood.

His hands were empty.

Jordan blinked. “Dude… were you out there the whole time?”

David shrugged tiredly. “Tools are organised now. Ready for tomorrow.”

Harper’s voice softened. “You didn’t have to do all of that tonight.”

David finally looked at her, and he spoke in a quiet, hollow voice. “Thomas didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

Silence spread across the room again, not empty this time, but full. Full of understanding. Full of resolve.

Elliot met Sam’s eyes. She nodded, her hand sliding into his.

Tomorrow, they would destroy the door.

Tomorrow, they would free Thomas.

By the time Elliot drifted back toward sleep the night before, dawn was already beginning to pale the sky. He hadn’t meant to stay awake that long, none of them had, but the house felt different now that they understood it. Every creak in the floorboards, every sigh of wind through the window frame, every whisper of settling pipes felt aware. Watching.

After the frantic work session, they’d eventually dispersed, Harper and Jordan heading to Room 5 with their notes, Sam and Elliot climbing quietly up to Room 6, David disappearing back to Room 1. They’d all promised to sleep, or at least to rest, but none of them did. 

Elliot lay awake beside Sam, one arm draped over her waist, feeling every tiny shift of her breathing. She wasn’t asleep either; he could feel it. Her fingers curled tightly into the fabric of his shirt, clinging not out of fear, but from the heavy weight of everything they had learned.

When morning eventually arrived, it did so reluctantly. No one moved quickly. No one wanted to be the first to break the fragile quiet.

But they all ended up in the kitchen anyway.

Not because they planned it, but because none of them could stay in their rooms any longer with the weight of the journal pressing on their minds.

It was Sam who finally broke the silence.

“We have to free him,” she said quietly. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the stillness cleanly. “Thomas deserves peace. And he deserves to be with Eleanor again.”

Elliot squeezed her hand. “We destroy the door,” she said, more firmly. “Today.”

Harper exhaled slowly, the tension in her shoulder loosening just a fraction as she nodded. “Burn it,” she agreed. “Completely. If the binding is in the. Wood, we can’t risk anything surviving.”

Jordan let out a weak laugh, not amused, just overwhelmed. “And pray we don’t unleash something worse,” he muttered.

No one contradicted him.

David reached for one of the crowbars he’d brought in, gripping it like a soldier testing a weapon. “Whatever happens,” he said quietly, looking between them all, “we face it together.”

A breath of agreement rippled around the table, soft sounds, but unanimous.

Still, the decision pressed hard on all of them. Elliot could feel it in the way Sam’s fingers pressed into his palm. In the way Harper pressed her knuckles into her temple, eyes closed. In the restless tapping of Jordan’s leg. In the way David’s jaw twitched with every inhale.

They weren’t just planning to destroy a door.

They were prepping to confront the demon Thomas had bound himself to. The demon Thomas had served for over a century. The demon that filled books with stolen memories.

Elliot's eyes drifted to the journal.

Thomas’s handwriting stared back at him from the final page they had read:

Help me undo what I have done.

He felt it like a weight in his chest.

Sam noticed his shift and rested her head briefly against his shoulder. “We can do this,” she whispered, mostly to him, partly to herself.

Harper straightened abruptly, shaking herself free of paralysis. “We’ll need to be smart about this. Fast. And careful. Once we start taking the door off its hinges, the demon is going to know exactly what we’re doing.”

“That’s assuming it doesn’t know already,” Jordan said under his breath.

Harper didn’t deny it.

Instead, she looked around at all of them, the most serious, vulnerable she had ever appeared, and said, “This is going to be dangerous. More dangerous than any of us can imagine. But Thomas didn’t ask lightly. He’s kept this demon satisfied for more than a hundred years because he believed someone would eventually help him finish what he started.”

Jordan swallowed hard. “No pressure.”

David let out a humourless huff of breath. “He waited for us.”

Sam looked at the journal. “And we’re not letting him down.”

The kitchen fell silent again, but this time it wasn’t empty.

It was filled with resolve.

A quiet, fierce promise shared between five people who had never expected to find themselves part of a story this dark, or this important.

Elliot stood first, pulling Sam gently up with him. “Let’s get ready.”

Harper closed the journal with reverent care. Jordan cracked his knuckles. David lifted the crowbar, the metal catching the weak sunlight.

They didn’t leave the kitchen all at once. It was more like the weight of the decision finally pushed them collectively to their feet, scraping chairs, exchanged glances, the quiet clink of untouched mugs being set down.

David hesitated only long enough to mutter, “Tools. I’ll get them,” before striding out of the back door. The others watched him cross the small, paved garden toward the shed, the morning light catching on the metal latch as he wrestled it open. A moment later came the muffled thud of items shifting, the clatter of a fallen spanner, David muttering curses under his breath as he scrambled to collect everything he’d prepared last night.

By the time they stepped into the hallway, David was jogging back toward them, burdened with a heavy canvas bag that looked like it weighed as much as he did. he slung it over one shoulder, breath fogging thickly in front of him.

That was the first sign.

The temperature had plummeted.

Sam wrapped her arms around herself as a small shiver chased up her spine. “It was warmer a minute ago,” she whispered.

“Yes, well,” Jordan said, tightening his grip on the mallet he carried, “maybe the house turned the thermostat down because it’s angry we didn’t offer it toast.”

Harper shot him a look, half warning, half gratitude for the joke, even if it was terrible.

They moved toward the staircase. Each step felt heavier than it should, like the air itself thickened around them. Their breaths came out in pale, ghostly clouds. The hall was too quiet. The kind of silence that felt constructed, intentional.

Elliot reached for Sam’s hand without looking. She took it instantly.

As they reached the bottom of the stairs, a faint vibration rippled through the floorboards, humming up through their shoes. Not constant, but pulsing, almost like a heartbeat.

Harper stopped mid-step. “Do you feel that?”

Jordan swallowed hard. “Yup. Fantastic. The house has a pulse now. Love that for us.”

“Jordan,” Harper murmured, but even she sounded unnerved.

They continued upward.

David was the first to notice the banister. He reached out to steady the tool bag over his shoulder and jerked back with a muttered curse. A faint crackle sizzled along the wood, little static sparks snapping and fading.

Jordan stared at it, wide-eyed. “…Cool. Love that. That’s completely normal house behaviour.”

No one laughed.

Sam tucked herself instinctively closer to Elliot, not clinging, but aligning herself with him the way one naturally does when facing something vast and unseen. Her breath escaped in a visible puff when she exhaled.

Harper flicked on the torch in her hand. The overhead light was working, but she didn’t trust it. “I don’t like this silence,” she murmured.

“Silence?” Jordan said, voice unsteady. “Pretty sure the house is growling.”

It wasn’t growling. Not exactly.

But as David cautiously tested the first step with his boot, a low vibration throbbed beneath their feet. Not loud. Felt, not heard. Like a heartbeat buried deep inside the walls. The wood of the stairs murmured under the weight of something unseen.

Elliot swallowed hard. He could feel eyes. Not in a metaphorical sense. Something was watching, tracking their ascent with attention so sharp it scraped against his nerves.

David looked over his shoulder, tone clipped. “Everyone stays close. Don’t fall behind.”

They moved.

Each footstep sounded too heavy, too amplified, as though the house had chosen to make their approach unmistakable. Shadows clung to the walls, stretching longer than they should have under the yellow bulbs overhead. When Elliot lifted his hand experimentally, his shadow lagged behind by half a second before catching up.

Sam noticed.

“That’s… not supposed to happen.”

“No,” Harper whispered, gripping the torch tighter. “It really isn’t.”

Halfway up the stairs, Sam stopped suddenly, her fingers curling into the sleeve of Elliot's jumper. The vibration in the floor had sharpened, no longer faint, but rhythmic, pulsing up through their shoes and into their bones.

She turned to him, voice barely above a breath. “Do you feel that?”

Elliot nodded once, jaw tight. “It knows what we’re doing.”

Jordan let out a shaky laugh, half humour, half terror. “Well, if it wants to stop us, it could at least send an email instead of rattling the foundations.”

Harper shot him a look. “Jordan.”

“What? I cope through comedy. You want me to cope through silence? Do you know me?”

Even Sam gave an anxious huff that might’ve been a laugh.

The first-floor landing came into view, and the vibrations intensified. The floorboards were trembling, not violently, but constantly, a low rumbling hum that buzzed through their bones. The air pulsed, pressure fluctuating like something was inhaling and exhaling around them.

Their breaths fogged thicker now, like they had stepped inside a freezer. Elliot rubbed his arms, teeth clenching as the cold cut straight through the fabric.

David shifted his grip on the tool bag. “We’re close. Everyone ready?”

No one was ready. Not really. But five nods came anyway, small, tense, but resolute.

The first-floor landing felt wrong the moment they stepped onto it.

A deeper tremor rolled through the old floorboards, faint but steady. A low, loving shudder that travelled up their legs to rest in their stomachs. Elliot paused mid-step, fingertips brushing the wall. It vibrated like a distant engine.

“Jesus…” Jordan muttered, staring down as the floor trembled again beneath them. “Feels like we’re standing on a sleeping dragon.”

“Or waking one,” Harper whispered.

No one laughed at the joke.

The air pulsed in slow, icy waves, each thump brushing their skin like something unsees breathing against them. Harper reached toward the wallpaper, pressing her palm flat against it. Her eyes widened.

“It’s freezing.”

David tightened his grip on the crowbar. “Stay shard. This is it.”

He set down the tool bag and crouches, unzipping it. The metal clinked softly, a strangely normal sound amid the tension. He pulled out the crowbars, two heavy, time-worn lengths of iron, and passed one to Elliot, one to Jordan. Then he distributed flat-head screwdrivers to Sam and Harper.

“Right,” David saif, voice low but steady, the natural leader emerging despite the fear tightening his jaw. “Elliot and Jordan, you’re on the main pull.” He tapped the centre of the door with two fingers. “I’ll take the hinge side. Harper, Sam, you wedge the screwdrivers into the hinges when the door is open to split them. If anything shifts, shout.”

Harper swallowed hard and nodded, adjusting her grip on the flashlight tucked under one arm. Sam took a breath that shuddered on the way in and accepted the flat-head screwdriver from David.

Jordan let out a thin, anxious laugh. “Cool, cool. So, we’re just… prying open a demon door. On a Sunday.”

Sam elbowed him lightly. “Jordan.”

“What? Humour is how I cope.”

David ignored the exchange, already positioning himself by the top hinge, crowbar in hand, metal gleaming faintly in the low, pulsing light of the hallway. The tremor under their feet intensified as if the very house sensed their plan and despised it.

Elliot stepped forward beside Jordan, placing his crowbar into the small gap between the swollen door and the frame. The blade pressed against the wood with a gritty resistance, like the door itself was clenching shut. He could feel the cold radiating off it.

Jordan mirrored him on the other side of the handle, his hands trembling despite the bravado.

Sam shifted closer behind Elliot, placing on hand lightly between his shoulder blades, a silent check-in. he glanced back long enough to meet her eyes, feat in both, but determination stronger.

David’s voice cut through the silence. “Remember: slow pressure first. Don’t jerk it. We want it to give, not splinter in our faces.”

Harper exhaled shakily. “If the lights go out again, stay exactly where you are. No sudden movements.”

Jordan groaned. “Please don’t manifest that into existence.”

Another pulse of cold surged through the hall, strong enough that all five of them flinched.

Elliot tightened his grip on the crowbar. “It’s now or never.”

David nodded once. “Positions.”

Everyone adjusted.

Sam and Harper crouched with screwdrivers ready.

Jordan braced his feet wide for leverage.

David angled his crowbar at the hinge side with methodical precision.

Elliot wiped his palm on his jeans, re-gripping the cold metal, and nodded to David.

“On your signal,” he murmured.

A deep, unnatural cold radiated from the wood, rolling across their skin in waves. Frost flowered slowly across the panels, creeping outward in a pale, branching veins as though the door itself were exhaling winter. Sam’s breath left her in a thick plume of white. Elliot's followed a heartbeat later.

Jordan stared at the frost spreading under his palm. “…That’s not normal,” he whispered, voice cracking.

“No,” Harper agreed softly, knuckles white around the flashlight. “It’s not.”

The hallway lights still worked, but the space around Room 2 seemed to swallow most of the glow. Shadows pooled unnaturally in the upper corners, drifting as though stirred by water instead of air. A low pressure pushed steadily out from the door, not enough to shove them physically, but enough that their bodies instinctively leaned back, like standing too close to a speaker blasting a sound too low to hear.

Sam stepped closer anyway, shoulder brushing Elliot’s, grounding herself in his presence. Her fingers curled around his forearm for a moment before she steadied her grip on the screwdriver she held. She could feel his pulse hammering beneath her touch.

Jordan swallowed hard, eyes fixed on the frost-laced doorknob. “It doesn’t want us in.”

No one corrected him. they all felt it, the resistance, the warning, the silent fury building behind the wood.

David exhaled once, long and controlled, the breath fogging like smoke. He shifted into position, crowbar angled toward the jamb, his posture firm enough to hide how tense his shoulders really were. “Stay focussed,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Whatever’s in there… it can’t stop all of us.”

Harper stepped up beside him, flashlight beam steady even though her hands trembled. She angled the light along the frame, illuminating more patches of frost and something else, thin hairline cracks appearing in the paint like veins under strain. “It’s reacting already,” she breathed. “Just to us standing here.”

Sam’s grip tightened on Elliot’s hand. He squeezed back, just once, quiet reassurance passing between them. They were terrified, every one of them, but they were here. Together.

A single shudder ran through the floorboards beneath their feet, almost like a warning growl.

Jordan drew in a sharp breath. “Okay. Okay, that’s fine. That’s totally fine.” His voice was not convincing anyone, including himself.

Elliot shifted his stance, planting his feet. His knuckles whitened around the crowbar. “We knew it would fight back,” he said, low and controlled. “We do this anyway.”

The pressure behind the door pulsed once, hard enough that Harper’s flashlight flickered. The shadows thickened, crowding the edges of the frame.

David lifted his hand, looking at each of them in turn, Sam, Elliot, Harper, Jordan, and despite the tremor of fear visible in all their faces, every one of them nodded.

David inhaled, bracing himself.

“Ready?” he whispered.

Elliot tightened his grip.

Jordan steadied his stance.

Sam and Harper leaned forward with their screwdrivers poised.

David gave a single nod. “Now!”

Elliot and Jordan jammed their crowbars into the gap between the door and the warped frame. David braced his own against the hinge side, muscles taut, breath clouding the air. The frost spreading across the wood made it feel less like a door and more like something frozen shut for centuries.

“Push,” David ordered.

They did.

The metal of their crowbars groaned, bending slightly under the pressure of three grown men, but the door itself didn’t move, not a twitch nor a quiver. Elliot felt the resistance not just in the wood but in his skull, a thick pressure like someone was pushing back directly against his thoughts.

Jordan hissed between clenched teeth, “Oh, come on.”

They pushed harder. David’s jaw flexed. Elliot's shoulders trembled. The crowbars slipped half a centimetre deeper, then stopped cold.

A sudden pulse of force, not physical, but something that pressed inside their heads, shoved back against them. Elliot staggered, breath ripping from his lungs.

Sam flinched behind him. Harper took a stumbling half-step back, her flashlight beam jerking wildly.

“It’s fighting us,” Sam whispered, voice thin.

David growled, “Again. On three. One… two…”

They heaved.

Nothing.

Not a millimetre. Not even a creak.

Elliot’s forearms shook with strain, Jordan’s face twisted, teeth bared, his breath coming in harsh bursts of white vapour. Frost crawled farther along the doorframe, creeping toward the floorboard like advancing vines.

"Okay, this is ridiculous," Jordan snapped, panting. “This thing’s welded shut by Satan himself.”

“Shift your angle,” David said, already adjusting his grip. “Try levering up.”

They repositioned, crouching lower, bracing their legs, forcing every scrap of strength they had upward.

The door held.

For a heartbeat, Elliot thought he heard laughter, faint and layered, like echoes squeezing through stone. Harper sucked in a sharp breath, eyes wide. Sam pressed herself closer to Elliot’s back, steadying him with both hands.

The pressure behind their eyes sharped, a spike of warning-pain. Something wanted them gone. Out. Away from this threshold.

David suddenly froze. “Stop!”

They all paused.

A hairline crack was creeping down the side of the frame, not the door, but the frame itself, splintering under the unnatural resistance.

“We’re going to lose leverage,” David muttered. “Crowbars won’t hold once that splits.”

He was right. With another few seconds of pressure, Elliot’s crowbar slipped free with a clank, nearly sending him flying.

“Okay,” Jordan gasped, hands on his knees. “So, Plan A’s dead.”

Elliot threw the useless crowbar aside; it hit the wall with a cold clang. “Then we shoulder it.”

David nodded immediately, already stepping back. “We break it the old-fashioned way.”

Sam swallowed. Harper steadied her grip on the flashlight, though her knuckles were white.

Jordan rolled back his shoulders, muttering, “If I dislocate something, I’m haunting this house too.”

David took position to the left of the door. Elliot and Jordan lines up beside him, three bodies squared against the ice-cold wood.

David looked between them. “On my count. Full force. Ready?”

“Ready,” Elliot said, though his heart hammered so hard the word barely made it out.

Jordan blew out a shaky breath. “Let’s piss off a demon.”

David raised three fingers. Dropped one. Then another.

“Go!”

They crashed into the door, all three shoulders slamming into the frozen surface.

A boom echoed through the corridor, loud enough that dust drifted from the ceiling. The door shuddered, barely, but didn’t open.

A pulse surged outward from it, slamming into them like a wave of icy water. Elliot staggered back several steps; Jordan nearly hit the opposite wall.

Whispers erupted, furious, overlapping, unintelligible, circling them like a cyclone made of voices.

Sam covered her ears, gasping. Harper stared, terrified, at the frost now spreading across the floorboards toward their feel.

David grit his teeth. “Again!”

They ran. 

Hit the door.

The impact rattled their bones. This time the door lurched inward maybe a centimetre, just enough for Elliot to feel a sudden suction of air, like something behind it had gasped.

Then a violent force slammed it back in place, almost pinching his shoulder in the frame. Elliot yelped and jumped back.

Harper swore under hear breath. Sam whispered, trembling, “It knows. It knows.”

The floor vibrated violently now, a subterranean growl running up their legs, shaking the walls.

Elliot's eyes watered from the pressure pressing into his skull.

David took one step back, then another. “Last time. Hard as you can. We finish this.”

Jordan shook out his arm, face set. “One more. Let’s make it hate us.”

Elliot nodded, adrenaline replacing fear. “On your signal.”

David didn’t even count this time.

David didn’t even count this time.

He just roared, “GO!”

They charged.

The world narrowed to their breaths, the cold, the vibrating floor, the weight of the house’s fury.

They slammed into the door with every ounce of strength they had left.

A deafening crack tore through the landing, wood splintering, frame bursting, something breaking on a level deeper than physical.

The third hit broke it.

Elliot felt it in his shoulder first, a splintering give beneath the wood, a sharp jolt that went all the way up his spine. The frame cracked with a shriek like something alive, and then the door lurched inward, swinging open far faster than any of them were ready for,

All three of them, Elliot, Jordan, David, stumbled with it.

They pitched forward across the threshold, boots skidding on the warped floorboards. Harper swore under her breath as she grabbed for the doorframe to steady herself. Sam yelped, catching herself on Elliot’s back as the broken door slammed flat against the wall with a deafening crack.

And then the house hit them.

A blast of cold air rolled out of Room 2 like a shockwave, slamming into their chests. Elliot's breath was punched clean out of him; for a sick second he couldn’t inhale at all, lungs spasming against ait that felt wrong, thin and heavy at the same time, like breathing smoke and ice together.

Above then, the ceiling light flickered so hard it seemed to strobe.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Then it didn’t out. It changed. The bulb settled into a low, electric hum, the light thinning to a sickly, humming yellow that barely reached the corners of the landing. Shadows pooled in the edges of the ceiling and along the skirting boards, drawn inward, like the whole corridor was slowly tilting toward Room 2.

Elliot's ears rang.

Not from the sound, he realised. From pressure.

It felt like altitude sickness and diving too deep and being under thick blankets all at once, something invisible tightening around his chest, pressing against his eardrums, pushing at the backs of his eyes until they watered. His heart thundered against his ribs, each beat feeling slightly delayed, like his pulse was trying to move through treacle.

He dragged in a shaky breath that didn’t feel like enough.

Beside him, Jordan cursed quietly. “Jesus Christ…”

The words came out in a thin, hoarse whisper. Everyone’s did. The air swallowed sound, muffled it, like there was cotton stuffed in their mouths.

Elliot straightened as best he could, one hand braced on the now-wide-open door and looked into Room 2.

It hadn’t changed.

That was somehow worse.

The same heavy dust on the floor and furniture, the same ragged curtains hanging in strips, the same writing desk in the centre of the room like an altar dragged there by force, the same faint, carved pattern in the boards surrounding it, wax glinting dully in the dim light. Nothing moved. Nothing shifted.

And yet every instinct in his body screamed that something was in there now, awake, aware, and furious.

The air inside the room seemed thicker than in the corridor. It looked like there was an invisible layer between them and the far wall, a heat-haze effect without the warmth, a barely-there distortion that made the edges of the desk and bed waver if he stared too long.

“Don’t go in yet,” Harper’s voice rasped behind him.

He heard the tremor in it, the way she had to force the words through the pressure. She moved up beside him anyway, flashlight clenched uselessly in one hand, knuckles white.

Sam pressed close to his other side, fingers hooking into the sleeve of his hoodie without her even seeming to realise she’d done it. Elliot could feel the tremble in her hand through the fabric.

His own fingers weren’t exactly steady.

The cold bit straight through his clothes now, sharp enough to sting the skin beneath, every hair on his arms stood on end, the hairs at the back of his neck prickling as though someone was breathing there.

No one was. He checked.

David stepped up on the hinge side of the doorway, shoulders squared, crowbar recovered and gripped in a gloves hand. Blood had drained from his face, but his eyes were set.

“Everyone okay?” he asked, voice low.

“Define okay?” Jordan muttered, but he dragged himself upright too, one hand rubbing the shoulder he’d slammed into the wood with. His breath came out in quick, pale bursts.

The vibration under their feet changed.

It wasn’t just a tremor now. It pulsed. A rhythmic thud rising through the floorboards, not quite matching anyone’s heartbeat, off by a fraction, a faint shiver running along the plaster, dust drifting lazily from some unseen crack above.

It felt like standing on the chest of something enormous and sleeping… that had just begun to wake up.

Elliot swallowed hard, throat dry and burning with cold.

The pressure in his head built up another notch, a sharp sting settling behind his eyes, like a migraine forming in fast-forward. He blinked rapidly, and for a moment, just a moment, he thought he saw movement in the far corner of the room. A darker patch of shadow, rising, folding, unfurling.

He blinked again. It was gone.

“Elliot?” Sam whispered, voice barely audibly. “Talk to me.”

“I’m fine,” he lied automatically and felt her fingers tighten on his sleeve in a silent ‘don’t.”

He forced himself to exhale slowly.

The air tasted metallic, faintly bitter, like old coins and burned dust. Every instinct he had screamed to slam the door shut again, to nail it, bolt it, paint over it and pretend it was a wall that had always been there.

But Thomas’s word from the day before echoed in his mind. The journal. The plea.

Help me undo what I have done.

Elliot shifted his stance, planting his feet more solidly without realising it.

The open doorway felt like a mouth nor, one that had spent most of the last century closed ad it was not pleased to find itself forced wide. Cold radiated from it in steady waves, making the skin on his face numb, fingertips tingling where they touched the frame.

Behind him, Harper sucked in a sharp breath.

“Look,” she whispered.

Frost was spreading.

It crept outward from the threshold in thin, branching veins, racing across the floorboards in delicate, jagged patterns. Within seconds, it reached Elliot’s boots, lacing around the soles like something claiming territory. The wood beneath his feet creaked softly as it chilled.

Sam hissed out a breath. “This is a bad idea.”

“Yep,” Jordan said faintly. “Horrific. Top ten worst ideas I’ve ever participated in.”

“But we’re here not,” David said quietly. “And we’re not leaving without doing this.”

The sentence didn’t feel defiant. It felt… resigned. Steady.

Elliot glanced back at them quickly, the four people he’d somehow ended up doing this with. Harper with her jaw set and hands shaking. Jordan trying to joke and failing but staying put anyway. David holding the crowbar like a shield. Sam pressed close to him, eyes wide but not backing away.

He turned back to the room.

The feeling of being watched doubled, then tripled. It wasn’t just from the room not. It was in the room, around them, pressing at their backs, sliding fingernail-light touched along their nerves.

He couldn’t hear words, not exactly.

But he understood the intent.

Intruders.

Thieves.

Mine.

The pressure spiked to sharply that he winced.

“Okay,” he said, voice rough, forcing it out into the cold. “We’ve pissed it off.”

Jordan huffed a breath that almost counted as a laugh. “Good. I’ve had a really crap week.”

Harper lifted the flashlight, beam shaking only slightly as she aimed it into the room.

“On three,” David said, shifting his grip. “We go for the hinges. In and out. Fast as we can.”

Elliot nodded, thought the last thing he felt was fast.

He stepped over the line of frost, the threshold of Room 2 under his boots for the third time in his life.

And the temperature plunged again, as if the room itself took its first full, furious breath.

The air detonated.

A pressure wave slammed outward from the centre of the room, invisible but violent enough to stagged all of them back a half-step. Their breath burst from their lungs in white plumes, ripped away by a spiralling blast of cold that coiled around their legs like a living thing.

Then everything moved at once.

Books tore themselves from the shelves with enough force to mimic the crack of gunfire. The first hardback shot past Elliot’s head so quickly he only registered it as a blur before it exploded against the corridor wall behind Sam.

“DOWN!” Jordan yelled instinctively, jerking his head aside just as a second book, thicker and heavier, hurtled past his cheek like it had been fired from a slingshot.

Drawers slammed open in a violent choreography, one hitting the far wall so hard it rebounded and skittered across the warped floorboards. A second drawer blasted out of an old side table and whirled through the room like a wooden discus. Elliot ducked, dragging Sam with him as it spun overhead and shattered against the doorway.

Harper raised her arm to shield her face as splinters rained down. “It’s throwing everything-!”

Before she could finish, a storm of screws and nails whipped out of the broken furniture, metal flashing in the flickering light. They moved like a swarm, not with random chaos, but with purpose, weaving through the air in spirals and sharp darts.

David yanked Sam closer to the corridor wall, narrowly avoiding a nail that embedded itself in the skirting board with a vicious thunk.

The lightbulb overhead flickered wildly, bright, dark, bright, dark, strobing the room in disorienting flashed that made it impossible to predict the next projectile.

A guttural sound swelled in the walls.

Not human.

Not animal.

A layered grown, like dozens of voices pressed together into one furious note, vibrated through the floorboards and sent a shiver up Elliot’s spine. The window rattled in its frame, frost spiderwebbing across the glass from the inside as though the cold were clawing at it from within.

Something unseen swept across the room, a rush of air so sharp it sliced the fog of their breath clean in half. It whipped loose papers into a frenzied cyclone, pages tearing themselves from the journals stacked on the ground and spiralling around the centre of the room before being flung outwards.

A yellowed notebook page slapped across Jordan’s chest. He ripped it off, flung it away, only for it to launch back into the ait like it had been yanked by invisible talons.

Elliot shoves aside a flying wooden picture frame with his forearm. The glass shattered mid-air, scattering like tiny stars before falling around them in glittering arcs.

Sam’s voice cracked through the chaos: “It’s trying to drive us out!”

Another drawer blasted free from its runners and careened toward Harper. Elliot managed to bat it away with his shoulder, grunting as the corner clipped him. But it diverted enough to smash into the doorframe instead of her chest.

The room roared again, the growl deepening, vibrating through their ribs, and a blast of cold tore through their ankles, whipping around them like a living gale.

Dust, pages, splinters, frost, all of it stirred into a swarm.

The house was fighting them.

Hard.

A snarl of pressure ripped through the air.

Something sharp glinted in the strobing bulb overhead. Elliot barely resisted the motion before David lunged sideways with a shout.

“Duck!”

Elliot dropped just as a jagged shard of metal, part of an old hinge, sliced through the air where his face had been. David caught it with his forearm, the metal biting deep before clattering to the floor. Blood sprayed across the boards, stark red against the greys and whites of the dust and frost.

David grunted, steadying himself on the wall, breath ragged. “I’m all right,” he snapped, more anger than reassurance, but the crimson trail down his arm said otherwise.

Another object whistled across the room.

“Harper, look out!”

Jordan shoved her aside just in time for a desk lamp to slam into his stomach. The sound it made was sickening, the dull, brutal thump of metal meeting flesh, the impact folded him in half, driving breath out of him in a choking gasp. He hit the floor on his knees, one hand braced on the boards, coughing violently.

Before anyone could reach him, the room struck again.

He didn’t have time to scream, he was simply gone, lifted off the floor like a ragdoll. His back hit the far wall with a crack that snapped outward in the plaster like spiderwebs. He slid down the wall, dazed, struggling for breath, pain flickering behind his eyes.

“Jordan!” Harper cried, trying to run to him.

She didn’t make it two steps.

Something invisible hooked into the back of her jacket and yanked her toward the doorway. The fabric cinched tight across her throat. She clawed at it, stumbling backward, boots skidding over scattered papers.

Elliot grabbed her wrist and pulled for forward, but the force countered, dragging them both several inches toward the hall.

“Let go of her!” Sam shouted, voice raw.

A cold wind, sharp as knives, whipped around her ankles.

Then something caught her.

She screamed as she was yanked off her feet, dragged across the floorboards. Her fingernails scraped the wood, shrieking against it. She slammed into the hallway wall, the impact choking off her cry.

“Sam!” Elliot lunged.

The moment he crossed the threshold another unseen force hit him sideways, slamming into his ribs with the full force of a charging animal. His body cracked against the doorframe. The air was ripped from his lungs in a soundless cry, pain bursting white behind his eyes. His knees almost buckled, he fought it, dragging himself on pure instinct.

Sam’s ankle was still suspended, held by something none of them could see. Her leg hung mid-air, trembling violently, her breath breaking in fast, panicked bursts as she clawed at the ground for purchase.

“I’ve got her. I’ve got her!” Harper gasped, grabbing Sam under her arms, planting her heels and pulling with everything she had,

The lights flickered harder, faster, the shadows thickening, writhing up the walls as if alive.

Elliot staggered forward again, ignoring the pain exploding in his ribs. “Hold on, Sam, I’m here.”

He caught her arm.

The force holding her tightened, jerking her leg again. Sam cried out.

“Let her go!” he shouted into the empty air, voice cracking, furious, terrified.

And then, something shifted.

The cold wind stuttered.

The grip around Sam’s ankle faltered.

A faint breath of warmth, subtle, barely there, rolled through the room like the opposite of a chill.

Through the roar, a voice whispered:

“I’m… tryi… to.. …elp…”

Sam gasped. Elliot froze. Harper felt it too. A presence distinct from the rage swirling around them.

Thomas.

For the briefest heartbeat, the force dragging Sam back weakened.

“Now!” Elliot shouted.

He and Harper pulled together, wrenching Sam’s body toward them with a final desperate yank. The invisible grip snapped. Sam slid across the floor and into Elliot’s chest, sobbing against him as he wrapped both arms around her, trembling but holding firm.

Behind them, Jordan groaned, pushing himself upright against the cracked wall. David wiped blood from his upper lip with the back of his trembling hand.

Elliot met their eyes, all of them battered, breathless, terrified.

But something in the air had changed.

The faint warmth lingered beneath the freezing chaos, a pressure pushing back against the demon, thin but unmistakable. Thomas. Holding the darkness at bay for just a heartbeat. Just long enough.

David seized it.

“While it’s distracted, MOVE!”

His voice cracked like a gunshot through the room.

Sam and Harper reacted instantly. They dashed toward the hinge side, boots slipping beneath them. Harper’s flashlight skittered across the floor as she scooped it up, her hands shaking but determined. Sam steadied herself against the splintered frame, breath coming in quick puffs as fog, then jammer her flat-head screwdriver against the top hinge.

“Harper! Bottom one!” she called.

“I’ve got it!” Harper dropped to one knee, bracing her shoulder against the warped doorframe as she wedged her screwdriver beneath the lower hinge pin.

Metal groaned, a tortured, shrieking wail, as both women levered their screwdrivers downward, trying to split the hinged around their pivots.

Behind them, Elliot staggered forward, ribs screaming in protest. He forced a breath past the pain.

“Positions,” he rasped.

Jordan was already limping to his side, face pale, dust in his hair. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. Let’s do this.”

David joined them, crowbar still in one hand, the other pressing briefly to his bleeding nose before he squared his stance. The three of them surrounded the door, each grabbing hold, ready to lift the moment the hinges gave.

Elliot planted his feet. Jordan tightened his grip. David leaned his weight forward like a man preparing to shoulder an avalanche.

Around them, the air pulsed with fury. The lights flickered. The unseen force gathered itself like a breath before a scream.

But the five of them, bruised, cut, shaking, were finally, fully in position. And the door’s fate was sealed.

Elliot felt it, a kind of pressure building in the air, a vibrating tension humming against his ribs. Something was winding up for retaliation. He braced harder, shoulder against the heavy Victorian wood, palms flat and freezing.

Behind him, Sam and Harper were already moving.

He didn’t have to look. He could hear it; the sharp metallic ting of Sam forcing the screwdriver into the upper hinge. The scrape of Harper wedging hers beneath the lower one. Their breaths puffed white with every exhale, fogging in the half-light. Frost crept across the hinges like veins of ice, spidering outward as if trying to stop them.

“Come on… come on…” Sam muttered under her breath, a tight, fierce whisper Elliot felt more than he heard.

He risked one glance back.

Sam’s hands were trembling, but she held steady, jaw set with the same determination he’d felt when he’d pulled her from the demon’s grip moments ago. She forced the screwdriver deeper. The hinge groaned, metal bending against metal, a high, awful sound that made the hair on Elliot’s arm rise.

Below her, Harper had her flashlight wedged under her arm, face taut as she twisted her screwdriver with both hands. Elliot saw the muscles in her forearms pull tight, saw the wood around the hinge splinter as she forced leverage where none should have been possible.

The door shuddered under Elliot’s shoulder, a sudden violent lurch that nearly knocked the wind from him.

“Hold it!” he hissed through clenched teeth.

Jordan grunted beside him. “I am! Jesus Christ, this thing weighs a ton!”

David didn’t speak, he just pressed harder, the crowbar braced at his side in case the hinges snapped unpredictably.

Elliot swallowed, throat dry, breath a cloud of pale mist. The wood against his shoulder felt like pressing into a block of ice. His ribs burned where the demon had slammed his earlier, a deep ache radiating across his chest. But he pushed anyway. Because Sam was behind him, fighting through the fear and cold. Because Thomas had tried to shield them. Because this was their only chance.

“Top hinge… almost…” Sam’s voice wavered, then steadied. “Move, damn it…”

The hinge screamed. A sharp crack echoed though the room.

The top hinge had snapped.

The door lurched dangerously forward, slamming its weight into Elliot's and Jordan. Elliot staggered, boots scraping across the frost-slicked floorboards.

“Got it!” Jordan choked out, arms trembling.

Not yet. Elliot could feel it, the bottom hinge still held the door in place, twisting it awkwardly now the top was broken. It felt like holding a body with only one joint left attached.

“Harper. Now!” Sam shouted.

Harper shifted her stance, planting one foot back, twisting hard. Elliot heard the deep crack of wood splitting. Frost shattered off the hinge like glass.

The demon reacted instantly.

A blast of cold air slammed into them, knocking Elliot’s breath from his chest. His vision sparked for a second, a white flash edging his sight. He braced hard, digging his shoulder deeper into the door as if he could physically shield the others behind him from whatever was building.

“Harper!” Sam cried.

“Almost…!”

Another loud crack, louder. Angrier.

The bottom hinge twisted. Metal shrieked. The door vibrated violently, as though something inside the room was trying to wrench it back into place.

“Push it!” David barked.

“I am pushing it!” Jordan snapped, voice thin with effort.

Elliot gritted his teeth, muscles screaming as he forced everything he had into bracing the failing door. He could feel the moment coming, the instant where the balance tipped, where the last hinge would give, where the century-old bond would finally break.

“Come on,” he whispered, voice raw. “Just a little more…”

The bottom hinge snapped.

The sound was like bone breaking under enormous weight.

The door dropped heavily into their arms, all of its weight suddenly theirs along.

Elliot gasped at the impact but held firm, boots sliding half an inch before he regained traction. Jordan swore under his breath. David shifted into a stronger position, catching the sagging edge.

Behind then, Sam and Harper both jerked back from the force of the hinge breaking, nearly losing their footing.

And for a split second, an unfathomably small breath of time, the room inhaled.

Every hair on Elliot's arms rose. He knew with a clarity that went straight to his bones: Something felt the break.

The air thickened, the lights dimmed. The pressure behind his eyes sharpened into a needlepoint.

And the freed door gave a low, guttural groan, like an animal waking.

Elliot tightened his hold, heart slamming once, hard, in his chest.

For half a second, the world went still.

Then it hit them.

A blast of pressure, violent, concussive, erupted from the door like the house itself had detonated. It struck Elliot square in the chest, knocking the breath out of him in a single, brutal punch. His grip tore loose without him even realising it; the force was too much, too sudden, too inhuman.

The door ripped free of all their hands at once.

Not fell.

Not dropped.

Ripped.

Launched.

It flew across the landing with such impossible force that Elliot’s brain couldn’t make sense of it fast enough. One heartbeat it was in front of him, heavy and solid in his palms. The next heartbeat…

CRACK…

It hit the far wall like a battering ram, plaster exploded outward in a cloud of white and grey, shards raining down like brittle hail. The entire landing shuddered beneath them, floorboards trembling under the shock.

Elliot barely had time to register the impact before the pressure wave hit them.

He felt himself leave the ground.

His shoulder slammed into the floor first, pain flaring like lightning up his arm. Jordan crashed somewhere beside him with a choked sound. Harper tumbled sideways into the skirting board. David hit the ground hard enough that the crowbar skittered from his grip and clanged across the landing,

Sam yelped as she slid across the boards, stopping only when her back struck Elliot's shin,

Dust billowed. Frost crept. The air vibrated with fury.

Elliot coughed hard, dragging a breath into his lungs that didn’t seem to want to expand. The world tilted, hazy around the edges, ringing faintly. He pushed himself up onto one elbow, ribs screaming in protest.

The door lay across the opposite wall like a fallen titan, splintered plaster beneath it, paint cracked, the wood humming with a cold, unnatural energy.

Jordan groaned, rolling onto his back, one arm thrown over his face. 

“That thing…” He wheezed, coughed, swallowed. “…does NOT want this door leaving the house.”

Elliot forced himself upright through the ringing in his ears, ribs shrieking with every breath. Sam was already pushing herself onto her elbows beside him, hair wild, cheeks flushed with fear and exertion. Harper knelt near the skirting board, gripping her flashlight like a lifeline. David, breathing hard, braced one hand against the wall to steady himself.

No one said, “Are you okay?” There was no time. And they weren’t. Not really.

But they were still moving.

“Up,” David barked through the blood still dripping from his nose. “We lift it again.”

Elliot nodded sharply, adrenaline cutting through pain. He moved first, crossing the trembling landing to crouch beside the fallen door, Sam followed despite Harper’s protest, hands shaking but reaching for the wood anyway.

The air pulsed once, hard enough to rattle the windowpanes. The demon wasn’t regrouping. It was winding up.

Together, they hauled the heavy slab upright. It groaned, the sound deep and wrong, vibrating through Elliot’s palms like a living thing resisting its own movement, Jordan limped forward to wedge his shoulder beneath it, and David braced the opposite edge.

“On three,” David saif, voice tight. “One… Two…”

They heaved.

The door rose. It fought, but it rose.

They staggered as a unit to the staircase, five bodies, one desperate motion, manoeuvring the weight inch by inch across the boards that vibrated underfoot like a trapped animal.

The second the door angled toward the first step, the air density changed. Not colder, heavier. A wet pressure slammed into Elliot’s chest, forcing a choking gasp from him. Sam stumbled beside him, clutching the edge of the door for balance.

Jordan’s breath hitched. “Holy…”

A low growl rippled through the walls. Not a sound. A vibration. A warning. A promise.

“Keep going!” David shouted.

They stepped forward. And the demon hit back.

A concussive blasé of invisible force slammed into the door. It ripped free of their grip with terrifying ease.

“Sam!” Elliot lunged as the door whirled sideway like it had its own orbit.

Harper shrieked as the door hurtled toward them. Elliot yanked Sam backwards by the arm with all the strength panic could give him. David grabbed Harper’s coat and yanked her sideways.

The door smashed into the wall opposite the staircase with another explosion of plaster and paint. Shards rained down across the landing. A shockwave threw them all off-balance again.

Harper slammed into Elliot. Sam hit the floor and skidded to his knees. Jordan crashed into the banister with a pained grunt. David braced a hand against the floorboards as the entire landing quaked beneath them.

Coats whipped violently around their bodies, hair pulling upward as if the gravity had reversed. The air thickened into something suffocating, each breath a struggle, each inhale like pulling cement into the lungs.

Elliot's eyes watered as he tried to shout over the roar in his ears. “We can’t…” He coughed hard, chest seizing. “We can’t take it down the stairs!”

The demon’s fury closed around them like a fist.

Jordan staggered to his feet, gripping the banister for balance. “No shit, Ward!” he shouted hoarsely. “Try again and it’ll throw us down the stairs!”

Sam clung to Elliot’s sleeve, eyes wide and shining with terror but absolutely steady. Harper’s knuckles were white around her fallen flashlight. David’s jaw was clenched like he was holding his skull together by will alone.

The message was unmistakable.

The demon wasn’t afraid of them entering the room. It wasn’t afraid of them seeing the truth.

It was afraid of the door leaving the house.

Elliot swallowed hard, forcing a breath through the crushing pressure.

“Then we find another way.”

Elliot swallowed hard, forcing a breath through the crushing pressure. His ribs screamed, every inhale scraping like broken glass, but he stayed upright. Stayed focus. Stayed moving.

David’s voice cut through the roar of the house like a whipcrack:

“The window! Get it to the window!”

Elliot didn’t question it, none of them did. Instinct, desperation, and Thomas’s faint, aching plea all braided into one undeniable commend: move the door.

They scrambled toward the fallen slab of Victorian oak, hands trembling, shoulders burning. Frost crystalised along the edges of the wood as Elliot slid his palms beneath one side. The cold bit instantly into his fingers, numbing them to the bone.

David took the top. Jordan took the other side. Together, grunting through pain and adrenaline, they lifted.

The demon struck immediately.

A new pressure pressed inward, violent, tidal, crashing over them in waves.

Elliot’s teeth clenched. “Hold… it… steady…”

The floorboard beneath their feet began to vibrate harder, and only trembled harder still with every step they took away from Room 2. Nails trembled in the wood like they were trying to wrench them free. Household objects still hung in the air around them, quivering like insects waiting for a signal to strike again.

Behind them, Harper and Sam pushed forward, clearing the way through the debris-strewn landing.

Harper batted aside a flung candlestick with the broken lamp she’d picked up, teeth bared is something halfway between terror and fury.

Sam kicked a rolling drawer out of their path and shouted back, “Keep going! Don’t stop!”

The demon’s response was immediate:

A low, animalistic grown reverberated through the hallway walls, vibrating through Elliot’s bones, sinking cold deeper into his chest. It wasn’t sound. It was a feeling, a pressure with a looming intent.

Stop. Turn back. Put it down.

Elliot shoves the voice out of his mind, jaw locked.

“Don’t listen to it,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Just move!”

They staggered forward inch by inch, the door heavy as a coffin, heavier still with the weight of a century-old curse clinging to it. Every step felt like fighting a riptide.

Jordan snarled through the strain, “This thing weighs a bloody ton!”

“It’s not the weight,” David growled, sweat freezing across his brow. “It’s pushing back.”

Elliot felt it too, that invisible force pressing against the door, against them, grinding into their muscles like teeth. The house vibrated harder. A picture frame fell from the wall and shattered at their feet. Something unseen swept past his ear like a cold whisper of fingers.

The landing lights flickered again.

Harper pointed with her flashlight, a trembling narrow beam cutting through the fog of cold.

“Nearly there!” 

Frost spiderwebbed across the glass of the landing window, thickening with every passing second the demon was sealing it shut.

They pushed again. Shoulders screaming. Legs shaking. Breath ripping from their lungs in white plumes.

Elliot's vision speckled black. Jordan stumbled but stayed upright. David’s grip tightened until his knuckles blanched white.

The door bucked once in their hands, like something inside the house had tried to wrench it back

Elliot grunted, “No…. NO, you don’t!”

He dug his feet in, pushing back with everything he had left.

They reached the window. The frost on the glass thickened visibly, spiralling across the pane in real time, as if the house were desperately trying to reinforce it.

The air felt drowning now. Dense, suffocating, pressing into their lungs.

Elliot looked at the others, teeth shattering from the cold and adrenaline.

“On three,” he rasped. A promise. A declaration. A final act of defiance.

He socked in a breath that barely made it past his throat.

“One…”

Elliot barely got the number out before the cold pressure punched into his lungs again, trying to choke the next breath out of him. the others braced instinctively, David planting his books wide, Jordan tightening both hands along the side of the door, Sam and Harper flattening against the wall to give them room.

“…two…”

The air vibrated so violently in buzzes in Elliot's teeth. Frost spiked out from the windowpane in jagged knives, racing outward as if the glass itself were trying to prepare itself. A low roar rolled through the house; not human, not even remotely animal, but something old, furious, and aware.

It knew what they were about to do and it was begging them not to.

“THREE!”

They threw their entire weight behind the door.

The impact was catastrophic.

For a split second, the glass bowed, warping inward as though resisting with a final, desperate effort. Then…

CRACK. BOOM.

The window detonated.

Sharps exploded outward in a halo of glittering ice, catching the faint winter sunlight as they scattered into the garden below. The sound was deafening, like a gunshot layered over a thunderclap, and the shockwave ripped back through the landing, knocking plaster dust from the ceiling and the cracks in the walls.

The door punched through the frame, tearing a chunk of wood with it, and tumbled out into the open air. It flipped once, twice, then crashed onto the grass below with a violent, splintered thud.

Everything stopped.

The pressure collapsed like a rubber band snapping.

The cold receded so sharply Elliot gasped, his lungs suddenly able to fill again. the vibrating floorboards stilled beneath their feel. The nails that had trembled upward earlier settled with soft, metallic ticks. The oppressive weight behind their eyes vanished.

And the whispering, the layered furious whispering, cut off mid-breath.

Silence.

A silence so sudden, so complete, that it rang.

Harper was the first to go down, her knees buckled, and she caught herself on her hands, trembling so hard her flashlight clattered across the floor. She didn’t even try to retrieve it. She just knelt there, breath shuddering in and out like someone who had finally surfaced from deep underwater.

Sam leaned heavily into Elliot's side, her shoulder pressed to his chest, her breath hot and ragged against his collarbone. Her fingers gripped the fabric of his hoodie so tightly he felt the tremor in each knuckle. He wrapped his arm around her automatically, even though every muscle in his ribs screamed.

David lowered the crowbar with shaking arms, the mela clanging as it hit the floor. Sweat dropped from his brow despite the chill that had filled the room moments earlier. He pushed both hands into his hair, exhaling a breath that sounded half like a laugh, half like disbelief.

Jordan slumped against the banister, let out a wheezing, disbelieving laugh that cracked halfway through it. “Well…” he panted, rubbing the side of his head where he’d hit the wall, “…that’s one way to take out a window.”

Elliot huffed something that might’ve been a laugh, might’ve been a sob. He didn’t really know. His heart hammered wildly against his ribs, trying to catch up to what the world around them had just done.

The demon hadn’t vanished. The house hadn’t gone safe. But its grip on the door. On Thomas. On them, had just been loosened.

The landing smelled like frost and old dust. Sharps glittered across the floor like fallen stars. The wind blew gently through the gaping frame, brushing past them like a sigh of relief.

Sam straightened slowly, swallowing, eyes fixed on the jagged gap where the window used to be.

“It’s out there, right?” she whispered.

Elliot nodded, tightening his hold around her as the wind carried the faint scent of frozen grass.

“Yeah,” he said softly. His voice was hoarse, but steady.

“Probably.”

The word hung between them for half a second, then David’s voice cut through the cold.

“Come on. We finish this outside.”

They didn’t wait. None of them wanted to remain on the landing any longer than absolutely necessary.

They moved as a single, battered cluster down the staircase, half-running, half-stumbling, adrenaline wearing thin. Elliot felt Sam’s fingers curled into the back of his hoodie like she needed an anchor. Haper descended carefully, one hand on the railing, still shaking from the fight. Jorda’s limp was more obvious now, but he pushed through it with quiet, stubborn determination. And David… David looked carved from something harder than bone, jaw set, eyes locked ahead.

The temperature eased further as they reached the ground floor, but the air still carried a wrongness, like a storm retreating but not yet defeated.

They slipped through the dining room, skirting toppled chairs and the faint dust that has drifted from the violent tremor upstairs. David shoved open the back door in the far corner with his shoulder, and cold mid-morning air poured in, fresh but sharp.

Outside, the garden looked almost peaceful, if not for the broken glass glittering in the grass and the door lying crooked a few metres from the house, its wood still humming faintly as though some part of it remembered being alive.

Elliot exhaled shakily. It didn’t feel over. Not yet.

But they were closer.

Jordan, ever the one to move first when he felt nervous, jogged straight across the grass toward the shed.

“I’ll get, uh, something burn-y!” he called over his shoulder, voice wobbling but trying so hard to sound brave.

Elliot exchanged a look with Sam, a tired, incredulous kind of amusement breaking through the fear. She squeezed his hand once before letting go.

The shed door banged open, a few seconds later, Jordan re-emerged triumphantly holding…

Elliot blinked.

“…is that screen wash?” Harper asked flatly.

Jordan stopped mid-stride, looked down at the bright blue bottle in his hand, and swore under his breath.

David pinched the bright of his nose. “Jordan… that’s not flammable. Put that back. Get that red can. The red one.”

“There are so many bottled in there!” Jordan protested, already jogging back. “Colour-coding exists for a reason, and this shed hasn’t gotten the memo!”

Despite everything, despite the demon, despite the injuries, despite the shaking in Elliot’s arms and the bruises blooming across his ribs, Harper snorted. Actually snorted. A tiny, startled sound quickly smothered, but it was the first real breath of normality they’d had in what felt like hours.

Jordan burst back out a moment later, this time brandishing a very obvious container of lighter fluid.

“Yes!” he barked triumphantly. “Success! I am a functional adult!”

“Debatable,” Harper muttered, but her voice was warmer.

Elliot stepped forward to help Jordan unscrew the cap. His hands were still trembling, whether from the cold or the adrenaline crash, he couldn’t tell, but Jordan didn’t comment. He simply steadied the bottle and nodded once.

David joined them, positioning himself near the fallen door as though preparing for it to leap up and fight them again. Haper hovered close. Sam wrapped her arms around herself against the cold but stayed at Elliot’s side, eyes never leaving the door.

It lay there, heavy and silent, but Elliot could feel the residue of what had been bound inside it. A vibration in the air. A memory of pressure. A cold that wasn’t weather.

The demon wasn’t dead. But it was weakening.

And this, burning the door, would sever the last thread binding Thomas to this house.

Jordan knelt first, pouring a shaky splash of lighter fluid across the upper panels. Elliot crouched beside him, helping spread it along the length of the wood. Sam joined them without being asked, steadying Elliot’s arm when it trembled too hard.

David watched the house.

Harper watched the garden fence, as though expecting shadows to crawl over it.

And Elliot watched the flame in Sam’s expression. Fear, yes, but also purpose.

He rose slowly, flicking open a matchbox with unsteady fingers. The wind tugged at his shirt, cold and sharp, but Sam stepped closer, placing her hand gently over his.

“Together,” she whispered.

He nodded.

They struck the match.

A tiny flame bloomed, small enough to be snuffed out by a breath, yet Elliot felt the weight of the entire house shudder at the sight of it.

He and Sam lowered their hands.

And dropped the match onto the soaked wood.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then…

WHOOMPH.

Fire rolled across the soaked wood like it had been waiting centuries for permission to breathe. Flamed licked outward in long, hungry ribbons, racing along the edges of the door, curling around splintered grain, swallowing the grooves where Thomas’s soul had been bound. The heat hit their faces immediately, sharp, bright, alive.

Elliot stumbled one step back, pulling Sam with him as the flames surges higher.

A tremor rippled under the grass, subtle at first, then strong enough that Elliot felt it through the soles of his shoes. The air clenched tight, as though the entire garden inhaled.

Then an icy blast erupted from the house.

It slammed into them like a wall of frozen wind, forcing Elliot sideways. Sam gasped, gripping his hoodie with both hands as her hair whipped across her face. Harper staggered; David forced an arm out to steady her. Jordan clung to the shed doorframe, still holding the stupid screen wash bottle he’d mistakenly brought earlier.

But the fire didn’t go out.

The flames dipped for half a second, guttering sideways, then snapped upright again with a violent crack, burning hotter.

The demon was panicking.

A sharp ringing exploded inside Elliot's skull. He hissed and clamped his hand to his temple. It wasn’t just a sound, it was pressure, scraping, clawing, like invisible fingers trying to dig into the soft behind his eyes.

Sam winced beside him, face twisting with the same pain.

Harper let out a shaky breath. “It’s… trying to stop it.”

“Too late,” Elliot whispered through clenched teeth.

A second wave slammed into them, cold and desperate.

Invisible hands seized their coats as if trying to drag them backward toward the house. Elliot’s breath hitched as something cold and sharp wrapped around his ankle, an echo of what had dragged Sam earlier. He kicked, felt it slip away, then felt it clench again, weaker.

Much weaker.

Thomas was free. The demon had nothing substantial left to anchor itself with.

David stepped forward, planting himself between the burning door and Harper like instinct, the crowbar raised as though he could fight wind. “Hold your ground!” he barked.

Jordan raised the screen wash bottle like a weapon. David swatted it down without looking. “Not that, you idiot. Just… stay behind me.”

Jordan muttered, “I’m trying to contribute…”

Another shriek of wind drowned him out, ripping across the grass.

The flames rose higher.

Elliot tightened his grip on Sam’s hand. She squeezed back, her knuckles white, her eyes locked on the burning wood.

The demon’s grip faltered again.

And again.

Every flare of the fire seemed to weaken it further, unravelling something ancient and terrible from the house behind them.

The door blackened, cracking down the centre like splitting bone.

The grass hissed beneath it.

Then…

The house screamed.

All of it.

Every brick, every pipe, every wall.

A sound like metal tearing, like stone breaking, like a storm shoved through a hallway.

The windows shattered.

First the second floor, in sharp successive pops, glass raining out like glittering shards. Then the first-floor corridor, Room 3’s window blowing outward in a spray, Room 1’s cracking into a star of fractures before bursting. Then the ground floor; small, rapid detonations of glass, as though the house was being relieved of a burden it could no longer carry.

Harper yelped and ducked. David shielded her with an arm.

The plaster inside cracked next, jagged lightning bolts racing across unseen walls, splitting paint, ripping through old wallpaper. The fractures spread like a living network, branching, crawling, racing down to the foundation.

Elliot felt the ground tremble. Not enough to knock him down, but enough that he planted his feet wider.

Wind roared out of the house, cold and furious, spiralling into the garden in a final blast of rage. It whipped their coats against their legs, tossed hair into their faces, tore at their clothes like it wanted to peel them backward into the dark.

Sam clung to Elliot’s arm, leaning into him for balance.

Jordan cursed loudly, half panic, half awe.

The back door behind them slammed open, then slammed shut over and over again.

Dozens of doors throughout the house joined in, each bang a violent punctuation mark. A thunderous, bone-deep cacophony.

Furniture scraped across floors inside, chests, chairs, tables, dragged without hands, without purpose, without patience. A final tantrum of a creature being expelled.

Sam flinched at each crash, eyes wide with fear, but she never let go of Elliot.

Through it all, through the shaking, the crashing, the screaming wind, Elliot heard him.

Thomas.

Not a voice in the air. A voice in the house. A voice everywhere. 

A scream, not of terror, but of release. Of a man ripped from chains after a century of punishment.

It shook with gratitude, with relief, with grief, with freedom. A sound of a soul unbinding, rising, breaking through something that had held it down since 1889.

Sam’s breath caught. Harper shivered. David bowed his head. Even Jordan fell quiet, his face pale, his eyes blown wide.

Thomas’s scream faded, softer, emptier, then turned into something like a sigh.

A long, exhaled breath of a man stepping through the final doorway.

Then nothing.

No wind. No tremor. No pressure behind their eyes. No whispering. 

Just silence. A deep, clean silence.

Elliot blinked hard, realizing only then that tears had streaked down his cheeks without him noticing. The cold wind had dried them as they fell.

The house… was breathing normally again.

The door crackled in the fire as its centre collapsed inward, caving like a burned spine.

Jordan lowered the bottle in his hand. “Holy… hell.”

David took a step back, crowbar felling to his side, sweat dripped from his brow despite the cold. His chest rose and fell in heavy, controlled breaths.

Harper swallowed once, bending forward with her hands on her knees to steady herself. She was trembling, whether from cold of adrenaline, Elliot didn’t know.

Sam leaned into Elliot's chest, letting him fold an arm around her shoulders. Her breath shook once before she steadied it.

“is it over?” she whispered.

Elliot didn’t answer immediately.

He looked at the house. The broken windows. 

He listened, really listened, for any scraping, any whisper, any breath that wasn’t human.

Nothing. Only the crackle of the burning door.

Elliot exhaled long and slow.

“I think so.”

Sam nodded against him, shutting her eyes.

The last of the door gave way in the fire, splitting apart with a faint hiss, the wood curling inward like petals burning at the edges. Smoke drifted upward as pale ribbons, thinning into the winter air, carrying with it whatever remained of Thomas’s imprisonment.

Harper stepped closer to the fire, arms wrapped around herself. “Do you… feel that?” she whispered.

Elliot frowned. “Feel what?”

“The house. It’s lighter.”

David nodded slowly. “Yeah. Like… whatever was sitting on top of it is gone.”

Jordan let out one shaky laugh and wiped his nose with the back of his wrist. “Well. That’s… that’s good, right? I mean, my entire body hurts and I’m pretty sure something punched me in the soul, but… good?”

Elliot managed a breath of something like a laugh. “Yeah. Good.”

Sam threaded her fingers through his, grounding herself. A tremor passed through her, but when she met his eyes, she was steady.

“Thomas is free,” she murmured.

Elliot swallowed, throat thick.

“Yeah,” he said softly. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, tired but real.

“He finally is. And so are we.”

They stood there together, five humans, bruised and scraped and exhausted, watching the last blackened fragments of the door collapse into ash.

No more pressure. No more whispering. No more cold that wasn’t seasonal.

Just a house.

A house that could finally rest.