Lena slammed the door behind her, heart hammering. The inside of the house smelled of dust, salt, and something else—something faintly metallic. Dried blood? The thought sent a shiver down her spine.
The house was just as she remembered it from childhood: dark wooden floors, oil paintings of long-dead ancestors lining the hallway, and that ever-present feeling of being watched.
As she moved deeper into the house, the whispers started again.
At first, they were soft, blending with the wind. Then, clearer. Words forming from the static of the old house.
"Lena…"
She froze.
The sound came from the sitting room.
She pushed open the door, and the fire in the hearth flickered violently, though no one had been there to light it. The armchair beside it—her grandmother's chair—rocked back and forth, as if someone had just stood up.
Then she saw it.
A shape in the fog outside the window.
Tall. Thin.
Watching.
The glass fogged up, as though something—someone—was breathing against it.
And then, from the darkness beyond the glass, fingers pressed against the pane. Long, bony fingers, stretching too far.
Lena stumbled backward, knocking over a table.
The whispers grew louder.
A child's voice.
"Let me in."
The window shattered.
And the fog poured inside.