A house sat at the edge of the woods, half collapsed and half forgotten, as though time itself had grown tired of holding it together. Its windows were blind with dust, its roof sagged like a creature crouching low, and the air around it always felt a bit colder than anywhere else. People avoided it without thinking.
But Rowan had always been drawn to it.
For weeks, he’d seen something in the upstairs window—a faint silhouette, still as stone, watching the world with a patience that made his skin prickle. Every time he blinked, it shifted. Every time he looked away, it returned.
He needed to know what waited inside.
The door resisted him at first, then gave way with a shuddering sigh, as if exhaling after a long sleep. Dust spiralled in the beam of his torch, drifting like ash. The air smelled of damp wood and something older—something metallic, like forgotten breath trapped between the walls.
Rowan stepped forward. The floorboards groaned beneath him, long and low, almost like a warning. Wallpaper peeled in curling strips, revealing dark wood beneath, carved with scratches that looked too deliberate to be age.
Then he heard it.
“Rowan…”
His torch trembled. No one knew he was here. No one should know his name.
The whisper drifted from the staircase, sliding through the air like cold fingers brushing the back of his neck. He climbed, each step creaking as though the house were counting them.
At the top, the hallway stretched longer than it should have, shadows pooling in the corners like spilled ink. The door to the room with the window stood slightly open, inhaling in and out with the faintest movement.
Inside, the walls were covered in drawings—hundreds of them—sketched in frantic, looping strokes. Every drawing showed the same thing: a boy standing in the doorway of this exact house.
A boy with Rowan’s face.
His breath hitched. The torch flickered with fear.
In the far corner, something shifted. Slowly, a figure stepped into the light—pale, hollow eyed, its body swaying as if unseen strings controlled it.
“Curiosity got the better of you,” it whispered.
Rowan stumbled, but the door slammed shut behind him.
And yet, outside, no one stirred. No one remembered him. No one had noticed. The house exhaled a quiet satisfaction, invisible as the wind, leaving Rowan erased in the shadows, forgotten by the world.
