Part 2: Paint Beneath the Plaster

First cometh the Trembling of Flesh, ere the Lips dare move. Fear is the Prelude, Desire the Hymn. In their mingling, Confession taketh root.

— Testament of Elias Harrow, 1764

Jade stepped first, boot crunching on the warped floorboards. The beam of her flashlight shook, though she held it high like a weapon. “Well,” she said, too loudly, “here we are.”

The foyer swallowed her voice. Dust motes spun in the torchlight, stirred by their arrival, and settled again like a snowfall with no wind to guide it.

Naomi paused on the threshold. “Air quality in here is atrocious,” she muttered. Her phone’s glow spilled over the floorboards, catching cobwebs strung like nets from corner to corner. “Mold, dust, rat droppings—this is how you get respiratory infections.” Her words tried for clinical, but her voice trembled at the edges.

Marcus gave a brittle laugh, one hand gripping the doorframe like a tether.”Relax. Worst thing we’ll get is tetanus.” He took a swallow from the flask, wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and added, “And ghosts, obviously.”

Clara hesitated just inside the doorway, boots rooted. The cold pressed against her legs as though the house itself tested her. Her chest felt too small for her breath. The last step from porch to floor stretched into something bigger than it should have been. She moved—and her heel skidded on a scatter of grit.

Dylan’s hand was at her elbow at once, steadying, gentle. He didn’t clutch; he aligned. Just enough to keep her upright, then gone. “Careful,” he said, soft but precise. The vowels bent around the word, gentling it.

“Thanks,” she blurted, too quick. Heat flared under her coat despite the cold. He’s just being polite. He’s always polite. Yet her pulse thumped loud enough she wondered if the others could hear.

Jade swept the light in a wide arc. Dust rose like startled motes, briefly catching fire in the beam.”Come on, it’s just an old house. Floorboards, shadows, maybe a bat or two. Nothing to scream about.”

A board groaned under Marcus’s foot, almost affronted—as though the house disapproved of Jade’s tone. Marcus flinched, then threw his shoulders back and barked a laugh. “See? The house already loves us.” Somewhere deeper, another plank answered, one slow knock: heard, not echoed.

“Or hates us,” Naomi said, stepping in with short, careful strides.

Clara followed, breath shallow. The dark closed behind them as the door inched back on its hinges. It didn’t swing; it considered, then settled, shaving the night to a thinner seam. Her flashlight beam wavered across faded wallpaper, a collapsed table, a mirror turned face down on the floor. The silence pressed at her ears.

Houses remember. Every draught is a sigh of something left unfinished; every creak is a confession no one thought to keep. And some houses, like this one, wait for company to turn remembering into appetite.

Their lights spread farther now, touching walls and corners. The foyer opened out into a space larger than any of them had expected. Once-grand, now sagging, it still held the shape of permanence, even as rot crept through its seams.

A staircase curved up into the dark, the runner collapsed into a ribbony heap. Its rail bore carvings of curling leaves and vines, hand-wrought and nearly devoured by dust. Overhead, a chandelier drooped from a chain, its crystal pendants dimmed to gray with grime. When Jade’s beam struck it, a scatter of dull sparks leapt, a memory of brilliance that only emphasized how far the room had fallen.

“Jesus,” Marcus muttered. “Whole place looks like it’s waiting to collapse.”

“Wouldn’t take much,” Naomi said, as she tilted her phone up for a better look. She’d never admit it, but her lips parted with a kind of reluctant awe.

Jade, striding ahead, lifted her light toward a cluster of portraits that loomed from the wall opposite the stairs. Frames leaned askew, canvases dulled with age. The faces on them blurred in dust, yet their eyes—always the eyes—caught the light. Unblinking, oil-dark, they stared back.

“Well, hello, ancestors,” Jade said. She gave a half bow and laughed at her own performance. The laugh rang too loud, bouncing against the walls until it didn’t sound like hers at all. Then, from somewhere deeper, an echo rose—a breath too late, pared down to half a greeting:... lo.

Portraits are like mirrors with opinions. And these, for all their dimness, had very strong ones.

Marcus lingered at the edge of the light, gaze flicking over the painted faces but never settling. He raised the flask again, though he didn’t drink this time. Instead he pressed it against his lips as if the cold metal might ground him. “I think one of them just blinked,” he said, joking, but his voice cracked faintly on the last word.

“Paranoid much?” Jade shot back.

Clara found herself staring, unable to stop. The brushstrokes had loosened over time, but the effect was uncanny: an old man’s mouth seemed fixed on the edge of speech, a woman’s half-smile never settling between kindness and cruelty. Their colors had faded into a palette of shadowed browns, yet the eyes clung sharp and alive. She felt them measure her, strip her down to her pulse. They know me. They know I’m afraid.