Barrow Street, Autumn, 1956

The house was quiet now. The scratching had stopped.

Professor Adrian Thorne sat at the attic desk, a candle flickering at his side, its flame casting thin, uneasy shadows along the sloped ceiling. His once-proud handwriting had grown more erratic, smudged with ink and sweat. In front of him, on a faded velvet cloth, sat the object that had stolen his sleep.

A figurine — no taller than a man’s hand, carved from something darker than ebony. Humanoid in shape, but its face was blank. Two outstretched hands curved upward in a gesture both pleading and commanding.

It had not always looked this way.

He used to think it was a relic. A remnant of folklore and superstition. A curiosity.

But it had changed. The first time he tried to sell it, he’d awoken to find it beside his bed. When he buried it in the woods, it appeared on his doorstep the next morning. Now, after weeks of isolation and whispers in dead languages, Thorne no longer doubted what he’d once called madness.

It was watching.

They had warned him — the villagers in Silvania. The old woman with the cataract eyes. “It chooses. And once it chooses, it protects. Until you betray it.”

He had tried. God help him, he had tried to let it go. But it would not be discarded. It had chosen him, and now it would keep him. Forever, if it must.

Downstairs, the grandfather clock chimed three times. Wind moaned through the floorboards. The candle fluttered and died.

Darkness.

And then: footsteps.

Not on the stairs. Inside the attic.

He turned, heart hammering.

But he was alone.

The figurine had moved. Closer now. Its hands no longer open — but curled, slowly closing into fists.

The last thing Professor Thorne wrote, in jagged lines across the bottom of the journal page, was this:

“It has no eyes. But it sees. It has no mouth. But it speaks. I should never have brought it home.”

The house wasn’t perfect, but it was theirs.

Emma stood in the overgrown front yard, hands on hips, squinting up at the crooked gable of the old Victorian. A hundred years of weather had peeled its paint like old wallpaper. The porch creaked beneath every step. But the price had been right—suspiciously right—and they were desperate for a place of their own.

Caleb emerged from the U-Haul, carrying a battered box labeled Office Books. He wore the satisfied grin of someone who believed they’d gotten a deal. “Still think it’s haunted?” he asked, elbowing her gently.

Emma smirked. “Not haunted. Just… seasoned.”

She was a librarian at the university downtown; Caleb taught high school history. Both were lovers of old things — stories, artifacts, dusty corners of time most people forgot. They were also realists. Emma had crunched the numbers until the calculator gave up, and Caleb had researched the town’s property tax history like it was a graduate thesis.

And still, this house had been the best — or only — option.

They weren’t looking for magic. Just space. A place to breathe, to build something permanent after years of apartment hopping and tight budgets. A place that smelled like wood and wallpaper glue. A place that creaked when you walked through it at night.

But already, the house felt like it was listening. Every groan of the stairs, every draft through the cracked windowpanes, whispered secrets just out of reach.

“Do we unpack,” Caleb asked, “or explore?”

Emma glanced toward the attic window. A sliver of sunlight broke through the dusty glass.

“Explore,” she said.