The door was gone!
Where it had once stood, a simple wooden door, worn but familiar, now loomed a cold, solid brick wall. The shift was instant, unnatural. Elias staggered backward, breath caught in his throat, eyes wide. He couldn't understand what he had seen: one moment, a wooden door, and the next, it had vanished without a trace.
Questions swirled in his mind like dark shadows. His hand trembled as it reached out and pressed against the rough surface of the wall. It was real, solid, unmistakably brick. Yet somehow, it had replaced the door without any explanation.
Desperate, Elias pushed against the wall, hoping it might give way like an illusion. But it held firm, as if protected by an unseen force. The silence that followed offered no answers, only deepening the mystery.
Something was very wrong!
His breath came in short, uneven gasps. He touched the wall again, harder this time, as if brute force might crack the illusion.
"This isn't right," he whispered. Not just the wall. The air felt wrong. Thicker. Like it was watching him.
Then he remembered.
'House fourteen on block four is an empty nest. There's no food there. It would be best to just stay out. Don't waste your time.'
'House fourteen on block four is an empty nest.'
'It would be best to just stay out.'
It was a warning, all along, it had been a warning.
Elias's hands dropped to his sides as the truth slowly sank in. The mention of house fourteen on the fourth block was far from a casual remark. In a city sprawling with millions of houses, only this one had been singled out, its address echoing with a chilling command:
Stay out.
The warning had been stated in plain sight. How had he failed to see it? For a world-renowned prodigy, trained to notice even the smallest detail, missing such a blatant message was almost unthinkable.
A cold shudder ran through him as the reality of his oversight dawned. That one house, designated so deliberately among countless others, now seemed to pulse with a sinister purpose. It wasn't merely a number or an address, it was a signal, a marked beacon, that hinted at hidden dangers lurking just beyond the ordinary.
The warning couldn't have been any clearer.
'House fourteen.'
He was in house fourteen. The metal plaque hanging on the door had read fourteen. He had seen it, but in his haste, he didn't attribute the sense of familiarity he felt upon seeing it, to the diary.
His stomach churned.
He paused, his mind racing as he began to connect the fragments he had once dismissed.
What else did he not pay attention to?
The faint smell of lemon tea lingering at the entrance…
That wasn't supposed to be there!
'House fourteen on block four is an empty nest. There's no food there. It would be best to just stay out. Don't waste your time.'
'There's no food there. It would be best to just stay out. Don't waste your time.'
'There's no food there.'
'No food'
'No food there. Stay out.' The words looped. No food. No food. Empty. He had walked into emptiness. Walked into, what, a trap?'
Rumble!
Elias slowly turned to face the hallway that led away from the solid wall that had once been a door. The hallway stretched into darkness, its length seemingly infinite, swallowed by a thick, unnatural gloom. Floorboards disappeared into black, and shadows clung to the walls like mold. The silence was too complete, as if sound itself had fled.
This house was sinister!
Elias shook his head repeatedly.
'This doesn't make sense.'
The words echoed in his mind like a mantra, useless, but oddly comforting. Despite being a certified historian, he held no belief in the supernatural. He dismissed texts of supernatural events as ramblings of an ignorant civilization. Their beliefs were merely incompetent explanations to what their ancient minds failed to understand. Like the rising and setting of the sun, natural disasters, comets, eclipse and cloud formations. Those weren't caused by some supernatural factors.
'Perhaps I was hallucinating'
Elias oddly began to suspect that he had been hallucinating.
'Hallucinations. That's the most rational explanation. Sensory misfires under stress. Sleep deprivation.'
Elias nodded repeatedly. That was it. There was no other explanation.
'A shadow of immense evil,….how childish!'
Disappearing doors?
'I might have to start considering screenplay as a possible career choice. I seem to have a talent in that field'
Elias chuckled to himself, shaking his head repeatedly. He had truly outdone himself this time. For his mind to conjure up such detailed hallucinations, his assistant had been right all along. He needed rest, and by the looks of it, lots of rest.
Looking up, Elias blinked hard. The hallway, the one that had stretched into shadows just moments before, had transformed.
Sunlight now poured in through tall windows, golden and gentle, warming the polished floorboards beneath his feet. Dust floated lazily in the air, each mote twirling as if in no rush to settle. The scent of lemon cleaner, or maybe just fresh air, wafted past, clean and oddly nostalgic.
The floor creaked softly underfoot, not in menace, but like a familiar house sighing in the morning. White curtains swayed in a light breeze, the kind that made you pause… made you trust.
Family photos lined the walls, slightly crooked. Harmless.
It felt ordinary. Comforting.
Too comforting.
"Hahaha… HAHAHA!"
Elias let out a sharp burst of laughter, the sound echoing down the hallway like a release valve snapping open. Relief washed over him, warm and sudden, loosening every tight knot in his chest. Just to be sure, he patted down his coat pockets—empty. No journal. Nothing.
He grinned to himself, almost dizzy.
'I've really done it this time. Fooled even my own mind.'
As his laughter faded, the hallway stayed still. But somewhere, faint and low, came a sound. A creak. A breath. Or was it just his imagination again?
'Hallucinations,' he muttered again, clinging to the word like a lifeline. Yet, somewhere deep inside, something squirmed. What if he hadn't imagined it?
What if…