Fractured Trust

Dawn seeped through the mansion's grimy windows, staining the parlor in watery gray light. Clara stirred, her neck stiff from sleeping on the floor. The sofa loomed above her, its torn fabric hanging like flayed skin. She blinked, disoriented, before registering the silence.

"Sarid?"

No answer. The room felt hollow, the air thick with the sour tang of mildew. Clara sat up, her jacket slipping from her shoulders. The dead flashlight lay beside her, the music box still wedged beneath the cushion where Sarid had hidden it. But Sarid was gone.

Her pulse quickened. "Sarid!"

Only the house replied—a low, creaking groan, as if stretching awake. Clara scrambled to her feet, her gaze snagging on the floor. Muddy footprints, still damp, trailed from the sofa to the parlor door. They were too large to belong to the child whose laughter had haunted the halls.

Sarid's boots.

Clara followed the prints, her socked feet silent against the floorboards. The trail wound through the foyer, past the leering portrait, and down a narrow corridor she hadn't noticed before. The walls here were papered in faded crimson, peeling to reveal blackened plaster beneath. The air grew colder, sharper, as if the house were holding its breath.

At the corridor's end stood a heavy oak door, its surface scarred with deep gouges. The footprints stopped here. A brass plaque read Library, though the letters were tarnished to near illegibility. The door was slightly ajar, a sliver of darkness beckoning.

Clara pushed it open.

The library was a tomb. Towering bookshelves sagged under the weight of moldering volumes, their spines cracked and titles eaten by time. A shredded tapestry hung askew, depicting a hunting scene gone grotesque—stag and hounds with human eyes. In the room's center stood a massive oak desk, its surface buried beneath scattered papers and a shattered oil lamp.

And there, in the thin morning light, pages fluttered.

Not from the shelves.

From the floor.

Torn journal pages drifted in a slow, deliberate circle, stirred by a breeze Clara couldn't feel. She knelt, her fingers trembling as she snatched one from the air. The ink was faded, the handwriting frantic, slanting off the page:

It speaks in their voices. It wears their faces. Do not trust what you see. Do not trust—

The rest was illegible. Another page skimmed her ankle:

—prefers the doubters. Feeds on their fear. The more you question, the hungrier it grows—

Clara stood, gathering pages as they swirled around her. Fragments of lives unraveled in her hands:

Elliot, my husband, swore he didn't move the knives. But I found them under our bed, dripping—

—child's laughter in the walls. Thomas insists it's rats, but I hear her. My Lila. My Lila who died in the fire—

—Elias warned me, but I didn't listen. Now the walls are bleeding. It wants a successor. It wants—

"Clara?"

She whirled. Sarid stood in the doorway, his shirt smudged with dirt, his eyes bloodshot. A shovel leaned against the wall behind him.

"Where were you?" she demanded.

He frowned, stepping inside. "Looking for a way out. The storm washed out the front path. I found a toolshed—"

"You left me alone?"

"You were asleep." His tone softened. "I didn't want to wake you."

Clara thrust the journal pages at him. "Read this."

Sarid skimmed them, his jaw tightening. "Old ramblings. People trapped here, scared out of their minds. It doesn't mean—"

"It prefers the doubters, Sarid." Her voice rose. "It's targeting you. Can't you see that?"

He dropped the pages. "You're letting this place get inside your head. There's no 'it.' Just rot and bad memories."

A cold draft snuffed the sliver of sunlight. Shadows pooled at the edges of the room. Clara gripped the desk to steady herself. "Then explain the music box. The handprint. The footprints leading here—"

"Footprints?" Sarid glanced down at his clean boots. "What footprints?"

Clara froze. The mud trail had vanished. The floorboards were bone-dry.

Sarid reached for her. "Clara—"

She recoiled. "Don't."

His hand fell. For a heartbeat, hurt flickered across his face. Then it hardened. "You'd rather trust the scribbles of dead strangers than me?"

The pages rustled at their feet.

Yes, Clara thought.

But before she could speak, the door slammed shut.

Sarid lunged for it, wrenching the handle. "It's stuck again."

"Or locked," Clara whispered.

The temperature plummeted. Frost spiderwebbed across the bookshelves. From the shadows beneath the desk, a low, wet gurgle rose—a sound that was almost a word.

"Doubt…"

Sarid paled. "Did you hear—"

The oil lamp flared to life on the desk, flames licking at air. In its glow, the journal pages rearranged themselves, forming a single phrase in dozens of hands:

HE WILL DEVOUR YOU

Sarid staggered back. "What the hell—"

The lamp exploded.

Fire surged across the desk, papers curling to ash. Clara screamed, yanking Sarid toward the door. It flew open, releasing them into the hall. They ran, smoke chasing their heels, until they collapsed in the foyer.

The library door hung innocently ajar behind them. No smoke. No fire.

Sarid gripped Clara's shoulders, his breath ragged. "Okay. Okay, I believe you."

But his eyes darted to the portrait above the fireplace—to the man whose gaze now gleamed with triumph.