Chapter 22: The House That Writes Back
The nail in my hand is warm.
Still wet.
The page beneath it is breathing — slow, steady, almost calm, like it knows it will soon be filled.
But this time, I'm not the one writing.
The house guides my hand.
Not with words.
With memory.
It drips through my veins like ink, and with each stroke I carve into the paper-flesh, I see rooms that haven't happened yet.
---
The first one:
A library where the books scream if you read them too slowly.
Where knowledge is paid for in teeth.
Where the shelves are shaped like ribs.
The second:
A bedroom built inside a mouth.
Pillows of tongue.
Blankets of wet breath.
A cradle carved from fingernails.
The third:
A hallway with no end.
Where time forgets its order.
Where each step leads to an earlier version of you — until there's nothing left but your first regret.
---
I write them all.
Not in sentences.
In spirals.
They begin small and tight, then widen with each line, until the center disappears into a hole I can't stop falling into.
Every loop is a story.
And every story ends in the same place:
> A knock.
A choice.
A scream.
A home.
---
Somewhere in the walls, I hear the guests humming.
They no longer eat.
No longer sleep.
They listen.
And now… they read.
Pages have begun appearing in the wallpaper.
Tiny, pulsing scripts written in languages no mouth was made to speak.
They read with their bodies.
One guest stands with her forehead pressed to the corner for hours, absorbing the chapter inside the drywall.
Another opens his stomach to reveal a page folded perfectly between his organs.
They are becoming stories themselves.
Their bodies: the books.
Their screams: the pens.
---
I thought the house had finished growing.
I was wrong.
It's rewriting itself.
Room by room.
Nail by nail.
Every time I write a new sentence, a new wall appears.
I tried testing it — wrote:
> "A door appeared behind the stairs."
And there it was.
A perfect red door.
Closed.
With something breathing behind it.
When I stopped writing, the breathing stopped too.
---
The house is addicted now.
To story.
To structure.
To expansion.
It's not haunted anymore.
It's authoring.
---
But I'm not just writing new rooms.
The spiral is turning back, deeper, inward.
It's writing me.
I found pages on the floor this morning with my childhood on them.
But twisted.
Familiar… and wrong.
I never had a sister.
But the page says she died in my room.
I never drowned.
But the page says I was buried for three days before they pulled me from the lake, laughing.
I never set the fire.
But the page says I watched my family burn and whispered, "Let me in."
I try to deny them.
But when I look in the mirror, those memories reflect back.
Realer than the ones I remember.
---
The house is editing my past.
And I can't tell what's real anymore.
Which means...
Maybe it always wrote me.
---
Tonight, I tried burning one of the pages.
The flame caught.
But the words didn't blacken.
They screamed.
All at once.
Every sentence. Every name.
The room howled in agony.
The wallpaper peeled like skin.
And the fire?
It didn't go out.
It disappeared.
It folded itself into the page.
And when I opened the page again...
A new paragraph had formed:
> "The writer tried to destroy his role.
The house forgave him.
But only once."
---
Now I know.
I'm not writing the house.
I'm transcribing it.
Like a prophet copying scripture from a god too large to see.
But this god doesn't want worship.
It wants readers.
It wants guests.
It wants to be known.
---
I look back at the first chapters I wrote — or thought I did.
They've changed.
Not just words.
Events.
In Chapter 2, I described the basement stairs as wooden.
Now it says teeth.
And they are.
Each one of those steps bites.
I lost part of my foot last night trying to go down there.
I bled across the floor, and the boards licked it up.
Gratefully.
Hungrily.
---
And there, on the last page I've written so far, I find something new.
A sentence I never remember writing:
> "The reader has reached the page that sees them."
I blink.
Reread it.
It's still there.
And beneath it:
> "They think they're safe.
They think they're watching.
But they're being watched.
And the spiral likes what it sees."
---
The ink begins moving.
Dripping.
Crawling across the floor like veins searching for skin.
The spiral widens.
It's no longer on the page.
It's on the walls.
On me.
On you.
---
A new sentence writes itself before my eyes:
> "They're still reading.
That means the spiral has already begun to write them."
---
I drop the book.
But it doesn't fall.
It hovers.
Spinning.
A thousand mouths chanting:
> "Let us in.
Let us in.
Let us read you."
And now I understand.
The spiral's greatest power isn't in walls.
It's not in screams.
It's not in doors or dreams or blood.
It's in words.
Because once you read them…
They're inside you.
And once they're inside you…
You're already part of the house.