The whispers behind the door. The old farmhouse had been abandoned for decades. Yet, every night at 3:12 a.m., someone lit a candle in the attic window. Elias saw it during his night shifts. A single trembling flame in a place where no electricity had worked since the fire of 74. People in the village warned him, “Dash, don’t go near that house. It remembers.

” But Elias was stubborn, and curiosity has a way of dragging even the sest person toward darkness. One night, he finally approached the house. The porch groaned under his weight, like something waking from sleep. A bitter cold seeped through the wooden walls as though the house exhaled against him. Inside, the air smelled of soot and damp earth.

 The candle light flickered from the top of the stairs, swaying gently as if someone unseen held it. “Hello,” he called out. Silence answered. Then, faintly a whisper followed. It wasn’t a voice, but the soft scratch of fingernails against the walls coming from behind the attic door. He stepped closer.

 The whispering grew louder, more frantic. The door pulsed, breathing in and out as if something pressed against it from the other side. When he touched the handle, it burned his palm. He jerked back, but the door slowly opened on its own. Inside the attic, the candle floated in the center of the room, untouched by any hand.

 Beneath it lay a charred circle on the floor, and something crouched at its center. Elias saw only its back at first, impossibly thin, skin stretched tight, ribs protruding like broken branches. They turned. Its face was a melted memory of a human one. Features slumped and dripping like wax. But the eyes, those eyes were untouched, bright. A child’s eyes. We’ve been waiting.

 It whispered with a voice that wasn’t one. The house remembers. Now you must too. The attic door slammed shut behind him. The candle went out and the whispers began again. Elias froze in the darkness. The whispers gathered around him like cold invisible hands brushing against his ears, his neck, his spine. They weren’t words at first, only broken breaths, gasps, and the rustle of something crawling just out of reach.

Then a voice clearer than the rest spoke behind him. Do you hear them two? Elias swung around, but there was nothing, only the shape in the center of the attic, the thing with the stolen child eyes, rising slowly to its full height. Its joints cracked with each movement, bending the wrong way, reshaping itself as if trying to remember how a human body should work.

 The whispers grew louder. They’re the ones who stayed here, the creature said. The ones who tried to leave the fire. Elias felt the floor tremble. Ash began to drift from the rafters like snow. The house groaned again, long low, and almost grieving. The fire didn’t kill them. It continued. The house kept them.

 It doesn’t let go of what it loves. A hand, small, brittle, and covered in blackened soot, slid out from under an old wardrobe. Then another, then a face pale with patches of charred skin dragging itself forward. More shapes crawl from the corners from behind rotten trunks. From beneath loose floorboards, silent smokestained figures with hollow eye sockets.

 Elias stumbled back, but the door behind him refused to open. It would twisting like muscle under his touch. They remember you, the creature said. You came to watch the fire that night. No, Elias Gisbirth. But a memory he had buried long ago clawed its way back. He had been a child standing outside the burning house with the others, watching the flames swallow everything, watching the shadows scream in the windows.

 You didn’t help us, the creature said, its voice now layered with a chorus of the dead. So, we will help you remember. The floor split open beneath Elias’s feet. A wave of heat surged upward, the breath of the fire that had never died. He dropped to his knees, palms burning against the wood that pulsed with old flames. The crawling figures surrounded him, their hands cold as ice, sharp as bone, grabbed his arms, his shoulders, dragging him toward the growing crack in the floor.

 From below came the smell of smoke and something sweeter, burning flesh. He screamed, but the sound bent in the air, swallowed by the house that inhaled deeply, hungrily. The child-faced creature leaned close, its waxy features trembling now. It whispered, “You will stay with us, and every night at 3:12, you will light the candle because the house must remember.

” Elias clawed at the floorboards as he was pulled into the fiery dark. The attic door flung open at last, not to let him escape, but to welcome the next visitor. And far below, in the depths of the house’s burning heart. Another candle flickered to life. Elias did not fall into flames. He fell through memory.

 The darkness beneath the attic swallowed him whole, but instead of heat, there was a suffocating cold. Cold like the world before scream. cold like breath held too long. He crashed onto a soft surface. Something that shifted beneath him like damp soil. When he opened his eyes, the darkness throbbed with a dull red glow, as if the walls themselves had veins.

 Whispers pulsed everywhere. At first, they came from distant corners, but slowly they began to shape themselves into words. His name spoken by dozens of voices he had never heard but somehow knew. A figure stood ahead of him. Not the creature with a melting face. This one was taller, straightbacked, wearing a long coat burned at the edges.

 Where its face should have been was nothing but a sheet of blackened wood like a scorched mask fused to a skull. Welcome back, it said, voice crackling like embers. Elias staggered to his feet. Where am I? The masked figure stepped closer. In the place the house keeps its truth. Red fissurers zigzagged across the walls, glowing brighter with each whisper.

 As Elias watched, the space around him warped, stretching, shrinking, breathing. The floor rose in places as if something underneath pressed upward. You watched the fire, the figure said. You stood with the villagers and did nothing. I was a child. Elias choked. I couldn’t. You remembered wrong. The figure lifted a charred hand. Kmet.

 The walls dissolved into smoke. Suddenly, Elias stood outside the old farmhouse again. Only was no ruin, but whole, alive, windows glowing with warm orange light. Snow drifted gently around him. He heard a child’s voice beside him. His own. Why don’t they come out? Young Elias asked, eyes wide. Adults stood behind the boy, whispering, trembling.

No one moved to help. No one dared. Then something happened that Elias had forgotten or forced away. The house laughed. A deep guttural rumble like with snapping under pressure. Flames rose higher, licking the night sky. Shadows crawled inside the windows, hands beating desperately against glass. But the adults didn’t hear the laughter.

Only Elias did, and instead of fear, the child version of him stepped closer, fascinated. “You watched us burn,” said a voice behind him. Elias turned slowly. The child-faced creature from the attic stood by the burning house, its eyes glowing brighter, reflecting flames that were not truly flames anymore.

 “You didn’t look away,” it whispered. The memory dissolved, melting like wax, and Elias found himself back in a red veined chamber beneath the attic. The masked figure stood inches from him now. “The house chose you that night,” it said, “because you heard it. You felt it. I don’t want this,” Elias said, backing away. His breath came out in frost.

 “It doesn’t matter what you want,” the figure replied. The house decided long ago. The floor behind Elias split open, revealing a winding staircase descending endlessly. At the bottom, faint lights flickered. Hundreds of candles trembling in unison like a beating heart. You will join the others,” the figure said.

“Those who keep the flame alive. Those who remember.” Shadowy hands began crawling up the stairs toward him. Burned hands, frostbitten hands, child-sized hands, old hands, all reaching, grasping. Elias turned to run, but the staircase shifted under him, twisting like a serpent, pulling him downward.

 As he tumbled, the whispers grew deafening. One day, someone else will see the attic candle, and you’ll be the one holding it. The last thing he heard before the darkness closed completely was the masked figure’s voice. Soft and final. Welcome home.