The last bulb flickered the moment we stepped over the threshold.
It was still daylight, barely—but inside Laurel House, light didn't last long. It died fast, like breath against glass. Mom tried the switch. Nothing. The realtor laughed nervously and said something about "old wiring" and how the place had "charm."
Charm.
That was one word for it.
I had others.
---
Laurel House was three stories tall and somehow managed to look like it was collapsing in every direction at once. The walls bowed. The attic window blinked—or maybe that was just my imagination. The trees hung low around it, almost protectively, as if shielding the outside world from what it had become.
The floors creaked even when no one moved.
And the silence was the kind that waited.
Mom said we needed this. A fresh start. Since Dad's disappearance. Since the last city failed us. Since the money ran out.
She said the inheritance from Aunt Miriam would help, and Laurel House, "despite its reputation," was now ours.
---
The electricity came on that night around 7:14 PM. I remember the exact minute because the ceiling light in my room buzzed like a wasp nest, then snapped on like it had been watching me all along.
That was the first time I heard it.
The click.
Then the counting.
Thirteen soft ticks. Like fingernails. Then… nothing.
I checked the hallway.
Dark.
The kind of dark that presses against your chest. Not absence-of-light dark—living dark.
When I stepped into it, my skin crawled like something had just passed through me.
The hallway bulb turned on by itself.
I didn't sleep that night.
---
The next morning, Mom was already in the kitchen. The toaster was broken, the coffee machine wouldn't brew, and she said the microwave clock reset itself to 1:13 AM every time she blinked.
The fridge light still worked, though.
"See?" she said, trying to sound normal. "We're already getting settled."
I didn't mention the sound.
The whisper beneath the stairs.
The click-click-click.
Thirteen times.
---
The first rule came from the realtor's daughter. A girl named June who had stopped by to "welcome us" and stayed too long. She was maybe eleven, maybe fifty. One of those kids who seemed to know things they shouldn't.
She refused to step past the porch.
"Every room has a timer," she whispered, eyes locked on the hallway behind me.
I tilted my head.
"A timer for what?"
She didn't answer.
She just pointed to the ceiling and said, "Don't let the dark hit thirteen."
Then she walked away.
---
That night, I tested it.
I turned off the hallway light.
I stood at the threshold.
I counted aloud:
"One… two… three…"
At twelve, something shifted in the shadows.
Something leaned forward, not physically—but like a presence had gotten curious. Close.
At thirteen, I swear I saw a smile.
Teeth that didn't belong to anything human.
The bulb snapped back on with a violent buzz.
I didn't scream.
But I didn't turn off the lights again.
---
The rest of the house had its own rhythm.
The dining room chandelier dimmed at 1:13 AM.
The second floor bathroom flickered for exactly 13 seconds at 3:33 AM.
The attic light never turned on at all.
We didn't go up there.
Mom taped the door shut after the first night. Said she heard something moving up there. Like strings being pulled. Like… a marionette without a puppeteer.
She didn't want to talk about it after that.
Neither did I.
---
The worst was the mirror in the hallway.
It didn't show me.
Not really.
It showed someone who looked like me, moved like me—but didn't blink when I blinked.
When I asked Mom why we couldn't take it down, she said, "That mirror was in the will. It stays."
So I started covering it with a blanket.
But every morning, the blanket was folded on the floor.
And the mirror… was warm.
Like someone had pressed their face against it from the other side.
---
We lasted five days before something touched us.
Literally.
I was brushing my teeth. Lights on. Door open.
Then the bulb popped.
I froze. Counted. One. Two.
By six, the hair on my arms stood up.
By nine, my reflection in the broken mirror began to turn—slowly—as if it heard something I didn't.
At twelve, I felt a hand slide across my back.
At thirteen, I screamed.
The light came back on.
The mirror cracked.
My reflection smiled.
I did not.
---
We tried to leave on the seventh day.
Car wouldn't start.
Phones wouldn't work.
The sky didn't get brighter.
We weren't just in a house.
We were in a ritual.
A house that wasn't haunted by ghosts.
It was haunted by rules.
And someone—or something—was enforcing them.
The countdown. The silence. The dark.
Laurel House was a stage.
And every room was waiting for us to hit our cue.
---
The rules weren't meant to protect us.
They were written to train us.
To prepare us.
For what, I didn't know.
But the attic door creaked open that night on its own.
The bulb overhead flickered once.
Then died.
I counted thirteen heartbeats in the dark.
And something stepped down.