They're going to say I hallucinated it. That it was a dream. That I misremembered or made it up, or that grief does things to a person.
Let them say what they want.
But I know what I found.
And I know what I heard behind the door.
It was her voice.
It was my sister.
And she's been dead for fourteen years.
• •
I didn't return to my childhood home for the funeral. Not when my mother passed, not even when my father followed three months later. The place made my skin crawl. There was always something off about it—too quiet, too still, as if the house itself was holding its breath.
But when my brother called and told me they were going to tear it down—sell the land, burn the structure—I felt something twist in my stomach. Guilt, maybe. Or obligation. So I agreed to go back. Just for one night.
To pack what I wanted. To say goodbye. To see the room.
I thought I'd imagined the room.
• •
We weren't allowed in the basement as kids.
The door was always locked. Always. Even after my sister vanished—no, especially after that.
"Old foundation's dangerous," my father would say. "Don't go poking where you don't belong."
When you're young, you believe things like that. You believe that if a door is locked, there's a reason. That if someone disappears, it's because they left. That your parents love you. That houses aren't hungry.
I don't believe any of that anymore.
Especially not about the house.
• •
I found the key inside a hollow book.
It was tucked in a row of Bibles. My father never read scripture. Not once. But there were nine Bibles, identical, pristine, and one of them was heavier than the rest.
The key was old. Iron. Cold even after sitting in the sunlit room for hours.
The lock clicked easily.
The door didn't creak.
It sighed.
And I went down.
• •
The stairs were wrong.
Too steep. Too narrow. Too many. I counted twenty going down. Then twenty more. Then thirty-three. Then forty-two. When I looked up, the door was gone.
No, not gone.
Farther.
Like the ceiling had stretched upward.
The air was warm.
Not musty. Not mildewed.
Breathing.
The walls pulsed, faintly.
I should have turned back.
But I heard her.
I swear to God—I heard Eloise. Humming.
The song she always sang when she braided my hair.
"I had a little bird, its name was Enza…"
Her voice was coming from behind a door at the bottom.
A door that shouldn't have been there.
Because the basement was unfinished.
Because there wasn't a basement.
Not anymore.
• •
The door had no knob.
Only a handle.
Old. Worn. Blackened with age.
When I touched it, the humming stopped.
In its place came something worse.
Her whisper.
"Are you finally coming to let me out?"
I didn't move. I couldn't.
My heart was jackhammering. My mouth tasted like copper. My fingers were numb.
She spoke again.
"Mom said you would."
My vision swam.
Because she didn't sound like a memory.
She sounded alive.
• •
When she vanished, they told me she ran away.
That she'd gone out the back door while we were sleeping and never came back.
But I remember that night.
I remember her standing in the hallway. Her hand on my doorframe. Her eyes wide and wet.
"I found a new room," she'd whispered. "It has a light that sings."
She said it was under the house.
She said it was calling her.
I rolled over and fell asleep.
She was gone the next morning.
And now, here I was, outside a door that hummed like a throat preparing to sing.
And Eloise was on the other side.
• •
I opened it.
Because what else would I do?
Because if there was any chance—any chance—that my sister had been here all this time…
The door groaned.
The room was—
No.
There was no room.
Just blackness.
Endless, shifting black, like fog underwater. The walls weren't walls. They were ribs. Huge, pulsing ribs that extended into the dark.
And there, crouched at the far end, was her.
Naked. Thin. Knees drawn to her chest. Hair knotted like string. Face tilted up.
She smiled.
Her teeth were wrong.
Not sharp. Not monstrous. Just too many.
And her eyes—
Not black. Not red.
Just hopeful.
Like she'd been waiting so, so long.
"I saved you a place," she whispered.
I took a step back.
She took a step forward.
I slammed the door.
I ran up the stairs—forty-two, thirty-three, twenty, I don't remember.
The hallway was bright.
The key was gone.
And when I checked the basement door…
It was sealed.
Masoned over.
As if it had never been there at all.
• •
That was six days ago.
I haven't slept.
Not because I'm afraid.
Because I hear her.
At night.
In the wall behind my bed.
Scratching.
Humming.
Asking why I left her again.