The syrup was a fire in her belly, a thrumming, vital energy that burned away the lingering chill of the thing's presence. For the first time since she'd stepped into this nightmare, Lane felt a sensation other than pure, undiluted terror: she felt anger. It was a clean, sharp blade of it, honed on the memory of her uncle's starvation and the thing's mocking, multi-voiced laughter.
It could imitate. It could frighten. It could show her phantoms and whisper lies. But it could not stop her from taking what was hers. The empty peach can, clutched in her hand, was a trophy. A testament.
The Second Rule: She could feed on its rage.
Its retreat after she'd consumed the peaches wasn't just a pause in the game; it was a concession. She had violated a deeper law of this place. She had introduced an element of self-sufficiency, of independence, and it hated her for it.
The candle flame, now steady, seemed to burn a little brighter. She placed the empty can carefully on the desk, a deliberate act of leaving her mark. Then she picked up Elias's journal again. It was no longer just a history; it was a field guide. She needed to know more. She needed to understand the geography of her prison.
The geometry is wrong, he had written. I walked down the hall to the kitchen for water. I counted 13 doors. On the return, there were 14.
The house was not static. It was a living, shifting entity that reconfigured itself in response to her. The new door, the one that smelled of violets and fresh sawdust, was a reaction. It was building a new trap based on what it was learning about her.
She had to move. Staying in the study, a place it now knew she had fortified, was a mistake. It would be preparing a response. She needed to see the changes for herself. She needed to map the unmappable.
Picking up the candle, she held it aloft, its light a brave, small defiance against the pressing dark. The fireplace poker felt good in her other hand, a solid weight of intention. She was not just hiding anymore. She was exploring.
She stepped through the archway back into the main hall. The air was different. Colder. The smell of violets was gone, replaced by a new, unsettling scent: ozone and hot metal, like after a lightning strike. The hallway itself seemed longer, the far end disappearing into a darkness her candle could not penetrate. The wallpaper had changed again. Here, it was a deep, bloody maroon, patterned with faint, gold lines that seemed to shift and writhe if she looked at them directly.
She began to walk, her footsteps echoing dully. She counted the doors on her right, using the poker as a measuring stick, tapping it lightly against each doorframe as she passed.
One. Two. Three.
The doors were all the same dark wood, all locked.
Four. Five. Six.
The air grew colder with each step. The scent of ozone grew stronger, prickling in her nostrils.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
A sound began to weave itself into the silence. A low, industrial hum, like a massive generator powering up deep within the bowels of the house. The floor beneath her feet began to vibrate faintly.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
She reached the twelfth door. Her hand, trailing along the wall, suddenly met empty space. A junction. But this wasn't the same junction she'd encountered before. This was new. The hallway branched to the right into a narrower, darker corridor. This new passage had no doors. Its walls were made of rough, unfinished stone, slick with moisture. The hum was louder here, emanating from the darkness within.
This was the change. The fourteenth door wasn't a door at all. It was a new wing.
The hook in her ribs tugged her forward, down the stone corridor. The compulsion was back, but this time it felt different. Less like a lure, and more like a challenge. Come and see what I've made for you.
She hesitated at the mouth of the new passage. The air coming from it was frigid and carried a new sound underneath the hum—a rhythmic, metallic clanking, like heavy chains being dragged over rock.
This was a bad idea. This was exactly what it wanted.
But what was the alternative? To retreat to the study and wait for it to come for her? To let it control the board completely? Elias had hidden. He had died.
The Second Rule demanded action. She would feed on its rage. She would invade its new construction.
She stepped into the stone passage. The temperature dropped instantly. Her breath plumed in the candlelight. The walls closed in, the ceiling lowering until she had to duck her head. The clanking grew louder, more regular. CLANK. Drag. CLANK. Drag.
The passage ended abruptly at a heavy, iron door. It was rusted shut, a massive, archaic mechanism with a wheel for a handle. It looked like the door to a submarine or a vault. The industrial hum was deafening here, vibrating through the metal and into her bones. The clanking was coming from just on the other side.
Set into the stone wall beside the door was a small, glass-fronted box. Inside was a single, red button.
It was too obvious. A cartoonish invitation. A big red button in a nightmare was the definition of a trap.
She reached for the wheel handle on the door instead. It was frozen solid, wouldn't budge an inch.
The clanking stopped. The hum continued.
Silence from the other side. It was waiting.
Lane looked at the button. It was the only way forward. It was the only way to see what was on the other side. This was the game. It built the maze and she had to run it.
Taking a deep breath, she slammed her palm down on the red button.
A loud electric buzz shot through the wall. A series of heavy bolts inside the iron door clanged back, one after another. With a great, grinding shriek, the door began to swing inward, releasing a blast of freezing, damp air.
The hum was now a roar. The light from her candle was swallowed by a vast, cavernous space beyond the door. She took a step forward, over the threshold.
She was not in the house anymore.
She stood on a metal gantry, high up in a colossal, underground chamber. The air was thick with steam and the smell of rust and hot oil. Below her, stretching down into impossible depths, was a monstrous, Rube Goldberg-like machine. It was made of grinding gears, pistons slamming up and down, conveyor belts carrying shapes she couldn't discern through the gloom, and networks of pipes that hissed steam. It was a engine of meaningless, insane industry.
And in the center of it all, connected by a web of pulleys and chains, was a cage.
Inside the cage was a figure.
It was a man, emaciated, dressed in rags. He was shackled to the floor of the cage. And he was lifting a massive, black iron weight, again and again, in a relentless, mechanical rhythm. CLANK. He lifted it. Drag. He lowered it. His muscles strained, his body shone with sweat in the hellish glow of furnace lights far below. His face was a mask of utter exhaustion and despair.
He hadn't seen her. He was locked in his eternal, pointless labor.
Lane knew him. She recognized the gaunt features from the one old photograph her family had kept of him.
It was her great-uncle Elias.
The thing hadn't just let him starve. It had kept him. It had built this hellish engine room in the depths of the house and put his soul to work, powering its madness.
This was the ultimate imitation. It had built a prison from her memory of him, from her family's grief, and it had installed the real thing inside.
As she watched, horrified, Elias paused in his lifting. He looked up, his eyes scanning the darkness. They passed over her, unseeing. Then he opened his mouth and spoke, his voice a dry, broken thing that was somehow amplified over the roar of the machine.
"He doesn't like it when we stop," Elias rasped.
Then his eyes focused on her. True recognition flashed in them—a moment of shocking, painful clarity.
"Run," he whispered.
The great machine groaned. Gears ground together. The pistons froze. In the sudden, relative silence, a new sound echoed through the cavernous space.
Shuffle. Drag.
It was on the gantry behind her.