The photograph fell from Lane's numb fingers, fluttering to the carpet like a poisoned leaf. The words scorched themselves onto her retinas. I KNOW YOUR SECRET. It had been standing right behind her. Reading over her shoulder. Watching her every move. The candle, her tiny bastion of light, had not kept it away. It had simply provided a better view.
A dry, rustling laughter echoed through the study, not from any one place, but from the walls themselves, from the shelves of books, from the very air. It was the sound of old leaves skittering across pavement, a sound devoid of joy, full of a ancient, mocking malice.
The thing was not just playing with her. It was cataloging her. The journal, her uncle's desperate testament, was now a weapon in its hands. It knew she was looking for the food. It knew about the peaches.
The hook in her ribs, her familial compulsion, twisted into something new: a raw, desperate need to defy him. To prove Elias wrong. The thing could know her secret, but it couldn't have the victory. She would find his stash. She would take what was hers.
The laughter faded, replaced by a new sound. A slow, dripping noise. Plink. Plink. Plink. It came from the hallway. It sounded like water, but she knew it wasn't. The journal had said the taps ran black and tasted of soil.
She ignored it. She turned her back on the open drawer, on the dead flower and the terrifying photograph, and dropped to her hands and knees. The loose brick. It had to be here. She ran her palms over the base of the bookshelves, where the dark wood met the floorboards. She pressed, she prodded, she clawed at the seams.
Plink. Plink. Plink. The dripping was closer now, just outside the archway. A coppery tang began to mix with the smell of violets and dust.
Her fingers caught on a sharp edge. A splinter dug into her skin, a bright pinprick of pain. She ignored it, focusing on the spot. One of the floorboards, tucked tight against the bottom of a bookshelf, was shorter than the others. Its end was rough, unfinished. She wedged her fingers into the tiny gap and pulled.
With a groan of protest, the short section of board lifted up, hinged on a single, rusted nail. Beneath it was not subfloor, but a hollow space. A hiding place.
And there it was. A single, small can. The paper label was faded, but she could make out the drawing of a sun-yellow peach half. It was real. Elias's secret. Her inheritance.
A wave of emotion—triumph, grief, and a savage joy—washed over her. She grabbed the can. It was cool and solid in her hand. A tangible piece of reality in this nightmare funhouse.
PLINK.
The sound was right behind her. A drop of dark, viscous liquid hit the floorboards beside her knee. It wasn't water. It was thick, almost syrupy, and the color of old blood.
She didn't look up. She scrambled backward, clutching the can to her chest, her other hand grabbing the fireplace poker. She shoved the loose floorboard back into place with her heel.
Another drop fell, then another, forming a slow, rhythmic pattern on the carpet. She followed the trail upward with her eyes.
It was coming from the ceiling. A dark stain had spread across the plaster directly above her, and from its center, a single, fat drop of black fluid gathered and fell. Plink.
It was imitating the peach syrup. It was mocking her find.
Rage, hot and clean, burned away her fear. She stared at the stain on the ceiling. "You can't have it," she whispered, her voice hoarse but steady.
The dripping stopped.
The house seemed to inhale, the silence becoming a vacuum. The candle flame, which had burned steadily, suddenly flared twice its height, burning a blinding, actinic white before snapping back to normal. In that split second of intense light, she saw them.
Figures.
They were faint, translucent, etched into the air itself like afterimages. A man in old-fashioned suspenders, his face a mask of terror, running past the archway. A woman in a Victorian dress, slumped against a bookshelf, weeping soundlessly. A young boy, no older than ten, hiding under the desk she had just vacated, his hands over his ears.
They were there for a heartbeat, a gallery of anguish, and then the light normalized and they were gone.
The house was showing her its trophies. The previous tenants. The ones who had lost the game.
The vision should have broken her. Instead, it hardened her resolve. She would not become another ghost in its collection.
She needed to open the can. Her eyes scanned the desk, landing on the rusted letter opener she'd seen earlier. She grabbed it. It was crude, but it would work. She positioned the tip against the rim of the can, her hands shaking with a combination of adrenaline and desperate hunger.
A cold wind blew through the study, though there was no source for it. The candle flame guttered wildly, threatening to extinguish. The pages of the open journal flapped like the wings of a panicked bird.
Don't you want a plate? A voice, smooth as oil, spoke from the corner of the room. It was her mother's voice. Perfect. Warm. Concerned. A fork? We have manners in this family, Lane.
Lane squeezed her eyes shut, focusing on the physical sensation of the metal letter opener in her hand. "You're not my mother," she gritted out.
But I can be, the voice purred, now right beside her ear. She felt a cold breath on her neck. I can be whoever you want me to be. Whoever you miss the most. Just look at me.
She kept her eyes shut, her entire body tensed. She drove the letter opener into the can's lid, sawing back and forth. The sound was horrendously loud, a metallic screech that tore through the false silence.
Look at me, Lane. The voice was changing, becoming younger, more vibrant. It was the voice of Mark, her college boyfriend, the one who had died in a car crash senior year. The one she still dreamed about. Lane, baby, look at me. I'm here. I came back for you.
A tear escaped her closed eye, tracing a hot path down her cold cheek. The pain was fresh, expertly applied. It knew all the softest spots.
"You're not him," she whispered, her voice cracking. She sawed harder, the metal grinding.
LOOK AT ME! The voice shattered into a hundred different voices at once—her mother, her father, her childhood best friend, her long-dead dog whining—a cacophony of lost loves and grief that felt like it would split her skull open.
With a final, brutal twist, the lid of the can came free.
The voices cut off.
The wind died.
The candle flame burned steady and calm.
Lane dared to open her eyes. The study was empty. The presence was gone. For now.
She looked down into the can. Two perfect peach halves nestled in thick, clear syrup. The smell was overwhelmingly sweet, a fragrance of summer and life that was utterly alien in this place. Her stomach clenched with a hunger so profound it made her dizzy.
She didn't have a fork. She didn't care. She dipped her fingers into the syrupy liquid, the stickiness a shocking sensation. She pulled out a slippery, soft peach half and brought it to her mouth.
The taste was a revelation. It was the single most delicious thing she had ever eaten. The sweetness exploded on her tongue, a direct assault on the house's diet of dust and fear. She devoured the first peach half in two bites, then fished out the second, sucking the syrup from her fingers. She drank the remaining syrup directly from the can, not wasting a single drop.
It was more than nourishment. It was an act of rebellion. A sacrament of defiance.
As she lowered the empty can, a new sensation bloomed in her chest. It wasn't just fullness. It was warmth. And with the warmth, a clarity she hadn't possessed since crossing the threshold.
The journal had given her the First Rule: It cannot create. It can only imitate.
But the peaches, Elias's secret, had given her the Second Rule, one she understood in her bones now.
It could feed on her fear. But she could feed on its rage. Every act of defiance, every refusal to play its game by its rules, was a spoonful of syrup it could not stomach.
She had taken something it did not want her to have. And it had retreated.
She looked at the empty can, then at the journal. She had a weapon. She had a rulebook.
The game had just changed.