“Go away,” the house seems to whisper. “We don’t want you here.” It's an old Victorian, with chipped white trim and a leaning cupola, leering from it’s one cracked, darkened eye. The creaking movement of the rotted porch swing and the leaning, boarded up windows only adds to the unsettling effect. It would seem as though nothing was amiss, that it was just another boarded up house in a boarded up town, a veritable ghost town, reduced to nothing, nowhere. But this house is hiding a dark secret, one darker even than shadows of it’s past. Haunted? Maybe not, but something lurks around these grounds, something old, something dark. Waiting in the shadows, steeping in vengeance and sorrow. It is waiting.

The door creaks open. The darkness beckons from beyond the porch. Groans of shifting timbers created an erie symphony of sadness and gloom. Entering, you look around. The twilight makes shadows on the peeling walls. Every step creates a creaking screech, akin to that of screaming souls. You see a twisting staircase from the entryway. All the other doors are blocked, yawning chasms barely blocked off by the thin timbers nailed haphazardly across the gaps. You make your way across the hall, seeing as you do so one door no longer blocked, the smashed 2 by 4s hanging limply by their rusty nails. Stairs stretch down into nothing. Nothing is seen, nothing is heard. The stair flex as you walk up them, on the brink of breaking. Cobwebs lurk in darkened corners.

At the top of the stairs you see a hallway, stretching down the hall towards another stairway, this one leading to the cupola. Looking into open doors as you walk down the hall, you see bedrooms torn to shreds, bedsprings protruding through the mattresses like swords through armor. Mirrors are shattered, windows broken. The next room is a bathroom, tiles chipped and stained with red. Next an office, papers strewn about the floor, drawers pulled and smashed, glass vials shattered on the desk. You reach the stairs. Climbing, dread clawing at your throat like a rabid animal, stair after stair. You reach the top.

A perfect room. Perfectly made bed, with newly fluffed pillows. Shiny mirror, polished tile sink. The only thing out of place in this static tableau of perfection is the cracked window looking onto the dead weeds of the backyard. It all comes into place. You realize what has caused this carnage, and this perfect room. The dread burst free, the terrified animals finding your legs. Because this house was never meant to be disturbed. You run. Past the office, the bloodstained bathroom, the terrorized room. Wood snaps as you fly down the master staircase. The door is shut. The handle rattles as the fight to free yourself from this horror, this madhouse. No one is there. A ghost house in a ghost town. The rest of the city has moved on. A shadow moves in the doorways nearby the stairs, coming up from the basement. For once, the house is silent. You sprint for the stairs once again, again past the the empty rooms, smashed to pieces. Only now you realized they're not empty. Limp shapes under the blankets. Vacant stares in the bathroom mirror. You're not the first. You hear it behind you, tearing up the stairs, crashing through the rooms once again. You make it up into the cupola. Into the perfect room.

You recall the story of hansel and gretel, of the perfect candy house, the perfect candy room. You notice imperfections never seen before: dark splotches in the carpet, scratches on the walls. You realize you can't erase the marks of death entirely. Then your time for thinking is over. A shadow makes its way up the wall. The shape emerges. Hunched low, the dark, feral form of a primal animal. A primal beast. You scream. The stairs stop creaking.