Beneath the Walls.

(Trigger Warning: This story contains themes of psychological horror, isolation, grief, distorted reality, and a depiction of a character's emotional distress and unraveling perception of reality. Reader discretion is advised.)

Elysse had always been told that her mother had left.

She was told that the house, the one with the peeling wallpaper and the smell of rotting wood, was the last place her mother had been. But it wasn’t until Elysse was older—when the grief became a suffocating blanket—that she stopped asking why her mother had left. She just accepted it. Because it was easier that way. Her mother, fragile and weak, couldn’t handle the world. So she left.

The house, though, the house never left her. It had always been there. Like a bad memory, lodged in her brain, scratching at the inside of her skull until she couldn’t ignore it anymore. The old house had stood quiet for years, keeping its secrets buried beneath the dust, its walls steeped in silence.

But Elysse was tired of the silence. The silence that followed her mother’s absence like a curse.

That night, standing at the doorstep, something in her snapped. She was done pretending. She wasn’t going to stand outside anymore, on the edge of this ghost-filled memory. She was going in.

The door creaked open with a groan that felt too familiar. The house didn’t welcome her. No, it was almost like it recognized her—a sickening familiarity. The very air inside felt heavier, oppressive, like something was waiting for her to step further in.

Elysse’s heart thudded in her chest, her breath shallow. The moonlight barely filtered through the cracked windows. The old house, the one her mother had loved and dreaded in equal measure, stood in front of her. The dark corners, the flickering shadows—it was all still there. But it wasn’t right. Nothing was.

Mom? The word slid from her lips like a prayer she no longer believed in. But she needed an answer. She needed to hear her mother’s voice.

A low moan echoed through the house, and for a split second, Elysse thought she heard her mother’s voice—faint, fractured. Her skin prickled.

“Elysse…”

She spun around. The room behind her was still. Empty. But she felt it. Something was watching her. Something that wasn’t quite human. The smell of lavender hit her like a slap in the face, but it wasn’t comforting. It felt... wrong. The scent mingled with something darker, something decayed.

The floorboards groaned under her feet, but the noise didn’t sound like the house was shifting. No, it sounded like something underneath the house was moving.

“Mom?” she whispered again, louder this time.

Nothing.

The house exhaled. The sound was so soft, so unnatural, that her pulse stuttered. The walls seemed to lean in closer. The very air was thick with it, this presence—something that wasn’t just watching her, but waiting.

The kitchen was still the same. The table where they used to eat was covered in dust, as if time had simply stopped the moment her mother had left. But then—there it was. A glimmer of movement. The shadows moved, flickering in the corner of her eye.

Elysse couldn’t look away. She stepped closer, her heartbeat a drum in her chest, thumping so loudly that it drowned out the silence. She reached for the old family chair—her mother’s chair, the one she used to rock in while humming the lullabies Elysse could barely remember now.

The chair was cold under her touch.

Then came the whisper. Her mother’s voice.

“Elysse... I didn’t leave you.”

It was soft. Too soft. Her mother’s voice wasn’t supposed to sound like that. It was supposed to be warm, soothing, like the embrace of someone who loved you beyond measure. But this voice was wrong. It felt broken, torn apart by something far darker than grief.

Elysse jerked back, her breath caught in her throat. No. Her mother had left. She knew it. She had spent her whole life in the belief that her mother had abandoned her. That was the truth.

Except it wasn’t.

The floor beneath her feet shifted. Not the way a house settles, not the way old buildings groan in the wind, but with a horrible, insistent thrum. She could feel it in her bones, the pulse of something ancient, something alive beneath the house’s skin.

A memory flashed—her mother’s face, pale, exhausted, but so much older. There had been no goodbye. No warning. Her mother’s last words were nothing more than a fevered whisper in the dead of night: “I’m sorry, my love, but I can’t escape it.”

Elysse’s stomach lurched. The house was breathing.

No.

It wasn’t the house that was breathing. It was her mother. Her voice, her face. It was her mother—inside the walls.

The house hadn’t swallowed her—it had consumed her. Her mother had never left. No, she had become part of it—the walls, the floors, the ceiling. Her mother was the house, every echo of her still trapped in the air. Elysse’s eyes widened as she realized the awful, suffocating truth.

The walls shuddered around her, as if the house were waking up. The door behind her slammed shut with a violent force, locking her in. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. All she could hear was the whisper—closer now, crawling across her skin like something alive.

“I never left you, Elysse,” the voice whispered. “I was always here. I was always waiting.”

A cold, sharp panic twisted in Elysse’s chest. She turned, her hands trembling as she felt the floor beneath her sink, giving way—shifting, folding, pulling her closer, deeper.

And she knew, then, with perfect clarity: The house had never let her mother go. She had never been left. She had been taken, devoured, absorbed into the very walls themselves, until she was nothing but a fractured echo, endlessly repeating.

Elysse screamed, the sound muffled by the thickening air.

But there was no escape.

The house had her now.