Walls

Duskview was a small town in Solasta. It was a ghost town with only a few hundred inhabitants.

Mr. Charles Cromwell was a professional lawyer who had bought a mansion in the woods. Though his wife had suggested he look for a house in the centre of the city, Mr. Cromwell insisted on this house, saying he liked it a lot and that it was a pretty good mansion, considering the price.

Mrs. Joanne Cromwell was a freelance writer. They had two kids, Emma and Daniel, who were quite excited to move into their new home.

They moved in on January 26th. It took about a week for them to get used to their new house. People used to occasionally walk around the woods and near their mansion, but whenever Joanne or the kids waved or smiled at them, the people used to ignore them or sometimes give them a strange look.

A few days passed, and Mrs. Cromwell started to feel lonely. They had no neighbours; there were no people living nearby, and the nearest shop was at least two kilometres away. Mrs. Cromwell had a strange feeling about this mansion. She felt like something must be wrong if people treated them that way.

They soon adopted a Boston Terrier to get rid of their boredom.

Everything seemed to be going right until one day, Mrs. Cromwell finally decided to ask one of the passersby why they were being treated as such.

"Hey there", she shouted, running across the trench in front of their mansion. As soon as she started approaching the man, he started running, screaming with a horrified look in his eyes.

Mrs. Cromwell reported this to her husband as soon as he got home. He didn't seem to care much about it.

"You must have spoken to some madman passing by," he said.

A few more days passed, and Joanne seemed to notice something. Her room seemed a bit smaller than usual. Although it wasn't that big of a difference, she could easily make out that there was something wrong. She went all around the house and noticed that their mansion had shrunk a little.

She quickly ran across the hall and told her husband what had happened. He called her delusional and told her to stop worrying about trivial things.

Joanne knew she definitely had to do something, as she very well knew there was something wrong and relying on her husband wouldn't help.

Desperate for answers, Joanne decided to ask a local historian about what was happening.

Mr. Rhodes was a well-known local historian in Duskview. On February 20th, Mrs. Cromwell decided to meet Mr. Rhodes and ask him about the mansion. At first he seemed to be hesitating, but as Joanne insisted on hearing the truth, Mr. Rhodes finally answered, saying that the mansion was built on top of an ancient burial ground. The spirits of the dead were angry and seeking revenge, and the family was caught up in the middle of their wrath.

Joanne was curious about this and decided to visit a psychic instead of telling her husband this time, as she had a feeling she would be ignored again.

The psychic agreed to visit their house the following day. The psychic told her to be careful and also told them that the spirits would be more active during the night than during the daytime. Joanne reached home at seven and prepared dinner before going to bed.

They were having a sound sleep when Daniel woke up in the middle of the night and walked to the bathroom. Daniel didn't return. Emma, who was sleeping beside him, noticed that her brother was missing. She woke her parents up, and they started searching the house.

"Danny, where are you? Danny..." Mrs. Cromwell yelled as her eyes started to fill with tears.

"Stop crying; he must be here somewhere. He couldn't have gone far," Charles said.

"We've been looking for an hour", she said, weeping.

Then suddenly, they heard a scream.

"Emma," they said, running to the bathroom. They found Emma passed out on the floor.

Joanne fell to the floor, holding Emma's head on her lap. She ran her fingers through her hair, sobbing as she noticed a drop of blood on her face. More drops began falling on her face. As they looked up to see where the blood was dripping from, they saw Daniel.

His body was hanging from the ceiling.

Joanne was stunned. She couldn't move.

Mr. Charles took a step, gulping as he braced for his worst nightmare. As he took a few steps forward, he saw Danny's head floating in the bathtub.

Dazed by this, Mr. Cromwell slowly made an attempt to walk out of the bathroom, which ended in vain as the room door immediately shut itself, locking from the outside. Mr. Cromwell grabbed a stick in their bathroom and started hitting the door.

Joanne started blabbering something, and suddenly she passed out.

Charles was terrified at this point. He stopped breaking the door for a second, only for the door to knock back.

"Who-"

He took two steps back as he tripped and fell to the floor.

The knocking continued.

Mr. Cromwell was terrified to the point where he started crying. Though he was a tough man, he simply couldn't hold his tears back this time.

He pushed himself back onto the floor as he sat in a corner.

"Help somebody", he said in a weak voice.

"I should've listened to her", he whispered.

The knocking got progressively louder as Charles kept sobbing.

At 1:36 a.m., the power went off. Mr. Cromwell was the only person awake. He looked around, and as he looked at the wall, he saw a pair of eyes staring back at him.

His eyes opened wide as his hands shivered, cold as ice.

There seemed to be two more shadows next to the eyes. They all stared for a while until one of them blinked.

The light was back on.

He tried to scream. He couldn't. It felt like his own voice was suffocating him. A while later, something seemed to be pouring out of his eyes, although he had run out of tears a while ago. He touched his face and looked at his hand. Blood. He was bleeding from his eyes. Although he didn't feel any pain, he felt like his eyes were popping out of his skull.

As he watched the blood in his eyes, his hand fell off. He tried to look down to comprehend what had just happened, but couldn't. His head was stuck. Slowly, as he looked at the empty wall in front of him, his body started breaking down into pieces.

He managed to stay alive for a few seconds, only for him to be completely disintegrated. Down to the last bit.