It Lives Within

Chapter 3: Settling In

The first hammer strike sends memories flooding through my frame. For a heartbeat, I am both now and then - feeling Blackwood's workers laying my bones, even as Mike Cooper's modern tools vibrate through my aged timbers. The sensation is disorienting, like ripples in still water disturbing long-settled silt.

"A little to the left, Dad," Emma calls from the doorway, her sketch pad balanced on her knee. She's been drawing the renovation process, her pencil capturing more truth than she knows. "The whole wall's crooked."

"Everyone's a critic," Mike teases, but adjusts his aim. I feel his careful movements through my boards - he's more skilled than he pretends, but his hands shake slightly. The medication helps most days, but renovation work strains him. Still, he insisted on doing it himself. "How's it looking now, boss?"

Emma looks up from her drawing, and for a moment, I see her really notice the shadows gathering in my corners. She blinks, shakes her head. "Better. But maybe we should get actual contractors?"

"Dad's got this!" Liam bounces in, his dinosaur backpack still on from his morning exploration of my rooms. "He fixed the treehouse at the old place, remember?"

"The treehouse that fell down in the wind?" Emma smirks.

"It was a very strong wind," Mike defends, but he's grinning. These moments of lightness come easier here than they did when they first arrived. I wish I could preserve them, keep them safe in my walls like pressed flowers.

Sarah appears with sandwiches and lemonade, her bare feet cool against my floors. "Lunch break! Emma, honey, did you take your allergy medicine? The dust in here..."

"Mom." Emma rolls her eyes, but there's affection in it. "Yes, I took it. I'm not twelve anymore."

"You'll always be my baby." Sarah drops a kiss on her daughter's head, and I feel Emma lean into it despite her protest. "Even when you're old and gray."

"Speaking of old and gray," Mike wipes his brow, leaving a smudge of plaster, "what do you think of the color samples for in here?"

"Not gray!" Liam protests. "Gray is boring. Can we do green? Like dinosaur green?"

"What about blue?" Emma suggests. "It's supposed to be calming." She doesn't say why they need calming, but I feel her glance at Mike, the careful way they all orbit around his bad days.

Sarah slides her hand into Mike's. "Why don't we each pick a color for our own rooms, and do something neutral down here? A fresh start for everyone."

The way she says 'fresh start' makes my beams ache. They've pinned so much hope on me, this family. They believe moving here will heal old wounds, give them space to breathe, to reconnect. If only they knew what breathes with them.

I feel it now, stirring in my depths. The force Blackwood woke, that he bred into my very architecture. It responds to their bonds, their love, their vulnerabilities. Not with hatred - it's beyond such human emotion. It responds with hunger.

The temperature drops in the corner where Emma sits. She shivers, wraps her arms around herself. I try to contain it, to hold back the tide of dark energy that seeps through my walls. But I am what I was made to be - a vessel, a trap, a cradle for something that feeds on family bonds even as I yearn to protect them.

"You cold, Em?" Liam scoots closer to his sister, offering half his sandwich. "You can share my lunch. Mom made peanut butter and banana - your favorite."

Emma manages a smile. "Thanks, troll."

I watch them share the sandwich, heads bent together, and feel the thing in my depths pulse with anticipation. No. Not these children. Not this family. But even as I think it, I know - I am as much a prisoner as they will become. Blackwood built his own destruction into my foundations, and I cannot change what I am.

The afternoon sun slants through my windows, casting long shadows. The Coopers work together, cleaning, planning, dreaming. Their laughter echoes through my halls, a bright counterpoint to the darkness gathering in my corners. I hold these moments like treasures, even as I feel the inevitable approaching.

They are here to heal, to grow, to become whole again. But I was built to break things - family bonds, sanity, hope. It's in my angles, my impossible spaces, my hungry depths.

I am their shelter and their doom, their protector and their threat. Like them, I am a victim of forces I cannot control. But unlike them, I know what's coming.

For I am more than walls and windows, more than brick and beam. I am a hunger built in the shape of home, cursed to destroy what I most wish to preserve.

And I have no choice but to let the darkness rise.