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★★★
CHAPTER FOURTY-EIGHT:
piggyback
★ ★ ★
Aurora stepped inside.
The door shut behind her without a sound, sealing her into the house as if it had never been open at all. The air was thick, damp in a way that clung to the back of her throat. It smelled wrong. Old and sweet and rotting all at once.
The floor beneath her boots was coated in something dark and glossy, stretched thin in places and pooled thickly in others. It looked almost wet. She took another step and felt it give slightly under her weight, sticky enough to resist before releasing her foot with a faint, sickening pull.
"Jesus." Her stomach tightened.
Along the walls, the same substance crept upward in slow, uneven veins, as if it had grown there over time. It clung to the corners of doorframes, gathered beneath the banister, and stretched in long strands across the ceiling beams. Webbing, she realised. Not the delicate kind. This was heavy. l.
Something moved near her ankle.
Aurora stiffened just as a small spider crawled over the toe of her boot, legs twitching too quickly. She inhaled sharply and flicked it away with a fast movement of her foot. It skidded across the floor and vanished into the dark.
The house was silent except for the faint, distant sound of something shifting above her. A slow scrape. A drag. She swallowed and forced herself forward.
Each room she passed felt half-finished, like the memory of a home rather than the thing itself. Furniture sat crooked and dustless, as if it had been placed there recently and then abandoned. Frames lined the walls, most of them empty, their canvases either torn away or melted into the same black substance that coated the house.
Her pulse thrummed in her ears.
The stairs loomed ahead, their bannister warped and cracked, streaked with thick webbing that sagged under its own weight. Aurora hesitated only briefly before placing her hand on the rail. It was cold. Too cold.
Upstairs, the corridor stretched longer than it should have, bending subtly at the far end. Doors lined the walls, most of them shut. Aurora moved toward the one open door, her steps slower now, more cautious. The room beyond was wide and bare, save for a single painting mounted on the far wall.
