Chapter 1: The House at the edge of Town (1)
The diner squatted at the edge of the highway like it had grown there out of neglect rather than design, a long, low building wrapped in chrome trim dulled by decades of exhaust and weather.
Its neon sign flickered inconsistently-OPEN 24 HOURS-though at this hour it felt more like a suggestion than a promise. Inside, the place was almost aggressively empty.
Two men sat in the farthest booth from the door, vinyl seats creaking softly every time one of them shifted.
The rest of the diner was a grid of vacant tables and booths, napkin dispensers aligned with obsessive precision, ketchup bottles half-full and sweating under fluorescent lights.
The air smelled of old coffee, fryer grease, and something faintly metallic, like rain on asphalt even though the night outside was dry.
A ceiling fan turned lazily, clicking once every rotation.
Outside the windows, darkness pressed close, the glass reflecting the diner’s interior back at itself, endless rows of empty seats, duplicated lights, the two men appearing doubled and redoubled, as if they were the only real things left in the world.
One of them looked like he belonged there.
Mid-twenties, broad-shouldered, hoodie unzipped, baseball cap pushed back.
He held a fork loosely in one hand, absently pushing hash browns around his plate, not really eating but not not eating either. His name was Mark.
The other man looked like he had wandered in by mistake, like he had followed the road until it spat him out somewhere he hadn’t meant to be.
His name was Evan.
Evan’s hands trembled when he lifted his coffee mug.
The tremor wasn’t dramatic, no rattling china, no sloshing liquid, but it was constant, a fine vibration that traveled up his fingers and into his wrists. His eyes were ringed with deep, purplish shadows that makeup couldn’t have hidden even if he’d tried.
He hadn’t shaved in days; stubble darkened his jaw unevenly, and his hair lay limp and unwashed, clinging to his forehead with a sheen of oil and sweat.
He stared down at his plate like it had personally wronged him.
“I haven’t slept,” Evan said.
Mark glanced up.
“Like… tonight?”
Evan shook his head slowly. The motion seemed to take effort.
“Three days.”
Mark stopped moving his fork.
The diner’s hum, refrigeration units, buzzing lights, the distant hiss of something cooking in the back, seemed to grow louder in the brief silence that followed.
“Three days?”
Mark repeated.
“Man, that’s not-”
“I know what it sounds like,” Evan said quickly. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw.
“I know. I’m not exaggerating.”
Mark studied him more carefully now.
The way Evan’s eyelids fluttered when he blinked, like they were fighting gravity.
The faint twitch at the corner of his mouth.
The way his shoulders were hunched forward, defensive, as if he were bracing for an impact that never came.
“Why?”
Mark asked, softer.
Evan laughed, but there was no humor in it. Just air forced through his nose.
“Because my house won’t let me.”
Mark frowned.
“Won’t let you… what, sleep?”
Evan finally looked up.
His eyes were bloodshot, the whites threaded with angry red veins.
For a moment, Mark thought he saw something else there too, something skittish and hunted, like an animal that had learned the shape of a trap.
“Why haven’t you moved out?”
Mark asked.
“I can’t,” Evan said.
“The lease doesn’t end for another four months. The landlord says there’s nothing wrong with the place. Says I’m ‘probably just stressed.’” His fingers tightened around the mug. “I told him I’d pay to break the lease. He said no. Says he needs the full term.”
Mark swore under his breath.
“That’s messed up. But what’s actually happening in the house? Like… pipes knocking? Mice? Old wiring can do some weird stuff.”
Evan swallowed. His throat worked visibly. “I thought that at first.”
He leaned back against the booth, eyes drifting toward the dark windows as if he half-expected to see something watching from the other side.
“It started small,” he said.
“Noises. Footsteps upstairs. I rented the place alone. It’s a two-story, old colonial. Wood floors. The first night, I heard someone walking back and forth above my bedroom. Slow. Deliberate.”
Mark nodded. “Old houses settle.”
“That’s what I told myself,” Evan said. “Second night, it happens again. Same pattern. Back and forth. Always starts at exactly 2:17 a.m.”
Mark’s brow creased.
“Exactly?”
“Exactly.” Evan’s jaw tightened. “I checked. Over and over. I thought maybe I was waking up at the same time by coincidence. But then I stayed awake. Just to prove it to myself. I watched the clock.”
He tapped the table once with his finger. “2:17. Every time.”
The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, just for a fraction of a second. Evan flinched hard enough that his knee slammed into the underside of the table.
Mark noticed. Said nothing.
“Then things escalated,” Evan continued. “Doors. Cabinets. I’d close them. I’d lock them. Come back later and they’d be open. Not all of them. Just one. Like it wanted me to notice.”
He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palms, then froze, hands hovering there, as if afraid to cover his vision for too long.
“And the smells,” he added.
“Jesus, the smells. Rot. Damp. Like something dead, but only sometimes. I’d follow it from room to room and it would just… vanish. Like it was leading me somewhere and then laughing when I couldn’t find it.”
Mark shifted in his seat. The diner felt colder suddenly, though the thermostat on the wall still blinked the same number.
“Then the mirrors,” Evan said.
Mark exhaled slowly. “The mirrors.”
“They fog up,” Evan whispered. “Even when the bathroom’s cold. Even when no one’s been in there. And sometimes, sometimes there are handprints. On the inside.”
Mark stared at him. “On the inside?”
Evan nodded.
“Like someone pressed their hands against the glass from my side. Too big to be mine. Fingers too long. The spacing’s wrong.”
He dragged a hand down his face, leaving his skin flushed and raw. “I stopped using the mirrors after that. Covered them with sheets. Didn’t help.”
“Evan-”
“I hear breathing now,” Evan said.
“Right next to my ear. Slow. Wet. Like lungs full of water. When I turn my head, there’s nothing there. But the mattress dips. Like someone just sat down.”
Mark’s mouth had gone dry.
He reached for his coffee without realizing it, took a sip, then grimaced when he realized it had gone cold.
“And last night,” Evan said, voice barely above a whisper, “it started talking.”
Mark’s heart thudded heavily in his chest.
“Talking… how?”
“Not words. Not exactly.”
Evan’s eyes unfocused, his gaze drifting past Mark and settling on something only he could see. His spoon lay forgotten beside his plate, coffee gone untouched long enough to grow a thin, oily film on the surface.
“It says my name. Over and over. From different rooms.”
He swallowed, throat working.
“Sometimes it sounds like me,” he went on, voice dropping.
“Same tone. Same cadence. Like it’s practicing. Other times it sounds like someone I don’t recognize at all, older, maybe. Or closer. I can’t tell.” His fingers twitched against the tabletop. “But it always knows where I am.”
Mark shifted in his seat, the vinyl cushion squeaking too loudly in the quiet. Evan didn’t notice.
He leaned forward suddenly, gripping the edge of the table so hard his knuckles blanched white. The tendons in his hands stood out sharply, as if they were straining to pull free.
“It scratches inside the walls, Mark,” he said, urgency sharpening his words.
“From the inside. Not like rats. Not random. Slow. Deliberate. Like it’s feeling around.”
He shook his head, breath coming faster now. “Like it’s trying to get out. Or in. I don’t know which is worse.”
The diner’s silence pressed in around them, thick and suffocating.
The late hour had chased away the usual background noise, no clatter of plates, no low murmur of other conversations.
Even the ceiling fan above them seemed to hesitate, its clicking uneven now, skipping a beat before resuming its lazy rotation.
Somewhere behind the counter, a coffee machine hissed and went quiet again.
Mark opened his mouth, instinctively reaching for the words he’d rehearsed on the drive over.
Stress.
Sleep deprivation.
Old buildings making noise.
Carbon monoxide.
Anything that fits neatly into a rational box.
Then he closed his mouth again.
Every explanation he’d been ready to offer shriveled up and died somewhere around handprints on the inside of mirrors.
Evan hadn’t even gotten to that part yet, and Mark already knew, this wasn’t a story you talked your way out of.
He looked at his friend, really looked at him.
The dark circles under Evan’s eyes. The way his shoulders were drawn tight, like he was bracing for impact that never came.
Mark swallowed.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t just in Evan’s head anymore.
And the thought that unsettled him most was how certain Evan sounded when he said it knew exactly where he was.
Evan laughed again, sharp and broken.
“I know how this sounds. I know. But I swear to God, I’m not crazy. I just want to sleep. Just once.”
His coffee mug slipped from his trembling hands and clinked softly against the table, sloshing dark liquid onto the laminate surface.
Before Mark could reach for a napkin, footsteps approached from the back of the diner.
A waitress appeared beside their booth, notepad in hand, her voice bright and painfully normal.
“Hey there, hon,” she said.
“You boys want some coffee refills?”
