The House of Anubis (Atem x Reader Halloween special)
Part Four: The Darkness
One //// Two //// Three //// Four //// (Five coming soon) ///
Summary: The house was large, a manor, really. Imposing, yet striking more aw with every turn of a corner. You had never thought you’d be dragged back into the family business, but your brother needed you, and so too did his latest project. It stood alone among the trees, yet, you never felt alone when inside. Hairs prickle on the back of the neck, shivers run down spines, and hands fidget with every unoccupied moment. And the thing- or rather, person, who simultaneously eases and worsens these feelings? Atem, a man who was just as mercurial as the house itself, all smirks and light comments one moment, then lingering stares and strange musings the next. So the real question remains, will you uncover the secrets both the man and the manor are harboring?(A Halloween mini-series inspired by the show ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ and the movie ‘The Frighteners’. The Reader x Atem themes are, admittedly, light as this mostly focuses on a spooky haunted house story, but the romantic undertones are there. Gender-neutral reader.)
A.N. Okay, how many of you wanna take bets on whether or not I'll actually finish this before Halloween of next year? I'll try my best, but for some reason, all I seem to get motivated to do is one chapter every Halloween -.- Maybe the next one being the last will motivate me! Either way, I hope you guys like the new chapter, and have a good Halloween!
...
The woods, seven years ago.
All the horror movies were true.
All the scenes of children tucked into bed, holding their breaths in fear at the shadows on their walls. All the images of branches reaching out like skeletal fingers, ready to rake and claw at unsuspecting victims who thought they were tucked away safe in their homes.
Those scary movies her older sister were obsessed with had perfectly captured the visage of old gnarled trees casting terrifying shadows. That was all Clare could think as they drove through the thick forest.
“You really think it’s a good idea to go out this far?” she asked, only now barely able to rip her gaze away from the barren branches reaching out for their car. “Haven’t you listened to those pod casts about people going missing on the backroads because of hill billy psychos?”
Jon, one hand on the steering wheel, one holding a contraband cigarette courtesy of his mother’s purse, actually scoffed. “There you go again, told ya she’d chicken out right before we got there!”
“I’m not-” Clare grit her teeth, “I’m just saying we should be careful! Heck, not even about axe murderers, you know how many people get into car wrecks from deer and shit jumping in front of them on roads like these?”
“Stop being an dick, Jon, she’s just worried your shitty driving is gonna to land us in a ditch,” came Dylan’s voice from the seat behind her. She heard a shift and his head came peeking between her and Jon. “Where are you even taking us?”
After taking another drag of the cig, and passing it to Dylan Jon said, “Let’s just say it’s not inbred machete maniacs that we have to worry about.” Taking his eyes off the road, he gave Clare that look. The look he got in their kindergarten class right before nap time, the look he used when their backyard bonfires lit up his face in an eerie glow, the look before he jumped out at an unsuspecting friend. “We’re going to an actual haunted mansion.”
Dylan groaned throwing himself back into his seat, “Yeah fucking right, there’s just a mansion sitting out in the middle of the woods? Come on, man, you spent all of middle school dragging us to cemeteries and abandoned buildings, I thought you were done with this.”
“This is for real, dude! It really is a creepy ass old mansion,” Jon started digging around in the small space between his seat and the center console, “and, get this, the old dude who owned it, died mysteriously a couple months ago.” He withdrew a piece of paper that Clare recognized as one of their town’s desperate attempts to cling to the past. “Read it yourself!”
After getting it shoved into her hands, Clare glared as she unwrinkled the newspaper clipping. The small article did indeed tell about some professor who died in his family home, but…
“A heart attack?” Clare rolled her eyes, “An elderly man dying of a heart attack is ‘mysterious’?”
“It says right there that he was in perfect health, though!” Jon insisted, but interrupted himself with an “oh shit” as he jerked his wheel to avoid missing a turn in the road.
Now with the trees more sparse than the dense decrepit woods from before, Clare felt a little more at ease. This was all just another one of Jon’s poor attempts to scare them, she hardly had to worry.
“Look,” Jon continued after straightening out his car, “my uncle says he knew the guy who died, and that he was starting to get all weird in the end. Talking nonsense, locking himself away in the mansion more than usual, and, warning people never to come visit him at his house. Dude went nuts like a professor in a Lovecraft story!”
Again Dylan’s head hovered between the front seats, “Doesn’t seem a little…you know, disrespectful or- or ghoulish to go through this dead guy’s house? He obviously had mental issues.”
“God damn, you two are no fun,” Jon accentuated his claim by blowing a raspberry.
And, given that he wasn’t careful to watch the road while he rambled about ghost hunting adventures, Clare took it upon herself to watch the road for him. The night sky was at least visible now, and the full moon overhead gave her some comfort. Ha, a full moon, that must have been why he chose tonight in particular to practically drag them out of bed with no warning just short of midnight.
She was just thinking about telling Jon to watch the road better when something made her stiffen. She saw it in the corner of her eye first, a flash, a spark, and she felt her chest hold back a gasp as her head whipped to the right. Clare leaned forward, trying to see past Jon’s head as she scanned the trees for, what, she wasn’t sure.
“Hey, what’s up?” Dylan nudged her arm, seeing her search through the darkness.
She swallowed. “I…I don’t know I think I saw something-”
A squeal of tires as she slid forward, her elbow making painful contact with the dashboard when the car came to a hard stop.
“Ow! What the hell, Jon!?” In a rare fit of anger, she punched Jon in the arm, before using the same hand to cradle her sore elbow.
To his credit, the driver actually did sound sincere when he said, “Sorry! Sorry, I think I missed the driveway, so I panicked.”
Dylan muttered “driveway?” under his breath as he twisted to look out the back window. “Holy shit, you’re right, I think it’s right there.”
Clare squinted her eyes at where he was pointing, though her view from the passenger front wasn’t great. In the moonlit dark, she thought she could just barely make out a mailbox on the roadside.
Before another word, Jon wrestled his junk-on-wheels car into reverse and veered into the opposite lane as he backed up. There it was, on the same side of the road where she thought she saw something in the trees: a long, unlit, winding driveway.
Jon had that look again, that smile, and he wiggled his eyebrows at them before turning into the driveway.
Despite herself, Clare swallowed hard. The twenty-year-old headlights of the rusted Toyota only cut through the shadows for a few feet, and again she felt like the darkness and trees were pressing in on them. Thankfully, the rocky path wasn’t as long as she had thought, because the woods soon broke into a clearing. There on the right, it stood, probably the biggest house she had ever seen in person, and that included the mayor’s place.
Towers, arching windows, vines woven over brick, it looked like it belonged on the cover of her sister’s old gothic romance books. Moonlight made some of the windows glint in the dark, and Clare realized that that must have been what she saw in the trees earlier.
“Hold shit,” Jon mumbled, “Uncle Tim wasn’t kidding, it’s fucking awsome!”
“And you’re sure no one still lives here? Like the dude's wife or something?” Dylan asked.
“Nope. My uncle said he just has a granddaughter left, and she lives in LA doing computer science shit.” With that, Jon killed the engine and popped open his door, leaving them both to do the same as he approached the house.
The front porch added to the spooky air, no doubt. Spiderwebs in every corner, wicker seats toppled over, and to top it all off: a rocking chair creaking in the night breeze. The old wood steps groaned and a blanket of leaves crunched underfoot as they walked up to the large front door. Immediately, Jon grabbed the handle and turned it hard.
Nothing happened, besides Jon banging his shoulder on the dark wood.
“Come on, you didn’t actually think they’d leave it unlocked, did you?” Clare teased as she turned to the arched, paned glass dotting the front of the house. “Maybe we could try a window?”
Jon gave one last annoyed look at the door before nodding. Dylan had already gone to the closest one, moving the broken wicker furniture to get close enough. A mighty lift, but the glass didn’t budge.
“Dude, give me a hand,” he waved at Jon and they were standing shoulder to shoulder, trying their damndest to slide it up.
While they heaved and pulled, Clare wandered back to the door. There was a fan-shaped pane of glass near the top, so she pressed herself against the wood and stood on her tiptoes. The view was hazy, dust or maybe the glass was simply warped from age, and the moonlight through the windows didn’t help too much. From what little she could see, the door opened into a large entry hall of sorts, and, if she squinted, she thought she could make out a large staircase.
A shadow in the darkness shifted. Clare felt her heart skip a beat, eye’s frozen on the spot where she swore the light from the window wasn’t shining. She made herself look behind her, at the trees surrounding the clearing, and gave a sigh of relief when she realized it must have been the branches swaying in the path of the moonlight.
She leaned back on her heels and turned towards the boys, who were still trying to open the same window. “Guys, I think you should try another-”
Click.
The creak of old wood filled her ears, as the door beside her opened.
It only stood ajar an inch or two, and she didn’t see anyone on the other side, but it still caused her to take a step back.
“Awesome! How’d you get it open?” Dylan asked as he and Jon came to her side.
Again, Jon wasted no time in taking the lead, he grabbed the edge of the door and pushed it open. They could practically hear his eyes go wide, “Holy shit!”
Clare tried to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat as Dylan crossed the threshold. It…it must have been unlocked the whole time, and just got stuck like old doors did. Yes, yes that had to be it. And it finally opened after she leaned on it for so long.
With that thought to calm her, she followed her friends. They took cautious steps inside, surrounded by old walls and creaking floorboards. She was right, it did open into an entry hall, with a grand staircase on the other side, but this wasn’t anything like the old houses they saw in movies.
“It looks like a set for The Mummy.” Dylan ran his hand over the thick layer of dust covering the sand-colored depictions of hieroglyphs and ancient gods.
“Yeah, Uncle Tim said the guy was some sort of Egyptologist. Guess he was waaaay obsessed with his job.”
Clare took her index finger and traced the face of a winged woman. “I thought you said he only passed away a couple months ago,” she asked, frowning at the dust coating her fingertip.
Jon shrugged, “Maybe he wasn’t big on dusting.” He turned and wandered to the doorway on the left side of the hall. “Man, he’s got even more Egypt stuff in here!”
Clare heard Dylan walking over to where Jon stood, but she was still transfixed by the wall. Something cold ran up her back like an icy spider, making her want to wrap her arms around herself. She turned to look behind but found nothing, just open, dusty space.
The chill didn’t stop at her spine though, it slithered down her arms till she started rubbing them through her hoodie.
Creak.
She heard it above her, and her eyes snapped to the ceiling.
Thud.
“Guys,” her call came out a hoarse cry, “Guys, I think someone’s upstairs!”
The boys, who had barely gotten to the next room, turned to face her again, “Huh?”
She was still watching the ceiling, listening, straining to see or hear any sign to tell her she wasn’t overreacting. The ceiling, web coated and peeling, was dark, and she blinked when she thought he saw a section of it…swelling.
No, her eyes weren’t seeing things in the dark, a tile in the bronze ceiling was swelling like a bubble. She watched as it got bigger and bigger- then screamed when it split open to reveal a large bloodshot eye.
Clare fell to the ground, still screaming as she crawled back backwards to the door, watching as the eye got bigger and the bulge in the ceiling slid like dripping ooze to the closest wall. The boy’s were calling her name, and just as they began pulling her to her feet something large on the stairs fell with a deafening bang.
Even with that and her screams, they still heard it.
“What are you doing here!?”
The deep, almost inhuman voice caused their heads to snap towards the staircase.
There, on the landing, back lit up by the marvelous stained glass, was a man with wild hair and eyes that seemed to pierce the darkness.
“Get. Out.” His voice was as deadly as a snake’s hiss, and even Jon gripped the doorway as he backed away. “Get Out! Now!” the figure roared.
They didn’t need to be told a third time. Dylan had a firm grip on Clare as they scrambled across the porch and down the stairs. An arm’s length from the car they heard that same baritone call out to them again: a warning.
“Never speak of what you saw here tonight.”
Jon didn’t even bother putting the car in reverse, and did the sharpest U turn of his life, peeling out of the driveway as if the devil himself were on their heels.
Atem watched them go, still standing sentinel at the top of the stairs.
Then his eyes snapped to the bubbling thing that had slid its way across the wall to the front door. The frame of a skeletal hand was visible under the wallpaper, reaching out in hunger at the meal that had gotten away.
Atem’s anger flared anew.
He was not a cruel man, even scaring those children hadn’t pleased him, but for that thing, he could find no mercy. Especially after Arther.
“If you think,” he took a step down the stairs, “that after everything you’ve put my friend through,” another step, “that I would ever let you harm another innocent,” his foot clicked against a hard floor, “then you are sorely mistaken.”
Atem was not a cruel man, but for the darkness infesting this house, he had no mercy.
The front door slammed shut on the creature's screams.
The manor, present day.
Music was never something that the old thief Alexander Hawkins had indulged in often, only when company graced his house did he allow his wife to fill their halls with the croon of a radio or record. Even his son Arther, who quite liked the birth of rock and roll, rarely turned the volume high. Today though, today a pair of siblings played a scratched up CD as loud as their old paint-stained stereo would allow.
Your head nodded along with your favorite track as the song blared against the tile walls. You remembered this setlist well, it was one of the first mixes your dad bad copied for you and your brother: a rite of passage in helping him with his work.
Laying tile was one of the few tasks you had struggled with when learning your family’s craft, making sure every square was ruler straight, pipping the grout just thick enough that there weren't layers and layers of clean up. It had taken many bathrooms and kitchens less grand than this to get proficient at all that.
So, the professional work you were doing now filled you with some pride.
The downstairs bath had been in desperate need of new tiles- both on the ground and the wall, and a road trip to some antique furniture stores in the area had yielded the perfect replacement pieces. The gold imitation of marble tied in well with the decor of the rest of the downstairs, lavish enough to not feel like an afterthought, but not so garish that the small space might make you cringe.
Unfortunately, your music was drowned out for a moment, the scream of a saw whirring down the hall as your brother finished cutting the tile needed for the edges of the room. When the sound died down again a new song was playing and at first you started humming along again; but when the lyrics started, the tune made you pause.
Usually, you paid no mind when this, one of your brother’s favorite songs, popped on, but today, in this particular house…
You flicked the little dial on the side of the radio, turning the volume down to a murmur as you turned back to your work.
In truth, the day spent shopping had been a much needed excuse. The last day you spent in this house, the day you had stayed till nightfall, had shaken you and your brother more than either of you wanted to admit. And the worst part was, looking back, you couldn’t even say why that night had scared you so much. Nothing had…happened, not really. Neither of you had said anything about the strange feeling of urgency felt when leaving the house, the sudden sensation that something was wrong.
Even still, the next morning your brother had suggested the shopping trip, as if the bathroom were some pressing issue that needed mending by the end of the week. Not that you complained, a day away from the House of Anubis was welcomed by that point. Something about this place just felt…heavy at times.
“Blasphemy, kiddo! One does not turn down the volume on Don't Fear the Reaper.”
Big brother had come back down the hall and set the bag of freshly cut tile by the door before he leaned down and turned the volume back up.
“I couldn’t hear it over the saw anyway,” you countered, and he put his hand over his heart dramatically.
“Well, see if I try to make myself useful again with that attitude!”
A playful roll of your eyes and you went back to your work. He did make himself useful again by refilling your drink from your stash in the kitchen, which was nice. It was almost completely drained again by the time you were finally done with the tile but at least the work was done.
Needing a break from the damp muddy smell of grout and that strange oppressive air of the house in general, you told him you were stepping outside while he mixed the paint for your next job.
Instead of going down the little hallway that led back to the entry hall, you took the door that opened into the study, then the next door that got you into the conservatory. Green was still bursting to life in every free space of the glass-domed room, and you made a mental note to double-check that there weren’t any vines digging into the rest of the house when you got the chance.
The glass doors at the front of the conservatory opened to a small side porch with a nice view of the woods. Said trees were beautiful this time of year, your view was an endless ombre of reds and oranges and yellows. The crisp autumn air filled your chest as you took in a deep, cleansing breath and closed your eyes.
After letting the cool breeze wash over your face for a while, you took a step out into the yard and looked up at the house, letting your gaze travel across it. There was a small balcony where the glass roof of the conservatory met the rest of the house, connected to the master suite.
As you gazed over the upstairs windows, you noticed that the outside walls had some strange angles to them, ones you hadn’t noticed when staying the night in the master room all that time ago. You found yourself tilting your head in confusion, no, that wall shouldn’t jut out like that. Maybe the room next door, but…hold on, that wasn’t right either…how could…
You were unceremoniously drawn out of your reverie by the sound of a car door slamming shut.
A blink as your mind traded one confused train of thought for another and you turned your head towards the sound. A car? Then the thought of Atem crossed your mind. Perhaps he had finally recovered from his mysterious illness and had come back to see you.
Though, you didn’t ever remember seeing him use a car.
The trek through the overgrown grass beside the house was a bit much, but you soon made your way to the side of the front porch, peering out at the driveway. There sat a nice-looking car, small, silver, and near it, stood a bespeckled blonde woman. She was staring up at the house, eyes a bit blank as she kept her arms folded tight over her chest.
You made sure to make your next steps out into the open a bit loud before you called out with a “Hello, can I help you with something?”
The effort not to spook her was in vain, and she jumped a little as she turned in your direction, “Oh!” a shake of her head, “Sorry- I didn’t mean to just stand here and stare.”
You had crossed the distance to her now, and up close, you could see that she looked to be in her late thirties, maybe early forties. Now at arm’s length, she finally untangled her limbs to hold out her hand.
“I’m Rebecca, Rebecca Hawkins, I think you bought this house from me.”
Ah, so this was the granddaughter. “Actually it was my brother who bought the place. I’m just here to help.”
She made a little ‘oh’ sound, her eyes darting back towards the house before quickly snapping to you again. “Well, I was passing through the state and I thought I’d come by and see the place one last time before it’s sold off to another family.”
You nodded, but didn’t miss the way she instantly folded her arms after shaking your hand. “He said that you lived in California, I guess you didn’t get much time to see it before you sold it, huh?” you pressed, remembering how odd it seemed to you, that she would leave behind so many things in the house.
The woman scoffed, digging her heel into the gravel as she gazed at the grand front door. “Honestly? I haven’t been here since I was a teenager. My parents moved to another state when they got married, so we only came back here every couple of years for the holidays. I don’t really have much attachment to this place so when I inherited it, figured I’d just let someone else deal with it.”
“Ah, so that’s why everything was left inside,” you mused out loud, “I understand, if you weren’t that close with your grandfather, it would be more a headache than anything.”
Rebecca’s head didn’t turn from the house, but her eyes did shift back to you out of the corner of her glasses. “Well, we were close, there for a while, but, towards the end he just…”
Her eyes had snapped to the manor once again as she trailed off, and the gaze stayed there for a moment, seemingly transfixed. Then she seemed to shiver from an imaginary breeze.
“Anyway, it took a few years to sell, but I think it's for the best.”
“Do you want to come inside? See what we’ve gotten done for the place?” you offered, before an awkward silence could settle.
The heel that had been worrying a spot in the gravel slid forward, towards the porch, but she quickly shook her head. “No, no, I think I should get going. I just wanted to see the old place with my own eyes before I moved on.” She gave you a smile that was a bit forced before shaking your hand again. “Thank you, I hope you and your brother can make some good money off it.”
And before you could insist she at least come in for some coffee, she was opening her car door. However, before she fully shut it, she apparently had one final thing to say.
“Oh! I also wanted to ask, has a man named Atem shown up at all? He lived in the area, so I thought he’d be curious about who finally got the manor.”
Your eyes went a bit wide at the mention, “Oh! Yes, he has, he actually told me all about the house's history.”
Rebecca smiled, “That sounds like Atem, he’s got to be, what, fifty by now?”
“He’s really inter-” You began, but then your mind froze when her words sank in. Fifty…what? “E-excuse me?”
She went on, not hearing your confusion, “Yeah, he was probably in his twenties last I saw him, though, I was a little girl at the time.” She shook her head as she closed the car door, and through the down window she said, “Well, tell him I said hi, grandpa always talked about him, so I hope he’s doing okay.”
And with that, she turned the car on and pulled out of the driveway leaving you standing frozen on the gravel path.
The drive to the hospital was unusually quiet on your end. Your brother talked, especially when you mentioned your morning visitor, but almost everything he was saying was nothing but a buzz in your head.
You couldn’t have heard Rebecca correctly. Atem had to be in his twenties now, not when she was a kid. Or- or maybe she was confusing Atem with someone else her grandfather knew. Or…
“Hey,” you started when there was a pause in whatever your brother was saying, “Do you know if Atem’s dad lived here too? …And if he’s maybe named after his dad?”
He let out a confused noise, but his mouth twisted in thought for a second, “I don’t know, I can’t remember him ever mentioning his parents. Why?”
You had to let out a sign before answering. “Oh, nothing. Just something weird Rebecca said before she left. I must have just misheard her though.”
Big brother hummed again, “Well, like I said a minute ago, everything about her visit was weird. I mean, who goes out of their way to come by this little town to see a house for less than five minutes?”
He had a point, her odd behavior should have been the most troubling thing about her visit. “She didn’t mention where she was going but, if it was any decent-sized city nearby she still would have had to drive, what, almost an hour off the major highway?”
Nodding his head, your brother added, “Not to mention when she sold me the place, her realtor said she’d had the place for years and specified that she had no interest in coming out to the house before the sale was final. Kinda weird to change her mind now.”
“Guess she just needed some last-minute closure,” you finished as you pulled into the hospital parking lot.
After dropping him off, you spent the drive back to the manor trying to get your mind off of the strange meeting. There was no use reading into something that, in the end, likely had nothing to do with you.
Still, you wished that Atem hadn’t been gone for so long, it could have taken your mind off of most of the things plaguing it once he gave you some simple answers. With that desire in mind, once you got back in the area, you actually spent some time going down several roads near the manor in a half-hearted attempt to find this little house Atem mentioned living in.
It was half-hearted because you didn’t actually go up to any of the houses to see if he lived in any of them. It felt too odd or random to just show up on someone’s doorstep asking about a strange man you didn’t even know the last name of.
So, in the end, after not seeing him on a front porch or driveway of the few houses you found, you turned the car around and went back to the manor. Work was sure to take your mind off things. You’d play some of the CDs you loved most in your brother’s collection and zone out on your next project.
Or at least, that had been the plan.
You spend no less than fifteen minutes sitting in the driveway, telling yourself to put the mystery away then dwelling on the thoughts once again in a vicious cycle.
Thankfully, as your eyes drifted over the house while you thought, you remembered another small mystery that had cropped up that morning. That’s right, you had been in the middle of figuring out why the walls of the upstairs didn’t match the inside when Rebecca showed up.
Figuring that solving one small mystery could help you forget another, you slammed the car door shut with determination set on your face.
You marched through the front door and didn’t waste any time grabbing the floor plans from the main workstation in the drawing room. With them rolled up in hand, you ran upstairs to the master suite and spread the papers on the lavish bed.
Even before you lifted the layer of clear plastic your brother used for notes, you could see that your suspicions were right. There, beside the balcony, the master bedroom was supposed to have an alcove about four feet deep.
“Okay,” you clapped your hands together, turning to the flat span of wall beside the balcony door, “according to the floor plans, you should not be here,” you said to the wall as you ran your hand over it. Now, what was the best reason to cover up a section of a room? Secret passages were a staple of old houses, after all.
It was all smooth planes, if they had covered up the alcove recently, they did a good job. No fancy bookcases to hide a door, no strange seam hidden by the pattern of the wallpaper, but… there was a walk-in closet beside the mysterious missing space.
Thankfully there were hardly any clothes left in it, so you only had to slide a few suit jackets aside as you crouched near the right wall inside the closet. If you were going to hide a secret door, this would be the spot you’d choose for sure.
Your heart was actually thudding a bit hard in your chest as you ran your hand along one edge of the wall, then up to the top and around the other side.
Then a breath caught in your throat as your finger caught on a very, very thin vertical line. Taking the light on your phone, you shone it over the spot and that’s when you saw it, barely perceivable: the outline of a small door.
With fumbling hands, you grabbed the keys from your pocket and carefully wiggled them into the seam, then pushed on them like a mini crowbar.
Pop!
The panel swung open just an inch or two and stale air met your senses, but you couldn’t care much as you tried to push the door open. Excitement made you give up halfway through, and you hurriedly shone your light into the hidden room.
The beam dragged across cobwebs and windowless walls that were a bit distorted from neglect. Then the light traveled across thick layers of dust, stained hardwood, and- and something sitting at the very center of the small space.
It was a pedestal.
Somehow you ignored the vague sound of something creaking inside the room as you squinted your eyes. A pedestal? You placed your hand on the doorframe as you started to lean forward, thinking that you saw something metallic glinting atop it when the light played across the space. Cramped and dark and tiny, you thought staring into that wrong-feeling void was the reason the hairs were standing up on your neck, until the door slammed shut on your hand.
A scream of pain tore your throat apart as something- something inside the room was pressing the door hard against your hand. You struggled, feeling the skin on your knuckles tear open as you tried to pull your hand free, even using your free one to push against the force behind the door.
Then, you heard a frantic call of your name, and someone was kneeling behind you.
A frantic cry trailed off in the air as you turned and saw Atem, glaring at the secret door as he put his hand next to yours, “Push!”
As if you had stopped trying. Together both of you pounded on the door and even over that noise and the pain, you could have sworn you heard something like claws scratching at the wood on the other side.
Whatever it was, it relented and you were sent falling back out of the closet and into Atem’s arms.
Still frantic and screaming and crying, you both scrambled to your feet, Atem practically dragging you out of the bedroom.
“Wh-what the hell!?” you were barely making sense, but when you both reached the stairs, Atem let you go.
He looked just as sick as the last time you saw him as he leaned against the railing, and waved a hand down the stairs, “Go-” he paused, seeming to catch his breath, “go downstairs. To the kitchen. I’ll get the first aid kit.”
Despite the million questions resting atop your near-panicked state, you couldn’t seem to find it in you to argue. You took the stairs two at a time, cradling your bloody hand gingerly the whole time. When you finally made it to the kitchen, you couldn’t calm down enough to sit, even as you tried to rationalize what just happened.
Maybe there was a shutting mechanism on the door that made sure it shut behind whoever entered? Or, maybe, maybe something inside the room fell and-
Or, maybe you were just going insane inside this house that caused mirrors to crack and brothers to have heart attacks and doors to slam shut on their own.
“Here.”
You hadn’t heard Atem come in, but there was a first aid kit on the kitchen counter now, and he looked up at you almost sheepishly.
“You need to take care of your hand, it could get-”
“What the hell just happened?” Your voice was more quiet than anything, but it was firm as you looked up at him, still cradling the hand he was so concerned with.
He looked away then. “I don’t know,” his back was actually turned to you as he said, “I came to visit like usual, and I heard your screams. I was just-”
“Cut the bullshit, Atem,” your voice was higher now, all your confusion and irritation and pain pouring out in your tone, “something insane is going on in this goddamn house, and I think you know all about- hey! Don’t walk away from me!”
He had started stepping towards the door, but in your anger you closed the distance between you both, reached out your hand, and-
And you fell through thin air the moment you touched his back.
The fall to the ground didn’t hurt much, but maybe your mind was just reeling too much to register it. In a scramble, you rolled onto your back and looked up at Atem. Or, at least the space he had been standing.
Something dark and smokey, like black mist curled and coiled in the air where you had fallen through Atem. Slowly, the shadow smoke merged back together, until it once again resemble the man. His face, slowly returning to a full, fleshy color, looked down at you with something like resignation in his eyes. You stared back at him for a long, silent moment.
Then, for the second time that night, the house filled with your scream.