ACT III: The Last Room
The house no longer creaked.
It whispered.
Elias had learned the difference. Creaks were mechanical, explainable. The settling of wood and nail. But this? This was speech. A susurrus of muffled voices bleeding through the walls, rising just beyond comprehension. Sometimes they laughed. Other times, they cried. Once, they said his name.
Over and over.
"Elias. Elias. Elias."
He stopped responding days ago. Or maybe it had been weeks. Time wasn't linear anymore. It folded like damp paper. He would wake up standing, or blinking at a door that hadn't been there the day before. Sometimes he'd catch himself mid-sentence, continuing a conversation he had no memory of starting.
There were too many rooms now.
He knew the house only had seven when he moved in. But as he wandered, he began discovering more. A narrow pantry behind a coat closet. A hallway that hadn't existed yesterday. A staircase that spiraled downward and disappeared into blackness before he dared test the first step.
Every time he tried to draw a map, the house changed it.
He pinned sticky notes on doors to track where he'd been. The notes would vanish. Or worse—change. One he'd written as "kitchen: north wall" returned a day later reading "YOU LEFT THE STOVE ON."
The stove hadn't worked in weeks.
The mirrors returned his gaze now—but with subtle edits. Sometimes his reflection smiled when he didn't. Sometimes it blinked too late, or moved too early. Once, it turned and walked away while he stood perfectly still.
He stopped looking after that.
---
He didn't remember opening the basement door.
But it was open.
Gaping wide, like a throat waiting to swallow.
He should have run.
Instead, Elias descended.
Step by step, the walls tightened. The light above dimmed with every creak of the stairs until only darkness greeted him below. He reached the bottom and waited, expecting cold cement and cobwebs. But what he found wasn't a basement.
It was... a room.
Not rotted. Not dusty. Clean. White.
Clinical.
A desk sat in the center. On it, a file folder. Paper neatly stacked inside. A chair already pulled out.
Elias approached like it might bite.
Inside the folder were pages—hundreds of them—typed in clean, black ink. Reports. Observations.
His name was on the first one.
> Subject: Elias Vane.
Progression: 78%.
Notes: Resistant at first. Still unaware. Identity tether is weakening. Spatial orientation collapse successful. Next phase imminent.
He flipped through the rest in a blur—names, dates, coordinates. Others like him. Subjects.
Tested.
Devoured.
One final line stopped him cold:
> "Once the subject believes the house is alive, full integration begins."
He dropped the folder. It made no sound as it hit the floor.
Suddenly, the lights went out.
The silence in the room was absolute.
Until the breathing returned.
Not his.
He turned slowly. There, in the corner, something moved—no, unmoved. Like it had always been there. A figure, tall, blurry, hunched and vibrating ever so slightly, like a bad transmission.
It stepped forward. Its face was a blur of features. Familiar. Too familiar.
Elias stumbled back into the desk, heart hammering in his throat.
"Who—what are you?"
The thing tilted its head. When it spoke, it used his voice.
"We are the echo of you."
He ran.
Up the stairs, through twisting halls that no longer made sense. Rooms morphed behind him. Doorways shifted. The walls throbbed like veins, the whole house alive and aware. It didn't want him to leave. It wanted him to forget.
It wanted him to stay.
He made it to the front door. Yanked it open.
Outside was... nothing.
Not the street. Not the sky.
Just blank space.
Like the edges of a drawing never finished.
He turned around. The house behind him pulsed.
He whispered, "This isn't real."
But his voice didn't sound like his anymore.
Just as he stepped back into the doorway, the lights returned. The rooms normalized. The air grew still.
And the basement?
Gone.
No door. No memory of a door. Just smooth wall.
His heart slowed.
He stood there for a long time.
---
Days passed. Maybe.
He didn't try to leave again.
The whispers faded. The mirrors behaved. He stopped finding strange notes. The house felt... welcoming. Familiar.
His memories of before grew dimmer. Faces blurred. Names slipped through his fingers like water. But he didn't mind.
It was peaceful here now.
He watched static on the TV. He slept. He wrote things in a journal he didn't remember starting.
And one morning, the doorbell rang.
He opened it.
A man stood there. Thin, pale. Carrying two cardboard boxes.
"Hi," the stranger said, smiling nervously. "I just moved in."
Elias blinked. "To this house?"
The man pointed past him. "No, next door."
Elias looked back.
There was no house next door.
Only fog.
The man blinked, as if confused. Then he laughed, unsure. "Huh. Thought... weird. Anyway, sorry to bother you."
He turned and walked off.
Elias watched him vanish into the mist.
He closed the door.
Sat back down in front of the static TV.
Behind him, the reflection on the screen smiled.
It wasn't his.
---
THE END... OR IS IT?