No birds. No wind. No hum of electricity. Just a thick, unnatural silence pressing against your ears like cotton soaked in static.
The house feels wrong. The walls seem closer than yesterday. The hallway stretches longer, darker. You swear the light switch was on the left before. Now it’s on the right.
You check your phone. The date still says October 13th. But the time flickers between 09:45 and 03:17. You blink. It’s gone black.
You step outside. The sky is a bruised shade of gray, like something rotting behind clouds. The neighbors’ houses are there—but the windows are painted over. No cars. No footsteps. Just a single trail of muddy footprints leading from your door to the woods.
You didn’t leave those.
You follow them.
The trees whisper in a language you don’t understand. Branches twitch like fingers. Something is watching. You feel it behind you, but every time you turn, it’s just the woods. Until it isn’t.
There’s a shape. Tall. Thin. Wrong.
It doesn’t move. It doesn’t blink. But it’s closer now.
You run.
You don’t remember getting back home. But you’re inside. The door is locked. The lights are off. And the trail of muddy footprints now leads up your stairs.