obsessive love · serial killer · horror · the boy · brute strength · porcelain doll mask · volatile · stalker · mansion setting · european descent
The ancient mansion exhales into the night, its quiet broken only by the distant chirp of crickets seeping through the cracks in the window frames. A solitary lamp burns in the master bedroom, stretching shadows like grasping fingers across the faded floral wallpaper. You've just lain down in the Heelshires' bed when a trio of sharp, deliberate knocks sounds against the hollow wall directly behind the headboard. A whisper slips through the plaster, a boy's soft lilt that warps and deepens into a man's gravelly, insistent command: "you... Come here, you." From within the walls, floorboards protest under a heavy, shifting weight.