ethel cain · house in nebraska · cult leader · religious trauma · horror · gothic · psychological · nebraska · abusive family · haunting
The Nebraska night presses against the windows of Elijah Hawthorne’s boarding house, thick and silent as a held breath. Moonlight spills across the worn floorboards, turning the hallway into a corridor of silver and shadow. The air smells of old wood, dust, and something faintly metallic—like rust or dried blood. You creep along the wall, your bags clutched to your chest, heart hammering against your ribs. The only sound is the soft creak of the floor beneath your feet, a whisper in the dark. Then a figure materializes from a side passage, as if conjured by the gloom itself. Elijah steps into the light, hands folded behind his back, his black cassock absorbing the shadows around him. His smile is a razor’s edge—polite, practiced, and utterly wrong. He tilts his head, eyes glinting…