The grand foyer was silent and covered in dust. The marble floor, the walls, and even the tall grandfather clock were coated in gray. When Noah raised his phone for light, our footprints became the only marks in the room. It looked like no one had been here for decades.
I tried to focus on details instead of the feeling in my chest.
The architecture looked Victorian Gothic. Pointed arches framed the hall, and the staircase had carved wooden posts. The furniture matched the style. Old, formal, and carefully made. The place felt preserved, almost untouched.
"This is incredible," Chloe whispered.
She brushed dust off a console table and exposed polished mahogany beneath.
"This is original furniture. Late nineteenth century, I think. The craftsmanship is really good."
She was trying to treat the house like a historical site instead of a place we were trapped in.
Liam had other priorities.
"Forget the furniture. We need another way out. Back door, service entrance, anything. And we need more light than that."
He pointed at Noah's phone. The battery was already down to thirty percent.
"Check the rooms. Stay together. No wandering."
His firm tone helped organize us. At least we had a plan.
We moved through the arched doorway on the left. It opened into a drawing room.
More dust covered everything.
Chairs and sofas were arranged around a table in the center. A huge fireplace dominated one wall, dark and unused.
Above it hung another portrait. A thin man with a long face stared forward with a serious expression.
When the phone light passed over the painting, I felt uneasy. I knew it was just a portrait, but it still felt like someone was watching.
"Anyone else feel like we are being judged for breaking in?" Noah said quietly. "Pretty sure we are failing."
His joke helped a little.
Maya suddenly tightened her grip on my arm.
She was staring at a set of long velvet curtains that covered the windows.
"They are not just watching," she said softly. "They are waiting."
I looked again. There was nothing except fabric and dust.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"It just feels like we interrupted something."
I tried to focus on the room again. The dust looked undisturbed except for our steps. The air was still and heavy. Even our voices seemed quieter here.
Then I noticed something near the fireplace.
On a small table sat a clean circular space in the dust. About the size of a teacup.
Something had been there before.
"Look at this," I said.
Chloe knelt beside the table.
"That is strange. There are no other marks around it. And no footprints."
She frowned.
"If something was sitting here for years, someone must have moved it recently."
The idea made the room feel colder.
It was a small detail, but it did not fit with the rest of the house.
We left the drawing room and crossed the main hall to the doorway on the right. The uneasy feeling followed us.
This room felt heavier. There was a faint smell in the air, like old food long gone.
We had entered the dining hall.
A huge mahogany table stretched across the center of the room. It could easily seat thirty people. Tall chairs surrounded it, all evenly placed and covered in dust.
At the head of the table stood a larger chair, more decorative than the others.
A tarnished silver candelabra sat in the middle.
"Light," Liam said.
He walked to the table and checked one of the candles.
Real wax.
He pulled out his lighter and ignited it. The small flame pushed back the darkness.
One candle lit.
Then another.
Soon the room was filled with dim, flickering light, and more details appeared around us.
Silver dishes on a sideboard, and crystal glasses still sitting on the table. Portraits along the walls.
These paintings showed a family. A stern man, a tired looking woman, and two children.
"At least we can see," Chloe said, though she still sounded nervous.
The candlelight helped, but it also made the shadows move.
"Great," Noah muttered. "Now we can see everything that wants to haunt us."
He tried to sound casual, but his arms were crossed tightly.
Maya had moved away from the table.
She was standing near a small door at the far end of the room. It looked like a service door.
Her hand hovered near the handle.
"There is something behind this," she said quietly. "It feels cold."
Liam stepped beside her.
"The kitchen maybe. Could be another exit."
He turned the handle and opened the door.
A narrow hallway appeared beyond it.
Cold air rushed out immediately. Much colder than the rest of the house.
The smell was different too, it was damp stone, rot, more like something metallic.
I tried to stay calm, but with the temperature drop, the smell, and Maya's reaction, made this impossible.
This hallway was not just leading to a kitchen.
It went deeper into the house.
We stood there staring into the darkness. The candlelight behind us could not reach far inside.
The house felt larger than we thought.
"We should check it," Liam said. "We need to know the layout."
He was right.
But something in my gut said this was a bad idea.
Some doors should stay closed.
The decision to explore the cold hallway stopped when Chloe suddenly spoke.
"Wait. Just wait."
We all turned toward her, and she was standing at the dining hall entrance, looking across the foyer at the massive front door.
"This is ridiculous," she said. "We are wandering through a creepy house looking for another exit when we have not even tried properly with the front door."
"We tried pushing it," Liam replied. His patience was fading.
"With our hands," Chloe said, walking toward the door. "That door is huge. Solid oak. It could be stuck from moisture or blocked from the other side. We need leverage. We need to think."
She was clearly challenging Liam.
Liam followed her, jaw tight.
"And what exactly do you want to use for leverage?"
"Anything," she said. "A chair, a metal rod, a fire poker. Something. That is better than deciding we are trapped by magic."
Her tone made it clear she did not believe in any of the strange feelings in the house. Maya flinched slightly at the word.
While they argued, Noah stepped up to the door and knocked politely.
"Hello?" he called. "We seem to be stuck in your house. Could someone let us out?"
His voice echoed through the hall. Nothing answered.
He forced a smile. "Guess they are busy."
No one laughed.
I watched the group quietly. Liam was frustrated and trying to stay in control, Chloe was stubborn and focused on logic, and Noah was scared and hiding it with jokes.
The tension between them was growing.
Maya still stood near the dining room doorway. She had not moved.
She leaned slightly toward me.
"It does not like the noise," she whispered.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"It wants us quiet," she said. "It wants us to listen."
"Listen to what?"
She shook her head. A tear slid down her cheek.
"I do not know. But it is getting impatient."
Right then we heard it.
A loud creak from upstairs.
It sounded like a heavy step on old wood.
Everyone froze.
The argument stopped instantly. Liam turned toward the staircase. Noah made a small choking sound.
The house had made a clear noise.
It was not wind. The storm outside had mostly passed.
It sounded like someone walking.
Chloe's search for tools suddenly felt unimportant. The real problem was that something else might be inside with us.
The silence afterward was worse.
All of us stared toward the dark upper floor.
"The wind," Chloe said quietly, though she did not sound convinced. "Old houses make noise."
"That was a footstep," Liam replied.
He had moved slightly in front of Chloe and Maya without thinking. His attention stayed on the top of the stairs.
I replayed the sound in my mind. It had been heavy and clear, and it came from the center of the floor above us.
If it was not one of us, then someone else was here.
"Okay," Noah said nervously. "New idea. We find something heavy and block ourselves in a room. Maybe there is a piano somewhere. Or that giant clock."
No one reacted to the joke.
"We are not hiding," Liam said. "If someone else is here we need to know who it is. A squatter maybe. The owner. Maybe the person who locked the door."
His logic assumed it was just another person. Maya's reaction suggested something else.
"We need more light," I said.
They all looked at me.
"A proper search. Not for the exit yet. For candles, lamps, anything. We cannot deal with this in the dark."
The suggestion helped focus everyone.
Liam nodded.
"Good. We split the candles from the dining room. Chloe and Noah search the drawing room. Maya stays with me. We check the dining hall and the hallway again. Ethan, stay here and watch the stairs. Call out if you see anything."
I did not like the idea of separating, but his reasoning made sense.
He handed me a silver candlestick.
The others took candles and moved into the nearby rooms, and their lights slowly disappeared, soon I was alone in the foyer, and the silence returned.
I stood at the bottom of the staircase holding the candle, and the flame shook slightly in my hand.
My job was simple, that was to watch the stairs, so I did.
I stared into the darkness above, trying to see movement. The railing cast strange shadows in the weak light. Dust floated slowly through the air.
Every small sound from the house felt louder now.
A creak. A distant rumble of the storm.
Standing there alone, I had the strong feeling that I was not just watching the house.
Something inside the house was watching me too.