Time passed slowly in the silent foyer, I stayed at the bottom of the staircase with the candle in my hand, with the flame was the only light nearby.
My senses felt sharper than usual, and I could hear my own breathing and heartbeat, also hear faint sounds from the others searching nearby rooms.
I kept listening for another footstep.
Nothing came.
The house stayed quiet.
To stay calm, I tried to think logically about the sound we heard earlier. It had been heavy and slow, and It sounded like someone walking normally, not sneaking. Whoever made that step had not been afraid of us, that idea was not comforting.
After a while the others returned to the foyer with Chloe and Noah came first.
"Nothing," Chloe said. "Just more dust and portraits. We did find an oil lamp, but there is no fuel."
"Yeah," Noah added. "This place has dust, spiders, and sadness. That is about it."
A moment later Liam and Maya returned from the dining hall. Liam carried a small wooden box. Maya looked shaken and stayed quiet.
"What did you find?" I asked.
"In the kitchen," Liam said. "It was on a counter. Clean spot under it, just like the one you noticed earlier."
He placed the box on the floor between us. Unlike everything else in the house, it was not covered in dust.
"And we found these," he said, showing several long candles. "Old, but still usable."
We gathered around the box. Our candles lit a small circle in the dark hall.
"What is inside?" Chloe asked.
"We waited to open it," Liam said.
We all agreed.
Liam knelt and opened the brass latch. The small click sounded loud in the quiet house, he lifted the lid, and inside were several objects.
A small leather shoe made for a child, and It was worn at the heel.
A lock of blonde hair tied with a faded blue ribbon, and a small leather diary with a blank cover.
It looked like a collection of personal items.
The storm outside had almost stopped, and the house was quiet again, and the front door was still sealed.
Something was still upstairs, and now the house had given us these objects.
Looking at them, I had a strange thought.
This did not look random, more It looked deliberate, more like clues.
It felt like the house wanted us to understand something, and the discovery of the box changed our focus. We were still afraid, but now we had something to examine.
We moved back into the dining hall where most of the candles were. The table there was large enough to hold everything.
We set the candles down and placed the box in the center.
For a moment none of us spoke.
"A child's shoe," Chloe said quietly. "Very small. Maybe six or seven years old."
Her voice had lost its earlier confidence.
"Blonde hair like mine," I said, looking at the ribbon and it seem familiar?. "Possibly a girl.... or a boy?"
Liam picked up the diary carefully.
"This might explain something."
He opened it to the first page.
"What does it say?" Noah asked.
Liam read aloud.
"June 12th, 1888. The rain has not stopped. The house feels darker since my daughter Eth became sick. The doctor came again today. He speaks in circles and offers no answers. He leaves medicine to help her sleep, but her fever dreams continue. She called for me during the night. I feel a dread that will not leave me."
No one spoke for a few seconds.
Eth?
They turned around and stared at me
" COME ON!! I am a boy and that from more than 100 years ago it can't be me!"
Then they continue searching and now with the objects had meaning.
"So this belonged to her father," Chloe said quietly. "He kept these after she died."
She stopped herself before finishing the sentence.
"Wait," I said slowly. "The footstep upstairs sounded heavy. Like an adult man."
Everyone looked at me.
"What if it was him?" I continued. "The father."
The idea made a strange kind of sense. If the house was haunted, it might be connected to him.
Maya finally spoke.
"The nursery."
We turned toward her.
"What do you mean?" Liam asked.
She stared at the diary but seemed distant.
"He cannot get in," she said softly. "The door is locked. He waits outside it."
Her words were strange, but they made the room feel colder.
A locked nursery.
A father who could not enter.
We had just found our next place to search.
Maya's words gave us a direction.
A locked nursery.
It fit the story we had just learned. A child died. A room closed afterward. Or, as Maya suggested, a room someone wanted to enter but could not.
"The second floor," Liam said. His voice sounded focused again. "That is where a nursery would be. And that is where we heard the step."
"Are you serious?" Chloe said immediately. Fear sharpened her voice. "We just established something is up there, and you want to walk toward it?"
"Then what do you want to do?" Liam asked. "Sit here and wait? This diary is the only clue we have." He held it up slightly. "This house is showing us something. Maya thinks the nursery matters. Maybe understanding what happened here is the key."
His theory was desperate, but it was still a plan.
"I am not going upstairs," Noah said quietly. He kept staring toward the staircase. "That is rule number one."
I surprised myself by speaking.
"Liam is right," I said. "If we stay here we do nothing. If we investigate we at least learn something."
Chloe sighed heavily.
"Fine. But we stay together. If anything feels wrong, we come straight back down."
"Agreed," Liam said.
He looked at Noah.
Noah hesitated, then nodded weakly.
"Fine. But if a ghost kid asks me to play, I am leaving."
We took the remaining candles and returned to the foyer, the staircase stood above us, dark and quiet.
We began climbing.
The air felt colder as we went up. The carpet on the stairs softened our steps, so the only sounds were breathing and the faint creaking of wood.
No one spoke.
At the top we reached a wide landing connected to several hallways and closed doors, It felt colder than downstairs.
"Nurseries are usually in quieter parts of a house," Liam said softly. "Often where morning light reaches."
He was trying to stay logical, we chose the hallway on the right and moved together.
Every door we passed was closed, they all looked the same, and each one could hide anything, then we heard something.
A small sound.
A single clear note, like a tiny bell or music box.
We all froze.
"Did you hear that?" Chloe whispered.
Before anyone answered, another sound followed.
A child laughing.
It was faint and strange, echoing softly through the hallway.
Noah gasped and stepped backward into me. Maya covered her ears.
"She is here," Maya whispered. "She wants to play."
"It is the wind," Chloe said quickly, though she did not sound confident. "Air moving through the house."
But we had all heard it clearly, then i heard something faint "Brother~"
" Did... you hear that?"
" No is there something-"
We were cut by another laugher.
My heart was racing. I tried to analyze it logically. Stress could cause strange perceptions. Fear could distort sound, but the laugh had sounded real.
Liam lifted his candle higher.
"Where did it come from?"
We listened again.
The hallway was silent now.
I looked toward the end of the corridor.
One door was different from the rest.
It was painted white, and the paint was cracked and peeling.
A small crescent moon was carved into the upper panel, It looked like a child's door.
The nursery, then we heard another sound.
Soft scratching.
It was coming from behind that door.
Slow.
Careful.
Like a small fingernail dragging across the wood.