The Lagging Glass

Your boot falls heavy on the rotted timber of the threshold, a boundary that feels less like wood and more like a scab over something festering. The house lets out a long, low groan—a splintering shriek from the joists that vibrates up through your marrow, as if a leviathan in the cellar has just been stirred from a century of sleep. The air here isn't merely stagnant; it is thick with the stench of scorched oil and sulfur, a cloying weight that clings to your flannel shirt and seeps into your pores, trying to find a way into your bloodstream. The hallway ahead stretches with an impossible geometry, far longer than the exterior walls should allow, twisting into a charcoal dark that your flashlight’s weak beam can barely puncture. You notice the first wrongness in the shadows. On the peeling wallpaper, the silhouettes do not mimic the sway of your hand or the arc of the light. They move with a predatory autonomy, creeping toward the corners behind you, withdrawing into the dark to set a snare in the space you’ve already passed. At the end of the hall sits a rectangular mirror, framed in worm-eaten gilt. Dust coats the glass like a heavy shroud. You raise your hand, and in a reflexi…