Chapter Seven: The Paintings Breathe
Mallory stood with her arms folded, staring at the row of frames lining the wall. The mansion had always felt large—almost impossibly large—but now the air seemed to press inward, as if the house itself were leaning closer to listen.
Beside her, Brandy hugged herself. Her eyes were still red from crying.
Calathea knelt closer to the frame that had once been blank.
The three of them had been trying to piece together what had happened.
Douglas had vanished.
Mason had vanished.
Jeffrey was trapped inside a painting.
And now Shelby was missing too.
None of it made sense.
“It has to be connected,” Mallory said quietly. “The mirrors. The paintings. The water. The drum in the basement. Reflections. Something in this house is pulling people somewhere.”
Brandy sniffed. “But where?”
Calathea didn’t answer.
She was leaning closer to the frame.
Something was happening.
At first the canvas had looked empty—just the faint beige of unfinished cloth—but now gray shadows had begun to gather across the surface like fog rolling in.
Mallory noticed it first.
“Wait…”
The three of them stepped closer.
Lines were appearing.
Thin charcoal strokes.
A curve.
A shadow.
A shape.
Brandy’s breath caught.
“Oh no.”
The painting was forming a face.
Slowly. Deliberately. As if an invisible hand were drawing it stroke by stroke.
Mallory felt a cold prickle crawl up the back of her neck.
The face became clearer.
Shelby.
It was Shelby.
Her face floated in a sea of darkness, the background behind her completely black, like she was trapped in some endless void.
But her face was lit—unnaturally pale against the dark.
More detail filled in.
Her eyebrows were crinkled tightly together.
Her nose was scrunched as if she were trying not to cry.
Her mouth trembled.
Shelby looked terrified.
And then—
She moved.
Brandy gasped and stumbled backward.
“She moved! Mallory—she moved!”
Mallory grabbed the frame, staring hard at the canvas.
Shelby’s eyes darted around inside the painting.
Not painted eyes.
Real ones.
She looked left.
Right.
Then directly outward.
Shelby’s lips moved silently.
Like she was trying to speak.
But no sound came out.
The darkness behind her shifted slightly, like something deeper inside the void had stirred.
Brandy covered her mouth.
“Oh my God… she’s in there too.”
Mallory’s heart pounded.
“She’s not just in a painting,” she said slowly. “She’s somewhere.”
Calathea stood up.
Her eyes weren’t on Shelby.
They were on the way the charcoal strokes were still appearing on the canvas.
The painting wasn’t finished.
Lines were still being drawn.
Invisible.
Precise.
The portrait was being created in real time.
As if someone—or something—was watching Shelby wherever she was.
And painting what it saw.
Calathea whispered,
“Something in this house is documenting them.”
Mallory looked back at Shelby’s frightened face.
“Or trapping them.”
Inside the painting, Shelby suddenly jerked her head over her shoulder.
Her eyes widened.
Like she had just heard something behind her in the darkness.
Then her mouth opened in a silent scream.
And the charcoal began drawing faster.
Mallory had always been sensitive to things other people missed.
Not just sounds or movements—but feelings.
Shifts in the air.
The strange emotional weight that seemed to cling to certain places.
Standing in front of Shelby’s unfinished portrait, that feeling tugged at her again.
Something wasn’t right.
She turned slowly, looking further down the wall at the other frames.
Jeffrey’s painting sat stiff and silent where it had been completed earlier, his face frozen in terror.
But two other frames nearby felt… different.
Mallory frowned slightly.
A quiet pull settled in her chest.
“Mallory?” Brandy asked softly.
But Mallory was already walking toward the other portraits.
Her footsteps were slow.
Careful.
Like she was approaching something fragile.
She stopped in front of the next painting.
Douglas.
At first glance it looked still.
Just like Jeffrey’s had once looked.
Douglas stood painted in dull tones, his body half-turned as if he had been caught in the middle of moving. The shadows around him were thick and unfinished, swallowing most of the background.
Mallory leaned closer.
And then she saw it.
Douglas’s shoulder twitched.
Barely.
But it moved.
Mallory’s breath caught.
“Guys…”
Calathea and Brandy rushed over.
“What?” Brandy whispered.
Mallory pointed.
“Look.”
For a moment nothing happened.
Then Douglas’s head shifted slightly inside the canvas, like he was trying to turn toward something outside the frame.
Brandy grabbed Mallory’s arm.
“Oh my God.”
Mallory’s chest tightened.
“He’s still alive.”
Before either of them could say anything else, Mallory stepped to the next frame.
Mason.
This painting was darker.
The shadows surrounding him seemed heavier, thicker—almost swallowing the edges of his body.
Mallory stared.
And there it was again.
Movement.
Mason’s hand twitched slightly at his side.
Then his head lifted a fraction, like he was listening.
Mallory could feel it clearly now.
The faint pulse of life trapped inside both canvases.
“They’re in there,” she whispered.
Brandy shook her head slowly, overwhelmed.
“How can they be alive inside a painting?”
Calathea’s eyes moved back toward Shelby’s still-forming portrait.
The charcoal strokes were still appearing.
Still drawing.
Still watching.
She swallowed.
“I don’t think the paintings are the trap.”
Mallory looked at her.
Calathea continued quietly.
“I think they’re windows.”
Brandy stared from one painting to the next, panic creeping into her voice.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said, shaking her head. “We don’t even know where Mason and Douglas wandered off to. They could be anywhere in this house—or wherever this is.” She gestured nervously toward the paintings. “How are we supposed to find them?”
Calathea was thinking, her eyes moving slowly across the hallway as if mapping the mansion in her mind.
“We split up,” she said finally.
Brandy turned toward her immediately. “Split up?”
“If they’re trapped somewhere in this house—or in whatever space is connected to it—we’ll find them faster if we search different areas.”
Brandy’s face tightened. “Yeah, except… I’m not doing that alone.”
Mallory looked at her.
Brandy folded her arms nervously. “I’m serious. You two can wander off into haunted mirrors or basements or whatever you want. I’m staying with someone.”
Mallory thought for a moment.
Then something clicked in her mind.
“The jacuzzi,” she said.
Brandy blinked. “What?”
Mallory looked at her and then at Calathea.
“That’s where I ended up before. When I tried to grab Jeffrey out of the painting—I fell into the jacuzzi and suddenly I was back in that dorm room. The memory they were in.”
Calathea nodded slowly, remembering.
“The reflection,” she said quietly.
Mallory nodded back. “Water. Mirrors. Paintings. It’s all the same thing somehow.”
Brandy looked between them, confused and nervous.
“So… what are you saying?”
“I think I can take us there,” Mallory said.
Brandy’s eyes widened. “Us?”
Mallory gave a small reassuring nod. “You’re not staying alone anyway, remember?”
Brandy let out a breath. “Okay… yeah. Good. I like that plan.”
Calathea stood straighter.
“I’ll check the second and third floors,” she said. “If Mason or Douglas crossed into another part of this place, they might show up in one of the mirrors or paintings there.”
Mallory nodded.
“If we find them in the dorm memory, we’ll come back.”
Calathea gave a quick nod and headed toward the staircase.
Mallory turned to Brandy.
“Ready?”
Brandy hesitated.
“…No.”
Mallory smiled faintly. “Good enough.”
The mansion bathroom felt colder than before.
The large jacuzzi sat still in the center of the tiled room, its surface dark and reflective like a sheet of black glass.
Mallory walked to the edge and looked down into the water.
Her reflection stared back.
But beneath it… something deeper seemed to move.
Brandy stayed close behind her.
“So what exactly is the plan here?” she asked nervously.
Mallory held out her hand.
“Trust me.”
Brandy stared at the water.
Then slowly took Mallory’s hand.
Mallory leaned forward and touched the surface.
The water rippled unnaturally.
The reflection stretched.
Then the floor seemed to drop out beneath them.
They landed on carpet.
Brandy stumbled forward, grabbing Mallory’s arm.
The air smelled completely different.
Warm.
Familiar.
They looked up.
A dorm room.
Mallory recognized it instantly.
Jeffrey.
Douglas.
Mason.
The same moment.
The same memory.
Jeffrey sat on the bed with his phone in front of him on speaker.
Voices crackled through it.
The group conversation.
The exact same scene Mallory had witnessed before.
Brandy stared in disbelief.
“Oh my God…”
Her voice trembled.
“This is… happening?”
Mallory nodded quietly.
“It already happened,” she said. “We’re just inside it.”
The lights flickered overhead.
Once.
Twice.
Brandy turned slowly toward the bed.
Mason sat on the edge of it, leaning forward as the conversation continued on speakerphone.
The bed creaked beneath his weight.
Brandy’s eyes widened.
Behind Mason—
Something was sitting there.
A tall shape.
Too still.
Too dark.
Like a shadow that had weight.
The same thing Mallory had seen before.
The entity sat directly behind Mason on the mattress.
Mason didn’t notice.
He kept talking.
Completely unaware.
Brandy grabbed Mallory’s arm tightly.
“Mallory…” she whispered.
“I see it.”
Mallory’s expression hardened.
They were closer to it now.
Close enough to feel the wrongness of it.
But they didn’t stop moving.
Mallory slowly began walking through the room.
Brandy followed close behind.
“If Mason and Douglas got pulled out of this moment,” Mallory whispered, “then the thing that took them probably started here.”
Brandy swallowed nervously.
The lights flickered again.
And the bed creaked behind them.
They kept moving through the dorm room, searching.
Trying to find where Mason and Douglas had been taken.
Meanwhile, Calathea moved carefully through the second floor of the mansion.
The hallway stretched long and quiet, lined with bedroom doors that all looked the same. She opened them one by one, stepping inside each room slowly, letting the silence settle around her.
She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for.
But she could feel something.
Since everything had started happening—since the basement, since the electricity humming through the house—her awareness had sharpened. Emotions, tensions in the air, strange pulls in certain directions… they guided her now like faint currents in water.
So she followed them.
Room after room revealed nothing.
Empty beds.
Dusty dressers.
Mirrors that reflected nothing but her own cautious expression.
Still, the sensation lingered.
Something was nearby.
Something she could almost feel but not quite see.
Calathea stepped back into the hallway, pausing.
Her eyes slowly lifted toward the staircase leading to the third floor.
The feeling was stronger there.
She climbed.
Each step creaked softly beneath her shoes as she reached the third floor landing.
The air felt different up here.
Heavier.
Charged.
Calathea walked slowly down the corridor, passing another set of bedrooms and a bathroom at the far end. She paused in the center of the small foyer where the doors branched off.
The sensation surged through her chest.
She could feel it.
Something was happening here.
Something moving just out of reach.
But she couldn’t see anything.
Calathea frowned.
Frustration prickled through her.
“I know you’re here,” she murmured softly into the empty hall.
But the space remained still.
Then something flashed through her memory.
The basement.
The drum.
The way the air had changed when she struck it.
The way the house itself had seemed to react.
Another memory layered over it.
Mallory pulling Brandy out of that strange memory world while the drum echoed through the house.
Calathea’s eyes widened slightly.
“The drum…”
Without another thought she turned and hurried back down the staircase.
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Her footsteps echoed quickly through the mansion as she made her way to the second floor and down the hallway to her bedroom.
She pushed the door open.
The drum sat exactly where she had left it.
Calathea grabbed it.
The moment her fingers wrapped around the instrument, something shifted.
A low vibration hummed through the wood beneath her palms.
The air stirred.
A sudden wind moved down the hallway even though the windows were closed.
Emotions—fear, confusion, panic—rushed faintly through her like distant echoes.
Calathea steadied herself.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Now she could feel it.
Now she understood.
She ran.
Back up the stairs.
Back to the third floor.
The drum clutched tightly in her arms.
When she stepped into the third floor foyer again, the air seemed to ripple around her.
She moved slowly now, eyes scanning the doors.
Four bedrooms.
One bathroom.
And then—
Movement.
Calathea froze.
Along one of the door frames, long dark fingers slid slowly across the wood.
They weren’t attached to a body.
Just thin shadowed shapes gliding across the frame like something testing the boundary between spaces.
Calathea’s grip tightened on the drum.
Her heart pounded.
“Douglas…” she whispered. “Mason…”
If this was where they had been pulled through—
Then this was where she needed to go.
Calathea stepped forward.
The fingers vanished as she approached the door.
She placed one hand on the handle.
Then slowly crossed the threshold.
The moment she stepped inside, the room shifted.
The air bent.
The walls stretched.
The space distorted like fabric being pulled apart.
Calathea lifted the drum and struck it once.
THUM.
The sound rolled outward like a shockwave.
The room twisted.
Reality tore at the edges like frayed cloth.
Fragments of another place began flickering through the distortions—pieces of a moment frozen in time.
Voices.
Movement.
Shadows of people.
Calathea struck the drum again.
THUM.
The tear widened.
Through the rippling edges of the distorted space, she saw something.
A face.
Mason.
Just for a moment.
His expression strained, like he was fighting against something pulling him deeper into the memory.
Calathea’s eyes widened.
“I see you,” she whispered.
And the fabric of the room continued to tear open.
Calathea stood in the third–floor doorway, the drum still vibrating softly beneath her fingers.
The torn edges of the room fluttered like fabric caught in wind. Through the distortion she had seen it—Mason’s face for just a second—struggling somewhere inside the warped memory.
But something about it didn’t feel right.
The tear was unstable.
The memory kept folding in on itself, bending in ways that made it impossible to move through safely.
Calathea lowered the drum slowly.
“No,” she whispered to herself.
If Mallory had found a stable way into the memories once before, then maybe Mallory is the only one that can make it through.
She stepped back out of the room.
The hallway returned to normal immediately, the strange distortions sealing themselves behind her like nothing had happened.
Without hesitating, she hurried down the staircase.
Past the second floor.
Down to the first.
Her footsteps echoed through the mansion as she made her way deeper into the house.
Then farther still.
Down the narrow staircase that led into the wine cellar.
The air grew cooler as she descended.
Rows of wooden wine racks lined the walls, their dark bottles glinting faintly in the dim light.
Calathea moved quickly through them.
She knew where she was going.
At the far end of the cellar sat the small tiled restroom.
The deep jacuzzi waited in the center of the room.
Still.
Black.
Reflective.
The same unnatural stillness Mallory had described.
Calathea approached it slowly, gripping the drum under one arm.
She leaned forward and looked into the water.
Her reflection stared back.
But beneath it… something moved.
The surface rippled without being touched.
Calathea took a breath.
“Alright,” she murmured.
Then she stepped forward.
The moment her foot touched the surface, the water swallowed her reflection and the room vanished.
Calathea stood still for a moment, trying to understand what she was seeing.
The dorm room stretched out in front of her, warm and real in a way the fractured memory upstairs had not been. Nothing here tore at the edges or warped like fabric being pulled apart.
It felt… stable.
But she didn’t understand why.
Upstairs on the third floor, the memory had twisted the moment she tried to step into it. The walls had bent, the air had distorted, and the space itself had resisted her presence.
Yet here she was.
Standing fully inside another memory.
Calathea frowned slightly, glancing down at the drum still tucked under her arm.
“How can I walk through this one…” she murmured to herself, “…but not the one upstairs?”
The room continued playing out the moment frozen in time.
Jeffrey sat with his phone on speaker.
Douglas leaned against the bedframe.
Mason sat on the edge of the mattress as the group call crackled through the phone.
The lights flickered softly above them.
The bed creaked beneath Mason’s weight.
And behind him—
The distorted figure sat quietly on the mattress.
Long, unnatural limbs folded calmly as it watched.
Calathea felt her body tense.
For a moment she froze.
Even though she knew this was a memory, the presence of the entity made the room feel wrong. Like something alive had been stitched into the past.
Mason continued talking, completely unaware.
The figure didn’t move.
It simply sat behind him.
Watching.
Calathea swallowed.
She could stand there trying to understand it…
Or she could keep moving.
Mallory and Brandy were somewhere inside this memory.
They were the ones who had already navigated this space.
Calathea slowly turned away from the bed.
The door to the hallway stood open.
Without looking back again, she walked toward it and stepped through.
Her footsteps carried her deeper into the dorm corridor as she continued searching for Mallory and Brandy.
Calathea stepped into the dorm hallway and paused.
The corridor stretched out in two directions, lined with identical doors and lit by flickering overhead lights. The air felt strange here—thicker than normal, like the memory was holding its breath.
She chose a direction and started walking.
But it was the wrong way.
Further down the opposite side of the corridor, Mallory and Brandy stepped out from around a corner, scanning the hallway.
Then Brandy saw her.
“Calathea!”
Relief flooded her face for only a second.
Because right behind Calathea—
Something was moving.
Brandy’s relief instantly turned to panic.
Her eyes widened and she started waving frantically.
“Calathea! Over here! Calathea!”
Calathea hadn’t seen them yet.
She continued walking slowly down the hall, unaware.
Behind her, a contorted figure dragged itself across the carpet.
Its body twisted in impossible angles, its spine hunched and warped like something broken and forced back together wrong. The skin across its limbs looked burned and stretched, dark patches peeling away as if the flesh itself had been scorched.
Its movements were wrong.
Not quite crawling.
Not quite scooting.
It pulled itself forward in short, jerking motions, its limbs scraping against the floor as it slowly gained on her.
Brandy’s voice rose higher with fear.
“Calathea! Turn around! Calathea!”
Mallory turned just in time to see it.
For a moment, fear froze her in place.
The creature’s head tilted unnaturally to one side. Its swollen black eyes bulged outward, reflecting the flickering hallway lights. A strange distortion seemed to ripple around it, like the air itself was reacting to its presence.
And it was inching closer.
Closer to Calathea.
Mallory’s heart pounded.
But she forced herself forward.
“Brandy—stay here,” she said quickly.
Before Brandy could protest, Mallory started moving down the hallway toward Calathea.
Fast.
Determined.
The creature continued dragging itself forward behind her, its long fingers stretching across the carpet as it pulled its body along.
Brandy’s voice cracked with panic.
“Calathea! It’s behind you!”
Calathea finally turned.
And saw Mallory running straight toward her.
Brandy’s voice cracked through the hallway.
“CALATHEA!”
Calathea barely had time to turn.
Something lunged behind her.
A warped arm shot forward and wrapped around her shoulder, its burned skin cold and tight as it yanked her backward.
Calathea screamed as her feet slipped out from under her and she crashed to the carpet.
The creature collapsed over her like a broken puppet, its twisted limbs folding around her body. Its shape seemed less solid the closer it got, like smoke and flesh mixed together.
And it began pulling.
Not dragging her across the floor—
Pulling her into itself.
The center of the creature rippled like a dark opening, the edges of its body folding inward around Calathea as if trying to swallow her whole.
Calathea struggled, clawing at the carpet.
“Mallory!”
Mallory was already running.
Her heart slammed in her chest as she sprinted down the hallway, the distorted shape tightening around Calathea.
Brandy stood frozen at the far end.
“Mallory!”
The creature jerked Calathea closer, its black swollen eyes bulging as its body twisted and folded around her.
Mallory lunged forward and grabbed Calathea’s arm.
“Hold on!”
The creature pulled harder.
For a moment it felt like Calathea might tear right out of Mallory’s grip.
But Mallory planted her feet and pulled with everything she had.
“Let go of her!”
With a violent jerk, Calathea ripped free.
The creature recoiled instantly.
Its twisted body shriveled inward, collapsing like burnt paper curling in on itself. The warped limbs shrank and folded until the entire shape crumpled toward the floor.
Then it dissolved.
The blackened flesh crumbled into nothing.
Only a thin vapor drifted upward from the carpet, twisting slowly through the air before fading away.
Silence filled the hallway.
Mallory dropped to her knees beside Calathea.
For a second neither of them spoke.
Then Calathea grabbed Mallory and held on tightly.
Mallory wrapped her arms around her, both of them shaking.
“You’re okay,” Mallory whispered breathlessly. “You’re okay.”
Calathea nodded against her shoulder, tears in her eyes.
Brandy ran down the hallway toward them.
“Oh my God—oh my God—”
She reached them and grabbed both of their arms, helping pull them up from the floor.
“Are you okay? That thing—what was that thing?”
Calathea wiped her face, still catching her breath.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly.
Mallory looked down the hallway where the vapor had vanished.
“It’s gone.”
Brandy shook her head nervously. “Can we please leave this place now?”
Mallory nodded.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
The three of them moved quickly back through the dorm hallway and into the room where the memory had begun.
Jeffrey, Douglas, and Mason still sat frozen in their moment, the speakerphone conversation crackling faintly through the room as if nothing had ever happened.
None of them noticed the girls.
Mallory walked straight toward the doorway where they had entered.
“Back through here,” she said.
They stepped through.
The world folded around them again.
The carpet vanished beneath their feet.
And suddenly—
Water.
The surface of the jacuzzi burst upward as the three of them rose out of it together, gasping as they climbed back into the tiled restroom in the wine cellar.
Drips of water echoed softly in the quiet room.
For a moment, none of them spoke.
Then Calathea looked up at them.
“I saw something upstairs,” she said.
Mallory and Brandy both turned toward her.
“Where?” Mallory asked.
“Third floor,” Calathea said, still breathing hard. “One of the bedrooms.”
She tightened her grip on the drum she was still holding.
“The room wasn’t normal. It looked like the fabric of reality was torn open.”
Mallory frowned.
“What do you mean?”
Calathea shook her head slightly.
“I could see through it. Like a rip in space. And at the edge of it… I saw Mason.”
Brandy’s eyes widened.
“Mason?”
Calathea nodded.
“And I think Douglas is there too.”
Mallory looked toward the staircase leading out of the cellar.
Then back at them.
“Third floor,” she said.
And the three of them headed for the stairs.
