Chapter Text
Here it is! Your new home!
Three stories of richly red-painted wood atop a cobblestone base, cheerily wide windows, a comfortably spacious shaded porch, all bundled beneath shingled sloping roofs with an incarnadine brick chimney poking out up top. Such a beautiful house, and it’s came at an incredible bargain! You could scarcely believe how heavy your bank account remained, humming happily down the long driveway. Trees grew thickly on either side of the dirt path, tall and coniferous; They were beautiful, painted greens and golds, though you some unwelcome little imp of a thought led you to imagine unbidden this now serene walk as rather scary during the night, like one of those cheap horror movies. Speaking of such; A confusingly cheap deal, this remote isolated location… It was as cliche as those flicks got. The silly thought draws a chuckle from you, and that was all. That troublesome thought-imp, you flick it away, your eagerness makes it easy as pie to dismiss any annoying little worries.
Nothing could dampen your excitement; This house was your dream. And here before you it was, beautiful, fat, and eager to be lived in.
Sure, it might be lonely… But all the better! Such a big, beautiful house would be yours alone, with no loud roommates who left their stinking socks in the middle of the floor! You’d decorate the walls, you’d keep everything all nice and tidy, and you’d live free of nagging, messy cohabitants forevermore!
Moving in went quicker than you’d feared, your excitement alone more than enough energy to get things done swiftly—And there wasn’t much to move, anyway. You’d brought only your bed, some basic appliances, a television and game system, dishes, cutlery, cooking supplies, a stack of books, and a smattering of knickknacks—No need for furniture since it’d come with the house! It really had been such an incredible deal, you thought, collapsing into a comfortable leather couch once most of the work was done.
Most of the rooms were already exquisite: The kitchen’s fridge and oven were so clean, you felt a bliss almost blinding once you saw the complete absence of grime; The living room sported a television stand already bolted into the wall for easy mounting, and even a convenient cabinet right beneath to place your PS5 atop and collection of discs within; The master bedroom came with pink and blue curtains cute and charming, along with a dresser and rather spacious closet; The attic…
Well, in stark contrast to the rest of the house, the attic was a mess most horrid. Everything was covered in some odd, ashy dust, dreadfully thick like a dirty fur coat. Chairs and tables and other cracked lumps were strewn all about, and the windows were boarded up.
With a groan, you had planted your face in your hands; How had you made such a silly mistake, as to not question why the previous owners hadn’t shown you the attic? You’d been so giddy over the deal and they’d glossed over it so smoothly you couldn’t even remember the probably nonsense excuse they’d fed you.
Sometimes in your life, you feel like you are a very stupid person.
Well, best not to beat yourself up over it. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone is a very stupid person sometimes.
At least, you hope.
Whatever! It wasn’t that big a deal. You just had a lot of extra cleaning to do.
Eh. You’d do it tomorrow. Suddenly, you’d been too tired to start right now; Instead, you collapsed onto your resettled bed, sighed deeply, and scrolled through your phone.
You weren’t being lazy, or intimidated by the task ahead, you were only taking a little break. Breaks are good for you.
Your definition of a ‘little break’ turned out to be four hours of doomscrolling. Your eyes felt sore, and you were hungry.
Oh well. You’d have to clean the attic after a nice microwave dinner.
It’s nearly difficult to breathe, but not dangerously so; Dust choked the air and your decision to wear a mask for this only proves smarter and smarter with each sea of dust stirred up. Most of the scattered furniture all over the floor is garbage, snapped into bits and in the case of some pieces, lightly charred. It’s weird, but you don’t think much of it all when you pack more and more of the trash into a large box by the staircase; When it gets too full you dump the crap into an even bigger box outside. You don’t exactly know what you’ll do with it all, maybe you’ll haul it to the dump someday, or use the wood for fireplace fuel. Eh. You’ll figure it out later; it’s not a pressing issue.
While continuing your cleaning, you find an oddity.
It’s a rectangular oddity, with a bumpy, stiff texture like waves, or lumpy round scales, rippling out from pits sunk into the surface. You sink a finger into one of the pits, driven by unwise curiosity, and are met with a dry, slimy texture, in the fashion of crumbling wax. Quickly you recoil, pulling out and wiping that finger off on your pants before resuming your inspection of the oddity more hesitantly (Instead of doing the wise thing and immediately incinerating this creepy-ass shit in a bonfire outside.) The spine is pale and hard, like dull porcelain, and the guts of the oddity are clasped shut with a short little strap. Strange in appearance, but it’s easy to tell that the oddity is a book.
Driven by curiosity bordering on morbid and a big bit of boredom, you undo the short strap and the innards, thick tannish, sort of translucent pages, spill open beneath your eyes. You open it to a random page smack in the middle of the time, where there is an obese—no, ribbiting, no croaking, that’s the right word—frog, or toad, drawn in fat strokes of ink. It looks kind of funny. Surrounding it are words, but they’re small and crudely penned, rendering them hard to read. You strain your eyes in futility for a bit, before giving up and flipping a few pages back towards the beginning, hoping to find a title page. Instead, you find a bookmark nestled deep in the crease between pages twenty-one and twenty two. At the top of aforementioned page twenty one it reads in bold letters finally legible:
‘FORBIDDEN RITUAL: CONVOCATION’
What does that word mean? Not ‘forbidden’ or ‘ritual’ you know those obviously and they’re ominous, (and a little intriguing to tell the truth,) but the third one’s denotation just slipped your mind. Not a big deal, you have a phone to search it up with. But before that, your eyes trail down the page.
‘PREPARATION:’
All beneath is illegible, or in some archaic language that looks like Latin. Maybe it is Latin, you have no way to know—Fuck off, hell yeah you do! This is the 21st century, and its prodigal child lies in your pocket!
That’s right, out goes the phone!
And several things, you notice in the action of unsheathing the thing:
Upon the dusty floor you think you might’ve glimpsed a line, curved, like the border of a circle. Having not held your attention, it might’ve been red. You don’t know.
The tab your phone opens to is that manga you bought digitally and just finished—Demon Slayer, that one with the hot evil cannibals.
And on your finger, a shallow cut. A paper cut maybe? It’s not serious, but blood indeed leaks out—Leaks and falls in a singular droplet.
Which splatters on the floor, on top of that line which is not, in fact, red, but a burnt-into-the-floor black.
Suddenly, fog swells from nowhere, and fills, impregnates the attic with its foul smelling essence that nips at any exposed skin like a thousand small snakes and it’s so, so cold you’re shivering and all you can see, all you can breathe is ghostly gray.
Oh no.
Then, hidden in the fog which obscures everything beyond the two inches ahead of your eye, something bites your arm.
Oh hell no.
Instinctively, you know you should scream and run. Rationally, you know you should force the thing off, bop it on the head until it lets go. Realistically, whatever is happening simply cannot be happening and likely you’re the thrall of some odd dream.
Yet despite all those howling voices inside, instead of screaming, instead of bopping heads and instead of waking up, you just stand there, slack jawed with a horrifically dumb expression. All that escapes your mouth is a shatteringly stupid,
“…Huh…?”
Your primeval ancestors are so ashamed of you, right now. But disregard that, it’ll be a matter for when you’re tossing and turning in bed tortured by humiliating memories—What matters now is living to reach that bed. Those fangs are still clamped onto your skin, the mouth is wet and salivating with hunger and an eager tongue laves over the sweat of your fear. It’s going to bite, it’s going to bite your arm off and you’ll lose your arm and this is your dominant arm, your favorite arm—It’s going to bite, oh god it’s going to bite and you’re frozen, you can’t move and it’s going to bite…!
It doesn’t bite.
You spend what feels like hours paralyzed, and it still doesn’t bite. It’s an awful limbo that you stand trapped inside, your frozen body unable to do anything but wait for the inevitable gnashing of teeth and the dismembering pain that’ll follow.
Why can’t you move? It’s pathetic. You used to be so confident in your ability to beat up home robbers in those daydreams of yours, now look at you; You’re a dog toy. You’re letting this demon summoned from hell chew you like a dog toy.
Nothing changes for what might be days--Now the fog is clearing, and you’re still a fear-frozen chew toy. The only part of your body you seem able to control are your eyes, and even then they feel out of your grasp; They’re creeping towards whatever’s got your arm in its maw but you don’t want to see it, you don’t want to see whatever netherworld born monstrosity is playing with its food of your flesh, you really, really don’t want to see and already you’re beginning to feel faint—You know your heart won’t handle the shock of sighting the awful thing but still your eyes betray you, helplessly drawn to your own doom and—
It’s too late. The horrific creature is revealed to you.
And he’s rather… cute. And familiar.
What the fuck?!