It was an old Victorian mansion, nestled at the edge of the woods, far from the rest of the town. Alice and Mark bought it for a bargain, thrilled at the idea of renovating the grand old place and making it their own. Sure, it was a bit run-down, but it had character — high ceilings, ornate banisters, and a sprawling, overgrown garden that had long been forgotten by time.
The first night they moved in, the house was still. The air inside was musty, thick with dust that hadn’t been disturbed for years. The house creaked and groaned, but it felt like home in a way that their previous apartment never had.
But the next morning, something had changed.
It was Alice who noticed it first. As she wandered through the hallway to make coffee, she saw a door that hadn’t been there the night before. It was plain, unremarkable, and yet she was certain it hadn’t existed when they’d done their walkthrough. Curious, she opened it.
Behind the door was a new room. A small study, lined with bookshelves filled with dusty old volumes, and a mahogany desk facing a large window that looked out into the woods. She stared at it, puzzled. They had toured the house a dozen times before buying it — there had been no study, and certainly not one like this.
“Mark,” she called out, her voice tinged with confusion.
He came quickly, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What is it?”
“This… this room. It wasn’t here yesterday.”
Mark frowned, stepping inside to inspect it. “Maybe we just missed it. The house is big.”
But Alice wasn’t convinced. She would’ve remembered a room like this — it felt lived-in, somehow, like someone had just left it moments ago. The air still smelled faintly of wood polish, fresh enough to make her uneasy.
They brushed it off, assuming it had just been overlooked. After all, they were still getting used to the house’s sprawling layout.
But the next morning, it happened again.
Another new door. Another new room.
This time, it was a small, cozy sitting room, with plush armchairs arranged around an unlit fireplace. The furniture was old-fashioned, as if plucked from a different era, but untouched by dust or decay. Mark tried to explain it away again, but Alice could hear the doubt creeping into his voice.
By the end of the week, the house had grown. New hallways twisted and turned where there had been none before. The rooms multiplied. There was now a second kitchen, a library, a music room, even a ballroom with chandeliers that sparkled in the faint morning light. The mansion was becoming a maze, and they were losing track of where they’d been and where they were going.
“This can’t be possible,” Alice whispered one evening as they sat in the original living room, the only space that still felt familiar.
Mark didn’t reply. He had spent the day trying to measure the house, counting steps from one end to the other, but no matter how he tried, the measurements never added up. The rooms seemed to shift when he wasn’t looking, expanding and stretching into places that shouldn’t exist.
A week later, Alice woke to find Mark standing by a door she hadn’t seen before. His face was pale, his eyes hollow.
“I heard something last night,” he said, his voice shaking. “Coming from behind this door.”
“What did you hear?”
“Voices.”
They stood in silence, staring at the door. It was plain, just like the others, but something about it felt different. Darker. As if the house itself was waiting for them to open it.
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Alice whispered, but Mark was already reaching for the knob.
The door creaked open, revealing a long, narrow hallway lined with portraits. The faces in the paintings were unfamiliar, but they all had the same distant, sorrowful look. At the end of the hallway, there was another door, slightly ajar.
Mark stepped forward. “We have to see where this goes.”
They walked together, their footsteps echoing unnaturally in the silence. The air grew colder as they approached the door at the end, and with each step, Alice felt a growing sense of dread.
When they reached the door, Mark pushed it open.
Inside was a bedroom. The bed was neatly made, the curtains drawn. But the most unsettling thing was the photograph on the nightstand — a picture of Alice and Mark, standing in front of the house, smiling brightly as if it were taken just yesterday. Only… they had never taken such a photo.
A soft sound filled the room. It was the faintest of whispers, barely audible. It came from the walls, the floor, the very bones of the house. The voices were indistinct, but one thing was clear: they were not alone.
Mark turned to Alice, his face drained of colour. “We have to leave.”
But as they rushed toward the door, the hallway beyond shifted. The path they had taken was gone, replaced by more doors, more rooms, all leading deeper into the house.
Slowly, they began to realise the truth: the house wasn’t just expanding. It was pulling them in deeper, further from the outside world, absorbing them into its bowels.
After such a long fast, the house had finally received another meal.
