Chapter 37

At first, it was small things.

Her mother started smiling too long at empty corners of the kitchen, spoon frozen halfway to her mouth, as if listening to something the girl couldn’t hear. Her father began locking doors that were already locked, testing them three, four, five times before bed, whispering, “Just making sure it doesn’t get out.”

The girl thought it was stress. Adults got strange when they were tired.

Then the rules changed.

“No windows after sunset,” her mother said one evening, gently pulling the curtains shut even though the sky was still blue. “And don’t answer if we call you from another room unless you see us first.”

Her father stopped saying her name entirely. He would just stand in doorways and stare at her for a long time, like he was checking she still matched something in his memory.

At night, she heard them talking downstairs. Not arguing. Not exactly.

More like repeating.

“We keep her safe.”
“We keep her safe.”
“We keep her safe.”

One night, she woke up thirsty. The house was too quiet, the kind of quiet that feels like it’s listening back. She crept into the hallway and saw her parents standing in front of her bedroom door.

They weren’t looking at it.

They were looking through it.

Her mother tilted her head. “She’s awake.”

Her father nodded slowly. “Then she can hear it now.”

The girl’s throat tightened. “Hear what?”

Both of them turned toward her at the same time. Their eyes looked wrong—not empty, not blind… just slightly delayed, like something inside them was reacting a second too late.

From behind her bedroom door, something shifted.

A soft scrape. Like fingernails dragging carefully along wood from the inside.

Her mother smiled that too-long smile again. “It started asking for you last week,” she said gently. “But we told it no.”

The scratching stopped.

A pause.

Then, from inside her room, her own voice answered perfectly through the wood:

“Let me out.”

Her father’s hand tightened on the hallway wall until the paint cracked. “We keep her safe,” he whispered again, but this time it sounded less like a promise and more like something he was trying to convince himself of.

The girl backed away.

Because she suddenly understood the worst part.

Her parents weren’t protecting her from what was in the room.

They were protecting the room from her.