The gifts delivered via UpsideDown Logistics were never delivered to any address, and those who unpacked them tended to call the police or social services rather than deliver them to anyone living, regardless of zip code.
The house was not listed on any map. It appeared, whenever a drone or satellite ventured high enough into the cloudy sky above the sprawling Evergreen Flatlands, as a still space surrounded by trees. On the fourth and final image, however, the trees began to part, revealing a brick facade and a neat, symmetrical sweep of brown walkways leading to a single, narrow wooden door.
When Lila received the photograph and the email, she blinked more quickly than she liked. Dear Lila, we are thrilled to present you with our most exclusive collection yet. Please note: the box is fragile and should be opened wearing gloves. Thank you for your interest in AETHERYX Paranormal Products.
She had not ordered anything from the company, and had never even heard of it, but the address had been her own, which was why she had sent it back to the sender, along with a polite question about delivery policies. She had received no reply.
So, six months later, when a soft blue package glided through her mail slot and nearly crushed the can in her left hand, she figured something was indeed off. She wore white cotton gloves without breaking them, and inside was a black box shaped like a coffin with a tiny handle on the top.
Inside were simple instruments: a brushed brass metronome, a glass spout, a roll of printed stone tablets, and an envelope sealed with black wax stamped with a pitchfork.
Inside the envelope, written in an elegant, old-fashioned hand, were the words:
“You have been chosen. Please visit.”
Lila would come to regret the choice.
—
The house was a hundred feet from her own, yet it felt as though she had stepped into déjà vu. Sheered windows stared down at her from the facade, devoid of any human clutter. Lilac was central. Everything about the house revealed symmetry: square shutters, neatly trimmed hedges, even small ironwork motto-styled lanterns lining the gallery at the front.
No one was there, and she felt the sensation on her skin, a cold presence, even in the middle of the afternoon. Shadows swirled at the edges of her vision as she walked, fingers gripping the handle until a dry creek prankled forward and splashed inside her shoes.
Immediately, the brass metronome moved. It beat steadily, ticking away six times per second.
She glanced at the instrument. No hands were reaching for it, and no ropes were catching at her ankles. The sound was familiar, a set of invisible hands clicking through chapters of a Japanese movie she’d watched once. The tapping accelerated and she stopped, listening as the beat started one-tenth slower.
A voice, soft and reverberant, whispered at her ear:
“Welcome, Lila.”
—
The door crackled with frost, and she edged closer, each step echoing in the hallway. The spout slugged water directly into her cupped hands, steam rising immediately. She was desperate for something; it settled on her tongue, cool and metallic — tasting of rust and gunpowder.
On the wall, a painted lighthouse flashed its beam. In her mind, an image sprang to life: the clock tower she’d seen vanish in the final shot of that anime, its face spattered with light-brook blood, a broken reaper draped from its hands.
The key twisted in her pocket, metal dangling. The door groaned; she forced her body inside.
The hallway was exactly what the postcard had promised: long, silent, and stretching floor to ceiling with aged wallpaper printed in blue silhouettes of wiry trees. She expected to see furniture, ornaments, maybe a tea set, anything other than what hung on the door behind her.
When she turned, her breath caught.
The walls bent and pitched while she moved, shadows shifting, the painting stuttering in place and sprouting roots that bared their bark and bared their teeth. On the ceiling, the ceiling started to feel shorter than the walls, and picture frames drifted in and out of her view, showing thousand-piece puzzles that were never completed — dazzling on the surface, but behind the pieces, only pink shadowy worlds.
Images rose, one by one. A woman stripped to the waist, with a clock superimposed on her chest, looking straight at Lila. Another woman, bound to a table, screaming, the head off and hanging on the wall behind her. Lila could not move.
She lived in all of these moments at once, trapped in a loop that never slowed, never began anew.
—
The metronome returned to six beats. Fog pooled beneath the doorway as the spout pulsed again, this time with a different liquid—one that burbled and hissed, the scent of roasted meat in the air.
Lila listened as the walls bent back to their original angle. The paintings worked their way up the walls until they slid down the lengths, spilling in battered stools and broken chairs.
She sat in the center of the hallway on nothing, some invisible surface beneath her feet. Her ears were buzzing. The wax seal, cooling from her fingers, had started to melt. Underneath was a second letter, this one handwritten and sloppily scrawled as if pressed onto the page by oversized fingers.
It read: The House at the End of the Hall.
I expected it to spell out how to escape, but nothing was written beyond those words.
A shadow passed over her as the lights flickered. A figure appeared. At first she thought she was seeing a reflection in a window. But it was real; she could see the dust motes stirring.
Eyes were at the tips of her shoes,_nodes along the wallpaper cords, and crawling down her spine. It wore tattered jeans and a long charcoal coat that swallowed its legs. Once a person’s nose, once a mouth, once a shoulder. She could not identify what it was, exactly.
The words “The House at the End of the Hall” appeared along the bottom edge of her vision, written in blood, crept over her eyes, and then oozed into a stain along the wall behind her.
The walls bent again, crumpling and ripping, and Lila was now curled on the floor, facing the door. The weight was immeasurable—she had to stop moving.
The figure moved closer from her left side, footsteps falling closer and closer. All around the hallway, chairs toppled and blamed themselves on invisible floors. She could not scream; her voice came out as a distant whisper.
—
The figure circled Lila for some time, footsteps slowing until they halted, and a face appeared at the end of its shifting body. A face: mature beyond time, though not yet completely old.
“Are you alone here, Lila?” The voice was gentle, coaxing, looking more at the carpet in her room than at her face.
She nodded. Her breath puffed into clouds.
The figure bent down, whispering directly into her ear.
“My house sits at the end of all your roads. Its walls hold your fears. There is no hope.”
Lila’s vision blurred. Black spots sapped her thoughts. She blinked, and for a heartbeat, she saw home: her sitting room, the cat lying on the rug, her phone charging near her pillow, the world soaking in afternoon light. Was it real?
She opened her eyes again. Nothing.
All she could see was mirrors, dozen upon dozen mirrors, reflecting every version of herself at every spot along the walls and floor. Each Lila reached out to the one next to her, hands outstretched, overlapped, screaming silently for release.
The sound of clicking metronomes crescendoed. The walls began to buckle, and Lila harvested herself together into a single body. She crawled forward, plant-like, toward the door.
As she reached her knees, the figure at her left appeared to sag; now she could see, from this strange vantage, that the figure had no solid center at all. That there was only a patchwork of ropes and chains connecting furniture and loose paper.
The door pulled open with a yawn.
A beam of golden light spilled through, warmth so intense she shrank back on instinct.
All at once, the walls melted away, painting wallpaper crashed into shards, and chairs straightened in line, and the metronome finally slowed. The sound was replaced by a soft, shimmering chime.
The house receded, shrinking back into its original folds. Lilac, subset, came back into herself, her stomach sinking, a deep, vibrant relief filling her chest.
She clutched the doorframe until her knuckles were white. The face in the mirror winked and then faded to black, vanishing.
Lila turned and embraced herself firmly, her heart racing. The house was gone. The mail, the package, the figures, the covers—all were nothing but her imagination.
But something was wrong.
As she untangled her legs from under the table that had popped up behind her, she noticed a card on the tabletop, all she could see of its face, with the same letters as THE HOUSE AT THE END OF THE HALL. Only, before it, the word HAD sprawled in the handwritten scrawl.
There was nothing else in the room.
One last glance at the door behind her. The shadow shifted, flickered, was gone.
And for the first time, she saw herself standing in the empty, restored living room, sunlight dancing on the
