What the Light Wouldn’t Touch

“The monsters outside aren’t half as bad as the ones inside — especially when the door’s already open.”

The door gave a soft groan as I pushed it wider. It hadn't been properly shut—just hanging there in the frame like an open wound, waiting. I hesitated on the threshold, one hand still on the door, the other clutching my phone. Behind me, the operator's voice continued its tinny protests, but the words had lost all meaning. They were just sounds now, background noise against the roaring in my head.

Joel's in there. Joel needs you.

I stepped inside.

The entrance tiles echoed beneath my footsteps—too loud, too hollow, the kind of echo that only happens in spaces that shouldn't be empty. The door swung closed behind me with a soft click that made my shoulders jump. Not a slam. Just a quiet, final sound that said: You're in now.

"I'm inside the house now." My voice came out hoarse, barely above a whisper. "It smells horrible in here."

And God, it did.

The smell had been faint outside, just a suggestion carried on the wind. But in here, enclosed and concentrated, it was overwhelming. Thick. Oppressive. A sour, organic stench that coated the back of my throat and made my eyes water. Rotting meat. Something sweet and putrid underneath, like fruit gone to mould. Damp and decay and something else—something animal and wrong that I couldn't identify but that made every primitive part of my brain scream danger.

I moved towards the kitchen on autopilot, barely seeing my surroundings.

"I'm putting the phone down on the kitchen bench."

I said it to the operator, to myself, to the empty house. A declaration. A line crossed.

The phone's screen glowed accusingly on the benchtop as I stepped away from it, the operator's voice still emanating from the speaker—tinny, desperate, increasingly distant. I heard her calling my name, telling me to get out, but I was already moving deeper into the house, drawn forward by something stronger than fear.

Joel.

The layout was typical split-level—kitchen and dining area flowing into a spacious living room, everything open plan in that 1980's way that was meant to feel spacious but just felt exposed. The last threads of daylight struggled through gaps in the blinds, casting the room in a grey half-light that made everything look two-dimensional. Shadows pooled in the corners, thick and undisturbed.

But nothing was disturbed. That was what struck me as I moved through the space, my footsteps too loud on the carpet. No overturned furniture. No broken glass. The chairs were tucked neatly beneath the dining table.

No mess. No violence. No sign of a struggle.

And that was somehow worse than finding chaos.

Because the smell said otherwise. The smell said something terrible had happened here. Was still happening here.

The quiet pressed against my eardrums, making them ache. It wasn't silence—not true silence. It was something held. Contained. The kind of quiet that happens when sound has been forcibly stopped. When something is listening.

I rubbed my arms through my coat sleeves, but the cold wasn't outside me anymore. It had seeped in through my skin, into my bones, settling somewhere deep in my chest where it made each breath feel laboured.

This wasn't just a house with a bad smell.

This was a place where something had gone very, very wrong.

My eyes swept the room, looking for... what? Signs of Joel? Signs of violence? I didn't know. I kept my gaze low, half-expecting to see blood on the carpet, a handprint on the wall, something to confirm what my instincts were screaming. But the floors were clean. The walls were clean. Everything was clean and tidy and perfectly, impossibly wrong.

The drawer made the faintest scrape as I pulled it open, and even that tiny sound felt too loud in the suffocating stillness. I moved slowly, each movement deliberate, as though even the cutlery might be startled. My fingers slid through the jumble of metal—forks, teaspoons, something sticky I didn't want to identify—until they closed around the handle of a knife.

It was heavier than I expected. Cold. Solid. I wrapped my hand tighter around it and drew it out, holding it close against my chest like it might steady my breathing. The blade caught what little light filtered through the blinds, throwing a brief glint across the benchtop.

I wasn't thinking about protecting myself.

I was thinking about what kind of mother walks into a nightmare unarmed.

For a long moment, I just stood there—listening. Waiting for some sound, some sign that I wasn't alone in this oppressive quiet.

Then I heard it.

A sound, low and faint, somewhere deeper in the house. At first I thought it was the wind, or maybe plumbing—an old pipe rattling in the walls. But no. It wasn't mechanical. It was organic. Wet. A shuffling sound, slow and dragging. And underneath it, something that might have been breathing. Ragged and uneven. Something alive.

The smell hit me again, stronger now as I moved towards the sound. Less rot, more... animal. Like something had crawled in from the bush and was dying somewhere in the walls. But it wasn't dead. It was moving.

I didn't realise I'd begun walking until I was already halfway across the room, past the dining table, past the lounge. My feet moved like they knew something I didn't, carrying me towards that sound even as every rational part of my brain screamed at me to turn around, to run, to get out whilst I still could.

The far corner of the room was framed in deeper shadow, a narrow section of wall that created a small alcove. There, just barely visible, was a door—partially open, showing nothing but darkness beyond.

The smell was strongest here. Much stronger.

I stepped closer, knife gripped so tightly in my hand that my knuckles had gone white. The door was a sliding one, I realised—the kind that ran on tracks, designed to save space. Someone had left it open just enough to pass through.

Or to let something out.

I reached for it with trembling fingers and pulled.

The rollers groaned softly against their track. The gap widened, revealing a small landing and a staircase leading down. Not a hallway. The lower floor of this split-level home.

The walls pressed in on either side, making the descent feel claustrophobic, suffocating.

At the bottom—maybe ten, twelve steps down—another door. Closed.

And from somewhere beyond it, that sound. Louder now. Definitely wet. Definitely organic. Shuffling and breathing and something else underneath it all—a low, guttural sound that made the hairs on my arms stand straight up.

Joel's down there.

The thought crashed through my paralysis with the force of certainty. I don't know how I knew. I just did. The same way I'd known I was pregnant before the test confirmed it. The same way I'd known, watching him read that birth certificate, that everything was about to fall apart.

My son was down there, and he needed me.

I started down the stairs before I could think better of it, my free hand trailing along the wall for balance, the other clutching the knife against my chest. The carpet was soft under my feet, muffling my steps, but each one still seemed to echo in the confined space. My breath came quick and shallow, fogging slightly in the cold air that rose from below.

Halfway down, my foot landed next to something dark smeared along the skirting board.

I crouched without thinking, squinting in the dim light filtering down from above.

Blood.

Fresh. Wet. Thick and dark. A line of it dragged along the wall, leading down towards the basement door. Not spattered. Not dropped. Dragged. Like someone had been pulled down these stairs, their hand or arm trailing behind them, leaving this awful breadcrumb trail.

My stomach lurched violently. I pressed the back of my free hand against my mouth, knife hand shaking, swallowing hard against the sudden surge of bile. The copper smell of it mixed with the rot in the air, making my head swim.

Joel. Oh God, Joel.

My vision swam. Black spots danced at the edges. I couldn't breathe properly—just these short, hitching gasps that weren't bringing in enough air. The blood was so red against the pale wall, so fresh that I could see it gleaming wetly in the low light.

A groan shattered through my panic.

Human. Pained. Close.

I jerked upright, spinning around so fast I nearly lost my balance on the narrow stairs. My eyes shot to the top of the stairwell.

A man stood there.

No—not stood. Staggered. He was leaning heavily against the doorframe, one hand pressed flat against the wall to hold himself upright, the other clutched to his side. His shirt—once white, maybe—was soaked through with blood, so saturated it looked black in the poor light. It clung to his torso, heavy and wet. His face was deathly pale, slick with sweat that caught the faint light from the room behind him. His eyes were wide but glassy, unfocused, like he was seeing through me to something beyond.

Blood dripped from between his fingers where they pressed against his side, pattering softly onto the carpet.

He looked straight at me, mouth working soundlessly, and I saw the moment his legs began to give out.

"Hey—!" I started forward instinctively, reaching up towards him even though he was too far away, too high up. "Wait, I can—"

He stepped forward, and his knees buckled.

Everything happened too fast. He pitched forward, body going limp, dead weight tumbling down the stairs towards me. I tried to brace myself, tried to catch him, but there was no catching something falling like that. He crashed into me with the force of a collapsing wall.

We both went down hard.

My knees slammed against the edge of a stair, white-hot pain exploding through my kneecaps. My elbow cracked against the wall, and I felt rather than heard something in my funny bone scream in protest. The knife flew from my hand, clattering somewhere below us in the darkness. But all I could really feel was the warmth of his blood.

It soaked into me immediately—hot and wet and wrong, spreading across my coat, my shirt, my skin. My hands were suddenly slippery with it as I tried to brace against his weight, tried to keep us both from tumbling further down the stairs. The smell of it filled my nose—copper and salt and something sweeter, more organic.

We came to rest in a tangled heap halfway down the stairs, his weight pinning me awkwardly against the wall. I could feel his chest hitching against mine, each breath a struggle. Wet. Rattling.

He tried to speak. His mouth opened, jaw working, lips forming shapes that might have been words. But all that came out was a gurgle—thick and wet and bubbling. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth, running down his chin.

His eyes found mine, wide and pleading and terrified. Or maybe just empty. I couldn't tell anymore. Couldn't think past the weight of him, the heat of his blood soaking into me, the way his chest hitched with each failed breath.

"It's okay," I heard myself saying, though nothing was okay. Nothing would ever be okay again. My voice sounded strange—high and thin and far away. "It's okay, help is coming, just—just hold on, just—"

I scrambled to get leverage, to shift his weight, to do something. My hands slipped in the blood coating everything—the stairs, the wall, both of us. I couldn't get purchase. Couldn't move him. He was too heavy, and I was too weak, and we were both sliding slowly down towards that closed door at the bottom.

And then everything changed.

The sound came first—a crash so sudden and violent that for a split second my brain couldn't process it as sound at all. It was pure force, a shockwave that seemed to shake the walls. The door at the bottom of the stairs exploded inward, wood splintering, the frame shrieking as it gave way.

Something burst through.

It was black. Not dark. Not shadowy. Black. A void in the shape of a creature, a shape that swallowed what little light reached down here. It moved like liquid smoke, like muscle and sinew given nightmare form—a sleek blur of violence that was too fast, too fluid, too wrong to be real.

I didn't have time to scream. Didn't have time to process what I was seeing before it was on us.

On him.

Massive claws—black as the rest of it, curved like scythes—shot forward and sank into the man's legs. The sound of them piercing flesh was wet and terrible, like a butcher's knife through raw meat. The man's body jerked violently in my arms, a scream tearing from his throat that was more animal than human.

And then the creature yanked.

The force was unreal. Impossible. It pulled him backwards down the stairs with such strength that I was dragged with him for a heart-stopping moment. His hand had found my sleeve, fingers twisted desperately in the fabric, and I felt myself sliding, felt my body being pulled down towards that thing, towards those claws, towards—

My free hand shot out, slamming against the wall, fingers scrabbling for purchase. They found the edge of a stair, dug in, held. The fabric of my sleeve tore with a sound like ripping paper, and suddenly his hand was gone, sliding free.

He screamed again—raw and bubbling, the sound cut short by something wet catching in his throat. His body twisted as the creature dragged him down, limbs flailing uselessly, hands clawing at the blood-slicked carpet. His fingers scrabbled for grip, pulling up tufts of fibre, nails tearing.

Blood fountained up the stairs. Hot and sudden and too much. It hit the walls in streaks, spattered across my face in warm droplets that tasted of copper when they hit my lips. I could feel it soaking into my hair, running down my neck.

I couldn't move. Couldn't scream. Couldn't do anything but watch as his hand—the one that had been gripping my sleeve—reached out one last time, fingers grasping at empty air, searching for something to hold onto.

And then he was through the doorway, dragged into the darkness below.

The sound that followed wasn't human. It was tearing. Wet and rhythmic and utterly, horrifically wrong. Like fabric being ripped, but worse. So much worse.

My body finally responded, every nerve firing at once. I scrambled backwards up the stairs, my hands slipping in blood, my knees slamming against edges, pain barely registering through the white-hot panic that had replaced thought. My foot missed a stair and I crashed hard against the wall, shoulder jarring, but I didn't stop. Couldn't stop.

My breath came in sharp, panicked gasps that hitched in my throat. The sounds from below continued—tearing, crunching, wet and rhythmic and getting worse. I pressed my hands over my ears but it didn't help. Couldn't block it out.

I had to get out. Had to get away. Had to—

My hand smacked blindly against the wall as I clawed my way upward, fingers scrabbling over plaster and blood and—

Click.

Light exploded into the stairwell with a mechanical buzz.

For a split second, the world froze in that harsh yellow glow. Time seemed to stop, every detail crystallising with horrible clarity.

The creature was halfway up the stairs.

Its body—sleek and black and impossibly panther-like—filled the narrow stairwell, muscles rippling beneath fur that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. It was massive, far larger than I'd realised in the darkness.

Its face was turned upward, locked on mine.

Eyes wide and inky black—no whites, no iris, just endless void that reflected nothing. They fixed on me with an intelligence that was somehow worse than animal rage. This thing knew what it was doing.

And its mouth.

Christ, its mouth.

Jaws too wide, filled with too many teeth—long and sharp and glistening dark red. Something hung from between them, something pink and wet that I couldn't, wouldn't, identify. Blood dripped from its muzzle in thick rivulets, pattering onto the stairs.

We stared at each other across the space of four, maybe five stairs. Its head tilted slightly, like a predator hearing a strange sound. And I saw—

It flinched.

The light. The creature flinched from the sudden light, its whole body convulsing as though the brightness caused it physical pain.

It let out a sound—low and guttural and warped, like metal being crushed underwater, like a growl filtered through something that had no right to make sounds at all. The noise reverberated in the confined space, rattling in my chest.

For one horrible, frozen moment, I thought it was going to spring up the remaining stairs. Thought I was about to feel those claws pierce my flesh the way they'd pierced his. Thought this was it—this was how I died, torn apart in Jamie Greyson's house whilst Joel was God knows where and I'd never told him I was sorry, never told him—

But instead, the creature released its grip on whatever remained at the bottom of the stairs.

Its claws ripped against the carpet below—a tear of nail on fabric that made my teeth ache, that seemed to cut right through my skull. And with impossible, fluid grace, it moved.

Not ran. Not retreated. It slithered backwards, like smoke being drawn into a crack, like oil flowing uphill. Its movements were wrong—too smooth, too controlled, defying physics and biology and everything I understood about how bodies moved through space.

It recoiled into the shadows beyond the splintered doorframe, and in the space of a heartbeat, it was gone. Vanished into darkness as though it had never been there at all.

But I could still hear it.

Down there in the downstairs room. Breathing. A wet, rasping sound. Moving slowly, deliberately. Waiting.

The silence that rushed in to fill the space it left was somehow worse than the sounds had been. Because now I knew. Now I'd seen what was down there. And it hadn't left. It had just... retreated.

Into the darkness.

Where the light couldn't reach.

I staggered backwards up the last few stairs on hands and knees, my legs too weak to hold me upright. My whole body was shaking so violently I couldn't control it—violent tremors that rattled my teeth and made it impossible to breathe properly. The landing floor rose up to meet me and I collapsed against it, gasping, retching, my vision swimming with black spots.

Blood. I was covered in blood. My hands, my coat, my face—all slick and hot and wrong. The smell of it mixed with the rot and the animal musk and I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't—

The light above the stairs flickered.

Once.

Twice.

No. No, please, no.

I forced my legs to work, forced myself to move, crawling away from the stairwell on hands and knees before my body remembered how to stand. My shoulder hit the wall and I used it to drag myself upright, legs shaking so badly I wasn't sure they'd hold.

Behind me, from the darkness, I heard a sound that might have been breathing.

Or growling.

Or something in between.

The light flickered again.

And held.

For now.