Page 8 of Where The Devil Kneels

I scribble something about the temperature drop by the library window seat, watching my breath cloud in front of me. The cold seems to reach for me, encircling my wrists as I hold the thermometer. My pen hesitates above the paper. What am I even supposed to write? “Ghost made an ice cube by the window.” I settle for “No logical explanation” and immediately hate how inadequate the words look on the page.

The study hits me with another cool area. God, it must be about 6°C, hovering around my grandmother’s writing desk like some invisible ghost sitting there. And the basement door? It’s as if walking through a wall of ice, maybe 4°C at its centre. I keep taking pictures, scribbling measurements, and noting everything like the scientist I pretend to be. What am I even doing? No amount of data collection explains this. My fingers are practically blue now, and I catch myself frantically rubbing them together between readings. The blood coming back feels like countless tiny needles under my skin.

The drawing room’s dust spiral is impressive. It branches into smaller swirls that look like something between fern leaves and those frost formations that appear on windows in winter. I drop to my knees, angling my camera to catch all the details. On the screen, it pops—dark dust against the pale floor, weirdly mathematical but also… alive? I’m so lost in getting the focus just right that when a floorboard groans behind me, I freeze like a deer in headlights, every muscle in my body suddenly concrete.

The temperature plummets. My breath clouds in front of my face, and the thermometer on the floor beside me flashes: 3°C. My heart hammers against my torso as I pivot on my heels, camera pressed to my chest like a shield. Nothing. Empty space greets me, the doorway vacant, the hall beyond still. Yet the sensation of presence weighs on my skin like an actual touch.

“Hello?” I whisper, the word crystallizing in the air. No response—not that I was really expecting one. The house creaks around me as an old house should. Nothing but my imagination working overtime. The aftermath of too little sleep and too much isolation.

The camera shakes in my grip as I abandon all pretense of methodical documentation, firing off shot after shot in rapid succession. Each click rings in the quiet like a faint heartbeat. The researcher in me—the one who came armed with thermometers and journals—dissolves away, leaving only the woman who has felt eyes on her back since the moment she arrived. Isn’t this exactly what I’ve been searching for? Proof that these walls harbour more than memories? That when I feel watched, I am?

“I know you’re here,” I say, my voice coming out stronger than my shaky hands as I scribble down the new pattern. “I’m not going anywhere.” It’s half fuck-you, half pinky-swear as I keep mapping every twist and loop of this freaky new pattern, counting spirals like they’ll be on a test tomorrow.

I try to list explanations: maybe it’s just the air flowing through the vents, or the vibration of trucks on the nearby road, or my mind playing tricks after too many nights alone. Yet something deeper—the same instinct that still jerks me awake at 3AM with the phantom sensation of water flooding my lungs—rejects these comfortable lies. When I exhale, the house inhales. When I look away, it shifts. When I speak, it listens.

The crunch of tires on gravel pulls me from my trance. I’ve been staring at the photographs of the altered dust patterns for hours, my eyes stinging from the strain of searching for meaning in their whirls and spirals. Through the front window, I spot an aged blue truck limping up the driveway, its bed loaded with lumber and what appears to be roofing supplies. Rafe. The man from yesterday who spoke of the house’s will as if it were a living creature. Perfecttiming. I have questions that need answering, and he seems to know more about this place than he’s willing to admit.

My fingers linger on the journal’s worn cover before I slide it into the desk drawer. Something stops me from shutting it immediately; the pages of temperatures and dust patterns suddenly feel like secrets not meant for outside eyes. I push the drawer closed, wincing at the gentle click that sounds too much like I’m hiding the evidence of a crime rather than protecting my research.

I push open the front door to find Rafe already knee-deep in work, hefting lumber from his truck bed with the easy rhythm of someone who’s done this since before I was born. The wood settles into his grip as it belongs there. When he catches sight of me hovering in the doorway, he offers a curt nod without breaking stride, as though I’m the visitor and he’s the one who belongs here.

“Morning,” I offer, wrapping my cardigan tighter against the morning chill. “I see you’re making good on your promise to fix the roof.”

He grunts. “Keep my promises.” His eyes barely acknowledge me before shifting to the house around me, measuring its angles and edges like he’s calculating something I can’t see. “Weathered that storm better than most would’ve guessed. Surprised me.”

His words carry an undertone I can’t quite place, and I find myself studying his weathered face. Does he know about the silhouette I saw through the rain-streaked window, moving across my roof with impossible sureness? My skin prickles with goosebumps despite the morning warmth. “The house held up remarkably well,” I say carefully, not breaking eye contact. “Strange, isn’t it? Almost like someone was up there during the storm, making sure of it.”

His expression doesn’t change, but his hands are still for just a fraction of a second before resuming their task. “Old houses have ways of surprising you,” he says, shouldering a toolbox that looks nearly as ancient as he is. “Going to check that north corner first. Needs reinforcing before the next front moves in.”

I trail behind him into the house, swallowing back all my questions. My eyes narrow as he moves through the hallway, his body automatically sidestepping the third-floor board that always creaks under my weight, then his head dips precisely two inches before passing under the staircase beam. Not once does he pause or look where he’s going. Each fluid movement betrays him. No stranger moves through a house like that. No repairman who’s visited only once before remembers which boards to avoid, which doorways run low.

In the upstairs hallway, Rafe stops abruptly. The hammer in his weathered hand connects with the floral wallpaper, producing a hollow echo that makesmy skin shiver. His eyes narrow with recognition rather than surprise. “The Victorians,” he murmurs, continuing his tapping down the corridor, “they built hidden truths into their homes.” Each tap reveals emptiness where there should be solid structure. “And this house? It’s got more secret passages than most, narrow corridors placed between the walls where a person could slip through the entire house without anyone knowing they’re there.”

My pulse quickens, and I swallow hard. “Hidden pathways?”

His rough knuckles rap against the wall, and the bare echo changes pitch. “Rich folks didn’t want to see their help,” he mutters, moving his hand along the panelling. “So they built these passages. Let servants slip around like ghosts.” The hammer hangs motionless, held in his grip as he stops at what appears to be ordinary wallpaper. His voice drops. “Some weren’t for servants, though. Some were for watching. Listening. Learning secrets.”

“You mean someone could be walking around inside my walls?” I ask, working to keep my voice controlled despite the implications, sending my mind spiralling in a dozen directions at once. My mysterious watcher. The dust patterns. The rearranged objects. Holy shit, I’m living in a house with built-in stalker tunnels.

Something flickers across Rafe’s face, not quite a smile, more like private amusement. “Takes a certain familiarity with the house. Tight spaces, most of ‘em. Some haven’t seen daylight since the Depression.” His weathered hand glides along the carved woodwork until his thumb finds an imperceptible notch. When he applies pressure, the bookcase I’d never questioned shifts with a whisper of wood against wood, exposing a slender darkness behind. “This one won’t show up in any county records.”

The revealed space is barely wider than my shoulders, a dark vertical shaft disappearing upward and downward beyond the reach of light. The air that wafts from it is cool and stale, wafting the scent of decades untouched by human presence. Or so I hope.

“How many of these are there?” I ask, moving closer to peer into the darkness. My voice sounds too loud in the confined space, bouncing back at me from unseen corners.

“More than the first architect intended,” Rafe answers cryptically, already closing the panel with practised ease. “These old houses grew over time. One owner adds a passage, another seals it up, a third discovers it and expands it.” He turns his attention to a damaged ceiling beam, his body language shifting to make it clear the topic is closed.

I push anyway. “Have you been in all of them? Mapped them out?” The question hangs between us, loaded full of implications we both understand but neither acknowledges.

Rafe measures the beam with careful accuracy, jotting numbers on a small notepad with a pencil stub so worn it’s barely longer than his thumbnail. “Not safe to explore,” he says finally, his voice husky. “Some floors rotted through. Some might still have…” He pauses, choosing his words with visible care. “Items. From previous inhabitants.”

“What kind of items?” I press, blood rushing in my ears. Each evasion only confirms my suspicions; he knows more, much more, than he’s willing to share.

His shoulders bunch beneath his flannel shirt as he turns away, busying himself with his toolbox. “You’re nosy,” he mutters before continuing, “People leave things behind. Best not to disturb them.” The warning in his voice is unmistakable.

Rafe barely speaks for the next hour. He navigates my house like someone who’s memorized its blueprint, moving with such certainty from one repair to the next that I find myself following him with growing suspicion. I shuffle papers and rearrange books, feigning productivity while watching his hands work. When he stops mid-task, head tilted as if hearing something in the walls’ whispers that I cannot, the realization hits me: he knows this house the way I never will. His fingers trace the woodwork with the familiarity of a lover, making me feel like I’m the trespasser here, not him.

“Another storm’s coming,” he says finally, packing his tools with methodical care. “Bigger than last night’s. I’ll be back tomorrow with tailored materials for those east windows. They won’t hold against what’s coming.”