The Hollow Door

November 13, 1871

The cellar door is breathing.

I hear it when the wind dies — that slow, rhythmic swell of wood and air, the faint creak of boards expanding as if lungs pressed from the other side. At first, I thought it was the storm — the draft that slips beneath the seams of old houses. But storms don’t breathe in time with a heartbeat. And tonight, the hum beneath the floorboards moved there — gathering, concentrating, waiting.

I’ve taken to sitting at the top of the stairs, candle in hand, watching the thin line of shadow under the door. Sometimes it brightens, pulsing faintly like something alive beneath water. Each time it does, the mark on my wrist warms.

The Kentucky book spoke of this. “The Second Mouth,” it called it — a threshold that opens only after an offering is accepted. A bridge between hunger and host. I thought the words were metaphor, allegory for temptation. But the margins — written by another hand, in smaller, desperate script — contradict the printed calm of the text.

Never answer if it knocks.

The candle burned low. The air grew heavy. Then — knock.

Once.

Again.

A third time, softer. Almost polite.

My name whispered through the wood — not aloud, but inside my bones. The same way the voice first came to me in dreams.

I rose before I realized it, fingers brushing the iron latch. The hum beneath my skin sang to the one beneath the floor.

For a heartbeat, I almost answered.

Then the flame guttered, and the whisper stopped.

Now the cellar is silent.

But the air still tastes of breath.