Page 60 of Where the Dark Things Bloom

I kept looking for him—searching corners, shadows, mirrors—but he was gone. Gone, or hiding.

Then the phone rang.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

I hesitated, heart pounding, then snatched it off the receiver. Static hissed, then his voice slid through the line, low and cold:

“You should’ve never come back, little stepsister.”

Air caught in my throat. I gasped, clutching the phone like it could anchor me.

But the floor beneath me felt like it was shifting—tilting, breathing, alive. And his voice… it kept echoing through the hall, even though the line had long gone dead.

Then he appeared.

At the top of the staircase.

But it wasn’t him—not anymore.

He wore a mask.

Rough jute stretched over his face, stitched tight. Two holes punched out where his eyes should be, dark and unreadable. Where his mouth should’ve been… there was a line—drawn in blood. A smile, red and crude, carved across the mask like a wound. A smile that didn’t end. A smile that cut straight into my brain and stayed there.

This was it.

Hause had him now. He wasn’t here to speak. He wasn’t here to plead. He was here to kill me.

I screamed—raw, throat tearing. My head jolted to the right—and that’s when I saw him. My father.

His body hung from the ceiling, limp, hanging from a rope. His eyes were wide open. Lifeless. Watching nothing.

This was the final act.

He—the thing in the mask—was here to kill me.

How did it come to this?

How could Dorian becomethis?

How could the boy I knew slip into something so hollow, so monstrous?

Then the doorbell rang.

A sharp, jarring sound that didn’t belong. Like it came from another world entirely.

I stumbled to the front door. Opened it.

Dorian stood there.

Alive. Normal. Breathing.

“Lenore?” he asked, confused. “What are you doing here?”

I screamed again, stumbling back, heart slamming against my ribs.

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