Day Three.
Mason didn't sleep.
Couldn't.
The photo sat on the kitchen table like a trap. Every time he looked at it, his stomach twisted tighter.
He had held the damn thing in his hands—his own face, captured mid-dream, unaware. Vulnerable. And someone had been close enough to take it.
Someone had been in his house.
The doors were locked.
The windows sealed.
And still, the photo had arrived.
He checked every inch of the place again—drawers, vents, crawlspaces, and closets he hadn't opened in months. He even pulled the mattress off his bed, just to be sure.
Nothing.
He didn't find anything.
And that terrified him more than if he had.
He couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.
Not watched from across the street. Not from the window. No.
It was closer than that.
Like something was standing directly behind him and choosing not to make a sound.
By noon, he was pacing the house like a caged animal.
Every creak of the floor made him spin around.
Every whisper of wind against the window sounded like breath on glass.
He checked his phone again.
No signal.
No Wi-Fi.
The world outside was still working—he could hear faint sounds in the distance. Cars. Kids playing down the street. Birds. But inside his walls?
It was like the house existed in its own dimension now.
Like he'd slipped into the cracks between reality and something much older.
Something colder.
Something with a schedule.
The doorbell rang at 2:17 p.m.
He froze.
He hadn't heard footsteps. No crunch of gravel. No squeaky gate.
Just the doorbell.
A single, sharp chime.
He didn't move.
Waited.
Another ring.
This one longer. More deliberate.
He finally stepped toward the door, barefoot, slow. Each step felt like walking toward a cliff edge.
He looked through the peephole.
No one there.
The porch was empty.
Just wind.
A grocery bag sat on the welcome mat.
Paper. Unmarked.
Mason opened the door cautiously, half-expecting someone to leap from behind a bush.
But no one was there.
He reached down and picked up the bag.
It was heavier than it looked.
Inside, wrapped in newspaper, were three items:
A jar of nails
A dead crow
A stopwatch, already ticking
He stood on the porch, staring into the bag, heart thudding.
The stopwatch read: 03:59:46. And counting down.
The sky started to change by evening.
Not the kind of change that came with weather.
This was different.
The light outside took on a strange, copper hue. The clouds moved against the wind. The birds stopped singing.
Mason sat on the floor of the living room with the bag beside him and the stopwatch ticking on the coffee table.
It didn't beep.
Didn't flash.
Just ticked.
Quiet and steady.
He set his phone beside it. Still no signal.
He took the dead crow out of the bag with a paper towel. Its wings were stiff. Its eyes half-closed like it had only just died. There was no blood.
Just feathers.
And something tucked under its wing.
A second photograph.
Not of Mason.
Not of Emily.
Of the chair.
Empty.
He burned the photo.
He didn't even hesitate.
Took it straight to the sink, lit it with the stove burner, and dropped the smoldering paper into the basin.
It curled and blackened, ashes sticking to the metal like soot.
He watched it vanish.
But the image didn't leave his head.
That chair, bolted to the floor in the dark.
Empty now.
Waiting.
The house started making noises around midnight.
Knocks. Scratches. Low moans like the foundation itself was breathing.
He moved from room to room with a flashlight and a knife.
He didn't expect it to help.
He just didn't want to feel empty-handed.
Every time he entered a room, it felt like something had just left.
Not in a rush.
Just... slipping back into the walls.
Watching.
Waiting.
The stopwatch hit 00:00:00 at exactly 3:14 a.m.
It didn't beep.
It didn't stop.
It just reset.
And started ticking down again.
From four hours.
He didn't sleep.
Not after the stopwatch reset.
He sat at the kitchen table, elbows on wood, eyes fixed on the little ticking device like it might reach out and bite him. Every tick felt louder now, like it was echoing in his skull.
4:00:00
3:59:59
3:59:58
It wasn't just counting time.
It was marking it.
A countdown to something.
But what?
The answer didn't come.
But the feeling in his chest—that gnawing tension—grew heavier by the second.
Morning broke like glass.
Sunlight came, but it didn't feel like relief.
The sky had that sick yellow hue that usually came before a storm. Everything outside seemed quieter than it should've been. The trees barely moved. No cars. No birds.
Mason opened a window just to hear something.
The wind that came in wasn't cold.
It was still.
Not calm. Not warm.
Still.
Like the air had been trapped outside waiting for him to open a door.
He shut the window again.
Around noon, someone knocked on the back door.
Three slow knocks.
Then silence.
He didn't move.
Waited ten minutes.
Nothing else.
When he finally worked up the nerve to check, there was nothing there. No footprints in the dirt. No shadow moving away. Just an old envelope taped to the glass.
He peeled it off carefully, hands shaking.
Inside, a note:
DAY THREE
KEEP GOING.
DO NOT STOP.
He flipped the paper over. It was blank.
No return address. No initials. Nothing.
He didn't even question how they knew which day it was anymore.
The house was on a schedule, just like him.
Something was keeping track.
The visitor came at dusk.
No knock this time.
No doorbell.
Just a soft humming from the front porch—tuneless, slow, almost childlike. Mason was standing in the hallway when he heard it. The kind of sound that shouldn't come from any living person.
He peered through the peephole.
A man stood there.
Not moving.
Middle-aged, in a dark suit with no tie. Pale skin. Slicked-back hair. Hands folded neatly in front of him like he was posing for a funeral portrait.
He didn't blink.
Didn't shift.
Just stood, humming that broken little melody like it meant something.
Mason didn't open the door.
Didn't even think about it.
But the man raised his head, as if sensing him.
And smiled.
It wasn't a warm smile.
It was the kind you give when someone owes you something—and you've just come to collect.
The man lifted one hand and knocked once, gently, with two fingers.
Then turned and walked away.
No rush.
No sound of steps.
Just gone.
He checked the porch.
Nothing was there.
Except the stopwatch.
Lying face-up on the welcome mat.
Still ticking.
Now at 3:47:22.
That night, Mason made a choice.
He moved the box into the hallway closet and duct-taped it shut.
He unplugged every appliance.
He covered the mirrors with towels.
He turned the lights off and lit a candle.
Then he sat on the living room floor with the crow's jar beside him and a knife in his hand, watching the stopwatch tick its way through the hours like a heartbeat made of metal.
He whispered aloud:
"I'm not playing anymore."
The house didn't answer.
But the walls cracked.
Just a little.
Like they were holding something in.
The next morning—the stopwatch was gone.
So was the crow.
So was the jar.
The tape on the closet door had been peeled off and laid in perfect strips along the floor.
The box was back on the kitchen table.
Open.
Inside:
A note.
And a piece of wood.
The note read:
THREE DAYS.
The wood was a matchstick.
Unburned.
Laid carefully on black velvet like it was something valuable.
Mason picked it up and turned it in his fingers.
On one side, carved in tiny jagged letters:
USE ME WISELY.
He didn't know what it meant.
But he felt something shift when he touched it.
Like the house was holding its breath.
Outside, it started raining.
Only the rain didn't make sound.
Not against the windows.
Not on the roof.
It just... fell.
Mason watched it for hours, waiting for thunder, waiting for wind.
None came.
Just silent, falling water.
Like the sky was crying for something it couldn't name.
Inside, the matchstick waited.
And the clock kept ticking.