Jeannette's Story - An Insane, Nonsensical Night of Horrors

The back room stinks of iron and wet wood. Jeannette Fortune stands over the widening smear, and the floorboards give up a faint, sticky creak beneath her boots.

From the back door, three hard knocks land in the dark. Not a polite visitor's tap. A measured, searching demand.

The knocking stops. For a breath, there is only the wind and the hush of the library beyond the wall.

Then a voice slips through the keyhole, low and careful. "Miss Fortune. I know someone has gone missing here."

The blood beside the threshold widens by a thin, dark finger, creeping toward the door as if eager to be discovered.

Jeannette Fortune's hand closes around the knife handle, and the blade comes free with a soft scrape of metal on wood.

She shifts her weight, boots planted in the blood-slick floorboards, and angles the point toward the door latch.

From outside, the quiet breathes once, then the door gives a faint, testing press against the frame.

The blood smear at the threshold glistens in the thin dark, split by Jeannette's shadow as she settles the knife low and ready.

Jeannette yanks the back door open on its warped hinges, and the stranger is there in the gap, half-turned from the blow of the rush of cold air.

Her knife drives in under the ribs before he can finish drawing breath, and his warning dies into a wet gasp.

He folds against her hand, eyes wide, one palm slapping the doorframe as blood runs down her blade onto the widening smear at the threshold.

The stranger sags in the doorway, still blocking the opening, while the dark beyond him stays silent and listening.

From outside, something shifts once in the yard, close enough to make the hinges tremble again.

Jeannette wrenches the blade free and drives it in again, and again, each thrust short and brutal. The stranger’s knees hit the floorboards, then slip sideways, their hands pawing at her wrist without strength.

Blood spatters the threshold and the doorframe, joining the old stain in a dark, wet line. Their breath turns ragged, then thin, then stops altogether.

She holds the last push a beat longer, feeling the body go slack under her hand. The open door lets in a blade of cold air that makes the hanging latch tap softly against the wood.

The stranger drops fully limp at her feet, head lolling toward the yard, eyes fixed and empty.

Something outside shifts back from the doorway, slow and deliberate, as if listening to the silence that follows.