The wallpaper in the master bedroom of 414 Elmwood Lane was a dizzying, faded mustard-and-olive floral—pure 1968. When Mark and Sarah bought the place, the real estate agent had practically begged them to take it, brushing off its forty-year vacancy with vague talk of an estate settlement that took decades to resolve.
It was on their third night that the sound started. It was not a creak or a draft, but a wet, laborious dragging sound starting in the hallway outside their bedroom at precisely 3:17 a.m. Ssshhhk... thump. Ssshhhk... thump. Mark opened the door to find the long carpeted hallway empty, but a deep, fresh groove was forming in the shag carpet before his eyes, moving directly toward him.
Something heavy hit the bottom of the bedroom door, followed by a wet, raspy breath coming through the gap beneath the wood. "Help me," a ragged voice wheezed from the floorboards. "The closet... he's in the closet..." The breathing stopped instantly. From inside their locked bedroom, leaning directly against the back of Mark's neck, a dry voice whispered: "Me."
The built-in mahogany wardrobe creaked open. Out stepped a figure made of jagged shadows, wearing a stained, sharp-collared suit from a bygone era with a face of sunken charcoal and a wide, impossibly jagged grin. In its right hand, it dragged a heavy, rusted brass lamp. "Arthur liked to beg, too," the thing crooned. "Crawled all the way from the study with a broken neck before I finished him. Fifty-eight years, and he's still trying to get out."
The entity glided toward Sarah as the room plunged below freezing. "I want what I've always wanted," the ghost purred, raising the heavy brass lamp into the icy air. "A fresh audience." The light flickered out. The last sound recorded before the room went dark was the dull, sickening crack of metal against bone, followed by the wet, rhythmic dragging sound restarting from inside the room.