A fibrous creak came again, louder this time, followed by a new sound: a soft, squelching *pop*, like a bubble bursting deep within mud. It came from directly behind the metal. Both of them flinched, taking a simultaneous step back toward the ladder. The center of the door, where it bowed the most, groaned in protest. A fine shower of rust flakes sifted down from its top hinge.
Megan’s nose wrinkled. “That smell… it’s stronger down here,” she whispered. Daniel lifted the flashlight and aimed it at the metal door. It wasn’t just rusting. It was bowing, ever so slightly, inward, as though pressure from the other side had been pushing on it for years. The edges of the doorframe were clogged with the same black, root-like fungus they’d seen above, but it was thicker here, pulsing faintly under the beam of the light. Megan grabbed Daniel’s sleeve. “Did you see that?”
“What?”
“It… moved.”
He stared harder. The growths were still now, inert like long-dead vines fossilized across the steel. “Meg… everything looks like it’s moving when we’re spooked,” he said, trying to believe his own words. But he didn’t.
He stepped closer. The door loomed over them, about four feet wide and reinforced with thick, crudely welded iron bands that looked like something from a fallout shelter. Except older. Cruder. Like it had been sealed shut by someone panicking, not planning.
Daniel placed his fingertips near the bulging center. The metal vibrated. Only slightly. A bare, tremulous hum. But it was unmistakable. Megan’s breath caught. “Dan. Stop. Don’t touch it again.” He pulled his hand back as if scalded.
The thing in the wall upstairs was just a tendril. A symptom. This door was the heart of the infection. And it was clear, with a certainty that froze the blood in their veins, that whatever had been sealed here was no longer content to stay hidden. The containment was failing. The house had been its prison, and now, with the wall breached and the air from above whispering down the shaft, it was waking up.