Whenever the lights were off, the hallway outside Ella’s bedroom looked darker than the rest of the house. Not normal dark. Deeper, like the shadows there were thicker somehow.
Ella noticed it the first night after she and her dad moved into the cottage in Surrey. She flicked the switch to head to bed and froze. The living room dimmed, the kitchen dimmed, but the hallway seemed to swallow the light completely. It looked like a long black tunnel that didn’t belong in their quiet little home.
She waited for her eyes to adjust. They didn’t.
Her dad looked up from unpacking boxes. “You alright?”
“Yeah,” Ella answered quickly, though her voice sounded smaller than she meant.
She told herself it was her imagination. First nights in new houses always felt strange. The shadows looked different. The silence sounded different. Everything needed time.
But the feeling didn’t go away.
Every evening, the hallway seemed darker than before. Even when the living room lights glowed warm and bright, that stretch of carpet stayed dim like it was holding onto night.
Ella tried walking down it slowly the next morning, telling herself it was silly to be scared. The hallway looked normal in daylight. White walls. Soft carpet. A framed photo of her and her dad at the beach. Totally normal.
But at night the shadows returned, thicker than they should have been. Darker than she could explain.
A few days later she noticed something else.
When she stepped into the hallway after brushing her teeth, the shadows didn’t stay still. They shifted, almost like fog moving in slow swirls. She blinked hard. The shadows settled again.
The next night she saw the same thing. A flicker in the black. A slow twist. A tiny movement that shouldn’t have happened.
Her breath caught. She felt goosebumps rise on her arms. She grabbed her phone and used its screen as a light. The glow cut into the darkness, but not as far as she thought it would. It felt like the hallway swallowed the light too, softening its reach.
“Dad?” she called.
He didn’t pick up. He’d gone to bed early after a long shift.
Ella stood at the edge of the hallway, her fingers trembling. She whispered to herself, “It’s just shadows. That’s all.”
She forced herself to step forward.
The carpet under her foot felt cold. Much colder than the living room floor. She backed up fast, heart pounding.
The next morning she tested it again. Warm. Totally normal.
By the end of the week she started keeping the hallway light on. Her dad didn’t question it. He probably thought she was still adjusting to the move.
But the light didn’t help much. The hallway bulb flickered almost every night. Not badly. Just little dips as if something brushed past it.
One night, the bulb dimmed again. Ella froze halfway to her room. She held her breath and listened.
There was nothing. Just deep, thick silence that pressed around her.
She took a careful step. The bulb flickered a second time. Then steadied.
Ella’s pulse thudded in her ears. Her eyes darted to the end of the hall, where darkness gathered around her bedroom door. It looked like ink pooling on the floor.
She swallowed hard and hurried into her room, shutting the door. She kept the lamp on all night and barely slept.
The next afternoon, after school, she sat on her bed staring at the hallway through the cracked door. Daylight made everything look harmless. But she still felt the cold edge of fear waiting for night to fall.
She decided to test something.
She placed her red hair tie on the floor in the center of the hallway. Then she went back to her room and waited.
Nothing happened.
Her dad stepped over it later without noticing. He asked if she wanted dinner. She nodded and tried to act normal.
But when she checked the hallway one last time before bed, her hair tie was gone.
She searched the whole hallway, crawling on her hands and knees. No sign of it. It had vanished.
Her skin prickled. She went to bed with her lamp on again.
That night she woke to the sound of something soft brushing the carpet outside her door. A faint drag, slow and steady, like fabric sliding.
Ella sat up, holding her blanket tight. The lamp hummed beside her. The sound came again. A whisper of movement. A shift.
She stared at the crack under her door.
It looked darker than everything else in the room. Almost like something was blocking the light.
She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
The sound stopped.
The hallway stayed silent for a very long time.
When morning arrived, she forced herself to check. Her stomach twisted as she opened her bedroom door.
The hallway looked normal in the sunlight. But her red hair tie was sitting neatly right in front of her door. Someone had placed it there.
Her chest tightened.
When her dad left for work that evening, Ella knew she couldn’t pretend anymore. She kept the hallway light on and sat on the sofa, eyes fixed on the shadows just beyond the threshold.
The bulb flickered.
Twice.
Then steadied.
She felt her heart race.
Slowly, the darkness at the end of the hallway thickened. Not like smoke. Not like fog. More like the air turning solid, gathering itself into a shape that didn’t make sense.
Ella’s breath hitched. The shadows stirred, folding in on each other, as if something was leaning forward, trying to see her better.
She backed away, eyes locked on the shifting dark.
The hallway light flickered again. And again. Each time longer.
On the final flicker, the bulb went completely out.
The hallway became a black tunnel.
Something moved inside it. A soft, dragging sound. Slow. Patient. Getting closer.
Ella stumbled back and snapped on every light she could reach. The living room filled with bright warm glow.
The hallway stayed black.
Something brushed the carpet again, just beyond where the light should have touched.
Ella whispered, her voice shaking, “Stop.”
The sound paused.
The shadows thinned. The darkness pulled back. The hallway brightened slowly until it looked normal again, as if nothing had happened.
Ella didn’t sleep at all that night. She sat in the living room until sunrise, lights blazing.
In the morning, when she finally gathered the courage to walk to her room, she saw a new shape waiting on the carpet.
Her red hair tie had been placed in the same spot as before. But this time, it wasn’t alone.
Beside it lay one long, thin line drawn across the carpet. A mark she hadn’t seen yesterday.
It pointed toward her bedroom door.
As if showing her the direction something had crawled from.
