All Are Welcome Here – Chapter 8
The Face Above the Ceiling
The ceiling split wider with a violent cracking sound.
Old wood splintered across the floor while the pale hands tightened their grip around the broken beams overhead. Elias stumbled backward toward the wall as dust poured down from the opening above them.
Then the face appeared.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Like it understood fear and wanted to enjoy it.
Elias Ward physically stopped breathing for a second.
The thing looking down through the ceiling almost resembled a person. Almost. Pale skin stretched tightly across a long narrow face while hollow black eyes reflected the lantern light below. Its mouth curved upward into a smile that extended far too wide across its cheeks, exposing rows of small uneven teeth.
But the worst part—
it looked familiar.
Not completely.
Just enough.
Like a distorted memory of someone Elias should recognize.
The creature tilted its head unnaturally sideways while staring directly at him through the broken ceiling.
Then it whispered softly using Emily’s voice again:
“You came home.”
Mara fired instantly.
The rifle blast exploded through the tiny house hard enough to make Elias’s ears ring painfully. The creature vanished upward the moment the shot hit the ceiling beams, disappearing across the roof with horrifying speed.
Outside the windows, every lantern walker turned toward the house together.
The smiles vanished from their faces simultaneously.
Now they looked disappointed.
The silence afterward felt even worse than before.
Smoke drifted from the rifle barrel while Mara reloaded with shaking hands.
“What was that?” Elias demanded.
Mara’s face had gone completely pale. “They’re not supposed to come this close before the ceremony.”
Another slow movement dragged across the roof overhead.
Then another.
More than one now.
Elias stared upward in disbelief. “There are multiple?”
Mara didn’t answer directly.
Instead, she stepped toward the back hallway of the house and spoke quietly but urgently.
“We need to leave.”
Outside, the lantern walkers began moving again.
Not toward the house.
Around it.
Circling slowly through the fog while carrying their lanterns between the trees. Emily walked among them silently with her eyes fixed toward the windows.
Elias’s thoughts spiraled violently.
“What ARE those things?”
Mara finally looked at him properly.
And what he saw in her expression terrified him almost as much as the creatures themselves.
Guilt.
“We call them the Hollowed.”
The word settled heavily inside the room.
“Hollowed?”
“They were people once.”
Cold numbness spread through Elias instantly.
Mara lowered the rifle slightly while speaking almost in a whisper now, like she feared the walls themselves might overhear her.
“The forest changes anyone who stays after enough ceremonies.” Her eyes drifted toward the broken ceiling above. “First they hear the bells. Then they begin dreaming about the woods.” She swallowed hard. “Eventually they stop belonging to themselves.”
Elias immediately thought about Emily standing outside smiling among the lantern walkers.
“No.”
Mara’s silence answered him anyway.
The roof creaked again.
This time several sets of long fingers slowly pressed between the ceiling boards overhead.
Watching.
Waiting.
Outside the windows, the lantern walkers suddenly began humming together softly.
A low, almost beautiful melody drifting through the fog around the house.
Elias felt his stomach tighten painfully the moment he heard it.
Because beneath the humming—
he could hear bells ringing again somewhere deep inside the forest.