All Are Welcome Here – Chapter 7
The Knocking Above the Ceiling
The knock from the ceiling came slowly.
Three deliberate taps directly above the center of the room.
Everyone inside the house froze instantly. The lantern flame trembled weakly across the table while dust drifted down from the old wooden beams overhead.
Then came another knock.
Closer this time.
Like whatever stood above them was crawling across the roof searching for the exact spot where they were standing.
Elias Ward instinctively stepped backward while staring upward into the darkness above. The sound didn’t resemble normal footsteps anymore. It dragged unnaturally across the roof with long pauses between movements, almost like something learning how humans walked by listening to them.
Outside the house, the lantern walkers remained motionless beyond the fog-covered windows. Their lanterns glowed softly between the trees while Emily continued standing near the front of the group with that same calm smile on her face.
Then, slowly—
she lifted one finger toward the roof.
Elias’s stomach tightened immediately.
Mara noticed too. “Don’t look at her.”
“What is on this house?”
The ceiling creaked again hard enough to shake the lantern on the table. Something heavy shifted above them, then stopped directly overhead.
Silence followed.
Complete silence.
Even the wind outside disappeared.
Mara slowly reached beneath one of the kitchen cabinets and pulled out an old hunting rifle wrapped in cloth. The sight caught Elias completely off guard.
“You seriously keep a gun hidden in your kitchen?”
“I keep it for the nights after the fourth bell.”
Her voice sounded exhausted. Practiced. Like this wasn’t the first time something had walked across her roof after dark.
Another soft knock came from above.
Then, to Elias’s horror—
a voice whispered through the ceiling.
Emily’s voice.
“You shouldn’t hide him from us.”
The words sounded muffled by the wood overhead, yet impossibly clear at the same time. Elias physically felt cold spreading through his chest.
Mara aimed the rifle upward immediately. “Be quiet.”
The thing above the ceiling laughed softly.
Not Emily’s laugh.
Something trying to imitate it.
The sound crawled beneath Elias’s skin instantly because it lacked emotion entirely. Too perfect. Too careful. Like repeating a sound it had heard before without understanding why humans laughed in the first place.
Outside, several lantern walkers slowly tilted their heads upward too.
Listening.
Waiting.
Then the roof groaned violently.
Something large shifted its weight above them.
Wood cracked.
Elias stumbled backward instinctively while Mara tightened her grip around the rifle.
“It found the weak boards,” she whispered.
“What found them?”
Before she could answer, a long pale hand suddenly pushed between the wooden ceiling planks overhead.
Elias physically recoiled.
The hand looked human at first glance.
Until he noticed the fingers.
Too long.
Too many joints bending beneath pale skin stretched tightly over bone. The fingers slowly curled downward through the broken ceiling boards while the thing above remained hidden in darkness.
Then a second hand appeared beside it.
The lantern outside flickered violently.
And every smiling person in the yard whispered together in perfect unison:
“All are welcome here.”
The ceiling cracked open further.
And something up there smiled down through the darkness.