In an old attic flat, Alice hears the furniture talking after midnight. Their warning sounds impossible, but something hidden in the floor seems determined to wake up.
Alice had stopped expecting sleep to come easily in the attic flat. Every night the place seemed to breathe around her: the beams creaked, the walls sighed, and the darkness in the corners gathered itself like it was listening. Still, nothing had prepared her for the voice she heard when the clock struck two.
"If only you knew what we're hiding..."
The wardrobe in the far corner gave a slow, resentful groan, and its door jerked shut as if it had spoken by accident. Alice sat bolt upright, her pulse hammering. For one stunned second she blamed exhaustion, the old pipes, the building settling in the cold. Then the glass vase on the windowsill answered in a thin, trembling voice.
"Don't be afraid. You're the only one who can hear us now."
Alice slid out of bed and crossed the room on bare feet that felt suddenly too loud. The wardrobe smelled faintly of cedar and dust, but beneath that was something else: old paper, damp stone, and the sharp metallic sting of a secret kept too long. "Why are you talking?" she whispered. "Objects don't talk."
A book on the shelf thudded open by itself. Its pages fluttered once, then stilled. "Most things in this flat have been listening longer than you have," it said. "And some of us remember what happened here."
The lamp on the bedside table flickered, once, twice, like a warning. Somewhere under Alice's feet, the floor gave a soft, hollow knock. She looked down. Another knock came, closer this time, as if something below her had heard her breathing.
"Can I trust you?" she asked.
The answer came from every object in the room at once, a dry rustle of voices beneath the attic beams. "If you want the truth, you have to come below. But once the floor opens, it may not close again."
Before Alice could move, the boards shuddered apart at her feet, revealing a narrow black stair sinking into the dark below.