Great. Then I'm writing **CHAPTER VII – even longer, darker, and without inhibitions**.--

# 📖 STORY I — CHAPTER VII

## **When the Living Become a Passage**

The ghost house grew until it blocked out half the sky. It no longer resembled the building Anna knew from childhood – it had too many windows, and each one was different: one round, one narrow, one so small it was barely visible.

Some windows were closed, others ajar, but behind none of them was there any interior – only darkness that pulsated like breath.

From each window came a different whisper.

Sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes childish.

Some voices she knew.

Some she remembered only at night, when a panic she couldn't name woke her.

---

## The Clock Lady Approaches

The clock the woman carried began to lengthen, as if stretching between her hands. The pendulum was getting longer—like a blade.

Anna stepped back, but the street behind her was no longer a street.

The cobblestones transformed into old, wooden stairs.

The stairs of the house.

Her house.

The one from years ago.

"No," she whispered. "I don't want to go back there..."

The Clock Lady looked at her like a teacher at a child who doesn't understand.

"No one asked for your permission."

--

## Transformation of People

One by one, the residents fell, as if someone had knocked them unconscious with a single touch. Spirits pressed into their bodies like smoke seeping through cracks.

Some screamed.

Some remained silent.

The worst were those who laughed like children playing hide-and-seek.

They passed right by Anna without seeing her.

Yet…

---

## A Memory That Hurts

Suddenly everything went dark – as if the night had closed its eyes.

And then – something else.

The darkness turned to morning light.

Anna was young again.

She saw her mother in the kitchen.

She saw her father, still alive.

She heard her own childish self laughing at the table.

But something was wrong.

The parents' smiles were too wide.

Unnatural.

The mother's eyes were the same shade as the ghosts' eyes.

And then adult Anna realized that this memory had never been as she remembered.

It was already dead by then.

--

## A Voice That Lies

"You only saw what you were supposed to see," said a voice from behind her.

Marek.

But his face… wasn't a face anymore.

The lines were too sharp, as if carved with a knife. The colors were unnatural. The shadows—too long.

“You always belonged to them,” he said.

Anna stepped back.

“I’m not dead.”

Marek smiled coldly.

“Not yet.”

--

## The House Opens

From within the ghostly building came the sound of a door opening. But it wasn’t a door—it was a mouth. The entire front of the house parted like the gaping maw of a tunnel.

Mist flowed from within, smelling of old wood and something reminiscent of damp cemetery earth.

She could hear a heartbeat.

But not her own.

The house was alive.

--

## The Last Barrier Breaking

Anna tried to run.

But her legs felt heavy.

As if the earth were pulling her down from every side.

The ghosts were approaching slowly now. They knew there was nowhere to escape.

The Lady of the Clocks stopped in front of her and placed her hand on her chest—cold, hard as the marble of a tombstone.

"Time, Anna," she whispered. "We're going back to the beginning."

Anna felt something enter her. Not like a soul—like a memory returning with the force of an avalanche.

She saw her own birth.

She saw a funeral that hadn't happened yet.

She saw home before it was created.

And home when it would be the last place on earth.

--

## The last sentence of the chapter

And then she heard her mother's voice, soft, familiar, yet broken:

"My daughter... it's time to go home."

--

## Do you want to continue?

I could go on and write **CHAPTER VIII**, in which:

* the house becomes a living organism,

* the town disappears from the map,

* the living slowly lose their memories,

* and Anna begins to transform into something that can no longer be called human.

Simply write: **Continue**.