When the shelf fell and I was cleaning up the mess, I noticed that the wall was not flat. There was a little curve to it, upwards, and when I pressed against it, I felt a certain hollowness rather than the solid wall I would have expected. The house was new, so I didn’t want to destroy it so quickly, but my curiosity got the better of me and I took a hammer to where the shelf had been, so as not to create multiple holes. I did, though, create those multiple holes by the end.

I was facing a small entranceway, at the end of which was a small door, about waist high. The stonework told me that it was part of a house that stood there before, not part of the house I was now living in. But, like a tumor, it still existed inside. I walked in, opened the door, and crawled into a tunnel that led steeply downwards, so steep that I was almost sliding.

At the end, I reached a square room with three items in it: a rattle, a bassinet, and a pacifier, all caked in dust. There was a certain silence here, not quite ominious but not quite inviting, either. I gathered the items and tried to crawl back up but there was no way to do so without sliding back down.

I wondered who had perished here and if I would, too.