SAY HIS NAME

Episode 2

 

The cellar door stayed open far too long.

No one wanted to move. It was Chloe, in the end, who mechanically crossed the floor, shoved the door shut, and backed away like it might swing open again on its own. The slam echoed up the walls. Elise flinched so hard she hit the banister.

Then they ran.

Not a word between them. Just the sound of feet hammering up the stairs, furniture clattering. Blankets were snatched, someone knocked over a lamp. No one picked it up. Chloe clutched the notebook like a Bible.

Upstairs, they crammed into the smallest guest room, the one that barely counted as a room at all. One lamp, one chair, one dusty bedframe with no mattress. The walls pressed in on them. Georgia stood. Elise curled up on the floor. Everyone else hovered in some awkward in-between state like they couldn’t decide whether to sit, hide, or bolt again.

“What the fuck was that?” Damien’s voice cracked halfway through the sentence.

“Can someone explain what we saw?” Georgia’s voice was shrill. “Because—no, seriously—what the hell did we just see? Was that a person? That wasn’t a person.”

Emma didn’t speak. She was still staring at Elise, who’d folded herself into the far corner, knees to her chest, shaking. Not crying. Just… gone. Her eyes were locked on the door like she expected it to explode open at any second.

Chloe sat down hard on the floor and opened the notebook again. She flipped through quickly, landing on a page she was certain hadn’t been there before. A smudged sketch—long limbs, hunched back, no face—and beneath it, in ragged ink:

He always starts with the legs.

“Guys,” she whispered. “This page.... this wasn’t here before.”

Damien blinked at her. “What do you mean it wasn’t there before?”

“I mean it wasn’t fucking there before.”

“No, you probably just missed it. We were flipping through fast.”

“I didn’t miss it,” she snapped.

“Okay, well, maybe it appeared out of thin air, then? Like magic? Is that what we’re saying now?” His voice was too loud, panicked. “This is just a bad trip. That’s what this is. I knew that tea tasted weird—”

“Oh shut up,” Georgia snapped. “Not everything’s about you.”

She was still holding her phone up like it was a lifeline, waving it near the ceiling, the walls, the corners.

“Still nothing?”

“Do I look like I have signal?” she hissed. “I’m literally waving it around like a psycho.”

“Sometimes it sends later—” Chloe started.

“I know, Chloe. Jesus.”

Darcy let out a high, nervous laugh. “God. We’re gonna be one of those stories, huh? ‘Six idiots trapped in a haunted house… never stood a chance against Freddie.’ We’ll be a headline. Or worse. A TikTok trend.”

“Don’t call his name,” Emma said suddenly.

Everyone looked at her.

Darcy squinted. “Why?”

“You saw what happened. It was after we said his name.”

“Oh come on. You’re joking, right?” Darcy let out another laugh, brittle. “You think it’s like a Beetlejuice thing? Say his name and he shows up? What if I say it backwards?”

“Just shut up,” Chloe muttered, flipping through the notebook again with shaking fingers.

Emma moved to the window. The snow had thickened into a white curtain, whirling so fast she could barely see the back fence. The motion-sensor light in the garden flicked on again—flickered twice—and held steady.

Something passed through it.

Her breath caught.

A figure, just barely visible. So tall it ducked under the window frame. So quick it barely touched the light before it disappeared into the dark again.

She didn’t speak or move.

“What?” Damien said.

She stayed there, forehead pressed to the glass.

From downstairs, a wet dragging sound rolled up through the house.

They all froze.

The sound came again. Slower this time. A long, low scrape like flesh against floorboards.

Elise whimpered. Chloe snapped the notebook shut and backed up into the corner. Georgia’s phone dropped into her pocket with a muffled thump. Damien swore under his breath and locked eyes with the door.

Three soft knocks against the door. 

Nobody breathed.

The knocks were so soft they could’ve been anything—pipes, settling wood, the wind—but no one believed that. Not really. They’d all heard it.

Three gentle taps. Almost polite. Like someone knocking on a coffin lid to say, I’m awake now.

Darcy mouthed don’t open it to no one in particular. 

Elise whimpered without sound, her fingers tightening around Emma’s sleeve. Emma moved without thinking, positioning herself between Elise and the door, even though her heart was punching her ribs like it wanted out.

Damien shifted slightly, and they could all see his hands trembling. “Maybe it was the wind,” he whispered.

No one corrected him. Not even Chloe. Her mouth was tight. Her eyes didn’t leave the door. The notebook in her lap looked ready to crack from how tightly she gripped it.

Then came the voice.

A tune, low and breathy, barely sung at all. Like a child humming to himself while pulling wings off flies.

“He loved their legs, so long and lean...
Took ‘em clean off, no in-between.”

It came from the other side of the door. That same hallway. The voice was too tall to belong to a child, too amused to belong to any sane adult.

Elise let out a choking sound and buried her face in Emma’s jumper. Darcy pressed both hands to her ears.

“No. No no no no no.”

Chloe had backed up until her spine hit the wardrobe. She held the notebook like it was holy. Georgia had stopped moving completely, staring at the floor like she was trying not to cry.

The singing stopped.

A slow scrape dragged across the door. Something hard. Fingernails. Bone. Claws. None of them wanted to picture it for too long.

“He’s playing with us,” Georgia whispered. “He knows we’re scared.”

“We need to get out,” Emma said, barely breathing the words. “There has to be another way out.”

Damien stepped forward, reaching for the doorknob.

“Don’t,” Chloe snapped. “You think running around in the dark’s gonna help?”

“What, you’d rather we sit here like bait?” His voice was too loud now. His panic had teeth. “We wait till he starts picking us off?”

The notebook in Chloe’s lap fluttered suddenly. No breeze. No one had touched it. A page turned by itself.

They all saw the writing appear, ink scrawling across the paper in jagged script.

Pick your tribute.

No one uttered a word.

Darcy took a step back. “Nope. Nope nope nope. What the hell does that even mean?”

“It means we don’t all make it out,” Chloe said.

Her voice was flat, like she was trying to keep it from shaking.

Emma turned to her, eyes wide. “Why would you say that? Why would it even say that?”

“Because someone wrote this,” Chloe said. “Someone who knew what happened when you summoned him. And we… we did.”

Damien laughed, but there was nothing human in it. “You’re the one who read the words out loud.”

“Don’t,” Chloe snapped, flipping through again. “Don’t even start that.”

She paused on a half-burnt page. Under a crumbling poem about teeth, new handwriting had appeared. Scratched hard, ink still fresh.

He only takes what he needs. Legs first.

Emma’s mouth went dry. She scanned the room, taking a good look at everyone. No one looked okay. Elise was still trembling in the corner. Georgia was white as bone. Damien’s face had gone blotchy, eyes too wide. Chloe… Chloe looked like she was holding herself together by threads.

“Then we don’t give him anyone,” Emma said. “No tribute. No deal.”

“But if we don’t…” Chloe didn’t finish the sentence.

From behind the door, something shifted.

The doorknob began to turn. Slowly. 

Elise screamed.

The lights went out. The room plunged into darkness.

Someone gasped. Elise sobbed somewhere near the wardrobe. A crash followed—maybe a lamp, maybe a chair. Damien swore, loud and panicked, his voice cracking halfway through.

No one could see.

And then… that voice again.

Softer now. Like a lullaby hummed by something with rotting lungs.

“The legs he loved, the ones they praised,
He took them all, and left them dazed…”

The floor creaked. Again, and again, and again.

Slow steps. Coming closer. Then that sick dragging sound again—flesh sliding over wood, bones shifting underneath like a sack of meat being pulled by the ankles.

Emma’s hands shook as she fumbled in her pocket, heart slamming against her ribs. She got her phone out and flicked on the torch.

A narrow beam of light cut through the dark.

It found their faces first. Darcy crouched low behind Georgia, her nails dug into Georgia’s jacket. Chloe sat rigid, clutching the notebook to her chest like a flotation device. Damien stood near the dresser, completely still, his pupils blown wide, shoulders heaving with breath.

The torchlight trembled as Emma moved it.

Then it landed on the door.

The handle turned again.

This time, it didn’t stop.

The latch clicked.

The door creaked open—just a sliver—and something stood in the gap.

They only saw it for a second. That was all it gave them.

Tall. Hunched. Wrong in every way.

Its limbs were stretched far beyond what a human body should allow. Arms that nearly brushed the floor, knees bent backwards like a goat’s. Skin like boiled parchment, grey and glistening in places, flaking in others. Its head tilted sideways, like it was curious. And its mouth opened wider than should’ve been possible. No teeth. Just a black void. 

And eyes. Dead, milky-white eyes.

Then the door slammed shut again.

BANG.

Emma dropped her phone. The light vanished.

Chloe screamed.

Damien grabbed a chair and flung it at the door. It hit the frame with a dull thunk and slid to the floor.

They heard something in the dark.

A wet, slick snap.

Then a scream tore through the room, high and full of agony.

Emma scrambled for her phone, her hands shaking so hard she could barely hold it.

She got the torch back on.

Georgia was on the floor, screaming.

Darcy was on her knees beside her, blood on her hands, screaming too, pulling at Georgia like she was trying to keep her whole.

Freddie was gone.

But Georgia’s leg wasn’t, or at least, not all of it.

Her left leg had been severed cleanly below the knee. No jagged tear, just a smooth, perfect slice. Blood was pouring out in thick pulses, pooling on the wooden floor.

“Help me,” Georgia sobbed, trying to crawl backward with what was left of her. “Please. Help—”

Darcy couldn’t even move. She was frozen, her mouth open but silent now, her hands trembling uselessly.

Emma dropped to her knees beside them and pressed her palms over the stump, trying to stop the bleeding. Her hands came away red. Hot and slick.

“We need something—we need to stop it—she’s—she’s losing too much—”

No one else moved.

Chloe just stood there, staring at the blood.

“It’s a message,” she said. “He’s warning us.”

Damien backed into the corner. “We’re not getting out,” he said. “We’re not—he’s not gonna stop.”

Elise hadn’t moved from her spot by the fireplace. She was curled into herself now, her arms around her knees, rocking slowly, mouthing something that didn’t make any sense. She’d stopped speaking aloud.

The light from Emma’s phone flickered slightly. She looked toward the door.

Still closed.

But the sound of the song soaked into the walls.

And they all knew it wasn’t over.

They managed to carry Georgia upstairs. Her blood had soaked through Emma’s sleeves and dried tacky on her forearms. Darcy mumbled apologies the entire way, barely helping. Her limbs moved like they didn’t belong to her.

No one wanted to stay downstairs.

Not after what they’d seen.

The guest bedroom was freezing. The radiator didn’t work. Emma used a bedsheet to tie off Georgia’s thigh. Chloe rummaged through her bag and pulled out plasters and painkillers, stared at them for a second like they were a joke, then dropped them back in with a thud.

What were they meant to do? Stick a plaster on a missing leg?

Damien didn’t say a word. He stood by the window, one palm pressed flat to the glass. The snowfall was heavier now. Thick, jagged flakes blown sideways by the wind. Beyond the trees, the world looked scrubbed clean.

“We need to call someone,” he said finally.

“No signal,” Emma reminded him.

He tapped at his phone anyway. Same result. Still nothing. He muttered something under his breath, too low to hear, and ran out before anyone could stop him.

Georgia stirred on the bed. “My foot,” she whispered. “I can still feel it.”

Emma blinked. Her mouth opened, but there was nothing to say. So she stayed beside her. Hands trembling. Blood on her sleeves. Blood in her nails. Blood behind her eyes.

Chloe sat cross-legged on the floor, notebook in her lap, flipping pages faster now. Her expression had changed. Focused, almost feverish.

“There’s something new,” she said, voice trembling. “I think someone added to it. Recently.”

Emma leaned over.

The margins were packed with scrawls. Slanted, crooked writing like someone had done it in the dark, in a rush. Words ran into each other. Some trailed off mid-sentence.

He only takes what you praise.
He keeps the legs for himself.
The others still walk beneath.

Emma stared at the page. “What the hell does that mean?”

Before Chloe could answer, a knock came.

Three sharp taps on the bedroom door.

Everyone froze.

Darcy’s voice was barely audible. “Damien?”

No reply.

Chloe stood slowly.

“Don’t,” Emma said, standing too.

But Chloe was already at the door, her fingers curling around the handle.

She pulled it open.

Nothing.

The hallway was empty. Just the wind leaking through the roof beams. And that smell again. Wet, mouldy, sour. Like meat that had been left in the sun and forgotten.

Emma stepped closer, peering past her.

Down the corridor, something was nailed to the wall.

She walked toward it.

A Polaroid. Old, curling at the corners. A group of teenagers standing in this house, arms linked, grinning wide like someone had just told a joke. In the middle stood a boy. Taller than the rest. His arms hung too low. His shoulders were hunched like he didn’t quite fit inside his skin.

Freddie.

Under the photo, a note had been taped in the same black ink from the book.

They laughed.
So I took their legs.
Will you laugh too?

Emma stared at the note.

Then she stepped back.

And from beneath the floorboards, from some hidden place below the bedrock of the house, that voice rose again. Louder now.

“The legs he loved, the ones they praised,
He took them all, and left them dazed…”

The hallway light flickered once, then died.