THE CURSE

They say time takes everything. Wood rots, nails rust, walls fall.

But not Carver’s barn.

The barn should have collapsed long ago. Storms have battered its walls. Winters have split its beams. Fire has blackened its boards. Yet every morning it stands exactly as it did before.

It heals itself.

It hungers.

It builds when the world is asleep.

For generations, people have reported hearing hammers in the darkness. Saws cutting through timber. Chains dragging across the floor. Lantern light moving through windows long after the fields have gone quiet.

No workers are ever found.

By dawn, broken boards have been replaced. New doors appear where none existed before. Hallways stretch farther than anyone remembers. Rooms emerge from empty space.

The barn is growing.

The cornfields surrounding it are no different. The stalks twist and knot themselves into a maze that seems to change with every season. Paths lead where they shouldn’t. Dead ends appear overnight. Those who enter often swear the field was different the last time they walked it.

Some say the curse began with Carver, a farmer whose name has long outlived the truth. Others believe something far older was already waiting beneath the soil when he arrived.

Whatever the truth, the land is alive.

The walls whisper your name.

The corn pulls you deeper.

The residents of the curse watch from the darkness, trapped within rooms that should not exist.

And somewhere beyond the next doorway, beyond the next turn in the maze, the sound of construction continues.

The building never stops.

Neither does the hunger.