The Ceiling’s White Bloom

The house on Maple Hollow Road was an inheritance from my grandmother, a Victorian relic with creaking bones and a basement that exhaled cold air. My room was the converted attic, a long, narrow space under the eaves, where the ceiling sloped down to meet the walls at sharp angles. It was always cold, even with the space heater humming, and I blamed it on the poor insulation, the single vent that wheezed warm air like an asthmatic. I was an artist, used to late nights and the company of my own imagination, so I dismissed the chill, the occasional creak, the sensation of being watched, as the old house settling.

But last Tuesday, the feeling intensified. I was lying in bed, sketching a design for a book cover, when I felt a pressure on my chest, as if something were pushing down. I looked up at the ceiling, which was bare plaster, cracked and stained with old water damage. I had the oddest conviction that something was up there, staring back. I tried to ignore it, but the weight grew, and my skin prickled. I grabbed my phone, opened the camera, and propped it on the nightstand, aiming the lens at the ceiling. I pressed record and lay there, breathing shallowly, watching the red dot blink in the dark. After about ten minutes, I stopped the recording and played it back, speeding through the footage.

At the two-minute mark, my breath caught. There, in the upper left corner of the frame, was a face. It was pale, almost luminous, with hollow eyes and a mouth frozen in a silent ‘o’. It seemed to be pressing against the ceiling from the other side, the plaster bulging slightly where it made contact. I turned on the bedside lamp, and the face was gone, only the water stain remained. But the image was burned into my mind. I grabbed my sketchbook and furiously drew what I had seen, trying to capture the exact shape, the way the shadows fell.

The next day, I decided to investigate the attic space above my room. There was a crawlspace hatch in the hallway, barely big enough for a person. I dragged a ladder, opened the hatch, and shone a flashlight into the darkness. The crawlspace was shallow, dusty, and empty, except for a few old boxes. But as I swept the beam across the floorboards, I saw that one section was stained a dark, rusted color, like old blood. The stain was roughly the size and shape of a person. I shuddered and backed away, my mind racing with possibilities. I told myself it was just an old house, that the stain was from a leak or an animal.

That night, I couldn’t sleep in my room. I moved to the guest room on the second floor, but the face followed me. In the middle of the night, I woke to find the ceiling above me dimpled with small, round depressions, as if something were tapping from the other side. I recorded again, and this time, the face appeared in the video, but it was closer, larger, and now it had a mouth, a thin slit that stretched as if it were smiling. I could see the texture of the plaster, and behind it, a shape that was not human. I ran, grabbing my car keys, and drove to a motel, leaving the house behind.

But the house was not done with me. The next morning, I returned to gather my things, and I found that my sketchbook had been disturbed. The page where I had drawn the face was torn out, and in its place, a new drawing appeared, in my own hand but somehow unfamiliar. It showed the face, now with a fully formed jaw, and beneath it, a figure, thin and twisted, with long arms that reached toward me. On the bottom, I had written, in shaky letters, ‘IT SEES YOU NOW.’ I didn’t remember drawing it. I didn’t remember writing it. I grabbed the book and flipped through, and every page had similar drawings, all variations of the same face, the same figure, all with the same message: ‘IT SEES YOU NOW.’ My heart pounded. I felt a cold breath on the back of my neck, and I turned, but there was nothing.

I called a friend, a paranormal investigator I had met at a festival. She came over with her equipment, and we set up cameras in the attic room. She explained that cold spots are often signs of a ghostly presence, but what we were dealing with was something older, something that had been dormant in the house’s foundation. She told me about the original owner, a man named Alistair, who had died in the attic. He was a recluse who believed he could communicate with the dead, and he had attempted a ritual that went wrong. The house was built on a burial ground, she said, and Alistair had disturbed the ‘white bloom,’ a term she used for the pale, pulsing energy that feeds on fear. ‘It’s not a ghost,’ she said, ‘it’s a parasite that mimics a face to draw you in, to make you come closer. It wants to create a permanent host.’

As she spoke, we heard a crashing sound from the attic. We rushed upstairs, and found the crawlspace hatch open, and the floorboards in my room ripped up. In the gap beneath, we saw the source of the cold: a mass of white, fibrous roots, like the mycelium of a fungus, growing from the foundation. They were pulsing, and in the center, a pale, fleshy orifice, surrounded by small, hair-like tendrils. It was the face, now seen in full, and it was enormous, filling the entire under-floor space. The eye sockets were open, and they were looking directly at us.

We ran. We grabbed my essentials and fled, but as I drove away, I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. I looked in the rearview mirror, and there was a pale, emaciated figure sitting in the back seat, its head slightly tilted, its mouth open in that silent scream. I slammed on the brakes, and the figure vanished. But I knew it wasn’t over. I looked at my sketchbook, which I had left on the passenger seat. It was open to a blank page, and as I watched, ink bled through the paper, forming words: ‘YOU CANNOT LEAVE. THE HOUSE IS MY BODY.’

I stopped the car at the side of the road, trembling. I realized that the house had been feeding on me for weeks, and that I had somehow become a conduit for it. The face I saw was not watching me from above; it was watching from within, growing inside me, spreading its white roots through my thoughts. I could feel it now, a faint pulsing behind my eyes, a cold tendril twitching in my mind. I looked at my hands, and they were unnaturally pale, the veins slightly translucent, and I could see a faint, white network spreading beneath the skin. I knew that if I returned to the house, it would consume me. If I stayed away, it would consume me anyway. The only way to stop it was to burn it out, to destroy the roots, to cut myself free. But the roots were inside me now.

I drove to a secluded forest, parked the car, and stepped out. I lit a match, held it to the sketchbook, and watched the pages curl and blacken. But the words seemed to burn brighter, and as the book turned to ash, I felt a searing pain in my chest, as if something were being torn. I fell to my knees, gasping, and for a moment, the world went black. When I came to, the sun was rising, and the cold was gone. I looked at my hands, and they were normal again. I checked the back seat, and it was empty. I thought I had won. But as I drove away, I passed a house on Maple Hollow Road, and I saw a face in the window. It was my face.

I don’t know how it happened, but I know that the house is still there, and that it wears my face now, waiting for the next visitor, so it can show them what it showed me: the white bloom, the face in the ceiling, the cold arm of the house, reaching out to pull them in. And I know that, somewhere in the roots, I am still screaming.