The Wellers were, without a doubt, the embodiment of the perfect family. They were immensely envied yet very well liked by the entire neighborhood.

Mr. and Mrs. Weller possessed all the qualities a child could wish for in a parent, and their kids; Mary, Alex and Hannah were every parent’s dream children. Each and every one of them achieved inarguable success at anything they undertook. They reached any and all goals they set their minds on.

Although their wealth was only moderate, everything they touched flourished, everything about them was objectively better. Their looks, their manners as well as anything they owned.

It was as though they all stumbled upon four leafed clovers on a daily basis. In a way I found that to be strange, but then again, living in a place such as GrayBird town, the dwelling of all oddities, may have swayed my understanding of the word from what could be considered conventionally strange… Whatever that really meant.

My sister was quite a close friend of Mary, their oldest daughter. She would never shut up about how Mary had the best clothes, the best hair, the best makeup and how she’d always get the attention of all the boys around them, and I could always discern the jealousy through her words and the frustration in her voice, yet somehow, I could always tell how much she cared about her, still.

I’d only ever interacted with Alex, their middle child, shortly. I thought he was pretty decent, and I always enjoyed our mild conversations together.

That was why there was no reluctance to accept their invitation for dinner, the occasion being the eighteenth birthday of Mary. Not that I wanted to miss the chance to see the inside of their perfect looking house, but I did wonder why Mary didn’t simply throw a party for her and her friends, I wondered why my parents were invited as well so, I asked my sister about it, to which she gave me the very brief and wise answer of,” Just mind your socks!” …It Brushed off my desire to understand it.

The days went by and brought the diner party night along. It was six thirty o’clock already and I was struggling to properly put a tie around my collar, It wasn’t my usual attire, therefore not my forté, but I still wanted to make a good impression.

Seven o’clock came around and we were all gathered at the front door, ready to go when the phone started to ring in the kitchen; I volunteered to answer it and was bummed out to learn that I couldn’t join them for the party after all. The caller was my friend, he’d informed me that our school project that was due the next day, comprised several flagrant errors and we needed to tend to them. So, I stayed behind.

When my friend finally left our house, the clock indicated that it was eight o’clock. Only an hour had passed since my family went to the diner. Considering they weren’t back yet, I thought that maybe it wasn’t too late for me to join them.

I ran out towards the house next door, then I stopped to take a breath and calm my panting before knocking.

I noted how quiet everything was, too quiet even. No sound or noise came from inside the house at all. For a home that was supposed to be hosting a dinner party, I thought it was a bit weird. But then I thought that the house may have been constructed in a way to prevent any sound from getting out.

After about ten seconds of standing there, I finally knocked on the door and waited… Then waited, but nobody came to open.

I knocked again, and when the same thing happened, I decided to look through the windows that gave a view towards the front of the house, but it was too dark for me to see anything.

I gave a third pointless knock before grabbing the doorknob and twisting it. I was glad to see that it was unlocked, I pushed it open a few inches and slid inside.

“Hello? It’s me, sorry I am a bit late…” I’d started to justify my late arrival, until I realized, nobody was there to hear it.

I was inside the house and I still couldn’t hear anything. No music, no talking, no laughing… Just silence.

I carefully moved around and did my best to avoid accidentally smashing into closed doors or walls, since the lights were off. I quickly turned my head when something caught my eyes; an area of the house was lit, I could see it from where I stood. I walked along the hallway that led me there.

When I finally reached its end, I realized I was standing in the middle of yet another hallway, although one side of it was completely consumed by darkness. The other one however, was enlightened by nothing more than candle flames, they sat on chandeliers that were attached to the walls.

I was only happy I could finally see where my feet landed at first, then I began to pay attention to my surroundings. Both the walls to my left and right, were riddled with framed pictures. I ventured a bit further down that corridor and examined those images. All of them, with no exception, were photos of the Wellers, but they were never alone on them. There were other people that I assumed to be relatives of theirs standing in pose near them, I couldn’t recognize any of them.

My sight finally landed on a picture I couldn’t take my eyes off of. There was an inexplicably familiar face that belonged to a young boy who stood by Alex’s side. I could’ve sworn I knew that boy from somewhere. I was sure I’d met him before; I was adamant I…

My train of thoughts was abruptly cut short, I just froze in place, my blood feeling colder and colder in my veins, my stomach suddenly felt too heavy for my abdomen to carry, and my chest became too tight to contain my heart.

Jeremy! It was Jeremy! How could I have forgotten about Jeremy Benson? We used to play together everyday, we were inseparable, the Bensons… They lived in the house across from ours until… Only three months ago, how impossible was that?

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But I started to remember, it was like hundreds of doors that were sealed for an eternity reopened in my mind. Memories flooding out and zooming through my brain like bullet trains. I’d begun to put together the pieces of the puzzle that were scattered all over in my head, until I could see it all very clearly, the final image. The last time I ever saw Jeremy, he told me that he and his family were going to… No…

I hurried over to the next picture, that one also featured familiar faces, besides the Wellers.

Trisha Holloway, I used to sleep every night wishing for her to disappear without leaving a trace, she tormented me for years at school, until… One day, she just stopped showing up.

My head jerked from left to right, everywhere I looked… Familiar faces, forgotten souls, people I'd only seen a week before... Saying that I was freaking out is a huge understatement.

Something came behind me and dragged me out of my internal mental spiral; a little girl’s voice, ”You are late. We were waiting for you,” when I turned around to see who it was, I found that it was none other than Hannah, the Weller’s youngest kid.

“You… Were waiting for me?” I said cautiously.

“Of course, we can’t start without you,” she said in what I would have thought was an innocent air, but then… I just felt sick to my stomach. I wasn’t sure of what was happening in that house, but something told me, I didn’t want to know.

“Start what?” I asked.

“Well, the party of course, silly,” she said. She turned around and walked towards the pitch black side of the hallway. Before she disappeared into the darkness, a candle on the wall ignited of its own accord, out of nowhere near her. I just froze, unsure of whether to follow her or run for the hills. I was also not sure I had any other choice, considering they had my whole family somewhere in that house.

I followed her eventually, making sure to keep a certain distance between us, just in case…

All the way, candles on the walls sparked to light, casting a fiery hue onto every surface close by. She stopped in front of the only door situated at the end of that hallway. Upon opening it, I saw that it gave place to stairs leading downwards, I assumed that was where their basement was.

We descended in unbearable silence. All my senses were screaming at me to run out and never look back, but… I just couldn’t.

As soon as I stepped off the last step, I was hit by a nauseating burning whiff of something rotting. The air around me was so concentrated with it, it made my eyes water.

We’d arrived in a vast empty room, made entirely in concrete, the only thing my eyes could discern down there were the pillars holding the space up, and one single opening in the wall facing me.

Hannah resumed walking again, she headed towards the entrance I saw. I forced my legs to go after her, and I wasn’t very surprised to find out it was another seemingly endless and lugubrious hallway.

No matter how much I strained my brain, I couldn’t think of one reasonable or acceptable scenario to make sense of what I was going through, nor could I think of one single outcome where I got out of that situation safe and sound with my family.

After what felt like forever, I could finally hear voices coming from the end of the corridor we were traversing.

The further we advanced down that path, the closer they came to my ears.

“There you are! What took you so long?” exclaimed Mrs. Weller when she saw me.

The walls of that chamber were also made of concrete, but those weren’t dull and empty, those were covered from top to bottom in weird symbols and sigils drawn in blood, “We’ve prepared a place just for you,” she spoke again.

She ushered towards a spot on the floor, right beside my… sister’s unconscious body. My parents were also laid in the same position. Each of their three figures were surrounded by candles… Did they expect me to just lay there? “Who the fuck are you people?” I screamed.

“Hurry up, we don’t have the entire night,” said Mr. Weller

When they saw that I wasn’t budging, they began to slowly advance towards me. I’d started to take some steps back, but when I tried to turn and run away, I felt drowsy all of the sudden. My vision grew blurry, and I tumbled on one of the walls to support my weight, ”What are you doing to me?”

“Don’t fight it, it’s pointless,” Alex’s voice came to my ears, and it was the last thing I was able to hear, before my eyes became too heavy for me to maintain open, and everything went black.

The first thing I felt after that was the cold hard floor beneath my body, I could hear people speaking gibberish from afar, I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I tried to open my eyes but to no avail.

“I am really sorry, I couldn’t warn you about them, I couldn’t leave this place, none of us can,”

I recognized that voice, I hadn’t heard it in… Three months. It was Jeremy’s.

“Jeremy? Is that you?” I didn’t know how I did it, but I was able to speak.

“Yeah… I guess you can remember me now,” his voice broke at those words.

“He can remember all of us now, he’s one of us, they all are,”

I could tell to whom belonged that new voice as well, “Trisha?” I asked, knowing full well it was indeed her.

“Welcome aboard,” she said in a tone I couldn’t decipher, a mix between sarcasm and sadness perhaps.

“What’s happening here?”

“It’s the Wellers, they’re not really human, they’re…,” Jeremy trailed off.

“Witches. They practice what is known as blood magic, and every now and then, they offer a few sacrifices in exchange for… I don’t know, abundance of luck I guess,” Trisha finished Jeremy’s sentence.

I tried my best to comprehend the information I was given, but my mind was blank. The words weren’t lining up correctly, my signals were all mixed. My thoughts wouldn’t reach their destinations to connect and form a cohesive story, and my mouth exposed the entire process in front of Jeremy and Trisha, ”Witches? Blood? Sacrifice?”

“Yeah… You basically fell into their trap just like we all did. Perfect Wellers can never seem to do anything wrong. Why do you think nobody is ever allowed in their house?” Trisha added.

Before I could say anything else, Jeremy spoke before I could, ”I am sorry, I am so sorry,”

I followed his agonizing gaze, to see… Myself and the rest of my family, slowly bleeding our veins out on that floor. We seemed so peaceful, like we were only sleeping, dreaming.

Death was swift, I can’t say i remember much of the process. Although, I can remember the last thing I felt before the emptiness came along; cold, I felt so cold and lonely.

Now, I spend my days watching the neighborhood from a window in the attic. Watching people move on with their lives, watching weird things happening, as it is usual in Graybird town. A new family moved into our old house, they kept some of our stuff and threw away the rest without a second glance.

It hurt profoundly to know that it was like we never existed at all. I thought somebody might try to figure out who we were by looking at our pictures but… It seemed; we could only be remembered under the Wellers’ roof.

As time goes by, more and more victims of sacrifices joined us here, it is getting crammier and crammier.

Sometimes we talk about our shared fate. We discuss how it should feel to know that nobody was coming for us, nobody could remember to care. We try to define and describe feelings, since the only ones we could experience were pain and emptiness.

I lost count of the days, the months… Years. The Wellers are still as lucky as always. They just grew older; I guess there’s no spell for that. It’s good to know they’ll die too someday. At least we have that to look forward to.