Ever since the incident with the giant frog, Nathan felt strangely at ease with life—or maybe it was just a new level of numbness.

Take right now, for example. He’d just woken up from a vivid nightmare, broken into a locked room that by all rights shouldn’t have opened, and found a talking painting, inhabited by… something odd, to put it mildly. And yet, he wasn’t even remotely fazed.

He stepped forward, unhooked the painting from the wall, and examined it closely.

The frame was hefty and well-made, with an old-world craftsmanship that screamed high-end. Dark wood covered in intricate, twisting patterns—something like letters, though too stylized to read. The carvings wound together like vines, merging into the delicate floral designs at the painting’s edges.

Nathan didn’t know much about art, but he knew enough to guess that this thing was worth something.

Meanwhile, the figure hiding in the painting stayed hidden, save for the glimpse of a dress hem peeking from the corner.

Nathan tilted the painting to try and see more, but nothing came into view.

“I know you’re in there,” he said, giving the frame a light shake. “Hiding doesn’t change that.”

The figure shifted slightly, with the faint sound of fabric rustling, but didn’t respond.

Setting the frame on the floor, Nathan crouched down, pulling out a lighter from his pocket.

He sparked the flame, bringing it close to the edge of the painting. “Alright, three seconds. If you don’t come out, I’m setting this thing on fire.”

A few seconds passed before a soft, almost childlike voice responded, “…Mortal flames don’t affect beings like me.”

But Nathan could hear the tension creeping into the voice.

So he touched the flame to one corner of the frame. “Oh? Let’s put that theory to the test.”

A shriek rang out almost instantly. “Wait! You’re serious?!”

Nathan quickly extinguished the flame and watched as a figure hurriedly leaped into view within the painting.

It was a girl, dressed in an elaborate black gothic dress, with a lace-trimmed headband and long, dark hair that framed a face as pale as porcelain. Her eyes were strikingly red, large, and currently fixed on Nathan with a look of alarm as if trying to gauge if he’d really gone that far.

Nathan had to admit he’d been startled when she first appeared. Sure, she was pretty, and looking at her directly, she didn’t seem too frightening. But given the dark, eerie background of the painting, her sudden entrance was enough to give anyone a jump. Especially with those crimson eyes, vivid as fresh blood. She leaned forward, pressing her face up close to the canvas, her eyes filling most of the frame as she locked her gaze onto Nathan, making her look even eerier.

“Don’t burn it,” she said, her voice urgent. “This is the only place I have to stay.”

“Step back a bit first,” Nathan replied, instinctively shifting back. Something about her eyes felt… off, as if the color might sink into his mind, leaving an unsettling residue. But determined to keep his composure, he forced himself not to look away. “If you do that, I won’t burn it.”

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“Oh.” The girl seemed agreeable enough and nodded, moving back to the center of the painting. She settled into an armchair draped in thick red velvet, reaching down to pick up a teddy bear that had tumbled to the floor in her rush. She hugged the bear, her gaze fixed unblinkingly on Nathan, watching his every move.

Seeing her perched there with her bear in that crimson chair made Nathan feel strangely as if he were seeing the painting as it might have looked before coming to life.

Then he noticed something strange.

He realized that her wrist, exposed as she held the teddy bear, had a… ball-joint structure.

A normal person’s wrist wouldn’t look like that. Only a doll would have that kind of joint.

Apparently, his staring was obvious, because the girl fidgeted slightly, her brows furrowing. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

Nathan opened his mouth, about to ask about the strange joints, but he caught himself. He knew next to nothing about the rules of this bizarre world he’d fallen into, and asking too many questions could reveal just how little he knew. He changed his approach. “Who are you? And why are you in my house?”

The girl hesitated, glancing down for a moment before finally answering.

“My name’s Erin,” she said, shifting as if to look more formal. “I used to be part of Alice’s House, one of her dolls… but that was a long time ago.”

Doll?

The word stuck out to Nathan, and his eyes drifted back to Erin’s doll-like wrist. His mind, however, focused on two phrases she’d used: “Alice’s House” and “Alice’s dolls.”

What did that mean? A doll he could understand, but a talking, moving doll trapped inside a painting? And “Alice”… Who or what was that?

Was it a place, a group, or some kind of organization? And were “Alice’s dolls” just a group of sentient dolls she owned?

Nathan’s mind spun, his imagination taking off. Was Erin one of a whole group of living dolls, all part of Alice’s “household”? Were there more of these strange dolls hanging around people’s homes? Did they lock themselves away, only popping out to scare homeowners and lurking behind closed doors? Could they even be a secret real estate racket, lurking in places to drive property values down?

Noticing his long silence, Erin finally spoke up. “Why did you go quiet all of a sudden… You’re not still thinking about burning it, are you?!”

“Actually, I have a question.” Nathan’s face turned serious, so much so that Erin jumped slightly.

“Uh… sure, go ahead.”

He looked her square in the eyes. “Is ‘Alice’s House’ some kind of organization that takes commissions to haunt properties and drive down real estate prices?”

“...What?”

“You know, someone pays you to haunt their house and scare people away, that kind of thing. You lock the door, creep them out, make buyers back off. Like a real estate haunting service.”

Erin’s red eyes widened, and it took her a full thirty seconds to process what he’d just said. Finally, she flushed with indignation. “You… you can insult me all you want, but don’t you dare insult Alice or my sisters! We’re… we’re an honorable group!”

“Then why are you in my house?” Nathan cut her off, glaring. “And why was the door locked? Also, that weird dream I had—was that your doing? And what’s with that creepy laugh?”

The questions tumbled out in quick succession, his frustration starting to show. But as he finished, he felt a slight twinge of anxiety. He remembered the unsettling encounter with the frog that had nearly killed him. This eerie, crimson-eyed doll in the painting had the same unnerving vibe. She seemed agreeable now, but who knew if she’d turn dangerous at the drop of a hat, yanking him into her twisted, unnatural world?

Then again, Nathan realized, the frog encounter hadn’t done any lasting damage beyond his brief “death.” And if a simple lighter had been enough to scare her, Erin couldn’t be all that dangerous… right?

By now, Nathan’s tolerance was at an all-time high. This world was already bizarre enough, and he’d technically “died” once. Maybe it was time to stop second-guessing and finally get to the bottom of these strange mysteries. Erin seemed like as good a place to start as any.

To his surprise, she didn’t react aggressively at all. Erin didn’t jump at him, nor did she throw the teddy bear in his face. Instead, she curled up on the chair, clutching her bear even tighter, looking… almost guilty.

“This was… all an accident. I didn’t start out like this,” she muttered, shifting in her seat. “There was an incident a long time ago. I got trapped in this painting and lost contact with everyone else…”

She looked around the room outside the painting, her expression turning wistful.

“And as for why I’m here in your house… I don’t know. I’ve been stuck in this painting for so long. It’s not like I got a choice of where I’d end up. Are you sure you didn’t pick me up at some point, like from an estate sale or something?”

Nathan just looked at her, speechless.