What started as an ordinary evening turned into one of the most unsettling experiences of this man’s life. He came home from work, dropped his keys on the counter, and immediately caught a strange smell drifting through the hallway. It wasn’t the usual mustiness of old pipes, and it wasn’t the scent of something spoiling in the kitchen. This odor was heavier, sour, and carried a rotten edge that clung to the air.
At first, he shrugged it off. Houses get weird smells from time to time — drains back up, something leaks, a forgotten bag of trash sits too long. But the next morning, the smell was stronger. By the third day, it had taken over the entire house. No matter how many windows he opened or candles he lit, it only got worse. It crawled out of the corners of the room, seeped into the furniture, and settled into the air like a fog.
He knew something was wrong.
He checked the kitchen, the crawl space, the attic. Nothing. The smell didn’t come from any visible source. Instead, it seemed to bleed out of one particular wall in the living room — the wall nobody ever paid attention to, the one covered by a bookshelf and a framed picture.
He pressed his nose against the wall, and the stench hit him so hard he gagged. Something behind that drywall was rotting.
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