Banette

By the third night, the house has a routine.

Lights go off. Floorboards settle. And something starts moving.

It begins in the walls — a quick, soft thump that travels from one room to the next like a skipping heartbeat. Not random. Not the slow, drifting sounds of an old structure. Intentional.

A cupboard in the kitchen snaps open. A second later, it slams shut. Upstairs, a drawer slides out with a long wooden groan, then shoves itself back in hard enough to rattle the frame. The rhythm is uneven, impatient, like something testing every part of the house to make sure it still responds.

It doesn’t stop when footsteps approach. If anything, it gets worse. A chair scrapes across the floor without warning. A coat hook near the door jerks sideways, then straightens. The hallway light flickers once, twice — not from faulty wiring, but from something brushing past it too fast to see.

The house is no longer quiet. It is being used. When the source is finally followed, it leads to the smallest room — one that had been left closed for years until recently forced open. The door is already ajar now, nudged wide as if something had grown tired of barriers.

Inside, the air feels different. Tighter; charged. And in the center of the room, perched on a low dresser like it has every right to be there, is a Banette.

Its head snaps toward the doorway the moment it’s seen, button eye gleaming with sharp awareness. One clawed hand is buried halfway inside an open drawer, as if it had been rummaging through it without permission — because it has.

It yanks its arm free and hops down immediately, landing with a soft, heavy thud for something made of cloth and stuffing. The movement is quick, practiced. This is not new behavior. This is habit.

The zipper across its mouth pulls slightly wider as it tilts its head, studying. It takes a step forward, then another. The air shifts with it, a faint pressure pressing outward like something old and stubborn refusing to be ignored. The room’s temperature dips just enough to notice.

A loose object on the dresser jerks suddenly, then slides across the surface and drops off the edge with a sharp clack.

Banette doesn’t look at it; it’s busy watching you. Testing.

There’s something tangled in the way it moves — not just mischief, not just territorial instinct. Something older, heavier. This wasn’t always an abandoned house. It wasn’t always empty.

Banette lifts one arm and points — not at you, but at the room itself. The gesture is abrupt, almost accusatory. Then it grabs the edge of the drawer again and yanks it open violently, scattering its contents across the floor like a demonstration. Messy, wrong, and plain unacceptable.

Another sharp motion — it kicks something aside, then looks back again, waiting. This is clearly a reaction - to change, and to the fact that something in this house was not the same as it remembered.

Banette takes one more step closer, stopping just short, head tilted at a severe angle now. The zipper twitches slightly as if it might open further, though no sound comes from it. Its claw lifts again — slower this time. Pointing toward the hallway. Then back at the room. Then at you. A demand, clear enough to understand without words: fiix it or leave.