" I Broke Into The Wrong House. It started Taking Part Of Me.. Permanently"

 

A dark, cinematic horror book cover illustration for "The Harvest of Hawthorne Lane." On the left, a lone figure in a hooded coat stands before a looming, haunted Victorian mansion during a blizzard. On the right, a surreal and terrifying interior scene shows distorted faces emerging from rose-patterned wallpaper, a rotary phone on a table, and several pale, struggling figures on a dark floor.

The Harvest of Hawthorne Lane

It was a bitter winter night, snow piling in thick drifts while the wind screamed like a tornado. Anyone with sense stayed indoors, huddled around fireplaces with steaming mugs. Those caught outside cursed their luck and scrambled for warmth.

The homeless raced toward the shelters the city slapped together every December—long lines for watery soup with a single chunk of carrot and gristle, plus a stale heel of bread if you were quick. The ones who refused help gathered under bridges or in alleyways, feeding scrap-wood fires that spat more smoke than heat. They passed a bottle of cheap whiskey wrapped in a brown paper bag, bragging about winters they’d survived, wondering aloud which of them would be stiff and blue by morning.

Fred loved nights like this.

Heavy snow, empty streets, rich people gone—it was perfect. Christmas week had always been his harvest season. He could still remember the year he’d lifted enough to buy the beat-up van he now called home. Tonight he walked with his collar up, hood low, eyes scanning every shivering body he passed. As a burglar, he preferred to be a ghost: no name, no face, no witnesses.

“Hey, buddy!” a voice rasped from a circle of firelight. “Night’s a killer. Come warm up, have a pull.” The man waved the bottle like a flag of truce.

Fred turned his face away and kept moving. He didn't need charity, and he certainly didn't need a witness who could describe his gait or the color of his coat. To Fred, these people were just landmarks—flesh-and-blood statues that marked the path to his real destination.

Two more blocks and he’d reach the avenue where the mansions stood dark and silent, owners sipping champagne on some private island. Their loss, he thought with a sneer. He imagined them in the tropics, tan and oblivious, while he dismantled the security of their lives. It was a fair trade in his mind: they had the world, so they wouldn't miss a few gold watches or a handful of diamonds.

The old man by the fire watched him disappear into the snow. “Just you and me tonight, old friend,” he muttered to the bottle, taking a long swallow.

Fred had been watching number 17 Hawthorne Lane for weeks. The house had sat empty two years now, windows boarded, mail overflowing. Neighborhood gossip called it haunted—cold spots, footsteps, the usual bullshit. Fred almost laughed every time he heard it. Rich people and their games: spread a ghost story thick enough and nobody dares step foot on your property. It was a classic trick, a psychological fence that cost nothing and required no maintenance. Worked every time. Except on him.

He turned onto Hawthorne. Even the homeless avoided this street; the glow from the mansions felt colder than the blizzard. The streetlights flickered, casting long, skeletal shadows across the pristine snow. Fred stuck to the shadows, moving from tree to tree, checking every curtained window for a twitch of movement. Nothing. Just snow and silence.

He stopped at the iron gate, breath fogging in front of him. The house loomed three stories high, gables sharp against the swirling white. It looked like a hunched predator waiting for the storm to pass. For a second the wind died, and the world went so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat—a frantic, rhythmic drumming that felt too loud for the stillness.

Fred smiled, pulled the slim jim from his coat, and slipped through the side gate like smoke.

He hurried to the back of the mansion, moving like a shadow. He slipped his glass-cutting tools from his pocket, his movements practiced and rhythmic. He pressed the suction cup against the pane, and carved a perfect circle. The glass sighed free. He reached through, fingers finding the latch, and eased the window open. No alarm. He counted to twenty, heart hammering against his ribs, then exhaled with a grin that felt too wide for his face.

He slid inside, lean as a knife, and closed the window behind him. The air inside was stagnant, smelling of old dust and something metallic—like the scent of a copper penny on a wet tongue. The moment his back turned, there was a soft, deliberate click. He spun around.

The window was gone.

Not just closed or locked. The entire frame had vanished. Where there had been glass and a view of the swirling snow, there was now only smooth, seamless wallpaper, patterned with fading roses that seemed to pulse in the dark. He clawed at the wall, nails scraping plaster, panic rising like bile. As a burglar, you always secure the exit first. Rule one. He’d broken it, and now the house had swallowed him.

Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. They sounded like they were coming from the ceiling, then the floor, then from inside his own head. Then nothing.

The phone on the side table rang—shrill, impossible in an empty house. The sound sliced through the silence like a razor.

He froze.

A voice whispered right against his ear, warm breath that smelled of nothing at all—no mint, no tobacco, just the absence of scent.

“Answer the damn phone.”

Fred jumped, a whimper escaping before he could choke it back. “Who’s there?” he hissed, spinning in circles, his hands fanning out in the dark.

The phone rang again. It was an old rotary model, the kind that shouldn't have been functional.

“Answer it, fool,” the voice said, amused, dripping with a terrifying familiarity.

He lunged for the receiver, his hand shaking so violently he almost dropped it. “Hello?”

A laugh crackled through the line, wet and ancient, like water bubbling through a narrow pipe. “No one enters here and leaves whole.”

“Fuck you,” Fred spat, his bravado a thin mask over his terror. “I’m not scared of a prank. Who’s paying you? The neighbors?”

“Look at your left hand, Frederick.”

He did.

His index finger was gone. Not bleeding—just gone. The skin was smooth and pale, as if it had never existed. The stump didn’t even hurt. It felt… old. He touched the spot where the joint should have been, but his skin felt like cold marble. There was no scar, no trauma, just a perfect, terrifying absence.

The voice purred through the receiver. “More will follow. A toe. An ear. Maybe a leg, so I can watch you drag yourself across my floors like a wounded dog.”

“What do you want?” Sweat soaked his collar, turning the cold air into a damp shroud.

“What you cherish most.”

“I’ve got nothing!” He was already backing toward the wall, searching for the window that wasn’t there. “I’m a nobody! I live in a van!”

“Oh, you do,” the voice said, savoring the words. “You cherish your utility. Your ability to move, to see, to take. What can you sacrifice, head to toe, before you cease to be a man and become a monument?”

Fred’s knees buckled. Tears burned his eyes. “Please. I’ll never rob again. Just let me go. I'll leave the city. I'll never come back.”

“Let you go?” A mocking chuckle. “We’re only getting started. The night is long, and the house is hungry.”

He slammed the phone down and ran, hands outstretched, groping along walls that felt like they were breathing. The hallway seemed to stretch as he moved, the doors on either side blurring into dark streaks. He tried the fireplace—chimney too narrow, soot choking him, the air inside the flue tasting of ancient ash and burnt hair. The voice drifted after him, lazy and omnipresent.

“I wouldn’t, pet. Imagine getting stuck with no arms to pull yourself free. You’d just be a chimney sweep’s ghost, rattling in the soot for eternity.”

He screamed then, raw, calling for police, for God, for anyone. He screamed until his throat felt like it was lined with broken glass. No one came. The house drank the sound, the heavy velvet curtains and thick carpets absorbing his terror like a sponge.

“Oh, you’re boring me,” the voice sighed. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees in an instant. “Let’s take something you’ll miss.”

Fred felt a sudden, sickening void in his center. A core part of his identity, his very vitality, felt as though it had been erased. He reached down, but there was nothing but flat, numb skin. It was as if his very history had been rewritten to remove his ability to ever feel or create life again. He made a strangled sound, half-sob, half-scream.

“Already dreaming of the life you'll never have?” the voice taunted. “Check your left eye.”

The world tilted violently. Darkness swallowed half his vision. He blinked, but the left side of his reality remained a black void. His fingers found the socket—it was empty, dry, and healed over. The skin was as smooth as a baby’s cheek. He was being hollowed out, piece by piece, like a statue being chipped away by a sadistic sculptor.

“I’m dead,” he whispered, collapsing against a mahogany pedestal. “I’m dead and this is hell.”

“Not yet,” the voice whispered from the shadows of the ceiling. “Death is a release. You are a collection. A specimen.”

He charged the wall, ready to bash his skull in and end the nightmare, but the surface gave like foam. He bounced off, sobbing, his body refusing to even allow him the mercy of a bruise. The house wouldn't let him break; it only wanted to subtract.

A hallway stretched ahead, impossibly long, the floorboards groaning like the bones of a giant. At the end, a door stood ajar, spilling a sickly yellow light that smelled of formaldehyde and ozone. He ran for it, his one remaining eye focused on that sliver of light as if it were salvation.

The door slammed behind him with the finality of a coffin lid.

He fell hard on his knees. The floor was warm. Wet. A thick, viscous liquid coated the boards, sticking to his clothes.

Shapes moved in the gloom—people, or what was left of them. They were like living waxworks, tucked into the corners and alcoves of the room. A woman with no lips smiled at him, her teeth too white, too perfect, set into a face that was otherwise a blank slate of skin. A man crawled past, dragging himself with elbows because both legs ended at the knees in those same smooth, bloodless stumps. Someone missing a jaw gurgled a greeting, the sound a wet, rhythmic pulsing from a throat that had been sealed shut.

They were all "complete" in their incompleteness. They didn't bleed. They didn't die. They just existed as fragments.

The voice filled the room, no longer coming from the phone or the walls, but vibrating through the very marrow of his bones, as if he were a tuning fork for the house’s malice.

“Welcome to my playground, Frederick. You were so worried about being a ghost—no name, no face, no witnesses. I’m just helping you reach your potential.”

Fred curled into a ball, what was left of him shaking. He looked at his right hand, watching as the pinky finger slowly faded into the skin, becoming nothing more than a memory.

The laughter never stopped. It echoed through the halls of number 17 Hawthorne Lane, joining the chorus of gurgles and silent screams that would never reach the snowy street outside.

Author's Note.

The moral of The Harvest of Hawthorne Lane serves as a stark reminder that shortcutting your way to success through the misfortune of others eventually leads to a hollow existence.

Crime Doesn't Pay

Fred’s downfall illustrates that while crime may offer a "harvest season" of quick gains, it ultimately strips a person of their humanity. By living as a "ghost" with no name or face, Fred invited a fate where he literally became nothing. The house didn't just take his possessions; it took his physical self, piece by piece. In the end, the "easy money" cost him everything he was, proving that the price of theft is far higher than any loot is worth.

The Value of Hard Work

In contrast, the story highlights that hard work is the only sustainable path to wholeness.

Security vs. Fear: While Fred spent his life hiding in shadows and shivering in a van, those who work hard earn the peace of mind to sit by a fireplace without fear.

Building vs. Taking: Hard work allows a person to build a legacy and a future. Fred’s "work" was destructive, and as a result, he had no foundation to stand on when the world turned against him.

Integrity: The story suggests that what we "cherish most"—our health, our identity, and our freedom—is protected by living an honest life. When you earn what you have, you never have to worry about a "voice in the dark" coming to collect a debt you can't pay.

Ultimately, Fred’s tragedy is a lesson that it is better to have a little earned through honest sweat than to have a mountain of gold that belongs to someone else.