The Gallery

Arthur has just finished his doctorate and is racing against the clock when a terse telegram from his Aunt Matilda summons him back to the sleepy Wisconsin town of Sumac. Exhausted and still tangled in the minutiae of his thesis, he boards the 4:15 milk‑run train, half‑expecting a routine visit to the spinster aunt who has long seemed a fixture of his childhood. But the moment he steps onto the creaking depot platform, the familiar landscape feels off‑kilter, as if an unseen pressure is reshaping reality itself.

Guided more by habit than hope, Arthur walks the eight blocks to Aunt Matilda’s house, the old‑fashioned homestead that has watched over him since he was a child. The town’s quiet streets and the lingering scent of dust‑laden bric‑a‑brac hint at something unsettled beneath the surface, and the protagonist’s scholarly mind begins to wrestle with a mystery that may be far beyond any academic puzzle he’s ever faced. The stage is set for a strange, introspective journey where the ordinary and the uncanny converge.