The House That Sleeps By Day (Patreon)

So. I've had a bit of a burst of inspiration. Where do I even begin?

The snow. It falls and blankets the ground and hugs it tight like a mother nurturing a child in the cold, dead of winter. We're hitting the harsher edges of the season, and a snowstorm is on the way that could be a wild experience. Add in the recent videos I've been doing, Serena's incredibly wonderful presence in my life, and a wonderfully wicked imagination that constantly taunts me...

And I've come up with my first ever original Gothic Drama/Horror.

Obviously the cover and the song that goes with it are conceptual, but... the story itself is already underway. I've finished the prologue... and I want to share it with you all, right here for your viewing discomfort.

Hope was never like the other girls. She was always on the outskirts of life when it came to the other children. Her peers, they never accepted her.

Was it because she had been sheltered most of her life? Maybe she had a strange walk... or talked to much.

Or, could it be the fact that she was raised by monsters...

The House That Sleeps By Day is about the life of a young woman. From the earliest recollections, to her elderly age. A life of danger. A life of confusion. A life of blood and death.

A horror story where the calls aren't just coming from inside the house... they own it.

Vampire stories come in all shapes and sizes, but this one... this one is more than just focusing on the vampire's as villains, or demons- or creatures of royal blood. This one, focuses on them... as parents.

Can two vampires who adopt a human girl raise her right... or will their monstrous appetites make a meal of her entire life.

Prologue: They Were Monsters

On the edge of a dark and foreboding forest—where the wind blew fallen leaves and broken branches like old bones dragged through dust—sat an old, rickety house.

The years had not been kind.

Its walls sagged under the weight of rot and rain. Black mold clawed up the siding like fingers searching for warmth. The roof bowed inward, shingles clinging on as if too tired to fall. Even the front yard had given up—its grass a patchy green, its flowers wilted into silence.

But on the warped porch, above cracked boards and scattered pebbles, an old rocking chair creaked back and forth. The sound was rhythmic, ancient. A heartbeat slowed by time.

In it sat a woman.

Her hands trembled as she knitted, fingers gnarled and swollen from years of use and the punishment of arthritis. Still, she worked steadily, determined to finish the small hat nestled in her lap—a soft sky-blue thing, just the right size for a child’s head.

Her tired blue eyes stayed fixed on the yarn, half-praying the task would end so the pain might fade. But pain was a companion now, and she had learned not to complain to it.

A shape shifted beside her.

She flinched—not from fear, but from instinct. Her heart pounded once, a dull thud against her ribs. She hadn’t heard the girl approach.

Through the haze of her graying hair, she looked up.

A child stood there. Barely eight. Thin arms crossed over her chest. Blonde hair that caught the dying light like ash. Eyes like storm glass—sharp, unsure, hungry for answers.

“Lexi, dear…” the old woman rasped, pressing a hand to her chest. “You gave me quite a fright.”

She clutched the yarn tighter. The ball unraveled a little in her lap. “You’re quiet as a ghost,” she added, offering a weak smile. “That’s a compliment, of course.”

Lexi didn’t smile back. She only blinked once.

“Grandma,” she said softly. “Momma won’t tell me, but I thought maybe you might.”

The woman’s hands stilled.

She blinked slowly. “Tell you what, darling?”

Lexi rocked back on her heels, then forward again—little feet in dusty shoes pressing against the porch slats.

“Momma said she never knew her grandparents. Not really. Not like how I know you. She said you never talk about them.”

She paused.

“Did something happen to them?”

Silence fell.

The yarn grew slack in the woman’s hands.

Her lips thinned. Not in anger—but in the way that people who live long enough learn to carry their sorrow behind their teeth.

She looked past the child, toward the woods.

The trees were watching. The wind had stilled.

“Something,” she said at last, her voice nearly too quiet to hear, “happened to them, yes. Trouble followed them like a moth to the flame.”

Lexi tilted her head. “Were they bad?”

A long breath escaped the old woman’s lips—measured, ancient, and full of ghosts.

“No,” she said softly. “That’s the worst part.”

The child’s brow furrowed. “Were they good?”

The woman’s face fell.

Whatever softness had been lingering there twisted—memories curdling in her expression, warping into something darker. Into gleaming eyes in the shadows. Into teeth that never stopped gnashing.

“They tried to be,” she whispered. “But they were… very sick, Alexis.”

Lexi blinked slowly. Once. Twice. Three times. “Did you take care of them?”

The old woman nodded, fingers trembling slightly over the yarn that had begun to unravel.

“Until I couldn’t anymore,” she said. “Until it became too much.”

Lexi’s face fell. Her little mouth tugged into a frown. 

“I’m sorry, Grandma.”

She climbed into the old woman’s lap, small arms wrapping around the brittle frame that still smelled faintly of lavender and old yarn.

“You must miss them so much.”

The old woman’s face twisted—not from pain, not quite—but from the spinning weight of memory. Her hands fluttered against the child’s back, then settled as her eyes drifted past the porch railing, toward the trees.

“There are days I do,” she murmured.

Her voice was thinner now, barely more than thread. Her soft, failing gaze caught the faint flurries of snow beginning to breach the gnarled limbs in the distance. The wind moved like something old remembering how to breathe.

“Days like this… when the snow comes, and the cold bites nearly as bad as—”

She stopped.

The words refused to come.

Lexi blinked. “Grandma?”

From the doorway behind them, a voice cut in—warmer, older, but still sharp. “Hope?” she muttered.

“Mom?”

An elegant woman stepped onto the porch, arms folded tight across her chest. Her golden-blonde hair was twisted into a practical bun, a coat thrown over her shoulders like she hadn’t intended to stay long.

Hope didn’t look at her right away, her focus remained on the small child snuggled against her.

“Is everything alright out here?” Caitlyn asked, her tone bordering on disapproval.

Hope leaned in close to Lexi, pressing one last kiss to the girl’s crown.

“Go inside, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Check the top shelf. The one with the sunflower plate. You’ll find the good cookies there.”

Lexi’s eyes lit up—just for a moment. “How many can I have?”

“As many as you want.”

Alexis didn’t have to be told twice.

Off she went—boots clattering on the porch—darting past her mother without a glance, vanishing into the warm hush of the house. Somewhere inside, her father waited just out of sight, arms open. His shadow lingered a second longer than it should have.

But the joy was not shared by the woman left standing in the doorway.

Caitlyn scowled, her lips tight with inherited restraint.

“She’s just a little girl,” she said, voice low but pointed. “I trust you weren’t telling her the same scary stories you used to tell me.”

Hope scoffed, the sound dry as old paper. “Of course not,” she said. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Caitlyn stepped forward, arms still wrapped across her chest like armor. Her silhouette stood harsh against the fading light.

“Come inside, Mom. The wind’s picking up. I don’t want you getting sick.”

Hope didn’t move. Her eyes followed the snowfall as it tumbled and danced—delicate flurries drifting across the porch, finally beginning to stick.

For a moment.

Then the grass, still stubborn with warmth, swallowed them whole.

“Hope,” Caitlyn said again, firmer this time. “Please.”

Hope’s voice came quiet. Almost wondering.

“Do you remember those stories, my dear?”

That stopped her.

Caitlyn’s arms fell. Her shoulders slumped. She took a few slow steps forward, the weight of unspoken things dragging at her posture. The lines on her face deepened—freckles drowned in crow’s feet, furrowed and shadowed like trees in the summer sun.

“I remember,” she said.

But whether she meant the stories or the way they made her feel… she didn’t say.

“You never really spoke of Grandma and Grandpa much,” Caitlyn said, her voice low and brittle.

“Just…”

She shuddered.

“Just the scary stories you used to tell me. The ones that kept me chained to your side when I was little.”

Hope blinked, her eyes sharpening slightly.

“Is that what I did?”

Caitlyn sighed. The cold air curled at her ankles.

“You did what you thought was best,” she said. “You just didn’t want to lose me.

Not like you lost them.”

Hope exhaled through her nose, slow and steady. Her mouth twitched—part grimace, part grief.

“You may be a therapist, Cait,” she muttered, “but you’re not mine.”

She shifted in her chair with a tired harumph.

“And secondly… I didn’t tell you those stories to scare you.

I told you to keep you safe.”

Caitlyn rolled her eyes. “Right. Safe. From the monsters in the cellar. The ones that ate your mother and father.”

Hope’s brow furrowed.

“Is that how you remember it, child?”

Caitlyn stiffened. “I’m not a child anymore.” She folded her arms again, but it wasn’t armor this time—it was a defense. “And yes. They were scary.”

The snow fell faster.

Hope shook her head slowly. “No, girl… you misremember.” Her voice was thin, but steady. “I didn’t say they were eaten by monsters.”

Caitlyn’s head tilted, a crease forming between her brows.

Hope continued, eyes fixed on the drifting white. “I said that if you went into the cellar, the monsters would eat you.”

A pause.

Then, softer—like a confession dragged from bone.

“They were the monsters, my child.”

Caitlyn’s mouth parted. “What are you talking about?”

Hope’s shoulders sank. The chair creaked beneath her as if it, too, had grown tired of holding her up.

“Eighty-four years,” she whispered. “I’ve carried this secret for eighty-four years.”

She swallowed, her throat working as though the words were too large to pass through it.

“And now…” Her breath trembled. “Now I’m too tired to keep it buried.”

Tears slipped free, carving clean rivers down the deep lines of her face. They clung to her chin before falling into the yarn in her lap—blue thread darkening where grief touched it.

Caitlyn dropped to a knee, panic tightening her features. Her hand reached for Hope’s, fingers closing around the cold, trembling ones.

“Mom?” she whispered. “What’s the matter?”

Hope blinked hard, as if trying to force herself back into the present.

“It’s time,” she said. “Time I told you the truth.”

Her gaze drifted toward the trees, toward the woods, toward the place the stories had always pointed to without ever naming.

“The truth about my mother… and my father.”

Across the grounds, the flurries finally began to stick—white swallowing brown, covering rot and ruin in a temporary mercy.

Hope watched it happen as though she’d seen it before.

As though she’d lived it.

“Of how I was raised,” she whispered, “by the monsters that took me home.”