The crawl space is a low world of damp and spider architecture. You do not love it. You love answers more.

Your lantern finds a mouse nest: shredded paper, a bottle cap, the kind of treasure mice respect. The scratch-scratch is explained in one second. Mice in walls are not ghosts. They are neighbors with no lease.

A loose vent cover slaps when the wind hits, tink-tink-tink, almost the kitchen’s knock but metal instead of wood. You hold it. The night goes quieter, like a radio you finally found the knob for.

Pipes sweat. A drip has a rhythm. Houses are machines for weather to play. Aunt Mara would say instrument, which is kinder.

You back out with cobweb in your hair and a sentence in the notebook: Vent cover + wind = knocks. Mice = scratches. Not a person in the floor.

The attic still has its own choir. You could compare, the way you compare two clocks. Or you could decide you have enough: the house is an instrument, and you have heard the song with the case open.