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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/niceynice876 on 2024-11-05 17:30:07+00:00.

I was forty thousand words into drafting my novel when it all turned to shit. I was trying to wrangle a cohesive draft from the sections spread out across notebooks, phone apps, half-written docs files, and scribbles on napkins, but I’d lost grip on what I found so exciting about the story and now it seemed thin and overwrought. My confidence had slipped just as much as my deadlines, and nothing I was doing to fix either was working. I was starting to dread sitting down at my laptop, feeling doubt and inertia gripping my fingers as I typed and deleted out sections that were too cliched, too obvious, simply not good enough.

One late night, scrolling distractedly through listings for secluded getaways, I found Briar House B&B, located in a sleepy retirement town about 3 hours away from the city. The photos showed a tall, wood-clad property with flower boxes at every window, surrounded by a wide, open lawn that bordered on evergreen forest. The listing boasted chef-prepared breakfasts, quiet rooms filled with antique furniture, and “a garden with whimsical touches” bordering on nothing but rolling hills and forest in the distance. The price was reasonable, and I figured if I stayed a couple of weeks, I might finally finish the book. And if I didn’t . . . well, at least I’d have a quiet place to recharge completely and return to my draft with fresh eyes.

I drove away from home feeling excited for the first time in weeks, feeling the old tension being replaced with the energy of new potential coiled up inside my body. The roads became quieter and narrower as the city rolled away behind me, and as the pink light of dusk started to fall, I pulled into the gravel driveway of Briar House.

The first thing I noticed wasn’t the floral-curtained house or the manicured lawns sprawling into the distance, but the hundreds of model houses. A village of scale replicas each a foot or so tall, with chalets, log cabins, and farmyard barns clustered around the bases of the trees, complete with tiny balconies and decks. Each one was meticulously painted and varnished in cheery colors with leafy plants, small rocks and mosses tucked in around them. Dribbling streams ran down piled rockeries where houses sat clustered on every simulated peak and valley, with orange lights shining from their tiny windows. There were even bird houses nailed to trees with vaulted roofs and tiny windows.

And then . . . I noticed the garden gnomes. Jolly-looking figures with rosy cheeks and pointed hats arranged all around the garden, nestled in ferns and posed under tree branches. Every type of gnome you could imagine were all there, from regular bearded gnomes, to younger ones with painted twinkles in their eyes, to gnomes dressed as chefs or doctors or farmers. Most of them looked happy and innocent, while others had a mischievous gleam in their eyes.

It was a kitsch paradise—charming, but also faintly unsettling. This was whimsical on a whole other level. Undoubtedly, this fairy kingdom was the labour of a lifetime, and I wondered what sort of person had created all of this—what sort of person would find this endearing and not remotely sinister.

I parked my car, feeling like I was being watched by hundreds of tiny eyes. I took a deep breath, put on my best polite smile, and walked toward the front door.

Before I reached the door, it opened and an older couple emerged, wide smiles creasing their kindly faces.

“Welcome to Briar House, dear!” the woman called, waving as she walked toward me. She was short and wiry, with grey curled hair and a floral apron tied around her waist. “You must be Jade! I’m Evelyn Hampton, and this is my husband, Robert.” She clasped my hand warmly with both hands as the man, tall and lean with thinning hair, nodded in greeting.

“We’re very pleased to have you,” he added. His voice was soft and slow, spoken as if he was savoring each word. “We don’t often have guests stay as long as two weeks. You’ll feel right at home, I’m sure.”

I smiled at him, imagining him painting each house with a look of intense concentration. “Thank you. The place is beautiful,” I replied, glancing around, though my gaze kept drifting back to the gnomes. Mrs Hampton caught my look and laughed quietly.

“I see you’re admiring our little village!” she said with sparkling eyes. “It has a way of catching people’s attention. The gnomes keep an eye on things around here, don’t they, Robert?”

Robert nodded, his lips curling into a smile. “Yes, they do. They’re part of what makes Briar House so special.”

I tried not to make my laugh in response sound nervous, and followed them inside.

The inside of the house was much more kitsch than the photos had shown—lace tablecloths, floral prints, and everything delicately framed in faded pastels. My room was very quaint, with rose-print wallpaper and a crochet-blanketed bed that looked like it belonged in a story book. In one corner was an old-fashioned baby pram, and inside were two old-fashioned dolls staring up at me. The dolls had been arranged just so, in eyelet lace dresses with their china faces frozen in serene, eerie little smiles.

As they served up casserole and freshly baked bread, the Hamptons told me how Briar House had been their “special home” for 26 years now, and how the land had always been a place where “guests feel like they belong.” Robert proudly detailed all the work that had gone into creating the model village outside, and wryly complained about all the ongoing maintenance it needed. Evelyn talked about her love of hosting guests from all corners of the world, and happily took my order for breakfast the next day.

There was something a little unusual about the way they spoke, with pronounced pauses and each word spoken almost carefully, as if each phrase was being picked quite deliberately. Still, they came across as warm, if a little formal. Mrs Hampton wore a tiny gold crucifix, and they certainly seemed like straight-laced religious types—I couldn’t imagine either of them angry, or cursing.

The dinner was delicious, and I fell asleep almost straight away when I collapsed on the bed upstairs.

The next morning, I woke up with a dull ache in my head and a heaviness in my limbs. I hoped it was just fatigue from travelling. I really didn’t want to be getting sick—I had a nasty habit of falling ill as soon as I went on holiday, as if the moment my body slowed down, my defences also lowered. I dragged myself out of bed and headed downstairs for breakfast, where Mrs. Hampton was waiting. The table was laid meticulously with several sets of silver cutlery, gold-edged side plates, and a vase of fresh dahlias.

“Good morning, dear! How are you this morning?” she asked, patting my arm as she handed me a plate piled high with eggs, toast, and sausages. When I told her I had a bit of a headache, she almost instantly produced painkillers with a big glass of orange juice. “Eat up, every bite. A good breakfast is the best medicine.”

She was an attentive host, and insisted on changing the sheets on my bed every morning. I’d taken to leaving a cross-stitched cushion on top of the pram in my room each night to avoid feeling creeped out by the dolls’ staring eyes, so I was careful to remove the cushion each morning and put it back in its place, to avoid offending Mrs Hampton.

That morning I sat down with my laptop in the garden, trying to ignore the heaviness in my limbs as I took in my surroundings. I’d come here to write, and the change of scenery was definitely an improvement on how boxed-in I was feeling within the walls of my city apartment. This place was beautiful—peculiar, but beautiful. The garden was full of blooming flowers, the leaves of the forest rustled in the breeze like the sound of distant waves, and light danced through the foliage. As I forced myself to write, the words finally seemed to be coming more easily.

By the third morning, though, an uncomfortable truth had become apparent: the gnomes were moving.

When I started noticing it I had tried to brush it off, telling myself that maybe I just hadn’t noticed where they were before. But this time was different. When I’d gone to bed, each gnome had been neatly arranged in clusters under the bushes and along the flower beds. But as I opened my curtains at dawn, I froze—the gnomes were lined up in a perfect row along the path in front of my room, and even though I was high above them it looked like they were looking towards my window, their tiny painted eyes staring up at me.

At first I thought it had to be some kind of prank, but I definitely couldn’t imagine the Hamptons doing anything like that. I tried and failed to rationalize what I was seeing, so much so that I started doubting my own eyes, and I decided to go down to look closer. I crept down the stairs and out the front door, down to the path where they stood, arranged perfectly parallel with my bedroom window. I barely had time to process the scene when I heard a noise from the house behind me.

Mr Hampton was up early, standing on the porch in his usual starched shirt as he surveyed the yard. I quickly hid behind a tree, watching as he walked to collect each gnome, one by one, carefully placing them back into their original positions under bushes and along flower beds.

“They like things just so,” Mrs Hampton had said to me the day before. “They have a way of arranging themselves, don’t they, dear?”

In the days that followed I watched Mr Hampton…

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