The House That Remembers
"Some houses forget. This one never did."
When Elise Bradford inherited her uncle’s estate in the quiet town of Black Hollow, she didn’t know she was inheriting something far older than bricks and wood. The house had been abandoned for twenty-seven years, standing like a stubborn relic among the green hills, forgotten by everyone but itself.
She arrived one gray morning, rain chewing on her windshield, the GPS blinking out just as the house came into view. A three-story Victorian beast, draped in ivy and time. Its windows looked like dead eyes. The gate hung broken, as if even it had given up trying to keep things in… or out.
Elise laughed nervously as she grabbed her suitcase. “Well,” she said to no one. “Home sweet home.”
The front door opened with a groan that seemed to echo from the earth itself. The smell hit her first—mold, rust, and something beneath it… something familiar. She brushed it off. Old houses always smelled weird.
The floors creaked under every step, like bones adjusting to a new guest. Her uncle’s things were untouched—books still on shelves, clothes in closets, half-burnt candles on mantels. But there were no family photos. Not one.
She slept her first night in the guest room, wrapped in layers, listening to the silence.
It didn't last long.
Whispers in Wallpaper
She followed it.
The weeping led her to the parlor. The wallpaper, faded green and gold, was bubbling at the edges. With trembling hands, Elise peeled a section away. There were words scratched into the wall beneath, shallow but desperate:
“She never left.”
Elise staggered back. She checked the whole room, tearing more paper away. Messages revealed themselves, one by one.
“They buried the wrong one.”“I can still hear her.”“Don’t let it wear your face.”
Her breath came short. Her pulse throbbed behind her eyes.
The next morning, she woke up on the floor of the kitchen, arms wrapped around herself, fingernails dirty, as if she'd clawed her way there.
The Locked Door
By the fifth day, the house was no longer pretending.
Lights flickered without power. Footsteps echoed where she had been standing still. The mirror in the upstairs hall began showing her doing things she hadn’t done—smiling when she wasn’t, blinking when her eyes were open wide.
But the worst was the attic.
It had a heavy iron padlock on it. Her uncle's journal, which she found hidden inside a hollowed-out copy of Wuthering Heights, spoke only once about it:
“If the house begins to remember, do not go into the attic. That’s where it keeps the faces.”
She couldn’t ignore that. She had to know.
That night, she pried the padlock off with a crowbar she found in the basement. The stairs groaned like they hadn’t been touched in decades.
At the top, a single room.
Someone had carved something into it:
“Sit to see your true reflection. Stand to lose your name.”
Elise sat.
Every version of her in every mirror… smiling. Wide. Wrong. Lips curling too high. Teeth too many.
Only hers stood.
The Voice Behind Her Eyes
That night, Elise dreamed of drowning in glass.
She woke up to find her voice gone. Her throat uninjured, but no sound would come out. Panic wrapped around her chest like a vice.
She tried to leave. Packed everything in twenty minutes.
But the front door was gone.
Not locked. Not stuck.
Gone.
Where the door once was now stood a flat, seamless wall. She checked the windows—bricked up from the outside. Her phone had died and wouldn’t charge.
The house was closing in.
Then came the whispers.
“She sat.”“She stood.”“She saw.”“Now she is not she.”
Elise screamed in silence.
She tried to write it all down in a journal, but the words faded minutes after she wrote them, like the ink itself was rejecting her.
Or maybe the house just didn’t want to be remembered.
The Visitor
Weeks later—maybe days, maybe months—someone knocked on the front door.
The door was back.
Elise answered it.
Outside stood a man in his thirties, backpack over one shoulder, camera hanging around his neck. “Hi,” he smiled. “I’m Chris. I’m doing a photo series on abandoned houses. Mind if I—”
The man blinked, hesitated, but stepped inside. “Wow, it’s… bigger than it looked outside.”
She led him upstairs. “You must see the attic,” she said.
He frowned. “Did you… used to live here?”
Elise didn’t listen.
Because she was already looking for her next guest.
Epilogue: Found Footage
Authorities found the house a year later, after Chris’s parents filed a missing person report.
They found his camera outside the front gate, lens cracked, but one image remained intact.
All smiling.
But in the center, in the chair, sat Chris.
He wasn’t smiling.
He was screaming.
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