THE HOUSE THAT REMEMBERED ME
People say some houses are haunted.
They are wrong.
Houses don't get haunted.
Houses remember.
I returned to my hometown after twelve years, not because I wanted to—but because my mother had died alone in our old house. The lawyer said there was no sign of forced entry, no illness recorded, no explanation. Just one strange detail: when they found her body, every mirror in the house had been turned toward the wall.
The house stood at the end of a narrow road, untouched by time, surrounded by dead trees that never grew leaves, even in spring. Locals avoided it. They avoided me too.
As I unlocked the door, the air inside felt heavy, like the house was holding its breath.
The smell hit first—old wood, damp walls, and something else… something warm. Human.
I told myself it was imagination.
That night, I slept in my childhood room.
At exactly 3:17 AM, I woke up.
Someone was whispering my name.
Not from outside.
From inside the walls.
The whispers weren't loud. They were intimate. Familiar. Like someone who knew how I used to cry as a child, pressing my face into the pillow so my mother wouldn't hear.
"You left us…"
I sat up, heart pounding, eyes locked on the dark corner of the room.
Then I noticed something terrifying.
The room was exactly the same as it was twelve years ago.
The cracked toy shelf.
The broken clock.
Even the old red stain on the floor.
That stain…
I remembered it too well.
I was sixteen when my father died.
They said he hanged himself in the basement.
But that wasn't the truth.
That night, my parents were fighting again. Screaming. Plates breaking. I stood on the stairs, listening, shaking, angry, wishing it would stop.
Then I heard my father say something that still echoes in my skull:
"I should've never let him live."
That sentence was about me.
Something snapped inside my mother.
I ran.
I didn't see what happened.
I just heard the sound.
A wet sound.
A sound like forgiveness dying.
The next morning, the police said it was suicide.
And my mother smiled.
Back in the present, I felt the walls vibrate softly.
Like a heartbeat.
I went downstairs, each step creaking in rhythm—as if the house knew my weight.
The basement door was open.
It had always been locked.
I didn't want to go down.
But the smell grew stronger.
Blood doesn't disappear.
It waits.
The basement was darker than darkness should be.
No light reached the corners.
Then I saw him.
My father.
Or what remained of him.
He was standing.
Not hanging.
Standing in the center of the room, neck twisted at an impossible angle, feet flat on the ground.
His eyes were gone.
Empty holes.
But he was smiling.
"You finally came back," he said, though his mouth didn't move.
"I've been screaming for years. The house heard me. Why didn't you?"
I fell to my knees, sobbing.
"I was a child," I whispered.
"So was I," another voice said.
My mother stepped out of the shadows.
Her face was wrong.
Too smooth.
Like skin stretched over regret.
She looked at me with love—and hatred mixed together.
"You left me with them," she said.
"Left you?" I screamed. "You killed him!"
She smiled wider.
"No. I fed him to the house."
The walls began to bleed.
Not drip.
Pulse.
The house wasn't haunted by ghosts.
It was alive.
Built on suffering.
Fed by silence.
Growing stronger with every secret buried inside it.
My mother had made a deal.
The house would hide the truth.
In return, it would keep her company.
Forever.
"But you came back," she said softly. "Now it remembers you too."
The floor cracked open beneath me.
Hands—hundreds of them—reached up, grabbing my legs, my chest, my throat.
They weren't strangers.
They were faces I recognized.
Neighbors.
Relatives.
People who disappeared quietly.
All remembered.
All swallowed.
As the house pulled me down, I screamed—not for help—but for forgiveness.
The walls whispered back:
"Stay."
Epilogue
The house still stands at the end of the road.
Sometimes, at night, lights turn on by themselves.
People say they hear a boy crying.
Sometimes a man screaming.
Sometimes a woman laughing softly.
And if you stand close enough to the walls…
You'll hear one more voice.
Mine.
Warning you.
Never leave your past unfinished.
Because some houses don't forget.
They wait.