“The Memory House”

The Memory House

By [shayan]

The house hadn't changed, at least not on the outside. The paint still flaked like old sunburn, the porch still groaned under your step, and the wind still whispered through the cracks like it knew your name.

Lena stood on the front walk, suitcase in hand, staring at the sagging roof of her childhood home. It had been ten years since her parents' funeral, ten years since she'd turned her back on the house and the memories sealed inside. But now it was hers again—passed to her in her aunt’s will like a ghost gift.

She stepped inside.

The scent hit first. Old wood, mothballs, a faint trace of lavender. Her mother’s perfume. Lena closed her eyes, and for a heartbeat, she was seven again—racing down the hall in a yellow dress, her mother’s laughter chasing after her.

She opened her eyes. The hallway was dimmer than it should have been.

The kitchen came first.

It was the room where her father used to sing along with the radio while making pancakes on Saturdays. The old transistor radio still sat on the counter, dusty but whole.

She pressed the button. Static.

She adjusted the dial. Static.

And then, faintly, a voice—her father's voice—singing off-key to "Blueberry Hill."

Lena froze.

"That's not possible..." she whispered.

The song wobbled, warped, as if dragged underwater. Her father's voice changed mid-note, stretching into something slower, darker.

The cabinets creaked open. The overhead light flickered. The pancake pan on the stove began to tremble, all on its own.

She backed out of the kitchen.

In the living room, the couch still bore the indent where her mother sat to read each night. Lena approached the armrest, ran her fingers across the fabric. She remembered the way her mother would gently stroke her hair as she read aloud—The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, The Little Prince.

She sat down.

And suddenly, the book was in her lap.

It was The Little Prince, open to the drawing of the boa constrictor swallowing the elephant. Just like that night when—

Wait.

That wasn’t right.

The drawing was different.

The elephant was gone. In its place, a black smudge, like something had clawed through the page.

She turned another page. More blackness. Then red.

The words were melting.

The floor beneath the couch shifted subtly, like breathing.

Lena stood up fast and dropped the book. It thudded like bone against the floor.

The upstairs hallway was darker than she remembered. She reached for the light switch.

It wasn't there.

She moved forward anyway, trailing her hand along the wall like a blind woman. Her footsteps made no sound on the creaky wood. That’s when she noticed the paintings on the wall—family photos that had always been there.

Except now, the faces were blurred. Her own face stretched and melted like hot wax. Her mother’s smile was wide. Too wide. Her father’s eyes were gone.

She didn’t scream. Not yet.

Instead, she pushed open the door to her childhood bedroom.

The room was frozen in time: twin bed with the faded star quilt, glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling, stuffed animals neatly arranged on the shelf. For a second, Lena felt relief.

Then the closet door creaked open.

Lena turned toward it slowly.

Inside, the darkness shifted.

She heard it: a voice. Her own voice. A child’s giggle. Then crying. Soft and scared.

Lena stepped closer. She recognized the sound—it was the night she hid in the closet from her father, after he’d thrown a glass at the wall during a fight with her mother. A memory she’d buried.

The crying grew louder. But it wasn't just a memory. The closet stretched inward, impossible in depth. A black corridor. And in the distance, her seven-year-old self stood, clutching a teddy bear, eyes wide.

"Lena," the child whispered. "Don't forget me again."

Lena ran.

Down the stairs, past the melting book, the singing radio, the smirking photographs. Out the front door into the evening air.

But the street was gone.

Just the house. Floating in mist. No neighbors, no sun, no sky. Just memory, rotting and alive.

She turned back.

The house’s windows were lit now. Every room flickering with the ghosts of her past—some tender, some monstrous. They waved. Smiled. Screamed.

She dropped to her knees, hands over her ears.

"This house isn’t mine anymore," she whispered.

A voice answered, echoing from the walls, from her own mind:

“It never was. It remembers better than you do.”