The House with the Red Door

There’s a house at the edge of town that nobody talks about anymore.

It sits quietly behind an overgrown hedge and a creaking iron gate, with ivy crawling up its wooden siding like veins. The shutters are always slightly ajar, and the paint is peeling, but the door—always locked, never open—is a vibrant red. Oddly untouched by time or weather. The kind of red that lingers in the mind, like a name you can't quite remember.

As a child, I used to ride my bike past it. My friends and I would dare each other to go up and knock, whispering ghost stories and half-remembered rumors. They said a woman lived there once—kind, strange, always wearing blue—and that she disappeared one rainy afternoon, leaving her tea still warm on the table.

Of course, none of us believed it. We were just kids looking for mystery in a town where not much happened. But still, something about that house made me slow down every time I passed. Something about that red door made me wonder.

I left that town when I turned eighteen. Moved to the city. Got a job, an apartment, a life that felt borrowed. I told myself I’d never look back. But ten years later, the call came.

My mother had passed. Sudden heart attack. No warning. No goodbyes. Just like that, I was on a train heading back to the place I thought I’d outgrown.

Grief makes the air feel thicker. Familiar streets look like strangers. Everything seems smaller—houses, roads, memories. After the funeral, I stayed a few days in my childhood home, wandering its empty rooms, unsure of what I was supposed to feel.

One evening, unable to sleep, I went for a walk. My feet took me without thought, down old lanes and past forgotten corners, until I found myself in front of the house with the red door.

It looked the same. Exactly the same.

I stood at the gate for a long moment. The air was heavy with the scent of lilacs. The grass was taller now, swaying in the wind like it had something to say. And then—without fully meaning to—I walked up the path.

The porch groaned under my weight. I hesitated. Then I knocked.

Once. Twice. Three times.

No answer.

But as I turned to leave, I heard it. The sound of the door creaking open behind me.

I spun around.

There was no one there. The door stood half-open, red and bold against the dim hallway behind it.

I should’ve walked away. But curiosity—old, childlike—pulled me inside.

The air inside smelled of cedar and dust. The furniture was covered in white sheets, like ghosts frozen in time. A cracked mirror hung in the hallway. A vase of dead flowers sat on a table. Everything was quiet. Still.

Then I saw it: a photograph on the mantle. A woman in a blue dress. Smiling. Standing next to a little girl who looked... oddly familiar.

I stepped closer, my heart thudding.

The girl was me.

Same freckles, same uneven haircut, same chipped front tooth I had until age ten.

But I didn’t remember ever being here.

I took the photo, held it in my shaking hands, trying to make sense of it. That’s when I heard the voice behind me.

“You used to come here often.”

I turned sharply. An old woman stood at the bottom of the stairs. Her hair was silver, her eyes soft.

“I—I'm sorry,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to—”

She waved her hand. “It’s alright. You always were curious.”

“Do I... do I know you?”

She smiled. “You did. Once.”

I asked her who she was, how she knew me, why there was a photo. But she didn’t answer. She just walked slowly to the window and looked out, as if expecting someone.

Then she said, “Some places remember us even when we forget them.”

I blinked. The room flickered—just for a moment—and she was gone.

I stood there, stunned. Alone again.

The photograph was still in my hands. I looked back at it. The woman in blue. Me as a child. And something shifted in my chest—like a key turning.

I never did find out who she was. The next day, I asked around town. No one had lived in that house for decades, they said. It was abandoned. Had been for years.

I went back once more, but the red door wouldn’t open.

It never did again.

Now, whenever I think about that house, I don’t think of ghost stories. I think of memory—how it hides, how it returns. I think of the woman in blue, and the way she said my name like it was a prayer. I think of the red door, and how some doors lead not to places, but to pieces of ourselves we thought were lost.

Maybe the house was real. Maybe it wasn’t.

But I know this: in that moment, in that place, I remembered something I didn’t know I’d forgotten.

And sometimes, that’s enough.