The House That Stole Her Back

Below is the narrative precisely.

The house on Hollow Lane hadn’t aged so much as rotted. Glass teeth jutted from its window frames, and the roof curved like a spine mid-collapse. Beyond the gate, weeds coiled into barbed thickets, snagging the sleeves of curious kids who’d poke the iron bars for bragging rights. None ever stepped through. Not until Mara.

October’s chill bit her cheeks as she stood before the fence, breath fogging the air. The others trembled at stories of the place—whispers of footsteps in empty halls, faces in shattered glass. But Mara had spent years tracing its silhouette from her bedroom window. Tonight, she’d meet it properly.

The gate screamed as she shoved it open, the sound sharp enough to split the moonlit silence. Her flashlight sputtered, carving a jagged path through brambles that snagged her jeans. Ahead, the house leaned closer, its shadow pooling around her ankles like tar.

The parlor held the photograph.

It lay centered on the floorboards, edges browned as old bandages. Mara’s pulse thrummed in her ears as she lifted it. A family stared back—starched parents flanking a girl in a lace-collared dress. The parents’ grins stretched too wide, eyes voids. The girl’s face stopped Mara cold.

Her own cowlick. Her own chin scar from a playground fall.

The photo slipped from her fingers. She’d never set foot here. Never even visited this town before last year. But the evidence glared up from the floor: her seven-year-old self, trapped in sepia.

A *tap-tap-tap* punctured the quiet.

The room reeked of crayons and sour milk. Sun-bleached drawings clung to the walls—stick-figure families, houses with smokeless chimneys. A rocking chair creaked empty, cushion dented. Mara’s skin prickled. She’d seen this room before—not in dreams, but in the hazy half-memories that surfaced during fevers.

“Mara.”

Her name slithered from the corner. The flashlight beam shook as it landed on a pinafore dress, then small hands, then the girl from the photo. Same cowlick. Same scar. But the eyes were wrong—pupils swallowing blue irises whole.

“Should’ve stayed away,” the girl hissed through baby teeth.

Dawn found Hollow Lane unchanged. No house. No gate. Just cracked cement and dandelions. Neighbors passed without glancing, their memories scrubbed clean.

In her apartment, Mara—*Mary*, the mirror insisted—clutched the photograph. The glass showed braids, missing front teeth, eyes round with second-grade terror. Downstairs, her landlord shouted about rent, but his words blurred like grown-ups in cartoons.

The house hadn’t just dragged her back.

It was peeling her apart—womanhood sloughing away like old paint. Each hour, her hands shrank smaller. Each night, the attic room flickered behind her eyelids, its crayon suns leering. Soon, she’d forget the adult she’d been. Soon, she’d be just the girl in the picture, trapped where Hollow Lane’s shadows never lifted.