The House That Waits Without a Door

Start writing...There’s a house at the end of my childhood street that doesn’t have a door. Not one that you can see, anyway.

No steps, no welcome mat, no place to knock. Just a wall where an entrance should be, covered in pale ivy and peeling paint, like the house was built to keep something in—or keep everyone else out.

We called it the Waiting House.

I don’t know who started that name. Maybe it was Eli, who said he saw a light flicker inside once, even though no one had lived there in decades. Maybe it was from the way the trees leaned toward it, like they were listening. Maybe it was because no matter how long it stood, it never seemed to age.

It waited.

The adults never talked about it. If you asked, they’d wave it off. "Just an old abandoned place," they'd say. But their eyes would shift. Their mouths tightened. Like they knew something and wished they didn’t.

As kids, we built stories around it. Ghosts. Portals. A woman in white who watched from the window—though no window ever had glass. We dared each other to touch the side of it. No one stayed close for long.

One summer, we found a cat sitting outside. Jet black, one eye, and a torn ear. It stared at the blank wall like it was waiting for it to open. It didn’t run when we came close. It just turned and walked into the woods.

We followed it once. Lost sight of it almost immediately. The forest behind the house never seemed deep from the outside, but inside it twisted. Paths curled back on themselves. The trees whispered in languages we didn’t know. We ran out sweating, scratched, shaken.

Afterthat, we didn’t go near the house for a long time.

Years passed. We outgrew ghost stories. Moved on. Left town.

But I came back last fall, for reasons I still can’t name. Maybe it was restlessness. Maybe something else. My childhood home was sold, but the town felt mostly the same—older, quieter, like a song I used to hum but forgot the lyrics to.

One afternoon, I found myself walking down the old road.

And there it was.

Th Waiting House

Still doorless. Still cracked and faded. Still surrounded by a silence that didn’t feel empty, but full.

This time, I didn’t stop at the edge. I walked closer. The air thickened. My ears rang faintly. And I realized something strange:

I wasn’t scared.

I reached out and touched the wall where the door should be. The wood was cold, pulsing faintly, like a heartbeat in reverse. My hand trembled, but I didn’t pull ba

Then I heard it.

Not a voice. Not exactly. Just a feeling, shaped like words.

“You remember me.”

I stepped back.

he wind picked up. The ivy rustled. The trees leaned clos

I blinked—and the blank wall shimmered.

For a split second, I saw something: a faint outline. A shape where the door had never been. Like memory itself had drawn it in chalk.

And then it was gone.

I don’t know what the house is. Or what it’s waiting for. Maybe it's not haunted by ghosts but by time. By the pieces of us we leave behind.

Because I left a part of myself here once—the curious, scared, wide-eyed boy who made up stories to explain silence. Maybe that’s what the house keeps. Not people. But echoes.

Not haunts. But memory.

I turned to leave. As I did, a breeze moved through the trees. The ivy lifted gently. And I swear—just for a second—I saw the cat again, sitting by the side.

Watching.

Waiting.

Some houses don’t need a door. They only need someone who remembers how to knock.

Author: L.M. Everhart