The Last House on Juniper Lane

I hadn’t been back to Juniper Lane in seventeen years.

The houses still looked like candy-colored blocks from a half-remembered dream — pastel blues, washed-out yellows, vinyl siding slowly giving way to ivy and rust. At the end of the cul-de-sac stood the house I once called home. 1324 Juniper Lane. White, or maybe gray now, with shutters that hung like tired eyes. The lawn was overgrown, a brittle “For Sale” sign leaning sideways like it had given up trying to stand straight.

As I stepped out of the rental car, I half expected to hear the old screen door creak open and my mother’s voice call out, “You’re late, sweetpea.” But the silence pressed in thick. Not even the cicadas dared to make noise here.

I hadn’t planned to come back. But the letter changed everything.

It was handwritten, postmarked two weeks ago. No return address, only the neat, looping script I recognized immediately — Mom’s.

“Come home. There are things you forgot.”

Which was impossible. She’d been dead for almost a decade.

I pushed open the gate. The hinges shrieked. The walkway had cracked and warped, weeds growing up through the concrete like veins on old skin. The front door opened when I touched it — not locked. Inside, the air smelled like old books and something sweeter. Peaches, maybe.

Everything was just as we’d left it. The floral couch, the dusty piano no one ever played, the shelf full of VHS tapes that hadn’t been touched since Blockbuster was still a thing. It was like the house had been waiting.

I stood in the hallway, staring at the family photos lining the wall. My ten-year-old self smiled up at me, missing a tooth. My father, stony-eyed in every photo, stood beside us like a prop. Mom always looked like she was mid-laugh. But one photo I didn’t recognize: me in the backyard, wearing a red dress I don’t remember owning, standing next to… someone.

The figure beside me was blurred. Not motion blur — more like the photo was smudged with static. As if someone had tried to erase the person next to me.

I blinked. The air shifted.

The basement door, slightly ajar, creaked open a little more.

I hesitated. Every memory I had of the basement was vague and uneasy. I’d never liked going down there. But my feet moved anyway, drawn like water downhill.

The wooden steps groaned as I descended. The deeper I went, the stronger the scent of peaches grew — cloying now, almost rotten. I reached the bottom and flicked the light. Dim yellow flooded the space, revealing boxes stacked to the ceiling, furniture draped in sheets, and in the far corner, a mirror.

The mirror wasn’t covered. It stood in an ornate frame, gilded and cracked. But the reflection was wrong. I stared into it and saw the basement — but not me.

Instead, a child stood there. Her face was mine, but younger. Red dress. She stared at me with eyes too still, too knowing. Behind her, the blurred figure again — this time with shape, almost human but faceless. It pulsed like something breathing.

Then she opened her mouth.

“You promised you wouldn’t forget me.”

My breath caught. My knees weakened.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

The girl tilted her head. “You know.”

And then I remembered.

It started as an imaginary friend. Lina. She showed up the year my father left. Mom said it was normal, a way for me to cope. But Lina wasn’t imaginary. She whispered things I shouldn’t have known, led me to places I wasn’t supposed to go. We played games. Dangerous ones. One day, I told Mom I wanted Lina to go away. She said, “Then you’ll have to forget her.”

So I did.

I buried her, deep in my memory — in the house, in the walls. In the basement.

But she never left.

The light above me flickered, buzzing like a trapped fly. The air thickened. I felt her watching — not from the mirror now, but from the dark space just behind it.

“I remember,” I said softly. “I’m sorry.”

Something loosened. The scent shifted — from rot to rain. The mirror darkened. In it, the girl faded, and the basement returned to normal.

I stumbled back up the stairs, heart pounding, lungs burning.

Outside, the sky had turned gold. The breeze was cooler, gentler. The house, though still peeling and crooked, seemed to exhale — like it had been holding its breath all this time.

As I turned to leave, I looked back one last time.

And in the upper window, just for a moment, I saw her — the girl in the red dress.

She smiled.

And vanished.