The Room I’ll Never Return To

The Story

The Room I’ll Never Return To

I hadn’t been back to the house in almost twenty years.

The movers had already emptied most of it when I arrived, but the silence still felt heavy, like the walls were holding their breath. My parents were both gone now—Dad last winter, Mom two years before that—and the old place had been left to me.

Walking through it felt like stepping into a half-forgotten dream. The wallpaper in the hallway still peeled at the edges, the floorboards creaked in the same spots, and the smell—faint lavender from Mom’s sachets, mixed with dust—clung stubbornly.

I thought I knew every inch of that house. Every hiding place, every cupboard, every nook where my sister Emily and I used to crouch during hide-and-seek.

But I was wrong.

It was the upstairs hallway where I noticed it: a door at the far end. Brown wood, plain brass knob, no sign of scratches or wear. But I couldn’t remember it. Not as a child, not as a teenager, not ever.

The strangest thing? The wall where it stood used to be flat. I would have sworn on my life that no door had ever been there.

I walked up to it, heart thumping. The knob didn’t turn. Locked.

A strange unease crawled up my spine. I called the movers to ask if they’d seen it earlier. They hadn’t. “Maybe you just forgot?” one of them said.

But I hadn’t. I knew I hadn’t.

That night, while going through a box of Dad’s old papers, I found a small brass key at the bottom, tucked between yellowed receipts. It was plain, unmarked, but when I held it in my hand, something in me knew where it belonged.

I should have left it alone.

The key turned with a soft click.

Inside, the air was stale and cold, as if sealed away for decades. Dust coated everything, but the room itself was untouched, frozen in time.

And then I saw it.

The wallpaper—yellow with small blue flowers. The twin bed with the faded quilt. The wooden dresser with stickers peeling at the edges.

It was Emily’s room.

My sister who had vanished when I was nine years old.

Everyone had said she wandered off one summer afternoon. We searched the woods, the lake, every road leading out of town, but nothing. She was never found. My parents never spoke of it again. It was as if, by their silence, they erased her.

But here was her room, exactly as it had been the day she disappeared. Her shoes neatly by the bed. A doll half-buried under her pillow. Even her school backpack resting by the desk.

I stumbled forward, throat tight.

On the desk sat an unfinished letter. My name was on the top.

Dear Michael,

If you’re reading this, it means I didn’t get to say goodbye. They’re calling me now. The ones in the walls. I don’t want to go, but they won’t let me stay. Tell Mom and Dad I’m sorry.

The words trailed off into a shaky line, the pencil broken mid-stroke.

The room seemed to grow colder. I spun around, suddenly aware of how quiet the house was. Too quiet.

Then I heard it.

A faint scratching, behind the walls. Like fingernails dragging across wood.

“Michael.”

The voice was small, childlike. Familiar.

“Don’t leave me here.”

I stumbled backward, slamming the door shut, fumbling with the key until it locked again. My chest heaved, my palms slick with sweat.

For hours I sat in the hallway, staring at the door, waiting for it to open again. It never did.

The next morning, I told the movers to board it up. I said it was just a storage room, nothing important. I didn’t mention Emily.

They sealed it with nails and wood, and I told myself it was over.

But that night, when I drove away for the last time, I glanced in the rearview mirror.

The upstairs window of that room—the one I never knew existed—was open.

And in the frame, a small figure stood, waving.

Emily.

Her smile was the same as it had been the day she disappeared.

I pressed harder on the gas, eyes burning, and whispered to myself over and over:

I will never return to that house.

I will never return to that room.