The Room That Waited

In a quaint little town, in the misty, rolling hills of Ireland, stood a vast castle-like home. It looked like a mashup of medieval and Victorian-era architecture. The greystone was covered in creeping vines, and the archways and windows were adorned with Victorian-era carvings.

I recently discovered that I had a great aunt here who left her entire estate to me. I knew we had family in Ireland, but I didn’t realize any of them were still around. I assumed they all died when I was just a kid.

“This place is huge!” My husband Christopher said, looking around. “It’s like something out of Dungeons and Dragons.”

I just stood there, my eyes wide with awe and wonder. I was looking at my dream home!

“Let’s head inside,” I said excitedly.

The grand oak front door, studded with iron, opened into a spacious foyer, where the constraints of the medieval gave way to Victorian grandeur.

“Holy shit! I’ve never seen anything like this in my life!” The high, vaulted ceilings and exposed stone walls contrasted beautifully with the rich mahogany paneling and ornate plasterwork of the Victorian era.

“Christopher, does it feel like this place was specifically made for us?” I asked, looking to him for reassurance that I wasn’t going crazy.

“I feel it too.” He said.

We stood there, in the grand foyer, for what felt like an eternity, when a man’s strong Irish accent suddenly broke the silence.

“Good morning. You must, Caroline and Christopher. It’s so nice to finally meet you. My name is Connor McNab. I was your great aunt’s friend and solicitor.”

We greeted Connor, then the three of us headed towards the great hall for a sit-down. Christopher and I were anxious to get to the bottom of this.

The great hall featured a massive fireplace big enough to roast a buffalo, surrounded by comfortable velvet armchairs. Tapestries depicting mythical Irish landscapes hung alongside portraits in gilded frames. To my surprise, the frames held pictures of our family, including my father, my two uncles, and their children.

“Mr. McNab, I’m really confused. I don’t know why I’m here. I never met my great aunt. Who was she exactly, and why did she leave this place to me?”

McNab pointed to chairs on either side of the fireplace. “Please sit, and I will explain it all to you as it was relayed to me by your aunt.”

Christopher and I sat down and listened as McNab revealed the origins of my great aunt. It seems that in the early 1950s, my grandmother, Polly, came here to visit a friend, and she unexpectedly fell in love with her friend’s brother, Francis. She became pregnant and stayed until the baby was born. Polly and Francis knew she couldn’t return to the States with a child, nor could she remain with them in Ireland. She had a family and children that depended on her. Francis promised to take care of their daughter and to make sure she knew that her mother loved her dearly, but circumstances beyond her control prevented her from staying.

“What was her name?” I asked, tears still streaming down my face.

“Caroline,” McNab replied.

“She really didn’t forget her. Grandma even named me after her.” I started crying again. Christopher held on tightly to my still-shaking hands.

McNab pulled out a letter from his briefcase and handed it to me. “Your great aunt instructed me to give you this before you begin your exploration of the house. I’ll be taking my leave now. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to call on me.”

“Thank you, Mr. McNab,” I said as he and Christopher walked to the door.

When Christopher returned, we sat down in the great hall once again and read my great-aunt’s letter:

My Dearest Neice,

If you are reading, then my earthly journey has ended, and yours- the one that matters most- is just beginning. We have never met, but I have known you since before you were born. I have watched from afar, quietly ensuring that what was once taken from you might one day be restored.

You will find, in the east wing of the house, a room that has remained locked for many years. Only you can open the door. No one else can. Everything within has been preserved exactly as it was the day you were born. Do not fear what you find there; the air will be heavy with time and silence, but it's waiting for you.

There are things your parents couldn’t tell you, things I swore to guard until you were ready to remember them yourself. You have always felt the pull of what others call ‘ancient superstition,’ though you know it as a more profound truth: the hum beneath the earth, the breath in old stones, the whisper of forgotten gods who still remember their names. That yearning is no coincidence. It is your inheritance.

In that room lies a secret bound to your blood, a story older than our family name, older than this land. It is not a burden but a calling. Listen with your heart when the silence begins to stir. The gods do not speak in words; they will reach you through the flicker of a candle, the scent of dust, the warmth of something that feels like memory.

I leave you everything that was mine, because all of it, even the things I could never name, has always belonged to you.

When you unlock that door, remember: you are not alone, and you are not the first.

Christopher and I immediately headed to the east wing of the house. “How do we know which room it is?” Christopher asked. “I’m not sure,” I replied. But as we walked along the corridor, I found myself suddenly drawn to a door at the end of the hall.

“I think this is it, but how do we get inside? There’s no key.”

I stared at the door for several minutes, trying to figure out how to get in. There was no keyhole, so we couldn’t pick the lock, and there was no space to slide a credit card through to open it, though that has never worked for me anyway.

“Maybe just reach for the doorknob, and it will open??” Christopher said jokingly.

“You know that only works in the movies. It’s not like that in real life. The door isn’t going to open just by tou…”

I stopped mid-sentence as the door opened. “Okay… I really didn’t expect that to happen.”

The hinges sighed, long and low, as if exhaling after years of holding its breath. The air was cool, still, and faintly perfumed with something I couldn’t quite place. Dust motes drifted in the slit of afternoon light that cut through the window, turning the air golden and hazy.

Christopher reached for the light switch, but nothing happened. “Looks like the room is on its own time,” he muttered.

I slowly crept into the room, the floorboards creaking beneath my feet, but the sound was muffled, swallowed by the thick silence that filled the room. It was… waiting.

Every object looked perfectly arranged, untouched yet preserved. A canopy bed dressed in black and red linen stood against one wall, its fabric yellowed with age but unwrinkled, like someone had made it this morning. A writing desk stood near the window, and a single candle burned to a stub beside a sealed envelope. Across the room, an ornate mirror leaned against the wall, its silver backing slightly clouded, not quite reflecting what it should. The light bent oddly on its surface, deepening shadows where none should be.

Christopher walked to a bookshelf that was built into the wall. The volumes were bound in worn leather, many without titles, but a few bore gold symbols that shimmered faintly as his fingers passed over them. “These aren’t in English,” he said, his voice hushed.

I didn’t answer. Instead, I was drawn towards the center of the room, where a rug was spread across the floor, intricate and handwoven, with colors strangely vivid despite their age. As I knelt to touch it, I caught my breath. The design wasn’t decorative at all! It was a pattern of symbols, an ancient language I didn’t recognize, but felt that I should.

“It smells like rain,” I whispered.

A draft stirred the candle stub on the desk. The flame briefly flickered even though it should have been dead long ago, and the room seemed to breathe with it.

Christopher turned, startled. “Caroline! Did you see that?”

I didn’t move. My eyes were now fixed on the mirror. In its hazy surface, I noticed the reflection of the room looked slightly different: the bed undisturbed, the candle tall and new, and, at the center of the rug, a figure kneeling exactly where I was, cloaked in a pale light.

My heart was racing faster now. I felt the pull of my great aunt had written about- that humming beneath the skin, the sensation that the world around me was older than it appeared.

“Caroline?” Christopher’s voice seemed far away.

I slowly rose to my feet, my gaze never leaving the mirror. “She knew,” I said softly. “She knew I’d come here.”

I took another step toward the mirror. The reflection wavered and then, as if exhaling, the figure inside the glass lifted its head.

It was my own face, but changed- regal, grave, and dusted with gold. My hair shimmered like dark metal in the candlelight.

Behind my reflection stood pillars, vast and sunlit, carved with the symbols from the rug. The whole scene looked impossibly real! Like the mirror wasn’t showing a reflection at all, but a memory, an echo of another world.

“Caroline…” Christopher’s voice was barely a whisper. He stood in the doorway now, afraid to come back in. “What is this place?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how to. My pulse was now beating in my ears, steady and ancient. Something deep within me felt like it had been awakened.

A single word surfaced in my mind, older than language: Anasae.

The name trembled on my lips. “Anasae,” I whispered aloud.

The candle on the desk flickered again, but this time it wasn’t fire; it was light.

Pure, white-gold light spilled out along the edges of the mirror as well, tracing the symbols carved into its frame. The lines glowed, moving like liquid, and the air filled with a sound that was not quite music. Voices layered upon one another, singing a single, endless note.

I suddenly felt weak in the knees. I looked down, and the symbols on the rug had begun to turn, not spinning but unfolding. The light poured into them, and for a moment I could see through time itself: deserts and temples, oceans and fire, faces lifted to the stars in worship. And always among them, the same woman, standing at the center of the circle, arms raised, as the people bowed before her.

A goddess, once loved and feared.

The words from my great aunt’s letter echoed in my mind: “You are not the first.”

“Caroline, what’s happening to you?” Christopher asked as he stumbled backward.

I turned to him slowly. My eyes were now gleaming with a light that was not my own. “I think,” I said softly, “I’m remembering.”

The room answered me with a gust of wind, even though no window had been opened. The scent of rain deepened until it was all around us. The mirror brightened once more, and when the light faded, the reflection was empty.

Only the room remained.

Neither of us spoke for what seemed like an eternity. The light had faded, but the air still trembled with a strange, living silence. I was still standing at the center of the rug, my hands shaking at my sides. The warmth in my chest had not faded; it was pulsing softly, like a heartbeat that wasn’t my own.

Christopher stepped toward me, grabbing my trembling hands. “Do you want to stay?”

I looked up at his loving, yet fearful gaze. “Yes. I need to know who I am.”

“I remember the sealed envelope on the desk has the same symbol as the rug, a circle pierced by three rays of light,” Christopher said as he led me over to the desk.

Without thinking, I grabbed the envelope and broke it open. Inside was a single piece of parchment, its ink dark and steady, written in the same graceful hand as my great aunt’s letter:

For when the mirror opens, and the blood remembers. You are the last of the line, the vessel through which what was once divine may rise again. We were not keepers of the old ways- we were their living heirs. They bound themselves to us when the world forgot them. They sleep in your bones, waiting for the name to be spoken.

My fingers went numb. My great aunt hadn’t been guarding a secret- she had been guarding me…

As I reread the words, a strange calm came over me. The symbols on the rug were moving again, glowing faintly, like they were answering my heartbeat. In the mirror’s surface, the reflection brightened, showing not just my own image now, but generations of women, all with my eyes, my mouth, each turning slowly to look at me, as though acknowledging my place among them.

“I remember now…”

Images flooded my mind, not memories but echoes. A temple carved into stone cliffs, its columns wrapped in ivy and prayer ribbons. Hands anointing my forehead with oil that glimmered like sunlight on water. Voices chanting my name, not Caroline but Anasae, the name the gods themselves had given.

Christopher reached for my shoulder, but when his fingers brushed my skin, a shock of warmth surged through him. He staggered back, eyes wide, “Caroline, your skin-its-...”

Golden light was now coursing through my veins, faint but unmistakable, pulsing beneath the surface like liquid fire.

I turned slowly to face Christopher. “They made a covenant,” I said. “Our blood for their memory. My great aunt kept them sleeping, but now they’re waking.”

The mirror rippled again- this time not reflecting me but showing a vast landscape: the temple ruins, sun bleeding into the horizon, water shimmering in the distance. A wind moved through the room, smelling of salt and myrrh.

I stepped forward. “They’re calling me back.”

Christopher’s voice broke. “Back where?”

I looked over my shoulder at him with tears in my eyes.

“Home..”