When the Windows Forgot to Close

The town of Wrenfield was the kind of place where even the birds knew not to sing too loudly. It wasn’t haunted by anything so cinematic as ghosts or murder, but rather by a silence that felt too heavy for its size—like a hush waiting to break.

Elena moved there in late October, chasing quiet after a noisy divorce and the kind of heartbreak that doesn’t bleed, only bruises deep. She rented a creaky old house at the end of Lavender Street. It looked as though it had been forgotten mid-conversation—books still left on shelves, wallpaper curled like sleeping petals, and tall narrow windows that lined the entire front like eyes, watching.

It was the windows that first struck her.

They had no locks. None. Not one.

She mentioned it to the landlord, a thin man with a name no one ever really remembered, and he had simply said:

“Oh, yes. That house… never liked being closed in.”

She laughed then, nervously. She didn’t laugh again for a while.

Elena settled in quickly, painting, reading, avoiding contact with most of the townsfolk. Everyone was polite, in the way people are when they don’t want to be asked about things. A little too kind. A little too quick to say "nothing ever happens here."

But the house—her house—never settled.

It started small. She would wake up and find the windows wide open, even though she swore she’d closed them the night before. Sometimes the curtains would be pulled outward, flapping into the cool night air, reaching like hands.

One night, she left her journal open by the window. When she returned in the morning, a single page was torn out, the edges not ripped but carefully removed. The rest of the book was untouched.

She assumed it was the wind.

Until it happened again. This time, it wasn’t her journal—it was a photograph of her as a child, taken from a closed drawer, placed gently on the windowsill.

And behind the glass, she saw it: a handprint. Small. Too small to be hers.

Elena began locking every room. She bought latches, even nailed some windows shut. But every night—without fail—they were open again by morning. Always the same ones: the bedroom window, the hallway window, and the attic skylight.

She never opened the attic. The key didn’t fit.

One night, after a particularly vivid nightmare of someone whispering into her ear in a language she didn’t understand, she woke to find not just the windows open, but footprints—small, dusty, barefoot—leading from the window to her bed.

She left the lights on that night. And the next. But sleep became elusive. Her dreams now pulsed with sounds—clicks, taps, and the faint creaking of wood… like footsteps overhead.

On the eleventh night, unable to bear the tension any longer, she hired a locksmith to break the attic lock.

It opened too easily.

The attic was dry, the wood old but intact. Nothing seemed strange until she saw the drawings.

Hundreds of them, stapled and taped and nailed to the beams—all childlike scrawls of the same thing: a house. This house.

And in every picture, the windows were open, and someone stood just outside, peeking in.

Sometimes it looked like a child.

Sometimes, it didn’t.

And in the farthest corner of the attic, hidden beneath an old sheet, she found a small wooden box. Inside were teeth. Children’s teeth. Dozens. All labeled.

Each label had a name and a date. The last one: “Elena – soon.”

She dropped the box and ran.

The town didn’t believe her. Or rather, they believed too much.

“You weren’t supposed to go in the attic,” the landlord said quietly, not angry—just… tired.

“What is that place?” she demanded.

He didn’t answer.

“You knew. All of you knew.”

“It only opens to people who need silence,” he replied, almost gently. “People the house wants. That house doesn't trap people—it calls them.”

She left the next morning, her belongings half-packed, windows wide open behind her.

Two months later, a new tenant moved in. A writer. Quiet. Recently widowed.

The windows were already open when she arrived.

She didn’t bother to close them.

And above the attic door, barely visible unless the light hit just right, someone had carved:

“It only comes in when you forget to close the windows.

But it leaves the windows open when it wants you to stay.”