The House That Never Lets Go

When Liz and her husband Sam bought the isolated cottage, they were told it had been vacant for years. Tucked away in the dense woods, the house seemed perfect—a cozy, rustic escape from the chaos of the city. But from the start, something felt off.

The first night, Liz noticed the smell—a damp, earthy odor that lingered no matter how many windows she opened. She tried to shake it off, but as they settled in, odd things began to happen.

It started with whispers in the walls, faint, like distant voices. Sometimes Liz would hear her own name, softly spoken, just out of earshot. The floor creaked under invisible footsteps, and shadows danced in corners where no one stood.

Sam brushed it off as “old house sounds,” but Liz couldn't shake the feeling that the house was listening, watching. One night, she was in the kitchen when she felt a chill pass through her, freezing her to the core. She turned, expecting to see Sam—but there was no one there.

In the coming days, Liz began to see a figure at the edge of her vision—a woman in a tattered dress, standing just beyond the doorway or lurking in the hallway. Every time Liz tried to get a good look, the figure vanished.

One evening, while rummaging through the attic, Liz found an old, worn-out journal, its pages filled with frantic handwriting. The entries told of a woman named Eliza, the original owner of the house, who had lived alone in isolation after her husband’s mysterious disappearance. In her later entries, Eliza wrote of seeing shadows in the mirrors and hearing her name whispered in the walls. Her final entry read, “This house won’t let me go.”

Liz felt a shiver run down her spine. She turned to leave, but as she reached the top of the attic stairs, the door slammed shut, trapping her inside. She pounded on the door, screaming for Sam, but no sound seemed to escape the walls.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps on the other side. “Sam?” she called, but the footsteps didn’t respond. Instead, they grew louder, closer, until they stopped just outside the door.

Through the small attic window, Liz could see the reflection of the doorway. But the figure standing there wasn’t her husband. It was the woman she had seen in glimpses—the woman from the journal, staring back at her with hollow, pleading eyes.

She whispered Liz’s name in a voice that was barely a breath, and then, in a voice laced with despair, she whispered, “It won’t let you go, either.”

The lights flickered, and Liz’s vision blurred. When she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the attic. She was in the hallway, looking at herself in a mirror—but it wasn’t her reflection. She was the woman in the tattered dress, her eyes hollow, her hands pressed against the glass.

On the other side, she saw herself—her own face staring back in horror as she whispered, “Please, don’t leave me here.”

But her other self backed away, shaking her head, her face paling as she turned and fled, leaving Liz trapped within the glass.

Now, Liz waits in the shadows of the house, whispering to anyone who enters, hoping they’ll listen. And every once in a while, she hears her own name called softly through the walls, as though the house remembers her and refuses to ever let her go.

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