The first time I saw the house, it was raining.
Not the kind of rain that falls gently and makes everything feel peaceful. This was the kind that attacked the windows, flooded the roads, and made the whole world outside my windshield disappear into grey.
I was driving home from my brother’s funeral.
That was the official reason I was on that road.
The real reason was that I didn’t want to go back to my empty apartment.
My brother Daniel and I had been close when we were kids, but adulthood had a way of pulling people apart. Different jobs. Different cities. Different lives.
The last time I saw him, he told me something strange.
“Some houses remember people,” he said.
I laughed.
“You sound like you’ve been watching too many horror movies.”
He didn’t laugh back.
That was the part I remembered.
Two weeks later, he was dead.
The police called it an accident. They said he had lost control of his car on a rural road during a storm.
The road was called Black Pine Lane.
Nobody I knew had heard of it.
That was because it wasn’t supposed to be there.
I only found it because I missed my exit.
The GPS froze.
The radio stopped.
Then the road appeared.
A narrow road between tall trees.
At the end of it stood a house.
It was enormous.
Old.
Three stories tall.
The windows were dark.
Except for one.
A light flickered on the second floor.
I should have driven away.
Instead, I pulled over.
I don’t know why.
Maybe because I was tired.
Maybe because some part of me wanted to understand what happened to Daniel.
The front gate was open.
The house looked abandoned, but the grass was freshly cut.
That bothered me.
I walked up the stone path.
The front door was already open.
Inside, the air smelled like dust and something else.
Something familiar.
Like my childhood home.
The walls were covered with photographs.
I stepped closer.
They were all pictures of families.
Hundreds of them.
Every picture showed people standing in front of the same house.
This house.
Then I noticed something.
Every photograph had someone missing.
A person had been scratched out.
Not blurred.
Not torn away.
Scratched out.
Like someone had taken a knife and violently removed them.
A voice behind me whispered:
“Don’t look too closely.”
I spun around.
Nobody was there.
The front door slammed shut.
I grabbed the handle.
Locked.
I pulled harder.
Nothing.
Then the lights came on.
All at once.
The hallway stretched farther than it should have.
At the end was a staircase.
And on the wall beside it was a photograph.
A new one.
Still wet with ink.
I walked toward it slowly.
My hands started shaking.
Because I recognized the people in it.
My mother.
My father.
Daniel.
And me.
The four of us stood outside the house.
But I had never seen this picture before.
My parents had died years ago.
Daniel was standing beside me.
Except he looked terrified.
And behind us...
Behind us stood someone else.
A tall figure.
No face.
Just a dark shape.
I leaned closer.
The photograph changed.
I swear it changed.
The figure moved closer.
Its hand lifted.
And in the picture, it pointed directly at me.
Then the whisper came again.
This time from upstairs.
“Daniel brought you back.”
My blood ran cold.
Because the voice sounded exactly like my brother.
I looked up.
At the top of the staircase was a shadow.
A person standing there.
Waiting.
I said the only thing I could think of.
“Daniel?”
The figure tilted its head.
Slowly.
Wrongly.
Like it was trying to remember how humans moved.
Then it answered.
“Yes.”
A pause.
Then:
“But he told me never to let you leave.”
The lights went out.
And somewhere inside the walls...
Something knocked.
Three times.
Like someone trapped inside was trying to get out.
Or something outside was trying to get in.
End of Chapter 1 🕯️
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
No comments:
Post a Comment