Lucas Bellamy lives in the clouds.

His world is a wooden room high above the floorboards, filled with drawings, tattered books, and the gentle voice of Mama who brings him meals through a little hatch in the floor. She tells him stories about monsters that roam outside, about a world too dangerous for a boy like him. And so he stays. He draws tigers. He counts raindrops. He listens to the wind and dreams of flying.

But when a strange man appears in the garden below, staring up at his window, cracks begin to form in Lucas’s perfect sky.

Why can’t he remember ever leaving the attic?
Why does Mama cry when she thinks he’s asleep?
And why does the house sometimes speak in voices that aren't hers?

A haunting tale of innocence, memory, and the kind of love that protects… even when it shouldn’t.

After Lucas returned, I stopped pretending to be quiet.


I stopped folding my feelings into shapes I could hide.


There were places in the house where I used to hide things.


Buttons from shirts torn in punishment.


Behind the dresser:A broken shoelace stained with blood. Mine. I remember not crying when it happened. That was the day I learned pain is quieter than screaming.


Under the floorboard beside my bed:A drawing of a woman with no face. I didn't give her one because I didn't know which version to remember—kind, cruel, or nothing at all.


Inside the vent behind the hallway mirror:A spoon. Burnt. Bent. I never understood why she used it, only that afterward, I couldn't sleep. Lucas said, "She needed silence." I think he meant mine.


Each thing I found made the house feel smaller.


When I pulled the last item out—the cloth doll with a sewn-shut mouth—he finally spoke.


I sat on the floor, surrounded by memories that smelled like dust and old bruises.


Chapter 31 - The Things I Buried in the Walls