The air inside the house was thick — old dust and the faint, sickly smell of something once alive.Amina's flashlight trembled in her hand, the beam slicing through floating motes that drifted like ash.
The walls were lined with portraits, dozens of them. Faces of strangers — men, women, children — all painted in the same pale style, their eyes dark pools that seemed to follow her every step.
When she brushed one frame, a whisper scraped behind her ear.
"Don't touch that."
She spun around — no one there. Only the echo of her own breath, ragged and too loud.
The floorboards moaned as she stepped forward, each creak a protest. The deeper she went, the colder it grew. In the living room, a fireplace yawned wide and empty, yet faint heat pulsed from it, as if someone had just left.
She found a journal on the mantle — its pages swollen with damp. The handwriting was careful but erratic, lines crossing each other, dates repeating.
October 9th — The house spoke again. It knows my name now.October 10th — I saw myself in the hallway mirror. But I was smiling. I wasn't.October 10th — It's whispering "Stay." Over and over. It sounds like me.
Amina's flashlight flickered.From the corner of the room, one of the portraits — a woman in a lace dress — began to hum. Softly at first. Then louder. The melody was broken, wrong, a lullaby missing notes that didn't exist anymore.
Amina stumbled back. The hum stopped.The woman's painted head had turned. Just slightly.
Somewhere upstairs, a door slammed.Then another.Then a third.
And then, as if the whole house exhaled, the whisper came again — this time from the walls themselves.
"Welcome back, Amina."
Would you like me to continue with Chapter 3: The Room That Shouldn't Exist, where she goes upstairs to find out who — or what — the house thinks she is?
You said:yesChatGPT said:
Hehehe… I knew you'd say that, Shaheer 😈Let's open the next door together.
🕯 "The House That Remembers"Chapter 3 — The Room That Shouldn't Exist
The staircase groaned like an animal waking from a long, hateful sleep.Each step Amina took echoed through the house — not above her, but beneath, as if the sound sank downward instead of rising.
Halfway up, she saw her reflection again — in a mirror nailed crookedly to the wall.But this time, her reflection didn't move with her. It stayed, staring, lips trembling as if trying to speak.Amina lifted her hand. The reflection didn't.She whispered, "What do you want?"And from the mirror came her own voice — but older, hoarse, and full of grief:
"You left me here."
The mirror cracked down the middle.
At the top of the stairs, the hallway was longer than it should have been. Five doors on each side — too many for a house this size. The wallpaper pulsed, faintly, like it was breathing.
She opened the first door — an empty nursery. A crib stood in the center, but there were no footprints in the dust. Just the sound of slow breathing, coming from nowhere.
The second door — a bedroom. On the dresser: another journal, but this one had her name scrawled on the cover.
AMINA REEVE — PROPERTY OF THE HOUSE.
Her hands shook as she opened it.The pages were blank — except for the last.
You shouldn't have come back.
Then she saw it — at the very end of the hall.A door that hadn't been there before. Black wood, no handle, no hinges. The wallpaper around it blistered, as if burned.
Something inside that door knocked — once.Then again.Then a third time, perfectly matching her heartbeat.
Amina whispered, "Who's there?"
A child's voice answered from the other side.
"Me."Pause."And you."
The house went silent. Every portrait downstairs stopped humming. Even the wind outside seemed to hold its breath.
Amina stepped back — but the floor shifted under her feet.The door opened inward, without a sound.
Inside, she saw her own childhood bedroom — down to the last detail.The same broken doll. The same blue curtains.But on the bed sat a little girl, her face half in shadow.
She looked up and smiled.It was Amina — at eight years old.