The house remembered before I did.
Before I learned how to read.
Before I learned how to lie.
Before I learned that fear could be fed.
Ravenhill House stood at the end of the street like an old thought no one wanted to finish. Its paint had peeled into the shape of veins, long and thin, crawling down the walls. The windows were uneven some slightly open, some forever shut as if the house blinked when it felt watched. People said the air around it was colder, but that wasn't true.
It wasn't cold.
It was holding its breath.
I grew up inside those walls. I learned the sound of each floorboard, each groan of the ceiling at night. I knew which door screamed when opened too fast and which hallway swallowed sound completely. The house taught me these things patiently, lovingly like a parent.
Like a replacement.
My mother used to say the house was sick.
"Buildings remember things," she told me once while scrubbing the kitchen sink, her hands red and shaking. "And this one remembers pain."
I laughed then.
I stopped laughing the night she died.
I was fourteen years old, small enough to hide, old enough to understand terror. The power went out at exactly 2:17 a.m. I remember the time because the digital clock froze, the red numbers burned into the dark like an open wound.
2:17.
My mother was in the living room, praying.
She had started praying a lot near the end whispering words that cracked in her mouth, lighting candles even when it wasn't religious days. She said the house was getting louder. That it followed her into her dreams. That something kept calling her name in a voice that sounded almost human.
That night, I heard it too.
Not a scream.
A summoning.
The walls began to breathe. Not metaphorically. They expanded and contracted, slow and wet, like lungs struggling to stay alive. The shadows bent the wrong way, crawling toward the ceiling instead of the floor. The smell came next old iron, dust, something rotten and sweet.
I hid under the staircase, knees to my chest, fingernails digging into my skin so hard I bled.
My mother screamed my name.
Only once.
Then the house answered.
The lights burst one by one, popping like bones snapping. Something dragged her across the floor slowly, deliberately while she clawed at the wood, leaving deep marks that stayed long after she was gone. I remember the sound of her nails breaking. I remember begging silently, promising anything, everything.
The house didn't listen.
It never does.
When it was over, there was no body.
Just silence.
And the feeling of being watched.
The police came the next morning. They walked through the house with tight smiles and professional disbelief. They blamed faulty wiring. Structural collapse. Stress-induced hallucinations.
One of them patted my shoulder and said, "Your mom must've run away."
I stared at him.
The house laughed.
No one noticed.
They boarded up the house for months, but it didn't sleep. I could feel it even when I stayed with relatives pulling at me, calling me back, reminding me that it had taken something precious and would never give it back.
When I returned years later, as its legal owner, the house welcomed me home.
The walls whispered my name in relief.
The floors softened under my feet.
The mirrors showed me smiling when I wasn't.
That was when I understood.
The house didn't kill my mother because it was evil.
It killed her because it was hungry.
And hunger can be trained.
I learned how to listen. How to encourage the whispers. How to let the shadows stretch longer. I left doors open, mirrors uncovered, corners dark. I invited strangers inside like offerings wrapped in lies.
Each scream healed something inside me.
Each death felt like justice.
The house and I we understood each other.
Or at least, that's what I believed.
Until the day a girl walked through the front door and smiled at the walls like they were old friends.
And the house fell silent.
Strangely silent 😶