The letter arrived on a Tuesday, but I didn't open it until Thursday.
At first, I thought it was a mistake. An advertisement. Maybe some sort of junk mail. I had been living in this apartment for three years now—just long enough for the occasional random letter to find its way to my mailbox. But when I saw the wax seal, deep crimson and embossed with an intricate insignia, a strange jolt of recognition ran through me.
The seal. I could never forget it. It had been on the last letter I ever received from my mother.
I almost threw it away. A part of me—one that had been buried under years of forced detachment—wanted to. But something about it felt like a whisper, too faint to ignore but too strong to dismiss.
I ran my thumb over the wax, feeling the smooth curves and ridges. No return address. No stamp. Just my name, Lena Holloway, in loopy script that looked almost too neat, too deliberate. The handwriting didn't belong to anyone I knew anymore, but it stirred something inside me, an old instinct. A fear I hadn't felt in years.
The house.
I hadn't thought about it in so long. The memory of it was fading, like an old photograph left out in the sun, curling at the edges, colours draining away. The house on Whispering Hill—so far from town, so far from anything familiar. A place I promised myself I'd never return to.
I took a breath and opened the envelope. The paper inside was brittle, like it had been sitting undisturbed for years. As if it had waited for me to come back. Inside was a single sentence, written in the same trembling, elegant hand:
You must come back.
No explanation. No signature. Just the words that felt like an order, a command, pulling me toward the one place I swore I'd never go again.
I stared at the sentence, my hands trembling slightly as I held the paper. The chill that had started in my chest spread to my fingertips, and I could feel my pulse quicken. I wanted to throw the letter into the fire, to watch the edges curl up in smoke and forget it ever existed. But even as I thought that, a more insistent part of me—the part I couldn't ignore, no matter how hard I tried—was already pulling me toward the idea of going back.
I had stopped dreaming about the house years ago. At least, that's what I'd told myself. But every so often, late at night, I'd hear a faint whisper on the wind—too faint to catch, but undeniable, like the echo of a voice from somewhere far away. And sometimes, when I passed old buildings, or abandoned places, I'd feel a sudden cold, a flicker of something I couldn't explain. A shadow at the edge of my vision that would vanish when I blinked.
I hadn't told anyone about those things. Not my therapist. Not my friends. Not even my mother, who had passed away long before I left the house for good. They would've called it paranoia. They would've laughed it off, chalked it up to stress.
But deep down, I knew. The house was still there. It was still waiting for me.
I closed my eyes, but the image of it came to me unbidden—sharp, vivid. The house, hunched and decaying, sitting at the edge of the woods. The sagging porch. The warped windows that never seemed to reflect light, no matter how bright the day. I could still hear the creak of the front door opening, slowly, like it had all those years ago.
You must come back.
The words echoed in my mind, a strange resonance that I couldn't shake off. I had ignored the warning signs before, when I was younger. The voices. The shadows in the corners of my room. The nights where the walls felt too close, as if the house itself were watching me, waiting for me to make a mistake.
And then, there was the night I left.
I hadn't even said goodbye to my mother. Not properly. She had known something was wrong, I think. She'd tried to warn me, but I couldn't hear it through the fear that wrapped around me like a noose. I'd packed a bag in the middle of the night, leaving behind the house, the memories, and everything I thought I understood. I left, without looking back.
Until now.
I couldn't explain it. It didn't make sense. I had built a life here in the city. I had friends. A job. I had moved on. I wasn't a little girl anymore, running from shadows that I didn't understand. But the pull was undeniable.
My fingers brushed against the letter again, the paper now feeling cold against my skin. I sat still for a long time, feeling the weight of it press into my chest.
The house was calling me.
And there was only one way to stop it.