I didn't sleep the night I read the letter.
I lay in bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, while the wind scraped against the apartment windows like fingernails. The letter sat on my nightstand, folded neatly back into its brittle envelope, but its weight felt impossible to ignore. It might as well have been burning a hole through the night, pulsing in the darkness like a heartbeat.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the house again.
Not just how it looked from the outside—the sagging roof, the blackened windows—but how it felt. The heaviness of it, the way the air turned thick inside its walls. The strange hush that clung to the hallways like cobwebs. The sense that something unseen was always just a breath away, just behind you.
I'd spent years trying to convince myself it had all been in my head. That I'd imagined the creaking footsteps on the second floor. That the whispers I heard at night were just the wind, or the old plumbing. That the shadows didn't really shift when I wasn't looking.
But the letter was real.
And somehow, that made everything else real again, too.
By morning, I had made a decision: I would not go back.
It was irrational. Unsafe. I had a life here. Responsibilities. I wasn't the same terrified girl who had run from that house in the middle of the night.
But when I stood in the shower, steam curling around me, I caught my own reflection in the foggy mirror—and I didn't recognise myself. My eyes looked haunted. My mouth set too tightly. The decision felt like a lie.
I didn't leave the apartment that day. I called in sick to work, citing a stomach bug, though I knew my voice sounded thin. I sat on the couch with a mug of tea I didn't drink, the letter balanced on my knee like a dare. I told myself I would throw it away. That I'd tear it into pieces, burn it if I had to.
But I didn't.
Instead, I found myself opening my laptop. Typing in the name: Whispering Hill Road.
Nothing.
The house wasn't listed. No Google Street View. No recent satellite images. It was like it had been erased. Or maybe it had never really existed to begin with.
That idea chilled me.
I tried searching my mother's name—Caroline Holloway—but again, very little came up. A few old property records, nothing recent. It was as if she had vanished long before her death. I knew she hadn't been buried. There had never been a funeral. I had no grave to visit.
Just memories. Just the house.
At some point, without consciously deciding to, I pulled out the old box I kept in the hall closet. It was small, worn, and filled with things I had long stopped looking at—photos, scraps of writing, a few keepsakes that I hadn't been able to throw away, no matter how much I wanted to.
At the very bottom was a photograph of her. My mother. She was standing on the front porch of the house, wearing a long coat, arms folded tight across her chest. Her expression was unreadable—neither smiling nor frowning. Just…watching. The picture had been taken from a distance, and I couldn't remember who had taken it, or when. But something about it unnerved me.
In the background, just beyond the porch railing, was the tree line. Dense and dark. And between the trees, almost too faint to see, was a shape.
I blinked. Leaned in closer. No matter how hard I squinted, I couldn't tell if it was a shadow or something else.
I slid the photo back into the box and closed the lid.
I needed answers. Closure. I told myself that was all this was.
Not fear. Not obsession.
Just unfinished business.
The next day, I called Sarah.
She was the closest thing I had to a best friend. We'd met in college, survived a string of terrible jobs together, and now lived three blocks apart. She answered on the second ring, her voice groggy from sleep.
"Lena? You okay?"
"I'm fine," I said automatically. Then, after a pause: "Can we talk?"
We met at a cafe near my apartment. I got there early, hoping the busy clatter of strangers might distract me, might convince me that everything was still normal.
It didn't work.
Sarah arrived ten minutes later, her hair in a messy bun, sunglasses perched atop her head. She took one look at me and frowned.
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
I laughed. It didn't sound right. "Something like that."
We ordered coffee. Sat in a corner booth. And then I told her—most of it. Not about the whispers, or the shadows, or the way the house seemed to breathe when no one was looking. Just the letter. My mother. The fact that I might have to go back.
She was quiet for a long time.
"You don't have to do this," she said finally. "You could just ignore it."
"I know. But I can't."
"Why now?"
"I don't know," I said. "It's like… it waited. All these years, and now it's calling."
Sarah gave me a look I couldn't read.
"Do you think someone's trying to mess with you?"
"I thought that. But it doesn't feel like a prank."
"Lena." She leaned forward. "What are you hoping to find there?"
I stared down into my cup.
"I'm not sure. But I'll never stop thinking about it if I don't go."
That was the truth, more than anything else. The letter had opened a door in my mind that I couldn't close again.
I had to see it. Even if it broke me.
That night, I pulled out my suitcase.
It felt like a betrayal. Like I was giving in to something I should resist. But my hands moved with a kind of inevitability. Underwear, socks, sweaters, flashlight, first-aid kit. I packed like I was preparing for something dangerous. Because I was.
I booked a rental car. Set the GPS to the nearest town I remembered. I would drive from there. The last stretch of road wasn't on any map.
Before I went to bed, I opened the letter one more time. Held it up to the light. Turned it over, searching for something I'd missed.
Nothing.
But the words still echoed.
You must come back.
I dreamed of the house.
This time, I was standing at the front gate. The sky above it was a deep, impossible red, and the trees rustled with whispers I couldn't understand. The house loomed in front of me—taller than I remembered, its windows yawning open like mouths.
And someone was watching me from the upstairs window.
Not my mother.
Someone else.
I woke before dawn.
The suitcase was by the door. The rental car was waiting. I stared at my apartment—my quiet, normal, safe life—and I felt a strange sense of mourning.
Something was ending.
I just didn't know what.