The old estate agent's office smelled of forgotten dreams. Sara Whitmore sat across from Mr. Blackwood, her fingers tracing the rim of her coffee cup as he shuffled through documents with practiced indifference.
"The Holloway House," he said without looking up. "Been empty for... oh, fifteen years now. Maybe sixteen." His pen scratched against the paper like fingernails on wood. "Previous owners left… rather suddenly."
Sara's vision blurred momentarily. The office walls expandrd and contracted with each of her heartbeats, was it breathing? The stress of the divorce, she told herself as she fluttered her eyes and regained herself. Nothing more.
"The price seems too good to be true," she whispered.
Blackwood smiled over the papers. "Well, there are always... considerations with older properties. Maintenance. You understand. The heating system is temperamental. The locals have their superstitions." He paused, his eyes meeting hers. "But you strike me as a practical woman."
Practical? Sara wondered. Me?
"I'll take it," she heard herself say, though part of her, a small, dim part screamed in protest.
Three days later, Sara stood before Holloway House as autumn rain drummed against her clear vinyl umbrella. The Victorian manor loomed through the mist. Its Gothic spires pierced the low-hanging clouds. Gargoyles perched on each corner. Their stone eyes weeping with rainwater.
The key turned with ease, as if the house had been expecting her.
Inside, dust motes danced in shafts of gray light filtering through tall, narrow windows. The floorboards groaned under her weight. Each step echoed through the empty rooms. Portraits of stern-faced strangers lined the walls..
their eyes followed her movement with painted disapproval.
Her phone buzzed: a text from her sister Emma. "How's the new place? Sending good vibes!"
Sara stared at the message until the words rearranged themselves. She rubbed her sleep deprived eyes.
"Fine," she typed back. "Perfect, actually."
The lie tasted like copper.
That first night, Sara discovered the house's peculiarities.
The hallways were longer in darkness. Doorways led to rooms that didn't quite match the house's exterior dimensions. The basement stairs descended thirteen steps during the day but fifteen at night. She'd counted multiple times. The numbers never changed.
In the master bedroom, she found a diary tucked beneath the loose floorboard by the window. The leather cover was soft with age. Pages filled with elegant handwriting that shifted and blurred.
"Day 47: The house speaks in whispers between the walls. I find myself responding to conversations I don't remember starting. Margaret says I've been talking in my sleep, but I know better. It's not sleep-talking when you're awake."
"Day 52: Found another room today. This one behind the pantry. Margaret insists it was always there, but I've lived here thirty years. The wallpaper has eyes."
"Day 58: Margaret is gone. Or maybe she was never here. The house has a way of... editing... memories. I should leave. I should have left weeks ago. But where would I go? This is my home now. This will always be my home."
Sara slammed the diary shut. The pages had been blank. She was certain they'd been blank when she first opened it. The words appeared as her eyes scanned the pages.
"I'm imagining things," she whispered to the empty room.
No, something whispered back. You're remembering.
Days blurred together. Sara found herself losing time. She sat down to breakfast only to discover it was already evening. Started conversations with empty rooms and finished them hours later with no memory of the beginning.
She called Emma less frequently. When her sister asked about friends, about her job search, about leaving the house for groceries, Sara's answers came smooth as river stones.
"Everything's wonderful. I'm writing again. The house is inspiring."
She wasn't writing. The laptop sat closed on the kitchen table, gathering dust. Instead, she spent her days wandering the house's ever-changing geography. Every day a new adventure. She discovered new rooms that appeared overnight. A conservatory filled with dead plants that still bore fruit. A library containing books written in languages that hurt her eyes to read. A child's nursery with a rocking horse that moved on its own when she wasn't looking directly at it.
In the mirror at the end of the upstairs hallway, her reflection sometimes arrived a few momemts late.
The voice came gradually. As if someone adjusted a radio's station. At first, just static, a whisper that might have been wind through loose window frames. Then words. Soft and insistent. Spoken in a voice that was almost but not quite her own.
"You don't need to leave," it murmured as she stood at the front door, keys in hand. "Everything you need is here."
The groceries appeared in the pantry without her memory of shopping. Canned goods lined the shelves in perfect rows, their labels facing outward with military precision. The expiration dates were all wrong. Items had expired years ago while others wouldn't expire for decades.
"Time works differently here," a voice explained.
Then her reflection in the bathroom mirror began offering advice.
"Don't call Emma today. She'll only worry."
"The neighbors are gossiping. Better to stay inside."
"That pain in your chest? Just anxiety. Nothing more."
It was so much easier than making decisions herself. This was perfect.
Emma arrived unannounced on a Tuesday.
Sara opened the door to find her sister standing in the rain. Her eyes wide with concern. "You haven't returned my calls in two weeks. I was worried sick."
Had it been two weeks? The calendar on the kitchen wall showed different dates depending on which angle she viewed it from.
"I've been busy," Sara said. "The house keeps me occupied."
Emma pushed past her into the foyer. Her modern coat and practical shoes looked alien against the Victorian décor. "Sara, you look terrible. When's the last time you ate? Really ate?"
Sara tried to remember. The pantry was always full. She couldn't recall the taste of food in... how long? The copper flavor in her mouth had become so constant she'd stopped noticing it.
"I eat," she said. "Three meals a day."
"Don't let her upstairs," her reflection warned. "She won't understand about the rooms."
But Emma was already climbing the staircase. Her footsteps echoed in the tall space. Sara followed. Dread pooled in her stomach like cold water.
"This is... wow," Emma breathed, reaching the landing. "It's beautiful, but... Sara, how many bedrooms are there?"
Sara opened her mouth to answer and realized she didn't know. The number kept changing. Sometimes there were five bedrooms. Sometimes seven. Once she'd counted eleven though that couldn't be right given the house's exterior dimensions.
"Enough," she said.
Emma walked to the window at the end of the hall..the one with the mirror. She stared at her reflection for a long moment, frowning.
"That's odd," she murmured. "For a second, it looked like..."
"Like what?" Sara's reflection asked, although Sara's lips hadn't moved.
Emma spun around, eyes wide. "Did you just…your voice came from behind me, but you're right here."
The air in the hallway grew thick and oppressive. The walls leaned inward. The distance between them and the staircase stretched like taffy. Sara felt the house's attention focus on Emma. It was vast and and displeased.
"She needs to leave,"the voice whispered urgently. "Now."
Emma's visit lasted seventeen minutes and four hours. Simultaneously.
Sara watched her sister flee down the front steps. Her practical shoes slipped on the wet stone. The house had shown Emma things. Glimpses of rooms that shouldn't exist. Corridors that led back to themselves. Shadows that moved independently of their sources.
"She'll be back," the voice said as Sara closed the door. "They always come back, eventually. The concerned ones. They can't help themselves."
Emma didn't come back. Instead, she called the police for a wellness check. Sara watched through the upstairs window as two officers approached the house. Their faces set in professional neutrality that cracked the moment they stepped onto the property.
They knocked. Sara didn't answer.
They tried the door. It was locked, though Sara hadn't remembered locking it.
They peered through windows, their flashlight beams cutting through the rooms like sword strokes. But the rooms they saw weren't the ones Sara lived in. The house showed them what it wanted them to see. Normal spaces. Lived-in and comfortable.
After a few minutes, they left.
"Good," the voice sighed. "Now we can continue."
"Continue what?" Sara asked aloud.
"Becoming."
The house began to digest her slowly. Lovingly. Like honey dissolving in warm tea.
Sara's belongings redistributed themselves throughout the rooms. Her clothes hung in wardrobes she'd never seen before. Her books appeared on shelves in libraries that existed only on Wednesdays. Her photographs lined mantlepieces in parlors that smelled of roses and memories.
She found more diaries. Dozens. Different handwriting in each one. Margaret, who'd bought the house in 1978. Catherine, who'd inherited it from her grandmother.
All of them had started the same way ~ practical people seeking a fresh start. All of them had discovered the house's hungry intelligence. All of them eventually stopped fighting it.
"Where did they go?" Sara asked her reflection one morning.
"Nowhere," her reflection replied. "They're still here. We all are. The house doesn't let go."
Sara could feel them, in the spaces between heartbeats. Whispers in languages she didn't recognize. Footsteps on stairs that led to rooms she'd never entered. Faces in windows that reflected interiors of houses that had stood on this land centuries before.
"Why me?" she asked.
"Because you were already lost," the voice said gently. "The divorce, the isolation, the depression you won't admit to. You were looking for somewhere to disappear. We simply provided the opportunity."
Emma returned on the thirteenth day of the month—though which month, Sarah could no longer say with certainty.
This time she brought reinforcements. Cousin David, an EMT with kind eyes and steady hands & Dr. Martinez, a family friend who specialized in psychiatric emergencies. They stood on the front porch like a concerned tribunal. Their faces grave with purpose.
"Sara," Emma called through the door. "We know you're in there. We're here to help."
Sara watched them from the upstairs window. Her reflection stood beside her like a faithful companion. The house rippled around them. Reality bent like heat waves over summer asphalt.
"Don't let them in,"the voice pleaded. "They'll try to take you away from us. They don't understand what we've built here."
But Sara remembered, fragments of her life, before the house. The taste of her mother's apple pie. The sound of Emma's laugh during their childhood summers. The weight of her ex-husband's hand in hers during their wedding dance, before everything went wrong.
"I should let them help me,"she whispered.
"There's nothing to help," her reflection said sharply. "You're home now. You're safe. You're exactly where you belong."
Down on the porch, David was picking the lock with practiced efficiency. Dr. Martinez spoke into his phone, calling for backup. Emma pressed her face to the window, trying to peer through the gauze curtains.
Sara felt the house's panic. Walls contracted and floors tilted as if the building itself were taking deep, nervous breaths.
”If you let them take you," the voice said, no longer gentle, "you'll never find your way back. And where will you go? Back to your empty apartment? Back to your failed marriage? Back to the loneliness that brought you here in the first place?"
The front door swung open with a sound like breaking bones.
They found her in the conservatory that shouldn't exist. Sitting among the dead plants that still bore impossible fruit. Sara was speaking to someone they couldn't see. Her voice rising and falling in animated conversation with empty air.
"—told you the roses needed more light," she was saying. "But you never listen, do you Margaret? You never—"
She stopped when she saw them.
"Sara?" Emma approached slowly, as if her sister were a wounded animal that might bolt. "Honey, are you okay?"
"Tell them you're fine," the voice whispered urgently. "Tell them to leave."
Sara looked at Emma's face—really looked at it—and saw the love there, the fear, the desperate hope. She remembered being loved like that. She remembered being part of the world beyond these walls.
"I'm..." Sara began, then stopped. The words I'm fine wouldn't come. Instead, truth spilled out like water from a broken dam. "I'm not okay. I haven't been okay for a long time. The house... it talks to me. It shows me things. It's been keeping me here, and I've been letting it because it's easier than facing everything I've lost."
Dr. Martinez stepped forward. His voice professionally & calm. "Sara, I'm Dr. Martinez. Emma called because she's concerned about you. Can you tell me when you last left this house?"
Sara tried to remember. The days blurred together like paint in water. "I don't know. Weeks? Maybe months?"
The conservatory around them flickered. Its walls becoming transparent for a moment. Through the sudden gaps, they could see the house's true structure. A maze of impossible rooms stacked and folded through dimensions that shouldn't exist. The dead plants writhed with unnatural life. Their roots extended through floors and into spaces that existed only in peripheral vision.
Emma gasped. David swore softly. Dr. Martinez blinked rapidly, as if trying to clear his vision.
"Now look what you've done," the voice snarled. "You've let them see. They'll try to destroy us now. They'll try to burn us down."
The house shuddered around them. Floorboards groaned like the hull of a sinking ship. The conservatory's impossible geometry began to collapse. Walls folded inward with the sounds like breaking glass.
"We need to leave," Dr. Martinez said urgently. "Now."
Doors had vanished. The windows showed only brick walls. The house was sealing itself. Protecting its collection of lost souls from the threat of rescue.
"You can't leave us,"* the voice pleaded. "We're all you have left. We're all you've ever had."
Sara looked at Emma. She drove hours to check on her. David, had taken time off work to help a cousin he barely saw. And Dr. Martinez, who was here because he cared about people.
"You're not all I have," Sara said firmly.
The conservatory convulsed. Its impossible plants withered to dust. Through the dissolving walls, Sara could see the other residents of Holloway House. Translucent figures trapped in their final moments of capitulation.
Margaret, standing at a window, watching for a husband who would never return. Thomas, sitting at a desk, writing the same letter over and over. Catherine, rocking an empty cradle in a nursery that existed only in her memories.
They looked at Sara with hollow eyes.
”Don't abandon us," the voice—their collective voice—whispered. "Don't leave us alone."
"I'm not abandoning you," Sara said gently. "I'm setting us all free."
She closed her eyes and remembered. Not the sanitized memories the house had fed her, but the real ones. The messy, painful, beautiful truth of her life. Her marriage hadn't failed because she was broken. It had failed because two people had grown apart. Her divorce was a necessary ending that made new beginnings possible.
"Emma," she said, opening her eyes. "I want to come home."
The house fought them every step of the way.
Hallways stretched into impossible distances. Stairs multiplied underfoot. Doors opened onto blank walls. Rooms filled with swirling darkness.
Sara no longer trusted what she saw. She held tight to Emma's hand and David's steady voice and Dr. Martinez's calm guidance, and she walked toward the exit that had to be there because houses—even haunted ones—had to have doors.
Behind them, the other residents followed. Margaret stepped away from her window. Thomas put down his pen. Catherine left her empty nursery. They had been waiting, Sara realized, for someone to show them the way out.
"You're destroying everything!" the house's voice screamed, no longer seductive but raw with fury and fear. "Without us, you're nothing! Without us, you'll be alone again!"
The front door appeared ahead of them. Solid wood with brass hinges and the promise of fresh air beyond. David reached it first. He pulled on the handle with both hands. It opened onto a world that looked almost impossibly bright after the house's perpetual twilight.
Emma went through first. Then Dr. Martinez. David waited, holding the door open. His face set with determination.
Sara paused on the threshold, looking back at the house that had been her prison and her sanctuary. The other residents stood in the hallway behind her. Margaret, Thomas, Catherine, and dozens of others she'd never met but somehow knew. They were fading already. The house's hold on them dissolved like morning mist.
”Thank you," Margaret whispered, her voice carrying the weight of decades.
"Thank you," Thomas echoed.
"Thank you," Catherine breathed.
One by one, they stepped into light that didn't come from windows or lamps. Bright & peaceful.
Sara stepped into the world.
Written for
& her horror prompts.
This has just the right amount of creepiness and melancholy, shot through with a cosiness that Tamsin can relate to.
Great job!
It felt comfortable and safe to sit in that house and I could 100% understand why she didn’t want to leave, even though it was killing her. The writing did a great job of conveying that. Haunting.