The House That Remembers

The footsteps were wrong.

Too slow. Too steady. Measured like ritual. Not a person walking through a ruined print house—they moved like they belonged here.

I stepped back from the mirror, heart pounding, hand reaching instinctively for the grip of the knife I kept hidden in my boot.

The floor creaked near the stairwell.

Another step.

I pressed myself against the cracked wall beside the door, breath held, spine tensed.

Then—silence.

Long and heavy.

Until the mirror whispered.

Not in words. In sound. A thin scraping, like quill to paper. Like something was writing me into a story I hadn’t agreed to live.

I spun and slashed the tarp back over the glass, just as something dark moved in the reflection. Not a full form—just shoulders. Just breath.

But when I turned to face it?

Nothing.

Only dust.

And a feather on the floor.

Black as pitch. Smooth. Fresh.

I didn’t wait to ask the dark for answers.

I ran.

---

The sky outside had turned a jaundiced grey, clouds thick with something worse than rain. It smelled like rust and static. A storm coming, but not the kind Crescent City knew.

Back at my car, I locked the doors before I even started the engine. I didn’t feel safe—not even surrounded by metal and gasoline. The city had changed its face again. Every shadow looked like it might stand up.

I drove straight to Silas Verge’s apartment.

Pounded on the door.

No answer.

I tried again.

Still nothing.

I was about to give up when I saw it—tucked under the door like a dying thing: a note, folded and streaked with ink.

I pulled it free.

The handwriting was sharp. Surgical. But the message bled chaos.

“They remember you now. Find the house. 421 Halberd Street. Before midnight. Or she disappears again.”

No signature.

I read it three times before sliding it into my coat pocket.

Then I looked up—and realized the hallway was different.

The carpet had shifted colors. The light at the end of the corridor flickered with a greenish hue. The numbers on the doors weren’t in sequence anymore.

204. 206. 208. 206 again. 205.

A loop.

A glitch.

Or worse—a trap.

I turned on my heel and bolted for the stairs.

The building groaned behind me, like it didn’t want to let go.

---

421 Halberd Street was on the edge of the city’s dead zone. A neighborhood the maps pretended didn’t exist anymore. Buildings that never got condemned, just forgotten. Houses with broken faces and boarded-up windows like stitched eyelids.

But this house—this one watched me.

Three stories. Victorian bones. Paint peeled in long gray strips like scabbed flesh. The gate hung open without a sound. The number stenciled in rusted brass. A crow perched on the dead mailbox and didn’t move as I passed.

I reached the porch and paused.

The front door was ajar.

Of course it was.

Because I was expected.

I drew my knife again, slow and careful, then pushed the door inward.

It didn’t creak.

It sighed.

---

Inside, the house was untouched by time.

No dust. No rot. The walls were papered in gold-and-black fleur-de-lis, the kind you’d find in hotels that forget their guests. The chandelier above was lit, but the bulbs flickered too slowly—like the light was dragging itself through molasses.

And in the hallway, pictures.

Frames of women.

Not portraits. Not paintings. Photos.

Dozens of them.

Some recent. Some old. All of them staring ahead, eyes open, mouths closed.

I walked past a dozen before I saw her.

Ava.

Middle frame. Clean glass. The only photo with her smiling.

But her smile was wrong. Crooked. Stiff.

Like it had been painted on after.

I reached to touch the glass.

And felt warmth.

The frame was warm to the touch.

Alive.

I turned my back to it and continued down the hall, boots silent on the blackwood floor.

Each step felt like it took me deeper into somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. Like I’d stepped off the street and into a different layer of reality—and the house was watching me adjust.

I reached the parlor.

It was empty.

Except for the girl.

Seated in the middle of the room.

Motionless.

Elaine Wren.

Eyes open.

Tattoo glowing.

Pulsing.

I didn’t call her name.

I didn’t move.

Because something behind her did.

A figure in the corner, too tall for the ceiling. Head brushing the plaster. Shadow stretched longer than its limbs.

No eyes.

No face.

But it looked straight at me.

Then it took a step forward.

---

I ran.

Through the hallway, past the photos, through the kitchen where flies circled glass jars filled with ink and teeth. I didn’t stop to process. Just kept going until I reached the back door and threw myself out into the yard.

The wind howled.

Only it wasn’t wind.

It was laughter.

Not human.

Not entirely.

I kept running.

Through the alley.

Into the next block.

Didn’t stop until the streetlights came back on and the air stopped tasting like grave dirt.

Only then did I look at my arm.

The glyph under my skin was glowing.

Pulsing like a second heartbeat.

I knew what that meant now.

The house had marked me again.

---

I went straight to Mara Lin.

It was late, but she let me into the city morgue without question. She could see it in my eyes — the madness, the urgency.

I threw down the note. Showed her the glowing mark. Told her about the photos, the figure, the impossible corridor in Silas’s building.

She listened. No interruptions.

Then finally said, “I believe you.”

Simple as that.

God, I nearly cried.

“I need your help,” I said. “You’ve worked cold cases. Weird ones. Rituals. Sigils. Find something on this mark. The glyph. And on the house. There’s history buried in that place.”

Mara nodded. “I’ll start now.”

Then she added: “But you need to sleep, Reese. If you keep chasing this without rest, it’s going to use that against you.”

“I don’t sleep anymore,” I muttered. “Not really.”

She handed me something.

A burner phone.

“There’s a number on it. Man named Caulder Locke. He’s not a cop. Not a shrink. Not anything clean. But if the glyph is active, he’s the only one who can explain what it wants.”

---

I called the number an hour later from my car.

The voice that answered was smoke and gravel.

“You’re the one with the ink, aren’t you?”

“Who told you that?”

“You did. Just now.”

I swallowed.

“I need answers.”

“You’ll get one,” he said. “Meet me at the old conservatory. Bring nothing. Leave your badge. Come alone. And hurry.”

“Why?”

“Because someone else is looking for you.”

---

I arrived at the Crescent Conservatory at 1:12 a.m.

It was abandoned now. Long since overtaken by vines and silence. They said it once housed poisonous plants in the basement level. I wondered if any of them had survived.

I stepped inside.

Caulder Locke was waiting.

Trench coat. Long, silver-blond hair tied back. Eyes like rusted mirrors. He didn’t move when I approached.

“Show me the mark,” he said.

I did.

He leaned close. Studied it. Didn’t touch.

Then looked up at me.

“You’re not just marked,” he said. “You’re a vault.”

“A what?”

“These glyphs, they don’t just anchor memory. They store it. Protect it. Or bury it. Depends on the ritual.”

“What’s in me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you remove it?”

He shook his head.

“But I can help you unlock it.”

“And what happens if we do?”

He smi

led, slow and sharp.

“Then we see what your sister tried to forget.”

I felt my knees weaken.

He stepped back, opened a leather case, and removed a long, curved needle coated in ink so black it shimmered violet under the moonlight.

“This is called the Echo Key.”

He pointed at my arm.

“We open the gate.”