Page 83 of Jayson
It used to feel familiar. Safe, even. The paint chipped at the corners, the shutters always slightly crooked—details I once found charming in a way only nostalgia can excuse. But now… everything is tinted with unease. My brain’s gone and rewired itself, stitched horror into the wallpaper, nailed dread into the doorframe.
This house isn’t mine anymore. Not since a body bled out in its shadow. Not since someone vanished into its silence and never came back.
It stands there now like a stranger wearing my childhood like a mask—close enough to touch, but wrong in all the ways that matter. A wolf dressed in the bones of better days.
I used to call it home.
Now it just feels like it houses ghosts.
The taxi pulls to a stop out front, and I stare at it—stone gray, tall, silent. The windows are dark and cold, lifeless eyes watching me from behind sheer curtains. Ivy coils up the porch columns like veins, choking the house inch by inch. It’s always been beautiful in the way old things are beautiful—stately, intimidating. But now it just looks like a tribute to a bygone era. A makeshift graveyard.
Riley disappeared here. My father died here. And somehow, I was shaped in the space between those two ghosts.
My gaze drifts to the porch swing—still creaking faintly in the wind, like muscle memory. I used to sneak Riley popsicles during the summer, and she’d sit there barefoot, mouth stained cherry red, laughing like the world was hers and she couldn’t imagine a reason to be afraid.
She was fearless. Until one day she was gone. Just… gone. And now, I’m back. And I won’t leave until I tear every rotten secret from the bones of this house.
I open the door and step out of the cab.
The street behind me falls away like a sound cut mid-note. The silence here is thicker. More personal. As if the neighborhood itself knows I don’t belong anymore.
I walk up the path slowly, every step heavier than the last.
The house, despite its age, has been kept in perfect order. The lawn is neatly trimmed, hedges squared off, flower beds still lined with mulch. And now it all just… waits.
I veer left toward the side gate. It still sticks like it used to, not from rust, just a bad hinge. I lift and shove, just like always, and it pops open with a soft groan. My boots land quietly on the flagstone path, and I slip around the back where the service door is tucked beneath the overhang.
I take out the brass key from my pocket and put it in the lock. It slides in smooth. The lock turns. The door opens.
And in that instant, I’m thirteen again—smaller, quieter, trying to breathe around the tension that used to live in these walls.
Even though I was here just a week ago—the day I skipped uni and Jayson tracked me down—it feels like years have passed. Like I’m stepping into a memory instead of a house.
The scent hits me first. Still the same. Clean. Too clean. Lemon polish and lavender oil—something Nina would nod at with approval. But beneath it lingers something harder to name.
An echo. A weight. Like the house remembers everything I’ve tried to forget.
I flick on the hallway light. The power’s still on. But it doesn’t feel warm, or safe. It feels clinical. Yet it still feels like I’m walking into a crime scene scrubbed too clean.
I shut the door behind me. Click.
The living room is untouched. The furniture is exactly as I remember it. No dusty sheets, no cobwebs. Cushions plumped. A book left face-down on the armrest like someone meant to return. The fireplace has been cleaned recently. The air feels too still, like the last breath was held and never released.
The dining room is polished mahogany. That table. Long. Formal. Terrifying.
My eyes drift to the right-hand corner—just past the head of the table. A shallow scar still mars the wood where I once dug my nails in, refusing to cry. I trace it without meaning to.
You cry, I add a minute,Father had said, voice smooth, even.
He always delivered cruelty with perfect posture.
I back away, hand falling to my side.
The kitchen comes next. Sleek countertops. Not a dish out of place. The fridge hums. Everything is exactly how it should be. But it feels hollow. Like whoever lived here was playing house inside a coffin.
And I know why I’m here.
My body moves before my mind catches up—toward the back staircase, toward the small door tucked beneath it.
