The first time I dreamed of him, I woke up knowing his voice.
Not the sound of it—
the weight.
It settled behind my ribs like a second heartbeat, slow and patient, as if it had always been there and I’d simply learned to notice it.
I didn’t see his face in that dream. Only his hands—long fingers, pale, familiar—closing around my wrist as he whispered my name.
I didn’t remember telling it to him.
When I woke, my wrist ached.
---
The house came with rules I didn’t remember agreeing to.
Do not sleep with the bedroom door open.
Do not cover the mirrors at night.
Do not answer if you hear your name spoken in your own voice.
The realtor didn’t mention them. The lease didn’t either. But the house enforced them all the same.
I moved in because I needed somewhere that didn’t know me. Somewhere blank. Somewhere I could disappear for a while.
The house disagreed.
It knew my footsteps by the second day. The rhythm of my breathing by the third. By the end of the week, it was adjusting itself around me—doors opening slightly wider, lights flickering when I lingered too long in one place, walls settling like they were making room.
And then, one night, he spoke.
“You’re early.”
I dropped the mug. It shattered, scattering white porcelain across the floor like bone.
He stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall, half-shadowed, as if the house hadn’t decided how much of him it was allowed to show me yet.
“I was wondering when you’d notice,” he said.
My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
“Who are you?”
He tilted his head. A gesture too intimate for a stranger.
“You don’t remember,” he murmured. “That’s alright. You never do at first.”
Fear came later. First came recognition.
His name arrived fully formed in my mind—Silas—and with it, a surge of emotion so sharp it stole my breath.
“I don’t know you,” I said.
He smiled then.
“That’s what you said last time.”
---
Silas never knocked. He didn’t need to. The house parted for him, walls softening, shadows stretching like eager fingers. He appeared at night, always after midnight, when the air felt thick enough to bruise.
He watched me constantly.
Not in the way men do when they want something from you—but like someone terrified of losing something they already own.
“You shouldn’t lock the door,” he said once, as I slid the bolt shut.
“It makes the house nervous.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will.”
He reached out, stopped inches from my cheek.
“Tell me,” he whispered, “do you still dream of the fire?”
I slapped him.
My hand went through his face.
We stared at each other.
“I forgot,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”
That night, I dreamed of burning.
---
The dreams grew worse as my feelings grew stronger.
I dreamed of loving him—desperately, violently—of begging him not to leave me alone with the house. I dreamed of my name carved into wooden floors, written again and again until the boards split under the weight of it.
I woke with scratches on my thighs, fingerprints on my waist.
Not his.
The house wanted what he had.
“You shouldn’t touch me,” I told him one night, shaking. “Every time you do, it hurts.”
Silas’s expression darkened.
“It’s learning you,” he said. “That’s my fault.”
“You sound jealous.”
“I am.”
He cupped my face, this time solid, cold, real.
“I waited decades for you,” he whispered. “Do you think I’ll share?”
That should have been the moment I ran.
Instead, I kissed him.
He tasted like smoke and old promises. The house shuddered around us, lights flaring, walls groaning as if in pain—or pleasure.
Silas pulled away, breath uneven.
“You can’t love me,” he said hoarsely. “Not like this.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you choose me,” he said, “it will choose you too.”
---
I found the journals in the crawlspace beneath the stairs.
Three of them.
Same handwriting.
Different dates.
Different names.
All of them mine.
Each journal ended the same way:
He told me he loved me.
I believed him.
The house remembered me.
The oldest journal ended abruptly, pages scorched, the last sentence unfinished:
If you’re reading this, it means he came back.
It means I didn’t survive him.
Please—don’t let him—
The page was torn.
I confronted Silas with shaking hands, the journals spread across the floor like evidence of a crime that never stopped happening.
“How many times?” I demanded. “How many lives have you taken from me?”
His face crumpled.
“I never meant to,” he said. “You come to me. Every time. Different name, same soul. I try to let you go.”
“You don’t try hard enough.”
“I always fail,” he agreed.
The house pulsed.
“I died here,” he said. “I loved you here. I burned waiting for you to come back. And when you do… the house remembers what it lost.”
“What about me?” I whispered. “Do I ever get to remember?”
Silas knelt in front of me.
“You do,” he said. “At the end.”
---
The final night arrived without warning.
The mirrors stopped reflecting the room. They reflected us—tangled, desperate, inseparable. The walls whispered my name in a hundred voices, all of them mine.
Silas held me tightly.
“If you stay,” he said, “you’ll become part of it. Not alive. Not dead. Just… remembered.”
“And if I leave?”
He closed his eyes.
“You’ll forget me. Again.”
I kissed him one last time.
The house screamed.
I ran.
---
I wake up in a hospital, lungs aching, wrists bandaged.
They tell me there was a fire. That I was found unconscious in the ruins of an old house scheduled for demolition.
They ask if I remember anyone else.
I say no.
They believe me.
But sometimes, late at night, when the ward is quiet, I hear breathing that isn’t mine. I feel fingers curl possessively around my wrist.
And when I look at the mirror—
Just before sleep takes me—
Someone mouths my name
like he’s been waiting
for me to remember.
The end !
