Where He Stayed 1

Chapter 1 : The Storeroom

After Dad passed away, everything in the house changed.

Not in a big, obvious way — the walls were still the same, the rooms still there — but it felt empty. Quiet. The kind of quiet that made your chest hurt.

We lived on the first floor of a two-story house. Below us was another family, and above, a terrace. At the far corner of that terrace was a storeroom. It had always been there — old, kind of rusty — but none of us really went in.

Only Dad did.

Sometimes, he’d take my brother along too. Just the two of them. Never me, never my mom or my sister. We never asked. It was just something they did.

But after Dad died, the storeroom felt even more… off. My brother was the only one who visited it now. He didn’t talk about it. He just went up there sometimes and came back down like nothing happened.

He also started doing everything — fixing broken things in the house, handling money, telling us what to do. It was like he became a new person overnight. Stronger, but colder.

And none of us went near the storeroom.

Not until much, much later.

Chapter 2: He Took Over

After the funeral, my brother changed.

He started waking up early, making calls, walking around the house with a notebook, checking pipes, switches, bills — things Dad used to do. At first, we were thankful. It felt like someone was holding us together.

But after a few weeks, it felt different. Like we weren’t part of it anymore. He didn’t ask us what we thought, or how we were feeling. He just… did things. And expected us to follow.

He brought his two friends into the house. They weren’t exactly rude, but they weren’t friendly either. They came by often — said they were helping fix up the place. Fix what, though? Everything felt like it was falling apart again, no matter what they did.

Then he got married.

It happened fast. She was from another country. She was polite, sweet, and always smiling, though a bit quiet. I liked her. I think Mom and my sister did too.

For a while, things seemed okay. Lighter. Like maybe the house would feel like home again.

But then, one night — she was just gone.

No note. No call. Nothing.

My brother said she left him.

Just like that.

I didn’t believe it. Neither did Mom. I remember standing in the hall that night, watching him walk in with his friends after looking around the area. His face was calm, too calm.

“She left,” he said.

“Why would she leave like that?” I asked.

“She just did. Let it go.”

That was it.

But I couldn’t let it go.

Something didn’t feel right.

And that’s when we started to get suspicious.

Chapter 3: Missing Pieces

After his wife disappeared, things at home got strange.

My brother didn’t talk much. He stopped smiling. He didn’t let us leave the house often either. Said it wasn’t safe. Said we should stay together as a family. But it didn’t feel like love. It felt like control.

My little sister stopped going to school.

I stopped going to work.

Mom mostly stayed quiet, but I knew she felt it too — something was wrong with him. And it wasn’t just grief. It was something deeper, something darker.

And then came that day.

One evening, Mom and I went up to the terrace. We hadn’t been there in a long time. I don’t even know why we went — maybe just to breathe. But then we saw the storeroom.

That old, rusty door. It had been locked for so long. I thought of Dad. Of how he used to go there with my brother. And how my brother never let anyone else near it after.

We looked at each other, Mom and I. We didn’t say anything. We just opened the door.

Inside, there were stairs going down.

It didn’t make sense — how could something go down from the terrace?

But there it was.

We walked slowly, carefully. The steps creaked under our feet. The air was thick, dusty. It smelled like old paper and metal. At the bottom, there was a room.

Dark. Messy. Books piled up everywhere. Cloth, broken boxes, old bags. Everything looked untouched, but lived in.

And then we saw something strange.

A second door.

Hidden behind some wooden planks. We moved them and opened it — it led to a small room with broken benches, like a classroom. But it was cold. Heavy. Like the air itself didn’t want us there.

On one of the benches, we saw a key.

We didn’t know what it was for.

We picked it up, but we didn’t take it.

Just then, we heard footsteps above us — our brother’s voice, and his friends.

We ran out.

Back to the terrace.

Back to pretending everything was normal.

But from that moment on, we knew:

Something had happened in that room.

Something Dad knew.

And now, something our brother was hiding.

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