The house was colder than she remembered.
Not the kind of cold that bit through skin, but the kind that lived inside walls — that seeped through wood and stone and memory.
May stood in the doorway, her mother’s keys still in her hand, dust motes drifting like ghosts in the thin slice of light. Every board creaked in recognition. Every shadow seemed to shift, as if the house had been holding its breath for her return.
She told herself it was just a place. Just timber and plaster. Just a house.
But the air disagreed. It moved differently here — slower, heavier — as though it had a pulse of its own.
Outside, the stream whispered through the trees, low and rhythmic. It sounded almost like her name.
She closed the door, and the sound vanished.
But something else moved behind it — a soft drag across the floorboards upstairs, deliberate and patient.
She wasn’t alone.
And the house knew it.

Read it now! Shadows By The Stream