The house had always whispered. At first, David thought it was just the creaking of old wood, the subtle sighs of a century-old structure adjusting to modern life. But after Alice died, the whispers grew louder—closer. He began to notice patterns in the darkness, faces behind frosted glass, shadows pacing in mirrors. The canal behind the house, once picturesque and still, now churned in his dreams like a grave trying to forget. No one else heard it, of course. No one else saw the film reels he found hidden in the archives—reels that showed the house swallowing lives long before his.
He stopped trusting the lights. They flickered like eyelids, and when they returned, things had moved. The wallpaper peeled in shapes he could almost read. His son’s drawings began to reflect things he hadn’t told anyone—dark figures with hollow eyes, the red smudge where Alice used to smile. He tried to keep himself grounded, clinging to the scent of her perfume still lingering on the bedsheets, to the sound of his son’s footsteps down the hall. But grief is a ghost with a thousand voices. It knows the shape of your thoughts. And it always knows where you sleep.
The more David investigated, the more the past bled through the walls. Murders. Betrayals. Families destroyed under the same roof, as if the house itself demanded tragedy like a ritual. But when he tried to speak of it—of the history, the film, the presence rising from the canal—he was met with concern, then suspicion. They said it was stress. Trauma. A man coming undone. But David knew what he saw. He felt it. Every time he stood near the water’s edge, he felt it pulling—not just his body, but his memories, his guilt, as if the canal were feeding on everything he refused to accept.
In the end, the house didn’t take him. He gave himself to it, piece by piece, chasing the truth until it became a lie too deep to climb out of. When they found his body by the water, the look on his face wasn’t fear—it was understanding. The canal does not forget. It reflects. It remembers. And long after David was gone, the house remained—quiet, watchful, ready. Another family would move in. Another man would hear the whispers. Another story would sink beneath the surface, unseen, unspoken—waiting to rise again in the dead of night.
