I didn't go back to Isla's room, not the next night, not the one after that.
Something about those drawings—it wasn't the likeness.
It was the way I was always alone in them.
Like whoever was sketching me knew I was already leaving people behind.
Or being left.
The Marrows didn't change; Regina still poured tea like it was a ceremony.
Dorian still read the newspaper like it contained war strategies.
And Grant... Grant just watched me.
I caught him one afternoon standing at the base of the stairs, head tilted, like he was trying to figure out what kind of animal I was.
"Do you remember your first day here?" he asked, smiling.
I said yes, he nodded.
"No one else ever gets past the gate."
Then walked away, the attic began to breathe.
I don't mean creak or groan.
I mean I could hear it—at night, when everything else had gone still.
Inhale. Exhale.
Walls tightening, floorboards loosening, like the house was expanding to make room for something else.
For me.
Or for what I was becoming.
The locked nursery door, the one with "Lydia" stitched on the crib, remained shut.
But now I saw shadows under it, slender feet pacing.
Tiny, flickering hands pressed to the gap, i told myself it was memory.
That trauma leaks like gas—colorless, odorless, and always ready to spark.
But I knew better.
I started forgetting things, small things, at first.
My birthday, the sound of my real father's voice.
The taste of Reen Green's blood in the air.
Then bigger.
Like how I got the scar on my knee.
Or whether Mom had ever really hugged me.
I wrote what I could in a notebook.
Names, dates, and facts I wasn't willing to lose.
The next morning, the pages were blank.
I confronted Isla.
"What is this place?"
She didn't blink.
Didn't look surprised.
Instead, she asked:
"Do you remember the day you killed her?"
My stomach tightened.
"I stabbed her." She stepped closer.
"But did she die, Mclainvic? Or did she give you something?"
I didn't answer.
Because I didn't know, that night, I dreamed of a garden that stretched forever.
Every flower was a face, every root a throat.
And they all whispered the same word over and over.
"Remember."
Then the house started rearranging itself.
Doors that led to bathrooms now opened into stairwells.
Hallways extended too long.
The mirror in the second-floor bathroom began to reflect last week's version of me.
Once, I turned a corner and came face-to-face with myself.
Not in glass, not in a dream.
Standing.
Breathing.
Eyes wide.
Then gone.
Dorian caught me trembling outside the study.
He handed me a glass of something warm, dark.
"You're adjusting. That's good."
"She'll be proud of you."
He didn't say who, he didn't have to.
When I asked him what this place was, he only smiled.
"Do you think WhiteHorse was the beginning?"
I didn't.
But now I wasn't sure it had ended, either.
The next morning, Grant was gone.
No mention.
No empty seat at the table.
Just a new rule posted on the refrigerator in cold block letters:
DO NOT SPEAK OF WHAT IS NOT HERE!
I stared at it for a long time.
Then took my notebook, and wrote just one line before the ink began to fade:
I don't know who I am anymore.
The notebook closed itself.
I swear it did.
That night, someone knocked on the inside of the nursery door.
Three times.
Most houses are loud in the wrong ways—squeaky stairs, groaning pipes, wind that gets stuck in the gutters like it's trying to say something. But the Mason house? The one across the street?
It was loud in silence.
And that's not poetic nonsense. I mean real, actual silence. An aggressive kind. Like the whole house was holding its breath when you passed by. You don't forget that kind of quiet. You feel it settle into your ears, thick as syrup.
The Masons had lived there forever, or so said Mr. Drewson, my adopted father, as he clipped hedges with military precision.
"They've got old money," he told me once, not looking up. "And older rules."
Rules. Yeah. Like no one in, no one out.
Like lights turning on in rooms no one used.
Like a girl who used to go to my new school, Eleanor Mason, just stopping one day—vanishing like a smudge wiped off a windowpane.
Everyone said she went to a private academy out in Maryland.
But I saw her once, two weeks ago.
In the attic window.
Face pale, hand pressed to the glass, lips moving. No sound.
I didn't tell Mr. Drewson or Miss Carol. Because if I'd learned anything by now, it's that adults don't hear the truth unless it's whispered through a mouth they already trust. And my mouth? Well, they mostly thought it was broken.
But I kept watching that house. That heavy, perfect house with white columns and ivy that seemed to pulse when it rained.
One night, I decided to get closer.
I made it halfway across the street before the wind stopped. Literally stopped. Trees stood still. Leaves froze mid-rustle. Even the moths hovering around the streetlight hung like ornaments.
And then, something whispered. Not from the Mason house. From the ground.
"Go back," it said.
I did!
I ran back inside and slammed the door hard enough to shake the living room mirror. Mr. Drewson called from the basement, "Everything alright up there?"
I lied, of course. Told him I thought I saw a raccoon.
Which is fair. The Masons kind of look like raccoons. If raccoons wore tailored suits and stared too long.
The next morning, something changed.
The Mason house had a sign in front of it.
.But not For Sale.
It said:
"Closed for Reclamation."
What the hell does that mean?
No one could tell me. Not the teachers. Not the neighbors. Not even Miss Carol, who usually knew every backdoor rumor before it slipped out the front.
And when I asked Mr. Drewson, he didn't answer. He just looked out the window; eyes fixed on the house, and said, "Some things aren't ours to dig up, son."
But I'm not a son, I'm a grave.
And graves don't stay shut forever.
That night, I couldn't sleep. Not because of nightmares—those had taken a strange vacation lately—but because I Eleanor's face earlier in the supposed reclamation building, or whatever version of her I'd seen behind that window.
She wasn't blinking.
She wasn't crying.
She was mouthing words in slow, deliberate rhythm—like someone speaking under water. Like someone rehearsing something they weren't allowed to say out loud.