The House That Remembers: Beneath the Wallpaper

After Nora was found in the woods, she was placed in a psychiatric facility two towns over. No one believed her story. Authorities assumed she’d suffered a breakdown, perhaps triggered by her brother’s disappearance and the isolation. She spoke rarely, and when she did, it was always the same thing:

"He’s in the walls. The house won’t let him out."

Months passed. The case went cold. The Whitmore house was once again forgotten.

Until Casey Delacroix came looking.

A paranormal archivist with a fixation on places that “consume,” Casey had followed whispers and newspaper clippings for years—each pointing to a pattern of vanishings, each ending at the house in the woods. When she read Nora’s name in a buried police report, something clicked. She reached out.

At first, Nora refused to talk. But Casey was persistent.

She brought her an old photograph—the Whitmore family, circa 1941. In the photo: a mother, a father, two children, and a third figure—half-visible in the shadows behind the stairwell. A pale blur with hollow eyes.

Nora stared at it for a long time.

Then whispered, “That’s the one who took him.”

They returned to the house in October.

Nora hadn’t set foot near it since that night. But something had changed—something inside her needed to go back. Not for closure. For Ben.

Casey was skeptical of Nora’s claims, but experienced enough to know that haunted places didn’t obey logic. She brought with her old blueprints, EMF meters, and recording equipment. But as they stood before the house again, even she admitted—it felt wrong. The air was heavy. The house hummed.

“It’s bigger,” Nora said softly.

Casey glanced over. “What is?”

“The house. It wasn’t this big before.”

They entered.

Inside, nothing had changed—and yet everything felt different. The dust was thicker. The shadows deeper. Rooms seemed to stretch longer than they should.

In the dining room, Casey noticed something strange: the wallpaper had bubbled in perfect hand-sized impressions. As if someone had been pushing from inside the wall.

Then came the sound. Not footsteps—breathing.

Slow. Heavy. Wet.

They froze.

The sound was coming from the walls.

They explored carefully, avoiding the basement. Casey mapped the house based on the blueprints, but quickly noticed inconsistencies.

“There’s a hallway that isn’t supposed to exist,” she muttered, marking her sketchbook.

Nora was drawn to it.

The hallway had no doors—just a long corridor with peeling wallpaper. At the far end stood a mirror—tall, gilded, untouched by dust.

They approached.

In the reflection, Casey saw only herself.

But Nora saw Ben.

He stood behind her, face pale, eyes wide. His lips moved, but no sound came.

“Ben?” she whispered.

The mirror flickered. His image vanished.

Casey snapped her fingers. “Nora, stay with me.”

But Nora’s gaze didn’t leave the mirror. She reached out—and the glass rippled.

It swallowed her hand.

Casey grabbed her, pulling hard. With effort, they freed her arm—but her hand was now burnt, like it had been submerged in acid.

“I saw him,” Nora gasped. “He’s still alive. He’s just… beneath it all.”

They fled the hallway, but the house had changed.

The front door was gone again.

Worse—Casey’s equipment no longer worked. Her compass spun wildly. The EMF meter screamed. And then they heard it:

“Noraaaaaa…”

It wasn’t Ben’s voice.

It was deeper. Older. Wrong.

They ran. Back through the living room. Past the children’s room. Down the hall. But the layout had shifted—doors now led to brick walls, rooms had collapsed into endless staircases, and mirrors appeared on every surface, each flickering with glimpses of people who weren’t there.

At last, they stumbled into the basement door.

“We’re not going down there,” Casey said.

But the house wanted them to.

The door flung open by itself. A gust of warm air escaped, thick with the scent of blood and mold. Beneath it, the stairs stretched into black.

Nora descended first.

What they found below was not a basement. It was a catacomb.

The walls pulsed. Literally—they pulsed, like lungs inhaling. Beneath layers of wallpaper were faces—trapped, melted into the walls. Some were whispering. Others screaming. A few simply stared, eyes full of agony.

Casey raised her camera. The lens cracked.

Nora walked toward one of the faces—it was Ben. His mouth moved silently.

She pressed her hand against the wall. “Tell me how to free you.”

A voice echoed from the dark:

"You don’t free the house’s memories. You join them."

The wallpaper peeled back violently—revealing arms.

Hands reached out, grabbing Nora, pulling her forward. Casey lunged, dragging her back. They fought—against the house, against whatever lived in its walls. Nora screamed. The arms let go.

The house roared. The walls collapsed inward.

Casey grabbed Nora and ran.

Up the stairs.

Down the twisted halls.

Through the mirror that wasn’t there a moment ago.

And just like that—

They were outside.

Gasping. Bleeding. Alive.

They never spoke of what happened. Not fully.

The footage? Gone. Camera fried. Audio blank.

But Casey kept one thing: the blueprint.

And on the back of it, in new ink, something had appeared:

"Next time, only one leaves."