The Memory Nest

The fire had gone cold.

Ash stained Anna's palms. Smoke still clung to her hair, thick with the scent of something sweeter than wood—like dried flowers rotted in their vase. But Dorma was quiet. And that silence was not peace.

It was a pause.

A breath before something worse.

Anna stared at the ceiling. At the narrow trapdoor in the hall. The one she had never noticed before, until now. Until the house let her.

She pulled the cord, and the attic ladder fell open with a groan—like the house wasn't sure it wanted her up there.

But it was too late for that. Anna climbed.

The attic was a cathedral of dust and memory. Slanted rafters reached above her like clasped hands. Fireflies—if that's what they were—floated through the air, casting warm, flickering light.

And everywhere were boxes.

Neat. Stacked. Labeled in a hand not hers, but familiar.

EDITH MORWEN – 1863–1879

CASSIA MORWEN – 1901–1906

MIRIAM MORWEN – 1940–2023

Her aunt.

Her great-grandmother.

Children, women—every woman in the bloodline.

And there, near the back:

ANNA MORWEN – 1999–

No death date.

Just her name. Waiting.

She stared at the box, afraid to touch it. But her fingers moved anyway.

Inside: photographs that didn't exist. Her face as a child—but altered. Smiling in rooms she'd never entered. Standing beside people with no eyes. In one, she was holding hands with her mother. But her mother's face was wrong—blurred, weeping from the mouth.

The worst was a picture she didn't remember being taken.

She was in the house.

Last week.

Asleep in the attic.

And something was curled around her leg. Long. Boneless. Pale as a slug.

Anna dropped the photo, heart pounding.

Behind her, something shifted in the rafters.

The fireflies went still.

A voice, barely louder than breath, crawled out of the beams:

"You are already remembered."

She turned slowly.

In the back of the attic, behind the oldest boxes, a shape unfolded from the wall. Like parchment peeling away from heat.

It wasn't Dorma. Not yet.

It was something older.

Something that recorded.

A tall, thin figure made of what looked like paper and shadow. Its face was blank, but wrinkled with hundreds of folds—each one a name.

And in its hands: a quill made of human hair.

It stepped forward.

Anna couldn't move.

She felt her mind fray at the edges—like pages torn from a book. The attic spun, and suddenly, the floorboards below her felt thin. Too thin. Beneath them, something vast shifted.

The figure raised the quill.

Anna whispered, "No."

It paused.

Then slowly, with careful, awful grace, it began to write.

On the air.

On her.

A name.

Her name.

And the final word—the one that made her blood run cold:

"Belongs."

The box with no name and after the thing vanished into the rafters—its ink still crawling just beneath Anna's skin—she sat in silence. The attic air felt thicker now, like it was trying to press her back down the ladder. But something caught her eye in the far corner.

A box.

Not labeled.

Not stacked.

Just waiting.

Covered in dust so thick it looked like mold. Wrapped in cord knotted like a binding spell. And when she reached out, her fingers trembled not with fear—but recognition.

It was hers.

Not labeled ANNA MORWEN.

Not even marked at all.

But she knew it belonged to her.

As if it had been growing here, alongside her. Preparing.

She untied the cord. The knot resisted, then slipped open all at once. The lid creaked like an old jaw, and the fireflies dimmed.

Inside:

● A single black ribbon—frayed and warm, as if recently worn.

● A child's drawing, done in crayon. Stick figures. A house. One person outside, one inside. A speech bubble from the house read, "I miss you."

● A mirror. Small, hand-held. The glass fractured—but not cracked. It was split. As if two reflections lived in the same frame.

When Anna held it up, only one reflection showed.

And it wasn't her.

It was her as a child.

Wide-eyed. Pale. Mouth sewn shut with red thread.

Behind the child, inside the mirror, something moved.

Not Dorma.

Not a shadow.

A room.

Stone walls.

An altar.

A crib.

And then the child lifted a finger and pressed it to the glass—from the inside.

Anna dropped the mirror. It didn't shatter.

It bled.

A slow line of thick, tar-like ichor crept from the corner of the frame and dripped into the box, where it disappeared instantly. Soaked up by the drawing. The ribbon. The memory.

And beneath them—she hadn't seen it before—was one final thing.

A tooth.

Still bloody.

Still warm.

And carved with a name not hers.

But close.

"ANNORA."

She whispered the name aloud.

And the attic floor vanished beneath her feet.

Not a name in any family record. Not in the journal. Not on the attic boxes.

And yet, as Anna fell through the memory's pull, she knew—

Annora wasn't forgotten.

She was erased.

The fall wasn't physical. It was inward—like plunging through your own reflection. Anna hit no ground. There was only cold, and a hum that came from behind her eyes.

Then—light.

Flickering candlelight.

Stone walls.

She stood in the Womb Room.

Not the ruined, hidden one beneath the house.

The original, as it had been centuries ago.

Evelyn Morwen stood at the altar, back turned. Her hands moved with purpose—grinding dried herbs into a thick red paste. She hummed a lullaby, soft and breathless.

And beside her: a crib.

Wooden. Carved with runes.

Inside it, a child.

Too still.

Too silent.

Anna stepped closer, and Evelyn froze—though she could not see her.

"I warned them," Evelyn whispered, to the crib. "One child. That was the pact. But you… you were born after."

Her voice broke.

"You were an accident Dorma did not ask for. And Dorma does not forgive."

She picked up a cloth and wiped the child's mouth gently.

"You should not exist, little one. But you're mine. So I'll give you a new name. One the house can't read. One that won't echo through the floorboards."

She leaned down.

And for the first time, Anna saw the child's face.

Her face.

Not quite.

Smaller eyes.

Sharper jaw.

But it was unmistakably kin.

Annora.

Anna's twin?

No.

Her ghost.

A fragment left behind the day Anna was born—the part of her Evelyn tried to hide from Dorma. The part that remembered. The part that never grew.

The "imaginary friend" she cried about as a child.

The one that sat under the bed and whispered stories in her voice.

Not a friend.

A sister, born into silence.

And now she was awake.

The memory burned white—and Anna was back in the attic, heart racing, box open, tooth in her palm.

From the mirror, the child stared up.

And whispered:

"I kept the third name for you."