Chapter 21: The House That Remembers
Something's wrong.
Or maybe something's begun.
The guests don't speak anymore.
Not even in their pulses, their hums, their silent chants beneath the floor.
They've grown still.
Like statues made of memory.
They stand in corners now — perfectly still, perfectly quiet.
Eyes closed.
Heads tilted slightly upward.
Listening to something I can't hear.
Something just beyond the spiral's edge.
---
I tried to speak to one — the woman with no shadow.
She didn't move.
But when I touched her shoulder, she whispered:
> "It's remembering."
I asked what.
She smiled, lips cracking like old paint.
> "You."
---
I don't sleep anymore.
Not because I can't.
Because the walls dream for me.
When I lie down, I sink into them.
Not into the mattress.
Into the architecture.
The pillow becomes lungs.
The sheets — skin.
The floor breathes against my back like a second heartbeat.
And the dreams begin before I close my eyes.
---
Last night, the dream was different.
I was eight years old again.
Running through the woods behind my grandfather's house.
Except the trees were bent in spiral patterns.
And the roots whispered my name backward.
And my grandfather?
He was waiting at the tree line, holding the spiral book.
He wasn't old anymore.
He wasn't himself.
He had no face.
Just a single eye, spinning.
And when I asked him where I was, he pointed to the sky and said:
> "Where the floor ends and the mouth begins."
---
I woke up choking.
Not on air.
On dirt.
My mouth was full of it.
But not from the bed.
From beneath the floor.
I coughed and black soil spilled across the sheets.
And mixed in it?
A photo.
Old.
Faded.
I was in it.
Standing in front of this house.
But… the house hadn't been built yet.
Just framing.
Nails.
Beams.
My hand on the shoulder of a man I've never seen.
Except I had.
Just last week.
He was the first guest.
---
The house is building a past.
A story.
And it's inserting me into it.
Erasing the truth.
---
In the kitchen, the clock ticks backward now.
The fridge hums in Morse code.
The sink weeps pink water that smells like the ocean during low tide and regret.
And above the doorframe, carved into the wall:
> "You were always here."
---
I tried to remember where I lived before this.
What city.
What job.
What name.
Nothing came.
Only the house.
Only the spiral.
Only this ever-present hum behind my ears like a second skull growing beneath the skin.
And when I looked in the mirror?
I saw someone else.
Someone who used to be me, mouthing:
> "I'm not supposed to be here."
---
I punched the glass.
It didn't shatter.
It bled.
Thick black fluid, pouring down my hands, pooling at my feet.
And in that pool, my reflection spoke aloud for the first time:
> "You are the house that forgets it is a man."
---
I screamed.
The walls answered.
They screamed back.
A thousand voices. My own voice. My father's. My son's. Walter's. The seventh. The eighth.
All of them, layered over each other like film on film on film.
Screaming not from pain, but from being seen.
I collapsed in the hall.
Nails beneath my knees.
The floor splintered like dry ribs cracking under weight.
And when I looked up—
A door had appeared.
Not spiral-shaped.
Rectangular.
Ordinary.
Too ordinary.
Which made it wrong.
---
I stood.
My legs weren't legs anymore.
They were stilts made of bone and intention.
Each step echoed before I took it.
The door waited.
I opened it.
Inside: a room I'd never built.
A study.
Bookshelves lining the walls, but all the books were empty.
No words.
Just pages of pressed skin.
And on the desk?
A photograph.
Of me.
From behind.
Writing.
At this very desk.
---
There was no one else in the room.
But when I turned the picture over, words had been scratched into the back:
> "You wrote this house.
You just don't remember how."
---
I fell into the chair.
It moved on its own.
Shifted to the center of the room.
And the floor below peeled open like paper.
Not down into a basement.
Upward.
The sky stretched below me like a canvas — white, endless, empty.
And I began to fall upward.
---
Through clouds of static.
Past memories I never lived.
Through voices I never spoke.
Until I landed in a room made entirely of mouths.
None of them opened.
They waited.
A figure stood at the center.
Its back to me.
But I knew it instantly.
Me.
Not as I am.
As I will become.
Fully transformed.
The final room.
The final floor.
---
He turned.
His mouth was gone.
Just smooth skin where words used to live.
But I understood him anyway:
> "There is no more you.
There is only what you became.
And what you will now write."
He handed me a book.
The spiral book.
But this one wasn't blank.
It was me.
Every page.
Every chapter.
My memories. My blood. My guests. My screams.
All of it.
And the last page?
Empty.
---
He pointed at it.
And vanished.
I looked around the room.
The mouths had begun to open.
Slowly.
Softly.
And they all whispered one word in unison:
> "Write."
---
So I picked up the nail.
Pressed it into my finger.
Let the blood touch the page.
And began the final entry:
"Chapter 22: The House That Writes Back."