The House We Couldn't Leave

Reya didn't sleep that night.

Not because she was afraid of the nursery.

Not even because Lina had vanished while they were still in the room.

It was because, sometime around midnight, she found a page in her sketchbook she didn't remember drawing—but the lines were hers. The hand. The pressure. Even the smudged graphite on her thumb.

She stared at it under candlelight until her eyes blurred.

It was the sitting room—the one near the stairwell none of them used. But in the sketch, the window was cracked wide open. There were handprints on the walls. And a shape outside.

Long, hair trailing like ink.

Reya hadn't drawn that. She would have remembered.

Wouldn't she?

She lit the candle again and flipped back three pages.

Another drawing.

The mirror room. Dozens of reflections. But in the very back—a face half-seen. A girl. Familiar.

Reya's skin prickled. She flipped again. And again.

The sketch of the hallway from their first day. The west stairwell. A door that didn't exist anymore. She'd sketched it—its hinges, the wooden grain, even a thin gap in the bottom corner—but no one had seen it since.

Aria had even said it was never there.

But Reya had drawn it.

She stared down at her hands and whispered, "How many of these do I not remember?"

By morning, the candle had melted halfway down its base.

Mina knocked once before stepping in.

"You're still up?" she asked.

Reya said nothing.

Mina walked over and glanced at the drawings. Her lips thinned. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Drawing rooms that don't exist."

Reya turned the page. "They do exist. Or did. That's the problem."

Mina sighed. "Reya, maybe it's just—"

"No. No, don't tell me I'm tired. Or stressed. Don't give me that excuse." Reya grabbed the sketch of the west door and held it up. "You said this wasn't real. Aria said it wasn't either. But look. Look at this hinge. I only draw what I see. I don't make things up, Mina."

Mina's face shifted—guilt, maybe. Or worry.

"I believe you," she said finally. "But believing you doesn't help if we don't understand what it means."

"It means we're forgetting. All of us."

The hallway outside felt heavier than usual.

Sofi walked past holding a doll none of them recognized. Aria was behind her, muttering numbers under her breath.

"Is Lina back?" Reya asked.

"No," Aria replied. "Her bed's untouched."

"She's not just gone, right?"

Aria looked at her, and for a moment, something flickered behind her eyes.

"She was the one who found the stairs," Aria said quietly. "Below the nursery."

"Yeah. I know."

"But Mina said she found them. Last night. She said she remembered where the panel was."

Reya froze.

"I thought she was just confused," Aria continued. "But now… now I'm not sure."

Reya opened her sketchbook. Flipped to the drawing of the hidden nursery. Seven cribs. One empty.

She touched the graphite lightly.

"I think we need to start recording things," she said. "Writing things down. Drawing. Anything. Before it all changes."

That afternoon, they gathered again in the attic.

Sofi, Aria, Tara, Mina, and Reya.

No Lina.

No Mr. Calden.

The candlelight stretched long shadows across the uneven walls.

"I don't think this is just a haunted house," Reya said, opening her book on the floor.

"I think it eats time."

Mina crossed her arms. "What do you mean?"

"I think it loops. Or shifts. Or resets. We remember things wrong, or out of order, or not at all. The mirror room, the disappearing doors, even the name on that crib—" she glanced at Tara "—I think things aren't just moving around. I think we are."

Tara sat very still.

Sofi rocked on her heels. "Like… like the house is playing with us?"

"No," Aria said. "Like it's trying to make us forget we ever wanted to leave."

They tested it.

Reya sketched a chair—one from the red gallery, second floor. She remembered it clearly. Curved back. Broken leg. Velvet cushion.

Then they went to the gallery.

No chair.

But there was a mark in the dust. A rectangle shape on the floor. Dust disturbed.

Tara touched the wall.

"There was something here," she said. "I think I remember it too."

Mina didn't speak.

She looked down at Reya's drawing and whispered, "How much have we forgotten already?"

That night, Reya taped her sketchbook shut.

She tied a red ribbon around it. Hid it under a floorboard near her bed.

Then she lay awake and counted ceiling cracks.

She remembered Sofi's laughter in the music room. She remembered Tara limping beside her in the garden. She remembered Lina humming a tune with no words.

The next morning, Tara still limped.

Sofi still smiled.

But Reya couldn't remember what Lina's voice sounded like at all.