I didn't really fear the house. But it wore grief like humidity- clung to your skin, slipped into your mouth. A skeleton of hope left half-fleshed. A house stitched behind my grandfather's like a breath held too long. Walls poured with good intentions, now echoing the weight of what never arrived.
Two rooms, a porch that opened wide to the land- tobacco, mango trees, the earth sunburned and cracked like an old tongue. I stayed there. Not by choice, not exactly. Maybe the house picked me, the way still water picks what it reflects.
That night, the sun was gone but still leaking from my skin. Laughter wilted from my mouth. The rum was sour. The air tasted like sleep walking in circles. Then the twist in my gut- like something inside me trying to crawl back to the soil. I staggered to the bathroom, hands slipping onto the walls.
Everything I had inside me was left in pieces. And behind me- no, within the walls- something grew. Not a sound, but a shift. A presence pressing down on the air. Tall. Timeless. Too large for the room. I didn't need to see it to know it was watching. I didn't need my eyes on it- my blood already knew.
So I ran. Out back, barefoot, gasping for the night sky. But there was no sky. Just the trees. The trees, breathing like lungs full of something older than oxygen. They moved but not in wind. They moved liked they recognized me. Like they remembered something I hadn't learned yet.
I stare into the dark too long, waiting for it to admit something. Tonight, it almost did. The whole land began to pulse. It reached out, not with hands, but with memory. And I had become an intruder in my own bloodline. I felt it watching, deciding wether or not I belonged.
I ran again. Into the house, which wasn't better. Just darker. Light leaked in through the cracks between the tin roof and the wall like it was scared to come in fully. Like it knew. The dark was already here, folding itself into corners and beams. The couch sighed plastic. The roof whispered in rust.
And that presence. It never walked it just was. Moving like mold- slow, silent, suffocating.
It wasn't threatening. Threats require intent. This was worse. It was indifferent. No message. No curse. No warning. I wasn't prey, I wasn't chosen, I was seen and still it did nothing. And somehow that absence of intent became more terrifying than anything I could imagine.
So I curled into myself. Ran into a room that was never mine and counted the ridges of the tin roof like prayer beads. Not to make it go away. But to remind myself I was still here. And maybe that was enough for now. No matter how much I counted though, I could still hear the trees blinking.
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