[A voice — old, tired, perhaps a ghost, perhaps just the house itself:]
---
"They don't come here anymore. The family. They built this house two hundred years ago. Stone by stone. Blood by blood. They filled it with laughter once. With music. With the sound of boots on hardwood and glasses raised to the Jakobs name."
[Piano note. Low. Slow.]
"Now it's just me. The walls. The floors. The windows that watch the sun set over fields that don't grow anymore. The roses still bloom. They always bloom. Red. Deep red. The color of the ground beneath them."
---
[Footsteps. Creaking. A door opening. A child's laughter, distant, maybe memory, maybe not.]
"They say the estate is haunted. They're right. But not by what they think. No chains. No specters. Just… memory. The weight of it. The way the halls remember the sound of a father's anger. The way the stairs remember the fall. The way the rose garden remembers what was buried there."
[Wind. The piano plays a few scattered notes.]
"I was the nursery once. The room at the end of the hall. The one they closed after the boy stopped crying. They say he grew up. Became a man. Became the name. But I remember. I remember the small hands on the windowsill. The small voice asking 'why does it hurt?' I remember the silence that followed."
---
[The piano stops. Silence. A single creak.]
"Wainwright comes sometimes. He walks the halls. He stands in the nursery. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to. I feel him. The weight of him. The weight of the thing he's trying to carry. He thinks he's alone. He's not. I'm here. I've always been here. I'm the house. I'm the walls. I'm the thing that watched them build and watched them fall."
[A long pause. A whisper.]
"He asks if I forgive. The house. The walls. The thing that holds the memory. I don't forgive. I don't forget. I just… hold. That's what a house does. It holds. It waits. It remembers. And when the time comes… it opens its doors to the next one. And the next. And the next."
[Piano note. Long. Sustained. Fading.]
"The Corpsewood Estate. That's what they call it now. Not Jakobs Manor. Not the family home. Corpsewood. Because the wood remembers what was buried. Because the roots drink deep. Because the roses bloom red for a reason."
[Silence.]
"He walks the halls now. Wainwright. The one who tries. He doesn't know I'm here. He doesn't know I'm watching. Waiting. Holding. Maybe that's enough. Maybe that's all a house can do. Hold the memory. Wait for the next one. Hope the next one learns."
[A final piano note. Fading. The wind. Silence.]
AsheTheHyena
