The front door clicked shut. Except I hadn’t opened it. I was in the library, a tome on fungal infestations laid open on my lap, the afternoon sun a perfect, dusty rectangle on the rug. The sound was distinct, a solid thunk of old wood meeting old frame. For a moment, I simply listened. The house breathed around me, a symphony of settled timbers and the low hum of distant traffic. No breeze stirred the curtains. No phantom draft rattled a window. It was just the click. And then, the silence, deeper now, as if the air itself had paused. A quiet acknowledgment, a punctuation mark in the endless sentence of my days here.
I remember when I first saw Porticos. It was more ruin than promise then, a grand old dame sagging on her foundations, her skin peeling like an ancient map. The listing said “former restaurant,” but the scent was all mildew and forgotten dreams, a thick, cloying sweetness that clung to the air like old potpourri. The real estate agent, a chirpy woman named Barb who clearly thought I was mad, spoke of potential, but my eyes were drawn to the way the afternoon light, filtered through grime-streaked panes, pooled on the warped hardwood of the dining room. It was 4:17 p.m., I remember, and the dust motes danced as if celebrating a secret. The staircase, winding upward into shadow, beckoned with its elegant curve, the third stair groaning just so under Barb’s reluctant weight, a sigh, she’d called it. I saw past the grimy varnish and the cracked plaster; I saw the bones, good and true, and a whisper of a life lived within them that felt… familiar. I bought it. Not because of a vision, but because it felt like a homecoming I’d never known I was waiting for.
The restoration was a slow, deliberate act of love. Peeling back layers of floral wallpaper, I found delicate stenciling beneath, faint as a memory. Scraping paint from window frames revealed the rich, dark grain of original oak. Each patch, each sanding, each coat of beeswax on the banister felt like an uncovering, a gentle coaxing of the house to reveal its true self. I imagined the clatter of plates, the murmur of voices, the laughter that must have filled these rooms when it was a bustling eatery. I loved the way the kitchen, once a chaotic, greasy mess, began to gleam, reflecting the dappled light from the garden. And I loved the quiet, the vast, echoing peacefulness that settled on the place once the workmen left. It was during these quiet evenings, the air cooling, the low light stretching my shadow long, that the subtle shifts began.
It began with the children. Not children I saw, but children I heard. Not a cacophony, mind you, but a ripple. A soft titter from the kitchen, quickly gone. The faint, skipping rhythm of small feet on the floorboards above when I was certain I was alone on the ground floor. I’d freeze, hand on the banister, breath held, listening. Always silence. Just the house, breathing. Then came the bathroom mirror, speckled with age and silver rot. Sometimes, just as I turned to leave, a flicker. A small, indistinct face, gone before my eyes could focus, like a trick of the light, or perhaps, a trick of my own tired mind. I’d stand there, staring at my own reflection, searching for the ghost of an image, finding only my own hollowed eyes. It wasn’t fright, not initially. It was a dawning recognition, colder than fear. It was like finally remembering a name that had been on the tip of your tongue for years, a name you had once known intimately, a name that carried a peculiar kind of sorrow.
The knowing settled in, a deep, inescapable hum beneath the skin. The house didn’t feel empty anymore. It felt… occupied. Not by a menacing presence, but by a lingering one, quiet and persistent as the scent of old roses in the attic. There was no terror, only understanding. These echoes, these whispers, these glimpses – they were not theatrical performances for my benefit. They were simply the house, breathing its memories. The laughter in the dining room, the faint, high-pitched joy from the upper floors – they were the lingering vibrations of children who had once played here, perhaps even lived here, long before the restaurant, long before any of us. They were the stories the walls refused to forget. I stopped trying to rationalize, to explain away the click of the door, the reflected face, the phantom skip. I became accustomed to the notion that the unseen could be as palpable as the visible, that the past wasn’t just behind us, but around us, woven into the very fabric of Porticos. Who did I become in that quiet surrender? Someone who no longer denied the weight of what lingered. Someone who understood that some truths hum beneath the surface, not needing explanation, just acknowledgment. The house is listening, I know. And somewhere, in the dark, a floorboard just creaked.