The house that never sleeps

By: Salim Habbar

Years go by when we think we have put the past behind us, but some memories continue to resurface from the folds of time, just as souls do when they cannot find a way to leave. There are homes - like people - that are born burdened with pain, and remain captive to the echo of the fear or tragedy that was etched into them.
I don't know, years later, if I really believed what I saw, or if my mind - haunted by fear at the time - played tricks on me.
But in all honesty, I will recount what I experienced as I have held it in my memory for more than fifteen years.

I was in my mid-twenties, working in a small company and living with my parents and sister. We were looking for a quiet house on the outskirts of the city, tired of the noise of the apartments and the lack of space. My father found a cheap rented house, old-fashioned but spacious.
The first time we visited, we were surrounded by an eerie silence. No birds, no children's voices, just the smell of old dirt and the wind passing through the broken windows, whispering like words.

‘Salim, what do you think?’ my father asked me that day. I replied with a hesitant smile: ‘The house needs some renovation, but it's suitable...’ I didn't tell him the truth; that I hadn't felt comfortable there since the moment I first set foot inside. The ground seemed to retain the footprints of those who had walked there before us, their voices, and perhaps their memories, which had not yet faded away.

The purchase was easy, faster than it should have been. The landlord, a fifty-something man with a wandering eye, immediately agreed to lower the rent and didn't ask too many questions. He just said:

"The house is old, but sturdy, and good people lived in it."
>He stammered a little and added: "They lived... and left."

We didn't pay attention to his hesitation. We were happy with the new place, hanging curtains and planting flowers in the dry garden, trying to breathe life into it and make him forget his old age. But something in the air refused to rise.

On the first night, after everything had calmed down, I sat on the balcony watching the sky. The weather was warm, and it was completely quiet. Then a cold breeze passed between my shoulders, as if someone had breathed near me. I ignored it. Human beings, by nature, tend not to believe in what frightens them.

But at midnight I was awakened by a clear sound: Three knocks on the wall, regular, stopping and returning. I was confused. I thought my brother was joking, but the rooms were dark and the whole house was in deep silence.

I sat on the edge of the bed and listened, feeling my heart beat unexplainably fast. A few minutes later it was gone, as if it had never been there. I tried to fall asleep again, but it didn't work. I hugged the blanket to my face and wondered: Do people sometimes hear what they can't see?

The next day, while carrying some tools From outside, I noticed the neighbours watching me with silent stares. An elderly woman stops at the corner of the street and watches us for a long time without approaching. A man comes out of his house, gives the house a quick glance and then looks away.
I felt that something was being hidden from us.

When the owner of the house stopped by to hand over the extra set of keys, I asked him without preamble:

“Did anyone live here before me?” He shook his head, avoiding my gaze. “Every house has its history, son. This house… it’s been through a lot, but now it’s fine.”

He smiled a cold smile and turned his back. That was the last time I saw him.

The nights at home began quietly and ended in confusion. Light knocks on doors, footsteps in the hallways, murmurs approaching and disappearing. The sounds weren't loud enough to be frightening, but they were so real they gave me a headache.

Once, I was studying in my room when suddenly I saw a shadow pass in front of the door. I caught only a glimpse of it, a female shadow moving slowly and then disappearing behind the wall. I rushed outside but found no one there. The hallway was empty except for a cold draft coming up from the bottom of the stairs.

When I returned to my room, I noticed something even stranger: the books on the table had been rearranged. I hadn't touched them for hours.

Weeks passed as we tried to cope. My father refused to talk about it, and my mother would whisper to me in secret:

"Salem, last night I heard someone walking in the kitchen after two o'clock at night."
I would smile and say to reassure her: "Maybe rats."
But I knew it wasn't.

At the end of the corridor on the second floor was a room we didn't use. From the first moment, it smelled different, heavy, like it was sealed with dampness and years. We left its door closed because our furniture wasn't enough to fill it.

One night, as I was passing by, I heard the voice.
Crying. Faint at first, then clearer, more sad than fearful.
I stopped and listened. It wasn't an echo, it was the sound of actual crying coming from inside.

My mum suddenly called me, and the sound cut out. When I returned to the room, there was a heavy silence, as if a wall separated us from the world.

In the morning, I told my father, and he shrugged his shoulders: ‘Maybe it's just the wind blowing through the windows.’ But two days later, we all heard the same sound. Nighttime, the long corridor, the closed door, and behind it, the crying of a woman we didn't know.

Since that night, the house has been different. The air inside was heavier, the sleep was more laboured, and the dreams were strange. We were dreaming about the same things: a dark room, a mirror, and a woman in a long white dress covering her feet: A dark room, a mirror, and a woman wearing a long white dress that covered her feet.

Strangely enough, my mum started She weakened, she cried easily, and my father became more silent than before. I noticed that the house was slowly changing us, draining us like a small stone drying out of water in the harsh sun.

Then came the night of the fifteenth night of our stay there.
I was reading by the light of a lamp when suddenly the electricity went out. The house was plunged into total darkness, a darkness with a heavy texture. I was fumbling with the phone when I heard a faint sound close to my ear that sounded like a choked laugh. Then I felt a warm breath on my face.

I jumped to my feet, shaking, and ran into the living room where I found everyone gathered in obvious fear.
My father said in a choked voice:

"I saw something... a black shadow passing behind me." My sister was crying: "She was standing there, at the end of the corridor. A woman in white looking at us."

We did not discuss the decision. In the morning we hurriedly gathered our belongings. We were about to leave when my father insisted on finally opening the room.

We tried to stop him but he wouldn't listen. He got a screwdriver and started unscrewing the metal handle. It took minutes, as if the door was resisting.
Finally it opened with a long creak, as if a groan had come from the wall itself.

The room was semi-dark, with thick yellow dust covering the walls and a suffocating smell of mould and dampness. In the corner is a large mirror wrapped in a dirty black cloth.

My father approached and slowly pulled the cloth away.
He froze for a moment, then choked up and fell to the ground.

My mum rushed to him, and she screamed as she looked in the mirror. I didn't want to look, but my curiosity got the better of me. In the reflection, we saw the shadow of a woman standing behind us quite clearly, even though the room was completely empty.

I immediately covered the mirror with a cloth, and we dragged my father out of the room. He regained consciousness after a few minutes, his face pale and his hands shaking.
He said in a choppy voice:

"I saw her... she was inside me in the mirror. She wasn't just looking at me, she tried to touch me."

We left the house that same day. We did not look back. Since that day, we have not dared to return. But the story did not leave us easily. It appeared in our dreams, in sudden bouts of cold, in the mysterious sounds that sometimes passed in the middle of the night.

A few months later, I happened to pass by the neighbourhood. The house was still empty. Its windows were open even though no one lived there. The wind blew through it, making the same sound I had heard on the first night: the creaking of the long door. One of the neighbours stopped me. He recognised me immediately and said in a low voice:

"No one stays there. Everyone who rented it left within a week. Some hear voices, some see a woman in a white dress at the window."

Today, more than fifteen years later, I'm still searching for a single convincing scientific explanation. Could a place hold a strange energy that generates illusions? Or does something really live among us, in the layers we can't see?

I don't have the answer.
But what I do know is that the house was not a "bad" or "evil" house, but a being burdened by what we don't know. Perhaps the woman whose shadow we saw was nothing more than an imprisoned soul, who was once wronged and had no one to hear her cries.

Whenever a cool breeze blows on a quiet night, I get that old feeling; like she is still there, trapped in a mirror, a wall, or even the echo of footsteps in the corridor.

When I pass by an old house, I whisper a question that I have yet to find an answer to:Are we the ones who inhabit the houses? Or do the houses - with their memories and hidden pulse - inhabit us, and stay with us until the end of time?

Fifteen years after leaving, the house that never rested... still haunts my dreams.