My grandmother died three years ago and left her house to me.
Not long after, my father remarried—and decided to move back in. He didn’t ask. He informed me.
“I’m her son,” he said flatly. “That house should’ve gone to me.”
His new wife, Marla, took it further. She stuffed my belongings into trash bags like clutter she couldn’t wait to erase.
“I live here now,” she said, smiling. “This place needs to meet my standards.”
I smiled back.
By the next morning, she was screaming.
The first scream came at 2:17 a.m.—raw and panicked, like something torn loose from the chest. I was awake already, lying in the bedroom they’d pushed me into while claiming the rest of the house room by room.
The scream came again. Then running. Something crashing.
Then silence.
Not peace. Not calm. A suffocating stillness, as if the house itself were holding its breath.
The next morning, I drank coffee at the kitchen table while Marla paced. Her face looked gray beneath her makeup, dark hollows under her eyes.
“Did you hear anything last night?” she asked.
I glanced up. “Hear what?”
“Screaming.”
Dad folded his paper. “You said you had a nightmare.”
“It didn’t feel like one,” she snapped. “There was someone in the room.”
I took another sip. “Old houses make noise. Grandma used to say this one breathes at night.”
Dad cut me off. “Enough.”
Marla stared at me like she was trying to solve a puzzle she didn’t like the answer to.
By afternoon, she locked herself in the bedroom.
By evening, she was drinking.
By midnight, she was crying.
The house remembered.
It remembered my grandmother humming in the hallway. Her slippers whispering against the floor. The nights she held my hand when my father disappeared for months at a time.
It remembered the day she pressed the will into my hands.
“This is your home,” she said. “No matter who comes back pretending otherwise.”
The second night, the scream was worse.
This time, my father heard it. He ran down the hall shouting her name. I stayed still, counting sounds—the sobbing, the thud against the wall.
“There was something standing at the bed,” Marla cried.
“You’re imagining things,” he snapped, fear bleeding into anger.
On the third night, she refused to sleep upstairs. She curled on the couch, every lamp blazing, jerking awake at every sound.
At 2:17 a.m., the air turned icy.
Her breath fogged.
The grandfather clock ticked backward.
She bolted upright and screamed so hard the windows shook.
By morning, my father looked hollowed out. His certainty was gone.
“This place isn’t right,” he muttered.
Marla turned on me. “You did this.”
I tilted my head. “Did what?”
“You’re feeding the house,” she whispered.
Dad shouted at her. She flinched.
I almost felt bad.
Almost.
By the fourth night, the house stopped pretending.
Doors opened on their own.
Footsteps echoed where no one stood.
A handprint appeared on the fogged bathroom glass at exactly 2:17.
This time, my father screamed too.
At dawn, Marla sat on the porch beside her suitcase, rocking. When she saw me, she grabbed my wrist.
“She speaks to you,” she whispered. “Doesn’t she?”
“Grandma always spoke to me,” I said.
“She wants me gone.”
“She wants what’s hers protected.”
Marla fled without looking back.
Dad collapsed onto the steps. “You set this up.”
“No,” I said. “You did.”
The porch boards creaked.
The door opened.
Cold air spilled out.
My grandmother stood there—not frail, not fading. Whole. Watching.
Dad dropped to his knees. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I thought I deserved it.”
She didn’t speak.
The house did.
“You were never owed what you abandoned,” I said.
She smiled at me.
And the house let go.
My father returned days later alone. No demands. No entitlement.
“I was wrong,” he said. “I don’t want the house. I just want a chance.”
I stepped aside.
The house decided.
The nightmares stopped.
The clocks corrected themselves.
Warmth returned.
And at 2:17 a.m., I wake to comfort instead of fear.
Sometimes I hear her hum.
Sometimes I feel her hand on my shoulder.
The house is peaceful now.
And for the first time, my smile isn’t armor.
It’s home.