Echos of the Past

“Hey, I gotta go.” She snapped her phone shut and peered out the windshield. Towering above her was a three-story, turn-of-the-century mansion. Its red bricks were stained black, and wild bushes seemed to reach out toward her. 

She pulled out her phone and opened her texts.  

“Do you remember that dream? I think I just found the house.”

The rubber keys groaned as she typed each word. She hit send and snapped her phone shut.  

“Before 7 PM, my ass,” she chuckled to herself.  

The expansive field behind the mansion was concealed by 3,000 square feet of derelict grandeur. The wraparound porch sagged under her weight. She glanced behind her, then reached up and knocked. The solid wood door absorbed the sound. No one came to greet her.  

“Hello?” It had been ten minutes, and still no answer. Part of her was relieved. She surveyed the deck’s rotting floorboards and the water-stained plywood covering the windows. The house was clearly abandoned, so she tried the doorknob.  

The heavy door scraped open, nudging debris aside. Inside, a long hallway featured decaying archways and dust-covered floors. Leaves were scattered and bunched in the corners. The ceilings soared high above her, and crumbling walls led to a quaint but grand kitchen filled with dark cabinets and shiny appliances. A large picture window at the back overlooked the woods at the edge of the field. In the back corner of this cozy kitchen, a door concealed a staircase leading to the second floor.  

She stepped across the threshold, thinking she hadn’t done anything destructive in a while. She didn’t want her guardian angel to get bored.  

“Hello?” She shouted shakily, not realizing the door was slowly closing behind her. No one answered. This was the house she had seen two nights ago. Only then had it not been abandoned. It had rich linens, plush furniture, and swept, polished floors. There certainly weren’t any vines creeping in through the framework. As she stepped further into this long-abandoned house, memories flooded back.  

She recalled the small bathroom down the hall on the left and the reading parlor upstairs.  

She had never been in this neighborhood before. Her sister had called, prompting her to pull off the highway. Now, as she gazed up at the high ceilings, she felt as if something had drawn her here. The tick-tick-tick of her blinker on the off ramp, the mindless turn down this country road, her sister spilling about her day, and then this mansion.  

The door to the staircase was neatly tucked next to the kitchen pantry. Maybe? she thought, pausing as she peeked around the curve of the staircase and up to the next floor. A small picture window illuminated the corridor. Maybe she was finally losing it. Maybe all her busy days and party nights had finally caught up to her. The crunch of leaves beneath her shoes suggested otherwise.  

As she ascended the stairs, something extraordinary happened. The dirt and grime on the steps vanished, revealing dark hardwood that gleamed as if polished yesterday. With each step, the air grew fresher, and daylight began to pour in.  

At the top of the stairs, her knees refused to move. She knew that down the hall would be six doors—three on the left, three on the right. The middle door on the left would lead to a parlor. Her parlor. The one she had seen just before waking up.  

Then she heard it: humming echoing down the hall. She opened her eyes wide, instantly recognizing the tune. It was her bedtime lullaby, the one her father used to hum on particularly rough childhood nights, before she was too old for lullabies. The hum grew louder.  

As expected, this hallway mirrored the one below. And as the humming intensified, she realized it was coming from the second door on the left—the parlor. She tiptoed closer, the heavy door creaking open slowly, allowing bright light to flood into the already sunlit hallway. There, on the other side, sat a young woman in an old-fashioned dress, humming to herself.  

The woman was perched on an occasional chair, her back turned toward the door.  

“Hello?”  

The woman didn’t respond.  

She crept closer, her ears filled with the melodic hum.  

“Hello?” She croaked again, barely managing to get the words past her heartbeat.  

This time, the humming stopped, halting her in her tracks. The woman rose and turned to face her. She was stunning. Her hair bounced as she pivoted, and in her arms, she held a baby.  

“Grandma?”  

The woman looked down, rocking the baby as it softly hummed, turning the child’s face toward their guest. Finally, the woman raised her eyes and gently pointed toward the visitor.  

“Henry, I’d like you to meet your daughter, Andrea.”  

The words hung in the air, and a rush of emotion washed over her—a mix of disbelief and joy that sent her heart racing as she processed what she had just heard. “Henry?” she whispered back, her voice trembling.  

The woman smiled warmly, her eyes filled with understanding. “You’ve been looking for him, haven’t you?”  

She gazed down at the boy. His chubby cheeks were flushed a rosy red. He looked up at her and smiled. “I don’t understand. Where am I?”  

The woman turned and settled back into the chair, patting the seat next to her. “Come, sit. Let’s chat.”  

She felt an inexplicable pull toward the baby. She had only seen pictures of her grandmother at this age, with her father sitting gently in her lap just as he was now.  

Her grandmother’s signature cologne wafted toward her as she rocked him.  

“Yes, Andrea, this is your father,” the woman continued softly, her thumb sweeping across Henry’s cheek. “We were all this small and innocent once.”  

Her father sighed, curling his tiny fists as if embracing the world.  

It was hard to picture her father ever being a baby. How could someone so calm become the man she knew now? Angry, withdrawn, closed off—living in his own little world. She tried to imagine him as a toddler, a preteen, a teenager, then a young man, lively and engaging. And then she felt it—the moment everything changed. The day her grandmother died.  

“I’m sorry.” She stood, backing away from them both, her chest tight with an ache she couldn’t explain. A flash of her grandmother’s aged, serene face—soft, smiling, radiating warmth—made the pain in her heart feel unbearable, a sudden weight she wasn’t prepared for. Her legs moved on their own, her body acting out the frantic desire to escape. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”  

As she descended the stairs, the house around her shifted. The age didn’t return, but the air felt heavy with memories. The stairs, once cracked and faded, were now spotless, almost unnaturally pristine. The dirt had vanished, as if time itself had been scrubbed away.  

The kitchen gleamed, but the sterile, chemical smell of cleaning products made her stomach churn. Just outside the window, two children ran through the field—playful, carefree. Were these her aunt and uncle? A sickening wave of uncertainty passed through her. Nothing seemed right.  

Just then, her phone buzzed in her pocket, a sharp interruption to her already fractured thoughts. Startled, she fumbled to pull it out and opened it without thinking. Her sister was calling back.  

She snapped it shut before the phone could even ring. The world snapped back to the present with a jarring, painful clarity. No more children laughing, no more clean counters. Just her, alone in this strange, empty space.  

On the ride home, she felt numb, as though her mind had gone into overdrive while her body was stuck in slow motion. The dream—or was it a vision?—kept playing on a loop, its meaning twisting and slipping away each time she tried to grasp it. Had she really just seen her father as a child? Her grandmother as a young woman? The question gnawed at her, but the answer felt like it was just out of reach.  

The winding road blurred into the background, the world outside moving too fast. She could feel the disconnection, the disorienting pull between reality and whatever she had just witnessed. The leaves swirling in the wind outside seemed to echo the chaos in her head, a reminder that she was being swept along, helpless.  

Was it just a dream? Or had she glimpsed something deeper, something real and impossible to ignore? A part of her wanted to believe it, to accept that the past had reached out to her in some mysterious way, but another part of her was terrified by the possibility. What did it mean? Why now?  

A hollow emptiness settled in her chest as she thought of the woman—her grandmother—and the baby, the boy who would grow up to become her father. She couldn’t shake the sense that she was standing on the edge of something she couldn’t yet comprehend, and the weight of it was suffocating.  

In a desperate attempt to escape her spiraling thoughts, she turned on the radio. The familiar crackle of static offered a brief sense of comfort, but the moment the music began, it wasn’t the usual song. It was a soft lullaby—the same one her father used to hum to her when she was a child. Her breath caught in her throat, the melody pulling her back to a time she could barely remember but had never fully forgotten. The sound wrapped around her, both soothing and terrifying. She felt as if she were drowning in a memory, caught between longing and dread.  

“Is this a sign?” She whispered, her voice barely audible, as though speaking the question aloud might make it all too real. The thought hung in the air like a fragile thread, stretching between hope and fear.  

The rest of the drive felt like a dream. Time blurred, and her mind couldn’t hold onto the present. Each passing tree felt like a glimpse back at the mansion, at the house she barely recognized but still seemed to belong to her, somehow. Was she meant to find something there? To uncover the truth buried in the walls of that place? Or was she just unraveling her own mind, chasing ghosts of her past?  

When she finally arrived home, the sun was setting, casting a golden hue over the familiar landscape—but it felt wrong. The world around her felt distant, like she was looking at everything through a fogged window. It was as if the universe had shifted ever so slightly, leaving her unsure of what was real.  

That night, lying in bed, she closed her eyes, but the mansion, the woman, the baby—her grandmother, her father—refused to leave her thoughts. She could still hear the lullaby in her mind, still feel the strange pull toward that place. A place she had never truly known, but now felt irrevocably tied to.  

Her heart ached with the weight of all the questions she couldn’t answer. What had she seen? What did it all mean? She knew she had to go back, to dig deeper, to uncover whatever was buried in the shadows of her family’s past. But the uncertainty was overwhelming.  

As sleep began to claim her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever lay ahead, it would change everything. The past had a way of clawing its way back into the present, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for whatever that might mean.