Return
It begins with the silence of the train. Not true silence, of course. There’s the hum of the engine, the soft thud of the wheels, the whispers of a few travelers behind me. But compared to the city, this is a stillness that makes my ears ring. It’s as if the sounds here dissolve, swallowed by the plains we travel through. I’ve always disliked this route,leaving Amsterdam, passing the meadows, heading towards Drenthe. The farther you go, the quieter it becomes, the emptier the horizon, and the longer you get lost in your own thoughts.
I gaze out the window. The landscape slides by, bare trees, wet meadows, murky ditches where geese float above. It’s late October, the sky leaden with clouds, as though the sun has long abandoned the effort to rise. My breath fogs up the glass. I wipe it away with my sleeve. It feels as if I’m traveling backward in time, to a version of myself I left behind long ago.
The phone in my coat pocket vibrates softly. I don’t need to look to know who it is. Thomas. My brother’s texts have been arriving since last night, short messages, each one a little more urgent than the last. When will you be here? The house isn’t empty. You need to see it yourself.
I haven’t spoken to him much in recent years. Even less so after our parents died. A brief message now and then on holidays, mostly unanswered. He stayed in Drenthe. I went to the city. Two worlds, two lives. But now… something in his voice, perhaps panic, has drawn me here.
As the train approaches the small station, a stab of nervousness jolts through my stomach. The platform is almost empty, two students in hoodies, an old woman with a shopping bag. I step off, and the cold grabs at my collar. The air smells of damp earth and fallen leaves.
I pause for a moment, allowing the shift in atmosphere to sink in. A long time ago, I’d walked this very path, but it feels foreign now, as if this place has become a shadow of what it once was. It’s beautiful in its decay, yet ominous.
Thomas isn’t waiting. Not that I’m surprised. He was never good with promises. I slip my hands deep into my coat pockets and make my way toward the parking lot. There, leaning against an old Volvo, a cigarette dangling from his fingers, stands Thomas. The faded blue of the car is almost grey, as if the vehicle had been rotting in the rain for years. Rust eats away at the wheel wells, and the metal flakes off like dried skin. The headlights are dull, clouded eyes that have seen too much, and wish to remain closed. It’s no longer a car, but a carcass barely holding itself upright.
His hair is longer than I remember, greasy against his temples. He doesn’t look up immediately as I approach, as if he’s only startled out of sleep when I stand before him.
“Eva,” he says, his voice hoarse, cracked, much like the sound of the Volvo’s engine starting up. “Thomas.”
We don’t say anything else. He flicks his cigarette to the ground and stomps it out. His eyes slide past me, avoiding mine, as though he’s afraid I might see in him the same decay that his car wears so openly.
The Volvo creaks as he opens the door. The air inside smells of cold smoke, moisture, and old fabric, as if the upholstery had been waiting for years to be forgotten. The steering wheel is smooth from use, the dashboard cracked, but somehow, it holds itself together. Just like Thomas. He’s had the car for so long that it’s almost as if it’s become a part of him. Every scratch, every patch of rust tells a story.
When the engine roars to life, it’s as if something long asleep has been awakened, something that might have been better left undisturbed. The growl is heavy, raspy, and with each gear shift, the transmission grinds like it’s protesting any movement. Thomas shifts with an odd tenderness, as if trying to keep something fragile alive. As if the car, like him, could fall apart at any moment.
The drive to our childhood home is short, but each meter feels like it’s moving through molasses. Outside, the landscape slips by, narrow dikes, winding ditches, farmhouses standing like dark sentinels over the emptiness. Everything seems smaller than in my youth, yet also more menacing, as if the land itself is closing in around us. Inside the Volvo, the air is thick with smoke and silence. It feels less like the car is carrying us, and more like we’re trapped within it, trapped in the void it creates.
Thomas doesn’t speak. His hands are clenched tightly around the wheel, his knuckles white. I decide to remain silent too. What is there to say after so many years?
The road winds through the land like a scar. It’s the same land from our childhood, yet it feels strange now. A quiet stage abandoned by its actors. The ditches lie still, like black mirrors that reflect nothing but darkness. They swallow sound and color, leaving behind only a hollow silence. The trees are frozen in place along the dikes, their branches reaching like fingers toward some unseen presence. The fields undulate slowly, not from the wind, but as if the earth itself breathes with a slow, hidden rhythm that makes everything beneath your skin quiver. Everything feels locked in, like a breath held too long, now straining to be released.
In the distance, the house comes into view. Our childhood home, but warped, as if someone had twisted the image in their hands. The whitewashed walls have taken on the color of old bones. Places where the plaster has crumbled away look like flesh melting off a skeleton. The roof lies heavy, weighed down with moss and rot, the ridge crooked, as if the house holds more secrets than it can bear. The windows are dull, not just dirty, but dim from within, as if something inside refuses to let in the light. The yard is overgrown. Grass clumps up like warts, paths hidden beneath thick, wet brambles. The wind sweeps across the land, carrying the scent of mud, wet wood, something sweet and faintly rotten that I can’t place. It smells like an old, sealed cellar.
I inhale, and it feels like I’m breathing through a pipe, short, unnatural. As if I’ve run into a wall of memories that echoes back, hard and cold. The Volvo rolls up the gravel path, and the sound is too loud in the silence, screeching, grinding, exposing the yard like an open wound. We step out. The wind bites into my neck, making my hair stand stiff against my skin. Branches tap against the wall like nails trying to pry something open.
Thomas walks ahead of me. His shoulders are tense, his steps slow and deliberate, as though he’s following a ritual he’s put off for years. He pulls the key from his coat, and the movement feels ancient, ingrained. He stands before the door. His hand trembles slightly as he turns the lock. Before he opens it, he glances back at me, and in that look, there is no reassurance. Only an unspoken message. A warning, almost.
“The house isn’t empty,” he says softly, and the words fall like stones into a deep well.
The door creaks open with a sigh that doesn’t come from the wood, but from something that has been waiting longer than I have. Inside, it’s dark in a way that absorbs the light. The hallway swallows our footsteps, turning them into soft echoes, as if the house itself is measuring our movements, using them against us. A shadow of furniture is outlined in the gloom, but nothing adheres to familiar shapes. Everything is shifted, a chair a little off, a rug half-rolled, as though someone had hastily gotten up. There’s a layer of dust in the air that weighs down our breath. Something that sounds like soft movement, as though something in the distance is shifting or changing position as we approach.
My hand instinctively reaches out to find something to hold onto and brushes against the cold paint of the doorframe. Something in me says we should have driven past. Something deeper, though, says that we can’t leave now. Outside, the landscape closes around the house like a ring, and inside, between the breaths we share and the silences we’re too afraid to fill, something begins to listen.
Inside, it smells of dust and damp. The interior hasn’t changed much since our childhood. The old sideboard, the yellowing curtains, the clock on the wall that has been still for years. As if time has frozen here. My heart beats louder.
I follow Thomas into the living room. Everything seems intact, the house’s scent the same, but there’s something in the air… a tension, a charged silence that I can’t place. It’s as though the house itself is breathing in and out, as if it lives.
Thomas sinks into our mother’s chair, the old leather armchair that always fit her so well. He settles into it as if it has always been his, as if it now belongs to him. It feels strange to see him there. I never expected him to return to the house, let alone stay in it. The last time we spoke, he planned to clear it out, sell everything, so he could finally close the door on it. That was the plan, right?
He looks at me sharply, his eyes darker than I remember. “You have to believe me, Eva. The house… it’s alive. There’s something here… something I can’t explain.”. I frown. “But… why did you stay, Thomas? You wanted to sell everything, clear the place out. You said it was over. This house... it’s no longer a home for us, is it?”
Thomas sighs deeply, his gaze drifting to the tall windows that let in the dim light. He seems to be searching for something, something within the space, as if he’s not entirely in the room. “It’s hard to explain. When I came back here for the first time, it felt like I had to finish something. Like there was something unresolved, something... that wasn’t ready to be let go.” His voice softens, and he pauses, searching for the right words. “The house… it needs something from us. And I think I’m the one who has to understand it.”
I can’t suppress my bewilderment. “What do you mean by that, Thomas?”
He looks at me directly now, his eyes intense, almost pleading. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but there’s a connection. Not just between us and the house, but between the house itself and… what happened. The walls carry something. A kind of burden. It’s like it doesn’t want us to leave.”
A shiver runs down my spine. The room feels suddenly colder, though the sun still filters in through the windows. “But if it’s… ‘alive’ like you say, why would you want to stay here? Why would you want to live here?”
He gives a faint smile, a bittersweet one, that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Because it won’t let me go, Eva. I can’t escape it. And maybe… maybe I need to understand it before I can leave.”
There’s something in his voice that unnerves me. It’s like a battle, an inner struggle that I can’t see but he clearly feels. This isn’t just a house to him. And it doesn’t seem like it’s just a house to me either.
I feel my stomach tighten. “Maybe… maybe it’s just everything you’ve been through here. The memories. They can feel so real sometimes. Like they never leave us.”
He laughs bitterly. “You still believe it’s all in your head. But not this. This… this is different. The house isn’t empty. It wants you back.”
His words send a chill down my spine. I don’t want to follow him down this path, but the fact that I’m here already, that I’m standing in this decaying house, proves his words are taking root.
We eat in silence, the bread he found in the house barely enough to keep the hunger at bay. Outside, the light fades as the rain starts to patter against the windows. I wander through the rooms, each corner echoing with forgotten memories. The scent of our mother’s cooking, Thomas’s laughter, the nights I lay awake, listening to voices that might have only existed in my mind.
I stop before the door of the old childhood room. The wood is peeling, the lock rusted. A suffocating sense creeps over me. I turn back and return to the living room.
That night, I hardly sleep. I lie in my old bed, the covers pulled tightly around me, the darkness thick and heavy. The house creaks as old houses do, but in the silence, I swear I hear soft footsteps. Slow, rhythmic, moving through the hallway. My breath catches. I listen intently. Then, nothing.
Maybe it’s my imagination. Or maybe it isn’t.
When I finally slip into sleep, I dream I’m descending the stairs, and there, at the end of the hallway, I see a figure. A child, its long hair falling over its face. It points toward the door of the childhood room. I want to scream, but my voice sticks in my throat. The child turns slowly, vanishing through the door.
I wake with a start, sweating, my heart pounding. From the darkness, I swear I hear those same footsteps again, right outside my bedroom door.
