My grandma passed away 3 years ago, and I inherited her house.
Recently, Dad remarried and moved in, claiming, ‘I’m her son, not you. This house should’ve been mine.’
Later, his wife threw out my things, saying, ‘I live here now. This place has to reflect my standards.’
I smiled. Last night, she screamed in terror—I had…

…never heard fear sound like that before.

It tears through the walls at exactly 2:17 a.m.—raw, animal, jagged. I am awake before the sound even finishes rising, my body already tense, already ready. I sit up in the darkness of my childhood bedroom, the one they shove me into like a storage box when they take over the rest of the house. The scream echoes again, followed by frantic footsteps on the stairs above me.

Something crashes. A lamp, maybe. A chair.

Then silence.

Not the peaceful kind. The thick, choking kind.

I lie back slowly, staring at the ceiling, my lips still curved from the smile I wear earlier that night when she smirks at me while dumping my clothes into black trash bags. I listen to my own breathing, calm and steady, as if I am not part of whatever nightmare just unfolds upstairs.

In the morning, I sit at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee, pretending to scroll my phone while Dad’s new wife—Marla—paces in slow, stiff circles near the window. Her face is pale beneath her makeup. The skin beneath her eyes looks bruised by exhaustion.

She stops suddenly. “Did you hear anything last night?”

I lift my eyes lazily. “Like what?”

She hesitates. Her fingers twitch. “Screaming.”

Dad looks up from his newspaper. “Marla, you said it was a bad dream.”

“It felt real,” she says, her voice tight. “Someone was standing in the room.”

My lips press into the rim of the mug, hiding the smallest quiver of amusement. “Old houses creak,” I say lightly. “Grandma used to say the walls breathe at night.”

Dad lowers the paper, irritation flashing across his face. “Enough with the theatrics.”

Marla’s eyes shift to me. Something flickers there—suspicion, confusion, maybe recognition. She bites down on her words and walks away.

By noon, she locks herself in their bedroom.

By evening, she is drinking.

By midnight, she is crying.

And I am still smiling.

Because this house remembers.

It remembers my grandmother’s laughter in the kitchen, her humming on the stairs, the way her slippers shuffle softly across the floor at night. It remembers how she holds my hand when I cry after one of Dad’s long disappearances. It remembers the promises whispered into the wood itself when she signs the will and presses it into my hands.

“This house is yours,” she tells me. “No matter who comes back thinking they own it.”

And the house listens.

The second night, Marla’s scream is worse.

This time, Dad hears it too.

He rushes from the bedroom in nothing but his shorts, shouting her name, stumbling down the hallway as if the floors tilt beneath his feet. I stay in my room, counting the seconds between sounds—the rushing feet, the crying, the thud against the wall.

Then Dad’s voice shakes through the house. “There’s nothing there.”

“There was something,” Marla sobs. “It stood at the foot of the bed.”

“You’re losing it,” he snaps, fear and anger colliding in his chest.

I hear her whisper something I can’t make out. Then another crash. The bedroom door slams.

The third night, she doesn’t make it back to the bedroom.

She sleeps in the living room with every light on.

I watch from the stairwell as her eyes flutter closed and spring open again in panic, over and over, like a trapped animal waiting for teeth in the dark. At 2:17 a.m., the temperature drops so suddenly I can see her breath fog. The grandfather clock in the corner begins to tick backward.

She sits bolt upright.

Her scream rattles the windows.

Dad finally believes her.

By morning, he looks ten years older. His confidence cracks like dry wood. He grips the kitchen counter as if the house itself is pulling him down through the floor. “This place is sick,” he mutters.

Marla stares at me across the table. “You did this.”

I tilt my head. “Did what?”

“This house,” she whispers. “You’re feeding it.”

Dad slams his fist down. “Enough! You sound insane!”

She recoils as if struck. I almost feel sorry for her.

Almost.

By the fourth night, the house stops hiding.

The doors open by themselves.

The mirrors stop reflecting correctly.

Footsteps echo where no bodies walk.

Dad drinks himself into a shaking stupor, pacing and muttering to himself about pipes and wiring and stress and dreams. But at 2:17 a.m., when the imprint of a hand appears slowly on the inside of the frosted bathroom glass, his denial shatters.

He screams too.

For the first time in my life, I see him afraid.

The house is done being patient.

At dawn, I find Marla sitting on the front porch with her suitcase, rocking back and forth. Her mascara streaks like war paint down her face. When she sees me, she lunges forward and grips my wrist with desperate strength.

“She talks to you,” Marla whispers. “Doesn’t she?”

I look down at her trembling hands. “Grandma always talked to me.”

“She hates me,” Marla sobs. “She wants me gone.”

“She wants what’s hers back,” I reply.

Marla releases my wrist like it burns. She stumbles to her feet and flees down the driveway without looking back.

Dad doesn’t chase her.

He doesn’t even watch her go.

He just sinks onto the porch steps like a man whose bones give up holding him upright.

“You planned this,” he says hoarsely without looking at me.

“No,” I answer. “You did.”

He laughs weakly. “You think screaming in the night scares me away from my own blood?”

I step closer. “You already walked away from your blood years ago.”

Silence falls between us.

Then the porch boards creak beneath invisible weight.

Dad stiffens.

The front door slowly opens behind me.

Cold air spills across our backs.

And Grandma steps into the doorway.

Not the way she looked at the end, fragile and weak. She stands tall now, younger, solid, her eyes steady and sharp with the same quiet authority they always hold in life. The hem of her old house dress never touches the floor. It floats just above it.

Dad turns.

His face drains of color.

“M—Mom?”

She doesn’t speak.

She doesn’t have to.

The air thickens. The walls groan. The house exhales.

Dad collapses to his knees.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes. “I—I deserved it—this house—I just wanted what was mine—”

Grandma raises one hand.

The floor cracks beneath his palms.

He sobs openly now, shoulders shaking, the proud man who once shoved me aside reduced to a trembling child.

“You were never entitled to what you abandoned,” I say quietly.

Grandma looks at me.

She smiles.

And the house releases its grip.

Dad doesn’t move in for three days.

When he finally returns, he comes alone. No anger. No claims. Only hands that shake when he knocks.

I open the door.

He can’t look at me at first.

“I was wrong,” he whispers. “About everything.”

I study him carefully, weighing the truth in his bones as the house does. The walls murmur softly around us.

“I’m not asking for the house,” he adds quickly. “I just… I want to see you. If you’ll let me.”

Grandma watches from the hallway.

I step aside.

The house decides.

From that moment, the nightmares stop.

The clocks tick forward again.

The cold retreats.

Marla never returns—and neither do her things.

Dad moves slowly now, cautiously, as if every step is permission he must earn. He fixes what he breaks. He listens when I speak. He cleans the floors where they once threw out my life like trash.

And every night at 2:17 a.m., I wake to warm air instead of cold.

Sometimes, I hear Grandma humming again.

Sometimes, I see her reflection in the hallway glass.

Sometimes, I swear I feel her hand on my shoulder.

The house is quiet now.

At last.

And for the first time since the inheritance, I am no longer smiling out of survival.

I am smiling because I finally feel at home.