Notes: A mother rebuilding her life after domestic violence uncovers a chilling secret in her new home
Isla didn’t notice the house was watching her until the second week. At first, it was just creaks in the floorboards, the way the hallway light flickered when she passed. But then came the whispers. Soft, like breath against glass. She told herself it was the wind. Or the girls talking in their sleep. Maybe trauma, curling around her like smoke. The realtor had called it a “fresh start.” Three bedrooms, a garden, and a clawfoot tub. Isla had signed the lease with trembling hands, her youngest balanced on her hip, Poppy clutching her leg, Mira silent as ever. They’d arrived with garbage bags full of clothes and one box labeled “Important.” Inside were birth certificates, a candle, and a photo of Isla smiling with the kids before everything changed.
Isla lit the candle every night. It was their ritual. One flame, three wishes. Poppy always wished for a puppy. Mira whispers to her kitten she carried and the youngest said “Mama,” and Isla’s heart cracked open. The house was quiet during the day. Isla found work at a local bakery, part-time, enough to buy groceries and keep the lights on. She walked the girls to school, made lists, and folded laundry. She was rebuilding. Brick by brick and breath by breath.
But by night, the house changed. It started with a door in the hallway. Isla hadn’t noticed it before, narrow and painted the same colour as the wall. One night, while brushing her teeth, she saw it slightly ajar. Inside was a staircase, steep and dark. She closed it gently, and heart thudded.
The next morning, she asked the landlord. “Oh, that old thing?” He said. “Just a storage crawlspace. Nothing down there but dust.” Isla didn’t believe him. She started dreaming of the house in her dreams, and the walls pulsed like lungs. The candle wouldn’t light. Her daughters vanished, their voices echoing from beneath the floorboards.
One night, Isla woke to find Mira standing at the foot of her bed. “The kitten says someone’s in the crawlspace,” Mira whispered. Isla sat up, heart hammering. “What do you mean, baby?” Mira pointed. “He says she’s sad and she’s cold.” Isla didn’t sleep after that.
The next day, she bought a flashlight. Waited until the girls were at school and opened the door. The crawlspace was narrow, lined with old bricks and cobwebs. Isla descended slowly, the air growing colder with each step. At the bottom was a small room, unfurnished, and damp. In the corner sat a trunk. Isla hesitated, then opened it. Inside were children’s clothes, a faded stuffed bear and a journal. Isla opened the journal with shaking hands. The handwriting was delicate, and looping. The entries spoke of a girl named Eliza. Of bruises, of silence and of a mother who never came back. Isla read until the words blurred then she called the police.
They found bones beneath the floorboards. Small, fragile and forgotten. The landlord was arrested. He'd inherited the house from his brother,who'd once fostered children. No records,no graves, they were just ghosts. Isla lit the candle that night with trembling hands. Poppy wished for justice, Mira whispered to her kitten and the youngest said "Mama," and Isla held them close. She didn't move out. She painted the crawlspace door bright yellow. Planted sunflowers in the garden and told Eliza's story to anyone who would listen. Because sometimes, healing means staying. Sometimes, survival means bearing witness. And sometimes, the house that watched you becomes the house you protect.
Weeks passed, Isla’s job at the bakery turned into full-time. She started saving and she brought the girls matching raincoats and a secondhand bike. Isla began writing again. Fiction, memoir, and fragments of memory that turned into art. She wrote about candles and crawlspaces and mothers who saved their daughters by saving themselves.
One afternoon, Mira came home with a drawing. “It’s our house,” she said. “But I added wings.” Isla smiled. “Why wings?” “So it can fly away if it gets sad again.” Mira said.
That night, Poppy lit the candle and whispered, “We are safe. We are whole. We are becoming.” But the house wasn’t done speaking because the next morning,Poppy pointed at the garden. “She’s there,” she said. “Eliza.” Mira followed her gaze. Nothing but sunflowers but the wind shifted, and Mira felt it, like someone brushing past her shoulder. Mira dug that afternoon. Beneath the roots, she found a rusted tin box. Inside were photos of children, notes and a lock of hair. She turned the box over to the detectives and they reopened the case. More names and more silence broken. Isla became a witness, a voice and a mother who didn’t look away. She started a support group in the neighbourhood. Survivors came with stories, with scars and with candles of their own.
The house on Wren Street became a place of remembering, of reckoning and of rebirth. Every night, Poppy lit the candle. One flame, three wishes and one truth. She had saved what mattered and what she saved had saved her back. The house on Wren Street had once held since, now it held a song and Isla, who had once been afraid to speak, now taught others how to listen. She began keeping a second journal, this one not for herself, but for the house. She wrote down the names of every person who came through the door and left lighter. She recorded the stories they were brave enough to share, she pressed petals between the pages. Sunflower and lavender, and sometimes a single feather from the wrens that nested in the eaves.
One evening, after the girls were asleep, Isla sat at the table with a cup of tea and the journal opened before her. She wrote: “Tonight, Eliza laughed for the first time. It startled her, startled all of us. But then we laughed too. And it felt like something cracked open like spring.” Isla then paused, pen hovering then added “I think the house is healing too.”
In the months that followed, Isla applied for a grant to turn the house into a community space. She called it “The Wren House.” A place for women and children starting over. A place where no one had to explain their bruises or their silence, and where the walls didn’t just listen, they remembered. The grant came through. Small, but enough. Enough to repaint the porch, to build shelves for books and toy, to install a second lock on the front door and one that clicked with certainty.
Poppy helped design the new sign. She drew a bird in flight, its wings made of flames. “Because we rose,” she said. Mira planted a circle of wildflowers around the crawlspace door. “So she’s never alone,” she whispered. Isla stood in the centre of the living room one morning. Sunlight poured through the windows, and felt something settle in her chest. Not fear, not grief, but something quieter, something like peace. Poppy lit the candle. One flame and three wishes. “For safety,” she said aloud. “For truth. For every girl who thought she had to disappear.” The flame flickered, steady and gold.
Outside, the wren sang.
Bio:
Brittany Szekely is a mother of three living in Mount Tarampa,QLD, Australia. I'm a writer of poems and short stories and sometimes paints abstract art.