"There's a house, you see, on Calle Roja," the old man began, his voice low and measured, as if the weight of the story might slip out too quickly if he didn't control it. The flicker of candlelight cast long shadows across the room, dancing off the walls like dark figures. His grandchildren huddled close on the floor, blankets pulled tight under their chins.
"You know the one I mean. It's the old, crumbling house at the edge of the village, near the olive grove. Everyone avoids it now, but when I was a boy… well, let's just say it wasn't always that way."
The children's eyes widened. They had walked by the house on occasion, always keeping their distance. The windows, dark and cracked, seemed to watch you as you passed, and the door was permanently locked, as though it was holding something in. The garden was overgrown, filled with thorny weeds that twisted around the iron gate like the fingers of a giant.
Their grandfather continued.
"It wasn't abandoned back then. A family lived there—the Martín family. They were quiet folk, never really came to the town square or joined in festivals, but they weren't unfriendly. Just… distant. The kind of people who didn't quite belong. And you could tell there was something different about them, something not quite right. But we didn't pay much attention to it. No one did, not at first."
He paused, leaning back in his chair, as if remembering something that had been buried deep in his mind for years.
"I used to play with their youngest son, Tomás. He was strange too—always quiet, watching the world like he was waiting for something to happen. He wasn't like the other boys. He didn't run or laugh or shout. He just followed, like a shadow. But the real strangeness? That began with the house itself."
The children shifted nervously, sensing the shift in their grandfather's tone. It was no longer just a story. It was a memory.
"You see," the old man continued, "the house was… wrong, somehow. Oh, it looked normal enough from the outside—just old stone and wood, like any other in the village. But inside, things were different. People said the rooms were too big. Or too small. That the doors led to places they shouldn't. That if you walked through the house, you'd feel something following you, just out of sight."
He shook his head, a thin smile playing on his lips. "We didn't believe any of it back then. Just stories, we thought. But the truth was there, waiting for anyone foolish enough to pay attention."
The children glanced at each other, wide-eyed, and one of them asked in a whisper, "Did you go inside, abuelo?"
Their grandfather nodded slowly, his eyes distant. "Once. Just once."
It had been a dare, of course. Boys will be boys, as they say, and back then, fear was something you had to swallow if you wanted to prove yourself. Tomás had invited him in—quietly, as he always did. There was no laughter, no teasing. Just the suggestion, soft and simple: "Come see the house."
The inside had felt colder than it should have. The air clung to his skin, thick and still, and the walls seemed to lean inward, as though the house itself was breathing around him. He had told himself it was just his imagination.
But then, there were the mirrors.
"They were everywhere," the old man said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "In every room, on every wall. Some were big, some small, but they all reflected the house in a way that didn't quite make sense. If you looked too long, you'd swear the room in the mirror wasn't the same as the one you were standing in. Things were off—shadows in the wrong places, furniture turned the wrong way, even reflections that moved… slower than they should."
He remembered standing in front of one mirror in particular. It had been in the hallway, tall and narrow, framed in dark wood. The reflection showed him and Tomás standing side by side. But something was wrong with the way his own eyes looked back at him—dull, blank, as though they belonged to someone else entirely. And Tomás… well, in the reflection, Tomás wasn't looking at him at all. He was staring straight into the mirror, his lips moving silently, like he was speaking to someone on the other side.
"I looked away as quickly as I could," the old man said, "but the feeling stayed with me. That feeling that the mirrors… saw you. Not just reflected you, but really saw you. Like they were watching you for a reason."
One of the children tugged at the edge of the blanket. "But you left, right, abuelo? You didn't stay long?"
"Oh, I left," he replied softly. "But that house—it stayed with me. Once you've been inside, once you've looked into those mirrors, you can't quite shake it. You feel the house wherever you go. In the back of your mind, in the corner of your eye, it's always there."
He paused, his fingers tracing the edge of his chair as though he was weighing his next words.
"The Martín family disappeared not long after that. People say they left in the middle of the night—packed up their things and vanished without a word. No one saw them leave, but by morning, the house was empty. The villagers assumed they'd moved to another town, maybe even the city. But there were no letters, no messages. It was as if they'd never existed."
For a while, the house stood empty, silent as ever. And then, slowly, people began to notice things.
"The olive grove," he said, "started to wither. The trees, once full and rich with fruit, grew twisted and blackened. The grass around the house died, leaving nothing but hard, cracked earth. And the windows, those dark windows—no matter the time of day, no matter how bright the sun, they were always black. Like the house had swallowed the light."
By now, no one dared go near it. Even the bravest souls in the village avoided Calle Roja at night. Some said they still heard whispers in the wind as it passed through the olive trees, voices too faint to understand but impossible to ignore.
"Of course, most people forgot about it after a while," the old man said, though his voice held a hint of doubt. "Time has a way of making us forget the things we don't want to remember. But the house never went away. It's still there, waiting."
The children huddled closer, their imaginations racing with images of the twisted olive grove and the dark, empty windows. One of them, the youngest, finally spoke up.
"But, abuelo, what happened to Tomás?"
The old man's eyes grew distant again, lost somewhere in the memories he had spent a lifetime trying to bury.
"Well," he said slowly, "that's the thing about that house. Once you go in, it never quite lets you go. You see, after the Martín family left, people stopped asking questions. They didn't want to know what happened to them. Didn't want to think about it. But I—well, I always wondered. And sometimes, when I walk by that house, I swear…"
He hesitated, his voice faltering as though speaking the words aloud would make them true.
"I swear I can see Tomás, just for a moment. Standing in the window, looking out. But it's never quite him, you see. It's like the house remembers him the way it wanted him to be, not the way he really was."
The children sat frozen, staring at their grandfather, the firelight casting shadows that seemed to shift and twist along the walls.
"And every time I see him," he continued, his voice barely a whisper, "he's always looking straight at me. As if he's waiting for me to come back inside."
There was silence, heavy and thick, as the old man leaned back in his chair, his eyes closing for a moment as if the weight of the story had finally tired him.
The candle flickered once, twice, and then, with a soft pop, it went out.
In the darkness, the children huddled closer, their breath caught in their throats. They wouldn't speak of the story again, at least not that night. And none of them would walk past the old house on Calle Roja without feeling the weight of unseen eyes upon them, watching from the windows, waiting for someone—anyone—foolish enough to come closer.