Childhood Memory – The House

By the time I was twelve, I had already learned not to tell people about certain things.

Not because anybody had ever called me crazy.

Not exactly.

But I'd seen enough strange looks to know that some things were better left unsaid.

Like how I could meet someone for the first time and somehow know things I had no business knowing.

Or how there were moments when life felt familiar, as if I had already lived them before.

Grandma Mae simply called it remembering ahead.

She never acted surprised when I finished her sentences or answered questions she hadn't asked yet.

She'd just smile and say, "Some folks hear thunder after the lightning. Some of us hear it before."

I didn't know what that meant.

Truthfully, I wasn't sure Grandma did either.

But when I turned twelve, something happened that frightened me enough to stop asking questions altogether.

For seven nights in a row, I dreamed of the same house.

It wasn't fancy.

Just an ordinary house sitting somewhere in town.

Only I couldn't find it.

Every day after school, I'd ride my bike through streets I'd traveled a hundred times before.

I searched roads behind the church.

Roads near the old feed store.

Roads around the cemetery.

Nothing.

It was as if the house only existed while I slept.

And every night, I'd dream it again.

Always the same.

Always standing in the yard.

Always feeling afraid.

Not scared of the house itself.

Scared of what was waiting inside.

By the seventh night, I'd started waking up crying.

Not because I knew what was going to happen.

But because I knew something was.

I couldn't explain how.

I just knew.

And whatever it was, I didn't want any part of it.

Then one Saturday morning, Mama came bursting through Grandma's front door.

"Baby girl, pack your things," she announced.

I remember looking up from the kitchen table, biscuit halfway to my mouth.

"What for?"

Mama smiled.

"We found us a place."

I still remember the feeling that settled in my stomach.

The way the room suddenly felt too warm.

The way my heart started pounding.

And then we pulled into the driveway.

My blood ran cold.

Because I'd been there before.

Seven times.

In my dreams.

The house.

The same white siding.

The same cracked flower bed.

The same crooked porch rail.

I recognized every inch of it.

Mama thought I was nervous.

But I wasn't nervous.

I was grieving.

Because somehow, before she had ever spoken the words, before she'd ever packed my clothes, before I'd ever seen the place with my own eyes...

Some part of me had already known.

And deep down, I knew something else.

I wasn't supposed to be there.

I belonged with Grandma Mae and Grandpa Earl.

But children don't always get to choose where they belong.

So I unpacked my things.

And when the bad things came, just like I'd feared they would...

I decided I didn't want to know anymore.

Whatever strange thing lived inside me, whatever Grandma Mae quietly understood...

I wanted no part of it.

Because knowing ahead of time didn't stop your heart from breaking.

It only made you watch it coming.