The Name She Used

Only my mother ever called me that.

After her marriage ends, Claire returns to her childhood home with her young daughter, Maisie.

Her mother is dead. The house is unchanged.

Then Claire finds the recordings.

Cassette tapes stretching back decades, labelled in her mother's handwriting by room and date. Kitchen. Hallway. Upstairs. Each one documenting sounds that should not have been there.

Claire begins to listen.

At first, she tells herself there must be an explanation. Old pipes. A settling house. Grief making patterns out of noise.

But her mother had been listening too.

And long before that, so had Claire.

There are things about her childhood she no longer remembers. Things the house seems to have kept for her.

And as Maisie begins to notice them too, Claire is forced to confront a possibility more frightening than anything on the tapes.

Whatever began in this house did not stop with her mother.

It was going through her.