The Museum

On opening day, the street shimmered with excitement. 

Crowds had gathered, rosy-cheeked, scarves looped tight. Kids bounced on their toes, holding strings of helium balloons. 

 

The mayor, a tall man with smoke-grey hair and a camel coat, cleared his throat and raised his voice over the crowd.

 

“Here’s to history—and to remembering who we are.”

 

He cut the ribbon.

 

The wind picked up. Scattered applause rolled down the street like dry leaves.

 

✦

 

The museum was a hit.

 

The old theater had been demolished for this. Once an old brick-red and crumbling vaudeville hall. Now a sleek and modern cathedral. 

 

The town’s attempt to matter again. “A symbol of progress,” they’d said, “a landmark to put us on the map.”

 

And it worked.

 

Families came every weekend. Students on field trips traced timelines with their fingers. Retirees lingered by paintings with solemn, admiring silence. 

 

The exhibits rotated monthly—prehistoric bones one week, surrealist art the next. A marble statue of a faceless woman became the unofficial mascot. They called her Vera.

 

The museum was everything the town had hoped for. Clean halls. Grand exhibits. Artifacts behind glass. Sculptures placed in pools of soft white light. People came from the highway, filling cafes. Snapping photos on the stone steps. Locals beamed with pride. 

 

From the café across the street, Drew watched the visitors stream in and out every day. 

 

He worked there part-time, mostly shelving, sometimes brewing coffee when it was busy. Not the most exciting job, but safe, familiar. 

 

The museum didn’t interest him, really. He didn’t think about the past much. He preferred things without stakes. Coffee. Schedules. Dishes that could be stacked. Washed. Forgotten. 

 

But then came the stories.

 

 

✦

 

First, a boy went missing. A red-haired kid, maybe six. His mother screamed loud enough that everyone in the foyer turned. Security scrambled. The museum was shut down for an hour.

 

They found him crouched behind the woolly mammoth, giggling. He’d been playing hide-and-seek—with who, he wouldn’t say.

 

Then: a group of teens snuck in close to closing. Loud. Filming TikToks. One girl, Sarah, didn’t come out with the others. They thought she’d already left.

 

She turned up the next morning, sitting stiffly on the porch of her family’s farmhouse just outside town.

 

Barefoot. Mud crusted on her palms. Her hair was soaking wet, though it hadn’t rained.

 

She didn’t speak for two days.

 

When she finally did, she gave no explanation. She hadn’t remembered a thing. 

 

 

✦

 

Another incident: a janitor, Gerald, stopped coming to work. But his niece found his keys and wallet still sitting on his kitchen table, his boots by the door.

 

A security guard quit without explanation. She left her badge on the information desk and walked out mid-shift. 

 

When pressed, she said only: “The museum watches you back.”

 

No one knew what she meant. But since then, people avoided the East Wing after dusk. Even the tour guides were said to move faster through that corridor—hers—their heels echoing a little sharper on the marble floor. 

 

People claimed they heard whispering in empty rooms. Lights flickered, blamed on faulty wiring. 

 

Then came the rumours, spreading like spilled coffee behind the counter at Drew's cafe—fast, messy, and impossible to clean up.

 

Some said the building was haunted. Others said it was cursed—built on land that once held graves or ruins. Some said the art itself was cursed, that pieces arrived without a sender.

 

Drew dismissed it all. Towns got bored. People invented things. 

 

But still, when he looked out at the museum from the café window, something itched just beneath his ribs.

 

It wasn’t just that it seemed too big for the town.

 

It was that it seemed older than it should be.

 

Like it hadn’t been built at all.

 

Like it had been waiting.

 

 

✦

 

Drew went in on a Tuesday.

 

Thin sunlight poured through tall windows. The lobby smelled like lemon polish and old stone. 

 

A security guard yawned behind the welcome desk, families in the lobby, someone coughing near the coat check, a toddler wailing by the snack bar. It all felt normal. Comfortably normal. 

 

Drew drifted through the well-curated exhibits. Clean. Quiet. The mammoth loomed. Well-preserved ancient coins. Portraits of local dignitaries. A room of sculptures caught golden light in all the right places.

 

He paused by a portrait of a woman in a red dress. Her eyes were empty sockets. The plaque read only: Untitled.

 

He moved on.

 

Beside a doorway, curtained in dark red velvet, a polished plaque read:

 

The Room of Lost Things

Special Installation—East Wing

 

It wasn’t on the pamphlet. 

 

He looked around. No one else seemed to notice. 

 

He hesitated—then stepped inside.

 

 

✦

 

The curtain, heavier than it looked, fell behind him with a hush.

 

The Room of Lost Things was carpeted in a deep, mossy green. It smelled of dust, lavender, and something like soil after rain. 

 

The lighting was dim, warm, unnatural. Overhead, low bulbs buzzed faintly like insects.

 

Shelves lined the walls—floor to ceiling—holding objects under glass. But they weren’t artifacts or antiques.

 

They were… personal.

 

A single mitten, wool fraying at the cuff. 

 

A chipped blue teacup with lipstick still on the rim.

 

A child’s drawing with faded crayon lines.

 

A cassette tape labeled “Dad’s Song.”

 

Hairpins, a Polaroid, scraps of paper. 

 

Each item had a tag in clean, italicized script:

 

Eleanor’s Courage

Jasper’s Last Lie

My Father’s Voice

Amy’s First Breath

 

Drew moved slowly, heart crawling up his throat.

 

He rounded a corner—and stopped.

 

At eye level: three glass cases. 

 

Inside one was a bow tie, for a child, its label read: Henry Thatcher — Returned

 

The mayor. 

 

Another was a yellow gardening glove, its label read: Angela Greaves — Returned

 

The third held a small toy boat, painted blue, with a frayed white sail. Familiar in a way that made his jaw clench and his hairs spike.

 

Tag:

Drew’s First Memory 

 

And underneath it in smaller print:

 

Drew Ward — Lost

 

His stomach dropped.

 

He couldn’t look away.

 

Hands trembling, he reached out—fingertips brushing the glass.

 

A memory floods him:

 

He’s seven.

 

Snow crunches beneath his boots. The woods are silent.

 

There’s a weight in his chest. Guilt? Dread?

 

He’s digging fast, bare-handed, snow-laced soil under his nails.

 

He pulls something from his coat. A photograph? No—a note. Folded.

 

He glimpses the lines: Sorry about the pond. Don’t tell mom. 

 

He buries it.

 

Behind him, someone exhales. A woman stands there. 

 

Mrs. Greaves. The old neighbor who used to garden barefoot, who smelled like lemon soap and smoked clove cigarettes.

 

He remembers her eyes always watching—kind, patient.

 

But not now. Not in the memory.

 

In the memory, her eyes are scooped hollow, and her mouth twitches like it’s remembering too much.

 

She tilts her head, fingers brushing Drew’s cheek like ice. Smiles.

 

“Remember,” she whispers.

 

And he does. 

 

 

✦

 

Drew gasps.

 

He’s back in the room.

 

Heart racing. Sweat slick on his palms.

 

He stumbles back from the shelf.

 

But the shelf is gone.

 

Where the boat had been, there’s only wall.

 

He spins—looking for the curtain—but there’s no exit. No velvet. No doorway.

 

Only a cold breath of breeze at his neck.

 

 

✦

 

He’s outside.

 

Staggering forward, blinking.

But—

 

The street is wrong.

 

The cars are gone. The bookstore across the street is a broken husk, windows shattered, vines thick around its frame. The café is a crumbling shell.

 

The banner that once read GRAND OPENING TODAY flaps in pieces, its letters faded to nothing.

 

Drew turns to the museum. His breath catches.

 

It’s decayed.

 

Rotting.

 

Marble cracked, pillars leaning. Moss thick along the doors. The glass panels are blackened like burned skin. A darkness presses from inside, like it’s watching.

 

He stumbles forward, toward a rusted plaque barely legible beneath grime.

 

He scrapes it clean with his sleeve.

 

EST. 1842

The Museum of Memory & Loss

Site of the Original Township

Disbanded: 1860

 

He stares. Breath frozen in his throat.

 

The wind rises, low and strange, like distant voices humming through the walls.

 

 

✦

 

The museum hadn’t opened weeks ago.

 

It appeared.

 

And everything else had grown up around it—like weeds around a grave. 

 

Now, the illusion was gone. 

And all that remained was what had been buried. 

 

And the town—

 

The town had been built around it.

 

And forgotten.

 

 

✦

 

A teenage boy, phone light in hand, lifts the red velvet curtain to a room lined with glassed items. Many items are labeled with names followed by “— Lost”

 

But a few scattered cases catch his eye:

 

One small lamp, its label reading: Sarah Conrad — Lost

 

The teenage boy remembers that the name belonged to the girl who stopped speaking for two days in town. 

 

Another: a folded handkerchief, its label reading: James Phillips — Lost

 

A yellow gardening glove, its label reading: Angela Greaves — Returned

 

And another: a small toy boat, blue paint chipped.

 

He leans closer to the glass. 

 

From the boat, something breathes, “Remember.”

 

He takes a step closer, reaches for it as he reads the label:

 

Drew Ward — Returned 

 

---

Photo by Pierre-Etienne Vilbert on Unsplash