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Memory is an awesome burden, the blessings of days past, and the curse of days lost. It reminds you of better times, and haunts you with wasted time. It's detrimental, and necessary for us. It is a curse we are blessed with for our entire lives.

Knowing this could have salvaged my sanity, when I decided to revisit my youth.

---

It had been four months, and I thought that the void had filled. I thought myself strong enough to handle the wreck of emotions congealing in that house. The ride seemed sallow, but not malicious. The door stood slightly ajar, as if the house had acknowledged my arrival. I should have turned around right then, and walked out. I should have waited for years before entering.

The slight hum of the wind should have given away the house's methods of madness. Woodpeckers had bored holes into the wood after wood-sharks had come and sold all the trees for timber. Pictures hung sloppily on the wall. Pictures of my brother and I. Pictures of our family. Pictures that can never happen again.

Up the stairs, into my old bedroom. A red stain graced the carpet, where only immaculent whiteness had reigned. The bodies had been long since removed and buried, but not a single person had thought to clean up after the attack. How could something this degrading happen in such a bastion of piety? Why must life always end in its prime?

The house began to play with my mind again. Hallucinations sprung to my eyes of days past. Where my younger brother and I had played in this very room. Where we ate meals secretly when Dad was away for work. Where we dressed up as knights to fight off various menaces. This house is evil. This house uses what I cannot be rid of to drive me insane.

Before leaving, I thought it wise to visit the graves. Three set together, and one deep back in the woods. First, I went to the garden, to visit the final resting-place of my father, mother, and brother. Tears flowed like a wellspring from my eyes, slowly paramounting my eyelids, and dripped off my chin.

Finally dragging myself off of the sight of my childhood washed away, I meaningfully trudged to the wood. Finding a simple stone, underneath which layed a dastardly murderer. Something of a torment came over me, and I found a rock. Defacing his final resting-place seemed like a small price for him to pay for killing my family, even after being shot.

While walking back, the house broke me. Finding a propane torch in the shed, I lit the place of my youth up in flames. Watching the house go up seemed to slake the curse of memory placed upon me.

---

That house is no longer haunting me with the curse of memory. The arcane is more mediocre than we think it to be. The most destructive power we are born with is that of memory. Of guilt. Of torment.