The Hill With the Small, Forgotten Building

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The building on the hill was so small you couldn’t quite tell whether it was a lookout, a ruin, or just some stubborn piece of architecture that refused to fall down. It sat there like a button somebody lost off a coat in the middle of winter. No one came back for it, so it decided to stay.

On certain mornings the lake below turned the color of fresh aluminum shavings. The light sparkled in a way that made you think the water was quietly thinking about electricity. The waves had the polite manners of someone trying not to disturb a sleeping dog.

Across from all this, the hills leaned forward like curious old men. They pretended not to be interested in the little building, but you could tell they were. Every time the wind blew, the pines on their backs whispered gossip about it — how nobody remembered who built it, or why, or what it had been guarding.

I once tried to hike up there to see for myself, but halfway along the ridge I felt like I had walked into someone else’s dream. The ground had that strange hush to it, like the world had switched off its voice so it could listen better. When I stopped to catch my breath, the silence pressed in around me like a long, patient question.

People in town said the building wasn’t haunted, exactly — just inhabited by time in a way regular rooms aren’t. If you opened the door, they claimed, you’d find the last seventy years stacked inside like folded quilts: a 1954 summer breeze, the ghost of a 1978 cigarette, two decades of winters that smelled faintly of pine tar and loneliness.

Nobody had the courage to check.

Down by the water, foam flickered like static on an old TV. I liked to think that if I tuned my eyes just right, I could see a different world playing under the waves — one where the building on the hill still had windows, and someone inside was boiling coffee on a metal stove, waiting for a visitor who never arrived.

The sky darkened the way skies do when they’re thinking about rain but haven’t committed to it. I realized the building might have been waiting too — not for a person, but for a story. Something simple. Something that could keep it company.

When I finally walked back toward town, I glanced over my shoulder one last time. The little building stood there on its lonesome ridge, watching the lake shimmer below like a tired sailor keeping an eye on his ship.

I waved, just in case it was looking.
It didn’t wave back, but the hills seemed pleased anyway.