The Whispers

By the third night, Noah had stopped pretending the house was empty.

It wasn’t the footsteps anymore. It wasn’t the creaking floors or the flickering lights. It was the voices—soft, rhythmic murmurs that rose and fell like breathing. Sometimes they said his name. Sometimes they said nothing at all.

He tore open the wallpaper in the upstairs hallway, convinced it was just air moving through cracks. But behind the paper, he found words carved into the plaster—hundreds of them, overlapping, written in jagged, desperate strokes.

STAY.  
LISTEN.  
DON’T LEAVE.

He covered them back up, but the whispers didn’t stop. They grew louder, clearer, more insistent. They came from the walls, the floors, the pipes—everywhere at once.

He tried to record them. The tape hissed with static, but beneath it, faint voices bled through.

“He’s here.”
“He’s listening.”
“He remembers.”

Noah played the tape back again and again, but each time, the voices changed. They began to use his words—phrases he’d spoken aloud in the house. His own voice, distorted and hollow, whispering things he didn’t remember saying.

“I’ll stay.”
“I’ll listen.”
“I won’t leave.”

He unplugged the recorder and threw it away.

That night, the whispers came from inside his room.
From the walls.
From the mirror.
From the space between breaths.

He pressed his hands to his ears, but the sound was inside his head now—his own voice, whispering back.

“You’re home.”

The next morning, he found new carvings beneath the wallpaper.
Fresh ones.
Still damp.

WELCOME BACK.