We moved into the house at the end of spring — an old two-story colonial that looked like it was sagging under the weight of its own history. The realtor called it “full of charm.” What she really meant was “cheap.” My wife and I couldn’t resist, we were desperate to escape our cramped apartment with two kids.
The first night, the house breathed. That’s the only way I can describe it. Old wood expanding and contracting, sighing through the walls. But as I lay there, I swore I heard something beneath the creaks and groans, like a voice buried inside the timber. A muffled whisper, low and steady, as if someone was speaking with cupped hands pressed against the plaster.
I told myself it was just the house settling.
On the third night, my daughter asked me who I was “talking to inside the walls.”
At first, the voices didn’t make sense. Just faint murmurs, shapeless and soft. They came mostly at night, though sometimes, in the stillness of the afternoon, I’d catch a phrase slipping out of the wallpaper.
Then the words grew sharper.
They weren’t random murmurs anymore. They were sentences. And worse, they were sentences meant for us.
“Don’t tell her what you did.”“Remember what happened in 2006.”“She doesn’t know. Not yet.”
The thing is…they were right.
These weren’t secrets you could search on Google. They were things I’d never told a soul. Things I’d buried so deep I sometimes convinced myself I’d imagined them. The walls were digging them up. One by one.
When it started mimicking our voices, I thought I was losing my mind.
I’d be in the kitchen washing dishes, and I’d hear my wife upstairs, calling my name. But when I went up, she was in bed, half asleep, insisting she hadn’t said a word.
Or my son, crying in the night, except when I opened the door, he was fast asleep, while the muffled sobbing bled out from inside the plaster.
Once, I heard my own voice. From inside the wall by the staircase. It whispered: “You shouldn’t have done it. You shouldn’t have done it.”
The voices turned into commands.
“Stay quiet.”“Do it, or we’ll tell.”“Blood seals the secrets.”
At first, I thought it was just a metaphor. Some sick game my subconscious was playing. But one night, the mouths opened.
I don’t mean metaphorical mouths. I mean the paint bubbled and split across the plaster, swelling like blisters until they tore into wet, lipless openings. Pink flesh pushing out into the air. They didn’t look human. Too wide. Too raw.
They spoke in chorus. Hundreds of mouths shaping words with slick tongues dripping spit.
“If you want us silent, you know what to do.”
It began with small demands. Things that almost sounded reasonable.
“Cut yourself.”“Give us what’s inside.”
I stood in the kitchen, the knife trembling in my hand, staring at my wrist. Their mouths opened, hungry for the taste of truth.
I cut myself. Just a line. Barely bleeding. But their mouths sighed. They licked their lips, quivered as if they'd just been fed. And, for the first time in weeks, they fell silent.
I didn’t tell my wife. I couldn’t. But a week later, I noticed the thin scabs on her arm.
***
The children weren’t safe.
One morning, I found my son in the hallway, both palms pressed against the wall, his ear against the plaster. He was nodding, listening, his lips moving as though he were repeating what it told him.
I pulled him away, but the wall wouldn’t stop whispering.
“They know where the matches are.”“They know the things Mommy hides.”“They’ll tell, unless you make them quiet.”
That night, I caught my daughter with a lighter under her pillow. She burst into tears when I took it, whispering: “The walls said if I didn’t know, they’d tell what I did.”
When I asked her what she meant, she just went pale. She never answered. I tried to ignore them. Pretend they weren’t there. That’s when they screamed.
Not whispers, not murmurs — screams. Shrieks so piercing, so deafening, they rattled through every board and beam. You couldn’t think. You couldn’t breathe. We huddled in the living room while the entire house shook with voices roaring:
“DO IT. DO IT. DO IT.”
The mouths tore wider, plaster raining down in chunks, drywall splitting open. I saw them spread across the ceiling, down the staircase, crawling over the floor like wounds ripping open the house.
Every secret I had ever buried bled out of those mouths. They knew everything. And they weren’t bluffing anymore. The night it ended, the walls gave us an ultimatum.
They wanted silence. But silence had a price.
I don’t know if it was my wife’s idea, or the house’s. Maybe both. Maybe, by then, it didn’t matter. The walls wanted blood. They wanted permanent silence. That’s when I realized: maybe it was never about the secrets. Maybe the house was only using them, bait on a hook.
It didn’t want confessions. It wanted obedience.
I’m writing this from a motel, two towns away. The house is empty now, but it won’t stay that way. The realtor will paint over everything, patch the holes, and sell it to some other desperate family chasing charm.
But if you move in, listen closely your first night.
The house will breathe. The walls will whisper. And sooner or later, the mouths will open.
And if they already know your secrets…It’s too late.
The real problem? The voices didn’t stop when we left. The motel walls are thinner. I can hear them through the plaster now, clearer than ever.
They’re not in the house. They’re in us.
***
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