The Echo Collector
Every night at exactly 3:11 A.M., the house spoke.
At first, Mara convinced herself it was just the building settling—an old colonial home with old colonial problems: rattling pipes, warping wood, air slipping through ancient vents like sighs from a sleeping beast. She was new to living alone, new to living anywhere quiet enough for her own heartbeat to sound like an intruder. So when she heard the first whisper one night in early November, she didn’t panic.