The Sound That Shouldn’t Exist

The Sound That Shouldn’t Exist

By [ WAQAR ALI ]

I moved into the cottage to escape noise.

After ten years in New York City — sirens, subways, neighbors fighting through the walls — my mind felt like a box of shattered glass. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t hear myself without the sound of the world crashing in.

So when I saw a cheap winter rental listed in rural Vermont — a one-bedroom cottage on the edge of a pine forest, no Wi-Fi, no cell service, just quiet — I packed my life into my Honda and left without looking back.

The first two days were exactly what I needed. Silence. Space. Solitude. I sat on the porch, drank black coffee, and listened to birds instead of buses. I read entire books without checking my phone. I thought: this might actually work.

Then, the noise came.

The first time I heard it, I was in bed. The clock read 12:03 a.m. It started faint — a clicking, like a metronome, but irregular. Click… click-click… pause. Then again.

I sat up, wondering if it was something mechanical. Old houses make old noises. Maybe pipes, or an old furnace. It lasted about eight minutes, then stopped.

The next night, same time. Same pattern.

On the third night, I recorded it.

When I played it back the next morning, I got chills. It wasn’t random. The rhythm was intentional. Like someone typing out a message.

I thought I was being paranoid. I told myself it was nothing. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was trying to communicate.

I walked down the road to talk to the property owner, a man named Douglas in his late 60s. He wore a camo jacket and never looked you directly in the eye.

“Old houses make old noises,” he said flatly, when I told him about the sound.

I asked if anyone else had ever reported anything.

“Some folks don’t last long up there,” he muttered. “Don’t mean much. People don’t like being alone with themselves.”

I started locking the bedroom door at night.

On the sixth night, everything changed.

It began with the usual clicks at 12:03 a.m. But this time, under the sound, barely audible — I heard a whisper.

It came from inside the room.

“He hears you now.”

I froze. My body went ice-cold. I turned on every light in the house and sat up with a knife from the kitchen until dawn.

The next day, I drove into the nearest town. I needed answers. At the coffee shop, I showed the recording to the barista — a college-age girl with a nose ring and dark eyes.

She listened twice. Her expression shifted from curiosity to fear.

“That’s the Pines Code,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“Local legend. There used to be a psych hospital near here — Black Pines Institute. Shut down in the early '90s. The patients developed a kind of code — tapping or clicking — to communicate when they weren’t allowed to talk.”

I laughed nervously.

She didn’t.

“One guy — patient #41 — they said he figured out how to get into people’s dreams. Through sound.”

I felt my stomach drop.

She handed me my drink. “That cottage is about two miles from where Black Pines used to be. Just… be careful.”

That night, I didn’t sleep. I wore headphones, blasting white noise.

But at 12:03, I felt a vibration under the floor. I pulled off the headphones.

Click-click.

Pause.

Click.

Then I heard the bedroom door creak open.

I couldn’t move.

No wind. No footsteps. Just… stillness.

Then, right by my ear, a whisper:

“He’s not outside anymore.”

I screamed. Ran barefoot to the car. Drove for two hours straight, until I found a motel with lights and people and signal.

I never went back.

Douglas didn’t act surprised when I called to cancel the lease. All he said was:

“They all leave. Doesn’t matter. Once you hear him…”

He hung up.

I thought leaving would fix it.

But the clicks followed me.

Even in my apartment in Brooklyn — at 12:03 a.m., they return. Soft at first. Then louder. Sometimes from the walls. Sometimes from inside my closet.

I moved again. Three times. Changed phones. Tried therapists. Burned sage. Nothing works.

Last week, my neighbor asked if I was okay. She said she heard clicking through the walls — and a man whispering.

I lied and told her it was just an old podcast.

But last night, when I checked my phone recordings, I heard something new.

A second voice.

Faint, layered under the first. A whisper I didn’t recognize.

It said:

“Say it back.”

And I did.

Click-click.

Pause.

Click.

I don’t know why I did it.

I just know I’m not alone anymore.