The House That Whispers

M Mehran

The townspeople never went near the Holloway house after dark. Children dared each other to touch its rusted gate, teenagers whispered about the shadows in its windows, and old men swore they heard screams on moonless nights. But still, the house stood—quiet, rotting, waiting.

Mara wasn’t one to believe in stories. She was a journalist, trained to seek truth behind superstition. When her editor suggested an article about “the most haunted house in town,” she rolled her eyes. But a deadline was a deadline, and so one autumn evening she walked up the broken path toward Holloway house with nothing but a flashlight, a recorder, and her notebook.

The air grew colder as she approached. The trees around the house leaned inward, branches like claws. Shingles dangled from the roof, the porch sagged, and the windows looked less like glass than black, unblinking eyes.

“Just a house,” Mara muttered, pushing the gate open. The screech of metal echoed far too loud.

Inside, the air was stale, thick with mildew. Dust floated in her flashlight beam. The floorboards groaned under each step, as if the house were shifting in its sleep.

She clicked on her recorder. “September 14th, 9:42 p.m. Entering Holloway residence. No activity so far.”

Her voice sounded small in the vast silence.

She moved from room to room, noting peeling wallpaper, overturned furniture, and the faint smell of smoke. Local legend said the Holloways had died in a fire a century ago—parents and two children, trapped in the attic. Some claimed the house burned without flames, that the family suffocated in smoke that never escaped the walls.

Mara didn’t believe it. But when she entered the dining room, her flashlight flickered.

She slapped the side of it. “Cheap batteries.”

That was when she heard it—a faint sound, so soft she thought she imagined it. A whisper.

She froze, holding her breath. The whisper came again, like dry leaves brushing against one another. Too faint to make out words, but undeniably human.

“Hello?” she called, her voice trembling despite herself.

Silence.

She forced herself forward, telling her pounding heart to calm down. “Probably the wind,” she muttered into the recorder. “Old houses make noises.”

But the air was perfectly still.

Upstairs, the smell of smoke thickened. The hallway stretched longer than it should have, lined with doors that seemed too many for the size of the house. Mara’s skin prickled. She opened one door at random—an empty bedroom. Another—just a closet.

Then she opened the third.

Inside was a child’s room. A small bed stood against the wall, its sheets gray with dust. Toys lay scattered across the floor: a wooden horse, a doll with one glass eye missing, a puzzle half-completed.

Her flashlight beam landed on the mirror above the dresser. For the briefest second, she thought she saw movement—not her own reflection, but someone else standing behind her. She spun around. Nothing.

Her chest tightened. “I need air,” she whispered.

As she turned to leave, the doll rolled across the floor on its own.

Mara’s heart lurched. She backed into the hallway, her breath coming fast. “No. No, that’s not—”

The whispering began again. Louder this time. Multiple voices overlapping, weaving into each other. Children’s voices.

She staggered backward, her flashlight shaking. “Stop it! Who’s there?”

The voices rose into a chorus, filling the hallway. The air grew heavy, choking, like smoke pressing into her lungs. She coughed, dropping to her knees.

Through the haze, she saw the end of the hallway stretch farther away, doors multiplying, the walls closing in. The house was shifting, reshaping, trapping her.

“No… it’s not real… it’s not real…”

But her body didn’t care. Panic clawed at her ribs. She crawled toward the stairs, every breath a struggle. Behind her, footsteps pitter-pattered—light, like children running. She dared not look back.

At the bottom of the stairs, the whispering stopped. The air cleared. Her lungs ached, but she could breathe again.

Mara bolted for the door. Her flashlight beam shook wildly as she sprinted across the living room. She reached the front door and yanked—locked. She clawed at it, pulling, kicking. The door would not move.

Then she heard it. A low, rasping voice, different from the children’s whispers. Closer. Right behind her ear.

Stay with us.

The flashlight flickered and died.

Darkness swallowed her scream.

—

The next morning, joggers passing the Holloway house saw the gate swinging open. Mara’s recorder was found on the front porch, its red light still blinking. The last words it captured were her frantic breaths, a long silence, and then, faintly, the sound of children laughing.

The townspeople shook their heads. Another fool who thought she could outsmart the Holloway curse.

And the house remained. Quiet, rotting, waiting.