The Hum in the Walls

The house was not old by historical standards—built in the booming 1980s, all fake brick and cheap drywall—but there was a kind of tiredness about it, a psychic sag that seemed to pull the light out of the rooms. Arthur Blackwood, a man who believed in tax deductions more than ghosts, had bought the place for a steal after the previous owners, the Harrisons, had simply... vanished. No note, no struggle, just a half-eaten bowl of cereal on the breakfast table and a terrifying, inexplicable silence.

Arthur, a junior partner at a struggling law firm, tried to ignore the stories. Mass hysteria, he told his reflection in the bathroom mirror, the mirror of a man who looked perpetually startled. A cheap publicity stunt to avoid mortgage payments.

But then came the Hum.

It started subtly, a low-frequency drone that felt less like sound and more like a physical pressure inside his skull. It was worst at night, right when the late winter darkness sealed the windows shut. It wasn't the refrigerator, or the furnace, or the wind. It was coming from the structure itself.

Arthur took his flashlight and started hunting. He pressed his ear to the peeling floral wallpaper in the master bedroom, the one the Harrisons had chosen. The Hum was louder there. It wasn't buzzing; it was a rhythmic, almost organic throbbing, like a giant, buried heart struggling to pump something viscous and cold.

One night, the Hum changed. It didn't stop; it intensified. Arthur was in the living room, trying to read a tattered paperback copy of Moby Dick, when the glass of lukewarm water on the end table began to shiver. The ripples were tight, violent.

Then, he heard the scratching.

It was thin, dry, and frantic, coming from inside the wall right behind the old brick fireplace.

Rats, he thought, clutching the book like a shield. Just big, damn rats.

He called an exterminator the next morning. The man, a gruff, middle-aged fellow named Lenny with a face that looked like it had seen too many damp basements, spent three hours tapping and listening.

"Ain't rats, mister," Lenny finally declared, wiping grease on his overalls. "Too regular. Too... heavy. Sounds like somethin' trying to get out, not somethin' trying to get in."

Arthur paid him fifty bucks to say exactly what he didn't want to hear.

That evening, Arthur couldn't stand it. He went into the master bedroom with a hammer and a grim determination. The Hum was a physical thing now, making the air taste metallic. He swung the hammer at the wall where the throbbing was loudest, shattering the fake wood paneling and tearing the thin sheetrock.

The dust cleared. Arthur held the flashlight, his heart hammering against his ribs in a syncopation faster than the Hum.

Behind the drywall was not insulation or studs, but a secondary, crude wall made of fieldstone and dried mortar, clearly much older than the house itself. And on the surface of the stones, smeared and etched, were dozens of childlike handprints—small, terrified, and seemingly pressed into the wet mortar before it dried.

And the Hum was coming from behind the stones.

As he stared, paralyzed, a new sound cut through the thrum: a faint, almost melodic whisper. It sounded like a child's voice, muffled by a great distance, saying one single, repeated word.

“Help.”

Arthur stumbled back, dropping the hammer. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him to his marrow, that whatever was behind that wall had nothing to do with the Harrisons' disappearance. They hadn't vanished; they had simply been consumed by the thing that had been waiting there for decades, maybe centuries. The house hadn't been built around it; the house had been built to contain it. And the Hum was the sound of the containment failing.

He scrambled for the door, tripping over the rug. His hand was on the brass doorknob when the floor beneath him gave a sickening, lurching sigh.

The Hum stopped.

The silence that followed was heavier than any sound. Arthur slowly turned, his blood freezing.

The light from the shattered wall was gone. Instead, there was a blackness so absolute it seemed to be drinking the light from the hallway. And in the center of that blackness, two points of dull, yellowish light—eyes—began to rise.

A voice, deeper than the earth and wetter than a flooded grave, replaced the child's whisper. It wasn't asking for help.

It was saying, "You found the door, Arthur. Now you pay the rent."