THE SILENCE BENEATH ASHWOOD HOUSE

No one in Graymoor spoke of Ashwood House without lowering their voice.

It stood at the far edge of town, where the road cracked and dissolved into weeds, where the fog came early and left late, clinging to the earth like a warning. The house had been abandoned for thirty years, yet every window remained intact, every door closed—as if someone still cared enough to keep the world out.

When I inherited it, the town went quiet.

The lawyer slid the papers across the desk with trembling fingers. “Your great-uncle Elias Ashwood,” he said, avoiding my eyes, “left you everything.”

“Why me?” I asked.

He swallowed. “Because you came back.”

I didn’t understand what he meant then.


---

I arrived at Ashwood House just before dusk. The sky burned orange behind the skeletal trees, their branches clawing at the clouds. The house loomed three stories tall, its dark wood soaked in shadows. The air smelled of damp soil and something older—like dust that had learned how to breathe.

The front door opened with a slow, deliberate creak, as if the house were stretching after a long sleep.

Inside, silence ruled. Not the peaceful kind, but a heavy silence that pressed against my ears. My footsteps echoed too loudly on the floorboards, and every sound felt like a mistake.

The furniture was still there. Chairs. Cabinets. A grandfather clock frozen at 3:17.

I noticed something unsettling: there was no dust.

Not on the shelves. Not on the floor. Not even on the piano in the corner, its keys yellowed but clean.

Someone—or something—had been here recently.


---

That first night, I slept in the study. I didn’t trust the bedrooms upstairs; the staircase groaned with each step, whispering protests in the dark.

At exactly 3:17 a.m., I woke up.

The grandfather clock downstairs began to tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

My heart pounded. I knew the clock had been broken. I had seen it myself.

Then came the sound of footsteps above me.

Slow. Careful.

As if someone was learning how to walk again.

I held my breath, listening. The steps moved from room to room, stopping, lingering. A door opened. Another closed.

Finally, silence returned.

I didn’t sleep again.


---

The next morning, I explored the house more thoroughly. In the east wing, behind a locked door I hadn’t noticed before, I found a narrow staircase leading down.

The basement.

The air grew colder with each step. The walls were lined with old photographs—dozens of them. Families. Children. Smiling faces.

Every photo had the same background.

Ashwood House.

On the back of each photograph was a date.

The dates ended thirty years ago.

And in the last photograph, the smiling man standing on the porch was unmistakably my great-uncle Elias.

Behind him, reflected in the dark window, stood someone else.

Watching.


---

I began asking questions in town.

At the diner, an old woman dropped her spoon when I mentioned the house. “You shouldn’t have gone back,” she whispered. “It doesn’t like being remembered.”

“What happened there?” I asked.

Her eyes filled with tears. “People disappeared. Families moved in and were never seen again. The house kept them.”

“That’s impossible.”

She leaned closer. “Then why do you think it still stands?”


---

That night, the whispers started.

They came from the walls.

At first, they were soft—indistinct murmurs, like a crowd heard from far away. But as the hours passed, the voices grew clearer.

“Stay.”

“Listen.”

“Remember us.”

I pressed my ear against the wall, my skin crawling. The wood felt warm.

Alive.

Then I heard a child’s voice.

“Please,” it said. “He locked us in.”


---

I found Elias’s journal hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the study.

The last entries were frantic, the ink smeared as if written in fear.

The house hears everything.

It feeds on memory.

If they forget us, we fade. But if they remember, we stay.

I tried to stop it. God forgive me.

The final page was blank—except for a single sentence scratched so hard it tore the paper.

It chose you.


---

At 3:17 a.m. on the seventh night, the house revealed itself.

The walls bled shadows. The floorboards pulsed beneath my feet. Doors slammed open, and the whispers became screams.

Figures emerged from the darkness—transparent, distorted, their faces frozen in terror. Families. Children. Dozens of them.

They surrounded me.

“You see us now,” they said in unison. “So you must stay.”

I ran.

The basement door stood open, the narrow staircase descending into a darkness deeper than before. I didn’t want to go down.

But the house pushed me.


---

At the bottom, I found a room with no windows. In the center stood a circle carved into the floor, filled with names.

My name was already there.

Elias appeared behind me, his face hollow, his eyes filled with regret. “I thought if I gave it enough lives, it would let the rest go,” he said. “But it’s never enough.”

“Why me?” I screamed.

“Because you remember,” he replied. “And because the house needs a caretaker.”

The walls closed in. The whispers grew gentle.

Comforting.

I understood then.

Ashwood House doesn’t kill.

It preserves.


---

They say the house is no longer abandoned.

Lights turn on at night. The clock ticks again. And sometimes, if you walk past at dusk, you can see someone standing at the window.

Watching.

Listening.

Making sure the silence beneath Ashwood House is never forgotten.