The Silence That Screamed

The Silence That Screamed

“When the voices stopped, the real terror began.”

They say silence is peaceful.

Whoever said that never lived in Room 213.

When I moved into the old boarding house on Ashmere Street, I was just looking for quiet. After a year of city noise, heartbreak, and too many sleepless nights, I wanted solitude. Something still. Something safe.

Mrs. Galloway, the landlady, was polite enough. She handed me the keys with a tight smile and only said one thing:

“No radios. No music. And… don’t mind if the walls creak a little.”

I didn’t.

The rent was cheap. The room was clean. And, most importantly, it was quiet.

At first.

The silence started off comforting. Gentle. Like the house was giving me space to breathe again.

But it didn’t take long before the silence began to feel… unnatural.

I noticed it on my third night.

It was raining outside. I could see the wind bending the trees, heavy droplets hammering the windowpane.

But I couldn’t hear it.

Not even a whisper.

The room was completely silent.

Too silent.

No birdsong in the morning.

No floorboards creaking above or below.

No traffic outside.

No hum from the fridge. No ticking from the old wall clock.

It was as if sound didn’t exist in that room anymore.

I clapped my hands once. Nothing.

I screamed—and heard only the dry rustle of my throat. The sound died before it reached my ears.

It wasn’t just quiet.

It was dead.

I tried to tell Mrs. Galloway.

She looked me in the eye and said, “That room was sealed for ten years.”

Then she locked the office door behind her and never spoke to me again.

The next night, I woke up with blood in my ears.

No pain. No explanation. Just a single drop on my pillow.

I tried to leave the room.

The door wouldn’t open.

I twisted the knob until my hands blistered, but it wouldn’t budge.

My phone had no signal.

I screamed again.

Still silence.

And then—

A sound.

But not from me.

It came from the walls.

A low, vibrating hum. Barely there.

Like something was speaking too fast to understand. Like the space around me had a voice, and it had been waiting for me to shut up long enough to speak.

The silence wasn’t an absence.

It was holding something in.

I started writing in a notebook to keep track of it. But even my pen stopped making sound after a while.

Each night, I heard more.

A baby crying—then choking.

A woman whispering in a language I didn’t know, over and over again.

Footsteps pacing. Heavy breathing. Nails dragging across wood.

And one phrase that returned every night, etched deeper into my brain each time:

“Silence is the scream that never ends.”

On the seventh night, I found the source.

Behind the wallpaper, the plaster was cracked. I dug at it with a fork until a chunk fell loose—and I found a second room, hidden behind mine.

Small. Dark. Soundproofed.

Inside was a wooden chair bolted to the floor.

Hand restraints.

A leather gag with dried blood.

A reel-to-reel tape recorder.

And dozens of journals.

They belonged to the previous tenant. A man named Ellis Granger.

His notes were frantic.

“It started with the ringing.”

“The quieter it gets, the louder they become.”

“They're not outside. They're beneath the silence.”

“If you hear nothing—run.”

He hadn’t run.

His last entry was one line, scratched into the cover in what I can only assume was blood:

“I screamed for hours. But all they wanted… was quiet.”

That night, the silence didn’t wait.

It roared into me.

Not noise—pressure. Like the air was folding in on itself. Like the space between seconds was screaming through my bones.

My vision blurred. My skin burned.

And then I heard it—the scream beneath the silence.

So loud it split me open inside. I dropped to my knees, clutching my head, but no sound came from my mouth.

Only silence.

They had taken it.

I woke up in the chair.

Bound.

Mouth gagged.

The reel-to-reel tape recorder clicked on.

And I heard my voice playing back.

Not the things I’d said—but the things I’d thought.

My fears. My regrets. My memories.

Everything I’d kept buried deep inside myself was screaming from the tape.

And the silence… was listening.

If someone finds this story, don’t go to Room 213.

Don’t look for the silence.

Because once it hears you—

It will never stop.

The End