The Sound Beneath the Door

It started one night when the wind didn’t sound like wind anymore.

It hummed low, like a voice trying not to wake someone.

I was half asleep, lying on my side, staring at the thin line of light under the door. The hum came from there. It wasn’t a threat, just curious — like it wanted me to answer.

I sat up, heart steady but aware, the way you get when something unknown feels close but not evil. The hum rose, then faded into a faint vibration. Almost music. Almost memory.

I waited. Nothing. The air felt thick, breathing with a rhythm that didn’t belong to the house. The light under the door flickered once, as if someone walked past it slowly.

I opened the door.

The hall was empty — no draft, no light, just that sound folding itself into silence. Then I noticed the floor was warm beneath my feet. Not hot. Warm like someone’s hand after holding yours too long.

Every step forward felt like stepping through someone’s thought. The air carried whispers of dust, cedar, and rain that hadn’t fallen yet. The walls stretched slightly, like they were relieved to see me.

I called out — just once — and my own voice didn’t come back. It went somewhere else, swallowed and softened, like the house had taken it for safekeeping.

A door at the end of the hall shivered. The hum deepened, and for a moment it sounded almost alive — like a choir beneath the floorboards, humming a song too old to remember. The vibration moved up through my legs, into my chest, and I felt the echo of something ancient tug at my breath.

Then, gone. Silence folded back into itself. The warmth drifted out through the open door, leaving nothing but still air and the faint outline of my own breath..

When I turned to go back, the light beneath my room’s door had vanished. Total dark — the kind that feels thick enough to press against. I walked anyway.

Inside, everything looked the same except for one thing: a single black feather lying by the baseboard.

When I picked it up, it wasn’t soft. It was heavy, as if it remembered the sound that brought it here. And when I set it on the table, it hummed once — faint, like a promise not yet broken.