The Whispering Shadows

I was strangely excited when I initially moved into the old Victorian house on Willow Street. Years of vacancy had left something enigmatic about it, even if the windows were cracked and the paint was flaking. Away from the noise of the city and the stifling pressure of my existence, it was the ideal escape.

But that was before the whispers of darkness began.

It started mildly. I would hear gentle rustling from the corner of my room at night, as though something were moving just outside my view from my bed. I wrote it off as the home settling, the groans and creaks of an ancient building. Still, the whispers got louder and more definite. They were words, not just sounds. My name is:

Anna...

My heart thumping in my chest, I stopped. Like a far-off echo, the voice was gentle, almost mild. Though it felt absolutely real, I knew I had dreamt it.

I heard it once more while I lay in bed the following evening.

"Anna... get nearer."

This time my heartbeat sped up. The hairs on the rear of my neck started to stand up. Looking about the room, I found it vacant. As though reaching out to me, the shadows in the room's corners seemed to expand and twist. I reminded myself that the result of too much alone time and too many evenings spent in a foreign house was simply my imagination gone wild.

Still, that evening the shadows moved.

At least, I believed I did—clearly saw it. The shadowy edges of my chamber changed. With fingers curling and twitching, the shadow borders seemed to grasp toward the bed. The atmosphere grew frigid, and the voices got louder and more forceful.

"Anna..."

Still seated in bed, I gasped. My breath stopped as the shadows kept slinking in the direction of closeness. The room felt like the walls were squeezing in on me. The knowledge that I was not alone, though, made me most afraid.

The shadows were living.

My fingers shaking as I turned the knob, I got up slowly and headed toward the door. But the voices trailed with me as soon as I entered the hall.

"Anna..."

The voice was louder this time, nearly a directive. I looked about; terror started in my chest. The home seemed to extend indefinitely. Once consoling in their silence, the hallways felt like a maze full of hidden hazards.

I went down the stairs, but the shadows also showed up. Their whispers got louder as I moved, slithered across the floor, collecting at the base of the stairway, winding around my ankles.

Anna: "Don't run."

With a pounding pulse and whirling ideas, I turned toward the voice. There was no means of escape. She could hear the house alive with them. They were all around.

My feet carried me to the basement door—the one I had avoided since moving in. Not with the odd, repressive force of the home; I hadn't dared to descend there. But right now something drew me toward it. I opened the door and smelled moist ground and thick dust.

I started down the stairs, the sound of the old wood reverberating in the quiet. The shadows appeared to reach me at the bottom, their figures moving as though they were hungry to eat me. Now the whispers were a continual hum in my ears, overpowering like a bee swarm in my head.

Anna, it's time to head home.

A deep growl trailed the whisper, and I stopped. I noticed a figure—no, a shape—moving in the corner under the low light of the basement. It initially seemed only a shadow, too dark to distinguish. Then, when my eyes adjusted, I noticed the tiniest glimmer of a pale, twisted, smiling face.

Startled, I stumbled backward. Though it felt so familiar, this visage was one I had never seen before. It seemed as though it had been waiting for me all this lifetime.

"Welcome home, Anna," it said.

The basement shadows closed in about me. Now I could hear them laughing—the sound of a hundred voices all at once. I tried to scream, but the blackness absorbed my voice in my throat.

Then the light flashed on, brilliant and dazzling, just as I thought I was about to be engulfed in the shadows. My breath seized as I turned to face the wide-open gateway and saw someone standing in the threshold.

It belonged to my grandma.

She had died a year ago, but here she was, same as always, standing in the doorway, grinning softly.

She murmured softly,

"Anna," extending her hand. "We should head out now."

I halted. The shadows withdrew, apparently running away from her. Then I realized.

The house harbored curses. Long before I showed up, it had been cursed. The shadows were the souls caught here, waiting for someone—anyone—to unlock the door. And I had carried on doing that.

But my grandmother had discovered a means of lifting the curse.

The shadows snarled as I moved toward her, but they no longer controlled me. The whispering stopped, then vanished into the house's quiet.

Taking my grandmother's hand, the home seemed different—lighter in that instant. The air cleared, and I knew I wasn't alone now.

Though I had discovered a path to go beyond the shadows, they had been waiting for me.

And I could still hear their voices far away as I turned to go.

"Anna...?"

But I had no more fear.