Whispers Between Worlds

The first whisper came on the night of the frost.

It slid through the crack beneath Mara’s bedroom door — not a draft, not the settling groan of the old farmhouse — but a voice. The words were soft, wet, almost bubbling up from deep underground.

Mara…

She sat bolt upright in bed. Her skin prickled in the cold air. The hallway beyond her door was black — the kind of black that swallows even the memory of light. For several minutes she listened, holding her breath until her chest ached. When nothing came again, she told herself it had been the wind, or maybe the remnants of a dream.

The lie was easy enough to hold until morning.

But the next night, at precisely 2:14 a.m., it returned. This time she was awake when she heard it — a whisper that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Mara… open the door.

Her hand hovered over the lamp switch, but she didn’t turn it on. Something deep in her gut told her not to let light touch the voice. She lay still, pretending to sleep, though every muscle screamed to run.

By the third night, it was no longer just her name.

They’re still here.

Under the floor.

Find me.

The whispers always came between 2:13 and 2:17, and she began to notice they weren’t muffled like a sound from the hallway. They were inside the room.

She remembered her grandmother’s warnings about the house — about her grandfather’s “neighbors.” He claimed they weren’t all dead, not exactly. “Some are caught between,” he’d said, “and they’ll find ways to talk to you if you listen.” Mara had always thought it was superstition, the kind of ghost story rural families pass down to entertain children.

But her grandmother’s final warning, given on her deathbed, was harder to shake:

“They’re not alone over there,” she’d said, clutching Mara’s hand with surprising strength. “The dead are easier than the living.”

On the fifth night, Mara decided she needed proof she wasn’t losing her mind. She left her phone recording beside the bed and waited. At 2:14, the whisper came again — only this time she understood every word.

You’ve been sleeping on me.

Her stomach knotted. The sound wasn’t drifting through the air — it was rising from beneath the bed.

When daylight came, she shoved the bed aside and found an old, warped floorboard with two rusted nails barely holding it down. She pried it up and was met with a hollow darkness that smelled faintly of earth and something sweeter… like fruit gone bad. Reaching inside, her fingers brushed something cold and smooth.

It was a small, cracked mirror.

She didn’t remember ever seeing it before. The glass was mottled with black spots like rot, but when she held it up, the reflection made her stomach twist.

It was her bedroom — same sagging wallpaper, same slanted ceiling — but in the mirror’s version, there was someone kneeling beside her bed. Their head was tilted at an unnatural angle, their smile stretched far too wide.

Their lips moved.

The whisper wasn’t in her ears anymore. It was inside her skull.

Finally… you can hear me.

She dropped the mirror, but it didn’t shatter. It landed face-up, and in its reflection, the figure stood now, stepping closer to where the mirror lay. Its eyes — black pits swallowing every glint of light — locked on hers.

Mara scrambled backward, but her heel hit the bed frame. Her hands shook violently, and in that moment she realized the voice hadn’t been calling only from this side. It had been calling through.

And the mirror… was a door.

She tried to slide the floorboard back into place, but the voice was no longer a whisper. It was a chorus, dozens of overlapping tones, some high and thin, others deep enough to rattle her teeth.

They’re still here.

We’re still here.

Now… so are you.

The air in the room grew heavy, as if the walls were exhaling grave-damp breath. Her vision blurred, the edges of reality bending like heat waves. Something cold brushed her ankle — fingers, curling tight.

Mara screamed and kicked free, bolting for the door, but the knob wouldn’t turn. In the mirror, the figure was no longer in her bedroom. It was right behind her.

Her grandmother’s warning came roaring back: The dead are easier than the living.

She didn’t know which one was at her back.

The last thing she saw before the world blinked into blackness was her own reflection in the mirror — mouth open in a silent scream — as the figure’s hands closed around her shoulders and pulled her in.

I can also craft a sequel chapter that reveals what Mara experiences on the other side of the mirror — a place where the living and the dead blur together. That would push the horror even deeper.