Mary never talked. She wasn't like the other kids. Her parents didn't ask her to, though, because they didn't believe her when she said she saw things. The house creaked in strange places at night, and the floorboards groaned like something was walking beneath them. But her parents said it was just old wood.
The first time Mary saw it, she was sitting on the stairs. It had been raining all day, and the house was cold. The door at the end of the hallway opened, and she heard whispers. Not words. Not quite. It was like a sound that rubbed against her ears, just outside her reach. She climbed to the top of the stairs, watching the empty doorway. The air in the hall felt thick, like something was waiting just beyond the walls.
She couldn't tell anyone. It would only upset her mom. And her dad… he didn't care. He had work to do. When the whispers came again, she closed her eyes, trying to push them away. But it didn't stop. It grew louder, filling her ears, and the dark doorway in the hall seemed to shift. The thing that hid in there… it smiled.
That was the first time it spoke to her.
"Come closer," it said, its voice smooth and wet. It had no face, but somehow she knew it was smiling.
The next day, her mother found her in the attic, staring at the empty chair. "I told you not to go up there," her mother snapped. "Nothing is up there, Mary. Stop acting like you're hearing things."
But Mary couldn't explain what she saw. The thing in the attic, that gray shape, it was still there, standing in the corner, arms stretched wide. She shook her head, trying to forget, but it wouldn't leave. The whispers never stopped.
They started following her around the house, coming from the corners of rooms or behind the doors. She would wake up in the middle of the night, the darkness crawling around her, the whispers so loud now. They were no longer gentle. They were demanding.
She saw them more clearly now. The things that waited for her—shapes, twisted and wrong, bending in ways that made her sick. They spoke in voices she couldn't understand. And then, one night, one of them grabbed her.
She woke up in the middle of the hall, the floor beneath her cold. A figure towered over her, its hands long, fingers stretching down, reaching for her face. Its breath stank like decay, its mouth split open far too wide. She screamed, but the thing didn't stop.
It took her.
The last thing Mary heard was her mother's voice calling her name, far away, from somewhere she couldn't reach. The walls around her closed in, and the air grew thick. The thing in the hallway had a face, now. It had always been there. And her mother never heard her screams.
The next morning, the house was empty. The parents, frantic, searched every room. There were no signs of anything wrong. Mary was just gone. No noise. No trace.
But when her mother stood in the kitchen, she found something. A small, dirty piece of paper under the chair where Mary had sat. Written on it, in the girl's tiny handwriting, were the words: "They told me I wasn't allowed to speak."
Mary never did.