A long time ago, in a crooked little town forgotten by time, there was a house that no one dared approach. It sat on the edge of a rotting forest, its windows long cracked and doors sagging as if trying to escape. Few spoke about it anymore. They all knew better than to.
They'd seen the ones who went in. Some of them came back, but not the same. Others—well, no one really knew. There was no record of them. No one could say if they were alive or dead.
And in the dark of the house, something moved. It wasn't a thing that could be touched, at least not in the way things were supposed to be.
It slipped between the walls, rustled beneath the floorboards, and hung in the air. They say it was born from something much older than the house, that it had been there even before the first plank was nailed in.
It liked the bad ones. The cruel ones, the greedy ones. They could sense it coming long before it arrived. The longer it stayed, the more it spread. It wasn't just an effect on the mind, but something deeper—something that chewed away at the soul.
The townspeople didn't speak of it directly. Instead, they spoke of the house's reputation, and that reputation was the only thing that kept people away.
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Gavin Hale had never been much of a believer in ghosts. He was a businessman, and business had always been about the tangible. The things you could touch, the things you could see. But when he had heard about the house, when it had come to him that the land might hold the key to expanding his holdings, something clicked.
Something in his gut told him that this was his chance. And if anyone was meant to own that house, it was him.
He wasn't a bad man, not exactly. He had his vices—who didn't? But he never thought of himself as cruel. That's what he told himself, anyway. He didn't look at the house for its reputation or the suffering that it supposedly bred. He saw only opportunity.
It didn't take long to secure the land. People in the town were all too eager to sell, as if the house had cursed them somehow. Gavin didn't understand it, but then again, it didn't matter. He wasn't here to worry about ghosts.
He spent the first few days poking around the house. It was damp and rotting in places, but nothing he couldn't fix. The floors creaked underfoot, the walls sighed in places, but nothing stood out to him as dangerous. Except for one thing. There was something about the silence of the house, something unnerving about how everything felt still. Too still.
He pushed those thoughts away. Ghosts weren't real, after all. Or so he told himself.
Then, on the fourth night, he heard it. A tapping, faint and distant, coming from somewhere deep inside the house. At first, it seemed like the wind. But the longer he listened, the more it seemed like something deliberate.
Gavin walked the house, searching for the source of the sound. His footsteps echoed in the empty rooms, bouncing off the walls in odd patterns. He paused at the staircase, the sound coming from below.
The cellar.
The air down there was thick with the scent of decay. He felt it on his skin, seeping into his clothes. It was as if the house was exhaling something old, something that hadn't breathed in years. And beneath it all, the tapping.
He opened the cellar door and descended, the steps creaking under his weight.
Nothing. No tapping, no sound. Just the stale air and the dark.
But as he stepped further into the room, something tugged at the corner of his mind. There was something here. He wasn't sure what it was, but it was like the whole house had shifted, like it was watching him.
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Days passed, and the tapping became more frequent, more insistent. Every night, it got louder, as if it was coming closer. Gavin started losing sleep. The nights were the worst—he would wake up to the sound of something faint but distinct, the constant knocking in his mind. It was always in the distance, always just out of reach, but still there, persistent.
But the worst part wasn't the tapping. No, it was the feeling that something else was in the house with him. Something unseen. Something watching. Every time he turned a corner, he half-expected to find someone standing in the shadows, just out of sight. But there was nothing. Just the house, the darkness, and the sound.
After a week, Gavin started hearing voices. Not in the traditional sense, no. It wasn't that they spoke directly to him, but they were there—hovering in the background. Low murmurs, barely audible, like a far-off crowd. A constant buzz of sound that never quite formed into words.
He began to avoid the house during the day, spending his time in town, trying to get a few hours of rest in the mornings. But the tapping never stopped, not even then. It was always there, like a clock ticking away, counting the hours of his sanity.
The local bartender, a man named Miller, asked him one night, "You hear it yet?"
"The tapping?" Gavin asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
Miller nodded, his eyes wary. "It's been around for years. That house... well, it doesn't like those who come for it. It's been feeding off those who have a dark heart for generations. It don't show itself, but it gets into your mind. Messes with you."
Gavin laughed. "That's just superstition."
Miller didn't smile. "You're wrong, my friend. The house chooses. It takes people who've done wrong. It... twists them."
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By the second week, Gavin couldn't sleep anymore. He'd wake up in the middle of the night, his heart racing, sweat dripping down his face. The voices were louder now, clearer. Sometimes, they sounded like laughter. Other times, like cries.
He started to feel the house shift with him. It wasn't just the tapping anymore, or the voices—it was the house itself. He would step into a room and the air would change. The walls would seem to close in, or the floor would sag beneath his feet. The temperature would drop without warning, and the weight of the silence would press in on him like a vice.
On the ninth night, he found himself standing at the top of the staircase, his feet frozen to the floor. He couldn't move, couldn't look away. His eyes were fixed on the shadows at the bottom, where something was moving.
It wasn't human.
It had never been human.
A shape emerged, its body long and thin, almost skeletal. It seemed to rise from the floor, twisting its way upward like smoke, until it stood before him. And in its hollow eyes, Gavin saw nothing but madness.
He staggered back, but the shape followed him, its presence tightening around him, wrapping around his thoughts. Its fingers stretched out toward him, brushing against his skin.
He screamed, but the sound was lost in the house's suffocating silence.
------
The next morning, the townspeople found him. He was standing in the middle of the road, his eyes wide and glassy, staring at nothing. His hands were covered in blood, but when they tried to speak to him, he didn't answer. He couldn't.
They never buried him. No one would touch his body.
Some say his mind was shattered, others say he had lost it long before he'd stepped into that house.
But one thing was certain: the house still waited. It waited for the next one to come. It was always hungry.
And so it went on, always feeding, always waiting.