It started with the wind.
Laura's new house stood at the end of an empty cul-de-sac, the last remaining property of a failed development. The realtor had called it a "fixer-upper," but Laura saw it as a fresh start. The paint was peeling, the floors creaked, and the yard was overgrown—but it was hers.
On her first night, as she lay in bed, she heard the wind. It wasn't the gentle rustling of leaves or the distant howl through cracks in the window frame. This was deep, resonant, like a breath exhaled through a cavernous chest.
She told herself it was the house settling.
By the third night, Laura noticed the silence.
During the day, the house was full of small, familiar sounds: the hum of the fridge, the ticking of the clock, the distant chirp of birds outside. But at night, everything stopped.
No hum. No ticking. No chirping.
It was as if the house were holding its breath.
When she got up to check the kitchen, she found the fridge door wide open, its light flickering weakly. She closed it, her hands trembling.
"Just old appliances," she whispered to herself.
The light turned off before she touched the switch.
The first truly strange thing happened a week later.
Laura was unpacking in the living room when she noticed the walls. Beneath the faded wallpaper, there were faint, jagged lines, crisscrossing like veins. She ran her hand over them—they were raised, almost like scars.
Curious, she peeled back a small strip of the wallpaper.
The lines weren't painted on; they were carved into the plaster, shallow but deliberate. They stretched from floor to ceiling, curving in ways that made her stomach twist.
When she stepped back to take a closer look, the lines seemed to shift, curling inward like they were… closing.
Laura covered them quickly and tried to forget.
That night, she woke to a sound.
It wasn't the wind.
It was coming from inside the house—a soft, rhythmic creaking, like footsteps.
Laura sat up, her heart pounding. She reached for her phone, but it was dead, despite having been fully charged before bed. She told herself it was just the old pipes, but the sound grew louder, closer.
The floorboards outside her bedroom groaned.
Then, silence.
Laura held her breath, straining to hear. When she finally worked up the courage to look, she found the hallway empty.
But the walls… the walls were wet, glistening faintly in the moonlight.
The next morning, she noticed the door.
It was in the basement, tucked behind a pile of old boxes she hadn't moved yet. Laura swore it hadn't been there before.
It was a small, narrow door, no more than four feet tall, with a brass knob that gleamed like it had been polished recently.
When she tried to open it, the knob wouldn't budge.
She pressed her ear against the wood, and for a moment, she thought she heard breathing—slow, deliberate, and impossibly deep.
She didn't go back to the basement that day.
The dreams started that night.
She was walking through the house, but it wasn't her house. The walls pulsed like they were alive, and the air was thick, heavy, making it hard to breathe. She could hear the wind again, louder this time, and it carried whispers she couldn't understand.
In the dream, she found herself in the basement, standing before the door. It was open, just a crack, and a faint red light spilled out.
A hand—her hand—reached out to push it open.
She woke up screaming.
Things escalated quickly after that.
Her belongings moved on their own. Cups appeared in different rooms. The mirror in the bathroom fogged up with words she didn't write: GET OUT.
The door in the basement opened a little wider every day, though Laura never touched it.
She called the realtor, demanding answers, but they insisted the house had no history of hauntings or tragedies. "You're probably just stressed," they said.
Laura didn't believe them.
The final night, Laura decided to confront it.
Armed with a flashlight and a hammer, she marched to the basement. The door was wide open now, the red light spilling out in pulsating waves.
She peered inside.
The space beyond wasn't part of her house. It was a tunnel, stretching impossibly far, lined with walls that seemed to breathe. The air was thick with the stench of decay, and the whispers were deafening now, overlapping into a cacophony of voices.
She stepped inside, hammer clenched tightly.
The door slammed shut behind her.
The walls of the tunnel began to move, closing in like a throat swallowing its prey. Laura ran, but the floor was soft and slick, pulling at her feet.
The whispers turned to screams, and in the red light, she saw them—faces pressing out from the walls, mouths open in silent agony.
One of the faces was hers.
When the police searched the house weeks later, they found no trace of Laura.
But in the basement, they found the small door.
It was locked.