The first time I heard them, I was nine years old, knee-deep in the overgrown grass of Mrs. Harlow's backyard. Everyone on Willow Lane knew to stay away from her property. Kids said she ate stray cats. Adults muttered about "bad blood" and crossed the street when her rusted mailbox came into view. But that afternoon, my baseball had sailed over the fence after a wild swing, and my brother dared me to climb after it.
*"Don't be a baby,"* he'd sneered. The ball was a birthday gift. I went.
The air smelled like wet soil and something sharper—rotten eggs, maybe. Mrs. Harlow's house loomed ahead, its peeling gray paint blistered by decades of sun. The windows were boarded, but the back door hung slightly open, creaking in the July heat. I told myself it was just the wind.
Then I saw the handprint.
A smudge of something dark and sticky marked the doorframe. My sneakers stuck to the warped porch steps as I leaned in, heart jackhammering. The house exhaled a cold breath, reeking of mildew and copper. I should've run. But there, in the shadows of the hallway, I spotted my baseball. It sat perfectly centered on the floor, like it had been placed there.
I took three steps inside. The door slammed behind me.
The dark wasn't empty.
Something skittered in the walls—a dry, papery sound, like beetles trapped in a jar. My fingers brushed the baseball, but it was warm. Too warm. Pulsing, almost. I froze when the whispers started. Not from one direction, but *everywhere*, threading through the air like smoke.
*"…stay…play…don't leave us…"*
I bolted, dropping the ball. The door wouldn't budge. The whispers swelled, angry now, hissing over each other. A flicker of movement snagged my eye—a sliver of light under a door at the end of the hall. I ran toward it, my throat raw. The door led to a basement.
The stairs groaned. The air turned frigid, my breath clouding. At the bottom, a single bulb swung on a wire, casting jagged shadows. Jars lined the shelves, filled with murky liquid and… things. Shapes that might've been teeth. Or fingers. One held a pair of milky eyes, drifting like pickled eggs.
A wet *drip* echoed.
Something sat in the corner. A figure, slumped and mottled, its skin the color of week-old bruises. Mrs. Harlow. Except her head lolled too far to the left, her mouth gaping wide enough to fit a fist. Black liquid oozed from her ears.
And she was *breathing*.
Her eyelids snapped open. No pupils—just oily, rolling whites. She lurched forward, bones cracking like kindling. I screamed. The whispers became a roar, shoving me backward as I scrambled up the stairs. The front door flew open, sunlight blinding me as I stumbled into the yard.
No one believed me. Not about the jars, the whispers, or Mrs. Harlow's corpse shuffling toward me. The police found nothing but dust and a few old newspapers in the house. But that night, as I lay trembling in bed, the whispers came back.
*"…you're ours now…"*
They're louder these days. I'm 27, writing this from Saint Mary's Psychiatric Wing. The doctors say it's schizophrenia. They don't see the handprints on my window every morning, black and sticky, don't hear the wet breathing under the floorboards.
Mrs. Harlow's house burned down a year after I fled it. But the whispers? They didn't live there.
They live *here*.
And the walls are getting thinner every night.