The house was quiet, bar a sound of creaking and splitting that emanated from its timber frame. Paint peeled off in spots and the air was coated in the smell of dust and disuse in the old wooden floor. However, it was mine and for the first time in a long while, I felt I was finally back at home.
I’ve been living here for six months already, having moved on the basis that I could get some peace here. This peaceful area was ideally suited to my temperament— quiet, somewhat eccentric, and looking for peace. I spent the great majority of my time in solitude, with very little interaction with the neighbors but on days off doing either work or being lost in a novel. Life had settled into a routine. However, that regimen was the final mechanism that could keep my thinking from getting lost in areas I am not comfortable with.
That was until the voices started.
Initially, it was almost impossible to hear, hear it like the wind through the windows creaking. I thought it was the usual sounds of the house, an old building making its noises over time. However, as the weeks went by, the rumors turned into an unshakeable murmur. They came from the walls. I could hear the others, faint but precise in a tongue I did not grasp. Sometimes they would follow me from one room to another, always just out of reach, as though they were waiting for something. It was strange. I would lie in bed in the darkness, listening to the sounds and watching the ceiling (and waiting for the sounds to stop).
I tried to not pay attention to them, claiming them to be just my imagination. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard strange noises in an old house. But these weren’t like any sounds I’d ever heard before. They weren’t the creaks of wood or the sighs of wind. They felt… deliberate. It seemed as if something or someone wanted to communicate something with me.
[Reason] One night, I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I decided to meet whatever was causing those sounds. I grabbed a flashlight, my heart pounding in my chest, and started towards the corner of the house where the sounds were the loudest. The hallway was dark, and the floorboards groaned beneath my steps.
Voices were louder now as if they were screaming my name.
“Zoya…” they said. My name.
I froze, my breath catching. I was sure nobody else was inside. I had been on my own for some time, except for a few trips to the supermarket. The walls were thin, but this was different. It felt personal. Whoever—or whatever—was in those walls knew who I was.
I pressed my ear against the wall and the voices became clearer, more distinct. My heart raced.
“Zoya… you have to listen. It’s time… it’s time to remember.”
The voice was different now—gentler, almost pleading. I stepped to the side of the wall with my thoughts racing. This was madness. I felt like I was slowly unraveling. But the voices felt so real. They felt as if they were enshrouding my mind.
I couldn’t get the perception that everything was amiss.
Over the next few days, I tried to go on with my life. I went to work, ate, and watched TV in the evening but the voices refused to rest. They were present in the background of my mind, all the time, always lurking. I tried to avoid them, but they only became louder and more insistent.
One night, as I lay in bed, the voices pierced the silence more forcefully than ever. They weren’t whispers now. There were screams. Pleas. The words were incomprehensible, but the urgency was undeniable.
I jumped out of bed and ran toward the living room, the flashlight shaking in my hand, casting strange shadows on the walls. The voices became so loud that they also reverberated across the whole house, off the walls, and into every room. It became impossible to think clearly.
I took a position in front of the wall where the sounds were loudest. The space seemed heavier now, more oppressive. My heart was hammering in my chest. Then, just as it had begun, the voices stopped. What came next was quiet not only the sound, existing in a dimension of greater disturbing than the noise itself. My breathing turned shallow and uneven, my thoughts swirling in the chaos of what had unfolded.
I realized that I needed the puzzle to set. I had to understand what was behind the walls.
The next day, I couldn’t wait any longer. I picked up a hammer from the garage and stood in front of the wall, my body shaking. There was an eerie stillness in me as if I had no other way but to proceed this way. I smacked the hammer into the plaster, and it sounded with a boom, a resounding shock through my back.
Slowly at a time, I hacked my way through the wall, parts of the wall falling on me like tumbleweeds. Then, finally, I had access to the other side. It all began with a small drill (the hole was initially very small), but I kept drilling and digging. The voices were still silent, but I could still perceive them, tantalizingly out of reach.
At last, the hole was wide enough to let me squeeze through. I inhaled deeply and walked into the pit.
I couldn’t find, on the other side, the connection I had hoped for.
It was a room. In my home, there is a tiny, concealed closet, deep within the walls. The air was damp and cold, stale with the scent of rot. The floor was covered in old, yellowed papers—torn photographs, letters, and strange symbols. The walls were dented, it was as if someone had already tried to give a message, but it was messy, chaotic, and not decipherable.
Sitting in the corner of the room was, well, something else.
A shadow. A woman, seated, but motionless, with her messy hair shown from most of her face. I could see her hands—twisted, elongated, like claws.
My breath caught in my throat.
Then, she spoke.
” Zoya,” she said, her voice now a whisper, maybe unsaid, for years. “It’s time to remember.”
Before I could move, she turned to face me. Her face was pale, her eyes wide and empty, as if she had seen things no one should ever see. She reached her hand out, her fingers long and skeletal.
And then I realized. I wasn’t alone. Not really. The voices in the walls had been waiting for me. It was as if they were waiting for me to uncover their presence. And now, as I stood before this woman, I understood.
Your memories. Your truth. It’s all right there on the walls, Zoya. She spoke once more and then her gaze seemed to pulsate on a darkened, eerie, and penetrating visible blue light. “You were brought here by your parents. And when they. Something followed you but there was something within, something that you have always wanted to deny. Now it’s time to awaken it.”
I stepped back, my mind racing. What was she talking about? What had happened to me? To my family?
The woman stood up, her movements jerky and unnatural. “This room… it’s part of your past. You have to face it, Zoya. Only then will you understand.”
Suddenly, I saw it. There, partially concealed, was something far more dreadful than I could have ever imagined behind her. A bloody hand, grasping out of the dark, tugging at the wall. It was something alive, something… monstrous.
The woman screamed, her voice high and wild, and disappeared, vanishing into the dark. The room grew silent once more.
I stood frozen, my body trembling. I didn’t know what was real anymore. The room, the woman, the voices—it all felt like a terrible nightmare.
But it wasn’t a nightmare. This was my reality.
I had to face it.
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As I looked around the room, at the old photos, the letters, and the strange symbols, I felt the weight of my past pressing down on me. There was something I had forgotten. Something that had been hidden here all along. I could feel it now, deep inside me, like an awakening.
This was my past. My truth. And there was no turning back.