THE WALLS HAVE VOICES

Chapter 2: Sounds in the Night

The first three days were normal. Well, as normal as moving into a new house can be. I spent most of my time setting up my room, hanging posters, and exploring every corner of the property. The house was a maze of rooms and closets, and I loved it. Mia stayed close to Mom, helping unpack dishes and arrange her stuffed animals on her new bed.

It was the fourth night when things started to feel wrong.

I woke up around two in the morning to a sound I couldn't quite place. Scratching, maybe? Or tapping? It seemed to come from inside the walls, moving from one side of my room to the other. I sat up in bed, listening hard, my heart starting to pound.

Tap-tap-tap. Scratch-scratch. Tap-tap-tap.

"Hello?" I whispered, immediately feeling stupid. What was I expecting—the house to answer back?

The sounds stopped. I waited in the darkness for five minutes, then ten, but heard nothing more. Just as I was about to lie back down, I heard it: a voice, muffled and distant, coming from somewhere inside the walls.

"Benjamin, Benjamin, brave and bold,

Listening to stories the walls have told,

Sleep tight, sleep deep, don't make a peep,

Or I might come while you're asleep."

I jumped out of bed and slammed my hand against the wall. "Who's there? This isn't funny!"

Silence. Then, from a different wall, a low chuckle that made my skin crawl.

I ran to my parents' room and knocked hard. Dad opened the door, squinting in the darkness. "Ben? What's wrong?"

"There's someone in the walls. I heard them. They were talking to me."

Dad sighed and put a hand on my shoulder. "Son, old houses make all kinds of sounds. The pipes, the wood settling—"

"No, Dad. It was a voice. A person."

Mom appeared behind him, her face pale in the moonlight streaming through their window. "What kind of voice?"

"A man's voice. He was... singing. About me."

I saw something flicker across Mom's face—fear, maybe, or recognition of something she didn't want to acknowledge. But Dad just shook his head. "It's late, Ben. You probably had a dream. Let's check your room if it'll make you feel better."

We went back to my room. Dad knocked on the walls, checked the closet, even looked under the bed. Nothing. Everything was perfectly normal, perfectly still.

"See? Nothing here. Try to get some sleep, okay?"

But as they left and I climbed back into bed, I heard it again—so faint I almost missed it. A whisper from somewhere deep in the house:

"Found you."

The next morning, Mia wouldn't leave her room. When I finally coaxed her out, she grabbed my arm and pulled me close. Her lips moved near my ear, and she breathed out two words: "Man. Walls."

My blood ran cold. "You heard him too?"

She nodded, her eyes wide and terrified.

That afternoon, I started investigating. I mapped out the house, measuring rooms and hallways, trying to find spaces that didn't add up. There had to be gaps, places where someone could hide. The house was old enough, strange enough. I found a few odd corners, a closet that seemed too shallow, a section of the upstairs hallway that didn't quite match the floor plan.

That night, we all heard it. The tapping started around midnight, moving through the house like a rat in the walls. Then came the voice, louder this time, speaking to all of us:

"Little family, safe and warm, don't you know there's coming storm? I'm in the walls, I'm in the floor, I'm standing right behind your door."

Mom screamed. Dad grabbed a baseball bat and started checking every room, every closet, every corner. Mia clung to me, shaking. We searched for hours but found nothing—no one, no sign of entry, no explanation.

"We're calling the police," Mom said, her voice shaking. "This is... this is evil. This is the devil's work."

"Marsha, let's not—"

"Don't tell me to calm down, Gregor! There's something in this house!"

The police came at dawn. Two officers walked through every room, checked every window and door, examined the basement and attic. They found nothing. No signs of forced entry, no evidence of anyone living in the walls, no footprints or fingerprints or anything at all.

"Old houses make sounds," the older officer said, echoing my father. "Could be animals in the walls—raccoons, possums. We can give you some numbers for pest control."

But I saw the way he looked at the walls before he left, like he wasn't quite sure of his own words.

That night, the voice came back, and this time it was laughing