The Last Visitor

The house had always been quiet. An old Victorian, it creaked and groaned with the settling of time, but there were no echoes of footsteps, no distant murmurs. It was a house of solitude, a place where the world seemed to fade into a muted, almost unreal, existence.

Then, there were the whispers.

At first, they were barely perceptible, a soft rustling like dry leaves in autumn. But as days turned into weeks, they grew louder, more insistent. They were in the walls, in the attic, in the cellar. They were everywhere.

I tried to ignore them. I turned up the radio, played classical music, even tried white noise machines. Nothing worked. The whispers persisted, growing into words, sentences. They were about me. About my past. Things I thought buried deep had surfaced, carried on the wind of those spectral voices.

Fear, a cold, insidious thing, began to seep into my bones. I’d catch glimpses of shadows moving in the periphery of my vision, hear footsteps pacing in empty rooms. Once, I swore I saw a figure standing at the foot of my bed, a silhouette against the moonlight.

The night the whispers turned to screams, I knew I couldn’t stay. I packed a bag, determined to flee this haunted house. As I turned to leave, I heard a voice, clear and distinct, unlike the others. “You can’t escape us,” it said.

I spun around, but there was nothing. Just the old house, silent once more. But as I stepped out into the night, a cold wind whipped around me, carrying with it the faintest echo of laughter. And then, darkness.