The first thing Joy noticed about the house was that it 'breathed'.
Not literally, of course. But there was something alive in its walls. A heaviness in the air that seemed to exhale and inhale slowly, like an ancient beast waiting for nightfall.
The house was old, far older than anything she'd lived in before. It crouched at the edge of a crumbling forest in a rural town called Pagent's End just three streets, a grocery shop, and an unsettling silence that blanketed everything. Joy's father had gotten a sudden transfer, and within a week, they'd left their small city apartment for this towering structure of creaking floors and faded wallpaper.
"This place is... unique," her mother said, trying too hard to smile as they stepped through the dusty front door. The real estate agent had left in a hurry after handing over the keys. He muttered something about renovations and "keeping the windows closed at night."
Joy didn't question it...yet.
Her younger brother, Tony, darted up the stairs excitedly. "I call the room with the round window!" he shouted. Their parents chuckled, but Joy stayed quiet. Something felt wrong. The air smelled like rotting flowers and something bitter she couldn't place.
She walked slowly through the hallway, her footsteps muffled by an old red carpet that looked like it hadn't been vacuumed in years. The walls were lined with faded portraits of strangers,old men in suits, women in long dresses, none of them smiling. All of them staring directly ahead.
At her.
That night, they barely settled in before the whispering started.
At first, it was faint—like a breeze, just beyond the edge of hearing. Joy sat on her bed, trying to unpack boxes, when she paused. The sound was inside the walls. Whispering. Murmuring words she couldn't understand. She pressed her ear to the wall beside her bed.
Nothing.
She tried to ignore it. Maybe the pipes were old, or the wood was shifting. That made sense. Old houses made noise.
But the next morning, she walked past the hallway mirror and gasped.
It was cracked,five sharp lines spider-webbed out from the center. But the most disturbing part wasn't the cracks. It was the handprint. Small, smudged, and on the inside of the glass.
"Did you see this?" she asked her mom, pointing to it.
Her mom barely looked up from her coffee. "You probably bumped it when moving the boxes."
"I didn't touch it."
"Honey, the house is just old. Nothing's perfect here."
But Joy couldn't shake the unease. Every mirror in the house had a crack by midday, even the compact one in her purse. Some of them had scratches—like someone had been clawing at the inside trying to get out.
That night, the whispering returned.
This time, clearer. Closer.
She lay still under her blanket, the moon casting silver light across the wooden floor. The sound came from her closet, low and rhythmic. Her heart raced as she sat up slowly, staring at the door.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*
Three knocks. Deliberate. Right from inside her closet.
She swallowed hard and stood, tiptoeing toward it. "Tony?" she whispered. No answer. The room was freezing now,her breath came out in white clouds.
Her hand trembled as she reached for the doorknob. She turned it slowly inch by inch until the door creaked open.
Nothing.
Just clothes. And darkness.
She exhaled shakily and stepped back. But just as she turned to return to bed, a voice whispered her name, right behind her:
"Joy..."
She spun around. No one. But something moved in the mirror beside her bed. Her reflection was still staring at the closet door, even though she had already turned away.
Her knees buckled, and she scrambled out of the room, running into the hallway and nearly colliding with her father.
"Joy? What are you doing up?"
She could barely speak. "There's something in my room. It whispered to me."
Her dad gave her that tired look adults reserved for scared children. "It's an old house. You'll hear things. You'll get used to it."
But Joy didn't get used to it.
She started sleeping with the lights on. Tony, who once adored the house, suddenly stopped playing in his room. "The girl in the walls keeps talking," he said one day at breakfast, chewing his cereal like it was the most normal thing in the world. "She says she wants to come out."
Their mother dropped a glass.
That night, Joy returned to her room and found her compact mirror split in two.
This time, instead of a handprint, there were words scratched into the glass...backwards, like it had been carved from the inside.
She held it up to the light, reading it through the reflection:
"Let me out."