Rain fell on Blackwater Falls like a slow, reluctant apology.
Elena Vance gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles whitened, her breath fogging the windshield of the rental sedan. Ahead, the town emerged through the mist—crooked streetlamps casting jaundiced halos, storefronts boarded like closed eyes, and the skeletal arms of bare oaks clawing at a bruised sky. It hadn't changed. Not really. Just decayed further into the kind of silence that felt less like peace and more like waiting.
She hadn't been back in twelve years. Not since the fight with Maya—the one that ended with slammed doors and unsent letters and a silence that outlived her sister.
Now Maya was gone. And Elena was here to sort through what she'd left behind.
The house stood at the end of Sycamore Lane, a three-story Victorian with peeling slate-gray paint and widow's walk overlooking the woods. Maya had bought it on a whim two years ago, calling it "a project with personality." In her last voicemail—left three days before her body was found in the attic—she'd said, "Ellie, you have to see this place. It sings."
Elena hadn't returned the call. Too busy. Too distant. Too used to Maya's dramatics.
Now, standing on the porch with rain soaking through her coat, she wished she had.
The key turned with a reluctant groan. Inside, dust hung in the air like suspended breath. The scent of mildew, old wood, and something faintly metallic—like copper or dried blood—clung to the walls. Furniture sat draped in yellowed sheets. A grand piano in the parlor stood open, keys gray with neglect.
She dropped her duffel bag by the door. "Hello?" Her voice echoed too loudly, then vanished, swallowed by the house as if it had never been spoken.
Upstairs, the attic door gaped open—a black maw at the top of a narrow staircase. Elena hadn't even climbed it yet, but she already knew that was where they'd found her. Where Maya had tied a rope to a rafter and stepped into nothing.
The official report called it suicide. Ben Carter—the boy who'd once walked her home from school, now Sheriff Carter—had said Maya seemed "off" in the weeks before. Paranoid. Talking to voices no one else heard.
Elena walked to the window. Outside, the woods stretched deep and dense, swallowing the last light. At the edge of the tree line, a crow watched her. Then another. And another. Silent. Still.
She shivered, though the house was warm.
That night, as she lay on the dusty couch wrapped in an old quilt that still smelled like Maya's lavender shampoo, she heard it.
Not a sound, exactly. More like the absence of one—a sudden hush so complete it pressed against her eardrums. Then, from somewhere above… a whisper.
Faint. Wet. Like lips parting underwater.
"...Ellie..."
She sat bolt upright, heart hammering.
Silence rushed back in. Heavy. Smothering.
She told herself it was the wind. The old pipes. Grief playing tricks.
But as she stared into the dark, one thought coiled in her chest like a cold root:
This house doesn't sing.
It's listening.
End of Chapter 1