Ava had never met her uncle in life—only in a photograph where he stared straight into the camera with eyes far too wide. When he passed, she inherited his home: an old Victorian buried in pine woods on the edge of a forgotten town. She moved in to escape the noise of the city and write her next novel. Silence, she thought, would be comforting.
It wasn't.
The silence hummed.
Specifically, from the door under the staircase.
At first, it was faint. Like the resonance of a tuning fork, so soft it could've been imagined. But it grew clearer with each passing night. A low, pulsing hum that vibrated in her bones. Not constant—rhythmic. Like breathing.
There was no handle. No hinges on the outside. Just a door-sized slab of wood with a single horizontal crack running across the middle like a sealed mouth.
The realtor had mentioned it briefly: "Don't mind the door. It's part of the foundation. Nothing behind it." But why would anyone build a door into stone?
On the third night, Ava couldn't sleep. The hum was louder. She leaned close and felt warmth radiating from the surface, as if something behind it were alive.
She placed her hand on the wood.
It stopped.
The silence that followed was worse.
She stepped back. Turned away.
Behind her, the door knocked.
Just once.
The next morning, she searched the house. No hidden switches. No keys. Nothing in the attic or basement explained it. But that night, it began again.
The hum… followed by something new: a whisper behind the door.
It sang, softly.
"Let us out… we know you hear us…"
She ran. Slept in her car. Drove to town the next morning and asked about the house.
An elderly man at the library froze when she mentioned the door. "He heard it too," he said. "Your uncle. Said it called to him in dreams. We warned him, but… he stopped coming into town. One day, he vanished. Left all the lights on. The door was open."
Open.
That night, Ava returned to the house to pack her things. But the door—sealed for a century—was ajar. Just a sliver. Enough to see that inside was no room. Just black.
Not empty. Black. Like a mouth waiting to speak.
As she approached, the hum returned… and this time, it was harmonizing with something deeper. A chorus of voices behind the door, humming and singing in broken lullabies. Her name whispered between notes.
She ran again. But when she reached her car, every window showed her reflection standing still… except her eyes—they hummed too.
The next morning, the house was empty. The neighbors said no one had lived there in years.
But if you stand close enough to the door, now completely sealed again, you can still hear her voice joining the chorus.
The hum has found a new harmony.