Scary

The first thing Lena felt was the hum. It came from far and wide and nowhere — downward , steady, like the deep vibration of an unseen machine. But it was n't mechanical. It was organic. metrical. Alive. She opened her eyes to darkness. Not the kind that comes with unrestricted lids, but the kind that has weight. A darkness that presses back. Her lungs pained as though the air itself defied her. She sat up — or study she did but her hands did n't meet the ground. They sank into commodity soft that palpitated noiselessly beneath her fritters. It felt like skin. She pulled her hands back, heart forging, and the darkness sounded to ripple in response. " Where — "

The house was silent the way a grave is silent not empty, but holding its breath. It stood at the edge of the old timber road, three stories altitudinous, its makeup long hulled into strips that coiled like dried skin. Every window had a faint fog to it, like eyes that had forgotten how to close. The locals called it the Waker's House, though no one could flash back why. Lena did n't believe in similar effects. She was thirty- two, practical, too habituated to megacity hum to notice old ghosts. She had come then for quiet, to finish her discussion on sound and silence in pastoral surroundings

Whispers After Midnight The Return Luke Morris noway believed in ghosts — not until the night Clara failed. For weeks after the burial, he could n't bring himself to step back inside the grange. The police had declared her death an accident — a fall from the old ground near the forestland but Luke could n't accept that. He'd seen the dispatches. He'd seen the time prints. She'd texted him after she failed. Every night since, her voice visited his sleep. occasionally faint, occasionally close — bruiting his name. Tonight, at 1157 p.m., he stood before the house again. The windows were boarded, the yard grown. The air was damp and heavy, smelling noiselessly of spoilage. His flashlight ray wavered across the weathered frontal door. The boards nailed across it were loose. He dithered only

The first tale came just after night. Clara Morris stirred in her sleep, allowing it was the wind percolating through the cracks of the century-old grange. But when she opened her eyes, the room was still, the curtains unmoving, and the air so heavy she could nearly taste it. The tale came again — faint, breathy, like someone speaking from a mouth pressed against wood. She sat up. Her hubby Luke was gone, working his late shift at the sanitarium, leaving her alone except for the old walls and the steady ticking of the forefather timepiece in the hallway.