Lila had always thought the house had character—creaky floors, warped windows, and walls that seemed to sigh in the night. She’d inherited it from her grandmother, who had passed under mysterious circumstances, but she hadn’t asked too many questions. It was home now.
The first night alone, Lila noticed it: a faint, muffled whispering. It came from the walls, so soft she thought it might be her imagination. But each night, it grew louder. “Help me,” the whispers begged. “Please.”
Lila tore through the house, convinced it was some trick—a draft or an animal in the walls. But she found nothing. The whispers became constant, pleading, until she could hardly think.
On the fifth night, Lila had had enough. With a hammer and crowbar, she smashed through the plaster in her bedroom wall, desperate to silence whatever was inside.
What she found stopped her heart.
A crumbling skeleton was bricked into the wall, its bony fingers outstretched, as if it had tried to claw its way free.
But it wasn’t the skeleton that made her scream.
It was the fresh, blood-red handprint pressed firmly against the inside of the wall, still wet.
