These walls have teeth

There is something coming up the stairs.

I can hear the dull thud of its steps behind me, and what at first is soft and carefully considered becomes louder leaving the whole house to ache in its wake.

The house was not made for this. There have been too many monsters trapped here over the years, scratching the walls and screaming to get out. It had to change to adapt. The stairs when stepped on let out moans of pain and the bedsheets whisper when lifted. Laying, alone, late at night, you can hear the house. You can hear its call repeated over and over. A beating heart hidden at the core of this mess, its reverberations felt throughout its labyrinth-like walls.

Yet what at first can be dismissed — a mouse moving beneath the floorboards, or the wind whistling through the eaves — soon starts to complicate. Sitting in bed, or crossing the corridor, the sound will start to take on meaning, and — what’s that? — words are heard.

Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out.

After you hear it, you can’t stop. The sound of the curtains rustling late at night, a plate smashing onto the kitchen floor — I feel like I’m losing my mind. Now even this sound of a step on the stairs takes a malicious tone.

Step on a stair, no, a step on the landing and coming, closer, closer. Closer to where I hide.

The house around me screams the same well-known words over and over and over again, and me, buried in a cupboard, no more important than the clothes that surround me, well, I scream too.