The Quiet That Watches – 2025 Spooktastic 2nd Place

It starts quietly
a slow exhale beneath the floorboards,
a sigh that does not belong to the wind.
The walls seem to pulse,
timbers flexing as though something
ancient shifts inside the bones of the house.
Dust drifts in the moonlight,
suspended like ash after prayer.
Somewhere, a hinge weeps
the faint cry of metal remembering movement.
No one walks the hall,
yet the air bends as if parted by a body.
I tell myself it’s the night settling,
but the night does not whisper.
It does not drag a nail along the plaster,
tracing words I cannot read.
The mirror hums softly,
its surface breathing frost that blooms, then fades.
In the corner, my mother’s chair rocks once
slowly, deliberately,
as though someone has only just stood up.
Every heartbeat in my chest
echoes through the hollow of the floor.

I am surrounded by my own sound,
and yet something listens back.
They say a home keeps its history
like lungs keep air
never fully emptied.
And when the silence grows too heavy,
the quiet begins to watch.