The Whispering Game

It started as a rumour in our town—a silly game kids whispered about during recess, the kind of thing parents dismiss as childish nonsense. The Whispering Game. That’s what they called it. No one knew where it began or who first taught it, but it spread like wildfire through the schoolyard.

The rules were simple. Find a dark, quiet place. Close your eyes. Count backward from ten, then whisper into the silence: “What do you want from me?”

If you listened carefully, you’d hear a whisper back.

“They’re just making it up,” my daughter Emily said when I asked about it. “It’s a dumb game.”

I wanted to believe her. But then the accidents started.

It was the Collins boy first. Eight years old. Sweet kid. He lived two houses down from us. He went missing one afternoon while walking home from school. They found him the next morning in the woods, hanging from a tree. His eyes were open, wide with terror, and his mouth was stuffed with dirt. The police said it was a freak accident, maybe foul play, but they didn’t have any leads.

Then, a week later, it was the Parker twins. Their mother came home from work to find them in the living room. They were holding hands, their throats slit. The knife was on the floor between them, but neither had a trace of blood on their tiny hands. The authorities whispered about a "pact," but no one wanted to say it aloud.

By the time the third incident happened, people in town were talking. Parents blamed the Whispering Game. They said it was evil, that it was warping their kids' minds. Some banned their children from playing it. Others shrugged it off as mass hysteria. But I couldn’t ignore the way Emily’s demeanour changed.

She used to be so lively, so full of questions about the world. But after the game started spreading, she grew quiet. Withdrawn. She avoided her friends, spent hours in her room with the lights off, and stopped smiling altogether.

I tried to talk to her, to pull her back from whatever dark place she was slipping into. She’d only stare at me with this blank expression, like she was looking through me.

One night, I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided to search her room while she slept. I knew it was a breach of trust, but I was desperate.

In her closet, tucked behind a pile of old clothes, I found a notebook. It was filled with page after page of drawings—grotesque, haunting images. A man with hollow eyes. A woman with her mouth sewn shut. Children standing in a circle, holding hands, their faces smeared with something red.

At the bottom of each page, in shaky, childlike handwriting, were the words: “What do you want from me?”

I confronted her the next morning. “Emily, what is this? What’s going on?”

She stared at me for a long moment before finally speaking. “It’s not a game, Dad.”

Her voice was so calm, so detached, it made my stomach churn.

“What do you mean?”

“They talk to you,” she said. “If you ask them, they answer. But they don’t just want to talk.”

“Who?”

She didn’t respond.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Emily’s words echoed in my mind. “It’s not a game.” Against my better judgement, I decided to try it myself. Maybe it would help me understand what was happening to her.

I went into the basement, turned off the lights, and sat in the dark.

“Ten… nine… eight…”

I counted backward, my voice shaking.

“What do you want from me?”

For a moment, there was nothing but silence. Then, I heard it. A faint whisper, so soft I almost missed it.

“Let us in.”

My blood ran cold. The voice wasn’t Emily’s. It wasn’t anyone’s. It was hollow, otherworldly, and filled with a hunger that made my skin crawl.

“No,” I whispered back.

The whisper returned, louder this time. “Let us in.”

I bolted upstairs and locked the basement door. I didn’t sleep that night.

The next morning, Emily was gone. Her bed was empty, the window wide open. We searched everywhere, but it was like she had vanished into thin air.

Three days later, I found her notebook on the kitchen table. The last page had one final drawing—a crude sketch of our house, with two figures standing at the door. One was small, a child. The other was tall and hollow-eyed.

Underneath, in that same shaky handwriting, were the words: “We’re coming back.”

That was a year ago. The house is quiet now. Too quiet. Sometimes, late at night, I hear whispers outside my door.

I don’t ask what they want.

I already know.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model