THE VOICE IN THE WALL

I bought an old house outside Saskatoon, and for the first few weeks, everything seemed perfectly normal until I started hearing someone whispering behind the bedroom wall every night at exactly 3:17 a.m. At first, I assumed it was plumbing or mice, but then the whispers became words, always the same three: "Let me out." One night, I pressed my ear against the drywall and heard a little girl crying. "Please," she whispered, "he's coming back." I grabbed a hammer and smashed a hole in the wall, revealing a narrow space between the studs. Inside was a tiny wooden door, barely large enough for a child. It had a brass handle and dozens of scratches around its edges. I pulled it open and shone my flashlight inside. There was a small room, an old mattress, and hundreds of photographs of me sleeping in my bedroom. My hands began shaking as I noticed the newest photograph, taken just moments earlier. In it, I was standing in front of the tiny door, holding my flashlight. Then, from somewhere behind me, the little girl whispered, "Don't turn around. He's wearing your face."

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