I awoke on one particular Saturday morning to the sound of whispers in the walls. Perhaps you’ve heard these whispers, too. Just as you’re waking up. You swear you can hear people talking, as if your parents were in the next room chatting over breakfast. Yet, when you go to look, no one is there. The house is empty. Or is it?

           Same thing happened on that Saturday morning. I heard the voices, went to look, and found no one. This was strange as my parents were always home on Saturday mornings. There was no note either.

         Usually the voices stop once you’re fully awake, but this time they didn’t. I walked around the entire house. Cupping my ear, I’d hold it to each wall and listen. I’d hear things that sounded like words, but not in any language I knew. Or perhaps they were just parts of words. The voices were so quiet and muffled it was impossible to tell. The voices wouldn’t stop. At times they seemed to sing even, somberly. The voices seemed sad altogether really.

          I had nearly given up trying to understand them when I tried the living room once more. Listening close to the wall I heard a voice say the word, ‘Train.’ Even being such a common word, it gave me chills. Perhaps it was the fact that I finally understood a word the voices were saying. There really were voices in the walls!

             The whispers became clearer and clearer from then on until I could make out a whole sentence. ‘…Found him on the train…’

           ‘…Bleeding…’ said another.

         ‘…Died alone on the train…,’ and this one was more of a hiss than anything.

            ‘He was such a good boy.’ The other voices moaned and wept.

             ‘A handsome boy, too. Too good to be caught up in all that.’

            ‘My poor, poor Clyde,’ said a voice and it sounded familiar. Eerily, Clyde was my name. I pulled back from the wall, suddenly freighted the voices knew I was listening.

           After a moment, I put my ear back to the wall. The voices seemed closer. Right on the other side of the wall. Blood rushed to my ears, my heart raced, my brow became beaded with sweat. I lay back on the couch, but could still hear the whispers. The voices were uncomfortably close now. I closed my eyes to focus on listening.

           ‘Hello?’ I said at the wall. Though afraid, I thought I’d try to get to the bottom of the mystery voices. The voices stopped.

            ‘Clyde?’ said a mournful voice with a quiver. So familiar, this voice. Yes, I knew that voice. It was my mother’s! This only added to my confusion. Did they have a secret room in the wall? Were the voices traveling through the pipes? My mother said, ‘I heard Clyde.’

            ‘It was only the house creaking,’ said another. This voice belonged to my father. ‘The walls whisper sometimes. A trick of the mind.’

            ‘It was Clyde,’ my mother insisted.

            I heard a creak then. Looking up I saw that the roof of the living room was being lifted off, as if hinged at one side. Only it wasn’t a roof, it was the lid of a coffin. A coffin I was laying in. I couldn’t explain it. I’d gone from being on the couch to being in a coffin, yet still I lay in the living room.  Looking up I saw my father as he said, ‘But Clyde’s right here.’

            Then I saw my mother peak over the edge of the coffin, eyes red and wet. I tried to call out to her, but my lips wouldn’t move.

            ‘It was only a whisper in the wall… Our son is dead.’

            ‘Yes,’ my mother agreed and wept. ‘It was only the whispers in the walls.’

—-

            I never got to speak to them again…

The End