The Strangers in the Walls

Ben had always been a practical man. He didn’t believe in ghosts, spirits, or anything that couldn’t be explained by science or logic. So when he found an old house at the edge of town that was being sold at an absurdly low price, he didn’t hesitate. The house had a certain charm to it—overgrown vines crawling up the brick walls, wooden floors creaking with age—but Ben saw potential. He was going to renovate it, make it his own.

The first few nights in the house were peaceful. Ben spent his days sanding floors, painting walls, and replacing broken fixtures. But as the sun dipped below the horizon each evening, an eerie quiet settled over the house. It wasn’t the normal, comforting silence of a house that had been left alone for a while. It was something else—a stillness that felt thick, suffocating. He dismissed it as nothing more than the loneliness of being in an empty house.

On the fourth night, after a long day of work, Ben sat down on the couch to relax. The house was quiet, save for the occasional creak of the wooden beams. But just as he started to doze off, he heard it—a soft scratching sound, coming from the walls.

It was subtle at first, barely noticeable. Just a faint, almost rhythmic scratching, like something—or someone—was moving behind the drywall. Ben’s heart skipped a beat. He froze, his body tense. The scratching continued, this time louder, more insistent. It was coming from all around him, the walls seeming to vibrate with the noise.

He stood up, moving cautiously toward the source of the sound. The scratching grew louder, more frantic, as though whatever was behind the walls was trying to break free. Ben’s mind raced. It could be rats, he reasoned. Or maybe squirrels had found their way in through a crack in the foundation. But the sound was… wrong. It didn’t sound like any animal he knew.

The walls trembled again. This time, it wasn’t just scratching. There was a soft thudding now, a faint knocking, followed by a low murmur that seemed to echo from all directions.

Ben’s breath caught in his throat. “Hello?” he called out, his voice shaky. “Is someone there?”

The murmur stopped, replaced by an unsettling silence. Then, in the stillness, a voice—soft, almost a whisper—slipped through the cracks.

“Let us out…”

Ben’s stomach turned. He backed away from the wall, his mind racing. It was impossible. There was no way there could be people behind the walls. The house had been empty for years, and no one had lived here for as long as anyone could remember.

But the voice came again, clearer this time, closer.

“Let us out. Please… let us out…”

Ben’s pulse quickened. He was no longer thinking logically. He was panicking. His hands were shaking as he grabbed a hammer from his toolbox and approached the wall where the voice had come from.

He hit the wall hard, splintering the plaster. Dust filled the air, and the scratching noise intensified, like nails scraping furiously against the inside of the walls. Ben kept hitting the wall, desperation making his blows harder, faster.

Finally, there was a crack, and a hole large enough for him to peer through. He leaned in, heart pounding in his chest, and looked inside.

The darkness behind the wall was suffocating. Ben could barely make out anything beyond the hole, but there was something there—a shape, a shadow. Then, two pale faces slowly emerged from the darkness, their eyes wide and staring, filled with something between fear and hunger.

“Please… let us out…” the voices whispered again, now accompanied by the sound of more scratching, more desperate movements.

Ben stumbled backward, his mind spinning. He couldn’t breathe. The faces in the wall didn’t look human, not entirely. Their eyes were too wide, their features too sharp. They were twisted, gaunt, as though they had been trapped for years, their skin yellow and stretched tight over their bones.

As he stood frozen, paralyzed with fear, the figures in the wall began to claw their way toward him. Their hands—long, skeletal fingers—scraped against the plaster, leaving deep gouges in the walls. Their faces pressed closer to the hole, their mouths moving wordlessly.

Ben stepped back, his legs giving out beneath him. He fell to the floor, gasping for air. The voices were all around him now, filling the room, chanting in a language he didn’t understand. The figures in the wall continued to writhe and twist, their movements frantic.

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, everything stopped. The scratching, the voices, the movement behind the walls—all fell silent. The room was still again, but the air was thick with something else now. A heaviness that pressed down on Ben’s chest, making it hard to breathe.

He scrambled to his feet, his mind racing. He had to get out of the house. He had to leave, before whatever was behind the walls came for him. But as he turned toward the door, he stopped dead in his tracks.

The doorway wasn’t where it should have been.

The hallway in front of him had shifted, the walls closing in. The door was no longer visible, and the house stretched in impossible directions, as if it had grown in the few seconds he had been distracted.

Ben turned back to the hole in the wall. The figures were gone, but the voices were still there—whispering, taunting, pleading.

“Let us out…”

And suddenly, Ben understood.

He wasn’t meant to leave. He had opened the door.

And now, he was part of the house.

Forever.

The last thing he heard before the darkness swallowed him was the scratching, slowly coming from inside the walls… getting closer.