It was a cold November evening when Emma found herself alone in her family’s sprawling, creaky old house. Her parents had left for a weekend getaway, and her older brother was out camping with friends. The house, nestled at the edge of a dense forest, felt unnaturally quiet as Emma curled up on the couch, scrolling absentmindedly through her phone.
The first strange occurrence was subtle: the sound of faint, rhythmic tapping. She dismissed it as tree branches brushing against a window, even though she’d closed all the windows earlier. The tapping grew louder, more insistent, as if someone were drumming their fingers on the glass. Emma’s unease deepened. She decided to check, clutching a flashlight tightly in her hand.
As she approached the living room window, her breath caught. On the outside of the frosted glass, a small, pale handprint slowly appeared, pressing against the pane. Emma froze, staring at the impossible sight. The print faded away before her eyes.
“It’s just my imagination,” she whispered to herself. She shut the curtains, heart pounding, and returned to the couch. She tried to focus on her phone, but her signal had disappeared, leaving her in digital isolation.
Then came the whispers.
They started as faint murmurs, barely audible over the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. They seemed to come from the walls, weaving in and out of the house’s groaning woodwork. Emma strained to hear the words but couldn’t make sense of them. She turned on the TV to drown out the noise, but the screen flickered, static overtaking the signal.
Suddenly, a child’s laughter rang out, high-pitched and echoing, coming from upstairs.
“No,” Emma muttered, shaking her head. “There’s no one else here.”
She grabbed her father’s heavy flashlight—a comfortingly solid object—and hesitated at the foot of the stairs. The laughter came again, followed by a thud, as if something heavy had been dropped. Against her better judgment, she ascended, her footsteps echoing ominously.
On the second-floor landing, the whispers became clearer. They seemed to be calling her name. Her bedroom door stood slightly ajar, and she could see a flickering light within. She hadn’t left anything on. Slowly, she pushed the door open with the flashlight.
Her phone’s missing lock screen photo stared back at her from her own wall—a family portrait, now torn, with her face scratched out. Beneath it, scrawled in red crayon, were the words: "Why did you leave me?"
Emma stumbled back, her heart racing. A cold wind brushed past her, extinguishing the flashlight. In the suffocating darkness, a child’s voice whispered right into her ear, “You’ll stay this time.”
The door slammed shut.
Emma screamed, clawing at the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. The whispers turned into a cacophony of voices, overlapping and growing louder. A shadowed figure stepped out of the corner of the room, its small frame illuminated faintly by the light under the door. It looked like a little girl, her head tilted unnaturally, her eyes gleaming with malice.
The last thing Emma saw was the girl lunging toward her with outstretched arms, and the house went silent once more.
When her parents returned two days later, they found the house perfectly tidy, except for one thing: Emma’s bedroom was locked from the inside.
And Emma was never found.
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