When she woke up there were seventeen voice messages from a stranger. The first was breathing. Wet, laboured, like someone trying to inhale through a mouthful of blood. The second was a whisper: You left the window open. By the fifth, her hands were shaking. Heather hadn’t given her number out. She hadn’t opened the window. The seventh message was a lullaby. Off-key. Sung in a child’s voice. Her daughter Rosie was asleep in the next room, safe, she hoped, but the voice on the recording mimicked her daughter’s cadence perfectly, “Mama, mama, come and play…”
She dialled the number. Disconnected.
The eleventh message was a scream. Not a human. Not an animal. Something in between. It sounded like meat tearing. By the seventeenth, she was crying. The voice said: You should’ve buried him deeper.
She hadn’t buried anyone. Not yet.
The house was too quiet. Heather crept down the hallway, barefoot, the floorboards cold and damp. She paused outside Rosie’s room, the door ajar.
Inside, Rosie slept soundly, clutching her stuffed rabbit, its stitched eye dangling by a thread. Heather turned to go back to her room and saw the window. It was wide open.
The curtains fluttered like pale arms reaching out. She slammed it shut, locked it, and checked every door. Nothing broken. No signs of forced entry. But the air smelled wrong. Like copper and rot. She opened her phone again. The messages were gone. All seventeen.
That night she dreamed of the basement. She hadn’t been down there in years. Not since the flood. The walls had buckled, the floor warped, and the smell, mildew, decay, something worse, had driven her to seal it off. But in the dream, the basement was pristine. White tile. Fluorescent lights. A metal table in the centre. On it lays a body. She stepped closer. It was her. Eyes gouged out. Mouth sewn shut. Her chest was open, ribs peeled back like petals. Inside, something moved. She woke up screaming.
The next morning, Rosie was quiet. She wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t speak. When Heather asked what was wrong, her daughter whispered, “ He’s in the walls. ”
She froze, wondering, “ Who? ”
Rosie pointed to the vent, and said, “ The man who sings. ”
Heather called the police. They searched the house and found nothing, but an officer lingered in the hallway, staring at the vent.
“ Have you ever noticed the smell? ” the officer asked.
“What smell?” Heather said.
He didn’t answer and left.
That night, the messages returned. Thirty-two of them. All blank. Except the last: You buried him in the wrong place.
Heather tore up the backyard and dug until her hands bled. Nothing. She checked the crawlspace. The attic. The old wall behind the shed. Still nothing. The smell grew stronger. Sweet yet putrid, like fruit left to rot in the sun.
Rosie eventually stopped sleeping. She sat in her bed, eyes wide, whispering to the rabbit. Heather listened at the door.
“ He says you were supposed to die first, ” the little girl giggled.
Heather found the old basement key in the drawer and she didn’t remember locking it. The door to the basement groaned open. The air was thick. Wet. She descended the stairs, flashlight flickering. The walls pulsed, like veins beneath skin. She touched one. It was warm. At the bottom, the floor was covered in water. Black and motionless. She stepped into it. It wasn’t water. It was blood.
In the centre of the room something rose. A shape. Human, almost, but all too instinctively wrong. Its limbs were too long. Its head tilted at an impossible angle. Its mouth stretched from ear to ear, stitched shut with rusted wire. It held a phone. Her phone. It played the first message. Breathing. Then the second: You left the window open.
She turned to run, but the stairs were gone. There was only a wall. Only a pulsing, living wall.
She screamed until her throat tore. The thing stepped closer. Its chest opened like a flower. Inside, she saw faces. Her own. Rosie’s. The officer’s. All stitched together. All screaming.
She woke up in her bed, the window was closed. Her phone was clean, no messages. She rushed to Rosie’s room and found it empty. Only the rabbit remained. Its stitched eye is gone. It’s mouth sewn shut. She felt powerless and horrified and heard a quiet whistling in her ears only to realise she was choking on a scream and holding her breath.
She called the police again. They searched. Found nothing. Except for the basement, it was pristine. White tiles. Fluorescent lights. A metal table. On it lies a body… Her daughter’s. Eyes gouged out, mouth sewn shut, chest open. Inside something moved. She screamed. The officer held her back. His mouth stretched too wide, his badge was stitched to his skin and he whispered, “ You should have buried her deeper. ”
She lives in the basement now. The walls whisper, the messages never stop. She answers them and sings lullabies but her mouth is sewn shut. She waits for someone to leave the window open. She decided to stop answering the phone but it didn’t matter. The messages came anyway. Not just on her phone, on the baby monitor, the microwave display, the blinking lights on the smoke detector. Morse code and she looked it up, discovering the message was I’m inside her now.
Heather smashed the monitor, yanked the smoke detector from the ceiling, and unplugged the microwave. Still, the messages came.
Rosie began drawing, Not rabbits or rainbows, like before. Now it was bodies, split open, eyes missing and mouths sewn shut.
One drawing showed Heather standing in front of a mirror, but the reflection was wrong. It had no skin, just muscle and bone and a stitched smile. She asked Rosie where she saw it. Her daughter pointed to the mirror.
Heather covered every mirror in the house, but reflections still appeared. In puddles, in windows, in her coffee. Always the same face, always smiling. She tried to leave. Packed a bag, grabbed Rosie’s hand, but the front door wouldn’t open. Not locked, just…gone. Only the wall. She tried the back door, the windows, and the garage. Gone. She screamed until her voice broke. Rosie just watched and giggled , “He says you’re almost ready.”
That night, she found a new message. Not on her phone, but carved into her bedroom wall: You buried the wrong daughter.
She didn’t sleep. She sat in the hallway, knife in her hand, watching Rosie’s door. At 3:17 a.m, it creaked open. Rosie stood there, eyes black, mouth sewn shut. She stepped forward and Heather dropped the knife. Rosie opened her mouth and the stitches tore as shrieked, “Mama, it’s your turn! ”
The walls began to bleed, the floor cracked open. Hands reached out, long, thin, stitched at the wrist. They grabbed Heather, pulling her down.
She fell for hours through memories, through screams, through every moment she’d ever doubted herself. Every time she’d felt abandoned, every time she’d wanted to disappear.
She landed in a room, white tiles, fluorescent lights, a metal table and on it laid Rosie, but not the real Rosie. Her skin was paper, her eyes were buttons, her mouth was sewn shut.
Heather stepped closer, the body twitched. She reached out and her eyes opened. Inside were mirrors and she saw herself smiling. The walls whispered: You’re ready now.
The table split open and inside was a phone. It rang and she answered. It was her own voice and it whispered, “ You left the window open. ”
She woke up in her bed, the house was quiet. Rosie was gone and the mirrors were uncovered. She looked into one and her reflection smiled, but it had its mouth sewn shut. She heard herself whisper, “ Welcome home. ”
The End
Bio:
Brittany Szekely is a mother of three living in Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia. She is a writer of poems and short stories and sometimes paints abstract art.