Whispering walls

Chapter 1

As I leaned my head on the window and watched as the trees flew past, I wondered what our new home would be like. Would it be worth moving across the country for? I watched as the clouds followed us and slowly changed shape. I turned my head to see Emmet purring quietly in his bed, his tail slowly flicking the seat under him. The sun would often peak through the oddly shaped clouds to shine soft golden light on his dark fur.
"Are we there yet?" I asked my mother from the back seat. " Only about 10 minutes, my dear," she said, peeking through the rear vision mirror. We passed a small white farmhouse as she said this. It had a small swing set and a white picket fence surrounding it. Was that what our house would look like? I suddenly burst into excitement at the idea of our new home. Would it be as magical as I had dreamed?

Well, the house was magical, but not in the way I had hoped. As we pulled outside the old house, I was utterly displeased with what I saw. It was not a white house with a white picket fence but an old moss-covered stone house with an overgrown garden, which hadn't been maintained in years. The front garden was filled with an extensive array of wildflowers. There was a stone pathway that led up to the front door through the flower garden. I looked at my mother, who had a defeated look on her face. I suppose it was not what she was expecting either. At this point, I realized that my mother was going to be spending most of her time in the garden tending to the shrubbery, and I would have to help. I spent the next ten years outside in that garden.

I was around eight years old when we first moved into our grandparent's home. It was a tiny fieldstone house in the middle of the woods with a long driveway connecting it to the road below. There was one town about an hour away and one road that led to it. Our house being one of the only two for miles meant that we had many people passing through on their way from one town to the next. Many travelers told me that this part of the woods gave off very curious undertones. I pretended not to know what they were talking about, but I knew. I always felt that I wasn't entirely alone. I wasn't. I had my mother and our cat Emmet, but there was something else that just lingered in the air, and I could never quite put it into words, nor did I ever really realize that I felt it. It was as if time moved differently in this house, as though time didn't exist here.

We had not been in the house for more than two days when my mother got to work on the house. It was falling apart at the seams, and bits of stone and mortar were chipping from the walls. Cool breezes would drift through the cracks during the night, creating an eerie howling sound, almost like the voices of people whispering. I tossed and turned during the night as the sharp wind pierced through the walls. The house would creak and sway and cause all sorts of nightmarish sounds. All I could bear to do each night was roll over and hide under the blankets until I fell asleep. I could feel a presence when I was in that room. But I didn't bother to wake my sleeping mother as she would not believe me, nor would she care. She would just tell me to go back to sleep.

The wind continued to rattle through the walls all night, causing me much dismay.
"We're those footsteps?" I thought to myself as I pulled the blanket over my face.
"It's just the wind," I reassured myself again. This house is old." I took a deep breath and rolled over, ignoring the creaking and whistling behind me. The walls seemed to be speaking to me. I could hear whispering. I couldn't work out what they were saying, and they were only faint. The walls quietly and continuously muttered to me as I fell asleep. It was a wonder I fell asleep at all.