The Murmur

The night was quiet. The cool breeze came and went, like the breath of a sleeping child. But I was not peacefully asleep, as the murmur had begun again. It had been going on for a few months now. We had moved in to our new home last year, and everything had been perfect. The view of the park across the road was amazing, not like our previous home, which was an apartment facing many other apartments. The rooms were spacious as well, and I immediately chose mine when I went in. It was only a few nights after, that the noises began. It was always in the same order; a man shouting very loudly, then a woman screaming, then some murmuring and it would end with children screaming. But the one that bothered me most, was the murmuring. It would always sound like it was coming from my room, like there were some invisible people next to my bed or something. And the funny part was that no one else had ever heard these noises. My parents and older sister always gave me a weird look whenever I brought the issue up, and my sister would always say “Its probably from some other house. You’re a guy, you shouldn’t be getting scared of stuff like this.” Well tonight, I thought to myself as I lay on my bed, I would find whether these noises were coming from our house or from outside.

I found my torch in the drawer next to my bed, and slowly walked outside my room. It was two in the morning and I knew that, from the previous experiences, that the noise would start in about five minutes. I was not wrong. The man’s voice started rising in volume and the woman’s voice sounded as if she were crying. I followed the voices down the stairs and realised that they were coming from our basement. Unable to control myself, I opened the door swiftly and shouted “Whoever’s down there, you better leave now or I’m calling the police!” Immediately after I said that, a strong gust of wind swept past me and almost knocked me over. I was about to go down the basement stairs to check, when a deep male voice boomed behind me, “You shouldn’t be here, boy!” I immediately turned around to find no one behind me. I ran up to my room and locked myself in. My whole body was shaking and I quickly covered myself with my blanket, even my face. I forced myself to go to sleep that night and woke up with a high temperature. I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone, because even when I thought about the incident, my hands would start shaking.

After a few more sleepless nights, I decided to go to the local library to see if I could find any information about the house. As I read through the old preserved articles on the Microfilm machine, I shuddered when I found an article about that very house that I was staying in. A murder had taken place fifty years ago, in 1965, where a man named Alan Swindle had stabbed his wife repeatedly, then found his two children, who were hiding, and strangled them to death. He had called the police to confess to his crime before shooting himself in the head. What shocked me more was that the murdered children used to stay in my room. I did not know what to think, and my mind was abuzz with so many thoughts as I left the library that day. When I got home, I went straight up to my room and stayed there. I heard my parents knocking on my door in the evening but they left after a while, probably thinking that I was asleep.

That night, the noises began again, as they always did. This time, for some odd reason, I felt like I had to know what was going on in the basement. I wanted to tell the spirits to leave my house and just give me a damn break. It was frustrating enough that I was the only one hearing these noises, but it was also severely affecting my sleep and I couldn’t take it any longer. As I started to get off my bed, the murmuring began. But this time, they sounded even closer than they usually did. It was almost intelligible this time, but I left my room before my mind could properly register the words. I crept slowly down to the basement door and I could hear the man’s voice shouting from below. I opened the basement door and shouted once more, ‘Get out of my house, Alan. You don’t belong here anymore!” The moment the words escaped my lips, I heard heavy footsteps coming up from below the basement. I quickly ran back up to my room and shut my door, shaking just as I had the few nights back. I heard the footsteps coming up the stairs and stopped right outside my room. As I peeked over my blanket. the door swung open with great force and standing outside was a man, covered in blood. His right eye, all the way to the right cheek was just a huge gaping hole that was bleeding profusely. The next thing I knew, he was sitting on top of me, his cold hands wrapped around my neck and squeezing tightly. As I tried to shout for help, I saw two children, a boy and a girl, cowering at the corner of my room. They were whispering something but I could hear it pretty loudly. It was then that I realised what they were saying; they kept repeating the words “Don’t go”, over and over again. My mind finally registered the murmuring I had heard in my room, prior to this incident; the words I had heard then were “don’t go” as well. The man continued strangling me and I started to feel the air escaping my body; my eardrums were thundering loudly in tandem with my slowing heartbeat. If only I had stopped to listen to the whispers, I may not have ended up in this situation. I thought about my parents and my sister, and how they would react when they found my dead body the following morning. I had already accepted my fate, that I was going to die that night. Tears started rolling my face, mixed with the saliva drooling from the madman above me. His remaining eye was filled with a violent rage, and as I breathed my last breath, the last thing I saw was a sadistic smile on his face; a smile that was filled with malice.

Credit : Aidanwyldd