The Counting Game

I was seven when my family moved to the old farmhouse on Henley Road, a place my father got cheap because the previous owner had died in a fire. My sister Lena and I shared a room at the end of the upstairs hall, beneath the eaves, where the ceiling slanted and the floorboards always creaked. On that first night, we lay in our beds, whispering about nothing, laughing at our own silly jokes, while our parents argued in the kitchen below. The house smelled of old wood and dust, and I remember thinking how quiet it was out in the country, no cars, no neighbors, only the wind in the dead pines.

Then Lena stopped mid-laugh. Her eyes went wide, and she scrambled under her blanket, pulling it up to her chin. I did the same, my heart suddenly thumping. For a while, we just lay there, listening. The house had gone still, save for the hum of the refrigerator. ‘What is it?’ I whispered. She didn’t answer at first. Then she said, in a voice so small I almost didn’t hear, ‘Did you hear that?’ I said no. She said, ‘A man’s voice. It’s calling my name.’ I told her she was hearing things, but she insisted, ‘Shh, listen.’ I held my breath, and then I heard it.

A low, raspy voice, like gravel and smoke, was counting. ‘Lena, one. Lena, two. Lena, three.’ It was rhythmical, unhurried, and it seemed to come from right beside my ear, as if the man were standing between our beds. I froze, my skin prickling. I wanted to believe it was our father, but his voice was higher, and this was close, intimate, as if it was whispering into my sister’s ear. I grabbed her hand under the covers, and we both lay there, shivering, as the voice counted on, each number sounding closer. ‘Lena, four. Lena, five.’

I don’t know what came over me, but I was angry, and scared, and I shouted, ‘Stop it!’ The voice ceased instantly. For a second, there was pure silence, and I felt a surge of relief. Then the voice resumed, but this time it was different. It was lower, and it said, ‘One, two, three…’ but it wasn’t calling Lena’s name anymore. It was calling mine. ‘Milo, four. Milo, five.’ I screamed, and the voice stopped. But I knew it was just waiting.

We stayed awake the rest of the night, huddled together, too afraid to close our eyes. When dawn came, we told our parents, but they dismissed it as an old house settling or our imagination. The next night, we refused to sleep, but exhaustion took us. At three a.m., I woke to a whisper. The voice was there again, but this time it had moved. It was coming from the closet. It was counting, ‘Nine, ten, eleven…’ and we both saw the closet door was ajar. We ran to our parents’ room, but when we came back, the door was closed.

The counting continued every night, always starting where it left off, always moving closer. It counted from the foot of the bed, then from under the bed, then from inside the wall. The numbers grew, and with them, our terror. We learned the pattern: it would count consecutive numbers, drawing out each one, and each time we heard it, we felt a cold presence pressing in. I started to lose track of the number, but one night, I realized it had reached a hundred. The voice said, ‘Milo, one hundred.’ And then, in the same raspy tone, it added, ‘You’re mine now.’

We were too scared to tell our parents again, and they thought we were being dramatic. But that night, Lena woke me, crying. She said she had dreamed that the closet was open, and a burnt man was standing there, pointing at me. I didn’t sleep again that night. Over the next week, the voice grew bolder. It would whisper my name in the daytime, from the hallway, from the basement stairs. Once, I saw a shape in the reflection of the window, a tall, charred silhouette, and it was counting, ‘Milo, one hundred and one.’ I knew it was coming for me.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided to confront it. The next time it started counting, I yelled back, ‘Why are you counting?’ The voice paused, and for the first time, it sounded almost human. ‘Because you took something from me. I’m waiting to get it back.’ I had no idea what that meant. The house had come with a box of old photos, and I remembered seeing a family portrait in the attic, a man with a burned face, and a little boy. The box had a child’s toy inside, a wooden music box, and I had kept it, not knowing why.

I ran up to the attic, grabbed that music box, and threw it into the fireplace. As it burned, the voice let out a long, mournful wail, and then it was silent. I never heard it again. But on the last night, before it faded, it whispered, ‘You can run, but I’ll always find you again. And I’ll be counting.’ Years later, I still hear faint counting in the middle of the night, in quiet rooms, in my own mind. And I’m always, always waiting for the number to reach a million.