The Hum of the Second Floor

After three years in that cramped, murmuring apartment, I finally left. It wasn’t a dramatic exit – just a quiet packing, my brother had already gone, and I was left with boxes and the feeling that the walls were breathing. I moved into my grandmother’s townhouse in Quezon City, a temporary arrangement until she and my aunt relocated to their new house. They’d agreed to let me rent their old place, and in exchange, I was helping design their future home, my engineer’s eye tracing blueprints at the small dining table while the city simmered under quarantine.

Grandma’s house was a two-story affair, clean and bright, with a certain stoic silence that felt refreshing after the echoing corridors of my last residence. Grandma had her room, my aunt had hers, and they’d given me space in Grandma’s room – a large, airy chamber with a window that overlooked a narrow street lined with acacia trees. The first few nights were bliss. The hum of the air conditioner was a steady lullaby, and the city noise was a distant, muted thing. But then, the quiet began to feel unnatural. There was a layer beneath the quiet, a low, persistent hum that seemed to come from the second floor, directly above my grandmother’s room.

At first, I dismissed it as a faulty appliance – the refrigerator, maybe, or the water pump. But the hum was not mechanical; it had a rhythm, a kind of thrumming, like a heartbeat made of static. I mentioned it to Grandma, who just smiled and said, ‘It’s the house settling.’ My aunt, a woman who rarely spoke, simply stared at the ceiling and said, ‘It only starts when we’re all in our rooms.’ I laughed it off, but as the days crawled by under the GCQ, the hum grew more insistent. It wasn’t loud, but it was everywhere, seeping into my bones. When I tried to sleep, it filled my ears, and I would lie awake, my heart beating in sync with that unnatural pulse.

One afternoon, I decided to investigate. I climbed the stairs to the second floor, which was supposed to be empty storage – a few boxes, old furniture, a closed door at the end of the hall. The hum seemed to intensify as I stepped onto the landing, resonating through my chest. I walked to the end of the hall and placed my hand on the door. The wood was warm, almost feverish. I pushed the door open.

The room was empty except for a single object: a small, round mirror on the wall, its surface dark, reflecting nothing. The hum was so loud now that I felt it in my teeth. I stepped closer, and in the mirror, I saw my reflection, but it was wrong. It was me, yes, but my reflection was smiling – a smile that was too wide, and it was looking not at me, but up, at the ceiling, as if listening. I stumbled back, and the hum stopped. The mirror showed only my bewildered face, and the room was silent. I fled downstairs, my heart pounding.

I tried to convince myself it was a trick of the light, a strange reflection. But that night, as I lay in bed, the hum returned, and it was different. It was not just a hum; it was a voice, murmuring, indistinct, weaving in and out of the sound, like a chorus trapped in the walls. I could almost make out words – my name, sometimes, or fragments of sentences. ‘You shouldn’t have stayed.’ ‘She always listened.’ I shook my head, trying to clear it. Grandma was asleep beside me, her breathing steady. I turned to look at her, and in the dim glow of the streetlamp, I saw that her lips were moving, silently, as if speaking to someone in her sleep.

The next day, I confronted my aunt. I asked about the room, the mirror, the hum. She looked at me with a strange, knowing expression. ‘This house has a history,’ she said. ‘Before we bought it, an old woman lived here. She was a widow. She used to listen to her children through the walls. They all moved away, but she would sit in that room, listening still. They say she died in that room, in front of that mirror, waiting for her children to come back. The hum is her, trying to listen to us, because she can’t hear them anymore.’ I felt a chill run down my spine. ‘That’s just a story,’ I said, but she shook her head. ‘The house remembers.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake, listening to the hum, which was now louder than ever, and I realized it was not just in the house – it was in my head. The voice was clearer: ‘They left me. You’re here now. You can’t leave.’ I got up, on impulse, and walked to the second floor. The door to the room was open. The mirror was there, and it was no longer dark. It glowed with a pale, sickly light, and in it, I saw not my reflection, but a room – a different room, with peeling wallpaper and a bed where an old woman lay, her body growing thin, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. She was murmuring, and I realized the hum was her voice, a constant, desperate frequency. And then she turned her head and looked straight at me, through the mirror, and she smiled with my smile.

I ran back to the bedroom and woke my grandmother. I begged her to leave, to come with me, that something was wrong. But she just looked at me with a calm, empty expression. ‘The hum is just the house,’ she said. ‘You’ll get used to it.’ I didn’t believe her. I looked at my own reflection in the dark window, and for a moment, I saw the old woman’s face imposed over mine. I knew then that I had not escaped the apartment’s haunting; I had merely traded one for another. This house had been waiting for a long time for someone to listen.

As the weeks passed under quarantine, the line between the hum and reality blurred. I started to hear my brother’s voice in the murmur, my mother’s, memories I had long buried. The mirror became a portal, and I found myself drawn to it, standing before it for hours, staring into the dark. The old woman would sometimes appear, not in the mirror, but in the corner of my eye, a flicker of gray. She was growing stronger, feeding on my attention. My grandmother and aunt went about their days as if nothing was wrong, but they would sometimes pause and tilt their heads, as if listening to something I couldn’t hear – or something I could hear only too well.

One night, I finally understood. I woke up, not in my bed, but in that empty room, sitting on a wooden chair in front of the mirror. The hum was deafening, but beneath it, I heard my own voice, high and pleading, as if from a distance. And in the mirror, I saw myself, but not just myself – a collage of faces, all the people who had lived here, all of them listening, all of them waiting. The old woman stood behind me in the reflection, her hands on my shoulders. ‘Now you’ll stay,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll keep the hum alive.’

I tried to scream, but no sound came. The hum swallowed it. The next morning, I woke up in my bed, my grandmother smiling at me. ‘You slept well,’ she said. I didn’t answer. I looked at my reflection in the window, and I didn’t recognize myself. The hum was there, softer now, but constant. I knew it would never stop. I had become part of the house, another voice in the chorus, forever listening. And when my grandmother and aunt finally moved away in July, I stayed behind. I told them I’d decided to keep the house, that I needed it for my work. They didn’t question it. They just left, and I stood in the doorway, listening to the hum, which was now a familiar, almost comforting sound. In the mirror on the second floor, a new face had joined the old woman’s – mine, my eyes reflecting the dim light, still listening, still waiting for something I could never name.