The Uninvited Listener

I always thought it was just the old house settling, that groaning in the walls at night, the way the floorboards breathed under my feet. I was twelve, then, and my room at the end of the hallway felt like a separate country, one I ruled with my cassette tapes and my stack of comic books. I’d lock the door and blast my music, drowning out the whispers I pretended not to hear. It was just my imagination, I told myself. Just the wind in the chimney. Just my own fear of the dark.

That all changed four months and three days after I turned thirteen, when my parents gave me a computer for my birthday. It was a bulky beige thing with a humming monitor, and I set it up on my desk, right where the afternoon sun hit the window. The first time I walked into my room with it, a wave of sadness hit me so hard I had to brace myself against the doorframe. It felt like a weight pressing down on my chest, a chill in my bones that wasn’t from the draft. I blinked, shook it off, and told myself it was just excitement, or maybe a sugar crash from the birthday cake. I ignored it and turned on my music, low, so I could focus on the computer.

I spent the next hour messing with the settings, loading up a game, and then I remembered my birthday cards. They were still scattered on my desk, and I wanted to put them in a shoebox so they wouldn’t get bent. I collected them, one by one, reading the cheesy messages, and then stacked them neatly in the box. When I turned back to my computer, I noticed the music was softer than I’d set it. I reached over and turned the dial up, back to 76, and the sound filled the room again. But when I turned around, the cards were back on the desk, exactly as they had been before, as if I’d never touched them.

I stood there, my heart thumping. I looked at my hands. I looked at the cards. I saw the shoebox, still open. I remember putting them in there, I swear I did. But there they were, scattered like before. A cold sweat prickled my neck. I gathered them again, this time watching myself, but I felt a strange resistance, as if invisible hands were holding them back. I shoved them into the box and slammed the lid shut. Then I left my room, heart pounding, and didn’t come back until dinner.

The next week, I started hearing things. Not just the usual groans, but a humming. It was low, almost below hearing, like a faraway power line. It came from my room, and it grew louder when I was near the closet. I pushed my desk against the door one night, and the next morning, it was pulled back, as if someone had moved it. My posters would fall off the walls, my books would be on the floor, and the temperature in the room would drop even in the summer. My parents thought I was just being a teenager, slamming doors and being dramatic. But I knew better.

One night, I left the computer on, with a blank word processor open, and went to bed. The next morning, there was a message typed on the screen. It read: ‘You have something of mine.’ I nearly screamed. I stared at those letters, and I felt the sadness again, heavier than ever. I asked my parents if they’d typed it, but they looked at me like I was crazy. I tried to delete the file, but it wouldn’t go. I eventually reformatted the hard drive, and it still came back.

I started to research, secretly, at the library. I found a book about local history, and there was a story about a boy who had lived in this house a hundred years ago. He had been an orphan, sent here to work, and he had been found dead in the attic, locked away, forgotten. His name was Jacob. The book said he had been ‘peculiar,’ that he collected things, small trinkets, and that he had been accused of theft before he died. The last line of the chapter was chilling: ‘He never left the house, even in death. He’s still listening, still waiting for what was taken from him.’

That’s when I remembered my birthday cards. My Aunt Mildred had sent me a card with a twenty-dollar bill, and I’d tucked it into the shoebox. I checked the box, and the twenty was gone. I felt a cold wash over me. He had taken it because I had taken his things? But I hadn’t taken anything. I was born here, but he had been here first. The house was his, and I was the intruder.

I tried to give him back something, anything. I put a small carved wooden horse I had when I was little on the closet shelf. The next morning, it was on my computer keyboard, and the word processor had a new message: ‘Not enough.’

The sadness grew. It was a constant ache now, and I couldn’t listen to music anymore because it just made me feel worse. My grades dropped. My friends stopped calling. My parents thought I was ill, but I couldn’t tell them the truth. I was the only one who could see the shadow of a boy that flickered at the edges of my vision, always just out of sight. He was in my room, in my head, and he was draining me.

On the last night before my fourteenth birthday, I woke up to find Jacob standing at the foot of my bed. He was pale, with hollow eyes, and he was holding the twenty-dollar bill. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. In my head, I heard a voice, like a cold whisper: ‘You have something of mine.’ I didn’t know what else he wanted. I had given him everything I could think of.

Then I looked at my computer screen, which was on even though I hadn’t turned it on. It showed a picture of me, taken in my room, and I could see Jacob’s reflection in the window behind me. I realized then: he wanted this room. He wanted to be seen. He had been here, so long, alone, and he wanted company. He wanted me to stay, always, like he had been trapped.

I screamed, and I ran. I don’t remember leaving the house, but I found myself on the lawn, shivering in the cold. My parents rushed out, but I couldn’t speak. The next week, we moved. I never told them about the shadow in my peripheries, or the humming that followed me to the new house, louder now, as if he had come along. And sometimes, in the quiet, I still hear that word processor humming, and I know that Jacob isn’t gone. He’s just waiting for me to return, to give him what he wants, but I can never go back. Not ever.