Chapter 3: The Wrong Voice

They'd driven to the nearest 24-hour diner and sat in a corner booth until 3 AM, Dan nursing black coffee while Liam stared at his untouched burger and tried to make sense of what they'd both heard. By the time they returned to the house, dawn was breaking over the rooftops, and whatever had been calling his name from upstairs was gone.

"You're staying in the spare room tonight," Liam had insisted, and Dan hadn't argued. They'd both heard that laughter, that impossible sound that had started as Chloe's and ended as something else entirely. Dan had agreed to sleep over, but his face had gone pale when they'd walked back into the house, and he'd kept glancing at the staircase like it might sprout teeth.

Now, sixteen hours later, Liam was regretting the invitation.

Chloe had come home around noon, full of apologies for the late dinner and excitement about landing the Peterson account. She'd hugged him tightly, commenting that he looked tired, asking if he'd slept okay. He'd managed to deflect her questions, but he could see the worry creeping back into her eyes – the same worry that had been building for weeks as the house's "tantrums" escalated.

Dan had left after lunch, claiming Sarah needed help with something at their apartment, but not before pulling Liam aside.

"Whatever's happening here," his brother had said quietly, "it's not normal. Maybe you and Chloe should think about staying somewhere else for a while."

"And tell her what? That something in our new house is doing perfect impressions of her voice?"

Dan had looked uncomfortable. "I don't know, man. But that thing last night... it knew exactly how to sound like her. That's not random. That's not some weird acoustic trick or whatever. That's intelligent."

Now, at 11:30 PM, Liam was lying in bed listening to Chloe's steady breathing and trying to convince himself that having company in the house would make things better. Dan was just down the hall in the spare room, probably scrolling through his phone before sleep. If anything happened tonight, Liam wouldn't be alone to face it.

The thought was comforting right up until he heard footsteps in the hallway.

Soft, deliberate steps moving from the spare room toward their bedroom door. Liam held his breath, listening. Maybe Dan was going to the bathroom, or getting a glass of water from the kitchen. The footsteps paused outside their door for a moment, then continued toward the staircase.

That's when he heard the voice.

"Liam?" It was Chloe's voice, coming from the hallway. Exactly Chloe's voice – not the distorted version from the night before, but perfect in every detail. Worried, affectionate, just loud enough to wake him without disturbing his sleeping girlfriend. "Liam, can you come here for a minute? I need to show you something."

Beside him, Chloe didn't stir. Her breathing remained deep and even, the breathing of someone lost in REM sleep. But her voice in the hallway was getting more insistent.

"Please, babe. It's important. I'm at the top of the stairs."

Liam's heart hammered against his ribs as the rational part of his mind warred with something deeper and more primal. Chloe was right there next to him, clearly asleep and had been for over an hour. Whatever was in the hallway using her voice, it wasn't her.

But God, it sounded exactly like her. Not just the tone or the accent, but the way she said his name when she was worried about something, the slight upturn at the end of "important" that suggested she was trying not to sound demanding. If he hadn't been looking right at her sleeping form, he would have sworn it was really Chloe calling to him.

"Liam, I'm scared. Please come up here."

The desperation in the voice made his chest tight. Even knowing it wasn't really her, every instinct he possessed screamed at him to get up, to go to her, to protect her from whatever was frightening her. His legs were already swinging out of bed before he caught himself.

It's not her. It's not her. It's NOT her.

He fumbled for his phone on the nightstand, hands shaking as he opened his text messages and started typing: are you awake?

He sent it to Chloe and watched the screen, waiting. Beside him, her phone remained silent and dark on her nightstand. She didn't stir, didn't reach for the device, gave no sign that she'd received any message at all.

The voice from the hallway was getting more agitated. "Liam, why won't you answer me? I can see the light from your phone under the door. I know you're awake."

That detail hit him like ice water. Whatever was out there could see the light from his phone screen bleeding under the bedroom door. It was watching, waiting, aware of his every movement.

"Fine," the voice said, and now there was a cold edge to it that Chloe's voice had never carried. "If you won't come to me, I'll come to you."

The bedroom door handle began to turn.

Liam's breath caught in his throat as the handle rotated slowly, deliberately, the metal mechanism clicking softly in the silence. Beside him, Chloe remained deeply asleep, oblivious to the terror playing out just feet away from her unconscious form.

"No," he whispered, his voice barely audible. "Stay back."

The handle stopped turning. For a moment, there was perfect silence.

Then Chloe's voice came through the door again, but this time it was different. Flatter. More curious than afraid.

"You can see me, can't you? Even with the door closed. You know I'm not really her."

Liam's entire body was shaking now. He reached over and gently shook Chloe's shoulder, desperate to wake her, to have her confirm that she was really there beside him and not standing in the hallway playing this impossible game.

"Mmm?" Chloe stirred slightly but didn't wake, just shifted position and settled deeper into sleep.

"She can't help you," the voice said, and now it was definitely not Chloe anymore. It was using her vocal cords, her accent, her speech patterns, but underneath was something cold and alien and infinitely patient. "She doesn't even know I'm here. But you do. You've been able to see me since that first night on the stairs."

The night he'd almost looked back. The night he'd felt something tall and thin climbing behind him, reaching for him with fingers that were too long.

"What do you want?" His voice came out as barely a croak.

"I want you to open the door, Liam. I want you to look at me. Really look at me this time."

"No."

"No?" There was amusement in the voice now, a sound like Chloe laughing at a private joke. "But you want to. I can feel it. The same urge that made you run up those stairs, the same compulsion that's been growing stronger every night. You need to see what I really am."

The urge hit him like a physical blow – not to open the door, but to photograph it. To capture evidence of what was happening, to prove to himself and Dan and anyone else who would listen that he wasn't losing his mind. His phone was already in his hands, camera app open, finger hovering over the flash setting.

"Yes," the thing wearing Chloe's voice whispered. "Show them. Show them all what you've found."

Liam's finger moved without conscious thought, switching the flash to its highest setting. He slipped out of bed as quietly as he could, bare feet silent on the hardwood floor, and crept toward the door.

Through the gap at the bottom, he could see shadow moving in the hallway – not the shadow cast by a person, but shadow that moved independently, flowing like liquid across the floor. As he watched, the shadow condensed, taking on shape and form.

He raised the phone, finger on the capture button, and opened the door.

The hallway was empty.

For a split second, Liam felt foolish, exposed, holding his phone up like a tourist at a landmark. Then his flash fired, turning the narrow space into a stark landscape of white light and black shadow.

In that microsecond of illumination, he saw it.

It stood at the far end of the hall, near the staircase, impossibly tall and thin. Its limbs were stretched to inhuman proportions, arms hanging nearly to the floor, head tilted at an angle that would have snapped a normal neck. But it was the face that made his blood freeze – or rather, the attempt at a face. Features that were almost right, almost human, but wrong in ways his brain struggled to process. Eyes that were too wide, too round, too knowing. A mouth that smiled with too many teeth.

And it was wearing Chloe's nightgown.

The flash faded, plunging the hallway back into darkness, but the thing had already moved. In the space between the light and the dark, it had covered half the distance to his door, moving with a fluid, boneless gait that made no sound on the hardwood floor.

Liam slammed the door shut and twisted the lock, his hands shaking so violently he nearly dropped his phone. Behind him, Chloe finally stirred, mumbling something incoherent about the noise.

From the other side of the door came a sound like fingernails dragging across wood – long, deliberate scratches that moved from the top of the door frame down to the handle. And underneath that, barely audible, Chloe's voice again.

"I have such beautiful dreams about you, Liam. Would you like to see them?"

He backed away from the door, clutching his phone like a lifeline, knowing that somewhere in its memory was proof of what he'd just witnessed. The scratching continued for another minute, then stopped. The hallway fell silent.

Liam waited until dawn before he dared to look at the photograph.

When he finally opened the camera roll, hands trembling as he found the image from the night before, what he saw made him understand that his nightmare was far from over.

The photo showed the empty hallway, exactly as it had appeared before the flash fired. But in the reflection of the window glass at the far end, barely visible unless you knew to look for it, were two perfectly round eyes staring directly at the camera.

And they were still moving.