u/thisisabhi_

I didn't sleep after that.

I stayed in bed until sunrise with my phone in my hand, listening to every little sound in the house.

Nothing else happened.

The next morning, I checked everything again.

The shoes were still under my bed.

The note was still underneath the desk.

But there was something I hadn't noticed the night before.

A small amount of dust had been disturbed underneath my bed.

Not everywhere.

Just in one narrow line.

Like something had been dragged across the floor.

I took a picture and went to school.

When I came back that afternoon, my bedroom door was closed.

I knew I'd left it open.

I checked my room.

Nothing seemed different.

Then I noticed my phone charger.

It was plugged into the wall.

I hadn't plugged it in.

That night, I decided not to sleep in my room.

I left my phone recording on the desk and slept in the living room instead.

At 3:17 AM, I woke up.

I heard something from my bedroom.

A drawer opening.

Then closing.

I didn't go in.

I waited until morning.

When I checked the recording, there was almost nothing.

Four hours of darkness.

Then, at 3:16 AM, the camera stopped recording.

At 3:18, it started again.

My bedroom looked exactly the same.

Except the chair was facing the camera.

I zoomed in.

There was something sitting on the chair.

My jacket.

I hadn't left it there.

I picked up my phone and checked the house security log.

The front door hadn't opened all night.

Neither had any windows.

Then I noticed something in the camera footage that I hadn't seen before.

The bedroom door was never opened.

Not once.

But between 3:16 and 3:18...

someone had moved the chair.

And whatever had moved it hadn't entered through the door.

Because the entire time, the camera had been pointed at it.

I don't know what happened that night.

But I'm sleeping somewhere else tonight.

And I'm taking the camera with me.

I know how this sounds, so please don't tell me I'm imagining things.

For the past two weeks, I've been waking up at almost exactly 3:17 AM.

Nothing unusual at first. I'd wake up, drink some water, check my phone, and go back to sleep.

Then I noticed something.

Every morning, one thing in my room was slightly different.

My chair would be facing the bed.

My books would be arranged differently.

Once, I found my bedroom door completely open even though I always lock it before sleeping.

Last night, I decided to test it.

Before going to sleep, I placed my shoes perfectly parallel to the door and put a tiny piece of paper between the door and the frame. If someone opened it, the paper would fall.

I woke up at 3:17.

The paper was still there.

The door was still locked.

But my shoes were gone.

I found them under my bed.

I don't know how they got there.

I don't even want to look under the bed anymore.

But this morning, I noticed something worse.

There was a message written on the underside of my desk.

I swear I've never seen it before.

It said:

"STOP CHECKING THE DOOR.

I DON'T COME THROUGH IT."

I'm writing this from my room right now.

And I just heard footsteps in the hallway.

The problem?

Everyone else in my house is asleep.

And the footsteps are coming from inside my room.

The first time I heard the footsteps, I assumed they belonged to my brother.

We had moved into the house that morning, and everything still felt unfamiliar—the smell of fresh paint, the unopened boxes stacked against the walls, the faint dampness that seemed to rise from the wooden floors. I was carrying a carton of books upstairs when I heard someone walking behind me. The steps were slow and uneven, almost like someone was deliberately trying not to make noise.

I stopped.

The footsteps stopped too.

I turned around.

The staircase below me was empty.

"Very funny," I called out, thinking my brother had hidden somewhere.

Nothing.

I waited for a few seconds, then continued upstairs.

The house was nearly fifty years old. My father had bought it because it was considerably cheaper than the other properties we'd seen, and the previous owner had been eager to sell. From the outside, there was nothing particularly remarkable about it: two floors, a narrow garden, an old neem tree near the boundary wall, and windows that needed repainting. The previous owner had told my father that his family had lived there for decades before moving away.

He never mentioned why the house had remained vacant for so long.

That evening, while unpacking my room, I found a small metal box underneath the bed. Inside were a few old coins, several photographs, and a folded piece of paper.

The handwriting was thin and shaky.

"If you hear someone calling you from an empty room, don't answer."

I remember laughing when I read it.

My brother thought it was some stupid prank left behind by the previous owner. We joked about it for a while before putting everything back into the box.

That night, shortly after everyone had gone to bed, I heard my name.

It came from the hallway.

I sat up.

For a moment I simply listened to the silences

Then I heard it again.

My mother's voice.

"Come downstairs."

I opened my door.

The hallway was dark, except for a weak strip of light coming from the staircase. I looked toward my parents' room.

The door was closed.

"Mom?"

No answer

I walked downstairs and found her sitting in the living room, watching television.

"Did you call me?"

She looked at me with genuine confusion.

"No."

I didn't tell her what I had heard.

I went back upstairs and locked my door.

For the next few days, nothing happened.

That was almost worse.

There were no dramatic noises or unexplained appearances. Instead, there were small things that were easy to dismiss individually.

A cupboard would be open after someone had closed it.

A glass left in the kitchen would appear upstairs.

My brother complained about hearing footsteps outside his room at night.

Once, I heard him laughing from upstairs while he was sitting beside me in the living room.

When I told him, he stopped smiling.

"I wasn't laughing."

Neither of us mentioned it again.

A week after we moved in, my father came home from work unusually quiet. During dinner, he asked me whether I'd found anything strange while unpacking.

I told him about the metal box.

He put his spoon down.

"What did the note say?"

I repeated it.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then he told us something he'd deliberately left out when we'd bought the house.

The previous owner had not moved away.

He had died there.

He had lived alone, and a neighbor had eventually found him upstairs after several days without seeing him.

My father said the official cause of death had never been completely clear.

I asked him why he'd bought the house knowing that.

He shrugged.

"Old houses have stories."

I didn't sleep much that night.

A few days later, my brother went to stay with a friend. That evening, heavy rain knocked out the electricity, leaving the entire house in darkness.

My parents and I were sitting downstairs when we heard footsteps above us.

They moved slowly across the hallway.

Then stopped.

A moment later, there was a knock on my bedroom door.

My father stood up.

My mother immediately caught his arm.

Another knock.

My father looked at me.

"Don't go upstairs."

Then we heard my brother's voice.

"Mom?"

My mother went completely still

My father reached for his phone and called my brother

He answered almost immediately

"Yeah?"

My father put the call on speaker

"Where are you?"

"At Rahul's. Why?"

Before my father could respond, the voice upstairs spoke again

"Mom?"

It was exactly my brother's voice

My mother began crying

The voice upstairs continued

"Why aren't you answering?"

My brother was still speaking through the phone

"What happened? Dad?"

Then the voice upstairs repeated his words

Not perfectly

A little slower

A little deeper

Like someone who had heard the sentence once and was trying to imitate it

We left the house that night

We didn't pack anything

We stayed with our neighbors until morning

The next day, my father brought an electrician and a locksmith to the house. He wanted a practical explanation for everything that had happened

The electrician found nothing wrong with the wiring

The locksmith, however, noticed something behind the wardrobe in the upstairs hallway

There was a narrow wooden door built into the wall

It had been painted over so many times that it almost looked like part of the plaster

None of us had noticed it before

My father opened it

Behind it was a small storage room

There was hardly enough space to stand comfortably

Dust covered everything

In the corner sat another metal box

Inside were photographs

Dozens of them

Families standing outside the same house

Some photographs were recent

Others were decades old

Different clothes

Different cars

Different people

But the house never changed

Then we noticed something disturbing

In every photograph, one person had been scrached out

Not cut away

Their face had been violently scraped from the paper

My father went through them one by one

Then he stopped

He had found a photograph of the previous owner's family

The old man stood outside the house with his wife and two children

One child's face had been scratched away

My father turned the photograph over

There was a sentence written on the back

"Every family leaves someone behind."

Nobody spoke

Then I found the newest photograph

It was us

My parents

My brother

Me

Standing outside the house on the day we moved in

For several seconds, I couldn't understand what I was looking at

Then my brother pointed toward one of the upstairs windows

There was a person standing behind the glass

An elderly man

The previous owner

My father stared at the photograph

"He wasn't there that day," he said quietly

I looked at him

"Are you sure?"

He nodded

"I was the one who took the picture."

We moved out before sunset

My father never tried to sell the house

Instead, he contacted the previous owner's family and eventually arranged for the property to be demolished

The house came down several months later

We thought that was the end

Until recently

I was going through the photographs on my phone when I found the picture of the house again

The one we'd taken on moving day

I don't know why I'd never noticed it before.

I zoomed in on the upstairs window

The old man was gone

Someone else was standing there

My brother

I called him

He answered after several rings

I asked where he was

"In my room."

I looked at the photograph again

"What does your window look like?"

There was a long pause

Then he said, very quietly,

"Why?"

I told him what I was seeing

He didn't answer for several seconds

Then I heard him whisper,

"There's someone outside my window."

The call ended

I tried calling again

Nothing

I haven't spoken to him since

The strange thing is that his apartment is on the seventh floor

There is no balcony outside his room

No roof nearby

No ledge

Nothing a person could stand on

And yet, every night since that phone call, I have received the same photograph from an unknown number

It is always the same image of our old house

The same upstairs window

The same figure standing behind the glass

Only one thing changes

Every night, the figure is a little closer to the window

Last night, I could finally see its face

It was my brother

And beneath the photograph was a message.

Three words...

He found me

I woke up to a photo notification from my phone—a picture of me sleeping, taken from the corner of my room. Then another notification appeared: “Photo deleted from your gallery,” and when I checked the picture again, the person standing beside my bed was gone.

The whisper faded.

I stood completely still.

For a few seconds, there was nothing.

Then the forest whispered my name again.

This time, it came from my left.

I turned my eyes toward the trees without moving my head.

Nothing.

Just rows of black trunks disappearing into the darkness.

My phone vibrated again.

I looked down.

A new message.

“Don't look at the trees.”

My heart dropped.

Slowly, I lowered the phone.

Too late.

Something was standing between the trees.

I couldn't see its face.

I could barely see its shape.

Tall.

Unnaturally still.

And somehow, I knew it was looking directly at me.

Another vibration.

I looked at the screen.

A photo had arrived.

It was a picture of the road.

The same road I was standing on.

But the photo had been taken from somewhere behind me.

I stared at it.

Then I noticed the figure in the picture.

It was standing directly behind me.

I didn't turn around.

I couldn't.

My hands started shaking.

A final message appeared beneath the photo.

“Now you understand why you shouldn't have stopped.”

I heard a slow breath behind me.

Not mine.

Close.

Far too close.

I shut my eyes.

And then I heard footsteps.

One.

Two.

Three.

They walked past me.

Not around me.

Through me.

For one impossible second, the cold seemed to pass through my entire body.

Then everything became silent again.

I opened my eyes.

The figure between the trees was gone.

The road was empty.

The footprints were gone too.

Even mine.

I looked at my phone.

The screen was black.

No signal.

No messages.

Nothing.

I almost laughed from relief.

Then the screen turned on by itself.

The camera was open.

Front camera.

I was staring at my own face.

Pale.

Terrified.

And standing behind me...

was the forest.

Except it wasn't the forest I knew.

There were dozens of people standing between the trees.

All facing me.

All completely motionless.

I turned the phone around.

The forest was empty.

I turned it back.

They were still there.

Then one of them slowly raised its hand.

And pointed directly at the camera.

My phone displayed one final sentence:

“It can see you now.”

The screen went black.

And from somewhere behind me—

my own voice whispered:

“You finally came back.”

I stopped walking

Not because I wanted to

Because I heard footsteps

One

Two

Three

Slow

They were coming from behind me

I didn't turn around

The forest was completely silent. No wind

No insects. Not even the sound of leaves moving.

Just those footsteps.

I held my breath.

They stopped.

I waited.

Nothing.

Then, from somewhere deep inside the forest—

my own voice whispered:

“Don't turn around."

My entire body went cold.

I hadn't said anything.

I hadn't even spoken for several minutes.

I slowly looked down at the road.

There were footprints in the mud.

Mine.

And another set.

The second set was walking beside me.

Except...

they were facing the opposite direction.

I took one step backward.

The footsteps behind me took one step forward.

I froze.

Then I noticed something worse.

The footprints weren't appearing behind me anymore.

They were appearing in front of me.

One.

Two.

Three.

Getting closer.

I looked toward the trees.

Nothing.

Just darkness.

Then my phone vibrated.

No signal.

No notifications.

Just one message.

From my own number.

“You shouldn't have stopped.”

I stared at the screen.

Another message appeared.

“It's awake now.”

And somewhere behind the trees...

something whispered my name.

Not loudly.

Not angrily.

Almost lovingly.

As if it had been waiting for me for a very, very long time....