Leila had always been uneasy in her grandmother’s house. The place carried a silence that was never peaceful, only heavy. Even when people filled the rooms, laughter echoing off the high ceilings, the silence seemed to wait just beneath the noise, patient, like a hand pressing against a door that would never stay shut for long.
When her grandmother passed away, Leila was asked to spend a few nights there to pack belongings and wait for a real estate agent. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t refuse. The old house sat at the edge of a forgotten road, far from the city, its windows clouded with dust. Her family had whispered about strange things that happened there—shadows moving across the upstairs hallway, doors that opened on their own—but no one ever dared to speak too openly.
The first night, Leila chose the guest room on the second floor. She noticed right away that the hallway lights were dim, no matter how many bulbs she replaced. At the end of that hallway stood a door that had always been locked. As a child, she used to ask what was inside, but her grandmother would only say, “Nothing you need to see.”
That night, while lying in bed, Leila woke to a soft creaking sound. She froze, straining her ears. The sound was unmistakable: a door slowly opening. She told herself it was the wind, an old hinge, anything reasonable. But she knew the noise had come from the end of the hall.
She didn’t sleep much.
The second night, the air felt colder, though the weather hadn’t changed. Every time she passed the end of the hall, she thought she saw the locked door tilt slightly ajar, as though it had never been locked at all. She tested the knob once, heart pounding. It was cold to the touch, but it didn’t turn. Relieved, she pulled her hand away—yet the feeling of being watched pressed harder on her back as she hurried away.
That night, the creaking returned. This time followed by something worse: the slow drag of footsteps on the old wooden floor. They stopped right outside her room.
Leila held her breath. Minutes crawled by. Finally, she whispered to herself, “It’s in my head. Just in my head.”
The footsteps retreated.
By the third night, she was exhausted, but she forced herself to stay awake. She placed her phone flashlight on, pointing it toward the door. At 2:47 a.m., the knob began to turn. She sat bolt upright, unable to scream. The knob jiggled once, twice, and then stopped.
Silence.
And then, so faint she nearly thought she imagined it, a voice rasped from the hallway:
“Leila.”
Her name, spoken low, stretched out as though dragged across broken glass.
She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she woke at dawn with the door still closed. Her phone battery was dead, though she was sure it had been full.
On the final night, she decided she couldn’t take it anymore. She would leave after packing the last of the boxes. But while carrying a stack of old photo albums down the hallway, she tripped, scattering them across the floor. One of the albums flipped open to a page she had never seen.
Inside was a picture of her grandmother, much younger, standing beside the very same locked door. She wasn’t smiling. Behind her, in the shadow of the doorway, something pale seemed to be peeking out—long fingers curling against the frame, a shape like a face blurred in the background.
Leila slammed the book shut and shoved it into a box.
That night, she lay fully dressed, ready to run. At 3:00 a.m., the door at the end of the hall opened. She didn’t need to see it—she heard it, clear and sharp, the hinges crying out after decades of silence.
She bolted from bed, phone in hand, racing down the stairs. But before she reached the front door, she heard footsteps coming down behind her—slow, deliberate, heavier than her own.
She dared to look back once.
The hallway was empty. The stairs were empty. But the door at the end of the hall was wide open now, yawning black, and something was crawling out, dragging itself along the floor with a sound like nails against wood.
Leila ran. She didn’t lock the door behind her. She didn’t even grab the car keys. She ran barefoot down the road until she saw the glow of another house.
The next morning, when she returned with her uncle, the locked door was closed again. Sealed tight.
But the dust on the floor showed a trail—handprints smeared along the wood, leading all the way to the guest room where she had slept.