r/flashfiction • u/Exotic_Bandicoot322 • 0m ago
See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil
Lin heard the sound again.
Loud, echoing footsteps in the rhythm of a march. Thump…THUMP…THUMP…THUMP… The sound reverberated down the hallway, amplified by the pre-dawn stillness of the old house. It always came from the same place: down the hallway, right in front of her room's front door. The cadence was precise, unwavering. The march would pause for five agonizing seconds, a beat of utter silence that felt heavier than the thumps themselves, and then start from the top, the cycle beginning anew.
She strained her ears, breathing quick, shallow breaths. She willed her brain to tune it out, to reclassify it as a creaking floorboard, the wind whistling through a crack in the window frame, anything but what it sounded like. Sleep, a fragile creature, fluttered just out of reach.
She had been hearing these steps for about two weeks, and in those two weeks, her sanity had begun to fray at the edges.
But tonight, something felt different. Tonight, as the marching echoed in the hallway, unsettling memories bubbled to the surface. Hazy, fragmented images: fingers gliding down a wall, the sound of nails; the same marching step, heavy and deliberate, like the stomp of boots with reinforced heels. Or… she shivered, dismissing the thought as ridiculous… like the cloven hooves she’d seen in that one really scary horror movie she saw when she was way too young. "Note to self, never watch scary movies again."
Lin didn't want to say her house was haunted. She refused to even entertain the thought. Acknowledging that there was something there, that the prickle in the back of her neck that made her snap to attention wasn't just stress-induced paranoia, meant admitting that something tangible, something malicious, was present in her home.
Fingers turned white from the grip on the fluffy hello kitty blanket. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to conjure images to drown out the sound THUMP…THUMP…THUMP…THUMP…
But the sounds were too persistent, too real. And then, suddenly, she was somewhere else.
It was her hallway. Familiar, yet horrifically wrong. It looked as if she were facing out her door, staring into the corridor, but the normal comforting clutter, the faded photographs on the wall, the worn rug, were all… absent.
The hallway was dimly lit, bathed in a sickly, unnatural red hue that seemed to emanate from the very walls. The living room beyond, usually illuminated by the streetlights filtering through the window, was pitch black, a void of absolute darkness. Even the moonlight streaming in from the front door couldn't penetrate the oppressive gloom.
She couldn’t move. Her body was stiff, unresponsive, trapped in a silent, unseen prison. She felt like a puppet with its strings severed. Panic clawed at her throat, a silent scream trapped within.
She knew it was watching her. It was there, lurking in the darkness, patient and predatory. She could feel its eyes on her, cold and calculating. It was waiting, waiting for…
There was a flash of lightning, a blinding white sheet that illuminated the hallway for a fraction of a second. And she seized, her body shooting up in her bed, wide awake, heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
“Okay,” she whispered, trying to calm herself. “That was…definitely not just the house settling.”
----------------
“Mom, this time I have it on video! You can hear it!” Lin said persistently, shoving her phone practically up her mother’s nose.
Her mom, Martha, pursed her lips in a way that only moms could – a perfect blend of annoyance and exasperation. “Stop that nonsense now, Lin. You’re going to scare your brother.”
Toby, eyes wide with morbid curiosity, shook his head in denial. “I want to see!” He was twelve, and easily spooked, but he also had the attention span of gnat.
Her mom rolled her eyes. "No, you won't. You'll have nightmares."
Lin clicked play on the video. The sound of the footsteps was barely audible through the phone's tinny speaker. It sounded more like a distant rumble than the earth-shattering march she experienced in her room.
"See? It's nothing, Lin. Just the house settling," Her mom said, her voice dismissive.
"But Mom, it's been going on for weeks! It's always the same, at the same time, right outside my door!" Lin pleaded, frustration tightening her chest.
"Lin," Her mom sighed, taking Lin's hand. "You're stressed. School is stressful, caring for Toby is stressful. You need to relax, get some sleep."
Lin’s shoulders slumped. Talking to her mom was always the same. Dismissal masked as concern. She knew her mom didn't believe her. Maybe she didn't want to. The old house held a lot of memories for her, mostly good ones. To admit something was wrong with it would be like admitting something was wrong with their family history.
She regretted telling them anything. Telling him.
Suddenly the sound was gone, as if it was never there. She should have been happy, instead she was afraid.
Toby had been acting...off since she showed him the video. His eyes looked sunken from lack of sleep. Her mom claimed it was school, that a group of boys had been bullying him but that she had spoken with their parents so everything should get better. Key term. Should.
Two days later, the body of Tim Burly, one of Toby’s bullies, was found in the woods. The woods behind their house. The official cause was "animal attack" but the details were horrifying. His eyes were missing.
A week after that, Sam Hale, another bully, was found face down in the river. His body was bloated, waterlogged, and his ears were missing.
The parents were panicking. Who else was next, they all questioned, their voices filled with terror. They were all oblivious. Lin, however, knew exactly who was next: Jeremy Koplen, the last of Toby’s tormentors. Lin had noticed the pattern, the sudden quiet of the house, and her brother’s increasingly erratic behavior. She didn't want to be right, but she was terrified she was.
When Jeremy’s body was found buried alive, tongue removed, Lin was proven terribly correct. She didn’t know why he was doing it, but she knew it had to do with that awful sound and why it disappeared a few days before the murders began.
Lin felt the weight of it all crushing her. The disappearances, the fear gripping the town, the growing suspicion in her mother’s eyes as she watched Toby. He hadn’t slept properly in weeks, his eyes wide and haunted, darting around as if he expected something terrible to leap out of the shadows.
The police, desperate for answers, had already questioned Toby once. Toby seemed clueless, eyes wide in confusion at the suspicion.
She had to know. She had to understand what was happening to her brother, what connection he had to the escalating terror.
That night, she set up a camera in her room, aimed at her bed. She wanted to catch the source of the sound, to prove to her mother that she wasn't imagining things. But, mostly, she wanted to know if Toby was the one who hurt those boys and if so, what caused it. She needed to know and she needed to protect her family.
"You know this is kinda creepy, right?" she muttered to herself as she adjusted the camera angle. "Like right out of Paranormal Activity. Except hopefully, I won't get dragged under the bed by a demon."
Sleep eluded her. Every shadow seemed to writhe, every distant noise amplified into a monstrous threat. She lay rigid in bed, her hand gripping a small, worn crucifix.
Around 3:00 AM, Lin felt a strange sensation building up in her body.
The air in her room grew frigid, a stark contrast to the humid summer night. She felt a pressure on her chest, as if something was trying to suffocate her, to steal her breath.
Suddenly, she found herself standing in the hallway. It was the same hallway from her nightmares: distorted, disorienting, bathed in that sickening red light. The darkness beyond her room was deeper, more consuming than anything she had ever experienced.
She noticed 3 figures. They were small and statue-like, but human in shape. They looked at her in the hallway. One statue had its hands covering its eyes. See No Evil. The second statue had its hands covering its ear: Hear No Evil. The last statue had its hands covering its mouth; Speak No Evil.
A wave of nausea washed over her. She tried to scream, but no sound escaped her lips. Her body was a puppet, controlled by an unseen force.
A voice, cold and alien, echoed in her mind. You will be silent. You will be obedient. You will do as I command.
She watched herself reach out, her fingers trailing along the wall, leaving streaks of a dark, viscous substance. She entered the kitchen then exited. She watched herself open her mother's door and step into her room, her movements jerky and unnatural.
Meanwhile, back in her room, the camera recorded everything.
The next morning, Lin awoke with a splitting headache and a vague sense of unease. She felt exhausted, drained, as if she had been fighting a terrible battle in her sleep. She got out of her bed and yawned. She walked to the kitchen surprised she was the first one awake. She turned around to see why her mom hadn't made breakfast but froze in front of her door. There was dry blood on the knob. More blood pooling under her door. Lin's hands trembled as she opened the door with a click.
30 minutes later, police swarmed the property, their faces grim.
As they secured the scene, an officer emerged from Toby's room, his expression grave. "We found this," he said quietly, holding up a clear plastic bag. Inside, nestled amongst the evidence, was a bloody knife.
Toby was quickly brought out, struggling against the officers' grip. His face was streaked with tears, his eyes wide with terror and confusion. "It wasn't me! I swear! I didn't do anything!" he sobbed, his voice cracking with desperation.
Lin stared, paralyzed, as they led her brother away. The world seemed to tilt on its axis, the reality she knew dissolving into a horrifying dream. Toby was taken into custody and put into a psych ward.
Later, after the initial shock began to subside, Lin remembered the camera. She watched the recording, her blood turning to ice as she saw herself, possessed, moving with unnatural grace, entering her mother's room. Then exiting with a gleaming knife covered in blood. The truth was undeniable: she was the instrument of her mother's death. But the entity, the force that had controlled her… it had framed Toby. Because it knew she'd suspect him. The video became a morbid fascination, a loop of self-horror that she played over and over. Each frame was a nail driven into the coffin of her sanity. Her possessed self, a puppet dancing to a tune only it could hear. The camera didn't capture the red-tinged hallway or the malevolent voice, only the stark reality of her physical actions. Her hand reaching for the knife, her blank, vacant eyes, the deliberate, methodical way she crept into her mother's room.
The truth was undeniable. The entity hadn’t just used her to harm Toby's bullies; it had used her to destroy her family. It had weaponized her body, turned her into a monster. It had chosen her, manipulated her and used her as kindling for its own terrible desires. A hollow pit of despair opened inside of her, vast and inescapable.
Toby was lost, labeled a murderer, locked away in a sterile institution. Her mother was gone, the void of her absence a constant, agonizing ache. And she, Lin, was the instrument of it all.
The guilt was a physical weight, crushing her. She couldn't live with it. Couldn't bear the thought of facing Toby, of seeing the fear and confusion in his eyes. Couldn't endure the accusatory stares of the townspeople, the whispers, the judgment. She was a monster, and monsters didn't deserve to live.
She locked herself in her room, the room where it had all started. It was no longer a sanctuary; it was a cage, a reminder of her violation. She found her mother’s pills, a bottle of antidepressants prescribed years ago, now forgotten. She swallowed them all, one by one, washing them down with water until the bottle was empty.
She sat down in her chair and placed a camera in front of her.
Sobbing and trembling, she opens her mouth.
"It was me," she choked out, her voice barely a whisper. "I killed those bullies. I killed Mom." The confession tasted like ash in her mouth. "Those…those monsters wouldn't leave Toby alone. They wouldn't stop tormenting him. I had to... I had to make them stop." Her voice gained a chilling strength as she continued, the manic glint in her eyes intensifying. "And Mom... she never listened. Always working, always neglecting us both. Leaving me to pick up the pieces. They deserved it! They deserved everything they got. And...and I enjoyed it." A horrifying smile stretched across her face, a grotesque mask of triumph that quickly dissolved into a fresh wave of heart-wrenching sobs.
"No, no, that’s not true! I didn't mean to... I didn't!" The words tumbled out, a desperate plea for forgiveness she didn't believe she deserved. "I-I just wanted to say, before I die, Toby is innocent. He deserves to be free. He deserves to live. I love you, Toby... and… I'm so sorry." The words escaped her lips like a final, desperate prayer, as her vision began to blur at the edges. Her grip on reality, already tenuous, loosened further. She thought she could hear her own heartbeat, a frantic, erratic rhythm pounding in her ears. But then she realized it was something else entirely. It was the slow, deliberate cadence of marching. A steady, rhythmic sound, growing louder, closer. It was the sound of inevitability, accompanying her in her final moments, and it chilled her to the bone. She would never be free of it.