The Feast in the Walls
When Daniel and Lisa moved into the abandoned house at the edge of town, they thought they had found a bargain. The real estate agent barely hid her relief when they signed the paperwork, and their new neighbors avoided looking at the house when they passed by.It was an old Victorian home, its wooden floors creaky but charming. The walls were thick, with elaborate molding and faded wallpaper that curled at the edges. Lisa joked that the house had "good bones," though Daniel often woke up at night feeling as if the house was breathing around them.
Then came the noises.
At first, it was scratching soft and rhythmic, like rats skittering inside the walls. Then came the whispers, low and unintelligible. Lisa swore she heard her name among them. Daniel dismissed it. "Old pipes, bad insulation," he told her. But at night, he too heard the voices murmuring just beyond the walls, growing clearer, calling for something.
One night, Lisa woke up screaming. Something had been touching her in her sleep long, cold fingers tracing her spine. Daniel searched the room, but there was nothing. Just the house, silent and waiting.
The next day, they peeled back the wallpaper in their bedroom. What they found was not drywall, not wooden beams - but flesh.
The walls were breathing, rising and falling like lungs. The wallpaper had hidden pulsing veins beneath it. Then, the mouths opened.
Hundreds of them. Some human, some grotesquely inhuman, all whispering, sobbing, gnashing their rotten teeth. Their voices formed words at last.
"We are still hungry."
A sharp pain lanced through Daniel's foot. He looked down. A gaping mouth had appeared in the floor, its jagged teeth sinking into his ankle. Lisa screamed as hands - pale, skeletal hands began pushing through the walls.
They ran, but the house would not let them go. The doors slammed shut. The mouths wailed with hunger. Lisa was the first to be pulled into the walls, her screams muffled as her body was swallowed whole.
Daniel fought, kicking and clawing, but soon, his flesh, too, was taken. The walls absorbed him, his skin stretched and stitched into the structure of the house. He saw the other faces now, centuries of victims, all trapped, all starving.
The house was quiet again.
Days later, a new family arrived, admiring the vintage charm, the strong structure, the thick, beautiful walls.
The house waited.
It was always hungry.
