Something Answered

Written: 2024   |   Setting: Rural Neighborhood   |   360 words   |   2 Minutes minute read

My neighbor buried her husband three days after the accident. She didn’t cry at the funeral. That should’ve been the first red flag.

At night, I heard her through the walls. Our houses are too close together. At first, it sounded like talking. Normal grief stuff. People do that when they lose someone.

After a while, I realized she wasn’t talking to herself. She paused. Like she was listening. Or someone was responding.

I saw her through the window a week later. She was wearing his clothes, standing in the living room. Smiling at nothing.

Then one night, everything in her house came on. Every light. Every radio. TV blasting static. It stayed like that for hours. It kept me awake until three that morning.

Then it all went dead at once.

That’s when I heard the scream. Not hers. A man’s. Loud enough to wake the whole street. Begging. Crying. Saying it burned.

Nobody called the police. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but you don’t live out here. People don’t rush into things like that. We waited until morning.

Her front door was open. There was mud everywhere. Thick, wet footprints leading inside. But only one set going out. We checked the house. No sign of her. No sign of anyone.

But the closet, God, the closet.

His clothes were ripped off the hangers. Some of them dragged across the floor like something had been pulled through them. And the smell… like dirt. And chemicals. Like something that had been buried too long.

They checked the grave later that day. It had been dug up from the inside.

They never found her.

Or what came out of that hole.

But sometimes, late at night… you can still hear voices in that house. Two of them.

One begging.

One comforting.

If you lose someone… never ask for them back.

Because something might actually listen.