We Were

We had just finished moving into the rental house, and though the day had been exhausting, it felt like the start of something exciting. The house was everything we wanted: airy, modern, and full of potential. I pushed the strange Facebook message from my mind. It was probably some prank, right? Nothing to worry about.

That first night, we were surrounded by boxes, but it didn’t matter. We ordered pizza, clinked glasses of soda, and laughed about how we’d decorate each room. By the time we crawled into bed, I was too tired to think about the message or anything else.

At around 2 a.m., I woke up. It wasn’t a sound that startled me awake—it was the absence of sound. The house, which had been creaking softly with the settling of the day, was now unnaturally still. Even the hum of the refrigerator was gone.

Then, a faint knocking echoed from downstairs.

I shook my husband, Chris, awake. “Did you hear that?” I whispered.

He groaned but sat up, listening. The knocking came again—three slow, deliberate taps.

Chris rubbed his face. “It’s probably just the wind or something settling,” he mumbled, pulling the covers back over himself.

But the knocking didn’t stop.

Finally, Chris sighed, threw on a shirt, and headed downstairs. I followed close behind, clutching my phone as a makeshift flashlight.

When we reached the front door, Chris froze. “It’s unlocked,” he said, his voice low.

I was sure we had locked it before going to bed. My heart began to race as he swung the door open, revealing… nothing. No one was there. Just the cold night air and an empty porch.

Chris locked the door, double-checking this time, and we went back upstairs, unsettled but determined to chalk it up to coincidence.

The next morning, things got stranger. The faint smell of smoke lingered in the kitchen, though there was no sign of a fire. Items we had unpacked the day before were out of place. A photo frame was lying face down on the living room floor, even though we hadn’t hung anything up yet.

Still, we tried to shake it off. We told ourselves we were imagining things. Until the night after.

It started again with the knocking, but this time, it wasn’t just the door. The walls seemed to join in, faint taps coming from different parts of the house.

I grabbed my phone and checked for more messages from that strange Facebook account. Nothing. But as I scrolled through my feed, I found something chilling: a tagged post from someone in the neighborhood. It was a link to an article about a crime that had happened in this house two years ago.

A young couple had rented the house, just like us. They’d reported strange noises, odd smells, and disturbances. A week later, they were both found dead. The police never revealed how they died, but the neighbors whispered about a tragic “accident” involving the gas line.

I showed the article to Chris, my hands trembling. “We have to leave,” I said.

Chris nodded, his face pale. “But how do we explain this to the landlord? He didn’t say a word about any of this.”

We decided to leave that night, grabbing just our essentials. As we hurriedly packed, the knocking grew louder and faster. Then, as we stepped out the door, we heard it—a low, guttural voice that seemed to come from the walls themselves:

We didn’t stop to investigate. We didn’t even lock the door.

That night, we slept in a motel. The next morning, I called the landlord and told him we couldn’t stay. He seemed unfazed, like he’d heard it all before.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “But remember, no refunds.”
We didn’t care about the money. We just wanted to be safe.

A week later, I received another friend request from a different stranger. The message read:
“You made the right choice. I wish I had.”