Your thoughts are not your own anymore.

Chapter 5 of Echoes In The Walls

_____

The house had moods.

Jett had lived in it long enough to know. Some mornings it felt like an empty cathedral — light spilling across marble floors, humming with soft domestic noise.

Other times, like today, it felt like a coffin with too many rooms. Dead air. Claustrophobic quiet. A kind of hush that didn’t invite peace but warned of the opposite.

He sat in the study, blinds drawn, holding a voice recorder in one hand and a legal pad in the other. The pad was covered in looped handwriting — lyrics, maybe, or riddles. Either, neither, both. Hard to tell anymore.

On the recorder, he’d logged thirteen entries so far. All late at night. All documenting the same thing: sounds in the house.

He hit Play.

“Entry Twelve,” he said the night before, his voice a raw whisper. “Two-forty-one a.m. Something moved in the hallway. I didn’t open the door this time. I think it’s waiting for me to.”

A click. A bit of breathing. Then the silence.

No footsteps. No whisper. No evidence.

Still, the dread.

*     *     *

That afternoon, Avery found him in the sunroom, staring at the recorder as if it might confess to something.

“You look like you’ve been up all night,” she said.

“I was.”

“More noises?”

He nodded, eyes still on the device.

“Did you record anything?”

He pressed play, letting her hear the static.

Avery listened for a few seconds. Then he turned it off.

“Jett . . .”

She paused.

“Have you considered — just considered — that this could be something other than a person?”

He said nothing.

“Stress can cause —”

“It’s not stress.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay. What is it?”

He finally looked at her. “You don’t believe me.”

“I believe you believe it,” she said. “But you haven’t left the house in weeks. You don’t eat much. You don’t sleep. It’s like you’re spiraling.”

“You think I’m sick.”

“No . . .” But she didn’t finish.

He stood abruptly. “I’m not sick. I’m aware. I’m sharper than I’ve been in years. You think this is some kind of breakdown? I’ve had those. This isn’t that.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“No?” His tone cut. “Then tell me how the guitar pick moved. Tell me how the closet door opened. Tell me why I found my old tour shirt in a room no one uses.”

“They could all have logical explanations. Maybe you moved it and forgot. Maybe it’s a memory. Maybe it’s guilt. I don’t know. But you’re seeing things, Jett. You’re chasing something. And it’s eating you.”

He stared at her a long moment.

“I don’t need your pity,” he said finally. “I need someone to believe me.”

And with that, he left the room, the recorder clutched tightly in one hand like a talisman.

*     *     *

That night, again, he didn’t sleep.

Instead, he walked the house.

Room by room, door by door, flicking lights on and off, checking corners, peering into mirrors like he expected to see someone else’s face looking back.

In the guest bathroom near the east staircase, he stopped cold.

The mirror was fogged. Damp, as if someone had just taken a shower.

But the room was cold. The tile chilled his bare feet. The shower hadn’t been used in months.

He wiped the mirror with his palm. No message. No symbol. Just his face — older than he liked to admit, eyes bloodshot and sunken.

Behind him, just for a moment, he thought he saw a shape. A person, maybe.

But when he turned, the room was empty.

*     *     *

The next morning, Maria found him kneeling in the hall outside the linen closet, laying down strips of masking tape like a crime scene technician.

“Señor?”

He didn’t look up.

“I’m mapping foot traffic.”

“Perdóneme?” she said, slipping into Spanish.

“I’m going to know where it goes. If it steps here — ” he tapped a tile — “the tape will shift. I’ll hear it.”

“Señor — ”

“You don’t believe me either.”

“I believe you have no sleep. I don’t believe you are well.”

He stood slowly. “You think I’ve lost it.”

“No one said that.”

“You don’t have to.”

She took a step forward, but he stepped back.

“I’m not crazy,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I’m not.”

*     *     *

That night, he recorded again.

He placed the voice recorder on the hallway floor. Pressed record. Closed the door behind him.

Then he sat in the dark.

An hour passed. Two.

At some point, he must’ve fallen asleep. The kind of shallow, brittle sleep that breaks with any sound.

And sure enough, he woke up.

To humming.

Soft. Low. Humming.

A melody, but wrong. Off-key. Like someone trying to remember a song they never quite knew.

He sat up, heart racing.

It was coming from the hallway.

He opened the door.

The recorder was still there, but no one else.

He picked it up, hands shaking, and pressed stop.

Then he went to bed, clutching the device like a rosary.

*     *     *

In the morning, he played it back.

Static. Silence.

Then — barely audible — humming.

It was faint, warped, almost mechanical.

But it was there.

He turned the volume up. Pressed the recorder to his ear.

And recognized the tune.

One of his.

“Paper Crown.” Track 4 on Dust // Glory.

Only . . . different.

Slowed down. Distorted. Like it was being played on an old, broken record.

Or like someone was trying to sing it from memory.

His own voice.

But twisted.

A shadow of itself.

_____

© Secret Agent Man
info@secretagentman.net