We got the house for almost nothing. The agent said the price was low for a reason, then waited until we'd signed to explain. Every family who lived here stopped talking eventually. "Not moved away," she said. "Stopped speaking. All of them." That first night, my sister Mara and I sat in the empty living room. Whenever we spoke, the house went very still. Like it was leaning in to hear.

I wanted answers, so the next morning I drove to the library to dig up records on the house. The old clerk knew the address before I finished saying it. She slid a thick folder across the desk and whispered, "Read it here. Don't read it out loud."

The folder held letters from past owners. The handwriting got messier in each one, then shrank to single words, then drawings of an open ear. The last page was blank except for one line at the bottom: "It only takes what you feed it. Stop feeding it." I understood. The house ate our voices.

Mara thought starving it was too slow. "If it eats voices," she said, "let's choke it." She set up every speaker we owned and queued hours of recorded talking. Then she hit play. Voices flooded the house from every corner, hundreds at once, and the walls began to shudder.

The recordings ran for an hour, then the batteries died. The instant the last voice cut off, the house went silent, and the silence felt furious. Slowly, one by one, the speakers turned themselves back on, playing our own voices back at us, the things we'd said days ago. The house had been recording us too.