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 clerk pulled me close and admitted her own brother had lived in that house years ago. "He went quiet," she said. "But near the end he wrote me notes. He said it only spared the people who never stopped talking back. It can't stand noise it can't swallow." Then she told me to go home and be loud.

I tried to be loud, but Mara had been alone in the house all afternoon. When I got back, she just nodded at me, calm and quiet. I talked at her for an hour, begging her to answer. She only smiled and pressed a finger to her lips, like the house had already taught her its favorite word. I was too late.