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."

Tucked in the folder was a faded photo of the house being built. A man stood out front holding a brass cone, like an old hearing trumpet. On the back someone had written: "He buried his listening machine under the floor so it would never go deaf." My stomach dropped. The thing wasn't the house. It was under it.

We pried up the floorboards in the basement and found it: the brass machine, half-buried in dirt, slowly turning toward the sound of our shovels. I dropped the shovel. "It hears us digging," I whispered. Mara was already pouring the gasoline. "Then let's give it one last thing to hear," she said, and struck the match.