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.

I raced home and told Mara everything. "We stop talking inside the house," I said. "We starve it." So we wrote notes instead. For two days we passed paper back and forth and never made a sound. The house grew colder and quieter, like something hungry waiting for us to slip.

We held out a full week in total silence. Then one morning the cold lifted and the air felt normal. I tested it by whispering my own name, and for the first time the house didn't lean in. We'd starved it thin enough to outrun. We packed in silence, drove off, and never once looked back at the windows.