The House That Made the Wind Scream
No one in the village of Durganagar said the name of the house after sunset.
They called it many things instead—the broken mansion, the hilltop ruin, the place where the wind screams. But its real name, etched in fading stone above the iron gate, was Blackwood Manor.
And on the night I first stepped inside it, I understood why even the bravest men lowered their voices when they spoke of it.
I had returned to Durganagar after fifteen years away. My father's sudden death had brought me back from London, back to the narrow roads lined with banyan trees and the smell of wet earth after evening rain. He had left me little in his will—some land, a crumbling ancestral home, and a sealed envelope that simply read:
Do not let the house remain empty.
There was no address written. There didn't need to be.
Everyone knew which house he meant.
Blackwood Manor stood alone on a hill beyond the village pond, its windows like hollow eye sockets staring down at the fields. It had belonged to the British zamindar Elias Blackwood nearly a century ago. He had built it for his wife, Margaret, who was said to have died inside it under mysterious circumstances. Some whispered it was illness. Others said it was madness. A few claimed it was something far worse.
After their deaths, no one lived there long. Servants fled in the night. A caretaker was found hanging from the grand staircase. A group of teenagers once dared each other to spend a night there—one of them was never seen again.
My father had been the last to visit it regularly. And now, he was gone.
I climbed the hill just before dusk, carrying a lantern and the envelope. The iron gate groaned when I pushed it open, the sound long and metallic, like a dying animal. Weeds choked the path. The air felt colder than it should have been in early summer.
The front door was ajar.
That was the first thing that made my skin prickle.
No one had lived there for decades. The villagers swore it.
Yet the door was open.
I hesitated only a moment before stepping inside.
The smell hit me first—damp wood, mold, and something faintly sweet, like decaying flowers. My lantern light flickered across a grand foyer. A chandelier hung crooked from the ceiling, its crystals dull and cobwebbed. The staircase curved upward into darkness.
As I moved forward, the door slammed shut behind me.
I spun around, heart pounding. The wind howled outside, rattling the windows.
"It's just the wind," I whispered.
But the air inside was still.
Too still.
I forced myself to breathe steadily. I had never believed in ghosts. Every story had an explanation. Every sound had a source.
That was what I told myself.
I broke the seal on my father's envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
The house is not empty. It remembers. Finish what I could not.
Below the message was a small brass key.
I didn't hear the footsteps at first.
They were soft, almost polite.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
They came from the floor above.
I froze, my lantern trembling in my hand.
"Hello?" I called out, my voice echoing unnaturally loud.
The footsteps stopped.
Silence pressed in around me, thick and suffocating.
Then, slowly, deliberately, something dragged across the floor upstairs.
A long, scraping sound.
I swallowed hard. My rational mind insisted that old houses shift and settle. Wood expands. Rodents nest.
But rodents don't drag things that sound heavy.
And they don't whisper.
Yes.
Whisper.
It floated down from the staircase like a sigh.
I couldn't make out the words at first. Just a murmur. A breath threaded with sorrow.
And then I heard it clearly.
"Why… did… you… come… back?"
The voice was female.
Soft.
Broken.
And right behind me.
I spun around, raising the lantern.
No one was there.
But the temperature had dropped so sharply that my breath fogged in the air.
The whisper came again, this time from the top of the staircase.
I looked up.
At first, I saw nothing but darkness.
Then I saw her.
A pale shape standing at the railing. Long hair cascading over a white gown that seemed to ripple as if underwater. Her face was turned slightly away, but I could see the hollow of her cheek and the faint outline of sunken eyes.
Margaret Blackwood.
Or what remained of her.
The lantern flickered violently, then went out.
Darkness swallowed everything.
I don't know how long I stood there, paralyzed. When I finally relit the lantern with shaking hands, the figure was gone.
But the key in my pocket felt warm.
Warm.
As if someone had just pressed it into my palm.
I forced myself up the stairs.
Each step creaked under my weight, echoing like a gunshot in the silence. The second floor corridor stretched long and narrow, doors lining both sides.
At the far end was a single door that stood out from the others. It was newer, reinforced with iron bands. A heavy lock hung from it.
I knew, instinctively, that this was what my father's key was for.
As I approached, the whispering began again—this time from behind the door.
Not one voice.
Many.
Low and overlapping, like a crowd speaking underwater.
My hand trembled as I inserted the key.
The lock clicked open.
The door swung inward with a slow, reluctant groan.
The room beyond was surprisingly intact. Dust coated the furniture, but nothing was broken. A bed stood in the center. A vanity mirror faced it.
And on the wall opposite the door were scratches.
Hundreds of them.
Long, desperate gouges in the wood.
As if someone had tried to claw their way out.
The whispering grew louder.
I stepped inside.
The door slammed shut behind me.
The key fell from my hand.
And the mirror cracked.
Not shattered—cracked.
A thin line splitting it down the center.
From within the mirror, a reflection moved that did not belong to me.
In the glass, I stood alone in the room.
But behind my reflection, the pale woman stood close—too close—her face hovering over my shoulder.
I didn't dare turn around.
Her lips moved.
"He locked me in."
My throat went dry.
"Who?" I croaked.
"Elias."
Her reflection smiled then, but it was not a human smile. It stretched too wide, pulling at skin that seemed too thin for the bones beneath.
"He said I was sick."
The room grew colder still. Frost began creeping across the mirror's surface.
"He said the voices were in my head."
The whispering rose to a deafening crescendo.
"But they were in the walls."
Suddenly the scratches on the wall began to deepen. Fresh gouges appeared as if invisible claws were carving them in real time.
I stumbled backward.
"Please," I whispered. "What do you want?"
Her reflection leaned closer.
"Let us out."
The mirror shattered.
When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in the room.
I was in the foyer again.
But it wasn't abandoned.
It was lit with candles. The chandelier shone bright and new. Laughter echoed through the halls.
A party.
Men in formal suits. Women in elegant gowns.
And at the center of it all stood Elias Blackwood, tall and severe, his hand gripping Margaret's arm tightly.
She looked alive.
But her eyes were hollow.
"You embarrass me," Elias hissed.
"I hear them," she whispered. "They're in the walls."
He smiled for the guests.
"Take her upstairs."
Two servants dragged her toward the staircase as she screamed.
The guests kept laughing.
As if they couldn't hear her.
Or chose not to.
I followed helplessly as they locked her in the iron-banded room.
Days passed in seconds.
I watched as Elias ignored her pleas.
I watched as servants left trays of food outside the door.
I watched as the scratches multiplied.
And then—
I watched as the whispering began.
Not from her.
From the walls.
Shadows seeped from the cracks in the wood, pooling on the floor like living darkness.
Margaret screamed.
And the darkness answered.
The vision shattered.
I was back in the locked room.
The walls were pulsing.
The scratches were bleeding blackness.
And from each gouge, something was trying to push through.
Hands.
Dozens of them.
Gray and skeletal.
Reaching.
The voice of Margaret filled the room.
"He left me with them."
The hands grasped at my clothes, my arms, my face. Their touch burned like ice.
"You opened the door."
"I didn't know!" I shouted.
"They are hungry."
The floor split open.
Beneath it was not earth.
But a void.
A churning mass of whispering shadows.
And they were rising.
I grabbed the fallen key.
"Finish what I could not."
My father's words echoed in my mind.
He had known.
He had tried to contain it.
The reinforced door. The lock.
The key wasn't meant to open the room.
It was meant to seal something inside.
I lunged toward the door as the hands clawed at my legs.
Margaret's form appeared before me, her face twisted between agony and rage.
"If you lock it again, I remain with them!"
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
And I stepped out.
The moment I crossed the threshold, I slammed the door shut.
The hands tried to follow, stretching through the gap.
I jammed the key into the lock and turned it.
The iron bands glowed red-hot.
A scream tore through the house—so loud that the windows exploded outward.
The floor shook violently.
The whispering rose into one final, furious howl.
Then—
Silence.
I don't remember how I got outside.
I only remember standing at the bottom of the hill as Blackwood Manor began to collapse inward on itself. Not burning. Not exploding.
Just folding.
Like it was being swallowed from within.
By dawn, nothing remained but a blackened scar on the earth.
The villagers gathered in stunned silence.
No one spoke.
No one asked questions.
And no one mentioned the name again.
It has been five years since that night.
I sometimes wake up to the sound of whispering in my apartment in London.
Soft.
Familiar.
Regretful.
When I look in the mirror, just for a split second, I sometimes see her behind me.
Not angry.
Not smiling.
Just watching.
And sometimes—
Very faintly—
I see scratches on the wall that weren't there before.