#14: The Stranger Room

Jacob Niles met them halfway down the driveway, jogging the stretch, then spun and walked backward toward the house as if he couldn’t bear to waste a second explaining.

“You guys, seriously, it’s there,” he said. “And my folks aren’t even acting like anything’s wrong. My dad walked right past it this morning. He didn’t even look at it.”

Cassie raised a brow. “Did you tell him it wasn’t there before?”

Jacob made a tight, frustrated noise. “Yeah! And he said something about the house ‘settling.’ Like a whole door sprouted out of drywall because of humidity.”

Noah snorted. “Classic Elm Street humidity. Makes doors grow.”

But Cassie felt the tension in Jacob’s voice. Not excited this time. Not bragging to the Bulletin Boys that he’d found something cool. He was scared.

Inside, the Niles house felt wrong in a way Cassie couldn’t name. It looked normal. Sunlight on the kitchen tile, the faint smell of cinnamon-sugar Pop-Tarts, last night’s TV Guide on the armrest. But beneath it was a second layer of quiet, a sort of… muffled-ness. Like the whole house had been put under a thick quilt.

Cassie had the sudden sense that if she spoke too loudly, the walls might respond.

Jacob led them past his parents in the kitchen. His mom was stirring a pot of soup. His dad had the paper open on the counter, tapping the crossword with his pencil. Neither of them looked up when the kids passed through. Not even a greeting.

Jacob whispered, “See? They hardly notice us.”

Cassie swallowed. Whatever was happening here, maybe it pressed on adults differently. Or maybe the house filtered what they could see.

By the bedroom hallway, Cassie felt a temperature drop, sliding briefly from warm to cool like walking past an open freezer door. The hum began here, soft at first, pulsing in a broken rhythm. It wasn’t electrical, or at least not anything she recognized. It was more like standing beside train tracks and feeling the vibration before you heard anything real.

Jacob stopped at the new door.

It didn’t belong. It wasn’t aged to match the others. The jamb was raw wood, slightly warped, as though it had been installed too fast. The knob was old brass but too cold, like it had been pulled from a basement tool box and slapped on minutes earlier.

Eli stared at it. Not with fear. With recognition. Cassie noticed it instantly, his pupils widening, the way his breathing shifted, turning shallow. The same look he’d had in the tunnels when the entity reached for him. She stepped subtly in front. “Don’t go first.”

Eli snapped himself back, blinking hard. “I wasn’t… Yeah. Good idea.”

Jacob opened the door. The hidden space breathed cold. Much colder than the hallway. The walls weren’t smooth like finished drywall. They bowed inward slightly, as though the room had been carved rather than built. Long seams traced the plaster, with uneven lines that reminded Cassie of the rings of an old tree trunk misshapen by disease. The floor was bare wood, but the boards didn’t match the rest of the house. These were narrower, gray with moisture, and subtly sloped toward the far wall.

And the far wall…

Cassie’s breath hitched.

The wallpaper wasn’t wallpaper at all. It was a sheet of paper-thin veneer that buckled and curled like dried oak leaves. Each curled flap seemed to peel back from a darker layer beneath, as if something was trying to shed the outer skin of the room.

A subtle smell hung in the air, with traces of cold dirt, wet metal, and something like old radio tubes warming too fast.

A faint hum pulsed through everything. Walls, floor, even the air. Eli stepped closer before Cassie could stop him. “It’s the same frequency range as…”

He drifted off, eyes narrowing, head tilting. Listening.

The hum deepened for several seconds, as if responding to him. Cassie grabbed his sleeve. “Eli.”

It took him a long moment to blink back to himself. “Sorry,” he whispered. But he didn’t look away from the wall.

“Look.” Noah crouched in the back corner. “Salt.”

Not spilled. Placed. A deliberate mound, grains arranged in a slope. Some of the salt had migrated outward in perfect little arcs, as though something had walked through it with tiny bare feet.

“Do you guys use salt for anything?” asked Cassie.

Jacob shook his head. “We’re not a… salt household? I don’t know. My mom only uses the pepper shaker.”

“That’s not the question I’m asking, Jacob.”

He swallowed. “No. Nobody put that here.”

A rustling sound behind them made Cassie’s pulse jump.

Jacob’s younger brother, Aiden, stood in the doorway, framed in the dim light.

He wasn’t blinking. He wasn’t moving. He seemed barely here. His eyes tracked the slope of the ceiling, the warped seams, the curling paper. He tilted his head like he was listening to something just out of reach.

“Aiden?” Jacob whispered.

Aiden didn’t acknowledge him. His lips parted a fraction. “…right… there…”

Cassie stepped closer cautiously. “What’s right there?”

Aiden’s gaze shifted to the far corner, right where the salt lay disturbed. A second later, a rippling wave traveled through the hum, bending the air like heat rising from asphalt.

Aiden’s face went blank. “Can we have lunch soon?” he asked brightly.

Jacob groaned. “Every time. He gets spooky-quiet and then just… resets. Like it never happened.”

Eli stared at the salt, his pupils huge. “We should go. Whatever this is, it hasn’t finished yet.”

Jacob nodded quickly. “Yeah, I don’t like it in here.”

Jacob ushered them back downstairs, eager to be away from the strange space but desperate to keep the conversation going. Once in the living room, he grabbed a spiral notebook off the coffee table.

“There’s more. You know how you guys collect stories for the Bulletin Boys thing?” He grinned awkwardly. “Well, I’ve got some new ones for you. Real ones.” He flipped the notebook open, revealing scrawled dates, crude drawings, arrows pointing at underlined words.

As words rattled from Jacob’s mouth, Cassie couldn’t shake the feeling that the house was leaning closer, listening to all of them. The walls had a pulse.

She noticed Eli’s leg bouncing, and his fingers tapped the side of his jeans in a slow, rhythmic pattern. Not his rhythm. The house’ rhythm. Cassie nudged him gently. He startled, then forced his hands still.

“Mrs. Larson across the street said her garage door kept opening itself,” said Jacob. “Three times last night.”

Cassie nodded. “We heard something like that on Birch Street.”

“Yeah. And Mr. Haverty down the block? His dog won’t go near the basement door anymore.”

Eli frowned at that. “Won’t go near, or won’t go in?”

“Either,” Jacob said. “He tries to pull her, but she sits down like she weighs a thousand pounds. Won’t budge.”

Noah shifted on the corduroy couch, listening carefully. “What about the hum? Do you just hear it here?”

Jacob shook his head. “The Thompsons said their toaster made that noise, even when it wasn’t plugged in.”

“So appliances,” Cassie said. “Rooms changing. Pets reacting.” She jotted items into her notepad, making it look like normal Bulletin Boy procedure.

Eli stared at the darkened hallway the entire time. Cassie noticed. He wasn’t hearing Jacob. He was hearing the hum.

A cuckoo clock on the wall chirped a single note, reminding Cassie they had half an hour before they were supposed to meet Cal. It had been several days since their encounter with Sharon and whatever it was, the plants and dirt and pipes coming at them on the street, and Cal now thinks he has a plan. Cassie tensed as the minutes ticked by.

Jacob was still flipping pages. “Oh, and the weirdest one! My uncle said he heard voices in his gutter.”

Cassie stood suddenly. “Jacob, this is all really helpful. Seriously. But I just remembered, we’ve got a thing to get to.”

Jacob’s face fell. “But you just got here.”

“I know,” Cassie said gently. “I promised my aunt I’d help her with something. Plumbing stuff.”

“And we have to, uh… clean out the garage. We promised our dad,” Noah added, clapping Eli on the shoulder to snap him out of his trance. Eli was still half-listening to the hum.

The lies slid easily. They’d practiced them before. Though Cassie noticed Jacob’s confusion lingering.

“But you’ll come back?” he asked. “To check the room some more? And Aiden?”

Cassie hesitated only a second. “Yeah. We will.”

Eli looked away. Noah coughed. None of them believed it.

Outside, the cold wind carried a hollow whistle through the Elm Street maples. As they headed the direction toward Sharon’s house, Cassie glanced back one last time.

Aiden was standing behind the living-room window, still and silent. Listening. Behind him, faint and rhythmic, the Niles house hummed, as though the walls were learning how to breathe.

*** End Transmission ***