The Second Voice

I noticed it because my phone was sitting on the kitchen counter and I heard myself talking.

At first I thought I had accidentally played an old recording.

I walked over and picked it up.

The screen was locked.

But my voice was coming from the speaker.

It was saying something I had never said before.

"Don't go upstairs."

I just stood there listening.

Then the recording stopped.

I checked every app on my phone.

Nothing was open.

No audio was playing.

I figured it was some weird glitch and forgot about it.

The next night it happened again.

This time my voice said,

"He's already there."

I looked toward the stairs.

Nothing.

I checked the entire upstairs.

Every room was empty.

I started getting paranoid after that.

I put my phone on airplane mode before going to bed.

Around 3 AM, I heard my voice again.

It was coming from downstairs.

I walked into the hallway and listened.

My voice was whispering from the kitchen.

"Don't turn the light on."

I turned it on anyway.

Nobody was there.

My phone was still sitting on my bed.

I hadn't brought it downstairs.

That's when I realized the voice wasn't coming from my phone.

It was coming from the kitchen wall.

I called my dad and told him what was happening.

He thought I was messing around until I sent him a recording.

He went silent after listening to it.

Then he asked me something that made my stomach drop.

"Did you ever hear your grandfather's voice in that house?"

I said no.

He told me that before I was born, my grandfather had lived there.

He died in that house.

Apparently, toward the end, he used to complain that he could hear someone copying his voice from inside the walls.

My dad said nobody took him seriously.

That night, I slept at a friend's house.

The next morning, my dad came over with me.

We opened the wall behind the kitchen.

There was nothing inside except insulation and old wiring.

Then my dad noticed something scratched into the wood.

A sentence.

"IT LEARNS YOUR VOICE BEFORE IT USES IT."

We left the house that day.

A few weeks later, the property was sold.

I never went back.

But about a year later, I got a voicemail from an unknown number.

There was no number displayed.

Just a recording.

I pressed play.

It was my voice.

Then my grandfather's voice.

Then my dad's.

Then a voice I didn't recognize.

And after all four voices finished speaking, they said the exact same thing at the same time.

"We know who lives there now."