A House That Eats Silence E-Book

Miles Everett Blake

• Herausgeber: Twist & Tether Press
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

When reclusive sound engineer Lucas inherits a crumbling monastery deep in the forest, he’s drawn not by its history—but by its hush. Tasked with restoring the building and cataloging its strange acoustics, he begins to record what he believes is pure silence.
But the silence is not empty.
Each recording reveals faint whispers—fragmented prayers, buried sobs, and something darker threading through the quiet. As Lucas isolates deeper within the stone walls, his equipment picks up what the ear can’t… and his mind begins to unravel.
The building isn't haunted in any traditional sense. It's alive in a way no one has documented. It doesn’t want to be heard—it wants to listen.
Driven by obsession, Lucas peels back layers of forgotten rituals, repressed trauma, and the emotional frequencies left behind by those who once dwelled within. What he uncovers challenges the very foundation of sound, memory, and truth.
In a place where silence isn't absence, but appetite, Lucas must confront the disturbing question:
When the silence starts to speak—what part of you does it leave behind?

Leseprobe

A House That Eats Silence

You Can Hear the Dead if You Stay Quiet Long Enough

Ash Thread: Horror in A24’s Shadow

Miles Everett Blake

Copyright © 2025 by Miles Everett Blake

All rights reserved. This book, including all individual stories and original content, is protected under international copyright law. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission from the author, except for brief excerpts used in reviews or academic commentary, which must be properly credited.

Fiction Disclaimer:

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

Cover Image Notice:

The cover artwork for this book was created using licensed generative AI tools under commercial-use terms. It is an original, symbolic composition created specifically for this title. Any characters depicted are fictional and do not represent real individuals.

AI Tools Acknowledgement:

The cover image and/or illustrations were created using generative AI technology under appropriate commercial-use licensing. All visual elements are original compositions intended solely for this publication.

Thank you for reading this special collection. I hope you enjoy every story inside.

Table of Contents

A House That Eats Silence

Description

Prologue: The Room With No Echo

Chapter 1: Inheritance Static

Chapter 2: Echo Chamber

Chapter 3: Not Haunted

Chapter 4: The Bell That Never Rang

Chapter 5: A Ritual of Absence

Chapter 6: The Truth Resonates

Chapter 7: The Cost of Quiet

Epilogue: The New Silence

A House That Eats Silence

Description

When reclusive sound engineer Lucas inherits a crumbling monastery deep in the forest, he’s drawn not by its history—but by its hush. Tasked with restoring the building and cataloging its strange acoustics, he begins to record what he believes is pure silence.

But the silence is not empty.

Each recording reveals faint whispers—fragmented prayers, buried sobs, and something darker threading through the quiet. As Lucas isolates deeper within the stone walls, his equipment picks up what the ear can’t… and his mind begins to unravel.

The building isn't haunted in any traditional sense. It's alive in a way no one has documented. It doesn’t want to be heard—it wants to listen.

Driven by obsession, Lucas peels back layers of forgotten rituals, repressed trauma, and the emotional frequencies left behind by those who once dwelled within. What he uncovers challenges the very foundation of sound, memory, and truth.

In a place where silence isn't absence, but appetite, Lucas must confront the disturbing question:

When the silence starts to speak—what part of you does it leave behind?

Prologue: The Room With No Echo

The first time I heard silence, I was twelve years old.

Not the everyday kind. Not the hush of a bedroom at night or the dampened pause between breaths in a cathedral. This silence was different. It wasn’t quiet. It was absent. Not empty, but hollowed out—like something had scooped the sound from the world and left only the shape behind.

It was late autumn, the kind of brittle chill that made your sleeves smell faintly like iron and firewood. My brother, Aaron, and I were staying with our grandfather while our parents sorted out what they called a “trial separation,” a phrase that sounded too clinical to contain the shouting that came before it.

Grandfather owned the monastery then—Saint Lorne’s Retreat, though nobody called it that. Locals just said “the bones.” The nickname made sense. The place looked like a ribcage buried in a hill, all stone corridors and rusted hinges, the chapel steeple listing like a broken tooth.

We weren’t supposed to explore the east wing. Most of it had been closed off after a fire years ago. But boys don’t obey well when silence is already screaming to be broken.

That day, we ran from room to room with a stolen ring of keys, the metal cool against our palms. The floor tiles in the forbidden wing were soft with dust, each step leaving a ghost. The air smelled like mold and old incense, brittle and damp.

There was one door—at the very end of the hall. Thick. Painted white, but the paint had blistered and peeled in places, like something underneath had tried to breathe.

Aaron glanced at me, his blue hoodie too big for his frame, the sleeves swallowing his hands.

“You first,” he whispered.

I fit the key in. It turned with a mechanical sigh.

The door opened onto a room that felt wrong.

Everything inside had been padded. The walls, the floor, even the ceiling were covered in yellowing cloth that dulled every footfall. In the center stood a single wooden chair facing the far wall—empty, expectant.

I stepped in, and the air changed. My ears popped. I snapped my fingers.

Nothing.

No echo. No return. Just the sound vanishing, like it had been swallowed whole.

Aaron followed, hesitating at the threshold. His breath came out shaky, barely visible in the colder air.

“Let’s scream,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. “See what happens.”

He frowned.

“You scared?”

He shook his head, but his feet didn’t move.

I stepped into the center, the cloth beneath my shoes sighing with age.

“AAAAAAAAHH—”

But the moment the sound left me, it was like it never had. My throat vibrated. My chest moved. But the air stayed dead. The sound didn’t bounce. Didn’t fade. It disappeared.

I looked at Aaron.

He was staring at me, wide-eyed. Then he took a breath.

And screamed.

Only it wasn’t a scream.

I saw his mouth open. Saw his throat strain.

But there was no sound.

Not even the whisper of air.

Then—another sound.

From the wall.

A low, animal moan. No source. No direction. Just presence.

We ran.

Outside the room, my ears rang like they’d been underwater. Aaron didn’t say anything. Not that night. Not the next.

He didn’t speak again for seven days.

I remember the sky was bruised with twilight when we left that wing. Grandfather never asked what we’d seen. Maybe he already knew.

Now, twenty-four years later, I still can’t forget.

The silence from that room followed me.

I made a career of chasing sound—measuring it, recording it, understanding it. The irony doesn’t escape me. I built a life around frequencies and feedback loops, trying to decode what wasn’t there that day.

Aaron and I grew apart. He blamed me, I think. Or maybe he didn’t blame anyone—just chose to forget. He joined the military. Later, he moved to Oregon. We haven’t spoken in five years.

But I’ve been hearing something again.

Not with my ears. Not quite.

In empty hotel rooms. On long night drives. In the spaces between breaths.

A whisper. Low and hungry.

Stay quiet or feed it.

I thought I imagined it. But then the letter came.

Grandfather was dead.

And he left me Saint Lorne’s Retreat.

The house where silence ate sound.

Where my brother screamed and was never heard.

Where something opened its mouth—and waited.

I unpacked the letter on my kitchen counter, the paper crinkling under my fingers. It smelled faintly of smoke. Or maybe that was just memory.

Outside, the sky over San Rafael was a watery gray. A siren wailed in the distance, but I barely registered it.

I ran my fingers along the grain of the letterhead. There, in small inked lines, the legal transfer was clear: The monastery was mine now.

I didn’t want it.

But I couldn’t not go.

Some questions don’t leave you alone.

They wait in the silence.

And they listen.

Chapter 1: Inheritance Static

The envelope was thick—cream-colored and heavy in my hand, the kind of paper that held fingerprints too long. My name was written in slanted black ink that felt impossibly old, as if it had been penned decades ago and only now decided to arrive.

It sat on the table for two days. I didn’t open it at first.

Outside my apartment, the city exhaled its usual mechanical breath: sirens slicing through haze, horns bleeding frustration, the low hum of a transformer from the building across the alley. I listened to it all, headphones off, the way someone might listen for thunder beneath a clear sky.

By the third morning, the envelope felt heavier, as though the air around it had thickened—like it knew I was trying to ignore it.

I sliced it open with a pocketknife, careful not to tear. The paper inside was brittle, but unblemished. It bore the letterhead of a law office I didn’t recognize—Wexler & Lorne, Hillside County, Vermont.

The letter read like a formality. My grandfather, Howard K. Barrett, deceased. A transfer of title. A property called Saint Lorne’s Retreat had passed to me as the sole beneficiary.

I stared at the name for several minutes.

Saint Lorne’s Retreat.

The words had weight, like old bells rung underwater.