by Saleah Yusuf
We watch the living.
It is the only thing left for us to do.
We have held them all—their laughter, their quarrels, their babies, their bones. Every word ever spoken in this house sits somewhere inside us, layered like dust. The walls have grown thick with secrets. The ceilings sag with prayers that never made it past the roof.
We used to be proud. We were built by men who sang as they worked—men with sunburnt backs and red dust in their lungs. They mixed our cement with their sweat, and when the first family moved in, we sighed in relief. We were meant to hold love, not rot.
But love, like termites, burrows quietly.
It started small, the way most things do. The man shouted. The woman wept. The child hid. We watched from every corner. The sofa absorbed the slaps. The walls swallowed the echoes. The floor trembled when he kicked over the dining chair. The bulb flickered when she prayed too loudly.
We thought it would pass.
Then came the thing.
We do not know its name, only that it hums through the wires and moves through us like fever. Sometimes, it is a low vibration under the tiles. Other times, it bangs the cupboard doors until they weep sawdust. It is not always cruel—sometimes it hums a lullaby through the ceiling fan—but we can taste its hunger.
The child was the first to notice. Children always are.
He would sit in his room, whispering, “Stop it,” though no one was there.
At night, he would cry, and his mother would come in and say, “It’s just the wind.”
We tried to be still, to calm the air, but the thing liked her voice too much.
Every time she said Jesus, the mirrors shook.
We’ve seen the thing wear faces. Once, it came as her mother—dead five years now—standing in the kitchen, peeling yam that wasn’t there. Another time, it came as the man himself, while the real one slept, to whisper to her in his voice: “Come outside.”
We would have warned her, if we could speak.
We would have said, don’t open the door.
But we are walls, and chairs, and curtains. Our mouths are sealed with paint.
The woman began to fade. She moved slower, prayed softer. She stopped opening windows. The air turned heavy, the way it gets before rain. Only, the rain never came.
Then, one evening, during a power outage, the generator refused to start. The man shouted. The child hid again. The thing slipped through the sockets and into the sitting room. It rattled the picture frames. It cracked the portrait of their wedding—split them both down the middle.
We felt it bloom inside us. A pulse. A rhythm. A joy.
It liked the noise. It liked the fear.
By midnight, the woman was gone. We heard the back door creak, then nothing. The man went searching. He called her name until dawn. He didn’t notice the kitchen knife missing. He didn’t notice the child had stopped crying.
He found her three days later—in the well behind the mango tree. The water smelled of iron and salt.
We remember the police. We remember the neighbors.
They all said, “Maybe she slipped.”
We said nothing, but the walls cracked from holding in the truth.
After that, the thing stopped pretending.
It began to live openly, like rent had been paid.
Plates flew. Doors slammed. The gas cooker turned itself on and off all night.
The man shouted prayers until his voice went hoarse. The child stopped eating.
We felt them both shrinking.
Last night, the man tried to leave. Suitcase, passport, rosary in hand. The child clung to his leg. The thing watched from the corner—small at first, then larger, stretching across the ceiling. It hummed. The generator came on by itself. The fan began to spin. The door locked.
We could do nothing but hold the screams.
The next morning, silence. The thing has gone still, sated.
The air smells of burnt hair and palm oil.
The curtains are stiff with soot.
The bedframe sighs under a weight that isn’t there.
The neighbors are outside now, whispering.
They will say it was a gas leak.
They will say it was madness.
They will say it was juju.
We will not correct them.
We watch as men in uniforms carry out the bodies. The child’s eyes are open. The man’s hands are clenched. The ceiling fan is still spinning, though there’s no power.
When night comes again, we listen.
Already, something is moving through us—slow, curious. It hums against the walls. It tastes the air like a tongue.
We’ve seen this before.
Tomorrow, someone new will come. They will say prayers. They will sprinkle anointing oil and sing hymns until their throats ache. They will laugh at how cold the rooms feel.
They will not know that we are watching.
That we are waiting.
That every wall remembers how to scream.
And when they finally turn off the lights—
we will welcome them home.
© 2026 Saleah Yusuf All rights reserved.
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