Chapter 3 The Broken Record

The phrase, "Is he home? Is he home?" clung to Adira like a shroud woven from the chilling static of the past. It replayed in her mind even in the quiet hours of the day, a phantom melody that tainted the sunlight filtering through the Briarwood's tall windows. The simple, logical explanations that had once been her shield-pipes, drafts, a stressed mind-now felt flimsy, transparent. No pipe hummed a mournful lullaby. No draft sighed with the weary resignation of a woman.

And her imagination, vivid as it was, couldn't conjure the distinct timbre of a child's faint giggle that occasionally accompanied the mournful whispers.

Sleep had become a luxury, a distant memory. Each night was a battle waged against the insidious sounds from the attic. She'd lie awake, rigid beneath the mosquito net, her breath held captive in her chest, straining to categorize the next auditory intrusion. Sometimes it was the mournful hum again, like a forgotten song. Other times, a distinct scraping sound, soft yet persistent, as if something heavy was being dragged across the attic floor. But the most unsettling was the repeated, fractured dialogue. "Don't touch that!" a woman's sharp, panicked voice. Followed by a child's sudden, piercing cry, cut short as if by a hand clamped over a mouth. And then, an abrupt, suffocating silence. This particular sequence began to haunt her, a terrifying snippet of a forgotten moment, replaying like a broken record in the vast, empty space above her head.

Her architectural designs, once her escape, now felt distant, irrelevant. The crisp lines blurred, the precise angles seemed to mock her fracturing sanity. How could she design the Apex Tower, a monument to human ambition and clarity, when her own mind felt like a chaotic symphony of ghostly whispers? Her frustration simmered, slowly boiling into a desperate, uncharacteristic curiosity. Logic might have failed her, but perhaps history would offer answers.

"Peculiar history," the rental agent had said. Adira remembered the almost apologetic shrug. Now, that phrase echoed with new, ominous weight. On Thursday morning, forgoing her usual meticulous planning, she drove the old Peugeot into the nearest town, a sleepy cluster of corrugated iron roofs and dusty markets, and headed straight for the local library.

The library was a small, humid room, smelling of aged paper and wood polish. The librarian, a stout, elderly woman named Madam Bisi, peered at Adira over spectacles perched on her nose, her eyes sharp and assessing. Adira explained her interest in the Briarwood Manor, trying to sound casual, academic.

Madam Bisi's expression shifted, a subtle tightening around her lips. "Ah, The Briarwood," she mused, her voice low. "Been empty for a long time, that one. Before your time, of course." She pulled out dusty ledgers, old newspaper clippings, and a thick, leather-bound register of local properties. Adira spent hours poring over the brittle pages, her fingers smudged with ancient dust.

The records were indeed scant, almost deliberately vague. The house, built in the late 1800s, had passed through numerous hands. Owners came and went, rarely staying for more than a few years. Each entry was a dry enumeration of names and dates, until she found it. A single, faded newspaper clipping from 1987, tucked haphazardly into the property register. The headline, yellowed with age, screamed: "FAMILY VANISHES FROM BRIARWOOD MANOR – MYSTERY DEEPENS."

The article was frustratingly short, lacking details. It reported the sudden, inexplicable disappearance of the "Adebayo family"-husband, wife, and their young daughter, Lola. No signs of struggle, no forced entry, no ransom notes. They had simply vanished, leaving behind their belongings, their half-eaten dinner, and a house full of unanswered questions. The police investigation had yielded nothing, concluding in a chilling shrug of uncertainty. The local community had, according to the article, been "baffled and unnerved." The house had stood empty for years after that, acquiring its whispered reputation, changing hands several times since, always to absentee owners who never truly settled in.

Adira felt a cold knot form in her stomach. Lola. A young daughter. The child's cry. The woman's anxious whispers. The pieces, fragmented and terrifying, were beginning to align. She felt an undeniable presence in the house now, more than just sound. It was mournful, lost, and desperately trying to communicate. Not malevolent, perhaps, but certainly not at peace. A chill, unrelated to the library's tepid air, crept up her arms. She felt a peculiar empathy for the lost family, a sense of their unresolved anguish, but also a growing fear that she was now inextricably linked to their fate.

Back at the Briarwood, the house seemed to hum with a new, charged energy. The echoes weren't just clearer; they were more frequent, bolder. The recurring sequence-the woman's sharp "Don't touch that!", the child's truncated cry, the man's angry, guttural shout that she now distinctly recognized, followed by the terrifying, profound silence-began to replay at random times, even in broad daylight. She'd be sketching, and a sudden, phantom chill would wash over her, accompanied by the fleeting, agonizing snippet of sound, so vivid she felt she was standing in the very room where it had happened.

Sleep was now a battle she lost every night. She would lie awake, listening, straining, until the echoes became a part of her dreams. She saw fleeting images: a bright red ball rolling across polished floors, a woman's hand reaching out, a man's shadowed face contorted in anger. They were disjointed, like static flashes, but terrifyingly real. She would jolt awake, heart pounding, convinced she had just witnessed something, not just heard it.

Adira's isolation deepened. She stopped answering calls from her friends, from her frantic colleagues. "Just really deep into the Apex project," she'd text, feigning enthusiasm. Her work, once a source of pride, became a bitter reminder of her fracturing focus. She'd stare at the complex architectural drawings, seeing not lines and angles, but the ghostly outlines of a vanished family, their voices trapped in a chilling, endless loop. Her friends' worried calls went straight to voicemail, her excuses becoming thinner, more desperate. Was the solitude she had so eagerly sought finally breaking her? Was she truly losing her mind, or was The Briarwood slowly, meticulously, revealing its horrific truth? The sounds were no longer just an annoyance; they were a story, unfolding in agonizing fragments, and Adira, whether she liked it or not, was becoming its sole, terrified audience.