The silence of the room baffled him to no end.
It wasn't completely unexpected -- no it wasn't at all. He had gone in to the house fully aware of its rather... bizarre qualities. It was nothing like the stuff he had read from the Navidson Record, for sure, since there wasn't anything particularly odd about the dimensions that he could see, but there was just something unsettling about the place.
For one, it was the only single storey house among an entire neighbourhood of high-rise apartments. A colonial-styled bungalow in the middle of a small field surrounded by homogeneous post-modern industrially designed high rise apartments whose sole criteria was the ever increasing human density over all others. Rumour has it that it was a haunted house, that somehow, despite all the large number of people surrounding it, no one actually managed to see what goes on inside the house itself.
No one could see anyone come in or out, yet strange sounds seemed to emanate from within. Guttural and harsh, those sounds were. Some thought they were the sound of wild beasts, but it was not possible since the nearest forest was a good five miles away with even more battery cage-like human dwellings.
He lived nearby. He heard those noises. He was curious. He was egged on by his friends who lived nearby too. He took up the dare.
And now he was in the living room of the house. And it was silent.
Granted, he wasn't dumb or crazy enough to investigate the house when night fell. It was during the day, slightly after noon. The hustle and bustle of the neighbourhood provided much of the ambient sound that he was used to listening. His friends had dared him, and had followed him to the outskirts of the house, in full view of anyone in the neighbourhood who bothered enough to stand around and watch them.
Standing outside, they could hear the usual human cacophony. But he, on the inside, could only hear a strange silence, even though the door was still open and was facing the hawker centre serving out lunch.
Unnerving.
He could see his friends peering in. In a desperate attempt to break the silence, he shouted at his friends.
But he found that despite his exertions, there seemed to be no sound.
He got afraid, wondering if he had gone deaf. Panicking, he turned towards the open door and ran out of the house.
As sunlight streamed on his face, the ambient sound that he was missing gradually came back to him.
They huddled around him, curious at what he found. He answered, and was surprised to hear his voice. They said that once he stepped through the door, he sort of vanished. They could see the interior of the room as it was lit by the lights through the windows from the door, but there was a stillness in it that made them feel uncomfortable. They feared for him, but no one could decide who was to go in and look for him.
He told them that he could see out of the door, but could hear nothing from where he was in the living room.
They all looked at each other with gazes of discomfort. Behind them, the door of the house slammed itself and they ran off as fast as they could away from the house.
