Scene 53: Voices Returned
Rain hammered the roof of the old church like desperate fingers clawing to be heard. Reaves stood before the stitched-eyed version of Carter, fists clenched, breath held.
"I don't believe you're him," she whispered.
Carter tilted his head. "I didn't come back alone."
Something wet moved behind the altar.
Reaves backed away slowly, pulling the flare gun from her coat pocket. "You said it let you hear. What does that mean?"
He stepped forward. His stitched lips split slightly-blood pooling in the threads.
"When you stop making noise... you finally understand what else is speaking."
She fired.
The flare lit the sanctuary in an instant-red, savage light cutting through the gloom.
And for one horrifying second, Reaves saw what stood behind Carter.
Tall. Boneless. Covered in mouths.
Each whispering a different name.
Some of them hers.
---
Scene 54: Kincaid's Confession
In a side room of the archive building, Reaves had left a recorder running, hoping to pick up any residual sound anomalies. Hours later, the device clicked on by itself.
A voice spoke.
Old. Male. Tired.
Miles Kincaid.
> "We drilled too deep. Not into stone-but into memory. The earth doesn't forget."
> "The echoes we lost weren't accidents. They were sacrifices. It's how it feeds. It takes the sound of your soul and chews it into shape."
A pause. Breathing.
> "If this is playing, I'm already gone. But it's not too late to reseal the mouth. Just know... it remembers everyone who ever heard it."
> "And it wants them back."
The tape ended with a whisper, almost inaudible:
> "Run."
---
Scene 55: Reaves Awakens
Reaves woke up face-down in the church parking lot. The sky was pink with pre-dawn. Her mouth tasted of copper and ash.
The church behind her was gone.
Only a blackened crater remained-circular. Seamless.
No rubble. No fire damage. Just... absence.
In her hand, she still clutched Carter's flare gun. Empty.
But in her coat pocket, tucked inside a small ziplock bag, was a strip of stitched black thread.
She hadn't put it there.
And when she pressed it between her fingers, a whisper tickled her ear:
> "It's not done."
---
Scene 56: The Underground Choir
Beneath the town, the tunnels twisted unnaturally.
The thing wearing Elise led the procession-Carter-shadows, silent miners, the twitching remnants of Arjun-all walking toward the beating heart of the mine.
Each figure murmured-barely perceptible. Layered voices folded into one low, groaning sound.
The walls pulsed. Flesh peeled from rock. Cavities opened.
Inside them: mouths.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Each one shaped like someone who'd disappeared.
And they were singing.
A melody with no rhythm, no language-just desire. The desire to be heard. To never be forgotten.
The Elise-thing stepped forward and raised her hands.
The mouths all screamed.
No sound came out.
---
Scene 57: Reaves Breaks In
Reaves drove through the town's crumbling edge in a borrowed jeep, heading toward the only route left into the mine-the old ventilation shaft at the north side of Briar Glen.
The fences had been cut.
The silence grew thicker as she approached-her thoughts becoming harder to hold onto. Memories blurring.
She played Carter's final recording over and over to ground herself.
> "The silence isn't the danger. It's the bait."
She parked and climbed into the shaft, her flashlight flickering.
She had one goal: destroy whatever fed at the mine's heart.
But as she crawled down the shaft, the walls grew warm.
Wet.
And far ahead, she heard someone calling her name.
Not yelling.
Whispering.
Like a friend.
Like family.
Like someone long dead.
---
Scene 58: The Chamber of Echoes
Reaves reached the chamber at last.
It was impossible.
A space too large to exist underground. A cathedral made of bone and silence.
The floor was covered in abandoned tools, cameras, flares-everything the others had dropped.
At the center was a pulsing pit. Not stone. Not organic.
Somewhere between the two.
Inside it: the mouths.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
And in front of them-Carter. The real one.
Or what remained of him.
Thin. Hollow. Lips still stitched, but glowing faintly now.
He turned to her and mouthed something.
"Help."
She stepped closer.
The pit opened wider.
And it spoke.
> "We remember you."
> "We remember all of you."
> "Come closer. Let us echo."
---
Scene 59: Reaves' Choice
She stood at the edge, staring into the impossible mass of mouths and voices.
It would be easy to fall. To become part of the chorus. To be heard forever.
But she pulled the matchbook from her pocket. Doused it with the accelerant she'd brought. The zippo sparked.
Behind her, Carter wept silent tears.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
The flame dropped.
The silence screamed.
Fire poured into the chamber, licking the walls, consuming the mouths, the shadows, the memory.
Reaves turned and ran.
As the pit collapsed in on itself, the voices surged one final time.
> "We only wanted to be remembered."
Then-
Silence.
Real silence.