As soon as I spoke, the noise stopped, and somehow that was worse.
If it had kept going, I could’ve told myself it was a machine, a loose pipe, some ugly little basement noise that didn’t mean anything. But silence like that? Silence that answered you? That felt personal. That felt like the dark had turned its head and looked straight at me.
I stood there with my hand half lifted, my breath trapped high in my chest, and listened so hard my ears started ringing. Nothing. No scrape. No footsteps. No voice. Just the low hum of something electrical behind the walls and the soft drip of water hitting concrete somewhere far enough away to sound lonely.
“This is insane,” I whispered.
My own voice came back thin and strange, like it didn’t belong to me anymore. I hated that. I hated this whole
