The fog clung to Morningside like a living thing, smothering the town in gray silence. It coiled through the empty streets, pressed against the windows of sleeping homes, and curled into the cracks of the old roads, heavy as breath on the back of the neck. The kind of silence that wasn't absence, but waiting. Listening.
Emma Parker pulled Violet by the wrist through that silence, her chest tight with fear, the uneven slap of their footsteps echoing too loudly in the mist. The glass from the burst streetlight still clung to Emma's shoes, crunching faintly with each step. She barely noticed, too focused on the dark stretch of road ahead. Every few seconds she glanced back, terrified that something would step from the fog and take shape. But there was only emptiness behind them—emptiness that moved as if it were not empty at all.
Violet stumbled, gasping, her black hair plastered to her pale face with sweat and mist. Her gray eyes darted wildly, catching on every shadow, every wavering shape of mailboxes or sagging fences. She was only sixteen, but the hollowness in her face made her look older. Not years older. Decades. As if the thing they had heard at the lake had drained something essential from her, some innocence that could never be returned.
Emma tightened her grip, steadying her. "Almost there," she whispered, though the words meant nothing, though she didn't believe them herself. Her voice cracked in her throat like glass.
Behind them, the hum began again.
It was faint at first, a vibration more than a sound, sinking into the marrow of the bones, rattling the teeth in their jaws. Emma's head pounded with it, her vision pulsing at the edges. Violet whimpered, pressing her hands over her ears as if that would stop the invasion. It wasn't outside. It was inside.
The voice came in the hum. Not loud. Not clear. But intimate, curling around Emma's thoughts like a lover's whisper:
Emma…
She froze. The voice was soft. Familiar. It sounded like Caleb.
Her throat locked. She wanted to scream, but the sound died before it left her lips.
Emma… come home…
Her breath came sharp and ragged. She tightened her grip on Violet, who was shaking uncontrollably now, her teeth chattering though the night was not cold enough for it. "Don't listen," Emma hissed, though she wasn't sure who she was saying it to—Violet or herself. "Do you hear me? Don't listen."
They reached Emma's house, a sagging two-story with peeling paint and dark windows. It loomed out of the mist like a ruin, though she had lived there her whole life. She fumbled the keys from her coat pocket, her hands trembling so badly she dropped them twice. The hum pressed closer, filling the air now, the fog around them trembling like water disturbed by a stone.
Finally, the lock gave. She shoved Violet inside and slammed the door shut behind them, turning every deadbolt, every chain, every lock with frantic, fumbling hands.
For a moment there was silence. Only the sound of their ragged breathing.
Emma pressed her back to the door, her auburn hair plastered to her damp face. She could feel her heartbeat hammering against the wood. Her eyes darted to the windows—thin curtains, fragile glass, nothing that could keep it out. She knew, deep in her gut, that a locked door meant nothing. But for now, the illusion of safety was all she had.
Violet collapsed onto the couch, curling into herself, rocking back and forth. Her nails dug into her arms hard enough to draw thin lines of blood. Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. "It followed us. It always follows. You can't—" She broke off, choking on the words, her eyes filling with tears that refused to fall.
Emma swallowed, pushing herself from the door. Her legs trembled as she walked the narrow hallway toward Caleb's room. She had to check. She had to see him, had to know he was still asleep, untouched by whatever this was.
The hallway stretched too long, the shadows along its edges seeming to pulse with the hum that still faintly lingered in her skull. Each step creaked louder than the last, echoing through the house as if the walls themselves were hollow.
From the end of the hall, behind Caleb's door, came a sound that froze her in place.
A child's giggle.
High, soft, innocent. The sound of her son.
But wrong.
Too slow. Too measured. Drawn out, like a recording played on a warped tape.
Emma's heart stuttered. She pressed her palm against the door. The wood was cold. Her voice shook. "Caleb?"
Silence.
Her hand trembled on the knob. She twisted it slowly, the faintest click echoing like a gunshot in the stillness. She pushed the door open.
The room was dark, the shape of the bed just visible in the weak spill of light from the hall. Caleb lay under the blankets, small and still. Relief surged through her so sharply it made her knees weak. She stepped inside.
"Baby," she whispered, crossing to the bed. "It's okay. Mommy's here."
She reached to touch him—
And froze.
The blankets were empty.
The shape was there. The indentation. But when she pulled them back with shaking hands, there was nothing.
The giggle came again, this time from the far corner of the room, deep in the shadows where the light did not reach.
Her breath caught. Her entire body went rigid.
"Caleb?" she whispered again, but her voice was no louder than the beat of her heart.
The shadow shifted. Something darker than dark moved there, crouched, waiting.
The giggle warped into a low hum.
Emma stumbled backward, her shoulder slamming into the doorframe. She turned and fled, running down the hall, her bare feet slapping against the old wood. Violet looked up from the couch, her eyes wide, but before Emma could speak, a knock rattled the front window.
Three knocks. Slow. Patient.
Violet whimpered, covering her ears. "It's here," she moaned. "It's here."
Emma's stomach twisted. She forced herself to the window, every muscle in her body screaming not to move closer. The fog pressed hard against the glass, thick and heavy. She saw nothing at first. Only her own pale reflection, wide-eyed and frantic.
Then the reflection shifted.
Something stood behind her.
Tall. Too tall. Its limbs too long, its head bent unnaturally as though listening at her ear. An absence of light shaped like a figure.
Emma spun—
Nothing. Only the empty room.
The knocks came again. Louder.
And from the back of the house, from Caleb's empty room, the giggle echoed once more.
---
Across town, Daniel Mercer stood frozen at the window of his father's old house, his blue eyes locked on the fog pressing against the glass. He had seen it. Not clearly. Not fully. But enough. A shadow in the reflection, too close, too tall. Enough to turn the marrow in his bones to ice.
Behind him, Claire whispered, "Daniel?" Her voice cracked with a child's fear, not the voice of the grown woman she was.
He turned slowly. Her pale face was drawn tight, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. The silence in the house stretched, oppressive.
The radio on the counter hissed faintly.
Daniel's skin crawled. The device was off, the knob turned all the way down, but the static seeped from it anyway. A whispering hiss, low and steady, like someone breathing through clenched teeth.
Claire shook her head violently, blonde hair sticking to her damp face. "Turn it off," she snapped, though her voice shook. "Turn it off, Daniel."
"It's already off," he said hoarsely.
The static deepened. A voice threaded through it, not from the speaker, but from the air around them.
Daniel… Claire…
Claire let out a strangled sob, backing against the wall. Her green eyes were wide, shining in the dim light. "It knows us," she whispered. "It always knew us."
Daniel's hands curled into fists. His father's voice came back to him then, a memory from childhood nights spent hiding under blankets while the walls whispered: Never answer it. Never let it know you hear.
But it was too late.
The radio screeched, sharp and violent. Both siblings flinched, covering their ears, as the voice surged clearer, louder, breaking through the static:
You left me here.
The air seemed to pulse with it. The walls groaned. The lights flickered. Claire screamed, her knees buckling beneath her.
And Daniel, even as terror rooted him in place, knew one thing with dreadful certainty.
The Sound wasn't just something that haunted the edges of the town.
It was inside the house.
---
Back at the Parker house, Emma stood frozen at the window, Violet sobbing quietly behind her. The knocks had stopped, but the silence that followed was worse. The fog pressed against the glass like a living thing. The child's giggle still lingered in the walls, curling through the house like smoke.
Emma's voice cracked as she whispered, "Caleb…"
And from everywhere at once—inside the walls, inside the air, inside her very skull—the voice answered.
Mommy.