If what happened in the woods had been a single night, we could've buried it.
That's what everyone else did.
Teachers went back to assigning homework. Parents went back to routines. The city went back to being loud and careless and alive. Whatever screamed in the woods didn't make the news. Whatever stood in the trees didn't leave footprints. Whatever followed us home didn't leave proof.
Life kept moving.
We were the only ones who didn't.
The first thing I noticed was that sound stopped behaving normally.
Not silence—sound.
Doors closed a little too softly. Footsteps echoed when they shouldn't have. My phone vibrated in my pocket even when I hadn't gotten a notification. At first, I blamed sleep deprivation. Then stress. Then my own brain trying to scare itself. Finally, I had thought it was my own paranoia.
But patterns don't lie.
And the voice didn't come all at once.
It came in fragments.
⸻
Samiya was the first to say something.
Not in a dramatic way. Not during some big argument or emotional breakdown. Just… casually. Too casually.
We were sitting on the steps outside school, the concrete still cold from the morning. Hashim was kicking at a pebble with his shoe. Neems was scrolling on her phone, pretending not to watch everyone at the same time.
Sia leaned against the railing, arms crossed, eyes scanning the parking lot like she was counting exits.
Samiya stared straight ahead.
"Do you guys ever hear your name," she asked, "when nobody's talking?"
Hashim snorted. "All the time. That's just paranoia."
She didn't look at him. "No. I mean clearly. Like someone standing right behind you."
That got my attention.
"When?" I asked.
She hesitated. Just a beat too long.
"At night," she said. "Mostly."
Neems' thumb stopped moving on her screen.
Sia straightened slightly. "How often?"
Samiya shrugged. "Enough."
Hashim laughed, but it came out thin. "Okay, nah. I'm not doing this. I already had one nightmare this week. I'm good."
Nobody pushed him.
But the air shifted anyway.
⸻
For me, it happened in places where it shouldn't have been possible.
Crowded hallways. Loud classrooms. Music playing through my headphones at full volume.
I'd be walking, thinking about something normal—homework, food, nothing at all—and then—
"Jamal."
Clear. Close.
Never loud.
Never panicked.
Just… familiar.
I stopped answering it after the second time.
That was the first rule I gave myself.
Don't respond.
Don't acknowledge.
Don't listen.
It helped.
A little.
⸻
Neems took the opposite approach.
She didn't talk about it at all.
She showed up to school. Smiled when she was supposed to. Laughed when someone made a joke. But she stopped filling silences. Stopped rambling. Stopped doing that thing where she filled empty space just because it existed.
She hated quiet before.
Now she treated it like a shield.
I caught her once in the library, sitting alone with her headphones in—nothing playing. Just wearing them.
When I asked her about it, she smiled too fast.
"Habit," she said.
It wasn't.
⸻
Sia noticed everything.
That's what made her dangerous to this whole situation—and also the only reason we weren't falling apart faster.
She didn't ask if we were okay.
She watched.
When Samiya flinched at sudden sounds. When Hashim stopped joking as much. When Neems jumped every time her phone buzzed. When I started pausing before answering questions, like I was checking something internally first.
One afternoon, as we were leaving school, she fell into step beside me.
"You're tracking it," she said.
I frowned. "Tracking what?"
She glanced at me. "Don't play dumb. You're noticing patterns. I want to know what you see."
I didn't answer at first. I thought about what I should say.
I tried to disregard her question.
I told her i've been seeing that monster from the cave, I wanted to know why.
Nobody else had said anything about an unfinished disturbing creature appearing at the end of their street at night.
I wanted to know why this was happening to us, why "It" happened to us.
Was there something that made us different?
The only thing I can say about it is that everything starts from that noise we heard in the woods, it wasn't the cave.
No, that was the second mistake.
The voice was the first.
⸻
The voice didn't try to scare us.
That was the worst part.
It didn't scream. Didn't threaten. Didn't demand.
It just… checked in.
Sometimes it sounded like Neems laughing from another room.
Sometimes like Hashim calling out from down the street.
Once—only once—it sounded like my mom calling me for dinner.
That one messed me up for days.
⸻
The night it got worse, it happened to Samiya.
She told us later. Not immediately. She didn't want to.
She was alone in her room, lights off, phone face-down on the bed. She'd been lying there for a while, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think.
That's when it spoke.
Not her name.
Her thoughts.
"You don't have to be angry."
Her breath caught.
She sat up slowly, heart racing.
"Who's there?" she whispered.
Silence.
Then—closer.
"I know you're scared."
She didn't scream.
She didn't run.
She listened.
Just long enough to realize her mistake.
She covered her ears and bolted for the light switch, flicking it on so hard she nearly broke it.
The room was empty.
But the feeling didn't leave.
⸻
We regrouped the next day, unspoken agreement pulling us together like gravity.
Nobody joked.
Nobody teased.
We sat in a loose circle at the park, daylight doing nothing to make it feel safer.
"It's still here," Samiya said flatly.
Hashim opened his mouth, then closed it.
Neems nodded once.
Sia exhaled slowly. "Okay," she said. "Then we stop pretending it was just the woods."
I swallowed.
"That thing from the cave," I said carefully, "didn't stay in the cave."
No one argued.
⸻
That night, I stood at my window again.
I told myself I wouldn't look.
I looked anyway.
The street was empty. The light buzzed softly. Normal. Ordinary.
Then—
Across the road, just beyond the reach of the streetlight—
Something stood.
Not moving.
Not approaching.
Watching.
Then that's when I said it to myself "Three. That's three times now.."
I slightly chuckled with an unnoticeable grin "Its a pattern.." I said.
My phone buzzed again.
Samiya: Do you hear it too?
I stared at the screen longer than I should have.
Then I typed:
Jamal: Yes.
Jamal: And I think I cracked a code.
Jamal: But we need to meet. This can't wait until morning.
I didn't wait for a reply.
My mom's room was dark. The house was quiet in that deep, late-night way where even the walls seem to listen. I pulled on a hoodie, eased my window open inch by inch, and climbed out like I'd done it a dozen times before—except this time my heart wouldn't slow down.
The street was empty.
I ran.
Samiya's house sat dark except for the faint glow from a hallway light. I circled to the side yard, crouched beneath her window, and knocked twice—soft, then harder.
Her curtain shifted.
"What the hell are you doing?" she hissed, sliding the window up just enough to glare at me. "Are you trying to get arrested? Or are you just a creep now, knocking on people's windows?"
"I need you to listen," I whispered. "Please."
She hesitated, then sighed sharply. "You have sixty seconds."
"I figured something out," I said. "About the thing from the cave."
Her expression changed immediately. Joking gone. Guard up.
"Go on."
"It shows up," I said. "Every third night. Same time. Same place."
She blinked. "What?"
"At the end of my street," I continued. "Right where the streetlight cuts off. I didn't notice it the first time. I barely noticed it the second. But tonight made three."
Samiya crossed her arms. "That doesn't make sense. Why hasn't it happened to me?"
I swallowed.
"That's the part that does," I said. "Tell me something."
She frowned. "What?"
"In the cave," I said quietly, "whose name did it say?"
She didn't answer right away.
Her face went still.
"…Yours," she said.
The word landed heavy between us.
"Mine," I repeated.
She nodded slowly. "Yeah. It didn't say my name. It said yours."
Something clicked into place.
"Hashim was still up top," I said. "When we ran out."
She tilted her head. "What about him?"
"I think something happened to him," I said. "Something he hasn't told us."
Samiya stared at me, realization dawning. "Because it started with you."
"And it spreads outward," I said. "Not randomly. In order."
She exhaled slowly. "Sia and Neems were in the parking lot."
"Last to see it," I said. "Last to hear it."
Silence.
Then she whispered, "So what do we do?"
"We regroup," I said. "All of us. Tomorrow. No jokes. No brushing it off."
She nodded once. "Yeah."
Her window slid shut softly.
I ran home before fear could catch up with me.
And for the first time since the woods, I didn't feel like we were just reacting anymore.
We were finally paying attention.
⸻
NEXT WEEK:
CHAPTER 4 - That Thing From The Cave