MidnightScreams

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It’s funny, isn’t it? How a man can be shaken to his core by something he doesn’t even understand. You think you can walk away from it—shake it off. But it never really leaves. The memories, the weight of what you’ve seen, it sinks into your bones, and no matter how fast you run, it always catches up.

That locket in my bag, the one I couldn’t bring myself to throw away? It was like a damn anchor. Every day, I could feel its presence, pulling me back to that cursed mining town. I could hear the whispers in the dead of night, so soft at first, but growing louder, clearer.

“Come back.”

At first, I thought I could ignore it. Maybe I was just paranoid. Maybe I was just crazy. But the more I tried to forget, the stronger the pull became. And the whispers—they were never just whispers anymore. They were voices, urgent, desperate.

I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t leave it like this. I couldn’t run from it forever.

So, I went back.

The journey wasn’t long, but it felt like it took forever. The truck rattled and groaned, and every mile I covered seemed to stretch out longer than the last. The fog, thick and unnatural, rolled in faster than I expected, swallowing up the road. By the time I reached the outskirts of the town, my hands were slick with sweat, my heart racing in my chest.

I didn’t even get out of the truck. I just sat there for a moment, staring at the town ahead, my mind swimming with dread. I could feel it before I even stepped out—the town was waiting for me. The earth was waiting.

I grabbed the locket from the seat beside me, turning it over in my hand. The cold metal seemed to pulse with an energy I couldn’t understand. I could still see the faded image inside, but now it seemed clearer somehow, like I was starting to recognize the face. A man with hollow eyes, staring back at me.


I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to find. Maybe I thought the answer was buried there, somewhere deep in the town’s forgotten graves. Or maybe I thought if I went back, I could put an end to it. Rid myself of this curse once and for all.

But deep down, I knew that wasn’t true. The town was never going to let me go.

I slammed the truck door behind me and started walking toward the heart of the town. Every step felt heavier than the last, and the silence that surrounded me was deafening. No birds, no wind, just that same stillness from the night I’d first arrived. The buildings were even worse now, almost unrecognizable beneath layers of rot and decay.

And then, I heard it.

The whispering.

Not from the wind, but from the town itself. The walls seemed to breathe, the ground underneath me felt like it was shifting. The shadows twisted in the corners of my vision. It was the same thing I had felt the first time, but now it was worse. Much worse.

I reached the graveyard again, the place where it all began. The air smelled different now—thick, like the earth was rotting. I stood there for a moment, staring down at the graves, and it felt like the entire world was holding its breath.

It’s hard to explain what happened next. It was like the town itself was alive, shifting around me. The shadows stretched long, too long, and the earth beneath my feet trembled. I could hear something scraping, something moving just beneath the surface, like claws dragging across stone.

And then—I saw it again.


The figure.

It was standing just at the edge of the graveyard, where the fog swallowed up the shadows. Its shape wasn’t entirely human, but its eyes—they were. Those same dark eyes from before. And it was watching me. No, not watching. It was waiting.

I couldn’t move. My body was frozen in place, my heart thumping painfully in my chest. The figure lifted its hand slowly, like it was beckoning me forward, and I felt my feet begin to move, as if the ground itself was pulling me toward it.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” the voice echoed in my mind. Not a whisper anymore, but clear, resonating in my skull. “But now that you have... you belong to it.”


I wanted to scream, to turn and run, but I couldn’t. My body wouldn’t obey. It was as though something was controlling me from within, forcing me to step closer.

I fought it, struggling to break free of whatever invisible force had its hold on me, but it was no use. My feet moved of their own accord, and before I knew it, I was standing right in front of it.

The figure reached out, its cold, elongated fingers brushing against my skin. I felt the chill spread through my body, numbing me from the inside out. The world around me began to spin, and I could hear the whispers—no, the voices—growing louder, more urgent.

“Take it,” the figure said, its voice deep and guttural, like the earth itself was speaking. “Take it, and you will understand.”


And before I knew what was happening, the locket slipped from my hand and into the figure’s grasp.

The moment it touched the figure’s fingers, the ground beneath us trembled violently. The town groaned as though it was waking from a long slumber. And in that instant, I saw it all—the town’s dark history, the horrors that had been buried here. The people who had come before me, their faces twisted in agony, their souls trapped within the earth, their voices echoing through the fog.

I fell to my knees, the weight of what I had unleashed pressing down on me like a thousand tons of stone. The figure leaned closer, its breath cold against my face, and I could feel the coldness of the earth seeping into my bones.

“This is your fate now,” it whispered. “The town has claimed you. And you will never leave.”

I tried to scream, but no sound came out. The whispers surrounded me, engulfing me in darkness, and I knew then that I had made a terrible mistake. I had awakened something that should have been left alone.

And as the figure pulled me deeper into the earth, I understood—the town had never been abandoned. It had been waiting for me all along.

The End: Part Two