MidnightScreams

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I had spent my career searching for ghosts. I never believed in them, not truly—not until I descended beneath Blackwood City. The tunnels had been sealed for decades, hidden beneath layers of history, but something down there had been waiting. And it was hungry.

I was hired by a historian named Dr. Calloway, who had uncovered old city blueprints that hinted at forgotten catacombs beneath Blackwood’s oldest district. The tunnels predated the city itself, remnants of something older, something no record could explain. He wanted evidence—photos, recordings, anything to validate his research. I just wanted a paycheck.

The entrance was beneath an abandoned library, concealed behind rotting wooden shelves. As I pried open the rusted hatch and felt the cold air seep up from below, a sharp, uneasy dread slithered through me. I ignored it.

The ladder descended into pitch black. My flashlight barely pierced the darkness, revealing a narrow tunnel lined with wet stone. The walls were marked with strange carvings—spirals, jagged symbols, and faceless figures etched in deep relief. They made my skin crawl.

I recorded my findings as I walked.

“Entering primary tunnel. Air is stale, damp. The architecture is inconsistent—some parts resemble natural caverns, others are man-made. There are markings on the walls, but they don’t match any known language.”

As I spoke, my voice felt small, swallowed by the oppressive weight of the underground.

Then, the whispering started.

Faint, distant, just at the edge of hearing. At first, I thought it was the wind, but there was no airflow. It grew louder, not words but a sound—like something wet sliding over stone. My heartbeat quickened.

I turned a corner and found an open chamber, far larger than the tunnels should have allowed. The ceiling was lost in shadow, and at its center stood a circular pit, lined with jagged black stone. Something pulsed at the bottom, something organic.

I stepped closer. The whispering intensified. My flashlight flickered.

A presence pressed against my mind, cold and endless.

Then, I saw it.

A shape, or rather, the absence of one—a void that bent reality around it. It moved, shifting like liquid darkness, seeping out of the pit like smoke. My legs locked. My breath stopped.

It spoke, but not in words. It filled my thoughts, unraveling my mind with concepts too vast to grasp. I glimpsed impossible things—galaxies birthing and dying in its wake, civilizations erased from time, the end of all things written in the spaces between stars.

I ran.

The tunnels twisted, shifting impossibly as if the space itself resisted my escape. The walls pulsed like living flesh. I could hear it behind me, a slithering mass scraping against the stone. My flashlight died.

I don't know how I escaped. One moment, I was lost in the dark, the next I was crawling out of the hatch, gasping for air, my body slick with sweat and something else—something that smelled of decay and time.


Dr. Calloway found me hours later, curled in a corner of the library. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t explain.

I never went back. But sometimes, in the silence of night, I still hear the whispers beneath Blackwood City. And I know it is still waiting.

Days turned into weeks, but the memories didn’t fade. Every shadow seemed deeper, every silence pregnant with whispers I shouldn’t be able to hear. Sleep became a distant luxury. Each time I closed my eyes, I was back in that pit, staring into something beyond comprehension.

I tried to tell Calloway. He dismissed my fears, calling them ‘hallucinations born of isolation and stress.’ I didn’t argue. I knew what I had seen.

But Calloway went down there himself. He took a team, confident that my terror was unfounded. They never came back.

A week later, the library burned. The hatch was buried under debris, the entrance sealed forever. Official reports called it an accident. I knew better.

Yet, I wonder. Fires don’t destroy concepts. They don’t silence whispers that exist beyond time. The thing beneath Blackwood City wasn’t destroyed. It was waiting.

And sometimes, in my weakest moments, I feel it waiting for me.