Grandfather never spoke about the day the tower appeared.
Not to my father, not to my grandmother, not even on his deathbed when his mind had begun to crumble into mutters and prayers to things that had no names.
But he wrote. Oh, he wrote.
I found the journals in a box beneath the loose floorboard of his old study, wrapped in a burlap sack that smelled faintly of rain and mold.
The first page was dated June 12th, 1943—the day everything changed in our town.
He called that day the birth of the black shadow.
********
The Town That Slept Beneath the Hills
We used to be proud of our isolation.
Our town, Edgar's Rest, was surrounded by a ring of sleepy hills and misty pines that kept the world out.
We had one bakery, one church, one post office, and a small schoolhouse that doubled as a meeting hall. People knew each other by name, by the color of their roofs, by the sound of their footsteps in the morning.
Grandfather wrote that life was simple — bread and laughter, church bells and rain.
Until the morning when the bells refused to ring.
He described waking up to silence — not peace, but the heavy kind of silence that swallows birdsong and breath alike.
And then he saw it:
"In the middle of town," he wrote,
"stood a thing that was not there the night before.
A tower, tall and black as ink, smooth as glass, and without a door or window.
The morning sun bent around it like it was ashamed to touch it."
No one had seen it appear. No one had heard a sound. It was just there, rooted into the earth as though it had always belonged.
********
The First Touch
Curiosity is a disease of the human spirit.
The men gathered around it that morning, poking and arguing, laughing nervously to hide the dread gnawing at their spines.
The town's chief, old Man Roder, declared it a "sign from God."
Grandfather didn't believe that.
He was a practical man, a carpenter, a father of two. He had calloused hands and steady eyes. He believed in things you could touch, things that could bleed or break.
So when the chief asked for volunteers to approach the tower, he went.
He wrote about how the surface was colder than stone, colder even than ice.
When one of the men, a fisherman named Hal, pressed his palm against it, the skin hissed. Steam rose from his hand as if the tower had drunk his warmth.
Hal didn't scream. He only whispered,
"It's breathing."
And then he smiled.
He shouldn't have smiled.
*******
The Tower Opens
Three days later, the tower changed.
It began to hum.
A low, deep vibration that rattled windows and teeth alike, coming from somewhere beyond hearing.
Crops started to wilt overnight. The cows refused to graze. The sky over the town turned the color of dirty brass.
That night, the chief called a meeting. The entire town gathered under the flickering lanterns, demanding answers that no one could give.
Grandfather described the fear as something thick enough to taste.
It was decided: a group of five men would enter the tower.
That was when it opened — a slit appeared down its center like a mouth splitting in a grin, revealing nothing but blackness beyond.
The five were: Chief Roder, Hal the fisherman, a preacher named Emitt, a young man called Jaro, and my grandfather, Collen.
They walked inside before dawn.
The door closed behind them.
******
The Inside
There were no walls, no ceiling.
Just blackness that swallowed light whole.
Their lanterns flickered and died one by one.
Grandfather wrote that sound didn't behave normally there — voices echoed before they were spoken, footsteps came after they were taken.
"It felt," he said,
"like walking through the inside of a heartbeat."
And then they saw the lights.
Shapes moved in the dark — not creatures, exactly, but outlines of motion.
They flickered between forms: sometimes human, sometimes skeletal, sometimes something… else.
When the preacher began to pray, the tower responded. The hum grew louder, forming words that none of them could understand but all of them felt.
"WE BUILT THIS PLACE FROM YOUR ECHOES,"
it said.
"WE GREW IT FROM YOUR FORGOTTEN SINS."
Hal began to laugh again. His eyes turned black as oil. His veins bulged, dark and writhing.
He reached out to the chief and whispered,
"We've been here before."
Then he dissolved.
Literally dissolved—his body crumbling into dust that shimmered like metal in the lantern light.
******
The Hall of Faces
They ran. Or at least, they thought they did.
In the tower, space didn't behave. The floor pulsed, tilting and breathing like an animal's lung.
They entered a chamber filled with walls that weren't walls at all.
They were mirrors.
But the reflections were wrong.
The faces they saw were not their own — they were versions of themselves: weeping, bleeding, laughing, screaming.
Each reflection whispered something different.
One of Collen's reflections said,
"You built me every time you lied to your wife."
Another said,
"You dreamed of leaving this town, didn't you? You fed the tower your longing."
The preacher Emitt dropped to his knees, sobbing. He begged forgiveness from the reflections.
The reflections forgave him.
Then they swallowed him.
*********
The Revelation
By now, only two remained — Collen and the chief.
They found themselves standing before a vast chasm.
In the center hung something glowing: a heart-shaped mass suspended by invisible threads, beating slowly, rhythmically.
Every beat sent tremors through the tower.
Grandfather realized, then, what it was.
"The tower wasn't built by gods or men,"
he wrote.
"It was built by guilt."
Every lie, every sin, every unspoken cruelty humanity had buried — it had all gathered, slowly, over centuries, into a physical form.
A monument to everything humans wanted to forget.
A womb for our ugliness.
When Collen whispered this to the chief, the man broke.
He threw himself into the chasm, screaming that he would repent from the inside.
Grandfather tried to leave.
But the tower wouldn't let him.
***********
The Price of Survival
He wrote that time lost meaning inside.
Days, hours, minutes—everything bled together in the humming dark.
He saw things crawling in the corners of his sight: human silhouettes made of ash and regret, whispering fragments of his own past back to him.
He only escaped because the tower spat him out.
Literally threw him into the streets of Edgar's Rest one morning as if rejecting a meal.
The town was empty.
No voices. No birds.
No people.
Only silence.
*******
The Tower Today
That's where his journals end. The last line reads:
"The tower is not a building. It's a memory.
And it remembers us better than we remember ourselves."
I closed the notebook and looked out the window of my grandfather's abandoned house.
The hills were still there, gentle and green.
But in the distance, through the mist, I saw something black.
At first, I thought it was a storm cloud.
Then I realized it was standing.
A tower, tall and silent, waiting.
And for the first time, I understood what my grandfather had meant when he wrote about guilt.
Because I felt something deep inside me respond to it — as if something within me recognized it.
A pulse.
A hum.
A calling.
Maybe it's true what he wrote.
Maybe the tower isn't a place.
Maybe it's the shape of humanity's conscience, built from all the things we refuse to face.
And maybe it never left Edgar's Rest.
Maybe it just moves, following whoever remembers it.
I'm beginning to hear the hum now.
It's faint, but it's there.
And I think, somewhere far away,
the tower is turning to look at me.
THE END
Stream Commentary; Tape #59. "The Black Tower"
"So… the tower.
Made of human misdeeds "
"Let's talk. You know the rules — I don't do monologues alone now."
[@Jaija: So was the tower… like, alive? Or was it something humans made without knowing it? Because that 'guilt-built monument' part really caught my interest]
[@Ovesix: Humans made it. The story's too clean. Every town hides something. You pile enough secrets together, you get something that looks back]
[@642: Or maybe the tower was human. Like, the body of everyone who ever lied and never got caught. A living confession. Creepily sweet, right?]
[@Enchomay …I think it wasn't a tower at all. It was just the narrator remembering his grandfather's madness. The guilt passed through blood. Like a curse disguised as a story.]
[@Ovesix: That's an interesting theory]
[@642: That would be more fun to watch, hehe]
"You know what gets me?"
(He pauses)
"It's how easy it is for us to build towers. Not from stone — from fear, from guilt, from the things we say we've moved past but never really did.
The tower isn't some ancient curse… it's just us, standing too close to what we've buried."
(He turns slightly, as if hearing something behind him. A faint thrum)
When you refuse to face your own darkness, it builds a home without your permission.
And when that home gets big enough…"
(He taps his temple)
"...you can't tell if you're living inside it, or if it's living inside you."
[@Ovesix: …Kai, you okay? You keep glancing off-camera]
(Kai smirks)
"Yeah. Yeah, just making sure there's no… towers around."
(He laughs, but it's dry — like static breaking through an old cassette)
"Alright, my haunted philosophers, it's time for the next one.
You're gonna need a break after this tower business — but don't take too long. The next story is… softer."
(He pauses, eyes flicking down to the script)
"It's called 'The Best Teacher.'
And before you start, I want every single one of you to grab a box of tissues.
And no, I'm not joking."
[@642: Tissues? What's the story about, Kai]
[@ Jaija: i will buy them tomorrow morning]
[@Enchomay: What do you meant by "best teacher"?]
(Kai's smile flickers)
"…We'll see, won't we?"
STREAM ENDS