The town didn't mourn Mrs. Gable.
It replayed her.
By noon, her voice was everywhere.
It poured from car radios tuned to dead frequencies. It crackled through baby monitors in nurseries three streets over. It whispered from the speakers of abandoned pay phones, from the intercoms of shuttered stores, even from the PA system at the old elementary school—silent for years—now softly repeating:
"I'm fine, dear. Go home now. Everything's alright."
Over. And over. And over.
People gathered on porches, faces pale, eyes darting. Some wept. Others stood rigid, hands clamped over their ears. A few—mostly the elderly—simply nodded, as if they'd been expecting this all along.
"It's happening again," muttered Mr. Henley from the hardware store, gripping his wife's arm like an anchor. "Just like '79."
Elena watched it all from her window, curtains drawn tight, heart hammering against her ribs. She hadn't slept in four days. Her reflection looked hollow-eyed, lips chapped from biting back screams. Every time she opened her mouth to speak—even to herself—she feared what might come out.
Ben hadn't come back after his ultimatum. But his cruiser still idled at the end of Sycamore Lane, engine running, lights off. Watching. Waiting.
She knew he wouldn't arrest her without proof. But the proof was her voice, and it was already lying for her.
Then, at 3:17 p.m., the power went out.
Not just her house. The whole town.
Streetlights died. Refrigerators fell silent. Even the distant hum of the river dam cut off, leaving a vacuum so profound Elena could hear her own pulse in her ears.
And in that silence—
—a new sound began.
From every direction, voices rose in unison. Not chaotic. Not random.
Harmonized.
Mrs. Gable's calm reassurance.
Old Man Peterson's gravelly laugh (missing since '79).
A child's nursery rhyme from the 1893 disappearances.
Maya's last voicemail: "Ellie, you have to see this place. It sings."
And beneath them all—woven through like a bassline—Elena's own voice, repeating the confession Ben had played:
"I did it, Ben. I'm so sorry…"
The chorus swelled, filling the streets, the trees, the very air—a symphony of the stolen, conducted by something ancient and hungry.
Elena backed away from the window, pressing herself into the corner. This wasn't haunting.
This was recruitment.
The entity wasn't just taking voices—it was weaving them into a net. And she was the next thread.
A knock at the back door.
Soft. Familiar.
Three raps. Pause. Two more.
Maya's childhood signal for "It's me—let me in."
Elena didn't move.
"Ellie?" came Maya's voice—warm, worried, perfect. "I know you're scared. But I figured it out. The Cage. I know how to finish it. Let me help you."
Tears burned Elena's eyes. God, it sounded so real.
But then—a slip.
In the pause between words, a wet click. Like a throat adjusting to a new shape.
And the pitch… just a fraction too low.
Elena crept to the kitchen, grabbed a cast-iron skillet, and peered through the peephole.
On the back porch stood a figure in Maya's favorite yellow raincoat—the one she'd worn the day she vanished.
But the face…
The face was hers.
Elena's own face—pale, tear-streaked, mouth trembling with sisterly concern.
"I'm not alone out here, Ellie," the thing said softly. "It's learning us. Together, we can stop it before it learns everyone."
Elena's breath hitched. The ultimate temptation: reunion. Redemption. An end to the guilt.
All she had to do was open the door.
All she had to do was speak.
She raised the skillet, knuckles white.
And in that moment, she understood Maya's final journal entry:
"It's learning my voice. Soon it won't need me."
It didn't need Maya anymore.
Now it wanted hers.
She stepped back from the door.
From outside, the voice sighed—a sound of such profound disappointment it nearly broke her.
Then, quietly:
"You'll let me in eventually.
Everyone does.
When the silence gets too loud."
Footsteps retreated.
Elena waited until they faded.
Then she ran to the attic.
She tore through Maya's boxes until she found it—the blueprint hidden inside the piano bench, sketched on brittle parchment: The Resonance Cage.
Copper wire. Quartz crystals. A phonograph horn. And at its center, a hollow space just large enough for a human throat.
At the bottom, in Maya's hand:
"To trap the Voice, you must offer a voice.
To silence the echo, you must become silent."
Elena traced the words with a shaking finger.
Outside, the chorus of stolen voices reached a crescendo—then cut off abruptly.
Leaving only one sound.
Her own heartbeat.
And the soft, wet click of something climbing the porch steps.
Again.
End of Chapter 10