The sky hung low, heavy with the promise of rain. Thick clouds bruised the horizon, casting the riverside in a dull, gray hush. Detective Kareem stood just beyond the police tape, his eyes locked on the boy.
He couldn't have been older than eleven. Barefoot. Mud-caked. Shoulders drawn tight like he was bracing for a punishment he hadn't yet earned. Around him, the crowd buzzed—locals whispering, reporters pushing against barricades, officers waving them back. But Kareem wasn't listening.
He only watched the boy.
Because the boy was watching the corpse.
A fisherman had been found face-down in the shallow curve of the Ojúmírẹ̀ River, his eyes missing and his tongue—God help them—bitten clean off. The death was a horror, but it wasn't the body that had brought the cold into Kareem's bones.
It was the way the boy had whispered: "It's happening again."
Kareem stepped closer. "You've seen her before, haven't you?"
The boy didn't move. His gaze dropped. He rubbed his hands together—scraped, dirty, nails chewed to the quick.
Kareem squatted beside him, voice low. "Ola, right? That's what your mother said?"
The boy flinched but nodded.
Kareem nodded back. "Good. Ola… tell me what you meant. 'It's happening again.' Who is she?"
The boy's lower lip trembled. His mother hovered nearby, holding back tears, clearly terrified of whatever her son had seen—or might say.
"She was found here," Ola murmured, his voice barely a thread of sound. "A girl. Weeks ago. No one talks about it. But I saw her. I swear I did. She used to walk by the river every evening. She sang."
"Sang?" Kareem echoed.
Ola nodded. "Songs I didn't know. Old ones. About things under the water."
Kareem turned to the officers. "Clear the area. I need to speak to the boy. Alone."
The mother's voice cracked. "He's just a child. Please, he's—he's scared."
"I'm not dragging him into anything," Kareem said gently. "But whatever's happening—he's already in it. We all are."
After a tense silence, the officers nodded and began dispersing the press and onlookers. Within minutes, only Kareem, Ola, and his mother remained near the edge of the cordoned-off zone. The corpse had already been covered. Flashbulbs had ceased.
They moved to a low tree at the riverbank, a little further from the body but close enough to smell the wet rot of algae and blood in the wind.
Kareem crouched again, watching the boy's hands. Still trembling.
"What's her name, Ola?"
"I don't know," the boy said, curling inward. "But the fisherman did. I saw them talking once. Just once. Then a week later, she vanished. And a few days after that... her body came back."
"Where?" Kareem asked sharply.
Ola slowly pointed to the spot just beyond the weeping fig tree. "There. Same place. Same position. Her mouth was open, like she wanted to scream... but she couldn't."
Kareem's pulse spiked. "There's no record of a drowned girl in this area. No body. No missing person matching that description."
"That's because she disappeared," Ola whispered. "Not just her body. Everything. Like... like she never existed."
Kareem's breath caught.
The boy looked up, eyes glassy. "He told me not to speak. The fisherman. He said if you speak too loud, you'll wake something."
Kareem frowned. "Something in the river?"
Ola nodded.
"The river keeps memories," he said, echoing something Kareem couldn't trace. "It remembers when you shouldn't. And when it remembers too much... it takes."
Kareem felt the chill then—not from the wind, but something deeper. Primal.
He looked at the boy's mother. She clutched her son's shoulders tightly, like she feared something would drag him away if she let go.
"What else did the fisherman say?" Kareem asked.
Ola's lips moved soundlessly for a moment before he whispered, "He said she wasn't the first. That before her, there was another. And another. That they all came back changed."
"Changed how?"
"He said... they sing wrong when they come back. They don't blink. They bleed from their mouths when they try to speak. And the river always takes their name first."
Kareem felt something tighten in his chest.
He reached for his phone.
—
Back at the station, Kareem sat alone under a flickering desk lamp, sifting through archive files, case logs, unofficial reports, old local newspapers.
Nothing.
No drowned girl. No recovered body. No unsolved cases matching Ola's description in the last three months.
It was as if the girl had been erased from time itself.
But the fisherman had known her.
Now he was dead.
The boy had seen her.
Now he was afraid.
And the river...
He turned to the glass case beside his desk. Inside it, a file from two years ago: Case 43-B. A teen girl found near this same riverbank. She had no ID. Her fingerprints didn't match any record. Cause of death: asphyxiation. Mouth full of water. But there had been no rain that week.
He hadn't connected it then.
He hadn't wanted to.
He closed his eyes, head pounding. What if this river was doing something more than just hiding bodies? What if it was erasing them?
A knock came at the door. Officer Halima stepped in.
"Sir, forensics just called. The fisherman's autopsy came in. It's... strange."
"How?"
"No water in his lungs. But moss. River moss. In his mouth. Packed in."
Kareem stood slowly. His hand brushed the old case file. His eyes returned to Ola's statement: "If you speak too loud, the river remembers. And when it does... it takes."
This wasn't just a series of drownings.
It was a pattern.
And maybe… a message.
He looked out the window. Rain had started to fall—light at first, then steady. The street outside the station darkened, the pavement gleaming under dim streetlamps. The river wasn't visible from here, but he felt its presence like a breath on the back of his neck.
It was calling.
Next Time on Whispers by the River:
A second body. A song with no words. And the first time Kareem dreams of a girl with no face, standing waist-deep in the water… whispering his name.