The ritual was underway.
The drum echoed through the trees, its beat steady, ancient—like it had never stopped since the beginning of time. Smoke rose from the shrine. White-robed figures chanted in a tongue older than memory, faces hidden behind carved wooden masks.
Detective Kareem crouched behind the brush, heart pounding.
He counted seven figures in total.
And in the center…
The new body. Still wrapped. Still unmoving.
But breathing.
"She's alive," Kareem whispered.
Beside him, Ola's eyes widened. "They're going to drown her."
Kareem didn't hesitate. He checked his weapon, slipped the safety off, and crept closer through the undergrowth.
The air shimmered with heat. But the river was cold. Still.
Waiting.
As the chants rose, two of the masked elders lifted the girl's body.
Kareem stood. "Put her down!"
Every head turned.
Chanting stopped. Silence flooded the clearing.
Guns weren't meant for spirits, but truth was.
"I have photos. Evidence. Names," Kareem shouted. "Chief Adewale. The mayor. The priest. You're not spirits—you're killers."
One of the masked figures stepped forward and pulled off his mask.
Chief Adewale.
But his eyes were no longer weary.
They were black. Hollow.
Like the river had looked into him—and stayed there.
"You don't understand, Detective," he said. "We are not murderers. We are keepers. We silence the drowned so they don't rise and drag us with them."
"They're already rising," Kareem said. "I've seen them."
Adewale shook his head slowly. "Then it's too late for you."
He raised a hand—and two others lunged at Kareem.
Gunfire erupted. One masked figure dropped.
Screams followed.
The girl, still wrapped, moved.
Kareem rushed to her and tore away the cloth—revealing a young woman, maybe nineteen. Weak. Dazed. But alive.
She looked up at him with sunken eyes.
"You heard the song, didn't you?" she whispered.
"What song?"
"The one the river sings before it takes."
Then, something strange happened.
The drum stopped.
But the beating didn't.
Because it wasn't coming from the drum anymore.
It was coming from beneath the river.
The ground shook.
The water churned.
And they came.
The drowned.
Dozens of them.
Rising. Dripping. Covered in moss and time. Their mouths open. Their eyes—empty.
Among them:
The fisherman.
The girl who first disappeared.
And more. So many more.
The circle of elders broke into panic.
"No!" the priest shouted. "We fed you! We kept your secrets!"
But the river doesn't forget.
It only waits.
And now it had come to collect.
Kareem grabbed the girl and Ola, dragging them back through the trees. Screams echoed behind them—elders dragged into the water, their cries gurgling and cut short.
Ola turned, frozen in place, watching the river twist and boil with vengeance.
And then—
Silence.
The drum cracked.
Split straight down the center.
And the water stilled.
By sunrise, the clearing was empty.
The shrine—gone.
The girl lay in a hospital bed, safe but silent.
Chief Adewale's body was never found.
Neither was the mayor's.
Or the priest's.
But somewhere down in the deep, where the river keeps what the town tried to forget, they are remembered.
Kareem stood by the river's edge one last time.
No whispers.
No faces.
Only still water.
And one final thought:
The dead do not stay silent forever.
Especially when you bury them in a river that remembers.
Whispers by the River