The knock came just after dawn.
Three sharp raps—official, patient, familiar. Elena hadn't slept. She'd spent the night on the couch with all the lights on, phone battery dead, every window locked, a kitchen knife clutched in her lap like a talisman. The house had been silent since the voice faded, but the silence now felt occupied, as if something sat in the corner watching her blink.
She opened the door a crack, chain still on.
Ben Carter stood on the porch, shoulders broad in a worn sheriff's jacket, rain glistening in his stubble. His eyes—still that stubborn hazel she remembered from high school—softened when he saw her.
"Elena Vance," he said, voice rough but warm. "You look like hell."
She managed a weak smile and unhooked the chain.
He stepped inside, boots leaving damp prints on the floorboards. His gaze swept the room—the overturned phonograph, the cylinder lying in pieces near the piano, the knife on the coffee table.
"Rough night?" he asked, not unkindly.
"You could say that." Her voice cracked. She hadn't spoken aloud since the whispering stopped, afraid her voice might invite it back.
Ben picked up the broken cylinder with gloved hands—instinct, she realized. He was already treating it like evidence. "Maya's?" he asked.
"She kept it in the attic. With notes about… something she called the Hollow Voice."
He frowned, setting it down carefully. "Ah. That old ghost story." He rubbed his jaw. "Look, Elena… I'm glad you're here. But I need to be straight with you. Maya wasn't well at the end."
"I know she was troubled," Elena said, crossing her arms. "But what if it wasn't just in her head?"
Ben sighed, leaning against the doorframe. "Two months before she died, she came into the station at 3 a.m., barefoot, soaking wet. Said the trees were talking to her in her mother's voice. She begged me to 'cut out the speakers in the woods.'" He met her eyes. "We had her evaluated. The doc called it auditory hallucinations with persecutory delusions. Grief over your mom, mixed with… whatever chemicals were off in her brain."
Elena flinched. Their mother had died when they were teens—a car crash Elena survived with scars, Maya with silence for weeks. She'd always blamed herself.
"And the autopsy?" she asked quietly.
"Suicide. No signs of struggle. Rope matched the one in her garage. Toxicology clean." He hesitated. "But… there was one odd thing."
She waited.
"The coroner noted… vocal cord trauma. Like she'd been screaming for hours. But there were no neighbors who heard a sound. Not a single call."
A chill slithered down Elena's spine.
Before she could respond, Ben's radio crackled on his belt. A dispatcher's voice: "Sheriff, you copy? Gable residence—911 hang-up. No response."
Ben's expression tightened. "Mrs. Gable? She's… what, eighty?"
"Lives two streets over," Elena said. "She brought Maya soup sometimes."
Ben nodded. "Stay here. Lock the door. And Elena?" He paused at the threshold. "Whatever you think you heard last night… it's this place. This town. It gets in your head. Especially when you're grieving."
He left without waiting for a reply.
Elena stood in the empty hallway, his words echoing: It gets in your head.
But as she turned back to the parlor, she froze.
The broken pieces of the wax cylinder… were no longer on the floor.
They sat neatly stacked on the piano lid.
And from the attic above, faint but unmistakable, came the soft, rhythmic click… click… click of a needle lowering onto a spinning cylinder.
Waiting.
End of Chapter 4