Phantoms of Silence - The Sound Beneath the Tracks

Rain hammered against the subway entrance hard enough to blur the city into streaks of silver.

Zade stood narrowly behind the yellow safety line with his hood soaked, staring at the dark tunnel ahead while commuters crowded around him.

Phones were glowing brighter than normal. Conversations began blending together. Train brakes screamed somewhere underground.

Normal.

Everything should have been normal.

The lights flickered.

The entire station dimmed for half a second.

Some people looked up briefly before returning to their conversations.

All except Zade.

Because during that flicker, he saw someone standing on the tracks.

It was a girl.

Perfectly still beneath the station lights.

And behind her, dozens of shadowy figures stood silently in the tunnel. Watching.

The lights snapped back, and the tracks were empty.

Zade frowned. It was probably exhaustion and lack of sleep.

He could hear the train thundering closer.

All of a sudden, an enormous pressure surged against his body.

It wasn't pain. It was some feeling that he had never experienced.

It felt heavy and devastating.

Then he heard it.

Whispering.

It wasn't around him or underneath him.

It was beneath the tracks.

Suddenly, hundreds of overlapping voices began speaking, too quietly to understand.

Zade stepped back instinctively; nobody else reacted.

The whispers became sharper, urgent, panicked.

Run.

The tunnel lights went black, with every light in the station dying instantly.

Screams erupted.

The train emerged from the darkness at full speed.

And something moved with it.

A shape unfolded from the tunnel wall itself. It was tall, twisted, and human-shaped only in the loosest sense.

Its face stretched unnaturally wide, and its body was distorted vertically.

People began stumbling backwards in confusion as freezing air rolled through the station.

Nobody could fully see it, but everyone felt it.

Fear spread instantly throughout the station.

The creature lunged forward. Not at the crowd.

But at a man near the platform edge.

The man’s expression changed immediately, with rage flooding his face.

He shoved the woman beside him directly toward the tracks.

The station erupted with people's screams.

The woman fell forward.

Zade reacted before thinking.

He grabbed her arm just as the train burst into the station.

The force ripped both of them forward.

Pain exploded through Zade’s shoulder.

For one impossible second, he saw the thing clearly.

What was this monster?

Its distorted body cracked open with shadow-like smoke leaking from inside.

It was a Wraith.

Its eyes locked onto Zade.

And smiled.

Then the train hit.

Silence.

Not darkness.

Just Silence.

Zade floated beneath a light black water.

No. Not water.

Something far colder.

Shapes drifted far below him in endless darkness.

Thousands of human silhouettes.

Some looked upward while others wandered slowly across an invisible ocean floor.

The farther down they moved, the less human they became.

A distant bell echoed somewhere impossibly deep.

Then a girl’s voice spoke beside him.

“You shouldn’t be here yet.”

Zade turned towards the voice.

The girl from the tracks floated beside him.

Up close, she looked about his age.

Seventeen maybe.

Her eyes reflected faint starlike fractures instead of light.

Behind her, the darkness seemed to bend slightly.

Not toward her.

Away from her.

“Who are you?” Zade asked weakly.

The girl hesitated.

Almost like she had forgotten how to answer.

Then:

“Stellar.”

The darkness below them shifted violently.

The distant silhouettes stopped moving.

Every one of them slowly turned upward.

Toward Zade.

Stellar’s expression changed instantly.

Fear.

Real fear.

“Don’t let them hear you,” she whispered.

Something enormous moved beneath the dark.

Far below the drifting dead.

Not swimming. Watching.

Then Zade’s lungs convulsed.

The world snapped violently apart.

He slammed back into his body, choking violently as hospital lights burned overhead and machines screamed around him.

Doctors shouted.

Hands grabbed his shoulders.

Water poured from his mouth onto the sheets.

Zade gasped for air desperately.

And through the reflection in the hospital window.

He saw Stellar standing silently behind him.

Zade gasped for air desperately.

And through the reflection in the hospital window, he saw Stellar standing silently behind him.

For a second, he thought his brain was still hallucinating.

That this was some damaged dream left over from whatever had happened beneath the tracks.

Doctors crowded around him in blurred motion.

A nurse pressed something cold against his chest.

“Easy, easy. Stay with us.”

“He was clinically dead for almost a minute.”

“Pupils responding...”

“Zade, can you hear me?”

The room felt too bright.

Every light burned into his skull.

But the reflection in the window remained dark.

Stellar stood perfectly still behind the hospital bed, half-hidden in shadow despite the bright lights above her.

Nobody acknowledged or looked at her.

Her eyes stayed fixed on him with an expression he couldn’t understand.

The heart monitor beside him began beeping faster.

The nurse noticed immediately.

“His pulse is spiking again.”

Zade kept staring at the reflection.

Slowly, Stellar raised one finger to her lips.

Quiet.

Then the lights flickered again.

The room dimmed for half a heartbeat.

And suddenly she was gone.

The reflection showed only the hospital room behind him.

Empty.

Zade sat upright too quickly.

Pain tore through his chest violently.

A dozen hands pushed him back down.

“Whoa—whoa, don’t move.”

“You’ve got possible fractures.”

“What happened?” Zade rasped.

His throat burned.

Nobody answered immediately.

The doctor exchanged a glance with one of the nurses.

“There was an incident at the station,” the doctor said carefully. “You dragged someone out of the way before the train hit her.”

The memory hit him in overwhelming fragments.

The woman falling. The freezing air. And that thing... Smiling at him.

Zade’s breathing became uneven again.

“No,” he whispered.

The doctor frowned. “No?”

“There was something down there.”

The room went quiet for a moment.

The kind of silence adults use when they think someone has experienced trauma.

“A person?” the nurse asked gently.

Zade opened his mouth.

Then stopped.

How could he explain what he saw?

Something so twisted, stretched and grotesque.

Something that stepped out of the tunnel wall itself.

Something nobody else could see.

His eyes drifted back toward the hospital window.

Nothing there now except rain streaking down the glass outside.

“…I don’t know.”

The doctor gave a small nod.

“Shock can cause confusion after near-death experiences.”

He couldn't begin to even try describing the black ocean he drifted in.

Because he remembered that place.

That black silence beneath the world.

The drifting silhouettes.

And Stellar.

Especially Stellar.

A sharp ringing suddenly pierced his ears.

Zade winced.

The heart monitor beside him crackled with static for half a second.

Nobody else reacted.

Then, faintly. Whispering.

He froze.

The voices were quieter now. Distant.

Like hearing conversations through thick walls.

He looked toward the hallway outside the room.

Shapes moved past the doorway. Doctors. Patients. Visitors.

And something else.

A pale figure stood motionless at the far end of the corridor.

An old man wearing a hospital gown.

His body flickered unnaturally around the edges.

Nobody acknowledged him as nurses walked straight through his form.

The old man slowly turned his head toward Zade.

Their eyes met.

The figure’s expression changed instantly into panic.

Then he vanished.

Not walked away.

Vanished.

Zade’s stomach tightened.

“What time is it?” he asked suddenly.

The nurse blinked. “Around three in the morning.”

It had still been evening when he entered the station.

“You should rest,” the doctor said. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

Lucky.

Zade wasn’t sure that was true anymore.

Two hours later, the room had gone mostly quiet.

Rain still tapped against the windows.

Zade sat upright now, sore and exhausted, staring at the sleeping ward around him.

Every machine hummed softly.

Every shadow looked wrong.

His phone rested beside him on the bed.

Nine missed calls from his mother and three from his friend Mason.

News notifications flooded the screen already.

-SUBWAY INCIDENT LEAVES MULTIPLE INJURED-

-POWER FAILURE CAUSES STATION PANIC-

-COMMUTERS REPORT “MASS HYSTERIA”-

Zade read the headlines twice.

None of them mentioned the creature.

None of them mentioned the man who suddenly snapped.

None of them mentioned the freezing air.

His thumb hovered uncertainly over the screen before locking the phone again.

The whispers had not fully stopped.

Every so often, he heard fragments beneath the hum of the hospital.

Tiny overlapping voices.

Not words. Just noise.

Like reality itself murmuring underneath everything.

A cold breeze drifted through the room.

Zade looked up immediately.

The hallway lights outside dimmed slightly.

Then came the sound of footsteps.

Slow and measured.

Approaching his room.

The whispers became louder.

His chest tightened instinctively.

Something was wrong.

That same overwhelming pressure came over him.

The footsteps stopped directly outside the door.

For one long moment, nothing moved.

Then the door slowly creaked open.

A nurse stepped inside.

Except...

The proportions were wrong.

Her smile stretched too wide.

Her movements lagged strangely, like frames skipping in a video.

And her eyes were completely black.

Zade stopped breathing.

The thing shut the door behind itself softly.

The fluorescent lights above flickered violently.

“You can see us now,” it whispered.

Its voice sounded layered.

Like several people speaking at once beneath the same sentence.

Zade backed against the bed, pain surging through him with each small movement.

The creature tilted its head unnaturally far.

“You opened your eyes too early.”

The whispers underneath the room became deafening.

The walls vibrated faintly.

Zade grabbed the metal railing beside the bed without thinking.

“What are you?” he breathed.

The thing smiled wider.

“Hungry.”

Then the shadows behind it moved.

Not one shadow.

Many.

Human shapes began unfolding from the corners of the room itself.

Thin arms.

Distorted faces.

Too many eyes.

The temperature dropped instantly.

Zade’s pulse monitor erupted into frantic beeping.

The fake nurse stepped closer.

“You hear them now,” it whispered. “The dead always sound loud at first.”

One of the shapes crawled across the ceiling.

Another stood motionless beside the window.

Zade’s breathing became sharp and uneven.

This can't be real.

The fake nurse reached toward him slowly and the entire room went silent.

Completely silent.

The monitor flatlined into mute stillness.

Rain froze against the windows.

Every shadow in the room suddenly recoiled violently.

The fake nurse’s expression twisted into terror.

A soft glow appeared behind it.

Tiny fractures of pale white light suspended themselves in the air like broken stars.

The creature backed away immediately.

“No,” it hissed.

Stellar stood in the doorway.

The darkness around her bent unnaturally, retreating from her presence.

Her expression remained calm.

But the room itself seemed afraid of her.

The floating fractures slowly revolved around her like a silent constellation.

“You shouldn’t touch him,” Stellar said softly.

The fake nurse trembled.

“What are you?”

For the first time, uncertainty crossed Stellar’s face.

Like, even she did not fully know the answer.

Then the lights exploded.

Glass shattered inward across the room.

The shadows screamed.

And everything went dark.

ns216.73.216.208da2

Reading Theme:

Font Size:

Line Spacing:

Paragraph Spacing:

Load the next issue automatically