10 Apr The Veil in Weller Ravine

Part I

The gravel cracked beneath the tires of the rented Jeep as it slowed to a halt, dust rising in thick orange plumes that lingered in the still air before dissipating into the mid-afternoon glare. The sun was high over the rim of the ravine, a white-hot disc bleeding into an endless, pale blue sky. The landscape around them sprawled outward in all directions, dry and brittle, a quilt of weathered sandstone and pale desert brush. Utah’s backcountry didn’t welcome visitors—it tolerated them with the same indifference as the sun bleaching bones in the scrub.

Jason Delaney stepped out of the passenger side and stretched his legs, squinting toward the distant canyon lip. His pack thumped against his back as he shifted it into place, already regretting the trip. The dust clung to his boots, and the heat clawed at his neck despite the handkerchief tied beneath his collar.

“Looks like Mordor had a baby with Death Valley,” he muttered.

From the driver’s side, Coach Anders killed the engine and leaned forward on the steering wheel, nodding toward the ravine’s edge. “Trailhead’s half a mile east, just past the petrified stumps. You’ll see where the ground dips.”

Jason nodded, saying nothing, then turned as Mira Chen climbed out of the backseat, a ball of energy in cargo pants and a green sunhat. She hoisted her duffel and scanned the surrounding ridges with the practiced glee of someone who believed wonder lurked just beyond every rock.

“This is the spot,” she said, grinning. “Three forum sightings cross-referenced within a five-mile radius, and last week someone caught a heat signature on a drone that just… vanished. Like, mid-flight. No terrain block, no signal degradation. Just gone.”

Jason rolled his eyes and adjusted the strap on his shoulder. “Or it crashed and the guy’s too embarrassed to admit it.”

She gave him a sideways look but let it slide, pulling out a small handheld recorder from her vest pocket and clicking it on.

“Day one,” she said, speaking into it. “Subject location: Weller Ravine, unincorporated stretch near the Utah-Arizona border. Weather’s dry, mid-eighties. No wildlife observed yet. Local accounts mention strange auditory phenomena, potential cryptid activity. We’re setting up camp above a suspected fault break.”

Coach Anders stepped around to the back of the Jeep and handed Jason a rolled topographic map. The paper crackled as Jason unrolled it, studying the rough grid. He traced their current position with a gloved finger. There were elevation marks, old surveyor notations, and a faded penciled line indicating a crude trail into the ravine. No caves. No tunnels. No markings of interest.

“I’ve hiked these canyons for twenty years,” Anders said, his voice low and gravelly. “Never seen anything down there worth chasing. You’ll find heat, rock, and if you’re lucky, maybe a rattler sunning itself on your boot.”

Mira kept recording, undeterred. “No caves marked?”

“None on record,” Anders said. “But records don’t mean much out here. Just don’t go too deep after dusk. The stone plays tricks.”

Jason raised a brow. “What kind of tricks?”

Anders gave him a long look, then turned back toward the Jeep. “The kind that make people forget which way is up.”

With that, he climbed back into the vehicle, muttering something under his breath that Jason didn’t catch. The engine rumbled to life, and without further ceremony, Coach Anders backed up, spun the tires, and disappeared in a haze of sand and sunlight.

Silence settled over the ravine. Jason glanced at Mira. She stood staring into the chasm, recorder still in hand, her smile slowly fading.

“No birds,” Jason said. “No bugs. No wind.”

Mira turned toward him and grinned again, though it was thinner this time. “You said you wanted quiet. Congratulations. You’ve found the deadest patch of desert in the state.”

* * * * * *

They made camp beneath a slanted outcrop overlooking the ravine’s eastern curve. The rock offered modest shade, and Mira pitched her tent with practiced ease, chatting to herself and her recorder as she described the terrain. Jason took longer, his hands clumsy with the unfamiliar gear, and sweat dampened his shirt before the sun began to dip below the ridge. The firepit was shallow, the fuel scarce, and dinner was instant rice and lukewarm beans eaten from shared tin bowls.

Jason sat cross-legged by the fire as twilight bled across the sky. Mira sat across from him, replaying her earlier recordings and noting timestamps, occasionally muttering to herself.

“I’m telling you,” she said, “this place is a node. Something feeds off this kind of silence.”

Jason scoffed. “Silence is just silence. You’re trying to turn echo chambers into horror shows.”

She smiled, but didn’t argue. They spoke less as the fire died down. By the time darkness settled fully, the ravine below them had become a vast black mouth, gaping and soundless.

Jason crawled into his tent sometime after ten, exhausted. The heat didn’t let up. Sweat clung to his ribs and soaked into the nylon floor of the shelter. He dozed intermittently, drifting in and out of shallow, half-formed dreams.

Then came the rustle. It was close—just beyond the tent wall. Jason sat up and held his breath.

“Mira?” he called softly, but heard no reply.

He unzipped the flap and peered into the dark. The dying embers of the fire threw just enough light to see Mira’s tent, ten feet away, zipped and unmoving. No reply.

Jason pulled on his boots and stepped outside, scanning the ridge. His eyes adjusted slowly, but the shadows felt unnatural, too thick for the thin light.

He was about to return when something familiar softly spoke his name, with urgency.

“Jason.”

He turned toward the sound. It had come from just beyond the ridge’s edge, down where the rock sloped into the black of the ravine.

“Mira?” he called again, louder this time.

There was a pause. Then, the voice returned.

“Jason. Help.”

Identical. Mira’s exact inflection. The same breathy cadence. The same lilt on the second syllable.

Jason felt the back of his neck go cold.

He crossed to Mira’s tent and unzipped it roughly. She sat inside, rubbing her eyes, squinting at the intrusion.

“What the hell?” she mumbled.

Jason stared at her, wide-eyed. “You called me. Twice.”

“I was asleep.”

He stepped back, suddenly unsure.

Mira blinked, then rubbed her face. “You okay?”

He forced a smile, shaking his head. “Yeah. Yeah, sorry. Must’ve been dreaming.”

He zipped her tent back up, walked to his own, and sat just inside the flap. He didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

Far below, the wind whispered across the canyon floor. And something else carried his name a final time.

Part II

The second morning came without fanfare. The desert sun returned with brutal efficiency, burning off the last of the night’s thin chill before Jason could finish boiling water for coffee. He sat on an overturned stone slab near the edge of their campsite, eyes narrowed against the light, watching the shifting hues of the ravine as it was re-lit in full, merciless detail. The wind carried with it no birdsong, no insect chirrups, no whisper of movement from anything living, just dry gusts brushing against rocks.

By eight, Mira was already charting coordinates and fiddling with her recorder, her enthusiasm undiminished by the silence that had robbed Jason of sleep. He watched her set up her camera rig across from a layered wall of sediment and chalk, describing each strata into her mic with a mix of scientific curiosity and cryptid speculation. Jason pulled the topographic map from his pack and spread it across his knees, comparing it against the digital data on his handheld.

It didn’t add up.

He frowned and tapped through the elevation overlays, then squinted toward a distant ridge that ran along the ravine’s northern curvature. A shallow depression there—barely visible from their angle—registered on his scanner as a disruption in the subsurface density. According to the official maps, it didn’t exist. Neither did the low-frequency fissure lines he was now tracing with the stylus.

He called to Mira, who approached with the recorder still running. “There’s a subsurface anomaly out past the next ridge,” he said. “No record of it here.” He tapped the corner of the map. “This area should be solid limestone. But we’ve got cavities running through it.”

Mira’s eyes lit up. “Could be sinkholes. Or better—collapsed tunnels. Lava tubes, maybe.”

“Could also be an error in the scanner.”

She grinned. “Or a hiding place.”

They packed up and made the short hike northeast, climbing over slick rocks and sloping ledges until they reached the low ridge Jason had marked. From above, the depression appeared unremarkable—just a shallow pit overgrown with scraggly sagebrush and crumbling sandstone. But up close, Mira spotted the irregularity first: a vertical shaft, roughly two feet wide, nestled beneath a tangle of dead brush and flanked by lichen-splotched stones.

Jason crouched beside it and swept the debris away with his gloves. The opening yawned downward at an angle, the edges jagged and discolored. There was no clear bottom, only shadows descending into a deeper shade of black.

“Jesus,” he said, leaning over slightly. “Could’ve stepped straight into it.”

Mira knelt beside him and dropped a small stone. They listened. Four seconds passed. Then—click. A distant, sharp tap, like that of a pebble hitting bone.

Then came another sound, rising slowly from below, carried on some unseen draft. At first, it was unintelligible—a soft moan that echoed through the shaft in irregular intervals. Jason leaned closer, trying to distinguish tone from distortion. The sound swelled, then warped, and Mira’s hand suddenly grabbed his arm.

“Do you hear that?” she whispered.

Jason blinked. “Yeah. Weird acoustics. Might be airflow.”

“It’s a voice.”

He paused, tilting his head. The sound seemed to shift with their movement, the pitch flexing and rebounding against the walls of the shaft. It repeated—low, breathy, and drawn out. This time, Jason made out syllables.

Two words.

“Help me.”

Mira went pale. “That’s a kid.”

Jason pulled away, skeptical. “Could be a bobcat. They sound human sometimes. Or a fox. Screams like that can carry weird out here.”

Mira shook her head slowly. “That wasn’t a bobcat. That was a child. And—” she hesitated, her eyes narrowing—“I swear I just heard your voice.”

Jason laughed, though it didn’t come out convincingly. “Yeah, okay.”

“I’m serious,” she said. “Right after the kid’s voice. Like it repeated something you said earlier. When we were packing up.”

Jason stood and took a few steps back. He didn’t like how the sound lingered. “Could be feedback,” he said. “Or a reverberation loop.”

Mira didn’t respond right away. She just stared into the shaft, holding her recorder close to the opening as the voices continued—rising and falling, but never quite vanishing.

* * * * * *

Later, as they returned to camp, Jason found himself walking slower than usual, burdened not by the weight of his gear, but by a memory that hadn’t surfaced in years.

He was eleven. His brother Tommy had just turned nine. They’d been hiking the back trails near Mount Hood with their father—standard weekend outing, nothing dangerous. The trail split around a cluster of fallen timber, and Jason had taken one fork while Tommy, trailing behind, wandered the other.

There had been no scream. No cry. Only a quiet call, muffled by the trees.

“Jason.”

He had turned, thinking Tommy was joking.

“Jason. Help me.”

Jason had laughed then—lightly, playfully—thinking his little brother was playing some game in the underbrush. It hadn’t occurred to him that the tone was wrong, too calm and measured.

By the time their father circled back and they retraced their steps, Tommy was gone.

They never found a trace.

Now, standing over a nameless hole in the rock, Jason shuddered. He marked the location on his scanner, noting the coordinates and logging the acoustic anomaly, but he made no mention of voices.

* * * * * *

That night, the air over the ravine was colder than the night before. The fire burned low, and Mira sat cross-legged, reviewing the day’s recordings with furrowed brows and distant eyes. Jason stayed silent, staring into the flames as they warped and twisted.

A sound broke the silence just before midnight.

A voice, rougher than Mira’s and far more familiar, drifted down from the ridge above their camp.

“Jason! Mira! Come on, now!”

Jason stiffened. Mira looked up sharply, her mouth slightly open.

They both knew that voice.

Coach Anders.

Jason stood and scanned the ridge, but saw no movement. The fire hissed softly behind him as the second call came.

“You two alright? You get what you needed?”

Jason turned to Mira. “He hiked out this morning. No way he’s still around.”

Mira grabbed her flashlight and took a step toward the edge of camp. “Maybe he stayed close. Thought we needed backup.”

Jason stepped in front of her. “No. Something’s wrong.”

“What if he came back?”

“He didn’t. Not without the Jeep. And we didn’t hear an engine.”

They waited. The voice didn’t come again.

Mira looked past him into the dark. “Sounded just like him.”

Jason nodded slowly. “Yeah. It did.”

But neither of them moved toward the sound again. Not that night.

Part III

Jason woke to the sound of zippers and metal clasps. Mira was already halfway into her climbing harness, laying out rope and fasteners in meticulous rows. Her recorder, always running, sat balanced on a flat rock nearby, blinking steadily.

He rubbed sleep from his eyes, not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice. “You’re not seriously going down there.”

Mira didn’t look up. “Of course I’m going. This is what we’re here for.”

“No, what you’re here for is cryptid fantasy nonsense. What I’m here for is geological data, and none of that requires lowering ourselves into an uncharted hole where people—if they exist—are crying out for help using our voices.”

She stood and clipped the final carabiner into place, then turned to face him. “We don’t know that’s what it is. Could be a reverb loop, like you said. Or a weird cave echo. We won’t know unless we get closer.”

Jason stared at her, incredulous. “You’re gambling on the idea that the creepy mimicry just happens to be natural reverb?”

“I’m not gambling. I’m investigating.” She slung her rope over one shoulder. “You can stay here if you want. But I’m going.”

Jason hesitated, then sighed and began pulling on his boots. “You’re going to get yourself killed if you go down there alone.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” she said.

* * * * * *

The descent into the shaft was slow and cautious, the rope biting through Jason’s gloves as he rappelled down the angled slope behind Mira. The mouth of the shaft gave way to a tighter corridor, the rock pressing inward with uneven ridges that scraped their shoulders as they eased past. The daylight above vanished within the first thirty feet, replaced by the cool artificial glow of their headlamps bouncing across pitted limestone and crumbling shale.

The temperature dropped more sharply than Jason expected, and with it came a stillness so complete it made their breathing sound intrusive. The air had a faint mineral tang, tinged with the scent of rot buried deep in the stone.

Mira stopped ahead of him, adjusting the beam of her light. “This passage twists left. Looks like it widens up down there.”

Jason examined the walls as they moved. Thin gouges marked the stone in erratic patterns, some long and shallow, others deep and frayed at the edges. They crisscrossed in no discernible pattern, but they all pointed in the same general direction—upward.

“These weren’t made by tools,” he said. “They look like claw marks.”

Mira stopped and examined one set closely. “Could be erosion. Stone fractures weird sometimes.”

Jason didn’t reply. He didn’t believe it was erosion. The markings were too narrow and deliberate, as if hands—desperate hands—had tried to climb back toward the light and failed.

They pressed forward another twenty yards, squeezing through a tight curve in the tunnel before emerging into a chamber large enough for both of them to stand fully. Jason tilted his head back and found the ceiling lost in shadow, supported by warped columns of fused stalactites and bulbous mineral growths that arched in from either side.

In the far wall, an aperture formed naturally in the stone—a kind of archway that led into a darkness more complete than anything Jason had seen in his life. This was the absence of light, a gap so dense it seemed to resist the headlamps entirely, swallowing the beams at the threshold.

Mira stepped closer and pointed her recorder into the dark. “You hear that?”

Jason stopped walking. “No.”

“Listen.”

He did. A breeze, faint and hollow, stirred through the chamber, but no whispers. Nothing intelligible.

“I don’t hear anything but wind,” he said.

“I hear… voices,” she replied, her tone lower now, almost reverent. “Not words exactly. More like—” She trailed off, straining toward the opening. “Like something is waiting to speak but doesn’t know how.”

Jason moved beside her and aimed his light directly into the aperture. The black didn’t yield.

Mira took a step forward, raising her recorder again, but before she could say anything more, the device crackled. A static burst filled the chamber, followed by a voice so sudden and familiar that Jason recoiled.

“Jason. Come back.”

It was a child’s voice.

Jason’s mouth went dry. He took a step backward. “Turn that off.”

Mira glanced at the recorder, then back at him. “That wasn’t me. That was—”

“I know who that was.”

The recorder crackled again, and this time the voice repeated itself, slower now, the syllables stretched unnaturally, as if dragged across broken glass.

“Jaaassson… come… baaack.”

Jason reached out and snapped the device shut. “We’re done. We’re going back now.”

Mira looked stunned. “Jason, wait. That could be—”

“I said we’re leaving.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but then stopped, her eyes fixing on something behind him. Her light beam caught movement across the natural arch.

Jason turned just in time to see it.

Something passed between the columns—a figure, slipping along the stone like liquid shadow. It was the shape of a man, but decidedly inhuman. It was too thin, too tall. Its limbs hung at strange angles, its head cocked toward the sound of Mira’s recorder as if drawn to it.

Jason barely registered it before it vanished into the dark.

Mira whispered, “Did you see that?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

“What the hell was that?”

Jason backed away from the arch, his hand brushing against the rock wall for balance. “I don’t know. But we’re leaving. Right now.”

Mira didn’t argue again.

They turned and retraced their steps in silence, the walls seeming to press closer now, the scratches catching their lights with too much detail. The ascent took longer than the descent, their hands shaking as they climbed, every echo magnified, every creak of stone suggesting pursuit. But nothing followed them. Nothing reached from the shaft or screamed from below. Whatever had been watching them remained where it was.

When they finally breached the surface, Jason pulled off his helmet and breathed deeply, his lungs desperate for the air above, and took in the afternoon sun.

Mira emerged seconds later, her recorder silent in her hand. She said nothing. Jason didn’t ask her to.

They both sat for a long time on the edge of the ridge, staring at the mouth of the shaft, now just a dark eye in the earth, half-covered again by wind-blown dirt and the casual indifference of the desert.

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the day.

Part IV

They returned to camp, without exchanging a word, just as the sun was beginning its descent behind the western ridge.

Jason collapsed onto a flat boulder, brushing the dust from his sleeves. Mira crouched at the edge of the fire pit, setting her recorder down beside her with a force that nearly cracked the casing. She didn’t speak. Her face was drawn, eyes fixed on the dirt like she could divine some hidden answer in the pattern of pebbles and ash.

Jason watched her for a while, and then broke the silence. “That thing down there—whatever it is—you still think this is just about curiosity?”

Mira didn’t respond.

“I mean, what’s the plan here, Mira? Post it online? Feed it to your followers like raw meat? ‘Woman Records Echo Monster in Utah Shaft’—is that the headline?”

Her head lifted slowly, eyes narrowing.

“You think I’m doing this for clicks?” she asked.

“I think you want to be the first. You want proof. You want exposure. You’ve been treating this like a treasure hunt from the start.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jason stood and paced near the fire pit, running a hand through his hair. “I know you heard a child’s voice coming from the dark. I know you followed it like it was a goddamn fairy tale. And I know something was down there. Something that shouldn’t exist.”

Mira stood, her voice sharp. “You think I wanted to hear your voice on that recorder? You think I asked for that?”

“I think you’re reckless. And I think you don’t understand what you’ve stirred up.”

She grabbed her flashlight and turned away from him. “And I think you’re scared. Which you should be. But don’t take it out on me.”

Then she froze.

From beyond the ridge came a sound—faint but unmistakable—of a voice calling from the ravine.

“Help! Mira!”

Jason’s mouth went dry. It was his voice, identical in every way.

It sounded like him. Precisely like him.

Mira turned back, eyes wide. “Did you—”

Jason shook his head slowly. “I didn’t say anything.”

The voice called again, louder this time, edged with urgency.

“Mira! I’m down here!”

She took a step toward the sound, her flashlight trembling slightly in her grip.

Jason caught her by the elbow. “Don’t.”

Her eyes searched his face. “But that’s—”

“It isn’t me,” he said firmly. “I’m right here.”

Mira pulled away. “If there’s even a chance someone’s hurt down there—”

“It knows our voices,” Jason said. “It uses them.”

She stared into the dark, her jaw clenched. “I have to check. Just in case.”

And then she was gone—turning sharply, slipping into the descending shadows at the edge of camp, the light from her flashlight flickering across stones as she moved down the ravine slope.

Jason stood alone by the fire pit, fists clenched at his sides, helpless to stop her.

* * * * * *

He waited for what felt like twenty minutes, pacing the camp’s perimeter and watching the place where her light had last vanished. The sun had dropped completely now, leaving the ravine drenched in shadow, the firelight behind him barely pushing back the dark.

Then the scream came.

It was short—sharper than any sound she had made before—cut off halfway.

Jason grabbed his light and ran.

The ravine was a web of crumbling ledges and gravel slopes, but he found a path down quickly, calling Mira’s name with every breath.

No response.

He reached a clearing near the base of the slope where broken slabs of stone jutted upward like crooked teeth. Her pack lay discarded at the center, along with a single trekking pole and the recorder.

No sign of her.

Jason dropped to his knees beside the recorder, pressing the playback button.

It clicked on.

“Jason!” Mira’s voice shouted, sharp and panicked.

Then—

“Mira!” Jason’s own voice, echoing back.

The two names repeated, overlapping—first normally, then distorted, the syllables stretched and reversed, mashed together and looped, like a child with a toy it didn’t understand but refused to let go of.

“Mira! Mira! Jason—Ja—Mira—Jason—”

Jason dropped the device, scanning the rocks around him.

That was when he heard the footsteps, crunching lightly against the gravel. But there was no one visible. Just the sound of something circling him in the dark.

He turned in slow increments, sweeping his flashlight in all directions. The beam caught empty brush, cracked stone, and fragments of gear strewn carelessly.

The footsteps continued, pacing closer.

Jason backed away from the center of the clearing, stumbling as his boot struck a rut in the stone. He braced himself against a rock and shone his light upward, catching nothing but the night.

Then the sound stopped.

He waited, every muscle tensed, the silence so complete it felt like the world had been paused.

From behind him, there came a whisper.

Jason bolted.

He climbed the slope in a rush, fingers digging into the dirt, boots slipping on loose gravel. He didn’t stop until he crested the rise and nearly collapsed into the remnants of their camp.

The fire was gone.

But a new light flickered at the far end of the clearing—a lantern.

Coach Anders sat beside it, his face drawn and pale, the bags under his eyes deeper than Jason remembered.

Jason stumbled forward. “You came back.”

Anders nodded once. “I didn’t like how it felt. I turned around before I got ten miles out.”

Jason tried to speak but found his throat dry. He gestured behind him instead.

“She’s gone,” he said. “Something’s down there. It took her.”

Anders didn’t ask for details. He simply adjusted the lantern and motioned for Jason to sit.

“I’ve heard ‘em too, off and on for years,” he said quietly. “Usually from deep in the canyon, but sometimes near the caves north of here. Always calling someone’s name.”

Jason stared at him, throat still tight. “You knew something was out here.”

“I suspected,” Anders said. “Locals talk about it. Navajo didn’t name it, but they wouldn’t go near the lower ravines after dark. Said the stone remembers voices. Said something listens. Learns them. Waits.”

Jason looked down at the recorder still clutched in his hand. It was silent now, but the screen blinked like it was still running—like it hadn’t stopped since Mira disappeared.

“I think it heard us,” Jason said.

Anders didn’t speak for a long time. When he finally did, he was quieter than usual.

“I think it always does.”

Part V

The lantern’s light held back the dark for only a few feet, and even that felt temporary, as though the shadows were waiting for an excuse to press in closer. Jason sat cross-legged beside the flame, shoulders hunched, the cold biting deeper into his jacket than the fire could counter. Anders remained silent beside him, watching the mouth of the ravine like something might rise from it if he blinked.

When Jason finally spoke, his voice was hoarse.

“I’m going back down.”

Anders didn’t respond immediately. He reached into his coat, pulled out a battered radio, and checked the battery.

“She’s gone,” he said flatly.

Jason shook his head. “No body. No blood. No drag marks. That thing—whatever it is—uses voices. But maybe it doesn’t kill. Maybe she’s still alive, trapped and waiting.”

“You don’t know that,” Anders replied.

Jason turned toward him, eyes sunken but focused. “No. But I can’t leave without knowing.”

Anders stared into the flame for a while longer, then stood and grabbed his pack.

“You’ll need help getting past that shaft.”

* * * * * *

They returned to the shaft entrance just after dawn, the sunlight reduced to a pale gleam behind the canyon’s ridgeline. Jason stood at the edge of the drop, staring down into the darkness below, while Anders secured the rope with practiced movements. There were no echoes this time, no voices rising from the pit.

Jason descended first. The rope creaked under his weight as he eased into the narrowing throat of the earth. His headlamp cut through only a narrow column of shadow, revealing the uneven grooves that still marked the walls—those desperate scratchings, preserved in stone.

He didn’t speak, not even to himself.

Anders followed several minutes later, his heavier frame shifting more cautiously through the tunnel’s narrowing curves. They reached the wide chamber again without incident, the air colder and damper than Jason remembered. The natural arch still waited at the far end, unchanged.

But something felt different.

Jason stepped toward the arch, scanning the floor for any sign of Mira—boot prints, cloth, gear. There was nothing.

Then a voice drifted in from behind.

“Jason…”

He turned, expecting Anders. But Anders was behind him, unmoving, frozen in place.

The voice came again. This time, it was Mira’s.

“Jason, help me.”

He scanned the chamber. The voice had not come from the tunnel or the shaft, but from everywhere.

Then, another voice layered on top of hers. Jason’s own.

“Mira! Where are you?”

It was Jason’s voice from the previous night. Exactly the same inflection and desperation—a perfect mimicry.

Anders stepped forward. “Don’t follow it. Stay with me.”

Jason nodded, but his body was already drifting toward the archway. The darkness beyond it still swallowed the beam from his lamp, just as before. He inched forward, fighting the growing urge to cross the threshold.

Then Anders’ radio crackled to life at his belt.

From out of the static, Anders’ voice emerged—raspy and halting. “Go back… go back… go back…”

Jason turned, horrified. Anders was gone.

Only the dangling rope remained, swinging ever so slightly above the tunnel entrance.

The radio repeated the phrase again, a little slower, the syllables beginning to slur together unnaturally. “Go… baaaaack…”

Jason grabbed the radio and shut it off. The chamber was now completely still, the only sound the drip of water from somewhere above.

He turned back to the arch. There, crouched in the crevice of the far wall, was the listener.

At first, he thought it was a trick of the light—something skeletal tangled in vines—but as his headlamp fixed on it, the shape resolved. It was gaunt, its elongated limbs pressed against stone. Its skin was the color of dried mud, stretched too tightly over its bones. As he watched, its head turned toward him without a sound, its jaw hanging loose, its mouth agape.

From deep within its chest came a fluttering, trembling sound, as though its voice box were strung like an instrument, twitching in preparation.

Then it spoke—not in words, not at first. The sound began as a low humming, layered and atonal, like wind in a broken flute. Then syllables formed, coalescing around a breath that didn’t come from lungs.

“Jason… help me…”

It was Mira’s voice.

The creature didn’t move. It didn’t advance or flinch beneath the light. It simply crouched, tilted toward him, and listened.

Its jaw flexed once, shuddering as the next sound emerged.

“Where are you, Mira?”

It was Jason’s own voice again, played back like a recording.

He stepped closer. Slowly. The beam of his headlamp never wavered from the creature’s face, but it showed no reaction.

For a brief moment, he wondered if it was blind.

He took another step. The creature remained perfectly still.

Then Jason blinked.

In that blink, it vanished. There was no sound, no movement of air or scrape of talons on stone. One moment it was there, and the next, it wasn’t.

The crevice stood empty, as though it had always been.

Jason backed away slowly, his legs trembling, the weight of the cavern pressing in on him like a vise.

He didn’t call out, not once. Whatever this thing was, it didn’t need to hear him again.

* * * * * *

It took him longer to climb out of the shaft than he remembered, his arms weak and hands clumsy with fear. When he finally reached the surface, the sunlight was brutal, but welcome.

There was no sign of Anders.

Jason wandered the upper ravine for the better part of the day, calling out only once or twice, each time lower than the last, the sound of his own voice now a betrayal.

Eventually, he found Anders.

The man stood near a rock shelf half a mile from camp, staring at the sky as though he no longer understood what it was. His lips were moving, but no sound emerged. His radio was crushed beneath his boot.

Jason spoke to him, asking what had happened, but Anders only stared, eyes empty, mouthing words in silence.

He never spoke again.

Part VI

Jason never filed a missing persons report. In his final transmission to the university field office, he submitted a trimmed version of the geological survey—clean, formal, and notably unremarkable. There were no mentions of subterranean chambers, acoustic anomalies, or inexplicable vertical shafts. Mira Chen’s name appeared only once, in the equipment requisition log, listed as a third-party assistant. Nothing else.

When the departmental emails began to pile up, asking about scheduling follow-ups or requesting clarification on survey discrepancies, Jason responded with rote professionalism. By the end of the second week, the field study had been quietly archived, boxed, and labeled, another line in a database of unfinished projects.

He returned to Oregon three days later and moved back into his one-bedroom apartment just south of the university district, where the rain was frequent and forgettable and the nights no longer echoed with the wind.

He didn’t tell anyone what happened.

Not his advisor, not his sister, not the couple of friends who still bothered to ask why he’d been gone so long. Even when a university newsletter printed a brief note about the “interrupted” fieldwork in Utah and Mira’s absence sparked minor concern among a fringe group of paranormal researchers online, Jason said nothing. He stayed off message boards. He stopped answering cryptid-related emails.

Anders, when last Jason heard, had been admitted to a care facility in Provo. The intake form had listed “post-traumatic stress” and “dissociative mutism” as contributing diagnoses, though the orderlies were more inclined to say he was just “broken in the head.” Jason never visited. He doubted Anders would recognize him anyway.

A full year passed.

* * * * * *

It was the first week of November when the package arrived.

Jason had been asleep on the couch, wrapped in a wool blanket, the TV still glowing with the tail end of some late-night nature documentary. The knock at the door came softly—two raps, spaced apart like the caller wasn’t sure whether they wanted to be heard.

He sat up, confused by the hour, and glanced at the clock. 3:13 AM.

The hallway light was off. Outside, rain streaked the glass, and the sodium-orange hue of the streetlamp barely reached the landing beyond his door. He waited, hoping the moment would dissolve, that the knocking had been part of a dream.

But then it came again—two soft knocks. Then nothing.

He stood and walked to the door. When he opened it, the hallway was empty. No one stood there. No sound came from the stairs, not even the distant shuffle of someone walking away.

That’s when he noticed the package, resting against the doorframe. It was weathered, taped unevenly, the cardboard soft at the edges as though it had been left out in the rain far longer than the storm outside could account for. There was no label or return address, and no stamps. His name—JASON DELANEY—had been scrawled in faded marker across the top panel in shaky, uneven handwriting.

He brought it inside without understanding why he didn’t leave it on the porch.

The tape peeled away in wet, curling strips. Inside the box was a layer of shredded paper and, beneath it, an object wrapped in what appeared to be a section of old thermal blanket.

Jason unwrapped it with mounting dread. It was Mira’s recorder, still intact, scratched along the edge where it had fallen near the ravine floor, and blinking red.

He stared at it for a long time before pressing play.

The speaker hissed softly. For a moment, all was still. Then a voice broke through the silence.

“Don’t leave me.”

It was his voice again, soft and pleading. He staggered back, nearly dropping the device, and sat hard on the edge of the couch. The recorder whined again, and then went silent.

The blinking light continued.

He set it on the table and stood, rubbing his face with both hands.

That was when he heard it.

From the far corner of the room, where the shadows gathered most deeply beyond the floor lamp, something shifted. It wasn’t a creak, nor the groan of old pipes or the whisper of wind under the sill. It was the faint, unmistakable sound of feathers dragging across carpet.

Jason turned toward the sound, eyes locked on the corner.

There was nothing there. No shape or movement, no outline within the dark.

But the sound came again, a faint, rasping pull against the fibers of the rug—then silence.

He didn’t sleep that night. Instead, he moved through the apartment with every light on, every closet opened, every window checked and re-checked. He played the recording back twice more. It didn’t change. It never advanced. It simply spoke the same three words, then waited.

“Don’t leave me.”

It never sounded like a plea.

It sounded like a reminder.

* * * * * *

Jason no longer considers himself a man of science. He hasn’t returned to the ravine. He hasn’t filed for another field grant. The maps and charts that once covered the walls of his office have been torn down or locked away in boxes stacked against the door of the spare room.

He doesn’t tell stories. Not to friends, not to strangers. But sometimes, when he’s walking alone at night or hears someone call his name on an empty trail, he remembers.

He remembers the sound of his own voice in the dark.

He remembers what it felt like to be watched by something ancient and patient, which had been utterly voiceless until it found him.

He still doesn’t believe in cryptids, not really—but he knows what he heard.

And he knows it’s still listening.