The days passed quietly. Too quietly.
In Maple Creek, life went on like clockwork. The grass was trimmed down to its roots. The same few people walked their dogs, guided toddlers across the sidewalks. The fountain still hissed, like it was expelling something it couldn't hold in. Nothing changed—on the surface.
But inside, I was unraveling.
No one knew I lived here. No one had my phone number. That used to feel like freedom. Now, it felt like isolation. Vulnerability. If something happened to me—if I vanished—no one would even know I was missing.
I looked at the windows, wide and unbarred. They once symbolized openness, escape, even a kind of defiance. Now, they felt like holes. Like eyes without eyelids. Like entrances for something waiting outside.
I began to question everything.
Maybe the bars weren't prison.
Maybe the bars were protection.
That night, the wind came again—moaning low, crawling through the cracks. The cry returned with it, faint at first, then louder. Rising. Fracturing. Like a child sobbing through a throat half-swallowed by darkness.
My wife was asleep, one arm draped over my chest. She held me like I was an anchor. But I felt like driftwood—unmoored, light, hollow.
I gently moved her arm aside and stood.
The cold hit me before I even opened the door. It slid under the cracks, along the floorboards, into my spine. I opened the back door and stepped outside. The wind rushed past like it had been waiting for someone to witness it.
And in it, the crying.
The same awful sound—thin, wind-carried, directionless. It felt like it was everywhere and nowhere at once. But somehow, I knew. I could feel it.
It was coming from below.
From the basement.
Again.
That same slope leading to that same black mouth in the ground. The air near it felt different—like it didn't belong to the same night. Heavier. Still. Expectant.
I stared at the entrance,my mind screaming,
Don't go down. Don't even look.
And yet I did.
I looked.
The darkness didn't move. But it didn't have to. The cry came from inside it. Or maybe beneath it. Or maybe beneath everything.
I wanted to wake her. To tell her something was wrong.
But how do you explain wind that screams?
So I stood there. Cold. Alone. Listening.
And the cry went on.
And on.