The wind howled through the pines of Marrow Wood, a keening wail that clawed at the night, rattling the frost-streaked windows of the cabin where Sam Carter hunched over a flickering lantern. The flame danced, casting jittery shadows across the plank walls, their edges warped and stained from decades of neglect, the air heavy with the musty tang of damp wood and something sharper—something metallic, like blood left to rust. He’d come here to escape, to outrun the city’s clamor and the gnawing guilt of a case gone cold—a missing girl, Lily Grayson, last seen two years ago near these woods, her photo still pinned to his corkboard back home, her wide eyes haunting his sleep. The locals had whispered about the Hollow Choir, a legend of voices rising from the trees on winter nights, luring wanderers to their doom, but Sam dismissed it as folklore spun by bored farmers—until now, until the singing started, faint and discordant, seeping through the cracks like smoke, a melody that wasn’t human.
He adjusted his scarf, the wool scratching his neck, and checked his recorder—its red light blinked, capturing the silence he’d meant to study, a side project to clear his mind. But the singing grew louder, a chorus of whispers weaving through the wind, forming words he couldn’t grasp, their pitch rising and falling like a tide, tugging at his thoughts. He stepped to the window, breath fogging the glass, and peered into the dark—the pines swayed, their branches skeletal against the moonless sky, and between them, shapes flickered—pale, too thin, darting just beyond the lantern’s reach. His pulse quickened, a dull thud in his ears, and he grabbed his flashlight, its beam slicing through the gloom as he yanked the door open, the cold biting his face, the singing swelling into a hymn that vibrated in his chest.
The snow crunched under his boots, fresh and untouched, the woods stretching endless before him, a labyrinth of black trunks and frozen earth. The beam trembled in his grip, catching glints of ice on bark, but the shapes stayed ahead, flitting between trees, their outlines blurring like smoke—humanoid, yet wrong, limbs too long, heads tilted at angles that defied bone. “Who’s there?” he shouted, voice swallowed by the wind, the recorder dangling from his coat, its mic picking up the choir—“Come… deeper…”—the words clear now, layered in voices that overlapped, young and old, male and female, a cacophony that clawed at his sanity. He followed, drawn by the sound, the beam sweeping wild arcs, until the trees parted, revealing a clearing—a circle of stones, ancient and moss-slick, their surfaces etched with spirals that glowed faintly blue in the dark, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Sam stopped, breath hitching, as the singing sharpened, ringing from the stones themselves, the air thick with a hum that prickled his skin. In the center stood a figure—Lily, or what might have been her, her coat torn, hair matted with frost, her face pale as the snow, eyes hollowed out, black pits staring through him. “Lily?” he croaked, stepping forward, but she didn’t move—her lips parted, and the choir poured from her, a dozen voices at once, high and low, pleading and mocking, her jaw unhinging wider than it should, splitting her face into a grin that wasn’t hers. The flashlight slipped, clattering to the ground, its beam spinning across the stones, and more figures emerged—pale, eyeless, their mouths gaping, singing in unison, their bodies swaying like reeds, closing the circle around him.
He stumbled back, heart slamming, and grabbed the recorder, fumbling to stop it, but the voices didn’t fade—they echoed inside his skull, a chorus of whispers clawing at his mind, “Join us… stay…” The air grew heavy, pressing him down, and his legs buckled, snow soaking his knees as he clutched his head, nails digging into his scalp, trying to drown them out. The figures drew closer, their hands reaching—fingers too long, joints bending backward, skin translucent, veins pulsing beneath like worms—and he swung the flashlight, its metal cracking against a stone, the beam shattering into sparks. The singing faltered, a glitch in the hymn, and he bolted, crashing through the trees, branches snapping against his coat, tearing at his skin, the choir chasing him, louder, hungrier, a tide he couldn’t outrun.
The cabin loomed ahead, its door ajar, swaying in the wind, and he threw himself inside, slamming it shut, the latch clicking with a hollow thud. He sank against it, chest heaving, sweat stinging his eyes, the recorder still rolling, its light a steady red in the dark. The singing stopped—silence fell, sharp and sudden, the only sound his ragged breathing and the creak of the floorboards. He exhaled, relief flooding him, until a knock sounded—soft, deliberate, three taps on the window behind him. He froze, turning slow, the lantern’s glow catching a face pressed to the glass—Lily’s, or what wore her skin, eyeless, smiling, her mouth moving soundlessly, the choir rising again, not outside but inside, from the recorder, from the walls, from his own throat, a whisper he couldn’t stop.
He clawed at his coat, ripping the recorder free, and hurled it at the window—the glass shattered, shards raining down, the device tumbling into the snow, its light blinking out. But the singing didn’t stop—it swelled, a hollow hymn spilling from his lips, his voice not his own, joining the chorus as the figures pressed closer, their shapes filling the broken frame, reaching through. He staggered back, hands to his mouth, muffling the sound, but it pushed through, a scream trapped in song, his reflection in the lantern’s glass showing eyes blackening, hollowing, his face splitting into that same grin. The wind howled louder, the cabin trembling, and the Hollow Choir sang on, claiming its newest voice as the night swallowed him whole.