Chapter 5: A Chorus of Victims

Michael spun around in his living room, searching desperately for the source of the tapping, but there was nothing to see. The sound reverberated through his skull like a hammer striking bone—tap, tap, tap—each beat synchronized with his racing heartbeat. He pressed his palms against his ears, but the noise only grew louder, more insistent.

The laptop screen flickered again, and when his vision cleared, another post had appeared under his hijacked username: "It's inside now. Can you hear them singing? So many voices, all calling my name. They want me to join the choir."

"I didn't write that," Michael whispered to his empty apartment, but his voice sounded strange in his own ears—layered somehow, as if other voices were speaking along with him.

He slammed the laptop shut and stumbled toward the kitchen, desperate for water, for aspirin, for anything that might stop the pounding in his head. But as he moved, he became aware of whispers threading through the tapping—soft, sibilant sounds that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

At first, they were indistinct, like voices heard through water or across a great distance. But as Michael stood frozen in his kitchen, gripping the counter with white knuckles, the whispers began to resolve into words.

"Michael..."

The voice was faint but unmistakably human—a man's voice, middle-aged, with the slight rasp of a longtime smoker. It sounded familiar, though Michael couldn't immediately place it.

"Michael... can you hear me?"

More voices joined the first, a growing chorus of whispers that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. Men, women, children—all speaking his name with increasing urgency, their words overlapping and blending into a haunting symphony of desperation.

"Help us, Michael..."

"Don't let it take you..."

"Join us, Michael, it's easier if you don't fight..."

"Run, Michael, run while you still can..."

The contradictory pleas crashed over him in waves, some voices begging for rescue while others urged surrender. But all of them knew his name, spoke it with an intimacy that suggested they'd been watching him, waiting for him, perhaps for longer than he could imagine.

Michael pressed his back against the refrigerator, his breath coming in sharp gasps. "Who are you?" he managed to whisper. "What do you want?"

The whispers grew louder in response, more distinct. He could pick out individual voices now, each one carrying its own tone of terror or resignation or pleading hope.

"We were like you once..." This from a young woman whose voice cracked with tears. "We heard the tapping, saw the signs, tried to understand..."

"It collected us," added an elderly man. "One by one, it gathered us up. Our voices, our names, our very selves..."

"Sarah tried to warn people," sobbed a child's voice that made Michael's blood run cold. "But it got her too, just like the rest of us..."

Sarah. The name hit Michael like a physical blow. The cheerful Airbnb host who had given him the keys to the cabin, who had wished him a peaceful retreat in the mountains. Her voice—that was why one of the whispers had sounded familiar. It was Sarah's voice, distorted by whatever had claimed her, but unmistakably hers.

"Oh God," Michael breathed. "Sarah, is that you?"

A sob echoed through the apartment, seeming to come from every surface at once. "I tried to stop renting that place," Sarah's voice emerged more clearly from the chorus. "After the first few guests went missing, I wanted to tear it down, burn it, anything to keep it from taking more people. But it wouldn't let me. It made me keep advertising, keep bringing fresh victims to the mountains where it could study them, choose them..."

The pieces fell into place with horrible clarity. The perfect isolation of the cabin wasn't accidental—it was a trap. Sarah hadn't been a willing accomplice, but rather another victim, forced to act as bait for the creature's hunting grounds.

"How many?" Michael asked, though he dreaded the answer. "How many others?"

"Dozens," whispered a man's voice he didn't recognize. "Maybe hundreds. It's been hunting for a long time, Michael. Longer than any of us understood."

"The forum posts," added another voice—one Michael thought he might have read online. "The deleted accounts, the people who just disappeared from the internet. We're all here, Michael. All of us who got too close to the truth."

Michael slid down the refrigerator until he was sitting on the kitchen floor, overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he was learning. The thing stalking him wasn't just a predator—it was a collector. It gathered people, absorbed them somehow, keeping their voices and memories and identities trapped within itself like trophies.

"What does it want with me?" he whispered.

"You're special," Sarah's voice said sadly. "You saw it in the mirror, used the water to glimpse its true form. Most people just disappear quietly, taken in their sleep or during moments of weakness. But you fought back, tried to understand. It finds that... interesting."

The tapping in his skull grew more insistent, and Michael realized with growing horror that it wasn't just sound anymore. With each beat, he could feel something pushing at the boundaries of his consciousness, trying to work its way inside his thoughts.

"It's trying to get in," he gasped.

"Don't let it," pleaded the child's voice. "Once it's inside your head, you can't think your own thoughts anymore. You become part of the collection, part of the choir."

But even as the voices warned him, Michael could feel his resistance weakening. The constant tapping, the sleep deprivation, the accumulated terror of the past week—it had all been designed to break him down, to make him vulnerable to whatever process the creature used to claim its victims.

"The reflection..." he managed to say. "When I looked in the water, it saw me seeing it. That's when this got worse."

"Yes," confirmed Sarah's voice, heavy with regret. "Direct observation marks you, makes you part of its collection whether you want to be or not. I should have warned you in my posts, but it was already controlling what I could say, limiting how much truth I could share."

The whispers began to fade, as if the creature was reclaiming control over its captured voices. But before they disappeared entirely, Sarah managed one final, desperate plea:

"Michael, you have to try to warn others. Post your story, share what you've learned, even if it doesn't believe you'll succeed. Some of us managed to leave fragments before we were taken—breadcrumbs for the next victims to follow. Maybe if enough people know what to look for..."

Her voice dissolved into static, leaving Michael alone with the tapping in his skull and the terrible knowledge of what awaited him. The creature wasn't just hunting him—it was grooming him, preparing him to become another voice in its ghastly collection.

He pulled out his phone with trembling hands and opened a text editor, desperate to get his story down before he lost the ability to control his own actions. But as he tried to type, the words kept changing themselves, his warnings transforming into invitations, his pleas for help becoming advertisements for the peaceful mountain retreat where others might follow in his footsteps.

The thing inside his head laughed—a sound like static and screaming that made his vision blur. It had been playing with him all along, letting him think he had agency while slowly tightening its control. The forum posts, the hijacked username, the growing invasion of his digital life—it had all been preparation for this moment.

Michael Hayes, systems analyst and rational skeptic, was becoming part of something ancient and hungry. His voice would join the chorus, his warnings would become lures, and his desperate attempts to save others would only draw more victims to the creature's attention.

The tapping grew faster, more insistent, keeping time with his failing heartbeat. In the reflection of his phone's black screen, Michael caught a glimpse of his own face—except it wasn't quite his anymore. The eyes were too wide, the smile too knowing.

Something else was wearing his features now, puppeting his expressions, preparing to use his identity to continue the hunt.

The collection was almost complete.