Chapter 8: The Chorus of the Lost

Chapter 8: The Chorus of the Lost

The door to Room 3B didn't need a key. As the thing that wore Pam’s skin pressed its hand against the wood, there was a soft, metallic snick from within the lock. The sound was not of a mechanism being forced, but of one willingly yielding. The door swung inward on its own, opening into a pit of profound silence and darkness. It was an invitation. A welcome home.

Elara tensed, her hand hovering over the duffel bag slung across her shoulder. “This is it,” she breathed, her voice a low whisper that the oppressive quiet seemed to eager to swallow. “Don’t let it distract you. Find the watch. That’s the only thing that matters.”

Leo’s heart was a frantic, slamming drum against the wall of his chest. He took a step forward, peering into the room where the nightmare had begun. It was just as they had left it—the unmade bed, the cheap particleboard furniture, the faint, lingering smell of stale coffee. But the very air was different. It was heavy, cold, and carried a scent like static electricity and old, damp earth. The space felt fundamentally wrong, a dead zone where the normal laws of physics had been put on hold.

The entity stepped across the threshold, and the room exhaled.

It started subtly. The shadows in the corners of the room, which had been inert and ordinary, seemed to deepen. They pooled and darkened, no longer simple absences of light but patches of active, light-devouring void. Leo watched in horror as the shadow cast by the nightstand detached itself from the furniture, crawling like a spill of black ink across the floor. Then the shadow under the bed oozed out to join it. All the darkness in the room was unsticking, flowing towards the center of the wall opposite the door.

Towards the stain.

It was exactly where the old historical records had said it would be, though no rental listing would ever show it. It was a faint, brownish-red discoloration on the cheap wallpaper, a meter-wide blotch that looked like old water damage. But as the shadows converged on it, the stain began to change. It darkened, no longer a mark on the wall but a hole in the wall. A gateway.

From the depths of that swirling portal of blackness, the voices returned.

Not just whispers from the hall, but a full-throated chorus of agony. The cries for help were a maelstrom of sound, a hundred different voices from a hundred different decades, all screaming at once. Men, women, children—the student photographer, the building inspector, the forgotten mill workers—all of their final, terrified moments were woven into a symphony of despair that hammered at Leo’s sanity.

“The anchor has to be near the focal point!” Elara yelled, her voice strained against the sonic assault. She ripped open a chest of drawers, tossing cheap clothes onto the floor. “The watch! Look for the watch!”

Leo’s eyes were locked on the thing that had been Pam. It stood in the center of the room, its back to him, facing the vortex of screaming shadows. Its arms hung loosely at its sides. It was drinking in the terror, basking in the raw emotional energy it had cultivated for over a century. The air grew colder, and Leo could see his own breath fogging in front of him.

Then, the entity turned its head, its neck twisting at an angle that was not quite human. Its white eyes, now glowing with a faint, internal luminescence, fixed on Leo.

The chorus of voices died down, replaced by a single, familiar one. Pam’s voice. But it was laced with the entity’s cold, cruel intelligence.

“You should have just gone home after the concert, Leo,” it said, its lips barely moving. The voice seemed to emanate not from its mouth, but from the swirling vortex behind it. “You could have been in your own bed. Safe. Everything in its right place.”

It was using her memories. It had sifted through them, looking for the sharpest knives.

“Leo, don’t listen to it! It’s a trick!” Elara shouted, now on her hands and knees, peering under the bed frame.

But Leo couldn’t look away. His every instinct was screaming at him, a raw, primal need to defend the memory of his friend.

“All your little boxes,” the entity continued, taking a step towards him. The shadows swirled around its feet like a royal train. “All your neat little shelves and alphabetized records. You think that keeps the world from being chaotic? You think it can keep you safe from things like me?”

“Shut up,” Leo breathed, his fists clenched at his sides. He remembered Elara’s rule—show nothing—but it was like trying to hold back a tidal wave with his bare hands.

“She knew you loved her, you know,” the entity whispered, and the cruelty in that one sentence was a physical blow. “The real Pam. She knew how you looked at her when you thought she wasn’t paying attention. She talked about it. She said it was sweet. But she felt sorry for you, Leo. A sad man in a dead-end job, afraid to live his life, pining for a girl who only ever saw him as a brother.”

“Stop it,” Leo choked out, taking a step back. Tears of rage and grief burned in his eyes. He could feel his composure shattering.

“You’re a coward, Leo. You were too scared to tell her how you felt when she was real, and you’re too scared to fight for her now.” The entity smiled Pam’s smile, but it was a predator’s baring of teeth. “What do you think she’s feeling right now? Trapped in the cold, dark place inside me? She’s screaming for you. But you can’t hear her over the sound of your own pathetic fear.”

“THAT’S NOT HER!” Leo roared, the sound tearing from his throat. He broke. The dam of his control burst, and a flood of pure, undiluted rage and despair poured out of him. “YOU’RE NOT HER! GET OUT OF HER!”

The moment the words left his lips, he knew he had made a catastrophic mistake.

The entity threw its head back, and this time, a laugh ripped through the room—not Pam’s laugh, but a discordant, layered shriek that was part of the ghostly chorus. The vortex on the wall pulsed, expanding violently. The temperature in the room plummeted. A psychic wind blasted from the portal, sending loose papers and dust swirling through the air. The screaming of the lost souls reached a fever pitch.

Leo’s emotional outburst had been a gallon of gasoline on a roaring fire. He had fed it, and it was growing stronger, manifesting more fully than ever before. The shadows were no longer just swirling—they were beginning to take shape. A tall, impossibly thin, humanoid form began to coalesce within the vortex, a being made of pure despair and shadow. At its center, a single, baleful point of light began to glow—the cruel, judging eye of Silas Croft.

The thing wearing Pam’s skin shuddered, its body starting to contort. Its joints began to pop and crack, bending at unnatural angles as the immense power of the fully manifested Echo surged through it. It was becoming a living puppet for the vortex of screaming shadows.

“Leo, the watch!” Elara’s voice cut through the chaos.

Leo tore his eyes from the horrifying display and saw her. She had ripped the cheap headboard away from the wall. Behind it, wedged deep into a crack in the plaster, was a small, dark object.

She pulled it free. It was a silver pocket watch, its surface tarnished black with age and psychic residue. The glass was cracked, and as Elara held it up, Leo saw that the hands were spinning wildly, counter-clockwise, a frantic, silent scream against the passage of time.

She held the anchor. But the monster was at full power, and it was turning its complete, undivided attention toward them.