Story 1231: The Voice That Screamed

It began as a whisper.

Just beneath the rustling wind and the hollow calls of distant crows, there was a voice—too faint to follow, too loud to ignore.

Lena had made it through fire, cults, and carnage. But nothing had prepared her for the silence that now plagued the outskirts of Sector R.

This wasn’t the deadlands. This wasn’t the city. It was the school.

Redgate Elementary had been closed for years. Molded papers still sat on desks. Lockers hung open like yawned mouths. And in the center of the main hallway stood a child-sized mannequin. Dressed in the school uniform. Eyes painted shut.

Don’t look away.

That’s what the scribbled message on the wall said—scrawled in a child’s handwriting.

Lena, cautious and half-starved, ignored it.

The moment she turned, the scream erupted.

A sound so sharp, so impossibly loud, it made her drop to her knees. Her eardrums throbbed. Her vision blurred.

And then… she saw it.

The voice had a shape.