were kept home from school. The streets emptied after sunset. The town had changed. Even the animals avoided the woods. Birds stopped nesting near the edge. Coyotes refused to howl.
And every night, at exactly 3:00 AM, those voices returned. Soft. Childlike. Sometimes whispering. Sometimes giggling. But always singing. And always – a new name.
***
One evening, as the red sun sank behind the hills, a black car drove into Everfield.
It was an old vehicle, but well-kept. Its windows were tinted dark, and the engine made almost no sound.
It parked in front of the abandoned motel at the edge of town.
From it stepped a man. Tall. Thin. Clad in a long, dark-gray robe that looked older than any fashion. His eyes were a strange pale green, and when he spoke, it felt as though the words didn’t come from his mouth – but from somewhere far, far deeper.
He introduced himself simply: Azem. No last name. No credentials.
“I am not a priest,” he said. “I am not a scientist. I am… a Listener.”
The mayor didn’t want to let him speak. But the people insisted. They had tried everything else.
That night, in the old school gymnasium, under flickering fluorescent lights, the town gathered to listen.
Azem stood not on the stage, not behind a podium – simply among them.
He spoke slowly, almost reverently.
“I have heard this song before,” he said. “A long time ago. In another place. Another land.”
The crowd leaned forward, barely daring to breathe.
“This is not a haunting,” Azem continued. “It is a reminder. A voice rising from the roots of what has been forgotten.”
Someone stood up. The physics teacher.
“You mean it’s… alive?”
Azem nodded.
“It’s very old. Very patient. It sings through the mouths of the unborn. And it marks those who owe.”
“Owe what?” someone asked.
Azem paused for a long moment, and when he spoke again, his voice dropped to almost a whisper.
“Balance. Long ago, a promise was made. And broken. This land belonged to others once – before roads, before fences, before these trees we see now.”
The silence in the room grew heavier than stone.
“You’re talking about a curse,” the mayor said bitterly.
Azem looked him in the eye.
“No,” he said. “I speak of a deity. A goddess. A devourer of souls. And she… is waking.”
***
Among the crowd of villagers was a girl named Isobel Green. Seventeen. Quiet. The kind of girl who smiled with her eyes more often than her lips.
She lived with her parents in a yellow house near the edge of Everfield, only a few streets away from the dark line of trees. Her father worked as a mechanic. Her mother taught piano lessons from their living room.
Isobel had a boyfriend – Caleb Wren. Tall. Soft-spoken. He always smelled faintly of cedar and ink.
They had been together for two years. Everyone said they were inseparable.
But lately, even Caleb couldn’t make her smile.
Because two nights ago, the choir had sung her mother’s name. And the night after – that of her father.
Both now lay cold in the town morgue, their faces frozen in the same expression: confusion… and emptiness.
Isobel hadn’t cried. Hadn’t screamed. Hadn’t torn at her hair like others did. She had simply listened. To the trees. To the silence. And to Azem.
The townsfolk gathered more and more often around the mystic.
He spoke rarely. But when he did, his words came slowly, as if rising from the depths of a very old, very deep well.
He told them of a forgotten tribe that once lived in these forests, long before the settlers arrived. Of a people who worshiped Humauatl – the goddess with the face of a woman and the tongue of a serpent, who was never satisfied.
“She was fed,” Azem said. “Once a year, in the, a child was brought to her – pure, untouched. And in return, the forest remained silent.”
“But the worship ended,” he continued. “The tribe was wiped out. Missionaries. Soldiers. Disease. The cave was sealed. And Humaquatl slept.”
He lifted his eyes – pale, like milk diluted with water. His gaze swept across the room.
“Until now.”
A long, strained silence hung in the air.
At last, someone asked: “What does she want?”
Azem answered at once.
“A gift. A life freely given. One that fulfills the ancient terms. Young. Pure. Untouched. In other words – a virgin.”
The silence turned to horror.
“No one would agree to that,” someone muttered.
“There is no Humauatl,” someone else shouted. “This is madness!”
But deep down, everyone felt that Azem was telling the truth. The choir convinced everyone.
The next evening, Isobel came to Azem. Alone. He was waiting for her behind the old church, standing within a circle of scorched leaves.
“I’ll do it,” she said simply.
He turned slowly, as if he had already known.
“You understand what it means?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I have no one left. Caleb will move on. I’m not afraid of dying. But I am terrified… of hearing his name in that song.”
Azem closed his eyes. For a moment, he looked older than time itself.
“Then come with me,” he whispered.
***
Azem led Isobel deep into the woods.
Past paths long overgrown. Past trees whose bark bore ancient, unknowable symbols. Past stones that vibrated faintly under bare fingers.
At last, they reached the mouth of a cave – a low, black gash at the foot of a moss-choked hill.
“The tribe called it The Thirsting Mouth,” Azem said. “No flame can burn inside. Only blood.”
He lit a single lamp. Its flame burned blue.
Inside, the walls were smooth. Wet. Veined with faintly pulsing lines, like the veins of some vast, sleeping beast. The air smelled of iron… and something sweeter – rotting flowers.
They walked through narrow tunnels, ever deeper, until they entered a vast underground grotto.
And there she stood. Humaquatl.
The statue was immense – twice the height of a man. A woman’s figure, carved from stone darker than midnight, crouched over an altar. Her face was calm. But where her mouth should have been, there protruded a tongue of polished obsidian – long and flat like a sacrificial blade. And at the very tip hung a single drop of blood. Trembling. Waiting.
“Once a year – during the three days following the full moon,” Azem whispered, “such drops are born. Today is one of those days. If the drop falls and finds no victim, Humauatl grows hungry. And then she begins to sing. She sings for an entire year, until the next drop is born. She sings, taking lives, calling names. But if the drop falls upon