The air was filled with a thick fog– making it difficult to see; the dense forest and surrounding dilapidation added to the foreboding feeling in the pit of my stomach. The sky was cloudless and pitch black aside from the shine of two lone stars, shining interestingly bright, as if they were exerting the last of their life force.
The equipment was piled inside of a box seated in the back of the car, the casings remained at my house.
Suddenly, the car screeched to a halt– jerking me forward into the resistance of my seatbelt. For a brief second, all of the air in my lungs was ejected from my body. I coughed from the sudden expulsion of breath.
"What the hell?!" I managed to say between gulps of inhalation.
"Look."
Theresa points to something in the distance.
"..At what?" I ask in confusion, following the direction of her finger, but not able to see anything due to the darkness.
She put the car in park and removed her seatbelt.
She turns backward in her seat, reaching into the box in the backseat to grab the equipment, handing me the spirit box and placing the speaker in her lap.
Camera in hand, she snaps a picture of the darkness. Looking back at the film, nothing is visible due to the glare of the flash on the windshield.
"I know I saw something." She says definitively. "Let's go." She adds, seemingly determined.
She grabs the speaker and exits the vehicle, slamming the door behind her, unintentionally.
I glance at the spirit box and quickly become overcome with a sudden sense of queasiness. I slowly unbuckle my seatbelt, and step out of the car, gently closing the door behind me– conscious of everything around me.
"Wait up!" I say, lightly jogging to catch up to Theresa. "What did you see?"
She doesn't say anything, almost as if she's locked in a trance of resolve and steadfastness.
I follow along quietly, my mind wandering wildly the whole way.
Eventually, we made it to a pile of rubble.
"Hey, hold these."
Theresa passes me the camera and speaker.
"What're you doing?" I ask while she moves toward the pile of boulders.
She responds with a series of grunts and groans as she pushes each rock and boulder out of the way, clearing a path.
The scene before me triggered memories of when Melissa and the other supervisors insisted we needed a male on our team for moments like this– but who needs a man when I have Theresa? She did bodybuilding in her free time, resulting in an impressive sleeper build. The men in this field tend to be extremely arrogant anyway, so I prefer it to be just Theresa and I– especially since we've formed a friendship outside of work.
"What are you thinking about?" Theresa asked, slowly walking back toward me, wiping the mud, dust, and debris from the rubble onto her jeans.
"Oh, nothing. Have you finished already?"
"Not exactly. I've cleared a path, but there's a series of chains and other obstacles," she said, already heading toward the car. "I'm going to grab some additional supplies. Stay here– I'll be right back."
With those words, paranoia creeps up my spine as she dissipates further into the night.
I attempted to calm my anxiety, reminding myself that I wasn't technically alone– that she'd be right back. But, as I looked around, there was nothing but darkness, swallowing everything around me.
"Breathe, Malia, Breathe." I whisper to myself. "I got this."
The fog thickened around me as the sky darkened, the stars sharpened, and the moon hung full above.
Without warning, the wind began to pick up and the leaves began to crunch.
I shut my eyes tight in disarray, completely unsettled by everything occurring at once around me.
"..ready." I heard faintly in the wind.
I whimper in fright.
Just then, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I whipped my head around to see what it was. Nothing. When I turned back, Theresa was standing there, smiling at me.
"Ready?"
I let out a blood-curdling scream.
"Whoa– hey, it's me! Calm down!" She yelled, startled by my reaction.
"You can't do that! Not out here!" I yelled back, louder.
"Gosh, I know you're afraid of the dark, but this is getting out of hand. You need therapy." She says. "Why are you in this line of work if you can't handle what comes with it? Your reactions are getting worse and worse."
I didn't respond back.
Something felt off about this place, but I knew anything I said would be dismissed as fear, so I decided to stay quiet.
Theresa pulled bolt cutters from the toolbag she'd brought from the trunk, cutting the chain blocking the entrance. She then produced a flashlight and clicked it on, light flooding the hollow of the downward cavern.
"C'mon," she said, gesturing for me to follow.
The farther in we went, the more unsettled I felt, as if we were being led into a lion's den.
Though Theresa was clearly leading the way, it felt as though we weren't alone– as if some unseen force were guiding her and I was following after.
"I think we are almost there, I can feel it."
After a few more moments of Theresa moving boulders, cutting through barriers, and forcing a path forward, we made it.
Clutching the equipment to my chest, I braced myself for what lay ahead, moving forward while every instinct was telling me to turn back.
The ruins opened into a vast yet suffocating chamber, its ancient stone walls rising unevenly, warped by time and damp with age. The air was cold and stale, pressing in on my lungs, thick with the scent of earth and decay. The flashlight's beam trembled across collapsed rubble and sloping floors, but shadows lingered where the light refused to settle. There was a presence in the silence– an unnatural stillness, as though the ruins were not merely abandoned, but watching, waiting.
Looking around, there were ancient markings everywhere.
I dared not go to the edges, as the light just didn't quite reach.
"Okay, Let's start getting set up." Theresa said, setting down her toolbag, reaching for the recording equipment in my hand.
Glancing around while Theresa set up the equipment and established connectivity between all of the devices, I saw shadows flickering in the darkness and dancing around the edges of the light.
"Ready?" She asked.
"As I'll ever be." I respond, jerking back to reality.
Theresa places the speaker on the ground beside the flashlight and passes me the camera.
"Let's get started."
I take the camera and point it at Theresa as we begin documenting the ruins.
"3..2..1.." I say, my finger hovering over the record button. "Action."
Click.
The recording begins, and so does Theresa.
Theresa straightened, her voice steady as she looked into the camera.
"Alright. This is Theresa Collins. We are currently inside the infamous Whisperfalls Ruins, approximately thirty feet below ground level. Initial access was blocked by chains and debris, which we've since cleared."
She glanced briefly at the darkness beyond the light, then back to the lens.
"There has been a noticeable temperature drop since we've entered, and the air feels.. heavier down here. No natural light source beyond the entrance."
She paused, listening, as if checking the silence itself.
"We've set up audio recording that is connected to the video, and a spirit box with external output through a speaker. If anything responds, it should be audible to both of us."
A small, controlled breath.
"We're going to begin a baseline sweep before attempting any direct communication."
Her eyes flicked to me, just for a moment.
"If there's anyone here who can hear us, we mean no harm. We're only here to document."
As Theresa continues, I follow.
For the next several minutes we are closely observing, examining, documenting, and speculating all of the markings covering every square inch of the place visible by the floodlight– drawings, symbols, hieroglyphs.
"It's time; let's see what this place has to say."
Theresa grabs the spirit box and flips the switch on. Feedback immediately swallows the silence followed by static, flooding the small speaker, managing to shake a few rocks loose from the ceiling.
I gripped the camera tighter, my knuckles whitening around the handle, one hand over my ear.
"Hello!" She begins, yelling out into the darkness. "Is there something you are trying to tell us?!"
There was a slight stir in the darkness, but no verbal response.
'Focus. Just focus.' I thought to myself. 'Don't let the shadows make you jump.'
Suddenly, a whisper seemed to thread itself through the white noise, faint, but audible. I froze. Did we just catch that?
Theresa tilted her head, listening. "Did you hear that?"
I blinked, trying to convince myself I imagined it. "Maybe.. maybe just interference?" My voice was tighter than I realized.
She gave me a look that was half amused, half warning. "Keep the camera steady."
Another burst of static, louder this time, shaped like a word—but it disappeared before I could analyze it. The beam of light from the ring light panel atop the camera caught a shadow twisting along the far wall, just beyond reach of the flashlight nestled on the ground. I just barely caught it on camera.
My stomach sank.
"I– I think it came from over there," I whispered, nodding toward the darkness.
Theresa walked toward me, hand hovering over the camera strap.
"Here. Take the spirit box– I'll handle the sweep back there."
We exchanged devices.
The weight of the spirit box in my hands felt heavier than it should have. Every instinct screamed at me to step back, to drop it, to run.
The static spiked again, a sharp hiss that made my teeth ache.
I swallowed, tightening my grip.
After adjusting her grip on the camera and properly tightening the strap, she gave a brief nod and moved into the shadows. My gaze instinctively followed after her, catching glimpses of her silhouette between beams of light and shadow. Each flicker of movement made me question if I was seeing Theresa– or something else mimicking her.
The static whispered again, almost conversational now, shaping a syllable or two before vanishing entirely.
I blinked. My chest was tight. My fingers were trembling– but I couldn't look away.
I kept my eyes trained on the shadows, the static from the spirit box pulsed intermittently, almost like a heartbeat of its own, and I couldn't tell if it was warning us– or reacting to us.
Minutes stretched. I counted them silently. Each second heavier than the last. My grip on the spirit box tightened until my knuckles ached, and I could feel the sweat beginning to slick my palms. Every instinct screamed at me to look away, to run– but I couldn't. Not while she was still there. The floodlight was all I had between me and whatever might be lurking beyond the edge of the beam.
Then movement. A shape. Theresa. She emerged from the blackness slowly, almost too carefully, like the darkness itself was resisting her. In her hands was something thin, fragile, held as if it might crumble at the slightest touch.
"A scroll," she said, voice low. "Ancient and heavily weathered. Look at the symbols." She angled it toward the light, camera capturing intricate lines and geometric shapes, ink faded to a dull sepia, curling at the edges. "I don't recognize this alphabet.. Proto-Script, maybe? Or some sort of cipher. It'll need careful study back at the house."
I swallowed hard, my pulse still hammering in my ears. "Alright.. let's head out," I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
Theresa moved first, cautiously stepping over jagged stones, the scroll cradled like a fragile life.
I turned off the spirit box, gathering everything.
Theresa recorded every angle, every flicker of shadow that darted at the edges of the flashlight beam I held. Every occurrence felt deliberate, as if the ruins themselves were testing us, slowing our progress.
Loose stones clinked underfoot, echoing through the hollow in a way that made the cavern feel alive, listening.
We reached the entrance at last, stepping into the cool, yet still foggy night air. Theresa held the camera steady, circling slowly to capture the exterior of the ruins– the jagged stone mouth, the moss-cloaked walls, the hollow darkness we'd just emerged from.
Theresa's presence seemed almost fragile, her small figure carrying the weight of the scroll like a talisman against whatever we had disturbed.
She stopped the recording.
Heavy, suffocating silence took over.
As we walked to the car, Theresa opened the driver's side door, starting the engine. The hum of the car engine was almost a relief as we packed the equipment– flashlight, spirit box, camera, speaker, and toolbag– each item handled carefully, almost ritualistically, as if improper handling might undo the day's careful work.
We both got into the car, simultaneously slamming the door closed, as if not wanting anything to get in and follow.
Theresa put on her head lights and 3-point turned out of there, driving carefully and silently.
Back at my house, the ruins seemed impossibly far away, yet the unease traveled with us.
We spread the equipment across the dining room table, packing everything up into their respective cases, except the camera. I piled everything neatly in a corner by the door for Theresa to grab on her way out in the morning.
I retrieved my laptop from the kitchen counter, where I had left it before going out. Carefully, I pulled the USB from the camera case and connected it to both the laptop and the camera, watching as the files began to load.
The camera footage glowed on the screen. The screen flickered with thumbnails of shadows, light beams, and moments I could barely remember in real time, showing shadows that stirred in ways they hadn't when we were there, subtle distortions in the beam that made me shift in my seat.
Theresa unrolled the scroll, laying it flat under the dining room light. I leaned closer, tracing the faded symbols. "These aren't just decorative," she said, "They're deliberate. Patterns. Instructions, maybe warnings."
I rubbed my temples, trying to focus. "Feels like they were meant to be read.. or followed. Or maybe.. survived." My voice faltered. The thought of what could have been left behind in the ruins made the room feel smaller, tighter.
We worked through the night, cross-referencing symbols, replaying the footage, pausing obsessively on shadows and static bursts from the spirit box. Every movement in the grainy light, every distorted hum from the speaker, made my skin crawl. The house was too quiet, too normal, the mundane walls of the dining room no match for the ancient darkness we'd been inside.
Time slipped. Each discovery raised more questions. Theresa traced a symbol again, her finger moving slowly over the ink. "See this sequence?" she asked. "It repeats.. but with variations. Someone.. Something– was leaving messages. And they didn't want just anyone to understand."
I leaned back, exhausted, staring at the flickering footage, the symbols, the remnants of shadows that didn't match the physical space. "We're only scratching the surface," I murmured. "And I'm not sure we're ready for what comes next."
The scroll, the ruins, the whispers from the spirit box– they were all there, waiting. And somehow, I knew–
This was only the beginning.