Speaker 1: Welcome listeners to Tales, a podcast that brings your short
stories to life. Do narrations, sound effects, and more. These
stories will be brought to you by different authors with
different writing styles, but with the same spooky vibes. So
lock your doors, check your closets, make certain there's nothing
lurking under your bed, and enjoy thereby.
Speaker 2: Uh uh. This is vera blackmore field notes incident designation,
red choir. This is just a record. I guess I'm
doing these to keep an archive for myself or maybe
for whoever finds it next. The town was called Greystone,
small college city, one of those in between places, just
far enough on the map that no one really knew
about it, but big enough to hide things in plain sight.
The melody started online. They showed up in short videos,
background noises in lime stream, that kind of thing, a
low humming sound off key, easy to ignore. Most people did,
some didn't, and that's when things started to change. I
got there too late to stop it from spreading. Ill
owned that I thought it was a simple mimic entity,
or maybe another curse signal. But this wasn't like anything
I've dealt with before. People weren't just acting strange they were,
I don't know, like they forgotten how to be themselves,
like something else had slipped inside the quiet spaces and
made a home there. And the worst part, no one noticed.
I decided to create a accordings now of my experience,
because well, I don't I don't want to forget. I
don't want to lose myself like these people almost did
in this town to anything. If you're hearing this, I
really hope you don't have to go do what I did.
But if you do, trust your instincts and listen carefully.
Speaker 1: I pulled into Graystone just before dusk, the kind of
town that had one main street, a university with too
many ivy and a local radio stations still pretending it
wasn't run out of someone's basement. The air smelled like
pine and cold earth. Christmas decorations were already up, string
lights tangled, and porch railings plastic snowmen grinning. Besides crack sidewalks.
Someone had gone all out with a ten foot inflatable
Santa in front of the post office. It looked normal.
That's what bothered me. I've learned not to trust quiet towns,
the ones with bookstores that doubled as tea spots where
people waved from their porches like they've known you for years,
the ones with just enough noise to cover what they
don't want you to hear. I parked a few blocks
from the campus and made my way to this little
cafe near the square, neutral territory, the kind of place
where no one will look twice at a stranger ordering
a black coffee and staying too long in the corner.
I passed a community board on the way in local
events Carolyn schedule, Christmas market flyers, and three missing persons
report penned with a single thumbsack, all girls college aged,
All disappeared within the last month. No headlines, no vigils,
just grainy photos and a number to call. I did
not like that. Inside the cafe was warm, crowded enough
to blend in. A few students were cramped out with
laptops and headphones, hunch over midterm notes, or pretended to be.
I got my coffee and picked a seat near the window.
Watched people drift pass outside, bundled in light jackets, earbudds in.
A few of them softly hum into themselves without realizing it.
I didn't catch the tune, but it had a shape
to it. I sat in the cafe for a while,
people watch him, let in the coffee go lukewarm, while
I scanned faces, body language, phone screens, anything that might
twitch in the wrong direction. But there was nothing. Everyone
looked normal and look I know better than to trust
that surface level sentity is easy to fake, especially in
towns like this, the ones that keep the grass cut,
the windows clean, and secrets quiet. Still, I'd expected more
when a case was first passed my way, flagged by
a contact who usually doesn't spook easy. I'd prepped for
something out of a nightmare. I thought I'd walk into
the thick of it, right into the middle of some
slow motion breakdown. Instead, I got soft indie music, herbal teas,
and college kids with thrifted sweaters and tired eyes. Graystone
didn't look haunted. It looked nauseatingly normal. But that's the thing,
isn't it? What is normal? Outside? The temperature had dropped,
A low fog was crawling up from the river, and
the lamp post flickered with that orange municipal buzz that
always made me feel like I was walking through a diorama.
On the corner near the university gate, I spotted another
flyer missing person number four different girl, different week. That
made four in the last thirty three days. Back in
the van, I scribbled some names down in the margin
of my field journal jot of the days where the
flyers had been posted, what direction the subjects had last
been seen headed. According to the small print, all four
had disappeared somewhere between the university and the river Walk,
and all of them were locals. No out of towners,
no transfer students, and you know what that was important.
I flipped back to the page i'd mark with a
red thread, a list of resonated locations pulled from a
series of old case studies. A town my grainstone wasn't
on it, but I knew better than to trust list.
The big stuff always started in small places. I was
halfway through circling a few likely hotspots when my phone
buzz block number, and so I didn't answer. Then it
buzzed again, and this time a voicemail draft. I listened,
just reading at first, then a voice, calm and familiar, Hey, Vera.
Speaker 3: It's me Samuel, Well Sammy, as even knowing we liked
to call me, I haven't heard from you. In a
couple of weeks. I heard you were working a new
k S And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to check in a pause, a little rustling,
like he's pacing or sitting outside.
Speaker 3: Things have been rough, trying to readjust the world in
a different light.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I haven't been back to Merrowick, not since it all happened.
I haven't seen my mom, I haven't been to my
sister's grave.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to hear a familiar voice. I guess,
be safe out there.
Speaker 1: I stared at the screen, then set the phone down
gently in the council beside me. Then I saw the
journal into the glove box, turned the key and pulled
out of the lot. There were three places I needed
to check before dark, and one of them was near
the water. By the time I reached the river walk,
the fog had thickened into a low hanging mist that
hugged the banks and blurred the railings. Water lapped gently
against the stone embarkment, slow rhythmetic. There were people still out, joggers, couples,
a kid on a scooter weaving through puddles. I parked
there a dead end lot, one of those gravel spaces
with a single street lamb buzz and above it, and
took the footpath down past the boat rentals. Instead of
stone steps, curved down to a lower trail closer to
the wharline, darker, half choked with vines. That was where
the trail narrowed, tucked between the river and the old
irrigation wall. It was also where three of the fourmists
and girls had last been seen. I moved slow, one
hand brushed the hilt of my cramb bit sheet at
my hip, not because I expected anything to jump out,
but because things like this never made noise come in.
They waited. There was something about rivers. They weren't evil exactly,
just old, deep things didn't just live in them, things remembered.
I follow trail until I found it. The place I
was looking for a clearin overgrown off the main path,
just far enough that it wasn't visible unless you were trying.
I only knew about it because of the maintenance map.
I pulled off the city's archive site last night, a tiny,
unlabeled inlet. The grass was flattened near the edge. Someone
had been here recently. No signs of struggle, no drag marks,
no blood, not even a bent branch. But that didn't
mean nothing happened here. I crouched down, letting my fingers
brush the flattened grass near the embarkment. It hadn't been trampled.
It had been an area that seemed to be used repeatedly.
Someone had been standing here on kneeland, not once, but
many times, always in the same place, and they were
alone when they did it. No footprints, no tire tracks,
just a slow wear in the earth, a patch of
bare dirt beneath the grass, and a few pieces of
broken stone in a near perfect arc facing the water,
like someone had tried to build a circle and gave
up halfway through. The river curved and closed at this
point you wouldn't notice unless you will look in. But
from where I stood, the bank's narrowed, forming a natural inlet,
and the drop off was sharp and sudden. One step
too far and you'd never come back up. I didn't
take that step. Instead, I let my eyes adjust and
I listened far off. Someone laughed, A jogger or a
trail walker passed it on the upper trail, maybe normal sounds.
I closed my eyes to dull some of my senses
so I can listen closer, the breeze of bird wings fluttering.
Something moved in the reeds. I stayed perfectly still, the
sound of ripples spreading across the water, and then there
it was something that fell out of place, like something
was crouched just below the surface, had paused mid breath,
waiting to sea. If I'd noticed it. It didn't feel hostile,
just curious. I stood backed out the way I came
and didn't turn my back on the water until the
clearman was behind me. This wasn't a sight of violence.
This was a place of invitation, and someone had accepted it.
By the time I got back to the van, the
fog had thickened. I peeled off my gloves and started
the engine. Heater grown into life. The dashboard clock blinked
six thirty one. I was about to pull away when
something caught my eye in the side mirror movement. A
man standing at the far end of the trail where
a river walk disappeared into trees, long coat, no umbrella,
just standing there like the rain that had started hadn't
touched him. I turned to look directly, but he was
already gone. I sat for another few minutes, watching the
spot waiting to see if the fog would spit him
back out, but it did. I shifted into drive and
headed towards the northern edge of town. There were a
few places on my list I wanted to check out
and maybe talked to some locals while I was at it.
One of them was a community rec center. That's where
one of the missing girls had worked while attending classes,
probably something part time to help with the ever climb intuition.
Each of the girls had held some kind of job,
but none of them worked together, and none at the
same place. Still, the rec center felt like a good
neck stop. Community rec center, backstairwell entrance smelled like mold
and pine cleaner. I didn't need an official invite. Small
towns like this always had bulletin boards and unlocked side
doors if you walk like you belonged. I knew from
my notes that Chloe Finch, one of the missing girls,
had worked here part time before she vanished. Her old
manager was a guy named Marlene Dorsey, forty something thin
in here, sneakers that squeaked when he walked. I caught
him on his smoke braik outside near the dumpsters. You
a reporter, he asked, squinting through the haze. Private investigator,
I said, flashing my license not a full lie. He
shrugged like that was worse but less annoying.
Speaker 4: Look, I already talked to the cops twice.
Speaker 1: Well, lucky for you, Like I said, I'm not a cop.
He took another drag.
Speaker 4: Yeah, then who sent you?
Speaker 1: I let the question hang. He didn't push. Tell me
about Chloe, I said. He leaned on the brick wall,
eyes tracking a shadow near the parking lot.
Speaker 4: Nice girl, too smart for this place. Always humming, though, God,
it drove me crazy.
Speaker 1: That made me pause humming.
Speaker 4: He nodded, yeah, same tune, over and over. Thought it
was just nerves or something she did to stay focused.
But then after she went missing, another girl started humming it.
Different girl, different shift. Said she didn't even know Chloe.
Speaker 1: So what happened to her? He shrugged again.
Speaker 4: Quite a week later, ooh, out of state. I didn't
ask questions.
Speaker 1: I pulled out my phone and tapped record, can you
hum the melody?
Speaker 4: Why?
Speaker 1: I need to know if it's the same one I've heard.
He didn't hum it. He just said, once.
Speaker 4: You hear it, it stays in your head.
Speaker 1: I ended the recording and slipped the phone into my coat.
As I turned to leave, Marlin called after me. Hey,
I stopped. If you find her, he looked away, voice low.
Speaker 4: We keep the locker how she left it. No one's
touched it. Couldn't bring ourselves.
Speaker 1: To the tunnel. Beneath Graystone Main Road was little more
than a shortcut, a cracked protestrian underpass painted with forgotten murals,
the kind of art projects commissioned by a well met
and mayor and long since weathered by time. I usually
avoided it, but the rain had picked up and I
didn't feel like circling the long way around. As I
stepped inside, the wind dropped away. My footsteps echoed against
the damp concrete, each one swallowed into silence the moment
it landed. At first, I thought I was alone. Then
I saw her. She was standing in the middle of
the tunnel, a young woman, maybe early twenties. Have back
to me. She wore a one denim jacket with a
handstitched patch that read Doom Bloom, and her hands hung
slack at her sides, fingers twitching as though tapping out
a rhythm only she could hear. I slowed evening, I
called gently. She didn't respond, didn't shift, didn't flinch, just
kept staring at the mural in front of her, or
rather past it. There was a stillness to her that
made the air feel colder than it should have, the
kind of stillness that doesn't belong to someone awake. And
then I heard it, a hum, low breathy, not coming
from her mouth exactly, but deep in her throat. It
resonated through her chest, and a weight that made my
own skin tighten. It was off.
Speaker 2: The pitch was wrong, not out of tune, but wrong
in a way I couldn't quite place.
Speaker 1: I moved in slowly, instincts prickling. Hey, I said, voice firman, now,
are you okay? Her head tilted just slightly, not towards me,
towards the wall, or maybe towards her own shadow. It
stretched strangely across the mural, the edges of a jerkin,
as if moving on delay. Not natural, not right. Her
mouth opened just a whisper. He's coming up from the deep.
I stopped walking. Who's coming? I ask? She smiled, and
a thin, uncanny stretch of her lips that never reached
her eyes. He needed a voice, she said, so I
gave him mine I backed up slowly. You need help,
I told her. I can take you somewhere safe, somewhere warm.
For the first time, she turned to face me. Her
eyes were wide and dark, pupil so dilated they almost
swallowed the color. She looked at me, but not into me,
more like someone looking through glass trying to remember what
their own face used to be. Then the humming stopped.
She blinked hard, as if wakened from a deep sleep.
Her eyes fluttered a blink, slow deliverate, as if something
deep beneath her skin had just let go. Her posture shifted,
softened all at once. Then the stiffness vanished, so did
the smile. When she looked up at me, it was
with warmth, not vacancy. Oh sorry, she said, let it
out a small laugh, brushing a shin of her hair
behind her ear, like someone wakened from a daydream. Was
was I in your way? I didn't answer right away,
just watched her. She seemed normal, now, centered, real, no
sign of the distant stare or the off killed her
hum Her voice held rhythm, her breath match her words. No,
not at all, I said. She gave me a polite
nod and stepped around me, heading up towards the street,
like she had somewhere to be, as if she hadn't
just been standing in the dark, humming a song that
didn't belong to her, waiting until her footsteps faded, then
turned back to the mural. Nothing unusual, no markens, no
shadows stretched too long, just chipped paint and water stains
and the faint smell of mildew rising from the cracks. Still,
the hummond hadn't come from nowhere. This was starting to
get interested in the missing girls, the path by the riverwalk,
the humming. It was all connected to something I couldn't
quite put my finger on. My pulse had picked up,
not out of fear but focus.
Speaker 2: I still wasn't sure what I was dealing with or
what had its claws in this town. But whatever just
happened to that girl, it was enough to get the
gears turning. The next few days pass and slow water
log stretches. The rain didn't let up.
Speaker 1: It wasn't heavy enough to shut the town down, just persistent,
like it was meant to wear you down by inches,
the kind of rain that seeped into your shoes, curled
under your collar, and made everything feel a little too soft.
People still went about their business, umbrellas overhead, jackets zipped tight,
but there was a kind of collective dragon, like something
unseen was leaning on their shoulders. And through it all,
the music never stopped. I heard it in bits and pieces,
from car radios rolling pass from open windows and students apartments,
from kids scrolling through their phones on their reels, and
tiktoks flickering across their screens. The melody was always in
the background, low, meandering, barely there, but it always caught
my attention, and once you noticed it, you couldn't unhear it.
I watched people humme it without realizing, the barista wiping
down counters, and at the gas station, humming softly while
pumping fuel. Two girls walking home from class sharing earbuds,
boat nodding at the same beat. It was slow, infectious,
and it was spreading. The morning the third day, I
saw the flyer, new faced, same layout, same desperate tone,
But this time I recognized her, the girl from the tunnel,
the one who stared through me like she wasn't entirely
in her own skin. Her name was Marabella Raised, and
according to the flyer, she'd last been seen just Two
hours after I passed her, a heavy knot settled behind
my ribs. I hadn't saved her, I hadn't even tried.
I chalked it up to odd behavior, filed it under
symptoms to monitor, and moved on. And now she was gone.
That night, I sat in a van with the windows
fogged and the heated tiken softly behind me. I'd circled
the river path three more times, eyes shop for any
signs of ritual marks, discarded objects or on tracks, anything
that didn't belong. But there was nothing. Whatever was happening
and was barely noticeable. I flipped my journal open and
started making connections. All missing girls local, familiar with the area.
All disappeared within five blocks of the river walk. The
rain began four days before the first girl went missing.
Each case followed a consistent emotional pattern, withdrawn, dazed, vanish,
and then there was a song. It was enough. I
picked up my phone. First call was to an old
archivist friend, someone I trusted, tell me when I was
grasping as shadows. Doctor Elias Rowe currently haunted the basement
of an old university archive in Tronheem. He picked up
on the second ring there you're.
Speaker 5: Only called it something's wrong.
Speaker 2: Well, that's because some thing ually is all right.
Speaker 5: Then what the flavor of nightmare are we dealing with today?
Speaker 1: I told him, quick kinnaical the way you report a
fever before the hallucination starts. The song, the weather, the
missing girls, the growing stillness in people's eyes. And for
a while he just listened. Then he said, sounds.
Speaker 4: Like a knook.
Speaker 5: Excuse me of what you know? The river spirit drowns people.
Old Nordic folklore, this was said to lure people in
by playing beautiful songs on the violin. There is some
variation Sweden, Norway, even Germany has a version Nixy nook
neck same.
Speaker 2: Bonds I rubbed my temple, except I don't think this
one's using a violin.
Speaker 5: No, but if it has learned to use a modertech
sun files penity loops, that would be robling still fairer.
There are stories, you know that spirits bound to Diggs
two rivers stock in place. They're cautionary tails, not case
of files.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know better than I do. What I
deal in is cautionary tales, and that's what's worrying me.
Speaker 1: After recall, I stayed in the van, listening to the
hiss of the rain on the roof. I could hear
faint music again. Someone nearby played it through their car
speaker as they pulled out of the parking lot, same tune.
I closed my eyes. If this was a knock, then
the price for its freedom had to be paid in pieces.
And Greystone, Greystone was all already halfway under. The storm
had turned sideways. Rain came in sheets, horizontal, hissing against
the windshield like static. My van was parked two blocks
from the riverwalk engine north wife was still. Every light
on the dash pulse red. The air smelled like copper
and ozone. I was wide awake because they were wide awake,
dozens of them, students, locals, A woman in the yellow
pajamas hunted to herself through her teeth, a man in pajamas, barefoot,
soaked to his knees. One by one, they walked past
my van, quiet, expressionless, all of them heading in the
same direction towards the water. I stepped out into a storm.
The cold slapped my face, but I didn't flinch. I
followed their procession, trillly behind them in the dark, boots
sliding on wet pavement. No one noticed me, no one spoke.
The sound was fate but constant, no source, just there
in the air itself, a lullaby written for sleepwalkers, and
the river was calling them home. By the time I
reached the bank, at least two dozen had already stepped
into the floodwaters, quietly, willingly, like the current was a cradle.
Then the song shifted. I felt it before I heard it.
Pressure behind the eyes, a pull in my chest, like
gravity had turned inward. The river's surface tremble, and then
he rose, not from the debts, from the center of it,
as if the water parted to allow him through.
Speaker 2: He looked almost human, beautiful in the way wild things
are beautiful, polished and sharp. He had pale skin, long,
dark hair slicked down over his shoulders, barefoot, draped in what.
Speaker 1: Looked like moss and velvet.
Speaker 2: But it was the eyes that gave him away, not
cruelized with something worse.
Speaker 1: Lonely, old, so old it made my teeth ache. He
locked eyes with me, and for the first time the
melody stopped. Everything went still, and then, in a voice
so soft and barely touched the.
Speaker 4: Air, do you stop me?
Speaker 1: My heart slammed against my ribs. His voice was velvet
and ruined.
Speaker 4: They forgotten me for centuries. I sing for them, gave
them dreams, secrets, beauty.
Speaker 1: But now he gestured towards the crowd. The phones clutched
in soak hands, still recording.
Speaker 4: Now they worshiped these little boxes, they sing to themselves.
Speaker 1: He tilted his head, birdlike, curious.
Speaker 4: All I wanted was to be remembered, to be loved again?
Is that so wrong?
Speaker 1: I didn't answer, because this was the moment, the part
with someone less tired, less experienced, might have believed him.
He took a step closer. The water moved with him,
not around him, but with him.
Speaker 4: You see them, you know how lost they are. I
could give them peace purpose. You don't have to fight me.
Speaker 1: I felt the weight of his gaze. Try to nest
in my mind. It would have been easy to nod,
to surrender, but I didn't come here for ease. I
reached into my pocket and wrapped my hand around the
brass fork. It was old, older than most of the tools.
I carried, a gift from a Romanian monk i'd work
with during the Tuli Chair Renaissance case. It hummed at
four hundred and thirty two hertz, a natural ground in tone,
said to clear negative interference, used to dispel emotional fog,
even ward off possession. I'd seen it stop a child
mid trans ones. I prayed it had one more miracle left.
I struck it hard against my belt buckle. The vibration
split the air like a crack of thunder. The nook flinched,
so did the crowd. The song wavered, thinned, like a
thread pulled too tight. This, sir, is not love, I said,
holding the fork up like a ward. This looks to
me like control. He looked wounded, then a flicker of rage.
The calm cracked just for a second. The air smelled
like rot.
Speaker 4: They came to me, they chose the song.
Speaker 5: I didn't drag them.
Speaker 2: And when they wake, when they drown, when they disappear,
is that still a choice?
Speaker 1: Silence? Then he sank like he'd never been there at all.
The river calmed, the melody faded. People blinked like they've
been underwater. No pun intended, some collapse, others simply turned
and walked away. Days soaken, wet phone still recorded, with
no memory of why. I sat on the edge of
the bank and let the tune and fork come until
it dulled in my palm. It wasn't over, but the
current had turned. I pulled who I could from the current,
kept some from going under. Sat with one girl until
the song left her lips and the light returned to
her eyes. But the truth is the night was chaotic.
I decided to run a hotel room for the night
to get out of my soak clothes, wet boots, and
needed a strong drink. I ordered a bottle of something
cheap and mean from the night clerk took the longest
shower of my life and didn't speak to a single
soul until sunrise. After that, I stuck around the next morning.
The rain stopped, but the town didn't wake up whole.
Seventeen people had drowned that night, most of them students.
Their bodies were found tangled in reeds or washed up
along the river's edge like broken instruments, no signs of
a struggle, just water logged silence. There'd be no easy
explanation for it, not one the world would accept. I
did stay to make sure he went back to sleep.
The knock. Whatever he was, however old, I knew he
hadn't died, just retreated, slipped beneath the surface, like miss
curling into a bottle. On my last day in Greystone,
I walked down to the river. It was calmer, now
still high, still swollen, but quiet. The sky was clearing
in places. I stood there for a long while, watching
the way the sunlight fractured the water. Then I reached
into my coat pocket and pulled out a small silver coin,
a relic i'd kept for years, worn but still gleaming.
I flicked it into the river with a whisper, too
sore for anyone else to hear. And besides the roots
of a half flooded willow, I left a tiny wooden horse,
hand carved smooth by years, in my bag, a gester.
Not forgiveness, not peace, but understanding, because I knew loneliness.
I knew what it meant to be forgotten, to be
replaced by noise and novelty, to watch the world change
and wonder if it would still have a place for
you when it was done. No, I wouldn't drown anyone
for it, but I couldn't hate him for wanting more.
As I turned to leave, I promised the wind that
I'd be back, not often, not with fan fear, just
a coin now, and then maybe another horse, just so
he wouldn't forget that someone remembered, and sometimes even monsters
get lonely. This episode of Tales was written by En
Varro narrated by Yours Truly and Brody Amazing. If you
like what you've listened to, leave this podcast a five
star review and don't forget to hit that follow button. Also,
if you will like your story on the podcast, you
can email me or message me on my social media.
That information can be found in a listener's notes. As always,
thanks for listening and remember even forgotten God's remember how
to sing, Stay safe, tail weavers, and don't linger too
long by the river
Speaker 2: Fo