The Quiet People

1.

          Before the neighborhood houses turned into abandoned shelters for stray cats, we had the brightest and most beautiful street in the whole city. It had the most flowerbeds, the most shared street festivities, the friendliest neighbors. No one cared what was behind closed doors. Beautiful masks for the public were more important. The fact that, behind those doors, some quietly hated each other was completely invisible to those on the outside, quietly watching.

          And if you suddenly start to think that the world is built on goodness�"wipe your glasses or use some eye drops. Otherwise, you'll remain, like the third, an unwitting witness to terrible events.

          My aunt’s house, on the edge of the street, was one of those places where the inhabitants kept to themselves. They didn’t indulge in gossip, too busy with their own lives. They watched the world go by from their porch but didn’t engage. We paid no attention to Mrs. Lerman’s threats about throwing gasoline on Harry, her neighbor on the right, for walking his Doberman near her garden. Once, Steve Carter, the local electrician, had been fixing our sockets when he casually remarked that if he had a couple more scandals, he’d hang his wife from a high-voltage wire, just like he’d seen on the news. And Mr. Brooks, one night, threatened to make a scarecrow out of the neighborhood children and hang them on his cherry tree, just to stop them from climbing others' trees.

          Yes, our neighbors said a lot of things, but otherwise, they were quiet people.

          Martha Walsh was the quietest of them all. She worked as an elementary school teacher and lived in a small house right in the middle of the street�"right at the epicenter of all the threats and curses that passed from one end to the other. Only occasionally were these angry words punctuated by masked greetings and smiles so sweet they made you sick. She was, and what am I saying, she still is, a very vulnerable person�"kind, sympathetic. She was the only one who didn’t want to hurt anyone and always defended the children’s rights to a peaceful childhood to Mr. Brooks. And she loved tea parties.

          I remember seeing her on her porch in the afternoon sun, holding a cup of tea, as she gently scolded the children who had dared to climb her fence. The sunlight caught the strands of gray in her hair, and for a moment, it was as if the whole street paused�"waiting for the quiet calm that she brought to this otherwise chaotic neighborhood. It wasn’t just the tea she loved; it was the ritual of calm that she seemed to bring wherever she went. In her eyes, there was a softness, an openness to others that was rare. She would sit with her hands folded delicately in her lap, listening to the neighbors as they ranted, offering them little more than a quiet nod or a whispered encouragement.

          And yet, despite her gentle nature, Martha always carried a certain sadness in her gaze, as though she’d witnessed too much and forgiven too easily. She was a survivor, but the years had taken their toll, and the mask she wore in public was so well-fitted that none of us could see the cracks beneath it. I’ve often wondered, looking back, if anyone ever really saw her�"beyond the tea parties, beyond the schoolteacher, beyond the one who always tried to make peace. Did anyone ever notice the way her hands would tremble when she thought no one was watching? Or how her smile never quite reached her eyes?

          But then again, maybe no one would have understood, even if they did see it.

          And it all started when children began to go missing on the street. The police searched, promised to find them, suggested maybe they were just hiding, looked for reasons in family problems. But there were no results. Even Mr. Brooks, at times remembering the tomboys who used to climb his cherry tree, berated himself for being so rude to them.

          After the tenth child went missing�"and there were only twelve children living on our street at the time, excluding Rebecca’s infant - the police began searching all the houses. Parents, besieging the police station, hoped the children were hiding at one of their friends' houses. When only infant Sarah remained on the streets, the routine inspections began in full force.

          But Martha’s house was left unexamined. She had gone to visit her parents in another state for a few days, and no one thought to include her. A short, thin woman with long brown hair, always neatly braided, didn’t raise any suspicions. What could she do? What could a person like her be hiding?

          When Martha returned home, a full month had passed since the disappearance of her first child, Alec Riley. The street was quiet, the sun beginning to set, and Harry, as usual, was walking his Doberman. He couldn’t help but notice that Martha was coming home with a large cake and a Lego set that was clearly labeled with “For ages 12 to 15” on the box. Alec had been 13. Harry could have at least glanced at her, perhaps acknowledging the oddity of the situation. But no. He simply muttered a distracted greeting, his eyes glued to his phone as he scrolled through social media.

          “Here I am back, my tea leaves!” Martha chirped loudly, her voice cutting through the air as she passed by him.

          Harry’s Doberman raised his ears, momentarily alerted by her voice. But when no other sounds followed, he returned to his task�"sniffing around Mrs. Lerman’s rose bush.

          It was Gwen who had shown me. Out of all the missing children, she was the one I’d known best. When she went missing a week later, I started having trouble sleeping. For the fifth night in a row, I couldn’t fall asleep before midnight. I’d been through this once before. The doctor had prescribed a course of sedatives for the stress of school, but after Billy got through to me, the restless feeling faded. It wasn’t really relevant, though.

          The feeling that something was wrong�"it’s the most unpleasant sensation of all. Behind it lurk even more unsettling feelings: a gnawing sense of unease, a creeping suspicion, a deep fear that something is off. Maybe this is some evolutionary trait we’ve inherited, a lingering instinct to sense danger before it arrives. After all, our ancestors had to be aware of danger at a distance, always prepared to flee from a predator. But even then, it was easier. A beast is easy to label as a beast the moment you see it. But when a person does the same?

          That’s different.

          When a person looks you in the eye with that calmness, that impenetrable gaze, you can’t read it. You can’t tell if he’s a friend or foe. His eyes don’t give away the truth like an animal’s would. That look, so human, so unnervingly ambiguous�"it’s something you can’t escape. And for a moment, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was precisely that - humanity - that made it all the more terrifying.

          I’ve always had a connection to things beyond the living. Souls, ghosts�"whatever you want to call them. It's something I’ve never spoken of openly, except to the children in the neighborhood. They were always the ones who asked the questions, their curious minds hungry for the stories I could tell. And I had plenty to share.

          When I came to visit my aunt, they would crowd around me, eager to hear about my encounters with the beyond. To them, I was the one who had seen things they could barely imagine. But to the rest of the world, I was just an ordinary ophthalmologist. The one who checked their vision and gave them new glasses. No one knew that beneath my calm, professional exterior, I had experienced things that could make even the bravest tremble.

          They never asked about my work outside the clinic, and I never told them. Why should I? It wasn’t something that could be explained easily. It was a part of me, something I couldn’t rid myself of even if I wanted to. And, truth be told, I didn’t want to. What I had seen, felt, and experienced in those quiet moments with the souls of the departed... well, that was mine. That was something that, for me, explained more about the world than anything else.

          But to the world, I was just an ophthalmologist�"someone who helped people see better.

2.

          I couldn’t exactly say what was wrong, but the feeling kept growing stronger�"like the whole street was somehow soaked in a strange, unpleasant smell. It lingered in the air, just out of reach, like something was wrong but couldn’t quite be identified. Should I tell anyone? Definitely not. What life has taught me is that there’s always a word for the things we don’t understand, for things that stray too far from our grasp. That word is “fantasy.” It’s an easy label, one that was invented long ago, so that people could feel better about the things they couldn’t explain.

          The truth is, we are so well-constructed, so neatly packaged, that we are terrified of anything that challenges our neat little boxes. We’re afraid of what we cannot see, what we cannot touch, what we cannot wrap our minds around. And so we use words like “fantasy” to shut the door on the things that frighten us.

          I learned this lesson the hard way. A few years back, I had written something on social media about the death of a guard at Seth Martin’s mansion, claiming that it had been caused by a ghost. Needless to say, I was labeled a fantasist. People laughed it off, dismissed it as delusion, or, worse yet, a cry for attention. Maybe it was all in my head. I had no way of proving it, after all. That was the first and last time I ever made such a post, and the first and last time I used social media. People don’t want to confront anything that doesn’t fit into their neatly organized worldview. The things they can’t understand, the things that might shatter their illusion of a perfect world�"they ignore. They can’t even acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, there’s more to the world than they want to see.

          We’ve all been told about the dangers that lurk in the dark, right? It’s a comforting thought, isn't it? That there’s something bad waiting for us, something to be afraid of when the lights go out. But, honestly, for most people, in the vast majority of cases, it’s just a dark room. The furniture you know so well, the walls you’ve brushed your hands against for years. And if you don’t let your imagination wander, if you just focus on the faint light from the door�"well, then you’re fine. Maybe you’ll trip, maybe you'll fall, but you'll make it out.

          But there’s a minority, a very small number of people, who refuse to be silenced by that fear. We see beyond the furniture. We know the truth�"that sometimes, in the dark, it’s not just the furniture that’s there. There are others too. Silent, waiting. Watching.

          That’s how it was with Gwen. She was a well-behaved girl�"always standing outside, never crossing the threshold of a stranger’s house. She didn’t intrude; she just whined. Every night, she’d stand under the window, her soft cry cutting through the silence.

          Luckily, I was just visiting my aunt at the time, so I could wait it out, counting down the days until I could return to my freshly renovated apartment, away from all the strange noises. But Gwen wasn’t just persistent in her nightly whines�"no, she had another quality, a relentless drive. I ignored her for a while, but as the nights went on, her cries grew louder, angrier, until one night she was pounding on the windows. Every window. All at once. It turned that two-story mansion into a bell tower, with the echoes reverberating through the walls and rattling my nerves. It became unbearable.

          By the second night, I gave up. I couldn’t take it anymore. Something about the sound, the insistence of it, made my skin crawl. And that's when I realized�"something more was at play here. Something beyond my understanding.

          The strange feeling had been with me for days, but it wasn’t until I returned home that I realized just how deep it ran. It wasn’t just the smell of something faintly rotten or the sensation of being watched�"it was the figures. The figures of children, small and fleeting, like shadows that weren’t quite shadows. They appeared at the edges of my vision, half-formed and indistinct, never fully solid, but always there, hanging in the periphery.

          The figures had started to appear more frequently, their presence undeniable, though always at the edges of my vision, never fully in my line of sight. At first, I dismissed them as tricks of the light or mere exhaustion�"after all, I was an ophthalmologist, I should have known better than to let my mind play tricks on me. But these figures were different. They weren’t shadows or hallucinations. They were something else.

          It wasn’t until one evening, when I was walking down the street to my aunt’s house, that I truly understood what I was seeing. The streetlamps flickered, casting long, wavering shadows across the sidewalk. And there they were�"figures, children, standing by the fences, or just at the edge of the trees, barely visible. At first, I didn’t recognize them, but something about their presence struck a chord deep within me.

          They were children�"no older than twelve, their features blurred and indistinct, as if they were caught between this world and another. But the more I looked, the more I realized who they were. Gwen, the little girl who had disappeared first. Alec Riley, the boy who had vanished not long after. I recognized them, or at least the faint outlines of them, the way they had looked when I’d last seen them in the neighborhood. But these figures were not exactly the children I remembered. Their faces were drawn, hollowed out, as though time had not been kind to them. And their eyes�"those eyes�"were dark and empty, as if they held none of the light they once had.

          But what struck me most was the way they behaved. They didn’t come to me, didn’t try to speak. They just stood there, quiet, watching, as if unsure whether they should make contact or remain hidden. It was as though they were too shy to approach, too hesitant to be seen, even though I was the only one who noticed them. I felt their gaze, their longing to be recognized, but it was a quiet, almost fearful longing, as if they feared being dismissed again.

          I paused in the street, my heart racing, trying to steady my breath. The figures didn’t move closer, but I could feel them watching me, waiting. I knew them. I knew them, and yet, I didn’t know what to do with this knowledge. They were the missing children�"the ones who had disappeared without a trace. I had seen them on posters, heard their names in hushed conversations, but here, in this moment, I saw them again, standing just outside my reach.

          I was the only one who could see them. That much was clear. The others on the street walked past, oblivious, just as they always had, not a single glance in the direction of the figures. I was trapped in this strange, silent exchange, these children just beyond my grasp, too far to touch, too shy to come closer. I wanted to call out to them, to ask them what had happened, to tell them that I hadn’t forgotten them. But something held me back, a nagging sense that, no matter how much I reached out, it wouldn’t be enough. They were not ready to speak. Not yet.

          And so, I kept walking, feeling their eyes on me, feeling the weight of their unspoken message pressing down on me. I couldn’t help them, not yet. They needed to find their own way back, to cross that threshold between the living and the dead. But I could feel their presence, like a whisper in the air, a reminder that they were still out there, lost but not gone.

          But the strangest part was how they never seemed to grow any closer. Even when I stood still and waited for them, they stayed just far enough away, hiding in the shadows of the trees, lingering at the corners of my vision. And I realized then�"these children were shy. They were waiting for something. Perhaps they needed someone to make the first move, to acknowledge them, to give them permission to step forward.

          I couldn’t help but feel that they were waiting for me to give them that permission, to make them real again, to say their names and bring them back from the place where they had been lost. But I was afraid�"afraid of what it might mean, afraid of what they might want from me if I reached out too far. So, I walked away, my mind full of questions and a strange, lingering sorrow, knowing that these children, these lost souls, were not quite ready to leave their shadows behind. Not yet.

3.

          That evening, as I sat in my living room, a quiet unease settled over me. The dim light from the lamp by the window flickered intermittently, casting long shadows across the room. I tried to distract myself, but it was impossible to ignore the strange sense of being watched. It had been happening more often lately�"those figures in the street, the children who had gone missing�"but now, it felt as if they were much closer.

          I sat by the window, sipping tea, trying to steady my nerves, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to happen. That was when I heard it�"soft at first, like a distant breeze, but growing louder. A whisper. Faint, like the rustling of leaves, but unmistakable.

          “Help us.”

          I froze, my cup halfway to my lips. My heart pounded in my chest as the whisper grew clearer, more insistent. It was coming from the direction of the hallway, just beyond the door.

          “Help us. We need you.”

          The voice was unmistakably childlike, but it wasn’t one voice�"it was many, overlapping, as if a chorus of children were speaking at once. The room felt colder, the air thicker, as if a heavy weight was pressing down on me. I set the cup down on the table with trembling hands and stood up slowly. The whispers were becoming more distinct now, clearer with each passing second.

          I walked cautiously down the hallway, my heart racing. The whispers followed me, drawing me toward the source, but I couldn’t quite place where they were coming from. It was as though they were everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I reached the doorway to the small room at the back of the house, the one that overlooked the garden. It was there that the whispers seemed to gather, swelling like a tide in my ears.

          “Please...”

          I hesitated at the door. Should I open it? Was this real, or had my mind simply gone too far this time? The last thing I wanted was to convince myself that I had somehow crossed a line between sanity and madness. But the whispers were not something I could ignore. They felt urgent, real, as though they came from a place just beyond the veil of what was visible.

          I took a deep breath and opened the door.

          The room was empty, just as I had left it, save for the dim light from the lamp and the shadows playing on the walls. But as I stepped further inside, I felt it�"the presence. It was there, just beyond my perception, in the corners, in the air, in the very fabric of the room itself. And there, in the farthest corner, just barely visible in the dim light, stood a figure. It was a child, a girl, her face pale and indistinct, as if caught between two worlds. She didn’t move, just stood there, watching me with wide, dark eyes.

          For a moment, I couldn’t move. Her eyes were so familiar�"those were the eyes of a child I had known, one of the missing ones, but I couldn’t quite place her name. She stepped forward, her small feet making no sound on the wooden floor, and though she didn’t speak, I could hear her whispering to me in my mind.

          “We’re here. We’re waiting. Come, find us.”

          I felt a cold chill wash over me, and I instinctively took a step back. I wanted to scream, to run, but the figure�"this child�"held me in place. Her presence was a pull, an irresistible force that tugged at my very core, urging me to reach out. But I couldn’t. My mind was screaming at me to wake up, to stop. This wasn’t right.

          The whispers grew louder, more urgent, almost frantic. I couldn’t tell if it was the child speaking or if the others had joined in, but the chorus of voices wrapped around me, filling my ears, my mind.

          “Help us.”

          “Find us.”

          The child took another step toward me, and I felt the air grow colder still. I wanted to reach for her, to touch her, to tell her I could help, that I was the one she was waiting for. But I was frozen, trapped in this moment, caught between what I knew and what I feared.

          The figure paused in front of me, her face just a breath away from mine. For a fleeting second, her eyes�"those familiar, sad eyes�"softened. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no sound came.

          And then, just as suddenly as she had appeared, she was gone. The whispers faded into the silence of the room. The coldness lifted, and the air returned to normal. I was left standing there, breathless, heart racing, unsure of what had just happened.

          Had the children finally decided to make contact? Or had I simply imagined it all? But deep down, I knew the truth�"they were here. They had reached out. And something inside me told me that they were waiting for me to act, to do something�"to bring them back. But the question was, how?

          “What do you want?” I asked, voice shaking despite myself, as I sprinted out of the house the moment the clock struck half past one in the morning. Gwen had already started her orchestra, her tapping on the windows echoing down the street.

          She was silent at first, almost like she hadn’t expected me to respond. Maybe she was surprised, or maybe she didn’t know if she should trust me. But she stood there, waiting.

          “If you're here, talk to me,” I demanded, trying to add a bit of arrogance and confidence to my voice. But it was one thing to see a silhouette in the shadows, to hear a distant whisper, and quite another to look into pale, watery eyes covered in a milky film.

          Gwen’s thin, ghostly figure flickered like a shadow. She pointed toward Martha’s house and coughed�"a sound that barely reached my ears. Her voice, frail and thin, sent a shiver down my spine, like a character from some long-forgotten horror film suddenly staring directly at you through the screen.

          “There's Auntie,” she said, her voice as brittle as glass.

          “So?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady despite the dread creeping up my spine.

          “Auntie’s bad,” she whispered, her words hanging in the air like a forgotten warning.

        “And what am I supposed to do about it? I’m not the police. I can’t prove anything,” I snapped, more out of frustration than anything else.

          Then came the voices. Not Gwen’s voice this time, but something deeper, more menacing. “She killed us all, you stupid cow!” The words were harsh and full of anger, clearly not coming from the girl in front of me, but from a boy.

          I flinched, heart racing. I hadn’t been ready for that.

     “Now stop expressing yourself like that in the presence of your elders,” came another voice, older, lower than the others. It felt more substantial, more grounded. “I’m Anna Robertson.”

          I blinked. Who was she? But before I could ask, Gwen, still there but now distant, looked at me with wide, lost eyes.

          “Nice to meet you, Anna,” I said, my voice shaky. “But… why are you here?”

          “Help us, please, miss,” Anna’s voice was desperate now, the words coming out quickly, as if the very act of speaking was a release they had all been waiting for. “We can’t do anything to her until someone knows what she’s done. That’s what a man told us when we were already dead. He told us someone could help. Someone like you. That’s why we came to you. We tried for two weeks to get your attention, tried calling to you, knocking on windows. Then Alec had the idea… and you heard us. You’re going to help us, right? It’s really creepy in that house.”

          No one had ever spoken to me like that. No one had ever put such hope in me before, and the weight of it almost made me hesitate. For a moment, I felt important. For the first time, I felt needed. And yet, there was a lingering guilt�"how many times had I dismissed them before, pretending I couldn’t hear? It felt wrong to have ignored them for so long.

          “I’ll help,” I said, more to myself than to them, but the words were out there now. “I’ll help. I just need to figure out how we’re going to do it.”

          “Okay,” Gwen said, as if she had been waiting for that. She sat down on the lawn, the other children slowly gathering around her, their attention on a bush of daisies in front of her. They were as silent as shadows, only their eyes�"wide, anxious�"speaking for them.

          I looked at them. Their faces were so pale, so distant, but there was something in their gaze�"a sort of quiet pleading.

          For some reason, the right idea never comes when you need it the most. I ran through options in my mind, every obscure ritual I’d seen in movies or read about in some forgotten corner of the internet. None of it fit. None of it felt right.

          I had no answers. Not yet.

          Then, as I stood there, a sudden beep broke the stillness. A text message.

          Of course. A damn promotional text.

          But then the beep came again.

          I pulled my phone from my pocket, already irritated, but when I saw the message, I froze.

          It had a strange phone number: «88#459872#»#654?%#.,!»*?;#.#.

‘Obsession. Notebook. Stenographer.’

          I stared at the screen for a moment, my thoughts reeling. I could feel the pulse of something deep inside, as if the words had meaning�"meaning that I couldn’t quite grasp.

          “Great idea,” I muttered, as a thought began to crystallize.

          Gwen, still sitting on the lawn, turned her head slightly.           “Did you think of something?” Her voice was filled with quiet curiosity, though it was clear she’d been watching me this whole time.

          “Which one of you has good handwriting?” I asked abruptly, my mind clicking into place.

          “Me,” came Alec’s voice from the back. It sounded faint, but certain.

          “Then let’s go inside,” I said, feeling the strange urgency building inside me. But the moment I stepped toward the door, I froze. They didn’t need to go inside. They were already here.

          I looked around, my pulse quickening. The house felt different now�"like it was full, not of just the living, but of something much older. They had followed me inside. They were already here, watching.

          We didn’t need to go anywhere. We just needed to write.

“Mom, Miss Walsh kidnapped me and the other kids. She’s not nice. She’s evil. She’s doing something to us, giving us weird tea. I don't know what it is, but it’s making us feel strange. She’s keeping us in her house. Stop her”

4.

          The next morning, Alec's mom found the note on the doorstep, crumpled and hastily written, and her heart sank. She didn’t hesitate for a moment. The fear and confusion in her son’s handwriting were unmistakable. Without wasting another second, she grabbed the note and rushed to the police station. The gravity of the situation was clear, and the moment she entered, the room felt charged with an intensity she hadn’t expected. As she called for help, she learned that the FBI was already being alerted to the case.

          The kettle was still boiling as police officers stormed into Martha Walsh's house. The house was eerily quiet, as though it had been waiting for them. The sight that awaited them was grotesque. The mummified bodies of the missing children were arranged with chilling precision, each one posed as though frozen in time�"some sitting, some lying down, all placed carefully around the house, as if part of some twisted collection. The officers were grim-faced as they began to remove the children’s mummies, treating each discovery with the reverence of a crime scene investigator, though the horror of the discovery lingered in their eyes.

          Meanwhile, parents, still clinging to the hope that their children would be found, were instructed to remain in their homes. Their worry, already sharp, now turned into something else�"something darker, something more desperate. The phone lines buzzed, the air thick with the unspoken question: How could this have happened?

          The sheriff, normally a pillar of authority in the town, looked exhausted as he faced the cameras. The media swarm was inevitable, and when the reporters caught him in the midst of the scene, the questions began to pour in. One reporter, clearly a bit too casual for the weight of the situation, asked for a glass of whiskey without ice during a commercial break. The sheriff, looking unfazed, gave no answer.

          “No comment,” he said, his eyes not meeting the camera.

          But later, after the crime scene had been sealed, after the evidence had been carefully gathered and cataloged, the sheriff emerged again. This time, he had an official statement. His voice was thick, almost reluctant, as he spoke to the gathered press.

          “All of the children who went missing last month were victimized by schoolteacher Martha Walsh. Her mental health and sanity will be tested by doctors. The composition of Ms. Walsh’s tea is still unknown, but we can say with certainty that this is what caused the deaths of all the victims.”

          A hushed murmur spread through the crowd. The sheriff continued, his tone growing graver with each word.

          “The children were mummified in natural poses. They were used as stands for tea sets and as places to drape outerwear. The number of tea bags and boxes of cookies we found in her possession… I’ve never seen anything like it. Nor have I ever seen such an array of mummified remains.”

          The silence in the room was palpable, broken only by the frantic scribbling of reporters, desperate to capture every detail. But no one could quite grasp the magnitude of what had been uncovered. No one could yet imagine the true horror of what had been going on behind those walls. And no one, not even the sheriff, seemed ready to understand the full extent of the nightmare Martha Walsh had created.

          And as I looked out the window of the police car, where Martha Walsh was sitting, my breath caught in my throat. Gwen and her friends, the children she had once tortured, were sitting next to her. 

          Martha, handcuffed and slumped in the backseat, was oblivious to the presence of the children beside her. Her eyes darted nervously around, her breathing shallow and erratic. But the kids�"silent, patient, and terrifying�"were not paying attention to her. Instead, their ghostly hands were slowly reaching toward her.

          It was then that I saw it�"the slow, deliberate movement of their hands. They were closing in on her neck. The children weren’t just sitting there, watching. No. They were doing something far darker. Gwen’s hand, cold and unyielding, wrapped around Martha’s throat.

          Martha's eyes widened as the grip tightened. She gasped, struggling, but her breath was already being cut off, her body seizing in panic. The officers outside didn’t see it, didn’t hear it�"none of them could understand what was happening in that car. But I saw it clearly. The children were strangling her. They weren’t just spirits anymore; they were enacting their revenge in the most visceral way imaginable.

          Gwen’s tiny fingers tightened like a vice around Martha’s neck. The other children, Alec, and the others, leaned in, their faces twisted with a mixture of sorrow and fury. Their hands joined in, ghostly fingers wrapping around the woman’s throat, squeezing the life out of her. It wasn’t just physical�"it was their energy, their hatred, their unfulfilled lives reaching out, wrapping around her throat like a suffocating coil.

          Martha’s face contorted in terror as she clawed at her neck, her breaths coming in desperate gasps. But it was no use. The children were far stronger than she could ever have anticipated, their wrath more powerful than any living person could imagine. With each passing second, the life drained from her, her body trembling violently as she fought for air that would never come.

          Outside, the sirens blared, the officers were still rushing around, unaware of the true horror unfolding inside that car. But I knew. I could see it in their faces�"the children were not just victims anymore. They were the executioners. They had taken control of their fate, and now they were the ones delivering judgment.

          The moment Martha's body went limp, her eyes wide and glassy, the children's hands withdrew, their job done. The car was eerily still, the silence hanging heavy in the air. 

          I turned on the news tonight, something I've never done before.

          "...that serial killer Martha Walsh died suddenly on the way to the police station from asphyxiation. Stella Reid, Channel 8."

Reviews

[Jeyanthi]

Oh my god...
I prefer to stay in fantasy world... but that's rightly said world is not fantasy it's where horror too takes place...
Recently I wonder about d factors...
Only being delusional and mental illness can bring such things to do... because I was there I was delusional, uppression, started beliving superficial powers ... I was at last stage... I'm lucky and grateful for what am now for my loved one...

Your writing suitable for this generations... life stack up (like program in data structure ).. the face value and place are meant to be
.
I always pity delusional ppl, because I know how much scary it is, they can't differentiate reality and illusion ...

[Yana Larson]

Thank you for your comment. I hope you are alright. Well, my character is not delusional. She is a medium

[Jeyanthi]

Not the main character...
Am saying the opposite one...
Yes but the Medium person ...
(I too seen a movie 🎬 that used medium... where phone is used as a medium)...

[Jeyanthi]

Yes am fine 🙂 👍 👌..
Thanks for asking 🙂 ☺️