The town had no name anymore. At least, not one anyone dared speak. Names carried meaning, and meaning had no place here—not since the void had come. It had appeared one night without fanfare, a silent absence that devoured the far end of Main Street. There had been no storm, no explosion, no heralding of its arrival. One moment, the world was as it had always been, and the next, there was the void: a stretch of blackness that swallowed all it touched.
At first, people tried to explain it. Scientists arrived in vans with blinking equipment, setting up barriers and monitoring stations. They worked tirelessly, staring into the void with machines that gave no answers. Then, one by one, they vanished. Their camps remained, their equipment buzzing and whirring, but the people were gone. Some believed they had entered the darkness; others whispered that the void had reached out and taken them.
The town grew quieter after that. No one else came. Those who stayed learned to avoid the void, to walk faster and speak softer, as if afraid their words might stir it. The edges of the darkness seemed to ripple sometimes, as though it was listening. Children who once played in the streets now stared out windows with wide, vacant eyes. It wasn’t the kind of fear that made you scream; it was the kind that hollowed you out from the inside, replacing your thoughts with silence.
Harold, the town’s grocer, was the first to break. He began muttering to himself as he stocked shelves, his eyes flicking constantly toward the void at the end of the street. One evening, just before closing, he walked out of his shop and strode toward the darkness. A few townsfolk saw him go but didn’t try to stop him. No one ever did.
He didn’t scream as he stepped into the black. He simply disappeared, his shape dissolving like smoke. The townsfolk watched from their windows, their breaths held, and then turned away as though nothing had happened.
After Harold, it became more frequent. A woman left her knitting half-finished on her porch and walked into the void. A teenager abandoned his bicycle mid-ride and wandered toward it, his face blank. Those left behind told themselves they would never follow, but the void lingered in their minds like a splinter. They felt it in their dreams, a pulsing call that grew louder with every passing night.
It wasn’t just the missing people—it was the whispers. Not real ones, but something felt. The void didn’t speak in words but in impressions, ideas that slithered into the cracks of the mind. It promised things, though no one could say what. Peace? Understanding? Oblivion? Whatever it was, it gnawed at the townsfolk, each of them convinced they would resist it, even as they edged closer to surrender.
Martha, the town’s oldest resident, said it was a punishment. “We’ve all done something,” she muttered to no one in particular, her hands trembling as she stared out her kitchen window. “Something unforgivable.” But no one could name what they had done, or why the void had chosen them.
One night, Sam, the postman, decided to test the void. He tied a long rope around his waist and gave the other end to his brother, Mark. “If it tries to take me, pull me back,” he said. Mark nodded, his face pale, his knuckles white as he gripped the rope.
Sam stepped into the void. The rope went taut, trembling slightly as he moved further in. For a moment, Mark felt hope—then the rope went slack. He pulled it back slowly, hand over hand, but it came back clean, frayed at the edges where it had once been knotted. Mark didn’t tell anyone what he had seen in his brother’s face before he vanished: not fear, but relief.
The void didn’t grow, but it didn’t shrink either. It simply existed, a wound in the fabric of reality, waiting. The townsfolk learned to live around it, if you could call it living. They stopped speaking of those who had disappeared, stopped speaking much at all. They moved like ghosts, their gazes drawn always to the edge of the black.
One day, there were no more whispers. No more mutterings. The town had gone silent, its streets empty but for the void. It lingered there, alone now, with nothing left to call. And still, it waited.
All work copyright Lurking Fear
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