The Darkness I Carry

Chapter 16: When the Soil Screams

The next dawn rose bloodless.

There was light, but it didn't feel like morning. No warmth. No gold. Just a thin, grey sheen that seeped through the windows like fog through a cracked door. Leah stood at her bedroom window, unmoving, her bare feet cold on the wooden floor. The glass was cool beneath her fingers. Her reflection looked strange—elongated, warped. Her eyes caught the light wrong. Her skin looked thinner, like something underneath was pressing forward.

Her shadow stretched in the wrong direction.

It crawled up the wall and along the ceiling like smoke, coiling in slow spirals.

She didn't notice.

Or maybe she did.

Maybe she just didn't care anymore.

Outside, at the end of her driveway, Clara was waiting.

Barefoot. Smiling.

Her white dress hung limp against her legs, soaked from the grass. Her eyes glowed faintly, like moons shrouded in mist. She didn't speak.

She didn't need to.

The moment Leah stepped outside, the wind stopped.

All at once.

Every leaf froze mid-quiver. The trees went still. Not quiet—still. Even the insects disappeared, their usual morning buzz silenced like a breath being held. The air thickened. Time slowed. The sky above them churned, not with weather, but with pressure—like a storm still deciding whether it wanted to be born.

The world was waiting.

Holding its breath.

They walked together.

Leah and Clara, side by side, barefoot and steady, wordless.

There was no need for talk. Words felt too small now, too fragile, like paper boats in a black sea. The bond between them went deeper than language. Something threaded through their hearts now—tight, hot, alive. The storm growing between their ribs was not a warning.

It was becoming.

They moved through the town like ghosts returned to their graves.

The streets were empty, but not abandoned. Not yet. Curtains fluttered, pulled back by cautious hands. Locks clicked into place behind closed doors. People watched, breath held, pulse racing, but no one stepped outside.

Somewhere, a baby cried and was hushed too quickly.

Somewhere, a dog howled, then fell silent.

They didn't know what they were seeing.

Not with their minds.

But something deeper remembered.

Something buried in blood and bone and lullabies.

The memory was rising.

The girls walked to the school.

It loomed like it always had—square and brick and weathered by years of rain and whispers. But today it looked different. Not bigger. Not smaller.

Older.

Like it had always been here. Longer than the town. Longer than the people. Longer than even the dirt beneath it.

And now it was waking up too.

Condensation ran down the outer walls, thick and heavy, smelling faintly of rot. The metal doors were streaked with handprints—some too large, some too small. The overhead lights above the entrance flickered once. Then died.

Leah and Clara didn't push the doors open.

They opened on their own.

The building welcomed them.

Inside, the air was humid. Charged. Alive.

The lockers pulsed faintly, like lungs taking shallow breaths. The floor tiles shifted beneath their feet with quiet groans, like bones settling after centuries of stillness. A faint rustling echoed through the halls—not footsteps, not wind.

Something older.

Something remembering.

Far off, down a corridor, someone screamed.

Not in fear.

In recognition.

Clara turned toward the sound and smiled.

They kept walking.

Past the classrooms with empty desks and abandoned notebooks.

Past the stairwells where shadows hung like curtains.

To the auditorium.

Where school plays were once held. Where assemblies happened. Where bored students used to doodle in programs while teachers lectured from podiums.

Now it pulsed with something far older than performance.

The moment they stepped inside, the air changed.

Denser.

Darker.

Sweeter.

Like the breath of something that had slept too long and just remembered its hunger.

The curtains on the stage stirred, though there was no breeze.

Clara stepped forward. Her hands were pale and open, raised like an offering. She turned slowly to face the room, the seats, the silence, the waiting.

Her voice didn't tremble.

"Let them see," she said.

Leah stood beside her, her spine straight, her heart quiet. The Beast inside her stirred—not as something separate anymore. It was her. It curled up her ribs and looked through her eyes and smiled through her teeth.

She opened her mouth.

And a voice deep, layered, ancient spoke through her.

"We remember."

The stage cracked open.

No warning. No sound.

Just a slow split down the center, wood giving way to something beneath. The scent of soil rose up—rich and sharp. Roots tangled from the gap, twitching, searching.

And from below, an altar rose.

Not carved.

Grown.

It was covered in roots, veins of glowing red and green pulsing through it like lifeblood. Symbols shifted across its surface, too fluid to be etched, too real to be imagined. At the center was a heart-shaped hollow.

Something would go there.

Something was already there.

Leah could feel it.

Students began to arrive.

Not all at once.

Not talking.

They drifted in slowly, their faces pale, their eyes distant. Some looked half-asleep. Some fully dreaming. A few were crying. Others were laughing quietly, strangely, like they understood something terrible and beautiful at once.

They filled the seats.

Not guided.

Drawn.

None of them spoke.

None of them questioned.

And when the last one sat, Clara began to hum.

A single note.

Low. Slow. Rhythmic.

It wasn't music. It was memory.

Leah joined her. The hum thickened, deepened, became a vibration that sank into the walls, the bones, the blood of everyone present.

The altar pulsed in time.

With each beat, something surfaced.

In the minds of the students.

Not dreams. Not thoughts. Memories.

But not theirs.

Forests under red skies.

Eyes glowing in the dark.

Laughter that came from under the ground.

Screams swallowed by roots.

They remembered.

Not in detail.

But in truth.

The truth of what lived beneath their feet.

The Ones Below.

Some students began to scream.

Not in fear.

In relief.

Because now it made sense. All of it. The strange aches. The nightmares. The static that clung to them like cobwebs. The unease they'd never had words for.

Now they had words.

Now they remembered.

And once something is remembered, it cannot be forgotten.

The illusion shattered.

The world could no longer pretend it was safe.

Outside, the sky cracked.

No sound.

Just lightning—silent, splitting the grey like veins across dead flesh. The clouds boiled. Trees bent backward. The church, miles away, slumped slightly, like it had been punched in the ribs by a ghost.

And beneath the auditorium, in the pit behind the altar, something began to climb.

Slowly.

Hungrily.

The remembering was done.

Now came the awakening.

And the soil began to scream.