The Sound of Silence

An animal-like scream of pure, agonizing terror sliced through the night, jolting me from a dead sleep. I bolted upright in bed and grasped the blankets in shock as I listened to the already fading cry. For a moment I was still, unable to decide what to do in this sort of situation. Then, I threw the blankets off and ran outside, not even bothering with shoes. A small crowd gathered in the street. They were conferring with each other about the unholy sound. I joined them, and when no one else could identify the sound, we decided to take it to the city hall. Still in my nightclothes and bare feet, I walked with my group to the hall. Apparently everyone decided to go to city hall because the entire fishing village of Atara had gathered outside the building. We waited quietly in the chilly night air for the mayor to make an appearance. When he did, he announced that everyone was to return home and a search party would be sent out in the morning. Grudgingly, the villagers and I left. As I walked home, I heard many whispers from my neighbors that the scream had come from the Moors. I shuddered, but not from the cold. The Moors had been a cause of fear for the people of Atara for years. It was the bedtime story mothers told misbehaving children, or to youths around a fire.

I had trouble sleeping that night, with dreams of the Moors and the entity that was said to haunt them. I awoke this time to the morning sun falling across my eyes. I vaulted out of bed, not wanting to be left out of the search party that was supposed to be taken place today. This time I changed into day clothes along with shoes before joining my neighbors outside.

I didn't take place in the search party; girls weren't allowed to. Instead, a dozen or so men entered the Moors with the rest of us watching from a safe distance away. It was several hours before the men returned (the Moors covered many miles of land). They brought back the source of the scream from the previous night. It was a teenage girl who no one had noticed was missing in all the excitement until now. I managed a quick glimpse of her body before she was whisked away by her family to be buried. She didn't appear to be injured or harmed, but her face was frozen in a perpetual look of extreme horror. It was an image that wouldn't leave my mind for a long while.

For a time, there were no more deaths. The girl's funeral came and passed with no more explanation to why she died. The village healers claimed she must have died of fright, but I wouldn't take their words too seriously. The people of Atara were a superstitious lot.

Three weeks later, another scream woke everyone in the dead of night. This time it was a boy youth who was found dead in the heart of the Moors. His body was in the same condition as girl's, and still no one knew the cause of their deaths.

Another three weeks after the boy's death, I woke up at what seemed to be midnight. I didn't open my eyes because I didn't know what had caused me to wake up. Suddenly, I had the odd feeling that I wasn't alone. With a sudden burst of courage, I cracked one eye open, then the other. And I sat up at what I saw. My window was wide open, letting in a breeze that made the curtains flutter slightly. I froze, my body going cold all over. I had made sure to shut and lock the window tight before going to bed. Before I could summon the nerve to close the window, a black mass jumped onto the ledge. I stifled a scream, not wanting to alarm the black cat that was now perched on the window ledge. The cat stared at me with large gold eyes that shimmered in the moonlight. With a start, I realized it was a full moon and there was a black cat in my room. The odds did not seem to be in my favor. I locked eyes with the cat, knowing I should look away but being unable to do so. Then to my absolute horror, it spoke. But not in the way that humans speak. It wasn't so much that I heard the words with my ears but felt them. "Follow me," it seemed to say. The cat's odd way of speaking sent shivers up my arms and I most certainly did not want to follow it. The cat turned and hopped from the ledge and out of sight. Then, to my dismay, my body began to move of its own accord. I threw off the blankets and crawled out of the open window. Luckily, my home was only one story.

My legs moved mechanically. I followed the cat. Even though it was far ahead of me, I could always see at least a dash of black fur shining in the light of the moon. I started when I realized where I was headed. The Moors. I wanted to scream and run in the opposite direction, but my body wasn't obeying my commands. I continued to follow the cat into the mist.

I walked for miles. I stopped trying to keep up with time, and I tried to ignore the growing unease in the pit of my stomach. I had never been fond of the dark and I was jumping at every hoot of an owl or shadow that spread across the grass. It was a while before I noticed that all the nighttime sounds had stopped. No crickets chirped or toads bellowed. There was no howl of a wolf or the periodic hoot of an owl. My unease peaked and my heart seemed to be trying to escape through my throat. I stopped walking seemingly for no apparent reason, until I saw that the cat had stopped and faced me. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. The heavy mist that had shrouded the Moors for the time I had been walking, suddenly lifted. But it only lifted around the cat and me. The mist created a perfect circle around us and grew denser until I couldn't make out the landscape on the other side. With a sudden jolt of panic, I realized that we were in the heart of the Moors. I couldn't move or make any sort of sound no matter how hard I tried. I watched, completely helpless, as the cat began to morph. Its eyes began glowing with a sickly yellow-gold light. Then, its body stretched until it reached nearly eight feet in height. Then the monstrous thing twisted and its black fur disappeared, replaced by milk-white skin that glistened sickeningly in the moonlight. It was no longer a cat. It was an otherworldly thing. Its eyes were the same yellow-gold as before but were stretched three times wider that a human's. The thing, that was undoubtedly the Silence, had a mouth stretched as abnormally wide as its eyes were. Its arms and legs looked as though they had been broken and stretched. Panic clawed at my throat and made my skin grow cold. The Silence moved toward me and I could do nothing as it took a clawed shaped had and placed it on my forehead. Pain like nothing I've ever felt before, tore through my head and into my chest. I opened my mouth in a silent scream. The Silence laughed, or at least I assumed it was laughter. It felt like an earthquake, knocking me from my feet and onto the damp ground. I curled into the fetal position as another bout of the terrible pain coursed through my chest again. This time though, when my mouth parted, the most unearthly scream ripped through my throat. My vision went dark to the sound of the Silence's laughter. I welcomed the cool claws of Death with open arms.