Бесплатный фрагмент - The Echoes of the Gone

Chapter 1

Lachmorne was a small town, one of dozens like it in any province. It was quiet, nothing particularly noteworthy ever happened there — but that was precisely its charm. Cozy streets lined with tidy houses, all looking much like the ones in other similar towns, didn’t draw much attention, and that gave the place a sense of calm. On the central square, a few small shops, cafés, and even a couple of restaurants operated — usually with half-empty tables, as most people preferred the comfort of their homes to dining out. The air was fresh, and though the roads weren’t exactly modern, they were perfectly serviceable.

Not far from the town’s outskirts, on Park Street stood an old house, a little set apart from the rest of the street. Its facade had long ago been repainted a dull beige, and the windows were covered with curtains. It looked abandoned, and though it had clearly undergone a few renovations, it had gradually lost its once-tidy appearance over the years. Now it simply stood there, holding onto the memories of those who had once lived within.

The mid-September morning was chilly, as was often the case in Lachmorne during the autumn months. A distant fog hovered on the horizon, but overall, the weather was pleasant enough. A van carrying workers pulled up in front of the old house. The first to step out was Martin — a tall, calm man in his forties, dressed in a work jacket and cap, looking a little worn out after visiting the local bar the night before. Behind him came his partner Dan — a young, slightly nervous guy, still getting used to his new job. Both worked for a construction company and had come to inspect the house ahead of its scheduled demolition.

“Well, let’s go,” Martin said, slinging his tool bag over his shoulder and heading toward the house. His voice was steady, with no hint of urgency.

Dan hesitated for a moment, looking at the old house. The place seemed ordinary enough, but something about it unsettled him.

“No one’s lived here for a long time, right?” he said, scanning the walls of the house. “Let’s just hope nothing comes crashing down.”

“Don’t worry,” Martin replied with a smile. “It’s just an old house, nothing more. We’ll take a quick look and head back to the office to file our report.”

Dan sighed and followed, opening the gate. There was still a trace of unease in his eyes. He had the feeling this place didn’t quite fit his usual idea of what abandoned buildings should be like, even if outwardly it didn’t seem dangerous.

“You know the roof’s in bad shape,” Dan said as they approached and saw the first signs of damage. “We’ll have to be really careful dismantling it.”

“That’s not a problem,” Martin replied, walking calmly to the door and placing his hand on the handle. “Standard job. No issues.”

Dan nodded silently and followed. The door opened with difficulty, and they stepped inside. The interior was dark and cool. The walls and floor were covered in dust, and the air smelled musty, like in any long-unattended place. Nothing out of the ordinary — typical for abandoned houses. Dan felt his anxiety ease slightly, though a vague discomfort still lingered. There was a lot of work to do, and he needed to focus. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this house was hiding something more than just old dust.

“Let’s start with the roof,” Martin said, picking up his tools. “Then the rest. Business as usual.”

Martin and Dan climbed the creaky stairs to the second floor. Each step echoed through the empty rooms. Light filtered in through narrow gaps in the curtains, casting dim stripes on the walls. The air was filled with the scent of dampness and old wood, a reminder of time slowly erasing the traces of the former residents.

“Here, take the flashlight,” Martin said, handing Dan a small but powerful torch. “Might be dark up in the attic.”

Dan took the flashlight, his fingers slightly trembling. He felt like someone was watching them. Maybe it was just shadows playing tricks or his imagination running wild, but the unease wouldn’t go away.

Martin, ignoring his partner’s doubts, decisively opened the attic hatch and climbed up first. Dan followed, lighting the way ahead. The attic was cluttered with old boxes covered in thick dust. Torn cobwebs hung from the corners, and the air was heavy and stagnant.

“A bit odd,” Dan muttered, shining the beam on the far wall. “Why are there so many locked chests up here?”

Martin grunted. “Maybe the previous owners just left their old stuff behind. The chests aren’t open, are they?”

Dan stepped closer and cautiously touched one of the boxes. The wood felt cold beneath his fingers. He leaned in to examine the carved patterns on the lid — strange symbols and unfamiliar markings.

“Doesn’t look like a clothes chest,” he said.

Martin chuckled and sat on a nearby box. “Dan, you’re too jumpy. Let’s get to work. We’ll check the roof, then you can study the chests all you want.”

After finishing the roof inspection, Martin decided to check the basement. Dan wasn’t thrilled about going down there but didn’t want to seem like a coward, so he followed. The stairs were steep, the steps cracked with age, and the air grew damp and cool. Their flashlights picked out patches of crumbling plaster and mold-streaked walls from the darkness.

“Clearly no one’s been here in a long time,” Dan muttered, glancing around.

In the far corner of the basement, he noticed an old wooden wardrobe, covered, like most of the items in this house, with a thick layer of dust. It looked slightly out of place, as if it had simply been forgotten or deliberately left there, hidden in the darkest corner.

“You see that?” Dan asked, pointing at the wardrobe.

Martin followed his gaze and approached the wardrobe. With some effort, he pulled at the creaky door, revealing its contents. Inside, among old belongings and crumbling boxes, one cardboard box stood out from the rest of the junk. It had no stickers, no logos, just a few numbers and dates scrawled in black marker.

Dan carefully picked it up and blew the dust off the lid. Martin squinted and took one of the audio tapes that lay inside the box.

“Tapes,” he said. “I wonder what’s recorded on them.”

Dan swallowed, a chill running down his spine.

“You think we should check?” he asked.

Martin looked around the basement, and his eyes landed on a small table against the wall. Sitting on it was an old cassette player, dusty but, at first glance, still in working condition. Beside it lay an extension cord, its cable trailing toward the wall.

“Dan,” he said, “you think there’s still power in the house?”

Dan thought for a moment, then pulled a voltage tester from his pocket, something he always carried for work.

“Let me check…” He held the device to the socket, and the indicator lit up. “Yeah, it looks like part of the wiring is still alive.”

Martin nodded, though he found it strange. The house had been empty for years — so if there was still electricity, someone must have made sure of it.

He ran his hand across the cassette player’s surface, leaving a clean streak in the thick layer of dust. The device looked old, but it wasn’t rusted or damaged. The tapes inside the box didn’t seem overly worn either.

Without much hesitation, Martin tested the cassette mechanism: the buttons stuck a bit, but overall, it seemed functional. He opened the tape compartment, checked the transport mechanism, and inserted one of the tapes. A click, followed by a soft hum as the tape began to play. Dan was tense, expecting to hear a voice or music, but instead, there was only indistinct rustling. Then came a faint, muffled knocking, like someone striking a wall or door. Martin glanced at Dan but didn’t stop the playback.

The rustling gave way to a strange sound muffled, barely audible laugh. Dan felt a shiver crawl down his back. The laugh sounded unnatural, as if it came from several places at once.

Then, a voice.

“Help me…” it whispered through the static. The voice trembled, distorted, as if the speaker were very far away.

“Shit,” Dan whispered, recoiling.

The tape continued spinning… The voice grew louder, clearer.

“Please, help me… he’s coming…”

Suddenly, the cassette player crackled, and a loud, sharp scratching sound rang out — like fingernails raking across wood. The basement light flickered, casting twitching shadows on the walls. Martin quickly hit the “Stop” button, and a ringing silence filled the basement.

Dan was breathing heavily, his heart pounding in his chest. He stared at the cassette player, unable to look away.

“This… this is just an old recording, right?” His voice was hoarse.

Martin remained silent, his finger still on the button. He didn’t like what was happening. At that moment, he too felt an inexplicable sense of unease.

A faint rustle sounded from the corner. Dan jerked, whipping his head around.

“Did you hear that?” he whispered. Without waiting for his partner, he bolted up the stairs.

Dan shot out of the basement. The air above felt unexpectedly cold, but it brought no comfort. He barely registered that his legs were carrying him away from the stairs, away from that place, away from the oppressive darkness steeped in the scent of dampness and old wood. His mouth was dry, his palms sweaty, fingers trembling like he had just escaped a nightmare that had somehow become real.

He didn’t even look back at Martin, who remained below, still intrigued by what had happened. Dan ran into the main hall, tripped over a loose floorboard, and grabbed the nearest wall to keep from falling. He tried to slow his breathing, but his lungs felt tight, refusing to let him take a full breath. It felt as if the entire house was watching him, creaking in its beams, sighing through its drafts, peering through the cracks in the boarded-up windows.

“What’s wrong with you two?” Martin’s voice called out.

Dan turned sharply. Martin stood in the basement doorway, holding the dusty cardboard box in his hands. His face remained calm, but a note of caution showed in his eyes.

“That… That wasn’t just an old recording,” Dan said, wiping his face with a trembling hand, trying to brush away the sticky fear. “You heard it too! That voice…”

He stopped short, remembering how desperate, how hopeless that whisper had been — trapped in the swirling noise and static. The words still echoed in his ears — “He’s coming.” Who? What?… Dan clearly didn’t want to know the answer to the question he had just asked himself.

Martin exhaled heavily, shifting the box to his other hand. He looked thoughtful but moved without panic, trying to make rational sense of what had just happened.

“We need to show this to the site supervisor,” Martin finally said, nodding toward the box. “Let him decide what to do with it.”

Dan said nothing. He glanced around once more, listening to the house as if expecting it to respond. Inside, it was quiet — but behind that silence, he sensed a looming, almost tangible danger.

“Yeah,” he finally exhaled. “Let’s get out of here.”

The construction company’s office was located on the outskirts of town, surrounded by garages and warehouses full of building materials. The two-story building, erected back in the mid-20th century, looked like it needed repairs itself: peeling paint on the walls, creaky wooden steps, and an old coffee machine that dispensed drinks with a rusty aftertaste. Time moved especially slowly in this office, and even the air seemed steeped in decades of history.

Behind a desk cluttered with papers and yellowed blueprints sat their senior site manager, Matteo — a heavyset, gruff man in his fifties with a bald spot and a perpetually displeased expression. He rarely showed emotions beyond irritation and preferred short, direct conversations. When Dan and Martin walked in, he lazily looked up, noting the younger worker’s anxious appearance.

“What’s wrong with you two?” he grumbled, furrowing his brow.

Martin silently placed the box on the desk.

“We found this in the basement of that old house on Park,” he said briefly. “Tapes. We played one of them…”

Matteo grunted, eyeing the box with suspicion, then opened it. Inside, along with the tapes, were several yellowed sheets of paper with handwritten notes, some smudged by moisture. The paper looked like it had been sitting there for decades.

“What’s on them?” he asked, taking out one of the tapes.

Dan swallowed, unsure how to find the right words. That voice still echoed in his mind.

“There’s… a voice on the recording. Someone asking for help. And… sounds, like someone’s trapped inside.”

Matteo raised his left eyebrow, then glanced at the tape recorder that Martin had placed beside the box. For a moment, a heavy silence settled over the room, broken only by the soft buzzing of a fly at the window. He considered their words, realizing that if they were right, this might delay the scheduled demolition.

“So, you decided to play detective?” he muttered, scratching his head. “Now what?”

Martin looked him straight in the eye.

“We thought it’d be best to put the demolition on hold,” he said. “These tapes might be important. If there really is something strange going on… better let the police handle it.”

Matteo thought for a moment, then slowly nodded. He didn’t believe in the supernatural, but years on the job had taught him one thing — if something feels off, it’s better not to ignore it.

“All right,” he said at last, leaning back in his chair. “I’ll call the police. Let them figure it out.”

A few hours later, the box of tapes had been delivered to the local police station. The officer at the front desk, an older man with a tired look in his eyes, reluctantly logged the item into the evidence register. It seemed like a pointless formality to him — after all, who would care about some old tapes from a crumbling house?

“Put it in storage,” he muttered to a younger officer, who yawned as he picked up the box and carried it into a back room. There, among dusty folders, forgotten evidence, and long-abandoned case files, the box found its place on one of the lower shelves.

“Just more junk,” the junior officer mumbled, lazily entering the data into the computer.

The room was quiet — so quiet that he thought he heard a faint noise in the depths of the archive, something between a rustle and a barely audible sigh. He paused, listened, then shook his head and walked out, dismissing it.

Chapter 2

Selena André, a local independent journalist, had long been drawn to stories that others dismissed as myths or rumors. She was fascinated by mysteries, especially those involving missing people, unsolved crimes from the past, and strange discoveries. She believed that every legend held a kernel of truth — something real, just forgotten or deliberately hidden from public view.

At 32, Selena was used to being on her own. She wasn’t married, had no children, and her parents lived in another town, so she saw them rarely, settling for phone calls or video chats. It wasn’t due to any bad blood — life simply had a way of pulling her along, leaving little time for family visits. Her work wasn’t just a job, it was her purpose, a way to uncover secrets and shine a light on things others preferred to ignore.

She had once been in a serious relationship, with a man she truly loved. But over time, it became clear they wanted different things. He longed for stability, family life, and a steady routine, while Selena couldn’t see herself as a housewife or stuck in an office job. She was drawn to the unknown, to chasing answers that wouldn’t let her sleep at night. Eventually, their relationship ended. And now, with time having passed, she didn’t regret it, though sometimes, when she came home late to an empty apartment, especially when rain tapped against the windows and the silence grew heavy, she caught herself wondering if she’d made a mistake by walking away.

Sometimes it felt like she lived in a world of her own, a world of articles, investigations, and the search for truth in places where others saw only forgotten pages of the past. She often stayed up late, poring over archived documents, studying old newspaper clippings, trying to piece together connections between events separated by decades. Some acquaintances thought she was obsessed, but she didn’t care. She knew that even the smallest discovery could lead to something truly significant.

So, when a message popped up on her phone from a contact at the town archive, she immediately took notice.

“The police brought in some strange tapes from an old house. Might be something you’d be interested in,” the message read.

Selena paused, rereading the text. She knew that house on Park Street well. Many years ago, several cases of disappearances had been officially recorded in Lachmorne — people who had lived in that very house. Multiple official investigations yielded no results: no signs of forced entry or struggle, no bodies: the residents had simply vanished. All of their belongings, including valuables, were left untouched. There were no witnesses, no motives, no evidence.

Then, about twenty years ago, the homeowners — an elderly couple, Marvin and Lillian Hessler — disappeared. It happened right after yet another disappearance, and their vanishing became the final stroke in a long string of mysterious events. Once again, the investigation led nowhere: the people were never found, and no charges were ever filed.

Since then, the house had stood empty. It wasn’t sold, nor was it renovated — only locked up, like a grave no one dared disturb. And now, just as the local authorities had finally decided to demolish it, something connected to the past had been discovered there?

The journalist quickly dialed Viktor — the head of the town archive. As the dial tone buzzed in her ear, Selena thought rapidly: maybe it was just another urban legend… but her instincts told her there was more to this story.

“Are you serious? What tapes? What’s on them?” she asked as soon as she heard Viktor’s voice.

“Don’t know yet,” he replied. “The box arrived a few hours ago, but no one’s really investigated it. They said it was found at a demolition site. I figured it was just junk, but then I heard a rumor — police say the workers played one of the tapes… and there was a voice. Someone calling for help. I listened to one myself and, well…” He paused. “You’d better come hear it for yourself.”

Selena gripped her phone tighter, feeling a rush of excitement mixed with unease. She didn’t believe in the supernatural, but she knew that every strange tale had a real story behind it — just buried or overlooked. Maybe this was someone’s twisted prank, a recording glitch… or a real cry for help from someone long forgotten.

She licked her lips and grabbed her notebook from the desk. A plan was already forming in her head: meet with the archivist, examine the tapes, talk to the people who found them. She couldn’t ignore this.

“You at the archive now?” she asked.

“Yeah. So, hurry up.”

Twenty minutes later, Selena stepped into the old town library. Tall shelves cast long shadows across the floor. The archive was housed in a far wing of the building, where dim lighting barely chased away the gloom. Rows of metal cabinets filled with yellowing index cards and stacks of worn folders made the place feel like time had stopped. The air carried the scent of paper, dust, and dried ink, while somewhere in the back, a wall clock ticked quietly.

In one of the silent archive offices, Viktor was waiting — a man in his mid-forties, with slouched shoulders, a round face, and thick glasses that constantly slipped down his nose. His movements were slow, his voice slightly weary. He’d grown used to the monotony of his work and expected nothing remarkable from it anymore.

On the desk in front of him sat the box — weathered by time. Inside were tapes, yellowed documents, and something else that immediately caught Selena’s eye: an old cassette player, clearly from the last century. A scratch ran across the tape slot, and the cord was slightly twisted.

She sat across from him, ran her fingers over the lid of the box, and looked at the archivist.

“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” she said quietly, sensing that this discovery might be the beginning of something far bigger than just another article.

Viktor leaned back in his creaky chair, folded his arms, and looked at Selena over his glasses.

“There are voices on the tapes,” he said softly, as if worried someone might be listening outside the walls. “No one knows who they belong to.”

Selena frowned. Unknown voices recorded in an abandoned house with a history of disappearances… This smelled like a real mystery — one not yet solved — and the anticipation tightened something inside her.

“And you heard them yourself?” she asked in a low voice, studying his expression.

Instead of answering, Viktor silently reached into the box, pulled out one of the cassettes, and turned it over in his hands. The tape was old, dark, the edges slightly warped with age. He hesitated, as though weighing whether to play it at all — but then he inserted it into the cassette player.

“I said just one,” he admitted reluctantly as he pressed the play button. “Last night. And honestly… I still regret it.”

The player gave a quiet whirr, the tape began to spin, and the room filled with hissing — steady and cold, like a radio tuned to emptiness.

Selena froze in her chair, tense with expectation.

The old tape deck hissed for a while longer, and then…

A shaky, uneven voice cut through the silence, as if tearing an invisible veil between the past and present. A man’s voice, speaking in broken phrases, his breathing ragged and gasping — like he’d been running, or was barely holding back a rising panic.

“They’re keeping me here…” the voice rasped from the speaker. It was hoarse, broken. “There are no doors… I… I can’t get out…”

A chill ran down Selena’s spine. The small archive office suddenly felt uncomfortable. She thought the lights above her had started to dim ever so slightly.

The voice continued speaking, growing increasingly desperate, filled with panic that seemed to pour straight out of the speakers.

“Please… if anyone hears this… help me…”

And then, there was a sound.

Faint at first, barely audible, but growing clearer with every second — like fingernails scraping wood. Or someone dragging their fingers across a rough wall, testing it for weaknesses.

Selena felt her insides clench, her heart thudding loudly in her chest. Her fingers curled into fists. Her throat went dry.

Then… a quiet, muffled knock.