Maya's scream still echoed in Ikenna's ears.
He clawed at the floor where she'd disappeared, splinters biting into his palms. "Maya! Maya!" he yelled, striking the wood as if sheer desperation could break it apart.
But it had sealed—perfectly, unnaturally. No crack. No sign of her ever falling through. The floor looked whole. Undisturbed.
"She's still down there!" he shouted, his voice cracking. "She's alive! I heard her!"
Samuel was pale, sweat gleaming on his forehead despite the frigid air. He approached slowly, kneeling beside Ikenna. "That wasn't just Maya you heard. The entity… it mimics. It lures."
"No," Ikenna snapped. "It was her. She was afraid. She said there was a child. We have to get her back."
A soft thud echoed beneath them—then another. Rhythmic. Like someone walking in slow circles just under their feet.
Then came the whispers.
Countless voices. Male, female, children, some gasping between syllables like they were drowning mid-sentence. All at once, all in one breath.
"Maya… Maya… She's ours… ours… ours…"
Samuel stood quickly, backing away from the pulpit. "This place is hollow," he muttered. "The basement was never built for people. It was built to hold it. To feed it."
The walls moaned.
That was the only way Ikenna could describe it. A long, low, human moan—of hunger, of torment. As if the building itself mourned.
"Then why bring us here?" Ikenna asked. "Why call us?"
"To finish the ritual," Samuel whispered. "Or to witness it."
Suddenly, a door creaked open on the far side of the sanctuary. One they hadn't seen before. A thin line of sickly yellow light spilled into the room.
Without a word, Ikenna stood and moved toward it, as if something inside was pulling at his chest like a hook. Samuel followed, reluctantly.
The hallway behind the door was narrow, carved from stone and dirt. The walls breathed—visibly expanding and contracting with wet, slurping sounds, like the corridor itself was alive.
And it stank—of sulfur, rot, and something older than decay.
They moved carefully, each footstep echoing. Symbols were scratched into the walls—some still dripping fresh blood. Others carved so deep they looked like claw marks.
Ikenna's light flickered.
"Not now," he muttered, smacking the flashlight.
It died.
The hallway plunged into darkness.
Then the laughing started.
High-pitched. Childlike. But wrong.
It bounced around them, moving too fast, too fluid—like it was slipping between the walls.
Then came Maya's voice—clear as a bell.
"Ikenna..."
He spun around. "Maya?"
Her voice came again, softer now. "Ikenna, it's so cold down here."
"Where are you!?"
"She's not speaking to you," Samuel hissed. "Don't answer. Don't believe it. It knows you. It's using her voice."
But Ikenna ignored him, surging ahead into the darkness, driven by guilt and fear. The tunnel twisted, dipped, then opened into a low, wide chamber.
He stepped in—and froze.
The walls were covered in faces.
Not carved.
Pressed into the stone.
Dozens of them—mouths open, eyes wide, frozen in horror. Some were fresh, skin and muscle still clinging. Others were just bone. And all of them whispered.
Maya's face was not among them.
Yet.
On the far end of the chamber, a figure stood—small, thin, cloaked in black. A child.
"Ikenna," it said in Maya's voice.
He stepped closer, breath shaking. "Where is she?"
The figure tilted its head, and as it did, the cloak fell back. There was no skin. No eyes. Just a black, empty skull—wet and grinning. But the voice was still hers.
"Don't you remember?" it asked.
"I've never been here!" he shouted.
"Then why did you dream of me?" it whispered.
Suddenly, behind the creature, the wall breathed—a massive eye opening in the stone, bloodshot and twitching.
The whispers roared to a crescendo.
Samuel screamed from behind. "Get out of there, Ikenna!"
But the child lunged, mouth splitting open vertically like a torn wound. Ikenna stumbled back, barely avoiding its grasp.
Hands shot from the walls—gray, clawed, human.
They pulled at his legs, clawed at his arms. He screamed, tearing free, running back into the tunnel with Samuel behind him.
The laughing followed them.
All the way to the church doors.
Which were now wide open.
They spilled out into the fog, gasping. The church loomed behind them, silent and watching.
Maya was still below.
But now, they knew what was waiting with her.
And it remembered them all.