I’ve always found a sense of tranquility in the soundscape of my suburban neighborhood after dark. The busy noise of the day dies down, leaving naught but a bed of chirping crickets and the whirl of a crisp wind brushing through the leaves of the trees. Even the hum of traffic passing by my bedroom window brings a comforting rhythm as I lie in bed awaiting sleep.
My bedroom rests at the front of my single-story house, bordering a large window that looks onto the street. It’s not what most would consider the ideal location for a bedroom, but I’m not exactly spoiled for choice. There are only a handful of rooms throughout the whole house, and when I moved in, my options were the room I’m in now or the small, windowless alcove across the hall that barely fits my work desk, never mind trying to shove a queen sized mattress in there.
Needless to say, the first thing I did when I moved in was buy a nice set of heavy blackout curtains for my bedroom window, which I keep drawn around the clock. My bedroom is my private sanctuary. I’m not fond of the feeling that a nosy neighbor may be peering in at me from afar.
Even so, sometimes as I lay in bed, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s someone standing on the other side of those curtains; that if I were to pull them back, I would be met with a pair of watchful eyes beaming down on me. Most of the time, when this feeling crops up, I’m able to shake it away as an irrational thought.
Recently, however, things have changed. And I’ve begun to wonder just how irrational those thoughts really were.
I’m no longer certain of when it all began, but if I had to pinpoint a specific moment, it would be four weeks ago. The first time I heard their song.
It was around quarter to ten. I had resigned myself to bed over an hour before as I had an early morning the next day, yet sleep eluded me. As I lay restless in bed, I started to get that creeping feeling again that there was something outside my window. As usual, I shook it off, thinking it was just my brain playing a cruel trick on me knowing full well that I needed a good night’s rest.
But then, I heard it. Out in the street, someone was singing. Not just someone. A whole group. Difficult to tell without seeing them, but there seemed to be at least half a dozen different voices. I couldn’t make out what they were singing. The song sounded like gospel, but the lyrics were in a language I couldn’t comprehend. It didn’t sound like any language I was familiar with.
Looking back now, it’s strange. I don’t remember feeling scared at all that night. Perhaps it was due to my confusion. My attempts to rationalize why these people would be out singing so late at night distracted me from fear. I remember thinking that it was probably a group of drunk college kids messing around. After all, I live in a college town and not too far from the campus, so it seemed plausible. They likely got a bit lost on their way back to the dorms after a night out and lacked the inhibition not to bother my neighbors and I as we tried to sleep.
I rolled over, placing my back towards the window and trying in vain to ignore the noise outside. It would be over soon, I told myself. Perhaps even someone with less patience, and more confidence, than I would go outside and yell at them to knock it off.
No such luck.
I continued to listen to the strange song, tracking the voices as they combed up and down the street. It felt longer, but after ten minutes or so, the street finally fell back into silence. I found comfort once again in my familiar soundscape of cricket chirps and, eventually, drifted off into sleep.
It wasn’t until a few days later that I finally managed to bring up the strange event with one of my neighbors. Mrs. Everly was a twig of a woman. The top of her head only rose to my chest, and in her old age, she was hardly anything but skin and bones. I happened to run into her doing some yard work as I returned from my evening jog.
After a bit of friendly small talk, I finally asked her about the singing the other night. She pursed her lips and her brow furled as she tried to determine what I was talking about. I clarified, even though I didn’t think it was necessary. How often does a group of carolers show up at night in the middle of spring? But even as I explained further, it was clear Mrs. Everly had no clue what I was talking about. She must have been asleep already, we reasoned, and left it at that.
After our conversation, I was ready to let the whole thing fade from my memory. Let it go as a strange, one time occurrence. One of those memories that pops back into your head every few years as a funny, unsolved little mystery. Except, as it turned out, it was not a one time occurrence.
Two nights after my conversation with Mrs. Everly, I woke up in the dead of night, my throat dry and in need of a drink. I noted the time on the digital clock that rested on my nightstand. Only 11:15, just a couple of hours since I had gone to bed. As I reached for the glass of water I kept beside the clock, I heard it again. That same song. Were there more voices this time?
My hand hovered over the cup, frozen in place as I listened to the song. I could hear it more clearly this time, but that didn’t help me understand it any better. The unfamiliar language in which they sang grated against my ears. Whatever it was, it was an ugly language, filled with harsh, grinding consonants and eerily stretched vowels.
This time, I wasn’t content just to roll over and ignore it. I wanted to see who was out there. I reached for the curtain and took hold of the corner. I would just pull back the slightest amount, just enough to see outside without drawing any attention to myself. I couldn’t shake this feeling that, whoever was out there, I did not want them to see me.
I inched the curtain back, peering out into the night. My suburban street didn’t come equipped with street lamps, but the moon was bright that night. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see clearly to the other side of the road.
There they were. A group of eight people walking up and down the street, singing their bizarre chant. From their voices, I could tell that there was a mix of men and women, but I couldn’t tell how many of which. Nor could I gauge how old they were. They were covered head to toe in blue robes which made them difficult to spot in the dark. And they wore wide-brimmed, pointed hats that looked like they were pulled from a witch’s costume straight out of a Spirit Halloween store, only they had long veils hanging from the brim which fell far past their shoulders.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was like a cult was passing through my neighborhood. Just when I decided I had seen enough, one of the singers turned and looked straight at my bedroom window. I told myself there was no way he could have seen me. My room was completely dark, and I had barely made a crack in the curtain. But then, the rest of them turned and looked my way. I could feel their stares burning into me.
I let go of the curtain and ran for the front door, making sure it was locked. I did the same with every door and window in the house before I found my phone and dialed 9-1-1. In those brief moments that I was waiting for the call to go through, I noticed a sudden absence of sound. The singing had stopped. The chirping of the crickets had returned.
As expected, the police were no help. With there being no trace of the cloaked figures in the street by the time they arrived, there was little they could do aside from file a report that I was sure would simply collect dust inside a filing cabinet. The flashing blue lights of the squad car that sat outside my house as I answered the dispatched officer’s questions did seem to draw the attention of some of my neighbors. Though, as I would learn later, not a single one of them had awoken to the singing.
After the officer had finally left, I returned to bed for the night even though I knew there wouldn’t be any sleep to be had. Every time I felt my eyes begin to grow heavy and drowsiness start to overtake me, my mind pulsed with the sensation that there was something just beyond my curtains. I never checked. I no longer wanted to find out if the sensation was irrational or not. I opted instead to lay still, anxiously waiting for the sun to rise.
I took the following day off from work. I would have been too exhausted, too distracted, to get any real work done anyway. I spent most of the day napping on the sofa and catching up on chores around the house. As I was stacking a load of clean dishes in the cabinets, I realized that the song from last night had begun to echo inside my head. Not like an ear worm. Like a seed that had been planted and was slowly coming to bloom.
I froze, nearly dropping the plate I had pulled from the dishwasher. I tried to clear my mind, but the song was pervasive. I could feel it stretching into every corner of my mind as if it were a parasite siphoning away all other thoughts until it was all that remained. Before it could overtake me completely, I did the only thing I could think to do.
I ran into the living room and found my earbuds, plunging them into my ears and cranking the music on my phone up to a volume that would have been painful in any other circumstance but now brought only relief as the unwanted song faded from my head. I caught the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding when I pulled the earbuds out and met with the silence in my head. The song was gone, but a creeping sense of dread told me that it would be back. I wondered how long I had until then and what would happen when it did return.
As sundown approached, I could feel my stomach growing cold. I wanted to cling on to those last precious rays of light like a child to his mother. But soon, the last of the day’s light faded away, and I was left with the familiar sounds of the night.
It wasn’t until nearly one o’clock in the morning that I relented and retired to my bedroom. I considered that I might be safe for the night. Both times the singers had woken me had been before midnight. Perhaps the threat of police intervention had actually managed to scare them off.
As I apprehensively tucked myself into bed, I kept my eyes fixed on the curtains beside me, praying that no one would come, that I would have a quiet, restful night.
My prayers went unanswered.
I awoke to the song only an hour later. Every muscle in my body tensed as soon as I heard it. For a moment, I had to wonder if it had simply crept its way back into my head. No, I could hear it emanating from outside. From the street.
I couldn’t bring myself to touch the curtains this time. I didn’t want the singers to catch me spying on them again, so I laid still, hoping they would simply go away like they had that first night.
As I waited, I listened intently. There was something different this time. Normally, I could hear their voices rise and fade as they paraded up and down the street, but this time, their volume was static. They were standing completely still as they sung. From the way it sounded, I guessed they were located on the sidewalk, just at the end of my driveway.
Why? Why were they so focused on me? I felt a sudden urge to peel back the curtain, curiosity tugging at my arm. Fear held me back.
Suddenly, I realized the voices had drawn closer. They were approaching my house. The police. I reached for my phone, scrambling to find it in the dark. When I finally did, I pressed the power button only to be greeted with a screen instructing to me to charge my phone. It was dead. I had used up more battery than normal trying to keep myself awake, and in my drowsiness, I had forgotten to plug it in when I went to bed.
Isolation crept over me as I realized there was no one to turn to. The song was getting louder, the singers coming closer to the window. I could feel it in my head again too, weaving itself throughout my mind. I was backed into a corner. My animal instincts were screaming at me. Fight or flight. Reason told me to run, but there was something else there telling me otherwise, and its voice was louder.
I took hold of the curtains and threw them open. A chill coursed through my body as I stared at the sight just beyond the thin glass of my window.
The singers were right there. Any closer and they would have been pressed up against the glass. At first, I couldn’t make out any of their features through their veils, but as I focused harder, I began to see.
Their skin was red and crusted like land in a drought. Strands of skin had begun to peel away around the creases on their faces. They were hairless, down to even their eyelashes. But their eyes, they were the most inhuman trait of all. There was no white in them; instead, they were encompassed by smoldering black tissue like burning coals.
They continued to sing their twisted chorus with mouths so dry I wondered how they possibly could, and as they did, I could feel the song burrowing deeper into me. As its words reached the deepest depths of my mind I suddenly realized that I could understand them. Those words which had previously eluded me now resonated deep within my mind.
And I realized that their song was beautiful.
Their song told a story, but not of the past. They sang of days to come. Days when the night will leave us and there will only be day. The sun, then, will take its rightful place as God. The clouds will vanish and its rays will shine down on us with renewed intensity. Those who refuse to accept our new savior will be judged, enveloped by a tornado of heat and burned away a layer at a time until all that remains is ash.
With the clouds gone, there will be no rain. The plants will die as the earth dries up, and we who remain will be left in a haze of dust that cuts away at the skin when the wind blows. Life on this planet will be hell, but for those that can endure the suffering—that can prove themselves worthy—it will be brief.
When the time comes, the fires of the sun will stretch down to the earth in slithering, tendril form. One by one, those of us that remain will be wrapped in its embrace and pulled away from this dying planet. It is nothing to fear. We are simply being chosen. We will become part of the sun, fueling it as it grows to consume more and more of our solar system. In a way, we will live on in its flaming belly as it swallows worlds.
I snapped out of my trance and realized the singing had stopped. The cloaked figures outside my window were gone. I looked out into the street. The night was peaceful. The crickets were chirping.
A strange sense of longing seeped into my heart, and I realized there were tears streaming down my cheeks. Their song had granted me such a wondrous vision, and without it, I was starved for more. I wanted them to come back, to sing to me once again. But then I realized that the song was not gone. I could still hear it, lingering in the recesses of my mind, playing on a loop.
I breathed a sigh of relief as a smile slithered its way onto my face. I lay back against the pillow, closing my eyes and letting the sweet lullaby guide me into sleep. I wondered how long it would be until the future the song foretold would come to fruition.
It’s been about a month since then. The singers haven’t come back since that night. That’s okay. I don’t need them to come back. The song hasn’t left me. In fact, it’s getting louder. I think that means that the sun’s awakening is drawing nearer. The days are getting longer. And when I look up at the sky, I could swear I can see the sun’s rays beginning to stretch like tendrils. The way they wave in the air, it’s almost like they’re dancing to the song inside my head.