Voices in the Dark
Nobody dared move after the lights died.
The tunnel beneath Blackwater Island disappeared into complete darkness while freezing seawater rushed slowly around everyone’s ankles. Somewhere above them, the storm still raged across the island, but down here the only sounds were uneven breathing, dripping pipes, and something crawling through the flooded corridor behind them.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Nora Vale physically felt panic tightening through her chest now. Darkness inside the underground tunnel felt different compared to normal darkness. It felt heavy somehow, almost alive, like the island itself wanted them unable to see what moved around them.
Then came another sound.
Clicking.
Wet clicking noises echoing against the tunnel walls while the crawling thing dragged itself closer through the water.
Selene’s voice trembled beside Nora. “Please tell me that’s not the big one.”
“No,” Elias whispered immediately from somewhere ahead in the darkness. “The Hollow One doesn’t crawl.”
God.
That answer somehow made everything worse.
Kai whispered shakily from behind them, “I would really appreciate fewer nightmare details right now.”
Then the clicking stopped.
Complete silence swallowed the tunnel again.
Nobody breathed.
Nobody moved.
And softly, from the darkness behind them, a familiar voice whispered:
“Nora…”
Her stomach dropped instantly.
Because she recognized the voice.
Her older brother.
Impossible.
God.
Nora hadn’t heard his voice in over three years.
The darkness behind them shifted slightly while seawater rippled through the corridor.
“Nora,” the voice whispered again, softer this time. “Help me.”
Selene grabbed Nora’s wrist immediately. “Don’t answer it.”
But Nora’s heartbeat had already become uneven now. Her brother drowned years ago during a diving accident off the coast near her hometown. There was no possible way—
“Nora…”
The voice sounded closer now.
Closer and weaker, like someone injured crawled slowly through the flooded tunnel toward them.
Kai spoke quietly into the darkness, his voice suddenly serious for once. “It’s doing the same thing the drowned did upstairs.”
Elias finally switched on a small emergency lantern he carried clipped to his belt.
Dim orange light filled the tunnel weakly.
And immediately everyone saw it.
A drowned crouched at the far end of the corridor roughly twenty feet behind them. Its body twisted unnaturally sideways against the tunnel wall while black seawater dripped from its limbs onto the floor beneath it.
But the face—
God.
The drowned creature’s face kept changing.
One second it looked like a stranger.
The next, Nora saw her brother’s features briefly forming beneath the pale skin before shifting again.
Then Kai’s face appeared across its stretched flesh.
Then Selene’s.
Like the creature couldn’t fully hold one identity together.
It smiled the second the lantern light touched it.
“Nora,” it whispered again through a mouth that didn’t match the voice.
Selene immediately backed away. “Nope.”
The drowned moved instantly after that.
Its body launched forward through the flooded tunnel with horrifying speed while bones cracked loudly inside its limbs. Jace reacted first, swinging the fire axe directly into the creature’s shoulder hard enough to slam it sideways into the wall.
The drowned shrieked violently.
Black water exploded across the tunnel floor while its arm bent completely backward beneath the axe impact.
Then slowly—
the bones corrected themselves.
God.
Nothing here stayed broken.
“RUN!” Elias shouted.
Everyone sprinted deeper through the service tunnels while the drowned screamed behind them, crawling after the group through the flooding corridor at impossible speed. Emergency lantern light swung wildly across rusted pipes and cracked concrete walls while more distant sounds echoed through the underground complex around them.
Not one creature.
Multiple.
The island beneath the resort was alive with movement now.
Kai nearly slipped while turning another sharp corner. “How are there this many of them?”
Elias’s face looked grim beneath the lantern light. “Because the island keeps feeding.”
Nobody liked the sound of that sentence.
The tunnels widened slightly ahead before opening into a large underground chamber filled with rusted machinery and flooded generator systems. Old metal catwalks stretched across dark water disappearing into the cavern beyond while massive support pillars vanished upward into darkness overhead.
God.
The place looked enormous.
Like part of the island had been hollowed out beneath the cliffs decades ago.
Nora slowed near the edge of the catwalk while staring into the black water below.
Something moved beneath the surface.
Huge shadows drifting slowly through the flooded chamber.
Then the emergency lantern flickered violently.
And for one terrible second, something pale rose halfway from the water directly beneath the catwalk before sinking again.
Kai saw it too. “No.”
Elias shoved everyone forward quickly. “Keep moving. Don’t stop near the water.”
“WHY IS EVERYTHING CONNECTED TO WATER HERE?”
Before Elias could answer, a loudspeaker crackled suddenly somewhere high above the underground chamber.
Static hissed loudly through the darkness.
Then an old recording began playing.
A woman’s voice echoed through the cavern, distorted with age and panic.
“This is containment report seventy-three,” the recording whispered shakily. “The subject has breached marine barrier levels again. Infection rate among staff has exceeded eighty percent.”
The group froze while the recording continued overhead.
“We were wrong about the signal. It isn’t calling them into the water…” The woman’s breathing turned uneven. “It’s changing them after they hear it.”
Selene stared upward into the darkness. “Signal?”
The recording crackled violently.
Then the woman whispered something that made Nora’s blood run cold.
“It learns from the people it consumes.”
Silence followed.
Then screaming erupted through the recording.
Gunshots echoed loudly across the cavern speakers.
People shouting.
Something roaring beneath the noise.
Then abruptly—
the recording cut off.
Only dripping water remained afterward.
Nobody spoke for several long seconds.
Because suddenly the drowned imitating voices and faces made horrifying sense.
The thing beneath Blackwater Island wasn’t just killing people.
It was remembering them.
Then suddenly the catwalk beneath the group trembled.
A deep metallic groan echoed across the underground chamber while black water below started moving violently.
Not from waves.
Something underneath was rising.
Elias’s expression changed instantly.
“We move NOW.”
Another tremor shook the catwalk harder this time.
Then from somewhere deep beneath the flooded chamber came a sound unlike anything Nora had ever heard before.
A low underwater moan.
Massive.
Hungry.
And directly beneath the metal grating under their feet—
dozens of pale hands slowly reached upward from the black water below.