Ashville

Amaral investigates shocking events of deaths alien activity in the small town.

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Gathering Dark Clouds

The sky over rural Virginia was wrong.

Agent Tony Amaral watched the green shimmer above the treetops as he sped dangerous and all too fast. The black Mustang’s headlights sliced through a fog so thick it seemed to swallow the world.

The radio in his car spat static, then silence. He tried the dial, but every station was dead. Only the hum of the engine and the crunch of gravel under his tires kept him company.

He pulled up to the old listening post, a relic from the Cold War, half-buried in weeds and shadow. The chain-link fence sagged, and the antenna dishes pointed at the sky like broken fingers.

Institution Post 19 was deserted.

He stepped out, breath clouding in the cold, and the air stung his lungs. He zipped his leather jacket higher, feeling the chill settle into his bones.

The case file briefing had been short:
Unexplained radio bursts, livestock found gutted and bloodless, eleven people missing in a month.

The Institution wanted answers, and Amaral was the one they sent when things got strange. And with his Stab Unit in disarray, Tony accepted the assignment.

Inside, the post was a time capsule. Dusty consoles lined the walls, their dials and gauges flickering with a sickly green light. Oscilloscopes pulsed with a slow, rhythmic beat, like a heart struggling to keep time. Amaral set his bag down and pressed the intercom. The speakers hissed, then went dead. He tried again. Nothing.

He moved to the main console, flipping random switches and pushing buttons. Abruptly, the pulse on the screen stopped. The room felt heavier, as if the air itself was waiting. Tony cleared his throat, and the pulse started again, faster this time. He bent down to a desk microphone by the switch board and whispered, “Testing,” and the line on the screen flatlined.

He stopped speaking. Total silence. And then after a moment, the pulse returned, steady and slow.

A noise outside made him freeze. Gravel shifting, slow and uneven. Amaral reached for his flashlight and stepped out into the fog. The beam caught a figure stumbling along the fence line, clothes torn, skin pale as chalk. The man’s eyes were wide, pupils blown out, and his lips moved in a frantic whisper.

“They eat the quiet,” the man said, voice barely more than a breath. “Don’t let them hear you stop.”

Tony moved closer, but the man recoiled, clutching his chest. His ribs seemed to collapse inward, as if something inside was pulling him apart. The man’s mouth opened in a silent scream, and then he crumpled to the ground, unmoving.

Tony’s hands shook as he grabbed his phone. “This is Amaral. I need medical—” The phone went dead. After a beat of silence, the same pulse, now louder, filled his earpiece. He looked back at the listening post, its windows glowing with that sickly green light, and realized he was all alone.

The fog swarmed in, thicker than before. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once, then nothing. Amaral dragged the man’s body inside the abandoned post building, locking the door behind him.

He checked for a pulse. Nothing.

The man’s chest was sunken, as if the air had been sucked out of him.

Tony sat at the console, staring at the heartbeat on the monitor before him. It pulsed in time with his own, slow and steady. He tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat. Cotton mouth.

The silence felt alive, pressing against his ears, waiting for him to violate its momentum.

He turned up the volume on the intercom, filling the room with a low hum. The pulse on the screen faltered, then steadied.

Tony leaned back, eyes fixed on the green line, and waited.

The Dark Symphony

He couldn’t shake it. Every time his eyes closed, he saw the farmer’s face, mouth stretched in a silent scream, chest caved in like a crushed can.

The fog outside never lifted. It pressed against the windows, thick and gray, as if the world beyond had been erased.

He spent the morning combing through the listening post’s logs. Most were routine: weather reports, intercepted radio chatter, the usual Cold War paranoia stuff.

But then he found a battered notebook, its pages yellowed and brittle. The handwriting was cramped, desperate.

One entry stood out: “Sound draws attention. Silence invites entry. Never let the quiet settle.”

Tony’s skin prickled. He flipped through more pages. The original operator had tracked the same pulse, always strongest between two and four in the morning, always during power outages or storms. There were sketches of waveforms, notes about livestock found dead, and a list of names. Some were crossed out. Some matched the names of people missing from this month.

He needed answers. The nearest town was a few miles down the road, a place called Ashfield. He drove with the windows cracked, radio on full blast, static filling the car.

The main street was deserted. Shops were shuttered, and every house had mattresses or blankets stuffed into the windows. He knocked on a door. No answer.

Another. Nothing.

At the library, the lights were on. He stepped inside, the bell above the door jangling. The air smelled of old paper and dust. An elderly woman sat behind the desk, winding a battered radio. She looked up, eyes wary.

“Welcome to hell,” she said.

Amaral introduced himself, flashing his badge. “I’m looking into the disappearances. The signals.”

She nodded, lips pressed tight. “Keep the noise up. Loud. They don’t like it. When it gets quiet, they come.”

“They?” He asked.

She hesitated, then reached for the radio, cranking it until static filled the room. “Listeners. They wait for the silence. My husband—” Her voice broke. “He forgot to turn on the TV that night. I found him in the morning, folded up like a sheet… not a bone broken.”

Amaral’s stomach twisted. “What are they?”

She shook her head. “Demons from hell, if you ask me. Maybe strange, green men from space. Who knows?… They eat the quiet. That’s all I can say.”

A sudden hush fell.

The radio died, the static gone. The woman’s eyes widened. She tried to wind the radio again, but her hands shook, out of control.

The silence pressed in, thick and suffocating.

Then, with a eardrum blasting sound like air being sucked from a room, she was yanked upward.

Her body bent in impossible ways, folding and compressing, drawn through a vent no wider than her wrist.

Tony stumbled back, heart pounding, as the silence deepened.

Move!

He ran outside, gasping for air. The town was still empty, the only sound his own ragged breathing. He noticed something strange on the sidewalk by the Mustang: a fine dust, metallic and gray, glinting in the weak daylight. He scooped some into a sample bag, hands trembling.