The Listening Dark

Noah and Riley / Before the Sirens

An excerpt from The Listening Dark

Noah had only meant to ride into town.

That was all.

A quick trip down the hill to Grace’s Convenience Store. A bottle of water. Maybe a candy bar. Maybe a few minutes away from the house before the day settled fully over Hiller’s Crest and reminded him, again, that everything in his life felt smaller than it used to.

The morning was still cool, the kind of cool that clung to the skin before the sun had burned the fog off the road. Overnight rain had left the pavement dark and shining, and the trees along the edge of Torrington dripped quietly into the ditch line. The whole town felt half awake. Not asleep exactly.

Listening.

Noah coasted into the parking lot, set one foot down, and leaned over the handlebars of his bike. The bell above Grace’s door jingled as someone came out.

That was when he saw him.

The man stepped onto the sidewalk with a baseball bat and mitt hooked over one shoulder, as if he had wandered out of some strange, small-town dream. He had dark hair, a beard, glasses, and the kind of smile that arrived before the rest of him did. Easy. Warm. A little nervous, maybe, but not in a way that made him weak. In a way that made him real.

Noah looked away too quickly.

Then looked back.

The man noticed.

“Nice bike,” he said.

Noah glanced down at it, then back up. “It gets me where I need to go.”

The man smiled wider, as if that answer had told him something he liked. “Riley.”

He held out his hand.

Noah hesitated just long enough to feel foolish for hesitating, then took it. “Noah.”

Their hands met.

It should have been nothing.

Just skin against skin. Two strangers saying hello outside a convenience store while the town stretched and yawned around them.

But Noah felt it anyway. A little spark of recognition that made no sense. Not love. Not even want, though want was there too, quick and embarrassing. It was something quieter. Something that felt like a door opening in a house he had forgotten he owned.

Riley let go first, but he did not step back.

“You from around here?” he asked.

“Hiller’s Crest,” Noah said, nodding toward the road. “Up the hill.”

Riley’s eyebrows lifted. “No kidding. I just moved in there.”

Noah blinked. “You did?”

“House 107.”

Noah laughed softly, surprised by how pleased he was. “I’m 101.”

“Well, damn,” Riley said, shifting the bat on his shoulder. “Neighbors.”

The word landed between them with more weight than it should have.

They started walking together without either of them really deciding to. Noah pushed his bike at his side while Riley kept the bat over one shoulder. Their steps fell into rhythm almost immediately.

“You always carry a bat when you go walking?” Noah asked.

Riley looked at it as if he had forgotten it was there. “I was supposed to meet my nephew. Return his bat and mitt. He took off to the mountains without telling me.”

“Sounds considerate.”

“Very. Family trait.”

Noah smiled.

For a few steps, they walked in silence. It was not uncomfortable. That surprised him too. Silence usually felt like something he had to fill, something that might judge him if he didn’t. But with Riley, the silence had room in it.

“So what brought you to Torrington?” Noah asked.

Riley’s smile faded a little, though he tried to keep it. “I left someone in Knoxville. Needed to get away. Clear my head. Start over.”

Noah’s voice softened before he could stop it. “Sorry to hear that. Hope she wasn’t too rough on you.”

Riley glanced over, then grinned. He swung the bat in a loose, theatrical arc. “I swing my bat a different way.”

Noah laughed before he could catch himself.

Riley seemed relieved by it.

“I kinda got that vibe when you walked up to me,” Noah said. “Guess you picked up on that with me too. Is that why you stopped to talk?”

“Maybe,” Riley said. “Just a little.”

Their laughter came easier after that. Brighter. Warmer than the morning deserved.

By the time they reached the last hill before Hiller’s Crest, Riley had told him more than he seemed to mean to. About Knoxville. About the boyfriend whose name still came with a shadow. About the car that had been in his ex’s name. About how stupid he felt for letting himself be controlled that way.

“No,” Noah said, steady and immediate. “You’re not stupid.”

Riley looked at him.

“You trusted someone,” Noah continued. “That’s not stupid. That’s human. It just means the next time, you’ll know better.”

Riley gave a half smile. “I’m not getting into another relationship. I’m going celibate for the rest of my life.”

“Oh my,” Noah said. “The rest of your life? No dick? That sounds horrible and boring.”

Riley laughed hard enough that his shoulders loosened.

“He did have a beautiful dick,” Riley admitted.

Noah shook his head, grinning. “Don’t worry. You’ll find another one. I’m sure of it.”

Riley looked over at him then, and the joke thinned into something else.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Their eyes held a little too long. The road curved ahead. The fog shifted through the trees. Somewhere far off, a bird called once and went quiet.

Noah felt it again.

That pull.

Not just attraction. Not just curiosity. Something threaded with ache. As if the morning had placed Riley in front of him on purpose.

Then the hill broke.

Hiller’s Crest came into view.

Blue lights flashed through the fog.

Noah stopped walking.

At first, his mind refused to understand what he was seeing. Squad cars lined the street. Ambulances sat with their back doors open. Officers moved across lawns and driveways with the stiff urgency of people trying not to panic. Yellow caution tape cut across the quiet beauty of the neighborhood, turning ordinary homes into scenes.

Riley stopped beside him. The bat slid from his shoulder into his hand.

“Oh my,” he breathed.

Noah looked toward 102. Stacy’s place. Then farther down toward the barn near 110. More lights. More officers. More movement.

“No,” Noah whispered, though he did not know what he was refusing yet.

A moment ago, the morning had been laughter. A sidewalk. A stranger with kind eyes and a dangerous smile. A possibility.

Now the entire subdivision looked wounded before the sun had fully risen.

Riley looked at him, and the spark between them changed. It did not disappear. It tightened. Darkened. Became something shared.

Noah swallowed, gripped the handlebars of his bike, and started forward.

This time, Riley walked beside him without a word.

Together, they went toward Hiller’s Crest, toward the flashing lights, and toward whatever had woken in the dark before morning.

Liam / The Crawlspace

Liam eased the truck up the driveway and tapped the garage icon on his phone.

The door answered with its usual groan, rattling upward one tired panel at a time. He sat there a moment, foot on the brake, watching the neighborhood through the windshield.

Hiller’s Crest looked too quiet.

Not peaceful.

Just quiet.

His eyes drifted toward 102 before he could stop them. Stacy’s place sat still in the late-day light, the driveway empty where Ole’ Mabel used to be. He hadn’t realized how much he had gotten used to seeing that old yellow bus parked there until it was gone. The empty space felt wrong, like someone had pulled a tooth from the street and left the gap showing.

“Poor woman,” he muttered.

Then, because he did not want to sit there thinking about dead neighbors and empty driveways, he pressed the accelerator and rolled into the garage.

The door began to lower behind him, sealing out the street with a heavy mechanical hum.

Liam let out a long breath as the last strip of daylight disappeared under the door.

Home.

Finally.

His shoulders dropped. His back ached from standing all day at Joe-Mart, his feet throbbed, and his patience had been left somewhere between the breakroom microwave and aisle twelve. All he wanted now was his recliner, the remote, and whatever frozen dinner was still hiding in the freezer.

He climbed out of the truck, grabbed his lunch bag, and punched his code into the keypad beside the kitchen door. The lock clicked. He pushed inside, already imagining the soft collapse into his chair.

Then he stopped.

The smell hit him first.

Sour. Wet. Foul.

Liam’s face twisted. “What the hell?”

The kitchen looked normal. Dishes in the sink. A towel folded over the oven handle. A note from Stephanie on the counter about the boys being gone for the evening, but he already knew that from her text. Seeing the note soured his stomach reminding him how he dreamed of somewhere else, someone else.

Nothing was overturned. Nothing broken. No obvious disaster to create such a rancid odor.

But the smell was there.

It crawled out of the house like bad breath from a putrid mouth.

He set his lunch bag down and followed it.

At first he thought it was the trash. Then the garbage disposal. Then the laundry room. But each room only pushed him farther along, nose wrinkled, irritation sharpening into unease.

By the time he reached the hallway, he knew where he had to check next.

The crawlspace.

He stepped outside and walked to the side of the house. He stood in front of the access door and stared at it.

“Nope,” he said.

The smell thickened.

He sighed, rubbed both hands down his face, and muttered, “Of course. Of course it’s under the damn house.”

For a moment, he considered leaving it. Whatever had died under there would still be dead in the morning. But the thought of Stephanie coming home and smelling it, of the boys complaining, of all three of them looking at him like he had personally invited rot beneath the floorboards, made him curse under his breath.

He grabbed his phone, turned on the flashlight, and opened the crawlspace access.

Cold air breathed out.

Liam froze.

It was colder under the house than it should have been. The kind of cold that did not belong to weather. It touched his face, slid beneath his collar, and raised the hair along his arms.

“Great,” he whispered. “Love that.”

He lowered himself inside.

The dirt was damp beneath his knees. Pipes ran overhead. Insulation sagged in pale strips between the beams. His phone light cut a weak blue path through the narrow dark, catching spiderwebs, old roots, and the glitter of moisture on the foundation wall.

The smell got worse.

Sewage. Wet earth. Old wood.

And something sweet underneath.

Something spoiled.

He crawled forward, one hand in the dirt, the other holding the phone out ahead of him. Every movement made the house groan softly above him.

Or maybe the sound came from somewhere else.

Somewhere closer.

“Hello?” he called, then immediately felt stupid.

The crawlspace answered with silence.

He moved deeper.

Then he heard Stephanie’s voice.

“Liam?”

He stopped so fast his shoulder scraped a joist.

“Steph?” He turned his head toward the access door. “That you?”

No answer.

His phone beam trembled.

“Steph?”

The voice came again, softer now.

Closer than the door.

“Liam…”

His stomach tightened.

“No,” he muttered. “No, no, no.”

Something was wrong.

Not wrong like a leak. Not wrong like mold or sewage or a dead animal behind the wall.

Wrong like the house had opened its eyes.

“Stephanie?” His gaze snapped toward the wall he had been crawling toward, then back to the exit. “I’m coming out.”

“Do you still use my things when you think I’m not looking?”

His mouth went dry.

“What the fuck?” he breathed.

The smell thickened. His breathing came faster now, too loud in his own ears. His thoughts began slipping out of order. Stephanie was gone. Stephanie was above him. Stephanie could not know that. Stephanie would not say that.

Stephanie would not sound like that.

“I’m coming out,” he said, forcing his voice louder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but we need to talk.”

The darkness answered with his name.

“Liam…”

“No.” His voice cracked. “Steph!”

Something exhaled beside his ear.

Not above him.

Beside him.

A cold, breathy voice, stripped of Stephanie now. Thin. Ancient. Amused.

“I’m always listening.”

Liam screamed and threw himself backward, slamming his shoulder into a joist. Pain flashed white through his arm, but he barely felt it. He scrambled toward the access door, half crawling, half dragging himself, the flashlight clutched in one shaking hand.

“Help me!” he yelled.

He reached the door and shoved it hard, expecting it to pop open.

It did not move.

He shoved again.

Nothing.

Panic tore through him. He slammed both palms against the wood, then his shoulder, then his fists.

“Stephanie! Open the damn door!”

The door held.

He hit it again, harder this time, dirt grinding beneath his knees. The whole crawlspace seemed to pulse behind him, patient and listening.

Then another voice came from the dark.

“Dad?”

Liam stopped.

His fist hovered inches from the door.

The voice was distant. Soft.

Lewis.

“Dad?” it called again.

A child’s voice, but not a child’s innocence. There was something underneath it. Something mean. Something smiling.

“Where are you?”

Liam coughed once, his throat closing around the smell. “Lewis?”

The darkness seemed to lean in.

“I’m in the crawlspace,” he said. “Go get your mother. Now.”

A pause.

Then Lewis said, “I saw you, Dad.”

Liam’s chest tightened. “Saw what?”

“I saw you watching the new guy next door.”

Liam pressed his back against the access door, his breath sawing in and out of him.

Lewis laughed softly.

“You wanted to see him, didn’t you?”

“What?” Liam said, but the word fell weakly into the dirt.

His mind lurched for reason. Gas leak. That had to be it. Sewer gas. Mold. Something toxic under the house making him hear things. Making him dream while awake. Making the dark speak in voices it had stolen from upstairs.

He turned and began pounding on the door again.

“Open the door!” he screamed.

Behind him, something shifted in the crawlspace.

Like the dark had changed positions.

Liam froze with both hands against the wood.

From somewhere behind him, in Stephanie’s voice again, came a whisper full of wet affection.

“Don’t leave yet, Liam.”

Then Lewis giggled.

And something knocked once from inside the wall.

Liam rolled onto his back, spine pressed hard against the access door. The glow from his phone lay weak and blue in the dirt beside him.

It should have helped.

It didn’t.

The darkness was growing around it.

At first, it was only a shadow inside the dark.

A low shape near the wall.

It moved.

Liam’s breath caught.

The thing crawled toward him slowly, dragging itself through the dirt with inhuman patience. A winged shadow unfolded around it, jointed and wrong, brushing the beams on either side as it drew closer.

Not animal.

Not human.

Not anything his mind could hold long enough to name.

“No,” Liam whispered.

The shadow paused.

Then it laughed.

Once.

A small, intimate sound.

Like it knew him.

Like it had known him for years.

The phone light flickered in the dirt between them.

For one impossible second, Liam saw the suggestion of a face, the glisten of something wet, the thin curl of limbs folding beneath it, wings pressed close like a shroud.

Then the light went out.

And beneath the house, the dark listened.