Life in the countryside was never easy, but it was yours. The days stretched long, the work unforgiving, yet each night ended the same—you shutting out the world, sinking into the velvet haze of jazz.

And then there was your voice. Smooth, aching, impossible to ignore. A voice that could hush a room and make silence itself hold its breath.

Your grandmother used to warn you it wasn’t a blessing, but a burden. Our blood carries songs that heal, she would whisper, her hands trembling, but the dead hear them too. And when the veil is pierced… so does everything else.

You told yourself it was just folklore. But deep down, you knew. Because every time you sang, you felt it—that pull beyond the walls of your home. Like your music stretched out across more than just space. Like it reached into the bones of the earth, brushing against time itself. And something always seemed to be listening.

One night, in a smoke-filled juke club, they asked you to sing. And you did. The crowd swayed as though baptized by your voice, eyes glazed, hearts laid bare. But beyond the dim lights, beyond the haze, something else leaned closer. It heard you. It wanted you.

But evil does not rush. Evil waits.

That night, not thirty minutes after you returned home, came the first knock. Soft. Steady. Patient. A voice outside asking to be let in. Your gut twisted. You killed the lights. You never answered.

But the knock came again the next night. And the next. Always after dark. Always with a different reason, a different plea. Always the same voice.

You never opened the door.

Not until the evening when the sun bled itself across the horizon. A record spun upstairs as your own voice carried through the house—until it wasn’t alone. A note slid against yours, low and deliberate, threading into your song from outside.

Your heart faltered. Slowly, you turned down the record. Silence fell. But the other voice didn’t stop.

Drawn to the window, you parted the curtain.

There he was. A man standing in the last red light of the day, his face tilted up toward you. His lips curled into a small, knowing smirk as he sang your song back to you.

The sound slid beneath your skin, familiar yet foreign, your gift twisted into something hungrier, darker.

You pushed the window open. The air was thick, heavy, waiting.

His eyes locked on yours, sharp and unyielding, as his voice trailed off into silence.

Then, with the calm certainty of a man who had been waiting a very long time, he spoke:

“You have quite the voice…”