I never thought I'd hear that voice again. The voice of my little girl. The voice I silenced.

  It was a dark, suffocating night. The kind that presses down on you, filling your lungs with dread. Emily was only ten, her eyes wide and full of the trust that comes with innocence. That trust made everything harder, the way she looked at us, like we could do no wrong.

  She had been a difficult child—spirited, some might say, but stubborn and defiant in a way that made life unbearable. She had tantrums, fits of anger that shook the house and shattered any semblance of peace. We tried everything. Therapists, counselors, even priests, but nothing worked. It was as though something evil had taken hold of her. We were at our wits' end. We were desperate.

  The night it happened, the storm outside was ferocious, winds howling like the voices of the damned, rain lashing against the windows as if trying to claw its way inside. Emily had one of her fits—screaming, thrashing, breaking things. She shouted that we didn't love her, that we were monsters. She clawed at us, biting and spitting like a feral animal.

  I don’t know who snapped first. Maybe it was me, or maybe it was Mary, my wife. Maybe it was both of us. I remember the sound—God, the sound—the crack as her head struck the fireplace, the dull, wet thud as she hit the floor. There was blood, so much blood, and she lay there, silent at last, her small chest no longer rising and falling.

  We panicked. We couldn’t call the police. They’d take her body and examine it, ask questions we couldn’t answer. So, we buried her in the woods behind our house. We dug a shallow grave under the old oak tree, the one where she used to play, and covered her with earth. As the last shovelful of dirt fell, it felt like the ground was swallowing our souls. We told ourselves she was better off, that we were better off. No one would ever know. We moved away, started fresh. We tried to forget, but the guilt never let us go.

  Fifteen years passed. We built a new life, but the memory of that night festered like a wound that wouldn’t heal. Mary couldn’t bear to have more children, and our marriage crumbled under the weight of what we had done. I would wake up at night, drenched in sweat, certain I heard her voice calling out from the woods. But it was just my mind playing tricks on me. It had to be.

  Then the phone rang.

  It was late, past midnight. Mary and I were sitting in the living room, the silence between us thick and impenetrable. The sudden shrill of the phone cut through the air like a knife, making us both jump. I frowned, wondering who could be calling at such an hour. We didn’t have friends anymore, not really. We didn’t trust anyone enough to let them get close.

  “Who would be calling this late?” Mary asked, her voice strained.

  I shook my head and picked up the receiver, my hand trembling slightly. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  The voice on the other end was soft, familiar. My heart stopped.

  “Who is this?” I asked, though I already knew. I’d never forget that voice.

  “It’s me, Dad. It’s Emily.”

  I couldn’t speak. My throat tightened as a cold sweat broke out across my skin.

  “Is Mom there?” she continued, her tone light, casual, as though we’d just spoken the other day.

  Mary was staring at me, her eyes wide with fear. I handed her the phone, my hands shaking so badly I nearly dropped it. She took it from me, and I watched as the color drained from her face.

  “Emily?” she whispered.

  “Hi, Mom. I’ve missed you.”

  The voice was unmistakable. It was our daughter, but that was impossible. We buried her. We killed her. How could she be calling us?

  “Who… who are you?” Mary stammered, her voice cracking.

  “You know who I am, Mom,” Emily replied. There was a softness to her voice, but also something cold and distant, something that didn’t belong. “I’ve been waiting for so long to talk to you. I’ve been so lonely.”

  Mary dropped the phone, her hands flying to her mouth. I grabbed it before it could hit the floor.

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  “This isn’t possible,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “You’re dead.”

  There was a pause on the other end, then a soft chuckle. “Am I, Dad? Are you sure?”

  I wanted to hang up, to throw the phone across the room, but something held me there, a terrible curiosity that kept me rooted in place.

  “What do you want?” I asked, my voice trembling.

  “To come home,” she said. “It’s been so long. Don’t you miss me?”

  Her words twisted in my gut like a knife. How could she sound so innocent, so sweet, when she was… I didn’t know what she was.

  “Emily, we… we can’t. You’re gone,” I stammered, trying to make sense of the impossible.

  “I’m not gone, Dad. I’m right here. Don’t you hear me?” Her voice was growing colder, more insistent. “You shouldn’t have left me. I was so scared, all alone in the dark. But I’m not alone anymore. I’ve made friends.”

  My blood ran cold. “What do you mean, friends?”

  “They’re here with me now,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “They told me what you did, how you left me out there to rot. They said you’re bad people, but I told them you didn’t mean to hurt me. You didn’t, right, Dad? You didn’t mean to kill me?”

  I couldn’t breathe. The walls seemed to close in, the air thick with the weight of her words.

  “It was an accident,” I said, my voice hoarse, desperate. “We didn’t mean to… it just happened.”

  There was silence on the other end. I thought maybe she’d hung up, that it was over, but then I heard it. Faint at first, a low murmur of voices, like a distant chorus. They grew louder, more distinct, a cacophony of whispers and moans. The voices were garbled, disjointed, as if they were struggling to speak through thick mud. And then, among them, I heard Emily’s voice again, but it was different now, twisted and broken.

  “Do you hear them, Dad? Do you hear what they’re saying? They’re angry, so angry. They want to hurt you, like you hurt me.”

  I clutched the phone, my knuckles white, unable to respond. The voices were getting louder, more insistent, filling my head with a buzzing that made it impossible to think. I could feel them, cold and malevolent, seeping through the receiver, wrapping around me like icy tendrils.

  “You have to come to me,” she said, her voice cutting through the noise. “You have to make it right.”

  “No,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “I can’t. We can’t.”

  “You will,” she hissed, her tone venomous now. “You have to. Or I’ll come to you.”

  The line went dead. I stood there, holding the receiver to my ear, listening to the silence, my mind reeling. Mary was shaking, tears streaming down her face, but I couldn’t comfort her. I couldn’t even comfort myself.

  For the next few days, we tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, that it was just some sick prank. But the phone kept ringing, night after night, always at the same time. We stopped answering, but it didn’t matter. We could hear her voice through the walls, through the floors, always calling, always demanding we come to her.

  The voices grew louder, the whispers turning to screams, echoing through the house, until we could barely think, barely sleep. We were prisoners in our own home, haunted by the ghost of our past. We knew what we had to do, but neither of us could bring ourselves to say it out loud.

  Finally, after a week of torment, we broke. We couldn’t take it anymore. We had to go back. We had to face what we had done.

  The night was eerily similar to the one fifteen years ago, the sky black and starless, the air thick with the promise of rain. We drove in silence, neither of us daring to speak, both of us knowing that this was the end. We parked the car at the edge of the woods and made our way to the old oak tree, the place where we had buried our daughter.

  The ground was soft, wet from the recent rains, and it didn’t take long to unearth the spot where we had left her. But as we dug, something felt wrong. The earth was loose, disturbed, as though someone had already been there. My heart pounded in my chest as the shovel struck something solid. We uncovered the remains, but they weren’t what we expected.

  The bones were there, brittle and yellowed with age, but they were not alone. Scattered around them were other bones, too many to count, tangled together in a grotesque embrace. And in the center of it all, her skull, grinning up at us, empty eye sockets filled with dirt.

  Then, the voices began again, louder now, coming from all around us, from the earth itself. They rose in a terrible crescendo, a symphony of the damned, and we could hear her voice, clear and sharp, cutting through the noise.

  “You left me,” she said, her voice filled with an unimaginable fury. “You left me here to rot, but I didn’t rot alone. They found me. They took me. And now, they’re coming for you.”

  The ground beneath us began to shift, the earth churning as though it were alive. Something was moving down there, something huge and ancient, something that had been waiting for us.

  We tried to run, but it was too late. The ground gave way beneath our feet, and we were swallowed by the darkness. The last thing I heard before everything went black was her voice, sweet and innocent once more, whispering in my ear.

  “Welcome home, Dad.”

  And then, nothing.

  Now, I’m here, in the dark, with the others. I can’t see them, but I can feel them, all around me, their cold breath on my skin, their hands clutching at me, pulling me deeper. I hear their whispers, their moans, and I know they’re waiting, just like I’m waiting. We’re all waiting, for the next call, for the next poor soul to hear our voices, and to come join us in the dark.

  And when they do, we’ll welcome them home.