The Ghosts Don’t Whisper Here

Title: The Message in Apartment 2B

Serenity Black stood outside the aging apartment building in Bronzeville, her leather satchel heavy against her shoulder, the wind tugging at the hem of her coat like a child begging her not to go inside. She already knew what waited for her upstairs—death always left a scent, and Serenity had smelled it since dawn.

The message had come to her in the middle of the night, as they often did. This time, it was a child. A small boy, maybe six years old, stood dripping wet at the foot of her bed. His lips were blue, his skin translucent, and his eyes too large for his skull.

“Tell my mama I didn’t mean to go,” he whispered. “She think I left her.”

By morning, Serenity had traced the energy back to Apartment 2B.

She knocked. A heavy thud echoed from inside, followed by silence. She knocked again, her knuckles grazing the peeling paint. Finally, the door creaked open.

A woman with cracked lips and rage behind her eyes glared out. “What you want?”

“I need to speak to you about your son,” Serenity said gently. “He came to me last night. He has a message.”

The woman’s face crumpled—and then hardened. “Don’t you ever say that to me again. My baby drowned ‘cause of me. Ain’t no message gonna change that. You some kind of damn ghost hustler or something?”

Serenity stepped back, sensing the shift. Grief and guilt had twisted this woman into something brittle and dangerous.

“I only came to help—”

Suddenly, the woman lunged, swinging a cast iron skillet that had been hidden behind the door. Serenity stumbled back, the heavy edge just missing her temple.

“You tryna make money off my pain?!” the woman screamed. “Get outta here before I kill you too!”

Serenity ran. Down the cracked steps, into the frozen dawn, the child’s voice echoing in her head.

“Tell her I didn’t mean to go.”

She sat on the curb and cried. Not because of the near miss, but because the boy was still watching her from the building’s broken window, his little hand pressed to the glass.

Title: Bayou Blood

Serenity Black never liked being called a medium. That word sounded too clean, too whitewashed, too safe. What she did—what she carried—was anything but.

Born and raised in the Lower Ninth Ward, Serenity learned early on that the veil in New Orleans wasn’t thin—it was torn. Spirits roamed like gossip, passed down in breathless warnings from grandmothers and root workers. Serenity didn't ask for the gift. It was stitched into her bones like a birthright. Messages came when they wanted, in whispers, smells, screams—and she delivered them whether people wanted them or not.

This time, it was a message wrapped in blood.

The spirit came to her while she was frying catfish in her shotgun house. A tall man with gator-slick skin and hollow eyes sat at her table like he’d been invited. His throat was slashed open, but no blood spilled. Just moss. Just mud.

“She thinks she safe,” he said, voice like a storm drain. “Tell her she ain’t. Tell her I’m still here.”

“Who?” Serenity whispered, heart thudding.

But he was gone. The grease popped. Her fish burned.

The message led her to Algiers Point, to a creaky white house that sat too still. She knocked. A woman answered—light-skinned, late 40s, too pretty to trust. The type that burned sage but didn’t believe in spirits until they scratched her back in the night.

“I’m Serenity Black. I got a message for you—from a man named Micah.”

The woman’s eyes turned to glass. “Micah’s dead. He drowned.”

Serenity nodded. “But he didn’t die alone.”

The woman slammed the door. But it didn’t latch.

Serenity stood there, feeling something watching from inside. Something old. Something mad.

She turned to leave—but the front door creaked back open.

“You need to go,” the woman said behind her, voice trembling. “You don’t know what you stirrin’ up.”

“Yes, I do,” Serenity whispered. “You buried him in the bayou. You let him drown while you married his brother. That’s why he can’t rest.”

That’s when it happened.

The woman screamed. Not at Serenity—but at something behind her. Serenity turned just in time to see the spirit rise from the floorboards—wet, moss-covered, eyes full of hate.

He wasn’t talking anymore.

Serenity ran. She didn’t stop till she reached the ferry dock, panting, sweating, the bayou’s scent chasing her like a dog.

She knew what came next.

Micah wouldn’t leave now. He’d be with her. Whispering. Waiting. Until the next message.

And every time she looked in the mirror, she saw his muddy handprint on her shoulder.

Title: Let Me In

By the time Serenity reached Tremé, the sun was bleeding out over the rooftops, painting the sky a bruised orange. She’d gotten the message two days ago, scribbled in someone else’s handwriting on her bathroom mirror:

“She’s not the one who needs to hear it. You are.”

At first, she thought it was a warning. But the dreams told her otherwise.

She’d seen the house before—dilapidated, swallowed by ivy and silence. It used to belong to Miss Loretta, a priestess who vanished in the '90s after her final séance turned violent. Some said the last person she tried to help clawed their own eyes out mid-ritual. Others said Loretta was still in there, waiting.

Serenity knew better. Spirits didn’t wait. They watched.

She stepped through the rusted gate, the wind heavy with jasmine and something sour—like spoiled milk and swamp water.

Inside, the house whispered. Floorboards groaned under her boots, the air thick and humid, clinging to her skin like a hand. Candles on the altar flickered without flame.

She knelt down and opened herself up.

“Alright, who sent for me?” she asked aloud, placing her hand on the rotted floor.

A low growl answered.

Then the walls began to bleed.

Thick, black ichor oozed from the seams of the room, and a name roared through her mind:

ALTHEA.

Serenity stumbled back. That was her birth name. One she hadn’t used since she was seven.

Something hit her. Hard. She flew across the room and slammed into the wall. Her vision doubled.

“Let me in,” a voice hissed—not from the room, but from inside her head.

It was a woman’s voice. Familiar. And angry.

Serenity clawed at her own scalp, trying to drive it out. But the thing inside just laughed. It wasn’t just a ghost—it was a loa. A powerful one. Twisted by rage, starved for a body. She’d been waiting decades, and Serenity was her perfect host.

“You came here to deliver a message,” the voice cooed, “but this time, you were the message. You just didn’t know it.”

Serenity screamed as her body arched, seized, and lifted off the floor. Her bones vibrated. Her jaw dislocated. She could feel herself slipping.

Then—just as she lost control—she heard another voice. A chant. Faint but steady.

Lani.

Her best friend’s voice cut through the darkness, anchoring her. Lani was outside, calling her back, praying in Haitian Creole, burning white copal and Florida water.

The spirit shrieked.

“No. She’s mine now!”

But Serenity wasn’t going.

With the last of her strength, she spat the spirit’s name:

“LORETTA.”

The house shook. A window shattered. And the black ichor ignited in flames.

Serenity woke up on the sidewalk, coughing up soot. Lani knelt beside her, tears on her cheeks, sage bundle in hand.

“You was gone for hours, girl,” she whispered. “I thought I lost you.”

Serenity looked back at the house. It wasn’t there anymore.

Just an empty lot.

But in her shadow… Loretta smiled.

---

Title: Whispers at Madame Bea’s

Serenity had done readings in some strange places, but none stranger than Madame Bea’s Beauty Lounge.

It was tucked between a daiquiri shop and a pawn store off Claiborne Avenue. The outside was painted bubblegum pink, but the inside… it felt *wrong*. Like something heavy lived under the floorboards.

She only agreed to meet there because the message had come through loud and clear three nights in a row—someone in that salon was about to die, and Serenity was supposed to stop it.

She walked in to the jingle of a bell and the smell of burnt hair and incense.

“Help you?” asked the stylist, chewing gum, side-eyeing her through rhinestone lashes.

“I need to speak to the owner,” Serenity said.

“That’d be me,” came a voice from the back.

Madame Bea appeared—five-foot-nothing, skin smooth like river stone, lipstick the color of dried blood. Her eyes didn’t blink.

Serenity explained what she was there for. That she got messages. That someone here was in danger.

Bea stared at her. Then cackled.

“Oh, honey. This place been dangerous. You just late.”

She let Serenity walk to the back, to the room where they did spiritual cleanses. Candles lined the walls. Chicken bones and mirrors sat on the altar.

“You came here to save somebody?” Bea asked.

“I came to deliver a message,” Serenity corrected.

The air shifted.

Then every mirror in the room went black.

Not dark. *Black*. Like ink had swallowed the glass.

In each mirror, a different woman appeared. But their mouths were sewn shut. And they were all screaming.

Serenity froze. The message slammed into her mind like a fist.

“They're trapped,” she whispered. “You bound them.”

Bea smiled. “And if I did?”

Serenity’s breath caught. “You can’t just use people like that. You made deals. You made them *vessels*.”

Bea’s eyes gleamed. “I made this place *powerful*. Those girls knew what they were doing. They *wanted* beauty. They wanted men. I gave them what they asked for.”

“Then give them *peace*,” Serenity snapped, voice trembling.

Bea leaned in close. “You came to deliver a message, messenger. You ain’t the judge.”

Then Serenity saw it—behind Bea’s eyes. Movement. Flickers of the trapped women, begging, fighting, trying to claw out.

One of them broke through.

Bea convulsed. Screamed. And then *collapsed*.

The mirrors shattered.

The women disappeared.

Serenity stood alone in the silence, heart pounding, the scent of jasmine and rot thick in the air.

The message had been delivered. The warning heard.

But as Serenity walked out, her reflection in the front mirror didn’t move with her.

It just smiled—and blinked *after* she was gone.

---

Title: The Crying Tree

Serenity almost didn’t stop. She was headed to Baton Rouge, dead tired, weed low, and coffee gone cold. But the road turned strange once she passed the broken-down sign that read:

“St. Mercy Hollow – Est. 1861.”

Her GPS blinked out. Radio turned to static. And then came the wail.

Not music. Not an animal. A *wail*—a child’s cry, deep and raw, coming from the trees.

She hit the brakes.

Serenity didn’t want to go in that forest. Every part of her screamed *don’t*. But a voice in her chest said, *She’s waiting.*

So she lit a cigarette, tucked her locs in a scarf, and walked into the pines.

Ten minutes in, she found it:

A giant oak split down the middle, oozing sap like thick tears.

A woman sat at its base, rocking back and forth in a white dress stained red around the hem. Her back was to Serenity.

“You lost, baby?” Serenity asked, already knowing the answer.

The woman turned slowly. Her eyes were gone—hollow pits of smoke—and her mouth moved, but no sound came out.

Serenity’s knees buckled.

The woman raised one hand and pointed to the bark.

Serenity looked.

Names. Hundreds of them. Carved deep. Some still dripping blood. One name glowed:

JANELLE.

The message dropped in Serenity’s gut like lead: *This woman was forced to bury her daughter here. But the girl never moved on. Her spirit is trapped in the roots, screaming for her mother—and the mother won't leave until someone listens.*

Serenity stepped closer.

And the ground broke open.

Skeletal hands reached out. Not just one child. Dozens. All trapped. All *wrong*. Torn. Stuck. Angry.

“Who did this to y’all?” Serenity asked, heart pounding.

A whisper filled her head like a storm.

"Mama did. She wouldn’t let us go."

The mother screamed then. Her jaw unhinged, her body lifting into the air, head spinning back as every spirit yanked at her soul.

Serenity clutched her necklace, chanting protection prayers.

But one child looked at her.

"Tell her to stop calling us back."

Serenity nodded, then shouted: “You gotta let them go, Mama! You’re keeping them stuck!”

The wind howled.

Then silence.

The tree split wider. The mother turned to ash. And the ground sealed itself.

Serenity stumbled back to the road, dizzy, her boots soaked in dirt and something else.

When she reached her car, her GPS flickered back on. The message read:

“Thank you. Now rest.”

But in her rearview, the oak still stood.

And one name still glowed:

SERENITY.

---

Mother’s Tongue

In Gentilly, there was an old woman who never spoke English. Creole French, rough and fast, with curses tucked between syllables.

Serenity got called there by the woman’s granddaughter, who whispered over the phone, *“She’s speaking in other people’s voices. Including my dead cousin.”*

Serenity arrived to a shotgun house with a black X painted over the door. Inside, the air was thick with mildew and sweet oil. The old woman sat in a rocking chair, her eyes rolled back, her tongue too long for her mouth. It writhed.

“She's a conduit now,” Serenity said. “Y’all been asking for messages too long without offerings. Somebody finally answered—and they brought their own mouth.”

Suddenly, the woman snapped forward. Her voice deepened to a man’s.

*“Why did you let them drown, Monique?”*

The granddaughter screamed. That was her cousin’s voice.

Another voice took over: *“Tell my husband I know what he did.”*

Then another. And another.

The room filled with screaming, her mouth stretching open until it tore at the edges.

Serenity shouted for candles, salt, anything—but the grandmother's body *stood up*. Her limbs cracked like dried branches.

“You brought her here,” the voices said in unison. “You wanted truth. Now take it.”

The old woman lunged.

Serenity threw the salt. Fire erupted from the candle flame, burning the chair, the altar, the floor.

By the time it was over, the woman lay quiet. Dead. But smiling.

Serenity left shaking. Behind her, the tongue still moved on the floor—crawling toward her shadow.

---

The Man in the Seventh Pew

Serenity wasn’t a churchgoer, but when Pastor Dillard called, she listened.

“Something’s wrong in my congregation,” he said. “People leaving that pew\... changed.”

It was the seventh pew on the left. Sunday after Sunday, folks who sat there lost their minds or their lives within days. A stroke. A seizure. Suicide.

The message came to Serenity in her sleep:

**“He’s sitting where he died.”**

She entered the church on a Wednesday, empty but humming with energy. The seventh pew was ice cold. She sat down.

Time bent.

Suddenly, the church was full. Everyone dressed like it was 1962. The sermon was fire-and-brimstone. And the man beside her—dark suit, blood dripping down his collar—turned and said, *“Preacher said I was a demon. So I showed him.”

In a blink, she saw it: the man shot himself mid-sermon. Right in that pew. Cursed it. His rage soaked the wood. His *hate* fed on anyone who sat there.

Now he wanted Serenity to stay.

The lights exploded. The pew buckled.

Serenity reached into her bag, pulled out her grandmother’s silver cross, and held it to the air.

“You ain’t got no claim over me!” she shouted.

The ghost screamed, tried to crawl inside her mouth—but she held her ground.

A burning handprint scarred her palm. But the pew turned to ash.

The church emptied. Quiet returned.

But Serenity still hears the man’s voice whenever she walks into a chapel:

“You sat with me. That means something.”

--

The Night Wendy Ate the Message

It was supposed to be a routine drop.

Wendy Washington, age 29, called Serenity after her dreams kept warning her to stay away from "green things." She thought it was about food.

It wasn’t.

Serenity came to her apartment with oils, prayers, and candles. But the moment she stepped inside, she knew—this wasn’t about dreams. It was *infestation*.

The plants. Dozens of them. They pulsed. They *watched*.

“You’ve been feeding them blood,” Serenity said, eyes narrowing.

Wendy blinked. “I only cut myself once.”

“Something moved in through the soil.”

That night, the message came while Serenity prayed: *“She is digesting the truth. And soon, she will eat you, too.”*

The plants bloomed black. Wendy levitated.

Her mouth opened wide. Inside was a second mouth—green, wet, hissing like steam.

“She chewed up the message,” Serenity whispered. “Didn’t want to hear it.”

Vines lashed out. Serenity grabbed her dagger, slashing roots, but they bled.

Wendy’s skin cracked, bark growing beneath it.

Serenity poured blessed water into her mouth.

Wendy screamed. Her body collapsed.

The plants withered.

But on the wall, in sap and blood, the message wrote itself:

“Do not deliver where truth will be devoured.”