The Silence That Screams

The Silence That Screams

Story Summary:

In the faded mill town of Darrington, Maine—a place where the wind whistles like an old man’s last breath and secrets fester like mold in the walls—lives Daniel Thorne, a reclusive, mid-thirties handyman with a quiet disposition and a past more jagged than a broken mirror. When Daniel survives a freak lightning strike while working alone on the roof of the decrepit old Marwick Library, something inside him changes.

He starts hearing voices.

Not spoken voices—thoughts. Private musings. Passing judgments. The raw, unfiltered truths people keep locked behind their teeth. At first, it's a gift. A miracle. Daniel can finish sentences, solve problems, dodge lies. He’s hailed as a genius, a local legend, even as a healer. But the deeper he listens, the darker things get.

Because something else starts speaking through people—something old, alien, and insidious. At first, it hides behind the minds of strangers. Then it speaks through people Daniel loves. Eventually, it speaks through Daniel himself. And its message is always the same:

“I see you.”

As the voices grow louder and the line between mind and monster frays, Daniel begins to realize that his gift is a curse—that what he’s hearing isn’t just thoughts, but a voice that doesn't belong in this world. And it's using him to find a way out.

Now Daniel must decide: block out the world entirely, or follow the whispers into a place worse than madness.The night it started, the sky was the color of old bruises. That kind of yellow-purple rot that crawls over Darrington just before the air splits wide open and the lightning finds something—or someone—to punish.

Story Begins

Daniel Thorne was on the roof of the Marwick Library, patching up what years of pigeons, neglect, and Maine weather had peeled apart. He’d taken the job for cash under the table, not because he needed the money—he didn’t—but because he liked the quiet. Up there, above the town's stares and whispers, it was just him, the rustle of pine trees, and the creak of warped shingles under his boots.

They said the library was cursed. Always something breaking, always cold even in summer. The kids swore it moaned at night. Daniel didn’t believe in curses. He believed in rot, water damage, and rusted nails. He believed in things you could hammer back into place.

But when the lightning hit, it wasn’t like anything he’d ever felt. It was fast, yes—instantaneous—but not painless. It didn't just stop his heart. It crawled inside it, like a scream poured straight into his veins. The bolt ripped through him, lifted him off the roof, and threw him down hard enough to crack the plaster on the second-floor ceiling.

When he woke, hours later, smoke curled off his clothes like steam off a freshly washed corpse. The rain had stopped. The town was asleep. And something was different.

He could hear them.

Not their voices, not at first. Not words. It was more like heat. Pressure. An itch under his skin that twitched with every step someone else took, every shift in their thoughts.

The first clear thought came from a nurse in the ER while he lay strapped to a gurney, blinking against the sterile fluorescence.

He looks like he’d rather be dead. Wonder if he jumped.

Daniel jerked upright. His lips didn’t move, but his mind screamed: I didn’t jump.

The nurse stepped back, startled.

The voices didn’t stop.

Back home, in his too-quiet trailer tucked behind the old sawmill, he couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard them: the neighbors arguing over overdue bills, a teenager whispering apologies to her dead dog, Mr. Mallory, the seventy-six-year-old war vet, praying for his cancer to spread faster. These thoughts curled into his ears like smoke from a burning house.

At first, Daniel thought he was going crazy. He tried earplugs. Sleeping pills. Vodka. Nothing silenced the thoughts. They weren’t hallucinations. They were real. He could confirm them—word for word—before they even opened their mouths.

Within a week, the town had noticed. Daniel, the odd-job loner, suddenly knew where missing items were. He could settle arguments before they started. People started treating him like a psychic. A healer. Even the skeptics came around when he helped find young Callie Jenson’s dog trapped under the abandoned feed store. He hadn’t seen her dog. He just followed the girl's panicked thoughts.

People started showing up at his door—at first, quietly. Then in droves. They wanted answers. Secrets. Daniel became the town’s unspoken oracle. Darrington never had a tourist economy until then. But word travels fast in a town with more gravestones than living residents.

He told himself he was helping. That maybe the lightning had given him some kind of divine gift. Or a calling.

But then something else started speaking.

The first time it happened, he was in line at Ned’s Market, half-listening to the cashier’s inner monologue about quitting, when it surged up through her like boiling oil.

I see you.

It wasn’t her thought. It didn’t belong.

Daniel stumbled back, knocking over a rack of Tic Tacs. The cashier stared, frozen mid-scan, as if something had momentarily snatched control of her brain and then vanished, leaving no fingerprints.

After that, it became more frequent.

He'd be passing someone on the street, and their thoughts would go dark—blank—and then that same phrase would slither into his head.

I see you, Daniel.

The voice wasn’t like the others. It didn’t come wrapped in emotion, in fear or guilt or longing. It was cold. Watching. Ancient. He started hearing it in the trees. In the pipes. In the static between radio stations.

Then it began to ask questions.

Where do you think it goes, all that pain?

Do you think they deserve their thoughts?

What will they do when you tell them you hear me too?

It spoke through children. It spoke through drunks. It spoke through a passing crow once, its beady black eyes boring into Daniel’s soul like twin bullets of obsidian.

The voice never lied. That was the worst part. It spoke truths that cut like broken glass. About people he knew. About himself.

It told him how his mother really died—not in her sleep, but by her own hand, with a fistful of pills and no note. It told him his father hadn't been hit by a deer, but had driven off the road on purpose. The secrets he never wanted confirmed came vomiting up from the voice like bile.

Daniel stopped going into town.

But the people came anyway.

They came at night. Knocked on his trailer door. Whispered at the windows. They needed him. They were desperate. And sometimes, it wasn’t them speaking at all.

Sometimes, the voice spoke through them.

Like that one man—Timothy Halloway—who showed up with tears on his face and a shotgun in his hands. One moment, he was begging Daniel to save his dying wife. The next, his eyes turned completely black, and he whispered:

Open the gate, Daniel.

Daniel fought him off. He didn’t remember doing it, not exactly. There was blood. And the sound of bones breaking. When he came to, Timothy was crawling into the woods, muttering nonsense through broken teeth.

And then, Daniel started speaking in his sleep.

Not mumbling. Chanting.

He recorded himself one night, just to prove to himself he wasn’t losing his mind. But when he played the tape back, it wasn’t English. It wasn’t any language he recognized. Just a low, guttural hum, like a swarm of hornets rattling inside a corpse.

The voice was coming for him. That much was clear.

And it wanted out.

One night, driven by desperation, Daniel drove to the Marwick Library. He climbed to the roof, the same place where it all began. The sky had that same bruised look. Rain coming, electricity humming in the air like a sleeping dragon.

He screamed at the clouds. He screamed at the voice. He demanded answers.

The lightning came again.

But this time, it didn’t hit him.

It hit the building.

Fire engulfed the roof in seconds. Daniel didn’t run. He stood there, watched the flames lick the shingles and claw at the night. He thought maybe if he burned the place down, it would end.

He was wrong.

They found him standing in the ashes, days later. Unburned. Unscathed.

But something in his eyes was different. The townsfolk noticed. He didn’t speak anymore. Not with words. But people said when they looked into his eyes, they heard him. Loud and clear. Not just words, but feelings. Memories. Fears.

And sometimes, they heard something else. A whisper.

I see you.

The trailer’s still there, behind the old mill. Grown over now. But sometimes, if the wind shifts just right, you can still hear the hum. And if you knock on the door at midnight, some say it opens.

Not outward.

Inward.

And whatever’s inside is still listening.

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