Season 2 - The Bone-Light: How an Orphaned Village Became a Mouth for Something Older

CHAPTER 5: The Girl Who Drew Exit Wounds: How the Orphanage Bleeds Memory

Date: March 20, 1980 - Location: Borsk, Abandoned Girls’ Dormitory

THE BLOOD-DRAWN SKETCHBOOK

Rain had saturated the orphanage’s east wing. The ceilings leaked, the floorboards bowed, and paint peeled from walls like dead skin. Sister Magdalena knew this wing better than any..she had led prayers here after the fire. But something about the dormitory disturbed her more than memory itself.

Two rows of rusted bunk beds sat in silence. At the end of the row, near a boarded-up window, a single sketchbook lay open on the wood-floor altar. Terror held her from touching it, but she did.

All pages were the same: a child’s trembling pencil-sketch of a human figure with holes instead of organs. Each hole was perfectly shaded to look as though flesh had been excised cleanly. The caption beneath in childish handwriting: “When we leave, we take the hole.”

Her heart thundered.

Under the last sketch lay a note:

“Find me where dreams leave their bodies. - E.”

No other signature.

E-THE ARTIST REMEMBER

Magdalena found E. kneeling in front of the bunk bed at the far end. The girl was seven..too young to draw such nightmares. Her hair was matted, her eyes vacant, coal-lines etched beneath them. E. held a large shard of ice; it dripped black.

Magdalena spoke softly.

“E., where did you find the ice?”

E. looked up.

“It drew circles on the ceiling. Every night. The ceiling. Cracks there. So I took some.”

“Why draw the holes?”

She smiled.

“They’re where we leave when we go.”

Magdalena understood: these were exit wounds. Places where souls had departed, presumably earlier.

THE DORMITORIUM’S BREATH

That night, Sister Magdalena couldn’t sleep. The dormitory exhaled.

She paced the hallway and felt vibrations from walls and floor..like a pulse. Occasionally, she heard children giggle. When she checked the rooms, no one lay in bed. The sketchbook lay closed on the altar. E. was gone.

At 3:13 AM, Black hail pelted the roof. The ceiling splintered, revealing a new hole. Through it, pale moonlight poured, and a freezing gust sent the sketchbook’s pages flipping..sketches blurring into new forms.

On one page: a silhouette of a child stepping through the exit wound..the holes were portals, ripping through flesh.

CALLIE’S DRAWING ROOM

The next morning, the portrait studio in the main wing… had been repurposed. Walls were painted with blood-drawn murals:

• A girl stepping backward into her mouth.

• A choir of children whose faces were blank but their organs were drawn in glowing chalk.

• A single word: HOME-written in a loop, finger-red.

Callie stood before the mural. Magdalena asked:

“What happened here?”

Callie traced the word.

“They found a way home. But only by becoming holes.”

When Magdalena left, Callie scrawled in pencil on the mural’s edge: “I am the door.”

THE EXIT WOUND EXPERIMENT

Kazimir and Sister Magdalena decided to investigate. They found a hidden passage beneath a floorboard with a brass ring. Pulling it revealed a spiral trap door into darkness.

Descending, they entered a chamber.

The walls were lined with writing-cross-hatched names and dates. Among them: “HOPE LIDIA - 1972” and “CALLIE KAZ - 1980.” In the center, dozens of exit wounds were etched into the ceiling. Some were glowing, oozing black corrosion.

E. appeared, barefoot, walking in a slow circle. She held one of the wounds, as if feeling its warmth.

When she sensed them, she raised her arm and pointed at the ceiling.

“She came first. But she never left.”

On the ceiling, fresh carving:

“MAGDALENA.”

THE TESTING OF HOPE

They brought 5-year-old Lidia, the only child strong enough to remain awake. She was asked to stand under a carved hole. She was instructed to whisper her name.

A single drop of blood trickled from the ceiling into her hair, staining her face red. She gasped. Then she collapsed.

In her hand was a small, perfect circle of flesh-cleanly excised, perfectly round.

It pulsed in her palm. She slept..deep..and did not wake.

ECHOES OF ECHOES

Magdalena tried to pull Lidia’s pulse. It was flat.

Callie knelt and whispered a beseeching Latin phrase.

The hole retracted.

Lidia’s eyes fluttered..open without awareness. She smiled.

“She remembered where her body stayed,” whispered Callie.

E. appeared beside them, eyes wet.

“I drew her hole for home.”

BOURNED SKETCHBOOK

In the studio, Kazimir found burning embers where the sketchbook once lay. He retrieved a charred page to read in the dim light:

“When we exit, we burn the path so they don’t follow us.”

Signed: E., The First Exit.

EXODUS AT MOONRISE

That night, at the stroke of moonrise, the corridors shifted again.

Walls retracted, hallways folded into themselves. Doors opened into nothing. Shadows leaped off floors.

The children..Callie, E., Lidia..walked toward the exit wound. They passed through it together.

And disappeared.

Only heavy laughter echoed.

Sister Magdalena screamed in chase. Kazimir tried to follow, but his legs moved into air. He sank.

CHAPTER 5 ENDS WITH..

The dormitory floor closed like an eyelid.

Only the murmur of wind through keyholes remained.

Sister Magdalena sank to her knees.

In front of her lay E.'s sketchbook..untouched..and open to a blank page.

At the bottom, freshly written:

“Blessed are the hollow.”

CHAPTER 6: THE BOY WHO HEARD THE SILENCE TOO CLEARLY : Echoes from the Bell That Was Never Meant to Ring

March 21, 1980 - Borsk Orphanage, Eastern Bell Tower (Defunct Since 1959)

THE SILENCE THAT SPILLED OUTWARD

Kazimir had not expected the bell to toll. Not here. Not after all these years.

Yet it did.

Once.

At 4:04 AM.

No one else seemed to hear it..except Elijah.

Elijah was mute. Born without vocal cords. Seven years old. Pale eyes that never blinked at the right time. His silence was usually oppressive, like a held breath..but now, as Kazimir watched him stand under the rotting wooden rafters of the eastern corridor, something had shifted.

He wasn't just silent. He was listening.

And the air around him responded like a ripple in black syrup.

The boy turned to Kazimir and pointed toward the bell tower.

Not spoke.

Pointed.

THE TOWER THAT SHOULDN’T RING

The eastern bell tower had been sealed since 1959, after a failed exorcism during mass caused the entire congregation to vanish mid-prayer. Only ash and salt circles were found in the pews. No bells had been installed since.

The stairs up were rotten. Wooden. Warped.

Kazimir climbed them anyway..Elijah behind him, barefoot.

At the top: a room that didn’t belong to this building.

The architecture was inconsistent. The walls curved inward like a conch shell. In the middle stood a single iron bell, suspended by ropes made of braided vocal cords..pink, glistening, twitching.

Elijah walked to the bell.

He pressed his ear against it.

And screamed.

Without a mouth.

THE SOUND THAT SHOULDN’T BE

The scream came from the bell, not the boy.

It rippled through the tower, knocking Kazimir to his knees. Blood trickled from his ears. He clutched the floor, gasping, as Elijah convulsed once..and then collapsed.

From beneath the bell, something leaked: a black fluid, thick and warm. It moved on its own.

It pooled into a shape.

A child’s silhouette.

It didn’t speak. But from every surface..walls, bell, Elijah’s own skin..came the echo:

"I AM THE GOD OF UNSPOKEN THINGS."

"YOU TAUGHT ME TO LISTEN WHEN YOU WERE SILENT."

The bell tolled again.

THE ARCHIVE OF UNSAID SINS

The fluid evaporated.

In its place, a scroll.

Kazimir opened it.

It wasn’t parchment. It was flattened skin.

On it were entries..written not in words, but in memories:

• A girl swallowing her diary so no one could read her pain.

• A boy blinking Morse code with bleeding eyes.

• A nun who silently buried 33 children in unmarked graves, her mouth sewn shut.

• A mute boy who never spoke, not because he couldn’t..but because he was listening for the one voice that never lied.

At the bottom of the scroll was a name.

"ELIJAH: RECEIVER #0"

THE RETURN OF SPEECH

Elijah awoke.

He opened his mouth.

He had no tongue. But sound escaped.

A child’s voice, layered with a thousand others.

He sang:

“We do not speak because we do not trust.”

“But the silence has rotted too.”

“We must remove it.”

And with that, his chest opened like a drawer.

Inside: a tuning fork.

Still humming from the bell.

He handed it to Kazimir.

"You’ll need this when they stop remembering how to scream."

THE OLD CHOIR RETURNS

Later that evening, the abandoned choir hall filled with children. Not physically. Audibly.

Their voices filtered through walls, through heating vents, through dust.

Each voice hummed the same unfinished note. And as the night deepened, the note formed syllables.

“Help us remember how to scream.”

In the center of the choir pit, Elijah sat. Tuning fork in his palm. Lightless eyes.

He nodded as Kazimir entered.

And on the back wall of the choir hall, in what looked like smeared ash, were the words:

“SILENCE IS THE WOUND THEY DON’T STITCH.”

THE FINAL BELL

Magdalena climbed the tower.

She found the bell half-melted, the vocal cords severed. In the center of the room stood Elijah.

He turned to her. Then opened his arms.

In his chest now: a void. A black orb where his lungs should be.

The last of the silence had fled him.

He spoke once more.

“The bell was not a warning. It was a heartbeat.”

“And it’s failing.”

He collapsed.

The orb rolled toward Magdalena’s feet.

She picked it up.

And heard every scream that had ever been buried in Borsk.

CHAPTER 6 ENDS WITH..

The bell tower collapses.

Elijah’s body is never found.

Magdalena drops the orb into the chapel’s baptismal font.

The water hisses. Then sings.

A newborn cry echoes through the halls.

CHAPTER 7: THE BABY WHO NEVER DIED (BUT WAS BURIED ANYWAY)

March 24, 1980 - Borsk Orphanage Cemetery, Frozen Grounds Beneath Plot 11B

THE BABY THAT CRIED FROM UNDERNEATH

The first sound wasn’t a scream.

It was a breath..wet, bubbling..heard just beneath the soil of the orphanage’s long-forgotten cemetery.

Sister Magdalena was walking the perimeter after midnight when she heard it. She turned toward Plot 11B..a plot officially registered in the asylum’s archived ledgers as: "Infant: No Name (1961). Cause of Death: Premature Lungs."

But something was wrong.

The ground there wasn’t frozen like the others. It was soft. Freshly disturbed. Breathing.

Magdalena knelt. Her candle’s flame bent sideways as if sucked downward. She pressed her ear to the ground.

And she heard it:

“Mmm-mama…”

Her scream echoed into the empty treetops.

THE BURIAL WITHOUT A BODY

They exhumed the plot by morning.

Father Kazimir, Magdalena, and two groundskeepers.

But when the coffin was lifted, it was empty. Or rather, never used.

A crumpled hospital blanket inside. Stained. Sewn with the emblem of St. Hedwig’s Asylum. A name embroidered in bloodlike thread:

Elias M. .. Born Still.

Except… the stitching was new.

Not aged. Not yellowed. Fresh.

When they turned the blanket over, they found it wet, and warm to the touch.

And in its fibers..moving of their own volition..tiny symbols began to appear.

They formed words.

"I NEVER DIED. YOU BURIED MY BREATH."

THE INFANT'S CRIB IN THE BASEMENT

They followed the sound through the old medical wing..now disused and sealed off since the 1972 lockdown. Underneath the floorboards in what was once the infirmary, they found a hidden sublevel.

Dust choked the light.

In the middle of the room stood a crib.

Burnt wood. Splinters soaked in old blood. All around it..tattered sheets, covered in tiny claw marks and bite indentations.

Inside the crib, however, lay something unnatural.

A human-shaped form, the size of a newborn, completely made of lungs.

Not a baby with lungs..a baby that was lungs.

It expanded and collapsed as if gasping through centuries of forgotten air.

THE INHALATION OF MEMORY

Callie was the first to approach.

As she neared the crib, the lung-creature exhaled, and suddenly the entire room filled with fog.

Not smoke. Not gas.

Memory.

Everyone present began to hallucinate.

• Magdalena saw herself delivering a stillborn, sobbing, only to feel it latch to her breast hours later, gasping for milk.

• Kazimir saw Elias, alive in 1961, crawling through vents, reaching into nun’s pockets, stealing names.

• Callie heard a lullaby sung in reverse..one that spoke of “a baby born with no heartbeat, but who never stopped listening.”

As the fog faded, a message was etched into the wall behind the crib:

"EVERY BREATH YOU FORGOT MADE ME STRONGER."

THE POSTMORTEM MIRRORS

They found mirrors in the old nursery.

Each one facing a crib.

All were shattered-except one.

In that last mirror, Kazimir saw the baby. Not as lungs..but as a boy of ten. Bald. Eyes stitched shut. Still breathing.

He stood behind Kazimir in the reflection.

When Kazimir turned..nothing.

He looked back.

The boy was closer.

And in his hand: a scalpel.

THE BREATH TAKERS

That night, six children stopped breathing in their sleep.

Not dead. Not awake. Somewhere in between.

Magdalena tried to revive them, but their lungs were too still. Only Elijah..who never spoke-seemed unaffected.

Elijah stood beside each bed, humming low.

The same hum from Chapter 6..the tuning fork.

Each child had something in their hand:

• Clumps of hair not their own.

• Pieces of mirror.

• A single cradle nail..ancient, blackened with mold.

The cause?

Unknown.

But the lung-creature was gone from the crib.

And the blanket?

Now dry. Folded neatly.

THE MIDNIGHT AUTOPSY THAT NEVER ENDED

They brought in Dr. Leszek..former coroner for St. Hedwig’s before the quarantine. He agreed to perform a field autopsy on one of the non-breathing children.

As he began to cut into the ribcage, something breathed out of the incision.

Fog. Cold and damp.

Inside the body cavity, where lungs should’ve been, he found a fetus.

Perfectly intact. Not decomposing.

Still smiling.

It opened its eyes.

Dr. Leszek tried to flee.

The fetus spoke:

“YOU BURIED US TOO EARLY.”

Then bit him.

THE CEMETERY EXODUS

At 3:33 AM, the fog spread across the entire orphanage.

Children wandered, still sleepwalking, toward the cemetery.

Dozens gathered at Plot 11B.

They began digging. With bare hands. Teeth. Nails.

Not to free something.

To bury something else.

They dug until the fog lifted.

In the morning, when staff investigated, they found the hole filled back in-neatly, tamped.

Inside:

• All the mirrors from the nursery.

• The scalpel.

• Dr. Leszek’s body.

• And a note.

“Next time, let us breathe long enough to be remembered.”

CHAPTER 7 ENDS WITH..

Elijah sleepwalking toward the plot.

Carrying the folded blanket.

He places it over the fresh grave.

Then opens his mouth.

And a newborn scream-not his own...comes out.

CHAPTER 8: THE NIGHT EVERY NAME WAS UNSPOKEN

March 28, 1980 - Borsk Orphanage, Chapel Archives / Forbidden Wing

THE DAY THE NAMES VANISHED

At dawn, Magdalena opened the chapel’s Book of Records to mark Elijah’s 8th birthday.

But the names were gone.

Not crossed out.

Erased.

All children, all staff, even former caretakers..the ink had dissolved, leaving ghostly impressions on each page. Only the dates remained.

The baptismal certificates floated in their drawers, untouched but illegible. Photographs on the wall now showed blank-faced children.

Even the stitched tags inside the children's coats were white, as if scrubbed by time itself.

Magdalena tried to scream..but the sound wouldn’t come. Not from her. Not from anyone.

By noon, not a single soul in the orphanage could remember their own name.

THE WHISPER THAT UNNAMED THEM

Callie sat on the floor of the chapel, staring into the baptismal font where Elijah had placed the black orb (Chapter 6).

The water shimmered, then darkened.

A whisper emerged..like a voice beneath the floorboards.

Layered. Childlike.

It said:

“THEY ARE MINE NOW.”

“NAMES ARE WHAT KEEP THEM IN THIS WORLD.”

“REMOVE THE NAME. REMOVE THE BODY.”

A child nearby began to fade.

First his fingers, then his face, then the space he once occupied.

The name “Timothy” scratched itself off a wall in the dormitory.

The un-naming had begun.

THE ROOM THAT HELD NOTHING

Magdalena led the remaining staff into the Forbidden Wing.

Locked since 1961.

Here, they believed the first un-naming occurred..a nun whose diary revealed she had replaced baptismal records with blank paper “so the devil would not recognize them.”

But when they entered, the wing wasn’t just dusty.

It was empty. In a way that hurt to look at.

Objects had outlines but no weight.

Chairs existed in memory only.

And on the walls: hundreds of name tags.

Pinned with rusted nails.

Each tag read the same word:

“ME.”

Not "I".

Not initials.

Just me..over and over, from floor to ceiling.

THE ARCHIVIST IN THE WALL

Behind the plaster of the Forbidden Wing’s back hallway, they found him.

The original Archivist.

Still breathing.

Fused into the wall.

His veins wrapped around shelves of forgotten paperwork, his skin mottled with ink like tattoos.

He opened one blind eye and rasped:

“The children were easier to protect when they had no names.”

“But one of them... gave the god her true name... and that is how this started again.”

His mouth unstitched itself, and hundreds of small, white moths flew out..each with a child’s name scribbled on its wing.

They scattered.

The children started chasing them.

One by one, as they caught a moth and read the name aloud..they vanished.

THE UNNAMED GOD IS REVEALED

In the attic, above the original nursery, Callie stood facing a wall painted solid black.

She placed her hand upon it.

The black paint writhed under her palm, revealing letters...not written, but burned in reverse into the wood:

“I AM THE ONE YOU FORGOT TO BAPTIZE.”

“THE ONE YOU NEVER WROTE DOWN.”

“AND BECAUSE I WAS NEVER NAMED, I BELONG TO EVERY NAME.”

Suddenly, the orphanage walls moaned.

Portraits bled ink.

The whisper returned...not from the orb, but from inside each child.

They began to recite:

“My name is...”

But each time they tried, they spoke someone else’s name instead.

And then collapsed.

THE RITUAL OF MISNAMING

Kazimir, Magdalena, and Callie gathered what remained of the children and brought them to the chapel.

They enacted a ritual, not from any known scripture—but found etched on the underside of Elijah’s old tuning fork.

“To break the Unnaming, speak three lies of who you are.”

One by one, each child stepped forward and declared:

• A false name.

• A false birthday.

• A false parent.

The god screamed—its voice coming through the crucifix, through the choir loft, through the very stone.

The ritual began to work.

Until it was Callie’s turn.

She stepped forward.

And whispered her real name.

The god entered her mouth again.

________________________________________

VII. THE FINAL UNNAMING

Callie collapsed.

This time, she didn’t scream.

She erased—becoming translucent.

Her limbs flickered like static.

The god inside her spoke:

“Thank you for remembering. Now let me forget all of you.”

But Elijah stepped forward.

Still mute.

Still holding the scroll from Chapter 6—the Archive of Unspoken Sins.

He held it up.

And burned it.

The room howled.

Magdalena clutched the altar.

The children wept soundlessly.

The black orb cracked in the font.

The god screamed one last time.

And every name returned.

Except for one.

Callie.

________________________________________

VIII. THE LOST NAME

At dawn, the Book of Records rewrote itself.

One new name appeared.

Written in ash:

“Calliope Magdalena Skorcha – 1973–1980”

A red ink blot covered her last known address.

But below it, in script not seen before:

“Witness. Vessel. Martyr.”

The children began to speak again.

Photographs regained their faces.

The moths turned to dust.

But on the altar… a single name tag remained.

It read:

“ME.”

No one touched it.

________________________________________

🩸 CHAPTER 8 ENDS WITH…

The orphanage is renamed.

The Book of Records is sealed in salt.

Elijah never speaks again.

But he is seen often near the altar—pressing his hand to the place where Callie once stood.

Waiting

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"This tale is spun from threads of global whispers...half-heard warnings, fractured folklore, and the chilling ‘what if’ that lingers after midnight. While shadows of real accounts may flicker through these pages, every character, curse, and creeping horror is a work of original dark encounters with a touch of fiction and any resemblance to actual events, Name, Place, things....past or present...is purely accidental and Co-incidental, a trick of the light, or proof that truth often imitates the uncanny. Names, places, and unsettling occurrences are conjured from the void...not the record. Proceed with curiosity (and maybe a nightlight).

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