Excerpt from Departure

A Post-Apocalyptic Horror Novel by Sophia Reamsnyder

Chapter Nine – Annaka

She hadn’t heard them in years.

Not like this.

Annaka stood in the bathroom, fingers gripped white around the porcelain sink. The mirror was fogged from the shower she had abandoned. Drops of water trailed down her arms, catching on the thin scars that crossed her wrists. Remnants of a time when she had nearly vanished beneath the surface of herself.

She leaned forward, pressing her forehead to the mirror. The cool glass grounded her. Barely.

Then

“Let us in.”

The voice wasn’t human. Not exactly. Not anymore.

It sounded like wind scraping through the vents or the low hum of a power line before a storm. Familiar. Foreign. Patient.

“Not now,” she said aloud, lips barely moving.

But it wasn’t like saying no to a person. The thing behind the voice didn’t care about consent. It responded to pain. It fed on frequency.

She had first heard it in the hospital after the collapse—when her lungs failed, when they thought she might not wake up. She had floated between life and death for days, and in the stillness, something had found her. Burrowed in.

At first, she had called it madness. A glitch in her brain chemistry. Hallucinations. Trauma.

But now the world was unraveling, and the whispers weren’t gone. They were louder. Closer. As if whatever they were waiting for had finally arrived.

“It’s time,” they breathed.

Annaka backed away from the mirror. Water dripped from her fingertips.

She didn’t know what it was. Only that something had shifted and she was no longer the only one who could hear them.