Echo Chamber

Mark Moran

The street sliced like a black artery through the city, a silent stretch emptied by night. The velvet shroud of darkness pressed close and thick, smothering all but the grating scrape of my footsteps. Then it rose. 

A rhythm, faint, drifting up from beneath the pavement. It wasn’t a hum or a beat but a web of sound, fragile at first, then surging into a fevered pitch.

I stopped.

It twisted and split, a staccato surge coiling tight around my senses, pulling my attention without effort. Shadows along the curbs writhed, stretching across the asphalt. Streetlights pulsed, their coruscating amber glow dipping and rising, locked to a bass that swelled now. Slow and deliberate, a resonant pulse from underground. The air grew turgid, warm and damp. Laced with something metallic, something sour.

My legs moved. Not by choice.

One step, then another, impelled toward that sound. The buildings narrowed, their windows like eyes, catching fleeting slivers of motion that weren’t there. A grate shone ahead, its bars slick with a film that gleamed faintly. Light pulsed from below. Bruised purples, lurid greens, a sickening red. Each flare was tethered to the undulating rhythm.

The sound tightened.

Drums and voices tangled into a roaring, guttural clamour, rolling up in thick waves. The street felt thinner, the air pressing tight. It slid into my skin, my ribs, my throat. I knelt, hands gripping the cold metal, and peered down.

Below sprawled a cavernous den, warped and wrong. A churning abyss of motion and rot. The walls dripped, streaked with crawling tendrils, sinking into the floor. Bodies packed the space, swaying unevenly. Some too long, too languid, arms dangling. Others too short, spines bent, heads twitching in time to the beat. The floor stuck to their shoes, a viscous glue of spilled liquor and smashed glass.

A bar sagged along one wall, wood split and swollen, coated in a dark sheen. A figure behind it poured from cracked glasses, the liquid contorting and twisting before sinking downward. The music tore through it all. Serrated, relentless, a shimmering vein of golden sound against the decay.

And I felt it in me.

A visceral shudder hooked onto my bones, coursed through my muscles, coaxed something loose in my skull. My shadow stretched behind me, its shape distorted at the edges, blurred and bending, swaying in the sound. The thrumming cadence bled through the dark, weaving gold into obsidian, until I shifted forward, fingers gripping the grate with desperate force, harder, harder. I wanted to fall into it, to let it carry me down.

Then, below, something stirred.

A lithe figure slipped from the crowd, fluid but wrong, head tilting up.

Not human. Not quite.

His face was smooth, too still. His fathomless eyes stretched wide and unblinking, set just a fraction too far apart. The flashing red lights caught his face with a flat, vacant sheen. His mouth curved in a smile that jarred, lips parting to reveal teeth too small, too uniform. Like they had been implanted, not grown. His skin gleamed. The light glanced it, rather than sinking in.

Then, his long, webbed fingers reached up, brushing the grate.

Where his fingers touched, the metal melted and bled. A thick, black smear that ran and glistened like tar.

The rhythm surged, and my reflection in the metal shuddered. I wasn’t descending into the sound. It was rising into me, note by note. My jaw slackened, my skin drawn taut. My wide, still eyes mirrored his.

Something connected between us, firm and vivid, wrapping around my ribs, my arms, tugging like a second pulse.

I didn’t move.

Couldn’t.

The cascade of music climbed, crushing against my skull. The club walls gaped, peeling open, clawing upward. The streetlights flickered, casting jagged shadows across the pavement. The city blurred at the edges.

A snap.

I stepped back.

The light dulled. The sound receded inward, a low thrum swiftly ebbing to a murmur. The street flattened. Shadows still, buildings rigid, lights steady. My grip loosened.

I turned, walking on, as my steps dragged through the quiet.

The rhythm lingered.

An ethereal echo curled in my chest, nestled between my ribs. The grate stayed behind, dark now, its lustre faded. But the air hung heavy, and the street stretched on without end.

And somewhere ahead, a shadow moved.

Too tall, too still.