On my first day in the village, the village chief told me:
“After dark, no matter what you hear, don't make a sound.”
I thought it was just local superstition.
Then, in the middle of the night, I heard footsteps outside the window, very soft, one after another, treading across the muddy ground.
They stopped outside my window.
Then I heard someone call my name.
The voice was exactly like my own.
My name is Lin Mo. I'm a graduate student in folklore.
After receiving a plea for help with no return address, I came to this village, sealed off by thick fog. Everyone here covers their mouths with strips of cloth and communicates with gestures. Copper bells hang from every door and window, and the ancient locust tree in the village center is covered in blood-red symbols.
The village records say that a hundred years ago, the villagers made a pact with the “thing” in the fog, trading their voices for good harvests.
Those who broke the pact would have their tongues eaten by the fog.
I thought I could stay alive until dawn as long as I kept my mouth shut.
Then, last night, the child next door said something in his sleep.
All the copper bells suddenly rang. Fog poured through the cracks in the door, as if it were alive.
I saw the child's father kneeling in the courtyard, cutting out his own tongue with a knife.
And this morning, no one mentioned what happened.
As if nothing had happened at all.
Now I can't get out either.
Because I found a secret in a cave:
All the voices that were eaten are trapped in the fog.
They're waiting for a chance... to speak again.
