The Voice Beneath The Ice

Every winter, the river running through Saskatoon froze thick enough for people to walk across it, but the city always warned residents to stay away from certain sections where the current ran deep. One bitter January night, I ignored those warnings. I was walking home along the riverbank when I heard someone calling my name from beneath the ice. At first, I thought it was a prank, until I recognized the voice. It belonged to my mother, who had been dead for eleven years. She sounded frightened, almost desperate, and she kept begging me to help her. I dropped to my knees and pressed my ear against the frozen surface. Beneath the ice, something scratched slowly at the underside, moving in perfect time with my heartbeat. Then my mother's voice whispered, "Don't let it see you."

I scrambled backwards, but the scratching followed me, sliding beneath the ice as though whatever was down there could see through the snow. Suddenly, a pale hand appeared beneath the frozen surface. Its fingers were impossibly long, and its fingernails dragged across the underside of the ice with a sound like someone slowly sharpening a knife. I ran toward the nearest streetlight, but halfway there, my phone rang. The caller ID showed my mother's name. Trembling, I answered. "Sweetheart," she whispered, "why did you leave me down here?" I turned toward the river. A figure stood on the ice, wearing my mother's old winter coat. Its face was hidden beneath a hood, but I could see its mouth moving. The voice on my phone continued, "Don't look at its face. It isn't finished making one yet." Then the figure lifted its head.

The next morning, police found my footprints leading onto the river and stopping abruptly in the middle, with no tracks coming back. My phone was discovered on the riverbank, still recording. When investigators played the audio, they heard me screaming, followed by a second voice that sounded exactly like mine, calmly saying, "It's all right, Mum. I'm home now." They searched beneath the ice but found nothing. Three nights later, a woman living near the river called police after hearing someone knocking on her front door at 3:17 a.m. When she looked through the peephole, she saw a young man standing outside, soaking wet and covered in frost. He looked directly into the peephole and smiled. "Please," he whispered, "my mother is waiting for me." The woman called the police, but by the time they arrived, the man had vanished. Since then, every winter, people walking beside the river have reported hearing someone beneath the ice, calling out their names in the voices of people they have lost. And sometimes, if they listen carefully, they can hear the scratching stop—and footsteps begin walking beneath their feet.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model