If You're Hearing This

When her grandmother dies, Lena Hollis takes the overnight bus to Sorrel Run, a hill town she last saw at nine. Every room of the old house hums with a drone that has not stopped in thirty years, and in the music room waits a box of forty numbered cassettes. On the first one her grandmother's voice says: 'If you're hearing this, I'm dead. And you're not alone in this room. Don't look behind you.' Lena is a sound engineer; she can read any voice as a waveform. But something in this town can call to you in any voice at all: your mother's, your grandmother's, your best friend's. The rule is simple. If something calls your name three times, don't answer. No matter whose voice it is. And under all of it lies a fire in 1994 that killed five students of the town's little music school, and a powerful man who has wanted nobody to hear anything for thirty years. This story is entirely fictional; Sorrel Run, its music school, the 1994 fire and every character are invented and have no connection to any real event, person, place or political party. It contains the voices of lost loved ones and themes of grief; it does not promote any superstition or folk practice. (16+)