Evan Mallory
speaker
161 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Evan Mallory’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
The paracord twanged again, quieter, as though fingertips traced its length. Then a voice spoke inches from the nylon. Why'd you bring the gun? My own voice, tone, timbre, the hitch on the word gun I'd made earlier that day when coaxing Jenna downhill. A perfect mimic, whispered with the warmth leeched out of it. The same sentence repeated, but now in Jenna's tone, fragile and cracking.
She clamped a hand over her mouth. I felt her heartbeat banging through her wrist. I cleared my throat. We're armed, I said, voice low but steady. Step away now, or I will shoot. The forest exhaled. Cicadas, crickets, everything that had been humming went dead. A two count later, footsteps retreated.
two measured paces pause two paces like a drill squad marching in felt slippers the cadence faded but the hush remained an oppressive vacuum that pressed against my eardrums until they rang we lay awake until dawn seeped through the fly in a colorless smear when i crawled out my boots slid on damp shale the paracord was gone every inch of it yet the stakes still stood
My mug lay on its side, handle threaded by a braided loop that hadn't existed the night before. Boot laces, our boot laces, had been sliced from both pairs of boots while we slept and woven into an elegant hangman's noose. A gray clay fingerprint smeared the tent zipper, flecked with grit that glittered like bone dust. Jenna stared, then turned the color of paste. We didn't speak.
We broke camp in six minutes flat. No coffee, no filter stop. As we shouldered our packs, the clouds above the cliff tilted, and for the briefest heartbeat, I thought I saw a thin figure perched on the rock face itself, limbs folded like a mantis. A blink later, only wet shale remained. We started downhill, the trail slick and narrow.
Behind us, far up the ridge, two sticks clacked together, talk-talk, in perfect imitation of Jenna's laugh. I tightened my grip on the pistol and kept walking, counting each breath until I lost track of the number entirely. Wind scratched the ridge like sandpaper, but thunder refused to crack, just a low, endless growl that chased us downslope.
GPS bars winked on and off, even though the sky stayed open. Every time the screen froze, the mileage ticked backward, chewing away our progress toward Burke's Garden. My watch claimed mid-morning, yet the air tasted of approaching night. We power-walked the narrow spine until the forest thinned into scrubby grass. That was where we saw it, the silhouette waiting on the next rise.
Tall, too thin, shoulders draped in something that fluttered without wind, its head listed to one side like a dog trying to puzzle a strange sound. Then with brutal deliberation, it raised one impossibly long arm, no bend at the elbow, and pointed downhill, the same direction we were already moving. Jenna whispered, it's hurting us. I could not disagree.
We cut left onto the faint connector trail racing the slope. Minutes later, a sharp digital click broke the hush behind a maple trunk, followed by another farther uphill. When I searched the bark, I found a black cube, an old Bluetooth speaker wedged in a knot hole, red light blinking. A delayed echo of our own footfalls spilled from it, three seconds behind.
The tiny cadence ricocheted through the hollows, multiplying until it felt like dozens of boots closing in. I smashed the speaker with a rock. The moment the plastic cracked, a whistle erupted from somewhere beyond sight. An elk bugle, pitched far too low, vibrato so deep my ribs hummed. Birds pinwheeled from the canopy. Some dropping stunned onto the duff.
We had two trails left on the map, both through Dead Oak's Hollow. The first dissolved beneath a landslide, so we plunged into the second, a drainage choked with limestone and slick leaves. Halfway down, the ground opened under Jenna's boot.
she yelped flailing and i grabbed her pack just in time pulling her back from the lip of a sinkhole maybe fifteen feet across and twice that deep its floor looked like a trophy dump deer mandibles bare jaws a mountain lion skull bleached white
human teeth molars incisors glinted among the bones like seashells on dark sand a fresh pair of upper incisors rested on a flat rock the roots still pink i gagged above us voices began to chant in unison neither loud nor hurried coordinates read out in monotone descending numbers between each line thirteen twelve eleven
figures ringed the sinkhole rim a full circle of pale watchers crouched so low their wrists dangled past their knees they rocked together synchronized until their joints popped like breaking sticks lightning finally tore open the clouds in the flash every watcher stood at full height arms spread ragged bark capes snapping like cloth Thunder hammered the basin.
A slab of limestone sheared off the lip and crashed into the sinkhole, tilting high enough to form a rough ramp. Move! I shoved Jenna up the rock and scrambled behind her. Limestone rang beneath our boots. Something, someone, slid after us, bare feet slapping in counter-rhythm. But the next lightning strike blinded my night vision. and all I saw were afterimages.
We broke into a downhill sprint, branches clawing our packs, the slope steep enough to tumble if we missed a step. Behind us, the coordinated stomp of many feet burst into a run, no shouts, no barking dogs, only that same precise cadence driving faster. At the service road, a hunter's truck idled, tailgate open, decoys rattling in the bed. I waved both arms, gun still in my hand.
The man's eyes went wide. He thumbed the safety off his shotgun, but didn't raise it. Jenna collapsed beside the bumper, sobbing. Gravel dust rose behind us, but nothing emerged from the tree line. Forest Ranger Hal Teague arrived ten minutes later in a green pickup. He listened in silence while I poured out the story, leaving out nothing this time.
When I finished, he rubbed the brim of his hat and asked only one question. "'You two cross Dead Oaks Hollow?' We nodded." Locals call them ridge watchers, he said, voice soft enough I almost missed it. They follow noise, don't let a thing go that rattles the ridge after dark. He offered hot coffee in a paper cup. I wrapped trembling fingers around it, then froze.
The cup's handle was looped by a neat braided string. My boot lace, though I had replaced the laces with paracord that morning. Three weeks later, back home in Richmond, a padded envelope arrived with no return address. Inside lay the splintered warning board from the kiosk and a microSD card labeled 203AM in cramped graphite. I slid the card into my laptop. A single audio file played.
My own voice whispered, ''Why'd you bring the gun?'' Thirteen times, flawless and cold, each repetition tailed by a wet exhale that fogged the laptop microphone somehow on the recording itself. When the loop ended, a faint click-click echoed, like sticks tapping out Jenna's laughter. I keep the board locked in the attic.
Showing 141–160 of 161 · page 8 of 9
← Previous
Next →