Pensacola was never the same after the Holloway house went quiet.
The neighbors never talked about the night the screams stopped. Or the way the sky above the house stayed cloudless while the rest of the city drowned in summer storms.
But something got out.
Something followed the echo.
The Return
Thirteen miles west, Anna Coyle moved into a fixer-upper near the old pine stretch. Single mom. Two kids. Trying to start over after the divorce.
She didn’t know about the well.
Didn’t know her backyard touched the same woods.
Didn’t know what her son, Jamie, meant when he said:
“There’s a girl in the floor. She says her name is Aria.”
The Listening
Jamie changed fast.
He stopped eating food that wasn’t “from the well.” He started sleeping in the basement. Drew circles on the walls. Wouldn’t talk to his sister unless she hummed “Twinkle Twinkle” in the exact same pitch every time.
Anna didn’t believe in possession. Or hauntings. Or cursed objects.
Until Jamie stopped blinking.
Until his voice echoed.
Until Aria’s name came from the vents.
The Others
Anna went digging.
Old forums. Paranormal boards. Local legends.
She found a group—The Echo Watch. Survivors. Researchers. One called himself The Archivist. Another just posted symbols that changed shape when you looked away.
They told her the truth:
“The Echo Well wasn’t the first. It was just the one someone called from. Echoes are drawn to grief. And now they’re listening from more than just the woods.”
Basements. Drainpipes. Phone lines. Playlists that shouldn’t exist. They travel on memory, and they grow when a name is spoken with enough sorrow.
The Extraction
Anna tried to save Jamie.
She went to the woods. Found the well.
It was wider now.
A spiral pit of mirrors and bone.
Jamie was already there, waiting.
His smile was too wide.
Behind him stood Aria. Or what wore her. And dozens more—half-formed children with too-long limbs and mouths stitched closed with thread made from human hair.
“Come play,” they said in unison.
The Breaking
Anna didn’t run.
She whispered her own name into the well.
The well listened.
The well answered.
And something else came out.
Not Aria. Not Jamie. Something older. With voices stacked on top of each other like a choir made of broken radios.
It didn’t want to play.
It wanted silence.
The Fade
The house burned itself from the inside. No smoke. Just a void.
Jamie was never found.
Neither was Anna.
But sometimes, new parents moving into the area hear their kids whisper names that aren’t their own.
Sometimes the drains hum lullabies.
Sometimes a name slips from your lips without meaning to.
And if it’s the right name…
You might hear someone say,
“Daddy?”
The Rule (Rewritten)
Never speak a name near a well.
Never sing songs after midnight.
Never listen too long to the echoes.
And above all—
Never answer.