The Ash-Rot Choir

In the late spring of 2009, I found myself at a rural retreat center perched on the edge of a forgotten forest. The place was a converted convent, its walls still smelling of damp plaster and old incense. My friend Lena had begged me to come for a mindfulness workshop she was co-leading. She promised it would be a chance to clear my head after my breakup. I agreed, though I stayed on the periphery, helping with meals and logistics rather than joining the meditation circles.

The building itself was unsettling. A fire had gutted the eastern wing a decade ago, and the charred beams were now propped up with steel scaffolding. The organizers had sealed off that section, but the air around it always felt wrong—too warm, carrying a faint smell of burnt sugar. The first night, as the group sat in a candlelit hall for a guided visualization, I slipped out to get some water from the kitchen. That’s when I heard it: a soft cry, like a woman weeping in the next room over. But the room was empty, just a storage closet full of old hymnbooks.

I shrugged it off as drafty pipes. But the next evening, after the evening session, the whole group gathered in a circle for a closing prayer. They asked everyone, including me, to hold hands and close their eyes. As our instructor began to speak, I felt a cold pressure on my palm. The woman on my left was gripping too hard. I opened my eyes, and saw her face contorted in silent agony. Her lips were moving, but no sound came out. Then I felt a wet warmth on my wrist. I looked down: she was bleeding from her eyes, thin lines of black ooze streaking down her cheeks.

I yanked my hand free and stumbled back. But no one else moved. They were all frozen, eyes closed, swaying gently. The instructor’s voice had changed, no longer a soothing baritone but a high, keening pitch, like a funeral dirge sung through broken glass. I tried to run for the door, but it was locked. I looked out the window: the forest was darker than night, and there were figures standing among the trees—tall, thin, their heads tilted at impossible angles.

The woman who had been holding my hand began to chant in a language I didn’t know. The others joined, their voices rising in a ragged chorus. My skin crawled as I recognized the tune: it was the same hymn we had heard during the prayer, but twisted, each note slightly off. The air grew thick with ash, though no fire burned. I saw the charred wing of the building glowing through the windows, pulsing with a sickly light.

I remembered the old legend Lena had told me the night before: how the convent had been home to a choir of nuns who were trapped inside during the fire. Their bodies were never found, only their voices, which were said to linger in the ashes, waiting for a new choir to sing their unfinished requiem. The workshop was never meant to be a spiritual retreat. It was a trap.

The instructor’s eyes snapped open, now black as coal. She smiled at me, and her mouth was full of ash. ‘You’ll do,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll sing.’

I ran then, not for the door, but for the window. I shattered the glass with a chair and scrambled out into the night. Behind me, the chorus rose to a shattering crescendo, and the air filled with the sound of splintering wood and cracking stone. I didn’t stop running until I reached the main road, and even then, I didn’t stop. I hitched a ride with a trucker, and he said I looked like I’d seen a ghost. I told him I had.

Months later, I received a postcard. It was from the retreat center, showing the charred wing, now fully rebuilt. The handwritten note said: ‘The choir is complete. We await your return.’ There was no stamp, no postmark. It had been placed in my mailbox silently. I moved the next week, but I still wake up some nights to the faint sound of a woman crying, just outside my window, and the soft whisper of a hymn I can’t quite place.