The Concrete Choir

I was 21 when I traded keg stands for EVP recorders. After a string of bad decisions in Waco, my cousin Marcus and I found a new obsession: documenting the dead. Our crew, six of us total, had worked our way through every ‘haunted’ grain silo and abandoned church within a hundred miles. Then came the tip about the old processing plant outside of Waco, Texas, off a forgotten gravel road veiled by live oaks and kudzu.

We parked at the edge of a long-abandoned nature trail, the sign for ‘Waco Creek Preserve’ half-swallowed by vines. The walk was eerie in its silence—no crickets, no wind, just the crunch of our boots on dead leaves. The moon was a sliver, barely lighting the path. After twenty minutes, we emerged into a clearing where four colossal concrete monoliths stood, their hollow shells open to the sky. They were relics of a meatpacking plant, abandoned since the ’70s, with 20-foot ceilings and crumbling rebar like exposed bones.

We started in the first building, flashlights casting long shadows. Marcus tapped on the walls, making hollow sounds. Jenna, our skeptic with a frizzy red ponytail, laughed at the faded ‘Employee of the Month’ sign. The second building had the faint smell of rust and old grease. We were having fun, snapping photos and doing ‘spirit box’ experiments, when we entered the third building. This one was different—the walls were bare, but the air was heavy, like a held breath.

The fourth building stopped us short. Every inch of the concrete was covered in graffiti, but not random tags—these were meticulous, almost ritualistic. There were twisted pentagrams, crude illustrations of horned figures, and phrases like ‘HE SEES THROUGH SKIN’ and ‘WE ARE HIS CHOIR.’ Nate, the quiet one, traced a spiral with his finger and muttered, ‘This isn’t tagging. This is a call.’

Then, the rocks began falling. At least, that’s what I thought at first. Small pebbles rained from above, pinging off our helmets. But as I aimed my flashlight up, I saw them—tiny stones lifting off the floor and drifting upward, defying gravity. The air turned cold, and my breath fogged. ‘It’s a draft,’ Jenna said, but her voice cracked. Marcus’s EVP recorder crackled with static, and through it, we heard a low hum, like a choir warming up.

Suddenly, the graffiti began to smear. The painted eyes on the walls seemed to track us, and the spirals started to rotate. A loud clang echoed from the empty machinery shafts. We all froze. The humming grew louder, and the rocks started spinning in a vortex above our heads. Then, the dust on the floor began to rise, forming shapes—first vague, but then distinct: hands, reaching out from the ground.

‘Get out!’ I yelled, but the doorway behind us was gone. In its place was a wall of solid concrete, with new graffiti that read, ‘JOIN US.’ We were trapped. The hands grew, cold fingers wrapping around our ankles. Nate screamed as he was pulled down, his body sinking into the concrete floor as if it were quicksand. Jenna tried to run, but a hand clutched her wrist, and she dissolved into the wall with a wet, slurping sound. Marcus dropped his recorder, and it skittered across the floor, picking up a distorted whisper: ‘You are the seventh voice we needed.’

I tried to climb the walls, but they were slick with a black ichor that oozed from the graffiti. The last thing I remember is the humming reaching a fever pitch, and all the colors of the walls bleeding together into a single dark red. Then, nothing.

I woke up outside the preserve, alone, at dawn. My flashlight was dead, and my clothes were caked in dust. I fled, never looking back. But ever since, I hear that hum, even in silence. When I close my eyes, I see the walls—and my friends, their faces frozen in silent screams, painted onto the concrete. They’re still there, waiting. They want more voices. And sometimes, when I pass a mirror, I catch a glimpse of a fanged smile behind my own reflection.