The Frozen Chorus

Marlene and I had been in the new apartment for barely a month, still unpacking boxes and learning the quirks of the place. It was a nondescript complex in a small Oregon town, four buildings huddled around a central courtyard where an empty pool sat like a concrete wound, its drained basin collecting frost. February had been brutal, and the night of the incident, the thermometer outside our window read nineteen degrees Fahrenheit. We were in the living room, each buried in a book, the radiator ticking its weak warmth against the chill.

At around ten, a murmur of voices drifted up from below. I glanced at Marlene; she shrugged and returned to her page. We figured it was neighbors heading out or a late gathering, though the cold made that seem odd. As minutes passed, the murmur grew, not in volume but in multiplicity. It was as if more and more people were joining a conversation just outside our window, though we saw no one through the frost-laced glass. By ten-thirty, it sounded like a lively party was in full swing down there—laughter, overlapping talk, the clink of glasses that made no sense in the frozen air. We exchanged skeptical looks but didn’t investigate; we’d learned not to judge neighbors we hadn’t really met.

Then the voices changed. They began to sync, slowly, into a single rhythm, a chant that slithered through the walls. The words were indistinct, but the cadence was hypnotic, and it drew us to the window. We peered down at the pool area. The night was clear, moonlight glinting off the ice-rimed concrete. The pool was a dark pit, shadows pooling in its corners. And there, in the center, stood a ring of figures—pale, statuesque, unmoving despite the cold. They wore nothing but thin shifts, and their faces were upturned toward us, mouths open as if singing to the sky. Our breath fogged the glass as we watched, and the chant grew louder, no longer a murmur but a resonant hum that vibrated in our chests.

I wanted to call out, to ask what they were doing, but Marlene grabbed my arm. Her fingers were like ice. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered. ‘Look at their feet.’ I squinted. Their feet were not touching the ground. They hovered an inch above the frozen pavement, swaying gently as if moved by an unfelt wind. The hum became a chorus, a thousand voices layered over each other, and I realized the figures outside were not the source. The sound was coming from inside the apartment, from the walls, from the floor, from the air itself. It was a sound I knew—a sound from my childhood, from a recording my grandmother used to play of a choir singing in a language no one could identify. I hadn’t thought of it in decades, but there it was, unmistakable.

The figures outside began to disintegrate, their forms breaking into motes of frost that scattered in the wind. The chant swelled to a deafening crescendo, then cut off abruptly, leaving a ringing silence. We stood frozen, staring at the empty pool. Marlene turned to me, her face pale, and said, ‘That was what you hear just before the world ends.’ I had no reply. We didn’t sleep that night. We sat in the living room, listening to the pipes groan, until the gray dawn crept in. The next day, we asked the manager about the previous tenants in our building. She hesitated, then told us that the apartment had been empty for years after the last occupant, a reclusive linguist, had been found dead in the pool, his throat cut and his body frozen solid. They never found the weapon. And the strange thing, she said, was that the pool was always empty in winter, but sometimes, if you listened close, you could hear a faint chanting, as if the concrete itself remembered.

We moved out a week later. But even now, on cold winter nights when the wind is just right, I hear that chorus in my head, and I know it’s not over. The frozen choir is still waiting, and they will sing again.