The floods came early that year.
Not hard, just constant.
Rain like static—steady, soft, but everywhere at once.
The canals overflowed until the waterline blurred with the road.
Hana said it reminded her of 2004, the year the south drowned.
She didn't look at me when she said it.
Just kept filming.
We'd started cataloguing sounds across the valley—
same equipment, new rules.
Record, label, move on.
No talking during takes.
No playback on-site.
It should've felt professional.
Instead, every recording began with our names whispered once,
as if the recorder wanted to introduce us before it listened.
The first voice came near the old train bridge.
The water was waist-deep, still rising.
We stood on the embankment, headlamps flickering,
trying not to slip.
Somewhere beneath the surface, something tapped.
Four beats. Pause. Four beats again.
Not metal, not rock—
something soft, like skin against wood.
Hana leaned forward, listening.
"There's a rhythm," she said.
"It's just the current."
"Currents don't breathe."
She was right.
Between each tap, I heard the sound of air being forced through water—
a throat still trying to speak.
We packed up fast, but the noise followed us inland.
At the next site—an abandoned school—
the tape began recording on its own.
Playback later showed us standing still,
backs to the camera.
No sound for five minutes.
Then a sudden rush,
like wind moving through dozens of small mouths.
A voice:
"It's rising."
Neither of us said it.
But when we checked the reflection in the window,
one of our mouths was moving.
I couldn't tell whose.
By the fourth site, Hana had stopped sleeping.
Her hands shook when she loaded new reels.
She said the chanting had changed pitch—
higher now, almost pleading.
I told her it was interference.
She didn't argue, just whispered, "Then why do I hear it when everything's off?"
That night, lightning hit somewhere close.
The flash burned white across the clouds,
and for a heartbeat,
the entire floodplain glowed with faces beneath the surface—
hundreds of them, mouths open,
bodies pressed against the underside of the water like film against glass.
When the thunder came, the faces vanished.
We went back the next morning.
The water had dropped, but something new floated in the reeds—
postcards, dozens of them, swollen and colorless.
Each stamped with dates from years apart.
Each addressed to no one.
I picked one up.
No handwriting, just a thumbprint in dried mud.
It matched mine.
We set the last recorder near the spillway before leaving.
It was supposed to run twelve hours.
When we retrieved it the next day, the counter read 72:00:00.
Three days recorded in one night.
The first thirty seconds were normal.
Then, the chanting again—
but not background this time.
It was everywhere,
layered until the words became a single sound,
vibrating like a motor under the world.
Hana turned pale.
"Listen to the tone," she said.
"It's the same as the hum from your tower."
I said nothing.
I couldn't.
The reel ended with static—
then one last voice, clear and close,
spoken in perfect sync with mine:
"It's rising."
That night, I dreamed of the water again.
The surface was still, but sound came from beneath.
Dozens of voices whispering the same phrase,
each starting a second before the other—
like a recording trying to align itself.
When I woke, my floor was wet.
The recorder light was on.
And from the speaker came the soft tapping of fingers against wood,
slow and patient,
as if waiting for me to answer.
(End of Chapter 8 — "Floodplain Voices")