Chapter 1

My mother, Evelyn, was born deaf-mute in Blackwood Creek, a tiny, forgotten town tucked away in the West Virginia mountains.

A local story, more like a prophecy, followed her since birth: she would speak only three times in her life.

Each time, disaster would follow.

I grew up with this story hanging over us, a constant, quiet dread.

I' m Sarah, practical, maybe a bit too skeptical for my own good, but this prophecy, it was different.

It felt real because Mom never made a sound, not a hum, not a sigh, just silence.

Then there was my father, David, a successful architect in Chicago, always a little too wired, a little too intense.

He loved Mom fiercely, despite the shadow of her silence and the whispers from her hometown.

Years passed, the prophecy a dormant thing.

I was in my late teens.

Dad was about to leave for a huge presentation, the kind that could make or break a career.

He was stressed, pacing the apartment.

Mom walked up to him, touched his arm.

And then, she spoke.

Her voice was a rough whisper, unused, shocking.

"Don't go, David."

Just three words. Her first.

Dad stopped, stared at her, a mix of shock and something else, maybe fear, on his face.

He brushed it off, said he had to go, kissed her, and left.

That night, he fell from our high-rise apartment balcony.

No history of sleepwalking, no note, nothing.

Detective Ramirez, a city cop who' d seen it all, investigated.

He questioned Mom.

She was silent again, communicating only with a few shaky notes, mostly saying she didn' t know what happened.

The official ruling was an accident, stress-induced sleepwalking.

But the whispers started, not just in Blackwood Creek, but in our Chicago building, among Dad' s colleagues.

The curse.

Her first words had brought death.