In the quiet town of Eldridge Hollow, nestled between two fog-draped hills, there was a legend about the old government facility on the edge of the woods. It had been abandoned for decades, its rusted gates sealed with chains and warnings in faded paint. Most townsfolk avoided the place, whispering about strange lights that flickered through the trees at night and the faint hum that sometimes echoed through the valley. No one knew exactly what had happened there. Some said it was a top-secret research lab, others claimed it was a place where the government experimented on things that shouldn’t be touched. But no one could prove it. The only records were scattered fragments in local archives, mostly redacted or missing entirely. One day, a young journalist named Eliza came to town. She had heard the rumors and was determined to uncover the truth. She spent her first few days walking the perimeter of the facility, sketching the crumbling walls and noting the strange symbols carved into the stone. The air around it felt different—thicker, almost as if it resisted being breathed in. On her third night, she decided to go inside. The gate creaked open without resistance, as though it had been waiting for someone. Inside, the building was a labyrinth of corridors and empty rooms. Dust covered everything, but there were signs of recent activity—footprints in the dust, a half-eaten sandwich on a desk, and a radio playing static in the background. Eliza followed the sounds down a narrow hallway, her flashlight casting long shadows on the walls. The deeper she went, the more the air seemed to shift, like a living thing. At the end of the hall, she found a door marked with a symbol she didn’t recognize—a spiral surrounded by three lines. When she touched it, the door opened smoothly, revealing a small room filled with old files, photographs, and a single chair in the center. The photographs showed people standing in front of the facility, their faces blurred or missing. Some looked confused, others terrified. One photo, however, caught her eye. It was a man in a lab coat, his face clearly visible. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place it. On the back, written in shaky handwriting, was a name: Dr. Elias Vane. She found a journal tucked under the chair, its pages filled with frantic notes. Dr. Vane spoke of "the resonance" and "the threshold." He wrote about experiments that had gone wrong, about a machine that could detect something beyond human perception. But the last entry was incomplete, ending mid-sentence: "It’s not just a device—it’s a door. And we’ve opened it." As she read, the temperature in the room dropped suddenly. Her breath became visible, and the light from her flashlight flickered. A low vibration pulsed through the floor, like a heartbeat. She turned around, but the door was gone. In its place was a wall of shifting shadows, as if the space itself was warping. Eliza tried to run, but the corridor behind her had changed. The walls were now smooth and featureless, the path leading nowhere. She pressed her hands against the wall, feeling something cold and wet. Then, a voice whispered in her ear, not in words, but in thoughts. *You should not have come here.* She stumbled backward, her heart pounding. The whispers grew louder, overlapping, forming a chorus of voices speaking in different languages. She collapsed to her knees, clutching her head as the room around her began to dissolve. The walls melted away, revealing a vast, endless expanse of stars and swirling light. When she finally regained consciousness, she was outside, lying in the grass near the entrance. The facility was gone, replaced by an empty field. No sign of the building remained, as if it had never existed. The townspeople said nothing about her visit, as if they had never seen her. But Eliza kept the journal. She studied it late into the night, trying to make sense of the words. She started seeing patterns in the numbers, in the dates, in the strange symbols. And one night, she noticed something she hadn’t before. The final page of the journal had a drawing of a door, just like the one she had seen. But beside it, in the same handwriting, was a message: *They are still listening.*