There were times when silence acted like a dam that suppressed a fatal flood. One that was meant to wreak havoc on everything in its path, making your soul feel like an empty jar on a shelf in the aftermath. A jar that was still holding its form but without anything left inside.

And that was exactly how we felt after we arrived at Connor's place. We all sat idly, staring at the capsules in absolute terror, not daring to utter a word. For none of us could bear the burden of being the one responsible for firing the cannon that was going to breach that dam we have kept intact for so long.

But all our efforts were to no use now. The crashing waves have already arrived...

"Do any of you have a rational explanation for what's happening?" My question felt like a blunt knife tearing through that thick silence.

They finally took their gaze off the capsules and looked at me as if they had just landed back on earth. And just like me, their eyes were clouded with unmasked fear.

Connor raised an eyebrow. "Why don't you enlighten us with your theory, Doctor?" A slight smirk found its way to his lips. "And maybe while we're at it, you can finally come clean about what you did. This stupid joke is getting old!"

Anger stirred up in my chest. I took a deep breath to keep myself together so I wouldn't smash his face. "I don't care if we are at your place, Connor. Enough with that nonsense, or I'll make you regret it."

He snorted. "Why don't you show me what you got?"

I didn't realize what I was doing until I was already halfway through the living room, my fists clenched as I was ready to hit him. But I was interrupted by Aiden, who hurried to stand between us.

"You're acting like children while we're on the brink of a disaster that could ruin our lives forever!" shouted Aiden.

I blinked. I had never seen him like that, but perhaps his new attitude resulted from his frequent dealings with delinquent, testosterone-driven adolescents.

His way of getting both of us to calm down worked, and we all sat back and started to think about what we were up against.

Aiden sighed as he ran his fingers through his damp, blonde hair. "What if someone saw us that day?"

"Which day do you mean exactly?" Connor let out a humorless laugh.

Glaring at Connor, he rolled his eyes and looked away. I then focused my gaze on Aiden, who seemed pretty shaken up. "If someone did see us, why would they show themselves just now, after ten years?"

"Wait," Connor blurted out. He seemed as if he had remembered something. "Erin, you said it yourself; the burial site had plants that had grown a lot of years ago, and there was no way the ground could have been dug up without removing those plants."

I let out a sarcastic laugh. "And now, you finally believe me?"

He ignored me and went on with his remark while pointing at the contents we found. "What if these things have been inside the capsules all these years?"

Letting out a tired sigh, I looked at him questioningly. "This only proves that someone saw us that day and replaced the original contents. Did you forget that we buried these capsules ourselves?"

Connor let out a curse and buried his head between his hands for a few moments. Then he abruptly stood up and walked toward the small bar. "I'm going to pour myself a glass of Scotch." He picked out a bottle of scotch that looked ridiculously expensive.

And here, I noticed for the first time that Connor obviously made a lot of money from his work as a corporate lawyer after struggling at the beginning of his career when he was still a public defender. His apartment was luxurious. It was modernly furnished with glass walls decorated with paintings and antiques that I knew must have cost him a fortune.

Connor returned, holding the bottle with one hand and three glasses in the other. "This bottle was a precious gift. I was keeping it for a special occasion or maybe to enjoy it with a beautiful woman." He let out a chuckle. "But I guess I may never get to open it after this day. As far as I know, vintage whiskey is considered contraband in prison."

He started filling up the glasses but was stopped by Aiden, who told him he didn't want a drink. Connor looked at me in question, and I nodded, taking one of the glasses from him.

"I'm thinking about something..." Aiden said, looking pale. "When I was studying psychology, and during all the years I worked with juvies, I came across many cases in which remorse had completely overwhelmed a person. As a result, they forget certain things they have done and events in their life. Their subconscious tends to build up a basement of its own, burying all those memories inside as if they never happened."

Connor looked at him, his eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

I didn't need to ask as I understood what Aiden wanted to say. During my residency, I encountered many similar cases. Some of them had been subjected to violent incidents, and others had been mentally traumatized. In medicine, we call this dissociative amnesia; it occurs when a person blocks out certain information, usually associated with a stressful or traumatic event, and sometimes, those memories never return.

"He means that one of us may have put these things inside the capsules but can't remember doing so," I said.

Connor raised one of his eyebrows, looking at me as if I had lost my mind. "This is nonsense."

"It's not our fault you're ignorant."

He gave me a hard look. "I don't know about you two, but I'm sure it wasn't me."

Me too. But I didn't say it aloud so I wouldn't be pointing fingers directly at Aiden. My memories of the days following that incident might have been a bit hazy, but I was pretty sure I never returned to that place.

From the tip of my eye, I glanced at Aiden. He looked nervous and was sweating even though the air conditioner was on. He fidgeted in his seat when he saw Connor and me looking at him. We both knew that what happened had torn him up, and it took him many years to get over the guilt and move on with his life.

I noticed that Aiden's lower lip was trembling. He bit it and closed his eyes before he shook his head and put it between his hands.

"I don't remember," he whispered.

He then lifted his head and revealed watery blue eyes. "I don't remember anything about what followed that day. I don't remember the condition I was in. I don't remember what I did. So maybe it was me. I really don't remember!"

Neither Connor nor I said a word. We both knew Aiden was one step away from breaking down.

My thoughts drifted off to thinking about how much Aiden was different from Connor and me. No matter how hard I thought, I couldn't find an explanation as to why Aiden wanted to be friends with us in the first place. He was always a model student and the kid every parent wished they had, while Connor and I were like a magnet for trouble. However, once life had brought him to us, our friendship bond was formed against all odds, and the three of us became inseparable.

I decided to change the subject. "Let's take a thorough look at what's inside the capsules. We may find some clues."

Connor seemed to understand what I was doing and nodded. We both approached the capsules and asked Aiden to join us. He did once he had wiped his tears and tried his best to regain some of his composure.

We had already emptied the contents of the capsules on the table. Each capsule contained a few old items that belonged to us in high school—and I remembered that these were the things we had put inside with our own hands.

There were also three letters, each with the name of one of us written on them. And there were also the notes we wrote about that day, but they were shredded to pieces as if someone had torn them after we put them inside. The capsules also had old and worn clothes inside—they were all dirty and had blood all over them.

"Why don't we start by opening the letters?" suggested Connor.

We agreed.

Each of us grabbed the letter that had his name on it. And with one last look, the three of us shared, we opened them...

When I first opened the letter, my eyes widened, and a chill ran down my spine when I felt a warm breeze down my neck. I took a careful look behind me, but, of course, nobody was there. And when my eyes fell on the words that were supposedly written for me, my blood went cold—even though I failed to understand what they actually meant.

I looked up at Connor and Aiden. They looked as terrified as I was, panic covering their faces as they stared at the letters in their hands with wide eyes.

Swallowing hard, I tried to calm myself down before I spoke. "Who wants to start?"

I was surprised to find that Aiden was the first one to volunteer. He started reading his letter slowly.

"He, who stared at him, loafing like a tree.

Whose soul, now expanding in white agony.

Had fused in a flaming circuit of atrocity."

When he finished, pregnant silence surrounded us for a few minutes, each of us trying to understand whatever that meant.

The paper in Connor's hand rustled, breaking the silence. And it made me notice that his hands were shaking.

He cleared his throat quickly before he started reading from it.

"So you think you know what comfort can lend.

When the days languish, but the anguish won't end.

How it seems we can never make amends.

Now, rolling in the deep, and it's a dead-end.

Bearing a great burden into the eternal wretchedness."

Connor didn't allow silence to take over again. He looked at me. "Your turn, Erin."

Looking at the paper in my hand again, I wished it could turn blank, but the words remained there. Like an inevitable fate, they waited for me to read them out loud and unleash all the evil they held into the world.

I started reading.

"I watched from afar how the world turned into a mess.

I watched from afar the eyes of the devil glooming from the abyss.

Now, I watch from afar as their tainted souls cease to exist..."

After we were done, we burned the letters and everything that was inside the capsules.

We stayed at Connor's house that night and agreed to forget everything that had happened and not talk about it ever again. And I was longing to leave the town again and return to my normal life, and this time I made a vow never to return.

After that fateful night, I knew I had to flee that cursed town once and for all. Nothing connected me to it. My parents died in an accident when I was in middle school, and my grandmother took care of me until dementia beat her. So after high school, I decided to leave and never come back.

And I wished I had stuck to that decision.

But for a reason God only knew, I abandoned all common sense and decided to stay in town for a few more days. Something within told me that things were far from being over, and a part of me wanted closure and refused to leave before getting it.

And unfortunately, days proved me right. What happened was only the beginning.

But it was the beginning of our end. For the crashing waves of that fatal flood had already arrived...