Howl: The Wailing Maw

The village knew the legend well. When the wind howled across the moors, doors were locked, fires burned low, and no one dared to step outside. The sound carried a sorrow so raw, so consuming, that to hear it was to invite madness. They said it was the wind scraping through jagged cliffs, a natural wail formed by the land itself. But the elders knew better.

Once, long ago, there had been a man. His name is lost to time, swallowed by the abyss that took him, but his grief remains. Some say he was a father who lost his child to the stormy sea. Others claim he was a poet, his love stolen away by a jealous rival. The details were unclear, but one truth persisted—his cries of anguish were so profound, so harrowing, that they never ceased. When his body fell into the void, his voice remained, echoing long after flesh had rotted away.

But grief is hungry. It does not linger in solitude. It calls, drawing others into its embrace, swallowing them into its misery. The first to disappear was a lost traveler, a man who had wandered too close to the cliffs, drawn by the weeping wind. His footprints led to the edge, but no body was ever found. Then, a shepherd’s daughter vanished, last seen walking toward the sound of the wail, as if entranced. One by one, the village lost its own. They had not fallen. They had joined.

As time passed, stories of Howl spread beyond the village. Traders and wanderers who had never heard the warnings walked too far into the moors, vanishing like those before them. Search parties would find no signs of struggle—only eerie silence, save for the wind that never stopped sighing its grief. The villagers knew better than to attempt rescues; the moors had already claimed too many. The moment someone heard the wail, it was already too late.

Now, when the wind carries the wail, it is not one voice but many, all of them screaming, calling, begging. They claw at Howl’s shifting form, their features barely distinguishable in the blackness, red eyes flickering like dying embers. Each cry is distinct—some filled with rage, others sorrow, and some simply the mindless shrieks of those who no longer remember who they were.

It does not hunt. It does not chase. It only mourns. But its lament is a lure, a siren’s call far worse than any song of the sea. To hear it is to know true despair, to feel one’s soul stretch toward its pain. Those who listen too long lose themselves, their own sorrow feeding the entity, their voices becoming part of the endless wail. No one knows what happens to them beyond the threshold of Howl’s embrace. Are they dissolved into nothingness, or do they linger, screaming in the abyss, forever trapped?

Some say there is one way to resist—cover your ears, hum a tune, fill your mind with thoughts of love and warmth. Anything to drown out the wail. A few have claimed to survive by gripping onto something tangible—a charm, a keepsake, a whispered promise to a loved one. But those who do survive never sleep well again, for even in silence, they swear they can still hear it. A whisper on the edge of consciousness. A voice calling their name in the dead of night.

And one day, inevitably, they will answer.

The village remains, though its population has dwindled over the centuries. Those who remain refuse to speak of Howl to outsiders, believing the legend best left unspoken. The few who have broken this rule, driven by guilt or arrogance, have met strange fates. A merchant who mocked the wailing wind found himself walking into the night, unable to resist the call. A widow, desperate to hear her lost husband's voice once more, disappeared at dusk, leaving only a note that read, I hear him.

Scholars have tried to explain Howl. Some claim it's an atmospheric anomaly, an unusual wind current that amplifies sound. Others believe it's a psychological phenomenon—a mass hysteria that has perpetuated itself through generations of fearful villagers. But the villagers do not care for science or reason. They know what they have seen, what they have lost. And they know that when the wind howls, no one must listen.

There are those who seek Howl intentionally, drawn by its legend, eager to prove its existence. They venture onto the moors, cameras in hand, recording devices primed. Few return. Those who do come back changed—haunted. Their eyes are distant, their sleep restless, their dreams filled with whispering voices and unseen hands reaching for them in the dark. They refuse to speak of what they heard, what they almost saw. But in the quietest moments, when the world stills and the wind begins to rise, they shudder and turn their heads, as if expecting to hear their name carried on the breeze.

For Howl never forgets those who have listened. It never stops calling.

And eventually, they will listen once more.