The Silence

A Story Born in the Depths of My 10-Day Vipassana Meditation Retreat

The brochure had promised peace. Ten days of noble silence at the Dhamma House, nestled in the rolling hills of the English countryside. No phones. No books. No writing materials. Just me and my thoughts, learning the ancient art of Vipassana meditation.

I needed this.

After Nathan's accident three months ago, my mind had become a labyrinth of what-ifs, each turn leading to another dead end of guilt. If I hadn't asked him to pick up groceries that stormy night... if I had gone instead... if the lorry driver hadn't fallen asleep at the wheel... My therapist said grief can make you lose yourself. She didn't mention that sometimes, losing yourself might be exactly what something else is waiting for.

About forty-five of us gathered in the registration hall that first afternoon. I remember them all now, their faces etched in my memory like photographs of the disappeared. The silver-haired businessman, Marcus, who kept straightening his tie even after changing into meditation clothes. The pregnant woman, Claire, twenty-six weeks along, one hand always resting protectively on her belly as if shielding more than just her child. The elderly couple, Harriet and Margaret, who'd been married recently never spent a day apart - until they did. Sarah, the young woman assigned to the cushion next to mine, her anxiety medication carefully counted out for ten days in a plastic organiser she surrendered at registration.

Even now, I can't be sure if knowing their names made it better or worse.

Mrs. Harrison's orientation speech felt rehearsed, yet somehow wrong, like a familiar song played slightly off-key. "Your old life ends here," she said, her smile never quite reaching her eyes, which reflected no light despite the afternoon sun. "Hand over your phones, watches, books – anything that connects you to the outside world. You won't need them where you're going."

Looking back, the emphasis on that last sentence should have warned us.

The rules seemed logical, almost comforting in their strictness. Wake-up bell at 4 AM. Meditate. Eat. Meditate more. Simple vegetarian meals twice a day, with just tea and fruit in the evening. No killing any beings (Mrs. Harrison's eyes lingered strangely on each of us as she said this). No stealing, no lying, no sexual activity, no intoxicants. Complete silence except for one-on-one sessions with the meditation teachers if needed.

The first few days were as expected – physical discomfort, mental resistance, the parade of memories marching through the quiet. I watched others struggle too. Marcus kept checking his bare wrist where his Rolex used to be. Claire shifted constantly, trying to find a comfortable position for her growing belly. Harriet and Margaret exchanged desperate looks across the meditation hall, smiling when their eyes met.

Five people left on day two. I noticed because counting and observing others had become my meditation instead of following my breath. Watching the empty cushions, tracking faces, noting who shifted positions or wiped tears away – these details filled the endless silence. When your mind isn't occupied with phones or books or conversation, it finds other ways to stay busy. Mine kept returning to Nathan, to guilt, to increasingly dark places. Later, I would wonder if those thoughts were truly my own, or if something was already beginning to seep in through the cracks in my consciousness.

By day four, something changed. The silence became thick, viscous, like honey in the throat. My meditation deepened, but not toward peace – toward something else. Something waiting. The technique was simple: observe sensations, remain equanimous, and let everything pass. Nothing is permanent, they said. Including, I would learn, humanity itself.

The changes were subtle at first. In meditation, I began noticing how the shadows in the corners of the hall seemed to pulse with the group's breathing. The carved wooden Buddha at the front, traditionally serene, appeared to wear a different expression each time I looked – sometimes pitying, sometimes mocking, sometimes hungry.

The hall, initially packed with sixty cushions, developed gaps like missing teeth. Fourty-two people at morning meditation on day four. These numbers filled my meditation hours: sixty to forty-two, eighteen empty spaces where people should be. I tried to recall their faces, but memory played strange tricks in the silence. Had the young man with the neck tattoo left voluntarily, or was he one of the gaps I couldn't explain? The woman with the jade bracelet - when had I last seen her?

Sarah, beside me, was changing too. Her meditation posture grew unnaturally perfect, spine straight as a rod, hands relaxed yet rigid. On day five, I noticed her breathing had synchronized perfectly with the strange rhythms that seemed to pulse through the building's ancient walls. That evening, she drank two cups of the special tea, her movements mechanical, her eyes reflecting the candlelight in ways that made my stomach clench.

Her cushion was empty on day six.

During my interview with the female meditation teacher that afternoon, the wrongness crystallized. The teacher’s office felt larger than the building's exterior should allow, the ceiling disappearing into shadows that moved independently of the light from her desk lamp.

"Have you experienced any unusual sensations?" she asked, her voice carrying harmonics that made my molars ache. "Lightness in the body? Feeling like you might... float away?"

"Just normal meditation experiences," I lied, not mentioning how gravity seemed to hiccup during walking meditation, or how my reflection in the bathroom mirror sometimes moved a fraction of a second too late.

"Are you drinking the evening tea? It's a special blend. Helps with... the process."

I told her yes, but I'd stopped days ago. The tea smelled like memories I'd never had, and those who drank it changed in ways that defied description. Claire, the pregnant woman, had taken on a translucent quality after her third cup, her belly now casting shadows that contained impossible geometries. The elderly couple, Harriet and Margaret, drank their tea in perfect unison, their movements mirrored so precisely it was like watching one person and their reflection – until the morning neither appeared for meditation.

The night Sarah disappeared, insomnia kept me awake. The moonlight through my window cast shadows that spelt words in languages that hurt to look at. At 2 am, movement caught my eye. Dark figures guided a familiar shape toward a waiting van – Marcus, the businessman, his silver hair now so bright it seemed to glow from within. His movements were wrong, joints bending in directions that human anatomy shouldn't allow.

My heart pounded against my ribs like something trying to escape.

The next morning, thirty-three people remained in the meditation hall. Mrs. Harrison's smile had grown wider, literally wider, stretching beyond the natural corners of her mouth. During walking meditation, I noticed the cameras in the corners of every room – not electronic devices, but dark, glossy spheres that moved to track our movements, their surfaces rippling like oil on water.

I began mapping the disappearances in my head, since writing materials were forbidden. Those who drank the tea went first, their transformations following a pattern I desperately tried to understand. They grew still, impossibly still, as if their bodies were merely furniture that something else might choose to occupy. Their eyes reflected lights that weren't there. Their movements became fluid, then erratic, then wrong.

On the eighth night, the silence changed quality. It was no longer the absence of sound, but the presence of something else – something that had been waiting. Only twenty-seven of us remained, and even they weren't quite "us" anymore. Through my window, the moon cast long shadows across the grounds, shadows that moved against the wind and formed patterns that made my vision blur when I tried to focus on them.

As I wandered through the halls, the air seemed heavier, pressing in on me from all sides. The feeling was impossible to shake, like I was being watched, or worse, led. My feet carried me down the passage without my will, drawn by an instinct I didn't fully understand. It was as if the house itself had begun to guide me. Every turn I took felt deliberate, and each shadow that flickered at the corner of my eye made my heart race.

And then I saw it – Mrs. Harrison's office door, standing wide open. I hadn’t touched it. I hadn’t even thought of it until that moment. The room beyond was cloaked in darkness, but there was something more to it. The darkness wasn’t still – it seemed alive, aware, as if it was waiting for me.

Compelled, I stepped forward. My hand reached for the doorframe, and the moment my fingers brushed the cool wood, I felt a shiver run up my spine. The door creaked as I pushed it further open, the sound oddly loud in the silence. Inside, her desk stood at the far end, untouched, except for a leather-bound book. It lay open, waiting, the cover unmarked but for a symbol that seemed to shift and pulse as I drew closer.

My breath caught. It was as though the book had been calling me, and now that I stood before it, I had no choice but to open it. It was a trap, yes, but one I could not resist. With a trembling hand, I reached for the pages.

The handwritten entries within dated back centuries, not decades:

"Subject 247 - Vessel preparation successful. Integration achieved. The flesh remembers its original purpose."

"Subject 249 - Vessel rejected the crossing. Consciousness fragmented during transfer. Disposal of remaining awareness required."

"Subject 251 - Pregnant vessel optimal. Dual integration proceeding. Both consciousness streams malleable. The unborn remember easiest."

"Subjects 252/253 - Paired vessels provide stable gateway. Their shared lifetime of memories creates robust pathways. The Others approve."

……

The margins contained sketches that violated the laws of perspective, geometric patterns that suggested doorways into spaces that couldn't exist. The same phrase repeated throughout, the handwriting growing less human with each iteration: "The body is temporary. Consciousness is eternal. Through vessel preparation, They return."

"You see why the tea is so important now."

Mrs. Harrison's voice came from everywhere and nowhere. When I turned, she stood in the doorway, but "stood" isn't quite right. Her form suggested human shape while simultaneously suggesting something else, like a word on the tip of your tongue that you can almost but not quite remember.

"We knew you'd come tonight," she said, her voice harmonizing with itself in impossible ways. "The resistant ones always do. Their consciousness fights the preparation, sensing what's coming. But curiosity... curiosity is just another form of opening."

Behind her, shapes moved in the darkness. They wore the faces of the missing – Claire's translucent features floating above Marcus's silver hair, Harriet and Margaret's forms intertwined into something with too many limbs, Sarah's perfect posture twisted into geometries that denied anatomy.

"What are you?"

"We are the remembering. The returning. The reclaiming." Her smile widened beyond the constraints of her face. "Meditation was never about emptying the vessel. It was about making space. They have waited so long to come home."

I ran. Through corridors that stretched and twisted, past windows that showed skies filled with impossible colours, upstairs that moved under my feet like living things. The chapel door appeared before me, though I hadn't been seeking it.

Inside, I found paper and pen, though I don't remember how. I have to record this. Have to warn... someone. Anyone.

The windows show only darkness now, though time has lost all meaning. The air feels thick with incense and possibilities, heavy with the weight of waiting centuries.

Through the walls, I hear chanting in languages that predate humanity. The sounds form patterns in my mind, geometric proofs of realities that shouldn't exist. They're getting closer.

I understand now why they took the pregnant woman first – new consciousness is easier to reshape. Why the elderly couple went together – shared memories form stronger bridges. Why some vessels are more suitable than others – some bodies remember what they used to be, before evolution made us forget.

The door is opening, though I never heard footsteps. Mrs. Harrison stands there, but she is not Mrs. Harrison anymore. Her form suggests possibilities that human language cannot contain. Behind her, the teachers and the Others have shed their borrowed faces, their true geometries bleeding through the thin veil of reality.

"The tea is prepared," they say in voices that taste like colours. "Your vessel is ready."

The chanting grows louder, harmonizing with frequencies that human ears were never meant to process. The darkness thickens, takes shape, reaches.

I still don't know what happened to the others. Whether they transcended or were taken or became vessels for something that remembers when stars were young. Whether their consciousness floats free or is trapped somewhere, screaming in geometries that Euclidean space cannot contain.

The pen grows heavy as gravity hiccups around me. My thoughts scatter like mercury, rolling into patterns that almost make sense.

I should have drunk the tea. The transition would have been easier with preparation.

They're he

The writing trails off into spiral patterns that seem to move when viewed directly. The bottom of the page contains a single line in different handwriting: "The vessel is prepared. We remember now."

---

Police Report, Dated [redacted]:

Following multiple missing persons reports, Dhamma House meditation centre was investigated. Building found empty. No signs of forced entry or violence. All participants signed out properly according to records. Several items of note: a book of tea recipes showing significant age, geometric patterns carved into the chapel floor, and multiple witness reports of lights in impossible colours seen over the property. Under standard classification pending further investigation.*

*Addendum: Investigating officers requested transfer following initial survey.

Case reassigned to Special Cases Unit.

Further details restricted.*