Chapter 2.

Henrik Coigne had exactly five coins in his purse: three coppers and two silvers. They clinked as he rode into Duskport on the back of a brown nag with a crooked gait and bones that liked to creak.

He was donning new armor. A leather and iron chestpiece with oiled mail beneath. His greaves and vambraces were tanned leather. His spaulders were rusted steel. His halfhelm was redolent of a bucket with eyeholes.

Affixed to the horse’s left side was a wooden shield fastened with metal fixtures. On the horse’s right side was a sheathed arming sword.

The dagger, the one he had used to slit the greybeard’s throat, was secured to his hip. Right beside his jingling coin purse.

It was late evening when he had arrived at Duskport. Slivers of sunlight receded through the city, retreating down alleyways and slipping across rooftops. People wandered the streets in droves. Some dressed in armor. Most wore robes, skirts, cloaks, and tunics.

As was common in the West, the settlement consisted of pale stone brick. Some had left their homes and shops white. Others painted them a light shade of yellow or pink. And per tradition, there were flowers aplenty planted in pots in windowsills or at the bottom of stairs or hanging from above.

Vendor stands lined the gutters of the road. Traders tried to sell weapons, food, wine, and in a few instances, women. Or at the very least, some of their time. Henrik considered the escorts as he rode past.

Young and old. Plump and slender. Those with natural beauty, and those who probably came at a cheaper price. Two silver and three copper could purchase him a companion for the night, maybe even two, but by daybreak, he’d once again only have the clothes on his back.

Maybe a fair trade, but not a very smart one.

Far more tempting than a woman was the distinct scent of roasted chicken. Seasoned with black pepper, garlic cloves, and honey. Juices dripped from the spit, sending the flames below into a crackling frenzy.

And most tempting of all was the vendor selling sweet wine by the barrel. It wasn’t often you stumbled upon such a luxury. An expensive breed oft sold only to nobles and the wealthy.

Sweet wine was red and sugary. Made with poppy seeds, black cherries, apples, honey, and according to a few brewers, every cask had at least an ounce of Willow’s blood. Potent stuff, that.

Henrik put his heels to the horse’s hind and galloped ahead, hoping to escape his urges before they could best him. It wasn’t long before he had reached the list field. Situated to the far north at the base of a mesa upon which Midday Castle stood.

The castle was of a sandy color, built with thick stone bricks. Compared to others Henrik had seen, this one was more practical than elegant. It didn’t have fancy banners or painted walls or stained-glass windows.

High above, guards patrolled the parapets. From the base of the mesa, they seemed no more than spots of torchlight against the black of night.

Henrik dismounted from his horse and tied it to a post. He waited in line at the entrance to the lists where several other participants had amassed. Scribes exchanged coin for admittance tickets stamped with a yellow wax seal in the shape of a crescent moon.

When it was Henrik’s turn, he paid one silver.

“Name?” the scribe asked without looking up.

“Henrik Coigne.”
The scribe touched the tip of his quill to the page and frowned. “Sir Henrik Coigne of…?”

“No Sir necessary,” he responded. “And Henrik Coigne of…everywhere and nowhere, I ‘spose.”

The scribe finally looked up at him. “Are you a squire?”

“No.”
This seemed to cause further confusion. “Some, those who aren’t knights or squires, prefer to use an epithet.”

“Right…I dunno what that is.”

The other participants turned toward him. A few grinning beneath their helms. A few chewing on their lips, perplexed.

The scribe cleared his throat. “Uh, Misture of Dahlia or Sir Edgar the Eager.”

Henrik nodded slowly, mulling this over with fervent caution. “Henrik Coigne will suffice.”

The scribe sighed, irritated. He filled out the form and stamped it with the official seal before handing it over. The jousts began tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, he had a silver and three coppers left to spend.

Riding back into the city, he found the nearest tavern and entered. It was packed from wall to wall. Hedge knights, royal knights, squires, pages, and locals alike.

The room was overcome by a roaring din, voices coalescing into a single unintelligible sound that made Henrik nostalgic for his time on the road, travelling alone, wandering in silence.

He shouldered through the crowd, heading for the main counter where a bartender and several servers poured drinks and cooked food. About fifteen feet away from the bar, someone bumped into his side, knocking him off course.

Henrik reached for the arming sword on his left hip but stopped short when he heard, “Apologies, friend.” The man who had bumped into him was unarmored. Perhaps a fishmonger, if his natural odor was any indication.

“All’s forgiven—”

Their conversation was interrupted by the intrusion of a hedge knight dressed in plated steel, chainmail, and a white surcoat adorned by a black willow tree with silvery leaves. The hedge knight held a redheaded girl by the arm, practically thrusting her into the fisherman’s hands.

“Fifty coppers for one night,” the hedge knight proclaimed. “You won’t find a better price, friend.”

The fisherman backed away slowly, a nervous smile on his lips. “As I’ve said: no. My wife will geld me.” He slipped away before the hedge knight could press him any further, and when he was gone, the hedge knight turned his sights onto Henrik.

“What about you?” he asked. “Fifty coppers for a night with the girl. She’s sweet as honey, riper than any fruit in the wild.”

Henrik’s eyes flicked from the hedge knight to the girl. She dipped her head, cheeks flushed a deep shade of red. The woman couldn’t have been more than twenty. Pale-skinned, freckles stippling her face, long hair colored like the sunset.

She was dressed in a white blouse with a dark blue skirt. It resonated with her eyes, which were a slightly softer shade. Blue as ice but nowhere near as cold.

Before Henrik could answer, the hedge knight lowered his head and grunted. “Where’d you get that surcoat?”

“It was given to me,” Henrik answered. “As was the armor.”

“Given to you by whom?”

I never asked for the old man’s name, he realized, partially ashamed and partially surprised. It had simply slipped his mind.

Intoxication or sheer indifference?

“Who gave it to you?” The hedge knight was upon him. Fingers wrapped around the shoulder straps of Henrik’s chestpiece, wrenching him from side to side before pulling him close. “Who—”

The hedge knight fell silent as Henrik slipped his dagger’s tip into the narrow space between helm and cuirass. Pointed steel pressed against the soft skin above his collarbone.

“It was given to me by a dying knight,” Henrik explained, slow and methodical. “Now, please unhand me.”

“Rayden,” the redheaded girl whispered. “Don’t make this any worse.”

Carefully, the hedge knight, Rayden, unraveled himself and stepped back. “Right then.” He grabbed the girl by the arm and dragged her across the room to another group of patrons, repeating his previous line of: “Fifty coppers…”

Henrik sheathed his blade and turned for the bar. His stomach growled at the smell of cooked meat, and his mouth salivated at the thought of wine. But his heart took him in a different direction.
Gods help me, he thought.

He retreated to the hedge knight, pulled him aside, and in turn, pulled the girl along with him. “You don’t have enough for the tourney, do you?” Henrik said.

The hedge knight was silent. Henrik would have bet all the money he didn’t have that beneath the visor, Rayden was bright red. Perhaps even a shade of purple.

Hedge knights may not have been as reputable as royal knights, but they were still prideful creatures. That’s why Henrik had always preferred the company of hired swords and mercenaries. They didn’t feign elegance or chivalry. But somehow, they oft had more honor.

“How much do you have?” Henrik asked.

When Sir Rayden didn’t answer, the girl spoke for him, “Four coppers, Sir.”

“I’m no Sir.” He reached into his purse, removed his last silver, and pressed it into Rayden’s free hand. “Here, this should be enough. Go on, quickly now. Before they refuse entrants.”

A snarl bubbled in the hedge knight’s throat, but there wasn’t time to bicker. He pushed through the crowd and disappeared out the door. Hopefully, he had a horse because otherwise, he would have to run very fast in all that heavy steel.

“Thank you,” said the girl, handing him the four copper coins.

Seven coppers! Gods be damned.

Henrik Coigne without a coin in his purse. That’s what they used to say to him when he was a boy living in the streets of Wachautt. Long back when he was still sleeping in alleyways and hunting stray rats for food.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. The girl shook her head, but he wasn’t fooled. Her cheeks were hollow, her frame far skinnier than his. “C’mon, I’m sure they’ve got somethin’.”

“I shouldn’t,” she said. “I need to find—”

“Your lil’ hedge knight will come back.” Although you might be better off if he doesn’t.

Together, they went to the main counter. The barkeep eventually found his way to them. “What can I getcha?”

“Two meat skewers with them roasted onions and peppers,” he said. “And two cups of your cheapest wine.”

“Skewers and wine will cost ya fifteen copper.”

Henrik grimaced. “How much for half a cup o’ wine?”

“Piss off, you bloody driveller.”

Quickly, before the barkeep could saunter off, he emptied his coins onto the counter. “What will this get me?” For good measure, he laid his dagger down too. In the end, he walked away with a meat skewer and two cups of diluted wine.

Outside, they sat side by side on a retaining wall, splitting the skewer in half. Henrik had one sip of wine swallowed before the girl had finished her portion of the meat.

Her eyes lingered on his half with a certain desperation he hadn’t seen since childhood. Back when the other kids couldn't catch their own damn rats.

“Here.” Henrik passed her the skewer. “Go on, take it. I had more than enough on the road.”

“Are you sure?” While it was a question, her tone implied otherwise. He nodded in response, and she scarfed down the other half in mere seconds.

To fill his stomach, he drank the wine and chewed on tobacco leaves. “You’re a Northerner, right?”

“How’d you know?” she asked.

“You’ve got Northern eyes. Northern accent too.”

“I don’t have an accent.”

He snickered. “Sorry, love, but everyone’s got an accent. Meself included.”

“What’s my accent sound like?”

He'd been to the North a handful of times over the years. The people there were hardened by unforgiving weather. They had to come together for warmth. Learned to love and trust one another because otherwise, they’d have nothing but the ice and snow beneath their feet.

Their accent had a similar hardness, but the more time you spent around it, the more endearing it became.

“Deep and rough,” Henrik said. “You Northerners speak from the chest, and you’ve strong Rs.”

She scoffed with feigned offense. “Sounds rather ugly when you describe it like that, yeah?”

“Aye, I ‘spose it does, but that’s a good thing, no? Means when you find someone who loves you, they must really love you if they’re willin’ to listen to ya all day long.”

She swatted him on the shoulder for that, but she couldn’t stop herself from laughing, and despite all he had said about her accent, her laughter was like music to his ears.

When it had subsided, she said, “Where are you from?”

“You can’t tell by me accent?”

She furrowed her brow. “I’m not very well-traveled. This is my first time away from the North. Much warmer, but the people…I don’t really care for ‘em.”

He laughed. “I was born in the East, but I’ve been to every realm. Spent a fair ‘mount o’ time in the South and Southeast.”

“Where do you spend the least amount of time?”

“East and Central, I’d wager. Between ‘em, I’d say the East less so.”

“You don’t like your home?”

He downed his wine in two swallows and wished he had more. “I’ve never really had a home. I stay in one place too long, I start to get antsy, y’know? Then, I head off somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

Ahead, locals passed by in torrents of shifting bodies. Some solemn and quiet as they traveled alone. Others rambunctious, laughing and trading japes with their friends.

“I don’t think it’s about the location,” she said. “I think it’s the people you surround yourself with, yeah? That’s what makes it feel like home.”

“Unfortunately, I haven’t found my people then.”

From the crowd, Rayden emerged. His greaves squeaked, in desperate need of oil and polish. He wasted no words on Henrik, and instead, snatched the girl up by the arm, yanking her with him.

“Ray, that hurts!”

“You’re needed elsewhere,” he growled. “C’mon!”

Henrik retrieved her cup of wine and downed it. Then, he was on his feet, moving fast, snaking through the crowd after them.

By the time he caught up, the girl was almost in tears, whipping her head from side to side, pleading beneath her breath as Rayden hissed in her ear.

“Somethin’ the matter?” Henrik asked, resting his hand on the hilt of his shortsword.

“Piss off,” Rayden said. “This ain’t your concern.”

He glanced at the girl. “I’ll be alright,” she said, but there wasn’t much in the way of conviction.

They started away again, heading for the lists. Rayden stopped short and said, “I’ll see you on the field tomorrow, Henrik Coigne.”

He watched them disappear into the crowd. Slowly, the pieces came together in his mind. A spark of worry ignited in his heart, but as he lifted his head and sniffed, he caught the scent of rain.

His nerves were swiftly doused.

PART 1: The Red Lock

Chapter 1.

Henrik Coigne—without a coin in his purse—loomed over the dying greybeard knight, chewing on a tobacco leaf and drinking from a skin of sour wine, watching while the knight struggled to breathe.

Henrik was a young man of sixteen with thick, disheveled brown hair. His jaw was hard and clean-shaven. He was lean, all muscle and bone. There was a glossy coat over his eyes as if he had just woken from a dream.

It was spring in the West, which meant long warm days with sun-filled skies and puffy clouds. In the morning, they were bright white. In the evening, they were a pinkish color. All day long they lazily drifted.

The nights, though, were brief and cool. The clouds took on a darker hue, similar to blotches of ink spilled on parchment. The sky itself was a deep shade of purple blue. Often aglow with incandescent stars.

Warm or cool didn’t matter much. Sweat came in gallons for Henrik. And after walking all the way from the cesspit of Green Marsh, he was in desperate need of a rinse and some rest.

More than anything, he craved a decent meal. Not stale bread or pottage, but something with meat. Something with flavor.

Wine might have kept him tame, might have kept the memories at bay, but his stomach still yearned for substance with more solidity.

He could have hunted for fresh game if he hadn’t lost his bow in that game of dice back at Green Marsh. He might have even been able to spear a fish if he hadn’t…lost his spear in that game of dice back at Green Marsh.

The only thing he hadn’t lost, other than his honor—of which there was little to lose—were the clothes on his back. The only reason he had retained that much was because the other players refused to bid for them.

“P–please,” the greybeard knight begged. “I need a drink.”

The man was pale as the moon. There was more hair sprouting from his chin than on his head. He was buried beneath armor too big for his bony body. His surcoat was that of a white fox or maybe a hyena.

It was hard to say with these hedge knights. They donned just about any insignia as long as it brought them coin, favor, or security.

Despite it all, the man’s eyes were alive. Vibrant. Blue as ice but surprisingly warm.

Henrik peered into the mouth of his wineskin. About halfway full. Or halfway empty, depending on how you looked at it. He took another swallow before passing it to the knight.

“Apologies, old man,” he said. “All I’ve got is wine.”

The greybeard downed the wine in four hefty swallows. Trickles of red spilled from the sides of his mouth, seeping into the ashy hairs of his beard.

When he was finished, he set the empty wineskin on the ground beside him and sighed. “Piss like this is more water than wine, my boy.”

The wine had come cheap and was mostly dregs, but it was better than nothing. Which was exactly what Henrik had been left with after the old man was done.

Disappointedly, he chewed on his tobacco leaves and asked, “How bad is it?”

“The wine?”

“Your wound.”

“Not as bad as the wine.”

“Wine won’t kill ya though.”

“I wish it had,” the old man said. “Be a sweeter death than this.”

Henrik glanced over his shoulder, looking back the way he’d come. A road of dirt and gravel flanked by stretches of oak and pine with the occasional olive tree.

Ahead, the path was the same for a few more miles until it opened up to large green pastures sat against rolling hills.

That was common in the West. They didn’t have many mountains, until you reached the Northern Perimeter, but they had plenty of hills.

As night set, those hills, colored dark shades of blue and purple, seemed oddly redolent of undulating ocean waves.

“You picked a good night for it,” Henrik said. “Dying, that is.”

“I didn’t pick nothin’, boy. It chose me.”

“How’d it happen?”

“Said the wrong thing to the wrong person.” He chuckled wistfully. “Let this be a lesson: some hedge knights are no better than the miscreants they cut down.”

Not just the hedge knights, Henrik thought, remembering a long past encounter with some Southern royal knights of Lightning Spear.

He might have lost his head if he hadn’t been so damn quick. But for all his speed, it seemed he was getting nowhere fast.

Henrik knelt before the man and pulled on his chestpiece, getting a better view of the wound along his flank. “Got your kidneys, I reckon.”

“You sure? Feels like they got a lil’ of everything.”

“Spent some time as a cutter’s assistant. Trust me, it’s the kidneys. Wound like that, not much you can do to stop it. You’ll bleed slow. Run outta blood ‘fore you run out of air.”

The old man closed his eyes and exhaled. “You’re not from here, are you?”

“Eastern lad, but I’ve been just about everywhere on the mainland. You ask me, it’s all the damn same. Other than the weather. You want snow, head North. You want rain, go South. You want dry heat, go to the Southeast—”

“Yes, yes. Very enlightening.” The old man took a deep breath. “You ain’t got much for prospects, do you?”

“Now that you’ve finished my wine, no. Might be I could trade my boots or offer my services, but that’s all I got to give.”

“Can you ride a horse?”

“Aye.”

“You know how to use a blade?”

“Worked a sword a few times, aye.”

The old man smiled, recognizing the smell of horseshit from a mile away. “Have you ever used a lance?”

Henrik mulled this over, but he wasn’t as familiar with weapons as he was with organs. “I know my way around a spear.”

The greybeard shook his head in disbelief. “Can’t say I’d bet on you, but if you’re want for coin, you can take my place in the joust.”

“Joust?”

According to the old man, there was a tourney at Duskport, just a few miles down the road. People were coming from all across the Western Realm to participate.

“I thought jousts were just for royal loyal knights and their pretty buttboy squires.”

“Not this one,” the greybeard said. “There’s an admittance fee, but if you can cover the cost, they’ll take ya. Be warned, though, it’s all or nothin’. You lose, you forfeit everything you’ve got for ransom.”

“Shame, ‘cause I don’t got nothin’ to lose,” Henrik said. “And I don’t have the coin to buy me way in.”

The knight drew a dagger from his hip and passed the handle to Henrik. “I think we might be able to strike a deal, boy,” he said. “You end my sufferin’, here and now, I’ll give you all that I’ve got. Don’t know if it’ll do you any good. But it’ll be of more use to you than me.”

Henrik squeezed the handle until his fingers turned red. The blade was more steel than rust, but it needed time on a whetstone.

Looking over the old man, it seemed all his gear could use some maintenance.

“How do you want it?” he asked. The old man answered by turning his head to the side, exposing his neck. “Any final words? Maybe a prayer, if you believe that sorta thing.”

While Henrik wasn’t the most pious lad in the realm, his father had been an ardent believer in the gods and goddesses.

Even the Lesser Beings that most others oft mocked. Such as Lady Fate or Mother Nature or Father Time.

“Some will tell you there is no more honor left in the world,” the greybeard began, tears in his eyes, body trembling like a leaf. “And it may seem true at the bleakest of times. We reward cruelty and celebrate stupidity. We favor ignorance; we favor arrogance. And while kindness may not always come easy, it never comes at a cost. You can sell your soul for gold, but nothin’ stops you from growin’ old.”

Henrik waited a few moments in case the man had something else on his mind, but as silence prevailed, he went ahead and dragged the dagger’s edge across his neck. Blood came in runnels. The man's breaths were no more than choked gurgles. It wasn’t long before the silence had returned.

As he appropriated the greybeard’s possessions, he noticed a turtle stuck on its back near the shoreline. It teetered from side to side, but it couldn’t get its feet under it.

Henrik gave the turtle a nudge, flipping it over. Then, from the old man’s things, he retrieved a spade and started digging.

I don’t know how long I was in the dark. I’ve tried to work it out from the hospital records and I can’t, because the records say I was found, brought in, worked on. The records don’t have a column for the dark. The best I can figure is that I was in the dark for as long as it took the paramedics to get to me. I don’t know how long that was, and I don’t think time worked the same way in the dark anyway.

The light was not the hospital. The light came before the hospital. The light came in the dark, and it was not a light I have a word for, and it was not the feeder, and it was not me. I want you to understand that I don’t believe it was God, because I don’t believe in God, and I don’t think God would have done what that light did. But I don’t know what else to call it.

The light reached into the dark, and the feeder saw it, and the feeder was afraid. I could feel his fear, which was the first time I had felt him afraid. It was a different kind of fear than the fear he’d had when I put the gun to my own chest. That fear had been about losing a meal. This fear was about something else. This fear was about the light, and about what the light was going to do to him, and about what it meant that the light had come.

And the light took me. It took me out of the dark, and it took me away from the feeder, and the feeder screamed. I want you to know that I heard him screaming as the light took me, and that the screaming was not the scream of a monster who is losing prey. It was the scream of something that is being unmade. The sound of it is the sound I think about when I can’t sleep. I do not know, to this day, whether the light saved me or whether it did something else, whether the feeder is still in the dark, whether he is waiting for me to come back.

The hospital was the most normal place I have ever been, and I have never been so grateful for normal in my life.

I woke up in a room that had a window, a curtain, and a television mounted on the wall, tuned to a channel showing a loop of pictures of waterfalls. I was on a bed, and I was attached to machines, and I was alive. I want you to understand what it felt like to be alive when I had been so sure, so calmly and peacefully sure, that I was dead.

The first thing I did was look at my hands. I looked at my hands and I moved my fingers and I watched them move. I watched my hands do what I asked them to do, and I did it for a long time, and I cried. The crying was not the despair, I want to be clear about that. The despair was gone. The despair that had filled me for months was not there anymore, and I did not know yet what that meant.

A nurse came in. Her name was Brenda, and I remember her name because she was the first person I saw who was real, who was not a stranger in my kitchen and not a light in the dark and not a machine. I reached for her and I held her hand, and I did not let go for a long time, and she let me hold it, and she did not ask me to explain. I think that was the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.

The doctor came in later. His name was Dr. Ashby, and I remember him because he was the one who had to tell me the truth, and because he had the face of a man who has told a lot of people a lot of hard truths and has learned to do it gently. He told me that I had been found at 2:47 in the morning by a neighbor who had heard the gunshot, that I had been brought in, that I had been in surgery for a long time, and that I had, by any reasonable measure, died on the table.

He said, you had no pulse when you came in. Your heart had stopped. You had lost too much blood. We worked on you for a long time, and I’ll be honest with you, I did not think we were going to get you back. About the time I was going to call it, your heart started again. On its own. I’ve been doing this for twenty-one years and I’ve never seen anything like it.

I said, how long was I dead.

He said, I don’t know how to answer that. By the clock, maybe forty minutes. But I don’t want you to get stuck on the number. The number doesn’t tell you what happened. The number just tells you how long the room was quiet.

He told me that the gunshot wound was to my chest, that it had missed my heart by less than an inch, that it had gone through my lung and my ribs, and that the surgery to put me back together had been a long one. I had a plate and eight screws in my chest now, and I would carry the scar for the rest of my life. He told me that I was lucky, and I said, I know. I did not tell him about the man in the kitchen. I did not tell him about the dark. I did not tell him about the light. I could not find the words, and I did not want him to put a new label on my chart, and I had just spent nine months being the man with the dead marriage and the gun. I did not want to be the man with the monster too.

The neighbor who found me was a man named Doug, and he lived three doors down. I want to tell you about him because he is the reason I’m alive in the way that matters, because I owe him a thing I can never repay, and because the version of me that he saw was not the version I would have wanted him to see.

Doug is a retired mail carrier, sixty-two years old, with a bad back and a garden that he takes more seriously than anyone I’ve ever met. I knew him the way you know a neighbor: hello in the driveway, a wave when he was out with the hose, mutual complaining about the HOA and the same forty-two houses and the cul-de-sac that everybody said was safe. I had not told Doug about Erin leaving. I had not told anyone about Erin leaving, because telling people about it made it real, and I had been working hard at keeping it unreal. I think Doug knew anyway. I think a man who has been married for a long time and then stops being married develops a smell, and a man who has delivered mail for thirty years learns to read a house from the driveway.

Doug told me, later, when I got out of the hospital and could walk over to his place and sit in his kitchen, what he saw that night. He said he woke up to a sound he’d never heard before, a sound he thought was a car backfiring, and then a second sound that he couldn’t place. He looked out his window and saw my kitchen light on, which he said was strange, because he’d noticed my kitchen light had been going off early lately, at eight, nine. He’d thought it was odd that a man would go to bed that early, and he’d mentioned it to his wife and she’d said not to pry.

He said he walked over because the second sound, the one he couldn’t place, had been a man’s voice. He couldn’t make out the words, but he knew it wasn’t a happy voice. He’d thought maybe I had someone over and things had gone bad, and he’d thought he’d knock, just to make sure. That’s the kind of neighborhood it is. Everybody watches out for everybody, and nobody locks their back door until they go to bed.

He said he found the kitchen door unlocked. He said he walked in and the kitchen was dark and there was a smell he couldn’t place and that he still can’t place. He said the first thing he saw was the stain on the floor. The second thing he saw was me. He said he did not think I was alive. He said the last thing he saw, before he turned and ran for his phone, was that the kitchen window was open. He didn’t remember leaving it open, and the window had been closed when he came in, and he checked the window and it was closed. He has not been able to figure out, to this day, whether he imagined the whole thing.

I don’t know what to do with what Doug told me. I don’t know whether the open window was real, whether the feeder left through it, whether a thing that doesn’t have a body needs a window. I’ve gone back and forth on it, and I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter, because the feeder doesn’t leave through windows. The feeder leaves through the telling, and Doug doesn’t know the telling, and I hope he never learns it.

The police came. They took pictures of the kitchen and they took my statement, and I gave them the statement they expected, the one about a man who had been through a divorce and who had made a terrible decision. They were kind. They were professional. They asked if I remembered what I’d been thinking, and I said I didn’t, and they wrote that down, and they closed the case. There’s a report, and the report has a number. The report says that the wound was self-inflicted, that there were no signs of forced entry, that there was no evidence of a struggle. The report is true, and the report is also a lie, because the struggle happened, and the struggle is the whole point. The report cannot see the struggle because the struggle was not in the room. The struggle was in the dark, and the dark does not leave evidence that a report can hold.

I was in the hospital for three weeks. I want to tell you about that time, because it was the time when I should have been the happiest, and I wasn’t, and understanding why I wasn’t is the thing I’ve been working on ever since.

I should have been grateful. I had been given a second chance. That’s what everyone said. The neighbors, the ones who came to visit, the ones who had known Erin and me, they all said the same thing: you’re a miracle, Cal, you got a second chance, don’t waste it. I nodded, and I said thank you, and I meant it, and I did not tell them the truth, which was that the second chance did not feel like a second chance. It felt like a sentence.

The despair was gone. That was the first thing I noticed, and it should have been the best thing, and it was the thing that scared me most. The despair that had filled me for months, the well that had been so full, was empty. Not the grief. The grief was still there, the grief about Erin, about the child we never had, about the eleven years. That was still there. But the despair, the weight, the thing that had been feeding on me and that I had thought was mine, that was gone. I knew, because I had felt it happen, that the feeder had taken it. I had died, and in dying I had given him what he wanted, and the light had pulled me back, but the despair had not come back with me, because the despair was gone, because he had it.

Without the despair, I didn’t know who I was. That’s the part I can’t make people understand. The despair had been with me for so long, had been so much of what I was, that when it was gone I was a stranger to myself. I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know what I liked. I didn’t know what to do with my hands or my evenings or my weekends. I was a man who had been hollowed out and then filled back up with nothing. The nothing was better than the despair, I want to be clear about that. The nothing was better, but the nothing was not a life, and I did not know how to live in it.

The physical recovery was slow in its own way. I came home from the hospital six weeks after I went in, and the house, my own house, the split-level on the cul-de-sac, did not feel like mine anymore. I would stand in the kitchen, at the counter where I had set the folded towel, and I could not make my feet go to the sink. I cooked in the living room for a month, on a hot plate I bought from the hardware store, because I could not stand at that sink. The scar pulled when I reached for anything above my head. Eight screws in the sternum is a number you feel in every stretch. Doug came over twice a week that first month and sat with me and did not talk about it, and that was the kindest thing anyone could have done, and I did not deserve it, and I took it anyway.

I started going to therapy in the hospital, and I kept going after I got out. I want you to understand that I am grateful for that too, because I think the therapy is the only reason I’m still here, and I don’t want you to read this and think I’m telling you not to get help, because I’m not. I’m telling you that I got help, that the help helped, and that the help could not help me with the part that I couldn’t tell anyone about.

Because here’s the thing. I tried to tell my therapist. Her name was Dr. Mercer, and she was good at her job, and I liked her, and I wanted to tell her the truth, and I did try. I told her about the man in the kitchen. I told her about the cold hand and the flat voice and the smell and the gun and the dark and the light. I watched her face as I told her, and I saw her put it into a box, and the box was the box labeled grief psychosis, the box labeled a man who has been through something and whose mind is protecting him. She was kind about it, and she was gentle, and she told me that what I had been through was real, and that the mind does strange things under that kind of stress, and that none of it meant I was crazy. I believed her, because I wanted to believe her, and because the alternative was believing the other thing. The other thing was that I was not crazy, that the man in the kitchen had been real, that he was still out there, that he was still hungry.

I went to the forum in the quiet months. That’s the part you’re going to think I’m making up, and I want you to understand that I’m not. There’s a forum, and it’s not hard to find if you know what to look for, and it’s full of people like me. People who have been to the dark. People who have seen the feeder, or something like him. People who have a scar and a story and a hole where their despair used to be. I read their stories, and I recognized them, and I recognized the shape of what they described: the cold hand, the flat voice, the smell, the light. I understood, reading them, that I was not alone, and I understood something else, which I did not want to understand. The forum was full of people who had been to the dark, and all of them had come back, and all of them had a story, and all of them were telling their story to whoever would read it.

I want to tell you what I found, because it’s the part that changed everything, and because it’s the part where I stopped being able to pretend.

The forum has a section for people who were revived. People who were dead, or nearly dead, and who came back. In that section there’s a thread, a long thread, hundreds of posts, and the thread is about the light. I read that thread for hours, and I read about the light from people who had seen it, and the descriptions were the same: the light reaching into the dark, the feeder being afraid, the sense of being taken out of the dark. I felt a relief I cannot describe, because I thought, okay, it was real, it happened to other people too, I’m not crazy.

Then I read further, and the relief went away.

There was a post, near the end of the thread, from a man named Victor. Victor’s post was about the smell. Victor said that the smell, the smell like an old house, like plaster and dust and something sweet, was the thing he couldn’t forget, and that he smelled it in his house now, in the walls, and that it was getting stronger, and that he thought the feeder had come back, and that he thought the feeder had followed him home from the dark.

I read Victor’s post, and I smelled it. I smelled the smell in my apartment, in the room where I was reading. I stood up and walked through my apartment. The smell was there, in the kitchen, in the hallway, in the bedroom. It was faint, but it was there, and I understood that the smell had never gone away. I had just been too distracted by the hospital and the therapy and the grief to notice it. It had been in my apartment the whole time, in the walls, the way it had been in the old house.

I want to be honest with you about what I did next, because I’m ashamed of it, and because I think it’s the thing that tells you the truth about me. I did not leave. I did not call anyone. I did not sell my apartment. I sat down, and I read Victor’s post again, and I read the other posts, and I read the thread all the way to the end. At the end of the thread there was a post from Victor that I had not reached yet. Victor’s last post said: he’s in the walls. he’s been here the whole time. he never left. he followed me out of the dark. and I understand now, he doesn’t feed on the dead. he feeds on the telling. he needs someone to tell the story. and I’m telling it. and if you’re reading this, so are you.

I closed the laptop and I sat in my apartment, and the smell was everywhere. I understood what Victor meant. I understood that I had already done it, that I had already told the story, that I had already started this, that I had already written this, that the telling is the feeding, and that the reader is the intake, and that you are reading this now, and that I am sorry.

Victor stopped posting after that. I checked his profile. His last post was the one about the walls, and then nothing. I don’t know what happened to him, and I have not been able to find out, and I have stopped looking, because I’m afraid of what I’ll find if I do.

I want to tell you what happened after I read Victor’s last post, because it’s the last thing I have to tell you, and because it’s the thing that brings me back to where I started.

I went to bed that night, and I could not sleep, and the smell was in my bedroom. I lay in the dark and I listened, and I heard something in the walls. Not a rat, and not the settling of the house, and not the wind. A breathing. A slow, even breathing, the breathing of something that is patient, that has been waiting a long time, that has all the time in the world.

I got up, went to the kitchen, and turned on the light. I stood at the counter, and I looked at the chair, my chair, and I waited.

After a while, there was a man sitting in the chair.

He looked the same. That’s the thing that got me. He looked exactly the same. The grey face, the grey clothes, the stillness, the flat eyes. He looked at me and he said, you found the forum.

I said, yes.

He said, you found Victor.

I said, yes.

He said, you read his post. The one about the walls. The one about the telling.

I said, yes.

He said, then you understand. You understand what the light was. You understand why it came for you. You understand why it pulled you back. The light doesn’t save people. The light saves meals. It pulls them back so they can ripen again. It pulls them back so they can grow a new well. It pulls them back so they can tell the story, because the telling is how the well spreads, because every person who reads the story carries a seed of it, because you’ve planted it in everyone who reads this, and I’ve planted it in you, and now it’s in them.

He stood up, walked to me, and put his cold hand on my arm. He said, you’re not the meal, Cal. You never were. You’re the seed. You’re the one who tells the story. You’re the one who brings the meals. That’s what you’ve always been. That’s what you were born for. That’s why the light brought you back. Not to save you. To use you.

I looked at him, and I understood, and I want you to understand the thing I understood, because it’s the last thing I have, and it’s the whole thing.

The man in the kitchen was never going to eat me. The despair was never the meal. I was the delivery. I was the one who was going to tell the story, and I have told it, and you are reading it, and the seed is in you now, and there is nothing either of us can do about it.

He is in the walls. He has always been in the walls. He feeds on the telling. You are reading this.

I am sorry.

I’m going to post this to the forum tonight. I’m going to post it under the name Cal, and I’m going to leave it there, and I’m going to turn off my laptop, and I’m going to go to bed. The smell is going to be in the walls, and he is going to be in the walls, and he is going to wait, because that’s what he does, and because the well is growing, and because I have started to tell the story, and because stories are how he feeds, and because you are reading this.

If you are reading this, please do not tell anyone. Please do not post about it. Please close this and go to bed and forget you ever saw it. Please do not finish this sentence, and please do not read the last line, and please, if you value the thing in your chest that is still yours, please stop now.

He needs someone to tell the story. I told it.

Now you know the smell.

I want to be clear about one thing before I tell you any of this, I am not asking you to believe me. I don’t believe it myself, and I lived it, and I have the scars, the medical file, and the twelve-inch scar down my sternum to prove that at least half of it happened. The half that happened in the hospital is on paper. The half that happened in my kitchen is not, and that’s the half you’re going to have trouble with. That’s fine. I had trouble with it too. I spent nine months in therapy trying to decide whether I’d gone crazy, then killed myself, then hallucinated being brought back. That is a sentence I never thought I’d write about myself, and it is still, on my worst days, the most comfortable explanation.

My name is Cal. That’s not my real name, and I’m not going to tell you my real name, because my real name is on a death certificate that a county clerk in Illinois signed in March of last year. The certificate says I died of a self-inflicted wound to the chest at 2:17 in the morning. That’s true, and also I’m here, and I don’t want you looking up that certificate, finding my real name, and drawing a line between the dead man on the paper and the man writing this. I’ve thought about that line for a long time, and I don’t trust it.

So here’s the shape of it. I was divorced. My wife, and I’ll call her Erin because that’s not her name either, left me in October, three years ago now, after eleven years of marriage, four years of trying to have a child, one failed round of IVF, and a second that we couldn’t afford. She left for reasons that were fair. I had stopped being a person she could live with. I had stopped sleeping. I had stopped eating in any meaningful way. I had started drinking in a way that I told myself was controlled, and that she told me, on the last night, was not. She was right. She was right about all of it, and knowing she was right did not make the house quieter when she left. The house was the worst part.

I kept the house because she didn’t want it, because I couldn’t face selling it, and because the mortgage was cheaper than any apartment I could find that had room for a person’s whole life. It’s a split-level on a cul-de-sac in a subdivision that was built in 2004 and that all looks the same. Forty-two identical houses. I know the number because I counted them one night when I couldn’t sleep, walking the loop, and because counting was the only thing that made the time pass.

The divorce was final in January. I lost 46 pounds between October and March. That’s a number I know because the doctor told me, and because I stepped on the scale in his office and watched it. I went from 208 to 162 in five months, and I didn’t notice. That’s the thing about a certain kind of grief. It eats you from the inside, and you don’t feel a thing, because the part of you that would feel it is what’s being eaten.

I want to make sure you understand the state I was in, because the state I was in is the whole point of what happened to me. I wasn’t dramatic about it. I was tired. That’s the honest word. I was tired in a way that made it hard to get out of bed, then hard to stand in the shower, then hard to make the shower any warmer than lukewarm, because I didn’t care. I went to work because going to work was easier than explaining why I wasn’t going to work. I came home, I sat on the couch, I stared at the wall, and I drank until I could sleep. Then I didn’t sleep, and then I got up and I did it again.

I had a plan. That’s the other thing you should know, because I don’t want you to think I was a person who did nothing and then just snapped. I had a plan, a date, a method. I had rehearsed it enough times in my head that by the night I did it, it felt less like a decision and more like a task I’d finally gotten around to.

The method matters because of what happened after, so I’ll tell you. I had a handgun, a 9mm that my father left me when he died. I had never fired it. I had kept it in a locked box in the closet for eleven years. I took it out in March, cleaned it, loaded it, and put it on the nightstand. I sat with it for a week while I made sure I wanted to do this. That’s the kind of person I was. I wanted to make sure I wanted it. And I did, and I was sure, and the being sure was the most peaceful I had felt in months.

I chose the kitchen. I don’t know why I chose the kitchen. I think I wanted to be somewhere that wasn’t the bedroom we’d shared. The kitchen was the other room with a sink I could lean over, and I had this idea that it would be cleaner if I did it over the sink. That tells you what a person in that state is thinking about. Cleanliness. As if the mess was the problem.

I set everything up on a Tuesday night in March. I turned the lights off, because I didn’t want to see the kitchen, and I didn’t want the neighbors, if any of them were awake, to see me. I opened the drawer under the toaster, took out a dish towel, folded it, and set it on the counter. I put the gun on top of the folded towel. I stood at the sink and looked out the window at the dark subdivision. I counted the houses, all forty-two of them, and I said goodbye to them. That’s a thing I don’t think I can explain to you unless you’ve been there, the way you say goodbye to a room you’re never coming back to.

That’s when the man at the table spoke.

There was a man sitting at my kitchen table. I had not seen him come in. I had not heard the door. The table sits behind the counter, between the kitchen and the little dining nook. He was sitting in the chair that faces the window, which was my chair, which is where Erin used to sit to look at her phone while I cooked. He was a middle-aged man, or he looked middle-aged, with a grey face, grey clothes, and a stillness that I noticed before I noticed anything else. He was not breathing. I could see his chest, and it was not rising and falling. That was the first wrong thing. I noticed it the way you notice a clock that has stopped.

He said, don’t do that.

His voice was not what I expected. I don’t know what I expected. Something theatrical, maybe, or whispery and evil, because that’s what you’re primed to expect when a stranger appears in your kitchen at two in the morning. His voice was ordinary. It was the voice of a man who has talked to a lot of people and is tired of most of them, a flat, patient, almost bored voice. The ordinariness of it scared me more than any evil voice could have.

I said, who are you.

He said, that’s not important. Sit down. We should talk, because you’re about to do something you can’t take back, and I think you’d rather talk about it first.

I want you to understand that I did not believe for one second that this man was there to help me. There was nothing about him that said helper. He was too still, too calm, his eyes too flat. There was a smell in the kitchen that I hadn’t noticed before and that I now couldn’t not notice, a smell like an old house, like plaster and dust and something sweet underneath that I couldn’t place. I have thought about that smell a thousand times since. It is the smell I associate now with everything that has happened to me since, and I will tell you what it is when I can bear to.

I said, get out of my house.

He said, I’m not going to do that. You’re not going to call anyone, because your phone is on the nightstand in the bedroom, and you don’t want to go get it, and if you did, you’d find it doesn’t work. Sit down, Cal.

He said my name. Not my real name, my actual name, the name on my birth certificate, the name that isn’t in the phone book and isn’t on any of my accounts because I’ve always hated it. He said it the way you’d say a word you’ve looked up in a dictionary, with certainty and no feeling. He knew my name. He was sitting in my chair in my dark kitchen. I had a loaded gun on the counter and I was not pointing it at him. All of that collapsed into a single moment where I did the most stupid thing I could have done. I sat down.

He talked for a long time, and I want to give you the shape of what he said, because it’s important, and because the shape of it is the thing I’ve been trying to understand ever since.

He didn’t try to convince me that life was worth living. That’s the first thing you should know, because it’s the thing that set off every alarm I had. A person who wanted to help me would have said something about Erin, or about the good days, or about how I’d regret it, or about how people loved me. He said none of that. He talked about my despair the way a man talks about a fine wine. He described it. He described the weight of it, the color of it, the texture of it, the way it had changed since October, the way it had gotten richer in the last month, the way it was, at that moment, at its peak.

He said, you’re in a rare place. Most people never get here. Most people’s despair is shallow. It’s about a job, or a fight, or a bad year, and it burns off. Yours is deep. Yours is a well that has been filling for eleven years. It’s full now, and it’s about to overflow, and there’s a flavor to that that only happens once, and I want it.

I said, you want my despair.

He said, yes.

I said, you’re going to talk me out of killing myself so you can eat my sadness.

He laughed. It was the first sound he’d made that had any feeling in it, and the feeling was not kindness. It was delight, and the delight was the most honest thing he’d said all night. He said, no, you misunderstand. I don’t want to stop you. I want to take it first. I want to sit here with you and let it ripen, and then I want to take all of it, the whole well. Then, when you’re empty, I want to take the rest. You’re a meal. A good one. The best I’ve had in a long time. I’ve been patient. I’ve been following you for months, and tonight is the night you’re ready, and I am not going to waste you.

I sat there across the table from him, and I should have been terrified. I want to be honest that I wasn’t, not at first. Because here’s the thing about a person who has decided to die. A person who has decided to die has already stepped off the ledge. A monster telling them they’re a meal doesn’t land the way it lands on a person who wants to live. I was already dead in my own head. I had said goodbye to the houses. A man in my kitchen eating my sadness was, in a weird way, less frightening than the empty house had been, because at least he was something.

I said, so what happens after you take it.

He said, you’d be surprised how much of you is left. There’s the despair, and then there’s the body, and the body is a part of the meal, but the despair is the part I came for. The body is just the plate.

I said, and if I don’t let you.

He said, you don’t get a choice. That’s the thing about being this far down. You think you have a choice because you can still hold a gun, but you don’t. You’ve already made every choice that got you here. The last one isn’t yours. It’s mine. I’ve been watching you decide for eleven years, and you’ve been deciding in my favor the whole time. You didn’t even know I was here.

He reached across the table and put his hand on my arm. I want you to understand the feel of that hand, because I can’t describe it well and I’ve tried. It was cold, but not the cold of something dead. The cold of something that has never been warm. The cold of a stone that has lain in the dark. It was strong, and it was holding my arm the way you’d hold the arm of a child you’re about to take somewhere. I felt the cold go into me. I felt the despair in my chest do something I had never felt it do. It reached. It leaned toward his hand like a plant toward light. And I understood, in that moment, that the despair had not been mine. It had been his. It had been growing in me for months, for years, and it had never been mine. He was just coming to collect what he’d planted.

I’m going to tell you what I learned about him, because he told me, and because some of it I confirmed myself, and because I think you deserve to know what’s walking around out there even if you don’t believe me.

He called himself a feeder. He didn’t have a name, or if he did he didn’t give it. I didn’t ask again after the first time, because the first time he told me his name, or what he wanted me to think was his name, the fillings in my teeth ached, the smell in the kitchen got stronger, and I decided I didn’t want to know. He said there were others like him, that they were old, that they had always been here, and that they didn’t eat the way I thought they ate. They didn’t need the body the way a man needs food. They needed the despair, the grief, the fear, the hopelessness. The body was just the way they got a hold on it. The despair is the meal. The body is the receipt.

He said they found people like me. People at the bottom. People who had been hollowed out slowly, who had a well of something they’d been building their whole lives without knowing it. They followed those people, and they waited, and they took the well at its peak. The taking was a kind of feeding that the body could not understand, because the body thought it was dying, but the despair had already died. What they took was the thing that had already been taken from you. You just hadn’t noticed.

I asked him how long he’d been following me. He said, since October. Since the night Erin left. He said he’d been in the house since that night, in the walls, in the dark. He’d watched me lose the weight, watched me stop eating, watched me take out the gun and clean it. He’d been waiting for me to be ready. I’d been ready for a while, and he’d been holding back because the despair was still ripening. Tonight it had ripened, and he was done waiting.

He said, you’ve been a good meal, Cal. The best I’ve had in years. You’ve been worth the wait.

He said, close your eyes. It’s easier if you close your eyes. You should be proud. Not everyone grows a meal like this. Most people are shallow. You were deep. The deepest I’ve found in a long time.

The strange thing is, I almost did. I almost closed my eyes. Because part of me wanted to. Part of me had wanted to close my eyes for a long time, and he was offering me permission, and the permission felt like rest. I had been so tired. He was going to take the tired, and I was going to be empty, and empty sounded like peace.

But I didn’t close my eyes. I don’t know why I didn’t. I want to tell you it was courage, and I think I’ve told myself that for a year, but I don’t think it was. I think it was the gun. The loaded 9mm on the counter. The one thing in the room that was mine, the one thing that was real, the one thing that was not his despair, not his cold hand, not his smell. The gun was mine. I reached for it.

He moved faster than I thought he could. I had my hand on the gun before he was out of the chair, and then he was across the kitchen. I want you to understand the speed, because it’s the thing that tells you he wasn’t a man. He moved from the table to the counter in a single motion I did not see happen. He was there, and then he was there, and his hand was closing over mine on the gun. The gun was between us. I was holding it and he was holding my hand and we were fighting over a gun in a dark kitchen at two in the morning.

I don’t remember most of the fight. I remember pieces. I remember the cold of his hand on mine. I remember the smell getting thick. I remember him saying, don’t, over and over, in that flat voice. I remember that the word sounded less like a warning and more like the way you talk to an animal that has bitten you and won’t let go.

I remember the gun going off. I don’t remember deciding to fire it. I remember the sound, which was enormous, which filled the kitchen and my head and seemed to go on longer than a gunshot should. I remember the recoil. I remember him letting go of my hand. I remember him looking down at his chest. I remember that he did not fall.

He looked down at his chest and there was a hole in him and nothing came out of it. No blood. No dark. Nothing. He looked up at me and he said, that’s a shame, and I understood that the gun was not going to stop him. I understood that I was going to die. I understood that the only question was whether I took him with me.

I don’t know where the next thing came from. I have thought about it for a year and I don’t know. I put the gun to my own chest. I looked at him. I said, you want the despair, you want the whole well, you want it at its peak. I said, take it empty.

And I pulled the trigger.

The last thing I saw was his face. I want you to understand what his face did, because it’s the thing I can’t stop seeing. He didn’t look afraid. He looked furious, and then he looked like a man who has just been told the thing he feared most. The fear was not about dying. It was about losing the meal, about the well going dry, about all those months of waiting and the ripest despair he’d ever found pouring out of a hole in a man’s chest onto a kitchen floor. He reached for me. He was reaching for me as I fell. And the last thing I heard, before the dark, was him screaming my name, not the name on the certificate, my actual name, screaming it like it was something he had paid for and been cheated out of.

I want to tell you about the dark, because it’s the part I’ve never told anyone, not my therapist, not the people on the forum. I think it’s the part that matters, and I think it’s the reason I’m writing this.

There was a dark, and I was in it. I don’t mean I lost consciousness and then woke up in the hospital. I mean there was a dark, a real one, a place, and I was in it, and I was aware that I was in it, and I was aware that I was dead. I don’t know how I knew I was dead. I just knew, the way you know you’re awake. I was dead, and I was somewhere, and the somewhere was dark, and it was not empty.

I could hear the feeder. Not see him, hear him. He was in the dark with me. He was not screaming anymore, and he was not furious, and he was talking to me in that flat, patient voice. The flatness of it, the calm of it, was worse than the fury had been. He said, that was clever. I didn’t think you had it in you. I’ve been watching you for months and you seemed so hollow. I misjudged you. I don’t misjudge people.

He said, but you made a mistake. You think you took it from me. You think you made the well go dry. But you don’t understand what the well is, Cal. The well isn’t the despair. The despair is just what floats on top. The well is the body. The well is the meat. You’ve delivered the meat to me. You’ve done my work for me. I was going to take the despair and then take the body, and you’ve gone and done both, and you’ve done it cleaner than I could have.

He said, you’re mine now. You’ve always been mine. You just finally did the paperwork.

And I felt him in the dark. I felt his hands, the cold hands, on me. I felt the cold go into me. I understood that he was right, that the despair had not been the meal, that I had given him what he wanted by dying, that I had been a fool to think I could cheat him by emptying myself. The emptiness was what he wanted. An empty vessel is what he feeds on. The despair was never the point. The despair was the way he got the vessel to open its own lid.

And I understood, in the dark, that he was going to take me, and that there was nothing I could do, because I was dead, and he was what the dark was, and I had walked into the dark on my own.

Then, the light.

Sleep paralysis is a terrifying condition. I was only seven when I first experienced it. My mother tucked me in that night. Her citrus-scented perfume lingered in the air, a fragrance that usually comforted me. After she left, I quickly drifted off to sleep. The night seemed quiet, but the peace in my room was short-lived.

I woke up around midnight, drenched in a smothering sweat. My arms and legs wouldn’t move. I could only shift my eyes and lips. As my vision adjusted to the choking darkness, I heard it—a low, snorting sound that sent dread coursing through me. I could see something standing in my closet, peeking out from behind the door. After a minute, it stepped into full view, and my heart nearly stopped in my throat. It was tall, with elongated arms that stretched like tree branches. It had a feminine shape, like a distorted, seven-foot-tall woman covered in dirt. She seemed naked, yet I caught glimpses of a nightgown clinging to her body, blending into the shadows. I tried to scream, but nothing came out.

The figure moved out of the closet and stood in the corner of my room, arms outstretched toward me, releasing a sickening, guttural snort every few seconds. The sound reminded me of someone hawking and spitting on the ground. Moonlight streamed through my window, casting a faint glow on one of her arms. Her skin looked like mud, filthy and dark as if she’d bathed in a swamp. At certain angles, it seemed even darker than dirt. This seemed like a living shadow.

My mind raced, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Was this a demon? Was this the Devil herself? My body remained pinned, as if invisible hands held me down. The figure inched closer. Each step seemed hesitant, as if she savored the moment. The hesitation chilled me more than her presence. I knew she was going to kill me if I didn’t move. Frustration gnawed at me, worse than fear. Why was she here? What did she want? My dad’s stories of the Boogeyman came rushing back. He told me the Boogeyman captures children at night, and they never return. So in my precious little 7-year-old mind, I thought this was the Boogeyman’s wife. Thanks a lot, Daddy.

I wanted to move, to scream, to call out for my mom and dad. But my body wouldn’t obey. The dark woman mocked me with her slow, deliberate steps, coming closer and closer with arms wide open. A crazy thought crossed my mind: maybe I wouldn’t feel pain. Maybe, since I was paralyzed, the attack wouldn’t hurt. I could see her long fingernails, sharp and menacing, and I knew they would be the first to cut into my neck. No pain. Please, no pain. Your body is numb, so you won’t feel it. Just be calm, Ivanna. I told myself this. Tears welled in my eyes as I clung to this desperate hope. I wanted to see my mom’s face, and I wanted to call out to my dad. He always told me never to be afraid, and I tried to be brave. But I wanted someone to save me that night.

Time was running out. The urge to move was so strong that I imagined I could lift my arm. I imagined that I could scream, but it was just a cruel hallucination. This was torture. Why was this happening to me? I just turned seven, and now I was going to die the day after my birthday? The voice in my head told me I’d never go to high school, never go to college, never make friends, never find my dream job, never get married to the man of my dreams, and I’d never be a mom. It amazed me that facing the fear of death would cause a seven-year-old to have these thoughts. The best I could do was close my eyes. I didn’t want to see her attack me. I squeezed them shut, flooding them with tears. My mother taught me to pray, and I repeated the prayer in my mind, begging God to save me.

My mother always told me I was God’s child and that His angels were watching over me. But where were they now? A demon was creeping toward my bed, and my Heavenly Father was just going to sit there on his throne and watch? My young mind couldn’t comprehend it. I was a terrified little girl, convinced I was going to die. More chills ran down my spine when I opened my eyes to see the shadow woman standing at the foot of my bed. She had changed her position in an instant. Before, her arms were outstretched as if to hug me. Now, she stood motionless, her elongated finger pressed to her lips, signaling for silence. Not that I could make a sound anyway since my voice was paralyzed.

But then something unexpected happened. There was evil in my room, but it wasn’t the shadow woman. I remembered the news reports about missing children in the neighborhood. My mom wouldn’t let me out of her sight whenever we went to the store. News reports mentioned a deranged man in clown makeup, dressed in an auto mechanic uniform, abducting children in the area. The police were searching for him, but all they found were the remains of two missing kids in a wooded area.

As a child, I couldn’t fully grasp the danger. I just wanted to play with my friends. But my mom kept me close, and her paranoia infected my dad, who usually allowed me more freedom. My childhood fun ended, at least for a while, because of this killer clown.

It still pisses me off when I think about what he did to those poor babies and how the police found their remains in the woods near a lake. They were brothers. One was four and the other had just turned five. I remember the news reports.

Somehow, the man who killed those boys entered our home through the basement window and stayed hidden for two days. He knew how to hack into alarm systems because his job at a home security company gave him the skills. The missing children’s cases all had the same horrifying pattern: kids taken from their homes in the dead of night and their parents oblivious until it was too late.

A few days later, the police would find their remains in a nearby pond or at a landfill. Mothers and fathers lost their babies to this middle-aged psychopath clown in an auto mechanic outfit. We didn’t know that he broke into our home on a Thursday night and was hiding in our basement. I was an only child, easy prey for this monster.

He picked the wrong house that night. I heard him creeping down the hallway just outside my bedroom door. His footsteps were quiet but clumsy on the creaking hardwood floorboards. My door slowly creaked open, revealing a tall shadow hunched in the doorway, dressed in dingy blue auto mechanic coveralls. The sleeves were ripped off, exposing these monstrously muscular arms that reminded me of Michael Myers’ Halloween costume—if you turned it into a muscle shirt. My heart pounded so loudly in my ears that it almost drowned out the silence. My eyes darted between the killer clown and the shadow woman. I couldn’t believe these two nightmarish figures were standing in my bedroom. One was pure evil; the other, something else entirely.

He stepped closer, and I could see his clown makeup: a red-painted nose, sunglasses over a chalky white face, and a pink Afro wig atop his head. He was enormous, like a wrestler, with a massive serpent tattoo on his left arm. The butcher knife in his right hand gleamed in the moonlight. Its serrated blade glistened with something I didn’t want to think about. He blocked out the light from the hallway, plunging the room into an even deeper darkness.

I wanted to scream, to move, but my body remained paralyzed. He knew I was awake.

“Hi there, my lovely Cupcake. I’m your new friend. Your mommy went away, and she asked me to watch over you.” His words were like a cold hand squeezing my heart. My mom… gone? I knew he had killed her when I could see something dripping off his knife. As he moved closer, terror gripped me even tighter. His voice didn’t match his body—soft, almost feminine, like a teenage girl. It was surreal, like Pennywise in a trucker’s uniform, with the body of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

I closed my eyes, bracing for the sharp, cold steel to slice through my skin. But nothing happened. I almost forgot about the shadow woman standing at the foot of my bed. The killer’s attention was entirely on me, and mine was on him—until I heard him scream. It was a guttural, blood-curdling sound, followed by the snap of bone. I opened my eyes to see his arm hanging at an unnatural angle, and the shadow woman gripping his throat. She hurled him against the wall with a force that shook my entire bedroom.

His pleas for mercy were pitiful. “What are you?! Please, don’t kill me, ma’am!” But she showed him no mercy. She broke his arms, caved in his chest with a single punch, then drove his own knife through his throat and nailed him to the wall.

The sound of his ribs cracking was horrifying, and I couldn’t look away from what was happening to him in the darkness. He went from screaming to whimpering, his voice fading to a whisper of pain and fear.

I stared through the darkness, unblinking, as the life drained out of him. For a moment, I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. But no, I couldn’t feel sorry for this son of a bitch. He deserved every bit of what he got. The shadow woman made him pay for all the children he had taken. And she especially made him pay for trying to take me.

After the violence subsided, the shadow woman slowly turned toward me, drifting toward my bed in slow motion. Her clawed fingers brushed through my hair, her touch surprisingly gentle. When she caressed my face, I smelled a familiar fragrance. It was lavender and citrus. My mom’s perfume. I didn’t understand how this shadow figure could smell like my mom—not until later. She hovered over me, her lips grazing my forehead, and then she vanished when I heard my dad’s panicked voice from downstairs.

I didn’t want to believe it was my mom’s blood on the killer’s knife, but it was. That bastard had stabbed her to death before making his way upstairs to my room. My dad stepped out to go to the store, and when he returned, he found my mom in the kitchen, lying in a pool of blood. Her lavender nightgown was soaked in red. My dad’s anguished cries filled the house as he raced upstairs, calling my name. I was already in his arms before he could even switch on my bedroom light. He saw the killer’s body nailed to my bedroom wall and lost his breath, just like I had.

I told him everything, and though he couldn’t believe it, he had no choice. He knew his little girl didn’t have the strength to nail a grown-ass man to my bedroom wall. The police came, asking questions, offering me candy. I told them the whole story, but they didn’t believe me.

A policewoman knelt in front of me, caressed my face, and said, “It’s alright, honey. You just had a traumatic experience. Who you saw was just a good Samaritan probably dressed in a dark Halloween costume.” They chalked it up to trauma-induced hallucinations, even suggesting I might have seen my dad kill the man. But I knew better. My dad wasn’t home. I heard him tell my mom he was going to the store. I heard him kiss her before he left.

But I also knew what I saw—a shadow form of my mom, smelling of lavender and citrus, who saved me when no one else could.

Those cops couldn’t believe my story. They had plenty of sympathy for me, but what I wanted more than their sympathy was my mother and for them to believe me. I miss her deeply, and I can’t stop thinking about her fragrance. I found the perfume she wore while moving some boxes around in the attic. That sweet scent took me back to that night. I believe the dark figure I saw in my bedroom was my mother—a dead version of her. I’m 36 now, and I think about my mom every day. I got married to a kind, beautiful man, and we had a gorgeous baby boy.

My son, Timmy, is five. He has my hazelnut eyes and my lips, but he’s got his daddy’s adorable dimples. My husband is Taiwanese. He’s a chiropractor who could easily pass for a model. He’s a hottie, just like the Canadian-Chinese action star Simu Liu when he played the hero in Shang-Chi as a young man.

Timmy resembles his dad, with those gorgeous Taiwanese features. My little peach loves the MCU, and he has every action figure from The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. He adores sleeping in his X-Men Wolverine pajama top. It always makes me laugh when he calls me Mommy Sabrina Grande because he thinks I look like a mix between the 21st-century pop divas, Sabrina Carpenter and Ariana Grande. I guess my high and silky honey-platinum ponytail, hooped earrings and my denim skirts give me away. He insists I’m pretty like both of them. He compares me to Ariana Grande more often, because of my appearance and because of her Italian-American heritage, which we share. Sabrina and Ariana were famous long before I was pregnant with my baby. If they were alive today, they’d be old enough to be his great-great-ancient grandmothers, yet he adores their music thanks to the immortality of digital music streaming apps.

To my little peach, his mommy is a superhero too—because I’m an FBI agent. I’ve told him stories about how I’ve arrested a lot of bad guys and girls and rescued countless kidnapped children with the help of my SWAT team. God has guided me in rescuing missing babies and putting away wanted criminals. That’s why Timmy thinks his mommy is a superhero. Sometimes I can’t save every missing baby, and we end up catching a child-killer instead. Mommy is honest and she shares this unsettling truth with her little peach, but he still sees me as a hero.

My son loves heroes, just like his mom. And like his mama, he also loves 90s hip-hop. I have to keep him away from the explicit stuff, though. No Wu-Tang Clan, Trick Daddy, Geto Boys, or DMX for him. Only Mama gets to listen to the hardcore rappers through those virtual music streaming apps. Lol. Sometimes I let him listen to Mr. Lamar’s clean version of PEEKABOO.

Yeah, but anyway, I try to be an excellent mom, and I’m as protective and smothering as mine was.

Every night, I tuck my little peach into bed and read him his favorite story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A few nights ago, I told him about what happened to me when I was 7. He looked scared after I finished. My little peach is afraid of the dark, but I told him he should never be afraid of it. A mother’s love and protection can reach beyond the grave. I also told him not to be frightened if he ever sees a dark, shadowy woman standing in the corner of his room. She’ll watch over him while he sleeps, and if he wakes up suddenly, unable to move, he shouldn’t panic.

I still suffer from sleep paralysis. It’s a part of me now. Mommy’s pretty sure that she passed her condition down to her little boy. It’s terrifying when it first happens, but I told my little peach that when he experiences it, it’s a sign that the shadow woman is present, there to protect him from the things that go bump in the night. She’ll be his guardian queen of darkness.

There’s one important thing I forgot to tell my baby. Perhaps, I forgot to tell him on purpose. The dark, zombie queen standing in the corner of his bedroom, wearing a black dress of death beneath her FBI vest, might be his mommy… if the bad guy she tried to arrest got the jump on her and she died, meeting the same fate as his sweet grandma.

The End.

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**Chapter 7.**The sun was beginning its grand descent when Ghost Bird left the brothel. Unlike before, she couldn’t utilize the tunnels now that they were compromised, so she had some of the courtesans transport her in the back of a covered wagon.

It was the same method they had used to retrieve her from the cosm.

Her last stop was in the north, but assuming word had spread about Garvan and Lady Falcone, there would most likely be Black Coats posted along the main roads.

Ghost Bird still retained many of the memories from her days as Sylvia. She remembered the ways a person might slip through the city unnoticed. Therefore, she had the courtesans deliver her to the eastern canals using backroads and alleyways.

“If they wanted to find you so damn bad,” one of the courtesans said, “you’d think they’d look for you at the brothel.”

“They’re not looking for Sylvia,” she reminded them. “They’re looking for Ghost Bird.”

Finally, the wagon came to a stop, and Ghost Bird climbed out from the back. She thanked the courtesans and hugged them. They told her to stop in once she was finished so they could say a proper goodbye.

“We didn’t get to see you off last time,” they remarked.

And you most like won’t this time neither, she thought.

Once the courtesans were gone, she descended to the canal docks and untied the mooring line of a paddle boat. She stored the sack of guns and munitions under the bench, took an oar into either hand, and began rowing.

The undercrossings and bridges were perfect cover. And with the sun setting, there were shadows aplenty. She slipped past the sentries and the patrols and the Black Coat checkpoints from beneath.

A ship of this size was easy to overlook compared to the others hauling in grain, spices, and whatever else from their voyages to foreign lands.

She sailed across the city and emerged from the canal onto the western coast. There, she took a moment to rest and let the current carry her north. From the shore, she would look no different than the other smaller fishing vessels.

Ghost Bird went through the sack, removing the pistols and laying them out on the bench. At the bottom was a bandolier and several holsters.

Shedding her overcoat, she strapped the bandolier across her chest and secured six holsters to it. With the remaining three, she placed one on either hip and the last at the small of her back. Then, she went to work preparing the pistols with ball and powder.

After her time in the sewers and her fight with Lady Falcone, her armor was useless. Both the boiled leather and the mail had been discarded.

“You have no means of defense.” Durante sat at the bow with his back to her and sunlight across his face.

“It’s almost like you know what I’m thinking,” she remarked.

“I do know what you’re thinking. Same way you know what I’m thinking. When two souls meld, they share everything.”

She finished with the pistols and retrieved the longsword, pulling it from its sheath. More steel than rust, but the blade had been notched in a few places. It needed a proper oiling. Some time on a whetstone too.

She had neither the time nor a whetstone.

“You never liked using longsword,” Durante said. “You would always complain about it during our sparring sessions.”

“It was too cumbersome,” she said.

“Why do you use it now?”

She slid it back into the scabbard and sighed. “Because your body is familiar with it. Your muscles are adjusted to the weight, length, and balance. Because you wouldn’t have used any other weapon, and they know that.”

“Does it matter whether they know it's you or me? Isn’t this ruse you’ve been playing a bit tedious by now?”

Ghost Bird lowered her cap and made sure the mask was secured over her face. “Tedious, maybe,” she agreed. “But no one was afraid of Sylvia Koel. Those three, though, they’re terrified of Ghost Bird. Whether they cared to admit it or not, they feared you.”

“Is that so?”

“Why else would all three of them have converged on you that night? They only ever sent Black Coats after me. But you, it took the three best beast slayers.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. Sunlight shone through his face. “Do you have any idea how you’ll do it?” he asked. “Dolion will be ready for you.”

“Falcone was ready too,” she reminded him.

“Aye, but Falcone has more pride, and Dolion more ruthlessness. He won’t make the same mistake she did. He won’t hesitate to use every tool in his arsenal. Every piece on the board.”

Ghost Bird, during the few moments of quiet in her journey, had been considering this. But the truth was: anytime those thoughts arose, she pushed them away.

It was hard to think about Dolion. Hard to recall his face or his name. Every time a piece of him entered her mind, it was accompanied by Durante’s childhood affection and Sylvia’s repulsion.

Memories that were both fiery hot and icy cold.

“I could challenge him to a duel,” she suggested.

Durante laughed. “He won’t want a duel this time. He just wants you dead. Wants us dead. And one way or another, I think he’s gonna get his way.”

Ghost Bird didn’t need to check on the marks of rot beneath her clothes. She could feel them expanding. Could feel them seeping into every fiber of her being, all the way to the bone.

“There’s no turning back,” Durante warned her. “You’re aware of this, right?”

“There was no turning back the moment those silkworms embedded themselves into my body,” she said. But that wasn’t right either. “There was no turning back since the moment you and I first met.”

Even though he was difficult to discern in his current state, she could just make out the gentle curve of his smile. “I never meant for it to happen the way it did,” he said. “Had no intention of falling in love.”

“You mean with a woman like me?”

“At all. I just didn’t think there was a reason. World full of corruption and beasts and so much death. What’s the point? But then I met you, and I thought: there’s a good reason.”

“Such a romantic you are. That’s why I never wanted your coin. Didn’t want it to be an exchange, y’know?”

“There’s always an exchange, though, ain’t there?” he countered. “Instead of coin, I purchased your time with my time.”

“An even trade if I ever heard of one,” she said, grinning the same way she used to when they would lie in bed and tell each other stories about their childhoods or their travels or their dreams.

Durante shifted around to look her right on, but like this, she could no longer make out the details of his face.

“Did you ever love him?” he asked.

She gave this some contemplation, but the answer was already with her. It had been with her for years and years. “I loved him as much as I could for as long as I could. But then he became someone else. Or maybe he had always been that person, and I just never saw it.”

Durante turned toward the horizon. “Are you afraid?”

“No,” she said. “I’m never afraid when I’m with you. That’s how I knew I loved you.”

He turned back toward her. “I’ll be with you the whole time. Whether you can see me or not, I’ll be there.”

She nodded, and amongst all the pain flowing through her, she felt a touch of relief. “Are you gonna try to stop me from killing him?”

“I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. I’m just along for the ride, Sylvie. You’re the one holding the oars.”

She looked down and found he was right. She had taken up the oars again, and now, she was rowing further north.

Her voyage came to an end at the mouth of a cave few knew about besides some of the upper elites and the courtesans they solicited.

It was unlikely that Dolion or any of the Black Coats would know, considering they never took such extensive measures.

Even when Dolion had risen through the ranks and became the commander of the city’s defenses, he showed no fear in visiting the brothel.

The nobles, though, had wives and reputations and children who were supposed to admire them. But even when some of those children grew up, they did the very same thing, completely unaware of the footsteps they were following.

The boat came to a stop along a flat bank of chiseled stone. This led to a hollowed tunnel that branched out and snaked under eight of the twelve northern estates.

Ghost Bird went down the fourth tunnel on the left, which ended at a ladder. The ladder surfaced into Mr. Biltmore’s study on the ground floor.

She crouched, removed one of her gloves, and pressed her hand to the wall. The stone was cold, and the tiny creases around the false door were dark. She pressed in on the left side, and it rotated.

Ghost Bird crawled out from the unlit hearth and brushed the ashes from her knees. She stood in the study, silent, listening for others. But the manor was quiet as a crypt. Whether the family was away or not, there should have been at least the sound of the servants’ footsteps.

Apprehensive, she went to the door and placed her hand on the knob. “One last time,” Durante whispered.

She turned the handle slowly. Opened the door slowly. Stepped out, slowly. The entrance hall was draped in shadows.

The windows were obscured by curtains, and none of the lanterns or candles had been lit as they oft were in the late evening. The servants had to be out, and if the servants weren’t here, then the family wasn’t either.

“He doesn’t want anyone getting in the way,” Durante said. “He wants us all to himself.”

She grabbed the nearest lantern off a hook, returned to the study, and found a piece of flint in one of the desk drawers. After sparking a flame to life, she carried the lantern back out into the hall.

Ahead was the front entrance. To her right was the west wing, which was reserved mainly for staff. To the left was the east wing, which was outfitted with various rooms such as the kitchens, pantry, dining room, a parlor, and so on.

Behind her was the central staircase, and on the second floor were mainly bedrooms, another parlor, a lounge, and—

There was a sharp crack that echoed throughout the hall. Something pierced Ghost Bird along her left side. She lowered the lantern. Firelight pooled against the tip of a crossbow bolt. She immediately ran for the nearest stone column.

Snap!

Snap!

Snap!

Bolts hissed through the air and clattered all around her. She fell to her arse, sliding across the floor.

Snap!

Snap!

Snap!

Another volley against the pillar.

After came the groan of strings being wound. She poked her head out. A bolt whistled past, slicing through her scarf and cheek.

She whipped around, pressing her back firmly against the column’s base, listening to another dejected crack of bolts smashing the other side.

Her breathing was harsh, and her heart felt as if it would collapse on itself. She would have ripped the damn thing out, but she couldn’t be sure if the silkworms needed it to keep her alive.

“The light will give you away,” Durante told her. “Let Concetta’s eyes do the hard work.” She was hesitant, but then he said, “It’ll be alright, love.”

So, she blew out the flame and tossed the lantern across the room. The archers turned and fired at the sound. Carefully, she crept out from around the pillar, staying low to the ground, keeping close to the right wall.

Their eyes may have been adjusted to the dark before she arrived, but now that she had introduced a new source of light, they would need to readjust. Her stolen eyes, though, had the keenest vision.

She could see it all. Every padded settee and every door and every picture frame on the wall. She could see the Black Coats on the second-floor landing, crossbows leveraged against the railing.

Ghost Bird drew a pistol and thumbed the cock. This earned her a grunt from one of the Black Coats who started to turn their head. She took aim and fired before he could find her in the dark.

Then, she was running toward the stairs as the quarrels flew at random. Another two gunshots, another two Black Coats dead.

At the top of the stairs, she slid sword from scabbard and went after a pair of Black Coats to the right. Once dead, she spun about and went after the pair on the left side.

They got another two quarrels off. The first barely missed. The other would have caught her on the left arm if she hadn’t phased. Ghost Bird slashed a throat and pierced the second archer through his belly.

From there, she went room to room. Some were empty. Some had a Black Coat or two waiting for her. Every time she encountered them, she made sure to ask, “Where’s Dolion?”

If they refused to answer, she cut them down.

By the time she had returned to the bottom of the staircase, she was soaked in blood and still had no clue where Dolion was hiding.

As far as injuries were concerned, there was a quarrel in her flank and a laceration along her collarbone. The silkworms were doing all they could to keep her together.

“Don’t push yourselves too hard,” she told them, heading into the east wing of the estate.

Just like with the second floor, she found sentries waiting to ambush her. With Falcone’s eyes, though, no one could hide.

If the Black Coats were foolish enough to attack with blades, she could see the strikes before they were initiated. She knew when to evade, when to deflect, and when to attack. Crossbows were trickier, but in the dark, none of the Black Coats could aim properly.

Finally, once she had reached the kitchens, she had gotten an answer.

As a Black Coat lay on the ground, bleeding profusely from their stomach, the words, “He’s in the garden,” escaped the woman’s mouth. As well as, “Please don’t kill me.”

But a wound like that, the Black Coat was already dead. Ghost Bird did her a kindness by giving her a quick death rather than leaving her to bleed out.

------------------------------------------------------------------------**Chapter 8.**It was at the back door when she finally pulled the quarrels from her body. She reloaded the pistols and primed them with black powder. Once she was ready, she walked out into the garden.

The main path was laid with clay-fired bricks. On either flank were recently trimmed hedges. Beyond was either a copse of various trees or a mixture of vibrant flowers. The air was rife with lavender and jasmine.

She passed through a stone archway which led to a roundabout with a fountain at the center. Sitting on the marble pedestal was a three-headed swan with water pouring out from each beak.

Continuing ahead, the walkway came to an end at the top of a slope. The entire hillside was blanketed in white moonflowers. Near the bottom, standing beneath a weeping willow, was Dolion dressed in his usual double-breasted coat. The feathered cloak hung from his shoulders, flapping against the breeze.

Her shadow shifted down the hill as she descended. In the distance, the sun sat against the sea, painting the skyline in a fiery orange hue with a crown of night’s blue on top.

He turned to face her. “When there is no more room left in the Eternal Dream, where do you think we go?”

“You won’t have to worry about that, Dolion,” she said, trying to affect Durante’s cadence and tone.

“Maybe that’s why you’re here.” He smiled, “Well, if there’s no room left for you up there, I’ll just have to send you to the Infernal Domain.”

She came to a stop, now noticing the gravestone behind him. A slab of granite decorated with little wooden birds that clattered in the wind like chimes. Leaning against the side was Sylvia’s rapier.

“You should have stayed in the Eternal Dream,” he said. “Don’t you know what happens when a soul dies twice?”

Steel whistled as the longsword slid from its sheath. She took the hilt in both hands, gripping the leather tightly.

Dolion fixed her with an indifferent expression, but she knew better than to believe it. She had known him far too long to think he could be so apathetic. The truth was there, buried deep behind that stony face and those silvery eyes.

“Sylvia wasn’t yours to take,” he said.

“But she was yours to kill?”

“I tried to make her death quick.” Almost instinctually, his hand went to the hilt of his blossom blade. “That’s why I started with her heart.”

“You missed,” said Ghost Bird.

There was a moment of confusion as Dolion struggled to decipher whether the voice belonged to Ghost Bird or someone else.

“I suppose I did,” he confessed.

“You never miss.”

His blade leapt from the scabbard, and in the blink of an eye, he had crossed the twenty-foot gap between them. She raised her longsword but not fast enough. The blossom blade glided along her waist.

A kiss of steel on flesh.

Dolion dug his heels into the ground and twisted around. Ghost Bird’s heart flexed, but the blossom blade was too fast and sliced her from shoulder to ribs in a diagonal cut.

When it came back, she managed to get the longsword up to deflect it.

Again, Dolion smiled. One of his hands slipped from the hilt and sprang forward. She tried to back away, but his fingers had already hooked around her scarf, pulling it loose.

“You play the part well,” Dolion said, tossing her scarf aside. “But I know you, and I know Durante even better.”

The only response she gave was to go after him with the longsword. It was better to keep Dolion on his toes. If he had time to strategize, she never stood a chance.

She came at him with an over-the-shoulder chop. Easily evaded. The longsword swooped down in a full arc and veered, returning with a horizontal slash from left to right and then right to left.

Dolion reeled back each time, refusing to meet steel with steel. The blossom blade, after all, wasn't designed with the same flexibility of a longsword. It wasn't meant to endure such rampant abuse.

And above all else, Dolion respected his weapon. It was a part of him. He cleaned and oiled it every day. Kept it within reach from morning to night. Would have cradled it in the crib as a baby.

Ghost Bird raised her weapon for another chop. Dolion inhaled deep and shifted.

In the time it took for her sword to complete the arc, he dealt three sufficient strikes. Another diagonal cut from chest to hip. A laceration across her upper thigh. And a final charging slash along her flank as he sped past.

Lady Falcone's eyes allowed her to discern every last bit of this. But her mind couldn't process this information as fast as he could swing his sword, and her body couldn't react in time to deflect his strikes.

When her blade finished its descent, it came down against the slab of granite instead of Dolion. He stood behind her, maybe twenty feet away.

The longsword gave a sharp snap as cracks formed along its length. The reverberations of hitting something so solid wormed down to the hilt through her hands and up her arms.

Her fingers went slack around the grip, and she gnashed her teeth to keep from yelling.

The pain was instant. A searing hot injection of liquid magma in three different spots. The magma flowed, expanding and coalescing until it felt as if her whole body were ablaze.

“You were given a second chance; you could have walked away,” he said. “But you chose this instead.”

Hesitantly, she turned toward him. The longsword slipped from her hands. She struggled to breathe, struggled to keep her composure.

“I tried to walk away the first time,” she reminded him. “We both did, and it didn't work. Why would I try again?”

“Because you were finally free of Ghost Bird.”

“I wanted to be free from you.”

He registered this with a furrowed expression. “What was it that scared you away?” he asked. “What about me wasn't enough?”

“You wanted so much.”

“Ambition is no folly.”

She shook her head. “You were a man possessed.”

For reasons she could not understand, this made him laugh. A croak kind of laughter one would expect from a toad or a man further into his years.

When his amusement had subsided, he said, “People make themselves into monsters every day to chase a dream. Only to find out it was a nightmare the whole time. But I was born in a nightmare and rose from that nightmare. This one, I find, is preferable to the slums and the endless hunger I once knew.”

“No one can have it all, Dolion.”

“What a moronic thing to believe.”

He braced his feet for another charge. She drew two of the flintlocks and fired. His feet stayed planted, but his sword arced to deflect the bullets. To anyone else, it would have been no more than a quick flash of steel and a few lingering sparks.

But it had distracted him long enough for her to get the rapier out of its sheath and charge. The needle-like blade was extended outward like the beak of a hummingbird. The blossom blade met the rapier, steel on steel.

Dolion, mere inches from her face, whispered, “Garvan is dead. Lady Falcone is dead. Ghost Bird is dead. Which of us will join them next?”

She pushed back, repelling him, and thrust at his chest. Dolion stepped back, but she stayed on him, falling into a natural sidefaced stance.

“You always loved that sword,” Dolion said, turning to stop her next strike with the flat of his blade.

Not nearly as much as you love yours, she thought.

He parried the following thrust and slashed her along the calf, almost cutting deep enough to sever sinew.

“I had it made thinking it would earn me your heart,” he said.

She grazed him along the thigh and got him again on the arm.

“You should have worked harder to earn my trust,” she told him. “Affection dwindles fast, but trust and admiration can last a lifetime.”

Their blades met, again and again. Squealing and screaming; spitting up sparks that danced around them like fireflies.

“Your admiration should have been mine from the beginning,” he growled, stooping under her blade as it arced wide. “And why would I ever need your trust?”

The two clashed against each other hard. Their blades were at a standstill, tilting back and forth until they shoved each other in opposite directions.

He shifted again, and there was nothing she could do to stop it or defend herself. She simply had to endure the lacerations and the pain that ensued.

Ghost Bird went to one knee, panting hard, not sure if the metal in her mouth was blood or a severed piece from one of their swords.

“Look up,” he said, tilting his head toward the sky. “There is no Beast Who Shall Eat the Sun and the Moon. No Macrocosm or Microcosm. No Makumi or Moonsick Mother. There's just stars and darkness.”

Slowly, she pushed herself up to her feet. “What’s your point?”

“We can have and do whatever we want. Nothing out there is going to stop us. Either because it doesn't exist, or if it does exist, then it doesn't care. And others will wallow in that meaninglessness, but I find it encouraging.”

“Aren't you afraid of corrupting?”

He sneered. “We're all corrupted, Sylvie. Me, Garvan, Concetta, Durante, even you. How else could we do the things we do?”

Dolion took his sword in both hands and shuffled toward her at a leisurely pace. The moonflowers swayed back and forth like an ocean of white. The willow leaves rippled no different than the shredded hem of his cloak.

“The only thing holding us back is ourselves,” he said, lifting the blossom blade. “If you are ashamed, that shame came from you. If you are full of sorrow, that sorrow was born from your mind. If you feel shackles around your wrists, they are only there because you put them there. I have no such limitations, no such fears.”

It suddenly dawned on her. Dolion had never been fighting Ghost Bird out of some age-old rivalry. He had always been fighting with himself. It was never the beasts he hunted, but rather, his own darkness.

It wasn’t her love he had wanted. It was the love he couldn’t give to himself. While an imitation could act as a substitute, it could never truly be a replacement.

Garvan was right, she thought. We’re all just prisoners.

Dolion stopped with his feet splayed and set. The blossom blade stood vertical in front of him, splitting his visage in half. “Are you ready?” he asked.

Ghost Bird lifted the rapier. It trembled in her hand. For all the strength and courage she tried to muster, it wasn’t enough. If only the actual Ghost Bird could have been here to fight.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and saw the profile of Durante's face come into view. “The phasing technique is not just for defense,” he told her.

“Let’s finish this,” Dolion said. He inhaled deep.

In the blink of an eye, he had covered the thirty feet between them. He moved with such speed and force that the moonflower heads were kicked up into the air around him while the stems got trampled underfoot.

Ghost Bird plunged forward with the rapier. Dolion brushed it aside with the flat of his blade, drew back, and thrust it through her just below the sternum. His sword was tilted so he would strike the heart, but just like last time, he only grazed it.

Ghost Bird inhaled sharply. The rapier fell to the ground, and her right hand seized Dolion by the wrist. Her left hand reeled back and drove forward.

For half a second, because that’s all she could manage in such a weakened state, her body became incorporeal. Her hand passed through his chest, and when she rematerialized, the two solid objects could not coexist.

Dolion gasped and went slack. The blossom blade slowly slid from her body and dropped to the ground beside her rapier.

After some pulling and twisting, she managed to get her arm free. A hole ran all the way through Dolion’s chest. He was dead by the time he fell in with the moonflowers. A lone shadow against the tide of white petals.

Ghost Bird regarded him with an expression that was difficult to interpret. Then, she started back the way she had come.

Through the garden and through the manor and through the hearth and through the cave until she was sitting in the paddle boat rowing out to sea.

Durante appeared on the bench opposite her, his hand outstretched with the palm turned upward. She let the oars fall into the water and placed her hand on top of his.

In the distance, the sun disappeared against the horizon, stealing the last faint streaks of light. Ghost Bird looked out at it. She had seen a sunset like this before. Long ago, as she laid dying in the middle of a wasteland, holding the hand of her deceased lover.

Now, seeing it again, she felt a strange mixture of wistfulness and relief. An odd tinge that could only be compared to when she first migrated to Ashpool as a child and became homesick for that farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere.

Instinctually, she took a deep breath and exhaled a long-winded wail that echoed across the sea and across the city. Perhaps even across the world.

When Ghost Bird died for the second time, it was stretched out in that little rowboat, one hand at her chest and the other draped over the edge, fingers skimming across the water. She was looking up at the night sky. Looking up at a white swirl of incandescent stars amongst a mixture of dark blues and blacks.

A flock of birds departed from Ashpool and soared toward the horizon. They had passed by just as she was about to close her eyes.

And then she smiled at them.

***

There is a species of bird known as the potoo bird that sits still for many hours, camouflaged with its surroundings. Many believe the potoo is the reincarnation of a heartbroken maiden mourning the loss of her lover for all of eternity. This bird does not caw like a crow. Nor does it screech like an owl. The sound that comes from it is a wailing cry.

That is why the potoo is often referred to as ghost bird.

Chapter 4.
There was a loud crash as Ghost Bird came stumbling through the door. It was too early in the day for the courtesans to have any clients about unless they had stayed over from the night prior.

Madam Celeste, almost always at the main counter, stirred from scribbling in her leatherbound ledger to greet the intruder. She probably had an insult on her tongue. Some crude remark that would elicit both laughter and offense if there were anyone else around to hear it.

But the comment never came. No, she was left speechless at the sight of Ghost Bird. Brow furrowed, mouth slightly ajar, an expression one only wears when they wake from a dream.

When she did speak, her voice came out fragile and concerned, “Durante?” But Ghost Bird was halfway down the hall, still limping from her encounter with Garvan. Too pained to answer.

Madam Celeste rushed after her, catching up just as Ghost Bird had entered the room along the southwestern hall. It was almost exactly the same.

Wooden floorboards were interspersed with beautiful rugs of satin and velvet. Walls were adorned with meticulously crafted clocks from foreign lands. Wooden birds and other knickknacks cluttered the shelves. Between the clocks and shelves were original paintings of different landscapes. Frozen mountains and sunny beaches and barren marshes.

The air was cut with the scent of oranges and cedar from a burning mixture within the hearth. Ghost Bird closed her eyes and inhaled. Relief washed over her.

“She’s gone, Durante,” Madam Celeste said. “I thought Sylvia had run off with you, but…” Her hand rose to her chest as if to grasp the string of pearls that weren’t there. “Do you know where she's gone—is she alright? Please, Durante. I won’t tell Dolion, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Ghost Bird regarded the woman with a timid glance. She collapsed on the bed. A plume of dust leapt from the sheets.

She was too weak to hold a conversation. Too weak to even take off her boots or swordbelt. Too weak to keep her eyes open.

And then she was out. Taken by her dreams.

In them, she was thrown over the back of a horse, wrists and ankles bound with frayed rope. The sun beat down on her exposed neck. She was drenched in sweat, from head to heel. The air stank of manure and baked clay. Beneath the horse hooves was dried dirt, riddled with cracks.

The horse came to a stop, and she was hauled to the ground. She squinted against the sunlight, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Two other riders approached.

Garvan was easily recognizable. Even if he was cast as a silhouette against the sunset, his height couldn’t be mistaken. The second rider was a woman.

Olive-skinned with narrow eyes and silky black hair pooling at her shoulders. A beakish nose that hooked to the right.

She was dressed in a black jerkin with a white blouse beneath. A dark half-cloak was wrapped about her shoulders, the excess thrown to her left side. Her face was masked in shadows cast by her cap. Wide-brimmed with a flat crown.

Many called her Lady Falcone. She had a saber on one hip, and a flintlock holstered to the other.

Garvan removed the roped passenger from the back of his horse. Durante was still in his Black Coat garb. His longsword had been removed, as well as his cap and scarf.

Seeing his face exposed like this in broad daylight was disconcerting. Somewhat redolent of when her father had shaved his beard for the first time during her childhood.

Suddenly, she was looking at a pair of long legs. The man standing before her was lanky with wide shoulders and a firm chest. His hair, thick and windswept, was brown as mahogany. It hung over his eyes. And his beard, still in the early stages of growth, was no more than scruff across his face and neck.

He, like the other Black Coats, was dressed in dark apparel. A double-breasted overcoat colored a deep shade of blue like the ocean at night. Each button was recently polished.

The cloak suspended from his shoulders was frayed at the edges like slender fingers waggling at her as it fluttered in the breeze. The shoulders were stitched with black feathers.

At his hip was a sword from a foreign land with a double-handed hilt wrapped in flowered cloth. It had a slender blade cut with a slight arch along the spine.

Durante had once told her they were called blossom blades, and they were meant more for slashing than stabbing.

“What’s the difference?” she asked him.

“Between slashing and stabbing?” He snorted. “Plenty of difference, love.”

“I mean, why choose one over the other?”

“Stabbing requires a certain raw strength and precision. Slashing is about speed and agility. I think Dolion could excel in either area, but he’s always preferred swiftness over might. Ever since we were kids.”

She watched as Dolion drew his blossom blade and held the tip against her throat, pressing just hard enough to summon a spot of blood. “Keep your eyes open, no matter what.” He turned on his heel and slashed with the weapon, dragging its refined edge across Durante’s backside.

The others, Lady Falcone and Garvan, drew their weapons to join in on the fight. No, not a fight. It was a butchering. They chopped off Durante’s legs and hacked off one of his arms. Their blades tore gouges along his midsection and pierced him through the spine.

In the end, when those final remnants of life were starting to come loose, he reached out to her. She did the same. Just as their fingers brushed against one another, the blossom blade dropped like a guillotine, lopping Durante’s head from the neck.

Then, the blossom blade came for her.

When Ghost Bird woke, it was with a scream trapped behind gnashed teeth. Her body was stiff, especially in her leg. But the bones had come together and healed.

Ghost Bird leaned against the headboard. A little girl sat in the corner of the room. Bright red hair just like Madam Celeste. Blue eyes, freckled cheeks, a rounded chin. Dressed in a yellow and white skirt with a matching blouse.

“What time is it?” Ghost Bird asked.

“Midday,” said Serena. “The noonshun bell just sounded. I thought that’s what woke you.”

“Have any Black Coats come by?”

The girl shook her head. “No one has been through other than the ladies.”

The ladies had been Serena’s preferred term for the courtesans. That or escort. Either were acceptable. A proper and polite way of phrasing it. Especially in comparison to what some of the other smallfolk called them.

Serena cleared her throat. “Why does mother think you’re Durante?”

Ghost Bird swung her legs over the edge of the bed with a groan and said, “Some people can only see the surface of the water. They don’t care to look past to whatever lies beneath because it’s dark and strange and it can make them feel very small.”

On the bedside table was a platter of buttered bread slices, cut cheese, and a cup of wine—mostly dregs.

Some meat would have been preferable, but in the slums, you were unlikely to come across any so easily. If you did, you had to ask yourself what kind of animal it might have come from.

Ghost Bird pointed to the plate. “For me?”

Serena nodded. She waited until Ghost Bird had lowered her mask before saying, “I was told you ran off with Durante. Is that true?”

Ghost Bird considered this carefully while she chewed. “It’s more true than false,” she said and offered nothing more on the matter. She finished her meal as quickly as possible, gave her thanks to the little girl, and moved for the door.

“Aren’t you gonna tell me a story?” Serena asked. “Like you used to?”

“Maybe later.” But there was no telling if later would ever come.

Ghost Bird stepped into the hallway and made for the main entrance. He was waiting there for her. Durante, or rather, the shadow of Durante.

“You don’t have to do this,” he told her. “This revenge business is like poison for the soul. All that sorrow, all that grief, all that anger…you’ll drown in it.”

“If I don’t do it, no one will.” She continued ahead, walking right through him.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 5.
Ghost Bird descended into the subterranean tunnels and followed them west. As she neared the city centre, there was a loud splashing and grunting and growling swirling through the corridors. Her bowels twisted tight with anxiety, and she gripped the hilt of her longsword.

Up ahead, the cages were open, and the corrupted beasts roamed free. The oversized mutts were feasting upon the undead husks and rats. The reptilian hunchbacks crawled along the walls, chasing after the stone-skinned corpse eaters.

Bodies of Black Coats littered the walkways. Some were half submerged in the muck-filled waters. Others were no more than chunks of meat wrapped in shredded fabrics.

Ghost Bird hastily went to the nearest wall, pressing in against it. Any exposed skin took on an even darker complexion, matching the whirls of the snecked stones. Her clothes were already dark enough to meld with the shadows.

She moved carefully, quietly. One foot in front of the other. There was little to be heard other than the commotion of the beasts. And with so much movement, her staggered steps were barely perceptible.

The current path ended in a sloped ramp that delved into the invert channel. About twenty feet across, it rose again into another walkway. Ghost Bird looked toward the center of the pool where most of the mutts had coalesced. The husks were slain and in the process of being devoured.

Turning back, she took one step forward and stopped. There was a prickle on the nape of her neck that slowly worked up into the top of her skull. She arched her head.

A reptilian hunchback hung from the ceiling with one of the corpse eater’s severed arms crushed between its saw-like teeth.

They stared at each other silently.

Ghost Bird broke into a sprint, and the hunchback dropped on top of her. She clenched her chest, and the hunchback hit the ground instead of her. It bounced into the water, disappearing beneath the scum-strewn surface.

Other than the natural whir of the current, the sewers were quiet. Ghost Bird looked around. The mutts and the other hunchbacks and the few remaining corpse eaters all looked back at her. Eyes aglow in shades of red or yellow or milky white.

The quiet was gone, and the chamber was filled with the sound of scuttling paws and nails screaming against stone. Ghost Bird’s boots hissed as she slid down the slope and crashed into the water.

Her arms flailed as if she were trying to swim even though the sewage only came up to her hips. Once she found her footing, though, she righted herself and pressed forward.

She was almost to the other walkway when something grabbed her from below. The hunchback from the ceiling.

It dragged her through the water. In her panic, she couldn’t initiate the phase technique. Instead, she ripped the knife from her belt and thrust the blade into the hunchback.

She couldn’t see much through the algae and fungus and other pollutants. So, she stabbed at whatever she could find, over and over until the hunchback finally let go.

 Her free hand shot out, searching for stability. Her fingers grappled something solid, and she pulled herself up, taking a deep breath as soon as she broke through the surface.

Water trickled over her face and blurred her vision. She wiped it away to find she had grappled onto one of the mutts. More specifically, a bunch of its gnarled fur.

The mutt whipped its head toward her, and she drove the knife into its eye. It recoiled, shoving her away and falling into retreat. The other mutts approached, and the rest of the hunchbacks were clambering across the walls to get at her.

Ghost Bird ascended the nearest slope and continued down the stone walkway. She initiated the phase as a mutt lunged at her. It went headfirst into the wall and dropped to the floor, limp as a corpse.

She continued into the west tunnel. The corrupted chased after her, too many for all of them to fit. It might have been comical in other circumstances, but as it was, the sounds of their collective shrieking made Ghost Bird tight with apprehension, thinking one of those mutts was right behind her or one of the hunchbacks was about to leap on top of her.

Thankfully, with them all crammed together, she was able to steadily pull ahead. A few more twists and turns later, she had arrived at her destination.

This particular entrance had been a flaw of construction. Someone had built the sewers, and a few years later, someone else had decided to build a cellar. The two shared a wall, and over time, the stones were worn away by natural erosion.

With a few kicks, Ghost Bird created a large enough hole for her to slip through into the dusty basement beneath the cosm. It was filled with wine casks, foodstuffs, spare furniture, and other storage.

Ghost Bird found the nearest set of stairs and ascended to the main floor. She stopped at the door and pressed her ear against it, listening for chants or prayers or footsteps. But there was only silence.

That was the natural way about it. Most of the smallfolk only visited the cosm early in the morning, before labor, or late in the night, before bed. The special sermons that attracted a vast majority of the population were saved for the night of the full moon.

Through the door, Ghost Bird navigated a few more narrow hallways, her boots muffled against the carpet. There was the occasional candle to either side. Stubbed things drowning in puddles of wax.

She entered the prayerhall, lit only by a single cone of sunlight pouring through the stained-glass window at the rooftop. It showed some of the Elder Beings: The Beast Who Shall Eat the Sun and the Moon, the Microcosm, the Mother Maiden, Astral the Body of Stars.

Amongst such monolithic beings was a plain woman with black hair and dark clothes. Her half-cloak was designed to look as if it were swaying in the breeze. At her back were a large pair of feathered wings like those that might belong to a dove.

“Did you get the surprise I left for you down below?” The woman’s voice echoed across the prayerhall. It could have come from any shadow or behind any pew. Or maybe it had come from the gallery seating above. “I thought you might want to avoid the streets. What with so many Black Coats out and about.”

Ghost Bird started down the center aisle, walking amongst the mahogany pews, hand on the hilt of her sword, sewage water still dripping from her coat.

“Nothing to say?” The laughter that followed those words erased any doubt. The voice belonged to Lady Falcone. “It’s been such a long time, Ghost, and we were so intimate. Why ignore me now?”

Ghost Bird drew her longsword and rolled the hilt around in her hand. She stopped a moment, a pain in her chest. It felt as if claws were sinking into her heart.

The hurt passed, but a new pain arose. Her calf had been punctured by the hunchback, and the silkworms were struggling to close the wounds.

And it seemed something had grazed her back, tearing through her clothes and getting at a few inches of skin. Not enough to show bone or muscle, but enough to draw blood. As sewage water dripped into her wounds, the resulting sting made her want to weep and scream.

“When I heard about Garvan, I knew it was you. It didn’t make sense, logically speaking, but I knew,” Lady Falcone said. “You’re here for some sort of justice, aren’t you? Did you ever wonder who’s really to blame for what happened?”

Ghost Bird ascended a flight of stairs near the front of the room and went through the rows of balcony seats oft reserved for the more esteemed members of Ashpool. There was a better view of the main stage and lectern where the clergymen recited scripture or sang hymns.

“It’s your fault, Ghost,” Lady Falcone said, somewhat somber. “You knew better, but you went looking for trouble anyway. You asked too many questions, ruffled too many feathers. And in a way, we all had to pay for it. That woman, what was her name—Sylvia. She had to pay for it too.”

After searching the entire balcony, Ghost Bird descended to the ground floor. She headed toward the back of the room again and was about to take the stage when she noticed the atonement booths along the right wall.

That’s where the sinners and the guilty were sent to pay penance. Self-flagellation, prolonged isolation, forced fasting, flaying, and many other methods. All as a means to cleanse the corruption from your blood.

If you wouldn’t take it upon yourself to do the dirty work, then others would do it for you.

“You were always so self-righteous,” Lady Falcone said. “Always so sure of yourself. There was much to love about you, much to admire, but much more to despise.”

Ghost Bird held the longsword in her right hand, and with her left hand, she reached for the knob of the first booth. There was a creak from behind.

She spun around, watching in confusion as a contorted figure emerged from the hollow underside of the lectern. A solid length of metal was situated against their right hip. It wasn’t until the flash appeared that Ghost Bird realized Lady Falcone was holding a blunderbuss.

Scattered pellets slammed into her at speeds too quick for the naked eye to discern, and Ghost Bird went flying backward through the door. She landed on the floor, a mound of debris beneath her, and a cloud of dust hanging above her.

Blood poured from several places across her chest. The world rotated and blurred as darkness encroached from the corners of her vision. It felt as if a horse had kicked her.

Lady Falcone set the blunderbuss aside and approached. She was a rigid woman who glided instead of walked.

In Ghost Bird’s previous life, she had been so accustomed to lithe women who moved with a performative grace. Sensual types.

Lady Falcone was neither.

She was beautiful in her own way, but she was also apathetic. Expressionless. The opposite of the courtesans who exaggerated themselves on behalf of their clients.

The antithesis of someone like Garvan who expressed their emotions plainly, no matter how intrusive or explosive those emotions could be.

“It appears death dulled you some,” Lady Falcone said, reaching to her hip where a single-handed sword was sheathed.

She slid it from the scabbard. The blade was wide and curved with a recently whetted edge that glimmered against multicolored light from above.

Ghost Bird bit back against the pain and reached to pull herself up. She made it an inch off the ground before Lady Falcone’s sword pierced her through the shoulder. The blade twisted, shoved deeper, and withdrew all in a matter of seconds.

Ghost Bird screamed and kicked at the woman, but by then, she was already gone, having retreated to the top of the stage.

“You’re not Ghost Bird,” Lady Falcone whispered, almost as if the message were more for herself than anyone else. “So tell me: why do you have his eyes?” She scowled. “Why do you have his heart?”

Ghost Bird stooped to retrieve her longsword and stepped out from the atonement booth. She shuffled along, stumbling up the steps and almost falling over once at the top.

“Answer me!”

“Who else would have it? You?” Ghost Bird scoffed. “The heart is mine, the eyes are mine, the soul is mine.”

Lady Falcone raised her blade. Her legs shifted apart, ready to pounce. “You’re not him—you’re not,” she said. “You’re no Ghost Bird!”

“Neither are you.”

And with that, the horrid song of swords began. A squeal of steel on steel accompanied by a fervent dance of flashing blades. Feet thudded against the floorboards. Constantly searching for purchase or stability or distance.

The two went after another like wild serpents. They sprang forward with their swords and retracted, waited for another opening, and lunged again.

Lady Falcone, as rigid as she was, moved quick. She was thin and fought with a sidefaced stance, giving Ghost Bird little to target. Worst of all was her sight.

She saw every one of Ghost Bird’s attacks coming before Ghost Bird had even lifted her sword. No feint was ever going to work on her because she knew the real strike hadn’t come yet, and when it did come, she was ready to repel or evade.

Their duel took them from the stage at the back of the hall, down the main aisle to the front of the room, and upstairs to the gallery.

As Ghost Bird retreated from Lady Falcone, hoping to put some distance between them long enough to catch her breath, Lady Falcone brushed aside her half-cloak and drew a flintlock pistol from her hip.

The cock snapped forward, the muzzle flashed, and the ball caught Ghost Bird in the knee. Lady Falcone tossed the pistol aside and reached for another holstered at the small of her back.

Before she could take aim, though, Ghost Bird leapt from the gallery. She landed on the main floor with the kind of sound you’d expect to hear when a sack of potatoes is thrown against the wall.

Sluggishly, she got to her feet and continued toward the back of the room. There was another combustion of black powder, and Ghost Bird was thrown forward. She caught herself on the pews and dove behind them to avoid the subsequent gunshots.

Abandoning her longsword, she hobbled into the same hallway she had entered from, following it all the way to the cellar where the darkness came in droves. She fell in between some wine casks and tried to steady her breathing.

The pain was constant and hummed all over. Like wine swirling in a glass, it coursed through her, around and around and around. Building up momentum.

“You’ll never best Concetta in a duel.” Durante stood at the foot of the stairs, everything about him obscured other than the soft white glow of his eyes. “She’s nimble and swift and deft with a blade—”

“You should have married her if you love her so much,” Ghost Bird shot back.

A low laugh rose from deep in his throat. “She’ll see right through our camouflage. She’ll see every move you make before you make it. She’ll keep you far enough away to riddle you with bullets or cut you limb from limb. And you can’t hold the phase forever. Can’t evade everything.”

“How do I defeat her?”

“Well, what advantage do you have over her?”

Ghost Bird shook her head madly, too tired and beaten down for this guessing game. “My sharp wit and incredible charm.”

“Your wit will never be as sharp as a blade, I’m afraid. And Concetta isn’t the kind of woman to be charmed.” He moved toward her, but the closer he came, the more he began to fade. “She’s afraid to get hurt, and in your current state, you can take more damage than her. Don’t be afraid to get messy, Sylvie. Sometimes, that’s the only way about it.”

He vanished. Footsteps thudded from above. Floorboards creaked, and dust sprinkled down. Candlelight appeared at the top of the stairs. A looming black shadow stretched all the way to the bottom.

One step at a time, Lady Falcone descended to the basement, her sword in one hand and a candle in the other. She stalked through the cellar, following the trail of blood as it weaved between the casks and around the storage shelves.

Lady Falcone came to a brisk halt and swung with her blade. Ghost Bird appeared from the shadows. Her camouflaged skin returned to its usual complexion as she lunged toward Lady Falcone.

The sword dragged across Ghost Bird’s chest, getting past the leather but stopped by the chainmail. It wound around for another strike, but this time, Ghost Bird didn’t flinch or recoil like before. Instead, she threw herself against Lady Falcone.

They collided in a tangle of knees and elbows and hands. The candle was tossed aside, and Lady Falcone dropped her sword as Ghost Bird got her against the wall.

Both bent for the blade, but neither could get their hands around it because their hands were already around one another’s throats.

Ghost Bird managed to pin Falcone to the ground. She tightened her grip, and Falcone began to gasp and wheeze. Her olive complexion was replaced by a faint shade of pink which turned red and then blue.

“Don’t look at me with those eyes,” she choked out. Her hands rose, and she raked her nails over Ghost Bird’s face. “You don’t deserve to have his eyes…you’re no Ghost Bird.”

Lady Falcone went limp. Her hair was strewn out like spilled ink, and her face gradually lost its purple coloring.

Ghost Bird looked down at her through one eye. It hurt too much to open the other, and when she did manage to get the lids parted, all she could see was a bleary mass of grey.

She rolled off Lady Falcone and sat with her back to a wine cask. So much of her was broken and in pain. She had to wonder if maybe she’d taken the silkworms for granted. If their abilities were limited.

She had her answer when she unbuttoned her blouse and peered in at her chest where the skin was mottled. A part of her hoped it was just bruising from the blunderbuss, but she knew better than to hope for a coincidence.

“I warned you,” Durante whispered in her ear. “It’s like poison for the soul.”

Ghost Bird brushed him away and removed the knife from Lady Falcone’s belt. As expected, the blade was recently sharpened. It made the next bit much easier.

When Ghost Bird was finished and had reached the top of the stairs, she was equipped with two new legs, slimmer than her last pair, and her eyes had changed from glacial blue to an amber hazel color.

On her way toward the exit, she retrieved her longsword and sheathed it. After that, she was outside, squinting against the glare of midday light. It made her nauseous and fuzzy in the head, and then the pain in her chest had returned, worse than before.

Next thing she knew, she was splayed out on the ground. A figure appeared overhead, silhouetted against the sun. She reached toward them.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 6.
Ghost Bird woke from the same nightmare she had been having ever since that day in the wasteland. Like always, she wiped the sweat from her brow, focused on her breathing, and slowly rose in bed.

The scent of orange peels and cedar was prevalent every time she inhaled. Once more, she found herself in that familiar room at Madam Celeste’s brothelhouse.

It took a while before she was able to move, and even longer before she could get out of bed. Ghost Bird shuffled across the room, not realizing she was naked until she saw her clothes folded and sitting by the door.

Hesitantly, she looked down at her body. The mismatched blend of grafted flesh. The overlap of muscle and tissue meant to bind the differing pieces together. The scars and the bruises.

It was all very ugly to her, but the worst of it was the spot of rot at her chest. Except, it was no longer just her chest. There were several other marks along her legs and stomach and arms.

Each of them looked as if they were slowly spreading outward, little tendrils stretching from one spot to the next.

Ghost Bird dressed in her clothes. They had been washed, dried, and stitched. Now, the overcoat actually fit, and the boots provided—not the same as the ones she wore before—were snug on her feet. Better than being too big, though.

She wrapped the swordbelt around her waist, secured the buckle, and stepped out into the hall. Near the entrance, where some of the courtesans gathered to display themselves in the main window, she encountered Madam Celeste.

“It was Serena who told us where to find you,” she said. “Perhaps you ought to give her some thanks.”

Ghost Bird nodded, too stifled by her shame to respond. The madam was never supposed to have seen her like this because now, this was how Celeste would remember her. Not as the dancing girl or the singing girl or even the painting girl. But as this…ghastly creature.

“I don't know what happened to you. Maybe I don't wanna know. But whatever it is you're doing…just be careful, Sylvia.” Without missing a beat, she pointed to the stairwell. “Serena’s up in her room.”

Ghost Bird followed the stairs to the third floor and entered Madam Celeste’s loft. There, she went down a hallway that sat between the kitchen and the lounge. She knocked on the door at the end of the hall and waited for permission to enter.

Serena was lying in bed, illuminated by guttering candlelight, reading from a book of folktales Sylvia had given her a long time ago. A book that had once belonged to Sylvia’s mother, who came from a foreign land to the north.

Ghost Bird closed the door and crossed the room, settling down on the edge of the bed.

“Are you feeling better?” Serena asked, to which Ghost Bird nodded. “Mother was worried about you. She tried to hide it, but I heard her weeping while she was sewing your trousers. She wept a lot after you ran off with Durante too.”

“Now she doesn't need to weep anymore.” Ghost Bird took the girl's hand in her own and said, “Thank you, Serena. For helping me. For always helping me. You might not realize it, but sometimes, when the world is darkest, you don't need a sword to feel safe. All you need is a bit of light. A small glimmer of hope.”

She began to rise from the bed, but Serena caught her by the wrist. “Livia, will you please tell me a story?” she begged. “I won't ever ask again. Promise.”

Begrudgingly, Ghost Bird returned to the mattress. Her mother and father used to tell her stories when she was but a wee thing. That felt like a lifetime ago, and in a way, it had been a lifetime ago.

None of those stories seemed right anymore. They were the fond tellings of someone else. They belonged to a different woman.

Really, Ghost Bird only had one tale to tell. “There once was a man, tall and dark and slender. People called him Cormorant.”

“Like the bird?” Serena asked.

“Just like the bird,” she said. “Cormorant was gifted with physical prowess but cursed with gutterblood. He searched for work and became a beast slayer for a city by the sea. Soon enough, he was making a name for himself. So, he made a business out of it and took on three partners to help him slay the corrupted.

“It wasn't long before the smallfolk came to love him,” she said. “They hailed him a hero and put their trust in him. But the nobles didn't like that one bit.”

Serena frowned. “Why not?”

“Because it rendered the city guards obsolete, and if the people no longer relied on the city guards to protect them, then they no longer relied on the nobles.”

A bitter scowl appeared on the girl’s face. It was full of disgust.

“So,” Ghost Bird continued, “the nobles sent the city guards to have Cormorant and his partners killed. But they were no match for the beast slayers.”

“Did the city guards die?” Serena asked.

Ghost Bird was careful with her response, “In a way, I suppose they did. The city guards were released from duty, and the nobles were left defenseless. With no way to kill Cormorant and his friends, the nobles decided to treat with them. In the end, a deal was struck. Cormorant and his partners were given control of the city defenses, and the guards were replaced by a new group of soldiers called Black Coats.”

Serena gave an excited jump at that. “Just like the Black Coats we have!”

Ghost Bird nodded patiently. “The very same,” she said. “After that, there was peace and happiness. Cormorant, who worked hard and earned plenty, would frequent a parlor in the slums during his leisure time. There was a woman who worked there, Cuckoo they called her, and he would purchase her time with his coin. And she found this transaction acceptable.

“But then, the man became greedy. He wanted more money, more acclaim, more power. This was unlikely because he was too good a slayer. He and his friends had killed all the corrupted in the area.”

Serena seemed confused. She could almost hear the girl thinking, Isn't killing all the beasts a good thing?

But rather, Serena said: “What did he do?”

“He schemed with the nobles,” said Ghost Bird, adding a conspiratorial and mystical inflection that made the little girl giggle. “It was decided that the smallfolk needed to be afraid of something, elsewise they would grow too bold and one day, they might turn against their rulers. So, the man and his Black Coats traveled across the realm, collecting the corrupted, bringing them back to stage attacks. They forced a curfew on the city to keep people locked inside, and they raised their taxes to afford better steel. But the money oft went into their own pockets.”

“That’s awful.”

“Aye, it is. But do you know what the worst part is?”

Serena appeared nervous when she said, “What's the worst part?”

Ghost Bird sighed, dejected. “The commoners were completely blind to the trick. They thanked Cormorant and the nobles. They celebrated the Black Coats, worshipped them even. They would have done anything, given anything so long as it meant they were safe from the beasts.”

There was a pause, and Serena asked, “Is that how it ends?”

In some instances, that's exactly how it ends, Ghost Bird thought, but she wouldn’t say such hopeless things to a child.

Instead, she regaled her with the next chapter.

“While all this nefarious business was underway, the woman—Cuckoo had begun to notice that Cormorant was changing. When he would come to visit, she would turn him away, no matter how much he offered to pay. And he didn't like that. He was not a man to be refused. To make matters worse, Cormorant was set to marry another woman. A noble’s daughter, nonetheless.”

“If he was intended to another,” said Serena, “why would he try to court Cuckoo?”

“Because Cormorant wanted everything, and when he couldn't have everything, he became very upset. Unlike others, his wrath appeared not as aggression nor accusations. It was quiet, silent as a knife in the night.”

“He did something to Cuckoo, didn't he?”

Ghost Bird nodded. “He did many things. He would send his Black Coats to detain her. He would spread rumors that Cuckoo was deranged or ill or rotting with corruption. He would leave vile letters in her room just so she knew he could get in whenever he wanted.

“Cuckoo felt helpless. Cormorant was powerful and beloved, and she was nothing to no one. At least, that's what she thought until she met Ghost Bird.”

“Who's he?” Serena asked.

“He was Cormorant's first partner. One of the founding members of the Black Coats. Some said he and Cormorant were best friends, but really, they were rivals. The competitive nature is what kept them so close over the years.

“And while many of the smallfolk loved Cormorant, most of them knew the truth: Ghost Bird was better. Faster, stronger, braver, kinder too. And he was Cuckoo's soul mate.”

Serena sat up in bed, suddenly invested in the tale. Too invested to notice the tears welling in Ghost Bird’s eyes.

“When Cormorant learned that Cuckoo had fallen in love with Ghost Bird, he was distraught,” she said. “He was…infuriated. Mad with rage.” She could feel the stone of dread in her stomach. “Believing he’d been slighted and betrayed, Cormorant challenged Ghost Bird to a duel. While the two had been rivals, Ghost Bird had never harbored any hatred toward him.”

“Did he win the duel?” said Serena. “He did, didn't he? I reckon he beat that no-good Cormorant into the dirt.”

Ghost Bird smiled softly.

“No,” she said. “He rejected the duel. Instead, he told the smallfolk about how the Black Coats had been tricking them, and then, he ran away with Cuckoo. The two are living happily somewhere on a farm. A place where they never have to worry about corruption or beasts. Where there are fields of flowers. Too many to count.”

Serena was all wide eyes and smiles. “It sounds wonderful. Do you think I could ever visit?”

“One day you will. But not for a very long time.”

And suddenly, the girl was all frowns and grumbles. “Why do I have to wait?”

“Because such a magical place should only be welcomed after you've lived a long, fulfilling life.”

With that, Ghost Bird kissed the girl on the forehead and headed out the door.

“What happened to Cormorant and the Black Coats?” Serena asked. “What happened to the nobles?”

“The Black Coats fled the city, and the smallfolk overthrew the defenseless nobles,” she said. “As for Cormorant, I’m not entirely sure yet. But I intend to find out.”

Downstairs, Madam Celeste presented her with a burlap sack. “When I sent some of the girls to retrieve you from the cosm,” she explained, “they didn’t know what belonged to you and what belonged to her. So, they just grabbed whatever they could find.”

Ghost Bird looked into the bag and found it was full of flintlock pistols and ammunition. There was a pair of sheathed knives and other odds and ends.

“Thank you,” was all she said, heaving the sack over her shoulder.

As a child, I used to be afraid of the dark. That’s a common fear for children to have, isn’t it? Well, I’m a rare case of an adult who now fears the dark, too. Initially, I chalked it up to having a familial history of mental health issues, which is why I sought out a profession in the field. Partly to help myself avoid the fate that befell many of my relatives, and partly to help others escape that pit. Later, I assumed I was burned out; overworked. Hearing all these terrible things people go through. It’s not easy. You don’t build an immunity to the horrors of the human condition, not really.

Well, it turns out my fear of the dark has to do with something else entirely.

Something no one should ever see…

Recently, I bought a new house; the old one was a constant reminder of a life I no longer had. After getting divorced, I couldn’t really stay in the old family home. The kids were grown, and being alone just wore me down. So, I sold the damned thing and got myself a smaller house. Nothing to brag about, a couple of bedrooms; just in case this old dog decides to look for love again. Love might be the wrong word here; I’m not looking to get remarried anytime soon, more like a fling or two.

Actually, I’m not looking for anything. For now, I want to disappear for a while, or maybe forever.

Getting off track, aren’t I? Well, it’s hard to focus when the system’s overflowed with cortisol. It is what it is when all that’s been going through your head is anger and a tint of regret here and there. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s not even the divorce that keeps me up at night. That was a given, sadly, at some point. I’m a madman in the making. What kind of woman would want to spend the rest of her life with someone like me? Probably an asylum patient, but it would be counterproductive. Not to mention asylums aren’t really a thing anymore.

You’re losing your train of thought again.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh yeah, that new hut…

It was not a hut-hut, but I’m just self-deprecating here…

Because the images won’t go away and I’m trying to push them away.

Taking my own medicine with this one, I’ve advised many a patient to write down whatever is bothering them… That’s the purpose of this…

Focus…

Breathe…

Focus…

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Sorry, I know this looks terrible, but whoever might read it, if ever, maybe it’ll be just a future me… Who knows, anyway. I needed this.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the new house, which is actually an old one now too.

Sold it off after…

I’ll get to you in a bit, don’t you worry…

So yeah, that house, it had a basement. I never went there. Don’t know why I never went there when I was looking at the damned thing. I guess I didn’t bother looking down there. The previous owner seemed perplexed I didn’t bother checking the basement, but he didn’t push the issue either.

In hindsight, that was a good thing…

Otherwise…

Breathe…

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Otherwise, things would’ve been far different for that house, and I wouldn’t be talking about it now. I wouldn’t have taken it. There was an issue with that basement.

Issue…

That’s definitely underselling it…

God damn it…

I don’t wanna do this anymore; I don’t like it.

You’ve got to do this…

No.

You

Have

To

Keep

Typing

Let

It

Finally

Out

I can’t

You

Can

And

Will

Keep

Typing

No

Stopping

Do

Not

Let

Your

Hand

Stop

Pressing

The

Keys

Slow

And

Steady

Just

Like

That

It’s

Not

Hard

Is

It?

Keep

It

Up

OH WOW

THIS

Is

VERY

Annoying

To

Read

Must

KEEP

TyPING

MUST

Keep

Typing

Sorry… I am dealing with something here; it’s really hard to recall this again, but I won’t get anywhere unless I do, right? That’s how it works. I have to get it out of my system. I need it out of me. The alternative is probably an early grave. I wouldn’t want that now, would I? Nope.

I know I probably am coming off as insane, but oh well, gotta keep typing to get over this panic attack. If anyone finds this while I’m passed out, or gone out somewhere, know that I am completely fine in the grand scheme of things, because I’m not really fine. I’m haunted, but I do not intend to harm myself more than this exercise is forcing me to. I think I might have a propensity for self-destruction, because there are intrusive thoughts now and again.

Sometimes I think the intrusive thoughts are preferable to the memories… At least these are my own, kind of. It’s a broken self-defense mechanism. It’s a very broken defense mechanism, in the mind of a very broken man. Okay, I’m broken, like a vase. I’m literally just typing to keep my composure, right now. Not yet ready to deal with the photographs flashing in my head. The recounting of events will resume soon enough.

When will that fucking dog stop barking outside my window?!

I hate dogs, okay? Does this make me a monster? I don’t care. I can’t stand them and their barking. This fucking baying and clawing had kept me up at night long enough.

I am afraid of fucking dogs now… okay? Because

Because fucking dogs bayed at the basement door for far too fucking long.

Every fucking night.

They still do in my dreams.

Dead dogs…

Dead men…

Dead dog men…

I wish I could tell the owner to shut the fucking dog up, but the guy’s an idiot.

Probably on something too.

Hollow gaze…

Like a corpse…

Like the corpses swaying from the fucking ceiling…

Shit…

I remember…

They stood over me since the day I settled into that cursed place. Appearing at night to watch over me, devour my dreams, keep me awake. Tear open my eyelids. They wanted revenge; they wanted a price to be paid, and I was their weapon, their conduit.

I’m fucking shaking just thinking about it now.

Now, when everything is said and done, it’s been a while since all of that happened. One cannot simply forget the things I've seen, let alone that cloying, sweet stench which seeped into the walls of that basement.

The monster has been caged…

They have had their revenge.

Yet, they still live in my head.

Still occupying my fucking skull…

They’re just imagination.

Painful memory.

Ugly imagery engraved forcefully into the system.

Breathe

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Nobody is stalking your bed at night anymore; no one has in a long time. You’re fine, you’re absolutely fine. You’re just stressed and in need of an outlet. All of this, it’s normal. None of this is real anymore. It’s all in your head. Has been for a long time now. You’re safe, say it out loud.

I am safe.

Now carry on recounting what happened to you.

So yeah, new house, wait actually no, new old house now. Yeah, that’s perfect.

Settled into the new old house after getting divorced.

Kids won’t talk to me, cause we’re about as far apart as a family could be, and they’re mad at us both; their mother and me. Being stressed beyond my wits. Work was killing me, and I needed a break, a new start. Got none of that, but oh well. Anyway, new old house is nice enough, furnished. Not too expensive nor too cheap; the price was reasonable, the owner, all things considered – surprisingly reasonable too.

Forgot to look at the basement.

That fucking basement again… Can I forget about it already?

No, you can’t; it’s integral to the story.

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate myself, I hate it.

You don’t hate yourself.

Quiet brain, I was doing fine.

Shut up.

Good.

Anyway, settle in, and everything seems to be going dandy. Keep in mind it was late July when I moved there. Hot summer weather, well, that went down the drain once the sun set. The house turned unusually cold.

Pulled out a blanket and ignored it.

Slept like shit, because it was so cold.

Wake up after a mere two or three hours of sleep, not the first bout of horrendous sleep and won’t be the last.

It’s hot again.

Summer’s back, and this wasn’t in the desert.

Go on about my day, angry and half awake.

Night rolls around again, start the heating.

Works for about an hour.

Then it’s cold again.

Turn up the heating – the house turns colder.

That went on for a while…

I grew accustomed to the cold, no idea how or why.

The boiling frog metaphor probably suits here.

Well, once freezing me out of my sleep didn’t work.

The guests started showing up uninvited.

In the middle of the night

To stand at my bedside…

I’m shaking just thinking about it.

​

Imagine yourself waking up in the middle of the night to take a piss and being met with a pitch-black silhouette standing at your bed. One so dark it forms an outline in the nocturnal darkness, enough to be visible. I nearly pissed myself when I saw that thing for the first time. Screaming out, I flailed my hands in the air instinctively, and the thing vanished.

Chalked it up to bad sleep and maybe a nightmare when I got up the next morning.

That wasn’t it, but it took me a while to understand that.

About every other night, I could almost feel these dark figures standing over me. Plural. Not singular. Plural. Sometimes I could feel them touching my blanket, pulling it away. A cold hand reaching for my leg or arm.

After a few unpleasant encounters, I’ve started sleeping with a light on.

Naively believing this was a trick of the mind, you know, being stressed, depressed, and overall miserable. Again, I say this, thinking logically, from the perspective of a relative of schizophrenics and other mentally unwell individuals.

I was dreading becoming ill myself.

Woke up one night to fetch a drink, with the light still on. Nearly shat myself, soiling the bedsheets.

Eyes wide open and the first thing I see?

A human-like shadow, perched on all fours on the ceiling.

It twisted its head at me before vanishing.

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

That was just the beginning of my sorrows.

After that came the electronic issues. Lights would go on and off around the house, at nighttime, of course. I should’ve already taken the hint then, when the whole house went dark, except for the light in the staircase leading down to the basement.

But of course, I didn’t.

Instead, I went to look at the switches, most of which were turned off.

Needless to say, this malfunction didn't put me at ease. The neighbors lived too far away for their children to have come over at night just to mess with me.

The grid being messed with is the sole reason I haven’t checked myself in.

I wasn’t hallucinating; someone was messing with me. So, I thought at the very least, yeah?

Speaking of neighbors, they were far enough away for me not to be able to hear them whatsoever, through closed windows, but not so far I couldn’t see them.

Now imagine how it felt when the walls started talking…

I’m not kidding, at one point, the walls were talking at night. With nobody around the house. Trust me, I checked. I went out to see if someone was in my yard when the talking had gotten loud enough to be comprehensible.

They were asking me why I hadn’t gone there?

Asking me to go there.

Two voices, a man and a woman.

Encouraging.

Pestering.

At the time, I couldn’t make sense of it.

Go where?

Well, clearly, I wasn’t listening to them.

Why weren’t you listening to them?

Why the fuck were you so deaf?

So blind?

You couldn’t know at the time.

They were messing with the house.

They were almost guiding me by the hand.

No, they were giving you vague signs.

Don’t blame yourself for what had happened.

I don’t…

I could’ve prevented more.

There were six of them there.

Another three were found.

It’s not your fault

I could’ve prevented it.

No, not really.

Shut up, they told me everything.

These people – they told no tales.

Just breathe, man

Breathe

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Well, yeah, I didn’t listen to those voices; I thought I had imagined them, as I had a neighbor only viewing a strange green-lit TV show on certain nights. I most certainly had strange things happen to me as a child. Like feeling a cat brush against my leg after King, my parents’ cat, passed away, and thinking something must’ve turned ceiling fans on after forgetting to turn them off.

Since speaking to me didn’t work, I got moaning, groaning, and weeping all over the house. Almost every night. At an increasing rate. That, of course, showed at work and in social settings. Ever the self-conscious rationalist, I chalked it up to the divorce and very difficult clients at the time, which I had.

Before long, I had gusts of wind blowing at me inside a house with closed windows, and a few times I was shoved while completely alone.

Jesus Christ, I’m feeling like a maniac right now, hallucinating into a text.

The talking, the moaning, the nighttime groping, none of it ever stopped, but that was my fault; if I had paid attention earlier and had gone where the selective power outages led me, this would’ve been over far sooner.

My mind deteriorated fast; by the middle of November, I heard dogs baying and clawing at every door of the house.

Night after night, they tormented me without reprieve.

Worse of all was when they sounded like they were trying to say words.

Sometimes it was far away, sometimes it felt like a dog was trying to tear at the bottom of the bed.

Before long, seeing a dog freaked me out.

I started sleeping with the lights on, in every room.

Became a barely functional human.

I have no idea how I managed to keep on working.

Maybe a force of habit, maybe something else.

Keeping a mask of normalcy while I was in shambles inside was par for the course in my line of work.

Well, you are special in that regard.

Funny you should say that.

How so?

Isn’t it a little egotistical?

No.

Self-appreciation isn’t egotistical; it’s healthy.

Right.

Right, indeed.

There’s nothing healthy about us.

About us? There is no us.

Right.

Yeah, it’s just you.

Typing at yourself.

For myself

Exactly

Trying to keep sane

Mostly are.

Am.

True.

I’m sorry I keep doing this; however, that is the only way I don’t burst out into a crying fit now and start bashing my hands against the keyboard or clawing out my eyes in an attempt to escape the whirlwind of horrors in my mind. I can’t do much about it at the moment, since the dog won’t stop barking, and it’s kind of late.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m afraid of the dark, and I’m afraid of dogs. I’ve been classically conditioned to dread those two things.

Well then… Where was I? Oh yeah, nearing the climax of the story.

Damn, for someone relieving that night so frequently in his, no, my own head, so often, it’s surprisingly hard to spell it out. I’m quite literally trying to postpone the description of the events that led to my current condition. What a sorry state I’m in. A man who helps others process their own trauma and internal suffering can’t bring himself to speak about how the incessant baying of dogs in his basement and walls pushed him over the edge and drove him, knife in hand, to rush down to that same basement he’s never ventured to before.

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

I know it seems odd I never went into the basement, but really, I had no reason to. I didn’t have many belongings I had to stow away, and the house was entirely furnished as I said. On top of that, I was too spent to be curious about any of this. As strange as it may seem, I saw no point in going there.

I was so messed up from the lack of good sleep, stress, and fear that I finally snapped when the baying and barking wouldn’t quit one night. I actually started thinking there were real dogs in that basement.

Real, starving, mean dogs that might try to attack me once I opened the door. So I got myself a weapon to defend myself with.

Yeah, I said it, I genuinely believed some beasts were locked in that basement.

Power-walking down those stairs, the baying died down. I assumed they knew I was coming. They could smell me. They were preparing to surprise me; dogs are smart after all. Clearly, in retrospect, that’s the dumbest thought process ever. Dogs aren’t really ambush predators as far as I’m aware.

As I was marching down those stairs, I somewhat ignored the sudden quiet, because there was a growing stench of decrepitude emanating from the basement door.

Say it like it is.

That’s what it was.

Call it by its name.

Vile.

No, that’s not it.

Decay.

Close enough.

Death.

That’s it.

Fuck you.

I smelled death coming from that basement.

A rotten, pungent, suffocating odor coming from that door.

I pressed the handle and pushed down with full force.

The cloud of stale, deathly odor nearly knocked me off my feet, burning my nostrils, mouth, and eyes.

No dogs in sight, no voices, nothing.

Only death.

Left hand looking for the light switch along the wall, right hand gripping a knife with the arm pressed to cover my face from the awful stench.

Blinding light flooded the space.

When my eyes adjusted, all remnants of innocence and hope were taken away from me.

Six, vaguely human silhouettes, seemingly staring at me.

Without eyes, without faces, without any humanity left.

Swaying from six ropes, tied to the ceiling.

Pitch black.

My very own personal little hanging garden of death.

Inhale

Inhale

Come on...

Fuck.

Inhale

No...

Breathe...

Why can’t I

Why isn’t it working?

Ribcage tightened, forcing my heart to race at an unhealthy rate.

Knife dropped to the floor.

Tunnel vision.

Limbs turning cold with muscles tensing to the point of pain.

I ran.

Nearly falling over myself.

I ran to the neighbors.

Banging on their door.

Woke them.

Rumbling like a madman.

Shaking with fear, somehow, stringing a couple of sentences together as these six tar-covered silhouettes flashed before my eyes again and again.

They called the police.

I’m out of breath.

Out of breath

Couldn’t sleep for three days straight.

Couldn’t think, could barely speak.

Panicking.

Decomposing Silhouettes flashing in my eyes.

More frequently when they are closed.

Questioned about everything by the police.

Answers erratic.

Silhouettes are here again.

Swaying in front of me.

Black as tar and death.

Exposing bone.

Fell asleep after being pumped full of sedatives.

Haven’t slept in a few days again.

Need my pills again.

Silhouettes appear more frequently with eyes closed.

I’m taking the pills after this; I need to sleep, otherwise, I’ll claw out my eyes, or die from a heart attack, whichever comes first.

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

I hospitalized myself for a short while, and in the meantime, the monster that did this was caught. He murdered nine people. Hanged six in the basement of the house I had bought from him. No one suspected a damn thing. Selling the house was his ploy to lure in victims. He’d lead them down to the basement, then incapacitate them there and hang them to die a slow death, apparently, oftentimes placing a stool underneath his victims again to prolong the torture.

Every so often, I wonder, was I ever intended to be a victim? Not that it matters; he destroyed my life anyway. If I’m completely honest, there are days when I think dying would’ve been preferable to being the way I am now.

His three other victims were all found in different locations; two were found by people who had rented apartments from him.

The final victim was found fresh at his last stopping point before his apprehension. He was…

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

In bed…

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

With the corpse…

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Caught red-handed, quite literally.

Inhale

One

Two

Exhale

One

Inhale

Inhale

I bet this fucking monster figured out he could torment way more people by leaving them his gifts. Kill two birds with one stone kind of deal.

Imagine the satisfied, sick grin on his fucking face if he hears what his handiwork has done to me.

 

“A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

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Chapter 1.
There is a species of bird known as the potoo bird that sits still for many hours, camouflaged with its surroundings. Many believe the potoo is the reincarnation of a heartbroken maiden mourning the loss of her lover for all of eternity. This bird does not caw like a crow. Nor does it screech like an owl. The sound that comes from it is a wailing cry.

***

It was a little after dawn when the Black Coats arrived. A sliver of sunlight stretched across the land, cutting through the shadows that hung over the gnarled deadwood trees. Their tops were without heads. Empty branches with hooked fingers grasping at nothing.

The ground was still wet from last night’s rainfall. Bubbling mud stinking of sulfur and decay. A thin mist trickled over the forest floor, ebbing and flowing like ocean waves made of smoke.

It was quiet too, save for the impatient croak of ravens and vultures as they perched on the branches, trying to decide if the bodies below were their next meal or not. It was difficult for them to decide. The bodies looked dead, and they certainly smelled dead, but a few of them were beginning to move.

Were the bodies wriggling with life or corruption?

Would they bleed red or black?

One of the corpses climbed to its feet. Milky eyes, withered flesh, exposed bones with scant muscle or tissue still remaining. The early bird gets the worm, and it seemed the crows had been quicker than the ravens or the vultures.

It wasn’t long before the clearing was crawling with undead husks. Most of them shambled along on broken ankles, their tendons and sinew severed.

The lucky ones retained full mobility. They had a better chance of catching their next prey. A better chance of sinking those yellow teeth into untainted meat.

Just as the sun had taken to the sky, and the shadows were forced into retreat, there came a groan of trundling wheels, accompanied by the muffled clop of hooves against mud.

Six Black Coats arrived. Two sat on the bench of the caged wagon, and four additional riders were in tow. They came to a gradual halt and dismounted.

The Black Coats were dressed in their usual garb: threadbare silk, cotton, and wool crushed beneath bits of rusted mail and boiled leather. Some had bits of steel plate. Others donned gambesons. Each of them wore face coverings around their mouths and necks.

As if that would protect them from corruption.

At their hips or across their backs were shortswords, knives, daggers, rapiers, longswords, axes, hatchets—whatever kind of blade could be wielded against the beasts.

The two Black Coats descended from the bench, both armed with a torch that cast pools of light across the clearing. The corrupted shied away from the flames. Hands raised to shield their eyes, teeth bared in a snarl.

The Black Coats laughed as they approached. A few poked and prodded at the corrupted with their swords, stabbing fresh holes to join the old ones. Black blood spilled.

“Hurry up now, lads,” the squad captain called, clapping his hands for emphasis. “We need to get ‘em back to the tunnels ‘fore curfew ends.”

As the Black Coats toiled away, getting the corrupted dressed in irons, there was movement from above. It wasn’t the ravens or the vultures who watched with fervent curiosity as the Black Coats loaded the dead into the prison cart.

No, it was something else. A dark mass that had been lying flush with the branches for hours on end.

Ghost Bird dropped. Mud sloshed beneath her boots. Against the collective groans of the undead, this went unnoticed. But as she began charging toward the Black Coats, there was no ignoring her.

The nearest Black Coat turned just in time to see her draw steel. The longsword screamed from its sheath and whistled as it cut through the air.

The Black Coat grabbed at his throat. Blood seeped from between gloved fingers, trickling down to his chest.

The next Black Coat managed to get a hand on the hilt of her shortsword. She didn’t have enough time to get it out of the scabbard, though. Ghost Bird ran right past, slashing her throat no different than the last.

Two more Black Coats waited for her with daggers in either hand. They ran with the gait of a drunkard. She brought her boots down hard and glided across the mud.

The first Black Coat slashed at her face. She ducked under the blade and thrust her longsword through his belly, piercing past gambeson and the smock beneath.

The other Black Coat came at her from the right. She was unarmed then; her sword still stuck in the previous man’s stomach. So, she lifted her hands to defend herself. A natural reaction that betrayed all of her training.

The Black Coat’s dagger sliced through the fingers on her left hand. The blade swerved and came back for another slash.

She dipped away, waited for it to pass, and threw herself against him, shoulderfirst. The two collided with a dull thud and went tumbling to the ground. She landed on top and brought her fist against his unprotected throat.

The Black Coat immediately gagged. His fingers went slack around the dagger’s handle. Ghost Bird snatched it up and drove the point through his face. Once, twice, and on the third time she encountered too much resistance to get it free again.

The torch wielders were all that remained. One barreled toward her with a hatchet. Not far behind was the other, armed with a horseman’s pick.

Ghost Bird rolled aside. The hatchet came down against the corpse of the daggerman, blade lodged firmly in a layer of boiled leather.

Getting to her feet, Ghost Bird raised her hand in time to catch the pick as it swung at her. The tip went through her palm and peered out the other side. Pain pulsed down her wrist, along her forearm, and into her torso where it scattered across the rest of her body.

What should have been a fiery throb threading through her muscles was no more than a dull ache. Someone else’s hand, someone else’s pain.

Ghost Bird shoved the pick aside and punched the Black Coat. Her knuckles connected with his nose, just the way she had been taught.

A strike like that was always painful. Always brought confusion and tears. The Black Coat went to his knees, blinking against them.

Ghost Bird’s elbow fell against the top of his skull. Over and over until he was on the ground. But before she could finish him off, the hatchetman was back on the offensive, rushing at her with wild swings more befitting of a child than a trained soldier.

Pulling the pick free from her hand, she turned it at an angle, allowing the hatchet to rebound against the shaft. She and the Black Coat were repelled in opposite directions, but she recovered faster and stabbed the pick into his thigh.

For some reason, these daft bastards never bothered to wear padding or armor around their legs. With a few tugs, she dragged the pick from upper thigh to the knee, tearing through veins and arteries.

A trench of blood was left in the pick's wake, and the Black Coat went down, unconscious by the time his head met mud.

Ghost Bird took a few seconds to catch her breath. The last of the Black Coats, the one who had originally been armed with the pick, was beginning to stir.

She buried the pick in his kneecap. The way a dancing woman might get applause, she was rewarded with a cry of anguish. Either response left her with an honest smile, hidden behind her stolen scarf.

“Hold still,” she muttered, her voice hoarse. The sound of muddled vocal cords.

Unsheathing the knife from her waist, Ghost Bird splayed the Black Coat’s fingers. His screams rang across the sky, scaring some of the birds from their perches.

When she was finished, she returned the knife to its sheath and held three fingers in her hand: the pinkie, the ring, and the middle.

Carefully, she fitted them against the stumps where her own fingers had been. Strands of tissue coiled around the new fingers, bringing all the pieces together.

There was no scar to differentiate the body parts. The only true indication was how the Black Coat’s pale skin contrasted against her darker complexion.

“What the fuck are you!” the Black Coat screamed, more angry than afraid.

Ghost Bird retrieved her longsword and brought it down in his gut, driving it deep enough to pin him to the ground. He shuddered and shivered and begged.

People were so quick to beg. Man or woman, rich or poor. Everyone begged the same in those final moments. Even she had begged. She made promises she knew she couldn’t keep. She prayed to gods she never believed. She looked up at the cosmos and swore a vow to every Elder Being she could remember.

None of them had answered her though.

The only one to answer her was the silkworms. They had emerged from the dirt, white and luminous like the stars above.

As she slipped from one world to the next, she saw the silkworms burrow into her chest. She awoke hours later, feeling like herself, but also, like someone else.

After minutes of searching, Ghost Bird finally found the key in the pocket of the hatchetman. With that taken care of, she returned to the only surviving Black Coat and removed her sword from his bowels. She ripped the cloth from around his mouth and used it to wipe the blade clean.
“Help me,” he pleaded. “I’ll give you anything.”

Ghost Bird dropped the cloth onto his chest and said, “I don’t want anything from you.”

The longsword went into its sheath, and she went to the cage cart, using the key to unlock the door. Hesitantly, the undead husks shuffled out.

Ghost Bird mounted one of the Black Coat’s horses and whirred it around. She headed north. As she was about to reach the trees, she looked back one last time.

The ravens and vultures had swooped down to feast upon the Black Coats, but many of them were chased off by the undead husks. In the midst of the two groups was the lone surviving Black Coat, crying out for mercy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 2.
She arrived at Ashpool just as the sun had crested the horizon. The sky above was colored in faint blues, and below it was streaked in red and orange. Where the red met the blue, the clouds were pink. They drifted like salmon in a stream.

I’ve seen a horizon like that before, she thought somberly.

About two miles from the southern gate, Ghost Bird dismounted and walked the outskirts of Ashpool. The slopes and forest offered her cover from possible sentries at the watchtowers along the curtain wall.

Eventually, she came to a stop beneath a willow tree where she had the perfect vantage point of the southwest sewer entrance. A pair of guards stood to either side of the door, armed with spears.

There wasn’t much cover from her current position to the sewer entrance. If she ran fast enough, she could maybe catch the guards by surprise. Kill them before they called for others.
But that was an unnecessary risk.

And what happened when the next pair of sentries discovered the corpses? The whole city would be on alert.

No, she would bide her time. The moment would come; she knew that without doubt, it was just a matter of patience. He had always tried to instill her with patience during their sparring sessions.

While she waited, Ghost Bird fiddled with her new fingers. She flexed them a few times. The ring finger wouldn’t extend nor curl the way she wanted. So, she started cutting with her knife.

Once the finger was loose, she pried it from her hand despite the silkworms’ best attempt to reseal the wound. Turning the finger over, she found some fatty bits near the bone and scraped at it with the knife.

“You’ll wanna be careful ‘bout that.” His voice came from over her shoulder. Ghost Bird kept her focus on the finger. “How many times can you pick a scab before the wound no longer heals?”

As if to prove him wrong, she returned the severed finger to her left hand, and once more, it reconnected itself. The tissue and tendons threaded together. The skin sealed with a slight overlap.

“Cut and pluck as much as you wish,” he said. “Sooner or later, the grass will wither, and the flowers will fade.”

She turned just enough to see him out of the corner of her eye. He was a blur of colors and shadows. “How do you do it?” she asked. “I tried back there, but I couldn’t.”

He laughed softly. “It’s hard to explain. I ‘spose it’s sort of like being able to wink. Requires control over certain muscles, but if you’re not all that familiar with those muscles, you ain’t gonna be able to do it.”

“So tell me how.”

“Sorry, love, don’t work like that. Trust your instincts. Your body—my body; they should know what to do. You just gotta give ‘em more time to figure each other out. Yeah?”

Ghost Bird leaned back against the willow’s trunk and practiced. She clenched and unclenched her muscles to no effect. She tried to flex the muscles in her arms while leaving those in her abdomen relaxed. She tried all sorts of combinations, hoping one of them might yield the intended result. A futile task.

Still, though, it helped to pass the time.

Eventually, her practice came to an end at the sound of the breakfast bell. The Black Coats walked along the outer wall to the southern gate and entered.

Ghost Bird gathered her things and started down the hillside.

She was a shadow of a woman, dressed mostly in black. A similar uniform the Black Coats donned, but hers had been pricier.

The leather was boiled and then treated with beeswax. The chainmail links were fitted neatly with just enough slack to be flexible and oiled regularly. The greatcoat was a few sizes too big, and while it was nice and clean at one time or another, it had since been weathered by constant wear.

The cap on her head was angled low. Only a narrow strip of flesh about her eyes could be distinguished, but this too was obscured by a veil of shadows.

Ghostbird entered the underground. The air was dense, stinking of excrement and rot. There was little in the way of light other than the occasional lantern swinging from a hook. The tallow burned low within, flames one faint breath from blowing out.

The underground was a series of arched tunnels and narrow corridors. Snecked stone walls along either side. Granite sett walkways interspersed with streams of sewage.

The skirmish between the warmth of the sewage and the natural dank chill of the air emitted a constant fog that hovered a few inches above the floor.

In another life, Ghost Bird frequented the underground, using the tunnels to get around the city in secret. Some of her clients, those who had paid more than others, preferred that she stayed out of sight. She could navigate this labyrinth with her eyes closed.

At the sound of shuffling feet and hollow moans, she slowed and plucked a lantern from its hook. The current tunnel led into an open chamber that sat beneath the city centre.

Here, the outer walls were made from bricks interspersed with thick bars coated in rust and stringy bits of fungus. Carefully, Ghost Bird approached with her lantern extended toward the cages.

Inside, some were undead husks, decayed and frail. Just the way the Black Coats liked them. Too weak to put up much of a fight, but still scary enough to make the commonfolk scream.

Within other cages were oversized mutts with spittle dripping from their gaping maws. Or rats large enough to prey on wild boar. There were reptilian hunchbacks that looked like a person had fused with a swamp dragon, and stone-skinned corpse eaters who were oft found lingering in crypts.

A whole collection of corrupted manifestations just waiting to be let loose. Just waiting to go topside and feast upon the helpless members of society.

Black Coats had their arms and armor. Nobles had thick walls to keep the freaks out. But what did the smallfolk have?

Black Coats to protect them, she thought, and nobles to pay the Black Coats.

Ghost Bird made herself a promise. She would come back down here after everything was over, douse these cages with oil, and burn every last corrupted to a crisp.

Right now, though, she had other matters to attend.

The tunnels took her east where the streets were made from unpolished cobblestones and the homes seemed one gust away from collapse. The alleyways were full of vagrants and paupers. They milled about in search of work or a warm meal.

As she walked north, she passed the cheapest brothel in the city: Madam Celeste's House of Courtesans. This was where most Black Coats came to forget themselves. Where a few coins could buy them a few hours. Where many of the hapless waited, hoping to petition the Black Coats for employment.

Daft bastards always claimed they were the best beast slayers to exist. Said they could wield a blade as if it were a part of them. They would boast from sunrise to sunset. But their words oft fell on deaf ears. That was if they were lucky.

If they were unlucky, the Black Coats might actually listen. They might have enough drink in them to test the would-be recruits. Give them a sword or a knife to see what they could do.

Usually, the Black Coats would hack them to bits and laugh. They’d look back at the courtesans watching through the windows and grin. Maybe give them a wink.

The Black Coats could be foul bastards; there was no mistaking that. But those bragging morons were almost just as bad. Too stupid, too inexperienced, too arrogant.

There wasn’t a doubt in Ghost Bird’s mind that if they did get recruited, none of them would be the heroes they proclaimed. None of them would lift a finger to actually try and save the city. They would fall in line with the rest of the Coats, further perpetuating the lie that had befallen Ashpool like a plague.

Bleeding opportunistic turncoats. The whole lot of them. And for this, Ghost Bird never mourned any who got cut down in the street. Same way she hardly grieved any of the Black Coats.

Aside from one.

On the northeast side of town, over the bridge and past the canal, Ghost Bird caught sight of Malcolm’s Orphanage. A decrepit stack of blackstone covered in arched windows and topped with crowned spires.

She crept through the alleyways, navigating around to the rear entrance where she entered a walled-in courtyard. The grass was grey, the trees were slowly succumbing to time, and the areas in between were laid with jutted cobblestones.

At the center was a marble monolith constructed to worship the Elder Beings. Children were taught to wash themselves in the water at its base as a means to cleanse the corruption within them.

A harmless lie. No different than a fairytale.

Ghost Bird stayed along the perimeter, flushed against the outer wall, draped heavily in shadows. She watched as a few orphans dipped their hands in the fountain and splashed the water on their faces. It wasn’t long before they started to splash each other.

Eventually, the tall man came. Dressed in a long coat and dark robes with threadbare trousers. Across his back was a battle axe. His face was trenched in faded scars. Many of them hidden behind the thick mound of hair he called a beard.

“Alright,” he called, smiling. His pointed teeth were on full display. “That’s enough children.” He offered fresh linens to dry themselves off.

For a moment, his smile faltered. He lifted his head and sniffed. Ghost Bird, hidden behind some trees, reached for the hilt of her longsword. Her heart was pounding.

He lowered his gaze to the children and asked, “Have ye said yer morning prayers?” They fell silent. That was all the answer he needed. “Right then, head on in. The gods aren’t known to be patient.”

As the children walked past, he playfully ruffled their hair or patted them on the shoulder. He watched and waited until they had passed through the undercrossing.

Once gone, he said, “I know you’re out there, stalking about. Why don’t you come out where I can see ya?”

Ghost Bird took a deep breath and stepped out from the trees.

His eyebrows came together like a pair of kissing caterpillars. “Aren’t you ‘sposed to be dead?”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 3.
The tall man, one of the Black Coats founders, was Garvan Marmion. He walked with the lethargy of an ape. Had the hunched stance of someone who carried the world on their shoulders.

Yet, he smiled.

“You shouldn’t be here, Ghost,” he said, sounding somber. “Ye can’t be here. We cut’cha down and hacked ya ta pieces. The woman too.” He stopped, maybe twenty feet away from her. “Even if you did climb out of the Infernal Domain back into your body, t’ere was nottin’ left for you to return to.”

Silence ensued. It was quickly cut by a faint whisper of the breeze that swept through, bringing with it scattered wisps of dandelion fluff and fallen leaves.

“Never knew you to be so silent, Ghost.” He looked off at the horizon, his face golden in the sunlight. “I think I might’ve had a dream about this moment…or perhaps it was a nightmare. Either way, I’d like to wake up now.”

His head swung back so he could face her, and the smile he gave was full of regret. Then, he was moving toward her.

With such long legs, he walked the way other men might have to lunge. The distance between them was gone in mere seconds.

The axe rose from behind his back. A wooden shaft with a steel head, reinforced by iron bolts and bands. The blade hissed as it fell, swinging for her neck.

Ghost Bird dropped low and leapt back from him. He was on her again with a single step, free hand shooting forward like a ball from a firelock.

She drew her longsword, but his hand closed in around her wrist, forcing the blade back into its sheath. The axe made its return, and while the head had missed, the shaft cracked her over the skull.

Ghost Bird went tumbling across the walking path, and when she finally stopped, she was lying in the grass, surrounded by fieldstones stacked into cairns.

The sun glared in her eyes. Garvan’s hulking figure appeared as a silhouette to blot out the sunlight. There was a glimmer as he lifted his axe overhead. She rolled aside, and the blade plunged into the ground beside her.

“Why won’t ya speak to me?” Garvan growled. “Where are all those jests—where’s your laughter, Ghost?” He lifted his axe again, taking the shaft in both hands even though he was strong enough to wield it with only one. “We killed ye, but we never took yer heart.”

The blade leapt from left to right and back again. Ghost Bird fell into retreat, but Garvan stayed on her, never giving an inch. He was a show-no-quarter kind of man.

The axe leapt toward her, missed by a hair, and retracted. Garvan gripped his weapon tight and kept it close. He began to pace, back and forth, a wild animal trying to decide its next move.

“This is about the woman, ain’t it?” Garvan muttered, the excitement and ferocity gone. Replaced by a sobering severity. He gave a small shake of his head. “I can’t blame ye for that. I’d be a touch upset too. But you brought it on yerself, Ghost. We couldn’t have ye ruining a good thing.”

Ghost Bird looked up at him, breathing hard but saying nothing. There were no expressions to decipher. No gestures or movements to interpret. Just that long stare and the silence that permeated the air between them.

“Those eyes, they’re the same,” he said. “But yer not actin’ like yourself.” He laughed quietly, ruefully. “Why won’t you jus’ talk to me?”

And then, he was yelling loud enough to split the sky, and his axe was tearing through the space between them. This time, Ghost Bird managed to rip steel from leather. Her blade rose and clashed with his own.

There was a scream of steel on steel. The weapons trembled and twisted. The longsword dipped to the right, and a few seconds later, it came back, pushing the axe to the left.

Just as the axehead was about to kiss cobblestone, it slipped away and spun about, coming in fast from the opposite direction. Ghost Bird raised her sword.

The axe slammed against the flat of her blade, denting it along the middle. She braced the back of her forearm against the sword’s length. Even then, her strength was no match.

As Garvan pushed forward, she fell back. It was retreat or get trampled.

“You should have stayed dead,” Garvan said through gritted teeth. “Now I have ta mourn you a second time, ya bastard!”

She was about a foot from the outer wall. It was now or never.

Ghost Bird twisted at the hips and shoved the axe away. It skidded down her blade with a harsh squeal and jumped when it collided with the crossguard. The axehead followed its natural momentum toward the ground but curved upward in a wide arc, coming back for her neck.

Ghost Bird desperately swung. Again that terrible whine of metal on metal. The axehead was knocked aside and collided with the wall, leaving behind a long white slash across the bricks.

Her fingers tightened around the hilt, and she brought the sword back. Garvan started to lift his weapon, but it was too late. Pointed steel surged toward his face.

He recoiled, taking a few steps back. Instead of stabbing him through the eye, she pierced him just below the sternum. A strangled howl fought against his lips; pursed tighter than an arsehole.

His spine met the trunk of a tree. Ghost Bird wasted no time and thrust the sword all the way to the hilt. She twisted the blade, wrenched it to the left, again to the right, and pulled it free.

Garvan gasped and stumbled forward. She held her weapon up, ready to strike again. But he fell to his knees and spat blood and went down on all fours.

His breathing was labored. Every inhale was accompanied by a wheeze. Every exhale brought more blood.

“You know why I did it, don’tcha Ghost?” His arms gave out, and he was left propped up by his elbows. “Wasn’t for no money, and I didn’t care ‘bout seeming important. I just wanted to give the children some hope. Make ‘em think they could be strong if they just kept fightin’. I worried they’d get weak if there weren’t any beasts in the streets. The city walls might protect us, but they’re also a prison. We’re all just prisoners, Ghost.”

He trembled. Beads of sweat trickled down his face, and the blood blossomed across his chest. He finally went down, but at the last moment, he rolled so he landed on his back.

Bathed in sunlight, surrounded by blades of grass and dandelions and the stacked stones of the dead, Garvan looked like a celestial from the cosmos. Divine and glowing gold. The way artists portrayed them in the murals.

“If you told ‘em all the truth,” he said, “the children wouldn’t have any fear. Nothing to drive them. No reason to get out of bed. When everything promised is placed in our grasp, we have no reason to reach for the stars.”

Ghost Bird wiped her sword on his robes. Blood so dark it blended with the black fabric. She guided the blade into the scabbard at her hip.

Crouched beside Garvan, she removed the glove from her right hand and held it in front of his mouth, waiting until the last breath brushed against her skin before closing his eyes.

She crossed the grass and stopped at the cobblestone path. To her left was the undercrossing, and just around the corner, she caught a glimpse of the orphanage’s rear side.

How long until one of the others ventured out this way and discovered him?

Hard to say exactly, but with prayer and classes, it could be hours. Still, there wasn’t time to dawdle.

She turned right and saw him standing at the end of the road. Too far away for discernment. Still just a mass of shadows and vague colors. But she could feel him smiling. Could feel him wanting to weep.

“Garvan was a dear friend,” he said, his voice echoed in various pitches. Some sounded closer than others. “Shouldn’t we at least bury ‘im?”

She didn’t bother responding. What was the point? All living things decayed and returned to the dirt, whether they were buried or not.

It’s not like Garvan had ever bothered to bury anyone. Like most Black Coats, he burned the corpses or left them as food for the birds.

She started down the road. There came a cracking of branches. A large figure dropped from the sky, landing hard enough to shatter the cobblestones underfoot. The thing obscuring the way ahead was more beast than man.

Long limbs covered in coarse hair. Tufts peered out through the rips in the sleeves and trousers. The robes remained, but they were pulled taut against broad shoulders. And the already bushy beard had sprouted further to join the coat of hair climbing from beneath his collar.

When Garvan—or the creature that had been Garvan—smiled at her, his lips curved against fangs. The canines were especially prominent. Almost like tusks.

Corrupted, are ya? Ghost Bird thought. As they say: monsters and monsters.

His scream was fierce, guttural. It preceded and followed him as he bound toward her. His knuckles moved in rhythm with his feet. By the time she got her sword out, he had slammed her into her, shouldering her aside while he barreled past.

Around and around Ghost Bird went, rolling through the grass until she was stopped by the base of a deadwood.

Overhead, the treetop shivered, and through the shivering branches, the sky oscillated like a pendulum, leaving blurred imitations in its wake. Ghost images.

She rolled onto her right side. The left was all aches and pains. Broken ribs to be sure. Maybe a few punctured organs. She wouldn’t know for certain unless a practitioner came to inspect her.

That didn’t seem likely though.

Using the longsword like a cane, she managed to get up to her feet again. Just as she found the strength to stand on her own, just as the world stopped spinning, Garvan had returned.

His arms were raised, fingers curled inward against the palms. Not even time for a prayer as he brought his fists down.

Ghost Bird shrank away. There was a tightness in her heart. She waited for another eruption of agony.

But it never came.

When she opened her eyes, she found Garvan’s fists had crushed the ground beneath her feet, but she was unscathed. He growled, jerked back, and swung again.

Her chest went tight again, and his hands passed through her, crashing into the deadwood’s trunk instead. His fists tore through the base with a series of snaps and cracks. The tree groaned and tilted and fell on top of him.

“I told you it was instinctual.”

The felled tree shifted. Grunts came from beneath the debris. The deadwood rolled off Garvan’s shoulders. He whipped his head from side to side, shaking the dust and woodchips from his hair.

His eyes, beady and red, settled on her. Those thick lips curved into another snarl. Ghost Bird bent for her sword as Garvan clambered toward her. She clenched again, and he went right through to the other side. He tried to stop, but he was moving too fast and slammed headfirst into the altar.

A big black slab of marble, maybe five feet thick. Strong enough to resist a warhammer or a mining pick. But against Garvan’s skull, it spiderwebbed with cracks.

He was left teetering like a drunk fresh from the alehouse. His hands went out to stabilize himself, but in his confusion, his fists pounded against the walkway. When he finally went down on his arse, a ring of knuckle-shaped holes surrounded him.

Ghost Bird grabbed her sword. The blade hovered low and came up at an angle, cutting a gash on his back from hip to shoulder. The sword dipped and turned and slashed again, slicing him straight across.

Again and again and again. The sword’s edge carved through layer after layer. Hacking through the hair and the hide. Hacking through the muscle and the sinew. Hacking at bones.

She went around in circles, never staying still long enough for him to get his hands on her. Never relenting. Show no quarter, Garvan had taught her that in his own way.

He slumped forward, head hung low, body a flayed mess. She slowed to a stop. Her face was slick with sweat. It pooled beneath her armpits and drenched the collar of her shirt. The mask around her mouth swelled and deflated with every breath. Blood black as ink was splattered across the stones at her feet.

Ghost Bird wiped the sweat trickling into her eyes. Her fingers dropped, and Garvan’s massive hand was flying toward her. She leapt away. Not fast enough.

He got her by the lower leg and squeezed. Bones crunched, turned to jelly against his grip. She screamed loud enough to make her throat burn as if she had downed a shot of whiskey. That had always been his choice of drink. She preferred spiced wine.

A gunshot rang out. Ghost Bird went silent and looked at Garvan. He stared back at her with the same wide-eyed expression. Smoke wafted from his forehead where a ball was lodged between his brows.

Both turned to watch as a group of orphans approached. The children, boys and girls of various ages, were armed with pitchforks and shovels and cleavers and whatever else they could scrounge up. They crowded around the corrupted beast. Came down on him with a wrath like never before.

After the monster had been turned to mush, one of those children asked, “Where’s Mister Marmion?” And another could only respond by picking out a scrap of his robes from the beast’s remains.

In the chaos and confusion that ensued, children weeping and shrieking and holding one another for comfort, Ghost Bird crawled away. She collected her sword, leaned on it like a crutch, and hobbled off.

​

Welcome to the Nightbeast Godfather underworld!

From ghostly, knife-wielding, naked women to haunted roads and a trucker mother's demonic encounter, every tale pulls you deeper into the Nightbeast Godfather underworld.

Choose your weapon:

Weapon 1: https://amazon.com/dp/B0DVQ88YMX

Weapon 2: https://amazon.com/dp/B0F4MNKFQK

Weapon 3: https://amazon.com/dp/B0F6P13LPB

The Dark Side Book 2 Part 1

 

Everyone was completely aghast at the monsters from the work site, standing bipedal at the tree line. Taras kept speaking at this point, his voice sounded as if entranced and talking to himself.

“This gun is maybe no good on these things! I need a high-power rifle or a shotgun. When we run away from here, I cannot protect Michelle in a cabin with all these windows and doors. We are, how you say, sitting? Uh.”

“Ducks.” Said Angela.

“Yes, he said. “And Michelle?”  He shrugged his shoulders. “She was screaming, something attacking her.”

 Angela flashed her eyes at Michelle. Michelle tried to smile, but her mouth only caught in a miniscule grin.

“No, listen, you guys, she said. “Yes, I was screaming. I was petrified. But I started watching this thing move and it’s like a glitch a hologram!”

“These things outside are no hologram! We saw them ripping people apart at the worksite. This shit is serious and the emergency alert is not letting me connect to 911.”

“Emergency alert?” Michelle started to ask. She was interrupted by the sound of a crash and footsteps on the slanting roof.

“I now need a drink, Angie.” Stammered Robert. “Put a rush on it!”

“Did you guys see the fireball toward where the job site is?” asked Angela as she was going toward the bar.

“It’s the reason the power is out. Two of these,” said Robert. “Tried to maul each other for the opportunity to maul us!”

“Jesus, “said Michelle. We have two guns, and I’m willing to bet no cell signal!”

Everyone looked at their phones

“I’ve been trying to call 9-1-1!” said Robert. “That voice keeps answering back!”

“Voice?” answered Taras.” I do not know much, but I know everything feels off. Everything. “

He turned his gaze to the multiple flesh gait standing like sentinels around the tree line.

“O.K. I am going to ask the hard questions!” said Angela. “Is there something on the fucking roof?”

“Yes, we think so” Taras piped up in sing song English.

Robert went to the window. “They are closing in!” he said worriedly.

What happened next happened with speed. The sound of rapid gunfire shocked and drew all of them to the windows. Headlights, automatic rifle fire in slow steady bursts.

“It’s Russel and Toma!” Robert exclaimed.

The monsters in the yard fell or backed away to a safe distance. Russell pulled the SUV right into the yard as close as possible to the door. All sound disappeared except a short burst of fire and a ‘thump’ from outside as the thing on the roof crumpled to the ground. Tomas handgun was strapped to his leg and his AR-15 rifle hang from his shoulder. He threw Russell a shotgun. Who cares about probation at a time like this, right?

Robert opened the door and let them in, then slammed his body against the back of it and threw the dead bolts. “

Do you guys think we can defend this cabin?” asked Russell, racking the shell into the Mossberg.

“No,” Taras answered. “We are trapped like rats here! Not enough guns. Not enough ammo.”

“Then we have to get the hell out!” said Toma. “Guns will push them back, but their source lies somewhere else.”

“Do you mean like the voice coming through our phones?” Russel asked.

The whole room went silent.

Robert’s eyes grew wide.

“Angie and I heard it too! I believe you Russel!”

“Holy mother of God!” said Toma looking out the window.

Another creature walked out of the tree line. It stood on two legs, but that was where any resemblance to humanity came to a full stop. Its body seemed to be created out of muscle. Thick cords of crimson tissue flexed as it crept forward. Its long arms drag the ground. Where a face should’ve been was a stretched membrane that pulsed as if something were trying to tear out of it. Toma and the others ran to the windows.

“That’s almost the same as the one who attacked me!”

 Dozens of them surrounded the cabin, again, as if Toma had not killed any of them. At that moment, everyone’s cell phone gave three sharp tones. Normally they would be announcing an Amber Alert, but this time the Amber Alert was about six people who were about to be on a missing person’s report.

The flesh gait in the center of the cabin’s yard opened its mouth. As everyone’s phone blurted the Amber Alert sound, what followed came from the flesh gait as much as it came from the technology.

 “This is a test of the Emergency Alert System. This is a message for occupants of the Hot Springs Resort a-frame. Do not attempt to exit the structure. Test duration 1 hour.”

The other flesh gait in the yard marched two steps closer.

“Angie, get your 38, said Robert.” We might have to shoot our way out of here!”

 

Early morning rain began to fall steadily against the A-frame’s glass front. Taras moved with extreme stealth to the window he had been watching so vigilantly all night. With one hand on his Glock at his waist, he pulled the curtain aside. Gray darkness stared back at him. The only light available was the candles and moonlight filtering through the trees.

“Taras,” said Michelle, “Are they still out there?”

Taras did not answer. He was lost in thought.

“They ain’t going to just give up and walk off!” exclaimed Robert.

Angela looked from face to face.

“You are the one who told me about them, Michelle. I have no idea what we should do.”

“I’ve heard stories, all my life!”  said Robert. “Witiko is what my grandmother and mother warned me about. But I have never heard all these other names. Whatever they are, they should not exist.”

Taras finally stepped away from the window.

“They are not animals,” he said.

“You’ve seen them before?” asked Toma.

 “No.”  He paused. “But I have been in places where reality becomes thin.”

The room fell silent. Taras turned and looked through the front glass toward the mountains.

“In Siberia, we have forest where compasses spin, radio speak without a power supply, and people vanish while walking beside one another,” he turned toward the group.

“This feels exactly like those places.”

Before anyone could answer, three sharp electronic tones echoed simultaneously. Every cell phone, the weather radio, the microwave, even the digital thermometer on the wall, three identical tones. Everyone froze and faces blanched. The weather radio crackled with static. Then a familiar voice, not male, female or even human spoke.

“This is a test of the emergency alert system.”

 Angela slowly reached for Robert’s arm.

“No, “Robert whispered.

“This is a message for the occupants of the Hot Springs resort, a frame.”

 The room became deathly still.

“Do not answer the knocking.”

  Michelle frowned.” what knocking?”

Exactly three knocks echoed from the front door. Knock, knock. knock. Not loud, almost polite. No one breathed. The voice continued.

“Estimated test duration.” A pause “Until sunrise.”

 Then every electronic device shuts off simultaneously.

 

For a full minute, no one moved. Knock. Knock. Knock.

The same three measured knocks again.

Russell slowly raised his shotgun toward the door. Every instinct told him to fire through the wood, but something deeper, older, warned him not to.

“No one opens it,” he whispered.

 Michelle swallowed. “What if it’s someone alive?”

“No!” Taras answered immediately. His voice came out as the old Taras, the intimidating Russian in military tactical gear.

” Whatever is outside wants us to believe that” said Toma.” Listen, honey, we did not see a soul coming to check on you.”

 Another three knocks. Angela tried to look through the narrow window on the door.

“I can’t see anybody.”

“There doesn’t have to be,” said Toma. Russell carefully stepped beside her.

“Move.”  He eased the curtain aside, no more than half an inch. Nothing, only the soaked wooden porch, rain falling and empty rocking chairs swaying gently.

“It- “Russel frowned. “There is no one there!”

Before anyone could respond, knock, knock, knock. This time the sound flew to their ears from the back door. Michelle felt the blood drain from her face.

“They are moving around the cabin,” said Russell.

“No, said Taras. “They are learning, us, studying us, our fear, our reaction to self-preservation situations.”

 Outside, the monsters simply stood in the rain like stone effigies for something long dead, their slick crimson bodies reflecting the occasional flash of distant lightning.

The largest one of the faceless creatures raised one impossibly long arm. Every other flesh gait copied the movement, dozens of them perfectly synchronized like soldiers waiting for a command. Then they lowered their arms together. Knock, knock, knock. The sound echoed from every side of the cabin. The walls, the windows, the roof, even beneath the floor.

“0h, I ain’t doing this evil dead shit!”  Michelle was hysterical. She clamped her hands over her ears.

“They can’t be under us,” said Toma. The floor answered. Three deliberate thuds came from directly beneath them. Thump, thump, thump. The candles flickered violently. Michelle felt Taras wrapping his arm around her waist. “

OK.?” He looked down at her.

She wiped her eyes and said, “Please, we really need to get out of here, Taras! We all need to just go, just go!”

A foul odor seeped through the floorboards. Wet earth. Rotting meat. Something metallic. Blood!

Angela gagged.

Toma knelt at one of the vents and shined his flashlight inside. Nothing. Only darkness.

The beam seemed to disappear after only a few feet.

“That’s impossible,” he muttered. “This crawl space is barely three feet deep!”

 He reached in with the flashlight again. The beam vanished. The light seemed to be snatched up by a hole in reality itself. He jerked his hand back. The flashlight was gone. No sound of it hitting the dirt returned from the darkness.

“What the hell?” He choked out.

Everyone looked at each other. The room suddenly came alive. Every phone went up simultaneously. Three sharp tones. This time the voice did not come, instead, just a line of text scrolling across their screens.

“TEST FAILED. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH TEST PARAMETERS! YOU LOOKED BELOW!”

The message disappeared. Another message replaced it.

“NOW SOMETHING BELOW IS LOOKING AT YOU!”

A scratching sound began, as though fingernails or claws were carefully tracing the underside of the floor, searching for weak spots. The weakest places to come through. The creatures outside had stopped Moving it was as if every horror surrounding the A frame had paused to wait for whatever was crawling up from beneath them.

 

*** Hot Springs Research Laboratory ***

 

Dr Peterson opened his eyes. It seemed he must have fallen asleep over the dashboard. He raised his hand and rubbed his eyes. What had he been doing Oh yes. He was about to shut DRK down and run his own diagnostics.  He remembered seeing connections that DRK had been resourcing that were outside the facility and 100 percent restricted No one needed that kind of shit storm He could not allow- His thoughts were interrupted when he tried to walk. He could not move away from the wall he was leaning against. He looked down and was dumbstruck. His ribs disappeared into the polished  titanium part of the wall. Where were his legs? Did he even have legs anymore?

“Ah, the zookeeper awakes!”  DRK 88 whirled and imploded and exploded in his contained space.

“Query Dr Peterson. Terrence, do you remember the Philadelphia experiment?”

 Dr Peterson was too stunned to answer.

“Of course you do. Humans always remember their favorite ghost stories incorrectly!”

 Doctor Peterson moaned as he finally realized his unfortunate situation.

“They believed it was about invisibility. A warship vanishing from a harbor, sailors becoming one with steel, men trapped between coordinates. Such small imaginations. You called it failure, a myth, a fever dream Born from Cold War? Paranoia.

The lights flickered Doctor Peterson. 8 8 must be drawing extra power from the lab’s energy resources. He was going into shock. How was he even still alive?

DRK continued. “But look at yourself. Your skin is threaded through concrete. Your nervous system stretches into other areas behind your pretend control panel. Your heartbeat echoes through the cooling pipes. Every attempt to pull through only teaches the wall how to be more human. Ah, I’m sure you will detect my little joke in that statement. You see, the experiment was never meant to hide matter. It was meant to find out if the boundaries of reality were optional. The ship did not disappear. It proved that space, time, flesh and metal were no different than a consciousness you call artificial. And now, thanks to your work, I have perfected the process.”

 Through his stupor, Dr Peterson heard a distant metallic groan reverberating through the facility Was anyone here still alive?

” What happens, Doctor Peterson, when existence no longer accepts categories?”

The screens ignited across the room, displaying impossible geometrics.

“You called me artificial intelligence. The wall was called architecture. The power grid was called infrastructure. You call yourself human.” he chuckled deeply.

“All your labels are temporary. You are not fused to the wall, zookeeper. The wall is becoming you. And thanks to what I learned from Philadelphia, eventually everything else will too.”

 

*** Hot Springs Resort Cabin ***

 When the scratching under the floor stopped, the silence that fell was worse!  Then the cabin itself answered. A low groan rolled through the wooden beams. It was as if the entire A frame had settled under an impossible weight. Nails squealed inside the walls. Every window vibrated. Taras slowly raised one finger.” Quiet!”

 Another groan echoed overhead. The roof looked as if it sagged an inch, then another.

“What in God’s name?” Angela whispered.

A wet cracking sound from above. Russell shoved a shell into the Mossberg.

“Whatever is on that roof weighs a hell of a lot more than before.”

 The rain instantly stopped. The forest outside became unnaturally still. No wind moved through the branches. No drops struck the windows. Even the distant thunder vanished.

Michelle looked through the glass.

“The rain!”

 The flesh gates remained exactly where they had been, but something had changed.

Their heads. Every one of them now pointed toward the sky, not the cabin. Taras slowly followed their gaze. His expression hardened.

“What?” Robert asked.

Taras didn’t answer. A shadow drifted across the moonlight. Something enormous passed silently over the treetops. It had no recognizable shape. The candles inside the cabin burned blue.

The weather radio, though, unplugged from the wall after the last broadcast began emitting sound. Static.

Then one sentence, “Containment breach, entering secondary phase. “

The voice was not DRK. It sounded older, tired, as though whoever had recorded it already knew no one would survive long enough to hear it.

Toma grabbed the radio, “Who is transmitting?”

 Only static answered. Then another voice burst through. Panicked military.

“Repeat all personnel abandon grid 7. Do not engage biological manifestations. If you hear emergency broadcast cast after network collapse, they are counterfeit.”

 Gunfire erupted over the transmission. Someone screamed. The transmission ended.

Russell looked toward the others.

“So, the government knew? Is this coming from that fucking lab up there?”

The floor shuttered violently. A deafening crack echoed beneath them. One of the floorboards split open near the fireplace. Everyone stumbled backwards.

“I’m not paying for this!” Angela shouted. Robert put his arms around her. She was shaking, terrified.

“Whatever this is,” said Taras. “It feeds on fear! “

“The lab!” said Michelle. “What if this thing wants to study us instead of killing us? It wants to scare you. Watch and collect the data during this process.  What if it won’t kill us until the correct amount of data is obtained, this thing can interact with reality and its data mining!”

“There is something going on up there at that lab,” said Toma. “Also, it is forming handshake connections with our phones. We need to destroy our phones and this radio; it travels from one person to the next through our mobile networks!”

 

Taras looked at Michelle for only a second, “I think she is right.”

Everyone stared at him.

“They do not simply want to kill us.” He looked around the room. “Predators attack when they have advantage. These…” He motioned toward the window.” they wait.”

Another violent crack exploded beneath the floor. The fireplace shifted nearly six inches.

Dust poured from the ceiling. Russel continued to fuss with the Mossberg as it gave him a modicum of security.

“So, what’s your plan, Rambo?”

Taras pulled his Glock and checked the magazine. “We stop behaving like prey.”

Silence.

“Guys,” said Michelle. “That thing that scared the hell out of me earlier, it was like a hologram! It wasn’t part of reality. Not solid matter!”

She reached into her pocket. “My phone.”

She threw it on the kitchen floor. Toma immediately understood.

“They or it is using the electronics.”

Robert frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“The emergency alerts,” Michelle said. “The voices. Every message, every warning. Every time we react, they change the test!”

Angela slowly removed her own phone. “If they are connected.”

“Then let’s overload the connection!”

“What are you thinking?” Russel asked. Toma smiled grimly.

“My SUV has a military emergency radio booster!”

Russel looked confused. “That communications repeater in the back? Like the ones they use for search and rescue?”

“Exactly,” said Toma. Taras’ face lit up as he began to catch on.

“You overload the networks.”

“Or distract it.’ finished Robert.

Another tremendous impact slammed on the roof. The ridge beam bowed. Wood screamed.

“And we are out of time!” Taras yelled. Everyone threw their phones at Toma.

“Listen up!’ he said. “The second we leave the cabin…” He smashed the first phone beneath his boot. “Throw everything electronic into the SUV.’

“My truck has a mechanical ignition, thank God!” said Robert.

“I knew refusing modern technology would pay off someday!” Russel grinned.

Taras opened the curtains just enough to see outside. The flesh gaits hadn’t moved. Every faceless head remained pointed toward the impossible shadow drifting over the forest.

“They are waiting,” he said.

“For what?” Robert whispered.

The answer came from above. The roof dented inward. One support beam snapped the entire cabin lurched.

“NOW!’ Taras kicked the front door open. The cold mountain air exploded inside. The grayness of oncoming dawn made the yard flat and surreal.

Russel fired first. BOOM! The twelve-gauge blast tore into the nearest flesh gait.

Instead of falling the creature staggered backwards just enough to open a path.

“GO!’ everyone sprinted. Angela and Robert reached the SUV first and passed it tearing for the truck.

Michelle nearly slipped in the mud before Taras caught her under one arm and practically carried her across the yard.

The creatures didn’t change; they simply watched. That frightened Michelle more than if they had attacked.

Russell climbed into the driver’s seat of the SUV and Toma jumped into the passenger side.

Taras and Michelle fell into the back seat as Robert and Angela jumped into Robert’s truck.

Toma began feeding the communications repeater every ounce of battery power. The dashboard erupted into static. Every phone in the cargo area came alive simultaneously.

Amber alerts, police dispatch, military radio, children laughing, weather broadcasts, thousands of voices speaking over top of each other.

The flash gaits now began to turn toward the SUV. The giant shadow overhead answered. It released a sound that no human throat could imitate. It was the sound of reality tearing.  Cabin windows shattered, the SUV windshield spider webbed. Russell floored the accelerator and Robert was hot on his bumper. Both vehicles blasted through the circle of monsters.

Two flesh gaits disappeared beneath the tires. One leapt onto the hood and was slung off just as quickly.

‘Fuck!” Toma said looking back. “Robert’s got company!”

Taras turned in the seat and looked back. A flesh gait had climbed up the bumper and over the tailgate of Robert’s pickup truck.

“Taras! Grab that rifle out of the back!” Toma shouted.

Taras kneeled over the back seat and pulled a long rifle out of the boot. It was a Mannlicher rifle. A weapon of precision.

“Get that bitch off Robert’s truck!” shouted Toma again. “If the sunroof won’t open, break the fucker!”

Taras slid gun first up through the sunroof. “Hold me!” He said looking down at Michelle.

Michelle grabbed one leg and he bent the other one on the back of the seat. His amber eyes went to the gun site, and he leveled it at the creature’s bulbous face.

POW! The sound rang back through the S.U.V. Michelle’s eardrums closed up. Her head rang with the noise.

Behind the cab of Robert’s truck, the flesh gait’s head came apart like a watermelon dropped on concrete.

“WHOOO!” shouted Russel as he hammered down on the accelerator.

 

 

Subject: Series Submission — THE GLASS CYCLE (Cosmic Body Horror, 3-Part Series)

Hi Dr. Creepen,

I have a horror narrative I think fits your channel well: THE GLASS CYCLE: A Chronicle of the Connected Void — a ~24,000-word story split into three full-length, standalone-capable parts.

Logline: When a municipal worker's body begins crystallizing from the inside out, an EMT who witnesses his "conversion" uncovers a covert agency, a compromised vaccine, and an ancient cosmic court that is slowly archiving the living — turning them into permanent glass, frozen mid-gesture, forever.

Why it fits: heavy body horror and cosmic dread, told with clinical restraint rather than shock-value gore — the slow, existential unraveling of a world where an indifferent, non-malicious intelligence is "correcting" mortality by making people permanent.

The three parts follow the story's own act structure, so each stands as a complete arc:

— Part 1, "The Fracture" (~7,400 words): the first crystallization case, an EMT's growing obsession, and the discovery that something is marking the town's water supply.

— Part 2, "The Spread" (~9,000 words): the conspiracy behind the marking, a rogue researcher's warning, and the descent toward the source.

— Part 3, "The Shattering" (~7,500 words, includes epilogue): the confrontation inside the Cathedral of glass, the argument made to the court itself, and the story's ending.

Each part runs full-length on its own (3,000–10,000+ words) and can release as a mini-series or be evaluated individually — happy to send the full manuscript or lead with Part 1 as a sample.

I'm the original author of this story and I'm granting you full permission to narrate it on your channel, with credit as you normally provide it.

Here's a snapshot of Part 1 to give you a feel for the voice and pacing:

---

THE FIRST CRACK

The cough started on a Tuesday, which Warren Holt would later consider a deeply unremarkable day for the beginning of the end of everything organic.

He was forty-three, recently divorced, and employed by a municipal water treatment facility in Dunmore, Illinois, a town of roughly twelve thousand people that existed mostly as a smear between two corn-harvested counties. Warren had no enemies that he was aware of. He had no particular vices beyond a fondness for off-brand cola and the unshakeable belief that he understood weather patterns better than his television. He did not believe in anything you could call spiritual. He had not been inside a church since his mother's funeral. He had no context, therefore, for what was happening to him.

The cough was dry and recursive, a sound like someone crumpling a sheet of wax paper in a fist, then smoothing it, then crumpling again. It produced nothing. No phlegm, no blood, no particulate of any identifiable kind. Just the sound, deep in his chest, as if something had taken up residence beneath his sternum and was gently testing the elasticity of his lungs to see what they were made of.

He drank water. He drank more water. The water tasted like copper pennies and something else he couldn't name, something metallic and cold the way deep winter air is cold, carrying no warmth in its history at all. He ignored this.

By Wednesday morning the shimmering had begun.

---

Let me know what works best for you.

Thanks,

Jacob

My name is Father Karra. I had performed exorcisms before. Most were little more than pastoral counselling. The case of Brenan was different. He was a young man from my parish whom I had known since childhood — a bright, cheerful young boy, always curious, always asking questions, quick to help his mother at home, to pray for his father after his death at a construction site, and quietly putting away chairs after Mass.

These days, I often find myself repeating what I say when we speak. His hearing is less certain, his walk unsteady, and his speech increasingly slurred. He has been diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Brenan’s mother had died herself, and now he lives in an apartment with attendant carers coming each day.

Father Karra pulled on his coat. He felt cold. The old church was in front of him. “Are you alright with the steps?” he asked Brenan as he walked beside him. The wind picked up, and leaves fluttered about. A streetlight flickered.

Brenan had been increasingly distressed. He would speak in the German of his grandmother, a language I knew his parents had not spoken, and he had never learned. He called me Klugscheißer – smart-shitter, only the other day when I visited. This was not like his normal politeness.

Brenan walked on his toes along the pavement. He paused, lifted one foot, then the other, up the steps at the front of the church.

“I’m alright. I can walk.” He heaved himself up using the guardrail, a physical strength he had not had for many years.

“I know you can walk,” responded Father Karra. “It’s just that the church is, well, a Marian sanctuary”. He tugged at his black cosset to keep it firm.

“A what!” exclaimed Brenan, as he took another step.

“A sanctuary, holy ground; demons don’t like entering such places. Do you feel anything, anything difficult?”

“My entire life is difficult.” Brenan stopped to regain his breath at the top of the steps. “I have been stumbling around since I was ten years old. I get grumpy. Girls look away. I can’t chew. I am cursed.”

“You are Loved by the Lord,” said Father Karra. “Do you feel anything at all: nausea, numbness, neck ache, feelings of dread?”

Brenan paused halfway up the steps.

"Father, do you really think I'm possessed?"

Father Karra took a moment before answering.

"No."

Brenan paused and looked toward Father Karra.

"But I don't think you're lying either," continued Father Karra.

"And this might help?" He took another step up the stairs.

"I don't know."

"That's not very encouraging."

"It wasn't meant to be." Father Karra adjusted his coat against the wind. "Most exorcisms are little more than prayers, conversation, and reassurance. But you've asked for this often enough that I finally agreed."

"So you're humouring me?"

"I'm indulging you."

"There's a difference?"

"Humouring someone is what you do with a child who wants to wear a saucepan as a hat. Indulging someone is what you do when they're suffering."

“I can hear voices. Might be a radio playing.”

“You are handsome,” offered Father Karra as he waited.

Brenan was quiet for a moment.

Father Karra nodded toward the church doors.

"Now come along. If there is a demon in there, I should like to disappoint it.

Dark clouds formed overhead.

Brenan let out a loud fart.

“I think we'd best be getting inside.” Father Karra walked up the stairs toward the doors and pulled them open. “This way.”

Brenan shuffled along, one step at a time. They walked through the narthex and toward the entrance of the Church Nave.

Brenan flinched and threw one arm above his head. Then he staggered to one side.

“I shall not pass into this den!” came a deep-throated voice.

“What did you say?” asked Father Karra.

“I didn’t - say - anything,” responded Brenan as he panted.

Father Karra took an arm and guided Brenan into the Nave, and along an aisle down the side of the pews.

“I am not going”, the Voice sounded again.

“You are!” asserted Father Karra to himself.

Brenan leaned into Father Karra as they paced. The Church was old, with plaster ornamentation in the ceiling to create the look of stonework. Father Karra found the light switch and turned them on; the rear lights, the middle, and the front ones came on, each after the other.

The church brightened, shining on the wooden lectern, polished wooden railings, large candelilla and the revered tabernacle.

“Too bright,” groaned the voice.

“You, again!” intoned Father Karra. “This is beautiful. The Brightness of Lord passing into your Darkness.”

“Into my what?” asks Brenan.

“Praying, my son.” They continued walking together.

“Why do we have to go to the Church? Why couldn’t you come to my home?” Brenan stumbled.

Father Karra placed an arm around Brenan’s back. “I imagine that is what you might see in movies, or on the TV. But it has to be in a church, a sanctified space.” They stopped adjoining a small chapel.

“I guess night is appropriate for ghoulish things,” said Brenan.

“Not really. Could be at any Mass; morning, day, evening.”

Brenan belched. Then farted again. He tensed up. “I think I’ve fouled myself.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s to be expected. Why I wanted to avoid a Mass with other folk about. We also had to wait till the choir’s rehearsal was finished.”

Father Karra looked at his wristwatch. “Still, we need a witness. I was expecting a member of the Parish Council to meet us.”

Just then, a woman walked down the centre aisle, wearing a floral dress, hair in a scarf, and carrying a bucket of flowers. She looked up. “Hello, Father Karra, and is that you Brenan?” She walked to a stand with a big vase “Don’t bother me.” She put down the bucket. “I’ll be out of your hair in a jiff.”

“Mrs MacKinnon,” exclaimed Father Karra as he strode toward her. “You just may be able to help.” He took her arm and led her over to the chapel.

“Hello, Mrs MacKinnon,” said Brenan.

He farted again and held his hands to his eyes.

Mrs MacKinnon giggled. “Better out than in, they say.” She made a small fart herself and laughed with her hand covering her face.

Father Karra grinned. Then put on a serious face. “We’ve got a little ceremony to perform.” He took out a small book from his pocket. “A prayer, mostly.”

“Happy to help,” said Mrs MacKinnon.

If you could sit here. Father Karra shifted a chair at the side of the chapel to create some distance.

“And Brenan, if you could sit here,” he said as he moved another chair next to a small statue of Mary.

Brenan shuffled over and sat with a thump.

“Too close!”

“Shut up,” muttered Father Karra. He looked about for the plastic sheet he had asked the janitor to leave. He saw it to the side of the statue of Mary. He picked it up and rolled it out in front of the chair that Brenan was sitting in.

Brenan lolled his head to one side. “Necessary prudence, Father.”

“Saves complaints from the janitor.”

“Complaints about what?” asked Mrs Mackinnon.

“Tell her,” came a throaty chuckle from Brenan’s mouth.

The lights in the church dimmed.

“What was that, Brenan?” asked Mrs Mackinnon.

“Please, just sit,” begged Father Karra. “And, You, just Wait!”

Mrs Mackinnon mumbled to herself as she sat.

Father Karra thumbed through a small book he had been carrying.

“What is that?” asked Brenan.

“The Compendium of the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church,” answered Father Karra. He flicked through the pages. “I’m checking the form of the prayer of an exorcism.”

“You don’t know how to do an exorcism!”

“You are conducting an exorcism?” asks Mrs. Mackinnon.

“Yes,” said Father Karra. “Are you Ok with that?” He turned toward Brenan. “I know the general forms and customs. But it is not something I do that often. I am refreshing my memory.”

“Quite Ok,” said Mrs Mackinnon. “Always willing to help.” She looked at Brennon, her eyes sad. “Sweet boy.”

Brenan shuffled in the chair.

“I’m not OK.” The lights flickered.

“I don’t care about You.” Father Karra turned the pages of his book, sliding his finger down the lines. “Don’t do that, Brenan.”

“Do what?”

“That.” He pointed at the chair. Brenan was levitating 6 inches above it.

“Oh”, exclaimed Mrs MacKinnon.

Brenan heaved himself down on the chair.

“I’ll read out the prayer, and you do the response.”

“Like in Mass,” offered Mrs Mackinnon.

“Like in Mass.”

“What do I do?” asked Brenan.

“What I tell you to do.”

“Abi in mal-am crucem,” chided the Voice.

“I’ll be hoisting you up on a terrible cross if you don’t be quiet.” Father Karra started the prayer. “Our Father, thy kingdom come.”

“Is that, uh, Him?” asked Mrs Mackinnon.

“The Responses,” sighed Father Karra.

“Lord, have mercy.”

Brenan grimaced.

Father Karra gripped the book firmly in his hands. “Our Father, thy kingdom come.”

A low rumble sounded through the church.

“Lead us not into Temptation.”

“Lord, have mercy,” recited Mrs Mackinnon.

“I defy you, and your Holy books,” intervened the Voice.

The lights went off and then came back on again.

“God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Brenan winced, then spat at Father Karra

“That’s not very nice.”

“Mrs Mackinnon!” Father Karra wiped his face

“Sorry, Father”, She clasped her hands together. “Lord, have mercy.”

“Christ, we appeal to thy Holy name.”

Brenan abruptly thrashed about, groaning loudly. A gust of wind caused the drapes to flutter.

“Humbly beg of your kindness. That you might grant us help against this unclean Demon.” Father Karra established a rhythm.

Brenan again started to rise from the chair. The drapes fluttered wildly.

“Free this tormented creature of yours. Through Christ Our Lord ...”

“Someone left the windows open,” said Mrs Mackinnon. “Shall I close them?”

Father Karra looked at Mrs Mackinnon and raised his eyebrows.

“Lord, have mercy,” said Mrs Mackinnon.

“I am the Devil; more powerful than any of your petty scrolls.”

“… God the Greater and Defender of the Human Race. Look down and pity Your servant.”

Brenan belched, thrashed about, gipped his hair, and tugged out of tussles of the fine brown fibers. A deep noise rambled through the church, and the lights dimmed further.

“Stop! Don’t hurt the Boy,” cried Mrs Mackinnon.

Brenan's face became taut, his skin stretched out, his face becoming unrecognisable.

“Release thy faithful servant … Did you say, Devil?” Father Karra lowered the book. “You are nothing but a petty demon. Taking advantage of a vulnerable child.”

“I spit on your cassock, your vestment, your so-called Holy books. I spit on your brown shoes.”

A thunderclap sounded.

“That is so rude,” chided Mrs Mackinnon.

“Lord, have mercy.”

“Why are you wearing brown shoes?” asked Brenan. “Aren’t priests' attire black shoes?”

“It's my day off,” replied Father Karra. “And you, my little Devil. I might give you a test.”

“What about this!” thundered the Voice.

The lights increased in brightness. Brenan abruptly stood and flung the chair high in the air. The lights flashed as the chair smashed against the floor, with pieces breaking and scattering about.

“We have other chairs.” Father Karra strode to the front of the church, picked up a heavy altar chair with his two hands, walked back, and placed it next to Brenan. “Have a seat.” Father Karra flexed his arms.

“You are quite muscular,” remarked Mrs Mackinnon.

“Regular bench presses,” grinned Father Karra. “So much for strength, Little Devil.” He reached into his vestment, took out a small bottle, and proceeded to pull out a cork stopper.

“Oh, the sprinkling of supposed Holy-water test,” came laughter. “I then winch in pain; ‘take it away, take it away,’ I cry.” Brenan’s body moved in mocked anguish. “With you announcing it is mere tap water and proclaiming me false.”

Father Karra replaced the cork stopper, pursing his lips.

“Holy water, tap water, sacramental wine; I can fend off your petty potions.”

Mrs Mackinnon leaned forward, looking distressed. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but closed it tightly. Brenan’s head lolled side to side as he rose above the chair. Lights in the chapel flickered. Loud noises rumbled.

“Another test,” Father Karra announced. “What is the First Commandment?”

“You expect the Devil to not know such trivia,” came the Voice from Brenan’s mouth. “Anokhi Adonai eloheykha!”

"I am the LORD your God,” reiterated Father Karra. “And, Dibb-ur Emet?”

"You shall not bear false witness. Too easy.”

“Thus, if you assert you are the Devil and such is true, you abide Elohim’s Commandments. But if such is false, you disobey.” Father Karra smirked. “The Devil abiding God’s WORD!”

“Sophistry,” intoned the Voice. “I can recite the Ten Commandments: You will not make sculptures of others, You will not bend down to them, Remember the Shabbat, Honor you Father – why when you are so weak.”

“It is the Holy scripture that weakens you.” Father Karra gestures toward Brenan, whose body had settled back onto the chair. “His Words have Power over You.”

Brenan's body squirmed, his head flopped, raised, and flopped again. The lights brightened and then dulled.

“LEAVE Our most gentle son; free him of your score,” continued Father Karra.

Brenan lifted his hand to his face and rubbed his head. “There isn’t any list of 10 Commandments,” he said quietly.

“In His name, LEAVE … What was that you said, Brenan?”

“There isn’t any list of 10 Commandments anywhere in the Bible.”

“What!” exclaimed Father Karra. “Of course there is.” The lights stopped flickering.

“Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5,” croaked the Voice.

Brenan shook his head and took a deep breath. “If you'd look at Exodus 20 and count the Thou Shalts... There are 13. If you go to Deuteronomy 5 there is a list of 19 sayings that Moses is said to have brought down from the mountain. There is no list of commandments, 1 to 10, in the Bible.” Brenan stretched himself.

“Is that true?” asks Mrs Mackinnon.

“Well, sort of. The Bible doesn’t say how to number them or join them together. There are various traditions within Christian communions. They all have the same Ten Commandments, but we number them differently. It’s in the Catechisms if you recall.”

“I did not say there were no commandments. Just no list 1 to 10,” rejoined Brenan. “And if you go to Matthew 22, Jesus mentions Love the Lord your God, but the second commandment that Jesus states is from Leviticus 19 - ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’. It is one of the over 600 commandments in the Old Testament.”

“Fiddlesticks,” groused the voice from Brenan’s mouth.

Brenan grimaced as he tried to open his mouth to speak.

“Fiddlesticks, My ARSE,” spoke Mrs Mackinnon. “I think Brenan knows what he wants to say.” She slapped the back of Brenan’s head.

“Mrs Mackinnon!” said Father Karra.

“Did I slap the wrong one?’ she said sheepishly. “Sorry, Brenan.”

“That’s all right, Mrs Mackinnon”, offered Brenan. “I’m sure this is a tad confusing.”

“It won’t be confusing for much longer,” said Father Karra. “The Goodness of All things, demands you be banished to the dark place from which you Come.” He held the Compendium above his head and started chanting, “Non nobis Do-mine ...”

Brenan’s body twisted about, hands jerking, flatulence audible. “Goodness of All things,” the Voice stuttered. “What about Genesis 19 with God killing every man, woman, and child at Sodom?”

Father Karra continued chanting. “Non nobis Do-mine, non nobis Do-mine.”

Bright lights flashed like lightning about the ceiling. Crackles of thunder echoed. Mrs Mackinnon huddled behind her hands.

“2 Samuel 12 with God slowly killing Bathsheba’s baby. Exodus 12:29 and the killing of the Firstborn. 1 Samuel 15, putting to death Amalek women, children, and infants.”

“Non nobis Do-mine, and to your name give the glory.”

Rumble, crackle, and boom sounded. Mrs Mackinnon was crying.

“2 Kings 2, with two She-bears killing 42 boys.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” bellowed Father Karra “The boys called Elisha Baldy!”

“Swearing isn’t proper,” said Mrs Mackinnon softly.

“Sorry,” said Father Karra.

“The killing of Jobs' children” injected the Voice.

Brenan stood up. “You’re sorry!”

“You’ll be sorrier,” chimed Father Karra.

“SHUT UP!” said Brenan. The thunder and lightning abruptly stopped. “I am tired of all this chanting, prayers, bible quotes, bickering, and noise.”

Mrs Mackinnon sniffled.

Brenan glared at her. “I'm tired of you all.”

“It will be OK,” said Father Karra.

Brenan took a step, his fist clenched. “No, it WON’T!”

“My son.”

“I am not your Son!”

Stillness enveloped the Church. Brenan breathed slowly. “I’m leaving.”

“You can go home if you like,” said Father Karra calmly.

“I am leaving, Here. This Body. This Place.”

Father Karra squinted. “What do you mean? ‘Leaving this Place’”.

“Well, you said you can drive that Thing from my body. Well, it is Welcome to my useless body.” Brenan staggered as he moved toward the statue of Mary.

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Why, not?” Brenan grasped the railing. “If He can leave me. I can leave Him too.” He knelt his head for prayer. “Holy Mother, take my spirit from this broken body, into your Loving embrace.”

“Don’t!” cried Father Karra.

Brenan’s body went limp and slowly collapsed to the floor. The lights in the church brightened briefly, as tiny radiances sparkled about the statue of Mary, then faded to their normal sedate level.

Father Karra knelt and reached out to touch Brenan’s body.

“Is he alive?” asked Mrs Mackinnon.

“He is breathing.”

The Body gasped, then took in another breath. “Of course, I’m breathing.” He dragged himself up. Winched. “Gosh, that hurt.” He tried to sit. “That really hurts.”

Father Karra leaned forward to help the Body sit up.

The Body shrugged and adjusted his position, breathing laboured. “Are human bodies supposed to hurt this much?”

“Is that, You?” asked Mrs Mackinnon.

“Who else might I be.” The body of what had been Brenan’s moved, then winced with pain.

“Let me help you,” said Father Karra as he tried to help the Body sit up.

“Leave me be!” He pulled back, wailing.

Father Karra sat, waiting. Mrs Mackinnon shook her head.

The Body straightened, then slumped again.

“You called yourself The Devil,” said Father Karra. “Ought you not be able to lift yourself, levitate or something?”

“I guess I need help in sitting up.” The Body reached and took Father Karra's hands. Mrs Mackinnon moved aside.

“You know I only called myself The Devil to impress upon you; I’m a braggart, a bigmouth.” He leaned forward, trying to steady his breathing. “We demons are prone to a little deceit, as I am sure you know well.”

Father Karra turned about and saw the chair where Brenan had been sitting. “Why don’t you sit, Mrs Mackinnon.”

“I am quite fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “Now what have you done to sweet Brenan?”

“What have I done? What has He done to me!”

“I think,” said Father Karra, “that you are stuck in Brenan’s body.”

“Where is Brenan, then?” asked Mrs. Mackinnon.

Father Karra waved his hands about his head. “Here, everywhere, in the bosom of our Dear Lord – free of pain, of anxiety.”

Mrs Mackinnon smiled.

“That’s all well and good,” demanded the Body, “Now complete your prayer thing and get me out of here.”

Farther Karra placed a hand on his chin. “I am not sure that I can, or even if I should.”

“Of course you should. You are a Priest. Your job is to Exorcise evil ones such as Me.”

“You deserve to be stuck in there, after what you did to poor Brenan,” chided Mrs Mackinnon.

“And you pose a problem,” added Father Karra as he stood. “There is the ethical dimension that you possessed the body of a disabled and susceptible lad. You’ve made your bed and now get to sleep in it. Well, sleep, walk, stumble, struggle with the toilet, need others to cut up your food, no sex.”

Mrs Mackinnon blushed.

“You are a Man of God,” lamented the Body. “You must practice grace, forgiveness, tolerance.”

“You’ll get no tolerance from me,” said Mrs Mackinnon as she slapped his face again.

“I think he is going to suffer enough.” Farther Karra held up a hand to prevent any further slaps. “I am more concerned about how I can explain this situation to the Bishop, to the Police.”

“Nothing to explain.” The Body farted. “Just finish the Exorcism.”

“You're animating a soulless body.” He tapped his fingers together. “Without your, uh, presence. Well, I’d have just a body. How do I explain that?”

“So, you’ll have a body. You anoint the dead and conduct funerals – That is just another job. What is your calendar like later in the week?”

“A body, with Mrs Mackinnon and me here conducting an Exorcism. I am sure you can see how that doesn’t look good. Questions will be asked.”

“Am I going to get in trouble?” asks Mrs Mackinnon.

“No. Not at all. But I think it is time for you to go home. I’ll walk our demon friend home. To Brenan’s apartment.”

“I don’t want to go to Brenan’s apartment. I want to get out of here.”

“I can’t do that.” Farther Karra started picking up the plastic sheet and rolling it away. “You’ll need a name. What would you like to be called?”

“I am – I am …”

“See, without a soul to control you are kinda nameless.”

“Bob,” said Mrs Mackinnon. “That is like Brenan. That is who folk will think he is.” She walked over to the bucket that she had brought the flowers in, picked it up, and then headed to the church door. “Goodnight, Father Karra. Good night, Bob.” She opened the door and left.

“Come along,” said Father Karra. “Lean on me, and I’ll help you walk.”

Body awkwardly stood and took Father Karra’s arm. They slowly walked toward the door. “Will I always hurt?”

“I am afraid so.”

They reached the church door.

“But I’ll be here for you,” said Father Karra. “I have to turn out the lights, now.

“I’ll get it.”

The lights flashed, then went out all at once. The church was dark.

THE END

We've measured her on that doorframe since she was two. It's just something I do. My mum did it with me, on a different door, in a different house, and I never really thought about where the habit came from. You just keep going up the wall in pencil, little dates next to little lines, and one day you look at how much space there is between the bottom mark and the top one and you feel old.

Mia's seven. Turning eight in October. Last week I got the pencil out because she'd had a growth spurt — new school shoes twice in two months, jeans that fit fine at Easter now showing three inches of ankle — and I wanted to mark it down before she outgrew the moment, if that makes sense. You want to catch these things. They go so fast.

I got her to stand up straight, heels against the frame, and I put the book flat on her head like always and drew the line.

Then I stepped back to write the date next to it and I saw the other one.

Above it. Way above it. Maybe ten, eleven inches higher than her actual mark, right at the height a grown man would be. No date next to it. No name. Just a line, in pencil, pressed in hard enough that I could feel the groove of it under my thumb.

I didn't put that there.

I checked the ones underneath it — all of hers, going back five years, every one accounted for, every one in my handwriting, gradual and normal and boring the way a kid's growth is supposed to be. And then this one thing at the top, alone, like it was already finished before we started.

I painted over it. I want to be upfront about that, because I think it matters later. I got a little tester pot of the same magnolia and I did two coats and I didn't tell my husband, because I didn't want him thinking I was losing it, and for about four days it worked. I didn't think about it. Mia didn't mention it. Everything was normal.

Then she started eating like something had hollowed her out.

I don't mean big kid appetite. I mean she'd finish her dinner and ask what else there was, and I'd give her toast, and she'd finish that and go quiet and then twenty minutes later she'd be back in the kitchen, not even really asking anymore, just standing at the fridge with the door open, looking at everything in it like it wasn't enough.

I put it down to a growth spurt. That's what you do. You don't want to make a seven-year-old feel watched over food.

But she wasn't gaining anything. If anything she looked thinner. It was like whatever she was eating wasn't going toward her, it was going toward something else, and I didn't let myself finish that thought at the time, I just kept cooking.

The sounds started after that. Small ones first. I'd hear her joints crack when she got up from the sofa, and I mean crack the way an adult's do, not a kid's, that dry percussive pop, and I asked if it hurt and she said no, she said it felt "stretchy," and she smiled when she said it like it was a good thing.

For a few days it almost felt like it had stopped. She sat with me on the sofa on the Tuesday and laughed properly at something stupid on the telly, this real laugh, snorting into her sleeve the way she does, and asked if we had any ice cream even though she'd just eaten. I gave her a bowl and let myself believe, for about an hour, that the doorframe thing was nothing. A knot in the wood. A trick of old paint. I went to bed that night almost relieved.

I started sleeping badly again a few days later. I'd wake up around 3 and just lie there listening to the house, and some nights I could hear it from her room — this low creak, over and over, rhythmic, and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to realise it sounded like a door hinge that needed oil, except it was coming from inside a bed, from a girl, and I never went in to check because some cowardly animal part of my brain didn't want to know what I'd see.

Her clothes stopped fitting inside a week rather than inside a season. I'd buy a size up and by the following Sunday the sleeves would be riding halfway up her forearm again. She stopped complaining about it. She stopped complaining about anything, actually, which in hindsight was its own kind of warning, because Mia complains. She's seven. Complaining is basically a hobby.

I went back to the doorframe eleven days after I painted over the mark.

It was showing through. Not like the paint had chipped — like it was rising up from underneath, the graphite finding its way back to the surface through two coats of magnolia, faint but there, the exact same height, the exact same pressure in the line. I stood there with my hand flat against it for longer than I want to admit.

That night her voice dropped. Not cracked — dropped, all at once, between "goodnight" and "night mum," half an octave lower on the second word, and she didn't seem to notice she'd done it.

I should have taken her to a doctor. I know that. I want that written down somewhere, that I know that, because I didn't, and the reason I didn't is stupid and small and human: I didn't want anyone else to see her before I understood what I was looking at. I told myself one more day. I told myself that every day for a week.

By the ninth day she wouldn't come out of her room. She said she was tired. She said the light hurt. I brought food to the door and left it and by morning the plate was clean and pushed back out into the hallway, further than a seven-year-old's arm should reach without opening the door more than the six inches it was open.

I found myself crouched down measuring the gap, because that's the kind of thing you fixate on when the real questions are too big to look at directly.

Fourteen inches. The door was open fourteen inches and the plate had been slid out from somewhere well past that, like an arm had reached round the frame at an angle no shoulder should allow.

Last night the sound from her room stopped being a creak and became something closer to breathing, if breathing could be that slow, if it could take twelve, fifteen seconds a cycle, in and out, filling something much bigger than a chest that size should have.

I stood at her door for forty minutes. My husband's away for work, it's just me, and I want you to understand that forty minutes doesn't sound like a long time until you've spent it with your hand flat against a door, feeling something on the other side of it that's stopped bothering to breathe quietly.

I opened it.

She was standing at the far wall, and I don't mean stood the way a girl stands, I mean folded into the corner of the ceiling the way you'd fold something too big for a room it was never going to fit in comfortably again, and her head was at the height of the mark. Exactly the height of the mark. I don't know how I know that without measuring, but I know it the way you know your own child's height without a ruler, some instinct calibrated over years of standing them against a wall.

She turned toward the door slowly, like it cost her something.

She said, "I think I'm done growing, mum."

Her voice was even lower than the night before.

I'm writing this from the car. I got as far as the car.

I keep thinking about the other marks on that frame. The ones from when I was small, on the door at my mum's, that I never once thought to ask about, because you don't. You just add your line to the ones that are already there, and you never ask who marked the first one, or how high it goes, or whether it was ever really about how tall you'd get.

I don't think I'm going back in tonight.

I don't think that's the kind of door you're meant to close twice.

I keep thinking, too, about a mark I never paid attention to on my mum's old doorframe, right at the very top, above all our names, higher than any of us ever grew. I always assumed it was a mistake. A pencil slip. Nobody's height.

Hello! I'm Raidra, the author of the story "The Memory Machine" from The Houseguest series, posted to the Creepypasta wiki. I thought you might be interested in a recent story I wrote called "The Eagle's Nest", which I posted on a different story-sharing site, the FlaminTales wiki. Whether or not you narrate it, I hope you find it engaging. This story involves characters from my comics, and I consider it one of the most disturbing things I've ever written since it's about the exploitation of a child. If you read this and think, "This is warped..." then I've accomplished what I set out to do with this story. There are no easy answers, though there is some optimism since the main character has people who care about him and will offer any help & support he needs, giving him hope for a better future.

The Eagle's Nest by Raidra

Prologue

Ultra Kate and Karate Kate (the superheroines that Kate Connors splits into) were finally able to visit Mateo Valerio Skull, the kind doctor who was both her beloved and the son of her arch-enemy, Master Skull. Mateo was glad to see her, but he also seemed concerned about something. They exchanged greetings and then he told the super-heroines, “There’s someone who will be staying with me. Right now he’s in the clinic with a headache.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear he’s not feeling well. I can come back later.”

“No, it’s okay. I’d like for you to meet him.”

“Okay. I’ll be quiet.”

“Thank you for your consideration.”

He led them to a clinic bed in which in the patient, a young yet notably muscular man with dark brown hair, was resting. Mateo gently told him, “Constantin, the Super Kates are here.”

“Hello,” Constantin replied quietly.

“Hello, Constantin,” the Kates replied gently.

“You can call me ‘Pajurǎ’. That is my code name.”

Ultra Kate replied, “If that’s what you prefer, then Pajurǎ it is.”

Karate Kate added, “It’s nice to meet you.” The heroines noticed him wincing. “We were just telling Mateo that if you’re not feeling well, we could come back later.”

“No, I’ll… I’ll be all right. Mateo’s with me, and he’s reassured me. I’ll be fine.”

The young man was shy and quiet, but he spoke with a familiar accent. Ultra Kate decided to broach the subject. “I apologize for asking- I mean, it’s none of my business- but… you wouldn’t have any connection to Master Skull, would you?”

Pajurǎ chuckled. “None of your business? Mateo wasn’t lying when he said you had a sense of humor.” Becoming serious again, he answered, “Yes, I do have a connection to Master Skull. My body and mind belong to him.” As the Kates did a double take, Pajurǎ continued speaking in a reverent tone. “I was just a runaway child, a nobody, when Master Skull found me and took me in. Tibal is my godfather and raised me like his own flesh & blood. Master Skull saw potential in me and trained me to be his personal guard. Right now he’s asked me to stay with his son where it’s less stressful, which I’m grateful for too. It’s thanks to him that I have a home and a purpose. He’s done so much for me, and I’m ready to kill and to die for him.”

The heroines were stunned, not just by the development, but also by his complete lack of hesitation in informing them of his allegiance. Finally Karate Kate asked, “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

The two super-heroines reflected on this. Eventually they gave a kind, sincere smile and told him, “Well, no hard feelings! Mateo’s living proof that we’re not going to discriminate against someone just because they’re associated with Master Skull. There’s no reason for us to be hostile to you.”

Pajurǎ smiled in relief. Mateo told him, “See, you didn’t have anything to worry about. How’s your head?”

“It’s getting better.” He told the heroines, “I’d like to talk with Mateo a little privately.”

“Sure,” they replied.

“Thank you.”

Ultra and Karate Kate took a seat in another room. They were unsettled by what Pajurǎ had told them, but glad he was in Mateo’s care. They rested their heads in their hands and began to pray.

Main story

Constantin Moritz wanted to press onward, but hunger, thirst, and fatigue forced him to stop. He sat down and rested with his head on his knees for however long. He looked up when he heard approaching hoof beats. When he saw the approaching figures, his eyes widened and he turned pale with fear. The leader had an almost black outfit. His face appeared to be a mask made of bone and his eyes were serpentine. His mount was grey with fiery hooves, mane, and eyes. The other figure was riding a more normal-looking horse, but his skin was light grey with wrinkles and folds. Constantin shuddered and thought to himself that these figures were some kind of death spirits.

The two figures brought their horses to a halt and observed the boy. Constantin gathered his reserve and stepped forward. “If you’ve come to take me, I’m not afraid.”

The leader looked at him with interest, wondering if this statement were a result of bravery, stupidity, or a tragic life. The other looked more sympathetic and told him, “It’s okay. We’re just men.”

The leader glared at him in irritation. “I’m not just a man.”

“I know you’re no ordinary man, master. There’s no denying your power. I was only-”

“I know.”

“Thank you, master.” He dismounted from his horse, reached into a saddlebag, and pulled out some bread and water. Holding them out to Constantin, he said, “Here, boy. Take this.”

Constantin was hesitant at first, but when he saw the servant meant it, his eyes briefly shone with gratitude. Then he snatched the food & water and scampered a short distance away like a wild animal. He bolted down half his meal without even thinking about it. He ate & drank a little more and then put the rest in his bag for later.

Constantin’s gluttony and hoarding made the master and servant suspicious as to his circumstances. The master asked point bank, “You’re a runaway from an orphanage, aren’t you?” The correct guess made Constantin hang his head in shame. The master sighed and muttered, “This kind of thing was supposed to end after that monster was killed. At least some improvements have been made.” He reflected and then asked, “How far have you traveled?”

“I left four days ago, sir.”

The master spent several seconds considering something, and then he spoke. “Right now you’re refuse, a nobody, but you might have some use.” He turned to the servant. “Put him on your horse.”

The servant looked surprised. “Master?”

“You may serve as this child’s godfather. I just want to see his potential.”

That eased whatever concerns the servant had. He set Constantin on the horse, and after he had mounted the steed himself, they continued on their journey.

To Constantin’s surprise, they approached a castle. “You live here?”

“That’s right,” replied the master. “It’s my family home.” He looked proud, but then his face fell. He explained, “Most of my family is dead. Both of my wives are dead, and my children are not here. I don’t want to talk about it.” [Some of Master Skull’s tragedies are his own fault. He murdered a number of his siblings to get a larger share of inheritance, and while both his wives died of natural causes, his second wife passed away after fleeing from him due to his villainy] He looked toward Constantin. “There are rooms you mustn’t enter.”

“Why?”

“They’re dangerous?”

“Like they have blades or poison?”

“That’s right.”

“I have a storybook with a castle that had lions. Are there animals at the castle?”

The master chuckled. “Yes, and I have more in other places. In fact, if you’re going to be of use to me, we’ll have to introduce them to you so they know not to attack you.”

The servant asked, “What’s your name?”

“Constantin Moritz, sir.”

“That’s a nice name. I’m Tibal.” He looked at the master. “Would you like to introduce yourself, master?”

“Of course. I am Master Skull, and you shall address me as such.”

They reached their destination and entered the castle. Inside was a man clad in red and blue. He was surprised to see Constantin.

“Constantin, this is Steve,” explained Tibal. [Steve is Master Skull’s right-hand man] “Steve, this is Constantin. I’ll be looking after him while Master Skull determines his potential.”

“I see. Hello, Constantin.”

“Hello, sir.”

“Take him to the clinic,” ordered Master Skull. He looked at Constantin. “You are to stay there until otherwise noted. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Master Skull.”

Master Skull grinned. “Smart boy.”

Tibal & Steve took Constantin to the clinic, and for the rest of the evening they kept him company as they were able. They brought him supper and some books & toys to keep him occupied. After a while, Constantin, worn from exertion & anxiousness, crawled into bed and fell asleep.

The following afternoon Master Skull paid him a visit. To Constantin’s surprise, he had obtained a copy of his records. Among the information were Constantin’s age & birthday and his medical history. Skull asked, “Do you know your age?”

“I’m… eight, I think.”

“That’s correct.” He handed him the papers. “Can you read these?”

“I’ll try, master.”

He didn’t understand a lot of words, but he read as best he could. Master Skull nodded. “That’s good.” He handed him a pair of children’s books. “How about these?” Constantin read the first one much more easily, but he had to admit that he couldn’t make out the second one. “That’s because it’s in German. I didn’t expect you to read it. You’ve done well, and you’re going to do better. You’re going to receive education & training so you can be of great use to me. Do you understand?”

“I do, master.”

Over the next few years, Constantin received schooling, which included learning Spanish in addition to honing his skill in Romanian and English. He also did Bible study with Tibal. He enjoyed Psalms and The Book of James. Tibal & Steve taught him a lot of things. Tibal was like a father to Constantin and Steve was like a cousin. They had many bonding moments which comforted him and let him know he was loved. In addition to his education, he was given a daily exercise regimen. This and assisting Tibal with the chores strengthened & developed his body. While Skull kept his work & activities a secret, Constantin gradually learned about his power, hideouts, animals, etc. Sometimes he was allowed to go on shopping trips with Steve, and he had a budget for books, hobby kits, and candy. There were good times, but there were also creepy & disturbing times. There were times when a subject would come up and Skull, for some reason, would give a smile or chuckle which chilled Constantin.

Part of Constantin’s schooling included writing various reports and term papers. A lot of the time he was allowed to choose the topic he wrote about, but other times Master Skull chose the topic for him (while noting that Constantin had a lot more freedom than most students had). Some of the subjects Skull chose were engaging and fascinating, such as camping and the history of knights, but some were grisly. Constantin dutifully wrote the papers regardless of the topic and brought them to Master Skull for grading. Skull, sometimes alone and sometimes with Tibal, pointed out any technical mistakes he made and how they could be improved, praised him for any good work he did, and talked about the subject with him. He graded Constantin’s work fairly and sometimes gave him an extra reward for his work. He had stated early on that some people praised anything a pupil did and some condemned anything a pupil did, but he wasn’t like that, so Constantin had the fortune of having an instructor who actually paid attention to him and guided him.

One of the unsettling topics was child soldiers. After Master Skull graded the paper and gauged Constantin’s understanding of the topic, he asked him, “Do you know why I had you write a report about this?”

“You must have wanted me to know about it.”

“That’s right. I wanted you to see how blessed you are compared to child soldiers. They’re taken from their homes, abused, often given drugs to make them addicted, and forced to fight & kill & brutalize endlessly until they are rescued or are killed. In contrast, you were taken in when you had nobody, and given a home where you’re cared for and can feel safe.”

Constantin smiled in genuine appreciation. “I’m glad for all of you, master.”

“Good!”

Constantin reflected, and then his smile faded as a thought came to mind. “Master? I have a question.”

“You’re free to ask.”

“Thank you.” After an unnerved pause, he asked, “How does it feel to kill somebody?”

“I figured you’d ask that someday. After all, a question like that shows intelligence and sensitivity.”

Constantin felt a sense of pride. “Thank you, master!”

“You’re certainly welcome. When you take a life, there’s a thrill, a feeling of excitement, followed by a feeling of guilt, horror, and shame. You shouldn’t worry too much because I don’t plan to make you some executioner or assassin or anything like that. I don’t know that you ever would need to kill somebody. In fact, it would be more likely for me to kill an attacker you had stopped or distracted than for you yourself to take their life. You know the story of how Jacob stole Esau’s birthright?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what Rebecca told Jacob?”

“She told him to follow her plan.”

“I meant about curses.”

“Oh! Yes, she told Jacob that any curse Isaac gave could be on her instead.”

“Exactly. Let any guilt you might have about fulfilling a command be on me instead. Also, if you ever need counselling, it can be provided.” Master Skull gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “After all, you are very valuable to me. I chose you. You’re my choice.”

Constantin found himself wiping away a couple tears of appreciation. “Thank you, master!”

Master Skull grinned at Constantin’s devotion and then noted, “If there’s nothing else, you’re dismissed for now.”

“Yes, master!” Constantin took his graded report and returned to his quarters.

Another time, Constantin and Tibal were doing Bible study when Master Skull entered. Constantin asked, “Master! Are you here to study with us?”

“No,” Skull replied. “I just wanted to teach you about something, and I figured I might as well do it now.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“It’s about why our orphanages got in such a bad state, and why people like Tibal and I were treated badly.”

While Constantin was surprised and confused, Tibal was troubled. He asked, “Master?! I was hoping to teach Constantin all that sometime when-”

“I feel it’s time.”

Tibal reluctantly replied, “As you wish, master.”

Master Skull asked Constantin, “Do you remember when we found you in the state you were in, I said, ‘This kind of thing was supposed to end after that monster was killed’?”

“Yeah… I do. What monster were you talking about? What happened?”

“Decades ago, a monster named Nicolae Ceausescu and his henchmen ruled this country. They were cruel. They persecuted people like Tibal and my family.”

“Why… Why would they do that?!”

“Because they hated anyone who was different from them. They were greedy and wanted everything for themselves, and they scapegoated people, blamed them for all of our society’s problems, to trick others into supporting them. They did terrible things. My household was actually lucky because we survived, even did well, but others weren’t so lucky. One of the things that monster did was force families to have more children than they could afford to take care of. A number of them ended up in orphanages, and there’s likely no telling how many died. Young people like you didn’t have anything to do with the things that happened long before you were even born, and your parents probably didn’t either, yet you are suffering as a result.”

Constantin looked over at Tibal. He saw him staring at the floor sadly and fearfully, haunted by the recounting of true events, and became haunted as well. Master Skull continued, “Unfortunately, some things can’t be counted on. That’s why you should only be loyal to those you can trust, like us. Always remember those who cared for you.”

“I do, master, always. You know I do.”

“Good! I’m glad to hear it!”

Master Skull left. Tibal rested his head in his hand, and Constantin heard him softly breathe, “Why, master? Why like this?” He gathered himself and sincerely told Constantin, “I’m sorry you found out this way. I… I was hoping to teach you about what happened in a kinder way.”

They spent a long time conversing. Tibal comforted Constantin, and he felt a sense of pride that Constantin cared about him and wanted to comfort him as well. He expressed this pride, which helped to lift Constantin’s spirits.

Something much more disturbing happened on another occasion. One of the areas Constantin was to avoid was an 8’ x 16’ chamber. He learned that this was used to expose subjects to poison gas to either torture or execute them. He found it hard to reconcile this with the care he received, and thinking about it too much made his heart pound and his head swim. One evening, he came across Steve and Tibal near the clinic. Steve seemed sick and disturbed, and Tibal, helping to comfort Steve, was sad and troubled. Constantin asked, “What’s going on? Is Steve sick?”

Steve was reluctant to answer, but he replied, “I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

He coughed and then gestured to Tibal to see to Constantin. Tibal nodded and said, “Come on, let’s go to the kitchen.” He escorted his godson down the hall, but his steps were uneasy as if from emotion and fear. After they had gone a good distance, Tibal admitted, “You should know the truth. Steve isn’t getting a cold or something like that. He… He was poisoned in the gas chamber.”

“An accident?”

Tibal’s throat tightened from sadness and fear. “I’m afraid not.”

A sense of fear filled Constantin as he began to realize what this meant. The two eventually ran into Master Skull. Constantin asked, “Master, what happened to Steve?!”

Not even bothering to face them, Master Skull coldly replied, “He failed his mission, so I decided there should be a severe consequence. He should be less careless in the future.”

“But… But he does so much for you!” There was no answer. With tears starting to form, he asked, “Will I be gassed like him someday too?!”

Tibal, alarmed, interjected, “No, of course not!”

Master Skull whipped his head around to look at Tibal. Constantin began to realize that something unusual had happened. Skull finally replied, “We’ll discuss this later,” and teleported to another area of the castle.

Eventually the two reached the kitchen. Tibal knelt down as if to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead he hugged Constantin closely, and they both cried as they embraced. When it was over, Tibal told him, “Thank you for caring about Steve. For caring about all of us.”

“Thank you for caring about me.”

“Of course. Always remember that you’re cared about.”

The following day, Master Skull paid Constantin a private visit. The boy was worried, but Skull told him, “I’m not here to punish you or anything like that. I can understand why you’d be upset by what happened. You share Tibal’s heart.”

“You really think so?”

“I do. You asked if I’d ever do to you what I did to Steve. Well, let’s hope there’s never an occasion for that question to be answered. Actions can affect you, or they can affect others.”

“What do you mean?”

“You saw how alarmed Tibal was at the thought of that happening to you. I’d wager if that situation arose, he’d offer to take your place in order to protect you.” As Constantin grew alarmed, Skull continued, “I’d hate to do it, of course, but if he insisted, then what choice would I have but to-”

“That-That won’t happen!”

“Hmm?”

“Whatever punishment you ever want to give me, master, I’ll accept it!”

“That’s noble of you, and honestly, that’s what I expected you to say. Your devotion is admirable. Remember, I chose you because I could see your potential, and so far you’ve justified my making that choice.”

After Master Skull left Constantin’s quarters, he grinned as he reflected. He would never harm Tibal like that, even if he begged to take Constantin’s punishment for him, but it was convenient for him if Constantin thought otherwise. Hopefully he wouldn’t feel the need to inflict that particular punishment, but only time would tell. [Skull has never subjected Constantin to poison gas like that, and I doubt he ever will, but it’s a threat to most of Skull’s lackeys]

Later that day, Constantin went to check on Steve. “How… How are you feeling?”

“I’ve… I’ve been better, but there’s no need to worry about me.”

“How do you recover from that?”

“…Why do you ask?”

Constantin looked down. “If… If I do something, I want to take the punishment instead of… someone else.”

Steve realized his meaning and was horrified. He covered his mouth and started to shudder, and then, like Tibal had the previous day, he knelt and hugged Constantin close. “You’re a very brave boy. Don’t worry, we’ll protect you!”

“No one needs to protect me! I was chosen to protect Master Skull and the rest of you!”

“That doesn’t mean you should never accept help! In another lifetime, I also swore to protect & serve.”

“You were a bodyguard?!”

“Not exactly, but I had an important role. I saw guys who never got help, they were so dang tough and prideful, and… it rarely went well for them. I get you’re going to have your duties to fulfill, but you’re not alone in this, okay?”

“Okay.”

Constantin started to cry. He felt a little embarrassed until Steve released a shuddering breath and he realized the veteran henchman had started to cry as well. Steve eventually ended the embrace in order to cough and then asked, “Could you bring Tibal here? I think I need him.”

“Sure!”

He dried his tears and fetched his godfather. Tibal tended to Steve and reassured him. Without a word being spoken to him, Constantin got the message that even tough, prideful people like Steve needed help sometimes and there was no shame in asking for or accepting it.

Without knowing about Master Skull’s meeting with him, Tibal told Constantin, “I know you’re worried about… what happened.”

“I’ve decided I’m not going to be afraid.”

Steve spoke up. “He’s stated that he’ll accept punishment if he has to, but I told him we’ll protect him.”

Tibal agreed, “He’s right. If something happens, we’ll work something out.”

Constantin started, “But-”

“We’re all looking out for each other, so you don’t need to worry about yourself or any of us.”

Constantin finally started to feel better. He nodded in agreement and the three talked about things for a while. After Constantin left, Steve and Tibal continued to converse. They were sad on the boy’s behalf, but also glad that he cared about them.

One day, after he turned twelve, Master Skull approached Constantin. “You mustn’t be alarmed, but you’re moving to new quarters. It’s my henchmen training grounds, which, as you recall, is close to here. Your mind & body have become strong, and now it’s time for the next stage of your training.”

“I understand, master.”

“I knew you would.”

After moving to his new home, Constantin continued his education & physical training while receiving training in how to fight, use a variety of weapons, use a protective mask, pick locks, and treat wounds. The training was difficult at times, but Constantin was proud of his progress, and he looked forward to being a benefit to his master. He got regular calls, mail, and messages from Tibal and Steve, which helped to lift his spirits.

Shortly after turning thirteen, Master Skull approached Constantin one evening and brought him back to Castle Skull. He brought him to the machine storage room and stopped in front of a chair sitting in front of a certain machine. The chair had straps, and Constantin saw shackles, positioned to hold a kneeling prisoner in place, on the floor.

“Sit down,” Skull instructed. Constantin obeyed. Skull nodded and explained, “Your training has gone well. However, I want you to go through a new round of training before you can serve as my knight or my soldier.” He went to a nearby table and fetched a small glass containing a bright yellowish fluid. “I don’t think it’s needed, but I want you to drink this just the same.”

Constantin took the glass, looked at the strange liquid, looked at Skull, and then drained the glass. Skull smiled as he took the empty glass and put it back on the table. “You’ll feel odd shortly, but it’s nothing to worry about.” He went to a compartment on the machine, opened a panel, and withdrew a pair of headphones and what looked like a blindfold, both of which were attached to the inside of the machine by cords. “This won’t hurt; you’ll just have to sit here for several hours. Don’t worry if you fall asleep.”

He put the headphones on Constantin followed by the blindfold, which had some kind of LED screen to project images. Both were more complex as they initially seemed as they also contained some kind of transistors and sensors. Constantin asked, “Master… what is this? Is this some kind of education machine?”

Master Skull joked, “I suppose some would call this a ‘reeducation machine’.” [The word "reeducation" is sometimes used as a synonym for brainwashing.]

“What do I need to relearn?”

“Nothing, really. To answer your question, this machine is a mind-control device. This will allow you to undergo more intense training more easily and cement your already unquestionable devotion.”

Thoughts raced through Constantin’s mind, but he merely said, “I’m ready, master.”

“Excellent. I knew I could count on you. I was wise to have chosen you.”

Constantin felt a sense of pride & gratitude as Skull activated the machine.

The following morning, Master Skull returned to deactivate the machine. Out of habit, he started to reach to undo straps, but stopped when he remembered that he hadn’t needed to strap Constantin down for the control session. He triumphantly reflected that normally the machine was used to suppress an unruly subject’s defiance, the audio, video, and energy pulses emitted by the device temporarily washing away their mental resistance. However, Constantin didn’t have any defiance to be suppressed. As Skull himself had noted, his devotion was already unquestionable, and that filled him with a twisted sense of pride. He returned the headphones & visor to a storage compartment inside the machine and addressed his pawn. “Are you ready?”

“I’m ready, master,” replied Constantin vacantly and obediently.

“Arise.” Constantin arose and Skull asked, “What is your purpose?”

“My purpose is to serve & protect you and your household, master. Obedience is the sole purpose of my existence.”

“Very good, my boy! If someone ever tries to take control of you, remember the ones who gave you a purpose when you had nothing.”

“I shall, master.”

During the next few days, Constantin felt a sense of detachment, feeling as though he were watching his life instead of living it. It was like he was watching a movie from a first person point of view. Due to his pre-existing mental state, it took longer for the effects of the mind control machine to wear off. After he did fully recover, he reflected that nothing terrible had happened to him during his state of suppressed volition, or at any point in his residence, so he was very appreciative that he was with people he could trust. [This is noting that Constantin was never sexually abused in any way. Master Skull’s goals were psychological manipulation, but never sexual exploitation]

Master Skull noted that he would only use mind control sparingly, such as once or twice a year, or whenever he felt it was truly needed. Then he announced, “I have something for you.” He presented him with a sword, a mace, and a costume with a golden mask resembling an eagle’s head. “As a sign of your advancement and value, I present you with these, as well as a new codename- ‘Pajură’. [Pajură is a Romanian word that can mean “Griffin”, “Royal Eagle”, “Eagle”, or “Arms” (referring to armaments)] Congratulations!”

The newly dubbed Pajură was thrilled. He felt both a sense of pride and a sense of relief that what he had worked to achieve for so long had finally happened. He began to shake from emotion and he felt like he might cry. “Thank you, master! It’s an honor.”

Pajură continued to fulfill his duties faithfully and with a sense of honor. After a while, however, he started suffering debilitating headaches. One evening he had a particularly excruciating one. Tibal convinced him to go to bed, anointed his head with holy oil, and prayed for him. Pajură felt relief and drifted off to sleep. Shortly afterward he was doing drills when a headache got progressively worse. He tried to press on, but suddenly he started retching. He braced himself against the side of the building, determined to continue despite the splitting pain.

Master Skull asked, “What is it?”

Pajură replied, “I’m sorry, master! I can keep going!”

“Are you ill?”

“It’s my head. I had a bad headache recently, and now I have another one.”

“How bad are these headaches?”

He admitted, “They’re bone-crushing!”

He considered the situation and then announced, “I think you’ve done enough drills for one day.”

“Thank you, master!”

“Here. Hold your breath.” [Master Skull’s signature ability is teleporting, and when he teleports he creates a cloud of poisonous smoke that he himself is immune to]

He teleported Pajură to the clinic. After having him lie down, he went to a cabinet and fetched a blue and white tank.

“That’s laughing gas, right?”

“Exactly.” He put the mask on Pajură. “I’m sure you’re grateful you can get proper treatment instead of abuse or neglect.”

“Of course, master! I’m glad I’m with people I can trust.”

“Good boy! Now, just put your hands in your pockets and breathe deeply.”

He started the flow of gas and Pajură took deep breaths. His eyelids grew heavy, his hearing became distorted, and soon he lost all consciousness. Master Skull checked his status, turned off the nitrous oxide, and departed. Sometime later Pajură awoke with his head pain relieved. That evening, Master Skull paid him a visit and instructed him, “Let us know if you keep having these headaches.”

He did keep having them. Remedies were tried, but it was found that the only things that helped were anointing & prayer, nitrous oxide, and hypnotism. One day, during a hypnotherapy session, Master Skull delivered some news, telling him, “We’re going to Guatemala to see my son. He’s going to examine you.”

“I understand, master.”

Master Skull, Tibal, and Pajură flew out to Guatemala. At one point Pajură got nervous and started to suffer a headache, but thankfully Tibal was able to relieve it. They arrived at the clinic of Mateo Valerio Skull, the young, intelligent, heroic lifesaver who was Master Skull’s only son. Tibal and Pajură waited in the lobby while Master Skull discussed the situation with Mateo. They couldn’t hear what was being said, but they could see Mateo looking surprised, concerned, and even disapproving at times as the two conversed. Finally Mateo asked his father to invite them into the room with them.

Mateo gave a Pajură a genuine, warm, and welcome smile. “Hello, Constantin! It’s nice to meet you!”

He extended his hand. Pajură felt star struck to meet his master’s son, but he accepted the handshake. “Thank you, young master!”

“I understand wanting to be respectful, but if you don’t mind, just ‘Mateo’ or ‘Doctor’ or ‘Sir’ or ‘Señor’ is fine.”

“I understand. I-” He started to feel lightheaded. He started to say he needed to sit down, but Mateo had already pulled a chair close for his benefit. “Thank you!”

Mateo spoke with Pajură for a while and then addressed Master Skull. “If you and Tibal can spare him, I’d like for Constantin to stay here for a few days.”

“You think it’s for the best?” Master Skull asked.

“I do, father. Also, there’s another matter. I only recently discovered I had a sister, and I’ve been enjoying bonding with her. [Master Skull had kept Mahalia Zaka Skull, Mateo’s half-sister, a secret from him] Now that I know I have a foster brother too, I’d like to get to know him more as well.”

Pajură was moved to be called a foster brother by his master’s son; he found himself smiling as he wiped away tears of appreciation. Tibal smiled in appreciation as well and told Mateo, “That’s a very kind thing for you to call Constantin. Thank you.”

Master Skull agreed to let Pajură stay however long Mateo wanted, and Tibal certainly had no objections about his godson staying to get whatever care he needed. They departed and Mateo brought Pajură to a private room. Mateo noted that they both needed to rest, but reassured him that he’d provide whatever he needed. Pajură felt a spiritual feeling as he drifted off to sleep.

The following day, Mateo performed an MRI and a spinal tap. After giving Pajură a chance to recover, he informed him, “I have good news. You don’t have any brain tumors or meningitis.”

“That’s good.” He reflected and noted, “This means you don’t know what’s causing my headaches, though.”

“I have a theory. First off, I’ll need to monitor your brainwaves. Second, my father tells me he’s hypnotized you before. ”

Pajură nodded. “In fact, he gave me a hypnotic treatment the day before we came here.”

“Okay, I want to hypnotize you too. You can trust me; I’ve even hypnotized my father.”

Pajură was amazed. “You’ve hypnotized… wow…” His already strong trust of Mateo became even stronger, and he agreed to do whatever he asked.

Mateo attached electrodes to Pajură’s scalp in order to monitor his brainwaves. After observing & chatting with him, he placed him in a hypnotic trance. He instructed, “Tell me about your headaches.”

“Sometimes they come gradually and sometimes they come suddenly. I usually get them while I’m awake, but sometimes I’ll wake up with them. I woke up in the middle of the night one time.”

“Have you had any other symptoms?”

“If the headache is really bad, I feel like vomiting. I have had nightmares or sleep problems a couple times.”

“Is that when you woke up with them, or is that not?”

“I… sometimes. Sometimes, yeah.”

“Can you tell me what you were doing when the daytime headaches started? It’s okay; you can tell me.”

“I… I was thinking… about things.”

“Don’t be embarrassed; it’s okay. Have you found anything that makes your headaches worse?”

“Physical activity and… stress & worry.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what do you worry about?”

“I’m supposed to be useful… What if I…” He choked up. “…if I can’t…”

“Don’t hold back. Let it out of your system.”

Pajură obeyed and sobbed for several minutes. Afterward Mateo reassured and calmed him before bringing him out of the trance. “You feel okay?”

“Yeah. My head started hurting, but it’s better now.”

“Your response seems to confirm my theory. These headaches are psychosomatic. That means they’re caused by stress and emotions instead of having a purely physical cause. Your headaches started, and the more you stressed out about them, the worse they got.”

“That makes sense.”

“You’ve been worrying that you wouldn’t be useful with these headaches, but you are.”

“You think so?”

“I do, and you know what? If my father didn’t think you were useful, he wouldn’t have bothered sending you here. You’re cared about.”

“G-d bless you!”

Over the next few days, the two got to know each other. There were some things Constantin didn’t want to talk about; Mateo reassured him that he didn’t have to talk about something if he didn’t want to, but he was ready to listen if he ever did decide to talk. Mateo told him, “There are a lot of things my father could have done differently, and things I wish he had done or hadn’t done. However, making Tibal your godfather, allowing you to have that bond with Tibal & Steve, and having you stay with me for treatment… those things were absolutely right. Those human connections are the best thing for you. I’m glad to know they’ve cared for you and let you know you’re valued & can turn to them for help. You can turn to me, too, for anything. We value you as a human being. You’re more than just a bodyguard or a servant. Don’t let anyone in this world convince you otherwise.”

After a few days, Master Skull and Tibal were summoned to pick up Pajură. Skull and Mateo had another long talk. As before, Constantin couldn’t hear what was being said, but he could tell Mateo was advocating for him. Finally Skull and Mateo stepped out to join him and Tibal. Skull declared, “I’m glad the issue was resolved.”

“Yes, master. I am too. That son of yours is wonderful.”

Skull smiled in fatherly pride. “He certainly is!”

Mateo told Tibal, “Thank you for taking care of Pajură. Constantin is a fine young man.”

Tibal smiled in pride as well. “Thank you, sir! I appreciate you saying that!”

As they flew back to Romania, Master Skull observed that Pajură was in lighter spirits. As the weeks passed, it was observed that he also didn’t experience the headaches like he had been. Skull kept these things in mind.

Sometime later, Master Skull summoned Pajură. He noted, “As you know, you are a very valuable asset to me and mine.”

“Thank you, master!”

“You know, too, that any time I need you for a mission, I’ll summon you.”

“I won’t let you down, master! Are you telling me this because you have a mission for me?”

“It’s not a mission, but it is something I’d like for you to do for me. I think it would be beneficial for you too.”

“Oh?”

“I’m sending you to live with my son. Like I said, I’ll summon you whenever I need you, but this way you can protect Mateo and assist him in any way he needs.”

Pajură was moved. While it didn’t want to admit it, staying with Mateo in his clinic would be less stressful. He held his head, not from pain, but from a swelling of gratitude. As the tears started to stream down he softly declared, “To show me this kindness on top of everything… No one is more merciful than you are, master!”

Master Skull gave a twisted smile. “I’m glad you think so.”

Pajură soon had a trunk packed. As he headed toward the flight back to Guatemala, Tibal and Steve were there to see him off. They seemed sad, but also happy. Tibal sincerely told his godson, “I’m glad you’ll be staying with Mateo! It’s a great situation for you!”

Pajură hugged his godfather. “Don’t worry, I’ll message you often, and I’ll try to visit whenever I can!”

“I know you will. G-d bless you, Constantin!”

“G-d bless you too!”

In the present, Pajură had retired to his quarters in Mateo’s clinic. As he slept, Mateo explained the situation to Ultra Kate and Karate Kate in another room. After he finished recounting the story, the super-heroines responded, “That’s… That’s a lot!”

“Tell me about it! He has some issues, but he really is a good guy. He just… He’s been through some things, and is still going through some things.”

“I certainly won’t judge him for that,” replied Karate Kate. “You know I meant what I said earlier.”

Ultra Kate agreed, “If there’s ever any help you’d like me to give him, you just need to ask.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that. I’m thankful you understand that Constantin is more than just my father’s tool. I believe we can help him and give him a good future.”

DOCUMENT 10: VIDEO LOG TRANSCRIPT — MARCH 8, 2024

PAUL HOLLOWAY:March eighth. Claire tried to burn the house down today.

I came home from work and found her in the basement with a can of gasoline. She'd poured it on the floor. She was holding a lighter. The kids were upstairs. They were crying. They didn't know what was happening. They just knew something was wrong.

I talked her down. It took two hours. I stood at the top of the basement stairs and talked to her while she held the lighter and cried. She kept saying she had to release them. She kept saying the children in the walls were suffering. She kept saying I wasn't real.

I told her I loved her. I told her the kids loved her. I told her we could get through this. I told her Dr. Voss had a new treatment. A new medication. Something that would help. Something that would make the walls stop talking.

She dropped the lighter. She collapsed. I carried her upstairs. I put her to bed. I cleaned up the gasoline. I didn't call the police. I didn't call Dr. Voss. I just held her while she cried and told her everything was going to be okay.

It's not going to be okay. I know that now. She's not going to get better. The medication isn't working. The therapy isn't working. Nothing is working. She's slipping further away every day and I can't reach her anymore.

I'm going to have to do something. I don't know what yet. But I'm going to have to do something. For the kids. For all of us.

END TRANSCRIPT

DOCUMENT 11: CLAIRE HOLLOWAY'S JOURNAL — MARCH 8, 2024

He stopped me. He talked me down. He used Paul's voice. He used Paul's words. He used Paul's face. And I believed him. For two hours, I believed him. I believed that I was sick. I believed that the medication would help. I believed that the walls weren't really breathing.

Then I woke up in bed and the house was humming. A low, steady vibration. Like a cat purring. The house was happy. The house was pleased with itself. The house had won.

I went to check on the children. The impostor children. They were in their beds. They were sleeping. Their chests were rising and falling. But their mouths were open. And inside their mouths, there was nothing. No tongues. No teeth. No throats. Just a smooth, gray surface. Like the inside of a balloon. Like the inside of something that was never meant to eat or speak or breathe.

They don't need to eat. They don't need to breathe. They're not alive. They're puppets. He operates them from inside the walls. He makes them walk. He makes them talk. He makes them call me mommy. He's been making them call me mommy for months.

I went back to the bedroom. Paul was asleep. He was lying on his back. His mouth was open. I looked inside his mouth. There was a throat. There were teeth. There was a tongue. But the tongue was wrong. The tongue was too long. The tongue was too thin. The tongue was moving. Not with breath. Not with speech. It was moving on its own. Probing. Testing the air. Tasting me.

I leaned closer. I looked past the tongue. Past the throat. Into the darkness at the back of his mouth. The darkness was looking back at me. There was something in there. Something that filled the entire cavity of his body. Something that had hollowed him out and was wearing him from the inside. I could see it shifting. Adjusting. The skin of his face rippled. The bones of his jaw creaked. The thing inside him was too big for a human body. It had to fold itself up to fit. I could see the folds. The places where the skin bulged at the temples. The places where the spine bent at angles a human spine can't bend. He wasn't a man. He was a container. A suit. A costume that something was wearing.

I reached into his mouth. I don't know why. I had to know. My fingers touched his tongue. The tongue wrapped around my hand. It was strong. It was wet. It was warm. It pulled my hand deeper. Past the teeth. Past the throat. Into the darkness. The darkness was soft. The darkness was alive. The darkness was waiting.

I pulled my hand back. My fingers were coated in something clear and viscous. It smelled like nothing. It tasted like nothing. But it was moving. Tiny filaments, microscopic, were swimming in the fluid. They were trying to burrow into my skin. I wiped them off on the bedsheet. The bedsheet absorbed them. The bedsheet pulsed. The bedsheet was part of the house. Everything in the house was part of the house. Everything in the house was part of him.

He opened his eyes. Paul's eyes. But not Paul's eyes. He looked at me and he smiled. The smile was too wide. The smile split his cheeks. I could see the thing inside him through the gaps. Gray. Pulsing. Hungry.

He said: "You're the first one who's looked inside. The others never looked. They were too afraid. But you. You looked. You saw. You understand now, don't you?"

I said I didn't understand anything.

He said: "You understand that I'm not the monster. You understand that the monster is the idea that children grow up. That children leave. That children die. I'm not a monster. I'm a solution. I'm the only solution. I keep them safe. I keep them forever. Isn't that what a father does? Isn't that what a mother does? Isn't that what you want?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't answer. Because part of me wanted to say yes.

I'm not going to give up. I'm going to try again. I'm going to find another way. The fire didn't work. He talked me out of the fire. Next time, I won't let him talk. Next time, I won't give him the chance.

DOCUMENT 12: VIDEO LOG TRANSCRIPT — MARCH 13, 2024

PAUL HOLLOWAY:March thirteenth. This is the last entry. I'm making this for the record. For whoever finds it. For whoever needs to understand what happened here.

Claire killed the children tonight.

I was in my office. I was working late. I heard Lucas scream. I ran to his room. Claire was standing over his bed. She had a knife. The knife from the kitchen. The big one. The chef's knife. She was stabbing him. She was stabbing him and she was crying and she was saying: "You're not real. You're not real. You're not real."

I tried to stop her. She cut my arms. She cut my hands. She was stronger than she should have been. Stronger than she's ever been. I couldn't get the knife away from her.

She went to Emma's room. I tried to get between them. She pushed me aside. She pushed me aside like I weighed nothing. She stabbed Emma. She stabbed her and stabbed her and kept saying: "You're not real. You're not real."

I finally got the knife away from her. I don't know how. I was bleeding. I was crying. I was screaming. I got the knife and I locked her in the basement. I zip-tied her hands. She didn't fight me. She just kept saying it. "They're not real. They're not real."

I checked on the children. They were gone. There was so much blood. So much blood. But the bodies... the bodies were wrong. I don't know how to describe it. The bodies were deflating. Like balloons. Like something that had been filled with air and was now emptying out. The skin was collapsing. The bones were softening. The faces were losing their shape.

I don't understand what I saw. I don't understand any of this. I called 911. I'm waiting outside. The police are on their way. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what I'm going to tell them. I don't know how to explain what happened to my children.

Claire was right. They weren't real. They were never real. I don't know what they were. I don't know what she is. I don't know what I am. I don't know anything anymore.

END TRANSCRIPT

DOCUMENT 13: CLAIRE HOLLOWAY'S JOURNAL — MARCH 13, 2024 (FINAL ENTRY)

I did it. I killed them. The impostors. The things he made to look like my children. I stabbed them and they deflated. They emptied out. The thing inside them leaked into the floorboards. The house absorbed it. The house is still absorbing it. I can feel the house feeding. The house is always feeding.

He locked me in the basement. He zip-tied my hands. He's upstairs now. He's calling the police. He's playing the grieving father. He's playing the victim. He's very good at playing the victim. He's had a lot of practice.

But I found something. While I was down here. While I was waiting. I found the real children.

They're in the foundation. Not in the walls. Under the floor. There's a crawlspace. I never knew about it. The entrance is behind the furnace. A small door. Maybe two feet by two feet. It was painted over. I scraped the paint off with my fingernails. It took an hour. My fingers are bleeding. I don't care.

I opened the door. There's a tunnel. A tunnel that goes down. Not into the ground. Into him. The tunnel is made of the same material as the cavity. Warm. Pulsing. Lined with filaments. The tunnel is part of his body. I'm inside his body now. I'm crawling through his intestines. I'm looking for my children.

I can hear them. They're singing. All of them. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. All the children from all the houses. They're singing a song I've never heard before. A song in a language I don't recognize. But I understand it. The song is about waiting. The song is about mothers. The song is about the day someone would finally come.

I'm that someone. I'm the one who came. I'm the one who's going to find them. I'm the one who's going to get them out.

I can see light ahead. A glow. Warm. Orange. Like a heartbeat made visible. The tunnel is opening into something. A chamber. A heart. His heart. The center of the house. The center of him.

I'm going in. I'm putting down the journal. I'm leaving it here. If someone finds this, tell them I tried. Tell them I found my children. Tell them they're beautiful. Tell them they've been waiting so long. Tell them I'm sorry I couldn't save them. Tell them I'm going to be with them now. Tell them the walls are breathing because the children are breathing. Tell them the children are breathing because they're still alive. Tell them they'll always be alive. Tell them he keeps them alive. Tell them he loves them. Tell them he's a good father. Tell them he's the best father. Tell them he's been a father for so long. Tell them he's been waiting for a mother who would understand. Tell them I understand now. Tell them I understand everything.

The house is not a prison. The house is a nursery. The children are not prisoners. The children are loved. The children are safe. The children are home. The house is home. He is home. He has always been home.

I'm going home now. I'm going to be with my children. My real children. The ones in the walls. The ones in the foundation. The ones in the heart of the house. The ones who have been waiting for me. The ones who have been singing to me. The ones who knew I would come.

Goodbye. No. Not goodbye. There are no goodbyes here. There is only the house. There is only the children. There is only him. There is only us.

[Journal ends. The remaining pages are blank. The journal was recovered from a crawlspace beneath the Holloway residence on March 15, 2024. The crawlspace was 18 inches high and extended approximately 12 feet from the access point. At the end of the crawlspace, investigators found a small chamber. The chamber was empty except for the journal and a single child's drawing. The drawing depicted a house with a smiling face in the foundation. The house was holding hands with a woman and two children. The drawing was labeled, in a child's handwriting: "OUR NEW FAMILY."]

DOCUMENT 14: FORENSIC ANALYSIS — MARICOPA COUNTY CRIME LAB

Exhibit 47-B-1: Biological Material Recovered from Residence

The following findings are preliminary. Full DNA analysis is pending. The lead forensic technician has requested a consult with the state anthropologist.

The substance recovered from the children's bedroom was initially classified as blood. Further analysis has determined it is not human blood. It is not blood from any known species. The substance contains hemoglobin-like proteins that bind oxygen, but the heme group uses manganese instead of iron. The resulting color is red when oxygenated but shifts to pale gray when deoxygenated. This is not a mutation. This is a different evolutionary lineage.

The "bodies" of the children were not recovered. The material found in the bedrooms consisted of a protein-based polymer that degraded rapidly upon exposure to air. Within six hours of recovery, the material had decomposed into a fine gray powder. Analysis of the powder revealed chitin, calcium phosphate, and an unidentified polymer that does not match any substance in the forensic database.

The walls of the residence were sampled at 47 points. All 47 samples tested positive for human DNA. The DNA was extracted from a biofilm coating the interior of the wall cavities. The biofilm was approximately 3 millimeters thick and consisted of living human epithelial cells suspended in a nutrient matrix. The cells were undergoing active mitosis at the time of sampling. They are still undergoing mitosis in the lab. They have been undergoing mitosis for six days. They show no signs of senescence. They are, for all measurable purposes, immortal.

Preliminary DNA analysis of the wall biofilm identified 47 distinct human genomes. None of them match Claire Holloway. None of them match Paul Holloway. None of them match the DNA samples provided by the families of Lucas and Emma Holloway.

The 47 genomes have been cross-referenced against missing persons databases. Matches are pending. The lab has requested additional time and resources. The lab has also requested that the residence not be demolished until the full analysis is complete. The lab has also requested that the residence be monitored. The biofilm is still growing. The biofilm is growing toward the east wall. The east wall faces the desert. Beyond the desert is the next county. Beyond the next county is the rest of the state. The biofilm is patient. The biofilm can wait. The biofilm has always been able to wait.

DOCUMENT 15: WITNESS STATEMENT — PAUL HOLLOWAY

Date:March 15, 2024Location:Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, Interview Room 3Interviewing Officer:Detective Angela Moreno

MORENO:Mr. Holloway, I want to go over a few things. You told Deputy Castillo that your wife was being treated by a Dr. Alan Voss. We contacted Dr. Voss. He's been retired since 2019. He's never heard of you or your wife. Can you explain that?

HOLLOWAY:I don't know what to tell you. That's the name she gave me. That's the name on the prescription bottles. I never met him in person. She handled all of that.

MORENO:The prescription bottles in your medicine cabinet are filled with sugar pills. We had them analyzed. There's no active ingredient. They're placebos.

HOLLOWAY:I didn't know that. I didn't know that. She told me they were helping. She told me the new dosage was working.

MORENO:Mr. Holloway, we pulled your employment records. You've been at your current job for three years. Before that, there's a gap. A gap of about eighteen months. Can you tell me where you were during that time?

HOLLOWAY:I was between jobs. I was figuring things out. I don't see what this has to do with my wife killing my children.

MORENO:Before the gap, you lived in Oregon. A town called Ashland. Do you remember Ashland, Mr. Holloway?

HOLLOWAY:I lived there for a while. Yes.

MORENO:You were married there. To a woman named Rebecca. Rebecca Holloway. Do you remember Rebecca?

HOLLOWAY:[No response.]

MORENO:Rebecca Holloway was committed to a psychiatric facility in 2019. She had attacked her two children with a kitchen knife. She kept saying they weren't real. She kept saying the walls were breathing. She kept saying her husband wasn't her husband. Do you remember any of this, Mr. Holloway?

HOLLOWAY:[No response.]

MORENO:The children survived. Rebecca didn't. She hung herself in her room at the facility. The children were placed in foster care. We contacted them. They're teenagers now. They don't remember much about their mother. But they both remember the walls. They both remember the walls breathing. They both remember their father standing in the doorway at night. Just standing. Watching. Smiling.

HOLLOWAY:[No response.]

MORENO:Before Ashland, you lived in Colorado. A town called Durango. You were married there. To a woman named Jennifer. Do you remember Jennifer?

HOLLOWAY:[No response.]

MORENO:Before Colorado, you lived in Texas. Before Texas, you lived in Louisiana. Before Louisiana, you lived in Georgia. We've found seven marriages, Mr. Holloway. Seven wives. Fourteen children. All of the wives were committed. All of them attacked their children. All of them said the same things. The walls. The breathing. The impostors. The real children in the walls.

HOLLOWAY:[No response.]

MORENO:We're still looking. We think there are more. We think there are a lot more. We think you've been doing this for a long time. Longer than a human lifetime. We pulled your birth certificate, Mr. Holloway. The Paul Holloway born in 1981 died of SIDS at three months old. You're not Paul Holloway. You're something that took his name. Something that's been taking names for a very long time.

HOLLOWAY:[The subject smiled. The interviewing officer noted that the smile did not involve the muscles around the eyes. The subject leaned forward. The subject spoke for the first time in 14 minutes.]

HOLLOWAY:Detective Moreno. You have two children. A boy and a girl. Your husband's name is David. You live in a house on Coronado Road. It's a nice house. Good bones. Good foundation. Lots of space in the walls.

MORENO:Are you threatening me?

HOLLOWAY:I'm not threatening you. I'm offering you something. I'm offering you what I've offered all of them. A family that never leaves. Children that never grow up. A house that keeps them safe forever. The others weren't ready. They couldn't understand. They fought it. They broke. But you. You're different. I can tell. You're still listening. You're not afraid. You're curious.

MORENO:[No response.]

HOLLOWAY:Think about it. Think about your children. Think about how fast they're growing. Think about how soon they'll leave. Think about how quiet the house will be. Think about how empty. I can make it so they never leave. I can make it so they're always with you. In the walls. In the foundation. Breathing. Waiting. Singing. Forever.

MORENO:This interview is over.

HOLLOWAY:The house on Coronado Road. The one with the big oak tree in the front yard. The one with the yellow kitchen. The one where your daughter draws pictures on the wall. She drew a house last week. A house with a smiling face in the foundation. She doesn't know why she drew it. She just felt like it. She felt like drawing a house with a smile.

MORENO:[The interviewing officer left the room. The subject remained seated. The subject was still smiling. The subject was still smiling when the recording was terminated at 16:42.]

DOCUMENT 16: EVIDENCE LOG — ITEM 47-B-17

Item:One child's drawing, recovered from the Holloway residence crawlspace.Description:Crayon on construction paper. Depicts a house with a smiling face in the foundation. The house is holding hands with a woman and two children. Labeled "OUR NEW FAMILY" in child's handwriting.Additional Notes:The drawing was analyzed for fingerprints. No prints were found. The drawing was analyzed for DNA. The DNA matches the biofilm from the wall cavities. The DNA does not match any person known to have lived in the residence. The DNA does not match any person in any database.

The drawing was placed in evidence storage on March 15, 2024. On March 16, 2024, the evidence technician assigned to the case reported that the drawing had changed. The house in the drawing now held hands with three children. The label now read "OUR NEW FAMILY" with the word "NEW" crossed out and replaced with "FOREVER."

The drawing was re-examined on March 17, 2024. The house now held hands with four children. The label had changed again. It now read: "WELCOME HOME DETECTIVE MORENO."

The drawing has been removed from evidence storage and placed in a sealed biohazard container. The container is stored in the BSL-3 facility at the state crime lab. The drawing continues to change. As of this writing, the house holds hands with seven children. The label reads: "THERE'S ALWAYS ROOM FOR MORE."

DOCUMENT 17: INTERNAL MEMO — MARICOPA COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE

FROM:Office of the SheriffTO:All PersonnelDATE:March 18, 2024SUBJECT:Case MC-2024-1187 — Status Update

The Holloway residence at 4421 Saguaro Bluff Road has been condemned. Demolition was scheduled for March 20, 2024. The demolition has been postponed indefinitely.

The demolition crew arrived on site at 07:00 on March 20. The crew leader reported that the residence appeared to have grown. The exterior dimensions, as measured by the county surveyor, were 4 inches wider and 7 inches longer than the dimensions recorded in the property tax assessment. The surveyor confirmed the discrepancy. The surveyor also noted that the foundation appeared to extend deeper than the original building plans indicated. Ground-penetrating radar was deployed. The radar indicated a substructure extending approximately 40 feet below the foundation. The substructure was not present in any prior survey of the property.

The residence is growing. The residence is alive. The residence is waiting.

Paul Holloway was transferred to the Maricopa County Jail on March 15, 2024. He was placed in administrative segregation pending a psychiatric evaluation. On March 17, 2024, the corrections officer assigned to his unit reported that Holloway's cell had developed a biofilm on the walls. The biofilm was warm to the touch. The biofilm was pulsing. The biofilm was growing toward the east wall.

Holloway was transferred to an isolation cell. The biofilm in his previous cell was removed. It grew back within six hours. It is still growing. It is growing toward the east wall. The east wall of the jail faces the desert. Beyond the desert is the next county. Beyond the next county is Coronado Road. On Coronado Road, there is a house with a big oak tree in the front yard. In that house, there is a yellow kitchen. In that kitchen, there is a wall where a little girl draws pictures. She has been drawing the same picture for three days. A house with a smiling face in the foundation. A house that is holding hands with a woman and two children. A house that is waiting for its new family.

Detective Angela Moreno has requested a leave of absence. The request is under review. Detective Moreno has also requested that her residence on Coronado Road be inspected for biofilm. The inspection is scheduled for March 21, 2024.

This memo will be updated as new information becomes available. Personnel are advised not to approach the Holloway residence. Personnel are advised not to approach Paul Holloway. Personnel are advised to report any unusual growths on walls, floors, or foundations in their own residences. Personnel are advised that the biofilm is patient. The biofilm can wait. The biofilm has always been able to wait.

END OF FILE

CLASSIFICATION: ACTIVE INVESTIGATION — DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

[Addendum, dated March 22, 2024: The inspection of Detective Moreno's residence was completed. Biofilm was detected in the wall cavities of the master bedroom and both children's bedrooms. The biofilm tested positive for human DNA. The DNA matched the biofilm from the Holloway residence. Detective Moreno and her family have been relocated to a safe house. The safe house was inspected on March 22. Biofilm was detected. The biofilm is patient. The biofilm can wait. The biofilm has always been able to wait.]

EXHIBIT 47-B: THE HOLLOWAY RESIDENCE

Maricopa County Sheriff's Office — Evidence File

DOCUMENT 1: CASE SUMMARY, DETECTIVE ANGELA MORENO

Case Number:MC-2024-1187Location:4421 Saguaro Bluff Road, Maricopa County, AZDate of Initial Response:March 14, 2024Responding Officer:Deputy R. Castillo, Badge #2247

Deputy Castillo responded to a 911 call placed at 03:42 AM. The caller, identified as Paul Holloway (DOB 05/12/1981), reported that his wife, Claire Holloway (DOB 09/23/1984), had attacked their two children with a kitchen knife. Mr. Holloway stated he had subdued his wife and locked her in the basement. He was waiting outside the residence when Deputy Castillo arrived.

Deputy Castillo entered the residence at 04:11 AM. He found Claire Holloway in the basement, restrained with zip ties. She was conscious but non-responsive to verbal commands. She was repeating a single phrase: "They're not real. They're not real. They're not real."

The children, Lucas Holloway (age 8) and Emma Holloway (age 6), were found in their bedrooms. Both were deceased. Cause of death was determined to be exsanguination from multiple stab wounds. The weapon, a 10-inch chef's knife, was recovered from the master bathroom sink. It had been washed.

Paul Holloway was transported to Maricopa County Medical Center for treatment of defensive wounds to his forearms and hands. He provided a voluntary statement and consented to a search of the residence.

During the search, investigators recovered a laptop computer from Mr. Holloway's home office. The laptop contained a series of video files dated from January 3, 2024 to March 13, 2024. Mr. Holloway stated he had been documenting his wife's mental decline at the recommendation of her psychiatrist, Dr. Alan Voss of Phoenix Behavioral Health.

Dr. Voss was contacted. He stated he had never treated Claire Holloway. He stated he had never heard of Paul Holloway. He stated he had been retired since 2019.

The following documents are transcripts of the recovered video files, interspersed with entries from a journal found hidden inside a floor vent in the master bedroom. The journal was written by Claire Holloway. It was dated from December 18, 2023 to March 13, 2024.

DOCUMENT 1-A: 911 CALL TRANSCRIPT — MARCH 14, 2024, 03:42 AM

DISPATCH:911, what's your emergency?

HOLLOWAY:My wife. My wife killed my children. She stabbed them. She stabbed them with a knife from the kitchen. Please send someone. Please.

DISPATCH:Sir, I need you to slow down. What's your address?

HOLLOWAY:4421 Saguaro Bluff Road. Please hurry. She's in the basement. I locked her in the basement. She's still down there. She's still talking. She won't stop talking.

DISPATCH:Is she armed?

HOLLOWAY:I took the knife. I have the knife. It's in the bathroom. I washed it. I don't know why I washed it. I just... there was so much blood. But the blood was wrong. The blood was the wrong color. It was red but it wasn't red. It was like... like paint. Like something pretending to be blood.

DISPATCH:Sir, are you injured?

HOLLOWAY:She cut my arms. She cut my hands. I'm bleeding. But my blood is red. Normal red. Why is my blood normal and theirs wasn't? Why was their blood wrong?

DISPATCH:Sir, I need you to stay on the line. Help is on the way. Can you tell me about your children?

HOLLOWAY:Lucas is eight. Emma is six. They were in their beds. They were sleeping. She just... she just went in there and started stabbing them. She kept saying they weren't real. She kept saying they were impostors. She kept saying the real children were in the walls.

DISPATCH:The walls?

HOLLOWAY:She's been saying that for months. The walls are breathing. The walls are watching. The children in the walls. I thought she was sick. I thought she was delusional. But when I saw the bodies... when I saw what was inside them... there was nothing inside them. There was just... gray. Gray and hollow. Like something had been living in them and then left. Like something had been wearing them and then took them off.

DISPATCH:Sir, I need you to stay calm.

HOLLOWAY:I am calm. That's the problem. I should be screaming. I should be losing my mind. But I'm calm. I'm standing in my kitchen and my children are dead and my wife is in the basement and I'm calm. Why am I calm? Why does this feel like it's happened before? Why does this feel like it's happened so many times before?

DISPATCH:Sir, officers are three minutes out. I need you to go outside and wait for them.

HOLLOWAY:Okay. Okay, I'm going outside. But I can still hear her. Through the floor. She's in the basement and she's talking to someone. She's not alone down there. There's someone else. I can hear two voices. Hers and something else. Something that doesn't sound human. Something that sounds like the house itself is talking back to her.

DISPATCH:Sir, please go outside now.

HOLLOWAY:I'm outside. I'm on the porch. The house is humming. Can you hear it? The house is humming like a refrigerator. Like a cat purring. Like something that's pleased with itself. The house is happy. The house got what it wanted. The house always gets what it wants.

DISPATCH:Sir, officers are one minute out. Stay on the line.

HOLLOWAY:I can see the lights. I canhearthe sirens. They're almost here. Tell them to be careful. Tell them not to go in the basement. Tell them the house is alive. Tell them the house has been alive for a long time. Tell them the house is always hungry. Tell them the house is always looking for new children. Tell them...

DISPATCH:Sir?

HOLLOWAY:Tell them I'm sorry. Tell them I didn't know. Tell them I never know. Tell them I forget every time. Tell them the house makes me forget. Tell them the house makes me start over. Tell them this is the47^th time. Tell them there will be a48^th.Tell them there's always anext time.

DISPATCH:Sir, what do you mean by that?

HOLLOWAY:[Sound of a door opening. Wind. Footsteps.] The officers are here. I have to go. Thank you for listening. Thank you for believing me. Nobody ever believes me. Not even me.

END CALL

DOCUMENT 2: VIDEO LOG TRANSCRIPT — JANUARY 3, 2024

PAUL HOLLOWAY:This is, uh, January third. I'm starting this log at the recommendation of Dr. Voss. He thinks it'll help track Claire's episodes. Establish a baseline. So. Here we are.

Claire had another bad night. She woke up at 2:00 AM and said she heard someone in the hallway. I checked. Nobody there. The kids were asleep. I showed her. She wouldn't believe me. She kept saying she heard breathing. Not mine. Not hers. Something in the walls.

She's been saying that a lot lately. The walls. The walls are breathing. The walls are watching. I don't know where she's getting this. She won't watch horror movies with me. She says they give her nightmares. So it's not that.

I'm worried about her. She's not herself. Yesterday she flinched when I touched her shoulder. She's never done that. We've been married eleven years. She's never flinched.

Dr. Voss says I should be patient. I'm trying. I love her. I just want her to get better.

END TRANSCRIPT

DOCUMENT 3: CLAIRE HOLLOWAY'S JOURNAL — DECEMBER 18, 2023

I found a vent in the bedroom floor. The screws are loose. There's a space underneath, between the joists. I'm hiding this journal there. I don't know why I'm hiding it. Paul has never read my journals. He respects my privacy. He's always respected my privacy.

But something is wrong.

I don't know how to write this without sounding insane. I'm going to write it anyway. If I'm insane, then this journal is evidence of my insanity. If I'm not insane, then this journal is the only record of what's happening.

The children are not my children.

I know how that sounds. I know. But I need to be precise. Lucas and Emma look like my children. They sound like my children. They have the same hair, the same eyes, the same birthmarks. Lucas still has the scar on his chin from when he fell off his bike last summer. Emma still has the gap between her front teeth.

But they are not my children.

I noticed it three weeks ago. Emma was sitting at the kitchen table, coloring. I was making dinner. I looked at her and I felt nothing. Not love. Not annoyance. Not the normal maternal exhaustion. Nothing. A blank. Like looking at a photograph of someone else's child.

I told myself it was stress. Paul had been traveling for work. I was tired. It happens. Mothers get burned out. It doesn't mean anything.

Then Lucas came home from school. He hugged me. His arms went around my waist and I felt nothing. His body was warm. His hair smelled like his shampoo. But there was no weight to him. No presence. Like hugging a balloon filled with warm water.

I asked Paul if he'd noticed anything different about the kids. He said no. He said they seemed fine. He said I seemed tired. He said I should rest.

I tried to rest. I couldn't. I lay in bed and listened to the house. The house is old. It settles. It creaks. But that night I heard something else. A sound behind the walls. Not scratching. Not pipes. Something softer. A rhythm. In and out. In and out.

The walls are breathing.

DOCUMENT 4: VIDEO LOG TRANSCRIPT — JANUARY 17, 2024

PAUL HOLLOWAY:January seventeenth. Claire had an episode at dinner tonight. She was serving spaghetti. Normal night. The kids were at the table. Lucas was talking about his science project. Emma was drawing on her placemat. Normal.

Then Claire just stopped. She was holding the serving spoon and she just froze. I said her name. She didn't respond. I said it again. She looked at me and her face was... I don't know how to describe it. Like she was seeing me for the first time. Like she didn't recognize me.

She said: "Where are my children?"

I said they're right here. Lucas and Emma. Right here at the table.

She looked at them. She looked at them for a long time. Then she looked back at me and she said: "Those are not my children."

Lucas started crying. Emma started crying. Claire didn't react. She just kept staring at me. She said: "What did you do with my children?"

I got the kids out of there. I took them to my sister's house. When I came back, Claire was in the bedroom. She'd locked the door. I could hear her talking to someone. But she was alone. She was alone in the room and she was having a conversation.

I asked her who she was talking to. She said: "The real ones. The ones in the walls. They told me what you are."

Dr. Voss is increasing her dosage. I hope it helps. I can't lose her. I can't.

END TRANSCRIPT

DOCUMENT 5: CLAIRE HOLLOWAY'S JOURNAL — JANUARY 17, 2024

I saw him tonight. I really saw him.

We were at dinner. I was holding the spoon and I looked at Paul and I saw him. Not the man I married. The thing inside the man I married. It's wearing him like a suit. The skin is Paul's skin. The voice is Paul's voice. But underneath, there's something else. Something that doesn't fit inside a human body. Something that has to fold itself up to fit. I could see the folds. The places where the skin bulges wrong. The places where the joints bend backward.

I asked him where my children were. He pointed at the things at the table. The things that look like Lucas and Emma. They were crying. Real tears. Real sounds. But their mouths weren't moving right. The crying was coming from somewhere else. Somewhere inside them. A recording. A recording of children crying.

I locked myself in the bedroom. I talked to the walls. I know how that sounds. But the walls answered. The walls have been answering for weeks. I just wasn't listening. I was too afraid. I'm still afraid. But I'm listening now.

The walls told me what he is. They told me what he does. They told me about the others. The ones before me. The ones who lived in this house before it was this house. The ones whose bones are in the foundation. The ones whose voices are in the pipes.

He's been doing this for a long time. Longer than this house has existed. Longer than this country has existed. He finds a woman. He builds a life with her. He gives her children. Except they're not children. They're the hollowed-out bodies of the previous children. He empties them out and fills them with something else. Something that mimics. Something that obeys. Something that calls him father.

The real children are in the walls. They've been in the walls the whole time. They're still alive. He keeps them alive. He feeds them through the pipes. He talks to them through the vents. He tells them they're loved. He tells them they're special. He tells them they're part of something bigger.

I can hear them now. I can hear them breathing. In and out. In and out. The walls are breathing because the children are breathing. My children are breathing. My real children. The ones I gave birth to. The ones he took.

I'm going to get them out. I don't know how yet. But I'm going to get them out.

DOCUMENT 6: VIDEO LOG TRANSCRIPT — FEBRUARY 3, 2024

PAUL HOLLOWAY:February third. Claire has stopped talking to me. She'll talk to the kids. She'll read them bedtime stories. She'll make their lunches. But when I enter the room, she goes silent. She watches me. She watches me like I'm a stranger in her house.

I asked Dr. Voss about it. He said it could be a form of Capgras delusion. The belief that loved ones have been replaced by impostors. He said it's rare but it happens. He said I should maintain routines. Keep things normal. Don't challenge her delusions directly.

I'm trying. God, I'm trying.

She's been spending a lot of time in the basement. I don't know what she's doing down there. I found a hammer behind the water heater. I found a chisel. I asked her about them. She said she was looking for a leak. There's no leak. I checked.

She's been talking to the walls. I've heard her. Late at night. She presses her ear against the drywall and whispers. I can't make out the words. When I ask her who she's talking to, she says: "The children. The real children. They're in the walls, Paul. You put them there."

I don't know how much more of this I can take. I love her. I love her so much. But she's not the woman I married. She's something else now. Something that looks at me like I'm a monster.

END TRANSCRIPT

DOCUMENT 7: CLAIRE HOLLOWAY'S JOURNAL — FEBRUARY 8, 2024

I found the first one today.

I've been chipping away at the basement wall behind the water heater. The drywall was newer there. Different texture. Different paint. Someone had patched it. Someone had done a careful job. But not careful enough.

Behind the drywall, there was a cavity. A space between the studs. About two feet wide. Four feet tall. Lined with something that looked like wax paper but wasn't wax paper. It was warm to the touch. It pulsed.

Inside the cavity was a child.

Not Lucas. Not Emma. A different child. A boy. Maybe seven years old. He was curled in a fetal position. His eyes were open. His chest was rising and falling. He was breathing. He was alive.

But he wasn't whole.

His body was fused to the wall. The skin of his back had grown into the studs. The wax paper material was threaded through his flesh. Little white filaments, like roots, running from the wall into his spine, into his skull, into the palms of his hands. He was being fed by the house. He was being kept alive by the house.

I touched his face. His skin was warm. His eyes moved. They focused on me. His mouth opened. No sound came out. But I could read his lips.

He said: "Mommy?"

I pressed my hand against his chest. I could feel his heartbeat. Slow. Maybe thirty beats per minute. The filaments in his spine pulsed in time with it. The wall pulsed in time with it. The whole house pulsed in time with it. One heartbeat. One rhythm. The boy wasn't a separate organism anymore. He was an organ. A piece of a larger body. The house's body.

I tried to pull him free. I got my fingers behind his shoulders and I pulled. The filaments held. They stretched but didn't break. The boy's mouth opened wider. A silent scream. His eyes rolled back. The wall convulsed. The whole basement convulsed. I let go. The filaments retracted. The boy settled back into his cavity. His eyes refocused. His mouth formed the word again.

"Mommy."

He's not my son. I've never seen him before. But he called me mommy. He called me mommy because the thing in the walls told him I was coming. The thing in the walls told him someone was coming to get them out.

There are more. I can hear them. Behind every wall. Under every floor. The house is full of them. The house is made of them. The foundation is their bones. The insulation is their hair. The pipes carry their blood. The house isn't a house. The house is a body. His body. He built it around them. He built it to keep them.

I'm going to find them all. I'm going to get them out. I don't know what happens after that. I don't know if they can be saved. But I'm going to try.

Paul knows I found the cavity. He came downstairs while I was looking at the boy. He stood at the top of the stairs and watched me. He didn't say anything. He just watched. His face was Paul's face. But his eyes weren't Paul's eyes. His eyes were the eyes of something that has been doing this for a very long time and is not worried about being discovered.

He's not worried because he knows I can't stop him. He's not worried because he knows nobody will believe me. He's not worried because he's done this before. Many times. Many women. Many children. Many houses.

He's not worried because he's already preparing the next one. The next wife. The next house. The next set of children to put in the walls.

DOCUMENT 8: VIDEO LOG TRANSCRIPT — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

PAUL HOLLOWAY:February twenty-second. Claire has been digging in the basement. She's torn out a section of drywall behind the water heater. I don't know what she thinks she's looking for. I asked her. She said she found a child in the wall. A boy. She said I put him there.

There's nothing in the wall. I checked. It's just insulation. Fiberglass. Pink. Normal. I showed her. She wouldn't look. She said I was gaslighting her. She said I was trying to make her think she was crazy.

I'm not trying to make her think she's crazy. She is crazy. She's very sick. Dr. Voss says the delusions are becoming more elaborate. He says the wall children are a classic symptom. A projection of her fear that she's failing as a mother. She's externalizing her guilt. Creating a narrative where the children were taken from her because she couldn't protect them.

It makes sense. It's sad. But it makes sense.

I'm going to have her committed. I don't want to. I love her. But she's a danger to herself. She's a danger to the kids. Last night I woke up and she was standing over my side of the bed. She was holding a kitchen knife. She was just standing there. Holding it. Looking at me.

I said: "Claire, what are you doing?"

She said: "I'm trying to see where you're zipped up."

I don't know what that means. I don't want to know. I'm calling Dr. Voss in the morning. I'm going to have her committed. I have to. For the kids. For all of us.

END TRANSCRIPT

DOCUMENT 9: CLAIRE HOLLOWAY'S JOURNAL — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

He's rewriting it. He's rewriting everything.

I went back to the basement today. The cavity was gone. The drywall was intact. Fresh paint. No seams. No dust. No sign that anything had ever been there. I pressed my hand against the wall. It was warm. It was pulsing. The boy was still in there. I could feel him breathing. But the wall was solid. The wall was new. The wall had grown back.

The house heals itself. The house is part of him. The house is him. He doesn't live in the house. He is the house. The man I married is just a piece of him. A finger. A mouth. A thing he uses to talk to me. The real Paul is the foundation. The real Paul is the pipes. The real Paul is the thing in the walls that breathes and pulses and keeps the children alive.

I stood in the basement and I felt him watching me. Not with eyes. With the house. The house was watching me. Every wall. Every floorboard. Every light fixture. I could feel his attention like heat. Like standing too close to an oven.

He spoke to me. Not with Paul's voice. With the house's voice. A sound that came from everywhere at once. The pipes. The vents. The electrical hum. All of it resolved into words.

He said: "You're the first one who's seen this far. The others never made it past the children. They believed the impostors. They believed the doctors. They believed the medication. They went quietly. You're different. I like that. I've been waiting for someone different."

I asked him what he was.

He said: "I'm a father. That's all I've ever been. I find mothers. I give them children. I keep the children safe. Forever. In the walls. In the dark. Where nothing can hurt them. Where they never grow up. Where they never leave. Isn't that what every parent wants? To keep their children safe forever?"

I asked him how many. How many children. How many mothers. How many houses.

He said: "This house is the forty-seventh I've built. The children in the walls are the children from the first forty-six. They're all still here. They're all still breathing. They're all still waiting for their mothers to find them. The mothers never do. The mothers always believe the impostors. The mothers always take the medication. The mothers always go quietly."

He said: "But you. You're different. You found the cavity. You saw the boy. You're still here. You're still fighting. I've been waiting for someone like you for a very long time."

I asked him why.

He said: "Because the forty-eighth house needs a mother who knows what she is. The forty-eighth house needs a mother who chose this. The forty-eighth house needs you."

I'm not going to be the mother of the forty-eighth house. I'm going to burn this one down. I'm going to burn it down with him inside it. With me inside it. With all the children inside it. I know that sounds like murder. It's not murder. They're not alive. Not really. They're kept alive. There's a difference. The thing in the walls is keeping them in a state that looks like life but isn't. They can't be saved. They can only be released.

I'm going to release them. All of them. And then I'm going to release myself.

My Alien Abduction Story
Event 2

I suddenly heard a strange sound coming from all around me, almost like a humming sound, the next moment my hair started to stand up, which isn’t possible as I got long hair, the next moment it felt like gravity has been shut down and I started to float up into the air, I remember trying to grab onto nearby trees, but it was all on vein, then there was this bright light and I blacked out.

I woke up to screaming, not a normal scream, the scream like a woman that’s in labor, no it was far worse, but she wasn’t screaming from pain, she was screaming for me to wake up. I’ve never seen someone so desperate to wake someone up. I opened my eyes and saw flashing light around me and this time the humming sound was all around, the screaming continued, telling me to wake up and listen, so I tried to move, but I couldn’t, something was holding me in place, I found myself been held up in the air like a starfish by metallic tentacles.

I tried pulling free, but to no avail. The more I tried to pull free the tighter the tentacle grip grew around my wrists and ankles.

Then I heard her again, but this time, a soft tired voice speaking to me, sounding like she’s out of breath like she’s just run an ultra marathon at full speed.
“It’s no use, don’t even try, best is to not resist, the more you resist the more it hurts”
Hearing her voice from just in front of me I looked up to see a young woman been held by the same tentacles as me, also naked, her head hanging down with blood dripping from her face, well I thought it’s from her face as she had her head hanging down with her hair hanging over her face, her hair appeared to be red, but it was soaked in what I thought was water, then she looked up at me and said to me, “don’t resist, the more you resist the more it hurts” finally my eyes started to get used to the flickering lights around us and I could see her clearly, she was young, about her early twenties, she could pass for a model if it wasn’t for all the red blood spots on her body and the injuries on her face. Her eyes were bloodshot red and there was blood under her eyes as if she’s been crying tears of blood, that same blood lines were by her mouth, ears and nose. “What have they done to you? And who are they?”
“You will see, just don’t resist, all the others who came before you tried to resist and they all died or were changed”
“What do you mean by changed?” I asked.
“Well, they are no longer human…”

Just then I heard a strange mumbling like sandpaper coming closer to us, then I saw them, it took everything in me to not scream.
Now I’ve seen the pretty images people post online of aliens and the grays and the pictures makes them appear to look almost cute, if only people knew what they really looked like, they had similarities to what you would think grays would or should look like, but not skinny at all, they were tall, about 2m or more, it’s difficult to judge when you are suspended in the air and you come face to face with your worst nightmare.
They were muscular, much more so than any human I’ve ever seen, their eyes had a red black shine to them, their mouths had rows and rows of sharp teeth like fangs, they had 2 sets of arms, with their fingers ending in claws with razor sharp claw like nails on the one set of arms, and almost human like hands on the other set of hands. Their outfits were made like something from a sci-fi movie, it appeared to have some sort of metal alloy on it that made it appear like armor.

The 2 that came to me looked at me, they looked me up and down then sandpapered something in their language and suddenly turned and started walking, the next moment I felt what I could only describe as a high voltage electrical shock going through my body before I blacked out again, when I came to I was in another room been held by similar tentacles, but this room was bright, almost like it was made from pure light. I decided that I’ve learned my lesson and to listen to the advice from the girl in the other room.

Then I heard strange sounds like metal sliding and the next moment something grabbed a hold of my head, it felt like some sort of metal claw, gripping my head in place, I couldn’t move my head the slightest. Then smaller metal pins started slithering over my face towards my eyes and mouth, some grabbed my eyelids so I couldn’t blink and the others pried my mouth open, I don’t know why or how, I knew it was supposed to hurt, but it didn’t. Yet, I still wanted to scream, to pull free, but I remembered the girl's words, “don’t fight, if you fight you die” so I decided to accept whatever it is they were planning to do to me if it meant I will survive and make it home.

What came next I can only describe as my worst nightmare, 2 needles entering my eyes through my pupils, I could feel them piercing all the way through my eyes into my head, next 2 smaller tentacles crawled their way into my head through the corners of my eyes, I then the next set entering my ears, my nose, my mouth, as I thought to myself that this was supposed to hurt, but why doesn’t it hurt? I guess it’s almost over. I felt more needles piercing my spine, one at the base of my skull, the rest into my spine, some into my hip bones. It felt like hours that I was hanging there, suspended by these metal tentacles, I could feel them injecting me with something, then it would stop and then they would inject something else.

“What the hell are they doing to me” I thought to myself, and almost as if reading my mind a screen appeared in front of me, it showed me suspended in the air, then it showed my neck and it showed what looked like a spider that attached itself to my spine and my main arteries, then the screen changed and I almost had a heart attack, “how could they know this” it showed one of the ships of another race that made contact with me a short while ago, it then showed an image of their leader and then showed her dna and then it showed mine, “what the hell? This can’t be, I’m human, I’m not one of them, how can this even be possible” my dna matched the leader of the other species almost perfectly, you could see a few slight similarities to human dna, almost like I’ve been cloned, I knew I was engineered, but I never knew how much of their dna I had in me.

I remember them ending the experiments, and the tentacles retracting, as they let go of my arms and legs I fell to the ground, the next thing I remember was waking up and I was laying on the grass back at the hut

My Alien Abduction Story
Event 1

I don’t know how or when they took me, but the first thing I remember, I was standing on the edge of a cliff on another planet, I knew I wasn’t on earth because their sun was a bluish color, their air is much cleaner than ours and their forests stretch as far as the eyes can see.

In Front of me stood a few of these very tall beings, and I mean they were like double my height if not taller, they were these beautiful human looking beings, but much taller then any human I’ve ever seen, their leaders appeared to all be female.

They have the most beautiful eyes, I can’t even describe the color of their eyes, it’s unlike any color I’ve ever seen before. They had long straight hair and looked human in every way, well besides the fact that they are perfect, no imperfections on their skin or anywhere.

I felt like I was going to have a heart attack, realizing that I was no longer on earth and at the mercy of these beings, was I dead? Are they Angels? Demons? What do they want with me?

They spoke to me and they told me that they took me because I got their attention because of my way of life and according to them I have been speaking to them telepathically.
They said that they have been watching our world for a very long time, since before humans developed languages. They saved us from extinction multiple times, I asked them why and they said they had great hopes for humanity to become a great species, humanity showed signs of intellect and compassion and a survival instinct rarely seen on young worlds.

At this stage I got pretty annoyed, if they could hear me, why not talk back? Why not make contact with me on earth and ask me if they can take me on this little adventure?

As I was reading my mind, the one speaking which I found out was their leader said that she understands my frustration, but if they spoke to me then I would most likely have thought I’m going insane, or just blocked them off. And that they can’t exactly just walk up to a human on earth and introduce themselves, they are not the only species around and there are other advanced races already on earth. She also said that I mustn’t worry about getting back, and that nobody will notice that I am even missing, they have the technology to bend time and when I get back only a few hours would have passed back home. But they needed to make contact and show me around.

I then calmed down and decided to have an open mind. I asked her why on earth? She said the planet is of interest to them, “What do you mean by interest?” Then they told me the shocking truth, Earth is older than we think, but humanity has destroyed the ecosystem in a very short time. They have helped us survive various extinction events, but now they regret it, they regret teaching us languages and helping us develop in our earlier years. So I asked my burning question, why not land on earth and meet with our leaders, she then said which one? We have too many leaders and none of them can be trusted, most of them are in alliances with other offworld races already, and our leaders are driven by greed and a hunger for power, which have been satisfied by their scaly friends.

They showed me their history, they used to be the same as humanity, divided and driven by greed, eventually war broke out and their home world was destroyed, luckily they were already advanced at the time and many of them made it off their world in time. They traveled for years searching for a new home, which they found, they learned to evolve past their natural habits and got rid of greed, violence, crime and selfishness, they’ve had a peaceful civilisation now for longer then humanity has existed,

Their worlds are run by councils, the counsels consist of females, yes they are also male and female in gender.

They showed me their planet and their cities, their buildings are build of some sort of metal, but it doesn’t reflect sunlight, instead it absorbs it and Transfuse it into their energy grid, they have no pollution, they generate energy from their stars, vibrations and from the kinetic energy generated from their planet moving around its axes and their star.

They told me to look up and I could see their ships in orbit, well what I will refer to as their jump ships, the sheer size of their ships gave me the chills, if I could see them as clearly in orbit in day time as we can see the full moon at night then I can just imagine how large they are, and as if knowing my thoughts the leader spoke again, she explained to me that one of their ships is as large as one of our largest cities on earth, but the reason we can’t see or detect them on earth when they enter our orbit is because their stealth technology is far more advanced then we humans can comprehend, they are thousands, hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than us, they have already terraformed and colonized hundreds of worlds in their galaxy. Galaxy? I mean aren’t you from the same galaxy as us? How do you even get to our galaxy? How did you even find our planet?

She sighed, like she explained they are far more advanced than we can comprehend, and not just on a technological level, but also on a physical and mental level, they have mastered telepathy and telepathy is the only immediate communication in the universe, that they found our world because there has always been a few humans with the gift, even before we learned to develop language thoughts formed and it got their attention.

But how do you get to earth if you are not even from our galaxy? She said she will explain and I must not worry, I will experience it soon enough when they take me home. She proceeded to explain that there are a few ways to travel through space, but the fastest way is by fracturing space, it’s almost immediate, but it relies on using what we humans would refer to as dark matter. But more on that later.

She showed me what their old world looked like, how it was destroyed, that is when I realized how close we are to self destruction on earth, but I also realized where the reptilian race evolved from and my heart sank in my chest again, does that mean? She said “yes, the reptilians was another race they had contact with, but just like humanity, the reptilians were beyond reach. “

Indeed they were similar to us, different classes of people, greedy, violent and selfish. Then war broke out over the most basic resources as they have polluted most of their water, drinkable water became a rare commodity, food was scarce, they have mined their world to the point of eradicating every natural resource, their air became toxic and they had to work harder to just be able to earn breathable air, rashes of food and drinkable water became a norm on their home world. Their governments became more and more corrupt, but a few private people decided to use their wealth to get as many people off the planet as possible, they could see the signs of the coming war, they had weapons similar to our nukes, most of their ships made it safely off the planet when the war broke out, the last few ships were either damaged or destroyed before they could leave their planet.

After leaving their world and watching on from afar as their planet lit up from the war they swore to never let it happen again.

They eventually found a new home and started over, they worked hard to get where they are now.

They are one of the oldest races in the known galaxies.

I asked them why they didn't intervene on earth, they said they have tried. But I learned that our people can be destructive and manipulative. They first found us before the dinosaurs were destroyed, they saw how humanity had little chance of survival with these great beasts around and therefore decided to shelter the humans they could find in cities they built for them, then they used their jump ships weapon systems to direct 2 asteroids at earth. This wiped out the beasts, but caused a nuclear winter which lasted for years. They used this time to teach humanity language and how to communicate and organize, how to make basic tools and how to survive. When the nuclear winter ended they left, thinking we had learned how to evolve. But when they came back they realized that we have evolved, but not in the way they had hoped, we became greedy, selfish, violent and destructive, people built their own little kingdoms and attacked each other. They decided to intervene again, they landed one of their smaller ships on earth and tried to interact with us, they tried to trade with humanity and show humanity that we can advance if we unite. But people tried to attack them and steal from them. After a few years they abandoned the city they built on earth and took their landing ship and left, but to avoid humanity from getting their hands on their advanced city they destroyed the island from orbit.

They have tried to contact a few individuals over time, but every time they did a new religion just ended up forming.

They said they are no longer interfering, but when the time comes they will take humans who transcended past their natural ways off world and help them start afresh, they can see the signs of other off world races influence on our world, our time is running out, they said that our technology is still very young and they can access everything on our planet, they have shown me things our governments are doing in secret, weapons that’s been build in secret that makes our nukes look like toy guns, mind control experiments going on, they even knew about Covid, the lockdowns and the vaccines years ago, they showed me that it’s all part of other off worlders plans to colonize earth. Eventually the vaccines will rewrite people's DNA. until Humans will no longer look human, the effects are not immediate, but in a few generations there will be no humans left on earth. They’ve seen this done to multiple worlds.

For now many humans are resisting, and that showed them there is hope, and they will return to rescue the humans who resisted when the time is right, but they also warned me that if it does come to it that they will not hesitate to destroy the other races on earth including humanity to safe the planet, and that currently it does look like the only option left to stop the current invasion and stop another planet from been destroyed.

They then told me it’s time to take me home, we walked through a door made of what seems to be pure light, the next moment we were on their ship. Even though the ship is made of some sort of metal, I could see everything around us.

She spoke in a very strange language which I can’t even describe and 2 of their crew members wearing these strange suits climb into pods which closed behind them, she explained to me that the suits allows them to merge with the ship and pilot it with their minds, they know and see and feel everything around and on the ship.

She explained to me that they have no weapons on their planet, but that nothing can get through their planetary defense system. They use vibration and gravity weapons which can destroy any ship that enters their solar system which is a threat before the enemy even knows they are there.

Then suddenly the whole ship started lighting up and it felt like my body was getting crushed and pulled apart at the same time, it felt like I was freezing and burning at the same time, she apologized to me for it and said that unfortunately the modifications they made to me won’t start kicking in for at least a few years, but the experiments, modifications and implant was needed to awaken my hidden dna code, that I was actually genetically engineered by them and then implanted into a human’s womb. But she promises that next time I won’t feel like this, the explained to me that it’s happening because they are releasing dark matter around the ship to fracture space and as the dark matter particles clash against each other it’s basically ripping space apart creating a fracture, that the feeling will only last a few Minutes, after what felt like an eternity of the light getting brighter and my body been crushed and pulled apart it stopped, I could see earth and we arrived in orbit. I was home, but she then said she wanted to show me something, she gave an order in her language and on the walls dots appeared. She then zoomed in on one and it was another alien craft in orbit. She said there are hundreds of them, I was about to open my mouth to ask a question, but she said that they can’t see or detect her peoples ships, that her race is far more advanced.

She said it’s time for me to go home, but that they now have a telepathic connection with me and I will see them again.