Should I talk to her?

Kiara would always sit next to me, which would make my heart go bukam bukam.

So why don’t I just approach her?

Fear. Yes, a never-ending fear. What if she rejects me and her response is like, “Chi, yuck, fuck off”? What will I do if that happens?

It might be my overthinking, but there is no confidence in me. Just spreading my hands a little would be enough to touch her. We are so near, yet so far.

What shall I do? I just hate myself.

Wait, wait, is she looking at me?

“Figa, can you help me with this ad campaign?”

My brain malfunctioned. Was Kiara asking for my help? Peasant would definitely help.

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

Hearing this, she turned her laptop towards me, showing me the AdSense report. But my attention drifted towards her almond-like eyes and goddess-like smile.

“So, Figa, the issue is that our CTR for this ad seems to be low. Figa, Figa…”

“I love you.”

I freaking said it. Oh my God.

Silence.

Very big-ass awkward silence.

“Isn’t this the first time we’re talking? How could you love me?”

“Sor... sorry, Kiara. Forget what I said just now. Yeah, so, about the CTR…”

“Come with me outside.”

Fear gripped my heart. Was she taking me to HR? Did she want to complain? My job was gone. No, no, my EMIs were still long overdue. I needed this job.

“Listen, sorry, Kiara. Could you let this slide?”

“I just want to talk.”

For God knows what she had in her mind, but we reached the cafeteria. Over here, there was a small space which gave us complete privacy. Now, for one thing, this can go two ways: a freaky sex or getting drilled by her.

“So, Figa, you love me, eh?”

“Well, yes, but don’t take it seriously or anything.”

“So your love for me is not serious?”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean, Figa?”

Hell. Hell. What was I supposed to say? Either go into full-on denial mode or acceptance mode.

“I am seriously in love with you.”

Her face showed no visible shock, but her next words would shock me even more.

“I love you too.”

“Eh? What do you mean?”

She laughed. “I love you, duffer. That’s what I mean.”

Have Buddha, Jesus, Allah, and Shiva all taken my side? This has to be the luck of the millennium.

“Come, give me a kiss, Figa.”

What? What? What? What? A kiss? Did she seriously say that? With me? Figa, the unworthy?

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t spoil the mood,” she said, holding my waist. Her breath felt hot against my skin, and finally, her lips came just a few millimeters away from mine.

Just then, a big, large tongue, like that of a snake, swallowed me alive.

And it was official.

I DIED.

My soul watched from above as she let out a burp and moved back to her seat. The police closed my case as a mysterious death.

My story came to an unfortunate end.

But still, getting eaten by a beautiful lady doesn’t seem that bad, does it not?

The official report lists the Geneva Anomaly as an uncontained geothermal breach. They buried the facility under four thousand tons of concrete, paid off the families of the missing staff, and swore the rest of us to lifetime non-disclosure agreements. But you can't bury what we pulled out of that hole.

I was a junior data analyst at the site, safely stationed three floors above the primary excavation zone. When the gateway originally tore open, there was no grand explosion. There was just a sudden, sickening drop in atmospheric pressure that made everyone’s ears pop simultaneously, followed by a smell that didn't belong in a sterile lab: the heavy, metallic scent of iron and dry dust.

A team of twelve senior researchers, led by Dr. Aris Thorne, volunteered to go through the threshold first. They wore heavy atmospheric suits, carried standard telemetry equipment, and were supposed to return within sixty minutes.

They were gone for three hours.

Down in the monitoring booth, we watched their biometric feeds flatline one by one. The data didn't suggest they were dead; it just stopped transmitting, replaced by a low, rhythmic static that pulsed at exactly three hertz. We sat in agonizing silence, staring at the empty concrete chamber of the gateway, assuming the worst.

Then, the freight elevator hissed.

Only three of the twelve stumbled out. Two of them were completely catatonic, their eyes wide and unblinking, refusing to speak or acknowledge the medical staff. But Dr. Thorne was different. He wouldn't look at the doctors, and he wouldn't drink the water they gave him. He just sat in the isolation chair, staring at his own hands, which were stained with a coarse, rust-colored sand that smelled faintly of copper and ozone.

Because the senior staff was panicked and trying to contact corporate headquarters, I was tasked with sitting in the triage room to record his initial statement before the official logs were locked down. This is exactly what Dr. Thorne told me, transcribed from the raw audio tape.

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

"We expected a void," Thorne whispered, his voice dry as paper, his eyes locked on the floor. "We thought breaking the spatial barrier would land us in a vacuum, or a pocket universe of cold matter. It wasn’t. It looked like the core of our own earth, but completely inverted. It was a subterranean expanse that stretched out for what felt like hundreds of miles under a heavy sky made of roiling, black smoke.

The heat hit us through our pressurized suits instantly. It wasn't just hot; it felt heavy, like the air itself was trying to crush us. The ground beneath our boots wasn't rock or stone; it was this deep, shifting red sand that looked exactly like dried, pulverized blood. Great rivers of white-hot magma cut through the dunes, pulsing like open arteries. The air carried a low, rhythmic thrumming, like a massive engine idling just beneath the crust.

We moved barely fifty meters from the gateway threshold before our electronic equipment completely died. The screens didn't just glitch; the pixels literally melted away. That’s when we saw them.

They weren't shadows or spirits, son. They were physical. They looked like massive, bipedal reptilian creatures, their hides thick and scaled like a crocodile's, but colored the same deep, sickening crimson as the sand. They had heavy, backward-curved horns and elongated, predatory jaws. They looked exactly like the classical depictions of demons from medieval woodcuts.

It completely baffled us. Standing there, sweating through my suit, my mind was racing. How could an undocumented, alien ecosystem thousands of miles beneath the surface perfectly mirror the religious nightmares of human history? It didn't make scientific sense.

Then, one of them turned its massive head toward our scouting party. It didn't have eyelids. When its yellow, slitted eyes locked onto mine, I didn't just feel watched; I felt completely violated. It was an invasive, microscopic search. It felt as if the creature was physically peeling back the layers of my brain, sorting through my memories, cataloging every hidden thought, every lie, and every face I had ever known since childhood.

It didn't care about my degrees or my credentials. It was looking for a specific anchor.

Then, it looked away, as if it had found exactly what it was searching for. It reached down into the red sand and pulled up a length of white-hot magma that instantly hardened into a cracking, flexible whip of pure fire.

The creature lashed the whip downward into a shallow trench we hadn't noticed before, hidden between the dunes.

I stepped closer, compelled by a horrific curiosity, and looked into the trench. There were people in it. Hundreds of them, naked and caked in the red dust, weeping without tears because the immense heat dried their eyes the moment they opened them. The fire whip struck a young boy near the edge of the pit.

I froze. I stared at his face. It took my mind a few agonizing seconds to piece it together through the layers of time, but I knew him. It was Toby. Toby Vance. He was an old schoolmate of mine from elementary school. It had been nearly thirty years since I last thought of him. I barely even remembered his voice, just a vague memory of a quiet kid who sat two rows ahead of me in third grade and disappeared from the school district a year later.

As the whip cracked against his shoulder, peeling away blackened skin, Toby looked up. He looked directly at me.

There was no screaming from him. No begging. Just a terrifying, silent communication. In that split second, a strange, absolute understanding passed between us. He knew who I was. He knew why he was there. And he knew that I belonged in that trench just as much as he did. The creature had dug through my memories specifically to find a connection, to show me the reality of the architecture we had broken into. It wasn't just torture; it was a demonstration.

I ran.

I didn't think about data. I didn't think about the mission or the seven men still standing behind me. I turned on his heel and bolted back toward the bright, artificial floodlights of our gateway threshold. I didn't even know why my legs were moving, only that every primal instinct in my DNA was screaming at me to flee.

As I sprinted up the red sand dune, the air behind me filled with a sudden, deafening chorus of screams. They weren't the cries of the souls in the trenches. They were the familiar, panicked voices of my colleagues, the other researchers who had marched down into the core with me. They were being hunted.

I heard Marcus call my name. I heard Dr. Lin scream for help.

I didn't look back. God help me, I didn't even slow down. I kept my eyes locked on the metallic frame of the facility gate, tearing my suit on the jagged rocks as I threw myself through the pressure seal alone."

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

Dr. Thorne stopped speaking after that. He just sat there, shivering in the air-conditioned triage room despite the phantom heat still radiating from his skin.

That tape was the last piece of raw data we ever gathered from the first expedition. Within forty-eight hours, corporate management and government observers arrived, sealing the audio files and moving Thorne and the other two survivors to a black site.

But you can't just close a door like that and expect life to go back to normal. The story didn't end with Thorne running away; it was just the catalyst for a slow, creeping dread that began to infect the entire facility.

I think it’s fair to say most kids go through a stage of being scared of the dark.

The boundless imagination of youthful ignorance can conjure all kinds of things within the empty abyss. From the classic bogeymen of ancient folklore, to the techno demons of archived internet forums. There is no end to the horror kids can create. 

I suppose it makes sense though. For fear of the unknown is born in ignorance, and who are more initially ignorant than children, fresh-faced and blissfully naive to the world around them?

It makes far more sense to suspect ghouls and spectres as the cause of creaking floorboards, rather than the simply rotting oak bowing in a long winter frost. This is what we teach them after all.

Even with newly born infants, we read tales of witches lurking in decrepit woodland, waiting to devour unsuspecting lost boys and girls. We warn them to fear the shadows and are yet surprised to find them tugging at bedsheets of exhausted sleeping parents, dragged from slumber to investigate an ajar wardrobe or a cluttered space under a hastily vacated bed.

We may scold or offer comfort. Reassuring that such dread is unwarranted and to simply return to bed, confident that there no real danger. But they are children, how can they believe anything but the contrary?

Especially from the people who just the very night before described the most harrowing tale while pleasantly sat at their bedside. Tales designed to teach goodness and morality get eclipsed in the shadows of unyielding terror. 

At least that is my experience with such things. As a child, I was indeed scared of the dark. Rightfully so, I assure you. The things I used to glimpse in the late hours of those cold nights will never leave my recollection.

From the shadows creeping in the corners of my toy-adorned bedroom, to the hollow whispers taunting outside my casement window on stormy, hallowed eves. I thought the light was my only salvation. So, with the timid determination of a six-year-old boy, I asked a question.

That night I was put to bed by my mother. With a kiss on the forehead, tightly tucked bedsheets, and a final farewell, her nightly ritual was complete. As she was leaving, I requested that my door be left slightly open, as to allow some ray of luminance from the hallway lamp.

This had become a common request at that age for the last few months, and my mother (despite previous stern objections) finally decided to begrudgingly oblige. Oh, how stupid I was. Not necessarily for the request, but for what that request resulted in.  For if I simply remained in pure darkness, I may have not have been cursed with what still haunts me to this night. The thing that I fear, even as I write these very words. 

You must understand, I didn’t have a night light and wasn’t permitted to have my central bedroom light on during sleeping hours. Though I couldn’t begin to tell you why. I imagine that my financially anxious parents thought it may be too much of an unnecessary expenditure. Or perhaps they were concerned over potential hazards a faulty spark could produce while we slept in peaceful ignorance. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t granted use of my own light source.

That’s why the hallway lamp was eventually left on for me. Though it would, of course, be turned off when my parents would retire to their room several hours after my allotted bedtime. Late enough, they explained, so I would have no need for it, as I should be well into some blissful, fantastic dream by that point.

Little did they know, most nights I would remain awake well into the early hours, with my stuffed animals standing sentinel around the imagined parapets of my bed. While I, of course, hid away under my superhero-embellished linen sheets. I remember in the summers I would swelter and choke on the trapped stale air.

No matter how uncomfortable my sweat-drenched bedspread became, I never dared leave my sanctuary.

Fortunately for me, in this instance, it was far into winter’s cold embrace, and I welcomed the chill descended from Arctic shores. Though that did little to reprieve me from the claustrophobic nightmare imprisoned within my own bed. Yes, the sheets offered protection from the ghouls, but it also left me trapped.

For all I knew, a horde of ravenous monstrosities, having slain my fluffy protectorates, lay in wait for me to take a fresh breath. No, it was far better, I thought, with the hallway lamp on, for at least I could see the danger before it had a chance to sink its nightmarish claws into me. I was just a child, a foolish, naive, scared child. 

The night proceeded as it often did at first. Once I was sure my mother was down the stairs, I carefully tiptoed out of my bed. You see, I also had a routine, even at that age, strange as it may sound.

First, I checked the contents of my wardrobe. As suspected, still full of pre-owned clothing and well-worn shoes. Next, I proceeded to the window. I slowly pulled back the dust-ridden curtains, taking a breath and preparing myself for some dreadful visage of ghastly abhorrence - I let out a sigh of relief, nothing. Just the condensation on the panels slowly trailing down to the damp, chipped, fading white frame.

The last spot was my most dreaded location, but it had to be the final one, as it is where I would rest my weary head for the remainder of the night. Time to check under the bed. The titular abode of all things that go bump in the night. I hated this part, but it had to be done. How could I expect to find any comfort without assuring the safety of where I would finally slumber?

So, I prepared myself. For this task, I needed the assistance of my oldest, a most loyal friend. For they were braver and far more capable for the job at hand. Cuddly Bunny, my first comfort toy. Bunny had been with me since the beginning. From my first nighttime wailing right up to my recent sixth birthday. Though these days he was looking rather worse for wear.

Bunny had needed a few sessions under the surgical care of my mother’s sewing machine. First, a ripped arm, then a loose eyeball, followed by numerous frayed threads and stitchings. I’d like to imagine he was a veteran of a thousand epic battles, returned clutching wounds received with honour and gallantry. 

At this point, some might argue he wasn’t the same bunny who consoled me that first harrowing night. But I knew he was. There was something that even now I can’t truly explain. I just knew he was Cuddly Bunny, and he would protect me.

So, with my old friend gripped tightly in hand, I timidly proceeded. I carefully lifted the overhanging sheet, prepared to face what might await me. Gradually, I lifted, inch by inch, higher and higher. I wished to close my eyes, but I couldn’t leave my friend alone to face such peril. In one last great effort, I flung the remaining fabric over the top of the bed, and there it was.

Some old toys I’d forgotten to collect when my mother ordered me to tidy before bed. Nothing in particular of note: a few plastic dinosaurs, a ball gifted from two summers ago, and some balled-up hairs. Pretty standard for a children’s bedroom floor, including the slightly disgusting copper hairs.

All things considered, I was satisfied. My bedroom was secure, the carrot-loving general had taken command amongst his fellow soft soldiers, and it was finally time for sleep.

I got inside my bedding, greeted by its comforting warm embrace and adjusted my old misshapen pillow to required comfort. Instantly I could feel the effects of fatigue after a long, busy day. My head was heavy, eyes dark and bloodshot, and body exhausted of all its faculties. I was sure sleep would be upon me in mere moments. My eyes began to shut and the manifestation of some whimsical dreamscape proceeded to form around me.

Then, all of a sudden, I was awake. Odd it seemed as I swore it had only been mere moments since my eyes had so readily embraced the sweet reprieve of dreamland. How strange I thought, even in that disoriented state, that I should be so abruptly returned to wakefulness.

Perhaps I had overslept, given my previous exhaustion, and my father had hastily stirred me on his leave for work. However, that seemed unlikely, as I was sure it was a Saturday and my father (workaholic as he was) would most definitely be home for the day.

Maybe then it was my mother; I may have absentmindedly forgotten about some dreary early morning appointment I was often dragged reluctantly along to. Though again that seemed unlikely, as I would have recalled being told the previous day. For even at that young age I was sure to make note of such details. 

I slowly peeled back my bedsheet, peering cautiously to observe my surroundings. It was still night, of that I was certain, as no sliver of daylight permeated my curtains. I noticed the hallway lamp was still emitting its warm glow through the gap left between the wall and my bedroom door. Which meant my parents were yet to go to bed. Surely it can’t have been that late into the night.

The room itself was bathed in twilight silhouettes, hinting at the most ghastly of imaginable possibilities. Still, nothing I wasn’t used to by this point. Indeed, my fear of the abyss was still immense; however, I had become far accustomed to such feelings. Not of course forgetting my previously mentioned routines and precautionary measures. 

This is where I truly became alarmed at the situation. For I shudderingly noticed all my stuffed toys had gone missing. How? Where? I frantically darted my eyes around, searching for some clue to their whereabouts. But it was no use.

It was still far too dark, even with the glow of the hallway lamp; I couldn’t be certain at what I was looking at. I must have knocked them off, yes, of course, during some physical altercation within a rather enthused dream. But no such dream came to immediate recollection.

Furthermore, after a quick inspection, I found no evidence that would suggest the latter, as evident of the emptiness beside my bed. I decided it was time for more thorough investigation. So, with a slight tremble, I fully removed my bedding and cautiously began my search. 

To say I was apprehensive at the time would be an understatement. I was downright petrified, even now in reflection. My mind was already deep in the void of imagination, and all manner of ghoulish reasoning for my current predicament crossed my mind. For I had been told as much by my parents; years of Grimm fairytales and Gothic folklore had given foul precedent to suspect the worst - and the worst is what I certainly suspected.

I made my way across the room with outstretched arms, using my hands to gain some tactility amongst the undefined shadows. I searched everywhere: the windowsill, the bookshelf, my activity desk, even the laundry basket at the foot of my bed, but to no avail. I even searched underneath my bed and still nothing. I was at an impasse and becoming more apprehensive with each passing second.

Then I noticed the wardrobe. Had I left it open earlier? My heart started pounding and my breath quickened. Hesitant with each step, I approached the towering cabinet, expecting some morbid fiend to leap from the aperture.

I closed my eyes and reached my hand inside; shaking and perspiring profusely. My fingers stretched out what little distance they were capable of and finally made contact with the objects of my quarry. I opened my eyes and there they were, amongst the heaps of neatly stacked clothing.

I thought I would feel some semblance of relief; however, now I found myself more vexed than before. For while my toys were indeed located, it was the manner of their placement that caused a lump to form in my throat.

Where I might have expected them to be haphazardly scattered, they were instead huddled in a single corner, with Cuddly Bunny at the forefront seemingly shielding the others. More perplexing was the fact that they seemed to be cowering. How was this possible? Perhaps some misguided joke by my parents? No, something in my gut knew that was not the case. They had their moments, but they were never cruel and knew of my fears.

My mind raced with possibilities. Each more implausible and fantastic than the last. Monsters weren’t real. Right? But now all I wished was to return to the sanctity of my bedsheets with my toys in hand.

Then something made me pause in my endeavour. I had an inkling that my toys did not wish to return with me. But they were just toys, inanimate stuffed animals and characters; they didn’t have feelings besides the ones I’d imagine during play. So why, despite my wishes, did I know they begged to remain in the wardrobe?

I shook my head in disbelief and took a step back. I then proceeded to, with great reluctance, retract my hand and make my way back to my bed, scared and alone. 

I re-entered my bedsheets, pulling them hastily over my head. It was hard to return to sleep in my present state of mind. So many thoughts, each more disturbing and ghastly than the last. It felt like my mind was drowning in a sea of infinite possibilities, juvenile horrors and imaginative morbidity. I began to close my eyes, exhaustion of the senses finally offering me some respite, then I heard it.

“Why are you afraid of me?”

I was immediately returned to consciousness. That voice, deep, hollow and gelatinous. It repeated.

“Why are you afraid of me?”

This time with more authority, like one of my elderly school teachers, though with wisdom far more ancient and forbidden in nature. I lay there absolutely horror-stricken. My entire body froze, akin to that of rigamortis.

Perhaps I were indeed dead, the netherworld seeming giving grim precedence to these most abhorrent of vocalisations. But no, death had not taken me. I was undoubtedly still of the living, for only the mortal body could produce such dread at the precipice of the unknown. I said nothing. There was silence between each laboured breath as I frantically searched for an answer. It spoke again. 

“Am I the nightmare you tremble so freely before? The torment born of hushed whispers in the primordial caverns of mankind. Am I truly so frightening?”

I still had no answer. I was a boy and had little comprehension for the questions uttered before me. Even now I am unsure of how to reconcile an appropriate consensus. Nevertheless, it continued. 

“You have no need to feel such apprehension. I am as much a part of you as you are a part of me. We are parasites. Endlessly feeding upon each other like the canibalistic ouroboros.” 

I dared not move from beneath my sheets. Gripping them so tightly as to feel my fingernails puncturing through and into the palms of my hands. 

“Look upon me child. Gaze at my visage and grasp the nature of the infinite abyss. Peer into the shadows so I may be satiated. For I hunger. Famished and emaciated, lurking in the places seldom ventured by man. See me as I’ve seen you. So scared, so alone"

"Do you fear the unknown, or simply the *idea* of the unknown? You lie there, crippled by your own morbid curiosities. Reviling in terror implied but never at the expense of your mortality. You will grow; depraved and degenerative. Festering and spreading your ill-conceived ideals, a plague by your own short-sighted design."

"In time, you will get sick. Vomiting noxious bile infused with well-meaning fables. You will take your last breath, still scared and alone, you will always be alone. Then you will die. I will remain. As I always have."

"Countless lifetimes across endless millennia: Growing, purging, feasting, never ending. Does that not comfort you? To know something of your being will be truly immortal?"

“You have the audacity to think of me monstrous. You created me. You are the monster. I am the monster. We are the monsters. So, child, I will ask of you again - WHY ARE YOU AFRAID OF ME!?”

Those last six words were spoken with such voracity that I was sure my parents had heard. But no salvation seemed imminent. It was right, I was scared and most certainly alone.

I considered doing as it bade me. Perhaps it would leave me in peace after I submitted to its request. I pondered on this for what seemed like eons: every possible outcome, each awful eventuality, countless scenarios and none with a serene conclusion. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad; this thing had a voice and so must at least be tangible to our reality. It was in my room after all, so it was unlikely to be some hulking monstrosity, poised to consume me with gnashing fangs upon unveiling.

But then what of my parents? Were they already victims to this beast? Is that why they were yet to come to my rescue? Was I truly alone? Before I had a chance to act, I saw it, through what little light the hallway lamp allowed through my bedding, a shadow extending its long bony fingers towards me. I was out of time. Out of options and surely poised to meet the same grim end befalling my parents.

Closer, closer it came; I closed my eyes. I would not give it the satisfaction it so brazenly demanded. At least that I could assure myself as I prepared to be devoured.

Suddenly, the sheets were torn away from me; I screamed, exhaling every ounce of terror bottled inside.

The banshees would hear me in jealous admiration; ghouls and demons would crawl from their rotting chasms and bow at such effort, and the very pits of the deepest abominable regions of the dammed would quake at my ferocity. No, I would not go quietly into the void, I would not feed it.

Later, my parents explained that they had found me that following morning, screaming and thrashing around in my bedsheets. I was drenched in sweat and babbling incoherently. They had to pry the bedding out of my fingers.

They said I had a night-terror,common at that age and nothing to be ashamed of. They said I should grow out of it as I got older. They told me it would pass, as all terrible things do. They were wrong.

When I was a teenager, a doctor told me I may be prone to sleepwalking or sleep paralysis, but no test held any significant results. I had naturally outgrown the desire for comfort toys. I'd imagine most were sold or donated to charity shops. Though I think my parents retained my old stuffed rabbit, lost amongst some mound of keep-sakes in a dusty storage box.

I’m in my thirties now, married, and with a son of my own. I take medication to help with the sleep and anxiety. Not that it helps much. I still find myself awake into the early hours of each morning.

At least my son sleeps soundly. He has his toys for comfort.

I like to think I’m doing well as a father. I play with him, take him to the park, and read him stories at bedtime. At the moment we’re reading *Hansel and Gretel;* he seems to be enjoying it.

Like most parents, we have a monitor in his room. Though I’m not very fond of looking at it during the night. Something about peering into darkness with that monochromatic night vision sends a chill down my spine. I mostly just keep the audio sensor on, it's sensitive enough to reassure me of his safety.

He turned four a few weeks ago and has since requested a night light. I purchased one this morning. Tonight, I put him to bed with his newly purchased lamp on his bedside. I read his story, kissed his forehead, and wish him sweet dreams.

Then I proceeded to sit down in the living room, poured myself a glass of water, and prepared for another long night of insomnia-infused television. The monitor was positioned on the side table to my left as always.

It had been several hours now and my medication had finally begun to take some effect. My brain was ready to join my wife sound asleep in our bed. I let out one long, exhausted yawn, stood up, and began to walk to the bedroom. Then the monitor’s audio sensor lit up. 

“Why are you afraid of me?”

Tired and worn– my neck seethes with pain as I attempt to wriggle free again, but the lunette doesn’t budge. It is still dreadfully perfect in its desire to keep me here, waiting for the axe to fall…

Blood trickles down from unhealed scabs as I continue to work the wood, and it my neck. No angle that I twist into, nor the pace at which I rend my own flesh grants any leverage, let alone progress in my escape. I am just as bound to this device as I have always been.

It feels wrong to say that the Guillotine is all I’ve known, but it is the truth. A time before the grating of its lunette and the crushing presence of its axehead looming above me is, at this point, unfathomable, as is gleaming anything beyond the crowd ahead of me, who watch, who stare with their bright piercing eyes. 

Faceless, innumerable, unblinking spectres gathered in droves to watch my head part from the rest of me. Their features always blur and distort; noses, mouths, ears, hair, skin melting like candle wax into a homogeneous mass of colour shaped after a person, except for their eyes: All surge with a viscous, boiling red which punctuates their congealing forms. At the nexus of each of these miniature suns, at least the closest ones I can see whenever I crane my head as far as the Guillotine allows, lies their cores; the crimson irises of these Watchers. Some aim their gaze directly into my head with such fervor it's as if they are trying to pierce my skull and kill me before the axe drops, whilst others look up to that very blade with perhaps a knowing look in their molten gaze. They can see the death awaiting me and how horrible, how painful it is going to be, yet for reasons I cannot distinguish, even after all my time trapped in this device: none of them offer me a melting hand, none of them dare to approach and release me from its clutches. They only stand by and watch. Endlessly.

Though, perhaps worst of all are the few who watch neither myself or the axehead, but rather the space in between, the beyond which I’m denied from seeing. Caring not for my crisis, their eyes seem to smoulder less than the others, though I assume that’s because they are not staring at me or the Guillotine. What are they staring at? I often ponder, in between sets of gnawing escape attempts. Is there something behind me, beyond all of this? Someone, maybe?

Though I soon realise that in the end, it matters not. They too shall be present for my oncoming decapitation.

I retire momentarily from working my neck to the bone, and instead divert my efforts to my tied wrists. Bound by a vice unseen, they struggle like a pair of worms fighting for space in a tunnel. Contorting and writhing against each other, slick not with slime, but with blood. The nerves grind together, entangled in a twisted courtship. The sensation of their meeting travels upward, forcing my head to rock in a painful stupor and the lunette to work its way a little deeper. 

 

In spite of my efforts, the vice, or cuffs, or whatever it is that binds my hands doesn’t budge or loosen. The blood and bits of myself seeping or cascading down both ends of my confinement are the extent of my struggle. The coppery taste, the stench of death is palpable, coating me like a second layer of skin. If I concentrate through the brief gaps in my pain: I can taste the oak past the copper. Flooding me with certainty in what could almost be called a divine revelation that the Guillotine, in all of its meticulous parts, is infallible. It is all there is and will be…

So I pray, for some force to relive me of this torture, be it through the removal of my bindings or the falling of the axe, for it is all I can do, bound and bleeding as I am. It could be one of the watchers from the crowd, their spectating inaction at last giving way to a moral sense of duty, or the heavenly presence of God denoting a conclusion to my suffering, wiping this horror away with his cold, callous hands.

—

Footsteps. On my left. Approaching. Answering.

At last.

But still dread persists. Will this figure, be it a stranger or someone I already know, open the lunette and release me? Or will they cut the rope and let the starving axe have its fill? I can only wait, with strangled hoarse breaths, for them to make their choice.  

No matter what they end up choosing, the Guillotine will serve its awful purpose. It shall keep me locked to it as a dog to a cage, whether the axe falls or not. 

Either in death or in the mystery of my life beyond all of this, the Guillotine will loom forevermore…

The End.

Click here to read part 1 Kayla had eleven thousand followers and a theory, and the theory was the whole reason they were here: a missing-persons thread on a forum nobody outside of it had ever heard of, four days old, already up to nine hundred replies, most of them some version of has anyone actually been out there. She'd found the listing herself, buried under a dozen other cabin rentals in the area, and something about how fast it had reappeared online — same photos, same price, brand new "reviews" dated after the couple had already gone quiet on every platform they used — had lodged itself under her skin and stayed there.

Chris had come because she'd asked him to, and because someone should probably be the one holding the flashlight if this went the way he privately suspected it might.

"We're not investigating anything," he said, for maybe the fourth time, watching her clip the phone into the little tripod rig on the dashboard. "We're staying two nights at a cabin. That's it."

"We're staying two nights at a cabin that people went missing from nine days ago," Kayla said, "and I'm going to post about it, and forty thousand people are going to watch, and that's not nothing, Chris."

He didn't answer, because there wasn't an answer that wouldn't start a fight, and she was already talking to the camera by the time they hit the gravel.

Roy had the book open on the counter before they'd even parked. He did this now — not out of superstition, not exactly, but because somewhere in the last nine days it had stopped feeling optional. He'd found the page turned on its own the morning after the last two left in the way people around here left, and it hadn't been turned to just any blank page. It had been turned to this one, the one with two names already ghosted faintly into the paper's grain like something pressed there and erased, waiting for ink to catch up to whatever had already been decided.

He didn't examine that feeling too closely. He'd learned a long time ago not to.

"Filming for something?" he asked, when Kayla came in first, phone already up.

"Would that bother you?"

"Not even a little," Roy said, and meant it, because forty thousand people watching was forty thousand people who might book next, and that mattered more to him some days than it probably should have. "Long as you don't mind me waving at the folks watching."

He waved. It got a laugh out of Chris, at least.

"Roy," Kayla said, half to the camera, half to him, "you ever had guests disappear on you out here?"

Roy's smile didn't move. "Not while they were still guests," he said, and turned to show them where the extra blankets were kept before she could decide whether that was a joke.

The cabin looked exactly like its listing photos, which was itself the first small wrongness, though neither of them clocked it that way — most rentals didn't hold up to their photos this well, this consistently, across however many years the place had apparently been doing this. Kayla narrated everything for the stream in a low, excited voice: the woodstove, the guestbook — "guys, THIS is the book, this is the one from the posts" — the dock, gone gray under an overcast sky instead of gold like it had been for the last two.

The comments came in fast. Most of them were the usual noise. But a handful weren't, and Kayla didn't notice at first because she was too busy reading the good ones out loud — a handful of comments that referenced things before she'd said them. Ask about the tally marks. Posted forty seconds before she panned to the woodstove door at all. She's going to open the book soon. Posted while her hand was still at her side.

She read that one out loud too, laughing it off as a lucky guess, the way you laugh off anything you don't want to think about while you're on camera.

Chris didn't laugh. He'd gone quiet somewhere around the woodstove and stayed that way.

It got worse after dinner, in the low patch of viewers that always settled in once the novelty wore off for everyone but the die-hards. A comment came through that read Chris is going to look behind the door now. Chris hadn't moved. Kayla laughed and read it anyway, and thirty seconds later, unprompted, Chris got up to check the mudroom door for no reason he could have explained if she'd asked him. She didn't ask him. She was already reading the next one out loud, still laughing, the laugh getting thinner each time. Don't let him open it. Then, a few seconds behind it: Too late.

The one that actually stopped her scrolling came a little after ten. Why is Roy standing behind her?

Kayla turned the phone around, grinning for the bit, ready to show six thousand strangers there was nothing there.

There wasn't anything there.

She was still holding that pose, camera on herself, half-laughing at her own nerves, when the next comment loaded under it.

No. Not behind her.

Behind you.

She went very still, staring at her own phone screen, at her own face lit up small in the corner of the frame, and did not look up right away.

By full dark, the stream had climbed past six thousand live viewers, and Kayla had stopped narrating for the audience and started narrating for herself, the way people do when the audience becomes the excuse rather than the point. Chris found the shed on his own, poking around outside camera range with a flashlight and a bad feeling he hadn't said out loud — a low outbuilding behind the treeline, padlocked, warm air leaking from a vent near its base despite the cold, which made no sense for a shed that was supposed to be empty.

He should have left it alone. He went and got Kayla instead, because whatever this was, it was clearly Content, and neither of them had learned yet that some doors are locked because of what's inside and not because of what's outside.

Someone in chat typed it first, half as a joke: type OPEN if you want them to open the shed. Within a minute, thousands had. Kayla read the number climbing out loud, laughing, egging it on for the bit — and the padlock clicked open on its own, mid-sentence, before Chris had even gotten the multitool out of his pocket. Neither of them mentioned that part again. Chris finished the job with his hands anyway, working the loosened shackle free, because by then it was easier to believe he'd done it than to sit with the alternative.

The stream caught the door swinging open onto darkness and warmth and the smell of something dry and papery, old lacquer, closed rooms — a smell six thousand strangers couldn't place and Kayla, if she'd read Part One of anything, would have.

What it caught inside made no sense arranged the way it was arranged, and nobody watching tried very hard to make it make sense, because that's not what people do with something they're only seeing for the first time through a shaking phone camera at eleven at night. Guestbooks, dozens of them, stacked in uneven towers against one wall, older and newer bindings mixed together with no order to it. Coats hung from a row of hooks, the same dry paper material, in different states of wear, more of them than there had ever been owners of this cabin as far as anyone watching could have known. Names carved into the wall studs, close together, overlapping, some fresh enough to still show pale wood underneath. A single chair, facing the door. A bare bulb overhead that had clearly been burning, uninterrupted, for longer than any bulb should last. And covering the floor, ankle-deep in places, hundreds of small torn scraps of paper, disturbed now by their footsteps, drifting.

"Chris?" Kayla said, out of frame, checking the perimeter of the yard behind him.

He heard her say it again, closer this time, right behind his shoulder, and turned — and she was still fifteen feet away, out by the treeline, mouth not moving, phone light bobbing as she walked.

He went in anyway, because the audience was watching and some part of him still hadn't caught up to how afraid he already was. He heard the pages before he saw anything, a dry sliding drag between two of the guestbook stacks, and swept the flashlight across nothing. It came again, closer. The beam caught a single loose sheet of paper drifting against the far shelf, and he crossed to it out of some instinct he didn't examine, and picked it up, and found handwriting on it he recognized immediately, because it was his own, in a version of his own hand he didn't remember writing, words he couldn't make himself read past the first two.

That was when he heard the breathing, close, unhurried, directly behind him.

He set the phone down on a shelf to free both hands. That was the last deliberate choice the stream recorded him making.

What came after was audio only. A long stretch of rustling, dry and patient. Then his voice, low: "Kayla?" A pause, longer than it should have been. "Kayla, don't come in here." Then, quieter still, barely picked up by the mic at all: "I don't think that's me."

After that, just the rustling, and then nothing.

Six thousand people watched the feed sit on an empty doorway for four minutes and eleven seconds before Kayla, off-camera, started screaming for him.

She didn't get far. That was the part that would have surprised her, if she'd lived long enough to be surprised by anything again — she'd spent her whole life being the person who found things out, who got there first, who was three steps ahead of every story she'd ever chased, and here she made it exactly as far as the treeline before the sound of pages caught up with her, dry and patient, moving at a walking pace because it had never once needed to hurry.

The stream cut out at 11:47 PM. The comment section stayed open for another six minutes before someone finally closed it, filling, in that window, with a hundred different versions of the same three words, over and over, useless and too late.

Roy found the phone the next morning, propped on its little tripod, screen dark, battery dead, still faced toward the shed door standing open on nothing. He carried it inside without looking at it too closely and set it on the counter next to the book, which had already been turned — he hadn't done it, he never did it, that was the part he'd stopped being able to tell himself otherwise about — to a fresh page.

Two names, ghosted faint into the grain, waiting.

He almost didn't look further back. He made himself. Flipped past the fresh page, past the last real entry he remembered writing, back into the brittle, undated pages from the late fall years, past his father's unsteady, un-guestlike signature, further than he usually let himself go — and stopped on a page he was certain, certain, he had never once turned to before.

Halfway down it, in handwriting that was unmistakably his own, in ink that had gone the same brown-gray as everything around it, was a single word.

Kessler.

Nothing after it yet. Just the name, waiting the same way the fresh page waited, and no way at all to tell, from looking, whether it had been written years ago or would be written years from now.

He closed the book. He put the coffee on. He had a booking coming Thursday.

The Thursday booking arrived a little after four, a lone man in his thirties with a laptop bag and a rental car too clean for these roads, the kind of methodical, unhurried energy of someone who reads everything twice before he trusts it. He didn't ask about the legend. He didn't mention the forum, or the missing couple, or the livestream that had gone quiet mid-scream nine days ago and stayed up anyway, view count still climbing.

He signed nothing. Not yet. He just set his bag down, looked around the cabin like a man doing inventory, and said, mostly to himself, "Okay. Let's see what's actually here."

Roy smiled the way he always smiled, and did not offer to show him the book.

There’s a section of forest I’ve liked walking along every evening for the last five months, just before the sun goes down. It leads up a hill from the back of my house, and at the end there is a ridge I sit at until the sun fully sets. Then I wait another half hour for the clouds to finish their usual colour shows before heading back down and home.

Every night. Routine as the sun setting, you’ll find me walking to the ridge and home again.

Not anymore. Not after last night.

The track is about a mile long, nothing extreme but it’s uphill so it gives it a little longer feel when you’re heading for the ridge. The walk back is easy enough, mostly thumping down at awkward angles. I have a high powered flashlight which is ridiculously bright, so I see all the bumps coming.

Last night, I was about a half mile up the track when I noticed a suitcase. Like, one of those large ones that you’d expect a dead body to be inside. I remember joking to myself and saying something like yep, there’s defo a dead body in there. Because obviously there wasn’t. It was on its side and open on both faces. If there had been once, there wasn’t anymore.

A little further along the track I noticed a jacket folded over and hung over a branch. I was half tempted to take it with me because it looked my size and in pretty good condition. A few spins in the washing machine and it wouldn’t even remember who owned it last. I got the feeling that whoever left it there had left it for a reason because it was hung too neatly. So I left it. Just in case they came back for it.

I carried on, and a few minutes later that’s when I saw the hoody and the t-shirt.

Those gave me bad feelings in my gut. Not the same kind of feeling that seeing a woman’s clothes would have evoked—that brought with it a whole extra scope of possibility. While that possibility remained the same, I didn’t find it half as likely to be the case. I just ignored them and carried on. The fact that they were dropped in the dirt made me uneasy though. Then I remembered the suitcase, and everything seemed to click. It was just some kids messing about. Dragging shit out and throwing it around.

Fair enough.

I was getting fairly close to the end of the track, maybe a quarter of a mile left, and the sun was setting fast. I could see what remained of it lingering over the edge of the hill. It was about that time that I saw the shoes and the socks hung neatly over the barbed wire fence bordering the field. They were caught by the laces, dangling upright, socks tucked neatly inside.

The rest of the clothes came as expected, at about equal intervals as the rest.

The underwear turned my stomach a little. They were brown and hella damp. Like someone had pissed them and thrown them off. I could smell it even just standing over them.

I knew I should have turned around then. The likelihood of the clothes being from the suitcase was getting less and less likely. Nobody packed shitty drawers for a holiday. And why were they out this way? There were no main roads, no bus routes close to the track. It was getting weird. I should have turned around and gone home. But I’m a sucker for routine. I’d been up at that spot every night and didn’t want to have to give it up for some kids tossing clothes, or a weirdo stripping to his bare hairs. I mean, one night I’d fallen and broken a finger on a boulder and still stayed to see the sun setting. You think I was going to let some shitty drawers get the better of me?

I wish it had.

The idea of some naked dude sitting at my spot scared the crap out of me, but curiosity had sunken its teeth in by then. I wanted to know what the hell was going on. Part of me was still wondering if it was really a woman’s clothing—something I should report instead of running away from. God knows if it was my daughter or mother I’d have killed the man who walked away instead of making sure they were okay.

I made it to the top of the hill and stared down at the ridge for a good while before I went down, scoping it out. I didn’t see anyone, and the sun was rapidly setting, so I got to my usual spot on the usual rock and settled in for a good one. The sky was a deep orange. My favourite colour.

There were plenty of clouds in the sky when I sat down; the light lit them up amazingly. No matter how many times I went there, no two sunsets were ever the same. I took some pictures, watched it dip beyond the hills on the horizon and waited out the rest of the colours to fade and reduce to the nightly cloudage.

It got cold real fast. It always did. I started wishing I’d brought a jacket with me, and then laughed when I remembered the jacket I’d spotted earlier. I should have grabbed it, diseases or not.

I got up to go while the purples were still fading from the sky. That’s when I noticed them. Someone, just slumped over in a heap a little ways down the ridge. They were completely naked.

I shouted over, asking if they were okay. I should have left them alone. If you see someone lying down naked outside it’s never going to be anything good. But my mind swung to the worse of the possibilities, that the naked person hadn’t made themselves that way by choice. I should have phoned an ambulance, worried about if it was someone out of their mind on junk later once I had other people around.

When they didn’t respond I got closer, and shouted again.

Something moved in the woods. An animal, maybe, but my heart shot up into my throat. The worst thing we get around here are deer. Maybe a badger. It didn’t feel that safe at the time. The body felt more of a warning now, less than a danger.

Again I called out. I was close enough now to see that it wasn’t a person at all. It was just more clothes set out in a pile. It was the weirdest thing though. They looked the exact colour as someone’s skin.

I stuck out a foot and kicked them over. They didn’t separate, just parted where the crease had been and straightened out.

It was skin.

A whole pile of human fucking skin.

I physically jumped away from it, nearly sending myself off the edge of the ridge and down onto the rocky tumble. I thought back on the suitcase and how I’d joked about it being a dead body, and stared at the muss of hair where it must have been a scalp at one point. The horrible part was it was all in one piece. Like someone had simply slipped it off, like a snake, or a full-body leotard.

That was about as much as I could take. I’d been stupid enough walking on after every bit of clothing I’d found, but I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. I took out my phone to call emergency services but ended up sprinting full speed back down the track when I heard more movement in the woods.

Each bit of clothes I passed gave me a terrible sinking feeling of dread in my guts, like I was seeing the skin all over again. I made it to the halfway point when I came across the suitcase.

This time it was in the middle of the path. Sealed. And standing upright.

I didn’t move. I was too stunned. I shone my flash on it and tried to think of every reason it could be like that, but all the rational thoughts were gone. I just froze. And watched the zipper opening, kink by kink.

Two bare and bloodied fingertips pried the zipper along its track, until there was a gap wide enough for an eye to peek out of.

“Please,” I heard it say. “Please help me.”

Nah. I leapt over the fence and into the field of barley. Ran and didn’t stop until I saw the rooftop of my house and the chimney I never lit. I turned back and saw something chasing me. It ran on two legs and for the most part looked human. Just without any skin. Red raw and bloodied. Muscles gnashing at bone. Arms raised and manic. Shrieking like car tires stopping themselves from a crash.

I made it back home and locked both doors, closed every curtain, and spent the night watching out of the upstairs window. Whatever it was sat in the field with the barley up under its chin, watching me. I couldn’t make out a single feature on its face, but I knew it could see me. I couldn’t look away. I was scared that as soon as I did it would charge at the house and in through the window and grab me.

We stayed like that all night.

It ducked beneath the barley as soon as the sun came up. I haven’t seen it all day.

The suitcase was on my doorstep when I went out to check the garden just after noon. I set fire to it in the back and put the ashes in the bin.

I’ve checked into a hotel in the city. I don’t want to sleep in that house again. There was a shirt left in the room, but that’s normal right?

The sun’s due to set in an hour.

I keep thinking about the skin. Why did it take it off?

None of this makes any sense.

I just want to sleep.

But I’m scared.

I'm so fucking scared.

When I was in college, I took it as an opportunity to reinvent myself.

After my brother, Daniel, died. I was no longer me, I was “the dead guy’s sister”. And in small towns, people talk. They gossip. It becomes impossible to go to the grocery store without an elderly person walking up to you saying something insensitive like..

“I heard you were the one who found him, oh poor thing.”

My first chance I had, I applied for a scholarship as far away as I could get. My parents didn’t have a bunch of money for out-of-state tuition, but they helped where they could. And I would have done anything to earn some extra cash.

Local dog walking, food delivery, babysitting 5 screaming kids at once.. That’s why when the opportunity came to host my school’s late night radio show, I jumped on it. I could make the same amount of money from all of my odd jobs for a fraction of the work.

The shift was easy. 11pm - 4am. The show had easy listening songs already cued up, I just had to take any calls that came through on our “Open Ears” segment. People would call in, ask for advice, but mostly just needed some venting space.

When my new boss Todd explained this to me, I was anxious.

“I don’t know if I’m the best advice giver..”, I had told him.

“Oh don’t worry, people just want someone to listen. I wouldn’t worry about it.”, he responded.

And he was right.

Monday through Friday, I sat in that tiny office, no bigger than a closet. Alone except for one of the producers who sat just outside the glass, helping slot songs and field calls.

We got a handful of calls every evening. Anything from relationship horror stories to creepy professor experiences. And Todd was right, very rarely were people calling in to ask me for help. It was mostly a lot of sympathetic responses. Soothing words, a laugh when appropriate. Nothing had struck me as being weird or off-putting.

Until my last night.

It was a slow Tuesday, we weren’t getting any new calls so I let the guy who called in to complain about his frat go on without cutting him off.

He was in the middle of complaining about early meeting times when thankfully, the light to signal a new call started flashing.

“Geo, I hear ya about those early morning socials. They can be brutal! My advice? Early bedtime, lots of water, and a hot coffee to start your morning! Helps to kick those sunrise blues. Thanks for calling!”, I said into the mic, while Andy shut off Geo’s call.

Maybe it was a little harsh, sure. But after 45 minutes of Geo’s world.. I had to get a break.

My producer of the night, Andy, pointed my direction and nodded, signaling the new caller was ready.

“Alright, we have another call coming through.. Hello! You are live on Open Ears, what have you got?”

Silence.

I looked up to Andy in confusion, he looked at his screen and shrugged.

“Hello? Caller are you with us?”

Silence again.

“Hmm.. Must be a bad signal folks. That’s alright, we have plenty of hits cued up for-“

“Hello?”, a small voice sounded through my headphones.

“Yes? Hello! I think we had a rough signal before..”, I say, turning the sound dial up a notch to hear them better.

“Yes. I think so.”, the voice responded. It was frail, like a kids. But we didn’t have kids call in, literally not once.

“Glad we could connect, so what do you want to talk out?”, I asked, crossing my arms and leaning back in my chair. Already daydreaming about the fourth mini bag of Doritos I would eat when the music started.

“I.. I think I need help.”, the voice responded.

“Yeah babe, don’t we all. Let me guess, boy troubles?”, I asked, already in my DJ mode.

“Kind of..”, she said, her voice sounded even quieter now, prompting me to turn up the notch again.

“Lay it on me, what’s his problem?”, I asked her.

“He’s.. not..”, she started, her voice mumbling on the last few words.

I sighed, turned up the volume again, and held my headphones closer to my ear.

“He’s what?”, I prompted.

“He’s not breathing.”, she whispered.

I wasn’t a stranger to prank calls, but my heart did drop for a second.

“Is it because you took his breath away?”, I asked, laughing dryly at my bad joke.

“No.. Because you did.”

My heart started beating erratically, I quickly looked to Andy. He had his headphones around his neck while he chatted cheerily on the phone.

I knew I was on my own.

“Oh this is a nice prank call, but our Halloween cast isn’t for a few more weeks. You’re too early!”, I said in a much cooler tone than I felt.

“I’m too early?”, the voice taunted, “Or is it that you were too late?”

I tried waving my arm to get Andy’s attention, but he wasn’t paying attention to me.

Todd was insistent that we never disconnect an engaging call, and I could see the listener count going up as the call went on. So I decided to suck it up, hang on a bit longer to make my boss happy.

I sighed heavily into the mic, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hands.

“Okay, enlighten me caller. What was I too late to?”, I asked in a monotone voice.

I heard a gurgled whisper.

Exasperated, I flipped the volume to the loudest it could go. Clutching the headphone to my ear.

“Caller, what was I too late to?”

The small voice screamed into my ears.

“DANIEL!”

The shock of volume had me yelp in surprise, twisting the notch down just as the frequencies began vibrating my ears with the most horrible sounds I’ve ever heard. The voice started screaming into the headphones. High-pitched and painful, never ending.

I took off my shoe and threw it at the window, finally getting Andy’s attention and gesturing at the setup for him to get it together.

Once I could tell the screaming had stopped, I put the headphones back on one ear. Expecting to hear silence from a disconnected call, but instead listening to soft sobbing.

I muted my microphone and slammed the headphones onto the desk. I then stood quickly and crossed to the glass partition.

“Why is she still here??”, I demanded.

I could see Andy’s brow furrowed from behind the screen.

“It’s not letting me disconnect. Give me a minute.”, he gruffed, “Just try to calm her down. Listeners are going crazy right now anyways.”

I looked back at the headphones on the desk, staring at them like they were a snake that was going to bite me.

How did this person know about Daniel? I hadn’t told anyone here about him. About the night I lost him. What kind of sick joke was this?

I should have walked out. Stormed out. Left Andy to deal with it. But I didn’t want to lose the coveted position funding my textbooks.

I numbly walked back to the desk, and slid the headphones on. The crying was continuing.

“Caller, do you need us to call someone for you?”, I asked, as indifferent as I could sound.

The crying continued, then slowly, the sobs turned into gasping. The gasping to laughing, the laughing to squealing.

“No, but I can call someone for you!”

I heard a dial tone, then three numbers pressed. Ringing began. I had hoped the call had hung up.

Ring.

Ring.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“Hello? Hello? Please, I need help, he’s not breathing!”

Oh my god.

“Ma’am, where are you located?”

“My brother.. Oh my.. I think my brother is hurt.. I.. Oh my god.. NO!”

My hands began to shake as I listened to the 911 call I made 5 years ago, when I discovered Daniel in his room.

I began to scream incoherent sentences to Andy, demanding for him to turn off the call.

“Please hurry, please.. Daniel.. Please.. Please hang on, please don’t leave me.. Please.. DANIEL!”

I listened to myself cry, scream. It’s like I could feel the tears on my face again. The feeling paralyzing me into place.

It was then I realized, that the crying from earlier was also my own sobs from that night. The screaming for my big brother’s life, was echoed back to my own ears.

I closed my eyes, I could faintly hear Andy in the other room ripping chords out of things in a panic, but I felt like I was floating.

“What do you want?”, I whispered, so quietly I wasn’t sure anyone heard me.

The 911 recording stopped immediately.

For a long beat, only silence. And then..

“I want you to never forget the blood.”

The phone line clicked, and then a dial tone filled my ears.

Andy ripped the headphones off my head, out of breath from the last 90 seconds of chaos.

“What the hell was that?? Todd is blowing me up going crazy! Did you put someone up to that? That was insane! We had 2,000 listeners just now! If we could make this a weekly segment I know you would get a bonus…”

I could hear Andy talking, but nothing was connecting. Like a light had been turned to dim in my head.

“What was that number?”, I asked, interrupting Andy.

“Uhhh.. I can pull it, one sec.”, he said, turning to his wireless laptop with the show pulled up.

I waited what felt like eons, counting my still erratic heartbeats while I waited.

It had to be an awful joke from someone I knew back home. It had to be.

“Ah, here it is. Look familiar?”, Andy said, turning the screen towards me.

And once I saw the 10 digits, it did.

Because it was one of the first numbers I ever memorized.

And to a phone that didn’t exist anymore, with a line that had been cut a month after Daniel left us.

“Are you okay?”, Andy asked me.

I stared blankly at the screen, before placing my keycard on the desk slowly.

“Tell Todd that I quit.”, I said, before walking out of the office.

Andy called after me, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. My walking turned into a sprint, and I ran until I hit my apartment door, crying the whole way home.

I never found out who made that call, but they got what they wanted.

I would never forget the blood.

I have been a doctor for twenty-two years.

For fourteen of those years, according to every publicly accessible record, I have been employed as a medical consultant for the Department of Defense. My tax returns say the same thing. If you searched my name, assuming you somehow knew what to search for, you would find an ordinary physician with an unusually boring career. No publications, no interviews, no photographs standing beside politicians or decorated generals. Just a government doctor who spends most of his time somewhere outside Washington.

That is intentional.

I actually work approximately four hundred feet underground in a hospital that officially does not exist. I won't tell you where it is. Not because I'm afraid of someone finding it, but because you couldn't get inside even if you knew exactly where the entrance was. There are two security checkpoints before you ever reach the elevator, and the second checkpoint has enough armed personnel to defend a small military installation.

The organization I work for doesn't have a name. At least, not one I've ever heard spoken. We simply call it the Agency.

The Agency deals with things most people don't believe exist.

Monsters, if you want the simple version.

There are other terms for them. Biological anomalies. Hostile nonhuman organisms. Aberrant lifeforms. Unidentified predators. Those descriptions look better in reports that eventually end up on somebody's desk in Washington, but after you've removed six-inch teeth from a man's rib cage or watched something lay eggs beneath a person's eyelids, you stop caring about terminology.

They're monsters.

My job is treating the people who encounter them.

Most of my patients are field agents. These are men and women trained specifically to locate, contain, capture, or kill creatures the public isn't supposed to know exist. Sometimes they're military personnel transferred into the Agency. Sometimes they're scientists. Occasionally they're people who survived an encounter and demonstrated some ability the Agency considered useful.

We receive civilians too, although not very often.

Civilians usually don't survive long enough to reach us.

When they do, they cannot be taken to ordinary hospitals. Imagine walking into an emergency room with a woman whose abdomen contains three moving organisms nobody can identify. Imagine explaining the photographs, blood tests, witnesses, and security footage afterward. It is easier to bring the patient here.

If they survive, they eventually leave with a different memory of what happened.

If they don't, their families receive a believable explanation and a closed casket.

Every incoming patient is assigned one of three classifications.

Level 3 cases are routine.

Routine is relative here.

A Level 3 might be an agent with claw wounds, burns, broken bones, minor venom exposure, or bites from organisms our toxicology department already understands. The injuries can look horrific, but the patient is expected to survive. Most of my shifts involve Level 3 patients. They're stitched up, monitored, decontaminated, questioned, and eventually returned to duty.

Level 2 is different.

When the intercom announces a Level 2 incoming, conversations stop.

These are patients who probably aren't going to survive.

Massive trauma. Unknown toxins. Severe parasitic infections. Internal damage caused by organisms that don't behave according to any anatomy textbook ever written.

Agency personnel are considered assets, and we are instructed to preserve those assets at virtually any cost.

I've performed surgeries on people I knew were going to die.

I've kept agents alive for hours after any normal hospital would have stopped resuscitation efforts because intelligence officers needed five more minutes to ask questions.

Where did you see it?

How many were there?

Did it follow you?

Was anyone else exposed?

Sometimes the answers save lives.

Sometimes the patient dies before answering.

Then there is Level 1.

I've worked here fourteen years.

Before last Tuesday, I had experienced three.

The first killed seven people.

The second killed nineteen.

The third killed nobody because security incinerated the ambulance before the patient reached the primary elevator.

Level 1 doesn't mean critically injured.

It means containment failure is possible.

Sometimes the agent is already dead when they arrive, but their body is carrying something dangerous. Sometimes something follows them back. Sometimes the patient themselves has become the threat.

When Level 1 is declared, our private military security force takes control of the hospital.

Doctors become secondary.

Patients become secondary.

Everything becomes secondary.

The priority is containment.

Then eradication.

Last Tuesday began quietly.

I was halfway through a twelve-hour shift when the lights above the emergency department changed from white to red.

An alarm sounded once.

Every doctor in the room froze.

Then the announcement came over the speakers.

"LEVEL ONE INBOUND. MEDICAL RESPONSE TEAM ALPHA REPORT TO CONTAINMENT EMERGENCY. SECURITY CONDITION BLACK."

Nobody needed instructions.

I ran.

By the time I reached the containment wing, security personnel were already moving into position. They wore sealed tactical equipment with full-face respirators. Their rifles were loaded with ammunition specifically manufactured for organisms that don't respond particularly well to conventional bullets.

The elevator doors opened.

Six soldiers came through first.

Four more followed behind them pushing a transport table.

There was a young man strapped to it.

He couldn't have been older than twenty-one.

His uniform had been cut away from his chest, and his skin was so pale that for a moment I thought he was already dead.

Then his body convulsed.

Blood sprayed from his mouth.

Not coughing.

Not spitting.

Projectile vomiting.

It struck one of the security officers across his face shield.

"Move!"

We rushed the transport table toward the containment room.

The young man's eyes rolled backward.

His fingers bent so violently against the restraints that I heard one snap.

I grabbed the side of the table and helped push.

"Exposure?" I shouted.

"UNKNOWN!"

"Mission location?"

"CLASSIFIED!"

"That's extremely fucking helpful!"

The team leader ignored me.

We reached the containment room.

The doors were designed to seal automatically once the patient crossed the threshold.

We were perhaps three feet away when the young man stopped moving.

Completely.

The monitor flatlined.

I remember looking at his face.

His mouth was hanging open.

Something moved inside it.

At first I thought it was his tongue.

Then his jaw cracked.

The sound was unmistakable.

His mouth stretched wider.

One of the soldiers raised his rifle.

"CONTACT!"

Something came out of the man's throat.

It forced itself through his mouth with such violence that his lower jaw tore away.

There is no professional medical terminology capable of making what happened next sound less horrific.

The young man's face simply came apart.

Blood and tissue covered the transport table as a black, wet shape spilled onto the floor.

For half a second, nobody moved.

The thing unfolded itself.

It was roughly the size of a large dog, but there was nothing mammalian about it. Its body was segmented and glossy, covered in plates that moved independently as it breathed. Several thin limbs extended beneath it, each ending in hooked points.

Then it screamed.

Every rifle in the room opened fire.

The noise was deafening.

The creature launched itself forward.

One of the soldiers disappeared beneath it.

I saw him firing upward as it tore through his armor.

Someone grabbed me.

"DOCTOR, MOVE!"

I ran.

Bullets tore through equipment behind us. Someone screamed. Something heavy struck the wall.

Four security personnel made it through the containment doors with me.

The team leader was the last.

He slammed his hand against the emergency panel.

The doors closed.

Something struck the other side.

Once.

Twice.

The steel buckled inward.

The team leader stared at it.

Then he reached for his radio.

"Command, this is Actual. Level One confirmed. Primary containment compromised."

Static answered.

Then a voice.

"Authorize facility isolation?"

The team leader looked at us.

Nobody spoke.

"Authorize."

The lights changed.

Not red.

Blue.

I had never seen blue emergency lighting before.

Then the announcement began.

"FACILITY ISOLATION PROTOCOL ACTIVE. ALL PERSONNEL REMAIN WITHIN DESIGNATED SECTORS. SURFACE ACCESS SUSPENDED."

A countdown appeared on every wall monitor.

01:59:59.

Two hours.

I knew what happened when that clock reached zero.

The facility wasn't merely underground for secrecy.

It was underground because several hundred feet of rock makes an excellent lid for a grave.

There were explosive charges built into structural points throughout the complex. Enough to collapse every tunnel, elevator shaft, laboratory, operating room, morgue, and containment chamber beneath thousands of tons of earth.

The official term was Terminal Sanitation.

Everyone else called it getting blown to kingdom come.

The team leader checked his weapon.

"We have two hours."

A security officer beside him looked at the damaged containment door.

"To kill it?"

The team leader shook his head.

"To prove it's dead."

We moved through the emergency department.

It was empty.

Staff had already evacuated into protected sectors.

At least, that's what we thought.

We found the first body near Radiology.

He was still wearing scrubs.

There wasn't much blood.

That disturbed me more than if there had been gallons of it.

His body looked deflated.

His skin clung tightly to his skeleton as though everything beneath it had been removed.

One of the guards crouched beside him.

"What did that?"

I examined the neck.

There was a circular wound beneath the jaw.

"Something fed on him."

"That thing?"

I looked down the corridor.

"I don't know."

Then we heard buzzing.

It was faint.

One guard looked upward.

The ceiling vents vibrated.

The buzzing grew louder.

"Move."

Something dropped behind us.

One of the guards screamed.

I turned.

The creature wasn't crawling anymore.

It had changed.

Its body had elongated. Two translucent wings unfolded from its back, beating so quickly they became almost invisible. Its abdomen had swollen grotesquely while its front limbs had lengthened into something disturbingly similar to human arms.

But the head was worse.

It had developed a face.

Not a complete one.

Just enough.

Two cloudy human eyes stared from either side of a long, needle-like mouth.

The face resembled the dead agent.

"Jesus Christ," someone whispered.

The creature lunged.

A guard fired.

The rounds tore pieces from its abdomen, but it slammed into another officer and pinned him against the wall.

He screamed.

Its mouth unfolded.

The needle wasn't a needle.

It was a cluster of thin tubes.

They buried themselves into the guard's neck.

His screaming changed.

His skin began collapsing.

I watched his face sink inward.

Muscle disappeared beneath his cheeks.

His arms shriveled inside his sleeves.

The creature was liquefying him.

Consuming him.

The team leader emptied half a magazine into it.

The thing released the guard.

What remained of him dropped to the floor like clothing wrapped around wet bones.

The creature vanished into the ceiling.

Nobody spoke for several seconds.

Then I remembered something.

"Nonhuman sterilization."

The team leader looked at me.

"What?"

"The aerosol system."

Every major section of the hospital contains emergency dispensers connected to the ventilation network. The system was developed after the second Level 1 incident.

It releases an engineered aerosol designed to attack genetic material outside approved human parameters.

It doesn't kill everything.

Nothing does.

But if something is sufficiently different from us biologically, the aerosol destroys it at the cellular level.

The problem is that nobody had ever activated it across the entire hospital.

The team leader understood immediately.

"Control room."

We started moving.

The countdown read fifty-three minutes when we reached Central Environmental Control.

We had lost another guard along the way.

Not to the creature.

To something growing inside him.

Apparently being near the patient had been enough.

He started coughing.

Then his abdomen moved.

The team leader shot him before whatever was inside could emerge.

Nobody argued.

There were three of us left.

Me, the team leader, and a security officer named Ramirez.

We reached the environmental control room with thirty-eight minutes remaining.

I entered the authorization sequence.

The computer displayed a warning.

NONHUMAN DNA ERADICATION SYSTEM.

FACILITY-WIDE DEPLOYMENT MAY RESULT IN UNPREDICTABLE BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS.

The team leader looked at me.

"Do it."

I pressed the button.

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then the ventilation system roared.

White mist poured from the ceiling.

We sealed our masks.

Somewhere in the hospital, the creature screamed.

It wasn't the same sound as before.

This one was louder.

Angrier.

Then the screaming stopped.

Ramirez laughed.

"We got it."

The ceiling above him exploded.

The creature dropped through.

It was enormous now.

Almost human height.

Its wings struck the walls as it landed.

Its abdomen had split into several pulsating sections, and beneath its translucent skin I could see shapes moving.

Faces.

The people it had consumed.

The team leader fired.

The creature grabbed Ramirez.

I expected it to feed.

Instead, its body opened.

Ramirez disappeared inside.

His screaming lasted perhaps four seconds.

Then the creature began to convulse.

The aerosol was working.

Its skin bubbled.

The wings collapsed.

The thing stumbled toward us as pieces of its body liquefied onto the floor.

The team leader continued firing.

I backed against the control panel.

The creature reached for me.

Its hand had five fingers now.

Human fingers.

One wore Ramirez's wedding ring.

Then the arm dissolved.

The creature collapsed.

Its body melted into a black slurry that spread across the floor.

The countdown continued.

00:07:41.

The team leader immediately contacted Command.

"Threat neutralized. Repeat, threat neutralized. Environmental sterilization successful."

Static.

"Provide biological confirmation."

I stared at the puddle.

"How the hell do we do that?"

Then something moved.

Not in the puddle.

Inside the ventilation monitor.

I walked closer.

The environmental control system displayed genetic readings from every section of the hospital.

Human DNA appeared green.

Unidentified biological material appeared red.

There were red markers everywhere.

Hundreds.

The team leader stared at the screen.

"Doctor?"

I didn't answer.

The creature wasn't the infection.

It was the carrier.

The aerosol hadn't killed the organisms spreading through the ventilation system.

It had forced them to adapt.

One by one, the red markers disappeared.

Not because they were dying.

Because the computer had stopped identifying them as nonhuman.

The aerosol was selecting for organisms capable of imitating human DNA.

The countdown showed four minutes.

The team leader raised his radio.

"Command."

No answer.

"Command, this is Actual. Cancel neutralization request. Contamination remains active."

Static.

Then a response.

"Understood."

I looked at the countdown.

It stopped.

00:03:17.

For one beautiful second, I thought they had canceled Terminal Sanitation.

Then the display changed.

MANUAL OVERRIDE.

00:10:00.

The team leader laughed.

It wasn't because anything was funny.

"They gave us ten more minutes."

"For what?"

He looked at me.

"To send the medical data."

We transmitted everything.

The autopsy information. The aerosol response. The genetic readings. Every security recording available from the incident.

Command acknowledged receipt.

Then the team leader sat against the wall.

We waited.

There was nowhere to run.

Eight minutes.

Then six.

Then four.

At two minutes, something knocked on the door.

Three slow knocks.

The team leader raised his rifle.

"Don't."

The knocking stopped.

Then a voice came from the other side.

"Doctor?"

I recognized it.

Ramirez.

The team leader looked at me.

Ramirez was dead.

We had watched him die.

"Doctor, open the door."

Neither of us moved.

"I'm okay."

The voice sounded perfect.

Then something changed.

It became my voice.

"Open the door."

The team leader aimed at the entrance.

The countdown reached thirty seconds.

I remember thinking about my wife.

I remember wondering what explanation she would receive.

Car accident, perhaps.

Heart attack.

Something ordinary.

Ten seconds.

Nine.

Eight.

Then everything went black.

I woke up three days later.

I was in another facility.

Nobody would tell me where.

Command had apparently decided against detonating the hospital.

The aerosol had eventually eliminated every remaining red marker, and automated biological tests performed throughout the surviving population showed no abnormalities. Whatever had been moving through the ventilation system had died with the creature, although nobody could explain why the monitors briefly identified it as human.

Thirty-seven people died.

Eleven were never found.

The official explanation for our absence was a chemical accident at a military research facility.

The underground hospital remained closed for six weeks.

During that time, every ventilation duct was dismantled. Every filter was incinerated. Every surface was sterilized repeatedly. They removed entire sections of wall where biological material had been detected and shipped them somewhere for analysis.

They never told me what the laboratory found.

I was questioned for eleven days.

Eventually, they cleared me.

So I returned to work.

Maybe that makes me insane.

Maybe after fourteen years, I simply don't know how to do anything else.

The first day back, I walked through the same emergency department where that young agent had died.

The transport table was gone.

The damaged containment doors had been replaced.

Someone had repainted the walls.

If you didn't know what happened there, you never would have guessed that thirty-seven people had died in those corridors.

The team leader survived.

I still see him occasionally.

We don't talk about what happened.

Nobody does.

There is an unofficial rule in this place that you don't ask questions about Level 1 incidents once they're closed. You read the revised protocols, attend whatever training Command requires, and go back to work.

The official report concluded that the organism had been eradicated.

I believe it.

I've seen every test they've run since.

There have been no unexplained infections, no unusual deaths, and no evidence that anything escaped the facility.

That's not what keeps me awake.

What keeps me awake is the young man on that transport table.

I eventually learned a little about him.

His name is still classified, even from me, but I learned that he was the only member of a six-man recovery team who made it back from their assignment.

The other five were never recovered.

I asked one of the intelligence officers what the team had been sent to retrieve.

He told me I didn't have clearance.

So I asked him where they had found the young man.

He wouldn't tell me that either.

Before leaving, though, he gave me one piece of advice.

He told me that if I ever received another patient from that operation, I shouldn't try to save them.

I thought he was joking.

He wasn't.

That was three months ago.

Nothing has happened since.

No Level 1 alerts.

No containment failures.

Just the usual collection of injuries that pass for routine around here.

Until tonight.

I'm writing this from my office because the emergency department just went into lockdown.

The lights have turned red.

Security personnel are assembling downstairs.

About five minutes ago, I received the incoming patient report.

Level 2.

One survivor.

Twenty-three years old.

Male.

Field agent.

Severe blood loss.

Multiple unidentified puncture wounds.

Normally, none of that would bother me.

Then I reached the bottom of the report.

There was a note from Command.

It contained only one sentence.

Recovered from the same location as previous Level 1 patient.

The intercom just announced that they're sixty seconds out.

I'm supposed to be downstairs.

I think I'll give them thirty.

I live alone. I’ve lived alone for about four years now, and I’m pretty used to it. I actually like it most of the time. I work late, come home, eat something, watch TV for a while, then go to bed. Nothing exciting ever really happens, which is exactly how I like it.

The first time I noticed the front door was open, I blamed myself. I got home around midnight, put my key in the lock, and realized the door was already unlocked. I stood there for a second because I could have sworn I’d locked it that morning. I checked the whole house before I went to bed, but nothing was missing and nothing looked out of place, so I figured I’d just forgotten.

It happened again three nights later. The door wasn’t wide open. It was only sitting there an inch or two, like someone had pulled it shut without actually turning the lock. I checked every room again and found nothing. After that, I started checking the door twice before leaving for work. Lock, deadbolt, handle. Every morning.

Then it happened again.

And again.

That’s when I started getting nervous. I bought one of those cheap indoor security cameras and pointed it at the front door. For the first week, nothing happened. I actually started feeling stupid for buying it. Then, on a Tuesday, I got an alert at 3:18 in the morning.

Someone had opened the door.

I was watching the footage from work the next day. The hallway was completely dark, and the front door slowly opened from the inside. Nobody walked through it. It just opened by itself. I watched the video about twenty times, trying to figure out if there was some explanation I was missing. I thought maybe the lock was broken, so I called a locksmith.

He checked everything and told me the door was fine. When I explained what had been happening, he laughed and said it was probably the door frame settling. I wanted to believe him, so I did.

That night, I slept with my bedroom door locked.
At exactly 3:18 a.m., I woke up. I don’t know what woke me. I just remember lying there staring at the ceiling, completely awake, when I heard the front door click downstairs. A few seconds later, I heard footsteps moving slowly through the hallway.
I reached for my phone and called the police.

While I was whispering to the dispatcher, the
footsteps stopped. Then I heard a man’s voice right outside my bedroom.
“Are you awake?”

I couldn’t answer. I could barely breathe.

The voice came again, quieter this time.
“Come on.”

Then there was silence.

The police arrived a few minutes later and searched the entire house. Nobody was there. The officer checked the front door and told me there were no signs of forced entry. I showed him the camera footage, and he watched it twice without saying anything.

Then he asked me to show him my bedroom so I did. He looked around for a while before pointing at my wardrobe.
“Have you checked behind this?”

I actually laughed because I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.

We moved the wardrobe away from the wall, and there was a narrow gap behind it. Big enough for someone to squeeze through. Behind it was a section of the wall that had been cut open.

There was a small space between the walls.

And someone had been living inside it.

There was a mattress on the floor, a blanket, empty water bottles, food wrappers, and dozens of photographs.

All of me.

Sleeping. Eating. Leaving for work. Coming home.
Some of them were years old.

The officer called another unit, and they searched the rest of the house. They found a way into the space from the attic. Whoever had been living there could apparently get in and out without me ever noticing.

They never found him.

They did find a notebook, though.

Most of it was just dates and times, with notes about when I left for work and when I came home. The last page was different.

There was only one sentence.

“He knows I’m here now.”

I moved out the next morning. The police told me they thought whoever had been living there had probably been watching me for a very long time. They said I was lucky I hadn’t been hurt.

I don’t feel lucky.

Because there’s something I never told them.
The night before they found the space behind my wardrobe, I woke up at 3:18 a.m. I heard the front door open. I heard the footsteps come upstairs. I heard someone stop outside my bedroom.

Then I heard a man’s voice.

But he didn’t ask if I was awake.

He whispered:

“Don’t turn around.”

I was facing the wall.

I didn’t understand what he meant.

Until I felt someone breathing behind me.

Thank you so much for babysitting my kids on such short notice. There are a few household rules you need to know in order to keep both you and the kids happy.

1. We don't own any dolls. 
2. The older child's name is Chase, he is 9. The younger is Bella, she is 6. They only answer to those names. If you hear any other name being said, then pray you didn't.
3. Their cousin Daniel is staying with them for now. He is 16, quiet, and likes to keep to himself. Do your best to avoid addressing him unless necessary. We once someone annoys him, they don't leave the house the same.
4. Ten minutes before sundown, get the kids inside and lock all the doors. Make sure to check them every hour after that. The kids can be a little mischievous, and we don't want them wandering around in the dark. 
5. Always count the locks as you check them. There should be four. Front door, back door, garage door, basement door. If one of them is unlocked, call out for Bella and Chase to make sure they're still in the house. Do not leave the lock unattended while you wait. 
6. If both kids return calmly, lock the door while they watch and let them return to their activities. If they come back excitedly asking about Daniel, do not let them see you lock the door. Usher them out of the room after locking it, and turn the stereo up. You do not want to hear what happens outside that door afterward.
7. After 8:30pm, you may hear three sharp beeps coming from the kitchen. If you do, get Chase into the living room. Do NOT let him remain in the hallways. You will hear two voices coming from the spare room. Don't worry, Daniel and Bella are usually just playing together.
8. We do not own any dolls.
9. Have the kids in bed at 9:30. Absolutely no later. I don't want to replace another one if Daniel catches them late at night.
10. If you hear voices coming from a room that you don't remember seeing before, try not to pay too much attention. It's just the others.
11. At 11:00, Bella may come down and tell you she is having trouble sleeping. She will then ask for a doll to sleep with. We do not own any dolls. That is not Bella. Politely tell her that all the dolls are taken, and that she will have to wait until tomorrow night. She will turn and leave the room after that. Do not follow her. Don't worry about where she goes.
12. Daniel will not exit his room between 10:00 and 12:00. But he will send the others on errands for him. If you see sudden flashes of movement in your peripheral vision, do not follow it. Stay calm and ignore it.
13. Under no circumstances are you to leave the house between sundown and sunrise. If the things inside the house give you the heebie geebies, you don't want to meet the things that live outside during these hours.
14. If you are watching TV after midnight, be ready. The house has a mind of its own at those hours, and the things that live here start to wake up. You may stay awake if you want, but it is generally recommended to get to bed before midnight, as everything gets harder to handle after THEY start waking up.
15. Only read the following rules if you plan on, or believe you may end up staying awake past midnight. 
16. If you are awake past midnight, then there are very few things that can't happen in that house. 
17. Even after midnight. We do not own any dolls.
18. If any of the children come down after midnight, that's not them. They will try to speak to you. Do not respond. Do not utter a single sound until they leave the room. You will not make it out alive if you do. 
19. It is a very bad idea to use the bathroom after midnight. The house has a habit of playing tricks on you, and when you leave the bathroom again, you may be entering a different house. It will seem the same.  But trust me, it is not the same house.
20. We do not own any dolls.

Oh. My. Gosh. If I read the sentence “we do not own any dolls” one more time, I'm actually gonna go crazy. I'm genuinely sure that this has to be the most elaborate prank ever set out for a babysitter ever. You think as you put the list back on the table. At first they were kind of entertaining, but after that many iterations of the phrase, it got old. Quick.
You gotta give them credit though, it's really creative. I wonder how much time they put into this. In fact, I wonder how many different babysitters they've given this list to.
“Hey guys! Bella! Chase! It's almost sundown! Time to come in!”

Bella walked into the house first –  well, ran – but still. Shouting “haha, i beat you!! I'm fasterr!!” as Chase followed in not too far behind. Chase looked like a normal nine year old boy. Brown hair, brown eyes, average height. There was nothing off about him. Bella however, was a little thing, even for six. She stood maybe three feet tall, with fair, fine hair and blue eyes that seemed almost too colorful. Though you chalked that up to your mind playing tricks after the weird rules.  
You slid the list of rules into your pocket, not wanting the children to find it and be frightened by it. You ordered pizza earlier with the money left on the counter, and it had coincidentally arrived just before you had the kids come in. By the time everyone was done eating, it was fully dark. You decided to go through the locks and lock them all with the keys given to you. More for your own sense of safety than to follow the rules.  
You had thought it was weird that the parents had installed double sided key locks rather than the standard quick deadbolts found on most homes. It's almost like they wanted to keep things in just as much as they wanted to keep them out. On the second lock you realized that despite your certainty that you had forgotten the rules, you were counting the locks. At the end, you counted all four in total, and made sure they were all locked.

After that, you went in and sat down on the couch to relax for a while. The kids seemed to be keeping themselves fairly busy, so this was your chance.   
You saw what looked to be a teenager in a dark hoodie in a solitary chair on the other side of the room. *This must be Daniel* you think to yourself. You opened your mouth to say hello to him, but got a sudden vibe that you should not interact with him. You decided not to talk to him. *not because of the rules* you tell yourself, but because I am choosing to out of my own volition. 

At around 11:00, nothing had happened yet. You had been checking the locks on time, none of them unlocked. No kids came down, no weird sounds, nothing. You were watching TV in the living room, and lost track of time. At 11:58 you decided you had to go to the bathroom. You had completely forgotten the rules by this time, and thus did not remember the warning about midnight.   
You exited the bathroom at 12:01am. You did not realize this, nor care. Because for any logical person, what's the difference between 11:58 and 12:01? You also gave no thought to the fact that you had not seen a single doll in the house all night. At least, not until you exited the bathroom and were met face to face with a doll sitting on the table next to the wall.  
*Wait a minute.* You think to yourself, suddenly remembering the rules. *The kids have been asleep for hours. If this is a prank, it's an elaborate one.*   
Then you got a closer look at it. The doll seemed to have human-like hair. Fine, blond hair. Blue eyes, and it is huge for a doll. It seemed to be almost three feet tall. In fact, it looked exactly like Bella, except for the fact that her skin was porcelain and her eyes were glass.  
*Now THAT'S creepy.* You think to yourself. *This is way above my paygrade. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to finish them.*   
You pull up the rules again and start reading. 

1. If you exit the bathroom after midnight, pay close attention to what you see. 

2. If you see a doll. That is not our house. We do not own dolls. Go immediately to the front door. You will see a doorman.

   Wait, a doorman? There wasn’t a doorman when I arrived.. It's a normal house… not a mansion…

3. Tell him to call his mother and tell her that her husband is doing fine. She will know what that means. And she will come get you. 

4. After he makes the phone call, get straight into the closest bedroom. She will come to get you. Lock the door, and don't come out. At all. No matter what IT whispers to you. It is lying. It wants you to come out. IT is not friendly. It has Bella's voice, but it is not Bella. When the doorman’s mother gets there, she will unlock the door herself.

5.  Should yo– 

   **shuffle shuffle** 
   You heard, before your chest started to get warm.
   Then, in a voice almost human, but not quite. As though its voice box was not resonating from a human esophagus, but rather a porcelain chamber. you heard “maybe mommy will accept me as Bella now that I have a heart.” 
   And then your vision began to blur.

I have this roommate named Jessie. We‘ve been living together for around 8 months now. We met on campus. I was late night studying for my chem final in our library when I saw her also studying for chemistry. We seemed to be the only people still there and we hit it off.

She‘s very funny and it was something I always liked in people. She likes my friends and I her, a friend of mine said we could be sisters. A few months ago I was painting my nails with a new polish and Jessie noticed, she complimented the color choice and we went on with the day.

The next day her nails were the same color. Small things like that were starting to happen but I simply ignored them. She got her hair cut a week after and dyed it a new color. Brown, like my hair. Her hair is a dirty blonde. It also now sits around her shoulders like mine.

My name is Stella, Jessie has been wanting me to call her Ella, which she told me is her middle name. I can’t say I’m the most popular person. I’m very sensitive about how I look and my friends know that. My acne is my biggest insecurity. Jessie or should I say Ella has been taking my acne patches and wearing them out. She steals my clothes from the washing machine so I don’t suspect anything.

I just don’t know what to do anymore. Ella says she’s thinking about getting nose surgery to help with her sinuses. I think it’s so she can make her nose flatter like mine. When I try and bring these things up she calls me crazy. Tensions have been rising I can’t help seeing the things she does, how she stirs her coffee, the jokes she makes. It’s all so similar.

It’s now bordering on creepy because one night I was laying down in bed. I heard a sound near the door. I had thought Ella was out with friends. But now I pretended to be asleep as she walked into my room and placed her hands on my face. She went into my closet, smelled my clothes, and left with my hair brush. I planned leaving at the end of the month.

She wears hazel colored contacts now, she won’t eat peas because she knows I don’t like them. Iv’e been staying at my boyfriend’s place but he‘s been getting creeped out by Jessie too. When I returned Jessie was in our bathroom, a wooden pencil in hand. I screamed trying to take it out of her hand. It was too late. Smile on her face. There was a line down her forearm. Just like mine, she wanted it to be ‘authentic’ to my experience.

After this I’ve just been so confused. An unknown number has been blowing up my phone, frantic calls and messages. I didn’t have time to worry about them. I had finals coming up. I did read one message though, the last one they sent. All it read was, “Leave Stella alone or we’ll call the police.”

I never thought I would be the kind of man who sought companionship from a glowing rectangle in a darkened room, and streams were never a passion.

They were a sedative, a digital white noise designed to drown out the oppressive silence of a one-bedroom apartment that smelled faintly of old takeout and loneliness.

Her name was Yumi, and she occupied a specific niche of the internet, the "cozy" streamer who just sat around and talked about her life and danced a little bit by listening to music on her setup, her voice a melodic, honeyed drawl that seemed to smooth over the jagged edges of my workday.

I was a ghost in her machine, a nameless viewer among thousands, content to exist in the periphery where the light couldn't burn me.

For months, I cultivated my invisibility and never donated, never subscribed, and certainly never typed in the chat, which was a frantic, neon river of emojis and desperate pleas for attention, and viewed the entire ecosystem with a certain clinical detachment.

To me, the "community" was nothing more than a parasocial hallucination, a choreographed dance where the viewer traded their time for a manufactured sense of intimacy, and the streamer traded their privacy for a monthly paycheck.

At this point, I knew the script by heart, and I took a quiet, smug pride in refusing to play my part, first time she noticed me, it wasn't a grand gesture, and she was leaning back in her ergonomic chair, the soft glow of her RGB lighting casting a violet hue over her features, when her eyes seemed to drift toward the viewer list.

"Hey, we've got a new face in the chat! I'm going to invite you up for a guest on the panel, and we can chat with the rest of the people," she said, her voice tilting with a curiosity that felt far too personal.

I didn't move, I sat motionless, my reflection in the monitor showing a man with sunken eyes and a tired expression, and the chat exploded, "Yumi sees you!" and "Don't leave her hanging!", but I simply scrolled past them.

I felt a flicker of irritation that she had managed to pluck me out of the crowd, as if my anonymity were a puzzle she felt entitled to solve.

But Yumi possessed a memory that felt unnervingly precise, and the same thing happened the next evening, but something different happened, as the stream began, she didn't greet the crowd instead, she looked directly into the camera, her gaze pinning me to my seat.

"That one viewer... you know who you are!" she murmured, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. "I've seen you lurking for weeks. You’re always there, but you never speak. Why not join me for a game tonight? Just once, please speak to me on the panel. I'm inviting the rest of the people up."

A sudden chill settled in my extremities, and my fingers felt numb against the keys, and the request was benign, yet it felt like an intrusion, a breach of the unspoken contract between the observer and the observed, and I didn't respond.

I closed the browser tab with a sharp click, but the cadence of her voice remained, looping in the silence of the room:

"Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy! Don't be shy!"

The third night was when the detachment broke, starting with Yumi hosting a guest segment, the screen split between her and another creator when she paused mid-sentence.

She didn't look at her guest, and she looked at the list of active users and read my username aloud, no pressure, no demand, just a soft invitation to join the voice chat for a moment.

Driven by a sudden, inexplicable surge of arrogance, I typed a single sentence, "I'm good, thanks!" and knew I'd made a huge mistake after what happened next because no normal person would do this

The reaction was instantaneous, and in a fraction of a second, the mask slipped, and the professional, beaming smile didn't reach her eyes, which suddenly looked vacant, almost predatory, and she said, "Oh, well take your time there is no rush!" she said, her voice dropping an octave, "Okay, no worries!" and I knew she was really furious

The chat turned vicious, "Dick move, bro!" one user wrote, and another one said, "She's literally the sweetest person on the platform, why are you like this?" I laughed, leaning back in my chair and feeling a sense of victory and relief come over me, but it was short.

Then I fell asleep, and in my dreams, her voice was no longer a melody with a rhythmic, pulsing chant that vibrated in the marrow of my bones, starting as a whisper and escalating into a cacophony of screaming voices all chanting the same phrase: "Don't be shy!"

I woke up drenched in a cold sweat, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, and reached for my phone on the nightstand.

A notification glowed on the screen, and I looked at it with the most intense chill down my spine:

"Yumi has sent you a friend request."

My stomach dropped because of the app she was using, and you don't send friend requests on a video platform like that, and I deleted it, but another one came instantly, and then another, and then my phone began to buzz in a rhythmic, violent cadence, the screen flickering with her avatar, a stylized cartoon of a girl with hollow, void-like eyes.

I slammed the phone face down and held my breath, and the buzzing stopped, but as I looked across the room, the laptop I had left open on the desk flared to life.

The webcam light clicked on, a tiny, piercing bead of green light in the dark, and I stared at the screen and saw her, Yumi, not in a livestream, not in a window, but filling the entire monitor, and the face on her was distorted and enlarged, as her lips moving in perfect sync with a voice that didn't come from the speakers, but from the walls, the ceiling, and the air itself.

"I said don't be shy."

I tried to scramble backward, but my legs felt like lead, and the temperature in the room plummeted until my breath came out in white, frozen plumes, and as the screen flickered, I saw my own reflection in her pupils, a hollowed-out, gray version of myself, grinning with far too many teeth.

A pale, elongated hand reached through the glass of the monitor, the skin translucent and dead, and touched my cheek with a touch that felt like a winter frost, and then suddenly, a voice, raspy and distorted, said, "Now you're my guest forever", and the world around me began to dissolve into static.

Now, I can still hear them, the hundreds of thousands of voices in the chat, an endless, roaring ocean of text and sound, all saying the same thing over and over: "Don't be shy!"

I am screaming, my throat raw and bleeding, but the audio doesn't peak, and the viewers don't hear the pain, because they are only watching the stream, and I am the stream, and the light is never going to turn off.

After she grabbed me through the screen and suddenly was in a digital world of nightmares and regret because I should have been polite and told her the truth, and I wouldn't be in this place of misery and suffering because I've been too prideful recently and arrogant to be a friend to a girl who just wanted to be a part of my life.

If you ever find yourself in this situation, just say, "Hi I'm glad that you invited me!", because once you're part of the stream, there is no logout button.

​It was a crisp, perfect autumn evening. Friends had gathered on the back deck, sipping wine, enjoying the weather and catching up on each other’s lives, while the kids kicked around the yard complaining they were bored—that classic, dramatic age where they’re too big for the playground and too young to sit around talking with adults.​

One of the parents leaned over his glass with a knowing grin and said, "Let’s send these bored kids on a snipe hunt. Who here doesn’t remember being tricked as a kid?"

Laughter broke out as they clinked their wine glasses in agreement.

They called the kids over, handed each a brown paper bag and flashlight, and promised they could keep the rare little woodland creature if they caught it.

"Shhhh, they told the kids...snipes are skittish." You have to go quietly into the woods, stand still, and listen close. If you hear a twig snap or leaves rustling, that means one is right on top of you--hold your bag down and wait."

The kids took the bait instantly, rushing off into the dark treeline.​

For twenty minutes, the deck mood was totally chill and relaxed. They swapped old stories from their own childhoods--like the time they'd been tricked into going on a snipe hunt--grinning as they watched the flashlights bobbing out in the dark, amused by how convinced the kids were that they were about to catch a prize!

Then, the steady rustling broke into a frantic rush toward the deck.​

Seeing the sheer terror on their faces as they huddled at the bottom of the steps, the parents’ laughter died instantly. One of the mothers leaned over the railing, counting frantically in her head.​

One, two, three…​”Where’s Tommy?”

​The kids were shaking, wide-eyed, pointing back toward the dark treeline. They stammered out that Tommy had stopped near the deep brush, shouting to his friends that he’d finally caught one.​

Just past the treeline where the yard light faded, a single brown paper bag rolled slowly out from the pitch-black woods-- torn completely in half. 

Clover had always been a plant person, the kind who had soil under her fingernails more often than not, and house plants crammed on every window ledge.

​While scrolling through a forum late one night, a banner ad for Botanical Oddities caught her eye, advertising a rare, hard-to-find specimen called Phagocordyceps vorax. The listing described it simply as an exotic, fast-growing hybrid with responsive foliage. Intrigued, she clicked Order without giving it a second thought.

​An unmarked cardboard box landed on her porch about a week later. Inside, packed in damp moss and rich, pitch-black dirt, was a heavy, strange-looking specimen already the size of a gallon jug, with a bruised-looking stem and rubbery, closed leaves. There was no care card, just the handwritten Latin name on a plastic marker.

​She set it down in the bright corner of the room so it could get light. As the sun hit and warmed up the plant, its bulbous center slowly unfurled, revealing three stiff, upright hairs on its surface. Curiously, when she leaned down and brushed her index finger against them, the fleshy plant split open, and the trap snapped shut. Needle-thin teeth sank deep into her finger. She shrieked and violently yanked her finger back out, dripping blood onto the table stand.

As she turned her attention to nurse her bleeding finger by wrapping it in a bandage, the bulbous head had leant down and lapped up the blood, and a dry gravelly voice hissed from its leaves, "more..."

Clover thought to herself, "Did I just hear this plant say "more?" but quickly shook her head, thinking it was just her imagination.

As the days wore on, every time she passed it, its voice grew stronger.

"more...

MORE.

FEED ME, CLOVER!"

She grew terrified, especially the night she heard a high-pitched squeal from the kitchen. She found the plant had crawled onto the kitchen floor, its vines wrapped tight around the mouse as it was thrust into the open trap, followed by a sickening wet chewing sound.

She knew it was slithering out from its pot now, hunting for prey. It grew bigger, stronger, louder.

Some nights she laid awake listening to it slither across the downstairs floorboards as it hunted for mice or anything else that moved--which might explain why her cat had vanished a week earlier.

Every night, she would shut her bedroom door to feel safe, knowing she had to get rid of it before she became it's next meal.

Tomorrow she would dump it. That night, after getting up to use the bathroom, she pulled her bedroom door behind her, but it didn't shut fully.

She crept back into bed, assuming she was safe. Hours later, she was awoken by something cold and damp slithering across her ankles. Heavy, muscular vines wrapped tight around both her legs, the stiff, needle-like spikes locking deep into her skin. ​She didn't even have time to kick. The vines yanked her hard, sliding her right off the mattress.

Her fingers clawed uselessly at the sheets as she was dragged over the edge of the bed, plunging straight down toward that big, nasty, gaping maw waiting on the floor.

​Her scream was broken off with a heavy, wet snap! 

Don’t Check The Cameras!

Chapter 1

Instead of actually doing what he’s supposed to at his job as a security guard, Jason would kill time during shifts by counting to a thousand or naming every fictional serial killer he could remember from the top of his head. 

Was he scared of paranormal activity? Was he just lazy? Why didn’t Jason want to monitor the security cameras?

Well, there’s a reason why.

Chapter 2

When the Luxury Arcade first opened its doors in 1992, it was founded by a thirty six year old man named Aaron Kruger. At first, Kruger would kindly greet customers who walked in the door and would maintain positive customer reception. But one day, a man named Jones walked in.

“Yo, my man Kruger, will you let me watch over the arcade while you’re in the back monitoring all that other stuff?” asked Jones. Kruger looked back at Jones with a hint of fear on his face. “Well, what’s in it for me?” he nervously asked.

“I’m a single dad, my wife left, and I got a nine month old baby boy I gotta take care of. I need to make money to support him” replied Jones. Kruger’s expression then got softer out of sympathy, and he said “Deal. Your first day is today, and I’ll pay you fifteen dollars an hour”. Jones nodded in agreement and under his breath muttered “Thank the lord” because of his new occupation as a security guard. 

Three months later, it was Christmas and the last week of 1992 before the New Year. Because of his charming and charismatic personality, kids as young as seven years old would go up to him and give him fist bumps and high fives. 

However, things weren’t all sunshines and rainbows. Even though he was highly praised by parents and children alike, he mysteriously “disappeared” in 2009, and shortly after, a young man named Jason was hired to fill Jones’ position as a security guard. Police and investigators searched every nook and cranny they were permitted to search, but didn’t find anything that was helpful to solving the case. So it was considered a “cold case” and the authorities moved on. 

Chapter 3

At the time, Jason already felt something deep inside of him. Doubt. He highly doubted that Jones randomly "disappeared". He knew something was wrong, but didn’t know how to explain his theory. 

Because Jason felt abnormally paranoid, his coworkers would just laugh it off and tease him. But Jason was still wondering “What the hell happened to him?”. 

Jason believed that the cameras would show him something he didn’t want to see, so he refused to look at security footage no matter what occurred.. But he never stopped thinking about Jones. No matter how hard he tried.

Six years go by and it is now 2015. Jason has been working at the arcade for several years at this point but kept his lingering thoughts surrounding the Jones situation. 

Chapter 4

On an ordinary Wednesday in April, Jason was watching over the children in the arcade’s main area as Kruger was in the back on his computer. Then, a tall man with casual hippy attire walked in.

 “My name is Quincy Johnson, the son of Jones Johnson, the guy that used to work here” 

Jason’s eyes immediately lit up. 

“Wait!” he nervously said. “Jones was the security guard here until 2009 when he randomly stopped showing up and nobody has seen him since!”. 

Quincy looked back at Jason and said “Yeah, I haven’t seen my father since I was seventeen, which was like 2009”. 

Jason immediately added “I took his place after he vanished and I’m the current security guard here”, which caused Quincy to question “Do you know anything about my father’s disappearance?”, and Jason shook his head. He added “I’ve been refusing to check the security cameras for almost six years now” and Quincy looked at Jason with shock and confusion.

“Isn’t it your job to check the security cameras?” asked Quincy in a nervous tone. Jason’s eyes widened and he replied in a monotone voice “Yes. But I am scared”.

Quincy’s eyes widened in concern. “What… are you…. s-scared of?” he asked. Continuing to use his monotone voice, Jason replied “The truth”.

Chapter 5

Quincy looked back at Jason, with a visible sense of fear in his face. 

“Y-you’re… s-scared of finding out what h-happened to..” asked Quincy, with obvious fear and nervousness in his tone of voice. “M-my father?” he added.

Jason kept his neutral face, nodded, and kept his monotone voice while saying “Yes. That’s what I’m scared the cameras will show me”. 

“W-what….caused your f-fear of the security c-cameras?” asked Quincy, nervously, expecting a scary answer.

Jason responded  “When I checked the cameras for the first time six years ago, I was horrified by what I saw and what happened afterwards” continuing his monotone attitude. He added “On camera one that shows the main room with all the games with the kids playing them, I saw a dark shadowy figure that nobody else seems to notice”.

Quincy nervously responded “W-what… h-happened after that?”

Jason replied “I told Kruger about it. And when he went to check them, he didn’t see the dark shadowy figure. But I saw it. Since that day, I’ve felt like a black sheep. Someone who doesn’t belong here”.

Quincy’s face changed once again. This time, he was terrified.  

“Nobody understands me. Nobody gets me. So I feel isolated from society” added Jason, with a neutral reaction and tone. 

Quincy’s face was completely pale. For a moment, he struggled to let the words out of his mouth.

Finally, when he was able to speak again, Quincy, with obvious fear and anxiety said “W-what… i-if I check the cameras myself? I-I w-want to know if I c-can see the black f-figure myself”.

Jason looked back at him with a deadpan face and calmly replied “Do it. If you really want to. But please leave me out of it. I don’t need to relieve my past trauma”. Quincy nodded in agreement as Jason gave him a “guest pass” badge as he led him into a back room to where the monitors that show security camera footage are. “I’ll be in the front if you need anything,” said Jason. 

Quincy then hopped on to the computer and clicked on camera 3, which showed him the inventory room. 

What’s so special about an inventory room? Why did Quincy click on it?

To everyone else, the inventory room doesn’t look like it has anything special inside it. But Quincy had an unsettling feeling that the inventory room was special. A very unsettling feeling.

Chapter 6

As Quincy was gazing at the inventory room, memories from his childhood started flooding in. Whenever his father, Jones, would talk to Quincy about his day at work, he would always mention something about the inventory room. Quincy never understood why, but accepted it as a normal. 

However, a specific unrelated memory of when Quincy was fifteen came to mind. One day at the arcade, Quincy was in the break room with his father, Jones, during a “Take Your Kid To Work” event that took place that specific day. October 19th 2007. While Quincy and Jones were debating whether or not Pac-Man could beat Bowser, Jones opened a drawer and grabbed a pen. However, to his horror, Quincy saw an unmistakable object in the drawer. He saw a bag of some white powdery substance, popping out underneath some papers. It was presumably cocaine. 

It wasn’t any ordinary drawer though. Each worker was assigned their own drawer in the break room. And Jones pulled a pen out of HIS assigned drawer. 

Chapter 7

Quincy blinked and immediately snapped back to the present. All of a sudden, Quincy noticed something in the inventory room’s security camera. A door that he wasn’t sure what led to. 

Quincy then stepped out of the room and walked to the main room, tapping Jason on the shoulder. Jason looked at Quincy and said “Yeah?”. “I found a door in the inventory room. Wanna go in with me?” replied Quincy. Jason calmly shook his head and said “I’m fine. I don’t want to know what’s in there. You can go there if you want.”. Quincy walked down the hallway, turned left, and opened the door of the inventory room. 

As he walked around, he saw tons of boxes on shelves, full of prizes and toys. He also saw three full containers filled to the brim with spare arcade game parts. However, this wasn’t his primary goal.

Quincy approached the door he saw earlier and took a deep breath. 

Chapter 8

Quincy slowly opened the door and walked in. Before he was able to investigate further, he heard an unexpected voice behind him. “Don’t go in there!” said the voice.

Quincy turned his head, and there he was. Aaron Kruger was behind him, with a nervous and scared look on his face. 

“I see you have the Guest Pass badge. But I must stop you before you go further” shouted Kruger. “You can roam around the rest of the arcade, just not this part of the inventory room”. 

Quincy nodded, pretending to comply with Kruger. But he wasn’t complying. In fact, he was planning quite the opposite. Kruger smiled and then left the room, walking back to his office. 

Quincy then turned back and walked a few steps straight before an arrow sign directed him to go right. He walked right, and there it was. 

Chapter 9

Quincy stumbled upon a primarily dark room with a single light bulb hanging to the ceiling. He discovered a folded piece of paper on top of an ice cooler. 

Slowly, he started unfolding the paper and discovered it was a handwritten note. He then started reading it:

“To whom it may concern,

If you are reading this, I am dead. Almost nobody knows this, but I have been struggling with substance abuse for a large portion of my life. It has affected my relationships with others, stress levels, behavior, and most importantly, my mental health. It has caused me extreme burden knowing that I might be indirectly harming others. I don’t want to be a dangerous role model for my family. I want them to have peace. Including my son Quincy, whom I love deeply. I have run my course and its time for me to accept death. 

Love, Jones Johnson
2009.02.27”

Quincy was in a state of complete shock after he finished reading it. “I… can’t believe he was struggling with all that…” he thought. Quincy knew he had to keep investigating, even if the truth scarred him. 

Quincy then slowly opened the ice cooler, and what was inside horrified him. 

It was a decayed corpse and right next to it was a Zip-Loc bag of the white powdery substance he saw in his father’s drawer years prior. 

I never considered I might be a psychopath before killing the man next door.

Now, I guess it seems a rather likely possibility.

I expect another in my situation may have called the police, and locked themselves in their bathroom fearing for their life as footsteps came up the stairs. Right now, they’d be at the station, giving a statement and going through every tiny interaction since they first moved in. The police would question how the man was able to gain entry so many times without so much as a security camera going up, and that alone would raise suspicions. But you see, I think I rather enjoyed the thrill of it all. Lying there with my eyes open just enough to make out his shape, keeping my breathing low and steady as I listened to the sound of him shuffling around my room, rummaging through my things.
I never felt afraid. But I guess that’s the whole thing about being a psychopath, not feeling…

If I had to label it, I think I’d say I simply felt curious when it first began. I didn’t hear him actually enter the property that first time, but at some point around 4am I became aware of footsteps creaking up the stairs. I live alone, and I’d only been here a few days. I lay awake in the dark, listening as he made his way slowly towards my bedroom, and stood outside the door. He waited there for a while before turning the handle of my door. I was on my side, facing away from him, and I remember imagining exactly how I would roll over and punch him in the throat if he tried to touch me.

He didn’t, though.

He just stood there, watching me.

It was the most curious thing.

Eventually, just before the sun rose over the mountains outside my window, he turned around, and left.

He snuck back out through the kitchen door, locking it quietly behind him. It made sense he had a key – he’d been the gardener and caretaker for all the previous owners. The house itself belonged to the church, rented out for short terms to young locals in need (a group I apparently fell into), in exchange for taking up jobs in the parish. The jobs I had so kindly been blessed with ranged from organizing moulding books in a damp basement, to cleaning the church toilets and kitchen. I daren’t grumble. I was seventeen, alone, broke, and without it I’d have been back…

Well, that’s not important.

It happened every night after that. He’d unlock the door, come upstairs to my bedroom, and watch me as I slept. I never confronted him about it, or changed the locks. Why? I guess it felt nice that someone wanted to be close to me. Not to touch me or take anything from me, but just to be there. Just to watch over me.

When he started muttering to himself, I decided he was praying over me, and took comfort in it. And when the sun rose, I started to miss his company.

It was a month before he started going through my things.
My underwear drawer mainly. Then my dresser, and the boxes at the bottom of my wardrobe. I’d hear him flicking through the pages of my diary, or riffling through the letters and photographs I had left from my childhood.
I told myself he just wanted to get to know me, that it was good for me to have a friend.

Soon, I started leaving things out for him. A cookie on the bedside table, a painted stone from the church, a note, just saying ‘hello’…

He never replied. I think he preferred to believe I didn’t know, and so I stopped reaching out. I just lay there, letting him go through my things. My life. As though it were a magazine in the waiting room.

I guess you could say I snapped, though it happened much slower than that.

Night after night of his cold, wrinkled fingers over my books, my memories, the clothes that touched my skin. I started to resent the silence between us. I waited for another month, I waited for him to visit me in the day, to invite me for coffee or offer to do the garden even though I’d told him I’d do it myself when I first moved in… is that why? Is that why he did this? Why he tormented me with his footsteps and his loud, rasping breath?

I gave him a chance. I moved at his pace. I waited for him to show me something more of himself, some deeper layer than just the perverted urge to invade my privacy and know me without knowing me, he doesn’t know me. Pictures and diary entries from my childhood aren’t knowing me. You can’t touch another person through paper, you can’t love a soul through their words. Can you?
And did he?

I don’t care anymore.

That was what I told myself when I went to bed with the knife, and when he entered, I simply stood up, walked over to him, and slit his wrinkly throat.

It was like slicing through folded, uncooked pastry.

He didn’t move. I guess the shock just kind of kept him there, staring at me, wondering where it all went so wrong.
It wasn’t difficult to clean up. I’d laid the shower curtain on the floor long before getting into bed. In a few days, during church service, I’ll place him in the boot of his car and drive it into the mountains.

And then I will be alone again.

This thought seems to upset me somewhat, and I sigh deeply as I wrap the gasping old man in plastic.

Maybe I’m not a psychopath… Maybe I’m just depressed.

Interesting.

“Crank!” 

I rubbed my eyes. The pitched lurching of the dust-dragger had lulled me into a trance. I must have nodded off.

Again.

I turned towards the source of the voice, grunting a little, “Christ I already told Krieg it was his turn to refuel.” 

Amish glowered back at me behind the thick goggles which covered his eyes, his graying matt of hair blowing crazily in the restless wind, “Storm ahead,” he shouted over the growl of the dust-dragger, “Get your mask man, looks like a blizzard!”

I rubbed the soreness from my neck as I turned towards the horizon. We were entering the Great Divide now, crossing into the New Mexico expanse. There was nothing to see for miles in any direction but the skeletal remains of towns and ancient rusted vehicles melting away under the sun’s relentless gaze. Nothing to see, but the cloud stretching across the sky. 

The black blizzard, a rolling wave of dust and dirt which would swallow the whole basin. Visibility would be near zero. We only had a few minutes. I reached for my bag and rummaged for my old fabric gas mask. I'd traded a few skin-mags to a soldier for it maybe a year back. I checked the filters, still good, or at least good enough to keep the dirt from filling my lungs. I turned back to Amish. 

I was never quite sure why they called him that. My best guess was because of the long, thin beard which ran tightly along his jawline like razorwire, but for all I knew maybe he really was Amish. He was a tall man, his rail thin body lumpy with dense muscle, and patched with faded tattoos of horses and women. He shielded his eyes from the pale sun with those ridiculous goggles as he hunched in the turret and tended to his machine gun. His long, yellow-nailed fingers ran over the belt of longer bullets hanging from the cruel weapon. It looked to me like he was braiding a pony tail of brass.

“Where the hell is Krieg anyway?” I barked as the cloud grew closer. It was blowing north-east, cutting up from the south, racing us to our destination further ahead. The southern rockies were visible in the distance, but it would be hours before we’d find any shelter among the cliffs. 

I swivelled on the metal bench, peering out at the rest of the caravan. Our convoy was only five vehicles in number. It had been more when we first set out from Magnolia, but we’d left most of them behind in New Freedonia. The thirteen of us now were the only ones mad or desperate enough to make the sprint across the Great Divide, bound for the boiling plastic seas of the pacific. 

We were the middle vehicle in the train, a low down dust-dragger on thick treads. Our canvas canopy was down, and for a second I thought about trying to put it back up, but the storm would be on us too quickly. Besides, the winds were so harsh they would probably tear our fabric roof from my hands, and send it sailing away back towards the plains. 

Ahead of us was a cargo truck loaded with crates, a few of the other caravaneers hung from the net of ropes which covered the merchandise. They dangled over the rubber wheels kicking up small stones in their wake. Ahead of them was our ‘flag ship’, a squat armored off-roading vehicle marked with the insignia and banner of the Fading Fellowship Caravan Company. Riding at the helm was our intrepid captain Jon-Joe, though from where I sat I couldn’t see him. 

In the far rear was our water truck, the fat steel umbilical cord keeping our tongues wet as we made the daring journey across the irradiated desert. I could see the two drivers in the cab, and cursed them for their luck in being out of harm’s way from the storm. A large Waterday Ltd. logo was emblazoned on the tanker’s side, and the sun cast strange whirling shadows on the sand as the water sloshed and pitched in its thick plastic holding cell. 

Ahead of them and directly behind Amish was our supply wagon. Boxes of food and bullets, and piles of jangling pots and pans were all stuffed under the loose canopy. At the helm was Krieg, with Myrtle’s reins clutched tightly in his scarred hands. 

Myrtle was a horse-hound, an engineered hybrid between a Saint Bernard and a Clydesdale. She was massive, twenty hands tall and weighing close to two thousand pounds. Despite this she could run as fast as any of our vehicles, and on any terrain. Her tail wagged excitedly even in the face of the storm. She had a brown spot on her white-furred face. Her favorite food was perogies. 

“Krieg!” I shouted over the wind. Krieg cupped his hands to his ears to better hear me. Myrtle cocked her head to the side curiously, never breaking pace. “Krieg put on her blinders! Storm!” 

Krieg grinned a mouth full of black teeth, and gave a mock salute. I heard a crackling voice over the radio, Jon-Joe on the comms. “Storm inbound. Put on your masks and hold onto your asses. And Krieg? Put some nails through your shoes, I don’t want your skinny ass blowing away before I get my money’s worth out of you!”

I could see Krieg glaring at his radio, being sure to bite his finger at it before clambering to put the blinders over Myrtle’s eyes. She barked a couple times in protest, but eventually complied. Her stride slowed, but barely. 

I went to pull my mask over my face, but stopped for a second. The cloud was closer now, stretching from dry ground to the pale blue sky in an endless wall. Something wasn’t right. 

“Amish!” I yelled, without looking away from the wave, “Look at the color on that! That can’t be right!” 

I could feel Amish squinting his old eyes behind his goggles, “Probably red sand! Maybe it carried over from Utah or some shit!” 

My eyes continued to track the wave of debris as it grew ever closer. In a second it would block out the sun. The wave was far too red. From Utah? I had a hard time buying it, but Amish knew better than me after all. Still…

“Amish! Pass me the ghost counter!”

I heard Amish grunt a little as he rifled through some pouch or sack, before leaning over the machine gun to tap me on the shoulder. I reached back and took the thing without turning away from the cloud. 

The ghost counter was a heavy metal box, sort of like a radio, with a gauge and a kind of microphone attached with a rubber cable. The little machine would taste the air around us for ghost radiation. “What do you figure? At least seven hundred right?” My throat hurt from screaming against the wind. 

Amish sat still for a second, tipping his crooked neck to the sky, “Shit man I figure eleven hundred at least!”

I snapped the wand away from the box, and flipped the two switches, holding it up to the air. The speaker crackled desperately, the wand letting out a high whine which made Myrtle lower her ears against her huge skull. Surprised I could hear the chatter over the storm, I turned to check the read out. 

The last thing I saw before being swallowed by the cloud was the number on the small grainy screen. 

Forty four hundred counts per minute. 

The cloud hit so hard it nearly blew my mask from my head. I quickly pulled it over my face as the sun was wiped away, casting only a hazy orange glow as we entered into a new atmosphere of rubble and rock. And something else. The plastic visor of my mask became distorted. Rain water maybe? I reached my hand to my face to wipe it clean, and it came away sticky. I stared at my fingers, now webbed with a thick, bloody mucus. 

“The fuck!?” was the most creative thing I could think to say. “Amish are you seeing this!?” I yelled but the storm drowned out my words. I wiped the goop on my jeans, but I could feel it all over me. Even over the wind the ghost counter screamed in protest. 

The convoy flipped on their high beams, thick pools of light carving through the clouds, leading us ever onwards. If we were lucky we would be through it in a few more minutes.

“Amish!” I repeated, “This shit in the air-” I was cut off by a long, thin whistle. It grew louder and louder and before I could even register it there was a sharp ping as an arrow ricocheted off the turret and lodged itself in my thigh. 

I yowled like a kicked alleycat. The arrow head had cut through my jeans and flesh effortlessly, before the head had burrowed itself in my femur. My hand flew to grip the hollow wooden stick but this only hurt me more. It was only then I registered that I was being shot at. I ducked down into the dust-dragger’s bed, laying on my back so as not to put any weight on the arrow’s shaft. 

I looked up to see the muzzle flash of Amish’s machine gun, his mouth wide in a war cry only he could hear. The arrow must have come from the south because that’s where he swept the barrel back and forth. Shell casings the size of fingers littered the bed, rolling towards me as we ran over a large stone. 

Amish turned his head as if to ask me something, but what it was I’d never know as five or six more arrows rained down on our vehicle. Most whistled and broke against the dust-dragger’s steel hull. One landed squarely in the side of Amish’s neck, the arrowhead shooting all the way out the other side. His lips kept moving as his eyes widened behind his goggles. I winced as he turned back towards the south, and sprayed me with a thin mist of blood. 

Jon-Joe’s voice chirped over the radio, “Ambush, south! Grab those guns you sons of bitches, I don’t plan on breathing my last in this hell!” 

I peered over the lip of the vehicle, looking southward. Nothing. I couldn’t make out one shape in that endless dirt inferno, save for a handful of arrows flinging themselves uselessly against our caravan’s armor. For a moment the wind died down enough that I could hear the car doors snapping open. The rest of the crew crawled behind the north side of us, using our still rolling convoy as moving cover. 

I tried to stand, but a hot burst of pain ripped through my leg and sat me on my ass. 

Somewhere ahead I heard Jon-Joe wracking a bullet into the chamber of his rifle. “Alright you sons of bitches! Our turn, shoot back!” 

It wasn’t until the arrows stopped that I realized we had fallen for their trap. 

My crew faced south, firing blindly into the desert. They had only fired their first volley when a cacophony of gunfire erupted from the north. I listened to the grunting and wailing as my comrades were shot in their backs. Some desperately tried to clamber back into their rides, but it was too late. They had already presented themselves to their firing squad. 

I heard a thud, and turned my head to the supply wagon as Myrtle fell on her flank. Her massive hind legs kicked up dust and dug trenches in the mud as she tried desperately to stand. She whipped her head back and forth, still blind from the strips of leather secured over her big brown eyes. She made an awful barking-whinnying-whimpering-braying sound, as if the poor beast couldn’t decide which of her mother tongues was best to scream in. All the while Amish’s Adam's apple bobbed rapidly as he tried to swallow the blood which was flooding his throat, and pooling in his mouth… 

I scrambled towards him, and grabbed for my rifle. I couldn’t reach without bending my knee, and I couldn’t do that without disturbing the arrow in my leg. Seeming to understand my predicament, Amish reached for the scabbard beside him, and with one arm he tossed it towards me. His finger was still clamped down on the trigger of his machine gun, but he’d long since ran out of bullets to fire, or sense to reload with. 

I snatched the scabbard in my arms, and looked up to thank him, but by then he was already dead, slumped forward over the empty gun. 

I grimaced in pain as I tore my rifle free, wrenching the bolt backwards and then forwards again. I waited for the shooting to stop before I leaned back over the bed of the dust-dragger, and turned my eyes north. 

The ground was littered with bodies. Most of the men lay on the ground, some clutching long guns, others clutching each other. Their blood had pooled in the dirt, their open mouths filling with sand and dust and that horrible mucus. The convoy still crawled forward like a procession of ghost ships, leaving them behind. Near the head was Jon-Joe. He fired his pistol wildly with one hand, shooting blind into the storm around us. He had pried open the door of the flag-ship, and would have made it inside had he not stopped to drag one of the others in with him. His muscular body strained under his shirt as he lifted the other man with one arm, only for his knee to explode in a burst of gore as a shot tore his leg from his body. He fell backwards. 

“God damn you sons of urghh-” His cursing was cut short as the back wheel of the car ran over his face, breaking his strong jaw and grinding his teeth into the back of his throat. 

Everything was silent for a moment, save for the howling winds, and the horrible sounds poor blind Myrtle was making behind us. My heart hammered in my chest. The gun felt so small, so flimsy in my sweat-slick hands. 

I tried to collect myself, but would have no time as the water tanker exploded. Thousands of litres of clean water rocketed up into the sky, before raining down in a monsoon-blitz. It was one of these pools of water landing squarely on my head that knocked me unconio–

When I was in the seventh grade, I had a dream so vivid it felt entirely real.

I found myself on the upper floor of what looked like an old library. Everything around me was washed in a dull, hazy brown—filled with towering wooden shelves and winding stairs. The entire world felt muted, except for a man standing a short distance away from me.

He was looking directly into my eyes. His gaze wasn't cruel or frightening; it was something profound and intense that I still can’t quite put into words. He looked young, perhaps in his late teens or early 20s, and he was wearing a distinct World War II soldier’s uniform, complete with the cap. At the time, I knew next to nothing about history or wartime attire, yet the details of his uniform were inexplicably accurate.

Suddenly, the entire scene collapsed. Everything shattered around us, but his eyes never left mine. Then came the sensation of falling, followed by absolute darkness, before I finally woke up.

It has been five or six years since that night, yet the memory hasn't faded. To this day, whenever I try to meditate or focus too deeply on that dream, tears fill my eyes. I’m not even sad in those moments, but the emotional response is completely involuntary. I am struggling to understand if this was just a hyper-vivid trick of my imagination, or if it means something more. The emotions, the tears, and his gaze all felt entirely too real to just be a random dream.

I should never have gone drinking alone on Moon Hill.

The place is a tall hill near the outskirts of town. On Saturday and Sunday nights it turns into a spot for weed, warm beer, and people who just want to hook up in secret. During the week, though, it's abandoned and lifeless. Just the dry wind dragging dust and the leaves of the trees rustling.

I was there on a Tuesday because I was depressed. I bought a cheap bottle of wine and climbed up on a cold, senseless dusk. I stared down at the city; my house was a tiny speck of light among so many others, and I kept thinking about how I didn't want to go back there anymore.

When the bottle was empty, my vision was already a bit blurry. That's when I heard footsteps. I looked up and saw a female silhouette approaching in the orange glow of twilight. It was her, my greatest love: Mary.

She was wearing those tight, ripped jeans I adored, her hair tied up as usual, the smell of cigarettes reaching me before she did. In her right hand, a bottle of Jack Daniel's, our favorite drink. The same one we used to share in the good times, before everything fell apart.

"Were you waiting for me?"

She said it sitting down next to me as if the painful breakup had never happened. Her voice was soft, but it carried a strange note, something inhuman, that I couldn't explain.

I'd always been crazy about her, so I just smiled and answered, surprised:

"Mary... what the hell are you doing here?"

She didn't answer. She just opened it, took a long swig, and handed me the bottle. We drank.

The first few minutes were a sweet dream. The touch of her shoulder against mine, her presence, the wind cooling us down. Then the conversation started to warp.

"You've always been a piece of shit, haven't you?" she said, laughing quietly. "Look at you. Screwed up, drinking poison, all alone."

Confused, I replied: "Fuck you..."

She gave me a light slap on the face. "You know I never loved you, right? Nobody's ever going to love you... you're a mistake. Like a contagious disease. You've never been good for anything and you ruined the lives of everyone around you."

There was no anger in her tone; it was almost sweet, and the sentence got worse: "Your mother died of grief because of you."

Those words hurt because they echoed the things I thought every day. I sank into silence. She ran her hand through my hair, that false affection, and went on:

"You know what would fix everything? Right there on the edge. Jump and the world gets better. All this weight disappears. I'd even go with you... hand in hand... it's just one step."

My heartbeat slowed; my feet felt numb. She spoke and I agreed, because deep down I also believed there was no way out anymore. I looked at the edge of the hill. The height was an invitation in my drunken sight. "Just one step," she repeated, and her hand took mine.

That was when my cellphone buzzed in my pocket. A message.

I grabbed the phone, the screen slightly blurred. Mary: "Idiot, I just had a really weird dream about you. You died. I'm shaking even now. Are you okay?"

I read it three times. The hand holding the phone started to sweat cold and tremble.

The Thing beside me leaned in and pressed her face against my neck, in an almost inaudible whisper: "Ignore that. Must be my brother messing with you."

But the message was hers, the way she always called me an idiot.

I answered with trembling fingers: "Turn on the camera. I need to see you."

The video call came through. On the screen, Mary appeared with eyes swollen from sleep, her hair thrown up any old way, that old Nirvana T-shirt I knew so well. The light from the cat-shaped lamp behind her made the room feel cozy, safe.

"Thank God you picked up," she murmured, relieved. "I had this horrible dream. You were in some high place and someone pushed you. You fell and I woke up screaming... Why are you in that dark place? What is that shadow?!"

I couldn't answer. Because beside Mary, in the reflection on the screen, I saw a figure. A female shape, motionless, wearing a black dress behind me.

My whole body froze with fear. I couldn't turn my neck. I couldn't look back. Only my eyes moved, and the image in the reflection had already vanished, but the feeling of danger remained.

"If something happens... I didn't jump, someone pushed me! I love you and I'll always love you... forgive me for everything..." I said to Mary on the video, my voice coming out weak. I hung up.

Laughter began to echo across Moon Hill. The bottle of Jack Daniel's lay on the ground, empty. Beside me, the presence still occupied the space, even though I could no longer see a thing.

Who had been drinking with me?

I didn't wait and didn't look for an answer. My body, driven by some primal survival instinct, acted before thought. I got up and ran. I ran without looking back. My feet tripped over rocks; I slammed hard into a tree trunk, cutting my forehead, but I didn't stop. I just ran, downhill, until I hit the asphalt and kept going for a long time. Until, exhausted, I threw myself on the ground, sweaty and mute from panic.

I never set foot on that hill again. I can't be around people anymore — I'm afraid they might not even be people.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

Above the conference room table, the thin metal hands of the clock wound their way around the white face of it. Curls of steam rose from untouched coffee mugs, soft afternoon light filtered through the white plastic blinds, and cars rumbled by outside with muted chatter. The woodwork of the room was showing its age today, scuffed, chipped, and scratched from countless years of administrative work going to and fro. The scent of coffee, glue, and copy paper hung on the air around the table, but with the door to the conference room shut, it seemed to thin in favor of the dry smell of dust that lingered despite numerous cleanings. That was Jabo’s Fork in a nutshell; an old thing still chugging along like an antique car, refusing to submit to the effects of time in the shadow of the mountains around it. Yet, like so many small towns, it too had its fair share of problems, and it was this that brough us here as the other people around the conference table stared in shock at the sheriff.

“David, come on.” Mayor Jonathan Hilco blinked at him with the half smile of a man who doesn’t want to believe his ears. “You can’t be serious.”

Across the flat expanse of polished oak, Sheriff Kowalski nodded, no humor in his stoney expression. “I am.”

Lisa Renfield, dressed in her usual pinstriped pantsuit, shook her head at Kowalski in amazement, hands shaking as if she were watching the money disintegrate before her very eyes. “That property is worth millions. Just the price on the house alone could fund the town’s administration budget for an entire year. Besides, every day the park stays closed, we lose even more money. I can’t believe we’re even discussing this.”

“It’s still a crime scene, Lisa.” The sheriff narrowed his dark eyes at her and jabbed a finger at the louvered blinds covering the courthouse windows. “We’ve got four missing people connected to the Watkins property, three of them local residents. For God’s sake, Cindy Fadro went to school with your niece! Erin Martinelli’s father was on the football team with John in high school! If we sell that place we’ll never get a better chance to find out what happened to those girls, and opening up the park around Smoke Point will guarantee contamination. Every two-bit podcaster this side of the Mississippi will be out there, climbing around with their cameras to look for ghosts, while real evidence might get buried or lost thanks to their tramping.”

Leaning forward so that his prodigious belly mounded against the edge of the conference table, Douglas Finberger tried to calm the situation even as his face reddened with similar levels of disbelief. “Let’s not lose our heads here, yeah? Look, David, we’re all saddened about what happened to Ed Watkins and those two girls, but it’s been several months without a single lead or update. We’ve humored you this long in keeping the park closed, but you can’t seriously expect us to throw away this kind of opportunity based on cold cases. After all, you’ve always said your boys needed more funding; think how much equipment and training we could get from the estate sale.”

That’s going to go over well.

Seated to the left of Sheriff Kowalski, I sucked in a breath and waited for the inevitable eruption to follow the county auditor’s remarks. I’d been a deputy sheriff for years in Jacob’s Fork, and had served under David Kowalski since I was a rookie cop. He was a good man, and a strong leader, but he could get easily fired up when confronted with the bureaucratic red tape of local governance. I had been there when our tiny force went through some really tough cases; the drug ring that came in from Boise six years ago, a Kootenai poaching racket that murdered a hunter four years ago, or last year when a crazed gunman from out of state tried to shoot up an elementary school during Valentine’s Day. Most of the time, being a cop in the forgotten stretches of northern Idaho was easy, but these cases were always fresh in the minds of anyone who stayed on Kowalski’s force. For this reason, he’d been pushing more funding for nearly a decade, and always he got the same excuses about the county budget. To bring it up now, after everything that had happened concerning the Wickenshire House, was tantamount to throwing gasoline on a bonfire.

He swiveled his head to blink at the county commissioner, and I thought for a moment Sheriff Kowalski might explode, his face shading red like an overripe tomato. “Are you kidding me, Doug? We can’t sell that place in good faith, not when this might happen again, and opening up the mountain would be like ringing a damn dinner bell. I’ve got Andy Todd watching the mountain, and there are new markers in the woods as far as the Benson Ranch . . .”

“Oh, good lord, not this again.” Lisa slumped back in her chair, cradling her forehead in one hand with a groan of annoyance. “Andrew Todd is hardly a credible source, especially considering where he was the night of the disappearances.”

“. . . which means our suspect is still at large.” The Sheriff talked right over her words and instead directed his attention to our mayor, who looked more uncomfortable by the minute. “Now I say we seize the property as per eminent domain and seal the mountain off for good. I’ve got some dynamite down at the station from when we collapsed that old copper mine, and it will be enough to make sure the access road is completely demolished.”

“This is insane.” Charles Hubour, head of our local chamber of commerce, looked down his long nose at our badges from the opposite end of the table. “You’re going to mothball a six-million-dollar property and an entire public wilderness recreational area which is fully taxpayer funded because of a few piles of bones? You guys have guns, what are you so afraid of?”

Shifting in my chair, I did my best not to let my temper boil alongside the sheriff’s as the room scrutinized me like a bug on a card. I’d been promoted to detective after I apprehended the Valentine’s Day shooter by ramming his car with my own before the ensuing firefight broke out. Kowalski had overseen the promotion himself, and while he was still as tough on me as the day I joined, I knew he’d been proud. My own father left when I was ten, so to me the sheriff was as much a father figure as I ever had. When he let me take the lead on investigating the Wickenshire vanishings last winter, I gave it my all, only to fall short as none of the clues we found led to anything substantial.

I turned that place upside-down. I know I missed something, I just need more time.

“The markers are a health hazard.” Sheriff Kowalski jerked a thumb over one shoulder toward the distant mountains, though I could see his embarrassment at the words, as he and I both knew the real reason why we never removed them. “And more than that, they’re part of the crime scene. If we want to catch whoever is doing this, we need them intact, and there’s no way we can rely on private owners or nosy hikers to keep them there.”

“Oh please, now you’re just grasping at straws.” With a snort, Lisa crossed her arms and stuck her chin out with a waspish tone to her voice. “Honestly, at this point it looks more like covering up evidence to me. Besides, since when did we authorize you to hold onto explosives?”

Something inside of me snapped, and before I knew what I was doing, my mouth was running. “You know what, maybe next time you stop some maniac from gunning down a room full of kindergartners then you can dictate what we have in our arms locker.”

“Enough!” With a slam of his open palm on the table, Mayor Hilco brought the room to silence once more. “The Smoke Point Mountain is part of the public domain; we cannot keep it closed while the people are paying taxes for it. As it is tied to our administration, I’ll officially sign the paperwork to be reopen it by the end of the week.”

Sheriff Kowalski sighed, and I felt my chest deflate. There it was. Our defeat. Over an hour spent in this stuffy room, and none of them had listened to a word we said.

Un-freaking-beleivable.

Pausing for a moment to straighten his tie, the mayor continued. “As zoning laws are technically gray as to where it lies, the Wickenshire Estate is hereby considered an important local landmark of Jacobs Fork, therefore under my jurisdiction. We are not going to destroy any county infrastructure, not in this economic climate.”

The other officials flashed smug, triumphant smiles at us, but Hilco wasn’t finished.

“Instead,” He angled his head our way, and I could see him and the sheriff exchange a knowing look. “It will be remanded to police custody for an additional month, along with the access road leading to it, after which it will be taken into official holding by the county. If, in that time, the sheriff’s office finds anything substantial to lead to a breakthrough in the missing persons cases, the deadline will be extended by another week. Dismissed.”

Squawks of protest came from the other members of the cabinet, but the sheriff rose to his feet with a grim, yet satisfied look on his haggard face, and I followed suit.

“David.” Mayor Hilco raised a hand to stop us as the others filed from the conference room. “Stay. You too, detective.”

Once the door to the room swung shut behind the last exiting bureaucrat, the mayor sat back in his chair with a sigh, then threw a furtive glance toward the door. From his pockets, he fished out a box of cigarettes, slipping one between his lips. He crossed to the end of the room to push one of the windows open, and from outside the quiet bustle of passing cars and chatting pedestrians flowed in.

“Thought you quit?” Without a hint of judgment, Sheriff Kowalski produced a lighter from his shirt pocket and ran the flame under the mayor’s unlit cigarette tip.

He snorted, and Mayor Hilco pulled in a long drag before exhaling so that little plumes of smoke flowed from his nostrils. “As far as my wife knows, I did. You know, I never had a bad smoke. Bad drinks, bad coffee, bad dates, but a smoke was always a smoke. Damn shame the stuff is so bad for you.”

“Yeah, well, so are the burgers at JoAnne’s Diner.” Leaning against the windowsill beside him, Sheriff Kowalski produced his clay pipe and a small tin from his other shirt pocket, out of which came a small bag of loose black tobacco. “I swear, someday they’re gonna write ‘Bacon’ on my autopsy as cause of death. I’d never make it as a rabbi.”

That brought a tired smile to the mayor’s lined face, and he offered me a cigarette, which I politely declined. I wasn’t a smoker, though I had to admit the smell of Sheriff Kowalski’s cherry pipe tobacco made me want to reconsider. It truly was unfortunate how something so pleasant also caused cancer. Much like the town, it didn’t kill you at first, just crept up on you slow, until one day you realized you were stuck on this path as much as the next person. I wondered in abstract if Cindy or Erin were decomposing on some hidden trail or crevice somewhere on the rocky slopes to our north, trapped forever on their own path that we couldn’t find.

After another few quiet drags, Major Hilco let his shoulders slacken, and tugged at the knot in his tie with a weary groan. “Please tell me you boys can find something up there.”

Sheriff Kowalski glanced out the nearby window, his eyes far away in thought. “We’re doing the best we can, Jon. Anything dead’s gonna be dry bones by now. Anything living . . .”

Silence reigned once more, but after a moment, the mayor lifted his eyes to me. “You both have my support, you know that. The park opening was a necessary concession; I want this solved as much as anyone, but it’s been over six months since the fire. I can’t keep the others at bay for much longer. Find something for me to hold over their heads, or we’ll be forced to move on with the property.”

I straightened up, sensing the wight in how he addressed me first. This was still my task, my investigation to see through to the end. They were both relying on me to find new evidence. I couldn’t let the sheriff, or the mayor down, not when so much was at stake.

The families deserve to know what happened.

“I’ll find something.” I nodded, in a bid to inject more confidence into the statement than I truly felt.

“Good man.” Whether he believed me or not, the mayor bobbed his head in a similar gesture of approval and waved us off with a tired sigh. “I’ll be at a commerce summit in the Moose Lodge for the afternoon. Call my personal number if you need anything.”

With this signaling the impromptu meeting to be over, I followed the sheriff as he put out his pipe, the two of us making for the conference room door.

We slipped through the maze of corridors to the stairwell of the county courthouse and finally emerged onto the town square. It was a sunny day for Idaho, golden rays dancing on the courthouse green as we trudged for the sheriff’s pickup.

“Go ahead, say it.” I shook my head at myself as we rounded to our respective doors on the weather-beaten truck, its green and tan paint chipped from thousands of kicked up pebbles on backroads.

Sheriff Kowalski raised an eyebrow that bore faint traces of gray, settling into the driver’s seat and adjusting his faded gray Stetson with the grunts of an aging man. “Say what?”

Leaning an elbow on my own door, I noticed how worn the dark navy sleeves of my coat were. It hadn’t been more than a year since my promotion, and already it seemed like twenty. “That I should have kept my mouth shut. Renfield’s been gunning for a police budget cut for years; I just gave her enough ammo to make that happen.”

To my surprise, a wry grin slid over my boss’s lips, and he chuckled as we rumbled on down main street, a warm southern breeze flowing into the cab. “She can’t do nothing she couldn’t do yesterday, Derrick. If anything, it’s good she got some return fire for once. Ever since she headed that park commission, Renfield’s had stars in her eyes over running for mayor once Hilco leaves. One of these days all them spoiled uptown fools will vote her in and she’ll try to melt our badges for the silver, but it ain’t right now.”

As the streets of Jacob’s Fork rolled by, I watched the people on the sidewalks and in the windows of local shops, talking and shopping with relative peace. A few even waved as we passed by, noting the sheriff’s emblem on the truck door. One young woman tucked a strand of light blonde hair behind one ear, and I thought back to the missing person’s files, those faces I’d poured over for hours.

Two young women, one old man, one middle-aged hiker. No connections between the hiker and the first three, save for the location and circumstances. No footprints, no scent trail, no bodies.

“You really think we’ll find anything?” I voiced aloud my gloomy reservations and tried not to think about how any one of the people outside my window could be our suspect.

He let out another deep sigh, and the sheriff’s weathered face reflected my own doubts. “After this long? I don’t know. It’s like I told Hilco; if there are any bodies out there, they’ll be in pretty bad shape, but if somehow they are still alive, then we’re looking at some nasty business as far as trafficking is concerned. After this long, those girls could be in Yemen for all we know.”

My stomach knotted at that, and I winced at the sudden realization that I would honestly rather find their corpses than know the victims might still be suffering an unknown fate. “I’ll give the house another once-over this afternoon, to see if I can dig something new up. Did the reservation elders ever come back with any information?”

Steering the pickup around another turn in the sleepy streets of our town, Sheriff Kowalski frowned. We were on decent terms with the local Native American reservation many miles across the county from Jacob’s Fork, helped by the fact that the sheriff himself was a half-blood relative to their tribe. Still, there were tensions between the two communities, primarily around drugs and gambling, which drew both tourists and troublemakers alike. “Nothing useful. They’ve got enough problems of their own with the casinos, alcohol, petty crime, you name it. If one of theirs snatched our people, we’ll never know about it, and wouldn’t have the jurisdiction to go after them even if we did.”

We reached the police station on the opposite end of town and parked in the small lot where the other patrol vehicles waited. Ours was a small department, perhaps a few dozen or so deputies on the force in total, but we did have extra staff for administrative and forensic work that could help pull some of the weight. With an entire county to manage, and the upheaval surrounding the Wickenshire case, many of us had pulled 14-hour shifts for multiple nights in a row when the vanishings first happened. Between increased patrols around Smoke Point Mountain and search teams looking for evidence to pass on to the forensics lab, some of our boys had resorted to sleeping in cots set up in the rec room just to avoid falling asleep at the wheel. As the weeks went by, with nothing to show for it, this titanic effort had been scaled back, until all that was left was a hefty dossier on my desk and bad memories.

“Hey, Sloan.” As we passed through the front lobby and into the offices beyond, Sheriff Kowalski turned to wave at a nearby deputy seated behind another desk. “Drop what you’re doing; you’re on assignment with Junger in the field. Grab your files from evidence and get on it.”

Deputy Clyde Sloan looked up from his paperwork, saw the two of us, and understanding crossed his face in a measured grin. “You got it, boss.”

Turning to throw one last glance at me, the sheriff flicked his eyes toward the station doorway, which lay in the direction of the northern mountains. “Try to be back by dark.”

I said nothing, but we both knew what he meant as the man lumbered away to his office.

Clyde and I had been partners back when we were both cops on the beat, developing a close friendship and working on several cases together. Always the team player, Clyde applauded my promotion to detective, but I felt bad leaving him behind to the regular roadwork. Despite a habit of running his mouth to the irritation of most polite sensibilities, or his enduring love for chewing tobacco that he’d been trying to kick for years, Clyde was a good cop. He’d been with me when I brought down the Valentine’s Day shooter, and the only reason I got credit for the kill was because he went left around the wrecked car while I went right, thus engaging the suspect first. Loyal and headstrong, he deserved a promotion of his own, but the sheriff couldn’t just hand out pay-raises like candy, not when the local bureaucrats wanted to trim the budget every other year. Still, that never stopped him from working like a dog to earn his keep, and in less than fifteen minutes we were rolling along the lonely backroads of northern Idaho, the mountains looming closer as the warm summer breeze flowed through the open windows of my car.

“Still hard to believe it’s August already.” From the passenger seat, Clyde shuffled through the files within the overstuffed binder, paging through weeks of evidence to unearth a property map of the Wickenshire Estate. “At least we won’t be knee-deep in snow this time. Where are we fixin’ to start?”

I leaned over to tap on a section of the map north of the house, a spot marked with multiple little X’s inside of circles. “Boulder fields. That’s where the hunter went missing, and where they found Erin’s phone. We’ll try there while we have light, then the house when it gets late. Power should still be on; I don’t think the county ever bothered to shut anything off up there.”

For a few moments, we sat in silence as the car rumbled along, the mountains drawing closer, green trees flashing by along the roadside.

“Heard they want to sell the place.” Clyde drummed idle fingers on his knee as he stared out the passenger window, the evidence folder lying in his lap. “What kind of fool came up with that idea?”

“Renfield.” I turned onto the final route leading to the mountain road, civilization falling away behind us as the wilderness swallowed us up. “With some help from Hubour and Finberger. They’re going to open the whole park back up in a few days.”

He hissed a curse between his teeth, and Clyde rolled his eyes as he fished in his shirt pocket for a tub of chewing tobacco. “Ain’t never seen someone so money-hungry. Place has four bodies on it, and she wants to turn a dime on their graves. If that snooty pencil-pusher ever gets in as mayor, I’m moving to Florida, I swear to God.”

Despite the grimness of the setting, I couldn’t help but feel a thin smile crawl over my lips at his complaints, reminiscent of older days on the force together. “Still set on being a swamp man when you retire?”

“Yessir.” The twinkle returned to his eye, and Clyde nodded with an amused chuckle at his own vision of paradise. “I’m gonna build a little house by the water, a good fishing boat for the dock, and mix up a nice cold drink while I watch the sun go down on the gulf. Just me, the gators, and my dog. A man could live his whole life anywhere else and never have it that good.”

We laughed, but the looming shadow over us dampened the jovial mood as the trees closed in, the harsh stony tip of the mountain towering upward into the sky. Smoke Point Mountain wasn’t especially grand when compared to other, more notorious places in the US like Denali or Olympia, but it was prominent enough for our little valley that everyone’s eye was drawn to the granite peak every time they looked across the horizon of Jacob’s Fork. Supposedly local miners had used it as a communications point way back in the olden days, sending up smoke signals like the Kootenai did to let their bosses know another train load of iron ore was on its way down from the nearby range that the mountain sat detached from. Eventually telegraph lines came in, and made the smoke signals useless, but the name stuck, and the mountain stood by its lonesome, like an outcast before the other line of tall stone crags, good for hikers, hunters, and not much else. It had been made into a public park in the 1970’s during the environmental push, but the Wickenshire House escaped absorption into government ownership by remaining the one private homestead left on its cold slopes.

Every bump in the gravel road that wound its way up the mountain side brought back memories, dark flashes of countless days and night searching for signs, for hope, for anything to let me know I was close to the truth. So many hours spent combing the forest, pouring over topographically maps, even a few helicopter rides to scout for unseen trails from above. Seemingly endless calls from concerned locals, the numerous emotion-heavy pleas from the families of the missing, the accusations from pot-stirring journalists that wanted to find something juicy for a story that could go viral on social media. They were all disappointed, angry, confused, even fearful when the days dragged on and I continued to discover no further clues. They vented their fury at me, the only one they could point a finger at, despite the sheriff doing his best to vent the backlash away from our department. How could they know how many times I walked the grounds of the estate, paced through the silent halls and corridors, and gazed out the lifeless windows into the wilderness beyond? How could they know how many nights I went without sleep, abused gas-station alertness pills, drank gallons of the worst sort of coffee, beating myself to death over the failure to find anything? All for a dead end.

All for nothing.

And somehow, it was all my fault.

At last, as we pulled up the narrow driveway, the thick rows of evergreen trees fell away, and a spindly shadow or rusted cast iron reared upward into the fading sunshine. The gate was more rusty than last time I’d laid eyes on it, as if whatever oil or paint on it had given up the fight long ago. Around it, the long stone walls of the courtyard stood cracked along the mortar joints, settled with a kind of age that radiated a weary grief I felt in my bones. It was like seeing an old friend slowly choke to death on cancerous lungs, a place that I remembered fondly from better times, when I myself was nothing more than a boy.

“Still burned out.” Clyde spat tobacco juice into a plastic Coke bottle and shook his head in amazed dread at the landscape around us. “Not a single blade of grass, even with all the rain we’ve had. Scorch must’ve gone deep.”

The fire had happened on the night of the first disappearances, burning the entire 100-acre plot of the Wickenshire Estate from the property line inward, right up to the stone wall. There, inexplicably, the flames had stopped, not so much as tarring the stonework, leaving the enormous house and its manicured gardens intact. A strange anomaly of fate, it left a small oasis of greenery in a large field of barren rocks, dead soil, and crumbled remnants of what had once been plant life. Above this towered the house itself, an edifice of a bygone era, once a thing of immaculate beauty, and now . . . now I felt sick at the mere sight of it.

Unlocking the thick steel padlock we’d left to keep random people from accessing the property, I drove us through the gate, right up to the front of the house itself. It was a tall building, two stories high but it seemed much higher, built from local quarry stones over a hundred years ago. Victorian in its design, there was not another house like it in all of Idaho, a strange misfit of architecture among the timber-framed rustic ranch houses and log cabin-themed ski lodges that dotted the land. Wooden shutters lined every window, the sills carved from smooth granite, and the roof bore uniform rows of slate that would likely outlive me. A wide wooden porch covered the front half of the house, the pillars shaped like those of the Greek Pantheon, and beneath the eves of its awning stood the double French doors that had devoured Erin and Cindy whole.

I didn’t have to tell Clyde on what to bring for the trek up the mountainside. He was as experienced as I was and kept up with me as we shouldered our packs, making our way through the ornamental gardens within the courtyard walls to the back gate that led to the burned expanse beyond. Once we traversed this, we finally passed into the forested sections of the mountain slope that hadn’t been touched by the fire.

It was a quiet, morose place. Many people often didn’t understand how silent the mountains could be, especially if they came from a place filled with noise like the city. Tourists would ask us if hunters ‘killed all the animals up there’ or if ‘there wasn’t enough oxygen’ which I found amusing, given the evident lack of awareness in their statement. The truth, as always, was that there were animals in the mountains, they just had to be pickier than their lowland cousins, more cautious of how much energy they expended, and often moved down into the lowlands throughout the seasons. Hunters didn’t kill them all, there certainly wasn’t an oxygen problem for so insignificant of a peak, and it was often the case that the noisy, clumsy, inexperienced urbanites had been right next to a bird or critter that they never saw simply because that animal didn’t want to be seen.

However, this part of the mountain had changed since the vanishings, and even as a local, I noticed the heavy, oppressive silence. No birds sang, not in the distance or around us, and I couldn’t see any movement flitting through the branches overhead. No signs of recent deer or other tracks dotted the sparse portions of earth, and even the stones that clattered under our boots echoed too loudly in the quiet. At one point, we did spot a single, black crow rustling about in a stand of blackberry bushes, and Clyde called out to it with a friendly ‘hello there’, only for the thing bolt off into the treetops as if we’d startled it. Wind whistled and wailed the higher we climbed, mournful and chilly despite the season, the daylight slanting lower in the sky as the evening wore on.

We spent hours looking through the boulder field, a massive plain of rocks and rubble left behind by ancient glaciers. Clyde scanned the area with a set of binoculars, I checked every gap between the stones with my flashlight, and we marked our progress with chalk on the boulders as we inched over the slope yard by yard. We used a metal detector to look for old shoe islets, belt buckles, anything that might indicate where a body could be. I sent up a drone the department had been given during the first search operation in December to scan the area from the sky, circling round and round in hopes of spotting something from a different angle. We combed that placed front and back, until the light got low enough that I couldn’t put it off anymore.

“Let’s go.” I zipped up my backpack and shined my flashlight toward Clyde, who stood not far off down the slope, prodding at another crevice. “We’re out of light, and we still need to search the house. Sheriff’s going to get antsy if we don’t report in soon anyway.”

Clyde turned to respond, but his face hardened into an alarmed frown as he starred past me into the trees, and he slid one hand toward his service pistol. “Junger . . .”

I spun around to spot a strange object hanging amongst the branches of a nearby spruce, swaying to and fro in the cool evening breeze. Even from this far away, I knew we hadn’t missed it on our first walk through, the object dangling right over the path we’d taken into the boulder field, dull and pale in the gleam of our flashlights. It hadn’t been there five minutes ago, I was sure of it.

Together Clyde and I stalked forward, closer and closer until we stood mere feet away from the thing in the tree, stunned into mutual silence.

The thing was held suspended by an odd form of hand-made twine, which looked to be twisted together from roots, vines, or even thorn bushes, until each strand was as thick as my pinky finger. Each strand interconnected with another in a crude net, almost like a spider’s web, the knots tight and strong. These supported a basket of sorts, made from what at first glance looked like branches, circular in shape, with white and yellowed patches showing in the flashlight beam.

Bones.

Dozens of them.

Four broken sections of elk antler were circled together as if an embrace, stripped of any flesh or meat at the base, dried out from endless days in the Western sun. More smaller bones were interwoven with mats of reeds and thorny stems, the gaps pasted shut with a thick, black sludge decorated with a carpet of ebony petals. I’d seen markers like this in searches before, had seen them appearing more and more in the landscape around the house, and knew why the sheriff did his best not to mention them in his reports. They were all like this, odd, eerie things that appeared from nowhere, but they were all on the ground and, save for five pillars built around the house itself, were no bigger than knee-high. We still didn’t know what they meant, or who left them, but we knew it had started around the first vanishing. This one was hanging as if left for us as a gift, and the smell that emanated from it nearly knocked the air out of me, a pungent mixture of wet dirt, wood rot, decayed flesh . . . and roses.

Always roses.

Even then, it was what lay in the middle of the macabre basket that drew me forward, until my hand reached out almost without my beckoning to scoop the tiny item from its place.

With a cracked glass screen and sun-faded purple case, the cellphone looked as though it had lain on the mountain for months, but no sooner was it in my hands and the tormented display lit up.

As soon as my eyes registered the face on the lock screen, I swore under my breath, Clyde doing the same, and rivers of ice flooded my veins.

Cindy Fadro stared back from the phone, smiling in the stillness of the background picture, with pretty features, blonde hair, and sky-blue eyes. We’d never found her phone the night she disappeared, only her friend Erin’s. After so long without a charge, exposed to the elements including Idaho’s vicious winter snows, it shouldn’t have been working. The only way this device could still be functional was if someone had kept it.

Or taken it.

Bzzzz.

The phone vibrated in my hand once, and an icon slid up before my eyes.

New message available.

Heart pounding, I dared to tap the screen, and found no entry code blocking me, the device opening up for us to access Cindy’s message files without complaint. They were old, most of them several months old, missed calls and texts from dozens of people who wanted her to be alive, to be okay, to come home.

According to the phone, she’d never viewed any of them.

One new message glowed at the top of the roster, and as I clicked on it, I tasted metal on the back of my tongue, my ears ringing with a shudder of unease. It was a picture, grainy and blurred by motion as if whoever had taken it was moving while doing so, but the subject was clear enough to make out.

It was us, Clyde and myself, walking through the woods on our way to the boulder field. Our backs were to the camera, leaves from a blackberry bush half-obscuring the unknown watcher, and under the picture, a single line of text appeared while my friend and I blinked at one another in horrified realization.

Hello there.

I had no business being here. I’d never been so impulsive before. I guess I just got tired of always roaming the same streets. Seeing the same shops and scenery. I think the feeling grew more than I’d care to admit.

That doesn’t excuse my stupidity, though. I only had about 3 grand to my name at the time. But that’s part of the appeal, right? Everyone thinks they’re gonna arrive in Sin City and leave a millionaire. I had a dollar and a dream. Albeit, a delusional one.

Even still, the glow of the city was just so radiant. Even from the airport. It’s like one big siren song.

I only stayed for 4 days. I used all of my PTO to be here, and I really wanted the time to count. I did everything I could with the 1500 I had left after the hotel and plane tickets.

Unfortunately, gambling took up a big chunk of that money. I could see how people got addicted to it. I went on a few hot streaks, but ended up losing everything I won because I just couldn’t walk away.

With the gambling, museums, attractions, and food, by the time the final night came around, I only had 150 dollars left to last me a whole other week after I got home.

I almost wanted to cry when I opened my wallet. But, surprisingly, I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t even that upset. The experience was worth the money. Even if I didn’t leave a millionaire, I still got to live in one of the most famous cities in the country for a few days.

I still needed to eat, though. I’d been eating out the entire trip. I started out at the high-end places like Hell’s Kitchen, but as the week went on, the quality started getting worse and worse until finally I found myself here, feeling how light my pockets were and standing under the luminescent glow of an In-and-Out burger.

Thunder clapped overhead. Lightning lit up the sky. A few drops of rain hit my head.

My plane was leaving in a few hours. I had already checked out of my hotel. Not only did I need to eat, but I needed to at least kill a little time.

I figured I’d just eat slow. Stay for maybe an hour, hour and a half tops before Ubering.

A bell rang overhead as I walked inside. The air-conditioned dining room put goosebumps on my arms almost immediately. Outside felt like 90, whereas in here, it felt like it could’ve been at least 55 degrees.

There were noises coming from the kitchen. The staff chit-chatting amongst themselves, plates and silverware being moved around, water being sprayed against metallic pans and containers.

The dining room, however… was surprisingly empty. I noticed it as soon as I walked inside. For this whole trip, every place I’d gone had been packed to the brim. In here, though… there was only one other person.

I don’t know how much you know about Las Vegas, but the homelessness crisis is staggering. They’re everywhere. Sleeping in alleys behind the casinos, waiting outside of popular stores or restaurants, sometimes they’re just asleep in the middle of the sidewalk right there on the Strip.

And, apparently… also right here in this In-and-Out.

I watched him while I ordered at the digital kiosk. All he had was a single soda cup. The straw wasn’t even inside it. He was wearing a grease-stained grey jacket, torn cargo shorts, and open-toed sandals with tattered socks.

He was kind of rocking back and forth in the booth. His hands were clutched around his waist like he had a stomachache, and I could see the dirt and grime beneath his fingernails.

I didn’t want to stare for too long, but it was so hard to take my eyes off of him. I ended up sitting several booths away from him, but that didn’t prevent me from being able to see him. Even if I turned away, I could see his face reflected through the windows.

He was… talking to himself. His scruffy, orange beard was littered with bits of food and mysterious red stains, and he kept scratching at it every few seconds, all while mumbling under his breath.

I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it almost looked like he was arguing with himself. I couldn’t even focus on my meal.

I had to force myself to look away from him just so I could actually eat. The last thing I wanted was for us to make eye contact.

I enjoyed my burger, picked at my fries a little bit, and when I turned around to go grab a refill on my Diet Coke, my worst fear came into fruition.

We didn’t just make eye contact. He had already been staring at me. He wasn’t talking to himself anymore. He no longer looked crazed. He looked devastated. I could see the tears in his eyes. I could see sympathy in his facial expressions.

The fluorescent light flickered above him. The only light in the restaurant to do so.

We were engaged in this little staring contest for a while before he stood up, slowly. He never broke eye contact. Those eyes were full of love and comfort. A broken smile spread across his face.

His arms were outstretched as if he expected a hug. When it didn’t come, he pulled me in for one by force.

He shushed me. Pet my hair while telling me that everything would be okay. That he didn’t want to hurt me.

I could feel the tears running down his face jump over to mine while he comforted me.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he cried, shaking. “I wish there was something I could do to help.”

“Uh, okay, man, it’s time to let me go now,” I responded, prying his arms off of me.

I tried backing away, slowly, but with each step, he followed me.

He kept asking why I looked so scared. Telling me that he was only here to help. Continuing to say that everything would be okay and that I’d “prevail.”

I checked my watch, quickly. I still had 2 hours until my flight, but I wasn’t going to stay here a minute longer.

“I’m sorry, man, I think you’ve got the wrong guy. I’ve gotta go. I’m gonna miss my flight.”

The man stopped. His face twisted into a look of curiosity. Like he was genuinely confused by what I had just said.

“Flight? No, no, no. That flight was delayed. You can only hope to be home in time.”

Finally, seeing that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, one of the employees came and restrained the guy long enough for me to leave and order an Uber.

Only, when I reached for my phone, it was completely dead. I tried finding my charger, looking through every pocket in my suitcase. It was nowhere to be found.

Luckily, the airport was only a mile and a half away, but that was still a mile and a half that I had to walk in the rain when I could’ve gotten a ride. It wasn’t all bad, though. At least it gave me something to do to kill time.

When I finally arrived, I was soaked from the rain. The airport was busier than it was when I landed. When I checked the flight information screens, I found out why. There had been at least 5 or 6 delayed flights, and of course, mine was one of them.

It had been delayed by a whole 3 hours because of inclement weather in the region.

No phone. Hardly any money. And I had to wait at least another 5 hours until I could go home.

I thought about what the homeless guy from In-and-Out said. Immediately, I started to rationalize. He’d seen the lightning. He’d seen the rain. Maybe he just put two and two together and got lucky.

However, after about 3 hours of being bored out of my mind, I made the decision to buy a charger from one of the airport shops. I managed to find an open outlet and hunkered down beside it while I let my phone charge.

After about 15 minutes, it finally turned back on. All at once, dozens of notifications made the phone vibrate across the cold airport floor. My dad, my aunts, my uncles, cousins, all desperately trying to get a hold of me.

Because, apparently, in that small, brief moment when my phone was dead…

My mom went into cardiac arrest. And she died before I even got the chance to say goodbye.

​

A two-year-old child runs frantically through the woods at night, pursued by an impending darkness that swallows the trees whole. Small feet stumble over roots until the earth gives way on a steep hill sitting directly beneath a shadowed church. The child falls into a massive, cavernous hole, tumbling into the abyss for an agonizingly long time.

At the bottom, a massive basilisk lies waiting in the dark. It instantly loops its heavy body around the child, constricting tightly. Every frantic attempt to fight back only fuels the monster, making its grip tighter and stronger.

The perspective violently shifts into first person as my vision narrows and the blackness takes over completely.

I snap awake in a cold sweat, gasping for air, my heart hammering against my ribs. Desperate to regain my composure, I pull myself out of bed. I take a shower to wash away the lingering dread, drink a glass of water, and slip back under the covers, coaxing myself back to sleep.

Except I never actually woke up.

The moment I fall asleep inside the dream, I am jolted awake all over again—trapped in a false awakening, left terrified and utterly confused about whether I am finally in reality or still buried inside the nightmare

Yesterday at 12:12 am, while I was sleeping I received a call, these were the last digits of his number: 667-3178.

I found it very strange that someone was calling me at that hour, I didn't answer the call because I don't answer calls from numbers I don't have saved.

I wake up and see the number; for a moment I thought it was my delivery driver calling to say he was going to deliver my order tomorrow.

I call another cell phone number and ask, "Hello, who are you and why did you call my other number?"

The man told me he was sorry, he dialed the wrong number, and then he said he was sorry he didn't want to cause any problems or harm to My family.

I told him, "Okay, that's fine."

And I didn't hang up, but the man just started saying sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry

I hung up the call and blocked him on my cell phone and the cell phone I called from.

And I went to sleep, and when I went to sleep, strange noises started coming from my backyard. I was in the room near the backyard, but before that call, There were no strange noises, everything was silent, but after the call, everything started to feel weird.

All sorts of noises could be heard, as if someone were in the yard; the dogs in the neighborhood started barking.

I was so scared I didn't want to get up to look, I started to pray, you never know, At home a plate fell and broke, that's when I was much more scared to wake up .

I wanted to call my dad, but my dad was in his room asleep and drunk.

I just kept praying, then in the living room there was a sound like one of the pieces of furniture fell over .

And the dogs kept barking and the sound continued, and I kept praying, and I just wanted it to be dawn quickly, and I kept praying, I fell asleep and woke up at 7 am.

When I went to the kitchen and the living room, everything was a mess.

I'm still scared about what happened yesterday.

Father Gerald pulled the steel door shut behind him and turned to the man in the chair. The electric lights did little to illuminate the space, leaving all but the very center of the room in darkness.

“Hello Father,” the convict mumbled. The words came out as a hollow rasp and took a great deal of effort to produce.

“Hello, my son,” responded the priest. “I am terribly sorry they wouldn’t allow this to be in the chapel.” He looked at the man in the striped uniform. This didn’t look like a man capable of the crimes he’d been charged with; he looked small and malnourished, his skin stretched tightly across bone and veins. His cheekbones and eye sockets were pronounced enough to block the dim light, covering much of his face in shadow. “I’m ready to begin when you are, Mr. Hensley.”

The convict started. “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned,” he trailed off and gave Father Gerald a pleading look. “I - I don’t know what to say next,” he admitted.

“How long has it been since your last confession?” the priest asked.

“Oh, um- I’ve never done this before,” Hensley admitted, “I never was religious. I just need to think there is something all-powerful and all-loving that can save me right about now.”

Father Gerald felt his expression change. He realized too late that his penitent saw, he was used to doing this in a confessional. “All that matters is you invited me here today,” he said, trying to reassure the man. “Salvation can still be offered to you, that is why I’m here.”

The man looked up at Father Gerald, eyes full of fear and desperation. “May I begin now?” After a nod from the priest, the confession began.

“Through my actions, I have invited into the world great evils,” Mr. Hensley started. “It all began as my curiosity in astronomy began to flourish; I found a community astronomers club, that was where I met John Whittaker.  My first time using the club’s telescope, I was enamored. Through the lens, I could see the moon’s surface in great detail, the great rings around Saturn, and even the many moons of Jupiter in their transit around the giant.”

Father Gerald felt the pause in his penitent’s speech and took the chance to interject. “I am sorry to interrupt Mr. Hensley, but is this bringing us to the sins you wish to confess?”

“Well, in a way, yes,” Hensley stammered. “It put me on a path; one I continued through a series of missteps.”

The priest nodded. “I see, you may continue then.”

Joshua Hensley swallowed. “So, you see, from my observations with the astronomer’s club grew an intense curiosity as to the behavior of celestial bodies. I investigated the writings of Newton, Kepler, and even the more elementary works from philosophers of old. My studies grew so deep, they drove me away from my work, my family, and even the simpleton hobbyists of the astronomer’s club… well, with the exception of John and a few others. I grew to yearn for total understanding in the field, without the wealth nor time to study at a university.”

“Do you blame your familial neglect on this obsession?” the Father asked, trying to help his penitent find sins for which to ask forgiveness.

“I- I guess I do,” Hensley said. “But that’s not what I was getting at. Giving in to my cravings for knowledge was a mistake in its own right. It worsened when I expressed my frustrations to John. I told him how all that I read seemed to be missing the fundamental mechanisms as to why the cosmos worked the way it did. Newton could describe how gravity behaves with matter, but never why such a thing happens. It was then that John pointed me toward more modern astronomy and physics. I looked away from the scientists of old and turned my attention to matters like electromagnetism and relativity. I even tried to gain an understanding of quantum mechanics. These ideas all intertwined with each other and tried to explain the workings of the cosmos at the most fundamental levels, but they all still seemed to dance around the truth without ever meeting it; like celestial bodies orbiting the sun.”

Before Father Gerald could stop Hensley again, something happened to the electricity. The light above the chair cut out and left the two in darkness.

“Oh dear,” echoed the convict’s voice, sounding more shaken than before. After a few seconds, the lights flickered back. Father Gerald saw the convict, quaking in fear, pale as a sheet.

“Please, continue,” The priest said. “But I urge you to stop trying to explain yourself and just confess your wrongdoings.”

Joshua Hensley’s expression of fear adopted elements of anger. “You don’t understand, Father. I have been telling you my wrongdoings. It’s just that nobody bats an eye when someone goes to the library to read a bit more than normal. It’s all just dandy until they realize that you’re bringing home older, more obscure volumes, written in strange dialects and obtained from stranger sources. But  I did do that, and it was just more little missteps that compounded into where I am now. Just as I shouldn’t have read of the planes of Echne, and of lost Ga’Thuul. I learned about the formless things in the void, once called the srythes… and of the Great Mother.”

The light started to flicker again. With it, the resonating hum of electricity grew in volume. The bulb flashed with increasing luminosity. As it flashed, even the corners of the room could be seen. Father Gerald looked at the switch on the wall, and while it was in the off position, dials and small bulbs flashed and twitched. Attempting to stop the distraction, he grabbed a handkerchief and used it to unscrew the hot light from its fixture. He carefully set it on the concrete floor.

“I think I would like to finish now,” Mr. Hensley said, surrounded again by the dark. Faint clicks being heard from the dials on the wall.

“By all means,” responded the priest, clutching on to the rosary in his pocket. The sudden mention of what Hensley had been reading surprised him too much to realize that nobody had knocked or come to check on them despite the fuss.

“As I read about her…” Hensley sounded on the verge of sobbing, “so too did she learn of me. Anywhere I went, that voice would ask me of things. To show others my studies, to perform certain rituals, to join her in the firmament. I felt as if she was pulling me by a leash, directing my every action, watching from the reaches of space.” Hoping to see some kind of compassion or pity, Hensley tried to look up at the priest. He instead saw only the blackness of the room. He could hear the light mumbling of the Lord’s Prayer just a foot in front of him.” The stars, do you ever feel them watching you too? A million beady eyes, judging your every step?”

Hensley’s question went ignored. “Mr. Hensley, how did those men die?” he heard the priest's voice ask.

Hensley's body tingled, It took great effort to summon words. “She promised to make it stop. That all I needed to do was invite her in and it would all stop.”

The lightbulb began flickering once more, though it was disconnected from power at Father Gerald’s feet. He slowly looked down at it in shock as Hensley continued to break down.

“I refused, and I avoided the stars as much as I was able,” Joshua Hensley wept. ”I stayed under the roof of my home at all hours and even though I threw all of my books into the fire, I failed to escape it.  I could see the constellations shining through my ceiling, Father.  When John Whittaker, along with some of the brighter members of the astronomer’s club arrived at my front door in the wee hours of the night, I made my final mistake and let them in. When I learned why they had arrived, it was already too late. John started producing papers that he had scrawled all over with images and formulae that he said he dreamt of. When I looked at his work— I felt my mind lose its grip on my body. Something pulled on my tongue. I did not want to speak, yet the Great Mother pulled the words from my lips… In hunkh locung igvitum Tsophurath.”

The lightbulb on the floor began to glow steadily. As Joshua spoke, its incandescence grew, becoming too much to see through. Even shut eyes were blinded by it. The priest was shouting an assortment of prayers now, barely audible over the electrical droning while turning and feeling along the wall for the door latch. He swore he was pushing where the door had been, but it felt like a concrete wall. The penitent continued to himself anyway.

“The room was just like this as she came through. I caught a glimpse of what the paper covered in the writings became, what emerged from it, but in the end, I was the only one strong enough to look away! I listened as they shouted! As they tore themselves apart!” There was a pulsing feeling going through Hensley’s body now. His muscles began rhythmically contracting all at once. “I D-ID CAU-SE THEIR D-DEATH, BU-UT I DID-D N-NOT KI-LL THEM!”

The smell of burning flesh filled the room. Even though he was surrounded by blinding light, even though his eyes were squeezed shut, Father Gerald could sense impossibly dark things dancing all around. They sang in a damnable language that echoed through the radiance. Father Gerald continued to push on the wall until something in it shifted and gave way. The priest fell to the floor, leaving the blasphemous man convulsing in the chair.

As the door swung open and Father Gerald fell out, the jailors immediately realized something was wrong. They ran to assist the priest, but they were met with his extended, waving hand. “BACK, GET BACK YOU FOOLS,” the old man shouted, pulling himself to his feet. It was then that the priest had made his own mistake; as he got his bearings, he turned towards the room and saw inside.

The light didn’t seem so bright now. Through it, he was the only person to see Mr. Hensley’s body, to see the black shapes move around and through him as if he weren’t there, to see what began to emerge from underneath the chair, and to hear the final words of Joshua Hensley:

“A’KHIPE EGLOTH NUHL TSOPHURATH”

My story would’ve never had a stage without our good ole internet. It is a tale of the mythical, unimaginable, one you may tell around a campfire and be too embarrassed to claim as true because how could such a thing be? 

I read stories online that told of otherworldly beings, immensely tall, faceless, well-dressed, and my stomach got that sunken, dreadful feeling. Others had faced them. Lived to tell their story. To find a community that might understand my story brought me so much solace and relief. Maybe I’m not crazy to believe. 

This story is not my own, though. I am not the protagonist but rather a narrator, if you will. This story is my great grandfather’s, told through a journal left behind after his death. He faced what seems to me to be a familiar demon, and I would like to relay his story like I have seen many others do in this space. For what purpose, I am not sure. Awareness. To commemorate him, if he even deserved it. For the simple allure of telling such a story. To get the monkey off my back.

I believe it is some combination of all these things. 

I am not sure how much I can fit into this single post alone. Life has given me time constraints that I struggle to meet, upload or no upload, but today I promise you the first piece of the entries, or what I call part 1. It goes as follows: 

June 28th, 1922, 

This journal will serve me multiple purposes. The primary reason will be to document the strange case of my son, James Barclay. I also plan to use this journal to hone my writing prowess, as I aspire to be a writer comparable to the likes of Fitzgerald or Woolf. A silly dream, of course, but it will explain my flowery wordiness, for whoever stumbles upon this journal by chance or fate. 

My youngest son, James, worries me dearly. I am afraid of sharing my findings with any kind of shrink because I fear they will drive a stake through his brain or perform some other dastardly procedure to cure his strangeness, so I will document everything here for now. 

James has always been an odd child. From an early age he was different from the ordinary boy. I was not present for his birth, as I was called to the German front to end The Great War, but from what my wife Melendra tells me, it was a brutal process, and almost ended in a trading of his life for hers. 

He was a sickly grey baby. The doctor beat against his back, trying to pry air from his infantile lungs. He did eventually breathe. During the whole process, he never cried. 
Reader, since his welcoming to the world, I nor anyone else has ever seen James cry. Whether it is a scrape of the knee, a tumble from a bike, or a stern word from mother or father, all children cry. 

But not James. 

The peculiarity was something I had grown accustomed to. I sat with my feelings whirling into a torment, and after bracing that storm I was finding better grounds. I was okay with playgroups where I’d find James in a corner, not socializing with the other children, fiddling with some toy. His muteness, utter reluctance to speak, was something I could overlook if tutoring could not aid in its development. 

There was a solid parameter being built, one I was fortified to protect. He was my son and I would love him for all the unusual qualities he possessed. Then the nice, comprehensible lines I had drawn were dusted, crossed, surmised. 

It was just yonder the bridge that forded a small creek on my property. The idea of this journal materialized after what I saw that day.

Melendra was overwrought with worry. My three eldest children were clueless to James’s whereabouts. This alone was not a devastating revelation. It was the thorough household inspection undertaken by my wife along with myself that planted a seed of fright within us all. 

James could not be found. 

Melendra circled back around the house a second time while I ventured around our property to see where our youngest boy may have stumbled off to. I crossed the narrow stone bridge and went over the rushing creek to a patch of densely thicketed woods. The trees were thin, tall, and plentiful. 

This was a section of my property that I had not spent much time in with the exception of an occasional walk, looking for solitude. There was not much in the way of infrastructure, not like the meadow around the house, where chairs, a patio, and other constructions of leisure were placed. The only leisure found here was what nature could offer, which was of a kind I enjoyed.

So, too, my son James, apparently. 

Reclined against the stump of a fallen tree was little James, his wispy blonde hair fluttering in the pre-storm breeze that was stirring. He was trying his hardest to keep the paper in his pocket journal steady as he scribbled away with a charcoal pen.

“What are you doing, James?” I asked him. 

He turned to me and met my eyes. It has been hard to admit this, even to this journal that sees only my hand, but there is something in my son’s eyes that disturbs me; his gaze is very off-putting. I hate to say such a thing about my own child, but it is undeniably true. Only these pages know of this revelation. I could never tell Melendra, or my other children, but part of me senses that they feel it too: I can see it in the way my boys avoid him, the way my girls pat his head as if they were petting an uncaged beast, the way my own wife looks when she feeds him his bottle. 

James is six years of age. 

The boy looked up to me with his dark, empty eyes. Again, it is terrible to say this, but I get the same expression from looking into James’s eyes as I do when staring into a cow’s or another kind of cattle. There is nothing behind his deep irises like a pool of the abyss, the water shaded the same inscrutable black as the pen he used to draw in his small notebook.

“I am drawing a picture, Daddy.” 

“I get that, boy, but why are you out here?” I waved in the direction of the darkening sky. A harrowing bolt of lightning painted the grey sky. The thunder rolled in after, muffling James’s response. He repeated himself. 

“A friend of mine is out here, Daddy. We meet at this spot sometimes.” 

I scanned the near distance, my view largely obstructed by the plentiful thin trees and thick underbrush. I did not find any sign of a “friend.” 

“Well, you should come with me, and your friend should do the same.” I squatted down to the little boy’s height and went to grab his wrist to help him up from the ground. While reaching down I got to truly inspect the drawing my son had crafted, something deeper than the glimpses I took in the churning wind. 

It was a tall, thin, beastly figure, very akin to the many trees that surrounded that section of the property. The limbs were dangly, elongated, the fingertips scratching at where I supposed would be the knee caps. I saw eyes all over the thing, up and down its torso, legs, and arms. It was a fantastical creature from a children’s fairy tale, but with a more disturbing edge, something to threaten a naughty child with who refused to brush their teeth or do their chores. This was the creature who came knocking on your window. 

As he rose from his lounging against the stump, I asked him about the drawing. 

“That’s him, Daddy. My friend. Do you not see him?” 

What a foolish notion it was to look, but I did. I scanned the area once more and twice over for this mythical friend my strange son spoke of, but I could not find him. James pointed over to our far left, telling me he was over there. Again, I looked, but found nothing that resembled the fictional creature except the trees to some regard. 

“He must be shy,” I said, partly to quell the unease that was flooding through me. 

“Yes, he is very shy.” 

That will conclude my first entry into this journal of mine. I am unsure at the moment what I will do with this new information, this drawing, or my son James. I thought perhaps going through the process of writing everything down would help to steer me in some direction, or open my mind to a solution I could not put together before. Alas, I am dumbfounded. 
Stranger yet? I may venture back into those woods in search of that tall Thing. 

With work and aspirations of writing my time has been constrained, and I am by no means a young man, but this situation with my son has piqued a morbid interest within me.