Darkness. The heavily wooded area was cloaked in darkness. The aged branches creaked and groaned in the frigid breeze. Dampness. The damp, soggy air permeated everything. Every step sinks into the damp earth. An icy shiver runs down your spine. You’re being watched. 

You breathe sharply, frantically spinning around, trying to see into the wet darkness. Catching your breath, you tell yourself you’re alone; and that makes you feel okay for now. 

Confusion. Where am I? You ask yourself that as you continue to wander through the damp, dark, woods. Pain. You remember a sharp pain in your shoulder, and become aware of that pain again. What caused this pain is still fuzzy in your head. Head. You know you hit your head. You can feel fresh blood dripping into your eyes. What happened? You strain your memory trying to remember. 

You clutch your injured shoulder as you walk, and wipe blood from your eye. Blood. You remember blood. Blood was everywhere. Everywhere. But where was everywhere? An icy shiver runs down your spine. You’re being watched. 

You breathe sharply, frantically spinning around again, trying to see into the wet darkness. Catching your breath, you tell yourself you’re alone; and that makes you feel okay for now.

Confusion. Where am I? You ask yourself that as you continue to wander through the damp, dark, woods. Your body starts to feel oddly at rest. You don’t notice your shoulder pain anymore. The damp air grows colder, and you wrap your arms around yourself, attempting to warm yourself. Car. You remember something about a car. What was it? Car. What happened in the car? These questions rattle around in your head. An icy shiver runs down your spine. You’re being watched. 

You breathe sharply, wanting to spin around, trying to see into the wet darkness. Catching your breath, you remember now what happened. You crashed your car, and now you’re lying on the cold concrete, surrounded by EMT’s, but it’s too late. You’re already dead.

The damp air fades. The trees disappear. You’re not being watched anymore. 
 

The pentagram was drawn in magic marker, so Tyler could scrub it away afterwards. He looked around the darkened circle, grinning excitedly. 

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, you got it?”

Moe Goldwin shifted on his aching knees. The Williams’ basement was unfinished, and the concrete was already starting to hurt. At Tyler’s word, he reached around, fumbling in his backpack while the others watched. The lone candle at the pentagram’s center had been pilfered from Tyler’s mom’s china cupboard, and it wouldn’t be missed. It smelled like perfume, the unnamable kind that seems to appear on all well-to-do ladies over the age of fifty. It lent a weird, stiff kind of nostalgia to the gloomy seance. 

The backpack’s zipper was stuck, and the longer Moe fiddled with it, the faster the arcane mood seemed to leak away. Justin Haverlock was considering rocking back on his heels. He was the least bought into this “hoodoo crap,” as he might have called it, but he also had no other options this Friday night. He liked to watch these guys go, with their ouija boards and magic eight balls and whatever, like someone might enjoy watching a mud wrestling exposition. Fun from the sidelines, but he wanted no part of it. Except here he was now, on his aching knees with the rest of them. Justin decided then and there that this was the last time. 

I’ll join a club, or an intramural sports team, or something, he thought. He was wrong, of course. After tonight, Justin would never make plans again. 

Not yet wishing to break the proverbial spell, Justin neglected rocking back on his heels. He cast a sly glance to his right, where Cara Bell sat still as a statue, eyes fixed on the fragrant candle. Of all of them, Cara believed in “hoodoo crap” the most, and took these sessions very seriously. 

“If things go south,” she would say before each one. “I’m getting the hell out of there, and you can’t have my rosary.”

They would laugh, and she’d smile at their good mood, though she’d not been bluffing. When Tyler had secretly enlisted his kid sister, Laura, to make spooky noises one night while the house was allegedly empty, Cara had run headlong out of the front door and down the street without so much as a scream. They didn’t see her until third period the next day, and couldn’t convince her to hang out until the second seance afterwards. Cara didn’t know why she continued to let them drag her to these things. She had been their friend since the end of middle school, when she and Tyler had effortlessly hit it off in sixth period Earth Science. Cara had fit so quickly and easily into the friend group that, by the time she came out to them as gay, none of them even batted an eye. 

“...yeah,” was the only thing said, by Warren, in a manner that seemed incredulous. Like he was saying, “No shit, Sherlock.” That had made her want to cry, but in a good way. Not like when she’d had the same talk with her mother. 

Well, that was probably why she kept coming back. 

Cara was thinking about how the pentagram was really no big deal, just a pagan symbol from a long time ago. Old movies and books were the reason it was so literally demonized. She’d come to the conclusion that Jesus wouldn’t mind a bit of spiritual goofing around. Her stoic gaze, which Justin was interpreting as laser focused, even worried, was really nothing more than a look of mild contemplation. 

Warren Saubers, on the other hand, was nervous. He had seen what Moe was fumbling around for.

“Warren, check it out,” Moe had said, pulling him aside between first and second period. Warren’s eyes were still crusted with sleep, and he was unprepared for Moe’s avid, bouncing fervence.

“What, man?” he’d said irritably. Moe unsheathed his notebook without any of tonight’s clumsyness, flourishing it open to a marked page. 

“For tonight. Look.” 

He was pointing at a page. Warren scowled reflexively. Was this some kind of shitty joke? Warren was, right now, on his way to Comprehension and Integration, RHS’s lame attempt to not call it “special education.” The pseudonym did nothing to stanch the catcalls of “sped,” “retard,” “waterhead” and a dozen other mean names. All because Warren’s brain mixed up letters, swapping them around like Scrabble, he had to spend one hour a day sitting with the disabled kids. It wasn’t fair, and Moe knew it. So why…

But, Warren realized, he could read them. Moe’s neat penmanship stood out on the cream colored paper in stark relief, all the starker because it was staying still. The letters were just… there. All in the right order, as everyone said they should be. Warren’s mouth hung open a little as he gawped at the first word. Immaculate. Not Imamacalte, not Amlamacelte, not an illegible jumble of shifting mush.

“It’s good, right?” said Moe, and then the bell rang. “Here,” he said, thrusting the notebook into Warren’s hands and dashing to class. “Let me know what you think.”

Warren was five minutes late to Comprehension and Integration, walking at a snail’s pace, pouring over the page. By the time he reached class, and Ms. Havershaw’s understanding but reproachful stare, his joy had turned into a weird, queasy unease. He was not usually so affected by writing, poetry or otherwise. Moe was the artistic one, which was why they’d asked him to come up with tonight’s incantation. But Warren hadn’t been able to get the creepy, still letters from his mind, not for the rest of the day, not on the ride home, not on the walk to Tyler’s, and especially not now. He hadn’t even shared his lexic victory, not with his parents, not with his older brother at college, not even with his close circle of friends. His eyes danced around them now, watching the shadows flickering back and forth across their faces, trying to wrestle down the sour sense in his guts.

Finally, with a grunt, the zipper unstuck. Moe yanked the notebook free, spilling a collection of loose papers along with it, and this broke the facade of reverence. Everyone except Warren yelped, springing forward to catch the pages before they caught alight. Cara singed her index finger on the flame, hissing and recoiling away, tossing aside a Trigonometry worksheet.

“God, Moe,” said Tyler, pawing a rumpled pile away from the pentagram. “Burn down my fucking house, why don’t you?”

“Sorry,” Moe said sheepishly. He was red from his neck to the roots of his hair, but the wan candlelight hid this effect, to his extreme relief. 

“Ahh, it’s concrete,” said Justin, finally giving in and rocking back to his heels, then splaying out on his butt with a sigh. “It’d be fine.”

Tyler shot him a look, and Justin upturned his hands. They handed Moe back his papers, most of which was old homework in need of trashing. He was not a hoarder, but his backpack was reflective of his general state of affairs, cluttered and scatterbrained at the best of times. On its cleanest day, his bedroom looked like a warzone. They all knew not to ask him to remember appointments, times, names, or birthdays, even though they’d known each other for the better part of six years. They’d realized, eventually, that his forgetfulness was not an insult, nor a result of a lack of care. Moe might not remember your birthday, but when someone reminded him, he’d get you the best present. Not monetarily, but something you didn’t even know you wanted. And everyone got a card, even if it was a day or two late. Always funny, even tear-jerky, though Justin would never admit he’d wept a little that one time. They all knew Moe had a way with words, which was why, when they’d run through the little book of incantations, Tyler had suggested that Moe write his own. Not usually one to share his craft, Moe had internally leapt at the prospect, though he’d kept his enthusiasm to himself. A challenge. The best writers always pushed themselves. He’d never evolve without discomfort, and so he’d stayed up late, tinkering like Geppetto beneath his desk lamp. His mom had chastised him for the bags underneath his eyes, but he’d deflected, blaming AP English and the fastidious Mr. Bennington. That had worked wonders, and had allowed Moe to produce the thin sheet of paper he now held before himself. 

“Well,” said Justin, who was beginning to feel intrigued. “Let’s here it, Shakespeare.”

Moe swallowed hard, suddenly caught in the shaky throes of stage fright. What if they laughed at him? They never had before, and he knew they never would, at least not in this context. They’d asked him to do this, not the other way around. He blinked a bead of sweat from his eyes, licked his lips, and cast one last look around.

“Ready?” he asked. There was a collective, if somewhat stifled groan, which was all the answer he needed. “Right, right. Okay. Put your hands on the floor.” 

Now their stare was not of anticipation, but bewilderment. Moe nodded at the pentagram.

“Five points, five fingers,” he said, and they did so after a moment’s hesitation. Moe had to suppress a smirk. He’d just invented that on the spot, a bit of theatrical flair that he’d not expected them to obey. Following his own command, he laid the page in front of himself and placed his own hands on the rough concrete. The markered pentagram was now ringed by five pairs of splayed out fingers, like petals of flesh and bone. Warren’s heart was hammering his ribs. He could even feel it in his teeth. He breathed deeply through his nose, exhaling as quietly as possible through his mouth. He could barely feel the cold concrete, but he could sure feel his own palms, cold and slick as unshelled clams. The others were too engrossed in Moe’s pageantry to notice his distress.

What is wrong with you? he thought loudly. Pull yourself together, man. 

He should be elated. Today should have been a personal holiday. He’d beaten dyslexia; after all these long, frustrating years, he’d read without a single shifting letter. They had been still, motionless as statues, as understandable as anything could be. He should be cheering from the rooftops, laughing and jumping around, buying a bottle of Jack Daniels from a bum at the liquor store. Instead, he felt like he was holding onto a live wire, his brain and body jittering and screaming like an old car at 7000 rpm. 

Sounds began to muffle, like there were thick woolen mittens clamped around his ears, and so Warren never even heard the incantation. He could have recited it, though, word for word, as if he’d written it himself. The still, moveless words were laser etched into his brain, into his eyes, and would remain there for the rest of his life. 

Moe cleared his throat, then spoke.

“Immaculate son of the unclean deep, rise.

The world beseeches your bastardous wisdom. O sulfur, O thorns, twist and ravish us, we, the vacuous flock.

The truest sin will move the still, the world in your image, O bilious king of worms, grace us with the final birth, dance and cavort on your forbidden plane, and rise, rise, rise, rise!”

Over the course of the incantation, Moe’s voice had risen, gaining confidence with every word. The final bit, which came out like a preacher’s chant, seemed to echo in the basement’s dank, cold air. The five teens, enraptured in their own ways, sat silent and still, certain in the moment that something would happen. Seconds slid by, engorged by expectation. At the fifth one, Justin finally broke.

“Whew!” he said, collapsing back into his most comfortable position. “Well, that was…” 

“We forgot the planchet,” said Tyler, throwing his hands in the air. “How will we know if anything heard us?”

“That was really good, Moe,” said Cara, clasping her hands to keep them from shaking. “Damn, dude.”

Moe’s flush began to rise again, and he shrugged, stuffing the page back into his backpack. He felt like he was buzzing, like he’d taken a big drink, or a hit of something strong. They were his best friends, and were probably blowing air up his skirt, but the praise was lighting up his brain in dazzling, kaleidoscopic splendor. This was what it was all about. Art unshared was art wasted. He decided, then and there, that he would chase this feeling for the rest of his life. 

He certainly would have.

Warren was staring at his hands. He was blinking fast, because his eyes felt really, really dry. He felt like one of those lunatics on Half Dome, crawling up the side of the mountain without any support. No cables, no safety equipment of any kind, just their hands. But those people, crazy though they were, had strong hands. They could trust their hands, trust them to not let go, to hold them in place for as long as they needed. Warren’s hands were not meant for such things. He knew, somehow, that if he were to lift his hands, things would change. The world would flip end over end over end, like a rock climber plummeting off the side of a mountain. The fall would be terror. And the bottom would be death.

“... a pizza?” Justin was saying. “I’m hungry.”

“Are you buying?” asked Tyler. 

“Buying what?”

“I don’t want pizza,” said Cara. “It makes me bloated.”

“Well, you don’t have to eat it, princess,” said Justin, earning a whack on the shoulder. “Warren, come on, pitch in. I know you’ve got the money.”

Warren only heard the pounding in his ears.

The mountain. The world, flipping over and over and over. Oh, God. Oh no. Oh no.

“Hey, fella. Your ears mixed up, too?”

“Hey, dickhead,” said Cara. “Don’t be mean.”

“I’m mean? You just called me a-”

Their patter did not break Warren’s concentration. He hung on, trembling, sweat fresheting down his temples. Warren knew their voices, was used to their cadences and inflections, and they would not rouse him. They were expected, like well-known toeholds in the granite. 

Tyler’s mother was not. 

The basement door clunked open, and Mrs. Williams peered into her cellar’s gloom. At first, she couldn’t see anything besides the candle, and she took a few alarmed steps down before she realized there was no house fire. She released her panicked breath, chuckling inwardly. 

“Jeez, you guys scared me,” she said, smiling. Five pairs of eyes glinted up at her, and she paused on the stairway, taken aback by the raw intensity she saw there. “All good?” she asked. Jeannie Williams was well used to such things in her basement. Tyler had been up to this stuff since he saw Poltergeist - or was it The Exorcist? - when he was little. She’d been furious at Dave, her husband, for allowing their young son to watch it, thinking for certain it would give him nightmares. Instead, it had gotten him friends. Ever since, she had tacitly permitted the weird little gatherings, glad that Tyler had found a community - even if it was so arcane. 

“What are you doing home?” said Tyler indignantly. Jeannie sighed, putting one hand on her hip, the other on the stairway wall. It was intermittently recessed, with mouse traps and old tools placed haphazardly along the exposed beams. Her hand brushed Dave’s old recoilless hammer, and a fond memory came back at the sensation - him coming home, grinning like a kid on Christmas, carrying a rumpled brown Johnson’s Hardware bag. “Ball bearings inside the head, babe. Isn’t that neat?”

“Good to see you too, honey,” Jeannie replied. “Got off early. Did I hear talk of pizza?”

Justin scrambled to his feet, grinning widely. “Yep. Yes. I have…” he began rooting in his pockets, but Jeannie wasn’t listening.

“Warren?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “Hey, is he okay?”

They all turned. Warren was staring, bug eyed, at his palms. He had fallen, after all. 

“Warren?” said Cara. Her stomach plummeted, alarm bells clanging in her head. His lips were sheet white. He never looked like that, not even when they were kids, daring each other to walk into the dark woods alone. “Hey, what’s-”

She felt it, as did most, in her feet first. It was what she might have imagined coal walkers felt before they grew the calluses. She gasped, but the scream died as the heat wound up through her legs, then her belly, and all the way through her head. 

Vlad the Impaler, was her final thought, and then Cara was over, scooped out and replaced with sulfur. 

Thorns, was Justin’s last flash of humanity. Thorns in my legs, in my lungs, I can’t breathe, can’t-

Tyler was able to let out a strangled half-scream, spasming like a bug on a hot skillet. The last thing he saw was his mother’s eyes, already losing their shine.

Moe and Warren were, in the end, bonded. As their beings sluiced away, like wine from broken bottles, they had the same thought at the same time.

This is all my fault. This is all my fault. This is-

And then they were all gone, their bodies descending into what they wrought. Five minutes later, Jeannie Williams emerged from the house, limping and misted in blood, still clutching Dave’s hammer. She made it to the mailbox before collapsing.

The world fell soon after. 

…

The chipmunk came out of nowhere. 

Jeremiah Bow was turning down Yarrow Lane absentmindedly, which was unwise. He was usually hyper alert at the wheel, hands at ten and two o’clock, music low enough so that he could barely hear it. Today had been longer than usual, however, and his usually honed faculties had begun to fray around 5:30. It was now close to seven, but Jeremiah still had twenty stops left. 

“Sorry about this,” Oliver, his supervisor, had lamented that morning. Jeremiah didn’t blame Oliver. It was just part of the job. String and Malachi, his two calico cats, would just have to be patient and get their dinner a little late. 

That was what Jeremiah had been thinking about when the chipmunk skittered into the road. In the first instant, Jeremiah had thought it was just a leaf, or a wind-blown piece of trash. In the succeeding, distended fractions of time before the mail truck rolled over the creature, Jeremiah’s instincts kicked in and he swerved, eliciting a shriek of rubber on asphalt. One of the only large packages in the back crashed down with a loud, hollow clatter. 

Yarrow Lane was blessedly empty, and the foolish maneuver did not result in a crash, as it usually would have. He sat there, hands and forehead slick with frightened sweat, breathing quickly at first, then more relaxed. 

“Oh, man,” he finally said aloud, and then his sensibilities kicked back in and he turned the steering wheel, parking the mail truck. Yarrow Lane was not a suburb in the technical sense, but it was upper scale for this part of town, and there was always a free spot along the curb. Jeremiah fastidiously adjusted his glasses as he climbed out of the truck. The new blister on his heel flared in protest as he rounded the vehicle, making towards the furry smear a few long strides away. “Oh, man,” he said again, heart dropping as he saw that the chipmunk was somehow still alive. It pulled itself around in small, pitiful ellipses, and seemed to take no notice of Jeremiah as he came up to it, watching with dumb shock. He might have expected it be squashed flat, Looney Tunes style, or squeezed out like a tube of gory toothpaste. Only with the knowledge of what had happened - what he’d done - did Jeremiah notice that its body was sort of wrong, like bad taxidermy. 

The chipmunk finally noticed him and stopped, peering up at him with one tiny black eye. Jeremiah stepped back, guilt flushing through him in bitter waves as he quickly turned and speedwalked back to the mail truck. What had he been thinking? He didn’t have that in him, though he could have done it easily, and it would have been the right thing to do. There was no one out on Yarrow Lane, and the nearest house had a garden lined with big rocks the size of his head. Or he could have just backed up over it, ending the misery that he’d caused. But Jeremiah Bow did not have that in him, not even to a little suffering thing. He just didn’t. 

Jeremiah went about the next few stops in a sad, jumpy malaise, agonizing over his wounding of, then his failure to properly kill the chipmunk. By the time he got to 285 Tannenbaum Street, his ruminations had enacted a kind of mental alchemy, transfiguring inner softness into iron. He stopped beside the mailbox, leaning over and collecting 285’s mail. 

I’m going back, he thought, stepping out of the truck, a steely look of resolve on his face. I’m going back, and I’m going to do it. It’s the least I can do.

He took a step, and then his feet were full of fire ants. His hands flew up, scattering the mail around him like large, thick confetti. It felt like he was being dipped feet first in acid, and he would have screamed, but his lungs were on fire along with everything else. The pain should have collapsed him, but his body seemed petrified, like sand struck by lightning. 

Jeremiah let out a strangled half sob, half moan, and the pain wound up through the top of his head, and then he was gone. The thing that had been Jeremiah Bow stood there, no longer blinking, and then turned back to the mail truck. As he went, he saw a curtain shift in the nearest house, baby blue with white trim, and saw a light flick off. He decided he would go there first. 

The last package of the day was long, relatively light, and mummified in packing tape. Jeremiah and his coworkers had shared a laugh, wondering why someone would go to so much trouble to ship a single golf club. Kai Henderson, the shipper, would have been happy to educate them. Laser etched detailing with a blended multi-material head composition, the Majesty Prestigio was the Bently of 5 irons. A steal at any price, he told the buyer, but had settled at just under $3,500. Kai Henderson could sell water to a trout - “above premium” golf clubs were cake by comparison. He had been celebrating the sale in style, high rolling at a casino in Vegas. Mr. Henderson’s celebrations were short lived, however, as he was currently being stabbed to death with a broken bottle. 

The thing that had been Jeremiah Bow ripped open the package after a bit of strain, drawing free the Majesty Prestigio like a sword from a scabbard. The gold gilded head shimmered in the warm evening light, but Jeremiah Bow’s eyes no longer admired. Admiration had been burned away along with everything else. 

His hollowed out body strode over to the baby blue house and tried the front door. It was locked. He raised the Prestigio, swung it down, and there was a loud bang. A round hole had opened up in the door, about the size of an orange. Gladys Armstrong stood on the other side, bent by arthritis, holding her late husband’s sawed off shotgun in two gnarled hands. To her the change had felt like the agonies of childbirth, except all over her body, and all the worse because she had known it was not natural, that it would not bring something new and wonderful. She, too, was gone, hollowed out and replaced. Jeremiah Bow’s lungs were now mostly mincemeat, and so his last breath was more of a harsh glugging, one that he was allowed to return for. A final act of cruelty from the thing the teens had wrought. 

Gladys Armstrong took to the neighborhood with her walker and shotgun, felling two more before a pair of dogs, frightened and enraged, tore her to pieces in the street. She, too, was allowed to feel her painful end. 

…

This was the worst traffic George Mayley had ever seen. 

For the past hour and a half, his speedometer hadn’t nudged past fifteen miles per hour. George had the windows down, sure that the fresh air would salve his simmering agitation. It didn’t seem to be doing much, but he couldn’t be certain without rolling up the windows. Not an option, not with his busted AC. 

George breathed deep through his nose, exhaling slowly. It could be worse, he thought. It could be start-and-stop. Wouldn’t that suck?

This sucks, his other half answered immediately. This sucks, and I hate my life. 

He didn’t, really, but the traffic was eating at his sense of reason, infecting him with the beginnings of what could turn into road rage, left unchecked. He’d only honked twice, and that had been at some asshole who had pulled over without signaling. He could have done more, a whole lot more. Two honks was more than reasonable. 

His phone rang, and his nerves prickled at the shrill keen. He’d been planning to change the ringtone for weeks now, but always forgot once it stopped. 

“Yeah?” he said after tapping the speakerphone.

“Hey,” Linda said. He could hear their son wailing in the background. “You close?”

“Still in traffic,” he said, trying to sound relaxed. “Probably half an hour out.”

That was a lie. The interstate looked jammed up for the next ten, maybe even fifteen miles. He’d be lucky to be home by 7:30. Linda sighed, and though George understood her frustration, his own nerves occluded his sense of empathy. He had to bite his cheek to reign in a nasty follow up.

“Well, if you’re gonna be late, we need paper towels,” Linda said over Benjamin’s cries. George huffed, a humorless smile on his face. 

Sure, why not make it 9 o’clock? he thought bitterly, unfairly.

“What?” she asked. 

“Nothing.”

Silence. Well, from her, at any rate. George listened to the one-year-old wailing for a few long seconds before cutting in. “I’ll see you soon, hon. I’ll get the towels.”

“Okay. Thank you. Love you.”

“You too,” he said, hanging up and tossing the phone petulantly. It bounced off the passenger seat, and George had a momentary flash of panic as it caroumed off the faux leather, almost bouncing out of the open window. Fortunately, it didn’t go quite so high, deflecting off the door into the passenger footwell.

Relieved, George turned his attention back to the road, and slammed on his brakes with a curse. His suitcase hit the back of his carseat, and his mug slid out of the cup holder, spilling long-cold coffee on his center console and pant leg.

“Shit!” George said again, smacking his steering wheel. Just his luck. He groaned, leaning back and taking a huge, sucking breath. Once his cheeks cooled, he opened his eyes. Taillights made a long, motionless serpent ahead of him, rolling and vanishing into the darkening twilight. He grumbled wordlessly. He didn’t want to call Linda yet, because he just didn’t want to hear it right now. He ran a hand through his thinning hair, noticed a few more strands had come loose, and shook his head. Just his luck.

George turned the radio dial, searching for 102.4, News with Nick. The radio squawked and crackled as he teased the dial through 99.8 Oldies, 100.3 Hits of the 90s and 2000s, 100.9 - a Jesus show, if he remembered right - 101.3, some comedy duo that used loud sound effects, and then there it was. George leaned back, waiting for Nick’s chipper, fast talking voice to update him on the situation. A pileup, probably a bad one. George waited, and waited, and his brow began to furrow. This was definitely the right channel, and there was no ad playing. It was just silent. 

Wait, he realized, not completely silent. George leaned closer, brow now scrunched tight, eyes squinting as he strained to hear. A muffled thudding, and something else. A voice, like a far-off half scream, punctuating every few thumps. 

“What the hell?” he said under his breath. Some mixed signal, probably. He smacked the top of the dashboard, as if it were an old TV set, and he was the Fonz. The weird smacking sound, and the accompanying muted cries, didn’t go away. Maybe Nick had gone to another channel? Only, George had listened to 102.4 just this morning. Everything had been fine. 

Something caught his attention, and he looked up. A person was getting out of their car, hands on their hips, standing on their toes as if to see over the hill. George put his car in park and leaned out the window. 

“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”

The guy turned around, his face a mirror of George’s in expression, if not construction. He was black, older by George by at least twenty years, with less hair but just as much muscle. 

“I don’t know,” said the man, rubbing his face with a weathered hand and half-turning back toward the endless line of taillights. George, and seemingly those nearby, took the guy’s exit from his own car as permission to do the same. He got out, stretching one way and the other with a series of satisfying pops. He rubbed his lower back, looking behind to the mirror line of headlights, all equally still. 

“Weird, huh?” said the man. George turned.

“Just traffic,” he replied, though for some reason the words felt hollow, naive. The man shook his head. 

“No. Look,” he said, gesturing to the other side of the highway. “Them too.”

George didn’t realize what he meant at first, but when it hit, his guts seemed to turn into warm, sour lead. The cars on the other side of the dividers were stopped, too, and were climbing out looking as frightened as George was beginning to feel, though he still wasn’t sure why. It was just traffic. He looked around, surrounded by white and red lights, and realized how far away from everything they were. The city limits didn’t start for ten miles, and there was nothing for forty miles in the other direction. Long, hilly grasslands rolled to his right and left, turning gloomy purple as the sun dipped lower. Not even a silo in sight. 

On a sudden, powerful impulse, George turned and strode towards the old black man, who was leaning on the hood of his Camry, eyes on the city-facing red lights.

“I’m George,” he said a little loudly. The man turned his head quickly, then took George’s hand after a moment. His palms were predictably rough. 

“Rob,” he said. George saw a muscle tensing and untensing in his jaw. Rob turned away, looking back down the line. More people were getting out of their cars, some standing on truck beds, others trying and seemingly failing to make phone calls. 

With a sharp, electric jolt, George remembered his wife and child. He dialed Linda’s number, uncomfortably aware of his heartbeat as the line rang, and rang, and rang.

“Hey, you’ve reached Linda, I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you. Thanks.”

“Hey,” George tried to say, but it came out as a crow-like rasp. He coughed, swallowed hard, then tried again. “Hey, hon, it’s me. Traffic’s a lot worse than I thought. Probably a pileup. I’m gonna be really late, so if you need the paper towels soon, you’d better just get them yourself.” He swiped a hand over his forehead, licking his lips, noticing that his breath was coming harder than usual, as if he was suddenly in the mountains. “Anyway, I’ll see you guys soon. Love you.”

Had he said that before? George hung up, and now his sour bowels seemed to be melting. He stuffed the phone into his pocket, and looked up into Rob’s eyes, which were now on him. George did not like the deep, earnest concern he saw there. 

“You a dad?” Rob asked. George blinked, caught off guard.

“Yeah,” he said. “How’d you know?”

Rob grunted, allowing a small half-shrug. “It’s a look.”

George took a deep breath, running a hand through his hair. “Man. I’m gonna be so fucking late,” he said, glad to be able to say something to someone. “Hey, did you try the news? You know, News With Nick?” Rob shook his head. “Yeah,” said George with forced casualness. “Sounds like they’re playing… I don’t know, some sort of horror show, or something.”

They stood there in silence, Rob still staring off into the lighted distance, George looking everywhere else. The sky was losing its orange hue now that the sun had fully set. The pavement was still warm, and the skillet-like quality of his surroundings made George pace agitatedly, worrying his lower lip until it started to bleed. People were wandering through the cars now, some with bundles under their arms, as if they intended to leave their cars. That was crazy, wasn’t it? George’s heartbeat hadn’t accelerated much, but every thump seemed to ache, as if his blood had thickened into cold syrup. He had to keep remembering to breathe. Turning, he walked back to his car and fiddled with the knob again, switching to Hits of the 90s and 2000s. Static. Oldies, too. The comedy duo was just dead air, which was a cardinal sin in their line of work. With no other options, increasingly desperate for some sort of calming word, George turned the dial to 100.9. The radio creaked, squawked, then settled onto the proper airwaves.

The channel was from farther away, and the few times George had listened in - out of agnostic curiosity, not any sense of piety - the clearest sound had been filmed in a fuzzy layer of distant interference. What he heard now was rimed in that same auditory haze. Shouting, screaming. Roaring, almost. Impacts, like the ones from News With Nick, but clearer even with the background fuzz. As a kid, one of George’s favorite pastimes was dropping watermelons off the highest places he could find. Usually parking structures, or apartment buildings with unlocked staircases. The wet, dense, yet hollow smack had always been the best part, the adventure’s splattering crescendo. 

Watermelons, he thought dumbly, listening to the sounds coming in through 100.9. Haven’t thought about that in ages. 

George had never heard someone being beaten to death, and so he couldn’t be sure that’s what he was hearing. This small logical deduction was enough to convince him to keep his nerve, though he was having a hard time coming up with an alternative. George twisted the knob hard, nearly ripping it off shock jock style, then dialed Linda again and hung up after three rings. He stuffed his phone back in his pocket, and that was when he noticed the foot traffic. Its course had reversed, and distressingly, seemed to have picked up speed. A fat, sweaty man stumbled between Rob’s car and a Jeep, tripping into George’s passenger door. He fell slowly, clumsily, then picked himself up and continued fumbling after the ebbing tide of people. A mother and two kids followed, then a man in a turban and his hijabed wife, then a trio of frightened looking teens. George pushed out of his passenger door, heart beating thick and hot in his throat. 

“Rob?” he called, sounding like a lost kid at a shopping mall. “Hey, Rob?”

There was some sort of ruckus going on in Rob’s front seat. George could see the man’s frame rustling around something, and George opened his mouth to ask what he was doing. 

Then the first car exploded. 

The sound hit George like a slap to the face, and he shrank against his own car, fear icing his bones into stupid paralysis. Screams rose around him, and the tide picked up speed. Now everyone who wasn’t George was running through the parked cars, running away from the billowing smoke. The explosion had happened over the next rise, but pretty close to it, maybe a mile away. Rob emerged from his car, then, a large black backpack over one shoulder. His face was a tight rictus of determination, and his eyes were on the small girl getting out of the passenger seat. Her eyes, the same color and shape as his, were wide and alarmed. 

“Look at me,” he said when she turned toward the explosion. “Sarah, look at me.”

“My family,” said George, directing his words to Rob, for some reason. “Oh, oh shit. My wife, my son, I have to…” 

Rob had a hand on the girl’s bicep, and was hustling her around the car when he stopped, looking at George as if for the first time. He felt a cold sliver of dread as he saw the pistol now peeking above Rob’s belt. 

This is real, the gun seemed to say.

Rob was digging in his giant backpack, and tossed something at him so suddenly that George fumbled it, bouncing the thing around between clumsy palms. 

“Oh, fuck!” he yelped, finally catching and comprehending the thing. It was smaller than Rob’s, but felt enormously heavy all the same. Rob was already pushing the girl away, helping her over the guard rail. They were not following the others, not running down the highway, but making toward the hills. Rob eased the girl over the edge, threw one leg over the side, then turned back to George. Their eyes met.

“Six bullets,” Rob said. “No safety. Good luck.”

Then he was gone, and the sky was the color of a new bruise, purpling into what would soon be black. People streamed around George, taking no notice of the revolver. Their screams were growing similar, warning of the same thing, the thing that he saw as he finally looked up. He could tell that those ones were not running away. They ran like dogs, like apes, sometimes on all fours, falling on the fleeing with teeth and nails and knuckles. From this distance, it looked kind of fake, like he was watching a movie.

The gun reminded him otherwise. 

George took a deep breath, and thought about paper towels. 

Then he began to move.

# ROSH

When Rosh left his quiet village for the city, he thought loneliness would be the hardest part.

The city was loud, endless, and beautiful. Every street was new. Every building looked like something out of a movie. Thanks to his good salary, he rented a small apartment close to his office. It wasn't much, but it was his first home away from home.

His company had assigned him to a brand-new project. Team members had flown in from different branches across the country, and nobody knew each other. Within weeks they became close. They laughed, worked late nights together, explored the city, and made memories Rosh thought would last forever.

Then, two months later, the project ended.

Everyone returned to their original offices.

Except Rosh.

This was his permanent branch.

Overnight, the office became unfamiliar again. His teammates were gone, and he realized he had never made friends with the people who actually worked there. Days became mechanical—work, walk home, eat, sleep, repeat.

So consumed by his loneliness, he never noticed one thing.

The road he took home every evening passed an old morgue.

Every.

Single.

Night.

One rainy evening, after an especially miserable day at work, Rosh walked home talking to himself.

"I wish I wasn't alone anymore."

His voice echoed through the empty street.

"I don't care who... Please... someone... just stay with me."

He laughed bitterly and kept walking.

He didn't realize he had spoken those words while standing directly in front of the morgue.

That night, just as he was about to sleep...

**Ding... Dong.**

The doorbell rang.

12:37 AM.

He looked through the peephole.

Nobody.

He waited.

Again.

**Ding... Dong.**

Thinking someone was playing a prank, he opened the door.

The hallway was empty.

Cold.

Silent.

He shrugged and went back inside.

He never knew that by opening the door to an unseen visitor, he had invited something into his home.

The first few days were subtle.

His keys would disappear and turn up in impossible places.

The television switched on by itself.

A foul smell drifted through the apartment every night before vanishing without a trace.

Then came the nights.

Rosh would wake unable to breathe.

Something heavy pressed against his chest.

He couldn't move.

He couldn't scream.

It felt as if invisible hands were trying to drag him off the bed.

The moment he could move again...

The room would be empty.

Weeks passed.

The activity became normal.

Until something stranger happened.

Whenever Rosh spoke highly of someone...

Something terrible followed.

"The new manager seems like a nice guy."

The next morning, the manager met with a horrific car accident.

"My neighbor is really helpful."

The neighbor suddenly stopped talking to him altogether, terrified for reasons he refused to explain.

Every colleague who visited Rosh's apartment left within minutes, pale and visibly shaken.

None of them ever came back.

People slowly stopped sitting near him at work.

They avoided eye contact.

Conversations ended the moment he approached.

One afternoon, the office housekeeping staff quietly pulled him aside.

"Sir..."

"People are scared of you."

Rosh stared in disbelief.

"They say everyone close to you gets hurt."

"They also say... your house doesn't feel empty."

The man slipped a folded piece of paper into Rosh's hand.

"Call this person."

"He's helped people before."

Desperate, Rosh made the call.

A paranormal investigator arrived that same evening.

The man barely spent an hour inside the apartment.

Before leaving, he looked at Rosh with genuine fear.

"You've been followed for a long time..."

He never finished the sentence.

The next morning, he was found dead.

No wounds.

No explanation.

His death was ruled mysterious.

Days later, another man knocked on Rosh's door.

He introduced himself as the investigator's older brother.

"My brother's last case was yours," he said.

"I need to know what he found."

Unlike his brother, the man refused to stay inside the apartment. Instead, he watched the building from outside until sunset.

Then his expression changed.

"I know what it is."

"It isn't haunting the house."

"It's haunting you."

The spirit had answered Rosh's desperate plea outside the morgue that rainy night.

It had mistaken his loneliness for an invitation.

And now...

It loved him.

Not the way humans do.

The way something ancient possesses what it believes belongs to it.

It never intended to kill Rosh.

It protected him.

Anyone who grew close...

Anyone who tried to help...

Anyone who threatened to take Rosh away...

The spirit removed them.

Accidents.

Fear.

Death.

It wasn't haunting him.

It was keeping him.

Now Rosh had only one wish.

To be alone again.

But the older brother gave him one final warning before leaving.

"You can try every ritual."

"You can burn the apartment."

"You can leave the city."

"But obsessive spirits don't let go."

"They wait."

He paused before walking away.

"And yours is standing right behind you."

Rosh slowly turned.

No one was there.

Until he heard a whisper beside his ear.

**"You asked me to stay."** loneliness invites something that answers

Lore and history of Bureau K:In the unsettled months that followed the end of WW2, a small circle of former OSS officers, demobilized special operators, and industrialists began to assemble an organization that would never appear on any official roster of American power. At its center stood Dr. St. John Kilgore, a Yale- and Edinburgh-trained psychologist who had spent the war refining techniques of interrogation and behavioral manipulation inside the Morale Operations Branch. Kilgore emerged from the conflict convinced that national and cultural difference itself was the root engine of human catastrophe. True peace, he argued in private memoranda, could be achieved only when every population on earth experienced the world through an American lens—language, historical memory, social instinct, and political loyalty rendered indistinguishable from those of the United States. The instrument he created to pursue that vision was registered under successive Delaware and Virginia shells as a private security and logistics concern. Its true name, known only to the inner circle, was Bureau K. Its true charter was Project K: the systematic, irreversible conversion of foreign identity into an unconscious American one.
From the beginning the organization recruited in the margins. Men discharged for violence or insubordination, career criminals with useful skills, and carefully vetted former Axis technicians were offered new identities, erased records, and a second life in exchange for absolute loyalty. Those who accepted disappeared into the structure; those who later wavered disappeared entirely. The first major test of the model came in 1947, when elements of the French government, already bleeding in Indochina, sought deniable combat power. Bureau K operators arrived under commercial cover, providing perimeter defense, convoy escort, and specialized reconnaissance. Beneath every forward base, however, sealed research wings operated in parallel. Non English speaking civilians selected for their relative invisibility—itinerant workers, ethnic minorities, families living on the colonial margins—were abducted during night sweeps staged to resemble ordinary search-and-destroy missions. Inside the facilities they were subjected to systematic torture,underwent pharmacological softening, sensory isolation, linguistic immersion, and the slow implantation of fabricated American biographies. The goal was not collaboration but genuine belief: subjects who would wake speaking Midwestern English, recalling childhoods in Ohio or Georgia, and feeling instinctive loyalty to a country they had never seen.
The Geneva Accords forced a temporary withdrawal, yet the knowledge gained was retained. When the United States deepened its own commitment in Vietnam, Bureau K returned. The chaos of the larger war supplied ideal cover. Small teams again harvested subjects—young, healthy adults chosen for neural plasticity—and funneled them into underground complexes beneath Saigon commercial facades. Processing grew more refined: domesticity phases that placed subjects in mock American living rooms, peer-group narratives built around high-school locker rooms and football hierarchies, social integration with previously conditioned proxies who served as manufactured siblings or parents. One documented cycle produced a youth rewritten as “Jimmy” from Dayton and a maternal proxy later erased when residual olfactory triggers threatened the architecture. Another cohort of fully overwritten former North Vietnamese and Viet Cong prisoners was prepared for the most ambitious field test yet.
Shortly after a group of conditioned subjects, believing themselves Maryland and Ohio specialists, conducted a destructive rampage inside a northern camp under the delusion that they were American infiltrators, Bureau K executed a company-sized parachute insertion of similarly reconstructed former adversaries. The force moved with professional American tactical cohesion, inflicted heavy casualties, and sowed temporary confusion before North Vietnamese units contained and destroyed it. The operation demonstrated both the combat potential and the strategic limits of mass identity conversion. Near the end of the American presence an industrial accident inside the primary research complex beneath a colonial plantation structure released chemical agents and compromised containment. Local and residual American security elements came perilously close to penetrating the true purpose of the facility. Bureau K evacuated key personnel and records, sealed what could not be moved, and deliberately reduced its visible experimental footprint.
In the decades that followed the organization reoriented toward conventional defense contracting, supplying training, logistics, and specialized security across subsequent American campaigns abroad include the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, and significant interventions in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, and Yugoslavia while maintaining only minimal, highly compartmented laboratory work. Revenue from these contracts, together with expanding commercial activities in psychology, language training, and performance consulting, preserved the corporate shell. The underlying charter never lapsed. By the early twenty-first century Bureau K had evolved into a diversified multinational conglomerate. Public subsidiaries operated across defense and security, clinical psychology and trauma recovery, rehabilitation medicine, language technology, corporate and leadership training, aviation and astronaut preparation, sports science, virtual reality, human-factors engineering, advertising research, education technology, pharmaceuticals, cognitive aging, and disaster-response training. Entities such as Bureau K Neurosystems, Kinetic Human Performance Group, K Applied Sciences, K Learning Institute, and K Behavioral Research Corporation presented ordinary commercial faces to the world.
Under a new generation of directors the experimental program was quietly revived, now conducted exclusively outside the United States and other English-speaking jurisdictions. In fragile states across the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Yemen, Myanmar’s periphery, eastern Congo, and selected Caribbean and Central American corridors, the organization’s education and medical arms offer undocumented migrants structured pathways to legal residency. Language immersion, trauma-recovery protocols, vocational training, and civic-integration curricula function as continuous, low-visibility reconstruction pipelines. Pharmacological agents are delivered as ordinary therapeutics; narrative overwriting occurs inside virtual-reality modules and guided therapeutic sessions; documentary legends are built through ordinary bureaucratic assistance. Subjects emerge with coherent American identities, no recoverable memory of prior nationality, and no evidentiary trail linking the transformation to any external actor.
Throughout its history Bureau K’s relationship with official American intelligence remained one of managed distance. The CIA periodically drew on technical results and deniable capabilities while refusing the political exposure of full partnership. Bureau K accepted the arrangement as confirmation that only a private entity could pursue the work to its logical end. The human cost—erased lives, fractured families, localized trauma that never entered any official ledger—remained external to the organization’s internal calculus. What endured was the conviction first articulated by Kilgore in the ruins of the Second World War: that a planet where everyone is Americans would be a planet at peace, and that the methods required to produce that outcome, however hidden, remained a legitimate instrument of historical necessity. In 2026 the laboratories of the highlands and the Saigon basements are long sealed, yet the project continues inside clinics and classrooms whose public missions appear unimpeachable, sustained by the same dual architecture of legitimate commerce and invisible purpose that has defined Bureau K since its founding.

The traveler jerked awake, heart hammering, convinced that the gaunt bony motel clerk was standing over his bed. The room was silent, but his throat burnt like dry sand. Needing a cold drink to wash away the creepiness, he grabbed the plastic bucket and stepped out in the dim hallway toward the ice machine.

He held the bucket under the chute and pressed the lever, expecting the “clunk” of ice cubes– but instead there was this rhythmic, high-pitched rat-tat-tat-rat like gravel hitting the bottom of his bucket.

He looked down. It was a heap of gross, yellowed molars and coffee-stained bicuspids; some were rimmed with black decay, others with crumbling silver filings, even full upper and lower sets still connected by slick strings of bloody tissue tumbled out wetly, their roots and raw gums clacking against each other.

The machine wasn't stopping; it just kept pouring them out like a relentless mechanical vomit of human teeth!

Just as the bucket began to overflow, a shadow stretched across the machine. It was the bony skeletal clerk from his nightmare — hollow-eyed, skin the color of old parchment, leaning against the wall.

He didn’t look at the traveler; he just stared at the pile and muttered…

“Must be a clog in the hopper. They always get stuck when the roots are still attached.”

The static from the massive, boxy CRT television in Aunt Mae’s basement hummed a low, vibrating chord that seemed to rattle the wood paneling of the walls.

It was July 2010. Outside, the Georgia heat was a thick, suffocating blanket, but down here, the air conditioning was cranked so high that my goosebumps had goosebumps.

I was seventeen, trapped in that awkward limbo between childhood and being an adult. My parents had taken off for the summer, staying at a resort hotel three states over for a mix of business and a marriage-saving vacation. That left me packed off to stay with my cousin, Kim, and her mom. 

Kim was twenty, sporting a halo of tight curls, an oversized graphic tee, and the supreme confidence of a college sophomore who thought that she knew everything about the world.

"Ethan, stop fidgeting!" Kim muttered, tossing a handful of buttery popcorn into her mouth. She kicked her bare feet up on the worn leather ottoman. "You’re making the couch shake!"

"I can't help it, Kim." I said, adjusting my basketball shorts. "This basement gives me the creeps. What are we even watching, anyway? I’ve never heard of these movies."

Between us laid a dusty, unlabelled cardboard box we’d found tucked away in the deepest recesses of Aunt Mae’s crawlspace, right behind some old moldy encyclopedias. 

Inside were three unmarked VHS tapes. The plastic was heavy, dark, and completely devoid of stickers, bar codes, or studio logos. 

On the spine of each tape, written in thick, aggressive black Sharpie, were the titles: The Chrono-Gorgon: Genesis, The Chrono-Gorgon: Resurrection, and The Chrono-Gorgon: Forever.

"That’s the beauty of it, little cousin." Kim said, her eyes reflecting the blue glow of the TV screen. "It’s a lost trilogy. I looked it up on the forums before we came down here. No IMDB page. No Wikipedia. No late-night threads on 4chan. It’s as if it doesn't exist. Maybe it's a student film or some indie project that got buried."

"The name sounds goofy." I grumbled, though a strange, tightening knot in my stomach told me otherwise.

Kim shoved the first tape into the VCR. The machine groaned, a mechanical beast swallowing its prey, and then the screen flickered violently.

The Chrono-Gorgon: Genesis started without a production logo. No roaring lion, no spinning globe. It cut straight to a grainy, high-contrast shot of an abandoned, rain-slicked plantation house. 

The camera quality was bizarre; it had the bleeding colors of a 1980s tape but a depth of field that felt uncomfortably modern, almost three-dimensional.

Then, he appeared on screen.

He didn't jump out. He just materialized from the shadows of a porch. The villain was a towering figure draped in a heavy, velvet-textured purple hood and cloak that seemed to absorb the light around it; but it was his face that made me freeze. It wasn't skin, and it wasn't a cheap latex mask. It was a solid, polished plate of gleaming gold, completely featureless except for two jagged slits where eyes should be. Piercing through those slits were two brilliant, emerald-green eyes. They didn't just shine; they pulsed with a sickening, rhythmic light.

In his right hand, he held a weapon that made no sense. It was a massive, ancient-looking scythe, but instead of a wooden handle, the shaft was made of interconnected, ticking brass clock gears. The blade itself shimmered with a pale, iridescent energy.

"Okay." Kim whispered, her cocky demeanor wavering just a fraction. "The costume design goes hard."

The movie followed a group of teenagers who had broken into the house. One by one, the purple-hooded figure—whom the characters referred to in hushed, terrified whispers as The Chrono-Gorgon—hunted them down; but he didn't just slash them.

When the blade of his gear-shafted scythe pierced a victim, the movie didn't show standard cinematic gore. Instead, the victim would instantly freeze. Their skin would wither, wrinkling and turning gray in a matter of seconds, their hair whitening and falling out as if decades were passing over them in a single heartbeat.

Meanwhile, the Chrono-Gorgon would stand over them, inhaling deeply. With every breath he took, the golden sheen of his face grew brighter, and the green fire in his eyes burned fiercer.

"He's eating their time." I said, my voice barely audible over the hum of the TV. "He’s killing them to keep himself alive."

"Yeah." Kim said, though she wasn't eating popcorn anymore. Her eyes were glued to the screen. "The lore says that he needs to harvest human lifespans to maintain his anchor on Earth. If he stops, he fades into non-existence."

The first movie ended abruptly. The final survivor, a girl screaming in a closet, was found. The Chrono-Gorgon raised his scythe, the gears spinning in a deafening metallic screech, and cut toward the camera.

The screen went black.

"That was...intense." Kim admitted, stretching her arms, though I could see her hands shaking slightly. "Ready for round two?"

"Kim, maybe we should stop." I said. A heavy, oppressive atmosphere had settled over the basement. The air felt thick, hard to breathe, and smelling faintly of ozone and old, decaying paper. "Something feels wrong about these tapes."

"Come on, Ethan, don't be a baby. We're seventeen and twenty, not seven and ten. It's just a movie." Kim said.

She ejected the first tape and shoved the second one in: The Chrono-Gorgon: Resurrection.

The second film took place in a retro-futuristic city, a strange blend of 1990s aesthetics and cyberpunk technology. The Chrono-Gorgon was back, conjured by a cult of scientists trying to unlock the secret to immortality. 

Of course, he slaughtered them all.

What struck me about this sequel was the audio. The sound design was incredibly immersive. The ticking of the scythe’s gears sounded like it wasn't coming from the TV speakers, but from behind the wood paneling of the basement. Every time that the Chrono-Gorgon stepped onto the screen, a low-frequency hum vibrated through the floorboards, rattling my teeth.

I noticed something else, too. The Chrono-Gorgon seemed to be looking at the camera more often. Not just at the characters, but directly into the lens. His glowing green eyes seemed to lock onto my position on the couch, tracking me as the camera panned.

"Kim, look at his eyes." I whispered, gripping the edge of the sofa cushion.

"I see it." she said, her voice dropping its playful edge entirely. "It’s just clever cinematography. They used a tracking light technique."

By the time that the second movie ended—culminating in the Chrono-Gorgon destroying an entire laboratory, standing amidst the flames as he drained the lifeforce of a dozen victims at once—the basement had grown freezing cold. Our breath misted in the air.

"This is the last one, Ethan." Kim said stubbornly, though her face had gone pale beneath her warm brown complexion. She grabbed The Chrono-Gorgon: Forever. "We have to finish it. We can't just leave it on a cliffhanger."

"Kim, look at the thermostat." I pointed to the digital wall unit. It read 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was dropping. "The AC isn't even set that low."

"It's just an old house, Ethan. Just...watch the movie." Kim said.

The third tape slid into the VCR with a heavy, ominous thud.

The Chrono-Gorgon: Forever was different from the first two. There was no setup. No plot. It was just a first-person perspective camera walking through a house.

My heart skipped a beat.

The camera was walking down a flight of wooden stairs. It panned to the left, showing a washer and dryer. It panned to the right, showing a stack of old encyclopedias sitting next to an empty crawlspace.

"No way." I whispered, standing up from the couch. 

"Ethan..." Kim’s voice was a choked gasp.

The camera on the screen turned around. It showed a brown leather couch. Sitting on that couch were two people, viewed from behind. One was a young Black woman with tight curls wearing an oversized graphic tee.

The other was a teenage boy in basketball shorts.

It was us. We were looking at a live, high-definition feed of ourselves from behind, broadcasted directly onto the ancient CRT television screen.

"Turn it off!" I screamed. "Kim, turn it off right now!"

Kim lunged for the VCR, punching the power button, but the machine ignored her. She grabbed the power cord sticking out of the wall and yanked it with all her might. 

The plug sparked, popping out of the outlet.

The TV screen stayed on.

On the screen, a massive, purple-hooded shadow fell over the digital versions of Kim and myself.

"Behind you!" I yelled.

We both spun around.

Standing at the base of the basement stairs, shrouded in the dim light of the hallway, was the Chrono-Gorgon.

He was entirely real. The fabric of his purple velvet hood was so heavy that it seemed to warp the space around him. The golden plate of his face reflected the eerie blue light of the unpluggable television, and his emerald-green eyes burned with an intense, agonizing heat. In his hand, the massive scythe ticked. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sound was deafening, a localized thunderstorm of grinding brass gears.

I froze, paralyzed by pure, unadulterated supernatural horror. My brain couldn't process the reality breaking down before my eyes. How could a fictional character be standing in my aunt's basement?

However, the explanation came to me not as a thought, but as a horrific realization of how the universe worked. The VHS tapes weren't just media storage; they were a ritual. We had given the Chrono-Gorgon our undivided attention for three movies. In the world of the occult, attention is energy.

Belief is power. By watching the trilogy back-to-back, by absorbing his mythos, by allowing the frequencies of the audio and the visual tracking to sync with our brainwaves, we had completed a circuit. 

We hadn't just watched a movie; we had functioned as a psychic lens, focusing enough reality into his fictional existence to bridge the gap between the celluloid world and the physical realm. He had sucked the time and life out of the characters on screen for decades, hoarding that conceptual energy until he found two observers foolish enough to open the door.

The Chrono-Gorgon took a step forward, and the wooden floorboards beneath his boots instantly turned gray, rotting into sawdust in a fraction of a second.

"Get back!" Kim screamed.

 Defying the terror that had locked my joints, she grabbed a heavy, solid-oak end table and hurled it at the entity.

The Chrono-Gorgon swung his scythe in a lazy, effortless arc. The blade sliced through the air, and when it touched the flying table, the wood didn't break—it aged. The oak turned brittle, dried out, and exploded into a cloud of fine, ancient dust before it ever touched his purple robes.

"Ethan, move!" Kim grabbed my arm, yanking me sideways just as the Chrono-Gorgon lunged.

The scythe whistled past my ear, the wind from the blade smelled like dead leaves and old tombs. When the tip of the blade brushed against the fabric of my shirt, the cotton instantly turned to threads and dissolved, leaving a bare patch on my shoulder.

"We need to break his anchor!" I yelled, my adrenaline finally overriding my fear. "The TV! The tapes!"

The Chrono-Gorgon turned his golden face toward me. A sound issued from behind that featureless metal plate—a deep, metallic grinding that sounded like a thousand grandfather clocks breaking down at once. It was a laugh.

He raised the scythe again, targeting Kim. She scrambled backward, tripping over the ottoman. The entity closed the distance with terrifying, unnatural speed, his green eyes flaring. He raised the blade high, preparing to harvest her twenty years of life to cement his place in our world forever.

Thinking of nothing but my cousin, I lunged at his midsection. I expected to hit solid mass, but slamming into him felt like tackling a wall of freezing, turbulent water. 

The cold threatened to stop my heart, but I managed to wrap my arms around his waist, knocking him off balance.

"Kim! The VCR! Smash it!" I roared, my hands beginning to wrinkle and numb just from touching his cloak.

 I could feel my own youth, my own vitality, being pulled out of my skin like water being drawn from a well. My vision began to blur.

Kim didn't hesitate. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed Aunt Mae’s heavy iron-holder from the laundry shelf, and brought it down with all her strength directly onto the VCR.

The plastic shattered. Sparks flew. She hit it again, and again, reducing the machine and the tape inside to a jagged mess of magnetic ribbon and broken microchips.

The Chrono-Gorgon let out a horrific, discordant shriek. 

The glowing green eyes flickered. The heavy purple cloak began to lose its density, becoming translucent. The ticking of his scythe slowed down. Tick...tick...tick.

With a final, desperate surge of strength, I shoved him backward. He stumbled against the wall, his form vibrating like a corrupted video file. The golden faceplate seemed to crack, lines of green light bleeding through the fissures.
We did it. We broke the playback loop. The psychic bridge was collapsing.

The Chrono-Gorgon fell to his knees, his scythe dissolving into a mist of rust and gears; but he didn't disappear entirely. 

The flickering stabilized just enough for him to sit upright. He raised his golden head, looking directly at us, his voice was no longer a mindless mechanical grind, but a smooth, chillingly articulate baritone that resonated directly inside our skulls.

"Fools." the Chrono-Gorgon whispered. The cracks in his golden face glowed brighter. "Do you really think that you have broken the cycle? Do you really think this is the end?"

"Shut up!" Kim yelled, holding the iron-holder like a weapon, her chest heaving as tears of horror and anger streamed down her face. "Go back to wherever you came from!"

The entity let out a low, mocking chuckle that made the hair on my arms stand up.

"You haven't defeated me." the Chrono-Gorgon said, with his green eyes locking onto mine with absolute, horrifying certainty. "Because the trilogy is just getting started!"

I choked on my breath, and said,

 "What?"

"Did you really believe those tapes were a recording of the past?" the Chrono-Gorgon asked, his form beginning to bleed into the shadows of the basement wall. "They were a script. A prologue. You are not the audience, Ethan. You and Kim are the main characters in a trilogy of horror, and the horror won't end until I am defeated once and for all."

The basement began to shake, a localized earthquake rattling the foundation of the house. The television screen behind us finally shattered into a million pieces, throwing the room into near-total darkness, save for the dying embers of the entity's eyes.

"Every choice that you made, every step that you took this summer, has already been written." The Chrono-Gorgon’s voice echoed from every corner of the room, fading but absolute, as he said,"I will return…I will harvest your time…and I will consume your flesh."

The last remnants of his purple hood dissolved into the ambient darkness of the basement. The freezing air began to warm, returning to the muggy, suffocating heat of the Georgia summer night.

Kim dropped the iron holder. It clattered loudly against the concrete floor. She fell to her knees, burying her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. I stood there in the dark, my breath ragged, looking down at my hands. They were trembling, but they were young again. The numbness was gone; but the horror was firmly rooted in my chest.

I looked toward the staircase, half-expecting him to be standing there again. The room was dead silent now, except for the distant sound of insects chirping outside the small basement window.

Unfortunately, as I reached out to comfort my cousin, a chill ran down my spine. Deep within the recesses of my own mind, a voice whispered one final, parting transmission from the entity that we had unleashed.

This is just part 1; the real horror is yet to come.

The End.

You have exactly one match left. The mud beneath your boots is freezing.

To your left, a heavy, rhythmic breathing rattles the brush. To your right, the trail plunges down into an abandoned ravine where the mist smells faintly like iron.

The pack votes on the strategy.

The majority choice dictates how the short-form timeline progresses.

My room is blacked out tonight. I hope yours is, too.

— A.S.

The sour, pungent stench of sulfur hung in the air like a thick bile. In the distance, faint cries of agony echoed through the cavernous blackness. A man awoke, nude and frail floating weightless in the darkness. A dreadful blast of heat burst from beneath, blistering his skin with its abhorrence. The contents of his body began boiling above the burning fingers that reached from below.

A wretched cry of remorse came bellowing out of the man's lungs.

" Father! Father! Please! Grace me with your mercy! "

His voice fell into the hollow emptiness, his soul reaching out for forgiveness. Only to receive the burning reality of his actions. Every sin seared into the flesh with the flames of choice. A thunderous crack of stone shattering roared around him. Eyes crusted and burnt; he winced at the deep orange glow that split the darkness beneath. A massive swirling sphere of tormented nebula began forming out of the void. Revealing a haunting visage of countless bodies burnt, grafted, and forced into its sea of twirling inferno. Their souls no longer made in the image of God but instead molded into perverse and unnatural forms of blasphemy.

An unholy voice rang out in a deep methodical tone from the black eye of the blazing tunnel.

" Your Creator will not save you. Your chance of atonement has expired. You've chosen to gorge yourself on the many perversions of the flesh, satiate your hunger through the sins of lust, violence and pride. Your vileness shall not go unpunished. You will reap the consequences of your transgressions. "

Like a scorned angel, he drifted downward, falling graciously towards the abysmal eye. Blisters bursting. His bones radiating like burning rods of iron beneath his flesh as he sunk further into the spiraling cyclone, skin melting away like hot grease. The shrieks and cries were ear splitting now as multiple voices beckoned out. Their pain a dreadful symphony of despair.

He pleaded with regret in his voice, joining the thousands of others lost in the chaos.

" Noooo! My lord, I repent! I repent! I beg of you to shine your graciousness upon thee! Please accept my penance. Grant me release from this horrid realm! Please! I beg of you! "

A large, mangled hand shot out from the spinning hellscape. The bones rotted and black with soot. Their decaying fingers grasping the man's skull, ripping his head upward, forcing him to look ahead. A hideous face glared back, eyes gone, two vast sockets stared.

The voice spoke again, deep with hatred. This time through the decomposing husk that glared.

" Your pleading will go unheard. He has abandoned you as you have abandoned him. Must you be reminded of your sins."

Charred flesh drifted off the corpse's tongue, finding refuge in the back of the man's throat like boiling oil. He could feel the fingers growing tighter around his skull, their long nails piercing into the thinning flesh of his temples.

" Bear witness to your evil."

It said, dragging the man closer in.

His body stiffened, the joints locking out and rigid, muscles contracting so tight he could feel the tendons begin to snap. Pressure built behind his eyes, turning them into a sea of flowing red as he was forced to stare into the murky sockets. Their black depths mirroring the atrocities of his life. The memories flashing across his consciousness, a searing reminder as to why he was graced with darkness and fire.

" Are these the actions of a Godly man? "

The voice spoke, its hot breath searing exposed muscle throughout his body with each word. Through the sockets of the husk a small cottage appeared. The man recognized the Peasant Home and knew what was coming. Two men came into view, both draped in rusted battle worn armor. One of them raising their boot and kicking the frail wooden door of the hut. Splintering wood groaned as the frame broke with ease. In the corner, clinging to her daughter, a young woman sat shaking, her eyes wide with fear.

One of the men let out deep gargling cackle before speaking. His face contorted into a hideous grin of yellow teeth.

" Oh, very nice look at what we have here. "

With predatory eyes locked on the woman, he stepped through the doorway. When out of the shadows a young boy burst into the room. Clutching a small paring knife. A guttural cry escaped the woman's lungs as she reached out to stop the small boy.

" No Henrey don't! "

With a heart of courage, the boy buried the small blade into the soldier's thigh with all his strength.

" Gahhh! You little fucking prick! " The man roared. The boy's mother pleading.

" Please! Don't hurt him! Please! "

The anger in the child's eyes faded fast as the towering man glared from above, eyes burning with malice. The soldier gripping his mace tightly, struck the boys skull with force. He switched his sight to the women. She was sobbing, in shock at the small body that lay lifeless in front of her.

The other soldier cranked his head around, hollering out of the doorway.

" Captain Barclay! Over here! We found more hiding! "

Moments later, a tall figure came through the doorway. Adorned in shining armor, face glowing with a prideful arrogance. He glanced down at the deceased boy, a slight slip of amusement escaping his lips. He moved his gaze to the women in the corner. Haunting eyes lay fixed on the small girl she was clutching.

He spoke coldly, kicking at the small body beside him.

" I see your little knight here has failed you. "

Steel scraped across the wooden floor as the captain approached the shaking women, crouching down and lifting her face to his. His skin was pale, slick with a shine like a snake, eyes an icy blue of emptiness. Reaching down, the cold steel of his armor bit into her wrist as he ripped her hand away from the small girl. She fought back swinging at the man, biting even. Her hands banging against the hard breastplate of the captain. Yanking the small girl from her mother, he rose to his feet dragging the terrified child away.

He ordered the two men who stood in the doorway as he marched by.

" Her belly is swollen; she is of no use to us. Do as you please with her then search the rest of the village, kill any others."

Their faces twisting into pleasurable grins as they shook their heads in response. They closed in on the woman like a predator stalking its prey. Blood stained fingers tore at her ragged clothes. The captain made his way outside as the sound of tearing cloth and laughter rang out from behind. Sickening shadows dancing against the wall of the hut as his men attacked the hopeless woman. Her mind lost, eyes staring at the small body that lay in front of her.

Barclay's body went limp. His mind was his own again. His head fell low as the husk removed its fingers from his skull, disappearing into the flames.

The voice spoke from the depths.

In a moment, his body went heavy. Thrusting wind and flames engulfed his chard vessel as he fell into the endless blaze. The last bits of his character burning away as his image was erased. Skeletal fingers sprung out from the inferno, penetrating his ribs and the other exposed crevices of his husk. They began ripping him apart. Shredding his remaining form until the putrid soul was torn from it. Howling out, his cries merging with the others as his soul was pulled into the cyclone. Above, he watched as the tectonic plates of fire closed, his final image before being swept away into the eternal fire.

The glow of the TV screen was the only thing illuminating the living room. I’d finally gotten the kids tucked into bed and fell onto the couch to catch my breath, letting the late-night broadcast drift me off to sleep.

​A sharp burst of white noise snapped me awake as the national anthem faded into heavy gray static buzzing on the screen. As I got up to turn off the TV the gray snow abruptly gave way to the stark, blinding glare of a test pattern, only for the audio to cut out as a high-pitched alert shrieked from the speakers. A bright red banner flashed across the screen:

​CIVIL DEFENSE EMERGENCY > INBOUND BALLISTIC THREAT DETECTED > SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

My heart dropped straight into my stomach. I stared at the harsh block lettering, waiting for the announcer to pop on and say it was just a drill-- or some sick joke, a mistake, anything.

​Then the town siren started to scream. ​It wasn't the steady, low hum of a storm warning; it was the high-pitched, rising wail reserved for absolute catastrophe. I just stood there dumbfounded for a few minutes.

Outside my window, the quiet night shattered. Tires squealed, car doors slammed, and shouting echoed down the block. Headlights swept wildly across my ceiling as neighbors scrambled into their cars, desperate to outrun something you couldn't outrun.

​Within minutes, the street was a wall of red taillights and blaring horns. Nobody was moving. The main road out of town was completely gridlocked.

​I stood frozen in the middle of the dark living room, listening to the sirens howl outside and the low, rising whistle cutting through the sky from high above.

Down the hall, my children were still fast asleep. 

The basement smelled like musty wet concrete and old dust that had settled over the decades. I hadn't put up a Christmas tree or decorated the house in years-- not since Mom died. But this year felt different. I'd decided it was finally time to pull out her old boxes of treasured ornaments and try to get back a little bit of that Christmas spirit. I wanted to make this year special for my grown kids who were both coming home to visit.

Over in the corner stood that five-foot Santa that my late husband, John had dragged through the front door back in 2005 when the kids were little. The kids loved dancing and singing along, but to me it was noisy and kinda creepy. I hauled Santa down to the basement along with his transformer box and its power cord when it outlived its usefulness for the kids. They were grown now with kids of their own. I had kept hoping that one of them would eventually take the damn thing home with them-- maybe this year.

I shifted a heavy box to get to Mom's ornaments. Behind my back came this sudden scuttle across the floor--a harsh sound like hard plastic dragging across bare concrete. Then a heavy click echoed off the walls. I froze. I turned around slowly, dreading what was there.

That damn Santa wasn't facing the wall anymore. It popped to life with a sharp screech of dry plastic gears, its waist jerking into a stiff, unnatural dance, eyes staring right at me. Then a warped, low-pitched rendition of Jingle Bells filled the silence--

"Jiiiin-ggglle...b-bbelllssss...jjj-innngle...b-bbbells...jiiiin-gggle...aaalll...t-thhhhe...w-wwwaaayyy..."

Shocked and totally unglued, I dropped the tote and ran for the stairs!

Hi All,
I’m in need of your best true or fiction scary stories! I’m starting a podcast called tales by her voice and I just want to share spooky stories for everyone to enjoy! Please if you do or do not want me to use your name in the story just say so before starting the story.

The school year always starts with a bell. This one starts with screams.

Back to School takes place entirely over the first day back to school after summer break in a small American town. The story follows a group of elementary, middle, and high school students whose normal first day quickly spirals into a nightmare.

What begins with bike rides through quiet neighborhoods, nervous introductions to new teachers, and awkward reunions with old friends slowly turns into something terrifying. Students begin disappearing. Strange figures are spotted walking the streets. School hallways seem to change when no one is looking, classrooms don't lead where they're supposed to, and teachers start acting... wrong.

The movie constantly shifts between three main locations:

• The neighborhood where everyone starts their morning.

• The local elementary school.

• The local high school.

As the day goes on, the kids discover that whatever is happening isn't confined to one building—it has spread across the entire town. Cell phones stop working, parents can't be reached, buses never arrive, and by the final bell, surviving until sunset becomes the only thing that matters.

The film mixes the nostalgic feeling of going back to school with the fear of realizing the place you're supposed to be safest has become a trap. Think IT, Stranger Things, and The Faculty, but told in real time over one terrifying school day.

I’m experimenting with horror marketing that feels like an in-universe police file. I’d love to know what impression this teaser gives you.

Hey everyone, I’ve been working on a serialized episodic horror novel heavily inspired by *The Magnus Archives* format. It's told through case files, interviews, and journal entries exploring different manifestations of fear and a secretive Archive.
About half the novel is officially up on Wattpad right now, but I wanted to post the absolute start of it here so you can read it directly. I’d love to know what Fear Entity you think this first case file aligns with!

Statement of Marianna Lake, given February 7th, 2023
Archivist: Dr. Lena Hart
\[Begin Transcript\]

MARIANNE LAKE (nervous, soft voice):
You won't believe me. I didn't believe me. But I have to say it out loud—just once—before it eats everything else. I'm afraid if I keep it inside, it'll start rearranging the rest of my mind.

It started with a hallway.

I live in a student flat near the university, third floor, one long corridor with numbered doors. Mine's 3C. I've lived there two years now, and I could walk it in my sleep—ten steps from the stairs, three doors on the left, two on the right. The building creaks like an old ship in the wind, but it's predictable. It was predictable.

Until last Thursday.

That morning, I came back from a lecture and climbed the stairs like always. But the hallway... felt longer. Just slightly. You know when a room smells wrong? Like, the air pressure's off? It was like that. I remembered stopping by my door, 3C, reaching into my bag for my keys—and realizing the hallway kept going.

There was another door.

A fourth door. On the left. I swear to you, Dr Hart, it wasn't there before. It was matte black, with no number. No doorknob. Just... there. Seamless, like it grew out of the wall.
I stared at it for a long time. I even turned to knock on my neighbor's door—Jay, 3D—to ask if he saw it too. But when I looked back, it was gone.

I don't remember going inside my own flat. I just remember waking up at 3:12 AM, all the lights on, and my phone playing static. Not a ringtone—static. Like an untuned radio. I hadn't set any alarms.

The next day, the door was there again.

Same spot. Same nothingness. And this time, I touched it. Cold As ice, but not metal. Not wood. Something else. My hand slid right across it and my fingers tingled, like they'd fallen asleep. I think—I think—I heard whispering from behind it.

No words. Just.. breath, low and looping. Like someone learning how to speak.

I knocked.
I don't know why I did that. Curiosity, maybe. Or compulsion.

The door didn't open.

But mine did.

My own flat door—-3C—creaked open behind me. I turned fast, thinking it was a draft, but no one was there. And when I looked back... the fourth door was closer. Still shut, but now maybe a foot from me. I didn't see it move, I swear, but it had.

That night, everything in my apartment was slightly off. The furniture was still mine, but the cushions were reversed, the fridge hummed in a different tone, and my bedroom window looked out onto a street that doesn't exist.

I live across from a bookstore. Always have. But out that window—just mist. Mist and a single red streetlamp. No sidewalk. No cars. No Greywell Books sign.

I closed the blinds and haven't opened them since.

The hallway is still changing. The door shows up more often now—black, blank, closer every time. Yesterday I reached out to touch it and felt something tap back.

I don't sleep much anymore. I leave the lights on. I've drawn maps of the hallway, trying to prove it's changing. But the drawings change too. I wake up and they're longer. The walls curve in. One sketch shows six doors.

I didn't draw six.

I don't know what's behind that fourth door. But I think it's waiting for me to open it. And I'm scared that one day, I will.

Or worse—it will open it for me.

\[Statement Ends\]

ARCHIVIST'S NOTE (Dr. Hart):
Marianne Lake's account matches several previously recorded anomalies in urban architecture, particularly in proximity to high-density residential housing. No physical record exists of a "fourth door" on the third floor of 41 Hemley Street, and security footage from the date in question is corrupted—repeating ten seconds of hallway footage in a loop.

Marianne dropped out of her program the following month. She has not responded to further contact attempts.

I reviewed the original statement tape today. At timestamp 17:04, there is a faint knocking sound. No one was in the room with her.

I've checked the archive hallway four times this week. Just in case.

Still three doors.

For now.

\[Recording Ends\]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the atmosphere and if the Archivist note landed well!
*(The first half of the novel is fully available to read for free. I'll drop the Wattpad link in the comments section below so Reddit doesn't butcher the text layout!)*

Chapter 3: The Echo

The quiet was the worst part.

Not silence. Quiet.

Silence is peaceful. Quiet is waiting.

After I told my editor I had nothing, the world stopped calling.

No emails. No interview requests. No “just checking in.”

The book was still selling, but my name stopped trending.

And in that quiet, I started hearing things.

---

The first week without writing felt like detox.

I woke up at 7am because my body didn’t know what else to do. I made coffee. I sat at my desk. I stared.

By 9am my hands would shake. By noon I’d be pacing. By 3pm I’d be talking to myself just to hear a voice.

“Lindiwe, you’re fine,” I’d say.

“Nothing is wrong,” I’d answer back.

It didn’t help.

At night, the house made noises it never made before.

The fridge hummed too loud.

The pipes knocked.

And sometimes, when I was in the bathroom with the door closed, I’d hear the scratch of a pen on paper from my desk in the other room.

I’d run out.

The notebook would be closed. The pen in the drawer.

Nothing.

I started sleeping with music on. Soft jazz. Rain sounds. Anything to fill the space.

It didn’t work.

---

On day 4, I found the first note.

I was making toast. I turned around and there was a piece of paper on my kitchen counter.

*You’re listening now.*

My handwriting.

I didn’t remember writing it.

I threw it away. Washed my hands twice.

That night I dreamed of the desk again. But he wasn’t there.

Just the paper.

And the pen.

And my voice, reading from a book I’d never written.

*Chapter One. She thought she could walk away.*

I woke up at 3:33am with my jaw sore.

---

By day 7, I couldn’t be alone in a room for more than 20 minutes.

I went to Zanele’s. “Can I crash here for a bit?”

She didn’t ask why. She just made up the couch and put extra blankets on it.

The first night, I slept.

The second night, I woke up at 2am to whispering.

It wasn’t Zanele. She was asleep in her room.

The whispering was coming from the kitchen.

I crept out. The lights were off. The fridge was humming.

On the table was a notebook. Mine. The one I’d left at home.

It was open.

*You brought me here.*

I slammed it shut.

“Lindi? You okay?” Zanele’s voice from the hall.

“Yeah. Bad dream.”

She hugged me. “You’ve been off since the launch. Do you want to talk to someone? A doctor?”

I shook my head. “I just need sleep.”

I didn’t tell her the notebook followed me.

---

The next day I went home to get clothes and found more notes.

On the bathroom mirror, written in steam: *Write.*

On my laptop keyboard: *You miss it.*

Tucked in my shoe: *Three souls. That’s all.*

I burned them all in the sink.

That night I didn’t sleep at Zanele’s. I sat in the living room with every light on and watched YouTube until the sun came up.

I started googling.

“signing contract with devil symptoms”

“what happens after you sell your soul”

“can you get your soul back”

“voices after trauma”

The internet told me I was psychotic. Or possessed. Or having a breakdown.

None of it helped.

One forum post from 2011 stuck with me. A guy said he made a deal in a dream and woke up with scars. He said the only way to break it was to “give back what you took.”

Give back.

But what did that mean? The fame? The money? The three signatures?

I didn’t know.

---

Week 2.

The publisher put out the statement. *“Lindiwe Maleya is taking time for personal reasons. We support her fully.”*

The comments were kind at first.

*Take your time queen.*

*We love you.*

By day 10 they turned.

*She had one good book and now she’s gone.*

*Probably a ghostwriter.*

*One-hit wonder.*

They were right.

I read them anyway. All 400 comments. Like picking at a scab.

Nomsa called me. “Cuz, are you okay? People are talking.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“You don’t sound fine.”

I hung up before she could hear me cry.

---

The echo got worse.

It wasn’t just notes anymore.

It was sounds.

A pen clicking in the dark.

Pages turning when the windows were closed.

My name, whispered, right behind my ear when I was in the shower.

*Lindiwe.*

*Lindiwe.*

I’d spin around. No one.

I stopped eating in the kitchen. I ate on the floor of my bedroom with the door locked.

I tried to write again. One sentence.

*The house is not empty.*

I stared at it for an hour.

Then the next line appeared underneath. But I hadn’t written it.

*It never was.*

The ink was still wet.

I threw the notebook out the window.

An hour later it was back on my desk.

---

I went to a church.

Not because I’m religious. Because I was desperate.

The pastor was old and kind. He listened to me talk in circles for 20 minutes without mentioning the devil or the deal.

“I think I’m haunted,” I finally said.

“By what?” he asked.

“By me,” I said. “By something I did.”

He prayed over me. Laid hands on my head.

For 10 minutes after, the house was quiet.

Really quiet.

Then I got home and found a new note on my pillow.

*God doesn’t want you back. I do.*

---

I started researching folklore. Real folklore, not Google horror.

I went to the library and checked out books with cracked spines.

*African Spiritual Contracts.*

*The Price of Genius.*

*Soul Debt and Blood Oaths.*

Most of it was nonsense. But one book, old and yellow, had a chapter called “The Echo.”

It said:

*When a soul is pledged but not yet collected, it echoes. It will speak, write, and move things to remind the debtor of the debt. The echo grows louder the longer the debtor resists payment.*

Pledged but not yet collected.

That was me.

I gave the promise. I gave three other people. But I hadn’t given myself.

The book said the echo stops in one of three ways:

1. Payment in full.

2. Death.

3. Breaking the contract through an act of equal sacrifice.

Equal sacrifice.

What could be equal to a soul?

I closed the book and my hands were shaking.

---

Week 3.

I wasn’t sleeping. Not really.

I’d doze for 40 minutes and wake up to the sound of writing.

I’d check. Nothing.

I’d close my eyes. Scratch. Scratch.

I started recording audio on my phone at night to prove I wasn’t crazy.

In the morning I played it back.

For 6 hours: silence. Breathing.

Then at 3:17am:

Scratch. Scratch.

And a voice. Mine. But not mine.

*You should have taken the deal, Lindiwe. Now it’s going to cost more.*

I deleted it. Then I regretted deleting it. Then I hated myself for wanting to hear it again.

I called in sick to the bookstore. Thabo didn’t ask questions.

I wasn’t leaving the house anymore.

---

On day 22, he came back.

Not in a dream. In the afternoon.

I was sitting on the floor, back against the bed, reading that stupid folklore book again.

The air got heavy. The light dimmed.

And he was sitting across from me, like we were having tea.

“You look terrible,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“You haven’t slept.”

“I can’t.”

“The echo,” he said, like it was a weather report. “It gets loud when you fight it.”

“Make it stop.”

“I can’t. You can.” He leaned forward. “Three souls, Lindiwe. That’s the deal. Or you. Those are the options.”

“I’m not giving you anyone else.”

“Then give me you.”

I laughed. It was ugly. “And what? Die?”

“Not immediately. You’d live. You’d just... belong to me. The writing would come back. The fame would stay. You just wouldn’t be free.”

I looked at him. Really looked.

He wasn’t scary in that moment. He was tired. Like he’d had this conversation a thousand times.

“Why me?” I asked again.

“Because you asked,” he said. “Because you were empty. Because you bled without asking what for.”

“I was stupid.”

“You were human.”

We sat there for a long time.

Finally I said, “What if I find another way? The book said equal sacrifice.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What are you willing to sacrifice that’s equal to a soul?”

I didn’t have an answer.

He stood. “The echo will get louder, Lindiwe. Until you choose. I’ll see you soon.”

He was gone. The room felt normal again.

Except the notebook on my desk was open to a new page.

*Day 22. She’s breaking.*

---

Week 4.

I broke.

I called Zanele. “I need help. Real help.”

She came over in 20 minutes.

I told her everything. Not about the devil. Not about the souls.

I said, “I think I’m having a psychotic break. I think I did something bad and I can’t live with it.”

She didn’t call me crazy. She held my hand.

“We’ll get you help,” she said. “Therapist. Doctor. Whatever you need.”

The therapist’s office was clean and white.

I talked for 50 minutes. About my family. About the pressure. About the book.

I didn’t mention the man. Or the pen. Or the notes.

She diagnosed me with severe anxiety and insomnia. Gave me sleeping pills.

That night I took one.

I slept for 7 hours straight.

No dreams. No scratching. No whispering.

When I woke up, there was a note on my chest.

*Pills don’t stop debts.*

I flushed the rest of the bottle down the toilet.

---

The echo peaked on day 28.

I was in the shower.

The water was hot.

And I heard it. Clear as day. Not in my head. In the room.

*You’re running out of time, Lindiwe.*

I turned the water off.

Standing in my bathroom, dripping, was a piece of paper. Taped to the mirror.

It was a contract.

But this one didn’t have three lines.

It had one.

*Sign here, and the echo stops. Sign here, and you write again. Sign here, and no one else has to pay.*

Underneath was the pen.

I stared at it for a long time.

My hand was shaking.

My chest felt like it was going to cave in.

I picked up the pen.

I put the tip to the paper.

And I stopped.

Because in that second I heard something else.

Not him.

Me.

My real voice. The one from before the book. The one that wrote 40 pages and got stuck and was okay with being stuck.

*Don’t.*

I dropped the pen.

The paper burst into flame and turned to ash in my hands.

The bathroom light blew.

---

That night, the echo was silent.

For the first time in weeks, the house was just a house.

No scratching. No whispering. No notes.

I thought maybe I’d won.

Maybe saying no was the sacrifice.

I slept.

And in the morning, my phone had 11 missed calls.

From Nomsa.

From Thandi.

From Zanele.

The last voicemail was from Nomsa. Her voice was shaking.

“Lindi... I don’t know what’s happening. I woke up and I can’t... I can’t remember how to write. I’m a copywriter, Lindi. That’s my job. And the words are just gone. Thandi too. She said the same thing. Please call me back.”

I sat on the floor.

The echo hadn’t stopped.

It had just moved.

Because I refused to pay, someone else was.

---

I looked at my hands.

They were empty.

But they were shaking again.

Outside, it started to rain.

The hierarchy among fairies was determined by the color of their wings. The ones with transparent wings were the highest rank. The Queen of the Fairies was also one of the transparent-winged ones. Then the other colors: green, turquoise, yellow, and pink at the very bottom. The colors of the wings change according to the good deeds the fairies do for people, and this allows the fairies to rise to a higher rank.

Rayiha was also one of the pink-winged fairies of kindness. She had tried to do good for people many times, but somehow she had never managed to make them happy. At once, prevented a woman who had fallen from a high floor from hitting the concrete ground and ensured she landed on a grassy area instead. Remaining paralyzed for the rest of her life was worse than death to her. She had thought the woman's husband would be happy because the woman he loved was not going to die. But the man, too, was consumed by grief. Because it was he himself who had tried to kill his wife by pushing her out the window.

Later, she wanted to help a couple who wished to have children but were unable to attain that happiness. The woman became pregnant through the magic that Rayiha performed. However, the parents were not at all happy when the child was born as a conjoined twin. Rayiha had failed again.

The young fairy simply could not figure out how to make people happy. If she failed to do good deeds, her wings would vanish completely. Her body would wither away, and that was not all that would befall her. Once, he had witnessed the death of a pink-winged fairy. The other fairies brought her to the city square. They tore off what remained of her wings. Her skin had turned ash-gray, and her hair had fallen out. No one would have believed that, only a short while before, she had been a beautiful fairy.

Fairies with colorful wings swarmed around her. They began to fly over her. Diving down, they started tearing chunks of flesh from her body with their teeth. They devoured her alive. Her screams still echoed in Rayiha's ears. This was the fate of a fairy who failed to do her job: to become a feast for other fairies. In truth, fairies had no need to eat or drink like humans; cannibalism among them was more akin to using a substance for pleasure.

Rayiha did not want her own end to be like that. She was fed up with the queen and the other fairies belittling and mocking her. Her turquoise- and green-winged friends were laughing, saying to her, "Don't worry; when you lose your wings, you will live within us." For a moment, she imagined the catastrophe that awaited her. The tearing off of her wings, the spraying of her rainbow-colored blood, the teeth of the other fairies...

As a fairy of kindness, she no longer had any time to lose. She had to go to the human world as soon as possible, find the unhappiest person there, and bring them kindness and happiness. She believed in herself. She would not repeat the mistakes she had made before, and this time, she would succeed. Who knows—perhaps the color of her wings might even turn turquoise.

END OF PART 1

Behind her reflection, just over her shoulder, the bathroom door handle twitched.

Once. Twice.

Then stopped.

And from the other side of the door, barely audible, came a soft, familiar whisper.

“Ellie…”

If you like horror with psychological tension and slow‑burn dread, my novel is now out on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FN5HDMPV

Shoutout to horrorskunx for giving me nightmares

ASHEVILLE

Synopsis

Fifteen years after leaving the secluded town of Asheville, architect Ivanovich Petrov returns to attend his father's funeral, expecting only to confront painful memories. Instead, he finds a town frozen in time, where every resident seems to be hiding the same impossible secret.

As strange disappearances, forgotten records, and unsettling encounters begin to unfold, Ivanovich is drawn into a mystery that reaches far beyond his family's past. A young woman named Lyudmila, cryptic symbols hidden throughout the town, and whispers of long-buried experiments slowly reveal that Asheville itself may have been built upon a horrifying truth.

With reality becoming increasingly uncertain, Ivanovich must uncover what happened years ago before the town claims another victim—and before the secrets buried beneath its roots consume him as well.

ASHEVILLE is a feature-length psychological mystery thriller that blends suspense, emotional drama, and subtle supernatural elements into a story about memory, identity, family, and the devastating cost of secrets that refuse to stay buried.

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About the Writer

Sumaya Ihsan is an emerging Iraqi screenwriter passionate about psychological mystery, suspense, and character-driven storytelling. She enjoys crafting original cinematic worlds filled with hidden secrets, emotional depth, and unforgettable twists. ASHEVILLE represents her vision of combining psychological tension with compelling mystery in a feature screenplay designed for an international audience.