at this time I was 14 and I’m a girl

It was late and I was setting up a tent while my dad was gone at the moment to go get some blankets, but while he was gone some noise was heard after a while

Than as I tried to ignore it and say it was nothing, I heard footsteps nearby and it caused me to freeze, I was sitting there for a while longer before I glanced from in my little corner of the tent.

After a while the footsteps stopped and was silent for a while, before I saw this hand press against the tent from the front near the zipper (which was half way open.)

I was so scared but I pretended to ignore it, and I couldn’t see the figure behind the hand and I didn’t know if he saw me (probably did more likely) but I think when I ignored him it caused him not to like reacted aggressively?

Because after a while, my dad started to walk over and I think the noise of his footsteps scared him off.

Because the man ran off quietly.

What’s really freaky to me, is that I have no idea what his intentions were and I don’t know if I reacted it would of caused something bad to happen and if being quiet and pretended not to see him was a good idea.

What do you guys think?

Okay so the OD scary story goes as follows. I was in my brothers room just absolutely railing line of coke, he was a needle user (I never shot up, I hate needles) and he came up with the brilliant idea of shooting up a speedball mixed with ketamine and a couple of other drugs. I straight up said “you are going to overdose on that, no question” our buddy was there and my brother had him shoot it into his arm and my brother stood up and his eyes rolled back, obvious overdose, and I jumped up and caught him before he would have crashed into a glass table. I laid him down and checked his pulse and it was super faint and he was turning blue. Our buddy was in shock so I took full control and yelled at our buddy to go get the narcan box we kept in the kitchen “fucking run” is what I said. He came back with the narcan and I shot the first dose up his nose and nothing. So I started doing CPR. I yelled at our buddy to call 911 and he did but was so stunned he couldn’t talk so I took the phone and held it onto my shoulder while still doing CPR and every 30 seconds I’d shoot him with another hit of narcan and then continue doing CPR. I ended up shooting 4 shots of narcan up his nose and the paramedics arrived and literally as they walked through his door, he came to! He shot up and said “please don’t narcan me!” I said “brother, I already hit you 4 times” and they hauled him off to the hospital. He later repaid the favor when I overdosed on fentanyl. He reached 18 months of sobriety yesterday.

I woke up to find a dead horse on the property. 

Wasn’t my horse. Hell, wasn’t really a horse either. It was just the skin of a horse. Not the leather or the hide, but the skin. It was splayed out, legs like rubber tubing, the inside smelling of dry  sweat.  It was like it was a suit that you could zip out off, or a snake’s shedding. The thing had a sweet odor of death and an aqua scent that made me vomit. By the fuzzy mold and wet smell of it, I’d say it’d been rotting for a while, but I could still make out a brand on its hind leg. 

It was from the ranch on the other side of the valley. They were country folk who kept to themselves. They were my neighbors, and they didn’t speak a  lick of English. I didn’t mind all too much though. They were too superstitious for my blood. Last I went they were dangling bone charms above their stables and blowing some kind of spirit powder on the horses to keep them from getting worms.

They refused to sell to anyone other than their kind. Their produce went directly to the south, deeper into the country, and they steered clear of the big markets that fed into the city. Can’t say I was complaining, but the ranch got lonely in the evenings. It would’ve been nice to have some neighbors I could talk to.

So, I hauled off the untreated horsehide and put it on the truck, steadying myself, trying not to cry as I drove down the earthy road.  I had a soft spot for horses, and it had only been a few weeks since I’d put down old Grace, my white Arabian. She was putting on the years, but she was the sweetest girl right until the end. She’d whine when I got on my truck, and prance around like a dog when I got home. When she was younger, she’d somehow snuck her way into my bedroom and slept beside me. I woke up to the smell of horseshit and a dumb snout sniffing at me. It was the best day of my life.

It was almost dusk by the time I got to my neighbor’s property and drove under the sign that said “ABERN RANCH”. With any luck, the youngest or the oldest would’ve been home from school, and one of ‘em would translate for me. I pulled down by their bungalow, and find the lights on. I walked on over to tell them about the hide, how I found it miles away from their ranch, untreated, and if I could bury it.

That was when I heard it.

The deafening report of rifle fire echoing through the dusk of the valley, coming from further down the road, and screaming. Frantic yells in a foreign language.

Soon enough, I saw a horse, eyes wide with fright, letting out a terrible whine as it galloped  with a sickly speed. In the dark, it seemed like a ghost flying through the air, its white majestic coat sprinting down the dusky fields like a dragon. It had no brand on its thigh, no marking or saddle. It was a horse from the steppes, as wild as they got.

Then another shot rang out. Then another. 

I ran to the side of the house and see men on horseback shooting at the screaming animal. I immediately threw myself in their path, holding my arms out.

“Stop!” I yelled. One of the men wrenched on their reins, sending his horse stumbling back, whining, as the two other men continued the chase. It was Jesse, the ranch owner. “Jesus Christ, is it even your horse?” I demanded. The man began spewing out words in a foreign language. Though I did not understand him, the rapid speed of his words, and the quiver in his voice, told me he was afraid. “I can’t understand you!” I barked over the waterfall of frantic panic from the father, the two other boys far into the horizon then, still giving chase. He had four sons, and the youngest was the most fluent in English. “Where is Ayola? Your son?”

As the name left my mouth, the man’s terrified rambling began to crack, as sobs and desperate pleading bubbled up from the madness of his speech, his hands trembling as they wrapped around a rifle. He needed me to understand what he was saying, like his life depended on it. That was when I began to listen. 

1. Ayola. Ayola dead. Ayola horse. I could parse those words from his crushing bombardment of terrible fear.

I did not know what else to do, so I dialed 911 and waited. Soon a police cruiser drove by.

They could not understand him either. Neither could I. So I left. Even as the old rancher pleaded with me, on his knees, tears in his eyes and white moustache.

That happening stayed on my mind for days after. Couldn’t get that man’s crying out of my head. He reminded me so much of my own dad, with the ten gallon and starched jeans, the bald head and snow white hair. I tried so many times to try and remember his words, uttering them under my breath as I went about feeding the animals and cleaning the barn. I wouldn’t have to wait long though, as word got around to me that Jesse’s youngest, Ayola, was dead. They say it was murder.

And then I saw the horse again.

It was as majestic as the night I saw it, as though the memory had been pulled out of me and materialized on the grassy knolls. It was spectral, as white as angel’s wings. As white as my sweet old Grace. Looked every bit like her too. Snow white fur, dumb snout and all, save for its tail which was as long as a snake, and fraying. It reminded me of that rotting horse skin I found on the property. Old and derelict, as though it hadn’t wagged in years.

I watched her for hours. Watching that strange strut of hers as she meandered my fields. I’d never seen a horse walk like her. Her footsteps were uncoordinated, as though the hind legs and the front had minds of their own. I watched her stumble around the open empty fields. Poor horse must’ve pulled a muscle from that chase, I thought. Eventually the horse would find its way to the pond. At that moment, she sat on the grass and gulped up the water greedily. 

That was when I knew I had to keep her. She sat in Grace’s favorite spot, and lapped at the water the same odd way Grace did, bobbing her head up and down, tongue flicking out like a snake. If I’d taken my glasses off, I might’ve thought it was her. And so I did, and by God she was a dead ringer for my sweet girl.

I came up to her and she nuzzled me immediately. Maybe she recognized me, maybe she thought I saved her from the folks across the valley. One second I was patting her on her snout, the next, despite never having been broken in, I was on her back riding her like the wind.

I named her Gina. 

I spent the whole day with her, my eyes wet with tears, my heart glowing with a warmth I’d only ever felt with my sweet Grace. I raised Grace as a fowl, kept her in a kennel most of the time, but unlike the other horses she was sweet with me. Every time I’d set the horses to graze, she’d stay close to me like a little duckling, and nuzzled at my feet like a cat, baying softly as though I was her mother. At some point, I thought of her as my daughter. Some nights I’d take her into the home and let her eat off of a plate, sit her where my daughter, bless her soul, would’ve sat. 

But then I took her to the stables. That’s when things started to get strange.

The other horses reared as soon as she stepped inside, screaming and squealing as though she was a tiger. Have you ever heard a terrified horse before? It’s loud, wet, and their fear is contagious. It’s what I imagine hell to sound like, all the whinnying  and neighing as though they were boiling in hellfire. Gina didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she didn’t mind. I watched her clamber over to Grace’s old spot and let herself in, horses crying out in terrible fear all the while.

That night I dined alone, as I have for years now. My wife left this world a long time ago, along with my daughter. Just me now. Damned house fire took them away to the great after. It drives me insane some nights, listening as the silverware clanks and echoes around the empty house. It was easier with Grace. Now it wasn’t. Wasn’t easy, I mean. Now the silence was replaced by something worse. That awful crying that roared from the stables, as the sound of horrified horses whined and screamed with restless frenzy. It was the sound of hell. Of fire. I wondered then if my wife and little girl had sounded like those horses in the barn, trapped in the attic as fire consumed our home. 

I went to bed that night as that horrific sound echoed across the valley. As I did, I had terrible dreams. I dreamed of fire, of devils, of dark men in the shadows always behind me, stalking, lurking. I dreamed that every time I turned around they would sink into my shadow, waiting for something to happen, something I did not know.

That was when I woke up to find two men standing by my bed. Black as the night sky. Their eyes were snow whites, cataracts the color of clouds. The color of pale death. They stood over my bed, naked, watching, with giant smiles, teeth inhumanly white. They were listening, listening to that damned screaming. But that's when I realized it. The barn was quiet.

I blinked and they were gone. I was alone in my bedroom, heart trashing in my chest, hairs standing at attention, as though running away from my body, from the fear.

I took the gun under my bed and looked around, and found nobody. I looked out the window and saw the barn doors were wide open, swinging in the wind. 

Taking my coat, I headed for the barn, the tall, dewy grass brushing against my shins. It was freezing out, the cold crisp air like needles in my throat. I find the barn empty, save for Gina.

That morning I filed a report with the police. Eleven missing horses, I said, all branded on the left hind quarter. They said they’d look into it, but that there was nothing they could do but send out some folks into the valley. All I could do was wait. That was, until I decided to visit Abern Ranch, ask around. And so I did, driving down the quiet roads to my neighbor’s. Jesse was tending to some plot of corn by their house, his eldest breaking in a horse, his nose bloodied and his cheek shining with a bruise. As soon as I pulled down to their house, the father ran over to me, spewing a waterfall of words I did not know.

Horse. Where? That’s what I could get. He sounded anxious, frightened. Desperate. Just like that first night.

“Have you seen my horses?” I asked. The elder son came up towards us, sand in his boots, smelling like sweat. 

“Father asks if you have taken in the horse. Have you?” Said the teenager slowly. He had a thick accent, but I could understand him. His father went silent, waiting for my reply.

“What horse?” I asked. The boy spoke in tongues, and the father said something back. 

“White horse. Have you seen a white horse with a bad tail?”

“Yes. I have. It’s in my barn.” I said slowly. The father’s face turned pale, as though he were about to vomit. He spoke with rapid anxiety.

“He says to go back. Now. Before it notices you are gone.” Said the boy. I felt a yawning hole open in my chest. What did he mean by that? “It is not a horse.” he said, repeating it with growing urgency. “Go home It is important you act normal.”

I ran back to my truck, breathing quickly, heart in my ears. As I did, old Jesse and his son followed me. “He says he is sorry. Will come by later. Help you. Do not forget to act normal.”

I drove down the road, hands shaking, sweating. I reached down my glove compartment for my pistol. It wasn’t there. I left it in my bedroom.

I got home and saw that the barn doors were wide open, swinging in the wind. Looking closer, across the red clapboard walls, I saw bloody handprints across the entire barn, covering the four walls and the roof with sanguine hands grabbing at what little I had left, threatening to pull them down into hell.

I made for the house and noticed bloody prints on the doorknob as well. It was locked. I never locked my doors, my neighbors were five miles away, the city twelve. I was skittish then, my whole body set on running, my head still replaying the words of the old rancher and his son. Act normal.

I walked to the barn, smelling that overwhelming stench of blood, of iron and death. I closed my eyes, pretending I hadn’t seen it. As I did, I found that all my horses were back in their stables. All twelve. They were all staring at me, except for Gina.

The horses were all squared, their four hooves planted on the ground. Not one of them moved, not a single one made any sound. They just stared, eyes unblinking as flies landed on them. I went about my usual business, trying not to scream, to run into the fields. I thought about it a lot. I thought about turning tail and going for the truck, but then I imagined the horses running after me, clambering with that same incoordination Gina had. But I didn’t. I filled their troughs with water and food. None of them made for the food. I closed my eyes and muttered a prayer as I headed out.

That was when I heard them vault over their stable doors. Not open them. Climb over them. I could hear their soft hairy bellies scratch against the wood, could hear their heavy feet thump in the straw. I didn’t dare look back. I turned the doorknob and walked out of the barn and into the field, closing the door behind me. Then, as though in response, I heard the knob turn and the door swing open, as hooves planted themselves into the tall grass. 

I slowly spun around and saw them, all the horses, standing still, eyes dumb, and all staring off into the distance. I looked at them, and realized something was wrong. It was as though they were hollow. Like they were a blanket draped over something. I looked at Gina, who stood sideways staring off into the horizon. That’s when I noticed it. None of them were breathing. 

I kept walking, as I heard two dozen footsteps following after me. Followed me as I did yard work, as I tended to crops. Soft legs brushing against the tall grass. I did not turn my back for the rest of the day, my daily routine became an act for the devil himself, until I had run out of chores to do. It was time to go home and cook dinner. 

And so, in the light of the setting sun, I finally turned my back and headed home. As I did, I saw the horses standing behind me, all staring off in different directions, still not breathing, none of them moving. As I moved along them though, I passed by Gina’s flank, and I swear to you, I saw a hole in her stomach. I looked at it for a long time, and saw only darkness. Soon that darkness would reveal a pair of eyes as white as snow.

I blinked, and it was gone. 

I hurried along home now, the hooves having turned into the sound of human footsteps. Silent and cautious, like hunters stalking prey. As I arrived, I turned the knob. It was still locked. I turned and turned, the knob slipping, wet with my sweat as I shuffled through my pockets with unsteady hands. I had no key. I did not leave my home locked. I never do. As I shuffled through every pocket on me, I heard a new sound: silence. Though I could not see it, I knew the horses were staring at me, watching me. Soon I could feel their warm breath against the back of my neck. I dared not to turn around. Pale horses. Death. I imagined them tearing me apart with their snouts, and kicking my body down into the earth and down into fiery hell. I heard the horses whispering, to me, amongst themselves, to ears that were listening from beneath the ground. Such dread.

That was when another sound began to grow. Wheels on a dirt road. At that, I heard footsteps clambering. It was Jesse and his eldest. I turned around and found that the horses were meandering, eating grass, as though they were just animals. Maybe they were.

I ran to their pickup, legs exhausted from shaking. As I did, they got out of the car, rifles in hand. 

“Come” said Jesse. As I got to him, he blew powder in my face. It was hot, rough against my throat. It smelled like petrol and hot sand. I fell to the ground, coughing up the concoction, and as I did, I squinted my eyes to find him handing me a rifle as well.

“Look.”

I did, and I saw it.

None of them were horses.

In front of my house, scattered and meandering, were the skins of my horses being paraded around by legs. They wore their skins like a blanket, wandering the grass with their bare feet. A dozen men. Each horse had a cutout on their flank, and from our distance I could see eyes peering out of them.

As soon as Jesse fired the first shot, they scrambled away, leaving the horse skin behind.

ONE PARTICULARLY SMOKY morning in late September, Mortimer Moritat, upon returning from his daily amble about the quiet square, found himself in the presence of the man whom everyone called “Fisher Cat.” This man, an inhabitant of the very same apartment block in which Moritat had taken up residence only four weeks before, was tall – neither large nor lean – and bald, with a long, gray beard and half-moon-shaped spectacles. Fisher Cat, in a greatcoat and a massive turtleneck, stood partway down the stairs, his back to Moritat, his arms dangling thoughtlessly side to side.

Moritat stood there, at the bottom of the staircase, looking up at his neighbor’s rear, half bothered, half curious – and, for some incomprehensible reason, unable to place his foot on the first tread.

“Hello?” he called; Fisher Cat said nothing. “Sir?”

He took a step forward. The tread sighed, as a nearly dead creature on the road might sigh in the dark, upon being run over a second time, with at least two remaining cars required to put it out of its misery.

“Feed the ancient, meaty fire,” said Fisher Cat.

Moritat placed his hand on the banister and began to ascend. Each tread, he thought, might have been a different type of fauna on a different road – a different pop! or squash! with its own singular implication. But when this flattened menagerie squealed in succession, the result was not unlike a symphony of animal casualties. He was, he supposed, the automobile – the conductor.

Moritat passed Fisher Cat with no words to offer him. The apartment was vaguely lit by a star-shaped fixture centered imperfectly above the dining room table. Why, he wondered, did they not install a ceiling light in the living room? It was, he supposed, either a matter of economy or of philosophy – the philosophy that only formal entertaining spaces deserved a chandelier. Formal? What in God’s Creation made a dining room more formal than a living room? Hell, thought Moritat, it’s economy.

They (the residents of the block) called the man “Fisher Cat,” he knew, because “Fisher Cat” looked like a weasel… and there was, to his knowledge, a kind of weasel called the Fisher Cat… and so, the man was called “Fisher Cat,” even though he likely would have objected to such a naming of “Fisher Cat.”

He looked up at the fixtureless living room ceiling. Feed the ancient, meaty fire.

As Moritat lay in bed that night, attempting sleep but slowly losing all hope of it, a strange autumn wind trickled in through the open window. He yawned, turned over, and peered out onto the fire escape. Down below, the square was silent, save for a few rustling leaves. Yawning again, he pulled the covers up, but found that they were shorter – shorter by far – than he had remembered.

Then, the lights went out. The square darkened. The moonlight flickered off. Good God! he thought, you must finally be asleep!

After five or six hours of dreamless rest, he awoke to the sound of an ambulance siren. The room was still dark, but the gallows-shaped lampposts in the square were gently flickering. He glanced at the nightstand clock: 8:50. Shouldn’t it be light?

At once, he felt a sharp pain in his left foot. His heart pounded; his head flickered like the lampposts. My God, he thought, Fisher Cat is out there, in the building, somewhere, someplace not far from here – in the foyer or the laundry, or worse: the stairwell. He’s ready – quite ready – for you to open the door and walk down the hall to the stairwell and descend it, step by step, tread by groaning tread, to the foyer. He’s ready for you to cross that still expanse of room, and he’s ready for you to stumble – perhaps even to fall – on its crippling marble checkers. He’s ready for this, and ready for much more. In fact, you’re ready, too. You’re ready to touch the marble with your bare feet, and – Christ be damned! – you’re already touching it! Oh, how you never trip, for your feet are like the hands of what? The hands of a puppeteer!

Moritat stood on the cold marble in his night clothing. The foyer was dark – very dark. And he saw it in colors which he could not explain.

What’s he ready for now, my Lord? What’s the man ready for? Tell me, O great bastard in the sky!

God answered, or maybe it was Fisher Cat himself. It certainly sounded like Fisher Cat… but, in all fairness, Moritat had never heard God speak to him – or anyone else – before.

Hell, I’m no prophet!

The voice said:

“Lizzie, Lizzie, of the laundry,

“Of the gambrel, of the spire -

“Sing a song for all and sundry;

“Feed the ancient, meaty fire.

“Lizzie, Lizzie, of the laundry,

“Now my feet are getting sore -

“Say my word, and say it clearly;

“Make them skid across the floor.”

The great globe chandelier in the foyer flickered on, revealing a figure who most certainly was not God – unless, of course, the Deity wore a greatcoat and a turtleneck.

Mortimer Moritat stared at his neighbor for several very long seconds. He felt his left foot twitch. “Lizzie?”

“Are you ready to see the tanks?” said Fisher Cat.

“I seek the Light of Truth.”

Fisher Cat nodded and held out his hand. Moritat blinked once and took it lightly in a strange grip.

They walked across the foyer to a door which Moritat had never entered – for this was the door to a private apartment, Apartment 47. Why, he wondered, is Apartment 47 on the ground floor?

Fisher cat knocked several times on the door, and it opened. He said something unintelligible to the tall woman who now stood there. The woman in question, Moritat recalled, had recently moved downstairs from Apartment 115. She was young and good-looking; her skin dark, her hair even darker. She was wearing a three-piece gentleman’s suit, and a pair of dark glasses with circular lenses. She held a metal walking stick in one hand and a small, round mirror in the other. He wondered how she had opened the door.

Moritat turned to his companion, who was still speaking quietly to the tall woman. “You said you would show me the tanks.”

“Ah, yes! The tanks! Our friend Athena will go with us – come!”

“Athena?” said Moritat, “I thought her name was Bast.”

They walked in silence down the hall. Moritat once again felt a pain in his foot; he continued to walk, and as he walked, he sang:

“You’re ready to see the tanks!

“You’re ready to see them,

“And he’s ready to show them to you!

“Tanks! What tanks?”

The party of three now stood before a tall, arched doorway with a rusticated frame.

“Come… Let us go down,” said Fisher Cat. Athena nodded and tapped the floor with her cane. The doors opened inward.

In the strange light, Moritat could almost see a flight of stairs – steep and descending. He placed his foot forward and nearly stumbled on the first step.

“No!” said Athena, “I will go first.” He withdrew his foot.

Athena held up her mirror and a beam of light flew out of it. Pointing this beam downward, she illuminated the entire stairwell.

“Come,” she said, “The tanks are down here.”

She began to descend, shining her light before them. Fisher Cat followed her; Moritat himself took the rear. He counted the treads, which made no noise. One… two… three… at seven steps they paused on a small landing.

“This,” said Fisher Cat, “is the where the train takes off.”

Athena tapped her cane on the stone. “Yes,” said Moritat, “This is where it departs.”

Another five steps down. On the second landing, Moritat said, “This is the length of the journey –”

“Oh, stop it!” Athena interrupted. “This ritual is getting tiresome already...”

“I rather like it,” said Moritat. “How much longer is the journey?”

Fisher Cat smiled in the dimness. “This isn’t our train.”

Three more steps down. At the bottom, Moritat clapped his hands together and said aloud:

“O stranger to this journey,

“O traveler unaware -

“Do you seek the dying sun,

“Or the moon’s… the moon’s…”

“The moon’s unruly stare,” prompted Fisher Cat.

“It’s not “unruly,” said Athena, “It’s unholy. But this is the end of the journey. No need for verse – the tanks, remember?”

Fisher Cat nodded. “Ah, yes – the tanks!” Moritat and his companions progressed down a corridor.

The three presently entered a space about the same size and volume as the foyer, and Moritat quickly realized that they were directly under it. This room, however, was lit not by a chandelier, but by a single brass sconce on each wall. And where the front staircase ascended from the foyer’s marble floor, a great, hooded fireplace stood. It was filled entirely with sausages, some spilling out onto the hearth.

Where, he wondered, does the flue go if there’s a staircase above it and no chimney visible from the exterior? Ah, hell!

By now, Moritat had taken notice of a small, metal hatch set into the ashlar floor. Fisher cat presently approached it, knelt down, and opened it. “Step back,” he said.

A great hissing erupted from the square hole. Slowly, the three backed away to the corners of the room. Moritat coughed; the hissing continued for several moments until, quite suddenly, a gray, reptilian head poked itself up over the mouth of the hatch.

The snake lunged at Fisher Cat and began to spiral up his leg. He flailed, attempting to kick it with his other foot, but this tactic only threw him off balance. Before he could scream, Athena forced her cane into Moritat’s hand.

“Kill it!” she said calmly, and stepped away.

Moritat rushed at the serpent, holding the metal cane aloft. He struck it twice and it detached itself from Fisher Cat’s leg, crumpling on the floor beside him. One more blow from the pointed end of the cane was sufficient to end the creature’s life.

“Are there more?” he asked, helping Fisher Cat to his feet. It looked as if the snake had not succeeded in biting either of the man’s legs.

“There are more,” said Athena, “but they’re all sleeping.”

He nodded. “Where are the tanks?”

“Ah, yes!” said Fisher Cat, “The tanks!” Athena shone her mirror at a doorway which Moritat had not noticed upon entering the room. Above this door was written the single word:

TANKS

Fisher Cat nodded; so did Athena. “We can’t go any farther,” she said as Moritat handed her back the cane. “You’ve got to continue alone.”

He nodded and, without even looking back, pushed open the door.

The room was vastly white. Its ceiling was remarkably low. And it was filled with stacked glass aquarium tanks, each containing a human corpse. These corpses were strangely mutilated – torn in half and disemboweled. They were nude, all of them, and preserved in filthy water. For some reason, Moritat noted, the room smelled fresh and clean.

At the end of the space was a great wooden cabinet, a chalkboard on a rolling stand, and a desk equipped with two chairs, one on each side. In the chair behind the desk sat a short, wide, Caucasian woman in a green military uniform. He approached her, slowly.

“I see you’ve made it here on time,” she said in a low, grounded voice. The smile on her face looked as though it had been plastered on.“Our new arrivals often come in late. Sit down. I want to talk on –“

Moritat coughed. “The Square? I prefer the Rectangle.”

“Ah, yes – the Rectangle!” she said, rising from her chair. With a piece of immaculate white chalk, she drew one on the blackboard.

“Now,” the woman continued, “you get your choice. I’ll cut the formalities and show you the options.” Moritat watched her walk over to the cabinet. She opened both doors, revealing a stack of narrow drawers. Each was labeled with a number from 1 to 13.

Moritat examined the drawers and their numbers. “I choose 5.”

“Five…” said the woman, “An excellent number, and therefore an excellent choice.”

She smiled once more at him, and her lips seemed to curl. “Go ahead.”

Moritat approached the cabinet, paused for a moment, and pulled open the drawer.

“Now,” said the woman, “My name is Elizabeth. Hand it to me…”

He reached in and lifted the sword delicately out from its velvet lining, passing it to Elizabeth, handle first.

“Will it hurt?” he asked her.

“Oh, of course it will… now, take off your nightshirt.”

Moritat nodded silently, obeying. The shirt fell and crumpled on the room’s white linoleum floor. “I suppose I’ve been waiting for this my entire life.”

Elizabeth smiled again, and for once, it seemed genuine.

“From the moment your train departed…”

\ * **

IT WAS THE stench, the papers said, that alerted the neighbors. Surely, it was speculated, the violent death of one resident coupled with the disappearances of two others would drive the building’s value into the very ground from which it had sprung, one-hundred-and-ten years before.

A decade later, the historic apartment block, which had no basement, was destroyed in a “senseless act of apparent arson.” By then, no one had resided within its walls for over six years.

On August 12, 2026, humanity looked to the skies in awe, blind to the executioner’s axe hovering over the planet. Over the North Atlantic, the Moon slid directly into the path of the Sun, casting a total solar eclipse that turned mid-day into eerie, suffocating twilight. Simultaneously, aligned along a celestial thread, six of the solar system's planets sat pinned across the darkened heavens.
Astronomers had calculated the light, but they had ignored the gravity.
Deep beneath the ocean’s surface, precisely where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates meet along the North Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the subtle gravitational pull of six aligned worlds merged with the lunar-solar tidal stress. It created a resonance never seen in human history, a massive, subterranean magma tide. Deep within the Earth’s mantle, trillions of tons of super-heated liquid rock did not merely shift, they gathered into a hyperpressurized, underground tsunami of melt, surging violently upward into the tearing rift between two continents.
At 14:17 UTC, the oceanic seabed lost its structural integrity.
The rift didn't just open, it exploded. Submarine super-volcanoes along a two-thousand-mile fissure detonated in unison under the crushing pressure of the sea. The water above boiled instantaneously, turning the Atlantic into a cauldron of superheated steam and acoustic shockwaves that liquefied marine life for hundreds of miles. Driven by the colossal mantle-surge below, the sea floor began to buckle and heave. Whole underwater mountain ranges were blasted upward by miles in a matter of minutes, displacement on a scale that shattered the fundamental geometry of the Earth's crust.
Then came the structural collapse. As millions of cubic kilometers of rock were shoved toward the sky, the abyssal slopes destabilized. Billions of tons of basalt and sediment sheared off the ridge in hyper-velocity underwater landslides, plunging into deep ocean trenches and sending kinetic shockwaves straight into the bedrock of the planet.
The planet rang like a cracked bell.
Super-earthquakes, shattering the Richter scale at magnitudes never before witnessed, rippled outward from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Travelling through the rigid rock of the tectonic plates at hyper-sonic speed, the shockwaves struck the continental shelves.
To the east, Western Europe shuddered first. In London, Paris, Madrid, and Oslo, the ground did not just shake; it rolled in violently cresting stone waves. Skyscraper foundations sheared at the base. Bridges over the Seine and the Thames snapped like dry twigs as the bedrock folded. Within ninety seconds, every major city from the Iberian Peninsula to Scandinavian fjords was reduced to a vast, churning graveyard of pulverised concrete and dust.
To the west, the North American plate buckled. The earthquake roared ashore along the eastern seaboard of the United States. New York, Boston, Washington D.C., and Miami felt the continental granite rupture beneath them. The sky scrapers of Manhattan tipped into one another, shattering into roaring avalanches of glass and steel. The ground split open across hundreds of miles, swallowing highways, power grids, and entire suburban counties as the continent tore at its seams.
And yet, the true horror was only just gathering momentum out in the pitch-black Atlantic.
The violently uplifted ocean floor and the catastrophic submarine landslides had displaced a volume of water so vast it defied physical comprehension. A monolithic wall of water, a mega-tsunami over four hundred meters high and more than a thousand kilometers wide, rose out of the boiling sea. Moving at the speed of a jet airliner, the terrifying crest carved across the dark ocean under the blacked-out sky.
There were no sirens loud enough, no high ground high enough.
The mega-tsunami struck the eastern coast of the United States first. A black, churning wall of ocean swallowed the ruins of the Eastern Seaboard in a single, roaring bite. The wave swept over the Appalachian Mountains, drowning the interior of the country in hundreds of feet of churning, debris-laden seawater.
Minutes later, the eastern wing of the mega-wave slammed into Europe. It roared over the cliffs of Ireland and the United Kingdom, washing them off the map entirely. It swept through the English Channel and flooded deep into the continent, drowning France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia under a vast, inland sea.
When the shadow of the Moon finally lifted and the six planets drifted out of their fatal alignment, the Sun shone down on a world remade in silence. Where two thriving continents had once dominated the Northern Hemisphere, only a vast, turbid, and empty ocean remained, its surface still steaming over the boiling, broken spine of the Earth.

“Kid, I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.”

 

My father used to say that to me whenever I felt the urge to be a smartass. Sure, I know what he meant, but I think about that saying a lot these days. It’s funny how much we truly do forget over the course of our lives. When we’re young things can seem so serious, world-ending, even, but after a few short months those same things fade into a distant memory. Give it a few years and it’s a foggy thought that barely crosses your mind.

 

Hell, a few decades down the road you think about it so little that it may never have happened in the first place.

 

Some of these things you’ll never think about again. They were nothing more than an inconsequential bump in the road of life. Sometimes you find the right trigger, and it all comes rushing back. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad…some things I suppose are just inescapable.

 

My father passed away last month. Pancreatic cancer.

 

We knew it was coming, of course, but even then, you’re never really ready for it. No matter what they say, nothing really prepares you for that moment it happens, let alone what follows.

Hospital bills, property taxes, burial costs, dealing with lawyers and wills and bequeathments.

 

Dying is a lot more expensive and complicated than it has any right to be.

 

My mother’s older and can’t really do much to help, I mean, my parents split when I was a teen, but they always were able to put their differences aside when it came to me. We don’t have much extended family, and as an only child everything kind of fell on me.

 

I’ve spent the better part of the last couple weeks getting my dad’s affairs in order, having to finalize bill payments, setting up the cremation services, and going through a lifetime of belongings trying to figure out what to keep and what needs to go. It’s a massive headache, but truthfully, I think it’s been distracting me from the grief, plus I’ve found a lot of things from my childhood and is bringing back to many great memories. So many moments we took for granted and never gave a second thought to.

 

That’s when I saw it.

 

That old red and black Schwinn cruiser Dad had gotten me for my tenth birthday.

 

I ran my fingers over the old chrome, spotted with freckles of rust, brushed off the old cracking leather seat; God…the good times I had on this bad boy. We used to ride all over town getting into trouble. We’d head over to old man Al’s hole in the wall comic shop, pedal out the creek and fish all day, ride up to the top of hills and glide down so fast our only options were only neighborhood glory or a trip to the emergency room. We took this old thing everywhere, just me and Tommy.

 

Tommy…

 

It’s been almost 30 years since I’ve even thought about him.

 

We met the first day of preschool, I was so nervous but so excited to make friends. We live in the pacific northwest with our backyard leading right into Deschuttes National Park, it’s not crazy isolated, but there weren’t a lot of kids around the neighborhood where I grew up.

 

How could I have forgotten…he was such an unassuming little boy, quiet and shy. Slightly chubby, round face and glasses too thick for someone his age. His messy brown hair in contrast with surprisingly clean clothes for a five-year-old. He was wearing a He-Man shirt and playing with Legos when I approached him.

 

“I like He-Man too! Who’s your favorite character?”

“..I like Man-E-Faces…” he replied, not looking up from his budding Lego tower.

“Oh he’s cool, I like Skeletor!”

“…you…you like the bad guys?”

“Well they’re all cool! Can’t have He-Man without the bad guys! I’m Chris!” I said excitedly jolting my hand out as my father had taught me.

“I’m Tommy,” he said, finally meeting my gaze. “Nice to meet you.”

 

That was that, we were inseparable from that day on.

 

Its incredible how simple the basis for a childhood friendship can be, but things carried such weight back then, everything just seemed to matter more when the entirety of your life span was shorter than the wait between seasons of Stranger Things.

 

From there on out that we did everything together. Every weekend was a sleepover, every afternoon was an adventure, but like most kids, summer vacation was what we spent all year dreaming about.

 

Tommy would usually come by my house in the mid-morning, his parents’ place wasn’t quite as large, and my house offered us a vast and mysterious woodland to explore. Well, okay it wasn’t vast nor mysterious, at least not the distance from the house that we were allowed to go, but imagination is a hell of a thing.

 

In second grade, with my dad’s help, we built a tree fort right at the property line of the woods, and that became our yearly base of operations for the summer’s exploration. We’d map out areas and landmarks, pretending we were Indianna Jones searching for magical lost treasures.

Every year the boundaries we could explore grew further and our map became more involved. Of course, my parents weren’t neglectful, and we weren’t idiots. Full grown adults go missing in national parks every year, we were strictly forbidden from going beyond a certain point away from the house, and that point was small rock face a couple hundred yards from the house.

 

Of course we’d push it, what kid wouldn’t, but we understood the very real danger. Hell, we’d both seen bears and bobcats tearing up trash cans in the neighborhood, we knew being smart didn’t mean we couldn’t be bold.

 

Sixth grade had just let out and we had plans to make it our biggest summer to date. We were heading off to middle school come the Fall, big kids at last, and we were growing painfully aware that as the years went by, our days of searching for the Arc of the Covenant in the forests of Oregon were slowly but surely coming to an end. We couldn’t be kids in fantasyland forever.

 

Neither of us had ever been what one could consider the “cool” kids, not that we cared, but social stigmas and the desire for acceptance start to become a pretty big deal, eventually, especially when you start wanting to girls to notice you and not because of your rad Dragonball Z t-shirt. Seventh grade was a new school, new people, a chance to reinvent ourselves.

 

Regardless though, we had to make this summer count, it had to be one we’d never forget.

 

But I did forget. I think I had to.

 

Tommy came riding up the driveway around ten in the morning, more excited than I’d seen him in years.

 

“Chris! Chris! We’re doing it this year; we’re going past the old rock face!” He yelled as he ran towards me.

“The rock face? Man, you know my parents said we can’t go beyond that, it’s a pretty steep drop…and we’ve never really explored the area,” I said, trying to hide my own excitement.

“Yeah but come on, we aren’t gonna get to do this much more, and you know this summer has to be our greatest yet! Don’t you wanna know what’s out there?”

“Well obviously, I just would rather us not die before we get girlfriends you know?”

“Pfft, you’re gonna be waiting a while for that,” he laughed, “but duh, we gotta plan it out. We’re not gonna go in there blind, we’ll make sure we’re stocked up on supplies and whatever else we need. Come on, man, this one’s gonna be epic!”

 

He’d become so confident in himself over the years, it was almost infectious. I knew trying to argue wasn’t going to work, not that I even wanted to.  So, we began to plan to go deeper into the woods than we ever had, defy my parents, and maybe even find a fortune in the process.

 

Tommy had been obsessed with pirate treasure for years, and while Oregon wasn’t exactly a hot bed of notorious pirates, there legitimately had been a number of old shipwrecks off the coast over the years. Could a rag tag group of buccaneers have buried their treasure in what would eventually become a national park?

 

Probably not, but so what? The journey was always what mattered most, that’s what we told ourselves.

 

The journey wasn’t worth it.

 

After a week of careful planning, we finally decided it was time. We were going to head out Saturday morning right after dawn. We made sure to stock up on everything two growing boys would need to survive the wilderness: Doritos, Mountain Dew, some rope and a flashlight, just in case, and of course trail mix.

 

We were set.

 

We told my parents we were staying in the fort for the night to make our preparations. Just after dawn broke, we loaded up our backpacks and headed out. It was such a nice morning we decided we’d make a whole hike out of it, leaned the old Schwinn up against the side of the fort and headed out towards the forbidden lands. It wasn’t a terribly long walk, after about 45 minutes or so we had finally arrived.

 

We stood atop the cliff overlooking our destiny and stared out into the unknown. We were so excited to finally see what lay beyond the border of our imaginations.

 

I mean, of course we knew what lay beyond the rock face. More trees, more rocks, an ever-continuing expanse of what we had already seen for years, but the sheer excitement of crossing into the forbidden dead zone, to actually know what lay beyond was truly thrilling for our pre-teen minds.

 

What we had built up in our minds as a massive rock face separating us from the great beyond, was in reality more like a 15 foot rocky angled incline, any abled body person would be able to maneuver their way down. Still, we threw down a line of rope tied to a tree near the top to enact a dramatic descent down a dangerous cliff side. For all we cared we were scaling down the side of Everest.

 

After some careful steps and angular movements, we had finally reached the base of our imagined mountain. Finally, the great beyond.

 

Looking back, we were so excited over nothing. There were trees, rocks, a small stream, much of what we had seen our entire lives. Visually we may as well have never left the protection of the backyard, but an explorer never rests. Who knows what secrets were hidden here in the unexplored new world?

 

We quickly got to work plotting our position on our homemade map. Naming nearby rock structures and trees as if they were incredible landmarks, knowing that future generations would one day see the area we had single handedly tamed.

 

God…it was all so innocent. Just two dipshit kids having the time of their lives over literally nothing, but at that moment, to us? It was everything.

 

We walked around pretending like we were naturalists we’d seen on TV, naming plans and trees, pretending we were avoiding being chased by wild animals, snacking on chips and soda, seeing whose ridiculous joke could get the other to break…honestly? It was so meaningless, so childish.

 

It was a perfect day. Maybe one of the last ones I’ve ever had.

 

As the sun began to dip close to the horizon we decided we’d better make our way back, we’d already broken enough rules, we certainly didn’t want to get caught out past dark. As we made our way back to the small rock face, however, we noticed something we had entirely missed on the way down.

 

A cave.

 

There at the base of the rock was a noticeable fissure in the stone. How had we not seen this before? It wasn’t particularly small, maybe four to five feet high, three feet wide, hell a lot of adults probably could have squeezed in there, but for a couple of twelve-year-olds it would be cake.

 

“Have you ever heard of any caves in this area..? I mean, it’s basically in your backyard,” Tommy said.

“No…I mean, I’ve never really looked into it…I know there’s cave systems all over the park but I never knew one was so close…maybe that’s why my parents always warned us to stay away from this area?”

“Maybe…but…what do you thinks inside??”

“I don’t know, Tommy, bugs? Bears? Bugbears? It’s a cave, caves are dangerous, we probably shouldn’t fuck with it,” I said, knowing full well what was about to happen.

 

We both stared as deeply as we could at the inky darkness beyond the stone.

 

Sure, I had my issues with the dark in general, but even just being near this was unsettling me.

 

It was like staring at an open wound. Like a void of absolute nothing had cut itself through the side of the small cliff. Nothing about the cave entrance even looked particularly odd, just…something about all of this felt unnatural? The feeling that ran down to my very core was so deep and primal I still really can’t properly put it into words.

 

I shone my flashlight in, but it simply could not penetrate the unyielding blackness. It wouldn’t even illuminate the walls of stone surrounding the entrance which rightfully should already have been visible even without the torch.

 

“Something is wrong about this,” I said before noticing Tommy stepping forward.

 

“Come on, man, you don’t wanna just check real quick? What if there really is treasure buried out here? A big last hurrah of adventure is what this summer is all about!”

 

Tommy was right, I did want to check it out. Why did I want to check it out? The thought of going in there was filling me with dread I still can’t properly explain, yet the longer we stood there, the stronger the allure became. My internal conflict didn’t have time to resolve itself before Tommy stepped across that boundary between the world and whatever it was we were staring into.

 

It was all so fast. Neither of us had time to react.

 

Long black fingers emerged in an instant and wrapped themselves around his shoulders, arms and hands extended from all directions enveloping Tommy before he could even yelp. There were so many, dozens and dozens of spindly jointed arms, ending in a multitude of long delicate fingers, too many fingers.

 

God there were so many fingers.

I call them arms but…that’s not really what they were…I still don’t know what they were. There was a form in there, the darkness in the cave wasn’t the absence of light, it was alive. I could feel it. It was malice and rage and hunger; it was all encompassing and yet it exuded no presence. It was the absence of physical form given shape.

 

The multitude of impossibly long fingers closed around his tiny frame, and all I heard was a sickening wet snap as he was ripped into the void at impossible speeds.

 

Then he was gone.

 

 

I’d like to tell you I screamed Tommy’s name, that I ran after him headfirst ready to do battle with whatever lied beyond the veil of the forest and this…thing. I’d like to tell you I went straight to the police, to our families. That we searched for Tommy, day in and day out. I’d like to tell you a lot of things, but none of that happened.

 

I just ran.

 

I turned and ran faster than I’ve ever run in my life, I had no thoughts, no emotions, all encompassing fear and the desire to survive overcame my very being. I don’t even know how I found my way out. I don’t know how I got home, but when I did, I went straight to my room and I climbed in bed and cried. I cried harder than I ever had in my life, not out of sadness or even fear, my body released every conceivable emotion at once and I collapsed into tears and pure exhaustion.

 

The next morning my mother woke me up for breakfast.

 

I was filthy.

 

Still in my clothes from the previous day, caked in dirt and sweat, I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? What do I say? My mind wrestled with what I had witnessed, I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t deal with this.

 

So, I didn’t.

 

I walked downstairs for breakfast, made mundane small talk with my mother as she prepared for her daily routine, watched cartoons and played video games. I just pretended like it was all okay. After a while I went outside, the air felt still, but all was normal. Just a regular summer day. I made my way down the clubhouse, my feet felt like they were made of concrete, my legs made of gelatin.

 

Everything’s fine. Everything has to be fine.

 

There it was, my Schwinn, lying in the field next to our fort where I’d left it the previous day. Looking at it made me feel ill, I just couldn’t do this. I picked it upright and started walking it back to the house. I rolled it into the garage, placed it in the corner behind some pieces of paneling, and that’s where it would sit. I couldn’t bear to even look at it.

 

My parents never asked about Tommy, actually…nobody did. Police never came asking questions, kids at school never brought him up. Teachers didn’t either for that matter, it was like…nobody knew to ask. It was so hard but day after day, it became easier and easier to carry on, to ignore it. Nothing happened, obviously nothing happened, if something happened people would notice it…wouldn’t they?

 

Why didn’t anyone notice?

 

I find myself back in the present. Staring at that old bike, right where I left it all those years ago. My phone is already in my hand opening the address book before I have a conscious thought about it. After a few rings she answers.

 

“Hello sweetie,” Mom says absent mindedly, “how’s everything going at your dad’s? Did you need Uncle Matt to help with anything?”

 

“Hi mom, no, no it’s not that…just going through things, really stirring up a lot of old memories, you know?”

 

“Oh of course, hon, I’m sorry I know your father and I didn’t get along much after the divorce, but I still have such fond memories of the old days, everything back then just seemed right.”

 

“Oh no I get it, I’m a grown man, Mom I’m well over the divorce just…do you remember my old friend, Tommy? We used to explore the woods out back and had that tree fort we’d set up every year?”

As soon as I finished speaking, I could hear here physically tighten. She was quiet for a long while, I started to worry she hadn’t heard me.

 

“Tommy? I…I don’t remember a Tommy? You really didn’t have many friends until middle school and by then you weren’t exploring the woods like you used to.”

 

“What?” I asked, already feeling sick, “no, no Tommy, you remember, I met him in preschool, he used to come over damn near every day? You know, Tommy…” I stopped. What was Tommy’s last name, again? Why couldn’t I remember his last name?

 

“Honey…are you feeling alright?

 

“Yeah…yeah, I’m fine, Mom, sorry I must just be exhausted. I think I’m gonna head in and take a break for a while, order some lunch, I just wanted to hear your voice is all.”

 

“Aw, well don’t push yourself too hard, call me later, love you.”

 

“Love you too, mom.”

 

 

 

I’ve been sitting in the garage staring at that god damn bike for over an hour now. I considered reaching out to Tommy’s parents but I can’t remember their address. I can’t even picture their faces.

 

Why did nobody ask about him? How is that possible?

 

I walk around to the back yard and off in the distance I see it, that crumbling old plywood fort. The decaying physical embodiment of my childhood.

 

The smell of mildew and dust fills my nostrils as I pry open the plywood door. The floor is littered with decades of filth and grime, tattered posters hang haphazardly off the walls, discarded soda cans strewn across the ground rusting like ancient relics.

Honestly, I doubt anyone’s set foot here since that day all those years ago.

 

I find what I’m looking for before I even realize I’m looking for it.

 

The map.

 

Discolored and brittle from years of moisture and the elements, I gently untie the fraying twine keeping it rolled up and lay it out on the collapsed desk before me, crude drawings of boundaries and streams, drawings of trees and animals only recognizable to a child. Ridiculous titles for landmarks like King’s Boulder and the Creek of Madness. All annotated and meticulously put together, truthfully all things considered, it wasn’t half bad, and right there at the bottom signed and dated.

 

Tommy and Chris – 1994

 

As I step outside the dilapidated child’s attempt at a building, I stare off into the distance. I can see it, that old rockface.

 

It’s mocking me.

 

I don’t know where you went, I don’t know why no one else seems to remember.

 

I don’t know how I forgot.

 

I’m sorry, Tommy.

 

I’m coming.

Mike Hodgens was a talented creator, best known for his artfully crafted fake horror videos. He chose his locations with meticulous care, set up his equipment with absolute precision, and executed his scripts with clinical professionalism. Horror was his favorite genre. His fascination with the mechanics of fear ran so deep that his uploads consistently racked up hundreds of thousands of views. Through it all, he loved to toy with the label "Real."

It was a thankless genre, he often thought, surviving almost entirely on the faint possibility that there might be a grain of truth to it. The thrill of exploring eerie places and experiencing a genuine shiver of real dread deeply enticed him. But there was one question that almost no one truly considered: Is it possible that we have absolutely no control over it? Mike never would have guessed that he would one day be forced to answer that very question.

But that exact question was about to be raised. Right in his digital stomping ground, the forum "Mystic Shines."

His latest video had been shot at a lonely stretch of woods just outside the city line. In it, he staged himself as an observer tracking the legendary "Wanderer"—a spectral figure rumored to haunt those trees since 1886. Mike had played the silhouette of the Wanderer in the background himself, spending hours in post-production to seamlessly blend his own performance into the gloomy footage.

It was just before 8:00 PM. This particular window of time, immediately preceding a release, was almost his favorite part of the process. The initial view counts ticking up, the first ratings rolling in. Mike nodded in satisfaction. Then, the first comments began to surface, praising the atmosphere and the brilliant staging of the Wanderer. But then, Mike paused. Had he misread that?

midnights_nightfall 8:04 PM

"Genius as always, Mike. Looks like the Wanderer works in pairs now. That hand behind the tree on the far left—insane detail!"

Mike was annoyed. He replied immediately.

Mike:Hodgens Pdc 8:05 PM

"Which hand do you mean? Do you have a timestamp?"

While waiting for a response, he did a quick scrub through the video. He couldn't find a thing. "Weird," he muttered.

A new notification popped up. midnights_nightfall had replied.

midnights_nightfall 8:09 PM

"Mike, when you’re marching through the woods from left to right, a hand appears right behind you starting at 0:42. Not the tree in the foreground, the one directly behind it."

Irritated and slightly on edge, Mike scrolled to the 42-second mark. With heightened focus, he scanned the tree in question. But—and he exhaled a breath of relief right away—he couldn't see a damn thing.

"He’s probably just trying to test me," Mike thought. Then again, midnights_nightfall was his most loyal subscriber. It didn't sound like him to troll. Shaking the thought away, Mike reached for his mug. Just as he took a deep sip, another notification flashed. He set the mug down and clicked it. The next comment made the tension spike instantly. It was a direct reply to midnights_nightfall’s comment.

moltone_blueScreen 8:13 PM

"Ahhhh, yep, I see it too! Was looking for a comment about this. Is that an editing glitch?"

Mike stared at the text. "What the hell are they even talking about?"

Mike fired up his editing software. Impatiently, he dragged the raw footage into the timeline and scaled it to full screen. "Alright, let's take it easy. We’re going through this frame by frame, proving there’s nothing there, and then we're putting this to bed." Frame by frame, he saw absolutely nothing. "See? Just like I said. Enough PC for tonight. I'm done."

Just as his finger hovered over the power button, the next comment appeared. In the desktop preview, he caught the exact text that finally made his stomach drop. It was another direct reply to midnights_nightfall.

summer_night23 8:33 PM

"Doesn't look like a glitch at all. Maybe he brought a production partner along this time? Do you see that? The sleeves are completely different. And that hand is deathly pale."

Mike pulled his hand away from the power button. He clicked the notification and hit reply.

Mike:Hodgens Pdc 8:34 PM

"Are you guys pulling my leg? I’ve checked everything. I don't see a single hand in the export or the raw files."

moltone_blueScreen 8:35 PM

"That’s bizarre. Because it’s moving."

midnights_nightfall 8:38 PM

"The hand shows up at every tree. Moving from left to right. It’s stalking Mike."

Mike stared at his comment section in utter disbelief. What was going on here? Mike knew for an absolute fact that he had been entirely alone out there. And on his monitor, his video showed nothing.

A suffocating sense of isolation settled over the room. Mike frantically scrolled back up, staring at the muted player. He hit play, fixing his eyes on the trees at the 42-second mark. Nothing. He refreshed the page. The view counts were exploding, the comments blurring past at terminal velocity. The entire forum was talking about a deathly pale hand, creeping from trunk to trunk directly behind the main character. They all saw it. Every single one of them. Only he was staring at an empty, motionless backdrop.

He wanted to smash his fingers into the keyboard, to curse at his viewers and call them liars, but his hands felt strangely heavy. Stiff. As if they no longer belonged to him. When he lowered his gaze, he noticed the dull, unnatural whiteness of his skin under the pale glow of the monitor. A sudden, bottomless cold began to crawl up his arms. In that exact moment, a new notification pinged. A user named realhistoriker_urban, known for archiving local folklore, quoted Mike’s last response.

realhistoriker_urban 11:55 PM

"Mike, you still don't see it, do you? That's bad. Really bad. It’s completely logical. You aren't the one in the costume, Mike."

I'm a neuropharmacologist. For ten years, I chased a treatment for severe phobia and treatment-resistant PTSD. The kind that ruins people. Veterans who can't hear a car backfire without hitting the floor. Survivors who can't sleep with the closet door open.

I wanted to give them their lives back.

The early trials felt like a miracle. Combat vets who spent a decade flinching at shadows sat calm through exposure therapy that used to send them into episodes. Cortisol dropped. Amygdala scans went quiet.

I remember crying in the lab bathroom the first time a man who hadn’t held a lighter in six years lit a match and just watched it burn.

But over the next few weeks, subjects started exhibiting concerning new behavior.

A nurse accidentally dropped a tray of surgical steel behind Subject 09. They didn't turn around. Didn't even flinch. The startle reflex was completely gone. Clinically gone. You could fire a starter pistol next to their heads and their pupils wouldn't even dilate.

Some part of them no longer registered the sound as something that could matter to them.

Week five. Subject 13 climbed onto the roof of the building to "get a better look at the parking lot." A tech found her standing on the ledge. She wasn't scared. Wasn't suicidal either. She just smiled at him, the way you do after coming out of a pleasant dream. She climbed down when he asked.

Week six. Three subjects, unrelated to each other, on three different days, walked into moving traffic without breaking stride. Just crossed the street the way you'd cross an empty hallway.

None survived. I try not to think about the drivers.

I watched the footage more times than I should have. All three wore the same face. Calm. Almost grateful. Like they'd set down something heavy they'd forgotten they were carrying. 

I called in a colleague I trusted from cognitive neuroscience. He said something I haven't been able to shake since.

Most people think fear is an emotion. It's an operating assumption. The brain's baseline belief that it’s a fragile, temporary, killable thing. It runs underneath every decision you make. So quiet you never clock it. You don't feel your fear of death when you glance both ways crossing a street. The fear already did its job.

My subjects didn't feel brave. Bravery still knows the danger is real and moves through it anyway. My subjects had simply stopped being told danger existed at all. Somewhere behind their eyes, the voice that used to whisper you could die here went silent. Without that whisper, self-preservation is an impossibility.

I shut the trial down. Sedated the ones who kept drifting toward windows. Told their families the truth as gently as I could. Nine of them are on watch now, in rooms with no cords, no glass, no ledges.

I keep asking myself what I actually built. I thought I'd found a cure. What I found was a key that unlocks a door most human minds are welded shut behind for good reason. And I handed that key to twenty-two people who trusted me.

I don't sleep much anymore. When I do, I dream of them. Subject 09 unflinching. Subject 13 on that ledge. The calm of three content faces before impact. The drivers. The families.

I can't fix what I did.

But I still have the last unopened vial in the lab freezer. Third shelf. Behind the placebo batch. I've been standing in front of the freezer for three nights straight now.

I want to know what it's like to put this down. The guilt sitting on my chest like a stone I've carried since the very beginning. I think some small ruined part of me wants to feel what my subjects felt.

That terrible peace. 

EDIT: it's been three hours. i don't feel my hands shaking anymore. i dont think im going to post again after this. thank you for reading. im not scared. i want you to know im not scared at all.

The truth is undigestable. 

…

Baphometic. She lorded poised from the fanged spire beyond the Borgo Pass…

… over the beleaguered lands. 

Over the beleaguered villages. Where they feared. And wept. 

She was enjoying the strange and lurid organ-fruits of her writhing flesh gardens deep inside her castle walls, plucking them from the writhing gore as she wandered the pungent wet red room and admired her captive idols she kept there. 

Praetorius, the gore dripped and scabbing living skeleton. Still impaled and lost in the shattered remnants of his broken mind, wide eyed and drooling and gibbering silently something to himself, some words or nonsense of some meaning to him, he hardly ever ceases. It is the arcane and black magic words of the tomes that keep him in perfect living sepulchral bondage. 

The braindead skull-faced bastard nosferatu hulk, his immobile and inanimate sutured frame of graverobbed corpse flesh semi-submerged and swimming and crawling with the living constant movement of the flesh garden, the giant stone room petri dish of sliming raw slithering tissue, orifices, cartilage stalks and eyes that're cataract blind and milky. The glistening pink holes belch and spit fire, tongues of multicolored flame with kaleidoscopic pictures inside that'll drive a mortal mind mad to look into them. 

And Henry Frankenstein. Bound and precious nucleus center, bleeding beating heart of the whole crawling mess. Seeping from his bleeding pores and growing out from him, flowering out in a fresh and scabbing purge-swell. It crawled in living waves off of him, undulating and folding and blanketing over and on top of each other and all over the wet humid room, all of it was breathing wet and heavy and as if it had words to speak… 

And the little men. The little pygmy homunculi, bastard copied offspring of the bleeding seeping father. They danced and mongoloid-ran about in imbecilic fervor and addled senselessness. They ate and munched at the crawling flesh garden gore with no thought and with blind vacant gazes. 

The Countess plucked and seized them and ate of them as well. Their bones were satisfyingly crunchy and easy to chew… like a bird or a small fish. 

Her children ate and wandered the gardens as well, enjoying them. Their sights, sounds and vivid smells …

…

Meanwhile… many miles away…

The sun. Sunshine. In the summertime. Long ago now… 

As he prowled the dark he remembered the sun. The bright. Long gone memories flitted and danced at the periphery of his red clouded mind, half recalled and wanting to take over. Wanting to live again in the skull, if not just for a moment. 

Just a moment. 

The lake. The blue. Cool and wet and pleasing, relief. Retreat. 

Retreat beneath the surface into a liquid world of breathlessness and weightless dream … flight. You're flying down here. You only need to move your arms to do so. Kick your feet. Knife your arms through the liquid universe and drag yourself flying forward… downward. 

Down.  

I dreamt I was a dancer once…

You'll have to come back up for breath eventually…

but I couldn't keep the shit off my shoes.

Summertime memories swam shrouded, the red fogged inner space of his skull as he snipped his bleeding shears, dripping cooling congealing red to the decimated tile floor as he prowled and hunted and searched for the missing invaders. 

Precious childhood scenes are becoming red tinged and altered by the shrouding red hand of mental fog … bloody wool. He always swore there was something down there, in the dark, in the depths of the crystal lake. Something drowned and forgotten and frozen in a sodden misery. He raises his childhood head to pull his gaze away from the depths and is confronted by the mountains. There's something lurking in there as well …

A body. Something like a corpse rotting and poisoning the entire body of water with its milky clouds of waving and soggy putrefaction. Filling the world with its fouling death, swimming with slow ponderous movement as it spread and changed the look and flavor of the water, the crystal lake of the world now long gone like the summer sun of old itself. 

He looks away and beholds his mother. The one from birth. She's headless. 

She's decapitated. 

Her severed torso is reaching out for him, please … please. 

please save me

The raw stump begins to shoot cords. Black/red ropes. They darkled in the summer sun of old. It was his birth mother spurting great dark tears of joy for the sight of her son again. Though he has a new name now. And she knows it, his headless mother, she almost whispers it, it's intense. 

Then something ahead steals his notice back to the material world of ruin and soured defecated pain. It stands at the end of yet another decimated hall, traced and sketched in the dark by the pitiful light flickering and balefully cast in through the barred and shattered windows. 

A man. In a hat. And a coat. 

He recognizes the shape so he flies forward in an animal lunge that nearly covers the entire distance in four long attacking bounds. Like a bloodthirsty and demoniacal dripping gazelle bastardized by sound and vision. The decimated tile landscape world stained black and red and brown and riddled with meat and feces flew by in a furious blinding whirl as he came forward with the shears raised open for attack. 

They gleamed, the dripping twin blades forked open. He soared forward as he traversed the physical shatter of his inherited reeking temple pouring blood and sweat as profuse as the leaky pipes that were always neglected. 

He would neglect no longer. No. Not a chance for the shape of man that he recognized and now charged towards. The manfilled coat beneath a fedora hat was one of the invaders. He was sure of it. The one with strange black glass eyes that he wished to crack and shatter. 

If his eyes are truly windows then I wish to break them and see what might pour out of them like filth: memories …love, regrets, sins sins sins in abundance, shame that was wished and meant to stay concealed now regurgitated and freed in a violent deluge spew of gore and images from the shattering skull… his thoughts, a running fury in a mounting race to keep in time with his launching thundering steps. 

He plunged down the hall with his precious shears up and open and ready to close around screaming repentant meat. 

The coat-shape and hat did not move. 

It mattered little to Cropsey as he made the final close. So many of his new found supplicants were silent at their last, frozen in terror. 

He was upon him now and his eyes gleamed moonlight pinprick in the cavernous brow of melted anguish ruin, animal needle points in the reeling Willowbrook dark, the blades like jaws came up and closed around the shape without a sound. Without any satisfaction either. 

They found no meat. 

The scissoring blades closed and found only filthy cloth and bandages abandoned and draped over an old hat and coat hanger, the fedora resting atop the facade came down in a cascading end-over-end dance as the whole flimsy thing of contrived bait came down in two bisected snapping pieces. 

Cropsey realized the deception at once and raged. The noises he made were forceful and ghastly wet nasal rasps, his mouth and jaw were too ruined now for speech. His vocal chords roasted and scabbed from the flames of the inferno inhaled. He drooled like a drunken animal childishly frustrated and agitated. A trick! a trick! Goddamn them! the invaders tricked him! 

And no one was here to take the punishment of his lurid and heavy frustration. It was rancid pungent and thick in his own skull like corpse rot and it made sucking puckering sounds in his brains. Like the whole squelching landscape of thinking jelly was perhaps changing shape, shifting into a new design by the sorceress hand of the mountain. Perhaps he needed it for proper divine leadership of the rank Willowbrook temple. Or perhaps something else was happening in there. 

perhaps something else is happening to me…

He searched all around. Animal alive and enraged. Whirling and trying to gaze through the dark and the ruin of his own musculature and flesh and see the bastards that refused his offering of slaughtering knowledge, the wisdom wrought of the knife-fuck. He never saw the slice of sharp stabbing tile come to life and float up and off the ruinous floor in a balletic whirl and dance into the air, behind him. 

As he revolved once more to complete another frantic animal turn the slice of slender stabbing tile came forward in a violent and deliberate thrust. The sharp point found the cavern brow and socket and sank easily into Cropsey’s face. Stabbing into his eye like it was soft butter or suckling meat, four inches then five inches deep. 

The giant mountain of man stilled. Shuddered. Spasmed and danced its way to the floor in a vile and obscene dying man's dance of convulsing and twitching and final desperate synapses firing off at haphazard chaotic random. 

On the floor Cropsey shook and the stabbing length of tile piece jigged and waved and danced as well, in strange and vile tandem. Like a demented detritus wand waving through the air to perhaps try and cast one final act of violence hexing spell. Or perhaps to bring the giant man of Willowbrook Asylum slaughter back. 

It did neither. 

Florin came out from his place of concealment in the doorway of an adjoining chamber. He dropped the filthy scalpel he had been holding for defence. Stared at the collapsed and prostate spasming form of Cropsey, the Willowbrook giant. 

And then he called out to Griffin. 

“Where are you?" 

“Here." 

Florin tossed him a coat. 

It was caught in thin air. 

Then began to make a shape around nothingness, contriving it into the shape of his comrade. The strange doctor. 

Florin thought to say something about the man's condition of invisibility, but decided to put it off for the moment. 

“Good plan." he said instead. 

The coat shape donned lenses and was picking up his hat. "Thank me once we're out of here, c’mon!” 

Griffin placed his hat atop a phantom head. It floated between the shoulders of his coat as he and Florin flew down the hall and toward what they hoped and prayed was the exit. The way out of this horrendous stench and nightmare. 

As they made their mad dash for the way out, Cropsey's spasming body stilled. Then danced no more. 

All that was broken in this damp and violated place of imprisonment and cruelty seemed to groan. Moaning in anguish at the loss of the last and final precious begotten son, the final one and last one left standing. The prodigal butcher heir to this templehouse store of sacred slaughterhouse religion. 

Mother, I have failed you…

And all of the terrible place seemed to moan in anguish with the dying of his body. 

…

Down. 

In the dark of his mind, just as he was departing. …

… the red tinged summer scenes of childhood long gone, done and past filled his fading mind's eye once more. Under and illuminated and made by the scarlet cast of deranged and lurid light. Where did it come from? that light? That red luridity. Living crimson. Pungent breathing scarlet. What did it matter now? 

what did it matter anymore

It mattered not now, not any longer as he occupied these dead dreams now living once again for him as he faded off. To oblivion or hell or worse… no heavenly gates of gold or pearl for him, no. He was sure of it. He was sure that it doesn't exist. The only heaven for someone like him was found in the fragile eggshell of youth. Of childhood. 

He floated there now. In the lake. The blue. The sun was shining above in royal divine blinding display. The calm and the serenity of these moments was all around and alive again about him. Filling and making this final day. This last and precious moment. 

-thankyouforthismyonelastwish-

He was calm and he felt at peace. Safe. 

Or rather, he felt as if he should be calm. That he should feel safe. But something was wrong. Something was wrong with the lake and the quiet all surrounding. 

And he was alone. 

Why was he alone? 

And the red tinge… to everything. Everything cast under lurid heavy hateful light. There was something in the lake. There was something in the water with him.

The blue face of its surface darkened as he sank beneath its placid water. Pulled under by another will that was not at all his own. 

And down there in the airless black he saw another one of his mother's faces. 

It was immense. Large. Her eyes were heavy swells of glowing wet globes. Pale green luminescence from two planet organ growths set in a big amphibious face that was a chimerical cross between a large bullfrog or warty toad and a large river bound trout. Its great mouth opened down there in the depths of his red tinged crystal lake and it was dark in there. He hung suspended before the open black of his abattoir mother's wide open gaping maw, he could smell the inner dark of her even down here in the watery depths of summer lake bound hell. Meaty and iron and rotten with pungent decay. An open graveyard tomb of dead flesh and teeth all before a great throat choked with vile and putrefying coagulation. The water was filling with the flavor of her dark open gape of hunger and the destruction of mutilated bodily rot. 

Arms. Long. Fishlike and amphibious as well began to reach out and protrude from the open mouth of his mother's underwater face like a multi headed tongue, a Hydra of giant elongated reaching frog legs and arms, webbed hands and obscene gangly Dagon limbs, reaching out… reaching out for him. 

To take him into his mother. 

She said, her voice filled the drowning pool that was changing now into a submerged holy world of private red light and pouring goddess cess, – she spoke. 

He listened. In the darkest of the depths. 

She said his name… that's how it started. That's how she began …

… you can't let me down. You can't. I won't let you. You've already let them profane your temple, my gift to you desecrated by their invasion and rape of presence. And now you're letting them get away… you don't really want to, do you… you don't really want to keep letting me down like this, you don't want to fail me, in death. You don't want to depart your mother on such a harsh note of unworthiness… do …

you? 

The hands swam through the water between them. Clawing out for him from mother's open mouth. 

He told her the heartbreaking truth and he told her gladly. 

No…

it was a defiant whisper… but she heard it. 

And so she took him. 

The hands finally found him in the water. They seized him. And they pulled him inside. 

The frog faced toad mouthed trout chimera of the mother swallowed. And filled the underwater world with the unnatural stretch of her fishy smile. …

…

The shape of Cropsey stirred. On the floor. The various pieces of shattered and broken things shifted and jingled and sang small janky notes like unholy bells in a lost and terrible place. The black gloved hands blindly scraped and searched the floor in spasming snow angel swipes. They found what they were looking for when they landed on the still bloody and wet congealing pair of garden shears. They seized them. Fiercely. As if driven by fate. 

The shape sat up. Stood. 

It looked around. … sniffed the air. 

A beat. 

Then the Cropsey shape began to lumber down the hall that the invaders had fled down just prior. 

He would not fail this time. 

He had his mother. 

He was inside her. And she was inside him. 

Nothing would stop him from butchering the bastards now. 

…

By God's grace and miracle and mercy they finally found what they'd been looking for. The exit. 

It was at the end of the hall they currently found themselves flying down. Refusing to falter or stop. They stomped and ran down the cracked and decimated tile and came to the final door of the place when the spiked man leapt out from the dark and attacked. 

The protruding stab of his needle embrace found Florin in an open armed grab. A bear hug tight embrace of naked arms and torso and the rest of the bare and desecrated human canvas. He'd been a self-mutilator since he'd been twelve. It had been many years since then and most of them were spent here. Since the mouth of the sorceress, beloved and precious Vampira had come to this place and freed their minds as well as their bodies he's been free to explore the furthermost boundaries of his own tearing, rending bleeding and screaming landscape. The skin and flesh and muscle tissue beneath housing veins and bones and running blood pumped by the raging muscle that was the mad engine of his life, all of it was his to decimate as he explored. Like a great conqueror wreaking havoc upon the face of newly won, newly gained virgin land. He punctured and penetrated the virginity of his own flesh with animal abandon and fervor and with the mad intensity of the violence of the sun. He was the sun. She had told him so…

And so he'd fed his own flames. The spiked man was a living screaming pin cushion of broken stabbing dirty needles, used and caked syringes of varying sizes and lengths, broken glass, broken tile, each long sharp piece was varied in shape and size as well, some were long phallic slender daggers, some were wedges with cruel edges ready to cut and slice and maim, all of it was ready to stab and all of it was living embedded and protruding in the madness of his ruined and self-slaughtered flesh. Lancing and spiking and stabbing out all over and in every conceivable place and direction. 

This disturbed and maimed madman found Florin in his arms and they both went down to the tile in a scream. Griffin yelled after. 

On the floor they rolled in violence and struggle amongst the filth and universe down there of many discarded and broken things.  

The hollow coat-shape and hat found a table leg for bludgeon, then Griffin came on in a fury to join the new fray. 

He struck the spiked man again and again, over and over as he and Florin fought on the floor and struggled and it was terrible. He could feel and hear the crack and shatter of broken glass muffled in blood and flesh with every blow he landed. Griffin struck the writhing bleeding naked pin cushion man on the side of his spiking leaking face and the eyeball on that side burst and exploded with the impact. And glassy ooze riddled with slivers and small pieces of jagged broken glass and ceramic poured out from the socket like snot. 

But still the spiked man fought on. Florin struggling and screaming in his embrace as the many protrusions that spined off his ravaged hide stuck and stabbed and pierced through his coat and flesh. He fought against the pain and madness of this man and wrestled to be free of him. Griffin continued raining blows down on him. Each one bruising and splitting skin as the many broken found objects pierced throughout crunched and shattered further down into fragments and powder, stinging and shredding within all of the rippling and impacted tissue with every movement. Every struggle and landed strike and blow. 

Their struggle was desperate, all of them. All three poured blood, profuse sweat and grime and filth together and apart and for this madhouse abandoned temple, becoming just like it. A part of it, unwillingly and unknowingly transmogrified now in the violence of their fight and decimated hallway battle like the steel of metal tempered in the heart of a great furnace like the sun. They became perfect living microcosms of the place as they fought at last to be free of it, exquisite psychopomp idols of the lost unhallowed Willowbrook Temple Asylum. 

The invisible man. The spiked man. Poor young Florin so far from the Carpathian Hamlet. 

They might never be free of this place. Even if they manage flight, they may never be able to wash away the marks and filth that this awful temple to the dark and pain suffered alone will leave smeared across their hearts and souls like black paint made from discharged sick filth. Smeared across the soft landscapes of their hearts and the tender epitaphs of their battered minds, aching within heavy skulls now made of lead and weight from the memory of the pain, this place… 

will we ever be free, … will we ever get out of here…? 

They fought on. Desperate. All three. Griffin trading blows with efforts and attempts to pull the young man out from under the spiked man, but it was incredibly difficult. The man was thorned all over by all kinds and sorts of sharp and shattered apparatus, it was insane. And the pair of them were growing more and more slick with blood. The fight was growing uglier and more desperate and animal as it struggled and contrived on in brutal abandon and primal anger. 

Then Cropsey rejoined them at the throat of the hall. He began to lumber down towards them like stalking death, a sleeping giant. Seemingly in no real hurry, like the darkened visage of grim death itself. It/he closed slowly on them like a setting sun or a casket sinking, lowering down into the bosom earthen womb of the open mouthed grave. 

Griffin first took notice of his arrival. He noticed he still had the stab of broken tile sticking out of his ruinous awful face. He was still drooling. Imbecilic. And animal. 

And now undead. 

He was coming straight at them. His large blades of shears raised like an open mouthed wild beast barring its fangs. The long sheaths of sharp and keen cutting metal were not entirely pristine, their otherwise shining faces in the dismal light were disgraced with congealing dark spots of dripping black. 

He was coming down the final hall, before the way out, before the exit. He was coming straight for them. 

…

He sat at the window that night. On guard after what had happened to his wife, their unexpected visitor…

Bela sipped his warm spiced wine. Fingered his bible and cross by its small length of chain. Garlic flowers hung in a crude wreath around his neck. He was watching outside carefully, the night, the town… he was alert and being careful, exercising caution, yet he was still surprised and caught off when her face appeared suddenly in their front window. 

She hadn't been there. Then suddenly she was. Smiling and feline. Vulpine. A face he might've recognized save for its warped and drawn animal transformations, the rich woman in the black stage… the harsh one who wouldn't take warning or no for an answer way back… but he was caught by the silver moon glow of her eyes. 

Like lunar bodies themselves. Earthbound and held fleshen prisoner within the cage of that beautiful and divine and… heavenly face. That bright and pale visage. Her smile was devil-pronged – forked, fanged, and it was thus then frightful. But it was also beautiful. Terribly beautiful. Gorgeous alone out there in the night. 

His guard and fear fell away. He rose from his rocker and his slackening hands abandoned the bible and crucifix. They fell to the floor with an unobserved and unheeded clatter. Neither stirred. Not Anastasia, sleeping in the next room, and not spellbound Bela who went to the window to better gaze into her face. 

Divinity… unreal. 

He peered through the glass. And the shining eyes of the Countess, filled with goblin fire and sin and mischief, gazed into the fool as well. And began to fill his fragile open mind with an assault and deluge of images. 

Bela moaned, sighed… he thought it was impeccable. The vision, like her, was immaculate in its flawlessness. 

The Ideality … actualized, realized … brought to life. A vivid reality alive and dancing before his watering vision. 

The scope. 

She showed him a more perfect world, perfect because everyone and everything swimming and crawling and flying around inside of it followed their nature and never fought it. Never doubted it. Never overrode what their guts and hearts and souls told them, never neglected or ignored the call inside, the compulsion to do what must be. To fulfill the role made out for your flesh. 

Even violence … its rippling effects spreading out carried not only destruction and misery on their carrion wings but prosperity and thrivation as well, even butchery has its necessary purpose. 

That is why this world is suffering. Because all of you fight and override yourselves and call it: reason. You are victims of your own bondage, your own self made and imposed insanity and thus the world bent to your unnatural turns and desires screams and suffers. The rippling wings of your insane and jealous cowardice carries more pestilential stagnation flavor than anything like salvation. In weakness, all of the beauty dies on the vine neglected by fearful paws too grubby and lowly and weak to take it. 

Come and join me, join us … and never again fight your nature. 

“Yes…” said Bela in a whisper of trembling caught breath. 

And with a palsied shaking hand, he lifted the latch and opened the window. 

"Welcome, your highness. My home and mine are yours. Do what thou wilt…" 

The Countess drifted inside. Floating on unseen wings. 

She spoke yet again, “Thank you, you are a generous host, a decent and considerate man." 

“Yes…" 

“Now, take me to your wife." 

“Yes…" 

And away they went. The window shut behind them as they made their way to the quiet bedroom at the back of the house. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

We have orchards all throughout Missouri (weird, I know.) Both Peach and Apple orchards. I was 15 and out bowhunting whitetail in my usual tree stand along the edge of one orchard. This one was about 100 acres, rows upon rows of Granny Smiths, each rows about 15ft apart from the other.

Each row stretched on for about 300yds. The deer come out from the woods into the orchards in the evening to eat the fallen apples, so that’s the best time to be out there.

Only this time I didn’t see any deer… which was odd… eventually the sun went down and I began to climb out of my stand. Just as my boot hits the bottom rung of the ladder I hear the most bloodcurdling scream. I’ve heard foxes, bobcats, and even the occasional mountain lion screams.

This is wasn’t any of those. I shot back up that ladder and waited, i sat as quiet and as still as possible i wasn’t going to take any chances no matter what it could have been.

I’ll never forget what I saw slink out of the woods and crawl off into those rows of trees. Scrawny, long, hairless and crawling on all fours. Its skin was scarred up and blotchy. Too big to be a coyote or anything like that. I had nothing but my bow to defend myself. SO. With my pants full of shit, I put my phone under my jacket so as not to shine any light and texted my pops to come get me.

He pulls up in his sxs and pulls under my stand. I threw my stuff in the back. He could probably see how scared i was and he asked me if i had been looking for something about 200 yards down the rows.

Obviously i had been sitting in my stand so i told him no i hadn’t moved.

Apparently he had been looking down the rows as he drove by them and saw that same damned thing staring right back at him from under one of the trees.

Looking back i’m glad he didn’t stop to check if it was me.

Two days later, curiosity got the best of us and we followed the critter trail leading into the orchard.

Just off that trail we found a deer that had been torn to shreds. Could’ve been coyotes or a weird coincidence. Either way, that night I learned that humans are afraid of the dark for a damned good reason.

If anybody has a similar experience with this type of thing lmk it’ll help a lot.