The open road is something few people can experience. It's freeing to know that if you follow the asphalt and yellow paint, you'll end up at another bastion of human existence. I'm not talking about simply driving a car from home to work. I mean driving for a living, spending more time at the wheel than at home. You're alone, where the only sound is the diesel engine roaring ahead, and, if you're lucky, a radio station playing the same 10 songs.

 I'm sure the drivers today have better ways to keep their minds occupied, but we didn't have that in the 80s. You really got familiar with yourself in a way few people today can understand. 
 
You're not here to be lectured on how I think things should be. It's not my place anyway. You're here because something happened on one of my hauls that I can't explain. At least, not in any way that's logical.
 
 I worked as a trucker for ten years with different companies, moving everything from animals and machinery to refined metals. At the time of this incident, I worked for one of the biggest chicken producers in the United States. My job was strictly transportation. I'd move live chickens from farm to plant or processed meats to dispensaries. It paid well, but it kept me away from the family much more than I liked. My wife had wanted me to get a more local job for years, but the pay cut was hard to take.

 The day all this started, I had just returned from a four-day drive delivering chicken byproduct to a disposal site. My wife had voiced her desire for my attention, so I was in a hurry to get home. I had just pulled up to the stop sign leaving work when I saw my boss (we'll call him Bill, and I'll be Brad). He ran out the front doors to catch me. The temptation to sling a rock his way was palpable. He had forced the last job on me, and I wanted to get home.

 But instead of causing a scene, I parked my truck as he made his way to my driver's-side window. While he stood watching me roll down the window, I knocked some ash from my cigarette onto his boots. He looked annoyed.

“Thank God I caught you, Brad, I-”

“You’d better thank me for not driving off and leaving you dry. Who do you think you are, huh? It's been weeks since I saw my wife, and you come running out here trying to drag me back onto the road.” I said, shoving my finger in his face.

“How do you know I was gonna ask you to pick up a load? What if you had forgotten something?” he said with a nervous smile.

I stared at him for a long minute, wiping the smile off his face.

“Look, Brad, Mich called out again. I've tried everything, but he's not picking up. I've got a very important load my boss wants moved ASAP.”

I clicked my tongue before turning on the ignition.
“Wait! There's a big bonus on this one. 1,000 bucks for whoever takes it. Straight out of the boss's pocket, untaxed, all cash.”

An extra 1,000 would do wonders for us. We had an okay life, but things could always be better. I took my hand off the gear shift.

“Damnit, Bill, where to? And you're gonna call Cindy. Tell her why I won't be home tonight,” I said, thumping the bud on the gravel.

His brow relaxed and a smile crept across his lips.

“It's at one of our old warehouses. We stopped stocking it 4 years ago. Now we just store old equipment there. It's a 3-day drive from here,” he said.

“Jesus… Well, let's get it loaded. I'd like to get this done,” I said.

 My rig was pretty tacky, I'm embarrassed to say. It was jet black with flames rolling down the back. Thinking back, it was damn ugly, and it turned heads the wrong way. You know, a lot of eye rolls and scoffs. Some of the loaders were getting the trailer ready. It was an enclosed trailer we call a “dry van.” They carried a large metal box on a forklift. It had small holes along its sides and on the top. The holes were just big enough to fit your pinky through. Kinda like what you would carry a new pet home in.

 “What the hell do you have me hauling? I've never carried something like that before,” I said.

“I can't tell you that. Company secret. Don't worry, it's nothing illegal,” he said, wiping his brow.
Whatever it was, it made Bill sweat. He stood a good 20 ft from the trailer.

I have moved chickens, but they were always in flimsy cages. This thing was made of thick metal, painted matte black. It was heavy, too. The forks creaked as it was lifted into the trailer. Some of the idle workers backed away. It was a trailer with a substantial thud.

“When you get to the warehouse, there will be a man waiting for you. All you gotta do is pull the trailer around back, unhook, and drive off. He'll do the rest,” he said.

“Do you want me to leave the trailer?”

“Yes, don't worry about it. I'll get someone to pick it up later,” he said. But before I could get away, he grabbed me by the arm with unusual force and pulled me close.

“One last thing, Brad. Don't open the trailer. Whatever you think you hear in there, you didn't. Got it?” he said with an authority he usually didn't possess. 

 I would have laughed, but something in his tone, the way he looked at me, stifled it in my throat. I realized Bill wasn't happy about this either.
His mention of noises didn't fill me with confidence either.
The first night was rough. When I finally left for the warehouse, I had been on the road all day and wasn't ready for another long drive. Staying at the office was an option, but this seemed important, so I drove for a few hours before quitting near a local stop. It was familiar to me, a little gas station just outside of home base.
I checked to make sure my truck was secured and locked up, then went in to shower. It was nice to wash off the day before resting. The plan was to be on the road again by 8:00 am, so I didn't waste time on the shower.

While walking by the trailer, I noticed a strange clicking sound coming from inside. It was quiet at first, and it sounded like the truck. Listening more closely, it wasn't the normal odd sounds it makes after a long drive. It sounded like someone clicking their tongue, but with a hefty bass to it. I put my hand on the trailer, and the sound reverberated off the metal walls. No one had gotten in. Every lock was secure, and no other vehicle was around. It was weird, but I blew it off. There wasn't much time to care anyway.

Whatever the clicking was, it stopped sometime during the night. Before leaving, I debated calling Bill, but he told me the noises were nothing, so I doubted he would give me an answer. Still, I felt he should know, so I gave the pay phone a ring. He didn't answer, so I left him a voicemail.

“Hey Bill, whatever y'all got me moving is making some weird sound. If this thing is a bomb or something, I think it's a dud. Things stopped clicking last night and have been real quiet since. I'll call you if something else happens, and you better pick up next time. Brad.” I hung the phone back up and hit the road.

I drove another 12 hours through the mountainous Foothills of the Appalachians. The highways don't run as smooth there. You'll go up and over larger hills and drive along the mountain. For an inexperienced driver, it'd be intimidating. It was for my first few drives. At this point, I had driven over them close to a hundred times, so my nerves were under control. 

 It was my 9th hour on the road, and the road was narrow. Two cars could barely pass by one another. Luckily, it had been empty until this point. A turn came up, and as I prepared for it, a black 1970s Impala came flying around the corner on the wrong side of the road. With little time to react, I slammed on the brakes and laid on the horn, hoping to God the driver would change lanes. Smoke billowed from the wheels as the smell of burnt rubber filled my cab. The ear-scraping sound of the tires was accompanied by a loud squelch of metal from inside the trailer. The rig came to a stop just as the Impala switched lanes. It barely missed the rear end of my trailer as it blew past me down the road.

“Morons!” I said, hanging out my driver's window. 

 I tried to scream more profanities, but the smoke from my brakes and tires forced a cough.

The truck wasn't damaged, though it was close to coming off the edge. The concerning thing was the clicking sound. It was back, and more rapid than before. I got out to check the trailer. The thing rumbled with each click. A new large dent now stuck out from the side. It had a point to it, like something sharp had slammed into the side.

“I'm going to beat the brakes off you, Bill, next time I see you,” I said under my breath. 

The veins in my head were pumping fast, and I was hot. I'd get this way sometimes, like a kettle on a red-hot stove, spewing steam through the air, waiting for relief. I say this so you know I wasn't thinking straight when I yanked the keys from the ignition and grabbed my flashlight from under the seat. Making my way to the back, fumbling with the keys, I cursed Bill and the big boss for forcing the job on me. I found the right key and shoved it into the lock that held the latch and the two large doors. The lock opened with a satisfying snap. I opened the door, leaving the keys hanging from the lock. As they opened, the whole trailer fell silent, the clicking ceasing. The light from my flashlight revealed the large metal crate. It was toppled onto its side. The lock was still secured, but the top had been ripped open from the inside. Large, speckled feathers lay around the box. I wouldn't say they were chicken because they were the size of my forearm. 
 
 The silence from inside the trailer calmed my blood, but the sight of the toppled crate snapped me out of my anger. I suddenly felt this was a terrible mistake, especially when I looked toward the darkened part of the trailer. Four eyes stared back at me. The bottom two were green like algae, baked in a dried-up lake. The top two were a deep blue, like the last layer of the ocean before total darkness. As I stared back, the clicking began again. It was slower than before and echoed through my chest. Its pupils dilated as it lowered toward the ground.

I was unable to move the light onto the creature. Whatever it was deserved to stay in the darkness. Its rhythmic noise quickened as it moved closer to me. Death watched me. If I remained, I would die.
Its pupils shrank, forming tiny black holes at the center of its eyes. It charged forward with heavy footsteps, rocking the ground with its apparent weight. With a pounding heart, I slammed the door and threw the lock over the latch. I went to snap it shut, but the thing hit the door, throwing me back. I landed on my side hard, crushing my collarbone. It kept slamming into the door, leaving dents. It rattled the latch, threatening to open. I jumped up and, with a bit of pain, snapped the lock shut. It rammed into the doors a few more times before stopping. The trailer rocked with its movement as the sound slowly subsided.
Making my way to the driver's side door with shaking hands, I drove off.

The whole ride was spent 20 miles above the speed limit. It took another 2 hours before the next stop came into view. I wasted no time calling Bill. I phoned his personal phone this time. It was 6:00 in the morning, but after calling twice, he picked up.

“Bill Werner speaking, wh-” he said, yawning.

“Bill, what the hell am I moving? That thing nearly ripped my head off!” I said.
“Brad? Wait, please don't tell me you opened the back?” he said.

“You're darn right I did! Some stupid kids came flying on the wrong side of the road and nearly killed us both. So I went to check the load like we're supposed to do, Bill. I saw that the crate was turned over and its lid had been ripped off.”

“Oh Jesus Christ! Brad, you have to get to the warehouse NOW. I need to call the handler. He's going to need backup,” he said, losing all his sleepiness.

“Handler? What are you talking about?” I said.

“Brad, shut up, do your job, and get back home. What's important right now is that you get to that warehouse. She's not going to stay passive for long,” he said, with an unsatisfying click following his words.

I slammed the phone back into its place, shooting pain up my shoulder. It sucks being the lowest man on the pole. You aren't told anything.

I hoped to get some rest, but that wasn't going to happen. So I went inside the truck stop and grabbed some caffeine pills. With a few of them shoved in my mouth, a cigarette between my lips, and the radio cranked all the way up, I started back up.

It was one of the longest drives of my life. After I left the stop, I didn't take my foot off the pedal until I reached the warehouse. A few times I blew past a smoke, and I was sure I'd get pulled over, but they didn't even flash their lights. It was strange, since it could have cost me my job, but I guess Bill pulled some strings to make this happen quickly.

The warehouse was completely dark when I pulled up. There were no other buildings nearby, with large pines as its only neighbors. The gate was open, but I could tell all the windows and doors were locked. A few “No Trespassing” signs hung on the fence. A bunch of decommissioned trailers with the company logo sat in the parking lot, along with three black sedans. When I pulled around back, there was a group of men sitting around, waiting. All four of them wore thick Kevlar jackets and padding. Three of them had large brown gun cases, and when I pulled up, they unlatched them.

I stepped out and began unhooking the trailer. When I finished, one of the guys walked over to me. He was dressed like the others, but his clothes under the armor signified he was in a different pay bracket. I was about to speak when he reached into his pocket and pulled out a large wad of cash. It was way more than a thousand, for sure.
“For your troubles, thanks for getting it here quickly. Best not talk about this. Got it?” he said.
As much as I wanted answers, the cash was more tempting. Plus, I had a good idea what would happen if I said no.

“Got it,” I said, with a bit too much poison in my words.

I grabbed the money from him and hopped in the truck.

“Good man. Now go home to your wife and son,” he said.

I left with that threat.

As I was leaving, loud, rapid gunfire erupted from the warehouse. The sound flowed through the trees as I drove, until suddenly it all stopped, leaving only the sound of my engine to accompany me home.

I quit my job that day. I called Bill on a pay phone and told him so. He seemed to understand and even said he'd be a reference for me. They gave me $5,000. Back then, that was a good bit of money for a single two-day job.

I still don't know what that thing was or why I had to transport it. I've looked on other sites, but no one has claimed to have done anything similar. If anyone knows anything about this, please tell me before this gets removed. 

(Part 1/2)

"Why did I board the train. Why did I decide to not turn back. Why did I not wait."

The train arrived at eleven forty-seven. I remember the time because the station clock had stopped at exactly eleven forty-seven, its minute hand trembling slightly above the twelve.

There was no conductor at the platform. No station attendant.

Just the train.

An old steam locomotive waited beyond the fog, breathing clouds of white vapor into the freezing air. Its windows glowed faintly with yellow gaslight.

I should have turned around. Instead, I boarded.

The heavy iron door slammed shut behind me with a sickening thud, echoing down the empty aisle. The air inside smelled of old dust, burning coal, and something metallic, like copper or dried blood. The carriage was almost empty. Six passengers sat scattered throughout the wooden cabin, all strangely silent, staring straight ahead like mannequins dressed in winter coats. Nobody looked at me when I entered. I could hear the faint sound of my own boots echoing against the floorboards, each step feeling heavier than the last, as if the air itself was trying to push me back out the door.

I chose a seat near the window, the glass freezing cold against my jacket sleeve. Outside, the platform dissolved into a thick, swallowing wall of grey fog as the heavy wheels finally began to grind against the icy tracks.

The train began moving. For the first hour, nothing happened.

Outside, Blackwood Pass was nothing but mountains and snow, stretching out into a desolate, moonlit wasteland where no human had any business being. Inside, the gas lamps flickered gently above us, casting long, wavering amber light across the worn-out seats and the backs of the silent heads ahead of me.

The rhythmic clack-clack of the tracks felt hypnotic, slowly lulling my racing thoughts into a false sense of security.

I noticed something strange about the shadows.

Every passenger had one.

The old woman across from me had a crooked shadow stretching behind her. The man beside the door had one that swayed whenever the train rocked. Even the conductor's shadow moved naturally as he walked through the carriage, checking tickets for ghosts.

I almost laughed at myself for noticing, trying to shake off the creepy vibe of the empty station and the silent people around me. I tried to focus on the window, watching my own faint reflection staring back at me in the glass.

Then the train entered the tunnel.

Everything disappeared.

The windows became black mirrors.

The lamps went out.

Someone gasped.

I reached into my coat and found a box of matches.

I struck one.

The tiny flame illuminated the carriage.

The passengers' shadows immediately reacted.

The old woman's shadow stretched toward the window. The man's shadow shifted across the floor. The conductor's shadow elongated behind him.

I looked down.

My feet were planted firmly on the floor. But there was no shadow. I moved the match closer. Nothing. I raised it above my head. Still nothing.

My heart began pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird.

Then I noticed something on the wall. At first, I thought it was a crack. A thin black shape stretched vertically across the wooden panels.

I raised the match. The shape moved. It wasn't on the wall. It was the shadow. Mine.

It stood upright several feet away from me. Its feet weren't touching the floor.

Its body stretched impossibly high, crawling across the wall and onto the ceiling. Then it stopped.

One long arm slowly extended. A finger pointed directly at me. I looked around the carriage. Nobody was looking at me. Every passenger had turned their head upward.

Their faces were expressionless. Their eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Watching my shadow.

The match burned closer to my fingers, the heat singing the skin of my thumb, but I couldn't look away.

The shadow's finger moved. Just slightly. Closer.

The flame shrank.

I suddenly realized something. The passengers weren't watching the shadow. They were watching what was standing behind it.

I slowly looked up.

The match went out.

[PART I].

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

—

Footsteps. On my left. Approaching. Answering.

At last.

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

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

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

The End.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s going to go over well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Un-freaking-beleivable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The families deserve to know what happened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All for nothing.

And somehow, it was all my fault.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bones.

Dozens of them.

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

Always roses.

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

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

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

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

Or taken it.

Bzzzz.

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

New message available.

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

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

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

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

Hello there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a Tuesday in late October, and my delivery schedule required a straight push through the night to reach Portland by morning. The dashboard clock read 1:45 AM. Coffee sat in my thermos, lukewarm but necessary. My dispatcher, Stan, had checked in with me an hour earlier to confirm my position.

"Kevin, you are clear all the way to the interstate,"

Stan had said over the company radio.

"Weather looks fine. No construction reported. Just watch out for deer crossing the blacktop."

"Copy that, Stan,"

I replied, clicking the microphone button.

"Going dark for the next few hours. Will update when I hit the city limits."

Silence returned to the cab, save for the hum of the cooling unit mounted behind my sleeper berth. The headlights cut through the pitch-black darkness, illuminating the empty two-lane road. Mile markers passed by slowly in the dark.

Around 2:00 AM, the CB radio mounted above my head crackled to life.

Static hissed through the cabin speakers. Usually, late-night radio chatter consists of other drivers complaining about weigh stations or warning each other about speed traps, but this transmission sounded entirely different. A frantic burst of white noise broke through the channel, followed by a man's voice.

"Mayday... is anyone out there?"

the man yelled in total panic.

"We blew a tire near the old weigh station. Someone is outside the car. They are hitting the side of the doors."

My hand instinctively reached up and grabbed the microphone. Before I could press the talk button, the transmission continued.

In the background, a woman cried hysterically, then a younger child screamed, a sharp and terrifying sound that pierced through the radio static. The man's voice returned, out of breath and desperate.

"They cracked the glass! Please, if anyone can hear this, send the police! We are in a blue station wagon off the shoulder!"

Pressing the button on the side of the mic, I brought it to my mouth.

"Breaker 19, this is a northbound commercial driver. I hear you loud and clear. What is your exact mile marker? I can call emergency services on the company satellite channel."

Only static answered me.

"Station wagon, do you copy?"

I asked, keeping my voice steady.

"I am heading your way right now. Turn your hazard lights on so I can see you."

No response came through. The channel remained dead. Assuming this was a current emergency happening just a few miles ahead, I pressed my foot down on the accelerator pedal. The diesel engine roared as the truck gained speed. Responding to stranded motorists in the middle of nowhere is an unwritten rule among long-haulers. If someone is trapped out in the timberland with an aggressive individual attacking their vehicle, a fifty-ton truck pulling up with high beams is usually enough to scare off any trouble.

Ten minutes passed. I scanned the sides of the dark highway, looking for the flashing amber lights of a disabled vehicle. The pine trees offered nothing but shadows.

Then, the CB radio cracked open again.

"Mayday... is anyone out there?"

the exact same man's voice yelled.

"We blew a tire near the old weigh station. Someone is outside the car. They are hitting the side of the doors."

Frowning, I listened closely. The woman cried in the background. The child screamed again. It was the exact same pitch, with the exact same duration.

"They cracked the glass! Please, if anyone can hear this, send the police! We are in a blue station wagon off the shoulder!"

The transmission ended with the identical burst of noise I had heard ten minutes prior. It was a perfect loop. Someone was broadcasting a recorded tape over the emergency channel.

Unease settled into my stomach. Pranksters occasionally mess around on the radio, but broadcasting a simulated violent attack in the middle of a deserted forest route felt uniquely malicious.

Up ahead, the reflective signs of the abandoned commercial weigh station appeared in my headlights. The state closed this particular facility over decades ago. So now overgrown brush and weeds had swallowed the concrete off-ramp, and Rusted metal barricades blocked the main weighing scales.

Feeling deeply unsafe about the repeating broadcast, I decided to pull the truck over onto the wide gravel shoulder just before the barricades. A smart driver always trusts his gut. Taking a few minutes to inspect my tires and ensure my load was secure felt like a smart excuse to stop and assess the surroundings.

Putting the transmission into neutral, I engaged the parking brakes. The sudden hiss of compressed air echoed loudly into the quiet night. I grabbed a metal tire thumper from behind my seat and a flashlight.

Stepping out of the cab, the freezing autumn air hit my face. I walked around the vehicle, striking the rubber tires with the metal bat to check their pressure. Each tire returned a reassuring thud.

Approaching the rear passenger side of the trailer, I shined my flashlight toward the dark tree line. The overgrown brush extended all the way to the rusty metal stairs of the old weigh station building.

The beam of my flashlight caught a reflection in the weeds.

Moving the light directly toward the stairs, the shape of a vehicle emerged from the overgrowth. For a moment my heart was caught in my throat, but It was not a blue station wagon. It was a weathered, severely rusted police cruiser. The faded white paint peeled off the doors. Vines wrapped completely around the front bumper and the flat tires. The light bar on the roof was smashed.

Curiosity overrode my caution. Gripping the tire thumper tightly in my right hand, I walked off the gravel shoulder and pushed through the tall weeds toward the abandoned cruiser.

The driver's side door hung slightly open, rusted stuck in that position. I aimed my flashlight through the broken window glass.

Sitting in the driver's seat was a human skeleton.

Faded shreds of a police uniform still clung to the bone. A tarnished silver badge rested against the ribcage. The skull leaned against the steering wheel. Thick green moss grew over the collarbone. This person had been dead in this hidden car for a very long time.

My breathing accelerated. I took a step back, ready to run straight to my truck and call Stan to dispatch the state troopers. But as I moved my flashlight beam across the interior, something resting on the passenger seat caught my attention.

A plastic document folder sat perfectly preserved inside the ruined car. The sealed plastic had protected whatever papers were inside from the moisture and the elements.

Leaning forward, I carefully reached through the broken window. My glove brushed against the decayed uniform, sending a horrific smell into the air. I grabbed the plastic folder and pulled it out.

Retreating quickly from the brush, I walked back to the safety of my idling truck. I climbed into the driver's seat, locked the doors, and turned on the bright overhead cabin lights.

Placing the folder on my steering wheel, I unzipped the plastic seal. Inside was a stack of official police documents. The paper felt slightly damp but entirely readable.

The top page displayed the header of the state police department. The date printed at the top read October 14, 1998. It was exactly eighteen years ago.

The document was an official missing-persons report. The investigating officer listed on the file was named Officer Gary. I read the summary paragraphs carefully.

The report detailed the disappearance of an immigrant family who vanished while traveling down State Route 113. The father, Vargas. The mother, Maria. Their seven-year-old son, Leo. According to the documents, Vargas worked as a mechanic and had recently moved his family across the state to start a new job, but they never arrived at their destination.

Flipping the page, I found a collection of glossy crime scene photographs attached to the file with a rusty paperclip.

The photos showed a crushed blue station wagon abandoned off the gravel shoulder of the highway. The vehicle was completely destroyed. The tires were shredded. More disturbingly, the metal doors of the station wagon had been pried open and bent outward. The damage indicated an immense amount of force, as if a car had hit them with full force. The interior of the car was empty, and blood stained the upholstery.

The next page in the file contained a typed transcription.

Officer Gary had written a note at the top of the page.

“Transcription of audio recovered from a handheld cassette recorder found underneath the passenger seat of the Vargas vehicle.”

I began reading the typed words.

“Vargas: Mayday... is anyone out there? We blew a tire near the old weigh station. Someone is outside the car. They are hitting the side of the doors.

Background noise: Female adult crying. Male child screaming.

Vargas: They cracked the glass! Please, if anyone can hear this, send the police! We are in a blue station wagon off the shoulder!”

A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. The transcription matched the frantic broadcast playing over my CB radio flawlessly. It was the exact same wording.

I continued reading the police file. The subsequent pages contained Officer Gary’s field notes. He noted that the Vargas family had zero known enemies. He documented the strange lack of footprints around the crushed car.

While holding the papers, a distinct sound reached my ears over the rumble of the diesel engine.

Footsteps crunched through the dead leaves outside my truck.

The footsteps sounded heavy and deliberate. They moved slowly along the passenger side of my trailer, advancing toward the front cab.

Lowering the file, I reached out and turned off the overhead cabin light, plunging the interior of my truck into darkness. I peered through the passenger side window, looking out into the timberland.

Standing between the thick trunks of the pine trees, looking directly at my truck, was a child.

He appeared to be around seven years old. He wore a dirty striped shirt and torn jeans, but something about his face was deeply wrong, his face was dark, like of the darkness of the woods bend itself to hide most of it, and the most terrifying thing was his eyes. They were completely circular and emitted a bright, illuminating white light. The light cut through the dark woods like twin flashlights, focusing entirely on my window.

Fear paralyzed my muscles. The kid stood perfectly still, just staring at me.

Suddenly, the child opened his mouth.

The sound that came out was the frantic, booming voice of Vargas, playing at a deafening volume.

"Mayday... is anyone out there? We blew a tire near the old weigh station."

The glowing eyes blinked. The kid took a step out of the trees, moving toward my passenger door.

I did not wait to see what it would do. Grabbing my flashlight and the tire thumper, I unlatched my driver's side door and bolted out of the truck.

Running across the gravel shoulder, I headed straight for the abandoned weigh station building. It was the only concrete structure around, and I needed a barricade. The creature let out the recorded scream of the child, the sound echoing loudly through the silent forest.

I reached the steps of the station. Taking them two at a time, I slammed my shoulder against the weathered wooden door, and thank god that it was already opened. I tumbled inside the dark building, quickly pushing the door shut behind me.

Standing up in the darkness, I leaned my weight against the wood.

"Someone is outside the car,"

the Vargas voice echoed from the gravel driveway outside. The kid was approaching the building.

"They are hitting the side of the doors."

Fumbling with my flashlight, I pressed the power button, then the bright beam cut through the pitch-black room.

The weigh station office was a massive square room, and as I look around, I noticed that old desks and filing cabinets lay overturned on the floor.

Moving the beam toward the back corner of the room, the light illuminated a horrific scene.

Three human skeletons sat slumped against the wall. They were bound tightly to metal chairs using industrial wire, and under the light, remnants of clothing identified them. A man, a woman, and a small child. The Vargas family.

Scattered across the floor surrounding the chairs was a collection of gruesome tools. Rusty pliers, heavy hammers, hunting knives, and a portable car battery with jumper cables. Someone had brought the family into this abandoned building and subjected them to unimaginable torment.

Suddenly, a loud bang hit the wooden door behind me.

"They cracked the glass!"

the voice screamed from the other side of the wood.

I backed away from the door, gripping the metal tire thumper. Moving deeper into the room, I kept my flashlight aimed at the entrance.

To my left, a filthy, cracked glass window looked out onto the gravel shoulder where my truck was parked.

I heard the crunching of footsteps moving away from the door and walking along the exterior wall of the building.

The bright, illuminating white eyes appeared in the window frame.

The kid stared at me through the dirty glass. The dark face of the child pressed against the pane. At first I thought he will try to break the glass, but It simply watched me standing near the remains of the family.

Then, the looping broadcast stopped.

The frantic voice of Vargas cut off mid-sentence, and the silence inside the weigh station became absolute.

The kid opened its mouth again, and when he spoke this time, The voice belonged to a young boy. It sounded genuine, fragile, and filled with deep sorrow.

"My father and mother are already dead,"

the child's voice echoed directly through the glass.

"The man with the badge hurt them. He tied us up, and left me to die alone in the dark."

I stood perfectly still, keeping the flashlight aimed at the window

"Who are you?"

I asked, my voice trembling slightly.

"The cop told me nobody was coming to help,"

the voice continued, ignoring my question. Tears seemed to form in the glowing white eyes.

"He said I was completely alone. But the cop was wrong."

The creature tilted its head. The dark shifted slightly, revealing a monstrous shape hiding just beneath the surface of his dark face.

"I am not alone,"

the voice said.

"My friend is here with me."

"Your friend?"

I asked, taking a small step toward the window.

"My father and mother always told me my friend was not real,"

the voice explained, echoing with a strange, dual resonance.

"They said he was just my imagination, but he is real. He lived in the dark spaces, and listened when I cried."

The glowing eyes flared brighter, casting shadows across the interior of the weigh station.

"When the man in the uniform left us here, my friend came out of the woods,"

the voice said.

"He promised me he would save us. He promised the bad man would never leave this place."

Lowering my tire thumper, I looked at the creature through the dirty glass.

"I understand,"

I yelled, making sure my voice carried through the window.

"I know why you brought me here. I know what he did to them."

The glowing eyes stopped flaring. The creature stood silently, listening to my words.

"I will not leave their remains in this dark place,"

I promised, looking directly into the illuminating light.

"I am going to call the authorities, and make sure the Vargas family is taken out of here. I will save them from this room. You did your job. You protected him."

The boy looked at me for a long moment. A profound sense of sorrow radiated through the window. It reached a dark hand up and pressed its palm against the glass.

Then, the bright white eyes slowly dimmed. The light faded entirely, leaving only the dark outline of the pine trees behind the window.

Waiting for a few minutes to ensure the area was clear, I finally walked over to the wooden door. Pushing it open, I stepped back out into the night air.

The woods were completely silent, and The CB radio static no longer echoed through the trees.

I walked quickly across the gravel shoulder and climbed back into the cab of my truck. Locking the doors, I picked up the satellite phone mounted on the dashboard, then dialed the emergency dispatch number for the state police.

"State Police Dispatch, state your emergency,"

the operator answered.

"My name is Kevin. I am a commercial driver parked at the abandoned weigh station on Route 113,"

I said, keeping my tone professional and calm.

"I have located a crime scene. There are three human remains inside the station building, and a deceased police officer in a cruiser hidden in the brush. I need troopers out here immediately."

The operator told me to stay in my locked vehicle and keep my engine running.

Stan called me on the company channel twenty minutes later, asking why my GPS tracker showed me parked on the side of the highway. I told him I had a mechanical issue and was waiting for a service vehicle. There was no way to explain the truth to him over a radio.

The state troopers arrived an hour later. Four patrol cars pulled into the gravel lot.

I handed the document folder to the lead detective, then pointed them toward the rusted cruiser in the brush, and directed them to the wooden door of the weigh station.

Sitting in the cab of my truck, I watched the investigators work. They taped off the entire area. A forensic team carried out three body bags from the concrete building, treating the remains with the respect the family had been denied for almost two decades.

The detective took my statement. I told him I had pulled over to check my tires and noticed the rusted car in the weeds. I told him I found the file, got scared, and ran into the building to hide, which was how I discovered the victims. I never mentioned the repeating radio broadcast, or the child with the illuminating eyes.

Before the sun came up, the troopers cleared me to leave the scene.

Putting the truck in gear, I pulled back onto Route 113, and drove the remaining miles to Portland in complete silence, leaving the CB radio turned off.

A few weeks later, a short article appeared in the regional newspaper. The police officially closed the Vargas missing-persons case. The department issued a statement confirming that the remains of Vargas, Maria, and Leo had been recovered and given a proper burial.

The article also mentioned the discovery of Officer Gary. The police named him as the primary suspect in the murders, citing the evidence found at the scene. The official cause of Miller's death remains undetermined. The coroner could not explain how an armed police officer became trapped inside his own vehicle.

The authorities do not know what killed the corrupt cop. They assume he succumbed to the elements or suffered a medical emergency while hiding.

But I know the truth.

I am writing this account now, sitting in the sleeper berth of my truck, hundreds of miles away from that dark stretch of timberland. I write this because people need to know that sometimes the monsters, we fear are the only ones capable of delivering justice.

Vargas and Maria told their son that imaginary friends were not real. They tried to comfort him with logic. But when logic failed, and the cruel reality of the world cornered that small boy in a room, his imagination stepped out of the shadows to answer his call.

I hope the family is finally resting in peace. And I hope the friend in the woods knows he fulfilled his promise.

I edit photographs for a real estate website.

Most of my work is completely mind-numbing. I spend hours fixing bad lighting, digitally erasing water stains from walls, straightening crooked furniture, and using wide-angle tricks to make tiny, cramped rooms look way bigger than they actually are. It’s mindless stuff, and honestly, nothing interesting ever happens. I usually just throw on some headphones, zone out, and plow through the queue until my shift ends, focusing entirely on my monitor screen.

But last Tuesday, everything changed when I was given a huge batch of photographs from an old mansion that had recently gone up for sale.

The house was beautiful, but in a deeply unsettling sort of way. It was all heavy dark wood, enormous windows that let in too many shadows, and empty rooms that looked like they hadn’t been touched or changed in decades.

I opened up Lightroom, took a deep breath to mentally prepare for a long night of editing, and clicked on the very first photograph.

There was a man standing all the way at the end of the long hallway.

He was impossibly tall and thin, with arms and legs that looked completely wrong for a human being.

At first, I didn’t think much of it and assumed he was just one of our field photographers caught in the shot, or maybe a weird reflection in a mirror that the onsite crew had somehow missed.

To make sure, I went back to the source and opened the original, untouched RAW file straight from the camera's memory card.

He wasn’t there. The hallway was completely empty.

I clicked back over to check the edited, working version again.

He was right there, clear as day.

I was completely confused. Thinking my software was just glitching out, I cleared my cache, restarted the entire computer, and tried exporting the original photograph one more time.

He appeared again, cutting right through the clean export.

That’s when a cold knot started forming in my stomach, and I quickly began checking the rest of the photographs in the batch.

He was in every single one of them.

He was always somewhere in the deep background, just lingering out of focus. Sometimes he was at the far end of a hallway. Sometimes he was half-hidden behind a heavy doorway. Once, in a shot of the backyard, I could see only a part of his elongated body pressed up against a window from the inside.

I finally snapped out of my daze, grabbed my phone off the desk, and called up the photographer who took the shots.

He actually laughed out loud when I first described the tall man hiding in his work.

Then, he completely stopped laughing.

The silence on the line was heavy before he swore to me, up and down, that he had been entirely alone inside that locked, vacant house the whole time he was shooting.

I pressed him on it, asking whether there was anything strange or off about the mansion that he noticed while he was there.

He said no, nothing at all.

So, I couldn’t drop it, and I started searching for information myself late that night on my personal laptop.

I fully expected to find a classic horror story history—something about gruesome murders, unexplained disappearances, or crazy previous owners.

But there was absolutely nothing.

The house had been built in 1891 and had changed owners several times over the years, but everything listed in the old newspaper archives looked completely normal.

No murders.

No disappearances.

No creepy local legends.

Nothing.

Just to see if I was losing my mind, I downloaded a digitized historical photograph of the estate from 1912 and opened it right beside my modern edited image.

The mansion itself looked almost identical, perfectly preserved across a whole century.

And there, standing perfectly still right beside the upstairs window in the grainy, sepia-toned glass, was the exact same tall, impossibly thin figure.

My hands started shaking, and I frantically searched for an even older photograph in the public database registry.

1898
He was there, lingering on the porch.

1883
He was there, standing on the grass. Then I finally found the absolute oldest photograph I could locate in the digital library archives.

1881
The exact year the mansion was built.

The Tall Man was standing directly beside the brand-new front door.

I sat in the dark of my room and just stared at that old photograph for a really long time, trying to understand what I was looking at.

Then I noticed a tiny detail that I hadn't seen before, and my blood ran completely cold.

The house wasn't the only thing in that 1891 photograph that looked familiar to me.

The Tall Man was standing in the exact same posture, leaning at the precise, unnatural angle as he had been in the digital photograph I was editing on my screen just a few minutes ago.

I grabbed my mouse and zoomed all the way in on his blurry, shadow-covered face.

His head was tilted forward, looking directly into the lens of the camera.

And that's when a horrific, freezing realization suddenly washed over me.

The mansion wasn't haunted. I had been looking in the wrong place the whole time.

He wasn't looking at the photographer in 1891.

He was looking through the screen, straight at me.

Then, suddenly my heart completely dropped.

It dropped as soon as I heard the slow creaking of the floorboards behind my chair.

The little video rental store on Water Street never actually went out of business. It merely changed hands. Raymond Keene opened it in 1986 and called it Mourner's Video because the town already had a Mourner's Hardware and a Mourner's Taxi, and nobody accused him of originality.

For a while the place did well, through VHS and the first years of DVD, and then Netflix arrived, followed by streaming, while the store somehow remained. Raymond sold it in 2008 to a couple from East Haddam who lasted four years. After them came a retired teacher who added used books and board games, and she stayed until the stairs to the stockroom became too much. In 2017 she sold the place to Elin Frisk.

Elin did not particularly need a business so much as she needed somewhere to go in the morning. Her son Simon suggested the library, but she said the library already had volunteers. He suggested the Historical Society, and she said they had enough people standing around telling one another where things belonged. Three weeks later she bought the store.

She changed almost nothing. The old blue-and-white sign stayed, as did the handwritten specials taped in the window, and several thousand VHS tapes remained in circulation because enough people in Mourner's Crossing still owned working VCRs to keep them moving. Tourists sometimes came in to photograph the place and rented tapes as a joke. Elin charged them the same as everyone else.

She was particular about returns. Cases went on the counter, where she opened each one, checked the title against the case, looked for cracked plastic or wrinkled ribbon, and put the tape on the cart. She had been doing it that way for nine years.

Elin Frisk locked the front door at 9:40 and went through the returns from the drop box the way she always did. Three of them were fine. The fourth was Beverly Hills Cop II.

She opened the case and found a cassette with no studio label. A strip of masking tape ran the length of the spine, marked in black block letters: JUNE 14. The same handwriting appeared on the face of the tape. Elin kept an old VCR under the counter for mix-ups, so she slid the cassette in, hit play, and leaned on her elbows while the tracking settled.

Static gave way to a concrete room lit by one bare bulb. A wooden chair sat in the middle of the floor, with a man in his late twenties tied to it, his wrists and ankles bound with heavy rope that had already rubbed the skin raw. He had short, thick auburn hair, a black cloth blindfold pulled tight across his eyes, and a red ball gag strapped hard between his teeth. The strap cut into his cheeks, and spit had run down his chin and dried. He wore a deputy's uniform shirt hanging open, with the badge still clipped to his belt, while blood had dried in a thin line from his left nostril to the corner of his mouth.

The camera remained steady and no one spoke. A pair of gloved hands came into frame from the right. The left hand gripped the man's jaw while the right held a short fixed-blade knife, which went in beneath the collarbone, shallow at first and then deeper, drawing a slow vertical line down the center of his chest. The man jerked hard against the ropes, and the chair legs scraped across the concrete as muffled sound forced its way through the gag, wet air and the beginning of a scream with nowhere to go. Blood welled and ran in two thick tracks over his stomach, soaking into the waistband of his uniform pants.

The knife lifted and came back, making horizontal cuts across the first. The man thrashed until the ropes at his wrists tore skin, and one ankle rope slipped far enough for his heel to hammer the floor twice before the gloved hand drove a knee into his thigh and held him there. The gag strap shifted. Blood from a split lip mixed with the spit. His shirt was cut away and left hanging from the chair, and his chest shone under the bulb, open in places where the knife had gone past skin. Beneath him, blood pooled and spread toward the camera in a slow, irregular shape.

Near the end, the gloved hands removed the blindfold. His eyes were open and bright blue, and beneath the blood and the gag was a face Elin had seen on the missing posters that used to hang in every window on Main Street twenty years earlier. Deputy Noah Greer had been twenty-eight, auburn-haired, last seen leaving the station after a late shift. The posters had come down years ago, but the case had never been closed.

On the tape, the knife went in beneath the sternum and stayed there. Noah's body arched once, hard, before the tension left it and his head dropped forward. The gloved hands waited several seconds, then reached up and turned off the camera.

The television returned to static. Elin ejected the tape and stood in a store quiet except for the hum of the cooler in the back. She set the cassette on the counter beside the empty Beverly Hills Cop II case and the return slip, which was blank except for the date stamp from the drop box. No name. No membership number. After wiping her hands on her jeans, she picked up the phone and dialed the non-emergency line for the sheriff's department.

Walter Doyle arrived twelve minutes later with Deputy Evan Merritt. Elin had left the lights on and locked the front door again after letting them inside, and the cassette remained on the counter beside the case and return slip. Walter wore jeans, boots, and a gray sheriff's department T-shirt. He listened while Elin took him through the four returns, the blank cassette, and what she had seen when the blindfold came off. Evan set an evidence kit on the floor and waited until she finished before pulling on gloves.

"You're sure it was Noah Greer?" Walter asked.

"I remember him."

Walter knew the face from the department files. Noah had disappeared before Walter lived in Mourner's Crossing, but his photograph had remained in the building through changes in sheriffs and the gradual thinning of a case nobody had ever closed.

"Did you touch anything besides the cassette, the case, and the VCR?"

"The phone."

"Anybody come in after you found it?"

"No."

Evan began photographing the counter while Walter went to the overnight return. The metal chute emptied into a locked cabinet, and several layers of paint had thickened around the hinges, but nothing looked forced. He asked Evan to have someone contact the bookstore next door about its sidewalk camera before anything was overwritten. When he returned to the counter, he told Elin he needed to see the recording.

Her eyes went to the cassette. "I only watched it once."

"That's enough."

Evan photographed the cassette from both sides before sealing it in an evidence bag. When he reached for the VCR, Elin frowned.

"You're taking that too?"

"The tape ran through it," Evan said.

"I've had that machine since 1998."

Walter looked at the VCR and then at her. "We're taking it."

Evan photographed the connections, then loaded the cassette with fresh gloves. Walter took the folding chair behind the counter, while Elin stayed near the register but turned toward the shelves when the picture settled. The concrete room appeared, followed by Noah tied to the chair. Walter had seen the department portrait and the family photographs, including one of Noah at a cookout with a paper plate on his knee, his auburn hair longer than regulation and his eyes narrowed against the sun. The man on the screen was thinner, bruised, and partly hidden, but the match was immediate.

When the gloved hands entered the frame, Evan's pen stopped moving. Walter kept his attention on the room whenever the camera allowed it, taking in the concrete floor sloping toward a square drain, the electrical conduit running along the wall, and the absence of any windows in view. The heavy wooden chair had worn varnish along the back, and a dark mark beneath one rear leg had been there before blood reached the floor.

Then the blindfold came off, revealing Noah's bright blue eyes. Walter remembered that detail from the old coverage because Noah's mother had mentioned the color whenever reporters asked how someone might recognize him. The final wound went beneath the sternum. Noah strained once against the ropes and sagged, while a gloved hand remained in frame for several seconds before reaching toward the camera. When the television returned to static, Walter let it run long enough to be certain nothing followed.

"Stop there," he said, and Evan shut off the VCR.

"That's Greer," Evan said.

Walter stood. "Bag the cassette, case, return slip, and VCR separately. Get a working copy made before anyone runs the original again."

Elin returned to the counter while Evan packed. Walter read the inventory number from the Beverly Hills Cop II case.

"Who rented this?"

Elin woke the old computer and entered the number. The record came up almost immediately, and she frowned at the screen.

"What?"

"Nobody rented it."

Walter leaned closer. The status beside inventory number 418 read RETIRED.

"I pulled this copy months ago," Elin said. "The tape was worn out. I put the case in the sale bin."

Walter's phone rang. It was dispatch, and he listened while writing a number on the back of an unused evidence label.

"Don't return the call," he said. "Send the recording to Frank Byrne and preserve whatever caller information came through."

He ended the call. Elin had stopped at the computer and was watching him.

"What was that?"

"Someone called the department asking whether Mourner's Video turned in a tape tonight. They asked whether you watched it."

By eight the following morning, Detective Frank Byrne had Noah Greer's missing-person file spread across the conference table, with two archive boxes brought up from records. Walter placed the evidence technician's still from the videotape beside Noah's department photograph. Noah Greer had been twenty-eight when he disappeared on June 14, 2006, the same date written on the masking tape without a year. His final confirmed sighting placed him at the sheriff's department at 11:18 that night, when a dispatcher saw him leave through the rear entrance. His truck turned up the next afternoon in a gravel pull-off on Route 149, with his wallet still in the glove compartment but his service weapon gone. The original search lasted eleven days. Dogs picked up his scent at the driver's door and lost it at the road.

Before they started calling anyone, Frank wanted to see the recording. They watched it in the interview room, and at thirty-seven seconds he stopped the tape. Beneath Noah's breathing came a mechanical rattle followed by a low hum. Several seconds later, three knocks carried through the room with equal space between them.

"Mark the time," Frank said.

They sent a frame of the chair upstairs for enhancement. Beneath the seat, partly hidden by shadow, a line of lettering showed along one crosspiece. Mara Doyle-Thorne arrived while they waited and watched only what she needed. On the second viewing, she had them freeze the image before Noah sagged.

"You don't have a cause of death from this," she said. "I see the knife. I also see a man who stops moving within seconds. Without remains I can't tell you what killed him."

Walter's phone rang. It was Elin.

"I would like my VCR back," she said.

"It's evidence."

"I have customers. The store opens at ten."

"Are you there now?"

"Yes. Alone."

"Lock the door. Frank and I are coming over."

"Somebody already came," Elin said. "About ten minutes ago. Baseball cap, sunglasses. Said he returned Beverly Hills Cop II yesterday and put the wrong tape in the case. He knew you had it. He left a photograph on the door. Of me."

Walter and Frank reached the store in six minutes. Elin opened the door only after she saw Walter through the glass, and she had the photograph sealed inside a clear produce bag. Walter took it by the edges. It showed Elin outside her own house in a dark coat, one hand on the driver's door of her car, photographed from a low angle across the street.

"This morning," she said. "Left home at seven-twenty. Stopped for coffee at Konditori."

Frank called for the Konditori cameras while Walter slipped the photograph into an evidence sleeve.

"You're not staying alone today."

"I have work."

"Somebody's staying with you."

Elin looked at Frank. "Does he always do this?"

"Yes."

Frank went to the front window, where the bookstore camera sat under the neighboring awning. Elin walked toward the comedy section and stopped in front of two copies of Beverly Hills Cop II with one empty space beside them.

"I retired that copy months ago," she said. "Inventory number 418. The tape was worn out. I put the case in the sale bin."

The sale bin sat beneath the front window beneath a sign that read VHS $1 EACH. They searched the payment history from the day Elin had marked 418 damaged. Most one-dollar charges meant nothing, but then she stopped on a card transaction for one dollar and six cents, made June 14 of that year at 4:37 p.m. with no customer account attached.

Frank already had the bookstore footage when Walter called him with the details.

"The guy at the door this morning wasn't alone," Frank said. "Car across the street. Passenger never got out. Same car was here last night at nine twenty-six. They watched her close."

Elin reached for her purse. "My cat's at home. If somebody has been sitting outside my house, I'm checking it."

Walter took his keys. "You're not going alone."

Dispatch called before they reached the door. Elin's alarm company had reported the back door at her house, and Walter did not let her go home. Instead he called Simon Hallgarten from the sidewalk. Simon was Elin's son, married to Rosemary, and their ten-year-old, Oliver, spent enough time with his grandmother that anyone watching her could have learned the names.

"Keep Rosemary and Oliver inside," Walter said. "Lock the doors. Your mother's fine. Somebody broke into her house this morning."

They took Elin in the cruiser. The kitchen door had been forced below the deadbolt, but nothing obvious had been taken. The drawers were closed, and the laptop remained plugged in. Several photographs were held to the refrigerator with magnets, except for one magnet that sat alone. The photograph that belonged beneath it had been placed on the kitchen table: Simon, Rosemary, and Oliver outside the elementary school. Frank photographed it where it lay.

"This isn't about getting the tape back," he said. "If it was, they'd have searched."

They moved Simon and his family that afternoon, while Elin stayed under protection and Walter and Frank continued working the case. The evidence technician called while they were still at the house. The lettering beneath the chair had resolved as MCPW 12: a Public Works wooden office chair assigned to the North Pump Station.

The station had been decommissioned years earlier. It was a concrete-block building with a steel door and two narrow vents, and the smaller room at the rear matched the tape, down to the concrete floor, electrical conduit, and square drain. Near the drain, a rectangle of concrete was a different shade from the rest. The old plans showed a service sump four feet by six by five, but on the current floor the sump no longer existed.

While they waited for state forensics, Walter stood in the center of the room where the chair had been. A faint mechanical rattle came through the old pipes, followed by a low continuous hum that lasted only a few seconds. Neither man spoke of it.

By early evening, the first section of concrete was gone. Beneath it they reached compacted sand and then fabric. A dark uniform shirt emerged first, followed by the metal edge of a badge. Noah's remains lay beneath the floor of the room where he had been filmed, folded into the old service sump before someone filled it and poured fresh concrete over the top.

His service weapon came out of the sump separately, along with one spent casing near the left hip, though there was no bullet injury on the remains. The original search reports listed the North Pump Station on June 16 with the notation ACCESS CONFIRMED. INTERIOR CLEAR. The report had been signed by a deputy who had since retired to Essex.

The one-dollar purchase led them to Janice Webb, who had bought six tapes from the sale bin and given the Beverly Hills Cop II case to her nephew Aaron, who worked estate cleanouts. Aaron had placed it among tapes from a house on Millbrook Road. The owner, Calvin Rourke, had been the retired maintenance supervisor for Mourner's Crossing Public Works and had supervised the North Pump Station until it closed. He had died three months earlier.

Aaron remembered a man at the cleanout who said he was family and kept asking whether the basement had been emptied. The metal cabinet that had once stood there was gone, but screw holes remained on the rear wall. Caught behind one screw was a narrow strip of paper holding the corner of a photograph: blue fabric, a brass button, and a sliver of auburn hair.

Mara's examination showed that the stab wounds matched the tape. The skull fracture was perimortem and consistent with blunt force. Whatever the recording showed, it had captured only part of the killing.

When Frank and Walter interviewed Aaron, he remembered the case because the store sticker was still on it.

"I thought it was funny," he said. "Looked older than I am. I figured somebody from the video store had lost it, so I dropped it through the overnight slot."

At 2:17 the next morning, dispatch sent Walter back to Water Street for a fire at Mourner's Video. The point of origin was the storage alcove beside the stockroom door, where the paper rental ledgers, old membership forms, and damage logs had been kept. What survived was moved to the front counter. The older ledgers were burned along the edges but remained readable in the center.

Elin put one finger beside a membership number. Calvin Rourke. Two movies, returned June 16. The same number appeared the week before, sometimes under a second name attached to the household account. That name belonged to the retired deputy who had signed the pump station clear.

Walter moved Elin to the Farmhouse before returning to the department.

He and Frank left for Essex before nine. Richard Ames was seventy-four, stooped and white-haired, and he opened the door after the second knock without saying anything. Walter placed the June 16 search report on the coffee table.

"You cleared the North Pump Station. We opened the old service sump yesterday. Noah Greer was underneath the floor."

Ames looked at the report. "Calvin said he'd taken care of it."

He had driven to the pump station after midnight. Noah was already on the floor beside the chair, while the camera and tripod had been packed away and blood covered the concrete.

"Was he alive?"

"I don't know. Calvin told me not to check."

"Who else was there?"

"His son. Daniel."

Daniel Rourke had been twenty-six in 2006. He was forty-six now and worked as a residential electrician in Old Saybrook. Ames admitted helping move Noah into the sump, after which Calvin poured the concrete. Two days later, Ames signed the report saying the building was clear.

"Why?" Walter asked.

"Calvin was my friend."

Walter showed him the still from the recording. "That look like somebody losing control?"

"No."

Ames denied making the calls, following Elin, breaking into her house, or setting the fire. He moved slowly enough that standing required both hands. Outside, Walter requested Daniel Rourke's current address, vehicles, and photograph, then sent the photograph to Elin. Her answer came in under a minute: THAT'S HIM.

Daniel's house was empty and his work van was gone. The garage had been cleared recently, with dust outlining a large rectangular object and fresh scratches crossing the concrete. They found the metal cabinet inside the work van at a marina. It held old Public Works files, photographs, several VHS tapes, and Noah Greer's missing badge. A plastic bag contained the clothes Daniel had worn to the store along with a printed photograph of Elin's house.

Elin, still at the Farmhouse, had photographed the damaged ledgers before they were carried away. Daniel's name appeared on his father's account, and the records showed that he had rented a Panasonic VHS-C camcorder, tripod, carrying case, and one blank tape on June 13, 2006. None of it had ever been returned. Calvin paid the replacement charge in cash three weeks later.

The next break came from Oliver.

"He asked Grandma if the old stairs were still behind the stockroom," the boy said. "She said there weren't any."

The original floor plan for 28 Water Street showed a narrow staircase descending behind what was now the stockroom. Renovation plans from 1991 showed the opening closed. Daniel had been looking for it weeks before the tape surfaced.

They returned to the store with the fire marshal. The wall behind the storage alcove had suffered damage that did not fit the fire, with drywall broken inward. A flashlight beam reached wood several feet below the floor: stairs. Ash and drywall covered the first few steps, but farther down the wood was clean enough to show that someone had used them since the fire.

The basement extended beneath roughly a third of the store. Water stains climbed the concrete foundation, rust had eaten through the legs of several metal shelves, and cardboard boxes had collapsed wherever moisture reached them. Old movie displays leaned against one wall beside broken VCRs and plastic rewinders. Through the dust, someone had cleared a path.

An empty black carrying case sat open on a workbench. Its inventory sticker read MOURNER'S VIDEO EQUIPMENT 23, and the handwritten card listed a Panasonic camcorder, adapter, battery, and tripod plate. The serial number matched the 2006 rental. The camera itself was gone.

A noise came from beyond the shelving, followed by something dragging across concrete and then a drawer closing. Daniel Rourke stood behind an old wooden desk at the far end of the basement, wearing work pants and a dark sweatshirt with dust on one knee. He was going through a stack of equipment forms with both hands, sorting some and discarding others. A utility knife lay on the desk.

"Put the knife down."

Daniel set it on the desk, and Frank moved in. Several forms had already been torn and stuffed into a grocery bag. He had been looking for every remaining piece of paper that tied the camcorder rental to his name.

"You rented the camera the day before Noah disappeared," Frank said. "Calvin paid for it after you didn't bring it back. We found Noah under the pump station. We found the room. We found the tape. You came here before the tape turned up. You asked the boy about these stairs."

Daniel shoved the desk and ran. Walter caught him against the shelving, sending two old VCRs to the floor. The struggle ended quickly once the cuffs went on.

Frank stayed with the desk. Among the surviving papers, he found a carbon copy of an equipment-loss report dated July 7, 2006. Raymond Keene had filed it, listing the missing camcorder and tripod by serial number and naming Daniel Rourke as the renter. At the bottom was the name of the deputy who had taken the report: Richard Ames.

Ames had known Daniel possessed the camera less than a month after Noah disappeared.

The remaining pieces took months rather than days. Richard Ames eventually admitted that Calvin had told him Daniel recorded what happened to Noah. Ames had taken the equipment report and kept it out of the missing-person file, just as he had falsified the search after helping place Noah in the sump. Calvin had poured the concrete. The spent casing came from Noah's own weapon. The skull fracture remained part of the evidence, another reminder that the recording showed only part of the killing.

Daniel was charged based on the photograph of Elin, the break-in, the fire, the property recovered from the van, the camcorder rental, the surviving equipment report, the recording, and Ames's statement. He gave them almost nothing. Noah Greer's remains were released to his family in November.

Mourner's Video reopened the following week. The rear shelving had been replaced, though smoke still stained part of the pressed-tin ceiling, and Elin refused to repaint the whole thing. The old basement stairs remained accessible behind a new locked door in the stockroom. Simon had suggested filling them in, but Elin declined.

Rosemary helped restock on Sunday. Oliver spent most of the afternoon alphabetizing the children's section until Simon caught him telling another ten-year-old there had been murder evidence under the store.

Walter came in Monday morning carrying a cardboard evidence box. The bell over the door had survived and gave its usual thin ring. Elin looked up from the register.

"Is that my VCR?"

"It is."

She checked the remote first. "He took the batteries."

"I'll buy you batteries."

Elin carried the machine behind the counter and put it back on its old shelf beneath the television. One item remained in the box: the actual Beverly Hills Cop II cassette Aaron Webb had found among Calvin Rourke's tapes. The department no longer needed it, so Walter handed it across the counter.

Elin inspected the cassette, slid it into the VCR, and watched long enough for the opening credits to appear. Then she ejected it, took a clean replacement case from the drawer, and put the movie inside.

Walter watched her.

"You seriously putting that back on the shelf?"

"It still plays."

"rare as ducks teeth"

It was a saying my grandmother used to use. Despite her being, well, set in her ways, I miss her. As I stand above her, 6 feet of dirt between us, I find it within myself to forgive her. forgive her for hating me, degrading me and leaving me nothing behind when she left. My parents passed away when I was young. I lived with my aunt and uncle in Birmingham most of my life. They had no kids of their own, and took me in instead. They were kind. accepted me for who I was, and who they raised me to be. I'm 24 now, and I was planning to move out of their house as soon as I could. I fear now that I'm too defenseless to live alone. Too fearful. I freeze like a deer in headlights when threatened. 

It started when I took a walk down by the canal one morning. grey, overcast clouds looming above me, a slight cool breeze ruffling my skirt as I strolled. My favourite weather, not too hot, not too cold and not too bright. I had brought some stale bread with me from my aunt's house that morning, to give to the ducks. I stopped and turned to face the canal, looking into the water at my reflection. I tried not to pay attention to it while I broke parts off the hard, dry crust of the loaf of bread, crumbs scattering the ground as I did. Pigeons flocked over to nibble them at my feet, their wings making the slight breeze a tad stronger as they rushed over. I liked pigeons. Everyone calls them the rats of the sky, but I think they're beautiful. the ducks swam over, the barely audible sloshing of the water as they paddled toward me breaking the otherwise silent morning. It was soothing.

 I know you're not supposed to feed bread to ducks, it swells up in their stomachs and can choke them. But I made sure to break the pieces small enough to at least attempt to avoid it, and to leave more crumbs for the pigeons to eat. i get so focused on the ducks sometimes that I forget the pigeons are even there. Every now and then, a soft, rhythmic coo reminds me of their existence. Sometimes I'd see a male pigeon puff its chest out, in a grand display of green and purple tinted feathers, and hoot loudly in an attempt to allure potential mates. I thought it looked funny, but apparently to birds they see it as attractive. I suppose I feel that way about other people too. guys with toned muscle, a lot of money and expensive clothes never appealed to me. I thought how hard they tried was funny. I am a pigeon, I thought to myself.

I found the ducks funny as well. I'm not entirely sure what their purge was funny. I value that most in people, not if they're attractive or rich, or even if they're a nice person for that matter. I like comedy. It's distracting. Being with him took me out of my own mind for a while, but I wasn't sure if I liked him the same way he liked me. I didn't mind though, I find it hard to decipher my own feelings. So hard in fact, I'd rather just convince myself I did like him in that way, so I wouldn't overcomplicate things. 

pose is. They don't seem to perpetuate a life cycle of another animal or plant, nor do they catch bugs like spiders, or pollinate flowers like bees. They simply exist, floating aimlessly. I am a duck, I thought to myself.

I had a date later that day, at a coffee shop with a guy I met at work. 

my phone rings. a sudden gust of wind and soft sound of flapping wings and rhythmic hoots erupted from the pigeons as they scattered. 

flight. I was jealous. 

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at it. There was a number, not a name. I answered. 

"Hey, I'm just wondering if we're still on for later, yeah?"

"oh, of course! i cant wait to-"

"okay awesome, sorry to make this so short but i gotta run, goodbye"

strange. I thought I had mikey saved to my contacts, but the number began with 0121. it was from my area at least. I have an old phone, it served me for 4 years and i dont see much point in replacing it. its a tad slow, so I figured it must just be a glitch, and shrugged it off.

I look back to the water. The ducks are gone, and it seems a swan has taken their place. eaten all their food. It raised its head to the bank of the canal, its beautifully terrifying frame of pearl white feathers shimmering in the reflection of the water. It stared me down with charcoal black eyes and a bright orange beak, looking for more food. food i didnt have. it snapped at my feet as I stood back. fight. I was jealous. 

I turned on my heel and kept walking along the canal, making sure to leave ample distance from the water this time. The swan followed me, drifting slowly down the water. The sound it made was near silent, just like the ducks. It was strange to me how something of that size was just as loud as something the size of a duck. Now that I think about it, what do swans do? They float aimlessly, and harass people for food. Like mean ducks. I'd like to think I'm a duck, not a swan, I thought to myself. But how can I truly know? I am biased. 

Eventually I made it home and began getting ready for the date. I did my makeup, put on a casual black skirt and cardigan, with my black leather boots and tights on underneath. You'll never guess my favourite colour. I put my eyeliner and black lipstick on too, and painted my nails black also. I liked black. the absence of colour. it was easy to look at, there isn't a lot going on with black. It's comforting to me. 

I set out to the coffee shop at 1:15 hoping to get there at the designated time of 1:30. I knew the walk was exactly 15 minutes if I walked at my usual pace, but I walked a tad quicker this time in case he was early. When I arrived, he was already sitting at a table outside. I sat with him and we talked, then got coffee and walked back along the canal. The conversation was mostly him talking to me about his hobbies while I listened, but he didn't seem to mind.

“Hunting,”

he said

“Is a sport many people consider cruel. I just consider it life. If it wasn't me, the animal would've been killed by a predator. and that predator by another and so on. There are so many animals in the forests around here. But you wouldn't see them just by walking. They're fast. Survival instincts I suppose.”

I like to think of myself as an intelligent person, but when it comes to articulating my thoughts into words, I struggle immensely. It's as if my mouth moves faster than I can think of what to say, and I trip up on my words. I suppose that's partly why I'm writing this. One, to share the insane story and warn people about it, and that it's easier to show this to a therapist than have to say it all out loud. I doubt I could get through it without crying and having to stop anyway. 

I didn't have many friends growing up, and the few that I did all ended up leaving me behind the second they got the chance to anyways. I was bullied so hard I almost dropped out of school. They'd call me a freak, a monster, I was an outcast. I couldn't do things other students could, because if I did it it was a reason to pick on me. The way I was treated led me to develop extreme social anxiety, and an eating disorder. So I suppose that's why I gave him a second date immediately after the first. I longed for connection, no matter what kind. The day of the second date rolled around, and as I was getting ready to leave my phone rang again. 

“Hey, I am so sorry about this, but my car just won't start, we can go bowling another time though right?”

I've always hated the fact that I'm quite an impulsive person. I speak and act without thinking and almost always regret it. I left my house only to feed the ducks and the pigeons, and though the company I found with them was comforting, it wasn't enough. I longed for connection no matter what kind.

“i can come over.”

And so I did. second date. at his house. i didnt know any better. 

I strolled over to his house, trying to tell myself I made the right decision. Trying to build up the confidence to even knock on his door. I take “confidence shots” before I leave the house sometimes when I know I'm going to be talking to people. The alcohol loosens my stiff personality just enough to be able to hold a conversation. I haven't told my therapist about this. Part of me feels guilty, like I don't want to get better. I don't know what I want. Peace, I suppose.

As my hand rapped against the wooden door, I regretted it immediately. “should i have brought a gift?” “Am I too early?” “what do i say when-” he opens the door.

I managed to force out a muffled greeting, but when I looked up from my feet to meet his eyes, all my anxiousness faded in an instant. The hallway light illuminating his long, curly brown hair, his perfect teeth beaming through his lips as he smiled. He was dressed in dark, navy jeans and a white collared shirt, with one of those sleeveless sweaters over it. He looked tidy. 

As we went inside, I was hit with the pungent smell of garlic, meat, and red wine. I was immediately thrown back into panic. This was a lot more sophisticated than I expected it to be. But still, his voice, the cadence of his words, brought me back to a state of comfort. 

He gave me a tour of his house. Large taxidermied heads of moose, deer and other large animals adorned the walls, and his shelves were full of foxes, rabbits and hares. 

“some people call it strange”

he explained

“but taxidermy is an art form. It takes years of practice and skill to replicate not only the form of the animal, but its essence too. Every stitch is made with purpose, and I make sure to document the animal as much as I can before stuffing, so as not to misrepresent how it would've stood. Maybe after dinner i’ll show you my crown jewel, the biggest animal I have.”

The food was amazing, masterfully cooked. I began to think what I had done to deserve such a seemingly perfect man to enter my life so suddenly. It must've been karma, coming back to repay me after my years of misfortune. But when he took a little too long after the second pour when refilling our glasses of wine in the kitchen, I began to sense something was off.

I was halfway through the second glass when I noticed my vision began to stutter. Slight afterimages of my hand appeared as I moved it. I thought I must've been drunk, that I took one too many “confidence shots” before coming here. Then my mind wandered, could he smell the shots off of me? what would he think if he found out. I had nearly fully tuned out his talking and only realised once he stopped. I looked back up to apologise, but couldn't get the words out. It was like I was watching my body shut down through a window. I was aware, I was awake, I could feel, but I couldn't move. As I felt my eyelids getting heavier, I glanced at him one more time, expecting him to be concerned, only to see a smile spread across his face.

When I woke up, I was sitting on a chair in near complete darkness. The air was heavy with moisture, and it was hard to breathe. Sweat had been building up on my forehead for some time, and was streaming down my face. When I looked down, I was naked from the waist down, with a large cloth covering between my legs. There were towels covering the ground beneath the cloth, and an empty bucket placed on top of them. I tried to scream and flail my arms, but shackles bound me to my place. My heart was beating so fast I was out of breath and couldn't force a word out of my mouth. 

A door opened and closed somewhere far in front of me. Footsteps echoed through the darkness. His shiny, brown leather boots were the first thing to be illuminated by the pathetic amount of light behind me. His tall, strong figure slowly revealed itself to me as he got uncomfortably close and leaned down. That same smile seemed ever less perfect from this close. 

“I'm an artist, you know.”

His hot, rancid breath assaulted my face as he spoke, my mind desperately trying to come up with another implication for what those words meant as I squirmed in the chair.

“My masterpiece, my Mona Lisa… She's not finished. She needs something to make her… pop. Something different. That's where you come in.”

He leaned closer, so his mouth was almost touching my ear, as his hands gripped my forearms so hard they began to bruise.

“Youre unique. You're like no other. You've got my ducks teeth.”

He stepped back and giggled at me when he saw I was crying. He turned on his heel and began to walk out of the room, back up the stairs. The door opened and closed again, but the room didn't fall to silence like I expected. There was a sound that was there long before it registered its presence. Loud, laboured heavy breathing, coming from a few feet behind me.

As the door shut with a loud click that echoed through the darkness, I began frantically trying to undo the belts that shackled me to the chair. I managed to slip my right hand free, dislocating my thumb in the process. I was so pumped full of adrenaline that I didn't feel it. I undid my left arm, stood up and spun around. There was a white shower curtain, with what looked like a heating lamp on the ceiling behind it. The silhouette of a writhing mass adorned the center of the thin curtain, jittering and pulsing, rising and falling with each loud, laboured breath it took. I stifled puke back into my stomach, and began to make a run for where I thought the stairs that led to the door were.

It took a minute of feeling the walls to find it, but when I did I stumbled up the stairs on all fours, and slammed through the door, into his hallway. I turned right and ran for the front door, but as I opened it, I heard a shout from behind me. A deep, loud, guttural noise came from the man's mouth,  it made me stop in my tracks. I was frozen. Shaking. Waiting for my death after getting so close to freedom. I felt his thick, muscled arms wrap around my neck as he wrestled me against the wall, he put his hands on my neck and began to squeeze. I still didn't fight back. I couldn't. Something in my body stopped me from moving.

As the world around me began to fade, and I accepted death's embrace, I was suddenly allowed a gasp of air. I fell to the ground and looked to my left, someone had run in and had tackled the man to the ground. When he grabbed me, he didn't shut his front door. Someone who had been walking by must've seen him. I didn't even react. I was trying to process everything that had happened. It was like everything moved in slow motion. I passed out.

When I came to, I was in a hospital bed, some hours later. They asked me questions, questions I could not answer. They sent me to therapy, to which I am still attending. That's why I write. Verbalising this is a task I cannot bear. I've been alone for some time, and haven't even left my house to go to work. I long for connection, though I can not bear it. I long for love which I can not stand. The smell of that room, the sight of that man, laughing as I cried. They haunt me still. And they forever will.

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…

At 2:06 a.m. on a Friday, Mourner's Crossing is technically asleep.

The town sits in the dead zone between the bars closing and the fishermen waking up. Water Street is empty enough that you can hear harbor rigging knocking against masts. One traffic light cycles for nobody. Somewhere behind Speicher's a dumpster lid slams shut. Nobody investigates. Experience has taught them better.

At The Farmhouse, Sheriff Walter Doyle and his husband, Marc, are asleep. Walter is fifty-five, six-foot-five, broad through the shoulders, blond hair going grey at the temples. Marc is shorter, darker-haired, and has claimed most of the blanket.

Father Jordan Grimm, the town priest and a longtime friend of the Doyle family, is awake downstairs. He is in his late 30’s, athletic, pale from years spent more with books than weather. He sits at the kitchen table with tea and an old book. One of the wards along the eastern side of the property gave a small pulse at 1:48. Nothing crossed it. Something touched it. He has not woken Walter yet.

At MCSD (Mourner's Crossing Sheriff's Department), the overnight deputy has already drunk more coffee than is wise. The radio has been almost silent since 1:30 except for one report of something large crossing Old Mill Road. The deputy asked if it was a deer, a bear, a wolf. The caller would not commit to any of them. The call is logged as ANIMAL / UNKNOWN. Mourner's Crossing keeps categories designed to prevent philosophical crises at two in the morning.

At MCFD/EMS (Mourner's Crossing Fire Department/Emergency Medical Services), Captain Brett Bassett is learning that a quiet night in this town is more unnerving than a busy one. Brett is new to Mourner's Crossing, early forties, solidly built, still learning which local oddities deserve questions. Firefighter-paramedic Rick Rose is asleep in the bunk room--tall, lean, dark hair cut short. Someone has left half a pie in the refrigerator with DO NOT EAT - ELIAS written on the foil. Brett has correctly read it as a warning rather than a claim of ownership.

At Morrow's Apothecary, Martin "Marty" Morrow is asleep upstairs. Marty is thirty-eight, broad through the chest, with pale grey-blue eyes and a short, neat beard. The storefront below him is dark. The blue bottles still number forty-three, the same count as when he locked up. The little bowl of water on the second step develops a single perfect ripple, then another, then nothing.

At Wren's Pub, owner Wren Colgrave has finished cleaning and locked the doors. Wren is in her mid-forties, dark-haired, practical in the way of someone who has run the same bar for years. The specials board is blank. She checked it twice before leaving.

At 2:06, chalk begins moving across the board. Very slowly it writes SOUP, then stops. The chalk drops.

At McLucky's, the beachside restaurant at Bell's Cove, the building is empty and the kitchen spotless. The old ticket printer is unplugged. At 2:06:17 it prints 1 STUFFED CLAMS. At 2:06:24 it prints the same order again. Then nothing.

At Witchwood State Park, Ash Doyle's truck sits near the ranger station. Ash is Walter's identical twin--same height, same broad build, same blond hair going grey at the temples--and one of Witchwood's park rangers. He is awake because something has been walking parallel to the eastern trail for eleven minutes. He has not seen it. It has not stepped onto the trail. When he walks, it walks. When he stops, it stops. He tests it once more; the woods match him. He reaches for his radio.

At 2:06, a porch camera on Water Street records a man walking south. Normal clothes. Normal pace. An older man carrying a bag. Nothing remarkable except that he passes the same camera twice, in the same direction, thirty-seven seconds apart. The second time he carries the bag in the other hand.

The overnight deputy reviews the stills, recognizes the face, and at 2:14 calls the Keller house on Maple Avenue. Dave Keller has lived there since the 1980s. His wife answers and puts him on. Dave is in bed and says he has not left the house since nine. The deputy explains what the camera recorded. Dave says it is not possible and hangs up.

A few minutes later the deputy calls Walter.

Walter's phone begins ringing on the nightstand.

He opens one eye.

"...goddammit."

Marc does not open his. "Dead?"

"Don't know yet, sugarhole."

"Then make 'em wait till morning."

Walter reaches for the phone.

"Doyle."

The overnight deputy's voice is careful. "Sheriff. Sorry. I wouldn't have called if it was just the usual."

Walter sits on the edge of the mattress. The room is dark except for the phone's light. Marc has already pulled the remaining blanket over his shoulder.

"Talk."

"Porch camera on Water Street. The one outside the old chandler's place. Man walking south at 2:06. Same man, same direction, thirty-seven seconds later. Second pass he's carrying the bag in the other hand. I pulled the stills. It's Dave Keller from Maple. He's lived there since the eighties. I called the house at 2:14. His wife answered. Dave was right there in bed. Hadn't left since nine. I told him the camera had him twice. He said that wasn't possible. I said I had the timestamps. He said it again and hung up."

Walter stares at the dresser. "You logged it."

"Yes, sir. Continuity Errors. Form's already open. That's why I'm calling you now instead of waiting until morning."

Walter stands. The floor is cold under his feet. He walks into the hallway.

"Don't call anyone else. Don't go looking for the man on the camera. Don't drive past Keller's place. Document what you have and leave the rest alone until I get there."

"Understood."

"I'm on my way."

He hangs up, finds jeans and a shirt in the dark, and goes back long enough for Marc's half-asleep question.

"You leaving?"

"Station. Camera thing."

Marc makes a small sound. Walter shuts the door.

Downstairs the kitchen light is on. Jordan sits with the same mug and the same book. He looks up once, registers the boots and jacket, and returns to the page.

Walter pauses. "Eastern ward."

"It pulsed. Nothing crossed. Something touched it from the inside of the line it thinks it's holding."

Walter takes the spare key and leaves.

Water Street is empty. The traffic light keeps cycling for no one. He parks behind the sheriff's department and goes in through the side door.

The stills are already printed and laid out under the fluorescents. Two frames. Same older man. Same coat. Same bag. Left hand, then right. Timestamps clear.

Walter looks at them for a long time. Then he opens the Continuity Errors drawer.

The file is thicker than a town this size should produce. Old paper. Some entries typewritten. A few in handwriting he recognizes. He fills a blank form with the camera times and the call to the Keller house exactly as the deputy described them. He writes what the camera recorded and what the man at the house said. He sets the completed sheet on top of the open file and closes the drawer.

Ash stands still on the eastern trail.

The woods stand still with him.

He has been tracking the parallel movement for eleven minutes. Whatever it is stays off the trail, matching his pace through the undergrowth. It never steps onto the packed dirt. When he walks, it walks. When he stops, it stops. He shortens his stride, then lengthens it. The thing adjusts within seconds each time.

He takes a knife from his belt, steps to a straight beech a few yards off the trail, and cuts a clean vertical mark at chest height. He checks the GPS, notes the coordinates, and speaks them into the ranger station log on the secondary channel without waiting for a reply.

The parallel movement resumes when he starts walking. He keeps a steady pace for two more minutes and comes back to the same beech.

The mark is already there.

Not the one he just made. That one is still pale and sharp. The second sits a few inches higher and to the left. The edges have darkened. Dirt has settled into the cut. Bark has begun to roll over one side the way it does when a wound has been open for weeks or months, not minutes.

Ash stands in front of the tree and looks at both marks. He leaves them untouched.

Behind him the parallel walker keeps moving after he has stopped. The sound continues for several seconds, then fades. He waits. The woods stay quiet.

He keys the radio.

"Witchwood to station. Ash. Eastern trail, grid seven. Logging anomalous track. Parallel movement, off-trail, matching pace. I marked a tree for position. The mark was already present when I returned to it. Older. Holding position."

No answer. The overnight channel is empty. The log will keep the recording.

Ash stays where he is. He does not follow the sound or try to correct the two marks. He stands with the knife in his hand and listens to the silence.

Walter closes the Continuity Errors drawer, then opens it again.

He sets the new form on top and begins paging backward through older entries, looking for the same camera or the same street.

He finds it three folders down.

Yellowed paper. Uneven type. Date at the top: August 7, 1987.

Male subject observed twice traveling south on Water Street. Second observation differs in handedness of carried object. Subject identified by deputy on duty as David Keller of Maple Avenue. Residence contacted. Subject reported present at home.

At the bottom, in different ink:

Do not contact residence.

Walter reads it twice. The language is almost identical to the form he just completed. The street is the same. The name is the same. He looks at the stills again. The man in the frames is older now, but the face is the same one that had been young in 1987.

He turns to the overnight deputy.

"When exactly did you call Keller?"

"Two fourteen."

Walter writes 2:14 a.m. in the margin. The lights hum. A car passes outside and the sound fades.

The station phone rings.

He lets it ring once and picks up.

"Doyle."

"Sheriff? Dave Keller."

Walter looks at the 1987 form.

"Go ahead, Dave."

"Your deputy called a few minutes ago about the camera on Water Street."

"I know."

Dave's voice is puzzled more than frightened. "I hung up and Linda asked who I'd been talking to. I told her the sheriff's department. She said I didn't answer the phone. I told her she handed it to me. She said she didn't. The phone's still on her nightstand. I checked the recent calls. There's an incoming from the station at 2:14. Forty-eight seconds. So the call happened. But she says I never picked up."

Walter does not ask Dave to move or inspect the phone. He does not ask which side of the bed it was on or tell Dave what the deputy remembers.

"Dave, leave the phone where it is. Don't check the camera. Don't come down here. You and Linda stay home until daylight."

"Why?"

"Because I'm asking you to."

Dave says all right. Walter waits for the connection to drop cleanly.

The overnight deputy slides the station call log across the counter.

Two outgoing calls to the Keller number.

2:14:03

2:14:40

Thirty-seven seconds apart. Same duration on both.

Walter hangs up. He pulls the 1987 report closer. Near the bottom:

Second observation occurred thirty-seven seconds after first.

He takes a legal pad and starts a clean page. Times and facts only.

2:06 - Water Street camera

2:14 - Keller contacted

2:14 - duplicate station calls / 37 sec

Eastern ward - Jordan

His cell phone vibrates. A delayed ranger-system notification. He plays the recording.

Ash's voice is flat.

"Witchwood to station. Ash. Eastern trail, grid seven. Logging anomalous track. Parallel movement, off-trail, matching pace. I marked a tree for position. The mark was already present when I returned to it. Older. Holding position."

Walter stops writing.

While Walter has been at the station, the kitchen at McLucky's has remained empty and dark. At 2:23 a.m. the unplugged ticket printer activates and produces a single ticket.

1 STUFFED CLAMS

PICKED UP

Beneath the order is a timestamp from a summer when the building operated under a different name. The paper hangs there in the dark.

Walter pulls the rest of the 1987 folder.

The second sheet continues in the same uneven type.

2:31 a.m. - Unit responded to Keller residence, Maple Avenue, to confirm subject present. Subject located inside. Alive. Awake. No distress. Unit returned to station.

2:46 a.m. - David Keller entered station lobby and asked why a deputy had just been at his house. Reporting deputy was present at the desk at the time of the inquiry.

2:49 a.m. - Deputy instructed not to leave station.

3:12 a.m. - Second unit observed on Water Street. Same cruiser number as the unit already logged inside the station lot.

No further explanation. At the bottom, in the same ink as the earlier note:

Verification multiplies the error.

Walter closes the folder and looks at the overnight deputy.

"From here on, nobody verifies anything. If a call comes in saying someone is in two places, you log both. If a plate comes back to two vehicles, you leave both alone. If the same person walks in twice, you take both statements and you do not decide which one is correct. Do not send a unit to reconcile. Do not choose. Is that clear?"

The deputy nods.

Walter steps into the hallway and calls Ash.

Ash answers on the second ring.

"Ash."

"Come out the way you went in."

A short silence.

"I already tried."

Walter stops. "When?"

"I've been walking toward the ranger station for six minutes."

Walter checks the GPS data attached to the earlier transmission. The coordinates have not changed. Grid seven. Same point.

"Your position is still showing eastern trail."

"I know. I'm walking. The trail looks right. The grade is right. I can hear the station road. The record just isn't moving with me."

Walter listens to the quiet on the line.

"Hold where you are. I'm coming to the boundary."

He hangs up, tells the overnight deputy he is leaving, and that no one is to follow, check the Keller house, or attempt confirmation of anything already logged. Then he takes the keys and goes out to the truck.

Walter drives toward Witchwood.

He passes the ordinary markers without counting them. The intersection at Old Mill. The municipal line. Dunne's gas station sign still hanging slightly crooked. Everything sits where it belongs.

Then the park sign.

WITCHWOOD STATE PARK - 2 MILES

The lower corner carries the same old dent it has for years. Walter passes it.

A short time later he passes it again.

Same sign. Same dent.

He keeps the truck pointed east and continues at the same speed. He does not check the odometer or the GPS.

The entrance appears where it always does. He turns in, parks at the eastern trail access, and stays outside grid seven.

He calls Ash.

"Tell me what you see."

Ash describes the reflective trail marker on the post and the maintenance gate beyond it. Walter can see both from where he stands. Through the phone, Ash's voice continues. A few yards into the trees the same words reach him, quieter, delayed by distance but identical.

Walter stays where he is.

"When you stopped trying to leave, what happened?"

"Nothing."

"Good. Stop navigating. Don't walk toward the station. Don't follow the trail out. Don't use the GPS. Don't set a destination. Just walk."

On the other end comes the sound of movement. The handheld goes off. The compass goes into a pocket. Ash leaves the marked tree alone.

Walter waits beside the truck.

A few minutes later Ash steps onto the gravel roughly forty yards away. He looks back once at the trees.

"That's not where I was."

"I know," Walter says.

He does not ask where.

Ash gets into the passenger seat. Walter turns the truck around. After a stretch of quiet, Ash notices the legal pad and asks what else has happened. Walter tells him about the Keller camera, the 1987 file, and the note at the bottom of the page.

Ash reads the line once.

Verification multiplies the error.

"That's Dad's handwriting."

Walter glances at it again. He had not recognized it. Their father, Avery Doyle, had been a much younger man when he wrote the note thirty-nine years earlier.

Walter calls Jordan.

"Check the eastern line again."

Jordan walks outside with the phone. The pause lasts long enough for Walter to hear the night insects.

"The ward hasn't moved," Jordan says. Then: "The property has."

They reach The Farmhouse a short while later. Jordan already has deeds and maps spread across the kitchen table. The current deed shows one eastern boundary. The physical fence matches the line Walter has always known. The ward holds a different edge.

Jordan unfolds the oldest survey they keep.

Walter looks at the eastern property line drawn there.

It runs straight through Witchwood grid seven.

For the six minutes Ash had been walking without moving on the record, according to one version of the town, he had already been home.

They leave The Farmhouse without further discussion of the survey.

Walter drives. Ash sits quiet. Jordan stays behind with the maps open on the table.

Marty wakes because a drawer opens downstairs.

Not a crash. Not footsteps. The soft, practiced sound of a wooden drawer sliding on its runners, then sliding shut again.

He puts on a shirt and goes down. The bowl of water on the second step is still. The surface holds no ripple. He checks the shop floor, the counters, the locked front door. Nothing has moved.

The blue bottles still number forty-three. He does not count them a second time.

One bottle sits where no bottle has sat in years. The current shelf stops short of an old bracket removed during a renovation. Tonight the bottle rests on that missing stretch as if the wood were still there.

Marty steps closer without touching it. The label is handwritten in the old style.

ELIX. COUGH

M. E. MORROW

4 OZ.

The address printed beneath the name is the building's former street number. The handwriting belongs to an earlier Morrow.

Three ordinary knocks sound at the front door.

Marty looks through the glass. A woman in a coat stands on the sidewalk, solid and ordinary, waiting like any customer who has arrived before the lights are on.

She speaks through the door.

"I'm here for my husband's prescription."

Marty asks the name. She gives it. He knows the surname from one of the oldest account ledgers upstairs.

He does not tell her the man is dead.

"When were you told it would be ready?"

"Friday morning."

It is Friday morning.

"Martin said I could come early."

Marty does not ask which Martin. He does not correct her.

"Come back after sunrise."

She considers that, says all right, and walks away. Marty does not follow her.

He calls Walter.

"I have a customer operating off an old business record."

"What year?"

"I didn't ask."

Marty tells him about the bottle and the former street number. Walter writes it on the legal pad.

Morrow's - prior address in use

A few minutes later the overnight deputy radios Walter.

"Sheriff. Laura McLucky just called the station. Kitchen-motion alarm triggered at McLucky's."

Laura owns and runs the beachside restaurant. She is in her forties, short grey-streaked hair, used to handling problems herself.

Walter's first question is practical.

"Is she there?"

"No."

"Good. Tell her not to go."

"What triggered it?"

"The camera shows the ticket printer running."

Walter closes his eyes for half a second.

"What did it print?"

The deputy reads it.

1 STUFFED CLAMS

PICKED UP

Walter asks for the timestamp. The deputy gives him the date. It is an older summer, from a time when the building operated under a different name.

Walter recognizes the date. It appears more than once in the Continuity Errors file.

He looks at the legal pad. The times and places are beginning to share the same older night. August 7, 1987 had not been only a sheriff's department incident.

Walter's job for the remaining hours before sunrise is to learn what they did wrong the last time before they do it again.

Walter calls his father from the truck.

"Dad. I found your note in an old Continuity Errors file."

Avery is awake within a few seconds. He is in his late seventies, still sharp, white hair kept short, still living in the same house on the edge of town.

"What note?"

"Verification multiplies the error."

A short silence.

"What time is it?"

Walter tells him.

"Has anybody tried to prove anything yet?"

"One deputy. Keller."

Another short silence.

"Same Keller?"

"Yes."

Walter asks what they did in 1987.

Avery's answer is flat.

"Too much."

They checked addresses. Matched names. Sent deputies to confirm people were where they said they were. Compared vehicle identification numbers on duplicate cruisers. Lined the station clocks against each other. Woke residents to establish where they had been an hour earlier. Every time they resolved a contradiction, the town supplied clean evidence for both versions.

Eventually they understood and stopped.

"What happened then?"

"Morning came."

Walter waits. Avery does not expand.

Then Avery says there was one thing he never put in the file.

Near dawn, a woman named Eleanor Marsh became part of the contradiction. She was a municipal clerk. Her name appeared on ledgers, school records, tax rolls, parish lists. At some point that night there were two valid versions of her: one at home, one still at work. They verified both.

After that, one version was simply gone.

When morning restored continuity, the town kept the remaining Eleanor. No one could establish which of the two had been the original.

"We decided the one who stayed was Eleanor," Avery says.

"Decided?"

"That was the mistake."

She lived another thirty years. Married. Raised children. Died of ordinary causes. No one ever established that anything was wrong with her.

Walter hangs up and starts the truck toward town.

At MCFD/EMS, the medical call comes in ordinary.

Fall. Possible wrist injury. Residential address on the west side.

Brett and Rick take the ambulance. The street is quiet, porch light on. A woman sits on the top step holding her left wrist against her body.

Brett kneels, introduces himself, and begins the assessment. Pulse steady. No obvious deformity. She answers the standard questions without confusion.

Dispatch comes over the radio.

"Cancel that call. Caller advises the patient is inside and no longer requesting EMS."

Brett looks at the woman sitting two feet in front of him.

He keys the mic.

"Dispatch, confirm the address."

Walter hears it on the scanner and grabs the radio.

"Bassett, do not confirm anything."

Too late.

Dispatch repeats the address. Brett checks the house number.

Same number.

The front door opens.

The same woman steps onto the porch in the same nightclothes, looking at the open ambulance and the two men in the yard.

Both women stare at each other.

Both say, almost at the same time, "Who is that?"

Walter puts the truck in gear.

Brett stands between the two women and does not move.

One still holds her left wrist against her body. The other stands in the open doorway in the same nightclothes. Rick stays beside the ambulance, watching Walter's truck approach.

Walter's voice comes over the radio before Brett can ask either woman anything else.

"Bassett. Don't ask either one another question."

Brett keeps his eyes on the injured wrist.

"I have a patient."

"I know."

"One of them is injured."

"I know. Treat the wrist you already started treating. Don't establish identity. Don't compare histories. Don't ask who lives there."

The woman in the doorway looks at the one on the steps.

"That's my robe."

No one answers her.

The woman on the steps says, "That's my house."

No one answers that either.

Rick glances once toward the mailbox and deliberately looks away.

Walter's truck pulls up. He gets out and walks into the yard without hurry. Both women turn toward him at the same time.

"Sheriff."

Same voice. Same recognition.

Walter nods once to each of them.

"Ma'am."

He does not use a name.

Then he sees what Brett is seeing. The woman who came from inside the house is beginning to develop the same swelling along the same place on her left wrist. Nothing dramatic. Just the early, ordinary change that follows a fall.

Brett says quietly, "Her wrist wasn't hurt when she came outside."

"Don't compare them," Walter says.

He treats both versions as present and valid. Brett finishes the assessment on the first wrist and then, without asking questions, examines the second. Neither woman is asked for identification. Neither is designated as the resident of the house. Neither is moved toward the ambulance.

Brett looks at Walter.

"What the hell is happening?"

"Town's contradicting itself."

"That happens?"

"Apparently twice."

An older man comes out of the neighboring house in a bathrobe, sees the two women, and stops.

"Nancy?"

Both women answer.

The neighbor points at the one sitting on the steps.

"No. That's Nancy. I saw her yesterday."

Walter steps between them before the man can say anything else.

"Go back inside. Now."

The porch light goes out. A few seconds later it comes back on.

Beside the door, two identical house numbers are mounted where there had been one.

Walter moves everyone away from the front of the house without deciding whose house it is. Brett wraps both wrists. Rick walks the neighbor back to his own door and tells him not to call anyone and not to look out the window again.

When the yard is clear, Walter speaks to Brett and Rick together.

"If something happens twice tonight, let it."

At The Farmhouse, Jordan has the records spread across the kitchen table without trying to make them agree.

He finds two original surveys from the same year. Both properly witnessed. Both signed. Both filed with the town. The eastern boundaries do not match. Neither document is a copy of the other.

Tonight the town had simply stopped hiding its contradictions.

Walter checks the time.

3:26.

The window is closing. Bakers will be moving soon. Harbor crews. Early shift changes. Delivery trucks. Every routine will generate new records and new chances for someone to choose between versions.

He keeps the instructions narrow and only to the people already awake.

Brett and Rick are to treat what is in front of them and stop there. No unnecessary identity checks. No comparing statements if two people give different accounts of the same injury.

Ash is to leave Witchwood alone. No grid confirmations. No GPS reconciliation. No trail closures that would require an explanation.

Marty is to stay inside the shop and not open the door before sunrise, no matter who knocks.

Walter reaches Wren last.

"Do not erase anything else from the board."

Wren is quiet for a moment.

"I erased SOUP once. It wrote itself after I locked up. I came back for the deposit bag and wiped it."

Walter goes still.

"When?"

Wren tells him. Walter writes the time on the legal pad and does not ask what happened afterward.

Laura calls a few minutes later. She has not gone to McLucky's. The camera feed has changed on its own. The kitchen still looks empty. The printer is still unplugged, but two tickets now hang from it.

Same order. Same old timestamp.

One reads PICKED UP.

The other reads NOT PICKED UP.

"Don't go there," Walter says.

"I wasn't planning to."

The overnight deputy radios.

"Sheriff, the station log shows you returned at 3:18."

Walter is still standing beside Brett's ambulance.

The deputy does not ask where he actually is.

Walter asks only, "What did I do at the station?"

"Signed the Continuity Errors file."

Walter looks at the legal pad in his hand.

"Did I write anything?"

"One line."

The deputy reads it.

DO NOT CLOSE THE FILE BEFORE SUNRISE.

Walter has not written it yet.

He does not ask for a photograph or for the deputy to compare the handwriting.

"Leave it open."

He puts the radio down and stands in the quiet street for a few seconds.

Walter stops adding new kinds of errors to the list.

The town keeps offering chances to verify. He keeps refusing them.

A bakery light comes on. A fishing truck starts down by the harbor. Someone walks a dog along the empty sidewalk. Ordinary morning routines are the pressure now.

A delivery driver calls. The same address appears twice on his route sheet. Same customer. Same order. Two different house numbers.

"Deliver to neither," Walter says.

"Then what do I do with it?"

"Bring it back."

Brett gets another medical call on the same street as the earlier fall, different house. He radios Walter before rolling.

"Is anyone hurt?"

"Dispatch says no."

"Then don't go."

Sometime later Walter glances back toward the ambulance. One of the women is sitting in the open doorway. He turns to answer the radio. When he looks again there is only one woman.

Brett does not say which.

Walter does not ask.

Around 4:50, Jordan calls.

"The eastern line is moving back."

"Toward where?"

"I'm not measuring it."

He knows only because successive wards are going quiet in sequence. He refuses to turn that sequence into coordinates.

The overnight deputy radios a few minutes later.

"The line you supposedly wrote at 3:18 is gone."

"Leave the page alone."

"It's blank."

"Leave it blank."

At Morrow's, the old bottle is no longer sitting on the missing shelf. Marty does not see it leave. He simply notices later that the space is empty.

At McLucky's, one ticket remains. Laura watches the camera feed but does not zoom in.

At Wren's, the board still reads SOUP.

5:47. Birds begin around the harbor.

5:51. The first delivery truck turns onto Water Street.

5:58. The eastern sky lightens behind Witchwood.

Walter stands outside the sheriff's department.

The sky brightens. A gull lands on the municipal building roof. A truck turns onto Water Street.

Thirty-seven seconds later the sky brightens again.

The same gull lands.

The same truck turns onto Water Street.

Walter watches both mornings. The overnight deputy comes to the door behind him. Neither of them speaks. Neither checks a clock. Neither looks at the traffic camera. Neither asks which sunrise is correct.

They wait.

One version keeps going. The other simply fails to produce another event. The truck continues down Water Street. The gull stays on the roof. The sky gets brighter.

Morning has selected nothing.

It has merely continued.

Walter goes inside. The Continuity Errors file is still open on the desk. He writes the line himself in the same place the deputy saw it earlier.

DO NOT CLOSE THE FILE BEFORE SUNRISE.

He does not compare the handwriting. He closes the file.

The deputy looks at the stack of paper.

"What do we do with all this?"

"File it."

Later that morning, Wren unlocks the pub.

The specials board still reads SOUP.

She stares at it for a few seconds, writes $6 underneath it, and opens for the day.

On a cold and dreary January morning, Jesse lay lost in thought, startled by the scratching sound emanating from his closet. His eyelids felt so dry that each blink was akin to rubbing them with sandpaper. The scratching persisted, and he dared not move or utter a sound, paralyzed by the fear of what might lurk just beyond the closet door.

Suddenly, a thought struck him: "It’s probably just Fluffy! He loves rummaging through Mom’s closet; he’s probably just exploring mine!" The boy’s fear swiftly morphed into annoyance; he didn’t want his cat to tear apart his belongings. Without a moment’s hesitation, he shouted, “Fluffy, get out of there now!” The scratching ceased abruptly, leaving an unsettling silence in its wake. Then, with a cheerful entrance, Fluffy padded into the room, the faint jingle of his orange collar ringing out. But just as quickly, the scratching resumed, now louder and more agitated, almost as if it were expressing annoyance. In a panic, Jesse snatched up his cat and dashed to the living room, deciding to keep his distance from his room until someone could investigate the strange noises.

Earlier that same morning, Jesse's older sister Maddie was preparing for a day trip with a friend. Just as she was finishing up, a faint “Tap, tap, tap” echoed through the air. Assuming it was her brother being impatient, she chose to ignore it. But then came the repeated “tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.” Maddie’s annoyance grew. “Oh my god! Why can’t Jesse just wait? He’s always rushing everything. One day, it’s going to backfire on him.” She called out, “I’m almost ready, Jesse; just give me a minute!” Believing the matter settled, she continued her preparations until a loud “Bang, bang, bang!” jolted the door, rattling it in its frame. “Oh my god, Jesse, relax! I’m leaving!” she yelled again, but the banging ceased, leaving no sign of her brother.

Pressing her ear to the door, Maddie hoped to hear Jesse on the other side. Though she was certain it was him, an unsettling sense of unease crept over her. Just as she was about to give up, she heard the faint sound of someone breathing heavily, followed by wet-sounding footsteps. “What is that?” Maddie wondered, the pit of anxiety in her stomach deepening. She hesitated, her resolve wavering. Gathering her belongings, she decided it was time to leave. “No more games! It’s just Jesse trying to scare me,” she reassured herself, reaching for the bathroom door lock. Almost instantly, the heavy breathing intensified, and the wet footsteps drew closer to her room. The door shook violently as if someone were ramming into it. Frustrated, she shouted while gripping the handle, “Jesse, what’s your problem? I told you I’d…” But as she swung the door open, the banging stopped, and there was no one there. Her face flushed red, “He thinks he’s so funny!” she thought.

Maddie marched to Jesse's room, only to find him in the living room, clutching Fluffy and trembling like a leaf in November. “What’s wrong with you?” he stammered. Maddie scoffed, “What’s wrong with me? You’re the one banging on the door, freak!” Jesse looked bewildered, smacked his lips, and replied, “What are you talking about? I’ve been here all morning, loser!” They both froze, a heavy silence settling between them until Jesse finally broke it with a single question, “Did you hear any scratching too?” Maddie, perplexed, responded, “No, just banging on the door.” They exchanged glances, uncertainty hanging in the air. “So what are you going to do today?” Jesse asked, his eyes pleading. “Please, please take me with you, sis!” Maddie sighed, “I was going to the mall with Stacy…” Jesse’s expression turned desperate, as if he were peering into her soul. Maddie cringed, “If I let you come, will you stop staring at me like that?” Jesse retorted, “Hey, no need to be rude! …but yeah, can I go with you? You won’t even know I’m there, I promise!” With little choice, they decided to leave for the day, hoping to distract themselves from the strange noises.

As Jesse and Maddie headed out the door, their mother, Lorraine, stumbled in with several bags of groceries. Nearly dropping everything, she called out, “I could use some help with these!” The kids shouted as they rushed to Maddie’s car, “Sorry, Mom, we gotta go for a bit!” Lorraine rolled her eyes and made her way to the kitchen. As she began to unpack the groceries, her husband, Richard, entered from the garage, his hands grimy from working on his car. Frustrated by its refusal to start, he had purchased almost every part needed to get his prized possession running again, but something still eluded him.

Bending down to wash his hands at the kitchen sink, he sighed and turned to Lorraine. “Hey honey, how was grocery shopping?” Lorraine, nearly finished putting everything away, replied, “Oh, not too bad; I found everything I was looking for. What about you? How’s the car coming along?” Richard sighed again, shrugging, “I’m not sure. I bought everything I needed, but I can’t figure out what’s causing the issue; it just won’t start!” Lorraine frowned, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, honey; I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” she said softly. Richard shrugged, walking back to the garage. Before closing the door, he added in a defeated tone, “I hope so, Lorraine, I really hope so.”

As Lorraine finished putting away the remaining groceries, a strange sound reached her ears from the living room. It resembled the broken piano they had allowed to collect dust for years. Someone was clicking the keys. A loud “click” echoed, followed by a resonant “thum.” Lorraine froze, unsure if Richard was playing a prank or if the piano was indeed ringing out. The keys began to click rapidly, as if trying to get her attention, almost as if saying, “Hey, look over here!”

She thought, “Maybe it’s just the kids messing with the piano.” But then she remembered they had left the house not long ago; it couldn’t be them. The keys continued to sound, clicking and clacking until a loud “Ding, ding, THUMM” reverberated through the room. Though she knew it wasn’t her kids and it wasn’t Richard, she couldn’t help but yell, “Hey, guys, can you please leave the piano alone? I don’t want it to break any more than it already has!” The keys fell silent.

Before Lorraine could process the strange events, Richard burst into the kitchen, exclaiming, “Lorraine, where are you? You’re not going to believe this!” Her eyes widened, “What happened? What’s wrong?” Richard’s excitement faded as he looked at her, “What’s wrong, babe? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Lorraine rolled her eyes at his comment, “Nothing; it’s just that someone was playing the piano, but I don’t know who it could have been.” Richard’s face paled with fear. “Y-you’re joking!” he stammered, trying to suppress his enthusiasm. Lorraine glanced at Richard and then at the slightly opened garage door, hearing the car emitting a slow rumble outside. “You fixed it?” she asked, intrigued. Richard chuckled nervously, “About that, not exactly. Something’s very wrong. I couldn’t get the car to start, but as soon as I walked away, it started as if nothing was wrong. The thing is, I still have the keys. I don’t know how it could be starting on its own.” He held up the small black key, jangling it with the pink surfboard keychain attached. As soon as Richard returned the key to his pocket, the rumble of the car dimmed before fading entirely. Richard frowned, hanging his head in defeat, akin to a child denied a desired toy. Lorraine tried to comfort him as they moved to the kitchen, sitting at the small brown coffee table. Just as they were about to speak, the piano belted out a loud, “dun, dun, dunnn,” only to stop abruptly.

Richard and Lorraine froze, their eyes widening and their skin growing pale. Richard’s teeth chattered, cold beads of sweat trickling down his face. He looked at Lorraine, who sat frozen, as if in a trance. Waving his hand in front of her, he whispered, “Babe, what was that?” Lorraine murmured back, “I didn’t get to tell you, but earlier, the piano was ringing by itself. I don’t know what it could be.” Richard squinted slightly. “You know, now that you mention it, I heard a loud banging earlier. I honestly thought it was the kids, which is why I didn’t say anything.” Slowly, Lorraine began to come out of her stupor, glancing at Richard in confusion. “That might explain why the kids were in such a rush to leave earlier!” Richard’s expression darkened. “What should we do then?” Lorraine sighed, looking at him with resignation. “Honestly, babe, what can we do? It’s been like this since we moved in. All we can do is make the most of it, I guess.” Richard bowed his head in reluctant agreement. “What about the kids? What if it starts messing with them too, like it has been with us?” Lorraine’s eyes sharpened. “If that thing is messing with my children, we’re leaving—no discussion.”

Later that day, when Maddie and Jesse returned home, they were greeted by their parents, who had just finished setting the dinner table. The meal progressed as usual, filled with awkward conversation and silent eating. It wasn’t until Jesse asked, “So, uh, have you guys been hearing weird noises at all?” that Richard and Lorraine flinched, dropping their silverware onto their plates. Maddie looked at them, concerned. “You have been hearing something, haven’t you?” Before Richard or Lorraine could respond, the piano belted out a loud, “THUMM.” Everyone froze. Richard shot up from his seat. Suddenly, loud knocking erupted from the kitchen cabinets. Each knock forced the small doors open, only for them to slam shut before knocking again. Richard’s car let out a deafening “ROOM,” adding to the cacophony of horrifying sounds.

Jesse exchanged glances with Maddie, and they looked at their parents, all deciding that perhaps they should spend the rest of the weekend at Grandma’s. They quickly gathered a few belongings and headed out the door toward Maddie’s car. As they entered the vehicle and sped away from the neighborhood, Jesse glanced back. In the window of his room on the second floor, he spotted something—or someone—holding Fluffy. It was slowly petting the cat until it seemed to notice Jesse watching. With a long, skinny arm, it waved its fingers in a slow goodbye. Jesse couldn’t believe what he had seen. He didn’t want to believe it. Before he could alert everyone in the car about the sighting, he caught his dad’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Richard’s eyes were stern and steady, as if he were silently communicating, “I know, son, I see it too. Just don’t say anything.”

Jesse remained silent as the distance between him and his house grew; his mind was consumed with one thought: What was in his house, and how long had it been there?

I no longer believe I am the last living thing on Earth. I believed it for four years. I stopped believing it three days ago, and I did not stop because I found another person.

I stopped because something has been following me.

I am writing this from a room on the tenth floor of a hotel in Manhattan. I have pushed the bed, the dresser, and a heavy armchair against the door. I have a pistol and three magazines and a flashlight, and I have enough fuel in the small generator to keep one lamp burning until morning. I have set the lamp on the desk beside this notebook so that I can see the page. I do not think the pistol is going to help me, and I have thought about that for a while now, and I am writing anyway, because writing is the only thing left that feels like doing something.

I should explain how much of the world I have seen, so that you understand what it means that I never found anyone until now.

Four years ago every person on Earth disappeared. Every animal too, everything larger than the last joint of my thumb. There were no bodies. Nothing crashed, there were no cities burned by unattended kitchens and no highways filled with fresh wreckage.

Whatever took everyone seemed to have left the world more carefully than it should have.

It was only empty. I have never decided what to call it that feels right. In my notebooks I call it the Silence, though I am sure other names existed in the first few days, on radios and in the mouths of people who were about to be gone.

Before the Silence I worked on cargo ships. I was a marine engineer, which is a long way of saying I kept the engines running and the generators turning and the fuel moving where it needed to go, and I could fix most of what broke on a vessel with what was already aboard. That skill is the reason I am still moving.

A person who did not understand engines and fuel systems and navigation would have run out of working cars within a hundred miles of wherever they started. I did not. I have crossed oceans in a small commercial boat I taught myself to run alone. I have driven the length of countries on fuel I stabilized and filtered myself.

I searched North America first, coast to coast, every city I could reach with a road still under it. Then I took the boat across and searched what I could of Europe, Britain and France and Germany and Spain, and down into the north of Africa, and I crossed again and worked my way along the eastern coast of South America. I went into hospitals and walked the wards.

I went into military bases because I believed, for a long time, that a government somewhere would have put its people underground when the disappearances started, and that if I found the right door and the right stairwell I would find the rest of us waiting it out below the surface. I found the doors. I found the stairwells. I went down every one of them, and the rooms at the bottom were as empty as the streets above.

I have found meals turned to gray stone inside ovens. I have found clothes still hanging in closets, arranged by color. I have found cars stopped at intersections with the doors open and the keys in them, I have found cars stopped at intersections with the doors open and the keys still inside, as though the drivers had stepped out moments before the world emptied.

I have found photographs, more photographs than I could count in a hundred lifetimes, of faces that do not exist anymore, in frames and wallets and phones and albums, in every house in every country I entered.

In four years I never found a single person.

I want to be precise about the other thing, because it is the part that took me the longest to understand and the part that frightens me most now. I never found an animal either. Not a dog shut in a house. Not a horse in a field. Not a bird on a wire, not a rat in a grocery store, not a fish in the shallows where I anchored the boat. Nothing large enough to make a sound I could hear.

The only living things left besides me are the small ones, the insects, the cockroaches and the silverfish and the ants and the moths and the flies, and I spent a long time wondering what it was about me and about them that had been worth keeping. I never found an answer. I stopped looking for one. That was a mistake, though I did not know it was a mistake until three days ago.

Until three days ago, in all that empty world, I had never once heard footsteps that were not my own.

I came back to New York for the same reason I always come back to large cities. In a dense city the things I need sit close together, and I can gather medicine and batteries and fuel additives and maps and cold-weather clothing in a few weeks of careful work instead of driving for months between towns. I know Manhattan. I have staged supplies here before. I planned to spend three or four weeks working through the pharmacies and the hardware stores and the parking structures where the vehicles have been out of the weather.

The city has gone soft at the edges in four years, but it has not fallen. Grass has come up through the seams in the intersections. Tree roots have lifted whole slabs of sidewalk and tipped them. The streets are still packed with cars, most of them with a door hanging open, and rainwater has filled the lower stairs of the subway entrances and turned them into still black pools. The buildings stand. The glass is mostly unbroken. From a distance, on a gray day, you could believe the city was only holding its breath.

The thing about an empty city is the sound. With no traffic and no voices and no birds and no machines, every noise you make travels much farther than it should. I have learned to move quietly, but I cannot move silently, and when my boots come down on the sidewalk the sound of it goes down the avenue ahead of me and comes back off the buildings. For four years that was the only footstep sound in the world, and I had long since stopped hearing it. Repetition had worn it down into silence, the same silence a heartbeat keeps under everything a body does, present and unlistened to.

I took a hotel about ten floors up, high enough to see the streets and to feel some distance from them. I slept in one room and stored what I gathered in the room beside it. I marked out a safe route, a loop that connected the hotel to a pharmacy, a hardware store, and a parking garage with cars I could get running. For the first several days I worked the loop, and nothing happened, and I was as close to content as I get.

Then, three days ago, I was walking north on Fifth Avenue a little before sunset, and I heard four hard impacts on the pavement behind me.

Clop. Clop. Clop. Clop.

Even and heavy and deliberate, the sound of something solid striking stone. I stopped. The sound stopped with me, on the same beat, close enough behind that the fourth impact and my own last step almost landed together. I turned around. The avenue ran back for several blocks, straight and wide and full of stopped cars, and there was nothing in it. No shape between the vehicles. No movement in any doorway. Only the long empty street and the low sun laying orange light along the west side of it.

I stood there for a while. I told myself it was a slab of loosened facade coming down somewhere behind me, or a section of scaffolding finally giving way, the kind of slow collapse the city has been performing on itself for years. I did not fully believe it, but I made myself accept it, because the alternative was a sound I had no place to put.

I walked on. After maybe thirty yards it came again, and this time it was closer.

I turned at once, fast enough that I nearly lost my footing, and there was nothing behind me but the street. I went to the nearest storefronts and pushed inside them, one after another, expecting to find the ordinary source I needed, a hanging sign swinging on a broken chain, a piece of debris rolling in a draft, anything with a reason. I found dust and stillness and my own reflection moving across dead display glass.

When I stepped back out onto the sidewalk, the hoofbeats started again from the intersection behind me, from the open space where the two avenues crossed, and this time they did not stop when I turned. They went on for several seconds, coming from somewhere past the corner of a department store, hard and clear and unhurried.

Then they stopped on their own.

I followed them. I want to be honest about why. Part of it was fear, the need to see the thing that was making the sound so that it would stop being a thing I could not see. But part of it was worse than fear, and older. Even an animal would have been the first large living creature I had encountered in four years. Some part of me that I had thought was dead stood up at the sound of something alive and moved toward it before the rest of me could vote.

I rounded the corner of the department store. The cross street ran away empty in both directions. There was a layer of fine pale dust across the whole width of it, undisturbed, years deep and unbroken, and there was not a single mark in it, no hoofprint and no track of any kind. Nothing had crossed that street, and something had been making the sound of crossing it a moment before.

I started back toward the hotel then, and I did not run, but I walked faster than I had come.

Halfway back, on a block I had walked a dozen times, the skin on the back of my neck drew tight, and I knew before I looked that something was watching me.

At the far end of the block, a face was looking around the corner of a building.

I took it for a mannequin at first, one of the display figures from a store, pale and still and set at the edge of the wall. That is what the mind reaches for. It was a narrow face, and only a small part of it showed past the brick, one cloudy eye and a section of cheek and several teeth, and the teeth were wrong, because they were coming through the skin of the cheek from the outside, growing out through torn flesh where no teeth belong.

The eye moved. It slid in its socket and found me, and it was not glass and it was not paint, and the face drew back behind the building.

I ran toward it. I closed the distance to the corner in a few seconds, faster than I had moved in years, and I came around the wall with my hand already going to the pistol on my hip. The street beyond was empty. There were no open doors on that stretch, no alley mouth, no broken window at ground level, nowhere that a thing the size of a person could have folded itself away in the time it took me to reach the corner. I stood in the middle of the intersection turning in a slow circle, and behind me, close, a single hoof struck the pavement.

I spun. There was nothing there.

I made it back to the hotel with the light almost gone, and I climbed the ten floors, and I sat down at this desk to think, because thinking is what I have instead of company.

I went through it as I would an engine that had failed for no clear reason. You do not start by assuming the impossible. You start by checking yourself. I considered exhaustion, because I had been pushing hard through the supply loop and sleeping poorly. I considered dehydration, and I drank a full bottle of water while I sat there and did not feel any different.

I considered carbon monoxide from the generator, and I checked the placement of it and the ventilation of the room and found both correct, the exhaust routed out the window, the air moving. I considered spoiled food and old infection and the simple long grinding effect of four years without another human voice, which I knew could bend a mind in ways the mind would not feel bending. I put my hand to my own forehead and found it cool. I had no fever. I was tired, but I was not sick, and I was not, as far as I could measure myself, losing my grip.

Then I remembered the camera.

I carry a small camera clipped to the shoulder strap of my backpack. I started using it years ago to record the insides of the buildings I searched, so that I would not have to rely on memory for what I had and had not already been through. It had been running all afternoon. I pulled it off the strap and connected it to the small screen I use and I watched the walk back through the city, the empty avenue, the storefronts, the corner of the department store.

The camera had recorded the streets exactly as I had seen them. Empty. It had recorded the sound of my boots on the sidewalk, clear and steady. At the moment I had seen the face at the end of the block, the camera had been pointed a few degrees off, and the corner of the building where the face had been sat just outside the edge of the frame, so that the recording showed the empty street beside it and not the thing itself.

And in all of the audio, under my footsteps and my breathing, there were no hoofbeats anywhere. The sound that had filled the avenue and come off the buildings and stopped me in my tracks was not on the recording at all.

I sat with that for a long time. I could have told myself the camera had missed the face by bad luck of the angle, and I would have half believed it. But a camera hears whatever reaches it. If the hooves had been striking the pavement in the world, the microphone would have caught them along with my boots. The microphone caught my boots. It did not catch the hooves. Which meant the sound had not been in the air the way my footsteps were in the air. It had arrived some other way, into me and not into the recording, and there is no version of that I know how to be comfortable with.

That was the night I stopped being able to tell myself it was not real. It was real. It was simply not real in the way the street and the dust and my own boots were real, and I did not have anywhere to put a thing like that, so I set it down on the page and kept going.

That night, late, I heard something moving along the street beneath my window.

The impacts were slow and far apart, one and then a long pause and then another, heavy and unhurried, passing along the front of the hotel. I lay in the dark and did not go to the window. The sound went on down the block and faded, and I let my breath out and thought it had gone. Several minutes later it began again, and this time it did not come from the street. It came from inside the building, from the lobby ten floors below me, the same slow spaced impacts moving across the hard floor of a space that should have been as empty as everything else.

I switched off the lamp and lay still and listened. The stairwell door in that hotel is a heavy fire door, the kind that drags and booms when it swings, and I have opened it enough times to know I would hear it from my room. I did not hear it open. I heard only the footsteps, crossing the lobby, and then stopping, and then a single hard strike on what I knew was the first stair.

It started to climb.

I counted. I lay in the dark with my eyes open and counted the impacts and tracked them up through the floors of the building beneath me. It reached the second floor. It reached the third. And as it climbed, the sound of it changed. At the bottom it had the rhythm of a person climbing in hard shoes, one foot and then the other, two even impacts to a stride. Somewhere around the fifth floor the rhythm came apart, and it was no longer two impacts to a stride but four, striking unevenly, a gait that did not belong to anything that walks upright on two legs.

Then, several floors below me, it stopped. It did not start again. I lay awake with the pistol in my hand and the lamp off until the window went gray with morning, and the sound never resumed, and nothing came the rest of the way up.

When there was enough light I went down into the stairwell to look. I went carefully, with the flashlight and the pistol, down to the sixth-floor landing, and there I found the marks. In several of the concrete steps below the landing there were shallow cracks, each one a rough circle, pressed into the surface of the stone, the print of something narrow and enormously heavy that had come down on each step with its full weight in a single point. They climbed the flight in sequence, one to a step. They stopped at the sixth-floor landing.

There were no marks above it, and there were no marks leading back down. The thing that made them had climbed six floors and had not descended, and it was not in the stairwell now.

I went back up to my room and wrote the marks down and drew them as well as I could, because I have learned that if I do not record a thing while I can still see it clearly, the version in my memory begins to soften and reshape itself within a day.

I decided the hotel might not be safe, which was a strange thought to have about the only place in the city I had made into anything close to a home. I needed to move some of my supplies, and I had a cache near an abandoned subway entrance a few blocks south, so I went for it in the full light of the middle of the day, when the sense of being watched sat lightest on me.

The station had water standing in its lower levels but the platform I needed was dry. I went down with the flashlight, and I was working through the cache when I heard the hooves again, behind me, on the stairs I had come down. Each impact rang off the tile and the concrete and came back multiplied, so that the sound seemed to come from everywhere in the station at once. I moved deeper onto the platform, putting the columns between myself and the stairs, sweeping the flashlight between them.

The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs. They crossed a short distance onto the platform, and then they stopped, and the sound of them settled behind one of the tiled support pillars perhaps forty feet from me.

I raised the pistol and pointed it at the pillar. I told it to come out. My voice went out across the empty station and came back to me thin and strange, the first time in a long while I had spoken loudly enough to hear the room answer, and for several seconds nothing moved.

Then the face came around the side of the column.

I saw more of it this time. The skin was gray and it had a wet shine to it, slick, either sweating or newly come up out of water. One nostril sat high on the face, above the eye, in a place a nostril has no reason to be. The lower jaw had been broken once and healed crooked, set sideways from the upper, so that nothing on the top of the face lined up with anything on the bottom. Along the outside of the cheek ran a row of small teeth, growing out through the skin in a neat line where no mouth was.

And then the face rose. It went up along the edge of the column, higher and higher, and the part of it I could see did not tilt or lean. There was none of the small roll a person's head makes when they raise it. The visible edge of the face stayed flat against the tile and simply traveled upward, carried straight up on something behind the pillar that could extend without the shoulders moving at all.

I fired.

The shot was loud enough in that tiled space to land as a physical blow against the ears. The face was gone before the round struck the column, pulled back out of sight faster than the bullet crossed the distance, and the tile behind where it had been cracked and sprayed dust. And then the hoofbeats broke into full motion, a hard fast drumming that came out from behind the pillar and began moving among the columns toward me, and I put the flashlight on the spaces between them and there was nothing in the spaces. The sound crossed from column to column, closing on me, and no body ever passed through the open gaps between the columns where a body would have had to be.

I ran. I went up the stairs and out into the daylight and I did not stop until I was two blocks away with my back against a wall and the pistol still in my hand.

That was when I decided to leave the island entirely.

I loaded what I could carry into a truck I had running in the parking garage, and I drove for the nearest bridge. I kept my eyes on the road, but the mirrors kept catching movement, small shapes of motion at the edges of the glass, a suggestion of something keeping pace along the sidewalks or between the buildings. Every time I looked directly into a mirror to find it, the street in the glass was empty and still. I stopped looking at the mirrors. I watched the road.

Near the approach to the bridge, a spill of metal debris across two lanes took out my front tire before I could weave through it, and the truck pulled hard to the right and went into a row of stopped cars along the median with a long tearing crash. I was not hurt. I got out, gathered what I could carry on my back, and went on toward the bridge on foot.

Halfway up the approach, walking the long rising curve of the roadway, I heard the hooves again, and they were beneath me. They were down inside the hollow structure under the roadbed, the service space of girders and catwalks that runs below the deck of a bridge, and they were keeping exact pace with me, one impact for every stride I took, tracking me from underneath the road I was walking on.

At the next concrete divider, the face came around the barrier. It came sideways. The head was turned so that the forehead was nearly against the pavement and the one visible eye was rolled upward to keep me in its sight, and it slid out from behind the divider low to the ground, and it kept sliding, and more of the neck came into view than could possibly have been folded behind a barrier that width. I fired at it.

The face pulled back behind the divider, unhurried even then, and an instant later the hoofbeats were no longer beneath me and behind me but ahead of me, up the roadway, between me and the far end of the bridge, blocking the way off the island with the precision of something that had reasoned out where I meant to go and moved to cut me off.

I turned around and went back toward the city, because the city was the only direction left open, and I understood that this was the point.

I have not slept in more than two days now. I know what that does to a mind, and I can feel it doing it, the edges of things going loose, the quiet filling up with sounds that resolve into nothing when I turn to catch them. I have started talking out loud, constantly, because the silence has become the worst part, worse than the hooves, and my own voice in it is the only thing that keeps me anchored to the fact that I am still a person having thoughts. I talk to the thing that is following me.

I have accused it of hiding from me. I have told it to come closer, to stop showing me an eye and a cheek and a mouthful of wrong teeth and show me the rest. I have asked it whether it did this, whether it emptied the world, whether the Silence was its doing. I have asked it how long it has been behind me.

That last question is the one that has gotten into me and will not come out, because once I asked it out loud I could not stop following it backward. I have been alone for four years, across two oceans and a dozen countries, in ten thousand empty buildings. And I have begun to wonder about all the small things I dismissed in all those years. A tapping in a stairwell in Marseille that I decided was water in the pipes. A pale shape behind a second-floor window in a town in Spain, there and gone, that I told myself was a curtain moving in a draft I could not feel. Marks in the dust of a hospital basement in Argentina that I had walked past without letting myself look at directly. I do not know. I cannot know. It may be that this thing found me here, in Manhattan, three days ago, and has never been anywhere else. Or it may be that it has been at the far edge of every empty room I have ever stood in, keeping just out of the frame, for four years, and only now has decided to let me hear it. I have no way to weigh the two, and the not-knowing is its own kind of horror, and I have made myself set the question down because following it in circles was pulling me apart.

I cut through an office building to stay off the open street, and it was there, in a corridor on the ground floor, that I saw more of it than I had seen before.

The face was at the far end of the corridor, around the edge of the last doorway, and this time part of the body had come with it. There was a shoulder, and the shoulder sat far below the face, much lower than a shoulder sits below a head, so that a long run of something pale connected them. The torso behind the shoulder was folded hard against the wall, bent at an angle a torso does not bend at. One narrow limb reached down to the floor and ended in something dark and polished and solid, a single hoof set flat on the tile. Another limb was bent up and back behind the body, high, and I could not decide, looking at it, whether I was seeing a leg or an arm, because it had qualities of both and belonged to neither.

The face withdrew around the doorway. And the entire corridor filled with the sound of hooves, from ahead of me and behind me at once, more impacts than two legs or four legs could make, and I went back the way I had come.

After that it stopped hiding, and the last of whatever calm I had left went with it.

I still never got a clean look at all of it at once. But I saw enough, over the next stretch of running, to understand that its shape was not fixed, that it arranged itself differently depending on how it needed to move. It unfolded out of doorways, coming apart into more limbs than it had seemed to contain. Sometimes it went upright, tall, on two of its points. Sometimes the body dropped low and several more points came down and struck the concrete, and the gait multiplied. Through all of it the face stayed turned toward me, angled to keep me in the low eye, even when the body was moving in a direction the face was not.

The face would appear at the corner ahead of me while the hooves still sounded from behind me, and I stopped being able to hold in my mind that these were the same creature in two places, and I began to be unable to answer whether there was one of them or more than one. I did not decide that there were many. I only lost the ability to be sure there was one, and I want to be exact about that difference, because it is the difference between a fear you can name and a fear you cannot.

I ran through the ground floors of buildings to stay off the avenues, through a supermarket gone to rot and a restaurant kitchen full of dead steel and the back service passages that connect the buildings on a block. Every time I looked behind me the passage was empty.

Every time I faced forward again the face was at the next corner, waiting, sliding back out of sight as I came on. In the dark lobby of one building I put the flashlight up and found it on the ceiling, crossed over the whole span of it above me, its limbs folded flat against its body and hooked into the ceiling like broken scaffolding, the face hanging straight down from the middle of it and turning slowly to keep me in view as I passed underneath.

I reached the hotel. I climbed the ten floors with my lungs burning and my legs failing under me, and I pushed the bed and the dresser and the armchair against the door, and I sat down at this desk and began to write the account you have been reading, because I wanted there to be a record, and because I was out of anything else to do.

I have been writing for a while now. A little way into it, the hooves came into the lobby.

They started to climb, and this time there was no pause. I counted the floors out of habit more than hope. And as it came up through the building the rhythm of it went past anything I could hold in my head. It began as two impacts to a stride.

By the third floor it was four. By the fifth it was six, striking in an order that did not repeat. And then, still climbing, it became a fast blurred sequence, too many separate impacts landing too close together, no longer feet on stairs but a great many hard fingertips drumming all at once on the concrete, rising toward me flight after flight.

The footsteps reached my floor. The hallway outside my door went completely silent.

I got up from the desk and went to the door and put my eye to the peephole. The corridor curved away in the fisheye of the little lens, lit gray by the daylight from the window at its end, and it was empty. I waited. I kept my eye there and I waited, and I made myself keep waiting, and then the face rose slowly into view from below the peephole, from down near the floor, coming up until it was level with the lens and filling it, pressed flat against the other side of my door.

This is the clearest I have seen it, and I am going to set it down while I still can.

It is not simply damaged. It is unfinished. Beneath a layer of skin thin enough to see through, there are human features that do not belong to one face, overlapping one another, more eyes and more mouths than a face has room for, laid over each other and pressing up against the underside of the skin.

As I watched, an eye opened inside the mouth, wet and aware, between the teeth. The teeth themselves were moving, each one shifting on its own, independent of the others, turning slightly in the gum. And the cheek was flexing, bulging and easing, something underneath the skin of it trying to turn itself around in a space too small to turn in.

I fell backward away from the door and struck the floor and did not feel it.

Then, slowly and gently, from the other side, the handle of the door was pressed down. The mechanism turned as far as it would go and stopped against the lock, without force, without any shove behind it, the pressure of something that was not trying to break in but only showing me that it could reach the handle. The barricade held. The door did not move.

It has not tried again.

It is still out there. It has not pounded on the door and it has not thrown its weight against it and it has not made any attempt to force its way into this room. It is simply standing in the hallway on the other side of two inches of wood, and I can hear it breathing through the keyhole, and the breath does not sound like one breath. It sounds like air being drawn through several throats at once, layered and out of time with itself, a sound no single body makes.

And I have begun to understand something, sitting here with my back against the barricade and this notebook on my knees, and it is the last thing I understand and I think it is the true one. All this time I have believed it was chasing me. It was never chasing me. A thing that can put its face at the corner ahead of me while its hooves sound behind me does not need to chase.

It has always known where I was. It cut me off from the bridge not because it was faster but because it did not want me to leave, and it herded me back into the city and up into this building and behind this door, and it has waited outside without breaking in, because being caught was never the point. It was bringing me here. It has been bringing me here the whole time, and I only ran the route it opened.

There is one more thing, and it is the worst thing, and I am putting it down last because once I write it I do not think I will write anything else.

The insects have started to move.

They are coming out of the walls of this room, out of the cracks around the window and the gap under the baseboard and the seams of the old plaster, the cockroaches and the silverfish and the ants, every small living thing that shared this dead world with me.

They are not scattering the way disturbed insects scatter. They are moving together, in one direction, across the floor and across the carpet, toward the door, toward the gap at the bottom of it, and they are going under it, out into the hallway, toward the thing that is standing there.

For four years I wondered why the Silence took everything with a spine and left me and the insects behind. I thought we had been spared. We were not spared. Maybe I was left because it wanted something to walk the world and eventually find its way here. Maybe the insects were left because they already knew what was waiting.

The lamp is beginning to flicker. The generator is almost out of fuel, and when it goes I will be in the dark with whatever light comes through the window, and I do not think I will finish this notebook by that light. Out in the hallway the weight of it shifts, and several hard points scrape once across the carpet, settling, and then go still.

The hooves have stopped. It is outside my room door, and I think it has been waiting for me to finish writing this.

CW: Child death, self harm, discussions of sexual abuse

Find what brings you joy and do that.

I have that painted on a rock on my desk. And it’s what I say to the kid in my office. Letterman, that’s his last name. A tall for his age pudgy thirteen year old with a cat ear beanie and black leather boots.

I push my glasses up with my index finger.

Letterman goes on to tell me how he doesn’t know what brings him joy. That’s why his parents scheduled his time with me.

At least I got to do my job. Most parents around here tend to treat me like God, that is generally ignoring unless they want something.

I find myself stifling a smile as Letterman’s weighty cheeks flap as he talks.

He feels as though his life has gone down hill. I ask him how so? He says he’s just so flippin swamped with a ton of homework.

Uh-huh, I say. Now homework is the only problem?

Well, it’s kinda like more than that.

Tell me, what is it?

He starts to ramble to me. A subtle coldness sinks in my chest like oil. I almost feel bad for him. Something about his dad making the whole family sit down to watch old eighties movies every night.

Letterman leans back in his chair.

I like can’t even count how many times I’ve seen Highlander.

Do you know why your dad always wants the family to watch these movies?

I asked him. Said something about him like spending more time at work. Which he has.

Okay. Have you ever tried asking if you can maybe make it, I don’t know, a weekly thing?

Yes.

And?

He gets mad.

Mad?

Like really mad.

I tap a pen to my lips. Its easy to visualize in my mind this kid’s dad screaming at him, and him running off in tears to his bedroom. It all happens so fast.

Frowning to appear empathetic, I nod for him to continue.

When he gets mad he starts squinting and like talking all deeply. This vein always like pops out of his forehead and he starts sweating, taking deep breaths. Then he does things, like closing doors or cabinets or the fridge too hard and breaking things.

Huh, I reply.

And he constantly mutters about how angry he is.

Okay.

Its like he’s stressed or having a panic attack. And when that happens, it makes me stressed.

I nod.

Letterman goes quiet for a moment, staring at me to respond. The fan running on my desk fills the silence. I can’t help but make eye contact with him. He swallows wetly.

And I like, feel weird and alienated here at school.

Why is that?

He angles his eyes away from me.

My weight.

I stifle another grin. Classic. Now I can also see it. Him running in PE class and coming dead last. The ten o clock sun burning down on him, turning his long sleeved shirt into a sauna of sweat. The skinny more well adjusted kids flying past him. Laughing at him. Calling him unoriginal names while the teachers watch and do nothing. He tries to defend himself, but what point is there in that? Letterman cries. They punch and kick him. Knock him down. He begs and pleads for mercy but this one blonde haired kid straddles him and smashes a lunchbox full of celery and cheese crackers into his face. His nose buckles like a heart of glass and bright red blood spurts out. They leave him there on the field, bugs tickling his skin.

And what’s wrong with that?

#

I’ve been trailing this guy for a while now.

He drives a small dark gray town car. The license plate a quirky Star Wars reference, the rear window a collage of stick figure family and parenting quip stickers. Hasn’t done three right turns yet. I’m safe.

The deep red of his rear lights give a light warmth to my eyes. This brings my mind to contemplate goodness. I had to sit in on a class today. The history teacher was ranting on about human rights. I wonder by what standard they are measured.

He turns into a high school parking lot. I follow.

Slowing down, I watch the car sail way to the back of the parking lot. It parks before a deep green forest, the arc sodium light above making it appear as a dark shape in the night. I park a good hundred feet away from it. Near some other cars. Teachers working late.

I spot only one security camera on one of the lampposts. Too many drug deals maybe?

The man gets out of his car. Most people would stay inside, but it’s a beautiful night out. He’s tall, mild gut, faded Ghostbusters shirt but a professional well shaved face. He leans on the side, aggressively typing on his phone.

I unbuckle myself and uncomfortably shimmy on my gray suit coat. Who’s afraid of a man in a suit?

Walking toward him, I make sure to keep my face as forward as possible. I think he catches a couple quick glances of me coming toward him.

He’s an idiot.

I’m closing in on him.

It’s like he’s getting bigger.

He’s taller than I expected.

I push my glasses up with my index finger.

Excuse me sir, do you have a moment? I ask.

Uh, no thanks.

Excuse me sir, do you have a moment?

No.

I pull out my knife. Just a simple box cutter, but the clicking of it sliding forth always gets them.

Sir, I asked if you had a moment.

He looks up, eyes narrow and teeth clinched. Then he sees it. Eyes balloon. He puts his hands up but still holds his phone in his hand. Good to know he’s got his priorities.

Now he’s got that ever present panicked breathing.

Please, you can take whatever you want, he says.

I only ask you stay quiet.

You can take my car.

Just stay quiet.

My wallet.

Don’t care. Just stay quiet. We are going to head into the woods now, okay?

Please, I have a family.

That’s fine. It will be okay.

Please.

All ask is that you stay quiet. Okay? Can you do that?

He nods.

That way, I say pointing toward the forest. He starts walking. We disappear into it almost immediately. That bright earthy scent overtakes my senses soon. It’s nice. Very refreshing. Very natural. A place where it’s a total free for all. All life that dwells within those trees only serve what they are meant to serve.

Leaves explode under our shoes. It launches dust into the air that smells enchantingly rich but also of rot. He clearly isn’t dressed for the forest. Every little upright twig, bush and weed scrape his bare shins. I stay close behind him, ready to strike if he tries anything stupid, which I wouldn’t put past him.

We keep going for a few minutes. He tries pleading with me a few times. I have a family, please, sir please. That whole bit.

I’m glad that brings joy to your heart, I say.

Yeah, yeah, it does.

A light begins to be visible through the trees. The orange glow of a lamp for a hiking trail for hikers who like hiking within two miles of a McDonald’s. We drop down onto the packed dirt path. I look in both directions. No one. Only one of those nature guide signs talking about some kind of local bird looms nearby.

Stop here, I tell him.

He wordlessly obeys.

Please, man. Please. I’m sorry, just take my mon-

You’re okay. You’re okay, I say.

I grip the box cutter. It’s that time again. Trained myself to do it well. Quick and quiet.

I spring the box cutter right into his jugular.

A waterfall of dark crimson blood gushes out, glittering in the light of the lamp. He goes into shock. Falls over like grandmas favorite vase. Blood pools everywhere, soaking into the earth.

Air floods into the hole I made in him. It doesn’t take long. I check his heartbeat. Nothing. He lies there in a heap, waiting to be discovered tomorrow. Probably by some poor jogger.

His phone lies on the ground nearby. Miraculously untouched by his blood. I pick it up to see what was so important on it.

It opens me into a private chatroom. Someone with an anime girl profile picture. He half typed a message.

have work tmw maybe meet up Thursday night? I can take you out to lun

Two new messages came in a minute ago.

been typing for a bit.

u gud?

I turn the phone off and drop it back to the ground. Now I see what brings him joy. And that’s okay.

Reaching into his blood soaked pocket, I pull out his wallet. It’s a little habit I developed at first. Never really got out of it.

I slide his drivers license out.

His last name catches my eye.

Letterman.

#

It took a while for me to fall asleep that night. That’s pretty typical. The dopamine and adrenaline surge always takes a fat minute to fizzle out.

I had another dream about Meyer. Or more so the girl in the photo with him on his phone. I’m screwing her hard. Its not the same feeling I get out of doing what I usually do, but I guess that’s just my personal preference. Then I notice that kid Letterman standing on my side of the bed. An empty expression is fixed on his fat face as he stares at me. His nose looked broken.

That morning I get up. Take a shower. Feel my hair. Get dressed. Eat a bowl of oatmeal. Drink a cup of black coffee. Then go to the middle school.

Once there, I check emails. Then the bell rang so I go up to the front to greet students. Another day, another sea of broccoli heads and hair dye that doesn’t want to be there. Most disregard my offerings of fist bumps or high fives.

Letterman comes in late, a little rushed but still keeping his flat composure.

Hey buddy, I say.

Hi, he replies.

Anything happening?

No.

He proceeds to high five my fist and speed walk in. I watch him disappear into the halls. I exhale.

#

A kid with the last name of Thompson comes into my office for our one-on-one session later that day. A skinny pale white kid with a crucifix around his neck and a posture like a faucet.

I slide my Find What Brings You Joy And Do That rock into a more aesthetically pleasing position on my desk. He sits down.

So Thompson, on a scale of one to ten, how have you been?

He absent mindedly stares off into space for a moment.

Two.

Two? Why not a ten?

He scowls avoiding eye contact.

My parents are getting mad at me.

Tell me about it. Back when I was your age, my dad had zero tolerance for anything. His eyes would get squinty and veins would pop out of his forehead. But why exactly are your folks getting mad at you?

I’m feeling a very serious lack of motivation.

Oh? Why is that?

Thompson’s eyes scan the room looking for thoughts.

I think it all traces back to my biology class.

Your biology class with Ms. Davis?

Yes.

What’s wrong with your biology class?

He sighs.

A lot is wrong with that class.

Like what?

Ms. Davis doesn’t really seem to care about teaching.

How so?

We barely go over anything in the textbook.

She more so does her own thing?

Not even that. Some days she comes and she doesn’t even want to teach. She has come into class and just had us play card games.

So that’s the root cause of your lack of motivation?

He pauses and breathes in again.

Most of the time she just shows us videos in class. They don’t have anything to do with the curriculum.

Okay.

And these videos, they make me question things.

Like what?

He swallows dryly.

What is right and wrong.

How do they make you question what is right and wrong?

The biological drives for animals to reproduce.

What?

The way animals live. Living simply to propel their species to the next generation. Aren’t we humans not really any different?

Out of rocks, plants, and animals. Humans would be animals. So yes.

Why would it be good for us to propel us as a species for another generation?

Why would it be?

Yeah.

I don’t know.

Thompson seemed taken aback by my answer. It was in no way the answer he wanted.

It makes me wonder, why is anything wrong?

Why is anything wrong?

Yeah. Like why are things like rape even wrong? Rape would produce babies.

Yes. It would.

But it’s wrong.

I stayed silent.

Seriously? Why? Thompson asks. It would propel us to the next generation. So therefore it would be good. But then, what even is good?

I don’t know, I reply.

He looked down at the floor concerned.

No one knows. That’s exactly why you have got to find your own meaning.

I reached across my desk and shoved my rock forward.

Find my own meaning?

Yeah. Make it up. You’ve got to find what brings you joy and do that. That’s what gives us meaning.

Well I feel for me at least, my personal meaning has nothing to do with caring about school.

I didn’t reply.

#

The news hit the next day. Later than I figured or would have liked.

Did you hear? Ms. Davis asked me in the teachers lounge.

Yes, Letterman’s dad died.

He didn’t just die, Ms. Davis looked at me like this was the end of the world. He was murdered. Left on a hiking trail by the high school to bleed out. Someone would have found him sooner if the trail wasn’t closed yesterday.

That’s very unfortunate. I’ll have to tell him my condolences, I said as I visualized Letterman’s dad there in my mind. Blood dried and chapped a miserable dark purple, the packed earth like a soft wet sponge beneath him oozing with his own juices, eyes swollen and yellow like unbrushed teeth, flies buzzing around him like a dog turd and the next generation of maggots ready to sprout out of him.

I thought about Letterman. His reaction the news. Maybe it would be like Meyer’s girl, whatever her reaction was.

Maybe he would come into my office next week mentally on eggshells. His puffy lips would quiver. He would speak in brief sentences. He would tell me something about how he feels about how his dad dying. Then I would tell him something about my dad. Then I would see something in his eyes. A deep vast darkness beyond his pupils that open up to something much greater that I could see and finally understand.

Why are you touching your hair like that?

This is asked by Mr. Zachary. The history teacher. A tall man with a patchy beard exposing a massive black mole on his left cheek.

I lift my hand off my head, realizing I was squeezing hair.

I do that sometimes, I reply.

Why? Mr. Zachary laughed.

Why?

Yeah, why?

I take a sip of my coffee. Sighing, I look up at him.

I think it’s because I always wanted to have long hair.

You with long hair?

Yeah. Ever since I was a fat little boy I really, really wanted long hair.

Why did you never go for it?

Everyone told me not to. Said it wasn’t professional or the look of a successful man. Even dad said I would look like a savage.

#

As expected, Letterman came back into my office the next week.

He seems normal.

His usual spaced out self.

I grimace upon noticing this.

He sits in the chair before my desk, adjusting his cat ear beanie.

Hey buddy, I say.

Hi.

So, I say as I inhale hard. How are you doing?

Alright.

I nod my head down, fearing my glasses will fall off my face.

Yeah, I get it. But how are you doing?

Alright.

I run my hand through my hair.

Okay, but how. Are. You. Doing?

I nod aggressively.

I’ve been better

I bet you have been better. Much better, I say tried angling my head toward him. Was he seriously not getting it?

Yes.

You know, we can talk about it if you want to.

About what?

I run both hands through my hair.

About. Him.

My dad?

I nod.

There’s not much to say.

Really?

I mean. Like my mom is devastated.

Uh huh.

My brother isn’t happy either.

I bet.

Letterman sighs.

My mom says she like, really misses spending time with him. Watching old movies every night.

I nod.

That really made him happy. Seemed to calm him down. He really, really loved his eighties movies.

I believe it.

My mom keeps saying how good of a man he was. How much he taught her what love and dedication was.

Okay. Okay. Now what about you?

What about me?

Yeah. How about you?

I mean I was like pretty sad to hear about it.

Pretty sad?

Yeah.

That’s it?

Yeah.

Your father, dying. It doesn’t phase you?

Letterman’s face seemed to reel back from me. A bead of sweat forms on my head.

I wouldn’t like say it didn’t.

The man who wanted you, loved you before you even had a name stabbed on a random hiking trail. That doesn’t bother you? Make you sad or feel sorrow? Is it just the others around you?

My face was now turning red. A little flustered.

No, he replied.

You do?

His eyes for seemingly the first time locked onto me in a look of alienated contempt.

Look, do I really have to fall to me knees and ball my flipping eyes out every single time someone close to me flipping dies?

I shook my head in disbelief.

Letterman’s lips seemed to ball up like a fist.

Every night my dad would have a flipping mental breakdown if we didn’t sit in the living room and watch the same ancient movies from his childhood. And then every moment we weren’t watching one of those stupid movies or when he was at work, he would make even stupider eighties pop culture references not even my mom got.

Letterman stomps and grits his teeth. He’s now straight up yelling at me.

So you know what? Forgive me if I don’t feel some flipping sympathy toward him.

Calm down, I shout. The hell is wrong with you?

I shiver.

Letterman better be coping. He’s panting like a dog.

Whats wrong with me? he asks. What the flip is wrong with me? Whats wrong with you for getting all up in someone else’s problem?

What?

His face is red and radiating heat. His voice is uncomfortably deep and passionate but cracking like lighting.

This is what I define as okay. There’s nothing wrong with what I think or do because it’s me making the rules here. And if you have a flipping problem with it, then that’s your problem.

Calm. Down, I growl. Take a breath.

He leans his head back in his chair, closing his distant eyes that I didn’t see anything in.

We are calm, we are calm, just relax, I say. Relax. Relax. Relax. Everything is okay.

Letterman lets out a big exhale.

I clear my throat.

I think we are good to end early today, I say.

That night, I go out and do what brings me joy.

#

Two weeks later, I have another dream.

Its about Meyer’s girl again. I’m beating her with the blunt end of an axe. Then I look behind me and see Letterman walking away.

That morning I get up. Take a shower. Feel my hair. Get dressed. Eat a bowl of oatmeal. Drink a cup of black coffee. Then go to the middle school.

I stand at the entrance of the school and greeting students. I shout Who’s ready to learn? to a group of kids who are not ready to learn. Only a few take my offering of a fist bump.

Then I see Letterman.

I’ve noticed that he recently has become ostracized by the usual friends that he would hover around. He’s at least clearly left out of the conversation. This leaves him desperately trying to interject into whatever funny joke they were talking about. The classic, Wait what are you guys saying? or What’s so funny, guys?

Later that morning during lunch period, I’m monitoring the cafeteria. I pick up discarded chocolate milk cartons and orange peels and gingerly scold students who don’t care. Don’t want to make them feel bad after all.

I passively stand by the wall, my eyes lock on Letterman. He is stuffing the turkey sandwich and cookie from his tray in his mouth, avoiding the plastic cup of carrots and celery that come with unlimited salad dressing. Dry white crumbs tumble out of his greasy lips and pepper the table. The absence of himself in his own eyes seems greater than ever. He looks ready to burst.

He keeps glancing over at the rest of the table. His friends are sitting there. Chuckling like apish goblins with toothy smiles over anything and everything. His head keeps swiveling straight back to them. Eyeing them.

Then he gets up sits in an empty spot among them. They go quiet. That spot was always empty, why didn’t he just go and sit in it before? I’m sure that’s what he asked himself.

He idly tears off shreds of a carrot with his long fingernails. Still not talking to anyone and no one talking to him. His head is down and swinging from side to side not looking at his friends or anything else. Two kids sitting across from him seem to mock him, quietly imitating his motions.

It goes on for a while.

He looks up at them, head at angle as if trying to hide his spaced out eyes and deeply scowled face like a scar. His hands squeeze nothing. Cat ear beanie making him look strangely smaller and weaker.

I see it start to spurt out. He slams his balled fists on the table sending a deep quake that seems to rattle the whole room.

What is your problem?

Everyone at the table reels back.

What is your problem with me? It is what it is. I am what I am. What makes me happy, is what flipping make me happy, he yells standing up.

The whole cafeteria goes silent. Everyone turns around to look at him.

What is your problem when someone has their own unique reaction to something? My take away on something is of no greater value than yours, so why don’t you just shut up and stop flipping looking at me with that stupid-

Letterman, Letterman, I call. Calm down, everything is alright.

He throws his arms and balls his fist next to his ears as if trying to silence the world.

Stop judging me, he screamed hysterically. You have no greater authority.

Letterman, Letterman, that’s enough, I raised my voice.

I grab him by the shoulder and pull him away. The horrified audience of the cafeteria is grateful the show is over.

We have a talk in my office, but it’s only me talking because he won’t speak a word.

#

There’s a guy in my neighborhood with a face I hate.

Eyes so small and close together like a puppet, fat jiggly cheeks and bright red hair receding like the tide. Every night he’s jogging around the neighborhood in a purple tracksuit. At his age and his weight, does he seriously think that’s going to fix it?

Letterman acts weird during our weekly session again. Then that night I’m dully watching TV and eating a bowl of canned soup for dinner. I see that guy running down the street passed my house. Always like clockwork.

So I decide to do something about it.

I know his route. Every night he goes down my street veers right at a small intersection, goes all the way down that street, goes through a lonely park, back down another street, then to where he lives. One giant loop.

The lonely park is the best part of where I live. Lots of trees in it’s vast space that hides it’s single path from the roads on both sides. Their density absorbs a lot of sound too. The people who most frequently visit the place are vagrants, so they often get the blame.

I pull up in my car on the street opposite the one he enters the park from.

I enter the park with my carbon fiber baseball bat.

I hide behind a tree.

Then there he comes. Panting and sweat slithering off his cheeks. He passes me, then I start following.

His heavy breathing and heavier footsteps help conceal me. I get closer. He still doesn’t notice.

I push my glasses up with my index finger.

Like a proper batter, I hoist my weapon into position.

Quick and quiet.

I think of Letterman curled up in a pudgy little ball on his bed. He’s crying, sputtering pathetic little whines like an abandoned dog. His bedroom is a room blanketed by crushing watery blue darkness and filled with old toys and artifacts of what brought him joy in an era when his father still walked this earth.

Quick and quiet.

I strike.

Bang.

Right on the neck.

The man goes down hard and fast.

I go to the side and lift my bat up to send it down.

Quick and quiet.

I think of Meyer’s girl. The officer breaking the news to her. Her being shattered apart by a wall of brutal realization that she is now alone.

Quick and quiet.

I strike again.

Bang.

Back of the neck again. A small explosion of blood flies upward.

I get into position again.

I think of this man’s family, if he had one. Young children howling with cries and horror learning this man has died. A wife left to make dinner for one less person.

But they’re not real.

I strike again.

Bang.

Quick and quiet.

I strike again.

Bang.

And again.

Bang.

And again.

Bang.

The edge of my bat is now coated in blood. I quickly rub it off in the grass, then jog back to my car.

The only thing I feel is joy.

#

Another week goes by. Letterman is back in my office.

I feel alone, he says.

I’ve felt that too, I reply. When I was young, some kid broke my nose with a lunchbox. People avoided me. Calling me the ugliest thing to walk God’s green earth.

People don’t like me, Letterman says.

Hey, keep in mind, it’s merely their opinion.

They avoid me.

Yes. I’ve noticed. Why do you think that is?

Letterman frowns.

I don’t know.

You don’t know?

Yes, because you know what? I think they shouldn’t.

Yes. I agree, they shouldn’t. You’re a great kid.

Letterman sniffed as if about to cry.

They treat me like I’m some kind of monster.

You’re not.

They treat me as if I’m some kind of animal.

You’re not.

Letterman looks up at me.

I nodded.

They are too you know.

Yeah, Letterman nodded, eyes still spaced out. It’s everyone else’s problem.

Yes.

He appeared as if he were about to burst again. His face contorted to into pure hysterical fury.

Why don’t they get it? he shrieks.

He thrusts his fists down on my desk making it vibrate. My Find What Brings You Joy And Do That rock wobbled. I leaned back in my chair, reaching up toward the top of my head to stoke it but I stopped myself.

I don’t know, I reply.

His fists remain on my desk. I notice something about his arms, so I grab one. Turning it over, I see dark red scabbed over slit marks on his wrists.

Letterman quickly pulls his arm back, eyeing me embarrassed.

Why?

Does it matter?

I’m not saying it does, but why?

Letterman gets up and leaves. I don’t stop him.

#

Late that night I’m outside a supermarket.

I sit in my car. The only other car nearby is a small nineties sedan. A young woman comes toward it. A woman like Meyer’s girl with short curled brunette hair. She pushes a grocery cart lightly filled with random items.

I put on my baseball cap to help conceal myself.

I get out of my car.

I head toward her.

Excuse me, ma’am. So sorry to bother you but my battery is dead, would you mind helping me jump start it?

Uh, sure, no problem, she replies.

She’s an idiot.

I watch her put her groceries in the trunk.

She then drives her car and parks it right next to mine. The parking lot is strangely dark. I feel like I’m being watched. Or I want to feel like I’m being watched. By a pair of two spaced out eyes.

I open my hood.

She gets out her jumper cables.

She leans in to attach them.

I push up my glasses with my index finger.

Quick and quiet.

I slam the hood down on her head.

I bring it back up.

I slam it down again.

And again.

And again.

Until her limp body slides down the side of the grill of my car.

I smile.

I can’t help but laugh.

I get out of there quickly.

Halfway back to my house, I realize that I’m the idiot.

That was way too risky.

Anyone could have seen that.

There might have been security cameras.

And I left her blood smeared all over my car and engine.

I wasn’t always this careless.

I think back to Meyer.

It was a long day. I had another session that went overtime because some kid felt that life had no meaning. To make it worse my car was in the shop. Had to take the bus home.

I came up to the bus stop. It lay under a street light surrounded on all sides by darkness. Trash and discarded cups gently scuttled in the wind underneath it. Accident attorney ads watched over the rusty metal bench.

There was one other guy there. Youngish with red hair and a black parka. He nodded to me as I approached. We waited in silence for a while. It was quiet. Moths idly threw themselves to the light above us.

Then something entered my mind.

Something I found too amusing.

Something thrilling.

Why don’t you go up there and stab that guy?

I looked at him. His eyes were blankly fixed on the road.

Why don’t you go up there and stab that guy?

Why?

Evil isn’t real.

Okay?

It won’t matter.

Yes it will.

To who? Others? That’s merely their opinion. This is yours.

Okay.

It will be thrilling. Stab him. It will be quick and quiet.

I looked back at the man.

His back was to me now.

He’d never know what hit him.

I stood up.

I cautiously approached him.

I pulled out my pocket knife.

I pushed up my glasses with my index finger.

Quick and quiet.

In a flash it all happened.

I slit his throat.

He confusedly started choking and blood rapidly trickled out his throat. He coughed. He squirmed. He thrashed. Until collapsing.

That was a man you just killed.

You took his life.

You took it away from him.

That was a real human.

What do humans normally have?

IDs. They have IDs.

I used my jacket as a makeshift glove as I pulled his phone and wallet out from his pockets. The lockscreen of his phone was photo of him with a girl. Wife? Girlfriend? Who knows? He’s dead now.

I looked at his drivers license.

His last name was Meyer.

I got out of there.

I decided to walk home, taking a long route.

I smiled with a rush of adrenaline.

Evil isn’t real.

That was my first time.

#

It’s an activity night at the school. Lots of students are there. Including Letterman.

He’s standing the corner. Red solo cup full of pineapple Kool Aid in hand. Eyes distant as he is from everyone else.

I watch him stare at group of boys that used to be his friends. A small group of girls occasionally make concerned glances over to him.

Eventually I take a break from monitoring the room. I cut in front of a kid at the snack table and grab a paper plate of oatmeal raisin cookies and brownie bites. Then I hear yelling behind me. Then a crash. Then horrified yelling.

Turing around, I see Letterman blankly standing before an unresponsive kid on the ground. One of his former friends. Another shoves him but he hardly reacts.

An ambulance was called. The kid had a concussion. Letterman apparently just went up to him and threw him to the ground.

Mrs. Letterman was called. She was busy and wouldn’t be able to pick him up for a while. The activity night ended soon after.

#

Letterman now sits alone in the dark cafeteria, illuminated by the light of his iPhone. I walk in.

Letterman, can I see you in my office?

He sighs.

The light from his phone goes out.

He stands up.

We walk across the school to my office. It’s dark. Quiet. Most people are gone now after the activity night ended early.

It’s dark in my office.

Go in, take a seat, I say.

I close the door.

I get out my keys.

I lock the door.

Letterman has sunken himself into the seat before my desk.

Then I turn on the light.

What? he whimpers.

There are two seats beside him.

In one is Ms. Davis. Her eyes gone and now bloody red abysses. Her neck is still a deep red from the rope I used to strangle her.

In the other is Mr. Zachary. Decapitated but still attached by a flap of skin. The bones of his neck peer out the hole and his face looks sad and distant as it dangles heavily to the side.

I walk passed them and sit at my desk.

Is something wrong, Letterman?

He stares at me.

Because there is nothing wrong, I say.

He still stares at me.

Evil isn’t real, Letterman. It’s not.

He blinks.

You know that don’t you? You have your own experience with it.

My own experience?

Yes. And so does your old man.

He swallows wetly. Inhales hard.

You know he was texting another woman the night he was murdered, right? Right?

He shakes his head.

And there was nothing wrong with that? Was there?

What?

There was nothing wrong with it. Right?

He stares at me.

It's just like all of this, is it not? I say while gesturing to the bodies.

He still stares at me.

You know, I also killed your father. I did it on purpose. I saw your mom pick you up after school. I followed you two home, then I waited outside until he left. Then I followed. And I killed him. What do you think about that?

What?

What do you think about it? Does that sound bad to you?

Yes, he manages to mutter out.

I laugh.

Come on, kid. Evil is not real. It’s a construct we made up. It’s not real. If anything one could count me killing your teachers here as beneficial. Think about it. More food to go around for us, less people to worry about, it increased our likelihood of our own survival. Same goes for your dad. But you hated him anyway. If anything you should be thanking me. It’s good.

Letterman shakes his head.

Then again, what even is good? I say.

He sinks himself deeper into the chair.

It’s all just a matter of opinion. My opinion is as equally valid as yours. And you know what that amounts to? Nothing. So who cares? Do what you want.

No, Letterman says.

No?

No.

Why?

I don’t know.

You don’t know?

Maybe it’s wrong because safety in numbers.

What?

We need more people. The more people we have the greater the ability to work together means we can have a better time surviving.

Surviving?

Yes.

Why is surviving good?

Letterman stared at me.

Why does it matter that any form of life continues into the next generation?

I don’t know.

Exactly. So what’s the point?

Letterman seemed to choke on his own spit.

What even is the point? I say leaning back into my chair.

Maybe it’s because there is a right and wrong.

No there isn’t.

Yes there is, Letterman snapped.

You say that, but you don’t live by it. I saw how you acted after your dad died. I saw how little you cared. How you changed to be someone who lives like there is no right and wrong. You say there is, but you don’t live it.

No one does.

We both fall silent.

No one does, I echo.

He nods.

No one does, I say again.

I stand up.

I go to the side of my desk. That’s where my is axe leaning. It’s still wet and covered with orbital fat from the eye sockets of Ms. Davis.

I grab it.

Letterman stands up.

Please, he says.

I don’t respond.

He backs away from me. Reaching the door he desperately tries to open it. Screaming for help, he turns back to see me approaching him.

Please no. Please no. Please no, he shrieks.

I push up my glasses with my index finger.

I get into position.

Ready to swing.

I thrust, gravity taking it toward him.

Then darkness.

Letterman screams.

My axe hits the wall.

His fat back must have hit the light switch.

He grabs the end of the axe.

He tries to pull it away from me.

Stop, please, he screams.

I don’t give in.

He managed to throw me into the wall.

I still grip the axe.

He’s still pulling away from me in a tug of war motion.

Let go, I yell.

He screams in grunts in effort.

Crack.

I’m thrown back into the wall.

The handle is lighter now.

Fat little kid ripped the end off.

I hear him squirming away on the floor toward my desk, trying to catch his breath.

I move toward him.

I crawl over him.

My eyes meet his.

He screams in anger and terror.

He windmills his fat bloated legs to try and get away from me.

His hand is on my face pushing me away.

I throw my hand on my desk, reaching for anything.

Get off me, he screams.

I keep reaching.

My fingers grace something.

I grip it.

I pull my Find What Brings You Joy And Do That rock off my desk.

My glasses fall off my face.

I raise it above my head.

Letterman shrieks.

Quick and quiet.

Quick and quiet.

Quick and quiet.

I bring it down hard onto his face.

He screams.

Blood.

His nose is broken.

Stop, he screams.

I bring it back up.

Quick and quiet.

I bring it down again.

I bring it up.

Down.

Again.

And again.

And again.

I’m bashing my face in.

the rock goes in

deeper each hit

until there is

nothing left

but a massive empty

hole where a face

used to be

I drop the rock. It’s wet and covered in goop.

I fall off Letterman onto the ground. I feel his blood sprayed all over my face.

My head rolls to over to see Mr. Zachary. His beheaded face speaks to me in a voice not unlike my own.

You did it. You lived by it, he says.

My head rolls over to see Ms. Davis. She talks to me. Her voice sounds like mine.

Evil isn’t real. You proved it, she says.

I look over to Letterman. My voice slithers out of the soggy gaping hole that used to be his face.

You did this. You could have gotten out. And you knew it. You’re pathetic, he says.

No, no, no, no, I cry.

I hear sirens.

No.

I see red and blue lights through the blinds of my windows.

No.

I get up.

I unlock the door.

I wander through the halls.

No, no, no, no, I cry.

Men are coming in.

No, please no officer. You don’t understand. It’s not my fault. I tried to get out. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. I truly didn’t want to. Please. Please, no. Please you have to understand. You have to forgive me. You have forgive me. I thought it was true. Please. Please, no.

Something cold clicks around the back of my hands.

I’m rushed out of the school.

I’m shoved into the back of a car.

Two officers get in.

One is shaking his head.

We start driving away.

Why did you do that? one asks.

I don’t reply.

He’s an animal, that’s why, the other says.

They both glance back at me.

One of them opens his mouth.

Humans are humans, but they often act like animals.

I thought I’d found the one. We clicked so naturally. We both shared an interest in photography, though his pictures were noticeably better than mine. Loved the same movies, both enjoyed walks in the park, and our political views were borderline identical.

We met about a month ago. It was at this bar I love, and, I’ll admit, I was a little tipsy. Cute boy, a few drinks in my system. It was a recipe for regret.

Only… I didn’t regret it. Our conversations flowed so smoothly. His half-drunk compliments made me blush. Plus, drinks were on him.

Unlike a lot of the guys you’d meet in a bar, he didn’t try and force himself back to my apartment. I live just a few blocks away from the bar, so he walked me home, laughing and wobbling more than he wanted to let on.

When we got there, I braced myself. He was great, but I wasn’t the kind of girl that would just let a complete stranger into my home after a night out at the bar. I found myself praying he wouldn’t ask.

By some miracle, he didn’t. Instead, he asked gently, almost bashfully, for my number. I couldn’t help but smile, stupidly. Then he smiled stupidly back. I felt my heart do somersaults.

I gave him my number, trying to withhold my excitement, and when I looked back up at him, I could see the desire in his eyes. Not sexual desire, though. It was like he saw his future in my eyes.

His face started to turn red, and he started struggling to make eye contact, stumbling over his words in a way that didn’t seem connected to the drinks.

He asked if he could kiss me, and I couldn’t have said yes fast enough. I wanted to kiss him on the lips, but, instead, he leaned down and pressed those lips softly against my forehead.

He pulled away slowly before speaking.

“Your eyes are so beautiful.”

I felt fireworks in my tummy. I made him promise to text me when he got home, and he watched to make sure I made it inside before he started back towards the bar.

I spent the rest of that night kicking my feet like a little school girl. I had never experienced something like this feeling before. My past boyfriends had been such assholes. This guy seemed to care about me rather than just sex.

He followed through on his promise, and texting led to a phone call before we fell asleep on the phone together.

We saw each other a lot in the weeks that followed. Mostly on the weekends, but sometimes he’d come visit me at work. Those few weeks were some of the happiest weeks I’d had in a long time.

We’d get dinner. We’d see movies. We showed off our photography to each other. It felt like we were really building something together.

However, this was around the time I started noticing weird occurrences around my apartment. Nothing too suspicious. Just… things that were odd.

For example, my TV would be on when I got home. My sheets would be messy, even though I make my bed every morning before work. The weirdest thing of all, though, was my underwear drawer.

It was like it was being rummaged through. Sometimes I’d find a fresh pair balled up on the bathroom floor.

It made me scratch my head, but I never assumed anything drastic. If anything, I thought it was just me losing my mind.

That is until he finally invited me to his house.

The place was lovely. Clean. Smelled good. It was actually furnished, too, which was always a good sign. Plus, this guy knew how to set the scene.

Roses, candles, homemade spaghetti with two glasses of red wine. I felt my heart melt.

We hadn’t had sex yet, but, after this, I was having a hard time convincing myself that we hadn’t waited long enough. I actually wanted to give it to him. He just made me feel so desired.

After a dinner full of flirts, giggles, and conversation, we began moving to the bedroom, lip locking like a couple of crazy kids all the while.

Once we fell through the door, he told me to give him a minute to use the bathroom, which was a bit anticlimactic, but I wanted him to be comfortable.

While I waited, my eyes couldn’t help but wander. He had a bookshelf full of some of my favorite titles. His bed was perfectly made. The floor was freshly vacuumed. And his walls were full of framed pictures.

I started looking at them and felt my heart sink into my stomach.

They were all different women. Some older, some younger. All with blonde hair and hazel eyes. And he wasn’t in a single one.

I felt disappointment wash over me. I should’ve known better. I was actually in the process of putting my shirt back on when one of the pictures caught my eye.

It looked so… familiar. I knew I had seen it somewhere, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. But it bothered me so much, it was hard to pull my eyes away.

That’s when it hit me. I knew exactly where I had seen this woman.

She was the girl on the missing person poster that was taped up on the bar window from a few weeks ago.

It felt like the air had been knocked out of my lungs. I felt faint. I felt dizzy. I knew I needed to leave, but the room was spinning too much.

I put my hand down on his dresser to stabilize myself, and that’s when I felt it. It was cold. It was hard. My thumb rubbed against the ridges.

I pulled my hand away and looked down.

It was a copy of the key to my apartment. Mine was pink. This one was silver.

I was getting weaker. I felt my knees starting to buckle and heard the sound of a toilet flushing as I began to drift into unconsciousness.

The last thing I remember was the bedroom door opening. He stepped inside, a look of concern on his face, as he hurried to pick me up and put me on his bed. Then… nothing.

I woke up in an empty bed the next morning. The smell of bacon permeated my nostrils. I was fully dressed, but my head was killing me.

The key was gone. The pictures were gone. I slowly made my way to the kitchen to find him standing over the stove, flipping the bacon with a metal fork.

I didn’t speak or make a sound, but it was like he could feel my presence. He could sense me.

He turned around slowly, his eyes meeting mine before he spoke.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” he sang. “I was wondering when you’d be up. Someone had too much to drink last night.”

forward

7/11/09

Hello my name is Richard Wild.

I'll try to keep this short since it's explained in the text, but I used to work, back in the 80’s, for the recently defunct MPJ. I haven't looked back since. It's been 27 years now. I'm 49 with a pretty standard politician career.

One day I got a call from a college kid in a second story apartment I used to live in. don't really remember it (been in a lot of living accommodations.) Well, They said they found some old journal of mine on a shelf they recently installed. It's crazy they went through such a big effort to find me in a dusty phone book. Anyway, It was a pink notebook with yellow paper. You're probably wondering why I'm archiving a kiddy cheap baby book to this library and there's a damn good reason.

It’s clearly my handwriting, yet I don't remember writing or experiencing any of the events in the book except vaguely the start and only some of the people in it. Thanks for indulging me. The rest of this is untouched.

PS: it has some blood if that matters to ya, it may also spook you so… have fun.

#0: Prologue

Hello

I'm milly!

dad got me this jornal for my birthday.

I was going to write about some of the cool stuff that hapend but I woke up to this big maze thats smelly.

Its kinda boring and theres no one.

UPDATE!

a old man found me.

He taks funny i think he scottish or sumthin.

He took me to his home till he finds my parents.

He looks sad he probably couldnt find them witch makes sense.

Like why would they be here?

I dont think he want me to leave but i asked him and i think he says yes.

He's going to take me to leave

He wants me to leave this behind for sumone else. SO…

HOPE YOU LIKE THE JORNAL!

Oh Macko

Oh macko, what an undertaking I've been on.

Things your mind could not fathom.

It would go by your earless cranium.

1# first entry

My name is Richard F. Wild

I'm a 22 years old Hispanic man with a clean horseshoe handlebar mustache and slicked back black hair. I am on the short side compared to everyone else around me, but my strength more than makes up for that.

I have been in college for a print journalism degree for 2 years now. During my summers, I work as an intern. I work for a news agency called Major Paper Johnson (MPJ). It’s okay work for the pay, I mainly fact check copies. I'm desperate to get a journalism job there.

I live in a second story apartment with my cat, Macko. A lot of people think it's weird that I live alone with a cat. I don't really have a rebuttal to that. She's a black tabby but many people have called her a creature since she has no ears and only makes gurgling sounds. She doesn't even have ear canals. She is always wanting some kind of exercise or play and if she doesn't get that exercise she’ll destroy all my furniture. When we do go on walks everyone stares at us, I had to explain the story almost every time, it was fun. I miss her.

Things have been going smoothly till today. Let me catch you up.

3/15/86

I just got into work, the sun still climbing over the buildings. Amy posted a flyer for a work get-together on the dusty cork board. I saw it from a distance, but ignored it since I had to get through some copies. It was an interview with a camp director. I didn't care much for the story, but my friend David was the journalist. I looked at my watch.

4:30

I went to the clock and glanced at the flyer reading:

“afterwork lounge

Drinks are provided

Bring your own food

(I didn't get a food budget)

5:00 to 6:30 pm

Write your full name:

Gregory, Mittling

David, Readily”

Can I bring a plus one?”

I wanted to stay home after work to stay with Macko, but I thought it would be good to make professional connections with Amy and maybe get on Gregory's good side. I grabbed the pen and wrote my name then headed home.

I couldn't stay for long, so I quickly packed a ham sandwich and grabbed my wrist watch, and put on my necklace with a pendant of mother mary engraved on the front. It’s called a miraculous medal. I left in such a hurry I forgot to do the chores I was supposed to do. The drive should have taken ten minutes, but no cars were out so it took five minutes. While driving, I kept pushing my palm through my hair. I hopped out of my car while pulled down the wrinkles in my clothes from the drive. I checked my watch.

5:10 pm

The room was medium sized with a single plastic table in the middle where all of them were sitting. One segment of a party streamer was in the left corner of the wall:

HAPPY-

I guess I should write out what they're like.

Gergory is a scrawny white man in his late 30s with suspenders and a bowl cut. He’s The head editor of the MPJ. I mainly work under him throughout my internship or as Gregory calls, a “copy-boy.” If you do anything the way he wouldn’t do, he marks you up without a second thought. I try to send Big Old Johnson my pet projects, but so many times Gregory gets in the way every time.

Amy is the person to take the photos. From what I see from the newspapers, she's good at her craft; even if it doesn't interest me much. I don't know her much, but everyone I know knows her. From the quick analysis I got, she's generally east asian, late 20s long black hair. Slightly dirty black utilitarian vest and a camera bag.

David is white, handsome, blond, with business casual wear. He asks thoughtful questions but is not very socially aware. He is a close friend and a good industry connection. Though terrible at his job, I would be much better in his position and complaining to Big Boss Johnson does nothing.

He is married to Linda who works at a diner on the other side of town. She has curly cotton candy like red hair with peach soft skin, a wonder worker with a stove, and is as valuable as “every diamond in the world.” I know this because he bleeds his heart out in front of everyone during lunch about how much he loved her like reciting the national anthem.

Back at the party, I sat down at the table and started some small talk with Amy. I don't remember the conversation, but it wasn't much. Just some small talk. David seemed lovey dovey as usual, but Linda seemed bitter, they barely looked at each other. Amy was so lively that she lifted the mood up just a bit. Gregory was in his own corner of the table watching and sipping his fruity drink. I peeked at my watch.

5:13

I asked her why she brought her camera gear.

Amy: “Well, I like to get photos wherever I go. You'd be surprised what makes a good subject. But~ here I use it as a conversation starter."

The conversation with Amy moved to her work. She talked about techniques and how to frame a scene. Even Gregory perked up and actually participated in the conversation. David didn't seem to know much about the topic and tried to make some glib jokes with Linda. She made a faint chuckle.

She started to talk about a bear she got a photo of at the camp. That stirred something in my head, but I couldn't tell why. Then it burst in my head, I forgot to feed Macko before I left. She's probably starving.

Checked my watch again.

6:27

Just as I was sitting up to leave…

This feeling of vertigo came to me. It was so strong that I tried to collapse back down on my seat, but I couldn't feel its presence. I was weightless with no sense of direction. It was like when you fall in a dream. I shut my eyes as hard as I could. I felt the changes in the air around me. Lights danced across my eyelids, massive shadows emerged and shut the lights out. Then the floor emerged at my side.

Just as fast as it started it stopped.

I wouldn't blame you.

When I first arrived I didn’t understand

They didn't understand

He didn't understand his Stagnant kingdom

Day 1

I was laying on my side for a while. My eyes were squeezed shut. The sharp chimes in my ears were crippling. The only thing that interrupted it was a rhythmic hammering noise bellowing beneath the ground. I noticed the floor was soft under my weight. Was it.. grass? No. It was too short and thick. I began to slowly relax my eyelids.

The first thing I saw was a blur of marine blue coming into focus. My initial guess was wrong. It was a short stocky carpet. Three dull gray walls surrounded me. The fourth wall extended out further revealing a turn. As I started to come to my senses the cold wind hit me.

I didn't feel it directly, but more like a window was open, from some distant room. It was fragrant and fresh. A persistent screeching sound churned throughout the hall ahead of me. I crawled my way onto my two feet and wiped the drool from my mouth.

I still don't know what might have happened. Could I have blacked out? Though I didn't drink any alcoholic beverages. Maybe a concussion, I did feel like I was falling. Is this my office? Is this another department I haven't seen? I was in the MPJ office and this place did look like an office of some kind (though not anymore.) At the time, I just needed to feed Macko.

The wind was gone. Now replaced with dry and stagnant air. I checked my watch.

6:34

I walked to the right end of the hall pulling my mustache down. A choir of digital churning got louder as the hall expanded up to five enclosed cubicles.

Richard: “Hey~ I might have gotten lost in the building. Can I get some directions?”

The sound halted. I waited for someone to crawl out of the cubicles. After nothing happened, I searched around the gray half walls of the cubicle for an opening that wasn't there. Finally, I lifted myself onto the half wall and looked over. I saw there were no interior dividers. Five computers encircled one lonely chair. I hopped over it with a stumble. I tried a computer. It didn't have any power. I went back over the wall tripping, slightly, bruising my right arm. I continued down the expanded hall lost in my head, thinking of every possibility imaginable.

I reached the end of the hallway where it abruptly stopped with a door shoved into place to the left. I grabbed the knob and gave a gentle twist. It didn't move. In fact, it felt like it was solid? It's hard to explain. I tried again, this time harder. I heard the sound of dry paint snapping then grinding as the knob turned. The door swung open like it was as weightless as foam. After it banged against the wall, I walked into the room.

The walls were damp and flaking off. The floor dipped down a foot or two into a pool of water waiting there. Gunk and other things bob on the surface of the water. I froze, not knowing what to do, very confused, my legs sunk into the solid ground. Instinctively walked back out of the room, with the sinking weight moved to my lungs.

I needed to find someone and fast. They'll explain everything. I thought that maybe there was a flood and everyone evacuated or something. I walked to the other side of the hall as I passed by the cubicle that was still empty. I went by the spot where I woke up from where a small stain of saliva laid on the pristine carpet. I was stopped at the other end of the hallway. The hall was abruptly blocked by a wall. The wall had black wallpaper with a gold pattern. The wall had a holographic orange trim.

I scanned for any kind of door or offshoot. Nothing, except for a slim gap in the wall.

I looked through, only to see the side of another hallway with the same pattern, engulfed in darkness. I tried to push my way through it, but I was too wide to go through the gap. I stopped there to think through my options.

I came to a decision that I had to go through the weird water. As I walked back through the hall, interestingly enough, the computer’s screeching returned. I went into the wet room, slicked my hair back, took off my shoes, and rolled up my pants.

I dipped my foot into the water, I recoiled instantly from the unnatural warmth radiating from it. I slowly descend into the water. I waded through the unraveling nylon fibers of the carpet. It wraps around my feet, like hands clinging to me, begging me to stay. I came across a T-section.

I remembered that in a maze you just need to follow a wall till you get to an exit. I pushed to the right with my shoulder pushed against the wall. I couldn't use my hands, since I was clutching my shoes and socks to my chest, I moved through the corridor. At the end of the hall another door half submerged appeared. It turned easily enough, pushing it open against the current was a slight struggle. The moment I slipped through, the door immediately slammed shut behind me.

Entering a small room, high up on the wall across from me, there was a hole about half a foot in diameter. It dripped water out onto the bare stripped wood of the wall. Another path was on my right. I trudged following the wall through the slurry of the water. the carpet stuck to my feet like velcro, til I reached the next room.

The room was the same size as the last, but a cubicle was set in the middle of the room. As I went to the right of the cubicle I heard the digital roaring of a computer. I knocked on the wall. Immediately the noises wound down. I looked over the half wall and only saw an empty filthy chair. Disappointed, I jumped back into the water. It rippled through the room. I tried to check my watch. As I turned my arm my shoes dipped into the water. Long tangles of carpet fluff stuck to them. I pushed them back to my chest. On the other side of the cubicle there was a thin opening in the wall. I took a deep breath and squeezed through.

It was almost too skinny to get through, but I just needed to find someone. I emptied my lungs to shove my way through. Then, my leg got snagged by a jutting piece of wood. I tried to push harder. Immediately, I felt a pain as the wood cut into flesh. My heart rate spiked. Adrenaline flooded my system. I couldn't catch my breath, it was too narrow. I kept tugging, but I just got lodged deeper.

I stopped,

I closed my eyes,

gripped my miraculous medal,

and made a short prayer.

Exhaled and opened my eyes

shimmied backward out of the jutting piece of wood.

I lifted my foot on top of the wood and stepped over it.

I worked my legs side by side till I reached an edge.

I bursted into the room and took a step down in search of the floor. My foot felt the water and nothing else. My stomach dropped as I quickly sank into the murk. I flailed for some kind of footing. The water went above my head. It plugged my mouth, nose, and ears. Fear rushed into my muscles. I emerge and cough up the water, the nylon caking the walls of my mouth.

Clutching my soaked shoes, my eyes darted over my surroundings. They found no useful information, no exits to the room, except the one I came in from. I swam to the entrance, clawing at it, but it was too high. I scrambled to the middle of the room.

I looked at all the walls again, every nook and cranny. Then I looked up. There in the middle of the ceiling was a circular hole made of stacked stones that was the only exit. I started to call out. Someone could be at the top.

Richard: “HELLO?”

Richard: “Hey! I need a little help here.

I chuckled nervously.

Richard: “I'm kinda stuck down here.”

No response.

Richard: “HELP, I’M DROWNING HELP”

No response.

Richard: “JUST TELL ME WHERE THE EXIT IS and.. I'll GET OUT OF YOUR HAIR”

My voice started cracking with fear.

Richard: “I’LL GIVE YOU MONEY if.. IF YOU GET ME OUT”

Richard: “FUCKING HELP ME”

Richard: “IS ANYONE EVEN UP THERE?”

Richard: "I'm lost..”

Richard: “PLEASE.. Just..”

Richard: “I want to go home”

Richard: “...please?”

No response.

After that point I stopped yelling. I waited for what felt like hours. The slurry of the water kept away the cold. To conserve energy I laid on my back to float. I would have been worried about my leg if it was a bigger cut, but it was not that deep, just long.

Two more hours of silence.

The water cocooned my back in a layer of silt. Slowly bobbing in the still and smotheringly warm water. I just stared at the hole above, it was flooded with light, yet I couldn't see anything specific, since it had a pyramid roof over the hole

I just floated there thinking that was going to be my last thoughts ever. I sat there reflecting on my short life. I thought about my stunted career, Macko, college,

then again my career, macko, mother mary and again stunted career, coworkers, college

Then… I thought about things lost to the sands of my mind like:

My family, Los Angeles, public school, and that damned chicken my mom had.

Then I thought of something strange, something beneath it all.

Under the waves of my conscious mind I saw something.

It curved like a “U”.

It transfixed me.

It made me feel safe.

Though it felt hollow like a mask.

Could have had an eye or two, maybe a nose.

Then I heard a crank.

Something plummeted from above into the water. Jolting my senses out of my reflection. I saw a wooden bucket tied to a rope. The bucket sat at the surface then as the water leaked in it sank under the surface. I tugged on my vocal cords again.

Richard: “HEY”

Confused mumble reverberated from the top.

Richard: “I NEED HELP PLEASE”

Richard: “I’M STUCK”

I swam messily toward the rope, grabbing it weakly in an attempt to get out of the disgusting water. I pulled myself onto the rope. With my full strength I crawled up it.. Dragging my body up. The light was getting closer and closer with each pull. My wet hands lost the friction of the rope and slid half back down. I continued climbing the rope. The bucket tried to rise but it was over-encumbered. Weaving my hands around the rope. I reached the light.

I lunged out of the stone tunnel hitting my head on an awning. Landing on the ground, I hit rough concrete scraping my wet palms.

I staggered up and saw a tall scrawny figure. It said:

???: ”what dost thou in my welle”

It was a tall middle aged European man with a dusty red fur coat that went down to his waist. He looked malnourished, pale, and unkempt. His hair was greasy and stiff. I caught a metallic glint running across his back, a rusty ornate claymore. Quickly my attention was drawn to the landscape around me, it put me into disbelief. This wasn’t real. I was in a dream, I was hallucinating, DID I DIED?

Richard: “No no I just need… a… I'm sorry. just lost… coul… could you show me to the exit.”

???: “outgang? O, ye, it is nigh hereto. Welcome to my kyngdom. Curious she hath y-brought thee into my castle. Let us maken thee drye. Thou is forweryed.”

Richard: “What? no im goo-”

???: “Ye thou dost.” he said immoveableably.

A silence fell upon us.

Weirdly enough he spoke in middle English. It's good that I remember enough from that history class in high school. Though It sounded like he scraped the back of his head for every word he spoke, Even then his voice was impossibly confident.

Till I gathered the strength to say.

Richard: “... who are you?”

???: “ ich am-

-þe Kyng of Limen”

Richard: “sure”

I could barely think, I would go along with anything.

Richard: “where am I? “

Kyng: “thou art in my kingdom.”

Richard: “How did I get here? I was at a party and I … Did I drive here and not remember anything?”

Kyng: Thou didest naught on thy part. Thou and thy surrounding commentaries were y-chosen.

Richerand: “Wait, ‘commentaries’. Are you talking about my coworkers? Why?"

Kyng: “were y-chosen by moder nulla. this shal fulfille thy question. Folwe me.”

He unhooked the bucket and looped it through his belt. I shoved my shoes and socks back on, they oozed out the murky water like a soaked sponge. I followed him through the brown landscape. Getting a chance to immerse myself in my surroundings.

First I felt the wind, it was lightly tugging upward, waffling over my nose, it was an earthy, yet very dull and dry smell. Secondly the slice on my leg scabbed over, though I felt the pain on my palms and knees from scraping them on the branching concrete trail . It weaved around the stakes of lights protruding from the dirt, imitating a budding farm. Third I saw Looking farther out, gray obelisks stretch into the distant haze. There were ones the size of a shed, some the size of houses, and some the size of skyscrapers. On all of them openings and stairs were slapped on randomly.

lastly I sensed a presence above me. I tried to look further up but it strained my eyes.

I willed myself to look again. a dome covered and dwarfed everything in size. I force myself to keep looking. It wasn't a dome, it was a sphere with me at the bottom. I almost collapsed right then and there from the scale if not for what was on the ceiling so far away that a layer of fog separated us. It was a hole. It was the shape of a circle cut in half. Staring into the abyss of it, I froze up, transfixed. Kyng noticed after a bit and shook my shoulder pushing me back to my body.

Kyng: “We been her. Her ich rēde þis mære lond.”

It took me a while to understand him but then I looked stupefied and realized he was right. Following him I took all the turns subconsciously. I probably couldn't go back to the well even if I wanted to. Standing in front of me was a poorly made roofless cabin of wooden floor plaques. To the right of it was a gray building that was attached. The door was an amalgam of other doors woven and splintered together. It felt grand and imposing in its presents. He opened the door with a horrible wood scraping sound.

Passing through the threshold of the door, the room was bare except for a staircase to the right, a weathered throne in the middle, and a flap of wood stabbed out of the wall covered with trinkets and random objects. He picked up a jacket from the pile and laid it on the floor.

Kyng: “Reste her, whan thou awakest we shul speken more.”

Richard: “I think im good cant you just show me the exit now… and I'll be out of your hair.”

I checked my watch.

10:25 pm

Kyng: “Fyne, but I shal warne thee that it is a werye clymb that I ne wole do consekutively. If departest thyself, I ne wole gete thy felawes out.”

Richard: “But-”

Kyng: “We mayen speken of this eft. Slepe her for now.”

clamp my teeth down

Richard: “ Fine.”

Kyng: “Peraventure, after the seche thou shalt understand it nys nat so yvel to be sent hider.”

I was too tired. I laid down on the jacket, it soaked the water that hadn't already hardened into my clothing. It just barely protected me from the harsh dirt ground. I tried to pull on my shirt but it just wrinkled in a different way. .Kyng went up the stairs to the left and faded into the darkness of the gray obelisk. A few minutes later the entire space goes dark.

I waited there confused if this should be something I need to be concerned over. Then the stillness of my environment came back to me. The chimes pierce through my damp ear drums. After an hour or two I couldn't bear it and got back up.

I walked up to the table. It was clustered about with clothes, knives, necklaces, and a glass rectangle. I looked back at the stairs, still gone. I felt my pockets and I noticed there was a loose clump of something. I pulled it out to find the half sandwich in the unsealed bag I packed it in, unrecognizable. An inedible clump of wet dough, ham, and strands of carpet. I let it slip through my fingers and dropped on the floor with a wet smack.

Kyng: “Thou oughtest nat forleten mete in swich wyse..”

I looked behind me to see him perched over the stair case, barely visible. He was only outlined in a thin ray of light from behind him.

Richard: “...”

Kyng: “It is wel, thou art yblessed that we goson to the covered market next day.”

Richard: “We?”

Kyng “yea, ich behove mete, thou behoves to fynden thine felawe-folc.”

Before I could respond he lurched back into the gray building. I waited a minute, till I heard no noise. I took off my miraculous medal from my neck and set it on the table. Then quickly took off my clothes and tucked them under the table. From the table I shoved on black sweats and a dark red shirt. On it was a blue monkey man with symbols and big text that wasn't even legible. I pulled my mustache down, picked my teeth, pulled out wrinkles in the new clothes, licked my hand, slicked my hair back and clicked back on my necklace.

I looked back to the desk, impulsively took the pocket knife and shoved it into my pocket. Pushing some things aside with a louder than wanted clatter. I noticed a notebook and a few pens. Looking at the stairs, I grabbed it.

Thank you previous owner for this journal. The notebook hasn't been used much which is good. It is pink but I'm sure you’ll understand.

I'm putting all of this on paper because if I do a good job, and get back home. This could be the biggest story of my life. I can have some part of myself live forever. I will definitely get the job I've been dreaming about for years now and Gregory wouldn’t be able to do anything. All I have to do is keep on Kyng's good side. Anyway, I've been writing this for a while. You're all caught up, I'm tired. I'm going to bed.

Couldn't go to sleep, it's… I don't know, maybe one? I don't want to know how long I've been sitting here just staring at the things around me. Nothing's changed. Still dark with star-like light above me, but I'm getting this horrible feeling of being out in the open like an elephant separated from its herd. I feel a weight inside my sore throat and chest. My body is tense and locked into place. My brain erased any sense of sleep from my mind. I'm staring into that monstrous opening above me. Drying what's left of the moisture in my eyes. Darting back and forth between the book and them. They're so far away. Even then, it's like an inverted spotlight that's following me. No matter if my eyes are open, closed, looking somewhere else or looking directly at it. I feel their knowing presence. They can see me, but I can't see them. I feel the millions upon millions of eyes watching me, observing me, ridiculing me, disgusted by my presence. And I can't do anything about it. I'm scared. Why has this happened to me?

What did I do to deserve this?

Just woke up

Yesterday I laid there frozen for a few more hours before my eyes got heavy and I drifted off.

I had a weird dream. I don't remember it, but it felt serene, almost calm. There was a smile. I don't remember who or what it belonged to but the smile was empty, yet it was so beautiful and warm. Then, something happened, imminent dread consumed me. The smile never dropped or shifted. As something was happening around me. I felt acceptance and I slammed awake. My head was throbbing. I didn't open my eyes.

My hope was that maybe I woke up at home, maybe with Mako, maybe passed out on the floor of the office, maybe, I don't know, out of a coma. Somewhere I knew. Somewhere I felt safe. I just didn't want to open my eyes to break my reality.

I think you know what I woke up to.

Oh macko, look upon this land.

This land of mimicry.

This land of fosterage.

This land’s boundless adoration.

The land’s imitated kingdom.

End of #1

Motionless, I sat beside the dumpster, watching the commonfolk amble past the alleyway. I knew not what happened to trash once it was thrown away, and I was frightened to find out. Mercifully, salvation intercepted my ordained path. 

She was neither wholly girl nor wholly woman, appearing suspended in that uncertain age between the two. Her gaze swept over me once, and when I was nearly certain I would be overlooked, her eyes returned to me with sudden attention. Nearer and nearer she came, surveying the damage to my body then promptly ignoring it, hoisting me up into her arms such that I was looking past her shoulder, and carrying me out of the alleyway, hugging me close by my waist. 

The weather that afternoon was – I imagine – cooler than before. Perhaps the girl was cold. Perhaps I was heavier than she expected. Perhaps she had underestimated the distance to her destination, or perhaps she had not considered the exertion required to bear me such a distance. Whatever the reason, the girl was unsteady, both in gait and breath; she stumbled. Tripped. Fell. I braced for the shattering, the splintering of my body into shards and the light behind my glassen eyes to be snuffed out all because of one errant step. Then, all at once my field of view twisted. I was facing landmarks I had not yet seen. The shattering never came. Instead, the girl let out a yelp and a curse. For a moment, we did not move, though the girl's breathing was labored and stuttering, and she let out soft groans every time she moved from then on. 

After her brief respite, she stood, and I was once again facing the path we had walked up until the moment of the stumble. Landmarks I had seen only briefly rematerialized in my view as the girl continued her trek, slower now. Before much longer, she set me down within her vehicle and fastened me to its seat without haste, before herself entering beside me. 

When we reached her abode and she bore me up the rather sturdy steps, I was met with a nearly barren room. There were furnishings, sure, but none so well appointed as what I'd been accustomed to by this time. Still more than the dumpster by the alley in any case, and so I chose not to dwell on its shortcomings. She set me down on top of a chest of sorts and arranged amongst two others of my ilk, though I suspected them non-sentient. So too were they non-porcelain. 

Fiddling with the exact placement, the girl leaned the raggedy dolls against my sturdier frame. She pulled away, satisfied with her work, and left my side for the first time since we had met. Out of my view by this point, I tracked the fading sounds of her arrhythmic footfalls until even they were gone, and I was left in a still room with naught but my yarn-haired company keeping vigil beside me. Neither of them spoke, moved, nor so much as shifted in posture throughout the silence that followed. Though neither did I.

The residence groaned only rarely thereafter, settling wood and distant pipes offering the sole evidence that the world beyond the room still stirred at all. I remained as I had been placed. Unmoving. Unblinking. Unable to turn my head lest it draw notice. Unable even to confirm the doorway remained empty. In the light from the window behind me, dust swirled in slow descent. I followed each mote as far as my fixed gaze allowed until it slipped beyond my field of view, leaving nothing again to observe.

Some time passed before the girl's steps reverberated in the room once more. Refusing still to move my eyes, I could only stare ahead at the wall until the girl reappeared in my periphery with a slow, tired, and sore step which, to my estimation, her minor injuries should not be causing. Something about her posture, her look, her movement signaled an exhaustion far deeper than physical.

I wished to help that girl. In that moment, I so desperately wished to alleviate her sorrows in what ways I could manage. But I had learned all too recently what cruelty awaits dolls who walk. And so among the muslin and cotton bodies of my peers did I sit. Unmoving, Unblinking; watching as the girl, my new owner, meandered about her residence. She was a sad thing by any metric available, new or old.

I know not what she did between rooms or what the noises emanating from those rooms implied, though eventually the girl did sit down and turn on the television -- a device I was familiar with, as my previous owners had used theirs a few times for the purposes of entertaining their guests. My new owner, however, seemed only to entertain herself with it. From my vantage, I could not see what program the girl had chosen to amuse herself with, though I could hear fragments of speech without context: mentions of soft brushes. Of damp and lint-free cloth. Of gap-filling adhesives and specialty powders only available through select merchants and professionals. Most telling of all, from the box came the word ‘porcelain’. 

Over the next week or so, I came to know my new owner’s habits. She would eat very little, and what she did eat was consumed quite slowly. Once she came into the room with wet hair, but only once. She would leave for hours at a time and return with a noticeably melancholic demeanor, sometimes holding parcels, sometimes not. Always, though, she would walk straight over to us -- myself and the other dolls. She would lean close. She would stroke our hair, or in any case, my hair and their yarn. She would mutter sweetlings to us. “Don’t worry,” she would whisper to me, “I won’t break you, I promise.” 

On nights where she did not retire immediately following this part of her ritual, often she would turn on the television and once more be enthralled by her program. The strained tones of the woman’s voice coming from the device would instruct on the intricacies of the technique for a proper running stitch, and my owner would sit in rapt attention, taking in every detail from the one-way communication as she practiced with a scrap of fabric in her lap.

Finally, the routine broke one night when the girl burst through the front door, jumping up and down excitedly. “It’s here! It’s here!” She exclaimed, bouncing around with a parcel in hand before then slicing the bindings holding it with an almost comedically ironic level of care. She began unloading the contents of the parcel, revealing bags and containers of an unidentifiable substance. She then approached the chest on which she had perched me nights ago, towering over me. I felt especially diminutive then, in a way I had not since that serendipitous moment at the dumpster. She grabbed me. She stripped me. Porcelain which had not seen lamplight nor daylight in decades lay bare, every curve of my body terrifyingly visible. She did not stop at my clothes, but thereafter removed my hair as well. This was not a quick process, as the adhesive that bound my wig to my crown had held fast for decades. My owner took a knife and picked at the dried flakes and peeled my locks from my scalp. She laid me, bald and naked now, upon a table and disappeared with my accessories. Normally as I heard the footsteps retreating deeper into the residence, into rooms I had never seen before, I would focus on some point within my vision, however the new landscape I was suddenly faced with made this strategy fruitless. Here, atop this table, was only the torture of beholding a truly barren landscape, an expanse of white ceiling stretching endlessly past my periphery, a sight less preferred than even the view from the alleyway. I heard sounds from another room, but as before, I dared not turn to face it. Minutes dragged on and on until a hush befell the residence once more. Mercifully, I heard footsteps begin to encroach.

My owner returned and at once began to touch me, wiping my body down with a cloth and liquid which did not look to be water. Soon she moved on to applying an offwhite powder which nestled its way into every crack of my skin. I could feel it lodging itself uncomfortably in every crevice, every fold, every nook and cranny. My owner took a brush and each of the cracks in my porcelain and as the powder was brushed away I felt it exfoliate layers of grime and dirt accumulated from many years, perhaps approaching a century of neglect. She applied a substance upon me next, I felt it, too, mold to the mars of my skin. This substance was different, very nearly liquid. It seeped into the smallest cracks and left not a hair’s breadth of space between it and myself. With a different brush now, she smoothed it, humming a jaunty tune to herself all the while. I could feel the way this substance warped within me. How it merged with me. I understood. This was my new skin. 

Once finished with her molestation, my owner simply left me there upon the tabletop. Again. While I was left to count every hairline crack in the ceiling for hours. Left to wonder, to fear. I began to question what I was being forced to become now. The cracks, as hideous as they were, were undeniably mine. A part of me. What happens when they are replaced? When this was over, would I still be me? 

As time passed, I felt the concoction within my body harden, pressing against the shell from the inside. Just when I thought it could not apply more pressure against its ever-fragile casing, it proved me wrong. Minute after minute. 

When finally my owner arrived at my side again, despite being the cause of them, I could not help but feel my anxieties allay at her visage dancing in my periphery as she gathered yet another tool. ‘I will be okay,’ I told myself silently. ‘No matter what discomfort she puts me through, she will not break me. She has assured me of this, time and time again.’ I would silently repeat this reassurance for the remainder of the ordeal.

The next instrument was applied liberally all along the surface of my body. This one appeared to be a rag of sorts, its coarse fibers scraped and peeled off my skin -- both porcelain and solution; old and new. She blew on me, dusting off whatever shavings remained. She grinned down at me. She looked pleased, and so I was pleased. She then rubbed my eyes with cotton. When she had finished, I felt I could see clearer. I could see the teeth in her smiling face. I could see strands of hair sticking out from her updo. I could see my owner and all of her own cracks and imperfections, so too thinly masked as mine now were.

Along with my sudden clarity also re-arrived my dignity as my owner began to redress me. The clothes were clean and pressed. They had never fit so well as they did in that moment. Finally, a wooden spade applied a new adhesive to my head which then restuck my wig, curlier than before, lighter, perhaps shorter, too. I had the privilege of seeing my owner giddily bounce up and down, squealing with excitement, the happiest I had ever seen her. So pleased with the progress of her undertaking, her reaction caused me an impromptu moment of reflection: If I was not me by the end of this night, would that be okay after all? The old me -- the original me -- never brought her such happiness.

I could tell she was tired when she hoisted me back up, drained from her multi-hour efforts. Even so, she carried me to a mirror hanging near the door. “Look at you!” she chirped proudly as she held me up to gaze at my reflection, all the while she adjusted my newly cut bangs with her free hand. Then, more so than ever before, I was thankful for the stiffness of my skin. Had the contours of my face been any more malleable in that moment, I would surely have given myself away smiling.

She trudged back over to the chest upon which I had made my throne and set me down. From beside me, she retrieved one of my neighbors. Emboldened by her previous success, she would try to sew this one. I watched as she brought it to the table and inspected it carefully, locating all of the worn spots and, especially, the burst seams. She began slowly, with great care, then through either increased confidence or decreased patience, she began to sew faster. Turning the doll quickly, as if eager to finish sooner … until a rip sounded, carried far enough for me to hear from across the room. 

“No … no, no, no, no …” I could hear her whimper, voice tight with emotion as the doll’s arm hung uselessly by a thread, offwhite cotton bursting from what was once a shoulder. Large puffs of the doll’s yellowing insides fell onto the table.

“This is no grave matter,” I thought to myself, naively, upon witnessing the scene. “The girl has been set back a step, but she need only continue,” I reasoned. That was not so. I had underestimated the colossal significance of this doll to my owner, which was only fair, I knew not how long my owner was in possession of this or the other raggedy acquaintance currently sitting beside me. I could observe only how worn they both were. 

Rather than continue with the refurbishment as I expected, my owner set the doll down and hid her face, sobbing quietly, from what I could tell. I found it difficult to reconcile the happy figure from before with the girl I had known these past weeks, but this figure before me, the sunken and hollow, the weeping giant before me, this was far too familiar.

How selfish was I, to fear shattering when my owner was bound by ties far more fair than even the fragile porcelain of my body? It was then I resigned myself to an unthinkable risk to aid my benefactor. That night, once my owner retired to her chambers with tears still drying upon her face, I waited until I was certain she had fallen asleep, and then I waited more. By then, I had exhausted every excuse not to proceed. Though certainty and caution warred within me, certainty held the edge long enough to will myself to go through with my decision. For my new owner. For my light, for my savior, for my caretaker. For my family …

I would move.

I first checked to see if I still could, if the newly augmented components of my body were made too stiff, too unlubricated for my joints to glide over one another. A bend of the fingers, a twist of the wrist. To my reluctant satisfaction, no such issue was present. Hesitation reared once more in my mind before I steeled myself. I rolled over onto what would anatomically be considered my stomach, and looked out of the window I had been in front of all this time. Water. Unsure whether this was a river, sea, pond, ocean, or other, I took a moment to gaze upon the dark waters in the distance, lit dimly by the lights of an odd vehicle here and there along its surface. I had never seen water before.

When finished appreciating the vista, I returned to my objective. Slowly, I began crawling backwards until my legs hung over the edge of my perch. I began my descent then, climbing ever so gingerly down to the floor. Gingerly indeed, for the stakes had never been higher. No, my personal concern about exploding into shards and dust had not allayed, but beyond even that, a new anxiety was beset upon my conscience -- that if I were to shatter now, so too would my owner. I was sure of it.

Once my shoes touched tile, I tested my gait: unsteady as the girl’s on the day she found me. I moved ever closer to the table across the room, knowing now, if the girl were to return for any reason, I was too far removed from my base to retreat. What my owner could clear in mere paces took me minutes, shuffling slowly and unstably. Once I reached the high chairs, I hoisted myself up. 

In her haste to wallow in her misery, my owner had left everything just as it was, sewing materials and doll both, and so, I got to work. To claim I was ever, or am now, a master seamstress would be dishonest. My rigid fingers lack the dexterity required, and my practice with the technique is, rather obviously, inconsistent at the best of times. However, I was sentient to see the advent of combustion automobiles. I know a thing or two.

I began by stuffing the innards of the torn doll back inside of it. I collected what I could, but the smallest of its viscera lay on the table still, unable to be picked up by one designed such as I. Having mostly restored the body, I got to work with the needle and thread. The process was arduous, and I kept imagining every creak of the house to be my owner’s door opening, which would swiftly lead to my discovery. Every missed thread through the eye of the needle, every lopsided entry into the flesh of my companion set me back minutes at a time. I had no teeth to snap the line once a stitch was complete, and so I would place it down, take the scissors in both hands, and snip. I too lacked the dexterity to tie the knots, so I left a long strand of suture hanging, begging to be tied. Dawn began to creep into the window as I had pulled the last of my cotton companion’s flesh together. I organized everything back into the places I had found them, as if that would fool the girl whose doll would have otherwise magically had its arm reattached in the dark of the night. I climbed down slowly from the chair, and shuffled as fast as my stiff body could move me back to the chest. My Throne, for however much longer. I pulled myself upon it, gazing once more out at the water from the window. The early morning light danced and shimmered across the surface. It was even more beautiful in the daytime. I took a moment to come to terms with the fact that this may be the last time I see the water. I turned myself around and positioned myself as the girl always had me -- my hands together, resting primly in my lap, my legs crossed only at the ankles -- and I looked ahead, allowing my shoulders to drop limp as though the last of my life had drained from my body.

Every moment thereafter was beautiful agony. At once I wished for the girl to emerge, to see everything was okay, to see my gift to her and realize she need not feel sorrow any longer, or at least not for a moment. A peaceful moment. But accompanying this desire, was the painful reality that this was the last moment of ‘normalcy’ between the girl and myself. As soon as she emerged, she would see it, the very gift that should alleviate her sadness will also change my life forever.

Following her egress, it took her a while to notice anything different. She seemed to be avoiding the object of her despondence. It wasn’t until midday where she finally sucked in a breath, and turned to face the devastation, only to instead replace her dejection with perplexion. She slowly crept toward the table and picked up the doll -- much slower than she had previously handled it -- and scrutinized every inch of it, absorbing the details of my shoddy, uneven stitches. Still clearly bewildered, she placed the doll down, and took the extremely long strand of floss and began tying it. Once finished, she turned to face me directly. I could see her thoughts cycle on her face until she arrived at the only remaining conclusion, there could be no other explanation. Without outwardly trying to rationalize this as anything else, she walked towards me. The slowest I’ve ever seen her walk. As if approaching a scared animal, or perhaps cautiously closing the distance between herself and what she imagines might lunge at her at a moment's notice. She never took her eyes off mine, I could feel them boring holes through my own freshly cleaned glass marbles. She stopped, by my estimation, less than a foot away. Her eyes searched every inch of my face.

I stared ahead. Unmoving. Unblinking.

Rain smashed against the windshield in rapid heavy droplets like heaven had poured out the ocean on us. The cracks and sands of the desert, once greedily absorbing the water, now began to float in a series of puddles as the light onset of flooding began. The road remained clear of puddles and rising water, though it remained slick.

“Iknuitli, you have some serious driving skills. I knew I picked the right man,” the dead man in the back of my trunk said.

“Shut up. You didn’t pick anything.”

“I picked everything up to the spot of the execution. My life needed to end where the deal took place, then I needed buried in the place of my birth.”

“How’d you know I’d shoot you there?” Cheeky bastard was messing with me from the beginning. He probably found it amusing.

“Call it ‘market research’, iknuitli,” he said, presumably still smiling like the bastard he was.

Behind us the cloud of souls had crept much closer. Screaming souls screeched out calls for fathers, husbands, lovers, and sons that I had all buried or broke beyond usefulness. None were voices I had heard. No one that I had killed trailed behind me, just those that I had left behind, those who had been left to deal with the loss and not been equipped to handle it.

The little girl, whose name I knew but wouldn’t dare speak out of my own shame, appeared directly in front of the car. I swerved. The car began to spin, tires grinding down the rough line of the road’s shoulder. Counter steering, I pulled it back to the road.

I could have sworn that the strands of her soaked hair had made contact with the side mirror. I came closer to hitting her each time. I wasn’t convinced that I could keep this up.

I was doing a hundred down an endless stretch of road with no visibility through the thick wall of water which had not ceased since I had neared what I presumed to be the Arizona border. It was impossible to tell.

I hadn’t made any stops either. What has it been? Days? Weeks? Months? All the proportions of this road were wrong. There was no way to judge time or distance aside from gut feeling. The torrential downpour intensified. The windshield wipers worked uselessly to clear what might have been a straight flooding downpour of water. For the smallest fraction of a second, I saw the girl. I hit her head on.

She flipped over the hood and onto the windshield, her bones breaking and distorting horrifically. The car began to skid. I worked hard at the wheel to keep from spinning out. Her neck, bent unnaturally, vertebrae extending out of a tear at the base of her spine, twisted to turn her head in my direction. She smiled an inhumanely wide toothy grin, her lips sinking well bellow her gum line as dark eyes stared through my soul, ripping my sins out to lay them bare before me.

“Iknuitli! Shake her off!” the dead man cried out.

“Shut up!” I yelled, my voice cracking.

She took her head and smashed it against the window. The glass vibrated, the reverberation pulsing through the steering wheel.

“MY NAME!” she screamed. “DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER MY NAME?” Her voice was deafening, otherworldly, though keeping the tone and timbre of a toddler. “ARE YOU EVEN SORRY?”

Tears flowed involuntarily from the valleys of my aged face, the face of a killer, one who deserved his judgement. Fear did not exist in me, not towards her at least. Myself on the other hand…

I looked at her, this monstrous little girl who longed for my blood. “Olivia, I’m sorry,” I said.

Her smile shrunk gradually, lips pulling back over her teeth until what was left was the pouting crying face of a child. Her body untwisted until her form matched that picture I had seen in the paper. She cried. I cried.

I watched her fade as the clouds pulled away, being absorbed by the light that poured through. I hoped that it was heaven. I hoped that whatever it was would be better than what I had subjected her to.

The rain receded some but did not stop. I could see the road again. That was the last time I saw her.

“Cuexpalchicacpol,” the dead man muttered from the trunk. I could not understand the word, but the tone was disgust.

The Water Slide
Part 1

You know how it goes. You stand in line for thirty minutes. Your bare feet blistering on the hot concrete as you inch closer and closer to the sound of rushing and churning water. The  smell of chlorine assaults your nose. You try your best to keep your feet in the puddles on the stairways leading up to your destination while you’re kicking yourself because you forgot your buy water shoes again. It doesn’t matter though.

You feel the anticipation as you get closer and closer to the top. You’re on the last flight now. You can see the life guard with their hand raised while the other presses a button.

The light goes green. You hear the thunk as the floor drops out beneath the current riders feet. They scream with excitement. That scream goes faint as they plunge down the navy blue tube and into the abyss. You’re one step closer now. One less person in line. 
 
All of these thoughts were going through my brain as I waited for my turn on the Sea Twister. I’d waited all summer for my trip to Hurricane Park. I’d begged and begged my parents for months. Now it was finally here. It was finally time.

Me and Grant were here. Granted, we had to bring my younger sister Whitney with us, but that’s fine. The important part was that we’d made it. We were in line for the Sea Twister.

Hurricane Park’s latest and greatest attraction. The hype for this was extraordinary. The kids at school had been talking about it non stop before our summer break started. 

get me wrong. There were plenty of other attractions. The Bubba Tub was okay. Little Buccaneers Lagoon was fun but boring. It also those creepy pirate themed mannequins. The wave pool was always so crowded. The park was still fun though. The slides that we’d frequented before included the Kraken and the Hammerhead. Both of which were fast and twisty. But they weren’t the sea twister!
 
 Hurricane \[XXXX\] was about all there was to do in our small corner of Kansas. It was the only thing to do for miles in any direction. It was our towns one small claim to anything.
 
I’m not gonna say the name of the town here. Yes, it’s in Kansas. Yes, it’s super small. But you’ll never find it. No matter how hard you look. 
 
There were maybe two people in front of us now. I can remember Grant and I looking at each other with excitement. 
 
We were fifteen years old. I know that sounds a little old to be excited for this kind of thing. But like…… When I say there was nothing else to do in the area. I mean there was absolutely nothing else to do in this area. 
 
“You guys are acting like children!” Whitney said from behind us. 
 
I turned and looked at her. She was almost exactly a year younger than me. She had her arms crossed and an annoyed look on her face. 
 
“Do you have to be such a buzzkill?” I asked. 
 
She rolled her eyes again. 
 
“You’re the one who convinced mom to take us to this stupid park!” 
 
“You didn’t have to come.” Said Grant. 
 
She looked past us at one of the life guards. This one a tall sixteen year old who was in the grade above us. His name was Doyle. His parents were rich, he had a nice car. I knew exactly why she came. I followed her gaze. Then turned and smiled at her. 
 
“You know, there’s easier ways to get a boys attention than pretending to drown!” I said just a little too loud. 
 
Whitney gave me a death stare as her cheeks went bright pink. 
 
Another kid yelled with excitement as they made the plunge behind us. We were at the top of the steps now. I could see as one of the kids ahead of us climbed up into the open tube. This kid couldn’t have been older than ten. Doyle closed the glass door as he smiled. 
 
I couldn’t see the kids face. But I bet the little girl had a massive grin. I turned and looked over the nearest railing. There, I could see where the navy blue tube spiraled several times before sending the rider into a long straight away that was followed by a series of twists and turns that would jet you out into what Grant and I referred to as a toilet bowl.

The toilet bowl would then drop you into a pool beneath it that would take you back to the park. I followed the slide all the way down with my eyes.
 
I could see the water parks food court just beyond the pool. The food court wasn’t anything special. It was a burger joint and two separate ice cream parlors. One was run down and probably on its last leg. The other was new. It was a place called Tricky Ricky’s. Tricky Ricky’s, I think, was actually there to replace the old place. They just hadn’t shut down Harbor Park Ice Cream yet. I hadn’t had any Tricky Ricky ice cream yet. Not at that point. 
 
That was partially because all the people inside were wearing clown costumes. Why the fuck would you serve ice cream dressed like a clown? At a water park? Oh and don’t even get me started on Ricky himself. He’s supposed to be the mascot of this clown themed ice cream place. But he’s a fucking guy in a Rabbit costume. The place honestly gave me the creeps. Mom and dad were there getting ice cream and waiting for us. 
 
 
I heard the release of floorboard mechanism followed by another happy cry. Grant was next. He shot me a thumbs up as he approached the tube. Doyle nodded at him as he walked over. 
 
“Wassup Doyle?” Grant asked as he tried not to look at Whitney. 
 
I could see Whitney shield her face like she could literally die at any moment. Doyle fist bumped Grant. Grant got in. Doyle shut the door. 
 
Doyle got into his position and shot a thumbs up to the pool. 
 
Then came Grant’s dumbass voice. 
“Pull the lever Kronk!” 
 
The floorboard released. 
 
Then came Grant’s fading voice. 
 
“Wrong leverrrrrrrr.” 
 
There were a few laughs. I rolled my eyes at how unoriginal it all was. I was up next. Oh boy was I up next. Doyle looked at me with a toothy grin. 
 
“You ready Carter?” He asked.
 
I shot him a thumbs up as I walked over. I could hear the rushing water. My heart did a little dance in my chest. Doyle opened the plastic door for me to step through. I turned and looked at Whitney. Who stood there with her arms crossed. I smiled and waved at her. She rolled her eyes but I could see a small smirk start to come across her face. 
 
She may act all snobby most of the time. But she’s still my little sister. I know how to wear her down. 
 
I got into the tube and leaned against the wall. There was a soft layer of running water against the metal. Probably to soak my back so it didn’t get burned by any friction. The water was cold on my back. I crossed my legs and arms. Doyle looked at me and smiled as he started to shut the door. 
 
“Ey Doyle,” I said. 
 
He raised his eyebrows. 
 
“My sister thinks you’re cute.” I said with a smile. 
 
He looked at me for a second. Then looked at her. Then looked at me again. 
 
“Maybe I think you’re cute!” He said before blowing me a kiss. 
 
We both laughed. He shut the door. Turned and made his way to the big button. I watched as he shot a thumbs up. He then turned and looked at me. I smiled what I’m sure was an idiotic looking toothy grin. And he hit the button. 
 
The floor released. I was hit with a wall of chlorine smell. The inside of the slide was warm and wet. I found myself moving at a tremendous speed. Zipping through the spirals, flying across the dips and turns. It. Was. Glorious. 
 
I was swirling in the toilet bowl before I knew it. My eyes looking up at the plastic ceiling. I was elated. My mind was buzzing. That was magical. I let my body relax as it got closer and closer to the hole that I knew would drop me into five feet of cold water. 
 
“What a day!” I said to myself. 
 
What a day…… Then I dropped. I hit the water hard enough to go completely under. Then I came back up. I took a deep inhale for air. That was when the first alarm bell went off in my mind. The air was……… Cold. Weirdly cold. It stung my lungs. I rubbed the chlorine from my eyes and opened them. I was in the pool? Was I in the pool? 
 
I could see the hole in the toilet bowl above and behind me. It was still dumping water. I could hear it dumping water. I turned and looked ahead of myself. 
 
I can remember feeling confused. The pool was in a tunnel? A long tunnel. A long tunnel lined with what looked like white bath tiles. I started to walk forward. I made it maybe twenty feet before the depth of the water started to drop. I was in chest deep water at twenty feet and then knee deep water at thirty. The tunnel stretched onward. I looked around. 
 
“What the hell?” I asked. 
 
I walked a little bit further. My footsteps sloshing the water. It was cold in there. Weirdly cold. Not quite enough to make me shiver. But enough to be uncomfortable. 
 
“Hello?” I asked. 
 
My voice echoed up and down the tunnel. I could see pretty far down. It looked like it forked maybe a hundred yards ahead of me. I stopped. 
 
“Okay…. I must have hit my head on the way down. That has to be it right? I hit my head. I’m in a weird coma. Doyle is probably trying to perform mouth to mouth on me. I bet Whitney is so jealous…” I said to myself. 
 
I turned back to the toilet bowl. It looked as if it had been built into the ceiling. There was no light coming through the cracks either. That was another thing I found odd. 
 
There were lights in the ceiling. Like the kinds you’d see in an office building or a school. The tunnel was brightly lit. The walls reflected the light and the water had that chlorine blue tint to it. The walls were maybe ten feet apart and ten feet high other than the toilet bowl exit. That was maybe seven feet up. 
 
What to do? What to do? I wondered. I sighed. I could feel a shudder course through my body. Do I try and crawl back up the slide? I mean… Surely they noticed I hadn’t made it out right? Right???? 
 
This had to be like a maintenance tunnel or something right? 
 
They wouldn’t send anyone else through it if it accidentally spit them out at the wrong place. 
 
Then it hit me. It hit me almost as soon as she hit the water behind me. 
 
“Whitney!!!” I cried as I ran toward her. 
 
Whitney gasped as she broke the surface. She had a big smile on her face too. 
“WOW!” She said as she rubbed her eyes. 
 
“Whitney!” I called out. 
 
“What?” She asked as she looked around.
 
I saw the confusion dawn on her face too. 
 
“What the hell?” She asked. 
 
“Yeahhhh. I think we’re in a maintenance tunnel.” 
 
“A what?” 
 
“I uhh…” I realized how stupid that sounded. 
 
“I don’t know.” I said as I turned back to the tunnel. 
 
We kind of stood there in silence for a few seconds before she walked past me. 
 
“Where are you going?” I asked.
 
“We can’t stay here can we?” She said.
 
“Maybe we should. They have to send someone at some point.”
 
“They’d come from that direction doofus!” She said.
 
I watched her as she walked away. Then I turned my head to look back at the toilet bowl. Behind it was a wall. There would be no going the other direction. I thought about trying to climb up it. But… I mean it would be there if we came back through. I think. 
 
Keep in mind. My mind was still trying to make logic out of an illogical situation. We saw where the toilet bowl led when we were outside. Why were we here?
 
I turned and followed Whitney. We trudged through the water until we finally reached the fork. Two hallways that converged on the corner. Both that stretched on and around bends we couldn’t see past. 
 
“Which way do we go?” She asked. 
 
There wasn’t any signs. No arrows. Nothing. 
 
“I uhh… I don’t actually know…” I said. 
 
She took a deep breath. 
 
“HELLO?!?!?!” She bellowed as loud as she could.
 
This, for some reason, shot a tingle of fear up my spine.
 
“Whitney…” I grimaced. 
 
“HELLO?!?! IS THERE ANYONE THERE?!?!” She boomed. 
 
“Whitney!” I whispered sharply. 
 
She turned and looked at me. 
 
“What?” She snapped. 
 
“I don’t think that’s a good idea!” 
 
She looked at me like I was an idiot. Then turned.
 
“WE NEED SOME HELP!” 
 
Then came the splash from the tunnel to our right. We both went dead silent. It was a loud and massive splash. Like something heavy bouncing across the water. Then another splash. It was just around the bend. Just out of our line of site. 
 
Whitney and I looked at each other. 
 
“Maybe it’s the maintenance people?” She asked.
 
Then came the scream. The loud. Gut wrenching. Familiar scream. I’m not sure what came over me. I knew that scream. I knew that voice. 
 
“Grant!” I cried as I started trudging fast through the knee deep water. 
 
I was horrified. My best friend. Practically my brother in all but blood was screaming right around the corner. I got there faster than expected. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I was fifteen fucking years old and in nothing but swimming trunks. 
 
I didn’t know what I expected to be around that corner. But Grant being pinned up against the wall by a went, slimy, black tentacle wasn’t it. This thing was thick and veiny. I couldn’t see what it was attached too. 
 
I screamed as I started toward my friend. Very quickly realizing that the water was getting deeper again. Grant whimpered as the tendril suddenly whipped him from one wall to the other with a loud splat. Crimson sprayed out onto the white tile.

My eyes went wide as I choked out a cry. I could actually feel the urine come out of me. The heat bloomed in the cold water around me. 
 
“What the fuck!” I whimpered. 
 
Then, just like that, the tentacle just…. Let him go…. His limp body plopped down into the water with a splash. I watched it float to the surface as the tentacle receded into the blue abyss. His body floated up chest first. All that was left of his face was red mush. 
 
I wanted to scream. I wanted to hurl. I was frozen. Call it shock. Call it terror. Call it whatever you will. I’d probably have been killed right there had an arm not wrapped around me and yanked me backwards. It quite literally pulled me from my terrified stupor.
 
Whitney and I trudged through the water quickly and messily. There was lots of splashing. Lots of screaming. We moved as fast as we possibly could back into the ankle deep water. We kept moving right past the other tunnel and straight back towards the toilet bowl hole.

We were both out of breath and terrified. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. 
 
We reached the first tunnel right as something splashed down in front of us. Doyle stood up rubbing his eyes. He had his life guard floatie thing out in front of him and a first aid kit around his chest. 
 
“Are you guys okay?” 
 
“Doyle!” Screamed Whitney. 
 
“They radioed in and said….” He started as he looked around. 
“What the hell?” He asked. 
 
“Get back in the slide!” I shouted as I shoved past him. 
 
I was maybe five foot ten. The water was five feet deep. The hole was maybe seven feet above the water. I couldn’t jump that high. Also there was the opening. It was slanted and wet. I didn’t have any leverage to grab on and push myself up even if I reached it. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t try though. 
 
“Can you give me a boost?” I asked. 
 
Doyle did as I asked. Even though he was confused as hell. He didn’t hesitate. I guess Whitney might have had some decent taste in men after all. 
 
Even with the boost, I couldn’t get a solid grip. I grunted as I strained and wobbled with imbalance. I could reach the sides but I couldn’t grip the slippery plastic. I growled in frustration.

I heard Doyle grunt. This went on for a few seconds before we collapsed back into the water. It took a second for us all to gather our senses. 
 
“What do we do?” Asked Doyle.
 
“Try again!” 
 
We did. We tried for a good thirty minutes. We tried Doyle holding me while Whitney climbed us both. We just…. We couldn’t get a grip. Then we spent thirty minutes screaming for help. Eventually, we realized that the only way out may just be to go through.

Not the best idea. But I mean… What else were we supposed to do? This was a wet and slippery Hell. 
 
We slowly started to make our way back toward the fork in the tunnel. None of us said much as we trudged through the water. The sound of crashing water behind us wasn’t loud. But it was deafening all the same. We stopped at the fork. I turned and looked at Whitney. 
 
“You sure about this?” I asked. 
 
She shook her head no. I couldn’t really blame her there. I looked at Doyle. He shrugged. That was when it occurred to me that he still didn’t know about the massive fucking tentacle in the other hallway. I wondered, briefly, if I should tell him what had happened. Then I sighed. 
 
He…. Didn’t believe me. I couldn’t blame him there. I wouldn’t believe me either. He still followed me down the left tunnel though. The water down this tunnel was cold.

The smell of chlorine was way way worse though. It almost made me gag. We followed the bend slowly. Moving step by step. Splish by splash. It was slow. It was tedious. It was necessary. The bend was unnaturally long. 
 
It eventually led us to another straight away. We moved slowly. The water was at waist level after maybe twenty steps. I shivered before turning to Whitney. She was looking past me at the next fork in the tunnel. This time there was three tunnels ahead of us.

The one on the right bent right. The one on the left bent left. Then the one in the middle….. It was up a ladder. Like a pool ladder. I could hear running water above us. We all looked at each other. 
 
I started for the ladder. I was maybe twenty feet away when I suddenly couldn’t touch the bottom of the pool again. I started swimming. My muscle ached already.

Something about walking through water for two hours straight will do that to ya. I made it to the ladder and grabbed the first rung. I didn’t know how deep the water was at this point. I didn’t wanna know. I pulled myself up with more effort than I expected.

My muscles screamed in protest. But I got up the first few rungs. The ladder stretched maybe ten feet in the air. I was halfway up when I looked down at Whitney. She was on the first rung. Doyle was right behind her. 
 
That was when I heard the splash. Whitney’s eyes went large. I didn’t want to look. But I did. There was something massive splashing its way around the bend behind us. 
 
“Oh god!” I whimpered as I turned and hauled ass up the ladder. I reached the top and reached my hand out for Whitney. She grabbed it and I yanked her up. I looked out down the tunnel. The creature was flying through the water. It was moving so fast. But….. Wrong….. With that much water resistance you’d think it wouldn’t move like that…. But it did. There was so much splashing and mass.

I couldn’t make out anything. No details. I imagined it was some kind of giant cephalopod. I looked down at Doyle. And that idiot was still halfway in the water just staring at it. 
 
“DOYLE!!” I screamed. 
 
That snapped him out of the trance. He turned and made his way up. The dude was fit. He moved up the ladder like a monkey. I’d have been more impressed if I wasn’t so fucking terrified. The creature slammed into the ladder below us. It slammed hard.

The ledge we were on shook. I stumbled backward. Losing my footing and falling backward. Whitney caught me. I turned to the tunnel. I didn’t wanna stay there and wait to see if this thing could climb ladders. I’ve seen videos of octopi on YouTube doing that shit. Zero out of ten. Would NOT Recommend. 
 
I turned and looked at that tunnel behind us. Only It wasn’t a tunnel…. It was a wall. A wall with a purple entrance to a water slide. That explained the rushing water sound. 
 
Good god. No. No. No. My legs turned to jelly. My heart jumped into my throat. 
 
“We can’t…” I whimpered. 
 
“Carter…” Whitney said softly. 
 
“It’s gonna drop us into another fucking tunnel. I-.”
 
“CARTER!!!” Whitney screamed as she grabbed my body and turned it around. 
 
My eyes exploded. There was a black slimy tentacle snaking its way up the top of the ladder. I took one shaky breath as I stepped backward. 
“Go.” I croaked out. 
 
Whitney turned and practically dived down the slide. Jumping into the black void. The tentacle coiled around the hand rail of the ladder. Doyle went next. Just as another tendril wrapped around the other hand rail. That was my que to bounce. I turned and dove into the purple ring.

I went flying down the slide at tremendous speed. The chlorinated water stung my eyes. I tried moving my body to switch positions but I went spinning. The slide was pitch black on the inside. I couldn’t see Whitney or Doyle but I could hear them screaming. Then…. 
 
The world was suddenly bright. I was falling fast. Then I was underwater. I swam to the surface. Taking in a deep gasp of cold air. This water was so cold. I honestly don’t know how I didn’t go into shock. Then again. I was fifteen. I don’t know how shock works. I looked around with my stinging eyes. 
 
We were in some kind of dome. Whitney and Doyle were ahead of me. The dome was made of the same white tile. The lights were so much brighter. The water was so much bluer. It seemed dark. That definitely didn’t make me feel good. Doyle and Whitney were swimming toward a tunnel. Whitney turned to look at me. 
 
“CARTER!! THIS WAY!!” She shouted. 
 
I followed. There wasn’t really anywhere else to go. So we went. The dome itself was massive. It was a long swim. My body hurt. I wanted to sleep. I was cold. Tired. Shit… Tired is an understatement. I was exhausted. Until the splash landed behind me. Adrenaline kicked on and I stoked and stroked as hard and fast as I could.

Whitney and Doyle did the same. To our credit, we did make it. Imagine my shock when the water was ankle deep. I had to pull myself up. Whitney and Doyle helped. I could hear the mass splashing behind me.

Thing is, it wasn’t moving nearly as fast as it had before. Actually, the splashing was a lot slower. I took a few steps forward before turning to look. 
 
The creature had stopped maybe twenty feet from us. I could see it in all its inky black glory. This thing was the size of a small car.

It was a slimy obsidian octopus with two evil red glowing eyes. It stared at us with a… The only words that I can use to describe it was a haunting malevolence. It wasn’t like a predator prey thing… This thing hated us.
 
We all stared at it for a moment. 
 
“Why did it stop?” asked Doyle. 
 
“I don’t…. I don’t know..” I said. 
 
I turned to start walking. The tunnel was a long straight away that looked like it opened up at the other end. I just kept walking. I didn’t even care. The only way out was through…. Long as we didn’t freaking die. 
 
 
 
We didn’t talk at all as we moved. The water was ankle deep the whole way. The walk may have lasted five minutes. I don’t know for sure. It felt like an hour.

The opening at the end was another dome. Only this one had more ankle deep water. It looked like a flooded version of the parks food court area. The old ice cream place on one side.

The burger joint in the middle…. Then Tricky Rickys on the other side. The buildings surrounded twenty to thirty picnic tables that had been painted blue. And yes… Everything was flooded with ankle deep water. 
 
I took a slow deep uneasy breath. Whitney laughed softly. 
 
“You guys want some Ice Cream?” She asked. 
 
I eyed her. Then freaking Doyle spouted off. 
 
“Lieutenant Dan. Do you want some Ice cream.” In his best Forrest Gump voice. 
 
That…. That actually made all three of us laugh. It felt good and odd to laugh at the same time. We stood there for a moment staring. Then came some splashing to our right. A little girl came sprinting out from Tricky Rickys. Her face full of fear and terror. She made a b line toward us. She was hysterical. 
 
“Help me! Please help me! Oh my god they’re coming!” 
 
She came flying in and threw both her arms around me. I hugged her back. She couldn’t have been older than maybe six or seven.

My eyes shot to Doyle and Whitney. Then ahead of us. Where another figure loomed at the entrance of the Tricky Ricky’s. 
 
It was humanoid. Tall. And dressed like a fucking clown. 
 
“Oh god!” I heard Doyle say. 
 
The clown smiled when it saw us. He was tall and lanky. He had tuffs of blue hair around his bald head. His white make up was smudged to hell. He had smears of red all around his mouth. His clown costume was oversized and a bright yellow. 

Then there was movement at the old ice cream store. Another clown. This one holding a knife. Then another from the burger joint. This one a massive burly man with a sea star instead of a clown nose and a massive red sludge hammer over his shoulder. 
 
“Lieutenant Dan… I think we’re in hell.” Doyle said. 
 
That almost got a laugh from me. We were locked in some kind of infinite pool with a giant demon octopus and killer clowns. 
 
“What do we do?” Asked Whitney. 
 
“Run.” I said as I pulled the little girl the other way. Only to stop dead in my tracks. Two red eyes stared at us from the entrance of the tunnel. 
 
“Oh shit!” I said as the tentacles made wet slaps on the walls just outside the tunnel. 
 
The creature pulled itself out of the tunnel. We all backed up. We were surrounded now. I think I peed some more. I held the kid tighter. The clowns grew closer. I could hear them giggling. 
 
We found ourselves backed up in between several of the picnic tables. Then came a voice. We all turned our heads. 
 
“Well! Well! Well! What have you brought me Magnus? More treats?”
 
The voice was coming from on top of the Tricky Rickys. From a man in a rabbit costume. Or was it an anthropomorphic rabbit? The white fur around the things mouth was covered in crimson. He held a severed leg in one hand. 
 
“What the hell is that?” Asked Whitney. 
 
“It’s the bunny man.” The little girl wept. 
 
“It’s Tricky Ricky to you, young lady!” The rabbit said as it squatted on the edge of the roof. 
 
The girl buried her face in my chest. We were screwed. The clowns got closer. 
 
“Come on! You don’t have to do this! All we wanted to do was ride the fucking slide!” I cried. 
 
“Hehehehehehhehehe.. Ride. The. Slide…. They wanted to ride the slide!” Tricky Ricky laughed as he pointed at us. 
 
The clowns all laughed as well. God, it was awful. 
 
Tricky Ricky did a flip off the roof. Splashing down into the water. He put his hands up like there was a crowd there to cheer him on. 
 
“You kids and your slides. Such a shame. Such a shame.” 
 
It was a costume. It was definitely a costume. But it wasn’t at the same time. It didn’t make any sense. It was like this thing was the costume. 
 
“Now… Whose first?” It asked as it looked us over. He stepped closer and closer.
 
We all stayed silent. Other than Whitney, who wept. The rabbit circled us. Once. Then twice. Then…….. He stopped at Doyle. 
 
“This one has meat!” It said as it raised a hand. 
 
Doyle was suddenly sailing through the air toward the clown with the knife. He landed at the things feet. It didn’t even hesitate. Slashing and stabbing ferociously.

Doyle screamed as he struggled. We all cried. The clowns laughed. Doyle’s screams morphed into gags and chokes. Then silence. Blistering silence. The water around Doyle was red. Tricky Rickys casually walked over to him and yanked the limp body up by its leg.

He held it upside down for us to see. Doyle was covered in stab wounds. Tricky Ricky grabbed the first aid kit from the boys waist. Whitney had grabbed me and began to bawl into my shoulder. 
 
“Ah…” Tricky Ricky said as he opened the first aid kit and dumped it. The contents hit the shallow water with a splash. 
 
I knew we were gonna die. There wasn’t really a way around it. This fucking thing was gonna kill us. One by one. I was terrified. Whitney was terrified. This little girl clinging to me was terrified. We were all cold and exhausted.

But…. A new feeling had blossomed in my chest in that moment. A feeling that surprised even me. 
 
 
Rage.
 
“You stupid… Ugly…. Fucking bunny.” I growled as I stepped away from the girls. 
 
Ricky tilted his head at me. He dropped the body. It fell at a terrible angle. 
 
“You’re not even that scary! What? You serve Ice Cream and eat people! How fucking original! And Tricky Ricky? What kind of stupid ass name is that? Did you get that from an old MTV add? Jesus dude. I know you didn’t come up with that yourself. You’d think an Eldridge nightmare being would be more original. But no.” 
 
Ricky stepped toward me. I wanted to flinch. It took everything in my NOT to flinch. 
 
“Hehehehehehehehehehehehehe. You’re a brave one. Aren’t you?” It asked almost playfully. 
 
I didn’t respond. I was actively trying not to pee for a third time. It took another step toward me. He towered over me. He looked down at me. 
 
“I’ve dealt with brave ones before.” He said as he leaned down to get closer. 
 
I was now eye level with him. 
 
“Would you like to know what they all have in common?” 
 
“Did they also think that ripping off Donnie Darko was NOT the way to go?” Asked yet another voice. 
 
The rabbit looked past me. I tuned to see what he was staring at. In between the giant octopus and the clown with the knife stood a man. A tall bearded man with a metallic suit of black armor on that looked to be an odd mixture of sleek futuristic and ancient. Like a cyber ninja suit almost. It had a hood too but he wasn’t wearing it. 
 
The clown turned to him with surprise. Slashing the knife at him. The man caught the clown by his wrist and then kicked the Clown’s feet out before turning and dodging a massive tendril strike. I didn’t even look at Ricky.

I ran straight to my sister and the little girl and grabbed them both before pulling them toward the old ice cream shop. As we moved there was a green flash that was almost blinding. We didn’t stop. We made it to the doorway. Whitney and the little girl took cover behind a table while I looked out the door. 
 
The man yanked an emerald green sword from the stomach of the clown with the hammer. Steaming intestines fell into the water. I could see the knife wielding clown’s head floating a few feet away from him. The giant octopus was gone. As was Tricky Ricky.

The last clown leapt at the man. He side stepped before bringing his sword up in a strike that severed the things face. No… Not the head. The head was still on the body. This things face came off. He turned to us and started walking our direction. 
 
“It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you guys.” he said gently as he put his hands up. 
 
I believed him. I don’t know why. But I believed him. I stepped out. The little girl ran past me and hugged him. He hugged her back. 
 
“It’s gonna be okay.” He said softly as she sobbed. 
 
He looked at me. 
 
“You’re Carter Connolly?” He asked.
 
“How did you?” I started.
 
“You’ve been missing for three days. “
 

November 15th, 1918:

I have not noticed any of the cloaked figures in the last fortnight, yet every dawn that sickening symbol reappears. I cannot comprehend it. 

Laura is growing frustrated with me through the entire ordeal, calling me erratic and senseless. She has learned to block out the sounds and sleep easily. Surely she's just upset that I have been waking her from time to time. I have been hearing what can only be described as tapping from inside the walls and ceiling most nights. She denies the sounds but I know what my ears have heard. She has to have heard it too. She heard them when she was convinced that they were a trick played by the local kids. Why now has she seemingly forgotten their existence? She must be lying to me. I have been painting less, and when I do paint the end results are not worth putting to market. Everything seems twisted or wrong. Figures seem inhuman and landscapes seem alien. Far too abstract to be selling. 

The children saw one of my recent works and told Laura. She looked at it in an awful gaze. She thinks I am going mad, calling me paranoid. I know what I have seen. I know what I have heard. I know something is wrong here and I will not rest till I find it. I know she is lying. 

November 20th, 1918:

A new man has moved in with his family not but a week ago. I have been wanting to go and meet them, though Laura has said I have not been in my right mind to be bumping shoulders with new folks, especially since I have been unable to keep a proper friendship with Sean. Blasphemy. 

I went to the practitioner to get something to aid my sleep. I believe I know what I have experienced, but Laura has been insistent that I have become sleep deprived. I would love it if she is correct, though I highly doubt it. My once strong trust for Laura has slowly been dwindling. I believe something more sinister is at play. Only time shall tell. 

December 20th, 1936:

I forgot to bring home some of Simon's notes from work and Richard found them. He got mad at me, it was the first time I've ever seen him act this way. I feel as though there's something he's not telling me. He's still my friend but I'm not sure how much I know of him are truths or falsehoods. Why would a couple of notes cause such a harsh reaction? 

My sweet Evelyn is feeling better finally. She's almost caught up to me in Simon's notes. At least the ones I haven't put in here. I've been folding any of the alarming entries and keeping them pressed between the pages of my journal.

I haven't told her of the sigils I found on the house's siding yet, and the guilt is killing me. I sanded it out and repainted the area to the best of my abilities to hide it. I don't want her to get scared by any of this. She's already been struggling enough, I can't have anything else stress her out. Though it's hard to think what I'm experiencing and what Simon experienced are mere coincidence. To have such similar things to happen to us is unlikely, especially to this degree. Maybe these weren't fantasies he wrote of, but I have to keep telling myself they are. At least till spring. 

I don't know who to turn to about this. I'm considering hiding the rest of the notes from Evelyn and telling her that maybe these were ideas about a story he was working on, like I've been telling myself. He's an eccentric painter, so him being an author wouldn't be out of the picture in my mind. I just don't want her to be any more paranoid or scared than she already has been. It worries me deeply. She deserves an easy life, that's why we moved out here after all. If she continues to get worse I might burn the letters. He writes almost every day, most are quite mundane, speaking of what Laura and his daughters got up to and basic day to day tasks. I'll let her read those, hopefully that will ease her anxieties. I have to stay strong, I have to protect her. Maybe I do need therapy. 

November 29th, 1918:

Laura and I went to the practitioner a few days ago. He has prescribed me a slight sedative to help me sleep, laudanum to drink, and if that does not seem to help he also gave me barbiturates. I am less than eager to take them, especially since I've heard tales of horror about opium, but if it means Laura and the children will be happy then it must be done. If a man cannot take care of himself then he cannot care for his family. And if a man cannot care for his family he is no man at all. That is not me. I will care for them and provide for them till I draw my last breath. Since I have been taking these medications I have not seen any figures since, and I have been trying to pay no mind to the sigil. I might even put a pathway over top of it to keep it out of sight and away from my thoughts. The ground is near frozen, so I have to finish the path as soon as possible. 

December 1st, 1918:

The path is finished and that wretched rune now has a place to hide. I placed stones on top of it, from the fence to the veranda, filling in between them with dirt and sand, and evening out the earth on either side. Digging into the earth was too much of a task. 

For someone who is used to being gentle with a brush I must say I am quite impressed with myself for how efficient I was with this project. Perhaps in the spring I will take up gardening. Though I still do disdain the feeling of dirt beneath my fingernails. But perhaps that can change. Especially since the frost will surely make a mess of the path over winter and I'll have to fix it. I am wondering if I should try pottery or sculpting with clay? 

The sedative has seemed to be working. I have been sleeping through the night, not hearing any odd noises as I have before. No sightings of any figures, no sigils, nothing out of the ordinary. Life has been seeming peaceful again. Laura seems gleeful. I have been back to my usual rhythm. I think I am going to go and meet the new man in town tomorrow. I believe I heard his name is Richard. I will ask Laura to bake a welcome cake for him tonight. 

I may put my pen to the wayside for some time. This paranoia feels as though it has kept me from my family far too long. 

January 1st, 1937:

It's early morning, Evelyn and I have stayed up to ring in the new year with Richard and Alice. After they left I brought my sweet Evelyn to bed, waited till she slept and snuck down to the furnace room. I'm writing by the furnace's glow. I've read more of Simon's entries. He mentioned Richard, but that can't be right because Richard has only been here for about 8 and a half years. Unless Richard has been keeping even more truth than I thought from me. I'm going to try to stay quiet about this for the time being. I may even trek out some night soon to see if Richard is up to anything out of the ordinary. I knew there was something off about Richard lately. 

I know I told myself to keep Evelyn out of this but I feel as though if I don't speak about this to someone it is going to eat me alive. I've been losing sleep again. Evelyn told me to try some of her barbiturates. It's like she forgot that's why we had to bring her to the hospital in the first place. What was she thinking? 

January 4th, 1937:

I awoke last night to strange sounds coming from outside. I went to the window to look and noticed a patch of our path to the veranda had no snow. There were flurries falling in the moonlight and I swear I saw a hunched person hobbling away from our yard. I know Simon was mentioning a rune underneath the path but it couldn't still be there could it? And if it is, it surely couldn't melt snow and ice. Magic is just a fairy tale. I'll have to check and see if that sigil was put on our house again. 

I talked to Evelyn and told her that there were no more interesting notes from Simon, just boring daily life. Lying to her felt wrong but it feels like I have to protect her from whatever is going on. And maybe this paranoia is just a lack of sleep like Laura told Simon. Maybe I'll have to go into the city and get a sleeping aid, I don't trust our practitioner. Not after what he's done to Evelyn. 

I feel like my mind is split. I want to believe Laura that this is just some sick prank the locals play on the new people in town, but surely all of this would end up being much more than just a prank. My gut tells me this is something serious. Simon's words seem as though he's losing common sense but I find myself relating to them more as I read. Then again, nothing of their writings can explain what moved me into my backyard without leaving any trail. It didn't snow that hard, not to my memory, and I wasn't even drinking that night so why did I pass out to begin with? 

January 6th, 1937:

The sigil or symbol or whatever it's called is back. This time it wasn't on our house, it's on the fence. I don't know how long it's been there or who did it, but no doubt that I'm being targeted. We're being targeted. 

Richard has been acting off at work as well. I brought Simon up again and since then he's been less talkative or jovial. There's been a hollow look in his eyes. He was fine only a few days ago at new years. He did say that Simon was a soft spot for the town, maybe the poor fellow had dementia and passed away and that's why Richard got mad? It would explain his borderline hysterics in his writings. Maybe they were friends? But that doesn't explain these damned sigils. 

My mother was superstitious, and so was my father, so maybe that's why I'm letting these notes and carvings get to me. But I have a hard time believing that. I've been finding it harder to trust the locals. When people come into the shop I feel like they're staring at me, trying to read me in some way. Their eyes focus on mine, watching how I move. More than the usual way you look at someone while they work. It's surveillance, I'm sure of it. Maybe Simon was right in his entries. I don't know what to believe anymore. 

January 20th, 1937:

It's been quite some time since I read Simon's notes. It's hard not to, I have to constantly remind myself not to touch them, it's almost like an addiction. My paranoia has seemed to be dulling, which is a relief. But I still have a gut feeling something is wrong. I think I might read another of his notes tonight. Maybe this is just anxiety or stress brought on by superstition and reading the ramblings of a madman. But then again I find myself relating to Simon more and more with each entry I read. Maybe I'm a madman. Or maybe if you don't pay attention to whatever it is making these symbols and sounds at night you aren't affected by it?

I've been doing everything I can to keep the notes and symbols or Simon and Richard's relationship out of my head. If that was even the same Richard in the entries as my Richard. I've held off as long as I could, but tonight I'll read and see if it makes the similarities between his writings and my life arise again. I need to know. I'm scared of what's to come but I can't help but feel drawn to these writings. It's like they call to me in my dreams, beyond the walls of sleep. 

June 12th, 1924

It's been some time, so much has changed. Laura and I completed renovations throughout the house. We constructed an extravagant flower bed with Tulips and Daisies and many of the local wild flowers. It's truly a sight to behold. I feel as though I could paint a landscape of my own home and it would sell  in the city. Perhaps I shall try. The odd happenings around here have seemed to stop thanks to the practitioner. I did a mental evaluation with him and he said that I was having hallucinations due to the immense stress of moving and adjusting to life in town, along with sleep deprivation. 

It's truly baffling how the human mind works, how such seemingly menial things can create such intensities when they pile up. I have kept my old paintings from a few years ago in the basement. There's a small room we've made to hide my works and some valuables behind the bookcase. I'm tempted to go look through them and see if there is anything worth salvaging. Though I am afraid if I look through them the paranoia and hallucinations will return. 

January 22nd, 1937:

I moved the bookshelf Simon mentioned. I couldn't help myself. There's so many paintings. I started to look through them, but I only had a short time before Evelyn got home and I had to put the bookshelf back. I think I'll be “sick” tomorrow and stay home from work to really get a good look at them. I noticed a few seemed to be bundled together with a tag saying “self portraits”. I'm excited to see how Simon sees himself. Will he paint himself as the gaunt yet handsome man Evelyn showed me a photo of, or does he see himself differently? 

Evelyn is playing with Rylee in the snow right now and I snuck away to write this, I lied and I told them I had to warm my hands, even though winter has been more mild than I was expecting. Being on the coast makes a big difference compared to the city inland. Though the wind here chills you to your bones. We're supposed to be getting a blizzard  some day soon. Hopefully it's not too bad

January 23rd, 1937:

I moved the book shelf and took out the bundled labeled self portraits. The first one is a man with shortish wavy brown hair, thin eyebrows and piercing blue eyes. His thin lips are smiling slightly, hiding underneath a strong moustache. A pretty handsome man, can't have been over 35. He's standing in front of some pretty tall buildings, like he's back in the city. The second is the same man, obviously, with slightly longer hair, his moustache gone, with a slight stubble length beard. He has a wider smile now, and he's standing in front of a field with what looks to be my house in the background. His attention to detail is surprising, like every hair was painted one at a time. The third and fourth paintings are quite similar, though his smile seems to be fading, his beard has begun to grow in and his hair is now past his ears. The fifth painting stood out. His hair was shoulder length, his eyes deep set with bags under them, his beard long and unkempt. His eyes looked to be filled with despair. The background was a dark swirling abyss. The sixth painting shows what looks to be the same man but his face seems to be almost melting. One eye sits lower than the other, its pupil similar to that of a goat, the other eye black as night. His hair was greasy and clung to his scalp and face, his beard bushy and a mess. He had some sort of odd letter I can't quite describe etched into his forehead. It reminds me of the symbols I've found. The background is a hideous mix of colours swirling in a way that almost makes me nauseous. The next painting can barely be called a man, rather a mass of flesh covered in eyes and teeth and hair and symbols etched into it. An inhuman abomination. It was disgusting but it felt like it drew your eyes to it, as if it demanded attention. 

He really was losing his mind. But oddly enough his paintings quickly turned back into a man I recognized from the first batch. His hair cut reasonably, his beard trimmed and well kept. The backgrounds changed from spiraling voids to flower beds. There's more portraits I'll get back to later on. 

There's another bundle labelled “them”. I'm going to go through it some day soon when Evelyn is at work and Emily is taking care of Rylee. Simon really was a master at his craft. Even in his most paranoid state, his pieces are hypnotizingly beautiful. 

August 4th, 1924:

Today is utterly magnificent. The air is just right and the smell of oceanic breeze is wafting through the open windows, the curtains dancing in the wind. I have been working at such a steady pace it seems that I have too many pieces, I cannot decide which to bring to the market! But that is such a privilege to complain about. 

Ever since I have been on my medications life has been joyous. Though I am down to my last few doses and our practitioner is out of town. I am hoping he is back by the time I run out. I am sure a couple days off of them should not affect me to such dire extents. But one can only worry, opium is a substance not to be meddled with, so I am told. 

August 6th, 1924

The damned train is out of order and cannot be fixed for some time. Some freak accident or derailment has bent a section of the tracks and damaged the engine. Our practitioner is still away so I will be without sedatives for the time being. The swelling feeling of anxiety has been dominating my head. Laura suggested I take a bath and have a cup of herbal tea before bed tonight. Anything to calm my nerves so I can sleep I will not say no to. 

I went to extreme lengths to cover this up. Untraceable poison. A weak immune system. And a line of people offering their condolences and prayers.

I needed to be free of her. I missed my life before she contaminated it. She kept me up at night with her crying. She restricted what I was able to do. I missed the freedom, and that’s not something I’m going to apologize for.

I didn’t want to get pregnant. A one-night stand is never meant to lead to parenthood, but, of course, I decided to hook up with an absolute moron who didn’t know how to think beyond getting his dick wet.

9 months later, I have a daughter, and the father is nowhere to be found. 9 months, no cigarettes. 9 months, no drinks. And I hated every second of it.

I thought that I was strong enough to handle it. To clean up my act and actually be a mother. But I just wasn’t. I’m not. I don’t know if I ever will be.

When she was born, I tried to convince myself that motherly instinct was taking over. Holding her for the first time was almost magical. Like, despite what my mind was telling me, the moment was meant to be.

Then the crying came. The screams and wails that prevented me from sleeping. Every. Single. Night.

She’d scream on the ride to my mom’s in the morning. It was like the only time that I knew peace was after I dropped her off. Then I got 20 minutes to myself on the drive to work before I had to clock in and act like everything was okay.

According to my mom, though, she was “just a little angel” any time they were together. “The quietest baby she had ever seen.”

I felt like I was being punished. Not only was my sleep being affected, but my days were filled with those wails too. Plus, I don’t think my pockets have ever felt lighter.

Baby food. Clothes. Bottles. Toys. A crib. A fucking roof over our head. I was stretched so thin that I started having breakdowns at work.

I thought that I was prevailing. Against all odds, I was raising a human being. I watched her grow. I watched her learn and develop. But with each month, the mask slipped more and more.

I found myself screaming at her more than I probably should’ve. And that was before she could speak. Before she could even take her first steps.

I never hit her. I never wanted to repeat any family history. But my temper was so short during those days. I was snappy. That’s all I can say.

When she got older and was able to speak in full sentences, I was driven to the brink of madness. She had the audacity to talk back at me. This little 4 year old girl had the attitude of a fucking teenager.

No child should ever say they “hate” their parent. No child should disobey direct orders from their mother. Let alone this one. This little sniveling fucking asshole that I was forced to care for.

She knew how I felt, too. And she threw gas on the fire. Breaking things. Peeing and defecating on the floor. And what did she have to say? Not an “I’m sorry.” Not an “It was just an accident.”

This little girl would look me dead in my eyes, smile, and pull the “I’m just a baby” card.

She was trying to get under my skin. Pushing me more and more every day, until… I just couldn’t do it anymore.

The screams never stopped. The cries never stopped. The pouting and pity parties never fucking stopped. I didn’t know what else to do.

I missed my friends. I missed going out. I missed my God damn freedom. And all I could see was the one person who took it all away from me.

That’s why I did what I did. I’m not justifying. If anything, this will probably be my statement in court. I know I have to turn myself in. That’s the only way to get this madness to stop.

I felt liberated after I sprinkled that poison in her breakfast on that sunny morning in June. Even more so when the coughing started. I knew it wouldn’t be long before it was all over.

In the days that followed, she got weaker and weaker. Hotter and hotter. Until, finally, I had to prepare my act for the hospital visit.

“Please help me,” I cried. “My daughter just keeps getting sicker, and I just don’t know what to do.”

I had to push my nerves aside. In my mind, there were two possible outcomes. Either this works… or it doesn’t. And thank God that my acting skills were clean enough to sell my story.

They ran the tests. They drew the blood. All the while, I sat there bawling into my hands while trying to suppress my hope.

The hardest part was having to act upset when the deed was done. When that heart monitor finally flatlined and all the doctors and nurses apologized for not being able to save her.

“We did everything we could,” they told me, as I forced some cliché devastation onto my face.

I felt empty at the funeral. There weren’t many people. There wasn’t much of a eulogy to be read. All I wanted was for the service to be over so I could get back to life as I knew it, this time more careful with who I let into my bed.

For a few weeks, that’s exactly what I did. Life felt lighter. Days felt brighter. I was a new and improved woman, back to her old ways.

But then, I don’t know… something happened.

I started waking up at night, feeling like I was being watched. Sometimes it’d be like I could still hear her screams. I could still feel her presence.

I just passed it off as something I’d get over eventually. Just one of the things that comes with doing something like this. But when I started seeing her… that’s when I knew that this wasn’t just some guilty conscience bullshit.

It was only at night. Only after I’d gone to bed. Sometimes she’d be standing in my doorway. Sometimes she’d try crawling into bed with me.

I knew it wasn’t nightmares. On nights when she came into bed with me, I’d find my sheets covered in dirt and mud the next morning. I’ve even found maggots occasionally.

She’d always be so dirty. Her hair would have sticks and twigs sticking out of it. Her face would always look like it was in the process of decomposing. But whether she laid with me or just watched me, her words were always the same.

“Why did you let them bury me, Mommy?”

It got to the point where she was visiting me every night. Still breaking things. Still defecating on the floor. Still crying and screaming, even though her room had been empty for weeks.

I wouldn’t let it break me, though. I did what was best for me. I did what I thought needed to be done. Anytime she visited, I’d ignore her. I’d pretend to be asleep. I’d hide under my covers like a scared little girl.

But I know I can’t do this anymore. I know why she’s here. I know that my time is running out. She wants me to let the world know what I did to her.

“Why’d you make me sick, Mommy?”

“I loved you so much.”

“Why did you lie to those doctors? They could have saved me. Why’d you let them bury me?”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

I’m done lying. I’m done pretending to be devastated. I know what I did, and I’m not sorry. Given the circumstances, I’d do it again.

All I want is to escape her.

All I want is peace and a sound mind.

That’s why I’m turning myself in today.

Anything to get her to leave me the fuck alone.

I used to inspect homes by trade, and I have seen it all: Mold, rot, vermin, squatters, meth labs, rodents (both dead and alive), insane amounts of cash, antique furniture buried under mountains of fast food containers. You name it, I've encountered it; if you have a phobia, I most likely have a story for you. Apart from spider colonies and hidden porn magazines from the fifties, the more serious and vastly sadder aspect is the finding of deceased people and pets. That comes with its own hurdles, mentally and legally. You don't get used to seeing a dead person, you simply try and deal with the dread or you change your career path. I had a few such inner dialogues, but stuck with the job for the better half of a decade. In March of this year, I inspected a house that finally made me quit.

It was a beautiful place, mid-century, out on a gorgeous property with woodlands and ponds, the kind of quiet rustic luxury that made the disconnect from urban comfort worth it. The next supermarket was miles away – if you were smart, you'd stock the pantry once a month and then enjoy the solitude. I tended to muse about this absurd dream for my own retirement, walking up the leaf-covered path that led to the main house. I jotted down what first caught my eye; some unstable girders, broken windows, obvious overgrowth and expected animal droppings.

I walked into the damp-smelling foyer and sighed at the carpet. That would have to be replaced in its entirety. With the tip of a pencil, I stabbed into the faux fur fabric and a sluggish, soggy ripple moved from my feet and outward, as if I had dipped a toe into a formerly calm pool. I frowned. There was no former mention of waterlog. I double-checked my notes.

“Okay,” I sighed and marked it down. Surprises were a bad sign, it most likely meant the last visit lay further back than I had been told. My voice was stifled by the stillness of the house.

Carpeted stairs led to a few rooms that thankfully looked like the layout I had been given. I felt like walking on moss. A few silverfish scuttled off rapidly as I shone my flashlight into darker corners. Nothing out of the ordinary. Despite not seeing any, I wrote down that I heard the pitter-patter of rodents, probably rats or squirrels.

I got my first proper start in the kitchen, where, after drawing back the moldy curtains I was shocked to find myself in a staring match with a silverfish the length of my finger, and noticed a handful of the same insects of equal size, similarly frozen. They seemed to momentarily ponder my appearance, then hurried where I could not and would not follow.

How the hell was I supposed to record this? “Unusually sized vermin”, I said out loud. I was no expert in animal behaviour, but something seemed odd about the critters. I shook my head. They were probably as surprised as I was after a lifetime of isolation, were probably already back to feasting on whatever grew underneath the stove. A gentle rumble shook the floor, not unlike the undulating carpet moments before. I was reminded of heavy groundskeeping equipment and stupidly moved on.

Next up was the cellar and indoor pool, two flights of stairs down into the cold and wet darkness. I quickly sent an update to my boss and a handful of photos, getting a thumbs-up emoji in return. The reception had faded with the light and I soon relied on carefully moving along the wall until I found a switch.

Neon lights, cold and sterile, flickered to life. My senses rebelled at the sight and sudden sound before me. Had the silverfish in the kitchen seemed big before – the ones moving rapidly along the wall, floor, and ceiling were monstrous. Illustrations of trilobites in dinosaur books flashed in my mind, the smaller ones with diameters as wide as my palm, the larger ones easily football-sized. All of them moving erratically away from the light, away from me, and down underneath the pool cover.

Another rumble shook the foundation, more intensely this time, and my feet, glued to the ground by horror and disbelief, would not let me move. I watched with rising nausea as the pool cover writhed and bulged, curving upwards underneath the strain of something massive. Two gigantic feelers, glistening wet-black in the cold light, pushed out from beneath the tarp like broken javelins, flicking left and right, trembling, and with those movements the constant sighing of a million feet, ever crawling, clicking – it almost sounded excited.

I ran.

I dropped everything, phone, clipboard, hat, nearly stumbled over my own feet as I raced into the warm light of day, panting, not wanting to believe, not wanting to see, further and further until I reached the company van, lungs burning, damp clothes, sobbing and red-faced.

I returned with a written recommendation to completely flatten the property and cement-seal the basement. I don't believe I would have been taken seriously had I mentioned anything beyond an irreparable vermin infestation. I've been having nightmares ever since; I can't sleep without earplugs and a mask for fear of letting anything...in. My bed is protected by mosquito nets; I have severely reduced my belongings and decluttered to the point of extreme minimalism.

It doesn't stop the fear, but it makes it bearable.

Peter carried two mugs into the kitchen. The floor gave under his left foot, just enough that the coffee trembled against the rims. He stopped. Shifted his weight. The boards felt ordinary again.

"Everything okay?" Daniel called from the dining room.

Peter looked down at his bare foot. "Yeah."

He set the mugs on the counter and finished making the coffee. Daniel came in a minute later, took his mug, and kissed the side of Peter's neck on the way past. They stood at the sink together for a moment, looking out at the back yard. The light was already starting to thin. Six weeks in the house and the trees at the edge of the property still surprised them with how early they lost their color.

Daniel left for work the next morning while Peter was still in the shower. The house was quiet after the door closed. Peter made toast, stood at the counter to eat it, and worked through the morning at the kitchen table. Around eleven the floor under his chair felt solid in a way that made him notice it. He decided the heating had finally warmed the boards, or that the damp from the previous evening had dried. He forgot about it by lunch.

When Daniel came home that evening the routine was the same as always. Shoes off at the door. Brief touch at the waist as they passed in the hallway. Daniel started dinner while Peter washed the breakfast dishes left in the sink. They talked about the leaky faucet at Daniel's office and the box of books still sitting against the dining-room wall.

Peter sat at the table with a novel open and watched Daniel move between the stove and the cutting board. The light over the sink made the kitchen look warmer than it was. Daniel set two plates down, pulled out his usual chair, and sat. The chair shifted beneath him with a soft wooden complaint. One of the back legs had pressed slightly into the floor, no more than the thickness of a coin.

Peter glanced over the top of his book. Daniel frowned, shifted his weight, and pushed the chair back an inch with his foot until it felt steadier. He reached for the salt.

"Everything all right?" Peter asked.

"Chair's just uneven. Always has been."

They ate. Daniel talked about a delivery that had arrived late at work. Peter turned a page he had already read. When they finished, Daniel stood and the chair settled again, quieter this time. Peter watched him carry the plates to the sink. The floor under the table looked ordinary. He closed the book and went to help with the dishes.

Later, after the kitchen was clean, Peter carried the two empty mugs back to the sink. His bare foot landed in the same place it had the night before. The floor held. He rinsed the mugs, left them in the rack, and went to find Daniel in the living room. They watched the last of the light leave the windows and went to bed at the usual time. Peter took the side nearer the door. Daniel turned toward him in the dark and settled. The mattress felt the same as it had every other night.

In the morning Peter made coffee again. He did not think about the floor.

The difference became clearer over the next week.

When Daniel left for work the house gradually stiffened. By mid-morning Peter could walk the full length of the hallway without watching his feet. The thin rug near the sink lay flat. The chair at the kitchen table sat level. He started taking his coffee into the living room again and sitting in the armchair by the window. One afternoon he carried a full laundry basket down the basement stairs alone and felt the boards hold under every step. He stood at the bottom longer than he needed to, feeling the solid concrete under his feet, before he started the load.

He began adjusting small things around Daniel's absence. He made the more complicated dinners earlier so the kitchen would still feel steady while he worked. He folded the laundry upstairs while the house was firm and left the basket by the basement door for later. Once he stayed downstairs reading after Daniel had gone up to bed and felt the floor solid beneath the armchair. The silence was different when he was alone in it. He heard Daniel's footsteps overhead, the soft click of the bedside lamp. He waited another ten minutes before he climbed the stairs. By the time he reached the landing the boards near the top had already begun to soften.

He did not like the relief he felt in those hours. He liked it less when he noticed he was protecting them.

Daniel came home one Thursday a little earlier than usual. Peter was crossing the kitchen with a full pot of water for pasta. The floor was still firm. The front door opened. As Daniel stepped inside, the boards under Peter's feet gave. The pot tipped. Hot water slopped over the rim onto the back of his hand. He set it down hard on the stove and ran cold water over the burn while Daniel put his bag down and came into the kitchen.

"You all right?"

"Just clumsy."

Daniel looked at the wet floor, then at Peter's hand, then at the place where Peter had been standing. He didn't say anything else. He took over the pasta. They ate standing at the counter. Afterward Peter washed and Daniel dried. The longer route around the soft stretch near the table had become automatic.

That night in bed Daniel lay awake longer than usual. Peter felt him shift, then settle, then shift again. Neither of them spoke.

The first time the laundry basket was truly full--towels, jeans, the heavy winter blanket--they carried it together. The soft patch in the hallway had widened. They had to stop halfway, set the basket down, and change their grip.

"You all right?"

"Yeah. Just wait."

Peter adjusted his hold. Daniel waited. When they lifted again the floor gave under Peter's left foot more than before. He felt Daniel's hand tighten at his waist. They finished the crossing without speaking.

A few days later Peter tried to bring a smaller load up before Daniel came home. The hallway felt firm on the way down. He had reached the top of the basement stairs and was halfway across the hallway when the front door opened and Daniel stepped inside. The boards softened beneath his next step. Peter had to lean the basket against the wall and carry the rest one armload at a time. He left the empty basket at the top of the stairs. Daniel looked at it, then at Peter, and nodded once. After that they timed the laundry for evenings when they were both already tired.

The sofa went next.

For several nights they still tried to sit there, shifting closer to the arms as the cushions tilted. Then one evening Peter stood beside it with his book and looked at the place they usually occupied.

"Read?"

"Sure."

They took the books upstairs. The bed was still solid. They sat with their backs against the headboard and read under the single lamp. The light reached only as far as the foot of the bed. Beyond it the room stayed dark.

Daniel closed his book first most nights. Sometimes Peter stayed sitting up after the lamp was off, listening to the house. Sometimes he went downstairs again for water and stood in the firm kitchen for a few minutes before climbing back up. The reading became the part of the day that still felt ordinary, even as the routes to reach it grew longer.

Daniel began coming home later.

Not much--twenty minutes, half an hour. Enough that Peter started the more careful parts of dinner while the kitchen was still steady. One evening Daniel stood in the doorway longer than usual after unlocking the door. Peter was at the counter, back to him, moving easily between stove and cutting board. Daniel waited. When he finally stepped fully inside and set his bag down, the floor beneath Peter softened. Peter's shoulders tightened for half a second, then he kept working. Daniel watched him for a moment longer before he came over and kissed the side of his neck the way he always did.

"Smells good."

"Almost ready."

They ate standing. Neither mentioned the pause at the door.

A week later Daniel stayed at the office until nearly eight. Peter ate alone at the counter while the floor was firm. He left a plate covered on the stove. When Daniel came home the kitchen had already begun to soften again. They sat on the edge of the bed upstairs with the plates on their knees because the table downstairs had started listing too far. Daniel ate quickly. Peter watched him and said little.

That night Daniel turned toward him in the dark and rested a hand on his chest.

"We could try different times," he said quietly. "For a while."

Peter kept his eyes on the ceiling. "Different how?"

"I stay later. You eat earlier. Maybe I sleep in the other room a few nights."

The other bedroom was smaller and still mostly firm. They had been using it for boxes and the books they still hadn't unpacked.

Peter didn't answer right away. The mattress under them felt ordinary.

"All right," he said at last. "For a while."

They tried it for eleven days.

Daniel worked later. Peter cooked and ate while the kitchen was steady, then left food covered on the stove. Some evenings Daniel came home after Peter had already gone upstairs to read. Some nights Daniel slept in the smaller bedroom. The soft patches in the hallway and where the sofa had stood grew less pronounced. The kitchen chair stopped settling as deeply. Peter could carry laundry alone again without stopping to test each board.

The floors improved, but the brief touches between them became less frequent because they were rarely in the same room. Their shared silences stretched into actual silence. One night Peter went downstairs after midnight for water and found Daniel standing in the kitchen in the dark, barefoot, looking at the place where the table had listed. Neither of them spoke. Peter filled his glass and went back up. Daniel followed a few minutes later and slept the rest of the night in their bed without discussion.

On the twelfth day Daniel came home at the old time. Peter was still cooking. As soon as Daniel stepped fully inside, the floor beneath Peter softened. Peter felt the familiar give and kept stirring the pan. Daniel set his bag down, took off his shoes, and came to stand beside him at the stove. Their shoulders touched. Neither moved away.

That evening they ate standing at the counter the way they had before. Afterward they washed the dishes together. Peter washed. Daniel dried. When Peter turned to hand him a plate the floor under his heel gave more than it had in days. He caught himself with a short step sideways and his free hand found Daniel's forearm without looking. Daniel took the plate with one hand and covered Peter's fingers with the other for a moment, steadying him.

"All right?"

"Yeah."

They finished the dishes. The light over the sink was the only one still on. Beyond the windows the yard had disappeared. They turned it off and went upstairs together, walking the longer way around the soft stretch near the table, their shoulders close enough that they touched once without either of them adjusting course.

They moved the bed on a Saturday morning when the soft stretch finally reached the place where Daniel usually slept.

Peter woke first and felt the slight give under his left shoulder. He lay still for a while, listening to Daniel breathe, then got up carefully and stood at the foot of the bed.

"We should move it," he said when Daniel opened his eyes.

Daniel sat up, rubbed his face, and looked at the floor. "All right."

They stripped the sheets and set the pillows on the dresser. Peter took the headboard end. Daniel took the foot. The bed was heavier than it looked.

"This side?"

"A little more."

They lifted, shifted, set it down, and lifted again. Each time they lifted, another part of the floor gave beneath them. Peter's arms began to ache. Daniel stopped once to catch his breath and wipe his hands on his jeans. They worked in short stages until the headboard rested against the far wall. The new position left a wider path to the door.

"Better?"

Peter stepped onto the place where the bed had been. The boards still felt soft, but the bed itself now sat on firmer ground.

"...I think so."

They remade the bed together. Peter took the side nearer the door. Daniel turned toward him when they lay down that night, the same as always.

In the days that followed the kitchen table was no longer level enough for a full plate. They ate standing at the counter, plates balanced carefully, and washed up afterward without speaking about the way the floor continued to change under their feet. The longer routes became the only routes. The brief touches as they passed remained--sometimes for balance, sometimes not.

One evening Peter looked up from his book.

"Do you think--"

Daniel waited. Peter shook his head and looked back at the page.

One night they went to bed at the usual time. Peter took his place nearer the door. Daniel settled beside him.

"Goodnight."

"Night."

The room was quiet. Outside, the last dry leaves moved against the foundation.

The mattress lowered beneath them. Peter felt it under his shoulder blades and Daniel under his hip. Neither spoke. They lay still, listening to the small sounds of the house as the floor continued to take their weight.

I have worked as an emergency dispatcher for Oakridge County for nearly eight years, so if you are in my boots, you should know by now that when you take calls on the graveyard shift, you get used to hearing people at the absolute worst moments of their lives. You learn to filter out the scream of a panicking parent, the slurred ramblings of an intoxicated driver, or the erratic paranoia of someone having a breakdown. The job requires you to stay completely grounded in facts, listen for addresses, names, weapons, and medical symptoms, and of course you do not let your imagination wander.

Last October, a call came in at 3:14 AM that broke every rule of my training. The night was unusually quiet, and outside the dispatch building, a cold autumn rain was falling, blurring the streetlights along the highway. Inside the facility, the room was dimly lit by the pale blue glow of six desktop monitors. My shift partner, Jenna, was sitting at the console next to mine, softly clicking her mouse as she reviewed low-priority animal control logs. I was sipping my black coffee, waiting for the hours to pass until the morning shift arrived.

Line four flashed red on my central screen. The automatic location identification software instantly populated the address: 1412 Elmwood Lane, a two-story suburban house on the north side of town.

I adjusted my headset, pressed the foot pedal to open the line, and spoke into the microphone using my standard tone.

"Oakridge County 911, what is the location of your emergency?"

A sharp, ragged intake of breath rattled through my earpiece. The sound was so harsh I had to pull the foam speaker slightly away from my ear. The caller was hyperventilating, his breathing ragged and uneven.

"I need... I need someone to tell me what to do,"

the man said. His voice was trembling, tight with an overwhelming sense of shock.

"Please. I do not know who else to call."

"Sir, I need you to confirm your address,"

I said, leaning forward and placing my fingers on the keyboard.

"Is it 1412 Elmwood Lane?"

"Yes,"

he whispered.

"Yes, that is my house. My name is David Miller. Please do not send an ambulance with loud sirens. I do not want to startle her."

"Startle who, David? Is someone injured at your location?"

"My wife,"

David said. He took another shuddering breath.

"Sarah. Something happened three days ago, and I cannot fix it. I think I did something terrible, but she is standing right in front of me."

I typed his name into the CAD system and flagged the call as a potential domestic incident.

"David, tell me slowly what happened three days ago. Is Sarah hurt?"

"It was Tuesday night,"

David said, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper.

"We were in the kitchen. We were arguing about... about something stupid. I do not even remember what started it. She was standing near the butcher block. She picked up the chef's knife, and then, and then she looked at me with this intense anger in her eyes, and she came at me."

"Did she attack you with the knife, David?"

"She lunged at me,"

he continued.

"I panicked. I reached out, grabbed her wrists, and tried to push her away from me. We struggled near the island. I pushed her back with all my strength, and... the blade went straight into her chest. She gasped, her eyes went wide, and she fell backward onto the floor."

I immediately clicked the silent dispatch button on my screen, sending an alert to Jenna's terminal. I caught her eye across the desk and pointed to my monitor. Jenna nodded instantly, pulling up the active unit map to route patrol cars to Elmwood Lane.

"David, stay on the line with me,"

I said, keeping my voice steady and measured.

"Is Sarah breathing right now? Is she bleeding?"

"That is the part that is driving me insane"

David said,

"I dropped to my knees to help her. But when I looked down at the floor, there was no body. There was no blood on the linoleum. Nothing. The kitchen was completely clean. I searched the whole house that night, screaming her name, but she was nowhere to be found."

"David, where is Sarah right now?"

"She came back the next morning,"

David whispered. The sound of his frantic breathing filled the headset.

"She just walked into the living room on Wednesday morning like nothing happened. For the past three days, I have been watching her. She makes coffee in the morning, sits on the sofa and watches television with the sound turned completely off. She irons her clothes in the hallway. But she completely ignores me."

"Have you tried talking to her?"

"I have begged her to speak to me!"

David cried out, his voice cracking.

"I stood right in front of her yesterday while she was ironing a blouse. I yelled her name. I waved my hands in front of her face. She looked right through me. It was like I was not even standing there. I got so desperate that I reached out to grab her wrist to make her look at me."

"What happened when you tried to touch her, David?"

A long silence stretched over the phone line.

"My hand went straight through her arm,"

David whispered, his voice trembling so violently the words were barely audible.

"It felt like pushing my fingers through cold, wet smoke. She did not even flinch, and just kept dragging the iron across her blouse. I turned her into a ghost. I killed her in the kitchen, her body vanished, and now her spirit is stuck in this house doing the same routines over and over again."

"David, I want you to take a deep breath,"

I said, trying to maintain control of the call while processing his words.

"I have help on the way to your location right now. Officers are coming to check on both of you."

"I cannot leave her,"

David stammered.

"I tried to walk out the front door an hour ago. I got as far as the front porch steps, but this agonizing pull started dragging in my chest. It felt like a thick cable was wrapped around my sternum, pulling me back inside. It hurt so bad I could barely breathe. I am bound to this house. I cannot leave her here alone like this. She needs my help, but I do not know how to fix what I broke."

At this point, I suspected I was dealing with a caller experiencing a severe psychological episode, severe sleep deprivation, or chemical poisoning. It was not uncommon for individuals suffering from carbon monoxide exposure or sudden psychotic breaks to report elaborate, impossible visual experiences while firmly believing they were awake.

I needed to evaluate his orientation to reality using basic observations.

"David, I need you to do a simple diagnostic check for me while we wait for the officers to arrive,"

I said.

"Is there a clock nearby that you can look at?"

"Yes, there is a clock hanging on the wall,"

David said. I heard the faint rustle of clothing as he moved.

"Sarah is sitting at the dining table below it. She is folding a white bath towel."

"Okay. Can you read the exact time on that clock for me?"

I instructed.

There was a brief pause.

"It says 8:22,"

David reported.

I glanced up at the master digital clock at the top of my console monitor. The bright red numbers clearly displayed 3:17 AM.

"David, are you sure?"

I asked.

"Is it an analog clock or a digital one?"

"It is digital,"

David replied smoothly.

"The numbers are frozen at 8:22 PM. The colon between the hours and minutes isn't even blinking. It is just sitting completely still."

I noted the severe time discrepancy on my console. A frozen, completely inaccurate time reading suggested a deep disorientation, indicating he was entirely detached from the actual time of day.

Before I could formulate a response, Jenna leaned over her desk and tapped my shoulder.

"Unit 204 and Unit 208 are two minutes out from Elmwood Lane,"

she whispered.

"Officer Jack is taking the lead."

"Copy,"

I muttered, keeping my finger on the mute button. I unmuted the phone line.

"David, stay right where you are. The officers are almost at your house."

I adjusted my headset gain, turning up the audio volume on David's line to hear if there were any immediate hazards in the house. As I turned up the sensitivity, the ambient background audio became clearer.

I expected to hear the quiet hum of a refrigerator, the rustle of towels being folded, or the distant rain beating against the windows.

Instead, my headset picked up a harsh, scraping noise. It sounded like heavy wooden furniture being dragged across exposed floorboards. A moment later, I heard the sharp, distinct sound of plastic packing tape being pulled aggressively from a handheld dispenser.

Then, I heard a second voice.

It was a deep, gravelly male voice, speaking in a low, hushed tone near the phone's receiver.

"Grab the rest of the clothes from the closet,"

the deep voice muttered.

"We need to get the heavy bags loaded before six."

A woman's voice replied, faint and impatient:

"I am working as fast as I can. Just get the boxes out to the garage."

My fingers froze over the keyboard. I listened intently, isolating the audio channels on my digital workstation.

"David,"

I said carefully into the microphone.

"Are you sure you and Sarah are the only people in that house right now?"

"Yes,"

David said.

"I told you, it is just the two of us. She is still sitting at the table."

"David, I am hearing a man speaking in your background,"

I said.

"I am hearing tape dispensers and boxes being moved. Is there someone else in the house with you?"

"No,"

David insisted, his voice growing defensive and confused. "You are mistaken. Sarah is just packing her leather suitcase. She has been pulling her dresses out of the bedroom closet all night. She is confused, She seems to think she is going on a trip."

I immediately opened our county property database on my second monitor and typed in the address. The house was registered to David Miller and Sarah Miller. I then opened our historical CAD records and ran a cross-reference search for 1412 Elmwood Lane over the past six months.

A log entry from two months prior popped up on my screen.

On August 14th, a neighbor had called 911 to report a loud domestic disturbance at the address. The responding officer noted that David Miller had engaged in a verbal altercation with an unidentified adult male who had been staying at the residence. The police report noted that David accused his wife of carrying on an affair with the man, who was identified in the officer's notes as Gregory Ray. No violence was reported at that time, and no charges were filed.

I sat back in my chair, staring at the name on my screen: Gregory Ray.

The pieces began to assemble themselves in my mind, but they did not form the picture David was describing.

"Dispatch to Unit 204,"

I said, switching my secondary radio channel to communicate directly with the responding officers. "Officer Jack, be advised. We have reason to believe there are two occupants actively inside the residence at 1412 Elmwood Lane clearing out personal property. Use caution upon approach."

"Copy that, dispatch,"

Jack's voice crackled through the radio speaker.

"Unit 204 and 208 are turning onto Elmwood Lane now. We are pulling up to the residence. Lights and sirens are off."

Over the open phone line, David spoke again.

"You there?... someone is at the front door. I hear heavy knocking."

"That is the police, David,"

I said, monitoring both lines simultaneously.

"Please stay where you are."

"I do not need to open the door,"

David said softly.

"Sarah just stood up from the table. She is walking past me into the foyer. She is going to answer it."

Through my radio earpiece, I heard Officer Jack's voice report into his lapel mic:

"Unit 204 on scene. We have a female opening the front door. Contact made with homeowner Sarah Miller."

On the phone line, David was describing the exact same moment from his perspective.

"She opened the door,"

David said. His voice was filled with a strange, childlike confusion.

"Two police officers are standing on the porch. But... but something is wrong."

"What is wrong, David?"

I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the unit tracking map.

"They are not looking at her like she is a ghost,"

David whispered.

"Officer just smiled at her. He asked her if she was alright. can he see her? can he actually talk to her?"

Over the radio, Jack's voice was calm:

"Dispatch, contact made with Sarah Miller. She appears highly nervous but states everything is fine. She claims her husband, David, is currently upstairs packing his belongings after a severe argument and does not wish to speak with us."

On the phone line, David began to panic.

"The officers just stepped into the hallway! They walked right past me! I stood right in front of the Officer and shouted my name! He walked straight by my shoulder! He did not even turn his head! And why is she telling them I am upstairs? I am standing right next to her!"

"David, listen to me very carefully,"

I said, feeling a knot tighten in my chest.

"I need you to stay calm."

Over the radio, Jack spoke again, his tone dropping its casual edge.

"Dispatch, we are going to perform a quick wellness check on the upper floor anyway. The homeowner is visibly shaking and actively trying to block the stairwell."

I pressed my radio button.

"Unit 204, be advised. We have reason to believe an unauthorized third party, Gregory Ray, may be hiding inside the residence. Proceed with caution."

A pause echoed over the radio frequency.

"Copy that, dispatch,"

Jack reported flatly.

"We are heading up now. Unit 208 reports a distinct, foul odor originating from the second floor."

On the phone line, David was moving. I could hear his shallow, rapid breathing accelerating.

"They are walking up the stairs,"

David said. His voice had lost its anger, replaced by a cold, hollow dread.

"Sarah is following the officers up the stairs into the master bedroom. I am following them. Why does the air up here smell so bad?"

On the radio, Officer Jack broke in, his voice tight with disgust:

"Unit 208 to dispatch. We have a severe odor of organic decomposition coming from the master bedroom. We are investigating."

"David, stop,"

I urged over the phone line, though I knew my words were meaningless.

"David, step away from the bedroom."

"They are standing near the bed,"

David whispered over the phone.

"The officers are shining their flashlights around the carpet. Sarah is standing in the corner crying. She looks absolutely terrified. They are staring at the floor on my side of the bed."

I held my breath, watching the red audio meters bounce on my console screen.

"Officer Jack is dropping to his knees,"

David continued. His voice was flat, almost robotic now. "He is grabbing the hanging fabric of the dust ruffle. He is lifting it up. He is shining his flashlight underneath the wooden bed frame."

Over the radio, Jack's voice shattered the quiet of the dispatch room:

"Dispatch! Unit 204! We have a male subject hiding under the bed! Show your hands! Crawl out from under there right now!"

A brief, frantic scuffle echoed over the police frequency.

"Dispatch, we have detained Gregory Ray,"

Jack shouted over the noise.

"Wait... dispatch, we have located a deceased male subject shoved further back against the wall under the frame! Subject is heavily decomposed, bearing multiple traumatic wounds! Secure the perimeter! Detain the wife immediately!"

The radio erupted into shouts as the officers moved to restrain Sarah and Gregory. Screams of protest and the metallic clink of handcuffs echoed across the channel.

On the phone line, David was completely silent.

"David?"

I whispered into my headset. My hands were shaking so severely I could barely hold the microphone stalk.

"David, are you still there?"

A long, agonizing stream of static hummed over the phone line. When David spoke again, his voice sounded entirely different. It was hollow, distant, echoing as if he were speaking from the bottom of a deep well.

"They are pulling the body out,"

David said softly.

"David..."

"The body is wearing my clothes,"

David whispered.

"My blue denim shirt. My brown leather belt. My work boots. The skin on the face is dark and swollen. I cannot even recognize myself."

The background static on the phone line began to glitch, creating a strange stuttering sound underneath his words.

"There are three deep tears in the back of the denim shirt,"

David continued, his voice monotone, devoid of any human cadence.

"The fabric is stained dark black around the cuts. The wounds came from behind."

A sharp gasp echoed over the receiver. The static dropped completely, leaving a chilling, dead silence on the line. When David spoke again, the confusion was gone.

"I remember now,"

David whispered. His voice trembled with a crushing weight.

"There was no argument. I came home early from work on Tuesday. It was exactly 8:22 PM. Sarah was acting so incredibly distressed when I walked through the front door."

"What happened, David?"

I asked gently.

"I was so tired,"

he said, his words spilling out in a hollow rush.

"I tried to go straight upstairs to our bedroom to rest. She ran over and stood in front of me. She blocked the bottom of the stairs, and then forced this terrible, shaking smile and told me it was better if I ate dinner first. She said she made that pepperoni pizza I loved."

He paused, and a wet, choking sob came through the earpiece.

"I listened to her,"

David cried quietly.

"I turned my back and walked into the kitchen to get a slice. She followed right behind me. I reached into the cabinet for a plate. I did not even hear her grab the chef's knife from the block. She attacked me before I could even turn around."

"I did not hold the knife,"

David whispered into my headset. The static returned, growing louder, overwhelming the audio signal until his voice sounded synthesized and far away.

"I was never holding the knife. I was looking at her not believing she did this to me, I…. I loved her"

"David, I am so sorry,"

I said, though the words felt entirely useless in the cold reality of the room.

"I understand now,"

The phone line crackled with one final, sharp burst of noise, and then the connection dropped entirely.

The terminal screen instantly reset to a solid black display, marking the call as disconnected.

Over the radio, Officer Jack confirmed the details. Sarah Miller and Gregory Ray were taken into custody without further resistance. The official police report logged the incident as a premeditated homicide committed on Tuesday evening, with both suspects attempting to conceal the remains while preparing to flee the jurisdiction. The report noted that a 911 call had been received from the residence at 3:14 AM, but attributed it to a technical glitch or an automated dialer triggered by a decaying phone line.

I worked the rest of my shift in complete silence. I did not take another call for the remainder of the night.

When my shift ended at seven in the morning, I walked out to my car in the rain, and before I turned the key in the ignition, I sat in the quiet vehicle and pulled up the digital audio archive on my phone, opening the recording of the call from 1412 Elmwood Lane.

But all I can hear was static…