I don't know how much time I have left, but I feel I need to get this out. Someone needs to understand my mistake. My name is Jean-Paul Allard, I am 87 years old, and I am going to die. I wouldn't fault anyone if they assumed it was simply age that was catching up with me, but no. Most people would never assume I was over 50 when they saw me. Some would say I've lived a good life, and that is the reason for my youth, but I know differently. I know it has to do with them, with those creatures I created all those years ago. The ones that hunt me now.

As a child, I spent much of my life around death and dying. I was a child when the Germans came with their monsters and overtook us, I watched family and friends die at their hands as they resisted until their last breath. I ran supplies for the French resistance until the end of the Second Great War, and when it was finally over my family devoted themselves to trying to return beauty to our beloved France. They were artists, my mother and father. They could see beauty in even the most mundane of things, but all I ever saw was horror. I was young when my home was ravaged, and it left an impression on me that carried over into my adult years. Where my parents could create peace and serenity, I could only make chaos and pain. I did my best to take after them, to see the beauty in all things, but I was raised in a dark time, and I witnessed nothing but darkness for too long. So, my work reflected that darkness that I had seen in everything.

My parents would still compliment my work, saying they could feel the pain and the hurt being conveyed through my pieces. I told them I wanted to see beauty, and they would reply "There is beauty in pain, Jean-Paul. Just remember, not all beauty is found in the serene."

I continued my artistic pursuits, and at one point I found myself invited to share my pieces at a gallery in New York City. My parents couldn't be prouder. Still, the sorrow and pain I felt remained a predominant part of my life. The horrors of what happened to my people, and the darkness in the years that followed remained a prominent feature in my formative years, and when I made it to New York I only discovered new forms of this shadow. 

The gallery show was a huge success, and I made a decent little stipend. The owner of the gallery, a man with piercing blue eyes by the name of Luciano, informed me that he wanted to see more of my work and he wanted to commission a few specialty sculptures, to which I gladly agreed. After all, how many could say they made their living as an artist in New York City? Things were going quite well for me, and the shadow was starting to lift. My work took on a brighter tone, and those who had come to enjoy my work were not pleased. They enjoyed that darkness, reveled in the evil I showed them, and I couldn't journey back into the dark.

When Luciano inquired about the sudden change in my work, I told him honestly that I had spent a long time seeing nothing but pain and darkness in the world, and now that things were starting to change for the better, I didn't see that dark side of humanity any longer. He told me not to worry about it, that my current work was wonderful, and that I should be proud. There was something about the way he said it though, like he was trying to smile through gritted teeth. I'm certain he was displeased that I wasn't making him the same money that I had been, but for the first time, I could see the beauty my mother and father created.

Then  I was attacked.

I don't know if Luciano had hired the men or not, but one night as I left the studio a group of men jumped me in an alley. They beat me within an inch of my life, spewing insults as they assaulted me. I was left lying in an alley, several of my ribs most certainly broken. Just like that, the bucket of sunshine that I had started to fill was kicked over and I was left in the dark again.

They came to me in a sort of fever dream.

I was recovering in hospital from the beating I had endured, and at some point, I had come down with an infection. I lay in the bed, sweat soaking the pillow when the shadows first took form. They offered me a chance to recover, all they wanted in return was to come to this world, to be given forms by someone who had been touched by horror. I was sick, presumably dying. I shouted that I would do whatever I was asked. I swore I'd create bodies befitting the nightmares they were if they just kept death at bay.

The next day I was fine. My injuries had miraculously fully healed, and my fever disappeared. I was kept for observation for a few days, but soon I was back on the street and I had a project to create. I had promised these shadows a body, and for some reason, I believed I owed them.

The first draft was terrible, I used stone to try and sculpt my vision of the things I had seen and I hated it. Every night I dreamt of them, their forms souring my every thought. It was like they wouldn't let me forget them. For the second draft, I used an old weaving technique my grandmother had taught me when I was a child, collecting pliant sticks and weaving them together to form an intricate body and arms. I liked this more than the stone, it created the image that plagued my mind more clearly. Something was still missing, though. I couldn't quite place it, but I knew I wouldn't be able to truly bring this sculpture to life without it.

The inspiration was found one night after Luciano had visited me. As we were talking he shooed away a stray black cat, and something in my mind clicked. I realize now that I should never have spilled more blood to create this monster, but it plagued me. One pelt was not enough, and I found myself hunting the dark-furred strays nightly for nearly a month to collect enough to create what I wanted. I used their bones and claws to create the creature's hind legs and soon enough the first shadow was near completion. I just needed to create its face.

I should have stopped. I should have realized the dark path I was walking, but all I've ever known was pain and horror, to me, this was nothing new. It was simply a unique artistic process that I was using to create something wonderful.

I should have stopped.

I agonized over the perfect face for the creature, eventually purchasing a collection of variously sized taxidermy eyes in an attempt to find the perfect pair. Nothing spoke to me, and the image in my mind never showed its face so I could no longer rely on it.  "Help me,"I remember saying to the unfinished, faceless thing."Help me find your face...please."I passed out after hours of fruitless labor, drifting back into a sea of despair as the muses abandoned me once more.

When I woke, I was surprised. There was a small collection of what looked like folded leather sitting next to my desk, alongside a pair of eyes and what looked like an entire bowl full of teeth. As I held up the leather, I marveled at how supple it was, and the tone...it seemed almost human! It was perfect. I stretched the leather over the shape of the creature's head and collected the eyes.  They were unique as well, large and bloodshot blue eyes, the plastic even seemed to have some sort of coating on them to give them a better shine. I put them in place, not bothering to give the creature eyelids, it would want to see the world perfectly after all. When I started adding teeth, I just used the entirety of the bowl, realizing too late that there were far too many on this grinning abomination's face.

"Why give you lips, eh? You are beautiful the way you are, no?"I murmured, adding the last few molars to the entity. When I finished I leaned back and eyed the abomination I had created. It stood at around four feet tall, squatting on catlike legs with humanoid hands. Its whole body was covered in black fur save for the bald head. There was no nose, and it stared at me with those bloodshot eyes and an unsettling grin."You are magnificent..."I murmured, nearly fainting.

I created four of those monsters in total. Each time it would become easier, the necessary pieces just...showing up as I slept. I never showed these Grinning creations to anyone, they didn't need to see them, they were mine. My own creations, my own little friends to keep me company. Eventually, I lost contact with Luciano. One day he just...stopped coming to the studio and eventually it closed down. The police said they suspected he was involved with the mob, and just as they were starting to close in on information that could lead to his arrest, he disappeared. I continued to create pieces, my haunting muses now guiding my hand in these dark creations, and with Luciano gone, there was no longer a middleman to pay exorbitant finder's fees to. I amassed a small fortune, and retired in the late 90's. I should have been well into my 60s by the time I stopped, but I looked and felt no older than a 30-year-old man. People who slighted me, even in the slightest, would often disappear. I had been questioned by police many times in the 40 years I lived in the city, and each time nothing came of it.

It wasn't until I saw them do it that I put it all together.

I had invited a lover to my home, and by this time I had amassed a collection of beautiful things. I needed the beauty, it helped with the nightmares I had of these creatures. He admired many of my pieces, but as we entered the studio I saw them sitting out, staring at us. I was horrified. No one was ever supposed to see them, and when I wasn't working I had always put them up. What were they doing out?

"My god they're hideous!"he had exclaimed."Who made those monstrous things!? How horrible!"

"I...they're my muses,"I admitted, sullenly.

"Muses? Those things? They're abominations! You really should burn them."  I quickly escorted him from the room as he continued to berate them, shaking my head and ensuring they were really amazing. I wanted him to praise them and love them as I had, but the way he spoke of them made me feel nothing but shame. I glanced over my shoulder, and I could swear they were staring at us. 

We spent the night together and fell asleep in each other's arms, but when I woke he was not with me. At first, I tacked it up to him not wanting to disturb me and leaving in the morning, but then I wandered into the study.

There, in the middle of the floor, surrounded by those...things I had made, was the body of the man I had brought home. He was covered in cuts and scratches, his nose looked like it had been bitten clean off, but he was still breathing. I could just make out the shallow heaving of his ravaged chest. I shouted, horror in my voice.

One of the things turned and looked at me. I felt my stomach climb into my throat as it raised a single, gnarled finger to its lipless grin.

I screamed. Horrified, I ran as fast as my feet could carry me out of that house and I kept running. I couldn't go to the police, what would I tell them? My sculptures have been killing people? I'm certain that would go over wonderfully. No, I had to do something about them, I had to stop them.

I must've been three blocks away from the house when I finally collected myself enough to go back. When I returned, I marched straight into the study, only to find the body gone and any sign of the attack gone with it. I stomped over to the cabinet I kept them in and flung it open. They were sitting there, lifeless, but still staring at me."All this time..."I murmured."All this time you've been taking lives."none of the sculptures moved or acknowledged me. I collected one of them and hauled it into the backyard. I coated the thing in lighter fluid from the charcoal grill and set fire to it.

I stared at the thing as it burned, yet it continued to do nothing like it was mocking me. So, I burned the rest of them that same night. None of them ever reacted to my actions, pretending that I didn't see what I had seen that morning. When the last of them was a charred pile of ashes, I breathed a sigh of relief. I was free.

That night my dreams were filled with those creatures, visions of them slaughtering countless people and just wandering back into the cupboard at night and pretending like they did nothing. I couldn't get the sight of the one who silenced me out of my head.

I was awakened by a crash in my study. I shot up and looked at my door, had someone broken in? Slowly, I pulled myself out of bed and grabbed the bat I kept nearby for such occasions. Quietly, I crept, not wanting to startle the intruder, but when I arrived in the study there was no man to be found. I searched the room and found nothing, until I glanced upon the canvas that I had set out. Upon it, written in ash were the words"It's not that easy."My stomach sank, and I turned to face the cabinet, slowly I opened those cupboard doors and to my horror there they sat. Those freakish little monsters with their lidless bulging eyes and too-many-toothed grins stared at me. Whatever beauty I had seen in these monsters had vanished the moment I discovered their purpose, the darkness I had poured into them.

"So you are my curse..." I murmured, shaking my head. "Fine, then I will bear you, but you will never harm another, not so long as I can do something about it." I don't know why I resolved to simply let them be, but if burning them down to nothing wouldn't destroy them, then I had a feeling nothing truly would.

For over a year I tried to figure out a way to stop these things, to control them, but nothing seemed to work. I sealed them in glass cases, locked cabinets, and even tried to bury them. They simply kept coming back. Eventually, I built a room in my basement, a sort of twisted display case that I kept them locked away in. Their bulging gaze always haunted me, every time I journeyed down there I could feel them watching me, a malice building in their stares. So I wrapped their eyes in gauze. I sealed them in a room all their own and blinded them...and it seemed to work.

For ten long years, I didn't feel their hate, for ten years I left them in the dark and alone, and in those ten years, I began to feel the first onset of aging, as if whatever twisted gift they had given me was finally beginning to fade. I never left home, I became a sort of recluse trying to keep these monsters at bay. I boarded the basement door, chained it, and placed a heavy shelf in front of it in an attempt to seal the prison for these grinning bastards. I spent ten years having my groceries delivered to my front door, and I had amassed a small fortune so I didn't need to work. My only connection to the outside world was the television and the computer. Those were the loneliest ten years of my life. I needed someone.

I no longer sought love, but instead I wanted someone to speak to, just an ear to listen and an eye to admire the vast treasures I had collected. So, I put out a job offer on one of those gig apps. One young man accepted, Alan. He was a kind boy and he helped me keep my home clean, in return I paid well. It was nice to have someone present again.

During one of his cleanings, he had moved the shelf I had used to hide the basement door and he inquired about it. Why would I board up and chain this door, then place such a heavy shelf in front of it?

When he inquired I felt that malice again. This time it nearly overwhelmed me. They had simply been waiting, as if they knew they'd be let loose.

I urged him to let it go, that nothing good existed down there, only the past and dark memories. He seemed to understand and accept my plea, he even helped me push the shelf back into place. I thought that was the end of it, even the hatred coming from down below began to fade again.

I wish that was where the story concluded, that Alan hadn't done what he did, but he was a young man and curiosity is hard to escape.

My time with Alan helped me to realize that life was too short to spend it trying to just be a jailor to these monsters. I had to get out again, to journey into the public eye and spend time amongst the people. I spent the day shopping and even purchased a new car, then I chose to go to a nearby gallery opening, I had a wonderful time, and the people there truly had a passion for the artistic. I had even met another man who I had promised I'd see again. Things were going the right way, finally.

Then I came home.

When I entered I was overcome by the wave of hate the permeated throughout my home, and I soon saw why. The basement had been unsealed. The chains broken, the boards torn away, and the shelf moved. I rushed down the stairs and found Alan staring at them. He had removed the gauze from their eyes and there was nothing but curiosity in his gaze, but it soon turned to regret and guilt as he saw me.

​"Oh! Mr. Allard! I'm so sorry, I..."

I only shook my head and offered a calm smile. "I understand, my boy. Were I your age my curiosity likely would have gotten the better of me, too. These things..." I murmured, turning to face them, "These...grinners. They are a memory I wish to forget. So I sealed them away." I could feel their hateful gaze on me, but I continued to speak as though they were just pieces of art. "You should leave, Alan." I glanced at him as he grabbed his collection of tools and ran back up the stairs. My eyes drifted back to the fiends I had made. "I can't escape you, can I? It's not that easy." I smiled grimly and turned to leave, I knew their eyes were still on me, and it no longer mattered. 

That night, I was awakened by a soft tapping at my window. It was strange, I slept on the second story of my house and there were no trees outside, so when I went to the window I half expected the man I had met at the Gallery tossing pebbles to wake me. Call it hopeless romanticism, or just pure naivety, but when all you have for ten years are stories to read and watch, you begin to fantasize about those sorts of things.

I tossed my curtains to the side and nearly fell backward. There, clinging to the glass and lightly tapping against it was one of those Grinners. When we locked eyes, it raised a single clawed finger to its lipless mouth as it had done so long ago. This time, though, it breathed onto my window and scratched a single word into the fog. "Alan." My eyes widened, I rushed over to my phone and called him immediately. It was the middle of the night, I don't know what I expected.

​"Hello...?" came the bleary answer, sleep still clinging to the voice as it desperately tried to pull him back down.

"Alan! Alan please listen to me. They are coming for you, you need to leave, to run, do not stop until you are far from here."

"Mr. Allard what are you...?" there was a crash from somewhere on his side of the line. "Hello?" I heard him call through the receiver. I didn't know if I was too late, but then I turned to look at the window again. The Grinning fiend was still there, but the fogged word had changed.

"You."

I wasted no time, I gathered a few things and ran from that house. I ran to my new car, I drove for what must've been hours. I must've tried to get a hold of Alan at least ten times during that drive, but there was never an answer. I don't know if they managed to take him, but I know they're coming for me. Every night since that fateful evening, I've heard a soft tapping at whatever window or door is nearby. I know they're just playing with me.I know they're waiting for the right chance, but that's not my worry anymore. I know that some day soon they will take me, but then...then what? They've been my charge for over half a century. Will they find someone new, or are they simply free to do as they please now? Whatever the case...I am sorry.

Last week I was in the Satanic Panic server on Discord and there was this picture of this man fishing but suddenly this other man popped out of the picture. The second man looked like a clown.

I asked some of the other members of the server if they knew anything about this picture. It was in channel named DO NOT LOOK.

A couple people told me it meant The Sleep Creeper was going to start coming for me in my dreams. After hearing their stories of what happened to them after seeing it, I’m feeling scared. Several people have had to take Ambien to try to sleep after the nightmares started.

Someone else said I’d be lucky if only thing that happens to me is The Sleep Creeper because several people had accidents after seeing it. In particular car accidents have happened. A few other people said really lucky things start to happen for some people. It’s the luck of the draw.

Well, I decided to go straight to the server owner named Mother and she said anyone that goes in there and sees the man will start to have mimics follow them on social media.

Yesterday I noticed that there are two Reddit accounts copying and pasting everything I say. They even borrowed my profile picture I use. One of them contacted me in DM. I wanted to dislike them but they were actually super friendly and we talked a lot about how much we love cats. Both our cats like to wear t-shirts. 😂

Today after my baseball game I splurged and bought 5 packs of pop rocks and an extra large Dr Pepper with extra cherry syrup. I do want to say that I fully chewed them all up.

When I got home, I noticed my new mimic dm friend had sent me a pic of their cat so I thanked them and we started chatting again. They asked me if I ate pop rocks today because they were getting psychic premonitions I was going to die in my sleep.

I asked how they knew that and they said it was part of their satanic ritual that someone needed to die as part of it for them to get their work promotion. They said I t was them that placed in my head the idea to overeat pop rocks because that is the quickest way to telepathically talk people into dying.

They warned me to not tell anyone else or they might die too because the spell is still in open mode. I couldn’t even decide if I should tell you all here on no sleep.

Then they laughed and said they were joking about it all and they just guessed I ate pop rocks based on me saying I just won my baseball tournament.

I just don’t know now. My stomach is really starting to hurt. It’s making these loud gurgles noises and the gas is getting unbearable. I just ran down to the kitchen to take some baking soda and Pepto Bismal now. I read online that baking soda was the wrong thing to take for pop rocks overdose.

I’m trying to watch TV but I just keep hearing this a voice in my head telling me to come to the cradle. It’s saying come to the cradle and add roses & berries for the baby. Why a cradle? Why a baby? I’m really starting to feel I’m losing my mind. I’m hoping some Melatonin helps. I really don’t know. If I never return here, can someone please report my account to Reddit for inspection?

I was in the right lane on the I-90 eastbound from Seattle towards the Cascades, driving slowly in the summer night and waiting for dawn. When I exited at the Division Street junction, it was still dark, prompting me to drive around aimlessly and await the first light of dawn. The nervousness had subsided and was replaced by a calm determination that surprised me. I knew exactly what I was going to do.

The first rays of the sun fell over the rooftops as I drove into the garage driveway and turned off the engine. I unlocked the garage, fetched a shovel and a wheelbarrow. I had gone through everything in my mind and carefully chosen a spot in the yard. The ground was rather dry, so I watered the grass where I intended to dig. Birds were chirping, but no humans were in sight; everything was calm and still. Just as I had hoped.

Once the water had soaked into the ground, I began digging. I dug up clumps of grass to form a square. I placed the clumps on the lawn beside the square and started digging downward. I put the loose soil into the wheelbarrow. While I was busy digging down through the earth, I heard a car approaching. I set the shovel aside and stood completely still. It was the newspaper delivery person; I remained standing and waited until he had passed. I resumed digging and continued until I had reached below the layer of topsoil and encountered hard moraine.

I went back to the car and fetched a wrapped aluminum box, which I placed at the bottom of the pit. I noticed that the birds had stopped singing. I took soil from the wheelbarrow and filled the hole. I finished by replacing the clumps of grass and tamping them down so that there were no visible traces of disturbance. Everything had gone as I had hoped, and it had not taken more than fifteen minutes. I went into the house and had breakfast while looking out the window at the spot where I had buried the aluminum box. The birds had resumed their singing, and a neighbor was retrieving the morning newspaper, everything was as usual.

I'll start from the beginning. When my son pestered me for a metal detector. He and a friend were out in the yard scanning with it and found some nails and other junk. After a while without finding any treasures, he used it less and less. I suggested that we could go down to the beach, maybe find some jewelry that someone had lost. Of course, we didn't find any jewelry but only bottle caps and the like. On the way home, I suggested that we take a detour through the park.

"Do you know that your great-grandmother and great-grandfather had a farm where the park is now? We could search there; who knows, maybe there's something hidden underground."

My son nodded.

Fruit trees and a house foundation are all that remains of my family's estate, Willowbrook. However, my older relatives have always spoken highly of Willowbrook, and the estate has taken on an almost mythical quality on that branch of my family tree. The metal detector beeped a few times, and we found a tin can, a horseshoe, and the usual nails. But after some searching, we got a stronger signal. I took the garden spade and began to dig.

After a while, the spade hit something hard. After some more digging and prying, we unearthed an iron lid. It was clearly old, and despite being dirty and covered in dried mud, we could see there was some sort of pattern and a few letters on its rough surface. Under the lid, a hollow space made of bricks appeared. At first, we saw nothing, but when my son turned on the flashlight on his phone, we saw a metal box sitting at the bottom of the cavity. I lay down and reached for the box, lifting it out. It was about the size of a shoebox and weighed a few pounds.

"Open it, Dad, what's inside?" he asked eagerly.

He was excited. I tried to open the box, but the lid was stuck tight.

"We'll take it home and try to open it calmly," I said.

We took the iron lid and the box home, cleaned them up. The iron lid turned out to be relatively well-preserved, patterned with grapevines and the letters "HW VP" in ornate script. The box, however, looked unremarkable. It was made of rough metal with no inscriptions or decorations. I had to pry and gently wiggle the lid. It tested my patience, but after a while, it finally loosened. My son leaned over as I revealed the contents.

"What the heck," he said disappointedly.

It was somewhat anticlimactic. Instead of treasure, there was a clay statuette, several smaller clay figures, and a number of bone fragments inside. The statuette and figures were crudely made and didn't mean much to me. The statuette resembled an amateurish attempt at a Roman statue, and the clay figures resembled some kind of small gnomes or creatures. Upon closer inspection, the bone fragments had inscribed markings on them. Soon, my son lost interest in the contents of the box but was quite pleased with the iron lid, which he proudly displayed in his room. As for myself, I felt a bit uneasy about the box and its contents. An impulse came over me to get rid of it all, to simply throw it in the trash, but something held me back. I tucked it away in a drawer under a heap of winter clothes, hoping it would fade into obscurity.

Looking back now, the oddities actually began before my son and I dug near the park.

We've lived in our villa for many years, familiar with the neighborhood from our walks and jogs. With a dog in the family, you get to know who frequents the area and become superficially acquainted with other dog owners and local exercisers. One day, maybe two weeks before we found the box, a new face appeared. A man in his seventies, I would guess. He was very talkative, as some retirees can be, but he was friendly and seemed to know a lot about my family. He knew who my grandparents were and was familiar with my mom, my uncle, and even their cousins. We talked until the dog grew impatient and wanted to move on. A few days later, while on a run through the woods, I was nearing home when we crossed paths again. We chatted briefly, and he mentioned that he often walks to the ski slope to admire the view, "yes, at Willowbrook, your great-grandparents' estate," as he put it. He seemed to have insight into other family relationships that surprised me a bit. But people keep tabs on each other, I thought.

A few days, or rather nights, after I hid the box in the dresser, the dog began to behave strangely. We have some wildlife that visits the garden at night, and the dog usually barks a few times, something we're used to, but suddenly he just growled. Our bedrooms are upstairs, and we woke up to find him downstairs growling at the couch, staring out the window. My wife went downstairs and looked outside without seeing anything. I went down the next night when he was again growling out the dark window. We chalked it up to a fox or a cat prowling the garden, unseen in the darkness.

I work shifts. It was after an evening shift when I got home just after 11 pm and sat in my favorite armchair to unwind when the dog came running and started growling. I turned off the lights and tried to figure out what he was looking at. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the fruit trees and bushes, no animal or anything to explain the dog's behavior. After a couple of minutes, I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. When I focused there, it disappeared, not uncommon when staring out into the darkness, I thought, and went to bed.

I had intense dreams that night. First, I dreamed I was standing on the steps of a cathedral. There were crowds of people below on a large square. They were talking loudly and arguing with each other, seeming to disagree about something. I couldn't make out what it was about but got the feeling they were about to make a big decision. The more they argued, the more chaotic it became; people started pushing each other, and there was tearing of clothes and hair. I had a leather bag beside me on the steps; when I opened it, the box was at its bottom. When I took out the box and held it in my hands, the crowd slowly fell silent, and all attention focused on me. The total attention was both terrifying and intoxicating.

"What do you want?" I shouted across the now eerily silent square.

"We seek guidance," replied a man who appeared to be some sort of leader among them.

"Should we go out to war?"

For some reason, I answered yes, that they should go out to war. Everyone bowed and lined up in orderly rows, marching away from the square and disappearing.

I woke up feeling almost intoxicated. When I fell back asleep, I found myself in a new dream; this time, I was wandering through a dense forest near the Snoqualmie Falls area. I walked along a winding path, surrounded by towering trees and the gentle sound of a nearby stream, until I stumbled upon a small, secluded village nestled in the forest. It had the quaint charm of those old towns you find in the foothills of the Cascades. I encountered an elderly woman standing by a moss-covered bridge. Her eyes met mine with a knowing, unsettling look, and she shook her head slowly. I was about to ask her what was wrong when I noticed that I was holding the box visibly in my hands. I woke up with a start.

That morning, I found it difficult to shake thoughts of the box. I made coffee and listened to the radio news, but it was as if I couldn't comprehend what they were saying. I forgot I was supposed to go to work before my shift for a meeting; it was only after my boss called to remind me that I hurriedly made it to the meeting. We were discussing a potential schedule change. I had to concentrate hard just to understand what the others were saying. Throughout the evening shift, I struggled to get the box and its contents out of my mind.

When I came home late that evening, I poured myself a large whisky and sat in the living room. I had nearly finished half the glass when the dog ran downstairs and started growling. I had completely turned off the lights and had good night vision. It took a minute before I saw movement in my peripheral vision that then disappeared. I continued to stare out the window and managed to focus my gaze on a dark figure that quickly vanished. After a moment, it reappeared. I couldn't follow it with my eyes; it appeared and disappeared much like trying to track a bat against a fading summer night sky. It resembled somewhat a wild boar, but walking on two legs. I stayed awake until dawn. Then the creature disappeared.

It had long been planned that my wife would visit acquaintances on the west coast the coming weekend and stay for two weeks. I would stay and work during that time, and then we would go together to our cottage on Bainbridge Island. After some persuasion, I managed to arrange for the whole family, including the dog, to go to the west coast. I wanted to stay alone at home. The dreams and thoughts of the box had become increasingly intrusive, and I found it harder to cope with work. In the end, I took sick leave. At night, I sat up and watched the creature roam outside the window. They seemed to be several now.

Sometimes when making decisions, you can later wonder how you were thinking. I don't know if I was thinking at all when I booked a ferry ticket to Bainbridge Island on the overnight ferry. It was the same day I had concluded that there were probably several creatures in the garden. I wanted to get the box away from the house and find somewhere at the cottage on Bainbridge Island where I could hide it. Upon arriving at Bainbridge Island, I placed the box in a kitchen drawer for the time being. I greeted some neighbors, turned on the water and electricity as one does. I was very tired that evening and went to bed before it started to get dark outside. I locked the doors and checked that all the windows were closed, something I had never done before in the cottage. I also looked in the kitchen drawer and noted that the box was where I had left it.

I slept and dreamed of the man from home. He spoke to me in my sleep; I don't remember everything but remembered him saying something about choosing the right path and that it was my turn to take over. When I woke up, the sun was rising. I pulled up the blinds and caught sight of a face with black eyes staring at me from the other side of the window. In an instant, the face disappeared, but it took no more than that to understand what I had seen.

I went into the kitchen, and there I got an even bigger shock. It was like getting a punch in the gut. I know that's how people usually say it, but it was true; my knees buckled, and I knelt down and stared. The clay figurines were arranged on the stove. After recovering from the initial panic, I grabbed a knife and searched the house without finding anyone there. I looked out the windows and saw that everything was in order. I tremblingly picked up the box that was in the drawer where I had left it and immediately felt that it was lighter. I don't know what I had expected, but the clay figurines had moved during the night, so someone or something had been inside the house while I slept.

I don't know how long it took me to regain my composure. I needed help to move forward, someone to ask for advice. I couldn't exactly call my wife or any friend and ask how to behave with found clay figurines that moved by themselves overnight. The police didn't seem like an option either; I would probably be driven to the nearest psychiatric clinic. I wouldn't take my own story seriously unless it was my own.

Another ticket to the mainland? I could throw the damn box overboard halfway to Seattle, but if it turned out to be a mistake, it would be difficult to repair.

The church? Priests were not strangers to the supernatural. I wasn't religious, but I was baptized and married in the church and still paid church taxes. A priest could probably handle what was in the box. I put the box in my backpack and got into the car. Regardless, I didn't plan to spend another night near the box and its contents.

I stopped at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and asked one of the groundskeepers to speak with a priest. I was told there was no priest on site and that she would come out to St. Paul’s first the day after tomorrow, but there was probably a priest in Port Angeles. I thanked her, got back in the car, and headed for the ferry that links the island to the rest of the mainland. I knew the church in Port Angeles; in the eighties, I had sworn allegiance to the flag and the country there during my conscription at the local base.

Arriving at the church, I stepped inside and asked an elderly woman who was rearranging hymn books if I could speak with a priest. She pointed towards the altar where a middle-aged man was busy with something. He introduced himself as Jackson and asked how he could help me. I explained that I preferred to discuss this privately and glanced at the woman with the hymn books. Jackson gestured toward the sacristy and closed the door behind us. We sat down, and he asked me to tell him what was troubling me. I started hesitantly describing my discovery of a box but noticed that the priest was skeptical. They must hear a lot of nonsense, I thought, before he straightforwardly asked me to show him the box. I took it out and opened the lid. His face turned pale, and he recoiled as if there had been a venomous snake inside.

"Close the lid, close it at once," he shouted and took a step back. "Oh my, oh my."

He was visibly stressed and began fidgeting with his phone.

"That's right, just the landline, the landline," he muttered and disappeared.

After a few minutes, he returned and nervously sat down, attempting small talk. It was clear he had received instructions from someone higher up. The lady with the hymn books appeared in the doorway and asked if everything was alright. The priest abruptly sent her off to fetch coffee. I didn't understand what was happening.

"What about the box? Will the church take care of it?"

"Not here in this church, someone from Seattle will come, I believe. We just have to wait, and someone will take care of it here."

From Seattle, I thought, that will take time. I didn't want to sit here wasting time with the anxious priest. Luckily, Priest Albert stopped his clumsy attempts to normalize this bizarre situation with small talk. In fact, it was just under an hour before we heard a car stop in the parking lot. Into the church came an elderly man in a wheelchair who looked very old, accompanied by a young female assistant. Something about how she carried herself made me think of her as a bodyguard or military.

"Leave us alone," said the man, and Jackson and the assistant left the sacristy.

"Show me what you've found," he said without hesitation, his gaze fixed on me.

If he seemed old and frail in body, his gaze was sharp as a knife and intensely present. He examined the clay figurines and picked up one of the bone fragments, scrutinizing it in the light before putting it back in the box. He asked me to tell the whole story from the beginning to now. He listened attentively and asked only a few clarifying questions. It felt good to tell my story to someone.

"Good," he said. "Do you have any questions?"

"Yes, actually quite a few. What is this that scares the life out of an experienced priest? What can make clay figurines summon black apparitions outside the house and emerge from a tin box on their own? How can it evoke dreams and conjure up an old man I've never seen who seems to know everything about my family estate that has been in ruins for over half a century? And above all, can you or anyone else take these items away so I can be done with all this? Then I'm also curious about who you are, how you can get here from Seattle in under an hour, and make the nervous wreck of a priest act like it's nothing special?"

"I could lecture for weeks on everything you've been through. Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time. The clay figurines, to simplify, are condensed evil. Evil is like energy; it is indestructible and can only change form. For example, if an evil person dies, the evil doesn't disappear but is taken up in a new form, perhaps in a new person who carries it forward. So destroying the box or, as you suggested, throwing it into the sea would only release the inherent evil, and we would have no idea where or when it might emerge. However, by hiding it, we can control it without exposing it. As for the bones, they come from a very evil person who lived long ago; the runes carved into them are a kind of curse. The creatures you've seen are what some would call evil spirits or demons; they cannot physically harm you but can affect you mentally, lead you to make bad decisions or do foolish things. The clay figurines did not get out of the box on their own; you were the one who took them out in your sleep, and what that tells me is that time is running short."

"The man you encountered both in reality and in your dreams is the guardian. He is likely part of, or someone close to, your family. And he, this might be difficult to hear, has just handed over to you."

He raised his hand in a calming gesture just as I was about to protest.

"You are the only one who can take care of these items and ensure they remain hidden. You are now the guardian. You can choose to see it as a burden, or you can see it as a great trust placed upon you by your ancestors who have chosen you to handle this responsibility."

“Who I am doesn’t matter; those closest to me usually call me the old one. Time is rushing, my friend; you must do what you must. When you are ready, take the car to the airport at Sea-Tac, and someone will meet you there to handle what needs to be done. And, most importantly, make sure you are at the airport before darkness falls.”

I got into the car and drove to the hardware store in Capitol Hill, where I bought epoxy, hardener, fiberglass cloth, and brushes. I emptied an aluminum toolbox from the toolshed and packed the items into it. I sealed the toolbox hermetically with multiple layers of plastic. While the final layer of epoxy cured, I said goodbye to the neighbors, blaming having to cover for someone at work.

The sun was starting to set as I drove off the ferry in Bainbridge Island. I took the winding road to Sea-Tac Airport, pushing the car to its limits. It was getting quite dim by the time I parked at the airport. I walked towards the entrance, worried that it might be a problem to get through security with a bag containing a hermetically sealed aluminum box, when a man discreetly approached and asked me to follow him. He looked like a military man. He showed me an ID card, and I was waved past security.

“Give me the car keys, and we’ll make sure the car is delivered to your address.”

He led me out onto the airport tarmac to one of the military helicopters. I was ushered inside and strapped into a seat.

We landed without incident at a small airstrip near the old man’s estate. There, the old man’s assistant was waiting. She escorted me to a nearby car and handed me the keys to a rental vehicle.

"The old man sends his regards; he thinks you're handling things excellently," she said.

And at this point in the story, we're back where I began.

It's been a few months since I buried the box, and autumn is approaching. Things are slowly returning to normal; I spend increasingly longer periods between the now rare visits to the garden. The man who walked to the park I've only encountered once more. He visited me in a dream, thanking me for finally finding peace.

To gain certainty about the guardian before me, I visited my mother's cousin Monica. She had many photographs from Willowbrook Estate in her possession. I carefully examined all the old black-and-white pictures of posed people and could recognize many younger versions of people I've met over the years. Then suddenly, I saw what I was looking for. He stood between my grandfather and his brother. The former guardian, the one who sought me out. I learned that his name was Harold. Harold had passed away in the seventies, I was told.

I woke in the middle of the night to find my boyfriend sitting on the end of our bed, staring into the dark corner of our bedroom.

I called out to him groggily. “Jack?”

He didn’t respond.

“Jack?” I called again. He was still and completely silent.

I moved to the end of the bed and looked at him. The look on his face froze my blood.

It’s as though he wasn’t there. His eyes were wide open. His pupils were like dinner plates as he stared endlessly at the dark corner of our room.

Needless to say, nothing like this had happened before. Jack wasn’t a sleepwalker. He usually slept through the night just fine, no tossing or turning or even grinding his teeth.

He was gripping his knees with both hands. I reached out and gently put my hand on his.

I swept his brown hair out of his eyes and softly said, “Jack, let’s go back to bed.”

I wasn’t trying to wake him. They say you’re not supposed to wake a sleepwalker. I was trying to guide him back under the covers but suddenly he snapped out of it and the life came back into his eyes and he looked me.

“Haley?”

He was clearly confused.

“I woke up and found you sitting here on the end of the bed. You looked completely out of it,” I said.

“Damn, really? That’s creepy.”

He blinked a lot and looked around the room.

“Let’s go back to bed,” I said.

And we did.

We got up a couple hours later, around 5 AM. Jack was working crazy hours. He would go in at 6 and work 12 to 16 hours before dragging himself back home.

We assumed that was the reason for his strange behavior so we made a plan to get to bed earlier.

He got home around 9pm and went immediately to bed. I joined him a couple hours later. I slid under the covers, he turned over and put his arm around me, and I was out.

I woke up with a start this time--

Again, Jack was sitting on the end of the bed, staring into the corner.

“Jack!” I hissed at him.

I’ll admit that this time I was not in the mood. It’s selfish, I know, but I just wanted to sleep. I managed to pull myself out of bed.

I sat down next to him. Again his eyes were fixed on the dark, far corner of our bedroom.

I grabbed his knee and gently shook it.

“Jack we have to go back to—“

Then Jack said something.

It sounded like “Ssss wahn uhhh...”

I leaned in close to him, fully awake now and chills going up my arm.

“What did you say, Jack?”

“Ssss wahnnn uhhh... ssss wahnnn uhhh...”

I was ready to give up and pull him back to bed rather than sit up and try to translate gibberish but then he raised his hand.

He extended his index finger and pointed into the dark corner and he whispered...

“He’s... watching... us...”

A shock of fear ran through my body like lightning.

I slowly turned from Jack to the corner where he pointed. I stared into the darkness but saw nothing.

What did I expect to see then? A ghost?

Then I jumped up and moved to the side of the bed and snapped on the lamp on the side table.

I looked over at the corner of the room one more time to be sure. There was nothing there.

“Did it happen again?”

Jack was looking at me, blinking his eyes rapidly with a kind of anguish on his face.

“I remember it this time.”

I sat next to him on the bed.

“I could see the bedroom, but I couldn’t move.”

“Sleep paralysis,” I said.

He nodded.

“It was as if something was forcing me to stare into the corner. I was just staring into the darkness until I began to see... something... emerge from the wall.”

He looked terrified.

“It was a nightmare,” I said.

I rubbed his back and kissed him.

"It felt like I was... conjuring something," he added.

"A nightmare," I repeated. “Let's go back to bed—“

BEEP BEEP BEEP!—

It was Jack’s alarm on his phone. It was 5 AM and time for him to get ready to go to work, even on a Saturday.

“Fuck,” Jack groaned.

“I’ll start the coffee,” I said as I made my way down the hall.

I decided not to tell Jack what he was saying in the night. “He’s... watching... us...” It was probably nothing anyway, just a nightmare.

I handed Jack his travel mug of black coffee, gave him a kiss and watched him step out the door into the still dark morning.

I had the day off from work. After some coffee and reading it was time to get the house in order.

I started in the bedroom. I was making the bed when I got a feeling I couldn’t shake. It felt like I was being watched.

I looked over at the corner of the room and almost screamed—

On the corner walls of the room was what looked like the silhouette of a man.

It was an outline of a full body. There was clearly a head, shoulders and torso cast onto the corner of the room.

I watched the figure for a second and something seemed off about it, apart from the obvious strangeness of its presence in general. The figure did not seem like a shadow but more like an image imprinted on the wall.

I slowly walked over to the corner and placed my hand on the wall, I don’t know why. When I pulled my hand away it was covered in a dark dust.

I looked closely at the dark image, then I wiped my rag across it. The dust came away onto the rag and powdered into the air.

It looked like ash.

I wet the rag and wiped the rest of the shadow figure it off the wall.

I know what you’re thinking, “why didn’t you just leave the fucking house?!”

The short answer is, we did.

I spent that whole day alone in the house. I spent that whole day thinking about those words that Jack had said in the night.

“He’s... watching... us...”

Then I spent the whole day thinking about that ashen shadow figure on the wall.

Then I booked us a hotel room.

Jack arrived home at about 9pm and I already had everything packed.

“What’s going on?” Jack asked.

“I got us a room at the Skyview for the night.”

He dropped his backpack on the floor.

“Did something happen?”

“I just thought a change of scenery might help you sleep through the night.”

“I don’t know I’m pretty tired already.”

I was already rolling the suitcase out the front door.

“The room is already booked and paid for. I’ll drive,” I called back to him.

I didn’t tell him that in the suitcase was a new set of lingerie and heels I had ordered a few days ago.

I woke up hours later in a king sized hotel bed now wearing nothing but sheer nylon thigh highs. The TV was still on and flickering in the corner of the room.

Through my bleary vision I could see the digital clock on the side table which read, “3:00 AM.”

I shot up and reached over to the other side of the bed.

I felt Jack’s chest. Thank god. I settled into him and closed my eyes.

Then I felt Jack’s head turn toward me. He made a sound.

“What?” I whispered.

What I heard next made my blood run cold.

“He’s... watching... us...”

I shot up and looked around the room. And then I saw it.

The TV in the corner was now showing nothing but static. Somehow something about it looked off. As if the little static particles were behaving in coordinated patterns of movement.

Then I saw it—

Within the static I could see the dark figure of a head and shoulders. It looked just like the shadow figure that appeared in our bedroom.

I could barely make out any features but from the outline of the figure I could tell it was smiling.

HE was watching us and HE was smiling.

“Jack wake up—“

Jack didn’t move.

I kept my eyes locked on the shadowy thing on the TV screen.

“Jack wake up!” I shouted this time and shook his arm.

“Jack!” he didn’t even stir.

I remembered the TV remote was on the side table. I slowly reached over keeping my eyes on the man in the static all the while.

I felt the remote with the tip of my fingers. I gripped it and quickly mashed the power button.

The screen went dark and so did my vision.

My eyes flicked around the pitch black darkness.

My vision adjusted and all I saw was the shadowy hotel room.

I turned to wake Jack and my heart nearly stopped. Jack wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the bed.

Then I saw him.

Jack was standing in front of the TV in corner of the room.

Even in the near complete darkness I could see his unblinking bloodshot eyes staring right at me.

A dead smile was plastered on his face.

“Jack? Jack wake up...” I squeaked.

He slowly moved across the room. It looked as though his body wasn’t working correctly, he moved like a marionette twitching and lurching across the room towards me.

I looked around for some form of weapon. I chose the telephone on the side table. I pulled the cord from the receiver and held it up like a club.

“Don’t come any closer, Jack.”

His rigor mortis smile continued its slow movement towards me in the darkness.

Suddenly, he was only two steps away. I stepped forward and SWUNG the phone, connecting hard with the side of his head.

I know that the thing I just hit with the phone was not Jack, not really, but I could feel that my Jack was still in there somewhere. Jack was the love of my life.

When I hit him I couldn’t help feeling regret.

After I hit him, I hesitated. Not for long, but long enough for him to turn back towards me and reach a hand for my throat.

I backed away at the last second and bolted for the door. It was too late.

He caught me by the arm.

The last thing I remember was my scream being choked out by a hand gripping my throat and squeezing hard.

I woke up in our bedroom. I was on my knees, bound with duct tape around my

ankles, wrists and mouth.

In front of me was Jack. He was kneeling facing the dark corner of our

bedroom. His head was flung back and he was rapidly whispering something.

It looked as though he was in prayer or some kind of religious fervor.

Then I saw it—

The dark shadows in the corner of the bedroom seemed to darken even more.

A shape emerged. A head, then shoulders and arms...

At first the shape appeared as a silhouette. Then it seemed to emerge from the wall and take solid form.

A face was coming through our bedroom wall, and it was darker than dark and smiling a horrible smile. The same smile I saw plastered across Jack’s face.

Jack’s whispering became more urgent.

He spread his arms out to either side.

The Dark Thing opened its eyes, they were pitch black.

Its arms emerged from the wall, they were long and its hands extended out into narrow endless fingers.

It reached out and put its hands around Jack’s throat.

I tried again to scream.

The thing’s hands moved up and gripped Jack’s head, then with one quick motion snapped his head around completely.

I’ll never forget the look on Jack’s face.

He was smiling.

I screamed and screamed and cried.

The Dark Thing pulled Jack into the corner of the room and somehow pulled him THROUGH the wall.

Jack’s body was gone and I was left alone in the bedroom screaming through the duct tape on my mouth.

I toppled onto my side and screamed until my voice box shattered and then I kept screaming. I slammed my knees into the ground, making as much noise as possible.

I don’t know how long it was before the police showed up.

They asked me what happened. I couldn’t speak after screaming for hours so I had to write it all down on one of their notepads.

I told them what I am now telling you.

They didn’t say as much but they clearly didn’t believe me. Jack’s fingerprints were on the duct tape that I was bound with and technically, he is the one that did that attacked and restrained me.

My claim that he was under some kind of supernatural possession to them just read as a defense mechanism against the domestic abuse that they believed I had suffered.

Every so often, an officer checks in with me to see if I know where Jack is or if I’ve heard from him. They believe he’s on the lam somewhere.

I’m living with my family now. I sleep with all the lights on if I’m lucky enough to sleep at all.

Lately there’s been power outages in the neighborhood. They didn’t start until I started living with them.

I don’t know why that Thing took Jack and didn’t take me.

I can only assume that one of these nights it will come back.

The velvet curtains part with a whisper, revealing the darkened stage beyond. As I step forward, the floorboards creak beneath my feet - an eerie echo in the empty theater. My heart pounds, each beat reverberating through my chest as if amplified by the cavernous space around me. I pause at center stage, willing my trembling legs to stay steady.

It's been two years since I last stood in this spot. Two years since the night that shattered my world and left me a broken shell of the man I once was. The memories flood back unbidden, as vivid and horrifying as the moment they were seared into my mind.

I close my eyes, fighting back the images, but they come anyway - a tide of terror that threatens to drown me...

The roar of the crowd. The heat of the stage lights beating down. My voice ringing out clear and strong as I delivered my lines. It was opening night of our revival of "The Phantom of the Opera," and everything was going perfectly. The audience was captivated, the cast was in top form. I felt invincible, riding high on the rush of a flawless performance.

Then came the fateful moment - the grand chandelier crash. A pinnacle of theatrical spectacle, it never failed to elicit gasps of awe from the crowd. The massive prop was rigged to plummet from the ceiling in a shower of shattering crystal, stopping just short of the stage in a stunning illusion of destruction.

But on that night, something went terribly wrong.

I heard it first - a deep groan of straining metal, audible even over the swelling orchestra. My eyes darted upward, widening in horror as I saw the chandelier swaying ominously. In that split second, I knew with sickening certainty that this was no illusion.

Time seemed to slow as I watched death descend from above. The chandelier tore free from its moorings in an explosion of splintering wood and snapping cables. It plunged toward the crowd below, a glittering harbinger of doom.

I opened my mouth to scream a warning, but no sound emerged. I was frozen, helpless, as two tons of metal and crystal crashed into the packed theater seats.

The cacophony was deafening - shattering glass, splintering wood, and the agonized screams of the audience all blending into a hellish symphony. Chaos erupted as people scrambled to escape, trampling those who had fallen in their desperation to flee.

I stood rooted to the spot, unable to tear my eyes from the nightmarish scene unfolding before me. The front rows had been obliterated, seats crushed to kindling beneath the chandelier's bulk. Those who hadn't been killed instantly writhed in agony, impaled by shards of crystal or pinned beneath twisted metal.

Blood ran in rivulets down the sloped floor, pooling at the foot of the stage. The coppery scent of it filled my nostrils, so strong I could taste it on my tongue. Still I couldn't move, couldn't even blink as I stared in slack-jawed horror.

A child's plaintive wail cut through the din, snapping me from my daze. Without conscious thought, I leapt from the stage and waded into the carnage. I pulled people from the wreckage with strength born of desperation, heedless of the glass that sliced my palms to ribbons.

For hours I worked alongside the rescue crews, digging through the rubble for survivors. But as the night wore on, we found fewer living and more dead. By dawn, the death toll had climbed to 37, with scores more injured.

I emerged from the theater as the first rays of sunlight painted the sky, clothes soaked with blood both my own and others'. My throat was raw from shouting, my body battered and aching. But the physical pain paled in comparison to the anguish that gripped my soul.

In the days that followed, I learned the gruesome details. A faulty weld had given way, sending the chandelier plummeting with lethal force. It was a freak accident, they said. No one was to blame.

But I knew better. I was to blame. I had been the star, the one whose name drew crowds to the theater night after night. If not for me, those people would never have been there. Their blood was on my hands.

The nightmares began almost immediately. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back on that stage, watching helplessly as death rained down. I relived the horror again and again, waking in a cold sweat with the victims' screams echoing in my ears.

Sleep became my enemy. I would go days without rest, fueled by a cocktail of caffeine and desperation. When exhaustion finally claimed me, the dreams were there waiting. Sometimes I was crushed beneath the chandelier myself, feeling my bones splinter as the weight pressed down. Other times I was trapped in the audience, unable to escape as the crystal shards sliced into me.

But the worst dreams were the ones where I saved them. Where I found the voice to shout a warning, or the strength to catch the chandelier before it fell. For in those blissful moments between sleep and waking, I believed it had all been just a bad dream. The crushing return to reality was almost more than I could bear.

I withdrew from the world, sequestering myself in my apartment. The very thought of stepping onto a stage again filled me with paralyzing terror. I ignored the calls from my agent, from casting directors eager to capitalize on the notorious tragedy. The newspapers dubbed me "The Phantom's Survivor," and suddenly I was more famous than ever. The irony was not lost on me.

Reporters camped outside my building, hungry for an exclusive with the reclusive star. I became a prisoner in my own home, afraid to so much as open the curtains lest I catch a glimpse of the outside world. Food deliveries piled up outside my door - I couldn't bear to face even the delivery drivers.

In my isolation, I began to see things. Shadows that moved when they shouldn't. Flickering shapes in my peripheral vision. I told myself it was just fatigue, just my mind playing tricks. But in the dark watches of the night, I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't alone.

It started small at first. Items not where I'd left them. The faint sound of whispers when no one was there. A chill in the air even in the heat of summer. I might have dismissed it as signs of my deteriorating mental state, if not for what came next.

I awoke one night to find my bedroom filled with a soft, ethereal glow. As my eyes adjusted, I saw them - translucent figures scattered about the room. Men, women, children, all bearing the gruesome injuries of that fatal night. They stared at me with hollow eyes, their faces masks of accusation and sorrow.

I scrambled back against the headboard, a scream lodged in my throat. This was a dream, it had to be. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to wake up. But when I opened them again, the spirits remained.

One by one they approached the bed. Spectral hands reached for me, icy fingers brushing my skin. Their touch sent jolts of agony through my body - the pain of crushed limbs, of impalement, of slow suffocation. Every hurt they had suffered, I felt as if it were my own.

I begged for mercy, pleaded for forgiveness. But they were beyond such things now. They had come with a singular purpose - to ensure I never forgot the lives that had been lost. That I never escaped the guilt which was my due.

Night after night they came, tormenting me with visions of their final moments. I saw through their eyes as the chandelier fell, felt their terror and pain as death claimed them. Their memories became my own, a hundred different perspectives of the same horrific event.

I was the mother who shielded her child with her own body, her back shredded by shrapnel. I was the elderly man pinned beneath a seat, slowly crushed as the crowd stampeded above him. I was the young woman who bled out in the aisle, a shard of crystal lodged in her throat.

During the day, I was haunted by phantom pains - legacies of injuries I had never actually sustained. My back ached constantly, bearing the phantom weight of the chandelier. My hands throbbed where glass had sliced them open, though the skin remained unmarked.

I began to long for death, for an end to the relentless torment. But the spirits would not allow it. Twice I tried to end my own life, only to have the pills knocked from my hand or the razor pulled from my grasp by unseen forces. They were not finished with me yet.

Months passed in a haze of misery and guilt. I wasted away, eating barely enough to stay alive. When I caught sight of myself in the mirror, I hardly recognized the gaunt, wild-eyed creature staring back at me. I looked more like a corpse than the spirits that haunted me.

It was in my darkest hour, hovering on the brink of madness, that an unexpected lifeline appeared. A letter slipped under my door, bearing the logo of the theater where tragedy had struck. I nearly burned it unread, but something stayed my hand.

With trembling fingers, I broke the seal and unfolded the heavy parchment. It was an invitation - the theater was reopening after extensive renovations, and they wanted me to headline the grand revival. My blood ran cold at the very thought.

I crumpled the letter, hurling it across the room. How dare they? How could they expect me to set foot on that stage again, much less perform? It was unthinkable.

But as the days passed, I found my thoughts returning to the invitation. The theater had been my home, the stage my refuge. For all the pain associated with that place now, I couldn't deny the pull it still held on my heart.

And so, against all reason, I found myself considering it. Perhaps, I thought, this was the key to my redemption. A chance to face my demons and lay them to rest at last. Or perhaps it was simply that I had nothing left to lose.

With shaking hands, I penned my reply. I would return to the stage one final time.

The news of my imminent return sent shockwaves through the theater world. Some hailed it as a triumphant comeback, the conquering of tragedy by the human spirit. Others decried it as a tasteless publicity stunt, capitalizing on the deaths of innocents.

I paid little heed to the discourse that raged in the press. My focus was consumed entirely by preparation for the performance - and by the growing dread that threatened to overwhelm me.

The hauntings intensified as the date drew nearer. The spirits were ever-present now, their accusatory gazes following my every move. They whispered incessantly, a constant chorus of laments and recriminations that threatened to drive me mad.

Still, I persevered. I threw myself into rehearsals with a fervor that bordered on obsession. I would make this performance perfect, I vowed. I owed the victims that much at least.

The theater had been entirely rebuilt, every trace of the tragedy erased. But I could still see it as it had been that night - the splintered seats, the bloodstained floors. Every time I set foot in the building, the memories crashed over me anew.

My castmates regarded me with a mixture of pity and unease. They had all heard the rumors of my breakdown, my descent into isolation and madness. I caught them whispering when they thought I couldn't hear, placing bets on whether I would make it to opening night.

I ignored them all, losing myself in the role. I had chosen to perform "Macbeth" - a tale of guilt and madness that felt all too fitting. As I delved deeper into the character, I found the line between actor and role beginning to blur.

Like Macbeth, I was haunted by the ghosts of those I had wronged. Like him, I was driven to the brink of sanity by the weight of my crimes. And like him, I knew that my fate was sealed - there could be no redemption for what I had done.

The night before the performance, I knelt before the spirits that haunted me. I begged them for the strength to make it through one last show. Whether they granted my request or simply decided to reserve their torments, I slept peacefully for the first time in two years.

I awoke on the morning of the performance filled with a strange calm. Whatever happened tonight, it would all be over soon. One way or another, I would find release from my torment.

As I entered the theater, a hush fell over the assembled cast and crew. All eyes were on me, watching for any sign of the fragility they all knew lurked beneath the surface. I met their gazes steadily, allowing none of my inner turmoil to show.

The hours ticked by with agonizing slowness. I paced in my dressing room, running lines under my breath as I had a thousand times before. But try as I might, I couldn't banish the feeling of impending doom that pressed down upon me.

At last, the call came. "Places in five minutes."

I took a deep, shuddering breath and looked at myself in the mirror one last time. The face that stared back was a mask of determination, all trace of fear carefully hidden away. I was ready.

I made my way to the wings, heart pounding in my chest. As I waited for my cue, I became aware of a presence beside me. I turned to see a shimmering figure - one of my ghostly tormentors. But there was no malice in its eyes now, only a deep sadness.

It reached out, spectral fingers brushing my cheek in a gesture almost like benediction. Then it was gone, leaving only a lingering chill against my skin.

The curtain rose. I stepped out onto the stage.

The bright lights blinded me for a moment, and in that instant I was transported back to that fateful night. I could hear the groaning of metal, see the chandelier beginning to fall...

But I forced the memories away, grounding myself in the present. This was not that night. I was here to perform, to honor those who had been lost. I would not let fear defeat me now.

I opened my mouth and began to speak, my voice ringing out clear and strong. The familiar words flowed from me, and I felt myself slipping into the role as I had so many times before.

But as the play progressed, I became aware of a strange energy building in the theater. The air seemed to thicken, charged with an otherworldly presence. My skin prickled with goosebumps, though I was sweating beneath the hot stage lights.

I faltered for a moment, the words catching in my throat. And in that instant of silence, I heard it - a faint whispering, audible even over the ambient noise of the crowd. My blood ran cold as I recognized the voices of the dead.

They were all around me now, filling the stage with their ethereal forms. They moved through the other actors, who seemed oblivious to their presence. But I could see them clearly, could feel their eyes upon me.

My lines became a litany of apology, the anguish in my voice bleeding through the character's words. Tears streamed down my face as I poured out my guilt and remorse to the unhearing audience.

The other actors exchanged worried glances, clearly unsure how to react to my unscripted emotion. But I was beyond caring about their confusion. My entire world had narrowed to this moment, this chance to unburden my soul at last.

As I spoke the final lines of the play, my voice broke. I fell to my knees, overcome by the weight of it all. The theater fell silent, the audience holding its collective breath.

In that moment of hushed anticipation, I felt a shift in the air. The oppressive presence that had haunted me for so long began to lift. One by one, the spirits faded from view. Their whispers grew fainter, until at last I heard only silence.

I raised my head, scarcely daring to hope. The stage was empty now, save for my bewildered castmates. The spirits were gone - but had they truly departed, or were they simply biding their time?

As the curtain fell, I remained on my knees, trembling with exhaustion and relief. I had done it. I had faced my fears and emerged...if not victorious, then at least still standing.

But even as a fragile sense of peace settled over me, a nagging doubt remained. Was this truly the end of my torment? Or merely the eye of the storm, a brief respite before fresh horrors were visited upon me?

I pushed myself to my feet on shaking legs, making my way slowly toward the wings. Whatever came next, I would face it. For I had learned that there are fates far worse than death - and I had already survived them.

As I stepped off the stage, the theater erupted in thunderous applause. But I barely heard it. My mind was already racing ahead, wondering what new trials awaited me in the days to come...​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The roar of applause faded as I stumbled into the wings, my body trembling with a potent mixture of adrenaline and dread. The other actors crowded around me, their faces a blur of concern and confusion. Their words washed over me in an incomprehensible tide, drowned out by the pounding of my own heart.

I pushed past them, desperate for solitude. My dressing room beckoned, a sanctuary from the chaos of the theater. As I fumbled with the doorknob, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the polished brass. The face that stared back was haggard, eyes wild with a combination of triumph and terror.

The door clicked shut behind me, muffling the sounds of the world outside. I slumped into my chair, letting out a shuddering breath. The room felt different somehow - lighter, as if a great weight had been lifted. But the absence of the spirits' oppressive presence only made me more acutely aware of the void they had left behind.

For two years, they had been my constant companions. Their torment had become a twisted form of comfort, a penance for my perceived sins. Now, in their absence, I felt adrift. Lost.

A soft knock at the door jolted me from my reverie. "Five minutes to curtain call, Mr. Holloway," came the stage manager's muffled voice.

Curtain call. The thought of facing the audience again sent a fresh wave of panic through me. How could I go back out there, take a bow as if this were just another performance? As if the stage weren't stained with the blood of the innocent?

My hands shook as I straightened my costume, smoothed back my sweat-dampened hair. I had to do this. I owed it to the victims, to their families. To myself.

The walk back to the stage felt like a death march. Each step was an effort, my legs leaden with exhaustion and fear. As I neared the wings, the applause swelled once more, punctuated by shouts and whistles.

I paused at the edge of the curtain, heart racing. What if this was all an illusion? What if I stepped out onto that stage and saw not an adoring crowd, but the mangled bodies of those who had died that fateful night?

A gentle pressure on my shoulder made me flinch. I turned to find the lead actress - Sarah, I remembered dimly - looking at me with a mixture of concern and admiration.

"That was incredible," she said softly. "I've never seen anything like it. Are you okay?"

I opened my mouth to respond, but no words came. How could I explain the torment of the past two years, the spectral visitations, the crushing guilt? How could anyone understand?

Sarah seemed to sense my struggle. She squeezed my shoulder gently, offering a small smile. "You don't have to explain. Just know that you're not alone, okay? We're all here for you."

Her kindness nearly undid me. Tears pricked at my eyes, and I had to look away. With a deep breath, I steeled myself and stepped out onto the stage.

The bright lights blinded me momentarily, and in that instant of darkness, panic clawed at my throat. But as my vision cleared, I saw only a sea of faces - living faces, their expressions a mix of awe and excitement.

The applause was deafening. As I took my bow, I scanned the crowd, half-expecting to see accusatory spectral faces among the living. But there were none. For the first time in two years, I was truly alone in my own mind.

As I straightened, my eyes were drawn to a figure in the front row. An elderly woman, her face lined with grief but her eyes shining with an emotion I couldn't quite place. Recognition hit me like a physical blow - I had seen her before, in the memories forced upon me by the spirits. She was the mother of one of the victims.

Our gazes locked, and in that moment, a wordless understanding passed between us. I saw forgiveness in her eyes, a release from the guilt that had consumed me for so long. A single tear slid down her cheek as she nodded almost imperceptibly.

The weight that lifted from my shoulders in that instant was almost palpable. I felt lighter, freer than I had in years. As I left the stage for the final time, a fragile hope began to bloom in my chest. Perhaps, just perhaps, redemption was possible after all.

But as I returned to my dressing room, doubt began to creep back in. The spirits were gone, yes - but for how long? Was this truly a new beginning, or merely a brief respite before fresh torments began?

I sank onto the small sofa, my mind racing. The performance was over, but I knew the real challenge was just beginning. How would I face the world outside these walls? How could I begin to rebuild a life that had been shattered so completely?

A soft knock at the door interrupted my spiraling thoughts. "Mr. Holloway?" It was the theater manager, his voice tentative. "There are some people here to see you. Family members of... of the victims. They'd like to speak with you, if you're willing."

My breath caught in my throat. Part of me wanted to refuse, to hide away in this room forever. But I knew I couldn't. I owed them this much, at least.

"Send them in," I called, my voice barely above a whisper.

As the door opened, I steeled myself for accusations, for anger and grief. But the faces that greeted me held none of that. Instead, I saw compassion, understanding, and a shared sorrow that cut me to my core.

They filed in silently - a dozen or so people, of all ages. I recognized some from the spirit-memories that had plagued me. Others were strangers, but the pain in their eyes was all too familiar.

For a long moment, no one spoke. Then an older man stepped forward, his hand outstretched. "Thank you," he said simply, his voice thick with emotion. "Thank you for remembering them."

I took his hand, my own trembling. "I'm so sorry," I whispered, the words woefully inadequate. "I never meant-"

He cut me off with a gentle squeeze of my hand. "We know. We don't blame you. None of us do."

One by one, they approached. Some spoke, sharing memories of their lost loved ones. Others simply clasped my hand or embraced me, their touch a balm to my battered soul.

As they spoke, I began to see the victims not as the broken, accusing specters that had haunted me, but as the vibrant individuals they had been in life. Their families painted pictures of dreams unrealized, of loves and passions and quirks that made them uniquely human.

For the first time, I truly mourned them - not from a place of guilt, but from a genuine sense of loss for the lives cut short. I wept openly, my tears mingling with those of the families.

When the last of them had spoken, a profound silence fell over the room. The air felt charged, as if on the cusp of something momentous. I looked around at these people who had every reason to hate me, yet had chosen forgiveness instead.

"I want to do something," I said, my voice hoarse from crying. "To honor them. To ensure they're never forgotten. I don't know what, but... I want to help. If you'll let me."

The responses were immediate and overwhelming. Ideas were shared, plans begun to take shape. A scholarship fund for aspiring actors. A safety initiative for theaters across the country. A memorial to be built in the lobby.

As we talked, I felt something stirring within me - a sense of purpose I had thought lost forever. The road ahead would not be easy, I knew. The guilt and trauma of the past two years would not vanish overnight. But for the first time since that fateful night, I dared to hope for a future.

When the last of the families had gone, I sat alone in my dressing room, emotionally drained but strangely at peace. The mirror caught my eye, and I saw a flicker of movement in its reflection. For a heart-stopping moment, I thought the spirits had returned.

But as I turned, I saw only empty air. The chill that had been my constant companion for two years was gone, replaced by a warmth that seemed to radiate from within.

I gathered my things slowly, savoring the quiet. As I reached for the doorknob, I hesitated. Beyond this room lay a world I had hidden from for so long. A world that now seemed both terrifying and full of possibility.

Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped out into the unknown. Whatever challenges lay ahead, I would face them. For the sake of those who had been lost, and for my own salvation, I would find a way to go on.

As I walked through the darkened theater, I could almost hear the whisper of phantom applause. But this time, it didn't fill me with dread. Instead, I felt a bittersweet sense of farewell - and of a new beginning.

The stage door loomed before me, a portal between worlds. I pushed it open, letting the cool night air wash over me. The city stretched out beyond, a tapestry of lights and shadows. Somewhere out there lay my future - uncertain, daunting, but alive with potential.

I took my first step into the night, leaving the haunted theater behind. But as I walked away, I couldn't shake the feeling that this was not truly an ending. The spirits may have gone, but their memory lingered. And in that memory lay both a burden and a gift - a chance to honor the dead by truly living.

The street was quiet, the late hour keeping most people indoors. But as I walked, I became aware of a presence beside me. Not the oppressive, accusing presence of the spirits, but something gentler. A companion on the journey ahead.

I glanced to my side, half-expecting to see a ghostly figure. But there was only empty air. Yet the feeling persisted - a sense that I was not truly alone. That those who had been lost were with me still, not as tormentors, but as silent guardians.

The realization brought a small smile to my lips. Perhaps this was the true nature of ghosts - not vengeful spirits, but the indelible marks left on our souls by those we've lost. The memories that shape us, haunt us, and ultimately guide us toward redemption.

As I walked on into the night, I felt a sense of peace settling over me. The road ahead would be long and difficult, but I was ready to face it. For in facing my fears, I had found a strength I never knew I possessed.

The city stretched out before me, a world of infinite possibilities. And somewhere in the distance, I could almost hear the faint strains of music - not the ominous chords of that fateful night, but a gentler melody. A song of hope, of healing, of new beginnings.

I quickened my pace, eager to see what the future held. The ghosts of my past walked beside me, no longer accusers but allies in the journey ahead. Together, we stepped into the unknown, ready to write the next act in this strange and haunting play.

The night enveloped me, cool and welcoming. And as I walked on, I felt the weight of the past two years beginning to lift. With each step, I moved further from the man I had been and closer to the man I could become.

The theater faded into the distance behind me, but its lessons remained. I had learned the power of facing one's fears, of confronting the ghosts that haunt us. And I had discovered that even in the darkest of tragedies, there is the potential for redemption.

As I reached the end of the block, I paused at the crossroads. In every direction lay a different path, a different future. The choice was mine to make.

For a moment, I stood frozen, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the decision before me. Then, taking a deep breath, I chose a direction and began to walk. Where this path would lead, I couldn't say. But for the first time in years, I looked forward to finding out.

The city swallowed me up, its rhythm becoming my own. And as I walked on into the night, I felt the first stirrings of something I had thought lost forever - hope.

The ghosts of the past would always be with me, I knew. But now, instead of dragging me down, they lifted me up. Their memory would be my guide, their lost potential my inspiration.

With each step, I moved further from the haunted theater and closer to an uncertain but promising future. The night stretched out before me, full of shadows and light, challenges and opportunities.

And I walked on, ready to face whatever lay ahead...​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

As I ventured deeper into the city, the familiar streets began to take on an unsettling quality. The flickering streetlights cast long, distorted shadows that seemed to writhe and twist with a life of their own. A fog rolled in, thick and unnatural, muffling the sounds of the night and obscuring my vision.

I quickened my pace, a sense of unease growing with each step. Something was wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on what. The city I had known all my life suddenly felt alien, as if I had stumbled into some parallel version of reality.

A figure emerged from the mist ahead, their silhouette vaguely familiar. As I drew closer, my breath caught in my throat. It was Sarah, my co-star from the play. But something was off about her appearance. Her skin was too pale, her movements too fluid.

"Sarah?" I called out hesitantly. "What are you doing here?"

She turned to face me, and I recoiled in horror. Her eyes were hollow sockets, dark and empty. When she spoke, her voice was a rasping whisper that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Did you really think it would be that easy, Thomas? That you could simply walk away and leave it all behind?"

I stumbled backward, my heart racing. This couldn't be happening. The spirits were gone, I had been freed. Hadn't I?

More figures emerged from the fog, each one a grotesque parody of someone I knew. My director, his head lolling at an unnatural angle. The theater manager, his chest a gaping wound. And behind them, a growing crowd of faceless specters.

"No," I whispered, shaking my head in denial. "This isn't real. You're gone. I saw you leave!"

A cruel laugh echoed through the air, seeming to come from the fog itself. "Oh, Thomas. So naive. Did you truly believe a single performance could atone for what happened? That you could wash away the blood on your hands so easily?"

I turned to run, but the fog had thickened behind me, forming an impenetrable wall. I was trapped, surrounded by the accusing stares of the dead.

"Please," I begged, falling to my knees. "I've suffered. I've paid for what happened. What more do you want from me?"

The spectral Sarah knelt before me, her eyeless gaze boring into my soul. "We want the truth, Thomas. The truth you've been hiding even from yourself."

"What truth?" I asked, my voice trembling. "I've hidden nothing. I've laid my soul bare, faced my guilt-"

"Not your guilt," she hissed. "Your complicity."

The word hit me like a physical blow. "Complicity? I don't understand. It was an accident, a tragic-"

"Was it?" The voice came from behind me now, and I whirled to find myself face to face with a new apparition. My blood ran cold as I recognized him - the theater's former head of maintenance, who had disappeared shortly after the accident.

"You knew, didn't you, Thomas?" he accused. "You knew the chandelier was faulty. I warned you, begged you to cancel the show until it could be fixed properly. But you couldn't bear to disappoint your adoring fans, could you? To miss out on your moment of glory."

"No," I whispered, but even as I denied it, long-buried memories began to surface. A hurried conversation backstage, brushed aside in the excitement of opening night. A nagging worry, silenced by the siren call of applause.

"I... I didn't think... I never imagined..."

"Of course you didn't," Sarah's specter sneered. "Because you didn't want to. It was easier to ignore the risk, to tell yourself it would be fine. And when it all went wrong, you hid behind your grief and guilt, painting yourself as a victim rather than face the truth of your own culpability."

The truth of her words crashed over me like a tidal wave. I saw it all now, the willful blindness that had led to tragedy. The selfish desire for acclaim that had overridden caution and common sense.

"Oh god," I moaned, doubling over as the full weight of my actions hit me. "What have I done?"

The fog swirled around me, images flickering through its depths. I saw myself dismissing the maintenance head's concerns, assuring him it would hold for one more night. Saw the doubt in his eyes, the resignation as he walked away.

"He tried to stop it, you know," the spectral Sarah said softly. "Climbed up there himself to try and secure the chandelier. He was still up there when it fell."

Fresh horror washed over me as I realized the full extent of the tragedy. Not just an accident, but a preventable disaster. And I had been the one to set it in motion.

"What happens now?" I asked, my voice hollow. "Is this my punishment? To be haunted for eternity by the knowledge of what I've done?"

The spirits exchanged glances, a silent communication passing between them. Then Sarah spoke again, her voice softer now, almost pitying.

"That would be the easy way out, wouldn't it? To succumb to madness, to lose yourself in guilt and regret. But that's not why we're here, Thomas."

I looked up, confused. "Then why? Why show me this, why make me remember?"

"Because it's time for you to truly atone," she replied. "Not with grand gestures or public performances, but with the quiet, thankless work of making amends."

The fog began to thin, the spectral figures fading. As they disappeared, I felt a weight settle onto my shoulders - not the crushing burden of before, but a solemn responsibility.

"Find them," Sarah's fading voice whispered. "Find the families of those who died. Not just the ones who came to you, but all of them. Learn their stories, help them heal. And most importantly, make sure this never happens again."

As the last of the fog dissipated, I found myself alone on the street once more. But everything had changed. The city around me was the same, and yet utterly transformed by the weight of this new knowledge.

I stood slowly, my legs shaky but my resolve firm. I knew what I had to do now, the path I had to walk. It would not be easy, and it would likely take the rest of my life. But it was the only way to truly honor those who had been lost.

As I began to walk once more, I felt a subtle shift in the air around me. The oppressive presence of the spirits was gone, replaced by something softer, almost guiding. I realized then that this had been their purpose all along - not to torment me, but to lead me to this moment of truth and revelation.

The next few months were a blur of activity. I threw myself into research, tracking down every family affected by the tragedy. Many slammed doors in my face, others greeted me with anger and accusations. But slowly, painfully, I began to make progress.

I listened to their stories, shouldered their grief and anger. I used my connections in the theater world to find jobs for those struggling financially, set up counseling services for those grappling with trauma. And with each small act, each life touched, I felt a tiny fraction of the weight lift from my soul.

But I knew it wasn't enough. The true test came when I approached the theater owners with a proposal - a complete overhaul of safety regulations, not just for our theater but for every stage in the city. It would be costly, time-consuming, and would likely end my career as an actor. But I knew it was necessary.

To my surprise, they agreed. Perhaps they too had been carrying the weight of unacknowledged guilt. Or perhaps they simply recognized the necessity of change. Whatever the reason, we set to work.

Years passed. I aged, my once-handsome face lined with the marks of stress and hard work. But with each passing day, each small victory, I felt myself growing lighter. The nightmares faded, replaced by dreams of stages made safe, of lives protected.

It wasn't until the tenth anniversary of the tragedy that I set foot on a stage again. Not as an actor, but as a speaker at a memorial service. As I stood before the crowd, I saw faces I recognized - family members of the victims, fellow actors, theater workers. All united in remembrance and in hope for a safer future.

I spoke of loss, of guilt, of the long road to redemption. But more than that, I spoke of change. Of the strides we had made in theater safety, of lives saved by new regulations and procedures. And as I talked, I felt a presence around me - not oppressive or accusatory, but supportive. The spirits of those we had lost, I realized, watching over us all.

As I concluded my speech, a hush fell over the crowd. Then, slowly, a sound began to build. Not applause, but something more profound - a collective exhalation, as if a great burden had been lifted from all of us.

I stepped down from the podium, my heart full. As I made my way through the crowd, I was stopped by a familiar face - the elderly woman from the front row of my last performance, the mother of one of the victims.

"Thank you," she said softly, taking my hands in hers. "Not just for this, but for everything you've done. My daughter... I think she would be proud."

Tears pricked at my eyes, but for the first time in years, they were not tears of guilt or sorrow. As I embraced the woman, I felt a shift in the air around us. The last lingering traces of spectral presence faded away, their purpose finally fulfilled.

That night, as I walked home through the city streets, I felt truly at peace for the first time in a decade. The weight I had carried for so long was not gone - I knew it never would be entirely. But it had transformed, from a crushing burden into a gentle reminder of the responsibility we all share to look out for one another.

As I reached my apartment, I paused at the threshold. The ghost of my former self seemed to linger there - the man I had been before that fateful night, full of ambition and self-importance. I nodded to him, acknowledging the long journey that had brought me to this point.

Then I stepped inside, closing the door on the past and opening myself to whatever the future might hold. The stage of my life had been reset, the tragedy rewritten into a story of redemption and growth. And though I knew there would be more acts to come, more challenges to face, I was ready for them.

For I had learned the most important lesson of all - that our greatest roles are not the ones we play for an audience, but the ones we live every day. And in that ongoing performance, every one of us has the power to change the script, to rewrite tragedy into hope.

As I settled into my chair, a sense of calm washed over me. The haunting was over, but its lessons would stay with me always. And in the quiet of the night, I could almost hear the faint echo of applause - not for the actor I had been, but for the man I had become.

The curtain had fallen on one chapter of my life, but I knew the true performance was just beginning. And this time, I was determined to make it one worthy of a standing ovation.

I’ve always been jealous of people who wear their hearts on their sleeves. I’ve never been able to react in a normal way. If I’m suddenly frightened, I won’t jump or scream. I still feel fear, but it looks like I don’t. I’ve only heavily sobbed two times I can remember, and I’ve never had a bout of laughter that I couldn’t stop. This strange mild manner didn’t affect how my family cared for me. However, I found most people were put off by my demeanor. It’s caused me to turn away from customer-facing jobs. After drifting from one failed career to the next, I settled on a simple one.

I would retrieve bodies, and on the side started to study to become a coroner. Believe it or not, where I live, you don’t need to have any kind of medical training to cut open dead bodies. However, I still was determined to take classes to fulfill my role. There is a desperate lack of coroners. If I wanted, I could become one and learn on the job.

I found myself blessed with a lack of a gag reflex. I drove with a partner who often needed a few minutes to compose himself on the more gruesome pickups. The last body we retrieved together upset him to the point he could barely look at it as we loaded it into the back. It was the body of a younger man riddled with quarter-sized holes. I learned that night people had a phobia of small holes bunched together. I didn’t blame people for disliking such a thing. The sight of the body made the back of my neck itchy, but I could handle it. I said I would take in the body so my co-worker could head home early. He took me up on my offer.

There is a difference between a medical examiner and a mortician. We still worked out of a funeral home simply because it was easier to split the costs of the expensive equipment between the two businesses. After the stretcher was out of the van, my partner left for the night. I easily wheeled the body to the elevator to head to the basement. The place was creepy after dark. There was never enough light downstairs. No matter how hard we tried, mold kept building up near the corners of the walls. I struggled to get the stretcher out of the elevator because one of the wheels got stuck. I made one last push, the motion almost causing the body to slip off. I silently apologized to the corpse then pushed the bag back into place. I could have sworn I felt something move inside the bag. I rubbed my hands against my pants knowing my mind was just playing tricks on me.

I pushed open one of the double doors to get into the autopsy area. A lock on the doors broke a few weeks ago making it so only one door opened. At one point you could lock both doors from the inside of the room, but if you jiggled the handle enough, you could unlock the only working door. We hadn’t gotten any oversized bodies come through, so we didn’t bother spending the money to fix it. My boss already finished the previous body we brought in earlier that day. He was just signing the report when I wheeled the newcomer into the middle of the room.

“Just you tonight, Rory?” My boss asked as he turned around.

“I can get our client downstairs on my own, it’s not a big deal, Mr. Flynn.” I replied not pausing in my task transferring the body to the steel table.

“Victor.” He corrected.

He has been trying to get me to call him by his first name since I started working there. Because he was older than me, it felt a bit disrespectful. I nodded trying to break my habit. He came over and helped remove the bag. We silently worked together getting the room prepped for our task. After looking over the body in a better light, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to him. He was found in the middle of the woods, with no ID and rags for clothing. Aside from the holes, there were no other signs of death. Each hole appeared to be so clean I considered a human made the wounds with some sort of tool. But for what purpose? Figuring out the motive behind a crime wasn’t our job. We just needed to figure out the cause of death.

“Can I stay and watch on this one?” I asked as we were finishing organizing the side table of tools.

“I think you’re ready to make some cuts this time. You have a steady hand and have respect for the dead. It will be nice when you’re able to assist with some of the troublesome paperwork.” Victor said with a very small smile.

I respected him a great deal. I wondered if it was because we were similar. His voice was soft, and he was never troubled by any kind of gruesome sight that came with the job. I’ve never seen him rattled, and yet he could still smile. We also had matching pale skin, black hair, and dark eyes. I bet some people assumed we were related.

“I’m awful at paperwork. I think they might be all on you.” I replied with a shrug.

Which was the truth. I really hated doing reports.

“Darn it. At least I have an employee willing to sacrifice their Friday night for work.”

I didn’t realize it was a Friday. No wonder my co-worker wanted to get out of there so fast. I glanced over to watch my boss so carefully arrange the scalpels and tweezers in their proper places. It was like he’d done the same actions a thousand times before. Even after working here for a while, I didn't know that much about him.

“If we don’t have any clients come in, do you want to do something next Friday?” I asked fully aware of how unprofessional the request sounded.

A confused expression came over his face. It was as if no one had ever asked him such a question before.

“You’re aware I’m old enough to be your father, right?” He said a smile creeping back onto his face.

“I didn’t mean it like that. Like, just to hang out. To get to know each other.” I wanted to sound offended by my voice stayed in the same monotone it always had been.

“We can get to know each other here. However, most people find it difficult to bond as they remove organs. I think we can make it work. But I don’t know why you would be interested though.” Victor said.

At least he wasn’t going to fire me or report me to HR. Did we even have an HR?

“I think you need a friend.” I gave an honest answer.

People may think we were alike. But after working here I knew Victor was different in some ways others may not notice. I couldn't emote the way I wanted. He kept his emotions hidden behind a calm and collected mask. I couldn’t shake the feeling he didn’t show just how lonely he felt to anyone. I often found myself watching him for an extra second or two through the basement door windows. His expression was much different when he thought he was alone. I’ve seen his hand go to take off a ring that wasn’t there before washing his hands out of habit. Along with so many other hints that he didn’t have anyone in his life. I wasn’t expecting him to accept my offer of friendship so we could keep things professional, but I wanted him to know the offer would always be there.

A sound made us turn around. When you work in a morgue, you don’t expect to hear anything aside from the hum of the fridge. What we saw didn’t register for a few seconds. I saw a stressed smile come over my boss’s face. He was fully convinced this was a prank.

The body I’d brought in sat up. The head slowly turned in our direction, the blank eyes landing on two shocked workers. My boss looked at me expecting I would fess up to a joke. For once, my expressions showed just enough horror to convince me I wasn’t behind all of this. I didn’t blame him for not thinking this was real. Bodies don’t just sit up. Half-rotten ones with countless holes don’t move. But whatever made a home inside that flesh does.

The corpse reached an arm out, and squirming shapes came to the surface of random holes. I felt stomach acid hit the back of my throat making me think I would throw up for the first time in my life for a reason beyond an illness. The small creatures that made their home inside the body crawled out just enough for us to see the worm-like body and a mouth filled with countless teeth. We both reacted far too late.

My hand fell on a scalpel. I gripped it tight, but my mind was slow to react. The corpse suddenly launched itself off the table and onto the person next to me. I pried the monster off him far too late. Within those few seconds, it had ripped open my boss's collar to get to the skin underneath. The bite wasn’t as bad as I feared, but I saw one of those worms trying to get into the wound. Victor sputtered in shock and raised a hand to his bleeding neck.

I stabbed the scalpel deep into the corpse's temple. I tossed the body aside to go over to remove the worm trying to dig into warm flesh. I had just finished stomping the thing into the cold tile floor when the corpse came at us again. So, it didn’t follow zombie movie rules which sucked. We were too cheap to buy rib shears and used garden shears instead. The weight of them was nice in my hands. I kept the attacking monster back long enough for Victor to stumble towards the door.

I got the walking corpse behind the stretcher I used to wheel it in. I then pushed the stretcher against the wall, pinning the body for a few seconds. I then ran grabbing hold of Victor’s arm to try and drag him out of there. We didn’t make it.

I heard a god-awful cracking sound. By the time I looked, the head of the corpse had split open. A long disgusting tube came from the neck, so many teeth shone in the dim light. I felt my body get pushed to the side when that long worm snapped outwards lighting fast to clamp down on Victor’s throat. His mouth fell open in a silent scream and his legs gave out from under him.

I don’t know if the creature was weakened, or if we were just lucky. I pulled off the tube mentally wincing at the large wound that was left behind. I saw more of those smaller worms wiggling around and infecting a new host. I got him to his feet, and we made it to the door before the tube attacked again.

I was forced through the door, and suddenly it was closed behind me. I saw Victor’s pale face through the window, a pained smile on his face.

“Victor!” I shouted at him as I pushed against the door with everything I had.

He knew he was infected and didn’t want to risk whatever we were facing to get out. He wanted me to get out safe and barricading himself with the monster inside the room was the only way.

The hell with that.

He collapsed on the other side of the door as I got to work jiggling the handle to unlock it. I needed to act fast. The worm noticed my face behind the window. When I felt the door unlock, I held my breath and waited. The gruesome worm shot out again, crashing through the window. I ducked just in time and then charged into the room.

First, I got down low to find a lighter in Victor’s pockets. I knew he smoked but was trying to quit. I found the small object and then raced over to the desk on the other side of the room. The people working here got used to the smells of the job, but we often got cops or detectives who weren’t. As a small mercy, we would spray some Lysol if we knew they were coming. I grabbed a can I knew was full. Then I faced the creature that was recovering from the failed attack.

Normally I was against people doing what I did. If you held the flame too close to the nozzle the flames could go back inside the can and explode. Knowing that I kept the lighter far enough away to be a bit safer and created the outcome I wanted.

Before the worm could shoot out again, I sprayed the main body with as many flames as I could. I heard wailing from the other infected creatures inside the body. The attack didn’t last as long as I liked. The monster got out from behind the stretcher to stumble around screaming in pain. We also worked with a lot of flammable chemicals. I won’t say what I poured on the screaming corpse as it was distracted but it worked. With one more lighter flick, the thing burst into flames.

I coughed as I dragged Victor out of the room. I blocked the door keeping the now dying monster inside to burn.

He didn’t look good. He lost a lot of blood, and I got right to work pulling out any worms I saw. The skin around his puncture wounds wriggled with the infection. I didn't know what to do. I would cause more damage by ripping those worms out. I risked nicking an artery because of where they were crawling around. Through the stress of the moment, I saw a thin chain around his neck with a worn wedding ring. For some reason, that sight was what made me refuse to lose him.

I got as many worms as I could. Then I realized he’d stopped breathing. I needed to deal with that first. Thank God I recently redid my CPR course. I know most people wouldn’t dare give mouth-to-mouth to someone he had just been infected with who knows what, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I just wanted him to live.

CPR is hard on the body. I didn’t know if it had been a minute or an hour. Sweat already stung my eyes as I silently begged him to breathe again. I went from begging to telling him to come back. I couldn’t explain why I became so sure Victor would open his eyes again. It was like I told the universe that it wasn’t his time and it listened. I was scared as hell when the infected corpse sat up, and yet I wasn’t scared for Victor.

A sharp hot pain came from my hands in the middle of compressions. It was as if an electrical current came from my chest to travel into his. After the feeling disappeared, Victor started to cough. His body jerked as his back arched. I grabbed a hold of his head and laced my fingers behind it to cushion his skull from slamming into the hard ground. I didn’t force him to stay still unsure if that would harm him more. I just didn’t want him to smash his head open as he thrashed around.

The bloody wound on his neck wriggled and to my shock, slowly started to heal. When he finally fell still, the wound scarred over, and his breathing returned to normal.

I sat, covered in blood with a horrible burnt smell overtaking the entire basement. I wasn’t even aware a pair of men in suits came out of the elevator, one with a sword in hand. The other held a gun pointed downwards.

I met their stares, feeling as shocked as they looked. The next few moments were a blur. One checked on the charred pile in the other room. He then borrowed the stretcher to place Victor on. I was separated from him to be led into a car waiting outside.

I don’t know how long we drove for. No one told me much. They just provided some water and rags to get cleaned up a little. The car stopped in front of a medical building I didn’t recognize. I was brought into a clean white room and then told to hand over my clothing to be destroyed. I didn’t put up a fight. At least I was given some privacy to shower and change into a clean set of white clothing. Then I was left alone for hours.

The room had a bathroom, a hard bed, and a stack of paperback books. Nothing else. I sat alone trying to understand what happened. I had a million questions but when another man dressed in a suit came into the room, I only asked one.

“Is Victor alright?”

I hated how calm I sounded. For once, I wanted to act as distressed as I felt.

“So far. He’ll be under observation.” The man explained.

He took out my wallet and phone that had been in my pockets when I gave up my clothing. At least I got those back.

“Is everything alright? I mean, are there more infected corpses out there?” I pressed slightly worried this was the start of the end of the world.

He thankfully shook his head.

“This was a mistake. It never should have happened let alone you to be the one to pick up the body. Normally a company that deals with... things of this nature are the ones on scene. I hate to say it, but this slipped through the cracks. As awful as it is, when accidents in this manner do happen, they get cleaned up quickly afterward.”

His suit looked perfect along with his styled black hair. He looked like the ideal image of a secret agent. He hinted at the fact this sort of thing happened often enough for an entire company with agents to deal with it to exist. At that moment I didn’t care about the fact monsters were real.

“So, two people nearly dying counts as a quick cleanup? Is Victor just a mistake?” Again, I hated just how calm my voice sounded. On the inside my chest was hot from rage.

The man’s face dropped. He lost his tough agent mask and I felt bad snapping at him. If it was up to him. There would be no mistakes. For some reason, they couldn’t fully avoid others getting hurt.

“You’re right to be upset. We should have caught onto this before it reached you. We’ll be providing Mr. Flynn as much care as needed.”

I thanked him for that news, but I didn’t apologize for my words. Since I was cleared to go, he led me outside to a waiting car. There were no threats to not tell others what happened, nor did he say what company he worked for. I got home that night with so many questions but was too exhausted to think about them.

I didn’t go to work for two days. The cover-up story was there had been a gas leak. On the second day an unknown number called. I answered it hoping it was news about how my boss was doing. When they said he was doing well, I pressed to be able to go and see him. After a bit of back and forth, they agreed to send another car. The other medical building was two hours away. I didn’t mind. I needed to sign in and somehow it didn’t feel like a top-secret government building. The same agent as the other night met me at the door. He filled me in a little as we made our way down to Victor’s room.

“Seeing him may be hard on you. He won’t be the same as before. Normally the infection takes over the body so it can multiply inside. For some reason, the worms fused with his body creating well... something we’ve never seen before. His brain was affected. He doesn’t seem to remember much. The doctors thought it would be good to have a familiar face with him, however...” The Agent stopped speaking.

We stood outside the room and yet he didn’t open the door just yet. My stomach turned waiting for the rest of the conversation.

“We cannot guarantee your safety. He may lash out searching for food.” He warned.

I nodded my head. I was a bit scared of what I was going to see inside that room. I refused to let myself give in to that fear. When the agent knew I was fully aware of the risk, he opened the door to let me inside.

Victor looked awful. His face was pale with bags under his eyes. His black hair was limp and unbrushed. He had a small tray on his bed with some small squares of colored paper. A few crumpled balls on the floor showed how he failed to fold the paper into whatever he wanted to make. I slowly walked over, pausing a few steps away.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked softly.

He raised his head, eyes blank with zero recognition on his face. The oversized white sweater made him seem even paler. His new scars on full display. When I took a step closer, a deep growl came from him. I moved slightly closer, and he pulled back his lips to show off a mouth full of sharp teeth. I notice the agent in the open doorway, still and yet ready to act.

I sat on the chair beside his bed ignoring the threatening display.

“I don’t know how to fold a crane either. Let’s learn how together. I think you need a friend.” I said as I reached over to the paper with the folding instructions.

I expected him to snap at my hand being so close. The growling died down and a human expression came back to his face. He watched as I picked up a colored paper to get started with. The one in his hand was wrinkled.

“Let’s use a fresh piece. What color do you want?” I asked as I took the pile to flip through the colors.

“Red....” His voice was low and hoarse, but at least he was talking.

I stayed with him for over an hour learning how to fold. I think it was good for him. By the time I was told to leave we had two badly finished cranes on his bedside table. I promised I would be back whenever I was able.

It felt wrong to leave him behind. He shouldn’t be in this state. None of this should have happened.

I couldn’t sit still. I knew the gas leak story was a lie. After getting home from seeing Victor I headed over to the funeral home. I don’t know what I was looking for. The back door was locked but I knew the code. The smell of burnt flesh still hung in the air. It got stronger as the elevator descended to the basement. I stepped into the room seeing they hadn’t cleaned up the blood stains on the floor.

The body had been removed, that was all. Everything was a mess from the struggle. I was told someone would be by to clean because the company already collected everything they needed. But they didn’t know when they could send the cleaning service.

I gathered up what I needed to get to work. I don’t know why I felt I needed to be the one to scrub the blood off the floor. Since the funeral home was closed, I never expected someone to come down into the basement.

I didn’t even hear them. When a person cleared their throat behind me, my body tensed up. My hand squeezed the sponge so hard it hurt. I half expected to see another dead body up and walking around. That would have been more believable compared to who I saw.

A very short man looked down at me. I didn’t recognize him and thought it was strange he was wearing pieces of a costume. When he took a step to better see what I was doing I realized his tall rabbit ears and feet were real.

“I am Lupa, the office supervisor for The Corporation. I wanted to meet with you personally to apologize for what happened, but you were not at home.” He said, his deep voice did not match his appearance.

He wore a professional brown vest over a button-up shirt. His dress pants stopped at the knees to let his rabbit legs move freely. He even had a tail that I very much wanted to touch. I didn’t let my expression show my intentions.

“I think Victor is the one you should apologize to.” I replied standing up to address him.

“Yes, you’re correct. Tragic that he was harmed. Unfortunately, we do not have enough manpower at our disposal to ensure such a thing never happens again. You can imagine how hard it is to come by people who not only know about supernatural threats but can deal with them. We’re lacking in manpower in each department as you can see. Not even enough cleaners to go around.” He said while giving a dirty look to the soapy bloody water on the floor.

I didn’t like his tone. He spoke as if implying he wanted to say something else.

“Like, crime scene cleaners? But for uh... supernatural crime scenes? There are people for that?” I asked.

“Some. Not enough.” He shrugged. “A shame because we do pay so well.”

I knew he didn’t come here to apologize. I didn’t know why he didn’t just come out and say his reasoning for dropping by. But how did he know I was here to clean up the place? Did he want to offer me any kind of job but didn’t care what I did? Were they desperate for people they were willing to let me do any kind of job for them?

“So, you’re saying there are a few job openings. I’m currently out of work right now. My boss is in the hospital. Do I need to submit a resume?”

Lupa smiled at my words. For a cute rabbit man, he really creeped me out. There was something dark hidden behind his expression.

“No need for such a thing. We already know everything about you. I’ll send over the information for you to approve of. I warn you; this job can have some dangers. Of course, we compensate well because of that.”

Any job that deals with cleaning up blood or other body fluids is a hazard. Not to mention the mental toll of seeing the outcome of what happens to a body in these scenes. Instead of dealing with just normal murders, or bodies rotting alone, I would see the aftermath of a supernatural attack. This wasn’t a job for any sane or rational person.

“Alright. I’ll finish up cleaning this and then I can look over the job information.” I nodded.

Another somewhat sinister smile came from Lupa. He thanked me and then headed on his way. I really shouldn’t be sticking my nose into danger. I got lucky getting out alive after an encounter with one monster. But I was only cleaning up messes, how dangerous could it be? A job is a job. No matter how frightening or life-threatening it may be. At least I somewhere knew what I was getting into.

As I cleaned for hours that night, I wasn’t aware of what nightmares waited for me from accepting this job offer.

This is my first time, and likely only time, sharing something here. I’m not even sure what is compelling me, but I’ve got a story that needs to be told, and everyone else I’ve tried to share it with has left me alienated. The department has me on a ‘Mental Wellbeing’ break, clinical talk for ‘suspended until I get my shit together.’ Two counselors I’ve spoken with have said it is PTSD, but I know that isn’t the case. My wife said I was being obsessive and losing touch, but now she has gone to stay with her mom, and based on the manilla envelope the post office informs me is due to arrive soon, I’ve got divorce papers en route. So here I am, writing down what sounds like absolute lunacy while I keep an eye on my surroundings, because in a day or two, I might not be able to bother anyone with this story again.

I don’t blame my wife, I love her deeply and I know it is a sentiment she shares, but when someone you love refuses to partake in what you believe would help, what choice is really left; the things I’ve ranted about would seem delusional and dangerous to myself as well if I hadn’t witnessed it personally. I don’t blame the department, it would be outright irresponsible to have me out on the streets with the things I’ve claimed, but again, they just aren’t seeing what I am. I don’t blame the two counselors I’ve spoken with, one from the department, the other from the VA; I’ve got a body of work ripe for the diagnosis they gave me. The truth is I know something horrible is loose in Helox County. I will do whatever I need to protect the people I love, the place I call home, and I’m scared it is beyond my capability to handle.

Helox County has been home to me for twenty-six of my thirty years alive. I was born and raised here, my dad a fabricator at the aircraft assembly plant, my mom a waitress at one of the diners. I played linebacker for Tabbarn High School, even set the record for most tackles by a player, season and career (a record that a Senior is set to break this year, I’m sad I probably won’t get to see it.) After high school I spent four years in the Marine Corps as a Rifleman where I did two tours in Afghanistan, I was even awarded a Silver Star for valor in combat. When I returned I got a job with the Helox County Sheriff’s Department, and after two years as a patrol deputy, I was assigned to the Special Enforcement Bureau Tactical Team, SWAT in everything but name. 

Some people may have lofty dreams, but for me, I’ve lived my dream life. Hobbies and work that provide bursts of adrenaline, then coming home to my high school sweetheart, who to me will have always been the hottest cheerleader at Tabbarn High (a record that will never be broken.) We had even begun discussing the possibility of having kids, hell, she might be pregnant right now. So when I began to perceive this threat, it was only natural I’d do whatever it takes to intercept it. I’m not, have never been, the type to not meet a challenge, it is a very core tenet of my being. Unfortunately it seems I may have finally come across a challenge I can’t meet.

Without further ado, let me tell you the story of how my life has fallen into ruin. It all started a little less than a year ago, with what should have been the highlight of a law enforcement officer’s career; a night when I stopped a very bad guy, and saved a young girl’s life.

—

August 02nd, 2023

Summertime in Helox County is unbearably hot, such is life in a high desert. The thermometer topped out at 115 degrees that day, which suspended any planned training for the day, instead we just went through gear checks and hung around the station waiting for any potential callouts. Frankly, I was hoping we would have a peaceful day. There is a weird kind of compromise for a Tactical Team during heatwaves. Usually the vast majority of our callouts is for a barricaded suspect, which during days like these amounts to establishing a perimeter, killing their air conditioning, and letting them swelter until they give up; the other side of that coin is we have to endure that same heat in tactical gear and heavy metal vehicles.

“All right boys, off your asses, we got a call.” Lieutenant Robert Hawell, a man who believes he is the epitomization of a modern cowboy and the team leader of the Tactical Team, announced as he entered, destroying our hopes beneath the spurs of his boots. “Barricaded suspect with a hostage in the Plainview Estates.”

An audible groan left the lips of every team member, knowing we had just been dragged into exactly what we were dreading. Nonetheless, we were professionals, so we grabbed our equipment and began moving it into the Bearcat, preparing to head out. By 1:30PM the giant armored vehicle was rolling out of the garage, accompanied by two cruisers with their sirens on as we sped towards the residential neighborhood.

“What’s the deal, L.T.?” Darius Milton, a long time friend who had made Tactical at the same time I had, inquired. “Another guy slap his wife and lock himself inside to try and get out of it?”

“Don’t have all the details, but it doesn't appear so. Nosy neighbor reported a break in, saying she heard screaming and gunshots. Patrol car responded, said they arrived just as the intruder was leaving with a child, apparently a few shots got fired. They think they wounded the suspect, but he retreated back inside. Negotiator is on scene trying to make contact now.”

“Armed pervert, great.” Darius spoke quietly to me, not wanting to interrupt Hawell as he was on the radio. “Dude deserves to get shot in his nuts and thrown on the asphalt, instead he is probably bleeding to death in an air conditioned room.”

“Won’t be air conditioned for long. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll poke his head out the window.”

It was 2:15PM when we arrived on scene, entering the hottest part of the day. The Bearcat was parked near the front of the residence, other cruisers being used to block off the neighborhood, and we all dismounted, Hawell going to speak with the negotiator as the rest of us took in the scene. There was a police car near the Bearcat, several of the windows shattered and the passenger door pocked with bullet holes. A small pool of blood dripped from the bottom opening of the door, cooking on the hot asphalt. Looking out on the car was a two story tract home, recently repainted, the front door open and the glass panes framing it shot out.

“Looks like a lot more than just a few shots fired…” I spoke aloud, more to myself than anything, but Darius nodded as he surveyed the same things I was looking at.

“Hope the deputy is okay, but that doesn’t look good.” Darius replied, but the fatalism in his tone indicated just how little hope he held. A Helox County Deputy hadn’t been killed in the line of duty in nearly four years, and we both knew we were looking at a real possibility of that streak ending.

“Gather round!” Hawell called out and we joined him behind the security of the Bearcat’s thick walls. There was a rage in his eyes, cold and pure hatred, and he spat before correcting the brim of his Stetson. “We got a real nasty sonuvabitch in there, apparently. Deputy Beagle took a bullet when they confronted the perp, he is enroute to Memorial as we speak but in critical condition.”

Those words led to an uncomfortable silence, all of us well aware that as we stood there one of our colleagues was now fighting for their life. After a moment, I broke the silence.

“So what happened here, Lieutenant?”

“The house belongs to John and Claire Trepa.” It helped to focus on the task at hand, but there was still a clear tone of anger in Hawell’s voice. “Both cars in the driveway belong to them, but the third is listed in a stolen vehicle report from Berren County. According to the neighbor, it pulled up, and a man got out, broke into the house. Gunshots and screaming followed, at which point the blue-hair called the cops. Deputies responded, arrived as the suspect was leaving with the Trepa’s 13 year old daughter, he fired at them, they returned fire, wounded him in the shoulder. Beagle’s partner chased him inside, but the suspect holed up in the master bedroom with the girl. He has been threatening to kill her if anyone tries to come in the room.”

“What is the game plan?” Darius asked, and much like me, I could tell he was dreading the thought of a long and drawn out negotiation. We were men of action, and in a scenario as charged as this, there was an overwhelming desire to simply burst through a door and finish it.

“Darius, Cliff, you two go relieve the officer inside. Keep that door under watch, if you’ve got a chance, take it, otherwise we wait for the negotiations to end. The rest of us will keep watch outside unless something changes.”

We didn’t protest, we wouldn’t, but neither of us was happy about that order. It was scorching hot, the second floor of the house would only be getting worse with its western facing windows getting cooked as the sun started to dip, and clad in heavy, dark tactical gear, we’d be stuck in a personal sauna for what could conceivably be hours. All the while just waiting for this lunatic to decide whether he wanted to bleed to death or come out guns blazing. For some reason, the thought of a peaceful surrender was just not even considerable. Without any complaint, Darius and I double checked our rifles, strapped on our helmets, and headed inside.

Now, I’ve seen some grisly shit in my time; the aftermath of a drone strike on a crowded building, the insides of a corrugated shed shredded by a full belt of .50 caliber, human bodies absolutely vaporized. So why did this strike me as so bad? Despite the severe heat, I felt chilled, cold sweat running down my exposed face.

“Damn…” Darius spoke first as we entered the living room, and I could tell he was as affected by the scene as I was.

John Trepa, what could be assumed was John Trepa, sat on the couch. Clearly he had been watching television when the break in occurred, he had one arm draped over the back of the couch, half turned to look at whatever noise had caught his attention when the intrusion began. Had he seen it? Hard to say. The top half of his skull was missing, chunks of it spread all over the living room wall, drips of viscera splattered against the television which was still flickering with images underneath.This wasn’t a clean decapitation, it was a hate filled act, the killer had stood there and shot him multiple times to inflict that kind of carnage.

As we entered the hallway, we came across Claire, another victim of this evil person’s sickness. Unlike her husband, she hadn’t been shot, and her death had all the looks of being slow and brutal. Her blouse…it must have been blue, but you’d be hard pressed to say, was tattered to an extreme, a multitude of puncture wounds made with a bladed weapon (the coroner would later confirm 47 different entry wounds,) and so soaked in her blood that even now it looked fresh. The carpet beneath her was likewise stained, and I had to imagine that when the time came for clean up that they would have to remove the flooring down to the cement, and would likely find a stain there as well. Arterial spatter lined the walls, and even the ceiling, just the most nightmarish visage I had ever seen since joining the Sheriff’s Department.

“On task, we’ve still got a live person to worry about.” Darius told me, and I nodded, dragging myself back to reality, the consideration of the dead scheduled for later hours.

“I hope we still do…this fucker is clearly not right.”

Bloody shoe prints laid out our path; two sets, leading us away from the atrocious acts, though their very presence had permeated the house. The first set of prints weren’t as deeply stained in the carpet, almost like a stamp that had barely grazed an ink pad, and from the pattern they obviously belonged to the standard issue shoes the department provided uniformed deputies. Deeper imprinted, as if they had been so thoroughly soaked in blood that it started hiding distinguishing features, were the worn sole prints of a set of hiking boots. Both went to the same place, and before long, we found ourselves at the stairwell, an ascending U-turn that led to the second floor.

“Friendly.” I called out as we began advancing, the deputy at the top of the stairs turning only temporarily to see us before returning his focus to the door at the end of the hallway. I recognized him instantly, the aged features and graying hair, Deputy Pollak had been a training officer with the department since before I hit my teenage years. His face looked gaunt, sweat covered, but his eyes were so focused in a mixture of horror and rage.

“Relax, Pollak. We’ve got it from here.” Darius told him quietly, and we both moved to assume better angles, Darius laying down on the hallway carpet, his rifle pointed at the door at the end of the hall, while I found cover behind a credenza and did the same.

“Yeah…” Pollak spoke in a low tone, his thoughts clearly a mess, and for the first time the reality of the day was dawning on him. He holstered his pistol, took a few steps down, then turned back to face us. “That guy isn’t right, there was just something off about the whole thing. He isn’t going to come out peacefully, you two better be ready to go in there.”

“We’re ready, don’t worry. The girl is still alive?” I asked, not once taking my eyes off the door as I shouldered my rifle, lined my scope up with the center of the doorway.

“I’ve heard her whimper and cry a few times, I don’t think he has hurt her yet, but given the opportunity, he is going to. You see what he did down there?” More anger, more fear in Pollak’s voice, and oddly I found comfort in knowing that as steeled a veteran as him was equally disturbed by what had happened in this house. “Just be ready, we need something, some small sliver of good to come out of here, and the only thing left is that poor girl’s life.”

With that, Pollak began down the stairs, but he stopped at the bottom, looked back up at us.

“She’s about 4’7. He’s around 6’3.” 

Nothing more needed to be said, the quiet implication found by both Darius and I. We adjusted our rifles slightly, our aim drifting just a tad higher. I thumbed the fire selector to the middle option, a burst of three rounds, then settled in for a long wait. There were no words to be exchanged between us, just singularly focused on the door at the end of the hall. Still, I couldn’t help but think about the carnage down below us. What kind of hatred lurked in a man’s heart to perform those kinds of acts?

One hour passed, then two, then three. The heat was sweltering in that upstairs hallway as the sun baked the house, and I can only imagine how much worse it must’ve been in the confines of that bedroom. Every so often we would hear the young girl cry, sob, groan, yet never heard the kind of sounds that would justify forced entry. Occasionally we would hear him, the man we would later identify as Thomas Frinz, scream or yell, likely into a phone and to the negotiator outside. Finally, that horrible moment came upon us at 6:27PM.

“No, no! Please! NO! Don’t!” She was shrieking, voice filled with terror, and I empathized, I felt it myself.

“Now, we’ve got to go!” Darius urged and I didn’t hesitate to agree.

Hurrying to the end of the hall, we didn’t wait, we didn’t radio for backup or inform them we were going in, there was no time. I stood in front of the door, Darius just slightly angled to my side.

“NOOOOO!” Again, that poor girl had already lived hell, and now she might have had to endure the last bit of it.

“Do it!” I urged, unnecessarily, as Darius' foot was already moving.

He kicked the door just under the handle, a powerful stroke, and the kick blew the flimsily made tract home door open wide, pushing it off one hinge, the other creaking as it was all that remained between the door and the carpet. I saw Thomas there, hand on the girl’s throat, his other hand holding a knife high and preparing to bring it down. He looked at me, but in that moment, I didn’t even process what would later come to startle me. I just pulled the trigger. Once, depressing it, and the rifle fired three bullets. One through the sternum, one through the chest, one through the collar, I’d have been hard pressed to group them better on the range. He fell backwards, gurgling, clutching at wounds that would never be staunched.

“Get her out of here, now.” I ordered and Darius quickly moved in, grabbing the girl, lifting her up, and hurriedly moving her out of the room and down the stairs.

Just as the bodies downstairs were not the first I had seen, this was not the first life I had taken. It was, however, the first time I ever watched someone closely as their life drained away. I’ll be honest; it was disconcerting. I knew the person dying in front of me was more monster than man, I’d be validated in this belief later, that I would not be sinned for feeling some small sense of joy in what I had done, but it eluded me then, and instead I just felt a sense of raw dread, something…metaphysically wrong with what I was seeing.

Now I need to clarify, this recollection has undoubtedly been tainted by what would happen in the days, weeks, and months after. In the particular seconds after, I wasn’t aware of any of this, my eyes were focused on his, and I kept my weapon trained on him. If he so much as flinched, I had every intention of subjecting him to the same treatment he had given John Trepa downstairs, and part of me wanted nothing less. Instead, he stayed still, slumped against the wall, his hand clasping at the bullet wound to his collar which was pumping an immense and fatal amount of blood down his shirt. His eyes never left mine, and as he sat there, wheezing and struggling with what would be his dying breaths, he smiled, dirty teeth, wet with blood that began spilling down his lip and chin.

It was a look of success, and to this day, it still twists my stomach to think about that gloating, satisfied expression on this bastard’s face, after brutally killing two people and ruining a young girl’s life, like he had accomplished something. In hindsight, I guess he had, but also in hindsight, I wish I had squeezed the trigger again. Not that it would have changed anything, but at least I would have that more graphic memory as opposed to the one I was left with. Instead, I just kept still, weapon ready, until I heard Hawell and the rest of the team enter the room. They checked and secured Thomas’ corpse. At this point, the adrenaline faded, and I got my first proper glance of the room.

Frinz had been busy in the time he had been held up inside the Trepa’s master bedroom. An autopsy on his corpse would later confirm four bullet wounds; forensics would match three to my rifle, but the fourth (technically the first) was a match to Deputy Pollak’s pistol, and had hit the suspect in the shoulder. The wound was clean, the bullet lodged into his shoulder, except it had additional markings that would be determined as self-inflicted with the knife. Frinz had been poking the wound with his knife during the entire standoff, likely to make it continue bleeding more than it was. A rational mind might assume he was trying to dig the bullet out, but one look around the room would dispel that notion.

The walls were covered in symbols, painted in his own blood. I couldn’t tell you what they mean, I know the detectives recovered a tome (and I mean tome as in a very old book) that uses those same symbols throughout from Frinz’s stolen car, and that it is just as morbid and upsetting as what was written on those walls. They were never matched to any known language or cipher, even with several experts consulted. I’m sorry I can’t show them, but I’ve lost access to any of the case material due to my suspension. I’ve got to believe that they are something profane, some ritual or words of some rite, that they are tied into why Frinz seemed so happy despite the fact that I mortally wounded him and interrupted whatever he intended to do with that poor young girl.

Hawell ordered me out of the room once it was secured, now the scene of an officer involved shooting in which I was the main perpetrator. I was happy to leave, the symbols on the wall disturbed me, and the satisfied smile on the face of Frinz’s corpse made my blood run cold. When I headed down the stairs, I did my best to avoid looking at the scenes of carnage on the first floor which were now being documented, but I can still recall them vividly even now, they aren’t anything I’ll ever forget. If there was some hope for respite with exiting the Trepa’s residence, it was dashed as soon as I stepped out. 

A gust of wind hit me as I stepped out the front door, and my sweat soaked face instantly went clammy and deathly cold. My stomach turned, rattled and lurched as the enormity of everything I’d dealt with these past few hours came home to roost. I turned and vomited into a hedge, spilling out the entire contents of my breakfast and lunch in one quick burst. It brought me to my knees, my head swimming. Unstrapping my helmet, I planted the dome in the grass and rested my face against it as I knelt.

Instantly, I was thinking back to the hallway, storming in through the door. I saw the young girl, held on the floor, and I saw Frinz, his knife raised and ready to plunge down into her. He looked up at me, eyes wide…but not in any kind of surprise. In readiness, in anticipation, as if he had expected this all along, wanted it. His face, it was distorted, the features shifted to give it a more menacing look, more wrinkled, bones more pronounced, almost a corruption of what a human should look like, like an abnormal monster from a book or a movie. Even his teeth looked different, sharp and pointed, dripping with black ichor.

“Cliff…Cliff, man, you okay?” Darius came over to me, kneeling next to me and resting a hand on my back, patting it.

“Yeah…yeah, I’m fine. It’s just the heat.” Some of you might wonder why I lied at this moment. Well, it won’t be the last time. It is worth remembering that at this stage, I had no clue what was happening, and more so, I knew that talking about anything like this would get me sent straight to a shrink and the suspension list (where I inevitably wound up anyways.) Perhaps if I had been honest from the start, things might have not gone so badly, maybe some of the troubles could’ve been avoided, but it is too late for that now.

Detectives arrived and assumed control of the scene, which meant the Tactical Team was due back at the station for debriefing, and my inevitable appointment with the investigation of my shooting. As the Bearcat passed the barricades at the end of the street, the local news was waiting at the cordon. They would never get any more than a brief statement from a spokesman on what happened, but much to my embarrassment, one of their cameras had captured me vomiting, and would run on the nightly program. ‘House of horrors is too much for even law enforcement to bear.’ If I didn’t wind up torpedoing my career down the road, I’m sure that video would have been happy to step up to the task.

When we got back to the station, I checked my gear in, and instantly downed two bottles of water, hoping against hope that it really was dehydration affecting me, but no. I was still chilled, uneasy. All I wanted was to go home, crawl into bed and my wife’s comforting arms, but I still had a long night in front of me. I vomited once more in the bathroom, entirely fluid this time as I had no food left in my body, and was busy cleaning myself in front of a mirror when Hawell came to collect me. It was time to rehash the day for a non-biased set of eyes.

Internal Affairs is a dirty word in a lot of police films, and apparently in some actual departments, but I’ve never had any real issues with them. If you’re hoping for a story of them trying to jam me up, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. They knew as well as I did that it was a good shoot, but routines and regulations have to be followed. So I explained events as they happened to them three times, my story being compared to Darius’ version, and there was really no difference in the retellings because there was nothing really to hide. I saw an armed suspect putting the life of a civilian in immediate danger and I acted to stop it with an appropriate amount of force, it was about as textbook as it gets. The only thing I concealed was that whenever I thought back to Frinz, I saw that distorted face.

All that was left was to review the camera footage from the day. There are four recordings of what happened in that room. Helox County mandates that all officers wear a body camera, it is a small chest mounted device that is always recording. For whatever reason, I think Hawell just likes having what he considers ‘bad ass’ footage, there is a secondary camera mounted to the barrel of our rifles, packaged in with the laser sight device. We ran through Darius’ recordings first, though towards the end his bodycam was obscured by carrying the Trepa’s daughter, and his rifle’s camera was pointed downwards after that moment as well. My body camera didn’t fare much better, the way I held my rifle meant it was mostly capturing my arms and my weapon, to which I was told I needed to reposition the camera in any future incidents.

My rifle camera captured it all in perfect detail however. The video matched my statement perfectly, it showed us advancing down the hall, Darius’ clean kick and breach of the door, and just as I said, there was Frinz preparing to kill the girl before I put three bullets in him. My skin went clammy again, I felt my heart beating faster, sweat beginning to pool on my brow. It was Frinz, there was no denying that, but it wasn’t the gloating, smiling human face; it was the monstrosity, the twisted and foreign features I had first seen when I was throwing up on the lawn.

“What the hell?” One of the investigators chimed up as he saw it, “recoil must’ve glitched the camera.”

“Department bargain shops, probably some kind of monster filter tucked away in its software that got activated. We’ll note that they need to replace the camera once we release your rifle from investigation.”

I knew better than to press my luck, maybe they were right, but that didn’t explain how I had seen that same face without reviewing the footage. Instead they cleared me, slapped me on the shoulder and told me it was a good shoot. Time to go home. I’d get a week off, with pay, to recover, an appointment with a counselor in case there was any grief to sort out, and then a week of desk duty before I got assigned back to the team. For the most part, that routine would stand, but once we learned who Frinz really was, I’d wind up getting awarded a medal and the mayor would want to shake my hand and take a picture. 

Saying goodnight to the rest of the team, they all told me to enjoy my vacation, but I could tell there was a slight concern from Hawell and Darius about how sickly I seemed after the day. They were probably hoping a few days of rest and I’d be back to my usual self. I wish that had been the case. Instead I headed out, sitting behind the steering wheel of my truck for a good five minutes and trying to chase away the visions before I could bring myself to start it. Halfway home I stopped at a gas station and purchased a pack of cigarettes, a habit I’ve struggled on and off with since I first joined the military. 

Surprisingly, they helped, at least seeming to settle my stomach and nerves as I stood in my driveway, the summer night still exceptionally warm, and smoked. I smoked two of them, one after the other, before stubbing them out underneath my boot then tossing them into the outside garbage bin. A quick spray of cologne, hoping it would cover the smell and spare me a lecture from my wife, and I prepared to head inside. Before I even opened the door, I made the decision that I would spare her the details of my day, and she would never deign to ask, knowing I was protecting her from some of the more grisly details work sometimes caused me. Only a month ago I finally learned that she had caught the segment on the news, seen me vomiting outside the house, so again I made things worse for myself by trying to conceal the truth.

We ate dinner, watched her evening program (I already miss watching those trashy reality shows with her,) and went off to bed. A good night’s sleep, that was all I needed, I told myself. Rest, and then I could get my head straightened out in the morning, I’d be back to chasing adrenaline highs in no time at all. Except that isn’t true either, I haven’t had what I would consider a good night’s sleep in nearly a year. It is hard to sleep when you feel constantly threatened.

I had been close to sleeping peacefully, I could hear my wife begin to snore so I knew she was, when I heard a rattling from the living room. My home is in a more rural area of the county, a lawn that drinks too much water and a lot of open desert brush, so it isn’t uncommon for the coyotes or other animals to come passing through, but they usually don’t come directly up to the house. Something was pawing, scratching at the glass sliding door that looks out from our living room onto the back part of the property. With a heavy sigh, I pulled my pistol from the night stand and climbed out of bed. At this point, I was inclined to believe this was just an unlucky coincidence, I know now that I’m a fool.

Barely had I entered the living room when I saw the dark shape pressing against the door, what looked like a hand pulling at the handle while another touched the glass, the shape of a head peering in. Again I got hit by cold sweat, felt my heart thumping in my chest, wanting to think some home intruder had picked the wrong home. I turned the mounted flashlight on my handgun on, shined it in the direction of the door, and instantly my hands began to shake, my grip on the pistol loose and weak, my finger not even able to slide into the trigger guard.

Was it human? To this day, I’ll tell you no. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve seen it several times since. It is humanoid shaped, with two legs, two arms, and a head. The legs are thick and muscular, as are the arms, but the feet and hands are malformed, elongated digits, dark yellow nails that look like spikes. Its face is nothing but taut albino skin, a gaping mouth with those sharp teeth and black spittle, and two dark solid eyes fixed directly on me as it licked at the glass with a barbed tongue. I wanted to shoot, more than anything I wanted to pull the trigger until the gun clicked empty, but I couldn’t bring myself to, I was afraid it would shatter the glass and this thing would come in after me. Instead we stared. After a moment it brushed its hand against the glass, an almost affectionate gesture, then began stepping back, until finally it faded out of view.

Somehow, I convinced myself to go back to bed, to shut my eyes and try to sleep, but I spent the night with my ear constantly turned for the slightest noise. Maybe it was a dream, maybe it was a hallucination, I told myself. Eventually the sun came up, my wife woke, and she began getting ready for her day. About thirty minutes later, I gave up trying and got back out of bed, going into the kitchen and finding her there with two cups of coffee. Our morning routine usually brought me some peace, as we both sat at the table together and drank.

“So what do you have planned for today?”

“Probably just going to hang around here, sure there is a thing or two that could use my attention or fixing.”

“Sounds like a good idea.” She told me, standing up and grabbing her purse, kissing me on my cheek. “Maybe you can do something about the sliding door. A coyote must have scratched the hell out of it last night.”

—

Well, that is how it started. It is unfortunately not how it has ended, because as of right now, I still get the occasional visitor at night, and plenty of strange things have happened since. So I may have lied at the beginning, I said this would be my only time sharing, but writing this down has helped provide a little calm, though at the same time, I hate dredging through this story again, but there is more to tell.

It is getting late, however. Time for me to try and sleep, and I never know when my night time visitor might turn up again. I’m hoping someone knows something, because I am in over my head here. At the very least, thank you for the sympathetic set of eyes. I don’t know if this thing will wind up getting the better of me, but at least now, people can be aware that there is something evil in Helox County.

Cliff B. (07/17/24)

People always want answers. Yet people are seldom ready to accept those answers. The problem is that sometimes the answers can be more disturbing than the unanswered question and sometimes they only lead to more wondering.

Sometimes answers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

That’s what I’ve learned in my experience as a detective working on missing persons cases. A few weeks ago, I began work investigating a particularly disturbing case. Three young girls had reportedly gone missing in the town’s nearby woods and their parents were worried sick.

The disappearance was huge news in the small town. Search parties were out in full force. I was with one of the many groups of people out there scouring the woods in every direction. We knew we had to act fast if we wanted to find them alive.

For several days, we found absolutely nothing and we had entered into our fifth night of looking. No one dared to say it out loud, but we knew what we were looking for at this point; corpses. We knew those girls weren’t going to come walking out of the woods unharmed like nothing ever happened.

I kept on looking, walking through the dark woods alone, guided by my flashlight while my team looked elsewhere in other directions. The search was an incredibly somber and isolating experience. It's a very grim and morbid task to be searching for the remains of three lost children.

It was a cold fall night. A waxing crescent moon loomed high above. The autumn leaves blanketed the muddy ground as I trudged onward.

Suddenly, I heard an eerie sound. It sounded like soft singing in the distance.

I turned all around but saw nothing in the autumn maze of orange, yellow, and brown.

In hopes that it might somehow be the young girls, I yelled out: “Police! Do you need help?”

There was no response.

I sat there in silence for a moment before I continued walking.

I noticed something very bizarre up ahead and went to inspect it. It was what I can only describe as an archway made of sticks and leaves. They formed an oval the size that a person could walk through. The formation appeared to be naturally occurring rather than man-made. It looked like something someone might want to stage for a wedding or a photography shoot. It was like something out of an old folklore story.

What happened next is beyond comprehension.

A small creature walked by me in the darkness, moving in a dancing motion as it went, and humming a peculiar tune. It moved into the view of my flashlight and I could see that it appeared to resemble a very small old man with a long whitish-gray beard and a maroon pointed hat.

The creature casually walking along looked identical to any “gnome” you’d see in a generic fairytale depiction. Seeing something so cartoonish, but yet there right in front of me in real life, was very surreal, uncanny, and disturbing.

This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I felt like I was losing my mind.

I watched as the mischievous little gnome skipped along towards the wooden archway. With a laugh, he walked through and disappeared completely before my very eyes.

I was shocked to be really experiencing this. My entire conception of reality was shattering.

“Had I somehow been drugged?” I wondered.

This was something beyond what tiredness could explain.

I approached the mysterious arched formation and studied it closely. It was just made of sticks and leaves. Nothing special. I put my arm through and held it there for a moment. Nothing at first, but then it started to slowly feel a bit numb. I took it out and stared at the archway once more. The feeling soon returned to my arm.

“Am I actually considering this?” I thought.

With an abundant lack of explanations for what I just saw, I decided to risk whatever danger I might face by walking through this apparently mystical archway. Feeling a bit silly, I took a deep breath and walked carefully through the natural oval stick structure.

Suddenly my mind was in a daze. It was like waking up from a dream.

I looked around to see the same woods I had been standing in, but it was bright and sunny. All my senses were strangely heightened. My mind was buzzing. I looked down to see that the flashlight I was carrying had vanished. The leaves seemed brighter, the air felt nicer, and all seemed calm. Where was I?

I looked around and that’s when the little creatures came in, appearing from behind the nearby trees. There must’ve been about ten of them. The gnomes were smiling as they danced around in a circle, laughing and singing an oddly familiar song.

One of the gnomes walked up to me and began to mischievously dig through my pockets. He found the change I had in there and stole a single quarter. He lifted the shiny silver coin up in the air and it reflected the sun burning brightly above. He let out a tricksterish laugh, put the quarter in his pocket, and joined back with the others in their dance. I had no idea where I was, what I was witnessing, or how to react to any of this.

Suddenly, the gnomes all took off and ran further into the forest.

I chased after them. Running through a narrow opening in the dense section of brush, I was greeted with a disturbing new environment and the intense feeling that something was horribly wrong. I found myself standing within a large ring of trees deep in the woods. My run soon gave way to a slow and unsure walk forward.

At first, what I saw looked to be a pile of yellowish off-white rocks neatly stacked up on top of each other in a row, but when I got closer it was clear and unmistakable that these were piles of skulls.

Their laughter grew louder and more sinister and their dances became more frantic as I crept slowly forward. The taste of iron unexplainably filled my mouth. As I grew closer I could see that the ground was covered in a dark red substance. The air became thick and humid and I began to feel very claustrophobic.

Dancing faster in a circle and cackling maniacally, the gnomes were holding entrails and viscera. All around them on the ground, it appeared to be the gore of dozens of unrecognizable bodies.

There was so much blood. The foul and deathly odor assaulted my nostrils and turned my stomach. I was hit with waves of panic. I felt like my mind shut down completely and I was paralyzed where I was standing.

The gnomes all turned to me smiling and simply continued their dark and morbid singing.

I just remember screaming and screaming and screaming as loud as I could.

Then, just nothing. The rest is all a blank.

I don’t remember a thing, but according to my partner, he found me zoned out and lying on the muddy ground of the dark woods where I had been searching for the girls. I was apparently clutching my flashlight and mumbling to myself. He says I must’ve had some kind of psychotic episode. I’m not so sure.

I would be tempted to blame it all on the stress of the job, but when I checked my pocket, a quarter was inexplicably missing.

I spent the next few days looking over the case files. I had a lot of theories, but none that made sense.

According to reports, the neighbor of the lost children had been looking out of her kitchen window while washing dishes. She purportedly saw the older sister leading her two younger siblings by the hand into the woods. They were humming a strange tune as they disappeared off into the wilderness that day and were never seen again.

The case files also revealed that the missing girls reportedly took a book from their playroom’s bookshelf before vanishing. It was a children’s fairytale book with bright happy illustrations of gnomes dancing through the forests.

It was called “The Friendly Sunshine Gnomes.”

I can still hear their odd singing in my mind at times when I’m alone.

I don’t think we’ll ever find those girls, or truly know what I experienced, and I’m convincing myself more and more each day that I really don’t need the answers.

One minute, my wife and I were grabbing a nightcap at the bar down the street, having an innocent conversation with a stranger.

The next, we were both waking up in total darkness, groggy and confused.

"Laura?" I called out into the void, my voice raspy, after waking up from what felt like an intensely deep sleep.

"Tom?" My wife called back, her voice sounding similarly exhausted.

After a minute of feeling around in the darkness, we eventually found each other and embraced.

"Where are we?" Laura asked.

"I'm not quite sure." I replied.

"How did we even get here?"

"He must have drugged us?"

"He?"

"The stranger that struck up a conversation with us at the bar. I knew something felt off about him."

"Off about me?"

Suddenly, a horrifying, synthesized voice rang out through what must have been a pair of overhead speakers mounted to the ceiling.

Before suddenly...

...The lights turned on.

My wife and I both gasped, as our eyes, having just gotten adjusted to the dark, were blinded by a pair of overhead lights.

Eventually, our eyes adjusted again, and we were able to discern our surroundings…

…A large room designed in the shape of a perfect box, each of its walls a giant mirror, with nothing inside it save for four things…

A machete.

A table.

A cat, which sat perched atop the table, rolling around on its back.

And a door, located on one of the box’s four walls.

I ran over to open the door, but sure enough, it was locked.

Then my wife and I both looked around for any other exits.

Nothing.

I looked up at the ceiling. There, mounted beside the overhead lights, were the two speakers we'd heard the voice emanate from. And beside them, what looked like ventilation grates.

"What is this place?" I asked aloud, before the metallic voice called out again over the speakers.

"Like what I've done with the place?"

"What's going on? Where are we?" My wife called out.

"Good questions." The stranger replied, "But I would have thought your first question would be asking who I am.”

"Who are you then?" I asked.

"Why would I tell you that? If you get out of here, you could use it against me."

"If we get out of here?" I asked.

"Correct. The ‘if’ is totally up to you."

"Up to us? What are you talking about?" Laura asked.

"You're to play a game. The rules are simple. As of right now, from outside the box, you are both dead and alive at the same time. Win the game… and you can leave alive. Lose the game… and you die.”

"Schrödinger’s Cat." My wife replied, referencing the famous thought experiment by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, wherein a cat placed in a closed box with an equal chance of dying can be considered both dead and alive at the same time while its fate is unknown.

"Ah, glad you got the reference."

Laura looked at the cat on the table. “A little on the nose much?”

“Well, sometimes you have to be literal to prove a point-”

"So how do we win?" I interrupted, growing tired of the back and forth.

“Another good question. You see the door over there?"

"Yes," Laura and I both replied, looking over at it.

"It's locked and can only be opened with a key. A key that is hidden in the box somewhere."

Laura and I both immediately scanned the room, but again, all we saw were the same four things.

The machete.

The table.

The cat.

And the door.

We both studied them, before looking at the cat, and turning to one another.

"You don't think-"

"The key is in the cat." I interrupted.

We then both looked over at the machete, before turning back to each other.

"No… We can’t." My wife said.

"Then we'll have to wait." I suggested.

"Wait?"

"’Til the key comes out of it… the natural way."

Suddenly, we heard the synthetic voice begin to count down over the speakers.

"60..."

"59..."

"58...."

"57...."

“56…”

“55…”

"Fuck!" I cried out, realizing that we didn't have time to wait.

Once again, I went to reach for the machete, but once again, Laura stepped in front of me.

"No! The key's gotta be hidden somewhere else." She insisted.

"But where?" I asked.

For a third time, we both began frantically searching the room.

This time we tried looking under the table.

Nothing.

Then, we tried to pry open the lights, speakers, and vents.

But all of them were sealed shut.

"40..."

"39..."

"38..."

Once again, I reached for the machete, this time picking it up.

But this time, my wife stood between myself and the cat.

"Laura, get out of the way." I insisted.

"I can't let you do that, Tom." She replied.

"The key is in the cat!”

"We don't know that!”

"Exactly. I'm gonna find out."

“You’re gonna sacrifice a cat over your own life?”

"You’re gonna sacrifice your own life for a cat’s?"

"No, the key must be somewhere else."

Trusting Laura’s instincts, I put the machete down on the table, and we both began searching the box for a fourth time, as the voice continued counting down, closer and closer to 0...

"25..."

"24..."

"23..."

...But for a fourth time, we came up empty handed.

That's when I saw what appeared to be a proverbial light bulb go off in my wife's head.

“What is it-”

But before I could finish asking, Laura put her finger down her throat and gagged herself.

We both leaned in, expecting to hear the CLINK of a key…

SPLASH.

…But all we heard were the contents of yesterday’s bar food, splattering all over the ground.

She shot me a look, and I immediately knew what she was suggesting.

"No, I can't! I've never made myself throw up before." I resisted.

That's when she ran over and took me by the hand.

"Do you want to live?"

"Yes!"

"Then sit down on that table."

I did as she said.

"10..."

"9..."

"8..."

She began to stick her finger down my throat, causing me to immediately flinch.

"Stop!" I mumbled, unable to properly speak with her hand in my mouth.

But it was too late.

Before I could push her away, I vomited.

We both leaned in, once again expecting to hear the CLINK of a key…

SPLASH.

…But all we heard were the contents of my own stomach, splattering all over the ground.

With the countdown almost over, we both looked at each other and began to panic.

That’s when my wife dropped her, and took a step back. "Fine, just do it!"

“Are you sure?”“Just do it!”

“Okay!”

I picked up the machete…

"3..."

…Walked over to the cat….

"2..."

…And raised the blade above my head…

“1…”

…But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, freezing in place…

WAH! WAH! WAH! WAH!

…As a loud alarm suddenly went off, before.SILENCE.

The alarm stopped.

My wife and I both collapsed to the floor, both hyperventilating from the traumatic experience, as we looked up at the vents, and expected a gas pour out and kill us.

But instead, all we saw were two speakers rattle, as the synthetic voice called out, “Congratulations. You’ve won the game.”

“But we didn’t find the key?” My wife asked, confused by the change of rules.

“I had told you the key was hidden in the box somewhere." The man began to explain. “But I never said it was a literal one. The key was your own morality. Deciding not to kill the cat, despite the assumption that the literal key was inside.”

“And that’s worth winning?” I asked.

“You’d be surprised. You’re the only ones this month who passed the test.”

“Wait. How often do you do this?” Laura asked.

But the stranger had gone silent.

CLICK.

Suddenly, we both heard the handle to the box’s door unlock.

Laura and I gathered all of our strength, rushed over to the door, and let ourselves out of the box, its door slamming behind us.

When we  finally caught our breath outside it, we looked around, and found ourselves inside a large empty airplane hangar.

My wife and I both turned back to the box, the one-sided mirrors lining its walls allowing us to peer in, only to see the cat still lying there, completely unaware of the fate that could have befallen it.

“What the fuck was that?” I asked my wife.

“I… don’t… know…” She replied.

But before we could dwell on it too much, we heard the sound of vents turning on above us.

We both looked up at the ceiling, to find a colored gas billowing out of yet another set of vents.

Laura and I turned to each other, a look of horror in both of our eyes, as the hangar quickly filled with smoke.

One minute, my wife and I were standing there in the hangar, outside of the box that the stranger had held us in.

The next, we were both waking up in total darkness, groggy and confused.

"Laura?" I called out into the void, my voice raspy, after waking up from what felt like an intensely deep sleep.

"Tom?" My wife called back, her voice similarly exhausted.

After a minute of feeling around the darkness, we eventually found each other, and embraced.

"Where are we?" Laura asked.

"I'm not quite sure." I replied.

"How did we even get here?"

"He must have drugged us?"

I stopped for a moment, half-expecting to hear the stranger’s horrifying, synthesized voice ring out through a pair of overhead speakers mounted to the roof above us.

Before suddenly...

...A light turned on.

I gasped, as my eyes, having just gotten adjusted to the dark, were blinded by the light.

Eventually, my eyes adjusted again, and I was able to discern my surroundings.

There before me… was our bedroom. And sitting beside me on the bed… was Laura, who had just turned on the light by her bedside table.

We both looked at each other, and let out a sigh of relief.

He had let us go.

That was years ago.

Since that time, we’ve never heard from the stranger again. Or found out why he did that to us in the first place. And we especially, never, ever set foot in the bar down the street, where we had met him.

All I know is… he’s still out there somewhere.

Sometimes, I wonder if the same is true of the cat we saved. If it was freed after our game, or ended up in the next one. If it’s alive… or dead.

But until I find out… it’s both alive and dead at the same time.

You might wanna read this because this CAN happen to you. You want proof? Go read some other guy's post about them on here. It's called I'm being hunted, this is a warning for you. SOMEONE doing this is paying attention to the comments after what happened.

Link to the post

I worked as a security guard in Buffalo over in New York in one of those casinos near Niagara Falls. Given that this was one of the closest places to stay by the landmark, it was one of the heaviest parts to work for, at least from my experience. I got used to the usual one could expect in this type of job, but certain events have changed so quickly that I can’t tell what is real except for my incoming doom.

I was working in the early afternoons, around 1 PM, give or take, and I was walking about when I saw a group of friends - I assumed - taking pictures. They were somewhat uncomfortable because a man in that picture looked to have one too many drinks at the time, rambling in some hysteria in the most annoying tone I ever heard.

He didn’t really look the part of a criminal. All I could remember was him having an athletic build, long black hair tied to a ponytail, a red sweater, a white shirt, black jeans, and converse shoes. He had tan skin and a clean-shaved face. As he continued to harass the group, which I guess consisted of some kids in their college years, I approached him, advising that he move along, or he will be escorted out.

The group left immediately while I was dealing with this guy. Strangely, he didn’t reek of alcohol, his eyes didn’t look affected, his speeches were clear with no slurrings, and he walked fine. While that beer in his hands was full, I wasn’t one to take chances.

But there was something off about this man. Looking into his eyes, I had a huge spike of anxiety… Something that I never felt at this level before just from someone. It was like the future was in jeopardy, and the closer I approached him, I could hear the heartbeat in my ears and a developing headache. I was questioning myself “Why?” because he didn’t look like someone who could kill anyone with a single punch, nor was he aggressive. Actually-

He acted out the opposite.

"Sorry, sorry-” I probably heard 4 ‘sorries’ in two seconds with how fast this guy talked in a light tone, and I mean really, really fast. It was a nice change of pace compared to the slobbering sentences I often dealt with. “I get carried away often, I promise to not do it again. But I did have a question. Are you hiring?”

So while this dude understood and at least apologized, I knew he would be a problem if he was going to be my coworker. Sadly this wasn’t my choice, and I think what I said next was how shit hit the fan.

“You’re gonna have to speak to my manager, I can refer him to you. Just write me your name and phone number-”

“John?”

Now, I only used a random name to cover my manager since I DIDN’T want to be dragging anyone else here, but since he did mention my boss’s name, I questioned him if they knew each other.

“Yup! For the record, I work with computers, cameras, and just about every technological gadget going on over here. The thing is your manager was somewhat concerned about this photo right here.” He pulled his phone out and showed it to me.

It was a photo of a broken-down subway door with shattered glass. He swiped, and it was another set of busted doors from the other side of the car. I never heard of this, so I assumed he was somewhat witnessed.

I didn’t know what to think of this, nor did I really care, but I sure as hell didn’t want to continue. I told him that if he wanted the job, he’d have to speak to the manager in question and that I had to return to work. He agreed and skipped his way into the casino's deeper parts. As I eyed him leaving, my body relaxed. It was like an adrenaline dump suddenly hit me and I was weirded out.

I went back to the office, monitoring the cameras as my coworker switched roles. It was the same as I watched, but I saw something weird in the corner of my eye. I turned and my heart sank, my blood boiled, and I felt like I was about to faint.

On one of the monitors was a taped photo of the front of my house.

Without hesitation, I approached my manager, confronting him as I thought this was a God-forsaken prank. He never saw my house, he never knew what area I lived in, or anything like that. As I had more questions, I was furious and ready to beat the fuck out of whoever this was, but I opened the door and I saw him… differently.

He was sitting on his desk, his head on his desk like he was sleeping. He would never do this, or post very private information for any workers to see. I woke him up and I saw his face a mess. He looked like he was crying, his face was somewhat pale, and his speech was slow. He didn’t show signs of somewhat taking drugs, or vodka in one sitting, so this was all strange to me.

But that didn’t stop me from our ‘talk’. It went like this from what I remembered.

“Hey, what’s going on with you?!”

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know anymore.”

“What the fuck do you mean?! First off, who put this in the monitor room? I never told anyone about my place, and I didn’t say it’s okay to take a damn photo for everyone to see. Who did it?!”

“What? I never saw that. That wasn’t me-”

“Well, someone did! I want to find out because that is a safety concern, let alone an invasion of privacy! Who?!”

“Stop yelling at me! Please, spare me! God, please! I had enough, don’t talk. Don’t talk, and let them to- I can’t, I can’t anymore, I quit! I’m sorry, alright. I’m-”

My boss broke down, and this whole scene ended up sending him to the hospital, and I ended up quitting on the spot, but not before I questioned every coworker I could find.

As much as everyone understood the severity of this situation, no one admitted to it. On my way home, I was thinking of why things turned out the way they were. At this point, I had a major fear lingering in the back of my mind - my safety.

Somebody exposed my house. While I’m a total recluse, I’m obviously also not one to spread something so private for a reason. With me living alone, I can attest that there was nothing more important than every detail I could see. While I hoped this was nothing more than a sick prank that, somehow, drove our manager insane, I always imagine the worst kind of people running across and doing God knows what.

From the driveway to my front door and living room, I took my time to check around the yard, the house, and every corner imaginable no matter how long that took. After confirming everything wasn’t touched, moved, or destroyed, I showered and went straight to bed. I may be out of a job, but I thought things weren’t bad, and I could fix it.

I woke up with one of the weirdest feelings. I felt something crawling on my arm, so I turned over the blanket and that was when things got worse from here. I didn't see anything on my skin, but it was more like something was INSIDE my skin.

The worst part was that I could see it moving, bulging just above my skin. I panicked, ready to grab my phone for the trip to the ER until I was paralyzed. My whole inside was rattling and moving under my skin. My bones, my veins, and my lungs were being disoriented and I could only scream the hardest I’ve ever had, unable to move like I was being torn apart.

Then, it stopped. Whatever it was, it made my arms dead, I was unable to move. I lay on the bed, refusing to move even if I was hungry or wanted to use the bathroom. I couldn't believe it, even now. I have no idea why and how this happened. I was in complete shock, I could feel myself panicking when I heard something that made me jump from the living room.

“Get out of bed.”

For some reason, I recognized this voice, but I had no idea who it was until I heard it again.

“You’re not gonna get hurt anymore, just get up.”

In a flash, an image popped up in my head of someone who sounded exactly like that voice. It was crystal clear who it was now. I left my room and saw my TV in the living room with someone inside. The face was of a young man with black hair in a ponytail and a red sweater, waving at me.

I was angry, but I sat down because I knew punching my TV wouldn’t do anything, but something threw me off. At first, I thought this was televised from a station, or pre-recorded. But his eyes were on me as I moved like he watched my every move despite no cameras being present. I only sat on the couch, feeling whatever was inside me now moving into the back of my thigh and… disappear.

“What the fuck did you do to me?! What do you want?!”

“Hey, hey, man. I’m sorry you gotta go through this, but just know this is necessary, alright?” I swear this man’s tone just made me wanna choke him out, he didn’t seem phased or anything. He was just like when I saw him in person.

So there I am, talking to the guy who seemed to be in charge of putting something in me and watching me like I was in a red room with that grin on his face on a television. I was thinking of ways to understand without possibly - does he even get mad? - pissing him off and sending me into a coma thanks to the rejected actor of the parasite from Aliens.

That thought I had right there? That came back to me later…

“Were you the piece of shit that doxxed my house?”

“What?”

“My fucking house…”

“What about it?”

“DID YOU TAKE A PHOTO AND TAPE IT ON ONE OF THE TVS FROM MY WORK?! WAS THAT NOT YOU?!”

“Oooooh… That was a drawing. Actually I-”

“BITCH!”

“Sorry, sorry. Yeah, that was me.”

“And did you put… whatever the hell this is in me?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? Why the fuck did you do that? Was it because you didn’t get the damn job?!”

“Not really, you gave us the answer anyways for OUR job. Thanks!” He smiled.

“But everything’s for a reason. You see, we’re doing what’s called ‘The Destruction’. I know this is a lot to take in, but we really, really don’t have much time, buddy. Let me ask you something. You’ve used Reddit from time to time, right?”

“Yeah?”

“On your table, there’s a piece of paper I want you to read. It’s about one of the posts written. I want you to read, keep to yourself, keep your thoughts to yourself, and only write everything after you say what you’re gonna do.”

Despite being confused, I agreed and picked up the paper, and sat back down to read while he was watching me do so. I’m not gonna restate what I read, but like I said in the beginning, read I’m being hunted, this a warning for you. 

Underneath - no usernames will be mentioned - there was a comment describing the OP’s strange way of describing where he was from. I mean, it's true. No one would say that if they were from there.

“So I assume you read that comment about that, right? Well, the thing is, he said that because he WASN’T from there.”

I looked up slowly. I had a gut feeling something was going wrong, aside from this morning, of course.

“Let me explain this simply. You heard of the phenomena of ‘extraterrestrial beings’ or ‘aliens’? Have you heard the debate about how they look? Have you ever thought they would look like YOU? Well, man, certain species outside your solar system do, and a particular set of species has made its way down to earth, escaping from our duty to eliminate threats to life as we know it. I gotta say, I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing about the subway incident, as our fellow wrote it as such, the technology here is so easy to play with, I think it may be THE easiest. Anyways, these aliens are trying to make a life here, and even try to use some of their technology on themselves to erase memories of their lives prior, so that they’d fit in and move on, that is why he was really… not a New Yorker, after all-”

“So you’re telling me that Earth secretly had an alien invasion to live a peaceful life?”

“Yeeees, and no. They’re escaping from their punishments and trying to correct things. But, the law is the law, and we’re the only ones to have the final say about that.”

“We?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Okay, but… why am I involved? I’m pretty sure I was born on Earth like a regular Earthling, so why drag me in?”

“Because your mom isn’t.”

I froze. Speechless.

“Your mom is one of the condemned, but she wasn’t meant to have a child, her biology doesn’t add up to what we know her race. That’s why we checked on you, and that is what that thing is for. It seems she had done a lot of work to try to make things harder.”

“My mom is an alien?”

“Yup! Now, we need to do something-”

I was in shock, sitting there as the man rambled on. He just told me that my life has all been a lie. My mind was numb, and I couldn’t process anything else at the time until the familiar pain jolted me hard enough for me to fall on the floor.

It lasted longer, and I started puking all over the floor as my body spasmed violently. My eyesight was blurring, and I couldn’t see anything except for bright colors that were everywhere every second. It felt like my body was being chewed apart, thousands of needles were ripping apart my bones, my lungs crushed in and out, and I felt my arms and legs being crushed as I couldn’t scream because of my vomit.

Then, it stopped, and I could smell last night's dinner all over me when I lay there, staring at the wall.

“Ready to listen, bro?”

I said nothing.

“Good! Now, the thing is, my other pals are doing their own thing. It’s currently… Six AM your time, it seems, and since we’re in bought time, I’m gonna need you to go to your mom and obey my instructions. You’ll hear my voice through that thing.”

I still said nothing.

“This is a good time to take a breather because things are gonna become harder. No worries, I’ll guide ya, you’re now in the hands of a professional.”

Then the TV turned off while I sat there. When I got up to change, I realized that I was sitting for almost a couple of hours, watching the blank TV screen in silence.

The thoughts of the event made me sick enough to not leave the house, not to attend work, and never eat anything during the day. My mom was an alien, hunted by another group of aliens for whatever crime she committed.

I remember a sharp sting in my head before I blacked out, and when I woke up, I found myself in my mom’s house. A forty-minute drive from my place.

“Why? Why did you do this?”

My single mother was lying on a bed with the ceiling light on, watching me with a tear streaming down her face as she was groaning in pain. I opened my eyes, realizing that I was standing up, feeling my hands warm and wet, but I couldn’t move my head to see what it was. I could only feel whatever it was dangling, touching my arms like it had several, thin legs, and the liquid was running down my forearm.

She was on her flower-printed bed next to the teddy bear I gave her from my trip last year with no arms, no legs, and a missing eye.

I wanted to scream, I wanted to throw up, and I wanted to be scared… But I didn’t feel anything, I couldn’t feel emotions, and I couldn’t move my body. My pupils moved independently, changing to the window curtains that were shut for the night.

I couldn’t see her anymore, only hear. I heard her scream, panicking as the bed creaked followed by some clicking noises to my right side, to the wall.

“Screaming isn’t gonna get ya anywhere. This whole room is separated from the outside now.”

My mom continued to shout for a while, which was long enough for me to feel some soreness in my legs, but that didn’t happen, strangely enough. I was a literal statue, only able to hear the situation without seeing her, or the man on the TV earlier.

“Ya done? I need to ask very important questions about your friends that’s around here.”

“I don’t know shit!”

“It’s no use lying, I already have your son in control now. I’m trying to make it easier for him since I think he should be fine staying here.”

“You… You fucking pieces of shits think what you’re doing is right?”

“We’ve already eliminated about thirty peeps down at that tunnel, but one of them escaped because they were given a good ole’ hand. Y’know Earth’s technology is so easy to tamper with that even you could do it. Y’know about that, right?”

My mom went silent when the man decided to work on his thing a little more.

“Ah! You are smart… very smart. This is actually getting fun by the minute. Unfortunately, the law is the law, and you still need to be punished. Don’t worry about your son, he’s not going to do anything, our little guy in him will make sure of that. Now, any last words?” My mom spoke in a weird language that sounded like static, gurgle, and gibberish. The man replied the same followed by a short conversation.

Then my head was forced by something invincible to watch him, sitting on one of the rocking chairs.

I saw my hand holding my mom’s severed arms with her guts dangling down.

“Remember this, bud. Revenge is best served cold, but it can be served hot. That’s why people love to do it, and a lot are doing it, but they never expect how much they have to pay that bill, including the tips… Thanks for helping!” He gave me a quick wave before I closed my eyes and I found myself on my bed, back to my room.

To this day, the “thing” in me never left, it’s still here, controlling my emotions, my fears, and everything about me. My mom was a criminal from outer space, I am the son of that thing. I’m currently trying to look for a job, and while my emotions and my thoughts are mainly controlled, my memory of that night never changed, especially since I was given the knowledge of what they said.

My mom: Who and what are you?

The man with an athletic build, long black hair tied in a ponytail, a red sweater, a white shirt, black jeans, and converse shoes: The Elements. We are the ones responsible for the existence of all things. Me? I am the Chaos, the reason why there are things never meant to make sense for a reason throughout the universe. There are things better kept unsaid and hidden, and you made a very big shift that’ll come soon.

Mom: How come we never heard of you? How come we show up now?!

The Man: It’s… complicated, but we only show up when we need to. That’s how it’s been since we created THIS universe. Anyway, I don’t have time to talk. My job is finished. Bye!

They’ve found me. They’re pounding on the door. It won’t hold for much longer. I’m trapped. There’s no escape. Please accept this post as my dying declaration. More importantly, let it be a warning to you… to all of you. Because the fate of the entire human race could rest upon what I’m about to tell you.

Before I go any further, I beg you, do not dismiss what I’m about to reveal as a prank or hoax. It’s so unbelievable I can scarcely believe it myself. If I were not living this nightmare in real time, I would have laughed at how far-fetched it all sounds.

I was living my best life, not easy, given I’m a wheelchair-bound teenage girl living on a rundown ranch in the middle of nowhere. But I was determined to make the most of it. I was a straight-A student and captain of the girls’ softball team. Sure, I needed someone to be my ‘legs,’ but boy could I swing that bat!

I had a happy upbringing thanks to my elderly foster parents, Jack and Ruth who raised me since I was a toddler. The way they tell it, my mom had eventually succumbed to her opioid addiction on the couch in our ramshackle home in Lincoln County.

She had been there for several days, leaving me upstairs all alone. I had somehow managed to scramble out of my crib desperately looking for food despite only being 18 months old. Weak from hunger, my legs gave way, and I tumbled down the stairs.

I may have lost the use of my legs that day, but I gained the most loving foster parents you could ever wish for. They doted on me. They made sure I never went hungry ever again. I often teased them, calling them ‘feeders.’ I guess they saw the funny side because they always responded by saying, “Eat up” at mealtime.

The joke was wearing thin. My sixteenth birthday was rapidly approaching, and I was concerned about how much weight I had gained. There was a boy in class that I liked, and I wanted to look my best. But when I shared my concerns with my foster mom, she told me, “I was being silly, and if anything, I had lost weight.”

When I complained that, “my clothes were starting to feel too tight” she smiled, and said, “You’re turning from a girl into a woman, they’re bound to feel tight.” I nodded. It made sense.

A few days before my birthday I saw her gift-wrapping a beautiful dress. It was red with lots of frills and sequins. I was so excited I could hardly wait to try it on. Later that day I saw the same dress sticking out of the trash. I was devastated and wondered what I had done wrong. I had done my chores. I had eaten my dinner, every last morsel as they had demanded. It made no sense.

I gazed longingly at my ‘birthday’ dress as it drowned in a sea of trash. I wanted so much to rescue it from its terrible fate. Eventually, I reached for it. The silk felt so soft against my delicate skin. As I held it against me the label landed on my lap. It looked like it had been removed with a pair of scissors. I glanced at it and immediately noticed that the dress was at least two sizes smaller than the label suggested, “Ah, that’s why they threw it away. It was way too small” I told myself..

I would not have thought any more of it had I not seen my gift exactly where my foster mom had left it earlier that morning. It was untouched. I sensed something was off. I grabbed my birthday present and tore at the wrapping. Inside was an identical dress. Except this one was my size and sure to fit. I beamed like a ‘Cheshire cat’. My crush was bound to notice me in it!

For a moment, it was probably the happiest I had been in my entire life. But then my eyes zoomed in on the label. It was the wrong size. I knew instantly that my foster mom had switched the labels. She wanted me to think I was much slimmer than I am. It was like a kick in the teeth. I suspected that I had gained a lot of weight and here was the evidence to prove it. Furious, I spun my wheelchair around and headed towards the living room to confront her.

As I approached, I could hear what sounded like conspiratory whispers. I peered through a crack in the door and saw my foster mom utter, “I hope she tastes as good as she looks!” My foster dad looked predatory as he licked his lips and whispered, “Mmm… sweet sixteen.” They started to cackle like a pair of hyenas on the hunt.

Their disturbing chuckles rang in my ears as I charged into the bathroom in my wheelchair. I barely had my head in the toilet before the contents of my stomach erupted like Mount Vesuvius. My heart pounded as I wiped my mouth clean. The two people I loved most in the world had been fattening me up like a plump Thanksgiving turkey so they could devour me. I couldn’t believe it. I had to know more about these ‘monsters’ whom I had spent most of my life calling, “Mom” and “Dad.”

I rifled through the cupboard drawers looking for something… anything. I pulled out several bills and invoices but nothing incriminating. I paused for a moment, “Think, Cassie. Think!” My mind raced. I suddenly muttered, “The tool shed!” My foster dad spent an ungodly amount of time there. Yet, he never seemed to make anything or fix anything.

The wheels on my wheelchair spun like Boudica’s war chariot as I charged outside. I checked to ensure the coast was clear and entered the shabby structure.

A strange humming sound greeted me. Distracted by the weird noise, my wheelchair brushed against a workbench. The impact caused a bottle of weedkiller to topple over. I caught it mid-air and put it back, next to a small blood-stained ax. I felt sure it was human blood, but I couldn’t get that damn noise out of my head. It was coming from behind a dusty old curtain that looked like it had been a food source for moths since the dawn of civilization.

I yanked the curtain hard. A cloud of dust enveloped me. I coughed and spluttered as I frantically rubbed my eyes, desperate to see what it was concealing. I was confronted with an imposing, solid oak door reinforced with thick strips of wrought iron. The incessant humming sound grew ever louder. I turned the handle expecting the door to be locked. To my surprise, the door slowly CREAKED open. I gasped as my vision fell upon an array of state-of-the-art computers and servers that looked like they belonged in NASA’s headquarters, not my foster dad’s tool shed!

I was desperate to discover what secrets the hi-tech equipment was holding but knew I needed something to protect me in case I was disturbed. I promptly grabbed the ax and weedkiller off the workbench and placed them on my lap.

My fingers caressed the keyboard as I attempted to gain access to the password-protected information concealed within the hard drive of one of the many computers. I wondered what dark secrets they were hiding as I typed variations of all the passwords I could think of.

Just as I was on the verge of giving up, I noticed a small trunk tucked in the corner beneath a workstation. It was covered in cobwebs and had a rusted padlock. I wasted no time in breaking it open with the ax. Inside was an old driver’s license with my foster dad’s name on it dated 1947. Lying next to it was a framed, black-and-white picture of my foster parents. They looked the same now as they did back then. How was that possible I wondered? Almost eighty years had passed but they had not aged a day.

At the bottom of the trunk, there was an old scrapbook. I quickly thumbed through it. There were several newspaper clippings of the Roswell incident. Not too surprising I reasoned. After all, it was practically on our doorstep and was big news back then. I continued to flick through it. To my horror, there were several polaroids of teenage girls spanning decades -- each blowing out the candles on a birthday cake as my foster parents looked on admiringly. All the girls looked like they were carrying a few too many extra pounds, much like me. Moreover, each cake had two numbered candles. The first one was the number “one.” The second was the number “6.”

My brain instantly generated a myriad of questions, “Who are these girls?” “Where are they now?” “Why are there no photos of them celebrating any other birthday besides their sixteenth?! I feared the worst, “Am I next?” I wondered. I gazed at their innocent, smiling faces as they blew out the candles on a cake they probably never even got to taste. I focused on the candles. An idea suddenly jumped out at me. I hastened over to the same computer as before and hurriedly typed in the number “16.” It failed. I tried “sixteen.” Access was “denied” yet again.

I turned away from the computer screen, defeated. I was on the verge of giving up when I decided on one final try. I typed in the words “sweet sixteen.” The screen suddenly loaded. I was in! I couldn’t help myself and whispered, “Sick sonofabitch” because of my foster dad’s twisted cannibalistic desires.

I studied the monitor as an array of text appeared on the screen. There were no actual words; rather it was a huge sequence of similar numbers such as 01100001 and 01100100. Fortunately, math was my strongest subject. I didn’t particularly like it, but I understood it. I instantly recognized the numbers as binary code and set about deciphering it as best I could.

Just as I believed things could not get any worse, the seriousness of the situation escalated to catastrophic levels. I began to decipher words such as “planet,” “attack,” “destroy” and “colonization.” My heart raced as I started to make sense of the numerical text. It quickly became apparent that ‘Jack’ and ‘Ruth’ were aliens from an unknown planet whose inhabitants were preparing to attack us. My so-called foster parents were seemingly on a scouting expedition when they crash-landed near Roswell in 1947.

They had probably murdered Jack and Ruth and stolen their identities and all their possessions including their ranch. Hiding in plain sight, they had been reporting back to their home planet ever since.

As I continued deciphering the code, I noticed the text was becoming increasingly dark. There was mention of ‘sustainable farming’ accompanied by drawings of dozens of young girls in individual cages. They were all shackled with feeder tubes inserted in their mouths. Breeding farms were also discussed. The best male ‘livestock’ would be used to produce a continuous food supply.

Tears filled my eyes when I saw their plans for the rest of the population. Virtually every male, man, or boy, is to be put to death—their bodies to be used as a source of heat. A similar fate awaited the sick and the elderly. The only human survivors in this terrible new world would be girls aged 0-16 with a life expectancy of 16 years. Once they reached this milestone they were to be slaughtered and eaten.

My stomach churned as I discovered why 16-year-old girls were so prized by this alien race. It was apparent that my foster parents had documented their culinary exploits in great detail. They had ‘sampled’ human flesh from all ages and sexes: newborn to elderly. Their comments were grotesque and way too graphic. Phrases such as “too fatty,” “too tough” and “too grizzly” were common. It was suggested that the raging hormones in pubescent girls is the reason the ‘meat’ tastes so sweet and flavorsome with 16 being the optimum age to slaughter the ‘livestock.’

My body shook head-to-toe as I tried to process these shocking revelations. I knew that I had to try and stop them somehow. My mind raced as I tried to devise a plan of action. I thought about returning to the house to get my cell phone so that I could call the cops. I had left it on charge but was sure it would have enough battery to make multiple calls by now. I decided it was too risky and opted to put everything I had discovered in a folder and email a copy to the relevant authorities.

I set about creating a folder. My fingers frantically pounded the keyboard. I was almost done when I heard footsteps. I eyed the weedkiller and knew what I had to do. I reasoned that maybe I could take them with me as I quickly unscrewed the cap.

I discarded the ‘empty’ bottle of weedkiller just as my foster parents started pounding on the door, demanding that I, “let them in.” I gripped the ax tight as the door suddenly exploded into a pile of kindling. My heart pounded like a drum. I realized that Jack and Rose had morphed into their true selves. No way could two elderly folk have destroyed the door with such force.

I was expecting slimy, green creatures with tentacles. However, they are far more hideous and threatening. They have both transformed into a huge black mass which is more animalistic than human. It was like staring at a pair of silhouettes. Yet, they exude power and have multiple limbs with claws the size of daggers. Their mouths are huge with row upon row of razor-sharp triangular-shaped teeth with a vicious serrated edge. They are like no apex predator I have ever seen. It is like looking at the shadows of two giant, multi-limbed, grizzly bears with the jaws of a great white capable of enormous ferocity and damage.

I’m beginning to feel incredibly nauseous. I’m not sure if it is sheer terror or the weedkiller starting to take effect. Either way, I am determined to keep the contents of my stomach intact in the hope that they get a nasty little surprise when they devour me.

I take great comfort in knowing I will taste anything but ‘sweet.’ Hopefully, I won’t be the only one who breathes their last today.

They’re still twenty feet away but are edging closer towards me. Drool drips from their huge, shark-like teeth as they salivate in anticipation of their ‘feast.’

They’re almost within touching distance now, I can feel their hot breath on my soft skin as I frantically finish typing up this post with my left hand. My right hand grips the ax tight. I may be ‘disabled’ but I’m going out swinging.

I pray you heed my warning and notify the authorities immediately.

They’re inches away. I’ve just enough time to click ‘SUBMIT’.......

A woman came through the drive through a while back. Not in a vehicle or anything, just walked up to the window. Which happens, sometimes people on walks will just come up and buy something. It’s even more common since we’ve had our dining room closed most nights. But I just can’t shake this woman from my head.

 I didn’t think she seemed out of place, not physically. Drive throughs get all types of people. I mean some people really stick with you because of how strange they are, like a man yelling at me because I handed his girlfriend her soda “too aggressively”. This woman wasn’t like that, she was remarkably average.

She looked middle-aged, mid-western, a blouse on with a cross just a bit too big and hair straight out of the 80s. She had asked for a small vanilla shake and a small fry, paying with a crumpled-up bill. She told me to keep the change, grabbed the food and walked away into the woods behind the store. But before she left, I think she kissed me? Just my hand, not like a full kiss or anything, but her mouth grazed against my hand when I was passing her the food, just for a second, and I can’t get that out of my head. For all intents and purposes, she should just be another customer in a long line of customers I serve every day, she wasn’t even particularly unusual. But, these past few nights, I feel like I can’t sleep, like she’s stuck somewhere behind my eyelids.

After that night, seeing her, I began having issues. For one, I started seeing bugs on my skin, it was probably due to the lack of sleep, but I’d see them in the corner of my eyes, crawling against my arm. They weren’t there, when I really looked and focused my eyes they’d be gone. It always made me feel on edge. Just the thought of a bug on me makes my skin crawl. Sometimes I would find myself absentmindedly scratching a spot that I’d seen a bug before. It would help that skin crawling feeling go away, at least sometimes. I think my coworkers chalked it up to addiction, a lot of them had gone through it themselves and always treated me extra nice if I had a bad itching day. I thought it was sweet, even if they didn’t know my real problem.

I’d also been losing time, mostly when I’d work the back window, away from everyone else. It would get worse at night too. I’d find myself in the deep freezer, or sweeping the floor, closing up for the night when I wouldn’t even remember it getting dark outside. I really didn’t mind it much though. Sometimes it would be nice to not have to work a full shift.

Surprisingly, given my state, the General Manager was talking about promoting me to shift manager. It was an exciting prospect, it means no more wearing a hat and apron, more responsibilities, but sadly no pay raise. I’d still be happy even without a pay raise but one of the responsibilities of the job is to inventory the downstairs freezer. Normally I wouldn’t have to go down there, the only thing they keep down there is frozen buns that the managers bring up to thaw daily, but soon it would be my job too.

Most fast-food chains don’t have basements, it’s entirely impractical, but since our chain replaced a family-owned company, we strangely have one. It’s a large space, unfinished, always wet, dimly lit, somehow always a dark shade of green.  You can’t turn on the lights until you are at the bottom of the stairs and even then the light comes from singular bulbs on strings that barely illuminate the room. It was eerie, and I dreaded having to do inventory alone, so killing 2 birds with one stone, I switched to day shifts. The doctor thinks it would be best, something about my circadian rhythm being messed up by working at night.

After switching shifts, I found that I really liked it. Opening early in the morning has a strange sort of magic to it. The quietness is peaceful, and the sun always streams into the building, sometimes making little rainbows on the caked grime covered floors. My sleep improved and the imaginary bugs went away. My arms finally get a chance to heal, now crisscrossed with bandages to keep the oozy patches contained. I felt refreshed, even going down into the basement doesn’t affect me that much anymore. Just knowing that the sun is out and shining keeps her from my thoughts. At least it had until last week, when I saw her again.

It had been a few months on the day shift, and I was about to leave for the night to go home and suddenly she was there, inside the building, waiting for me at the cash register, her nails tapping against the plastic countertop. She was taller than me, domineering, she frightened me, staring at me expectantly with eyes so radiantly blue they seemed to glow.

“Ma’am, our inside dining area is closed for the day, but we can help you through the drive through,” I had said.

“You aren’t working nights anymore,” her voice was deeper than I had anticipated, fuller, scratchy, like a heavy smoker, it didn’t match her physical appearance at all. Taking a closer look at her, she seemed sick, her eyes reddish, her nose running, her skin flushed a dark pink. She was shiny with sweat.

“No ma’am,” I had replied. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled as she moved closer, leaning over the counter.

“I miss seeing you,” her voice taking on a warm note, like salted caramel. I wanted to curl up in it, breathe her in. She reached her hand over the counter to place it over mine. I could feel the sweat of her palm as it lay clammy against me. I jerked it back startled looking down at my hand, strangely assessing it for injury. By the time I looked back up at her, she was gone, no trace left behind.

I tried to go to sleep that night but couldn’t. She haunted me. She said she missed seeing me, and I worried that might be true. I didn’t think I had seen her at all since that one night when she kissed me. Had I missed something? I tried closing my eyes, counting sheep, willing myself to sleep, but I couldn’t stop the thoughts racing around my head, that and my hand itched like hell.

 I dreamed of the woods behind the store, dense with foliage, brush untamed holding onto bits of paper wrapper and plastic bags, it appeared almost like the leftover remains of a meal trapped on the teeth of a wooden beast. I saw her, her body tucked within that maw. Her skin even sicker, draped around her like melting candle wax, her eyes the lit flame. Her hair had slunk off, her eyelids hung against her cheeks. She held out a hand for me. Her fingers dripping blood, flesh drooping against bone. The forest mouth seemed to open, hinging back displaying her like a pearl in an oyster, like a red tongue in a mouth. She stepped, tree branches catching on her skin, ripping it like wet tissue paper. I wanted to scream I wanted to run, but in ways dreams are so often, I couldn’t move. I felt her get closer, I could feel that horrible sensation, my skin rebelling against me, itching. She stood a mere foot away from me, grabbing at her own melting visage. Shifting it, molding it like warm putty, finally she lifted it back, moving it almost like taking of a hood, revealing her face. I woke.

Morning shifts got worse; my sleep schedule got thrown off again. I started itching, seeing things in the corner of my eyes, not just bugs anymore. My coworkers really started to worry. My doctor says I need medication, but it takes weeks to start being effective, I don’t know how long I can keep going like this. I hear things now too, I hear her, in the basement. She whispers to me, she wants me to come back at night, to stay until sunset, she says she has wonderful things to show me.

The bugs aren’t on my skin anymore, they’re in it. I can feel them moving, separating skin from flesh, as much as I scratch, I can’t seem to get them out. My arms are a landscape of open wounds, scabs, and raw tissue. I’ve been trying to wear long sleeves, but I can’t stop pulling them up to itch. Customers have started treating me with disgust, I was pulled aside today by the general manager, they’re thinking about firing me if I don’t get any help. I can’t explain that I’m beyond help, that she has me, I am hers now.

My coworkers say there used to be a woman that would come up to the window each night once I switched to day shift and ask if I was there, she’s stopped coming. My coworkers don’t know what happened to her, but I do. She’s in the building, tucked under the stairs of the basement, waiting for me to stay just long enough for the sun to set. I can see her down there every morning, peaking at me while I count the number of rye loafs and burger buns. The coworkers think we have a mouse infestation, something keeps eating our leftover cookies and frosted turnovers, but I know the truth. She just has a sweet tooth.

It’s getting colder outside. I know she can’t get me in the sun, but the days are getting shorter. One day I’m going to leave too late, and I know she’ll have me.

She showed me what she really looked like today, when she takes off her skin. In my dream I never saw it, but right before I left for the day I went down there, rolling her a chunk of raw cookie dough from the freezer. I don’t want her contaminating the customers food while searching for a sweet treat. She pawed almost into the light reaching for the dough, and I saw her fleshless hand.

“Turn off the lights love,” she whispered to me. I shook my head, my resolve weakening. She came out into the light further her eyes glowing cat like in the darkness.

“I want you to see me,” she whispered, despite myself, I switched off the basement lights. The room went dark, inky black. She emerged from her den behind the stairs. And I saw her, her horrible tremendous self. A display from a grey’s anatomy book, muscles, tendons, ligaments on full display.

I see her even writing this now. Her eyes eternally open, blood pooling around her feet, her flesh tender. She holds open her arms towards me like a lover. She says she wants me; I am her chosen; she won’t leave without me. I can feel my skin pull from me, flesh yearning for escape from its prison, it wants her too. I don’t know how much longer I can resist.

I let her touch me in that basement, just my hand, she kissed it again, purposefully this time. I can feel my tissue peel away, like a hangnail that doesn’t stop, a whole finger unsheathed from its flesh. I type with it now, every nerve ending feels born again, sensation free of the dulling of skin. I think I’ll go back tonight, let her run her hands against me, and feel as my skin slides free.

 Born anew.

Please send help. I've been in this hellhole for 5 hours. Sorry if I sound like a selfish coward throughout... whatever's happened to me, this has just been a lot and I don't know what to do or how to get out of here. I'll try to recap everything as accurately as possible, so that you get the general idea.

I'm gonna share a couple of screenshots from my friends' GC for context.

FYI, my username is "UnintendedPalindrome09", Shawn's is "jeans", Jamie's is "egg.sand.brkfst", Matt's is "sk☠️11y".

—

UnintendedPalindrome09 - 12/04/2024 10:06 AM

So, what are we gonna do when we meet up?

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jeans - 12/04/2024 10:15 AM

Bro still uses proper punctuation in 2024 💀💀💀

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egg.sand.brkfst - 12/04/2024 10:15 AM

stfu you literally bought a discord account

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jeans - 12/04/2024 10:15 AM

Okay you scroll through TikTok all day. Your point?

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egg.sand.brkfst - 12/04/2024 10:16 AM

youre a soccer fan

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jeans - 12/04/2024 10:16 AM

And?

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egg.sand.brkfst - 12/04/2024 10:16 AM

and you play overwatch all day too

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jeans - 12/04/2024 10:16 AM

Alr you didnt have to bring that up

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sk☠️11y - 12/04/2024 10:18 AM

huh whats going pn

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sk☠️11y - 12/04/2024 10:18 AM

lets explore that abandoned wwrehouse at shawn's place

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UnintendedPalindrome09 - 12/04/2024 10:21 AM

Why would we do that? There's nothing in there.

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egg.sand.brkfst - 12/04/2024 10:22 AM

omgg yes lets all bring flashlights and stuff

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jeans - 12/04/2024 10:22 AM

Bro is literally a horror movie protagonist 💀

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UnintendedPalindrome08 - 12/04/2024 10:35 AM

That was funnier the first time.

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sk☠️11y - 12/04/2024 10:38 AM

who wants to go to the wasrehouse thumbs up react this meds age

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sk☠️11y - 12/04/2024 10:38 AM

meds age

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sk☠️11y - 12/04/2024 10:38 AM

meds aged

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sk☠️11y - 12/04/2024 10:38 AM

FFS autocorrect

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sk☠️11y - 12/04/2024 10:38 AM

message

[👍3 ]

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egg.sand.brkfst - 12/04/2024 10:39 AM

LOL

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sk☠️11y - 12/04/2024 10:40 AM

who wants to go do something else react here

[👍1 ]

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sk☠️11y - 12/04/2024 10:43 AM

we're going to the warehouse @ everyone

—

We met up at Shawn's at about 5 PM.

He's upper-middle class; his dad owns a couple of local mattress stores and his mom is a heart surgeon.

He lives in a mansion, and always wonders why we hang out there, "instead of Jamie's or Dean's apartment, or wherever Matt lives". Shawn's home has three separate bedrooms and bathrooms, a home theater and a room filled with a bunch of clocks. Shawn says it's his dad's clock collection, but when we enter it, the clocks suddenly stop ticking, so I don't know what's up with that.

Anyway, we're all outside and nobody's saying anything.

I tried breaking the ice. "So, where's the warehouse? Isn't that what we came here for?"

"Huh?" Jamie suddenly stopped scrolling and took out her right earbud, putting it in her pocket and blankly staring at me, as if processing the information I just told her.

"Oh, yeah, I dunno. Go ask Shawn."

she replied, going back to scrolling through videos of anime clips played above Subway Surfers gameplay.

"Prolly behind that dumb fuckin' mansion." Matt smirked, pointing up and adjusting his sunglasses.

"That's Shawn's home, you know how he feels about us making fun of his “dumb mansion”." I argued.

Why do we keep making fun of each other?

"Why are you such a square, man? Jeez." He looked deeply offended, sliding his vape out from under his sleeve.

"You wouldn't want Shawn to make fun of your apartment, would you?"

"Oh, here we go. “You wouldn't want Shawn to make fun of your apartment, would you? You wouldn't download a car!”" Matt parroted in a nerdy voice, flailing his arms around.

"Live a little, dude," he said, now in a serious tone. "You don't always have to be goody-two-shoes, you're allowed to make fun of your friends a little bit."

"Sorry, I just didn't wanna come off as an-"

"Hey, what's up, guys? I was busy... ironing my shirts. What's going on here?" Shawn strolled in, carrying a heavy box of equipment.

"Oh, we were just talking about where the warehouse is. Or where it could be, because you haven't told us where it is," I answered.

"You should really get yourself together, Shawn. Your shirt's on backwards and it has ketchup stains on it," Jamie said judgmentally, briefly looking away from her phone, before going right back to mindlessly scrolling.

"Oohh, that? I found out there's actually a bunch of protein in ketchup, so I started ordering ketchup packets from McDonald's and eating them. You know, for bulking," he said, putting the box on the ground with a thud, then striking a confident pose.

"You eat ketchup...? Like, as a snack?"

"Yeah, but we don't have to talk about that."

Shawn slowly took off the lid, revealing 50 tiny flashlights in neat individual plastic packages. "I got us some flashlights, like you asked me to. I stole these from a Walmart dumpster. Don't tell anyone," he grinned, expecting to see our horrified reactions.

Jamie was doomscrolling, phonk music faintly blasting through the earbud in her hoodie pocket. Matt was wiping the condensation off of his sunglasses with his jacket.

"Why... would you do that?" I said, peeking into the container, grabbing and unwrapping a flashlight.

It felt cheap; smooth, light and flimsy. The neon green and orange coloring irritated my eyes. Felt like a cheap toy more than anything.

"Ugh, don't ask. Doesn't matter. Whatever." Shawn said, dismissing the question. He took a handful of cheap flashlights and handed them out.

"Wait, I wasn't paying attention." Jamie put her phone in her pocket, furrowing her eyebrows.

"What the hell is this?!" she said, throwing the flashlight on the ground and lightly stepping on it, shattering it into tiny shards of glass and plastic.

Matt took a hit of his vape, and choked on his own spit while exhaling. "Dude-" [cough] "Dude, aren't you like, a billionaire?", he snickered in the middle of coughing.

"Shut up! Let's just head to the warehouse already." Shawn shushed him, quickly scanning his surroundings. "We gotta head down this path. You guys got enough battery left?"

"Yeah, I got about 97% left. Should be enough." I muttered.

"Why are we sneaking around, anyway?" Matt asked, hiding his vape in the sleeve of his jacket.

"My dad's home. He's in the clock room... adjusting his clocks or something. I don't know what he does in there, but it'll buy us time." Shawn whispered, trying not to draw attention to himself.

"Alright...? Are you not allowed to go near the warehouse or something?"

"Yeah, my mom told me this weird wives tale all the time. It goes something like...

“There's a reason why we built our home in front of that old warehouse. My friend, my dear old friend, went to the warehouse one day. I dared him to go there, and stay for a day. When he returned, he was never the same.” It's like a song, or a poem. Gets stuck in your head, especially if you hear it every week for like, two years."

"Two years?! Damn, man."

"I'm starting to question whether or not we should do this." I butted in, slowly backing away.

"What are you, a coward?! Come on, we don't have time for this!" Shawn hissed through gritted teeth, grabbing my wrist and digging his fingernails into my skin.

Jamie audibly groaned. "Let's just go already. If Dean wants to be a pussy, he can leave whenever. It's not like we're holding him hostage."

I retorted, putting my hands up. "Fine, fine! I'm sorry, alright? I-I'm just anxious."

I felt like something was wrong. Terribly wrong. I just couldn't quite put my finger on it.

The warehouse's front gate looked like it was centuries old, weathered and rusted from decades of rain and terrain. The bottom left corner of it was lousily pried open, the opening just barely big enough to crawl through.

Matt cocked his head to the side, putting a hand on his hips. "This place looks sketchy."

"Looks fun." Shawn said, grinning.

"Looks..." - The words got stuck in my throat. I felt a rush of cold sweat on the back of my neck.

"Looks good, yeah." I finished, taking a deep breath.

"Quit doing that, man. I'm sure it's-..." Matt took another hit from his vape, exhaling the fumes and letting out an excruciatingly long dry cough, then gasping for air.

"...sure it's fine. Choked on my spit," he gestured to his throat, bending down and coughing once again.

I sighed. "Let's just get this over with."

Breathe in, breathe out... Breathe in, breathe out...

I got on all fours and carefully crawled through the tight opening, holding my breath.

I exhaled and took a deep breath through my nose, instantly being thrown into a coughing fit. The stench of rotting flesh was unbearable.

The interior of the warehouse was strangely warm; the tiled floor was slimy and slippery, much like a mother's womb. It was bright enough in there to read a book. I felt a rush of hot air blowing in and against my direction. As the wind brushed against me, I almost thought the roof moved up and down about half an inch.

"So, what's out there?" Matt asked, peeking in.

I stood up, nearly slipping on gunk.

I was inspecting the area, stunned. "You have to see this. I-I can't... I'll sound insane."

After looking around, I touched a wall out of curiosity. It was made out of large gray bricks, covered in oddly soft translucent film.

It almost looked like... skin.

I felt a stinging pain in my index finger, like getting jabbed with a thousand tiny syringes. I let out a quiet "ow!" before hearing the sound of metal scraping and creaking behind me.

Matt was trying to pry the gate open with his bare hands. He crawled through the larger opening he made, Jamie following behind him.

Shawn quickly tried to squirm through the hole. The sharp edges of the gate tore off a part of his crumpled shirt and skin on his back and side, leaving a deep, thin wound in its place.

Shawn let out a painful, yet quiet yelp, trying to clutch the oozing cut in a panic, his hands getting covered in his own blood.

He looked pale and sickly, wiping the blood off of his hands against his torn, ketchup-stained shirt. "Shit... Anyone got band-aids?"

"We didn't bring any. I don't think any of us thought this would happen, frankly." Matt said flatly, fidgeting with his flashlight.

"...Am I gonna get lockjaw?" Shawn asked, looking utterly terrified.

Nearly everything that could go south did in approximately 5 minutes. I was scrambling to find a solution to all this.

"I'll go get help," I suggested. "J-Just make up an excuse, and I'll fetch you some tissues, or a bandage, or-"

"Are you kidding me?! My dad's gonna kill me if he finds out about this!" Shawn said, looking at me like I was insane.

He tore off his sleeve and haphazardly covered his wound up with it, the fabric soaking up his blood in an instant. "Look, I can improvise, it's fine. I'm fine," he said, as blood was dripping down his torso.

Jamie rubbed her temple and wiped her sweaty forehead. "We need to do something; either we explore the warehouse now or we tell Shawn's dad about this and go back home. Hangout cancelled or... delayed, I dunno."

What am I supposed to do?

Can't we just meet up another time?

No, they'll get mad at me. They'll stop hanging out with me.

Just have to go along with the plan, and everything will be okay.

I reluctantly agreed to explore the warehouse.

The deeper we went in, the more filth and grime was in our surroundings.

Matt turned his flashlight on, the weak, flickering light barely illuminating anything in the already bright building.

"This place is definitely bigger on the inside than I thought it would be," he said, turning off the flashlight and throwing it behind his back.

Suddenly, Shawn stopped limping and jolted upright, pointing his finger up in the air shakily. "This place is bigger than a football stadium!" he said enthusiastically, a demented grin spreading across his face and quickly dissipating.

"Are you feeling okay?" I said, patting his back.

"This is worse than that-..." [cough] "...that time the ref gave me a yellow card for itching my nose."

I let go of his shoulders, taking a few steps back. "W-What are you talking about...?"

Shawn let out a series of wet, gurgling coughs. He fell down on his knees, bruising them and bending down, his hands on the wet, slimy tiles.

He began throwing up... something, his body shaking and twitching. The liquid itself looked like viscous clear goo with bits of pink flesh and blood mixed in. It smelled like rotting flesh, coming out of his nose and mouth.

After a time that felt like hours, he coughed out the last glob of that liquid and stood up perfectly straight.

He turned around to look directly at me.

His eyes were gone.

Only crimson red, unnaturally wide eye sockets remained in their place.

"I love soccer more than anything in the world." he said, that same eerie grin spreading across his face. "Do you like sports like I do?"

Breathe in... Breathe out... Breathe... BREATHE! No, this isn't working!

I glanced over to Matt for help. I couldn't think straight or think at all, really.

He was leaning up against the wall, his arms crossed, looking off into the distance. His vape was on the ground next to Shawn, which was covered in whatever was inside him.

I ran up to Matt as fast as I could. He looked like he wasn't fully there. I grabbed him by the shoulders, trying to jolt him awake.

"We have to go, now! Please, I-"

"Huh? What's going on? Sorry, I zoned out," he replied nonchalantly.

"MATT!"

He shook his head, burying his face in his hands. "What's happening?! God, my head hurts... what happened to Shawn?"

"I..." I gestured to Shawn, who was now facing us.

Matt lifted his sunglasses up to take a proper look at him - at it. "That's not... that can't be Shawn anymore."

"We have to go!"

"Go? Go where?" 'Shawn' asked, tilting its head slightly.

Matt cowered in fear. "No, no! That's not... you're not... Get away from me!"

"We won't get anywhere if we hide, Matt! What are you doing?!"

Matt was hyperventilating, curled up into a ball. "No, but... that's not gonna... we're not gonna be able to... able to..."

I heard a loud meaty pop from inside of Matt. Inside of his head.

He stood up, taking off his sunglasses. That substance was leaking out of his eye sockets and ears, getting into his mouth and onto his chin, but he still had that smile. That fucking smile.

"What are you, a coward, dude? Come on, trust me..."

It said in a mocking dude-bro voice, leaning in close to me, its eyeless sockets boring into my soul. I felt its breath on my neck; it smelled like a cadaver left out in the sun for a month. It grabbed my wrist, tearing into it with its fingernails.

"...you'll never have enough time to run."

I pushed it away with all of my strength. 'Matt' just stood there, unmoving.

They're all gone. Matt, Shawn... wait.

Where did Jamie go?

I looked around the warehouse, trying to regain my composure, trying to find a compromise to this mess.

Matt, Shawn...

"Jamie!"

She was lying on her side in that filth, facing away from me. I could see her thumb doing that swiping motion. Swiping down, again and again and again...

"Jamie, come on, we have to-"

She rolled over to face me, sighing.

There was a swarm of pale white worms gnawing on her leg, tearing through her flesh like butter.

"What is it?", she asked, not taking her eyes off of her phone.

"What the fuck are you doing?! I can't just let you die here!"

Jamie casually shrugged. "Whatever. Not like that matters."

They're all gone, stop wasting your time! Just run!

I ran off, not looking back.

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out...

I heard a faint "good luck," before leaving everything behind.

Thank God, I'm safe. I can get out of this shithole, live a long, happy life...

No, I wouldn't. I'm a coward. Leaving my friends to rot.

They're not my friends anymore! Those things are just pretending!

It doesn't matter. I just need to get to the exit. Wait, where's the gate...?

Where's the gate?

Where's the GATE?!

The roof moved up...

...and down, about 3 inches. Another gust of wind. Colder, this time. I felt myself getting weaker and weaker and...

I woke up to a shrill, high-pitched chorus of laughter.

"Going somewhere, Dean?" 'Shawn' asked, laughing in my face.

I rubbed my eyes, my hands covered in slime. "What...?"

I was right back where I started.

I'm typing this out now, I don't know what else to do. I've tried calling 911, my parents, any contacts in my phone - all I heard was that same fucking laughter on the other end of the line.

Shawn - or whatever's left of him - is talking to me now.

It's laughing at me. Laughing in my fucking face.

"Tick, tock, tick, tock... The clock is ticking, Dean. You won't have long before we're all gone."

It started about a month ago. I woke up in the middle of the night, thirsty as hell. As I stumbled to the kitchen for a glass of water, I noticed a sliver of light coming from Ethan's room. The door was cracked open, and I could see his small silhouette framed against the window.

"Ethan?" I called softly, pushing the door open. "What are you doing up, buddy?"

He didn't turn around. He just stood there, staring out into the darkness.

"Ethan?" I tried again, a little louder this time.

Finally, he looked at me, his eyes wide and unfocused. "Daddy, it's time," he said, his voice flat and emotionless.

A shiver ran down my spine. "Time for what, bud?"

But he didn't answer. Instead, he climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. Within seconds, he was fast asleep.

I checked my phone. 2:12 AM. Weird, but kids do strange things sometimes, right? I tucked Ethan in and went back to bed, chalking it up to a random night terror or sleepwalking episode.

The next night, I woke up again around 2 AM. Call it parental instinct or just paranoia, but something made me check on Ethan. Sure enough, there he was at the window again. I checked my phone: 2:12 AM on the dot.

This time, I didn't say anything. I just watched him from the doorway. He stood there, perfectly still, for exactly five minutes. Then, just as I was about to intervene, a sound pierced the silence that made my skin crawl.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Three sharp raps on our front door.

Ethan didn't react. He just climbed back into bed like nothing had happened.

With my heart pounding in my chest, I crept downstairs and peered through the peephole. The porch light illuminated an empty stoop. No one was there.

I tried to convince myself it was just a coincidence. Maybe some drunk teenager playing a prank. But a nagging feeling in my gut told me something wasn't right.

For the next week, the same thing happened every single night. Ethan at the window at 2:12 AM. Knocking at 2:17 AM. No one at the door.

I tried talking to Ethan about it during the day, but he had no memory of getting up at night. He just looked at me with those big, innocent eyes and asked if we could have pancakes for breakfast.

I was starting to lose it. I wasn't sleeping. I couldn't focus at work. Every night, I'd sit on the stairs, watching Ethan's door, waiting for 2:12 AM with a mixture of dread and morbid curiosity.

One night, about ten days in, I decided to do something different. At 2:10 AM, I quietly entered Ethan's room and stood next to his bed. As the clock ticked over to 2:12, his eyes snapped open. He sat up, but when he saw me, he froze.

"Daddy," he whispered, "you shouldn't be here."

"Why not, buddy?" I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.

"Because," he said, his eyes darting to the window, "she's waiting."

My mouth went dry. "Who's waiting, Ethan?"

But before he could answer, the knocking started. Only this time, it wasn't coming from the front door.

It was coming from the other side of Ethan's bedroom window.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The knocking stopped as suddenly as it had started. In the eerie silence that followed, I could hear my own ragged breathing and the frantic pounding of my heart.

"Ethan," I whispered, my voice trembling, "get away from the window. Now."

But my son didn't move. His eyes were fixed on something outside, something I couldn't see. Slowly, deliberately, he raised his small hand and pressed it against the glass.

That's when I saw it. A hand on the other side of the window, mirroring Ethan's. Long, skeletal fingers with blackened nails. The skin was pale and waxy, like that of a corpse left too long in water.

"Jesus Christ!" I yelled, lunging forward to grab Ethan. But as soon as my fingers touched his shoulder, he let out an ear-piercing scream that made me stagger backward.

The hand outside the window vanished, and Ethan collapsed onto the floor, his body convulsing violently. I scooped him up, my mind reeling with panic. As I turned to rush him out of the room, my eyes caught something that made me freeze in my tracks.

There, scratched into the window glass, were five words: "I'M COMING FOR HIM, JOHN."

A wave of dread washed over me. How the hell did it know my name?

I ran downstairs with Ethan in my arms, fumbling for my phone to call 911. But as soon as I hit the bottom step, every light in the house flickered and died. In the pitch darkness, I heard something that sent chills down my spine.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

The sound of nails dragging across wood, coming from every direction at once.

"Daddy," Ethan whimpered, his small body trembling against mine, "she's inside now."

I sprinted for the front door, my free hand outstretched in the darkness. But when I grabbed the doorknob, it was ice cold and slick with something wet. I yanked my hand back, feeling warm liquid dripping down my wrist.

The coppery smell of blood filled my nostrils.

"You can't leave, John," a voice whispered, so close I could feel fetid breath on my neck. It sounded like Marie, but wrong. Like her voice was being forced through a throat full of gravel. "We're a family again."

"You're not Marie," I choked out, backing away. "My wife is dead."

A chilling laugh echoed through the house. "Dead? Oh, John. I'm so much more than dead."

Suddenly, the lights flickered back on. I blinked, momentarily blinded. When my vision cleared, I saw her.

Marie stood at the foot of the stairs. But it wasn't the Marie I remembered. Her skin was gray and bloated, her eyes sunken and filled with a sickly yellow light. Her once beautiful hair hung in wet, rotting clumps around her face. She wore the same dress we buried her in, now stained with dirt and God knows what else.

"Marie," I breathed, unable to believe what I was seeing.

Her mouth stretched into an impossibly wide grin, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth. "I've come to take our son home, John. It's time for Ethan to join me."

Ethan squirmed in my arms, reaching out towards the thing that looked like his mother. "Mommy?" he called, his voice a mixture of fear and longing.

The creature's eyes locked onto Ethan, and she took a step forward. The floorboards creaked and squelched under her bare, mud-caked feet.

"No!" I shouted, clutching Ethan tighter. "You're not taking him!"

I turned and ran for the kitchen, my mind racing. Salt. I needed salt. Wasn't that supposed to work against spirits or something?

As I fumbled through the cabinets, I could hear Marie's wet footsteps getting closer. The air grew cold, and the putrid stench of decay filled the room.

"Oh, John," her voice sing-songed from just outside the kitchen. "You can't protect him forever. Ethan belongs with me now."

I finally found the salt and turned around, ready to throw it. But what I saw made the container slip from my numb fingers.

Marie stood in the doorway, but her body was... wrong. Her limbs were elongated, joints bent at impossible angles. Her head lolled to one side, neck stretched and distorted. And behind her, writhing in the shadows, were dozens of arms, reaching, grasping.

Ethan screamed.

In that moment, as I stared into the abyss of that horrifying scene, I knew our lives would never be the same. Whatever was wearing Marie's face, whatever had been coming for my son night after night, it wasn't going to stop.

And I had no idea how to fight it.

The thing that wasn't Marie lurched forward, its grotesque limbs scrabbling across the kitchen floor. I backed away, clutching Ethan to my chest, my mind blank with terror. My back hit the kitchen counter, and I realized we were trapped.

"Please," I begged, though I knew reasoning with this creature was futile. "Please, just leave us alone."

The thing cocked its head at an unnatural angle, Marie's once-beautiful features twisting into a mockery of confusion. "Leave you alone? But John, we're family. And family should be together... forever."

One of its many arms shot out, impossibly fast, grabbing my ankle. I yelped as icy fingers dug into my flesh, the chill spreading up my leg like poison. Ethan whimpered in my arms, his small body shaking uncontrollably.

In that moment of pure desperation, something inside me snapped. A surge of protective rage coursed through my veins, burning away the paralyzing fear. I wouldn't let this thing take my son. I couldn't.

With a roar, I kicked out at the creature's face. My foot connected with a sickening squelch, and it reeled back, momentarily stunned. I seized the opportunity, charging past it towards the basement door. If we couldn't leave the house, maybe we could find a way to trap it.

I slammed the basement door behind us and fumbled for the light switch. The dim bulb flickered to life, casting long shadows across the cluttered space. Ethan clung to me, his face buried in my shoulder.

"Daddy," he whispered, "I'm scared."

"I know, buddy," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "But we're gonna be okay. I promise."

That's when I saw it. In the corner of the basement, partially hidden behind some old boxes, was a door I'd never noticed before. It looked ancient, its wood warped and stained with age.

From upstairs came the sounds of splintering wood and shattering glass. The creature was tearing the house apart looking for us.

With no other choice, I approached the mysterious door. As I reached for the handle, Ethan suddenly spoke up.

"That's where Mommy comes from," he said matter-of-factly.

I froze. "What do you mean, Ethan?"

He pointed at the door. "Every night at 2:12, that door opens. Mommy comes out and goes to my window. She says she misses us and wants us to come with her. But I was scared, so I didn't open the window."

My mind reeled. How long had this been going on? And why 2:12 AM?

Then it hit me. 2:12 AM. February 12th. The day Marie died.

Before I could process this revelation, the basement door exploded inward. The creature that wore Marie's face came slithering down the stairs, its body contorting in ways that defied physics.

"Found you," it hissed, its voice a chorus of whispers.

I grabbed the handle of the mysterious door and yanked it open. Beyond it was not the foundation of our house, but a swirling vortex of shadows and mist. The air that rushed out was frigid and smelled of decay.

The creature let out an inhuman shriek. "No! You can't send me back! I won't go alone!"

It lunged at us, its numerous arms outstretched. In that split second, I made a decision that would haunt me forever.

I set Ethan down and kissed his forehead. "I love you, buddy. Always remember that."

Then, using all my strength, I shoved the creature towards the open door. But as it teetered on the threshold, one of its arms wrapped around my waist.

I looked at Ethan, saw the terror and confusion in his eyes. "Run, Ethan! Run upstairs and don't look back!"

The last thing I saw was my son's tear-streaked face as the creature and I fell through the doorway into the abyss beyond.

I don't know how long I fell. Time seemed to have no meaning in that place of shadows and whispers. But eventually, I crashed onto what felt like solid ground.

I opened my eyes to find myself back in my own basement. The old door had vanished, leaving only a blank wall. Sunlight streamed through the small windows. Morning had come.

Painfully, I climbed the stairs, calling out for Ethan. I found him curled up on the living room couch, sleeping peacefully. When I woke him, he had no memory of the night's events.

It's been a week since that terrible night. The scratches on Ethan's window are gone, as if they never existed. He no longer gets up at 2:12 AM. To all appearances, our lives have returned to normal.

But I know better.

Sometimes, late at night, I hear whispers coming from the basement. And in my dreams, I see Marie - the real Marie - reaching out to me from beyond a door I can never open.

I don't know if the creature will find another way back. I don't know if it's truly gone, or if it's just biding its time. All I know is that every night, I check on Ethan at 2:12 AM.

And every night, I pray that the knocking doesn't start again.

X

I suppose my grandfather had eccentric tastes. The place he called home near the end of his life was a somewhat disturbing property that would surely freak out most people.

It was a former insane asylum.

Despite its off-putting past, he talked about it like it was the most luxurious mansion you could imagine. Instead of being creeped out by it, he was proud to own such a historic old building. He bought it for a very good price but spent quite a bit on restorations.

When he passed away, I was stunned to discover that he left the building to me.

A few members of the family were a bit insulted that he gave it to me over them, but most were so unsettled by the place that they didn’t mind. I guess I really was his favorite granddaughter.

I drove up one day to take a look at the place, tour the building, and decide what I was going to do about the fact that it had recently come into my ownership. At first, I thought there was no way I’d ever actually move in.

Arriving at the property, I was confronted with the sandstone monstrosity. The building was tall, towering over the landscape, with ornate windows and gothic architecture. There was a circular water fountain in front and a large clock tower at the entrance.

Inside there were several long and empty hallways. My grandfather had renovated the opening interior room into a living room and had rearranged things quite a bit. He had changed the doctor’s and nurse’s areas into his lavish bedroom and guest rooms. The kitchen was fully redesigned with expensive granite countertops. In one room there was even a pool hall. He had really turned this grim asylum into his own personal manor. I was somewhat impressed.

At the time, I still lived in a cramped apartment, so this was certainly an upgrade as far as space was concerned. I was pretty hesitant, but eventually, I decided to sell my apartment and move in. It might be a bit creepy, but it was much nicer than the place I’d been staying and there was no way I could pass up on all that space. It’s not wise to look a gift horse in the mouth I suppose.

It took some time to get used to it, and heating the place was a nightmare. Whenever I’d walk through the hallways it'd be freezing cold. However, the bedrooms and other rooms I could heat with fireplaces and heaters. After a while, I stopped seeing it as “an asylum” and saw it more and more as just a nice house that my loving grandfather had graciously given to me. I was appreciative.

This next part is a bit difficult to describe but I guess it’s relevant.

I’ve had mental health issues all my life on and off. They tend to get worse during periods of high stress, and shortly after my move, I started having a lot of issues at my job and with a few of my relationships. I became very paranoid as a result. I was convinced that someone was poisoning my food. Even when I was self-aware enough to know that it wasn’t true, it still bothered me and kept me from eating for several days. I felt I was having some sort of psychotic breakdown.

Eventually, I sought psychiatric help and after much assessment, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I didn’t have any auditory or visual hallucinations and with the aid of therapy and medication, I was able to keep my symptoms in check and manage it.

The irony of living in a former insane asylum at the time wasn’t lost on me. My friends morbidly joked that maybe the building was what did it somehow, but of course, I’d had a history of such mental health problems all throughout my life.

Thankfully, this was the 21st century and I was able to receive proper treatment, unlike many of the poor folks who lived their lives in the former asylum that I then called home. It was also a less taboo subject, something to be discussed more openly, instead of locked away behind the gates of hellscapes like an insane asylum. Patients were once stored away from society like a dirty secret and subjected to what would now be seen as horrible medicalized mistreatment. This grim history was all around me and only drove home the point for me what progress we had made as a society and how grateful I was for it.

Then something most peculiar happened.

One night I was heading to the kitchen to get a midnight snack. I had a blanket wrapped around me while traveling through the cold hallways. While making my way there I noticed unsettling movement in the distance. The hallway I was in had tall wooden doors along either side with each one leading to a small room that the patients once stayed in. When I looked towards the source of the noise I saw a human figure walking out of an open door. The figure moved down the hallway before disappearing through another open door further down.

The figure was as plain as day a person standing there, like you or me, not transparent like a specter in a movie. It was an eerie woman wearing an old-fashioned white nurse outfit. She looked like something out of an old black-and-white photo. I felt the threatening feeling that a mysterious stranger was in my house.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

The mind is a weird thing and can play tricks on you. I would know that more than most. At first, I took what I was seeing at face value, but when I thought more about it, I wondered if it could be a product of my mental illness. I’d never had visual hallucinations before and I’d been taking my medicine.

Could I really be seeing this? I thought.

Cautiously, I took a few steps forward in the cold dark corridor.

As if on cue, the nurse emerged from the door at the end of the long hallway. This time, however, she turned and faced towards me, staring blankly. Her piercing dark eyes gazed into me. This made my skin crawl.

The woman’s uniform was a white dress, shoes, and hat. Her skin was ghostly pale, her short hair was dark brunette. She looked at me for quite a while before a wicked smile began to slowly appear on her face. We both stood transfixed staring at one another for a moment. Something about the way she was looking at me was very sinister and intimidating.

She appeared to be holding an odd shiny silver medical instrument in her hand but I couldn't see what it was.

The nurse then began walking towards me.

In a panic, I ran back into my room and slammed the door.

I stayed awake all night. There was no way I was sleeping after that. I waited for daylight. In the morning I nervously peered out the door but saw nothing. It took hours to gain the courage to investigate the hallway in the daylight only to find absolutely nothing. No one was there.

After that horrible night, I started storing snacks in my room to avoid the empty hallways where I saw the nurse. I still wasn’t sure what she was. Given the history of the building, I thought she might be a ghost, but with my recent mental health crisis there’s no way I could be sure.

One morning, I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom mirror, trying not to think about what I’d been going through. I suddenly got the uncomfortable feeling that I was being watched. In the mirror, I saw the haunting figure gradually appear behind me out of nothing. With sudden alarm, I dropped my toothbrush and turned around to look, but she was gone.

That’s when I became really convinced that what I was seeing was a spirit of some kind, but that conviction was hard to hold on to as the days went by. I couldn’t trust my own mind to be giving me accurate information on what I was seeing. I just didn’t know if this was part of my condition somehow worsening or not. I wasn’t sure which answer was more frightening, that my illness now resulted in vivid hallucinations or that an asylum spirit was pursuing me.

Then I started seeing her during the daytime more and more. Sometimes it’d be just for a moment or out of the corner of my eye. Other times I’d see the ghostly nurse going in and out of rooms doing her busywork. She always seemed to catch me off guard. I started closing all the doors but somehow I’d find them inexplicably open again.

The door physically moved. That couldn’t be the result of a mental health issue, I thought.

Then again, maybe I didn’t actually close those doors, but just tricked myself into believing I did.

Sometimes late at night when I was getting ready for bed, I’d hear the sound of her nurse shoes walking on the tile flooring out in the hallway. I’d shutter as she drew closer and closer. If she was a spirit, I wondered what she wanted from me.

After weeks of being plagued by her mysterious and threatening presence, I decided I had to see my doctor and tell him about this. I told him that I’d been experiencing what I believed to be visual hallucinations. He increased the dosage of my medication in hopes that that would help.

It didn’t. I continued to see the ghostly woman in the hallways or throughout the building as I tried to focus on my daily life. I’d see her again and again. She just wouldn’t go away. Nothing could make her leave. I’d yell out to her in empty rooms, asking her what she wanted from me or pleading with her to please stop and leave me alone in peace. She made no reply.

Then one night, as I was sleeping, I grew restless and began to toss and turn. Suddenly, I found myself awake in the dark room. My eyes strained in the darkness until I could make out what I was seeing. My bedroom door, which I had locked, was wide open.

The nurse was standing at the foot of my bed looking at me as if I was a patient in her care.

Terrified, I screamed, threw the blankets off of me, and ran out of the room.

I made my way alone through the chilly hallways to the kitchen and flicked the light on. I stayed in the kitchen all night, guarding the door and looking around the room nervously waiting for her to spontaneously appear somewhere.

I knew I locked that door. With my dosage already increased, any notion that this was a product of my mental illness went right out the window for me. I needed to research the property more to see if there was any way to figure out what I was dealing with.

I knew my grandfather had a binder of information he’d collected on the old asylum. He’d mentioned it to me before, I just needed to find it. I spent the day digging through storage until I finally uncovered it in an old tote at the very bottom of a stack of cardboard boxes.

The binder was full of newspaper clippings and documents about the place, from the time it was being built until the time it was closed down and sold. There were even letters and correspondence between staff within its pages. I learned about the grizzly history of the asylum and about the poor treatment and dehumanization of the patients there.

In order to calm patients down sometimes they’d put them in “ice baths” which were tubs filled with ice to get them to calm down. They also did electro-shock therapy on supposedly unruly patients.

But the worst of all was the many horrific Transorbital Lobotomies which were done with tools resembling an ice pick and hammer.

Lobotomies were once considered a helpful form of treatment for various mental illnesses including schizophrenia, OCD, depression, anxiety, and violent outbursts. Sometimes the patient’s relatives just simply didn’t want to deal with them for whatever reason and so they had them committed or lobotomized. Anyone deemed “abnormal” was at risk. Sometimes this was an easy way for a husband to get rid of his former wife.

The procedure essentially resulted in permanent brain damage to the prefrontal cortex and left the patient as a zombified shell of their former self.

A steel ice pick was stabbed just below the eyelid into the thin bone inside the eye socket. The end of the long silver ice pick would then be struck with a small medical hammer until the pick cut into the brain tissue. The pick was then moved around from side to side until it severed the frontal lobe’s connection to the thalamus. Their personality, their self, and their ability to make rational decisions were forever destroyed.

Sometimes the patients were wide awake during these procedures and sometimes they died from brain bleeding.

The patients were left with vacant expressions and severely blunted or reduced emotions. The doctors found them to be more “obedient” and claimed to have fewer issues from them. Lobotomies continued in the medical field until around the late 1960s.

It was perhaps the worst thing you could do to someone, like killing them but without killing them.

I soon learned there was a nurse there who was legendary for the amount of lobotomies she’d given. Her name was Amelia and if the letters are to be believed she was not the nicest of people. I was horrified when I turned the page and was met with a photo of the very specter that’d been haunting me, standing outside on the building's front steps with the other nurses. Looking into her dark hateful eyes, I was sure it was her, every detail matched. The spirit I’d encountered was the cruel nurse Amelia who worked here in the early part of the 20th century.

Not wanting to be alone or in the building at all after reading that, I asked a close friend of mine if I could come over to her place. I explained some of what I was going through to the extent that I could without seeming too off-kilter. Being a true friend, she agreed that I could stay over for tonight so I wouldn’t be so frightened. I wondered how expensive a long hotel stay would be until I could find somewhere else to live.

I arrived at her house and we talked in the living room for a while. I showed her the binder and told her about what I was experiencing. It was nice to have someone to talk to and she made me feel much more comfortable. Getting out of that depressing asylum certainly put me in better spirits as well. Saying all of the story out loud to another person, I began to doubt myself a bit. It all sounded too unbelievable to be true.

Suddenly, my friend asked, “Do you hear that?”

I listened closely.

We both then heard the sound of shoes on hard tiling. It was coming from the hallway leading to my friend’s bedroom. She got up to investigate and I cautiously followed close behind her.

Staring down the hallway we both saw the ghostly figure of a dark-haired nurse.

“You see what I see, right?” I asked.

My friend, unable to form words, nodded.

In the nurse’s hands, she held a silver ice pick and hammer.

Nurse Amelia just looked at me and smiled a foreboding smile.

In that moment I saw that my worst fears were justified and there was no longer any ambiguity.

I knew then what her intentions were for me, and I knew that I wouldn’t be rid of her. She must’ve overheard me mention something about my diagnosis while I was living in the former asylum. She knew about my condition, and she intended to use her tools to fix it, the old-fashioned way.

Wow, I can't believe this works! Hi everyone, this is my blog for my upcoming hiking trip! I am so excited to share where I am hiking, THE Nahanni national park! I’m so excited to be given the opportunity to hike here, and share it with all of you! Well, gotta get back to packing, LOL. Keep following this blog and you will get updates very, very soon. See ya then!

My supplies:

Food

Sleeping bag

Bear spray

Tent

Toothbrush and toothpaste

Deodorant

Shotgun

Bullets

 Fishing gear

Bear traps(Protection)

EDIT: I totally forgot but so many people asked what park this is because they have never heard of it before. The nickname for this park is actually the valley of headless corpses, and I looked up why this canyon has been given that name. The reason for the name is that so many people keep being found without their heads, LOL.

Oh and by the way, a indian tribe actually disappeared here, which gives into the spooky feeling of the canyon, so I will not be sleeping at all(joking of course, but still, kinda spooky)

Anyway, by then!

Monday, april 6, 2024

I can't believe I made it. Everything looks spectacular, and the canyon walls look absolutely gorgeous. I wish I could take pictures but sadly I can't. The one bad part was that I had to go in a helicopter and had to be airlifted into the canyon, because there was no way to get my car down here(I’m actually scared of heights, would rather be on the ground, LOL) but now I’m here, my eyes cant take in this awesome beauty. I’m one of the few people that can actually be down here, so its just me and nature, the way that I like it. The helicopter pilot told me that there were a set of rules for me to follow nicknamed T.H.E.M

T- talk with a official on the phone if you see anything suspicious

H- Hover around the area and be absolutely sure that you saw something. Do this before calling an authority figure

E- Evaluate the situation, Know if you are in immediate danger or if you can get out of the situation

M- Move away from the immediate danger. DO THIS AT ALL COSTS. If you cannot move at the sight of danger, follow E- Evaluate the situation, try to find a clear escape plan, and then call an authority figure. 

To be honest with you, I’m not too worried. They keep saying to remember this stuff, but like,how bad can it be? The worst thing that can happen is a bear gets into my food or is too close to my tent, but I have a gun and bear spray, I’m fine. I hiked for a little bit, but as the sun started coming down, I decided to set my tent up by some bushes. I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I prepared, and started writing this. I'm about to hit the hay soon, so goodnight everyone, stay tuned for more awesome adventures!

Tuesday, April 7, 2024

Hello again, everyone! It’s me again, and I just want to say Im am so happy that people are invested in my hiking trip! It warms my heart, and I care deeply about each and every one of you. I just want to clear a couple things up, before I talk about my day. Some people are worried that I’m here, that I will get killed. And to that I say, I’m fine. I really don't understand what the big problem is. A couple of hunters got killed in mysterious ways 100 years ago, what does that have to do with me? I care deeply for your concerns, but trust me, I am, and will be, 100% ok. Anyway, enough of that, let me talk to you about my day!. The sun came up early so I set up my bear traps(I want to stay in this location for a couple of days) and decided I wanted an organic breakfast, so I went and got some berries. They were very delicious.

I went around and explored the area, and found a river! I will go fishing there before I leave. I saw so many fish in the water. This is such a beautiful place, it's practically untouched. I saw rabbits, butterflies, birds, frogs, and other funny little critters that God gave us. I wish Bob Ross was here, I bet he could paint the most beautiful picture of this canyon. For lunch and dinner I decided to make some stew. I guess the smell of the stew attracted some bears, because I kept seeing them, far off in the distance. Anyways, I hope each and every one of you have a good rest of your day, bye!

Wednesday, April 8, 2024

Hello to all the people who are keeping up with this blog. I just want to still say how thankful I am that each and every one of you cares so much about stupid ole me. It means the world. I must admit, I totally forgot to write about today. You may ask yourself, why? And to that I answer with bears. I have been seeing them all day. I decided to move from my current position, the stew smell kept them around, and so, I decided to hike to a new place. But it seems that I just can't shake them off, they are determined to get to me, LOL. I hike for thirty minutes, take a break, and from the corner of my eye, I can see a massive bear hiding from me. Then I look around and notice not 1 bear, but maybe 3 or 4 are surrounding me, hiding. It honestly freaks me out a little  bit, but I’m still 100 % percent safe. I found a new place to set up my tent(It is right by a boulder) and used almost all of my bear spray(Don't want to be mauled to death, LOL). I decided to have a couple peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and dinner. I don't want to make something that will attract bears again. 

Anyways, that's all that happened today, see ya tomorrow!

Thursday, April 9, 2024

I think the bears found me again. 

It’s still really weird how none of my bear traps have gone off, but there's 3-4 bears that I saw while hiking yesterday. I dunno, I might be going crazy, might be one of the canyons tricks. But I think one of them, the biggest one, keeps following me. I went fishing today, and actually caught a ton of fish. All was well until I heard a massive roar. It sounded like the bear was right next me, prepared to rip me to pieces right then and there. But… There was no bear at all. I just brushed it off as my mind was playing tricks on me, like it has the past two days. I kept hearing the roars get quieter and quieter. I totally forgot about the roars, that was until I heard something massive run in the brush right next to me. It had to be that bear, so I ran back to my tent, grabbed my shotgun, and was determined to kill it. 

I looked into the bush, but I saw no bear. I did, however, see footprints. Bear footprints. I tracked the footprints and it seemed like the bear was walking right next to the river, and then just stopped. I literally mean the tracks ended, there weren't any tracks that led on. Again, kinda strange. Hopefully I scared it off,  and honestly, I’m kind of scared right now. Why does this bear want to kill me so badly?

Please pray for my safety, everyone. See ya then

Friday, April 10, 2024

That wasn't a bear. I don't know what the hell it is.

And I heard it right by my tent last night. I woke up because I needed to pee really badly. As I moved over to open my tent, I noticed something very strange. There was a shadow of a bear right next to my tent. I heard very labored breathing, and smelt something putrid. The bear was trying to quietly enter my tent but couldn't. He couldn't seem to get the zipper to work. I guess he got frustrated, because he walked off. I tried to open my tent and see if  it was the massive bear that's been following me, but the bear was gone before I could peek my head out. To say I was scared would be an understatement. I couldn't sleep at all, I was waiting for the bear to come back. But he didnt come back. When the sun started to rise, I decided to get up and look around my place, to see if the bear got into anything. Nothing got moved, none of my food was eaten. But I saw bear tracks again. That was no surprise, but what was a surprise was the tracks were in a set of two, not four. Normally, a bear would walk on all fours, only walking on two to threaten a rival bear, or to get food that was on a tree. 

But the set of tracks that I was looking at had, 2. Another weird thing was that it seemed like the bear didn't change to going on all four, it stayed on two. What? That makes no sense, a bear tried to get in my tent, but couldn’t, so it instead walked away like a human? That honestly freaks me out the more I think about it. Maybe it wasn't a bear, maybe it was something else, I don't know. I’m  really tired, my eyes keep darting around, waiting for the thing to come back. Hopefully it doesn't, but you gotta prepare for the worst, hope for the best. 

Saturday, April 11, 2024

Holy shit I think I might die here.

Weird things have been going on, I don’t know if I’m tired or just paranoid from yesterday but I keep noticing small things that freak me out. At the beginning I mentioned how much wildlife was here, I have seen nothing today. No birds are chirping, haven't seen rabbits, frogs, and even bugs. I feel like I'm trapped, and I’m the only one making noise in the forest. I also feel like I’m being watched, by something, that I don't know what it is. I also keep hearing bears roaring in the distance, but they don't sound 100% like a bear, but something trying to imitate them. Am I in the forest with a skinwalker?  I keep trying to tell myself that I’m not, to help myself from going insane. I am determined to get out of here ali

Jesus christ, I know for a fact now that it isn't a bear now. I was typing on this laptop, when I heard something strange. I decided to check it out. I followed the sound until I came across a clearing. I looked around until I saw a person. It’s night time so I wasn't completely sure I saw a human(Due to low visibility) so I hid by some trees to be safe. The “human’ was holding something. A can, he was holding onto a jerry can. He stopped in the middle of the clearing, looked around and then started pouring a liquid from the jerry can on himself. He then lit a match, threw it on the ground, and immediately was engulfed in flames. I could tell that he was trying to yell something, but the flames kept cutting out his words. He stood there, trying to scream words. But then he noticed me

I ran, I ran as fast as I could, I looked behind me and noticed that this person was incredibly fast, and was catching up. I knew I wasn't going to outrun him, so I decided to hide in some brush. A light started to come into view, and I heard the sound of flames, I knew he was here. He stopped, tried to scream something again, but couldn't. He was gasping for air, and I saw the skin melting off, exposing raw muscle, tendons, and bone. His eyes kept darting wildly, knowing I was here, but couldn't pinpoint on where I was hiding. He was trying to find me, and I was trying to keep myself hidden, as best as I could.

Then I thought of a plan. Everytime he turned away from the bush that I was hiding in, I would push myself back, being very quiet, and eventually get away. And, so I did. He would turn his back, I would crawl away, then, when he turned to my bush, I would lay flat, hoping that the shadows covered me. I did this a couple of times, until I could not see him anymore. I stayed there hiding behind a tree, until I noticed the light bouncing off trees was going farther and farther away. I was safe.

Frankly, I don't know what the hell that thing was. I know it was a human, but how come he was able to survive, while being engulfed in flames? All I know is that I’m done, my trip ends tomorrow, the helicopter is coming to pick me up tomorrow, and I am going to the canyon wall before it does. I'm sick and tired of this forest. If I go by the wall, I can see if something is following me, there is nothing it can hide behind, it's too rocky for plants to grow. Hopefully I make it out of here alive. 

Sunday, April 12, 2024

I made to the canyon wall, I’m out of the forest

All morning, while I was packing up my tent and things, I felt like I was being watched. I felt like whatever was out there, looking at me, wanted me dead. I am so thankful to be out of the forest. I actually was able to find a small cave in the wall that I was able to climb into. I’m staying here until I hear the helicopter. I am thankful to make a once in a lifetime trip out here, but I am also thankful that it is over.  I hear it, the helicopter, it might be a different helicopter, because it sounds a little off, maybe they needed to repair the other helicopter, who knows? Anyways, all I know is I’m finally getting out of here. Before I go, I want to thank each and everyone of you who have been so involved in my trip! It means the world that so many of you care about me, and it touches me deeply. 

Bye everyone, I will get back to this blog soon!

{Previous Part}

First off, thank you all so much for your feedback and input on my last post. All of your interpretations and suggestions have helped me piece this strange puzzle together just a little better, I think. That being said, it has also set me in the opposite direction just as much. The more your theories rolled in and the more you all showed me different angles to take it, the more it just made the thing unravel, opening new questions that I hadn’t even considered. Like I said, this has helped me to better understand how I should be looking at the puzzle, but it hasn’t made the pictures on the pieces any less blurry. If this diary was taking up more time than it needed in my life before, it’s completely consumed it now.

Overall, there seemed to be two camps of people: Those of you who viewed the log as paranormal, and those of you who saw it as a gruesome tale of a father taking the lives of his family. Let’s talk about that latter one first.

This was the explanation that I was ready to believe. I’ve never been the kind of guy who believes in the paranormal, mainly because I view things very logically. It was setting my heart at ease when I read your explanations of night vision/hunting goggles and how they could easily match up with the titular “Flashlight goggles”. That would mean that my fears about the diary were wrong, and this was nothing more than an old book recounting a bygone murder case. Paired with a few other details that could be overlooked as the imagination of a child, I was almost willing to write it off, but it was those very details that were bothering me the most.

What were the snakes Roxy mentioned? One of you suggested intestines, which was a very good interpretation, but then what was the glowing puddle of liquid on the ground next to them? And if it was her father that murdered the sibling and mother, why did it seem like they were being attacked before he left the bedroom to run to them? Once again, I was ready to pacify myself with “It was an inaccurate account coming from a young girl,” but then a few more of you weighed in, and affirmed what I might be thinking.

That flashlight goggles might not be goggles at all. That they might be the way a child rationalized glowing eyes, and that the snakes on the ground might be something even more sinister than entrails.

If you were on the same line of thinking that I originally was, then all of that might be a little confusing to hear. Before I break that interpretation down, however, I’d like to share the next log. I think it offers a lot more insight than the first one did, and if you’re hesitant to believe that more outlandish theory, I think it might change your mind.

I’ll have my thoughts for you at the end, but for now, here it is:

Daddy and I are hiding in a shed with Aunt Sarah. It’s the shed behind her and Uncle Charles’ house. It's very cool to be allowed in here because normally Abby and I aren’t allowed when we play in the backyard. I am getting to do so many fun things tonight that I don’t normally get to!

Uncle Charles says there are too many dangerous things in here and that's why I’m not allowed to come inside. He probably means things like the big sword Daddy is holding. Daddy calls it a ‘macshety’, but it looks more like a sword to me. He's still shaking very badly, but it’s not even cold in here. I wonder if Daddy is sick. I shiver a lot when I’m sick too.

I can hear people outside still, but I think they are far away. They all are still crying and yelling, which I really don’t like hearing since they’ve been doing it so long. I don’t know how they haven’t found who they’re looking for yet when there are so many of them looking. Lucky us they haven’t found us either, since that’s why we’re hiding in here, Daddy says. I wish we had a TV or music to listen to so that I don’t hear the people outside anymore, but Daddy says that we need to be quiet since we’re hiding. I really like hide and go seek, I am the best in my class at it, so I don’t think they will find us.

Uncle Charles isn’t with us right now. Daddy says that he was too tired to drive, and that he’s going to sleep a little longer before joining us at vacation. Aunt Sarah must not have been sleepy like him because she’s here with us. She seems sad about something, but I don’t know what. Maybe it’s because Uncle Charles chose to stay in the house and she already misses him. I heard her say his name to Daddy a little bit ago.

 Her tears are getting my head all wet while I sit in her lap. She’s holding me tightly right now, which is making it hard to write because she’s also shaking like daddy. I'm glad Daddy put me in my coat, since it must be so cold outside.

I asked Aunt Sarah why she’s crying and if it was because of the snake, but she just told me that sometimes grown-ups just cry, and that I don’t need to worry. I am worried, but I won’t tell aunt Sarah that.

I wish Coop was in here with us. Petting him always makes me feel better. Maybe Aunt Sarah would feel better if she pet Coop. He’s sleeping back in the house with Uncle Charles, though. He must be tired from helping look for the missing person. He didn’t even bark when we came to the house like he normally does!

Daddy didn’t knock, though, so maybe that’s why. We had got out of the car very quickly and ran to the door when we finally got to Auntie and Uncle's house. Daddy grabbed a secret key from Aunt Sarah’s flowers and we went inside. He told me to stay by the door and wait, and to be very quiet. It was very dark since none of the lights were on in the house, so when Daddy started to leave I got scared. I tried to be a big girl and just close my eyes like Mommy told me, but it didn’t work very well. I held Nuzzle tighter, though, which made me feel a little better.

Uncle Charles and Aunt Sarah have a very big house because they have a lot of money, Mommy says. Abby and I like it here because there’s a lot of room to play castle and adventures. Coop is also here, which I really like because we don’t have any dogs at our house. Nuzzle is a dog, but he’s stuffed and not as big as Coop is.

I was wondering where Coop was while I sat with my eyes closed. It would be a lot less scary if I had him to hug, I thought. I heard Daddy calling out for Uncle Charles in the living room, so I thought it would be okay for me to call coop. I did it quieter though so that Daddy wouldn’t be mad if he heard me.

Uncle Charles has a small door on his big door in the kitchen that Coop can use to go outside, and I heard the sound it makes when it opens. I got excited because I knew that meant Coop was coming, so I called him again. I didn’t open my eyes, because I was still too scared, but I could hear his nails clicking on the floor as he got closer.

Usually coop runs very fast and almost makes me fall because he jumps on me because of how happy he is. Coop was moving slow and breathing very hard, though. It sounded like when we make him run really fast around the backyard but even slower than that breathing. I wondered if Coop had been outside running.

When I heard his nails clicking closer to me, I could see light on my eyelids, so I opened them because I thought a light had turned on. That had not happened and it was actually still dark, but I could see Coop now, and the light was coming from him! He was carrying a flashlight in his mouth! It was so cute, but I couldn’t see very well because the light was shining right at me.

I called for Coop to come closer to me. I wanted to get the flashlight from him before Daddy saw since we aren’t supposed to have those right now and I didn’t want Coop to get in trouble. He kept walking slow, and I thought he might be scared. It looked like he might have been hurt too, since he was walking all wobbly and tripping a lot. Coop really likes Nuzzle, so I held him out to try and cheer Coop up, and I think it worked! Coop dropped the flashlight to come take nuzzle instead, but then something very scary happened.

Coop fell over when he let go of the light, like when we pet him a lot and he falls down so we can get his tummy. The flashlight started rolling when it landed and moving toward me, but  It was still hard to see because it was pointing right at my eyes the whole time. I tried to make my eyes smaller to see it better and then screamed really loud. It was a snake that Coop had caught! He dropped it from his mouth!

 It’s head was funny like it had a light bulb stuck to it, but I was still very scared. I know I should not have screamed because Daddy told me so, but it was coming to get me and I was so afraid. I dropped Nuzzle on the floor, because I was so scared, and the snake must have thought he looked better than I did because it jumped at him. It was so fast!

It landed on Nuzzle and then went inside him with its tail. This snake was not like the ones daddy used to show us in the garden. It was black and sharp looking. It ripped out some of his fluff, and I screamed, which made Daddy start running back downstairs to me. It was so dark again since the snake had its head inside nuzzle, so I didn’t know where to run and I was so scared. I couldn’t move.

The snake heard me scream and it’s head poked out of nuzzle. The room was bright again but I still could not move. My feet weren’t working because they were shaking so bad. The snake started slithering at me again but then it’s light went dark. There was a foot that was stomped on top.

I thought it was daddy, but then I heard Aunt Sarah’s voice! It was her who stepped on the mean old snake! When she lifted her foot, there was an icky goo that was glowing on the floor, and the snake wasn’t moving anymore. I didn’t feel bad because it was so mean, but I still didn’t like seeing it like that. I wondered if I had glowing goo inside me, too.

Aunt Sarah picked me up with Nuzzle and told me that I was okay now. I was so happy to see her. Daddy made it back into the room, and he called out for me as he ran back to us. I told him that I found Aunt Sarah, and he ran over to hug us both. He asked her where Uncle Charles was, but she didn’t answer because a noise from the basement made us stop.

Uncle Charles and Aunt Sarah have a very cool basement, not a creepy one like Bonnie Mayhew’s basement from church. They have a lot of games and a TV and drinks that Daddy says we can’t have down there. That must be where uncle Charles was, I thought.

The door was open, and there was a light coming up the stairs that we could see. I could tell it was Uncle Charles when he got up because of his big belly like Santa Claus. He was making noises like the people outside and had a pair of flashlight goggles on just like them. His had both eyes lit up, and were very bright. Aunt Sarah started breathing really hard and shaking while I was still in her arms. It sounded like she might have started crying too.

Daddy told Aunt Sarah that we needed to go and grabbed us so we could leave. We went to the door, but outside the door window there were a lot of lights shining in. Daddy looked through then yelled some naughty words. He said we needed to go to the backyard instead. I wondered if it was the people outside, and felt very guilty if they had found us because I had screamed. I also felt very confused. Why was Uncle Charles helping the people outside, and why were Daddy and Aunt Sarah not saying hi to him?

Aunt Sarah started holding me like Daddy had earlier with my head buried into her neck, so I couldn’t see anything. Daddy yelled for her to ‘Go’ while he went forward to hug uncle Charles. I was glad he did this because I didn’t want Uncle Charles to be upset that we were all ignoring him, even if he’s being a bad man by using a flashlight right now. Aunt Sarah ran by without saying anything, though, which made Uncle Charles upset, I think. He made a loud angry sound, but maybe it was just because Daddy took his flashlight goggles off. I could barely see daddy holding one of the lights in his hand.

Aunt Sarah ran out the back door and was going to run across the lawn, but there were more lights flashing from the woods behind her house. Instead, she started running for the shed, and we ran inside. She set me down, then started peeking out the door while whispering things that I couldn’t hear. I asked her what Daddy and Uncle Charles were doing and if they were okay, but she didn’t answer me. I was starting to think something might be wrong, which really scared me. Were Uncle Charles and Daddy fighting? Were there more snakes out here, like the one Coop caught? I asked Aunt Sarah where Coop was, but she didn’t answer that either. I hope the snake he had caught didn’t bite him and hurt him.

I was about to ask Aunt Sarah where Daddy was again, but then I heard her call his name. I could see lights shining through the space in the door and the tiny window above the table in the shed. I was getting worried that the people with flashlight goggles might know where we are, but Daddy burst through the door all the sudden and shut it behind him. After that, all I could hear was people outside crying still.

Daddy grabbed a chair from the table with all of Uncle Charles' tools and put it under the doorknob. I asked him if something was wrong because he was breathing hard and covered in more red paint, but he smiled and told me that everything was okay. I’m not sure if I believe Daddy. Something feels wrong.

Daddy went over to Aunt Sarah and gave her a big hug. He didn’t let go for a long time. When they were done, Daddy told me to plug my ears and hum quietly to myself so that him and Aunt Sarah could talk. The adults do that a lot when they’re going to say something naughty that they don’t want me and Abby to hear, so I listened to him. Usually Daddy taps me on the arm when I’m okay to listen again, but it took him a lot longer than he normally does. I wondered what kind of naughty things they might have been saying.

When I was okay to unplug my ears and stop humming, Daddy told me that we were going to have to wait in this shed for a bit until all the people outside get bored and leave. He told me that I should write in my diary so I don’t get bored, but I told him that I needed to help nuzzle first. Daddy took Nuzzle to check on his hurt spot, and told me that he can fix him for me while we wait, and that I should sit with Aunt Sarah while I write. I was okay with that because Aunt Sarah could hold her phone to help light my diary, and also because she seemed like she needs a hug. I may not be Coop, but I hope my hugs are good enough to make her feel better.

I don’t know what’s wrong, but everyone is acting very funny tonight, and I hope they’re okay. I hope that we can just go to vacation soon…

At this point, I think it’s undoubtable that something hit this town that’s never been seen before—Or maybe it has, which is why I’m still bringing all of this to you, praying that there’s some sort of worldly explanation for what is going on. Because if not, that means that the subtext of this girl's writing is meant to be taken literally, and that the snakes are…

Well, the snakes are some sort of parasite…

That leads me into the research I’ve done with the last post and this one in mind. One of you suggested looking into parasites with bioluminescence since that would explain all the glowing mentioned in the text, but my digging led to nothing of real substance. The only “snake-like” creatures I could find that emit light are glow worms and certain types of eels and sea creatures, none of which would be able to glow as bright as a flashlight, let alone be on land. None of them are parasitic either; a front I also had no luck on.

The closest thing to what was mentioned that I came across were “Taenia solium”, or pork tapeworms that can sometimes wind up in the brain and cause a thing called cysticercosis. The effects are usually never anything worse than headaches, seizures, or minor cognitive disfunction, though, and while it can result in death if untreated for long enough, that process takes years. Whatever happened occurred quick, and its effects were completely changing people—almost turning them into puppets.

The thought makes my skin itch, and I feel sick imagining that something could actually do that to a human being. It’s even more terrifying that it all seemed to happen so fast. None of this seems real, and yet, I know it had to have been, because how else did this damn book end up in my locker?

It all gets worse, however.

Maybe there was time to convince myself that the notebook was all a hoax or an overactive imagination, but unfortunately, I dug deeper. One of you suggested I try to find the notebook’s origin, something I had already been considering, and while there was a lot of risk in doing that without giving away what I was poking in to, after translating that last passage I needed to know.

I mentioned in my last post that tampering with evidence could get me in a lot of trouble, even dead evidence. This is why if I went digging into files on a closed case that’s evidence was just listed as destroyed a few weeks ago, the station could very easily figure out what I’d done. Still, I was smart about it, I think. Told our archivist that I needed to confirm that I’d destroyed everything for the case and managed to sneak a look at the file. What was listed there was dread inducing.

Nothing. There was absolutely nothing in the file.

For those of you who are confused why that’s such a terrifying concept, the average file for any federal case is usually hundreds of pages long; thousands if it's an event that took place on a mass scale. If something really happened to this town, even if the journal is wrong—even if it was the most insignificant event of our millennia—there would be something logged in our system. Evidence showed up from the scene of the crime into my locker, which means that at one point something did happen, and we were there. So why is there no record of it? Just a white screen where words and pictures should be. Not even a line saying “Site investigated, nothing of interest.”

You know the strangest part, though? It’s not necessarily true that there wasn’t anything. In order to log a file, even a blank one, you have to at least have some placeholder information like a case number, a state and city, and a few other necessary identifying information. Would you like to guess where this file allegedly took place?

“Washington, Pennsylvania”. Do you know how many towns and cities are in Pennsylvania named Washington? 28. It’s the most common town name in the country with a whopping 88 townships holding that title. It’s almost like that town name was chosen to throw off anyone who went digging farther into this case.

Well, I went digging, and still didn’t find anything. None of those “Washington's” match up with any sort of outbreak or mass death that has ever occurred, and when I ditched that path and just started looking into abandoned towns and cities in general, that turned up even more dead ends. Whatever happened to this town—to these people—It was wiped off the face of the Earth, and with how horrifying the implications of this journal are, I can’t even blame whoever did it. My only hope is that they got whatever happened under control. What I don’t understand, though, is if that’s what somebody was trying to do, then why even have a case file in the system in the first place? Why not just delete it from the servers entirely? Was there some sort of encryption I missed?

So where does all of this leave me? More lost, confused, and freaked out than ever, for sure. I can’t even trust my own department at this point… This Journal is consuming my every waking thought, and while I know I’m running the risk of getting caught up in something I don’t want to be a part of the more I keep looking, I can’t help it. This changes so many things if this is real, and I just… I need to know if it is. I need to know if this poor girl escaped whatever got her town.

The thing that scares me the most now is that I may not like the truth I find at the end of all this—if there is one.

For now, there're more entries left to go. I’m going to keep plucking away at them when I can, but in the meantime, I would greatly appreciate any more thoughts or theories that you all have regarding what I’ve found. I’m in desperate need of some answers, and you all seemed to have some good one's last time.

I’ll be back when I have something else for you all. Thank you again for your help so far; I’ll see you soon.

I am prone to nightmares. I have been since I was a child. But while others have different nightmares each night, I suffer from the same recurring dream that comes to me once every year.

The dream always starts out the same. I am in the courtyard of a large castle. The first time I had the dream, I remember the experience being tranquil. Of enjoying the rosebushes beneath the silver moonlight and noticing the crisp cool of the night air mix in sweetly with the scent of the flowers. I must’ve only been four years old at the time, but I enjoyed the scene as deeply as though I were a much older man. But in subsequent dreams, the sight of rosebushes would come to haunt me, for each time I saw them, and the marble steps of the walkway, I would know at once what was to follow, and would begin to search the courtyard frantically for who I next expected to see.

She doesn’t always appear in the same place each time. At times, she would be lurking behind the statues in the courtyard, and other times I could see her up on a faraway balcony. But most often she appeared walking down the corridor that ran along the parameter of the courtyard, from between the rows of arched columns. Every time I saw her there was a ping of recognition, as though she were familiar to me. She was hauntingly pale and wore a white gown that appeared almost to fluoresce. Beneath her eyes, she bore the dark rings of smeared mascara, though her face was emotionless as she walked with the calm cool of a person whose mind was well and truly made up. Spots of blood stained her white dress.

Seeing her always sparks a panic in me. I feel an overwhelming need to know where she is going. In each dream I chase after her. Sometimes, like the times when she’s on the balcony, I run throughout the castle all night and never find her. Other times, she toys with me, and goes down the wrong path, leading me to dead ends. But in the dreams where she walks down the courtyard corridor, I feel a leap of excitement, for those are the dreams that I find the most success in following her.

She always leads me through a door at the end that passes through the servants’ quarters, with its rows of closed doors. At the end is a fork. She always turns left. The first night, she was nowhere to be seen around the corner. But in subsequent dreams, when I run a little faster, I can catch a glimpse of her white gown slip through a side door and up a service stairwell.

She then travels down a hallway that overlooks the outer castle. My first time up, I lost her by being transfixed by the marble cliffs of the coastline and the inky black sea beyond. But I have since learned to ignore the landscape, and sprint down the hall as fast as I can, for at the end, I always come up to a wooden door with an iron ring handle that is bolted shut. I never make it in time before it closes. Sometimes, when I am quick, I can catch a glimpse of the door being shut. But then I hear the thud of it slamming into its frame, and the click of the bolt sliding into place. And that is how the dream always ends.

It wouldn’t be such a bad dream to have, if it weren’t for the overwhelming sense of dread that prevails throughout. I am always infected by a horrible desperation to make it to the woman in time, and a great sense of worry of what should happen if I don’t.

But what makes it most unbearable is the feeling that, after all these years of having the dream, I am no closer to finding out the mystery of the locked door. The dreams don’t always come in set intervals, and in fact, have become less frequent with time. Each time the dream doesn’t happen for a while, I wonder if I am at last over this strange, childhood fixation of mine. And then one night, when I close my eyes, I’ll see the silvery rosebushes and I am once again reminded of the task that I have not been able to complete in twenty-four years of trying.

I have never been able to put together who the woman is. She looks like no one I have ever met before. And no amount of travel has led me to a castle quite like the one with the glistening, marble courtyard.

But, in the last year, the dream did not come at all. Nor did it the year before in fact. I realized that I was now two and a half years free of seeing the ghostly woman. But knowing that brought me no sense of relief. It felt like something unfinished, and I was beginning to think that not knowing the mystery of that room was much worse than whatever horrible secret lay inside.

I am now a schoolteacher, and for years have been teaching a class in History at St. Augustine’s. One summer, while on vacation, I took a trip through the rural parts of Scotland. It was there, in the small town of Aemish, that I came across a newspaper on a nearby stand. On it was a photograph of an automobile collision with the headline “Woman Killed in Roadside Disaster”.

I read on:

On Thursday the 22****^(nd) at 8:32 p.m., police were called to the scene of a highway accident along the M8. A young woman, believed to be on route to her wedding, was found dead.

I stopped here, for there was an eerie feeling of recognition that came over me. The paper went on to say that she had been speeding along a cliffside road, when she failed to make a turn. Her car smashed through the guard rails and fell a hundred meters down to the stony coastline. There was no mention of a name.

I am not a nosy man by nature, but I was filled with an overwhelming desire to know more. I scoured the paper for any mention of a wedding, and when I didn’t find one, I asked the man at the stand for a copy of last week's paper. It was there that I found mention: Come to the wedding of Eva and Franklin Geller, this Thursday at 9 p.m. There was an address, and when I asked the man about the location, he told me that it was the spot of a popular tourist destination, The Castle Amsgard.

I got back in my car and drove as quickly as I could. It was dusk by the time I arrived. As I neared, I recognized the white cliffs of the coastline, with a small dirt trail running parallel that led to the foot of two massive doors. The Castle Amsgard rose as high as the early stars on the evening sky, with its ivory towers and face of marble white. My heart was thumping as soon as I saw it. I had to try to control my breathing, for I knew deep in my bones that this was the castle from my dreams.

There were several cars parked outside. People were packing away tables and streamers. When I arrived on the lawn an elderly woman looked up at me and said, “The wedding’s off.”

“Oh, I’m not here for the wedding,” I told the woman, “I’m just a tourist. I visited the castle when I was child and was just hoping to get a quick look for old time's sake.”

“Well, don’t let us stop you. This is a solemn occasion for me and my family. We’re in no mood to entertain," she begrudgingly said.

I nodded. “What happened that had the wedding be called off, if you don’t mind me asking?” I eventually found the nerve to ask.

“The bride passed away,” the elderly woman said, “in a car accident.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“No, you’re not,” the old woman grumbled as she pushed by me with a box of plates.

“Was she in too much of a hurry to go to her own wedding?” I asked, "was that what caused her fate?"

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m only a stranger,” I said, “I promise I won’t say a word of this to anyone. I’m just often a little too curious for my own good.”

The old woman sighed. “She got news that the groom had slept with one of her bridesmaids before the wedding. She got in her car and drove off before anyone could get a word in to stop her. He’s up there now,” she said, glancing up at one of the towers, “locked himself away. Won’t talk to anyone. Refuses to take blame for any of it. The low life.”

I froze. “He’s up there? Right now?” I could see the locked door appear visibly in my mind.

“Yes, but it’s no use trying to get through to him…”

Before the old woman had finished talking, I was already sprinting for the large double doors. I had a hunch, a suspicion, that something was about to happen. Within me there burned that sense of dread that so often burdened my dreams.

I ran through the halls of the castle, shocked by how familiar the stone corridors felt to me. I remembered all those nights I’d wandered aimlessly around them. I knew the way by heart now that led into the deep interior of the castle.

I ran until I reached a stone archway, and through it, I stepped out into a courtyard. The moon was out by now. My heart nearly stopped as my eyes fell on the rosebushes. The marble walkway, the distant balconies, the statues, all of it was exactly as I had dreamed. I couldn’t believe it. I wondered if I wasn’t dreaming now, and that the trip into Aemish and the talk with the old lady were just a prelude to the old familiar dream that I worried was about to come.

I caught a flash of white out of the corner of my eye. There was the ghostly woman, strolling as effortlessly as she did along the adjacent corridor. Her clothes were even bloodier than I remembered, and what I had once mistaken as purposefulness in her eyes, I now saw as a blinding hate. Without even hesitating, I bolted after her. I ran full speed down the servants’ corridor, alarmed by how much it all looked the same. I turned left and bounded up the steps of service stairwell, tripping once or twice, as I moved with a blind determination, faster than I had ever moved in the dreams before.

At the top, I could see the doorway down the hall. The woman was walking towards it. I screamed at her to stop as I sprinted after her, but I was still too late. The door slammed shut in front of me and I heard the deadbolt slide in.

My heart roared inside my chest. I listened for any clue of what was going on inside. And as I did, I heard a man speak. “Eva?” he said in a whisper. And then silence. I listened for a moment still until a chilling scream erupted from the night. I cannot for the life of me describe to you what it was like. It was like nothing I had heard before. A scream of the deepest disbelief and terror. A scream that I myself might’ve had if I’d seen the white woman in her bloody dress for first time, looking at me with those scornful eyes.

I ran for the window and screamed down to the guests for help. Three of the men arrived two minutes later. By then, the cries of the man had finished. There came no more sounds from behind the door.

We found a nearby stone bench and the four of us used it as a ram to break down the door. Inside, we found a small study, with a writing desk, a knocked over stool, and pages lying all around. From a rope in the center of the room hung Franklin. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin a ghostly pale, and his face was contorted into an unending shriek, the image of which will be burned in the back of my mind for as long as I should live. There was no sign of the woman.

The family were in shock, and no one could guess how I had known the suicide was about to take place. I didn’t tell them about the bride. I left not knowing how to feel about the mystery that had taken up so many years of my life, and why it was I who should receive the unearthly warning. I have since come to discover that I am of a distant relation to the Gellers, and I wonder if it was not some long forgotten bond that had foretold me of Franklin’s demise, though what I was supposed to do with that prophecy I may never know.

Smelling the barbecue reminded me of the desert. Suddenly all those months at Western State meant nothing. I fell over, convulsing and crawling under the wooden picnic table, my voice raised in panic as I scrambled. I realized I'd done this and crawled back out, avoiding looking at everyone.

I walked back to the ride, but without keys. I just sat on the parking curb and waited to be rescued. My sister took her time, but only because she stopped to say whatever to everyone. Then we went home.

I could recall all of it. The nightmare, the diabolical ravings of Professor Frenzy, some kind of captain cannibal. Nobody believes me, I am just some fringe heretic of the world of amateur geologists and too good-looking in a straightjacket for the UFO people.

Being a summer student, in the afterglow of graduation, made me feel like I was Indiana Jones as the girl. Cool stuff, but not popular. That's me, with eyeglasses so thick that Anthony Hopkins could pluck them off my face and start a campfire by popping out a lens and using it as a magnifying glass. Then he'd have me with Favah beans. I'd have laughed at that at one time, but now it makes me unable to eat.

Having written a thesis on the formation of clastic pipes, how they billow out through the cracks in the earth during earthquakes and other similar formations, the invitation was extended to me. Clastic pipes are made from sediments and are squeezed through the cracks of harder stone around them, even if that stone happens to be shale, which erodes much more rapidly than sandstone. They look bloomed out at the top, and the shale could erode away and so could the blossom. Then mud could pour around this wall-like formation and harden, which was the theory as to how our walls formed. Purely geologic.

Doctor Amantis was there explaining how the cracks had formed to look like bricks, an expert on such a process. None of us entertained the notion that these were manmade. The wall of petrified concrete 'bricks' was nearly thirteen million years old. If it was made by anything, it wasn't human. And we were confident we had explained how it could have formed naturally, although I had some questions still.

One of those questions was how the mud had become elevated and flowed over the sandstone wall in a geological event that had left the fragile exposed wall undamaged. Where there was no hardened petrified mud, the wall was eroded from the hundreds of thousands of years since it became exposed from the adjacent hillside, where further formations supported our estimate of the age and process of the rock wall formation. Everything looked good, except that one little detail.

It occurred to me that if this rare composite of sandstone were a deliberately mixed concrete, that long ago it could have stood freely, and even formed the base of a much larger structure. This was problematic, because it was supported by the fact that the cracks, when we mapped them out, were a little too long and straight and began to look more and more like an urban sprawl than the kind of jagged geysers most clastic pipes emerge as. I pointed this out to Doctor Amantis, who justified it by saying we were looking at a unique scale. Eventually, the emergence of the pattern formed by the clastic pipes would appear more familiar, and more natural. I just wasn't seeing it yet.

Walking along the wall I noticed soot markings, the occasional tallied chisel marks and even a few arch ways. All of it was circumstantial, as these formations had stood exposed throughout all of human history. I stopped when I found a piece of petrified charcoal embedded between two bricks where the hill had eroded from the base. When I pried it out the rock split, revealing a long porcelain fang. I held it to the sunlight, noting its warmth and translucence.

Sarah and Rachel took the tooth from me and began dating it. I've never dated a tooth, but I went out with a dentist once, she looked like Doctor Garcia from the Crest commercial and actually showed up in her dental hygienist's uniform. This tooth though, we quickly determined was artificial and came from no animal. Its preservation was due partially to its glass-like composition, although it proved to be as hard as any ballistic laminate material, scratching copper with ease.

"This appears to be a prosthetic tooth, and it appears to be the age of the stone it was encased in, some thirteen to thirteen and a quarter million years ago. Give or take a hundred thousand years, our method in the field is less precise." Sarah said. I pointed out the method was the same, only our confidence was different. How could we believe our results?

After we had spent days testing the tooth Doctor Amantis and Professor Frenzy found us, and they were very excited about what they had discovered. Apparently, they had excavated the foundation of one of the corners of our wall and had found proof it was all an archaeological discovery.

"We came here as geologists." Doctor Amantis kept saying weirdly.

"Aren't you fascinated, Ruth?" Professor Frenzy asked me.

They opened champagne and someone found everyone's phones and put them in a locked glove compartment. We were under radio silence until help could arrive. Some kind of joke, I guessed. Nobody had service out there anyway, at Rend Vista.

I like to think about Marius Ranch, as where I returned to the real world. I suppose it was actually just a state of mind. Nothing was real, out there in the desert. Without reality, things become a nightmare in broad daylight. Ever see a nightmare walking around under bright sunlight? You'll never feel safe again.

I took a walk, tired of Doctor Amantis continuing to point out we were all geologists. I was tired of watching Sarah and Rachel making up for spending college nights doing homework instead of partying. Champagne gives me a headache.

Something was already wrong with Professor Frenzy. His smile was wrong, his eyes were wrong. The way he folded his hands and watched everyone was wrong. Something was wrong, I just didn't know how to make it clear in my own mind, let alone say or do anything about his wrongness.

I remember the first real feelings of fear creeping up along my back, like a slug of cold sweat. Staring at Professor Frenzy in the moonlight of the desert as he jerkily danced and cackled. He was holding a bottle, so I assumed he was drunk. Then he threw the bottle against the stone wall violently and suddenly his head swiveled and his moonlit eyes shone on me with predatory intensity. I instinctively took a step back.

I don't recall the exchange. I must have said something like "Are you alright?" and then he started making noises. I got very frightened very fast by the growling and grunting he was doing, and his attempt to speak in raspberry syllables was like a demonic Daffy Duck impression. I think I was laughing for a moment, the high from the champagne making me slightly unsure if I was scared or not for about one instant. Then the terror set in and I had turned and started to run away.

When I realized he was pursuing me, I screamed. My voice was cut short as I was close-lined in the throat by Doctor Amantis. I flipped with my feet still pumping air and my head going towards the packed sand. The impact knocked the sense out of me for long enough that I missed what happened next.

I sat up to an uncomfortable silence. Somehow, I had dreamed of horror and screaming and the sounds of things ripping and splashing and gurgling. The after-silence in the camp had somehow brought me awake. My head was throbbing and I wanted to go find something to ease my migraine. I felt dizzy, and realized I was probably concussed.

Hours must have gone by before my shocked body had reduced the acetylcholine levels to a steady and conscious pulse. I was blinking a lot and trembling, but I seemed to be intact. I slowly got to my feet, shaking and worried that Professor Frenzy had gone berserk and killed everyone for no apparent reason. I began shuffling slowly through the camp, leaving a trail like I was on skis when I went with my parents that one year.

I looked at my ski marks in the sand and heard a howl. It came to me like a wind that was actually a bucket of icy cold water on a hot day poured over me without warning. I was certainly reacting exactly the same way, my body posed like a Venus pudica and breathing like I was about to give birth. The howl was a man's howl, a man who had become like an animal, and the note wasn't mournful or resonant like the noble wolf or the wise coyote, but rather depraved and homicidal, like the maniac madman.

When I was in the hospital, there was a boy who would howl all the time. It did not remind me of Professor Frenzy, but the doctors thought it did. It didn't remind me and I didn't mind him howling, it didn't bother me. I can see how someone would worry that a different crazy person howling would trigger those awful memories, but it is scent that floods my thoughts with flashbacks, not sound.

Doctor Amantis had tried to catch me, seeing me running in a panic. Professor Frenzy must have gotten to Doctor Amantis and made a tackle. Strangulation was next. I don't know how I know, I was in and out, my eyes fluttering open, things barely registering. I just have this one thought of Professor Frenzy atop Doctor Amantis and throttling them.

Sarah and Rachel must have reacted, but drunk and having no idea of the severity of Professor Frenzy until he'd stabbed Rachel between her neck and shoulder using a broken protractor. Rachel hurried off somewhere, holding her neck at intervals and letting it spray out with the kind of consistency of the mist they use on the fresh vegetables at your favorite grocery store whenever she let go of the hole. She collapsed not far from where Sarah was being mauled by Professor Frenzy.

Was I lying on the ground unconscious or was I witnessing these atrocities? This is how I am unsure of my memories. I know I saw those things, but I don't know when I saw them. Maybe I got knocked out more than once. It would explain the gash on my forehead, if I was struck upon the head later and fell down. I'm doing my best to find what I lost out there.

Somewhere in my memories I know I heard Professor Frenzy speak. What he said made perfect sense. It was so profound and so well articulated that I knew it was the ultimate truth. I was happy to hear it, and I was sure that all that he did was necessary and right. It was a weird feeling, and I cannot recall a single word he said or what it might have contained, just how I felt about it. If I could go back to that moment and hear what he said, I know I could forget this whole thing and heal and have a life ahead of me.

I had looked up from where I was kneeling in prayer, and seen something rising from within the red glow, the tumbling cloud of white dust, the black sky of the starless night, just before dawn. As Professor Frenzy prayed to the rising god, I saw its limbs, its eyes, its teeth, its gemstones and paint upon its gnarled and twisted thorny muscles. I was in awe of the living nightmare, and as the sun bathed it in the light of our world it was born again, anew. We had done a great thing to call it forth from slumber, or so it said, somehow. I cannot describe the words it spoke into our minds, like an echo of an emotion, a law of nature written in our blood.

Plenty of blood was on the sand.

Professor Frenzy had hanged Sarah and let her drip over the god's bed. Rachel had lost her head, making me laugh and sing, some part of my mind shattering outward, unable to withstand the pressure of so much hideous carnage all around me. Doctor Amantis had run through the camp on fire, setting everything ablaze. The black-brown smoke and ash washed over me, calming me like a beehive. My mind stopped swarming all around me and focused on survival.

I'd laughed and sang and welcomed Professor Frenzy's nightmare into the morning of reality. I had no choice, I am not strong enough to resist the will of such creatures. When they accepted me as part of their choir, I was not in any danger. My temporary insanity had saved me.

During the nightmare feast, while the chewing and devouring was going on, I stood and began my journey out into the desert on foot. The god and its apostle were eating the dead, and if I was offered a morsel I'd have eaten as well. Perhaps I did, and my body remembers something that my mind refuses to acknowledge.

Charred and disturbed, I took our god's image with me across the desert, swearing to remember my way home. I was not meaning my childhood home. I felt the ruined temple of the old god was my home, until I reached Marius Ranch.

The dog was barking and frothing, and the man was nervous and alarmed. My appearance, my smell, the look on my face - these things had warned everyone that I wore signs of terrible horror. Where is Professor Frenzy?

Whatever the sheriff decided to do with me, I ended up in a hospital back home. Whatever I said to them changed nothing. Everyone was dead, cooked and eaten by some kind of ancient desert thing that had made a puppet out of Professor Frenzy. That's probably what I told them - and I'm sure the information was about as useful to them as it would be to anyone who didn't believe what I was saying to be entirely accurate.

How can I be sure of anything, when this is all I am left with?

I tried to get away, but I was so afraid I had no idea how to escape. I went through the camp, and I am unsure of the sequence of my memories, but I have specific memories I cannot forget. In my mind, I've learned to revisit that night and continue to search for the way out. I will find it someday. If I do not, and these events become the history I was part of, then history shall repeat itself, and in this way, another might follow my tracks in the sand and leave the same desert behind.

Part 1

Part 2

The big man stood in front of me. He was such a sharp contrast to Jen. Jen was always so still and withdrawn I wondered if she was alive. This man’s chest bounced up and down in a frighteningly fast rhythm, a war drum. He shook ferociously and his breath came out so thick I could almost see it. The heat of the room soon had sweat sliding down my back. I was scared but wrath trampled my fear. I’d traveled the world with Jen; she was my friend. So, for the second time in my life, I threw a punch.

My fist struck his jaw. My knuckle grazed his thick, wet lip.  I waited for his head to rise, for eye contact, I wanted this fight to be fair. I struck him again. His cheek felt like jelly, no more like pudding. Dark red blood shot from his lips.  I wasn’t done.

“Jen, are you watching!” I cried out. I kneed his gut.

He howled. I smiled. “If you want a reason to live I’ll give it to you. I understand what he did to you was wrong. But this is how you solve it.  You face your fears!” I yelled and raised my hands in a hammer fist to slam on the back of his neck and paralyze him forever. “You face your fear and crush it like a bug.”

The big man’s hand flew into my jaw. It knocked me backward. I crashed hard. The big man leaped on me. He let me struggle. Blood dripped from his awful thin smile, and his shoulders bounced in a quiet laugh. I knew there was nothing I could do to get him off me.

His fist flew into my face. I saw black first then I saw red. So much blood. So much more than what came out of him. He toyed with me. It was over. He poked, prodded, and explored me with his fingers as I were a thing and not a person. I whimpered. He enjoyed that, of course. He snickered and his blood and sweat drizzled on my face. I could never beat him. I cried. There’s no point in holding any emotion back.

He adjusted his gargantuan frame on me and I wheezed at this form of punishment. He wanted to take his time -it was so unfair- I had to let him. And I got another unnerving feeling that traveled up my spine. I didn’t know what he wanted to do to me. Eat me, torture me, or something worse. He shifted his weight again and crushed my chest. The gasp for breath interrupted my streams of tears.

Why did I think I could beat him?  I’m not that guy. He placed one meaty hand on my neck and squeezed.

“Do you know why she sent me to you?” the big man asked.

His grip was so strong I choked on my thoughts. So I gave him no reply.

“Because that’s what she is. That’s her nature. We hurt her. She brings you to me and I hurt you. Because I’m the worst of us. I’m the one who got to do whatever I wanted. We traveled the stars and worlds beyond ours and no pleasure was denied me. And this is what you get when that happens.

“She didn’t tell you her part in all of this, did she? She didn’t tell you what she does to us. She makes us into this. All I am is the result of getting whatever you want for 200 years. Pure hunger.”

And I understood. I understood what she was and I hated her for it. But I hated him more because I found him so pathetic. That was it? He was offered whatever he wanted and he gorged himself like a suicidal pig. The world was in his palms and he chose to put it on a plate for his fat mouth instead of feeding the hungry. He held the world and instead of helping it he fucked it. He only cared about his mouth and his balls and then demanded to be pitied. His mouth was too high to touch but his balls were on my chest and with new resolve I slammed my fist into them.

He reeled and reached for them.  His malformed body rolled away and off me. And I saw my mistake. I tried to fight this thing like a man. This thing that saw the evil of the world and only thought of his next meal. I lept up and slammed my foot into his mouth. His teeth cracking was satisfying but I was not content. I pummeled him, alternating between strikes on any part of his body he left exposed. His precious body, the only thing that mattered to him.

Some lose the right of the fair fight, of honor. Some have thrown away their humanity and should be treated as that new subhuman thing they become.

I stopped beating him when he no longer could raise his hands to defend himself, when his chest was still, and the blood pouring from his body coated us both.

“Are you happy, Jen?” I asked the empty room. “The danger is defeated. You are free to live!”

“What did you do Nathan?” I heard her voice behind me and spun around to see her. She didn’t address the body. She stared at me with the same disinterested, glazed-over eyes, she always regarded me with.

“Jen, I saved you. Do you want to live now?”

“No, Nathan. What did you do when you first learned we could do whatever we wanted.”

“I don’t remember, Jen. It’s been a while,” I pointed to the body. I smiled from ear to ear. I was genuinely happy with my victory but I exaggerated it hoping that Jen would feel my joy. She could relax; the danger was over. “I don’t know Jen, probably traveled somewhere.”

“Why didn’t you change the world, Nathan, like you asked him to?” Now Jen regards the body with a simple nod.

“Um I… I…”

“Because there is a little of him in all of you. You are more empathetic than him… for now. But we’re bound together now Nathan. I have to obey you. You will be him.”

“No, I won’t, that’s ridiculous.”

“Do you think you are the first good man, Nathan?”

She snickered. My smile vanished. My throat was sticky.

“Good man,” she laughed at the concept. “Good woman. It’s easy to be good when you don’t have power. But you have me now. You can have whatever you want. In a way you’re blessed. Not everyone gets to see how they die. Take a look, Nathan, because in a century or two that will be you.

I did look at his revulsion, at his filth, at his loss of humanity and I knew it was lost but not so far away. I saw his body for what it was. Was it really so large? Inhumanly large? No, I could be like that if all I knew was lust and gluttony for a century. Yes, that could be me.

My body shook in fear of my fate. His warm blood dripped down my hands. How long until I was like that and I was squished by a self-righteous child?

“This always happens?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered. Bored again. “It is human.”

“Then I need to be better than human.”

“You are what you are.”

“No, if that is what it means to be human then I demand to connect to something greater.”

She was silent which was fine. An idea was forming. I had power over her. I would use it.

“Jen, what are you?”

“Something like a- -”

“No, specifically. What are you?”

“Genjenmuey is my species name.”

“Then Jen I command you make me into a Genjenmuey and make yourself my master.”

Jen was petrified; it was all over her face. Her eyes bulged, her face lost color, and she was screaming. “No, no, take it back!” However, her hand moved of its own accord it rose in front of her face, her elbow extended, and she snapped.

I felt the change. I felt the power. I felt the chain. A weighty invisible link wrapped around my neck and tied me to Jen’s wrist. Jen’s eyes were neither bored nor dead now. They were alive and in awe.

“We’re bound together now,” I said.”Mutually assured destruction. If I ever harm you. You now have the power to harm me.”

“Why, Nathan?” she asked.

“I wanted to be better than him.” I pointed to the body. The puddle of blood was still.

“Are we to stay together forever?”

“No, do you still want to die?” I asked.

“No, well, maybe, this is unprecedented. I am confused. There are horrors even worse than him… I don’t know if this life is worth it. You… you think it is worth it?”

“Yes, I think a lot of good could happen in between the horrors. May I make a request of you?”

“Yes, but I might make the same as you,” she said.

“Go and do what you think is best every day for a year. Even if you think it’s scary or strange do what you think is good. No one controls you now. This is about how you want to leave your mark on the world. Abandon your beliefs about life. They aren’t working for you if you’re ready to end your life anyway. For a year pretend you know nothing. Go attack life with a blank slate. If by the end of the year, you still want to die. Then merely let me know where your grave will be and I’ll put flowers there every year.”

“Frogs.”

“A frog?”

“No frogs. I want frogs there instead of flowers. Like a little habitat. They can come and go as they please but I want my grave to be a home for them. I have always liked frogs.”

“Deal.”

I love open floor layouts. When you grow up crammed in a small house with 3 other kids and your parents all sharing 2 bedrooms and a bathroom, you develop an appreciation for space. I like the breathing room. I like feeling like I can stretch out. It's like the "everything the light touches" scene from The Lion King when I look at my open floor plan condo. It's a beautiful thing. Move-in was completely painless as well, as I'm on the ground floor. I've got these huge glass panes on either side of the front door- it's a real modern apartment, I've come a long way since my childhood- so it almost feels like the entire street, the open field and trees on the other side, everything out there is a part of my condo; it's all my domain, my territory. Even when I'm doing chores, I genuinely feel content just looking at it all; I get to see my neighbors walking their dogs and wildlife playing in the grass.

I also harbor a great appreciation for films and television shows, so I laid out my furniture to accommodate immersion. When I'm really absorbed in a work, it's basically the only time I don't want to be thinking about how much I love my condo. So, across from the entrance, the TV stands against the wall, and the couch in between- facing the TV, of course. The kitchen's off to my left. The door to my bedroom is past the dining area to my right. Because of the limited distance between my couch and my TV, my field of view is mostly taken up by the screen. The glare can get annoying on a sunny day due to the aforementioned glass panes by the entrance, but I mostly watch in the evenings so the trade-off is worth it to me. All I see is the TV.

Last night, I was watching a period piece drama that took place in 19th century England. It's great junk food TV for when I get home from work and I don't really want to use my brain. The camera work can be a bit lazy, but the actors look nice and the costumes are really detailed; consequently, I don't mind when the camera lingers on a shot for a little too long. Moments like that can be immersive in their own way. I felt my eyes start to put up a fight, but there was one episode left in the season so I decided to stick it out and watch it. Midway through the episode, it happened.

I fell asleep.

It happens! I can't always force myself awake even when I'm engaged with the story. Never one to admit defeat, I tried to rewind to where I slipped out of consciousness. My entertainment system had other plans. For some reason, I couldn't rewind past a certain point about five minutes after I passed out. It was a dialogue scene, a medium profile shot of a girl in a frilly dress and a man in a very nice suit against a floral wallpaper. I tried mashing the button, but it I'd hit a wall in the playback. It wasn't supposed to be doing this. The intrigue woke me up fully and I restarted the entire system. When I hit resume on the show, it put me right back at that point and the same problem happened again. I hit play to see if that would do anything, and as the characters began discussing their mutual friend, my remote stopped working entirely. There was no useful guidance to be gained from a couple Google searches, so I gave up.

I put my phone back in my pocket and looked up, only to be met with silence and both of the onscreen characters making direct eye contact with the camera, dead silent. Blank expressions. It felt like they were actually looking at me. When had they stopped talking? I hadn't noticed. For a moment, I thought I must have accidentally paused it, but I could see them breathing. This had never happened before in the entire run of the show, I had no idea what was going on. The girl's expression shifted slightly to this subdued sadness, almost disappointment. Like someone at a call center having to scam yet another elderly person out of their retirement. My stomach dropped. Her arm slowly raised, in fits and starts, pointing at the camera. Pointing behind me.

I felt every nerve in my body charge, a horrible pulse of the most ugly and viscous dread I have ever felt. My hands and feet felt like ice, my neck felt exposed, I was too aware of the skin on the back of my skull tightening up. I had to look.

The glass panes.

A man, standing just to the right of my door. Just outside.

His nose too high on his face. Unnaturally long philtrum. Thin, wide lips. His hands between his brow and the glass, leaning in, peering in, peeping watching looking s t a r i n g r i g h t a t m e a n d m y b o d y w a s i c e.

A sort of hyperawareness. I felt the air in my condo like it was part of my body, like my nerves extended out and beyond my form and stretched into the cavernous room, the precious space between he and I. I felt every disturbance. I could see everything, hear everything, I was so in the moment that it seemed to stretch on forever. It only lasted milliseconds before every muscle in my body contracted and I let loose from my throat a distorted white noise, a scraping or scratching scream I've never screamed before. I scrambled to my feet and he just watched. I looked around my apartment for something I could use to defend myself, but finding nothing I looked back to see him moving away, his legs somehow moving his torso with no sway, no bob, perfectly evenly, as if he was sliding but you could see his legs taking him, carrying him away and he didn't break eye contact, not for a second not for a moment not for anything. I'd never wanted so badly to curl into a ball and cry and just not exist. Could I even call the cops? He didn't commit a crime... I looked to my kitchen, finding the knives, and in my peripheral vision I saw it, his face was on my screen, two of them, imposed on the characters on my TV. Still pointing.

My head swiveling, turning like a top on a table, rotation, centrifugal force exercising slightly on my eyes and nose and the protrusion of the back of my skull, my hair pushed by the air that wanted to stay still, and he was there, just behind my couch, just feet away from me, still with his hands positioned like he was looking through glass, the door unopened, my panic gripped me and I just fell over, genuinely fainted.

Today, I awoke and found my TV missing. It was the only thing missing. The police came to my house, looked around, I told them about the man's appearance and behavior but I left out the images I saw on my TV, the strange blurring of my reality in those moments. I don't think it really matters, I don't even know if it was real- maybe it was my subconscious filling in the blanks of knowing there was someone watching me, I don't know. Is such a thing possible? Can you tell when someone's watching you?

I met my girlfriend (let's call her Diana) when I was living in a bustling city. She worked at the same office as I did. We had known each other for like a year or two when we started dating. She would tell me stories about her hometown and the paranormal activities that occured there. She was one of those people who are deeply interested in the paranormal.

I did not believe her stories, because I didn't believe in paranormal stuff. She would always look so full of life whenever she talked about paranormal activities or stories she had heard from other people.

After a few months since we started dating, she got a job at her hometown and moved there. I wanted to go there with her, but there were no job openings there. Not for the first few months at least. I applied for a few jobs in her town and finally was able to land one. I could not wait to see her again because I hadn't seen her for months.

I remember how Diana and her family welcomed me with open arms when I first entered the town. They fed me delicious food at her home and I formed bonds with her family. In addition to her parents, she had a little sister who was the world to her. Her sister was called Lily. She was a shy, quiet little girl who barely spoke to anyone. Diana had told me how often Lily got sick, and how no doctors knew what was wrong with her.

Diana would tell me how she and her family thinks that something else was causing Lily to get sick so often.

On that day when her family welcomed me, her Dad Daniel took me into his room. I wondered what he was trying to do.

"Son, I heard that you're gonna live in this town." Daniel said, his gaze fixed on me.

I nodded in response to his question.

"Then there are rules that you must follow." Daniel cleared his throat. " Do not fish at the pier past 12 am in the night. Do not go into the woods past 9 pm. And finally, do not go anywhere near the beach to the south at sunset. This final rule is one you must never break under any circumstances."

I nodded, even though I did not believe him. I believed that everything must have a scientific explanation and paranormal stuff are made up by people as a way to pass time or for entertainment.

After that, I went back to dine with the rest of the family. The rest of the day went normal.

Obviously, I couldn't stay at Diana's house so I ended up renting a place close by to her place. We would go on dates occasionally as I got used to her town. Even though I did not believe her father Daniel had said, I avoided breaking the rules he mentioned out of respect for him.

One day, when we were on a date at a local café, I brought up what her Dad talked about with me. His list of rules.

"Yeah." She said. "As long as you are not there at the times my Dad mentioned, you're safe."

I have to admit. The creepiness of those rules were getting to me. At first, I had thought that this was all a ploy by her Dad to get me to break up with her. But seeing as how she herself validated his rules, I was not so sure anymore.

As I grew more accustomed to the town, I would go to this beautiful beach to relax. I would use this swing in the woods that led to the beach. I could get a good view of the beach from there. There was always this one kind old lady (let's call her Mathilda) who would talk to me whenever she saw me there. She would come there almost every evening to get wood to burn.

I enjoyed those days. I enjoyed our conversations. She would tell me stories of the past, about the time when she was young.

And at everyday, when sunset draws near, she would hurry home after telling me that I should not stick around longer, even though I would have done so without her telling me.

And one day, when I was chilling on a bench at the beach at evening, I fell asleep, because I had not slept well the previous night. I had a strange nightmare of an old man strangling me when I was on the bench and woke up. No one was there. It was quiet, with the sound of waves splashing.

It was dark, with the clouds in the sky shaded with red. I looked at the time. It was already sunset. All of a sudden, I felt a chill run down my spine. Like I was not alone. I quickly got back into the woods, to go back home. As I was walking in the woods, I saw the old lady. The same one who would always talk to me in the distance. She was standing completely still, with her back turned.

I did not notice it until I got close enough to her. She had no feet. And she was hovering above the ground. She turned around to look at me. Her eye sockets were empty, and she was grinning from ear to ear. It was not humanly possible. The minute that happened, I heard sounds of women laughing from all directions. They sounded hysterical.

I covered my ears and turned my eyes away from her. And then, when I looked at where she was before, she was gone. I ran as fast as possible. The laughing voices were still there, echoing from all directions. Their volume did not change no matter how far I went. I covered my ears and made my way towards home. The people on the street shot me weird glances, as though they were staring at someone who went insane.

As soon as I entered my house, the laughing voices stopped. It was as quiet as it had always been. I went into my room and plucked the courage to look through ghe window. Nothing was out of the ordinary. I looked at the the sunset sky and wondered if this was going to continue. At that point. Daniel's warnings replayed in my head.

"Don't go anywhere near the south beach at sunset"

I wondered if this was the beach that he had talked about with me before. I was worried about what might come next.

I stopped going to that beach. But the feeling was always there. I felt like something was watching me no matter where I went. Sometimes, I would feel someone touching my shoulder or pull my clothes lightly. And no one would be there when I would turn around to look.

I did not tell Diana nor anyone about this. I believed that it was my burden and my burden alone.

I did not see the old woman either, for days. Ever since this happened, I used my free time to walk around town. I did not pay attention at the time, but I would never see the old woman when I walked around town. Many days passed this way, without further incident.

One day, as I was going back home from work, I noticed the old lady standing there in the woods. She gestured me to come closer. But I was too afraid to go to her. She kept gesturing over and over, but I paid no heed to her. As I passed by her, I gave her a glance. She looked normal, like she usually does. I still could not get over how creepy she looked at sunset on the last day I saw her.

Seeing how she looked normal, I told myself that whatever I saw and heard the other day must have been my imagination. As soon as I went up to her, she smiled.

"Hey, sonny!" She said. "It's been a while since we last saw each other. How have you been doing?"

"I have been fine, I guess." I answered.

"Sonny, I have a present for you. Can you come with me?" The old lady eagerly asked.

"Sure, I guess." I answered with a moment of hesitation.

After gesturing me to follow her, she took me to her house in the town. It looked beautiful, as though it was built yesterday. It was filled with lights. Upon entering her house, I noticed that it was completely empty.

"Do you live here alone?" I asked, my tone curious.

"Yes. I have a few children, but they are all out of town." She answered.

She led me into the living room and gestured me to wait. The house was well-lit, with a lot of colorful, small lights. It looked as though the house was prepared for a party. Not too long after, she brought me a slice of chocolate cake.

"Take a bite, sonny." She said eagerly.

Without wasting any time, I took a bite from the chocolate cake. But the minute I did that, it tasted like mud, and I instantly spat it out. The old lady was still there, observing me eagerly. She started laughing.

"Sonny, take another bite" she said.

"It tastes terrible." I said to her.

She looked disappointed. And then she took the cake slice and went out of the living room.

I was puzzled as to why the cake tasted like mud when it was clearly a chocolate cake. I still had the bad taste of it in my mouth. It was enough to make me feel extremely nauseous. I could not stay there any longer so I went out of the house and rushed towards mine. I was getting weird looks from people on the street again. Like I was an insane person.

I could not stop to think about it at the time because I was too nauseous. As soon as I got back home, I vomited in my bathroom on the toilet. I did not look at it and flushed the toilet.

My whole body felt weak, as though I had a bad fever. I laid down on my bed to rest and fell asleep briefly.

I woke up from my phone ringing. It was Diana calling me. I picked up.

"Babe, are you okay?" Diana sounded worried.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Just feeling a bit nauseous, that's all. I'm feeling better now" I said without thinking.

"That's good." She said as though she did not believe me.

I sensed that there was something odd. She was unusually silent and did not say anything for a while.

"Babe, please... please tell me the truth." She said, with a serious tone. "What were you doing at the graveyard?"

A chill went down my spine. I was genuinely puzzled at her words. I did not go to any graveyard.

"What? I didn't go to the graveyard since I came to this town." I said, genuinely confused.

"Babe, a lot of people saw you at the graveyard eating dirt." She told me. "You left before anyone could intervene."

Hearing this chilled me to my core. Was I losing my mind? Was I actually eating dirt in the graveyard? Or did people mistake me for someone else? Recalling what happened in the past, I came to the conclusion that what my girlfriend was telling the truth.

We talked a bit more and she genuinely sounded worried. After that, she hung up the phone.

On the next day, as I finished work, Daniel called me and asked me to come as soon as possible. So I went there. I knocked on the front door and Diana opened it. She looked worried.

She gestured me to come in so I went in. She led me into the living room and had me sit down on the couch. She sat right next to me and held my hand tight. A few moments later, Daniel entered the living room and sat down next to Diana.

"So, son." He started. "I hear that you did some... questionable things in the graveyard."

There was silence in the air. I hesitated to talk.

"Well," Daniel broke the silence. "Because this happened, you must've stayed on the south beach at sunset."

He was right. I nodded. His expression changed to a slightly angry one.

"Son." He said. "I told you clearly. Do not stay at the south beach at sunset."

I explained to him what had happened to me there in full detail. As well as everything that happened between me and the old lady.

"I see. You've been seeing this old lady almost every evening?" Daniel asked.

"Yes." I answered.

"What did she say her name was?" Daniel asked.

"Mathilda." I answered.

Daniel's eyes widened. I looked at Diana. She had the same reaction. There was silence for a few moments.

"Son." Daniel replied. "Mathilda died years ago. She is my mother. And she is Diana's grandmother."

It shocked me to my core. I could not believe it. This meant that the old lady I was talking to all along was Diana's grandmother? Questions popped up in my head one after the other. Why did the old lady lie about her children being far away if she was a ghost? Was she evil or something?

"So that's the shape it took, huh." Daniel said, as though he was talking to himself.

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"That nasty thing... It's not real. She is not real. That is only one shape among many others that nasty thing takes." Daniel said. "Even my daughter Lily-"

Daniel suddenly stopped.

"It's okay, Dad." Diana reassured him, holding his hand.

"My daughter Lily..." Daniel continued. "That thing is tormenting her too. We only realized it recently."

I was shocked. So the thing that has been causing Lily to get sick all the time was that thing?

Almost right at that time, Lily came entered the room. She looked at me and smiled.

"Mr. Humpty likes you, big brother." Lily said to me. "Mr. Humpty wants big brother to hang out with him. Come."

Before I could answer, Lily was pushed away by an unseen force. And she started struggling against something on the ground. It was as though something invisible was trying to strangle her. Before we could reach her, she stopped. She had passed out.

Daniel took her in his arms as he cried. He was whispering something that I couldn't quite make out. After that, he went out of the room.

I could see Diana covering her face with her hands, crying. I tried to console her the best I could. When she finally calmed down, I asked her to tell me everything.

She told me what happened. They were having a barbecue in the evening, near the woods with their neighbors. Lily was playing with a few girls her age. When they took their eyes off Lily, she disappeared into the woods. They searched for her all over the place, only to find her standing still at the south beach at sunset. She had been acting like that ever since that event. She would get frequently sick and would not be able to get out of the house.

According to Diana, they were a safe distance away from the south beach. She had no idea about how Lily went to the south beach through the woods.

There was no doubt in my head about it. Lily went through the same thing I did. Diana also told me that people who have been targeted by the entity see it in different forms. For me, it was in her grandmother's form. For Lily, it was someone/something else.

Diana told me that someone was brutally murdered by some thugs at the south beach at sunset nearly 40 years ago. I knew what she was getting at. It was his vengeful spirit that was haunting the south beach.

Obviously, it was a lot for me to take in. My entire world has changed within a span of a few days. Above all, I knew that whatever that thing was, it wasn't done with me.

Deep in my heart, I wished that, that thing would leave me alone. As much as I did not want to believe that it was real, I did.

I wondered why others were fine even though they went to the south beach at sunset. Why Lily? To this day, I'll never know. Diana didn't seem to have an answer either.

In the following days, the activity intensified. I would hear distant laughing, talking nearly everytime I went outside. Activity started happening everywhere except my home. The other day, my coffee mug was pushed by an unseen force, breaking it to pieces when it hit the floor.

Another time, I would see shadow figures moving at humanly impossible speeds. So I reduced the time I spent outside.

My contact with Diana was very limited. I could not pick up her calls, even though I knew she was worried. My mind was just too occupied with the activity that was happening to me.

The activity at my workplace worsened as I stopped going outside except when I had to work. The shadow figures I would see in my workplace evolved into unnatural entities. One particular day, as I was working past the normal hours, without anyone else but me, I caught something in the corner of my eye.

In a cubicle in the same row as mine, was a shadow-like face with no features except for its gigantic eye. Only half of its face was visible. I jolted. As if noticing, my movement it put its head back in the cubicle it was in. It was only there for a moment. I did not take my eyes off the cubicle it was in and went up to that cubicle.

To my surprise, the cubicle was empty. I was too scared at that point so I was about to go home. As I reached the exit, I saw a creature. The same creature from before. With its gigantic eyes. This time, its face was visible. It was a distorted face.

Its body was like a body builder's. It had 8 legs that on its human-like torso. It looked very much like a spider. Upon seeing it, I heard hysterical women laughing from all directions. At least, that is the thing I remember before fainting.

On early morning the next day, I woke up in the graveyard without knowing how I went there. I looked at the visible parts of the street. There was no one around. Figures since it was early morning after all. I quickly hurried towards my house, my body aching with pain.

After reaching my house, I decided to call someone, anyone who can help me. I reached for my phone in my pockets, only to realize that it was gone. I was too scared to be outside so I couldn't afford to go back and search for my phone.

So I went inside my house and took a shower. The weight that I had felt the whole time was gone as soon as I entered my room.

That was when I noticed the wounds on my body. There were scratches and bruises everywhere. What happened to me last night, I wondered

Still, the image of the spider-like creature lingered in my head. Those gigantic eyes, the distorted face. If possible I never wanted to see the creature again.

After showering, I lay on the bed, thinking.

Not too long after, I heard knocks on the door of my room. I opened the door. It was Diana. She looked very worried and sad. She asked me to tell her everything about what has been happening to me. So I did.

She called her Dad and told him the whole story. She and her Dad offered to help me with this situation and I accepted gratefully.

I had heard that Lily went through this similar experience, and with the help of some exorcists, it is not as intense anymore.

Ever since that, I haven't gotten out of my house much. I am currently taking leave from work (thank god for vacation leave). I've seen a few exorcists, but my condition hasn't improved. Everytime I go out of my house, I see that spider-like creature in the shadows, looking at me. Sometimes, it disappears, other times, it runs towards me with inhuman levels of speed and I would faint, only to wake up with scratches all over my body.

Oh, and I also figured out that staying in my house keeps it away. So I am spending more and more time in my house. Diana is helping me with food and errands. Thank god I have such a wonderful girlfriend like her.

I am too scared to go outside anymore. At the same time, I am wishing to be rid of this curse, ghost, spider or whatever it is. So I'll remain in my safe haven until exorcists are able to get rid of this entity.

My aunt was dying.

I knew she didn't have long to live so I traveled out to see her. My boyfriend came along too to give his respects. He was actually already in the area for another reason. It may sound silly to some, but his major hobby is researching sasquatch, and there had been a few supposed reports in the area that my aunt lived in.

We entered the small home to see a few of my other family members already there in the living room. My mother and father were there and understandably heartbroken. My mother looked especially exhausted and was clutching her rosary beads for comfort.

My boyfriend and I entered my aunt's bedroom. She looked incredibly weak lying there.

My aunt and I never saw eye to eye on many things. She was very devoutly Protestant, not Catholic like my mother. Meanwhile, I was a Neo-Pagan who worshiped an eclectic variety of ancient gods and goddesses. We were an odd family, to say the least.

I didn't know what to say to my aunt, so we made awkward small talk while ignoring the elephant in the room.

My boyfriend, lacking social graces, cut in and asked if she'd heard of the recent sasquatch sightings reported from the nearby forest. I elbowed him as if to say "Not now."

To my surprise, my aunt appeared interested and replied.

"Well, I don't know about sasquatch, but I did have my own mysterious encounter in those hollows. When I was a little girl I was lost in those woods and an inexplicable white orb of light suddenly appeared. I followed it and it guided me back home. I knew it had to be the holy spirit."

My mother, apparently listening in, appeared in the doorway.

"It's true! I saw it myself in the old dark hollow," she added.

I thought about it for a moment. It sounded to me a lot like the will-o-wisp in old Celtic lore.

"Are you sure it wasn't some kind of faerie activity?" I asked.

My mother and aunt looked at me disapprovingly.

"There are no such things. Those are all demons in disguise and they'd never do anything good. This was surely the holy spirit or some kind of miracle from The Lord. There is only one god, anything else is deception," my mother lectured.

"How do you tell the difference?" I retorted.

"You just do! You use your discernment," she replied.

My boyfriend cut in again to add that he had all sorts of odd experiences in the woods looking for sasquatch. "I've heard knocking sounds on trees, seen glowing eyes in the distance, and once I swear I even saw a man-sized hair-covered thing dart out from behind a tree and disappear into the foliage."

My mother and aunt didn't seem very impressed by that.

The conversation changed topics from there. We decided to stay the night at my aunt's place along with my mother to take care of her. As we got ready for bed, I couldn't stop thinking about that mysterious light they saw in the forest that had protected my aunt all those years ago. I was sure it must've been some sort of will-o-wisp or forest spirit.

I had the idea to go out to the dark hollow at night with some kind of offering to leave out there, something sweet that the fae would like such as cakes, berries, or libations.

Late at night, when everyone was asleep, I snuck out with a small jar of blueberries and a bottle of wine in hand. I journeyed out into the heart of the forest where I found a nice spot to make an offering. While pouring out the berries and wine onto the ground beneath a tall old tree, I asked for any spirit dwelling in this forest to help me or guide me to the truth that I couldn’t see.

I sat in silence and asked my questions internally. I felt an odd almost electrical feeling around me and I could pick up the smell of ozone throughout the forest as if after a lightning storm.

Why does mankind struggle with the spiritual realm? I thought.

How can there be so many interpretations for something as simple as a light in the darkness?

I know that faith gives people a sense of comfort, but what’s really behind it all? I questioned.

I just needed to know.

Suddenly, I felt a strange humming in my brain.

Through the scraggly trees, I saw a light, dim and distant at first that grew closer and brighter. Soon the white orb was hovering in front of me. Before my very eyes, I watched the light shift and change, ultimately transforming into a large hairy creature.

There stood proudly an 8ft tall sasquatch where the orb had once hovered.

I was amazed at what I just witnessed, but this was only the beginning.

To my utter confoundment, I watched as the sasquatch began to inexplicably make the sign of the cross. He lifted his long hair-covered arm to his forehead then down to his stomach and across his shoulders in the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. The beast then seemed to let out a slight chuckle.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Astounded by the sight, I stood to my feet and dropped the glass wine bottle which shattered into pieces and spilled out onto the forest floor.

"Greetings, do you like this shape?" the sasquatch asked in a low eerie tone.

The sasquatch tilted its head sideways as it looked at me.

Despite my best efforts, I was stunned silent and could make no reply.

"Don't you recognize me? I'm what they're all chasing after. I make the knocking noises heard in the distance," the sasquatch said.

The creature then began to laugh heartily at my frightened and confused expression. The sasquatch walked around me as it continued to look at me. It was almost dancing in its graceful motion.

"Perhaps you'd like this one," it said as it suddenly began once more to transform.

The creature levitated into the air and a purple light emanated from its body as the figure became that of a beautiful goddess. It was Athena, whom I had worshiped before. She was holding her spear and shield. An owl was perched on her shoulder.

A sudden sense of awe and religious ecstasy hit me. I was overcome with emotion.

"Lift your eyes up to me, follower!" she said in a commanding and queenly tone.

She extended a hand to me and caressed my face the way a mother might lovingly caress her child. I briefly felt my face go numb as she touched me. It felt somehow more real than real. It's hard to explain, it's like in that moment I realized that I wasn't real and neither was the world around me, but she was. I'd never experienced anything like it before.

"You are in my care, you are in my guidance. You have nothing to fear," the goddess said.

Every word she spoke I could feel deeply. I had an intense sense of knowing them to be true, a profound sense that I should trust her. I could feel that this entity embodied pure goodness, love, wisdom, and truth. My mind was buzzing.

The goddess before me began to shift rapidly. The next thing I knew she appeared to be the goddess Inanna or Ishtar, then Aphrodite or Venus, then Isis, then Brigid, then Athena again. The shapes moved so quickly that I lost track completely.

"I've seen you there, at your altar, in the dark by candlelight. All those little statues you collect, just more and more of my faces."

Her arms then went out in the cruciform pose and in a flash of a blindingly bright light she was gone, now replaced by a new form.

There stood a scrawny tan outsider in ragged off-white clothing. His robes began to glow whiter than anyone could bleach them and a familiar feeling came over me.

"Hello, my child. Remember me?"

Now I felt like I was five years old again, in those Sunday school lectures I soon grew to despise.

"You don't hate me now, do you?" he said with a half-smile.

Christ's face then started to warp and change until it was unrecognizable. It cycled through various faces like you'd see in any given crowd until it seemed to melt and distort into a disturbing mess of features.

The being laughed mischievously.

"See, isn't this fun? I can make you believe every word. I'm pretty good at this. I've been doing it for a very long time."

The creature was mocking me, none of that was real, but it had all felt so real.

"I can get scary too. Just you wait."

Suddenly horns sprouted out from Christ's head. A devilish expression took over his face, distorting his caring eyes into a wicked stare and an evil grin. His skin became deep red and his eyes became a charcoal black. Large dark bat wings extruded from his back and cloven hooves took the place of his nail-pierced feet. His voice grew deeper as he laughed once again.

"Every good performer has to play a villain sometimes."

A sudden intense feeling that something was horribly wrong came over me. I sensed imminent death. All my hair stood on end. I had the primal feeling of fight, flight, or freeze, so I just stood there frozen still.

Once again, I felt the feeling that I somehow "knew" this being to be pure evil. The only problem was that before I somehow "knew" it to be pure good. How, I thought, could my perception be fooled like this so deeply? This being seemed to have complete control and command over my emotions and my senses. There was no discerning the truth beyond these intense experiences.

Finally, I managed to speak a single sentence aloud.

"What... are you?" I said with a look of disgust.

"There aren't good enough words for what I am. I've been fooling humanity since the dawn of society. I ruled Mesopotamia. The Egyptians once carved guises for me and bowed before them. I commanded a civilization from Mount Olympus in many forms. I guided Zoroaster and countless other philosophers and mystics. I told Abraham: ‘If you'll be my people, I'll be your God.’ He took that deal. I came to Paul on the road to Damascus as a dead man's apparition and changed his mind. Soon much of the world had entered into my new blood covenant. Those are only a few examples you'd be familiar with. I can't even begin to tell you all the eyes I've pulled the wool over.”

"Why?," I asked, "Why bother tricking humanity?"

"Human beings have the capacity to imagine, to create cultural structures with me that I can use to influence you. A wolf cannot build a temple to Aphrodite and cannot imagine her form. To use the human mind to establish and perpetuate these customs, traditions, and images by which to control mankind; that is my goal. More accurately, that is my means to an end, an end I can't reveal to you at this time but that which is mankind's ultimate destiny."

"I am the ghost of every ghost tale, the chill down your spine when you enter a haunted house, just as much as I am the feeling of the divine in every place of worship. Despite any appearance I may take, I am not your dead loved ones, I simply embody a memory to deceive and manipulate. In this sense, I am everyone's dead loved ones."

"I'm your friend, your father, your mother. I'm your deity, I'm everyone's deity!"

"I am the UFO of every UFO sighting, the creature of every faery tale. I have taken you to the faery realm, to outer space, to anywhere your mind has wanted to go. All I ask for in return is your belief, your faith, and ultimate ownership of your species."

“I’m not human, I don’t have any morality, that’s a game your species has invented.”

“I’ve watched countless civilizations come and go. I watch human lives twinkle in and out of existence like blinking lights. Sometimes I play you against each other. Your species is a plant that I water with deception until the day that it has fully grown for its greater purpose, for its apotheosis.”

“It’s fitting that some people these days call me their shepherd. To me, you are property.”

I collapsed to my knees, overwhelmed by it all. I started crying and sobbing.

"Thank you for the offering. I hope I've answered your questions to the best of my ability. Tell your mother to keep praying those prayers. It feeds us."

With that, the creature vanished right before me.

Perhaps, I thought, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing us that we had a choice or that there was an alternative. But what I saw wasn't the devil, that's just one name from one version of one story, there was no true word for what it was. An intelligence with a million names has no true name and a consciousness with a million faces has no true face.

After taking quite a while to compose myself, I left the forest and returned to my aunt's home.

In the morning, my aunt's condition took a turn for the worse.

We had a little heart to heart and I told her that despite whatever differences we'd had, I truly loved her. We sat in silence for a while after that.

Throughout our conversation, she appeared to be in horrible pain and barely hanging on.

Then, suddenly, a peaceful expression went across my aunt's face and she smiled.

"I feel a bit better. There's someone else in the room with us," she said, looking to the corner as if she was seeing something.

I turned but saw nothing.

"Who is it?" I asked with hesitation.

"...It's Jesus," she said happily.

A chill went down my spine.

Hours later, she slipped away, and I wept bitterly.

Even though I absolutely hated straying deep into the wilderness, I humoured my brother for his birthday weekend. Peter wanted to look for areas to place a trail cam. Those areas were, of course, a click off the dirt road that even then had no cell service.

The heat was sweltering, I can imagine anyone living in North America right now is feeling the effects of the heat wave. I wore shorts and a tank top. Call me unprepared if you'd like, but wearing anything more would feel like torture. Even in the shade I was sweating buckets.

I was also bleeding.

"Hold on a sec, dammit!" I hissed at my brother ahead. I inspected my leg and noticed slim slice in my leg, embedded inside was a couple thorns.

"You all good?" Peter asked me.

I carefully plucked the thorns from my leg. "Yeah, probably those rose bushes we passed by."

I could still see the truck behind me, we weren't that far in. I just wanted to run back to it, crank the AC, and wait it out; However, I couldn't leave my brother on his own.

Despite the discomfort, the area he insisted we trek in was pretty breathtaking. A small creek, tall trees, the humming of bugs and chirping of birds all made the agonizing journey picturesque at the very least. I finished snapping a few photos when I heard something.

It sounded like a tree collapsing. I know my brother heard it, too. My biggest fear was running into a bear or a mountain lion in the woods. Even with his gun drawn, I still didn't feel comfortable.

"Please tell me that's just the wind," I said, quietly.

My brother shouted some random nonsense, alerting any bears or whatnot to our presence. Smart. After waiting for about a minute for another noise, my brother put his gun away.

"Looks like you might be right, there's definitely some rotting trees here," he assured me. I did feel the wind on my skin, and it was soothing.

We didn't walk for much longer, eventually we settled on a tree that faced what looked like an obvious animal trail. Heck, the area showed lots of signs of antler rubbings against lots of the trees.

I helped my brother set up the camera against a large aspen. I may hate the deep isolation of the woods, but I did like helping him set up tech.

I noticed something a small distance from the tree, on the opposite side of where the camera was facing. It looked like a sinkhole.

I walked over to it while Peter did the final adjustments on the trail cam. Up close, the hole stunk of death, and it appeared to be very deep.

"Check this shit out!" I waved to Peter, still processing a cough from the stench.

My brother immediately drew his gun and he became on high alert. It made me nervous myself. He took a few, noticeable sniffs to the air.

"That's probably a bear cache. Something might be close," he said, eyes darting around our surroundings.

"Like a bear?" I asked, voice creaking with nervousness.

"Yep, use your ears," he said sternly.

Strangely enough, using my ears made me notice a discrepancy. Nothing was making a sound, no birds, no insects, nothing. The only noise I could hear was my own breathing.

"Silent, usually means a predator,: I heard Peter say.

With this silence as somewhat of a cue, my eyes turned upwards to the trees. There were only a few trees that had branches that could support a mountain lion. I quickly but carefully glanced at every tree branch I could.

I decided to shout some random nonsense in hopes of attracting the thing to move. Nothing budged. Weirded out, my brother and I decided to back away slowly and bolt for the truck when we thought we were clear enough from that "cache" that my brother had been alert about.

After taking a few paces back we heard a shrill scream. It sounded like a wounded rabbit in a trap. Immediately our eyes begin darting around the woods. However it didn't take too long to pinpoint the sound.

It was coming from the hole.

We ducked behind some trees. The hole was making these horrific sounds for about a minute before I noticed something moving ahead in the woods.

Wasn't a bear, but a coyote. It was trotting excitedly towards our direction. I didn't know what to do, but my brother had a clear shot on it. When I re-adjusted myself, I realized that the thing may have smelt me from the cut in my leg. Least it was just a coyote.

Was.

The coyote went straight for the hole. Inspecting the screaming, and sniffing around. Then something strange happened.

The hole moved, it expanded, swallowing up the poor coyote. And just like that, the screaming rabbit noises ceased.

Wanting to waste zero time, my brother and I made a break for it. We could hear the sound of collapsing trees sinking. The hole was following us, and clearly swallowing up trees. This had to have been what I'd heard before.

We are still a good distance from the truck when I snagged a root and tripped. I cracked my nose on the forest floor. I cupped my bleeding nose in frustration when I heard something impossible.

I heard my fiancé Yasmine, screaming right behind me.

"Help me! Save me!" it sounded all distorted, like it was coming from underground.

I looked back in shock, and noticed a hole opening up where I had fallen and caused my nose to bleed. I could see what I could only assume was the culprit.

Though it was covered in soil. I saw a crude mix between an earthworm and a human head. It looked like a worm, with eyes, a nose, and a tongue of a human. It had hair, but no ears. The tongue of this monster flicked in my direction.

I didn't stop, but Peter and I were both terrified as this new hole formed, and the thing below was hunting us down.

"Don't run from me!" it demanded in my fiancé's voice.

"Shut up!" I yelled back it.

"Don't let up bro, were almost at the truck!" I heard Peter call out ahead.

"Thank god!" I yelled at Peter.

I saw the rose bush I had cut myself earlier on. It gave me hope for a little bit.

A scream that sounded like Peter's came from the bush. It too was swallowed ip by the worm, digging itself halfway out of the ground itself.

"What the fuck!?" I heard my actual brother yell in confusion and terror. I felt something slice the back of my arm. It was the tongue form that thing!

"Shit!" I grunted, clutching my arm. I felt like I was bleeding so much that I'd be done for. I began to almost run in peace, accepting this monster may devour me.

Hearing the truck start up in the distance snapped me back to reality. Looking at me I saw the worm thing's sickly pale eyes staring at me. It began vibrating its head rapidly, making sounds similar to the nonsense my brother and I had made earlier.

I threw open the passenger door as fast as I could, and slammed it so hard it could've broken. Peter got in quickly and we drove off. Heck, I don't even know if my brother wants to review his trail cam footage. If its really a worm, we'd have to wait for some colder seasons in order to not risk getting swallowed up. Worms retreat underground in colder temperatures, right?

If you see a hole in the forest floor, do not linger.

I live on the outer edge of a small, plains area farming town. Not many people, not many things to do, but it works great since the oil place i work for is close by. Tonight at about 9 pm, i got a voicemail from the county reverse 911 that genuinely scared me. Not a tornado warning, or any kind of severe weather alert like it usually is. It was something else entirely.

The automated message transcription my phone made said "A message from county police. Go indoors and do not go outside. Close and lock all doors and windows. Shut all blinds. There is a threat to your safety. Call 9 1 1 if there is someone on your property that you do not know. Do not interact with anyone on your property that you do not know. If you are traveling, do not return home. This is not a test. There is a threat to your safety." This message made me instantly get that "Oh shit!" sinking feeling in my stomach. Imagining for 10 seconds what could possibly be outside was scary enough that i did close and lock everything.

About 30 minutes later, the power cut, and the only thing alive was the rapid beeping of the UPS system i hooked to my satellite modem and the green glow of the modems power light. I whipped out the giant ass flashlight my police officer friend jim gave me, and went to reset the breaker. The breaker didnt pop. Everything was set exactly as its supposed to be. Thats when i realized it might not just be my house that no power. I had 0 cell service, and the only remaining things with any power were my flashlight, the modem, the battery system, a small battery powered lantern I found, and my laptop. Only things with batteries. I made the real bold (and stupid) decision to peek outside the blinds towards the rest of town to see if there was anything lit up out there. Why not? If I did it quick, should be an issue, right? I regret doing that. It was almost just light enough to see the outline of things around. When i took a look towards town, i first noticed that the area the town center is in (sorta like where all the businesses are lined up for non small town people) was dead.

The only light was coming from one building, as though a generator was keeping their porch lights alive for some reason. But then i noticed, off in the distance 200 or so feet away from my house, just barely visible, a person, or at least, something like a person. Someone just kinda standing out in the field looking toward the road. But as i tried to figure out who it was, i noticed that it started turning my way, followed by it walking my way as well. As soon as i noticed it moving i jumped back from the blinds and ducked. I had to work up the guts to even move away and go back to the room i was keeping lit up.

Since then, ive heard knocking at the front and back door. But not like the regular knocking people do, where they knock a couple of times then give up and leave, this has been like someone smacking the door as hard as possible a few times every couple of minutes, then running back around to try the other. I genuinely do not know what's out there or what they want, but this has been going on for over 2 hours now. Ive been hiding under my desk with an old rusted crowbar thing i took off the ground at work a few days ago, hoping whoever it is doesnt try to brute force their way in and that if they do they'll be stupid enough to not check under the desk before i whack its knees.

Im hoping the routers battery system stays alive long enough for this to upload. I've been charging my phone with my laptop, and sending things through email and the web using the satellite modem. If i stop responding to this, its likely becauss the modem finally died out. The county website isnt even online for me to check if theres been an all clear, and I have no service to call for help with. Hopefully one of the officers comes by patrolling and arrests whoever or whatever is outside my house. They'd be sending the cops out right, given the message they sent? Or are they hiding too?

Just so people know, this is part two of what's happened to me in Stow Vermont. If you want to have a more in depth look to what's happened so far, then you can either go to my profile or go to this link https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1e2d53z/has_anyone_seen_the_kids_in_the_forest_near_stowe/ If you want a basic rundown, I went back to my childhood home and my parents have been experiencing weird things with these kids that either live in the wood or just sneak in there (I'm still not sure). The worst part is that they keep receiving photos of them sleeping. All I want to do is find out what is going on and how I fit into all of this. That's the gist of what's happened so far, but I recommend that you still go look at part one so you can help me with all of this mess.

I know it’s been a little bit since I last posted, but things have gotten worse. I can't leave Stowe anymore. There's no running away. They won’t stop writing about me, and every note has some cryptic message at the end. Also, this one is going to be a bit longer than my last post. So much has happened in only one day. Thank you guys for trying to help me. I’m going to try and remember what has happened over the past few hours, so some of the details may be a bit fuzzy. 

After I wrote the first story, I went back to the living room with my father. We looked through more of the photos and I saw the scars and scrapes they were talking about. Not only was it on my arms, but they were also covering my back. I lifted up my sleeve and looked for any signs of scars. On my hand, there was a deep brown looking scar. I had never noticed it before, and I don’t think anyone else has. Why wasn’t I remembering anything?

“Your palms were always bleeding,” My dad said from beside me. “You always had cuts on them. Probably from those kids.”

“So what did you do? To me it looks like you did nothing to try and stop it.” I stood up, staring down at him with fury in my eyes. 

“I told you we tried to keep you away from the woods. Then they decided to try and come into the house. That’s how you-”

“That’s how you failed to save me. The only reason I’m still here is because they just so happened to drop me. What do you think would have happened if they had continued forward? I would have disappeared into the woods. Then what would you have done?”

My father stood up swiftly, angry being present across his face. “I tried my best Jason! I tried to keep you safe, but then they decided to start attacking us. They would throw rocks through our windows, try to pop the tires on our car, and come into the house. We were practically never safe when we decided to venture outside.” I could see tears start to form in his eyes. I began to feel guilty for what I had said. “I tried so hard to keep you and your mother safe, then they decided to break into the house and steal you. I tried to run after you, but they were too fast. When they dropped you, they tried to pick you back up but they were too slow. I kicked one of them away and then pulled out my gun. They scurried away and never tried to come back.”

He sat back down and began to cry. His hands now covered his face as I stood before him, staring down at the man who had tried so hard to set me free from the torture that had plagued me all those years ago. Why have they come back now? Did they want me again? I needed to remember and find out what they had done all those years ago.

Before I reached my hand out to comfort my father, I heard a knock. It came from behind me though. I looked back and saw that the curtain was slightly adjusted so I could see the forest that was outside. Except something was blocking my view. I saw a bright orange fox mask peeking at us. Dark brown eyes glared with intent that I couldn’t read.

I jumped up and ran towards the door. I could see that the child in the mask was beginning to run away. I swiftly opened the door and ran outside, trying to chase that creepy kid. Before I could even get onto the porch, I was hit in the head with something cold. I fell over onto my back, pain shooting up my spine as I hit the deck floor. I could hear laughter, and when my sight was adjusted, I could see two more children standing above me. It was the same kids from before. They were still wearing the bear and owl mask. They were the ones who had taken my picture.

“Shit,” I yelled as they ran away with the other masked child. They laughed the whole time as they ran deeper into the woods. My head began to feel like it was pounding, and when I looked for the object that had hit me, I saw that it was the shovel that my father had from before.

“Jason! What happened?” My father rushed to my side and slowly lifted me to my feet.

“They hit me with the shovel,” I said as I slowly stood up. It felt like the whole room was shaking. I could barely stand up. “They ran away back into the woods. Should we try to follow them?”

“Already tried that once. They don’t really like anyone coming in, especially when it’s dark out.”

Of course they don't, I thought. They don’t want you to come in because they might try to kill you guys. “Don’t try to go in there alone,” I said, more stern than intended.

“We haven’t been in there since you left for college. We don’t plan on going in there anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean that you wander in there alone either. You either take me or one of your friends. Even then I don’t think we should venture there.”

How had the woods that I used to travel in, that I used to be obsessed with, become so terrifying and foreign? Why were these kids back? What were they trying to do? So many questions had flooded my head that I had to sit back down on the cool wooden floor. The fresh forest breeze had begun to settle in and made me feel like I was freezing.

“They left something here Jason.” I looked back at my father as he held two square shaped objects in his hand. One of them seemed to be a piece of notepaper, and the other looked like it might have been another picture. I grabbed the photo first and saw a picture of me looking straight into the camera that was about twenty feet away. I could see the porch and the silhouette of my father behind me. The other piece of paper was in fact a note. The handwriting was terrible, yet still legible.

You’ve been gone for so long little Gecko. The storyteller can still remember you. Do you remember us? Why don’t we play some games to help you remember us?

“Short and straight to the point,” I said aloud. I handed both pieces to him as he stared at them intently. Who the hell is the story teller and how did he know who I was? It was also interesting how they knew I had a gecko mask.  These kids had to be about eight or nine, so how did they know? How old was the Storyteller?

“How did that one get on the roof,” My father said, baffled.

“Wait, what did you say?”

“There's one of those damn things on the roof. He was right above us.” I quickly grabbed the picture and scanned through it. Sure enough there was a person right above us. He was staring down at the two of us, but he had no mask on. Instead, he had a hat with what looked like long blades of grass that covered his face. The worst part is that you could still see the glint from the camera that was in his eyes. He wasn’t as young as the rest of them either. He was older. “Why doesn’t he have a mask on though?”

I felt myself start to breathe faster as my heart began to pound against my chest. He was up there the whole time, yet I never noticed. How did he not make a sound? I could feel my father’s hand grab my shoulder, trying to calm me down. It worked as I began to slow my breathing. 

“I don’t understand any of this,” I said as hot tears ran down my face. “What did I do out in those woods?”

“Jason, if I had an answer I would give it to you immediately, I just don’t know anything that happened when you walked out into those woods. I thought you would stay on the paths, but those children must have led you somewhere else.”

That’s what the false trails might be, I thought. They created trails that branched off the given paths that we had so I could go deeper into the woods with them. When I looked back at my father, it seemed that he had the same realization. “So if I go down those false trails, then I can find them. I can find out where they are.”

“You are not going to go in there now. You and I are gonna talk and you can find out what you want to do from there.” I agreed with him and we walked back into the house. How had everything gone south almost immediately? I just wanted to visit my parents and talk about how college was. Now I was out here trying to figure out why masked children were harassing my parents. It seemed like they wanted something else from me too.

“Earlier you said, ‘I thought you were happy’. What did you mean by that?”

“Well,” My father said as he fetched another cup from the cabinet above the coffee maker. “They used to come by a lot more often after you left for college. They would come around, take more pictures of us, then just leave notes addressed to you. They wanted you back in the woods. So we told them that you were off at college and that you wouldn’t be back until a while. We gave them jam, honey, and bread to try and make them happy, and it seemed to work. They rarely came by after that, until it was your last year over in Washington. They got more aggressive saying that they needed you back. They started throwing more rocks through our windows, and more photos were dropped off at the door.”

He set the mug in front of me, steam rising out of the mug. I held it in my hands, feeling the warmth spread across my hands. I took a quick sip as it glided down my throat. It almost tasted sweet. “So then what?”

“We told them you weren’t going to come back. They began to try and hurt us. I walked out onto Puffball one day and one of them stabbed me in the ankle. I haven’t been back out on those trails until you showed up yesterday. Then they left me a note. Not your mother, but me. It said that they would try to kill your mother if I didn't get you back here. So we had to invite you."

I could feel fury and rage boil inside of me. "You invited me so I could get killed by those things? What the fuck were you thinking!" I slammed my mug onto the table, making some of my coffee spill.

"They were going to kill her, Jason. I had no other choice."

"Why the hell didn't you move? Maybe go to a random town for a few days. Even going to a friend's house would have worked."

"Jason," My father yelled. "We tried almost everything. We tried going to your aunt's house, and they appeared again. They tried to abduct your cousins. We couldn't go anywhere without someone getting hurt. I'm sorry, but this was the only way that everyone would stay safe." His breathing was loud, jaw clenched, and hands balled into fists. They really did. My cousins were only seven and eight. How did they know where they were?

“I’m going to go to town,” I said as I stood up. My father looked at me with disbelief in his eyes. Before he could speak, I started to talk again. “I’ll be fine. Town is only ten minutes away. I’m gonna go ask some friends if they know anything about this. You need to stay here and make sure mom is okay.” I silently walked towards the door and looked behind me before I could exit. My father’s face was hidden by his hands as he silently wept into them. He looked up at me, practically begging me to stay. “I love you dad.”

He showed a silent smile as he softly said, “Love you too, kid.” I walked out before he could say another word. I closed the door behind me and sat on the steps that led down to my car. I silently cried as I thought about how much he had truly done. I should have thanked him instead of blaming him for everything that was happening. I wanted to find out what was going on with these kids, no matter what it took.

After the ride to town, I parked outside of the Stowe Community Church. Really the spot where I parked was at Lower Bar, which always confused me because why would you have a bar next to a church. You could tell it was Sunday because most of the nearby residents seemed to be inside. I got out of my car and looked around the parking lot, trying to find any vehicles that would be similar to the ones during my childhood, at least the bit that I could remember. 

When I walked inside, I could hear the preacher or pastor, (I never went to church much and when I did, I usually just drowned out the sound and thought about how hot the girl next to me was) talking about how the devil has many ways to infiltrate the mind. “And believe me, if I had the power to stop the devil, then I would without any hesitation. People who worship the devil only have thoughts about how their life could be changed immediately. Think of it as a shortcut. Following the word of God is something that will benefit you towards the end of life. Really it helps you at any point in their life.”

I took a seat towards the back and kept listening to the man and the podium who kept talking about how God can show us the miracles of his brilliance. I never really thought of religion as a great thing. I think it’s good to find meaning in it and to try and change your life for the better, yet it still always freaked me out. Especially with the way that they always spoke about it. 

After the sermon and after everyone had left, I walked up to the pastor. As I began to walk over to him, he gave me a big smile. “Hello sir. What can I do for you today?”

“Hey,” I said a bit shyly. “I wanted some help with a situation I have.”

His face was then washed with concern as he stared at me. “What may that be? Are you having trouble following the word of God? I know it seems hard at times, believe me I’ve been through it, it does get easier with time.”

“No it’s not that. I wanted to ask you if you knew anything about kids in the forest.” He looked confused and I immediately regretted asking him. Why didn’t I just ask someone that I actually knew? I should have asked someone else.

“Do they wear those little animal masks?” That same smile that he gave me earlier was spread across his face.

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“Oh those kids shouldn’t mean any harm. They just like giving people a good scare, especially to some elderly folks. I think they’re just kids from around the neighborhood. All they are is misguided. I bet I’ve seen each one of them in church before.”

His determination in his statement was surprising. “How do you know all of that?”

“I don’t. It’s just my best assumption. Are they giving you any trouble?”

I didn’t really know what to tell him. So I just lied instead. “No, just my parents. They said that they take pictures of them. Like a lot of pictures. It's starting to freak me out.”

He turned his back to me and started to walk away. “Follow me. I’ll show you something that might change your mind.” This whole situation was getting creepier by the minute. I didn’t really know if I should have followed him, but he waved his hand signaling that I should. 

He led me into a room towards the back of the church, where there were a multitude of crosses lining the wall. This was one reason why I didn’t care for religion. He walked towards a filing cabinet and reached in. He grabbed about five photos, each of different people and laid them out onto his table. “Oh my-”

“Not in a church please, but I can understand your fear.” Fear. I’m mortified. Every photo was of someone, not realizing they were being watched, and a circle that noticed a different thing. “Most of the photos that I’ve gathered have this same little circle. Every circle differs depending on the person. I think they’re just trying to note what features they like in the person. While at first creepy, most people have come to terms with it and take it as a compliment.”

“So how did you get all of these photos?”

“You’re not the only one who came for some help. They gave me the photos and asked if I had any answers. I gave them the same one that you just received.”

I didn’t feel comfortable anymore. I stood up and was getting ready to go. I felt like I had to puke. “Well I have to go. Have a food day Father or pastor or preacher.” 

I walked out of the door and from behind me I heard, “It’s Peter Kevilan. Have a good day and come back if you need any more help. I’m always here.” The last sentence freaked me out and I practically ran outside. When I reached the door, I ran to Lower Bar and puked in the parking lot. I felt sick to my stomach seeing all of these photos of different people. What did these kids want? I couldn’t tell if they wanted me, or everyone. 

“Jesus, Jason,” I heard from behind me. I looked and saw my former girlfriend, or what felt like the ruder term, my ex.

“What do you want Kensie? I don’t really feel like having any condescending comments today.”

“Yeah, I could tell that. I came over to ask if you were okay, but if you don’t want any help then I suppose I can leave.”

“Yes please. You can go.” She began to walk away before I finished my sentence. “Wait. Can you actually talk with me for a second?”

She looked back and smiled. “I knew you were lonely. So what were you doing in church?” 

I stood up, trying to control my breathing. “Well I was looking for some answers. My parents got something weird going on at their house.”

“It’s those kids still, isn’t it.” I looked up surprised, yet she just stared at the ground. She seemed scared. She must have had some experience too. “They talked about it a while ago. I was there when they tried to make the report. Later they said that the kids weren’t as aggressive. Those little shits came by my house one day. Tried to take a picture of me before I threw a rock at them. They ran away but still got the picture. I never received it though.”

“Has everyone been receiving those photos?”

“Some people. Mainly your parents though. I tried asking my friend Riley but they said that it was some joke that they heard their little brother talking about. Riley thinks he’s in on it.”

Finally, It felt like I had something that I could work with.  If I could find this kid then maybe I could find out more about this weird thing. “Where’s that kid now? Where’s Riley?” She paused and looked away once more.she leaned against my car and I could hear her let out a deep sigh. “What’s wrong Kensie?”

“Markus died about two weeks ago. At Least that’s what Riley thinks.”

“Oh my God. I’m sorry Kensie.”

“It’s fine. Riley said that he went missing a while ago. He was missing for about a week before one of those kids dropped off a photo at their window. It was his brother. His body was gray and leaves were covering his body. Riley hasn’t shown their parents. they didn’t want them to find out about what happened. He was only in second grade.”

Everything was silent for a while. I didn’t want to know if it was the kids who killed him or not. I just wanted to leave at this point, but at the same time I wanted to solve this for everyone. “Do you think you can introduce me to Riley?”

She gave me a look of shock and backed up a little. “Are you kidding me? Is this your way of trying to date me again?”

“No Kensie. I want to solve this whole thing. I need to find out what is going on. There is something going on with them that goes deeper. I’m going to find it out and then we don’t have to worry about these kids ever again.” 

She looked concerned. I know she didn’t want to go along with this plan, and to be honest I didn’t either. I had to though. The thought of Markus’s dead body lying in the forest where no one would find him again haunted my mind. If not for myself, then I wanted to do it for my parents and everyone who has been receiving these notes.

“Okay,” She said, letting out another deep sigh. “I’ll text him real fast and we can meet here later. I hope you're serious about this, cause these kids are really pissing me off.”

Kensie got into my car (since she lived in town she had no use for one as she worked at The Black Cap which was across from the church) and began to lead me towards Riley’s house. At first there was awkward silence, no radio or anything to break the tension between us. She reached down and turned on the radio which started to play Maneater. 

“So, where did you come from,” I asked. She looked at me confused as if to say ‘well obviously the same town you did’. “I mean, where did you come from when I came out of the church? Why did you even come over to check up on me?”

“Well, you seemed sick and I wanted to help. I had just finished my shift at The Cap so I was going to walk home until I saw you. Just because you’re my ex doesn’t mean that I won’t try to help you. Do you think I’m that cynical?” She let out a little giggle after her sarcastic comment.

“Do you mean that?” I kept looking straight down the road, not trying to glance in her direction. “Are you serious when you say that you would try to help me? If you are, then I need you to help me find out what the hell these kids are all about. I know it’s a big ask, but I need people to help me.”

“So that’s why you want to meet Riley. You want him to help you with all of this shit.” I felt bad asking for other people's help, but I had a gut feeling that Riley wanted to know what had happened to their brother just as much as me. I know that they want answers.

“Yeah. Whoever Riley is, they probably want answers just as much as me.”

“Take a left here.” I obeyed and was about to speak when Kensie interrupted me. “Riley is a guy. He works with me at The Cap.”

I froze a bit yet my gaze never wavered off the street. “Oh,” I said as I could feel my voice crack. My face got red. “So is he your-”

“Jesus, Jason. Just because he’s a guy and he’s my friend, doesn’t mean that I date him.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to ask if he was your only friend.”

“Pretty much. Everyone else is either a stuck up wannabe rich kid or some really weird person. And I don’t mean weird as in ‘Oh I like Star Wars and DnD’, I mean WEIRD.”

I laughed a bit and continued watching the road. “Liking Star Wars isn’t weird. It’s a normal thing.” 

“Oh my, your sarcasm is so good that I thought you were telling the truth.” She began to laugh now as I could feel my face begin to blush. “That’s his house right there.” She pointed towards a two story white house with different kinds of flowers growing in tiny gardens. There was a brick path that led to the road but cut off due to there being no sidewalk. There were no cars in the driveway, and I wondered if he was really home.

“Just park in the driveway. His parents are out trying to look for Markus.” I listened to her and parked in the driveway where I could see a tall figure step out of the door. We got out and Kenise was the first one to greet him. “Hey Riley. How are you holding up?”

“Good,” He said in a voice that seemed a little too deep for someone who looked like they were the same age as me. “Who’s your friend?”

I walked up to him with my hand outstretched. “Hey Riley. I’m Jason. I’m one of Kensie’s previous boyfriends.”

He stared at my hand for a bit then took it with his own. “Um…alright. I didn’t know Kenise had more than one ex.” Kensie lightly hit him and he seemed to understand what she was indicating. “So what are you guys doing here?”

“Well,” I began, not totally sure how to ask him if he wanted to look for his dead brother’s possible killers. “Have you heard of the masked children in the woods?” I was expecting him to look at me like I was an idiot. Maybe even say ‘are you high’. None of that happened though. Instead, his face was ghostly pale.

“Get inside,” He said as he rushed to the door. He opened it for us and started to push us in. We entered the living room and he sat in a cushioned rocking chair that sat across from a couch. Kensie and I took our seats across from him as he started to speak again. “First of all, you can’t just say that shit so casually out here. People are still terrified of them. Second, why would you want to know that?”

“Do you know who the Potter’s are? I’m their son. Those kids want something with me, and I think you could help me with this stuff. They won’t leave us alone and-”

“I’m sorry but no. I don’t want anything to do with those kids anymore. My brother knew something about them that I didn’t, then those fuckers killed him. If you try and find out what’s going on, then all that’s going to happen is another missing person. What happens when they take your picture and send it to your parents?” I didn’t want to think about that but I did. I could already imagine my father blaming himself for not doing more.

“Riley,” Kensie started with a sad tone. “We need to stop these kids. People around town are getting the pictures and no one is doing anything. Pastor Peter is already trying to play it off, just like sheriff Giligan. If we don’t do anything then no one will. What happens when someone else’s brother goes missing?”

“He’s not missing. Markus is dead in the woods because he knew something about them. If anyone tries to find out more about them, then what do you think will happen?” We all stayed silent for about a minute before I finally thought of something.

“What if it wasn’t those kids?” Everyone had looked at me like I was crazy. “I know it sounds weird, but what if those things aren’t responsible for it. Think of them like little servants. They seem young enough that they wouldn’t really know what is right and what is wrong. Someone could easily manipulate all of them and start making them do all of their dirty work.”

Riley nodded his head up and down but Kensie still looked confused. “I don’t understand. You’re saying that these kids are just pawns or something?”

“Exactly. I think there is something bigger at play here. I got a note this morning from them and a picture. They said something about a storyteller. To me, that just sounds like a leader. Riley, did Markus say that all of them wore animal masks?”

He looked back up, his eyes beginning to produce tears. He wiped them away and said, “No. He said some of them wore hats that still covered their faces. I got his notebook and it says some stuff about it. I don’t want to read it, but if you can find something in there then you can have it.I didn’t want to read it after he went missing. It felt wrong to go through it when I didn’t know where he was. I guess I do now though.”

I nodded and he practically ran up the stairs. Kensie then tapped my shoulder asking for my attention. “So if they aren’t doing it by themselves, then why would the people leading them tell them to torment the town? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t understand why, but I know we are getting closer to the truth. I think Riley might be on board soon enough.” Just as I said that I could hear heavy footsteps come from above us. Riley flew down the stairs and threw the notebook to me. He took his seat and then waited for me to read it. 

I have the notebook with me in my room right now, so I will just copy off what Markus had written. The note came from the last entry that he wrote. 

May 25th, 2024    

Dear dairy-

Me, Jackson, and Westley went into the forest today and found those weird kids again. Something was really creepy about them today though. They had some new people there that didn’t wear those creepy animal masks. I think there were three of them that had weird hats. It was made out of grass, or straw, something long that covered their faces. They seemed a lot older than the rest of the kids, It almost sounded like they were telling them what they should do. They talked about pictures and sent them to some people. I’m pretty sure that they were really interested in Laurence and Mary Potter. I don’t really know why though because they never go to town. Maybe that’s where they like to hangout. I wish I could  hang out with them. Maybe those masks wouldn’t be so creepy if I wore one. Thanks for listening to me.

-Markus

The last few sentences had mortified me. Maybe those masks wouldn’t be so creepy if I wore one. I already knew I looked pale, but I didn’t really know what else to do. How was I supposed to tell Riley about what his brother had written in the book? He did confirm one thing though. There were leaders to this whole thing, and they were older people. One of them had to have been on my roof this morning. 

“So is there anything interesting in there,” Riley asked with growing curiosity being present.

“I was right. There are people teaching them all this stuff.”

“Holy shit.” Riley stood up and started to walk around. Kensie raised her hands to her face and stayed silent.

“We need your help Riley. Now we know that it was these people who,” I froze trying to think of what to say besides ‘the people who killed your brother’.

“They killed my brother. That’s what they did.” We all still stayed silent and waited for the other to answer. I wanted to walk out. I wanted to do anything to get out of there. Then Riley spoke again. “I can help. Where do we go first?”

After a while we all hopped into my car and started to drive away from Riley’s house. “You said we should go to my house first, right Kensie.”

“Yeah. You said you have some of those trails. Maybe a couple lead towards a hideout or something out there. I think those false trails could lead us somewhere.” I agreed with her and began to get on the road that would lead out of town. 

Before we could go anywhere, Riley began to point something out. “Hey, isn’t that the sheriff's car?” He pointed ahead of us and right where his index finger was pointing, was a police car that was parked on the side of the road right next to the forest front. “What do you guys think he’s doing?”

I already had one thought in my mind. He’s out there with the kids, but why? Then Kensie had shut that thought down when she said “I think he’s on the search party right? Maybe he’s trying to look for Markus.” 

Silence overcame all of us to the point where all we could hear was eachother breathing. I reached down and turned on the radio which started to play ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’. We all stayed silent until we reached my house.

“I think this is the worst place that you could live,” Riley said. We all stepped out of the car and walked up to the front door. 

Before I could even knock, my mom pulled the door open. “Jason. Oh my God I was so worried. You’ve been gone almost all day.You’re fathers sleeping right now so don’t worry about him.” She gave me a big hug and when she let go she noticed that I had company. “And you brought friends. I can whip up some dinner if you guys want some.”

“Mom, this is Riley, and you already know Kensie.”

“It’s nice to meet you Mrs. Potter,” Riley said as he stuck out his hand to my mother. 

“Well it’s nice to meet you Riley. Kensie, when was the last time that you were here.” My mother had a strange supernatural power that I could never understand. She was somehow able to make every public situation awkward to a noticeable degree, yet she never noticed.

“It sure has been a while,” Kensie said while blushing. I couldn’t blame her because I knew that my face was just as red as her’s. 

“Well we’re gonna go over to the backyard. We wanted to go down the trails.”

I could tell that she wanted to stop me, but I think she knew that I needed to go out there no matter what. She knew I would be safe if I had multiple people. “Do you have a knife?” I pulled out a small hunting knife and flicked it open. “Okay. Be back by six thirty. I’ll have dinner ready by then.” I agreed and looked at my phone. It was three o’clock. We had enough time to find out what was in there.

As we reached the backyard, I could hear rustling coming from the trails. Riley was right beside me and looked at every trail. “Jesus. What one do we go down?” 

“I don’t know. Puffball is the longest one. We might find something there.”

Kensie walked ahead of us and began to walk down the trail. “We should hurry. It gives us more time to look around.” Riley and I looked at each other and nodded in agreement and followed her down the path. If I wasn’t doing this for my parents, then I would do it for Markus. I’m going to find out what’s in those woods, no matter what it takes.

That’s all that I have in me right now. I’ll make sure to write about what happens as soon as I can. Again I want to thank everyone that has tried to help me with this whole situation, and I wanna ask you guys the same question as before. Has anyone seen the kids in the forest near Stowe Vermont?

Late last year, I started seeing a statue. Yes, a statue. It looks like one you see at art museums. It’s completely white and shiny. It has no torso, it’s just a chest with a head. The man who is etched into the marble has thick, straight eyebrows to match his equally thick, curly hair. It always looks like he’s in a state of concentration. He has a wide neck to go along with his burly chest that is completely nude. In any other context I would have absolutely marveled over this work of art.

He won’t stop following me.

In early December of last year my alarm had woken me up from a decent night’s sleep when I saw the quick image of a head and chest from the corner of my eye. I immediately whipped my head in the direction of which l saw the sharp flash of white but there was absolutely nothing there. I remember blinking my eyes slowly open and shut to make my groggy mind more awake, thinking it was just a dream that followed me into the real world.

I had to get ready for school so as I got back home from my swimming club I had forgotten the entire thing already. It wasn’t until I was filling up a glass of water that I saw him again. I had leaned against the island in my kitchen, my eyes still sensitive and my body sore from that day’s practice when he appeared in my line of view a few feet away from me. He was closer to the stairs leading to my room than from where I was located on the island. I rubbed my eyelids so harshly that I could see spots and stars for a few seconds after I opened them again. I had also painfully flinched against the thick concrete of the kitchen island and my back had the evidence of a large bruise from the intensity of the scratch from the rough concrete for weeks after.

When I opened my eyes again, he was gone. My heart was beating at a rapid pace from the shock of seeing something so out of place. Although our house has things that cheaper homes don’t, my family absolutely does not collect perfectly sculpted marble statues.

It didn’t make sense for him to be there even if we did because he wasn’t balanced on anything. It was as if he was just floating there, like he had found a pocket of gravity that worked enough for him to watch me. What could I believe then? Was I experiencing psychosis? I don’t remember hearing about or seeing it running in my family, but then again, taboo subjects like that are not often spoken about in fear of bad reputation. I had to brush it off again. It's such a strange thing to experience that I had to.

I got ready to wash the chlorine from my body in a confused state, my heart feeling like it had gained ten extra pounds. There was an electric course running through me that I just wanted to slow down with a nice, hot shower.

I remember the feeling I got when I was washing the shampoo from my hair. The feeling that I was not alone at that moment. I didn’t want to open my eyes, I wanted to pretend that there was an endless amount of shampoo flowing down my face, leaving me unable to open them until it all washed down the drain.

“You’re being ridiculous.” I had thought to myself then. “You are being absolutely ridiculous.”

I didn’t see him when I finally had the courage to loosen the grip of my eyelids from the safety of my bottom lashes, but not because he wasn’t there. No. It was because I was facing the showerhead.

If I thought my two previous encounters were a strange dream or a trick of imagination, this was a haunting nightmare. He was peeking through my shower curtain, his face the same as before. The furrow in his concentrated eyebrow had no distinction between pleasure and curiosity.

I had finally screamed. He disappeared as I backed up against the wall and even though the shower had suddenly turned into the end of a mouse trap, I couldn’t bring myself to free myself from the cold and wet wall that was grounding me from slipping through the shower drain. I somehow, after much time had passed, finished my wash.

I was exhausted then, even more so than before. My eyes had felt like I had spent an extra five hours more than the usual one in my school’s swimming pool. I was slowly dragging my feet to my room, procrastinating in turning the handle in hopes that he wouldn’t be on the other side of the door.

The turn of my knob was an adrenaline rush in of itself, but the checking of every corner in my relatively small room felt like the peak of being on a looping roller coaster. He wasn’t there after double checking every inch of my square space, but even as I changed into my regular clothes I was quickly darting my head in every direction after I had placed each item of clothing on myself. The sudden shout of my mom announcing that dinner was ready was a gunshot to the ear. I didn’t even hear her coming home in my apprehensive state.

I wanted to ask my mom then if there was any sort of mental illness that ran in the family, but how does one even begin to bring that topic up? Was I supposed to do it after I asked her to pass the salt? I must’ve been obvious because she did ask me if I was feeling alright, and unfortunately I had decided to push it away and make an excuse that I had been stressing over homework.

Even after I had tucked myself into bed I would occasionally look behind me or flash a light towards the door. It seemed like three times was the charm for the day, and only the moonlight was a comforting blanket after the most confusing day of my life.

Oh how I wish the glowing rays of the moon followed me every minute, but as you can see that I am writing to you now, it was only the test run to the start of a tormenting game that I was the sole player of.

I don’t remember what I dreamt of that day, it was probably just a black screen of peace, but when I first opened my eyes from the sound of my alarm ringing, he was there again. He wasn’t a sudden flash of white, he was directly in front of me. If I had slept any closer to the edge of my bed, we could’ve been touching noses. I didn’t have it in me to react physically, but my breath halted in my throat and my bones suddenly tightened into an iron grip in my body. Again, he didn’t do a single thing but stare. I gathered my clothes after the initial fright and as I turned to see if he was still there, he was laying on my bed. His look of permanent concentration was slowly starting to piss me off. I decided to finish my routine in my closet. At least then, even if he did follow me there, I couldn’t see him.

This lasted the entire school day. He would position himself in front of me as I tried to focus on whatever teacher was trying to do their job. Most of the time though, my gaze would focus on the clock in every classroom. You don’t realize how quickly time can pass if the only thing you see is the slim line underneath each clock hand that is assisting it to every destination on that small circle.

He is unnecessarily cruel. He never lays a finger on me or inches closer than my nose, he just stares in contempt. He judges me like he has any right to. I didn’t want him to get under my skin and I didn’t want to admit defeat. I never did ask my mom if anything like this ran in the family, for better or for worse. I just suffered in silence.

“No. You’re not suffering. This isn’t a big deal. You are over exaggerating. This is nothing.”

I would repeat this to myself whenever he popped in as I was showering or changing. I didn’t even need to check behind me to make sure he was there after a couple of weeks.

Just when I thought I had finally convinced myself that I was used to it, when I could finally attempt to ignore that face from the corner of my vision, he shifted on the first day of Christmas break.

I’m not ashamed to admit that when he was pointing at me with the sudden appearance of a torso, I shrieked. His eyes had grown widely, the sculpted pupil nearly jumping out of his head with the force of which he was viewing me. The finger accused in my direction was thick and the palm connected to it was manly and veiny. It only took me a few minutes after my initial shock to understand why he was so mad at me.

I was getting used to him. No. I was getting over him. And by God, he refused to let me move on.

“What is wrong with you?” I screamed. I didn’t care if I looked unreasonable to anyone who could walk in. As far as I was concerned, the only unreasonable person in the room with me was made out of marble.

“Just leave me alone!” I refused to cry. He could get me to change in my closet, he could get me to check around every corner I was approaching, and he could get my grades to drop because I couldn’t switch to any desk without him being there. He could do all that, but he couldn’t see me cry.

He didn’t stop that act until I resumed my swim practice. It took the entire two weekends of overblown festivity and the first half of Monday for him to appear as his normal self when I had changed into my usual loose shirt and shorts after swim class. The smooth chest and furrowed eyebrows were a strange comfort that quickly turned into a tight knot in my stomach. I was getting used to him, just not the same way as before.

I quit the swim team shortly after that.

“You weren’t a valuable asset. You weren’t the captain. It’ll be a lot less work. You could go home sooner. It’s not because of him.”

My mom eventually noticed that I hadn’t been doing average in school like before, in fact after the whole ordeal started my highest grade was a B minus. Honestly, I was quite proud of myself for that with all things considered.

She was angry at me, which I guess is fair. She took away my phone, saying that it was a mistake giving it to me in the first place. She would give it back when I put in more effort in my schoolwork. I was supposed to be going to college soon, what am I thinking?

Not once did she ask what was wrong.

You never did tell her about him.

But not once?

I stormed into my room after. This is unfair. I’m a good person, right? If I was, would this be happening to me? It’s not fair, I haven’t done anything wrong.

“You asshole.” I said under my breath. What was he going to do about it?

Turns out, his way of punishing me for foul language is to take form as a rotting corpse. He was a full man now, but his internal organs were spilling onto my bedroom floor. There was blood secreting from his eyes and ears slowly. His mouth was agape like he was shocked by my vulgarity. The marble block that allowed him to balance had his hands thrown against his feet.

He finally made me cry. Actually, what he got was a long round of guttural screams and sobs. What he got was me hugging myself on the floor, repeatedly asking myself what I did to deserve this. What he got was a lonely puddle of what was once a teenage girl. I imagine he was satisfied.

Not once did anyone ask.

You’ll have to get over him.

I remember contemplating, “Why should I even try? When I had done so before, he showed me how much it wouldn’t work.”

After sitting against my bed frame for an indiscernible amount of time, his blood pooling into my toes, I thought one thing.

“What other choice do I have?”

Admittedly, it took a lot. Notice how I’m writing this in the middle of the year. Some days, I would slip back into the comforting ticking of the clock, hoping that it would never catch up to its destination. Sometimes I would do absolutely nothing but lay on my carpet floor because he had taken up space on my bed. I would pretend that I was floating through the stars and that where I was, statues didn’t exist. Blood and guts and marble are only a concept on Earth.

Most days, I would find the strength to stare back at him. I would blur my eyes and I would inch closer. I would talk to him and I would sing to him. I never got the strength to change in front of him, though. That is a big regret I have.

One day, he wasn’t on my bed, and the sigh of relief I let out was the knob to my tears. I had forgotten all about how my bed sheets formed comfortably around me. The next day, he came back, but that was fine. His biggest mistake was letting me have one night of familiarity.

One day, I pushed his head aside to fill in a question during math class. The loud screech from the friction of his sliced chest against my desk made me wince, but I had to finish the question. The next week, I applied to colleges.

Sometimes I wish he hurt me physically. I know it’s a strange thing to want, but if I had proof then maybe somebody would notice. Even if they didn’t, I could blame everything on them. It’s odd, isn’t it? The comforting point of a finger to anyone but yourself or the person hurting you.

Eventually he slowly started disappearing from my life. I would head back home from school and I wouldn’t peek around corners. I would finally get an A on one of my papers after what felt like a century of studying. I would finally get my phone back and get an apology from my mom for not helping me more. I would forgive.

Last month was my 18th birthday. After the initial congratulations ended and the questions on if I felt any different subsided, I blew out the candles on my cake. His head and bare chest were sitting on the other side after the small wave of smoke disappeared into the air. I cut a slice for myself, and then I offered him one after.

He hasn’t shown up since.

Prior part: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1e2pqo3/the_death_collector_part_3/

Sorry for the cliff hanger on the last entry, but it looked like it was going to be too long to finish in one post. Plus I needed to take a break to move to a different room. The knocking was starting to get hard to ignore.

The entry that came a page or two after the one bookmarked with Judy's prayer card looked way different than any of the ones before.

Dear Journal,

I understand that I am not at fault for what happened with Alex and Judy. I understand that these connections were only made out of extreme duress based on my guilt and psychotic beliefs following the death of first my father, and then my nephew and sister-in-law. I know now that my death would not bring them back or cause any satisfaction to my brother Adam, who cares for me deeply despite his loss and has been a major part of my recovery along with my mother. The black eyed boy that I was seeing was a result of delusional thinking and hallucinations that have been properly diagnosed by Dr. Hawkins. After months of physical and mental recovery, I will be starting my journal afresh with a new mind after having it returned to me by the staff at St. Peter's Psychiatric Care Center and using the skills from my therapeutic journal to continue my recovery. The staff and Dr. Hawkins have my eternal gratitude for helping me start me life without delusion and begin my adulthood from a place of healing.

After digging through the box the journals had been in, I found what looked like a workbook that I had overlooked considering how identifiable the journals were. Inside were therapeutic exercises talking about guilt, shame, identifying how to distinguish hallucinations, countering delusional thoughts, what looked like unpolished versions of modern safety plans, entries he'd written during his treatment, and letters written back and forth between him, his mother, and his brother between visits. His brother offering him forgiveness and talking about not wanting to lose anyone else he loved. His mother talking about how strong she knew he was. Although I knew that psychiatric treatment had been far less humane in the past, the workbook was honestly inspiring, even heartwarming...at least, if I didn't know where the story ended. If I didn't know there were more journals to read.

Still, there was over a decade of pretty standard entries that seemed much more monumental considering the ones I'd read up until now. His brother remarrying and having two children, one named after his father with the middle name of the son he lost and the other with their daughter with Judy's name as her middle name. I couldn't help but wonder what the new wife thought of the latter, but considering the intensity of his loss maybe she was understanding. Either way, there weren't any entries that were negative about it. Blitz passed away as an old man and eventually he got his own dog named Duke that he took with him when he started his own family. Allen got a steady job as a butcher at a store he'd frequented growing up and eventually became the manager. He married. Had kids that his mother often watched for them on date nights and seemed to dote on. Knowing how things were with his kids now it was strange to see how much he wrote about them, how Alicia was "so smart that it caused her trouble", how the middle daughter was "already so kind", how he was so happy to have a baby boy to round out their family.

It made the punch in the gut even worse when the streak broke.

Dear Journal,

I finally remembered.
It's been so long and my treatment was so intense that I really did think I was crazy. That "Christian" was just something that flared up when I got too stressed, like when Dad died or when everything happened with Alex and Judy. Some kid based on the imaginary friend I made up when Adam was getting too old to bring his little brother around. So I'd let it out of my mind for all these years.
But they came tonight.
It was late, maybe 10pm, and Rosie and the kids were all asleep. I just finished looking for Jupiter since it was a clear night. Then someone knocked on the door while I was putting away the telescope. I was worried it was an emergency since it was so late, especially with the neighbor's heart attack last week, but I damn near had one myself when I saw who was there.
There were two little girls at the door that looked just like Alicia and Maisy, down to Maisy's hair ribbons and the studs in Alicia's ears with her birthstone in them. I knew it couldn't be them of course, they were upstairs in their beds, but it was uncanny. I asked them what was wrong and they said that they woke up outside and that they were scared. They even called me Daddy. They were sniffling and whimpering in a way that broke my heart to hear and I squatted down a second to get a better look, starting to wonder if maybe they'd been sleep walking even if that hadn't happened before.
Then I saw their eyes, completely black, even what should have been the whites of their eyes.
And I remembered.
I slammed the door shut and they started clawing and banging the door behind me, sobbing, letting out these keening cries for "Daddy" to let them in and that I was scaring them. They were scaring me. I locked the door and ran upstairs the the girl's room while Rosie was coming out to see what was happening and...there they were. My little girls sat up in bed with that same scared, confused look as the girls on the doorstep. They were mine though, their eyes were teary but they were the same eyes that had looked at me from their little bundles at the hospital the day they were born. Rosie was so worried, she kept asking why the door slammed and what all the banging was and I told her that it was some hitchhiker wanting a ride that gave me a bad feeling. She didn't seem like she believed me, but since she didn't have a better option she let it go. I'm on the couch writing this to make sure they don't come back, and I hope I'm just over tired. I hope to god I'm just tired. Because if not I've got no one to turn to for this.

It looked like things settled down for a while again, almost long enough that he had dismissed the incident, before the girls showed up again.

Dear Journal,

Rosie answered the door after dinner and as I went to go into the living room I saw who she was talking to. It was the girls again. Rosie seemed so confused and even looked back to make sure the girls were still playing on the floor near the couch, especially after I heard them beg "Mommy" to let them in and that they were sorry for going out without asking. I didn't hear anymore because I ran up behind her and slammed the door in their faces, the older girl barely pulling her hand off the door frame in time. Rosie got upset with me and started shouting at me for being heartless, that clearly these two little girls were confused, and I lost it. I shouted back for her to bring the girls upstairs and that those demons were not coming in our house, that it'd be over my dead body. Our girls had never heard us fight before, hell, we never had fought until now, and they ran upstairs like they'd seen the devil himself and he was biting at their heels. I don't know what got into Rosie but she was actually fighting me to get at the door, it was like something had come over her and she was dead set on getting that door open, only made worse by those little demons crying and begging for their mother. I felt like I was going crazy, like my entire world was crashing down on me. The only thing that made me keep going and keeping her away from the door is knowing what those things could do to us, to our children.
And then it just stopped.
The banging and the crying was gone. Rosie was staring at me from about a foot away, looking concerned, and I had my back against the door. The only thing that let me know I hadn't completely lost my mind was the scratches up and down my arms from her nails. She started asking me what was wrong, acting like those scratches were from some cat or from Duke jumping on me, and genuinely seemed like she had no idea what had happened just a few seconds before. I told her that she had come at me over those girls at the door and I asked her if she lost her mind, but she really didn't know what I was talking about. The only thing that helped was when I went upstairs the girls ran to me crying and asking me why Mommy and Daddy were fighting and if something bad happened.
I held them for a long time, kept pulling away to look at their eyes and kiss them on their foreheads, kept telling them that Daddy loves them and that everything would be okay.
I was lying to them. I don't know if anything will be okay.

After this, there were entries about trying to act like everything was normal, and about the nightmares he started having. Nightmares about his own little girls turning into the ones with the black eyes and shooting him in his sleep, choking the baby in his sleep, opening his wife's belly with a knife the way Alex had been shot. There was so many desperate attempts for him to separate those nightmares from his girls and how he was worried that it was effecting how he interacted with his kids. How eventually he even started having nightmares of his baby boy opening his eyes after a nap and them being all black.

Dear Journal,

I think it might have gotten past the point of no return. Today the girls were playing outside with Charlie now that he's big enough to run around with them, with either Rosie or I looking out to check on them every few minutes. I was worried about those demons popping up somewhere the way they had when I was young, and Rosie was just being a good mom like she always was. I think she was actually asking me about whether I'd come up tonight instead of sleeping downstairs and I was making up something else about my back being better on the stiffer couch when I noticed I didn't see the kids anymore. I asked her if we could talk about it after I saw where they went off to and headed out to find them.
It took a bit longer than I expected but eventually I found them heading back towards the house, each of them holding Charlie's hand as he giggled and let them lift him up between them. It was one of the things they did as siblings that made me feel at ease whenever the nightmares made me worry. And then they looked up.
It was them.
I felt my knees go week as they kept playing with my little boy, acting as if nothing was wrong and smiling at me with the same shark-like smiles that I remembered from so long ago. This was the first time I've been near them without the door there to protect me and I felt vulnerable, especially since they had my son. They greeted me in my daughters' voices and asked if they can bring Charlie back in and get some lemonade before they came back outside. I just kept shaking my head and thinking how this couldn't be happening, wondering where my real daughters were, when there was suddenly big bright bursts of laughter from somewhere behind me and my girls came running from the bushes not too far from the back door. They kept giggling at their "prank" and saying how their new friends wanted to help them play a trick on me and Mommy and see if we would notice before they came inside. They took their brother's hands and asked me if they "spooked me good" before seeing my face. I must have looked bad because they immediately got upset and started apologizing for the prank and blaming the demons for coming up with it, and I knew. I knew they had wanted to get inside and that they would have done something to hurt my family, maybe even replaced my girls. The idea had been ruminating in my nightmares but it hadn't come to a head until that moment when the demons feigned fear at "getting in trouble" and ran off.
I don't think I can do this anymore. Either those things are going to hurt my family or I'm going to end up doing it myself.

The entries after this were too sad to go into much detail here. The fear of his children and how he lashed out at them and their mother in return, maybe even on purpose to make them leave him. How messy the divorce was even when he tried to let them take whatever they needed because she had tried to take Duke from him too. The empty home after she'd won. Trying to tell his brother and mother what had happened. Fighting them tooth and nail to keep them from having him committed, something they legally couldn't do but were trying their hardest to do anyway. The years of fear, pain, and loneliness that followed as the people he loved became more and more distant and the black eyed children became more and more frequent. And I knew from the last journal and the fact I was here to begin with where that had ended.

I was torn about whether I should try to at least give his children the letter from the first journal I found, regardless of keeping the rest of the journals from them to remove the full context. Maybe it would give them the closure they needed, even if they didn't 100% understand what he'd meant.

Then I heard a giggle.

My head jerked up to the window but, as expected from the second floor, there was nothing there. Still, it was the wake-up call I needed to finish my job. I put the journals aside and stacked them in order to take home with me and went to work with the usual business of dealing with the dead. Every once in a while I thought I heard a giggle again, but I ignored it. Still, I ended up having to come back the next day to finish the job, with the giggling still seeming to follow me from room to room.

When the house was empty I was doing my last check of all the rooms when another giggle caught my attention, closer than before. I was in the living room so I looked out of one of the windows and saw him.

A boy with black eyes and a shark-like grin.

For some reason, I wasn't scared. I was furious. I had something in my hand at the time, a poetry book I'd missed or something, and I threw it at the window as hard as I could. The soft-covered book made a loud slapping sound as it hit the glass and actually made the kid jump. He looked me in the eyes almost accusingly before moving away from the window, and when I grabbed the book he was gone.

I left not long after.

Although I did offer, Alicia refused to see the letter, and actually got aggressive with me when I asked if I could offer it to her siblings, but luckily it was after payment had exchanged hands. Still, I kind of wish she'd seen it. I know how hard things must have been for her and her siblings judging by what I had glimpsed in those journals, but I couldn't help but feel bad that Allen's only apology wouldn't reach who it needed to.

Of course. Right on cue. No idea how they end up coordinating the knocking so that it's in so many places at once, and I'm not sure if's the boy from the house or one of the other ones that come around, but it's about the time of year they start trying to get in. Hopefully I still have a bag of assorted candy in the cabinet I can leave out after they go away for the night.

In the meantime, I look forward to answering your questions and seeing the names you give me. Even if it riles things up off schedule here.

[Part 1]

I should have listened. All the concerns, the suggestions, the advice. Maybe I wouldn’t be in this mess right now. I had the opportunity to let things be, to leave good enough alone. To not involve anyone else. But I didn’t listen. And I am in a mess. A considerably nastier and more confusing mess. 

Now, what point had I got up to?

That’s right.

Knock-knock-knock.

I stood still.

Knock-knock-knock.

Not still. Shaking.

Was it a soft, sinister knock? Or a loud, aggressive one?

I didn’t know. I’m surprised I heard it at all over my chattering teeth and the pounding in my chest, the blood rushing through my ears. Doesn't matter. It was a bad knock.

Knock-knock-knock.

I couldn’t think. Mind and body petrified.

“Who is it?” I managed, pitifully.

The knocking stopped.

Instantly.

Silence.

I began to edge towards the door. Slowly and quietly, despite the fact I had just announced my presence. They knew I was inside.

Passing my kitchen, I thought about getting a weapon. A knife, a rolling pin. My fucking blender. That was pretty heavy. It had a handle, too.

I kept creeping towards the door. Ever so gently, I put my hands on either side of it, and leant in, pressing my ear against the wood.

A pause.

I couldn’t hear anything.

Had I scared them off?

I’m not sure how long I waited like this. A few seconds, a few minutes, an hour.

I got down on my knees and peered under the crack of the door. This didn’t help.

With one hand on the doorknob, I pulled myself back to my feet. I hesitated, then twisted the knob and flung the door open.

An empty hallway.

No-one was there.

I waited in the threshold for a moment, almost as if I was teasing, saying go on, try me now, have a pop.

As I was about to go back into my apartment, I had a thought. Should I ask my neighbors if they had heard anything? There were three other apartments on my floor. Surely one of them must have heard the knocking, no? But it was quite late at night, and if they hadn’t heard anything, then I’d be doing to them what had just been done to me.

I looked despairingly at the closest door to me. Apartment 156. 

Wait a minute.

I checked my door. 115. I was Apartment 115.

Moving out from my doorway, into the middle of the hallway, I checked the other two apartments.

Apartment 153, Apartment 154.

Four apartments on a floor. 153, 154, 115, 156.

What the fuck?

And what was that noise?

It sounded like…

Breathing.

Shaking again, I tiptoed over to the stairwell. I looked down.

A hand.

On the railing. Three floors below me.

It wasn’t moving. It was a left hand, indicating that its owner had been going downstairs before they stopped.

Had they heard me? Despite my stealth up to and after, I hadn’t exactly been discreet when I opened my door.

I waited.

The hand disappeared. 

I waited.

The other hand gripped the railing.

They had turned around.

And were coming up the stairs.

Fast.

I was paralyzed with fear again. The person was running, no, sprinting up the stairs, I could hear them, they were breathing hard, their pants rustling, feet stomping, two floors away now, going up, up, up, closer, closer, closer.

I snapped out of it, ran back into my apartment and slammed the door. The deadbolt locked – but if the person was who I suspected, that wouldn’t stop them. They would be on the floor below me by now.  Seconds before they were at my door, through my door, into my apartment. Upon me. I looked around. How could I…

There.

I ran to my kitchen and grabbed a collapsible steel ladder from the slot next to my fridge. For a fleeting moment I considered trying to wield it as a weapon, like they do with chairs in pro wrestling, but it was too awkward, too slow.

They were off the stairwell now, on my floor, I could hear them, almost here.

Flying to my front door I shoved the ladder under the knob. To give it some additional weight, I tipped the only thing nearby, my shoe-rack, over the legs of the ladder, holding them together so it didn’t dislodge.

UMMPPPHHH!

The door jostled inwards a fraction, my pursuer must have thrown themselves hard at it, but to my immense relief, my impromptu brace held.

I ran back to the kitchen, yanked the blender from the wall outlet, turned back to face the front door.

Heavy breathing on the other side.

I raised the blender, ready to attack, to club, to bash, to fight.

A stalemate.

Knock-knock-knock.

Nope. No fucking way.

“Go away! I’m calling the police!”

It was a spontaneous response, I had just meant it as a threat, I had never called the police in my life, but I realized that was precisely what I should be doing.

Still holding the blender, I pulled out my phone and dialed the emergency number.

No reception. The call wouldn’t go through.

What the hell? I thought emergency calls were supposed to work anywhere.

“Yes, hello, there’s someone trying to get into my apartment,” I faked. I loudly said my address into my empty phone. “Okay, three minutes? Thank God. Yes, thank you, they’re still here. Come quick. Yes, I’ll stay on the line.” I was practically shouting.

I continued with this phantom conversation for a while. At a lower volume, though, because I’m sure I wasn’t making any sense. I can’t even remember what I said.

I waited. There was no further knocking. I waited longer, pacing around my apartment, white-knuckled. They must have left. But there was no chance I was opening the front door to test that theory.

I tried the emergency number again. And again. Then my friends. Nothing. No reception. Shit. What was I going to do? I wasn’t going to sleep like this, no way. And I didn’t trust leaving my door from sight for more than a few seconds.

The Internet seemed to be working. How it was working whilst phone reception is dogshit in the same spot probably has a simple explanation, but not one that tech-Neanderthals like me know off the top of our heads.

But it was working, that’s the main thing. And I do know how to use a phone, that’s the second thing. I pulled up WhatsApp and scrolled through my contacts.

Gabe.

Gabe is an old friend of mine from high school. He’s probably the only one of my friends who would’ve been up at this hour, watching conspiracy videos or anime or some shit. His WhatsApp profile said he was last active thirty minutes ago. Good.

I hit voice-call. My phone started to connect. Calling. Calling. Calling. Nothing. Bastard.

I was cursing him and thinking about other options when a message popped up.

Gabe: I’m gaming, wassup?

I tapped into the message and immediately began typing back.

Me: I need your help. SERIOUS. Someone is trying to get into my apartment. Tried calling police but no reception. NOT A JOKE.

Minutes added up on my phone’s clock. They felt like hours. Come on, Gabe. Fuck.

Finally, a notification.

Gabe: Serious. you ok now ? Want me to call police ?

Me: Yes. Please. Not okay.

Gabe: shit. ok. Will call. Want me to come over too ?

I thought about this. Couldn’t hurt.

Me: Yes, come over.

Gabe: ok

Feeling faintly relieved now, I sat down on the couch, loosened my grip on the blender.

That was close.

But police were on their way. Gabe was on his way.

I listened carefully for any sounds outside. I couldn’t hear anything. Tentatively, I got up and walked to the front door, leant awkwardly over my shoe-rack-ladder-blockade, pressed my ear against the wood.

Nothing.

I relaxed a little and went into the kitchen. Shit, I had damaged the power outlet. That’s too bad. Pouring myself a glass of water, I checked my phone, hoping for a call or message at any moment. But there was still no reception. When the police got here, they would have to buzz the intercom. If the caretaker hadn’t disabled it, of course.

I went through what I thought was going on. My apartment had been moved. Or, more accurately, I suppose, all my stuff had been moved. I had unpacked and set up in the correct apartment – 115. When I was away at the conference, the caretaker had gone into it, got all my stuff, and meticulously moved it over to this apartment, which was actually Apartment 155, despite the number on the door. He must have taken pictures of everything in my original apartment – and I mean everything, and exactly how I had put it all together.

When I had returned, I was hoodwinked by a couple of fake signs, swapped numbers on a door and some sleight-of-hand with my keys. Both buildings – the third building with 115, the fourth building with fake 115/real 155 - look identical from the exterior, so it wouldn’t be shocking if the same floor, same corner apartments in the two different buildings nonetheless had an identical interior design.

Why did he want me in Apartment 155? It was obvious now. He would come into 155, do whatever sick things he planned to do to me, as he likely had done to the missing real estate agent, Jacqueline, then move all my belongings back to my legal residence, Apartment 115. In his role as the caretaker, and in his alter-ego the removalist, no-one would pay him much attention moving stuff around the complex. He had already fooled me – the moving company guy had been the same height and build as the caretaker, sure, but so were a billion other men. As he had been wearing a facemask and barely spoke, why would I even notice? Just get my stuff and put it over there.

By the time my absence became suspicious, and a search was conducted, all my things would be discovered, untouched, in my real apartment, as if I had just vanished. There would be no evidence of foul-play, no struggle or shouts heard by a neighbor. Investigators would have no cause to search this apartment, 155, but if for some reason they did, it was dreadful to think about what state they might have found my body.

The precision and painstakingness of it all would’ve been impressive, if it wasn’t scaring the shit out of me and making my head hurt.

The police were dawdling. What’s the response time supposed to be? Just a couple of minutes, surely, in a town this size. It’s not like I’m out in the sticks.

Then it hit me.

I hadn’t told Gabe that I had moved. We haven’t been that close lately, and I was still getting around to updating everyone. He must have given them my old address.

I began typing.

Me: Gabe, I’ve moved apartments. My new address is [xxxx]. On [xxxx Road]. I’m in the FOURTH building on the right, inside the complex. I’m in Apartment 155 I think, but I’m supposed to be in 115. Call me when you’re here. Try to buzz 155. Okay?

A few minutes went by. Perhaps he was driving. Maybe he was at my old place, with the police, confused. But why hadn’t he called me? Wouldn’t the police have called him back when they got there?

I saw that Gabe was typing…

Gabe: what

I sighed. I copied my previous message and sent it again, then sent another.

Me: Did you go to my old place? Where are you?

Gabe: still at home. Did police come ?

Me: No, I’m at a new address. It’s [xxxx]. You gave them my old address, right?

Gabe: yeah

Me: That’s okay. My bad. Just call me when you are here. I can’t come down.

Gabe: why not

Me: I’ll explain later. Just get here.

Gabe: ok I might be a while tho

Me: Why?

Gabe: been up for hours lol. just give me 10 mins to rest

Fuck’s sake. Probably had been drinking or was high.

Me: Okay, thanks. Remember, I’M AT A NEW APARTMENT. Let me know if you can’t find it.

Gabe: ok. want me to call police ?

I thought you already did, you fuck. Maybe he did. I had screwed up, too. I thought about it. Perhaps that would be a bit much for Gabe. If he could just pull himself together enough to get here, then I could handle the rest. And my door was locked, blocked, and no-one had knocked for some time.

I messaged him back.

Me: No, just come over.

Gabe: ok

Alright. That was sorted. I went back to my couch and slumped down. My heartrate had settled. Getting cold now. I pulled up a pillow and a blanket, swiveled myself around so I was laying lengthways. I put the blender on the coffee table in front of me, within easy reach.

I lay still for a while. My eyelids began to droop, but my ears were fully alert. Listening out for anything. The cunning caretaker back at the door. The buzz of the intercom signaling that Gabe had arrived. He was taking his time. How long had it been? Oh. My phone is over there. Oh well. Doesn’t matter. He’ll be here soon. Focus. Keep listening. What’s that? Nothing. Good. Quiet.

I fell asleep.

*

It was bright when I woke up. I hadn’t shut the blinds, and the morning sun warmed my face and arms as I stirred, still sprawled out on the couch.

I checked my phone. No messages. Gabe had probably fallen asleep as well. Or passed out. Useless chump.

But I was okay. I had made it through the night. It’s always scarier at night.

Still, I had been through quite an ordeal. I stood up and stretched, then picked up the blender. I walked over to my front door, cleared away the shoe-rack, pried the steel ladder from under the knob (it was jammed in quite tight).

Slowly, blender held like a club in my hand, I opened the door.

An empty hallway. No-one was around.

I exhaled.

As I was turning back, I saw it.

The number. On my door.

Mother. Fucker.

He had changed it, the caretaker had changed it. Back to its original number, what it was supposed to be. Last night, whilst I waited for the police, waited for Gabe, whilst I slept. He had been back. Had he tried to get in? Made one last attempt? I hadn’t heard anything. Shit. Was he still around?

I wasn’t going to wait for him, if he was. Or rely on anyone else. Still holding the blender, making sure my phone was in my pocket, I went down the stairs and out of the apartment building.

When I reached the main courtyard of the complex, I took out my phone. The bars were full. I called the police.

A police car pulled up out the front about five minutes later. Response time was good, if there’s nothing urgent to respond to, I guess. I met the officers at the front security gate and detailed my torturous night.

The officers listened, alternating between looking simply lost and perplexed, to looking at me in pity and concern. I probably seemed like a nutter. A just-woken-up, rambling on about this apartment and that apartment, blender in hand, nutter. I didn’t care. I went through it again. I was making sense.

They followed me to the fourth building on the right, the one that I had been in that night. On our way, I saw that the caretaker had removed the incorrect, shabby A4 signs that he had tricked me with the day before, and now the properly printed apartment indicators were visible. At the entrance to the fourth building: Apartments 141-160. Motherfucker.

I explained this to the officers, and they nodded at me, like a parent would to a child recounting an adventure with Dora the Explorer.

In my apartment – well, not my apartment, but the one I had been in - I showed them the black bag, with the rope, the duct tape, the bottles full of chemicals. I went over again what had happened, the knocking on the door, the chase up the stairs, how I thought that Jacqueline had been killed here, look at the plughole, you see? Don’t you remember, the missing real estate woman? You have to check it out, call the murder squad, missing persons unit, run tests or something, she was in this apartment, I know it.

The way they kept looking at me… they must have been close to calling for a psych eval. Frustrated, I went over to my living room table, and rifled through the mess of papers. I held one up to them.

“See? Apartment one-fifteen. I’m supposed to be in one-fifteen.”

I should’ve seen it coming. The officers glanced at one another, and then relief spread across their faces. “So… you’re just in the wrong apartment?”

I wanted to scream. Yes, I’m in the wrong apartment, but what about all the other fucked up shit I just told you?

It clearly didn’t bother them. They took the bag, said they would “pass it on” to the detectives investigating Jacqueline’s case, am I okay, did I need them to call anyone? I called you, you morons, why aren’t you taking me seriously? No, no-one else heard or saw anything. No, I didn’t get a good look at him last night. No, I don’t know this complex very well.

It was pointless.

Ultimately, they did the whole Sherlock Holmes routine around Apartment 155 for a bit longer, then left, saying to call if “he comes back or if you find anything else”.

I was on my own again.

But not for long. I went back down into the courtyard, constantly scanning to see if the caretaker was sulking about. He wasn’t. I called my real estate agent.

The agent, like the cops, was bewildered. But, to his credit, he listened without interrupting too much, and told me that this had happened before with some previous clients. Whether that was true or not, I have no clue, nor do I care. In any case, he knew I was quite distressed, as he said he would be right over. Or perhaps it was because I may or may not have vaguely threatened to cancel my contract and trash him and the property manager for showing the wrong apartment (even though I knew they hadn’t).  

It wasn’t much of a wait until they both showed up. The property manager assured the agent that he had presented the right apartment, that we had gone into the third building on the right, where Apartment 115 was located. My true apartment.

They came up with me to 155. Whilst they wandered around with no real purpose, I went over my misgivings regarding the caretaker. The agent shook his head. He had worked closely with Jacqueline and was obviously very familiar with the case. He told me that police had investigated the caretaker, as he worked at her last expected location, they had questioned him, searched his residence, cross-checked his activities that day, but that he had been cleared. He was not a suspect at all.

That couldn’t be right. Someone had missed something. Why wasn’t anyone even willing to entertain the possibility? Did I need to show them the bag, the murder kit? Oh. That’s right. The police took it.

The agent and the property manager must have thought I was just a dunce and had moved into the wrong apartment. Maybe I got the wrong key, the numbers were similar after all, the complex has a lot of apartments, it’s an easy mistake (they delicately avoided mentioning how I got the wrong key or whose *“*mistake” that could have been).

In the end, possibly because they were worried about me trying to call the owner or leaving a one-star review of the agency, they said they would help me move all my stuff into the correct apartment.

The agent went down to the office, explained the situation to the weekend caretaker (a different guy to the one that I strongly suspected was behind all this), and swapped the keys over. I put both the main and the spare on my keychain and asked if there were any others. He told me there wasn’t. Not good enough. I said that I wanted another lock on my door. A big, heavy-duty, solid-as-fuck lock. The agent waffled on about having to ask the owners, he would have to get back to me, blah blah blah. Fine. Get back to me.

It took us most of the afternoon to move all my stuff across to Apartment 115. Every time I saw the weekend caretaker, I stopped and gave him a good hard look. Sometimes he smiled. Probably thought I was checking him out. He was decent looking. But I didn’t care. There was no disguise, no mask, no fooling me twice. It was definitely a different man.

I wouldn’t say I slept easy that night, waking up a lot more than normal, but as I received no more knocks on my “new” door, I began to relax the following morning. Perhaps there was an innocent explanation for Friday night. After all, I had been in the wrong apartment. Maybe whoever had tried to get in, though their actions and motives were still very suspect, had thought I was someone else. Not my problem. I needed to stop fixating on it and move on.

I went for a run this afternoon. Runs are good to clear your head. I thought about how I was going to update everyone, would say that whilst I had a few initial troubles, I was finally settled in okay.

Then I saw it.

Behind my apartment complex. Not at the main entrance where I had exited to begin my run, but a quieter street behind the buildings that was usually filled with work trucks and construction equipment.

A car. A big, boxy, brown-paint-peeling-off-it, Volvo wagon. I recognized it instantly.

Gabe’s car.

It’s parked outside my apartment.

First Part - I play a game they call "Sleep Points". Every night I hide under my blanket (Part 1) : r/nosleep (reddit.com)

Previous Part - I play a game I call "Sleep Points". Every night I hide under my blanket (Part 20) : r/nosleep (reddit.com)

Part 21:

I wasn’t completely sure if it was just the alcohol in me or pure instinct, but I put the pedal to the metal and sped right outta there.  I didn’t really know what the deal was with this new stage that Anastasia was on, but she had already given me enough of a warning about what could’ve happened to me if I had gotten too close during it.    Eventually I looked back and noticed that the orb of red light emanating from Anastasia’s house wasn’t still chasing me.  But now I had to figure out how to get back to Anastasia’s place.  And I was way too drunk to figure out how to do that myself.  I was just glad to have not gotten my dad’s truck stuck in a ditch again.  Not to mention the fact that I was the only one on the road.  ‘Cuz yeah, if ANOTHER car had come around during that time, my dad’s would’ve been toast.

I know only two drinks doesn’t sound like a whole lot, especially not when you’re slightly on the bigger side like I am.  But ya gotta remember that this was still my first time ever having any alcohol to drink at all, so I’m working with literally NO tolerance here.  And then there’s the fact that I had had two over the course of only one hour, so there was also that.  Even though Anastasia probably weighed less than me, she probably wasn’t anywhere NEAR as out of it as I had felt, even though she had just had so much more purely because she seemed so much more used to the stuff.  And once I had made my way back, she didn’t seem too out of it at that moment, anyway.  Though, once the liquor started to properly set in, the effects would become a bit clearer. 

Anyway, I was just thankful that I had taken Annie’s advice and brought my dad’s phone with me.  I looked up her address, which I had kept in my phone’s note’s app (since I knew there was no way in hell that I would’ve remembered it on my own) and got ready to head back.  But there was a slight problem with this:  I was using my DAD’s phone and NOT my own.  Because y’know.  That one kinda had to stay home on the charger in order for me to not find myself dropping dead anytime soon as a consequence of the phone having died, which would’ve meant certain death for yours truly.  Well, whatever.  It wasn’t like I had made any turns in my frantic scramble away from Anastasia’s.  All I would have to do was make a slightly illegal U-turn, hopefully stay on the road all while STILL keeping myself out of any ditches, and her house would have to turn up eventually.

Maybe I could’ve avoided drifting off the road if I had just walked back, but it was WAY too cold for anything like that.  Annie was gonna have a fit if I had spent so long out in the frigid cold, just like she had last weekend.  I turned my headlights on and started turning back.  I didn’t know if I quite had the space to turn around since these backroads weren’t all that wide, seeing as how they weren’t expected to accommodate all that many cars at any one time, but I gave it a shot anyway.  I ended up off the road, but thankfully, there weren’t any ditches nearby, so I was able to get myself situated and back on the road again soon enough.   

Even if I didn’t have her address, the red light had lit up her house to the point where I could still more or less remember what it looked like, and I was able to find my way back soon enough.  And by the time I did, I finally remembered that I wouldn’t have even NEEDED that reminder of what Anastasia’s house had looked like since the address was STILL in the search bar of my dad’s google maps app, which was the whole reason why I was ever even able to make it up there in the first place. 

And the whole reason the ADDRESS was in the search bar was because back at home, back where I had access to my OWN phone, I had ALREADY looked up the address and put it in the search bar before even getting in the car.  Ugh.  Only two shots in and I was already losing it.  Or maybe I would’ve forgotten it anyway.  I did have a track record of forgetting basic things even while sober too, so that was still entirely possible.  Whatever.  I made my way back to Anastasia’s easily enough either way.

By the time I had gotten back, it was 2:07, so my little adventure away from Anastasia’s and back again had taken a little longer than I had meant for it to, but it didn’t really matter, since we still had plenty of time before The Sandman would be back to check up on Anastasia by 3.

“Well, I see that you are still living, meaning that you have taken my advice and did not attempt to watch me sleep again,” said Anastasia, greeting me at the backdoor and leading back to her bedroom.  “I do appreciate that.  I would not have been particularly ecstatic to find that you had done that once more.  If you had violated my personal boundaries for a second time, even after having very sternly and explicitly communicated them to you, then I must confess that your passing would not have greatly troubled me,” she said.

As much I knew she had meant business just then, I couldn’t seem to focus on all that since the whole red-light business had gotten me curious about another thing.  Back at 1 AM, I could see red light emanating from her house, but it wasn’t like it was threatening to outright consume me the way that it had at 2 AM.  I also couldn’t hear very much from inside the house, even though I could hear everything crystal clear at 2 AM halfway down the street.  What had made such a difference?

“Yeah, no worries, I totally get that,” I said, responding to what Anastasia had said from before.  “But there was such a loud noise.  There was all this red light and it seemed like it was about to get me.  What was that all about?” I asked.

“That was a direct result of the final stage,” she said.

“But how did you sleep through it?  The noise was so loud, and the light was so bright.  How come you didn’t wake up?” I questioned.

“The blanket that I gave you last week not only blocks out the cold, but also all light and sound.  That was why the brightness, in tandem with the amplitude of the sound, did not awaken me.  And no one else would have woken up since the light would be invisible to anyone who does not play Sleep Points just as the clock is.  And the sound that The Sandman makes does not, of course, arouse the attention of any non-players either,” she explained.

“What would’ve happened if the red light had caught up with me?” I asked.  “You said ‘I see you’re still alive’.  Does that mean I could’ve died?”

“Yes.  Yes, you could have.  Though, only because you were awake.  If you had been asleep just as I was, you would have been just as safe from The Sandman as I, myself, had been,” she answered.  “If you had arrived even a few minutes earlier than I had suggested, you would have encountered a similar situation.  I honestly must apologize for not having warned you of this in advance.  I had not expected you to be early, though considering the level of risk at hand, it was grossly negligent of me to not have planned for that contingency,” she said, apologetically.

I had honestly thought it was only 1:00 by the time her house had come into view, but that idea was based on the red light.  But now I knew that she still had to be asleep for another 5 minutes after the fact.  The Sandman must’ve stuck around even after 1:00, so that must’ve meant that I was actually a few minutes later than I thought.  Maybe the aftermath was all I had really seen.  That was the only way to explain why I hadn’t seen the red light expand out toward me the way that it had done in the lead-up to 2:00.  That stage of The Sandman’s visit must’ve thankfully been over and done with by the time I had gotten there.  And I had only just barely missed it.  Thank God.

“It’s all good,” I responded.

“You must forgive me.  My thoughts have not been nearly so organized as they should be as of late.  Partly the alcohol is to blame.  Though, discounting tonight, I haven’t consumed any since you returned my blanket to me.  I believe the majority of this comes about as a result of my friend’s time having ran out.  Even before you said a word, I had a feeling she was gone.  I was in a very delicate state early Sunday morning because I knew that if she hadn’t broken her clock, she would have been taken at 4 AM.  I, of course, had been asleep at 4 AM.  Though I could’ve set the alarm for 4:01 and seen for myself.  I was allowed to be awake 1 minute after 4 as I had yet to ascend to my own latest Stage.  The final stage,” she said.  That didn’t sound good.

“But I don’t want you coming away with the impression that I will be taken any time in the near future.  The fact that I am now on the final Stage means only that as  little as half my time is up.  I have played for three years, and thus, if I am conservative with my Sleep Points as I most definitely intend to be, then I should have up to another 3 years to go.  I may very well live to see 2022,” she said.  Well, she almost did.  She got pretty close.  December ’21 ain’t bad.  She almost made it to the other side of the pandemic.  But like she said: that’s still a LONG ways away from where we are in the story right now.  Which means I got a LOT of writing to do before the end of this year.  At this rate, I won’t make it to 2025.  I’m just lucky I even made it to 2024.  So yeah, you guys are gonna have A LOT of new posts comin’ your way pretty soon.

“Well, thankfully I only saw the red light around your house by the time I had showed up,” I said, changing the subject from our inevitable deaths in the coming few years.  And if ya can believe it, she didn’t really wanna fight me on that.  “The light wasn’t like coming after me or anything like that.  But I guess that’s because you still had to be asleep for another 5 minutes even after 1 o’clock.  I guess that’s why I had seen the light from your house, even though it wasn’t expanding out to get me,” I answered.

“That is correct.  And I am quite thankful that the light cannot be seen by anyone uninvolved in Sleep Points lest the entire neighborhood be awakened.  My blanket’s capacity to block out the light and sound helps as well.  Were it not for that, I would need to resort to rather extreme methods indeed to keep myself asleep,” she explained.

“Y’know, your blanket actually reminds me of something else,” I said, thinking back to the first night of Stage Two, when I still had it with me.  “Now, obviously I hadn’t done it, but the thought had crossed my mind to try and use it to go to sleep while I still had it.  Part of me kinda wonders if maybe I shoulda done that, thanks to what I see it doing for you.  Would that’ve been okay?” I asked.

“No.  No, it would not have been okay.  You were right to have never used it to fall asleep.  You were to use it only as I had directed.  And I assure you that you would have been quite sorry for yourself if you had not,” she said bluntly.

“Okay.  I mean, yeah, that’s kinda what I figured.” I responded.

“Good.  Your instincts served you well.  You do not strike as one who gives his instincts due credit, but I am pleased to know that in that instance you did,” she said.

“Well, I wouldn’t really say that.  A lot of how I’ve made it this far ultimately came down to trusting my gut,” I said.

“I assume that is true.  Most tend to trust their instincts when the stakes are sufficiently high.  Though I suppose I meant my previous statement in a more general sense.  In an everyday context where your own immediate well-being does not hang in the balance, you strike me as the sort to second-guess yourself even when it would’ve been unnecessary for you to have done so,” she explained.  “A game of survival such as this shall hopefully teach you to leave behind such foolish tendencies as those in due time.”

“This is one of the few positives I see in alcohol consumption.  Unhealthy though it may be, it has us acting in a much more instinctual manner.  We are less inhibited and do not question ourselves as we are otherwise so apt to do.  We speak far more frankly and openly.  This is why I cannot help but to consider moderate alcohol consumption in the company of others to be an ultimately pro-social behavior.  Perhaps it is my own bias attempting to rationalize my drug of choice, but I cannot help but believe that you have acted and spoken more ingeniously toward me under the influence of alcohol than you ever have before when you were in a state of greater sobriety than at present,” she said.

“What does ‘ingenuously’ mean?  Like ‘honestly’ or something like that?” I asked.

“Correct.  Your instincts guided you to ze truce yet agyan.  And if you had had more to drink, you might’ve more confidently presumed zis,” she said.  Her ‘th’s were starting to come and go, by this point.  Or maybe I should say “zis” point, now that her Russian accent was beginning to creep back in here and there.  Sometimes she’d pronounce them right, other times not.  I guess it was just whenever she felt like it.

Although I probably shouldn’t harp on this point too much since she could get kinda sensitive about that, what with how she was always trying to sound as American as possible and, to her credit, tended to do a pretty good job of that.  Like I’ve said before, I would’ve never known she was born in Russia if she hadn’t said so on the first day of school.  Again, with a name like “Anastasia”, I would’ve probably guessed there was some Russian in her, but with how good her accent was, you really wouldn’t’ve thought that she, herself, had been born there.  But at the time, I hadn’t really realized what a sticking point it could be.

“You sound so much more like a Russian when you drink,” I said.

“I suppose that should tell me that I have had quite enough,” she said, going back to using her ‘th’s properly, probably to avoid sounding as Russian as she had before.

“I would truly hate for my Russian origins to corrupt my English as it does for my parents.  As proud as I am to be a Russian, I also take great pride in having exquisite command of the English language.  I would hate for my natural Russian accent to compromise that,” she said.  “Or at least whatever remnant of a natural Russian accent I have left.  I am vastly superior at speaking English in an American accent than I am at speaking Russian in a Russian accent.”

“Well, Annie, if you’re so proud to be Russian, why not go by ‘Anastasia’ instead of ‘Annie’?” I questioned.  “I mean it’s a really pretty name, right?”

“As a principled socialist, I refuse to be a Romanov.  I suppose that is rather controversial so will leave some time for that to marinate,” she said.  She paused for a second or two. Not that she really needed to, with me, though.  I didn’t judge.  Much like a lot of other Gen Zers, it wasn’t like I was the biggest Capitalism fan anyhow. 

“Anyway, that means that I would rather not share a name with one.  I am Anastasia Dmitrievna Baumana, not Anastasia Nikolaivna Romanova, and I choose to go by ‘Annie’ such that I might emphasize this important distinction.  ‘Dmitrievna’ from my father, named ‘Dmitri’, ‘evna’ from the suffix ‘-vna’ added on to the end of all female middle names.  They are called ‘patronyms’ as Russian middle names are always derived from the first name of one’s father.  The son’s patronym follows a similar pattern, albeit with the suffix ‘-ovich’, in place of ‘-evna’ or ‘-ovna’, or anything else of the like.  Lastly, there is ‘Baumana’, from the fact that daughters have an additional letter ‘a’ appended to their surnames,” she explained.  “In summary, I dislike the name ‘Anastasia’ not because is it Russian, but because I detest its association with the Tsarist Regime,” she explained further.

“But now I have strayed much too far away from the topic about which I had intended to speak to you.  What sort of progress have you made on falling asleep with your head under your blanket?  You will need to get used to that, because starting Monday March 25^(th), you will have to be both asleep AND have your entire body under your blanket by 5 AM.  I did warn you of that, did I not?” she asked.

“Yeah, I remember you talking about that.  But I’ll be honest, I haven’t made much progress,” I confessed.

“Do you have an air vent in your room?  It would be quite good if you had a consistent flow of less contaminated air entering from underneath your blanket,” she said.

“Yeah, I remember you talking about that.  But I don’t really know if it’d help.  After all, I think my main problem is with the fact that I’ve never fallen asleep like that before, so I don’t really know how to start,” I said.

“Zat is vhy iz so important zat you get practice before start of Stage Sree,” she said.  “I don’t know if I would truly consider it ‘natural’, per se, but damn do I love putting on a Russian accent while under the influence of vodka,” she said, grinning.  “I feel so much more connected to my nation of birth,” she said.  “It likely isn’t even a particularly good accent, at that.  My parents would be humiliated.  But I find it rather enjoyable, regardless.  That is of course why I did not press the issue of your pronunciation when I taught you that Russian saying from before.  I only insisted that you try it.  I have spent the vast majority of my life in the United States.  My pronunciation is also liable to be a bit off,” she explained.

“Well, I guess going back to your question about air vents, I do have one in my room, but it’d be pretty difficult to get my bed situated right to the point where it’d be blowing under my blanket,” I said.

“Why is that?” she asked.  “What about it is so difficult?”

“Well, for one thing, my bed’s pretty heavy, and then there’s the fact that it’s pretty far away, so I’d have to carry it a pretty long way.  And plus, I would have to turn it around a bit to get it aligned with the vent,” I explained.

“Then you should make an effort to increase your upper-body strength over the course of the next three weeks,” she said.  “If it is too difficult to do all at once, then make incremental progress day by day.”

“But won’t my parents think it’s weird that my bed is moving around like that from one day to the next?”

“Meh, Probably,” she replied.

“Okay, cool.  So, what do I say when they ask?” I asked.

“This is not a problem you will have to encounter if you simply move it there all at once,” she said.

“Uh, yeah it is.  My parents are gonna see that my bed somehow got transported all the way across my room and then probably ask what that’s all about,” I said.

“Not if you return it to its original position before they wake you up,” she said.

“Cool.  So I’m just gonna have to lug my heavy-ass bed all the way across the room to go to bed, and then haul the damn thing all the way back before morning, just to avoid getting my parents’ attention,” I responded.

“That is one way to do it, yes.  Or you could simply tell your parents that you would rather have your bed near the air vent,” she said.  “They likely won’t ask further questions.  And even if they do, you could simply tell them that you enjoy the breeze,” she said.

“But that’s still gonna require me to move my bed all the way over to the other side of the room in one night,” I complained.

“And?  You have the entire night to accomplish that.  Take breaks throughout the night, if you must.  This is all perfectly doable.  Your mind has an astounding capacity to turn the possible into the impossible, Morgan,” she said.

“Ugh.  Fine.  I guess when you put it like that, I could MAYBE pull it off,” I conceded.

“Good.  Now then, back to Sleep Points.  You should know that I will now require Sleep Points just to make it through the night.  If I spend them only on keeping myself alive from one night to the next then, given the amount I have right now, I should make it to make it to late-January 2022.  This is why I am so reticent to continuously supply you with further sleeping aids:  it will ultimately cut into the number of nights I have left.  I would rather not give up what little time I have left if I do not have to,” she said.

“There are thirteen stages to Sleep Points and I am on the Thirteenth.  If you think the first two stages have been taxing, then you should know that you have seen hardly anything at all as of yet.  Now go.  It is now 2:50.  You should leave if you know what is good for you.  Feel free to go home.  Or to come back for another hour.  Or two.  I will welcome you all the same,” she said.  And with that, I headed on out. 

Only to find none other than Brian Truman waiting for me on the other side of the door.  And yeah.  He didn’t look super jazzed to see me.  He didn’t look like himself at all.  His hair had fallen out.  His eyes had so many revolting bags around them that I was surprised he could even see.  He had such a deranged and twisted look about him too.  He had the same twisted grin that The Sandman did Wednesday night when I only had about 6 hours left to go to sleep. 

“Well, well, well.  Livingston told me I’d find you here.  And here I was thinkin’ he was fulla shit like usual.”  I wasn’t quite sure what kind of sleep-deprived cryptid he had turned into, but I didn’t wanna stick around to find out.  Not that I had much of a choice.  He was completely blocking my way out.