Hi there. If you’re reading this, I really could use your help. As you’ve probably gathered from the header, I’m stuck in a parking structure, like the ones you find at a mall or a college. I know it sounds strange, they have exit signs and they're not exactly complicated structures, but this is different. It’s difficult to tell how much time has passed, but my phone says it’s February 2nd. That means I’ve been in here for almost 3 days now.

3 days ago, on the 30th, I had a very important interview. I work for a fairly prestigious tech company, and the position I’m going for would almost triple my salary. Not surprisingly, I was incredibly nervous and anxious about it. I’m great at my job, but I’m terrible at speaking. This wouldn’t be the first interview I’ve blown just by coming off as weird or awkward. For weeks, ever since I found out about this opportunity, it took up all the space in my mind. I started having nightmares about it which created a sort of self-perpetuating loop: I worried the interview would go poorly which stopped me from sleeping well which made my performance at work worse which made me worry more about the interview. It got pretty bad, honestly.

But the night before the interview, the night of the 29th, I didn’t have a nightmare. I mean I thought it was a nightmare at first, it looked just like the other nightmares I had been having. But it was different. In the dream, I was in an ornate office, one that clearly belonged to someone important. I was sitting in a comfortable chair in front of an intimidating desk made of dark, polished wood. At the desk sat a middle aged man with a wide grin. He looked just like any business professional you would imagine, save the air of hunger laced in both his gaze and his smile. I could see out the window of the room, but there was nothing outside. Not as in there was nothing interesting or it was mundane. I mean outside of the room was nothing, just darkness.

You see, I had similar dreams before. Normally, at this point, the man, who I knew to be someone important in my dream, would tell me I’m fired or I didn't get the job, something along those lines. But for a long time, he just looked at me. I felt words form in my throat; nervous, rambling explanations of why he should hire me, but he cut me off before they left my mouth.

“Do you want to succeed?”

His voice was odd, it shifted pitches and tones seemingly at random. It sounded like every word he spoke was an impression of a different person. His mouth was strange too. It moved far more than it should have. When it opened to speak, his jaw moved too far, his lips were too animated. Still, I couldn’t handle the anxiety I’d been experiencing anymore so I told him the truth,

“Yes.”

His grin grew wider and his pupils narrowed into thin slits. He spoke again,

“Are you willing to be tested?”

I had no idea what he meant. But like I said, I’m great at my job. I knew I could handle whatever test he had for me. So again I said,

“Yes, I am.”

Without another word he extended a hand out to me, which I then shook, my arm moving without me willing it to. As soon as I did, I woke up in my bed at 6am. I felt great, like I had slept for a full 8 hours when in reality, I hadn't gone to bed until around 3am. My morning routine went as smoothly as usual; I showered, got dressed, ate breakfast, and got in my car to drive to the interview. It was uncharacteristic of me, but the anxiety from the weeks prior had evaporated, leaving me with a sense of confidence and excitement. I could do this, I knew it for a fact.

There was no traffic that morning and I got to my interview early. I pulled into the 4 story parking structure and grabbed a spot right by the entrance. I practically skipped to the waiting area outside of the office, and they called me in almost immediately.

The interview went amazing. I spoke with a confidence I’ve never had before. I had an answer for every question, and I could tell I was impressing my interviewer. It did feel a bit weird when I spoke, my mouth moved in a way that wasn’t entirely familiar to me. But it hasn't happened since, so I’m not terribly worried, at least not about that.

I’m happy to say I got the job on the spot. I’m actually meant to start tomorrow, on the 3rd. So if anyone has any ideas on how to help me with the problem I’m about to describe, please let me know quickly. As soon as I shook my new boss’s hand, a chill ran through me. My confidence left me and I could feel my knees buckling like they usually do in high pressure situations. But I didn’t let that bother me, if anything, it gave me a feeling of triumph, like I was gloating. I had cheated my nerves and now it was too late for them to ruin this for me.

I was ready to go home and relax for the first time in weeks. I got in my car with a smile on my face and backed out of my parking spot not yet noticing how dark it had gotten outside. I had parked on the 4th floor. The building connects directly to the parking structure and this was the nearest spot to where my interview had been. Honestly, it was a small miracle that the spot hadn’t been taken earlier.

A started my drive, following the exit signs that pointed me left and then down, then left and down again. This kept on for 20 minutes. I stopped the car for a bit to gather myself. My line of thinking was that I had been numb to my nerves earlier and they were catching up to me now. I figured I would park again and wait for someone to leave the building so I could either ask for directions or just follow them out. But no one came. An hour went by, then 2, then 3.

At this point I had had enough, so I got out of my car. Rows and rows of cars lay ahead of me. Behind me were both the ways up and down. The air felt incredibly humid and heavy, almost foggy. There was a sign on the wall labeled, “FLOOR -12”. I stared at it for a while, not sure if this was a joke or if someone had made a mistake.

I figured I had been driving down for a while so I’d walk back up a floor or 2 just to see if maybe I could find someone. As I did, I could hear scraping coming from somewhere above me. The noise echoed down the concrete halls. I called out nervously,

“Hello?”

The word bounced off the walls and floors as it ascended the parking complex. The scraping stopped, and the world went dead silent for a singular moment that lasted an eternity. Then, the air was filled with the most bone-chilling scream I had ever heard. Footsteps rang out loudly from above. They were headed towards the ramp leading to the next floor- to me.

I don’t know who or what that was, but I had no interest in finding out. So I ran to my car and pulled out of the parking spot, nearly flooring the gas pedal as I resumed my descent. In my mirror, I saw it. A huge, spindly, pale grey humanoid thing, chasing after me with lopsided strides. The best word I can describe it with is crooked- it’s limbs twisted and curved like gnarled tree roots.

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I watched this monster in my rear view mirror pick up a sudan and throw it at my car. Luckily it missed and the sudan smashed into a support column to my left. I drove as fast as I could without flipping my car on the sharp turns until I felt comfortable enough to slow down. It must’ve been 50 floors lower than where I started. I followed the signs that still somehow read, “EXIT” in glowing red letters. And so, down I went, hoping that I would find the exit at some point. I can’t turn around, not knowing that thing is somewhere back there.

And that has been the last 3 days for me; driving deeper and deeper into this never ending cage. I keep a case of water bottles in my trunk and I have trail mix and beef jerky to last me a while, but I really am starting to panic. I have a charger for my phone that I’m using to type this out. But what happens when I run out of gas? I won’t be able to charge my phone and worse, I’ll be stuck outside and moving much slower. I shudder at the idea of that thing catching up to me.

Some of you may be asking, “Why not just get out of the car and go over the side of the parking structure?”

I already tried that. Just like in my dream, there is nothing outside of this place, only inky blackness. All I can see looking either up or down are endless levels of the same parking structure.

I also want to note that, until floor -302, the parking spots had all been chalk full of other cars. But now I only see 1 or 2 occasionally. Things are getting worse and I’m starting to think I’m not the first person this has happened to. I drove by a dark green Jeep Wrangler the other day with a massive hole through the windshield. Shattered glass and stale blood littered the inside. The door hung open and a trail of dry blood led away from the car, trailing off towards the edge of the floor- towards the darkness.

I can’t tell if the non stop driving is getting to me, or if I’m losing my mind, but I keep seeing things. As I’m driving, I'll occasionally see a figure peeking out from behind a corner or a column in the edge of my vision. But when I turn to look, there’s nothing there. I hear noises occasionally, too. Not the scraping, usually. But sobbing. I can hear faint sobs echoing through this place but I can’t tell if they’re coming from above or below me. Even the air in here acts strangely, changing rapidly from cold to hot. The air conditioning in my car has helped with this but again, what happens when I run out of gas?

So, as you can see, I’m in a bit of a conundrum currently. I’m trying my best to stay optimistic, but it's difficult and I feel like I’m at the end of my rope. My low fuel light came on not long ago, and I’m freaking out a little.

If you’re reading this, could you please help?

Hi, this is my first post, I was wondering whether to post this or not.

I live with my parents, my aunt, and my cousin. My cousin and aunt's room is right across from mine, but my cousin's room is next to a still-non-working bathroom that we use as storage. Everything was quiet until about four months ago, when I started hearing strange noises in my cousin's room. They were sounds similar to someone rummaging through drawers, but the most disturbing thing was that it always happened with the lights off.

The first time I heard it, I was home alone. I stood still for a few seconds, trying to convince myself it was my imagination. But the noises continued. With my heart racing, I walked to her door and, working up the courage, opened it. The room was dark and empty. No one was there. I immediately closed the door and went back to my room, feeling a chill run down my spine and goosebumps.

When my cousin returned, I told her what had happened. She just looked at me like I was completely crazy and said, “You’re delusional.” Her response made me feel stupid, so I decided not to give it any importance. However, the noises continued, especially when no one else was home. No matter how hard I tried to ignore them, every time I heard them, a cold, anxious feeling would take over me.

Eventually, the noises went away and I came to think it had all been a product of my mind. But yesterday something happened that made me rethink everything. I was in the living room watching TV with my sister when I remembered that I needed to make my bed, so I went up to my room. When I got to the hallway, I noticed that the light in my cousin’s room was on and, again, the same noises could be heard. Thinking that she had come home early, I spoke to her through the door, asking how she had been. Her response was curt: “Fine.”

I found her tone strange, but I didn’t think about it any further. I walked into my room, made my bed, and upon exiting, noticed that the light in her room was now off. The odd thing was that I didn't see her walk down the hall to the stairs, and my room has a window from which I can see if anyone goes up or down. I thought maybe I just hadn't been paying attention. I assumed she had gone to sleep and went down to the living room with my sister.

A few minutes later, we heard the front door open. My cousin had just arrived. I actually felt a chill run through my body when she said, "Hey girls, what are you doing?" I stared at her, my expression horrified. "Did you just get here?" I asked her, my voice shaking.

She looked at me with the same look on her face as the first time I told her about the noises in her room and replied, with obvious obviousness, "Obviously I just got here."

My mind went blank. If my cousin hadn't been in her room, then... who was up there?

Hello everyone from r/nosleep. My name isn't important, nor is my current location. I'm here to share a true story from my experience as a generator technician. The title of my post may not grab a lot of attention, but I have no clue how else to share this without risking my knowledge being discovered by the wrong people—or worse.

To start off, I’m a 20-year-old in North Texas working as a generator technician at sites all over Dallas and Fort Worth. I have many customers that range in size, shape, ethnicity, and even quirks. Some of my more notable clients include the George W. Bush ranch in West Texas, Mark Cuban’s home in North Dallas, and the coolest of all, the Cody Jinks residence (famous country music singer, for those who don’t know). The company I work for is highly trusted by many big names and celebrities to take care of their power needs.

About a year ago, I received word from my company that I would be the new major account tech and needed to run an inspection job at the FBI building in Dallas. As much as I hated the idea of more work, I was a little intrigued about the prospect of working at the FBI building.

My first day at the FBI building was the following Monday. My coworker and I showed up to perform an oil change and a few other repairs. It wasn’t at all what you would expect—there was minimal security, lots of paperwork, and a bland office building. Once we checked in and got into place, we performed our service and left. I returned once a month for about eight months, going through the same process each time and wanting to leave immediately after checking in.

The last time I was there, about six months ago, I showed up and went through the usual routine: inspected the unit, checked voltage, and checked out with security. On my way out, I noticed a red disc lying in the dirt near my service truck. I picked it up, and it read as follows:

PROPERTY OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

THIS DISC CONTAINS TOP SECRET INFORMATION THAT IS NOT INTENDED FOR PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION

FILE NAME:__________

CASE NUMBER:__________

I thought it was a cool trinket and didn’t really think there was anything on it since the name and case number were blank on the front. I showed it to all my friends and girlfriend, and they all said the same thing: destroy or return the disc. I tried to explain to them that it was most likely blank and that it was silly of them to think I was in any danger for having it in my possession. I thought, if anything, it would just contain a lunch schedule or maybe, at the very worst, some light paperwork for a homicide case that had long been solved. I held onto the disc and kept it in my truck, hidden away where it still remains.

The next week, I went through work as usual, clocking in a 70-hour week, and I was exhausted by the weekend.

I received a call early that Saturday morning and had to be in Plano by 7:00 a.m. I went out to my truck, and a very large man approached me in a white 2013 Impala. He handed me a knife in a leather sheath that had bold letters engraved: SHERMAN KNIVES. The knife looked familiar—it was the knife I kept in my truck. He informed me that it had been lying in front of my truck in the parking lot. I thanked him for returning it and questioned myself as to why it was so far away from where I usually kept it.

I got my answer as soon as I opened my truck; receipts, paperwork, tools, and all my gear were wrecked and out of place inside my cab. Someone had been looking for something, and I knew exactly what it was. The disc, the one I thought had no value, was the only thing that hadn’t been misplaced due to how well I had hidden it. What was on this disc that was so important? What information was in my possession?

As I pondered this, I felt more and more foolish. Maybe I was overthinking it. I found that whoever had been in my truck had made off with my flashlight, a traveling movie screen, and an empty vape—just some kid or a crackhead. This was all too stupid; I scared myself into thinking that I was being pursued by the FBI. I went through my day, completed my job, and came home around 5:00 p.m.

When I got home, I was tired. A 70-hour week plus a weekend job called for a few beers and a good night’s rest next to my girlfriend. I walked up the steps to my apartment and opened the door to my dimly lit apartment. I threw my keys on the side table and cleared my pockets wearily before surveying my living room.

What I saw made my heart drop. My 80-inch TV lay shattered on the floor, kitchen utensils were scattered everywhere, and my fridge had been raided. Clothes were thrown about haphazardly. The bathroom was in a similar state, with the shower curtains pulled off, the mirror smashed, and cabinets ransacked. My bedroom was equally trashed, but the worst sight of all awaited me there.

My beautiful six-month-old puppy lay slaughtered and mutilated under my sheets. The only thing missing was a collar that had belonged to her, and a laptop from 2011 that no longer worked. Nothing of value was taken—not my Xbox, not the TV, not even my $3,000 collection of gold and silver that had been opened but left untouched.

I stood frozen, overwhelmed by disbelief and horror. I felt too tired and broken to properly analyze what had happened. I needed to sleep, to escape from this nightmare, but the image of my puppy lay heavy in my mind.

I gently picked up my beloved dog and placed her in a small box, intending to bury her tomorrow. The grief was suffocating, but I forced myself to complete the task.

Why had they broken into my home, and what were they looking for? As I sit on the edge of my bed, the weight of my thoughts press down on me. I can’t shake the feeling that I have stumbled onto something highly important to the government and i am going to get to the bottom as to why they want this disc so bad.

im gonna buy a laptop tommorow to find out what’s on this thing. i’ll share what i find soon.

Melvin was bullied relentlessly. At times, it felt like the almost comical youth ultra-violence seen in the books of King and Burgess. The older kids would throw rocks at him, yank his hair, drag him around by his unfortunately large ears and throw him into the mud bank on the edge of the football field. Not too long ago, they set fire to his locker. I never knew who exactly did it, but that was the rumour I heard while waiting in the fire assembly out in the rain.

Melvin was an easy target.

He was thoroughly overweight, had pasty skin the color of bacon fat and smelled of something I don't care to mention. His nose looked like an invisible hand was pulling his nostrils firmly upwards and his hair was a shade of bistre with the texture of wet straw. He should be wearing glasses, but they'd only ever last a day and medicaid can only go so far.

The worst bit was that he didn't have the smarts to make up for it. It wasn't like he was some quiet academic who'll eventually one up his bullies, not through violence but through success. In class, he was a failure. It wasn't all his fault though. Our school was pathetically underfunded, and Melvin had no way of getting the extra help he needed. He lived on the other side of the tracks, a caravan park on the edge of town that my mother warned me never to go near. I didn't know much about his home life, until it was all over the news.

Melvin did have one thing he excelled in though. When I was younger, around five or six, I was actually good friends with him. That was before it became common law not to be associated with him. Any time I spent with him, he'd shower me in bug facts. Even now, whenever he had a moment of solace at school, he'd spend it crouched in the corner of the yard, digging through the earth with his rusted fork. Any insects he found he'd store away in a little plastic bag he brought everywhere with him. He would fill that bag with just about any small creature he got his hands on. Then, when it was almost full, he'd seal it and turn its contents into a fine mush with a rock. For the rest of the week, you'd never see him without that bag. That is, until someone inevitably took it from him and he had to begin the process all over again.

Now, nobody liked Melvin. I didn't either, not that I felt the need to violently show it. If you had told me last year that I'd end up spending my summer hanging out with him, I probably would've spat on you. It started with a little girl's bike. Me and my friends were dicking around in my cul-de-sac when Chet, the anthropomorphic glue that kept our friend group together, decided it would be funny to steal the bicycle of my neighbour's five year old daughter. We egged him on and he went through with it, and spent the rest of the day riding around on it. By the evening, he'd gotten tired of it and dumped it on the edge of the creek.

As soon as I returned home, my mother confronted me about it. Apparently, that little girl spent the entire day balling her eyes out in the middle of the street. Admittedly, I snitched immediately. Chet ended up being fined an amount he never told us. After it came out that I was the one who grassed, I was persona non grata. Within the week, I knew what it was like to be Melvin. I spent yard time standing on my own, lamenting. Still, I never tried to find a friend in Melvin, thought I wouldn't have to stoop that low.

This all carried on until the summer, and beyond. By mid-June, social solitary confinement was getting to me. I thought long and hard about extending an olive branch to Melvin, but always decided against it. Eventually, my mind was made up for me. One morning my mother woke me up around noon and told me that there was a friend waiting for me at the door. I leapt out of bed, hoping it was someone from my old posse. Maybe even Chet, coming to make up. Instead, I found Melvin awkwardly standing on my front porch.

“What do you want?” I launched into an interrogation.

“I was wondering if you'd come play with me today” He told me in his low, nasally voice.

After a minute of internal debate, I thought “fuck it”. I shouted to my mom that I'll be back before dinner and left to spend the day with Melvin.

Our first conversation together felt like dialogue from one of those shitty “how to make friends” books. He attempted some polite icebreakers, told a few bad jokes and offered me a piece of apple flavoured chewing gum. I declined since the packet had a bit of a stain on it. Before long, our interactions began to resemble normal.

We made our way down to the creek, chatting and hitting things with sticks. Melvin is an interesting guy, once you get to know him. Apparently, he did live in the trailer park, but not in a trailer. His step-dad was the landlord, and they lived in a large house at the head of the grounds. His mother worked long hours at some place or another, and Melvin spent a lot of time home alone.

As we were talking, and traversing our way over a moss covered log, Melvin suddenly squealed with delight and pointed at something I couldn't see. He jumped from the felled tree and dropped to his knees, scrounging around in the mud. I crouched next to him and watched in awe as he pulled out the largest, thickest grub I'd ever seen out from under a leaf.

“Woah man, that's disgusting. Cool!” I yelled.

Melvin held the grub uncomfortably close to his lips as he gazed longingly at it. Eventually, he snapped out of the trance and, with his free hand, rummaged around in a fanny pack. He pulled out a plastic zip-lock bag filled with a rancid paste of crushed invertebrates. He opened it with his teeth and gently placed the grub inside of it. He zipped it up again and stuffed it back inside of his pack.

“Why do you do that?” I asked him, bluntly.

“Do what?” Melvin replied.

“You know,” I answered, “That thing you always do. With the plastic bags and the insects”.

Melvin shrugged earnestly and that was the last we talked on that subject.

This became my summer routine. Almost every other day, I'd spend hours hanging out with Melvin, usually down at the creek. I made sure, as best I could, to not be seen by any of my old friends. If it came out that I was spending my time with Melvin, any last hopes I had of clawing back my popularity were done for.

On this particular day in July, me and Mel were walking to our usual spot. I peeped over the brow of a small yet steep hill just before he did. I quickly dropped to the ground when I saw Chet and a few others on the other side, making their way towards us. I scurried backwards and pathetically took off running, past Melvin and across to the other side of the clearing. Panting, I glanced from behind the tree I was using as my hiding place. I watched Chet and the gang lock eyes with Melvin as she climbed down from the slope. Before he could run like me, they pounced on him. I carried on watching and they buried his face into the mud, stamping on his hand and pinching his neck. I turned around and walked back home.

I didn't see Melvin for a few days after that. When he did finally turn up at my door again, he had a black eye and a swollen lip. I stupidly asked him “Are you OK?” and left it at that. I didn't bother apologising. I didn't think there was anything to say sorry for at the time.

It was that day he suggested we should hang out at his house. I was reluctant, but seeing the state he was in, I understood his reasoning. Despite my mother's warning, I followed Melvin to the trailer park. It was as run-down as I imagined. Bits of scrap metal and old cars were strewn across the front lawns of the caravans. From old wire hung wet clothes, that dripped a slow rain onto the already sodden earth underneath. I would've believed you if you told me the place was abandoned.

Melvin’s house emerged further down the trail. It was an infancy bungalow, although it at least had a fresh lick of paint. Tacked onto the side of it was a small reception. Melvin informed me both of his parents were working. His father owned the source of the low rent, that being the dump next to the trailer park. He admitted that he didn't know where his mother worked, but that she was out all day, most days.

The first thing I noticed was the dust. Every surface in his house was covered in a thin skin of dust and cobwebs. The place smelled strange. I honestly couldn't think of a better adjective for it. The wall paper was completely mismatched and when I looked more closely at the dozens of pictures hanging up, I realised that each of them seemed to display a different family.

I was too preoccupied during the rest of our time together to ask him about it. We had drinks and snacks, of which he seemed to have an endless supply of both. We realised that we both were big fans of the same trading card game, so a few hours of that scorching hot day were spent in his room playing it. He had some pretty rare, expensive cards in his collection, and every time his back was turned I made sure to pocket one.

Melvin’s room was a mess. It stank of piss and the corners were decorated with black mold. Clothes were everywhere, as were roaches. If one ever scuttled in front of him, he'd crush it with his fist and smear the mushed remains against his trouser legs to clean it from his hand. It was around this point I decided that spending the summer on my own wasn't all that bad. After we'd finished up with all the activities he could strain out of my visit, I excused myself to go home.

“Wait!” He shouted, grabbing my wrist as I walked outside.

“What?” I said, through gritted teeth, as I tried to politely pull myself free from his grasp.

“There's something I really wanted to show you!” he snorted, “I can't believe I haven't brought my best friend to see it yet.”

I sighed

“What do you want to show me, Melvin?”

“My maggot farm!” he said and began to lead me to it.

The heat outside was much more bearable than it'd been earlier, but still thoroughly uncomfortable. Melvin ignored the rest of my questions, instead opting to silently drag. We ended up at the far corner of the trailer park. There was a few yards of lame forest cover between the edge of the trailer park and the corrugated iron fencing of his dad’s dump yard. A portion of the rusted fence had collapsed, and on top of it was an old, white water tank, as well as a myriad of other smaller pieces of trash.

The tank was around four feet high and six feet wide, not including the lid. I stood back and watched Melvin struggle to push the immense metal lid off the top of the tank. I chuckled to myself and looked around. I only now realised how secluded we were. Before I could ask Melvin if he wanted any help, the lid fell back enough to release the foulest smelling odour I've ever known, before or since. It made me physically recoil and gag. I quickly covered my mouth and nose with my baseball cap.

“What the actual fuck, Melvin!?” I said, muffled by the fabric.

“It's my maggot farm.” Melvin told me. “I've been working on it for some time now. I collect roadkill a lot. I leave them to fester in this drum and after a while it becomes filled with maggots. Come have a closer look.”

I stared in pure shock at Melvin. He looked like a prideful child, finally getting to share his glittery art piece with his parents. When I didn't immediately take a peek at it, he spoke again, more forcefully this time.

“I said come take a look.”

Reluctantly, I took two steps forward and glanced quickly over the metal rim, intent on getting it over with. For a second, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. I had to look again, longer this time, to make sure.

The tank was full of rotting meat. Intestines and bits of fur and bone fragments added an extra texture to the rancid soup. A bizarre yellow, oily liquid pooled around the flesh. Worst of all, it was infested with countless maggots. The tiny white stubs squirmed in their viscous home. Clusters of holes gave way to more and more eggs, ready to hatch a new generation of maggots. Eventually, they'd become flies and start the process all over again.

“Melvin, that has got to be the most disgusting thing I've-”

Before I could finish, Melvin swung a discarded tire iron into the back of my head. My world turned to nothing and I crumpled to the ground. I woke up an unknowable amount of time later. It could've been hours, more likely a few minutes. It was pitch black. Total, absolute darkness. I took a deep breath in and instantly knew where I was.

I tried to stand up but my head hit the inside of the lid. I slipped in the swirling stew of rot which rose up above my waist and fell. Some of it went in my mouth. I gagged and threw up, adding my vomit to the concoction. The smell was so foul it burnt away the hairs in my nostrils. I began to feel the miniscule, tearing bites of the maggots. It was like a swarm of gnats. I writhed around, imagining my unseen attacks borrowing into my skin and laying eggs.

My head still hurt like hell. It took me a while to realise what had happened. In my state of panic, the first thing I checked were the cards in my back pocket. I figured they'd be ruined now, stained and soaking beyond any recognition. I felt for them, but they weren't there. I started to bang on the steel walls of my prison, screaming and hoping that someone would hear me. No one did.

My foot brushed against a firm hunk of meat somewhere on the far side of the tank and I recoiled, making myself as small as possible, curling up into a fetal ball of fear. I'd never been more afraid in my life. My cousin told me about sniffing glue and not that long ago I tried it for myself. The gasses coming from the rot had a similar effect. I could feel my brain cells dying.

Eventually, I was able to form a cognitive thought, that was that I should try to chip away at the patches of rust that lined the inside of the tank. I felt around directly in front of me for something that could be used as a tool. I imagined I'd find a sturdy piece of bone, but I found something far different. It had a metallic center and two rigid strips of fabric attached to either side. It was a watch. I held it up and felt around in the darkness for the buttons. I pressed one, and all it did was beep. I'm sure that had some effect, but nothing of use. I pressed another one, and likewise all it did was beep. The third, however, triggered the small, digital display light. In the brief second of vision it caused, I saw that there was someone else in here with me.

I froze. My constant state of thrashing, caused by the maggots penetrating my skin, stopped. With a shaking hand, I pressed the LED on again, holding it down this time. Sitting across from me was Melvin. He was naked, or at the very least didn't have his shirt on. He was watching me with content eyes. He smiled when he knew that I'd seen him. I realised that the piece of meat my foot brushed against minutes before was his leg.

“M… M… M…”

I was a mess. I struggled to form basic thoughts, let alone a challenging question.

“What… the… fuck..” was all I managed to spit out.

Melvin giggled to himself, but said nothing. Instead, he went back to picking maggots out from their bloody nest and stuffing them in his mouth. I began to gag and heave again. There was physically nothing left in me to throw up, so instead my vomit was composed of stomach acid and bile. Once I was finished spilling my guts, I remembered the plan.

I shoved the watch into my pocket, not wanting to have to look at Melvin anymore. I felt around in the sludge, and almost immediately found what I was looking for. It was a chunk of jaggard jaw bone, from the skull of a dear or large dog. I turned and started to scrape it against a patch of brittle rust. Gradually, I felt layers of oxidised metal flakes peel off. Finally, with a powerful stab, I pushed the bone straight through it. A small, olive-sized hole let in the first ray of natural light in what felt like forever. I quickly pressed my mouth against the hole, accidentally breathing in tiny shards of rust as I gasped for fresh air.

While I pressed my body against the walls of the drum, I felt something below me. I couldn't reach with my hand, but my shin brushed against yet another patch of rust. It was right at the base, where a bad welding job attached the two main parts of the water tank. With my mouth still clasped around freedom, I kicked violently at the fragmenting barrier. Moving my legs was like trying to run in a vat of molasses. Again and again and again I kicked at it until finally my foot broke through. I was filled with hope and stamped at the loose debris, trying desperately to create an opening large enough for me to squeeze through. The fetid liquid oozed out as the gaping wound in the side of the tank grew wide enough for a twelve year old to pull himself through.

“Hey, HEY!” Melvin roared from right behind me.

I ignored him and took a deep breath from the smaller of the two holes. I pinched my nose, closed my eyes and plunged beneath the rotting surface. I left my baseball cap behind me as I felt around for my exit. I grabbed the rim, cutting my hand on the sharp edges. I yanked myself down and, finally, out. Like a newborn, my head, covered in filth, erupted from the steel womb. It was followed by my two arms, which grabbed onto the grass in front of me. I began pulling myself out.

My forward motion stopped at my waist. I was stuck fast, tearing clumps of grass from the sodden earth as I tried desperately to free myself. Suddenly, I felt someone grab my foot. Melvin was trying to drag me back in. I screamed and planted my hand on either side of the entrance, painfully pushing myself forward. I kicked back, struggling against his vice-like grip. Finally, the sole of my shoe made contact with his jaw. The momentum of the strike propelled me from the drum and sent me tumbling out onto the rot-soaked ground.

As soon as I was free, I bolted. I staggered to my feet and ran as fast as my weary body could manage. I plodded through the tangled foliage, narrowly avoiding a discarded washing machine. I didn't look back as I streaked past the trailers, their occupants watching me in confusion and disgust. I cut through the creek, not wanting anyone to see me in this state. I emerged near my house, and walked the last few yards, exhausted.

This took place in the Summer of 1995, and was a pivotal moment in my life. I go to therapy often, not only because of the events of that day but it does tend to come up in almost every session. My mother was so disturbed by what happened to me, she rang the police. A cop turned up at my house to talk to. He was trying to figure out exactly what had happened. Once I spewed my account, and he finished his coffee, he thanked us and turned to leave. Just before he did, he spotted the digital watch in the kitchen bin. It was the one that had been in my pocket since the incident, the one my mother threw away along with my ruined clothes.

He turned white when he saw it. He grabbed some tissue paper and wrapped his hand in it, picking up the filth covered watch which had, to the cop, an oddly familiar gecko pattern on the straps.

“Where did you find this?” he said in a low, worrying voice.

I told him that I was the watch I mentioned in my account, the one I found in the maggot farm.

My parents never told me what happened next. It was to protect me, I suppose. A day later, it was plastered all over the local news that a small business owner and dedicated family man, who I realised was Melvin's dad, had been arrested. Anytime it was mentioned, my mother would quickly turn the channel over. As far as I could remember, I never saw Melvin again. He stopped showing up to school, and the prevailing theory was that he’d been made to live with his Aunt the state over. Not that I could talk to any about it, as in Melvin’s absence, I became the new punching-bag for anyone with a broken home life for the rest of middle school.

I'm forty-two now, and have kids of my own. A boy and a girl, aged six and eight. I moved away from my hometown long, long ago, and now live a quaint, happy life. Recently, my brother visited, and told me about a Facebook group he recently joined that was dedicated to my old school.

Yesterday evening, I sat down with my kids to show them what I had to put up with, and to get a nice dose of nostalgia. The most recent post was about a boy I didn't recognise, but soon remembered was the younger brother of my old friend Simon. A few days ago was the 30th anniversary of his disappearance. The comments were filled with outpourings of sympathy and reminiscing. I looked at the photo and then at my son. As a parent, hearing about these sorts of stories really strikes a nerve. I studied the boy in the picture while my children fired a barrage of questions at me. His sweet grin and rosy cheeks brought a tear to my eye as I mentally put myself in the position of his grieving parents all those years ago.

I wonder what my children were thinking as they watched me drop the phone, then fall to my knees, wailing and crying into my hands. After all, they didn't notice the watch the boy in the photo was wearing, nor did they know the significance of the gecko pattern straps.

I bought Belial from a man on a council estate out east three years ago. She was cheap for her breed, her mother a purebred Borzoi and her father, according to the man "one of those pigs, y'know, one of those pig-dogs". A police dog he claimed had impregnated his lovely Borzoi when she slipped through the crack in his door while in heat. Belial sat with her mother without a sound; long nose and big paws and cute curly tufts around her ears that reminded me of little devil horns.

I had never owned a dog before Belial, I am a linguist and mainly work with deaf children. I figured a smart breed like Belial couldn't be much different and so I decided to train her based on my own knowledge of language acquisition. When she was still a tiny puppy, I trained her like this:

"Belial, is this a ball?" I would then move a treat up and down in the air and Belial's head would follow, mimicking a nod "Yes! Good girl Belial". Then I'd hold up a roll of tape "Belial, is this a ball?" And would move a treat side to side

No

"Good girl!"

Eventually Belial didn't need the treat. She'd slowly nod Yes and shake her head No appropriately. I didn't teach her sign, I should have in hindsight, but I thought it would get confusing when meeting clients.

When Belial was a few months old I could ask her more complex questions. I'd lay the ball and the tape next to each other on the floor "Belial, which one do I throw?" Belial would gently place her long snout on the ball "Good." Her curiosity grew as she did, following me around the house, pointing with her nose.

Belial's understanding of propositions fascinated me, I knew she was special. I believed she had a gift.

To be honest, she had begun to usettle me a little. She is a big girl, the silhouette of a German Shepherd but lankier, with a long snout and short, beige fur all over with elegant tufts of fluff around the back of her legs and ears. Her movements were always measured; graceful and deliberate, more like a horse than a dog.

This already made her stand out, and most people at the park are not used to a dog answering a question with a head nod. I would try to avoid asking her questions in public, I could feel people stare in disbelief when I would ask "Belial are you hungry" and she would nod

Yes

There was also her personality, or rather, her lack of one. Dogs have small muscles over their eyes that we bred into them to make expressions, puppy eyes, angry eyes, the full range. Not Belial. I took her to a vet. Maybe she had a facial palsy, something wrong with her nerves.

"She's just very calm, there is nothing wrong with her" I was told, unconvincingly.

Her silence perturbed me. She didn't bark. Not once. She didn't seem to want anything from me at all aside from her lessons. She would sit and stare at me, eyes locked, waiting. Frozen, until I pointed at something.

I'd point at an apple

"Belial is this a vegetable?"

No

For hours and hours, pointing at different objects.

Three months ago I emailed my local university about Belial's language abilities. Three professors agrees to meet us. I could tell they didn't take us seriously, until they did. I brought a bag of random objects with me. We met in a class room in the late evening. I laid my bag of objects out on the floor: an apple, ball, pen, lightbulb, paper fan, bell pepper, and a dog dental chew stick. The professors watched, amused.

"I am going to ask Belial what these items do, or the class of these items. For example, I might ask her which item is blue, and she will place her nose on the item" I explained.

"Belial, what do I write with?" Belial placed her nose on the pen "Good."

"Belial, where does light come from?" Belial placed her nose on the lightbulb "Good."

One of the professors laughs "brilliant!"

"Belial, what vegetable do humans eat?" This time, Belial did a command I didn't see often from her, she walked around in a slow, delibarate circle

"She does that when she doesn't know the answer." But she knew.

"Belial! What vegetable do I eat?" I say in frustration. Belial shakes her head

No

"It's okay, she is very impressive" one of the professors says, smiling politely. They didn't understand what had just happened.

I try one more time "Belial, where is the bell pepper?" Belial looks at me, and then looks at the three men, and down at the bell pepper, which she snaps between her jaws and swallows in two bites. She stares at me again

No

she shakes her head,

No .

On our walk home I was proud of my training and of Belial, she really was a clever girl. But I was also feeling a little... shaken. She trotted next to me, her body pressed closer than usual. Her eyes fixed up at mine.

"Stop staring at me, Belial"

Yes

Her blank face and her near total obedience until this point had made her a sort of automaton in my mind, a complex doll or a robot. But this was clearly wrong. She was thinking and learning to an extent I couldn't understand and she was pushing back.

Over the next month Belial would push boundaries. She wanted to eat my food

"Belial, eat your food"

No

"What food do you want?" She would place her nose on my plate

Yes

I live by myself, so I started making two meals. She would get up at night and walk around, I could hear her paws pat patting on the floor in my room. She'd climb up onto the end of my bed and stare at me "What do you want?" she would trot away into the darkness. In fact, she still does this. Something the vet noted about Belial is that she was born with a condition called tapedum agenesis, her eyes do not reflect in the dark; her night vision is no better than a humans.

One of the best things at the time about Belial was that she was house trained and could be left alone for hours, she was trustworthy.

I had come home very late, between 2 and 4 am after work and then after work drinks and then after works drinks drunk talking. My bad. It is a mile or so from my house. Safe but poorly lit, dead headphones, dead phone. As a young women my heckles were already up, pin pricks down my back. Eyes darting into the darkest shadows for a trace of movement, my heart would race at an odd figure in an alleyway. Just a pile of rubbish bins stacked strangely. I avoid looking through the dark windows and light a cigarette. The footsteps behind me speed up and I sweat ice cold, a woman walks past me and smiles. Foxes scream, I jump out of my skin as a dead crow runs across the pavement only for it to be revealed as an empty black plastic bag caught in the wind.

My road is dark as night and quiet as sin, there are no pools of light from porches and the sun doesn't rise until 8. I fumble for my keys and relax into the safety of my front hallway. As usual, nobody greets me at the door. No paws patting on the ground. Dead silence. Curious. I turn the corner into my kitchen, it's pitch dark aside from the glow from the timer on the oven. And then my eyes adjust. There's someone in my kitchen.

Six foot tall and lanky, her arms pulled up around her middle. Balancing precariously on her long hind legs, she is standing in the kitchen facing away from me, looking at the oven.

"Belial? What are you doing?" Her figure so forced, breathing heavily and swaying and making little balancing movements. She tilts her head down and I see her face, she's grimacing, her lips pulled all the way back.

"Belial?"

I walk towards her and as I do, she slowly turns around and I see her in full. Belial is standing on her hind legs with her back straight, straining as hard as she can trying to straighten her arms and legs out, ears flopped down and her face pulled into a grimace, her lips sort of moving like she's trying to say something. She steps towards me, she's more balanced than I had expected.

"Belial? Are you okay? "

Yes

she nods slowly.

I was drunk and tired. Yes, Belial was acting very strangely. But she had never been aggressive and so I did the only thing that made sense. I went to bed. She walked with me, on all fours now, and stood at the end of my bed. She watched me as I fell asleep.

Clickclickclickclickclick.

The sun rose in the grey sky through my window.

Clickclickclickclickclick.

The snapping clicks started again and I darted up, realising in a panic that the clicking was the ignition on my hob. I ran into the kitchen and there was Belial with her lanky paw on the hob. She was trying to light the stove. Click. Click. Click.

"You're going to kill us both Belial!" I shouted, lunging for the switch. She turns to me.

Yes

She slowly nods, grimacing.

My heart dropped in my chest and I remember for the first time feeling totally helpless. I was scared of her. I searched up and emergency vet. That evening we got take out.

That night she stood over my bed, watching me sleep.

Everything that I have described is what lead up to the event that happened one month ago that I will live to regret for the rest of my life.

The next morning I decided to call the emergency vet. Belial was sleeping, curled up on the sofa, like a normal dog. And I slipped out the front door. I called the vet, I told them something was seriously wrong with my dog.

When I looked over at the house, Belial was peeking through the window, watching me on the phone. I turned around, paranoid that she could read my lips. When I got back in she was standing in the doorway.

"Belial, let's go for a walk"

Yes

And so we walked, side by side. People stared, horrified. Children pointed. People crossed the road to avoid us. Belial faced me the entire walk, grimacing.

Why are they scared of me

We made it to the vets. They were perplexed. They thought maybe she had a brain injury that was causing her to posture, perhaps she had damaged her front legs. They asked me if they could give her an anaesthetic for an MRI.

I wait, and I wait and I wait. And then a vet walks in.

"I'm sorry, when we injected the anaesthetic it caused a hemorrhage in Belial's brain. She is still with us but she's had a stroke, we are keeping her in the ICU."

A week later I see her. In her sick cage. Belial, sat there whimpering, big puppy dog eyes. Dopey looking.

"Belial, are you okay?"

Nothing. She looked at me with raised eyebrows and big sad eyes. Another week passed and she's ready to come home. She bounds out of the vet up to me, she barks, licks my face. She's discoordinated, walking around on all fours like a big dumb dog. On the train home she stares up at me.

"What a lovely girl, a big silly dog" a stranger cooes.

I thought, you have no idea what Belial knows. I have no idea what Belial knows. She still stares at me from the end of my bed. I pray she never remembers what I did to her.

Rushing down the stairs with an almost terrifying pace, I put back on my shoes, medal still in hand. I fumbled with the door in anger, waking the family. Mary had gotten to the bottom of the stairs before I flung the door open, calling out to me. I marched over to Gary’s house, practically banging on the door. It shouldn’t take him too long to answer. However, it was Isaac who opened the door, with his cold, blue eyes staring back at me. Of course, the little shit already knows. 

“You left a fucking Nazi medal in my goddamned house?!” I screamed, my voice raw with rage. 

Mary, who had been running after to get my attention, froze in place.

The boy in front of me barely flinched. Instead, he scoffed, his voice laced with vitriol. “Wrong name, d-.” 

Before he could continue, I swung across his cheek, and he crumpled to the ground. I shook off my hand, my knuckles stinging from the impact.

“Stay the fuck away from my kids. I know what you are.” 

A sudden movement made me turn. Gary had rushed down downstairs, a handgun gripped loosely in his hands. He lifted it, hesitation clear in his stance, before recognition flickered in his eyes. He realized it was me.

I was already backed onto the porch, my hands raising in surrender.

His expression hardened. Back to his facade. “Get out of my house, neighbor.” 

For a moment, I stared at him expectantly, wanting him to do something about his son, but he slowly shook his head, moving towards the door to shut and lock it.

I kicked the staircase railing in anger, shaking my head and turning toward my own house. But I didn’t get far.

“You just moved in and already overstayed your welcome.” 

An old woman stood a few feet ahead, her face deceptively kind, but her words dripped with bitter venom.

“People like you ruin everything,” she sneered. “Your family is nothing but disgusting, violent pigs.” 

Behind her, other doors creaked open. Porch lights flickered on, illuminating the street like a stage. Even further outside our little cul-de-sac, more people filed out of their homes. One by one, neighbors shuffled out in their robes and slippers, their tired eyes brimming with something darker than exhaustion. 

And then, they moved. Slowly, at first, then with purpose, closing in. 

On us.

“Get the hell away from us, you creepy motherfuckers!” I shrieked, as they surrounded us in a crowd. It was like we shook a nest of hornets, how they all flocked to swarm us as quickly as I hit Isaac.

At first, they shouted and spat insults, hurling every slur and vile name they could think of. But then, their heckling began to shift, merging into something akin to what I heard back at the church.

It started as a low murmur, crawling under my skin, insidious and unnatural.

“You’re next. You’re next. You’re next.” 

The words swelled, rising into a full-throated chant, echoing throughout the neighboorhood and rattling my skull. 

Some of them were overtaken in religious fervor, their porcelain white skin flushed red, veins bulging, froth bubbling at the corners of their mouths. Others swayed where they stood, like drug addicts.

Mary and the kids huddled close to me. I wrapped them as best I could. 

We edged sideways, pushing toward our house. I shoved past a few of them, ignoring their glazed-over stares, until we finally slipped inside. As I slammed the door shut, the crowd turned in unison, their empty eyes following us.

I dragged a heavy shelf in front of the door, bracing it against whatever might come next.

Jamie wailed, his cries piercing through the thick tension in the room. Miriam clung to Mary, burying her face in her mother’s side.

“Are we going to die?” she asked, her voice trembling, body shaking with fear.

Mary stroked her hair, her voice soft but steady. “No, baby. Mommy and Daddy are going to protect you and your brother.” She held her close, whispering reassurances in her ear.

I stepped forward and scooped Jamie into my arms, rubbing his back in slow, gentle circles—the one thing that had always calmed him down. I rocked him, whispering quiet shushes, my own throat tightening.

For a moment, tears burned in my eyes. But I forced them back. I had to be strong for them.

“Daddy’s going to sit right here and keep y’all safe,” I said, my voice firm. “I need you to go upstairs, lock the bedroom door, and stay quiet. No matter what.”

Mary hesitated, her lips parting as if to argue. But then, she just nodded.

“Come on,” she whispered to the kids, holding out her arms.

I handed Jamie over, now silent but clutching her shirt with tiny fists. Mary ushered Miriam upstairs, glancing back at me only once before disappearing down the hall.

I turned away and walked to the kitchen, grabbing the largest knife I could find.

Then, I dragged a chair across the wooden floor, the sound grating against my ears, and positioned it a few feet from the front door.

And I sat.

The alcohol that had clouded my judgment earlier had mostly worn off, replaced by something far worse—primal, bone-deep fear.

For hours, we were at their mercy.

At some point, exhaustion won. My head drooped, and I drifted off.

When the first light of dawn crept through the blinds, I jolted awake, momentarily blinded. My heart pounded as I checked the time. 6 AM.

I stumbled out of the chair and rushed to the windows. Then the garage. Then the back door. No signs of forced entry. No footprints in the dewy grass.

Upstairs, I found Mary and the kids still curled up together, finally asleep.

I exhaled, tension loosening in my chest. But my relief was short-lived.

Something had to be done about those bastards.

I took a cold shower, letting the icy water jolt me fully awake. Then, I threw on a T-shirt, sweatpants, and my running sneakers. I grabbed my wallet and keys, checked every lock, and stepped outside.

The neighborhood was silent again.

They must have left sometime after I dozed off. But why?

Had they marked me for purging?

I wouldn’t know for sure until Sunday.

It was Tuesday.

Five days until the next procession. Five days to prepare.

First, I needed answers.

Why did Isaac bring a KKK medallion into my house? I knew there was racism here, but this?

This was something else.

Something worse.

It was like living in a goddamn horror movie, like fucking Get Out.

I kept a steady jog, head down, though I knew it wouldn’t do much. As I left the neighborhood, the world around suddenly whirred to life. Cars rushing past, people walking their dogs, voices carrying over phone calls.

A few glanced my way, their expressions unreadable, though some almost looked... sorry for me. I ignored it and pressed on.

By the time I reached the pier, it was already bustling with life. Fishermen cast their lines into the lake, families lingered along the docks, and boats drifted in the distance. I slowed to catch my breath, my body reminding me I wasn’t as young as I used to be. Still, I had run far enough to feel accomplished.

My car was right where I had left it. I rounded the hood, pulling out my keys—then stopped.

Something was tucked under the windshield wiper.

Shit.

Expecting a parking ticket, I snatched it up. But it wasn’t a citation—it was a crumpled scrap of paper, creased and worn like it had been balled up and smoothed out again.

There was only one thing written on it.

An address.

No name. No explanation. Just a destination.

Frowning, I pulled out my phone and punched the address into Maps. It led to a library about ten miles away.

I sighed. This was going to take up my whole day.

Without a second thought, I called in sick to work. It’d put me in hot water, but my family’s safety came first.

Before getting in, I did a full sweep—checked the trunk, the back seat, even under the seats. No signs of anything stolen. No signs of anything planted.

Satisfied, I slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and headed for the library.

When I arrived, I double-checked the address, unsure if I was in the right place.

The building loomed before me, its architecture ancient and imposing—much like the church, though with a more scholarly air, something straight out of Harry Potter.

I stepped out of the car and took a closer look. The towering stone structure had an old-world charm, its massive wooden doors worn but sturdy. Taking a deep breath, I pushed them open and peeked inside.

Warm lighting bathed the interior, casting a golden glow over the towering bookshelves and massive columns near the entrance. The air was thick with the scent of aged paper and ink, a musty but oddly comforting aroma.

Students from the nearby campus filled the space, some hunched over textbooks, others murmuring quietly among themselves.

As I took it all in, one of the receptionists waved me over.

“Hi, do you need any help today?”

She couldn’t have been older than twenty, her youthful features framed by a ponytail of ginger hair. Her oversized glasses looked a little too big for her face, giving her an almost bookish innocence.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, stepping closer. “Do you have any books on the history of the nearby towns? Also, any news clippings from the town over.”

She blinked. “From how far back?”

“Well… as far back as possible. I’ll be here for a while, so I want to cover my bases.”

She stared at me for a second before nodding.

“We have records dating back to the 18th century.” She turned to her computer, tapped a few keys, then gave me directions to the archives.

I thanked her and made my way deeper into the library, my pulse quickening.

If there were answers to be found, they’d be here.

I followed the receptionist’s directions, weaving through the towering bookshelves, keeping my gaze low as I passed clusters of students. The deeper I ventured, the quieter the library became, the hum of conversation fading into an eerie stillness.

At last, I reached a secluded section in the far back—a dimly lit archive room that felt more like an office than a library. Rows of meticulously organized file cabinets lined the walls, and shelves sagged under the weight of aging tomes and yellowed newspapers, neatly categorized by date.

Behind a worn wooden desk sat a lone librarian, flipping through a ledger. He was older than me, bald on top with wisps of gray at the sides, his reading glasses balanced precariously on the edge of his nose. He barely glanced up as I entered.

“Help you with something?” he rasped, his voice rough with age.

“Yeah,” I said, stepping closer. “I’m looking for historical records on the town—anything strange. Unusual events, disappearances… hate groups. That sort of thing.”

That made him pause. He looked at me, studying my face with a mix of curiosity and something else—caution, maybe—before nodding slowly.

“We keep local newspapers and town records back here. Some of the older ones aren’t digitized, so you’ll have to go through them manually,” he said, gesturing toward a heavy filing cabinet against the far wall. “Start with those. The rest are in the microfilm room.”

“Thanks.”

“Hold on,” he added, reaching into a nearby drawer. He pulled out a box of latex gloves and shook it lightly. “You’ll want to use these.”

I took a pair and slipped them on before moving to the cabinet. The drawer groaned as I pulled it open, releasing a stale, musty scent—the unmistakable aroma of old ink and decaying paper.

At first, the files contained the usual small-town history—construction projects, business openings, the occasional scandal.

But the deeper I dug, the more the stories began to shift:

1915: Unexplained disappearances on the outskirts of town.

1928: Mass resignation of town officials—no reason given.

1936: Church congregation accused of “ritualistic practices.”

1952: Family of four vanished—house left untouched, food still on the table.

A chill crept up my spine as I scanned the headlines, each one more unsettling than the last. Then, my eyes landed on a particular article, and my breath caught in my throat.

"Local Businessman Found Dead in Apparent Suicide – Strange Symbol Engraved in Skull."

The date was recent. Eight years ago. 

Beneath the headline was a grainy black-and-white photo of the man’s lifeless body. Above and slightly-right to his temple was an intricate symbol carved deep into his skull. I had seen it before.

It was the same one I had seen on the Klan medallion in my house.

My fingers tightened around the brittle newspaper, sweat beading down my forehead. My pulse was pounding in my ears.

This wasn’t just about racism.

There was something much worse lurking in this town.

There was something else peculiar about the article. Every case mentioned a trail that went cold a few miles past the nearby railroad tracks. Clothes and dolls were often found scattered near the tracks, later identified by neighbors as belonging to the missing family of four. In the case of the businessman with the engraved skull, his body had been dumped in a ditch right beside the tracks. Even in the older articles, this trend was still prevalent with the clothes of the missing persons being torn and hung over the trees.

I took the article and walked over to the old librarian.

“Do you have directions to the railroad tracks mentioned in this paper?”

He glanced at the article, his expression shifting from curiosity to dread. His face went pale.

“No, you don’t want to do that,” he muttered.

So he knew.

“There are people in danger,” I pressed. “I need to find out what the hell is happening in this town.”

He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “You think you’re the first brave soul to go chasing ghosts? You’re dealing with something beyond you, beyond all of us.”

“I don’t have a choice,” I said. “Last night, people were chanting outside my front door. And I found a Klan medal in my house.”

His eyes widened in disbelief. He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his forehead. “Oh, God…”

For a moment, he said nothing. Then, with a heavy sigh, he spoke.

“If you go beyond the steel refinery, about a mile out, you’ll reach the train station. Follow the tracks past the river, and keep going. You’ll know when you get there.” His voice dropped lower. “I’m warning you—there’s something deeply wrong with that place. It’s taboo to even take pictures of it. Bring a friend with you, let your family know where you’re going.”

His directions echoed in my mind as I drove home, my grip tightening on the wheel. I needed to prepare. My first thought was to bring Gary, but there was a chance Isaac was still keeping an eye on him. I mulled it over while gathering supplies—food, water, batteries, flashlights, and a small medical kit. I also grabbed a portable charger. If I was going to find proof, I needed to make sure I could document it. But who would I even show it to? Would the police even care?

At home, I kept my explanations brief. I told my family I was going hiking, avoiding any details that might make them suspicious. She chose not to press, but the kids begged to come along. I told them no, promising to bring back a cool rock instead. That was enough to satisfy them, making things easier.

Rather than meeting Gary in person, I called him.

"I found something big. Are you free tomorrow morning?"

He hesitated on the other end. "Yeah. I’ll pick you up. Don’t tell me anything over the phone."

"One more thing—bring hiking gear."

With that, I hung up.

That night, I cooked dinner for my family—burgers and fries, something simple but comforting. If this was the last time I saw them, I wanted to share a meal before stepping into the unknown.

Wednesday.

The next day arrived, and I met Gary outside our homes. He had a backpack slung over his shoulder, dressed in a short-sleeved flannel over a tee, paired with shorts and gray sneakers. I opted for a gray hoodie, shorts, and durable sneakers. He gave me a nod before tossing our gear into the trunk and climbing into the driver’s seat.

"Is Isaac gonna know?" I asked, my voice edged with concern.

"No. As far as I can tell, he's not suspicious of me. You, though... I don't know." He pulled out of the driveway, heading down the road.

"I brought weapons," he added casually. "I know you don’t have a license, but if shit goes sideways, I don’t want you running around with your dick in your hand."

He popped open the glove compartment, revealing a steel revolver and a stubby black handgun nestled inside, along with several boxes of ammo. He glanced at my expression and smirked.

"They're not loaded. Relax." He shut the compartment before I could say anything.

I shook my head and turned to look out the window as we drove.

For the next forty minutes, I guided him according to the librarian’s directions. Sure enough, we eventually arrived at the old train station. The parking lot was surprisingly busy, filled with cars from commuters and travelers. We grabbed our gear, loaded our weapons, and stepped out. Gary had a holster for his revolver, but I didn’t, so I awkwardly tucked the handgun into my waistband.

Standing by the tracks, we looked in both directions—railroad stretching endlessly in either direction, disappearing into the horizon.

We started walking, quickly realizing we had underestimated the sheer distance. Mile after mile passed, accompanied by the occasional stop along the way. Eventually, civilization faded behind us, replaced by dense forest pressing in on either side.

Then, we reached the river.

I stopped to take a few pictures, though there wasn’t much worth capturing. The river was murky and littered with trash, its banks lined with debris and broken branches. It reeked of stagnation.

Still, we pressed on, trudging another two miles deeper into the unknown.

“I think we should stop here,” Gary spoke up, pulling his pack off and squatting beside a tree to unload it. 

"Really? I feel like I could keep going," I said, stretching my arms as I balanced on a rock.

"Alright, LeBron, pack it up. Sit your ass down and eat."

I rolled my eyes but did as he said, unpacking my bag. A quick glance at my watch made my stomach drop—2 p.m. Already?

Jesus. Six hours of just walking. We needed to find something. Soon. We were burning daylight.

We ate in silence, charging our phones and resting for about twenty minutes. The break was welcome, but there was an unshakable feeling creeping over us. Like we were being watched. Not by a person—by something else.

Gary finally broke the silence. "So... what did you find in the library? You didn’t say much in the car."

"Yeah, I know. But here." I pulled out my phone and flipped through the photos. "More messed-up shit that happened nearby. This goes way back, man. We’re talking 1800s to the late 1900s. And Matthews? He wasn’t just involved—he was full-on Klan. That medal? That was his."

Gary ran a hand through his hair. "The 1800s? What is he, a fucking vampire? How is that even possible? I mean, I knew the guy was old, but… that’s like three centuries."

"Astute fucking observation," I muttered. "I just know it’s tied to what y’all went through. The altar you were being fed through. I don’t know how, but I’m inclined to believe the answer’s here. Every trail leads to these tracks. Every victim left behind something. And for whatever reason… no one has gone deeper than where we are right now."

Gary rocked back and forth, muttering curses under his breath. He knew how bad this was getting. But so did I.

I had risked his life dragging him into this, sure. But he risked mine first—leading me to that damned church, putting a target on my back.

I’d say we were even now.

For now, we hadn’t seen anything damning yet. We kept walking, just hoping to find something—anything. The forest stretched endlessly around us, trees packed so tightly they felt like looming walls.

In a car, it would’ve been comforting. Most roads in Connecticut are like this—long stretches of trees blurring past the windows.

But walking through it?

It was too quiet. Unnaturally so.

I hated how creepy it was.

We soldiered on, the woods growing thicker, the trees more mangled and twisted as if they were warped by some wicked phenomena. The overbearing silence wrapped around us like a suffocating blanket. The air had grown thicker too—sticky with humidity and a staleness that made every breath labored. We both kept our eyes peeled, scanning the forest around us, but there was nothing. No signs of life, no sounds of animals—just the soft, rhythmic crunch of our boots on the dirt.

"Something feels off," Gary muttered, breaking the silence. "This place... somethin’ ain’t right."

I didn’t need him to tell me that. I felt it too. It meant we were on the right track. It was more than just the silence, more than just the eerie stillness of the woods. It was as if the forest itself was holding its breath, watching us. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something, or someone, was out there in the shadows, waiting for us to lower our guards.

Beside the railroad, was a different path. It curved slightly, and beyond that, the trees thinned out, revealing what looked like a small clearing. It was barely noticeable—just a small gap in the dense undergrowth. But something about it caught my eye. The closer we got, the more it felt like we were walking into something we shouldn’t.

Gary noticed me eyeing the clearing. "You see that?" he asked quietly, his voice tight with the same unease I was feeling.

"Yeah." I chose to keep quiet, but it was for sure a trap. Though, it was the only sign of proof we’ve had in miles.

We continued forward, drawn to the gap in the trees, almost as if it was welcoming us. As we stepped into the clearing, the air seemed to change. The oppressive heaviness of the forest was gone, replaced by an eerie stillness. I felt exposed here, vulnerable. Every instinct in me screamed to turn back.

In the middle of the clearing was a small, weathered shack. It was barely standing—its roof sagging, windows boarded up with planks of rotting wood. The whole structure seemed to be decaying, but it felt like it had been abandoned for much longer than it actually had been.

Gary’s eyes narrowed. "This is it, huh? Feels like a trap."

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure what to think. I walked up to the shack, my hand hovering near the gun at my side, ready for anything. I wasn’t sure if it was the wind or something else, but I thought I heard a faint rustling sound—like something moving inside the shack.

Before I could stop him, Gary had already made his way to the front door. He hesitated for a moment, then knocked, loud and deliberate.

Nothing.

"Let’s check it out," he said, turning the knob and pushing the door open with a creak that echoed through the clearing.

We stepped inside, the air immediately thick with the smell of mildew and rot. We raised our arms simultaneously, to shield our noses. The walls were lined with old newspaper clippings, much like the ones I’d seen in the library. But these were different—torn, faded, and pinned with red string, connecting faces, events, names. Every image seemed to pulse with a disturbing familiarity.

I could barely make out a few of the headlines: "Disappearances Continue," "Local Official Bows Out," "The Cult Returns."

I scanned the room, my eyes quickly flicking over the clutter, until something caught my attention. A photograph pinned to the wall, just beside an old, faded map of the area. The photo was barely distinguishable, sepia-toned and worn with age. It showed a crowd of people dressed in the white robes of the Klan, their faces twisted in expressions of amusement, almost celebratory. In the background, several figures hung limply from trees, bags covering their heads. Homes were engulfed in flames behind them, the smoke filling the sky.

But what stood out to me, what made my breath catch, was the lone figure at the front of the crowd. He was different from the rest. Stoic, almost stately in his demeanor. He wore round spectacles and his gaunt face seemed almost familiar. He was younger, but unmistakable.

Father Matthews.

The connection was undeniable. The man who had been running this town’s secret cult for generations stood among a mob of murderers. And he was looking straight at the camera.

I stepped closer, my heart hammering in my chest. My fingers trembled as I reached for the picture, carefully pulling it off the wall.

"We need to get out of here," Gary whispered.

"Not yet… I needed to find this. Everything led me here. This is proof."

He stared at me like I’d lost my mind, but that hardly mattered. I snapped several photos—of the place, the group picture, and most importantly, the map. Red lines stretched from my town to where we stood, with blue-circled entry points scattered across the map, all leading back to the church. I took another picture. These locations could be key.

Still, something gnawed at me. I had no idea who led me to this library, but they knew exactly what I needed to see. They were trying to help.

Just as I turned, I heard it. Soft footsteps in the grass, picking up speed.

We froze.

I spun, yanking the handgun from my waistband, my finger twitching over the trigger.

Nothing.

"Let’s go," I muttered, my pulse thrumming in my ears. Something was wrong here. I wasn’t sticking around to find out what.

We checked the area before slipping back onto the main road. The sky was darkening—it was already 5 p.m. My phone was at 40 percent. I glanced at the map picture, spotting an entry point just half a mile away.

I looked at Gary. “Maybe we should keep going.”

He sighed, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “It’s late. We should come back tomorrow.”

I shook my head. “I have work. I’m not trying to get fired. I’ve got four days before the service—I need to nail this bastard before then.”

Gary exhaled sharply, rubbing his temples. “You’re one stupid motherfucker. You’re lucky I’m sticking with you.”

I smirked before veering off the path, pushing through the thick forest. Branches clawed at my hoodie, and I grumbled as I swatted them away. Then, I saw it—a mound in the dirt. A cellar. Its doors locked tight.

I stepped forward—then nearly fell.

Gary’s sharp inhale made my blood run cold. “Holy fuck, man. That’s an arm.”

I stumbled back, my foot revealing rotting flesh—gray, decomposed, with bone peeking through. My stomach lurched.

Then, I took in the rest of the scene.

A corpse slumped against a tree, a noose still around its neck, flies swarming. Another body—beheaded, tied to the trunk. Bones, large and small were scattered through the dirt. There were almost as much bone fragments as there were actual rocks.

I swallowed hard, forcing myself to stand. Gary wasn’t having it. He stumbled over to a tree, retching horribly.

Steeling myself, I walked over to the slumped over body, picking up a stick. Using it, I nudged the intact corpse, turning its head. There it was—the Klan sigil, carved deep into decayed skin. I snapped a picture and exhaled shakily.

Then, I turned to the cellar. 

An overwhelming dread settled over me. I couldn’t open those doors. I couldn’t see what was inside. I should just turn around, go home, see my wife and kids.

Gary wiped his mouth, stepping beside me. My hands trembled on the handle, sweat beading down my forehead.

“That’s enough for today,” he murmured. “Another day, Art.”

He was right. I wasn’t ready.

Marking trees with red spray paint, we retraced our path, heading back toward civilization. The lake came into view, familiar and almost comforting. We didn’t speak on the way back.

By the time we reached a small diner, it was 9 p.m. I stared at my untouched omelet, shame coiling in my gut.

Gary sighed. “We did good today. Except for that last part.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s in that cellar, but it’s beyond us. Right now, we can go to the police with this… probably.”

I frowned. “What if they’re in on it? Why wouldn’t they be?”

“Shit… true.” He stirred his coffee, deep in thought. “Write about it. Make people aware.”

“Like… a blog?”

He shrugged. “It’s what young people do.”

I hesitated. “Not a bad idea. I can post everything online as a backup… and still talk to the police.”

It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Pt I

It happened during the Christmas season of 2024. A strange thing had been happening to me for a long time. Something like déjà vu, but in reverse. Sometimes I saw something that hadn't happened yet, but I didn't know if I was dreaming, if it was my imagination or something else, I just saw my life that hadn't happened yet (this is impossible to describe exactly, and if it doesn't make sense to you at all, it might be because this entire text is translated by Google Translate). Well, when I "woke up" from this "dreaming", I didn't remember it at all. It's like I only remember it when I have it.

What was more interesting was when I experienced déjà vu. I was 100% sure that this moment had happened before (sometimes I was so sure that I almost started shouting "This has happened before!"), but I didn't know when, because it wasn't in my "normal" memory.

As I wrote at the beginning, the fateful moment happened on Christmas Eve 2024. When almost the whole family was having lunch/dinner, I experienced another déjà vu. But this one was not like the others. Now I was much, Much, MUCH more sure that this moment had happened before. And then I finally remembered. I had seen this moment BEFORE in my "dream". As I write this, I have goosebumps just like I did then, because my "dreams" really did predict the future for me all the time.

I have another case that "scares" me to this day. When we were at a school camp in the countryside a few years ago, I saw with my own eyes the place from my very long dream (it was a long dream even then). I had something like déjà vu, but this was not just for a few seconds - I had it the whole stay. I can't describe the place exactly, but I have a very brief and imprecise description here: a green wire fence in a square, on one side the fence stands on a hillock made of something like concrete pavement (I understand that this name is completely wrong and strange, but I don't know a better way to describe it), there are chickens inside. I don't know exactly what else was in that place, but this is the main thing. Well, and by the cottage where we were staying, there was exactly this place, except without the chickens. But that's not all. My classmate, who was in the room with me, also had the exact same "déjà vu". Is it even possible for two people to have the same "dream" or déjà vu?!

So, these were probably my most interesting cases and experiences with my déjà vu and strange dreams. You may be asking: "Why am I even writing such a post?". Well, I want to "confide" in you about these cases and experiences so that I'm not "alone" in this (I know I'm not).

So this was my first post on Reddit with extra quotes "" and (probably) some weird words because I wrote this all in Google Translate.

So, have a good day, and bye.

We’re at the ending now... So much more happens from here on. But I have to give you the short version, because... the long version will kill me... I barely have anything left in me to finish the story. But what comes next is the true horror of The Asili. It’s what I’ve been afraid to tell... So, I just have to tell it best I can... 

Me and Tye were in the hole. Terrified by the events of that night, we stayed awake until the dimness of the jungle’s daylight returned on the surface... It was still pitch black inside our hole, but at least from the dim circular light above us, we knew the horrors of the night had probably disappeared... Like I said, the two of us did manage to get out of that hole - but we didn’t escape from it... We were rescued... 

From out of nowhere, a long rope made from vines is thrown down into the hole. We yell out to whoever threw it down and a voice shouts back to us – an English-speaking voice! We get out the hole and what we see are two middle-aged white men, with thick moustaches and dressed like jungle explorers from the 1800’s. But they weren’t alone. With them were around twenty African men, dressed only in dark blue trousers and holding spears or arrows... 

The two white men introduce themselves to us. Their names were Jacob, an American from the southern states - and Ruben, a Belgian. Although I was at first relieved to be seeing white faces again, I then noticed their strange expressions... Something about these men scared me. They smiled at me with the most unnerving grins, and their voices were so old-fashioned I could barely understand them... There was something about their eyes that was dark – incredibly dark! And the African men with them, they were expressionless. They barely blinked or made any kind of gesture, like they were in some kind of trance. The American man, Jacob, he gets up close and is just staring at me, like he was amazed by my appearance. I didn’t want to look at him, but I couldn’t help but feel pulled up into his gaze... Looking into this man’s eyes, I couldn’t help but feel terrified... and I didn’t even know why... 

When they were done with me, they turned their attention to Tye. Without even saying a word to them, Jacob and Ruben treat Tye as though he somehow offended them – as though just his appearance was enough to make them angry. Jacob orders something to the African men in a different language and they tackle Tye to the ground, like they were arresting him!... 

They brought us away with them, past the mutilated remains of the zombie-people from the night before. They tied Tye’s hands behind his back and were pulling him along a rope vine, like he was no better than a dog. They didn’t treat me this way. Jacob and Ruben seemed so happy to see me. They treated me as though they already knew me... Walking through the jungle for another day, they brought us to where they lived. From the distance, what we saw was a huge fortification of some kind – made from long wooden walls. The closer we get to this place, I began to see all the details... and it was horror!... 

Along the top of the walls, more African men in blue trousers were guarding – but above them, on long wooden spikes... were at least a dozen severed heads!... Worse than this, right outside the walls of the fort, were five wooden crosses - but on them – inside them, were decaying rotting corpses! A long wooden spike had been forced through one end and out the other – through the back of their skull, while another was shoved underneath their arms horizontally – making them into a cross. The crucified man!... 

Inside the walls of the fort was a whole army of African men, wearing the same identical dark blue trousers – and all with the same empty expressions. They lived in a village of thatched-roof huts – too many to count. Making our way through the village, towards the centre of the fort, we came across four large wooden cabins, decorated in pieces of white ivory...  

But I then saw something that was remotely familiar... Outside the wooden cabins, in a sort of courtyard... was a familiar face... It was the dead tree! The dead tree with the face! Only it had been carved to resemble a statue – an idol... and on top of that idol, staring down at me... was the very same face... The face from my dreams had finally shown itself to me... The worst was still yet to come. Even worse than the dead mutilated bodies. For what we found next was what we came here to find... We found the others... 

We found Naadia, and we found the other commune members. They were still alive... but they were all crammed inside of a small wooden cage. They were being held prisoners! Even worse, they were being held... I can’t say it... 

Jacob and Ruben weren’t the only two white people here. There was two more. One of them was a woman – a blonde Swedish woman. Her name was Ingrid. Dragging the bottom of her dirty white dress towards me, she seemed just as amazed to see me as Jacob and Ruben. Touching my face, she for some reason had tears in her eyes, like I was someone close to her she hadn’t seen for a long time. This woman, although I thought she was very beautiful... she was clearly insane... 

But then I met the last white face that lived here... Their leader... From the middle, larger of the cabins, an old man walked down to us. Like the other three, he wore white, Victorian-like clothing. He had a thick, grey beard and his body was round –and somehow... he looked how I always imagined God would look like... This man was called Lucien, and like the others, he spoke in an old-fashioned way, with a strong French accent. He came right up to me, up close to my face, and he stared at me with a serious expression, like there was no joy inside of him. But from his serious gaze, I saw he had the clearest blue eyes... and I realized... his eyes were very much like my own... Staring through me for a good while, the piercing look on his face quickly turned to joy. Uttering some words in French, Lucien pulled me into him and started hugging me as tight as he could... His arms around me were so strong and even though he was clearly happy to see me, whoever I was to him, he was squeezing me like he was intentionally trying to hurt me... 

I was so confused as to who these white people were, who seemed like they came from a hundred years ago. Even though they terrified me to my core, I knew they were the ones to give me the answers... The answers I’d been looking for... 

Lucien told me everything... He said this place, this dark, never-ending part of the jungle – The Asili... he said it was called the Undying Circle... People who entered the Circle could never leave. It would attract people to it – those chosen. The Circle was very old and was basically an ancient god – a sort of consciousness... 

The four of them, dressed in their white linen clothing, spoke like they were from the 1800’s because they were! They came to Africa at the end of the 19^(th) century. Wandering into the Undying Circle, they’d been here ever since. Stuck, frozen in time!... 

Jacob and Ruben were soldiers. When the Europeans were still colonizing Africa, they were hired by the king of Belgium to seize control of the Congo. They wandered into the Circle to conquer new territory or exploit whatever resources it had... But the Circle conquered them... 

Lucien and Ingrid came to Africa as Catholic missionaries. They came here to spread the word of God to the “uncivilized people”... They heard that a great evil existed inside the darkest regions of the jungle, and so they ventured inside to try and convert whatever savages lurked there... Now they were the savages...  

Lucien said they found people already living inside the Circle. He said they were stone-age savages who were more like beasts than men. Jacob and Ruben’s army went to war with them, and killed them all. They took their kingdom for themselves and made it their own. They chose Lucien as their leader and worshipped the Undying Circle as their new God... The God who’d allowed them to live forever... In this jungle, they were kings... and they could do whatever they wanted... 

But they still weren’t alone in this jungle... Whoever lived here before – the ones who survived Lucien’s army, they formed themselves into a new kingdom - a new tribe. Lucien’s army had killed all the men, but some of the women survived... They were a tribe of women... But Jacob said they weren’t women anymore – not even human. They were something else... Like them, they worshipped the Circle as a god, but believed it was female. Whatever it was they worshipped, Jacob said it turned them into some sort of creatures - who painted their skin red, head to toe in the blood of their enemies, were extremely tall, with long stretched-out limbs, and even had sharp teeth and talons...  Jacob said they were cannibals, who ate the flesh of men... This all sounded like racist bullshit to me - but in The Asili - in the Undying Circle... it seemed every nightmare was possible... 

The reason why they were so happy to find me – why they acted as though they already knew me... it wasn’t because of the colour of my skin or where I was from... it was because they knew the Circle would bring me here... In his dreams, Lucien said the Circle promised to bring him a son. Lucien believed I was his great, great, great something grandson, and that I was here to inherit his kingdom... I told him he was wrong. He was French and I was English, and even though we shared similar blue eyes, I told him it wasn’t possible... 

But Lucien told me something else... Before he came into the Undying Circle, he said he’d had a son... He broke his vows and gotten a native woman pregnant. He took the baby away from her and gave it to an English missionary. Whoever this missionary was, he brought the baby back with him to England to be raised and educated in the “civilized world”... I didn’t know if he was telling the truth. Was I really his descendent? I didn’t believe it... I chose not to believe it!... I wasn’t one of them! I would never be one of them!... 

They made me do things... They forced me to do things I didn’t want to do... They kept prisoners. They kept... Jacob forced me to beat them. He put his sword in my hands and made me kill the ones who were too weak to work. He made me cut off their hands. He wanted me to keep them as trophies...  

The female prisoners who the white men found attractive, they were allowed to roam free as concubines... Naadia was one of them... If she wasn’t, I would’ve been forced to hurt her... and even after everything she put me through. Cheating on me. Lying to me. Tricking me into coming to this place I never should’ve come to... I couldn’t do it... But I did it to the rest of them... 

What’s worse is that I enjoyed doing it to them. I enjoyed it!... It made me feel powerful! This group, that from day one, looked at me like I was unwanted, unaccepted. Made me feel guilty because of the colour of my skin. Every ounce of pain I put them through... I took pleasure from it... 

The one I wanted to hurt most of all was Tye. I hated him! I was jealous of him! He took Naadia away from me! I wanted to make him suffer... but I couldn’t... He wasn’t my prisoner. He was Ingrid’s... He was Ingrid’s concubine. I couldn’t touch him... and it infuriated me!...  

There’s something you need to understand... This place – the Undying Circle... The Asili... It brings out the darkest parts of you... Whatever darkness lies in your heart, the Circle brings it out of you. Allows it to overtake you... Jacob and Ruben came here as soldiers, and now they were tyrants. They were monsters... Ingrid was from a time where women were oppressed, and now she oppressed those who were seen as beneath her... Lucien came to spread the message of the God he loved... Now he’d denounced him... He now served another god – an evil god... In this place – in this jungle... he was God...  

I was a white guy from London. Diversity was all I knew. I accepted anyone and everyone... even if they never really accepted me... Is this what I truly am? In my darkest of hearts... am I a racist?... Of all the horrors I came across in that jungle... I feared myself the most... 

I was a god here. A king! I had power over life and death... I didn’t want it! I didn’t want any of it! Whatever part of me was still good, I called upon it... The man I was before... he wasn’t here anymore... He lived on the other side of The Asili... 

Beth and Chantal were dead. They died of weakness. The last I saw of them, they were just skin and bones... As long as Naadia was a concubine, at east she was being fed... As for Moses and Jerome, two young, strong “African men”... they became soldiers in Jacob and Ruben’s army... The things they did was almost as bad as me... Like me, the Circle preyed on their darkness... 

But they didn’t want to be soldiers – they didn’t want to be followers. They wanted to be free... They escaped the fortress and took their chances in the jungle... It didn’t take long for Jacob and Ruben to find them... They already killed Jerome - they put his head on top the wall with the others... But they gave Moses to me... 

They made me cut off his hands while he was still alive... I could hear Naadia screaming at me to stop, but I kept on beating him until he wasn’t screaming anymore... Moses loved God. He loved Jesus Christ - and even though he begged them in his final moments... no one was there... 

Moses looked for God in his final moments, but didn’t find him... I looked for that part of me that was supposed to be good – that once knew love and kindness... Every night, I woke only to see the darkness and the smell of death... But one night, through the surrounding black void of my cabin... I found him!... I saw him through the darkness... He told me what I needed to do - why I came here in the first place... 

That night, I went out of my cabin... The fort was quiet. Empty - but the torches were still lit all around. Tye was in the courtyard, tied to a wooden pole by his neck. I held out my knife to him. I wanted him to know that I had the power to kill him... but instead I was going to cut him free. Even though he had no reason to, I needed him to trust me... I told him we needed to save Naadia, and then the three of us were getting out of this place – that we’d take our chances in the jungle... Tye was expressionless. The Circle’s darkness had clearly gotten to him. He looked up at me, with murder in his eyes... But then he agreed... He was with me... 

As Tye went away in the direction of Ingrid’s cabin, I went into Ruben’s... I opened the door slowly. I couldn’t see but I could hear him breathing... I put my hand over the sound coming from his mouth – and with my knife, I pressed it into his neck! I heard him react under my hand and I pressed down even harder. I heard the blood gurgling inside his mouth and felt his nails scrape deep into my skin... But now Ruben was dead... I killed him while he slept, and in his final moments... he didn’t even know why... 

I leave Ruben’s cabin and I make my way towards Jacob’s. I found Tye there, waiting for me. I asked him if he did it, and he looked at me blankly and said... ‘I strangled her’... The way Tye looked at me, I was afraid of him... I now knew what he was capable of... but I needed him... 

We went inside Jacob’s cabin. He was sleeping with Naadia next to him. Naadia saw us through the glow of the outside torches and we gestured for her to be quiet. By the bedside was Jacob’s sword – the same one he’d made me use to do my killings... I took it. Standing over Jacob, Tye looked at me, waiting for me to give the signal. As I raised Jacob’s sword, Tye quickly put his hands over Jacob’s mouth. I saw Jacob’s eyes open wide! Looking up to Tye, he then instantly looked at me, seeing I was holding his own sword over him. I stuck it deep into his belly as hard as I could! I saw his eyes scrunch up as Tye kept his groans inside. I took out the blade and I kept on stabbing him! Covering me and Tye in Jacob’s own blood. Jacob tried grabbing the sword but it only sliced through his hands... By the time he was dead, his hands were still holding the blade... 

Having killed Jacob, the three of us left out the cabin. The fort was still quiet and no one had heard our actions... We knew we couldn’t just leave the fort – soldiers were still guarding the front entrance. We knew we had to create a distraction, and so we took one of the fire torches and we set Ingrid’s and Jacob’s cabins on fire! We hid in the darkest parts of the fort until the fire was so large, it woke up Lucien and all of Jacob’s soldiers. It seemed everyone had gathered round the burning cabins to try and put out the flames, and as they tried, we made our escape! The entrance was unguarded, and so we ran outside the fort and into the darkness of the jungle... 

We journeyed through the Circle’s jungle for days, unsure where it was we were even going. We knew we could never escape, but taking our chances out in this jungle was better than the hell that existed inside there!... I feared what we’d run into – what we’d find... I feared that Lucien and his army would be coming after us... I feared the predatory monsters we’d only seen glimpses of... and I feared that Jacob was telling the truth, and there was some tribe of man-eating creatures who could be stalking us... 

But just like when we first entered this jungle... we saw nothing. Again, we were trapped among the same identical trees and vegetation... before the Circle... The Asili... just seemed as though it spat us back out...We were free!...  

We found our way out of that place! We were still in the jungle – the real jungle. But whatever dangers the Congo had, it was nothing compared to the horrors in there! We found our way back to the river, back down to Kinshasa... and eventually, we found our way home... 

We never told the truth about what happened to us... We said we got lost – that the others had died of disease or hunger... It was easy for them to believe, because the truth wasn’t... 

I went back to London, and Naadia went home to her family... I tried to get in touch with her, but I couldn’t... She ignored my texts, my calls... She no longer wanted anything to do with me... To this day, I don’t even know where she is – if she went back to the States to be with Tye... For the past three years I’ve felt completely alone. I’ve had to live with what I’ve been through... alone... But it’s what I deserve! The Asili had turned me into a monster. A murderer!... It almost seems like just a bad dream - that it wasn’t really me that committed all those things... but it was... 

If you’re wondering how it was we got out of that place... I think The Asili allowed us to leave – like it wanted us to... Whatever The Asili was, it was evil! It had worshipers. Followers. It was basically a religion... Maybe it wanted us to tell the world what we’d seen and been through... Maybe it wanted more people to come here and bow to its will... Maybe I’m doing more damage than good by admitting its existence... 

We never found out what happened to Angela... I don’t even know if she’s still alive... Maybe she’s still out there somewhere, surviving... What if the tribe of women had found her? What if they weren’t the monsters Jacob said they were - that they were just survivors who fought against Lucien’s tyranny... Angela was a warrior – she knew how to survive... I’d almost like to think she became one of them... If she never escaped The Asili, like we did... I’d like to think that’s the best fate she could’ve had...  

I did my research. I tried to find whatever I could to explain what The Asili really is... I only came up with one answer... It’s the centre of evil... Evil leaks out of that place, slowly infecting the farthest corners of the world... The Congo has always been at war with itself... And anyone who goes there turns into that very same evil...  

The first white men who came to the Congo... they didn’t bring peace. They didn’t bring civilization. They murdered millions! They collected severed hands and traded them like they were currency!... Ten million Africans were murdered here when the first white men came to the Congo... But that’s what The Asili is... It isn’t the Undying Circle... It’s the Heart of Darkness itself...  

I don’t care if anyone doesn’t believe me... Just take my warning... Stay far away from the jungles of Africa! Just stay where you are and live in ignorance...   

For anyone who doesn’t listen. For whatever reason you go there, no matter how good your intentions are... take my warning... and burn it all to the ground! 

End of part IV 

The End  

“Just a little further, Dani, we’re almost there.” I reassured my younger sister as I tried my hardest to roll her difficult-to-manoeuvre wheelchair up the steep, hill path. Unfortunately, the wheels kept getting lodged in potholes and caught on branches sticking out of the dirt.

“Lana,” she said weakly. “we don’t have to sit at the peak. We can just have our picnic right here, don’t worry about it.” before she let out a brutal cough and clutched her chest.

Dani. Oh Dani.

Too benign for this world for her own good, and maybe that’s why it’s taking her away from me. Just looking down at her weak, sickly, pale ten-year-old form that’s still reeling from the needles and IV tubes that had been strapped up to her for weeks – I can feel myself choke up.

She used to be so lively, so energetic, so feisty you’d have to tie her to a leash to keep her in one spot. But now look at her. In the span of only one year, this cruel and unforgiving disease has stripped her of her very essence. Now, she can barely stand and with each word she manages to squeak out, she feels aching pain as her lungs feel like their being filled with glass shards.

But she’s held on. She’s a fighter, always has been. As well as an optimist. She says, as soon as she’s all better again, she’s going to become a doctor and research a cure to beat this diseases butt.

But I’m not like her. I’m weak. I don’t stand for anything, and I always assume the worse. That’s why I know that her aspirations will never come to fruition. I know she’s not beating this disease, despite how much I cheer and root for her on the sidelines.

I knew it from the doctor’s grim expression and the proceeding uncontrollable sobbing from my parents after he privately delivered news to them.

I knew it the moment the hospital let her go home with us that she didn’t have long.

The hill we were walking was one me and her raced up-and-down countless times when we were younger. We were so blessed to have moved near it when our dad got a promotion at work and had to relocate.

A hill in the middle of an acre of sunflowers, fit with daisies and a big apple tree at the summit – a sight you’d think to only find in a Disney movie - was just a field away from us. A paradise that belonged to us and only us. Our little getaway to run to when life got stressful.

We were especially lucky to have gone out today, as the clouds had cleared, and the sun seemed to take a liking to us as it showered us in its rays. Despite that, my sister still shivered. An invisible draft absorbed her of all possible warmth she could be feeling in that moment. A chill that was ever present in her soul as its grip on life loosened with each day. A chill no amount of weighted blankets or heaters could dispel.

But I had to try.

“Do you need your blanket, Dani?” I asked, fishing my hand into the backpack I was carrying.

“No, no. I’m fine. Honestly, I’d probably just feel colder if I did have it.” she answered, still quivering.

“Are… are you sure? I just don’t want you to be cold.” My voice began to crack at the seams, as I began to lose my composure.

“Lana. I’m fine, really.” she said, in the best nerves-easing voice she could muster. But I saw right through her act. I knew she was in so much pain and discomfort, that unfortunately no amount of medication and words of pity could fix. It was brave of her to hide such anguish, so I just bit my tongue and stared off into the distance as I gave up attempting to wheel her up the impossible to surmount hill.

The serenity and peacefulness that surrounded us that would usually be calming for me, instead felt like it was drowning me in its silence. It’s hard to explain. I suppose that the knowledge that my sister was feeling none of this peace as a war between her anti-bodies and the invading cancer cells waged on in her bloodstream was enough to make me feel as if I had no right to enjoy the tranquillity, yet here it was trying to force me to.

As I gazed across the vast landscape of perky flowers that stared at me with their hazel irises while a slight breeze tickled their petals, and as hopelessness began to settle within my soul, something caught my eye.

A horse.

Dark, inky, a small black smudge on an otherwise magnificent painting – inlayed a tall, black horse. Despite being miles away, it was hard to ignore as it stood out of place amongst the amber petals that surrounded it. It was a true eyesore, an eyesore that strangely filled me with a bottomless pit of dread as I began feeling queasy at the sight of its stationary form.

“Hey, Dani. You see that horse?” I asked my sister, as I delicately spun her wheelchair around to face the horse’s direction.

Her eyes narrowed as she attempted to spot the sable stallion. “What horse?”

I glanced back up and was just about to point to its location, when I noticed that the horse had vanished. I let out a sigh of disappointment. “Aw, It must have run away. My bad, Dani. If I see it again, I’ll try to point it out quicker.”

She nodded her beanie covered head. “Okay… Can we have our lunch now? I’m really hungry.”

“Sure thing. Let me just find a good spot.”

***

Upon finding a suitable patch of grass to have our lunch on, I took out a red checkered picnic blanket and laid it flat on the ground.

I wheeled my sister over and carefully helped her out of her chair onto the blanket, before we set out a loaf of soft bread and ingredients. We were sat near a slope leading down into an acre of sunflowers, a slope that me and her used to playfully roll down back when she was healthy.

“Did you bring any jam? I can’t seem to find any.” Dani asked meekly as she searched my backpack. It was then I realised I had completely forgotten the jam. It must have slipped my mind while packing as my thoughts were mostly preoccupied with what Dani needed for the trip.

“Oh, damn. I’m sorry, Dani, I forgot. I’m really sorry.” I said in an embarrassed tone.

A leak of sympathy in my stomach that had been dripping with beads of pity, developed into a catastrophic flood of guilt that steadily filled my interior as I choked out further apologies.

A mistake that would seem so minor to others, felt like a rock crushing down on my ribcage. I brought Dani on this trip to make her feel more at ease with her rapidly worsening condition, and yet I couldn’t even roll her up a simple slope or merely remember to bring jam.

“It’s okay, Lana, at least you brought butter. I like butter nearly as much as jam.” she reassured me as she pulled out a tub of butter and peeled the lid open.

She took hold of a butter knife in her pale hands and slid it across the block before spreading it out on a piece of bread. I could tell even this was tiring for her, but I stayed quiet as she clearly wanted to do it herself with no assistance.

RUSTLE

I heard the rustling of flowers behind me, as I shifted around and looked down into the jungle of blossoms while my sister continued her efforts in crafting a sandwich. Even from my higher view, I couldn’t see what was making the sound thanks to the overwhelming amount of sunflowers. But I could hear it. I could smell it.

The smell of rot and slurry assaulted my nostrils as the rustling of florets grew closer. It was not just that I heard, as I also heard the ragged, exhausted heaving of an animal accompany it.

Even as the sounds grew closer and closer, and I noticed flowers fall out of view with each crunch of their stem, I could still not spot the animal which was making those noises, despite how close they sounded below.

The stench only assaulted my senses further as it became more potent with each second that passed. I could almost make out another sound before my sister snapped me back to reality and I shifted to meet her curious gaze.

“Sis? You okay?” she asked, holding a sandwich of her own making as the movement suddenly ceased and the smell evaporated.

“Yeah, yeah… did you hear that rustling?” I asked worryingly.

She looked at me puzzled. “No? I didn’t hear any rustling. Oh, but did you smell that lovely scent that filled the air? Smelt sorta like roses and marshmallows, you know? I haven’t smelt those in a loooong time.” she answered cheerfully, just before she chowed down on the soft exterior of her sandwich.

She looked… different. I realised the reason she looked so unfamiliar to me was because of how lively she appeared. Her face was fatter and fuller of colour as a dimpled smile had risen across it. It had been so long since I saw my sister with a grin, that I forgot all about the rustling and the stench, and instead focused on chatting with her while she had a bit of energy.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” I said as I begun to prep my own sandwich.

“It’s always beautiful here. Gosh, I’m so glad we came, I’ve missed this place.” she stated as she chewed away.

“That’s true. I guess I just forgot how much this place was like a slice of heaven, since it has been a while since I came here. About a year, I think, since you began staying at the hospital.”

She stopped mid bite and looked at me. “You haven’t been here in a year? Why?”

My eyes fell to the ground as I pondered the question in my head, although I found the answer in my heart. “I guess… I guess I just couldn’t go here without you. I mean, it’s our special place, right? We did everything here together. Tag. Camping. Sunflower picking. It just felt wrong to visit with you not by my side.”

She stared at me with fond eyes as she visibly reminisced back to those days. “Heh. Remember when we went frolicking through the flowers, and-”

I cut her off, already knowing what she was going to say. “-And I fell into a deep puddle. Yeah, I remember it well. Especially how cold it was.”

She let out a little giggle, her face blooming with glee. “I don’t know why I found it so funny at the time. Even now just thinking about it, I can barely hold back laughter.”

“I remember you on your back, cackling to yourself as I lifted myself out. I was wearing my favourite shirt at the time, too. I mean, what the heck was a hole that deep doing in the middle of a sunflower field?” I said, unable to stop myself from cracking a smile as Dani chuckled even harder. Soon I found myself laughing alongside her.

When our laughter quelled, Dani’s face took a more relieved expression as she looked at me. “I haven’t seen you smile in a long time.”

This caught me off guard. She was right, of course. But I thought I did a good enough job at hiding my despair when I spent time with her as to not make her feel even more worse. As not to make her feel like it was her fault for my sadness.

Before I could say anything in response, she got to her feet, catching me off guard a second time. She looked at me with a toothy grin. “You know what, Lana?”

“What?” I said, still in awe.

“Maybe we should see the hilltop. I mean, I’m feeling a lot better at the moment and I think seeing the apple tree before going home would make us both feel a lot more happier.”

Before I could say anything or object, Dani began jogging uphill in excitement. I didn’t have much time to discuss with her whether she should be doing that sorta stuff, especially as the doctor had recommended that she would need assistance if she ever wanted to walk. But by the time I got to my feet, she was nearly out of view.

Before leaving to follow her, I took one more glance back at where I heard those sounds. I attempted to decipher the faint one I had heard right before my attention was torn away from it by Dani.

Now that I thought about it, it sounded an awful lot like the clacking of hooves.

***

“Woah, Dani, don’t leave me behind now.” I said, exhausted from how difficult It was to keep up with her.

She looked back at me with a mischievous smile. “Heh. Come on now, Lana, you’re only five years older than me. Don’t tell me you’ve gotten old and slow.” She said in a playfully smug tone as she kept her quick pace.

I gestured to an invisible walking stick and hunched my back forward as I began to wave my fist at her.

“Darn it! Get back here, you meddling kid! This is my property, and you will obey its laws!” I shouted in an old man voice, mimicking a neighbour of ours called Mr. Wellers who was a real stickler about his lawn. This got a laugh out of Dani as she slowed her pace down to meet mines.

“Alright, alright, I’ll slow down. Wouldn’t want you to break your back.” she replied, playing along.

We both shared a laugh as we walked side by side, nearing the hilltop as we strolled pass daisies that seemed to bloom due to our presence. Or maybe it was just hers, as her form glowed from the golden light casting down from the sky.

As I watched her frolic up the dirt path and chat with me about topics in which she had struggled to express to me in that depressing, grey hospital room months ago, a weight of hopelessness lifted from my soul and was instead replaced with a more soothing sensation.

Hope.

Hope that this was a sign that she had begun a journey of recovery, that the bad days were over and that the future was as bright and blue-skyed as today. That me and her could return to this hill as frequently as we did back when we were younger. That I’d have more time with my sister.

We soon reached the hilltop, and thus, the apple tree. It hadn’t changed one bit from the last time we visited, still towering over us and being plentiful of red, juicy apples.

“Wow.” my sister said as she gazed up at the bushy leaved hair of the tree. She pointed up at an apple that grew from a branch fairly close to the ground, but was still just out of reach for both of us. “Lana, if you let me climb on your shoulders, I’m sure I can reach that apple!”

I thought it over for a second, but ultimately decided it would be a good last action to end this trip on. “Sure, why not.”

I wandered over to where she stood and buckled my knees so she could reach my shoulders and grapple around them. I stumbled a bit once she eventually jumped on my back, not expecting her to weigh as much as she did, as when I was helping her out her wheelchair an hour ago, her body had felt like a bag of twigs.

I stood firmly in place, trying my best not to sway as my sister extended her hand up to the prized apple, when that familiar, horrid stench hit me.

“Oh wow, it smells so good! Just like roses!” my sister stated above me as she continued trying to get a good grasp of the apple, meanwhile I frantically looked around to spot where this smell was coming from. It was just as Dani finally managed to pluck the apple from the branch, that a noise came from behind the tree.

A neigh.

A loud, gurgled one. A breathless, bubbly neigh that startled me so badly it knocked me off balance and I nearly tumbled to the ground with Dani still on my shoulders. Luckily, I managed to regain balance and have Dani dismount my back as the animal made its way from behind the stump and within our view.

The stench became unbearable, tugging at my gag reflex with a crooked hook as a black horse trotted into view. Chunky blood, puss, vomit and other fluids dripped from every open pore on its body, from natural pores to opened wounds. Its eyes had a glossy look, and its mane dripped with grease as it heaved in and out, its exposed windpipe undulating with each choked breath.

It took all my power and some physical restraint not to vomit up all my insides right then and there from the grotesque sight that stood towering over me and Dani. Its silk, rotting skin would shift with each gallop, sliding up and down its muscles as its hooves shook from the lack of meat on them. Yet it managed to stand as it steadily approached us. Neighing.

Dread attacked my nerves with ferocity as I retreated back in fear. But Dani did not have the same reaction as me, in fact, she had quite the opposite.

“Wow. So pretty.” she said, approaching the stallion with zero apprehension or disgust, but rather admiration. The horse continued to close in on her, with Dani lifting her hand to meet its muzzle.

“D-Dani! Get away from that… thing!” I shouted at her, pleading with her to back away from this beast as I felt nothing good could come with interacting with it. But she ignored me, as she awaited to meet the horse’s touch.

I would’ve tried to run and carry her away from the horse, but terror had shackled me to where I stood as my knees locked in place. I couldn’t bare watch as the horses head bobbed mere inches away from Dani’s palm.

What was Dani seeing that I couldn’t?

Being weak, I clenched my eyes shut and I prayed this was some sort of nightmare that I would wake up from. But a part of me also wished it wasn’t. Because if it was, that meant Dani hadn’t actually begun recovering, and that when I woke up, I’d find her sickly form in bed attached to wires as she groaned in pain.

“Hee hee! Good girl!” I heard my sister giggle as I squished my eyelids together. Hazardously, I reopened them to view a strange sight.

Dani was petting the horses muzzle, much to the horse’s visible delight as it lowered its head to make it easier for Dani to stroke its snout. I stared on in confusion, still unable to move from where I stood as Dani continued giggling while grooming the vile mare. I noticed that, with each caress Dani gifted the horses revolting muzzle, no dirt or mucus would coat her hand afterwards.

Then I soon noticed that Dani looked different again. A change that was hard not to notice. Her beanie had fallen off, but instead of showcasing a shaved head, it instead showcased a veil of curly, dirty blonde hair hanging from her crown, seemingly having regrew while I had shut my eyes.

That’s when I got a sense of what was happening. That’s when I knew what the horse was.

I think Dani knew too, as she had a sombre expression on her face as the horse shifted its height lower to the ground, until Dani was able to mount its back.

Tears began to brim from my eyes as realisation struck me like lighting on a thunderous night. “…no. No. No, no, no, no. NO!” I yelled as Dani climbed onto the back of the horse and it regrew to its original scale.

“Please! Please, don’t take her! Not yet, please! Just give us more time, just more time!” I shouted desperately, pleading with an uncaring force of nature to delay the inevitable. Just so I can spend more time with my sister. So I could have more time to say goodbye.

The horse just neighed in response to my begging, uncaring or rather unbiased as it most likely hears the same pleads all the time. Instead, it was Dani who replied.

“I’m so sorry, Lana. I wish I could stay, I really do. I don’t wanna leave you, mommy and daddy. I don’t wanna go. But, it’s not my choice,”

She said, tears streaming down her face just as they did mine. “Just know, that I’m okay with this. I’m just so happy I got to frolic around with you. One last time.”

“Dani…” my voice cracked as I found it impossible to speak from the tears that were flooding my throat.

“Bye, sis. For now, at least.”

The horse neighed, and began to gallop down the side of the hill, keeping its balance perfectly as it descended the steep inclines.

Pass the daisies. Pass the wheelchair. Pass the picnic blanket. And soon into the sunflower field as the sun plummeted. All the while my sister clung to its back.

And then,

my sister was gone.

I’ve been starting to really get into hiking for around a year now. I’m from western Massachusetts and fortunately we have a good amount of wooded areas and mountains especially in the Berkshires. I know our mountains aren’t as big as the Rockies or the mountains out west “that’s the parking lot to our mountains” and blah blah blah I don’t give a shit they are still beautiful to me and it’s what I grew up with. I go to school in Amherst so it’s cool that a lot of trails are within driving distance.

A few days ago I was scrolling through the AllTrails app and I saw a place that caught my eye. Mount Norwotuck. It was only a 4ish mile hike up for the Robert Frost trail (orange) so I looked at the pictures of the views from the top and it looked really cool so why not I figured. I packed up my bag with some waters, only 1 bag of chips since it wasn’t gonna be too long, some weed and my rolling papers and drove over to the starting area of the trail.

It was fine at first. the first half mile in it gets a little steep but nothing too crazy. As many people know while hiking you’ll run into other hikers on the same trail. The common courtesy is wave at them say hello and keep going. At first it felt like a lot of people were on the trail. It’s supposed to be a popular one so I guess it makes sense if anything it makes me feel a little bit safer that if god forbid anything goes wrong someone can be around to help but I also would rather the peace and quiet on my hikes. Either way as I was walking I could have sworn I saw something weird.

Walking past a girl and her boyfriend I waved and said “hey” and when she waved back I felt a strange sense of unease.

“Di-Did… she have 6 fingers?” I thought to myself bewildered

I stopped dead in my tracks and looked back but they were already too far away and I couldn’t get a good enough look to be sure that what I saw was real or if it was just my imagination.

“I must of be crazy I don’t know why I thought I saw that woman have 6 fingers. I gotta get some more sleep.” I said to myself chuckling and just dismissing it.

I kept going up the trail and saw a few more people that all seemed normal passing by me, said my hellos and carried on but slowly less and less people were around me and I started to feel that inner peace you get when you feel you are truly alone in nature and just turn your mind off.

The trail I’m on around half way seems to go up at an almost 90 degree angle and really takes a lot out of you. At this point it’s been around 30 minutes since I’ve seen another person. A little weird for being a more known trail such a nice day. I decided to take a break and sit down on a rock slightly off the path and roll a joint. I got out my papers and my bud and started breaking down the weed when I looked up to see a guy coming down the trail. He was dressed in a full tuxedo and was whistling a happy tune.

“Ok what the fuck is this.” I say getting up from my rock to go see why this guy was about 2 miles in on this trail dressed like this.

“Hey dude what the hell are you wearing?” I say confused

“Well whatever do you mean!? It’s my wedding day OF COURSE I would be dressed for the occasion. Now if you don’t mind I can’t stand here and answer your idiotic questions all day. Good day sir!!” He says and turns around from me and keeps walking down the trail.

“Hey dude I just. I..” I stammer on my words. I don’t even know what to say I’m just perplexed by the whole encounter. Not that he was acknowledging me any way he just kept going until I lost him in the trees.

At this point I’m thinking I’m losing my mind I mean I could play off that girl having 6 fingers thing as just my eyes playing tricks on me but to have this very real interaction with this guy makes my mind race with possibilities. Was I being pranked or something? is that guy just insane? I decided to just keep going and get to the summit before I let this bother me anymore. I’ve met weird people out on hikes before I guess this’ll just be another story of a weird guy to tell my friends about over some drinks at the bar later.

I finished rolling up my joint, lit it and kept trudging up the steep incline. I had about 2 miles left till I got to the summit and could relax and take in the views. The hike continued on normally. I finished smoking my joint and started to get the munchies. Around the 3 mile marker I stopped and leaned up against a tree so I could eat some chips and drink some water when mere inch’s from my head an arrow strikes the tree I’m leaning against. I instantly get a surge of adrenaline and frantically look around to see where it was shot from when I see a man dressed in full Native American chief clothing and face paint loading up another arrow for his bow.

In a moment of desperation I drop my hiking gear and bolt up the mountain dodging the man’s arrows as I try to zig zag up the path so he can’t get a good shot on me. I hear him screaming in a language I couldn’t understand.

“This isn’t happening! This isn’t real!” I yell to myself thinking I had to be having some kind of nightmare. This didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense this couldn’t be happening. Running and running arrow after arrow whizzing by me. I was just begging to wake up and that’s when I tripped.

I fell and hit my head on a rock. I don’t know how long I was out for and had no clue where I was anymore. I went so far off the trail in my frenzy that I was now completely lost. Even worse it’s starting to get dark. I gotta be close to the summit at this point I was running up the trial for most of the chase. “If I just keep climbing up I can reach the top and get back on the trail then leave this God forsaken mountain.” I thought to myself. So I pulled myself up and made my own trail trudging straight up the incline I was determined to get back. My vision took a little bit to adjust I was seeing 2 or 3 of whatever was in front of me and had this drunken woozy feeling almost as if I was in a building with a gas leak but I continued on anyway.

The feeling of lightheadedness and my double vision suddenly went away right as I found myself back on the trail and with just my luck a person right ahead of me. I was overjoyed. Finally I was safe I ran to the man screaming and waving my arms to get his attention like a mad man.

“HEY!! HEY!! HELP I NEED HELP!!” I screamed while running up towards the man who now stopped and turned around

I get to the man out of breath and with my hands on my knees trying to explain everything.

“THE GUY. TH- HE HAD. TUXEDO! INDIAN!” I spurt out knowing that nothing I said made any sense. The man put a hand on my shoulder and I looked up. He was a tall man. I mean really tall probably about 6’8-6’10 and was wearing a huge black puffer jacket with a black beanie on his head.

“It’s ok man everything’s gonna be fine” he said in a deep reassuring voice.

“Everything- everything’s gonna be fine” I say repeating him and finally stand up straight now having finally caught my breath. Just as I start to smile and let myself calm down out of survival mode my shoulder starts feeling wet. I look over to see that the mans hand on my shoulder wasn’t a hand. It was a tentacle. I look back up at the man to see his coat slip off of him and reveal both of his arms up to the shoulders where that of a squids. He swiped at me trying to grab me but I duck and run pass him. Darting up the trail barely being able to see with the sun going down I look back to see that now not only is the squid armed man chasing me but now so is the Indian chief, the tuxedo man, and the 6 fingered girl. “FUCK!” “THIS ISN’T REAL IT’S NOT REAL!” I scream out. I stumbled up an incline to reveal that I did it. I reached the top.

It was beautiful. The view from the top was breathtaking. The lights from Amherst starting to all turn on. The sunset. The hundreds of surrounding mountain ranges as far as the eye could see. However now all I’ve done is cornered myself. Surrounded by these monsters chanting in tongues I couldn’t understand. The only choice I had was to go off the edge or to be at the will of these creatures. They close in on me as I’m backing up on the jagged rocks that lead to the edge of the sharp drop down and I’m left with no choice as they only get closer and closer to me. I jumped.

For the last few days I’ve been recovering in the hospital. The psych ward to be more precise. The doctors said I experienced some sort of psychosis and thought I tried to kill myself by jumping off the top of the mountain. All it did was shatter my arm, break 4 ribs and leave me with a severe concussion. I’ve never had a history of psychotic episodes or any other mental problems. None of this makes any sense to me but I know what I saw was real all of it was real it had to be. The girl, the Indian, the tuxedo guy, the squid guy I mean I know it sounds crazy but you have to believe me. There’s something happening on that mountain. I’m not sure whats going on but I will get to the bottom of this.

Stay away from Mount Norwottuck.

The late October air was crisp as I hiked the familiar trail along the Minnesota River, a stretch of wilderness south of the Twin Cities. The vibrant reds and golds of the changing leaves clashed with the deepening gray of the twilight sky. The sun, already dipping below the horizon, cast long, skeletal shadows across the path. I pulled my sweatshirt tighter, the chill seeping into my bones despite the brisk pace I set. That's when I saw it. At first, I thought it was just a deer, standing at the edge of the woods.

But something was off. It was massive, easily twice the size of any deer I'd ever seen in these parts. Its silhouette was elongated, almost skeletal, and its posture was strangely upright, almost as if it were standing on two legs. Its head was held at an unnatural angle, the long neck almost serpentine. As it turned its head towards me, I saw its eyes – twin points of burning orange, glowing with an unnatural intensity. Then, with a speed that defied its size, it vanished into the dense undergrowth.

I stopped dead in my tracks, my heart pounding. I'd spent countless hours hiking these trails, and I'd never seen anything like it. Was it just a trick of the light? A case of mistaken identity? Or was it something… else? The image of those glowing eyes haunted me as I hurried back to my car, the fading light casting an eerie pall over the familiar landscape.

Back in my apartment, in one of the quiet suburbs south of the city, I tried to rationalize what I'd seen, but the image of those burning eyes kept flashing in my mind. Maybe it was just a large deer, its size exaggerated by the shadows and my own fear. But the feeling of unease lingered. I found myself checking the locks on my doors and windows repeatedly, a prickle of fear crawling up my spine.

The unsettling feeling intensified as the days grew shorter and the nights colder. During my walks along the river trails, I started noticing things I'd never paid attention to before – broken branches high in the trees, tracks too large to belong to any known animal, a strange, musky odor, like rotting meat mixed with something sweet and cloying, that clung to the air like a shroud. The dreams began – vivid nightmares of the deer, its form twisting and contorting in the shadows, growing larger, more monstrous, until it resembled something not quite animal, not quite human. I'd wake up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding, convinced I wasn't alone in my apartment.

One evening, as I was walking back from the grocery store, the street lights flickered off, I saw it again. It was standing at the edge of the parking lot, partially obscured by the shadows, but its form was unmistakable. Tall and skeletal, with dark, matted fur and what looked like antlers protruding from its head. Its eyes, those burning orange eyes, were fixed on me, radiating a malevolence that chilled me to the bone. It stood perfectly still, like a statue carved from bone and shadow, its gaze unwavering. I froze, a wave of pure terror washing over me. My breath hitched in my throat. I wanted to run, to scream, but my legs felt like lead and my throat felt constricted. It stood there for what felt like an eternity, its gaze unwavering, before the lights turning on revealing an empty spot.

The fear became a constant companion. I started carrying a heavy walking stick on my hikes, a pathetic defense against whatever this creature was. I researched local wildlife, trying to find a rational explanation, but nothing fit. I even considered talking to someone about it, but the fear of being dismissed as crazy kept me silent. The isolation only fueled my paranoia. Driven by a desperate need to protect myself, I went to a local gun shop and bought a used handgun. It was a small, something I could easily conceal. The cold steel of it felt heavy and reassuring in my trembling hand, a small comfort against the encroaching darkness.

Winter arrived, blanketing the landscape in snow. The cold seemed to amplify the dread, making the feeling of being watched even more intense. It grew bolder. I started seeing it closer to my apartment building, lurking in the shadows of the parking lot, its eyes glowing in the darkness. It was no longer just watching; it was hunting. The tapping started subtly, a light scratching sound I initially dismissed as branches against the window. But it grew more insistent, more deliberate.

One night, I woke to a tap... tap... tap on my bedroom window. My heart hammered against my ribs. I knew what it was. Slowly, I sat up, my hand trembling as I reached for the handgun on my nightstand. The tapping continued, a rhythmic pulse of dread. I crept towards the window, peering through the blinds. It stood there, its gaunt, skeletal form silhouetted against the snowy landscape. Its face, illuminated by the pale moonlight, was a mask of grotesque hunger, its long, sharp teeth bared in a silent snarl. Those eyes, burning orange embers, were fixed on me, radiating pure malevolence.

Terror seized me, a primal fear I'd never experienced before. My breath hitched in my throat. I raised the handgun, my hand shaking uncontrollably, and aimed at the creature outside the window. Tap... tap... tap... The tapping continued, each tap a hammer blow against my sanity. I squeezed the trigger. The gun roared, the recoil jarring my hand. I flinched, expecting to see it fall, but when I looked back at the window, it was gone. Just an empty window, the snow falling silently outside. Relief washed over me, quickly followed by a wave of confusion. Had I actually hit it? Or had it just vanished, as it always did? I lowered the gun, my hand still trembling, and turned away from the window.

Tap... tap... tap...

The tapping was behind me. I whirled around, my heart leaping into my throat. It stood in the corner of my room, its back to the window. How…? It hadn't come through the window. It was inside with me. How? The question echoed in my mind, a chilling whisper. Its head slowly turned, those burning eyes locking onto mine. A low, guttural growl rumbled from its chest, a sound that seemed to vibrate the very foundations of the building. It was even more terrifying up close. I could see the details now – the matted fur, the long, sharp claws, the patches of bare, rotting flesh. The smell was overpowering – a mix of decay and something ancient, something utterly alien. I raised the gun again, but it was a useless gesture. I knew, deep down, that no bullet could stop this creature. It was a manifestation of fear and darkness. It took a step towards me, and I knew… I knew this was the end. Its long, clawed hand reached out…

I fired again. And again. The gun recoiled in my hand, the sound deafening in the small apartment. It shrieked, a sound that tore through the night, a sound of pure, unearthly rage. It staggered back, its burning eyes wide with something that might have been surprise, or even… pain? It turned and lunged for the window, crashing through the glass and disappearing into the snowy night.

I collapsed to the floor, my breath ragged, my body trembling. I didn't know if I'd hurt it, or if I'd just startled it. But it was gone. For now. I knew I couldn't stay there. It would be back. It was only a matter of time. I scrambled for my coat and keys, shoving them into my pockets along with anything else I could grab phone, wallet, a half-eaten granola bar and bolted out the door. I drove through the night, adrenaline coursing through my veins, my eyes constantly scanning the shadows.

I ended up in a cheap motel hundreds of miles away, but I knew it was only a temporary reprieve. It was out there, somewhere. I could feel its presence, a cold dread that clung to me like a shroud.

As I described my encounter in detail, the chilling progression from a fleeting glimpse to a terrifying confrontation. I recounted the creature's appearance, its glowing eyes, its unnatural strength, the way it seemed to invade my thoughts. I warned people to be careful, to stay out of the woods at night, to be aware of the signs. Some people responded with skepticism, dismissing my story as a hallucination or a hoax. But others… others believed. They shared their own stories, their own encounters with the unexplained. They spoke of strange sightings in the woods, of eerie sounds in the night, of a growing sense of dread that filled the area. I realized I wasn't alone. There were others who had seen it and whispers about the name.

The Windego.

When my daughter, Éléa, started talking about an imaginary friend, I didn’t think much of it. All children invent invisible companions at some point. But something about the way she spoke of "Mr. Closet" unsettled me.

— He lives in my closet, she explained with the serious air of a four-year-old. But he only comes out when Mommy and Daddy aren’t here.

I found it both adorable and a little eerie. Still, I figured she would eventually forget about this game and that Mr. Closet would disappear just as suddenly as he had arrived.

For the first few weeks, it was innocent. Éléa would talk to herself in her room, sometimes giggle. Once, I heard her whispering, as if she were sharing secrets with someone. One morning, I found her sitting in front of her wide-open closet, staring into the darkness with a vacant smile.

— What are you doing, sweetheart ? I asked.
— I'm waiting for Mr. Closet to wake up.

A chill ran down my spine. There was something deeply unsettling in her voice.

Then, things took a darker turn.

One night, as I passed by her room, I heard scratching. A dry, rhythmic sound, like fingernails brushing against wood. Intrigued, I cracked the door open. Éléa was sitting up in bed, eyes wide open, staring at her closet. I stepped closer.

— You’re not asleep, sweetheart ?
— Shhh, Daddy. Mr. Closet wants to come out.

My blood ran cold. The scratching stopped immediately. I swung the closet door open, my heart pounding. There was nothing, just her clothes hanging neatly and a few stuffed animals piled in the corner.

I told her she had been dreaming and tucked her back in. But that night, I hardly slept.

A few days later, we found our cat, Simba, hiding under our bed, trembling and refusing to come out. Normally, he was curious about everything, but now he wouldn’t go near Éléa’s room. I tried carrying him inside, but he clawed at my shoulder, hissing and shredding my shirt in his panic.

Then, Éléa began to change. She grew quieter, more withdrawn. She would spend hours sitting in front of her closet. One evening, I caught her sliding a piece of paper under the door.

— What are you doing, sweetheart ?

She shrugged.

— Mr. Closet asked me to draw him a picture.

I picked up the paper. My heart nearly stopped. It wasn’t a simple childish scribble. She had drawn a tall, thin figure with an unnaturally wide grin and hollow eyes.

— Does he look like this ? I asked, my throat dry.

She nodded enthusiastically.

— Yes ! He told me he likes me a lot.

That night, I locked her closet. But by morning, it was open again.

Things got worse. Éléa had dark circles under her eyes. she became even more distant. one morning, I found her crying.

— What’s wrong, sweetheart ?
— Mr. Closet says you don’t like him, Daddy. He says you want him to leave.

I held her close, trying to reassure her. But deep inside, I felt something watching us.

That night, I set up a surveillance camera in her room. I had to know what was happening. I can barely describe what I saw.

Around 3 AM, the closet door creaked open. A shadow emerged. It was impossibly tall, at least eight feet. It bent over Éléa’s bed, its bony fingers brushing her face. Then, it turned its head toward the camera. And it smiled, staring into the lens with hollow, black eyes.

A massive, unnatural grin stretched across its grotesque face, like something out of a twisted Picasso painting.

It leaned over Éléa and seemed to whisper something in her ear before slipping back into the closet, leaving the door wide open.

I ran to her room, ripped out the camera, and grabbed my daughter. We left that house that night. We never went back.

The next night, while staying in a hotel, I woke up with a jolt to find Éléa standing there, staring blankly at the closet door.

— Daddy, why is he here ? He says he’s angry…

My heart skipped a beat.

— Who, sweetheart ?

She turned to me, her little eyes filling with tears.

— Mr. Closet… He says we shouldn’t have left.

Then, a dull thump echoed through the room. As if something was knocking softly against the wooden door.

Éléa started laughing, a strange, low-pitched laugh that didn’t sound like her at all.

— He’s coming, Daddy.

A sickening crack rang out. The closet door creaked open on its own, revealing an abyss of unnatural darkness. A freezing breath of air filled the room.

Then, in a whisper barely audible, a hissing voice slithered out of the blackness:

"You can't stop me from seeing her… I am her friend. But you… I don’t like you."

Éléa walked into the closet. The door slammed shut behind her.

I lunged forward, desperately trying to pull it open, but it wouldn’t budge. I screamed her name, pounded on the wood until my fists were raw and bloody, but there was no sound. Nothing.

When the authorities arrived, they had to break down the door. The closet was empty. No hidden passages, no way out. Éléa was gone without a trace.

Today, I am in prison, accused of murdering my own daughter. An investigation was opened immediately after her disappearance. The hotel neighbors testified that they heard screaming, violent banging on the wood, and my desperate cries. To them, I was a father in the midst of a psychotic breakdown. My story about a shadow from the closet only sealed my fate in the eyes of the law.

The police found no tangible evidence of an intruder. No forced entry, no fingerprints. Nothing that could explain what had happened. They searched the room, dismantled the closet, looked for hidden compartments. But Éléa had simply vanished. The lack of a body worked against me, according to them, I must have hidden it somewhere.

I pleaded my innocence, begged them to believe me. But who would believe a story like this?

I have rotted in this cell for three years. The other inmates look at me with that mixture of pity and disgust reserved for those who hurt children. But I am not a monster. I am a victim. And I know that somewhere, trapped in an unreachable darkness, my daughter still exists.

If you are reading this and your child talks about an imaginary friend who lives in their closet, please don't make him upset.

My sister Amy and I were raised in a tiny seaside town in the North of England, beautiful to the tourist eye but relentlessly dull to the pair of teenagers who’d traipsed around the arcade and the grey stretch of beach so many times that we could have walked it blind.

The sole activity that still mustered any particular excitement for us was what the local youths had dubbed the Eely Cave Game, being that it took place in said cavern situated in an elusive cove accessible only by descending a hazardous ledge of cliff face.

The sea currents around it were too strong for us to have swum there and back, so climb we did.

Loose stones and scarce handholds in the rock meant you had to crawl on your belly, gecko-like, naively hoping that any climber behind you would break a potential fall. There must have been more than a few broken bones amongst the participants from that stage alone, but Amy and I always emerged unscathed, though somewhat out of breath and streaked with mud and sand from the slope.

Once a player arrived at Eely Cave the goal was to uncover a tunnel through the wall which could be unlocked only by following one or more of the games’ many nebulous rules. These ranged from a standard rhythm of knocking on the stone to reciting a song aloud, the latter of which had largely fallen out of favour by the time our generation had started to play.

No one we knew had ever been successful, but there were young people who’d gone missing across previous decades who were considered by our peers to have won. The rumour of the hidden gateway had begun somewhere, after all; the question was what it all lead to, and why those victorious players had never returned.

Like the journey to the cave itself the implications of those historical vanishings failed to dissuade my sister and I from trying to uncover its secrets.

At least once a week we’d climb down into the cavern and stand side by side, knocking our fists along the damp walls in the hope of finding some hidden lock or breaking some spell.

What the elusive tunnel was and how it had been hidden from sight was little agreed upon amongst the players. Some of our friends thought it was a man-made construction, a war bunker or treasure trove; others had the idea that it was paranormal and that it led into the roots of some other world.

Then there was the faction that didn’t really believe in anything, playing with the indifferent apathy of young people with nothing else to do.

Amy and I often pretended to belong to this group, cracking cynical jokes even as we brought our fists to the walls of the cavern, unable to deny our superstitions. We both knew even then that one of us would win the game without comprehending where that knowing had come from, nor which of us it referred to.

So we went back and back to Eely Cave until the day Amy won.

Our parents were out, I remember, and with school finished for the summer my sister and I were at liberty to do whatever we wanted.

Predictably we found ourselves tortured by the usual boredom. The arcades were humid and jostling with families and bickering teenagers, the beach listless with rain.

Without needing to discuss it the decision was made to visit the cove and play the Eely Cave Game for the second time that week. With much grunting and swearing we clambered down the muddy verge of cliff, kicking clods of dirt at each other only half by accident.

The sea lashed at the sand like a white rope, and the air felt heavy over us as we ducked into the shelter of the cave. It was only as large within as the average classroom, the roof low enough to touch if we jumped and clapped our hands to it.

The names of a thousand children had been carved into the rock on all sides, and there were empty drinks cans and cigarette butts on the ground underfoot left behind by less reverential players.

“Scruffs,” said Amy, kicking at the litter.

She didn’t like the idea of those casually engaged in the game stumbling upon the Eely tunnel before us.

“So what are we doing this time?” I asked, referring to the system of knocks we’d try on various parts of the walls. “Last time we did 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1, 1. No point doing it again, is there?”

The common belief was that a rhythm of eight beats was required to open the gateway; what remained unsure was how precisely they should be delivered.

“I dunno,” said Amy. “I thought maybe we could do 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, like a heartbeat, and just work our way round in a circle.”

“We could try two different patterns and get more done,” I suggested.

Amy shook her head.

“Last time we did that I fucked mine up. It proper distracts me when you’re not doing the same one as me.”

I rubbed my hands together, surprised by how cool the cave remained despite the heat beyond its entrance.

“Are we doing the song this time?”

Amy rolled her eyes.

“You can do it. I always feel like a right knobhead.”

“That’s because you are a knobhead.”

“Fuck off.”

I grinned. Amy always became snappy when she was nervous, and I could almost see the dark coils of her hair stand on end.

“Well, you don’t even have to sing it,” I pointed out. “You can just say it.”

“It’s a song, though, like. That’s the whole point. If you don’t sing then it won’t work, will it?”

“To be fair we don’t even know if it even does or if someone just made it up. Might as well throw a dance in and see if that works as well.”

In a sudden burst of irritation Amy pushed my shoulder and stalked off to the other side of the cave.

“You’re doing my head in now. Just do the knocks, alright?”

At this we both became serious and began working our way slowly around the walls, our phone torches lit up in our free hands as we rapped our fists from floor to ceiling as far as we could reach.

For some time there was only the sound of our breathing, the crunch of sand under our shoes, and our knucklebones against the rock.

1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2...

I heard Amy begin to sing quietly half under her breath, her mouth almost touching the stone.

“Eely Cave, oh black, oh dark, open up the night you are...”

As juvenile as the lyrics were she had a strong voice and had been in the school choir before she got older and embarrassed of it, mainly due to my brotherly torments. That Amy was singing in my presence proved how desperate she was to be that decade’s winner, to uncover the doorway that no competitor, to our knowledge, had.

I didn’t laugh— couldn’t when I felt that same urge to succeed. Our voices cracked as we counted out the knocks or uttered the words of that childish rhyme to the walls.

Something came over us there in the cave, a crawling apprehension that we hadn't known there before. The fun had ended, and suddenly I was experiencing the same fear I felt running from the bathroom to my bed at night, thinking something would jump out at me from the shade of the stairwell.

“Amy,” I said. “Let’s go. We’ve lost. We can come back next week.”

She didn’t hear me, for though no longer singing she muttered under her breath and knocked the wall so fiercely that I saw beads of blood left on the stone.

“Ames,” I said. “Stop it, will you?”

She turned her head to snap at me, but before she could speak her right fist fell through the wall ahead of her, not into a pocket in the rock but into a stretch of darkness I had not perceived there till she touched it.

It wasn’t a hole, or a door, or a tunnel in any conventional use of the word, but a black matter that ate six feet of stone and let in no light, though Amy’s phone was directed right at it. Her arm had been taken by it to the elbow, and it seemed that something had hold of her within it for as she turned to face the void her entire body pitched forwards, unbalanced.

Amy fell with a scream that vanished without echo, as though the black had taken the sound into itself as well. I lunged for her, grabbing at the back of her shirt, but just as my fingers pinched the cotton I found myself faced with firm rock again, the shred of fabric trapped within it hanging like a growth of moss.

My sister's phone had fallen from her pocket, lying smashed at my feet, the battery ejected from its back.

I stood still gripping onto the rag of Amy’s t-shirt, staring aghast at the closed door of the wall. Then I began to scream, incoherent yells of horror and grief and rage that my sister had been taken from me.

That I had not been allowed to follow.

I started to beat my hands against the cavern, struck and struck at the rock until the skin split across the heels of my hands. I begged to be let in, for her to be let out, tried to remember the pattern of knocks that had allowed Amy to enter the wall, but it did not once yield.

For an hour I stood there, taunted by the quiet and the dark until at last I staggered out of the cave and clawed my way back up the cliff with barely any understanding of what I did. All I saw and heard was Amy, her cry as the darkness took her in, the pain that surely seized her as she fell.

Striped with mud and sand I stumbled home, the shock that closed over me so profound that I barely noticed my parents’ car pulling into the driveway behind me.

Only when my mother got out to shake me by the shoulder did my gaze focus on their faces, both of them tense with alarm.

“Amy,” I said. “She’s gone! She’s fucking gone!”

Then I screamed again and couldn’t stop until my throat gave out and shattered the sound.

My parents half dragged me into the kitchen, forcing me to sit at the table even as I struggled against their arms.

Having grown up in the town they'd heard of the Eely Cave Game, and had even played it themselves in their youth. But in adulthood they no longer believed in it, and as in choked pieces I described how Amy had vanished I saw the anger and bewilderment of that doubt cloud their eyes.

I’d later learn that they thought my sister must have fallen from the cliff and broken her neck, or else attempted to swim against a violent current and drowned. They believed that I lied then through the guilt that I’d had some part in her death, or because the sight of it was so unbearable that I’d rather pretend the cave had swallowed her than admit the reality of what I’d seen.

The police were called, forcing me through another interview that exhausted me to the point I could no longer form coherent speech.

A search was conducted around the cove with the expectation of finding a body or some evidence of an accident, but being that none was discovered I was interviewed a second time, this time with the implication that I had harmed Amy in some way, or had concealed her having run away from home.

In the end they could find no proof of that either, succeeding in nothing but reducing me to hysterics. My mother and father, though still privately convinced of my guilt, defended me against the rumours that arose from her disappearance.

They campaigned endlessly in the news and with posters and radio interviews, offering a reward to anyone that came out with information as to where Amy had gone.

Their efforts consumed them to the point that they both lost weight, wandering about the town, fliers in hand, like two lone survivors of famine. In time they grew distant from me, a gully which later deepened into resentment when I was suspended from school after fighting with another pupil, Sam Roe, between classes.

“Heard your sister won the Eely Cave Game,” he’d said, shuffling after me down a busy corridor. “How did she do it?”

He hadn’t been the first to ask, but the others who’d done so quickly backed off when they’d seen the look in my eyes.

Sam, however, kept pushing, following me even as I attempted to lose him in the knots of students between us.

“You know what, I bet you’re full of shit,” he scoffed. “Bet you didn’t go anywhere near it.”

“Yeah?” I snapped. “So where's my sister, then?”

Sam shrugged, his greasy face sly with malice.

“Probably run off with some lad. Everyone knows what she’s like.”

I’d turned and hit his sneering mouth with the same blind anger with which I’d struck at the cavern, and only our peers yanking us apart prevented me from knocking Sam’s teeth down his throat.

In the weeks following that incident, barred from the school gates, I entered a daze that never quite ended, drifting between Eely Cave and the house in which I felt unwanted, waiting for Amy's return or some definite sign of her end that I knew was unlikely to come.

Sometimes as I ran my hands across the rough walls of the cavern I thought I heard my sister’s screams or snatches of her voice in song, straining my ears at the dark until I lost the trace of them again.

There were days that I convinced myself that there were other voices, too, and I would stand and listen to them till nightfall, mesmerised by dread, though perhaps it was only the sea I heard against the rocks, or the gulls wailing overhead.

But I never believed that, for the horror of Amy’s loss prevented me from perceiving the sound as anything but the cries of the many children that had fallen through the stone.

I continued my habitual back and forth from house to cove incessantly, giving it up only when, in my late teens, my mother became ill with a heart condition. My father had fallen into such a profound depression that he couldn’t be expected to look after her, and so my life became for them, and them alone.

I didn’t mind it, for by then I’d come to blame myself for Amy’s vanishing completely. I should have played without her, I’d tell myself, driven her off with a scathing word or shove.

Over time I’d forgotten how close we were, and how pig-headed Amy had been. With or without me she would have been a competitor in the game, and it was only my bad luck that I’d been present to see her digested by the cave.

My mother died when I was twenty; my father could barely look at me when we buried her. He passed some months after from a sudden aneurysm, and though I’d been alone since Amy had disappeared I truly felt it then, trapped in the corpse that was our home.

I was resigned to that loneliness, certain that I was deserving of it.

The following summer a knock came at the front door in the night. I lay in bed listening to it without any intention of getting up to answer, my head pulsing from the remains of a hangover; like my late father, I drank.

I rarely received visitors, was unemployed and had few friends left by then, if any at all. Someone had likely gone to the wrong house, I thought. They’d go away soon, and I could sleep.

Only when the knocking started on the windows did I stumble down the dark stairway to the front door, fumbling to unlock it and tug it clumsily open.

A small girl stared up at me from under a tangle of dripping hair, sand smeared across her face like a half mask, one skinny arm shielding her eyes from the rain. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen and yet she held herself delicately, as though she were very old, or ill.

I knew her.

She was my sister.

But it was so impossible for her to be there, and almost entirely unchanged, that I looked at her as though she were a stranger, my arm across the door to prevent her from entering the house.

I was afraid of her, of course, for I did not know what she was.

“Are not going to let me in, then?” said Amy, and her voice was the same, though dull and dry.

“No,” I said. “You’re not Amy. You can’t be. You’re still in Eely Cave. You’re dead. I saw it.”

She shook her head, and her eyes were lifeless, the brown of them gone to black.

“It let me go,” she said. “The people who won the game before me— they’re all in there, still.”

I felt a weakness come over me and gripped onto the door in case I fell.

“I don’t know what you’re on about,” I mumbled. “What are you—"

“Just let me in and I’ll tell you.”

Not knowing what else to do I stepped back into the house and Amy followed. She was wearing the same pink t-shirt she’d worn on the day we’d played the Eely Cave Game, a chunk ripped from the back where it had been trapped in the wall.

I’d gone insane with grief, I thought, or the drink had summoned a ghost. But as Amy moved past me into the kitchen her arm brushed mine and it was warm, the heat of the living.

I was glad to sit down, so light-headed with shock that I was surprised to still be on my feet.

Amy looked at me, and I looked back.

Neither of us spoke for some time.

Then I said, “So what is that thing in Eely Cave? The hole you fell into?”

“Alive,” she said simply.

I let out a hysterical laugh.

“How can a cave be alive?”

“Because it just looks like one, but it’s not. I think it’s a monster; some of the players inside it called it that. And the game we’ve all been playing— it’s all pointless. It doesn’t even matter. It just chooses people to let in when it feels like it.”

I studied Amy’s face, which was serious in a way she’d never been as a child except inside Eely Cave.

“So how do you know it chooses people?” I asked.

“Because it told us,” said Amy. “We could all hear its voice in our heads. Like if darkness had a sound, I swear that’s what it was like. The Eely.”

I rubbed my face, finding it damp with a sudden sweat.

“When it took me inside it I could hear other kids screaming and shouting,” said Amy. “Felt them all round me, pushing and shoving and all desperate to get out. But nobody had ever got out before. They only ever went in and just... stayed there. Never got any older, like it was preserving us or something. Not that we could see each other to tell. Like I said, it was all black. So black and dark, and cold as well.”

My sister leant her head upon her arms, and I wished that I had the courage to get up from my seat and hold her. But I’d never been that kind of brother, and though she’d come back to me we were still, in a way, far apart.

“I was in there years, wasn’t I?” said Amy suddenly. “It felt like even longer. Ages and ages. All of them other kids that had played the game, thinking it was a fun joke— all of them were just crying and shouting, knowing they were never getting out of the Eely. But I don’t think any of them actually knew how long they’d been in the dark.”

“I used to hear them,” I said. “In the cave I heard them all the time. I thought I was making it up.”

Amy didn’t answer, only drew spirals on the table with her finger, a habit she’d had as a girl and had held onto even through all those years in that timeless sentient hallway.

“Do you know what the Eely was keeping you there for?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Amy flatly. “It was eating us. Not our bodies. The inside of our heads. Them kids were all going senile. You could tell when the Eely was done with someone when they’d just go quiet. They’d forget how to talk and who they were. That was worse than all the screaming because they wouldn’t die. They’d just be like that forever in there and nobody outside would ever know what happened to them.”

An endless lifetime without light, slowly devoured by a vast concourse of evil— I ran a hand across my clammy forehead as though to brush the thought out.

“So how did you get away from the Eely?” I asked. “How are you even here?”

Amy glanced up at me, and her eyes were like grave dirt, full of a death that never was.

“It let me go. It knew you’d seen it take me, so it kept me for as long as it did knowing you were on the other side, waiting. Thinking you’d lost me. Then one day I saw light coming into the Eely; I was the only one of the kids there that could. I went towards it, walked and walked through the black until I was in the cave again.

"I thought it was a trick at first. I was too scared to go anywhere. But then it got dark again, a real night for the first time in so long. I climbed up the cliff and walked all the way here, but the whole time I knew the only reason I was out of the dark was because it wanted you to see me.”

“Why, though?” I pressed her. “Why would it do that?”

“So I could tell you what was at the end of the game,” she said. “What it was doing in there. So it could laugh at you. It knows that no one's going to believe you, Jake.”

She laid her head on her arms again, and looking at her I wondered how much of her mind had been consumed during her eleven years in the dark. How much was left of her perhaps even she did not know.

“Kids are still going to play the Eely Cave Game,” said Amy. “They’ll play no matter what you say or what you do.”

I was never big on dating apps, but loneliness can make you do things you wouldn't normally do. After another night of eating dinner alone, I downloaded one of those trending dating apps. It felt stupid at first—swiping left, swiping right, judging people based on a handful of pictures and a few words. But after a while, it became mechanical, almost hypnotic.

Then I matched with Claire.

She had only one picture—a black-and-white shot of her smiling, long dark hair falling over one shoulder, deep green eyes staring directly into the camera. Her bio was short: "Looking for something real." Something about her expression drew me in. It wasn’t the forced, filtered perfection of most profiles. She looked… real.

We started chatting right away. She asked me deep, personal questions almost immediately. What scares you the most? What's your worst memory? Do you believe in fate? I answered, drawn in by how engaged she seemed.

I asked her the same, but she avoided answering, always shifting the conversation back to me. I should have thought it was strange, but I didn't. I was too flattered by the attention.

After a few days, she asked me to meet in person.

"I’d love to see you," she wrote. "Meet me at 8 p.m. at The Lantern Café."

I hesitated. I’d never heard of it before. When I searched, I found almost nothing—just an old listing with no recent reviews. The address put it on the outskirts of town, in a part I didn’t go to often. But against my better judgment, I agreed.

That night, I drove out to the café. The area was mostly deserted—just a few scattered streetlights flickering weakly. The Lantern Café was a small, run-down place with a dimly lit neon sign that barely buzzed to life.

When I got to the door, my stomach twisted.

The sign read CLOSED, but the lights inside were still on.

I tried the handle, and to my surprise, the door swung open with a soft creak.

Inside, the place was dead silent. No barista, no customers. Just the hum of the old ceiling fan and the faint smell of stale coffee and dust.

Then I saw her.

She was sitting alone at a corner table, completely still.

Claire looked exactly like her picture—same long dark hair, same green eyes. But something was… off. Her posture was too rigid, her expression vacant. It was as if she wasn’t looking at me, but through me.

"Claire?" I asked, my voice unsteady.

She smiled, but something about it wasn’t right. It was too slow, like she was mimicking an expression rather than making one.

"I was waiting for you," she said.

I hesitated, my fingers tightening around my phone. Something about this felt wrong, like a dream that was about to turn into a nightmare.

I glanced down and pulled up the dating app. I wanted to check our messages, to ground myself. Maybe I was just being paranoid.

But her profile was gone.

No match. No messages. No trace that she had ever existed.

A cold shiver ran down my spine.

"You won’t find me," Claire said softly.

I looked up, my throat dry. "Why not?"

Her smile widened—too wide. "Because I don’t exist."

The room suddenly felt smaller, like the walls were closing in. My heartbeat pounded in my ears.

I took a step back. "This… this is a joke, right?"

She tilted her head, and for the first time, her eyes truly met mine. "You swiped right on something you shouldn’t have."

The café lights flickered. The door behind me slammed shut on its own.

I turned to run, but the moment my hand touched the door handle, everything went black.

I woke up in my apartment.

I had no memory of getting home. My phone was lying on my chest, the screen dark. My head throbbed.

The first thing I did was open the dating app.

Claire’s profile wasn’t just gone—our entire conversation had vanished. It was as if she had never existed.

I checked my texts, my call history—nothing. But then, I noticed something.

There was a new picture saved in my gallery.

A black-and-white photo.

Of me.

Sitting alone in the empty café.

Staring at the camera.

Smiling.

There’s this place in rural Canada that I grew up in. The locals call it Skinwalker Valley because the Indigenous community often tells stories about Wendigos and Skinwalker encounters in the area. Many non-Indigenous people have their own alleged true stories about these encounters as well.

It’s a strange place. There’s a weird vibe to it—tons of ghost stories, UFO sightings, and more. I won’t get into all of that though; I’ll just focus on my Wendigo and Skinwalker experiences.

All of this happened when I was a teenager. My four friends and I were packed into a car, headed to a party out in the boonies. On the highway, it’s nothing but empty fields of long grass for miles.

It was foggy that night, and we were listening to loud music, singing along, laughing, and having a good time. As we went down a hill section of the highway, the fog got even thicker. We saw a large, weird-looking figure moving in the distance—it looked unnatural.

My friend who was driving said, “What the hell is that?!” and we slowed down, pulling over to the side of the highway to get a better look. The fog was so dense and it was hard to see much, but we could make out what looked like a large black figure with long limbs next to a small body of water. It very clearly had a white animal skull for a head.

We all sat there, trying to make sense of what we were looking at. Then, our Indigenous friend said, “Holy shit… That’s a Wendigo… Drive… Drive!!!” We quickly peeled off, and he asked to be dropped off at home after that, visibly shaken.

The second encounter happened at one of the parties. It was right in the valley, alongside the lake that ran through it. We had a bonfire going, music, beer—everything was normal.

Then, suddenly, we heard a loud, blood-curdling scream that sounded like it came from a woman. We turned down the music, listening for a moment, worried that someone might need help. As we sat in silence, we heard it again.

You could hear people whispering, “What the f**k…?” and a group of us decided to check it out. We followed the sound toward the lake and, on the other side, could make out what looked like a woman with long, dark hair sitting by the water. A few of us called out, asking if she needed help, but she didn’t respond.

She just continued to scream and sob. Nobody knew what to do, and since she wasn’t communicating with us, we decided to head back to the party. Nobody wanted to call the cops because we didn’t want them to bust us for underage drinking.

The next day, we decided to go check out the area where she had been. When we got there, we found a mutilated deer carcass, swarming with flies, exactly where she had been sitting the night before.

That place still gives me chills. I fully believe the legend of Skinwalkers and Wendigos after what I saw and heard about out there.

The first time I saw one of them, I thought it was a trick of the light.  

It was late—past midnight—and I’d been working on my laptop for hours, the only light in the room coming from the blue glow of the screen. I was about to close it when I glanced toward the window and saw it.  

A figure.  

It was standing on the sidewalk outside my apartment, just beyond the edge of the streetlight. Its body was shadowy and indistinct, but its face…  

Its face was smiling.  

Not a friendly smile. Not the kind you’d give a stranger in passing. This smile was wrong—too wide, too sharp, like its mouth had been stretched beyond its limits.  

I stared at it, my heart pounding. For a moment, I thought it might be a person. A prank, maybe. But the longer I looked, the more I realized there was something unnatural about the way it stood, the way it stared at me without blinking.  

I closed the laptop and pulled the curtains shut, telling myself it was just my imagination.  

But the image of that smile stayed with me.   The next day, I convinced myself it had been a dream.  

I told no one. What was there to say? That I’d seen a shadowy figure with a creepy smile standing outside my window? People would laugh, or worse, think I was losing it.  

I went about my day, trying to forget, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. At the grocery store, I kept glancing over my shoulder. On the bus ride home, I felt a pair of unseen eyes boring into the back of my head.  

That night, as I sat in my living room watching TV, I heard it—a soft, rhythmic tapping against the window.  

I froze.  

The curtains were drawn, but I could see the faint outline of something standing on the other side of the glass.  

Slowly, I stood and approached the window, my breath shallow. I reached for the edge of the curtain and pulled it back just enough to peek outside.  

It was there.  

The same figure from the night before, its face pressed against the glass, its grin impossibly wide.  

I stumbled back, my heart hammering in my chest. When I looked again, it was gone.  

Over the next few days, the figures started appearing everywhere.  

At first, it was just one or two, standing at the edge of my vision—on the sidewalk across the street, in the corner of a crowded café, reflected in the glass of a shop window.  

But soon, they began to multiply.  

They stood in groups now, always watching, their grins frozen in place. They never moved, never spoke, but their presence was suffocating.  

I couldn’t escape them.  

They were outside my apartment when I left for work, standing silently in the alley as I hurried past. I saw them on the subway, their smiling faces visible through the windows as the train pulled into the station.  

Even at work, they found me. I’d glance up from my desk and see one of them standing in the parking lot, its head tilted as though it were studying me.  

I tried to tell myself it wasn’t real. That I was hallucinating. But no matter how hard I tried to ignore them, they wouldn’t go away.

The first dream came on the fifth night.  

I was standing in an empty field, the sky a deep, unnatural red. The air was thick and heavy, like I was breathing through a wet cloth.  

The figures surrounded me, their smiles glowing in the dim light.  

They didn’t move or speak, but I could feel their eyes on me, their gaze like a physical weight pressing down on my chest.  

One of them stepped forward, its grin widening until it split its face in two. Its mouth opened, revealing row upon row of jagged teeth.  

It didn’t say anything. It didn’t need to.  

I woke up gasping for air, my sheets soaked with sweat.  

But the worst part wasn’t the dream.  

The worst part was the figure standing at the foot of my bed, its smile gleaming in the darkness.  

I stopped leaving my apartment after that.  

The figures were everywhere now—outside my window, in the hallway, reflected in every mirror and screen. Even when I closed my eyes, I could feel their smiles, burned into the back of my mind.  

I didn’t sleep. I barely ate. Every time I tried to call for help, the line would go dead, the faint sound of distant laughter crackling through the receiver.  

I tried confronting them once. I stood at the window and screamed at the figure standing on the sidewalk. “What do you want from me?”  

It didn’t respond. It just tilted its head, its grin stretching impossibly wide.  

And then it took a step closer.    

It wasn’t until the twelfth day that I understood why they were watching me.  

I was staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to convince myself I wasn’t losing my mind, when I noticed something.  

My smile.  

It was... wrong.  

Too wide. Too sharp.  

The realization hit me like a punch to the gut: I was becoming one of them.  

The whispers in the back of my mind, the growing hunger, the way my face felt stretched and unnatural—it all made sense now.  

They weren’t watching me.  

They were waiting for me.    

I fought it at first, clinging to what little humanity I had left.  

But the change was inevitable.  

My reflection no longer matched my memories. My eyes were too bright, my grin permanently etched into my face. Even my voice had changed, taking on a hollow, echoing quality that didn’t feel like my own.   The figures didn’t stand outside anymore. They were inside my apartment, surrounding me, their smiles no longer menacing but welcoming.  

I could hear their whispers now, soft and inviting: “Join us. You’ve always been one of us.”

And deep down, I knew they were right.  

The final step came when I stopped resisting.  

The fear melted away, replaced by a strange, euphoric calm. My smile widened, my body dissolving into shadow, until I stood among them, my grin as wide and sharp as theirs.  

I didn’t know how much time had passed. Days? Weeks? Time had become meaningless.  

I stopped recognizing myself—not just in the mirror, but in my thoughts, my actions. The smiling monsters didn’t need to force me to join them. My resistance was crumbling all on its own.  

I began to feel... connected to them.  

It started as a faint hum in the back of my mind, like static. Over time, it grew louder, clearer, until I could almost understand it—a language made of whispers and emotions, of hunger and patience.  

When I looked at the figures surrounding me, I didn’t feel fear anymore. I felt kinship.  

And that terrified me.  

I decided to run.  

It wasn’t rational—I didn’t even know where I could go. But sitting in that apartment, surrounded by their grins, waiting for the inevitable, was worse than death.  

So, I packed a bag and left in the middle of the night.  

They didn’t stop me.  

In fact, they didn’t react at all. As I stepped out into the cold, empty street, they simply watched, their smiles frozen, their heads tilting ever so slightly as if to say, Go ahead. See if it matters.  

I walked for hours, my feet aching, my breath clouding in the freezing air. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I couldn’t stop. Not until I was far, far away from them.  

But no matter how far I went, they were always there.  

I reached a small town just as the sun began to rise. It was quiet, the streets empty, the houses dark.  

For a moment, I thought I was safe.  

But then I saw them.  

They were everywhere—standing in windows, sitting on porches, lurking in alleyways. Every single face was frozen in that same wide, impossible grin.  

This wasn’t just about me anymore.  

The smiling monsters weren’t following me. They were spreading.  

I stumbled into a diner on the edge of town, my heart pounding. The place looked abandoned—dusty tables, flickering lights—but I couldn’t bring myself to care.  

I collapsed into a booth, burying my face in my hands. My mind raced with questions, with fears, with the growing certainty that I’d never escape.  

“Rough night?”  

The voice startled me.  

I looked up to see a man standing behind the counter, a worn apron tied around his waist. He didn’t have the smile. His face was tired, his eyes bloodshot.  

“You’re not... like them,” I said, my voice trembling.  

He laughed bitterly. “Not yet.”  

The man’s name was Allen. He poured us both a cup of coffee and sat across from me, his hands trembling as he lit a cigarette.  

“They’ve been here for weeks,” he said, staring into the swirling smoke. “At first, it was just a few. Standing in the shadows, watching. Then more came. And more.”  

“Why?” I asked. “What do they want?”  

Allen looked at me, his eyes filled with a mix of fear and resignation. “They don’t want anything. They’re just... waiting.”  

“For what?”  

“For you.”  

Allen told me something I didn’t want to believe.  

“They’re not just following you,” he said. “They’re part of you. Don’t you feel it? That connection? That pull?”  

I shook my head, denying it even as I felt the hum in my mind growing louder.  

“You brought them here,” Allen continued. “Wherever you go, they’ll follow. And when they’ve consumed everything... they’ll take you, too.”  

His words hit me like a punch to the gut.  

I’d thought I was running from them, escaping their gaze. But the truth was worse.  

I was their anchor.  

I wanted to leave, but Allen stopped me.  

“If you run, it’ll only get worse,” he said. “You can’t outrun them. You have to face them.”  

“How?” I asked, desperation creeping into my voice.  

Allen didn’t answer. Instead, he handed me a small, rusted key. “There’s a room in the back. You’ll know what to do.”  

I didn’t understand, but I took the key anyway.  

The room was empty except for a single mirror hanging on the far wall.  

When I looked into it, I didn’t see myself.  

I saw them.  

The figures stared back at me from the mirror, their grins wide and gleaming. But there was something different now.  

They weren’t just watching me.  

They were me.  

Each figure in the mirror was a twisted reflection of myself—my face, my body, my smile. I realized then that the monsters hadn’t been following me.  

They’d been growing inside me.  

The connection wasn’t a curse. It was a transformation.  

And I was almost complete.  

Allen’s voice echoed in my mind: “You’ll know what to do.”

The mirror shimmered, the figures shifting and writhing as they reached for me, their smiles widening.  

I could feel the pull, the hunger, the promise of peace if I just let go. If I let myself become one of them.  

But then I thought about the town, about Allen, about the people who would suffer if I gave in.  

I gathered the courage, raised my fist, and smashed the mirror.

The mirror shattered into a thousand pieces, each shard reflecting a distorted version of my face. The humming in my mind stopped, replaced by a deafening silence.  

When I stumbled out of the room, the diner was empty. The figures outside were gone, their smiles erased from the streets.  

For the first time in weeks, I felt alone.  

But I wasn’t free.  

The connection was still there, a faint hum at the edge of my thoughts. The smiling monsters were gone, but I could feel them waiting, watching, just out of sight.  

And I knew they weren’t finished with me.  

Not yet.  

I thought it was over.  

For days, the streets were empty. The shadows were just shadows again, and the oppressive feeling of being watched had lifted. I even started to believe that breaking the mirror had saved me.  

But tonight, I woke up to the sound of tapping.  

It was soft at first, almost rhythmic, coming from the window beside my bed. I froze, my breath catching in my throat. I didn’t want to look, but the tapping grew louder, more insistent, until I couldn’t ignore it.  

Slowly, I turned my head.  

There, pressed against the glass, was a face. My face.  

The grin stretched impossibly wide, the eyes glowing faintly in the darkness. Its mouth moved, forming words I couldn’t hear.  

I scrambled out of bed, my heart racing, but when I turned around, another figure was standing in the corner of the room.  

It was me again, its smile frozen, its head tilting slightly as it stepped forward.  

The hum in my mind returned, louder than ever, drowning out my thoughts.  

I backed into the wall, my chest tightening as more figures emerged from the shadows—each one a perfect copy of me, their grins splitting their faces in half.  

“Why are you doing this?” I screamed.  

The figures didn’t answer.  

They didn’t need to.  

Because in the corner of my eye, I caught my reflection in the cracked mirror above the dresser.  

I was smiling.  

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat in my bunk, staring at my arm, clenching and unclenching my fist, waiting for that wrongness to resurface. It never did. But I felt it.

Like someone standing just outside your vision, watching. Waiting.

By morning, I convinced myself it was exhaustion, trauma. Maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing—oxygen deprivation, nitrogen narcosis. The others were already treating me like I’d barely scraped through a ghost story.

Except for Kristen.

She was quiet at breakfast, picking at her food. When I sat down, she glanced at my arm.

“You remember anything?” she asked, voice low.

I hesitated. “Not much.”

She nodded, but I saw the tension in her shoulders. “They pulled you up with the bell. But we lost your umbilical.”

That stopped me. “What?”

“It was severed.”

I looked down at my plate, but I wasn’t seeing it. My umbilical cord—my lifeline—had been cut? That meant…

I hadn’t been connected when they brought me back.

That wasn’t possible. I should have drowned. I should have died down there.

But I didn’t.

Because something else sent me back.

That night, I dreamt of the deep.

I was sinking, the cold wrapping around me, pulling me down. My arm throbbed, the wrongness seeping deeper into my bones.

And then—

A shape in the dark.

Not a fish. Not a person. Something older.

A presence that didn’t swim—it shifted, as if the water obeyed it.

It didn’t speak with words. It didn’t need to.

The deal wasn’t a bargain. It was an exchange.

I saved you.

Its voice coiled through my skull, a whisper in my own thoughts.

Now you carry me.

I tried to scream, but my mouth filled with saltwater.

I woke up gasping, clutching my arm. My skin was cold. Wet. Like I’d just crawled out of the ocean.

I looked down.

A single droplet of black water slid from my wrist to my palm—

Then vanished.

My heart pounded.

I didn’t come back alone.

I became something else.

And whatever I brought with me—

It’s still waiting for what it’s owed. Over the next few days, things got worse.

At first, it was just sensations—a pull in my gut when I walked past the ship’s water tanks, a shiver down my spine when I heard waves lapping against the hull. Then came the visions.

When I looked at the ocean, I didn’t just see the surface anymore. I saw depths. Shapes moving in the black. A city of impossible structures, shifting in ways that hurt to comprehend. And at its center—

A door.

Something behind it, waiting.

And I was the key.

I started hearing voices when I slept. Not just the one from before—others. Whispers carried through currents, pleading, sobbing, laughing in tones that didn’t belong to human throats.

I wasn’t just carrying something.

I was delivering something.

And it was hungry.

Then, the first accident happened.

A new diver, Lewis, went overboard during a routine equipment check. One second he was there—harness clipped, radio check clear. The next—gone. No splash. No struggle. Just... missing.

They searched for hours. No sign. No body.

That night, I dreamed of him.

He was floating in that impossible city, staring at me. His eyes were black.

You brought me here.

I woke up gasping, my arm ice-cold.

And on my wrist—a new scar. A single, curved line.

Like a tally mark.

That’s when I understood.

The deal wasn’t just about saving me.

I was its ferryman now.

And Lewis was just the first

Did you miss last week? I’ve got you covered.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/s/oBk40X5LmE

I can’t see them all clearly. It’s more of a mob, a swarm of toys turned into murder implements. Dead eyes focused on the girl and I.

Now, for the most part, I’d say to take any advice I’m giving with a grain of salt. At the end of the day, what do I know? But I would hope my opinion on evil toys is something you trust me on.

There’s a difference between me and the encroaching mob. The way I look ( Even before being given my battle scars) I’m going to be honest, probably not something you’d buy your kid.

The last time a ventriloquist’s doll looking like myself was on a toy shelf would have been the fifties. I’m the kind of thing that’s became more a symbol of eerie than anything else. Up there with VHS tapes and CRT televisions.

These things though, they’re , kid friendly? As ironic as that is. Of course they’re here to hurt us, but you wouldn’t be able to tell it by looking at them.

This is usually where I’d joke about filing that away with all the other useless supernatural trivia I’ve learned but at this point but I think I’m starting to understand things.

The way I see it, I was made a couple decades before these little guys. That tells me there is some difference, some change in how things are done between then and now.

I’m in a panic, having to think on my feet. I try to drown out the girl behind me, focus on the task at hand.

I won’t name them here, but someone last week said something in the comments about taking a page from Mike’s book. As the strangely photogenic mob gets closer, I figure it’s as good of an idea as any.

The crowd is talking to each other. Their voices becoming an unintelligible, garbled, mess. I can understand bits and pieces, it must sound horrific to the child though.

“36 against one, give or take? I’ve faced worse odds. “ I say, trying to emulate Leo and Mike as best I can.

Judging by the sudden silence, the mob can understand me as well. All eyes are on yours truly.

“You assholes are going to find out they don’t make things like they used to. “ I say, feeling like a little bit of a badass, if I don’t say so myself.

In a flash I replace one hand with one of my blades.

“You know what I hate?” I say starting to feel like I’m picking up steam, “Evil toys. Want to know why? The scary thing about an evil toy… shit that doesn’t really work. “

Something from the back laughs, an electronic, grating noise.

I’m no Mike, or Leo, I try and salvage the situation, taking a sizeable chunk of doorframe out with my blade.

“Anyone who wants the girl, is going to have to get through me. “ Is my best attempt.

The crowd reacts almost as one, driving toward the door. My attempt at intimidation a miserable failure.

I manage to slam it shut before any can get in, but already I hear the sounds of tiny hands, and whirring miniature machinery.

I hold myself against the door, fear overwhelming any confidence I may have had. If I move before the dresser gets placed in front of it, these things are getting in immediately.

I’m hit in the head by something, a baseball I think. Then a book, then a snowglobe.

I see the girl, panicked but determined.

She looks thin, pale, angry and scared. Bright green eyes contrast with the evidence of torment. She can’t be more than ten.

A jewelry box rattles the flesh inside of my head. I try to put up my hand in a ‘peace’ symbol.

“Well…” the girl seems to gather her courage, “ fuck you too! ” she says the vulgarity with the seriousness of a child using it for the first time before hitting me with a jar of nail polish.

I look to my hand and remember my missing finger. I’m frustrated, but I get where the kid is coming from. She couldn’t have understood my sad battle rant ( sorry, by the way, I’ll up my game next time. ), and I just locked us in a room together and flipped her off.

It feels like the crowd outside hits the door as one. I stumble, but manage to hold the splintering door shut.

I’m scared as hell, tired of playing this losing numbers game. Horrified of the concept of death at the end of a war of attrition.

I point to the dresser, frantically. A television remote hits me in the stomach, but I see the girl look unsure.

Outside the window I hear something being placed against the wall. Giggling and muttered threats.

Her brother.

And on top of all of this horror, all of this fear, is that darkness within me.

It’s stronger now than it has been, a pull to do evil. More than just an intrusive series of thoughts at the back of my mind, it worms its way through my being like a parasite.

Innocence, right in front of me. Defenseless, blameless, pure. It would be so easy to…

I slam my head against the door, letting the pain of my rattled skull bring my focus back.

The crowd works together, I start moving forward, centimeter by centimeter.

The girl is scared, confused, and minutes away from death either way. She cautiously makes her way over, bending low and shoving the dresser.

It moves slower than the door, the ten year old pushing herself to her limit just to make it budge.

I pull with her and the weighty piece of furniture is in place before the mob makes it’s way in.

I see what I’m looking for. Now, why on earth a kid needs a cell, I don’t know, but there it sat on a half-sized, pink desk.

I point to it, she turns it on, and sets it on the floor, not willing to get close enough to me to hand it off.

As you’d expect, the service itself was interrupted.

Thankfully I found something that could help. Do I wish it wasn’t the “Magic Horsey Voice App.” ? Sure, but at this point, any port in a storm.

“I’m not with them, I want to help.” I type, the phone rendering it in a voice that would be downright hilarious in other circumstances, “What happened?”

The girl still looks unsure, but as a tiny drill pierces through the door, she starts to talk.

“I’m Alex, and I don’t know. A while ago things started getting, scary. Noises outside, lights flickering, ghost kind of stuff.

Then Steve, he’s my brother, started acting weird. Mom and dad didn’t think it was anything but... “ She starts to shudder and cry, “He went crazy, he hurt them, bad. Then the man in the attic came with the toys.”

Seems about right given how far the Bishop is willing to go.

I listen to her story, trying to parse some way out of this situation. But I can’t take my mind off of the potential for violence. It feels like I can physically smell it at this point. A cloud of barbeque smoke wafting by a starving man.

I’ve taken two steps toward her, blade out before I stop myself.

I put the weapon away, the temptation is too much.

But other than the worst thing possible, what can I do? I’m not Mike or Leo, I’m certainly not Kaz or Hyve. I’m just, a fucking doll. An Evil one at that.

I try to type something, a message of reassurance, but the urge to do violence is stifling. I open my head, letting the fresh air wash over my bare flesh. I don’t exactly breathe, but things feel less stifling all of the sudden.

The child is shocked, but curious at the same time.

I let my senses drift, unfettered by the dampening of the magic infused head.

It happens slowly, but I see something within Alex. A glow, at first I have no idea what it is, but on an instinctual level I understand.

I’m seeing a soul, or at least as much as my creator could let me see.

This is the thing that is causing me so much strife. This is the beacon to those dark parts of me.

I tear my sight away from her, looking toward the door the dark thoughts becoming too much to handle.

Then I see something that makes so many things make sense.

It looks like a field of stars. The same kind of pure glow coming from within Alex.

The toys, the mob, each has a portion of a child’s soul bound within. It wasn’t the tiny morsel in front of me that was setting me off, it was the buffet behind the door.

And this is where I understand, my creator had to have seen this coming. What I’m for, my real purpose, isn’t some slow burn revenge story. It isn’t the tale of some half-assed necromancer flinging a toy at the problem.

Out of all the powers we’ve seen, the one that even Pi seemed impressed by was foresight. Which I’m positive my creator had in spades.

See, I’m sure all of you would agree, the amount of spooky things that started off as kids are pretty huge. By the time you’ve finished reading this sentence I guarantee you’ve thought of 4 separate examples.

My cover was a child killer. A nasty little device meant to do one of the worst things imaginable. But my purpose, as I see the dozens of tiny fractions of soul, is clear.

I’m what does the dirty work. I was made to put an end to things others might not be able to without destroying themselves mentally.

Leo and Mike would walk through the mob behind the door. But what happens to their minds when they understand they snuffed out the eternal essence of these tortured victims of necromancy? I like those guys, but putting more stress on structures that aren’t up to code in the first place isn’t a good idea.

I’ve dubbed my feelings of evil and violence ‘The Monster’, and you’ve seen a couple of times where I’ve given into it. But I’ve never really let it take the wheel, never really listened to it. It’s always been leashed, tempered.

Now I get that.

Those things behind the door, they have one thought on their mind, and it’s doing exactly what they are doing right now. No shame, no moral conundrum. Just the tortured remnants of long dead children getting comfort in the only way they can.

If I was like that, I’d be useless. Just another pipe-bomb in some evil arsenal.

But everything has a time and place, and right now is the time to let the monster have its say.

“Scream, as long and as loud as you can. “ I type on the phone before putting it down.

Alex obliges, being the kind of loud only a ten year old with nothing to lose can be.

She covers the sound of me cutting through the drywall between the closet and living-room. As the chalky material falls, my body tingles with anticipation.

Things are so clear, so simple. Instinct, and forbidden knowledge run through my mind.

I move through shadows, crawling up the wall with ease. I see the crowd, each toy pigeonholed into a specific task. Given some kind of implement of torture or destruction hidden within their cheap plastic forms.

They don’t see me, they don’t hear me, they’re focused on nothing but Alex.

I’ve wondered why my creator didn’t give me more weaponry, make me more like the proxy. But as I lean into what I’m meant to do, embrace that dark side of me, it makes sense.

I’m not like them, I’m flexible, I can adapt, I can think. The world is my weapon.

I cut a length of cord from the blinds as I silently crawl by, looking into the crowd for my first chance to test my theory.

I’m no longer in pristine condition but I manage to crawl along the ceiling just fine, staying out of sight.

Surprise makes up for a lack of speed. I take a member of the crowd unaware, a generic G.I Joe, or Action Man type.

The cord plucks him from the ground and I drag him into the master bedroom.

The only reaction from the crowd is a brief look and psychotic sounding laughter. Their minds incapable of self preservation or empathy.

It tries to fight, but for once, I’m not the smallest one in the room. I drag it by one leg, I’m not looking to fight a damn thing, I’m looking to commit murder.

So many choices, but one stands out to me.

A flat iron.

The toy feels no pain as I immobilize it. Cheap ball joints shattering easily.

I plug the iron in, setting the possessed toy between the rapidly heating elements.

After a few moments it begins to smoke and bubble. Not hot enough to ignite, but becoming soft and pliable.

A look of understanding in the eyes of the toy for a brief second.

The more I go with things the more I understand, the more secrets the monster has to tell.

These things, they weren’t crafted like myself. They’re not much more than a bit of sentience crudely spliced into some plastic.

What I need to do is separate one from the other.

Leo would have had some kind of zinger. Mike probably would have made things look like he did them with his mind or something.

Fights are public, murder is done in the shadows.

I stomp the elements, the nearly liquid toy spraying into long thin streams of plastic that cool in mid air surrounding a central smoking mass.

The noise it makes cracks window panes. A scream of anguish as the simple energies animating it are pushed beyond their capability.

Debate in the comments all you want about what I do next. But realize you’re not going to change my mind. I get what I am, what I’m made to do and how I work.

I take what’s left after the magic is strained beyond what it can do. The scrap of soul hits me like a shot of adrenaline with a coke chaser.

Call it cruel if you want, but there’s an alive child about one home depot special door away from death. I’m doing what I’m made to do.

The crowd sees the aftermath, something large, purple and simian looking breaks off, loping toward me.

It speaks madness, and gets no reply. I run toward the thing, turning at the last moment, and skittering into a kitchen cabinet.

As the infernal furnace inside of me burns through the piece of soul I consumed I smell the flesh inside of the ape-like toy. This one is more meat than Muppet.

The bottle of olive oil I throw explodes on impact with the floor. The ape-like toy makes horrific noises in response. Thinking this a missed attack.

The thick, leather pads of it’s feet make short work of field of broken glass.

They’re not as good at keeping the creature upright though.

I’m guessing it weighs around twenty pounds. The meat stuffed animal is around my size, and could probably give me a run for my money in a fair fight, stolen soul or not.

Glad I’m not fighting.

Glass pierces the cheap fur, slicing into an eclectic combination of skull, hands and feet underneath.

No elegance went into the thing’s making. It’s the byproduct of some lunatic’s sick attentions. Held together by trauma and the magical equivalent of duct tape.

Tendons are severed, long dead muscles torn.

The more the creature tries to rise, the more of itself it destroys. Each fall onto the oil slicked ground driving more glass deeper into it.

I leap from the cabinet, slamming into the thing. Bones shatter, and the both of us slide into the livingroom.

Teeth shatter as it tries to bite me. The ape-like toy enraged at it’s failing limbs.

I could end things with a stomp, or if I was feeling merciful, a single stab. But the monster doesn’t do things that way.

I crawl up an entertainment unit, the ape-like thing dragging itself toward me by it’s chin.

It’s a tasteful, white porcelain urn. The name emblazoned on it “Sparkle” makes me assume it was for a pet.

I shatter the top, creating a jagged, almost saw like blade of the opening.

I taunt the simian toy, tilting a stream of ash down on it as it tries in vain to drag it’s mutilated body up the entertainment unit.

It's like I can see how the urn will fall, every tilt, every spin. I pick my moment and push it from the shelf.

It lands in a spray of ash and shattering porcelain.

The first couple of inches of the opening remain, embedded in the hardwood floor . On the outside was the creature’s body, still twitching. Looking up at me, from the inside of the jagged porcelain shards was the thing’s head.

I take the mangled, dripping head, ducking low and sneaking back into the room. Feeling it’s scraps of soul begin to course through me.

A memory, strong enough to border on hallucination.

Grey walls, bars, orange jumpsuits. Was I in prison?

I’m talking to someone, white guy, bald head, lots of tattoos. He seems worried.

I point under the bed, the man retrieves something, handing it to me.

I inspect the object, knowing what it is. As I see the prison lighter, I notice I’m not wearing a jumpsuit. Must have been a guard.

I stumble into the room, dropping the head. The memory breaking me from reality for a second.

Alex is still screaming, god bless her heart.

Finally doing what I was made to has been fun, but if I keep going at this rate, these things will be in here, missing members or no.

I motion for the girl to get to the far wall, realizing my glimpse into my past, wasn’t random. The idea it puts into my head satisfies the monster.

(Do I have to tell you all not to make a prison lighter at home? I shouldn’t , but I will. Don’t do it.)

The door is held together by hope and the dresser as I cut the cord from a gaudy sparkle encrusted lamp, then separate the leads. One pencil later, I have the single most dangerous, inefficient way to probably start a fire possible.

Waterbottle, handfull of bottles of dollar store kids perfume, and some crayons thrown in for good measure.

I know I have to let them get in on their own, if the door suddenly opens, the base cunning left in their almost insect-like minds will sense something.

I wait, and I watch, one hand holding the plug an inch or so away from a wall socket.

They burst through, tearing back pieces of the door. The weight of the crowd pushes the dresser away, the toys crawling over each other in their zeal to get Alex.

I plug the cord in, in an instant the graphite in the pencil glows red, after a second, a piece of wood sparks from the pencil. Then all hell breaks loose.

It’s not an explosion, that takes a lot more chemistry knowledge that I have. But it’s an extremely vigorous reaction.

Plastic, alcohol and wax turn to liquid as the power surges, and breakers blow. The burning material doesn’t spray, so much as turns into a molten liquid carpet covered in dull blue flame.

The mob is bottlenecked, like crabs in a bucket, they drag each other backward in their desperation to kill Alex.

It’s not napalm, but it doesn’t need to be. Carpet, spilled books, and broken pieces of door begin to catch, intensifying the flames.

I feel on top of the world, transcendent wouldn’t be an exaggeration. I feel like I’m not only in control of the situation, but I’m part of it.

For all of about 4 seconds.

Shattering glass, paint peeling vulgarity, and Alex screaming.

The window is broken, Steve leans through, trapping Alex in a sloppy chokehold.

The sight throws the monster into the backseat, fear and uncertainty flood my thoughts. I know I have to stop Steve, but the things getting into the room aren’t going to be taken out by the fire alone.

But Alex isn’t giving up without a fight, she claws and struggles, catching desperate breaths.

I know I have to trust her, if I don’t stop the mob, we’re both dead.

I turn to the encroaching creatures.

The fire isn’t making their journey easy, joints start to fuse, glass eyes pop, and tin springs are turned to slag.

But they keep coming. Screaming in rage and pain, they keep coming.

It scares the hell out of me, watching these metaphorical cousins of mine tearing themselves apart to get to their goal.

But the monster begins to whisper, and I have no choice but to listen.

I grab a pillowcase and ensnare a molten plastic dripping baby doll. I slam the thing into the spreading pool of burning liquid, flames catch from the burning droplets as the creature screams and dies.

I feel it’s essence coursing through me, I catch glimpses of who it once was, and the horrific things that brought it to this point.

The crowd are making headway, but each passing second in the growing conflagration takes it’s toll. Rapidly they are starting to fuse together.

I would have assumed this to be the end, but the monster knows otherwise.

The energies pushing them forward are simple enough this doesn’t matter. Within a half minute, it’s an amorphous, flaming blob, dozens of screaming faces propelled by melting, deformed limbs.

I can’t let the fire do my work for me.

The strength coursing through me is more than I though possible. I lift a sticker covered floor mirror, opening my head, wanting to have as little as possible between me and what happens next.

It explodes in a spray of shards, crushing, and tearing the slug-like blob apart, squelching all but the worst of the flames.

Soul drifts from the mass like steam from dumplings. My body hums with the trapped energy.

I turn to Alex and monster or no, when I see the two inch piece of glass sticking out of her eye, I feel like a piece of shit.

But even this isn’t stopping the kid, blood and fluid stream down her face like tears. She’s turning blue, he strength waning.

I want to run, to save this kid, to buy a little bit of my god damned soul back. But the monster isn’t something I can flick on and off, it’s a part of me.

There’s a wet crunch as Alex thrashes, then buries her teeth into one of the many gaping wounds on Steve.

He has no reaction, but in a spurt of sick looking dark blood Alex severs something important.

His arm goes limp, days of self mutilation leaving his body vulnerable.

I’m walking toward them now, sauntering across a shelf close to the window.

Steve begins to fall, a look of understanding on his face. The bastard grabs a fistful of Alex’s hair, slamming her into the wall, and dragging her toward the serrated remnants of window.

I look out the window, expecting to see psychopathic glee on Steve’s face.

I don’t, I see a young man, broken, and coming back to his senses at the worst possible time. He’s not trying to kill her, he’s holding on for dear life, one foot precariously balanced on the ladder.

I grab his wrist, unholy energy giving me enough strength to hold him aloft.

I scrape Alex’s hair against the shards of glass, freeing her. Steve looks up to me, pleading, literally begging.

It isn’t a long fall, two stories or so. But Steve is already so torn apart, it’s an instant death.

The flames in the room are dying, thick acrid smoke wafting through the house.

I hop off of the shelf, doing my best to keep the monster’s attention away from Alex.

The discarded phone is cracked and melting on one side. But manages to let me get one message before it dies in a whisp of yellow smoke.

“Get to the next town, and get to a hospital. Find some family far away.”

Alex looks to me, one eyebrow raised for a moment. I make a god-aweful hissing noise to drive my point home.

She leaves, of course, walking out of the house that will haunt her nightmares for years to come.

Me, I have a supernatural gun nut to deal with.

And that’s where I’m going to leave things for now. The battery on Alex’s laptop is dying, and I know if the Mob was this bad, whoever is upstairs is going to be a lot worse.

To my friend in the comments, hopefully next time I get the chance to bust out a zinger or two. I don’t want to disappoint you. Though I think I might be more of a grower than a shower in that regard.

Till next time, if there is one.

Keep an eye out of your window.

Punch.

We were coming home from my sister’s soccer game. We kept asking Dad to stop at McDonald’s. He gave us the typical “We have food at home.” and “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” talk. I think we were wearing him down. He looked at my mother, whispered something, and started to change lanes.

We were getting excited in the back seat. Our house was only a mile or so down the road, and my Dad was taking an unexpected turn. We knew not to keep asking at this point.

Dad loved little surprises. Little deceptions. Like when he told me we needed to stop at the bank after school, and instead, he brought me to get ice cream. Or the time he woke us up early on a Saturday for a doctor’s appointment, only to bring us mini golfing and to the arcade. Mom secretly loved when he did this. She loved how far he would go to surprise us, even if it was just a Happy Meal.

The arrow turned green, and Dad started driving again. I was too busy thinking about what toy would come with my meal. I didn’t see anything. I heard Dad shout “OH MY G-“.

Then everything went black.

I woke up seconds later. At least I felt like it was only seconds later. I wasn’t in the car anymore. My vision was fuzzy. The lights were so bright. It felt like I was staring at the sun.

I just wanted to wipe the sleep from my eyes, but my body felt like it was 1000 pounds. I started to feel panicked. I heard a voice say “Hey buddy, it’s okay. Easy now.. “

I looked in the direction of the voice. It was a lady. She was purple. My vision was slowly coming back to me. Things around me were starting to take shape. No, she’s not purple, it’s her shirt. And her pants. It’s a nurse. Did Dad really bring us to the doctor’s office instead of McDonald’s? I know that can’t be true, but nothing makes sense right now. I feel the panic inside me growing.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Try to stay calm. You’ve been through a lot. Your parents will be so happy to know that you’re awake.” The nurse had a calming voice. I don’t know why I’m here, but she makes me feel safe.

I have so many questions. I don’t know where to start. What happened? Where is my mom? How did I get here? My brain was racing. I tried to speak, but all I could say was “ w-what?”

The nurse told me that my family was in a car accident. Someone sped through a red light while my dad was turning and crashed into us. She said that we must have an angel looking out for us, because everyone in our car survived and she couldn’t say the same for the other car.

Apparently, I took the most damage. She says I’ve been in a coma for 5 days. At first, they didn’t believe I was going to make it, but I started showing signs of improvement after the 3rd day. She sat with me another minute or so then told me she was going to go get my parents.

They must have been worried sick. Mom was probably biting her nails to the bone. She always bites her nails when she gets stressed out. I’m sure Dad is blaming himself, even if it wasn’t his fault. Jenny must be so scared. She’s always been the nervous type. She still comes into my room every time there’s a thunderstorm. I’d hate to see how she was when she thought her big brother was going to die. But the nice nurse lady did say that my family survived, and now that I’m awake, that means that everything is going to be okay. Or at least that’s what I thought until the door at the hospital opened again.

When the nurse walked back into the room, there were two people behind her. A man and a woman. They had bandages on their faces, and the man had a cast on his arm.

“Oh, thank god!” The woman said as she walked up to my bedside. She had tears in her eyes.

The man stayed back a step. With a hand on the woman’s shoulder, he said, “ I told you he was a fighter. I knew you’d pull through.”

This isn’t right. Maybe my eyes were still adjusting. No, it can’t be. That doesn’t sound like them either.

The woman leans in to hug me, and I flinch. “There must be a mistake. I don’t know these people. Where are my parents?”

“Don’t be silly,” the woman says while wiping the tears away from her face. “It’s me, baby. It’s Mom!”

Now I’m 100% certain these people aren’t my parents. My Mom would never call me “baby”. She hates pet names. She won’t even call me Matt. It’s always Matthew.

I can feel the panic lump in my throat again. I begin speaking louder, almost shouting, “You’re not my Mom. I don’t know you. Where is my Mom? Where is my Dad? And where is Jenny?!”

The woman slowly backs away. Turning her head, she looks over to the nurse. “ Is he okay?” Her voice is trembling. “He doesn’t recognize me?”

The nurse steps forward, “After severe trauma, sometimes people can suffer short-term memory loss. He may be disoriented and need some time to get his bearings.”

I started shouting louder, almost screaming. “ I know who my parents are. They are not my parents,” I pointed directly at the pair to emphasize my point. “And where is my sister, where’s Jenny?”

“Sweetie, who’s Jenny? You don’t have a sister?” The woman said in hysterics. “Nurse, you have to do something. There must be some kind of brain damage.”

Sweetie?! Again, my mother would scoff if she heard someone call me sweetie. My fight-or-flight senses are kicking in. My panic turns to rage. I start thrashing in my bed. Trying to find the strength to stand up and leave this nightmare.

I’m connected to too many wires and machines. I don’t even know where to begin. The man is holding onto the woman in the corner. She’s still crying, but I can’t be bothered by it.

The nurse rushes over to the bed. She’s trying to calm me down, but it’s no use. She hits a button in the side of the bed.

In seconds, the man and woman are pushed out of the way by a group of nurses trying to restrain me. They’re holding onto me and trying to keep me from hurting myself.

Once they realized that I wouldn’t calm down on my own, the nice nurse lady said, “We’re going to have to sedate him.”

One of the other nurses rushed out and back with a small bottle and a syringe. They held down my leg and stuck me, injecting the fluid into me. It was warm. My arms started feeling heavy again. I was lacking the ability to speak, to fight back.

Before I lost consciousness, I looked to my side and saw the man and woman again. They were standing in the doorway. The last thing I remembered seeing before everything went black was the woman’s face.

She was staring at me. She said nothing. But her mouth was wide open.

She was smiling.

I don’t know how long I’ve been in this room. The overhead light hums, flickering every few minutes, like it’s on the verge of dying. It smells in here; stale coffee, cigarette smoke, sweat. Maybe it’s mine. Maybe it’s his.

The detective sits across from me, rubbing his eyes. He looks exhausted, but not like he wants to sleep. More like he’s holding himself together by sheer force of will. His fingers tap against the metal table, slow and deliberate, a metronome counting down to something I don’t want to know.

I can’t stop crying. My chest heaves with every gasping breath. I want to wipe my face, but my hands are shaking too much. He doesn’t care. He just stares, his jaw clenched so tight I can hear his teeth grind.

Finally, he exhales sharply through his nose.

“Mr. Holland, we don’t need a confession. We have all the evidence.” His voice is flat, emotionless, but his fingers twitch like they’re itching to do something else. “I just need to know; where is she?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. My throat is raw.

“It wasn’t me.” My voice is barely a whisper, but I force it out again. “It wasn’t me.”

I sniff, trying to hold myself together.

“I was on a date when the babysitter called. Kayla. She’s been watching Jenny for months now, she’s great, she’s reliable. But when I picked up, something was wrong.”

The memory sends a fresh wave of nausea rolling through me.

“Her voice was off. Like she was talking through a bad connection, but…wet. Garbled, like her throat was full of something. But I heard enough to know something was wrong with Jenny.”

The detective doesn’t blink.

“I ran out of the restaurant. Sped all the way home. I barely remember the drive; I just knew I had to get there.”

I suck in a shaky breath.

“But when I got there, something was…off. The house was dark. Too dark. The porch light wasn’t on, even though I always leave it on for Kayla. No sound. No movement. Just…stillness.”

I pause, trying to keep my voice steady.

“Then I saw the upstairs window.”

My stomach twists.

“The lamp was on in Jenny’s room. And Kayla…she was standing there, looking down at me.”

A flicker of something in the detective’s eyes.

I grip the table, my knuckles white.

“She was smiling.”

The words taste like bile.

“Not smiling; grinning. Too wide. Too forced. Like someone was pulling the corners of her mouth back with a hook. And her hand”

I swallow hard.

“She was waving. But her fingers were bent the wrong way, like they were broken.”

I shake my head, trying to rid myself of the image.

“I ran inside. Called for them. Nothing. Jenny was gone. Kayla was nowhere. But then”

I hesitate.

“Something moved outside.”

The backyard. The swing set creaked in the breeze, but there was no wind.

“She was there.”

The detective leans in slightly.

I don’t want to say it, but I do.

“Jenny.”

The name feels foreign in my mouth.

“She was standing in the backyard, barefoot in the grass, swaying slightly. The moonlight hit her face just right, and that’s when I saw it.”

I can barely get the words out.

“Her eyes.”

The detective stills.

“They were mine.”

Silence.

The buzzing overhead light grows louder, like it’s listening.

“I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. She lifted her little hand and waved at me; just like Kayla had. Same motion. Same broken fingers.”

I swallow, my throat dry as sandpaper.

“And then…she opened her mouth.”

The detective’s stare sharpens.

“She didn’t cry. She didn’t speak. She just…laughed.”

A wet, gurgling sound, like something trying to force its way out of her tiny throat. It wasn’t a sound a baby should make.

“I ran. I didn’t think; I just ran. But as I turned back to the house, the porch light flickered on.”

I blink rapidly, my head throbbing.

“And I saw myself standing in the doorway.”

The detective stiffens.

“What?” His voice is barely above a whisper.

I grip the table harder.

“Me. Standing there, staring back. Same clothes. Same face. But I wasn’t moving. And then…"

I let out a shaky breath.

"The me in the doorway? He smiled. And he waved."

The detective stands abruptly. His chair scrapes against the floor.

The fluorescent light flickers again.

Something shifts in the reflection of the two-way mirror behind him.

Not me.

Not him.

Something else.

Waving.

05/20

It was nothing much, we just talked about life and dumb things we used to do. Becca brought up a story when we were in middle school. One I wished everyone forgot about, or maybe I would never have to hear again.

“No, no, no. Remember that play?” Becca started, putting her drink down on the concrete and sitting crisscross in her chair. “And how Lucas busted his ass on the stage.” Becca continues, barely managing to form the sentence without laughing through it.

Lucas shot up to his defense, “The rope was loose! Besides what about you and Mr. popular? How that go?”

“How long did you and Jenna last again?” Becca fired back, Lucas just brushed it off though I could see a tint of red on his cheeks.

“Jenna was a ho-“ Lucas muttered but Katherine cut him off.

“Wasn’t her and Jayden partners in the play?” Katherine said, in that so ever soft voice. It felt as if I could be put to sleep, made me forget what they were actually talking about for a second.

“Yeah, she liked him too. I for so ever resent him for that.” Lucas said, shooting glares at Jayden. Though I think Jayden was too drunk out his mind to even really care about the conversation.

“You know what’s funny, he would complain to me about her. He would go ranting on about how she annoyed him.” Katherine said, before Becca could respond she continued.

“He never even liked her. He rolled his eyes when he saw he’d be paired up with her.” She chuckled lightly.

This made Lucas frustration admittedly high with that stupid face he does, making the whole group laugh. I was glad they didn’t bring up more of it. As we were leaving I looked around one last time. “Resent? Big word for you.” Becca said quietly to Lucas, earning a soft jab from him. Katherine picked up her belongings just tidying up the space. Her soft dark brown hair falling off her shoulders, her loose button on her dark magenta cardigan. The way the light shined through her dark brown eyes.

We all and said our goodbye and left from Lucas house. Unfortunately, I got stuck with bringing Jayden back to his house. The drive back was quiet with the exception of music playing faintly from the radio. I knew Jayden for a while, he was always this chill guy even when drunk. Though he was more incoherent and clumsy.

We were almost at his house, it was going smoothly; as I was driving something caught my eye. It was a red rocky path through a forest near the road. Maybe I was seeing things or maybe I too was drunk enough. But that path gave me certain… feelings about that play.

Something tells me to to find my scripts. Maybe just some unfinished business, I’ll try to find it I think my mom has it. I would ask Jayden for his, but he has a bad hangover and I wouldn’t want to bother his girlfriend about it. ——————————————

06/11

Hey. It’s been a while like a month. I got my script from my mom a week ago. I’m just getting Jayden’s. He seemed to understand why I asked him for it. To better understand this I’ll take you back.

It was a cold a night, and I just turned 13. I walked around backstage getting ready quickly. The curtains draw and the play started. For reference I played Carolina and Jayden played a boy named Everett.

———————————————————

Act 1 Scene 1: Ms. Myrtle and her lake [Enter CAROLINA and EVERETT .]

CAROLINA Everett we been walking for sooo long. How far is it?

EVERETT It’s not that far, oh look!

[Both look ahead. ]

EVERETT Down by the willow, Oh down by the willow, there’s a mother by the lake. What could she be looking for?

CAROLINA Probably your intelligence.

EVERETT Very funny Carolina, now come on.

[ . . . Ed: END. . . ]

He grabbed my hand a little too quick, I almost tripped over the floor. I hate how low budget this school was, the floor board was sticking out for god’s sake! I regained my balance and Jayden looked a little guilty for it.

“You okay?” He muttered

“Yeah, Dingus.” I whispered back. He rolled his eyes.

(One thing I thought was strange was how teachers were in the play too. I didn’t pay any attention to it then, I wished I did now. For a low budget school it was sorta big.)

We walked up to “Ms. Myrtle” in reality it was just one of the teachers…

[ . . . Ed: START . . . ]

MS. MYRTLE [Low humming. ]

EVERETT What exactly are you looking for ma’am?

[MS. MYRTLE smiles gently] MS. MYRTLE I seemed to have lost my daughter. We were playing a so nice game of hide and seek. [Clasp Hands Together] Her names Sophie, have you seen her Deary?

(I’m sorry, but that smile was something I couldn’t get over. Her white stained teeth slightly crooked. It was barely noticeable, but I noticed. I noticed everything.)

EVERETT Well no ma’am. But we can help, our moms said we have to be back before sun set.

CAROLINA Do you know where we should look at first?

MS. MYRTLE Thank you Dearest! Oh yes, you should look just right out back of my house. I hope she didn’t wonder off far.

———————————————————

(Now that was the sheet I was given. A few lines I know. Though I still liked my character, I felt like she was very much like me in a way. I’m now going to put Jayden’s up here… Now for whatever reason he had the original copy, the one without cuts or fixes, and I’m starting to wonder what else happened to my friends.)

———————————————————

Act 1 Scene 2: The long red old path [Enter CAROLINA and EVERETT, forest setting. ]

CAROLINA Why you’d have to say yes? [Mumble]

EVERETT Because. . . Didn’t your mom tell you to be nice to people?

CAROLINA Yeah be nice not caring. I don’t care about this Sophie. [Throw hands up]

EVERETT Don’t talk like that. Ms. Myrtle is a nice lady. And my mom did say to respect our elders.

CAROLINA Not help them. Like we’re not even getting anything out from this! I would love to just be home with my mom. //Not an old bitch!//> (Put this out when finalized)

[Distant giggles. ]

EVERETT Over there, that’s where she is!

[Both walks to brushes. ]

EVERETT Ms. Sophie? Your mom’s looking for you.

SOPHIE Hm? That’s the point you’re going to get me spotted! [Harsh whisper]

CAROLINA She’s not playing //dumbass. She lost you now get your ass and go back home hoe// >(Don’t like this part, redo it later)

(Mind you I just stared at this. Why would the Director want me, a 13 year old, to curse in a school play? What I said if I remember correctly, “She’s not playing, She asked us to help look for you. She thinks you’re lost, so get home.” That was the line I was given.)

SOPHIE This is why I don’t play games with her. She always loses me.

[EVERETT helps SOPHIE up. ]

SOPHIE Thanks, you are?

CAROLINA He’s Everett

SOPHIE [Rolls eyes] Come on, my mom always makes cookies when we play.

[Drags EVERETT away. ]

CAROLINA Wait! What am I supposed to tell your mother?

EVERETT At an Chuckaboo! I’ll be back before sunset it’s alright!

[EVERETT and SOPHIE leaves. ]

CAROLINA Great. Now who’s supposed to walk me down the path? //That fucking bitch.// >(Take out later)

———————————————————

(In hindsight it was a rusty red color carpet that looked like it’s been left in the Arizona sun for too long. Now I found this part dumb. My character just goes on murmuring about whatever. I’m just wondering why my line was the only line changed, unless I’m missing something?)

(When I did finish my part I saw Jayden and the teacher who played Ms. Myrtle. I wonder why her name didn’t display when it showed actors. Yet most of the names were blotched and scratched away I mean this is pretty old paper.

The teacher had her hand on Jayden’s shoulder with that same smile. Jayden shot me looks, like he’s telling me not to come over. Wished I listened.)

“Oh! Sweetie didn’t see you there, you did great. I have some candy in back room.” The teacher said. Jayden was silent, but I could see the slight panic that rose in his eyes. I could already tell his inner thoughts, and while he didn't speak, it was as clear as if he had shouted it. He was begging me, pleading with me.

I thought of two things one say yes to spite him, or two say no and listen to both him and my mom. Which she didn’t like me having candy.

“No thank you, my mom doesn’t want me to eat all that sugar.” I said finally. Jayden was still creeped out. When the teacher did go away I tried to ask him what happened. He brushed it off saying, “The candies she has sucks ass.” Though I could tell it was more than that. Just had that look in his eyes, I couldn’t get it out. I pushed him more about it he just said to leave him alone so he can ‘get in part’.

I then noticed he didn’t have his jacket for his character. I pointed this out to him.

“No! It fine.” He squeaked, I could see the anxiety and apprehension on his face again. He was trying to reassure me, but I could see that he was not doing well.

I looked at him worriedly, struck by the change in his demeanor. I had never heard him like this before, this anxiety and nervousness. I saw the strain on his face the uneasiness in his eyes. Something was wrong, and that teacher must of done something.

“I can go get it or look around it’s not that big of a dea-“ He then cut me off.

“No. It’s fine. Everett doesn’t always need to wear that damn jacket. Like is he always cold or something?” He said in a slight tone. He tried to joke about it, actually he tried to joke about a lot of things during this night. Which just felt weird and force. Like why else would we have Lucas for?

That look and his squeak. I haven’t asked. And the more I get closer to uncovering this play. I can get answers. Now I tired to google it or look for it, but it’s no where to be found. Which maybe I’m spelling it wrong or something. I even went to that schools page yet nothing. Like every page. Also it’s not like

Sorry I’ll pick up when I get Lucas and Becca’s papers. I think I just saw something from my widow and now my dogs are barking nonstop.

Part 1

Part 2

The hospital loomed in the distance, its dark silhouette barely visible through the dense fog. The air was cold, sharper than it had been earlier in the day, biting against my skin as we approached. No one spoke. Our footsteps were muffled by the wet grass, and the only sound was the occasional rustle of the supplies we carried.

We reached the back entrance, the same one we’d escaped from days earlier. The metal door, slightly ajar, creaked as Tony pushed it open. A faint, sterile odor drifted out—bleach, decay, and something else that made my stomach turn.

“Last chance to turn back,” Lex muttered, his voice barely audible.

“No one’s turning back,” Andre replied firmly. He flicked on his flashlight, “Let’s get this over with.”

We slipped inside, the door shutting behind us with a soft click that sounded far louder than it should have. The building felt different now.

We moved quickly, retracing our steps through the dimly lit hallways. The floor tiles were cracked and stained.

The stairs we’d used last time stood ahead, the lower stairway leading into the blackness below.

“This is it,” I said, my voice hollow.

“Of course it’s stairs,” Tony muttered. “Because an elevator would’ve been too easy.”

Andre went first, his flashlight gripped tightly in his hand. “Wait until I’m down before the next person starts following.”

One by one, we descended into the unknown, the cold metal railing biting into my palm. The air grew heavier the further we went, carrying a faint, metallic tang that made my throat dry.

When we finally reached the bottom, the flashlight beams revealed a narrow, concrete tunnel. The walls were lined with rusted pipes, some leaking a slow trickle of water that dripped into shallow puddles on the floor. The sound echoed around us, giving the space a sense of vastness despite its cramped confines.

“Which way?” Kelsey asked, her voice trembling.

Andre checked the map of the tunnels we’d found in the maintenance room. “Left. The main tunnel should lead us deeper into the complex. If the note was right, the answers are down here somewhere.”

As we moved, the tension between us grew. Every sound felt amplified, the shuffle of our boots, the distant drip of water, the faint hum of machinery somewhere far off.

“Does anyone else feel that?” Tony asked suddenly, stopping in his tracks.

“Feel what?” I whispered.

“Like… we’re being watched.”

No one responded, but I could see it on their faces. They felt it too.

The tunnel eventually opened into a larger chamber, dimly lit by flickering fluorescent lights overhead.

Before anyone could say anything else, a sound echoed through the chamber, similar to the one we heard in the hospital days before. A low, rhythmic, guttural noise that sent a shiver down my spine.

“Did you hear that?” Kelsey whispered, her flashlight shaking slightly in her hand.

We froze, the beam of Andre’s flashlight swinging wildly as he scanned the room. The noise came again, louder this time. It sounded almost human but… not quite.

“It’s coming from up ahead,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

“No,” Lex hissed. “We’re not going toward that. Are you insane?”

“We don’t have a choice,” Andre said firmly, his grip tightening around his wrench, “If Rachael’s down here, we can’t leave her.”

Reluctantly, we moved forward, the sound growing louder with every step. The tunnel narrowed again, forcing us into single file. My heart pounded in my chest, each beat echoing in my ears.

We ended up in a large room. I covered my nose to mask the burnt scent hitting me. Inside, everything seemed to be covered in a light layer of soot and on the far side of the room, a rusted furnace. Along the walls were rows of metal gurneys with body bags resting on them.

Then we saw it. A figure resting on one of the gurneys, covered by a white sheet just the like ones we saw inside the hospital. Only, this time it was motionless.

Kelsey moved towards it first, “Is that…?” but her words trailed off as we got closer.

She slowly started to lift the sheet off of the humanoid figure.

It was James. Or what was left of him. His face was pale, his eyes sunken, and his body twisted at unnatural angles. A sharp, metallic smell filled the air, and I had to fight the urge to gag.

Kelsey screamed.

“Holy shit,” Tony breathed, his flashlight trembling in his hand. “What… what did they do to him?”

Andre knelt beside the body, his expression grim. “He’s been dead for a while,” he said quietly. “But… how did he get down here? He wasn’t with us at the hospital.”

Before anyone could answer, the guttural noise came again, this time from behind us, louder and closer than before.

“We need to move,” I said, panic rising in my chest. “Now.”

As we turned to leave, a shadow moved at the edge of the flashlight beams.

“Wait. did you see that?” Kelsey whispered, her voice trembling.

Another sound echoed through the room, this time a soft, shuffling noise. My stomach dropped as a figure stepped into the light, blocking our exit.

It was Rachael. Or at least, it looked like her.

Her eyes were empty, her movements jerky and unnatural. A deep scar ran across her forehead, and the way she stared at us sent chills through my entire body.

“Rachael?” I said, my voice barely audible.

She let out a low, guttural growl, her head tilting unnaturally to the side. Then she lunged.

Time slowed as Rachael lunged, her unnatural movements horrifying and swift. Andre reacted first, shoving Kelsey out of the way and raising his wrench in a futile attempt to protect us.

“Rachael, stop!” he shouted, his voice trembling, as though some shred of the person we once knew might still be inside.

She didn’t stop. She didn’t even flinch.

The impact sent Andre crashing to the floor, his flashlight spinning wildly as it hit the ground. Shadows danced across the walls, making everything feel even more chaotic. Rachael clawed at him, her movements feral, her growls echoing like something out of a nightmare.

“Get her off him!” Kelsey screamed.

Tony and Lex grabbed her, their hands shaking as they tried to pull her back, but she was stronger than she should’ve been, inhumanly strong. I froze, my heart pounding in my chest, until Kelsey shoved something into my hands.

The crowbar.

“Do something!” she yelled.

My mind raced. It wasn’t Rachael. It couldn’t be. But as I raised the crowbar, I hesitated. What if it was her? What if there was a way to save her?

Andre screamed in pain, snapping me out of my thoughts. His arm was bleeding, her nails digging deep into his skin.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, swinging the crowbar.

The impact sent her sprawling, her body hitting the floor with a sickening thud. She lay still for a moment, and I thought it was over.

Then she started to move again.

Her head twisted unnaturally, her eyes locking onto me. The guttural growl returned, deeper and more menacing, as she pushed herself up, her limbs bending at impossible angles.

“Run!” Andre shouted, clutching his arm.

We didn’t need to be told twice. Grabbing Andre, we bolted down the tunnel, the sound of her growls echoing behind us. My flashlight bobbed wildly.

“What the hell was that?” Tony yelled as we ran, his voice breaking.

“Not now!” Lex snapped, his breathing ragged.

The tunnel opened into another chamber, this one larger and filled with machinery. Pipes crisscrossed the ceiling, and the walls were lined with monitors, most of them cracked or flickering with static. In the center of the room stood a large metal door, its surface covered in the same strange symbols we’d seen earlier.

Andre stumbled, his face pale. Blood dripped from his arm, leaving a trail behind us.

“She’s still coming!” Kelsey cried, glancing back.

“Help me with this!” Lex shouted, running to the door.

Tony and I joined him, our hands scrambling for a way to open it. The door didn’t have a handle, just a keypad with a faintly glowing screen.

“Shit! What’s the code?” Tony yelled, slamming his fist against the door.

“I don’t know!” Lex shouted back.

Behind us, the sound of Rachael, or whatever she had become, grew louder. Her growls were joined by a strange, metallic clicking noise that made my skin crawl.

“Figure it out, fast!” Kelsey yelled, pulling a knife from her bag and turning to face the tunnel.

Andre, leaning heavily against the wall, pulled the crumpled map of the tunnels from his pocket and shoved it into my hands. “There… might be something,” he said through gritted teeth.

I scanned the map, my hands shaking. The symbols on the door matched something in the corner of the map, a sequence of numbers and letters.

“Try 7C-A43!” I shouted.

Lex punched it in, and for a terrifying moment, nothing happened. Then, with a low hiss, the door slid open, revealing another tunnel bathed in red light.

“Go!” Tony yelled, pulling Andre through.

Kelsey was the last to follow, her knife clutched tightly as she backed toward the door. Rachael’s figure appeared in the distance, her growls growing louder as she moved faster, her body jerking with each step.

Kelsey hesitated for a split second, then bolted through the door. Tony slammed his fist against a button on the other side, and the door slid shut just as Rachael reached it.

The sound of her growls and the metallic clicking didn’t fade. She pounded against the door, the force shaking the ground beneath us, but allowing us a moment to breathe.

Kelsey looked towards Andre “Your hurt,” pulling out a first aid kit “let me help you.

“I’m fine,” Andre said, gasping for air “really.”

“Shut up tough guy,” Tony grabbed some gauze from Kelsey and tightly wrapping around his arm “like you said, we’re in this together.

“We can’t stay here,” Andre said weakly, his face pale.

“We won’t,” I said, glancing down the red-lit tunnel. “But wherever this leads… it might not be any better.”

The others looked at me, their faces filled with fear and exhaustion. No one said anything. We just kept moving, deeper into the unknown.

The rapture has happened, and I was left behind. All my life, I questioned the existence of a god. I sinned repeatedly, grappling with the idea that there couldn’t be a god—at least not the one that Christians described. I thought I was right. It happened yesterday while I was working my cashier job at the local grocery store. Suddenly, I was blinded by a light emanating from the sky. As my eyes adjusted, I realized the sky was no longer its usual blue; instead, golden rays enveloped everything in sight. It was breathtaking. In that moment, I knew what was unfolding. A being descended through a crack in the sky—some sort of man-like creature draped in a pristine white robe that radiated an aura of superiority. It was God. I chose silence, mesmerized. I ran outside, unable to look away. Co-workers, friends, strangers—millions—began to float toward the being. I remained anchored to the ground. Then, the being spoke: “My children. Come witness your spiritual bodies in my kingdom. This day has been foretold since my word was created. The rest of you are not my children. Those who remain will face the punishment I leave for you. Blasphemers, murderers, rapists. Ye who remain shall surely go to Lucifer.” Tears welled in my eyes. What kind of god was this? I felt an overwhelming urge to shout, “Why us, God? What did you expect? You gave us a book—that was it! What kind of king are you?” For a fleeting moment, I could have sworn He looked down at me specifically. I turned and walked back into the store, standing amidst the chaos. I knew more painful emotions were yet to come, but I was determined to survive as long as possible.

A month has passed since that day. My parents are gone. My brother is gone. Everyone. Now, embers of some kind of fire rain down—little bits at a time. I’ve contemplated ending my own life, but I refuse to succumb. I will live as long as I can. I vow to anyone reading this: I won’t die by my own hand. I’ve begun to wake each morning with strange carvings etched into my skin. This morning, it was “Woe to those left behind.” I can’t make sense of it. What does it even mean? As I write this, riots and looting dominate the news. Is this what God wanted? To sow doubt about His existence, then watch us turn on one another? If He’s still watching, I hope He sees the consequences of His actions. Children are dying every day. I will update this journal each month.

Two months in: The fire has intensified with each rainfall. My house is the only one on my block untouched by the chaos. It seems there were a lot of Christians running this country. Everything is in disarray—pure anarchy. I met a woman who was stuck in the rain. I let her in, treated her wounds, and offered her shelter. She accepted. You wouldn’t think there could be happiness amidst this despair, but the rain has become a norm, and she and I have found a rhythm, living as we did before the rapture. Her name is Misty. I plan to start updating on our food supply each month; crops are nearly impossible to grow in this fire rain. For now, we have enough to last a year if we ration wisely.

Three months in: The fire rains persist daily. Between downpours, I check the roof. A few weeks ago, we found sheet metal and reinforced our home. It should withstand the flames. Misty and I have grown closer—I feel a connection with her, but it frightens me. If something happened to her, I don’t know how I would cope. The rioting and looting have slowed, mainly because there’s nothing left to steal. The fire has decimated wildlife, so hunting is futile. Our entertainment has become board games. We discovered a stash of guns and food, ensuring we’re relatively well-off—enough provisions for up to two years if we’re careful.

Seven months in: My phone broke, and I haven’t found a replacement. Everything has deteriorated. We are the last people left in town, though raiders have passed through occasionally. The only thing keeping me sane is Misty. A while back, she kissed me, and we’ve been together ever since. It feels reckless to care for someone in these dire times, but perhaps if I’m careful, it will be alright. I managed to get a radio working and have been trying to broadcast a message for help—a plea for a community we could join. So far, there’s been no response. The rain has ceased, and we’re unsure why. Misty and I are honing our skills with weapons, just in case. We have about a year’s worth of food left—maybe a year and a half if we ration well.

Five years in: I just found a functioning phone. If God is still watching, I want Him to end my suffering. If the devil is, I hope he does too. Misty is gone. Our child, Sean, is gone. He was only three years old. Why, God? What did we do? We did nothing. What a terrible king you are. How are my parents? How is my brother? Where are the souls you took? Damn you, God. If I can reach heaven, I’ll find you and confront you myself. Listen closely, God: I have a Beretta M9 aimed at my temple. I’m coming for you, you liar. Misty, I’ll see you again. Just wait for me.

I’ll make a new post when I’m done with this. If anyone sees this, good luck. Keep surviving. Maybe you’ll see me emerge from this darkness and end it.

Jem died on prom-night.

Alone, and crumpled in the road, shattered into pieces.

While I was convinced he'd stood me up.

The person who hit him swiped the ring he was going to propose to me with.

“We’re burying what we could find.” I was told at his funeral.

That's what his Mom told me.

Instead of his body, she buried his tux and shoes.

We didn't have the luxury of having a body. There was no body.

Jem's mom hid her agony with wide smiles and swollen eyes.

"It's okay, we can... bury his clothes!"

She said that's what he would have wanted.

I know Jem, and he would have wanted to be cremated. Burned to ashes.

Jem hated the idea of being buried underground to rot away into nothing.

He once told me, if he were to ever die young, he wanted his ashes sprinkled in the sea. So he could go to Atlantis.

That's what loved about him. He was a fantasy freak.

His mother's words stuck with me, heavily, like a fucking weight on my chest. She did her best to comfort me at the funeral, but I couldn't stand the idea of burying an empty coffin.

"We're burying what we they can find, sweetheart, and some of his clothes."

They couldn't FIND anything.

Jem was dead and gone, and whatever pieces of him left were lost. Most of him was caught around the car wheel.

Apparently, the crime scene was grisly. Blood on the road, a cruel scarlet smear stretching right across the sidewalk.

Excuse me for my language, but the evil bastard who hit him didn't even care.

He swiped the ring Jem was going to propose to me with.

And left him dead on the side of the road like he didn't fucking matter.

Grief is weird. It hits you in waves, and emotions no longer feel like your own.

I laugh, and it doesn't feel right.

I cry, and it feels forced.

It's like being an alien among humans.

I thought I was okay, and then I was hearing his favorite song, smelling his cologne was still clinging to my clothes and my car seats, even my own skin.

Then I was breaking apart all over again, overwhelmed, fucking suffocated with him– until I couldn't breathe.

I wanted to stay with him– even if he was six feet under the ground, buried in dirt and surrounded by wilting flowers.

It wasn't fair that I was alive, and he wasn't.

Every day, I was numb, and I was sick of numb.

Every day had no sound. Every day was like living in a forwarding video tape, and I was the only one awake. Alive.

Two months after Jem’s death, sound bled back in the form of a loud squawk.

I was walking back from school a few days ago. I don't know what day it was.

I didn't care. Lifting my head, a crow swooped above me. I admit, I was mesmerized, smiling a little.

I think that was the first time I actually felt something.

But then I glimpsed what was caught between its talons.

Scarlet entrails twisted in burned strips of clothing I recognized.

What was never recovered. What his mother was still looking for.

Something snapped inside me, my legs giving way.

Jem’s tux. The one he died wearing.

Another crow flew past, its beak twitching, beady eyes focused.

This time, my boyfriend’s mutilated torso was clinging between tiny talons.

I thought I was going to throw up.

My first thought was they were hungry. But it didn't matter, because they accomplished what the police couldn't.

The crows found him.

Before I could stop myself, I threw myself into a run.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I HAD to know what was left of him, and how much of him– and if I would be able to scoop up his lost pieces and take him home.

The crows touched down deep in the town forest. I thought it was a nest, or worse, maybe they were eating him.

But to my shock, there were bodies, all of them dead kids, and among them, my boyfriend, lying in pieces half fused together, his head attached to his torso.

The crows worked effortlessly, hopping across the ground, piecing Jem together like a puzzle.

I watched, baffled. These kids weren't recently dead. They died a while ago.

Serena drowned last fall. Rowan crashed his car two years ago.

It started to to hit me slowly, in waves of ice cold water, that the crows didn't find the other dead kids.

When one crow pecked at Rowan's torso, pulling out stringy intestines, his body jerking, just like Jem’s, I slammed my hand over my mouth.

The crows dug them up.

Which means these birds actively searched for them.

Wanted them specifically.

Serena’s face was half rotted away, maggots creeping from her nostrils.

The crows rolled her over, chirping to each other, like giving each other orders.

Rowan was more skeletal than human, and yet I watched, transfixed, as fleshy patches of feather-like skin spread across the pearly white of his skull, covering his half mutilated grimace.

When they were finished with the other two, their focus went to Jem.

He took a while. So long that my legs were aching from staying crouched, my clammy hand glued to my mouth.

When they were finished, the crows left in a flock, taking off into the sky.

They had buried Serena and Rowan in shallow graves covered in flowers and berries.

I think… I could be mistaken, but I think it was their own version of a funeral.

Jem, however, lay on his back.

Somehow, despite the grisly way he had been put back together, he was still beautiful.

I thought I was never going to see him again, and there he was, put together like a puzzle piece. I noticed he was missing an arm, and a quiet “chirp” startled me.

Next to me, a baby crow was dragging his mutilated arm.

And with perfect precision, reattached it, hopping across my boyfriend’s stomach.

It flew off when I got too close, struggling to hold myself together.

I dropped to my knees in front of him, tears choking my throat.

I could take all of him back to his mother.

I could bury him whole.

I scooped him up, but when he twitched in my arms, I dropped him.

“Jem?” I whispered, my trembling hands cradling his face.

His flickering eyes, lips parting in a silent cry.

He didn't move, his head slumping, but his chest was… twitching.

He was alive.

When I rolled him onto his back, something slimy filled my throat.

Something was writhing under his skin, raven black streaks running up and down his naked spine.

His body twisted and jerked, his head snapping back, congealed blood seeping from his mouth in black lumps.

I shuffled back when his spine broke through skin, splitting in two, bulging feathered appendages protruding from his back.

Wings.

He was beautiful, and yet when Jem turned to me, vacant eyes, beady, almost bird-like, I found myself stepping back.

The glamour over my eyes seemed to come apart, and I saw the reality of him, a human twisted and cruelly contorted into something inhuman.

His head twitched, dead eyes staring straight through me.

I think he was trying to speak, the way his lips parted slowly, but I don't think he could.

Behind him, a single crow watched him, its head inclined, almost like it was waiting for something.

I screamed at it, told it to shoo, but the bird just sat there staring at me.

It wasn't frightened or intimidated.

It's almost like it was playing it's own fucked up games with me, pushing me to rush at it or try and attack the thing.

Jem didn't react when I said his name.

I don't think he even knows his name.

Instead, he turned, spread his wings, and took off into the night.

After a moment of the crow watching me, again, like it wanted me to do something.

Its tiny eyes flicked to a pebble, and I felt it; a sudden, overwhelming urge to grab the rock, and throw it at its head.

But I didn't.

And, like it was disappointed, it too swooped into the air, giving me last one caw.

Days later, I was woken by ice cold air.

My window was open.

And on my pillow next to me, something was wet.

My forehead was sticky, strands of my hair glued to my cheeks.

There was a decapitated head neatly placed on my pillow. Its eyes were wide open, like they were still screaming.

Next to it, was my ring.

The following night, I woke to coins being dropped on my pillow.

Then maggots.

Human arms and legs.

I think he's giving me ‘gifts’ but I'm fucking terrified of him, and what he's turned into.

If I shut my window, he comes through the front door.

He won't stop.

I've told the authorities, but they're convinced it's some kind of animal????

I led the sheriff back to the forest where I found the bodies of the other kids, but they're gone.

I'm terrified the same thing that happened to Jem-- whatever creature he became - - is happening to them too.

I keep hearing noises at night, loud chirping and flapping wings.

Like they're outside my house hunting me down.

It sounds like they're teasing me, waiting for the right moment.

I can hear a mix of human laughter, laced with something wrong. Bird-like.

They're outside right now. Laughing. They won't stop laughing.

Giggling.

Chittering in their own language, and sometimes I swear the birds answer.

They swoop past my window, slamming their talon-like nails on the glass.

I tried locking and bordering it up, but they just tore it down.

Please help me. How do I get Jem to stop??? Is there a way to stop them??

Whatever my boyfriend has turned into is trying to fucking KILL me.

Okay, Reddit, I need to get this off my chest because I’ve dug myself into the weirdest hole, and I don’t know how to get out of it without ruining my reputation or breaking a bunch of hearts.

It all started as a joke. I live in a tiny town where everyone knows everyone, and gossip spreads faster than wildfire. One day, my friend Sarah was stressing about her love life and jokingly said, “I wish I could just *know* if Jake likes me or not.” Without thinking, I said, “Oh, I can tell you. I’m kind of… psychic.”

I don’t know why I said it. Maybe I was bored, maybe I thought it would be funny. But Sarah’s eyes lit up, and she begged me to “read” her. So, I made up some vague stuff about how Jake was definitely into her but was shy, and she needed to make the first move. She believed every word.

A week later, Sarah and Jake were officially dating, and she told everyone I was the reason they got together. Suddenly, people started coming to me for “readings.” At first, it was just friends, and I kept it light—stuff like, “You’re going to find $20 soon” or “Your cat is plotting something, but it’s fine.” But then word spread to the rest of the town.

Now, I’m getting calls from strangers asking me to predict their futures. The local bakery even asked me to bless their new oven so it wouldn’t burn the bread. I tried to back out of it, but they looked so hopeful that I caved and waved my hands around the oven while muttering nonsense. Apparently, it worked because their bread has been perfect ever since.

The breaking point was when the mayor’s wife asked me to help find her lost wedding ring. I panicked and said it was “near water.” She found it in her sink the next day and now thinks I’m a miracle worker.

I’m not a psychic. I’m just a regular person who made a dumb joke that spiraled out of control. But now, the whole town thinks I have supernatural powers, and I’m terrified of letting them down. I’ve thought about coming clean, but I don’t want to disappoint everyone or make them feel stupid for believing me.

So, Reddit, what do I do? Do I keep up the act and hope no one asks me to predict the lottery numbers? Or do I come clean and risk becoming the town pariah?

TL;DR: Jokingly pretended to be a psychic, accidentally became a local legend, and now I don’t know how to stop without ruining my reputation. Help.

It was my third week living in a small town called Guardala. It wasn't even an option. The company I worked for had just opened a unit in that town, and as one of the senior employees, I was assigned to oversee the opening process. I was required to stay there for three to four months.

Guardala wasn't a bad place. As a matter of fact, it was one of the quietest and most beautiful small towns I had ever been to.

I enjoyed the peacefulness—the chirping sounds of birds, the flowing water in the river, and the rustling of trees swayed by the wind.

The apartment my company rented for me was about a 15-minute train ride away or a 45-minute trip by bus. So, when I had to work overtime until nearly midnight that day and there were no buses available, the only option left to go home was by train.

I stood on the train station platform, raised my hand to check the time on my wristwatch, and wondered when the next train would arrive.

It was 11:45 PM, and I still saw a few people standing there, waiting for the last train.

Then, a few minutes later, precisely at 11:50 PM, I saw an oncoming train entering the station.

"There it is," I thought.

The train stopped and opened its doors. I looked around. There were about five or six other people, but no one seemed to move. I was the only one who stepped inside.

One of the ladies standing just a few meters from me looked startled when she saw me board the train.

"Isn’t this supposed to be the last train?" I wondered as I took a seat. The train car I was in wasn’t full, which made sense since it was nearly midnight. But it was at least half-occupied, which seemed odd for this late hour.

As I waited for the train to arrive at my station, I pulled out my phone to check if I had any messages from friends, family, or colleagues.

There was one. It was from Caleb.

Caleb was my coworker. He was a local and had also worked overtime with me that night. But his place was just around the corner from the office.

"Hey, man," Caleb said in his text. "I don't know if anyone has ever told you this, but I guess it's better to tell you regardless. I forgot to mention it back at the office."

"The last train in this town is precisely at 12:00 midnight," Caleb continued. "The previous one is at 11:15 PM. So, if you ever see a train arriving between 11:15 and 12:00, do not board it."

The message was sent at 11:10 PM—right when I had just left the office.

"Why?" I asked.

Caleb replied quickly. "Let’s just say there's an urban legend about it that’s been around for generations. No one boards a train that arrives between 11:15 and 12:00. Do not get on."

Was that why the lady at the platform seemed startled when she saw me board?

"But why? It's just a train," I texted back. "I mean, I can just get off at the next station if it takes me the wrong way."

"Why do you sound like you're already inside the train?" he asked.

"I am," I replied. "The train arrived at 11:50 PM, and I hopped in. It’s already departed."

It took him a while to respond. Then, he replied with only one word:

"Shit."

Okay. That was odd.

"Care to explain, Caleb?" I typed. But before I could send the message, my phone lost signal. No texts, no calls, no internet. Nothing.

Weird.

I looked out the window and noticed something strange. I had taken this train countless times, but never once had I seen mountains through the windows.

Guardala was a beach town. It didn’t even have a single mountain.

I had no idea where the train was headed, but it didn’t seem like I had any other options.

So I remained seated.

I looked out the window again and saw a tunnel ahead. Within minutes, the train entered. Pitch darkness. Apart from the dim lighting inside the train, there was nothing. No lights. No signs.

Then, I felt the train slowing down. Slowly… slowly… until I saw the light ahead at the end of the tunnel.

I didn’t know why, but I had a bad feeling.

The moment the train exited the tunnel, I immediately saw a train station. That should have been a good thing. But something about the station looked eerie—wrong.

The station’s walls, pillars, and ceilings were decorated with jagged rocks, as if it had been built inside a cave. The train slowed down more and more until it eventually stopped.

I looked out the window. There were people standing on the platform, as if they were waiting to board.

The moment the train stopped and the doors opened, an earthquake suddenly struck. The station’s walls and floor cracked open, and from those cracks, flames burst out.

The station turned scorching hot.

It felt like hell.

The passengers inside the train erupted in chilling cries. They screamed in horror, realizing what was about to befall them.

Then, just seconds after the flames burst from the cracks, the people standing on the platform transformed.

They became monstrous—three meters tall, with red skin and golden horns protruding from their heads.

Demons.

The passengers screamed even louder.

Three demons stood in front of my train car. Each one smashed a window, grabbed a passenger by the head, yanked them through the broken glass, and hurled them into the fiery cracks.

I watched as the passengers struggled, trying to claw their way out of the flames. Their screams of agony echoed through the station. But one of the demons walked up and shoved their heads deeper into the fire.

In seconds, they were gone.

Consumed by fear, I instinctively ran out the train’s door and past the demons, who were too busy grabbing and throwing people into the flaming cracks to notice me.

I had no idea what lay beyond the platform full of enraged demons, but staying there wasn’t an option. So I ran—through the station of hell.

The next chamber I entered was even worse. People were being punched to pieces by the same kind of demons I had seen earlier. But they didn’t die. Seconds after being torn apart, their bodies regenerated—only to be shattered again. Over and over.

Was there any way out of this hellish place?

Anything at all?

I didn’t stop running, despite witnessing countless forms of human torture around me. Strangely, none of the demons seemed to pay attention to me. Or so I thought.

Then, without warning, a giant, red hand grabbed me by the torso.

It was one of the demons.

“This is the end of me”, I thought.

The demon lifted me to its eye level, staring intently, as if trying to observe me. I braced myself, expecting it to bite my head off. Instead, it let out a deafening growl right in my face.

It growled so loud, so close, it felt like my eardrums were about to explode.

Then, unexpectedly, the demon raised its arm—me still in its grasp—and hurled me back toward the train platform. I crashed into the jagged ceiling before plummeting hard to the ground.

Pain shot through my entire body. It felt like some of my bones were fractured, if not already broken. But I forced myself up, thinking of trying to run past the demon, hoping for another way out.

It growled again. Then it charged at me.

What choice did I have?

None.

I turned and ran back to the train. It was still there, its door open. I sprinted as fast as my battered body allowed, diving inside just as the demon reached the threshold.

But it didn’t follow me in.

It stopped right outside the train’s door. It didn’t try to step in. It didn’t even try to reach for me.

It just stood there. Silently.

I took a look around. The car was empty. No one else was there. All of the passengers had been thrown into the fiery cracks. All of them.

No one was left.

No one but me.

Yet none of the demons tried to take me. Not a single one.

From the next train car, I heard the same bloodcurdling screams. It was happening there too.

When the demons were done, silence fell.

Then, as if nothing had happened, the demons transformed back into human forms. All the cracks were reversed and disappeared. The fire was gone. The train station's platform returned to normal.

Seconds later, the train doors closed, and the train departed.

I was alive. But…

What the hell was that?

I stayed in my seat, waiting for the train to stop at the next station. I didn’t know where it would take me, but it could be worse than the last one.

Minutes passed, though it felt like an eternity. Then, finally, the train arrived at another station.

It looked familiar.

It was the station near my office. The very place where I had boarded the cursed train.

As soon as the doors opened, I wasted no time. I leaped onto the platform.

The moment I stepped off, the train pulled away, disappearing into the darkness.

I looked around. No one was there.

I remembered a large digital clock hanging near the platform.

12:01 AM.

Everything I had just experienced had lasted only 11 minutes. But it felt like forever. Then, my phone vibrated. The signal had returned. It was a message from Caleb.

"Well, I can't really tell you for sure where that train goes," he wrote. "I honestly don’t know. The legend has been around for generations. Some of our great-grandparents accidentally boarded it—and, thankfully, returned to tell the story. They said the train took them to hell. Or something like it."

"But that was generations ago," he continued. "We all know there shouldn’t be any trains between 11:15 and 12:00, so no one dares to board one—even if they see it."

"I’ve seen it a few times," he admitted. "But I never got on. And I never planned to."

I thought that was his last message. But then another one came.

"So, I don’t know if the train actually goes to hell or not."

I tapped the reply button on my chat app and responded to Caleb.

"It does."

The longer I’m around. The more I realize that things just happen. They come and go and you’ll never get the answers you’re looking for. That’s kind of how Turkey entered my life in the first place. Turkey is a dog. He was my friend’s dog.

He was a good guy, my friend, I mean. Really outgoing and nice to everyone, until one day when he just wasn’t himself anymore. Shut himself off from the world and, well, you know, lots of traumas. But when all was said and done, Turkey needed somewhere to go and I was looking for any support I could find, so I offered to house him.

Turkey reminds me of how my friend was before. Always excited and ready to socialize. Just close your eyes and picture a golden retriever. There you go, you just imagined Turkey. Happy face, floppy ears, and golden fur, the works. I watched Turkey go from a pup with way too much energy to an old dog with way too much energy.

We have been through a lot together. There were days when I’d look at Turkey and realize I had known my friend’s dog longer than I knew my friend. This was a somber thought to be certain, but sometimes comforting. Like, I had this piece of my friend that got to grow with me even when he couldn’t. Ya know? It drove me to be better like he was always keeping an eye on me.

Helped me a lot in life and I’d say I’m doing well for myself. Turkey has been with me for all of it, every promotion, and every move. His favorite is our little adventures into the woods. We’d stay at the cabin my dad built with his own hands whenever time off from work permitted such a luxury.

I bring up the cabin because that must have been where it started. Turkey is an indoor dog, but when we’re at the cabin, he’s allowed to venture as he pleases. It’s the only time I can think of where something must have happened. He had to have run out into the woods and gotten into something.

It’s easy to picture him leaping around and plunging his nose into all the smells the wild has to offer. Pressing his face just a little too close to some strange something-or-other. Maybe he was bit or crossed some strange threshold, I just don’t know. I’m not sure when the first signs reared their ugly heads too.

Maybe the plastic? What I assumed was plastic anyway. Turkey had started to spit out these little red flakes. They were hard and glossy. At the time, I assumed that he had just chewed up some toy he found as he hadn’t been acting strange prior. One piece was particularly large, and it must have cut Turkey’s throat because it carried small trails of blood mixed with the mucus.

Before you think I’m neglectful. I took him to the vet when he chucked up the bit with blood on it. But nothing was out of the ordinary. Well, the vet’s bill was pretty insane, but other than that, Turkey had a clean bill of health. The vet was actually impressed given Turkey’s climbing age.

Still, Turkey kept leaving little red flakes lying around the house. I remember stepping on one, I was barefoot, and it was hard enough that it managed to pierce my skin, causing me to bleed.  

Or maybe it was when he started just staring off into space. Dogs do that sure, but he would walk up to the wall, press his nose against it, and just stare there. He’d do it once or twice a week, and anyone I talked to just suggested early signs of dementia. Again, Turkey, he’s old. And just because his body was healthy, didn’t mean his mind was.

So, I thought, sure. My dog just has a few quirks. He still loved to play catch. The same dog that liked to rub the bark off sticks with his teeth. I still had to stop him from chewing the handmade furniture in the cabin. Same dog that always spun around 3 times before deciding to lay down. Always three times. Same dog, my friend.

The dementia thing. Probably made me overlook too many things. I remember rounding the corner one day just in time to watch Turkey walk across the room… sideways. He watched me continuously, moving steadily from one side to the other with perfect balance as if performing a waltz. It was uncanny to watch, each time I saw it, unnatural.

He’d also do this thing where his eyes would go wide and I swear, it looked like he was trying to bulge them out of their sockets. It was so strange. But every time I took him somewhere to get checked out, there was nothing. Or at least, nothing they could explain.

Things really ramped up when I found the first lump. Right able his right eye, every time I pet him I could feel it. It was a stiff bump, it felt like bone but I knew in my heart that it hadn’t been there before. This was confirmed when another larger bump appeared at the back of his temple, just as stiff and unmoving.

The bumps showed up during examination, the vets said it was practically bone, and they implied that maybe I just missed the spots before. That they were just oddities in how Turkey’s skull developed. It became harder to go back to the vets with each failed visit, financially and spiritually.

At this point, something was obviously wrong with him. His energy was lower, and he’d space out more and more. Sometimes just staring at me, unblinking for, God, hours? It would creep me out so much. Just waiting for him to move, it felt like he was going to lunge for me at any moment. But instead, he’d eventually come to and trot off, sometimes even doing his strange sideways exit.

More and more bumps appeared, they seemed to be growing at times too, one being large enough to pierce through his skin. After cleaning where it had poked through, I could see it was a dull red, just like the flakes he was spitting up. Whatever was happening to my dog, Turkey was gone. He just wasn’t himself anymore. Whenever I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see him. I just saw a silent plea, one I just a few weeks ago, decided to answer.

So, we went to the cabin.

It was just me and him. Sitting on the bathroom floor. I had tightly bundled him with the blanket from the bed we slept in throughout the years. He got to eat a couple of hamburgers, ones with a mix of drugs that made him more and more tired. With golden hour cresting through the bathroom window, we sat.

My hand resting on his chest, I felt his frame rise and fall with each breath,

UP

DOWN

UP

DOWN

Up

Down

Up

down

I sat for a while, thinking I would feel his chest come back up again. But it didn’t, and I was alone. Thinking that at the very least, I got to say goodbye to my friend this time. The cocktail of drugs took longer to take effect than I initially thought and by the time Turkey had passed, moonlight was filling the room.

Finally deciding the world had to keep spinning, I stood up and just let Turkey lay there. I thought he deserved one last rest in the home, I guess. And so I went to bed and rested in it alone for the first time. It didn’t feel right, it was so empty. I tossed and turned throughout the night, struggling to sleep.

After several hours of giving it my best go, I ended up just lying there with my eyes open, staring at the wall. And then I heard a *Click*. At first, it sounded like something had just fallen onto the roof, but then I heard it again.

*Click*

I sat up in bed and waited for the noise to occur again.

*Click*

I turned my head to the noise; it was definitely coming from inside the house. A faint and brief tapping. It sounded like a stone being dropped onto linoleum.

*Click*

Quickly shuffling to the side of the bed, I rose out, dropping the sheets onto the floor. Thoughts were bouncing around in my head. Wondering if I locked all the doors and windows. Trying to recall if I had seen any suspicious behavior or if some raccoon had just made their way inside.

*Click*

I stood in the hallway, peering down at the silver beams of light that spilled out from the open bathroom door as the clicking picked up in pace. My heart sank as I thought about the possibility of Turkey writing around on the floor. Thinking that I had somehow messed up the doses and put him through more pain.

Then the light coming out of the door was partially obstructed at the bottom of the doorframe.

*Click*

My body was stiff watching the shadows shift in tandem with the tapping emitting from within the bathroom. Getting larger and larger. Red, dull red was the first color I could see poking out of the bathroom. In one swift motion, it moved out into the hall, as if intentionally trying to shock me.

A spastic and unforgiving revelation of the strange and twisted claw that pressed down onto the hallway’s carpet. Obviously, I was astonished. My brain was firing off synapses to try to understand what I was seeing. The malformed, bleak and dark representation of a crab’s claw. It looked gnarled and jagged, covered in a glossy and heartbreaking red liquid.

The claw was attached to a similarly messy-looking arm, it looked like old musty PVC piping and was about as thick as one of Turkey’s arms. It twisted and creaked at the joint pulling along the body behind it, revealing more and more horror with each drag forward.

Strange clicking was replaced with a sudden thud, like a book dropping onto the carpet. The arm operating the claw led my vision to the complete desecration that had become of Turkey’s face. I had what felt like an eternity to absorb the gruesome sight of my friend's ruined corpse, the silence amplifying the horror.

His face had been split open, the crab’s arm sticking out like a pipe that had pierced a seat cushion. The area was fractured and had red gleaming in the moonlight. His eye had shifted and was protruding. A thin collum of muscle lifted the eye out of the socket, leaving it to bend around with each drag.

Another pulls forward. I could see the other claw starting to make its way out of Turkey’s face. Breaking through the surface it pushed aside wet matted fur, I could see where the thinning film of skin started to parse and tear, streams of red brighter than the claw spilling out.

Each forward drag painted the carpet, the vibrant colors marking its territory. My heart could’ve broken bone, it was beating so hard. I retreated a step when the abomination pulled forward. Another sullied and filthy claw reached out and landed on the carpet, malformed and slightly smaller than the other.

Embarrassingly, I tripped as I attempted to back off again. My body was so rigid and shaky, and it was hard to step correctly. My nerves didn’t even register the pain of plummeting to the floor, all my mental capacity was focused on what had become of Turkey. How the claws, larger than his whole torso, would bend and strain to pull my dog’s body behind it.

With both claws out and articulating though, the monster was moving fast and clearly coming towards me. Turkey’s other eye made a sickening squelch as it popped free from his face and lifted next to the other. Both beads of darkness focused on me.

What remained of Turkey’s face was all fractured bone and torn skin, only vaguely could I make out the picture of what he used to be. The proportions of it all seemed nonsensical, I can’t imagine how such large claws were confined in a head smaller than them. The strength of the claws was already enough to drag the dog’s body with relative ease.

I started scrambling to my feet when it reached out, arm seeming longer than before, and smashed a claw down. It tore through my pants and ripped my skin open before I had enough time to draw it back. The wound gashed and spilled blood, soaking the surrounding fabric.

My body was finally moving, and I was able to scramble to my feet again, feeling the pain of the open wound as I put pressure on it. The thing was quick to react to my movement, backing off slightly. Where Turkey’s teeth used to be had been almost completely reworked in the transformation. Lips pulled back, revealing shriveled gums that had dissolved into a thick, soupy mess, the smell of decay thick in the air.

His teeth, though, when it moved back, they chittered. Shaking, the pearly whites smacked against each other rapidly. It sounded like a rattlesnake trying to ward me off. I felt small like this thing had set its sights on me and was reeling back for a final pounce. I didn’t know if running or slowly backing away was the right move.

I could vaguely see his side profile being illuminated in the sunlight. It was somehow the worst part, being able to see his torso writing around like that. I knew what was coming next, but my eyes just wouldn’t avert. His ribs moved around rapidly under the skin, they pressed against the skin, protruding further and further each time.

His teeth continued to rattle as what was once Turkey’s ribs started to poke through the skin on his chest. Extremities the same dirty, bone color as the arms attached to the claws reached out until they tapped on the floor.

Metamorphosis.

Turkey stood, his frame contorted into an unsettling silhouette, the very air around him seeming to crackle with a hellish energy. Eight legs on each side of his torso reached down and supported the rest of Turkey, they pushed down all over the carpet as the body twisted around like a centipede.

I was running before I realized I had decided to do so. The awe finally turned into abject horror as I bounded for the stairs. I could hear it behind me, the way its feet landed on and pulled at the carpet. The rapid thud of the claws smacking the ground pulled the structure along.

It was rapid, and I felt one of the claws try to pincer my leg, only managing to grab the fabric, but it was enough to send me flying. This time I felt the impact, body rag dolling down against the wall. I rebounded and let my body tumble around the corner, managing to stay upright. I turned around and took a brief look at the thing round the corner.

The movements were sloppy. It crashed against the wall too, it hit hard enough to rattle the pictures on the wall. Claws reached out to stabilize the body before it could properly topple over. It was so much faster than me. My leg where it had scratched me was hot and writhing in pain. It felt like someone had sliced me open with coral.

There was no chance in hell that I was making it to the front door in time. Despite my best efforts to hobble forward, the crab monstrosity was on me before I could regain my footing. I fell to the floor again and before I could try to get back up, I was surrounded by a cage of skittering legs.

When it pushed me over, I toppled onto a side table my father had made with wood from the surrounding trees. My skin rubbed against the bark that remained on the table’s legs, causing the skin to peel as I once again smacked the ground.

My senses dulled as I rolled up and looked up at the towering desecration of my friend’s dog. Of my friend. The crab loomed over me, both claws pressed down on either side of my head. Shoulders were confined by the imposing pincers. All I could do was feel the cold night’s air punctuating each bead of sweat.

The chittering got louder as it lowered its face to mine. I imagined my face blending into a fine mist. Or those claws closing around my throat. All the ways that this horrid thing could rip me apart. It leaned closer and closer until I could practically smell its eye stalks.

I peered into the dark protruding marbles. My face faintly reflected on them and after. It reeled back, and I grabbed the closest thing I could to defend myself, as futile as the effort seemed. Fingers wrapped around the table leg and I held it out in front of me as if it was some mighty sword.

The crab version of Turkey halted. The eyes bent down to look at the stick of wood and as it felt like fear was trying to get me to pass out, the crab lunged forward and closed its mandibles-

On the stick. I watched, wide-eyed, as the crab chewed away at the stick, pulling the bark free and seemingly swallowing it.

Using my feet, I pushed back slowly as the crab reached with its claw and grabbed another table leg, chewing on the furniture that Turkey was never allowed to. Slowly backing up, I got enough room to stand. Once again, I was in awe, for a completely different reason.

This horrible abomination. The absolute destruction of my dog. I watched it spin in a circle.

Once

Twice

 Three times.

And then it laid down, curling what was left of the dog’s body into a ball and it just kept chewing away at the stick. One stick after another vanished, chewed away by Turkey’s strange mandibles. When it… when he looked up at me, eye shining in the light. I could see my dog. I know it’s wrong. Sick of me I do. But I just left.

Closed the cabin’s door behind me.

I returned a few days later. A bundle of nice, thick tree branches in tow and opened the cabin door. It was quiet for a moment and then I heard a rapid tapping approach. As it rounded the corner, I initially felt that fear again, soaking in all its features for what felt like the first time. Now soaked in daylight.

A lot of the blood had been cleaned away, by God knows what. Where the skin had been cleaned and healed, I could still see tuffs of Turkey’s golden blond hair. And as it approached me, I held out a stick, it took the stick, and I watched my weird dog-crab monster chew away, not a care in the world.

Wild animals are unpredictable. And I’m sure someday this will all turn around on me. As strange as it sounds, I’m okay with that. Maybe one day Turkey will mistake my arm for a tree branch and shred all the skin off. Maybe his claws will someday separate my head from my body.

But for now, as much as I can. I’ll keep slipping away.

Tree branches in tow.

To hang out with my best friend.

Laura. She stood five foot three with webbed feet from birth and matching birthmarks on both of her thighs. One was shaped like her father, the other her mother—or so she would say. To me they looked like black splashes roughly the same, the left slightly larger, more jagged than the other, them both mottled by patches of dark brown.

A single hair came out long from the softer one.

She showed them to me three weeks after we met on a wet park bench at 3am. Her webbed feet came first, but they didn't concern her much. Said she didn't see the fuss. Not since highschool, she said. Her curves and short stature made her a terrible swimmer and the other girls had made a sport of pointing out the irony, among other meaner things. And my Laura was ironical in many ways more than that.

The mark of her father was the more painful. Tears welled in her eyes as she traced the contours of the sharpest edge and explained the meaning of its strange geometry. But it was hard to follow after the part with the wooden cane. Her speech lapsed fast and every third or fourth word sounded something like Arabic; and it was Arabic, it turned out.

Stunning language, Arabic is. Even directions to the restroom sound poetic, in Arabic. To me they did, at least.

She wrote to me on a napkin once:

'ahibuni kama law 'anah la yastatie wala

I never asked what it meant, don't ask me why, and translating her words now, after what happened—after what she did—is the furthest thing from anything I can ever see myself doing by choice.

Same thing happened with the mark on her mother's side, but it was Italian that she drifted to then. I was too mesmerised to say anything. Just followed her expressions and inflections as best as I could. A different kind of pain came when her language shifted that time, hitting hardest, from what I could tell, over the patch where that long hair grew from. Near impossible not to embrace her when she winced. And then the hair itself brought a smile, just long enough to show how complex that relationship was.

On the other side of the napkin—which I still have, somewhere, actually—she wrote:

Ma non nel modo in cui ha fatto lei

I'd never met a girl with natural metaphors on her legs before. Not that she saw things that way, of course. It couldn't have endeared her more, and her trauma made my insides rise a fire up. I don't think it much mattered that I didn't follow everything. It was all about her. I was her safety, more like, which was how it had been since the beginning.

Since the night I'd been walking home late and found her holding unsteady to the other side of the barrier. The one on the high bridge over the river.

She was too fucked on DXM to remember it the next day, where she'd been, how she'd gripped my back and cried into my neck as I carried her. All she had were the photos. Some public bathroom mirror, it looked like: bright red lipstick and a brighter red jacket and her smile this demented blend of dissociation and euphoria. Like she was ready for her own party. And then the video of her walking to that party. Holding the front camera towards her as she danced and rambled and sang fuck knows what while flashes of midnight traffic passed her by.

I slept on the couch and called a cab before I woke her.

Surprisingly, she wasn't that surprised.

She smiled at me actually. Then kept smiling. And then she asked what was for breakfast. Her lipstick smeared Joker-like to one side and she smelt like an admixture of three perfumes and green grapes.

Reflexively, I said, "Poached eggs and avocado."

Her smile widened as she replied, "Can you do scrambled?"

"Reckon I can manage that."

Completely forgot about the cab and pretended I wasn't home when the doorbell rang, which she found hilarious. "Scaredy cat," she called me.

"Not a scaredy cat. You're a distraction is all."

And she smiled her biggest smile yet.

She stayed all day and we ordered pizza for an early dinner. I didn't know how to ask her tactfully, but I tried my best. Just after the movie finished and I was putting the boxes in the bin. Didn't want to make a big deal, just in case.

"So what were you doing on the bridge last night?"

And she winced, and looked away.

It was raining outside. Heavy rain, and there was no traffic on the street.

And then she was hugging me where I stood.

And my big arms were around her firm as she squeezed.

She couldn't remember the bridge. But she must have remembered the before. Too much shame in her eyes, for otherwise. I pieced the DXM later on, after finding out about her issue with substances, the pharmaceuticals which were the ones she was able to order safely online.

We didn't speak of it again until just after 3am on a wet park bench, three weeks later. That's when I saw the photos, and the video, and that's the first time that my heart broke while sitting beside the same person that it felt for.

A month after that, she moved in.

So too her makeup and fashion collection, which took up half the fucking apartment, I swear. Good thing I'd gotten an Aurelius hard-on the previous summer and thrown most of my excess away, so there was just enough space.

I didn't mind, not really.

Rooms had a way of expanding when we were close. And my small two-bedroom had turned into a palace.

She quit the drugs and accepted the diagnosis she'd been resisting and began a strict regime of exercise, reading, and medication. Four pills of a morning, one at night, a PRN for when things went haywire, which had been happening frequently and had been the look on her face in the bathroom mirror before she'd danced to the river that night.

She was, by every measure I could discern, saved.

I had saved the life of a person—and how she loved me, and with what intensity she loved—from themselves, helped her find the self that she'd been but forgotten and there on my chest each morning her waking smile was the heart-stop of my paralysis.

And in the twilights of the night when I woke from a dream to another dream of her there with half that beautiful smile on her face as she slept, I barely noticed the hair go in. Nor did I notice the sound that it made, lower down, under the sheets, quiet beneath the edge of my awareness. That horrid suctioning, of some nightmarish leech.

All I could feel was the warm soft of her skin; and she made sure, even when she was gone those nights, that some part of herself was against me, our bodies always touching, somehow.

And then, more than a year later, after her medication had stopped again, and the manias began again, and I found a receipt for the DPH in the bin, I finally looked in the mirror. Really looked, I mean.

It's kind of funny, the things you don't notice in routine glances, when grooming, making sure your hair doesn't look like shit, taking that brief acknowledgement of self in your reflection each morning.

Or the changes in your energy reserve each day. That six months prior you were someone else. All too easy to blame it on smoking weed again, and quitting before starting again. On your old depression returned.

When I looked in the mirror that day, that's when everything changed.

I still don't know how she did it. How those purple veins that vectored hideous from that puss-filled hole on my thigh had all been invisible. Or how it was gone when I tried to show her after confronting her about her medication and the DPH.

She pretended not to hear. Screamed that the meds held her back and changed her for the worst and the manias were part of her and weren't manias at all. That she was gaining weight because of the Olanzapine, had nothing to do with not exercising anymore. That I'd forced the diagnosis on her that had been ruining the person that she was, the one who danced and felt and felt free.

The reflection in the mirror, it wasn't me at all. My jaw had sunken in guant-like beneath dark recesses beneath eyes turned flat, tired, and half dead. 20kg on the scales gone, my muscular frame then withered, practically cadaverous.

And on the mornings after those confrontations, she'd smile.

That fucking smile.

Like Futurama's Hypno Toad, it was. Beams of unparalleled love that gazed and gazed and seemingly filled everything that l had lost. An impossible love to fake, yet too intense to be entirely real. Just as impossible, in that state, to resist.

And looking in the mirror, still hypnotised in her smile's afterglow, once again, I looked perfectly fine.

But something in my perception had changed.

I wasn't sleeping the same. I was barely sleeping at all. Not without THC and nicotine, which we mix together where I'm from. A compound addiction that I'd struggled with in the past, that served the denial better than well.

The weed would wear off at precisely 3am each night: just in time, long after it had begun, to feel the first itch of the hair going in.

That wasn't a hair at all.

And on hot summer evenings well over a year after the bridge the bedsheets would slip away and our bodies became a smooth pale grey in the half-light.

Illuminated such, that finally, one night, I was able to see.

The pain was the thinnest of needles, at first. Like the proboscis of some oversized mosquito. But it didn't last long. Other senses flooded in and overlapped and replaced themselves.

The second, was the noise. A rhythmic kind of squelching, rubbery and wet and hideously alive; a sign of something dreadful happening, down there. That alone was terrifying enough. But it wasn't the worst of it. Not even close.

The third sense, looking down at my exposed thigh, is what I saw.

Laura's right-side birthmark had moved. Her feet were crossed between my calves and her softer black splash, the one that she called her mother, was gone.

It was on me.

Twice the size it had been, and the underside of its surface, facing upwards, shined like a varnished leather in the dim. And there was motion...and it was heaving. Its edges were affixed to my skin and its interior was rising and expanding bubble-like before it drooped and flattened down, then back up, paused a moment, and went back down again.

That's when the hypnosis came to an end.

I didn't move. Couldn't even if I was able. All three senses rapidly collided and I wanted to scream, but couldn't do that either, and I stared hopeless and helpless as this black mark, this thing, steadily vacuumed some substance from out deep within. From within me. And then it stopped, and it must have realised that I was watching, and it flattened itself again, and remained still, and then my ears began to ring loud as my sight became dotted and increasingly dense with these dots that caved a thickening border inwards, until finally, quickly, that ghastly image, and the room, were gone.

And when I woke, gone was everything.

The bedding beside me was well-made, the pillow untouched. The racks of clothes that had long suffocated my bedroom, were gone.

Laura was no-where to be seen.

It was only the puss-filled hole in my thigh, now wide as a jar lid, that remained. Throbbing drainingly and painfully as I got out of bed and limped to the kitchen and rested my body achingly on the bench, head down, eyes looking up, scanning hopeless, looking over what had once been the palace that we made.

Laura, was no-where to be seen.

Not the smallest trace that she'd ever been there. Just the minimalism of the Stoicism that I'd forgotten: several books neat on a shelf, the old second-hand couch before the sparce wooden coffee table, a sole plant in the corner unwatered, and half dead. Everything still, and quiet, so quiet you could almost hear a static in the air.

Laura. Had she ever been there?

Only the memory remained, and from inside it suddenly bloomed, like an antibody to the pain, filtering out over the stark of the reality that was before me...and the room filled with colours vibrant with life unseen and it was Ghost BC from the stereo, quick footsteps on the floorboards and laughter that was louder than the music, before finally, inexplicably, she was there. And it was the two of us. Me full-bodied the both of us healthy-skinned and I was picking her up and spinning her around and around as she laughed and giggled carefree and blissful...and when we toppled to the couch, I glided into them as myself, and felt the soft press of her body underneath, and it was the gaze of her smiling eyes staring into mine as I leant my head down slow, our lips interlocking rhythmic, that old crescendo of love transfigured through skin, a kiss that consumed all else.

Then gone went that world, and it was only her, wrapped a bundle in the sheets, looking at me, smiling.

Always smiling.

And when I woke that night I looked back, how I do not know, with a smile of my own. One of love, and forgiveness, somehow. But it was a forgiveness for no-one. For someone who I thought that I knew, the beautiful girl I thought had been saved, who couldn't be saved because she had killed herself a long, long time ago.

Tears in my eyes and that pain in my leg, all of a sudden.

I yawned with fatigue, and checked my phone.

It was 3am.

Heavier than ever, I raised my head. Moonlight fell a slant through the window and spread angular to the other side of the bed; a scene that looked almost liminal: greylight between a half dark across nothing, to something empty.

But I couldn't have been alone. Somehow, by some force, she must have known.

Suddenly my reverie broke as the room lit-up. It was light from my phone.

It was a message from Laura.

A loud flash of ringing in my ears, and it was a falling weight in the air. But I felt no surprise, or fear. The only surprise was that, in spite the surrealism of the nightmare I found myself in, I felt nothing. The day had been a blur. Was still a blur. The dots came too, for a moment, and still I felt nothing. I grabbed the phone. It was numbness, maybe. Sterile numbness.

It took three attempts for the passcode to work. I opened WhatsApp, and our old chat, the one that once told the story of everything when apart, was empty. Only this one new message, which was a video.

I hit play.

The screen was blank, at first. Then a flash of distortion over white, and it was my bathroom from the perspective of the loungeroom. And it was me, standing next to the bathroom doorway, wide-eyed and unblinking and impossibly still, staring directly at the camera. Some other me, who looked exactly like me, but surely can't have been.

And surely would never be.

He—or it—then turned drone-like with a wooden stiffness, its widened eyes still locked, and it grabbed a rope hanging high from a cluster of nails over the door. I couldn't absorb the image properly—so unbelievably fucking insane it was—but neither could I stop watching.

The knot of the noose was already done. And it was gripping it, gesturing it at the camera, its blank expression cracked awful into the ghastliest of smiles, and slow it stepped onto the chair I then saw and took the ring and brought it up and over and down around its neck...

And then there was Laura.

Some other Laura, this fully naked Laura, covered head-to-toe with black splashes that writhed and bubbled and glistened with alien wet.

I barely registered her voice. It wasn't until the video stopped, that I knew what she had said. I guess that's how the mind works, sometimes. When it's numb, and half dead.

She said, "You know something, you abusive cunt? You destroyed me. You killed everything that I was. So please do this for me, won't you? And be sure to stream it live, just like this. So I can see."

It was her who kicked the chair.

My Laura.

A few weeks later I sent her a message. She'd been able to send me one, after all. Said that I hoped she was doing better than she was—to imply, no hard feelings, to forestall her guilt, if she ever freed herself from those things, just in case. Love always, Garry. Which sounds batshit crazy, I suppose. Well see, in the end I didn't care about the video. Wherever and whatever she was, I knew those early days were real. Maybe we were mismatched, but, they were real. She wasn't to blame for herself, not with those parasitic black marks on her legs. And there's no better way of letting go, than to forgive.

Forgiveness through which you start to regrow, and find that withered flicker of strength you once knew.

Only, letting go in the heart...it still leaves the problem of the body. And the depression, and the weed that sends it south, the old habits that undid you. So when you meet someone new not long afterwards, someone perfect in ways never imagined, how much can really be said, for hope?

Because I did meet someone, just like that. Someone just like me, mostly, at first, only a little bit more. And a little bit less. Her perfection no less in her less than her more.

The outside beauty, just a bonus.

But my body wasn't ready, I don't think. Not for someone as weird as I am. Maybe it is now, now that I'm strong again, but now, I'm not even sure I know who she is, either. Not after today. Not after another hint, of that old, immature sadistic.

Maybe we shouldn't choose while we're still weak. Maybe, we can get it wrong. That we need to wait till we're strong, again.

See when we fall, and our bodies fail our minds, that's when we learn a person. We learn what they choose to see; we learn their projections, and their interpretations, of things. And yet, I still don't know what I've learned. Maybe black marks, they aren't always borne of trauma. I really don't know. But I don't think I care, not really.

Not anymore.

You take her idea with you all the same. You love her at her worst no less than her best. Love her for what's hidden, deep down, and inside. And what she hides, can be worth it all.

That which strength gives.

And so you clean your space and do the work and strengthen yourself, for yourself, by yourself. You become the person that you are. Never for her, no matter the her. Not for anyone. Least of all, for someone like Laura.

Laura. That girl I knew once, who wanted to be saved, who I thought I could fix, who only wanted love, who gave me love and her beautiful webbed feet, and nothing else.

Who never wanted to fix herself.

[FIRST PART]

Hi guys, I just wanted to start this post off by saying thank you for the comments on the last one. I really thought I might have been over exaggerating how weird this guy was. I told my sister about it yesterday as well once she got home and she didn’t think it should have freaked me out as much as it did. She said, “if the worst that happened was a bad phone call, then I think your day went pretty fine OP.” But reading all of your responses being equally weirded out by the guy made me feel a bit less crazy. I mean, today has been... a day. Kind of starting to feel crazy again, but you know, I’ll get into it.

As for if my manager ever updated me on anything the guy did yesterday… No? I mean she did text me about him today, but I’ll talk about that in a second. So I guess after I checked him into his room, he just stayed there all day. 

We have a passdown system here, so basically we have a log where we put all our notes for the day, including things like strange behaviors from guests. Usually it looks something like this:

[ROOM NUMBER] - guest had issues using the shower. Work order entered. 

Or:

Cops were called on lady in lobby, lady did not have a reservation and refused to leave. She is trespassed, if she shows up again, call cops. [DESCRIPTION OF GUEST].

I think you get the idea. They are usually pretty short and sweet. There really isn’t a need to gum it up with information that doesn’t really matter. I was reading the passdowns from our overnight girl this morning though and it was a bit longer than her usual entries. I copied it here for you guys (a bit redacted, sorry, privacy policy stuff):

[ROOM NUMBER] - Mr. [GUEST LAST NAME] was in the lobby for a while last night. I asked if he needed help for anything but he said he was fine. I asked for his room number to make sure he was staying with us (he is). Called [SECURITY GUARDS NAME] and asked him to stand up at the desk with me. Mr. [GUEST LAST NAME] went back to his room once [SECURITY GUARD] got here. Got a call from his room too, but I think his phone is broken. ([OP], can you have [MAINTENANCE] check it out in the morning?). 

I read it after she clocked out so I wasn’t able to ask her more about the phone thing, like if she felt the weird breathing thing that I did yesterday. 

There weren’t any other notes about him in our passdowns, but one of my housekeeping girls today did text me saying that when she went to give him room service he was really weird. The thing about that is, the room has to be vacated for someone to do housekeeping. It's a safety policy thing. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but basically it’s for the safety of our housekeepers. Well, Mr. Weird was in the room while she was cleaning. 

I’ll copy our texts here so you can see what she had to deal with. (Also, sorry but another note here. She doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Spanish, so our texts back and forth can read a little weird. We are just doing rounds of google translate to the other person's language and it doesn’t always go well.)

[Housekeeper] - Our guest in [ROOM NUMBER] is strange.

[Me]                 - Yes! I noticed yesterday at check in! How did he behave with you?

[Housekeeper] - He is standing in the room as I cleaned. He watched me as I cleaned.

[Me]                 - Ew! I’m so sorry! [long apology about the situation] He didn’t do anything else 

though? Just looked?

[Housekeeper] - He only looked as I cleaned. 

[Me]                 - I’m so sorry. 

[Housekeeper] - It is okay! I won’t enter that room again.

Then a bit of time passed, maybe 5 minutes?

[Housekeeper] - Can I tell you something about [ROOM NUMBER]? 

[Me]                 - Yes

[Housekeeper] - I left his room and I hear him talking. He sounds behind me. 

[Me]                 - He sounds like he is standing behind you?

[Housekeeper] - yes

[Me]                 - Do not go near his room again. 

[Housekeeper] - ok

I’m pretty sure she got an early lunch, and my housekeeping manager came down to talk to me about it. I told her what I knew, which isn’t a lot. That, apparently, he had requested housekeeping (but I really can’t find any notes about this literally anywhere), she had gone to the room and entered, then texted me that he was in the room when she was cleaning. I want to double down that the housekeeper that went in is 100% not the type to do that. All the housekeepers know not to go in the room if someone is in there, but her especially. So now I’m thinking, like, what did he say or do to get her in the room? 

The housekeeping manager said something about going up to tell him we would not be cleaning the room if he was in it, but he’s set to check out tomorrow so it shouldn’t be a big deal. I just told her we shouldn’t send anyone up to that room alone, but she thinks I’m being a bit dramatic about it. But I never got a message from her saying she went up there to tell him anything so maybe she decided against it. 

So about my manager's text. She sent it to me like halfway through my shift (it was actually during my lunch break), and it’s not all that weird on its own but, you know. In addition to everything else, it's pretty weird. She texted me and asked if he’d called the desk again. And obviously I was confused because she didn’t have anything in her notes about him being weird and calling the desk. I’ll copy these messages as well for you:

[Manager] - Did [ROOM NUMBER] call the desk again today?

[Me]          - Not yet. Why?

[Manager] - He kept calling last night, and I know he called during [OVERNIGHT GIRL]’s shift 

too. 

[Me]          - Oh, well he hasn’t called again. 

[Me]          - Did he say anything weird?

[Manager] - On the phone?

[Me]          - Yeah

[Manager] - No, I think the phone in that room is broken.

[Me]          - Did he say anything on the phone?

[Manager] - No, I think it’s the phone in that room. We just need to go in and change it. I texted 

[MAINTENANCE] about it and he said he would check it out. 

[Me]          - I’m going to tell him not to enter the room if the guest is in there. [GUEST NAME] 

really creeped me out last night, and [HOUSEKEEPER] too this morning. 

[Manager] - Just let me know if [MAINTENANCE] can fix the phone when he’s done. Text me if 

anything weird happens. 

I mean guys, I don’t know but this phone thing is really bothering me. Like really really bothering me because I checked the call logs and he called the front desk like 32 times. It looked like twice an hour every hour from around 3pm ish till 6am ish. That is crazy right?? I’m not crazy for thinking that's crazy? No one tried to call back and tell him to stop? No one went up to the room to tell him to stop? Because there is no way that 32 times is an issue with the phone. I mean unless some techy person on here can tell me some super obscure way that causes phones to call one specific number over and over again like that. I don’t know, I feel like it's really weird. 

Anyway, this is the most exciting part. I’m sorry it took so long, these other things were just a bit too weird to not include them. I saw him again. 

So I was going back to the kitchen to refill the coffee, and it was like almost the end of my shift so I was sort of losing hope that I was going to see him today. So I fill the little coffee container, and walk back up to the desk, and turn the corner. Who do I see? Mr. Weird standing right in front of the coffee station.

He wasn’t making coffee or anything, just looking at it. So I walked up beside him and tried to talk to him. Kind of went something like this. 

“Hello Mr. [LAST NAME], do you mind moving over just a bit so I can set down some fresh coffee for you?”

“Fresh?” Which is the first question I’ve heard him ask. Yesterday when he came to make the reservation to begin with he just said ‘I need a room’ or something like that. I don’t know, maybe I’m reading into it too much. 

“Yes Mr. [LAST NAME]. I just roasted a new pot of coffee, so I just went to the back to refill it here.”

And this whole time I was trying to like, observe him without making it obvious. A couple of comments yesterday made me think that I should like, maybe try to see if there is something off about him, looks wise. 

So another baby interlude here, when you are behind the desk and helping someone out, it's hard to fully realize the scope of how tall someone is. There's just space between you, so it makes a height difference seem less intense. I don’t know the science or psychology behind it, just know that's how it feels.

So I walk up to the guy, try to get him to scooch over while also trying to see if he looks ‘off’ somehow, and suddenly I notice that he’s like Really Tall. I’m not that short either. I mean, I’m only 5’8 but this guy is dwarfing me. Not like, “he’s 6ft omg!” but like, “This is freakishly tall and I have no idea how I didn’t notice yesterday” kind of tall. I don’t think it helps that he was standing so straight, like he had a rod up his back or something. It was freaky. 

And then, he looked at me, which he was not doing before and I fucking felt his eyes in my skin again. I’m sorry, I tried to keep cursing out of the post, mostly because it’s not really necessary but oh my god. I swear, I could feel his eyes in my skin. 

I… I really don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how to describe it. He was just… Looking At Me. Staring at me. I really don’t even have words close enough for how it felt when he looked at me. I felt so bad, did my housekeeper feel like this? Like, guys, did I somehow, inadvertently, send my poor housekeeper into this fucking guy’s room???? Because this staring is just… it feels awful. I feel awful. Like sick or something I don’t know. Like when you are so anxious you start to feel sick, even if nothing is really happening. That’s kind of, a little bit like what being watched by this guy felt like. Sort of. 

The really unfortunate thing is that his… fucking staring, god christ it was awful, sort of distracted me from trying to notice much else about him. I know I had mentioned in one comment that I would try to see if he looked as normal as I remember him and I really couldn’t tell you. I kind of felt… frozen. Or maybe more, paused? Like I couldn’t get myself to move. I don’t know. It’s really hard to describe. Maybe it’s just fight or flight (or freeze). 

Anyway, he stopped looking at me eventually. I set up the coffee for him, and like, apologized for staring (I kind of was staring at him), then went to hide in the back office. 

Saying I was recovering from him staring at me sounds a little stupid, but hey that's what I was doing. So I sat in the back and watched on the camera monitor. I’ll do that sometimes if I’m really not in the mood to be at the desk or if it's really slow. 

Well anyway, there he was on the camera. Standing in front of the coffee station, the funny thing is, he did not look as tall as he felt. He looked tall but not freakishly tall. Maybe my anxiety was warping the height in my brain or something. 

There really isn’t much more to tell you from there that isn’t the same as yesterday. I was looking at the camera, there was some camera fuzz, I looked under the desk to try and see if something wasn’t plugged in properly, and by the time I looked up, the guy was gone. The coffee station was messed up too. Like, coffee all over the table, coffee cups half filled, sugar packets kind of, everywhere. A huge mess that I had to clean in the last like, 30 minutes of my shift. So that’s cool. 

I looked back in the camera recordings again for when he was in the lobby before I hid in the back. It sort of just looked like we were having a staring contest when he was looking at me. He didn’t… move or anything. I kinda didn’t either. Looking at it from that perspective kind of tripped me out, I don’t know. On the camera it sort of looks pretty normal. Apart from having a staring contest. 

I didn’t tell my manager about it, I just wanted to get home and type this all up so I can get it off my chest. I also told the agent following me to text me if literally anything weird happened with him. Anything at all. Hopefully he doesn’t freak her out. 

Also a couple of notes for some of the comments. 

1. The only thing reported missing was a set of car keys that ended up being found later in the guest's room. I also didn’t notice anything missing from the desk, and housekeeping didn’t mention anything missing either. 
2. The only other ‘disappearing act’ situation that happened with him today (so far) was him being in the lobby and then being gone, but that could have been the camera malfunctioning, and also I was away from the desk to fill the coffee containers so he could have just walked up like normal.
3. I haven’t rewatched the ‘men in black’ episode of unsolved mysteries/buzzfeed unsolved yet. Felt like just coming home, changing into pajamas, and watching tiktoks in bed for a bit. 

Again, if any other front desk agents or anyone has dealt with this guy or someone like him, some help or advice would be really appreciated. He should be checking out tomorrow so I will update you if anything happens at that time. Hopefully not though.

When strangers ask what happened to me, I tell them I was mauled by a dog.  That’s the quickest way to shut down the conversation. Sometimes there’ll be a follow up question, and it’s almost always, ‘What kind of dog was it?’ I tell them it was a pit bull, because that makes sense to them, and then I’ll change the subject so that they know that it’s time to shut the fuck up and talk about the weather to the nice lady with the scary face. 

I learned early on not to make a joke about it. For a while, my go-to response was ‘my blender jammed and I tried to fix it with my face!’ Turns out people don’t appreciate that. The kind of person who will straight-up ask you what happened to your face thinks they’ve just proven what a compassionate and concerned person they are by asking.  Throwing it back in their face is like a rejection, and it turns out that assholes are super sensitive about rejection. When you’re a woman with a face like mine, you’re not allowed to have a sense of humour about it. If you don’t play the dutiful victim and provide a relatable explanation, they will never forgive you. Women under 45 won’t talk to me at all, by the way. A face like mine is every woman’s worst-case scenario. They’ll just ask each other if they know what happened to me as soon as they think I’m out of earshot.  

Only my close friends and family know what really happened that night.  It’s a version of the truth that I knew they’d be able to digest. To be honest, it’s been so long since I’ve revisited what really happened to me that I can’t be sure that I’ll be able to remember everything. Although having said that, the minute I decided to write it all down, small details and even whole snatches of conversation from that night have come back into sharp focus. A little too sharp. After what happened today, I know I have to get it all on the record and post it online. Besides, there’s a chance one of you will come across this thing at some point.  And maybe my story will help you survive.  

I got very, very lucky. That’s the only reason I’m here. And that’s the season I can have a sense of humour about my face. I’ve cried enough tears in private about this over the years, and as far as I’m concerned that earns me the right to make light of the worst thing that ever happened to me. I have a deep understanding of the kind of bullet I dodged.  

 I’m a bottle of wine in, so excuse any spelling mishaps or grammatical whatevers. I write for a living now, because it’s the kind of job I can do from home, and True Crime is one of the last safe havens for journalists, so I’m hoping my muscle-memory of stringing words together is going to keep this legible as I get steadily more bat-faced drunk. Christ knows I’m going to need to be VERY inebriated to relive this night for you.  I’ve kept this door locked for a very long time, but I’m going to tell you now what my own mother does not know. Consider this to be your trigger warning. For all the worst things.  

..... 

Picking up a hitchhiker probably wasn’t my best idea, but I was getting pretty tired of sobbing in the car with no one to tell me to snap the fuck out of it.  There was still a lot of road between me and Sydney that night and what I really needed right now was an unsympathetic ear. I’d spent the last one-hundred Ks scouring the roadside for someone, and now here she was. A lone backpacker, trudging along the highway on-ramp with her thumb out. She had brown skin, a frizzy afro and a bright smile that she’d flashed as I drove past.  In the end it was that smile that moved my foot to the brake pedal. 

I watched her run lightly along the side of the road towards the car, lit red by the brake lights. She was short but solidly built. Light on her feet like a boxer. I bit my lip as the stranger trotted up to the open passenger window and leant in, her frizzy brown hair brushing against the top of the window. 

‘Thanks! It’s getting a bit cold out here. I’m so glad you’re not a man!’ 

I smiled at the strong kiwi accent. Maori, was my guess. ‘I know!  They’re so… rapey.’  

I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, wincing at myself. Hitchhikers were supposed to be the creepy ones. Rapey? Seriously. 

‘They can be a bit rapey, yeah. I’m going to Sydney.’ 

‘Me too! Well... via my parent’s place on the South Coast?’ 

’Sounds good. Can I come? I can find my way from the coast.’ 

I smiled. ‘Of course. Should I pop the boot for your…?’ 

‘No I’ll just dump it in the back seat, if that’s okay.’ 

I realised that the back door was still locked. I fumbled for the button and unlocked it. ‘There we go.’  

The stranger didn’t open the back door though. She climbed into the front passenger seat and tossed her backpack into the back from there, nearly hitting me in the face as she did.  

‘Ooh sorry! Sometimes they drive off after your bag’s in. Force of habit. That’s why I didn’t put it in the boot.’ 

‘Ah! Smart.’ 

 She smelled nice, like sandalwood. 

 ‘I’m Natia.’ She pronounced it ‘Na TEE ah.’ 

 ‘Kate.’  

 We shook hands like we’d just sealed a deal, and I pulled the car back onto the freeway. 

..... 

It took an hour for the conversation to settle down. Fuelled by my nerves, I’d short circuited my default ‘chatterbox’ setting where I talk non-stop about myself and had opted for a continual stream of questions that I pop-quizzed at my new passenger. She had answered my queries with great patience. She was Samoan, not Maori, though raised in New Zealand and had crossed ‘the ditch’ to visit various cousins dotted around the coast north of Sydney.   

‘Okay, so there’s my Fat Cuz, my Rough Cuz, Rich Cuz and Shit Cuz. Every one of ‘em owes me money or a favour, so I’m cashing in. Fuck ‘em!’ Natia laughed loudly with a singular ‘Ha!’ ‘But enough about me.  I need to suss you out too, you know.’ 

‘Oh, sorry. It’s been like twenty questions since you climbed in and I’ve been grilling you non-stop.’ 

‘Little bit, yeah.’ 

My eyes left the road to check her face for signs of irritation, but there was that warm smile again. 

‘Were you crying when you picked me up? What’s going on with you?’ Natia’s voice softened with genuine concern, and I felt my tears gather themselves up for another outing. 

‘Well I’m going to Sydney to break up with my boyfriend.’ 

Natia shook her head and waved her hand in front of her face. ‘Oh no, I’m sorry.  It’s none of my business. Ask me another question.’ 

 ‘No, no it’s okay really. It’s probably good to talk about it.’ 

‘Well not if you start doing the ugly-cry and can’t see the road. You pull over if you start that shit, okay?’ 

I laughed, and my stupid tears retreated again. ‘Okay, safety first!’ 

 ‘And foremost, yeah. So you’re breaking up with him, but... you don’t really want to?’ 

‘I have to!’ 

‘Because?’ 

‘He’s a bass player.’ 

‘Oh, girl. Say no more!’ 

‘An American bass player.’ 

‘Cute?’ 

“Very. He’s been living here for five years, but he’s on tour now with this top twenty… tweeniebopper.’ 

‘Okay, don’t tell me who, I wouldn’t know ‘em.’ 

 ‘You wouldn’t want to. Anyway, Gabe has all these new Instagram followers because of that and he’s kinda …sleeping his way through them all.’ 

I winced and turned to Natia. There was no trace of the comforting smile now, but she put her hand on my arm as a consolation. 

I shot her a blurry smile. 

‘It’s okay. Really, it’s okay. I definitely should have seen this coming.’ 

‘Mmm hmm.’ 

‘I mean… I was one of those Insta-groupies myself eight months ago. Hashtag: Stupid.’ 

‘Well. Never say hashtag ANYTHING to me ever again… but good on you for pulling the plug. You deserve better.’ 

‘Oh I know.  I do. I mean ANYONE would. It’s just… I dunno.’ 

I sighed at the dark road ahead. ‘I was happy with him, ya know? I really liked who I was when I was with him.’ 

‘Wow, yeah. That’s so…’ 

‘Cringe?’ 

‘I was gonna say lame, but yeah… I know what you mean.’ 

 ‘I really didn’t want to cry my way to Sydney, ya know? And then I saw you out there in your leopard print tank-top and you needed a lift, and I needed to talk, and here we are!’ 

‘Well I’d stop for this tank-top, too. I’m glad you stopped though, girl. I was freaking myself out after the sun went down. It gets a bit creepy out there.’ 

‘Well you’re braver than I am. I could never hitchhike on my own.’ 

Natia sighed. ‘Well I can take care of myself. I’m a black-belt in karate.’ She pronounced it ‘kara-teh.’  

‘No shit!  Really?’ 

‘Nah not really. I make sure I work it into the conversation early though. How convincing was I?’ 

I smiled. 

‘Well, points for pronunciation, that’s for sure. Kara-teh. I would not be fucking with you.’ 

‘You BETTER not!’ 

…..

As the night wore on, the traffic was reduced to an occasional passing white flare. Now that I had someone to talk to, I could crank the heater up, and the car was now toasty and warm. Talking with someone was a much nicer way to stay awake than driving with the windows down and being blasted by the cold night air. Now the icy wind blew against the outer shell of the little red car, trying to regain entry. We ignored the night wind as it tried to scream its way into the conversation, whistling at a crack somewhere and trying its best to frost the windscreen. I turned off the freeway and began weaving my way through the unfamiliar back roads that led through the dense bushland, up and over the dividing range and towards the sea.  

’So what was creeping you out back there?’ I asked, once the green display in the dashboard had flickered over to midnight. 

Natia put her arms around herself, as if remembering the chill. ‘Oh, you know… nothing specific.  Just a feeling. Like somebody was walking with me.’ 

‘Oh that is creepy! Like behind you?’ 

‘No, more beside me. Like… it’s stupid, but I was thinking if I turn my head, I’m gonna see something walking next to me, staring at me with big crazy eyes, and a big smile on its face or something. Don’t worry, I know not to whistle after dark in this country. I didn’t summon the wotsit...’ 

 ‘Oh yeah, right the uh…’ 

‘Featherfoot, yeah. You guys have some scary spirits over here. Best not fucked with.’ 

‘Ugh! Goosebumps, look! Do you say goosebumps or goose-pimples?’ 

‘Goosebumps!  Who the fuck says goose-pimples?!’ 

‘Uptight Americans. Gabe’s sister said Goose-pimples.’ 

‘Oh fuck that. And fuck her especially! Fuck that whole family while we’re at it! AND their pimples.’ 

I giggled. Natia seemed to find the quickest possible route to ‘fuck ‘em,’ on every topic. Not in a bitter, aggressive way, just in a ‘I don’t have time for that shit’ kind of way, which was pretty endearing.  

‘I’m not that worried about spirits and ghosts or whatever but I’m always freaking myself out too,’ I said. ‘Especially when I’m driving alone.’ 

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Natia turn to look at me.  

‘Well let’s hear about it then! You’ve already got your goosewotsits going.’ 

I gripped the wheel tighter and shifted around in my seat, getting comfortable. ‘Okay, so whenever I see like a piece of clothing lying on the side of the road?  Like a shoe or something? I automatically think it’s all that’s left of someone. The only clue to some horrible murder.’ 

Natia laughed her single, braying ‘Ha!’ and clapped her hands together. ‘Of course! Yeah I always think that too. Like it’s evidence. I never touch ‘em when I’m hitching.’ 

‘And if you DID stop to pick it up…’ 

‘The killer will jump out from behind something and get you?’ 

‘YES! He totally would, wouldn’t he?’ 

‘That’s why he left it right there on the road, girl!’ 

‘Exactly! You think that too, really? When you see a road-shoe?’ 

Natia looked out of the window, surveying the darkness as it rocketed by. ‘Road-shoes. Yeah. I reckon everybody thinks that when they see them out there. That’s why nobody stops. They’ve probably been there for years.’ 

There was a silence in the car as we both stared out of our windows at the night, thinking of all the empty shoes lying beside all of the roads out there, and of all the killers lying in the grass close by, waiting. 

‘Okay what else you got?’ Natia said, breaking us out of our thoughts.  

I shook my head. ‘It’s too stupid.  You’ll think I’m an idiot.’ 

Natia punched me in the arm. ‘Come on, you started this. And I already think you’re an idiot. Instagram groupie…’ 

I sighed a long sigh, and held up a finger. 

‘Okay, but I’m not stupid.  Remember this.’ 

‘Righto, you get a pass THIS time!’ Natia turned away and muttered, ‘…crazy bitch.’ 

I laughed, and punched Natia in the arm. I felt very awkward doing it. I cleared my throat. ‘Okay, so here it is. You know when you’re driving along…’ 

I paused for a long time, milking the moment. Natia pursed her lips and widened her eyes. ‘Mmm hmm.’ 

 ‘…and you see a box lying on the road?’ 

Natia nodded, her smile faltering. 

‘Well… I always think… like the first thing that pops into my head is that…’ 

I turned and locked eyes with Natia. We both spoke together: 

‘There’s a baby in that box.’ 

We both gasped, a stereo gasp. It was such a cartoonish moment that we both laughed, Natia with her big singular ‘Ha’s, and me with my rapid fire ones. 

‘Well it’s the most likely scenario,’ Natia said, matter-of-factly. ‘Box in the road? Gotta be a baby in there, girl.’ 

‘Oh my god!  We’re both IDIOTS!’  

’No I’m not,’ Natia said, sobering suddenly. ‘There COULD be a baby in them boxes.’ 

‘Yes. Box-babies.’ I agreed, gesturing to the road. 

‘But who puts them there? And why?’ 

‘I know! It’s ridiculous.  But I can never run them over.’ 

‘Well, you shouldn’t, you know.’ Natia said, straight-faced. ‘You probably shouldn’t run down a box-baby. Besides, there’s a chance it could be a boxed-up fuel pump or something that's fallen off a truck. I’m not into babies, but I’m not gonna run one over.’ 

We both shuddered. 

‘Oh, I couldn’t live with myself! Can you imagine?!’ 

 Natia shook her head. ‘The box would be ruined, for starters.’ 

‘…and the baby! You’d feel it under your car… kaTHUMP! And you’d have to stop and look. Oh! I could not deal with that.’ 

Natia shook her head and said, ’That poor box!’ 

‘And baby!’ I added.  

‘Obviously.’  

The road rushed towards us, racing to connect us to the worst night of our lives. I can still see that dark road. For years it’s greeted me the minute I close my eyes to sleep. It’s been ten years since I picked Natia up on the side of that road, and I know that when I close my eyes tonight, no matter how many bottles of wine I’ll have chugged down by then, I’ll see that windscreen view, those quiet white lines rushing at me out of the dark.   

The monotony of the drive eventually wore our smiles away, and soon the conversation followed suit. I remember asking if she wanted me to put some music on, and apologising that all I had on my phone was Taylor Swift. ‘1989’ had just come out and I’d already listened to it all the way through three times before I’d stopped to giving her a lift. Natia had smiled politely and said, ‘Nah I’m okay thanks.’ And the conversation kind of petered out after that. 

 The wind whistled in at us now that it could get a word in edgeways. It sang to us of the killers it had passed on its travels, of the blood it had cooled against their itching palms, and of all the boxes it had passed on the road.   

Another hour passed in relative silence. The small red car plunged into the dark bush, following the winding road towards the coast. There was no oncoming traffic now, and the white gum trees arched over the road, almost touching in the middle. The little car plummeted down this ribcage of bush like a submarine in the deep, exploring the belly of some long dead sea creature.  

 Safe inside the car, I navigated the winding road as my passenger dozed beside me. My eyes fixed themselves on the path ahead as rain began to whip at the windows, drowning out the screaming wind. The drumming, howling roar set my mind’s needle in a dark groove. Up ahead, the road pulsed forwards, and I remember imagining the broken white lines to be a tally of the victims that it had claimed. Car crashes, pedestrians…I wondered grimly how much blood had been soaked into its skin. I thought of the tendrils of road dividing off again and again in every possible direction, covering the entire continent like a network of dry veins, waiting to be quenched. 

I’m not adding this in for drama, by the way. The more I write, the more I remember… the conversation with Natia has returned to me word for word. The thoughts I had… the sound of the wind outside… I’m remembering now that my right ankle was feeling tired from working the pedals, which is an insane level of detail. I guess when your mind has been through something like this, everything about that night gets seared into your memory, waiting for you to shine a light on it.  

I’m getting shaky now - I know what lies ahead. I have my meds handy, sitting just within reach beside my laptop, but it’s not time to take them yet. 

..... 

It had stopped raining, and Natia was still sleeping soundly when I saw it. It was waiting for us up ahead, sitting on the wet road just left of the broken white lines. I nudged my hitchhiker awake. 

‘Natia! Look!’  

‘What? Wassat?’ She sat up a little, rubbing at her eye. 

‘It’s a box,’ I said. 

Natia snapped fully awake with a jolt. ‘Fuck off,’ she said. 

‘No I think it is! Look…’ 

Natia leaned forwards, squinting. 

It was definitely a box. A worn brown cardboard box, with shiny brown tape criss-crossing around it, sitting in the middle of the road. It was coming up fast. 

Natia turned to me. ‘Run it over.’ 

‘What?! I can’t!’ 

I turned back to the road, just in time to see the box baring down on us. I swung the wheel to the right, and the car swerved away from it and onto the opposite side of the road.  

Natia shot a hand out to the dashboard. ‘SHIT!’ 

I pressed my foot to the brake pedal and jerked the wheel to the left. The car lost its footing on the road, skidding sideways. 

‘No! Fuck!’ I eased my foot off the brake and then pressed it again softly. The car skidded sideways down the road, tyres screaming for purchase on the wet seal-skin tar. The steering wheel ripped itself from my hands, almost breaking my thumbs in its thick whirring spokes. I gripped it again and seized control of the thing. The scenery spun past us.  

Road.  

Bush.  

Road.  

TREE. 

I slammed my foot into the brake pedal, and the car stopped with the sudden chunking sound of roadside gravel. A gigantic tree stood only two meters from the headlights - an ancient, impossibly huge ghost gum, white and smooth. The headlights reflected back onto us off the tree’s iron skin as we stared at it, our thoughts shattered by thundering hearts. 

‘Are you.. you okay?’ I heard myself say. 

Natia did not turn her head. She spoke as if addressing the tree. ‘I’m alive, yeah. Not okay. Fuck no I’m not!’ 

I shook in my seat, thumbs throbbing. The tears wanted to come, but they were too far down on my body’s list of priorities right now, so I cried with my voice. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’  

I put my hands to my mouth, thumbs stinging. 

‘It’s okay. You did okay. We’re okay,’ Natia told the tree. ‘Probably saved us, girl. Good job.’ 

I turned and looked at her. 

It was the first time I had really seen Natia’s face clearly, lit so brightly by the light reflected from the tree. I’d thought she was older than me, but she looked younger in the bright light, her eyes big and brown.  I nodded at her, and Natia smiled so brightly that I had to look away.  

I exhaled a shaky breath, threw the car into reverse and backed it onto the empty road, parking it just behind the two ragged tyre tracks where we had veered off. I wrenched the park brake into position and before I knew I had done it, I’d unbuckled my seatbelt.  

‘I just have to check the car. It’s a piece of crap but it’s my brother’s. I think we hit the…’ 

I opened my door and stepped out of the car on legs that felt more like cooked noodles. The black rubber lines on the wet road circled and snaked behind the car, taking my thoughts with them.  Back down the road… to the box.  

It sat there quiet and square, lit red by the rear lights. It was still intact.   

I hadn’t hit it.  

 ‘Natia, come with me!’ I said. My eyes were glued to the box.  I could not look away.  There’s no other way to describe it.  

Natia opened her door and popped her head out. 

’The fuck I will! Get back in the car.’ 

I strode towards the box on my noodles. I wore my hair shoulder-length back then, and it whipped around my face in the wind. My feet were numb.  

The box sat waiting for me.  

‘Kate! Jesus. Get back here!’ Natia hissed, keeping her voice down. 

I was only meters from it now. The bottom of the box was slightly soaked from the road, but the rest of it was dry. 

‘It must have been put here after the rain…’ I called over my shoulder. 

Natia glanced furtively to her right, at the dark gaps between the trees. ‘Leave it!’ She pleaded. ‘Please, girl. Leave it there. Let’s go.’ 

‘I’m just going to move it off the road. It’s gonna cause an accident!’ 

 I had reached the box. It was only knee-height. I put my hands around it and lifted it. I loosened my grip and dropped it. It wasn’t empty. 

 I fumbled around the sides, stretching my numb fingers along the slick brown packing tape, feeling for the end. I found it and pulled it off the cardboard, releasing the flaps in the top.  I dug in my jeans pocket for my phone and switched on the LED torch.  In one hand, I held the phone, shining the quivering light into the box as I opened it with my free hand. 

I couldn’t speak. The world sank around me as I stared at the small thing huddled at the bottom of the box. 

‘Fuck…’ I said, ‘Oh fuck.’ 

‘What! What’s in there?’ 

‘It’s a baby!’ 

Natia slammed her door and stormed towards me and the box. ‘Don’t you fuck with me, now.’ she said. 

I looked at her, feeling the blood drain from my face. ’Shit, what do we do? It’s a baby.’ 

 Natia ran towards me and jabbed her finger at me as she spoke. ’Don’t fuck with me!’ she shouted. ‘I hate pranks.’ She looked down into the box. ‘Fuck me! It’s a baby.’ She grabbed the phone from my fingers and shone it into the box. 

The baby was no more than six weeks old, pale white and curled up on its side on top of a dirty blue blanket.  Its tiny hands were clenched in front of its mouth. Its lips were blue, and its white skin was a network of faint purple veins. Beneath the blue blanket, the bottom of the box was covered with what looked like finely crushed eggshells. 

‘It’s a fucking baby. A dead fucking baby in a box…’ Natia said, as if narrating the scene for the visually impaired. The baby was dressed in a dirty light blue singlet and a disposable nappy, and it stirred as the night air began to seep into the opening of its box, drawing its knees up tighter. 

We clutched at each other, eyes wide and glued to the not-quite-as-dead-as-it-looked baby in the box.  

‘He’s alive,’ I said, dumbly. ‘Jesus he’s…’ 

‘And I told you to run it over…’ said Natia, ‘We could have… oh my God, Kate. What do we DO with this fucking box-baby?!’ 

We stared at each other, horrified. 

Natia grabbed me and shook me. ‘It’s a fucking box-baby.’ she repeated, shock having reduced her to relating the obvious. 

‘I know!’ A fresh wave of horror washed through me like ice water. ‘It really is.’ 

The baby let out a tiny cry, huddling into itself, shivering. 

Natia stepped back, as if the baby were a bomb that had just armed itself. 

I reached into the box and scooped up the tiny creature. 

‘Oh he’s like a bag of ice…’ 

‘We need to call someone NOW,’ Natia commanded. ‘Like right now we need to call triple-one.’ 

’Triple-oh.’ 

’Triple somethin’, girl because someone left a baby in a box. On the fucking ROAD.’ She was whipping the light around at the roadside now, scanning the dark, dripping trees for whoever had done this.  

After a moment, Natia turned her efforts to calling for help, swiping and tapping at the screen. The wind had died down, and I noticed that the bush was completely silent. Not a single chirp from a cricket or the usual chorus of frogs ringing through the trees. It was as though they were all watching us, silently engrossed in our little drama. 

‘There’s no signal out here.’ 

I was still rocking the baby, which slept on, nestling into me. There was a faint smell on its breath, which at the time I couldn’t place. It was sour milk mixed with something sweet and syrupy. 

I realised six months later what that smell was. While I was still in intensive care, my brother had smuggled alcohol into my hospital room - a can of Bundy and cola. The second I smelled that sickly sweet rum, I recognised it from the night I’d lost my face and threw up hospital food all over the bed. I knew right there that I would never drink another drop of rum. Now I can say without a doubt that someone had dosed that baby up with rum in its bottle so that they could box it up without waking it.   

My tears were coming now. I looked up at Natia and she must have seen the total helplessness I was feeling because she took a step forward and softened her voice.   

‘It’ll be okay now. We’ll take it to a hospital… somewhere.’ 

I nodded, and turned to take the baby back towards the car. 

‘Hang on, girl! We should bring the box. The cops are gonna want to dust it or something.’ 

Natia bent and grabbed the box, which peeled off the wet road with a faint sucking sound. She followed me back to the car, still scanning the silent bush for whoever had left it out there.  

I opened the driver-side door and carefully eased myself into the seat, holding the fragile thing in the crook of my elbow.  I leant to the side and pulled the lever that pushed the seat back a foot or so from the steering wheel. 

 ‘Will the box fit in the boot?’ Natia asked from outside. 

‘No there’s not much room in there.  We probably shouldn’t crush it down. Chuck it on the seat behind me?’ 

 Natia opened the back door and put the box carefully on the seat beside her backpack. 

‘Will it need its blanket, do you reckon?’ Natia asked, pulling it out of the box and brushing the eggshells off it. 

‘He might, yeah,’ I said. 

Natia held the old blanket up to her nose. 

 ‘Ugh, smells like oil or something. Better leave it.’ She threw the blanket back into the box, and then paused.  ‘Oh shit!’ she said. She reached into the box and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, which was folded into a square. She unfolded it, her hands shaking, and read it to herself.  

 ‘What the fuck…’ she whispered. Then she slammed the car door and shouted ‘Hang on!’ 

 ‘What?’ 

 Natia trotted around the car, gripping the piece of paper in her fist. 

 ‘What?’ I repeated, blinking as Natia passed the headlights. 

‘There’s a note! Hang on.’  

She bundled herself into the front passenger seat and shut the door against the night chill. 

‘They left this under the blanket. Holy shit, Kate.’ she said. 

‘What? What’s it say?! Show me.’ 

Natia fumbled with the note, and then unfurled it so that I could see. Scribbled across the paper in thick black marker were the words:

DON’T LET IT KNOW YOUR NAME.