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/r/nosleep
Thinking back to that night I wonder what I could have done differently. Being a naive twelve-year-old I made a stupid, spur of the moment decision without thinking. The last 12 years of blame and self-hate have forced these memories to play on repeat. That being said, I think I’m finally ready to forgive myself and just remember him as he was. My best friend.
Every kid has the same fear on their first days of school. 'Will anyone want to be friends with me?' Sitting at the lunch table hours in, I was thinking the same. However, when a young dirty blonde-haired kid sat opposite me and complimented my bright blue dinosaur adorned lunch box, that all washed away.
Mason, likewise, was a Dino nut. Starting with our matching lunch boxes, a friendship blossomed that could and should have lasted a lifetime.
The days playing dinosaur disaster (a made-up dinosaur wrestling game) and nights watching old dino docs were the best days of our lives.
Our town sat just above an old prehistoric lake-bed deposit, which was home to an extension of the town. Due to the extremely high flood risk and past storms, the local council had deemed the area hazardous and off limits. As a result, the area had been left in a hurry, giving its shambled remains the image of a ghost town.
Its frankly dilapidated condition and its mystique had most local kids attempting to break in weekly. That being said, security was high, oddly too high for an area that was simply at risk of flooding. However, sadly for us, that area was home to the long-forgotten museum of prehistory and the object of our interest.
The plans we made up in Mason’s back garden tree house, could have seen us as world renowned paleontologists. Although, what we wanted more than anything was to get just a peak at the treasure trove laying, untouched in that valley.
-
We weren't bad kids; we listened to our parents’ warnings and understood why we couldn't go down to the lake-bed. Though, after years of fantasizing and opportunity arose in our first year at secondary school, that we couldn’t help but pounce at.
"You hear about that ghost town in Grey's Valley? Well apparently, Josh Browning is going to throw a lit party in a week. I don’t know how, but he’s found a way in."
The rumor mill churned as a revelation smacked me in the face as Mason charged down the hall, practically doing the same.
"Leah's going" he coughed between baited breaths. My puzzled luck, encouraging him to elaborate.
"She's going to Josh's party. Maybe we can go with her. You know down to the old town."
As we stared into each other’s eyes with hyperactive excitement, we knew this could be our only chance, so long as Mason’s sister would be cool with it. That evening as we sat in the tree-house, we hatched a plan.
We decided that we’d follow them down the valley and enter the exclusion zone just behind, out of sight. Using the mastermind excuse of ‘going to the movies with Leah’, we had our alibi. This also gave Leah the excuse to leave too, which she was happy to play along with. We’d decided not to spend too long as to not arouse any suspicion and be back within a couple of hours.
Checking the forecast, we were due some rain, though not until two days after. With it being early Autumn, we stupidly assumed that nothing would change, and we’d be in no danger from the elements.
That evening felt like an eternity to come, our eagerness causing every minute to feel like an hour. However, as it did, we saddled up our packs, mostly filled with torches, batteries and an encyclopedia of prehistoric animals, we were ready. Checking our watches as Leah took forever to get ready, we couldn’t contain our excitement.
Clambering into her small two door car, neither of us could stop smiling as Leah watched us through the rear-view mirror.
“Right, I don’t want to see you at the party. So, whatever it is you’re planning, do it as far from me as possible. Got that?” She demanded.
“Yes ma’am,” we joked as we saluted her from the back seats.
From our planned drop off point we stealthily waited and watched as the rowdy group of teens formed and then ventured through the broken fence. Though the forecast had said no rain, a couple of clouds loomed overhead, threatening to unload their contents. Giving a complimentary one-minute wait, we burst free from our hiding spot and began to embark on our adventure.
-
Somehow, Josh and his mates had found a section of the perimeter fence that was obstructed by a pair of small shrubs. With what we assumed were pliers, they snipped away a corner of the supports and used the surrounding foliage as a cover.
Following a short track way of trampled vegetation, we pushed through a thick mixture of fir and conifer trees on our descent, emerging around halfway down the slope. As we scanned the environment below, I caught the group ahead entering the town and making a right turn towards one of the larger buildings.
The town wasn’t massive, maybe six or seven intact buildings, with a litter of half-submerged or collapsed structures sitting in the thick, but currently hard mud. Maybe only a foot wide, a set of snaking tributaries trickled in and out of the structures as they passed from right to left down the shallow decline of the lake-bed.
Reaching the end of the path, we hastily moved to our left, trying to avoid the main entrance and guard station sitting at the top of the valleys wall. On our venture we trudged passed a fire station, convenience store and collapsed gas station cover, to finally face the main entrance of the museum at the old towns end. Obviously, we’d seen photos, but actually standing there in person, we couldn’t hold back our excitement any longer. Mason darted for the doors, with me half a second behind him as we squirmed through the shattered doorway and into its interior.
Entering that damp, yet fairly undamaged building we surveyed our surroundings. Making our plan days prior, we set out a route that would allow us to see as much in as little time as possible, so long as we didn’t make any major detours. Whipping out his torch, Mason examined the printout of the map I had bound together into a crude booklet.
“Okay. No wasting time, let’s get to it, yeah?” Mason suggested as he pointed to the open doorway, which read in large red font, ‘Cenozoic Era.’
“Yeah, but let’s not be too reckless, this place isn’t all that put together anymore.” I didn’t want to waste time either, but something about the aged supports had me slightly on edge.
The hallway we entered had a large, long geological timeline which extended round the perimeter walkways leading to each exhibit. For a while we simply followed the dim damp corridor, rays of sunlight revealing our path as they peaked through the broken clerestory windows.
Occasionally we would enter any small exhibits and take some arguably out of focus photos on Mason’s short digital camera. The soft scraping of stone and creaking of wet wood lingered as we ventured through. Though we wouldn’t be picky with what we got to see, our main focus was the Mesozoic section and its array of dinos.
Exiting that section and stepping into a wide room, a tangle of foliage, moss and what looked and definitely smelt like mold covered the tall walls and wrapped around the cracked staircase ahead of us. A collapsed section of the wall and upper floor piled up, blocking the doorway to our left and leaving us with two options. Beams of light extending from the holes in the roof, illuminated the three signs sitting on each wall of the room in front of us. From left to right, ‘Gifts – Cafeteria’, ‘Mesozoic Era – Paleozoic Era’ and ‘Movie Hall’.
“Sam, wanna actually see a movie?” Mason chuckled as he pointed and turned his head towards me.
As he spoke, we collectively heard the faint, yet distinct sound of people talking.
“What was …” Shushing Mason as I tilted an ear and strained to listen again, those were definitely voices and there were at least a couple of them.
Slowly and hesitantly, I guided Mason over to the slightly a-jar ‘Movie Hall’ door, with my finger pressed to my lips. Delicately peaking around its corner, I scanned the auditorium to see a group of people standing around the front row of seats. Fixating on each person one-by-one I quickly realized one of the taller girls was Leah, and this was her group.
“Ewww Josh, these seats are all wet, where are we supposed to sit?” and “Toss me another, this place blows.” One girl droned on in an obnoxious tone as the guys in the group cracked open another can.
“Well then, guess we’re not going in here, are we? Don’t wanna upset the big boss.” Mason jokingly whispered again as we wound our necks in and turned to the staircase.
“Thought they were supposed to be partying? This is definitely not the type of place Leah would hang … unless she’s trying to pull?” Mason’s sarcastic wink, solidifying why I was his only friend.
“How’d they get in? You think there’s a back entrance somewhere? I questioned, but Mason had already started ascending the broken staircase.
Stepping foot on those weak panels didn’t fill me with confidence, as their pained grouses only added to the buildings settling noises.
-
Reaching the top we both stood in awe as we gazed upon the objects of our infatuation. Standing ahead was the largest collection of dinosaur animatronics and statues in our county.
Surprisingly, what caught our attention first was a jumbled mess of bones, some connected to the supporting wires, but most laying, cluttered on the granular floor. A Frankenstein’s monster of multiple dinosaur species stared us in the face, though there was no name or description panel. Trying to concentrate on the creature, I couldn’t tell if it was just a jumbled mess caused by the crumbling exhibit or it had been made that way.
The audible click of magnetic limbs drew me up to see Mason adding an ‘average’ sized rib bone to the stout Carnotaurus skull in a phallic design. Chuckling to one another Mason jumped down and passed me into the main bulk of the room, however my eyes didn’t follow at first. They were almost transfixed on the skeleton. Something about its disjointed proportions and angular frame made me uneasy. It seemed to jerk ever so slightly, chalking it up to wind or the recent meddling of Masons, my engagement was quickly broken as he called for me to follow.
Walking the exhibit, with interspersed flashes of a camera, we couldn’t have been more vindicated for actually coming down that evening. I don’t know how long we spent, but we must have meticulously examined and debated each sculptures accuracy and ‘coolness’, as Mason put it.
“Mate … that Gnathosaurus is well weird, look at its crest. What are we saying, a top 10 dino?
As Mason took another snap, I couldn’t help myself but interject, regardless of how cringe I would have sounded then and still do now.
“That’s a pterosaur not a dinosaur actually, but yeah, its 100% a top 10.”
Not all the sculptures were unscathed buy the withering of time. Though most were just slightly water damaged, a couple of headless Raptors definitely made up for the unfortunate crumpled piles of plastic and fabric. Similarly, with the absence of electrical connections, all but one of the animatronics actually made a sound. Though, it could be compared to wheezing rather than the original vocalizations.
We’d easily spent more time than planned there, but striding into the ‘Cretaceous exhibition, we finally gazed up at its centerpiece. A hulking titan loomed over us as we stood, marveling at the Tyrannosaurus.
“He’s a big boy, isn’t he? Mason really had a way with words.
“How about you put your head in his mouth, and I’ll take a photo?” I knew he’d ask me, so I quickly got my question in first.
Smiling, somehow he seemed game and with little push back, quickly positioned himself below the behemoth. His head rising closer and closer to its maw as the image put into perspective how small we really were in comparison.
Lunging forward, a distorted, broken crackling roar bellowed from the slack jawed therapod, as the scraping, scratching of carbon fiber bones echoed in unison. Its suddenality sent Mason flying backwards to the floor, like a startled cat and caused me to become paralyzed in place. The gap between Mason’s head and the jagged rows of teeth as it jerked had been so small, for an instant it seemed as if he would have been swallowed up by the animatronic.
Looking at the now slumped T.rex and then back at each other, laughter broke out, though it was strained and faked. Mason’s eyes hollow and extremely wide as the beast rocked back to its original position, the near miss must have put into perspective how dangerous of a situation we were really in. Our stunned silence was complimented by the absence of settling noises and the emergence of a soft dripping overhead.
Sitting on the exhibition floor a small drip of water hit the back of my neck and slithered down my shirt, causing me to squirm in place. My head slowly tilted upwards as another droplet hit me square in the face. It was dark, no longer the dim afternoon but the early evening. As the grey clouds thickened, raindrops gradually beat through the opening in the ceiling, causing me to realize we’d been here too long.
Turning to Mason, I was about to tell him we didn’t have much time left, but he hadn’t moved. His gaze was no longer on the T.rex but locked in on something out of my sight. Nudging him forcefully, his eyes never lost their laser like focus.
“What? Mason, what is it?”
“Sam, where did that skeleton go?” His voice trembled like a young child getting reprimanded by a parent.
“What?” I questioned as my eyes filtered around the legs and fake shrubs of the dinosaur’s podium.
The section was empty.
“Did it fall over or through the floor maybe?” They were empty suggestions as I knew we’d have seen or heard something.
The distinct change of his mood and body language had me on edge too. However, before I could open my mouth to ask for us to leave, voices came from the floor below.
-
Scrambling to our feet, we rounded one of the display walls and peered over the bent catwalk barrier. Leah’s group were downstairs in the cafeteria wandering the pealing floorboards and overturned tables.
Questioning whether I should tell her we were leaving or just buck it out of there now, a shout came from one of the large unhinged double metal doors, leading down to the basement. I couldn’t make it out, but whatever it was, it pushed the group into action as they hastily followed the sound.
With a foe bravado, Mason’s voice emerged from my right.
“Maybe we should see what the fuss is about, this can be the last thing before we dip.”
Nodding, regardless of the small pocket of fear welling within, we searched for the makeshift entrance they’d used to get into the cafeteria. With no luck, Mason pointed out a slab of collapsed wall below us, creating a sudo ramp from the second to first floor. It definitely wasn’t fully stable, but with our only other option to track back to the main entrance, we ventured down. Effortlessly, Mason hung from the catwalk barrier and lowered himself feet first onto the slab, sliding down to the floor. However, somehow I managed to lose my grip and fall a short distance, back first onto the slab, slumping down to the floor in a heap.
It was painful but didn’t hamper me too much initially, mostly due to the adrenaline and my desire to end our little excursion. As I slowly propped myself up on one of the overturned tables, Mason stretched out a hand beckoning me to take it and rise to my feat.
The basement was pitch black, mostly due to the absence of a light source down in its depths. With a slight nod of solidarity, we clicked on our torches, barely cutting through the dense, moist air and descended the thick stone stairs.
Following the quiet chatter, we stepped through a thin layer of water which blanketed the basements stone floor as we advanced. From simple storage to half damaged sculptures and props, the rooms were collectively home to that ever prominent green and black mold, infesting the building.
Finally, we saw the group as they entered a room filled with early human mannequins. Evidently this was what they had found so enthralling. Poking and jesting at their proportions and clothes, the gaggle of late teens frisked through the room’s items. Backing away slowly and moving to an unoccupied room we simultaneously stopped, in a sudden realization.
A beige sandy platform lingered at its back wall, illuminated in our torchlight. Stepping closer, the labelled panel read: ‘Skeletosaurous’, 'a selection of the most famous composites for any avid paleontologist to craft a wild new creature.'
“Is this where that thing was supposed to be?” His voice trembled as it had in front of the Tyrannosaurus.
“I don’t know. But where is it now?” My tone paralleling his growing fears.
“Skeletons don’t just get up and walk around, do they? It’s not nightmare at the museum.” His fake chuckle didn’t mask his true thoughts.
My response wouldn’t come, as a raspy scratching sound echoed from deeper within the elaborate and dark rooms. As it did, it was followed by a chorus of screams and the distinct sound of frenzied panic. Scrambling across the open doorway a portion of the group dashed away to the basement staircase.
Whatever their pursuer was, we didn’t want to find out, however as we turned a shooting sharp pain planted itself in my lower back. That fall hadn’t left me unscathed. I knew I wouldn’t be getting out with any haste and as we stared at each other, a silent decision was made.
Grabbing and half dragging, half crutching me to a section of pallets deeper in the right of the room, we planted ourselves and held our breath. Trying our best to stay silent we waited. That dragging scraping sound mixed with the moving, settling of the building came from the room ahead. Whatever was creating it was large, but not whole.
The sound of clicking and dangling pieces of a hard, stone-like material bounced off the walls and the other components of its mass. Although, mixed in with those inanimate sounds, were the dripping, squelching noises of a living thing. Whatever was being dragged across the wet stone floor was wheezing and faintly panting as if it were clinging to life, only barely. Each step on the entities asymmetric digits sent a short ripple of water. Every ice-cold wave beat at our back as we sat there motionless. Neither of us dare turn to look, in fear of revealing our makeshift hiding spot.
-
We must have sat there in complete silence until we couldn’t hear anything, then waited some more. Though we didn’t want to wait long enough for whatever that was to come back, our movements were braised as if wrapped in a strait jacket. By that time, we’d acclimated to the cold water and hadn’t even noticed that it had risen from ankle level to knee level. The strained sound of thunder snapped Mason from his trance.
“It’s flooding, we’ve got to go”, I whispered into his ear as to not illicit any attention.
“Let’s go, I … I’m … ready to go now” Mason squeaked, the fear palpable in his weary voice.
Traversing those rooms felt like a horror game. Each corner was a potential jump scare lingering in the pitch-black maze of museum relics. Reaching the base of the staircase, streams of water gushed down, steadily converting the once damp basement into a deep abyss.
Ascending with care, we prayed nothing would rear its head and blockade our only exit. Stepping in a panic with too much force, my foot hit a soaked mossy patch masked by the onrushing waterfall as my footing gave way. The fall stole my breath as I plunged back into the rising water table. With a gasp that could have swallowed all the air in the room I broke free of the surface tension. Staring up at Mason, his silhouette juxtapose to the faint moonlight peering through the opening above. His spotlight fixed on me as I struggled to push myself back onto my knees.
“Sam, you good mate?” Masons voice was harsh as he attempted to call down without alerting anything.
“Arh … my knee. Help me up, please.” This situation had me feeling like a helpless child, which right there, kneeling in the flooded basement, I was.
In the fall my torch had disappeared under the deepening current, though not at the forefront of my mind as we attempted to climb out for a second time.
His outstretched hand, grasping my shoulder and heaving me up as I barely put one foot in front of the other on our ascent. Breaking free from the darkness, we could tell that we were in a very dire situation. Water was surging in from every possible inlet, dragging anything that wasn’t tied down back to the museums cracking back wall. If we weren’t more careful, we could end up following the impending opening of the floodgates, pulling us downstream.
Searching the slowly imploding room, we tried to locate the doorway back to the main entrance, although in our horror we both turned to see it had caved in, leaving no safe way to exit.
“Where’s the door gone, how are we going to get out, what now?” I whimpered, as Mason shook me and divulged his plan for our escape.
“Check your map Sam, there must be a staff area or something with a back door.”
Distressingly however, the fall had soaked my backpack and its contents, leaving the map no more then a damp scrap.
“Okay, okay … we can still do this, we need to find a way back to the Cenozoic exhibit, where we came in.” His voice, returning to that enthusiastic tone he’d used earlier. Maybe it was to comfort me or just to psych himself up, but I was ready.
At that time with the falling debris and increased water level, a small section of the catwalk we’d previously been stood on had dropped, allowing us to access it if we gained a small amount more height.
“Mason, if we move a table or two, we can jump back into the railing from the second floor, look!” My outstretched arm pointing to our hopeful salvation.
“Yeah, I think that will…” His statement was cut off, by a sound that sent a shiver up our spine, colder than the surrounding water.
As parts of the building fell, splashing in the rising water level, another fainter sound could be heard between the rumbles of thunder. The scraping sound. Whatever it was originated from, was still inside.
“Sam, you work on the table. I’ll keep an eye out and watch your back.” His voice remained firm as the cone of light from his torch extended out into the wide room behind us.
The torch only just lighting a pale white flicker. Its disjointed figure lurched out of sight once more, dragging what seemed to be the upper half of one of the mannequins.
“Sam, lets get a move on.” His voice growing more frantic as I could see the torch light flick across the rooms perimeter.
Hobbling over to a round table, I tried to use my body weight to leaver it up onto my back so I could carry it, however as I did a section of wall gave way and a blast of water sent be to my knees. Interspersed between breaths I called out for Mason as he tried his hardest to keep track of our stalker.
“I can’t, were going to have to do it together.”
I knew Mason didn’t want to take his eyes from the rest of the room, but with a short, vicious ‘fuck’ under his breath, he swiveled, and collectively we mounted the tables.
Like mice running from a cat, we scaled that unstable platform and scrambled up to the second floor as fast as we could, fighting the urge to look back as those scraping sounds drew closer. Darting, slipping and fleeing across the second-floor exhibit, we passed the things that had excited us so much, now only relegated to obstacles blocking our escape.
-
Stopping at the top of the staircase, a riptide beat against its supports as debris and steps flowed down hitting the weakening back wall. As we hesitated at the top, the unmistakable sound of a raspy, broken T.rex roar emanated from back within the exhibit. Only one thought shot through our minds as we knew, what had activated its sensors.
Pushing me upfront as my lower body began to fatigue, Mason’s head doubled back, as to ascertain our pursuer.
“Right, don’t worry about that, just take it slowly and don’t put too much weight on the steps, they’re practically falling off.” His goading hand signals leading me down the dilapidated structure.
“Look there, the raised podiums. Just get on them and we’ll be okay.” His encouraging words driving back the talons of nausea that were embedded within me, preventing any semblance of rationality.
Traversing the stairs, each platform creaked and cracked on my descent, leading me to make a stupid, reckless mistake. In hysterics at the looming sounds from the second floor, I quickly hopped down the last three, disregarding Mason’s earlier statement. Shattering under my weight, their splintered remains rapidly flowed down to the back wall. That must have been the final straw as, the moment they collided with the mound of debris, the back wall collapsed sending the river of rubble hurtling down stream at a breakneck pace.
Staring out at the rapids, many of the previously seen buildings were flowing away in the writhing channel that had formed.
Mason followed suit, painstakingly clambering down as far as possible. Planting himself on the last available step and bracing himself, something above caught his eye as they widened to the size of footballs. Mealy for a fleeting moment, I caught a fragment of what he was seeing. Its broken frame limping as it dragged its numerous appendages and joints with an uncanny ferocity. Flicking back down to me, I could see the fear welling up within as he was forced to make a leap of faith.
The moment hung in the air for an eternity as he flung himself towards me, arms outstretched. My disregard earlier forcing him to make an impossible leap. In my fear of falling to the waves, I didn’t inch closer to the edge, only reach a hand, which scarcely bridged the gap between us. His body was frozen there in mid air as our fingertips touched. All the while our eyes were locked on one another. However, eternity passed as his body dropped, plunging into the torrent. Its cold grasp, ensnaring him and wrenching his body under.
For a moment I was stunned to silence, not moving and disregarding the writhing clawing sounds above me. Whether I was hopefully searching for a sign he was alright or just expecting the creature to slump down and devour me I froze. In a moment, my world had crumbled as the structure around me imploded and fell to ruin.
-
I expected to be chewed out by the line of parents and officers who’d congregated at the embankment in front of the main entrance. Honestly in that moment I was too focused on getting help for Mason to care what they’d say as multiple men forcefully wrenched me back to the safety of the valley wall.
My naivety and panic only left the adults with solemn looks as they grasped the situation, something I wasn’t able to process. My pleas only falling on deaf ears as there was nothing any of them could do.
I dreaded the conversation with Masons parents. Martha’s bloodcurdling wails as she fell to the floor and the dejected, sorrowful look in Roberts eyes only fed the spiraling abyss in my stomach, as it engulfed me. Mirroring their pitiful situation was another couple, I’d later find out was one of Leah’s friend’s parents. Curled up in a ball, their quiet sobs being drowned out by the downpour, which washed away any trace of their only child.
Leah never told me what she and her friends saw, let alone what happened to Tommy. I can make an educated guess, but evidently, she’s repressed those memories like most from that group, all except Josh. Lots of people still blame him, none more so than Leah’s parents, but looking back, he was just like me, excited to spend time with his friends.
Whatever it was, that thing in the basement, no-ones heard about it since. Looking back at old documents and photos of the museum when it was fully operational, there wasn’t even a mention of an exhibit with any large scale skeletons in. The tiny glimpse I got in the reflection of Mason’s eye, is enough for me. I don’t need the full picture to get closure. Although, regardless of the power mother nature commands, I doubt that synthetic beast was quelled so easily.
Weeks, months went by with me confining myself to exile in my room. I’d hoped my parents would hate me or disown me for disobeying them, but they just pitied my situation as I felt sorry for myself. For a while hating myself just became the norm.
It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with what happened and with no bodies ever being found, closure is hard to come by. However, with this story I think I’m finally able to look past my mistake and stop this spiral of self-loathing.
What spurred me on to this was us moving out and throwing away a lot of my old childhood things. That dinosaur lunchbox forced my recollection and has given me the motivation to move on. I’ve applied and been accepted into the Oxford University on a Geology and Paleontology degree, and by God I’m going to be the world’s greatest paleontologist, not just for myself, but for Mason.
Last night, I caught my neighbor staring at me through the window.
I just happened to be walking past the living room window, when I noticed the old woman who lived next door, sitting on her couch, just watching me with this horrid look on her face.
She didn't even pretend to look away in that super awkward way that we humans tend to, when we're caught doing something incredibly rude, or even stupid.
It was like she was in a trance. Her eyes almost buldged from her wrinkled, leathery face, the creases on her features began to slowly tighten until she looked like she would just about fall apart at any moment.
I waved to her, but that only seemed to make things worse. Her eyes opened wide and started tearing up, her teeth began to gnash, and her fists kept clamping shut tight, then releasing.
Yet she wouldn't move an inch. She just sat and stared right into my soul.
I felt my chest tighten, my mind playing out paranoid scenarios at lightning speed. What the hell was wrong with her? Was she going insane?
I slowly inched forward, trying not to let my anxiety take over. My mind was trying to rationalize what it just saw, to no fucking avail.
That's when I saw her grandson run right up to her. She didn't even blink. He held up a drawing for her to look at, shouting and giggling.
Slowly, the old woman grabbed his head and turned it out the window. When he had turned and looked at me, his eyes went wide, and he started staring with the same unnatural look that his grandmother had, and pointed at me.
His eyes went numb and twitched wildly as he went still. His gaze would not break from mine. I tried to motion to him, mouthing out "Do you need help?"
The boy's head started to turn sideways, still staring directly at me. His body went limp.
Now I knew for sure something was wrong here. I quickly closed the distance to my window and shut the blinds, trying to shake the feeling of being watched.
It was like icey needles were slowly piercing the back of my neck. I couldn't breathe, but when I turned around to go grab my inhaler, there was another person staring through my window, this one on the opposite side of the room.
My body felt wobbly as I processed the man and his wife, my other neighbors. They stood in the lawn just outside my house. Both of them were just... Staring.
The woman's face was twisted up in a look of absolute hysteria, her mouth pursed so tightly that her head was vibrating from the pressure. She looked like she was muttering the same words over and over.
Her husband was next to her, just a few feet from my window. He looked at me with a tightly wound look of absolute disgust. His body kept shivering, his tongue continuously licked his lips, like he was trying to keep them from drying up.
I could feel my lungs trying to collapse in on themselves as I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening. I bolted across the living room, almost tripping on the corner of the couch as I ran faster than I ever had in my life.
I practically tore the blinds down getting them closed as panic started shifting me into auto-pilot. I started to scream as I turned, seeing another set of unblinking eyes looking in through a window in the kitchen. It was the only visible window from where I stood and stared back.
The mailman usually made late runs, but now he was stood completely still, the mail from his satchel blowing around him in a swirling motion. It was as if he had been walking and just completely froze the moment we locked eyes with each other.
I started to scream at the top of my lungs, running to close the window. The man was just like the others, unflinchingly gawking at me with this growing intensity that made me want to curl up and cry.
As I closed the curtain over the kitchen window, I decided enough was enough. I was going to call the police and have these people arrested. Whatever the hell was going on, it couldn't be natural.
When I called, the bored woman on the phone assured me that the police were on their way. I managed to calm down a bit, assuring myself that it might be me who is going crazy, not them. Or maybe this was some elaborate trick, a prank set up by the neighbors.
God, I hoped so.
Not long later, I heard the authoritative knocking that police officers always used to intimidate criminal and civilian alike.
"Police! Open up. We got a call from this residence about a disturbance in the neighborhood."
I sighed, relieved that the people outside must have left. Now I would have to explain to the officers that this was all just a silly misunderstanding. I always was a paranoid person.
I opened the door quickly, happy to receive the help of my tax dollars at work.
I wish I hadn't.
Two young police officers were stood on my porch, one up close and one lingering by the stairs of my porch.
They both stood motionless, staring at me with the same intensely rigid eyes that everyone else had planted into their skulls that night. The front officer started stammering like a catatonic soldier stuck in combat, his fingers digging at nothing while his arms were stiff as a board.
The other looked like she was sweating and drooling on her uniform as she shivered, her face trembling from the stretching of her muscles, all tightening rapidly.
I screamed with the force of a jet engine, slamming the door in their faces. I turned to run, no longer trusting the outside world.
The only place I could go where they couldn't spy on me was my basement, so that's where I fled.
I wrenched open the basement door so hard that the hinges practically splintered the door frame, the door knob puncturing dry wall as it slammed out.
My brain kept replaying a kaleidoscope slideshow of their horrible expressions, the glistening eyes that stared at me from body's that no longer belonged to my neighbors. Hell, the whole world could be fucked, for all I know.
I quickly and quietly made my way down the rickety wooden stairs to my basement. The smell of mildew and old concrete made my head feel weak as I descended into the dimly lit room.
I must have left the lights on when I went down there earlier. Eerily enough, I couldn't remember when or why I came back up without the spare kitchen chair. It was the whole reason I went down there in the first place. I knew I had company coming over later tonight and I wanted to be prepared.
I got about ten steps from the bottom when I stopped, holding my breath as nerve tingling sounds reached my ears..
It sounded like someone was down there. A man was whispering to himself, occasionally releasing a low and menacing laugh. He was talking to himself, and I could hear what sounded like a blade slicing into fresh meat. He would slice then laugh, slice then cry out...
I couldn't go back up, so I thought maybe I could sneak by and find a weapon, maybe set up a barricade in the back room. I could stack the washer and dryer and block the door, I thought.
I slowly creaked down the stairs. The moment my feet touched cold basement concrete, the man's mumbling and laughter ceased.
In the deep, dark dampness of my basement, a single lightbulb hung from above. The smell of copper and iron flooded my nose. It took me a long time to process the lunacy that lay before me.
Under the single glowing yellow-orange light of the room, a man stood there. He wore a ragged looking olive colored jacket, a pair of torn and dirty jeans, and had a long, bloodied knife gripped tightly in hand.
He just stood there, staring. His eyes were so wide that they looked like they would tear right open if he sneezed. His chest rose and shrank quickly. It looked like he would reach down and tear his own stomach out at any moment. Blood dotted him in dark speckles from head to toe, and he shuffled just a bit in place with a nervous energy I had yet to see that night.
I could feel his eyes drilling right through my head, like he was stuck here for all eternity.
At his feet, I saw a bloodied and mangled corpse lying face up on it's back, the blood coagulating as it touched the cold concrete floor, steam rising into the air from the warmth leaving it's host.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run upstairs. Run out the door, and find someone in the shadows of the streets to come and help me sort out the insanity of this night that I fell head first into unknowingly.
Not because there was a killer in my house. Not because everyone was staring into my soul that night.
It's because the body I saw under that bloodied knife and flickering fluoresent bulb...
Was me.
John 19:30: “He said ‘It is finished!’ and He bowed his head and gave up His spirit.”
As soon as her blood ceased to fall from the black cross, so too had the snow exhausted itself. Her red dress nobly held what blood it could, but it did her no good. So exsanguinated was her body I thought it would float to Heaven if not for the nails, but her red dress fell like a comet to the ground. The snow caught her as softly as it could; it embraced her body warmly, but we took her easily, for she was not a corpse but a feather or a rose.
The ground was hard, but many hands made work light. Soon there was a place for her in the earth.
“A mercy or disgrace, to remove the crown that pierced her?” We asked.
“Leave it. The regalia pains her no more.”
We had her buried in time for supper.
At supper, the sermon topic was Christ’s resurrection. We were told that Mary would rise again in the spring, just as Christ after being buried in his tomb rose again on Easter. Just as Christ’s rising from the dead signified his conquering of death and bestowed everlasting life on all who believed, so too would she do for us if only we were baptized in the lake with the angel and in her name. After supper we would go out to lake and be baptized with the angel as witness.
Dinner was joyful. They ate little and they ate quick to prepare for the lake. The director put on thick waiters to not freeze in the waters. They gathered towels and blankets to keep the newly baptized from freezing.
That chain that held our angel above the lake grew taught as we giddily walked in the gray dusk. I realized my time was nearly up. So I stopped, watching to see if in their glee they would notice me fade from the crowd. Only Jessica’s eyes turned back to me, giving me a knowing look. She shook her head, and continued with them.
Simple as that, I walked away, past the cabins, and the vans and along the road from which we came in summer.
After night had fallen, towards the now distant lake I heard gunshots echo through the woods. First only a few, then a chorus, then a storm. I kept my face forward, afraid to look back. As quickly as the storm grew, it faded and passed.
After walking again in the night and in silence, “Hey kid! Stop right there!” Footsteps approached rapidly from behind. “Show me your hands! Hands!” I lifted my hands.
Once they were close behind I heard, “Turn around slowly kid, show us your eyes.” So I did. After examining my eyes with a flashlight, they put a bag over my head, zip tied my hands, and marched me again through the night.
The next day I recounted the events of those 6 months to men in black suits. They showed me pictures of the angel, of the cross, of the man in white robes, and the bodies of my friends whose eyes were now black as pitch. They told me I’d be among them if I had not left when I did.
They kept me warm and fed until summer when my stay at the camp would have ended. Then they flew me back home to my parents. At the airport, I repeated to my mother what the men in black suits had told me. I had a great year. I made great memories. The lake was beautiful. I’m glad to be home.
I find it ironic: what sticks with me most. It's not the miracles, or rather the horrors. It’s the synchronicities; the gentle whispers that guided me there and safely back. I try to fathom the purpose of it all. Perhaps only to tell the tale.
Hey everyone! It's been a while since I posted here. I won't bother with introductions - I just need to share this while I still can. Before my mind gets filled with more things, I can't explain... I don't even know how long I'll remain me
Love stories usually start with a chance meeting, don't they? Mine began this year, when I met the woman of my dreams. Literally - she was everything I'd ever dreamed of, down to the smallest detail. We shared every interest, finished each other's sentences, laughed at the same jokes. Perfect matches like that don't really happen, do they? I should have wondered about that.
Her accent marked her as foreign, though I could never quite place where from. When our eyes met across the café, she approached first, her voice like warm honey in my ears. We talked for hours, the world fading around us. She mentioned she was new to the city, staying at a hostel while looking for a place. Something in her voice made my heart ache when she described her struggles to find somewhere permanent.
Without thinking, I offered her a place to stay - my apartment had a spare room, after all. Looking back, who offers their home to a complete stranger? But at the time, it felt as natural as breathing. It was like the words came from my mouth before my brain could process them, yet somehow it felt like the most obvious thing in the world.
It wasn't until weeks later that I realized something odd - she had known my name from the start, though I never introduced myself. When this thought surfaced, it slipped away just as quickly, like trying to hold onto a dream after waking.
Then came the dreams. Night after night, I'd jolt awake, heart racing, certain she was beside me. Those sweet eyes of hers would be fixed on my face, her lips moving in whispers of a language I couldn't quite grasp. But when I truly woke, everything was normal - our usual morning routine, her in the kitchen cooking, me sitting down, waiting to be served. When did that become normal? When did I start forgetting what my life was like before her?
God, what happened to me? Since when was I this hopeless romantic? The guy who used to stammer just asking for coffee directions, now living with a beautiful stranger? My old friends would laugh if they saw me - if I still talked to them. When did I stop talking to them?
Her family appeared next, insisting on meeting me. They shared her strange accent, their voices carrying the same melodic quality that made my thoughts go fuzzy around the edges. "Isn't she perfect for you?" they'd ask, their smiles warm and inviting. "You two were meant to be together." Within a week, we were dating. Within a month, they were planning our wedding.
Can you believe that? Our wedding. The thought should have shocked me more. I hadn't even told my sister - the same sister who'd interrogate me for hours about any girl I so much as smiled at. The sister who called every Sunday without fail. When was the last time I answered her calls?
I remember catching my reflection one morning - something seemed different about my eyes. The color maybe? Or was it something deeper, something in the way they followed her movement like a sunflower tracking the sun? The thought vanished before I could grasp it, like everything else that didn't fit into her perfect world.
Then I met her relatives who came to visit. The way they welcomed me, with such genuine warmth and affection - like I was already part of their family. The children were... different though. They would stare with those unnaturally still eyes, pointing and whispering in their language: "Again... new brother... good? Old brother... gone..." I didn't understand then. I wish I still didn't.
Our wedding happened so fast - one month after meeting. One month. Even writing this, I feel my mind splitting in two. Part of me wonders why I rushed into marriage with a near-stranger, while another part insists it was the most natural thing in the world. How did none of my family attend? Why didn't I invite them? These questions feel like trying to grasp smoke.
My mind was too much in a haze during those days. Each question that surfaced in my mind would dissolve like morning mist. There are whole weeks I can't recall, places I don't remember going to, yet somehow, I ended up there. Then they brought me to their family estate - a sprawling property just two hours from the city. The roads getting there grew narrower, the houses fewer, until we turned onto a private drive I would've missed if not for my wife's direction.
The honeymoon started normally enough. Despite being so close to civilization, the thick woods surrounding their property made it feel like we were in another world. The isolation should have bothered me, but like everything else about her, it felt right. She was the perfect wife, anticipating my every need, her love wrapping around me like a warm blanket. Too warm. Too perfect.
When did I start losing myself in her eyes? When did her voice begin to drown out my own thoughts? Sometimes I'd catch her watching me sleep, her fingers tracing patterns in the air above my skin. The next morning, my arms would itch, though I saw no marks.
By this point in our marriage, six months had passed. Their discussions had become a constant backdrop to my life - warm family conversations in corners, joyous celebrations I couldn't understand, those affectionate exchanges between my wife and her mother that would shift to English the moment I entered a room. The frustration of being surrounded by all this love yet missing half of it started to crack through the haze of contentment they had wrapped around me. Even in my love-addled state, something in me yearned to be part of every aspect of my new family.
That's when I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. I would learn their language in secret. Their genuine warmth and inclusion in everything else made me want to understand every word, every joke, every story they shared. Maybe it was the desire to truly be part of this loving family, or maybe some part of me was still fighting to understand what was happening. Whatever drove me, I began my study.
For four months, I carefully learned their tongue. I used children's reading books, noting down phrases I heard during our family gatherings. I looked forward to surprising them all, imagining their delighted reactions when I could finally join their conversations fully. The strange thing was - even as their words began making sense, so did other things. Things I hadn't wanted to understand. Each translation brought clarity, like pieces of a puzzle I hadn't known I was solving.
Time flowed strangely after that. While I was nearly caught studying one night, my wife brought up something new. She insisted I get tribal tattoos. "Family tradition," they said, showing me intricate tribal designs that seemed to dance in the candlelight. They looked beautiful, and I agreed without hesitation. Looking back, I wonder if my growing understanding of their language had weakened whatever spell they had over me, because for the first time, I noticed how their eyes gleamed when I said yes.
The way their loving gazes carried something else beneath the surface. Those concerned whispers between family members, always followed by reassuring smiles. The children's seemingly innocent chatter that held darker meanings. Everything started making terrible sense.
One night, I overheard her speaking with her mother: "Dear... it's time... prepare... he's... yours... final... perfect... love." Their sweet smiles felt different now that I understood their words. The children's warnings made horrible sense. Each "new brother" before me, where had they gone? What happened to the "old brothers"?
After piecing everything together, I knew I had to leave. Even if I was misunderstanding something, I couldn't take the risk of staying to find out. My skin burned where the tattoos were, and sometimes in the mirror, I swore I saw them moving, tracing patterns I'd seen in their ancient books.
I made an excuse about needing to sleep as I was too tired. They were deep in their discussion and made the fatal mistake of letting me go. I grabbed everything I could - power bank, phone, food, blankets, and anything else that might help me survive. My hands shook as I packed, and I tried to ignore how my fingernails had started to look different - longer, darker, more like hers.
I ran. That's where I am now - hiding in these woods, trying to ignore how the tattoos glow through my clothes. The air is freezing, but I feel warm. Too warm. There's a smell like metal and roses rising from my skin, but that can't be right. Can it?
Darkness is falling by now. The familiar city lights are probably visible somewhere beyond these woods, but I can't find my way through their property. The trees all look the same, and somehow, I keep circling back. I've found shelter against a massive tree, using its thick roots as a shield. But I'm not sure how long I can stay here.
The tattoos - they're whispering now, calling me back. The metallic smell grows stronger, mixing with something sweet and familiar - her perfume. My phone sits useless in my hand. I should call someone, but my fingers won't dial. My thoughts keep slipping away, replaced by memories of her smile, her voice, her touch. No, those aren't my thoughts. That's not me. Sorry, that's not me.
I hear footsteps crunching through the snow behind me. Soft. Familiar. Perfect.
"What are you writing there, dear?" Her voice flows like honey, and my body turns toward it without my permission. Frost falls from my face - when did that start happening?
"Just my story, sweetheart. Don't worry." The words leave my mouth, but they don't feel like mine anymore. Were they ever mine?
"Why don't we go home?" she asks, and I feel my mind clouding over with warmth and love and surrender. The last thing I see as I turn to her is my reflection in her eyes - my own eyes now the same impossible color as hers.
My wife says hi!
It was a night like any other when Camila and Mariana were sitting in front of their phones, ready to go live for their followers. Camila's room was dimly lit by her desk lights, with a couple of colored LED lights in the background, giving it a cozy and youthful atmosphere.
Mariana, who had just turned on her account on her device, smiled as she saw the first followers joining.
- "Hi, guys!" Camila greeted, waving her hand and adjusting her camera to capture her face better. "We're live for you, ready for another challenge! What do you think about what we have today?"
Mariana, while waiting for more people to join, gave Camila a conspiratorial glance.
- "Shall we go with the shadow challenge?" she asked, with a tone of intrigue.
Camila, who had already seen the challenge on other streams, nodded enthusiastically.
- "Sure! Who doesn't love a good shadow challenge?" she replied, smiling at the camera. "It's pretty simple, guys, we just need a wall and a light source. And then, well, whatever creativity and darkness let us do!
Mariana turned on the lamp on the table, pointing it toward the white wall, and waited for her hand's shadow to project. Meanwhile, Camila kept adjusting the camera.
- "Let me know if you can see the shadow well," Camila said, looking at her phone screen. Followers started typing in the chat, excited and ready to participate.
Suddenly, one comment caught Camila's attention.
u/shadowHunter: "Do the shadow challenge with the secret phrase! Supposedly, if you repeat it three times, something weird appears."
Camila frowned, staring at the comment with curiosity.
- "What's this about the secret phrase?" she asked, still looking at her screen.
Mariana, hearing the comment, let out a nervous laugh.
- "It's a silly superstition, Cami. Something about summoning... I don't know what. But it sounds cool!" she replied, while adjusting her fingers in front of the light and starting to make a strange shadow, like her hands were forming a horn or something.
Camila hesitated. There was something in the suggestion that gave her a chill, as if something wasn't right.
- "Look, Mariana, according to what my mom told me, you should never mess with shadows at night. It's a tradition, a superstition my grandma always mentioned... Something about playing with shadows bringing... bad things," Camila explained, trying to sound serious, though a bit nervous from the growing tension in the air.
Mariana turned toward her with a mocking look.
- "What?" she said, laughing, "Please! That sounds like something an 80-year-old would say. It's just a game, Camila! No one's going to pop out of nowhere because we made a shadow on the wall! Come on, stop being so old-fashioned. What if your mom hears you? You don't even have to tell her!"
Camila frowned and looked out the window, as if the night's air was bringing with it an uncomfortable feeling.
- "I don't know..." she said, unsure. "What if something weird happens? I don't want to end up scared tonight. Who knows what could happen?"
Mariana looked at her in disbelief.
- "Come on, please! It's just a game. Besides, we need to do something different for our followers, they're waiting! What if we try the secret phrase? They say the shadow changes shape if you say it three times."
Camila, with a slightly nervous smile, decided to give Mariana a chance, though part of her still felt that something strange could happen.
- "Alright, but... only three times," she said, raising her hands in front of the light, and their shadows danced on the wall, matching the rhythm of her heart, which began to beat faster.
Mariana, with a challenging smile, began to quietly recite the phrase she had found in the comments:
- "My shadow lives, my shadow feels, my shadow is free." Valeria looked at her, surprised by the darkness that seemed to envelop her words.
- "Mariana, stop already!" she shouted, feeling an increasing discomfort, but Mariana didn’t listen.
- "My shadow lives, my shadow feels, my shadow is free."
Suddenly, the shadows on the wall began to move in an unusual way. It wasn't just the reflection of their hands and arms... something else seemed to be taking shape. Camila felt the air grow colder, and an odd pressure enveloped her. But... the shadows continued to move in the usual way, as if someone were waving their hands near a light source.
Camila looked at the wall with a mixture of relief and disappointment. Nothing strange had happened.
- "Well..." Camila sighed with relief. "Like I said, nothing weird happened. See? I told you. It's just a game." Mariana let out a mocking laugh, clearly amused by the situation.
- "Oh, Cami! You took it all so seriously. Please, it's like you were expecting something to fly out of the wall!" Mariana laughed, dropping her phone on the table.
Camila looked at her, smiling but still a bit embarrassed.
- "Hey, it's just that my mom always told me those games at night aren't good... What if something weird happened?" Camila said, raising her hands as if she still couldn't believe she had fallen for the superstition.
- "Oh, don't be so dramatic!" Mariana responded, laughing again. "Nothing's going to happen, Cami. What matters is that we had fun, even just a little!"
They both laughed together, and in the meantime, the followers in the stream kept writing in the comments. Some made fun of Camila, while others enthusiastically commented on how fun the challenge had been.
u/cherry_bliss: "¡Ha, so scary! But Camila’s shadow looks way bigger than Mariana’s, do you guys have a trick?"
u/luna_night: "I thought you were going to summon something... haha, I got scared for a second."
u/xX_angelXx: "Can’t wait to see what challenge you do next, girls. The shadow one was awesome!"
Mariana, seeing the comments, decided to read them aloud, exaggerating her facial expression so that Camila wouldn't stop laughing.
- "I thought you were going to summon something!" Mariana repeated in a dramatic voice. "Yeah, yeah, I thought a monster was going to come out of the wall.
Camila burst into laughter, finally letting go of the discomfort from earlier.
- "Stop it, Mariana, you're making fun of me!" she said, trying to contain her laughter.
With laughter in the air, Camila looked at the camera.
- "Well, guys, it’s pretty late. Thanks for joining our stream!" she said, smiling. "We hope you liked the challenge, even though nothing weird got summoned.
Mariana nodded with a mischievous smile.
- "Yes! Let’s see what challenge we do next. And maybe..." she paused and looked at Camila, "maybe next time I’ll make you believe in something really weird. That would be fun!"
Camila shrugged with a smile.
- "That’s never going to happen, Mariana," she responded, and then looked at the camera. "See you next time, guys!" They both waved and ended the stream with a smile.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A couple of days later, Camila and Mariana decided to do a different stream, no shadows or superstitions this time, focused on something that would surely excite their followers: a viral mug cake recipe in the microwave. Both girls were in the kitchen, ready to make the recipe that had been circulating on TikTok. The camera was positioned perfectly to capture all the ingredients while Camila mixed the flour and cocoa in a mug, with her usual smile.
- "Hi, guys!" Camila greeted, looking at the camera while mixing. "Today we're going to try a viral recipe that I’m sure you’ll love: a mug cake. It’s super easy and fast!"
Mariana approached with the other ingredients, also smiling.
- "And you don’t need to be chefs to make it, it's one of those recipes for when you want something sweet in minutes!" she commented, showing an egg and a bit of milk.
They began adding the ingredients, following the step-by-step tutorial, while the camera captured every movement. Comments from the followers started flooding in immediately.
u/sweet_lover123: "That looks delicious! How long do you leave it in the microwave?"
u/candymix_99: "I can’t wait to try it! How much cocoa do you use? We don’t have much at home, haha."
u/tasty_vibes: "Why not bake it in the oven? I mean... isn’t the microwave a bit weird?"
They quickly responded to the comments, explaining the steps and clearing up doubts. The recipe seemed to be going well until a comment caught Camila’s attention.
u/creepyshadow: "Is it just me, or are the shadows not synchronized like before? It looks weird..."
Mariana, while stirring the mixture with a small spoon, raised an eyebrow, not paying much attention to the comment. But when she noticed that other followers were starting to make similar comments, Camila’s curiosity grew.
u/shadowDetective: "Girls, in the last stream, the shadows didn’t move the same. Are you playing with them again?"
u/dark_vision: "Did you see that? One of the shadows didn’t match the movement. That’s not normal."
Camila paused for a moment and looked at the wall where their shadows were projected, but everything seemed normal. Their movements were natural, and she didn’t see anything strange. However, Mariana, hearing the comments, let out a nervous laugh.
- "What’s going on now?" said Mariana, raising her eyes to the camera with a mocking smile. "Do you really think we’re playing with the shadows again? Enough with those superstitions, guys!"
u/realisticdreamer: "I don’t know, the shadows look weird. Are you sure you’re not using a filter or something?"
u/mystery_lover: "The shadows aren’t moving like they should, it’s making me uncomfortable watching this."
Camila glanced at the wall again but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Their shadows followed the rhythm of their movements, as usual.
- "Oh, come on," said Camila, laughing nervously. "Mariana, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not so sure those shadows are right. The comments are strange, don’t you think?"
Mariana, seeing the concern on Camila’s face, moved closer to look at the wall.
- "Cami, you’re overreacting!" she said, laughing, while making sure there was nothing strange. "Look! The shadows are fine, everything’s normal!"
However, Camila couldn’t shake the slight unease. Despite Mariana’s laughter and attempts to downplay it, the comments kept coming.
u/spooky_girl: "Girls, you’re scaring me. The shadows look weird... like they’re moving by themselves."
u/ghostly_investigator: "I saw them... one of your shadows doesn’t match. Something weird is going on."
Mariana, seeing how the comments piled up, tried to change the subject quickly.
- "Okay, okay... enough with the shadows! Let’s finish the recipe, guys, that’s what matters, not superstitions. Look how great it’s turning out!"
Camila tried to relax and smiled at the camera.
- "Yes, guys, you know, we’re just here to make a delicious cake, not to summon strange shadows. This has nothing to do with what you think!" she said, trying to hide the discomfort she was feeling, while they continued mixing the batter.
Finally, after a few minutes of confusing comments and jokes about it, they decided it was best to end the stream before the conversation went in an even stranger direction.
- "Alright, guys, I think that’s enough for today," said Camila, smiling nervously. "We’ll see you next time! We hope you try this recipe, and remember, no more shadows today!"
Mariana, seeing the stream was coming to an end, raised the mug with the mixture and smiled at the camera.
- "See you next time, guys! Don’t forget to be happy and not get scared of the shadows!" she said, with a mischievous laugh, while Camila turned off the stream.
They exchanged a brief smile, but deep down, Camila couldn’t help but wonder if the shadows from the last stream were as normal as they thought.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
After the stream, Camila couldn’t stop thinking about the strange comments about the shadows. Although Mariana insisted that nothing was wrong, Camila’s curiosity kept swirling in her mind. The idea that something could be wrong with their shadows bothered her more than she wanted to admit. She decided to go back and check the previous stream, the one in which, according to the followers, the shadows weren’t synchronized. Camila logged into the account she shared with Mariana and searched for the video where they were doing the mug cake challenge. She quickly went to the past streams section and opened the recording.
At first, everything seemed normal. The recipe, the funny comments from their followers... until the moment when, for some reason, Camila felt strangely drawn to the shadows projected on the wall. She moved closer to the screen and observed closely. And then she saw it.
Mariana’s shadow wasn’t moving the same way as her. It was subtle, but unmistakable. While Mariana stirred the mixture with the spoon, the shadow of her arm seemed to lag behind, as if it were on a completely different rhythm than her body. It didn’t move in sync with her gestures; it seemed delayed, like it was mimicking her movements with a slight lag. Camila froze. At that moment, a strange feeling overtook her. The same feeling she had when read the comments during the live stream, but now the proof was clear. There was something very strange about that shadow.
With her eyes glued to the screen, Camila kept rewinding the video, trying to understand what she was seeing. Yes, Mariana’s shadow was the one that wasn’t synchronized. Mariana’s arm moved the spoon to one side, but the shadow seemed to drag a few seconds later, as if it couldn’t keep up with her movements. Sometimes, it even seemed like Mariana’s shadow was making completely different gestures, moving in opposite directions from its owner.
- "No... this can’t be real..." Camila murmured, almost in a whisper, as she watched the video for the fifth time.
Fear started to grow inside her. She couldn’t explain it, but there was no doubt something strange was happening with that shadow. With her heart racing, Camila closed the stream, feeling a chill run down her back. Without thinking, she grabbed her phone and sent a message to Mariana.
Camila: Mariana, you have to see this. The shadows... there’s something wrong. They’re not synchronized.
Mariana: What? More shadow stuff? Enough, Cami, everything’s fine. Don’t be weird.
Camila (nervously): I’m not kidding, seriously. I swear, the shadows aren’t right. Yours... moves differently. It’s not synchronized.
Mariana: Cami, what’s wrong with you? You’re seeing things. Don’t freak out over a couple of weird comments. You know how people are on social media.
But Camila couldn’t calm down. She closed her eyes, feeling the pressure on her chest. Her friend wasn’t going to understand, but she was sure of what she had seen. Something wasn’t right with that shadow, and it wasn’t just the followers’ imagination. It was real. Then, Camila’s phone vibrated with a TikTok notification. It was a comment on the live stream from that afternoon, one that made her stop in her tracks.
u/shadowHunter: "Girls, who else saw that Mariana’s shadow isn’t moving like her? This is weird."
A chill ran through Camila’s body. The followers weren’t wrong. Something was happening with the shadows. And she couldn’t ignore it anymore.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
After several failed attempts to convince Mariana, Camila was determined to make her friend see what was going on. She didn’t want it to just be a weird feeling; she needed Mariana to see it for herself. Camila was sitting in her room, anxiously looking at her phone while waiting for Mariana to respond to her message. It didn’t take long before the girl finally replied.
Mariana: Okay, okay, I’ll check out the streams. But this is getting a bit ridiculous.
Camila bit her lip nervously, watching the clock. She didn’t want Mariana to think she was going paranoid, but the fear still weighed on her chest. She knew what she had seen in the streams, she knew the shadows weren’t right. Soon after, Mariana sent her another message.
Mariana: Cami, I just saw the mug cake recipe recording... and I don’t see anything weird. Everything’s fine. ¿What are you talking about?
- "What if that’s why she can’t see it? What if... saying the phrase was what connected her to her shadow in some way?" she said in a very low voice.
The thought sent a chill through her blood. Could it be possible? It was ridiculous, but nothing in the past few days had made logical sense. If the phrase had activated something, and only Mariana had said it, did that mean the out-of-sync shadow was... independent? Or worse, something more than just a simple shadow? With trembling hands, Camila decided to confront Mariana, grabbed her things—her keys, phone, a jacket—and headed toward her friend's house.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A while later, at Mariana's house, the two friends were sitting in front of Camila's laptop. Mariana sighed, now visibly frustrated.
- "Really, Cami, you're making a mountain out of a grain of sand. I already told you; I watched the broadcasts and there’s nothing weird. I don’t understand why you keep insisting."
- "Wait, please. Just listen to one more thing. Do you remember the shadow challenge? Do you remember the phrase we had to say?"
- "Of course, what’s the connection?" said Mariana, shrugging.
- "I never said it, Mariana. I only moved my lips. But you... you said it completely. Three times. Just like the followers said."
Mariana raised an eyebrow, clearly confused.
- "So what? What does that matter? It’s just a silly phrase."
- "Don’t you think it’s strange that we all see something wrong with your shadow, but you can’t see it? Don’t you think it could be related to the phrase?"
Mariana laughed, a dry and somewhat nervous laugh.
- "Cami, that’s ridiculous. You’re letting this nonsense consume you. It doesn’t make sense."
- "Do you really not feel anything strange since that night? Nothing at all?" Camila said, insisting.
For a moment, Mariana seemed to hesitate. Her gaze shifted to the window, where the car lights passed in the distance. Then she shook her head.
- "No. Nothing has changed. Everything is normal."
Camila sighed, frustrated but also worried. If Mariana was somehow connected to her shadow, what did that mean? And why did it seem so unchanging? As the two argued, a light breeze swept through the room, moving the curtains. Camila looked at the wall, watching how the shadows danced with the movement. For a moment, she swore she saw something strange in Mariana's shadow again, a slight delay, a movement that didn’t exactly match hers. But when she blinked, everything was normal again.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In the days following the discovery of the desynchronized shadows, Camila started to notice subtle changes in Mariana. She was no longer the same. During a live stream where both of them were trying to recreate another viral challenge (making paper flowers), Mariana seemed distracted… she was acting strange in Camila's eyes.
- "Is everything okay?" Camila asked softly, noticing that Mariana was folding the paper wrong over and over again.
- "Huh? Yeah, yeah. Everything’s fine, I'm just tired," Mariana replied, letting out a nervous laugh.
In the comments, followers quickly pointed out the oddity:
u/ShadowLover23: "Mariana looks super weird today, is everything okay?"
u/Flor_de_Sombra: "Haha, I think Mariana needs more sleep... Why is she so serious?"
u/MirrorSoul42: "It's like she doesn't know how to do this. Mariana, is it you or a clone? 😂"
Mariana forced a smile as she checked the comments, but her expression seemed empty. Camila noticed. After the stream, the tension was palpable. Mariana barely spoke, and when Camila asked if she wanted to stay for a movie, the response was flat:
- "I can't, I have things to do."
The next day, while Camila was editing clips of the streams to upload, she remembered a comment someone had left on another video: "Mariana hasn’t been acting like herself lately. It’s like she’s learning how to be Mariana..."
Camila paused the clip and stared at the screen, unsettled. It was true. Mariana seemed... drained, even mechanical.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The erratic behavior didn’t stop. During another stream, Mariana became confused while speaking, even forgetting basic details about her own preferences.
- "Mariana! I can't believe you're saying you don't like chocolate ice cream now. It's your favorite!" Camila joked.
- "Yeah... well, I guess I’m getting bored of it," Mariana frowned, as if she were processing something.
The comments quickly started coming in:
u/LostShadow: "This is getting weird... Is Mariana okay?"
u/EchoTwin: "Does anyone else feel like Mariana isn’t Mariana?"
Camila didn’t know how to confront it. Her friend was there physically, but something about her was different. And the worst part: it seemed like she didn’t realize she was changing.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The tension between Camila and Mariana started to show not only in their daily interactions but also during the live streams. Before, the laughter and jokes between them were the heart of the content they created, but now the atmosphere felt uncomfortable, even for the followers. In one stream, where they were trying a rapid-fire question challenge, Mariana appeared distracted and uninterested.
- "Okay, Mariana, do you prefer the beach or the mountains?" Camila asked with a smile, trying to keep the mood light.
- "What? Uh... I don't know, the mountains, I guess."
Camila raised an eyebrow, surprised.
- "The mountains? You always say you hate the cold! Are you sure?"
Mariana shrugged.
- "Maybe I changed my mind."
The comments quickly started coming in:
u/MoonChaser23: "Mariana looks SO weird lately. Is everything okay between you two?"
u/TwinTheory7: "It’s like she doesn’t even know who she is... 😬"
u/CamiFanForever: "Camila always carrying the streams... Mariana is shut down."
Camila tried to change the topic to prevent the discomfort from escalating, but Mariana's behavior kept getting worse. When it was her turn to ask a quick question, Mariana said something that threw everyone off.
- "Camila, what would you do if I... disappeared?" Mariana said in a flat voice.
Camila stared at her, stunned.
- "What? You’re going to disappear? What are you talking about?"
Mariana didn’t answer, and instead, she stared directly at the camera, as if lost in her thoughts. Camila tried to laugh to lighten the mood, but the discomfort was palpable.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In another stream, while they were doing a dance challenge, the synchronization they used to have been completely absent. Mariana moved her feet at the wrong time, looked away, or simply stopped in the middle of the step.
- "Mariana!" Camila said with forced laughter, trying to cover it up. "You're totally out of sync today!"
Mariana just shrugged again.
- "I guess I'm not as good as I thought."
The comments kept fueling the discomfort:
u/ShadowSeeker99: "Camila is trying so hard in the stream... Mariana is not helping at all!"
u/DoubleTrouble32: "Something's wrong with Mariana, she's not the same."
u/DarkMirror: "Anyone else notice that Mariana doesn’t even seem to enjoy this?"
Camila decided to end the stream earlier than planned. As soon as they turned off the camera, she turned to Mariana.
- "What's going on with you lately? You're not yourself. It doesn't even seem like you care about being here."
Mariana frowned, annoyed.
- "What do you want me to do, Camila? Do you want me to act like a machine so everyone will be happy?"
- "No, I want you to be yourself... but I feel like I don't even know who you are anymore."
The argument hung in the air, Mariana stayed silent, gathered her things, and left the room.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
One night, while Camila was finishing editing clips from the latest streams, she received an unexpected notification: Mariana had started a live stream on their shared account. She furrowed her brow. They hadn’t planned any streams that night, and Mariana usually didn’t do anything without telling her. She opened the app to join the live. The image was blurry at first, as if the camera had been set up wrong. When the quality improved, Camila felt a chill run down her spine. Mariana was sitting in her room, but something wasn’t right. The light was dimmer than usual, and her movements were strangely slow, almost mechanical.
- “Hello…” Mariana said softly, staring at the camera.
The comments began flooding in:
u/LostShadow: "This is weird, why is Mariana so quiet?"
u/EchoTwin: "What is she doing? She seems a bit... out of it?"
u/DarkMirror: "That's not Mariana. That’s NOT Mariana."
Mariana tilted her head as if analyzing the comments. Then she spoke, but not like she usually did. Her tone was monotone, devoid of emotion.
- “Mariana's life is interesting. She has friends, family... dreams... I’m still learning.”
Camila felt a knot in her stomach. "I’m learning," she had said. That didn’t make sense. Learning what?
- “Sometimes... it’s hard to understand it all,” Mariana continued, interlacing her hands strangely, almost childishly. “But soon it will be easier. I’m... adapting.”
The comments became frantic:
u/MirrorSoul42: "What the hell is she saying? 😳"
u/ShadowHunter: "Someone turn this off, it’s disturbing!"
u/DoubleTrouble: "Mariana looks like she’s possessed or something."
Camila couldn’t take her eyes off the screen. There was something strange about Mariana’s shadow projected against the wall. Even though Mariana was still, the shadow seemed to move subtly, as if adjusting its posture or exploring the contours of the room. Suddenly, Mariana turned her head toward the shadow.
- “You’re learning too, aren’t you?” she murmured.
The stream continued as Camila, with her heart racing, kept watching, unable to turn it off. What she was seeing made no sense. Mariana was sitting in front of the camera, but her movements were becoming more erratic. Her head tilted to one side as if it weighed too much, and her hands trembled slightly as they rested on the table.
- “It’s time…” Mariana whispered suddenly, her voice resonating in a deeper, more guttural tone than usual.
The shadow behind her began moving more independently. It no longer followed her movements; it seemed to have a life of its own. It stretched and distorted, projecting onto the wall as if it was separating from Mariana. The comments exploded:
u/ShadowSeer: "What’s happening to the shadow?!"
u/DarkMirror: "TURN OFF THIS MADNESS!"
u/LostEcho: "That’s NOT Mariana, something is coming out of her."
Suddenly, Mariana went completely still, her eyes wide open and expressionless. Her skin appeared paler, almost translucent, as if all the vitality had been drained from her body. The shadow, now completely detached, took form behind her. Slowly, it began to materialize, solidifying before everyone’s eyes. The figure was identical to Mariana: the same hair, the same features, even wearing the same clothes. But there was something strange. The eyes were slightly different, a little darker, more intense, as if they were filled with an alien consciousness. The "new" Mariana stood up, flexing her fingers as if testing a body for the first time. She looked directly at the camera and smiled, but the smile was too wide, too forced, almost cartoonish.
- “Thank you for waiting,” she said in a voice identical to Mariana’s, but with a slightly mocking tone.
The empty shell of the original Mariana remained seated in the chair, motionless, like a broken doll. The comments were filled with terror:
u/EchoSeeker: "What the hell just happened?!"
u/NightHunter: "That’s NOT Mariana, it’s something else!"
u/DarkReflection: "Is anyone recording this? This is terrifying."
The new Mariana leaned toward the camera, observing the comments with a calculated smile.
- “Looks like you have a lot of questions. Don’t worry, everything is... under control.”
Then, she extended a hand toward the camera, as if trying to touch the viewers, and the stream abruptly ended. Camila stood frozen in front of her phone, unable to process what she had just witnessed. Her body was trembling as a single question echoed in her mind: "What have they done to Mariana?"
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Camila tried to reach out to Mariana, but it was no use. The day she planned to go to her friend's house to confront her, despite the fear she felt, Mariana started a solo stream. The screen lit up with her face, looking relaxed and smiling, as if everything was perfectly normal. Followers quickly began joining, filling the chat with messages.
u/luzysombras98: "Hi, Mariana! We missed you... what happened in the last stream? It was a bit strange."
u/fansdecamiymari: "Why isn’t Camila with you? Are you guys okay?"
u/nochesintriga: "Mariana, what happened with the weird shadows in the videos?"
Mariana read the comments and let out a light laugh.
- "Guys, guys!" she said, raising her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Okay, listen, I have to confess something."
The chat paused for a moment, as if everyone was holding their breath.
- "The truth is... everything that happened with the shadows was a prank I played on Camila." Mariana smiled with a knowing look, as if sharing a funny secret with her followers. "I wanted to do something different for Halloween and thought about playing with the idea of shadows. It was super easy to edit the videos afterward to make it look like something weird was happening."
u/sombraslocas: "What?! Really?"
u/superfanshadow: "Haha, poor Camila, she must've been so scared."
Mariana nodded, smiling even wider.
- "Yeah, she was so convinced something paranormal was happening. I felt a little guilty, but it was also really funny. It’s just that Camila is so easy to scare!"
The chat exploded with laughter and emojis, some followers applauding her creativity, others asking her not to make fun of her friend.
- "The important thing is that everything’s fine now," Mariana continued. "I already talked to Camila, and although she’s still a bit upset with me, I’m sure we’ll be doing streams together again soon."
The comments turned mostly positive, with followers praising the idea or asking for new challenges. But among the hundreds of messages, one caught Mariana's attention.
u/miradasombría: "If it was a prank, why is your shadow still not moving with you?"
Mariana froze for a moment. She looked at the wall behind her, where the soft light cast a seemingly normal shadow. She blinked several times and then looked back at the camera, with a nervous laugh.
- "Okay, I think some of you are too immersed in the story. Relax!" she joked, but her tone sounded tenser than before.
The stream continued for a few more minutes with casual questions and jokes, but Mariana ended it earlier than usual, claiming she was tired.
Camila watched the stream in silence from her phone. Every word from Mariana felt like a knife. She knew it wasn’t a joke; Mariana was never that skilled with video editing, and her explanation had too many holes. But what troubled her the most was that moment when Mariana looked at her shadow. Camila noticed it. Although Mariana acted like everything was fine, there was something in her gaze, a spark of fear or confusion, as if even she couldn’t be completely sure of what was happening.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The change in Mariana continued to become more evident, but only to Camila. The small details, the inconsistencies in her habits, in her way of speaking or laughing, piled up like an unbearable weight. The worst part was that no one else seemed to notice, not even the followers, who often commented on how good Mariana looked and how entertaining her videos were. Camila couldn’t stand it any longer. She decided to confront her directly one night after Mariana finished a solo stream.
- "That’s not you, Mariana!" Camila shouted, her eyes on the verge of tears. "I’ve been watching you... you’re not the same anymore. Something changed after that game, and you know it."
Mariana looked at her calmly, too calmly. Her face had an almost amused expression, as if she enjoyed Camila’s suffering.
- "What are you saying? Of course, it’s me. Maybe the one who changed here is you."
- "Don’t say that!" Camila retorted, feeling panic taking over her. "I know you’re not Mariana. Tell me what you did to her!"
For the first time, Mariana dropped the mask. Her smile widened unnaturally, and her eyes, dark and empty, fixed on Camila.
- "Why do you keep fighting, Camila? Mariana is gone. It’s me now. I’ll always be me."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In the following days, Camila completely distanced herself from the streams. She couldn’t stand watching "Mariana" interact with her followers as if nothing had happened, as if the real Mariana had never existed. She tried to seek help, but no one believed her. Even her followers started attacking her, calling her jealous and selfish for trying to ruin Mariana's image. One night, out of sheer desperation, Camila checked the social media channel. There, she found a stream that "Mariana" had started alone. The screen showed Mariana sitting in her room, with the dim light they used to create shadows in their games.
- "Hey, guys. Today I don’t have Camila with me, but I wanted to spend some time with you. I’ve been thinking a lot lately... about who I am, about who I want to be."
The comments were filled with compliments and emojis, but Camila noticed something strange… Mariana had a different approach, one she usually didn’t do. The light came from another direction, the camera focused only on her face in close-up, as if everything had been meticulously arranged so… so that Mariana’s shadow wouldn’t be seen. Suddenly, the "Mariana" on screen leaned toward the camera, her expression changing to a disturbing smile.
- "Thank you all for helping me find myself. Now I know exactly who I am."
The stream ended abruptly. Camila felt a chill run down her spine. Mariana’s words echoed in her mind: "I know exactly who I am."
[Entry 1]
[Sorry for the extended absence. I’ve been doing a lot of research, a lot of driving, and a lot of hiking. I think I have a general idea of where all this may occurred, but by general… I mean very general. I showed this second chapter early to some fellow hikers, and one of them told me that he thinks they’re situated somewhere west of the Eastern Continental Divide due to some of the details here. He sounded sure about it, at least, and after doing some of my own research to verify, it seemed as good a lead as any.
My search led me to West Virginia first. That’s where I’ve been situated the last month, but… as you can imagine from my unenthusiastic tone, I haven’t turned up anything new. I’ve read ahead, trying to learn more about the town the writer keeps mentioning, and while they have quite a lot to say about it, none of it involves actually naming the damn place.
Correction. They do seem to name it, however, every single instance I can find where they likely dropped the name of it is… blurry. Have you ever tried using a pencil eraser on pen ink? It’s smudged a lot like that. So, while I was hoping whatever this town is would be a sure ticket to getting answers, I am, to put it bluntly, shit out of luck in that regard. So, it’s been a lot of studying maps, following trails, bodies of water… it’s been exhausting. I’m not giving up, but hopefully, you can understand my slowness in updating you all. I’m juggling a lot here, and it’s been proving very difficult.
That being said, you’ve heard quite enough of my complaining. Here’s the next entry.]
The forest had been quieter than ever; after everything that had happened the other night, it felt wrong. I was keeping myself up at night waiting for something else to happen. The irony isn't lost on me. One night, the sounds of the forest keep me on edge. The next, its absence sends me spiraling.
It was the feeling you get from the silence of an approaching storm. You see the black clouds overhead, and know what's coming next. So why can't the soundtrack of the Earth reflect the way you feel? It felt odd waking up to sunlight warming my face. I expected rain on the window, or a menacing fog rolling in.
No such thing. A bright day, with a gentle breeze. Cicadas chirping together in a buzzing orchestration, the shuffling leaves and creaking branches of the trees serving as their accompaniment. The world just was what it was. Didn't matter how I felt about it.
I got up slowly, rubbing the sand from my eyes and blinking blearily at the sunbeams invading my uncle's bedroom. As I looked around, I took in the decorations that adorned it. Cork-boards lined the walls with prized wilderness photos, complete with detailed notes, GPS coordinates, and corresponding entries in some of his nature books. It confused me the more I thought about it. My uncle had to have all this info memorized by heart by now, barring maybe the locations of where he took the pictures. Even that felt like something he’d just know off the top of his head, though. I couldn’t help but wonder what all this additional information was for.
Too tired to analyze any further or study them myself, I dragged myself into the kitchen, cooking up a mediocre breakfast. I'm slowly getting better at the whole "cooking" thing, but it takes so much more effort than my college diet of instant noodles and energy drinks. I put special effort into making it that morning since I knew I'd need a lot of energy to get through the day. Even then, I still underestimated how much I'd need it.
The plan was simple enough: gear up, and start mapping out the forest. I packed a big hiking back full of everything I thought I needed. Plenty of snacks and water, of course. Maps, GPS, and other survival supplies like a knife and bear mace. There was no "over-preparing" in my eyes. I got used to how the GPS worked, as well as my starting position on the maps. Learning to read and understand the maps fully was an arduous process, but my mom had already run me through a crash course of her own while she was here. Through my studies of the maps for the surrounding areas, I learned there was a cave about three miles from the house. That didn't sound that far. At least, not as someone who used to drive about five times that every day between college, to work, to home. I drew an approximate route to follow there and back.
Eventually, I caught myself septuple-checking my bag and everything on me. What was initially me just “over-preparing”, became a revolving door of compulsive check-listing to stall; it was clear after a while I was simply putting off going on the trek. I took a deep breath, muttered some iffy self-reassurances, and finally walked out the door. The air outside was crisp and inviting, the breeze carrying with it the inviting scents of nature's bounty. As much as I wanted to enjoy it, I couldn't forget what had happened the other night. It colored my perception of what would normally be a calming experience for anyone else. I started to wonder if it was a front; if even now I was being lured into some trap.
That being said, locking myself in the house until it was time to go home wasn't going to get me anywhere. I didn't want to be just… me, anymore. I wanted to come out of all of this a better person, someone I could be proud of. Not to mention, I still had so many questions about my uncle that were plaguing my mind. I'd never get them answered by aimlessly letting the days pass me by.
The first step into the forest was the hardest. It felt like crossing a threshold into a whole new world. The further I tread, the easier it became; but I struggled not to cast backward glances to the safety of the house. Steeling my resolve, I pushed forward. It was still early in the day. The morning sun scattered through the canopy overhead, warming my skin and the cool dirt beneath my feet. Each step was cushioned and almost springy from the moss growing along the brown soil. The air was fresh and crisp from the scent of morning dew, the tall grass sparkling like diamonds as the light touched it.. A soothing melody greeted me as I pushed on, songbirds playfully darting between the trees.
I tried to isolate all these different sensations, feeling my heart calm as I tucked them all away in a mental scrapbook. Seeing the forest like this, it was much harder to rationalize my fear of it. It was easier to see why my uncle loved it so much.
So, the journey began. I followed my map, GPS, and compass religiously, taking no chances of getting lost out here. For the most part, the journey went well. I took the time to appreciate my surroundings, without dawdling. When I was making a route to follow, I found a stream that winded a good distance toward where I was headed. I noted a collection of rocks in the water that resembled a smiley face, taking this as an amusing, good omen of what was to come. The shallow body would be accompanying me during this first stretch, the gentle sounds of its calm waters helping ease my nerves as I hiked ever-forwards.
The first mile passed without issue. I enjoyed the sights and sounds of Appalachia along the way, and my newfound appreciation of the wilderness grew with each step. I took a small break to rehydrate and snack before pushing into the second mile.
The second mile was harder. The land started to incline ever so slightly, and the path was beset with protruding roots and rocks. It would be easy to stumble and fall flat on my face if I didn’t pay careful attention to the terrain. Towards the end of the second mile, the stream curved away from the path, no longer accompanying my trek forward. I bade it farewell and pushed onward.
The third mile.
At first, the third mile seemed like a much-needed break from the terrain of the second. Old, wrinkled leaves covered the forest floor, issuing a swirling chorus of whispers to answer every breeze. Thankfully, the fallen leaves didn't cover anything particularly dangerous. The path was much easier to walk, devoid of all the natural debris and hills of the second mile. As I pushed forward, an odd detail struck me.
I had spent a lot of time observing the environment around me. Particularly, paying close attention to the trees that surrounded my path. As I entered the latter half of the third mile, they had been subtly changing. Now, they were getting wider. Much wider, to the point I could imagine someone being able to carve a small dwelling into the interior of one. Some were bulbous towards the bottom, but all of them were massive. I stopped in my tracks when I noticed, taking a moment to pause and look around.
The path had grown much brighter. As I looked upward, I noticed the canopy of these trees had become much wider horizontally, and thinner vertically. Observing them in full like this, they were almost comparable to some kind of root vegetable, growing hundreds of feet up into the air, devoid of any low-hanging branches. They looked… alien to me. Certainly foreign to this forest, at least. There was nothing else even remotely like it.
As I looked behind me, I noticed these trees stretched as far as I could see behind me. I was paralyzed. How did I not see my surroundings changing like this? Doubt was sown in my mind. I was being cautious and observant this whole time, yet it was like I had haplessly stumbled into an entirely different region. I didn't feel like I could be that blind, but it didn't change the situation.
Taking a deep breath, I sat down for a moment, rechecking all my navigational tools.
The GPS still seemed to be functional. Cross-examining it with my map, it appeared I was getting close to the cave. It felt like a good sign. My compass was still functional, too. I took a second to calm down, making sure I was ready before going any further. In my mind, nothing could make this situation worse than stumbling around in a blind panic. After some breathing exercises, I stood up and pressed forward.
It wasn't long before things got even stranger.
After only a few minutes, I noticed the distinct sound of running water. In fact, exactly like the same brook I had followed for most of this trail. I slowly looked to my right, a sense of dread creeping into my heart. About two dozen feet away from me, the stream had reappeared, despite the fact I had passed it at least an hour ago.
In the center, a collection of rocks were arranged into a smiling face.
Looking back, the stream stretched as far as I could make out, despite me only now noticing the sound of it. So I sat down, rechecking everything, my heart thumping in my chest. Cross-referencing with the map, I was still moving forward. However, as I was triple-checking this to be sure, I noticed something odd. The date listed on the GPS was ten years late.
It didn’t make sense. I spent all that time before setting out thoroughly inspecting everything I was taking with me. How could I have not noticed something like this? How was that even possible for a GPS? I couldn't help but fixate on this detail as I tried to push down the rising anxiety back into my gut– it may have been something small, but it was compounding on everything else that felt horribly wrong the further I continued. I considered heading back, but I was so close to my destination. There was something I needed to confirm. And, regardless of how strange my surroundings were becoming, the tools guiding me had served me without fail so far. I had no reason to doubt them, at least for navigating this forest.
Ahead, there came a fork in the path. One kept going forward, while the other bent and curved ninety degrees to the right. The path curving to the right looked much more worn by foot traffic, even including a small wooden bridge going over the brook. My immediate thought was, of course, did someone else live in these woods? If someone did, why didn’t I know that already? Wouldn’t my uncle have brought it up to someone that he had a neighbor nearby? Hell, wouldn’t the police when they came to us?
I checked the map again, coordinating it with where the GPS said I was. Of course, it didn’t have this curving path anywhere on it. I at least considered the possibility that this could’ve been the work of my uncle at some point. But as I looked up from my map…
The bridge had changed. It looked decayed and shoddy, the planks making it up loose and splintering, nails protruding out the ends. Baffled, I walked forward to the fork, taking a look down the right-leaning path.
It was dark. The trees lining the path grew progressively more bare the further it went, tangling together in some unholy archway that morphed the path into a foreboding, abyssal tunnel. Hesitantly, I reached into my backpack, fearing to take my eyes off of the path for even a second. I fumbled around blindly until I felt the shape of the binoculars I brought with me, taking off the lens caps and raising them to my eyes.
These binoculars were strong– I bought them before the trip to scout the area and watch distant wildlife.
Which is why it was all the more concerning when I could barely make out an end to the path.
I say barely, because despite how dark the path grew as it continued, there was a vague shape towards the end of my vision. I swapped the magnification to eight times, and a man-made shape came into focus. From what I could make out in the shadows of the tangling trees, it appeared to be a large shed.
And there was a dim light on in the window. Flickering and wobbling like the flame of a candle. The ambient sounds of nature, the cicadas, the rustling leaves, they all fell silent. Even the river seemed to stagnate and quiet as I watched the distant light, my breath shallow, my body paralyzed.
Out here in this forest, miles away from the safety of my uncle’s house, or my car, I was not alone. And that made my blood run cold.
But not nearly as cold as when I saw the light in the window snuff out.
Something immediately took hold of my heart. It was like the instinct of fight or flight, horrifically twisted and magnified. The distinct feeling in my gut that if I didn’t leave, now, something horrible would happen. Something I couldn’t imagine or comprehend. It was like I was staring down into the fleshy, wet, molten gullet of a ravenous, sleeping beast, and it was starting to stir.
I stumbled over myself as I burst into a mad dash, clumsily trying to shove my binoculars into my backpack as I did. There was a stirring in the wind, and the softest breeze felt like the prelude to a tornado crashing into me. So I ran. My instincts took over. I thought I was running back home.
But, in my panic, I had gotten disorientated. I had run in the wrong direction. I ran further towards the cave.
Once I started running, I couldn’t stop. It was primal instinct. It felt like the Devil’s breath was on my neck, and my only hope in Hell was to run as far and as fast as I possibly could. I didn’t pay attention to the trees, or the rivers, or the birds, or the sounds of the forest. All I could feel was my burning lungs, all I could hear was the labored pounding of my heart in my ears. Onward and onward I ran, only slowing as the path had begun to incline. My stamina couldn’t last forever. I was decently in shape, but I was no athlete. My pace slowed, the adrenaline unable to carry me forever.
Then, rasping and wheezing, I finally took a moment to properly observe where I was. And I saw it.
The cave. Just a bit farther up this inclined path, staring back at me like a pitch-black monolith. The same cave I saw in my dreams.
My heart sank. Had I exchanged one abyss for another? This was my goal, to make it here. But now, I would rather be anywhere else. I looked around, and the forest seemed… normal. The trees had returned to their… usual look, before all the oddities on the trek here. If something was following me, I couldn’t see a single trace of it, even from the heightened position I had now to peer further down the path. I finally collapsed onto the dirt, still panting from exhaustion as I brought my attention back to the cave.
The cave was carved into the face of a cliff overlooking the forest, the entrance narrow and tall. Judging from my position here, it was about ten feet wide and about thirty feet tall. Due to its position, The entrance would be nearly pitch-black until sunset, the only possible angle for the sun to hit it.
And sunset was rapidly approaching.
I wasn’t sure how. I had kept good track of the time throughout the journey; I did so specifically in case it took longer than expected, I would have enough time to make it back before nightfall. I felt like I should have been more scared than I was, but the physical exhaustion turned to bitter resignation in my mind.
“Of course things would get worse,” I thought.
It was by my own choice that I was here. I may have felt justified in doing so, but if I was going to knowingly put myself at risk, I had to also take responsibility for it. Kicking my feet and crying about the unfairness of the situation I got myself into would get me nowhere.
So, I took a break to rest and collect myself. However, spending the time to do so meant a majority, if not all of the trek back would be in the dark. An hours-long journey with little visibility beyond my flashlight. And in woods this heavily forested, a single hand-held flashlight did little. It helps you see the path ahead, but not the things that lie beyond and outside of it.
Hopefully, this makes it more understandable why sleeping overnight in the abyssal cave behind me was a choice I was actively considering. Neither were attractive options, but they were the two options I had. But, as I stared into the ink-black void that was the cave, it dredged up a feeling familiar to what I experienced when I first saw the shack – a feeling of creeping dread, working its way around my heart and slowly throttling it. I took a deep breath, deciding to at least take a closer look at the entrance before making my decision. The sun began its slow descent as I walked further up the path towards the cave, the orange glow pouring along the ground towards the cliff alongside me. Step by hesitant step, I approached the entrance, my anxiety growing the closer I drew to it.
My pace grew slower the closer I got, every fiber of my being straining against me to try to pull me away. It was all I could do to take a step, let alone hide my fear or shaking hands. Despite everything, I managed to make it a couple of yards outside of the entrance. Refusing to pull my eyes off the black pit, I retrieved my flashlight from my backpack and aimed at the cave. With another shaky breath, I flicked it on. The beam cast itself into the darkness, and…
It was swallowed completely.
All I could make out was parts of the rocky floor and walls, and nothing else. For as bright as the flashlight was, there was no end in sight to the cavern. I thought to get a closer look, but my legs were locked in place. The imagery from my dreams swam through my mind, paralyzing me. If the cave swallowed the light so easily, what would it do to me?
As I stood there, petrified, the sunlight reached me again, pouring over me as it inched closer and closer to the cave. As I watched, enraptured, I could hear something from the cave. It wasn’t a bellowing roar or a blood-curdling growl. It was a soft buzzing.
The fluttering of wings.
And then, below and far behind me, a sound more terrifying than anything I had heard during my time here.
A human voice.
I turned quickly, trying to identify it-- but had no such luck. The sun was sharp in my eyes, and squinting left me little room to identify them. They spoke in words incomprehensible beyond the raspy hisses of their “S”s, and they began marching towards me with slow, heavy steps. I instinctively took a step back. Most of their form was still cast in shadow. All I could make out was what appeared to be a male figure, and the smile stretching across his lips.
I called out for him to stop moving. I demanded it. With a shaky voice at first, and then with as much command as I could muster. It wasn’t a lot, but clear enough to be heard and understood.
He kept marching toward me. I took another step back. The buzzing behind me grew louder, morphing into a high-pitched hum. I didn’t know where else to step. Trying to sprint downhill past him was a dangerous prospect. He wasn’t running toward me now, but I couldn’t shake the feeling he wouldn’t hesitate to follow suit if I did. I was being cornered, slowly and surely, between the cave and this man.
Closer and closer, he kept plodding towards me. I could feel his gaze burning a hole into me. Even as he grew closer, I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. It was like a low and hoarse whisper was being cast directly into my ears from wherever he stood, and each incomprehensible word filled me with an unshakable feeling of helplessness and disgust. His very presence felt like a violation. He stepped closer, and closer, no string of protests and warnings able to halt him in his tracks and I finally reached a breaking point– the words flinging violently out of my throat as I reached into my pack and pulled out the serrated knife I brought with me, holding it forward as threateningly as I could in my trembling hand.
“I SAID STOP!”
The scream echoed across the forest, bouncing between the mountains and trees. And then a sound bounced right back. A familiar, haunting bugle, the braying of a distant beast. The man finally froze in his tracks, his form still indistinguishable, but his expression falling.
His ragged lips curved in an expression of bitter, barely contained rage. The world grew completely silent, the moment frozen in time for an eternity. All before I heard the first understandable words the man spoke to me. They rang clear as a pin dropping in the preceding silence.
“You shouldn’ta done that, boy.”
He started moving toward me again, crushing the dirt underfoot with his now enraged stamping. The humming behind me grew louder. My heart pounded in my ears. His whispers clouding my mind were now even more cruel and bitter, but I could still only make out the feeling, not the words. Everything was reaching a crushing crescendo, the cacophonous overlapping noises overpowering my mind. I dropped the flashlight and knife, clutching my head in my hands as I retreated further backward towards the cave.
Then, I heard it. Over everything else, the fluttering. A hundred thousand wings beat behind me, drowning out everything, even the violent whispers had been assaulting my mind. The setting sun poured into the cave, and something in it was coming for the light. Rushing toward it.
Without a second thought, I hit the ground, covering my neck. I heard the man scream as a swarm of moths flew from the cave entrance like a furious tide, bowling into him and knocking him down. I could see him careening down the hill, rendered helpless against the swarm rushing into him, the sky itself filling with what must have been millions of their ilk. So many it blotted out the sun.
In my panic, I heard that bugling cry again. The call of the beast that had shown itself to me the previous night. This time, it didn’t feel like a haunting warning; it felt like a starter pistol. The sound brought me out of my terrified stupor, reminding me that now was my time to run.
I stumbled upward, covering my mouth to protect it from the thousands of moths whirling around me. And I ran. I ran, despite my complete lack of energy, despite the pain in my gut, the aching of my legs and feet, the burning in my lungs. I rushed past the man who was still screaming as the swarm covered every inch of his body, rushing toward the path home, his cries unintelligible as he was smothered by the mass of winged insects.
As I ran as fast as my exhausted body would take me, another oddity graced my rushed journey home. Rapidly, the weather and climate around me were changing. One moment, it would be pouring rain, muddying the dirt below my boots and scattering the moths for a moment. The next, a scorching summer daylight would return to the path, drying the ground and filling the air with the sound of cicadas. Then, as the fluttering moths washed past me, the leaves of the trees above grew auburn and quickly fell to the earth. The river accompanying me would grow silent as it froze over, and then it would repeat in a cycle, the seasons rapidly fading into each other as I ran for my life.
I didn’t know how much more I had in me. My body was screaming at me to stop, while my mind screamed at me to keep running. It was an hours-long journey back home, and I knew I couldn’t do this forever. I was reaching my hard limits, ready to collapse at any moment. As I gave myself one last push forward, my foot caught a protruding root, sending me crashing into the dirt, hard. The pain was excruciating for my already aching body, but I knew I couldn’t stop. I dug my fingers into the dirt, screaming as I strained to pull myself forward, inch by inch. I tried to push myself back onto my feet, but my legs were like jelly. So I crawled. Crawled as the swarm parted ahead of me, as I lost track of the trees, and…
I looked up.
I was home.
I looked up in complete disbelief, wondering if this was all some insane dream I would wake up from any moment. It was just as hard to accept the reality of the sight before me now as everything that came before it. Like a return to normalcy was in itself abnormal. I continued crawling forward, every advance making my muscles burn in agony. With laborious effort, I reached the backdoor, painfully pulling myself back onto my feet and twisting the handle.
Seeing the inside of the house again felt bewildering. Like I didn’t belong here. I did my best to shake the feeling, letting my pack slide off my exhausted shoulders and crash into the ground. I dragged myself with a small limp towards the bathroom, standing over the sink, in front of the mirror.
I was covered in dirt, mud, and scratches all over. My clothes had seen better days. Despite it all, the person who stared back at me in the mirror was still me.
It didn’t feel like it was me, but I was plenty used to that already. I stared at my mud-caked face for a long while before reaching for the faucet and turning on the water. My first thought was to wash my hands and face, and it was all I could do to not stick my mouth on it and drink straight from the tap. My throat, like everything else, was killing me.
After composing myself in the bathroom, I put a minimal amount of effort into making a meal and ate at the dinner table in complete silence, staring with tired eyes out the window of the back door. I thought about what had happened, what it meant, and whether or not I should keep going. I was alive. But now, there was an actual, tangible threat out in those woods. I hesitate to call whatever he was a person, but it could be the forest playing tricks on me. In the same way the path had become more and more twisted as I traveled along it, maybe it could do something similar to people. Some lost soul haunting Appalachia, warped and unraveled by its wicked nature.
In this line of thought, I caught myself vilifying the forest itself yet again. In truth, what had it really done? Nothing. As far as I knew, it wasn’t some maligned entity waiting to swallow me whole. Still, there was something wrong with the woods. That much was crystal clear. Either something was corrupting it, or it was defiling those inside it.
And if I had seen all this so soon, God, what had my uncle seen? What could he have possibly gone through staying so long in this place? I was at least thankful the man in the woods was not him. I would have recognized my uncle by his voice alone. And, judging from my own experiences, and how my mother spoke of him, he would sooner throw himself off a cliff than hurt another living soul-- let alone his own family.
No, whatever… whoever that thing was… he was someone else. I could be certain of that, if nothing else. Unanswered questions aside, the most important thing right now was that I no longer felt safe in these woods. More than ever, it was clear I was not as alone as I once thought I was. So, I made plans for the following day.
I would travel to the small town a few miles away from the house. Getting out for a bit would be good… socializing with other human beings would be good, too. Maybe I could even get some info out of them that might help my investigation.
That aside, having a proper weapon would make me feel a lot safer.
I should be more clear.
By that, I mean a gun. I couldn’t see myself going back into those woods without one, at this point. Seeing the clear danger now, I felt stupid not having taken that precaution to begin with. The knife and bear spray felt like enough at the time, but I no longer feel that way. Maybe if I had retrieved the bear spray instead of the knife, it could have done something, but… I can’t help but have lingering doubts as to its potential effectiveness on whatever he was.
I have a lot more faith in what a bullet could do to him than some chemical deterrent, at least.
After finishing my thoughts and my meal, I double-checked all the doors and windows to make sure they were locked, and headed to bed. I thought I’d have more trouble sleeping, but I was out like a light the second I hit the mattress. Didn’t even dream. Out one moment, back the next.
Stands to reason I woke up sore and tired as all hell. Did my best to take a shower and get in a fresh set of clothes, generally freshening up. Applied a few bandages here and there to cover up my scratches, and made myself breakfast. After collecting a few things in my pack, it was straight to the car. Where I am now– writing this. I don’t see myself staying in the town for long, but I’m keeping this journal with me. I’ll leave it in the glove box so it’s easy to find on the off-chance something happens, but I should be fine. Once I’ve spent a full day in the town and have more to say, I’ll write the next entry.
I feel like a moron asking this, but… wish me luck?
I know, realistically, I’m talking to no one right now, at this moment. But… putting the request out there, somewhere, at least makes me feel a little better. Even if I end up the only one who sees the words put down in this journal… at least it’s somewhere. It doesn’t mitigate the anxiety all that much, but I need anything I can get right now.
It’ll be fine.
I have to believe it’ll be fine.
The hotel was dying, and like all dying thing it exhaled its decay slowly, all around itself, from the peeling wallpaper and chipped paint to the way the light in the lobby constantly flickered— as if it too sensed the end of things as they were.
I don't know why I stayed. Most of the staff had moved on to better ventures, dropping like flies as time went by when it became apparent the hotel was on its last leg and nothing would be done to save it. I had only worked there for three months, I could have easily started off somewhere else all over again. So no, I don't know why I stayed.
Maybe it was the sensation I always had when silence engulfed the hotel at night, heavy and familiar, like a slightly eerie blanket. Or maybe it was the way the whole building faintly smelled of rain even when sun baked the cracked pavement outside. There's a certain comfort in small discomforts, I think. A sense of familiarity that makes even the bleakest things feel peaceful. That was this place in a nutshell for me.
The hotel was dying, I knew that much. Fewer guests each month, more rooms sealed off because the damp air had made the wooden floorboard sag, the wallpaper peel off or the carpet smell of mold. All things the owner — a person I had never met or talked to myself — seemed uninterested in fixing. But the night shift was easy work, and no one bothered me. I liked the stillness that came with the job.
Until the birds came.
Three of them arrived on a Sunday evening, just before dusk. They sat silently, perched in clusters along the power lines and the rusting fence that bordered the hotel’s back lot. I couldn't tell you if they were crows, ravens, blackbirds or something entirely different. All I know is that nowadays I can't look at a bird with black feathers without feeling like I'm going to be violently sick. Their beady black eyes seemed to follow me everywhere, tracking my movements when I walked to the creaky gates to clock in for my shift or when I stepped out under the stars for my usual cigarette break.
While unsettling, it was easy to convince myself there was nothing to it. I knew birds could be really smart and maybe those ones were trying to pick between friend or foe when they looked at me. I smoked my cigarette on the crumbling stoop, watching them shuffle and preen. I even left a few crumbs of the sandwich I planned to have later in the night on the steps as an offering. I hoped they would judge me a friendly face after that. But they made no sound, no movement, even when I grunted and got up to return inside. Just sat there, staring with tilted heads.
The next day, three more had joined them.
They covered the short power line between the two leaning poles now, like a black tide moving and swaying softly with the wind. When I clocked in for the night I heard one of them whistle something soft, almost melodic. A birdsong like none I had heard before. It was beautiful, in all honesty, hauntingly so when standing in a place that barely hung to whatever life it had left. I had the fleeting thought then, that the birds — like everything else — would be one of those small discomforts that would slowly blend into the melancholic painting this place always seemed to be to me, something more than just me to accompany these walls to their end. It was silly, I know, but being in the hotel at night always made the pretentious poet inside me perk his head up.
That was the night she checked in.
The hotel had been empty for almost two weeks. Not a single client in sight. I rarely saw anyone even when we had occupied rooms, we weren't in the middle of the city and people rarely felt the need to wander after dark around here, so I had gotten used to entertaining myself without having to be too aware of my surroundings. That probably explains why I hadn't heard her enter, or even the click of her heels against the chequered tiles. One minute I was leaning down to dust a cobweb under the front desk and the next she was there, just standing inside the lobby.
Her hair hung dark and sleek over one shoulder, framing a face too pale to seem healthy. She wore a long black coat that went down all the way to her ankles and she looked way too good for this place, too stylish, too wealthy, too proper. She even wore those shoes with the red bottom that I can never remember the name of. To me, those always made me think of someone that had stepped in blood, staining the bottom of their shoe, but to the regular people — the ones that didn't enjoy spending all their nights alone in a decaying place, rumoured to be haunted in new inventive ways every other week — I knew this meant she had a lot of money to throw away.
“I need a room,” she said, her voice low and lilting. She didn’t smile. It sounded as beautiful as the birdsong nonetheless.
I fumbled towards the old computer, barely remembering the protocol. I had never checked anyone in since I had started working at the hotel. I knew how to, I was given the crash course, but Theresa — the 60-something woman who took care of the day shift, and had apparently worked at this hotel since she was even younger than me — had always been the one handling arrivals.
I finally managed to pull up the system, but the computer was lagging again, the cursor crawling across the screen like it was moving through inches of mud. Unsurprising when most of the cables running through the building were probably stripped raw at this point. She didn’t seem to mind the wait however. She just stood there, still as a statue, her dark eyes glancing toward the window at my back, that gave a perfect view of the birds perched on the power line, silent once again.
“They like it here,” she said softly.
I blinked, confused. “The birds?”
She didn’t answer, just took out her ID from her purse and slid it on top of the desk, towards me. I had barely started entering information into the system and hadn't even thought about asking for it yet, but I guess she was used to this song and dance already, so I took it with a nod and a polite smile she didn't return. The photo was faded, the text smudged almost to nothing. I squinted at it but still couldn’t quite decipher the name.
“You’re lucky, you know.” Her lips barely moved as she spoke, almost making me jump out of my skin. “They only ever go where they’re needed.”
Her strange tirade about the birds made me forget completely about her illegible ID. For some reason looking at her, listening to her beautiful sombre voice made the hair at the back of my neck raise. I was never good at being around people, even less so beautiful women, and I simply chucked it as me being awkward and anxious. I left most of the check in form empty, handed her the key to Room 304 — one of our only rooms left to be inhabitable — and left it at that. She turned her back as soon as she had the key in hand, without a word or a smile and I watched her ascend the staircase, her heels clicking rhythmically against the creaking wood.
This was the last peaceful night I remember spending at the hotel. The last night where everything felt quiet and still as I had learned to love them. Before the scratching started and my night shift turned nightmarish.
___
It started the next evening, quiet but all too noticeable when you are as used as I was to the complete silence of the place. It seemed to come from the walls behind the front desk—faint at first, like a loose branch dragging against the siding. There was no way a branch could make any noise noticeable from the inside with how thick the walls of the building were. Plus there were no trees that close to the outer walls to begin with, but the scratch scratch scratch was quickly getting on my nerves so I stepped outside to check nonetheless. All I saw were even more birds than the night before, some of them forced to perch on the gutter lining the roof, barely holding itself together under the added weight, because the power cable had become too crowded.
I went back inside, trying to focus on the hum of the vending machine instead of the sound creeping through the walls. The scratching grew louder as the hours dragged on, moving now—above me, then below, then behind the desk again. It felt like something burrowing, clawing its way up and down the floors from inside the walls themselves. It was unnerving. Like I said I had gotten accustomed to the silence, I had learned to love it even, so any sound disturbing that peace would have felt foreign to me in the dead of night, but this one even more so. It was insidious, creeping, it made me uneasy regardless of what caused it. And despite the state of the hotel, uneasy was the one feeling I had never felt during my shifts before.
I sat there for hours, humming to myself to try and drown the infernal noise. I didn't see the woman in 304 coming back from errands or climbing down to complain about the scratching and, unsurprisingly, didn't check in any new client either. When my shift neared its' end, for the first time in the last few months, I was more than happy to see the first ray of sunlight filter through the stained glass above the double doors. My nerves were raw and my ears kept ringing with phantom noises, even after I had walked out.
When Theresa met me at the entrance to start the day shift, I told her about the scratching. She laughed, said the rats were probably getting bold again. But even though I didn't know the woman very well, something about her wide smile felt forced, empty of the amusement she displayed. Like she didn't quite believe what she was saying either. I don't know if, one way or another, Theresa knew what was about to happened before I did, I never tried to find her to ask afterwards, but thinking back on it now, I wouldn't be surprised.
___
The woman stayed in Room 304 for three days. I never saw her leave. I only knew she was still there because the system hadn't been updated with her departure and, strangely enough, because I could occasionally catch the faint smell of her perfume drifting down the staircase at the start of my shifts—something sharp and floral, like jasmine left too long in water, an enjoyable smell until you tried to pay too close attention to it, catching the hints of wrongness that accompanied it.
The birds had multiplied, a little more of them joining their brethren each day. They had to scatter all over the place to even find space to perch now, between the power line, the windowsills, the gutter lining the roof and one of them even finding its spot on the roof of the lone abandoned car in front of the building, that had been there for as long as I could remember. I had tried as hard as I could and for as long as I could to ignore it. Nature was weird that way and birds liked to perch on things, forming groups during their migration— or so I had learned after a night of furious googling on the subject. But there was something not right about so many similar birds showing up at the same time when I had rarely seen more than a few of them croak and pass by until then.
I knew black birds were seen as an omen, a warning of death. The internet, again, had told me so. Some small, whimsical part of my brain wanted to believe they had come to see the hotel die, to sing that birdsong of theirs at its funeral, to celebrate the life well lived of a building that had stood the test of time for generations before finally caving in under its old age. But even birds weren't that smart, and spending too long trying to figure out , exactly, led and kept them here, made me more paranoid and uneasy by the second. The intermittent scratching, of course, didn't help.
And then there was the blood.
I was taking the stairs up to the second floor for my daily — though usually useless — scan of the corridors and empty rooms, when I saw the first smear of it, just at the edge of the handrail. At first, I thought it was rust, hints of it had appeared on almost every metallic surface at this point. But it streaked wetly when I swiped my thumb across it, painting my skin in a small red smudge.
I wiped it on my jeans and kept climbing, concerned. It wasn't my blood and Theresa looked perfectly fine when I saw her at dusk, not cuts, bruises or bandages. Unless we had squatters, it was pretty easy to deduce it was the blood of the woman in 304, but I didn't want to jump to conclusion so I kept looking at the handrail as I climbed, searching for more drops of it against the railing.
By the time I reached the third floor, I had found three more smears of blood. Walking down the corridor leading to 304, the smell became unmistakable. The signature jasmine I had learned to equate to her, mixed with a coppery scent that made my tongue go dry and my stomach turn. People can say they don't know the odor of blood, but the truth of the matter is, when faced with it, it becomes instantly second nature to recognize it.
I hurriedly knocked, suddenly worried that something might have happened to the stranger. I hadn't seen much blood, at all, but the smell of it had me in knots.
“Ma’am?” My voice shook. “Are you okay?”
No answer.
The door wasn’t locked. I didn't like the idea of entering without permission, but it felt safer to get reprimanded for it than to let someone bleed out when I could've prevented it, at the time. I knew I was overreacting, but things had turned from weird to weirder too fast in the span of a few days and my mind struggled to keep a grip on reality. I tilted the doorknob. It swung open with the softest push, and I saw her.
She was standing by the window, looking out at the birds gathered there. Her coat laid abandoned on the untouched bed and her pale skin looked gaunt and grey under the moonlight. It made it even easier to notice the red smeared all over her fingers and the palms she had pressed against the glass, drops of it slowly trailing down the length of her forearm before dripping from her elbow and unto to floor, at her bare feet.
“Ma’am?” I tried again, more alarmed now than ever, but she didn’t turn around.
Her breath fogged the pane as she whispered something I couldn’t hear. From where I stood I couldn't see if she was hurt, if there were any cuts on her, all I could see was the blood now forming a tiny puddle seeping under the sole of her feet and the blurry reflection of her expressionless face in the window. I took one step forward. Only one. I wanted to check on her but I was also incredibly weirded out, nothing about this felt right. The situation, the woman, even the air in the room somehow felt wrong.
The floor creaked under my weight, and the sound made her laugh suddenly—a soft, broken noise that sent a shiver crawling up my spine.
“Do you hear them yet?” she murmured, her voice barely more than a breath.
I'm not ashamed to say that I backed out of the room and walked back down to my desk as fast as I could. It took all my self-control not to simply run there. Something was wrong with this woman, mentally. I felt bad for leaving her if she was hurt, but it's difficult for anyone to understand how heavy and suffocating the atmosphere was at that moment. All I could smell was the blood and jasmine and the sound of her broken laugh and nonsensical question seared themselves in my brain and for a second, standing there, I was blindingly scared.
___
I didn't want to go back upstairs after that. Even while scanning the corridors, I started to purposefully skip the third floor altogether. I knew the woman was still there, in 304. She never seemed to leave the room at all, at least not during the night and the rotting sweetness of her perfume had started to carry hints of copper in it now, as if the smell of the blood I had seen on her hands that day had clung to her. It was nauseating and for the first time I contemplated quitting just to get a reprieve from ever having to smell it again.
The birds were everywhere too. They crowded the parking lot, the lobby windows, the roof and the gate. One of them had even tried flying in the hallway just before the front desk when I had opened the door at dusk. They never moved an inch when I approached, not even those I had to walk over to get to the door. They just stared with their beady eyes like they were waiting for something and as curious as I might have been before, I really didn't want to know what anymore. I stopped going out for my cigarette breaks to avoid them.
The scratching in the walls had grown louder too, more insistent. I adored the silence and the stillness before, but now I had to take earbuds with me at work and use my music to drown out the sound, else it would drive me up the wall. Everyday Theresa swore she heard none of it. I didn't even know if I could trust her or not. Hell I barely trusted my own senses anymore. And despite the music almost constantly blaring in my ears, in between songs, I would sometimes hear that broken laugh echoing down the staircase, always followed by that one phrase: “Do you hear them yet?”
___
On the sixth night of her stay in 304, the power went out. The emergency lights flickered weakly, casting the whole room downstairs in sickly red glow that did nothing to appease how furiously freaked I had now become every time I was at work. The scratching was almost deafeningly loud now, not just in the walls but in the vents, the ceiling, beneath the floor. It was impossible to tell where it was coming from, all I knew was that it wasn't those damn rats Theresa had tried to blame.
And then I heard a scream. Blood curling and terrifying.
I knew exactly where it came from. The only room it could come from. And I hated myself for hesitating but for a second I really had to ask myself if it was worth going up those stairs. But no matter how scared and paranoid I had become, no matter how much I believed something to be very very wrong with the woman in 304, I wasn't heartless. After a scream like that, I had to check up on her, disregarding every single one of my instincts telling me to run the other way.
I grabbed the flashlight from behind the desk and climbed the stairs, the beam trembling against the yellowed wallpaper. By the time I reached the third floor, the smell of blood was so thick it felt like it coated my tongue, making me gag, tears forming at the corner of my eyes. There was no jasmine there, just pure copper, the scent stronger with each step I took towards her room.
Her door was open. This time it wasn't respect or politeness that was keeping me from peeking in but unaltered terror. I didn't want to see what was in there, I didn't want to see her. And more importantly, I didn't want her to see me. But I had gone this far. Steeling myself, I held my breath hoping it would momentarily get me rid of the awful stench and I leaned to the side to look inside room 304.
It was empty.
No woman, no belongings, not even the furniture that had always been there. Just the walls, slick with thick blood from top to bottom, rapidly pooling on the floor in a puddle that could almost reach my ankle. Feathers clung to them like wet leaves, scattered all over the four walls, rustling with the wind coming from the open window. Not open. Broken. Tens of bird corpses laying under it, blood and feathers mixing with shards of glass, as if the birds themselves had rammed into the window to make it inside only to die there. From outside, more of them stared at me with their beady, soulless eyes, unblinking, unmoving.
The scratching worsened, making me jump. It sounded so close, like it was right behind me. Not against the floor or the wall, but right next to my ear. I don't remember moving, but I did. I was in a state of shock, I think, terrified, unbelieving, unable to think through my own actions anymore. So I turned around.
She was right there, inches from me. I think I screamed but the birds all started croaking, singing, batting their wings in a cacophony so complete that I don't even remember hearing my own scream, or the sound of my flailing heartbeat. Her face was all wrong, her mouth stretched too wide, her eyes seemed as black and soulless as the birds. Blood dripped from her arms, her eyes, her mouth but she wasn't in pain, she was laughing, that god awful broken sound.
And then she just whispered to me.
"It's time. Do you hear them yet?"
___
I don’t remember running, but I must have. I woke up at home, the flashlight still clutched in my shaky hands and dried blood coating my shoes and even the bottom of my jeans.
I never went back to work after that. I didn't call the owner, I didn't reach out to Theresa, I didn't even try to go back one more time to see if I had imagined it all, because as impossible as it all sounds, I knew I hadn't and the blood on my clothes was proof enough.
It took me copious amounts of therapy to stop waking up screaming every time I closed my eyes and even when I thought I was starting to forget, to rebuild some normalcy into my daily life without my family constantly acting as if I was one step away from a mental breakdown, it seemed the hotel wasn't quite done with me.
A week ago, I stumbled upon an article online mentioning that the hotel had simply... died. It had apparently crumbled onto itself, the structure giving way under its own weight until there was very little left but rubble. And according to the article, it all happened the night I saw the blood. The night I fled the scene.
I don't know what happened. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. The birds, the woman, her question and, ultimately, the hotel's demise. I have never managed to make sense of it and, for my well-being, I have stopped trying. But it would be lying if I said that, sometimes, when I close my eyes and I'm about to fall asleep, I don't hear her lilting voice in my head asking me:
"Do you hear them yet?"
___
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It was at a flea market, of all places. The kind you go to wander aimlessly, pretending you're looking for something very specific, knowing that chances are you'll probably leave with nothing. Rows of mismatched tables stretched over the cracked pavement under the afternoon sun, piled high with old tools, scratched-up yellowing furniture, and junk people had dug out of their garages. The air smelled like kettle corn and cheap sunscreen, with the faint tang of rust from some vendor's collection of scrap metal.
My apartment was still mostly empty. I'd just moved in, and the empty walls and bare corners were starting to really bother me. I wasn't on the search for anything specific, just something to make the place feel less like an abandoned storage unit and more like a home. A lamp, maybe, or an interesting piece of furniture. Cheap, preferably.
It didn't take long to find something. At one of the stalls, tucked behind a pile of well-worn tools and broken frames, I saw a bundle of mismatched furniture: a side table painted white with chipped corners, a small stool, and an old couch that needed a wash or two. It was a random assortment tied together with fraying twine, but it was solid enough for what I needed.
"Hundred bucks for the lot," the vendor said, catching me looking. He was older and looked like he'd been sitting in his folding chair for his entire life.
Before I got a chance to respond, he added, "Take it, and I'll even throw in that painting over there."
I followed his nod and saw it propped against the back of the chair leg. The painting.
It was half hidden behind a stack of dented cans. Its edges were frayed, and its frame was stretched.
A woman stood alone in a vast field of wheat, her figure poised in a strange way, almost reverent. The wheat behind her stretched endlessly, but it wasn't as golden and vibrant as you might expect. It was gray, lifeless, and brittle, burnt to a crisp. Each stalk bowed under a phantom wind. The texture of the wheat was so vivid that I almost felt the dry rustle of it brushing against my fingertips.
The sky roiled with movement, as still as it was. A violent storm of colors crashed into each other, waves of pigment and brush strokes. Deep purples melted into streaks of orange and crimson, shot through with veins of sickly yellow. The horizon was blotted with heavy bruise-like clouds, threatening to open and bleed.
Yet, despite the chaos of it all, there was a balance to it. Each hue blended seamlessly into the next like the canvas had been alive once and was now frozen mid-motion, like pausing a video.
And then there was the woman.
Her pale dress rippled faintly as though caught in the dying breath of the wind that had long since left the wheat around her motionless. The fabric clung to her frame in a way that should have made her seem fragile, yet she didn't look it. She was still, a statue carved from soft light. She stood with her back facing me. Her face was turned just enough to reveal some of her profile, the curve of her cheekbone, and the point of her chin, but her eyes held me.
It wasn't fearful or defiant, and it wasn't pleading either. Her gaze was resigned, mellow, and accepting.
"It's part of the bundle?" I asked.
"Sure is" the vendor said, tipping back a can of soda. "Take it all for a hundred."
The painting stayed tied up in the bundle until I got home.
I carried it all into my living room and untied the twine, letting it all tumble onto the floor. The painting was the last thing I pulled free, it was lighter than I expected.
I set it against the wall and stepped back, letting myself take it in fully again.
The details came into sharper focus. I hadn't really wanted the painting to begin with, so I placed it against the corner of the wall and left it there. Truth be told, I didn't like it too much; it was eerie to look at. But couldn't bring myself to throw art made with such care away. It wasn't to my taste, but maybe I could find a home for someone who could appreciate it.
For three days, the painting sat in the corner.
I couldn't bring myself to hang it, but I didn't want to hide it either. Every time I passed by, I caught myself glancing at it. Then, on the fourth day, I finally decided to hang it above the couch.
The news came three days later.
I was scrolling through my phone over breakfast, my TV murmuring something in the background when I saw the headline "Wildfire Ravages Kansas Farmland, one fatality."
I tapped the article, and the image of the blaze filled my screen.
The fire had consumed acres upon acres of farmland, leaving nothing but ash and blackened stalks of wheat in its path. The sky above was hazy, streaked with deep purples and reds as smoke billowed and faded, leaving behind traces of yellow.
I stared at the photo. It looked eerily familiar. But it wasn't exact. There was no woman, no dress. Just an empty field and the fire ravaging it.
I shook my head and put the phone down. It had to be a coincidence. Fields burned all the time. The painting wasn't unique. It was probably just an artistic take on some generic disaster. All the stress that had been building up over my move and my all-new long commute to work was just making me overthink things and making the painting more special in my head than it actually was.
Still, I didn't like it. I put the painting back in the corner, thinking of disposing of it as soon as possible.
The second painting arrived about a week after the wildfire. This time, I didn't find it at a flea market; I didn't look for it at all. It was delivered straight to my mailbox.
The container, a tube, was unmarked. There was no return address, postage stamp, or anything to suggest where it had come from. But there it was, in my mailbox, sitting among the pile of junk mail like it belonged there. I almost didn't even open it.
I considered throwing it away. I got The first painting by pure coincidence, but now I was getting it in the mail. I thought about going back to the vendor I had initially gotten the first one from, but the flea market was seasonal, so I had no way to find him even if I wanted to.
So, I unrolled it.
It showed a train.
The perspective was striking, painted from the inside of some sort of vehicle looking toward a train, but the location was not discernible. The angle was low, and train tracks were laid out in the distance, where the silhouette of a train sat derailed, its frame twisted and broken like a crushed can. Cars careened off the rails; some split, others piled on top of each other in jagged heaps of metal.
Flames spat from the wreckage, consuming wood and broken glass. Thick and black smoke curled into the sky, blocking out the pale blue above.
Yet the focal point wasn't the wreckage but the figures.
A woman in a red scarf was on her knees at the edge of the tracks. She was close to one of the train cars, her arm outstretched toward a child dangling from a broken window above. The child's miniature body teetered on the edge, tiny fingers reaching desperately toward hers, but she was stuck.
The fire illuminated their faces with painful clarity. The woman's face was painted with desperation, her mouth half open in a cry I could almost hear if I strained hard enough. Her scarf fluttered in the heat. The child's expression was frozen in wide-eyed terror; she was so close to the woman, yet so far, and the scariest of all, the train car seemed as if it would tip over any moment.
The details were so vivid and precise that it did not feel like a painting, but a picture of a moment.
It happened the next day.
I was driving home from work, dragging myself through traffic on a suburban road, when I heard it.
At first, it was just a distant sound, a strange screech that didn't belong in the hum of rush hour at all. Then, it became a screech of metal against metal, a sound that would make your teeth ache. The sound was distant still, but it grew louder with every passing second, raw and visceral, cutting through the air.
The railroad ahead was already crowded with cars, and brake lights glowed in the evening haze. Beyond, the train barreled toward the intersection. I watched as the train swerved violently, sparks flying as the wheels left the tracks. The first car tipped sideways, dragging the rest of the train with it in a cascade of catastrophe.
I stopped the car instinctively, gripping the steering wheel as the chaos unfolded in front of me. The derailment was horrific. Passenger cars crumpled, and people flew out of the train cars as they collided with one another. The force of the crash sent debris flying into the air. With a loud bang, the engine smashed into a support beam near the crossing, igniting an explosion that lit up the sky with orange and red flames.
It was chaos.
And then, there they were.
The woman in the red scarf and the child.
She was kneeling by the edge of the wreckage, her arm stretched out in a feeble attempt to rescue the dangling child. It was exactly what I had seen in the painting. The firelight danced across their faces, their expressions frozen in the same raw clarity.
I sat frozen in my car, my hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly I could hear it groan in protest. I wanted to move, get out, and help somehow, but I couldn't.
And then it happened.
The train car, which was balancing on its side, tipped over in slow motion, and I watched as the child was eaten up by the flames and the woman's legs crushed, now trapped as the fire ate away at her. I couldn't look away.
I felt tears run down my cheeks as I finally regained my senses, the screaming around me breaking me out of trance.
The painter hadn't just known this would happen; they'd know where I'd be and what I'd see.
I don't remember driving home.
The crash broke something in me.
I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the woman and the child, frozen in that terrible moment, just as the painting had depicted it. The fire's light, the scarf, the desperation, and the reaching out. It was all burned into my mind, replaying over and over like a punishment I could do nothing to escape from. I was in purgatory.
I didn't go to work the next day either, or the day after. At first, I called in sick, telling my boss I had the flu, until I stopped answering my phone altogether. I threw the painting away, but it did little to numb my thoughts.
I let the dishes pile up, and the clothes scatter across the floor. Everything in my fridge went bad, and the stench of rotting food filled the apartment, aiding in my misery. I didn't care about it. All I could think about was how, even though I knew I was powerless, I blamed myself for not at least trying to save them.
But then I realized I owed it to them at least. I needed the answers.
When the fog of guilt finally eased a little, I was consumed by the need to know why this was happening.
I scoured the internet, searching for everything and anything that could explain the paintings. I posted on obscure forums and searched for artists and local galleries. But I found nothing.
Even the paintings themselves offered no hints. I still had the original painting of the field, so I picked the first one up from the corner and inspected the entirety of it. I looked for a signature, a date, or a stamp, but still, there was nothing. The more I searched, the more questions consumed me. I kept asking myself why I was the one who had to find these and how they accurately predicted things unseen.
I tried putting a stop to the next painting I received, to no avail.
When it arrived, a flood swallowing a small street, I tried memorizing every detail. The cracked sidewalk, the cars in the middle of being submerged by muddy water, a bent stop sign in the corner. I sifted through maps and my memories, searching for streets that matched the one in the painting. I spent hours driving around, hoping to stumble across it, but I never found it.
I hadn't even stopped to consider how I would prevent a flood of that scale, because if I did, it made me feel all the more powerless.
Days passed, and the dread gnawed at me, growing heavier with each day that passed in wait. When the flood finally happened, it was nowhere near me.
I dreaded the rare times I could receive a painting, but soon, they started appearing everywhere.
In my mailbox, propped against my front door, even in the passenger seat of my car. They all came without warning.
A bridge collapsing into a river, cables snapping like aged threads as cars plunged into the water below, the faces of passengers visible in their final moments. A tornado ripping through a tiny farmhouse, the roof torn away to reveal a petrified family huddled inside. The aftermath of a sinkhole appearing below an apartment building.
The details were always painfully vivid. I could almost feel the heat of the fire, smell the smoke, and hear the screams. Each one stayed on my mind like a deep scar.
I woke up to find one leaning against the foot of my bed.
I felt the tube before I saw it.
As I got out of bed, my feet brushed against something and tipped it over.
Another painting. Except this one was not a disaster.
It showed a small and dilapidated house with a sagging roof and boarded-up windows. The yard was overgrown, and the porch steps were broken.
In the foreground stood a figure.
The man wore a jacket identical to mine. His hands were shoved into his pockets, and his posture was stiff. His face was obscured, but there was no mistaking who it was supposed to be—me.
In the corner of the painting was a street sign, "Ashwood Lane," and in the bottom right corner, scrawled in the dark paint, was a signature. "E.V."
The signature seemed to be there, purely to mock me, a final taunt from the person who had been controlling my life without permission.
This wasn't a prediction, it was an invitation.
Or a trap.
I was furious at finding a painting in the sanctity of my room. The guilt and fear had built up, and exploded into a rage that stripped me of rational thinking. Ashwood Lane wasn't hard to find. It was on the outskirts of the city, a forgotten road choked with weeds and lined with houses that looked like they would have been used in the set of a bad zombie movie. Regardless, it was still on my car's GPS.
So, I took this invitation as a challenge. And I wanted this all to end.
The house was exactly as it had been on the canvas. The roof sagged in the middle, and the windows boarded up. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and petrichor.
I pulled the car to the curb and stepped out, my legs unsteady beneath me. In my dash to come here, all the emotions that were rushing through me were now fading, replaced with a sense of unease. I was about to face with whoever had been doing this.
I knocked thrice, and with each knock, the door opened wider.
The inside of the house was horrific.
The walls were lined with canvases, some stacked two deep, some stacked six deep. Some leaned against furniture, and others piled on the floor. They were all disasters: hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires. Each was as vivid as the ones I'd seen, the colors raw, violent, and impossibly sharp.
At the center of the room was a person.
E.V.
He sat hunched over, his back to me, a brush moving steadily across a canvas. It was still taking shape, swirls of black and crimson dancing in an abstract chaos that I could not decipher nor care to. His frame was thin, almost nonexistent, his hair wiry with spots of gray. He didn't turn when I stepped inside, didn't seem to notice me at all, or simply didn't care.
"You found me." He said without turning. His voice was dry and ashy.
I stepped closer, anger taking hold of me. "You knew I would."
"Of course." He dipped his brush into a smear of gray, dragging it across the canvas. "Everything follows a pattern. You were always going to end up here.
"Why me?" I demanded, my voice starting to crack. "Why send the paintings to me?".
He finally turned, his dark eyes locking onto mine. Yet there was no malice in his gaze, no insanity, just a cold, detached clarity.
"Because you were paying attention" he said matter of factly. "Most people don't, you see. They go through their days blind to the cracks in the world, ignoring the inevitable until it happens to them. But you couldn't look away. You saw the patterns, even though you could not understand them."
I refused to flinch. "You're saying all this is inevitable? That nothing I did could've stopped it?"
"Exactly." He finally set his brush down, folding his hands in his lap. "The world is unraveling, one piece at a time. I just record it."
"There's no magic here, no divine inspiration. You people are just so stupid that it makes me seem prescient." He continued.
"Record it?.." I repeated, my voice starting to rise and my anger building. "You paint people dying, children falling into fires, buildings collapsing, and families getting wiped out, and you call that recording?"
"What would you have me do?" His tone remained steady, his calmness maddening. "Stop painting? Would that save anyone? Would it change something? My work makes it all visible, finds the beauty in it all."
I clenched my fists and fumbled with the zippo in my pocket. "You could warn people, do something."
E.V. chuckled softly while shaking his head. "Warn them? You can't fix what's broken. And even if you could, do you think they'd listen? People don't want to see the end. They'd rather stumble into it blind, believing they have the control."
I thought of the woman and the child, the fire and the crash.
"There has to be a reason for all this."
"There really isn't." E.V. leaned back, his bony frame casting long shadows in the dim light. "You want there to be meaning, a purpose behind it all, because the alternative is too much to bear. But the truth is simple, and you already know it."
The room felt smaller, and the air heavier. My gaze flicked to the paintings surrounding us, each one laced with despair. I thought back to the things I'd seen again, and my inability to take action.
His voice cut through my thoughts. "You just can't accept it. You've spent your life believing you are in control and that your choices matter. But they don't. You're just a witness, just like everybody else. You think you're angry at me, but you're just angry at the truth."
"Stop it," I muttered.
"The only question is how long you'll keep fighting before you accept it."
"Stop it!" I repeated, louder.
"You think you can change anything?" He mused.
"You're wrong" I growled. "You're just a coward that sits here, painting misery while the world falls apart."
E.V. smiled faintly, the corners of his mouth barely twitching. "And yet here you are. Watching. Just like I knew you would."
That was it.
My hand shot into my pocket, pulling out the Zippo. My fingers trembled as adrenaline rushed through me, while I thought about what I was about to do.
"You think I'll just let you do this? You think I'll let you keep making these monuments to suffering!?"
At this point, he wasn't even looking at me; he turned back to his work and kept painting.
I grabbed the nearest painting off the wall, a tsunami ravaging homes and families, and held it over the flame. The canvas caught quickly, the edges curled as the fire spread, licking at the vivid colors. The smell of burning paint filled the air around us, sharp and acrid, but I was not going to stop.
I tossed the painting onto the floor, the fire spreading as I tore more canvases from the walls. One by one, I fed them to the flames, floods, fires, and earthquakes, all of them consumed as E.V. kept painting.
"You really think this changes anything?" he asked quietly, his voice now barely audible over the crackle of the fire.
'I don't care." I spat, tearing another painting from the wall. "I'm done watching. I'm done letting you use me as an audience."
E.V tilted his head, but still didn't look at me. "You can burn the paintings, but it's all still there."
I ignored him, the heat of the fire scorched my skin as I grabbed another canvas.
It wasn't until I turned back toward E.V. that I saw that he had completed it.
The painting on the easel he was working on.
It showed what I thought, no, what I knew was the end of the world.
Not a single disaster, not one moment of tragedy frozen in time, but everything.
The sky was fractured, great jagged tears ripping through the heavens, the endless skies folding into each other, exposing a blackness so deep it felt like staring into an opened grave. The earth was in chaos, split into monstrous, gaping chasms that bled molten fire and bellowed smoke. Entire cities tipped and crumbled into the abyss, their skeletons of steel and iron twisting as they fell.
The oceans boiled, great clouds of steam rising into the air as colossal waves slammed against crumbling coastlines. Ships, torn in half or capsized in their entirety, dotted the horizon like discarded toys. In the foreground, what was supposed to represent a vast forest was reduced to an expanse of blackened stumps, each one smoldering. Between them, the skeletal remains of animals lay scattered.
Among the wreckage, pressed against the shattered windows of the crumbling cities, floating lifelessly in the boiling oceans, were thousands of faces frozen in terror, their mouths open in silent screams.
And in the center of it, the audience was me.
I stood on a jagged outcrop of rock, my silhouette illuminated by the fiery abyss below. My posture was slack and my hands lay limply at my sides.
But it wasn't just me. Around my feet were smaller figures, clutching at my legs. A child reached upward, her tiny fingers brushing against my hand, and I knew who that was meant to represent.
"You see now," E.V. said. "You are the audience. Everyone is."
I turned away from him. The fire was everywhere now, climbing the walls, devouring everything. The heat was unbearable. Despite how fast the old wood of the house carried the flames, there was always time to get out. Nothing physically locked him to his chair, yet he remained there, carrying on his magnum opus without a care.
"You're still a witness; you failed," E.V said, with finality.
He was wrong; as the flames roared, he would fail to predict anything ever again, so I turned and ran, the heat chasing me out of the house into the cool night air. I didn't look back as the flames consumed the building, the firelight flickering against the darkened sky.
I reached my car, slumping into the driver's seat and gripping the steering wheel like it was tethering me to reality. I stared through the windshield, the house on Ashwood Lane burning behind me.
It didn't feel like a victory.
I drove home in silence, the weight of exhaustion pressing down on me. My apartment was still how I left it, silent and empty.
I entered my bedroom and picked up the house painting once more. I inspected it one last time, the weight of my actions sinking in.
But before I had time to think about anything, when I flipped the painting over, I saw another one.
A silhouette running from a burning house.
The perspective was distant but unmistakable. My figure was small, silhouetted against the inferno; the flames roared behind me, consuming the house and everything inside it.
It was proof that once again, I had failed to change anything.
The house burned because it was always meant to burn. I ran because I was always meant to run.
Everything played out exactly how it was supposed to play out.
And I was the witness.
I bought a cool-looking film camera in Lima, Peru at a second-hand shop.
My best friend and I wandered around the city center and came across a street that sold second-hand clothing. The craziest looking collectable old toys and electronic shop was just a few blocks down from there.
The place looked like the old garage of a hobbyist who was interested in vintage toys, old electronics, and weird keychains from 100 years ago. Everything was covered in dust, and it looked about as neat as a front yard rummage sale, and several glass cases were filled to the brim with vintage toys. There were a few vendors inside this dusty strange place, and when I saw the vintage cameras in a case, I made a beeline for it.
I had just gotten into film cameras and I was hoping to spot a camera to use for the duration of the trip.
The cameras were sitting in an old aquarium tank, the green, yellow, and blue colored rocks on the bottom were layered with dust, as were the cameras. I pointed to a few that looked interesting, a red snappy Canon automatic, and a point-and-shoot Minolta caught my eye at first.
My Spanish was terrible, so we communicated via body language. The woman showed me how the cameras worked, where to deposit the film, and the battery location. I asked and mimed, “Do they work?” She nodded her head as if I was silly for asking her that. “Of course, all the cameras work,” she responded. Leaning forward on the glass aquarium case in front of the cameras she continued to pull out to show her stock.
I picked up a chunky black Fujifilm camera. It looked like a small brick. I had been wanting a chunky camera and asked her about the price. She held up her fingers to show $70 Peruvian soles, which was about $20 something USD.
“Do not use film in camera,” she said pointing to the back of the Fujifilm camera. “Do not use film,” she said again, tapping it with her long acrylic fingernail.
“Okay,” I responded. “I won’t use the film inside.” she smiled and nodded. “$70 soles.”
I produced the money and met my friend outside. She got bored after a few cameras had been pulled out and was more interested in taking photos of the odd toys in the different cases. We did a couple more hours of exploration, I found a battery that worked for the camera and bought some extra film to use in the camera.
“Hey! Pose for the camera!” I said to my friend, aiming the camera in her direction.
“Hold up – hell no, didn’t that lady say not to use that film in the camera? You're not about to steal my soul with that shit,” she said, getting up, and putting her hands in front of her like she was pushing an invisible box.
“She probably meant the film is shitty and old, but fine I won’t use the camera to steal your soul,” I said jokingly pointing the camera at myself and snapping two photos of me holding up the peace sign before the camera made a sound that signaled I’d reach the end of the roll and it was rewinding the film inside the canister to be taken out and developed.
I popped it out and replaced it with some 800 ISO film, the film that I preferred when I wanted to take cool photos at night. Night was coming, and I wanted to shoot a few photos of city life in Lima. So before we went home I grabbed a couple shots, mostly how traffic looked at night, people walking under street lights, the coast line of Barranco was beautiful at night. I used up the whole roll.
The next day, with a quick google search I found a film developing shop nearby where we were staying and convinced my friend to take a little detour there before we started exploring for the day. I wanted to make sure the camera took good photos before I decided to take more photos. I’d be annoyed if the photos turned out badly because the camera really wasn’t working well.
The film shop was super basic, it consisted of mostly just a beat up white counter with an older gentleman who was running the place. The paint was peeling but it had a beautiful pink and purple flower motif that was faded around the perimeter of the shop, and looked like it needed a repaint about 10 years ago. The sign boasted 1 hour of development time, so I pointed to the sign that produced the shot film rolls and the money to pay for both to film canisters.
My friend raised an eyebrow at the two film canisters on the counter top. I knew she was silently judging me for not only using the film but developing it too.
I shrugged, I wanted to know what was on the old roll, I’d done it before with old thrift cameras and seen interesting photos. Why would this one not be much different?
We went about our day in the city, checking out the coastline, doing our own walking tour and having the best Peruvian lomo saltado ever. My friend stayed in after lunch to rest, and chat with her partner; while I took a detour back to the shop to pick up my film.
The shop owner recognized me and pushed two sets of paper envelopes to me that held both the photos from each of the films I shot.
I sat down on a bench outside at a nearby park, before heading home to check out the photos. I pulled out the prints from the film that was previously shot in the old camera. A few photos were unreadable, probably because the back of the camera had been opened before the film was developed, the rest were fine.
The photos from the old camera were first.
It looked like a photo of a grand family dinner. People were sitting around a dark wood oak table, with pink and purple floral decorated ceramic plates, basic chrome silverware. There was plenty of food on the table, and also on the plates. There were smiles all around, but something felt strange about the photos. It seemed to be shot with 800 iso film, dark film too, which I didn’t initially notice but the people were in pitch black dark, the light source was candles on the table mostly and the flash from the camera.
I flipped through a couple more photos and then realized I didn’t see any kids, maybe it wasn’t a family?
All adults were all wearing a white top with pink and purple floral patterns, a design that matched the plates, purple pink and white flowers painted on beautifully. Something was starting to feel unnerving about this dinner. Like something was scratching my brain in the most uncomfortable way. Then I saw it.
The meat, it wasn’t normal. It didn’t look like the meat I’d been accustomed to. Was it a horse? There were cloven hooves with five segments on one of the plates in the center with coily dark hair still on it. There was some inky dark meat that looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it on another platter. There was a stack of three fingered hands lined neatly on a plate, gold and silver jewelry still on them. There was a bowl of what I thought were boiled eggs, but on closer look it seemed that they were eyeballs.
As I continued through the photos the smiles actually looked strained. The eyes were wide open and almost sad. I think I saw a tear rolling down the cheek of one of the men. Their smiles looked like someone was pulling a taut string across their cheeks, as all teeth were showing for everyone. I realized that the collar of my shirt was soaking wet, I felt a cool breeze on my neck but I couldn’t look away from the images.
As I continued the photos showed some dark shadow near the head of the table. It was taller and much bulkier than the people sitting down, it seemed humanoid but wrong. Its arms were longer than human limbs, there were pale grey fingers with more joints than ours that protruded from the robe, golden rings on each finger. The body looked swollen and bulky underneath the white robe. It was donning a golden crown.
I was trying to make out the face but I couldn't. Then, I saw the crown move, the thing tilted its head in my direction. My brain was starting to swim, my head was starting to hurt, and I felt the sweat rolling down my back.
I dropped the photos on the ground at that point, my hands were shaking and when I looked up it was already night time. How long was I looking at the photos? I didn’t even get to see the ones that I took. But I didn’t want to, it was late and I needed to get back to the apartment.
My heart was beating quickly. I put the photos back in my bag and headed back to our hotel. I feel like I heard strange whispers in my ear, but I think it was just my nerves, there were so many sounds in the city.
I opened the door to our hotel and knocked on my best friend's door. I didn’t want to expose her to whatever shit I just saw with the first camera roll, so I tucked those prints away in my bag.
“Janice, do you mind if we look at these photos together. Can I come in?”
“Come in,” she said. “And don’t bring that creepy camera in my space,” she said. I left the camera on the dining room table and headed back to her room.
“Let's look at the pics I took last night,” I said, pushing the photos towards her.
Janice picked them up and flipped through the photos with confusion, and disturbance running across her face.
“We need to go to the police,” Janice said, pushing the photos back towards me.
I was confused, I didn’t look at the second roll of photos I shot. I flipped through a couple. The first ones were normal. City lights. Skyline moments, then I saw something odd.
Underneath the city lights sitting on a bench was a woman in the same floral pants and shirt that were in the photos I saw at the park. I continued on, a few people riding light-up bikes that I took, one of them folks on the bike was wearing a white floral uniform.
The selfie that I took outside the day I got the camera came up next. There was a barely visible shadowy figure behind me in the distance, and I swear it had a gold glint on top of what it was its head.
Then I saw what Janice meant about the police, there were photos I didn’t take in the roll. There was a photo of a pale hand reaching out of the closet in my bedroom of our Lima apartment, a picture of me taking a shower, my back turned to the camera, a photo of Janice and myself walking into a thrift store and talking to the women I bought the camera from.
I looked at Janice and the moment I did I heard the unmistakable click of the camera from behind me. I turned around and saw it on the console table in Janice’s room, but I know I left it on the dining room table.
“Dude, I said I didn’t want that creepy shit in here,” Janice said.
“I-I thought I left it on the dining room table,” I responded.
“We’re going to the police,” Janice said again, standing up.
Five of Spades. It was the decisive moment, and he didn’t let it slip away. With skill, he picked up the card from the pile with his right hand, its texture as sturdy as a ham hock and rough like sandpaper. The deck, a silent witness to countless games, revealed the history of past matches in its worn cards. He then lowered his hand, and victory unveiled itself as a well-earned prize.
His fellow players grumbled in protest, their hoarse voices echoing through the ancient corridors of the mine. It was a place where the daily grind was as constant as the passage of time. The interior, scarred by decades of excavation, held the mine’s history in every crack. The yellowed light from incandescent bulbs made the shadows of the miners dance on the walls.
The winner, for his part, allowed himself one last look at that familiar place, which he witnessed daily—the old silver mine. The players gathered at the entrance to the deepest tunnels, seated at a weathered wooden table, shuffling worn cards from an exhausted deck. The solid stone walls stretched through the subterranean landscape, and ahead were numbered entrances, each leading to a tunnel where he would spend hours digging through the depths that night.
— Speak, my friend… — intervened his playing companion, breaking his reverie.
— What did you say? — he asked, bewildered.
— I asked if you want to start a new game or if you plan to begin your work soon. — the companion repeated.
— Well, the sooner I start, the sooner I’ll finish. — replied the veteran, stroking his graying beard.
He stood up, heading to one of the crates against the wall. Opening it, he pulled out his work tools — a rusted pickaxe and a yellow safety helmet, its scratched surface bearing the marks of years of service. The pickaxe, with its handle worn by sweat and the vibrations of mining. Inside the crate, an oil lantern remained, now obsolete due to the modern convenience of electric lights. As he organized his equipment, his colleagues gathered the cards and began preparing to leave, but not before offering a warning.
— Hey, are you planning to go deep today? — asked the taller, darker-skinned miner, the one who owned the deck.
— With every trip, I go deeper. That’s how the mine works. — the old man replied impatiently as he adjusted his helmet.
— I see. In that case, take the lantern. The lights have been failing down in the depths recently; it’s better to be safe. You don’t want to get lost in the dark down there. — the miner suggested, tucking the deck into his pocket.
— I’ll do that. — the old man said, retrieving the lantern and a matchbox from his hiding place.
The lantern was a reminder of times when darkness was the only companion in the depths of the mine, before electricity illuminated the way.
— Are you sure you want to go down there alone? You know, after the accident... — said the youngest miner. — They found Judas’s body, battered and unrecognizable... down there, — he finished, his voice heavy with concern.
— Forget those fears, boy. I’ve spent more time in this mine than you’ve been alive. A mere ghost won’t haunt me. That man was on the brink of madness, not sleeping or eating for days, muttering delirious things about the mine and cursing everyone. He probably threw himself into the machinery, ending his own suffering. — the veteran stated, heading toward the tunnels.
— Judas wasn’t always like that... — murmured the young miner, remembering the stories circulating about the miner who had lost his sanity in the mine’s depths.
— Let’s go before he gets even crankier without the work. — instructed the older miner, and both made their way to the elevator.
— Have a good night, sir. — the young man said, a trace of concern in his eyes.
— See you tomorrow. — replied the old miner.
The two activated the elevator, which, with its noisy gears, began to rise.
He gripped his pickaxe, fastened the unlit lantern to the bar of his coveralls, and entered the tunnels, unaware of what awaited him that night.
Four hundred and twelve... Four hundred and thirteen...
— I wonder if the dawn has already come? — he asked, alone, as he continued his tireless task of hammering the rock with his tool, collecting the rare fortune of silver that, by chance, he had managed to find.
How much time had passed since the farewell? Hard to say, in those depths, the flow of time seemed to have ceased, and it would have been a feat beyond human ability to perceive the approach of another being, given that the miner had ventured so deep into the tunnels that any sound of arrival was drowned out by tons of earth. Likewise, any cry from him would have been a silent lament in this abyss.
He only interrupted his laborious digging when he reached the coveted personal goal, four hundred and thirteen feet of depth explored. In a way, all the solitude that enveloped him while the pickaxe pierced the ancient rock was overcome by a proud, almost triumphant sigh. However, his triumph was overshadowed when the lamps around him began to flicker, and then...
The lamps buzzed, wavering, and finally... turned off. Ah, yes, the darkness, how beautiful the darkness is.
His colleague had been right, the electricity showed weakness in the deepest abysses of the mine. However, he had followed the advice, letting the old tool fall to the ground, creating a clink that echoed through the subterranean cavity. With his hands groping for his overalls, he maintained his calm, despite the growing despair. No matter how much he resisted the idea, he knew that age had taken its toll, and his memory was no longer what it once was. Among the numerous corridors of the mine, it could take a long time before anyone found him, time beyond what he himself had, and this caused a lump in his throat.
With the skill of a man familiar with the equipment, he detached the lantern and, with a single motion, brought a flickering flame to life. A faint, shimmering light filled the space. He took a deep breath, controlling the rising anxiety, maintaining control of his breathing, while, with one hand, he directed the fragile light through the labyrinth of dark tunnels.
The orange light of the lantern bathed the worn stone floor as he breathed with growing anxiety, his initial cautious steps turning into a frantic walk. He desperately tried to recall the way, but confusion took over—did he turn left or right, or was it the opposite? The rhythm of his steps became a run, his breathing agitated like a hurricane. Where was the exit? Cold drops of sweat began to run down his forehead. The fear... The tips of his fingers were growing cold with increasing anxiety. Not a common fear, but an inner, childlike fear, locked away for years, that resurfaced relentlessly. He tried to deny it, suppress it, pretend it didn’t exist, but now it was there, more real than ever, consuming him like an insatiable flame. His despair grew, the darkness enveloped him, and he was lost, struggling against — CRACK.
Silence surrounded him like a cloak. With an inadvertent movement, he lowered his gaze, surprised to see what he had just stepped on. His gaze settled on a broken crate, and his leg, now wounded by the jagged wood, was proof of his carelessness. However, something caught his attention: a solitary object, resting inside the shattered crate. Blood splattered on the cover of the item, a cruel reminder of his injury. With difficulty and a grimace of contained pain, he freed his leg from the wreckage, revealing a diagonal cut that ran from his right calf to his left. As quick as a thought, he ripped the shirt from his sweaty torso and turned it into an improvised bandage, wrapping it tightly around his leg.
He breathed quickly, nervously, his old heart racing. Then, he forced himself to breathe deeply again, trying to calm himself, inhaling deeply... and exhaling forcefully.
Carefully, he picked up the object that had caught his attention: a notebook, its cover stained with his own blood. His leg lay painfully on the cold, damp floor of the mine, next to strange scratch marks on the solid stone walls. With a choked sigh, he placed the lantern by his side, letting its trembling light reveal a glimpse of the notebook’s contents. His breath was heavy, laden with anxiety as he held the notebook with trembling hands and opened it. Deep down, he hoped the words written within could illuminate his path as much as the uncertain light of the lantern.
The notebook showed signs of severe wear, with pages torn out and others completely scratched in a chaotic manner. As he moved to a partially legible section, he began to read the content.
“Today, another day in the mine. My little corner! But... sometimes, I see something, like an onhmribassyaiw, but when I stare at it, it disappears. Am I losing my screws?”***
With trembling fingers, he turned the page with growing concern, looking around the corridor, seeing only darkness, but still feeling a chill:
“The little lights are flickering non-stop. When it gets dark, I feel something strange. The lantern has been my compadre. As it flickers, I’m locked in. But I’m afraid it will go out. You’re my only friend now, notie.”
Intrigued, yet terrified, he slid his bloodstained fingers over the next page, as he tried to read, tapping his foot on the ground incessantly, restless:
“Today, I bumped into some marks of nails on the walls of the holes. ~~Deep, deep, deep, like something wild had ripped the stone. I feel like it's getting close. Close. Close. close.”
Holding his breath, he lifted the lantern to examine the marks stretching across the walls, as a silent prayer lingered in his mind. His hands trembled, wavered, and the temperature of his body dropped, as fear increased. When he turned the page, the revelation was distressing:
“Can’t deny it anymore. The THING is almost on my tail. It doesn’t see right— My only way out is to follow the direction arrows and find my way back to the elevator. GETOUTGETOUT. Wait, i think i heard something. - JD.”
Finally, the journal revealed its last page, which was unreadable. Whatever had been recorded there had been covered by a large patch of dried blood, and it definitely wasn’t his.
Terrified, no, completely scared, in an impulsive movement, he threw the object away, losing focus on his breathing, and began to breathe in a frenzy.
In great haste, he struggled to rise, desperately wishing to leave as quickly as possible. While trying, unsuccessfully, to keep calm.
Limping, he dragged himself through the tunnel, taking the lantern and his last hope with him. He breathed rapidly, terrified, wanting to leave. He leaned against the wall, leaving a trail of blood behind him, while feeling along the wall and lighting the path, running his hand over the mysterious claw marks. He definitely wouldn’t want to see what made them firsthand. Then, by some stroke of luck, his calloused fingers found something: an arrow carved into the rock. It could have been his mind playing tricks on him, but at that moment, his hope was rekindled. The timid flame of the lantern seemed to come alive for a moment.
Suddenly, the lights returned and then went out again. The electricity had not been restored, and to his misfortune, the electrical panel was up on the surface, out of reach. The lamps began to flicker frantically, and then a guttural sound echoed through the corridors of the mine, as if a terrible beast were prowling in the shadows. The noise seemed to come from all directions, making it impossible to discern its origin. The sound was not just a simple noise; it was intense, so strong that he could feel the ground shaking, feel his heart pounding faster, feel death approaching. The poor man paled at the sound, tears trembling down his face, tears of fear. And even with a wound open on his leg, he did not hesitate to follow the carved arrows, desperate for a chance to escape this nightmare, even if it meant running aimlessly through the darkness while bleeding, leaving a trail of crimson-red on the ground.
He launched forward with renewed hope, the pain in his leg a cruel reminder of his fragility. The carved arrows in the stone were his guide, his only connection to salvation, but the growing fear began to take root in his mind. The dance of the lantern’s flame was an unsettling sign, threatening to extinguish at any moment.
Then, a terrible BAM! BAM! BAM! reverberated through the dark corridors. Heavy, hurried footsteps, a presence approaching with brutal force, and the old miner knew that time was running out. Each step was a drumbeat in his chest, and the sound echoed in his mind as a warning that something terrible was closing in.
He slowed his pace, forcing his wounded leg to continue, but deep down, he was already accepting the facts. He was alone, wounded, and being pursued by a beast from the depths. The lantern’s flame, trembling like his own heart, threatened to go out—his last line of defense between him and the unknown.
And then, BAM! BAM! BAM! The relentless footsteps approached rapidly. The miner felt as if a shockwave ran through his body, from head to toe, making every hair on his body stand on end. There was no immediate escape. As a last resort, he silently ducked into a tunnel curve and held his breath. The steps resonated, an imminent encounter. BAM! BAM! BAM! The beast passed straight by the curve, and the old man exhaled, not daring to peek at what it was, for the creature’s putrid scent was already torturous enough. His body was exhausted, aching for rest. He felt his muscles scream, his bones creak, longing, begging him to give up. The sounds distanced themselves, and the roars faded into the darkness.
He knew he had escaped by the skin of his teeth, and despite all the pain, the fear, he couldn’t waste this chance. The fear slowly transformed into a kind of fuel that wouldn’t let him stop. With determination, he stood up and continued his journey. And then, he saw it—the light of the moon filtering through the elevator shaft, and it renewed his strength. The lantern burned brighter, his heart felt as if it would leap out of his chest, his hyperventilation turned into joyful breathing, a relieved smile on his face. He began to run as fast as he could, which, due to his injury, wasn’t very fast, but for a moment, he felt young again, alive. The adrenaline consumed his blood, his pupils dilated, and he craved his goal, his salvation, more than anything.
Along the way, his injured leg began to fail, forcing him to slow down and pay attention to his surroundings. And then, he saw it—the wooden table, where everything had begun that fateful night. He used a chair as an improvised crutch and hobbled over to the elevator. With trembling hands, he pressed the button to call the machine. The mechanism creaked, making a loud noise that seemed to echo through the depths of the mine. Then, another roar echoed from the depths, the steps approaching ferociously—BAMBAMBAMBAM. That sound made his entire body shiver again. He felt the vibration of the ground, he knew it was coming. He had come so far; he couldn’t give up now. To buy himself some time, he threw the chair forcefully in the direction of the sound, hoping to distract the beast for a brief moment.
The chair shattered into a thousand pieces upon hitting something in the darkness, a figure he couldn’t fully make out. After all, his eyes were no longer the same. The lantern flickered, the footsteps ceased, and a brief silence hung in the air. The creature seemed momentarily distracted. It was all he needed. The elevator finally descended.
He hurled himself into the elevator, sitting against the safety grate, looking up and seeing the silver light of the moon. Hope was reborn—he had made it. His accelerated heart announced his triumph, and he raised the lantern to guide himself when… The beast was there, covered in a thousand shards of the chair. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who could be silent. They stared at each other for a moment. The creature was between his hand and the up button. It slowly moved closer. His throat closed completely. He was suffocating in tears, shaking, completely overtaken by terror. He kicked, hit the walls, muttered curses until... He stopped. It was useless. The man took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let his last tears fall. Then, the beast gently blew, and the lantern’s flame went out.
— Alves, Natan.
Previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1h3qeeo/should_i_listen_to_the_animals/
I wish I could be in better spirits writing this...I listened to the animals, but I also ignored what they said, I wish I took this more seriously.
After making the post and with support I was going to see what was in the woods, I was scared but I couldn't take the noises anymore. As the noise started up again I went to the window to see the squirrels again, there was six of them now throwing things at my window, even started to crack.
"Go into the woods." They said in unison in that commanding voice from before, instead of a calm dominance, whatever this is it's patients was running thin.
"Fine I'll go, b but in the morning, it's freezing right now." I said shaking a bit but I tried my best to stand my ground. With that statement they all dropped whatever they had and ran off, I could even hear the mice leaving the walls, they all just left.
In the morning I collected equipment, warm clothing, flashlight, food, water, some rope, and a knife. I should of brought a gun but knowing me id rather run then fight so it was better to keep it light. Then my cowardice side realized something.
The animals left, they just took my word and I haven't seen a squirrel all day, maybe it all some sick prank? I decided to test my luck, I had everything ready but I put it the side and enjoyed my day and as the sun fell I looked out my window and hey no squirrels!
But as I went to bed, closing my eyes, a deer called outside. I don't know if you ever heard a deer before but one noise they make is to call other deer, it's like a creaking door slowly opening and as it continues it gets louder and louder. As I got up another started...it was two going at the same time, almost deafening to the ears as I get downstairs to look outside the window.
Now there was four deer standing outside, there darting eyes looking at the house. They lowered their heads before slowly arching up making that agonizing sound again, getting louder and louder with each one. I plugged my ears and looked away trying to block out the noise with thoughts. Once it ended I looked outside and there was eight now, bucks and doe alike.
"What the fuck is going on?!" My stepdad stepped out of his bedroom, gun in hand with Toby barking, from the calls I didn't even hear Toby going nuts.
"He lied" the deer said, that tone from before had a hint of sorrow in it, whatever was going to happen next was a punishment it didn't want to do.
I looked to my stepdad, a figure of a strong man now petrified after hearing some deer speak, the only thing pushing him was the anger and andreline of being awoken in the middle of the night. He goes to the door putting on a jacket before going out there with a gun and Toby.
"Wait Dave this isn't normal!" I grabbed onto his jacket pulling him back inside, but I couldn't grab Toby. Dave looked at me before looking out the window again, rationality coming back to him for a moment.
We tried calling Toby back in, but he was transfixed on the deer, his hair standing up, a ferocious growl that would scare normal deer, but they just stood there looking at the dog like it was nothing but an annoyance.
" We have to get him, t there just standing there we can get him." I tried my best to hold onto my stepdad as he said that but with a yank he was free from my grasp as he stepped outside.
I couldn't I wish I could of stepped outside and pull them in but fear overtook my body as I stare from the window. Dave held his gun up, a simple hunting rifle, he couldn't kill them all but it seemed to help him move forward. He got to Toby grabbing his collar, about 10 feet away from the deer.
"Go into the woods." A buck uttered looking at me in the window before turning to my stepdad and started charging, antler's down but before it got close a shot rung from my Dave's gun. As he tried to reload he let go of Toby who stood beside my stepdad ready to defend.
The deer did there call once more, wailing in the sky as more dear appear and started charging. Toby tried to take one down before he got speared by a buck, it's antler's going through his body as Dave took another shot getting revenge for Toby.
He dropped the gun and just started running to the door, the sickening feeling from watching my dog get fired to death broke me from my paralysis as I go to the door opening it wide.
"C'mon Dave you can make it!!" I screamed terror pulling at my heart as I watch him run, a horde of deer charging at him... The last thing I saw was the deer catching up and trampling down on my stepfather, the shattering of bones rung in my ears before slamming the door. I put my weight against it as the deer slammed there heads into the door over and over, I could hear on the other side skulls cracking before they smashed there exposed brains against the door and dying on top of each other till they couldn't get past the bodies.
I didn't know what to think, grief and anger trying to take over my body, as tears fell I heard the call again. More team came and just started running into the house, some just ran slamming full force into the wall before dying, others took the initial blow before trying again until there body couldn't.
"Fine! I'm sorry I lied please forgive me! I'll go into the woods I'll go into the woods!!" I screamed I didn't know what else do. The slamming stopped, the only thing that could be heard was my crying and the howling of the wind.
I finally found the courage to stand and look out the window, a stack of dead deer and brain matter splatter on the glass as I see one deer standing there it looked at me once more before slowly wandering back into the woods.
It was - 3 Fahrenheit If I had death wish I would of gone last night but if I die I want it to be with purpose. And this is where I sit the next day. I have all my gear but I grabbed three more things, I siphoned the gas from a vehicle, some matches and my stepdad gun. I'm not planning on coming back, I let people that took care of me die because I was to much of a coward to go into the woods.
I ignored the animals... But I shall listen now. I'm going into the woods.
“Gold Horn Retreat: You are home”
The simple tagline that I had read on the retreats website repeated itself on a well kept wooden sign. The gate behind it lifted, and the thick lining of trees that surrounded either side of the road finally broke and opened up into a sparse collection of large lodges, a good distance from each other with tire tracks leading towards the central building. The central building, where I presumed I would meet my new employers, was large and out of place. Founded on a bed of cement, it towered over the housing of the retreat. Nearly pressing my face against the bus window, I counted twenty stories. Far too many for what they were going for here. The bus pulled up to the front of the building, and shortly after me and my new coworkers were ushered off the bus, and instructed to take our luggage from the undercarriage of our transport.
Gold Horn Retreat had posted a listing for line cook a month ago, and after a set of quick and easy interviews, I was bound for a seasonal position in this secluded area. I got the impression that they were short on staff, and desperate to fill the various positions that littered the job boards before summer. Luckily for them, I was just as desperate as them and willing enough to take anything that would get me out of town for a while. I lived alone in New York before this. Dark alleys and blending into crowds were my home, not Gold Horn Lodge. I’m not a good person. I didn’t belong here and I knew it. I made my money by selling drugs and stealing cars. My funds were low, and I knew I was just one misfortune away from missing rent. The pay was good, and it was a chance to make an honest living, and something to add to my sparse resume so why not right? Plus, I heard that one of my regulars was looking to jump me after I apparently sold him some “Fake shit.”
“Look at this place, it’s amazing!” The older woman who sat next to me exclaimed to me, a smile wide on her face. Everybody made a point of keeping to themselves but Catherine, who sat next to me on the bus.
Catherine did her best to make conversation with me throughout the ride up, not taking the hint that my polite smile and brief responses to her attempts were a sign that I wasn’t up for conversation. Still, she didn’t let up. I would’ve been annoyed, but her overwhelming positivity and the earnestness in her voice kept me from ruminating, so I was glad for it. Catherine, in turn, didn’t seem to mind that I didn’t contribute nearly as much as her to the conversation as she told me about her adult children who never visit, her ex-husband who was apparently a bastard, and how excited she was to get away. She even called me a good listener at one point. She seemed kind, but lonely, and I promised myself that I would make more of an effort throughout the few months we would be here.
“It really is.” I responded, and meant it. Those same trees that narrowed our view on the ride now circled the retreat neatly, making the twenty acre property feel even more isolated than the fact that it was an unknown distance from any sort of civilization already made it. We were told that the retreat was incredibly private, and that we would not know its location at any point during our time working there. Not the best sign, but again, I was desperate.
“Well, come on then.” Catherine said and smiled at me. I followed her, and the rest of the group, inside.
The interior was grand and rich. I knew that most of the annual patrons weere far more well off than the average person, but I didn’t expect an interior that could have matched any Four Seasons. Orientation was quick, but organized. We each received a personal itinerary, given keys to our own rooms within the central building, and told to get settled. I was expecting a small room with just the essentials, but was shocked to find that the rooms for us matched the lobby. If the staff was provided king sized beds lined with silk and a stocked mini fridge which a small note left on the desk assured us was free, then I wondered how impressive the actual lodges were.
I spent the night studying the menu and looking up at the crackless ceiling as I drifted off to sleep early in the night, thanking whatever guiding force in the universe deemed me deserving of such luxury when everything else in my life was going to shit. For three months, I could disentangle my brain from worries, and make good money while doing so. I dreamt of open fields and clean air for the first time in my life.
The next day, I couldn’t find Catherine. I looked for the man who was in charge of our orientation.
“Excuse me?” I asked timidly, not wanting to be a standout but also uneasy without my new friend present. “I think someone’s missing. A woman named Catherine.” The man looked at me, made no facial expressions, then glanced down at his clipboard. He flitted through several pages before looking back up at me.”
“No Catherine on the list. Maybe you misheard her name?” He looked towards the crowd of new workers, counted them, then checked his clipboard again. “By my count, everyones here. It’s a new environment, maybe you just got confused. No one would blame you, Gold Horn Lodge makes quite an impression on people.” He smiled for the first time during the conversation.
“Right… maybe.” I replied, unsure. Did I fall asleep on the bus and dream up a conversation that never happened? Either way, there wasn’t much I could do. Maybe she left the same night on that same bus, and the man’s list was updated to reflect that. I decided that it was none of my business whether Catherine existed or not, and pushed her out of my mind. I had a station to learn and money to make.
I didn’t have any professional experience as a line cook, so they had me on prep work, cutting vegetables, herbs, and whatever else they needed for the day. During our break after lunch, I made myself a sandwich for lunch and decided to eat outside. I expected to find families walking around the retreat, but the space outside was eerily barren. No cars, no people. Just the odd staff member walking in and out of the central building with silver platters housing either meals on the way out or covered empty plates on the way back.
“Our clients are very private.” The same man I had asked about Catherine before explained. “They come from high stress careers and lives and just want time for themselves. I’m sure you’ll see some soon enough.” In the week that followed, I didn’t. I hadn’t been paying too much attention to the others, so I couldn’t be sure, but it felt like every other day, there was one fewer amongst us that were taken here on the bus. The day after someone would replace them, a face I was sure I’d never seen, but couldn’t be sure because again, I still didn’t bother to actually get to know anyone here.
One night, I decided to take a walk. I circled the treeline, doing my best to avoid any other staff members. I was just about to reach the end of my path when I saw that one of the lodges had their lights on, something I had never seen before. It was around midnight, so I had to be asleep soon, but I figured that a small peek inside from the windows couldn’t hurt. Not a smart idea, I know but no one was around at the moment to see me, so I let my curiosity get the better of me.
I’m glad I did.
I couldn’t see much except from a small peak from a misaligned curtain. Ahead on a table was a silver platter, one that I assumed must have been missed from before, except there was still food on it. A New York strip steak with a loaded baked potato and asparagus. The food must have been freezing by now. I heard a crash.
I turned my head to look towards the side of the room the crash came from, where I saw a man tied a chair, a red ball gag in his mouth. At first I assumed I was looking at something private, but then realized that the man tied to the chair was one of our own. I only recognized him because he had had a loud argument with the man who organized us that same day. Something about wanting to go home because the stress wasn’t worth it. He was on the meat station, which was always busy, so I figured he just couldn’t hack it and would be sent home. But there he was. Someone I couldn’t see lifted his chair back upright. He had fear in his wide eyes. Slowly, he was surrounded by hooded figures. One after another they bit into his neck, arms, chest, legs and tore flesh away by the mouthful.
I covered my mouth so as not to scream. As the figures backed away from the tied up man, half of him was missing in un-uniformed chunks of pink flesh and white bone. I backed away, and ran towards the central building. I needed a way out. The surreal, horrifying scene forced a feeling of disorientation in my mind that left me weak, but the one thought penetrated through was the understanding that I had to leave. Now. I found the bus and thanked God that a life of dishonest living gave me the skills to hot-wire a bus. As the engine roared, those same figures through their lodges door open as light spilled from the doorway. They bound towards me. I decided to bound towards them in turn.
I hit one. The others scattered.
The impact slowed me as I began to turn towards the gate, and slammed my foot on the accelerator. I didn’t look back. Hands pounded on glass near me, then further towards the back the faster I drove. I crashed the gate, and drove. I kept just driving. My brain was numb. I didn't believe what had just happened, but the memories were still fresh and undeniable. I wasn’t aware of anything except for the road.
It wasn’t until I found some small town nearby that I ditched the bus by the roadside, and walked the rest of the way. I used the rest of my money to catch a greyhound. My overloaded brain remained numb the rest of the way.
I was home. My real home, in Michigan, with my parents. I never told them a word of what happened, but not a night passes that I don’t remember or dream of Gold Horn Retreat. I dream about the bus ride over with Catherine when I’m lucky, the exciting but foreboding feeling of exiting my comfort zone, the unknown, and I dream about the ravaged man in the lodge when I’m unlucky. Those nights I dream of muffled screams and sinew.
I’m looking for local work now. I’m writing this not only to get this off my chest, but also to warn others. If you come across a posting for a job with housing provided, make sure you vet the place, no matter how desperate you are. I tried to find any trace of Gold Horn Retreat, but it’s been effectively erased from the internet. We all met in Wisconsin, but the ride was long, and there's no way for me to realistically provide any evidence for what had happened. Maybe they re-branded. I expect they have the resources to disappear and reappear at will.
If you’re desperate for work, and if you find any job posting claiming to be your new home, take my advice and ignore it. If you find something too good to be true, it probably is. You will not be home, no matter how consumed you are with the opportunity.
I never believed in the supernatural. Ghosts, demons, curses—they were the stuff of late-night TV and childhood dares. That was until I moved to Somerton, a quaint little town perched at the edge of an ancient forest. The town was charming enough, with its cobblestone streets and cozy cafés, but the locals warned me about one thing: Somerton Hill.
“It’s just an old superstition,” I laughed when Mrs. Parker from the bakery told me to steer clear of the hill. Her wrinkled hands trembled as she handed me a loaf of sourdough.
“Stay away,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “Especially at night.”
Of course, I didn’t listen. How could I? I was new, curious, and far too skeptical for my own good. The idea that a simple hill could hold any danger seemed laughable. So when my friend Clara visited a few weeks later, I suggested we hike up Somerton Hill. It was a crisp autumn afternoon, the kind where the air is alive with the scent of fallen leaves and woodsmoke. Perfect hiking weather.
The trail started innocently enough, winding gently through groves of maple and oak. Clara and I joked about the town’s warnings, making up ridiculous ghost stories as we climbed. But as we neared the summit, the atmosphere began to change.
The trees grew denser, their gnarled branches twisting together like skeletal fingers. The sunlight dimmed, even though the sky above was clear. And then there was the silence—no birds, no rustling leaves, just an oppressive stillness that pressed against my chest.
“Do you feel that?” Clara asked, her voice unusually small.
I nodded. I felt it too. A strange, vibrating tension in the air, like the world itself was holding its breath.
At the top of the hill stood an old stone circle, weathered and moss-covered, its origins long forgotten. The stones formed a perfect ring, and in the center was a patch of blackened earth, as if nothing could grow there. The sight was unsettling, but neither of us wanted to admit it.
“Looks like a great place for a séance,” Clara joked, though her laugh was hollow.
“Or a sacrificial altar,” I added, trying to keep the mood light.
We lingered for a moment, taking photos and poking fun at our own unease. Then the sun began to dip below the horizon, and the shadows lengthened.
“We should head back,” Clara said, glancing at her watch. “It’s getting late.”
I agreed, but as we turned to leave, something caught my eye—a figure standing at the edge of the tree line. It was too far away to make out details, but its silhouette was sharp against the twilight. Clara noticed it too.
“Who the hell is that?” she whispered.
The figure didn’t move. It just stood there, watching.
We quickened our pace, trying to put distance between ourselves and whoever—or whatever—was out there. But the further we walked, the more it felt like we were being followed. Shadows shifted unnaturally in the corners of my vision, and the sound of footsteps echoed faintly behind us, though when we stopped, the silence returned.
It wasn’t until we were halfway down the hill that we saw them—hundreds of figures, standing motionless among the trees. Their shapes were indistinct, like smudges of darkness that seemed to swallow the fading light. My heart pounded as Clara grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin.
“Run,” she gasped.
We bolted, careening down the trail, branches whipping at our faces. The figures didn’t chase us—they didn’t need to. Their presence was enough to drive us into a blind panic. I stumbled and fell, the rough ground scraping my palms. Clara yanked me to my feet, and we kept running until we burst out of the forest, gasping for air.
Back in the safety of my apartment, we tried to make sense of what we’d seen. Clara insisted we call the police, but what could we say? That we were scared by shadows? We eventually convinced ourselves it was a trick of the light, a shared hallucination brought on by our nerves.
But then the dreams started.
Every night, I found myself back on Somerton Hill, surrounded by those shadowy figures. They whispered in a language I couldn’t understand, their voices a low, droning hum that wormed its way into my skull. And always, at the center of the stone circle, was a figure larger than the rest, its eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
Clara had the dreams too. She stopped answering my calls after a week. Her roommate told me she’d locked herself in her room, muttering about “the eyes” and “the circle.” When I finally went to check on her, I found her apartment empty. The police called it a missing person’s case, but I knew better.
Last night, I woke up to the sound of whispering. The air in my room was ice-cold, and the shadows on the walls seemed to writhe and shift. I turned on the light, but it didn’t help—the shadows were still there, darker and deeper than they should have been.
And then I heard it: a faint knock at my window.
I live on the third floor.
I’m writing this because I don’t know what else to do. The shadows are everywhere now. They follow me in reflections, linger at the edges of every room. I’ve stopped sleeping, stopped leaving the apartment. I know it’s only a matter of time before they take me too.
If you ever visit Somerton, heed the warnings. Stay away from the hill. Don’t go near the stones. And whatever you do, don’t let the shadows see you.
They never forget.
I like to look back and reminisce about old days with my ma. I do a lot of international travel for work, so curling up on the couch next to my mother and paging through old photos has become our yearly way of mother-daughter bonding over the holidays. Memories are so much more vivid when you’re holding physical pictures; old smells breathed in again, forgotten locales recalled, names and faces springing back into memory from some dusty and long neglected corner of your mind.
I’m very little in most of the photos, happy and carefree in ways I might never be again. I love it, but it also makes me a bit sad.
Yesterday, I got a message from someone I hadn’t heard from in years. “Hey, Kris, is that you in the back?” Smiley face. He attached a photo of us at one of his birthday parties. We looked to be around five years old (perhaps six for me as I have a year on him). We were outside at some small event venue and he was sitting on the driver seat of a toy car, chubby hands proudly gripping the plastic steering wheel as I stood shielding my eyes from a sunny glare a few feet away. Parents and kids were frozen behind us in different stages of movement and party-going. Laughs and smiles all ‘round. It was a cute little time capsule, perfectly captured.
“Oh my God, yeah, I think that’s me,” I typed back. “Thanks so much for sharing it! Mom and I love looking at old pictures.”
He typed a two-word response: “Me too.” An ellipsis flashed next to his name for a good minute of so like more was coming, but nothing did. I thought about keeping up the chat, but I didn’t want to bother him, so I just saved the picture and made a mental note to share it with ma when I next saw her. I did exactly that the night before Thanksgiving. I wish I hadn’t, but this is where I’m at now.
At some point in my young life, I guess loved him. We were never serious—we were too young for that—but he was a lot of things to me. He was someone I grew up with, a childhood friend and a man I could trust, and a sweet, guiltless first kiss at sixteen. Then he grew into a certain severity as a teenager, keeping me at arm’s length until our relationship fizzled. He moved to another state and I moved on with my life.
I hadn’t thought of Jay much at all recently with all the worlds and time and countries between us. But now, here he was, in my head, coalescing into an idealized totem of better days. Life can get lonely when you travel for your livelihood. After the euphoria of sightseeing and discovery wears off, you tend to want for the old and familiar… with the bad things taken out, of course.
I realize now that I’m stalling. I thought writing this out would help me make sense of things, but all I’m getting so far is more pain.
Okay. No more. No more stalling. Just write it all out.
I arrived late the night before Thanksgiving, but ma welcomed me in with all the warmth in the world, like time wasn’t a factor. We hugged, we had dinner, we sat down, and we took out the albums to look at the pictures. “Jay sent me this one too,” I said. “I thought you might like it. Look how cute we were!”
I expected something approximating a charmed response, but that’s not what I got from my mother. Instead she stiffened, and her smile died a slow death on her face. Did she get pale, too, or was that simply what such a sudden change in mood felt like? I wasn’t sure. I’m still not.
“Get rid of it.” Her words weren’t a whisper, but they were low enough that I strained to hear them, coated with a fear I seldom saw in ma. “You should get rid of it,” she said, a bit louder this time, reasserting some confidence.
I took the picture back and laughed, not sure what to make of the reaction. “Get rid of it? Why? What’s wrong with it? It’s just a picture.”
I was already thinking of a thousand ways I may have erred. Ma took a gentle hold of my hand, and she looked at me the way she had only once before, on that awful day my father and sister had their accident. It was the same severe face, with the same guarded pain. It didn’t fit my sweet old ma at all. I wanted badly to unsee it.
Ma asked if Jay had sent the photo to me. When I nodded, ma closed her eyes and tried to still her breathing, a soothing mechanism she learned in therapy and later taught me. “He shouldn’t have sent it to you.”
I looked at the photo again, struggling to find anything odd or frightening about it. Again I saw Jay, the toy car, myself, the kids behind us, their parents. Everything was normal. Then I saw it. To be more specific, I saw him. I don’t know how I didn’t notice him before. Maybe he didn’t want me to see him. Or maybe I wasn’t ready.
The parents in the photo all looked to be in their thirties, or forties at most. They had all looked like huge old giants to me as a child, but they were probably younger then than I am now. This man was old, gaunt, and taller by a head or two than the adults around him, not at all like the other parents. He had a straight, long-limbed stance that stood apart from the merriment around him. His clothes were off, too; he was wearing an old brown suit, double-breasted and much too small for him, and faded khakis that failed to reach his ankles, exposing bony calves and mismatched long socks. Wisps of uncombed white hair hung loosely at the sides of his head, then top of which was bald and dotted with age. I couldn’t see his eyes, sunken into the shadows of his angular face. But I could see his mouth, thin dry lips stretched taut into a half-smiling grimace. I couldn’t read the emotion in that face—I’m not sure anyone could have—but it felt wrong. What stood out most to me about him, though, was how muted he felt, as if he could drain the life and color from his immediate vicinity. Everything around him was joy and pastels, but he just… wasn’t.
“Ma? This man…” I struggled to formulate the question somehow, even though it was so simple. “I don’t recognize him. Who…?”
Ma got up and disappeared into the kitchen. I could hear her shuffling around, clanging mugs together. Then came the whistle of boiling water. She was making tea. When she returned, she put a chamomile mug in my hands and sat across from me in her smaller sofa, blowing gently at the drink in her hands.
“I can’t say I ever met that man. I can’t say I ever even saw him, really. But Jay did. Jay saw him.” Ma took a sip of her tea. I was too unnerved to drink mine.
I asked her, “What do you mean you never saw him, ma? If you never saw him, you can’t know who he is, right?”
Ma smiled a faint smile. It barely reached her eyes. “You know how Jay could paint a picture with words.” I did; Jay was a talented writer from a young age. Ma continued. “This would have been when you and Jay were about ten, five years or so before that picture would have been taken. And about a year before your—“
“Right,” I interjected. I didn’t want to talk about pa and sis. Not now. Not ever, really. It was an old wound, old and very much buried.
“Jay described this man to his Emma and me once around that time,” Ma said, sighing. “He said a tall old man would appear to him, day or night, at odd hours and random days, but usually when he was alone. Emma didn’t believe him. I can’t say I believed him either. Not at first.”
Emma was Jay’s mother, and practically a second mother to me. She was a sweet woman, but very spiritual if not outright superstitious. It seemed strange for her not to believe her own son with something like this.
Ma seemed to sense my thought. “What he told us didn’t make much sense,” she said. “Jay told us this man would appear to him at his bedside, outside his window, sometimes at school, right outside the classroom or behind his teachers. But nobody ever seemed to notice the old man. And the way he described him, well, you’d think a seven foot guy in silly socks and clothes two sizes too small would stick out to people. But that’s exactly how he described him, down to every last little detail. The man in that photo has to be the same man.”
“Who is he?” I asked. My insides coiled in my stomach, my body bracing itself for some undefined terror that had yet to reveal itself. “We’re not talking about a ghost here, are we, ma?
Ma shook her head, eyes shut. I could see moisture in her long eyelashes. “No, no, not a ghost, maybe not a man either.”
“What, then?”
“An omen.” Ma could do little to stifle the tears at this point. “A warning. I’m just not sure why it chose Jay and not us. Poor, poor boy.”
I wasn’t sure what to way at that point; I simply waited for my mother to continue. When she’d gathered herself, she took my hand. “This man, this thing, came to Jay many times, so he said. But he spoke to him only one time, that same year.”
My throat was tight. A budding anguish was trying to choke me somehow. “What did he say?” I asked.
Ma loomed me straight in the eyes the way she’d only done once before. She picked her words carefully, and somehow, I knew them before she spoke them. “He said the old man smiled an awful, awful smile. And then he told him, ‘Little Kris’s father will kill someone soon.’”
For a few terrible moments, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. My mouth went dry and I felt a coldness inside me, a pressure in my gut. I took a sip of tea hoping for warmth, for comfort, but it was ice-cold now, too.
Ma had come undone. “We got so angry at Jay,” she croaked. “Emma pinched him and tried to send him to his room, and he said he’d been seeing that horrible creature for years, but he knew nobody would believe him, so he kept it quiet. But this time, he couldn’t keep it quiet—“
“—because he knew what it would do to us,” I said, completing the statement.
Ma shook her head. “To you, baby. He was afraid what it would do to you.”
When I was ten, pa had a heart attack while driving my sister to soccer practice. When the pain started, he lost control of his car and crashed onto oncoming traffic. Six people were injured, but only two of them died. Pa died on impact and sis passed on the way to the hospital. It nearly killed me; I have the scar to prove it. I’m sure it nearly killed ma, too. And Jay—brave, tiny, ten-year-old Jay—had tried to warn us, knowing we’d likely think he was crazy.
I was scared, terrified of the existential dread and implications of what I had just heard. But more than that, I was angry. Whatever that man, whatever that creature was, it wasn’t trying to warn us the way Jay had tried to. It wanted to watch the fireworks, to feed on our loss. Somehow I was absolutely sure of that. Had he watched it happen? Was he watching us fall apart this very moment, licking his thin dry lips? And if he was, and Jay were here, would he ask if we can see him?
After the quietest Thanksgiving meal of our lives, I went on social media hoping to reconnect with Jay, but he’d deleted his account. I tried calling him, too, but he’d changed his phone number. Why did he send me that photo? I pray now that he can hear my thoughts, and hope to see him again someday soon: “I believe you, Jay, and I love you, and I know you did your best. Nothing was your fault. Love, Kris.”
I recently noticed that in the past few years there's been a lot of construction happening in my city. Overhead cranes visible against the sky, non-stop sounds of jackhammering, construction vehicles constantly driving up and down the streets. New buildings going up. Apartment complexes, commercial highrises. Mostly downtown, but that's where the density is. I didn't give it too much thought, to be honest. It just seemed normal for a city to be expanding, growing. Development is a positive. Who wouldn't want to live in a place that's booming.
Then I noticed the rental prices in some of these apartment buildings. High, very high. To the point of being almost impossibly high. Like, who can afford to pay these prices? And the units aren't big. In fact, they're rather tiny. More than one small family couldn't fit into one, yet I don't know many small families who could afford to pay that much rent. So I got interested. I went around to a few of the buildings and asked about renting, about how flexible the prices were. “Oh, those are set by the home office,” I was told by one guy, “so there's nothing I can do. Take it or leave it.” Another told me to ask again in a few weeks “because the prices fluctuate on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. It's all controlled by the algorithm.”
The algorithm.
Someone must have made that, right?
One night, on my way back home, I noticed something else that was strange. Almost all the lights in these new buildings were off. It was 9 p.m. Dark. Who's asleep at nine? Moreover, who's not asleep but keeps the lights off? And if you can afford to rent a unit at these prices, surely you could afford to pay the electricity costs to turn your lights on.
All the new buildings were the same way. Rows of black, unlit windows. It was positively eerie, and once I'd seen it, I couldn't unsee it. I lay awake in bed that night trying to think of an explanation, but nothing came to me. Only nightmares.
I skipped work in the morning and went back, tired, to the rental offices. This time I asked about unit availability. Did they have a lot of empty units to rent? The answer was the same everywhere. No, only a few. “So you'd better act fast.” Was that the truth or was it a sales tactic?
When I told a friend about what I'd discovered, he suggested I look into the management companies, the construction companies. “But to me it seems like you're right that there's no one living there. The explanation, however, is rather simple. It's Chinese buying up property to secure assets outside China,” he said.
“Except no one's buying these units,” I responded. “They're renting them.”
But my friend's advice to check out the companies involved was sound, so that's what I did. I physically went to the worksites and noted the names on the signs, vehicles and equipment. All had websites, phone numbers, representatives. I talked to the workers too. They were all getting paid. All had bosses. The only thing strange, it seemed to them, was my interest. The property management companies were legit as well. None of it made sense to me, but I was starting to doubt whether I actually had any sense if no one but me was paying attention to this. Maybe I was the problem.
That's when I started getting those targeted ads online. You know the ones. You tell someone you're looking to buy a pizza oven, and suddenly YouTube is showing you ads for pizza ovens. You search online for unshelled pistachios a few times, and you start seeing nuts everywhere. Well, I started getting ads for condos, office space, and local real estate financing with oddly aggressive language:
STOP LOOKING IMMEDIATELY (and buy your dream home today!)
LOWER YOUR INTEREST NOW!
YOUR SEARCH ENDS HERE (with Sunvale Developments.)
Now, I consider myself a rational person, I don't get hooked by conspiracy theories, but even I was starting to get a little paranoid, looking over my shoulder whenever I went out into the street, taping across my laptop camera, shutting down and unplugging my electronics. No more television in the evenings. No more doom scrolling on my smartphone before bed. Just silence and books. The ticking of an analogue clock.
But outside—always, everywhere: the cranes and the construction noise, the scaffolding, the freshly poured concrete foundations, the construction workers, the steel beams and brickwork, the heavy industrial equipment and the buildings, so clean, new and seemingly so uninhabited. I'd even read that the buildings pretty much design themselves these days. The architects and the engineers simply look things over and approve.
With the office towers it was harder to tell occupancy than with the apartments, because you expect offices to be empty at night, but after sitting in front of a few for a few weeks I can say they seemed empty during the day too. There were security guards and cleaners and deliveries made, but where were the actual workers? I'll tell you: going into the old buildings in the morning and leaving in the afternoon, like it should be. Old, above-ground parking lots filled with cars during working hours. The new office buildings all have underground parking, controlled entrances/exits, with guards. “But don't you realize how weird it is that no one ever goes in or out of the parking lot?” I yelled at one as he escorted me off “building property.” I had managed only a quick look before he grabbed me, but I can tell you with certainty that it was empty. It was ten o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday and the entire underground parking was empty! Obviously, the guard didn't answer my question. “Ain't my job to notice stuff like that,” he said, threatening to call the cops next time.
That's when I met Andy.
I met him online on an obscure little forum for people who don't tow the mainstream line. I'd been posting my observations everywhere I could (from a library computer, of course) and that's where somebody actually responded. His message said he'd noticed the same things, was equally puzzled and wondered if we could meet. He wanted to show me something. Even as the message got me excited, I knew there was a chance it was a set-up, a way to end my interest for good. Maybe the security guard had reported me to the higher-ups. Maybe I'd caught someone's attention on the library's security footage and they'd matched me with the underground parking incident. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
I met Andy anyway, in a small hotdog place downtown, and I'm glad I did. He was legit. More than that: he had more information than I did because he worked as a handyman for one of the large management companies that owned a number of the city's newest and priciest apartment buildings. In other words, he'd been inside, and after talking to me for a few hours he decided he wanted to show me what he'd seen. “If nothing else, it'll let you maintain your sanity a little longer. The stuff we've noticed—it's real and it's damn weird.”
I showed up late at night at the building Andy worked in, and he let me inside. Then, together, we walked the halls from the first floor to the twenty-first, looking into the units. I swear to you, all of them were uninhabited. But they weren't exactly empty. There was nothing in the kitchen cabinets, the fridge, the dishwasher. No toothbrushes, towels or medications in the bathroom. The bedroom closet held not one piece of clothing. But in each unit there was at least one computer, usually more, plugged in and turned on. Locked. Humming. There was WiFi too, password protected, but no keyboards, mice, printers or peripherals of any other kind. So while there was no sign of human life, there was definite activity. The potential implications made my heart sink. I felt hot, then cold, then I got goosebumps.
“You said you looked into the companies that build and manage new buildings like these,” Andy said. “How far up the chain did you go?”
Not far, I admitted.
“Did you look into the people supposedly running these companies?”
Yes, I said. “If you're asking whether they exist, as far as I can tell they do. They all have a digital footprint.”
“Did you meet any of them?”
Some of the ones further down the chain, I said. Construction workers, security guards, rental agents. “Not the CFOs and CEOs, obviously.” Andy remained silent. “Why? Are you suggesting those don't exist?”
“Exist is a tricky notion,” he said. “I think you found ‘digital footprints’ because those are the only footprints they have. I think they're bit-based, not atom-based”—he paused, searching for a word—“entities. Or perhaps just one entity, with many digital faces.”
I felt then as if I were being watched, as if I were in a room filled with digital ghosts, passing through me, and I had to resist the urge to run down the hall, down the stairs and out of the building. “We should go,” I said.
“I know what you're feeling. Trust me, I've felt it too. I've been in these rooms so many times. But nothing ever happens. You go home, sleep, and then you get up in the morning and go to work again as usual. The fear, the anxiety, it never fully goes away, but it does become manageable. I've read that's normal in situations where you're dealing with things you don't understand. Things more complex than yourself.”
“You think they don't care we're here—that we know?”
“They used to turn on the lights, eh? Besides, what is it that we know?”
I couldn't immediately answer. That this is weird. That apartment buildings with no occupants should not exist. That people cannot rent at the prices on the market. That, therefore, whoever (whatever) owns the buildings doesn't want people living in them. That, as a business, the buildings are unprofitable and no company should be building more of them. Yet these things are. The computers hum, connected to the internet. New buildings are being constructed at an increasing rate. People work in them and get paid and go about their own, human, lives.
“That the city—it is now building itself,” I said.
The hum seemed louder.
“A bit-based entity building atom-based structures in the so-called real, atom-based world.”
But for what purpose? Are we like bees, herded into hive-like urban spaces, to produce something for the benefit of something other than us? If so, what is it: what is humanity's honey?
I shuddered, sitting in that apartment unit, and Andy, like he'd read my mind, said, “Lately, I've been considering they may not even have a reason to be at all. We have no evidence they use anything other than systems we've created.” I remembered the rental agent's mention of the algorithm. “They may be simply a merging of some of these systems, become more effective at doing, without us, what we created them to help us do in the first place.”
“We should go,” I said again.
This time, Andy agreed and we rode the elevator down to the ground floor, then exited by a back service door. All the way down I imagined—if not outright expected—the elevator to kill us, then the door to refuse to let us out. But none of that happened, and we walked outside, under the stars and the skyscrapers.
Then I went home, went to sleep, got up and went to work as usual.
After work, I wrote all this down in a notebook.
Then I realized the only way to share it widely enough is online, which means feeding it into the system, so that's what I did. I went to the library, scanned and OCR'd the notebook pages and posted the result to reddit. But before I posted it, I proofread it and realized I had to clean it up. There were obvious typos, ones any human would have caught, and I thought: maybe what's truly dreadful is not just being made a slave to one's own system but being enslaved by a system that's not yet ready to be in control.
Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1h3q7z8/my_mom_found_some_old_video_tapes/
Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1h4i1rn/i_showed_my_sister_the_tapes_my_mom_found_part_2/
Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1h5bdmr/the_man_from_my_moms_tapes_part_3/
A lot has happened since my last post, which is why I didn’t update you all yesterday. I’ll do my best to write everything down and catch you up. Some of you left really interesting comments under my last post—comments about things I’d honestly rather not think about—but for now, I’ll focus on what’s been happening.
After my sister and I finished talking about the man in the tapes, we just sat there in silence. I don’t know where her thoughts were, but mine wandered back to his face—the way he looked that day on the pier. I couldn’t shake the memory of his smile, the calm way he told me to go with my family. A kidnapper wouldn’t act that way. At least, not the kind of kidnappers you hear about on the news.
Maybe he was delusional. Maybe he truly believed I was his granddaughter. Or maybe he was a stalker—his appearance on those tapes would certainly suggest that. But at the time, I didn’t know what to think. Part of me wanted to piece it all together, but another part of me didn’t want to give those thoughts any weight. It was easier to let them sit in the shadows, unanswered.
It struck me then—I’d never shown my sister the tapes of the woman in the forest. There was a chance, however small, that she might recognize something about them. She was older than me, after all. Maybe she’d remember if they were from an old movie or something like that. It felt like a long shot, but it was worth trying.
I told her about the tapes, describing the strange, haunting scenes I’d watched. She frowned, her fingers drumming lightly against the table as she thought. “I don’t know any movie like that,” she said finally, “but maybe Camila would. She is attending to film school, remember?”
She was right, of course. If anyone would have an answer, it was Camila. Without wasting any more time, we called her, asking her to come back over so we could watch the tapes together. Maybe, just maybe, we’d find some answers.
The three of us sat down and watched the tapes together. I kept my eyes fixed on them, but part of me was more interested in their reactions—especially to the second video. The sudden boom made my sister flinch in her seat, her hand darting to her chest as if to steady herself. Camila, on the other hand, barely moved. She watched with sharp, unwavering focus, her expression unreadable.
When the screen finally went dark, Camila leaned back and thought for a moment before speaking. “It’s not from any movie I know,” she said finally. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s something that woman made herself. Maybe some kind of... home video?”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. The idea that the footage wasn’t staged, that I might have just watched something real—and possibly sinister—made my stomach churn. My sister shifted uncomfortably beside me, her unease plain on her face.
“There are also some corrupted files,” I said, breaking the suffocating silence. “I think there might be more videos on the pendrive, but they’re damaged.”
“Clara…” my sister started, her tone uneasy. She gave me that look—the one I knew so well, the one she wore every time she thought I was walking into something dangerous. “Maybe it’s better to leave it alone. The man who… took you, this woman on the tape… None of it feels right. And it’s been, what, thirty years since any of this was recorded? What’s the point of digging it all up now?”
Her words hung heavy in the air. I wanted to argue, to say it did matter. But part of me couldn’t help wondering if she was right.
“I could ask someone at my school to try fixing those corrupted files,” Camila said casually, brushing off everything my sister had just said. “Stuff like that happens all the time. Most of the time, there’s no way to recover them, but it wouldn’t hurt to try, right?”
Her confidence was almost reassuring, but I still turned to my sister. “Is that okay with you?”
She shrugged, her expression unreadable. “Mom found these tapes, didn’t she? As weird as all of this is, I doubt anything on those files could be worse than what we’ve already seen.” She sighed heavily, the tension evident in her voice.
Her words didn’t ease the weight in my chest. Logically, she was probably right. What were the chances the corrupted files held anything worse than that haunting second video—the woman in the woods, her terror and sobs, the sudden boom? And yet, some instinct, deep and unshakable, whispered that we hadn’t seen the worst of it. Something darker lay hidden, waiting.
When I got home, the familiar scent of something cooking greeted me. Lucas was in the kitchen, humming to himself as he stirred a pot. Dinner was already in progress, and for a moment, everything felt perfectly normal. We slipped into our usual rhythm, talking about the same things we always did—his work, my work, the neighbors who still hadn’t learned the concept of indoor voices, and the dream of a vacation we kept postponing.
But my mind was elsewhere, tangled in the truth my sister had dropped on me earlier that day. The man who wasn’t my grandfather. The story that unraveled everything I thought I knew. Part of me wanted to tell Lucas, to unload the weight pressing against my chest. But I hesitated. Acknowledging it felt like lighting a match near a pile of dry leaves. It would burn through our normal lives, leaving worry in its wake. His worry. And mine—the kind I’d rather keep buried.
Before I could make up my mind, my phone buzzed on the counter.
It was my dad.
"Hi, kid." For the first time since the day he left, my dad's voice sounded clear over the phone. Not muffled or distant, but familiar. Warm. I hadn’t realized just how much I missed him until that moment.
"Hey, Dad," I said, a little surprised. "Is something wrong?" It wasn’t like him to call; he usually just texted.
"Hey, Sergio!" Lucas chimed in from the kitchen, flashing a big smile. My husband always got along well with my dad, a rare feat among the boyfriends I’d introduced to him over the years. Lucas had been the first—and only—one he genuinely liked. They kept in touch regularly, bonding over potential business ideas and shared hobbies.
"Hey, Lucas," my dad replied, but his voice lacked its usual warmth. It wasn’t outright cold, but something felt off. He sounded distracted, maybe even reluctant.
"Clara," he said after a pause, "can we talk in private?"
The shift in his tone made my stomach tighten.
"Uh, sure, Dad. Give me a second." I glanced at Lucas, who raised an eyebrow in silent question. I forced a smile and excused myself, heading into the bedroom with the phone pressed tightly to my ear.
After closing the door, I leaned against it and took a deep, deliberate breath, filling my lungs as much as I could. My dad had always been a man of few words—not cold, exactly, but not one to linger on emotions or explanations. If there was a problem, he fixed it. No discussion of feelings, no analysis of the process, just action. He was a man of his time, pragmatic and straightforward. So for him to call, to actually want to talk about something... it unsettled me.
"Okay, Dad," I said, my voice steadying itself as much for me as for him. "I'm alone. Is everything okay? Do you need something?"
"Your mom told me she found some tapes," he began, diving straight in without preamble. "Said she took them to a store to... ‘virtualize’ them, or something like that." His tone was matter-of-fact but carried a faint edge, like he wasn’t quite sure how to frame what he was about to say. "She also mentioned you girls saw something strange—something about a woman in the woods?"
I froze. My fingers tightened around the phone. For a second, all I could focus on was the faint hum of Lucas moving around in the kitchen, completely unaware of the tension knotting itself tighter in my chest.
"Clara?" His voice cut through the silence, startling me. I hadn't realized how long I'd been quiet, lost in my thoughts.
"Yes," I replied quickly, trying to steady myself. "We saw that. The woman in the woods... and some old family videos." I moved to the edge of the bed, sitting down as if grounding myself would keep my nerves in check. "Is something wrong with it?"
"I see." His response was clipped, and then there was silence—save for the faint sound of him moving around on the other end of the line. His hesitation filled the air with a weight I couldn't shake. "It was just the one video of the woman? And the family tapes?"
He was fishing for something. That much was clear. The realization sent a sharp spike of anxiety through me. He knew more than he was letting on.
"Yes," I answered cautiously. Then, after a moment of hesitation, I added, "But I found a second video later. At my house. It came with a couple of corrupted files."
"You what?" His voice sharpened, and I heard the distinct sound of him freezing mid-movement. The air on the line seemed heavier, his breathing subtly deeper now. "And... did you watch that other video?"
"Yes." That was all I could say. Even if I’d wanted to tell him more, the words wouldn’t come.
On the other end of the line, there was nothing but silence. I could picture him standing in the middle of his New York apartment, staring at the floor, stroking his beard the way he always did when he needed to think.
"You and I need to talk about this," he said at last. His voice was steady, but there was a weight behind it that unsettled me. "I'll book a ticket and be there by the third of December, okay, honey?" I could hear the faint rustling of him moving around again, probably heading for his laptop.
The thought of him coming back stirred something bittersweet in me. I felt a flicker of happiness, but it was tangled with nervousness. "Okay," I managed.
"And, Clara," he added, his tone dropping an octave, becoming sharp and deliberate.
"Yes?"
"Don’t try to look into those corrupted files before I get there. Understood?" There was no room for negotiation in his voice. It was an order, plain and simple.
"Yes, Dad."
"Good." He paused, lingering for a moment. "I’ll see you soon."
We sat together in that silence, the space between us filled with things neither of us dared to say. Finally, he spoke again, softer this time. "I love you."
The words hit me harder than I expected. My dad wasn’t the kind of man to say those things lightly. A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it. "I love you too, Dad."
I was ready to end the call, my thumb hovering over the button, when a thought crossed my mind. It was intrusive, sharp, and impossible to ignore.
"By the way, Dad..." My voice was hesitant, but I pressed on. "How did Grandpa die?"
Silence. The kind that chills you, that stretches longer than it should.
"We’ll talk when I get there," he said at last, his voice flat, almost distant.
And then the line went dead.
After the conversation with my father, I returned to the kitchen. Lucas must have seen something on my face because he immediately rushed to my side, concern etched into his features. “Is everything okay? Did something happen to your dad?” he asked, his voice tinged with worry.
I shook my head, though the weight of the conversation still clung to me. “No, nothing happened to him. He’s fine. He’s just… coming back sooner than I thought.”
His brows furrowed in confusion. “Why?”
I realized then that I couldn’t keep it from him any longer. I needed to tell him everything. Taking a deep breath, I began. I told him about the man on the tapes, how my sister recognized him as the man who had kidnapped me when I was a child. How my parents had kept that secret from me for all these years.
Lucas didn’t interrupt, didn’t offer his thoughts right away. He just listened, his hand resting gently on my back, rubbing slow, comforting circles as I spoke. Encouraged by his quiet support, I continued, telling him about the videos of the woman in the forest, how my sister and Camila didn’t recognize them as part of any movie. How we all feared the same thing—that they might be real.
Finally, I told him about my father. About the way he seemed to already know about the tapes, how he had insisted I not touch the corrupted files until he arrived. As I spoke, the weight of everything began to feel a little lighter, though the questions swirling in my mind remained unanswered.
When I finished, I glanced at Lucas, expecting a barrage of questions or perhaps a look of disbelief. Instead, his hand paused on my back, and he pulled me closer, wrapping me in his arms. "We’ll figure this out," he murmured. “You’re not alone in this, Clara.”
I wanted to believe him. More than anything, I wanted to believe we could find the truth and still keep our lives intact. But deep down, I wasn’t so sure.
Three days later, I received an email from an unfamiliar sender. The subject line read: "Regarding the Corrupted Files." My stomach tightened as I clicked on it, an inexplicable dread pooling in my chest. The message read:
"Dear Miss Franco,
Your niece gave me a couple of corrupted video files and asked if I could recover them. I did as she requested, but when she came to pick them up, I asked her about their origin. She told me you had given them to her.
The content of these videos is something I wouldn’t recommend anyone watch. The image quality isn’t perfect, but it’s clear enough to understand what is happening.
That is why I insisted on getting your contact information instead of giving them back to your niece, she agreed.
Camila mentioned your family history and that her grandmother had found these old tapes in her house. After reviewing the files, I can tell you this: their content is deeply disturbing and tied to the darkest chapters of our country’s history.
The videos depict military officers torturing civilians. Based on the context and footage, I believe they document acts committed during the dictatorship, evidence of the desaparecidos, the people who were made to vanish under the military juntas.
I strongly urge you not to view the content of these files. Instead, I recommend reaching out to the Madres de Plaza de Mayo or a related organization that can help navigate this sensitive matter.
For legal purposes, I have attached the restored files to this email, though I sincerely hope you never need to open them.
I am deeply sorry.
Sincerely,
Professor García"
I sat there staring at the screen, my heart pounding so loudly I could barely hear my own thoughts. My hand hovered over the attachments, but I couldn’t bring myself to click on them. The weight of what they might contain pressed down on me, crushing, suffocating.
That night, sleep evaded me entirely. My mind was a storm, thoughts swirling too fast to grasp, yet one rose above the chaos, clear and unrelenting.
My dad was arriving in the country that morning.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes. The weight of the email, the restored files, and the implications of it all pressed down on me like a suffocating blanket. The hours crawled by, and with each passing minute, the anticipation of his arrival grew heavier.
I didn’t know if I wanted answers or if I wanted to run from them. But one thing was certain: the morning would come, and with it, my father.
Miss Williams would come into the store every week to get her groceries. She was the kind of old lady figure that no matter your background she always reminded you of your grandmother. She was one of the few residents born and raised in town who didn’t move away whenever they got the chance.
She would always come into the store with her curly white hair, floral dresses that looked more like pajamas and her tiny weiner dog named Ruffles would always come sniff every staff member to make sure they were still doing their jobs properly. (Technically dogs aren't allowed in the store but no one was allowed to say no to Ruffles.)
She was one of the most loved people in the community and was a celebrity of the town. Which made it all the more heartbreaking and confusing when a group of kids found her lifeless body in the alley behind the chinese restaurant.
This type of crime is something I never like to talk or hear about. Like I mentioned serial killer and true crime stuff has always freaked me out but since it’s someone I know it’s impossible to ignore.
The vague description by the radio news anchor left me with a pit in my stomach I cannot stand. The absence of graphic description left my mind to swirl with what possible awful fate she must have endured in her final moments.
“Do you even care?!” I finally heard Chris bark at me after the ringing in my ears subsided.
“Umm Mis…Miss Williams. She’s uhh she’s” I said, stuttering every word trying my best to make any sort of sense.
“What on earth are you talking about?” Chris responded, flailing his arms in exasperation.
Seems in his power trip fueled tirade he completely missed the shocking news we all just heard. I quickly walked towards the customer service desk by the registers and turned up the volume on the radio.
“…Police are still not saying for certain but there is suspicion that the grizzly murder of 78 year old Kathy Williams may have some connection to the string of killings the area last endured only a year ago. This is Lisa Martel CHQ277 Radio News Netw…” I turned off the radio and silence fell over the store so palpable that I couldn’t even hear the shitty pop song over the loudspeakers anymore.
The silence only broke with the sound of Holly letting go and bursting into hysterical tears. The news of Miss Williams was the final gust of wind that knocked over the paper thin wall she was trying to keep up to protect herself.
She quickly ran to the back whipping away her tears.
I looked over at Chris and once he regained his focus we made eye contact and when I gave him a sympathetic look he nodded over to the direction Holly ran off too and I went to see if I could provide any sort of comfort.
As I fast walked towards the break room I saw Rob back on the floor again. He was walking down the dog food alse with a walk that boarded on skipping. I almost felt bad for a moment knowing he must be ignorant to death of Miss Williams and the terrifying rant on the walls of our bathroom.
Once I got to the break room I saw Holly facing away from me packing her things into a backpack.
“Hey, are you okay?” I ask pensively.
“I just need to leave, I can’t be here right now” She said, never breaking her thousand mile stare into her open backpack.
I was overcome with a fear I could quite describe. As if by walking out the door of the store I would be letting her walk into the den of a starving lion.
I have grown up in this town my whole life, I know every pothole on every street and almost every address and who lives there by heart. But for some reason the town seemed different, as if the once welcoming residents and friendly neighborhood had been replaced with a traumatized populace ready to attack any stranger.
“Can I walk you to your car?” I asked
Holly looked undecided for a moment, I could tell she probably just wanted to be alone so before I could speak and tell her not to worry about it she said.
“Ya, thanks”
As we were making our way to the front door I saw Rob and some of the other part timers watching the news coverage about Miss Williams on the flat screens in the electronic section.
While the part timers looked horrified and saddened by the news, Rob with his towering frame looked angry, intensely angry. As if he was going to get revenge on whoever did the crime in a brutal manner. Ever since our little “exchange” on Tuesday I have been completely avoiding him and scared I would possibly get his attention by staring I quickly followed after Holly.
Once we reached Hollys car I opened the door for her and she gave me a polite smile and climbed in. When she closed the door she rolled down the window.
“Thanks for walking me to my car. I appreciate it.” She said trying her hardest to keep her calm.
“Anytime, I wouldn’t want anyone walking alone right now, especially someone I cared about” I said with a smile and rush of panic about how cheesy that was.
She let out a light laugh and gave me the first real smile she had given all day.
“You’re cute.” She said in a way I am still debating was either flirty or friendly.
I smiled and an awkward silence fell for a few seconds until my curiosity got the best of me.
“Did you know Miss Williams very well?”
“No not really, I mean she came into the store all the time. She was really friendly but I didn’t know much past that.” She said as her face dropped like a bag of rocks and she began to stare blankly at her steering wheel.
Right as I opened my mouth to ask what had been bothering her all day she started her ignition and put her car in drive and looks over at me and said.
“Thanks again for walking me, I told my dad I’m coming home early and he’s expecting me so I should go. Text me, my number is on the staff board in the break room.”
Watching her car leave I saw a figure at the end of the parking lot that made my heart sink even lower to the floor.
Standing about a quarter of a kilometre away looking directly at me was the lanky customer. Still holding his box of garbage bags.
As Holly's car left the parking lot he stared at me for a few more seconds and turned and walked in the direction of Holly leaving the lot.
A few hours later when I was on my lunch break Tony walked into the breakroom. I could tell just by the way he walked he was about to rant.
“That shit took me 2 hours to clean!” He said, slamming his latex gloves on the table.
“If you're gonna have a mental breakdown why would you use a sharpie? That's just inhumane.” He continued while I wondered if he even knows I’m here.
“You know what's weirder? I was talking with Holly in the parking lot earlier and…”
“That is weird” Tony interrupted “Why would she talk to you?”
“You’re fucking hilarious man” I said sarcastically before continuing.
“That guy was standing at the end of the parking lot just staring at us, like he hadn’t left since he bought his shit.”
“That is weird, he must be new. I have never seen him before.” Tony replied as he sat down across from me at the table.
Just as he sat down Rob walked into the break room with a couple of the older full time employees. A couple named Janice and Steven have been with the store since the Mcleans took it over. Both in their late 50s or early 60s (everyone is too scared to ask) they have well past their customer service days but they say they wanna work here till they die. Come to think of it, I don't think I have ever seen them leave.
Janice was complaining to Rob about how they need to ditch the fancy new cash registers (which were made 3 years after I was born) and go back to the classic manual cash registers.
The combination of seeing Rob and the terrifying prospect of an elderly lady's complaints made me decide to end my lunch break early.
As I got up and walked towards the group I noticed Holly’s number on the staff board like she said. After looking over at Tony to see him playing a slot machine game on his phone I quickly put her number down in my phone.
The rest of my shift was spent wandering the aisles in a Zombie like haze completely distracted by deciding the best way to text her.
After an embarrassingly long amount of time I decided to go with “Hey it’s Derek, how are you feeling?”
As I drove home, I turned on the radio and the news was talking about the murder of Miss Willams. I would usually flip over the station but I felt an odd desire to listen to what happened to her.
“The investigation continues into the murder of local resident Kathy Williams, the residents of her hometown reeling with grief and the gruesome manner of death has now been revealed, listener discretion is advised.”
I once again reached for the knob but felt a wash of curiosity I couldn’t shake. I slowly moved my hand to the volume and turned it up slightly.
“Police today have said today the manner of death was a neck fracture that severed Williams brain stem.”
Maybe that meant she didn’t suffer?
“Police also confirmed they are looking into the possibility of this most recent death being connected with the senior murders that were thought to be concluded just over a year ago, in the area and surrounding towns.”
I was so focused on the broadcast when I pulled into my garage I nearly jumped out of my skin when my phone buzzed on my console. It was Holly.
“I’m doing better, thanks for asking! How is your night going?”
Since I had the next 2 days off all I really did was text Holly, we mostly talked as friends and I was beginning to think the romance between us was maybe entirely one sided. Until I received one message from her.
“Hey, are you busy tonight? I gotta get something off my chest.”
“Thanks for reaching out by the way” Holly said opening a new packet of cigarettes before putting one in her mouth and lighting it.
“Not a lot of people in this town to talk to so I’m glad you were able to come out tonight.” She continued after a puff of her freshly lite cigarette.
As we sat in her car in the parking lot of the only baseball Diamond in town I thought of all the things I have wanted to tell her since I met her. How she made me feel better no matter the circumstances just with a smile or how walking into the store to see her at the register made my heart race a million miles a minute. But as these thoughts swam through my mind all I could get out was.
“Of course, anytime!”
She smiled and offered me her cigarette.
“You smoke?”
I don’t but would she think I was a nerd if I said no?
“Ya I do” I said, taking the cigarette from her hand just before taking a drag and coughing a lung out almost as soon as it touched my lips.
She laughed and said, “Do you now?”
“I.. I do..don’t” I said, still desperate to catch my breath.
She grabbed the cigarette from my hand. “You’re cute, It’s okay, I have been trying to quit since I started honestly.”
An awkward silence fell over the cabin of the car but I eventually worked up the courage to ask.
“You said you had something to get off your chest, do you still wanna talk about it?”
She looked down at the steering wheel soberly, I could tell she had been avoiding the topic but needed to let it out.
“It’s my dog, we… we found her dead the other day” she said choking back tears.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry that’s terrible! Are you okay?” I said sympathetically.
“Not really, I’ve had her since I was 8, she was one of my best friends just… just seeing her like that almost killed me” She said not holding back the tears anymore.
“What happened?” I know it's not the most sympathetic thing to ask in this situation but I couldn’t even register the words in my mind before I spoke them.
She took almost a minute to collect herself but talking through the tears she said.
“She… she… was ribbed in half… at first I thought maybe by a car but she was just on the sidewalk! no part of her was eaten or even missing her intestines just laid there! My mom thinks it was an animal but in my heart I just know it wasn’t an animal, it was a sick twisted son of a bitch!”
I slumped back in my seat. Who would be capable of doing that to a defenceless animal? And for what purpose? For some disgusting game? Or to let out some primal rage? Whatever the reason it sickened me to a point I felt nauseous where I sat.
My mind raced for something to say but it kept coming up blank.
“I just knew something was wrong when I got home that night.” She said after a silence that felt like an hour.
“When was this?” I asked so quietly I wasn’t sure she heard me.
“It must have happened Tuesday night cause we found her Wednesday morning.” She responded.
I felt my stomach twist into a knot. First Miss Williams now that, I knew that the nightmare we thought had passed a year ago was coming back and coming with anger. Could I really continue on living in constant fear that some malevolent monster will come out of the shadows and attack me or any of my family? The constant peeking around corners and the panic that strikes through me when someone doesn’t answer a text after a while.
We talked a little more and I did my best to provide any sort of comfort for her but I was never very good with people crying.
When she pulled up to my driveway she put the car into park and gave me a dejected look.
“Are you gonna be okay?” I asked.
“Ya, my dad said he and his other cop buddies are gonna find whoever did this, they are just delayed because of Miss Williams.” She responded with a sigh.
“I didn’t know your dad was a cop.” I said surprised.
“Ya he was actually the head of the senior murders case a year or so back. I remember him pulling his hair out for months and with everything now I can see the stress building in him again.” She said looking blankly out the windshield.
I wonder if she told him about the weird guy with the graffiti the other day? Does she even know about that? It was in the mens bathroom after all. Maybe I’ll just tell her later I don’t know how much more she could handle tonight.
After we said our goodnights and I got back inside I texted her again.
“I really enjoyed spending time with you, please let me know if you ever need to talk. I’ll always be here for you.”
I didn’t receive a response for the rest of the night. That isn’t weird, maybe she isn’t checking her phone, she was pretty upset, she probably just needs some alone time.
By the afternoon the next day I still hadn’t received a response. I was sitting on the couch watching TV when my phone buzzed next to me. I grabbed it at a speed I didn’t know I was capable of.
Tony: “You didn’t even kiss her? Pussy.”
For fuck sake Tony. I can’t remember what I said in response exactly but it definitely had something to do with Tony’s mother.
The next morning I still hadn’t heard back from Holly and when I got to the store in the morning I saw Chris and Rob in the corner of the registers whispering what seemed like an intense conversation. Chris was opening his arms in exacerbation and Rob just stood there looking blankly into Chris’s eyes with his dead stare.
When I got into the back office I saw Steven unpacking his lunch from his backpack into the staff fridge.
“Hey Steven” I said dejectedly.
“Oh good morning Derek!” Steven responded as infuriatingly upbeat as ever.
“Another one bites the dust eh!” He said, giving me a nod.
“What do you mean?” I asked
“Oh you didn’t hear? That makes sense it only happened yesterday, Holly quit.” He said nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders.
I stood completely still, I couldn’t think, my head was an empty shell with only my beating heart picking up speed breaking the silence in my body.
“What? Why?” I asked through my heavy breathing.
“Don’t know, she just called Rob yesterday, no notice or nothing just quit out of the blue.” He said finally finishing packing his stuff and heading for the floor.
“It’s a shame, she was really sweet, good cashier too. Anyway see you out there!” He added before leaving for the floor.
I was left alone in the break room. I don’t know why but I knew something was wrong, granted I didn’t know her extremely well but I knew this was not like her. She is going through a lot but to give no notice? And to Rob? She was terrified of Rob. Why would she call him instead of just sending a resignation email? Especially with no notice.
These questions ran through my mind over and over until my lunch break when I was walking out of the store to go get some food, passing by Rob who didn’t even acknowledge me as he was furiously typing on a phone.
Just as I was wondering what his deal was I got a text.
Holly: “I’m sorry”
I texted her back immediately telling her there’s nothing to be sorry about and asking why she quit and if she wanted to meet up again. I didn’t care about looking cool or hiding my feelings anymore. I just needed confirmation that she was okay and I was being completely irrational.
She never responded. In fact my texts didn’t even send as if she turned her phone off or blocked my number.
That was the last straw as I left the store and immediately drove to her house. I wasn’t sure what my plan was, if she answered the door and thought I was a creep than whatever at least I know she’s okay and I can rest easy with that fact.
Driving through the streets at an unreasonable speed I finally pulled up to Holly’s house and saw her car was still in the driveway parked right next to her dads cruiser. I knocked on the door over and over, I rang the doorbell and even shouted her name. I got no response, no one came to the door or even looked out the window. Every blind in the house was closed and all the lights were off.
I wanted to call the police but what would I tell them? My crush stopped answering my texts? A girl in her 20s quit her dead end job at a grocery store?
I needed something to tell them, something concrete. So with my entire body screaming at me to stop I reached for the door handle. It was open.
The creaking of the door opening still plays in my mind as I try to fall asleep and the overwhelming feeling to run has still not left me.
Despite my heart telling me to leave, my legs stayed firmly planted, only being interrupted by stepping forward into the dark foyer of the house. Down the hallway was a half opened door with the light of a desk lamp illuminating the bottom and sides of the door frame.
The walk to the door felt like a mile but once I got to the door I cracked it open to find a perfectly intact office with family photos and police portraits on the wall. In the centre of the room was a large wooden desk with papers scattered across it in all directions. Among the manila folders and endless police reports was a letter, sitting on top the pile practically lighting up to draw my attention.
I picked it up and turned it over and it simply read “FOUND YOU!”. It was the same crude handwriting as the psycho in the bathroom.
I had to keep my knees from buckling as my shaking hands became so uncontrollable I dropped the note on the floor and booked it for the door.
When I got to the door I stopped myself, I looked up the stairs and to see the only other light coming from the first door when you reach the top of the stairs.
Before I could even talk myself out of it I reached the top of the stairs and put my hand on the door handle.
Slowly turning that handle I saw a sight I cannot drive out of my mind, the scene looked more like the work of some demon of hell than of any mortal man.
Holly laid on her bed, arms and legs visibly broken, her face was so bashed she was unrecognizable as the girl I knew. Her father laid at her bedside, blood pooling into an endless lake of some hellish design. His throat had been cut down to the bone. There was blood everywhere, on the walls, on the ceiling, on her dresser everywhere. As if whatever creature did this attacked with so much rage that no human was even capable of. The only thing I didn’t realize till later was the doll, the wooden doll sitting on her dresser was completely clean despite everything surrounding it being covered in blood.
I stumbled out of the doorway so fast I nearly fell completely down the stairs. I ran as fast as I possibly could back to my car and immediately called the police.
The rest of the day went by in a blur. All I saw when I closed my eyes was the scene in Holly’s room, talking to police and giving them my story over and over. I began to feel sick with every word I spoke. Getting home that night I knew I needed to leave. My semester started in 3 weeks anyway so I needed to get out. Every time I even looked at the store I felt sick.
I am writing this now to get some sort of closure. Maybe if I tell the world it will make a little more sense and I’ll be able to move on. It’s been a year since I last went back to my home town and to be honest I don’t think I ever will. Since I left the investigation has hit another stand still. More details have come out and it appears the Doll Killer he’s now called is still at large. But if I’m being completely honest the real reason I am writing this is because I got a letter this morning. “FOUND YOU!”
I need to do something with my hands, with my mind. I need to pretend like anything that's happened makes sense.
My name is Adam and I need someone to know.
Monday
I hated my job. Not anything about the work itself, but all the insufferable constants surrounding it. I worked retail, Lightning and Lights. We sold batteries and lightbulbs, one step away from being obsolete like radio shack. We were lucky if we had a plural number of customers before we closed at 7 pm.
I don't think it was the stores’ fault, we were in a desolate location. A small corner store in a small town in bum fuck nowhere Missouri. Saint Joseph Missouri.
The work itself I could handle fine. I swept, I stocked shelves, I even tested car batteries without issue. The things I hated were my coworkers. Beth, my boss, was a bored real estate agent who decided it would be a good idea to buy into a retail franchise after she divorced her husband of 14 years. Normally she was pleasant enough, but considering the lack of effort it requires to run a store with no customer base, she found herself with nothing to do most days and just micromanaged.
Dale, the cashier, was just an asshole. He wouldn't do anything besides watch LiveLeak videos at full volume during his entire shift. Shockingly, I'm not a fan of listening to people get into car wrecks on my lunch break so we didn't have much to talk about most days. I'm pretty sensitive to noise in general, a fact he was keen to criticize me for frequently.
It was just us 3, the store was about as big as a 2 car garage so we didn't need that many people. Shift wise I was the opener, I unlocked the door at 7 am and “worked” by myself until noon, at which time Dale was supposed to show up so I could go to lunch. My shift should end at 3 pm, leaving Dale to close up shop at 7 pm. It very rarely happened like that though. At some point Dale got into the habit of leaving before my shift was supposed to end and texting me that there was an “emergency” he had to deal with, leaving me to close.
Honestly, I welcomed it. I was getting paid overtime for essentially no work and I didn't have to deal with Dale. Beth only ever came in to check in on us on Wednesdays, she never asked about the overtime so I think she already knew I was doing it. And it wasn't like I had anything better to do.
I met “him” on a Monday.
It was a dull day like always, half an hour away from closing. I finished sweeping and mopping that morning. No one, not even Dale, had walked in the door. Another “Emergency” of course. I was reading a book… I don't remember what it was about. It doesn't matter now. I was startled when I heard the chime of the front door. In walked what appeared to be a very short, old man. According to the height indicator sticker on the door, He barely clocked in at 5’0. He was bald and his skin was sun damaged. His skin wrinkled around his neck, like he had lost a large amount of weight recently. The fact he wore a dress shirt and pants that were a size too large for him lead credence to this theory. I cleared my throat and greeted him.
“Hello sir! Anything I can help you with today?”
He looked at me like I was a novelty and smiled without showing his teeth.
“Oh no, I'm just gonna look around.”
“Alright, let me know if you need anything.”
He wasn't the first old person to walk around the store with no intention of buying anything. I had seen them before, old people that had nothing to do during the day other than… wander. I remember thinking he had probably outlived everyone he ever knew growing up.
I had to pay attention to him though, if he stole something I wouldn't hear the end of it from Beth. I followed his slow movements across the store floor. Eventually, he disappeared behind our only standing shelf, a feat only possible thanks to his small stature. I waited for what felt like minutes for him to move… but he didn't. I sat there, the only noise audible being my own breathing. I was sitting at the front desk behind the register, it would have been weird for me to stand up and try and find an old man within spitting distance of me. I looked at my watch and decided to keep reading until the store closed. My eyes glanced at my book for what felt like seconds before I felt like someone was watching me.
The old man was standing at the counter. He made no noise when he moved. I was startled back into customer service mode.
“Oh! Uhh… did you need something sir?”
The man looked at me like I was a parked car on the side of a freeway.
“I was wondering if I could get some advice about a project.”
He spoke like he was trying to remember how words worked.
“Uh sure. What kind of project are you working on?”
I remember my mind trying to recall the 20 minute PowerPoint about light grading I had to sit through for training.
“Well that's the problem actually, I haven't started working on it yet. It's just that there are too many options to choose from, I don't even know where to begin!”
I remember silently dreading the old man wanting an excuse to talk my ear off so close to closing time.
I made a mistake in saying something I shouldn't have.
“Well… if you're having a problem with choice paralysis, something that helps me sometimes is to think about the ending, rather than the beginning.”
“Oh?”
The man looked at me like a child seeing a dog for the first time.
“Sure! If you start from the end, you can see what you need to do to get to that ending easier. It tricks your brain into solving smaller, immediate problems rather than getting hung up on the big picture. Works for me anyway.”
I held up my book as a prop to accentuate my point.
“People remember endings more than beginnings after all.”
The old man stood silently after I weaved my made up philosophy.
“The ending is more important… I like that… I like that a lot!”
The old man waved his pointer finger at me. He then asked me my name.
“Adam.”
“Well, Adam, I think you make an excellent point!”
“Glad I could help.”
The old man turned and started walking towards the door. He stopped and turned back towards me.
“Will I be able to find you here if I come back?”
“Uhh.. Yeah… yeah I'll probably be here.”
I remember making myself sad when I said that.
“Wonderful… you'll be able to see the ending.”
I remember being too self conscious about my life to ask any follow-up questions to the old man before he walked out. At 7 pm I locked the front door and started my walk home. Part of the reason I even got the job was because it was within eyesight of my rental. I saw the “now hiring” sign be put up. I'm pretty sure I was the first to apply.
Lucky me.
I got home, showered, ate, and was on my phone by 8 pm. I didn't have any new messages and all my old messages made me feel worse than not having any new ones. I shut my phone off around 8:30 pm so I wouldn't think about it. I got on my computer and cranked one out, to what I don't remember. I was in bed before 9 pm. I don't like remembering what I thought while laying there. I got up and took some medication to help me sleep. I was effectively dead to the world as far as anyone knew for the next 8 hours.
Tuesday
I feel like a fool looking back on it now, but the day after I met him for the first time I had actually considered it a good day.
Normally my day started with my neighbor peeling down the street on his bike at the crack of dawn, waking every dog on the block. That didn't happen, I actually almost slept in because it happened so frequently. Not that being late would've mattered in the slightest. I left my apartment and crossed the single road needed to get to the store. I opened the front door, flicked on the open sign, and proceeded with my work day.
My work day was completed at 7:25 am. Officially out of things to do sans customers, I sat at the front desk with my book and read.
12:00 pm rolled around, no sign of Dale of course. He didn't even bother to text that day… or at least that's what I thought until I noticed I forgot my phone at home. Having almost slept in threw me off my rhythm and I didn't pick it up.
I debated whether or not I should close up shop for lunch and go get it when he walked in again.
“Hello Adam, glad to see you're still here. Man of your word!”
The old man looked at me like a proud fisherman looking at his catch.
I jumped at his presence. I looked at the front door, wondering why the chime didn't go off. Ignoring my own question I greeted him. In the daylight the old man looked… fuller? Less wrinkled and a bit redder in the face. I remember questioning if he was taller as well…
“Oh man… you startled me! But uh… yeah I'm here like always.”
Small talk was never my strong suit.
“Good good. So… how was your night?”
“Uh… it was fine. How was yours?”
I realized at that moment I did not know the man’s name, I really hoped it wouldn't come up.
The man looked at me like a dog that wouldn't stop barking.
“Adam… do you not know?”
“What do you mean? How would I… wait, do you mean your project? Were you working on that?”
The man smiled again, still not showing his teeth.
“Yes! What do you think so far?”
“Uhh… sir… I don't know what your project is. You left before you told me what it was yesterday. I can't weigh in on something I don't know about.”
The old man paused. He turned to look at the glass front doors of the shop. I followed his gaze. All I saw was an empty parking lot. He stared outside for several beats before turning back towards me. He giggled like he knew something I didn't. Which was true.
“Silly me… I guess I did rush out of here rather quickly didn't I? No fault of yours…”
I remember thinking the old man was really weird.
“Oh, no worries! So… what is the project?” I asked, trying to get the ball rolling on the conversation.
The man tilted his head slightly, his eyes looking through me. I recall how odd it was that he didn't blink the whole conversation.
“You'll know it when you see it.”
And with that, he opened the front door and walked out of view into the parking lot. I stood up and tried opening up the door a few times to check if the chime still worked. It did. I wondered why it didn't go off when he walked in.
He was definitely taller, I chalked it up to his posture and forgot about it.
I sat at the register for another 30 minutes. Part of me was hoping to have some other human interaction that day, other than the old man. Hell, even Dale would have been a sight for sore eyes. No one came. It didn't bother me too bad at the time, I was used to feeling alone. At least I thought I was.
I locked up for lunch, walking to my apartment yet again. I recall how calm of a day it had been. I could actually hear birds chirping in the nearby trees, it was so quiet. Things likethat were usually drown out by traffic noises. I picked up my phone off my bedside table, no new messages. I pocketed it and went back to work.
The rest of the day was the same as the day before, no customers. I made a note to myself to recommend Beth actually try and advertise that this business exists next I saw her. I locked up at 7, home by 7:05, and went to bed after a few hours of reading.
Wednesday
Almost slept in again. No motorcycle, no dogs barking. Even the birds were noticeably absent.
I went to work.
Neither Beth or Dale showed up to the Wednesday meeting. I sat there, by myself, for hours waiting for someone to show up. Dale not showing was to be expected, but Beth though? That was weird. I texted Beth 20 minutes after she was supposed to be there.
No response.
I texted her an hour after she was supposed to be there.
No response.
I texted both Dale and Beth several hours after they were supposed to be there.
No response.
I developed a stomach ache after my attempts at reaching out were met with no response. I hate that feeling. Always have, always will. I left my phone on the desk face down, having given up on reaching anybody. That's happened more times than I'd like to admit.
The hours passed, I wasn't even reading my book anymore. I found myself absentmindedly staring down at the front desk. I was so lost in thought I didn't register the sound of the glass door breaking. I was thinking about my family when I noticed the old man was now towering over me.
“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!”
The visual of a once diminutive old man now stretched into a splotchy, sinewy giant shocked me out of my chair and onto my ass on the floor. The once five foot senior citizen was now liable to bump his head on the ceiling if he stopped looming over me with his unblinking eyes. I could see more of his thin, discolored skin as his clothes now strained to be contained on his frame. Parts of his body looked swollen, like his body fat was squeezed into shape by someone packing a suitcase. The skin around his neck was taught, threatening to rip at the seams if he turned his head too quickly. He was smiling. I still didn't see his teeth.
He spoke to me like I didn't understand what language he spoke.
“Adam. Do you see it yet? What do you think? I'm making wonderful progress, don't you agree?”
I was at loss for words, it felt like an apex predator had cornered me and was about to pounce. I grabbed the folding chair I was sitting in and held it in front of me defensively.
“WHAT THE… WHAT THE FUCK?!”
The old man looked at me like a stale piece of bread.
“Adam… come now you must know what’s going on at this point.”
His voice sounded like it was echoing through a long metal pipe, like the voice was coming from somewhere in his chest rather than out of his mouth. I was still in fight or flight mode, and my legs chose flight. I did my best to throw the chair at the looming figure and scrambled towards the fire exit. The chair clambered over the desk, not striking anything. The old man’s eyes followed me, but he didn’t move. I slammed through the crash bar of the fire exit and ran across the parking lot as fast as I could. I don’t remember if I was shouting for help or not, but I do remember the suffocating feeling of isolation as I came to a stop. I had left my phone back at the desk. I whipped my head around, looking for someone to call the police or at least to acknowledge what was happening.
The fire alarm was still audible, I looked back and the old man was crouching through the fire exit, clearly in no rush. He looked at me like I was a disappointing child.
I ran again, naively thinking that I could get to safety. I ran up the road, in the hopes that I could flag someone down. The side street where I spent most of my life opened up onto the main road, North belt highway. A fast food ladened stroad that could be mistaken for 100 different midwestern cities. Cars littered the street, but with no passengers in sight. I slowed my escape, I saw car doors ripped off their handles, shattered glass crunching beneath my feet. I couldn’t tell if the distinct metallic stench of blood was because I was overexerting myself or if it was permeating the air. I didn’t see any bodies.
I kept running until I hit the intersection of Frederick and North belt highway, a stone throws away from the offramp to highway 71. This was the most traffic prone intersection within city limits and I was standing on the road alone. I heard the rumble of an idling car that was backed into another car waiting at the light. I rushed over, the car was still running but there were no passengers. The drivers side windows looked like they were smashed in. Amongst the broken glass were seatbelts that looked like they had been stretched to the point of snapping. I backed away from the car and almost tripped over something. It was a childrens car seat, or what was left of one. I looked back at the backseat window of the car, sure enough the frame looked like something was pulled through at great force. I picked up the child seat… there were bite marks on the cushion.
“I don’t like the things that run away from me, Adam. That’s why they were first.”
The old man didn’t make noise as he moved. I dropped the seat and backed away, my heart pounding. I finally found my voice.
“What the FUCK is happening… Where is everyone?!”
The old man looked at me. It made me feel sick.
“My project, Adam. I’ll be done soon. It’ll take me several days but the hard part is over. Nothing left I need to chase.”
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! WHAT PROJECT?!”
The oldman looked at nothing.
“You’ll get to see it. The ending. It IS the most important part after all.”
It felt like I was trying to talk to a message carved into stone, unable to change anything that happened or was going to happen. I turned and ran again. I ran until I couldn’t anymore. The old man didn’t follow. I wouldn’t see him for another 2 days.
I was alone.
Thursday
I walked home in the middle of the night. There was no moon or stars in the sky. In the past I would have blamed it on light pollution, but considering I was in a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from, I assumed the old man had eaten those as well.
Half of the street lights weren’t getting power anymore, I assumed it wouldn’t be long before none of them did anymore. I wasn’t being chased, if the old man wanted me dead then I would be dead. I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I just went home. I walked down the empty streets in near pitch black. The feeling that there was nothing out there was at the forefront of my mind. I didn’t believe it , I wasn’t physically able to believe it. A thought that I would leave the city and go somewhere else to look for people crossed my mind. The familiar fear of being disappointed quashed that thought almost immediately. I continued home, stumbling in the dark.
I got home. I barricaded myself in my bathroom because it didn’t have any windows. I took my sleeping medication because I couldn’t sleep. I dreamt about being around my family again.
I woke up several times. I took the medication several times. What felt like an entire day passed.
Friday
Hunger eventually forced me out of the self contained hole I was in.
My fridge had gone out. My water wasn’t running anymore. I ate preprocessed food that didn’t need to be cooked. I noticed that there was more light streaming in my living room window than normal. I thought having something to distract me was good for me, but it made things worse in the long run.
I open the shade to let the light in. There was too much light. There's a big tree right outside my front door that blocked out the sun constantly. At least there was.
I walked out my front door and there was no tree… in fact… there weren’t any trees. There were no trees, no grass, no shrubbery, just ruptured and disturbed soil everywhere. Concrete sidewalks smashed to pieces, no sign of any weeds or even the stray leaf to be found.
The lack of plant life made the landscape even drearier than it already was. The air was dry as a bone and stale smelling. I was tempted to lock myself back in my apartment and wait to die when I saw the old man again.
It wasn’t hard to see him, he was sitting next to the Lightning and Lights store.
Or rather… he was straddling it. His huge, swollen frame dwarfed the building even when he wasn’t standing. His head was resting on the roof, staring directly at me. He looked like every part of his body had grown too large to move properly, the skin failing to stretch and torn, his bones buckling in on themselves from the immense weight.
He looked happy to see me.
The flight part of my mind had died days prior, the fight part knew it would be hopeless. My body decided the best course of action was to walk into the nearest storm drain and assume the fetal position. I grew up in a catholic household, I stopped going to my church when they told me I was no longer welcome. I started reciting prayer from memory as a means of soothing myself.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us…”
The old man’s face hovered over me, looking at me like a child would look at an insect. His head was larger than a pickup truck and he still didn’t make noise when he moved.
“Who are you speaking to Adam? Did I miss someone? I must be getting complacent in my old age…”
His voice rattled the ground beneath me, my body felt like it was going to shatter like glass. All I could do was wrap my arms around my head and keep warbling out my prayers.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come…”
I didn’t want to leave the church, my friends were there, what was left of my family was there. I wasn’t welcome after they found out about Stephen.
The old man craned his neck up at the sky, the skin of his neck having long since given way. I was able to see every bend of his vertebra as the back of his bald scalp rubbed between his shoulder blades. Despite its size, his head moved like a bird’s, near instantaneous pivoting until something caught his attention. His face dropped back down towards me, his nose inches away from compressing me into the dirt like a sunflower seed.
“You’re a good man Adam, keeping me honest about my work.”
I don’t know what happened next, it felt like the force of the old man moving upward caused a surge of air to lift me out of the storm drain. I don’t remember how long I was airborne. I just remember hitting the ground.
Saturday
I woke up with the rising sun. My left leg bending in the wrong direction at the knee. My head pounded, one of my eyes was swollen shut. I was confused as to why I wasn’t dead yet. I was in too much pain to move. I was left with my thoughts.
I thought about Stephan. He wasn’t like anyone I had ever met before. We were in college together. The only reason anybody lived in Saint Joseph Missouri was for the school. We made eachother happy. The first time I felt genuine happiness since my older brother died. He was there the last time I spoke to him in person. He was there when I found out he died. He stood up for me when I told my parents we were together. He was there when my community shunned me for being in love. I wasn’t there when he died of Covid.
Nobody responded when I needed them most. I was alone. I have been for a long time.
I blacked out from the pain, the sky turning odd colors as the ground shook.
Sunday
I started writing this today. My laptop still has a charge and it’s the only light source I have. I had nothing else to do other than to wait.
I woke up in the ditch again, looking up at the sky. Something was wrong with the sun. I held my hand up to look at it through my good eye. It was… dimmer. Like there was something in the way. My mind snagged on a memory. The last one I had with my family before things went wrong. It forced me out of the ditch.
I used all 3 of my non broken limbs to crawl back into my house and back into my bedroom. I dragged one of my dresser drawers open and spilled the contents out onto the floor. Amid the accumulated junk was a cheap pair of paper glasses. Solar eclipse glasses.
August 21st, 2017. A full total eclipse occurred over the town of Saint joseph Missouri. My older brother John came to visit the day before, he and his wife Alexa brought their newborn daughter, Rose. My parents came down as well, they all stayed at my apartment for the night so they wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel or fight traffic the day of. That was the day I introduced everyone to Stephan. We weren’t dating yet, he was just my best friend as far as anyone was concerned. The day of the eclipse came, but thanks to the weather it seemed that no one was going to see the total eclipse this century. As we were just about to walk back inside, the clouds parted. For less than a minute, the eclipse was fully in view. Surrounded by the people I loved, experiencing something truly out of this world, It was the best day I can remember.
Alexa and Rose died in a car accident a week later. They were slammed into by a drunk driver while waiting at a stop light. John was devastated. He took his own life a month later.
I find it hard to blame my parents for what they said, we were all in mourning. They threw themselves back into church life. My Dad went back to being a preacher, devoted himself to the word every single day. I threw myself into my schoolwork, eventually finding solace in Stephan.
When they found out, my father looked at me like I had murdered his only remaining son. He excommunicated me from my small town church. Everyone I had grown up with turned on me without a second thought. I stayed in Saint Joseph, even after I lost Stephan. I had nowhere else to go.
I crawled to my front door, laying on my back gasping from the pain in the same spot I saw the solar eclipse years ago. I put the glasses on and looked at the sun. The old man looked back at me. His neck coiled and swayed behind the sun like a serpent around a heat lamp. His head was round and cratered with his bottom jaw visibly split open. I saw his teeth, thousands of pointed pillars that would dwarf mountains. His eyes were thousands of miles away and I could tell he still saw me. His lips drifted to a fro like foam on the waves… He was saying something.
I can’t be sure, from my perspective the sun was about the size of a button looking through my one good eye. There was no sound, just a slow, methodical mouthing of his intended message…
I. Found. God.
With his final edict having been communicated, his head split in twain. A blossom of white pillars for teeth stretched out over the sun and swallowed it whole. The light of the star shined dimly through the skin of the old man before slowly extinguishing. The world became dark.
I am in my room right now. It’s getting harder to type because of the cold. I don’t know if anyone will ever read this. I don’t know if there will be anyone ever again. I’m going to take the rest of my medication and get some sleep.
I love you Stephan.
I'm typing this out now because I don't know what to do, I'm tired and I can't go home, not that it matters now. I'm sure it's too late to find help, I'm only writing this out so whoever finds this knows what happened to me.
It was the middle of December when I was coming home from work, I had finished my last afternoon shift for the week and was more then ready to get out of the damm place. Around 10PM I had made my way towards the carpark, seeing mine and a few other cars covered in frost from the cold touch of Winter.
I unlocked my car and grabbed the window scraper, breaking off the bits of ice that had stuck to the windows; just one of the many fun activities of driving during the Winter. As I finished clearing off the ice, I noticed the car parked behind mine- a small black car that I didn't recognize. I couldn't see anything inside with all the frost, except the silhouette of a person, sitting completely still in the driver's seat. I walked over to the driver's side of the car, thinking it might have been someone having troubles with their car.
"Do you need some help?" I tried asking them, knocking on their window to get their attention. I could barely see the driver itself through the ice-covered windows.
There was no response, not even a hint of movement; either there was a mannequin in the driver's seat or they just didn't wanna talk to me. I didn't think much of it, I was exhausted and I just wanted to go home to get some rest. Going back to my car, I drove off and headed towards my house, the driver in the black car still not moving an inch.
The route back to my house was pretty simple- a quick 10 minute drive along a carriageway and a little trip around the town I live, nothing more to it. I loved driving at night anyway; no loud noises; no other cars in the way; just me and the radio, playing some music to pass the time. But my quiet drive home had stopped being so quiet when I saw a car following behind in my rear view mirror- the exact same car I had checked on before had somehow caught up to me.
At the time I thought it was just a coincidence, its not like I was the only person driving at night, so I just passed it off as someone who was also heading home. But something wasn't right, the car had followed me everywhere; when I got off the carriageway; when I took a turn or went off a junction. It was still there. As ridiculous as it sounds, I was worried that the they were following me home. I've never seen this car until today and now it's conveniently taking the same route as me.
I've heard that if you think you're being followed, take 4 right turns and check if they followed you all the way around. I did just that; I took 4 turns in the same direction. It was still there. Now I was just getting annoyed, who even was this guy? Is he following me just cause I bothered him in his car? I'd had enough. I came up to another junction and indicated right, hoping to pull a fast one on them, I'd instead pull off to the left at the last second.
For a moment I thought I'd gotten away with it, and yet the car behind was still on my tail. It didn't help that I needed to stop at a station to refuel my car- a 10 minute drive had now just become half an hour because of this weirdo.
I decided to stop at a nearby station, to no surprise the car had followed me there too. I'd planned refuel my car and confront the driver right after about what they were doing. I'd finish topping up the car and had gone to pay the cashier. As I was making my way back towards my car I heard shouting- another driver had confronted my pursuer before I could, shouting about how he was blocking the way and to "get a f*cking move on", going as far as to bang on the car's window with his fist.
I was about to go over and hopefully calm him down... but then the shouting stopped. In the blink of an eye, the man's anger had disappeared and was replaced with something else; absolute fear. I watched him slowly back away from the car in dread, the whole time he had never kept his eyes of the car. His face, he looked like he was on the verge of tears, it was like watching a kid about to cry for his parents. Soon after the guy ran to his car and drove off as fast as he could.
"What the f*ck was that?" I asked myself as I went over to see what exactly they saw. I wish I wasn't so stupid. What I saw in that driver's seat was not a "person". The ice on the car had thawed off, leaving that thing's face in clear view- it was man, an old pale looking man. His face looked thin and contorted; the skin was stretched tight and you could see his cheek bones. His eyes were impossibly wide, looking back at it I'm not even sure he had eyelids to blink with. The worst part was his smile, it was forced and unhinged, it was so wide I thought he was gonna break his own jaw.
I ran. I didn't know what to do, so I ran back to my car and drove away as fast as I could. My hands were shaking against the steering wheel and I couldn't stop shouting at the sight of that face burned into my mind. I looked in the mirror and he was there, no matter how fast I went he tailgating me from behind. There was nowhere I could go.
It's been almost an hour since I left that station, I've parked up on the side of the road to write this. I can't go home because that thing is parked right behind me, I'm too scared to even get out of my car.
It's getting out of it's car now, I can see it- it looks malnourished, it's whole body is twitching, it can't even stand upright. It's right beside my car, looking at me through the window and still smiling. It spoke in its ungodly voice, mocking what I first said to it way back; "Do you need some help?"
Your brother is an artist. A sculptor, technically. But not the kind that makes things you want to spend any time looking at. His work is "abstract." Big twisted things with points and swirls and sticking-out pieces that promise to snag clothing and skin. Usually made from trash. Metal scrap. You are no stranger to calls from the scrapyard, the landfill, construction sites– places he can be found looting from again and again.
People call you instead of the cops because your town is tiny. No one wants to fuck with the famous author's weird son. Maybe if Dad wasn't what put the town on the map to begin with, things would be different. Maybe they'd be better.
He called you half an hour ago from the scrapyard. He has been caught again. Will you come get him?
Sensing the tension across the room, where your husband sits on the couch, you sigh and answer the only way you really can.
“Yeah. I’m on my way.”
Your brother seems to think of this as a pleasant routine. Your husband, arms crossed, watching you pull your boots on, thinks the whole thing is inherently ridiculous and pathologically selfish on your brother's part.
"This isn't our problem. You're his brother, not his parent."
"I'll be back soon," you say, threading your arms into your down coat. "It's not a big deal."
Your husband turns away from your kiss.
You let the car heat up for a while. As the windows defrost, they reveal the woods outside, black against the setting sun. Real estate is still cheap out here in the boonies, but it won't be forever. A new housing development five miles down the highway hints at what's to come.
The only lights you pass on the way to the scrapyard are set far into the trees. Tiny, falling-down homes owned by people with no interest in or capital for improvement.
A mile away from the scrapyard, the night sky begins to lighten, as if time is reversing. As you make the turn into the lot, you have to squint against the canopy of halogens.
The scrapyard is small but sprawling. Husks of refrigerators and the empty shells of cars stick out from piles of twisted metal and dirt. Some of your brother's sculptures are indistinguishable from these organic heaps.
A cloud of insects foams around the porch light as you mount the trailer steps and enter the front office.
The wiry guy behind the desk -- a piece of sheet metal propped on cinder blocks -- stands to greet you.
"Harvey not in today?" you ask.
"Nope," he replies, shaking your outstretched hand, bent over like a pipe cleaner. "Called in sick. I've been here since ten this morning."
"Oof, that's awful. Hopefully you get to go home soon."
The attendant shrugs.
Your brother gets to his feet, giving you a lackadaisical smile, like this is all part of a beloved routine.
"Sorry you had to call," you continue pointedly. "I told Harvey he can trespass him any time he wants."
"No worries. He told us what to do if Brian shows up. Gotta be nice to the folks with stuff goin’ on."
Many people are under the impression that Brian is mentally ill. This is a reasonable assumption to make of someone who spends his time gluing trash together, but he's not. Brian just prefers what's in his head to what's outside it. He always has.
"Not like he can take much, anyway," the attendant continues. "Copper's all locked up for like a year now."
"Well, tell him I said thanks, and I hope he feels better."
"Will do."
You guide Brian out the door with a firm hand on his shoulder. He's taller than you -- older, too -- but it's never felt that way.
"Thanks, again."
"You folks have a good night."
Brian walks with his hands in his suspiciously bulging pockets. He stares at the piles of metal and pauses by the twisted hulk of a small sedan.
"Wouldn't it be great if I could take one of these? There's so much you can do with a big frame like this."
You pull him forward by the arm, digging your fingers in.
"Ouch, dude," he says cheerfully.
You shove him into the back seat. He makes a quip about being demoted.
"You good?" he asks you as you slam your seatbelt buckle into its housing.
"No, not really," you reply, looking over your shoulder and reversing into a turn.
"Why?"
"You know I have a life, right? That I don't exist to serve you?"
"I'm sorry," your brother replies, nonplussed.
In the rearview, his head lowers as he inspects his haul.
"I have a LIFE. I'm sick of this shit. I'm telling Harvey to trespass you if he sees you there again. I'm telling EVERYONE to trespass you. I am SICK OF THIS SHIT."
Brian turns his eyes up at you but, wisely, doesn't open his mouth again. He just sits there and plays with his toys like a child.
His house is the last on a long dirt road and is easily identifiable in the worst way. Junk metal glitters in the front yard, like a small plane crashed into the ten square feet of crispy brown lawn and disintegrated. The mangey roof sheds shingles. The garage, abandoned, is half-collapsed and leaning. If he had actual neighbors, this place would have been condemned years ago. As it is, he's just an eyesore. A directional waypoint. If you've hit the hillbilly house, you've gone too far.
You park on the street. You've lost enough tires to the nails and screws tossed carelessly into what passes for his driveway.
Brian gets out and knocks on your window. You lower it but don't look at him.
"Can I show you what I've been doing?"
You light up with a surge of anger that fades just as quickly. You repeat the mantra your mom used to say whenever the two of you fought as kids:
Don't ever go to bed angry. You never know when you'll see each other again.
So you nod and roll up the window and kill the engine and follow your brother up his shitty driveway and into his shitty house. Spaces bleeding together, every surface used indiscriminately. He turns on lights that put out a weak nicotine glow and the two of you walk over empty bags, papers, pieces of scrap.
"For fuck's sake, it's like a bomb went off in here."
"I gotta clean here soon," Brian dismisses, waving his hand. "But here, look. Check this out."
He opens the last door on the left and ushers you into what was once the spare bedroom.
Twisted metal forms loom everywhere, shoved into any available space around the antique flip-top children's desk braced against the far wall. The eye can barely make sense of the visual cacophony. Wrenches and bolts and screws and an ancient soldering iron sitting on a rolling laptop stand and spools of solder and more papers and even more empty fast food bags. Who knows what kind of insect life is thriving here.
Brian weaves between the statues -- organic tangles, loops of thick metal, headlight housings, electrical cables, all smashed together the frozen second of detonation -- and picks up a small object from somewhere in the clutter. He holds it tenderly in his palms, like a small animal.
He hands it to you. You gingerly accept it. It's a crudely made hollow cube made of solid, hand-smithed pieces of metal. Only one panel of the square is solid, and it is suspiciously copper-colored.
"What metal is this?" you ask, running your finger along it.
He ignores you. "Look inside."
“Can I not?”
“No, come on! Look!”
You could strangle him. But you do as instructed.
The inside of the cube is empty. The back panel is blank.
"Nice," you offer lamely.
Brian grins. "Keep looking. Pay attention to the corners."
"Dude, I want to go home."
"No, no, just look again! Look at the corners!"
He's selfish, and he always has been. He doesn't care that your husband has been waiting for over an hour now. It never crosses his mind that you might have priorities that aren't him and his shitty art.
You look again. Nothing. It’s just metal.
Except.
You look closer.
There’s something weird about the top left corner.
You turn the cube this way and that.
Something is definitely off.
You follow the lines and discover something very strange.
"How do you have the sides overlapping like that?"
Brian's grin broadens. "Doesn't make sense does it?"
You follow the lines again and again. It reminds you of that triangle optical illusion, where all the angles are impossible. Except this is different. This isn't a copy of any illusion you’ve ever seen. Every time you follow a beam, you feel a sort of slipping, an almost painful flinch, and when it's over, the lines have changed. You're sure of it. You test it over and over until your eyes hurt, like you've been staring into a bright light. In fact, when you pull away, you're left with an afterimage, and even the afterimage stings something in the center of your head.
You hand the cube back a little too roughly.
"Careful! For fuck's sake!" Brian chastises, cradling his bizarre creation.
"How did you do that?"
His face lights up with a proud smile. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
Your phone buzzes in your pocket. A text from Andrew:
Dinner's cold. I'm going to bed.
"I’m leaving. Andrew’s pissed."
For the first time that evening, Brian seems genuinely remorseful.
"Sorry. I really didn't know it was that big of a deal."
"It absolutely is."
"I can try and do it less, if that helps."
You don't have the time or energy for a single other second of your brother.
Brian stands in his doorway, waving as you leave. Still cradling the cube.
The drive home sucks. You use Siri to apologize over and over, but Andrew never responds.
The house is dark when you pull in. He left your dinner on the table. It's your favorite, and it is, in fact, stone cold. You eat it standing at the kitchen counter. You clean all the dishes by hand and put them in the rack to dry. Tomorrow, you'll get Andrew a chicken burger and some coffee. You'll try to make it up to him. You start up the stairs to the bedroom.
But, suddenly, you're not sure you’re actually tired. Could you actually sleep right now, even if you tried? It might be better to watch something. Get sleepy that way.
You lie down on the couch and turn on a movie. You turn it up a little. The house feels oppressively quiet tonight.
Previous Part: Wires and Chains Part Three
I lay there, sprawled over the rock, my breaths coming in short, ragged gasps. I tried to push myself up, but the pain in my knee was overwhelming, my leg refusing to cooperate.
That's when I heard it.
The low, guttural growl.
I froze, my heart hammering in my chest as I turned my head. It was there, at the edge of the clearing, emerging from the shadows of the twisted forest. The creature. The thing that had stepped out of the tree earlier, its tendrils writhing and its featureless face fixed on me.
It moved with a horrible, jerking motion, its body bending and twisting in ways that defied logic. The hum from earlier returned, faint at first but rising in intensity as it approached.
I felt its gaze-if something with no eyes could be said to have a gaze-fixed on me, cold and unrelenting.
I was the sacrificial lamb.
Gregory and Tianna had chosen me.
The realization was like a knife twisting in my gut, cutting deeper than even the pain in my shattered knee. They had left me here, broken and vulnerable, to save themselves.
The creature moved closer, its tendrils dragging across the ground, leaving faint scorch marks in the dirt. The hum grew louder, resonating in my skull, making it impossible to think.
I was alone.
And the monster was coming for me.
I tried to make myself believe I could escape. I tried to convince myself the monster would vanish, that it would turn away and leave me behind. But no matter how hard I focused, nothing happened.
There was a gnawing fear deep inside me—no, not fear. Doubt. It clung to me like chains, heavy and unrelenting, dragging me down. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t believe, not truly. The certainty that Skibidi had wielded, the desperation that had once transformed me—it wasn’t there.
I was powerless.
The monster loomed closer, its tendrils reaching out with deliberate, jerking movements. I wanted to scream, to fight, to do anything, but my body refused to move.
The tendrils wrapped around me, cold and unyielding. They lifted me effortlessly, pulling me toward the creature’s chest. The last thing I saw before everything went black was that blank, featureless face staring into me, as if it were swallowing my very soul.
When I awoke, I was lying in a river. The shallow water lapped gently against me, barely a few inches deep, its cool touch shocking against my skin. The world around me was eerily calm, the sunlight dappled through the trees above, the soft trickle of the stream the only sound.
I sat up slowly, the ache in my body lingering but dull. I glanced down, and my breath caught in my throat.
My body was… wrong.
My skin was an amalgamation of flesh and bark, twisted and fused together in unnatural patterns. Patches of wood grew out of me like an infection, rough and splintered, covering parts of my arms, my chest, even my legs. It was grotesque, alien, a nightmare etched into my very being.
Panic surged through me, and I began to scrub at the bark frantically, my hands clawing at the wooden patches with desperation.
“Get off,” I muttered, my voice trembling. “Get off me!”
To my astonishment—and relief—it worked. The bark began to flake away, revealing raw, tender flesh beneath. I scrubbed harder, ignoring the sting, until every piece of the twisted wood was gone, my skin returned to normal.
I knelt there in the river, my breaths coming in short, ragged gasps, the water washing away the remnants of my panic. It wasn’t until I stopped that I realized there was something else—something I hadn’t noticed in my frenzy.
Music.
A soft, lilting tune, carried gently on the breeze.
I turned my head toward the sound, my heart pounding anew, though this time it wasn’t fear.
There, on the riverbank, I saw a small campfire, its flames flickering softly. Beside it stood a tent, simple and unassuming, and sitting cross-legged in front of it was a figure.
A man, playing a pipe.
The melody was hauntingly sweet, both calming and unsettling in equal measure. The man’s head was bowed, his orange hair catching the sunlight like the glow of a dying sunset.
I froze, unable to look away.
The tune faded as he slowly lowered the pipes from his lips, turning his head toward me. His face was young, yet his eyes carried the weight of ages—black as the void, dotted with the faint shimmer of stars.
“Kjäll,” I whispered, my voice trembling.
The Piper.
He smiled faintly, his expression unreadable as he watched me from across the river.
As I climbed out of the river, my legs unsteady beneath me, he rose from his seat and gestured toward a neatly folded set of clothes lying beside the fire. I glanced down at myself, realizing with embarrassment that I had nothing, not even the rags I’d worn before.
“Take them,” he said, his voice calm and measured. “You’ll need them.”
I dressed quickly, the simple tunic and trousers fitting well enough. The fabric was rough but warm, and the small act of covering myself brought an odd sense of grounding after everything that had happened.
As I tied the last knot, I turned to him, my chest tightening with the weight of my question. “What… what happened to me?”
He tilted his head slightly, the faintest hint of sorrow in his dark, star-speckled eyes. “You died,” he said simply. “Or at least, a part of you did. You were turned into a leshy—a servant of the woods, bound to Naamah’s will.”
The words sent a chill through me. “I was… patrolling the woods? Like the monster we saw?”
He nodded. “Yes. The fate of all who perish here. Their souls are rewoven, reshaped into her beasts. Tools for her dominion.”
My stomach churned as I processed his words. The faces in the trees, the creature that had taken me—they were all like me. People who had fought, struggled, and lost, now twisted into something unrecognizable.
“Then… how did you find me?” I asked, my voice trembling.
He smiled faintly, a mysterious glint in his eyes. “Perhaps a part of you knew you needed to be found. Perhaps it was your belief, even buried beneath your fear, that called me to you.”
I stared at him, my mind reeling. “So… you’re saying I saved myself?”
His expression didn’t change. “I’m saying that sometimes, when a soul is still strong, it reaches for something greater. And sometimes, it is answered.”
I had so many questions, more than I could possibly articulate. What was this place, truly? How did he know so much? And why did he care?
But before I could ask, he raised the pipes to his lips and began to play.
The melody was haunting and beautiful, the kind of tune that reached deep into your soul and stirred something you couldn’t name. It wasn’t like the humming of the creature in the woods. This was different—pure, cleansing, and sad.
As he played, his form began to shimmer, the edges of his body dissolving into the air like mist in the morning sun.
“Wait,” I said, stepping forward, my hand outstretched. “Don’t go.”
He didn’t stop playing. His form faded further, his hair catching the last rays of sunlight before it disappeared entirely.
“Please,” I whispered, my voice breaking.
But he was gone, and I was left alone by the fire, the tune lingering in my ears like the echo of a dream.
I sat down heavily, staring into the flames, my mind racing. The warmth of his presence, the depth of his words—they had felt real.
But the question burned in my mind, refusing to be silenced: Was that truly the Piper? Or was it just the world justifying my salvation?
The thought lingered, unanswered, as the fire crackled softly in the quiet of the forest.
As I rose from the fire and began wandering along the trail near the riverbank, I felt unmoored, adrift in this strange, unpredictable world. The path ahead was faint, winding through the forest in a way that seemed both purposeful and completely random. I didn’t know where I was going—just that I had to move.
The forest grew denser as I walked, the sunlight dimming beneath the thick canopy. Every sound felt magnified: the crunch of leaves underfoot, the rustle of branches in the breeze, the distant calls of unseen birds. My mind raced with questions about what had just happened—about the Piper, the leshy, the rules of this twisted place.
That’s when it happened.
A faint snap echoed from somewhere behind me. Before I could react, figures burst out of the underbrush, one after another, surrounding me in a semicircle.
Brigands.
They were a rough-looking bunch, dressed in mismatched armor and wielding crude but menacing weapons. There were at least a dozen of them, their faces grim and eager, like wolves circling their prey.
From among them, a man stepped forward. He was tall and broad, with a patchy beard and a scar running down the side of his face. His armor was slightly better than the others’, though still piecemeal, and a large sword rested on his shoulder.
“Well, well,” he said, his voice gruff and mocking. “Don’t you know this is a tolled road?”
I froze, panic surging through me. Was I about to die again? Would I be dragged off to captivity, or worse, turned into another of Naamah’s beasts? My mind raced for an answer, a way out, but nothing came.
And then it hit me.
I don’t know what possessed me—maybe desperation, maybe the lingering memory of Skibidi’s arrogance—but I decided to gamble everything on the most ridiculous plan I could think of. I decided to gaslight the shit out of them.
I straightened up, puffing out my chest, and plastered a look of indignation across my face. “Is this any way to treat your boss?” I said, my voice loud and commanding.
The brigands hesitated, their expressions flickering between confusion and amusement.
The leader narrowed his eyes. “What did you say?”
I scoffed, shaking my head like a disappointed parent. “Unbelievable. I step away for one day, and this is what happens? My own men pointing weapons at me like common highway trash? Do you have any idea how foolish you look right now?”
The leader blinked, clearly taken aback. “You’re… what? Our boss?”
“Of course I am!” I snapped, throwing my arms wide. “You don’t recognize me because I’ve been undercover, you dolts! Testing you! And guess what? You’re failing miserably!”
The bandits exchanged uneasy glances, their weapons wavering. I could feel the doubt creeping in, and I pressed harder.
“You really think someone would wander this road alone without knowing it’s tolled?” I said, jabbing a finger toward the leader. “You think I don’t know every inch of my territory? I built this operation, and now I see it’s being run by a bunch of incompetent fools who can’t even recognize their own commander!”
The leader took a half-step back, the confidence draining from his face. “Wait… you’re saying you’re in charge?”
“Of course I am!” I barked. “And if you don’t start acting like it, heads are going to roll. You think I don’t know where the treasury is? Where the secret entrances to the stronghold are? Shall I prove it to you?”
The group visibly wavered now, several of the brigands lowering their weapons entirely.
“I—I didn’t realize—” one of them stammered.
“Didn’t realize?” I interrupted, rounding on him. “Didn’t realize? That’s exactly the problem! None of you think! You just swing your swords and grunt like the dimwits you are! No wonder our profits are down!”
The leader looked flustered, glancing nervously at his men. “I—I’m sorry, boss. We didn’t know—”
“‘Sorry’ doesn’t cut it,” I snapped, glaring at him. “Do you think Naamah will accept apologies when we can’t deliver our tribute? No? Then why should I?”
At the mention of Naamah, the brigands all stiffened, their faces blanching with fear.
“Boss, please,” another bandit said, dropping to one knee. “Forgive us! We—we didn’t mean to offend!”
One by one, the rest of them followed suit, bowing their heads and muttering apologies.
I stared at them, my heart pounding. I couldn’t believe it had worked.
“Fine,” I said, waving a hand dismissively. “You’re lucky I’m in a forgiving mood. But this is your last chance. One more mistake like this, and I’ll personally see to it that you regret it.”
The leader nodded quickly, his face pale. “Understood, boss. Please, let us escort you back to the stronghold.”
They actually had a stronghold? My stronghold, apparently.
I gave a curt nod, trying to maintain my composure. “Lead the way.”
As the bandits gathered themselves and began moving, I followed, struggling to keep my disbelief in check.
For the first time, I realized how foolish I had been to care about an NPC like Maple. These brigands weren’t people. They were props in this world, tools to be used, reflections of whatever the system thought I needed them to be.
It was sobering, and strangely liberating.
They led me through the forest until we emerged at a sprawling fortress nestled in a hollow. Its walls were high and jagged, and its towers loomed over the surrounding trees.
“Welcome back, boss,” the leader said, gesturing toward the gate with a nervous smile.
I took a deep breath, staring up at the stronghold that was now mine.
Over the following days, I stayed with the brigands—if you could even call them that anymore. It was during this time that I truly began to understand the strange rules of this world, and more importantly, how to bend them.
I had already discovered how difficult it was to make myself believe something enough to manifest it, but I realized that the NPCs—well, they were different. They weren’t like me. They didn’t carry the same doubts or complexities of thought. Their reality seemed malleable, and with a little push in the right direction, they could be made to believe just about anything.
And once they believed something? The world reshaped itself to fit their belief.
It started on the first day.
I was hungry, and I demanded a feast. The brigands nodded dutifully and led me to the food stores—empty barrels and shelves greeted me, the hollow echoes of the room mocking my request.
I tried to manifest food myself, focusing as hard as I could, but it was no use. I just couldn’t make myself believe it into existence.
But then an idea struck me.
I walked back to the brigands, who stood around awkwardly, and fixed them with a stern glare. “Are you telling me you didn’t check properly? That you let your own laziness insult me and deny me the feast I deserve?”
They exchanged uneasy glances, clearly unsure. “We… we looked, boss,” one of them muttered.
“No,” I snapped, my voice rising. “You thought you looked. But you didn’t. You didn’t try hard enough. Now go back in there and search again. I know there’s food in those stores—there has to be. Find it!”
They hesitated, but my insistence pushed them into action. They scrambled back into the storehouse, muttering apologies and assurances that they’d “do better this time.”
When they emerged a short while later, they were carrying crates overflowing with bread, cured meats, and fresh produce.
“See?” I said, my arms crossed as they laid the food out in front of me. “What did I tell you? You just weren’t looking hard enough.”
They bowed their heads, apologizing profusely, while I stood there in shock, barely able to contain my disbelief. I had just gaslit reality into bending itself to their perception.
The next day, I noticed how much of a dump the stronghold was. Most of it was little more than a ramshackle camp inside a crumbling fortress, the walls barely standing and the living conditions abysmal.
I walked through the ruins, shaking my head at the sight of it all. “Unacceptable,” I muttered loud enough for the brigands to hear.
When they gathered around me, I pointed to the mess and started talking.
“You call this a stronghold?” I said, my voice dripping with disdain. “This isn’t a stronghold—it’s an embarrassment. And yet you let it stand like this? Unclean? Unkempt? How do you expect anyone to take us seriously if this is how we present ourselves?”
One of the brigands scratched his head. “We, uh… we don’t have the supplies to fix it, boss.”
“Nonsense,” I snapped. “You’ve already fixed it. You just don’t remember because you’re too busy slacking off. You cleaned this place up days ago. You repaired the walls, swept the floors, replaced the furniture—it’s spotless, isn’t it? Or am I wrong?”
The brigands exchanged nervous glances, but the doubt in their eyes began to fade. “I… yeah,” one of them said slowly. “Yeah, we did fix it up, didn’t we?”
“Yes, you did,” I said firmly. “And you did a damn good job of it. Now take a moment to admire your work.”
I left them standing there, their expressions turning from confusion to pride as I stepped outside. When I returned to the courtyard a short while later, the stronghold was unrecognizable.
The walls were pristine, the floors swept clean, the buildings repaired and reinforced. What had once been a ruin was now an impeccable fortress, towering over the surrounding forest with an air of authority.
I didn’t stop there.
Once I saw what was possible, I realized the true extent of my power in this world.
The brigands were still bandits at heart, their habits crude and their morals nonexistent. But I saw an opportunity to make them into something more—something better.
I gathered them in the main hall, their eyes wide and expectant as they waited for me to speak.
“You’re not brigands,” I said, pacing in front of them. “You never were. That’s not who you are. You’re warriors. Noble warriors. You fight for the people, for the weak, for those who cannot fight for themselves. You are protectors, not thieves.”
The words hung in the air, their weight sinking into the minds of the brigands.
One of them frowned. “We… we fight for the people?”
“Yes,” I said, meeting his gaze. “You’ve always fought for the people. You’re virtuous warrior priests, champions of justice and defenders of the downtrodden. That’s who you are. That’s who you’ve always been.”
At first, there was silence. Then, slowly, they began to nod.
“That… makes sense,” one of them said.
“Yeah,” another chimed in. “We’ve always fought for the people, haven’t we?”
I smiled. “Exactly. And this fortress? It’s a temple. A place of refuge and strength for all who seek it. And you? You’re its guardians.”
From that moment on, the transformation was unstoppable. The brigands discarded their crude weapons and patched armor, replacing them with noble garb and polished steel. The stronghold became a beacon in the forest, a place of sanctuary for travelers and traders alike.
People began arriving—farmers, merchants, wanderers—all seeking shelter, trade, or protection. The fortress buzzed with activity, its halls filled with purpose and pride.
I couldn’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction. I had taken what was broken and made it whole. I had turned chaos into order, despair into hope.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, I began to feel something strange, something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Pride.
Days turned to weeks, and then to months. The fortress was no longer just a place—it was a kingdom unto itself. And I? I was its Lord Commander, its High Priest. It was mine, forged by my will and guided by my hand. Under my leadership, the stronghold flourished. The temple halls echoed with purpose, the armory was stocked with weapons of gleaming steel, and the people—my people—looked to me as their protector, their leader, their savior.
I became lost in it all.
Every day was filled with decisions, proclamations, and ceremonies. Every night brought feasts and celebrations in my honor. I was adored, revered, and I reveled in it. The power was intoxicating, the world bending to my every whim as long as I could convince the NPCs to believe it.
But the deeper I sank into the role, the more the lines between what was real and what was false blurred. The Piper, Maple, Skibidi—these memories flickered in and out of my mind like fleeting dreams, distant and unimportant compared to the life I had built here.
Until the day everything changed.
It was an ordinary afternoon. The sun was high, the courtyard bustling with life as merchants set up stalls and warriors sparred in the training yard. I wandered through it all, my presence enough to part crowds and draw bows of respect.
That’s when I saw her.
A book merchant, standing by a small, colorful stall stacked with leather-bound tomes and scrolls. She was beautiful, her hair dark and flowing, her eyes sharp and captivating. Her voice carried an enchanting lilt as she spoke with a customer.
But as I drew closer, something about her struck me wrong.
It wasn’t her appearance, though I couldn’t help but notice how perfect it was—too perfect. Her movements, her tone, even her smile—they were warm and inviting, but there was something hollow beneath the surface.
She reminded me of Maple.
The realization hit me like a slap, and I froze in place. It wasn’t just that she looked familiar—it was the feeling she gave me. That same intoxicating comfort, that same sense of being understood and seen.
And with that came a flood of memories.
I hadn’t forgotten that this world wasn’t real, but I had pushed it to the back of my mind, buried it beneath the weight of my new life. Now, staring at this woman who felt so much like Maple, it all came rushing back.
This wasn’t real. None of it.
The thought made my chest tighten, the weight of everything I’d built suddenly pressing down on me like a crushing tide.
But before I could dwell on it, a commotion broke out in the courtyard.
Shouts and the clatter of armor echoed across the open space as a group of my soldiers marched through the gates, dragging two prisoners behind them. The crowd parted, murmurs rippling through the onlookers as the soldiers forced the captives to their knees in the center of the courtyard.
“Commander!” one of the soldiers called, his voice sharp and commanding. “We’ve captured two criminals attempting to sneak into the fortress.”
I stepped forward, my heart pounding as I approached the scene. The prisoners were bound, their faces obscured by sacks, their shoulders slumped in defeat.
“Let me see them,” I ordered, my voice steady despite the unease creeping into my chest.
The soldier nodded and stepped back, yanking the sacks from their heads.
I stopped dead.
Gregory and Tianna knelt before me, their faces battered and bruised but unmistakable.
Their eyes widened as they looked up at me, and I saw a flicker of something in their expressions—relief, disbelief, and maybe even a hint of anger.
“Glenn?” Tianna’s voice was hoarse but steady. “Is that you?”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.
The world I had built, the identity I had claimed, the life I had embraced—it all came crashing down around me in that moment.
Because here they were, flesh and blood, real in a way this place never could be.
“Commander?” one of the soldiers asked, his voice hesitant. “What should we do with them?”
I looked down at Gregory and Tianna, my mind racing.
For the first time in months, I felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore.
My first reaction was rage. It consumed me instantly, boiling up from the pit of my stomach and spreading like wildfire. My heart pounded in my chest, each beat loud and deliberate, as though it were driving the storm inside me.
Thrum.
Thrum.
Thrum.
The sight of Gregory and Tianna, kneeling there, bruised and bound, sent a torrent of emotions crashing through me. Betrayal. Anger. Resentment. The people I trusted most had left me to die, and now here they were, caught sneaking into my fortress—into my domain.
My fists clenched at my sides as the anger demanded to be heard. Words burned on the edge of my tongue, sharp and cruel, ready to be unleashed.
But before I could speak, something strange happened.
At first, I thought it was the adrenaline, the way the world always seemed to slow down in moments of intensity. But this was different. The soldiers froze in place, their hands still gripping Gregory and Tianna. The wind stopped moving, the banners hanging from the battlements falling unnaturally still. Even the faint hum of the bustling fortress behind me ceased entirely.
Time had stopped.
I blinked, my breath catching in my throat. The silence was deafening, the stillness suffocating.
Then I saw him.
On the battlement above the courtyard, leaning casually against the stone wall, was the Piper. He wasn’t playing this time; the pipes rested at his side, and his dark eyes—those infinite, star-speckled eyes—were fixed on me.
Before I could speak, he moved. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed something through the air.
I barely had time to react before my hands moved instinctively, catching it.
The pipes.
I stared down at them in my hands, their surface smooth and cool, the faint hum of their power thrumming against my skin. When I looked back up, he was gone.
Time resumed.
The noise of the courtyard rushed back in all at once—the shuffling of soldiers, the murmurs of the crowd, the crackle of the banners in the breeze.
I stood there, staring at the pipes in my hands, the weight of them more than physical. The rage that had consumed me moments before seemed to dissolve, replaced by a single, undeniable truth.
It didn’t matter if that had truly been Kjäll or just an image, a manifestation of this world bending to my need. His presence—real or not—meant the same thing.
Mercy.
I took a deep breath, the pipes still clutched tightly in my hand, and turned to the soldiers.
“Free them,” I said, my voice calm but firm.
The soldier nearest to me hesitated. “But, Commander, they—”
“Free them,” I repeated, my tone leaving no room for argument.
The soldiers obeyed, cutting Gregory and Tianna’s bonds. They both staggered slightly as they rose to their feet, their eyes fixed on me with a mix of confusion and caution.
I met their gazes, holding the pipes tightly in my hand. “You’re not criminals,” I said, my voice steady. “You’re free to leave or stay. The choice is yours.”
Gregory and Tianna exchanged a look, but neither spoke.
Without another word, I turned and walked back toward the fortress, the pipes in my hand a quiet reminder of what had just happened.
For the first time in a long time, I felt the weight of my choices. This world may have been mine to shape, but that didn’t mean I was free to ignore what it demanded of me.
And as I passed through the gates and into the halls of my fortress, one thought lingered in my mind:
Mercy wasn’t just for them. It was for me, too.
As I stepped through the gates into the fortress, the air grew heavy, the temperature dropping so quickly that my breath fogged in the chill. The torches along the walls flickered, their flames shrinking to faint, struggling embers.
Then it hit me.
A pressure like nothing I’d ever felt before crashed down on me, driving me to my knees. It was as if the weight of the entire world had been placed on my shoulders. My chest tightened, my vision blurred, and a sharp, stabbing pain pulsed through my skull.
I clutched at the ground, trying to steady myself, but the floor beneath me wasn’t steady. It writhed, pulsing like it was alive, the cold stone shifting into something warm and fleshy.
Voices rose around me, faint at first but growing louder—laughter, whispers, screams—all blending into a chaotic symphony of sound.
Then her voice cut through it all.
“Poor, fragile Glenn,” she purred, soft yet commanding, dripping with mocking sweetness. “Even with all your power, you remain so… breakable.”
“Who—” I tried to speak, but my throat tightened, the words choking in my chest.
“You know who I am,” she said, the laughter fading as her tone turned sharp and cold. “I am Naamah. I am the one who brought you back from the woods, from the chains of the leshy. It was my will that unbound you, Glenn. My will that returned you to yourself. And yet, you dare to question me?”
The walls of the fortress dissolved into a swirling void of shadows and light. A throne emerged before me, massive and jagged, its surface pulsing with a dark, blood-red glow. Upon it sat a figure cloaked in shadow, her form shifting and indistinct, yet undeniably present.
“You amuse me,” she continued, her voice wrapping around me like silk. “With your defiance, your clever little games. But tell me, Glenn—what has it all earned you? A crumbling temple of lies, built on the backs of puppets who would cease to exist without your belief.”
Her words struck deep, but before I could respond, an image appeared in the swirling void beside her.
It was me—my body, but not me.
I was walking through the mortal world like a machine, my movements stiff and robotic, my eyes empty. The same hollowness I’d seen in those glazed-over people when this all began.
She laughed, a low and mocking sound. “Do you wish to return to this?” she taunted. “To this life of obscurity, chasing mysteries that no one cares about? Writing your little stories for the few who even bother to read them—and the even fewer who believe you?”
The image shifted. I saw myself again, sitting alone in a dimly lit room, surrounded by books and notes, my face drawn and tired. The loneliness radiated from the scene, a sharp, familiar ache that I couldn’t deny.
“You can stay here,” she said, her tone softening into a tempting sweetness. “Here, you are a king. A savior. Here, you are adored, respected, worshipped. All that I ask is a small thing in return. The interlopers—Gregory and Tianna—they do not belong. Hand them over to me, and Paradise is yours. Forever.”
Her presence pressed down harder, the pain in my head growing unbearable as her words coiled around me.
I tried to speak, to answer, but my thoughts were a tangled mess of fear, doubt, and temptation.
“Think carefully, Glenn,” she hissed, her voice sharper now. “This is the only life where you matter. Out there? You are nothing. Here, you can have everything.”
My throat tightened as I forced out a response. “Let me… think.”
The laughter returned, cruel and echoing, as the shadows around her throne surged closer.
“Yes,” she said, her voice dripping with satisfaction. “Think long and hard, my dear. And when you are ready to make the right choice, I will be waiting.”
The void around me collapsed, the world snapping back into place as I found myself kneeling on the cold stone floor of the fortress. The pain in my head subsided, but her words lingered, heavy and inescapable.
The image of my empty, robotic self walking through the mortal world burned in my mind, a cruel reminder of what waited for me if I refused her offer.
And yet, somewhere beneath the fear and doubt, a single thought stirred, faint but persistent:
Was it better to be nothing in the real world… than everything in a lie?
I stood there for a moment, the cold stone beneath me grounding me in a reality I wasn’t sure was mine anymore. Naamah’s words lingered in my mind, her taunts echoing like a cruel refrain: This is the only life where you matter.
To be Continued.
Found on the hard drive of a laptop found at the scene, along with a broken mobile phone. Recovered under black sand determined to be made mainly of graphite and clumps of rubber. Written on Notes app. Posts are as follows:
~~~~~~~~~~~
May 12
Some of the weirdest shit just happened, and I don’t know where else to turn. I don’t really know where to start, to make things worse. This is my first post, I believe, so I apologize if it’s slightly illegible. I am not a poet, and what happened has me pretty fucking rattled.
Have you ever had a day where, with no real reason whatsoever, things seemed to go against you at every instance? You wake up to cat piss in your bed and you don’t own a cat; you forgot to empty the old coffee grounds in the coffee machine after putting in a massive layer of new grounds on top and breaking the coffee machine inexplicably; your car’s battery dies midway out of you pulling out of your driveway and you’re basically emergency parked in the middle of the busy street and the tow company is stuck in traffic caused by your unfortunate park job; the coffee place you went to accidentally gave you a small cup of coffee with spoiled milk and you didn’t know until you left the building and got back into your rental car that you were nearly denied had it not been for the sweet soul of the front desk person who smudged some rules to give me a fair deal; despite knowing how terrible your day started, your boss still rips you a new one for being late which led to a meeting with HR and facing a real possibility that you wouldn’t have a job if anything happened again; your card declines at a luncheon and you have to settle for some free fruits (two apples, an orange, and a banana,) and a couple of spare granola bars that your coworker was kind enough to spare… there’s more, but I’ve listed so many already.
This all sounds like a nightmare for some folks, but this was my morning. I wish I could say the rest of the day was just mildly frustrating if not downright infuriating, but after I somehow managed to convince my boss to leave early, I got home to someone tagging my parking spot in the garage with the weirdest sprawling lines I’ve ever seen. I did try to take pictures of the lines, but my phone’s rear camera broke when it fell out of my pocket during lunch and the front has a weird glare in the lens that just appeared. I wish that was the worst of the tagging, but the scribbling lines almost seemed to lead into the building straight to my apartment. Hell, there were lines in the damn elevator that lined up. It was like lines on a kid’s drawing, almost like a fake pirate’s map that doesn’t have a set location of the treasure. The lines that almost didn’t lead directly to my door were violently scrawled over, like it was wrong. My damn door was covered in those lines, too, but more like a circle surrounded by very small question marks surrounding the door frame well beyond the neighbors’ doors and on the ceiling. I freaked out so much I called the cops and the front desk about everything. They tried pulling footage of the garage and the hallways, but the cameras must’ve been broken. The officers, Wilson and Singh, told me they’d look in my apartment for anything and that I did the right thing by not going inside and calling them first. They set me up with a hotel room in the meantime.
Jesus I’m tired. It’s not even that late in the day. What the cops said about me doing the right thing… it feels off for some reason and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. Maybe once they give me an update, I’ll ask them to clarify, if they can. If that weird shit was involved in a whole ass other crime (or worse), what the fuck does that mean for me? I’m getting anxious just thinking about the possibilities. I’ve told the front desk not to forward calls to me or to send anything to my door per Officer Wilson’s orders. I’m exhausted, but I don’t know if I can sleep. I guess I can try. What else can I do?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
May 20
Shit got weirder.
It’s been a week since the graffiti shit happened. I’m still at the hotel. Officer Singh dropped by the day after everything happened to let me know that the room is still being thoroughly investigated, but what they found was… God, it’s weird to type out. It was like the room was turned into a drawing. The walls were slanted at weird angles, the appliances were vastly out of proportion to each other and the surfaces they were on, but the stuff with the lights? Holy shit. Any room with a light on had those little lines of rays that kids draw to show light, but when the lights turn off, the fucking lines disappear. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. If it wasn’t for the bodycam footage, I wouldn’t have believed it either. It sounds whacked.
I’m fucking wreaked. I managed to get HR to approve my time off for “emergency mental health reasons”. I can’t work with this shit running in the background of my mind and act like everything’s gonna be fine. I barely have a proper grip on reality right now. Weed doesn’t help, and the bar downstairs (while being super sweet about it and I do absolutely understand and get the reason why) isn’t allowed to send me any more alcohol. I guess I drank a dent in their inventory and I was costing them a pretty penny in reordering supplies. Whoops. Thank you, Doordash and Instacart.
The apartment complex has fully dropped my lease, no fee, nothing. The head maintenance guy went with the cops the first time into that place. He quit right after. I’m looking into getting a new place soon-ish, but given that my belongings are not physically possible to exist, furniture and clothes are a luxury at the moment.
My music app has been acting up as well. It stops playing my music for like 20 seconds, then I hear something like humming, only I don’t know the song. Swear to G if my life is a real-life fucking creepypasta.
Upside, got my car back. I guess it just needed a new battery. I need to eat, I’m too hungry to think.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
May 26
I got my phone replaced yesterday. I guess I had some malware installed without knowing it and my entire phone just… broke. None of the apps worked, few actually opened. Stupid thing had some bizarre “game” on it that I didn’t really know how to play, but it played that same song like the humming from the music app. How have things gotten so weird? I’m done with all this. Please, God, I’m so tired.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jun 5
Well fuck.
My car is basically internally totaled and the mechanics don’t know how or why. From what they’ev told me, it just “stopped working”, and popping the hood only confused them more. It was like everything was made of plastic, like a Barbie doll car or an RC car. Same engineering design of the inside, but fake. As if it was just for display.
So on top of getting a new apartment, I now need a new car. Fuck me running.
To make things worse, that stupid game is back on my phone. I swear I can hear the humming in my sleep sometimes. It’s almost haunting. I’m so tired.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Jun 8
I finally figured out that “game”, sorta. Like it gave me a choice. Damn thing opens on its own, sometimes. I would just close the game and turn my phone off but curiosity and dead cats, and all that jazz.
I was right, it’s not really a game per se, but a graphic novel of sorts… if a child made one. Like a choose-your-own-adventure graphic novel made by kids, for kids, so no real story to follow at all. From what I’ve gathered, the main character is a little girl, and she has an imaginary friend named SAM or something like that. As the little girl, you control your imaginary friend via benign prompts like “pick doll up” and “dance silly”. Kid shit, y’know? Like kid games should be, but with worse graphics and designs. The little girl is a stick figure drawing with red pigtails and a green dress with yellow and blue flowers on it, and SAM… didn’t look like how I expected him to look. He was short and bulky, like a cardboard box filled with too much stuff that bent the sides out, wearing a white shirt with SAM in bold black letters. His legs were like twigs, skinny and tall, and a comically wide stance covered in weird blue pants that disappeared under the shirt and big black shoes. His arms were similar, but long, longer than they should be, and were bent at sharp angles, ending with what looked like those hook claws from arcade games, but his face… It was wider on one side, but longer on the other. His mouth was almost star shaped, warping to the shape of the face and filled with pin needle teeth. The eyes were somehow worse. One eye was large and cloudy blue– cataracts? Maybe. The other eye was small but wide and extended over one corner of his mouth over the longer side of the face with a black dot serving as a pupil. For some reason it was obvious the smaller eye wasn’t useful in any way, and the blue eye always seemed like it was looking at me the few times the app opened.
I did manage to find a cheap-ish apartment right next to the subway and bus lines. At least I don’t have to worry about how I’m getting to work if I get the place. Silver linings and all that.
~~~~~~~~~~
Jun 19
I GOT THE PLACE!!!! I move in next week! Oh thank Christmas. I never wanna stay at another hotel for a long fucking time.
Mom set up a storage unit for me in town and stuffed it to the brim with furniture from Ikea that she had Dad, Linette, and Marcus fix up for me. Marcus also said he and Mom can help me out with getting a car while Dad and Linette worked on getting me clothes and knick knacks to make my new place feel homey.
The police haven’t really updated me about my old place since Officer Singh told me about what they found last time and I can’t build up the courage to ask. Mainly because I wouldn’t know how to ask, and I’d rather not really know.
That damn app still opens itself up from time to time, but only if I’m alone, and only when I’m using my phone. Only this last time was disturbing as fuck.
App opened up like usual, but something about the main screen was off. SAM still looks creepy, but the little girl has gone from smiling to a weirdly neutral face, and her dress went from a cute little green dress to a black dress and a big black hat. They’re standing next to a big brown mound on the scribbled grass flooring, almost like a grave. The game prompted something along the lines of, “she isn’t here anymore” with the choices being “cry” or “laugh”.
I closed the app after that. So far it hasn’t opened back up yet.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Jun 22
My fucking storage unit got tagged.
Same scribbled lines. Same question marks surrounding my unit. Same drawing furniture.
How. The fuck. Is this happening.
My folks are beyond confused. Rightly so. My step-parents are talking to the cops out front.
I don’t know what to do.
Hotel, here I come.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jun 28
The goddamn game cha
–EDIT: On laptop, finishing post now–
The goddamn game changed.
The little girl was lying down, crying. Same little black dress, the hat drawn flung off to the side. Sam was center of the screen. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
The prompt on screen asked, “Where’s Mommy?”
The only answer I was prompted to give was, “find her”
I closed the game and threw my phone in the closet.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Jul 2
I got a laptop. I managed to save my previous notes from my phone on it and update the one I started after the game opened up. I pray I don’t find that fucking game again. I haven’t touched my phone since I threw it in the closet. Here’s hoping the damn thing died.
My stuff is still cartoon-ized. Again. I don’t know how they cleared out the storage unit. Don’t know, don’t wanna know.
Sort of.
I called the police and asked about my case file, which transferred me to a detective named MacKenzie, I think. She told me the officers in charge of my case were dismissed for erratic, nearly violent behaviors following the weird discovery. She reminded me that all this was still under investigation, but she might have a lead.
Det. MacKenzie told me about another case similar to my case, where a woman’s house was marked up and “vandalised”, she called it, and the woman went insane, saying things like “she’s coming for me, I wasn’t paying enough attention, I didn’t love her enough”, creepy stuff like that. It was three weeks of constant calls about her screaming down the street and getting at least three arrests to finally get her into the psych ward. Apparently she calmed down in the psyche ward, but kept up the muttering of someone finding her.
The detective took a minute to tell me this next part, and I nearly threw up.
It was another week until they found her body in pieces, covered in clumps of “black sand and a dark pink rubber material”, but the pieces looked like they were “erased”, since no more parts of her could be found. She had her phone on her, and it looked like it exploded from the inside. Like someone smashed a window from the inside of the house.
I still haven’t gotten my phone out of the closet. I don’t want to anymore.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jul 18
Detective MacKenzie came over today. I never realized that we were close in age, all of our talks have been over the phone. She brought over files from similar cases that ended in the same bizarre way. Some were from different states, and two were in different countries. I almost asked why she brought over all this, but the frazzled look on her face shut me up. Something tells me something happened to her, too. Not sure what, I wasn’t gonna ask. She went almost in circles about how everything nearly ended the same, every victim in pieces, missing the parts that were “erased”. Like a drawing.
Then she pulled out her phone.
She was playing the game. SAM wasn’t smiling. He was crying. The little girl was gone.
Then I saw the prompt.
“Find her”
~~~~~~~~~~~
Jul 22
I finally got the courage to grab my phone out of the closet. If it was dead, I didn’t check. I kept it face down and plugged it in, then looked over the files Det MacKenzie left. What I’ve gathered is that all 16 of the victims were women, all in their mid-30s, all with variations of strawberry blonde to bright red hair. At least four of the six victims had dyed hair, pitch black, like it made a difference.
How did I even get into this mess? Fuck, I don’t know what to do. I have to look at my phone eventually. Maybe something changed.
SAM is alone. Crying. And pointing to the right, toward the window.
I shouldn’t have checked.
There’s a woman out there, wiry bright red pigtails... I thought her dress was black but it’s just covered in black sand, turning it gray.
She’s crying. Wailing. There was something in her hand.
I need to leave. Now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jul 28
Detective MacKenzie’s dead. Same way. I need to go.
She can’t find me right now. I don’t know how, but she can’t see me. I have to find a way to get around her. I can’t die like this.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aug 3
I finally left the hotel. Had to. She was close to finding me. I couldn’t stay there. First thing I wanted to do was fly somewhere not here, but I read the damn files. I’m still being hunted. What the fuck did I do? What DO I do? I’m scared shitless, but I can’t run for long.
Who am I supposed to find?
SAM only cries if she’s nearby. He doesn’t prompt me for anything, just stares back, the eerily wide smile gone. Maybe he can hear me? I must be going insane. I’ll try to get set up at another hotel. I’m in dire need of a shower. I’ve been driving for hours. I need to stop. Just for now. I need a breather.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aug 4
He can hear me.
He answers in prompts. Prompts I can only verbally respond to. My first question was if he could, in fact, hear me.
YES, I CAN HEAR YOU. In big, bold, sprawled letters on the screen. I asked who I had to find.
HER.
Why?
MOMMY LEFT US. WE WANT HER BACK. FIND HER.
Who is we?
BETTY. SHE ISN’T HERE NOW. SHE WANTS MOMMY BACK REALLY BAD. FIND HER.
How the hell am I supposed to respond to that? I asked instead if he knew Mommy’s name. It was really the only other thing I could think of. SAM’s mouth somehow twisted more.
THAT WASN’T MOMMY. SHE WAS A LIAR. WE WANT MOMMY. NOT HELEN. WHERE IS MOMMY?
Ok so I have a start. I gotta get my laptop, I need to look up these names. Nothing is making sense anymore.
The names that came up led to some weird article about a woman named Helen Jeffers who stole a baby from a hospital in buttfuck nowhere New Jersey in the mid-to-late 90’s. She was some sort of fucked up in the head, according to the article, but about eight years later, a woman’s body was found in pieces in her home after a wellness check from Helen’s estranged husband (who was not named, I guess for anonymity). Same small pieces, same black sand that was tested as a graphite and eraser rubber mix. The little girl was never found.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
SAM is crying. I need to go.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Aug 8
SAM stopped crying finally. Four days of driving nonstop except to sleep and get food and gas. I look insane. I feel insane. A drawing on my phone is helping me survive. Sort of. I’ve asked him more questions since, but it’s like asking a 6 year old child about advanced algebra. I have to be careful about how I ask my questions. SAM isn’t good with complicated questions. He doesn’t really answer in anything longer than a couple sentences. Mostly it’s been small tidbits of random word bile for a bit, stuff like SHE WANTS MOMMY BACK and FIND HER, but I did learn that Betty found out about her birth mom when Helen let slip that she wasn’t her mommy, and that something happened right after. I didn’t ask for more info. I had a feeling I knew where that line of questioning would go.
Betty’s getting closer. SAM’s giant blue eye has that weird cartoon glint on it. I need to leave here, too. Soon. I can’t stop for a while yet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aug 12
Jesus Christ, I think I know where Mommy is.
Now I have to make sure Betty can’t find me, not yet. SAM isn’t crying yet so I might have a chance.
I’m gonna ask him about the dirt mound in the background of the drawing.
~~~~~~~~~~
[No date logged. Post is as follows]
YOU FOUND MOMMY.
YOU FOUND MOMMY.
YOU FOUND MOMMY.
YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY. YOU FOUND MOMMY.
MOMMY WENT TO SLEEP FOREVER. MOMMY NEVER FOUND BETTY. MOMMY NEVER LOVED BETTY. MOMMY HAD MORE LITTLE GIRLS TO TAKE BETTY’S PLACE. BETTY DIDN’T LIKE THAT. SHE MADE MOMMY GO TO SLEEP. GO TO SLEEP. GO TO SLEEP.
GO TO SLEEP.
GO TO SLEEP.
GO TO SLEEP.
E O U Y U.
W F N D O
—
[No other entries past this point. A body was recovered on scene, similar to the other cases. No further information has been found. The cases have been officially deemed cold.]
This is my first time writing fiction since high school, a good 10 years ago - so forgive any literary faux paus and this is draft 0.9, so there are a few bits to iron out. And I would love any suggestions, comments or critique. Enjoy the story, and again I would appreciate any comments you have on the flow, and what might improve the general consistency of the story. Its written from the perspective of a narrator, just in case you're wondering. But anyways, enjoy the read.
Our story begins with four friends, all studying at the university of Exeter on the southern coast of England. Douglas, Emily, Evelyn and Andrew (named for his parent's love of Scotland, and their heritage in St Andrew's). The aforementioned four friends worn by the year of studying they recently endured decided to go on a jaunt to Cornwall on the south-western edge of England, in a small village called Anglesand, right on the coast with pleasant weather (for England that is) - famed for its surprisingly regal ancient church and town hall for a village of its size. Once a great prosperous town, built in the Roman era of Great Britain but slowly depopulated during the War of the Roses, and the later war of the Roundheads and Cavaliers (convoluted, I know).
Setting off immediately post exam season, before receiving their results as they had been working hard and felt they deserved a long break (as 22 year olds, they didn't fully understand the rest of life to come). Douglas insisted on driving and as early as possible so as to not drive in the dark as he hadn't properly repaired the lights, classic for Douglas. But as it was the best car for the windy roads of Cornwall and the car being a passion project he had been working on for years; he insisted on giving it a full road test .The group all being students and barely out of their teens, were fully unprepared for the road and journey ahead; bringing only the bare minimum of summer gear, a few pairs of raincoats and obviously sunglasses; perhaps a pair of binoculars would've been handy given the latter part of this tale. But it was early June and the weather was meant to be pleasant according to the Met office.
They arrived in Anglesand in the late afternoon, and journeyed straight to their Airbnb with unsurprisingly Evelyn taking 20 minutes to figure out the process of the keybox; the party had endured their final exams that morning and wanted to catch a nice early nights sleep to start early in the morning, but ended up drinking and playing cards and drinking games late into the night.
When they eventually awoke lethargically in the morning, surprisingly early given their heavy drinking the night prior - again not unusual for a group of students. Whisky, wine, and beer all involved. Heavy rain had began overnight so they settled in to watch a comforting movie and wait for the rain to stop - which pleasantly occurred around midday. Unusually, they found the town deserted; which for midday on a Friday they thought was a bit unusual, but figured it was a local custom. As there was a village fete being held that day which was advertised which they had noticed the day prior, and will be mentioned again later in this tale. They set out to explore the town, starting with the fabled church; which was adorned with beautiful iconography. However, all of these fixtures were quite odd for a town of this region; ancient as it was.
Within the church, the first thing the group noticed was a masterfully crafted statue of Caesar during his death throws on the ides of March, situated beside a small statuette of Romulus and Remus being weaned by their surrogate wolf mother (this being a pseudo-roman church), a painting of the vestal virgins - and all the other less unusual things you would find in a church from the 4th century: an icon of Jesus on the cross, a beautiful maple wooden pulpit, with intricate carvings of the virgin Mary. The final odd piece, another icon being of Prometheus providing fire to the humans of antiquity - all in all, quite a strange arrangement of objects, but being students, young and foolish they found it disturbing in the slight, but fascinating and a great story to tell their friends back in Exeter. Perhaps if they had tried to leave the village at this time, their fates would have turned out better.
Next on their list of sites to visit was the infamous town hall. Which they were surprised to find dilapidated and generally in a poor condition; not the highly maintained and beautiful regal building they had expected; but being recent adolescents and foolhardy they explored the town hall almost falling through some of the rotted wooden flooring as they wandered around the dilapidated hall. Again, after visiting the church the group were worried, but foolhardy as they were; continued on and found the entrance to the cellar of the town hall (not an easy undertaking, being under further rotten floorboards which Douglas ripped up, being as adventurous as ever, and figuring himself somewhat of a handyman). There they found even stranger items than in the church itself, being built in the 4th century they were clearly placed closely after the church was built. Old scrolls, rolled up paintings of long dead dukes and most disturbingly (especially for Emily) a wall of skulls with a room positioned behind. Douglas as we have discovered by this point, was a perhaps overly brave young man, broke down the door so they could finish their exploration. Inside, what they found was disturbing; ancient skeletons likely dating from the Roman period who had been interred, possibly due to a plague of the era or something more nefarious. The oddest part of this section of the church was most of the skulls looked not long dead, or fresh if you rather. Figuring they had explored the whole church, and worried a daemon or other beast (Emily and Evelyn being of the superstitious kind) may appear to consume them like the persons presumably belonging to the skulls of the people on the wall, they swiftly left and headed out into the early afternoon sun.
By this time it had reached the late afternoon once more, and there had not been a sight of a single other person other than those of the group themselves; which they thought was odd but there was advertised for that evening an annual village festival which can have a tendency to turn into a camping trip of sorts; they assumed everyone had drank a bit too much and were just continuing being jolly and merry; nothing wrong with that.
After the visit to the town hall, they all figured they'd go on a bit of an adventure down to the shore and explore the cliffs, rock pools and swim in the surprisingly warm east Atlantic waters to comfort their minds and bring some peace to their increasingly uncomfortable holiday (accompanied by some beers of course, students after all). For summer, given England is quite far north it got dark surprisingly early, so they jumped in Douglas' car and headed back to their Airbnb; for more drinking and general relaxing after their hard year.
It was the third day by this point of their planned short weekend adventure, and they still hadn't seen a single person or even an animal, be it a: deer, rabbit or even a field mouse; which were meant to be quite common in the region. Emily being the most skittish of the group suggested they leave the village as it was starting to seem something unusual was clearly occurring and it was best to leave before a daemon or other creature turned up, which everyone bar Emily thought was hilarious but as Douglas was very lets say 'fond' of Emily, agreed and they packed up and set off. They followed the same road they came to Anglesand down on, but passed the same signs over and over again eventually finding themselves back in Anglesand. At this point they all noticed their phones had not been receiving signal since they had arrived in the village - its a rural place so they didn't think much of it, but were very obviously highly concerned that they couldn't leave the town. At this point Andrew started to become incredibly anxious and suggested they headed to the top of the cliff overlooking the beach and relaxing until they spotted a passing boat they could flag down. They slept there overnight and increasingly they all grew more anxious over the clearly growing seriousness of their situation.
When the sun arose on the 4th day. The group were all growing increasingly sleep deprived and desperate for relief; they decided to try to head out of Anglesand again and hoped this time they would be able to get back to Exeter; to home and rest with an incredible story to tell. Regrettably, the same prior situation occurred and they ended up right back were they started, they set back off for the cliff again hoping to see a ship to take them out of what was turning into a hellish experience - they brought wine and the last of their whiskey, and being inspired by their vision of the icon of Prometheus set up a fire and tried to keep themselves merry.
Upon reaching the morning, they were beginning to view mirages of boats on the horizon and began calling out until their voices turned hoarse with their protestations. None of them responded to their pleads for aid. Evelyn was the first to call out, followed by Emily; this woke Andrew and Douglas who continued the farcical calls along with their companions; Emily and Douglas retired in the early evening to try to rest, hoping to preserve their remaining food. But Evelyn and Andrew continued screaming until their voices were worn by their protestations, and they too following their Promethean inspirations from the visit to the church starting a fire, to warm the group who only had blankets and one sleeping bag claimed by Evelyn.
The weather by this point on their 'short' weekend jaunt had turned to a mix of sleet and snow, quite obviously unusual for England in June. But surprisingly the ground was supplying an almost unnatural heat, which kept the group warm enough to ward off hypothermia whilst they slept; given Douglas and Emily were by this point coupling the cold wasn't a huge threat for the newly formed couple. However, at this point the supernatural nature of Anglesand had started to reveal itself, and perhaps revealed why the village had been essentially abandoned by the Romans, and then the following Anglo-Saxons. Only leaving a small village populated by reclusive persons who never ventured far from the village - given the nature of the story we will never know.
Andrew was the first to begin the slide into madness, and soon the rest followed. Hallucinating and dreaming they were home with their parents back in Exeter. Finally spotting a boat heading towards them on the horizon they rejoiced and slid off the cliff all being ecstatic that their fate had finally turned around. Once in the now frigid waters, the group laughed and laughed whilst swimming around one another and that is where their story ended, and is alas all we will ever know. The boat was an illusion. The village of Anglesand did not turn up on any map when their family eventually realised they had all not returned on time - the story remains a mystery to this day. However, if you are ever suggested to visit Anglesand or see a sign directing you to it, immediately turn back - as you will likely never return.
-CM
I've always loved winter retreats. There's something about the crisp mountain air and the serenity of a snow-covered landscape that clears the mind. That's why, when my friends and I planned a week-long getaway at a remote cabin in the mountains, I was all in. It was supposed to be the perfect escape from our hectic city lives.
There were four of us: me (Ryan), Chris, Dan, and Matt. We've been friends since college, and despite our busy schedules, we made it a point to reconnect every year. This time, Chris had found a cabin that was "off the grid," nestled deep within a forest, miles away from the nearest town.
We arrived on a Sunday afternoon, our SUV packed with supplies. The cabin was rustic but comfortable, with a large stone fireplace and a panoramic view of the surrounding wilderness. The first two days were everything we'd hoped for—hiking, cooking hearty meals, and endless rounds of poker.
On the third day, the weather took an unexpected turn. Dark clouds gathered ominously, and by late afternoon, snow began to fall. Lightly at first, but then heavier, until thick flakes were swirling all around us.
"Wasn't expecting this," Dan remarked, peering out the window.
"Weather report said clear skies all week," Chris added, a hint of worry in his voice.
"Relax, guys," Matt said, always the optimist. "We've got enough food and firewood to last us. It's just a bit of snow."
By nightfall, "a bit of snow" had turned into a full-blown blizzard. The wind howled, rattling the windows and causing the cabin to creak. We huddled around the fireplace, the warm glow offering some comfort against the storm outside.
"Think we should check in with someone? Let them know we're up here?" I suggested.
"No signal," Chris said, holding up his phone. "We're completely cut off."
"Well, looks like we're stuck here for a while," Dan sighed.
We tried to make the best of it, sharing stories and sipping on whiskey. But there was an undercurrent of unease that none of us wanted to acknowledge.
Around midnight, just as we were considering turning in, there was a sudden thud against the side of the cabin.
"What was that?" Matt asked, sitting up straight.
"Probably a branch falling," Chris said, though he didn't sound convinced.
Another thud, this time louder and accompanied by a scraping sound.
"Doesn't sound like a branch," I muttered.
We fell silent, listening intently. Through the wail of the wind, we thought we heard faint... footsteps?
"Is someone out there?" Dan whispered.
"Impossible," Chris replied. "We're miles from anywhere, and no one in their right mind would be out in this storm."
"Maybe we should check," Matt suggested.
"Check what? Open the door to a blizzard?" I said. "If someone's out there, they can come to the door."
As if on cue, there was a knock—three slow, deliberate raps on the front door.
We all exchanged uneasy glances.
"You've got to be kidding me," Dan said.
"Who's gonna answer that?" Matt asked.
Before anyone could decide, I stood up. "I'll do it."
I approached the door cautiously. "Hello?" I called out.
No response.
"Whoever's out there, do you need help?"
Still nothing.
I reached for the doorknob, hesitating. "Guys, maybe we should all—"
Before I could finish, the knocking resumed, more insistent this time.
"Just open it," Chris urged. "They might be in trouble."
I took a deep breath and pulled the door open a crack. A blast of icy wind and snow hit me, making me squint.
There was no one there.
I opened the door wider, stepping onto the porch. The snow was falling so heavily that visibility was almost zero.
"See anything?" Matt called from inside.
"Nothing," I replied, shouting over the wind.
"Close the door!" Dan yelled. "You're letting the cold in!"
I stepped back inside and shut the door, bolting it securely.
"Maybe it was just the wind," Chris suggested.
"Wind doesn't knock," I retorted.
We tried to shrug it off, but the atmosphere had shifted. An uneasy silence settled over us as we returned to our spots by the fire.
About an hour later, just as we were starting to relax, the footsteps returned—this time on the roof.
"Okay, did everyone hear that?" Dan asked, his eyes wide.
"Sounds like someone's walking up there," Matt said.
"That's impossible," Chris insisted. "The roof's too steep, and it's covered in snow."
The footsteps moved slowly across the ceiling, directly above us. Then they stopped.
"Maybe it's an animal," I offered, though I didn't believe it myself.
We sat in tense silence, waiting. Then, from the chimney, came a soft scratching sound, like nails on metal.
"Is it trying to come down the chimney?" Matt whispered.
"That's it," Dan said, standing up abruptly. "We need to figure out what's going on."
"Agreed," I said. "Let's check the attic."
We grabbed flashlights and headed up the narrow staircase to the attic hatch. The scratching continued, intermittent but persistent.
Chris pushed the hatch open, and we shone our lights into the dusty space.
"See anything?" Dan asked.
"Nothing," Chris replied. "But the sound is louder up here."
We climbed into the attic, the beams creaking under our weight. The scratching had stopped.
"Maybe it left," Matt suggested.
Suddenly, a loud thump came from behind us. We spun around, our flashlight beams darting frantically.
In the corner stood a figure—a tall, gaunt silhouette barely visible in the dim light.
"Who's there?" I demanded.
No response.
"Hey, this isn't funny," Chris said, his voice shaking.
The figure tilted its head unnaturally, and for a brief moment, the light caught its face—a pale, expressionless mask with empty eye sockets.
We stumbled backward in horror.
"Run!" Dan shouted.
We scrambled back down the hatch, slamming it shut behind us.
"What the hell was that?" Matt gasped, panic etched on his face.
"I don't know, but it's not human," Chris said, bolting the hatch.
From above, we heard the sound of the hatch being tried, the handle rattling.
"It's trying to get in!" Dan yelled.
"To where? We're already inside!" Matt exclaimed.
"Just help me move something over it!" Chris shouted.
We dragged a heavy dresser over and shoved it atop the hatch. The rattling stopped.
"Okay, now what?" I asked, trying to catch my breath.
"We need to get out of here," Dan said.
"And go where?" Matt countered. "Into the storm?"
"Better than staying here with... that," Chris said.
We agreed. Grabbing our coats and whatever supplies we could carry, we headed for the back door.
As we reached it, the door burst open, snow swirling in. Standing in the doorway was the same figure, its hollow eyes fixed on us.
"How did it get there?" Matt screamed.
We backed away slowly.
"Split up!" I yelled. "It's our only chance!"
Without waiting for a response, I darted toward the kitchen, the others scattering in different directions.
I could hear footsteps behind me, deliberate and heavy. I grabbed a knife from the counter, holding it out defensively.
"Stay back!" I shouted, though I doubted it understood.
The figure stopped, tilting its head again. Then, with inhuman speed, it lunged at me.
I ducked instinctively, and it crashed into the cabinets behind me. I didn't wait to see what happened next. I bolted through the kitchen door, racing toward the front of the cabin.
I found Chris and Dan trying to pry open a window.
"Help us!" Chris yelled.
"Where's Matt?" I asked.
"He went upstairs," Dan said, panic in his eyes.
"We can't leave him!"
"Forget that!" Chris snapped. "We need to get out now!"
The window finally gave way, and cold air rushed in. We clambered through, dropping into the deep snow outside.
"Which way to the car?" Dan asked frantically.
"We can't drive in this!" I shouted over the wind.
"Then we run!" Chris said.
We started trudging through the snow, the icy wind biting at our faces. Behind us, the cabin loomed ominously.
"Wait!" I stopped. "We can't leave Matt!"
"We don't have a choice," Chris said, grabbing my arm.
"He's our friend!"
"He's probably already gone," Dan said softly.
I shook my head, torn between fear and loyalty.
Just then, a blood-curdling scream pierced the night, coming from the cabin.
"Matt!" I turned back, but Chris held me firmly.
"There's nothing we can do!"
I wrenched free and started back toward the cabin. As I approached, I saw Matt stumble out the front door, clutching his side.
"Ryan!" he called out weakly.
I ran to him. "Are you okay?"
He shook his head. "We need to go."
I helped him through the snow toward where Chris and Dan were waiting.
"Thank God," Dan breathed.
"Let's move!" Chris urged.
We pushed forward into the forest, the storm relentless. The howling wind seemed almost to form words, whispers that sent chills down our spines.
"Do you hear that?" Matt asked between labored breaths.
"Hear what?" I replied.
"It knows our names," he said, his eyes wide with terror.
"Don't listen," Chris said firmly. "Just keep moving."
Hours seemed to pass as we trudged through the unforgiving terrain. Finally, we saw lights ahead—the faint glow of a roadside diner.
We stumbled in, collapsing onto the floor. The startled staff rushed to help us.
"What happened to you boys?" an elderly waitress asked, concern etched on her face.
"Something... in the woods," I managed to say.
She exchanged a glance with the cook. "You're lucky to be alive," she said quietly.
We tried to explain, but our story sounded insane even to us. The authorities were called, and a search party was sent out to the cabin.
They found it empty. No signs of a struggle, no footprints other than ours. Matt's injuries were dismissed as self-inflicted during a panic.
"Probably got spooked by the storm," the sheriff said.
We knew better.
In the weeks that followed, the four of us drifted apart. Chris refused to talk about what happened. Dan moved away without a word. Matt... well, Matt wasn't the same. He started hearing things, voices calling his name. Last I heard, he checked himself into a psychiatric facility.
As for me, I can't escape the nightmares. Every night, I see that pale face, those empty eyes. I hear the whispers in the wind, feel the cold seeping into my bones.
I learned too late that some places are meant to be left alone, that there are things in this world we can't explain—and shouldn't try to.
If you ever find yourself in a remote cabin during a storm, and you hear a knock at the door, do yourself a favor.
Don't answer it.
Been debating whether I should post about this for a while. But after what happened this past weekend, I don’t feel like I have a choice anymore. Looking to hear if anyone's been through something similar / any advice on what to do.
For context, I gotta first rewind to about five years ago. Just before covid was popping up on everyone’s radar.
It was 2019 and I was living in Los Angeles. West LA, for those who know the area. Had been there about 6(ish?) years and had finally fallen in love with it. For non-locals, LA takes a little warming up to. But once you find your people, your job, etc., it can be a pretty fun place to live.
The city itself wasn’t perfect but it’s one of those places where you always feel like something is happening if you just know where to look. Kinda like a buzzing energy. By 2019 it had changed a bit, mostly because the homeless situation had gotten out of control. Not that I ever felt unsafe, but you hear enough people screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night and you get a little jumpy. And this was before the Echo Park Lake takeover, mind you.
LA might have been falling apart, but 2019 was a banner year for me personally. I came out to Hollywood to be a film/tv editor and the first bunch of years were rough. Hard to break in. Was doing a lot of (unpaid) student short films, some (barely paid) TikTok/IG work, and a little porn (hentai, lol) at one point. None of that was really the dream though. The dream was features. But in 2019, I got pulled in by a friend to be an assistant editor on a big-time reality show (can't say which one, but it had been on for many seasons at that point and is still going strong today). Suddenly I was making $1700 a week. Maybe not much to some of you, but for me it felt like I was bathing in cash.
Okay, back to the homeless situation. Every morning I’d walk to Starbucks before work to grab a redeye and I’d pass this encampment near a little park. There were at least a dozen homeless men and women there at any given time. Definitely one of those parks I wouldn’t go past at night, but at six in the morning, no sweat.
And every morning I walked by, I’d see this guy.
Never got his name, but to make this easy let’s call him John.
John had to be the roughest of the bunch. Curly red hair, skin that was probably pale once but had been turned permanently bright red from sunburn. I swear you could almost see the melanomas forming. His lips were crusted white, his face dry and sunken like someone put a straw in the back of head and sucked hard. He didn’t have eyes so much as he had sockets from which, somewhere deep, he peered out.
But what stood out most of all was the smell.
I don’t know how to describe it except to say it wasn’t normal. Not the usual sour tang of sweat and urine. It was like spoiled meat and chemicals or something. It clung to the air around him and made my stomach churn.
Long story short, there were older and more sad-looking people there, but this dude was the scariest, at least to me. Every morning he’d be laying out his belongings -- soda cans, potato chip wrappers, bike parts, anything -- as if he were putting them out for sale. But he’d always be rearranging them, moving this Pepsi can here, that ziplock bag of nuts and bolts there. Like some sort of Rubik’s cube he was constantly twisting without answer.
All of the above made me feel for him. Actually scratch that. All of the above made me feel guilty.
So I started giving him things.
Whenever I passed, whatever I had. A few bucks whenever I was carrying cash, which wasn’t often. A croissant from Starbucks sometimes. If I ever ordered takeout for dinner, I’d set the leftovers by the door so I’d remember to bring them to him in the morning.
The first time I said “Hey man” and offered him something (maybe a sandwich? Can’t remember) he looked at me like I was the crazy one, totally annoyed that I had disrupted his Rubik’s cube swap-around. But he took it silently and went back to work. Every time after, he’d take what I had to offer without a word, as if he expected it. Made me chuckle inside, to be honest. His eyes were always darting around his things, clearly too absorbed to give me too much time. I started to think maybe he couldn’t speak, or maybe in his whacked-out brain he said “thank you” and expected me to read his thoughts.
I didn’t mind. It made me feel better. It was a daily reminder that no matter how bad my life was, it wasn’t John-level bad. And it made me shittily proud. Like, it was this thing I did that nobody at work or any of my friends knew about. Yeah, I know how that sounds. I’m a self-important asshole. But still, it felt good.
Okay so cut to early 2020. The reality show gig was coming to a close and I didn’t have my next one lined up. That’s kinda the life for editors of a certain level, so I was used to it. But I’d gotten a little addicted to seeing those numbers hit my bank account.
One night, I got home from work absolutely starving and decided to hit up the taco truck around the corner. It was super cold that night and as I huddled near the grill while they made my tacos, I looked down to the park encampment a few blocks away. Figured John must’ve been freezing. So on a whim I ordered 10 more tacos (it was like $40 max, nothing crazy) and walked them down to him.
To be honest, I forgot how scary that park could be at night. Most of the people were in their tents or under their tarps. You could hear them moving around in there, whispering to each other (or themselves) and just fidgeting to find a comfortable spot on the concrete. Forgot to mention: nobody was allowed to sleep in the park itself, so all the tents were lined up on the sidewalk around it. Super backwards. No regular joe would go into the park because of the homeless, and yet the homeless were not allowed in either. So it was just an empty spot of grass surrounded by people who would’ve really benefited by laying on a surface that wasn’t rock hard.
Anyway, I found John there. He was the only one who hadn’t packed it in for the night yet. He was still sorting through his wares, moving them back and forth silently. If eyes could mumble, that’s what his eyes were doing.
I said “Hey man,” and handed him the bag of ten tacos. He looked up at me, and for the first time since I started doing all this, it was like he actually saw me. And this time he wasn’t annoyed that I was bothering him.
He took the bag. And then he spoke.
“Why do you do this?”
I was floored. There was a light in his eyes all of a sudden. It was like the man inside the shell peeked out, and he was totally lucid. I didn’t know what to say, so I said something trite like “You seem like you could use the help” or something.
He looked at me longer. I thought maybe I’d offended him until he said (and I recall his words verbatim): “You’re a good man.” His voice was crystal clear. Didn’t warble a bit.
“Not really,” I replied.
“What can I do for you, then?” he asked. His voice felt like it literally struck me. His tone was almost reverent, like he was offering me something sacred and holy. This… favor.
Now, here’s where the fuck up happens.
I have a seriously morbid sense of humor. Don’t know why, something about growing up on the internet, probably. It was way more of a thing when I was in high school, and it basically equated to me saying off-hand shit like “Hey could you suffocate me with a pillow?” or “Wouldn’t mind dying right about now.” It was never malicious. I wasn’t one of those guys going around posting DIAF. I also wasn’t a cutter or did any self-harm. I just got a kick out of the shock value, I guess. Very childish, I know. Kinda grew out of it in my twenties, but those stupid responses still popped into my head as a gut reaction.
And in that moment, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want anything from John, at least nothing he could give me. So, before I could stop myself, that old morbid humor took over --
“Would you mind killing me?” I said. I laughed as I said it, in fact. But his face… God, his face. It went totally dark. Instantly I knew I fucked up and added “Just kidding, of course” and apologized for my twisted sense of humor.
But John didn’t laugh. Instead, for the first time ever, he smiled. His front two teeth were gone, and the rest were yellow and overlapped painfully.
“Sure thing, man,” he said. His s’s whistled when he spoke.
I swear to God, a chill ran down my spine. I wanted to reiterate that I was kidding, but just like that, he was back to his sorting. The light in his eyes disappeared back into those sunken sockets.
I didn’t know what to do. And it seemed like the conversation evaporated from his mind, like I couldn’t even be sure that any of it stuck. So I told myself just that. That it was a meaningless moment.
I walked back to my apartment. I thought about going back, trying to talk to John and confirm that he didn’t take me seriously. But a week later, the cops had cleared the encampment. The homeless people were all dispersed to God-knows-where, John included.
I never saw him again. And within a month, I’d forgotten it ever happened.
That was five years ago.
I don’t live in LA anymore. Covid hit, the industry shut down, and even when it came back, people low on the totem pole like me were shit outta luck. Now I’m in a different state and I have a job that doesn’t pay nearly as much. Which state and what job, I’m not comfortable saying. Same reason I’m writing this from a throwaway.
My new place doesn’t have that LA excitement (or LA weather ☹) but I’m much happier here. I have a girlfriend for the first time (let’s call her Jenny) and even though the paychecks don’t make my eyes pop, they are more than enough. Even got a one-bedroom in 2024 for the same price as I had a studio in LA in 2019, which is bonkers.
Long story short, my new chapter has been good. Leaving the industry felt almost like a weight off my shoulders. Like I was trying to achieve this impossible dream and every moment of every day I felt guilty for not doing more to get it done. Now all I’m trying to achieve is happiness. Maybe not enough of a challenge for most, but I don’t care. For the first time in a long time, it feels like I can breathe.
Until a few months ago.
I don’t recall when it started exactly, except that at first it was in the middle of the night.
I started waking up confused. That’s the best way to put it -- confused. At least once a week, I’d find my eyes open in the middle of the night. Took a few instances to make me realize why. My apartment was making noises. Not like “the air conditioning just kicked on” noises. Like, someone was moving around in the next room. Not footsteps, per se. Something else. I didn’t give it a second though, especially because Jenny didn’t notice it, although admittedly she’s a pretty deep sleeper.
Then one night after work, while I was meal prepping for the week, I opened the utensil drawer in my kitchen and stopped short. The silverware had been moved around. Nothing crazy -- seemed like Jenny had switched the knives and forks. Simple mistake. Probably emptying the dishwasher and just forgot where things normally went.
I dismissed it at the time.
And yet, at least once a week, there I was, my eyes open in the pitch-black bedroom. Hearing something moving in the other room. Remember: I’d lived in a studio my entire adult life until now. I wasn’t used to waking up in a place where I couldn’t see everything I owned all in one room. I wasn’t used to this feeling.
A few times, I got fed up and investigated the noises.
But whenever I’d open the door to the living room, all I saw was shadows. That feeling I got, though, scanning the empty darkness of the silent apartment… there was always that slight spike of adrenaline, the voice in my head goading me, saying “what if someone is standing there in the dark, staring at you right now?”
Of course that was never the case.
Cut to last weekend. Jenny was out of town, and I woke up in the morning alone. We aren’t living together yet but she spends almost all her nights here regardless. This time I’d slept through the night (or did I? I can’t remember) and felt totally relaxed. Immediately hustled into the bathroom for my morning piss. And when I did, I looked in the mirror.
The picture that normally hangs in my bathroom (an art deco Popeye piece) wasn’t there. Instead, the framed Radiohead poster from the living room was in its place.
I must’ve stared at it for five straight minutes. It had never been there before. And Jenny wasn’t around to ask or accuse. I figured I’d deal with it later, but then I went into the living room to make my morning coffee and my heart dropped into my stomach.
It wasn't just Radiohead and Popeye. All of my wall art had been rearranged.
Every single poster and painting, every Funko Pop and bit of memorabilia. The photos on my fridge were all in different places. Nothing taken as far as I could tell. Just everything moved.
I almost had a panic attack, to be honest. But I didn’t even think to call the police. The more I thought about it, the more I told myself to let it go. Like maybe I’d been sleepwalking (I used to do that when I was younger). Or somehow forgot I’d redecorated. I hadn’t connected the dots yet. It’d been five years, remember?
It’s just like when I get sick. Do I go to a doctor? Nope. I just close my eyes and hope it goes away.
That brings us to last Saturday night.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving is a bit of a personal holiday. I’m usually still stuffed with food and feeling gross anyway, so I like to do a bit of day drinking, and night drinking, and late-night drinking. With friends, of course. Dunno why. Just one of those things I did once and then kept doing. And last weekend I did just that. Barhopped with Jenny and some buddies. I got more wasted than the rest, but in my mind it was mission accomplished. Jenny dropped me off at my place at about one in the morning. She told me ahead of time she wouldn’t be staying over since I was bound to be throwing up all night. All good, I didn’t mind.
It was cold out, I remember that.
I remember stumbling up to my door and taking a long time to get the key in the lock.
I remember opening the door and spilling inside. The apartment was pitch-black and I couldn’t see a thing. In my drunken state, I’m thinking I’ll just feel my way through the dark and once I find my bed, I’m gonna collapse until further notice.
So I started groping through the dark.
Baby steps, waiting for my knee to hit the side of the couch or my toe to hit the corner wall and give me guidance.
But halfway through the living room, I stopped.
Why did I stop? Because something smelled awful. At first I thought maybe it was just the kitchen trash can. But it wasn’t. I took a deep breath in. Trying to place it. It was a smell I remembered.
Spoiled meat and chemicals.
Yep, you guessed it.
Suddenly, I was stone-cold sober.
I raced back to the front door and flipped on the lights in a panic.
I looked around, but nobody was there. To be honest, if I had seen John standing there in the middle of my apartment, I might have fainted. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I searched behind the couch, in the cabinets below the kitchen sink. It really smelled like he was right there with me.
And that’s when I noticed my bedroom door.
It was closed.
Not totally unnormal. Jenny closes the door when she goes to sleep while I’m still playing video games, which is why it didn’t catch my eye at first.
But Jenny wasn’t there. And I’d never have the door closed otherwise.
Suddenly, my heart was pounding in my throat.
At first I kept dead still. Just listened.
But I swear the night was quieter than it’d ever been before.
I stepped up to the closed door. No light from beneath.
If there was someone in there, he was standing in the dark.
I stood there forever. Listening. Waiting.
The smell was all around me.
I didn’t know what else to do. I definitely wasn’t going in there.
So, for whatever reason, I spoke these words --
“Hey, whoever is in there. Can you please just go away?”
I waited. And waited.
And just when I was about to relax, I heard a whisper that gives me goosebumps just writing it out now.
“Sure thing, man.”
Whistling s’s and all.
That was around one in the morning on Sunday. I immediately left and went to Jenny’s house. We came back together to my place in the morning, but John wasn’t there. The smell had almost entirely disappeared.
Jenny believes me, of course. But I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how he found me or how he’s getting into my house. I’d forgotten about the guy until now and it seriously feels like a bad dream.
I’ve been staying at Jenny’s apartment all week and I’m gonna finally call the cops today to file a report. But I doubt they’ll be able to do anything for me, which is why I’m posting here.
If anyone has advice (or if something similar happened to you?) please let me know. Thanks in advance.
‘Did that alien really spot me? Am I in trouble?’ I began to worry.
All this combined with the mysterious events at the base, only managed to further heighten my paranoia. It took a whole hour, for the anxiety to start wearing down. Since nothing untoward had happened in all that
time, it was slowly becoming a little easier for me to brush this off as a mere coincidence.
When I finally reached town, I decided to stop by my cousin Henry’s place. I desperately needed somebody to talk to. Yet as a precautionary measure, I drove around town for the next 60 minutes stopping at odd places, just to make sure I wasn’t being followed.
It was already 5 am when I finally reached his home, and I wasn’t surprised to see him awake. He runs a small illegal gambling den in the city, and usually works late into the night.
Henry was sitting by the fireside enjoying a pint of beer. I quickly brought him up to speed with the events of the day.
When I was finished, he asked, “Do you still have the telescope?”
I nodded. He took it out from the briefcase and pointed it at the sky. I showed him how to work it, and warned him not crank it up all the way to level 3. He nodded.
And then, he saw it too. All the three spaceships were suspended mid-air. Just like I had spotted them the first time. He was in shock and whistled softly to himself.
“What’s gonna happen Mike? Why do you think they are here?” he asked. I simply shrugged not knowing what to say.
“Are they going to hurt us?” he inquired, sounding worried.
“I’m sure the government already knows of their presence. They must be dealing with them” I replied, though not fully convinced.
He then panned the device straight at me and said “I can see your heart, lungs, spleen and guts from here Mikey!”
He then pointed it down to my trousers and exclaimed “Somebody’s packin down there!’.
I grabbed the telescope and put it back in the briefcase.
“I want to sell this thing to help pay for Jessica’s surgery. Do you know any buyer?” I asked him.
He told me about a smuggler in Tipmann Avenue, which was an hour’s drive away from his house. I decided to visit him first thing in the morning.
Henry looked at me in silence. “Mike, you would probably be dead by now had you not received the call from the hospital,” he said a moment later in quiet realization.
“And don’t blame yourself for Joe’s death ok,” he added. “Had you stayed back, you would have all been killed by now, including Buster,’ he reasoned. I nodded in understanding, but deep down I couldn’t shake away the feeling of guilt. Joe was all alone back there and had no body to turn to for help.
Henry then got up and hugged me tight, “I’m glad your fine.” he said.
We spoke for a little while longer before agreeing to call it a night.
As I lay down on his couch, I felt the exhaustion kicking in and immediately fell asleep.
I looked at my Mickey Mouse watch. It was 5:36 PM. I was happily licking my ice-cream in the backseat of my car when a truck came and rammed into it. I looked around in the car, but I was all alone.
I started doing everything in my power to try and get out. But I was unable to open the door. It was stuck. I tried to smash the window with my foot. But I failed again. It was too strong.
Then a man looked at me from the outside. He had long hair and wore a French beard. He smashed the glass with his elbow and rescued me from the wreckage. ..
I opened my eyes and realized I was still sleeping on Henry’s couch. It was the damn dream again. But it was very different this time, and I had never seen that guy before.
When I looked at the clock I realized it was 3:00 in the afternoon, and my cousin had already left for work.
I got up from the couch, took a quick shower and put on some of Henry’s clothes. While going through his cupboard, I noticed a new jacket and decided to try it on. It fit perfectly, so I decided to keep it. I took out the telescope from the briefcase, and placed it in the inner pocket of my new jacket.
Got in my car with Buster, and took off to meet the smuggler whose address Henry had provided. When I was halfway along, I stopped at a signal to take a right turn to Tipmann Avenue. A man with long black hair and a French beard stopped his bike next to my jeep.
I was a little taken aback at the coincidence because he was the same person who had appeared in my dream this morning. I kept staring at him, while he had his sight fixed on the road. When the signal turned green, he raced ahead and I decided to follow him.
A few miles later, he stopped his bike in front of a store and walked inside.
I straightened my shirt and cleared my throat before stepping out of the jeep, and began formulating a plan in my mind as I walked towards the store.
“Good morning. What can I do for you?” he asked me, when I entered the same shop with Buster.
The man with long hair was manning the counter, and appeared to be in the dry cleaning business. He was wearing a sleeveless jacket with a nameplate that read Adam.
To my surprise, there was another person seated just a few feet away who looked just like him. They were in fact identical twins.
“You saved my life.” I said to Adam.
“Excuse me?” he replied back sounding confused.
“You saved my life when I was involved in a car accident. But that was only a dream” I said to him.
The brothers glanced awkwardly at each other before breaking into a grin, treating me as if I were a mad person.
I simply took the telescope from my jacket, and placed it on the counter in front of Adam. I just wanted to see how he would react. And he immediately recognized the device for what it was. He was not laughing anymore, and I now had all his attention.
“Who are you?” he asked for the first time fully serious.
“My name is Michael. I used to work as a security guard. I found this lying around in an abandoned building.” I said.
I refused to divulge any further details about myself.
“How did you find me?” he asked still looking confused.
“In my dream like I already told you. Now I realize this sounds both stupid and bizarre.”
“So did you really save my life? No, of course not. I saved my own life from the car wreck, and I saved my cousin’s life as well.”
“But there must be a reason why you came in my dream this morning, because I spotted you on your bike only a few hours later. Now I have reached a point in life, where I can longer just ignore incidents like these as mere coincidences.”
“So I decided to follow after you, and here I am, right now, in front of you, in your own store.”
I then tapped on the telescope with my finger and asked. “So, are you interested?”
Adam took a deep long breath and finally asked, “Ok Michael. How much do you want for it?”
I said, “30k. In cash and would like it now please”.
“Why the urgency?”
“My wife needs emergency surgery, and I need the 30 grand to make that happen”
Adam nodded.
“Ok. Let’s go test this thing upstairs. But your dog stays here. Don’t worry. My brother will keep an eye on him. You cool with that?” he asked.
I looked at his brother, and he raised his hand to assure me Buster would be fine. I nodded and followed after Adam to the terrace.
I could see Adam was comfortable with handling the telescope. He had obviously used it before. He placed it in front of his eye, and then began to fidget with the controls. He panned it at various office buildings and continued to keep testing it.
He then passed it back to me saying it wasn’t working properly. I took it from him and began testing it myself.
I looked into the telescope. The green display was working fine; I could zoom in and out. I then cranked it up to level 2. I could now see various people busy at work inside their offices.
When I kept panning the telescope, Adam suddenly came into my line of vision. The telescope suddenly zoomed in to reveal the insides of his chest, and what I saw made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
There was a little alien residing inside Adam’s body, and he was looking right back at me.
Before I had any time to react, I fell to the floor feeling fully paralyzed. Adam had just tasered me. The only thing I could remember after that was his fist coming in contact with my face, and I lost all consciousness.
When I finally came around, I realized I was still at the dry cleaners. Buster was busy licking my face and wagging his tail. He was obviously happy to see me finally awake. I looked around the store, and the twins were nowhere in sight. Adam obviously must have carried me downstairs after knocking me out.
Meanwhile, on the counter I saw the telescope, and next to it were a stack of bills totaling $30K. There was also a note attached to it.
It read, “Break your little finger if you get into trouble”.
I looked at my palm, and noticed a tiny puncture mark in the webbing of my right hand between the ring and the little finger.
‘What did they inject into my hand? What did that note even mean? And why did they leave the money on the counter without even taking the telescope?’ I thought to myself.
My head was swimming with many unanswered questions. But I was grateful for the money. I immediately wired it to the hospital, and asked the doctor to get started with the surgery. But first I wanted to check in on Henry. For some inexplicable reason, I began to worry about his safety. I got in my car and started to drive towards his place.
When I parked the car outside his home, Buster immediately began to bark. He could sense something was wrong too. I took out my pistol from the dashboard and ran towards his house. I decided to enter through the backdoor, hoping it would give me some kind of tactical advantage if necessary. I kicked the door open, and entered the house through the kitchen to get to the living room.
My heart sank when I looked at Henry’s lifeless body. He was sitting in his favorite chair, killed in the same way as Joe. All that was left of him now, were his skeletal remains. I dropped to my knees, and the tears started flowing down my face.
Buster started barking loudly again. His face looked really tense and I soon realized why.
Three large aliens had suddenly come out of hiding, and their eyes were all fixed on me. They were at least 8 feet tall, with large hands and muscular bodies.
The alien in front of me was brandishing a baton kind of weapon in his hand. Every time he swished it in the air, electrical sparks flew from it. Buster suddenly lunged at him to tear into his leg, but he casually managed to kick him away. He flew back 2 feet in the air and yelped in pain.
I then aimed my gun at him to take him out, when another alien whacked me in the head from behind. And I fell to the floor unconscious for the second time in less than 5 hours.
**********
When I regained consciousness, I realized I was seated in a large elliptical hall. A huge workstation was occupying one half of the space. This included a giant display at the center that was throwing up all kinds of data.
On either side of the screen, there were large control panels with switches, buttons, mini displays, knobs and other monitoring instruments. I could see at least 10 aliens hunched over busy at work.
Twenty feet away from them, I could see a large swivel chair at the center that was overlooking the entire operation. It also had somebody seated on it, with their back turned towards me. When I tried to get up, I realized I was confined to a chair. My waist, wrists and legs were all cuffed to it. I looked around for Buster, and found him asleep in a corner.
Before I could call out to him, I heard a voice say, “Hello Michael, Welcome Aboard!”
The person on the swivel chair had turned around to face me. It was the same alien whom I had first spotted while using the telescope. He too was over 8 feet tall with an elongated jawline, and a bulbous head that protruded backwards. He did not have a nose but a triangular slit in its place.
But the most unique feature about him was his eye. He had only one, and it was positioned vertically at the center of his forehead. He looked older than the rest of his crew, and it was clear that he was the one calling the shots around here
“How do you know my name?” I asked him.
He smiled and said “You humans like putting all your details out there in the ether. Right from your government records to social media, everything seems to be just a click away.”
The alien was speaking in his own native tongue, but an AI program in the background was simultaneously translating it into English.
He was wearing a large robe with the logo of a bright sun and an eye at its center. I knew I had seen that logo somewhere before, and then suddenly remembered the telescope.
I softly uttered the word ‘korelo’ under my breath, but he picked it.
“That’s right” he said. “I am Captain Korelo, and the telescope you found belonged to me”
He continued to speak. “I come from the Planet ZX4. The telescope was my gift to the erstwhile President when I visited Earth for the first time in 1969. In fact I have visited earth many times over the decades. Little did I imagine that one day, I would come in possession of it again.”
He pointed his finger at the telescope they recovered from me, which was now sitting on his desk.
“So are you some kind of a diplomat? Are you here representing the government of your own planet?” I asked him.
“No. I am a private contractor. I come here regularly hoping to get a lay of the land. Study your species. Analyse your society, gauge how you people function as a collective unit, and to keep track of the developments being made in science and technology. It is an essential part of my job. So when I do finally get the green signal, I’d like to be prepared.” he said.
“Green signal for what?” I asked.
“To colonise your planet and take over your resources of course!” he replied calmly. I just looked at him in silence.
Then Korelo continued, “You see Michael, even in my part of the world, politics is an inevitable aspect of life. As societies get more advanced, the masses begin to grow a conscience. They become more vocal about individual rights, liberty, the right to livelihood, and those sorts of things. But it’s a conscience of convenience. They are always willing to look the other way, as long as they are not directly accused of being the aggressors.”
“However, the need for new lands and new resources is never going to stop on its own. When you have the ability to terraform any planet to mimic the conditions of your own home planet, it becomes easier to colonise than to have to constantly fix and maintain what is already yours. It also reduces infighting within us, because people can now simply move to newer pastures and start afresh.”
“But somebody has to colonise to make that happen. And the government is unwilling to do the dirty work. So they outsource it to people like me. This gives them plausible deniability, while also enabling me, to make a lot of money in the process. Everybody is happy in end.”
“In fact, the committee of nations from my part of the world had long ago compiled a list, where it was decided to colonise planets in a set order. We extract and utilize the resources of one planet before moving on to the next. Planet Earth has been green lit for colonization now,” he signed off.
“You think you can just troop in here with a few spaceships and take over our land and its people?“ I asked him.
“To assume that there won’t be any pushback from 8 billion plus people, would be a gross underestimation on your part. We might not have you technological superiority, but that doesn’t mean we can’t put up a tough fight. We are not living in caves. We are nuclear capable. If we have to go down, we will take you down with us.“ I added, my tone unwavering.
Captain Korelo let out a soft chuckle.
“It’s been over a week since my arrival on Earth. I have already informed your government of my plans. The ultimatum has been given.”
“But do you see any pushback on the ground?”
“The average guy is still going to work, picking his child up from school and kissing his wife before going to sleep. So, where is this so-called fight back?”
“Do you know why that is?”
“Because they can’t. Every major defence system has already been put under lock and key. The missiles wont fire, the fighter jets can’t fly, the drones can’t take off, and the nuclear bombs won’t detonate.”
“So how will your people retaliate exactly? Are you going to take your machine guns and start firing at the sky?”
“Furthermore, the governments are already running scared. Because they know what happened in Russia was not an accident.”
“The Russian government tried to keep pushing their luck, so I let one of their bombs detonate. It sent a clear message to all the other governments, and I now have their complete cooperation.”
Korelo let the silence linger for a moment, giving his words time to resonate, then spoke again.
“I alone decide what happens to your planet and your people. Neither you, nor your government can do anything about it.”
“In fact, I completely control all your defence systems now. Only the commercial flights are up in the air, and they are also being constantly monitored. This is just so that secrecy can be maintained and to avoid the public from panicking. But even that will stop after tonight”, he added.
“What will happen tonight?”
“Cleansing!!” Korello answered.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“When I visited earth during the 90’s, I was invited on a hunting trip by the then Australian Prime Minister. We shot and killed Kangaroos for fun. He said it was important to cull them to keep the population manageable.”
“You see Michael, when you are in my line of work, it becomes necessary to effectively deal with the criticism that comes with it.”
“Wiping out an entire civilization doesn’t work, and it rubs everybody the wrong way. “
“But culling!”
“Now people don’t object to that, even if it makes them a little uncomfortable. In fact they even see it as a necessary evil.”
“So during my expeditions, I allocate a piece of land to the locals and I let them shortlist and pick whatever they think is of value to them. Almost always, most civilizations pick what is most essential to keep societies running. Like engineers, doctors, leaders, teachers, police officers and blue collar workers etc. But they are only allowed to pick a few of each. And then of course, the wild and domestic animals to keep the habitat lively and exotic. “
“And that is what will happen to all you earthlings too. Over the next 24 hours, the population of the human race will drop to 3% of what it is now. Special zones will be earmarked for the survivors. You can herd your donkeys, goats, chickens, birds and insects or whatever else you deem is important there. The list of what or who needs to survive has been left for individual governments to decide. ” he finished off.
“And the governments are all ok with this?” I asked, feeling incredulous.
He nodded. “They don’t have a choice. They are already working on it discreetly without the public knowing.”
“How can you justify this as culling? This is blatant genocide that borders on extermination. You claim things like the right to livelihood matters even in your part of the world, yet you seem completely unfazed about killing billions of people. I don’t understand how you can get away with this, if law and order holds any sway in your society.” I said.
Korelo smirked and said, “Your problem is you see us as equals. We are not. I don’t see it that way, and my own people don’t as well.”
“When you kill kangaroos and call it culling, it is usually because their overpopulation is a strain on the natural resources. But the other reason is their increasing numbers is an inconvenience to YOU! Their high numbers disallow YOU from enjoying the resources to live YOUR life.”
“Similarly a large human population is not only an inconvenience, but also a threat to my own people. If their numbers are high, the humans will constantly feel slighted about losing their own land and will eventually get emboldened enough to do something about it. So when you cull as much as is required, you don’t have these problems. They quickly come to terms with their destiny, and even demonstrate compliance.“ Korelo said.
I still struggled to wrap my head around the casual ease with which he talked about taking so many lives.
“But don’t your own people feel any remorse when they see pictures or videos of dead bodies that run in the billions?”
“There are not going to be any dead bodies.” he replied calmly.
“What do you mean?” I asked him,
”People who don’t make the cut, they will be vaporized. “
I felt the anger rise in me even as I just sat there, with my mouth open unable to speak.
“So is that what you did to the scientists at the base? Vaporise them? “I asked him sarcastically. He simply nodded.
“I also instructed my people to leave the skeletal remains of your security friend, so that it sends a message to your government as well.“ he said.
“So doing the same thing to my cousin Henry, is you sending me a message, is it?” I asked.
“Yes.” he replied in a matter of fact manner.
My shoulders began to droop even as every fibre in my body was vibrating with anger. Then I finally asked him ”What am I doing here Captain? Why am I not dead already?”
As a theater major in college, it took me a while to land a solid job, but eventually, I found a position as a stage manager at an old theater in the heart of the historic district. This theater had been around since before television was even invented, and its marble floors and soaring, intricately designed ceilings made it a stunning, almost otherworldly place to work.
I drove up to the Gagel Theater early on my first training day, the excitement of starting a new job mixing with the familiar anxiety of the unknown. The road was empty at that hour, and I found myself driving through the misty streets, the headlights casting long, eerie shadows along the pavement. I stopped at a gas station on the way to grab a stale cup of coffee and a protein bar—nothing fancy, just something to wake me up.
The rain from the night before hung heavy in the air, and the asphalt glistened with puddles beneath a gray sky. I parked behind the theater, its gothic facade barely visible through the morning fog. The weight of the building settled on me as I stepped out, its mysterious presence heightened by the chill in the air. I shrugged it off, grabbed my bag, and walked toward the entrance, my footsteps echoing in the empty lot.
Inside, the warmth was a welcome relief from the dampness outside. The air smelled of old velvet, dust, and a faint metallic scent, like remnants of past performances. The lobby was grand, with ornate molding and polished marble floors gleaming under chandeliers. An abandoned ticket booth and tarnished concession stand hinted at the theater’s forgotten past, frozen in time.
I paused to take it all in, the silence broken only by my footsteps, the sound of sharp shoes clicking on stone grew louder. "Mr. Allen?" a voice called from around the corner.
I turned, and there he was—a man so impeccably dressed he could’ve stepped out of a fashion magazine. His bald head gleamed under the dim lights, and a black-dyed goatee framed his angular face. He wore a tailored suit so expensive it made my second-hand clothes feel like a joke. His name tag, gold-plated and pristine, read William Kersey - Gagel Theater Manager.
"Yes, sir," I replied, stepping forward and extending my right hand for a handshake, trying to match his professional air.
But Kersey didn’t acknowledge my hand. Instead, he walked directly up to me with the kind of confidence that only comes from someone who has been in charge for a long time. His eyes were sharp, calculating, as if he had already sized me up the moment I walked through the door. Without missing a beat, he spoke in a low, smooth voice, his words deliberate. “Welcome to Gagel Theater,” Kersey said, his eyes briefly scanning the lobby behind me as though he were assessing something unseen. I pulled my hand back awkwardly, feeling his detachment. It wasn’t rude, just off-putting—he wasn’t here to make me comfortable, but to assert control.
With a theatrical sweep of his hand, he motioned to the theater. “Let me show you around. Your supervisor and the Director will be here soon.” His tone, polite but authoritative, made it clear this was more of a formality than an invitation.
I followed, trying to shake off the unease creeping up my spine. A tough boss didn’t bother me, but something about Kersey’s behavior made me feel like he was always in charge.
He led me through the building’s halls, pointing out offices, bathrooms, and the break room. His words were mechanical, like he’d given this same tour a hundred times. He paused by a display, turning to face me with a grin. “Every employee should appreciate the history and legacy of where they work, don’t you agree?”
I forced a smile. “Yes, sir.”
He abruptly gestured toward a wall display—a shrine to the theater’s history. Behind glass were framed photos of past actors, some unrecognizable, others glamorous, each with plaques detailing their contributions. “This theater has been running since 1905,” Kersey said, sweeping his hand toward the images. “Hundreds of performances, thousands of audiences.”
I nodded, feeling a strange unease as I studied the old photos. They were more than tribute—they felt almost reverential. Kersey motioned toward the oldest photo. “We’ve made many improvements over the years.” The comparison between the humble beginnings of the theater and its modern grandeur was stark, but something about the display made the history seem distant and unsettling.
I glanced at Kersey, who stood with perfect posture, smiling at the photos with an intensity that felt off. I shook off the discomfort, reminding myself I was here to work, not to unravel the theater’s mysteries.
Just then, Kersey’s smile twitched as he glanced behind me. “Mr. Allen, this is your supervisor, Troy.”
I turned to meet Troy, a man in his mid-twenties with curly hair tied back and dressed all in black. He greeted me with a firm handshake and a friendly smile. “Nice to meet you, Denis,” he said, his tone warm. His eyes flicked to Kersey, who stood by the display, still observing us. “Are you done with the history lesson? We open in two weeks.”
Kersey sighed, as if Troy had interrupted something important. “Of course,” he said coolly, then gave me a tight smile. “Welcome to Gagel,” he added before walking away with his usual air of authority.
Troy’s expression softened once Kersey was out of earshot. “Sorry I was late to save you from his speech. He loves to hear himself talk.” He gave a conspiratorial grin, but it wasn’t unkind, just casual.
I chuckled nervously. “It wasn’t that bad,” I said, trying to sound casual. “He wasn’t too bad.”
Troy gave a half-smile, clearly not buying it, but he didn’t press the point. “Well, he can be a bit much. But, I’ll save you from more of that. Come on,” he said, gesturing toward the theater's inner sanctum. “Follow me. You haven’t seen the stage yet, have you?”
I shook my head. The tour so far had mostly been the administrative side of things, and the closest I’d gotten to the theater was standing in the hallway outside the main stage entrance. “No, I haven’t had a chance to see it yet,” I replied, trying to mask my curiosity. I was more than eager to get a closer look at where I’d be spending most of my time.
Troy led the way, his pace quick but relaxed, and I fell in step beside him as we passed through the corridors. The deeper we went into the theater, the quieter it became, as if the building itself was holding its breath. The heavy air of history seemed to thicken the farther we went, like the walls were absorbing the weight of decades of performances, both celebrated and forgotten.
He gave me a sideways glance as we reached a large, creaking door that led to the backstage area. “Don’t let Kersey scare you off,” Troy said with a half-smile. “He can be a little intense, but he means well. Just… a little obsessed with this place.”
“I can tell,” I said, letting a light laugh slip out.
Troy nodded, then pushed the door open, the scent of dust and old wood immediately filling the air. “Alright, this is where the real work happens,” he said, stepping aside to let me enter. I peered into the dimly lit space, where the edges of the stage seemed to emerge from the shadows like an old, forgotten memory.
The backstage was just as I’d imagined—dark, cramped, and filled with the remnants of countless performances. Ropes and pulleys hung from the ceiling, and old props were strewn about haphazardly, as if left in a rush. The faint smell of paint and aging fabric filled the air. My eyes were drawn to the towering set pieces that loomed in the dim light, their outlines shifting in the gloom.
Troy took a few steps into the space, gesturing to the various areas. “This is where you’ll spend most of your time,” he said. “The crew’s all up here—setting lights, adjusting props, making sure everything’s in place before the curtain goes up.” He glanced over his shoulder with a small smirk. “It’s not glamorous, but it’s where all the magic happens.”
I couldn’t help but be excited. This was the kind of place I’d dreamed about—messy, chaotic, yet full of life in its own way. It wasn’t the clean, polished front of the theater where the audience would sit. This was the heart of the production, where things were built and broken, where the real work took place.
I walked to the center of the stage, the darkness swallowing me whole. The theater was empty, and its vastness seemed to stretch forever, the air thick with the smell of old wood and dust. I could almost hear the whispers of the past, the faint echoes of performances long gone, lingering in the silence. It was a place where dreams had lived and died, where lives had been changed, and now, it was mine to explore. The thrill of it all—the possibilities of being part of something so much bigger than myself—made my heart race. This was going to be the start of an exciting chapter in my life.
Troy slapped me on the shoulder, breaking my thoughts. “The cast is rehearsing for Chicago during Tech week. They’re off-script, running through everything. You won’t be alone—we’ve got another stagehand to help you,” he said easily.
I nodded, distracted by the vastness of the space. Troy started walking away, heading toward the light console. “It’ll be easier to show you everything with the lights on,” he called back.
Alone on the stage, I felt the weight of the empty theater. The silence was almost suffocating. I remembered hearing that, from the stage, you can’t see the audience because of the bright lights. In this massive theater, Troy had already disappeared from view, and the darkness seemed to swallow me.
I walked over to the velvet curtains, and when I touched them, I felt a strange hum, like they were alive. The fabric was warm—unnaturally so. I shook it off as just the air conditioning, but unease lingered. Suddenly, the lights blazed on, nearly blinding me. “Damn it,” Troy’s voice echoed. “Sorry, should’ve warned you.”
I laughed it off, stepping back from the curtains. Troy came up the stage with surprising agility. “Let me get you a script Denis.” Troy said, his grin playful.
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me that,” Troy said with a smirk. “But first, let me show you the ropes.”
As we moved toward the back of the stage, I couldn’t resist asking, “Hey, Troy, what’s up with the curtains? They were... humming.”
He paused, looking at them with a strange tension in his face. “I’ve wondered that myself, but never cared to check. It’s just one of those things.” His expression darkened. “My old supervisor once told me something,” he said, lowering his voice. “Never open the curtains after a performance. Don’t touch them after they fall.”
I thought he was joking. “Like no one’s allowed backstage after a show?”
“No,” he replied, serious now. “It’s... different. Sounds crazy, I know, but he was clear—never touch the curtains once they fall after the cast bows.” The air grew heavier, colder. I tried to brush it off. “Just a superstition, right? Like saying Macbeth?”
Troy gave a tight smile. “Probably. But still, don’t open them after the show. Promise?”
I nodded, trying to laugh it off. “I won’t, don’t worry.”
He gestured to the notes on the wall. “Alright, let’s get to work.”
Those first weeks with Chicago were exciting—learning the ropes, working behind the scenes, the thrill of being part of something bigger. But now, I wish I’d listened more closely to Troy’s warnings.
It was opening night for Chicago, and I was a nervous wreck. The adrenaline was buzzing in my veins, my hands slightly trembling as I gripped my clipboard. I was dressed in all black, the uniform of the stage crew, and my earpiece was snug in place, the faint hum of static filling my ear. The cast was in full swing—rehearsing lines, running through their dance routines, and sipping on warm tea to soothe their throats before the big show. The energy backstage was palpable, a mixture of excitement and nervous anticipation that seemed to vibrate through every corner of the theater.
Troy wasn’t around tonight. He trusted me to handle the production solo, which, while comforting, only added to the pressure. It felt like the entire show rested on my shoulders, but there was pride in that too. He trusted me, and I was doing well. That thought gave me a boost—maybe I was finally proving myself in this intimidating world of theater.
But before I could enjoy the moment, the intercom blared. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Chicago!” The voice was unmistakable—William Kersey.
His presence always set my nerves on edge. There was something about the forced friendliness in his voice, the arrogance he exuded like he owned everything, especially the Gagel Theater. I could almost see him out there, strutting across the stage in his expensive suit, relishing the attention. It made me want to roll my eyes, but I couldn’t afford distractions—it was opening night.
I peeked out from the wings, my heart racing as I scanned the packed house. It was a sight I’d dreamed of but never fully expected. The audience, dressed in everything from formal attire to casual clothes, was eager for the show to begin. The air was thick with excitement and nerves—an exhilarating chaos that made me feel like I was part of something important.
Then my attention shifted to a man sitting in the front row. He stood out—a large glass of brandy in hand, his posture slumped, and a glazed look in his eyes. He seemed too relaxed, like he’d already indulged too much before the show even started. His presence was unsettling, the kind of drunken calm that felt out of place.
The bright lights stung my eyes, and Kersey’s voice echoed through the theater again, repeating his rehearsed speech about the history of the Gagel Theater. I gripped the velvet curtain, trying to steady myself amidst the growing unease.
As soon as my fingers touched the curtain, a wave of disgust hit me. It wasn’t the soft texture I expected—it was slick, wet, and slimy, like squeezing a soaked washcloth. My heart raced as I pulled my hand away, but the liquid clung to my palm, stretching out in sticky strands. The fabric wasn’t just damp; it was soaked, glistening unnaturally, almost alive. The familiar hum of the theater felt heavier now, vibrating through the walls, like the curtains were breathing.
Confusion twisted into dread as I stared at my hand, covered in a slick, spit-like residue. A rancid, rotten smell filled the air, making me gag. What had happened to the curtains? They had been fine this morning. Had someone spilled something on them? I needed to tell Kersey, but something about this felt off—like the curtains were waiting for something.
Kersey’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts, announcing the start of the show with his usual flair. The audience cheered, but the sound was distant, muffled. I wiped my hand on my pants, the sticky residue still there, clinging to me as I stepped back. I glanced at the curtain again, but all I could see was that strange, unnatural sheen. The theater felt... wrong.
As the show began, everything went flawlessly—each note from the orchestra, each line delivered perfectly. The audience was captivated, their applause growing louder with every act. The energy was intoxicating, but underneath it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the theater itself was holding its breath. Backstage, I was busy coordinating quick costume changes and shifting set pieces, feeling like a vital part of a well-oiled machine. Everything flowed seamlessly, the crew working in perfect rhythm, and the energy of the show buzzed through the building. It was exhilarating to be part of something bigger than myself.
As the final act ended, the music swelled, and the cast took their bows. The audience stood, applauding, and the excitement in the room was electric. I hovered over the button to lower the curtain, one simple motion to end the night. But as I stood there, a strange unease washed over me.
The cheers sounded muffled, distant, like I was hearing them through water. My mind flashed to earlier—the damp, oily sensation on the curtains, the hum they emitted, and Troy’s warning: " Never open the curtains after a performance. Don’t touch them after they fall." I had brushed it off, but now, that warning echoed in my mind, and the feeling that something was wrong settled deep in my bones. The applause continued, but I hesitated, hand poised over the button. The hum of the curtain seemed to vibrate through the walls, sending a chill through me. I swallowed hard, struggling to push aside the growing sense of dread. Something about this moment felt off.
Finally, I clicked the button, and the curtain began its slow descent, moving as if reluctant to end the evening. As I moved backstage to join the cast, I caught sight of a drunken man stumbling toward the stage. His unsteady steps and flushed face made it clear he’d had too much to drink.
“Wait, sir!” I called, stepping forward. “You can’t come up here.”
But he ignored me, climbing onto the stage as the audience murmured in confusion. With the curtain halfway down and tension rising, all eyes shifted between the man and the retreating performers.
“Jerry, get back here!” I heard a woman shout from the front row. She was reaching toward him, her voice strained, but it seemed to have no effect. He barely seemed to hear her, too drunk to comprehend her words.
He mumbled incoherently, and then I heard the words that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up: “Show must go on. Show must go on.”
His voice was hoarse, like a chant, something mechanical in the repetition.
“Sir,” I said, my voice firmer now as I stepped forward, stepping under the descending curtain. My hand reached out, palm open, as I tried to keep the drunken man away from the set. “We can’t have you on stage like this.”
But just as I was about to reach him, a hand shot out of nowhere, grabbing my shoulder with brutal force. I was yanked back, my feet sliding on the stage as I spun to face the person who had stopped me. It was William Kersey. His eyes were fixed on the man now stumbling further onto the stage, and his gaze was... wrong.
There was a sadness there, something cold and distant, like he was watching a final act unfold. “What are you doing?” I exclaimed, trying to shake off his grip. I pulled myself away from him, but his eyes never left the drunken man, who was now mumbling louder, as if in a trance.
“Show must go on…” he slurred again, his voice growing louder and more frenzied, though his body seemed to be losing control.
And then, without warning, the man tripped, collapsing onto the stage with a violent thud. His body hit the aged wood with a sickening crack, and the audience gasped. I winced at the sound, horrified by his fall. He lay there motionless, sprawled on the floor.
I was about to rush forward, to drag the man off the stage myself and call the police, but before I could take another step, William’s hand shot out again, this time grabbing mine.
“Mr. Allen,” he said, his voice low and urgent, yet strangely calm. “It’s no use now. Don’t open that curtain. Please. You don’t deserve it.”
I stared at him, confused. What was he saying? My hand trembled as I looked back over at the fallen man, still lying there, tangled in the folds of the curtain that had finally reached the stage floor. The red velvet had covered him entirely, swallowing his body in its luxurious fabric.
William’s grip on my hand tightened. His eyes didn’t leave the curtain, but there was something dark in his expression now, something unreadable. “Please, Mr. Allen,” he murmured. “Do not open the curtain. There are things behind it you don’t want to see.”
I swallowed hard, my chest tightening. Something inside me screamed to open the curtain, to see what was really going on. But a deeper instinct held me back. What had Kersey seen? What had he witnessed? The fear in his eyes, the way he spoke... It was like he already knew what would happen if I did.
The atmosphere was thick with confusion, yet the chaos of the audience seemed to dissipate in an instant. I stood there, my mind racing, as I watched them trickle out of the theater. The same audience that had been shouting for the drunken man to get down from the stage—now quietly filing out, just like they were leaving any other performance after the final curtain call.
I noticed the woman who had screamed for Jerry to return to his seat. She was walking calmly toward the exit, completely alone, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. She didn’t even glance back toward the stage.
It was then I noticed William Kersey. He was walking briskly toward the lobby, heading to speak to the audience as if nothing had happened. His back was turned to me, his shoulders stiff with a purpose. A sense of urgency hung in his every step. His departure left me alone backstage, the weight of the silence pressing down on me like a physical force. The air felt thick, suffocating.
I was left standing there, unsure of what had just transpired. The curtain... the man... had I imagined the whole thing? My fingers reached out and touched the curtain again. This time, the fabric was dry—completely dry, as dry as the first time I had brushed against it. No strange slime, no warmth. It was almost... normal. Almost. Yet, beneath the surface, I could still feel it—the hum, the subtle vibration that pulsed through the fabric like something alive.
I waited for the drunken man to emerge, expecting him to crawl out from beneath the velvet folds. Perhaps he had passed out under there. Maybe he was unconscious, but surely, he wasn’t dead. But there was no movement. No sound. The curtain lay still, like an impenetrable wall of red.
I moved about the backstage area, cleaning up the remnants of the night, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off the stage. I kept looking toward the center, where the man had fallen, half-expecting to see some sign of life. A hand. A foot. A twitch. But there was nothing. Just the silent, ominous weight of the stage pressing in on me. When I reached the front console to switch off the lights, the weight of the night’s bizarre events pressed down on me. Each fragment of the evening replayed in my mind like a haunting loop I couldn’t escape. Had the curtain… crushed him? Was Jerry—was he dead beneath that heavy velvet? Or had I imagined it all, a trick of the mind, some fevered hallucination brought on by exhaustion? I tried to push the thoughts away, tried to anchor myself in logic, to dismiss the gnawing sense of dread coiling tighter in my chest. But no matter how hard I tried, the unease stayed with me, clawing at my ribs, cold fingers tightening around my heart.
And then, like a cruel answer to my spiraling questions, the curtain moved.
It wasn’t slow or tentative, like the controlled descent it had made earlier in the night. No. This was something else. Something darker. The velvet began to lift—not slowly, not carefully, but fast—too fast for something so heavy. It wasn’t just parting; it was unfurling, unraveling, as if some unseen force on the other side was pulling it apart. It rose with the predatory grace of a monstrous creature stretching awake from a long slumber. The dark fabric rolled back, revealing the stage behind it—a gaping maw framed by the harsh glare of the stage lights, their cold glow flashing like teeth, sharp and hungry.
Behind the curtain, the stage was empty. But the air—God, the air—was thick with something wrong. I squinted into the darkness, seeing nothing but the clutter of props and the forgotten ropes hanging lifeless from the rafters. The brick wall loomed at the back of the stage, silent and indifferent. Yet, there was something else, something wrong in the air, a faint sound that shouldn’t have been there. It was a scream. No, not a single scream, but a chorus—distant, muffled, as though they were coming from far beneath the stage or maybe the very bowels of the building itself.
At first, I thought it was just the building settling, the old pipes groaning, maybe the sound of traffic echoing off the distant streets. But no. As the curtain continued its unsettling rise, the screams grew clearer—more defined. Like the last, desperate cries of something or someone long lost. I froze, unable to tear my gaze away from the widening space, my breath thick in my throat, my heart slamming against my chest.
The man—Jerry—was gone.
I scanned the stage, my eyes darting frantically across the bare boards, the orchestra pit yawning dark below. There was no sign of him. Not a trace. Not a drop of blood. Not a shred of his clothes, no hint of him left behind. It was as if he’d never been there at all. The empty stage stood silent, its hollow emptiness pressing in on me from all sides. The curtain, now still, hung in the air like a watchful eye, its fabric undisturbed. I was alone, but the lingering echo of those screams… they stayed with me, clawing at the edges of my sanity.
And then, in the silence, the curtain shuddered—just a tiny movement. As though it knew I was still watching. A wave of panic slammed into me, raw and unrelenting, like a fist to the chest. My heart raced, my breath shallow and frantic. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to get away, but my body betrayed me, frozen in place, locked in some kind of nightmare. I turned abruptly, my fingers numb and shaking as they scrambled to find the switch.
The lights died, plunging the theater into a suffocating darkness, but it didn’t matter. The building wasn’t quiet. The silence that surrounded me now felt wrong. Heavy. Like something—no, someone—was lurking in the shadows, waiting for me to slip, waiting for the moment when I’d lose control. The air itself was thick, charged, as though the very walls of the theater were closing in on me. The curtains—those cursed, wretched curtains—loomed in the blackness like a sentient thing, watching, waiting.
My legs felt like lead, each step an effort, as if some invisible force was dragging me back, pulling me deeper into whatever nightmare this place had become. Still, I forced myself to move, to leave the stage behind. Finally, the door loomed ahead, the faint light from the street spilling through the cracks beneath it. I swung it open, nearly stumbling into the cool embrace of the night air. The shift from suffocating darkness to the chill of the outside world was jarring, but it didn’t comfort me.
I turned my face to the sky, trying to fill my lungs with the freshness of the night, hoping the cold would clear my head, shake off the weight that clung to me like a shadow. But it didn’t help. It only made the world feel more distorted, more off. The night seemed to stretch on, unbroken, endless. The sound of distant traffic was muted, as though the world had pressed its palms to its ears, trying to drown out whatever was stirring just beyond the reach of my senses.
I swallowed, trying to regain control of my racing thoughts, but the feeling of eyes on my back—of something just out of reach, just beyond my perception—didn’t fade. Instead, it grew, spreading like a dark stain across the edges of my mind. Something was waiting. Something had been waiting for far too long. But when I stepped onto the sidewalk, I froze.
The woman—the woman who had been sitting with Jerry—was standing near the street, staring off into the distance. There was no sign of Jerry. No one else was with her. She was alone.
I approached her, my voice hesitant as I asked, “Hello, ma’am. Was that man Jerry with you?”
She turned to look at me, her eyes distant, as if she didn’t quite understand what I was saying. “What are you talking about?” she asked, her tone confused. “I don’t know anybody named Jerry.”
My breath caught in my throat. I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. She couldn’t have forgotten him—could she? She had been shouting his name only an hour before. I watched her for a moment longer, trying to read the blank expression on her face, but there was no recognition, no flicker of memory.
Was she pretending? Had the whole audience been pretending? Had they somehow all forgotten Jerry’s presence on stage, his drunken stumble, the fall, and the strange silence that followed?
And then I felt it. The heavy weight of the stage is still clinging to my thoughts. The curtains. The way they had seemed almost alive, as if they were waiting for something. The vibrations. The hum. The heat. All of it flooding back to me in a moment of sheer panic.
The voice of William Kersey echoed in my mind, chilling me to the bone: “You don’t deserve it.”
What did he mean by that? I turned, desperate to escape the unsettling feeling creeping up my spine, but the question lingered, gnawing at me. I had no answers. All I had were the strange words Kersey had spoken, the eerie emptiness of the stage, and the haunting memory of the curtain opening on its own, revealing nothing.
Months passed before I would ever truly understand what he meant. And now I wish to God I heeded his words.
I’d lived my whole life in the small, idyllic farming town of Harvest Hill, where the annual pumpkin festival is more than just an event; it’s a cherished tradition that brings the entire community together. Every fall, the townsfolk gather in the town square, surrounded by the glowing red and yellow of autumn leaves, to celebrate the season’s bounty and compete for the coveted title of the largest pumpkin. For years, I had dreamed of winning that prize, but this year my hopes were higher than ever.
Nestled at the edge of town, my modest farmhouse is surrounded by meticulously tended gardens. Each morning, I wake at dawn, don my gardening gloves, and tend to my plants with the care and precision of a master craftsman. This year, my pride and joy was a massive pumpkin that I’ve nurtured from a tiny seedling into a colossal gourd. It sat in the center of my garden, its vibrant orange skin gleaming in the sunlight, and I couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride every time I looked at it.
However, there was one garden in Harvest Hill that always caught my eye with a mix of curiosity and unease: Old Farmer Joe’s. His property, just next door to mine, was shrouded in mystery. The garden was overgrown and wild, yet his pumpkins always seemed to grow bigger and healthier than anyone else’s. Joe was a reclusive, eccentric man who rarely spoke to anyone, and when he did, his words were often cryptic and unsettling. The townspeople often gossiped that he held secrets, old and dark, but of course this was all wild speculation and no one knew anything for sure.
As the days grew shorter and the festival drew near, I found myself working tirelessly in my garden, determined to finally outdo Joe and claim the grand prize. The townsfolk noticed my dedication and would often stop by to admire my giant pumpkin, offering words of encouragement and praise. The excitement was tangible, and for the first time, I felt that victory was within my grasp.
The day of the festival arrived with a crisp chill in the air. We were in the midst of autumn, and the town square was alive with activity, filled with stalls selling homemade pies, caramel apples, and other seasonal treats. Children ran around in costumes, laughing and playing, while adults admired the various pumpkins on display. My pumpkin, transported with great care, sat proudly among the contenders, drawing gasps of admiration from the crowd.
As the judges made their rounds, carefully inspecting each entry, I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. When they finally approached my pumpkin, their eyes widened in surprise, and I saw them exchange impressed glances. After what felt like an eternity, they announced the winner: my pumpkin had claimed the top prize.
The crowd erupted in applause as I stepped forward to accept the trophy. My fellow townsfolk clapped me on the back and congratulated me, their faces beaming with genuine happiness. Amid the celebration, Old Farmer Joe approached me. His weathered face broke into a rare smile as he shook my hand, his grip firm and uncomfortably tight.
“Congratulations,” he said, his voice gravelly and low. “You’ve done well this year. But remember, there’s always a secret to true growth.”
His strange words lingered in my mind long after the festivities had ended and the crowd had dispersed. As I stood alone in my garden that evening, gazing at the enormous pumpkin that had brought me such joy, a strange sense of unease began to creep in. What did Joe mean by a “secret to true growth”? And why did his smile seem more like a warning than a congratulation?
Little did I know, the answer to those questions would soon turn the essence of my existence upside down, revealing a dark secret that lay hidden beneath the fertile soil of Harvest Hill.
****
My first night after the festival I experienced fitful sleep and unsettling dreams. I kept waking up to the image of Old Farmer Joe's cryptic smile and the ominous tone in his voice. By the first light of morning, all the elation I’d felt in victory had faded, replaced by a gnawing curiosity about Old Joe's parting words.
I was determined to get to the bottom of it, so I decided to pay Joe a visit. Under the guise of thanking him for his congratulations, I approached his property, feeling apprehensive, yet determined to find out what he meant. His garden, as always, was an overgrown mess of vines and leaves, with enormous pumpkins peeking out from the undergrowth. The sheer size of his produce, even larger than mine, seemed almost unnatural.
I found Joe in the back, hunched over a patch of particularly large pumpkins. He straightened up as I approached, wiping his hands on his worn overalls.
"Morning, Joe," I called out, trying my best to sound casual. "I just wanted to thank you for your kind words yesterday."
Joe looked up, his eyes sharp and piercing despite his age. "You're welcome," he said slowly, as if measuring each word. "Your pumpkin was truly impressive. What brings you here?"
Taking a deep breath, I decided to broach the subject directly. "I couldn't stop thinking about what you said, about the secret to true growth. What did you mean by that?"
For a moment, Joe said nothing. Then, he motioned for me to follow him. We walked through his garden, the dense foliage brushing against us, until we reached an old, decrepit shed. Joe pushed open the door, revealing a cluttered space filled with gardening tools, jars of strange substances, and dusty old books.
"Curiosity can be a dangerous thing," he said, rummaging through a pile of papers. "But since you've come this far, you deserve to know."
He handed me an ancient, leather-bound book, its pages yellowed with age. "This," he said, "is a grimoire... of sorts. It's been passed down through my family for generations. It contains knowledge that most would deem unnatural."
I opened the book, my eyes scanning the strange symbols and diagrams that filled its pages. There were detailed instructions on rituals, strange ingredients, and dark incantations. My heart raced as I realized the implication of what I was seeing.
"Is this... magic?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Joe nodded. "Not the kind you'd read about in fairy tales, but… something much older and darker. It's a form of alchemy, using the natural world to bend nature to your will. My pumpkins thrive because of these rituals, but they come at a cost."
"What cost?" I asked, feeling a chill run down my spine.
Joe's expression grew grave. "The soil here is enriched with more than just nutrients. It requires sacrifices: animal blood, bones, and sometimes... other things. The magic demands a balance."
I stared at him in disbelief, the weight of his words sinking in. "And my pumpkin? How did it grow so large?"
Joe sighed. "I saw your dedication and wanted to help, so I... enhanced your soil when you weren't looking. I thought it was harmless, a way to give you a taste of success. But… I fear I may have set something in motion."
My mind reeled with the implications. My prize-winning pumpkin, the source of my pride and joy, was the result of dark, unnatural forces. The sense of accomplishment I had felt now seemed hollow and tainted.
As I left Joe's garden, clutching the grimoire tightly, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had crossed a line. The vibrant orange of my pumpkin now seemed sinister, and the whispers of the town took on a more menacing tone. The once-idyllic Harvest Hill was now shrouded in a shadow of ancient secrets and dark magic, and I was at the center of it all.
The true horror of my situation was beginning to unfold, and I knew that uncovering the full extent of Joe's secrets would come with a price; a price that I might not be willing to pay.
****
The days following Old Farmer Joe's revelation were filled with dread but also undeniable fascination. I couldn't bring myself to destroy the grimoire he had given me. Instead, I spent hours poring over its ancient pages, trying to understand the arcane rituals and the nature of the dark forces at work. The more I read, the more I realized how deep and dangerous the magic was.
As I delved deeper into the grimoire, I noticed strange changes in my garden. Other plants began to grow at an alarming rate, their leaves larger and more vibrant than ever before. The soil, once rich and loamy, took on a darker hue and a peculiar smell. The once-comforting sounds of nature were now accompanied by eerie whispers and rustling noises that seemed to emanate from the very ground.
Despite my growing unease, I continued to seek Joe’s guidance, hoping to find a way to undo what had been done. Our conversations grew increasingly bizarre. Joe spoke in riddles, his eyes often glazing over as if he were communicating with something unseen. He mentioned ancient spirits of the harvest, entities that demanded offerings in exchange for their gifts.
"You've tapped into something old and powerful," Joe said one evening as we stood by the garden fence. "The spirits are pleased, but they are never satisfied for long. They will demand more."
"What do you mean by 'more'?" I asked, a sense of dread curling in my stomach.
Joe's face darkened. "The rituals require balance. You must give back to the earth what you take. The larger the bounty, the greater the sacrifice."
That night, I awoke to strange noises outside my window. Peering into the darkness, I saw shadows moving in the garden, shifting and twisting in unnatural ways. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and decay. I grabbed a flashlight and ventured outside, my heart pounding in my chest.
As I approached the center of the garden, the light illuminated a horrifying sight: small animals—rabbits, birds, and even a stray cat—lay dead among the plants, their bodies seemingly drained of life. The vines of the giant pumpkin had grown thicker, their tendrils wrapping around the lifeless creatures as if drawing nourishment from them. The pumpkin, which I’d severed from its roots to take it to the festival, was now reattached to the ground.
Panic set in, and I realized that whatever magic had been used was spiraling out of control. I needed answers, and I needed them fast.
Desperate for a solution, I visited the town library to research the history of Harvest Hill and its connection to Old Farmer Joe’s family. The librarian, an elderly woman with a wealth of knowledge about the town’s past, led me to a dusty archive filled with old newspapers and records.
As I sifted through the yellowed pages, I uncovered stories of mysterious disappearances and unexplained phenomena dating back generations. Each incident seemed to coincide with particularly bountiful harvests at Joe’s property. One article detailed the sudden disappearance of a young girl during a pumpkin festival many years ago, hinting at foul play but never proving anything.
The deeper I dug, the more I realized that Joe’s family had long been rumored to practice dark rituals. The townsfolk, though wary, had always turned a blind eye due to the prosperity the harvests brought.
Back at home, I began to experience vivid nightmares. I dreamt of being buried alive, of roots and vines slowly constricting around my body, pulling me deeper into the earth. Each morning, I awoke drenched in sweat, the images lingering in my mind.
Sarah, my wife, noticed the change in me. “You’ve been acting strange,” she said one morning, her eyes filled with concern. “What’s going on?”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the full truth. “Just stress from the festival,” I lied, trying to sound convincing. “I’ll be fine.”
But Sarah wasn’t the only one who noticed. Neighbors began to comment on the unusual growth in my garden, their curiosity tinged with suspicion. I could see the unease in their eyes, the way they whispered when they thought I wasn’t listening.
Determined to find a way to reverse the dark magic, I began documenting everything. I took photos of the garden, recorded the strange noises, and even collected samples of the soil. My collection of evidence grew, but so did my paranoia. I felt like I was being watched, not just by Joe, but by something else... something ancient and malevolent.
One night, while reviewing the footage from my garden camera, I saw a shadowy figure lurking near the pumpkin patch. It wasn’t Joe. The figure was tall and lean, dressed in dark clothing, and moved with a stealthy purpose. My blood ran cold as I realized the figure was performing a ritual, chanting words I couldn’t understand. The next morning, I found the pumpkin even larger, its vines more aggressive.
In a moment of clarity, I confronted Joe one last time. “I’ve seen the rituals. I know what you’ve done,” I said, my voice trembling with anger and fear. “Tell me how to stop it.”
Joe sighed, his shoulders slumping as if carrying the weight of centuries. “You can’t stop it,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “The spirits are already here. The only way to appease them is with a greater sacrifice.”
“What kind of sacrifice?” I demanded, my mind racing through the possibilities.
Joe looked at me with a mix of pity and resignation. “You know what kind,” he said. “Blood for growth. Life for life.”
As his words sank in, I realized the true horror of my situation. The price of my success was far greater than I could have ever imagined, and the darkness I had unleashed was now beyond my control.
****
The situation reached a horrifying turning point on a cold, moonless night. The ghostly quiet of the garden was shattered by an unsettling noise, a low hum that seemed to resonate from the very earth itself. Unable to sleep, I decided to investigate, clutching the grimoire tightly and armed with a flashlight.
As I stepped into the garden, the hum grew louder, vibrating through the ground and into my bones. The flashlight beam cut through the darkness, illuminating the twisted vines of my giant pumpkin, which now seemed almost sentient, writhing and pulsing as if alive. My heart pounded as I moved closer, the sense of impending doom thick in the air.
Suddenly, I saw it: an area of disturbed soil near the pumpkin, freshly turned and dark with moisture. Kneeling down, I used my hands to brush away the loose dirt, uncovering something that made my blood run cold. Beneath the soil were the remains of small animals, their bodies contorted in unnatural ways. Among them, a human hand protruded, the flesh pale and lifeless.
A wave of nausea swept over me as I realized the full extent of the horror. This was no longer just about a giant pumpkin or an eccentric neighbor. The garden had become a graveyard, and the dark magic I had unknowingly nurtured now demanded human lives as its true price.
Desperate for answers, I turned to the grimoire, flipping through the pages with shaking hands. The ancient text described a ritual of appeasement, a way to communicate with the spirits of the harvest. The instructions were clear but chilling: a sacrifice was needed to stop the dark forces—one that matched the scale of the magic used.
Fueled by feelings of both fear and purpose, I stormed over to Joe’s house, the grimoire clutched in my hand. He met me at the door, his expression one of grim understanding.
"I found the bodies, Joe," I said, my voice trembling with a mix of anger and horror. "How do I stop this?"
Joe sighed, his face etched with lines of regret and sorrow. "I warned you about the cost," he said softly. "The spirits demand balance. The greater the gift, the greater the sacrifice."
"Tell me how to end it," I demanded, desperation creeping into my voice.
Joe led me to his cluttered shed once more. From a hidden compartment, he retrieved a small, intricately carved wooden box. Opening it, he revealed a ceremonial dagger and a piece of parchment covered in ancient runes.
"This is the ritual of severance," he explained. "It’s the only way to break the bond with the spirits. But it requires a life for a life."
My heart sank as I realized the implications. The life of someone I loved would have to be sacrificed to undo the dark magic that had taken hold of my garden. The weight of this knowledge bore down on me like a crushing force.
Returning home, I found Sarah waiting for me, her eyes filled with concern. "What’s going on?" she asked. "You’ve been so distant, and the garden... it feels wrong."
Torn between the need to protect her and the truth of what I had discovered, I decided to tell her everything. As I recounted the dark history of Old Farmer Joe’s magic and the horrific revelation in the garden, Sarah’s face paled.
"We need to leave," she said urgently. "We can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous."
But I knew running wouldn’t solve the problem. The spirits were bound to the land, and they wouldn’t let us escape so easily. The only way to free ourselves was to complete the ritual, but I couldn’t bring myself to suggest the unthinkable.
In the days that followed, the garden’s transformation accelerated. The giant pumpkin grew even larger, its vines spreading like a cancer across the property, suffocating everything in their path. The eerie hum became a constant presence, a sinister reminder of the dark forces at play.
As the situation grew more dire, I spent hours each day in the library, seeking any alternative to the ritual of severance. One evening, as the sun set behind the hills, casting long shadows across the town, I stumbled upon an old, forgotten diary tucked away in the archives.
The diary belonged to a woman named Margaret, who had lived in Harvest Hill over a century ago. Her entries detailed her own encounters with the dark magic and the spirits of the harvest. In her final entry, she wrote of a similar situation, describing the unbearable choice she had to make to protect her family.
"My husband’s life was the price I paid," Margaret wrote. "But the spirits are never truly satisfied. They always return, hungry for more. The cycle must be broken, or it will continue forever."
With a sinking heart, I realized the full horror of what Joe had been trying to tell me. The ritual of severance might only be a temporary solution. The spirits’ hunger could not be sated for long, and the dark magic would eventually return, demanding new sacrifices.
Standing in my garden that night, surrounded by the monstrous vines and the eerie hum, I felt the weight of an impossible decision. The midpoint of my journey had revealed the true nature of the darkness I faced, and the path ahead was fraught with danger and sacrifice.
In the distance, Old Farmer Joe’s house stood in shadow, a silent witness to the legacy of the dark magic. As I stared at the giant pumpkin, its surface pulsating with a malevolent life, I knew that the hardest part of my ordeal was yet to come.
****
The night of the final confrontation arrived, shrouded in an unnatural darkness that seemed to swallow all light. The air was heavy with the scent of decaying leaves and the pervasive hum of the restless spirits. The giant pumpkin, now a monstrous, grotesque behemoth, dominated the garden, its vines twisting and writhing with a life of their own.
Desperate to end the nightmare, I gathered the necessary items for the ritual of severance: the ceremonial dagger, the ancient parchment, and a vial of my own blood. Each item felt like a lead weight in my hands, the significance of what I was about to do pressing down on me.
Sarah stood by my side, her face pale but resolute. She had insisted on being there, despite my attempts to protect her from the full horror of the situation. Her presence gave me strength, but also deepened my fear of what might come.
"Are you sure about this?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.
I nodded, unable to speak past the lump in my throat. The decision had been made, and there was no turning back. Together, we walked to the heart of the garden, where the monstrous pumpkin loomed.
I knelt before the pumpkin, spreading the parchment on the ground and placing the dagger and vial beside it. With a deep breath, I began to chant the incantation from the grimoire, my voice shaking but gaining strength as I went on. The words felt foreign and ancient, resonating with a power that made the air around us vibrate.
The vines reacted almost immediately, writhing more violently, as if sensing the impending threat. The hum grew louder, filling my ears and making it difficult to concentrate. I took the vial of blood and poured it onto the parchment, watching as the dark liquid seeped into the ancient runes, making them glow with an eerie light.
As I continued the chant, I felt a presence growing stronger, an unseen force that seemed to watch and judge my every move. The final part of the ritual required the sacrifice of a life—one that had been touched by the dark magic. I had hoped that the animal sacrifices Joe had made would be enough, but deep down, I knew it wasn’t.
Tears streamed down my face as I raised the ceremonial dagger. I turned to Sarah, her eyes wide with fear and understanding. "I’m so sorry," I whispered, my voice breaking.
Before I could act, a powerful force knocked me to the ground, the dagger flying from my hand. The vines surged forward, wrapping around Sarah and lifting her into the air. She screamed, struggling against the crushing grip of the tendrils.
"No!" I shouted, scrambling to my feet and grabbing the dagger. I slashed at the vines, but more took their place, pulling Sarah towards the monstrous pumpkin. Desperation fueled my actions as I hacked and cut, my hands slick with blood from the thorny tendrils.
Suddenly, Old Farmer Joe appeared, his face a mask of determination and sorrow. "This is my doing," he said, his voice barely audible over the cacophony. "I have to set it right."
With a swift motion, he took the dagger from my hand and plunged it into his own chest. The vines recoiled, releasing Sarah and retracting towards the pumpkin. Joe fell to the ground, blood pooling around him as he chanted the final words of the ritual.
The air crackled with energy as the ground trembled beneath our feet. The giant pumpkin began to wither, its vibrant orange fading to a sickly brown. The vines shriveled and turned to dust, releasing a cloud of dark, acrid smoke. The hum intensified, reaching a deafening crescendo before abruptly stopping.
Joe’s body lay still, his sacrifice complete. The garden fell silent, the oppressive weight lifting as the dark magic dissipated. The spirits, momentarily appeased by Joe’s selfless act, retreated into the earth, their hunger sated for now.
Sarah and I stood in stunned silence, the horror of what had just happened slowly sinking in. The garden, once a source of pride and joy, was now a barren wasteland, the remnants of the dark magic leaving an indelible mark.
We buried Joe next to his monstrous pumpkin, marking his grave with a simple stone. His sacrifice had saved us, but the cost had been immeasurable. As we left the garden, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the spirits were still watching, waiting for their next opportunity.
The climax of our ordeal had revealed the true price of tampering with forces beyond our understanding. The darkness that had taken root in Harvest Hill was not so easily vanquished, and the memory of that fateful night would haunt us forever.
The ultimate confrontation had ended, but the scars it left behind would remain, a chilling reminder of the danger that lurked beneath the surface of our once-idyllic town.
****
The days following the climactic confrontation were a blur of exhaustion and grief. The garden, once the pride of my efforts, was now a desolate patch of scorched earth and withered plants. The giant pumpkin had collapsed into a decaying heap, its vibrant orange hue now a sickly brown. The oppressive atmosphere that had hung over our home seemed to dissipate, leaving a profound silence in its wake.
Sarah and I struggled to come to terms with the events that had transpired. We moved through our daily routines in a daze, haunted by the memories of that fateful night. Old Farmer Joe’s sacrifice had saved us, but the price had been high, and the weight of guilt and sorrow was overwhelming.
News of the bizarre occurrences spread quickly through Harvest Hill. The townspeople, initially skeptical, became increasingly curious and wary. They whispered about the giant pumpkin, the strange lights, and the eerie hum that had emanated from our property. Joe’s sudden death added to the sense of mystery and fear that gripped the town.
One afternoon, the town council paid us a visit. They stood in our barren garden, their faces a mixture of disbelief and concern.
"What happened here?" asked Mayor Thompson, his voice filled with apprehension.
I hesitated, unsure of how much to reveal. "There was an... incident," I said slowly. "Old Farmer Joe tried to help us, but things got out of control. He... sacrificed himself to stop it."
The council members exchanged uneasy glances. "We’ve heard rumors about Joe and his family," said Mrs. Henderson, the town librarian. "Dark rumors. Is there any truth to them?"
I nodded reluctantly. "Joe had a knowledge of ancient rituals, a kind of dark magic. It’s what caused the giant pumpkin to grow so large. But it came with a price."
The council members fell silent, absorbing the gravity of my words. "We need to ensure this never happens again," said Mayor Thompson finally. "The town must be protected."
Sarah and I knew we couldn’t stay in Harvest Hill. The memories were too painful, the whispers too loud. We decided to sell our property and move to a neighboring town, hoping to find a fresh start away from the darkness that had consumed our lives.
As we packed our belongings, I couldn’t help but feel a lingering unease. The grimoire, now hidden away in a locked chest, seemed to call to me, its pages filled with secrets I could never unlearn. I debated whether to destroy it, but something held me back: the fear that the knowledge within might be needed again.
On our last day in Harvest Hill, Sarah and I visited Joe’s grave. We placed a small bouquet of wildflowers on the simple stone marker, a silent thank you for his sacrifice. The air was still, the oppressive presence of the spirits gone, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were not entirely vanquished.
Harvest Hill took measures to prevent a recurrence of the dark magic. The town council declared Joe’s property off-limits, eventually bulldozing the decrepit shed and covering the garden with fresh soil. They held a town meeting to discuss the strange events, urging residents to remain vigilant and to report any unusual occurrences.
The town slowly returned to normal, but the memory of the giant pumpkin and the dark rituals lingered. Stories and legends grew around the events, becoming a cautionary tale passed down through generations. Harvest Hill would never forget the price of tampering with forces beyond their understanding.
In our new town, Sarah and I worked hard to rebuild our lives. The shadow of Harvest Hill loomed over us, but we found solace in each other’s company and the fresh start we had created. We planted a small garden, careful to use only natural methods, and watched as it flourished without the taint of dark magic.
But the past was never far behind. I kept the grimoire hidden, a reminder of the danger that knowledge could bring. Late at night, when the world was quiet, I would sometimes hear the faint hum of the spirits in my dreams, a chilling reminder of the darkness that still lurked beneath the surface.
Our new life was a testament to resilience and the power of love, but it was also a constant struggle to keep the shadows at bay. The events in Harvest Hill had changed us forever, leaving scars that would never fully heal.
In the end, we learned to live with the memory, finding strength in our shared experiences and the hope that we could prevent such horrors from ever happening again. This part of our story was a quiet one, marked by the slow but steady process of healing and the enduring reminder of the price we had paid for our brush with darkness.
****
Years passed, and Sarah and I slowly built a peaceful life in our new town. The horrors of Harvest Hill faded into distant memories, although the scars always remained. We had a child, a bright and curious boy named Tommy, who brought joy and light into our lives. Our small garden flourished naturally, free from any dark influences.
One crisp autumn evening, as we were putting Tommy to bed, he handed me a small, carved wooden box he had found while playing in the attic. My heart skipped a beat when I saw it; it was the same intricate design as the box Joe had used to store the ceremonial dagger.
"Daddy, look what I found!" Tommy said, his eyes wide with excitement. "It’s full of old papers and stuff."
With trembling hands, I opened the box. Inside were several yellowed pieces of parchment, covered in familiar runes, and a small vial of dark, dried liquid. My breath caught in my throat as I realized what it was: the remnants of the grimoire and the tools for dark rituals.
Late that night, after Sarah and Tommy were asleep, I sat alone at the kitchen table, the contents of the box spread before me. My mind raced as I tried to understand how these items had followed us. Had the spirits somehow transferred their connection to our new home? Or had the dark magic never truly left me?
As I studied the parchments, a familiar hum began to fill the air, soft at first, then growing louder. My heart pounded in my chest as I realized the horrifying truth—the spirits had found us, and they were growing restless once again.
Suddenly, a shadow flickered across the kitchen, and the air grew icy cold. I turned, expecting to see some ghastly apparition, but instead, there was nothing. The hum, however, persisted, a constant reminder of the darkness that lurked just out of sight.
Unable to ignore the growing sense of dread, I knew I had to act quickly. I retrieved the hidden grimoire and compared it to the new parchments, hoping to find a way to protect my family. As I read, it became clear that the spirits were not simply satisfied with the occasional sacrifice: they sought to bind themselves permanently to a powerful source of life, such as a child.
Panic surged through me as I realized their target was Tommy. Desperate to shield him from the impending danger, I decided to confront the spirits directly. I returned to the garden, now bathed in the eerie glow of the full moon, clutching the grimoire and the ceremonial items.
Standing in the center of the garden, I began to chant the incantations from the grimoire, calling forth the spirits. The ground trembled beneath my feet, and the air grew thick with a palpable energy. The vines around the garden began to stir, twisting and curling as if awakened by my words.
A shadowy figure emerged from the darkness, its form shifting and indistinct. It was the same figure I had seen in the garden all those years ago, the entity that had fed on the sacrifices. It spoke in a voice that seemed to echo from the depths of the earth.
"You have summoned us," it intoned, its eyes glowing with an otherworldly light. "What do you seek?"
"Release my family," I demanded, my voice steady despite the fear coursing through me. "You’ve taken enough. Let us live in peace."
The figure laughed, a cold, hollow sound. "The bond is not so easily broken," it said. "A life for a life, remember? But there are other ways to appease us."
Desperate, I offered myself in place of my son. "Take me," I pleaded. "Just leave my family alone."
The spirit considered my offer, its eyes narrowing. "A noble sacrifice," it mused. "But we require something more. Your life alone is not enough. You must bind your bloodline to us, ensuring that our connection endures."
The full weight of the spirit’s demand crashed down on me. Binding my bloodline meant condemning future generations to the same darkness I had tried so hard to escape. But there was no other way to protect Tommy and ensure his immediate safety.
With a heavy heart, I agreed. "I will bind my bloodline to you," I said, my voice breaking. "But spare my son and allow us to live in peace for as long as we can."
The spirit’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction. "So be it," it said, extending a shadowy hand. "Seal the pact."
With trembling hands, I used the ceremonial dagger to cut my palm, letting the blood drip onto the ancient parchment. The runes glowed bright red, and the hum intensified, resonating through the garden and into the night.
As the ritual concluded, the shadowy figure dissipated, and the garden fell silent once more. The oppressive presence lifted, leaving me drained but relieved. I returned to the house, where Sarah and Tommy slept soundly, unaware of the pact that had been made.
The next morning, I buried the grimoire and the ceremonial items deep in the forest, far from our home. The garden slowly returned to its natural state, free from the monstrous growths and eerie hum. Life continued, seemingly peaceful, but I could never forget the price we had paid.
Years later, as I watched Tommy grow into a bright and inquisitive young man, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of dread. The spirits’ hunger had been sated for now, but the pact I had made would hang over our family like a dark cloud, a chilling reminder of the darkness that lurked just beneath the surface.
In the quiet moments, when the wind rustled through the trees or the moon cast long shadows across the yard, I could still hear the faint, sinister hum; a reminder that the spirits were always watching, waiting for the next chapter of our bloodline to unfold.
Thats what I heard from the news...
but to give you context.. we have to go back 30 or so years in the past...
1992/03/18: I was six at the time and I was just your average boy just playing outside with friends and getting some ice cream but then out of nowhere a guy came up to us enthusiastically and asked us
"Hey Kids! You wanna go to Runky and Friends World?"
To which some of my friends decided they wanna go there, I hesitated but then I decided to ask my parents for days and then after days of telling I would do my chores or anything just to go they finally had enough and they calmed down and looked at me and said
"Fine... we can go to Runky and Friends World, But! on one condition, You will have to do extra chores for a week, Ok?"
"Yes Yes Yes!!! I promise I will do them!"
And then the next day as I got up I brushed my teeth, took a shower but then... I saw a weird looking silhouette and when I checked it was... no one.. weird.
So I then got dressed and packed up and then we drove and as soon as we got there... I suddenly felt... weird...
I thought it was nothing and we went inside and got our tickets but then... Runky the Clown came and I hugged him the second I saw him.. But he just pushed me aside saying that I could hug him later...
That was weird... But it gets worse
I then saw runky just being a huge asshole towards kids and adults and he even said death threats... yes.. Death Threats... and I was 6 years old and then after some rides and eating some weird pizza it was time and as I went to runky again I hugged him and his behavior changed...
he was way nicer and he led me to a place and I sat with the other children...
But I'll never forget what he's done...
He then got something and I thought it might be a trick and it was you regular "I will cut this woman in half" sort of thing..
I sighed as this was a bit boring... but then he took a chainsaw and just went for it... and the woman was screaming as if it wasn't staged and 6 year old me thought of stopping him but.. what could a child do against a man who's maybe more than 6ft tall...
But the children just watched with... joy... and that was very creepy as even the adults were amused as if its not something horrifying... but then a girl asked me
"Hey! are you ok?"
I turned to her and turned back... but the woman wasn't bleeding but it looked like if it was the normal thing... and even when I was a kid my parents would swear and I was pretty smart and I said in my mind
"What. The. Fuck"
And the second trick was a man and he was tied up to a wheel and he didn't have anything on.. and the kids and adults were again amused but... as I rubbed my eyes runky was inches away from my face and he asked in a somewhat sinister way
"Why aren't you watching the show? Is there something in your eye? here... let me help"
"No thank you sir!"
and it was still the same thing... the man soon turned out to be dead... and there was blood on the wheel... I had to get out... but I couldn't...
I saw many of his "Tricks" and "Stunts" and every single one of them was horrifying than the last... I wished I wanted to make it seem like a horror joke but... I wished I never saw that
I wished I never got Coulrophobia...
I wished I didn't see it...
But its too late...
and today Runky is on the loose...
DO NOT let your kids out, not in any circumstances..
He's a clown that's hungry for blood...
The Clown that always hunts for prey...
The Clown thats a devil in disguise..
Its been 30 years since I went there and it has been 21 years since I saw the news..
He's still there.. watching and waiting to hunt and kill you..
NEVER go to Runky and Friends world
I never thought a painting could ruin someone’s life—but then again, my brother was always different.
He’s always been a strange guy, often lost in thoughts that seem just out of reach—like his theory that colors evoke emotions more powerfully than words. It’s not entirely baseless, but it feels detached from reality. He sees himself as an “artiste,” constantly rebelling against the mundane. His paintings, though technically skilled, lack the spark that makes them remarkable. He insists, “The real world doesn’t sell,” but neither do his paintings.
Don’t get me wrong; I love him. He’s always been there for me in his own way. Like that time he scared off my bullies with a few quiet, cutting words. I still don’t know what he said, but they never bothered me again. That’s just who he is—someone who seems to understand people in ways I envy.
Not everyone sees him like I do. He’s eccentric, and most people write him off as absentminded. But to me, he’s always been more than just my older brother. He practically raised me after Dad left. Sure, he’s frustrating at times—he drifts through life while I clean up the messes. I paid Mom’s bills when she couldn’t work and helped him with his rent more times than I can count. Still, he’s my brother, and even if his paintings aren’t great, I’ve always admired his dedication.
That’s why his disappearance hit me so hard.
We usually text a few times a week, but in October, he went silent. At first, I wasn’t worried; he does this sometimes. He’ll disappear for a few weeks, then reappear, inviting me over to see his latest “masterpiece.” His work is always technically brilliant, but the concepts tend to be… lacking. I’d smile and nod, feigning interest because I know how much it means to him.
By mid-October, though, something felt off. My texts went unanswered. Even his social media went quiet. I assumed he was sulking—he’s sensitive and hates criticism. Maybe he thought I wasn’t being honest about his art. But as the weeks dragged on, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was different.
When November rolled around, I called our mom. She hadn’t heard from him either. That’s when I knew something was seriously wrong. We decided to check his apartment. Mom has a spare key, but I asked her to wait in the hallway while I went inside. I don’t know what I expected—maybe the worst. But when I opened the door, everything looked… normal.
His apartment was neat, almost eerily so. There were unfinished canvases scattered around, which was strange. He never starts a new piece until the last one is complete. The air was stale, like the place had been empty for a while.
In his bedroom, I found an open laptop resting on his perfectly made bed and, beside it, a journal. He’s always kept journals, saying they help him organize his thoughts. I picked it up, hoping it would give me some clue about where he went.
Flipping through the pages, I saw the familiar chaotic mix of sketches, notes, and thoughts. But it was the last entry before he stopped responding to me that caught my attention.
October 3, 2024 10:34 PM
“I’ve struggled to find real inspiration lately, but that’s changed. My brother always enjoys my Halloween pieces, but this year, he’s going to love what I create. Finding genuine inspiration is a pain, but the internet never disappoints. I discovered a streamer named Caitastrophe. Her name is Caitlin, and there’s something about her I can’t get out of my head. Her ethereal theme has my mind spinning. I hope she doesn’t mind, but I think combining her beauty with a ghost-like design could lead to an incredible painting, something perfect for Halloween. He’s going to love it.”
I don’t know why, but reading that gave me chills. I’d never heard him mention this Caitlin before. Something about the way he described her felt… off. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my brother had found exactly what he was looking for—and that it had already taken hold of him.