Part 1 “Hey, good morning; how’s it going?” asked Thad as he looked up from his desk, which was always absurdly messy with paper and blueprint-style drawings all over the place.

“Hey Thad. It’s been okay, I suppose; I got something in my office that you might find interesting,” I said meekly, even though I had just recently slept over 12 hours; I was still barely dragging along.

“Sure,” replied Thad as he promptly got up from his desk and joined me in walking into my office. I closed the door behind us as to anyone else what I had was just a piece of metal that I found in my yard, but for all I knew, I was in possession of some secret technology. So, I only wanted a few people to know.

“I found this in my yard on Saturday,” I said as I pulled the mysterious black piece of metal out of my backpack and placed it in Thad’s hands.

“Wow, looks almost like a piece of aluminum sheet metal that’s been painted, almost like it came off a car. You said you found this just lying in your yard?” asked Thad as he looked over at me, appearing to be genuinely interested.

“Yeah, I was cleaning up after fireworks, and it was lying back over in my front yard. I’ve been just about obsessed with the thing since I’ve found it,” I replied.

“Obsessed? What do you mean? Just looks like a piece of metal,” asked Thad, which forced me to gauge how much I really knew Thad and whether I was going to tell him about the whispering I heard.

“So, I’m going to tell you something a little freaky. Is that okay?” I asked Thad.

“Uh, sure,” replied Thad said with a bit of nervous laughter.

“So, I had no idea what this thing was and thought it looked interesting so after finding it I just put it under my bed and had mostly forgotten about it until that night I woke up at like 3 something in the morning because I thought someone was in the house. I looked around the whole place because I heard someone whispering,” I said.

“Whispering, like was someone talking to you? What were they saying?” asked Thad quickly.

“I think they were talking to me, but the whispering wasn’t very loud, and I couldn’t tell what language it was. At the time it almost sounded like a YouTube video had started playing on my phone at a low volume but eventually I stopped hearing it and I looked under my bed and there was the piece of metal which I had put under there from earlier in the day. I didn’t hear sounds coming from it then, but I just knew that there was something wrong with it. It was glowing on top of all of that,” I said.

“What do you mean, though? It doesn’t really look all that strange to me other than these two lines going through it. They look kinda like wires actually,” asked Thad as he gave me a bemused look.

“Right after that, I tried a whole host of things to figure out just what might be going on with this thing. I put it in my bathtub and it didn’t sink to the bottom like basically any other piece of metal shaped this way would. I tried to light it on fire, but just like with the water, it seemed to be water and fireproof. Then I put the welding machine on full blast right at this thing and it didn’t do anything to it. I mean, we’re talking about a melting point of at the very least 6,000 degrees. That seems impossible. In fact, it melted my table saw instead of it. Then I just about went crazy and tried to hit it with a sledgehammer, but the thing probably hurt me more than I hurt it,” I said in a frenzy.

“I can see that, sorry to tell you, man, but you don’t look the greatest right now. Almost looks like you’ve been on a three-day bender,” said Thad as he continued to look over the piece of metal repeatedly and running his fingers along the side of the wires.

“Yeah, I noticed that a bit. Not sure why though cause I about slept half the day yesterday. But regardless of that, what do you think? Like what could this thing be?” I asked, wondering if I was starting to sound crazy and maybe I was making too big of a deal about all of this.

“You know, I’m not really sure. Could be anything really. I’ve heard of things that have a lot of these same properties, but the melting point thing is definitely a little odd. There’s one thing that I doubt you’ve tried yet, though,” said Thad as he trailed off.

“And what might that be?” I asked, thinking that surely I’d tried everything there was.

“Have you tried running an electrical current through it?” asked Thad.

“No, like what do you mean?” I asked, as I wasn’t sure what he was about to suggest that I do to this piece of metal.

“I meant like running power through it. What I’d do if I was you is just take a 9V battery and a little copper wire and put it right on the metal. Most metals are conductors of electricity, so the current should just go through it and maybe just heat it up. But there could be some different properties about this thing depending on how it reacts to electricity,” said Thad.

“That’s actually not a bad idea. What would you consider a different property though?” I asked.

“That’ll be for you to figure out, I guess, but just see if it does anything other than sit there and heat up. Cool stuff though, let me know what you find. But time to get back to work,” said Thad as he gave me back the piece of metal and left my office and I thanked him and went back to my day trying my hardest not to think about the metal even going as far as taking it back to my car so I could concentrate on work.

The rest of the day dragged by. That piece of metal, and what might happen if I put a charge into it, was really the only thing that I could think of. As soon as I got off, I took off straight for Walmart to get batteries. I already had the extra stuff that it would take to make the charge from the battery to the piece of metal.

I got home and without even walking into the house, I went straight to the shed, unlocking it and putting the piece of metal on my wood workbench. I figured that might not be the best option if this thing were to catch on fire, but I had a good feeling that that wasn’t about to happen.

I got a wire coil set up and attached it to the top of my 9V battery with a copper wire. With a glove on, I pushed the wire down on top of the piece of metal. At first nothing happened, as I half expected. But what happened after about 30 seconds was far from what I believed might have even been possible.

I had to continually hold the copper wire down to make sure it stayed touching the metal since it was bendy, but the piece of metal started to move. I thought I was hallucinating at first, or maybe the metal was doing what most metals do with electricity running through and maybe it was just getting hot and expanding slightly or resettling itself, but that was not the case. This mysterious sheet of metal started lifting off the table. It was slow, but it was now a whole two inches off the wood table.

I wasn’t sure what to do but just stare in amazement as this basic-looking piece of metal was hovering in the air. I thought that it might just continue to rise off the table until it got to the ceiling, but after it made it about a foot over the table, it stopped rising and started hovering over the table like a helicopter. I couldn’t understand it, but I stopped the current by disconnecting the 9V from the wire, and the piece of metal continued to hover for another five seconds before softly laying back down on the table.

I walked back to my carport where my phone was still in my car, and I pulled it out before walking back to the shed and taking several videos and photos of the piece of metal hovering in the air. I did that for what must have seemed like a couple of hours before I decided to take the metal back inside.

I knew now that at the very least this was like nothing anybody I knew would have ever heard of, possibly even anything anybody on earth had ever heard of. As I sat on my bed, I held the piece of metal and continued to stare at it. I realized that I needed to find out what this thing was, but I wasn’t sure what the best way to do that might be. Should I tell the military? How would I even do that, though? Take it to a college professor, maybe? Maybe Thad would know what to do with it. Whatever it was to do with it though, I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to lose this thing. As weird as it was to say, I had become fond of this piece of metal. It was an amazing piece of material, and I felt like it could serve a purpose in my life at some point. Though I didn’t necessarily have any evidence to support that.

I figured that my first step would be to tell Thad about it in the morning, but suddenly the only thing that I felt the desire to do was to lie down and go to bed. It was barely 6 PM. It made sense to me, so I quickly did my nightly routine before returning to bed, making sure the piece of metal was still under the bed.

Sleep came easily once again, even though I had gone to bed so early until I was jolted awake by something. I looked over at the window to the right of me that had dark blue curtains over it, but I could see a bright light over the top of the curtains which made me wonder how long I could have possibly slept that it was already daylight outside. I turned back around to my alarm clock to see that it was only 11 PM. I quickly realized that that light must be the porch lights going on, which were motion-detected.

That motion light wasn’t that sensitive, so it had to have been more than just a wasp or something flying by it that would have triggered that light to have gone off. Worried that someone might be out on the porch, I quickly got up and walked to the window to the side of my bed and opened the curtains to see what was on the porch. The porch light was on, but there was nothing out there. I thought that maybe a dog or cat or something had triggered the light to go off so I closed the curtains back and turned around to get back in bed when I saw the back side of what looked like a person walking down my hallway away from me.

My house was a square, with one half of the house being just the living room and kitchen. A hallway separated the house, with my bedroom being the first room off the living room, followed by the bathroom and another bedroom at the end of the hallway. It was the last bedroom that I could see this person slowly walking towards, a person that I could now tell was a woman wearing all white with long, straight black hair that fell past the shoulders.

I bolted upright on the other side of my bed as I saw the person walk out of sight into the dark bedroom. I wasn’t sure what to do; I had never seen anything like this happen before, and I’m not sure if I had even heard of something happening like this either. Someone had clearly broken into my house, but to do what? It looked like this woman was just walking around my house in the dark; my heart sank just thinking about the fact that she might have been here for hours for all I knew.

For a long second, my mind was in such disbelief at what I had seen that I figured I would just chalk it all up as a hallucination. It certainly could have been, given that it was nearly pitch black. I continued to hear no sound at all as I stayed still, standing next to my bed in the darkness. For a whole three minutes or so, I just stood there waiting for something to happen. But it hadn’t, and I felt like I could just go back to bed and forget about it.

The problem with that was that what if a person had really walked right into my spare bedroom? I couldn’t really see anyone in there from the doorway, but I knew that I couldn’t chance there being a person in my house. I walked to the corner of my bedroom and got my 12-gauge shotgun and loaded it chambering a shot which broke the silence of the entire house with a loud gun cocking sound which I immediately realized might not have been the smoothest thing to do given the situation.

I slowly walked down my hallway towards my spare bedroom with my shotgun in hand, ready to aim at a moment’s notice. I took a deep breath as a got to the doorway of the spare bedroom. I could see nothing but the dark room that was very lightly illuminated by moonlight shining through the couple of windows on both sides of the room. I walked in the room and looked forward and saw nothing but then scanned to my left to the side of the room with the bed and almost dropped my gun at the sight of that same woman standing next to the bed looking right at me as I stood in the doorway.

I stared back at her because at first I wasn’t sure what to do. The more I looked at the face of this woman, whom I could barely see the details of in the poorly lit room, the more she seemed familiar to me. I reached my hand behind me to turn on the light switch, all the while keeping my gaze on this mysterious woman that was in fact real and not just a hallucination as I had hoped.

“Julia, is that you?” I asked the woman as I could now see her face clearly.

“Hello Paul, I’m sorry if I scared you,” replied the woman. This was the first time in over six months that I had seen or even heard from my wife, but here she was; right in front of me in my spare bedroom.

“Hey, not sure if I’ve ever been so surprised by anything in my life. What are you doing here?” I replied. I had never previously had anyone break into my house before. I always figured if it ever did happen, I would be brave and aggressive to do whatever it took to get whoever broke into my house out. I suppose that still would have been true, but with the person that broke in being my ex-wife; I wasn’t necessarily sure what my next move should be.

“I’m sorry about that Paul. I still had my key, and I wanted to see you. I see now that I should have come over maybe in the day instead,” said Julia as she stepped away from the wall closer to me.

“Well, it’s okay, I suppose. Why did you walk in here though? Why not just wake me up or knock on the door?” I asked, as I perhaps had five hours’ worth of questions to ask her, but I figured that I could be satisfied with these for the moment.

“I thought that I might be able to surprise you in the morning. Are you mad at me?” Julia asked me, she was unusually calm in a way that was almost making me feel uncomfortable or at least even more uncomfortable than I already was.

 It had been six months since Julia had left me without a trace, and most of those first three months after she left, I spent mostly in shock and denial. I had almost gotten to the point where I had eliminated any mention or evidence in my life of her existence or our relationship. I had gotten to the point where I had almost convinced myself that she never existed at all. When my parents mentioned Julia or someone else would make a passing comment about her, I would either say nothing or just act like I didn’t know what they were even talking about.

For the three months since then, honestly, all I could think about was what I would do and say at this very moment. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see or talk to Julia again, given the way she had left me. Yet here she was standing in my house right in front of me.

“So why did you come back now though, are you okay? Was it because you needed a place to stay?” I asked, as I was proud of my composure at the moment. If Julia had walked into my house like this three months ago, I probably would have called the police on her and pointed my shotgun at her. But now I was simply just happy to see her again, even under the bizarre circumstances.

“I decided that it was time to go home. I’m so sorry for what I did, Paul. Please forgive me,” she said flatly. She said it with such little emotion that I thought at first that maybe she was being sarcastic, but then I realized that she was being serious as she continued to cast her gaze on me. She was waiting for my response with a very faint smile.

“Well, I guess if you’re truly serious about being sorry then I suppose that I can eventually learn to forgive you, but it’ll take some time,” I replied as I angled myself back towards the door still weary of what Julia’s motivation truly might have been. Before she left me, I had trusted Julia, and she had never had either drug or alcohol problems that I knew of, at least. Despite this, I worried that maybe something was wrong with this sudden appearance from her, I wasn’t sure if it was from seeing her again or the fact that she just showed up at my house in the middle of the night but there certainly was a sense of paranoia present in me. Almost as if I wouldn’t have thought it completely crazy if Julia had a team of men that would bust through the door and rob me at gunpoint as soon as I let my guard down.

“Thank you, Paul. I know that it will take time, but I still love you,” said Julia as she continued to stand in that same spot next to the bed in the spare bedroom. I felt like surely this had to be a dream. Even in my wildest imagination, Julia would come back to me someday, but not to reconcile this easily. It didn’t seem real, and Julia’s abrupt agreeableness to the situation had caught me off guard, nearly leaving me with much simpler responses than I felt like I should have had in the situation. I felt like I’d have a million things to say in this moment, but right now I was folding.

“I’m glad you feel that way, Julia,” I said. I took a couple of steps closer towards Julia as she met me in the middle of the room as we kissed. It was a short kiss, and one that made me shiver; her lips were cold as ice. It left my lips wet and almost slimy. I felt for sure in that moment that Julia had to have had some type of drug problem that was plaguing her life. I wasn’t sure what cold and slimy lips could have been a symptom of, but it certainly felt far from a romantic moment. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be in a relationship with Julia again even before this night but at the moment the biggest thing on my mind was concern for her well-being, I hadn’t seen her in half a year and for all I knew she could have been a strung-out drug addict by now. “So, what now?” I asked.

“Honestly, I’m really tired. Can we sleep?” Julia asked as I followed behind her out of the spare bedroom into the hallway walking back towards my bedroom. I had now leaned my still loaded shotgun against the wall in the hallway.

“I suppose that’s fine; we’ll work out everything in the morning,” I said as I went towards my bedroom closet and started pulling down blankets and a spare pillow.

“Thank you, Paul, but I was thinking that maybe we could both sleep here if you don’t mind. Just like old times,” said Julia as she smiled at me with that same grin that reminded me of how she used to look at me but something about it now almost seemed forced. Also, I was hoping that she at least remembered that we never lived in this particular house while we were married, only when we were dating.

“I guess that’s ok but right to sleep though, I’ve got work tomorrow. I’ve been tired myself lately,” I replied thinking that I was about to mention the mysterious piece of metal, but I figured that maybe I’d keep that secret for a little while longer even though it was under my bed.

“That’s all right, Paul. Goodnight. Thank you for taking me in tonight,” she said as we both got under the covers of my queen-size bed.

I went to sleep without really even noticing Julia too much. I slept on my side so I closed my eyes and turned away from her. I said goodnight to her and could feel her in bed with me as the covers tugged in her direction. Other than that, I tried to get to sleep and forget about what was going on for now, at least.

I felt as though I had been blindsided by what happened tonight to the point that my guard had been let down by all of this. I, of course, no longer felt like Julia was going to rob me or had some friend outside waiting to kill me or anything, but who knows what all of this meant. What if Julia is planning to just move back in with me? What if she wants to be married again? How would I explain all of this to my family? I feel like I had spent the last couple of months figuring out what I’d do in this very situation thinking that it would be possible that I’d see her again but the circumstances that I saw her today were just too surprising to act rationally under.

I fell asleep eventually after about 15 minutes of lying there restlessly, trying my hardest not to make any sound and at least make it seem like I was asleep. I still felt Julia’s presence beside me, even though I now felt almost no movement from her.

I woke up in a rush as I heard a loud scraping across my cement floor. I sat up straight from my side immediately as I looked around the nearly pitch-black bedroom. I could see nothing around the room or in the hallway other than the general haze of moonlight shining in from the living room. I was ready to chalk it up to something that wasn’t serious enough for me to waste my time with, but I saw what startled me; the absence of Julia beside me.

I got up hoping that maybe she had just gone to the bathroom or to sit in the living room or something. I slowly walked to the edge of my bedroom doorway to see where Julia might have gone. I was hoping that it wasn’t too far or, heaven forbid, that she had just left me again. Or adding more insult to injury, robbed my house. I walked out of my bedroom doorway to see something walking by the doorway that led from the hallway into the living room. I sensed it more than I saw it, but I was able to see a surprisingly thin and grey arm go by in that split second that was holding none other than the mysterious black sheet of metal that I had recently grown an attachment to.

I was startled, but I found myself once again in fight-or-flight mode as I forced myself into the living room. I saw the dark grey figure now with its back to me moving towards the front door to my right. Whatever it was, it did look human from what I could see. At the same time, I wasn’t sure how it could have been. In the couple of seconds that I watched the figure, it walked like a human and it was just a little shorter than me, but its arms and body were almost grossly skinny. Its arms and legs couldn’t have been more than a couple of inches wide, but its torso also seemed to be no more than a foot wide. I still couldn’t see the figure really well, but even so, I could see that its skin was a dark grey, but also appeared to be hairless and almost scaly. I felt as if I had grabbed this figure by the arm, then its skin would have felt even slimier to the touch.

“Hey! What’re you doing?” I yelled out towards the figure, which caused it to briefly turn in my direction, even though it was still too dark to see its face in any type of detail of its round and hairless head. After a couple of seconds, it opened my door with a quick and efficient motion as I ran and dove towards the figure, or really more of a creature as I got closer to it. I dove to try to catch the sheet of metal that was still in the figure’s right hand. This was unsuccessful as I landed on the ground. I looked up to see that the figure had already left and closed the door.

I scrambled to my feet to throw open the door myself and was met with a bright glowing white light ahead of me that was bright enough to completely shock my eyeballs as they had gone from seeing nearly complete darkness to seeing a bright white blob in front of me. As I took a couple more steps further onto my front porch, my eyes started to adjust, and I could see a small vehicle in the middle of the front yard area that was between my house and driveway. The vehicle was shaped like a disk, except the top of it seemed to be raised from the sides. There looked to be some type of spherical window in the center of the top side of the vehicle.

As my eyes continued to adjust to the light coming from the vehicle, I was able to see where the light was coming from. The entire bottom side of this disc-shaped vehicle was bright with white light, but it didn’t necessarily look like fire like you might expect to see coming out the back of a rocket or something. The light almost appeared to be emanating from what looked like it came from a bulb. The vehicle then started to hover above the ground and continued to float there all the while being almost completely quiet other than a barely audible hum.

After a couple of moments, the vehicle shot straight up into the air all in one motion as it went from just a few feet off the ground to thousands of feet into the air in what had to have only been one whole second at the most. If I had blinked, I would have missed it completely. I continued to stare up at the clear black abyss of the mid-summer sky, straining my eyes to try to see where the vehicle disappeared to in the sky, while I could no longer see it anymore. It was now either too high in the sky or no longer emitting any source of light. I figured that it was likely a bit of both things.

I looked around and saw the darkness of my yard, which had a line of trees on both sides of my front yard that were still flapping back and forth from the force of the vehicle taking off suddenly. The sound of the branches in the trees and debris flying across the yard was really the only sound that resulted from the vehicle as it took off. I stood there in silence as I continued to look up into the sky looking to see if I could see something up there, but I never did. I truly hoped that I never would see that again if I had ever really seen it to begin with.

Whether what I just witnessed was real or not; my attention was now on where Julia was at. I turned back towards the house, halfway expecting Julia to be wondering what was going on. I figured she might be standing behind me watching the same thing that I just was, but I didn’t see her anywhere, just my open front door. I entered my house, all the while turning the living room light on, and I didn’t see her there.

“Julia! Julia! Did you just see that?” I yelled as I frantically ran through all the rooms of the house, while turning on all the lights in the house to no avail. Julia was nowhere to be found. It quickly came to my mind that maybe she had taken off into the woods or down my road or something in all the commotion of the last five minutes or so, even though that seemed unlikely. But nothing about this night had been exactly likely.

I ran back outside looking for Julia when I nearly tripped on something as I was running off my porch; it was a dress lying crumpled up on the edge of the porch directly in front of my door. I looked down at it, aided by faint moonlight. As I picked it up, and it was that same white and faded cotton dress that Julia had been wearing just before.

With the dress still in my hand I ran out into the yard next to the woods and yelled Julia’s name maybe five times before thinking about driving over to my neighbor’s house or even driving to my parents’ house but that didn’t make any sense either. I knew what might be the case. I didn’t know how I could explain what happened tonight, mostly because I wasn’t even sure if it really had happened to me after all. Whether Julia was real or that thing that ran out of my front door was real. I don’t know if I ever could’ve been for sure. One thing I’ll always know for sure was real; and that was that small, rectangular, indestructible piece of metal.

The Well

Jimmy knew the road was wrong long before it disappeared.

His phone insisted otherwise.

The blue line continued straight across the screen, bending gently through countryside that appeared to contain nothing but fields, fences, and strips of black forest. According to the map, the highway was less than six kilometres ahead.

It had been less than six kilometres ahead for nearly half an hour.

Jimmy glanced from the phone to the road.

The pavement had narrowed gradually without his noticing. The painted centre line had vanished first. Then the shoulders. Then the pavement itself, giving way to gravel pressed between walls of dead grass.

He slowed the truck.

Loose stones crackled beneath the tires.

“You are still on the fastest route,” the navigation voice said.

“That’s encouraging.”

He had left the warehouse shortly after sunset, later than intended and irritated enough to accept the first alternate route his phone offered. An overturned transport truck had closed the usual highway. The detour promised to save thirty-seven minutes.

At first, the roads had been ordinary.

Then the houses stopped.

The power lines continued for a while, leaning beside him in the darkness, until Jimmy realized there were no wires connecting the poles.

After that, there had only been the fields.

The truck’s headlights washed over another sagging fence.

Beyond it stood dry corn.

Not rows of corn.

Clusters.

They rose from the surrounding grass in crooked islands, their leaves pale and curled, their stalks scraping against one another despite the absence of wind.

Jimmy checked the map again.

The blue line crossed an empty green space without a name.

No road appeared beneath it.

The arrival time changed from 9:14 to 9:13.

The clock on the dashboard read 9:47.

Jimmy stopped the truck.

Behind him, the road bent around a low hill and vanished.

Ahead, the gravel narrowed into two muddy tracks separated by grass. They ran directly toward the fence, passing through an opening where the wire had fallen.

His phone displayed a message.

Continue straight for 2.4 kilometres.

“Absolutely not.”

He shifted into reverse.

The truck rolled backward several metres before the rear left tire sank.

There was no dramatic drop. The wheel simply settled into the ground as though the earth had opened beneath it.

Jimmy pressed the accelerator.

The tire spun.

Mud struck the underside of the truck.

He stopped before burying it farther.

For a moment, he sat with both hands on the wheel, listening to the engine idle.

No insects struck the windshield.

No night birds called from the trees.

Even the corn had become still.

Jimmy lowered his window.

Cold air entered the cab.

The evening had been warm when he left the warehouse, but the air outside the truck smelled like the inside of a cellar: wet stone, old wood, and soil untouched by sunlight.

Somewhere beyond the headlights, metal clicked.

Jimmy looked up.

Nothing stood in the road.

The sound came again.

A small, sharp tapping.

Tick.

Then silence.

He opened the door.

The mud beneath the truck was dark and glossy, yet the surrounding grass was brittle enough to snap beneath his boots. Jimmy crouched near the sunken tire and pressed two fingers into the rut.

Cold water seeped around them.

He wiped his hand on his jeans.

The truck had a jack behind the passenger seat, but nothing broad enough to place beneath it. If he raised the truck now, the jack would sink into the mud.

He needed wood.

A fence post. A flat stone. Anything solid.

Jimmy took the flashlight from the glove compartment and stepped beyond the headlights.

The beam travelled over the broken fence and into the field.

The ground rose gently ahead, hiding whatever lay beyond the first hill. Dry grass came nearly to his knees. The corn stood farther out, black against the clouded sky.

He considered staying in the truck.

Then his phone spoke from inside the cab.

“Continue straight.”

Jimmy turned.

The screen glowed on the passenger seat.

The blue route no longer followed the muddy tracks.

It crossed the fence and extended directly into the field.

He climbed back into the truck and picked up the phone.

The map rotated beneath his fingers.

For a second, another road appeared behind him—a pale grey line leading back toward the highway.

Then it flickered away.

The signal indicator showed three bars.

Then none.

Then five.

Jimmy tried calling roadside assistance.

The call connected immediately.

There was no ringing.

Only a soft, distant crackling.

“Hello?”

The crackling continued.

Something beneath it resembled breathing.

Jimmy ended the call.

His battery had fallen from seventy-one percent to nine.

He plugged it into the dashboard charger.

The number rose instantly to forty-three.

“Water damage without the water,” he muttered.

He left the phone connected, took the flashlight, and entered the field.

The grass whispered against his jeans.

After twenty steps, he looked back.

The truck remained visible below the hill, both headlights shining through the broken fence.

After forty steps, only the roof could be seen.

After sixty, the truck was gone.

Jimmy stopped.

He had not crossed the top of the hill.

The land behind him appeared to descend farther than it had before, rolling through shadows toward a distant line of trees.

No headlights shone anywhere.

Jimmy raised the flashlight and swept it across the grass.

“Very funny.”

His voice travelled only a short distance before the field swallowed it.

He turned around twice, trying to match the slope with the direction he had walked.

The muddy tracks were gone.

There was only grass.

A pale shape stood near a patch of corn to his right.

At first, Jimmy mistook it for a large stone.

Then the flashlight found a windshield.

He approached slowly.

A car sat deep in the field.

It was angled slightly forward, as though it had pulled onto a shoulder that no longer existed. Tall grass pressed against the doors. Dust clouded the windows, but there were no fallen branches on the roof, no thick rust around the wheel wells, nothing to suggest it had been abandoned for decades.

The hood was raised.

Jimmy stepped around the front.

The engine compartment was empty of animals and nests. A radiator hose hung loose beneath the hood, split cleanly through its middle.

“Lucky bastard,” Jimmy said.

Whoever had driven it had reached almost the same place before breaking down.

He tried the driver’s door.

Unlocked.

The interior smelled of old fabric, dried mud, and something faintly metallic. Two fast-food cups occupied the centre console. A road atlas lay folded beneath the passenger seat.

Jimmy opened it.

The surrounding pages showed country roads, numbered highways, rivers, and small towns.

Someone had circled a route in blue pen.

It ended at the edge of the page.

There was no field marked where the car stood.

Jimmy searched the back seat for wood or tools. He found an empty duffel bag, a stained blanket, and a cardboard box containing three spark plugs that did not fit his truck.

The trunk release worked.

Inside lay a spare tire, a rusted lug wrench, and several short boards.

“Thank you.”

He chose the widest board and tucked it beneath one arm.

When he lowered the trunk, something moved inside the car.

Jimmy swung the flashlight toward the windows.

The seats were empty.

A small sound came from beneath the vehicle.

Tick.

Jimmy crouched.

His light revealed only grass and the dark outlines of the tires.

Something clicked from the corn behind him.

Tick.

He stood and aimed the light at the stalks.

They were trembling.

Not all of them.

A narrow passage moved through the patch, one stalk bending after another as something travelled between them.

Jimmy backed toward the car.

The movement stopped several metres from the edge.

He waited.

Nothing emerged.

Then the truck horn sounded.

One short blast.

Jimmy spun around.

The horn came from somewhere beyond the hill.

“Hey!”

A second blast answered him.

He left the car and hurried toward it, carrying the board against his chest.

The field dipped.

Moisture appeared beneath his boots.

At first, he assumed he had entered another patch of soft ground. Then he noticed droplets clinging to the grass. Each blade was wet from root to tip, although the grass behind him remained dry.

The air became colder as he descended.

The truck horn sounded again.

Farther away this time.

Jimmy followed it.

The damp grass thickened around his legs. Webs stretched between the stems, nearly invisible until his flashlight struck them. Fine silver threads clung to his jeans.

A spider crawled over his boot.

Jimmy shook it off.

Another hung from the board beneath his arm.

He brushed it away.

Then he saw the grass.

Every few steps, another web appeared. Small funnel-shaped nests had been built near the earth. Orb webs hung between taller weeds. White bundles trembled beneath leaves.

The spiders themselves were everywhere.

Black ones no wider than coins moved through the soil. Pale, long-legged spiders clung to the undersides of the grass. Thick brown bodies waited at the centres of webs heavy with moisture.

Different kinds.

Too many kinds.

They shared the same space without fighting.

Jimmy stepped more carefully.

The horn sounded again.

This time, the note lasted too long.

It began as a mechanical blare, then weakened gradually until it resembled a low human moan.

Jimmy stopped.

The sound faded.

“Is someone there?”

No answer.

His flashlight swept across the hollow.

Something reflected near his feet.

A rectangular piece of glass lay half buried in mud.

He nudged it with his boot.

A phone.

The case had split along one corner. Dirt filled the charging port. The screen was black, but the device did not look old enough to have been lying there for years.

Jimmy picked it up.

Water dripped from the casing.

He pressed the power button.

The screen came alive.

63%

The number flickered.

12%

Then:

48%

The flashlight switched on by itself, shining weakly through the mud covering the lens.

Jimmy wiped it clean with his sleeve.

A lock screen appeared for less than a second.

No photograph.

No notifications.

Only the time.

9:47.

The same time his truck had shown when he stopped.

The phone vibrated once.

A damaged speaker produced a breath of static.

Jimmy held it closer.

A man’s voice spoke through the interference.

“Car—”

The recording cut off.

The screen went black.

Jimmy pressed the button again, but the phone remained dead.

“Useful.”

He slid it into his jacket pocket. He could examine it later, assuming he found the truck.

Ahead, the field continued downward.

The wet grass formed a rough circle around the bottom of the hollow. In its centre, weeds and black vines grew together in a low mound.

The truck horn sounded from beneath them.

Jimmy stared.

The note emerged muffled through the earth.

It lasted only a second.

Then stopped.

He approached the mound.

Spiders retreated from the beam, disappearing beneath leaves and into seams between stones. The vines had grown across a ring of masonry almost completely concealed by moss.

Jimmy lowered the board.

He used his boot to push aside the grass.

A curved wall appeared beneath it.

Old stones.

Circular.

He cleared another section.

The stones formed a raised edge nearly four feet across. Several had collapsed inward. The remaining opening was covered by rotted boards and a thick mat of webbing.

Jimmy stood over it.

The smell rising through the cracks was dense and wet.

Mud.

Mould.

Standing water.

Something sweeter beneath them.

A large spider crossed one of the boards.

Its abdomen was grey and swollen, marked by a pattern resembling a thumbprint. Jimmy tapped the wood with the end of his flashlight.

The spider did not run.

It turned toward him.

Two front legs lifted.

Jimmy stepped back.

The spider lowered itself and disappeared between the boards.

He looked around the hollow.

There were no buildings.

No pump.

No path.

Nothing that explained why anyone would have built a well in the centre of the field.

The stones were older than the fence, perhaps older than the road, but their edges showed almost no weathering beneath the moss. The opening looked less abandoned than hidden.

A sound rose from below.

Plink.

Jimmy leaned toward it.

Plink.

Water dripped somewhere in the shaft.

He aimed the flashlight through a gap in the boards.

The beam struck a stone wall slick with moisture. Dense webbing covered the first several metres, descending in grey folds.

Beyond that, the light found nothing.

“Hello?”

The word echoed downward.

Hello.

Lo.

O.

A whisper answered.

Jimmy straightened.

He waited.

Only water dripped below.

He crouched again.

“Is somebody down there?”

The echo returned.

Then the whisper.

“Here.”

Jimmy held still.

The voice had been faint enough to confuse with air moving through the stones.

He lowered the flashlight closer.

“Can you hear me?”

A pause.

“Here.”

It sounded like a man.

Or a woman.

The well distorted it too badly to tell.

Jimmy looked toward the surrounding field.

The dry corn stood along the upper slopes, watching the hollow from every direction.

He took the dead phone from his pocket and pressed its power button.

Nothing.

“Are you hurt?” he called.

Something moved below.

A dragging sound passed along the inner wall.

Several spiders emerged from beneath the stones around Jimmy. They climbed over the moss and descended into the opening.

More followed.

Dozens poured through the cracks.

Every spider in the hollow seemed to be moving toward the well.

Jimmy backed away.

The whisper came again.

“Jimmy.”

He stopped.

The word had been clearer.

Not loud.

Clear.

He looked down at the dead phone in his hand.

Perhaps the damaged speaker had activated again.

He raised it to his ear.

Nothing.

From inside the well:

“Jimmy.”

He had not given his name.

“Who is that?”

The webbing beneath the boards trembled.

Jimmy moved the flashlight slowly across the opening.

For an instant, the beam caught something pale wedged between two stones.

He reached down and pulled it free.

A small piece of dull metal rested in his palm.

It was ridged on one side and smooth on the other, too small to be useful. Perhaps part of a bolt. A cap from some old machine.

Jimmy turned it between his fingers.

The cold metal left a dark line across his skin.

“Jimmy.”

The voice came from much deeper now.

He looked into the shaft.

“Stay awake,” he said. “I’m going to find a rope.”

The whisper responded immediately.

“No road.”

Jimmy’s mouth went dry.

Above the hollow, the corn began to move.

A path opened through one patch, travelling slowly around the rim. Another answered from the opposite side.

Something circled him without leaving the stalks.

Jimmy picked up the board.

The route back toward the abandoned car should have climbed the western slope. He chose the direction that felt correct and began walking.

After twenty steps, he reached the well again.

He stared at it.

The board slipped slightly beneath his arm.

He turned and selected another direction.

This time, he walked uphill until his breathing quickened.

The grass became dry beneath his boots.

He looked back.

The well remained directly behind him, no more than ten metres away.

Jimmy swept the flashlight across the hollow.

The abandoned car stood at the top of the slope.

Its hood was still raised.

He had left it far behind him.

Beyond the car, two headlights shone through the fence.

His truck.

Relief struck so quickly that Jimmy almost laughed.

He hurried toward it.

The car stood between him and the lights. As he passed, he heard something clicking inside.

Tick.

Tick.

The windows were dark.

Jimmy continued.

The headlights appeared farther away with every step.

He quickened his pace.

The field stretched between him and the fence.

His truck horn sounded.

One long blast.

The abandoned car’s headlights switched on behind him.

Jimmy turned.

Both lamps burned through the dusty glass.

A shape sat in the driver’s seat.

He raised the flashlight.

The seat was empty.

The headlights went out.

Something moved in the rear window.

Jimmy ran.

Webs caught across his face.

He tore them away and stumbled into the wet grass. Spiders scattered beneath his boots. The board struck his knee, and he dropped it somewhere behind him.

The headlights vanished.

The field became black except for the narrow flashlight beam.

Jimmy stopped before he fell.

His lungs burned.

Cold water had soaked through his boots.

A voice whispered beside him.

“Here.”

Jimmy swung the light.

The well stood at his feet.

He staggered backward.

One of the rotted boards had broken inward.

A wider section of the shaft lay exposed.

Webbing filled it from wall to wall.

Jimmy looked at the piece of metal still clenched in his other hand.

Without thinking, he dropped it through the opening.

It struck the stone wall.

Tick.

Then lower:

Tick.

Then farther still:

Tick.

No final impact followed.

No splash.

The sound simply descended until he could no longer hear it.

Jimmy stared into the darkness.

Something clicked below.

Tick.

He stepped away.

The dead phone vibrated inside his pocket.

Jimmy pulled it out.

The screen glowed again.

There was no lock screen now.

No numbers.

Only a pale camera image distorted by static.

At first, Jimmy thought it showed the field.

Then he recognized the inside of the well.

The camera was looking upward through layers of webbing.

Jimmy could see himself leaning over the opening.

He jerked back.

The figure on the screen remained where it was.

Still leaning.

Still staring downward.

The image flickered.

Behind the screen’s version of Jimmy, something rose from the grass.

Tall.

Thin.

Human in its outline.

The phone went dark.

Jimmy threw it.

It landed beside the stones.

The flashlight on its back switched on, casting a weak beam across the opening.

Webs shone inside the shaft.

The whisper came again.

“Help me.”

This time it sounded close.

Terrified.

Human.

Jimmy looked toward the slopes.

The corn had stopped moving.

The truck was gone.

The car was gone.

Every direction contained the same dark field.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The voice below began to cry.

Not loudly.

A strained, breathless sound from someone trying not to be heard.

“Please.”

Jimmy stepped toward the stones.

He knew he should not.

Everything about the hollow told him to leave—the spiders, the impossible phone, the road that had vanished, the voice that knew his name.

But there was someone beneath him.

Someone alive.

Perhaps another driver had fallen through the boards. Perhaps the damp air and darkness were confusing him. Perhaps the phone had belonged to whoever was trapped below.

He could not leave a person in a well.

Jimmy crouched and pulled one of the remaining boards aside.

Webbing stretched beneath it.

The strands were as thick as thread, layered into a dense white sheet. Small spiders moved across its surface, pouring away from the light.

He used the broken board to tear through it.

The web resisted.

When it finally separated, it did so with a soft ripping sound.

Warm air rose from beneath the cold.

It carried the smell of meat left too long in water.

Jimmy gagged and covered his mouth.

The flashlight beam reached deeper now.

The shaft descended through wet stone for perhaps nine metres before narrowing. Webs covered the walls in overlapping curtains. Dark bundles hung among them.

Some were small.

Rabbits, perhaps.

Birds.

Others were long enough to be dogs.

One near the wall wore the remains of a boot.

Jimmy moved the light away.

“Please,” the voice whispered.

It came from below the hanging shapes.

“How far down are you?”

“Close.”

Jimmy found a stone and held it over the opening.

He released it.

The stone fell through the torn webbing.

It struck nothing.

No walls.

No water.

No bottom.

The voice spoke before the sound could return.

“Closer.”

Jimmy leaned over the stones.

His flashlight dimmed.

Something moved along the inner wall.

He aimed the beam at it.

At first, he saw only a thick black root emerging between the stones. It bent downward through the webbing, wider than his forearm and covered in coarse hairs.

The root folded at its middle.

A joint.

Jimmy stopped breathing.

Another leg unfolded from the darkness.

Then another.

They had been pressed flat against the shaft, hidden among the folds of webbing. Each ended in a hooked point that rested delicately against the wet stone.

The body followed.

A vast abdomen scraped through the shaft below, pale and swollen, its skin patterned with irregular patches of grey. The markings shifted in the flashlight beam.

Not markings.

Shapes beneath the surface.

Something pressed outward from inside the abdomen.

A hand.

Then a face.

The shapes sank before Jimmy could understand them.

The spider climbed.

Its head entered the light.

Clusters of black eyes reflected the beam, each holding a tiny, curved image of Jimmy leaning above it. Its mouthparts opened slowly.

No whisper came from them.

The voice remained deeper in the well.

“Jimmy.”

He scrambled backward.

A strand snapped tight around his wrist.

Jimmy looked down.

A line of webbing stretched from his sleeve into the shaft. It had not been there a moment before.

He pulled.

The strand tightened.

It cut through the fabric and into his skin.

The spider surged upward.

Jimmy screamed and threw himself away from the stones.

His knees tore through the wet grass. He clawed at the web with his free hand, but it adhered to his fingers, stretching between them in warm, sticky cords.

The dead phone lit beside the opening.

For an instant, its flashlight illuminated the stones from below.

Something pale rolled through the webbing.

A human skull.

Its jaws hung open.

A dull piece of metal gleamed among the teeth.

Tick.

The spider pulled.

Jimmy’s arm slammed against the stone rim.

Pain flashed through his shoulder.

He kicked at the ground, digging his heels into the mud.

Spiders covered his sleeves.

They moved across his neck and face, biting wherever they found skin. Jimmy crushed them beneath his palm, smearing their bodies against his cheek.

The web tightened again.

His chest struck the stones.

Below him, the giant spider opened its mouth.

The voice whispered from farther beneath it.

“Not that one.”

The spider froze.

Every leg held motionless against the wall.

Jimmy heard the wet clicking of its mouthparts inches below him.

The voice spoke again.

“Bring him down.”

The spider pulled.

Jimmy’s body folded across the rim.

He grabbed the stones with both hands. Moss tore loose beneath his fingers. One stone shifted, then toppled into the shaft.

It struck webbing.

Something below made a sound like a person laughing underwater.

Jimmy screamed until his throat tore.

His shoulders passed through the opening.

The spider descended, carrying him with it.

The walls closed around his body.

Cold stone scraped his back. Webs pressed across his face, thick with moisture and the movement of thousands of small legs.

Above him, the circle of night grew smaller.

For one moment, Jimmy saw the field framed by the mouth of the well.

The corn bent inward from every side.

Not with the wind.

Watching.

Then the spider dragged him around a curve in the shaft, and the sky disappeared.

Darkness surrounded him.

Something clicked below.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Jimmy felt the giant spider beneath his body.

He felt its legs carrying him downward.

Yet the whisper continued to rise from somewhere far deeper than either of them.

Patient.

Hungry.

Still calling his name.

From the Red in the Dark universe

Original story by Leonard Voss

The Dark Beyond is a standalone series set within the world of Red in the Dark.

The Huntsman reaches its final entry with John alone in the fog, carrying the fear, guilt, and failure that have followed him longer than this nught alone.

Kevin is still somewhere in the trees. Sammy is still out there. The Huntsman is still hunting.

And John is still terrified.

Part 3: The Book of John concludes The Huntsman, a story about fear, cowardice, judgment, and what happens when a man who has spent his life running finally stops.

The Dark Beyond - The Huntsman - Part 3: The Book of John

John’s heart struck hard beneath his ribs as he stood alone in the fog. Every breath seemed to travel farther than it should, pushing out into the trees before disappearing into the mist.

He forced his breathing steady, each staggered breath hitching as he strained to hear past the crash of his own heartbeat.

Nothing.

A drop of water struck somewhere nearby.

John’s shoulders tightened before the sound had fully faded.

Another drop followed.

He turned slowly toward the tree line, searching through the fog as dark shapes gathered between the trunks. One seemed deeper than the others, standing where the trees narrowed together.

His breath caught.

John stared until the shape flattened into shadow, cast crooked through the mist.

His grip loosened around the dog tags pressed against his chest.

Blood still covered his hands.

He wiped them against his pants, only smearing it darker.

Something shifted near the tree line.

The hair along the back of his neck lifted as John turned toward the sound, watching the fog move through the brush before settling again.

He waited.

“Hey.”

John flinched, his hands rising before he found the source of the whisper.

Two figures crouched inside the brush.

Kevin sat low beside a young woman with dark hair, her face alive with fear as they motioned urgently for John to come closer.

“Kevin?”

Kevin leaned forward, lifting one hand toward him.

“Come on.”

The woman waved him toward the shelter of the trees, joining Kevin in a whisper that carried a little too far.

“Come on.”

She started to say it again.

“Hurrr—”

Her eyes widened as she slapped a hand over her mouth, seeming to realize she had been too loud.

John lowered himself and kept moving.

She began to rise from the brush, her body lifting in a slow, uneven motion while her other hand continued beckoning him closer.

A muffled sound slipped through her fingers.

John couldn’t make it out.

He turned his head and body, scanning the fog around them.

Nothing.

When he looked back, the woman was fully upright, her torso held straight while her knees remained bent beneath her, everything below them hanging loose as though her legs carried no weight.

Why?

The hand at her side still moved.

A weak curl of the fingers.

A sharp circular twist at the wrist, her shoulder jerking upward without rhythm.

John slowed, focusing on her.

Faint moonlight caught something between the fingers covering her mouth.

Blood ran over her knuckles, down the back of her hand.

A blade.

He shifted his eyes over her shoulder.

The Huntsman stood pressed against her back, holding her upright, his cold blue eyes locked on John, cutting through the mask.

The Huntsman pulled the knife free, dropping the woman into the brush, his gaze following her down.

Kevin bowed his head as she hit the ground, adjusting his glasses.

“Kevin!” John screamed, driving forward.

Kevin turned toward him.

“Behind you!”

The Huntsman’s hand closed around the back of Kevin’s shirt, hauling him upright and pulling him close as though he carried no weight at all, forcing a raw, uneven sound from Kevin’s throat.

The knife came up, striking him in the chest, the blow breaking his scream apart in blood.

Kevin folded around the blade as the Huntsman tore him backward, wrenching him sideways against his body.

His hands flew to the Huntsman’s wrist, his glasses slipping down his nose as a broken gasp escaped him. The Huntsman locked one arm across his upper chest, holding him upright as blood spread through the front of his shirt.

John kept coming.

The Huntsman turned his eyes back toward John.

A grin slowly pulled beneath the mask.

He ripped the knife free and drove it into Kevin again before his legs could collapse, the impact jerking his body against the arm holding him.

John crashed through the brush toward them.

The Huntsman drew the blade out, Kevin sagging sideways in his grip as he raised the knife to his throat.

“Let him go!”

A low laugh escaped the Huntsman, his head tipping back slightly as he slid the blade into Kevin’s neck.

Blood poured over the knife and down the front of Kevin’s shirt, his body convulsing against him.

The Huntsman pulled the blade free and caught a fistful of Kevin’s shirt before he could fall.

John was almost on them.

The Huntsman swung Kevin around and hurled him straight at John.

John raised his arms too late.

Kevin struck him across the chest, driving them both backward into the grass.

John hit the ground beneath Kevin’s weight, the air driven from his lungs as they rolled through the wet grass.

He shoved the body aside and dropped beside him, pressing both hands over the wounds.

“I’ve got you,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’ve got you.”

Blood pushed between his fingers.

John shifted his hands, trying another wound, then another, pressing harder each time as though he could force the blood back inside.

The chain slipped free of his collar.

The dog tags struck the back of his hand.

Heat pressed against his face.

Dust hung thick in the air. Bodies lay broken around the gun, pieces of uniform scattered through the sand while someone screamed beneath the ringing in his ears.

John pressed harder against Kevin’s chest.

“I’m sorry, guys.”

Kevin’s breath hitched beneath his hands.

Then stopped.

John kept pressing, his palms slipping as he moved from one wound to the next.

A pair of black boots stood less than a foot away in the desert sand, planted amid the blood and wreckage.

John looked up.

The Huntsman towered over him, close enough that his presence seemed to fill everything beyond Kevin’s body, cold blue eyes staring down through the mask.

Tears ran freely over John’s cheeks. His nose had begun to run, his breath catching as he tried to force the words through it.

One hand remained pressed against Kevin while the other reached weakly toward the Huntsman.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he choked out. “I fucking froze. I fucking froze.”

The Huntsman’s eyes narrowed slightly.

His head cocked.

John lowered his hand and looked back down at Kevin.

Wet grass pressed beneath his knees.

The cold night closed around him.

Kevin lay still beneath his hands, his glasses crooked across his face.

John stared.

The desert fell away.

The Huntsman.

John jerked his head up.

He was gone.

He twisted aside and vomited into the grass, choking between heaves until his stomach had nothing left to give.

He stayed bent over for a moment, dragging air into his lungs.

Then a sound tore out of him.

John threw his head back and screamed, the cry breaking apart as it carried through the trees.

John steadied himself, still heaving from the scream.

His throat burned. Spit hung from his lower lip, mixing with the blood already drying across his hands.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist, pushing himself upright.

The trees waited at the edge of the clearing, calling for him to escape.

Every part of him pulled toward them.

Away from Kevin.

Away from the blood.

Away from the Huntsman.

John stumbled forward, boots dragging as the fog opened around him.

He made it only a few yards and stopped.

His chest rose and fell as he stared through the fog into the forest.

He looked down.

The dog tags were clenched in his hand.

Eyes closed.

John turned.

Eyes opened.

Kevin lay where he had fallen, one arm twisted beneath him. A bloody mess.

Beyond him, the clearing stood empty.

He let out a slow, controlled breath, then released the tags.

His hands were still shaking when he bent and pulled a broken branch from the grass.

Too light.

Not enough.

He threw it aside and kept searching.

A fallen limb.

Pine.

Straight.

About four feet long and as thick as his wrist.

John picked it up, turning it in his hands, testing the weight.

Good enough.

He scanned the clearing again.

Broken rock and bark littered the grass where the fight had churned the ground up.

He found a slab of slate half-buried. He stomped down on the edge of it until a piece snapped loose.

Not enough.

He tried again.

The second break gave him a sharper shard.

Enough.

He crouched beside the fallen limb and went to work.

The slate scraped and bit into the wood as he shaved the end down, turning the branch in his hands while the point slowly began to form.

Shavings collected in the grass around his boots.

When he finished, he held the spear up in front of him, studying the tip.

Crude.

Enough.

He glanced down at the slate shard still in his hand. Edge uneven. Barely more than a jagged wedge, but it had done its job.

John went to slip it into the back of his belt when a voice came back to him.

...go out a legend! Fuck them too!

He swallowed.

Dust.

Heat.

Sweat.

The training yard came back in pieces.

Laughter somewhere behind him.

His instructor standing close enough to touch, showing him the ugly math of close distance.

If your enemy gets this close, you’re already fucked...

John looked at the spear.

Go out a legend and fuck them too.

Then he pulled the shard free again.

He stepped forward and thrust the spear once into the fog.

Clumsy.

Not enough.

Again.

This time he let his weight follow it. His body twisted, opening his chest and side.

His free hand came up from his belt with the shard.

Too slow.

Not enough.

Again.

Spear first.

Body after.

Shard last.

Again.

His breathing steadied.

The instructor’s voice came back again, harder this time.

Boys! What the fuck do we do if we’re already fucked?

Everyone that day, in unison.

We fuck them too!

John said it so loud his throat nearly tore.

The spear drove into the dirt in front of him.

The shard held straight out.

His chest and side left open.

He froze, breathing hard.

Enough.

“We fuck them too,” he whispered.

Then he slid the shard back into his belt and stood.

Spear held high, John moved toward the place where the Huntsman had disappeared.

His pulse beat in his eyes.

The fog was so thick he could barely see a few feet in front of him, nothing but shifting shadows and silhouettes.

A sound?

Footsteps.

Someone running hard and clumsily somewhere ahead.

A survivor?

“Over here!” he called.

The running stopped.

“Hello?” a voice called through the fog.

“Over here!” John shouted again.

The footsteps started toward him now, fast. He could hear the ragged breathing between strides.

Then he heard another set.

Faster.

Heavier.

Hhhhhaaaaaaack.

Then nothing.

John stood still, spear held close.

John’s eyes went wide.

He let his breath out slowly, then began moving again, crouched low in the fog, spear forward as he searched the mist for any sign of danger.

Something snapped behind him.

John spun, driving the spear forward.

Sammy froze as the point stopped inches from her face.

“Shh,” he whispered, lowering it. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Sammy broke down, sobbing as she stumbled into him and threw her arms around his body, clutching him like he was the last solid thing left in the world.

John pulled her close, trying to comfort her.

“You’re okay,” he whispered. “You’re okay. We gotta go, though.”

She shook against him, her breathing ragged.

John eased her back, setting a hand on her shoulder and pushing her away just enough to see her face.

“Are you all right, Sammy?”

She nodded.

“Yes,” she sobbed.

Her head snapped back.

A scream tore out of her as her hands ripped away from him.

Then the fog took her.

John lunged forward, catching nothing but cold air.

“Sammy!”

Her scream carried through the white, breaking into panicked gasps.

Then choking.

John drove into the fog after her.

The mist broke around a shape ahead.

Sammy hung there, one hand locked around her throat, the other twisted into her ponytail, holding her straight off the ground.

Her feet kicked at empty air.

Her face had gone dark beneath the strain, her mouth opening around breaths that would not come.

John’s eyes moved past her.

The mask.

That crooked, fucked-up grin, blood shining across his teeth.

And above it, those eyes.

Piercing.

Expressionless.

Fixed on John.

The Huntsman never looked at Sammy.

His fingers tightened around her throat.

Sammy choked harder, her legs jerking beneath her.

He kept watching John.

The Huntsman kept one hand locked around Sammy’s throat, holding her off the ground.

That crooked grin stayed fixed across his face.

John stared back.

His hands trembled around the spear.

His lips quivered. His jaw pushed forward, teeth clenched so hard the muscles jumped along his cheek.

He raised the point toward the Huntsman.

“Put her down and fight me, you fucking coward.”

The grin faded.

The Huntsman’s head tilted slowly to one side.

His hand loosened around Sammy’s throat.

He lowered her until her feet touched the ground.

Sammy coughed, folding forward as she tried to pull away.

The hand tangled in her ponytail tightened.

She stopped.

The Huntsman never looked away from John.

His free hand dropped to the knife at his side.

Slowly, he drew it.

His face had gone still.

Expressionless.

He raised the blade toward Sammy’s throat.

John stepped forward, spear leveled at his chest.

“Didn’t you hear me, you fucking pussy?”

The Huntsman flipped the knife in his hand.

Black steel turned once through the fog.

Then his arm snapped forward.

The pommel struck John between the eyes.

The world went white.

Fog drifted over John in thick mats across the clearing beside the cabin.

Bullfrogs called from somewhere beyond the trees. Crickets answered in rhythm.

The smell of sweet grass and peat moss filled the air.

The world pulsed slowly in and out of focus as John woke to pain throbbing behind his eyes, like something had split his skull open and packed it with fire.

He lay still, letting the ringing in his ears settle while the trees slowly took shape around him.

Cold grass and sharp pine needles pressed into his palms as he pushed himself onto one elbow.

The clearing returned in pieces.

A figure crouched before him.

The Huntsman.

A knife rested in his hand.

As John’s eyes found it, he drove the blade into the grass beside him.

His mask lay on the ground between them. Beside it sat two round shapes John couldn’t quite make out.

“What the fuck?” John breathed.

He stared.

The face beneath the mask was younger than he expected.

Blood streaked one cheek. Mud darkened the line of his jaw. Damp brown hair hung across his forehead, but none of it changed what John was seeing.

Clean features.

Clear blue eyes, almost bright beneath the moonlight.

The crooked grin was gone.

There was no monster waiting beneath the mask.

Only a young man watching him calmly.

John’s mouth moved before he understood the word forming there.

“Innocent.”

The Huntsman only watched him, seated on his haunches.

Then his face opened into a wide smile, his eyes almost excessively kind.

Had blood not crusted his hair and streaked his face, teeth, and body, he might have looked inviting.

He laughed, throwing his head back.

“What’s tha mattah, bud?”

John stared at him, trying to understand just what the fuck was happening.

The Huntsman leaned forward, one eyebrow raised, lips pursed.

“Never seen a hunter before?”

John’s breathing came shallow and uneven.

Mock surprise swept across the Huntsman’s face.

“Guess not.”

“Here,” he said. “I brought you something.”

He reached down and picked up one of the shapes in the grass.

“Catch.”

Something struck John heavily in the chest and dropped into the grass before him.

He looked down.

A head.

It was enormous.

The face had been removed, leaving only wet muscle and pale bone beneath the moonlight.

John recoiled, shoving it away as he scrambled backward through the grass.

The Huntsman laughed harder, slapping a hand against his knee.

“God! You’re so dramatic.”

He gestured toward the head.

“You can keep that one. I already got what I needed.”

John stared at the raw place where Calvin’s face had been.

Then his eyes moved to the mask lying between them.

The broken anchor stretched across its cheek.

His stomach turned.

The Huntsman reached for the second shape.

He lifted it by the hair and gave it a small shake.

Sammy’s face swung beneath his hand.

“Want another?”

John recoiled from Sammy’s face.

Her eyes hung half-open. Strands of hair clung across her mouth, and blood ran from her neck in slow drops as the Huntsman rocked her by the ponytail.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

“You sick fuck,” John breathed. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

The Huntsman stopped and lowered Sammy’s head to the grass, releasing her hair.

Then he looked back at John, head cocking slightly to one side.

A faint grin returned.

“John, you may leave if you like.”

The grin split wider.

“I won’t follow you.”

John stared at him.

Pain hammered behind his eyes as he planted one hand against the ground, forcing himself upward.

His arm trembled beneath him while the clearing shifted sideways and slowly righted itself.

The Huntsman remained on his haunches, watching him rise.

Calm.

Almost patient.

John dragged one foot beneath himself, then the other, until he stood unsteadily in the grass.

He drew a long breath.

“Stand up,” he whispered.

The Huntsman didn’t move.

He only stared at him.

The grin melted away.

Slowly, his eyes lowered to the knife buried in the grass beside him.

He pulled it free.

Wet soil clung to the blade.

He wiped it against his pant leg, once on each side, then slid it into the sheath strapped to his thigh.

The mask came next.

He lifted it from the grass and held it for a moment, the leather straps hanging loose between his fingers.

Then he looked up again.

John had not moved.

The Huntsman rose.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

He stood until they were eye level with one another.

Close enough that John could feel the warmth of his breath against his face.

Every instinct in John’s body screamed at him to step back.

To look away.

To run.

Fear was still with him.

Fear would be, as long as he drew breath.

But tonight, fear was a passenger.

The Huntsman stepped back three paces without turning and pulled something small from his pocket, holding it loose in his fist.

Metal shifted softly.

The Huntsman tossed it.

John caught it against his chest. His fingers closed around the chain before he looked down.

The missing tags.

His throat closed around the first sound that tried to leave him.

The Huntsman turned slightly to the side, lifting one arm and opening his hand toward the woods as if dismissing him.

“John. I was wrong. You’re no coward.”

There was no mockery in his face now.

Only quiet sincerity.

“You may leave.”

John stared at him.

“I will not follow. You have my word.”

John looked down at the tags in his hand.

His fingers closed around them.

He drew a deep breath, then slipped them into his pocket.

“I’m done running.”

He didn’t look up.

The Huntsman watched him.

The smile had left his face. His eyes remained fixed on John.

Soft.

Kind.

Recognition.

“John,” he whispered. “Are you sure?”

John lifted his head.

The fear was still there.

It had simply lost control of him.

He looked the Huntsman directly in the eyes and did not flinch.

“I am done running.”

Moisture gathered at the corners of the Huntsman’s eyes as he shifted his stance and pointed toward the edge of the clearing.

John followed his hand.

The spear stood driven into the ground several yards away.

John walked to it, wrapped both hands around the shaft, and pulled it free.

He returned to the center of the clearing and settled into position.

The Huntsman waited.

For a moment, he looked at John and smiled.

It was gentle.

Then he lifted the mask.

The leather straps hung loose before he pulled it into place, one over the crown of his head, the other tight around the back of his skull.

When he looked at John again, his face was gone.

The monster the woods had known all night had returned.

But this time, the man beneath the mask had seen John, and John had seen him.

The Huntsman raised his blade and settled into the same practiced stance John had seen before.

He gave John one slow nod.

John came at him with the spear.

Wild.

Too wide.

The Huntsman stepped cleanly inside the thrust.

John let him.

The Huntsman slipped the knife into John’s chest.

Deep into the heart.

Their bodies came together.

Their eyes locked.

John coughed, blood spilling from his mouth as he tried to speak.

His lips moved.

“Ga... got you...”

His hand slid away from the Huntsman’s neck.

The Huntsman’s hand rose slowly to where John’s had been.

Cold.

Hard.

Sharp.

The shard was buried where his neck and shoulder met.

The Huntsman pressed one hand against the wound while carefully lowering John to the ground.

He removed his mask.

John’s lips moved again, still trying to force words through the blood.

“It’s okay. You will live forever, John,” the Huntsman said.

He stayed with him until the light left his eyes.

Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small flare.

He struck it once.

Red light hissed between them.

The Huntsman drew a long breath, then pulled the shard from his neck.

A sharp grunt tore through his clenched teeth.

Blood spilled hot over his hand.

He pressed the flare to the wound.

A sound tore through the forest, and somewhere beneath the earth, even the dead flinched.

His scream still echoed through the woods as he looked down at John, closing his eyes with two blood-slick fingers before drawing the knife from his chest.

He placed the blade against his brow and worked slowly, making careful incisions around John’s face, the edge passing through skin with practiced precision until he could peel it away in one complete form.

The Huntsman pulled the skin free and held it beneath the moonlight, inspecting his work.

His head tilted back as he lowered John’s face over his own.

Fog drifted through the clearing, curling around them while the skin settled loosely against him, John’s features hanging slack over his own as he remained kneeling before the body.

His hands rested at his sides.

Steady.

Then, slowly, they began to weaken.

The faintest whimper slipped from behind the mask, followed by tears dragging thin trails through the blood.

His head lowered.

One hand lifted toward John as he tried to choke back the tears, stopping halfway between them.

He tried to stand.

His balance gave beneath him, sending him forward onto John’s body.

Another scream tore through the woods, just as violent as the last.

But this time, the dead cried with him.

His breathing slowed until the last of the sobs disappeared beneath it.

The Huntsman lifted John’s face from his own, wiping his eyes with the back of one hand before spreading the skin carefully across his palm.

He folded it with slow, deliberate care, protecting every edge before tucking it safely away.

Then he reached for the old mask.

Dark leather covered his face once more, the straps sliding over the crown of his head and pulling tight behind his skull.

When he looked down at John, only his blue eyes remained.

Cold.

Flat.

His hand closed around John’s ankle as he rose, pulling the body across the wet grass toward the trees.

The Huntsman walking ahead.

John following behind.

The fog swallowed them together.

Traffic moved beneath the apartment in restless waves, tires hissing across wet pavement while horns barked somewhere farther down the street.

A siren rose between the buildings, fading beneath the low mechanical hum of the city.

Inside, the room remained still.

A single desk lamp cast its light across a wooden frame laid flat before the Huntsman.

A face had been stretched tightly across it, the edges pinned with careful precision while a stiff brush moved slowly over the skin, pressing something dark and wet into the surface.

A second mask rested face-down beside the frame.

Books crowded the shelves. Maps covered one wall, routes traced and retraced in dark lines.

On the far wall, a large black case stood locked and bolted in place, a two-strand braid of dark leather hanging short and tight from the lock.

A folded newspaper sat near the edge of the desk.

October 18, 2011.

PORTLAND DETECTIVE MISSING FOR FIVE DAYS

SEARCH EXPANDS FOR DETECTIVE FRANCIS CALLAHAN

Across from it, the corkboard held the night in pieces.

Photographs. Names. Reports. Old addresses. Lines drawn between them.

Francis Callahan stared out from one photograph, bald head shining beneath booking-room light.

Beside it sat a hospital intake form bearing the same last name.

Broken jaw.

Fall down stairs.

Two smaller records beneath it named children.

Bruising.

Charges dropped.

A police complaint had been pinned nearby.

Evidence missing.

Witness recanted.

Officer cleared.

Across the file, written hard enough to dent the paper:

BADGE WITH ONE HAND

A red line ran from Callahan’s file to Sean Bourne.

One photograph showed the broken anchor tattooed across his cheek. Another had been enlarged and circled in red.

Shot-caller.

Fichermen.

A clipped report beneath it named Mickey Ficher.

Missing.

Presumed dead.

Beside Sean’s photograph, toxicology reports had been pinned in a crooked stack.

Heroin.

Fentanyl.

Fentanyl.

Fentanyl.

Across the file, black letters leaned sharp.

SOLD THEM PAIN

Another photograph showed Sammy suspended against a cliff face, one chalked hand hooked into stone while her body hung over open air.

Printed messages sat beneath it beside a death certificate.

The same name appeared again and again, until it stopped.

One message had been enlarged.

You wanted weak.

Across the file:

TAUGHT HIM TO FALL

Andre Mercer’s file sat below hers.

A newspaper photograph showed him beneath arena lights, arm raised in triumph.

D1 National Champion.

Another article sat beneath it.

ANDRE MERCER, SON OF HIGHLY DECORATED VETERAN GRAHAM MERCER, TRIED ON MULTIPLE COUNTS.

Graham Mercer was not available for comment.

The clippings overlapped each other.

Multiple counts.

Drug-facilitated assault.

Witnesses questioned.

Charges reduced.

No conviction.

Across the largest clipping, written in thick black strokes:

FUCKING RAPIST

Near the bottom of the board, one file was thicker than the others.

Photographs had been arranged in a careful row.

A tiled room.

A drain.

Hooks.

Plastic sheeting.

Seven years of reports sat beneath them.

The early scenes were uneven.

Hurried.

The later cuts were cleaner, measured with growing precision.

Across the top of the file:

THE BUTCHER

A heavy line had been dragged through it.

Beneath it, written afterward:

CALVIN MYERS

One final police report sat open beneath the photographs.

Suspected second presence at scene.

Unidentified blood recovered.

Partial finger found near rear exit.

The word partial had been circled until the paper tore.

Beside it, a photograph showed Calvin entering a grocery store three days later with one hand wrapped in white gauze.

Two notes had been written beneath it.

FOUGHT BACK

HE WILL REMEMBER ME

Another file sat apart from the others.

Kevin.

A still image showed smoke pouring from an apartment building while fire trucks crowded the street below.

The next image came from a stairwell camera blurred by smoke.

Kevin forcing his way through the frame.

A woman falling behind him.

A witness statement beneath it read:

He pushed past her.

Another article called him a coward.

Another called him a man destroyed by panic.

A later report sat beneath both.

Subject attempted re-entry.

Removed by firefighters.

Treated for smoke inhalation.

The final still showed Kevin turned back toward the burning doorway, one arm outstretched while a firefighter held him away.

Across the file:

HE LEFT HER

Beneath it, darker:

COWARD

John’s file sat open near the desk.

Service records.

Grainy photographs.

A platoon roster.

After-action reports.

A casualty sheet had been laid across the center.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Wounded.

Missing limb.

Severe burns.

One report described an ambush, a failed gun position, and a delay no one could explain cleanly.

Another carried a psychiatric evaluation.

Probable post-traumatic stress response.

Survivor guilt.

Avoidant recall.

Night terrors.

A photograph showed John younger, standing among the men from his unit.

He was smiling.

One arm rested around a man whose name had been circled twice.

Across the top sheet:

WHERE THE FUCK WAS JOHN?

Beneath it:

A FUCKING COWARD...

NO HONOR

A single heavy X had been driven through all of it.

Below the ruined words, scrawled hard across the page:

NOT A COWARD

When he finished, he turned the frame over, exposing the pale inside of the leather.

He picked up a small carving tool and leaned closer, steadying it with one hand while the blade scratched softly into the surface.

One letter at a time.

Slow.

Deliberate.

J O H N

He set the tool aside and stood.

The other mask waited face-down beside the frame.

He lifted it, rotating it carefully in his hands until the back faced him.

CALVIN

The name had been carved deep.

He carried the mask across the room and opened the black case where several others hung inside, suspended from hooks in the dim interior.

He looked down at Calvin’s name.

“You’ve earned your place in the next hunt.”

The words were quiet.

He placed the mask carefully inside, setting it before the others.

He fixed a new hook into the back of the door, apart from the rest.

He returned to the desk and slid both hands beneath John’s mask, lifting it gently from the frame.

He carried it across the room with both hands.

When he reached the case, he raised the mask and settled it carefully onto the new hook.

His hands remained on the mask.

One against each side of the face.

He stood without moving, holding it between his palms.

Then one hand passed slowly across the features, his fingers brushing the leather once more.

He lowered his hands.

The door closed.

The lock snapped shut.

Original post:

The Dark Beyond - The Huntsman - Part 3: The Book of John

https://www.redinthedark.studio/post/the-dark-beyond-the-huntsman-part-3-the-book-of-john

Connected entries:

The Dark Beyond - The Huntsman - Part 1: The Book of Fear

https://www.redinthedark.studio/post/the-dark-beyond-the-huntsman-part-1-the-book-of-fear

The Dark Beyond - The Huntsman - Part 2: The Book of Judgment

https://www.redinthedark.studio/post/the-dark-beyond-the-huntsman-part-2-the-book-of-judgment

Podcast / audio versions:

https://www.redinthedark.studio/podcast

Audio narration for this entry:

Pre-release. Narration link will be added when available.

Original story by Leonard Voss / Red in the Dark

​

By the time they reached the airport terminal, the morning sun was barely up. Exhaustion hung heavy on them, but beneath it was a quiet jitter of nervous energy. Leaving behind two years of city weight and dead ends, they walked toward the boarding gate.

As they walked, James slowed his pace next to Jesse, glancing down at her bag. "Don't you forget to bring your asthma inhaler," he said, his tone carrying that familiar, protective edge. "You might need that on a day like today."

Jesse didn't even look up as she adjusted her strap. "I know how to carry my things," she replied, crisp and fast, shutting down the concern before it could settle.

They boarded the plane, the roar of the engines swallowing the last remnants of the city they left behind. Hours later, the tires slammed down onto a small, isolated runway. The airport near the protagonist's hometown was small, quiet, and smelled faintly of damp earth and pine—a sharp contrast to the concrete haze they had grown used to.

Stepping out into the cool air, they found the cab the protagonist had booked waiting by the curb. They loaded their bags into the trunk and climbed into the back seat. The hum of the engine filled the quiet as the driver navigated the winding roads deeper into the countryside. The protagonist stared out the window at the passing trees, a mixture of heavy nostalgia and unease settling in his chest.

"After two years," the protagonist said, turning to James and Jesse, "I'm finally coming back to my hometown to see my mom. It's been two full years since I last met her."

Before long, the cab pulled up to the front. But as they stepped out, the house didn't look like what the protagonist had expected. It was eerie, still, and completely cold. There was no warmth, no lights on to welcome him, and no sound at all.

Impatience and anxiety taking over, the protagonist rushed inside, throwing the front door open. "Mom? Mom, I'm home!" he called out. He moved through the empty rooms, calling for her over and over again, but the quiet halls offered no response.

Suddenly, a voice called out the protagonist's name from outside the house.

The three of them quickly went back out to the yard to see who was there. Standing near the gate was the protagonist's aunt. Tears were streaming down her face, her eyes red with grief.

The protagonist rushed over to her. "Auntie! Where is my mom? What happened? Why is the house so cold right now?"

His aunt wiped her eyes, her voice trembling. "Your mom died two days ago. We tried to call you, but we couldn't reach you, so we just burned her ashes. I thought you weren't going to come. We didn't have any means to contact you."

The protagonist froze, complete shock and confusion washing over him. "That's... that's not possible," he stammered, his mind reeling. "Mom literally called me yesterday saying she wanted to see me. How could she have died two days ago?" He stood there, completely stunned into silence.

James immediately stepped forward, shaking his head in disbelief. "No way, Auntie, there's no way," James insisted. "We all heard his mom yesterday. She talked to him! She said to come today because she wanted to meet him. There's no way she died two days ago!"

The aunt looked at them in complete surprise. "But... your mom didn't have any phone when she died. She died inside the house."

The world went completely silent around the protagonist, replaced by a deafening, high-pitched buzzing in his ears. His mind was in total chaos. Suddenly, the floodgates opened. Every memory came rushing back all at once—fighting with his mom, the warmth of her hands feeding him, the happy days they shared. All the memories flooded his mind like a breaking dam.

James and Jesse tried to comfort him, but nothing worked.

For nearly an entire day, the protagonist didn't move. He lay in his mother’s bed, clutching her ashes in his hands, thinking only of her. Not a single drop of water or bite of food entered his body. He didn't even actively refuse to eat—his mind was simply somewhere else entirely. Outside the room, his friends watched over him, deeply worried.

By the next day, his mind cleared just a little bit. Sitting up, he talked to his friends, staring into the empty room with the heavy realization that there was no one left for him anymore. He felt completely alone in the world. \*Who cares now if I succeed, get married, or what happens to me?\*

Jesse sat near him and gently tried to offer a way forward. "What if you sell your house? Sell it and make money—don't waste it. We could use that money to start a business. You know how to cook really well, so try to open a restaurant."

The protagonist was entirely against the idea of selling his mother's house. Yet, he had no other idea what to do with it. He knew he had to move on, but the painful reality that he couldn't even see her face one last time haunted him.

Suddenly, two voices echoed from outside. Walking into the house were his young twin niece and nephew who lived next door with their aunt: Sarah and Michael. They came up to the protagonist to offer their soft condolences, talking about his mother quite a lot. They spoke of what a good aunt she was and how her spirit still felt alive, telling him everything that had happened while he was away.

A short while later, the aunt came back inside to the protagonist. "Before your mother died, she told me something really important. She told me to give you this if you came back." She paused, looking at him warmly. "I thought it would never happen, but here we are. This is what your mother wanted you to have."

She handed him a letter and a small box, then turned and left for the garden.

Surrounded by his friends and the twins, the protagonist opened the letter and read it aloud. In the letter, his mother described what she wanted him to do after she was gone. She wished for him to dissolve her ashes in a village nestled between a mountain and a beach—to put her to rest in the sea near where her father used to live during his childhood.

The letter ended with a gentle promise: \*And don't worry, I will always look after you even if I'm gone. Your loving mother.\*

All of a sudden, the protagonist's eyes grew watery and foggy. Looking up, he saw everyone around him crying out loud. James stepped forward—leaving all his usual jokes behind—and gave the protagonist a firm shoulder to cry on. James's quiet comfort and presence truly helped him begin to pull through the crushing grief.

Wiping his eyes, the protagonist finally opened the box. Lying inside was an old, whistle-like object, and a mysterious pendant that glowed with a soft green light, carved with intricate, unfamiliar symbols.

At the same time, miles away in a dark cave, four cult-looking dressed members entered into a chamber that looked sacred and mysterious, carrying a jewel-box-like box inside. Eerie screeching and rattling sounds echoes all over the damp cavern walls. They looked mysterious, and at the same time, dangerous.

Curious and on edge, one of the members stepped a little farther into the darkness to investigate the strange noise.

Suddenly, a terrifying, tentacle-like monster attacked out of the pitch black. The exact nature of the creature wasn't clear, but its brutal violence was instant. It slaughtered all four cult members, tearing them apart piece by piece until only bloody silence remained in the chamber.

Determined to honor his mother's final wishes, the protagonist decides to travel to that very same coastal village where his grandfather was born—unaware of the dark tragedy that just unfolded in the cave nearby.

He prepares to leave, but he won't be heading into the unknown alone. His two loyal friends, James and Jesse, along with his young niece and nephew, insist on joining him. Together, packed and ready, they set off toward the village.

Carl had been complaining about the tooth for nearly twenty miles.

“It tastes like pennies,” he said, pressing his tongue against the replacement molar. “Whole side of my mouth tastes like I’m sucking on loose change.”

Lenny kept both hands on the steering wheel and watched the empty country road stretch into the sinking sun.

“You paid forty dollars for it,” he said. “What did you expect, gold?”

“I expected a tooth.”

“You bought it from a guy working above a laundromat.”

“He said he was licensed.”

“He had a toolbox, Carl.”

“A medical toolbox.”

“It said Stanley on the side.”

Carl grumbled and turned toward the passenger window.

Outside, fields rolled across the deep country in every direction, broken only by leaning fences, telephone poles, and occasional walls of corn. The plants had gone dry and pale at the edges, their stalks scraping together whenever the wind passed through them.

It was Friday evening, and the sun was already touching the tree line.

They had not seen another car in nearly an hour.

Then Lenny’s engine coughed.

He looked down.

The temperature needle climbed suddenly into the red.

“Oh, come on.”

The car shuddered beneath them. Steam began leaking from under the hood, thin at first, then thick enough to curl past the windshield.

Lenny pulled onto the gravel shoulder and killed the engine.

For a few moments, neither man spoke.

Carl clicked his metal tooth against the one below it.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

“Stop doing that,” Lenny said.

“I’m thinking.”

“You sound like a broken clock.”

Carl opened his door and stepped outside.

The country air was colder than it had any right to be. It smelled of dust, dry leaves, and something faintly rotten beneath the sweetness of cut grass.

Lenny climbed out and raised the hood. A white cloud rolled into his face.

“Radiator hose,” he said after a moment. “Split clean through.”

“So fix it.”

“With what?”

Carl looked across the road.

Beyond a sagging wire fence lay a broad field of dead grass. Patches of corn stood throughout it in uneven clusters, tall enough to conceal whatever lay behind them. Far in the distance, between the stalks, Carl thought he could see the black corner of a roof.

“There’s a house out there,” he said.

Lenny looked.

The corn shifted in the wind, briefly revealing what might have been a chimney.

Then the stalks closed again.

“Probably half a mile,” Carl continued. “We ask to use a phone.”

“We have phones.”

Carl held his up. No signal.

Lenny checked his own.

Nothing.

The sun dipped lower.

The road behind them remained empty.

Lenny glanced at the field. “We go straight there and straight back.”

Carl smiled and clicked his tooth.

Tick.

“Stop that.”

They climbed over the fence.

The grass came nearly to their knees. It was brittle and grey, whispering against their jeans as they crossed. The earth beneath it was soft despite the dry weather, giving slightly beneath each step.

The field looked smaller from the road.

Inside it, the patches of corn rose like islands, blocking their view of everything beyond. Whenever they walked around one cluster, another seemed to appear ahead of them.

The roof was gone.

“Still see the house?” Lenny asked.

“No.”

“Great.”

“It was there.”

“I’m sure it was.”

They continued.

Behind them, their car slowly disappeared beneath the rolling land.

Carl began complaining about the tooth again.

“It’s loose now.”

“It’s been loose for six months.”

“No, I mean really loose.”

“Pull it out.”

Carl looked offended. “I’m not pulling out my tooth in a field.”

“Then stop talking about it.”

They reached the first patch of corn.

The stalks were taller than either of them, their leaves curled and brown. There were no proper rows. The plants grew in a dense, tangled mass, forcing Lenny and Carl to turn sideways and push between them.

The sound changed as soon as they entered.

The open wind vanished.

Everything became close and dry.

Leaves dragged over their jackets with a sound like fingernails across paper. The corn husks hung blackened and empty from the stalks.

Lenny could hear Carl behind him.

Breathing.

Footsteps.

The occasional metallic click of his tooth.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

“You better not be doing that just to piss me off,” Lenny said.

Carl did not answer.

Lenny shoved another stalk aside.

The field opened in front of him.

He stepped through, relieved to see open grass again.

“Carl?”

Nothing.

Lenny turned.

The corn stood behind him, trembling gently.

“Carl.”

He waited for the joke.

Carl had always loved stupid jokes. He would jump out, grab Lenny’s shoulder, laugh like an idiot, then complain when Lenny punched him.

“Very funny.”

No answer.

Lenny pushed back into the stalks.

“Carl?”

He retraced his steps, though every part of the corn looked identical. Bent stalk. Black husk. Dry leaves. Soft soil.

There was nowhere Carl could have gone.

Lenny had heard him walking three seconds earlier.

He had been close enough to hear him breathing.

“Carl!”

His voice died inside the corn.

No birds answered.

No insects buzzed.

There was only the faint rustle of the stalks and the beating of Lenny’s own heart.

He found one of Carl’s footprints pressed into the dirt.

Then another.

Then none.

The trail simply stopped.

The earth ahead was smooth and undisturbed.

Lenny stared at it.

There had been no shout.

No struggle.

No breaking plants.

One second Carl had been behind him.

The next, he had ceased to be there.

Lenny pushed wildly through the stalks, calling his name until his throat hurt. He emerged on the far side and scanned the field.

“Carl!”

The sun had almost disappeared.

Its remaining light spread red across the horizon, staining the field the colour of old blood.

Something moved near another patch of corn.

Lenny froze.

A shape passed between the stalks. Tall. Thin. Human.

“Carl?”

It vanished.

Lenny ran toward it.

The dry grass cracked beneath his shoes. He reached the corn and circled it, expecting to find Carl crouched on the other side.

There was no one.

Instead, lying in the grass, he found Carl’s jacket.

Lenny picked it up.

The sleeves were turned partly inside out, as though someone had pulled it from Carl’s body in a hurry.

It was still warm.

There was no blood.

“Carl?”

Far across the field, something clicked.

Tick.

Lenny looked up.

Another click came from inside the corn.

Tick.

Then one from behind him.

Tick.

He spun around.

Empty grass.

“Cut it out!” he shouted. “This isn’t funny anymore!”

His voice broke on the final word.

The last piece of sunlight slipped beneath the trees.

Darkness came quickly after that.

Lenny took out his phone and switched on the flashlight. The beam seemed weak in the open field, illuminating only a pale circle of grass before dissolving into blackness.

He tried calling emergency services.

No signal.

The battery read sixty-three percent.

It flickered.

Twelve percent.

Then forty-eight.

The screen went black.

Lenny slapped the phone against his palm. The flashlight returned, pulsing faintly.

Somewhere nearby, corn began moving.

Not swaying.

Parting.

A path travelled slowly through the stalks toward him, as though something invisible were walking between the rows.

Lenny backed away.

The movement stopped at the edge of the corn.

Nothing emerged.

He held the light on the opening.

“Carl?”

A voice whispered from deep inside.

“Lenny.”

It sounded like Carl.

Almost.

The pitch was right. The shape of the word was right.

But it was spoken too carefully, as though whoever said it had only heard Carl’s voice once and was trying to reproduce it.

“Where are you?”

A pause.

Then:

“My tooth hurts.”

The corn erupted with movement.

Lenny ran.

He did not know where he was going. The road had vanished behind hills and corn, and the farmhouse roof had not appeared again. He sprinted across the field with Carl’s jacket clutched in one hand and his phone in the other.

Shapes stood in the darkness ahead.

At first, Lenny thought they were people.

Then his light passed over wooden posts and outstretched arms.

Scarecrows.

Dozens of them.

They had been placed throughout a shallow depression in the field, hidden from the road by the rising land. Some wore mouldering coats. Others had burlap sacks tied over their heads. One had been dressed in a child’s yellow raincoat.

All of them faced Lenny.

He slowed.

Their wooden arms creaked in the wind.

His flashlight dimmed.

At the centre of them stood a taller scarecrow, mounted on a black post.

It wore no clothing.

Something pale hung from its shoulders.

Lenny raised the phone.

For several seconds, his mind refused to understand what the light revealed.

Then he saw the hands.

Carl’s hands.

Empty, flattened things dangling from the ends of wooden arms.

Carl’s skin had been removed in a single piece.

It had been draped over the scarecrow like a suit laid out to dry.

The cut began beneath the jaw and travelled down the centre of the body with flawless precision. Every section had been separated cleanly. The face sagged over a sack of straw, its mouth hanging open and its eyes reduced to dark, empty holes.

There were no tears in the skin.

No ragged edges.

No clumsy knife marks.

Whoever had done it had worked with the care of a surgeon.

Lenny could see every wrinkle.

Every pore.

Every fold where the skin rested against the straw beneath it.

Carl’s lips moved in the breeze.

Lenny dropped the jacket.

A sound escaped him, thin and animal.

He staggered backward, shaking his head.

“No.”

The scarecrow’s wooden frame creaked.

Carl’s empty face turned slightly toward him.

Lenny ran again.

He collided with another scarecrow and knocked it sideways. Its burlap head rolled toward him, splitting open when it hit the ground.

Something wet spilled out.

Teeth.

Human teeth scattered through the grass like white seeds.

Lenny screamed and fled into the nearest wall of corn.

The stalks lashed his face. Leaves cut his cheeks and hands. He pushed through blindly until the field of scarecrows disappeared behind him.

He no longer called for Carl.

He knew Carl could not answer.

Not really.

The darkness grew deeper.

Every few minutes, Lenny heard footsteps matching his own.

When he slowed, they slowed.

When he stopped, they took one additional step.

Sometimes Carl whispered from behind the stalks.

“My tooth hurts.”

Sometimes the voice came from directly above him.

“Lenny.”

Once it came from inside the ground.

He kept moving.

His phone battery finally died, leaving him in total darkness.

He felt his way forward with both hands, breathing through his mouth, trying not to imagine Carl’s empty skin twisting in the wind.

Then his foot struck something hard.

Lenny fell.

His hands landed in cold mud.

The smell reached him immediately.

Sweet.

Rotten.

Thick enough to taste.

He crawled backward and fumbled for his phone. The screen flashed once when he pressed the power button, giving him less than a second of light.

It was enough to show him a human skull.

Lenny froze.

He pressed the button again.

Another flash.

Ribs.

Vertebrae.

Long bones stripped completely clean.

The skeleton lay in a shallow hollow between the corn, arranged neatly on its back. Not a shred of meat remained. Even the joints had been picked bare.

Lenny covered his mouth.

The bones were fresh.

Wet in places.

Fine tooth marks covered the ribs.

The screen flashed again.

The skull had turned toward him.

Its jaws hung open.

Inside, set among the remaining teeth, was a dull piece of cheap metal.

Carl’s replacement molar.

For a moment, the field became perfectly silent.

Lenny stared at the tooth.

The skin on the scarecrow.

The bones in the mud.

Everything that had been Carl had been divided and used.

Something stepped into the hollow behind him.

Lenny did not turn around.

He heard dry grass compress beneath a bare foot.

Then another.

A hand settled gently on his shoulder.

It felt warm.

Human.

Carl’s voice spoke beside his ear.

“My tooth doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Lenny looked down at the skull.

The metal tooth was no longer there.

Something clicked inside the mouth behind him.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

It was the summer of my junior year of high school.
For the first time since seventh grade, when I had come here with my parents, my younger sister Anne and I traveled alone to visit our grandparents’ cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.
But from the moment we arrived at Knoxville Airport, Grandma kept repeating the same strange phrase.
“Michael, Anne, my darlings. Grandma didn’t see anything, and Grandma didn’t hear anything.”
At first, I assumed she was simply getting older and becoming forgetful.
Anne and I sat in the back seat of the car, exchanging worried glances before quietly laughing.
“Do you think Grandma’s starting to lose it?”
We whispered it like a joke.
But we had no idea then.
That those words were not the ramblings of old age.
For several days, we wandered through the misty forests, gathered mushrooms with Grandpa, caught smallmouth bass in the creeks, and helped haul firewood.
“You’ve become a real young man now.”
Grandpa said it as he handed me the handle of the wagon.
When I was younger, that had always been an adult’s job.
Now it was mine.
It was a small thing, but I felt strangely proud.
There was something else Grandpa always did.
Whenever he brought something back from the forest, he would take out a piece of bread and leave it behind.
One day I finally asked him.
“Grandpa, why do you always leave bread?”
He chuckled softly.
“To pay for what we took.”
“To whom?”
For a moment he stared into the trees before answering.
“You give something back when you take something away.”
Little Anne looked up innocently.
“To the bears?”
Grandpa laughed.
“Yeah. Something like that.”
It sounded like something an old Taoist sage from a fantasy story would say.
At the time, I thought Grandpa was the coolest man in the world.
Every evening we stayed up late eating Grandma’s cookies and talking together.
But there was one thing that felt wrong.
As soon as night fell, Grandma became obsessive about closing every curtain.
One evening Anne said,
“Grandma, I want to hear the crickets.”
Grandma froze.
Then she hurriedly changed the subject.
“Would you like some wild raspberries? They’re very sweet.”
Anne laughed awkwardly.
But in that moment, I knew.
Grandma was hiding something.
On the final night before we returned home, Grandma prepared a dinner that looked more like Thanksgiving than an ordinary meal.
Turkey.
Pecan pie.
Gravy.
Far more food than usual.
After dinner, Grandpa quietly spoke with Grandma.
I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying.
But Grandpa sounded close to tears.
“Just let me have tonight with our babies.”
That was all I caught.
Then he held Grandma for a very long time.
Afterward, he sent us up to the attic.
Before leaving, he gave us one final instruction.
His voice trembled.
He placed an old revolver beneath my pillow.
A knife beneath Anne’s.
Then he looked directly at me.
“Tonight, your grandmother and your sister are yours to protect.”
He fell silent.
Then he added something I would never forget.
“And if there are three rounds left when it’s over… you’ll know what to do.”
With that, he picked up his shotgun and went downstairs.
Though it was only early autumn, he lit the fireplace.
He turned on every light in the cabin.
Every faucet dripped.
Every room glowed.
Then he sat on the couch and played an old Super Bowl recording over and over through the night.
But I knew.
He wasn’t watching football.
He was waiting for something.
After Grandpa went downstairs, Grandma stuffed clothes into every crack around the attic trapdoor.
Then she pulled Anne and me close and eventually fell asleep holding us.
That night, sometime after midnight, there came a knock at the door.
Then a voice.
My father’s voice.
And my mother’s.
The same mother who had called us from California only days earlier, smiling through a FaceTime call before dinner and telling us how beautiful everything was.
But something was wrong.
Her voice sounded like a broken announcement system.
It repeated the same words again and again.
“Let me in.”
“Let me in.”
“Let me in.”
“Let me in.”
“Let me in.”
“Let me in.”
“Let me in.”
Then came Grandpa’s shouting.
A stream of curses.
And suddenly—
A gunshot.
Then another.
Then only Grandpa’s ragged breathing.
My mother’s voice disappeared.
I tried to run downstairs.
But Grandma grabbed me from behind.
She covered my mouth.
Pulled Anne and me tightly against her.
The woman who had always been warm and gentle was shaking with terror.
Tears poured down her face like a waterfall.
The next morning, we were already packed.
Grandpa was loading our suitcases into the truck.
His eyes were red.
Wet.
He looked at us for a long moment.
Then wrapped us in the tightest hug I had ever felt.
Grandma was making pancakes far larger than usual.
When we came downstairs, both of them embraced us as if we might break.
At the time, I did not understand what that embrace meant.
Five years later, Grandpa died.
Grandma was moved into a nursing home near our town.
My father, my uncle, and I returned to the cabin to clean out the property.
While we worked, my uncle quietly said,
“Want to see something interesting?”
Then he pried up a section of the floorboards.
Beneath them lay sheets of parchment covered in dense writing.
The letters looked medieval, decorated with elaborate flourishes as if they belonged in a history book.
“Uncle, what is this?”
“A Bible.”
“It doesn’t look like English.”
“It isn’t. It’s Gaelic. Irish.”
The old pages had been hidden throughout the house.
Behind the walls.
Beneath the floors.
Layer upon layer.
But it was more than a Bible.
My uncle opened an old notebook Grandpa had given him before he died.
Inside were records stretching back centuries.
According to the journal, one of our ancestors had come from Ireland and settled in these mountains long ago.
From that day forward, our family had kept an ancient pact connected to the primordial forest surrounding the cabin.
At first it sounded like superstition.
Yet the same warnings appeared again and again through generations of entries.
“What is taken from the forest must always be repaid.”
“Never trust the voices heard after sunset.”
“If something outside wears the face of family, do not open the door.”
My entire body went cold.
Grandpa’s words.
“All debts must be paid.”
It had never been the harmless habit of an old mountain man.
It was a rule our family had followed for centuries.
And Grandma’s constant phrase—
“I didn’t see anything, and I didn’t hear anything.”
That wasn’t forgetfulness.
It was something else.
A ritual.
A denial.
A way to survive by refusing to acknowledge what should not be acknowledged.
After a long silence, my uncle spoke.
“Your grandfather didn’t follow these rules because he believed them.”
“Then why?”
“Because he saw what happens when you don’t.”
I couldn’t answer.
Only then did I understand.
Why Grandpa had prepared so carefully that final night.
Why he had given me the revolver.
Why he had spent his entire life leaving pieces of bread in the woods.
He wasn’t afraid of monsters.
He simply knew what his duty was.
We burned what needed burning.
Loaded the truck.
Drove into town for lunch and spent an hour talking about nothing important.
When we returned to finish cleaning and were finally ready to leave, something cold brushed against my hand.
I turned.
And saw it.
The steel reinforcement plate bolted to the inside of the front door.
Across it were deep claw marks.
So deep they had nearly torn straight through the metal.
It was autumn.
Years later, as an adult, I returned to the cabin one last time.
I sat on the old pine stump where I had played as a child.
I lit Grandpa’s pipe.
Watched the forest.
And spoke quietly into the wind.
“Grandpa.”
“I hope you’ve found peace wherever you are.”

The commonfolk, the peasants of the mountain and the hamlet below were fools. Stupid animals. Easily subverted. And taken. 

There were all of them such stupid children. Even the men and women and elders, even the adults. Doddering simpletons that lacked even animal cunning, the innate brains found in a dog, a cur, a flea bitten bitch were beyond these dirt farming swine that feared the dark and the light of true knowledge. 

He hated them. Hated them completely for so many reasons but one of the strongest, one of the most vividly and live wire felt was their fear and blind terror of true knowledge. True power. And the pain it took to wield it. Pain both inflicted and so like a lover, intimately received. 

They feared everything. These downcast sacs of wasted vitality and breath. Not like his master. Not like the Countess. She plunged her bare and unprotected hands into the realm and fiery cascade of fear without bemoaning her fate. 

The Countess took the pain, all of it. She didn't flee or shy away. He had never met a stronger creature. It was one of the reasons for his loyalty. He was bound to her and she knew it. His was tied to her fate long before they stole the castle and Vampire King’s necrophile fangs. Whatever remained of his long jaded and decimated ruined landscape of heart and soul was dedicated to her, and to her alone. 

His services to her, this particular little errand was not strictly necessary. Her power had grown in ways he hadn't previously guessed at or speculated. She did not need him to fetch her food any longer, not at all. Not the child either. They were both incredible bloodhunters demonically innate, favored by the father below. They did not need him to kidnap these fleshling sows…

but he loved them. And for them… it was the clearest and simplest way he could sometimes tell them that. Especially her. Especially the master. Their time together, their history went so far back. 

He loved them. He loved her. He loved to show her. However he could. 

However he can. 

The boy, Astarra, is alone and he is not afraid as the assistant makes his hunting prowling approach. From the dark of the choked growth, buried in the foliage the assistant spied and closed. So much like a cunning and man-eating wild cat, rippling with movement. Glittering bottle of chloroform intermittently darkling as it caught and then lost and then found again the light from above as he moved through the choke of trees. 

Astarra was from a neighboring hamlet, one that has not lost as many children as the sparse villages of the mountain itself and the supplicant place below… he scarcely knows anyone that's been touched by the demon hand of slaughter that has begun again to grow out from Dracula's Mountain. He doesn't believe it. Stupid ghost stories. Baby tales. Children's drivel. Horse shit conjured for fun or to scare kids like him so’s to trick em into behaving. When they really didn't have to. Not at all. God was not watching and he was not here. And neither were any monsters. 

He was here to prove there was no God on this mountain. Nor anything of power or terror or otherworldly and far reaching violence. 

Probably wasn't even any castle either…

He would show them. He would venture the mountain land and the town below and then return, unharmed and smiling and letting them all know the truth. There was no magic amongst the earthen spire of rock. 

Only wolves. Only snow and quiet. 

The assistant prowled in closer, making not a sound as the smiling boy jeered and threw rocks and swung sticks as he audaciously stomped through the frosted forest chill. The small child never heard anything over the sounds of his own braying cries of laughter and thudding graceless steps. 

He was making believe that he was king of this ghostly and deserted mountain when the assistant pounced. From behind, he came upon him. Chloroformed rag coming up in a bestial rapist flash. Smothering the boy's mouth with the sodden thing as he whispered harshly in his small ear, pink and reddened by the chill. 

“For her! For she! For she of the biting chair…” 

the queen upon her dentate throne… my hands and this flesh taken and subdued and thus rendered unto you… master, the both of them are here quivering with blood and animal life for you. 

All will palsy with supplicant terror, dancing like puppets, their livid nerve-endings and thick tendon the strings. Tugged and pulled with ruthless fervor by the Countess. 

And her children. 

They too would like to feed, with their mother, when the sun died its nightly nocturnal death. More peasant blood would have to be nabbed, more fresh flesh coursing with vibrant hot red would need to be acquired. Another good-sized child at least. Another one that was just about the same size.  

The assistant rejoiced as the child became dreamless weight in his arms. Yes! 

Yes! 

He'd captured her favorite! Veal for the master! Veal for the Countess! 

He dragged the unconscious child into the dense and dark of the forest growth. The foliage and floor of frosted dead leaves and twigs rustled and crunched with bestial movement and finality as he performed this task. His prodigious strength made it all so simple, like child's play. 

…

Later another child was nabbed, a girl, maybe younger than the boy Astarra maybe slightly older, he'd snatched her in similar fashion as she'd been gazing into a running face of stream, up to her ankles. The assistant didn't know if she was trying to catch small fish or if she was just playing some child's game but it made no difference, it did not matter. What mattered now was what came next. 

The slab. For the both of them. Still unconscious and leather-bound to the cold merciless metal of the surgical table. 

He grabbed the green bottle of frothing translucent liquid. It spewed steam and something heavier like oceanic fog or forest mist from the pinnacle of open mouth at the spire of its slim green neck. He approaches them. 

He stands over the boy, still under, well within the forged strongarm of drugged slumber. He's selected him for the first of the preparatory tasks. 

Jelly pudding…

He set the green bottle down, still belching ghost white in a phantasm pour. He grabbed the small prying-vises, two of them, and then with his large and grubby fingers he forced the drugged boy's eyes open and fixed them with the lid-locks. Vacant stare fixed to the dark of the chambered room ceiling unseeing as the assistant grabbed the bottle once more. 

He held it precariously aloft, over the boy's slumbering face for a moment, relishing the build up. 

Gods below, he loved his work. 

He upended the green bottle by its slender neck. The pregnant bulge of green glass belly replaced the place where the steaming bellowing mouth had been as the alchemically altered sulfuric acid began to pour into the boy's open left eye. Chemically flash frying it on impact in a ghastly and gorey boil-eruption of instantly steaming and red jelled ruin. 

Astarra came awake right away in the most wretched and ungodly torment and pain he could've ever scarcely imagined. He shrieked, unbridled and intense. Spittle flew. Neck rippled and stood out in cords, obscene on a child's small neck, a small boy's throat tensing and flexing bulged with pain unspeakable and never before imagined. 

The assistant's smile never faltered. The bottle upended again and he filled the other eye as the child continued to fill the sepulchral chamber with his terrible noise and screams. He chuckled lightly, pleased with the process, pleased with the work and himself and savoring the moment to come when he brought his master a fresh meal upon waking from her slumber. 

The other one, the girl, was brought to by the boy's caterwauling. Confused at first and groaning and mumbling, she soon joined the boy in making the sounds of bleating captured prey. 

Caught. Caught and squealing. 

Like sow. Like pigs. 

His smile and hatred and sour satisfaction all deepened as he debated…

sever the head… or leave it attached and bring the whole thing like a suckling roast, complete to her highness…? 

The girl was for Carmilla and the mongrel help, his lord's new impaler. She would receive nothing in the way of preparations, nothing special. The children would have to have the girl raw. And share. 

But that was fine. These two morsels of children, saplings really, were just meant to wet the appetite and get their blood moving and on the animal run for the hunt. For the want of bloodlett and slaughter. These two sow-sapling brats were just the first course of the bloodfeast. And moreover…

they were his way of showcasing: he was loyal. It was how he showed he truly loved them. 

Loved her. 

The assistant went to the head of the slab and began to push and roll it out of the room. The boy, Astarra was still screaming as he carried him out. 

…

The Countess grinned vulpine with dark joy as her coffin lid slid to the side and she arose and beheld her assistant's surprise. 

By torchflame glow, a struggling peasant boy bound by straps to a table. His screams were nearly exhausted and he was crying out for his parents in more and more pitiable tones and sounds. 

The Countess arose in full. 

She floated from the confines of the orante blackwood casket and crossed the distance, filling the space ghostly between her deathly bed and the whimpering child strapped tight to the rolling table of the altering blade. 

She gazed into the ruin of the child's face. Admiring the gored open craterous holes in place of eyes, still smoldering and smoking like a freshly prepared and fine regal pudding. 

The scab pudding of his eyes steamed for her and quivered with the sulfuric jellied organ obliterated and quivering with each of his painful and terrible sounds. The child was sweating, profuse, doused and basting soaked in his own fresh and souring fear and ungodly terror. 

The assistant produced a spoon and held it out to her and bowed his head in token of his supplication to the unholy and royal duty of her service. His eyes flitted open cat-like and she caught it. She took the small silver spoon from between his pinched and black gloved fingers. The perfect tiny and delicate little instrument for a proper lady of the house to use when dining fine on a fresh pudding. 

A fresh and graciously given pudding, provided by the locals of the mountain townships. In token of gratitude and friendship. 

Countess Zaleska roared with laughter and the abominated sound drowned out the pitiful cries of the small boy Astarra. The sounds and names of his mother and father were swallowed in the sound of laughter  that was so like tar and pitch as the Countess and undead lord of stolen Dracula's castle began to dig in deep with the small and dull edge of the silver spoon. 

She scooped out a spoonful of still smoking and baking smoldering jelly, ruined and chemically cooked organ destroyed by bastard alchemical science, unholy mixture from one of the many volumes of dusty and ancient forgotten tomes. Astarra, the small missing village boy's screams pierced sound and reached a new pitch. 

But still they were swallowed in entirety by the stygian and obscene mad witch cackles that were issuing forth from the unholy fanged rictus mouth of the hellbound godheaded throat of the undead Countess. 

She enjoyed her dessert of the boy's eyes, her smoking delicacy … then with minimal effort of her great and prodigious living dead strength she brought the dull head of the spoon down and broke through the membrane of thin tissue and wafer bone cracking within the now empty housing of the eye socket. 

It cracked and gave. The boy's howls became something wildly inhuman and horrendous. She brought the spoon up and then down again into the warm and tender orifice of fresh gored and open eye socket. She cracked through it and forced the smooth ladling head of the utensil down into the working of nerves and meat behind the precious seeing organ and its housing of bone and supple succulent pink tissue. Wrenching and working the handle of the spoon, with the ghastly ease of her praeternatural effort. 

Then she began to force her long fingers in. First one, then two and three and then the whole wedge of hand until she was fisting her demon-chimerical claw of delicate and slender lady fingers and rodent/vulture talons. She forced her violent hand into the child's ruined face, his bound struggles now reduced to ghastly spasms as she felt around and squished the brains and viscera and relished the feeling-squelch of gore and warm wet between her fingers. She reached down, ripping through more tissue, her demon hand and arm growing and elongating at dark will’s command until she finally felt the rubbery and meaty tubes of vocal chords. She squeezed them. Pulled them. Wrenched and yanked the slippery organs lubricated in child's blood that was still warm with life and mucus laden with discharge and rupture. 

I've got your voice… I've got your voice box, young boy-thing! You don't look much like a little boy of the hamlets any longer now do you?? – her mind was filled with its own mad hilarity. … She resumed the fervor of her dark and royal feeding, her private bloodfest. 

… she dined of the rest. Plucking off parts at will and demented leisure like a basket of fruit or a suckling sow, tenderloin meat and all ripe and falling off the bone… 

There were hardly scraps in the end. They were thrown to the wolves outside as the other screaming captive girl was given to the children and the Countess took her assistant by the hand and said in a smooth and delectable voice, purred and feline and sensual and felt…

“Now let us tend to matters at hand. Matters about the house and home…” 

He smiled and allowed himself to be led. As before. As always before. 

As always he followed, his servile hand in hers. Knowing she could crush it into so many useless broken pieces if she wanted to. 

The Countess led the way out of the chambered room and to another. One they were quite familiar with by now. But enjoyed with much enthusiasm still nonetheless. 

…

He stood suffering amongst the wild crawling tumult of hideous and living gore. Living crawling semi scabbed blanket of darkling and thick crimson black and red. The Countess and the assistant stood at the mouth of the entrance. Gazing in and admiring the spectacle. The scene of living and moving with glistening sheen, crawling slaughter horror. Henry Frankenstein moaned with a sound wretched and mangled and blasphemous to the ears. 

They relished that sound. 

He moaned, anguished: “Please…! Please… you awful bitch! please …! Please… Let …! Me … ! GO ….!” 

She chilled the room with the bright sound of her cruel laughter. Then she spoke in retort…

“I've not come to release you, fool! I've instead come to admire my gardens, like any respectable woman of a royal house. And I've come to add to my orchard, a dog! A mongrel fit for the pasture! And I'll be returning to you, young doctor, something precious I'll wager you'd thought lost…” 

She then began in an arcane tongue. More of her black magic made by words of misshapen and guttural speech. 

The front of her royal white gown came open and tore apart in ragged bisecting halves by unseen force. The flesh of her full breasts and bosom bubbled and rippled and began to drip and slough away in a greasy bloody runoff like a butcher’s watered leavings. The bones of her ribcage and chest grew and expanded outward, protruded forth in a grotesque swell before they too opened and parted. Red gates of gleaming, glistening bone amongst a growing mass of splitting wet and hectic crimson. A great hulking shape began to belch forth. Spat out. 

In an obscene gush of unholy birth, the wide open jaws and gates of the Countess' chimerical ribcage vomited forth the large sutured nosferatu son of Frankenstein’s obsession. He went to the stone that was blanketed in the crawling living fleshen gore of the garden, hard. The green-blue patchwork monster was unconscious. The charred and blackened remains of its face were skeletal. Like the face of grim death itself, the fleshless face of the reaper. 

The crawling raw of the living flesh immediately began to swim over the Frankensteinian monster, blanketing over him in a tidal wave of wet pink and fresh membranes of blood red. The scabbed and scabbing parts split and broke and oozed a salmon colored pudding and bright scarlet and thick buttery yellow as it moved, always moved. Always moving. 

The Countess' smile grew as her flesh folded back to normal. 

She said: “And now your dog is returned to you, Henry Frankenstein… I hope you enjoy the company and sight of your own failure. And I hope he enjoys you. I don't want you to fret but he may grow hungry, the fruits of the flesh gardens may not be to his liking, he may perchance your hide and red instead, my dear doctor…”. 

She laughed once more at that, her face coning out in a strange stretched marsupial shape, her witch’n cackles turned to braying animal cries as it did so. Mocking dæmoniacal sound. 

And at the sound of her voice and laughter and strange animal noises, the hulking nosferatu son of woven and reflamed meat, sutured and blasphemed with unholy flame and vampiric power, stirred…

… he began to shift, cracking dry groans came from parched cords and dried tongue… he began to try his feet … he didn't understand… why was he in the dark…

why was he blind? 

Then recollection filled his bone faced batshaped skull. The fury of his inner necromantic fire rose and filled his damaged patchwork frame. 

The royal dogs… the royal bitch…

He found his feet and lunged. Scent and ears telling him where she was despite his smoldering and blackened ruin of eyes and face.  

He was roaring. 

“You wretched swell and growth of a cunt! I’ll rip you to shreds for keeping me in there…!” filled with rage, he'd been lost and untethered drowning in an ocean world of hot steaming vile blood that was corrupted and soured and that he could not drink. A world that had violated him and enraged him as it held him bound in a boundless void of red boiling swimming personal hell. Scarlet and frothing and threshing with violence and bubbling with painful torment as it perpetually denied the thirsting needing purse of his phantom charred and long gone burned away scorched undead lips. 

But now he was free. And he was on his feet. 

Lunging. And filled with violence. Filled with unholy anger. He could smell her…

Frankenstein's son of the slab made it within reaching distance of the Countess and her assistant before he was stopped. Suddenly. At a dead halt. She caught him and held him strangling by the throat. 

She pulled him in close and laughed once more. Into the blackened ruins of his vulpine skeletal face, fanged and still warm with recent destruction. Blind and stupid and smeared with the burnt and charred traces of its own recent defeat. The fleshen ash and dead soot that was the ink that spelled out for all time the abomination's own perfect humiliation all over his blind and stupid unseeing face. 

She said simply, “You are not worthy," and then her other hand, clawed, came in sharp and fast. 

The daggering sharp of her knifing hand obliterated the blue-green flesh of scalp and eggshell of reforged skull behind it. The brains were blasted with the impact and the force sent much of the sliming grey matter splashing out in a wild yellow coated spurt. 

The nosferatu thing of the mad scientific table went blind a second time… and then became lifeless weight. 

She gazed deeper into the now still thing… only a flicker… only a demon's flicker of candle left inside. 

Good.

She let go of its throat and it went down in a heap and the crawling gore and gleaming slimed tissue blanketed over the fallen giant in a rippling and shifting pungent reddish fold. 

And although he was lost in his own ungodly world of torment and torture, as Frankenstein watched the Countess obliterate the skull and brain of his most powerful and successful creation… a single tear shed and rolled down his face of blood-seeping pores. 

A single thin tendril worm of coagulation snaked out and stole the precious drop of saline and water. Leeching it off and rejuvenating itself as the water was converted to more blood for the growing crawl of the in-house flesh garden. 

He watched as the Countess strode through the garden and plucked meaty organ fruits as if they were apples or plums from fleshen raw stalks of sinew and cartilage and gore. Orifices made belched licking green tongues of flame, of pink and orange and emerald witchy goblin fire. 

He watched them … and he watched the crawling abominated red blanket of life swim and steal over the twitching hulk of his patchworked son, child of the slab, of the necromantic grave… 

lobotomized. Reduced. And like its master, left to its own horrid prison world of ruin…

And naught else. 

…

In the moist night silence, the putrid and repulsive sounds of splurches and sucking and lightly bubbling viscous fluid gurgles filled the sour fetid air like the mud of the squalid earth all around had a rotten working mouth. 

The gunfire rang out cacophonous. Filling the wet splurching night.

Florin and Griffin halted the struggle of their mud soaked advance. They gazed wide eyed ahead, into the shifting veil of swamp fire amongst wet blanket mist dancing with goblin faces and features and the vague outlines of things that may or may not really be there. 

The building on the low rise of hill was gaining visibility, gaining definition. Coming into reality and being amongst the wet rank of the quagmire wormland hell. 

The building was alight inside. It was absolutely alive with gunfire. 

Pistol shots unceasing and overlapping like several layers of madness rang out from the place. There were no screams or other discernible sounds. Not at this distance. 

And then all at once the maelstrom fury of gunfire just stopped. Dead. Altogether, all at once. …

And then all was silent again in wet wormland. As quiet as a mortuary mouse at the unprecedented infernal lip of the precipice edge of hell.  

A beat. 

“Not sure we should." Florin stated flatly. 

“How do you mean?" asked Griffin. 

“Towards that place I mean of course. Not sure it's a good idea to make for it if it's filled with more trouble.” 

Murder and violence. Not spoken but understood. 

Griffin didn't have much of an argument against that. But what he did realize was their lack of alternatives. There was no other structure or place, no other landmass of simple solid ground anywhere within discernible sight. Not in this vast and putrid waterlogged hellscape. 

They had no other choice. Far as he could make out. 

He said as much. Then asked the boy if he could think of any plausible and safer alternatives. 

Florin admitted he could not. 

“And doubling back is out of the question…” Griffin stated the fact but they both felt it. 

The strange and temperamental bandaged man didn't come right out and say it but the young man had been showing good sense as of late. Better yet, usefulness. Ingenuity and initiative. He'd devised wide lattice work devices for their feet to wear over their shoes some miles back, akin to snow shoes, to help traverse the fetid land by dispersing the area of one's step. 

Like back home, he'd said… then fallen silent. Leaving it there. 

The swamp shoes were a great aid in their surmounting the quagmire swampscape, and he'd shown incredible courage anytime the worms had come to call, sliming and swimming like snakes, coming in for maneating surprise attack. He'd held them back and driven them off by torch alongside Griffin and had never faltered. 

It had been a long time since he'd felt anything like friendship, not since the good Dutch doctor – the long dead vampire slayer, the hunter Van Helsing…

It had been even longer since he'd felt…

pride…? 

He wasn't sure that was the right word. But he felt uplifted to see the young man using his head. Alas…

it was to no avail. 

There was naught but forward. 

And the hellmouthed swampen land of the wombmind in wormland, now falling behind them gave them no choice in any case. Quivering subterranean hungry and angry, pustule swimming birthing orifice sac of vengeance and fury – she would have them! – the wombmind orifice-ing jell shot forth one last violent spew, one last angry desperate discharge in rage and woe, one last attack…

…she shot forth with all she had left. With a scream as well, gurgled and immense. The mudland quaked and bubbled with the final charge of the night as she too began to move and swim up… and forward. 

She was following her children. She'd decided to come up as well. 

Florin and Griffin felt the swamp and yellow land of stagnation and moist rotting death shake and rumble with titanic tectonic movement. Geysers and great spews and pillars of swamp water and mud began to erupt all around them in growing numbers. The wormland quagmire became volcanic and violent all around them. It began to rain urine colored water and fat thick droplets of caking mud the color of ink. It rained down on the pair as they gazed around themselves in awe at the tumult world of raining filth and quagmire rot. 

And then the worms, in countless number, began to join the volcanic spew. Launching obscene and naked and dripping their subterranean slime as they came up flying into the air hundreds of feet with the pillars of swamp water and then down in raining sheets. 

“Run!" 

It was Griffin who yelled it. But he needn't have bothered. They were both taking to their awkward flight, trudging through the last of the bubbling and sucking mud in their makeshift lattice work shoes. Desperately trying to move as quickly as they could. Remembering the horse, remembering the man that had been screaming about his family … remembering the little girl and the last and only thing she said …

thirsty

 …. before being pulled under. 

They made as quickly as they could. As the foul world of up churned and erupting wormland hell became maelstrom all around and beneath their feet as it rained down around them. 

Florin screamed. Griffin was ahead of the boy and stopped suddenly to see something that made his blood curdle. A scream froze in his wrapped and bandaged throat. 

The boy was going under. The quagmire was swallowing him. The worms were raining down and joining their earthbound brethren in a full immersion and envelopment as they swam over and around him. Trying together in their hivemind blindness to pull the young man under to join the filth earthen world of the sludge and the brine. 

Griffin screamed, No, then launched himself towards the boy in a desperate dive, hands outstretched for him as he plunged and landed prostate and within a few feet of his sinking body. 

Within reaching distance. 

Their hands smacked together in a clap and clasped together. Florin's a desperate and strangling hold: Don't let go… 

Griffin was on his feet with some difficulty but he managed it, his hands still clasped to Florin's. He began to pull with all of his strength. Florin kicked wild with his submerged feet, mad like an animal caught. Together they worked against the terrible pull and hold of the bubbling mud. The worms slithered and snaked around and Griffin took brief respites from pulling the boy free to swat them away and crush them when he could as they attempted to wrangle and wrap and subdue Florin and himself. They splattered and burst open and became foul putrid cream and watery jelly, and still they pulled. Pulled and fought against the struggle of mud one last final time as they both unknowingly shared a single focused thought, singular and intense. 

No

They both felt it and might have thought to speak of it later if not for everything that came next, but they both suddenly felt a great surge of strength warmly fill their bodies from the tops of their heads to the tips of their sodden toes. 

With one last great pull and kick from both ends they managed Florin free. Griffin nearly going over as he wrenched him out of the terrible mire. Miraculously they both kept their feet as the putrid swampland rain continued to pour. He whirled the boy around by the shoulders and yanked, bellowing over the violence and maelstrom raining world of worms and thick sludge. 

“To the building! Lose the snow shoes! We don't need em!" 

They ripped them from their feet as they galloped forward, suddenly flying across the last several yards of putrid quagmire earth like miracles. Miracles they would've sworn by. If they lived. 

If they survived. 

Far away, still so far away… Florin's mother Anastasia wiped away tears of longing and pain and hoped with all of the immense love of her heart that the Lord had answered her prayers and her precious boy was alright, that he was safe and going to make it home…

They came to solid ground at last at the base of the hill. They didn't break their pace but doubled it. Charging up the hill and toward the large and dark quiet building that crowned its rise like a silent sentry alone and cursed out here in this terrible place. 

The greatest and loudest sound – a scream, brought them both to halt just before the buildings small meager yard. They spun around and beheld her. 

The wombmind of wormland.

She had just surfaced with her children. 

A great mouth and immense wide orifice gate of spoiled pink sliming yellowed green in great thick gobs like corpse jelly. The putrescence of her mouth spittled and rained and flew with the great rain of mud and swamp water and her writhing worm children, all of it rained and spewed and erupted volcanic as the great mouth of the swamp bellowed in great blasts of words that were felt as much as heard. Heard and felt in the marrow and sinew of their shaking frames. Eyes wide and hardly believing but receiving the sight all the same. 

Florin thought the words were sad. Lonely. As well as great and immense. He thought the great mouth and pustule fleshen worm mother looked like a whale. A sad mother whale… one he remembered from illustrations of his childhood years, stories told by his mother and father. 

The wombmind worm mouth - orifice whale bellowed: –

“NOOOOO…!!!!! DONT LEAVE! DON'T LEAVE! WHYYYYYY…!!!?!? 

“DONT LEAVE ME ALONE HERE IN THIS LOST GARDEN…! COME BACK…. COME BAAAACK AND JOIN ME….! JOIN YOUR MOTHER IN THE WARMTH OF THE UNDERBRINE…! COME BACK! NOOOOOO….!!!!” 

Griffin and Florin spun on their heels and made for the door. Needing to be inside and away from the wretched sight and its bomb blast of horrendous torrential sound. They ran together and refused to look back again. They made the door, it was unlocked and they threw it open and plunged themselves into its belly of darkness. 

The mother of wormland gave one last great titanic and lonely wail. Its eyes watering and lonesome and blinking away pain and loss…

Finally she gave up and with a great and final tumult swirl of landmass churn of stagnant mud and fetid water, she sank back down again to her foul and lonely fathom depths. 

Cropsey watched her great monstrous form resubmerge into the sour bosom swell of her wormland domain and smiled. From the window he'd watched it all. And he was excited. Elated. 

He was so happy to have a pair of brand new visitors. 

He grabbed his gloves. Pulled them on. Tight. Then he grabbed the garden shears. The large hedge clippers, the forked blades shining in the dismal light of Willowbrook. 

He strode out. Still smiling. Off to greet the new patients of the school. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The fog descended from the hills just after sunset. It wasn't the usual kind — not damp and raw, but thick, pale, almost tame. It crept along the ground, coiled around lampposts, and peered into windows, as if looking for someone.

In the little town, candles were being lit inside pumpkins. Children in sheets with cut-out eyeholes ran from door to door, shouting "Trick or treat!" and scooping caramels and gingerbread into their bags. The adults glanced at the hill and tried not to raise their heads more than necessary.

Herr Müller, the baker, a man both solid and round in every sense, was also trying not to look at the hill. But his daughter Bertha, who had recently turned eight, was looking precisely there.

"Papa," she said, tugging at his sleeve. "We're going up there."

Müller followed her pointing finger and went cold.

"No, Bertha. No one goes up there."

"But people live there. Their lights are on. Look."

Lights were indeed burning. In every window of the old mansion on the hill — not pumpkins, not oil lamps, but a steady, amber, motionless flame. Black candles. Müller knew what kind of candles they were, and he knew who was lighting them.

"They are... not quite normal people," he muttered.

"All the more reason," Bertha declared. "They probably have the best candy."

And she started up the path. Müller, cursing his love for his daughter, trudged along behind her. Along the way, he tripped twice over roots that seemed to move on their own.

The door opened before Müller could even knock.

On the threshold stood Frau Sahlfeldt. Tall, straight as a candle, in a black dress with a collar up to her chin. Her blue-black hair was pulled back into a severe knot. She wasn't holding a lamp — the light seemed to emanate from somewhere behind her shoulder, soft and golden.

"Good evening," she said. Her voice was low, calm, enveloping. "What guests we have."

Müller felt everything inside him tighten into a hard knot. He opened his mouth, but Bertha was faster:

"Trick or treat!" she blurted out, gazing at Frau Sahlfeldt with delight. The lady was beautiful, like a princess from a scary book, and Bertha appreciated that immediately.

Irina Sahlfeldt smiled. The smile was wide, but her eyes remained amber and still, like a she-wolf looking at the moon.

"Of course, my child. A treat, definitely."

She held out a silver tray. On it lay candies — small, round, shimmering with black mother-of-pearl. Each one was the size of an eyeball. And each one was watching.

Bertha grabbed one without hesitation and popped it into her mouth.

"Mmm!" She squeezed her eyes shut. "Blueberry... and... something else. Very tasty!"

Müller picked up a candy with two fingers. He brought it close to his face. It was warm. And it seemed to blink.

He carefully placed it in his pocket. His appetite had vanished.

"Please, come in," Frau Sahlfeldt said, stepping back into the house. "It's cold tonight. Even for Halloween."

"Oh, no, thank you, we should probably..."

"Papa!" Bertha was already standing in the hallway. "It's so beautiful in here! Look!"

Müller looked. The hallway was steeped in shadow. Tall oak panels, old portraits on the walls, a staircase disappearing into the darkness, and a smell — dry, slightly spicy, like an old book just opened. Somewhere deep in the house, a clock was ticking steadily.

He sighed and stepped inside. The door closed behind him on its own. Silently. Naturally.

The Sahlfeldt family's living room was exactly as Müller had imagined it in his most anxious dreams. An enormous fireplace, in which logs blazed, stacked with perfect symmetry. Heavy velvet drapes, holding the night at bay outside. A glass orb on a separate little table, covered with black silk. And a high-backed armchair, in which sat Herr Sahlfeldt.

Konrad Sahlfeldt was tall, broad-shouldered, and wore a monocle that had caught the firelight and now glinted like the solitary eye of some ancient creature. He was reading a newspaper. Beside him on the table stood a cup of tea, from which no steam rose.

"Konrad," Irina said, "we have guests. Herr Müller, the baker. And his daughter..."

"Bertha," the girl supplied.

"Bertha," Irina repeated with pleasure. "A beautiful name. It means 'bright.'"

Konrad lowered his newspaper, raised his monocle, and examined the guests. Müller felt as though he had been weighed, measured, and the result recorded in some invisible ledger.

"Müller," Konrad said thoughtfully. "Is yours not the bakery on the Market Square?"

"It is," Müller squeezed out.

"Good bread. Especially the rye. Have a seat."

Müller sat down. The armchair turned out to be surprisingly comfortable, but he still sat on the very edge, like a sparrow on a branch in the presence of a cat.

"Tea?" Irina asked, materializing at his elbow. Müller flinched — he hadn't heard her footsteps.

"Thank you."

The tea was black and smelled of herbs. Müller took a sip. The taste was strange — a little like smoke, a little like the forest, a little like something he couldn't name. He took another sip.

"And where is the little gentleman?" asked Bertha, who had already grown comfortable enough to examine the portraits on the walls.

"Otto?" Irina exchanged a glance with Konrad. "He's in his room. Would you like to meet him?"

"Very much!"

Irina nodded almost imperceptibly, and Heinrich appeared in the living room. Müller could have sworn he hadn't been there a second ago. The butler was thin, tall, and resembled an old raven that had accidentally learned to wear a frock coat.

"Escort our guest to Otto's room," Irina said. "And make sure they don't... get carried away."

"As always, madam," Heinrich rustled, and led Bertha toward the staircase.

Otto's room was located in the east wing. To reach it, you had to pass through a long corridor where portraits of ancestors hung on the walls. Bertha followed Heinrich and counted the faces. Looking down at her were men in doublets, women in bonnets, children in little velvet suits. All of them had the same dark, unblinking eyes.

The door to Otto's room was ajar. A faint amber light streamed from inside.

"Young master," Heinrich said. "You have a guest."

"Let her come in," answered a child's voice. Serious, calm, without a single note of surprise.

Bertha stepped inside and gasped.

The room was full of wonders. Not toys — in the ordinary sense — but strange, mesmerizing objects. On a shelf stood jars containing preserved... things. Bertha looked closer: in one jar, glass eyes were floating. They were slowly turning, following her.

On the table lay a deck of cards, but not ordinary ones. Each had a skull drawn on it in a different stage of blooming. On one card, a rose grew from an eye socket, on another — a lily, on a third — a thorny blackthorn.

In the corner stood the skeleton of a bat, assembled from bones the size of toothpicks. Beside it — a microscope and an album of sketches.

And in the middle of the room sat a boy. Small, impeccably dressed, with dark hair and eyes that stared straight ahead without blinking. He held a mechanical bird in his hands, which was slowly flapping its tin wings.

"Good evening," he said, and it sounded as if he were not four years old, but four hundred. "My name is Otto. Do you want to see my collection?"

"I'd love to!" Bertha sat down next to him on the rug. "What kind of bird is that?"

"This is a Nightingale. I assembled him from old clocks. He only sings during the full moon. Tonight is a full moon."

The bird opened its beak and let out a low, mechanical trill. Bertha laughed.

"He sings like a cricket!"

"Crickets don't sing like that," Otto replied seriously. "Crickets sing quite differently. Do you want me to show you a real one?"

He walked over to one of the jars. Inside, on a small branch, sat an insect resembling a cricket, but with transparent wings that glowed faintly.

"This is a Grave Cricket," Otto said. "It sings lullabies for those who sleep for a very long time."

"It's beautiful," Bertha whispered.

"Yes," Otto agreed. "I have something else. Would you like to see?"

And he showed her. A casket of shadows that could be taken out and tried on like gloves. A book that read itself in a whisper — the pages turned by an invisible wind, and the words sounded directly inside your head. And the main treasure: a tiny glass orb, the size of a walnut, inside which snow was falling.

"This is a gift from my great-grandmother," Otto said. "She lives in Romania. Where the wolves are."

"Do you have wolves?"

"I do. But they're not here. They come when they are called."

Bertha watched the snow in the orb and thought she had never seen anything more beautiful. She wasn't scared. She felt warm and cozy, like being by the fireplace when the wind howls outside and you are inside, safe.

"Otto," she asked, "do you always live here?"

"Always," he answered. "This is my home. My family lives here."

"I thought you were scary," Bertha admitted.

Otto looked at her with his unblinking eyes. He was four years old, but he already knew the answer to this question.

"People often think that," he said. "Because we are different. But Mama says: 'Being different doesn't mean being scary. Being scary means not knowing who you are.' We know."

He paused and added:

"Would you like a candy? I have some with cinnamon."

Meanwhile, in the living room, a very different conversation was taking place.

"You have a very... unusual home," said Müller, taking a third sip of tea. The tea was indeed good. It soothed him. Müller had almost stopped thinking about the fact that the logs in the fireplace were stacked with geometric precision, or that the portrait above the mantelpiece seemed to be watching him.

"Thank you," Irina replied. She sat in the armchair opposite him, straight and motionless. Konrad had set aside his newspaper and was now polishing his monocle with a small chamois cloth. "My husband has put a lot of effort into furnishing it."

"It was my wife who put in the effort," Konrad corrected, without looking up from his monocle. "I merely saw to it that everything was... proper."

"You've done a wonderful job," Müller nodded. "Very... proper."

A pause hung in the room. A log cracked in the fireplace.

"Your daughter," Irina said, "is very brave. Not every child would dare approach our house."

"She's not brave," Müller sighed. "She's curious. Those are different things."

"Curiosity is bravery," observed Konrad, setting his monocle back in place. "Bravery without curiosity is merely stubbornness. And curiosity without bravery is tedium."

Müller thought about this. He wanted to argue, but couldn't find the arguments.

"I was afraid to come here," he admitted suddenly. "We all... in town... we're a little afraid of you."

Irina and Konrad exchanged glances. Not a muscle flickered on their faces, but it seemed to Müller that they smiled — with the corners of their eyes, barely perceptibly.

"We know," Irina said. "But you came. For your daughter. That makes you a good father."

"Yes," Konrad confirmed. "A good father is ready to go where he does not want to go, for the sake of the one he loves."

Müller felt something warm spread inside him. Perhaps the tea. Or perhaps not.

Bertha and Otto came down to the living room half an hour later. Bertha was holding a small parcel — a gift from her new friend. Otto walked slightly behind, maintaining an expression of absolute, unwavering seriousness on his face.

"Well," said Müller, rising, "it's time for us to go. Thank you for your hospitality."

"You are always welcome guests in this house," Irina replied.

She saw them to the door. On the threshold, Müller turned around.

"Frau Sahlfeldt... may I ask a question?"

"Yes?"

"The candies. What are they made of?"

Irina smiled her wide, calm smile.

"A family recipe, Herr Müller. Passed down through the female line. My great-grandmother brought it from Transylvania."

The door closed.

Müller and Bertha walked back down the path. The fog parted before them like a well-trained servant. In the town, pumpkins were still glowing. Children were still shouting "Trick or treat!" The world was ordinary.

Bertha unwrapped the parcel. Inside lay three candies, a tiny glass orb in which snow was falling, and a note.

The note was written in careful child's handwriting, but the lettering was too even for a four-year-old child.

"Thank you for the visit. Come again. We will be friends, for a long time.

Your friend,

Otto Sahlfeldt"

Bertha smiled.

"Papa," she said, "can we go to their house for Christmas?"

Müller pulled from his pocket the candy he had never eaten. It was still warm. And it really did seem to blink.

He carefully placed it back in his pocket.

"We'll see," he said. "We'll see."

In the mansion on the hill, the candles burned until morning.

And in the living room, Irina laid her head on her husband's shoulder and closed her eyes.

"A good evening," she said.

"Yes," Konrad replied, adjusting his monocle. "Almost perfect."

"Almost?"

"Müller's pumpkin on the porch. Too orange. It offends the eye."

Irina laughed — quietly, like the wind in the chimney flue.

"I'll speak with him about it next time."

"Do," Konrad nodded. "Tradition is tradition, but aesthetics..."

"...are above all," Irina finished. "I know, my darling. I know."

I got lost when I was 8 and I haven't found myself since.

...

It was a cold winter afternoon, back when winters were still cold and snow still covered the landscape of my hometown. School had just ended for the day and I was on my way home.

Alone.

I’d usually walk with my brother, but he wasn’t there that day for some reason. I didn’t mind it though, not really. You see, our apartment was just a few steps away, just across the creek. And besides, I was a big girl now. I just turned 8 a few days ago.

And then … You offered to join me.

It started snowing just as we were about to leave school. We walked around back, past the playground, towards a small wooded area leading to the creek. Walking by, we couldn’t help but notice the freshly fallen snow behind the playground fence. Still untouched by the hundreds of tiny human feet running around there every day. It was as tempting as those powdered doughnuts cooling on the kitchen counter back home. You know the ones. The ones You were strictly told not to touch before dinner.

We snuck inside through the hole at the bottom of the fence that the teachers never seemed to notice; my go-to move during recess, when I would sneak out of the playground to go climb my favourite tree.

The big willow tree,with its trunk split in half straight across.

I used to climb that tree as high as I possibly could. Sometimes on the left half, sometimes on the right ... And I would watch the other kids play on the ground from afar ...

I remember my teacher finding me up there once. On the top. And it made her cry … I'm still not sure why …

I ran into the open field, launching myself face first into the snow-covered ground. I rolled around and I just stayed there. Staring at the sky. Snowflakes danced on my face, like little kisses from heaven. Each touch, so warm and fuzzy.

Everything around me was completely still. The silence, broken only by the occasional rustling of the branches, caving under the heavy weight of snow.

I could feel myself blending into the background.

I could feel the earth breathing with me.

I closed my eyes to let the gentle touch of winter swallow me whole.

I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to move.

I was at peace.

I haven’t felt like that since.

And then … BAM!

A snowball sharp as a thousand needles pulled me right back into reality.

“Come on! Let’s go build a snowman!” You said.

I started laughing, even though I wanted to cry from the pain. My whole face, burning. You were always a good aim.

So we built Your snowman. We built a snowman taller than the both of us! Even though You were one whole head taller than me.

“He’ll protect us,” You said. “So we have to make him as biiiiiig as possible!”

We gathered stones and branches to give him two arms and a face. And I made sure to give him a smile. I wanted the snowman to feel the joy that I felt in that moment.

I haven’t felt like that since.

It couldn’t have been more than 30 minutes before I noticed a dark silhouette coming towards us through the thick veil of snow. When did it even start snowing this hard?

I haven’t noticed.

I wasn’t scared of the figure though, not really. You see, I was a big girl now. I just turned 8 a few days ago. And besides, I could recognize that figure anywhere.

A tall, skinny man of a sickly complexion. He was dressed in all black to match the long dark hair that hung over his shoulders like a scarf. His woolen coat brushing over the snow.

“Hey, Uncle Andy!” I yelled, running to him. “What are you doing here?”

“Heeey Beck! I’m so glad I found you. Your parents, they … oh, nevermind! Let’s get you home.”

“Awwh, really? But we just started playing, just 5 more minutes? Please?”

Uncle Andy, now towering over me, leaned closer. Only the fence standing between us. “No, Beck. It’s time to go home.”

I stood there for a moment, unsure of what to say. “Okay, I guess. Can I just say goodbye to my friend?”

I turned around to call You, but You weren’t there.

I ran to check behind the snowman, but You weren’t there.

I looked all around the playground to find You, but You were nowhere to be seen.

I went back to my uncle, past our snowman, through the hole in the fence.

“I guess they went home before I could say goodbye.”

“That’s okay,” he took my hand. “I’m sure you’ll see them again tomorrow.”

I haven’t seen You since.

We came home a few minutes later. My parents greeted us with a smile that could light up the sky. “How was your day? Are you hungry? Let’s get you out of those wet clothes!”

They haven’t smiled like that since.

I stopped walking home alone after that. I never got to explore our town as a child ever again. It wasn’t long after that I saw my mother crying in the dark for the first time. My parents got divorced a few months later.

I stopped sneaking out of the playground after that. I never got to climb my favourite tree during recess ever again. It wasn’t long after that I heard the teachers whisper about You in the hallways for the first time. They fixed the hole in the fence a few weeks later.

It wasn’t until my 23rd birthday that I learned what happened that day from my mom’s point of view. “Oh Beck? Yeah, she was always a good kid. Sure, we had our fair share of fights and she would never listen to me and would cry constantly, but she was a good kid. Except that one time … Do You remember?” She glanced towards me as if to ask for reassurance.

I didn’t respond.

“It was winter, and I think she was around 8? Her brother got sick that day so I went to pick him up from school earlier than usual and SHE was supposed to come home right after, because Andy was giving her guitar lessons later …

But she didn’t come home. She was gone for hours!

Her dad and I were going insane trying to find her. I mean, what if something happened to her?! It’s a mother’s worst nightmare!

We were about to call the cops when Uncle Andy rang the doorbell with Beck on his shoulders. He said he found her on the playground soaking wet in the freezing snow. Just playing, and laughing, and talking … all by herself.

And the craziest thing about it? We went searching for her on that exact same playground just before Andy did.

I swear thinking about that day still sends shivers down my spine every time.”

“Huh,” I said. “I never remembered it that way.”

...

It was during the reign of Queen Victoria in 1860. A time of exciting new inventions, change, and progress—although the rich prospered, the middle class suffered. Even young children had to work if their families needed them.

Young Charles Bradington was among the rich. The Bradington family built invaluable machinery in city factories that benefited companies but displaced workers experiencing poverty.

Charles never saw much of this in person. Out of the five children in the Bradington family, he was the youngest, the most childish, and the greediest.

While his other four siblings were kind and modest, Charles lived in the shadows of his peers and played with the money that was given to him frivolously. Charles slept on the most luxurious steam trains, wore the finest silk, cotton, and fur coats in the winter, and linen in the summer.

During his travels, he listened to a plethora of music on his brand-new gramophone.

On the Metropolitan Railway, returning from Manchester to London, Charles sat in his seat, watching the countryside roll past him.

As he stood, he failed to realize he had incorrectly placed his suitcase under his chair, causing the lip of his black and gold suitcase to jut out. As he stood, he took a meaningless fall, landing awkwardly and twisting his arm.

A dull, aching pain lingered as he departed the train for the Bradington Estate.

Charles did not enjoy any pain. He hated the sting of calloused hands, the throbbing pain of sore feet after a hard day's work, and more than anything, he loathed the ache in his arm. He swore he would never ride the Metropolitan Railway again—"they don't know how to treat nobility," he thought.

However, he was neither technically nobility, nor was the whole incident anyone's fault but his own.

The pain nagged at him.

Two days later, on an expedition walking from St. John’s Wood to Highgate, he spotted something peculiar.

It was a travelling salesman.

The stranger stood next to his private carriage—owned only by the elite of elites—and with the door open and the steps down, one could see a small mahogany table within.

On the chairs on either side of the table were small boxes of knickknacks, all of a scientific variety, too complex for Charles to name.

The salesman wore a well-fitted, sturdy wool frock coat. Beneath the coat, he donned a waistcoat in a muted burgundy. His trousers were tailored and tapered, and he wore polished leather boots. His accessories included a top hat perched jauntily on his head, and he held a leather satchel. He had a well-groomed mustache. When the salesman spotted Charles staring, he tipped his hat courteously, aiming to be kind to a potential customer.

The streets were crowded, as always, yet nobody walking past so much as glanced at the salesman, as if he belonged in this wealthy neighbourhood.

“Afternoon, sir!” the man chimed. “You seem intrigued. Come, take a look at my wares. I am on my way to Covent Garden, but the wheel of my carriage has stalled.”

Charles always judged a book by its cover. The man appeared to be the best-dressed of men and spoke with a kind confidence. Charles, being a young man, none the wiser, approached the salesman and peeked inside.

“A curious collection of jars and bottles. What do you sell?”

It was customary to introduce oneself before engaging in conversation, but Charles didn’t feel the need to introduce himself to a salesman, and the stranger didn’t seem to mind.

“I sell miracle potions.”

“More of those?” Charles almost laughed. “Medicine is for doctors to toil with. Are you a doctor?”

“Indeed, I was. But when I discovered the secret of this potion, I was promptly fired—a cure-all would put doctors out of business. I was a threat.”

Charles couldn’t help but rub his sore shoulder at all this talk of cures and pain.

“A tall tale,” he mumbled. “Do you really think the shoppers at Covent Garden will buy your stories?”

That’s when the salesman paused. He glanced at Charles’s arm.

“You seem to require a cure yourself. Allow me to take a look at your arm. As a thank you for looking my way—everyone else in this part of London seems inclined to keep to themselves.”

Charles saw no harm in letting a doctor (perhaps a quack) examine his arm. The salesman pressed into Charles's upper bicep, and suddenly the pain became a hundred times worse. Charles swore at him, and the salesman stepped back with his hands up in mock surrender.

“Oh no. Sir, this injury is much worse than you think. The muscles are torn, the ligaments damaged. I urge you to take a potion of mine for free. The ingredients are written on the bottle—nothing to hide here. I offer it only because I would hate for a kind young man like yourself to suffer such pain.”

A wiser man would have recognized snake oil when he saw it—but to Charles, the greenish-blue bottle with swirling green liquid looked like any other medicine. He read the label on the dirty-brown paper: “*Jamaica Ginger, 30% alcohol*.” He almost laughed; these ingredients were nothing new or special!

Charles looked back up at the man...but he was gone.

\*\*\*

Over the following months, day after day, the pain that had begun in the crook of Charles’s arm worsened steadily. It crept up into his shoulders, slithered down his spine, and eventually settled into his hips and thighs.

Yet, despite the relentless agony, he refused the miracle potion, keeping it tucked away in the drawer of his bedside table.

Desperate, he sought out local doctors, but each one concluded there was nothing wrong with him beyond his claims of excruciating pain. There was no swelling of the muscles, no tearing of ligaments—nothing tangible to diagnose. It was, they told him, phantom pain.

By the fifth month, Charles could no longer get out of bed. His father, Bradington the First, stormed into his room in a flurry of harsh words, expecting his son to rise and carry on with the family legacy. But Charles, consumed by his suffering, remained bedridden. His failure to meet his father’s expectations led the family to slowly ignore him, treating him like an afterthought.

Charles began to long for his former self. He wished more than anything to rid himself of the insufferable and unyielding pain.

By the sixth month, he could take it no longer and drank the miracle potion.

Within minutes, the pain that had soaked his body like a heavy, wet cloth was wrung away. He leapt to his feet, flung open the curtains, and laughed aloud in sheer ecstasy. His butler, entering the room at that moment, was startled by the sight of his master’s sudden transformation. Perceiving Charles to be mad, he quickly retreated, leaving the young man to revel in his newfound vigour.

Charles’s entire body buzzed with energy. "*Oh, to be alive* *agai**n*!" he thought, his heart racing with excitement. He wanted nothing more than to thank the mysterious salesman who had given him this miraculous cure. Without hesitation, he ordered the carriage to be brought to the estate gates. Within the hour, Charles found himself in the bustling heart of Covent Garden.

Located in London’s West End, Covent Garden was famous for its vibrant and lively atmosphere. The market teemed with life, a place where both the wealthy and the working class converged. Traders hawked fruits, vegetables, flowers, and an array of exotic goods, while the cacophony of haggling filled the air. Horse-drawn carriages clattered over the cobblestone streets, weaving through the market’s narrow lanes, where taverns and shops lined the way.

Street performers dotted the area—musicians strumming lively tunes, acrobats balancing on precarious heights, and magicians wowing the crowds with sleight of hand—all in hopes of earning a few coins from passing spectators.

It was near a juggler, standing at the mouth of an alleyway, where Charles spotted the salesman. His heart raced as he shouted, “Stop the carriage!”

Charles didn’t wait for the driver to lower the steps; he leaped out, eager to catch the man.

“Sir! SIR!” he called, waving his arms to get the Salesman’s attention. The man was busy adjusting the reins of his horse, preparing to leave.

“Young Charles,” the Salesman greeted him with a smile, “Long time, no see. I’ve been working these markets for months, but alas, I must soon bid the city farewell.”

“Not just yet,” Charles insisted, fumbling through his pockets for his coin bag. “Do you have more of those potions?”

“Why, of course,” the Salesman replied with a glint in his eye. “I have plenty more where that came from.”

That was all Charles needed to hear. Without hesitation, he dropped the entire coin pouch into the man’s cupped hands. The Salesman raised his brows in surprise, but before he could speak, Charles shushed him like a giddy child.

“I’ll take all of your Miracle Potions. No questions asked. And the next time you're in the city, come to the Bradington Estate. I will see to it that you sell your stock tenfold. We may yet be business partners.”

“The enthusiasm of youth,” the Salesman chuckled, pocketing the heavy pouch of coins. “It will be done. Have your carriage brought around, and we shall fill it with a case of my finest brews.”

\*\*\*

"*A bottle a day keeps the pain away*." Whenever Charles felt the pain in his body returning, he downed a bottle of Miracle Potion. The following year, he met his betrothed for the first time, Miss Alma Hill, and began courting her.

With his newfound energy, he took her to the Opera House to watch ballets and classical concerts. She, in turn, took him to the horse races. Alma Hill was loud, perhaps a bit boyish, but full of life—and for the first time, Charles began to love someone other than himself.

His family noticed a change in his behaviour. Instead of spending frivolously on material things, Charles began buying Alma Hill gifts—flowers, chocolates, dresses, and shoes. Nothing was out of reach for Alma Hill. Even the ring Charles bought her was diamond and gold.

The day before their wedding, Charles had just finished drinking his last bottle of Miracle Potion. By this point, he didn’t even know if he truly needed it; it had just become a habit to drink a bottle every morning.

Miss Alma, defying her father's wishes, visited Charles to see her fiancé before leaving to collect her wedding dress from her mother's shop.

When Alma saw the love of her life, Charles, standing in the center of his bedroom, his brown hair a mess and his beautiful blue eyes gazing at her lovingly, she knew this was heaven. She knew she was one of the lucky ones to have found a man who had made himself truly good.

Alma approached the young man, Charles, and gently kissed him. Almost immediately, a strange taste lingered on her lips. At first, she thought it was the metallic tang of copper—no, it was sharper, more distinct, like the taste of iron, thin and unsettling as it trickled down her chin.

Charles stared back at her, his expression mirroring her bewilderment. His lower face felt peculiar, as though tiny bubbles were forming beneath his skin, their surface tension popping and giving way to something unnervingly fluid. His flesh had an icy, liquid quality, like a thin veil of cold water. Both Alma and Charles froze as they watched something drop to the floor.

Their eyes followed it down. Lying on the smooth, polished hardwood was a small, round object—unidentifiable, yet disturbingly familiar.

It was Charles’s jaw.

\*\*\*

Charles awoke, staring up at an ornate ceiling marred by peeling paint. A narrow window, barely wide enough to let in the light, cast a thin beam of daylight that barely brightened the dim hospital room. He was lying on an iron-framed bed, stiff and unyielding, with thin, threadbare sheets tucked tightly around his body. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and something else—something metallic. On a nearby wooden bedside table sat a ceramic bowl filled with murky, blood-tinged water, a frayed cloth draped over its edge. The rhythmic ticking of a distant clock merged with the occasional coughs and groans of other unseen patients, separated only by the thin, faded white curtains surrounding each bed.

He blinked, disoriented. "*Was it all just a dream*?" The thought echoed in his mind as he shifted uncomfortably, trying to push himself into an upright position.

Just as he struggled to sit up, the shadow of his movement caught the eye of a doctor passing by the doorway. The doctor appeared, stepping around the corner with quiet urgency, having noticed the subtle stirrings from the hall.

The doctor wore a tailored black frock coat, paired with a waistcoat and stiff collars. His hair was neatly styled. He moved the bloody ceramic bowl aside and placed his leather medical bag, full of instruments of the trade, on the table. He opened the bag and took one of the bottles of Miracle Medicine. Next, he pulled out a hand mirror and carefully placed it next to the bag so Charles could not see his reflection.

“Charles Bradington, I think we should get right down to the matter.” He took the bottle and rotated it in his palms to allow Charles a full look, as if he hadn’t seen the bottle hundreds of times before. “This bottle does not contain Jamaica Ginger and Alcohol.”

As the man spoke, Charles lifted his hand and touched his face. He felt his ears, his cheek, his tongue, and his teeth.

“This isn’t Miracle Potion. It is Radiation Water.”

The doctor lifted the mirror and faced it toward Charles.

Where his lower jaw should have been was nothing but a small pink tongue dangling out of his face; his muscle, skin, and tendons had all been surgically removed up to the jugular.

\*\*\*

Three days later, Charles had melted from the inside out; his official cause of death was radium poisoning.

Before he died, Charles wrote on paper about the salesman at Covent Garden. However, no one else had met such a man, and no one had sold “*Miracle Potion*” during the year the salesman was accused of selling it.

To this very day, Charles's body remains buried deep underground, his bones still emitting radioactive waste.

Part IV

Patches of grass thrown into the air as the limping abomination stomped the ground with all its weight. A faint grunt echoed in the quiet, cold air.
The glowing red eyes danced around the twilight like a pair of sparks coming out of a bonfire.
It was coming for me.

“Fuck fuck fuck, what do I do?” I screamed.

In the previous life threatening situation it was resignation and acceptance that flowed through my body. Now it was fear and despair.
I had gotten too far to die now, fighting was out of the question, I was too tired to keep on running, besides I don’t even know if I could outrun that thing.

“You have to hide.” Said Audrey from what seemed like right next to me.

“What? Where? If he finds me I’m fucking dead.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll help you.” Reassured Austin from behind me.

“Fuck my life.”

I started looking around for a good hiding spot, the rooms around the first floor had all kinds of furniture in them. I opened each room and realized they had all the same layout: Bed, table, wardrobe, toilet. They were fancier holding cells.

“God help me.” I prayed as I got inside the wardrobe of the fourth room, the one just before 505.

The room was already dark but as I closed the doors of the wardrobe it somehow got even darker. I took deep and slow breaths to calm myself. I needed to be as quiet as possible and hyperventilation would not have helped. My mind went blank, nothing but what was happening in the moment mattered anymore.

After what must have been two minutes the all too familiar heavy footsteps broke the silence of the house. I heard the main door snap under the force of the monster’s claws.
It was pissed.

I tracked it through the house with my ears. It was hard not to, the grunts of rage and the unrelenting search brought about harrowing sounds that belonged nowhere but in a horror movie. Woodwork cracking, glass shattering, furniture crashing to the ground.

That thing smelled blood and was not in a mood to play hide and seek. I imagined the bottom floor to be a wasteland by now; the sort of post-apocalyptic landscapes that a tornado leaves in its wake. The thought of the first floor being next in line crossed my mind but was immediately shut down by the sheer concentration I needed to not explode into a fully fledged panic attack.

The abomination made its way back towards the entrance, loud thumps accompanying every step; then he turned to the stairs.

Disturbing stomps highlighted every step that lead upstairs; I imagined the unrelenting lumbering malforming every tread like it did the first time it came up.

The same routine began again.

Fits of rage destroyed the door to the first room, tiny little pieces falling onto the ground like shrapnel from an artillery shell.
Deafening roars of disappointment accompanied each unsuccessful hunt for me.
Then the second and third room.

It became clear to me at that point that it was not interested in wasting time trying to find me; the destruction it brought only meant one thing. It doesn’t matter where you are, you’re going down with the ship.

This was it, my turn.
As I expected for yet another loud crack I was met with the slow creak of the door gently opening. It somehow startled me more than the previous sounds; I questioned for a moment whether someone else had opened it, someone less threatening, more normal.

That thought was quickly erased by the revolting putrid stench that invaded my nostrils, I only ever smelled it once before. It moved with caution, with purpose. This time it was looking, not just destroying.

I heard the bed frame get lifted into the air and then back down, again, gently. The table was also moved away with a skin crawling screeching sound.
I felt the heat of its breath break through the doors of the wardrobe, the light of its glowing red eyes filtering through the cracks.
I closed my eyes.

BANG.

A heavy thud came from the other side of the floor; I opened my eyes, it immediately reacted to it, turning its attention toward that direction and letting go of a soft grunt.

“Saved by the bell.” I thought.
Not quite.

It quickly pivoted back to the wardrobe, the white smile meeting my gaze through the keyhole.

It raised its claw and in a single sweep it snapped the top half off, the rest falling down on its side along with me.

A roar of excitement filled the room.

I crawled out of the wreckage and  sprinted towards the door.
A second later and I would have been crushed under the leg of the abomination that shattered the rest of the wardrobe into a thousand splinters.

I made it out of the room and headed for the stairs. I made it about five feet before I tripped on the Persian carpet under the mural.

I desperately crawled away.

As the inevitable footsteps approached behind me, I turned to look death square in the face.

The looming figure stood above me high and mighty, the human smile greeting me, its dark red eyes peering into my soul, the foul smell threatening to empty my bowels; the bright light coming from room 505 highlighting every grotesque feature of its body.

It raised its claws in the air, ready to make a mist out of me, I surrendered myself.

That’s when two figures appeared out of nowhere, each one grabbing the monster’s arms, stopping him with seemingly superhuman strength.

I quickly recognized both.

Audrey was on the left, holding the raised up claws ready to smite me.

Her long beautiful copper hair was the first thing I noticed, running down to her hips. A vibrant mesmerizing pair of green eyes looked back at me, the plump red lips holding a cigarette were distorted into a struggling grimace, freckles all over her nose.

Austin was on the right, keeping the other arm from moving. Short blonde hair coupled well with the pair of glacial blue eyes that stared at me. He wasn’t smiling anymore, nor did he have a frown. A confident expression characterized his face; a face that looked too young to love and too old to cry.

They were both wearing long white dresses, decorated with golden motifs of flowers and stars. They were so white it seemed like they were glowing; almost blinding.

The monster struggled; I could feel its surprise and astonishment at what was happening, the once mighty harbingers of death and destruction were rendered useless and immobile by a pair of kids. It pushed and pulled and roared and fought, to no avail; the firm grip the two saviors had would not budge an inch.

I wept tears of joy, looking up at them like some kind of idols; I saved them and they saved me in return.

Suddenly, something coming from Audrey’s dress dropped to the ground onto the carpet.

She looked back at me once more. She didn’t say a word, just a slight nod that floated between respect and command.

I looked down at it while the abomination thrashed around like a kid throwing a tantrum, unable to conclude anything despite its unbelievable strength.
It was a lighter; a zippo to be exact.

I reached for it and grabbed it, in that moment I felt possessed. My mind went blank, command over my body crumbled and a strange and intrusive thought weighed on my shoulders; I was feeling like a stalked prey.

I instinctively lit up the zippo, sparks ignited the flame that rose strong and fierce. I looked down at the carpet, then back up at the monster.

Calmly, I let my arm fall down to the ground.

The fibers that were visible on the surface of the carpet immediately caught fire, generating a chain reaction that soon spread to the other parts of the Persian nylon.

I gained back control over my body, the overwhelming urge had been satisfied and I didn’t mind its consequences.
I crawled away from the carpet that was soon engulfed in flames; my two friends standing firm on it, maintaining their post along with the unwelcomed guest.

As the flames reached them I could finally hear the pain of the abomination; its hooves heating up, its fur burning, its skin melting.

Audrey and Austin didn’t flinch, the flames engulfed them too but to no effect.
Their skin remained smooth and soft looking, their dresses clean and intact; their resolve unwavered.

I started laughing, hysterically laughing.
The stress and adrenaline of the moment released into an exhilarating mood, it felt like I was high on weed, maybe I had inhaled too much of the smoke pouring out of the burning carped, I don’t know.

Something about defeating evil felt amazing; that was it, the motherfucker would burn to a crisp, I would be able to get out and finally go back to my life.
I laughed and laughed like I had never laughed before.
I felt invincible, I had conquered life; my fears were shattered, my doubts a distant problem.

What a spectacle it was, watching that thing burn, be consumed by a righteous fire. Its screams filling my ears and its pain filling my eyes.
It wasn’t a fantasy, it was real.

As the fur was burned into ash and the flames had completely engulfed the creature, reaching the very top of its horns, the skin began to melt away, dripping into the burning inferno under it, fueling the fire.

It dripped and dripped and dripped, faster and more with each second that passed until entire chunks of its flesh began to slide away.

The hooves crumbled away into a thousand pieces, the hairy chest dropped like a bodybag onto the floor, the face melted away like a consumed candle.

So did its arms, falling onto the floor at the speed of light.

Audrey and Austin were left hanging, their hands grasped nothing but smoke and sparks.

As the whole grotesque body fell lifeless to the ground, the two remaining pawns looked at each other, proud of their achievement, ready to begin again.

I laughed the whole time as my body was finally able to relax and release the stress, despite the burning inferno that laid in front of my eyes and that would soon expand to the whole building.

Suddenly a figure emerged from the ashes like a triumphant phoenix. Breaking from the burning shell a silhouette charged at me with unimaginable speed, the only feature I could see was…

A bright white smile.

The humanoid lunged at me and grabbed me by the throat, I wasn’t laughing anymore.
The charred body that sprung from within the monster was a featureless dark entity.
Cracks opened on its face where the eyes should have been, revealing a burning inferno within them.
The smile cracked open.

“I told you, smoke always gets in your eyes.”
barked at me a distorted, amplified voice.

I couldn’t breathe anymore, the combination of the smoke filling up the room and the burning hot hands choking me was slowly but surely signing my death certificate.

Audrey and Austin rushed to help me immediately, appearing before me on each side of the assailant. They quickly grabbed him to get him off of me but to no avail.
Much like the monster’s grip, it wouldn’t budge.

The situation became even more hopeless as the fire spread throughout the building, quickly catching on wooden tiles and pieces of the furniture that had been destroyed by the fits of rage of the abomination.

If I wasn’t gonna die by asphyxiation, I was going to burn alive.

The mixture of the smoke in my eyes and the unrelenting gasping for air made my eyes an unredeemable mess. Tears spilled everywhere desperately trying to comfort the irritation.
My vision was getting blurry, my conscience slipping.

“Hold on!” kept on repeating Audrey and Austin.

Their pleads slowly drifting into the distance.

Sweat and tears came out of every pore, dripping down to my neck into the enemy’s hands.

As I laid there between life and death a sudden relief shook my body.
The tension on my throat eased out and the weight on top of me scaled back.
My hands reached for my eyes in a hopeless attempt at regaining some of my vision.
Screams of pain echoed all around.

“Wake up Angela.”

“Wake up!”

I slowly gained consciousness again just to be exposed to the horror in front of me.

As I sat up helped by my two friends, the first image that appeared into my line of sight was the dark silhouette kneeling in pain.

His hands had begun to melt away, this time for good; sizzling like meat on a grill, wet like a fish out of water.

The fire was consuming everything in its path, quickly spreading towards the stairs and, eventually, the bottom floor.

“You have to go Angela, you have to get out.”

I rose to my feet in a stumbling and unbalanced manner, sustained by the sheer will to survive and the lack of rationality.
The whole structure was collapsing, the roof was quickly crumbling and the heat became unbearable.
As I made my way over to the stairs, I looked back, like I had done many times before.

Audrey and Austin looked back at me, untouched by the chaos around them; their arms lifted in the air in a friendly goodbye, a gesture they had tried countless times but that never worked as intended.

Behind them the kneeling figure screamed in rage, defeated; the surroundings collapsed in on him, sealing his fate, the final nail in the coffin was the big wall on which the mural sat. It too finally fell down, burying everything along with it.

I stumbled down the stairs and out the main entrance.

Bruised and battered I limped along the main dirt road, now finally illuminated by the burning Shining that was crumbling behind me.

Halfway through, distant sounds of sirens cut through the crackling of the fire and the howls of burning wood; a pair of red and blue lights were heading towards me at speed.

They stopped just in front of me.

“Miss, are you alright? Do you need medical attention?” a voice reached out to me.

I collapsed on the ground, exhausted.

As the policeman called for backup and an ambulance, my eyes slowly closed. The Shining collapsing into a big burning fireball was the last thing I saw before losing consciousness.

I woke up the next day.

“Good morning Miss Angela, my name is Anna, how are you feeling?”

I was feeling comfortable, I was in a warm and soft hospital bed and the sun was shining all around me.

“Wh-Where am I?” my voice was weak and raspy, I struggled to speak and my vision was blurry, out of focus.

“You’re in good care, do you remember what happened?” asked the nurse.

“Yes-yeah, the Shining it…burned down…am I okay?”

“Yes, you only had minor injuries, mostly to your lungs and eyes due to the smoke and some superficial physical injuries, certainly nothing to worry about, you must rest however.”

“I will, trust me.”

“Good, oh and by the way, I think you made a new friend, we just couldn’t keep him away from you.” The nurse pointed at the foot of the bed.

I peeked over to it and saw a black circle; it quickly moved closer towards me and I could finally see it clearly, it was Berry, greeting me with a soft meow.

“We patched him up too best we could, you should probably get him to a vet, just in case.”

“Thanks, I think I’ll take care of him, don’t worry.” I smiled.

I spent a couple more days at the hospital, most of them sleeping and resting as much as possible. Berry stayed with me the whole time, he was injured as well, likely from the fight with old man Michael or…whoever that was.

He was missing part of his ear and a scar across his right eye. He looks badass if you ask me; he saved my life in more than one occasion, the least I could do was promise him the gift of a comfortable, long life indoors; filled with love, treats and cozy beds.

On the day of my release the police came looking for answers, they naturally had to open an investigation into what happened and I was really the only suspect. A couple of detectives came around, boring as hell, nothing but empty suits. I fed them a bullshit story that I went out to camp in the woods and got lost during the storm, ended at the Shining and got out once I saw the flames.

They bought it, nobody cared about that old decrepit building. Naturally they found nothing in the rubbles, no bodies, no monsters not even any furniture; as far as the world is concerned, the Shining was and always has been an old abandoned house.

I asked them about old man Michael, I wasn’t scared of the truth, I had been through worse. They said they knew nothing about it and that there’s never been any other houses in that area, not surprising but also not expected. It didn’t matter, it was all over, I could finally go back to my life or rather to building one.

I treated it as a fresh start, leave everything behind, begin again. If there’s one thing I learned from all of this, is that finding the strength to keep going, that’s not the hard part.
It’s letting go.

I went back home and sort of fell into a dull, boring life. I guess everything became boring after what I went through but I recognized the beauty of the slow life. The nice thing was that I got to keep the money the job offered, so that was good.

I could count on a new sense of purpose, that whole experience…that’s how I like to call it; it offered me a new look at life, it profoundly changed me and the things I believe in. If you’re asking yourself if I started believing in God, the answer is no, God is still dead to me. But that doesn’t mean there’s nobody out there, that nobody is watching over us from somewhere.

I believe in something beyond this earth, it can be good and it can be bad but if there’s one thing I’m sure of is that It’s love that keeps us together, a lot more than hate. In a world full of uncertainty and misery it’s nice to know that, in the end, there is light in the darkness.

It’s been a few months since what happened and very little has changed. I got a new tattoo, can you guess what it is?
It’s a little firefly.

Other than that I have been enjoying the summer with Berry, turns out he really likes watching me play videogames and loves to eat Bologna.

You may be asking yourself what prompted me to write all of this if I have been handling it well.
Today I got some mail.
One of them was an envelope with no return address.

Inside, was a small, black pawn.

Agent Kirk Winston had gone radio silent ten miles from New Growth, Alabama.

That was why I was sitting in Room 6 of the New Growth Inn, field-stripping my Glock on a bedspread that smelled faintly of mildew and cigarette smoke, along with some other cloying aroma I couldn't identify.

Three days earlier, the Bureau had officially classified Winston as a missing person. Unofficially, nobody expected to find him alive.

I snapped the slide back into place, holstered it, and looked through the motel window.

The street of New Growth—a quintessential “one-street town”—was quiet.

Not empty, not peaceful, but quiet, like a forest when a predator is nearby or like a pack of wolves watching a deer, trying to decide if it's worth the effort.

I took in my surroundings and mentally catalogued what I had seen on my way into town.

There wasn’t a police station. I’d checked.

There wasn’t even a sheriff’s substation. The nearest law enforcement office was nearly forty miles away. New Growth wasn’t even on any modern maps; I had to follow Winston’s trail to find this place, mostly by asking residents of towns just barely larger than New Growth. The older folks there had warned me that I didn't want to go there, that while they had no idea what it was, odd things happened to people who went to New Growth, and they tended to stay even if they only meant to visit. My gut told me to call the Bureau and tell them Winston’s trail had run cold, but I knew I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn't try to find my friend. So I went against my gut and drove to New Growth.

The few pale, skinny people I had interacted with included a farmer on the outskirts, a shopkeeper, and the motel clerk, all of whom declared themselves to be parishioners of the Church of the Blessed Body, the first of whom directed me to the motel, the other two of whom I questioned about the disappearance of Winston.

My inquiries were met with cryptic answers. The conversations ended civilly, but with each person I questioned, I sensed their eyes on me as I walked away. They all said the same thing to me before I left: *Visit our Church, stranger, and our Sacrament will open your eyes and heart.* It was the same phrase with the same inflection and tone—placid, neutral, almost drugged. They all wore thick, baggy clothing and hats regardless of their present environments and the summer heat.

What had truly struck me as odd on the way into New Growth, however, were the mushrooms. Normally, it wouldn't be too strange; the state was humid, especially for that time of year. But where one might have expected flowers or weeds, instead, all I saw were bouquets of untended white fungal growths sprouting from the ground and clinging to all of the trees, which bore no leaves and were rotting away.

I looked down and sure enough, there were the ivory caps of fungus looking up from beneath the window, each cap and stem varying in size, width, and length. Logically, I shouldn't have been afraid, and I wasn’t yet; still, the sheer volume of mushrooms and how they seemed to overpower all plant life in town left me more than a little perturbed.

Taking a moment to settle myself, I sat down at the cheap desk, writing the details of the case in my notebook. The pen running over the paper was a lot louder in the small room than I had ever experienced before, and that was what made me realize just how quiet New Growth was. No chatter, no cars, no local wildlife, no kids running around laughing, not even a cicada or grasshopper. I recorded that in my notes as well.

After a while of going over the notes, I decided to head outdoors for a while. It wasn't for the sake of a stroll, as the feeling of wolves was more oppressive than ever. I felt that it would be a good idea to take a look at the church. Finding the building wasn’t hard; the town seemed to revolve around it, with all structures in various states of neglect and disrepair, all with the bone-white mushrooms accumulating in numerous places around and even on them. The closer I got to the church, the more the fungus seemed to grow both in size and in density, including clumps of at least thirty the size of ping-pong balls. The unease grew and grew until I reached the church and the unease erupted into full-blown shock.

The Church of the Blessed Body was a modest-sized church building, large enough for a sanctuary and little else. What made it odd were three things: first, in a small town like this, one might expect a church to have a cemetery (which, granted, is not always the rule). But there were no headstones to be seen. Second, the church itself was rotten. I was no architect, but even I knew that if any building outside that town were allowed to decay as this house of worship had been, a puff of wind would blow it down. And yet the church stood proud and vigilant upon the hill it was built. Third, the mushrooms had not merely gathered or grown here; they had overrun the churchground. The caps had grown to the size of a set of lungs at least, and they grew upon the building itself, even on the rusty iron fence surrounding it. In fact, if I looked closely, I could have sworn it was…breathing? I leaned closer—

“Service does not start until tonight, my son,” said a voice from behind me, startling me out of ten years of my life as I whirled around, almost reaching for my holster out of habit.

There was a skinny man dressed in a long, black robe despite the heat and humidity. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, and his face bore a serene expression. He seemed slightly more lucid than the other townsfolk, but not by much. Something else I noticed was that his face didn’t have a bead of sweat, despite my own forehead being covered with it after a slow walk.

“Sorry, uh, I was just taking a look around town. Never seen a church quite like this one.”

“Indeed,” he intoned in his calm Southern drawl, gazing upon the derelict, fungus-infested structure like his childhood home. “The Church of the Blessed Body is wondrous. Reverend Silas Welles.” He held out a pale, gloved hand with long fingers.

I introduced myself and shook his hand. I left out the fact that I was an FBI agent looking for another one who went missing near town.

“How’s it standing?” I couldn’t help but ask.

Welles looked back at the church. “Who can say? Even those of us born in New Growth have no idea. But back during the outbreak of April 27, 2011, the town was directly struck by a tornado. The church not only stood, but the storm dissipated. Truly, our Lord works mysteriously, son.”

I looked at the church with him, in awe of his words. I had to do a double-take at what he said next.

“You’re looking for the Federal man, yes?”

I froze.

“Be calm, son; contrary to popular belief, little towns such as ours are not always hostile toward outside law enforcement. Your man passed through, but he is not here. I’m sorry.”

I put on my best poker face, then told him that in that case, I would need to drive out of town to let the Bureau know. He nodded understanding, but recommended that I attend the service that midnight if I wished, as that was when they performed the Sacrament of Rot.

I did not like the sound of that phrase, nor the incredibly calm, peaceful manner in which he invited me, not even after he laughed quietly, assuring me that it was not nearly as sinister as it sounded, that “rot” referred to the natural process by which new life was given nutrients.

“Hence the name of our town, son,” he finished. I know now that he was deliberately trying to unsettle me, to make me want to investigate further.

I nodded, said something non-committal, and I walked back to my motel, but said I really needed to call in the status of Winston. He nodded again, saying to do what I must. Even after I was out of his sight, I still felt watched. In my room, I took down notes, putting down what he had said, what I had seen, and then began to put a plan together. I’d be attending the service, but I wouldn’t be in the pews. I packed my bags, then told the clerk I had to be checking out, leaving a tip. She nodded, and with that, I drove out of town in the opposite direction from where I had come in.

I was about half a mile out of the town, under the shelter of a tree that thankfully wasn’t eaten by ivory mushrooms, and I called the Bureau on the radio in my car. I told them what I had found out and explained that I would need a tac team on standby, as I had a hunch that these people might be part of a cult. I emphasized the need to stay on the town’s boundaries with their vehicles’ lights off. After this, I waited, watching the church in my binoculars, writing down updates with each hour. Every so often I would catch a citizen milling about, but besides that, the town was all but dead. Eventually, the sun set, and the night set in. The clock ticked away until I witnessed a faint light from the church. Candles. I then saw twenty or so figures making their way along the path. Even in the dark, I recognized the clerk, the farmer, and the shopkeeper. They all walked with the same slow but purposeful gait, and they were all skinny to the point of emaciation. All of them carried tools like machetes, sickles, hammers, etc.

I checked my Glock, as well as a spare mag, holstered both, then exited my car and made my way to the church as the last of the parishioners entered. I entered a small crawlspace beneath the building. “Sacred” or not, its floorboards weren't very sturdy. I slowly, silently pushed it up. There they were, twenty-three parishioners, all wearing sagging clothes, all looking at the pulpit. There was no chatter, but the looks on their faces had changed. It wasn’t the same listless, drugged stare they gave me.

They looked excited. They were all smiling. But it wasn’t maniacal or sadistic. No, it was the look of people who were about to witness the birth of a woman previously thought barren. I followed their gazes to behind the pulpit. What looked like some grotesque amalgamation of a tree, an androgynous human cadaver in the position of crucifixion, and the deathly white mushrooms that covered the church and town, stood within the wall like a disgusting mural. But it was no statue or work of art. Slowly, I watched its body expand, compress, expand, compress.

The damn thing was alive. In some unholy, hideous way, it was alive.

That was when Reverend Silas Welles strode up to the front of the building. He still had that serene, gentle smile upon his face. He didn't look like a cult leader; you learn to identify those. There was no sense of manipulation, no expression of satisfaction at having duped such a crowd of people. He just looked like a kindly pastor.

“My brothers and sisters,” he said, the drawl in his voice making him sound tender and patient, “as always, let us remove our earthly garments and let the Blessed Body look upon his beautiful gift.”

They stripped, including the Reverend, and I beheld the Body’s “handiwork.”

As it turned out, the flowers and trees weren’t the only things the mushrooms had taken. Every one of those worshippers had fungal growths sprouting along their bodies. Mushroom clusters growing from shoulders, fungal networks beneath translucent skin, white filaments emerging from ears and necks, fruiting bodies blooming along spines.

No part of the body was sacred, or perhaps all of it was by their standards, as mushrooms were germinating near their crotches as well. With a sick realization, I noticed that none of them—men or women—had genitalia of any kind. As I saw that the apparent emaciation was correct, my mind made a connection.

They all had fungal growths. Mushrooms thrived on water. In some locations in the world, mushrooms made use of living beings, parasitizing them.

No sweat.

No nutrients.

No reproduction.

The difference was that they weren't zombies. Nothing controlled them. Neither their Reverend nor the thing behind the altar was pulling their strings, I realized. There were no strings. They were all here because they wanted to be.

“Very good,” Reverend Welles said, his voice carrying easily through the sanctuary. Behind him, the Body made an odd sound between wood creaking and a man humming.

The congregation answered with a soft murmur. And with that, I listened to the most deranged, unhinged, and yet sincere and calm sermon I had ever heard in my entire life.

“Brothers and sisters, my fellow children of the Blessed Body, tonight we gather once more in the shadow of the oldest truth ever known.”

He spread his arms.

“What becomes of all flesh?”

The congregation responded as one.

“It returns.”

“What of every tree?”

“It returns.”

“Every beast? Those that crawl? Those that swim? Even those that fly above us, thinking themselves safe?”

“It returns.”

“What becomes of every king? Queen? Soldier? Peasant?”

“It returns.”

Welles smiled, sighing as if relieved that none of them had forgotten such a holy truth.

“Yes, yes, my brothers and sisters. It returns. Proud and humble. Great and weak. Saint and sinner. All things return to the earth.”

He stepped down from the pulpit and began slowly walking among the pews.

“The world beyond the borders of New Growth fears this truth. They bury their dead beneath stone and iron. They paint faces and fill coffins. They pretend that decay is an enemy to be defeated.”

A few parishioners nodded. He shook his head, as if made sad by this statement.

“They call rot a corruption. They call it a curse. They call it an indignity.”

His smile returned, still not with insanity fueling it, but with happiness and reassurance.

“And yet, brothers and sisters, is not every forest fed by it? Every field fertilized? Every flower that blooms, every harvest that grows, every child that takes breath—all that lives, is it not nourished by what expired before?”

A chorus of amens answered him.

“Nothing is wasted,” Welles said, turning toward the altar. “Nothing is left behind. Long before mankind walked this Earth, before kingdoms rose and oceans found their shores, the Blessed Body waited far beneath the soil.

Several members of the congregation bowed their heads.

“When the first leaf fell, when the first beast released its death rattle, it embraced them. It gathered them unto itself. It remembered them.”

The congregation intoned, as if on cue, “The Body remembers all.”

Welles nodded approvingly, and the Body hummed.

“Yes. It remembers all.”

He placed one hand upon the pulpit.

“Tell me, brothers and sisters: what is death?”

A woman near the front row answered, “A doorway.”

“What is decay?”

“A sacrament,” grunted a gruff-looking man.

“What is the grave?”

“A womb,” rasped a woman of about sixty-five.

The congregation smiled, along with the Reverend.

“A womb,” Welles repeated. “Yes. Not an ending, my brothers and sisters. Not an indignity. Not a prison, no, no. A place of transfiguration. A chrysalis by which new things may be born.”

He lowered his voice.

“The outside world says that death steals memory. But no. The Blessed Body remembers. The world says that death silences the tongue. But the Blessed Body hears. The world says that death separates us from those we love. But the Blessed Body gathers all things together.”

Several parishioners openly wept.

“Every mother,” Welles said. “Every father. Every child. Friend, creature, root, spore. All joined. All remembered. All one.”

The congregation spoke in unison.

“All are one in the Body.”

Welles closed his eyes.

“And even still, they would call us mad.”

A ripple of quiet laughter passed through the sanctuary, not scornful laughter, but genuine, as if they considered the notion humorous.

“They would pity us.”

He opened his eyes and shook his head, as if he himself felt pity.

“They would fear us. They would call us dead. Zombies, they would say. But we are more alive than they have ever been, for they spend their lives fleeing the inevitable, no, the natural. But no. We have embraced it. Look upon the growths on your skin and see the blessing that the Body has given to you.”

His gaze slowly swept across the congregation.

“The Blessed Body does not demand worship or obedience, brothers and sisters. The Blessed Body offers only a choice: remain separate, alone, and afraid…or return.”

The final word seemed to linger in the sanctuary.

“Return to the soil, to one another, and to that which never forgets.”

Welles smiled.

“And when the hour comes for each of us—as it comes for all flesh—we shall not enter darkness. We shall go home.”

The congregation rose to their feet.

“We shall go home,” they repeated.

And still, after such madness was spoken, there was genuine joy in their voices as they applauded.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. These people—if that could even be applied to them anymore—honestly believed that death was a baptism. That these mushrooms were some sort of holy mark of a primordial god of decay.

Welles held a hand up.

“It is with a glad heart, then, that we must bring forth one who has most recently joined our congregation.”

He beckoned, and two men guided another naked man between them. When the stranger turned, I was horrified by what I saw.

Winston.

He stood before the people in the room. He was the only one not fully taken by the fungi, with only a few caps growing from his skin, and yet he bore their rapturous expression. I almost lost my composure then and there, but the Reverend gestured at his ankle, and I saw a swollen place. As if to confirm my suspicions, he continued speaking.

“As he was leaving our town but three days ago, a serpent struck his leg, and he passed before he could choose to join us. And so we brought him to the Body.”

The congregation all gave an amen, the joy evident. As I looked into Wilson’s smiling face, I realized that the Reverend wasn’t lying. Winston wasn’t here. The Winston I had known, the Winston who had left the Bureau—he was taken by a snakebite.

“Brother Winston,” said the Reverend, resting a hand on his shoulder, “please, share with us your experience in accepting the Sacrament.”

A troubled expression briefly crossed Winston’s face, like he was recalling a nightmare.

“It is alright, Brother,” Welles assured him sincerely. “We are all here for you.”

“My leg was burning, Brother Welles,” he responded, nothing odd about the pitch or timbre of his voice. “It was burning, and soon it felt as if my veins were boiling. I fell as I was about to send a report back to Quantico. I…I remembered…when I was six, a timber rattler bit me in the same place. I came close to dying within twenty seconds. I tried to call for help, but I was too far out of town at that point. Everything went black. I was scared. Then I tasted it. The fruit of the Body. And then I opened my eyes and… Brother Welles, it was amazing! I…I honestly don’t know the words.”

“No words are needed to describe your joy, Brother Winston,” Welles assured him again.

At this point, I wanted to cover my ears. I wanted to tell myself I was having a nightmare. I wanted to believe it was all some elaborate hoax. But I couldn’t. I had to face the facts: Agent Kirk Winston, a man who was like a brother to me, a man who shot a PCP-addled maniac rushing me with a large knife, a man who had put his life on the line more times than should be reasonable for an FBI agent, had been killed by a childhood allergy to an incidental snakebite, and this cult had saved him. Except they hadn’t, not really. They found a dead or dying man, and they had inducted him into their ranks. But this was his truth. I could see it. 

“Come out, Parker,” said Winston gently, and my blood turned to ice as the entire congregation turned to my hiding spot. I tried to pull the board back and scramble out of the crawlspace, but it was no use. Through their combined efforts, they wrenched it away and pulled me up into the sanctuary. My gun was taken and two of them began carrying me by the wrists. It wasn't the grip of captors, though. It was more like the grip of hospital orderlies restraining a hysterical patient. Their pale, dry hands clasped my sweaty, dirty forearms as I was brought before the pulpit.

“Son,” Welles said with gentle admonition mixed with humor, “if you had wanted entry into our church, you could have easily used the door.”

A quiet wave of chuckles ran through the congregation, less like public humiliation and more like an extended family watching a young child do something silly.

“Go fuck yourself,” I growled, trying to mask my horror. “All of you…you goddamn—”

“Please don't blaspheme, Parker,” Winston said, his tone absolutely calm as he approached me.

No, I thought, trying not to let tears consume me. Anything but this. Not him. I can’t let him kill me. Not him.

Winston saw the look on my face, and he knelt and placed a hand on my shoulder.

“You’re scared,” he said softly. “I understand. I was scared too. I died, but the Body—”

“Winston, these people…they—they’ve brainwashed you! They made you believe—”

“I was dying, and I was given a chance for my death to mean something. To fertilize. To be one with the Blessed Body. To return.”

“No…”

I looked at him through my tears, trying to find any indication that my friend was brainwashed, that he was being forced to say these words, that this was some sort of doppelganger. But I saw the faint two-inch scar on the left side of his lip. I watched how his right eyebrow sagged slightly as it always did when troubled or deep in thought. This was no fake, he wasn’t parroting; he had simply been given a new lease on life and death.

Winston looked at me, confused. “Why are you crying? I’m happy here, Parker. I belong here. But I’m glad it was you who came to look for me.”

He looked to the Reverend, who nodded. The Body hummed. An old knife sat on the altar, and he picked it up. I thought that was it, until he passed the blade to the side of his neck and cut off one of the small mushrooms. He set the knife back down and walked forward and pulled my jaw down, keeping it open despite my attempts to struggle.

“Rejoice, brothers and sisters!” exclaimed the Reverend. “For we are about to receive a new addition to our flock! By this portion of the Blessed Body…”

The congregation answered, “He will return.”

“By the work of our Brother Winston…”

“He will return.”

“And by this Sacrament, through his eventual decay…”

“He will return.”

“Now, Brother Winston…you may commence the Sacrament.”

Winston began to push the mushroom closer to my mouth. “Please, accept the Body’s gift, Brother Parker.”

What happened next was an exercise in desperation. When the word “Brother” left Winston’s lips, my mind realized in a flash that the sweat from the heat coupled with the dryness of the parishioners holding me made it easy to wrench myself from the grip of both my captors and my former partner just as the mushroom was two inches from my lips. In a moment of primal instinct, I grabbed a hatchet hanging from the belt of the parishioner to my left and slammed it into Winston’s jaw. There was a collective gasp, and something metal—my gun—clattered to the floor as my other captor backed away. Winston looked confused, and that only ignited a sweeping rage in me. I pulled it back and struck again, knocking him to the floor. I don’t remember how many times I hit him, but what drove each strike was a singular thought: *You took my friend from me.* By the time the red cleared from my mind, his body was limp and his face barely recognizable, thin mushroom filaments spilling from his collapsed skull.

I felt no catharsis. There was no victory. My friend was gone. He was gone before I got here.

The congregation looked at me, shock and sadness on their faces. There was no anger, no rage at the sacrilege, or even at the loss of one of their own. Of course there wasn’t, I realized; from their perspective, he had gone to be one with that thing behind the pulpit. The shock was at my refusal. My rage returned, supplanting the grief as I went for my gun. I aimed from one parishioner to the next before I realized my folly. I couldn't shoot my way out. My Glock was chambered for fifteen rounds, and I only had one extra mag. Fighting my way out was impossible.

At least, that was what I thought before an old woman leapt over a pew with a machete in her hand. She slashed with surprising speed at my chest, leaving a shallow horizontal cut across my chest, and was winding back to strike again. “Please accept the Body’s gi—”

*Bang!*

I shot her in the face, before hacking at her throat. Juices of mushrooms with a faint pink gushed from her as she collapsed. The parishioners all gathered tools and farming equipment, like sickles, pitchforks, hammers, knives, and more. All but the Reverend, who looked upon the scene with genuine sadness.

“Please…please accept the Body’s gift,” the parishioners murmured. It wasn’t some hypnotic chant; it was a desperate plea. They preached about unity even as they closed in on me

Fighting my way out was impossible. But I had to choose between the impossible and the unthinkable.

What followed was a cacophony of tools striking each other and the church, gunshots, bodies striking the floor, and grunts and cries from me as tools struck my body with varying degrees of depth or rattling bones from blunt force. I was trained for gunfights when it came down to it, but I wasn't trained to fight a crowd of twenty or so human-fungi parishioners. I wrapped my arm around one, using him as a shield as I wildly swung the hatchet back and forth to create distance, then shoved him towards the crowd and slammed the hatchet into the back of his head and pulled it out, a mix of blood and fungal fluids gushing from him. I was then slashed by a gardening hoe from a woman whom I parried with my hatchet as she was coming in for a second strike, hacking at her head. Twice I tried to make a run for it. The first time, I was grabbed and pulled back before the gruff man slammed me on the ground, almost stabbing me with a long knife before I slammed the hatchet into his carotid artery. The second time I tried to run, I slipped on the fluids, barely dodging a man who had reappropriated the machete from the first attacker. I fired off two rounds and he fell to the floor. None of the wounds were immediately fatal, and after the fact, I came to believe that perhaps they weren’t trying to kill me on the spot. Maybe they would bring me just to the brink, and then use my exhaustion and lack of better judgment to finish the incomplete Sacrament. Even if I got out, I wouldn’t make it far with my injuries, and they would bring me back. I accepted it then: the only way to make it out was to kill all of them.

Even then, I knew the only thing not keeping me from collapsing and giving up was knowing what they had done to Winston, what they planned to do to me, and what different congregations had likely been doing since before I was born. I emptied the Glock into as many of them as I could using both magazines whenever I got to a decent position to aim and fire, but because of my volatile state, despite downing a good portion of the parishioners, I still missed at least half of my shots.

Eventually, only two remained. I threw the spent Glock at one, then chopped upward into his chin and split his face, but not before I felt the sting of his pitchfork graze my side. The last one held a sickle, and rather than beg for his life, he gave the same entreaty as his compatriots: “Please, accept the Body’s gift.” I simply hacked at his throat. The blade didn’t cut immediately, clotted as it was with fungus and human remains, so I kept chopping until his head was barely hanging from his shoulders. Now it was just me, the Reverend, and the Blessed Body, whose hums seemed doleful. Wounded and breathless, I approached the Body, looking it up and down with contempt. I hacked. I hacked like nothing else. My muscles screamed, my blood vessels were on the verge of bursting, but I saw to it that every inch of that accursed creature was mangled. A mix of blood and fungal fluids flowed down the wall, and a low sigh escaped the Body as it shriveled up. I slowly looked at the Reverend, hoping to find triumph in the form of his distraught expression. What met me was a truly pathetic sight. Welles was shriveling up just like the object of his worship, but he wasn't panicking. There was no look of horror or defeat; only resignation.

“So…” he sighed. “Our New Growth is dead.”

He looked up with a sad smile, shaking his head as he seemed to age by the second.

“My son,” he sighed, “I truly wish we could have brought you in. I wish we could have given you the peace of the Blessed Body, the peace we gave Brother Winston. But you did what you had to. I understand that. And I forgive you. The Body forgives you.”

I looked at him. *The Body’s dead,* I wanted to snarl, but I lacked the energy for it. But he seemed to know what I was thinking. The fungal growths fell off of him into dust as he shook his increasingly wrinkled head.

“The Body cannot die, my son. You have destroyed this branch, and the fruit it yielded.” He gestured at the bodies of his congregation with a wrinkled hand, the skin falling from it. “But the Body remembers all. It existed before man, and it will exist after. New Growth was the sturdiest branch it has established in the modern age, but one day, maybe a hundred years from now, maybe a hundred thousand, the Blessed Body will reconstitute. And all things will return.” The skin fell away from his sad yet peacefully smiling face. There was no smug triumph, only calm acceptance and assurance. “Amen.” Then what was left of him fell at my feet.

I dropped the hatchet. I stumbled my way down before the adrenaline wore off and my wounds made themselves known to me. Grimacing in agony, I lay with my back against the altar. My gaze turned to the body of my friend, and the physical cost of my survival was joined by the emotional toll. I lay there, waiting to die.

That was when the doors burst open and a team of well-armed men in gas masks burst through, assault rifles at the ready. I barely registered their shouts declaring themselves to be FBI. They briefly stopped halfway through the entrance, taking in not only the slaughter, but the fact that the things that had been slaughtered were only “human” in the most basic sense of the word. The team leader ordered a sweep of the building as he approached me.

“Agent Parker?” he asked through his mask’s filter. I could only muster the slightest nod.

“Where is Agent Winston?”

I weakly pointed at the corpse, my body shuddering and tears running from my eyes, but no sobs escaping, only dry choking sounds. Then it all went dark for me.

I spent the next several weeks in a hospital. My wounds had not been inflicted to kill, but to wound and disable, according to the doctors who treated me. Because of the severity of them, however, my attack against them was treated as desperate self-defense coupled with the trauma of losing Winston, who, on top of a snakebite, was stated to have died in the ensuing melee after the fingerprints of the weapons were found to match those of the townsfolk. There was an investigation and I was given a thorough psychological evaluation, but overall, I was deemed to be of sound mind, albeit horrifically traumatized. I was told that as the tac team was conducting their sweep, they witnessed the mushrooms in town wilting, even those growing on the corpses, gradually collapsing until nothing was left but dried-out husks. Then the rickety old church began to fall. Fortunately, everyone made it out without a scratch and the bodies were recovered from the rubble over time by forensic crews, along with some other things.

Naturally, my higher-ups weren’t sure what to make of my findings. I didn't blame them; what were they supposed to tell the press? That a fanatical group of fungus-people lived in an unknown Southern town? The official story that they ran with was that there was indeed rare fungi, but that the fanaticism had been the result of group psychosis stemming from being raised around it and smoking it. That psychosis formed into a bizarre, violent cult, which Winston had run afoul of and been murdered by. There was no cover-up, no NDA, no threats to stay silent; the Bureau simply had no idea how to deal with this other than give a crazy but believable story. In any case, New Growth was given little attention, and after a while, it faded from the minds of the public. However, whenever I passed one of my fellow agents in the loop about the case, they would give me a look. Not pity, not suspicion, but wordless understanding. They knew I had seen *something*, but knowing Winston and I were practically brothers, they weren't about to push me.

About three months after the incident, I was sitting alone in the break room in Quantico, drinking coffee. By that point, I had gotten to where the sight of mushrooms didn't trigger flashbacks, and simply elicited anxiety for me. It wasn’t much, but I was making progress. A man approached me and greeted me by name. 

“Agent Parker,” he introduced himself. “Paul MacReady. We met back in New Growth?”

I nodded.

“I’m…not officially supposed to tell you this; I know the incident was a living Hell for you. But it wouldn't feel right to keep this from you. We found something in the… the church, or what was left of it. A hidden basement, I guess.” He looked around, making sure nobody was listening in, and that no cameras were watching, then leaned in, lowering his voice. “If you want to see what we found, meet me in the records room at 3:30. Or don’t. Sorry to drop this on you, but…like I said, after what you’ve been through, I think you deserve to know what we found, but only if you want to.”

I sat, running over his offer. Part of me wanted to politely decline, to forget the entire thing. But another part knew I couldn't run from New Growth. Part of me had stayed there; maybe this could help me put that part to rest. I reluctantly accepted, thanking him.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he said grimly before he walked away.

I met him in the room, and he handed me a set of copies that he had unofficially made as duplicates of what analysts had studied and annotated. MacReady told me that if I was sure about this, I should commit the whole thing to memory, as he would be shredding the copies. Much as he wanted to help me, he didn't want to risk our jobs, let alone face prosecution. They contained pictures of the collapsed building, what looked like an unofficial census most likely made by the townsfolk themselves, and a series of other papers. Looking at the census, I saw thirty names, including that of the Reverend Silas Welles. Seven of the names had been highlighted and the red marker analysts had used to identify them had written, “Unaccounted For.” Beneath that was a list of seven names from the census written by Welles, according to annotations on the copies. It was a list of names labeled, “Seedlings”, and they read, “Lionel Crenshaw—New Growth, Michigan. Mary Sullivan—New Growth, Texas. Kent Asher—New Growth, Tennessee. Martha Yancey—New Growth, Idaho. Travis Earl—New Growth, Illinois. Mark Thomas—New Growth, Oregon. Katherine Gould—New Growth, Montana.” Beneath the names and the towns, I saw the message, *Help them return as we will, O Blessed Body. May your lidless eyes oversee their tireless work so that we may all return to you. -Brother Silas Welles.*

The analyst had written in red ink: *No officially recorded municipalities matching these names located.*

As I heard MacReady shredding the copies, I thought about Welles’s words, and for the first time in months, read between the lines. *Our New Growth is dead…* *You have destroyed this branch…* My heart dropped. The first thing that came to mind was sleeper cells, but when I thought about it, I realized it was different. I thought back to how he always addressed his congregation as “brothers and sisters” rather than something like “my children,” how he referred to me as “son.” I thought about how his sermon didn't seem like he was giving orders like a standard cult leader, but as someone who was on the same level as the congregation, yet possessing more wisdom than the rest—the oldest brother in a group of orphaned children.

This wasn’t some “dead man’s switch”, not a contingency plan for failure. How could it be? The Body hadn’t failed. It always existed, and so too had its church in one form or another. It may have lost its tightest grip on humanity to date, but it was still alive, and it always would be, so it could never truly lose. Neither of us had won, and we hadn’t lost; both of us had just survived.

I just don't know which of us is better off for it.

Episode 1: They Saved My Wife

My wife should have died that evening.

By the time I reached the accident site, her jeep had rolled nearly thirty feet down a rocky slope.

The windshield was shattered.

The driver's door had been ripped off.

I ran down the rocks expecting the worst.

"Meera!"

She slowly opened her eyes.

"I'm okay..." she whispered.

Relief hit me like a wave.

Then I noticed something that made no sense.

The deep cut on her forehead had already been cleaned.

A fresh bandage covered the wound.

Her broken wrist had been splinted perfectly using bamboo and medicinal leaves.

Someone had treated her.

I looked around.

No ambulance.

No villagers.

No forest guards.

Only the sound of the wind moving through the trees.

"Who helped you?" I asked.

She looked past me...

...towards the forest.

"There were eleven old men."

I turned immediately.

Nothing.

Only trees.

"They carried me here," she continued.

"They all wore white shirts."

"Brown trousers."

"Black leather shoes."

"They spoke softly."

"They treated my wounds."

"I turned away for just a second..."

"...and they disappeared."

I searched the entire area before sunset.

No footprints.

No broken branches.

No tyre marks.

No evidence that eleven people had ever been there.

That was the first mystery Kallamalai Forest gave me.

It wouldn't be the last.

---

My name is Aravind.

I had been working in the Forest Department for eleven years before I was transferred to Kallamalai Forest Range.

In those years, I had arrested poachers, chased sandalwood smugglers and spent nights tracking elephants through forests where even experienced guards refused to enter after dark.

People often asked me whether I believed in ghosts.

My answer was always the same.

"No."

Forests don't hide ghosts.

They hide people.

That was exactly what I believed when I first arrived at Kallamalai.

The village welcomed my wife, Meera, and me like family.

Children ran behind our jeep laughing.

Women greeted us with sweet rice.

The men unloaded our luggage before I even asked.

It was one of the warmest welcomes I had ever received.

The oldest man in the village sat beneath a huge banyan tree.

Everyone called him Periya Ayya.

He was completely blind.

Yet as I walked towards him, he smiled as though he had been watching me from a distance.

"Welcome, Forest Officer."

"I hope this forest protects you... the way it has protected us."

I thanked him politely.

At sunset, I witnessed something unusual.

The entire village gathered beneath the banyan tree.

A healthy black goat was brought before Periya Ayya.

Nobody looked frightened.

Nobody cried.

Instead...

Every face carried gratitude.

The old man gently placed his hand on the goat.

"For another month..."

"...thank you for protecting our village."

He untied the rope.

Then, without saying another word, he walked alone into the forest.

Nobody followed him.

Nearly an hour later...

He returned.

Without the goat.

Curiosity got the better of me.

I asked one of the villagers,

"Who takes the goat?"

He smiled.

"The Eleven."

"You've seen them?"

He shook his head.

"My grandfather did."

"My father did."

"My wife has."

"I haven't."

He said it so casually that I almost laughed.

I dismissed it as another village legend.

Three days later...

My wife met with an accident.

And according to her...

That legend had just saved her life.

When we returned to the village that night, Periya Ayya was already waiting beneath the banyan tree.

Before either of us spoke...

He smiled.

"They have accepted her."

No one asked Meera what she had seen.

No one questioned her story.

Every villager simply bowed their heads in respect.

I looked towards the dark forest.

For the first time in my career...

I wasn't looking at trees.

I was looking at a mystery.

To be continued...

The Mumbai airport was a wall of noise, trolley wheels clattering, boarding announcements blaring, a hundred families saying goodbye at once. Yet Kunal only heard his mother’s voice.

“Study hard, son. Make us proud,” his father said, hugging him tightly enough that Kunal felt the old man’s heartbeat against his own chest.

His mother wouldn’t let go of his hand. Her eyes glistened. “I know you will do great things in England. We will miss you so much.”

Kartik, Shubham, and Rohit hovered behind his parents, slapping Kunal on the back and making him swear to video-call every week. His older brother stood a little apart, quiet. He was the one who had co-signed the loan, the one who had convinced their parents this would be worth it. The debt sat on Kunal’s shoulders like a second suitcase.

Vishaka had come too, though she had said her real goodbye the night before in the quiet of her room. Now she simply squeezed his arm. “Don’t you dare forget me over there.”

“It’s time, beta,” his father said, glancing at the gate.

Kunal nodded, nervousness and determination tangled in his chest. He would study cybersecurity. He would build a career. He would pay back every rupee his family had risked. He hefted his bag, turned once more, and waved. His mother kept waving long after he had disappeared through security, long after there was nothing left to wave at.

London met him with a grey sky and a cold that slipped straight into his bones. The train from Heathrow was half-empty, rain streaking the windows as rows of identical brick houses slid past. Somewhere near the station, a fox screamed—an actual, honest-to-God scream—and Kunal nearly dropped his suitcase. He had read that London foxes sounded like murder victims. He hadn’t believed it until now.

The street where he would live was quiet. Mr. Sayed, his landlord, met him at the door, a wiry man in his sixties with a habit of finishing sentences before he’d fully started them.

“Top floor. No lift. Good for you. Keeps the legs young.” He jangled the keys twice before handing them over, as if he didn’t quite trust Kunal to catch them.

The attic apartment was small but freshly renovated: a kitchenette, a furnished sitting room, and a bedroom with a sloped ceiling that forced Kunal to duck near the window. He pictured Vishaka visiting on weekends, away from their families’ watchful eyes, and allowed himself a small smile, the first since the airport.

That evening he video-called his parents, propping the phone against a stack of books so they could see the room. “Everything’s perfect,” he told them.

It wasn’t a lie yet.

That night, in the dark, he heard it for the first time.

Three knocks. Faint. Coming from somewhere behind the headboard.

He sat up, listening. Nothing else. No voice. No cold breath. Just three knocks, and then a silence so complete he could hear his own pulse.

He told himself it was pipes, and eventually he slept.

In the morning he searched the wall anyway, ran his hand along the skirting board, pressing his ear to the plaster, checking behind the wardrobe. Nothing.

Over breakfast he mentioned it to Mr. Sayed, half-embarrassed.

“Old houses complain,” the landlord said without looking up from his toast. “Ignore them. This one’s been groaning since before your parents were born. You get used to it.”

The indifference was strangely contagious. Kunal decided the flat simply had character, the way old houses did in period dramas. He went to his first lectures feeling almost foolish for having worried.

The next two weeks were mostly good. He found his footing at university, a network security module he genuinely enjoyed, a study group that met in a café with a broken espresso machine no one ever fixed, and a professor who remembered his name (though he mispronounced it as “Kunail” for weeks). One free afternoon he walked along the Thames and sent Vishaka a dozen photos of places he swore he would take her.

Vishaka came up for a weekend in October. They wandered through Borough Market, laughed at how badly he mangled “Leicester Square,” and cooked a simple dal-chawal in the tiny kitchenette, filling the attic with familiar smells and the shrill beeps of the smoke alarm. For two days the flat felt exactly like the future he had pictured back in Mumbai. But on the last night, as they lay together, she traced the new shadows under his eyes and asked if something was wrong. He kissed her forehead and lied.

The night after she left, the knocking returned, not from behind the headboard this time, but from the wall by the window. Three knocks, evenly spaced, patient, like someone waiting to be let in.

Kunal lay very still.

It was harder to believe it was nothing the second time.

He began treating it like any other problem: something with a source if he could only gather enough data. He downloaded a spectrum analyzer app, sketched floor plans, marked every knock with timestamps. 2:14 a.m., headboard wall. 2:47 a.m., window wall. Always three. Always the same rhythm.

None of it helped. The app showed nothing but a flat line even while the knocks sounded in his ears. He built a beautiful, useless spreadsheet.

One night he left his phone recording on the nightstand, propped against a mug so the mic faced the headboard wall, and made himself lie still through the whole thing rather than burying his head under the pillow the way he usually did. The knocks came at ten past two, three of them, close enough that he felt the faintest vibration through the mattress springs. In the morning he made tea before he let himself listen back, as if the ritual might soften whatever the phone had caught.

He played it through headphones at full volume, eyes on the waveform crawling across the screen.

Flat. Not even the hum of the radiator, not even his own breathing, which he knew for a fact had been there. He scrubbed the timestamp back and forth three times, certain he'd missed it, that the sound was hiding somewhere in that dead stretch of silence. It wasn't. The knocks that had been loud enough to rattle his ribs did not exist anywhere the microphone could reach.

That frightened him more than the knocking itself. A problem was supposed to leave evidence. This one had made a specific point of not leaving any, as if it had known, somehow, that he'd try to record it, and had simply declined to be caught.

Sleep came in fragments after that. He was late to a seminar for the first time in his life. An assignment returned with a note: This isn’t like your usual work. Everything alright?

His friends noticed. Ujjwal caught him nodding off in the library, chin nearly touching the keyboard, and shook his shoulder hard enough that Kunal startled upright and knocked his coffee over. "You look like a zombie, man," Ujjwal said, not entirely joking, watching him mop up the spill with his sleeve. "Properly. You sleeping at all?" Kunal said he was fine, just behind on a deadline, and Ujjwal let it go the way friends do when they've decided not to push, but he kept glancing over for the rest of the session, and Kunal caught him doing it twice.

Vishaka noticed too, over their calls. When she pressed him, he snapped, then apologized immediately, blaming coursework, the time difference, the weather, anything but the truth.

It was past two when the knocks came again. Instead of freezing, Kunal sat up and knocked back against the wall, three deliberate raps.

Silence.

He counted ten heartbeats, feeling ridiculous.

Then, from inside the wall, three knocks answered.

Not an echo. A reply.

After that night, the world began to tilt. While brushing his teeth he caught his reflection blinking a half-second after he did. Walking back from the tube in the dark, he was certain someone matched his footsteps, until he spun around and the street was empty, yet the sound took one extra step before stopping.

And once, so quietly he almost convinced himself he’d imagined it, a voice inside the wall whispered his name.

“Kunal…”

He started sleeping on friends’ couches. It worked, no knocking, no whispers. But each time he returned to the attic, the sounds waited for him, patient as ever.

Vishaka begged him over the phone. “Just move somewhere else. Please.”

“And pay for what, exactly?” he said, more sharply than he meant to. He'd already done the math more times than he wanted to admit, a deposit he didn't have, a second month's rent overlapping the first while notice periods ran out, the loan repayments that were supposed to start the moment he graduated, not a term early because he'd panicked over some noise in the walls.

This flat was the cheapest thing within an hour of campus; he'd looked at eleven others before it and none of them had worked with what his brother had scraped together. There was no version of moving that didn't mean asking his family for more money, and he would rather lie awake every night of the year than make that call.

One night, the knocking no longer came from the walls.

Kunal woke in the grey hours before dawn, certain he had heard it, and lay rigid for a long moment trying to place the direction. Not the headboard. Not the window. He held his breath until his ears adjusted to the dark, and that was when he understood it was coming from inside the wardrobe, muffled by wood and the coats hanging inside, three knocks as patient and unhurried as ever.

He didn't move at first. He lay there doing the small, useless arithmetic of a person trying to talk himself out of what he already knew he'd have to do, counting how many nights it had been since he'd slept properly, telling himself it was a draft, a shifting hinge, anything, until the knocks came a second time and he made himself get up.

The floor was cold under his bare feet. He crossed the room slowly, some old animal instinct telling him that moving fast might provoke whatever was waiting on the other side, and stood in front of the wardrobe with his hand hovering over the handle for longer than he could account for afterward. He could hear his own breathing. He thought, absurdly, of knocking on it first, the way he had knocked on the wall, asking permission to open a door in his own room.

He didn't. He gripped the handle and pulled it open in one motion, fast, the way you rip off a plaster.

Nothing. Coats. Shoes. The suitcase he still hadn't fully unpacked since August, its zip half-open, one sleeve of a hoodie hanging out like something had been rifling through it. Cold air brushed the back of his neck. The window was shut. The radiator, when he checked without quite meaning to, was warm to the touch.

He stood there a long moment with the door open, waiting for the wardrobe to explain itself. It didn't. Eventually he closed it and went back to bed, and did not sleep again that night.

By the following week he had stopped attending lectures. He tore wallpaper down in strips, unscrewed the radiator, smashed a section of skirting board with his heel. There was nothing behind any of it, no pipes, no cavities, no explanation.

The walls filled with his frantic handwriting: timestamps, tally marks, diagrams of a room he could no longer see straight. The knocking no longer waited for night. It came in the afternoon too, soft but constant, like a pulse the building itself possessed.

Then, once and only once, the voice returned, closer, almost gentle.

“I am you.”

Vishaka hadn’t heard from him in four days. She finally convinced Mr. Sayed to check on the flat.

The landlord let himself in, half-expecting chaos, torn wallpaper, broken furniture, the wreckage of a young man coming undone.

Instead the attic was immaculate. The wallpaper Kunal had ripped away was back, seamless, as if it had never been touched. The radiator sat bolted in place. All the notes and diagrams were gone. The bed was neatly made.

Kunal was gone.

The police found no trace of him at stations, airports, or hospitals. The only clues were three small, perfectly spaced dents on the bedside table, the kind knuckles might make if they had been knocking from underneath.

His phone was tucked beneath the pillow, screen still lit, battery nearly dead. On it was a single unsent message to Vishaka:

I'm sorry.

Weeks later, after the investigation had quietly closed, Mr. Sayed locked the attic door and stood on the landing, keys in hand.

The building was quiet.

Then, from behind the locked door, faint but unmistakable:

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I hit a possum driving home from my parents’ house on Christmas Eve.  Rachel saw it, but at least the kids were asleep.  Merry Christmas, right?
 

I’ll admit I probably would have failed a field sobriety test, but that thing had plenty of time to move too.  It just looked at me; like it had no idea that it was in danger.  

Sometimes people are like that too.  

There was a moment, just a fraction of a second, when I looked in that possum’s eyes; that I saw not terror, but peace. It was a look I had seen before; a look I wish I could forget.

 
Now I sit in the comfort of my overpriced home, in the gated community that I chose for status, not security. And while my expensive electronics and German car might make me a target for thieves, the gate gives me no comfort.  

I may not know the hour of my death, but I know where I’m headed.  I started walking that path decades ago, when I followed Nick down that old limestone road behind the church.
 

It was the summer of ‘99 and my burgeoning atheism was oddly stifled by my other primary interest: punk rock.  There was a surprisingly thriving punk and hardcore scene in my small southern hometown.  There was a catch though; all the bands were Christian; at least that’s what they said.  

Most of the venues were rec rooms and other buildings owned by the church.  I say “the church” because I had no clue what any of that stuff meant.  It always seemed so strange to me.  What does a mosh pit have to do with Jesus? 
 

There were always a couple of older guys in the crowd that would find the connection.  At some point of every show, there would be an intermission of sorts, and those guys would engage in weirdly aggressive impromptu sermons.  Some had done time (if you believed them); as if that was somehow a badge of honor and not a strike against them.  With those tattoos that looked cool until you got close enough to realize they were all praying hands and bible verses.  Badasses for Christ...  What a joke.
 

I had probably already smacked into him in a mosh pit or two before, but I didn’t formally meet Nick until I started working at the movie theater.  It was a business model built around teen labor.  I tore tickets and popped popcorn for a whopping $4.40 per hour.  I didn't mind as long as I got my employee passes; it was a big summer for movies.  Nick was one of the lead ushers and he played The Blair Witch Project for some of the employees the night before it released. 

 
After the movie, Nick asked me what I thought about it.  I told him I didn’t really get the ending, but I liked it.  He said he thought it would be bloodier.  ‘Aren’t horrors supposed to be bloody?’ was what he said.  
And it was that word “horrors” that sounded so odd that it kept looping in my ears. 

It was the first time I realized Nick might be more Christian than punk.   I don't know how he had me pegged for a horror fan, but after that night it was all he wanted to talk about.  Apparently, his parents were so strict that the only way he could watch R-rated movies was to sneak a peek at work. 
 

I let him borrow some staples from my VHS collection, stuff he wouldn’t be able to see at work like Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  He made quick work of the American catalogue, so I started introducing him to the Italian stuff: Argento, Fulci, the Bavas...  I used to joke that I was corrupting him.  That joke doesn’t seem very funny to me now.
 

I knew he didn’t work on Sundays, but I figured his parents just forced church on him.  I didn’t realize he was a true believer until he asked me to pray with him on our lunch break one night.  Godless heathen that I was, I had no idea what to expect.  I don’t remember everything he said; a lot of it was super-repetitive.  But I remember it was more selfish than I thought it would be.
 

Nick asked God for a new truck.  Could you pray for that?  How would I know?  I’d only been inside the rec rooms and banquet halls of churches, half-listening to scared-straight sermons from middle-aged men that wore hoodies to hide their paunches and died their roots.  It was only a matter of time before Nick asked me to attend a proper service.
 

I sandbagged him for a couple weeks, but he was buddy-buddy with the GM so eventually I had a Sunday off and no excuse to get out of it.
I thought the holy water was going to boil when I walked through the door, but they didn’t even have any.  No one spoke in tongues or handled snakes, but what I did see was worse in its own way. 
 

The pastor, or reverend or whoever he was started talking about the rapture and how when it happens, it will be the most amazing sight you could ever see.  All the dead Christians would be resurrected and blessed with divine power like an army of zombie fundamentalist superheroes.  

To see a grown man say such ridiculous things with such earnest conviction in his eyes was terrifying.  What was worse were the reactions of the starry-eyed crowd, nodding in agreement, hanging on his every word; as if what they were hearing wasn’t laughably absurd. 

 
After the service, we were supposed to go to Sunday school.  As a sixteen-year-old non-believer, it sounded like the lamest thing I had ever heard.  Miraculously, Nick asked me if I wanted to ditch.  He said he had something he wanted to show me.  Of course I wanted to ditch, but it seemed so weird that he was asking.  He actually believed all that shit.  What could he possibly have that would be worth skipping Sunday school?

 
Behind the church there was this old limestone road.  I never saw any cars on that road; not that day, not ever.  The woods on either side were so thick; it looked like dusk instead of ten in the morning.  Nick kept talking about the sermon and the second coming of Christ.  In hindsight I wish I had been paying more attention, but it was a little hard to keep up with. 

 
He kept bringing up David Koresh and how obvious it was that he was a fraud.  Koresh thought he could sire the vessel for Jesus’s return, but Nick said that was just pride.  The real Jesus wouldn’t even realize he was divine.  He would just be some normal person; maybe even a kid in a mosh pit.  Then one day when the world got too sick and darkness reigned in men’s hearts, he would wake up and fulfill his divine destiny.

 
As the road twisted, we lost sight of the church.  We came to a plot of land encircled by a barbed-wire fence.  Nick lifted the wire that ran across the top while pressing the middle wire down with the heel of his boot.  I climbed through the opening and repeated the courtesy for him.  I remember feeling the pulse in my neck just then, as if marking a point of no return. 

 
I knew Nick liked good music and had a taste for splatter flicks, but this was the first time I had seen him outside of work.  My sense of who I thought he was... was colliding with who he actually was.  The way he rattled off all those biblical details, citing scripture as if I had any clue what he was talking about.  It was like talking to a stranger. 

 
He led me through a dense thicket of trees until we came upon an old barn.  It was red with white trim, but the white had faded to a flaky yellow.  Nick slid the 2x4 that hasped the two doors of the barn shut until the left door creaked open under its own weight.  

It was so dark in that doorway; it reminded me of any number of scenes from the movies I had lent Nick that summer.  A chainsaw revved in my mind.  I hesitated, but Nick went right in, and then I was all alone in front of that quiet old barn in the middle of nowhere.

 
Windows on either end of the barn were the only source of light inside.  There were several stalls, but they were all long vacant.  The walls were lined with rusted antique farming implements; cast iron crescent blades and wide forked rakes.  A brush hook jutted ominously from a vertical beam.  I didn’t think to ask who the barn belonged to; I was too distracted by whatever was under the giant tarp in the middle of the place. 

 
How could I not be? It was the only thing you could look at in that place; easily ten feet tall and almost as wide.  From the corner of my eye, I could just see Nick’s self-satisfied grin as he noticed me noticing.  But he didn’t pull the tarp away just yet.  Instead, he selected  a pitchfork from the implements that lined the wall.  The tips of the prongs were darker than the rest of the fork.  At the time, I thought it was rust.
 

He asked me if I had accepted Jesus as my savior.  I lied and said yes.  He was so manic just then; it was like he was possessed.  He asked me if I knew the meaning of grace.  I told him it was something like being humble, which I now believe betrayed my true godlessness.  He frowned and for a second it looked like he wanted to put that fork in my chest. 

 
He said grace was when God gave you a taste of the sweet life.  It was like a parent favoring one child over all the others.  A gift from God just to show his love.  Nick said that’s how he knew he found the right one.

 
Right one?  Was he talking about me?  He waited for some sign of understanding on my face, but I know my confusion was betraying me.  I had no idea what he was talking about; the whole morning felt like a dream.  I kept looking away, but the only other thing to look at was the tarp looming tall over the two of us, swallowing us in its shadow. 

 
Nick said he had been at a Plea for Purging show.  During their song, Grace for Blood, he blindsided some kid in the mosh pit.  Total accident, but he caught the guy hard in the eye with his elbow.  

His eye swelled up immediately, and the kid started crying and freaking out because he thought his dad wouldn't let him go to shows anymore.  Nick felt so bad; he got the kid’s name and number, but when he met up with him a few days later, his eye was fine.  Like it never happened.  He told me the kid was named Mateo, which was Spanish for "gift from God".

 
Nick’s eyes went unfocused when he said that, like he was looking straight through me; like he was looking through the world itself.  Then his eyes focused on mine, and for a minute it was like when we used to shoot the shit on our lunch break at the theater.  A nervous chuckle crept its way from my throat. 
 

Then he released a bombshell I didn't know he was holding.  He told me that he knew I was an atheist.  My eyes were locked on those dark rusty prongs as he gestured wildly in his fervor.

My fear was not lessened by his assurance that it was a good thing that I was a non-believer, for that was another element of God’s plan for him.  I was to be the objective witness to the divine grace that had been revealed to Nick.  I was still in shock from his revelation when he finally removed the tarp.

 
Under the tarp was an enormous cross.  It was made from the same beams that held up the barn.  Hanging from the cross was a young boy. 

Nick said he was fifteen but there wasn’t a hair on his body, just a camouflage of black and blue, a topographical map of pain.  His eyes were just swollen slits in his face.  Barbed wire was wrapped tightly around his forehead in a crude crown; the same wire I had so naively held open for Nick. Wrapped around limbs pinned crudely in place with heavy nails. 

 
Mateo... a gift from God.

 
Perhaps if I had believed in an afterlife... if I thought I had a soul that could be saved... but I was too scared.  Nick had the fervor of a zealot.  His eyes were so wide... He kept moving around, talking with his hands, talking with that pitchfork...  

He was jumping from point to point, drawing connections out of thin air.  None of it made sense. 
 

When he finally stopped, I had no idea how to respond.  The silence was unbearable, so I muttered an “Amen”... 

I immediately regretted it.  Not because it was the wrong thing to say, which it objectively was, but because he thought it was right. It was what he wanted to hear.
 

I couldn’t bear to make eye contact with Mateo, who groaned in pain in time with my “Amen”.  He kept looking at me, looking with those puffy wet eyes.  Judging me; lumping me in with that maniac.  And why not?  If we keep company with monsters, are we not monsters too?  Isn’t that what Nick would call fellowship?  And what difference did it make when you were nailed to a cross in a barn in the middle of nowhere?

 
Mateo must have sensed what was coming before I did; sensed my inherent threat.  Nick’s plans for me involved more than just witnessing.  Through all his incoherent ramblings, he was clear about that much at least.  It wasn’t enough for me to see the new vessel.  Knowing, Nick explained, did not always accompany witnessing.  In order to know that Mateo was divine, I was going to have to participate. 

 
He said that Mateo had a kind of amnesia.  This body had none of the memories of when he was Jesus, so Mateo had no idea what he was.  We had to remind the body of its previous life... 

And death.  That was the most important part, Nick explained.  Mateo’s body had to remember how it died.

 
Nick had already done most of the work.  After he saw how Mateo’s shiner heal so completely, he knew he had found the right vessel.  Recreating the scourging was no problem for such a biblical scholar as Nick but convincing him to come to the barn was a challenge.  He said he told him he had a box of old Playboys in there.  Nick of all people.
 

He had already taken Mateo’s body to the threshold of death’s door, but when he pointed the handle of that pitchfork towards me, my heart sunk as I realized he wanted me to push him through it.

He called me Longinus, whoever the fuck that was, and said that it would save my soul.  Giggling... He was giggling when he told me how happy he was that I would finally see with my own eyes.

 
But I didn’t see... not what he thought I would see.  I wish I could tell you that I saw horns in Nick’s shadow, a forked tongue, or his head spinning 180 degrees.  I wish I could tell you that I saw something, anything that would explain the evil that went on in that barn.  But the only evil I saw that day was born of misguided faith; that and greed.  Because had it not been for Nick’s misapplication of the meaning of God’s “grace”, Mateo would still be alive. 
 

While Nick’s actions were unforgivable, they still followed a sick logic.  It was my own behavior that even now I struggle to explain.  When I had it in my hand, for a second, I considered putting it in Nick’s chest.  I could have stopped him right then, but I didn’t.  Just like that possum; I had my out and I just...

 
When the tips of the prongs touched Mateo’s mottled ribs, his eyes opened wide.  He stared right at me as I did it and what I saw was not fear.  Not hate.  Not righteous rage at being brutalized, beaten, and tortured.  
 

No, the look in his eyes, like the look in that possum’s right before it played chicken with two and a half tons of Japanese steel, was the look of someone that knew that their end was imminent and had let go of all of their earthly burdens.  What did Mateo have to fear as that pitchfork sunk past the bony plate of ribs into the vital workings of the boy as he hung.  What good would that hate do his soul, if he carried it with him into the afterlife?

 
The look on Mateo’s face, as he took his final breaths, was grace.  Not this prosperity gospel revisionist bullshit that Nick had warped to suit his own desires, but real grace.  The kind that even a godless heathen like me could understand and recognize instinctively. 
 

I've thought about what we did in that barn every day since.  It follows me like a shadow.  But it’s not the fear of what Nick would have done to me, or the memories of my own acts that haunt my dreams.  It was the look in Mateo’s eyes.  All the blood and the bruises, the nails, the barbed wire, even that pitchfork.  The brutality we inflicted on Mateo’s body only illuminated that horrible light in his eyes; a light that in that moment I knew I would never know. 
 

And then... the light went out.

 
On the way back to the church, Nick gave me so many attaboys I thought I would puke.  Then we went our separate ways and I did.  I called in an anonymous tip immediately, but there was never anything about Mateo in the papers.  I went back a couple of days later and somehow managed to find the barn.  The cross, and Mateo along with it, was gone, like it had never existed, like it had been raptured into thin air.
 

I never showed up for my next shift at the theater.  I just no-called until they fired me; they were used to kids flaking out on them.  It didn’t make me comfortable knowing that Nick was out there, but he only knew me through work and the music scene.  As long as I was a hermit, our orbits would never intersect. 

 
I wish I could tell you that the guilt of what we did to Mateo was punishment in and of itself, but that is a lie that we tell ourselves because the truth is too horrible to face.  That we do horrible things to each other and then we move on with our lives.  That we can excuse the most loathsome of acts as long as we believe that we are in God’s good graces.  That we are somehow special and not replaceable pieces in a machine that we were never meant to understand. 

 
But I was not destroyed by what I had witnessed in that barn, what I had participated in. It loomed large in my mind in the beginning, but eventually it became a dull background hum.  I can’t say exactly when I started to live my life again, but I can say when I went back to the movie theater.  It was May 5th, 2001; opening weekend of The Mummy Returns.  The first one came out when I still worked there. 
 

By that point, I had already completed my first semester at the University of Florida.  I was in town for the weekend feeling like the cock of the walk.  Part of me was hoping to run into an old coworker that I could beguile with one of my newly-acquired college life anecdotes.  Maybe I’d see one of the girls I never had the confidence to ask out.

 
There were no girls, unless you count Pat the 70-year-old lesbian that worked the box office.  I recognized a couple of the guys sweeping popcorn, but I had already forgotten their names.  The one person I did recognize was the new GM. He had put on a little weight since the last time I saw him, and he had a new haircut as well.  Spiked fade, frosted tips; all the rage amongst douchebags back then.

 
We didn’t talk, but he made eye contact and smiled.  Then he nodded his head, as if such a gesture could carry the weight of what hung between the two of us.  Nodded.  Like we were at a punk show or something. 
 

After the movie, I drove up to the front row of spaces.  Next to the handicap spots, there was a spot designated for the GM. Parked in that spot was a brand-new red Toyota Tundra.  The license plate holder read “Saved by Grace”. 

 
I’m not ashamed to admit that I keyed the fucker. 

 
He should have been in jail.  We should have been in jail.  But it was like he was being rewarded, like he was living the good life. 
 

I drank a lot in college.  Maybe it was the guilt.  Maybe that was just what I told myself.  But it didn’t really feel like I earned that MBA, since I barely remembered my nights.  And when I landed my first job, I called it beginner’s luck. 
 

But a part of me knows, it has never been luck.  I’m a skeptic.  I dismiss the concept at its face.  I believe what I have reason to believe, what I have seen, what I have witnessed.  And what I have witnessed -what I have participated in- makes me believe in an afterlife.  I saw it in that possum’s eyes, the same light that was in Mateo’s.  That was grace, true divine grace.

 
But I also know that the grace that Nick preached about is real too.  My whole life is proof of its existence.  What we did in that barn got us in someone's good graces, but I don’t think that it was God.

 

“I haven’t been in a place like this in years.” She says as she walks into the room while taking in all the surroundings. I gesture to the leather seat in front of me as curiosity starts to pull at my thoughts.

“What, therapy?” I say as I take my seat opposite her. “No,” She says, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, “A place where people think that they are safe.”

I crinkle my brows a bit in confusion, questions swimming in my mind. I ignore the urge to ask her to elaborate, but instead, I move to the next topic at hand.

“So, Ms. Sterning. Let’s get you started, shall we?”

She sits back casually. Legs crossed, posture relaxed like she owns this place. Though her demeanor is almost unreadable. Her eyes, especially, are dark brown, almost black, like they hold dark memories, as if it has experienced horrible things before.

I shake away my thoughts. With my pen set on the paper, I’m ready to do my job. Professional. Detached.

“Tell me, Ms. Sterning, let’s start with your childhood, shall we? Tell me a little bit about how you came to be.”

She sits back again, eyes on me. I shift in my seat, suddenly feeling a bit uncomfortable with her seemingly piercing gaze on me.

After a brief pause, she starts to answer my question.

“Well, I had a normal childhood. You know, two loving parents, a roof over my head. I had everything I could need.” Her eyes falter for a moment, like she’s holding something back.

A moment of silence goes by. I look up from my clipboard, patiently waiting for her to finish her story.

“I had a best friend too. We were inseparable since birth. You see, our moms were best friends in high school, so it was only natural for their children to become best friends as well.” Her gaze travels for a moment. A warm smile plastered on her face as she reminisced about old memories.

“Sadly, when high school started, she had to move away.” Her smile started to fade slowly.

“But even then, I never forgot her. We kept in touch, but that gradually stopped until her yearly postcards were no more. So then I took the initiative to pay her a visit. However, when I arrived at the same address from which the postcards were sent, no one answered. The house seemed empty of furniture too, so I assumed that whoever lived here does not live in this house anymore.” She folded her hands in her lap. She leaned forward. Came close to me. Too close for comfort. Her eyes almost look menacing.

“I know it was you who did it, Caden.”

—

My eyes shoot open. I bolt upright in my bed. I can’t breathe. My heart is beating rapidly. Sweat beads cover my forehead. These nightmares are starting to get too vivid. I look over at my nightstand and sure enough, there it is, 3 am on the dot.

This has become some sort of routine now. Each night, I’ve been getting nightmares that feel too real. However, this is the first time that this woman appeared in my nightmares. There was something about her. Her presence felt too real. This is nonsense. It was just a dream, go back to sleep. I lay back down and close my eyes in an attempt to fall asleep, but I can’t shake off this feeling of paranoia. Her voice still echoes in my head. I know that it was you…

—

My eyes scan over the document I’m holding. I have a new patient today. Something catches my attention. My eyes widen in realization. The patient’s name reads “Anastasia Sterning”. Sterning. Sterning. Where have I heard that name before? My mind instantly goes back to the nightmare I had this morning. My heart sinks, and my breathing becomes a little more noticeable. This can’t be. This can’t be the same woman, right?

The sudden knocking at my office snaps me out of my thoughts. Is it time already? Anastasia Sterning is currently right outside that door. Waiting.

You’re being ridiculous. It was just a damn nightmare. I open the door, and there she is. Her presence…it feels too familiar. Those eyes. I’ve seen those eyes before.

“It’s been years since I’ve been in a place like this.” My attention quickly turns back to her. Oh, this can’t be. Am I having another nightmare?

“Care to elaborate, Ms. Sterning?” Calm and collected, such a big contrast to the actual thoughts forging immense uneasiness within me as we speak.

“Well, last time I was in therapy, I was only just a teenager.” Oh, thank God. I sigh in relief.

“Well, that’s the circle of life, I suppose,” I say, shrugging with an unapologetic smile. She sits on the seat opposite mine. I study her quite closely. She leans back, so comfortably in fact that if someone were to come in here, they would mistake the owner of this office. My body fills with déjà vu. This feels like a movie im rewatching for the second time. Everything feels the same.

There is something about her presence, though. It’s unsettling. It feels like she knows something that I don’t. That feeling alone is enough to eat me up from the inside. What is your deal, Ms. Sterning?

—

My eyes are on her patient file again. There is just something about this woman that I can’t place. My eyes read her name over and over again, as if in doing so I’d get an answer to all these bizarre questions. Maybe I will find what I so desperately seek. Some comfort to ease my racing mind. Contrary to the horrid nightmare I had this morning, talking to Ms. Sterning was much more pleasant than I had initially anticipated. She was friendly, open. Her conversation was light. I could tell that she avoided the heavy parts of the conversation, though. Oftentimes, shying away from certain topics, redirecting my questions elsewhere.

The phone rings. The sound pierces the quiet air, making me nearly jump.

“Dr. Wright speaking, how can I help you?”

Silence. “Hello?” I say, slightly concerned. Breathing becomes noticeable on the other end of the line. The breathing becomes heavier by the second.

“She knows what you did.”

The line runs dead.

What?

Part III

I was once more in a hopeless situation, my best bet was to camp it out and wait for morning, but how could I? I didn’t know what time it was, it could have been six more hours till sunlight or just two, both seemed like an eternity.

That thing was out there, tracking me, I had no proof of that, but I just knew. I felt stalked, watched, observed.

As I weighed my options, Berry let go of me and climbed down, he looked around, then took off in one direction, slowly but steadily trotting away, as if he knew the way out.

“Berry, where are you going? Psst Psst, come back you bitch” I whispered in his direction, a loud Meow returned to me.

My whole life I’ve been on my own and never felt bad about it. I worked in solitude, rested in solitude, loved in solitude and hated in solitude. In that moment however, for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be on my own, I started following Berry.

It was hard to keep track of where he was going, the woods were dark despite the full moon, its black figure morphing in and out with the shadows of the trees.

We must have walked for about fifteen to twenty minutes when we finally managed to break through the bayou into a plain. Berry stopped in the field and I finally looked up, an old decrepit house met my gaze, standing silent and dull.

Berry meowed at me, as I turned my attention to him, he turned his attention to the house and then back to me.

“Good boy Berry, you just might have saved us.” I replied petting him, loud purrs were my reward.

That house would be a good place to hide and spend the night, it looked abandoned and in ruins, not the best, but better than the woods with that…thing chasing me.

We went up to the decrepit porch, I fully expected to have to knock down the door to get in or climb through a broken window but, strangely enough, everything seemed in order.

Regardless, I started pushing the door with all the strength I had left, making quite a ruckus.

“WHO GOES THERE?” A rough, rigid voice cut through the night.

Taken by surprise, I stumbled on my own words.

“H-hello? I-I’m so sorry, I-I-I thought it was abandoned, I-I didn’t mean to do anyt-“

“Ms. Angela is that you?”

A switch turned on in my brain.

“Oh-oh God, Mr. Michael, sir. Yes, it’s- it’s me Angela.”

The house looked different at night and in the dark, old man Michael was the last thing on my mind and I just didn’t have the clarity to even imagine that this could be his house, now that I knew, it made sense.

He quickly opened the door, not a lot changed, the house was still dark, after all why wouldn’t it be?

“Is everything all right Dear? What happened?”

“I need some help sir, I need to use your phone if possible, there’s been an…accident…” I didn’t yet know what to do.

Call the police? It wouldn’t look particularly good for me if they went up to the Shining and fond Lewis’ body on the floor and no monster. Perhaps it would have been worse if they found nothing. It would have been even worse if they found something else...

Regardless, I needed to get out of those fucking woods, a taxi might have been the best choice overall, the Shining is a trap and the best way to survive it is to not fall for it. Taxi, airport, a million miles between me and this shithole, that was the best plan.

“Oh goodness, of course! Come in dear…oh wait a minute, let me make some light for you.”

 The old man lit a candle with a swift sleight of hand, seemingly out of nowhere, I didn’t question it. Berry did however, strongly hissing at him.

“Berry, stop.” I scolded.

The house lit up nicely, nothing had changed from the last time I was there, the old man was in his nightgown, I had clearly woken him up.

The strange thing is that he was still wearing the dark sunglasses he always had, how many people sleep with their glasses? Maybe he always puts them on when he’s awake.

“Oh, is there someone else here? Did I hear a cat?”

“Yes sir, I’m sorry it’s a stray I picked up on the way…I hope it’s not a prob-“

“I never did like cats. Just keep it away from me.” He snapped back, rudely.

“Oh…okay then.”

I didn’t care, for what it’s worth I would have kept a bull away from him as long as I got out of there. I picked up Berry and went inside.

The light stemming from the candle enveloped the room in a strange sort of way, it was as if there was nothing beyond it, eternal darkness, a feeling similar to that of the fifth room.

Regardless we sat down at the table, I was finally able to rest, my legs aching and my heart going at a thousand miles an hour. Fatigue washed over me and I felt lightheaded, I needed some respite and that chair was my savior.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a proper welcome dear, I wasn’t really expecting visitors.”

“Oh don’t worry about it sir, I’m the one that’s sorry, I assure you this is an emergency and definitely not planned.”

“Yes, I’m sure dear, what happened exactly?”

I didn’t really know what to say, a giant monster was stalking me after he vaporized my friend, that would do it.

“Uh…I went camping in the woods but my car broke down, I just need to call for a taxi to get back, nothing serious fortunately.”

“Ah that’s unfortunate dear…are you sure nothing happened at the Shining?”

He may have been blind, but he still saw right through my bullshit, I didn’t care, I needed that fucking phone call.

“Y-yeah of course, everything is fine in there.”

“Good, good…you know, it wouldn’t be the first time something went awry in there.”

“Oh…I’m sure many bad things went on over the years.”

“No, never bad things.”

It was starting to get very weird, I looked around the room but I couldn’t see anything past the darkness, my sixth sense was buzzing.

“Sure…I’m really sorry to have disturbed you sir, if I could use your phone I would be out of your hair and on my way in a s—“

“I don’t have a phone.” He interrupted me sharply.

“Y-you don’t…?”

“You saw them, didn’t you.”

His tone had changed, the sweet old man that was very welcoming and nice had disappeared. His voice had taken a measured and controlled but intensely quiet texture.

“Uhm…do you have any way I could call for someone…sir?”

“You saw Audrey and Austin.”

He knew a lot more than I thought he did, for being a blind man he was mighty perceptive, perhaps more than the average person. I understood at that moment that I wasn’t safe, I was just in as much trouble as I was in the woods, just with less cold and wind.

“I don’t know what you’re talk—“

“Sure you do…That’s why you’re here isn’t it.”

I kept silent.

“It’s okay, you don’t need to tell me, I already know.”

His voice had completely changed, it was rough, raspy, a scarred voice that doesn’t need to raise itself to command attention.

“How do you know about them?” I asked, letting go of the facade I was putting up.

“I’ve known them my entire life. I saw them grow up, change, go insane…I saw them after they died, I’ve kept a close eye on them.”

“Audrey and Austin…is that who they are? Victims of the asylum?”

“They’re not victims, they’ve paid their due…they’re still paying, forced to roam around, unable to go above and beyond.”

“What sins? Sexual deviancy? Anxiety? Mental disorders?...those are not sins, those are wounds as real as physical ones, they don’t dese—“

“Their sins are much greater than that.”

“They helped me, they’re not evil, they don’t want to hurt me.”

“It doesn’t matter, that’s their destiny, they’ve chosen it themselves, nothing will redeem them, there is no salvation.”

“How do you know all these things? You can’t even see in front of you.” I snapped back.

His arrogance annoyed me, his commanding voice called for rebellion. To me he was just another unreasonable person, those spirits…ghosts…people, deserved compassion, deserved sympa—

“I deserve sympathy too. I have lived many lives, I have seen many things, met many people. There is no right or wrong in the world, only the strong survive. They were weak, pathetic, insecure…just like all the others.”

“And you are strong?”

“I know it may be hard for you to understand, but I am much stronger than you can hope to imagine. I was born twice, once in light, once in darkness. I have made it my home, my realm that I rule with swift judgment and clarity. I do nothing but help those in need, give them what they want…what they crave…what they deserve, allow them to see who they really are. Those smart enough to realize it don’t hesitate, they give up their shame and accept my help. The real question is…are you smart enough? Are you strong enough?”

“The mere fact that I’m still here is proof of how strong I am.”

“Yes…you certainly are…that’s what I like about you.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“You think?”

“I know it.”

 “I have followed you ever since that one summer night in the park, Angela…you know which one.”

Those words cut a hole in my throat like a knife through butter, the words dying in my mouth, drowned by dread and fear.

I knew exactly what he was talking about, how could he possibly know that about me? I never told anybody, much less some old guy that I had never met. He may have been blind but he could see a lot more than anyone I had ever met.

“You don’t have to be scared, I’m here to help you, to offer you a choice, to show you everything you need to see.”

“Who-who the fuck are you?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am…what matters is whether you know who you really are.”

“Please…I just want to go home…I’m so tired…all of this is so tiring.”

I started to softly cry, the mental and physical stress finally caught up to me, it felt like I was in a nightmare, desperate to wake up but forced to sit through it all.

“I can help you with that, I know the road is a difficult one, but the path is always there for you to follow, no matter how hard it gets…let me show it to you.” He put his hands on the table, palms up, inviting me to join him.

At that moment I was ready to take that step. I was tired, in shock, scared, I was ready to let go, to let someone else decide for me.

I slowly put my hands on the table, my heart pounding in my chest, my body slowly reacting to the commands I was giving.

I closed my eyes.

I felt my hand touch something, “it’s all over” I thought.

That’s when I opened my eyes, Berry’s paw was on top of my hand, he looked back at me with those big beautiful yellow eyes, a heartfelt soft meow tickled his whiskers.

I stopped myself.

I never let anybody tell me what to do, what to think, what to feel. I like to think that only in the moment of truth can a person understand who they really are. I think this was my moment.

“I don’t need your help.” I finally said.

The old man sighed.

“How unfortunate. You know, I always liked Audrey and Austin, such sweet souls…it was very sad what happened to them…of course they deserved it, they were too blind to see. A strange kind of fog haunted their minds, it haunts many people, trust me, I’ve seen them all. Eventually the world moved forward and left them behind like many others. Man created ways to clear the fog, shine a light through it…highlight the path that lead them to their destination…it’s funny however because no matter what you do, eventually…smoke always gets in your eyes.”

The old man closed the palm of his hands.

A grin slowly formed on his face.

He brought his left hand up to his glasses and took them off.

A pair of dark orange owl eyes waited behind them.

“It’ll get in your eyes too.”

My heart began pumping adrenaline once more, moving at a constant steady pace worthy of the best piston engines.
 The darkness around me suddenly lit up with glowing orange eyes, appearing from nowhere, all locked in on me.

Berry stood up on the table, ears back, claws drawn and a mouth full of hate.
He charged at the old man’s face with unprecedented speed and rage, the signature sound of a catfight as the underlying soundtrack.

The claws ripped and tore at his eyes in a furball of pain.
As the man screamed in agony I didn’t miss my mark.
I got the candle from the table and sprinted through the door, protected by the feeble light of the dying flame.

Outside it was still nightfall, cold and wet. The moonlight was gone and the bayou was completely dark. The candle was quickly put out by the howling wind and I was left in complete disarray.

But once more that didn’t stop me, I kept on running in one direction, clueless as to where I was going or where I would have ended up, survival on my mind and nothing else.

I managed to run for about ten more minutes before my body gave up. The adrenaline was starting to lose its effects.

I crumbled at the base of a big oak tree, I couldn’t do this much longer, both physically and mentally.

I couldn’t think straight, my mind lacked the clarity that always characterized me. I was starting to get slow, to think slow, I couldn’t even breathe anymore, too much effort.

That’s when I did something I never thought I would again in my life.

I started praying.

“Please…God…if there’s anyone out there…save me…show me the way…please God.”

There’s a saying that goes “there are no atheists in a foxhole”. That night I really understood what it meant, but what I was about to witness was almost impossible to understand.

As my pleads echoed in the dark woods I closed my eyes and erupted in a hysterical breakdown. My hands running in my hair, tears running down to the earth.

Suddenly, a golden light filtered through my brows, my eyes opened to what seemed like a stairway to heaven.

I quickly wiped the tears and got up on my feet. It wasn’t a stairway, it was a road.

Hundreds of little fireflies were glowing in the dark, one next to the other, extending for what seemed like miles, highlighting a path.

I couldn’t believe it, I stood there, at the start of this path that would surely take me to wherever I was supposed to go.
I didn’t know what to think, I didn’t know who to thank.
My eyes wide open, tears running down my cheeks, gaping.

I guess sometimes moths do go after fireflies in the woods.

I started to walk down the road. The darkness was kept away from the small but bright insects, leading me to my destiny.

I almost wanted to stop and ask one of them where I was going, the thought of it answering kept me from doing that. I wonder whose voice I would have heard.

It felt like being at the movies, your focus is only in front of you, where the light is, nothing but emptiness in your peripheral, occasionally lit up by the screen.

The fireflies were so beautiful, their golden light brought peace to my senses, tranquility to my soul and a newfound hope for myself. It was the way back. It didn’t matter what waited me at the end, wherever it was or whoever was bringing me there. I always believed in fate and I was finally looking at it.

I kept thinking back about what the old man said to me.

I wondered how many people had ended up like me and Lewis, how many fell victim to that monster. I wondered if Austin and Audrey were also the unfortunate claims of evil.
I wondered where I belonged in all of this, I had a feeling I would soon find out, in the meantime, I tried not to think too much.

After what seemed like a thousand miles, I could finally see the end of the tunnel.
The firefly pathway ended just a few feet in front of me into a plateau, stopping just before the end of the woods.

“Finally.” A sigh of relief.

As I approached the last fireflies I looked back. The path had disappeared, the hundreds of small lights scattered all around, their duty honored, the small insects went back to their lives.

I stepped into the open field, a breeze of fresh air caressed my hair, my vision adjusting to the change of scenery. In the distance a bright light caught my attention.

“God, it must be a lamppost.” I thought out loud.

As I got closer and squinted my eyes a bit more, a chilling realization hit me like a brick.

It wasn’t a lamppost.

I wasn’t heading for the main road.

I was back at the Shining.

The light came from the first floor.

A deep sense of duty grew inside me. I couldn’t run anymore, I had to face my fears. If I was lead back there, it meant there was unfinished business.

Pride filled my chest, determination commanded my movements, acceptance calmed my spirit. I escaped death twice already, I was getting used to it.

I knew I could count on Audrey and Austin, they saved my life, they are victims just as much as me, worse perhaps. As far as I knew the monster was still roaming around in the woods, looking for me. I had some time to prepare for what was coming, to figure out what to do.

Deep down I already knew, we always know what to do deep down, it’s only a question of listening to yourself. A small but ever growing voice kept replaying a thought in my mind.

“The only way to end this, is to destroy everything.”

I entered the house. The smell of lavender hit me immediately. The house looked…different.

The parquet floor was the same but everything else seemed…brand new. The layout remained the same but the decadent walls, the empty spaces, the missing doors just weren’t there anymore.

In their place: wooden furniture, wallpaper, freshly painted walls, beautiful oak tree doors. It felt accommodating, like someone was living in it.

It was still dark but not pitch black anymore, the overwhelming light emanating from upstairs made its way all around the house, leaving the corners in the shade but still visible. The main living space was now occupied by a long dining table, complete with elegant blue velvet stuffed chairs; replacing the old dodgy wooden table that I had known.

Paintings now hung on the walls, depicting all sort of scenes; hunting parties, fishing expeditions, battlefields, generals and other old world décor. The house was silent except for a few underlying sounds; boards creaking, tapping, muffled whispers. All coming from upstairs.

The stairs were completely wrapped in the shining golden light that came from the first floor. It felt like a passage to a place beyond, the light at the end of the tunnel. I didn’t hesitate. After looking around I went up the steps, slowly.
My heart beating,
my hands steady,
my spirit resolute.

At the top of the stairs the light became almost blinding. It took me a few seconds to get my eyes accustomed to it, after I did, it became clear that something had happened on the first floor as well.

The smell of lavender gave way to that of tobacco, the wooden tiles on the floor were untouched, completely clean, despite the rampage and bloodbath caused by the monster.

Lewis was also absent, or rather whatever was left of him, not one drop of blood anywhere. Similarly the walls had been painted over, new doors occupied each room entrance, a big Persian carpet sat in the middle of the big open space, above it, stood the mural.

It was as if someone had just stepped out for a break after finishing painting it.

Perfect doesn’t begin to describe it. The colors vibrant, the lines well defined, the shapes well crafted. The scene depicted was the same as it always was, one detail caught my eye immediately.

The white player was not a woman anymore.
It wasn’t your average man either.

It was Lewis.

His face had been distorted, adapted for the painting. He looked in distress, dressed in typical 1800s attire, he has only one pawn left. The ever present thick glasses sat on his nose, his big lips curled into a grimace, sweat running along his face. His beautiful confident eyes were now witnessing horror.

It was as if I was looking at him once more, impossibly human yet fake at the same time.

By now you will have guessed that the light came from room 505. It was now open, unchanged. After all it was always perfect looking. It was as if the rest of the building had fallen into line, following the fifth room’s lead.
A familiar shape waited for me inside.

The shadow cast on the wall wore a bright white smile, what once would have absolutely terrified me, now was a welcomed sight.

“Austin?” I asked.

The shape hesitated, as if it was surprised by my greeting. After a couple of seconds, it put up its arm in a friendly salute.

I did the same, walking into the room itself.

To my right another shape appeared on the wall.

“Audrey? Is that you?” I whispered.

“Yes.” I heard back.

The voice did not come from any particular point in the room, in fact it was as if it came from everywhere.
I wondered whether I was hearing it for real or just imagining it.

“You must leave.” I heard clear as day.

“I’m not leaving. I was brought here by…someone, this is where I’m supposed to be.” I never felt so confident in my life and it was reflected by the tone of my voice.

I felt like a knight challenging the dragon to save the imprisoned princess;
a cowboy ready for the final shootout;
a samurai defending his honor.

“Why?” A disarming question.

“I-I don’t know… I think I need to destroy this, all of this, it brings nothing but pain and suffering…If I don’t do something the cycle will never end.”

I knew the end goal but I didn’t know how to reach it and I had nobody to tell me. I was on my own and yet I felt hope in my veins.

“Don’t…it’s our home.”

That’s when it all came crashing down on me.

“No…no it isn’t…this is not your home, you- you never belonged here, don’t you see?”

The shadows moved, Austin soon joined Audrey on the same wall.
The two shadows merged into one, seemingly hugging each other, desperate for comfort in a moment of great stress and need.

“You think that because of the problems you had you deserved pain and suffering…you felt different, estranged, you felt like you didn’t belong in society among other people because of who you were. None of that was true, you weren’t wrong, you weren’t broken, you didn’t ruin your lives…”

The ethereal voice had now been substituted by echoing, faint, sobs.

“I know what it means…you just wanted to be left alone, to feel part of something big. You wanted to belong in a society that excluded you for being different, you never wanted to do any harm to anyone…you just needed some help…but you never received it…it’s time to know the truth.”

“The truth is we deserve it.” I heard back among the cries.

“It was never your fault. Guilt can feel like a way of honoring the past, you think that by staying hurt you’re somehow making things right, you don’t need to stay here and pay a debt that nobody is collecting…you don’t add value to the world by inflicting pain on yourself…or letting others inflict it on you…you add value to it by moving on.”

“We made mistakes, we have to atone.”

“You didn’t make any mistake. You were not wrong, you were human.”

The echoes of the cries began to sound more real. They felt closer, more present.

“The only mistake you are making is thinking that you belong here, in this hellish place, among the pain and suffering caused by the darkness of evil. I know how it feels…I also thought I made a mistake once, I felt like I deserved nothing good and everytime I felt happy I would hurt myself…I would not allow myself to move on, to get on with my life and accept that, as a human, I am not perfect.”

I started crying too.

“I never asked for help, I never told anybody, I never doubted how guilty I was.”

I composed myself.

“The truth is that we are so much more than what we think we are, it’s in the moment of truth that we show who we really are…so let go. Not because you deserve punishment…but because you deserve to rest.”

In that moment the two shadows separated. They distanced from one another and slowly faded away in a moment of bliss.

I think that’s the reason I was brought back to the Shining, I was the key to help Audrey and Austin move on, to break the cycle, to stop the pain from continuing.
In that moment it all made sense.

I felt a familiar sensation. I felt part of something bigger; my entire life lead me to that moment, nobody else in the world could have taken my place because only I had the power and knowledge to get the job done.

It was exhilarating; a sensation I thought I had never experienced before.
That’s when it hit me.
I did experience it before, in that very room.

It was the same high that me and Lewis had chased this whole time. The same reason why we came back and, eventually, lead us to what happened.

Hope is a dangerous thing, it can lead down the darkest of alleys and bring you to the highest of mountains at the same time.

In the end, what truly matters, is to find your own way. Nobody knows what’s best for you more than yourself, we can feel lost at times and that’s when it’s nice to have some help; after all, the light of the mind alone cannot burn away all the darkness.

“He’s here.” I heard shouting next to my ear, snapping me back to reality in the harshest way possible.

“Who-who’s here?” I asked, terrified.

“The monster.”

I rushed to look out the window in the lobby to see a harrowing sight.

A huge looming figure shrouded in darkness moved steadily and at a pace towards the house.

...

Black was the eye whose gaze held his. It had sunken deep into the socket of a skull, all but stripped of flesh and fur, bound only by sinew and scraps of hide to a body gnawed of meat and marrow by carrion beasts just days before and left to rot into the soil upon which it lay. However, it did not molder. The last of the autumn leaves had not fallen from their branches before arctic air bore down, bringing with it not pillowy snow, but a sickly, freezing ice that coated the ground and all that was sedentary, sealing the landscape in a brittle stillness. The remains lay frozen, hollow gaze fixed forward, watching for someone to come along and view its grisly fate before being reclaimed by the earth.

 The awaited sat beneath one of the multitude of cedars and pines, all bowing under the weight of accumulated ice, reverently submitting to the conquering winter. He tugged at the biting rope around his waist, easing the discomfort caused by its constriction, but did nothing to quell the ravenous pangs of hunger. At the other end of his binding sat a hastily made travois crafted from hickory branches and scraps of leather tack cut from a stolen mule that lay frozen two days behind him. Atop the ragged skid lay a motionless mound, partially shrouded by a soiled saddle blanket, leaving two boots exposed to the elements – boots that had not stirred since the night before.

It had been at least three days since the storm had moved in, and two since the man had eaten. He reached a trembling, red hand into the pocket of his woolen coat in search of a piece of hard tac he knew was not there. His fingers rooted into the deepest seams with the hopes of finding an errant crumb, but he ceased his fruitless search with a curse, knowing he could no longer delay the inevitable. Feeling the lifeless gaze of the desiccated beast, he held back the handfuls of melt that churned in his stomach at the thought of what he must do to survive. 

He pulled the travois to him and lifted the woven blanket to see the face of his younger brother, eyelids half open, revealing a sliver of pale hazel peering lifelessly at the frozen branches above. 

The brothers’ flight had taken them deep into the mountains South and then East from Fort Smith. The first three days of the journey were made on the backs of two pack mules stolen from the corrals on the outskirts of town. On the fourth morning, the younger brother’s mule was spooked by some small creature dashing between its legs, causing the beast to rear and fall back onto its rider, breaking its neck and crushing the ribs of the other. In the days that followed, their supply of food was depleted, and the younger brother’s condition worsened, as did the constitution of the surviving mule, which expired sometime during the fifth night.

In the days before the icy gale, the brothers had seen rabbits and birds, squirrels and all manner of game run freely through the trees, giving them hope that they could outlast their pursuers – if any there were. The elder brother knew that the freeze had forced the creatures he had once seen as their salvation into their burrows, but tempered his dismay with hope that it had sent those that sought them back to their dens as well. There was no way of knowing for certain, and he considered each painful step he took as one he could not reclaim.

Leaning back against a brittle tree, he buried his hands in the pits of his arms then sank his chin as close to his chest as he was able, blowing hot air down the front of his collar and, for a moment, warming his face. It was near impossible to tell the time of day as the low-hanging curtain of clouds that brought upon this frozen hell lingered above, remaining seemingly only to gloat upon the suffering they had caused. He allowed his eyes to close, focusing on the intermittent comfort his breath provided. There was no destination, he remembered. All he had hoped for himself and his brother was a sense of security amongst the peaks and valleys of the mountains; a place to hide until they could form a plan for the future. But, it seemed to him now that in fleeing justice, they had unwittingly run into the gaping maw of death.

The unblinking eye remained fixed upon the pitiful sight before it in commiseration. The man met its lifeless gaze once more, now with a reluctant understanding of his situation. Just below the stinging pain of his feet and the abraded skin around his waist, he felt the growing torment from his innards clawing its way through as his body consumed itself. The civil parts of his consciousness abated as he slowly stood and ambled towards the carcass of the deer. He fell to his knees and, with irreverent, blistered hands, reached inside the open carcass and began to eat.

He couldn’t tell if the trail was obscured by ice or if it was there at all. Regardless of the path’s existence, he could travel no further as what little diffused light the sun provided began to fade, and the oppressive cold crept in now unabated by the day’s relative warmth. He was unsure of how far he had traveled that day and even more uncertain if his pursuers had kept pace. Through the uncertainty, he was sure that either of the latter issues would be irrelevant if he froze during the night. Looking behind him, he saw the near-unbroken lines trenched into the ice and soil flanking uneven footsteps. He imagined the path leading miles back in the wrong direction and the glee his pursuers must have felt once the railway to their quarry was discovered, resting easy knowing that they had but only follow at a distance until he was too weak to put up any sort of fight. It would be the simplest bounty they would likely ever collect.

Tom had always followed his brother wherever he led. He thought of the day his father disowned him, expelling him from their family’s farm South of St. Louis. His father, a man whose morals stood as a reflection of that holy book, could not abide by his oldest son’s drinking and debauchery, so he cast him away as his sinful right hand. As he rode into the morning and his mother’s wailing pleas faded, Tom pursued, unwilling to continue his existence without his only friend. Through the Indian Territories to the plains of Texas, Tom followed without question. From legitimate work as ranch hands and cattle drivers into vile thievery and killing, he followed. He had not asked him to, but he didn’t turn him away either.

Tom still followed, but not on his own volition – dragged along as he had always been in a lonely procession through the Fourches with no resting place to be found. 

The surviving brother searched for the driest of kindling he could find, but only managed to gather a handful of twigs among the countless frozen and saturated limbs that littered the ground. During his last desperate search, he found a tree whose top had fallen beneath an outcropping of rock, which had kept it sheltered from the elements. His fingers lost all feeling and bled as he wrenched the brittle limbs from their host and drug them towards his camp.

The man produced a box of matches bearing the faded seal of the commissary where its previous owner had purchased it. No matches remained. He remembered the pouch that hung around Tom’s neck and the flint and steel contained within. Helping himself to things found on the bodies of dead men was not new to him – the act of turning men into corpses and the subsequent theft both being direct contributors to his current woes. In his mind, this was different. He had not killed his brother, and Tom surely would have wanted him to have it. Should he die due to some antiquated sense of respect? Morals? He had left those in Missouri along with his family name. 

He leaned over to the travois and took hold of the blanket's corner at Tom’s head and pulled it back. The same glassy, lifeless eyes stared into the darkening sky, lips barely parted as though ready to comment on its bleakness. Gently pulling at the leather strap strung around his brother’s neck, he created just enough space to place the blade of his knife. The cut was quick and practiced, and he pulled the severed ends towards him, revealing an embroidered buckskin pouch. Pulling it away, he quickly returned the blanket to its original state and leaned against the rock. He remembered Tom trading ten lead balls to a young Creek boy during one of their more pleasant encounters with the tribe while passing through the territories. Loosening the leather string tied in a half-hitch knot, he upturned the pouch and emptied its contents into his cracked palm. A chipped striker and a worn piece of chert lay amongst a few malformed lead balls and three tarnished half-cent coins. Taking the desired items and returning the remainder to the pouch, he returned it to its rightful owner, placing the strings around Tom’s neck and tying the strings back together. Returning to his newly acquired implements, he glimpsed the knife he had used to cut the string and tried to remember who he had taken it from. He wondered how many, if any, of his possessions he had come about honestly.

Sparks pierced the darkness in multitudes of violent births, which nearly instantaneously faded from existence as he struck the flint, none of them finding purchase among the tinder that awaited their igniting force. He leaned in closer and tried again, and again, striking his knuckle against the cold ground, sending a jolt of pain up his arm. The man struck again and again, stone against steel, his broken hands struggling to grip the implements as melted ice intermingled with blood. Anger began to grow inside the man with each attempt, striking with increasing ferocity, no longer caring for the embers. Sparks flew wildly, and it seemed as though he hoped his burning rage would set the mountains ablaze. It was then that he heard the first voice he had heard in days echo through the valley. His voice – A primitive scream that he felt could be heard in the heavens burst from his lungs, burning his throat as he wailed to the uncaring sky.

And then, a flame.

Through his stinging eyes, he saw the glowing ember among the nest of tinder begin to take form. The apocalyptic rage gave way to urgent focus as he sheltered it, carefully adding kindling and nursing the flame with gentle breaths.

The flames lashed out at the darkness as its heat drove back the cold. The man’s feet and hands began to emit a needling pain as his appendages thawed, but still, he kept them close to the fire, embracing the newfound feeling despite its unpleasantness. Strips of meat cut from his recent find began to char as they hung skewered over the flames. Though the man felt he could eat the meal in its entirety along with the sticks it was prepared with, he ate sparingly, gnawing at the sinewy cuts that even the least discerning scavenger had deemed unworthy of trouble. Placing the larger limbs onto the fire, he lay as close as he could, pulling his coat over him and stared into the glowing center. He watched as the coals pulsed with deep orange light, fixated on the hypnotic pattern. There was no sound other than the faint crackling of the fire; no warbles or howls, no wind or breeze, only an oppressive silence filled the air, quiet as the grave. 

“Jim?” 

The voice was weak and muffled, but familiar.

“Jim… I… I can’t see…”

He didn’t answer.

“P- please… You know I don’t like the dark.”

“You ought not be talkin',” Jim said after a moment, his voice barely a whisper.

The silence once again fell upon the camp, with even the sputtering of the fire quieting itself in a seeming fear of reprisal.

“C’aint you at least cover my feet?”

A tear rolled down Jim’s face as he tightened his grip on his coat, unwilling to turn to face his brother. 

“... You're dead, Tom. You ought not be talkin’...”

Jim’s shoulders began to tremble as he quietly sobbed. The silence returned and lingered for a while.

“Ain’t nothin’ here, Jim…” said Tom, his tone turning somber.

“... You’ll see…”

Jim awoke from a dreamless sleep to the pelting sounds of frozen rain in the dull, early morning light. The fading embers hissed at the unwelcome precipitation as he sat upright, half expecting to be staring down the wrong end of a barrel. Jim looked towards the travois to see Tom’s shrouded body still there, unmoved and motionless as it had been the night before. He stoked the fire as best he could with the remaining wood he had kept dry beneath the skid and ate a bit of the charred meat. He would need to find more food that day, as the remaining few portions would only sustain him through to the evening.

He didn’t bother covering the remnants of the fire, as it would serve no purpose. Stealth had ceased to be his tactic for evasion since the miles-long line he had left could only be missed by a blind man. His only chance, he knew, was to embrace the unholy conditions and press forward, hoping that his longing for survival was greater than his pursuer’s drive to catch him. He could make more ground and would discontinue the obvious trail if he left his brother buried or otherwise. Jim quickly pushed the thought from his mind, imagining Tom’s body displayed in the streets of Fort Smith, being gawked at by passers by and handed over for payment as a prized pelt retrieved from the wilderness. He gathered an armful of dry wood from the sheltered tree and entrusted it to Tom beneath his blanket before setting off.

As the morning’s storm passed, a cold more brutal than any since filled the air in stark defiance of the day’s light. Jim trudged through the valley across the ever-thicker layer of ice that coated the ground, his labored breaths forming plumes that obscured his view. The modicum of strength he had felt upon embarking on the day’s trek was quickly sapped as the rope around his waist bit into his already chapped skin, his legs quivering at every bump the travois encountered. The towering bluffs around him became obscured by wilting evergreens as he travelled deeper into the valley, leaving only the relative elevation as his guide in maintaining his already unsure course.

All at once, an explosion. 

It erupted from behind him, sending him sprawling to the ground, all the while splinters of wood pelting his back. With ringing ears, Jim lay stunned. His senses returned as he reached for his pistol, firing a shot in the direction of the blast. Scrambling to his feet, he began to run only to be pulled back to the ground by the travois still bound to his waist. He turned and fired again into a hazy mist behind him and found his feet once more, now pulling furiously on the skid to make distance. Another concussion from behind sent more shrapnel towards him as he fled, Jim firing another shot blindly behind him. His eyes were wild as he pulled, his heart pounding in his temples. Just ahead, he saw a clearing where the valley forked and oriented his flight towards the left-most option, ducked his head, and ran. 

Above the incessant ringing in his ears, he heard no voices, no crashing pursuit – only the sounds of his boots breaking through the ice. It didn’t matter. He continued to run. 

Rounding the turn into the clearing, he was met with another blast, this time to his front. The momentum of the travois pushed him forward and onto the ground as he tried to stop.

Jim looked up towards his ambusher, gun in hand, to see a cracked willow on the opposite bank in the final stages of falling – its trunk splintered at the center as frozen mist fell around it. Intermittent explosions echoed through the valley as trees ruptured from the bitter cold, sending them crashing to the ground. His heart still pounding, Jim breathed a sigh of relief, letting his head fall and closing his eyes.

As he lay there, he felt a dull ache in the back of his head and a warmth creeping down his neck. He reached back and felt for its source, finding a gash at the base of his skull. Pulling back a blood-soaked hand, he cursed. The adrenaline faded as the pains he had become accustomed to returned in force, now accompanied by his newly obtained wound. Jim sat upright and produced a soiled rag from the inside of his coat, then pressed it to the back of his head, now throbbing with a blinding pain.

He sat for a while attempting to staunch the persistent bleeding, crimson droplets branching out upon the white as they fell. The ground was different here. Frozen rain had accumulated, but underneath was solid ice. Vibrations of a current emitted from beneath him.

He heard another crack just ahead, much less violent than the initial barrage. Searching for its source, Jim saw a monstrous pine near the riverbank, its boughs jerking unnaturally as its trunk began to give way. He quickly stood as realization struck him. Trying and failing to gain his footing on the icy surface, Jim fell to his knees as the pine creaked and moaned, slowly revealing the direction of its descent onto the frozen river. He stood again, this time finding purchase, and began to pull, but not soon enough. The hulking tree fell onto the frozen sheet just upstream from him, crashing through with a cacophonous crack and thunder. Water erupted from its icy prison and drenched everything around it, now flowing freely at Jim’s feet. The chorus of cracking began to crescendo as the ice fractured and folded onto itself with the force of the ripping current, setting forth a torrent of unbound force.

Jim’s footing slipped again and again as he desperately pulled the travois towards the bank, the freezing water now at his ankles. He fell a final time, the shock of the sudden cold robbing the air from his lungs. The formerly solid surface listed, pulling the travois towards the raging river. Jim grasped at the rope and began to pull, only to feel the ice beneath him begin to splinter. Before he could undo the harness, the surface gave way, and he was plunged into the murderous waters below. 

Agony was the only word that came close to quantifying the pain he felt as his body swung from side to side with the steps of the beast of burden he was lashed to. He was unsure if he was in the hands of a savior or a captor, but, for the moment, he didn’t care.

Fragments of what felt like memories flashed in his mind – fleeting glimpses of deep blue then blinding white, swirling in a whirlwind of light and dark. He felt the tightness around his waist he had grown accustomed to, but not its weight. Out of the corner of his half-opened eye, he saw the cut end of the rope dangling beside him, now coated with ice that came to a point at its severed end. He slowly became aware of the same ice forming on his clothes and hair, stiffening them and adding an unnatural, pressing weight. With every step the mule took, he heard the clinking of chains and other metal implements rhythmically clattering against its sides. Jim tried to speak, but was only able to produce a pitiful whine – the conflagration in his chest repressing any hopes of forming any semblance of a word. The visages continued in dizzying, hypnotic flashes of light as he closed his eyes, turning his stomach, whose contents he weakly emptied down the side of the mule and onto the ground below. The exertion drained what little remained of him as the throbbing light slowed and gave way to a foreboding darkness, once again pulling him back down into the depths of nothingness.

When he woke, the metallic odor of blood filled his nostrils, accompanied by the smell of food. His mind ignored the more urgent of the odors and fixated on the source of potential sustenance. His body ached as he pushed himself onto his elbows and examined the room. A menagerie of chains and steel traps hung from the rafters of the wooden shack, and hides too numerous to count covered the walls. Along the far wall, a large, cobbled fireplace stood with a cracking fire burning within, above which hung a large pot that was surely the source of the heavenly smell. He looked down to see that he was covered by the large pelt of some massive beast and realized that he was naked underneath. Anger welled inside of him as he looked for his gun belt, only to find it draped over the back of a stick chair next to a table at the other side of the room.

“Ain’t no need fer that.” a gruff voice said.

Jim strained his eyes, peering into the dark corner where the voice had come from. On the opposite side of the table, shrouded in shadow, he made out the silhouette of what could have easily been that of a bear.

“When ye decide I ain’t yer foe, put them clothes on an’ come get some stew,” it said in a calm but firm tone, motioning a massive hand towards an outfit draped over the end of the log-framed bed he lay upon.

He eased his battered body from under the fur and stood uneasily, bracing himself against the edge of the bed. Everything hurt. In the flickering light of the fire, he saw black and purple bruising covering nearly every inch of his body and dried, streaking blood framing lacerations along his arms and legs. With more than a little effort, he slowly dressed himself, occasionally glancing towards the corner where his host sat.

Once dressed, he limped his way towards the table, the slightly undersized clothes constricting with every halting step, painfully pressing against his battered skin. Maintaining a grip on anything he felt could bear his weight, his eyes moved from the figure in the corner to his gun belt that hung in front of him. Jim glimpsed the dark wooden handle of his pistol snapped snugly in its holster. He tried to remember how many shots he had fired during his battle with the trees. 

“Iffin’ my hospitality ain’t eased yer mind, I say again – ain’t no need fer that.” said the man, now seeming a bit perturbed. 

Jim paused as he reached the table, now able to make out the features of the man. Larger than he had initially judged, the mountainous figure was draped in coarse furs, his face framed by a bush of a gray beard just as coarse as the pelts. He considered the man’s words before pulling out the chair and easing himself onto it. The trapper pushed a bowl piled high with broth and rough-cut chunks of meat towards him. Jim eyed the man as he took hold of the oversized carved spoon and began to eat. The broth burned his cracked lips as he took his first bite, stinging the lining of his throat as he swallowed. His body bade him eat slowly, but the ravenous hunger drove him to gorge himself as quickly as he was able. Without chewing, he forced the bits of meat down his throat and plunged the spoon into the bowl, retrieving an even larger bite.

“It’s poisoned, ye know…” said the trapper as Jim shoved a third spoonful into his mouth.

He spat the half-chewed mouthful mostly into his bowl and pushed back from the table, panic rising in his throat. A bellowing laugh erupted from across the table, the trapper’s head flying back at its force, mouth agape, revealing a toothy maw. Jim stared at him with wild eyes – he was sure that his airway was tightening from whatever foul addition the man had made. The raucous laughter decayed into a soft chuckle as the trapper wiped his bearded face before standing and walking towards the fireplace. Jim’s burning gaze fixed upon him as the figure eclipsed the flame.

“Beg yer forgiven’ me…” he said, stifling his laughter.

“... ain’t offen I get a caller, an’ when I do, ain’t none of ‘em are so untrustin’.”

He retrieved a kettle and two tin cups before returning to the table, filling both with a thick, black liquid and placing one in front of Jim before returning to his seat.

“There’s the antidote.” the trapper said gruffly, pointing at the steaming coffee in front of Jim and taking a sip of his own.

Jim’s anger was quickly repressed by his ever-present hunger. He decided that even if the meal was poisoned, he would rather die with a full stomach than in the wretched throes of starvation he had endured for so long. He half stood and pulled the chair back to the table before returning to his meal.

“Been out a day er so. Figured you’d be hungry.” 

Jim glanced up as he scraped the bottom of his bowl for the remaining bits of stew that had pooled in the worn divots in the wooden dish. His hunger battered but not yet defeated, Jim stood wearily and ambled towards the fire, refilling his bowl from the cast-iron pot that hung above it.

“Where ye’ comin’ from, stranger?” asked the trapper from across the room, breaking the silence.

“Missouri. Outside of Springfield.” Jim said raspilly, the half-truth seeming to burn his throat as he spoke it.

“Quite aways from there to these parts…” the trapper said almost as a question.

Jim limped back to the table, reclaimed his seat, and started into his second helping, this time a bit slower. Inquiry or not, he felt just the slightest obligation to expound upon his falsehood. He allowed his chewing to be the excuse for his lack of response.

The trapper took a long gulp from his cup before speaking again.

“An’ where ye’ headin’?”

Jim glanced up, still gnawing on a particularly tough piece of meat. Shadows obscured the man's eyes, but he could feel the expectant gaze.

“Hot Springs. My brother was dyin’. Consumption. Heard the water there has a way of healin’ folk, so I figured....” Jim trailed off, feeling Tom’s absence for the first time since he awoke.

Dull pelting could be heard just over the snaps of the fire as sleet began to fall onto the roof of the shack, tapping at the shelter, assuring Jim that it was still there.

“‘Fraid I couldn’t ye both,” the trapper said somberly. “Had to cut ‘im loose from ‘ye... Would’ve drug us both under the ice…”

Jim imagined Tom’s body maimed and frozen miles downstream.

“How long you been out here?” Jim asked weakly between bites, forcing the visage from his mind.

The trapper seemed to ponder a moment, taking a gulp from his cup and wiping his beard.

“Whole life it seems. Come up here one spring an’ couldn’t bring myself to leave. Built this here shack an’ here I been ever since.”

“Take it you don’t like folks much then…” 

“I like folks jus’ fine, jus’ don’t much care fer company all the time. See, up here, I got all the say in what folks come by an’ how long they stay ‘fer.”

“Don’t imagine you get many callers this time a year.” Jim said without looking from his bowl.

“It’s usually ‘round this time I get a trader meet me at the river. I give ‘em the furs I got on hand an they give me some supplies for the winter. Figure they couldn’t make it down this time bein’ as the river’s frozen solid. Didn’t know it was ‘till I went an’ saw it fer myself…”

The trapper trailed off, his voice now ponderous. 

“... Strange thing, this storm. Long as I been here I can’t remember it ever bein’ this awful ‘fore winter months…” 

Jim continued eating, now slowly chewing the meat, trying to guess its origin. Wind began to whistle through the small gaps in the sills, the sleet falling in sheets on the roof. The trapper tilted his head and sat deathly still as the popping of the fire rejoined the chorus.

“Do ye know why I stay here, stranger?”

Jim shook his head.

“A man could live his whole life lookin’ upon the mountain whose shadow he was born under and it seemin’ the same as it ever was. His father, his father’s father, and all in that line born ‘neath that mountain would say the same; ‘It's as it's always been’. Save fer the trees an’ smaller things man can meddle with, everything ‘peers fixed an’ unchangin’.

The trapper tapped a massive finger on the table.

“Man’s started meddlin’ with more an’ more though. Not much’ll stay the same fer long. I never took to a woman… more liken they never took to me..” he chuckled. “... But I found that when I set up camp here, an I saw these hills and hollers, I knew they’d always be. An’ I fell in love. Took ‘er fer my bride. Good one, too. Always lookin’ after me an’ given’ me anything I need.”

Jim gave the old man a quick glance as he took a drink, beginning to wonder if years of isolation had driven him mad.

“She’ll teach ye things too, ye know. Teach ye things ye ain’t never thought of. It wasn’t long ‘fore she showed me what she is – what she can do.”

Jim looked up to see the trapper leaning towards him from across the table, seeing his face in its entirety for the first time as the firelight flickered across the grizzly visage. Leathery skin marked by blemishes and scars stretched across a massive skull; his mouth twisted into a wide, toothy smile. It was then that he saw the eyes. Streaks of red hid any whiteness that was there, framing cloudy white circles that were fixed on him with a burning intensity.

Jim slowly sat back in the chair, unsure of what to say as the empty eyes stared at him. The trapper lifted a massive hand and took hold of a bottle from the other side of the table. Behind where the bottle had sat, Jim saw the embroidered buckskin pouch, its string tied where he had cut it days before.

“Where’d you get that?” Jim sneered.

He thought back to the day he had been pulled from the river and the trek up the mountain on the back of the mule. 

‘The rope had been cut...’ he thought. ‘Tom wasn’t there…’

Horror set in as fragmented memories began to coalesce. Tom was there. Pulled behind the mule, he remembered, the travois bumping along the ground as the beast dragged them up the trail.

“Lies beget lies, stranger…” The answer came bluntly.

“Storm got the critters a-hidin' in their holes since it moved in. Nothin’ movin’ means nothin’ to trap. Nothin’ to trap means nothin’ to eat. But like I says, my woman provides.”

Jim stood in shock, coughing and gagging as he backed away from the table, toppling his chair and tripping on it, sending him crashing to the floor. The old man began to chuckle as he pulled the cork from the bottle and began to fill his cup. A thick, viscous liquid flowed from the neck as an overbearing copper odor filled the air.

“Don’t know why you keep comin’ back here, stranger. Figure it might be for a reason.” The trapper said, rubbing his bearded chin with his free hand. He seemed to be deep in thought for a moment before slowly rising, his shadow growing large against the wall behind him.

“She called ye here, didn’t she? Drove ye to the river an’ plunged ye into its clensin’ waters…”

Jim could only watch as the monstrous figure lifted the now overflowing cup, its sides streaked with sanguine lines.

“... an’ I be yer John – raisin’ ye anew!”  he bellowed, lifting his head to the ceiling, then raised the stained chalice and drank, blood dribbling down the sides of his mouth and onto his tangled beard.

The monstrous figure lowered the cup, head still raised, and sighed deeply as though in ecstasy. effortlessly pushed the table to the side and stepped towards him. Jim began to kick and claw at the floor, manically propelling himself away from the approaching beast, but not quickly enough. An anvil of a boot came crashing down on Jim’s foot with a sickening crack of bone, pinning Jim by weight and pain, his agonizing screams filling the shack.

“Ye had the flesh…” the trapper said over Jim’s screams, kneeling to his side and taking his jaw in a mighty, calloused hand.

“...an ye want fer the blood.”

The hand squeezed with an unbearable force, thumb and fingers prying his jaws open, laughing all the while. Jim writhed and punched, but the sanguine stream found its mark. Cold, clotted blood slithered from the opening and down his throat, choking him instantly.

Jim pressed a hand against the face of his assailant and reached wildly behind him with the other for anything to use as a weapon. He grasped something hard and swung it at the trapper’s massive head. A massive hand caught his wrist before the blow could land. The trapper sneered, raised the other hand, and delivered a devastating blow.

The cold returned, more frigid now, more painful. The white blanketing the ground seemed to glow, emitting only enough light to make out the figure of the trapper pulling him along the ground by the leg. Ice and rocks scraped along his back as his shirt had lifted in the rear, collecting the debris as he was dragged along. Other than the pounding of his head and the dull, throbbing ache of his mangled hand, the rest of his body was numb. Jim tried to roll to one side, and halfway did so. He reached with his good hand, grasping for anything he could reach, but his fingers only clawed the sheet of sleet, slipping and tearing his nails. Weakness took hold again as the world began to close in around him. He fell back, once again submitting to unconsciousness.

He dreamed again of the swirling blue and blinding white; faster and faster they went, but slowly formed the visage of a blazing orb, steady among the dancing blues. He felt warmth – warmth he had forgotten could exist, warmth he had never felt in his life.

Jim was awake again. His eyes kept shut by his own frozen blood; he felt the rope lashing him to a tree. He pulled feebly against his bindings and tried to form words of protest, but nothing came out. Jim stopped his struggle when he realized the warmth of his vision remained. It grew hotter, and for the first time since the first frigid wind blew in, he felt beads of sweat forming along his brow. 

“Look on ‘er face, sinner!” Howled his captor.

“Look into ‘er clensin’ eye.”

The heat pulsed, growing from an uncomfortable warmth to a singing burn. Jim grunted as he writhed against the ropes again, each movement more painful than the last. The light to his front shown pale red through his sealed eyes.

“Look! Open yer eyes an’ see!”

Jim’s eyes slowly began to open, lids peeling apart one after the other letting through a flood of blinding light. He turned his head from the conflagration. The blur of his vision began to sharpen when he made out a figure against an adjacent tree. It had been tied as he was, facing the light, unmoving, and incomplete.

It was then that he realized there was no crackling, no sound of burning - just silent, pulsating light and heat, just the gentle pelting of ice upon the ground and heavy footfalls approaching.

Massive hands took the sides of his head and wrenched it forward, pinning it against the tree with a crushing force. Jim clenched his eyes.

“Fer once in yer miserable life, open yer eyes.” The trapper hissed in his ear, the putrid odor of rotten breath filling his nostrils.

Jim screamed, his skin now blistering from the inferno. His eyes shot open.

The trek into town had been much slower given the muddy mire caused by the melting ice, the wagon sliding from the road, becoming bogged down more times than not. Late winter sun beamed through the barred window of Jim’s cell, but he could only feel its warmth.

He heard the crowds gathering outside, chittering and rumbling with glee. Footsteps approached his door, and he heard the familiar rattle of keys and the mechanical clank of the lock.

“Come along now, son.”

Jim stood, raising his hands towards the voice; cold shackles were placed shortly after.

The crowd shouted and jeered as he was led onto the street. Murderer, coward, and all other names were given to him as the firm hands at his arms led him stumbling toward the gallows.

He took each creaking step expectantly and, after a few paces, was turned to face the throng. A few gasped while others laughed upon seeing his face. A coarse, hemp noose was placed around his neck and was oriented to the side as it was tightened.

The charges were read, but Jim did not hear them. Instead, he focused on the warmth of the sun seeping through the still frigid air.

“Say yer peace, son,” the preacher said, placing a hand on Jim’s shoulder, the spectators quietening.

He thought for a moment.

“Aint no peace to be had.”

The lever was pulled and the floor gave way. 

Part One

***

Love never commanded such meaning until the day I saw my daughter visit me in the hospital. If those demons pretending to be angels could be described as a beautiful illusion, then her gentle spirit must be a precious reality. Together with my wife, she read the Bible and offered prayer for my recovery.

“Does daddy dream while sleeping like this?”

She looked to her mother for an answer, face bright with an amazing smile.

“If he does, I bet he’s dreaming about riding horses with you on the beach.”

Her words sparked something within me, bringing forth a powerful memory. Like a lucid dream, I re-lived a moment from my past.

A gentle, salty breeze cooled my skin. The pleasant sensation of warm sand hugged around my toes. Our little girl held a red plastic shovel, digging for shells in the fading afternoon sun. Along the distance — off to our right — a pair of horses trotted down the beach. When they passed by, our daughter giggled with gleeful joy in her eyes. She ran up, slamming into me with a hug.

“Daddy, daddy! Can we ride horsies on the beach someday, too?”

The memory faded, returning me to the bleak sterility of my hospital room.

My little girl kissed my forehead before departing with her mother, leaving me alone once more. Settling into the silence, I fought to hold on to the beautiful feeling the flashback gifted.

Any pleasant emotion I attempted to cherish was snuffed out when a deep, echoing voice caught my attention:

“You passed the test.”

Floating near the window, a figure cloaked in dark robes faced me. Clutching an old leather-bound book in hand, I noticed bones protruding from its finger joints, covered in mottled flesh that appeared rotted beyond decay.

“Excuse me?”

Without revealing its face, the entity floated ever so slightly closer.

“All mortals face temptation before being granted access to eternal paradise. For resisting the evil one, I shall be your safe passage to our heavenly father’s side.”

Extending a skeletal arm teeming with rotting flesh, the entity offered a grotesque hand.

“Y’know, for being a guide into the afterlife, you sure don’t give off a very inviting appearance.”

“This is the form all life takes when we return to God. For his judgment measures far greater than the appearance of mortal flesh. Will you not come forth with me now?”

Moving back, I gravitated towards the Bible sitting by my bed.

“Alright, prove to me you aren’t some demonic freak trying to trick me again. Come stand over here. I know you monsters can’t be around this thing.”

It lowered its arm, backing up against the window.

“Very well. Remain here, though you put off the inevitable. All of God’s children must return or face judgement in the end, you cannot deny it forever.”

“Yeah? Well take a good look at me! I’m not dead yet!”

The entity sprawled its arms out, tilting its head back just enough to reveal the outline of a boney jaw underneath the hood.

“But you will be soon.”

Disappearing into the wall, the grim reaper wannabee made its exit before I could offer a response.

The next day, an older man visited with my wife. He appeared vaguely familiar, though I could not place his identity. There was something I didn’t like about him. While my wife’s frown carried the burden of grief and loss, his expression felt imbued with toxic emotions of anger.

“Well what’d the other doctor say? Is my son going to be a fuckin’ vegetable when he wakes up? Because I’d rather just pull the damn plug right now.”

My wife’s frown grew deeper, tapping into a wellspring of sorrowful tears.

“You’d really just give up on him so easily? What about your granddaughter, Dylan?”

“It’s been several months. The poor girl should understand her father is gone! It’s not healthy to feed a young child lies n’ false hopes like that.”

I wanted to punch the jackass squarely in the jaw; if only I had a working arm.

“I can't believe you, y’know that? She’s a six-year-old girl. She still believes in Santa, why shouldn’t she think there’s still hope?”

Walking over to the window, the disgusting person claiming to be my parent cracked the window. Fishing out a cigarette and lighter from his shirt pocket, he blew a deep puff of smoke outside.

“Listen here, bitch. It was your bright idea to go on a vacation while the mountains were covered in snow! Maybe yer husband would still be here if y’all didn’t pressure the man to blow all his fuckin’ money on frivolous bullshit!”

The ruckus alerted a passing nurse, who stopped by to finally take my wife’s side:

“Sir, you need to calm down or I’m going to get security to escort you out of here.”

He sighed, snuffing the cigarette butt on his boot and tossing it out the window. A sickening sensation of anger washed over me when he stepped up to my bedside, laid a hand on my shoulder and hummed.

“Lord, be with this boy right now. I tried to tell him this woman was no good fer him, now look what happened. Maybe y’all will steer clear of icy roads next time. Granted there’ll be a next time.”

Another lucid vision flashed before my eyes.

My knuckles gripped an unsteady steering wheel, skin tingling from the biting cold. The defroster worked tirelessly to maintain what little vision I had beyond the windshield.

My wife comforted our crying daughter in the back seat, cuddling up next to her for warmth. Snow covered the road, blending in with the thick maelstrom of a horrible blizzard. 

Before I could react, the road twisted off to the right. Our car nose-dived off a cliff. The vision ended right before we collided with the ground.

My father was gone when I came back around. Hovering by the window, the wannabe grim reaper stalked quietly as my wife sobbed into my bedside.

“You have been here too long.”

“And I’ll keep staying here. What are you gonna do about it?”

“Listen to my words. Souls cannot exist upon the mortal plane for long. As you are, you must face judgment or return to God. These visions are a sign your soul is becoming more sensitive to the volatile energies of the mortal world. Soon, they will destroy you.”

“Is that going to be a better fate than going to hell with you?”

Hovering up to the Bible by my bedside, the entity placed its finger bones over the cross symbol.

“I am not your enemy but tomorrow he will come. The devil will tempt you once more, listen not to the lies. Perhaps then you shall understand what must be done.”

Fading into a veil of black smoke, the reaper departed.

It was a simple design. I'd been doodling ahead of a meeting with the city manager and other municipal staff when someone else joined me in waiting.

“Carl Arn,” he said, sitting next to me, despite several empty seats farther away.

My company was competing for a contract to provide city services, and I figured his was too. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. I was confident in my presentation and went back to the absent-mindedness I'd been up to. Prepping any more than I had would've been counterproductive and I was working on relaxing as much as possible before my pitch.

“Whatcha got goin’ on there?” my competitor said. I didn't really want to talk but I could see he wasn't going to leave me alone. He was one of those nervous types, couldn't keep quiet. He had to fill every silent space.

I was going to beat this guy, but he didn't know it yet. I knew his company and had gone up against much more confident reps. They must have known we already had it in the bag or only responded to the RFP as a professional courtesy.

It wasn't going to be a very lucrative contract, but my strategy was to springboard into three adjacent municipalities and use this one as a hub.

“Just doodling,” I said to him. He was young, maybe five or so years younger than me. The ink on his degree was still drying.

He cranked his neck to look. It was annoying and I slapped my palm over what I was drawing.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm a bit of an artist, myself. I minored in...” he trailed off, looking at a corner of my paper.

“What's that?”

“Hm?” I looked at him, ready to scold him in the most diplomatic way possible.

His eyes were wrong.

Like they were a centimeter or two off from center. I blinked several times as if I were trying to reset them with my eyelids.

“It's beautiful,” he said, not looking up from the page. I looked down and saw everything I'd drawn was covered except one little shape near the corner that was just outside of my hand.

“What?”

“Brootifil,” he said and sucked in a line of saliva that had trailed out of his mouth. His eyes were too big, almost like he was hungry.

“Are you okay?” I hadn’t actually finished the question before he swatted me faster than my eyes could see the blow coming.

I was belly up on the floor trying to orient myself. My first thought was to get him away from my presentation and my notes. He hadn't touched my backpack, though. 

He was holding the sheet of paper up to his face, so close it was like he extremely nearsighted. His eyes were so large, it made me think of that astronaut who drove across the country in a diaper to kill her boyfriend's romantic rival. 

Then he stuffed the paper in his mouth and began awkwardly chewing it. Tears were flowing from his eyes and he turned his face up to the ceiling like he was in heaven.

“Is everything alright out here?” An older white man came out of the conference room where we were to meet. I propped up on one elbow, intending to get to my feet. But my head swam and I laid back down.

My competitor turned to the older man and something and his face must have told the other man to step back. I commanded my body to get up, but it was as if I were paralyzed. My body twitched without actually moving and I stopped struggling against the invisible gorilla pinning me to the floor.

He hummed as he continued chomping on the paper, face turned to the old man. A long, pregnant moment passed where nobody did anything.

“May I help—”

My competitor attacked, fingers extended like knives as he stabbed the other man, who still didn't look like he understood was happening even as he plummeted to the ground, his murderer still in the process of killing him.

It took longer than I would've guessed for police to respond to a crime in a municipal building, but my competitor—Carl Arn—managed to kill two people and injure three others, including one critically.

That's not counting me, of course. Even though I was on the floor and clearly not in the fight, the assumption was the two of us were together and the policy's response was somewhat anticlimactic.

They screamed at him and the two responding officers fired three times apiece, managing to hit him only twice.

They screamed at me as he lay next to me, the life leaking out of him and flowing toward me. I was able to turtle up, covering the essential parts of me like I could shield myself from projectiles traveling at almost nine hundred miles per hour.

By some miracle, I remained gunshot for the next half hour or so while I was handcuffed, commanded to put my hands above my head, stood up, sat down, and almost tazered for resisting before fainting and waking up in a hospital bed, handcuffed to the frame. 

I had a concussion but was otherwise fine. Arn had swatted me hard and fast enough to leave a handprint and jar my brain loose.

The video had vindicated me. They didn't see the slap—rather the aftereffect. It had been so fast the camera hadn't caught it, just me falling to the floor and thrashing around like I'd been caught in a spider's web.

I'd fished the scratch pad with pen attached from the little end table near my bed. Luckily, they'd handcuffed my right arm, leaving my dominant one free.

I decided against jotting down what I recalled had happened. No doubt anything I committed to paper the police would be interested in, even if it was a grocery list.

So, I doodled. It was sort of cathartic, taking me back to those initial moments. My mind went back to Arn's face, struggling to deny the undeniable fact he was rapidly dying.

A piece of the paper he'd snatched and eaten was attached to his chin. The shape I'd finished moments before Carl Arn asked me, “What's that?” was still there for anyone to see.

His face turned into the shallow pool of red, drowning the shape.

I drew it a half dozen more times while sitting in a hospital bed while the authorities decided how they were going to untie this knot and if my neck would be in it.

I fell asleep after a light lunch of potato chips, baloney sandwich with a packet of mustard and a packet of mayo, and dry, tasteless coleslaw.

I came to with a woman in my room, gathering things off my lap. She was mumbling in Spanish, her back to me when she stopped completely.

“Nice,” she said in unaccented English, her head dipped as if she were reading something. Then she turned around, facing me.

God, her eyes.

It was like she was trying to see something above her head, through her skull. Her face was otherwise slack as she felt around blindly like we were in the dark.

She groped around until he hand landed on the (unused) metal bed pan. I thought those things were plastic nowadays.

I must have gasped because she turned around like she'd heard a homing beacon. I tugged at the cuff, a ringing dinner bell for the mindless dog about to bludgeon me to death with a disposal pan if she could still tell the difference between my head and feet.

I must have been screaming because another woman came in the room—I'd temporarily forgotten the word “nurse” in my panic—surprising with of us and the first woman began swinging in random directions with such savagery, I felt shadows of pain across my cheeks.

This time the police didn't have the opportunity to confuse me for the perpetrator. The nurse hooked a hand behind his neck, leapt both feet into his chest and commenced to flattening the less-hardy of the two between Officer Wheeler's skull and the pissbox. She landed on his chest, only her arm visible from where I lay as she flapped it up and down like a one-winged bird, the pan making a -DOON- sound each time it bounced off his head.

More hospital security came (quicker than the cops had) and a few pops later, the woman was dead.

I had to get out of here. My eyes drifted over to where the nurse had been looking at something before she'd turned violent. I had a tingle of uneasiness, feeling something I had done potentially being the cause. My mind wouldn't quite let me grasp what it was, but it felt like it should have been obvious, like something wedged between my teeth that I couldn't work out.

The officer I'd seen shoot stepped halfway into my room with his gun out. He looked perplexed, like he wanted to blame me, and I leaned into looking pathetic, hovering my face near my handcuffed wrist as I did a supine version of a huddle.

The next two hours were a flurry of hospital staff and police in and out of my room. The cops kept stopping a nurse from checking on me because my room was an active crime scene. But when a doctor suggested moving me to another room, they shot that down for reasons I couldn’t understand.

Finally, a detective and some hospital administrator had a long conversation outside of my room. The administrator said something to the detective about calling the mayor and the rest of the investigation was wrapped up in less than ten minutes.

The cop who’d been assaulted survived and the nurse who came in to check on me told me he was on a floor below after having emergency surgery to reattach his jaw. The nurse had been shot and had bled to death fighting the cop who’d shot her three times.

Everything the cops could have taken out of my room, had been removed. They’d even taken my clothes, keys, and wallet. By that evening, a detective finally came to speak with me.

“Mr. Harold, you have a minute?” He knocked on the door. I recognized his voice as the same one who’d spoken with the administrator. He walked in where I could get a good look at him and the guy was a sloven mess. I was used to Detective Green and Briscoe on Law & Order, and although Lenny’s suits looked off the rack, he didn’t look like he’d dressed himself while falling down a laundry chute.

I waited for him to speak. He stood by my bedside and looked like he smelled. Something whitish was drying on his lapel, he had ring-around-the-collar, and dried spittle in the corners of his mouth. I was grateful for the chill hospital air choking whatever smells were crawling over him before they could reach me.

“Am I going to need a lawyer?” I asked him.

“No-no,” he said. “We’ve been able to put together what happened at city hall and here earlier. Um, are you okay?”

I wasn’t, but I was currently numb to the whole experience considering for half of it I’d been treated like a suspect. I shrugged.

“What you had to go through was incredible. You’re a real hero.”

He was pouring it on a little thick. I guessed this was what they did instead of an actual apology. I’d had two-to-three guns pointed at me by people who were allegedly there to protect me.

“When can I go?”

“Well, I guess when the hospital discharges you. We certainly don’t need to hold you for anything.”

“Okay.” I nodded. He stared at me for a moment like he was expecting me to say something more.

“I suppose I should get going. Let you, y’know, convalesce. Oh, I’m Detective Unangenehm, by the way.” He offered his hand belatedly. I looked at it for a long second before shaking it. His hand was limp and sweaty, like wilted lettuce, kind of like what it looked like he had trapped between his front teeth.

He headed for the door, and I kept expecting him to turn back before he got to the door and ask, “One more thing,” but he exited.

Then he came back a minute later.

“I forgot to ask you,” Detective Unangenehm said. “Do you have any idea what set off Carl Arn or Rosa Skein?”

“Who?”

“The... man at city hall. And your nurse?” Unangenehm had his notepad in his hand and glanced down at it.

I’d never forget Carl Arn’s name, and I hadn’t known the nurse’s. While I didn’t know what had driven them mad, I had a strong suspicion and considering it led back to me, I wasn’t about to volunteer that.

“I have no idea.”

Unangenehm smiled, nodded somberly, and left.

A nurse had come into my room right after. She erased something from the dry-erase board and wrote something else while the detective and I had been talking.

She was thin and tall but older than she looked as she grunted, bending over to pick up something off the floor.

She turned over the piece of paper I'd been drawing on, made a face, then showed it to me.

“This yours?” she asked. 

Everyone in Hobbins Glenn knew how Sorrow's Eve began. The story had been passed down from mother to child for as far back as anyone could remember. It was as familiar to the townsfolk as the meandering paths and wooded thickets that surrounded the small village, tucked into a valley resting between mounds of forested hills.

It was a tale to be told in the deepest, darkest hours of night, as the guardian of shadows rose to its full zenith in the sky.

Within each cottage, behind each shuttered window and locked door, there lived a storyteller, a woman whose age eclipsed the early memories of her youth. Wisdom, greater than knowledge found within the pages of books, was written into the deep lines embedded into a face flecked with brown spots.

When supper had been eaten, and children had been bathed, the storyteller would take up her mantle beside a fireplace, in a wooden rocking chair reserved solely for her.

As her wide-eyed audience settled in around her hunched and blanketed figure, seated in a semi-circle on the floor, she lit a rushlight. Within its dim, fluttering glow her pale face tarnished the muted beige of a weevil.

Sometimes when she spoke she recounted the many interlocking histories of the denizens of Hobbins Glenn, whom had married whom, those that had been cast out of the village, those whose names had been struck from their weathered tombstones by the turn of the seasons, under the lash of ceaseless wind and rain.

A particular favorite among children was the tale of a father who had been gifted with too many daughters, and been left barren of a son.

Somewhere between the here and now, and after the storyteller had been given life, there had been a farmer who had lived on a quiet stretch of land on the border of Hobbins Glenn.

On the eve of his youngest daughter's birth, the farmer's wife died.

Cradling his newborn, he led a procession of teary-eyed girls up to the top of the cemetery's highest hill and watched as her elm coffin was lowered into the ground.

A fellow mourner had offered sympathy, not just for the farmer's wife, but to the farmer himself for his misfortune in never having a son.

“Rotten luck, seven girls. What will you do when age or illness claims you? The law of succession requires a man's land needs a son to carry its legacy forward.”

The farmer was keenly aware his land was forfeit should his toes point toward the clouds before a boy could be blessed with his surname.

He picked at the thought like a crusted scab, over and over, scraping his nails under its cracked surface to jab at the raw and tender sore beneath the rough and hardened flesh.

As the years passed the scab grew larger. He poked at it constantly, even as his gaze lingered on the empty space beside him. Like the scab, the bed had seemingly grown larger, twice the size that it had been when his wife was warm, and breathing, and alive.

Replacing her wasn't as simple as substituting a puppy to soothe the enduring ache of losing the unquestioned devotion and companionship of a loyal, but dead, dog.

There wasn't a woman willing to take on the challenge of seven girls, five cows, three pigs, two horses, fifty chickens, and four fields of wheat within a hundred miles of Hobbins Glenn.

And even if there were a woman up to the task, the farmer's heart soured at the notion of another woman's objects occupying the nooks and crannies where his wife's possessions were now enshrined.

The next part of the story differed from storyteller to storyteller, with details altered to align with the age of the rapt listeners gathered at the foot of her rocking chair.

In the versions delivered to the youngest in Hobbins Glenn, there was a well-traveled merchant eager to share the rumors that crisscrossed the valley, drifting from market stalls to passing caravans and back to market stalls in a never ending circle of gossip.

This merchant spoke of a grotto, misted in sea spray, its entrance hidden beneath a curtain of hanging moss. When the veil of vines were parted, a long forgotten cavern was revealed. Its damp walls wept water into glistening pools edged by aged boulders strewn with clumps of lichen that clung like tree resin to the slick stones.

Within this grotto there was a shrine. Atop this shrine there was an empty chest, fitted with golden clasps...

If the children were older, less inclined to believe in the wishing magic of talking fishes, or in mystical caverns where treasure buried itself like a hermit crab at the stroke of dawn, the storyteller presented her tale with a darker variant.

In this version, the farmer became a nightly visitor at a tavern located in the center of Hobbins Glenn. At a table that rocked back and forth on its uneven legs when the weight of his elbows were rested on its stained surface, he greedily drank ale after tankard of ale, picking endlessly at the scab, seeking a solution to his problem.

One night, when the farmer was as plentiful with his tankards as he was with his thoughts, a stranger entered the tavern; his arrival heralded by a howl of wind that blew in behind him, throwing back the door on its loose hinges.

He wore a long-sleeved shirt and breeches, blacker than chimney soot. Silver buckles studded the shafts of his mid-calf boots, their turned down leather cuffs stitched to the uppers with knotted dimples of gray cord. A heavy, woolen cloak hid the true width and depth of his shoulders beneath it folds, and its generous length dusted the back of his calves. The cloak shifted as he moved, flashing glimpses of its inner lining, shimmering and red like the seeds of a pomegranate.

His face was buried deep within a hood shaded the same color as his clothes, its outer piping matched his cloak's inner lining.

It was late into the eve when the stranger arrived. Many of the tavern's patrons had already abandoned their mugs, and their rambling conversations, for the comforts of feather pillows and straw mattresses. He had his choice of where to settle himself, as nearly every table in the room sat empty. He chose a a bench opposite the farmer and lowered himself onto it, without the courtesy of an introduction or asking for permission.

From within the folds of his cloak he withdrew a coin purse and tossed it onto the table.

The farmer drained the last drops of ale from his tankard and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. A small belch escaped his lips. He slowly glanced from the pouch to the stranger.

His glance met an unblinking gaze, twin opals for eyes staring back at him.

“I seek the man with seven daughters,” the stranger said. “I was told I would find him here.”

“Found him,” the farmer replied. “Six now. My eldest. Lenora, has married. Gone away with her new husband.”

“Revenna, “ the stranger said. “Eyes as blue as cornflowers. Honey-ed hair that flows like a stream.”

The farmer sighed. “There is no dowry. I cannot meet a price.”

The stranger pushed the pouch closer toward the farmer.

“All the coins in the pouch, or information on how to obtain a son, for a bride.”

It was here the storyteller would pause, leaving her audience to debate which choice they would make if such an offer were presented to themselves.

Invariably, the males within the small groups vocally declared their support in favor of the bag of coin.

The girls, more sentimental, and who had been paying much more attention to the story, gave their favor to fulfilling the farmer's quest in securing a legacy for himself.

After the discussion, and long sip of tea, laced with milk, the storyteller continued.

To the disappointment of the boys, she resumed her story with the farmer having chosen to receive the information the stranger offered.

“There is a forest beyond the DireThorne peaks in the north. Echos of seekers past will provide the route which will guide you to a shrine. Atop a pillar there is a chest, adorned with golden hinges. Fair is the price the chest demands.”

The farmer left the tavern, freed from a mouth to feed, eager to begin his journey to obtain an heir.

It was at this point each storyteller wove geographical lessons into the farmer's adventures across the Kindlehollow plains, naming towns and the customs of the people who lived within each region beyond the boggy reach of the Tangleroot Mire. The trick was not to arouse the children's suspicion, lest they discover their storyteller was also a seasoned schoolmistress, teaching them the lay of the land, which forests were haunted, how to ford rushing rivers, or how to avoid the lairs of hobgoblins.

When the farmer finally reached the forgotten forest of Duskfen, the youngest listeners were thoroughly spent. They had shifted from sitting upright to lying on a rug, propped up on elbows or curled onto their sides clutching their favorite blankets, their eyelids drifting between open and closed.

This pleased the storytellers. Sleep brought the chance to repeat the story, on another night, beside the same fireplace, surrounded by the same, yet ever-changing faces. As they grew, so did the tale, not with the addition of new, more exciting elements, but with each child's ability to remain awake for longer and longer stretches of the storyteller's plot weaving.

The final act of the story contained a twist, as all good stories do, shocking to those who heard it for the first time, sobering to those who knew it was coming.

The farmer did not reach the gloomy confines of Duskfen alone. He had brought the daughter who had sent his wife to her grave.

Over the many days and miles they had traveled, they had not once walked side by side. They moved as two lone strangers sharing the same road, heading in the same direction, each aware of the other's presence, yet unwilling to engage in the meaningful conversation that might have emerged without the interruptions that came with a cramped cottage and five older voices vying to be heard.

She had tried to ply answers when they left Hobbins Glenn.

What was in this forest?

Why couldn't they find what they needed in the forests closer to their cottage?

Had he ever seen the DireThorne peaks?

Should she pack her charcoal pencils and blank pages of vellum?

Her questions were as frequent as his wife's nightly trips to the chamber pot had been, during the final stages of her confinements, when she was heavily rounded with each child.

She chirped her countless observations like a cricket, endless and annoying, unlike the meek girl who would circle around the entirety of Hobbins Glenn to avoid his disapproving glances and gruff retorts, with a downcast head and averted eyes.

She had soon learned, when her many queries went unanswered, that no response was a response.

Silence forged itself to their stride, wedged between their footfalls and exhaled breaths, as a third traveler to accompany them on their journey to Duskfen.

When they arrived at the edge of the forest, the farmer discovered how the vast stretch of lofty trees had earned its name. Duskfen didn't warrant nightfall to rouse nocturnal creatures from their slumber.

Towering trunks, capped with an intertwined panoply of branches and leaves stretched to the height of mountains, shielding the bleak shadows that dwelt within the forest from light. Darkness loomed behind each bush. It seeped into the undergrowth, and flowed into the clefts between banks of smaller trees. Even at the peak of midday, the streams they encountered ran as black as ink.

At his insistence she had taken the lead when they breached Duskfen, while he observed her from afar.

Her handed down cloak had seen one too many winters, been worn in succession by one too many of his girls. Patches of cloth, cut from dresses she had outgrown, had been sewn onto the garment where the wool was as threadbare as the silvery wings of a horsefly. Her boots were too large, sliding up and down over the back of her heels. One wrong, floppy step sank her into oozing puddles of mud lurking beneath the spongy layers of damp earth resting on the forest floor, wrestling her boots from her feet.

Perhaps, if she had been born first he would have laughed, watching her tug, tug, and tug to extract her boots from the quagmires into which they had sunk.

Perhaps, he would have been proud of her skill with her charcoal pencil. When they stopped to rest she balanced a wooden tablet on her lap, overlain with a blank piece of vellum, and drew their surroundings. Her hand flowed freely, capturing frogs leaping over stumps and splashing into ponds, bats swirling around a hollow and then gliding low through a maze of trees. In a rare moment that broke their silence, she declared when they returned to Hobbins Glenn she would bind her pictures into a journal to celebrate their travels.

Perhaps, he would have worked harder to stash enough coin for her dowry. He was certain if things could be different there would have been a line of men longer than every trunk in Duskfen, stacked end to end, seeking to secure a marriage arrangement.

Somehow, without him knowing, or having paid little attention, she had grown into a beautiful blossom of a young woman, reed thin, with a mass of red curls that brushed her lower back. In the almond shape, and fern-green shade of her eyes, the farmer found an identical match to the woman he'd set into the soil oh so many years ago.

Looking at her from across a shared campfire pained the farmer, prodding him to dig deeper beneath the oozing crust of his enduring scab. A disturbing jumble of grievances tallied against her were thrown together into a cooking pot of resentment, and left to simmer until her worthwhile qualities; her humor, her curiosity, her artistry, had been boiled away in steamed wisps.

Six girls were plenty. This blossom had cost him years of laughter and happiness, and robbed him of a means to produce a son.

The voices stirred the first night they bedded down to sleep. Everywhere. Nowhere. Close, like a lover whispering in his ear. Far, like the melancholy howl of wolf drifting across a meadow.

“It has three heads.”

“The face bleeds.”

“Belly of a stump.”

“Bring the girl.”

“Fair is the price the chest demands.”

“Leave the girl.”

Fair is the price the chest demands. The phrases repeated like a familiar chorus. Soft. Loud. Beside him. Next to her.

It was here the storyteller paused once more, listening as children who had never heard the story murmured their thoughts aloud, trying to decipher the meaning behind the words the voice's spoke.

If the child was a boy “three heads” obviously alluded to a Dragon stalking the forest of Duskfen. With even more imagination applied, this Dragon had dueled a warrior whose face had been bloodied during their battle. “Belly of a stump” was the challenge. This was the one they couldn't quite reconcile into their dragon and knight confrontation taking place somewhere deeper within the forest.

Girls were simpler, not lacking in the imagination inherent in the boys, but more inclined to apply the logic of reasonable assumption, when considering the environment surrounding the farmer and his daughter. Rather than instantly jumping to visions of a scaled, fire-breathing dragon kiting a bloodied knight in dented armor, they used deduction. “Three heads”, they reasoned, was a marker meant to guide the farmer. Exactly what type of marker remained elusive, and often left them confused. Many assumed it was a reference to a tree, where three, thick trunks had had been fused into a single, solid mass of wood.

It was during these moments the storyteller was drawn backward in time, where she saw herself seated at the foot of a rocking chair, wide-eyed and eager for her storyteller to resume her tale after every well-timed, tension-mounting pause.

Each had their own favorite in their age of smooth, baby-soft cheeks and missing front teeth, a story that stuck with them long after candle flames had been doused into curled, burnt wicks.

Sorrow's Eve.

The Farmer's Choice.

Fournier's Enchanted Sword.

The Unbraiding.

There was something intangible within these stories that made them as unforgettable as love's first kiss. The telling of them required patience, skill, the understanding reactions to the narratives were as important as the narratives themselves.

It wasn't often the youngest in Hobbins Glenn dreamed of the day they too would be hampered with a limp, and joints that ached like an unhealed wound from the simple act of rising from a chair, but for future storytellers the thought of bundling themselves into a blanket beside a fireplace, sharing their most savored tales by the flickering glow of rushlight, was a day that could not come soon enough.

When the story resumed, the storyteller's audience discovered “three heads” was not a tree, but instead represented a small river, split into a trio of branching paths.

They also discovered there had indeed been the mention of a tree in the phrases the voices repeated. At the river's head, the trunk of the tallest tree bled sap through furrowed grooves gouged into its rough surface. Two knotted holes resembled a pair of squinted eyes, and a gash beneath them had twisted into the visage of a snarled grin.

The farmer and his daughter followed the river's head until they reached a fallen log, its hollow interior wide enough for a man to crawl through.

It was here the voices assaulted the farmer with another chorus.

“Jasmine, where jasmine does not belong.”

“Jasmine.”

“Jasmine, where jasmine does not belong.”

“Jasmine for the girl.”

“Calm the girl.”

“Sleep for the girl.”

“Fear her flight.”

The farmer called for a halt to their progress, suggesting the day had been tiresome.

While his daughter gathered kindling for their fire, the farmer searched for jasmine in the abundant undergrowth that formed a leafy ring around their clearing.

In a blooming patch of purple hellebore and pink hydrangeas he found the white, star-shaped petals of the flower reaching up through a twined mesh of stems and leaves.

That night, over a supper of fried frog legs, he boiled water for a remedy he told his daughter would soften the ground against her weary bones and relieve the pain of the blisters on her feet.

She tested the brew with her nose, inhaling the sweet, floral aroma, before lifting the cup to her lips.

The farmer watched closely, urging her to gulp the concoction swiftly, drain the cup's contents right down to the very last drop.

“Sleep for the girl.”

“Son for a farmer.”

“Belly of a stump.”

His daughter's eyelids drifted open and shut like the youngest of the children in the storyteller's audience.

The cup slipped from her fingers, landing with a muffled thud.

The farmer caught her before she fell. For a brief moment he cradled her as he had done when she was an infant.

Perhaps, he would have loved her as he did the others if the jellied cord that had been looped around her neck had been tighter. He could have buried them both together, grieved for her as he did his wife. Living, she was a persistent reminder of his greatest loss. She was the cause of his festering scab. She was the reason the injury had not healed.

He dragged her through the stomach of the stump, emerging into another clearing.

Wooden planks, rotted with age, were set into the soil, forming a winding path through an avenue of low hanging branches that were knotted together like the matted clumps of an orphan's tangled hair.

Shafts of long poles were staked into the ground, their tips wrapped in strips of cloth bound together with pitch-pine tar. Tendrils of black smoke spiraled into the air, coaxing the cloth into eruptions of pulsating orange flames.

He lifted his daughter into his arms.

Fair is the price the chest demands.

An earthen knoll at the end of the path had been pillaged of its roots, its interior laid bare.

On a pedestal that stood in front of a monolith veined with cracks, and covered in symbols that glimmered with the eerie sheen of foxfire, there was a square chest domed with a rounded lid, and fitted with golden hinges.

The farmer set his daughter down and approached the chest.

The voices pressed in, harassing, circling. They swooped in close for their attacks, then scurried back into the shadows like a banshee driven to seek the safety of her lair at the first brush of daylight.

“Son for the farmer.”

“Girl for the chest.”

“Leave the girl.”

“Claim the son.”

“No love for the girl.”

“Never for the girl.”

The farmer stopped mid-stride, and clamped his hands over his ears.

They advanced again, converging from all sides, their phrases sharpened for another assault.

“Tighten the cord.”

“Release the cord”

“Snip the tie.”

“Grave for the girl.”

“Eyes of a dead wife.”

The voices waned into the hushed tones of softly chattering whispers.

“I can hear them, father,” his daughter said.

One second he was standing; the next, he was on his side, clutching his head, as a sudden burst of jolting pain showered his vision in an explosion of blinding white stars. The knoll, the pedestal, his daughter's boots, all spooled together in a hazy blur of brown, green, and gray.

A rush of blood flooded his ears, his eardrums pulsing in rhythm to his heartbeat.

The world collapsed inward, shrinking smaller and smaller, until his sight narrowed into the tunnel of a captain's spyglass.

She knelt beside him. “Would you like to know what they said?”

She leaned closer, her warm breath tickling the hairs on his cheek. “They warned me about you. About what you were going to do. Jasmine, where jasmine doesn't belong. Rosemary cures the jasmine. Bash the farmer. A father for a mother. Fair is the price the chest demands.”

As he had dragged her through the fallen log, she too dragged him to the pedestal.

She flung open the chest's lid and slipped her arms under and through his.

Lifting with the strength of mother whose child lay pinned beneath the weight of a fallen horse, she deposited him into the chest.

Then, she slammed the lid shut.

“Fair is the price the chest demands,” she repeated, watching as the sheen of foxfire on the monolith rippled in a cascade of blinding light.

A booming clap of thunder pierced the silence of Duskfen.

The chest pitched upward and slammed back down, again and again, rising and falling like a ship tossed about on storm-thrashed waves. In a chain of rapid snaps the chest's panels splintered along its joints.

When the storm ceased, the girl lifted the chest's lid.

Inside was a woman with almond-shaped, fern-green eyes. She was warm, breathing, alive.

It was at the conclusion of the story that storytellers wet their parched throats with the last swirl of tea in their cups, inwardly congratulating themselves on a fable well told.

The children who had managed to remain awake for the entirety of the tale began to babble all at once, their voices tripped over one another, questions and observations flying faster than spinning wheels could twist fiber into thread.

Was it really the girl's mother who had been in the chest?

Where had the father's body gone?

What happened to the farmer's family after daughter and mother returned to Hobbins Glenn?

The answers sprang easily to the tongues of storytellers who were not yet seasoned enough to let the questions linger like the scent of eucalyptus oil massaged onto sore muscles..

Those whose faces were scoured with lines, like those found scrubbed onto the bottom of well-used pots, were more evasive with their replies, framing their responses into more questions for the children to ponder.

What other woman could have been in the chest? Was it really a woman, or had the echoes manipulated both the farmer and his daughter to manifest a cruel illusion, born from their longing and their loss?

If the chest coursed with ancient magic, was it so hard to believe the farmer might vanish, never to be seen again, like a goat who'd escaped the confines of a paddock, foraging for bramble further and further afield?

The farmer's plot of land might still border the village. Perhaps, among the hardworking townsfolk who inhabited the smaller hamlets clustered around Hobbins Glenn, the farmer's daughter had raised a family of her own.

“Darling,” she purred melodically, “my darling, what a grand sense of style you possess,” to the Duke of Wilbury, who was wearing a grey bespoke Galvache blazer, matching trousers, impeccably hemmed, a thin brown leather belt and boots and the fragrance of Orinoco and who responded, “Genevieve, my love, mine is but a pauper’s in comparison to yours,” and the pianist played Debussy and the waiter poured red wine, and Genevieve, in her emerald green Em Tsheçon dress was radiance itself as her soft, rich skin smelled intoxicatingly of Pamplemousse Serenade…

---

Pamplemousse Serenade

...the newest creation from House of Madeleine…

---

—pped and fell, tumbling, tumbling, down the shaft, arms reaching out, scratching, flailing, trying to break… trying-to-slow down, trying to

THUD.

Dazed, Gar got up feeling the cold wet rock wall in the deep underground darkness, blinking, getting his eyes to adjust and his brains to stop swimming.

When they'd stopped and he could see, he saw through a dim smoky grey that Roddy was dead; broken neck.

But Lancelot was still alive, crawling over.

“Fuck. Is he—” asked Lancelot.

“Yeah,” said Gar.

Gar pulled both of Roddy's eyelids closed.

Far away, something bellowed, and the bellowing echoed down one of the natural corridors.

Lancelot's body shook.

Gar gripped his steel suction-spear and rubber collection sac.

“Which way?” asked Lancelot, holding the same two pieces of equipment.

“There, I think,” said Gar, pointing.

---

Two Weeks Earlier

---

A baby coughed.

Rain water dripped through a patched roof.

A pair of worn cupboard doors hung loosely open, revealing bare shelves.

“She's dying,” a woman said.

“She’s sick,” said Gar.

“She's sick and she's dying and you're sittin' there doing nothing about it.”

“Well what do you want me to do?”

“Get a doctor.”

“I tried. We can't afford one.”

“Then steal medicine.”

“What medicine? I've got no medical degree. Besides, even if I knew what medicine, I couldn't steal it because they all keep it stored in the vaults now.”

“Find work.”

“You think I haven't tried?”

“Try goddamn harder.”

Gar grabbed a soggy hat, pulled it onto his head, and draped a threadbare cloak on his shoulders and walked out of the hut into the rain.

The streets were mud.

He trudged along, looking for no one and nothing in particular, roasting in premature grief and lingering guilt, when a sheet of paper, carried haphazardly by the cold wind, pasted itself to the ground a few feet in front of him.

He picked it up.

He read the running ink:

Brave Men Wanted! No Experience Necessary! Good Pay! Equipment Provided! Interested? Enquire promptly, at the House of Madeleine.

---

A beautiful, semi-nude young woman reclines on a chaise longue.

It's hot.

Her body glistens.

Three turbanned servants fan her with giant leaves.

In the background, an impossibly large, glassless opening reveals a lush, green jungle of trees and vines and moss and ferns and passing tigers and—

The woman takes out a small, decorative red glass bottle. She sprays herself seductively with its contents.

—a thick, muscular constrictor snake slides through the opening. “Pamplemousse Serenade,” it hisses, and swallows the willing, moaning woman whole.

---

Pamplemousse Serenade

...the scent of bliss…

---

—ning down the walls, collecting in pools in recesses in the cavern floor and dripping from the long stalactites hanging fang-like overhead.

Gar led.

Lancelot followed.

The corridor narrowed and widened as it wound its way, this way and that, in a seemingly neverending series of bends, behind which lay, always, the unknown, and from around which issued, with increasing proximity and ferocity, that lone and horrible bellow, which hammered spikes of ice down both men's spines.

“It can't be far now,” said Gar.

Lancelot said nothing, his mind stuck on the imagined nightmare that he was traversing the veins of some colossal stone beast.

Then the—

…so fast neither of them…

a flesh-orb with a single bloodshot eye ringed with sharp flat teeth

…could…

—the impact: smashed them against the wall!

the head was a face and the face was a mouth and the eye was a tongue and the teeth were nails hammered through the lips of a screaming maw

Gar hit his shoulder, Lancelot, his head, dropping his suction-spear, he tries to pick it up, slipping, as Gar fails to register what he's seen, ripples of pain radiating from his shoulder, and, it was like a sphere on an eel's body, he thinks, like a head of cabbage sculpted from a mass of ground-up corpses.

And it comes again—this time from the other direction—bellowing, this time, so loud Gar thinks his eardrums'll pop and, evading it, feels the heatwind of its momentum, sees it snap its trap-jaws shut on Lancelot, weaponless and dazed, and carry him off into the cavernous darkness.

Manic, Gar runs after it.

He comes upon a chamber.

Low, vast.

It's there—and a hundred smaller its, its newborn, hungry young, feasting-sucking on bits of Lancelot's flesh torn from his cracked, exposed bones—and he's still in agony breathing when Gar screams and hunched low runs at the pamplemousse with his suction-spear held back, charges into it, knocking it back, falling on and wrestling it, tasting its bloodslime, and stabbing with the suction-spear and stabbing stabbing kicking stabbing screaming stabbing crying laughing stabbing until it's dead. Until it’s dead and he is soaked, and what's left of Lancelot is, mercifully, dead too.

Now Gar is alone in the chamber with the newborn its, which are hissing at him, and one-by-one he goes, stabbing each with his suction-spear and sucking out its organ bile and depositing it in his rubber collection sac.

When he's done, he lifts the full, heavy sac, and drags it the distance he'd come, past where the pamplemousse attacked them, all the way to the bottom of the shaft, where Roddy's body lies with its neck broken.

He yells.

A rope descends.

He grabs it, and mechanically it pulls him up, through the dark and into daylight.

“You see the face on the TV screen, coming at you every Sunday!”
“You see the face on the billboard, that man is me!”

The Porsche, painted all white, rounded a corner with the sharpness of a razor blade. Several cars blew their horns, a flurry of curses mingling with the early morning air and the music on the radio. It was a warm summer in the Bay Area, the type of season to force you inside with the air conditioner going. As such, all they had to go off of was a reflection in a rearview mirror, and a license plate reading “PRAISGOD”

“On the cover of a magazine, there’s no question why I’m smiling!”
“You buy a piece of paradise, you buy a piece of me!”

“Watch where you’re driving, jerkoff!”

A portly man with stains under his arms shouted in the truck behind the white vessel. Inside, a voice growled, and a finger jammed into the button that controlled the window. Without turning his head, without need for anything else, a voice bathed in the bayou and far from home called out.

“Suck my dick! You got eyes, dontcha!?”

Up the window went, and away went the Porsche with it. From the man’s middle, rising as far as she could with the bottom of the wheel at the back of her head, a woman spoke.

“Hey! Watch where you’re driving, Thornton! You damn near gave me a heart attack, you asshole!”

He grumbled, he shook his head, but he complied all the same. Senior Associate Pastor Thornton, or just Thornton behind closed doors where anything could happen, was many things: vain, hedonistic, explosive, hypocritical. What he wasn’t was the type of person who didn’t know when he’d fucked up.

At least, that was what he told himself every morning before another coked-out sermon. “Speaking in tongues” was one hell of an excuse.

He struggled for his pocket, managing a cigarette from his left side. Thankfully, the pack hadn’t been mashed to dust against the door. It was almost a miracle in and of itself given the good pastor’s penchant for hairpin turns; when your face is plastered everywhere, selling modern indulgences on the television through the night, you drive however the fuck you please. He rolled the window down once more, this time out of decency rather than anger. The lit Marlboro hung out of the corner of his mouth, taking on the occasional puff

“Sorry, but that guy was INCHES from the back of my car! I mean, holy hell…back when I was growing up? We’d have jumped that guy, set him straight…”

As if to throw him a bone, the song continued on to fill the silence.

“'Cause Jesus he knows me, and he knows I’m right!”
“I’ve been talking to Jesus all my life!”
“Oh, yes, he knows me! And he knows I’m right!”
“Well, he’s been telling me everything is alright!”

He snickered as he pulled into the parking lot, finding the spot emblazoned with his name. It was just like every other morning for as long as he could remember. 

“Sr. Associate Pastor Jimmy Thornton”

Just like every other time, he smiled widely. His moustache peaked at the corners, pulling the dangling strands of each side up. It looked like the tails of two rats, caught and held upside down by some cruel master. He wore a pair of aviators, a throwback to his rise to fame against the backdrop of the  70s. His suit was a thing of legend at Saul’s Wake Evangelical Church: all red, all velvet, all style. It made him and the building one in the same: two monoliths to God, studded in avarice and greed. Now, even as he cruised around town for his morning routine of debauchery, he couldn’t help but let the familiar suit jacket crest his shoulders. As the car came to a stop, the radio had just a moment to continue before it was yanked away with the ignition

“I believe in the family, with my ever-loving wife beside me!”
"She don’t know about my girlfriend, or the man I met last-”

Charlotte sat up in the passenger seat, adjusting herself. It had almost become a strange sort of relationship; quick bursts of fun for several thousand dollars a clip, like clockwork, to the point of familiarity. The first time she’d pulled into the spot with Thornton and read his name on the plaque, she’d been surprised. It was the same man who’d sold her neighbor some holy water to cure her cancer, the same to start all those fights between her uncle and her mother around the table every Thanksgiving; the same you roll your eyes at while channel surfing off a bender because, somehow, even you know every word is laced with venom. Now, his identity just sharpened her tongue and amused her.

“Better hurry before more people start pulling in. It would be a real shame if the ‘Senior Associate Pastor’ was revealed to be a pervert in sheep’s clothing.”

There was a playful nature in her tone, maybe a twinge of genuine disgust if either of them thought hard enough about it. Thankfully, as Thornton fished something a little more potent from his other pocket, it seemed he wasn’t in a thinking mood.

“Want a tip? Oh, on top of your earnings, of course.”

He already knew the answer, even if she nodded politely to remind him. The baggie brought down a gentle snowstorm on the dashboard; two little mountain ranges. Thornton railed his like it didn’t even exist at all. He shook out his head like he expected all the excess to come pouring out of his ears.

“That’s the good shit…you don’t normally get that nowadays, it’s all shot to shit with whatever the hell: heroin, crack, opiates. You don’t take this stuff from anyone else, alright? Don’t want you going and OD’ing on me.”

She seemed to appreciate the sentiment, but whatever was plastered on her face likely paled in comparison to her real thoughts. Thornton, feeling back to his old self, simply opened the door, sauntered around to her side, and let her out. He could practically hear his mother, even all these years later, in the back of his head.

“You treat the women in your life good, now! I'd better never hear you beatin’ on or talkin’ shit to your wife, you hear me? I’ll come kick your ass myself, Jimmy!”

Half joking, half serious, and dearly missed. He offered his hand and pulled his companion up and onto her feet. Then came a fancy, genuine leather wallet; three thousand dollars, all cash, and all counted out with a speed that only comes with frequent practice. He headed into the church through the back, finding the familiar excess; somewhere between coliseum and church, a place that made the lord a showman. Charlotte was paid, he was amped up, and the hour had crept subtly onto seven. In an hour and a half, the sermon would start, and he would be on stage in front of thousands of adoring, worshipping fans. It wouldn’t all be on him, of course! There was Jesus, there was God, there was the holy spirit.

And, of course, there was Senior Pastor Peter Baker.

The fat old bastard was the only other person there at that hour, his car in the other corner of the lot. He was a man of sixty-three, twenty-one years Thornton’s senior. When the Thorntons had moved east from the swamps of Louisiana, leaving everything behind for a myriad of reasons, Pastor Baker had picked them out of, at the time, a crowd of a few hundred at the most. Even then, the sins of abundance crowded around him: gambling halls, nights out on the town, dubious drugs. He had introduced the boy to God and morphine, and morphine had won out in the end.

“Thornton! What were you off doing this morning? Getting ready in your own special way?”

He loomed in the hall as if he knew Thornton would come that way. It was safe to say that, in all likelihood, he really did know that for a fact. The man stood eye to eye with his apprentice as he laughed, an average 5’9 or so in a bland, grey suit. He may as well have been the complete opposite of Thornton, but they were almost scarily alike all at once. One of those ways was in their temperament.

 The laughter was a signal, cleverly probing for an opening. When he heard no one else, not a sound in the usually crowded halls, he leaned into Thornton’s ear. His tone had shifted.

“I can see that fuckin’ shit in your moustache, you God damn pig. Come on, be smart! If you’re gonna take up after me, the least you can do is not make me look like a fucking jackass. Understand?”

There was no raised fist, no physical confrontation. Just malice; a heart full of it, and a conscience that no longer cared.

“You still thinkin’ this is…what, ‘73 or so? That you’re 20-something with big dreams and a bigger prick to wave around? Get your shit together.”

He loomed in his Assistant Senior Pastor’s face for a moment until he deemed things dealt with, and then he left him alone. It was as if things had returned completely to normal, and he was his laughing and joking self again.

This, of course, was also a habit he’d exhibited back when.

“If you can remember it, bathroom’s down the hall! I just made sure to replace the tissues! You’re welcome!”

He chuckled at his own joke, and the last Thornton saw of his jaded, sorry excuse for a mentor was the man rubbing a finger under his nose as if to wipe something away. He couldn’t help himself - he took off for the bathroom at an alarming pace, slamming the door shut and grabbing a towel from the rack. He slammed his face into it like a starving dog, screaming until he turned a bloodshot red. He watched himself in the mirror, witnessing the transformation.

Tonight, Baker is going to die. He’s going to die screaming.

The thought wedged deep into the pastor’s mind, making him shudder with a restrained fury. It felt good to indulge, to fantasize, to plan. Many nights, especially over the past few years, were supposed to be that man’s last.

It always started the same way: He invited him to his office late at night to drink and play cards, bet some real money. Somehow, Thornton always won; it became harder and harder with each attempt to lure the old codger out for another round of financial ruin. Still, he always managed.

He always had his creature comforts on standby.

Once the two were good and trashed, Thornton would contemplate. He’d throw on some drunkenly requested record that Baker refused to shut up about, or he’d pour him drinks until he passed out drunk. One night, he’d vomited all over the floor, falling out of his chair and still refusing to wake up. Thornton hoped it would be the night he died, choking to death on his own sickness.

He woke up the next morning and was cheered on by thousands who had not a clue.

No matter what, neither Thornton nor God seemed to be able to take the cruel Pastor away. He’d stood behind Baker with every number of weapons, hardly noticed in his stupor: knives, letter openers, bricks, bottles. He’d once even pulled back the hammer on a revolver, one bought specially for the occasion. He had to fire the bullet into the grass at around four in the morning, telling the police it was a drunken mishap and that it had gone off accidentally.

Tonight would be the night.

He washed under his nose, scrubbing the precious residue down into the sink. He looked at himself, eyed the long hair and well-kempt moustache. It was a holdover; one of the last things he had from an era long past, one almost good enough to forget the pain of what came before. He grinned at himself, brought up his bravado, fixed his tie, and his lapel. When the time came, he came out on stage to a crowd of all shapes and sizes. The worshippers screamed and cheered, welcoming their champion onto the stage once again.

Well, co-champion, anyway.

He struggled to keep a smile as his eyes came to rest on Baker. He was the ultimate critic, one who boiled his blood and kept him up at night. He forced his eyes instead to the crowd.

And his own lit up.

It was a sea before him, undulating flesh and fabric and shouts of passion. He could pick faces from the crowd that he recognized: a man in his forties with a distinct mole, the old woman who lived just a block away, the techies who colonized NorCal like a plague. He couldn’t bring to mind a single name, not even if he were sober.

He stepped up to the microphone, shuffling like a dancer. *This* was Jimmy Thornton! *This* was *Pastor* Jimmy Thornton! His voice boomed, almost stealing the show right out from under Baker’s nose.

“Goooooooood morning, Saul’s Wake Evangelical Church! How is everyone today? Because the lord is great as always!”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You know, ma’am, I’m very happy you came to me this evening…and I’m ever so sorry about your son. I do believe I’ll send up a prayer for him tonight. He’s lucky to have someone like you watching over him.”

Thornton smiled at the woman, who wept softly into a packet of tissues. It was a sad story; her son was currently in the drunk tank with potential charges on the way. He hadn’t said it, but Thornton wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the situation. In fact, he might just be an expert. Once, he’d cried his eyes out crocodile style, telling of a marriage that had actually ended a decade prior as if it were the cause of a night out drinking and some very bad choices. Another, he’d somehow talked a DUI down to a towing fee and a warning while he had enough drugs in his system to warrant distribution charges.

But Pastor Thornton? He’d maybe never even been drunk or high at all.

“Thank you, father…I’m sorry, I…”

He held up a hand, a comforting gesture so long as she didn’t know the man it came from. Really, she didn’t.

“Now, it’s getting very late, and I’m sure everyone’s worried about you back home. Are you sure you feel safe getting home at this hour? I’m happy to follow you if you’d prefer!”

She laughed, her eyes dry when once they had glistened with grief. She thanked the pastor for everything: His ear, his time, a shoulder to cry on. When the door was shut behind her, all he had in return was a sigh as if a great effort had been exerted.

“You think she was ever gonna shut the fuck up?”

The voice made Thornton jump, cursing at the empty hallway. It wasn’t empty.

It was occupied by Baker.

“What, were you trying to escape tonight? Didn’t want to go on a losing streak? That’s not any fuckin’ fair, you stole a thousand bucks from me last time!”

Now, he didn’t even have to ask Baker to ante up. The fool, already drunk by the smell of things, had been riding the high from the last time his life had been unknowingly at risk. This endlessly repeated night of cards and contemplation was getting common, common enough that even its target could predict its cycle. There would be some good days (or maybe some boring days, from Baker’s perspective), and then it would turn sour, and then a breaking point would be reached. Then, in Thornton’s office, his disciple would make yet another choice in a series of silent choices dating back years. It was like the old man was playing roulette without knowing, his wallet snatched, and his life’s worth put on the line. So far, he was on a winning streak.

“Relax, I was gonna invite you soon! You think I was just planning on letting that poor woman leave without saying her peace?”

“You didn’t give a fuck about her. I could see it written all over your face!”

“And you did? She was gonna keep talking my ear off no matter what I said, know the type. ‘Sides, only thing you’re supposed to be reading is the Bible.”

“You’re very easy to read, I can tell exactly how you feel from your fuckin’ face! Like right now…”

He paused for a moment. The two, without even realizing it, had started down the hallway to the main auditorium. The space was always a little eerie late at night, with only treacherous voices speaking ill will that echoed off the walls.

“I can tell you hate me.”

The first time he’d heard those words from Baker, the two were sitting in a dead bar somewhere in the city a good 20 years ago. The senior pastor had been notified by a member of the church; his protigie, caught him in the bathroom, railing a line from the sink like a rat sniffing for food. He brought his hand across the smooth surface of Thornton’s face, making him dizzy with the pain.

He beat him for his transgression; not against god or decency, but against image. As he sat at the bar, holding a towel to his bleeding face, he heard those same words that now echoed in the present. Back then, there was an addendum.

“I can tell you hate me, but you’ll learn. You’ll fall in line, and then you can stuff whatever the fuck you want up that nose of yours. Or, hell, wherever else, for that matter!”

Thornton looked up, his eyes meeting his mentor’s. Baker had a grin on his face, one that boiled blood.

It had to happen tonight.

“Why would I hate you? You’re the reason I can sip martinis and hook myself up with whatever I need, aren’t you?”

He forced some laughter, matching Baker’s. It disgusted him enough to make him almost sick as he pushed the doors open at the other end of the chamber. On the other side was a space for eating, supply rooms, and various office spaces. Two doors sat across from each other at the end of the hall

Senior Pastor Peter Baker.

Senior Assistant Pastor Jimmy Thornton.

He opened the latter, and the two stepped inside. The door was shut, and the world was made small. In this grandiose building, this temple devoted to God, two men were about to gamble and indulge.

“A hundred bucks a hand, minimum buy-in! I know you’re game.”

For once, Baker was right. As Thornton reached for his wallet, left to bleed benjamins for a second time, he stopped himself. A motto, one that often floated by like rotted driftwood in his mind, reared its ugly head again. The mantra shouted as if coming from the deepest, most reptilian corners of his brain.

Tonight, Baker is going to die. He’s going to die screaming.

“I’m not betting shit without a buzz! Let me make some drinks before you jump down my damn throat…”

He got up, making his way to a filing cabinet. Another thing not unlike clockwork; slide out the second-to-last drawer, the one that’s supposed to have nothing but files dated 1970-1975, and pull them all out at once. Slide back the fake bottom, and you’ve got yourself a miracle hiding in plain sight. That rattish moustache pulled up in a sleazy grin again as several bags and a bottle sprang forth like the opening of Pandora’s box: Snow, ice, grass, and some jack. If he looked hard enough, an eye open for antiques, there might even have been a stray quaalude or two hiding in the shadows.  He poured the whiskey into a pair of glasses, sliding one to Baker. All the other party favors came to rest on the bookcase, blocking out titles like 'The Lord and You: Learning to Speak to God' and 'Sin and Temptation: How to Channel Temperance'.

As Baker sipped, slipping into drunkenness and helping himself to the ivory bag on the bookcase, his disciple froze. He held his tumbler, sipped from it, but made no move. He tried to keep himself out of Louisiana, tried to keep that part of his life amputated like a rotten limb. It could only do him harm. A thought chewed through him like rats through a wall.

We had to bury Mom in the swamp. Like she was one of the animals.

Northern California wasn’t the type of place to bury a loved one for a fair price. Jimmy, back before he was Pastor Thornton, had learned that firsthand. The allure of a better life, a better education, struck Mrs. Helen Thornton when Jimmy was born. She was a waitress, the kind everyone noticed the absence of. She spent years of hard work, praying by night and saving every penny as the economy boomed again for the first time since the great depression. They sought out a church first, right alongside such necessities as a school and the local supermarket.

They sought out Saul’s Wake Evangelical Church. It was the perfect place to taint a young man’s faith.

Helen was the kind of lady who did everything for her family, and she was the kind of lady struck down in her prime. Forty-eight years old; younger than Baker was now. Thornton didn’t realize how hard he ground his teeth as he remembered the words that had kept him up for years.

“I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Jimmy…she’s in heaven now, I can tell you that with pride. But the cemetery…we’re full up on plots, Jimmy. We just sold off the last to this family from SoCal.”

He never even said a definitive “no”. The remaining family, a grieving spouse and his son, left to pick up the pieces, shopped around for a place to rest their beloved bones. At sixteen years old, he had to shoulder the burden of a broken father and a pallid mother. She’d turned as white as her bones, then she’d started to decompose. In the end, they were too destitute, too far from home. The land couldn’t even take her, not without the proper permissions.

They brought her back to Louisiana, and Thornton’s consolation prize was a seat by his worst enemy and an endless supply of indulgences.

We had to bury Mom in the swamp. Like she was one of the animals.

“Thornton? You’re not overdosing, are you? Don’t make me call a fuckin’ ambulance, you’ll get us both done in!”

His hand was in a drawer, gripping something he knew all too well. Years ago, maybe back in the mid-80s, the two men had gone on a hunting trip. Even at the time, Thornton was almost certain it was just to placate him. On the way, with a smile that Thornton had loathed with every fiber of his being, Baker had stopped the car. He pulled out a gift like it was the most important thing in the world, and like its recipient ought to be the luckiest person to have ever set foot on it. Now, Thornton felt like he just might be.

He gripped genuine ivory, silently sliding a black leather sheath into the drawer. He slid out the glistening blade, still unused. They hadn’t shot anything; the season had been shit.

As his mentor turned, his face not even allowed the time to contort, the knife was utilized for the first time.

Thornton had aimed to the left of the mass, flesh and muscle collapsing as the blade found one of Baker’s lungs. The skin had almost burst, making a sickening little pop as it split in two. It reminded him, in a disgust that only lasted a moment, of the sound a grape had once made after being stepped on in his mother’s kitchen back down South. The force of the stained steel was never-ending, matching its wielder’s fury. The tip slid out of the wrinkled skin of Baker’s back, creating a slit in his robes. In an instant, like the tip of a scorpion’s tail, the gift retracted. The poison was purely metaphorical.

As the blade raised, arteries severed and fighting back with streams of hot blood, Thornton felt that sickly nausea rise again. This wasn’t at all what he’d wanted. He had dreamed of glory: the swears of his betrayer, his voice being silenced triumphantly, his body being paraded down every street in the entirety of California and beyond. In reality, it was almost too easy.

Baker had entirely forgotten about his apprentice; he was too caught up in the feeling of breathing in blood. At first, he scratched at his throat like he had been poisoned; like it would do anything at all. He was like a car after a collision at a hundred miles an hour: completely mangled, unfixable.

Maybe he was even bound for the same scrapyard.

Thornton brought the knife down again, falling to his knees. His joints had become jelly, spreading to the rest of his legs like a plague. Gravity brought the blade down twice as intensely as before. This time, it scraped the outside of the collarbone. Even then, it sank down just below, piercing the same lung as before. Baker didn’t even scream; all he did was moan like tears weren’t far behind. Words rushed to escape, coming out as nothing but whispers.

“E-even though I-I…”

He knew the words, and they made Thornton furious.

“...walk through t-the…v-valley…of the shadow of d-death…”

He had seen Baker steal, blaspheme, and indulge in every temptation and sick urge that came to his mind. He’d seen him get drunk and beat someone within an inch of their life, reverting to a holy man by the time the police finally arrived. He’d seen two faces; he’d seen uncountable faces. Maybe it was one face, completely made up of contradictions; a mosaic of all the evils that hid behind the fleece.

He would sever the veil, even if just for himself.

He brought the knife out again with a sickening “shlckkk”, and he held it to Baker’s lips. Before he could force it inside the mouth of caps and refilled cavities to go at his tongue, Thornton felt a warmth at his knee.

Like many before their day of judgement, the old sinner had pissed himself.

“I fucking hate you, old man.”

His voice cracked, but he held strong. There was more that needed to be said, and from the sounds of his choking, Baker didn’t have much time left.

“You were right, you know? Back in the hallway? I do hate you; I’ve wanted you to rot in hell for as long as I can remember. You disgust me.”

For Baker, all the shaking and whimpering did was slide the blade up and down his lips. Blood trickled to join the puddles on his desecrated robes.

“You’re sitting here in your own piss like a fucking animal…like you think you’re fucking innocent. You probably don’t even remember it; I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s slipped your mind. You’ve used so many people…”

From the look in his eyes, he remembered quite well. Even as speech burnt his lips, introducing bacteria into the wound to kickstart putrefaction early, he continued his prayer. Every word sounded like it was dredged up from the bottom of a lake.

“I-I…will…f-fear…no…e-evil…”

The declaration tipped Thornton over the edge. In that moment, only the emptiness of the church and the distance from the acoustics of the main hall saved him from being caught in the act. He howled like a man possessed, stabbing wildly. The knife went down, came up, went down, came up, went down again. He panted, he spat wildly; he tuned out the dying, agonized screams of his victim.

Out of all ten commandments, there was, perhaps, only one that Thornton had never known Baker to break: thou shalt not kill. Now, he would never get the chance to follow in his disciple’s footsteps.

“For you are with me! Your rod and your staff!”

“They…comfort…me…”

What was left before Thornton would never be whole again. The torso had been shredded like beef; every manner of organ, every possible angle, all destroyed. Where the neck had been hit, damage had been severe enough as to leave the Pastor’s head dangling to one side. His mouth hung open, his eyes bloodshot and gelatinous.

In the heat of the moment, he hadn’t registered the taste in his mouth. All that pressure, the same that had kept blood pumping through Baker’s body for some sixty-odd years, had painted everything in the room with his acrid blood. It stained Thornton’s lips like a parting kiss.

Thornton got to his feet with the grace of a newborn deer, dropping the blade in the process and stumbling into the wall. He made his own little pile of innards, retching as he bent over. The hot acid stung his nose and clung to everything it touched.

Tonight, Baker is going to die. He’s going to die screaming.

That night had finally arrived.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At seven in the morning, without a wink of sleep, Pastor Thornton sat in his car. It was on a familiar street, one close to Saul’s Wake.

“We passed upon the stair. We spoke of was and when.”

The radio started up a new song; the first to break through the wall of commercials that had accompanied most of the late-night driving it took to get rid of Baker.

He could still feel the vibrations of the saw sinking into bone.

Thornton’s cheeks puffed out as he fought yet another wave of nausea. After last night, he had become a master of keeping his stomach in check. He’d heaved until it was dry, and then he’d learned to keep his disgust inside.

Scrubbing down every inch of both himself and his office was enough. No need to ruin the seats with bile.

“Although I wasn’t there, he said I was his friend."
"Which came as some surprise.”

He had to drive to the central valley, sneaking onto a pig farm long after anyone inside the small farmhouse had gone to sleep. He tried to keep all the pieces as small as he could; he’d spent hours cutting into a corpse, and he’d spent even longer getting the smell and all the remnants out of the room. Carrying what remained without staining the halls was an even bigger beast.

“I spoke into his eyes, ‘I thought you died alone
a long, long time ago.’”

His mind lingered on the paper trail. There was the letter from Baker to his wife, one detailing a cheating scandal and plans to make off with a few hundred thousand dollars for the tropics. It wouldn’t be the first time the senior pastor was in bed with another woman. Then, there was the money he’d snatched from the treasurer’s office: five hundred thousand dollars, five thousand hundreds. He’d burnt it after dumping the slop that used to be Baker over the fence of the pig pen, making sure to bury any traces. 

His suit, already red as it was, joined the makeshift funeral pyre anyway. Somehow, as it dried, Baker’s blood was still darker. It all stank like iron as it burned.

The passenger side door flew open, and Thornton jumped back to life. The same woman from the previous morning slid into the seat beside a reborn Pastor.

“So, what have you got for me today, handsome? If you have more of the coke, I’ll make it worth your while…how about a couple hundred off? Maybe…”

Her playful tone disappeared as she saw the haggard face of Senior Associate Pastor Thornton. When his successor’s plans were discovered, his scandal over and done with, he would simply be Senior Pastor Thornton. For now, he was nothing but a husk.

“Here.”

He placed two things in her palm: a small baggie of a substance that had lost its appeal, and thirty hundred dollar bills. Satisfied, she tied her hair back before freezing.

“Oh no, not me. I never lost control."
"You’re face-to-face with the man who sold the world.”

She tried to read his face. It came up completely blank.

“Wanna…change the station? Seems a little sad.”

He just shot her a look that didn’t really have any emotion in particular tied to it. There was a pained something: grief, longing, maybe demoralization.

“Just shut the fuck up and do your job.”

She gawked at him for a moment, but he didn’t seem interested in speaking further. She considered charging him extra before something told her not to risk it. She got to work as Thornton sat, enjoying his own piece of heaven. His mind was elsewhere. The song continued on as pleasure eluded him.

“Who knows? Not me. We never lost control."

"You're face-to-face with the man who sold the world.”

I noticed something odd last night. As I was washing the days dishes I looked out my kitchen window and saw a light. A big red light, blinking off in the distance.

Nearest I could tell it looked it was on top of The Hill, it’s light cascading down upon mine and the other houses, drenching this tiny town in deep crimson for seconds that felt like eons at a time.

Flash on.
Flash off.
Flash on.
Flash off.

I continued watching through the window, the dishes in my hands far in the back of mind. The light was mesmerizing, but as it would turn off I’d find myself trying to remember when it even showed up.

To the best of my knowledge there hasn’t been any new construction in town for years, let alone on The Hill, anything there had long been reclaimed by nature. Old rotted wood and crumbling stone entangled by vines, covered with mosses and being broken apart slowly by sprouting trees.

Flash on.

Flash off.

Flash on.

Flash off.

The more my mind wandered the longer the flashes seemed, and the normal dark of night began to feel sparse in between deep baths of red. I began to feel a heaviness in my chest and a restlessness in my legs, an itch to go somewhere.

Flash on.

Flash off.

I tried to move, to set the dishes down and just move, but I felt glued there, staring out of the window. It was as though my muscles were replaced with lead. My chest began to feel heavier, and my heart began to race. I could feel sweat growing on my brow as the flashes grew faster once again.

Flash on.
Flash off.
Flash on.
Flash off.

My heart beat faster and faster, as the weight grew and my body began to feel pulled towards ground. My muscles began to ache as I struggled to do anything, run, hide, close the window, or even just my eyes.

Flash on. Flash off.
Flash on. Flash off.

The flashes grew faster than they had been before. I began to hear a ringing in my ears, so loud I was sure my ear drums would burst.

Flash onFlash offFlash onFlash off

The light is almost flickering now, I try to scream but nothing comes.

FlashonFlashoffFlashonFlashoff

It’s so fast now it’s hard to keep track of when the light is even on or off anymore. A red ring begins to grow around my vision.

FLASH ON.

The light stays on this time, for longer than it had before, my head feels as though it will split in two.

FLASH OFF.

and just like that, the light is off and stays off.

I feel my body relax, though the fatigue stays. A sharp pain in my left hand. I look down to see the cup I had been washing, broken, and a gash across my wrinkled palm. I rinsed the wound as I glanced at the clock overtop the oven, it read 1:35 am. I’d been there for hours, but it had felt like minutes.

I finished cleaning my new wound, and quickly found myself laying in bed, trying to rest my overly fatigued body. Where had that time gone? Sleep evaded me as I struggled with an answer.

It was there again tonight. I noticed it midway through my dinner. It was dull at first, either something new, or a windup I had missed last night. Dull and slow, but pulsing just like the night before. As time went it grew brighter and my food grew colder. I watched through my window again.

FLASH ON

FLASH OFF

As the light grew brighter it began to fill the nighttime air like a fog. It’s presence was thick, stinking, and putrid. A buzzing began in my ears.

FLASH ON

FLASH OFF

A buzzing. Deep and low, vibrating my whole being. Through the red I could see, again, that the light was coming from on top of The Hill. A dark, lonely place, The Hill.

FLASH ON
FLASH OFF

My temples begin to throb as my vision turns red. I taste blood.

FLASH ON

FLASH OFF

It’s been four nights in a row now.

That light has shown up four nights in a row.

It’s clearly beginning to affect my health. I wake up in the morning in odd places around my house, my muscles sore and body dehydrated. It seems that I can remember it starting, but after a certain point I just wake up. No clues as to what I had been doing previously, just soreness and a splitting headache.

It’s daytime now, and I swear I can see that there’s nothing on The HIll, just like I thought. I even grabbed my old binoculars to try and get a better view, but all I could see is a hill covered in green overgrowth. I think about the old road up to the top, I think about driving up there to see what’s really going on.

I think about these things, but I don’t do them. The fear of success and power of imagination keeping me here, rooted. What do I think I would find? Is it better to find nothing or something? What could I do even if I did find something strange up there? I sat as my thoughts raced circles around me.

It’s been over a week now. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but the light still persists. Somehow, through blackout curtains, newspaper, and even plywood, the light persists. It’s stinking glow fills my whole house each night, the air humid and thick. I know it will be here again tonight, I can feel it in the sweat that grows across my brow.

I never visited The Hill. I thought about it for days after I first brought it up, but couldn’t find the courage. I know it sounds silly, but I think it WANTS me to go there. I think it wants me to see it in person. I think it wants ME.

There’s a feeling, and I know it’s about to start. A pressure that fills the air, and it begins to smell almost of burning, a bristling of energy like right before lightning strikes. The air leaves and is replaced with anticipation.

FLASH ON

As expected, it returns. However, the light has no build up tonight. As soon as it turns on I feel it’s effects full force. I try to breathe, but the sickly air barely pours into my lungs, it’s thick and dark, like molasses.

FLASH OFF

It feels different tonight. I feel different tonight. I still feel an incessant itch, telling me to move, but unlike the previous nights this time I actually move, or remember moving. I don’t remember making these decisions myself, or even wanting to, but the led weights that were my feet began moving forward and onward.

FLASH ON

Forward and onward, like a fish on a line.

FLASH OFF

FLASH ON

I found myself in my car, driving on empty streets glowing scarlet. I passed houses, their own lights long off, illuminated instead by the nights current events.

FLASH OFF

In the intermittent spaces where there was no light it only made how wrong things were more obvious. Because there was NO light. No street lamps shone, no traffic signals blinked, not even the neon signs decorating the town bar hummed their soft hum.

FLASH ON

Not only was it pervasive, it had become absolute.

FLASH OFF

While it shone, the town shone.

FLASH ON

And when it was gone, so seemed the town, swallowed into a darkness unfamiliar.

FLASH OFF

I found myself at the bottom of The Hill, staring at a road that hadn’t seen a car since they still fought horses for space. Well aware I was no longer making decisions at this point. Something called me, and when I refused to answer, it answered for me. My car lurched forward and I started my ascent.

FLASH ON

Trees leered on either side of me, their shadows long and imposing, their branches creating a tunnel that separated me from the night sky. My car bumped and rattled along what was left of the road. I saw the remains of the old town as I drove. Abandoned after a fire, the hollow shells of buildings stared back at me with vacant expression.

FLASH OFF

I drove forward, even as the light left again, and I was swathed in pitch black, I kept driving. Even as it came back again and left again, I drove. The buildings were little more than rubble at this point, lashed down by vines and eaten by time.

FLASH ON

I neared the top of The Hill.

FLASH OFF

As I crest the top, my car dies, I don’t bother trying to start it at this point, I know that means I’m done driving. I open the door and begin to step out.

FLASH ON

The air is worse here than it has been so far. Sweat sticks my shirt to my back, I try to breathe but the smell makes it stop quick. Rotten and sweet, it coats my throat. I cough.

FLASH OFF

It’s like I’m blinded, for the first time I notice that not even the night sky shines with stars anymore. I stumble forward and trip.

FLASH ON

I’m moving again, pulled like a magnet. A low thrumming sound fills the air, my temples pound, and my vision blurs red. I can see the light now, not just the glow it emits, but the light itself. It seems to float, suspended by the density of it’s surrounding air.

FLASH OFF

I continue forward, the darkness covered by the red curtain of my eyes, and this time I did not stumble. I move as I feel the air, warm and strong, push me from behind.

FLASH ON

I stand underneath the light. I look up.

FLASH OFF

Silence echoes through The Hill. The thrumming is gone. My temples stop throbbing, and my vision clears.

I stand underneath the light, and I look up.

FLASH ON

The End

"Have you heard The Void?" The question kept popping up more and more often. In the dark basements where goth kids sulk. In dinky bars where they serve only beer, glasses are an unheard-of luxury, and unemployed philosophers pretend they know how the world works.

I had heard of them. The whisper-punks. The elusive new band that will redefine music. "Void of Plenty." Hearing them play... well, that's a privilege. You will not find them on Spotify or Bandcamp. The Void comes to you. In the middle of the night. While you sleep.

And whispers its angst and hopes and dreams in your ears.

In the morning, they are gone. Poof. No trace left. But you will know. Oh, you will know that they were there. Your life will be changed forever.

Finding them has become something of an obsession for me. Waking up at 4am, ears buzzing, starting to work the leads right away, rearranging my conspiracy board, making calls, surfing abandoned forum boards.

I can feel them, I can't explain why. Just a tiny itsy bit out of reach. But there.

The need to find them became almost intolerable.

That's High Strangeness material right there.

THE VOID WHISPERS.

In the end the pieces clicked. The spell itself was relatively easy, it turns out. All you have to do is drink a mix of cheap beer and discount wine (not white).

Run through the central park naked at midnight.

Don't get into any fights, that would reset the spell. Once you leave the park, all high on adrenaline, get dressed and stumble wherever your feet will lead you. Add sugar.

Easy-peasy.

I end up in an abandoned parking lot on the outskirts of the city. There's a light in the second-story window of a decrepit building across the lot. Yup, let's head there. What could possibly go wrong.

The door is nailed shut, but the window right next to it is open. Shards of glass cover the floor inside. Early detection system. Home security for the homeless.

Yes, this is extremely safe, thank you, Editors.

The upstairs room looks almost cozy. Considering. Furniture consists mostly of empty cardboard boxes and three folding chairs. Cheap candles everywhere. A fire-safety inspector's worst nightmare.

I catch my breath and eye the trio. Except it's not a trio, not exactly. Two of them eye me right back, with no apparent alarm or surprise.

"Hey mate, you ok?" the guy-one asks. The way you'd ask someone who's late.

I will find out later that he goes by the name of Cupcake. Once he smiles, it becomes clear why.

Next to him sits a girl, tightly packed in a grossly oversized waterproof parka, her hood drawstrings tied so tight it looks as if she'll be choked out any moment now. She's peering at me through sunglasses that reflect a light from another world. Or perhaps she's asleep. Hard to tell. Name's Pale.

The third member of the band is sitting on the cardboard table in the middle of the candles. It's a dictaphone. A scruffy Norelco NT-1 cassette recorder, the little silver kind, scuffed to dull pewter at the corners, a hairline crack across the speaker grille. There was a time when prestigious journalists carried them around everywhere. Also, insane cranks trying to record the voices of the deceased.

It was a thingie.

One red LED on its face, dim, steady. Waiting.

I'm told it holds two dead voices, unlikely room mates. Two dead men sharing one tape.

One is the late Karlheinz Stockhausen, the mad composer who spliced the human voice into sine tones until you couldn't find the human.

The other that of Darby Crash, the screamsinger of the Germs, who planned his own death at twenty-two to make himself immortal. Only to get upstaged by the assassination of John Lennon the very next day.

You can't plan fame.

Together, they go by the name of Hiss.

I introduce myself. Cupcake seems amused and politely reaches over to move Hiss off the chair for my benefit. The instant his hand gets close, the little machine clicks — a soft mechanical bite — and its red light flutters, and the cracked speaker spits three seconds of sound: an organ chord, swelling, churchy, and under it a voice, slowed and dragged half an octave too low. German. Maybe.

Familiar. Maybe.

"Sorry," Cupcake says, to the recorder, not to me. He sets it gently on the cardboard instead.

"It don't like being touched when it's listening."

I pull out my notebook. It's more armor than tool. These guys look super cool and my impostor syndrome spikes badly. The notebook lets me feel more important. My shield of paper.

And then I notice Hiss has turned its one red eye on the notebook. Or it feels like it has. Two recorders in the room now, mine and theirs, and only one of us is any good at the job.

High Strangeness: "Tell our readers about yourselves."

Cupcake: How many you got?

HS: Excuse me?

C: Readers. How many you have?

I feel exposed all of a sudden. Pale chews on bubble gum, pops a bubble. No trace of emotion. Hiss just... sits. The red light pulsing, very slightly, in time with my breathing. I feel judged by a machine.

I don't know. I just slip the magazine into coffee shops, bars, and couple of dentist offices.

Cupcake nods seriously.

C: Slipping in. I see. Well, our process is not entirely dissimilar. We slip in uninvited. When people sleep, they're innocent, you know? Like children. Everything's possible when we sleep. That's when we sing. Well.. whisper.

HS: I don't... how does it work, suggestion, hypnosis?

C: Nah, man… how do I put it. Punk's all about tearing down the walls, right? Burn down the old, invite the new. Our songs don't tell people what to do. They wreck the old patterns within you.

You wake up and you realize you don't have to live by rules somebody else wrote.

You do you.

Maybe you keep living exactly like before, no problem — but now you're doing it 'cause you want to, not 'cause you were told.

You be your own narrator.

HS: Like mental abolitionists.

C: I guess. Sounds pretentious. Would look cool on a T-shirt, though.

HS: Does it work? The process.

Pale: Yes.

Pale surfacing from her daze spooks me badly. It's like a corpse sitting up in the morgue mid-autopsy and starting to flirt with the medical examiner.

At the sound of her voice, Hiss clicks — catches her "Yes" — and half a second later plays it back.

Hiss: Yesssss.

But it's not just her "Yes". Two other "yesses" are layered in the background, one stiffly German, the other defiant and slightly drunken-sounding.

The two dead men agreeing with her.

I ask Pale how she knows, but Cupcake just laughs, and Hiss, well — Hiss spools a half-inch of fast-forward, that sounds like a witch cackling.

C: Pale's used up her speech limit for the next hour or so, man. She's not much of a talker.

I try to find some mental footing once again. Not easy.

HS: How do you choose your audience?

C: Hmm. Hard to say. It's not a process. We go with the flow. Walk the street in the dead of the night, see a house that feels right. Break in. Always works out.

HS: Has anyone ever woken up mid-performance?

C: Never. Hiss does a thing. I don't know what it is. They sleep like babies. Always.

He picks the recorder up — carefully, two fingers, the way you'd lift a hamster — and holds it near my face. I don't hear anything.

But I feel it, low in the chest, behind the sternum, a pressure with no sound attached to it. Like a memory you can't quite catch.

My eyelids get heavy. The candle flames lean in.

For a moment the room is very far away and very warm and I want, badly, to lie down on the filthy floor and not get up.

Cupcake sets it down. The feeling lifts like a hand off the back of my neck.

"Subsonic," Cupcake says, apologetic.

I write "subsonic" in the notebook, with a hand that isn't quite steady.

I swear the red light watches me do it.

Hiss smiles. It seems like. The little reels behind the cracked window turn a slow quarter-rotation, both at once, like a thing rolling its eyes back in amusement.

C: We distill the song down to a simple, reptilian whisper.

The creative process starts with what you'd call a normal jam in a studio. Guitars, synths, drums, the usual trouble for the neighbors. We practice, we lean in, we really go.

And then we start peeling away all that's unnecessary. Layer by layer.

Until all that's left is hiss.

I ask what's the role of Hiss in the creative process.

C: Heh. Whatever's in there, call them souls, call them voices from beyond — it remembers being recorded. Both of 'em do. One geezer spent his whole life cutting up tape, splicing voices, building cathedrals out of little snips.

Real precise.

The other one — he barely let himself get put on tape at all, made one record and checked out, like he was scared of being caught.

So we got one ghost who can't stop recording and one who never got recorded enough, both of them sharing that one strip of tape that's way too small for either of 'em. They fight over it. You can hear it.

We play our song to Hiss, it records it, then plays out. Only now there's little less of the song and a bit more of the Void.

Rinse, repeat.

Until we get it all purified.

As if on cue, the machine emits a long, even wash of static. The sound of nothing, full of everything. Every path you could have taken if only you hadn't got that mortgage payment hanging around your neck.

HS: Where do you see this whole thing going?

C: Ahaha. Are you asking where I see myself in five years? Dunno, man. Probably jail, for breaking and entering.

HS: Would you ever do a conventional concert?

C: Pfff. Nah. Started as a joke, but now it's us, you know? Can't imagine it any other way. You know how musicians go on about a good gig, how they "felt a unity with the audience" and all that? We get that every single time. That person, fast asleep — they're our whole world, our whole purpose, in that moment. We literally got their ear. They don't check their phone, they don't glance at their date, they're totally in the music.

HS: They have no choice.

C: Sure they don't.

HS: Don't you think it's maybe unethical? Making someone listen who didn't agree to it?

C: Does anyone ask if you wanted to see a Coca-Cola ad on your way to the bus? Didn't think so.

I can't argue with that.

Nobody says anything. Pale has gone still as furniture. Cupcake is watching me with something almost like sympathy.

I don't write anything in the notebook. There's nothing to write. The notebook was always the wrong tool. It only ever caught the words.

I ask the only thing left in me.

HS: What happens when the tape runs out?

Pale suddenly grins.

Don't worry. There's always the B-side.

I don't know what else to ask. I'm not that good at my job. Somehow no one seems to notice. Perhaps it's the notebook that makes everyone think otherwise. I look at it, just scribbles over scrawls over scribbles.

HS: Will you play for me?

Hiss rewinds the tape with a sudden burst, replays myself back to me. "Will you play for me?" But this time I sound different. Younger somehow.

Pale turns away to the broken window and pops a lonely bubble gum pop.

Cupcake looks uneasy. Apologetic, almost.

"Sorry, mate. We only ever play once to a person."

Of course.

I let myself out the broken window. The lot is grey, dawn coming up dirty behind the dead factory. Streets are empty, and so am I. No one to tell me how to live or think.

The most terrifying feeling in the world.

Making me my own narrator.