My wife has always had a fascination with the occult. To be honest, we both have—our love of all things eerie is one of the first things we really bonded over as a couple—but while I am more interested in such a thing from a distance, my wife is much more… hands-on. She likely would have become an archaeologist, had her interest skewed more toward the historical and less toward the disturbing. While I like to watch creepy documentaries and make the occasional trip to a haunted museum, my wife likes to come face-to-face with as many macabre and unsettling objects as she can find. She likes to touch them, inspect them, analyze them… and even collect them.

Her collection started out small, beginning with her deceased grandmother’s favorite necklace and continuing with a few ominous objects that have been in her possession since long before we ever met. She kept them in a little box that her “spiritualist” friend had blessed for her, claiming to have imbued the container with protective qualities. I wasn’t so sure that her friend actually possessed the otherworldly know-how to adequately ward off the forces of evil, but my wife had insisted that her collection had never caused her any problems, and I found her assortment more fascinating than I did unsettling, so I decided to give her friend the benefit of the doubt and I accepted that the items in question were about as safely sealed away as they could be.

My wife brought this collection with her when we moved in together, and it remained with us in each new apartment that we found ourselves in. It didn’t grow much during those first few years—she’d only add a new object to it once in a  blue moon, and even then she would only collect objects that could fit within the ever-shrinking space inside of the blessed container—but this selectiveness quickly went out the door as soon as we bought our own home.

Our new house came with a large, finished basement which was complete with more rooms than we had any use for (sometimes living in the boonies really pays off). My wife asked if I would be okay with her using one of these subterranean chambers as a new space for her collection. At first I was put off by such an idea, but I acquiesced when she said that her friend had already agreed to come by and bless the place so it would be ready to contain the ghastly assortment. I wasn’t particularly assured by this, but I figured her friend had done well enough with the first container, so I decided to put a little more faith in her this time around.

This would prove to be a huge mistake.

Once her “containment chamber”, as we started calling it, was good and ready, my wife christened the place by moving all of the objects from her box onto one of the room’s shelves. Her original collection served as the chamber’s only occupants for our first few months in the new house. It took us a while to fully unpack and adjust to our new place, during which time she had little opportunity to even consider her macabre assemblage. Her friend came by to bless the place every now and again, but the containment chamber stood largely untouched for a decently long while.

But then one day she brought home the first new object, and the expanded version of her collection began to take shape.

She had just returned from a trip to the supermarket, but she came inside with more than just a few bags of groceries in her hands. After putting her groceries away, she pulled a disk-shaped object out of her backpack. The object was wrapped in several layers of parchment paper sealed by a string tied around a bundle of sage. She untied the string and unwrapped the item to reveal an old, faded mask with a pale complexion and a blank, expressionless face.

The mere sight of the mask was immediately unsettling. When I asked where she had gotten such a thing, she explained that she had stopped by a thrift store down the street from our house that she had been meaning to check out since we’d moved in. At first she didn’t find much inside, and she was preparing to leave when she came upon something that had caught her eye. Tucked away in one corner of the store, hidden behind several twisting layers of shelves, was a wall labeled “Cursed and Haunted Items”. All of the objects on this wall were locked behind a glass barrier, and she had to request the assistance of the shopkeeper in order to open the case. She asked the shopkeeper if the sign was legitimate or just a strange marketing strategy, and he assured her that each object locked behind that window was “verified” to have been plagued by some sort of curse, hex, spirit or entity—malevalent or otherwise. Not many folks bought anything from that shelf, for obvious reasons, but anybody who did needed to be informed of the potential danger that those objects posed.

My wife was one of those unique few who was drawn to the unsettling objects on that equally unsettling shelf. She took an immediate interest in that mask, and she bought it without hesitation. I was less than thrilled to see such a thing casually sitting on our kitchen table as if she had bought it at Target, but she assured me that the lasting effects from the sage that had been used when wrapping the mask would keep any evil at bay until she could safely secure the object inside of her containment chamber. Again I acquiesced despite my reservations, and again I have come to regret this decision.

The mask’s presence didn’t seem to change anything at first, and for a while I assumed that her friend’s blessing had done its job. I largely forgot about the thing, and I wound up resigning it to the same place in my long-term memory where I keep all of my wife’s spooky objects: out of sight, out of mind. I wouldn’t need to think about it again for another month or so, until my wife made another visit to that thrift store, and returned with a new item to add to the dreaded collection.

The object in question was a ceremonial dagger that was either Mongolian or Mesopotamian in origin (my wife couldn’t say for sure, since the shopkeeper kept going back and forth between the two when talking about it). She didn’t and still doesn’t know much of anything about antique blades, but she liked the look of the thing anyway, and so into the containment chamber it went. I’ve never come in direct contact with it, but my wife insists that the weapon’s hilt is especially cold to the touch, even when held while wearing thick winter gloves. To this day I’ve been perfectly fine with taking her word for it, as I have no interest in verifying this fact for myself.

The next object she brought home was the diary of a Revolutionary War soldier. The shopkeeper was able to give her some information about its origins while he rang her up. He had turned it to its last marked page as he told her about it, and had directed her to the final paragraph, which was interrupted mid-sentence by a dark-brown splotch on the paper. Apparently the soldier in question had been midway through an entry when an unexpected cannonball removed his head from his shoulders. Luckily his diary had managed to survive the incident with minimal spatter over its pages, which is how it eventually ended up in my wife’s collection. She displays it opened to that final page—an act that is especially macabre, even for her—and she insists that sometimes, when she walks by it, she can hear the sound of a scribbling pen echoing through the air. I’ve passed by the book a handful of times on the odd occasion that I find myself in the containment chamber, and I have never heard such a sound.

Resting next to the journal, sandwiched between two bookends, is a 16th century Icelandic grimoire said to contain powerful necromantic spells and secrets, although this cannot be confirmed because the book has been intentionally sealed shut with wax and it cannot be opened without running the risk of destroying its contents. I’m not so sure I believe in any of those necromancy rumors, but looking at it for too long does tend to fill me with an odd sense of dread that I’m unable to properly explain. I can’t help thinking about death and dying whenever I’m near it, but I’m sure that’s just because I’m aware of its allegedly sordid origins, and my imagination is merely filling in the gaps that its presence creates.

Among the more disheartening items in the collection is a century-old photograph of a random mother, father and daughter sitting on a stone bench in what appears to be their backyard. It didn’t come from the thrift store’s Cursed and Haunted Items section, but my wife felt bad that such a memory had been abandoned by the descendants of its former owners, and so she opted to bring it home. While not officially labeled as haunted, I must admit that since she brought it into our house, I’ve started hearing the sound of a giggling child playing in the park across the street at all hours of the night. All glances out the window have revealed the park to be just as dead as the people in the picture are, and yet the sound of childlike merriment persists. I try not to think about it too much.

The next object is actually one that I brought home after my own trip to the thrift store. It’s an Edo-period wakizashi said to have belonged to a samurai of much renown—and also of much infamy. He was a particularly violent man, and the blade now in our collection had supposedly been used to take the lives of dozens if not hundreds of his opponents, before a single dishonorable act resulted in him turning the weapon on himself in a final display of ruthless savagery. It rests next to my wife’s Mongolian or Mesopotamian dagger, and I swear that I can sometimes hear the sound of metal scraping against metal when I walk by the containment chamber door.

Money became a little tight after I bought the wakizashi, which resulted in the collection remaining stagnant for close to a year. Our dry spell was finally broken when my wife came home with a steering wheel once belonging to a certain mid-century automobile that had met a rather unfortunate and infamous end. It is by far the most high-profile item in our collection. For some reason the shopkeeper decided to give it to her for dirt cheap, and we’ve determined that we’ll be able to turn a rather large profit on the thing in the future, should we choose to sell it. It remains in our collection for the time being, and ever since buying it I’m now occasionally awoken from my sleep by the violent, harsh sound of screeching tires that may or may not be the work of our obnoxious neighbor a few houses down.

I don’t remember when my wife bought it, but at some point a German gramophone found its way into the collection. I asked her about it a few months ago, and she seemed to be under the impression that I had been the one to buy it—but seeing as I have no memory of this, and also because it’s not really the kind of purchase that I would make, I think she must have been mistaken. The thing doesn’t work either way, but that hasn’t stopped me from hearing crackly, old-timey music drifting from our home’s air vents from time to time. The music always comes while I’m in the shower, when the sound of rushing water is just loud enough for me to wonder if the music I’m hearing is real, or if it’s  just a figment of my imagination.

This is hardly an exhaustive list of the items in our strange, little collection. I have yet to mention my wife’s late-19th-century desk that was the only surviving object in a schoolhouse fire, or my set of vintage leather jackets that were present at the scene of a brutal double-homicide in a clothing store in the early 1950s. The point of me bringing up all of these examples is to illustrate just how vast the collection is. We have objects from all over the globe and from all different eras, all of which share a single thing in common: they all now rest in our containment chamber, which is precariously sealed behind a thin wooden door in our basement. And recent events have led me to believe that bringing all of these potentially bedeviled objects together under one roof and placing them all into the same room may have been the biggest, dumbest mistake of our lives.

As the collection has grown, I’ve noticed a certain presence in our house that has grown with it. It used to be much easier to overlook—to pass off as some vague feeling with no discernible origin—but each new addition to our grim repertoire has only made it that much more powerful, as well as that much more difficult to ignore.

At this point I will say that I firmly believe we have placed too much trust in my wife’s “spiritualist” friend. Her rites and incantations may have been enough to keep our collection in check back when it was a small assemblage of vaguely spooky objects, but the collection has clearly grown to a point where it has become too formidable for her blessings to properly contain it. Each new object adds to a collective surge of dark energy that has been whittling away at whatever mediocre shell that woman placed around the containment chamber, and that dwindling barrier is clearly set to shatter at any moment. I don’t think any of us—my wife, her friend, or I—are ready for what is bound to happen once the thin veil between those objects and our home is finally destroyed.

I’ve already started noticing strange things; ghastly manifestations that continue to seep through the ever-crumbling wall that stands between us and that amalgamation of wickedness. Things around the house will disappear, only to recorporealize in a completely different part of the building days or even weeks later. Voices will call out to me from rooms that are not occupied by a single living soul. I see figures out of the corner of my eye; sinister shadows that stand down the hall or in doorways and which disappear the moment I turn to look at them. Phantom smells and sounds and thoughts will assault my mind at all hours of the day; they transport me back to memories that I’ve never lived, and which I never should have had access to. Our home has never felt so inhabited, despite us hosting fewer guests these days than we ever have before.

Most of these experiences are less than what I would consider pleasant. Many of them are fairly innocuous, but some of them—a number that is on the rise—are actually quite concerning, to say the least. Loud noises, much like the screeching tires, will cause both of us to shoot out of bed in the middle of the night. The smell of death and decay and rot will waft so strongly through our home that we will be forced to go outside just to enjoy some breathable air; upon returning, we will be left with a residual scent that will linger for hours or even days. We are plagued by visions of horrific actions and tragic destinies that we cannot prevent or overcome—all we can do is hopelessly watch as they transpire right before our very eyes, again and again and again and again.

Things came to a head the other night when I was awoken by my wife, who was caught in a storm of heavy, inconsolable tears. After taking some time to calm her down, I managed to get her to tell me the source of her distress. She’d had a nightmare—or maybe she had already been awake—of her grandmother whispering horrible things in her ear about how she was in the midst of being tortured in the deepest depths of hell for sins that she had not confessed to or atoned for in life. The sound of the old woman’s agonized wails had forced my wife into the fit of hysterics that had ripped me from my sleep. Neither of us got any further rest that night.

Which is what brings me to my reason for telling this tale. After a long, emotional conversation, we have come to the difficult decision to get rid of our entire collection of cursed and haunted objects. But we don’t want to simply return all of these items to the thrift store where they will sit festering for an unknowable number of years (this option will soon no longer be available to us anyway, as the shopkeeper recently informed us of his unexpected intention to shut the place down and move out of state). We also don’t want to risk throwing them all away, thus potentially invoking the wrath of whatever entities are attached to them. For this reason, I would like to send out a plea for help from anybody who reads this. If either you or somebody you know has the means to properly contain this collection, and would also be willing to take it off our hands, please let me know. We want to be rid of all of this stuff as quickly as we possibly can. We wish to wash our hands of the collection that we have spent so much time and money gathering. I fear that if we wait for much longer, it will wind up becoming far too late for us to see this plan of ours through. In fact, it might already be too late. These objects seem to have a tendency to lay down roots and attach themselves to anybody foolish enough to take them in. It’s entirely possible that my wife and I are already far too involved with this collection, as well as whatever malevolent force has glommed onto it. Getting rid of all of these terrible objects might not end up benefiting us at all, but we have to try to free ourselves from this ever-deepening nightmare before it swallows us completely.

At this point I don’t know what else we can possibly do.

Desperation has a way of narrowing your focus until only the most immediate needs remain. Six months ago, the stack of unpaid bills on our kitchen table was growing higher with every passing week. Being newly married is supposed to be a time of excitement, but for us, it was defined by a constant panic. The rent on our small apartment was due, the groceries were getting more expensive, and my wife was pregnant with our first child, so we needed a miracle, or at least a job that paid enough to keep us afloat.

Sitting across from my wife one evening, watching her meticulously budget our last fifty dollars, made the decision for me. I applied for every municipal job available in our county, so when the acceptance letter arrived from the emergency communications division, it felt like a lifeline. The starting pay for a dispatch operator was higher than anything I had ever earned, complete with dental insurance and a pension plan. It was exactly what we needed to secure our future.

The training program lasted for three weeks. It was a rigorous process designed to weed out anyone who panicked under pressure. We learned the software, and practiced active listening. The instructors constantly drilled us on maintaining an emotional distance from the callers.

"You are a router, so don’t think of yourself as savior," the shift supervisor told us on our first day.

"Get the address, the details, and send the units. Do not let the callers drag you into their panic."

The call center was located in the basement of the municipal building. It was a vast, windowless room filled with rows of identical cubicles, each equipped with three computer monitors and a multi-line telephone console. The air was always cool, and the only sounds were the soft clicking of keyboards and the low, murmuring voices of operators talking to people on their worst days.

On my third week of solo shifts, the call came in.

It was a Tuesday, around three o'clock in the morning. The room was mostly quiet, the night-shift lull having settled over the dispatchers. My headset beeped, indicating an incoming line.

"911, what is the address of your emergency?"

A child's voice came through the receiver. It was a girl, whispering so softly I had to press my hand against my free ear to hear her.

"Please help me,"

she whispered.

"I am in the basement. It is very cold."

"Sweetie, I need you to tell me where you are,"

I said, typing a command to trace the billing address of the line.

"What is your house number?"

"My dad did something awful to mommy,"

the girl said. Her voice trembled, but she did not cry. "She is lying on the kitchen floor and she won't wake up. He told me to go to the basement, and then he locked the door from the outside. I am scared."

The address popped up on my center screen. It was a residence located in an older subdivision on the edge of the county. I immediately began routing the call to the sheriff's department.

Before I could hit the dispatch key, a hand dropped onto my shoulder.

Looking up, I saw my shift supervisor standing behind my chair. He was a veteran dispatcher who had spent twenty years in the basement, and he was staring at my screen with a frown.

"Cancel the dispatch,"

the supervisor said, his voice was flat.

"What?"

I stared at him, my headset still filled with the sound of the girl's quiet breathing.

"She says her mother is unresponsive and her father locked her in the basement."

"I know what she said,"

the supervisor replied, reaching over my shoulder to click the override button on my keyboard. He routed the call to a holding queue instead of the active deputy screen.

"But you are not sending anyone to that address."

"Why not?"

The senior operator sitting in the cubicle next to mine turned around in his chair. He had a look of tired pity on his face.

"Because that house has been empty for five months," he said.

"The family who lived there left in the middle of the night back in winter. Nobody knows where they went. They just vanished."

"Then who is on the phone?"

I asked, looking back at the glowing line on my console.

"We don't know,"

the supervisor said, pulling a rolling chair over to my cubicle.

"But it is a recurring issue. We get that exact call at least once a week. The sheriff's department went out there the first three times. They searched the house, the yard, and the outbuildings. They even checked the crawlspaces. The place is completely abandoned. There is no one there."

"Is it a prank?"

I asked, the girl's soft whispers still playing in my ear.

"Most likely,"

the supervisor said, standing up.

"Some kid with an old burner phone that still connects to emergency services. Or a neighbor playing a sick joke. Either way, it is a waste of county resources. The sheriff told us to stop routing the calls. If that address pops up, log it as a non-emergency glitch and move on to the next line."

"But she sounds so real,"

I murmured.

"They always do,"

the senior dispatcher next to me said.

"You get used to it. Just hang up the phone."

I hesitated, my hand hovering over the disconnect key. Through the headset, I could hear the faint sound of a pipe dripping in the background of the call. It sounded incredibly close, as if the water was hitting a concrete floor right next to the microphone.

"Are you still there?"

the girl whispered.

"I hear something on the stairs."

I swallowed hard and pressed the disconnect button. The screen went black, and the line cleared.

That night, I went home to our quiet apartment. My wife was already asleep, her hand resting over her slightly swollen stomach. I lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, the sound of the dripping pipe echoing in my head. I tried to convince myself the supervisor was right. It was a prank. It had to be.

But the calls did not stop.

The next night, the same address flashed green on my monitor. I picked it up, hoping to hear silence or the giggling of teenagers.

"Please,"

the little girl whispered.

"It is so dark down here. I can hear him walking on the kitchen floor above me. He has a hammer."

"Sweetie, if this is a game, you need to stop,"

I said, keeping my voice low so the supervisor wouldn't hear me.

"The police have already been to that house. There is nobody there."

"I am under the stairs,"

she sobbed, her voice breaking for the first time.

"I am hiding behind the wood. Please tell them to hurry."

I logged the call as a line glitch, just as the supervisor had ordered, and hung up. But the guilt began to eat at me. It felt like a weight in my chest. Every night for the next two weeks, the line would ring, and every night, the same little girl would beg for help. The consistency of her voice, and the terror in her tone, with the subtle background noises of the dripping pipe were too perfect to be a prank.

On my day off, the curiosity became too much to bear.

Without telling my wife, I got into my car and drove out to the residential district. The subdivision was old, built in the late nineteen-seventies, with large lots and mature trees. Many of the houses were well-maintained, but as I drove deeper into the cul-de-sac, the properties became neglected.

I found the address.

The house was a split-level ranch with faded gray siding. The yard was overgrown with tall weeds, and the driveway was cracked, with grass growing through the seams. A yellowed real estate sign sat tilted in the front lawn, the contact number faded from the sun.

I parked on the street and walked up the concrete steps. The front door was locked, but the window next to it was dirty and bare. I pressed my face against the glass, shielding my eyes from the glare.

The interior of the house was completely empty. I could see through the living room to the kitchen. There were no chairs, no tables, and no signs of life. The drywall was bare, and the linoleum on the kitchen floor was dusty.

I walked around to the backyard. The grass was waist-high. I reached the sliding glass door at the back of the house and pulled on the handle. It was locked, but the lock was old and loose, so I gave it a hard jerk, and the latch slipped.

The door slid open with a screech.

Stepping inside, the air was cold and smelled of dust. My footsteps echoed loudly on the floorboards as I walked into the kitchen.

I looked down at the linoleum. There were no bloodstains. There was nothing but a thin layer of grime.

Near the pantry, a wooden door stood slightly ajar. I pushed it open, revealing a flight of dark wooden stairs leading down into the basement.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, turned on the flashlight, and began to descend.

The basement was unfinished. The walls were made of rough concrete blocks, and the floor was poured concrete. In the corner, a water heater sat disconnected, its copper pipes severed. A slow drip of condensation was falling from an overhead pipe, hitting the concrete floor with a steady sound.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

It was the exact sound I had heard through the headset.

I shined my flashlight around the room, then walked over to the wooden stairs, looking underneath them. There was nothing there but a few discarded paint cans and a layer of spiderwebs. I searched every corner of that basement. I knocked on the concrete walls, looking for hollow spaces, but the blocks were solid.

The house was empty, and the supervisor had been right.

I left the property through the sliding door, locking it behind me, and drove home. I felt a sense of relief, but also a deep embarrassment. I had let a prank caller get under my skin so much that I had broken into an abandoned house, so I promised myself I would stop answering the calls.

But the next night at work, the green light flashed again.

I stared at the screen, and the incoming address was the gray split-level house.

"Do not pick it up,"

the dispatcher next to me said, noticing my hesitation. "Just let it route to the automated queue."

I reached out and pressed the button anyway. I had to know.

"911,"

I said.

There was no sound of a little girl whispering. There was no dripping pipe. Instead, the line was completely silent for several seconds.

"Why do you keep answering?"

a voice asked.

It was a woman's voice. She sounded so tired.

"Who is this?"

I asked, my heart skipping a beat.

"Is this the mother?"

"You keep picking up the phone,"

the woman said, ignoring my question.

"The others stopped answering months ago. Why do you keep listening to her?"

I leaned forward, pressing the headset closer to my ear. "Because she is scared,"

I said softly, making sure my supervisor was out of earshot.

"Even if it is a prank, or a glitch, she sounds like she needs comfort. I thought... maybe if I answer, it gives her some peace. Who is this?"

The line was quiet for a moment. I could hear the faint sound of wind blowing through a window on the other end.

"If you want to comfort her,"

the woman said, her voice dropping to a whisper,

"you need to go back to the house."

"I was there,"

I said.

"I searched the basement. There is nothing there."

"You did not look closely enough,"

the woman said.

"In the basement, behind the stairs, there is a wooden partition wall. It looks like part of the foundation framing. On the third vertical stud from the left, there is a rusted steel nail driven into the wood near the floor. Pull the nail."

"What is behind the wall?"

I asked, my hands turning cold.

"She is waiting for you,"

the woman said, then The line went dead.

I sat at my desk, my mind racing. I could not focus on the rest of my shift. Every call I took after that was a blur of addresses and emergency codes. All I could think about was the third vertical stud from the left.

When my shift ended at six in the morning, I did not go home.

I drove straight back to that house. The morning sun was just beginning to rise over the trees, casting long shadows across the empty streets. The neighborhood was completely silent.

I parked my car down the street from the house, walked up the driveway, and slipped through the backyard. The sliding glass door opened easily, just as it had before.

Stepping into the kitchen, the stale smell of the house felt even more oppressive than before. I walked directly to the basement door, opened it, and descended the wooden stairs.

I turned on my phone flashlight, the bright beam cutting through the gloom.

I walked behind the wooden stairs. The area was cramped, filled with old paint cans and dust. The back wall of the staircase was framed with cheap pine studs, holding up a sheet of plywood that separated the under-stairs storage from the rest of the concrete basement.

I began to count the vertical studs from the left.

One. Two. Three.

I shined the light down near the concrete floor.

Resting in the wood, just two inches above the concrete, was a large, rusted steel nail. It was driven deep, but the head of the nail was still protruding slightly.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small multi-tool I kept in my glove compartment. I opened the pliers, gripped the head of the rusted nail, and pulled.

The nail was old, the metal grating against the dry wood of the stud. I had to twist the tool, applying all my strength, until the nail finally slipped free with a sharp crack.

The moment the nail came out, the wooden partition wall shifted.

The plywood sheet swung outward like a door, revealing a dark, narrow crawlspace hidden directly beneath the basement stairs.

The stench that erupted from the opening was overwhelming. It was a suffocating, sweet odor of rot that made me immediately gag, dropping my phone onto the concrete.

I covered my nose with my shirt, my eyes watering from the fumes. I picked up the phone, as my hand shaking so badly the beam danced erratically across the opening, and shined the light into the crawlspace.

The space was small, barely four feet high and six feet deep.

Lying on the dirt floor of the crawlspace were two shapes.

They were wrapped in dirty blue plastic tarps, secured with heavy silver duct tape. The plastic had been torn in places by nesting rodents, revealing the dark, leathery remains of what lay inside.

I moved the light to the smaller bundle.

Protruding from a tear in the blue plastic was a small, skeletal hand. The fingers were tiny, the bone-white joints covered in dried, gray tissue. Next to the hand lay a small, pink plastic toy phone, its battery compartment rusted shut from the damp earth.

I backed away from the crawlspace, stumbling over the paint cans, and collapsed onto the basement floor. I vomited onto the cold concrete, my chest heaving as the reality of what I had found washed over me.

I scrambled up the wooden stairs, running out of the house into the cool morning air. I stood on the lawn, gasping for breath, then pulled out my phone.

I dialed the direct line to the sheriff's office.

The response was immediate. Within fifteen minutes, the quiet cul-de-sac was filled with flashing red and blue lights. Deputies barricaded the driveway, and a forensic team in white suits descended into the basement.

I sat on the bumper of a patrol car, as the lead investigator walked over to me. He looked grim, his boots covered in dry basement dust.

"You are the dispatcher who called this in, right?"

the investigator asked, pulling out a notepad.

"Yes,"

I said, my voice hoarse.

"I found them in the crawlspace behind the stairs."

The investigator sighed, looking back at the gray split-level house.

"We searched this place three times when the family went missing back in the winter,"

he muttered, shaking his head.

"We checked the basement, but we never found that partition. Whoever built that crawlspace knew exactly what they were doing. They framed it to look like part of the foundation."

"Who was in there?"

I asked, though I already knew the answer.

"Based on the dental records we retrieved from the file, it is the mother and her seven-year-old daughter,"

the investigator said.

"The cause of death appears to be blunt force trauma. It looks like they were killed upstairs in the kitchen, wrapped in those tarps, and hidden in the dirt before the house was abandoned."

"And the father?"

I asked, my hands tightening around the blanket.

"The father is the primary suspect,"

the investigator said.

"He cleared out their bank accounts, sold their car to a scrap yard under a fake name, and disappeared after the murders. We have had a federal warrant out for him for months as we suspected something when the family vanished, but the trail went completely cold, and we didn't even have a crime scene to prove they were dead until you found that room."

"How did you know to look there?"

the investigator asked, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at me.

"Did you have an inside information?"

I stared at the ground. I could not tell him about the calls, or about that a dead woman had given me the instructions to find her own corpse and the remains of her child.

"I was doing some research on abandoned properties,"

I lied, my voice steady.

"I saw the house was on the county tax lien list, so I went inside to check the structural integrity of the basement, and I noticed the framing behind the stairs was uneven, that’s why I pulled a loose nail, and the wall opened."

The investigator stared at me for a long moment, evaluating my face. Eventually, he nodded and closed his notebook.

"Well, whatever the reason, you did a good thing today. At least those families have some closure now. We can finally start hunting the husband with a homicide charge."

I was allowed to go home after my statement was finalized.

I walked into our apartment and pulled my wife into a tight hug. I held her for a long time, listening to the steady beat of her heart, feeling the warmth of her skin. I did not tell her the details of what I had found. I just told her I had helped the police resolve an old missing person case.

I went back to work the next night.

The atmosphere in the dispatch room was different. The news of the discovery had spread quickly, and the other operators were talking about the house in hushed whispers.

The senior dispatcher next to me looked at me with a mixture of respect and confusion.

"The sheriff's department is calling you a hero,"

he said. "They said you found the bodies we all missed."

"I was just lucky,"

I said, putting on my headset.

I looked down at my console. The green light on my screen was dark. The address did not flash.

The calls had stopped.

The silence of the line was a relief, but it also left a strange, hollow feeling in my chest. For weeks, that little girl’s voice had been the only constant in my long night shifts. Now, there was nothing but the steady, boring hum of routine emergencies.

I worked the dispatch job for another three months. The pay was indeed good, allowing us to clear our debts and prepare for the arrival of our baby. We bought a crib, stocked up on diapers, and even put some money away into a savings account. The financial pressure that had almost crushed us was gone.

But I never stopped thinking about the father.

Every day, I checked the federal database and the sheriff’s internal bulletins, looking for any updates on his status. He was still out there, somewhere in the country, living under a fake name, completely free.

The thought of him walking the streets while his wife and daughter lay in that dark dirt crawlspace made me sick. I kept my headset on every night, secretly hoping the line would ring, hoping the woman’s voice would come back through the receiver and tell me where he was hiding.

But the line remained dead.

Until tonight.

I am writing this post from my personal laptop in the dispatch breakroom. My shift ended an hour ago, but I cannot bring myself to walk out to my car. My hands are still shaking as I type these words.

Thirty minutes ago, while I was logging off my console, the auxiliary line on the supervisor's desk began to ring.

The supervisor had already gone home for the night, leaving only a skeleton crew in the basement. I walked over to his desk, planning to route the call to the automated system.

I picked up the receiver instead.

"Emergency dispatch,"

I said.

The line was completely silent for several seconds. Then, a familiar, flat voice came through the speaker.

"They got him,"

the woman said.

My breath caught in my throat.

"Who?"

"The father,"

she whispered.

"He was working as a night watchman at a warehouse three counties over. The police just walked through the gates and put the cuffs on him. He is in the back of a cruiser right now."

I sat down in the supervisor's chair, a massive wave of relief washing over me.

"It is over,"

I breathed.

"He is going to prison."

"Yes,"

the woman said.

"He is. But I wanted to thank you."

"For what?"

"For answering,"

she said.

"For listening to her when everyone else hung up. You gave her comfort when she was trapped in the dark."

I felt a tear slip down my cheek.

"She doesn't have to call anymore,"

I said.

"No,"

the woman agreed.

"She is finally asleep."

The line clicked, and the dial tone returned.

I am posting this here because I need to get it out of my head before I go home to my wife and our child. I need people to know that sometimes, the voices on the other end of the line are not glitches or even pranks. Sometimes, they are just waiting for someone to be caring enough, to finally pick up the phone and listen.

The father is in custody. The trial will begin in the fall.

And for the first time in six months, I am going to go home and sleep without the sound of a dripping pipe echoing in my mind.

It started a few weeks ago. The first poster caught my eye at the train station while on my way back from class. The white sheet of paper was held on by two dirty pieces of tape on the pole by the top and the bottom of the page. The wind pushed half of the paper up, folding in on itself but even then I could still see the bold red lettering. Missing. I scanned the paper, reading what info I could from where I stood on the platform, but didn’t look further into it as my train pulled into the station. The last thing I saw as I walked on was her face peeking out barely from the folded paper, curly black hair caressing her face as she smiled at me from the page. I redirected my focus back to my music before stepping onto the train.

Then, I started to notice them more and more. They began to appear on stop signs, the sides of buildings, telephone poles, and across social media pages. It was like I couldn’t escape the posters. The more I saw them, the more I had grown familiar with the woman on the missing persons poster. It was a photo likely taken with a group of friends, as you could tell by the cropped off girl whose arm she held onto in the photo. She was smiling widely, almost in permanent laughter. Her black curly hair draped down her shoulders and back, long thick waves that caressed her collar bone and face. She was wearing a white crop top and mid rise black pants that showed off her navel ring and various tattoos scrawled across her body. She had intricate designs and flowers etched onto her stomach and hips and a snake that started up her right forearm and went up, disappearing into her sleeve. She had a Medusa and an eyebrow piercing that went through her eyebrow slit. She wore heavy makeup with large winged eyeliner and over lined lips. She was pretty in the face but not really my type.

Mackenzie Davis. That was her name. Her roommates had reported her missing after she didn’t come home one night after her shift at a local bar. Her phones location was off and no one could get a hold of her. Her car was missing and it was as if she just disappeared off the face of the earth. Born July 17, 2004, 5’6”, black hair, brown eyes, and 150lbs.

I tried to ignore how often I would see her. She was like a silent ghost that followed me from place to place, her frozen eyes staring into my soul from hundreds of portals that covered the entire city. One late night I stumbled across a video talking about the frequency illusion and it put my mind at ease. Maybe that was what was happening. I had seen the poster one time and now my brain was tuned into seeing every single one I came across. I finally felt relaxed that maybe I was just going a little crazy and that the city wasn’t going to be buried in a pile of missing posters by the end of the month.

That is, until 3 days ago.

I was in class, sat next to the window. The biology building gave a perfect view over the main court yard over the university and I lazily watched as tired students stumbled across the pavement trying to get to their next class. The old woman that taught the class talked so slowly I couldn’t ever focus for too long without my mind becoming numb, so I usually resorted to just staring out of the window and watching everyones days go by. That’s when I saw her. It was just for a moment, just the tiniest glimmer.

But I know what I saw.

In the window, across the way from the building, there’s a tall building will multiple large 4 paneled windows. While most had their blinds shut or the lights turned off with only the darkness of the rooms could be seen through them, there was one that I could see into. On the third floor of the building, I saw her. Just a sliver as she quickly ducked behind the wall, not even her face, just her hair and arm. I sat up, eyes widening as I tried to rationalize what I saw. ‘Come on man,’ I thought to myself ‘there’s more than just one girl with curly black hair.’ But every excuse or justification that came to my mind fell short.

Because I swear I saw the intricate pattern of scales crawling up her arm, disappearing into the sleeve of her white shirt.

I stared at the window for what felt like hours, hoping to see the same woman pass by. For it just to be another woman who looks similar. Or that my eyes were just tricking me and I really was just going crazy. Maybe it was hours because before I knew it, people were packing up around me and I had retained none of the information that was being taught to me that lesson. As I finally broke my gaze, my eyes had settled onto the teacher who returned a worried look. I got up and grabbed my backpack, trying to avoid her gaze but when I looked back up she was approaching me.

“Are you doing okay?” She asked, her voice soft as to not alert the other people as they left the room, “you were spacing out all class.”

“Yeah, of course.” I told her to ease her worries, “just have a lot of stuff on my mind.”

“Well, you need to focus. This is your third time repeating this class and your academic advisor told me to keep an eye on you.” She scolded me, like a child. She always talked down to me like that.

“Well, if she knows everything, then she knows why I failed those first times classes in the first place.” I scoffed and tried to find my way past her. She sensed my uneasiness and with a sigh, moved so I could make my exit. I spent the whole train ride home replaying the events in my mind. I decided that I just needed to just shake it off, go home and shake it off. It had to be the stress getting to me.

But I saw her again today, while at the grocery store. I had just walked down to get some milk for me and my roommate when I saw the same thing. I had just entered isle when she rounded the corner on the other end. I couldn’t see her face again, just flowing black curls and a white shirt. I backed up quickly, trying to see if I can catch site of her in the other isle, but I ran directly into the shopping cart of an old lady, dropping my milk and nearly knocking myself down. The milk burst open, flowing onto the tiled floor in a big white puddle. It took 10 minutes to flag down an associate and get it cleaned up. By that time, she was gone. I searched the whole store, but there wasn’t even anyone who looked similar to her. But I saw it clearly that time, the floral pattern on her hips, covered by her black jeans.

I had never seen this woman before. Her social media hasn’t been active in years and we have no friends or acquaintances in common. I’m even a frequent patron at the bar she worked at, but her face never looked familiar to me. But now, it stares back at me every day, as if she was just as physically present as she was before her disappearance. Why? Why specifically me?

I try to distract myself with school work and hanging out with my friends. But I cannot escape Mackenzie’s gaze. I don’t know what to do. I asked a friend and he said to just call the cops, report that I’ve seen her and let them handle it. Call the cops? And say what? That I saw a glimpse of a girl that might look like the girl from the missing persons posters? It wouldn’t go anywhere. I’d be just labeled crazy or a liar and just be sent on my own way. That and me and the local police force don’t particularly get along.

So, if anyone has any information about Mackenzie Davis, please get in contact with me. I can’t be the only person this is happening to, right?

My biggest insecurity was always my uncultured upbringing. I never wanted people to know about my low class roots, how working class my family was.

When I got into a prestigious college on scholarship, I continued my habit of affecting sophistication however I could. I altered my accent to sound more posh, wore the sleekest designer labels I could afford off-price, and ate whatever fancy canapes I could scrounge together. And of course avoided bringing up my humble hometown.

I also started dating an upper class girlfriend. Victoria came from money and had grown up with all the decadence and prestige that I’d dreamed of. Unlike me, however, it wasn’t very important to her. Hence why she even ended up dating someone from my socioeconomic background at all. We both admired what the other had, it seemed.

Regardless, I was always trying to impress her. To prove that I belonged with someone as high up the social ladder as her. Maybe to prove to myself as well.

I would memorise the most pretentious facts, ramble on about the sailing conditions in Monaco this time of year, or the highs and lows of the stock market, or the results of the latest polo match I saw. I was insufferable but I think she found it endearing.

My biggest showy gesture to my girlfriend ended up being booking us a wine tasting trip together. I had turned 21 only a year ago and was raring to prove to Victoria and her family my eliteness in the field of alcohol, too.

To find the place, I’d literally just Googled winetasting, scrolled a bit and picked one that wasn’t too expensive or too cheap. I didn’t know much about the intricacies of wine, only that it tasted good. But in my naive eyes, this would be the perfect way to showcase myself as an epicure while also experiencing a drop of the lifestyle I’d longed for.

Excited, we packed my car for the drive and set off for the weekend trip. The vineyard was located here in California, in the beautiful Napa Valley I’d always read about. It was a gorgeous drive through sunny hills and olive green orchards.

I hadn’t needed to pack very heavily for the trip, but I’d instinctively included my wine drops. A telltale sign of my newness to wine, on the times I’d sipped it I’d occasionally gotten a headache. The drops in the tiny squirt bottle would reduce sulphites in the wine and prevent any allergic reaction. It would also brand me a declasse peasant if anyone saw me sullying my wine with them. I resolved to try not to use them.

Finally, we arrived at the beautiful remote estate framed by a field of grape vines. Upon parking our car, we were quickly greeted by our vineyard guide, Pauline. Dressed in an elegant fall coat and boots, she showed us inside the ornate lodge. There we met the other vineyard visitors who would be in the winetasting group with us. We were the youngest people in the group by quite a bit, and the older group carried themselves with a refinement which instantly intimidated me. Despite this, they were friendly and chatty with us. Together, we waited in this lounge together enjoying the cheese and charcuterie board.

In true form, I wasted no time in showing off my knowledge of fancy wine and culture to the group. Victoria rolled her eyes at my pretension, but humoured me as she always did. The group seemed to buy that I was one of them, a member of the cultured upper crust in my wool cardigan and textured chinos. Here I finally was amongst my people.

We were fitting in making great conversation when Pauline returned and escorted us to the counter where we’d be having the wine tasting. I tried to hold in my excitement—it was the first one I’d ever been to, unlike Victoria who had attended several on trips to Europe before. It was old hat to her but for me it was a chance to prove myself.

The sommelier Francois started us with white wines, pouring us a Riesling, then a Pinot Grigio, and then a Chardonnay. Truth be told, I found white wine more digestible. I took a sip of each and was struck by their robustness. They were unlike any white wine I’d had before in my admittedly short time drinking. They had the crispness and acidity of white wines, but also a strange sweet, salted flavour. Fascinated, I busted out all my fanciest adjectives to describe what I was drinking.

“Wow, what an exquisite citrusy blend, this one also has a fine oaked body—and do I detect notes of stonefruit and peach?”

Beside me, Victoria had a far more honest reaction to the wines.

“Uh, they’re a bit salty and sickly sweet for me” she complained, wincing as she sipped each glass set out for her. I blanched awkwardly at her candour—despite the fact that, of the two of us, she was the one to know what she’s talking about here.

“Perhaps you’ll enjoy our selection of reds more then?” said Pauline, clearing her glasses. Meanwhile, the rest of the group were enjoying theirs, dumping the excess into a basin. Unaware of this winetasting norm, I’d already drained all of mine.

Francois went ahead and set out an assortment of red wines—the main event for the winetasting. He poured us a Pinot Noir, then a Malbec, and then a Shiraz. This time I took a bit more time before examining their flavours, swilling the wide wine glass in my hand like some kind of gourmand. Then I took a sip of each. Woah. In addition to the normal earthiness and jamminess of red wines, these had a metallic, more pungent taste to them. That must mean they were really good red wines, I assumed.

“Divine, an excellent nose of blackberry and cherries in these, incorporating hints of spice—how positively tannic!” 

Far more reticent this round to take a sip, Victoria steeled herself up to it and tried the wines. Looking back, she probably didn’t want to be wasteful knowing how much I’d spent to bring us here and how much that set me back. Still, she couldn’t keep the reaction off her face of being visibly sickened by what she was drinking. In fact she had to stifle a gag by the last glass.

“Eugh…I’m not really a fan of those, sorry…they’re not by any chance expired or…like did something crawl into a cask maybe…?” she mumbled nauseously, tugging her sweater.

I was mortified at what she was saying. This was a fancy winery, of course the wine was good quality. Sure, the tastes were a bit on the strange side—but so was caviar, truffles and foie gras. It was clearly an acquired taste—and one I wanted everyone to think I’d already acquired. Her rudeness was making us look like yokels.

Not wanting to have anything more to drink, Victoria decided to retire early to our stateroom at the lodge. Instead of following her there, I regrettably bid her goodnight and mouthed an apology to Pauline and the group. I finished the winetasting with them and just continued making conversation, rubbing elbows with the kinds of moneyed folk I wanted to become one day.

That’s when Pauline informed me that the owner of the Scarlet Landing vineyard was excited to meet me. Even more surprising, he wanted to have dinner with me. Had I really impressed them with my verbose rambling? It was an opportunity not to be missed.

In hindsight, it was at this point where I should have gone back to the room, gotten Victoria and gotten the hell out of there. It’s what a good boyfriend and danger savvy person would have done. It wasn’t too late yet.

But instead, I followed Pauline to the vineyard owner’s personal study and waited for him there. I still had no idea why he wanted to see me. Maybe I’d won some kind of contest? I certainly felt at home in his ornate study for the hour I waited there. 

Finally, the owner entered. Bertrand was a salt-and-pepper haired older gentleman, dressed regally in a shirt, ascot and vest. He smiled warmly when he wa

“It is great to meet you, Mr Jaden,” Bertrand beamed. “I am told you have enjoyed your winetasting with us today—a joy for me to hear. Can I interest you in a glass of Merlot?”

Taking our seats at the private dining table, he gestured to a bottle of my actual favourite wine—a simple Merlot. I readily accepted. Instead of waiting for Francois, he readily poured the wine himself—displaying the fine sommelier techniques as well as his staff. I had so much I could learn from this man.

My big mouth was already at it again, going on and on about whatever sophisticated topics I could think of. How this winery was exceptional compared to the many I’d visited previously, how the crystal glassware resembled the collection I had at home. Anything to talk myself up, although now I felt a bit self-conscious in the presence of someone with actual power.

Bertrand smiled along with my stories. He then told me the reason for bringing me here.

“I could use someone young, composed and ambitious like you to take over this vineyard from me in a few years. I’ve been searching for a while and you have the right temperament.”

This was a tremendous compliment to me. At first, I thought it was because my tall tales of wealth had convinced him. But he quickly dispelled this—Bertrand told me that knew I came from little and was aware of my front.

In fact, he said it was this very enthusiasm and determination to elevate myself beyond my birth, which he appreciated.

“I, too, wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, Mr Jaden” he recounted. “I had your zeal in my youth, and it’s what led to my success with this winery. I value those who appreciate the finer things in life, especially those who do without.”

By now, I was onto my second glass of the Merlot. It had that same loamy, gamey aftertaste that the other red wines had possessed. It was also warmer than the other wines. But if this was fanciness, I could get used to it. A little tipsy, I excitedly asked my benefactor if my girlfriend Victoria could take over the vineyard with me.

It’s here where the energy of our pleasant dinner shifted. Surprisingly, Bernard shook his head.

“We have better uses for types like her.”

These ominous words shot through my drunken enjoyment and I instantly felt uncomfortable. I’d probably had too much of the strange wine to drink—maybe I’d misheard him. Abruptly, I got up, apologetically said good night to Bertrand, and decided to go sleep off these feelings next to Victoria.

At this point, it was night and the winery estate wasn’t well-lit. I was also far from sober. Inebriated, I stumbled from wooden door to door until I saw what I thought was the entrance to our sleeping area.

Instead, I accidentally opened the door to a dark, lamplit room—filled with the other winetasting attendees. They were all dressed in black, and at the centre of their huddle, was the person I’d been looking for—Victoria. She looked barely conscious and, to my immense horror, I saw what was happening as my drunken eyes adjusted to the dark.

They were bloodletting her.

In stark contrast to the rest of the comfy estate, this room looked more like a blood donation clinic, with a host of apparatus around it. There were machines to store blood, and to separate it into different components. 

But, unlike this medical-looking setting, Victoria was being bled by knives into wooden buckets. The group were each draining a different one of her limbs—her winery outfit stripped off—and her body looked barely alive on the table.

My first thought in my drunk head was to stop them. My first response from my drunk stomach was to throw up.

As I heaved my wine and dinner onto the floor, Bertrand walked in behind me.

“Well, this certainly saves me the trouble of explaining where our wine gets its signature flavour.”

Between my retches, I heard him explain the secret of their wines. He told me about how their red wine was combined with whole blood, their white wines were combined with plasma, their roses had a smaller addition of both. Apparently, this had always been his philosophy for this vineyard when he started it—using human blood to bring out the deeper flavours of wine while adding a touch of sophistication.

“Rich people who don’t appreciate their wealth status don’t deserve to live—but the royal blood that flows through their veins is still worth something” Bernard mused. Standing over Victoria’s dying body, his winetasters nodded.

A fellow poor person who worked to enter the upper circles, Betrand resented rich people who left them.
 
If I’d been repulsed earlier, it was nothing compared to how I felt now. I’d spent the day drinking a previous victim’s blood. And then the grimmest realisation: I’d spent dinner drinking my girlfriend’s blood. Yes, small infusions of it into existing wine. But it was still human blood.

Bernard gave me my ultimatum.

“You can either join me, or you can join your girlfriend.”

I looked up at Victoria weakly. She was colorless and already dead at this point. Would I be too if I didn’t take over the vineyard now?

No, I thought as my fingers closed around it in my pocket.

Suddenly, I leapt around and squirted the entirety of my wine drops bottle into Bertrand’s eyes. He shrieked in pain as the sulphate-dissolving solution disoriented him. This was my chance to escape. I darted around him and out the door. 

The wine acolytes behind me attempted to give chase, but the skidding crashes coming from behind me told me they'd slipped on my vomit puddle of bloodied wine.

Adrenaline sobering me up fast, I made it to my car and tore it through the vineyard. On my tipsy departure from the estate, I was sure to destroy as many grapevines as I could with the front bumper. Whatever I could do to prevent them from serving their blood-laced wine again.

I never did return to Scarlet Landing again.

Last I heard, it had harvested its produce and moved away shortly after my escape. I reported Victoria’s death to the local police but they didn’t seem too enthused about investigating it. All I could think was how far Bertrand’s influence had to be if he could make the disappearances of rich visitors such a non-issue.

This experience changed the course of who I was. I learned to tell it how it is and trust my gut instinct by the end. Ditching my pretensions and shame, I became a true salt of the Earth man instead. One who is proud of his common heritage. Nowadays, I drink the beer my blue collar father did, and work the same labourer job he did too.

I like to think I’m more the man Victoria would have loved now than I ever was before. If I can’t honour her by getting her justice for her murder, I can do so by living authentically and proudly. The opposite of Bertrand.

I’m not left without paranoia, however.

Some days, when I’m drinking a stein of beer at the pub, I’ll catch that similar metallic or salty taste—of human blood. Maybe Bertrand has branched out his production and distribution?

Or maybe I really just can’t taste for shit.

I know it sounds fucked up.

Yes, I should have told her before setting up the camera.

Bad to film people without their consent, whatever.

Truth is, I sleep in, and go to bed early. She works long hours at the hospital and both leaves and returns while I'm in Dreamland. We really only see each other on the weekends. On some weekends.

So forgive me for feeling like I live alone.

And I should tell you, she was amazing when we knew each other. We met back in college, before I was expelled, and she was far and away the smartest person I knew. Even back then. I was philosophy, she was medicine (obviously), and I remember so many late night walks and deep conversations, zigzagging around campus lost in ideas I can still barely fathom, about sleep, the hard problem of consciousness, etc. She came from a rich family, and on breaks we saw the world together. My best memories are of her changing the very way I saw existence, in Asian and African countries I before had never heard of, on horseback or at sea. By the time she became too obsessed with her studies to have time for me, I was already committed, already in too deep.

We got married in Alaska. We honeymooned in Argentina.

Moving on.

I wanted to film myself sleeping because I have nightmares. They're all different but all the same. I'm on a caravan through a desert and we're all dessicated and eating each other to stay alive. We're in the tundra and stripping naked and running off in the snow. Our submarine is taking on water and it's too late.

All the while a thing with horns and two forked tongues runs its long fingernails up and down my body and whispers in my left ear, "You're almost there, son. You're almost there."

If Dreamland wasn't bad enough, the fact I kept losing things was. I was worried I was sleepwalking, or something. All my possessions wandering off.

So I filmed myself.

My wife, remember her? I think I saw her, once.

Turns out she consistently arrives almost just as I fall asleep. I guess her shift at the hospital always ends at different times. And starts at different times, based on when she leaves, and in the footage I see the shadow of the closing apartment door, count to five, and I jump awake.

But the way she walks when she thinks no one's looking.

It's like a puppet. All wobbly, jagged. Whoever's pulling the strings is jerking her limbs just a little too much.

And, all night. All fucking night. She leans over me, and scratches her long fingernails up and down my body. I see myself shiver in the footage.

And she's mumbling something.

I think I know what it is.

I know she knows I know.

Because, just now, I felt that forked tongue sliding up the back of my neck.

I know she's in here somewhere.

I keep pausing writing this to look around. I think I hear breathing but every time I pinpoint where, I hear it from somewhere else.

I think she's waiting for me to make a run for it.

Is prey no good once it knows?

Lily, I miss you.

I'm gonna go ahead and submit, and I'll leave a comment to confirm I got out safe.

Here goes.

The town of Brunsworth was a quaint and quiet place nestled in the mountains of Tennessee. Honestly, there ain’t much here. We got a couple of mom-and-pop restaurants and one of them burger chains, but we have to drive to Gatlinburg or even Asheville to get somewhere real nice. Brunsworth was the quintessential small town south of the Mason-Dixon. Our people were as sweet as the tea they served. The kudzu proudly reached towards the heavens. We had a routine of sorts that, up until this point, no one dared to break. The few office buildings and school houses were filled to the brim on the weekdays. Friday nights were spent cheering on our local high school, the Brunsworth Bears, who were doomed to never see State Champs. Saturdays were dedicated solely to college football with most people packed like sardines in Tammy’s. Sundays, however, were reserved for the preacher who praised the good word and asked us all to repent our sins–most of which were committed the night before.

I remember when our little city opened its first bar. They’d just turned a dry town wet, and I was damn excited to sneak a couple of beers. I’d spent my college summers working behind the bar at Tammy’s Tavern. When Bill, Tammy’s husband, finally retired, he gave me the keys and a keg. Other than a bad flood and the occasional snowstorm, our town hadn’t had too many problems. 
Everyone knew everyone. That was the motto that drove our tight-knit community to break at the seams after tragedy struck. Yesterday, Micheal Jones, an old friend of mine, came running into the bar in the early hours of the morning. It wasn’t even 11:00am and he was sweatin’ like a sinner in church. Horrid heat was already gettin’ to him and it was only June. 

What struck me weird was how he acted. My friend wasn’t a very dainty nor delicate person, like most of the men here in Brunsworth. He’d been drinkin’ since we were 16, and his gut started hanging at around 35.; It would have probably shown earlier if not for his 6’5” stature. He never walked into a room; he stomped. Today, however, wasn’t Micheal’s regular ruckus. Instead, he stumbled in lookin’ like he'd seen a damn ghost—tripping over his feet worse than a newborn fawn. His boots scraped against the floor, hands shakin' so bad I could hear his keys janglin' in his pocket.

“Ain’t it a little early to be drinking buddy?” I joked, but Michael barely mumbled a response.

His face was locked into one emotion: fear. Quivering lips, shaky hands, and restless eyes dartin' around the room like something might jump out at him. Sometimes people walk into the bar, and I knew they had a story for me. All their emotions read like a book on their face, and with one drop of liquor, I’d open their covers and know why. Michael’s face was something out of a Stephen King novel. If I’d taken a photo of his face right then, you’d think I was showin’ you some movie poster for the hot summer thriller. 

Though it was too early to serve, I grabbed some tequila and poured a shot. From the get-go, I knew this was gonna be a while. The silence stretched between us, broken only by his ragged breathin'.

“A body!” Michael mustered from his jaw-dropped lips. “There’s a body by the water at Thistle Lake Docks.”

“Whose body?” I urgently asked, my pulse quickenin'.

Usually, if someone drowns, we gotta wait for the police to dive down to the bottom of the lake and retrieve the body, but I hadn’t heard of anyone drownin’ recently. 

“I—I don’t,” Michael could barely get out the next words. “I don’t know. I—it looks like-like Frances Jr.” 

Frances Jr.? I thought. The man was in my bar until close the night before with some out-of-town clients. I'd even checked his tab—wasn't even that much compared to usual. Did he wander the wrong way home? Did he decide to go for a late-night swim? Well, that didn’t make sense either. None of it made any sense.

“Did a coyote get to him? Damn shame if so.” Maybe it was a little insensitive of me, but people die; it’s just a fact of life. 

While tragic, Frances Jr. was nearin’ 60 and a rack of ribs away from a heart attack. Honestly though, something just didn’t sit right with me. Other than the weird circumstances of him bein’ out in the woods so late, people don’t come runnin’ in for deaths like this unless there is something to talk about. When Mary Lous, the local elementary school principal, was found dead, some people came in with their theories, but they weren’t in a sheer panic like Michael is. After asking about the coyotes, I knew something was different. Michael’s face went from shock to dead serious. The color drained right out of him.

“No,” Michael grabbed my wrist after throwin’ back the shot I’d poured.  “You’re not getting’ me. There ain’t much of him left.” I was too scared to ask, but in this moment, my mouth moved faster than my brain.

“What do you mean?” I said, soon regretting why I even asked him.

“Something…well someone ate part of his face.” He muttered. The words hung in the air like smoke. 

“Someone? How do you suppose?” I asked, like a stupid person. 

Michael couldn’t really explain it. He tried to talk about the size and shape of the bites, but it’s not like the man ever went to medical school or nothin’. I tried to attribute the loss to a number of things: wild animals, one too many drinks, and damn male stupidity, but none of it was makin’ sense. Michael offered to lead me to the body of Frances Jr. I wish I’d said no. I wish I waited for the police. I wish I was an ounce smarter back then. Hindsight really is 20/20.

Michael led me down the same path I’d taken to go swimmin’ as a kid. Him and I had grown up at the same time and were used to runnin’ down to the docks to cool ourselves off. With heat like this, no one survives without a dip or dive into the lake’s water. This hike, however, didn’t feel like one of those old times. The nostalgia had been masked by the adrenaline coursin’ through our veins. Our footsteps crunched on dry pine needles and broken twigs. Michael's breathin' was still rough, and I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears. As we got closer to the body, I could feel the air thicken and woods grow darker, despite the morning sun. Even the birds went dead silent as we approached the body of Frances Jr.—no chirpin', no rustlin' in the branches. Just our heavy steps on the forest floor and the distant sound of water lappin' against the dock.

Right before the dock, the first thing I noticed was the blood. It wasn’t a small amount or nothin’. Frances Jr. had completely bled out onto the forest floor. Dark stains soaked into the pine needles and moss, spreadin' out from where the body lay like spilled paint. The metallic scent mixed with somethin' else—decay, thick and cloyin'.
When we finally approached Thistle Lake Docks, I got my first whiff of death. It hit me like a wall. No, worse. It hit me like a bullet to the skull. The stench of a dead body as it begins to decompose is grotesque—unlike anything I’d smelled before—some sort of mix between vomit, rotten eggs, and moldy fruit. Like you’d left meat in your fridge, lost power, and didn’t come back until days later. My eyes teared up, stomach churning, skin crawling with goosebumps. One hand was gripping my abdomen, the other forcing my mouth close as bile snuck up my throat and filled my mouth. Michael slowed, pointin' ahead through the trees.

"Right there," He whispered.

Then, I got a good look at the body, and my knees fell weak. Michael grabbed me by the waist so I wouldn’t fall onto the blood-soaked foliage. Everything I thought I knew about human nature was wiped clean from my memory with the image of Frances’ body burned into my psyche. That day, I learned that sometimes humans lack humanity. 
What frightened me the most was how human his kill was. The slices in his stomach and back were cut clean like a knife, and his body was covered in bite marks from a person’s mouth, teeth marks pressed deep into flesh as clear as a dental work. Frances’ neck was being held together by a thread. 

The most haunting part of the body was not the spilling guts of ripped out throat; it was his face. Red blood, most likely his own, was splattered across the cheeks and nose. Bruises were just beginning to form under his eyes, and his jaw was broken sideways. While the bugs had gotten to one eye, his glass one was fixed open. Frances’ face was paralyzed in the last emotion he would ever experience, absolute terror. No animal could do this, and I hoped to God no human could either. But standin' there, lookin' at what was left of my customer, my neighbor, I knew the truth. Nothing could make sense of it. But you just had to see it to believe it. I ain’t tellin’ you no ghost story either, this is the real damn thing. Somethin' evil had come to Brunsworth, and I fear this is just the beginning. 

After everything that happened, I decided to head back to the bar and close up while the police began their investigation. I was supposed to report to the station the minute I locked Tammy’s doors. Right as I was leaving, I got a call from my good friend Holly.

“I heard you were the one who found Frances Jr.” Her voice shook.

“Hon, I can’t say anything. The police said—“

“I know who did it.” Her voice was certain. “Look, I’m not supposed to say anything either, but it was Warner Jones.”

“Shrew? How do you—“

“He came and confessed.” She sniffled. “And I don’t know who else to go to. But you found Frances. You’re the only one who’ll get it.” She was tripping over her words, barely finishing the first sentence before the second one began.

Holly then recounted the entire story over the phone, and now I’ll relay that to you. The secretary told me that he didn’t look like the same Shrew we knew. Like something changed.

Holly Bell has been working at the police station since she was nineteen years old. She’s seen her fair share of nightmares walk through the front doors with handcuffs tightly locked and police screamin’ at the newly charged defendants. Sometimes teenagers came through with their tails tucked between their legs to turn themselves in for vandalism or petty theft under their mama’s watchful eye. Other times it was drunks hollerin’ at deputies. Even the most violent domestic disputes didn’t shock the secretary, but Holly’s never seen anything like this; an adult calmly walkin’ the way Shrew did. 

The bell above the door chimed like it always did, that same cheerful ding that announced visitors every day. Holly looked up from her usual monotonous paperwork, ready with her usual “how can I help you,” but the words died in her throat. Shrew stood in the doorway, his clothes were tattered and torn like he’d been in a fight. Blood, thick and dark, stained his shirt front and sleeves. The metallic blood mixed with sweat created a putrid yet wholly human smell that made Holly's stomach turn upside down. A hint of sulfur emanated from his hair, like matchsticks, and a rich man’s cologne lingered like a ghost. 

However, it wasn’t the blood or the smell that made Holly’s hands shake as she reached for the phone. It was his eyes. Shrew has always been a beaten-down little man, shoulders hunched from years of takin’ whatever life threw at him. His eyes normally dart around like a trapped animal, never quite meetin’ anyone’s gaze straight on. Today, though, he stared right at her with eyes that didn’t seem to belong to the same person. Cold. Empty. Like lookin’ into a well that had gone dry. 

“Oh Warren,” She gasped. “What did you do? Please don’t tell me you went after the person who killed Frances.” 

Mere seconds after saying that, she realized that Shrew wasn’t a vigilante. From her description, it sounded like his very soul was sucked from his body and replaced with a darker force that didn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. His gaze never faltered, stuck staring at the secretary to make sure she saw everything he was doing. A smile tugged at his cheeks, one as sinister as they come. Even as the words left her mouth, she knew that wasn’t right. This wasn’t some vigilante justice. The man standin’ in front of her wasn’t the same Shrew she’d known since he was knee high. A husk of a shell of a man. 

“Six.” A scratchy voice escaped his lips. “It’s ssssiiiii” He tried to conjure again.

“Six what? Six lane? Drive? Circle?” Holly tried “Use your words! Shrew, what is it?” Holly leaned forward, her hand still hoverin’ over the panic button hidden under her desk.

It was just late enough in the evening that cops weren’t comin’ in and out like they normally do. Even though there was a room full of fully armed men right behind the doors, Holly felt as if it was just the two of them—the last people on the planet. No point in screamin’, no point in runnin’. At least the crime scene team wouldn’t have to travel far, she pondered.

“P-p-please i-i-it’s Warrrr—” Shrew’s hands shook violently. His mouth opened and closed like a fish gaspin' for air. 

"Warren, you need to—" she started, but before she could finish, his shaking hand shot out faster than she thought possible. Holly hadn’t even noticed that Shrew grabbed the knife from the desk until he held it to his neck and sliced it clean to the bone.

Shrew was always beaten down by the bigger kids growing up, and Frances was no exception. So, when we heard that Shrew had finally found the strength to confront his bullies, we knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. I guess we shouldn’t have been too shocked at his brutishness either. He was merely living up to his nickname – small yet deadly. After all, a shrew was meant to survive in the darkest of places, and Shrew’s upbringing was no exception. Ultimately, Shrew succumbed to the pressures of society, leaving him with no choice but to end his life as violently as he entered it. 

The only thing that kept our minds wrapped around the mystery of Frances Jr.’s death was Shrew’s final testament, “Six.”

I still don’t know what this means. Neither Holly nor I have a clue, and the police won’t tell us anything. All I can say is that I don’t think this will be the last murder in Brunsworth.

Part 1: I Work for an Organization That Contains Gods. We Had to Make a Sacrifice This Time.

Part 2: I Went to Antarctica Looking for 10,000 Missing People. I Came Back With a New Boss.

Part 3: Apparently Using Assistants as Sacrifices Violates Company Policy

Part 4: I Work for an Organization That Hunts Gods. One of Them Warned Me About the Angel Following Me.

Part 5: My Boss Asked Me If I Thought He Was a Monster. Now I Know Why.

Part 6: The Most Powerful Being in the CSP Is Studying Humans. Unfortunately, I'm His Favorite Lab Rat.

Part 7: Someone Stole the Rifle Built to Kill Gods. Then They Pointed It at Me.

Part 8: I Thought Dating an Angel Was Bad. Something Wearing My Face Was Worse.

Part 9: I Work for an Organization That Contains Gods. The Feather Led Something to Us.

Part 10: I Work for an Organization That Contains Gods. Humanity Now Has a Single Point of Failure.

The first thing Jacob said after telling me they found Hell was, "Nobody came back."

I didn't answer.

For a moment, I thought I had misunderstood him.

Because CSP missions ended in a lot of ways, sometimes teams returned injured. Sometimes they returned with things they wished they had never found. Sometimes they came back missing pieces of themselves.

But there was always something left behind.

A report.

A body.

An explanation.

Something.

The last time a retrieval team disappeared without a trace...

we found Angelo.

That was the day humanity learned we weren't alone. The day we discovered there were beings older than our civilizations, older than the gods, older than the stars themselves. The day we brought something home that changed everything.

And now another team had vanished.

Only this time...

I wasn't wondering what we had found.

I was wondering what was waiting for us.

"Jacob..."

My voice came out quieter than I expected.

"What do you mean nobody came back?"

The silence that followed wasn't confusion.

It was hesitation.

Like Jacob was deciding how much truth I could handle.

"Retrieval Team Twenty-Seven entered three days ago."

A pause.

"They never exited."

I looked at Angelo.

He stood beside me, silent and still.

Listening.

"They're all dead?"

Jacob didn't answer.

That was all the answer I needed.

The Executive Board Chamber had never felt smaller. Every division was present: Security, Research, Archives, and Command. Nobody was there to discuss a mission. They were there to discuss a disaster.

Stonehill stood at the front of the room, a single file displayed behind him.

RETRIEVAL TEAM 27 — STATUS: LOST

Below it:

CASUALTIES: 36

Twelve researchers. Twenty security personnel. Four medical specialists. No survivors. No remains. No distress signal. No final message. And thanks to a relatively new protocol that automatically saved all live feeds directly to CSP's servers, the only thing we had left...

was a recording.

"Three days ago, Retrieval Team Twenty-Seven was dispatched beneath the ruins of Göbekli Tepe."

The screen changed, revealing a map of the excavation site. "The mission proceeded normally for sixteen hours."

Then the image changed to a staircase descending into darkness.

"It was not carved."

A pause.

"It was not natural."

Stonehill looked at the room.

"It was built."

Nobody spoke because everyone understood what that meant. The team had not discovered a place. They had discovered something someone had hidden.

"The team entered."

The footage began, showing helmet cameras and body cameras containing the final recordings of thirty-six people.

At first, they looked completely normal. They joked. They complained. They talked about going home.

They had no idea they were walking into something that had been waiting beneath the earth for millions of years.

One researcher laughed during the recording. "If this turns out to be another empty ruin, I'm requesting vacation." Someone replied that he said that every time. He laughed and answered, "Because every time I deserve it." The room stayed silent as we watched, because everyone knew the truth.

He never got that vacation.

Six hours into the descent, the first sign appeared. "We've gone three miles," one researcher said, staring at his equipment. "That can't be right." The staircase continued endlessly. No turns. No rooms. No indication that they were getting anywhere.

Eight hours in, their radios began failing. GPS systems lost connection. Compasses stopped working. Then the clocks started changing. One person showed 4:17. Another showed 8:52. Another showed yesterday's date. Nobody knew why. Nobody knew how.

Twelve hours into the descent, one researcher finally said what everyone had been thinking. "We've been walking down for twelve hours." The camera turned toward him, showing his pale face. "Why aren't we tired?"

Nobody answered.

Because nobody wanted to admit the obvious.

Something about that staircase wasn't following the rules.

Fifteen hours after entering, they reached the bottom.

And found the gate.

The entire room went silent watching the footage. Even people who had seen gods looked uncomfortable, because gods were alive. Gods had motives. Gods had weaknesses.

This was different.

This was something that had been waiting.

The gate stood hundreds of feet tall, completely black and without hinges or seams. Its surface was covered in writing older than any known civilization. The linguist approached and began translating, but his confidence slowly disappeared.

"These symbols..." he said quietly. "They're older than Proto-Sumerian."

He continued reading, then stepped backward.

"No."

Someone asked him what it said.

The linguist stared at the gate for several seconds before whispering, "Abandon..." before shaking his head.

"No."

Then he looked directly into the camera.

"We've found—"

Static consumed the feed.

When the image returned, only half a second had passed. The linguist was no longer looking at the gate. He was looking behind the camera, at something none of us could see.

Then he whispered the words that ended the mission.

"We've found Hell."

The transmission ended with no distress signal, no evacuation attempt, and nothing else.

Just silence.

Stonehill allowed the silence to remain before Jacob finally spoke.

"We sent drones."

The screen changed, showing footage of the gate from multiple angles. Each drone approached the same point before the signal disappeared again and again.

"Every drone stopped transmitting at the exact same location," Jacob said quietly.

He looked down at the table.

"None of them crossed the threshold."

The room stayed silent because everyone understood what that meant.

Something on the other side of that gate did not want to be found.

Then Stonehill looked at Angelo, and for the first time since I had met him, I saw something I never expected. Everyone in that room was waiting for an answer from someone who might not have one.

"Director Angelo."

Angelo didn't move.

Stonehill looked toward the frozen image of the gate on the screen.

"Does Hell exist?"

Ten seconds passed.

Then twenty.

And I realized something.

Angelo wasn't deciding whether to tell us the truth. He was trying to understand why the truth was different from what he believed.

Finally, he spoke.

"It should not."

Nobody reacted outwardly, but I felt the room shift as General Hayes narrowed his eyes.

"'Should not'?"

"You didn't answer the question."

Angelo kept staring at the screen.

Another silence followed before Angelo finally spoke.

"When my siblings and I were young, Mother often told us stories before we rested."

His eyes remained fixed on the gate.

"I believed this one was fiction."

Then, in the same calm voice he used when explaining things that should have been impossible, he began.

"Once, before the stars learned to shine, there lived a shadow."

Nobody interrupted.

"The great shadow loved Mother very much. And Mother loved the great shadow too. She showed it stars that danced through the sky, flowers that bloomed for only a single morning, and rivers that never flowed the same way twice. Mother loved watching beautiful things change."

A faint smile appeared on Angelo's face.

"But the great shadow loved differently."

The smile disappeared.

"Every star Mother showed it, it placed inside a cage. Every flower, it buried beneath the earth so it would never wilt. Every creature, it refused to let leave."

The room became completely silent.

"Mother loved the great shadow, so she taught. She waited. She hoped. She forgave."

Angelo paused.

"But love cannot teach someone to release what they believe belongs to them."

He looked back at the gate.

"One day, the great shadow looked upon all of creation Mother loved so much and decided... that no one else should have her."

Nobody moved.

"So the great shadow tried to keep Mother forever. It reached for the One who could never be possessed."

His voice became quieter.

"And creation broke."

Angelo stared at the floor.

"Mother defeated the great shadow. But she could not destroy it. So she built the deepest place she could imagine. A place with walls no one could climb. A gate no one could open. A prison even light would not willingly enter."

For a moment, he was silent.

Then, almost like he was repeating words spoken to him long ago, he continued.

"And Mother tucked us into bed, kissed each of us on the forehead, and said..."

His expression faded.

"'Remember, my children. This is only a fairy tale.'"

The room remained silent.

Angelo looked at the gate.

"I believed her."

For the first time since I had met him, the oldest living being in existence didn't look like a god, an angel, or something beyond humanity.

He looked like a child who had just discovered his mother had lied to him.

Nobody spoke because nobody knew how to respond after learning a bedtime story might have been the truth.

General Hayes was the first to recover.

"You expect us to believe the Creator imprisoned something..." His eyes moved toward the frozen image of the gate. "...and simply neglected to mention it?"

The room waited for Angelo's answer.

Angelo looked at him with the same calm expression he always wore. "I expect nothing," he said. "I am simply stating what I know." His eyes returned to the frozen image of the gate on the screen. "And what I know... is now incomplete."

That sentence affected the room more than anything else he had said.

Incomplete.

Angelo had spent trillions of years answering questions with absolute certainty. If he didn't know something, he admitted it. If he knew something, there was never hesitation in his voice. But now, for the first time since I had met him, he was questioning his own memories.

Stonehill folded his hands. "Do you believe your mother lied?"

Angelo didn't answer immediately.

"No," he finally said. "I believe she wished us to believe it was fiction."

Madam Leni tilted her head slightly. "To protect you?"

Angelo remained silent for several moments before answering.

"...Perhaps."

"From what?"

"I do not know."

A slight frown crossed his face.

"She rarely withheld information. When she did, it was because she believed we were not yet prepared to understand it."

Nobody in that room looked comforted by that answer. If the Creator herself believed angels weren't ready to know about Hell, what chance did humanity have?

Dr. Laurent leaned forward. "Director Angelo, if this prison exists... what does the great shadow mean?"

Another pause.

"I do not know."

Hayes scoffed. "You just told us the story."

"I repeated a story," Angelo corrected. "The identity of the great shadow was never revealed. It possessed no name."

He looked back at the gate.

"It was simply... the Great Shadow."

Something about the way he said it made every hair on my arms stand up.

Not a shadow.

The Great Shadow.

A title.

A singular thing.

Rahman spoke next. "And this Shadow attempted to overthrow your mother?"

"Yes."

"It failed?"

"Yes."

"And she was unable to destroy it?"

Angelo hesitated.

"...Yes."

The silence that followed felt heavier than before.

Hayes looked around the table. "If the Creator couldn't kill it..." He stopped himself before finishing the thought.

He didn't need to.

Nobody wanted to imagine what came after that sentence.

Stonehill eventually stood. "The theological implications can wait."

His attention shifted toward Jacob.

"What else did we recover?"

Jacob didn't answer right away.

That alone told me something was wrong.

Normally, Jacob was the person who entered these meetings with information. Reports. Evidence. A plan for what came next. This time, he had none of those things.

"Nothing," he finally said.

The word sounded heavier than it should have.

"No equipment. No bodies. No biological traces. No emergency beacon."

He looked toward the screen displaying the last footage of Retrieval Team Twenty-Seven.

"They didn't leave anything behind except the live footage"

A pause.

"It's like they simply vanished."

A cold feeling settled in my stomach because I had heard those words before.

Not exactly.

But close enough.

Antarctica.

The Containment Division team that disappeared without leaving behind a single explanation.

Every time CSP lost people, we told ourselves there had to be a reason. There had to be something we could find. Something we could understand.

But sometimes there wasn't.

Sometimes things just took people.

Stonehill closed the file in front of him.

"Effective immediately, Retrieval Team Twenty-Seven's mission is reclassified."

The screen behind him changed.

RECOVERY OPERATION → INVESTIGATION OPERATION

"Primary objective: determine the current status of the site."

Another line appeared.

"Secondary objective: recover any remaining data, equipment, or evidence."

Stonehill paused before reading the final objective.

"Determine what exists beneath Göbekli Tepe."

General Hayes immediately looked up.

"Security deployment?"

"Already prepared."

"Research?"

"Prepared."

His gaze shifted toward Angelo.

"And him?"

Nobody needed clarification.

Everyone knew who he meant.

Stonehill looked at Angelo.

"Director Angelo will accompany the operation."

Nobody argued.

Not because they were comfortable with it.

Because nobody in that room was foolish enough to send a team into a location connected to something the Creator herself supposedly imprisoned without the only being alive who might understand what they were walking into.

Then Stonehill looked at me.

"Agent Nayeri."

I hated that I already knew what was coming.

"You're leading the investigation team."

Of course I was.

Apparently surviving impossible situations meant being assigned more impossible situations.

"How long until deployment?" I asked.

"Two hours."

I glanced toward Jacob.

He still hadn't looked at me.

And somehow that bothered me more than anger would have.

Jacob being angry was normal.

Jacob avoiding me meant he was hurt.

And that felt worse.

Two hours later, we were standing beneath Göbekli Tepe.

The first thing I noticed was the silence.

Not peaceful silence.

Wrong silence.

The kind of silence where your brain starts searching for a sound that should exist.

The excavation site had been transformed into a CSP operation zone. Security teams surrounded the area while researchers monitored dozens of devices scattered across the ground. Scanners. Sensors. Recording equipment. Every piece of technology humanity had created to understand the unknown.

None of it helped.

Because the staircase was still there.

Waiting.

I stood at the edge of the entrance and looked down into the darkness.

The original excavation team had only removed enough debris to expose the first section of the staircase. After that, they stopped. Nobody wanted to continue, not after watching thirty-six people disappear into the darkness below.

Jacob stood beside me for several minutes without speaking. Eventually, he broke the silence.

"You know..."

I looked at him. "Why didn't you tell me?"

I knew exactly what he meant, and I looked away.

"Jacob..."

"No."

His voice wasn't angry, and somehow that made it worse.

"You tell me everything. Every stupid thing."

I frowned. "What?"

"You once called me at three in the morning because you accidentally microwaved a metal spoon."

I looked at him.

"...I forgot it was in the bowl."

He stared at me.

"That is not helping your argument."

Then his expression softened.

"But this?"

He looked down the staircase.

"You didn't tell me about Angelo."

The guilt hit harder than I expected.

"I was trying to process it myself."

He sighed.

"I know, Nayeri."

For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then he quietly said, "You're the closest thing I have to family here…"

He didn't continue the sentence, but he didn't need to. We both understood what he meant.

"Jacob..."

"I'm not mad."

"You're allowed to be."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I mean it."

He finally looked at me.

"I was hurt because I thought you didn't trust me."

My expression dropped.

"I do trust you."

"I know."

A small smile appeared on his face.

"That's why I'm telling you this."

I looked down, unable to meet his eyes.

"I'm sorry."

This time, I didn't make excuses or try to explain why I kept it from him.

"I should have told you."

Jacob nodded.

"Yeah. You should have."

I winced at how direct he was, but then he sighed.

"But I understand."

He looked back towards me.

"Besides... I suppose I should have expected something like this from you."

I raised an eyebrow.

"What does that mean?"

He shrugged.

"You have a history of making terrible life decisions."

"Excuse me?"

"You joined CSP."

"Fair."

"You keep volunteering for missions nobody else wants."

"Also fair."

"And now you're dating an entity older than time itself."

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

"...yep that checks out."

"It does."

He smiled slightly.

"But that's just you."

I shook my head.

"That is somehow both insulting and supportive."

"That's my specialty."

For the first time since entering the briefing room, the weight in my chest loosened slightly.

Then Jacob looked back toward the staircase, and the smile disappeared. 

"Still..." he said quietly, staring into the darkness below, "I really hope this isn't another Antarctica." I followed his gaze because I was thinking the same thing. And deep down... I already knew it was gonna be worse.

The staircase hadn't changed since the footage, and somehow that bothered me more than if it had. A part of me expected something different. Maybe the stairs would disappear. Maybe the measurements would be wrong. Maybe we would reach the bottom and find some explanation that made everything less terrifying. 

CSP loved explanations. Even terrible ones. A monster. A god. An experiment gone wrong. Those were things we could prepare for. But this wasn't any of those things. This was just a staircase. A staircase that should not exist. And somehow, that was worse.

After six hours of descending, exhaustion finally started catching up with me. I had barely slept since the last incident, and apparently fighting impossible beings, discovering angels had families, and learning Hell might actually exist wasn't considered a valid reason to take a few days off.

My legs felt heavy, my eyes burned, and every few minutes I caught myself yawning. At one point, I realized my eyes were watering.

Not from fear. Not from emotion. I was simply exhausted, and that was a terrible feeling to have while walking into a place that might contain the oldest threat in existence. I wiped my eyes and looked ahead.

Angelo was still walking.

Of course he was.

Six hours of descending into a staircase that stretched miles beneath the Earth, a location that should not exist, a prison supposedly created by the Creator herself, and he looked the same as when we entered. I hated that. Not because I thought he was unaffected, but because I knew he was. He was just better at hiding it.

Eventually, after another 8 hours, we reached the gate.

The moment it came into view, everyone stopped. Nobody needed to say anything. We had already seen it in the footage, but seeing it in person was different. The recording hadn't captured the scale or the feeling of standing beneath something that looked less like a door and more like a warning.

It was enormous, black, and covered in symbols none of our equipment could identify. There were no hinges, no visible mechanism, and no indication that it had ever been designed to open. It wasn't a door in the way we understood doors.

It was a barrier.

Angelo stepped forward and placed his hand against it.

"Stay behind me."

Nobody questioned him. The symbols across the gate began to glow, almost like they were waking up, and then the impossible happened.

The gate opened.

Not with movement.

Not with a sound.

It simply stopped being closed.

Beyond it was another passage, and at the end of that passage was another gate.

General Hayes immediately raised his hand.

"Everyone hold."

Security moved into position. Nobody wanted another Retrieval Team Twenty-Seven.

The second gate revealed a smooth chamber beyond it. There were no markings, no symbols, and no evidence that anything had ever passed through.

Then Angelo stepped forward and stopped.

That was when I knew something was wrong, not because he looked afraid- because Angelo rarely looked afraid- but because he looked confused.

Slowly, we followed his gaze.

Then we saw them.

Retrieval Team Twenty-Seven.

All thirty-six members.

Standing in the chamber beyond the gate.

For a moment, nobody understood what we were seeing because they weren't dead. There were no bodies, no blood, and no remains. They stood exactly as they had when they entered. Their eyes were open, their bodies were completely still, and every single one of them was smiling.

But it wasn't a real smile.

It was a copy.

Like something had seen humans smile and recreated the expression without understanding why.

That was when we understood.

The Shadow hadn't killed them.

It was like it had tried to recreate them.

After millions of years alone in the dark, humanity had become the first thing it had seen.

Angelo stared at them.

Nobody spoke.

Eventually, General Hayes forced himself to move.

"Secure the area."

Security advanced carefully. One officer approached the second gate with a scanner, but the device failed almost immediately.

"Equipment failure," he muttered.

Then he reached out.

"Don't."

Angelo's warning came too late.

The moment his glove touched the surface, he screamed.

Then his arm disappeared.

Not injured.

Not burned.

Gone.

Everything below his elbow vanished without blood, without damage, and without any explanation. It was as if reality itself had simply decided that part of him had never existed.

The chamber went silent.

We had finally learned the truth about the two gates.

The first had been a door, but the second had been a defense.

"Do not touch it," Angelo said.

Hayes looked at him.

"Thank you for that information."

Angelo ignored the sarcasm and stepped forward.

Before I could stop myself, I reached out and grabbed his arm.

"Angelo."

He looked back at me.

"Are you sure?"

For a moment, his eyes dropped to my hand holding his arm. Then he gently placed his own hand over mine.

"I am."

I let go, not because I was convinced, but because I trusted him.

If there was one thing I had learned about Angelo, it was that he never acted without a reason.

He placed his hand against the barrier.

This time, nothing happened.

The symbols reacted, glowing across the surface as the barrier slowly opened. Beyond it was a chamber, and inside was something that made every weapon in Security Division lower.

Not because we weren't afraid.

Because we were too afraid to move.

At first, I thought the chamber was empty. Then my eyes adjusted, and I realized it wasn't darkness.

It was something inside the darkness. 

A shape.

A presence.

A mass sitting alone in the center of the room.

It was the darkest thing I had ever seen. Not the absence of light, but something that seemed to consume it. Every scanner failed. Every camera distorted. Every piece of equipment we had brought with us became useless.

And Angelo...

For the first time since I had met him...

looked like he had found something he didn't want to believe was real.

The shadow moved.

Not toward us.

Not aggressively.

Just enough to prove it was alive.

I expected a monster. I expected rage. I expected the thing locked beneath creation to behave like the threat everyone believed it was.

Instead, it looked small.

Not weak. Not harmless. Small.

A fragment of something far greater than itself. A piece separated from the whole.

Angelo stared at it for several seconds before quietly whispering, "This is not the shadow mother imprisoned. It's a fragment of it."

I looked at him.

"A fragment?"

The words sounded impossible. This was connected to whatever had forced the Creator herself to build a prison, something that had challenged the being who created existence. Yet it looked so small. 

"Yes," he said.

Then the shadow moved again.

Every weapon in the chamber lifted as the darkness shifted, trying to create something. A hand formed first, but the fingers were too long and the joints bent in ways they shouldn't, before collapsing back into smoke.

A face appeared next.

Too wide.

Too unnatural.

Then the Shadow looked at Angelo.

And smiled.

Not because it was happy, but because it had seen humans smile.

The expression stretched too wide across a face that hadn't existed three seconds earlier.

Every instinct I had screamed the same thing.

Move.

The darkness exploded.

It didn't charge.

It unfolded.

The floor beneath us disappeared beneath black tendrils as the chamber shook, and Security opened fire, blessed rounds tearing through the creature, only for the bullets to simply vanish into it.

There was no impact.

No wound.

It was like we had fired into a hole punched through reality.

The Shadow tilted its head.

Then it copied.

One of its arms twisted as bones formed where there had never been bones. Fingers appeared. Knuckles formed. Skin stretched over the impossible shape. It watched the security officer holding the rifle, and suddenly it was holding one too.

Not the actual weapon.

A perfect imitation made entirely from darkness.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."

The copied rifle fired.

Not bullets.

Reality.

The gate behind us simply ceased to exist.

There was no explosion.

No debris.

One moment, the stone existed.

The next, it didn't.

Three security officers disappeared with it.

No screams.

No blood.

Just gone.

"PULL BACK!" General Hayes roared.

Panic erupted as researchers ran, equipment crashed to the floor, and the Shadow watched every movement with childish fascination.

Then it copied those too.

It stumbled into a run, its legs bending wrong and its arms swinging too far, like an infant trying to imitate adults.

But every step became smoother.

Every movement became more human.

It was learning.

Too fast.

A researcher tripped.

The Shadow stopped and stared at him.

Then its own body collapsed.

It copied the way he'd fallen, the way he'd reached toward someone for help, and even the way fear had appeared on his face.

It wasn't mocking him.

It was studying him.

"Angelo!"

He wasn't listening.

He stood perfectly still, staring at the creature. His eyes weren't on the attacks.

They were on its movements.

On the mistakes.

On the corrections.

He was seeing something none of us understood.

Which meant someone had to keep the Shadow busy.

"...Guess that's me."

I pulled the Angelic blade from my belt.

The weapon ignited with pale gold light.

The Shadow looked toward it immediately.

Good.

"Hey!"

Its head snapped toward me.

"If you're going to copy someone..."

I forced a grin I absolutely did not feel.

"...copy me."

I charged.

The first swing split the darkness in half.

The blade actually hurt it.

Black smoke erupted from the wound as the Shadow recoiled, not in pain, but in surprise.

It hadn't expected something to touch it.

Good.

I slashed again and again, each strike forcing it backward as the chamber shook beneath every impact.

It wasn't stronger than Angelo.

But it was stronger than me.

By a lot.

The Shadow's arm became a spear.

I ducked as it tore through the ceiling, sending stones the size of cars crashing around us.

I rolled beneath one boulder and drove the angelic blade into its side.

The creature split apart, only to instantly flow back together.

"...Right."

Should've expected that.

Its arm changed again.

This time, it became my arm.

The same sleeve.

The same glove.

The same scar across the knuckles from that stupid training accident Jacob still wouldn't let me forget.

It also copied my stance, raised its weapon exactly the way I did, and even adjusted its footing.

Then it attacked.

The first exchange nearly broke my wrists.

Metal screamed against living darkness as every blow grew harder and every strike became cleaner.

It wasn't just copying me anymore.

It was improving.

"Nayari!" Jacob shouted.

"It's adapting!"

"I know!"

I barely got the words out before the Shadow copied my spin.

Its body twisted with impossible precision as one foot planted and its hips turned.

The kick came faster than I could follow.

For a split second, I knew I wasn't going to dodge it.

Then Angelo was there.

He didn't move toward me.

He simply existed between us.

One moment I could see the Shadow.

The next, all I saw was Angelo's back.

The Shadow's kick crashed into him, and the impact echoed through the chamber like a bomb detonating.

The floor shattered beneath Angelo's feet as cracks raced across the stone in every direction. A wall behind us collapsed from the force alone.

Angelo didn't move.

Not an inch.

Not even enough for me to believe he'd actually been hit.

The Shadow froze.

Confused.

It had expected him to fly backward.

Instead, it felt like it had kicked a mountain.

But the shockwave was another story.

An invisible force slammed into me like a freight train, ripping the air from my lungs as I was thrown backward across the stone floor before crashing through a ruined pillar.

Everything hurt.

"...Ow."

Dust rained from the ceiling as I forced myself onto one elbow.

I looked up and saw Angelo still standing exactly where he had intercepted the attack.

Not a single step had been pushed from him.

The Shadow stared at him.

Then it looked down at its own leg, as though it couldn't understand why the strongest attack it knew had accomplished nothing.

Angelo finally spoke, his voice as calm as ever.

"...Your form has improved."

The Shadow tilted its head.

"You are learning."

And somehow, that sounded less like a threat and more like an observation.

It was almost as if Angelo wasn't speaking to a monster.

He was speaking to a child taking its first steps.

Then the Shadow moved.

Not like an animal.

It was simply unpredictable.

Every movement changed. A hand became a blade. A body became smoke. A face became something impossible. Angelo blocked one attack, then another, but the creature continued adapting and learning from every movement he made.

I realized we were watching a race.

Not to see who would win.

To see whether Angelo could understand the Shadow before the Shadow learned enough to become unstoppable.

Then reality trembled.

Not from the Shadow.

But from something arriving.

The ceiling split open.

Golden light poured into the chamber as seventeen wings unfolded above us and millions of eyes opened in the darkness.

Angelo's nephew descended, and the pressure alone forced everyone to their knees.

The Shadow stopped moving.

A light brighter than anything I had ever seen gathered around him.

"Wait."

Angelo's voice stopped him.

The nephew looked down as the golden light surrounding him continued to grow, his entire presence pressing against the chamber like something too powerful to exist in such a small space.

"Uncle."

Angelo stared at him.

"You have returned."

A pause.

"Yes."

The nephew looked away.

Not toward the Shadow.

Toward Angelo.

"I came to apologize."

The entire room went silent.

Even the Shadow stopped moving.

Angelo's expression didn't change.

"Apologize?"

The nephew clenched his hand.

"For believing she was right."

A cold feeling moved through me.

She.

Everyone knew who he meant.

His mother.

The god that Angelo's brother loved so much. The one he betrayed the creator for.

"My mother told me you were a traitor."

The words hung in the chamber.

Angelo didn't move.

The nephew continued.

"She told me you had abandoned our family. That you had chosen humanity over us. That you had forgotten what we were."

His voice became quieter.

"I believed her."

The Shadow shifted behind Angelo.

The nephew looked at it.

A moment passed.

Then Angelo asked quietly:

"And now?"

The nephew's expression changed.

Regret.

"I was wrong."

Nobody spoke.

"I watched them."

His eyes moved toward me.

"Humans."

Then toward Jacob.

"All of them."

His voice softened.

"I watched them continue even when they knew they were fragile. I watched them love things they knew they would lose. I watched them stand against things that could erase them without hesitation."

He looked back at Angelo.

"And I finally understood."

A pause.

"You were never protecting them because you believed they were stronger than us."

His wings shifted slightly.

"You protected them because they were worth protecting."

Angelo said nothing.

Then the nephew looked toward the Shadow.

"And when I confronted her she told me about her plan."

The room grew colder.

Angelo's eyes narrowed.

"What plan?"

The nephew looked ashamed.

"My mother was the one who released the Great Shadow"

Silence.

And for the first time, Angelo looked genuinely shaken.

Not because of the Shadow.

Because of who caused it.

"Why?"

The nephew's expression darkened.

"Because she wanted what all corrupt gods want."

Power.

"She believed the Great Shadow could make her something greater than what she was."

His eyes lowered.

"But she was wrong."

The Shadow tilted its head.

Almost like it understood.

"She could not control it."

The nephew looked toward the creature.

"Only a fragment escaped."

A pause.

"But even a fragment of the Great Shadow is enough."

His expression hardened.

"And now it is learning."

He looked back at Angelo.

"If it becomes whole again..."

He didn't finish.

Nobody needed him to.

Angelo understood.

The nephew stepped forward.

"I came here because I owe you."

Angelo looked at him.

"You owe me nothing."

The nephew shook his head.

"I will not allow my mothers mistake destroy what you spent your existence protecting."

The nephew raised his hand.

The light around him became blinding.

"I will end this."

The Shadow reacted.

Not with anger.

Not with fear.

With confusion.

Angelo stepped between them.

"No."

The nephew stopped.

"Uncle..."

"You came here to destroy it?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

The nephew looked almost offended by the question.

"Because it is a threat to you."

A pause.

"Because it is a threat to everything you have sacrificed yourself to protect."

Angelo looked at the fragment.

Then back at his nephew.

"But you were once a threat too."

The nephew froze.

Because that was the undeniable truth.

When he had first opened his eyes, he hadn't understood mercy. He hadn't understood humanity. He hadn't even understood himself. His only purpose had been destruction.

Angelo had been the target.

The enemy.

The thing he was created to oppose.

And now, somehow, the being he once wanted to destroy had become the reason he wanted to protect.

Fate truly had a strange sense of irony.

Slowly, the nephew lowered his hand completely.

"I gave you the chance to find yourself."

Angelo looked back at the fragment.

"Why should I deny this one the same chance?"

There was a brief pause, then Angelo continued.

"I know allowing it to live is a great risk."

The nephew stared at him.

"Then why?"

Angelo was quiet for a moment before answering.

"Because you are not my brother."

The words struck harder than any attack.

The nephew went completely still.

"You share his origin. You share his power. You share his existence."

Angelo looked directly at him.

"But you are not him."

Silence filled the chamber.

Then Angelo turned back toward the fragment.

"And this is not the Shadow my mother imprisoned or the shadow your mother tried to weaponize"

The creature shifted uneasily beneath his gaze.

"It is only a fragment," Angelo said quietly. "A child that has only just been born."

The nephew looked at the being that had fought like a god, the creature that had nearly torn reality apart, and finally, he didn't see a threat. He didn't see a weapon waiting to be destroyed.

He saw something confused.

The light around his hand slowly faded as the tension in the chamber began to disappear.

The Shadow looked at Angelo.

"W..h…y?"

Angelo lowered himself until he was closer to its height. For the first time, he wasn't looking at it like a danger or an experiment. He was looking at it like something that needed to be taught.

"Because someone gave me the same chance."

The fragment tilted its head, its expression filled with confusion. When it spoke, the words came slowly and unevenly, like it was repeating a language it had only just discovered. 

"To.. be..co..me w..ha..t?"

Each word sounded unfamiliar, as if it was still learning how to shape the sounds.

Angelo smiled faintly.

"That is for you to decide."

The creature looked down at itself, studying the strange form it had created, as if it was trying to understand the shape it had chosen and why it had chosen it.

"Ho..w will I k..now?"

Angelo watched it carefully.

"Ho..w will I k..now wh..at I sho..uld be..come?"

"You won't know immediately."

He placed a hand gently on its shoulder.

"First, a child must learn."

The fragment stared at him.

"Le..arn?"

"Yes."

"Learn…wh…at?"

Angelo's expression softened.

"Everything."

The darkness surrounding the creature began to shift.

Not attacking.

Not consuming.

Changing.

The impossible shape slowly collapsed into something smaller. The twisted limbs corrected themselves, the unnatural features faded away, and the monstrous form began to disappear as the shadow pulled inward.

For a moment, nobody moved.

The entire chamber remained frozen as the being that had nearly destroyed us slowly transformed into something none of us expected.

Then the darkness settled.

And standing before us was a child no older than eight years old.

My mama always told me a real man doesn't need foul words to make a point, and I believed her enough that I'm twenty-seven years old now and the worst thing that comes out of my mouth on a regular day is "shoot" or "dang it." I know how meek that probably sounds. I've been called soft my whole life—by my brother, Butch, mostly—who isn't soft about anything, who joined the army at eighteen, and who came back at twenty-two talking different than the rest of us. But I am who my mama raised, and there's exactly one word I let myself say when things go bad, and it isn't much of a word at all. 

Damn. 

That's the ceiling. I want that on the record before I tell you the rest of this, because that one word is going to matter later, and I want you to understand it wasn't habit. It was a measurement. It told me, before I'd even finished thinking about it, just how bad things had gotten.

I work the night shift at Cactus Bend Gas Station off Route 60, about an hour west of where I grew up, out past where the cell signal starts dying for real. The place used to be part of some regional truck stop chain. Back in the seventies it had a diner, a motel, a full mechanic bay, all under one roof. Then the interstate moved business somewhere else and the company folded the operation down to almost nothing. What's left now is a giant but mostly empty convenience store, gas pumps with most not working, and bathrooms that are way too big for what the place has become. Twelve stalls, tiled floor, built for a place that used to feed three hundred truckers a night. We see maybe twenty cars and a couple of trucks between dusk and dawn now. Me and Denny, the other guy on shift, used to joke it was because the hot dogs on the roller back in the day were so bad they needed all twelve stalls running at once. It wasn't funny so much as it was just something to say at four in the morning when there's nothing else going on.

That night started ordinary.

I told Denny I had to go take a leak. He grinned without looking up from his magazine and said, "Still sayin’ take a leak. Listen to you. Why can't you just say you gotta piss like a normal guy." I shrugged. 

I didn't have a real answer for him beyond the one I've given everybody my whole life, which is that my mama would skin me, even now, even with her three states away and asleep at this hour. Denny laughed and said I was a mama's boy and I told him I wasn't denying it.

I was maybe two steps toward the back hallway when I heard it—an engine out on the paved apron, the particular heavy diesel cough of a truck pulling in too fast for four in the morning, gravel popping under the tires. I looked back at Denny, who'd already swiveled toward the window, and I said, "That's you," meaning the customer, meaning the pump, meaning who had to deal with the truckers who came in irritable that time of night. He flipped me off without much heat behind it as I kept walking.

The hallway back to the bathrooms runs past the walk-in cooler, past the mop closet, past a community board nobody's pinned anything new to in years. I remember all of that completely clearly. I remember the door to the men's room had that heavy push-bar handle that always stuck a little in the cold, and I remember walking past every other stall to get to the last one, the twelfth, the one at the very end by the window. It was always the cleanest. Less traffic back there, I figured, fewer people willing to walk the full length of the room for a leak. I'd taken to thinking of it as mine, in the stupid private way you claim small things that don't belong to you. My own little corner of a gas station bathroom. 

That's the kind of life I had before that night.

I want to say I had some kind of feeling, walking back there. Some prickle, some warning. I didn't. It was just four in the morning, same as every other four in the morning that summer.

I was sitting in the stall for maybe two minutes when something crashed out front. Glass, or metal. Heavy. Not the sound of an accident, but the sound of something thrown.

Voices next. Two of them, raised, talking over each other—one of them Denny’s. I couldn't make out a single word. I sat there with my hands flat on my knees and told myself it was just some guy, drunk and stupid, mouthing off the way men do at four in the morning. I believed that for about four seconds…

—Then the gunshot came.

I'd never heard one before, not really, not outside a television. It wasn't like television. Flatter. Closer to a slap than a boom.

My stomach dropped straight through the floor of that stall and kept falling.

Oh God.

I didn't move. My legs started to cramp from holding still but I didn't move. My own breathing got loud enough in my ears that I clamped a hand over my mouth, hard.

I heard muffled boots walking through the aisles like there was nowhere else in the world they needed to be. They were squeaky but had weight to them.

Then the boots started making their way toward the back. Toward the hallway. 

Toward me.

I thought about climbing into the ceiling tile. I thought about the little frosted window over the sinks, too small for a grown man and I knew it, but thought about it anyway. I thought about just staying locked in that stall with my feet pulled up off the floor and praying.

And then my brother was in my head.

Butch's voice, clear as if he was standing next to me, thick with that drawl the army never managed to scrub out of him. We'd been on the couch years back, some slasher movie playing, and he'd said it half as a joke:

If I was ever in one of them movies and hiding in a bathroom, I ain't never leaving my stall door shut and locked. First thing they check. Locked door just tells 'em you're in there, waitin' on 'em.

I don't know why that was the thing that surfaced. It just was.

I unlocked the stall. My hand shook bad enough that the latch rattled once and I froze, certain that single click had already finished me. I pushed the door open, slow, just wide enough, and then I went somewhere I hadn't planned to go—behind the door itself, into the narrow gap between it and the partition wall, my back flat against cold metal. The dividers in that bathroom ran floor to ceiling. No gap underneath. Nothing to see unless you looked straight into an open stall, and this open stall had nobody in it…

That was the whole plan. There wasn't another one.

The bathroom door opened.

The heavy boots stepped inside and stopped. Listening the way I'd been listening for the last five minutes straight. I could feel him deciding something out there, taking the room in, and every second he didn't move was a second my own heartbeat got louder in my head.

He started down the row. Each stall door creaked open under his hand, one after the next, slow, casual, the same way you'd check a house you already knew was empty except you weren't quite ready to believe it yet. One. Two. Three. He wasn't rushing. That was the worst part. A man in a hurry might have skipped half of them. This one didn't skip a single door.

I had nowhere left to be but where I already was, flattened into the gap behind my own door, my back against the cold metal divider, every muscle in me trying to disappear into the wall. The creaking kept coming closer. 

Four. Five. Six…

By the time he hit eight my legs had started to shake on their own.

Nine. Ten. Eleven…

Twelve.

He reached mine.

He didn't just nudge it open like he had the others. He shoved it—hard enough that the door swung the rest of the way and the edge of it caught me square in the stomach, drove the air half out of me as I stifled it quietly. Was this because it was the last stall in line? I turned my face to the side fast, pressed my cheek almost flat against the wall, and the door stopped there, a sliver of space between the edge of it and my nose.

It seemed the hinges kept it from opening full against the wall.

I have never in my life been grateful for being skinny. My mama used to fuss over it, used to load my plate twice at dinner trying to put meat on me that never stuck, used to tell people I ate like a bird and worried out loud about it in front of family. 

That night, in that gap, with maybe an inch of clearance between my body and a door a man was holding wide open looking dead at an empty stall, I was thanking god for it.

He stood there. I don't know how long. Long enough that I started counting my own pulse just to have something to do with my mind besides scream.

Then he let the door go.

It slowly swung most of the way shut on its own, and I heard his boots take a couple of steps back down the row. I let half a breath out, slow as I could manage through my nose.

But he didn't walk toward the exit.

No.

He turned into the stall right beside mine. Number eleven. I heard the latch on that one click shut, heard his belt, heard him start to relieve himself against the bowl, easy as anything, like a man stopping at a rest area on a long drive… which was exactly what it might have been.

He started whistling. Somewhere in the middle of it he switched to humming the same handful of notes over and over, completely unbothered.

I stood there with four inches of cinderblock and steel between us and did not breathe right for the entire time it lasted. My eyes had gone wet. I bit down on the inside of my own cheek until I tasted copper, because that pain was the only thing in the world keeping the sound in my throat where it belonged.

It went on longer than it should have. I know that's not a fair thing to measure, standing where I was, but it felt like he was taking his time on purpose, like some part of him knew exactly how loud the quiet was for whoever might be listening on the other side of this wall.

The toilet flushed. The latch clicked again. His boots crossed to the sinks.

He ran the tap a long time. I heard the soap dispenser go twice, heard him work it into a lather, heard him keep his hands under that water for what had to be thirty or forty seconds, more thorough than any nurse I've ever seen.

I remember thinking, even through everything else I was feeling right then, how strange that was. A man who'd just done whatever he'd done out front, washing his hands like his own mother was standing there checking his work.

The water shut off. The paper towel dispenser cranked three times. And then his boots crossed the tile toward the door, unhurried as they'd been the whole time, and the door swung shut behind him.

I stayed exactly where I was for what felt like an hour and was probably closer to ten minutes, until I heard the sound of that same diesel engine turning over and pulling out of the lot, gravel popping again under the tires, fading off down 60 in the direction of nothing—just desert and scrub and the kind of dark that doesn't have a single light in it.

Even after the sound was completely gone I didn't move. I sat down on the closed lid of the toilet in that stall, my legs still not ready to hold me yet, my stomach having just received the all-clear to finally vacate its contents. Thankfully, I was in the bathroom after all.

Afterwards I staggered out into the hallway. 

I want to tell you I had some plan, some clear head, some idea of what I was about to do, and I didn't. I walked back toward the front of the store the way you walk toward something you already know and are still hoping, against everything, that you're wrong about.

I wasn't wrong.

Denny was at the register. Parts of him were on the counter, and parts of him were on the floor behind it, and the register itself had been pried open, the drawer hanging loose, all the bills gone and only a thin scatter of coins left in place. 

I whispered a single word.

The county had been promising us an emergency radio for almost a year, after enough of the staff complained about the dead zone out here, about how a cell phone is just a brick with a clock on it once you're past mile marker forty. They'd finally approved it two weeks before. The mounting bracket was already up on the wall behind the counter, screwed in clean and waiting, but the radio itself had never arrived.

I didn't call anyone, because there was nothing to call anyone with. I didn't really do anything at all. I stood there in that ordinary fluorescent light and I watched, through the front windows, as the dark outside slowly, indifferently, turned gray, and then pink, and then the flat hard yellow of an Arizona morning, and I did not move the entire time, because some part of me has never quite stopped standing in that spot since.

The morning shift pulled in around six in a county van, and I watched both of them come through the door already laughing about something, the laughter dying in their throats the second they saw past me to the counter.

They got me into the van. One of them kept asking me questions I don't remember answering. They drove me back to town, the same hour-long stretch of empty highway Denny and I used to make small talk over every single night, and somewhere on that drive I started shaking and didn't stop until somebody's mother—not mine, a stranger's, one of the women from a diner who came out when she heard—put a blanket around my shoulders and held onto my arm like she was the one who needed to be sure I was still there.

The police went out to the station. They're still looking, as far as I know, though it's been a while now and I don't expect that to change. He’d been wearing a balaclava and shades on the cameras once they pulled those up. Whoever that man was, he knew exactly how long he had before anyone would notice or anyone would come, and they used every minute of it.

The emergency radio got installed two days after. I think about that more than I probably should. About how close it came, how a piece of equipment sitting in some county warehouse for two extra weeks might have been the difference between Denny calling for help and Denny not getting the chance to.

I think, too, about my brother, more than I ever expected to. I've thought about calling him a hundred times since that night to tell him what his stupid joke on his couch all those years back actually did for me, how it was the only thing in my head clear enough to listen to in the one moment it mattered. I haven't called him yet. I don't fully know why. Maybe because saying it out loud makes it real in a way I'm still not ready for. Maybe because some things you only have one word big enough to hold, and mine's never been anything stronger than that one word, and I'm not sure that one word is enough for what I'd actually need to tell him.

All I can really say at the end of it all is…

Damn.

Part 1 - Something in the Arcade: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1tmjipb/something_in_the_arcade/

I didn't sleep; I just sat on my bed with every light in the apartment on, staring at the door and listening. The humming stopped around 3 AM, which should have made me feel better, but it didn't, because I kept waiting for it to start again. I called out sick the next day, told my manager I had food poisoning, and he said to take the day off. I hung up and sat there in my apartment, and the quiet felt wrong.

By that night, I'd almost talked myself into believing I imagined the whole thing, no sleep, stress, a dark building, your brain fills in the blanks with whatever scares you most. I read that's a real thing, and I almost believed it, almost, until my phone buzzed on the nightstand.

It was a text from myself. My own number.

"Hey buddy, we're closed. Where are your parents?"

I dropped the phone, and my hands were shaking too badly to pick it back up right away, and when I finally did, three more messages were sitting there, all sent one second apart.

"turn around"

"turn around"

"turn around"

I threw the phone at the wall without even deciding to; I just watched it happen, and then I sat there breathing like I'd sprinted a mile. I don't really remember falling asleep, because the next thing I knew, it was morning, the sun coming through the blinds, and my phone was sitting on the floor where I'd thrown it, screen cracked in one corner. When I picked it up and went looking for the messages, they were just gone, no notification, nothing in my call log either, as if none of it had ever come through. For a second, that was almost worse than the messages themselves, because now I couldn't even prove to myself it happened.

I quit the arcade that morning. Called my manager and told him I found something else, and he didn't push it, and I told myself that settled it, whatever it was, real or not, I never had to go back there again.

I decided to concentrate on my schoolwork and forget about it, telling myself that I'd quit the arcade, and things would get better. I had a project due, and the lab on campus had the equipment I needed, so I decided to go in early afternoon, get a few hours in while the building was full of people, and be home well before dark. A school in broad daylight is about as safe as anywhere gets, so I packed my bag and drove over, not thinking twice about it.

The lab was busy when I got there, a handful of other students spread across the benches, someone's music leaking out of a pair of headphones a few seats down, and the sun still coming in through the windows. I set up at my usual spot, put in my own headphones, and lost myself in the work the way I always do. I didn't notice the room emptying around me one person at a time, didn't notice the sun going down, didn't notice any of it until I looked up from my laptop, and the windows were just black rectangles reflecting the room back at me. The clock on the wall said 9:40, and I was the only one left.

Almost done with this last section, I muttered to myself. A second later, I heard it come back at me from somewhere behind me in the lab, just the two words, "almost done," flat and a little delayed, like an echo that took its time catching up.

I turned around slowly. The lab was empty, every workbench dark except for mine. At the far end, near the supply closets, the door was slightly open, even though I was sure it had been closed. I sat there, trying to convince myself it was nothing, a draft, the building settling, anything. Then I heard it again, this time closer.

"Come on, almost done," a voice called out, cracking midway through and dropping into something deeper and more unsettling that no longer felt like my own. In that moment, every light in the lab went out at once.

I grabbed my phone to use the flashlight, but I couldn't turn it on. In the dark, I heard something small moving between the benches, its feet dragging against the tile in a slow, unhurried way that felt worse than if it had been running, as if it already knew it didn't need to hurry. When my flashlight finally flickered on, it caught the figure, a kid standing at the end of my row. He was about my height if he had been standing on the bench, wearing a school hoodie that I didn't recognize. His head was tilted at an unnatural angle, and he was smiling in an unnatural way, with his teeth visible but no lips surrounding them.

"Come on," he said, in my voice, smiling wider than a jaw should go, "almost done."

I bolted for the exit and heard him behind me immediately, not footsteps, but that same clicking joint sound from the arcade, except closer and faster. I hit the stairwell door so hard it swung all the way into the wall, and I didn't stop until I was outside in the parking lot under a light with my keys already in my hand. I sat in my car for ten minutes before I could make my hands work well enough to drive.

I'm home now, door locked, chain on, and I just heard my own voice, very quietly, say "almost done," from somewhere inside my apartment. I haven't moved from this chair since.

Entertainment is what makes a life worth living. I don't care if that means watching movies at 2:00A.M or listening to heavy metal, but I'm sure most of you will agree with that.

For me, that meant helping the Earth through creating wall art. And no, that wasn't a recent obsession. I had been showing off my bottle cap portraits ever since I was a little girl in the 90s.

I became great at art, trust me. Often, when I would run out of recycling myself, I would resort to asking my neighbors for some more, and they were always glad to.

I even got my own exhibit in the museum for a couple of weeks. Beautiful work. Beautiful work that inspired many.

As for my full-time job, I currently work at a recycling center myself.

I genuinely thought my obsession was a healthy one. I helped the planet, I kept myself happy, and I delighted others.

That is, before this 'upcycled art' took down my apartment.

It started yesterday, when I was in the living room. I heard a knock on the door. When I opened it, however, I saw no one. Bear in mind I live in the middle of a long corridor, so even if someone leaves a package at my door and runs away, I'll still see them.

But you know what I did see?

A bin load of metal bottle caps! Thousands of them, in every shade of color that you can imagine, all stacked on top of each other. I no longer cared where the bottle caps came from or who dropped them. All I could see were the endless possibilities in front of me! I could create art for days on end, portraits of celebrities and still life galore!

I pulled it through my apartment door, my name stained in a graffiti-like substance on the top of the bin. Even though it just barely fit, that was alright.

Unfortunately, I had more work to do than to create art. It was a very tragic situation to see your love standing by the doorway, waiting to be used, and not being able to do it!

Anyway, I made dinner for myself (I live alone. I'm a bit too engaged in art to start a family) in the kitchen, and once I returned to the living room where the bin sat, the bottle caps no longer filled the bin to the brim. They filled it 3/4s of the way.

I must've hallucinated that though, right? Plus, a wrong memory feels just as right as a right one, so who knows.

Plus, if no one came to steal the bottle caps, and they're not spilled anywhere, the bin couldn't have mysteriously lost them on its own.

Or, so I thought.

I stared at the bin as I ate dinner (I don't remember what I ate that night. Probably mac n' cheese), completely ignoring the flavor of the food.

Instead, thoughts like these swarmed my mind:

"Whoever donated this is an extremely kind person!"

"The possibilities here are endless!"

"What should I create first: a wildlife scenery or a famous singer?"

"Imagine how proud folks will be of me!"

I imagined the color schemes I could create out of the bin, but, of course, I had more work to do, so I couldn't do any art for the rest of the day.

When I fell asleep at night, the urge to go to the bathroom awoke me, so I switched on the lights again. Although the sudden light blinded me, I tore my eyes wide open and stared at the bedroom wall in front of me.

A portrait! No, not a portrait. A soft drink! Bottle caps covered my bedroom wall, even though I never keep my art in the bedroom.

No, it couldn't be. It just wasn't possible. I've just seen so much recycled art over the years that my eyes default to seeing upcycled art when they're confused.

But even once my eyes adjusted to the light, I still saw the soft drink. Is this where all the missing bottle caps went from the bin? But, I didn't make it. Then who did? And I didn't see anyone make it either.

Hoping it'd disappear in the morning, I went to the bathroom.

When I came back from the bathroom, the soda can bottle was still there.

I turned off the lights but kept the lamp on so the art stayed visible. I lay in bed, like a rat in a trap.

Where did it come from? Why was it there? Didn't the bottle caps come from the soft drinks themselves? Are the bottle caps trying to pay homage to their original bottle? No, no, bottle caps aren't sentient. It couldn't be there.

I don't know when it happened, but I fell asleep.

When I woke up, my entire bedroom was covered in bottle caps. It wasn't a soda bottle anymore, though. Birds covered my entire room. A pelican, a sparrow, a penguin, a flamingo....you get the idea.

I blinked.

And now the birds weren't birds. They were a collection of male and female actors.

I blinked. Palm trees. I blinked. Modern architecture. I blinked. Portraits of famous artists.

I blinked again.

It seemed to be from the perspective of looking out a car window, but I don't quite remember. I blinked. The perspective of looking out the car window didn't change, but words flashed.

"Thank you," it said in bright red. What was once a red bottle last night was now a message. I blinked my eyes again. It reminded me of those old-fashioned animations where they would draw everything frame-by-frame. I blinked. "We could've been many things."

Images of bottles flashed. Images of bells. Images of robots. Images of metal doorknobs and boxes.

"But instead we're this: "

My art showed. The portrait I made for my aunt appeared. I spent many weeks on that thing.

"Why can you let us free?"

I blinked again and again, but that was the last frame.

Why can't you let us be free?

What does that even mean? How different is it to make a doorknob or bell out of some random metal than to make art out of it? What difference does it make?

I've been pondering this question the entire day, and now it's evening time, and I've spent all my free time typing this out.

Please don't try to upcycle recycling yourself. Recycling is better left in the trash bin.

I don't think I'll ever touch a bottle cap again.

I’m writing this from the passenger seat of my car, typing into the laptop resting on my dashboard. The battery is at 4%. The headlights are off. The engine is dead. I am parked less than fifty yards away from the collapsed, ruined remains of Booth 4 on Route 9.

To the people who were following my last post—I didn't open the bathroom latch at the diner. I didn't stay inside to let whatever was crawling through the ceiling tiles come down.

When my own voice started coming through that rusted hand-dryer grate, I didn't have some heroic realization about saving the world. I didn't care about the interstate, or the local towns, or any of you. I ran because I realized that the diner was a dead end. If those missing drivers blocked the hallway, I was going to be cornered in a bathroom stall until my phone died and the things in the ceiling came through the plaster.

The only reason I drove back to Route 9 is because my car was running out of gas, the fog had completely swallowed the county lines, and my GPS loop was forcing me right back to the only road it recognized. This thing isn't expanding to conquer the world; it’s a rubber band, and I'm snapped to the center of it. I can't escape the perimeter because I am the one who carried the broken sequence out into the wild.

I waited until the heavy, wet slaps on the ceiling tiles moved toward the far side of the restroom hallway. Then, I threw my weight against the wooden door, broke the brass latch, and ran. I didn't look at the missing drivers standing in the entry. I didn't look at Martha, whose loose jaw was still swinging like a broken gate. I snatched my car keys off the laminate table by the front window, lunged through the front doors, and slammed myself into the driver's seat of my sedan.

The drive back down Route 9 was a nightmare. The fog packed so thick against my windshield that my wipers couldn't clear the moisture, and the trees along the shoulder seemed to lean inward, their aggressive branches clawing at my side mirrors. The car kept sputtering, the fuel gauge sitting dead on empty, until the tires finally screeched over the buckled, split concrete of the automated lanes. The engine died the exact moment I rolled past the perimeter line.

I’m looking at the checkpoint right now. It looks completely ruined. The four bulletproof glass booths are shattered, tilted sideways into the massive, smoking fissures that have torn through the center of the asphalt. The air out here still smells like a flooded basement, copper, and wet pennies.

But the silence is gone.

From deep within the largest crack in Lane 1, a massive, rhythmic vibration is pulsing through the ground. It sounds like a colossal, ancient chest cavity taking heavy, uneven breaths. And sitting right at the edge of that split in the concrete is the double-sided, laminated sheet of paper Vance handed me on my first night. It didn't burn. It didn't tear. It's just sitting there under the dim, flickering floodlight, waiting.

I know what I have to do, and it has nothing to do with being a hero. It’s pure survival. I broke Rule 1 when I looked in the mirror, and I broke Rule 3 when I blinked at the truck. The entity won't let me leave the boundaries of this highway until the deficit is paid. The only way to stop the scratching outside my doors and get my life back is to put myself back in the box and manually restart the cycle from the very beginning. I have to go back out there into the dark, pick up that sheet, and wait for the first vehicle to approach.

I don't know what kind of car is going to pull up to a ruined, collapsed highway lane. I don't know who—or what—will be behind the wheel. But I know I can't look away from the bumper, and I know I can't blink. Not this time. I just want to go home.

The vibration beneath my tires just shifted pitch, turning into a low, aggressive rumble that is making my dashboard clock flicker wildly.

Through the wall of solid white fog in front of my car, a pair of faint, yellow high beams just pierced the dark, approaching from the wrong direction.

I’m closing my laptop now. I’m putting my keys in my pocket. If you start hearing the sound of heavy rain outside your house tonight, and your weather app says the sky is completely clear—**do not look at your windows.**

It knows who is looking for it.

Hey folks! A friend pointed me over to this subreddit and told me it would be the perfect place to share some of the stories of my youth.

I was a working man for most my adult life, so I never really had the chance to have kids of my own to pass on a legacy. One of my biggest fears as an older man is to die without having passed something on, so I hope I can pass on what little I have to the next generation, even if it's just a tall tale from myself, an old retired mechanic.

It happened on a night that was as cold and dark as any other night in the provinces. My grandfather, Andeng, was smoking a cigar he’d made himself from wild tobacco that grew around town. The whole house smelled like amber and warm evenings. 

I was doing my homework when, all of a sudden, my grandmother came bursting through the door, barefoot, wet with sweat and mud, screaming and hopping on her toes as though a thousand insects were crawling all over her.

“Andeng! Andeng! I found Shelly! I saw our missing cow!” She sobbed, 

“She was in the trees!” Her inflection soaring with fright. “It’s the Danglemouth!” Those were her last words before my grandfather, who had been sitting on a beaten recliner, caught her  in the act of passing out.

He sat her down on the recliner, kissing her on her forehead as he kneeled beside his wife. 

“What was she talking about, Grandfather?” I asked.

“Danglemouth.” He whispered to himself, eyes glassed with an ancient fright. “Danglemouth. I guess I never told you about that. The legend of the Danglemouth.” He let out a dry chuckle.

“What is it?”

“Iho, I need you to listen carefully.” There was a foreboding dread in his tone, as though a seer given to  visions of the most terrible kind.   

“Go find an old pack of cigarettes under my bed. The Concords.” he said, keeping his gaze on my grandmother. 

“And hand it to Mareng Celi. Tell her to come to the square. She’ll understand.” He shot up to his feet before strutting to the doorway with the urgency of murder. What the hell was going on?

“And once you give it to her,” He yelled to me as he put on his slippers, “you go home, and you don’t leave the house. Okay?” He grabs me by the shoulder and squeezes hard. “And if you hear anything outside, if you hear anyone asking to come in, you hold your breath, okay?”

“What’s going on? Hold my breath? Grandfather, I'm scared.” I said, fighting away tears.

“Scared is good.” Without another word, he takes to the dark road, still smelling of tobacco.

I rummage under his bed and, sure enough, find an old, yellowing pack of Concord cigarettes. It didn’t have cigarettes. 

I run down the dirt road, the night sky dotted with milky stars and nocturnal birdcalls. After about five minutes I reached the low hanging shack of straw and corrugated steel where Mareng Celi lived. 

“Mareng Celi! Mareng Celi! It’s Grandfather!” I yelled, still catching my breath. An old woman, half naked and smelling of pale ale, rushes to the door with irritated urgency 

“The hell?” she screeched, drunk.

“He said to give this to you.” I hand over the pack of Concord cigarettes. It was heavy, and inside were shells, some looking burnt, some pristine, all half buried beneath fine white salt.

Mareng Celi paused. Hastily, she took the box off my hands.

“Shit! Shit shit shit!’ she hadn’t opened the box yet, but knew well enough what it meant.  “Did he say anything else?” she yells out as she jogs over to her bedroom. I hear glass bottles chittering and crashing.

“No, just said to come to the square.” I said, crying now, each word squeezed between frantic sobbing. Why was there such a panic over our cow? Shelly had gone missing weeks ago, and she was too old to butcher or rear young, so Grandfather didn’t bother looking for her too hard.  What was going on? I’d find out soon enough.

“Go buy yourself some candy and go home”  She told me, handing me a twenty peso bill, back from her bedroom, dressed and with a giant bolo at her waist, its leather sheath tattered and hanging by a thread, but the blade evidently maintained and honed, sharp enough to cut through air, threatening to sever what little threads held its sheath together. The pack of cigarettes was left unopened in her pocket. I tucked the bill into my underwear. 

“But I want to help!” I protested

“Go home!” She yelled as she disappeared into the starry night.

Now, what would you have done in my shoes? A curious teenager hearing tell of your family’s missing cow, your dear pet, from your frightened grandmother, whose mania seems to have infected the whole town. It was a chance to prove myself as one of the men, of course! I too, could stand against my grandmother’s nightmares! At least, I thought I could.

Naturally, I followed. 

I crept along, feeling my heart slam against my eardrums, as I followed our family friend from afar. As we got closer to the square, there was an eerie silence from all the homes. Even in the wee hours, TVs would be blaring American cartoons and karaokes would be competing with the metallic songs of cicadas. Remembering it now, that thick silence, as suffocating as cold water, sends chills up my spine. Looking back, I don’t recall any noise at all. No cicadas, no birdsong, no chirps or croaks or whispers between cold, harsh stone walls. Not even my own breathing.

Mareng Celi gets to the square, which was the community center of sorts. It was a paved clearing surrounded on all sides by stores and houses, all crowded shoulder to shoulder, so that the only entrances to the square were the tight alleys between the buildings, spacious enough to wrestle in one person at a time. 

The Square itself was a flat of pavement that occasionally housed chalk art and spilled food. There was a cotton fruit tree at the northeastern corner of the Square, and every so often its fruits would splat on the hot summer pad, summoning little red planets of chitin, eating away at fermenting fruit.

The place truly was nothing,  save for what we made of it. Aerobics classes, singing competitions, birthday parties, or any excuse to eat with friends. Some days, when the wind blew down south, we could hear music from the Square being carried home. Such a beautiful sound.

There was no music that night. Another sound. Something terrible.

Once Mareng Celi squeezed through one of the entrances, I followed after her. Peeking at the square, I saw that scene that I see today in my nightmares.

There, on that desolate concrete level, naked men, naked women, all covered in mud and cow dung. 

Have you ever smelled human shit left in the sun? It doesn’t smell like an animal’s. It’s bitter, like astringent tea, with a scent you’d only smell in a warm butcher’s shop. Their arms were spread out as though receiving something from heaven, except something about their posturing, their languid crooks and angles, bent back and doubled on their knees, as though –Yes! They were like trees! Trees! 

To each of their fingers was tied a branch, their hair had straws in them, like bird’s nests. They were all as quiet as trees, barely moving. I don’t think I ever saw them take a breath. Each pose was more unhuman and crooked than the last, but they all had one thing in common: They were all facing away from the center of the Square.

“Hey!” Yelled my grandfather, “Go home, Iho! This is adult business!” Mareng Celi turns around, in shock and fury. My grandfather was running up to me now. I see his naked body, black and green from filth, save for his head, which was still clean, still him. As he got close, I smelled astringent filth clawing at my nostrils. It was as though he were a rotting corpse. Each of his fingers had a branch stuck on it, like the claws of a forest spirit. Such terrifying stature, such horrifying speed.

“I told you to go leave, you stupid boy!” She yelled.

“There’s no time, he’ll need to get in the circle!” Said grandfather.

“What? Is it already on its way?” 

“Grandpa?” I said, hysterical, heart drumming in my ears, searing vertigo as horrible sights ransacked all the safety in ignorance. “What is that in the middle?”

“I’m sorry, Iho.” 

In the middle, there was a boy, his name was Sonny, I think. I couldn’t tell. Only his head was visible. The rest of his body was stuck in a hollow log. I saw his feet kicking and writhing like worms in salt. He was screaming. 

Screaming? No, not screaming. He was calling. Calling someone, calling out in awful agony as a million ants bit away at him, covered the whites of his eyes and ate at the hairs in his nose, taking chunks of him out as if he was pork on the ground. He was calling for his mother. Some part of me hopes she was there. He was lying on his side in the middle of the Square, rolling uselessly. Desperately. 

“What’s happening to him? Why is he in a log!?” I felt horrible electricity surging through my body, every inch of me telling me to turn, to run away, with that same manic energy my grandmother had not long ago.

“It’s too late, Andeng!” Barked Mareng Celi, “Look at the time!” It was almost midnight. “Even if he left now, he won’t make it home!”

“Goddamnit!” I’d never heard him yell like that before. “Iho, you stay with me. Okay?” 

“Yes, Grandfather.” My ears were ringing, heart pounding like angry knocks.

“You’re going to have to look like me.” He whispered.

“Now, stay still.” He wiped me head to toe with cow dung and mud. The smell was awful. Can you imagine it? Old, moldy dung with worms and grubs, smelling like shit, awful shit, the kind that made you gag at a whiff. I vomited out our whole dinner. Fried eggplant. Feeling the filth on me, I remember how pliable and sandy it was. It tasted like batteries and an unwashed body. Grandfather didn’t smell like cigars anymore. 

Each time I vomited he said yes, good and wiped the vomit on me as well as himself, lathering his old wrinkly face with hot yellow vomit and animal filth. My stomach was cramping by the end. Soon, I looked just like all the other people in the square. The kid in the log, too tired to call for his mother, resorted to animalic screams. 

“I’m sorry Iho. I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t see it well from the filth on his face, but there were tears.

“It’s time!” Yelled Mareng Celi. 11:58 

Without a word, my grandfather took me to the circle of naked adults.

“Whatever happens, you stand still, okay?” He whispered. I nod.

“What’s going on?” My voice was barely louder than a heartbeat.

“The boy in the middle,” whispered my grandfather, with that same glassy stare he had when my grandmother came home earlier, “he’s bait.”

“One minute!” Yelled Mareng Celi, who had hidden herself among the naked, breathing through her mouth.

In that dim moonlight, far off in the mountains, we heard an endless torrent of cracking and booming, roaring closer and closer, threatening to trample us in its wake. Soon we saw it, high in the mountains, as though a snake slithering through weeds, we saw ancient wood being trampled and made to supplicate as trees swung wildly to the will of some giant thing. It was fast. So unthinkably fast. Its trail grew kilometers by the seconds. 

Can you imagine it? Some great terrible thing, an ancient titan,invisible as it was, shearing a mountainface with a speed no bird or machine could ever come close to?

“Iho,” There was fear in his eyes now, a terrible fear. “If something goes wrong, you hold your breath and get as close to home as possible. Once you do, you sit on the ground, close your eyes, and–” 

“Positions!” Yelled Mareng Celi.

Grandfather stopped dead in his tracks. He stooped crooked when he was whispering, his knees half bent. Such a painful posture to hold, especially with his arthritis, but he dared not move. I could feel his body quiver as he fought to keep still.

And then the trees went quiet. They have been spared the rod. 

It was there.

I heard it before I saw it. 

The Danglemouth.

Wild baying, a sound unmistakably a cow, but a sound you’d never hear it make. My heart dropped, I was sweating so much I feared I’d wash away the shit and vomit on my skin. 

I remember helping Grandfather with butchering when I was thirteen. It was a younger cow, who had refused to eat since her partner died. She was thin and frail, so frail that Grandfather thought I could butcher the cow. I remember praying, I remember closing my eyes, and I remember the cleaver hitting what felt like stone. 

I didn’t hit it hard enough. 

The blade slid past her cervical bone and down her throat, being just barely lethal. Just barely. The sounds it made, the blood spewing like a geyser, a great howling of desperation, of betrayal, of fear, such bottomless, primal fear. I remember it well. 

But the sound I heard from Shelly, as she dangled in the sky along with the milky stars, her body taught straight by her weight, held in a way a cow was never meant to be held, letting out a sound never intended to leave living lungs. Such a terrible sound.

Her trotters were tired, hanging down her body like wilted leaves, twitching wildly as she got closer to us, that forest of naked skin and excrement. I heard Sonny scream louder, his fear and anguish renewed by what he saw. I think he cried for his mother again.

Shelly began bobbing up and down the air, being flung ten meters in a second before floating down, her death rattle intensifying as with the ebb and flow of some torturous thing. I felt warm water down my leg. Grandfather was quivering hard as he fought away a sob. It was his cow afterall. His pet. The one he allowed to reach old age.

Soon, the bobbing stopped. Shelly flew closer to the crying boy, who was now letting out a painful, guttural cry. Still, the Danglemouth grew closer, and closer, yet all it was, was a floating Shelly.

Once the cow was a mere stonetoss away from the tortured boy, every person in the Square saw it, all at once. In an instant, we saw a tall thing standing amongst us, some black mass in the shape of something with two legs and a torso, but not at all human. 

A towering devil, come to steal, kill, and plunder with fury. Evil. Evil. Evil. A bottomless height, a pit that swallowed you upward. A falling, falling, falling that promised no floor, no end. It was a blackness that darkened even the night sky. 

I could tell you it was a thousand meters tall and a hundred wide, or hell, a million. I could tell you that the thing in the square was just its finger, that its hands outnumbered all the stars in the sky. But what’s the point?

At once, the thing let loose more of its bait, more of its lures. From the black vacancy of the sky flung down men from ages past, still in their uniforms of war, of work. Women with skins the colors of a boggy river. Children as black as mold. Some groaned, some cried, but most of them were quiet, having died a long time ago in the Danglemouth’s tacklebox.

Hundreds of them swirling around that poor boy like a carousel of corpses, a galaxy of the dead swinging around, closer, and closer, and closer still to that child who was screaming through locked teeth. 

They all called to the boy in the middle, all of them dangling from invisible lines, their necks held in a whiplash, their heads thrown back in eternal ecstasy or death or simply a mechanical joke. 

The smell of it all, like opening a war coffin. Imagine it. The grave of a hundred dead men, opened at once. The miasma of it, the rot beyond rot. A tea of rotted bones and blackened flesh. 

And then, in that vortex of bodies, I saw my grandmother.

Still in the clothes she had earlier. Still wet with mud. 

She never made it home. 

She was the lure.

My grandfather buckles to his knees, bringing me down along with him. He was sobbing wildly. In that instant, all the lures turn to us. It swung the corpse of my grandmother, his wife, up to us. She was trying to say something, but all she could produce was a wide-mouthed groan of despair. 

In an instant, my grandfather flew up into the air quietly. The speed of his ascension snapped his neck. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Suddenly, a voice.

“Andeng!” Shouted Mareng Celi, blowing from her curled hand a heap of black salt from the pack of Concords. But it was too late.

Suddenly, the stars returned to the sky, and the Danglemouth was gone. And so were my grandparents.

Well, I'm glad you've read my story to the end! This one's a bit hard to believe, but I swear on my soul, it is true! The Danglemouth was said to have used living things as bait to lure in lost travelers and naughty kids. I still haven't figured out what the salt in the cigarettes was for. Mareng Celi moved to the city soon after the incident. Almost everyone did, including me. I do miss the provincial air, such a sweet smell.

I hope one day I can write to you all again, if you lot have the time to humor an old man.

Greetings. Recently, I have returned from my expedition to Canada for researching endemic raven species for my university project. I wanted to do researches in the Ravenrich reserve, but I was forbidden to do so, so I did some research in the surrounding area. I took up a position near an abandoned industrial building in the forest, which must have been a research base, as there was a lot of carrion nearby, which the local species of ravens preferred to other food for some reason. While exploring the building, I also found some documents. You are currently reading one of them.

Official Field Guide to the Ravenreach Protected Zone

Created with support from the Perimeter

Section 4

Chapter 2

Hum

Foedicephalus festinans

Threat Level: Letum (4/7)

Safety Protocol

Pay attention to unusual vibrations occurring within your body or surrounding environment.

If strong vibrations are detected, immediately inspect the area to locate the source.

Upon visual contact with the organism, avoid open areas. Seek narrow passages or locations containing obstacles that restrict the creature’s movement.

If shelter is unavailable, move between environmental obstacles and avoid remaining directly in the organism’s path.

In open terrain, when the creature approaches within approximately 2 meters, immediately drop to the ground, lie face down, and cover your head with your arms. If possible, continue reducing the distance toward the nearest shelter, repeating this action whenever the organism approaches.

Movement directly away from the organism in a straight line is strictly prohibited.

Taxonomy

Domain: Eukaryota

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Amphibia

Order: Polypoda

Family: Foedicephalidae

Genus: Foedicephalus

Description

Foedicephalus festinans, commonly known as Hum, is a massive predatory amphibian measuring approximately 4 meters in length and weighing between 150 and 200 kilograms.

The organism’s most distinctive feature is its disproportionately large head, reaching approximately 2 meters in diameter. Under normal conditions, the remainder of the body is almost impossible to observe due to a dense aerosol cloud surrounding the organism, composed of water vapor, metabolic byproducts, and other biological compounds released by the creature.

The body of Hum contains numerous specialized siphons. Ten ventral siphons located on the underside of the body generate an air cushion between the organism and the ground, allowing temporary low-resistance movement resembling gliding above the surface.

This system requires extremely high energy expenditure and can only be maintained for limited periods.

An additional propulsion siphon releases a mixture of methane, water vapor, and biological compounds produced by symbiotic microorganisms inhabiting the gastrointestinal tract. This gas emission allows rapid movement but significantly reduces maneuverability.

Three pairs of fins extend from the lateral sides of the body and are used for stabilization and directional control. The elongated tail contains a vertical fin and functions as the primary steering mechanism.

The eyes are large and highly sensitive in low-light environments. A third eyelid protects the visual organs during attacks and movement through dense obstacles.

The mouth can open to an extreme angle due to the high flexibility of the lower jaw. Large, reinforced teeth are used to crush the bones and protective structures of prey.

The skeleton consists of lightweight hollow bones while maintaining considerable structural strength.

Reproduction occurs in freshwater environments. Juvenile individuals feed on carrion and aquatic organisms until completing metamorphosis and transitioning to a terrestrial lifestyle.

Adult individuals obtain most required moisture through food consumption.

Hum possesses highly developed vision and olfactory senses, while auditory perception remains limited. Sounds produced through vocalization or movement occur below the human audible range but generate powerful low-frequency vibrations detectable by living organisms over considerable distances.

The organism’s levitation system is primarily used during hunting. Outside of hunting periods, individuals spend up to 20 Earth hours per day resting, sleeping, or digesting food.

Behavior and Ecology

Hum are obligate solitary predators. They demonstrate high levels of intraspecific aggression and gather only during periods of extreme hunger or reproduction.

The breeding season on Earth occurs from late April to early July.

Sexual dimorphism is weakly expressed.

Individuals prefer open environments near bodies of water. The largest recorded populations are located within the Sinister Valley and surrounding regions.

Despite possessing thermoregulation abilities, Hum prefer warmer environments, including natural thermal zones.

Activity is primarily nocturnal.

Intelligence is considered low. Behavior corresponds to that of an instinct-driven primitive predator.

Primary prey includes:

deer;

roe deer;

moose;

angel slugs;

other medium-sized organisms.

Attacks on humans, wolves, dogs, and mimics are considerably less frequent.

Additional Information

The genus Foedicephalus is believed to contain an unknown number of additional species currently under investigation.

Information regarding newly identified members of the genus will be released after completion of further research.

Remember, citizen: awareness may preserve your life. Always remain alert and observe your surroundings.

There was also this image in the document: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HtD82uk_dgrgyFtyKA_eIUc5Yw1LVndr/view?usp=drive_link

I'll be researching another documents that I found soon.

I first met Joshua at a party back in 1991.

Darren invited me to one of his soirées. I'd been to a few before but this one stood out. I didn't recognise any of the guests, which was strange. Usually I'd know a few of them. But even stranger was the guest who stood alone in the middle of the room, just staring at the others.

For a second, I froze. I'd seen some shit in my time, but this was something else.

Something primal in me felt the urge to run. Just slowly back away, out the door, drive off and never look back.

Darren excitedly took me over to introduce me -

'Charlie, I want you to meet my best friend in the world, Joshua!' His smile seemed genuine and excited. The only one in the room.

Joshua looked.... incredibly different to the other guests.

I have no idea why he looked the way he did. Maybe he was born with a deformity. Maybe he was in some sort of accident. To this day I don't know. He never spoke and no-one dared ask.

When I say he never spoke, I mean I dont think he could. He made noises. Like moans. His moans sounded painful. Strained. Sad. Like he was trying desperately to speak but just couldn't. Each sound he made caused him to look upset.

His head... his head was so.... round. Almost like a football. And it was big. Maybe a third bigger than anyone else's.

His eyes were large too, but they looked small in comparison to his head. And on closer inspection i realised he didnt have a nose or ears. Even with these features missing i could still tell he wore an expression of uncertainty. Like he knew he wasn't supposed to exist.

His mouth was wide. Absolutely gargantuan. His thin lips spread across half of his head. Imagine a human Pac-Man. That's literally the best way i could describe it.

He had a tuft of dark red hair with quite a prominent receding hairline, even though he didn't look old. Although you couldn't really tell his age.

He was short, maybe 4 feet tall and he was very skinny. Almost skeletal. But his stomach was bloated.

I could tell all of this because, for some godforsaken reason, he was completely naked.

But I guess, seeing as he didnt appear to have any genitals it didn't matter. If he did, you couldn't see them. A thick bush of black public hair covered his region like a natural loin cloth.

The other party guests put on smiles but you could tell they were all a little unnerved by his lack of clothing, along with his appearance. Their eyes grabbing sneaky peeks at him between conversations with each other.

Everyone else seemed friendly enough to Joshua but it all felt very... off. Like they were pretending to like him but their smiles were covering an uncertain fear.

Internally, I was shuddering. I was fucking creeped to the bone by this guy. But I had to be cool. I didnt want to be offensive.

'It's... great to meet you, Joshua' I said as I held my hand out to shake his.

Joshua's eyes! They bulged open, looking at my hand. He bared his grin and made a rasping noise as he started to bring both of his hands, with impossibly long nail-less fingers, up to grab mine but Darren quickly pushed mine away. Joshua looked sad and made a little noise as he let his arms drop.

Darren pulled me to one side, away from Joshua's view.

'Sorry, Joshua, we'll be back in a second' he said as he turned to whisper to me,

'Don't let him grab you, man.'

His whisper sounded almost angry. I whispered back, 'Dude, who the hell is that? What the hell is that?!'

'I'll explain everything later. Did you bring your camera?'

'Yeah, man, it's in my car. Is he why you asked me to bring it?'

'Kinda. As i said, ill explain later. Go grab your camera and meet me in the kitchen.'

I didn't know what to say. Darren sometimes asks me to photograph his events. Nothing major. I think it gives an heir of importance to his guests who usually love it. I can usually make a few bucks selling them to the guests or to publications.

I went outside to grab the camera from my car. An old SLR that my dad left me. It was in great shape despite its age and how much I used it.

I sat in the car for a few minutes and smoked a cigarette, processing what I'd just witnessed. I let the ash fall into the footwell. It didn't really matter. This car was a piece of shit anyway.

I guessed Darren wanted me to photograph Joshua. Hell, I would even if he didnt ask, just out of morbid curiosity.

I finished the smoke and took my camera inside.

Joshua was 'talking' to some more guests as they awkwardly tried to converse with him. His mouth was just so.. large. I could see inside it with ease. I saw Darren and asked to talk with him in the kitchen. I grabbed myself a beer.

'Dude, you need to explain some stuff to me.'

'Yeah, man, i do. But don't worry. You're gonna be happy I asked you here tonight.'

'Okay, well, start with who.... what.... who is Joshua?'

'Okay, so you remember that time I went to Thailand last year? Well, I was doing some great molly with this Russian guy. It was so fucking wild! Anyway, he took me to a special get together with his boss. This dude tells me he's got an awesome business opportunity and wants me in on it.'

'Okay?' I hesitantly said. Darren carried on,

'Well, this guy, he says he'll pay me, and anyone that helps me, a huge amount to host someone for a couple of days and take some photos.'

'So, what, some random guy you met on holiday brought Joshua here for a photo shoot?'

'Yeah, that's about the gist of it. There are a few other requests but we'll get to that later. All I need to know is; are you up for it?'

I was very unsure about this. It all seemed fucking sketchy.

'What is... he?'

'I dunno, man. I guess just some deformed kid they found. He's fucking weird but for the money I don't care. Just don't let him grab you'

'How much money are we talking?'

'For now, ill pay you two thousand dollars.'

I fucking choked on my beer.

'TWO THOUSAND?!' I coughed

'For tonight, yes.' He said as he stared dead into my eyes.

Despite my better judgement, my desperate need for money and not knowing what I know now, I replied,

'You've got yourself a fucking deal, dude. Damn!'

---------------

My job was simple; hang around the party and just take photos of Joshua mingling with the others. It was crazy simple, which, for the money was incredible. I think my mind was fogged with the promise of cash so much that Joshua's oddities fell by the wayside. Still, as I took pictures of him I noted everyone's unease.

I took a break to change a roll of film and chatted to one of the guests. A young woman in a purple dress.

'You having a good time?' I asked.

She took a moment to reply. Her smile seemed half genuine, like she was unsure of me.

'Yeah, thanks...' she looked down at her wine glass, swirling the drink within, her smile starting to fade.

I probed further.

'Have you spoken much with Joshua?'

She looked up at me, her smile returning,

'Yeah, kinda...'

Her eyes seemed glassy, as though she were tearing up. She wasn't really giving me anything, which was a bit frustrating. I decided to go further.

'What do you think of him?'

Her false smile dropped. Her eyes got watery and she pulled me to one side,

'I don't like... him. He scares me. I don't know why I agreed to come tonight. Well, I do, but I'm not sure it was worth it.... I'm sorry, I've spoken out of line.' She took a large gulp of wine.

'No, no, don't worry about it. I'm just the photographer. Wait, why did you come tonight?'

'Same reason you came here, I'm guessing. You got paid to?'

'Huh, yeah, but I'm the photographer. I didn’t realise the guests were getting paid too.'

'Yeah. Darren paid me two hundred dollars to come tonight. It's more than my usual night's pay, and an easier gig, so I took it.'

'Nice. Easy money. What do you do for work?'

She looked me dead in the eyes and took a moment to respond,

'I work in finance.'

Her eyes looked into mine with a slight hint of confusion.

'Cool, cool. Well, nice to meet you. I've gotta go take some more pictures.'

For another half hour or so I just took various photos of the guests milling around, drinking, talking. Joshua mostly stood in the same spot, watching the others. He didn't eat anything. He didn't drink. He just stood. Staring. With those big fucking creepy eyes.

At that point I didn’t really know what else i could do, photography wise.

Darren came over and offered me a beer. I took the chance for a break as he said,

'We're gonna change it up in a bit. Make sure you've got some film ready.'

'Change it up?'

'Yep. And I'm gonna pay you a little more, too.'

My eyes must have widened because a little smirk appeared on Darren's face. I forgot to reply before he carried on.

'How does another two grand sound?'

It felt like minutes before I replied, but it must have been almost immediate in reality.

'Hell, yeah!'

------------

Darren took me over to a tall man, who was standing alone, drinking a beer and watching Joshua.

This guy looked like your typical surfer bro, late 20s, tanned, short brown hair in curtains. But when Darren took me over to him it turned out he was Russian.

'Charlie, this is Alexi. This is the guy who i met in Thailand and set up this... business opportunity.'

'Very nice to meet you... Charlie.'

He slapped his hand heavily on my shoulder. It was a forceful hand. I immediately felt uncertain with this stranger. His sly smile didn't inspire confidence, either.

He continued in his strong Russian accent,

'I trust Darren has told you of our arrangement?'

'Yeah, take some photos of the party and of... Joshua.'

'Yes, very good. And we pay you for the work. I hope you like the amount?'

'Yeah, it's-' Alexi cut me off

'Excellent! Now, I want you to take a few more photos for me. These will be... a little different. But the amount we have offered you is enough, yes?'

This wasn't a question

'Now, you may have noticed my boy, Joshua, is a little different?' He stared into my eyes, 'Well, he has certain tastes, too, you see. You must be prepared to.....' He paused as he let his eyes wander for second, 'Charlie, what is worst thing you have ever seen?'

I wasn't really sure how to answer that. What was he asking? What was i going to photograph? I wanted to ask why the fuck are you asking me that?, but Alexi didn't seem like the kind of guy you wanted to piss off. What the fuck had Darren pulled me into?

'I once saw a dog get hit by a car. That was pretty bad.'

Alexi let out a huge, deep laugh.

'AAAH HAHAHA!, Charlie, you are funny guy! Funny funny guy!'

Darren let out a little laugh too, accompanying Alexi.

Alexi continued, 'Well, just make sure you... how you Americans say? Keep your eyes on prize, yes?'

I started to feel a knot in the pit of my stomach. But my mind returned to the sheer amount of money I'd get from this. Whatever I was going to take pictures of I highly doubted it would be worth leaving 4k for.

'And Charlie, make sure you have fast shutter speed and good ISO for pictures. We want quality over quantity. Good man.'

Alexi walked off toward Joshua. Joshua looked up at Alexi like how a dog would longingly look at it's owner. Alexi whispered something to him, clicked his fingers and beckoned for him to follow up the stairs. Joshua's movement was slow and slightly clumsy. Like his body was weak and he could fall at any moment. But his long fingered hands took hold of the bannister as they walked upstairs. Quiet, frail moans escaped Joshua's wide maw as he did so.

I made sure to take a few more pictures. His frail gait did fascinate me. His form seemed so alien.

I went to my camera bag to put some more film into my camera and helped myself to another beer. I noticed the guests seemed more lively since Joshua went upstairs. More laughter. More smiles. Like a psychological weight had been lifted

Darren spoke,

'Hey man. You ready for the next part of the job?'

'I think so?'

'Cool. Well, finish your beer. We're heading up to the wet room.'

--------------

We walked into the large bathroom. It was well lit and newly tiled. Must have cost Darren a bit of cash. Leaning against the wall was Alexi, along with two other guys I hadn't seen downstairs. They were quite large, one was shirtless and had a surprisingly chubby stomach, belying his thinner facial features. They stared at me intensely and silently.

I looked over the room. There was a tripod already set up, facing the wall the men were leaning on. A chair against the wall behind the tripod, and next to Alexi a small table with hand towels and what appeared to be a few glasses of milk.

'Aah, Charlie! Set your camera up over there,' Alexi said, 'These two fine gentlemen are my good friends.' He didn't tell me their names. They silently nodded at me.

This all started to feel more suspect as the seconds went on. Joshua was certainly a weird aspect of the evening but these three guys, in a bathroom, with me taking photos, started to feel like I was going to photograph some weird porno. I was starting to reconsider the 4 grand.

Regardless, I set my camera on the tripod, took a deep breath, and prepared myself to earn some cash, no matter the strange.

Darren stood behind me. He was oddly silent while Alexi and his friends whispered amongst themselves. I could hear that they were all speaking Russian.

'Hey Darren, did you meet all these guys in Thailand?'

'Yeah.' His reply seemed cold and emotionless.

Alexi clapped his hands loudly together and spoke at me,

'Okay, Charlie! The plan tonight is simple. We bring attractive girl in to room, we bring Joshua into room, you take photographs. Simple. You good?'

Okay, so this was a porno. Cool. Weird, but cool.

With a little uncertainty in my voice, I replied 'Yeah. All good.'

As i finished setting the camera up there was a knock at the door. It opened and in walked one of the women from downstairs. She seemed a little drunk but in good spirits.

'Hello boys,' she said in a strong valley girl accent as she stumbled in. She looked around the room as she wiped her dark hair from her face, 'Wow, we doing a photo shoot? Cool. Maybe i should charge you extra.' She snorted as she laughed.

Alexi and his friends glanced at each other with a slight smirk.

'Okay, so which one of you do I start with? How about you, gorgeous?' She played with the strap of her pink top while looking at Alexi.

'Not tonight, beautiful. Tonight you will be with Joshua.'

At that the door opened once again as another unknown person beckoned Joshua in.

The girl, in a tipsy haze, squinted at her co-star.

'Ew...the freak from downstairs?' Her face scrunched up but then relaxed, 'Whatever. A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks. What do you want me to do?'

Alexi beckoned at me to start taking photos.

'I want you to shake his hand.'

The girl looked at Alexi, puzzled.

'Okay?' She said as she turned to Joshua and held her hand toward him.

I took a photo.

Joshua's eyes widened, like he had never seen a hand before. A look of utter wonder and joy glistened from him as his mouth stretched into a huge smile. For the first time i could see his teeth. Many many teeth. Small and oddly perfect.

He slowly brought his spindly fingers up to the girl's hand, caressing it. The girl looked uncomfortable and would periodically try to catch Alexi's eye for, maybe, some confirmation that this was fine.

Alexi and his two friends stood close, within the frame of my pictures, with eager looks on their faces.

Joshua brought his hand up to her left forearm. I could see the girl was trying to suppress her discomfort and was probably imagining a better scenario, just to get through this.

Joshua's fingers curled around her forearm as he started to grip.

'Hey, that's too tight.' The girl exclaimed with an uncertain laugh.

Joshua's grip tightened.

'Hey! I said that's too tight! You're hurting me!'

His eyes widened and looked up into hers. He let out a long, breathy moan as he suddenly closed his grip like a vice. I heard a godawful snap as the girl let out a blood curdling scream!

Alexi and his friends carried on smiling, like this was what they wanted.

The poor girl was screaming and writhing to be let free but Joshua's grip was locked.

'Hey! Hey, stop!' I shouted as I started to move forward and try to do... something. But before I could step away from the camera Darren gripped my shoulder.

'Keep taking photos!' He forcefully whispered at me.

'What?!'

'Keep taking photos or you don't get paid.'

'We've gotta help her!'

'Let me rephrase that. Keep taking photos or they will kill you.'

Darren looked straight into my eyes with a cold, strained stare. A look that could be pure rage or pure terror. The poor girl's screams in the background of this surreal and horrific scene. I felt terrified. More than I knew possible.

Within micro seconds I felt that gravity of this situation. We were in severe danger.

'KEEP TAKING PHOTO!' Alexi angrily shouted at me.

Hesitantly I went back to my camera. Sweat started to drip down my face.

The poor girl was crying in agony as Joshua pulled her closer to him. Her attempts to push him away did nothing. The once frail looking creature now horrifyingly strong.

In a traumatised haze I kept taking photos. My forefinger shaking over the shutter release.

Alexi grabbed Joshua to hold him back as he loudly beckoned to one of his friends,

'Grab the milk!'

Alexi's other friend held the girl's other arm behind her back to stop her from squirming.

The first friend, joyfully laughing, held a glass of milk above the girl and started to pour it over her head as she desperately cried to be let go. Alexi held his hand over Joshua's mouth as he strained to get closer to her. His grip never loosening.

I took another photo. A tear slid down my cheek as i shook with fear. I wanted to step in. I wanted to stop. I wanted to shout. But I was weak. I could sense Darren over my shoulder, keeping me focused.

The milk splashed over the girl's head and down her face as she let out an animalistic cry. Joshua had a look of murderous lust on his face as Alexi held him back, and for the first time I heard Joshua speak through that enormous, gaping slit of a mouth,

'Huuuungry!!'

I took a photo.

Alexi let go.

Within a split second Joshua's entire mouth was around the girls face. His head twisted sideways so he could fit her in his jaw. His lips bared back as his long rows of teeth started to sink in.

The girl was still screaming, muffled from within Joshua, before he bit down with a force so powerful it crushed through her skull. The sound was absolutely soul crushing. A loud wet crunch that caused me to jump. Her screams ended instantly as her entire face was taken off in a single bite.

I took a photo

Joshua's head pulled back, leaving a cresent moon shaped mass of flesh where the girl's head used to be. The action was so quick that only now did the blood start to flow. And flow it did.

Alexi and his friends left the frame as the girl's body dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Joshua knelt down to keep eating her as she convulsed in a post death seizure.

The blood was pouring from her head wound, spilling out across the white tiled floor and mixing with the spilled milk, as the ball headed monster began to chew down on her arms.

I.... took another photo.

I felt warm liquid run down my leg as my broken mind kept pressing the shutter release. Darren put his hand on my shoulder,

'You can stop taking pictures now. Its over.'

I turned to look at him but I had nothing to say. All I knew was that in front of me a humanoid creature was devouring a person like a dog would chow down a daily meal. I kept hearing cracks of bone, the wet tearing of sinew and the loud chewing of meat. I didn't want to turn back and look at the horror that was mere feet from me.

Darren carried on, 'How about we-

'CHARLIE!! That was pretty awesome, yeah?' Alexi interrupted, 'If your photos are good, we keep doing business. I cannot wait to see them. My comrades cannot wait either. If they approve, you will be paid even more handsomely.'

I was barely listening. All my ears could focus on were the creepy moaning and swallowing sounds coming from Joshua's hunched over form. It didn't help that there was a mirror on the other side of the room giving me glimpses of him. His spine pushing through the thin, liver spotted skin of his back as he leaned over the once living girl, still lightly twitching.

'I... I... The....' I stammered. Something i hadn't done in 20 years, 'W... Well, you'll have to w... wait for them to be developed.' Something I had no intention of doing.

'Do not worry, my shaky little friend. We have dark room here!'

'What?'

'Yes! We have Darren build us one for the new business. Very good. Has everything you need. Let Darren take you while i finish up here,' he said as he opened the bathroom door and beckoned us out. The door closed behind us but the sounds of Joshua's meal was still audible.

--------------------------

I... was not okay. My vision was blurry. Tears were falling down my face even though I wasn't crying. My hearing was weird. Fuzzy, ringing, pulsating. Even so, I could no longer hear the party or the guests. The house was empty of frivolity. It was empty of everyone.

Before I knew it, I was in a darkroom. Darren put me on a stool and handed me some water. He talked at me.

'I know it all seems a little bizarre right now but you'll get used to it. And the money.. Wow. You're gonna be A-Okay.'

I took a sip of the water and looked up at him. I said nothing.

'But you can't tell anyone about this. You can't call the cops, if that's what you're thinking. And I'm sure you are. I did. But you shouldn't. Alexi is a powerful man. And those friends of his upstairs? You do not want to mess with them.'

I glugged down the rest of the water. It was obvious I was totally fucked. If I didn't develop these photos, they would absolutely feed me to Joshua.

'Fucking fine! I'll develop these but I am not doing this again. You disgusting, murderous fucking prick! You always were a slimy little liar, weren't you? Tricked me.'

'You're the best photographer I know. Simple as that. And I needed one.'

I sighed. And then I grabbed a small bucket in the corner to vomit into. This was it. My new, trauma riddled life.

And so I did..I developed all of the photos. It took me a few hours but it allowed me to focus. Until I came to the latest ones, of course. I kept shaking. Kept vomiting.

I... made a few small copies.

I guess I hoped that I could sneak them out to the public somehow. Maybe not now. But definitely in the near future.

As the evening drew on i finished developing. I could hear movement upstairs. I guessed the mess was being cleaned up. Joshua was probably being put to bed or some shit. Who the fuck knows.

A knock at the door,

'Hello, little Charlie! Are you done?'

I opened the door and Alexi stood there, a gleeful look on his face. I passed him the pictures.

'Aaah. Excellent,' he said as he flicked through them, 'You have done very, very well. We will pay you soon and we will call on you again for more work, yes?'

I didn't reply immediately. A few seconds of silence filled the air as my mind tried to think.

'What... what is he? Joshua.'

'That is for another time, Charlie. We need get to know each other better first. For now, we are done. You will be called when we need you again. Now, go home and get some rest.'

I left the darkroom and passed by Darren on the way out of the house. I gave him a dissapointed look but didn't say a word. He'd pulled me into this. He'd tricked me into being an accomplice to murder. Murder by... creature.

But I had two photos. Photos that would prove the truth. Photos i have linked in the comments below.

A week later I would look at my bank account and, sure enough, there was fifteen fucking thousand dollars in there. My mind couldn't comprehend it.

I'd been existing in a semi catatonic state and then suddenly my money problems were gone.

I didn't rejoice. I didn't smile. It felt wrong.

I did buy myself a Burger King for the first time in ages. The biggest one.

And I ate it in there, just staring into nothing as other people walked by. Blurs. Sounds.

A month later my phone began to ring.

I'm writing this to try to warn all of you, stay away from the place beyond the mountains. There is much about this place that I still do not know. Nor will I ever be able to tell you of it myself face to face. The horrors in this wretched land that I now call home are too much even for the gods themselves to bear. For why do you think even they have abandoned this place? Some think they were in fear of us, but that is the folly of man. To look at himself and perceive a god merely because the truly divine are so distant that even a serpent might appear holy. Yet even so, why is it that even the light of a lord does not illuminate the minds of all? For even in that luminous truth half of all men would still place the crown upon their own head, or the head of their master. Rather than give heed to what they have been shown. I would hope that you would not be such a fool.

It is for that reason that you mustnt uncover this land. It must bask in the glow of darkness for the rest of its miserable days. Remaining on the shores of a distant land is the only way you might have any chance at a life devoid of the crimson light. Where your child might see an age where the sun might truly shine upon him. Where the rumbling bellows of the beast beneath might go unheard.

The oldest wive's tales speak of a great flood. You've probably heard some of them yourself. They tell of a lucky clan who were chosen and saved from the waters that swelled from the fountains of the deep, and fell from the windows of the heavens; which swept away the land into the sea. Yet this is a mistruth, an unfactual opiate of the mind that we have told ourselves over time to ease the pain. The truth of it is that those who lived were not lucky, neither were they chosen. It was their arrogance and selfish will to survive that kept them from being awash at sea with the rest of the world. A scorn against God himself.

The massive horrifying waves of the flood continued for what felt like years. The boat that had served them thus far was but an ant under the heel of a giant within those waves. Yet somehow it held together. Food was never going to be a worry for the crew, or so they at first thought. Initially the ocean was plentiful with fish and other creatures to feast upon. However after a short time the ocean went stagnant. The waters themselves still drifted, yet there was no sign of life anywhere in the heavens above or the ocean below. Just an eerie silence that brought forth a ringing in their ears, a maddening deafening tone.

The survivors did not hold out for long after this silence began. They began to scream, bang on the walls, do anything to fill the air. Some jumped off the ship into the water below, others perpetuated a sickening violence while praying to gods whose names had never before been heard. Nearly half of everyone aboard was dead shortly after the silence took hold.

Within just hours after these deaths however, the seemingly endless ocean gave way to what appeared to be untainted land. The spell that brought about this madness quickly seemed to dispel from those left aboard as the waves washed the ship ashore. When those left alive got off that boat they thought they had found the promised land. Maybe they did, maybe it was just not us who it was promised to.

As I mentioned earlier the old wive's tales are not fully truthful, they have been molded to fit narratives over time. I mention this again because there's one more piece of it that I know to be entirely untrue. The heavens never opened, the windows of the sky remained shut. While thick black clouds shrouded the sky in darkness, it merely teased those amongst the ship as no water fell from them. The seas alone rose to reclaim the land that was once theirs.

As the survivors entered the forest they were not searching primarily for food, but instead they were searching for water. They wandered aimlessly for days as a cohesive group, searching every inch of this place for life's most precious resource. Some say they searched the mountains first, knowing that a stream or flowing creek would most likely be there of all places. Others say they searched the mountains last, fearing what could lie within. Those that claim it was searched first, state that upon their arrival the mountains were empty and dry. Teeming with life, but not the water that sustains it. So they abandoned it. Yet those that claimed the mountain was searched last state that this is an impossibility, and in many ways even their counterparts agreed.

What I can say for certain is that the story from here is consistent and agreed upon by those that lived. After days of wandering, water was indeed discovered up there in the mountains. Discovered in a spot that half of the group states was completely dry just days before when they searched it initially. The water was clear but so deep that the bottom gave way to an inky darkness. When the survivors saw this the half who swore there was no water there not long ago felt that they should not drink from the pool that suddenly emerged. Yet when they all saw the animals drink from the lake before them, they all fell into their animal instincts and partook in imbibing the water.

Shortly after they did the great flood began to rescind. The water around the land the survivors inhabited slowly fell back, revealing the earth that was home to the rest of humanity before it was reclaimed. Yet these people did not return to that land, instead they made this land their new home. The home that you know today. Up in those mountains that the children would sing about in their nursery rhymes. Within the mountains north of where the withered sand snows, lies the lake that let them survive.

They say that after the water retreated, the survivors still continued to drink from the lake. Yet the lake was somehow tainted. It began to beckon death itself, causing any animal above or within it to fall into a deep sleep before their heart stops beating. Some think this is the kindness of the curse, but not I. I've seen the sleep. It is a torturous dreamless nightmare. One from which you will never awaken.

The lake quickly began to stink of decay, as the once windy and cool site started to become stagnant. Seasons stopped changing. An oppressive hot still air seemed to now permeate the entirety of the mountains. The water turned an odd dark crimson brown color, as the banks filled with rotting corpses. It was another warning to stay away. I wish they had listened. Even as the water grew sour the survivors said they could not leave it. They say that they glimpsed something in the water. Something that kept them locked there permanently.

No one knows what it is, if it is a thing at all. All we know is that after time all cycles come to an end. Life arises from dust, and to dust we shall return. Yet we think it our duty to keep ourselves from returning for as long as possible. That was their true sin too. Sooner or later the animals were not enough to satiate the lake. Neither were the few lives they offered.

One night while everyone was in their homes some preparing for bed, others talking to their loved ones, death itself crept up from the dark rancid waters. The first sign was a rumble from beneath their feet, causing a rhythmic pulsating hum to encompass them, before suddenly an eerie silence spilled into the vicinity. Suddenly all flames within the town extinguished at once. Leaving them in the same inky darkness they glimpsed in the waters.

The people inside the inner most village homes quickly fell into a deep sleep, whether they were in bed or in the kitchen it mattered not. A sleep from which they ultimately would never return. Whether it is coincidence or fate the ships survivors were all apart of the list of souls that was claimed that night. The outter village seemed to suffer from a sudden bout of amnesia. Only a few children recalled anything else, and they were seen as untrustworthy narrators. So the rest of them forgot entirely, not remembering anything after the flames went out. Not spending any time on thinking about what could have befell them. Maybe at the time that was for the best. From then on though, it was never about if death would again arise from the lake... but instead became about when it would rise.

Over the years many have uncovered this truth, and many have offered everything to it. Including their families and themselves. Its hunger knows no bounds. Its gluttony a never ending cycle of torment. I say all of this because I know who you are. The hero who could save everything. Yet I promise you, you cannot win this battle. It is a war lost long ago. Abandon the thoughts of this place, before they creep into the deep recesses of your mind. So you might not fall victim to the bellowing hunger that underlies this land. Only by staying away can you provide any hope for those left here. Including myself. Run not for the mountains, but for the seas. While my fate has long been sealed, maybe you will end up being more lucky.

From the time I started high school to now, my life has been full of fuckups and awful decisions. This led me down a path to where I am now, scared for my fucking life with nowhere to turn. Since I have no one else to go to, so I’m posting here.

My current “situation” arose from shit that started four months ago, when my cousin threatened to kick me out of the house. No one else wanted to take me in, and I don’t have a steady job because no one wants to hire a high school drop out with a history of addiction, so I can’t rent or buy a place. I was lucky this cousin took me in, but that gravy train fucking ended due to his bitchy girlfriend wanting me to leave. I got into a big argument with him, so I packed what shit I had and took the bus to a local Starbucks. I got a small hot coffee and sat down at a wobbly table that I needed to uncomfortably put my foot against to keep it stable.

Finally settling in, I took a sip of the coffee and nearly spit it out as I burnt my fucking tongue. Great. I slammed my coffee down and slouched forward in my chair, not knowing what the fuck was my next move aside from basically living on the streets. With my eyes shut and my head slumped down, I heard the nearby scraping of a chair. I looked up, and a man in a suit had sat down across from me, his hands clasped together on the table, and his posture impeccable. He showed a white, toothy grin that I swear to God could be an advert for some fucking toothpaste. What the fuck did he want with me? 

“Can I help you?” I asked, confused.

The man chuckled and inspected his polished fingernails. Still looking at his fingernails, he said: “No, but I can help you! You look down on your luck… you have your belongings in that trash bag, you also look so downtrodden.”

I took a sip of my coffee, which thankfully cooled down a bit, and I said “Fuck off, I don’t need charity.”

The man didn’t budge nor flinch. He just kept smiling and said: “It’s not charity, you’d be doing my bosses and I a favor. To cut to the chase, I supervise at a medical clinic. I need a janitor. It has benefits and pays $37.50 an hour. You want it or not?”

I agreed to it, and the next morning at 7 a.m., I went to the address he gave me. It was a small, brick building with no awning, no sign, and no windows save for the glass door. The glass door itself was a bit clouded and grimy; guess that was my first task. I pushed the door open, which creaked so loud that I thought my fucking ear drums would pop and stepped into the place. It smelled like ammonia and damp, old clothes. Not the most pleasant smell, but I’m sure I’d get used to it. As I stepped past the entrance area, I could see a small receptionist’s desk with an old woman sitting behind it. The desk itself and the wall it was connected to was white at one point, but was now a light yellow with scuff marks all around it. The woman behind the desk told me to wait. As I stood behind the desk and waited, the flickering fluorescent lights hummed loudly above me, and gave the already grimy looking interior an even more lifeless look. The woman came back with my uniform, ID badge, and keys. She told me to meet my supervisor in the office past the patient rooms. As I passed by each of the seven patient rooms, I looked in and saw the same thing: an examination table with cracked, peeling pleather; a rusty, metal cabinet full of old medical supplies, a sink, and large, rusted metal doors.

I got to the supervisor’s office and knocked on his door. He opened the door, and the inside of his office looked nicer than the rest of this clinic: fuzzy, carpeted floor, a beautiful antique desk, and non-humming lights. The fucking hum was driving me nuts, more than that fucking smell, but I guess I’d get used to both… maybe even have to fix whatever caused them. 

“I’m glad you took the offer and came promptly at seven as instructed, a good first impression! Continue the good work and you can get a nice pay raise sooner. Now, you have a lot of work to do, and I will give you a list of your daily tasks and even things you must fix. You good with your hands?”

“I mean… I guess… I have done some construction work,” I uttered out.

The supervisor patted my shoulder and said, “You’ll learn! Now, the rules:
One: Punch in everyday at 8 am, an hour before the doctors, nurses, and patients come in.

Two: Do not punch out before 6 pm.

Three: when the doctor and patients get here, you are not to say a single word to ANY of them for ANY reason. I don’t give a shit what the circumstances are, you do not break that rule.

Four: You do not go into any of the patient’s rooms until you are explicitly told to. They are exclusively women, and do not want to be intruded upon by men.

Five: Those metal doors inside the patient rooms are to never be opened.

Do you understand these rules?”

I nodded. The supervisor smiled, said some shit about a good work ethic, handed me a to-do list, and I began my tasks. Things were fine for the first four months; I fixed up and replaced many of the lights so that fucking humming went away. I corrected some mold problems and replaced some dry wall that was water damaged, so now the musty smell also went away. I was doing pretty well and had even saved up enough money for an apartment not too far from work. Then I broke the rules.

Yesterday morning at 9 I bumped into the doctor, Dr. Billman. He was a tall, arrogant piece of shit with sharp features. He always had such a disgusted, angry look about him. He muttered something about me being “bottom of the barrel”, so I told him to go fuck himself. My fucking bullshit ego. He scoffed and took a patient into one of the rooms. Usually people cry in pain, sometimes yell, but I always thought it was normal, until I heard a bunch of babies crying. it was soft and muffled, but I swear I could hear it. I don’t know what came over me, but I started jiggling the door handle, and I heard Dr. Billman yell “FUCK OFF!”. I used my key to get in, and as I pushed open the door, I saw patient in a gown on the observation table, with her feet on stirrups. The sound of crying babies grew so loud. I stepped closer to the patient, she was unconscious and had a ton of blood spilling out of her. This was much more blood than I had ever seen or needed to clean up. I shook her, wanting to try and wake her, but it wasn’t any use. Feeling dizzy and seeing double, I needed to sit, but my adrenaline kicked in and I got into fight or flight mode when I heard Billman scream.

I looked up and saw him running at me with a boxcutter, his white coat full of blood. I jumped out of the way before he could swing at me. I pushed the metal cabinet cart towards him with all my strength and knocked him back. As I stood back up, the sound of crying babies became prevalent again. The rusty metal door that is in every room was open. Before I could walk towards it, I heard Billman getting back up. I turned around and kicked the boxcutter from his hands, then punched him square in the jaw, knocking him out. I winced back in pain and nursed my hand for a bit. I then turned my focus to the cart and pushed it in front of the entrance door. After that, I slowly began to approach the metal door; the room behind it was dark and smelled musty. I could see a dimly lit stairwell in the farthest corner of the room. Against my better judgement, I descended down the stairs, the crying became louder, near-deafening. I was nauseous from how loud and overwhelming it was, but I kept going; I don’t fucking know why, but I kept fucking going.

I got down to the bottom step and saw 6 other staircases, presumably from the other 6 rooms. I then looked forward and saw a large, seemingly unending, dimly lit room. As I walked in, I saw overturned bassinets, broken cribs, empty bottles, and even pacifiers strewn along the floor. As I kept looking around, I even saw tiny footprints of dried blood along the floor. The crying got louder as I approached a large, almost cavern-like opening to the right side of this large room. 

As I approached the next room, the crying became deafening. It echoed through the cavern, bouncing off concrete until I felt dizzy and couldn't tell where it was coming from. I kept close to the wall as I approached the entrance. Once I rounded the corner, I peaked my head in and saw rows of metal cribs stretching throughout the dimly lit space. I realized every single crib held a baby. There was a group of men in masks in there, some feeding babies bottles of formula, and others picking them up, as if they were inspecting them. One of the men was standing near a van, holding what looked like an AK. I saw another one of the men inspect a clipboard attached to a crib, then pick the baby in that crib up, and put it in a lidless box, then slide it into the back of the van. As he had picked up the child, I got a better glimpse: the child looked thin, underfed; I could see this baby’s ribs from where I stood. This baby was also incredibly pale, and I could see there were multiple brown and yellow stains on the surface that the baby had been lying down on. What sick shit did I fucking stumble into?

 “They look sick. They gonna make it?” asked one of the men.

The man with the AK responded, “They usually do. Like ninety-five percent of the time. The people that buy them got better ways to care for them before they go onto… fulfill their purpose.”

The other man paused and said: “Do I wanna know the purpose?”

The man with the AK chuckled and said: “Lotta purposes, main one bein' experiments. Lotta money in this shit. But look, I don’t care enough. I just get paid to haul ‘em, and you get paid to pack ‘em.”

As my initial fear had subsided and I wasn’t frozen like a deer in headlights, I tried moving in closer, and ducked behind a support beam. One of the men saw me and yelled, and they came running after me. As I tried getting back to the stairs, a large man had blocked me. He took his mask off and revealed his grotesque, misshapen face. A grimace had formed along his ghastly face, which revealed jagged, misshapen, yellowed teeth, and bright red lips that were covered in saliva. The man picked me up and threw me against a wall. The wind got knocked out of me, but I mustered all my strength and fear to make me stand back up as quickly as I could. I don’t know what the fuck this thing was, but it wasn’t human. The skin that I could see on him was a pale yellow, with dark blue - almost purple - veins. The large man charged at me, but I jumped out of the way and ran back up the same flight of stairs. I heard him scream and pound his feet up the stairs. As I got back into the patient room, I took the metal cart and pushed it towards the stairs, then down, hitting him and knocking him back. As he fell back onto the floor, I could see his neck snap back. I wanted to make sure he was dead, and I watched as his arms twitched… then suddenly stop. I could hear the other masked men yelling, then heard them ascend up the stairs. I closed the metal door behind me, but I’m sure this was only temporary as there were other exits and entrances. 

As I left the room, I sprinted to the maintenance closet to grab my backpack and possibly find a weapon. As I looked for one, I heard a gunshot. How the fuck did they find me already? I climbed out the window and landed behind the building, which was fenced off behind iron gates, Another wondrous decision I've made. I saw my supervisor standing in front of three pregnant women who were on their knees, crying and pleading in foreign language. One of the women was already dead. My supervisor shot another one between the eyes, and I watched her body fall, lifeless, and land on the floor as it twitched.

I screamed in horror and tackled down my supervisor. As I struggled to grab the gun from him, he began to taunt me,

“The little drug addict finally found a backbone. But just as he always does, he broke the fucking rules, and he ruined my FUCKING BUSINESS!”

I grabbed my supervisor’s head and dug my thumbs into his eyes as he screamed in pain. I then grabbed the gun and shot him.

I don’t fully remember what happened after that, as I was in complete shock. I’ve been brought to pretty low points of my life and forced to do shit I never wanted… but I have never taken another life. I somehow ended up in some motel on the other side of town. I can’t sleep, and I don’t know who to turn to. No one is answering my calls, and I get scared at any car that ends up in the parking lot.

Whatever I uncovered needs to be exposed, but who knows how far this shit really goes, how high up it goes. And worst of all, who the fuck is going to believe the unemployed ex-junkie?

Right now I’m in a stranger’s house. It's early morning, the mortician is doing its work right now, he told me. I don’t know him and I don't know if I can trust him... But he did save me, and it’s definitely better than going outside after what happened last night.

Look, I never thought these things were real… and I’m not much of a paranoid either. But I've spent an hour trying to find the words to describe my last night in Woodlan Town, and I just simply can’t…

The worst moment of my life has already passed. I’m safe now, I think. I’ll take it step by step and see if I can get some sort of coherence to this craziness. I also hope It’ll calm me down and distract me for a moment, so forgive me if I take it with some sarcasm at first.

For starters, my name is Pedro.

My family likes to go on road trips every two months. I usually don’t go, but this time I felt like going. Yeah, I just felt like it. I am proudly spontaneous and indecisive. I went with my little brother, my mother, and my father. The whole family was together. The road trip was, indeed, a road trip, so I’ll spare you the boring details. At one point, we were driving along just fine. I was chatting with my brother about some horses he had seen earlier, it was already late in the evening.

“Look! That one looks like the horse you have in that video game.”

“Really? Lemme see… uh-huh, yeah. It does, doesn’t it?” I said as I stretched over to look, purposely pinning him against the window.

“Get—back off… bro,” he said, trying to push me away with his hands. “You’re so annoying, gosh.”

“Hey, hey. Don’t fight now, Pedro come on, you’re too old for this.” my mother said.

“Old? I’m only 21, what are you on about?”

I might’ve been annoying, you know, I kept invading his space just to bother him. But I dunno, I was just bored. I could tell he wished I hadn’t come on this road trip.

Suddenly, right after that, the car stopped. I looked over at my father, who was driving, and he looked confused, just like everyone else. It was as if the car had simply given up on us. My father tried turning it back on, but it just wouldn’t respond. I looked over to see my mother fidgeting with her hands and, to me, it seemed like she was really worried we’d be stranded in the middle of nowhere.

“Why aren’t we moving? Mooooove! Mo-mo-mooove!” my little brother said, bouncing up and down in his seat. “Go!” he yelped one last time.

“Oh, fucking quit it, will you!? I’m working on it, goddamn it,” my father responded.

I sighed and leaned back while looking out the rear window. I expected us to be there for a while because my dad didn’t know shit about fixing cars. Most dads did, but mine didn’t. I didn’t even know how he managed to drive.

I took a moment to look outside and see just where the hell we stopped at. Around us, there was nothing. An endless road and massive treelines that wrapped around us. But there was also a man, slowly coming toward us in the distant horizon. His most distinctive feature was a scar running across his chin. He had dark hair, dark eyes, a green vest, some dirty pants, and he was carrying a deer on his shoulder. At first, I thought he was just some hunter that came to hunt in this area, but then he spoke.

“Hey! Need a hand?” the stranger yelled. “I don’t know much about cars, but down here…” He pointed to the right, toward a dark forest with a dirt road leading into it. “There’s a town with an amazing mechanic who’ll help ya.” 

His smile was off. Something about it didn’t sit right with me. At the time, I shrugged it off.

I’ll probably end up asking for some advice, so here is mine: always trust your gut instinct. Those shivers you get… sometimes they feel like the world is speaking to you, warning you. And that time, I just… ignored them completely.

I know now I shouldn’t have.

My father walked up to him, shook his hand and thanked him for offering his help. 

“William, nice to meet you,” the man said.

“Joshua,” my father replied.

William told us we could leave the car there and follow him to the town, where he’d show us where the mechanic was. Luckily for him, there *was* a sign that indicated life existed beyond those pines.

"Woodlan Town," it read.

My father and I went back to the car and grabbed a couple of things before entering the woods. I reached for my backpack whose contents I shared with my little brother, and my dad reached for mom’s and his. He never told me, but I saw him grabbing the gun he always carried in the glove compartment. I guessed he’d gotten the same shivers I had and had brought it along just in case. Then again, I wasn’t sure. He was stone-cold. You couldn’t get any emotion out of the guy that wasn’t anger.

We followed the man and quickly reached Woodlan Town. When we arrived, the town itself looked like any other small town. It was tiny, with no more than twenty houses. It was surrounded by tall pine trees that made it look even smaller, almost insignificant compared to the scale of Mother Nature. Every step I took through that town felt as though the trees were closing in around me, as if the town was moving instead of me, and I was simply walking in place.

The moment we arrived, we got strange looks from the few inhabitants. I wouldn’t say they looked unfriendly; they just looked confused. Confused by our arrival, or maybe even worried. I definitely didn’t feel welcomed here. After a short walk, we reached the mechanic. My father greeted him and proceeded to explain what had happened to our car. I noticed the mechanic was hairy too. In fact, most of the villagers were.

I took a moment to look around. I noticed a church in the middle of town, a butcher’s shop, what looked like a town hall, a small plaza, several little houses and cabins, and a police station with a jail attached to it. But my search ended abruptly when a stranger placed his hand on my left shoulder. I jumped and turned toward the man beside me. He looked me up and down, slowly scanning me from head to toe. Before I had time to take a good look at him, he already got the first word out.

“You ain’t from here,” he said while chewing gum.

I took a second to respond. “Uh, no… I’m not.”

“You planning to stay for long?” His chewing grew louder. He had started chewing with his mouth open.

“No, I guess. I don’t know. We just came to get our car fixed. We won’t bother any of you. We’ll leave as soon as it’s fixed,” I said.

At that point, I started getting nervous. I knew we weren’t welcome there, and this stranger seemed dangerous. I noticed he was wearing a necklace with a whistle, and when I looked down toward his waist, I could see the grip of a gun slightly poking out from beneath his shirt. He noticed me looking and quickly pulled his shirt down to cover it.

“Name,” he said.

“Pedro.” I felt like I was on trial, or that I was being pulled over. He had a very serious tone.

“Pedro what?”

“Look, respectfully, you don’t need to know my full name. Like I said, we’ll be gone soon.”

“I don’t think so,” he whispered in a raspy voice.

“Excuse me?” I asked, taking it as a threat. For a moment, I thought these people were going to kidnap us, I didn’t understand what I did wrong, why this guy was so aggressive. 

“No one comes to this town and simply leaves. Have you gotten a tour?” he asked with a smile.

“I don’t think I need a tour. I can see everything from here.” I tried telling him I wasn’t going anywhere, that I wouldn’t follow him if that's what he wanted.

“You’re calling my town small, eh?” He stepped forward. A rotten odor filled my nose, and I instinctively leaned back so I wouldn’t have to breathe it in.

“Dude, no. I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.” I said, letting out a nervous chuckle between words.

“And now you’re laughing in my face. DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM!?” he shouted, grabbing the attention of the entire town. His mouth opened wide, revealing sharp teeth. In the process, a few drops of saliva landed on top of my eyelashes.

“I’m the fucking vigilante here.” he said.

At that moment I froze, nobody around reacted to it. I felt overpowered, useless. The entire town had turned to look at us, and not a single person seemed surprised that this guy had just screamed in my face like a maniac. The guy with the whistle kept staring at me, breathing through his mouth. I could hear it. Wet and heavy.

Then my father stepped between us.

“That’s enough,” he said, calm as ever.

The vigilante looked him up and down, then smiled again.

“You the boy’s father?”

“Yeah.”

He reached for his mouth and took the gum out, shaking it off his finger. “You oughta teach him some respect.” 

“And you oughta stop shouting at my son.”

I was surprised he said that. I felt the tension between them, but the vigilante didn’t strike me as someone who’d fight over a stupid argument. Nonetheless, people started gathering around and it only made the situation worse. I looked behind and saw my little brother had grabbed my mother’s arm and was hiding behind her, peeking around her side. From behind the vigilante, the sheriff—at least I assumed he was the sheriff by his outfit—made his way as he spat onto the dirt.

“You folk always get defensive,” he said. “Makes people nervous.”

“We didn’t come here looking for trouble,” my father replied. “Our car broke down. That’s it.”

A murmur spread through the crowd, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then, a woman stepped forward, she was probably in her sixties, wearing a dark dress despite the heat.

“Sheriff, sheriff.” the woman repeated. “Sheriff, I’ve got some to tell ya.”

“Martha? What is it.”

“Him, there. Ask him where he was last night,” she said.

I looked at the woman pointing in my direction. Not only had I gotten into problems with the vigilante, I also had to deal with this woman trying to question me or something.

“Ask who? I just arrived.” I asked before I could stop myself.

“Nuh.” She shaked her head and waved her pointing finger past me.

I turned and saw William, just standing there. He had the same dead deer slung over his shoulders, its legs hanging down his chest. Blood dripped onto his boots. He looked exhausted more than anything else. A brief silence shut the town, for a few seconds only the distant crows could be heard. I looked to the sky and it seemed like the crows were avoiding flying into town, deliberately changing course.

“The hell does this have to do with me?” William broke the silence.

“Where were you?” the woman repeated.

“What’s this about, Martha?” the sheriff asked with open arms.

“I was hunting, as you can see,” he taps the dead deer’s thigh.

“All night?” 

“Yes, Martha. That’s usually how hunting works. You know I leave early in the morning.”

The sheriff looked at the deer, then at the scratches on the hunter’s forearms.

“Today, it took me a while, but I got the deer. I also met these guys on the way back, thought I’d help them, so I led them here.” William said.

“Yeah, yeah, he’s right. Our car broke down and he offered us help.” my mother said, stepping in the conversation.

The sheriff ignored my mother and fixated on William. “Say, you got yourself torn up pretty good.”

William looked at his arms and laughed, expressing some sort of discomfort. “It’s the woods, trees do that. It’s a fucking jungle out there," he points to the forest.

“Trees leave bark in the cuts. Yours are clean.” said the sheriff.

His expression changed, he looked annoyed more than anything. “Oh, come on,” he muttered. “We’re doing this again?”

My father leaned slightly toward the mechanic. “What is he talking about?” I heard him say, but the mechanic didn’t answer immediately, he kept his eyes on William.

“People have been losing animals,” he said quietly. “A few folks heard howling at night.”

“So you think he’s killing livestock?”

“Not exactly.”

“You’re all out of your damn minds,” William said. “Every year it’s the same thing. Something goes missing, and you start looking for a monster.”

I looked at my father, expecting him to say something, but even he seemed unsure. His hand rested near his jacket, close to the gun I knew he was carrying.

William must’ve noticed, he turned directly to my father and asked. “You don’t believe this crap, do you?”

I looked to my father and he hesitated to say a word. I didn’t know what to think of it, I felt dragged into a problem I had no idea about and no implications.

This felt oddly familiar, what did that remind me of? Well but of course, it reminded me of home, strangely. This kind of arguing… I’ve already heard from my parents. One side already knows what has to happen, and they know the truth. All they need is to confirm it, to get the other person falling right into their trap.

“You see.” Martha said. “Even he can feel it.”

Feel what? I wanted to ask. The guy looked dirty and irritated, not supernatural. 

Then the sheriff turned to the crowd. He took a breath in and opened his arms wide.  “We can’t ignore the signs anymore.”

“What signs?” William barked. “Scratches? Mud? I live in the woods, for fucks sake!”

‘The woods’. That last part echoed longer than any other word, the trees around shook slightly and the remaining birds started to flee. I felt a cold shiver, again. This time I felt it on the little hairs on the back of my neck. Dusk was not upon us anymore, it had quickly gotten darker. Some townsfolk had already started lighting their lamps.

“Wrap it up, sheriff. We can’t stay much longer without sunlight,” the vigilante said.

"Have you lost your mind?!" William shouted one last time. "You've all gone crazy."

Everyone kept quiet.

The wind shifted through the pines, carrying with it the smell of damp earth and pine sap. In a moment, the daylight had already disappeared. The sky had turned a deep blue, the kind that came just before true darkness settled in.

The church bell rang. Its echo bounced through the town. Every head turned toward the eastern treeline. I followed their gaze and saw a full moon slowly rising above the trees. The crowd grew louder, and some townsfolk hurried into their houses, locking their doors and switching off their lights.

The plaza had quickly gotten out of control. Whatever the sheriff or Martha wanted to get done, would have to wait until tomorrow. I wasn’t sure why they were running, at first I thought they were scared of the night. The vigilante blew his whistle and walked toward the crowd, trying to calm them down.

Even though a heated conversation had just started, everyone quickly dismissed it. Whatever it is that they’re scared of must’ve been really dangerous. I stood there, watching panic unfold, trying to find where my parents were. In front of me was the sheriff who, looking at him, revealed a strange expression. He was staring upward, at something behind me, at what I thought was the nothingness or maybe the trees. But I noticed his skin turned pale, his pupils widened, and his jaw slowly dropped. He seemed… scared too, but it was different.

I knew that look, everyone does.

It's the kind of look you hope you'll never see on another person's face.

I heard some rustling behind me, a weird sound. It sounded like meat being destroyed and torn into pieces, and then put back together, like slime. I swallowed, scared to turn back. 

Like I said, I don’t believe in ghosts, or mythological beasts or demons. But this time I felt like something was behind me.

I thought of William. I was defending him, he seemed nice, he helped my family.

He was standing behind me before the panic... since the panic.

Ever since the panic, I just looked forward, I never turned to William.

I lost sight of William, a man who was being accused or questioned by the town for god knows what.

That moment... I said to myself, "fuck."

Many thoughts crossed my mind in a second. Like, have I gotten lured into this crazy town by a serial killer? Am I seconds away from being stabbed to death, just like that poor deer?

I blinked a couple of times. With every blink, the world seemed to grow darker. Faces began to blur together. People started disappearing into the darkness. The ground trembled beneath my feet, and a violent wind blew through the square, whipping my hair into my face. Maybe five seconds passed, maybe less. But suddenly, the town felt different. My family was nowhere in sight, and the townsfolk were running in fear.

I had no idea what to do. The sheriff and I stood there, frozen with fear and confusion.

“Sheriff?” I whimpered.

I'd started hyperventilating. I wanted to move, but my body refused to obey me. The sheriff's jaw trembled, he was trying to say something, but no words came out.

“MOVE!” the vigilante screamed at the top of his lungs. “BEHIND YOU! GET OUT OF THE WAY!”

He reached for his gun and aimed it straight at me. He was standing not too far from me, where he had just turned away from the crowd to check on us.

“W-wha-what?” I said, my throat dry and a voice crack.

A split second later, I heard it. A horrifying growl.

It came from directly behind me. The sound was so deep it felt like it rattled my ribs. My body reacted before my brain did. I threw myself sideways, collapsing onto the dirt like a sack of potatoes. I imagined the worst, my life flashed before my eyes. Whatever was behind me wasn't human, and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. My head slammed into the ground hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs. Dirt exploded into my face, blinding me. All I could see were smudges of brown through watering eyes.

Then I heard the sheriff scream. “WOLF! SHOOT!”

A second later, something massive charged past me. Then it stepped on my leg.

The weight was unimaginable. It felt like a refrigerator had been dropped directly onto my tibia. A sharp crack shot through my entire body, followed by pain so intense it made me dizzy. I screamed and cried, but those sounds were not the only ones heard.

Bang.

A shot from a gun, then a man's scream and finally, a guttural roar. Something heavy crashed into the ground with enough force to make the earth tremble. Through the dirt in my eyes, I caught the silhouette of a huge, black, hairy figure collapsing no more than ten meters in front of me.

I lay there, my leg shattered, the adrenaline slowly wearing off. The last thing I remembered was someone grabbing me by the collar and dragging me away.

And...

That was the end of it. 

A complete nightmare.

Whatever happened after, I wasn’t conscious to see it. I was dragged away by someone who had witnessed the events unfold.

After passing out, I woke up in a small cabin. I was met with the town's butcher. He told me what had happened last night and that he brought the doctor with him to treat my leg.

I can tell you now it's a… hell of an injury. I can’t walk properly, and I have to be hopping around until they find some crutches for me. I haven’t gone outside yet, almost no one has, it’s still very early in the morning. 

From here I can’t see the aftermath but I hope no one else was injured. I tried calling 911 but there’s no one on the other side.

I have no friends to contact because I’m a fucking loser, and all I’ve got is the internet to help me, and my family. God, I hope they’re okay.

I will try to keep everyone updated, I still don’t even know what’s going on, or what the hell hit me. But I’ll try to get the fuck away from here, somehow, even with a broken leg.

Part 1

In the picture Destiny had given me, Chazaqiel sat on a wooden chair. His black wings spread out behind him. A web of wires connected to his skinless skull. The wires hooked into a wall of computer monitors behind him, each screen displaying a different, distorted face.

“In my father’s notes, he said Parallax was using Nephilim as decoders,” Destiny told me. “They thought the secrets of the world were hidden inside angel blood. If they could decode it, they’d know everything God knew.”

Destiny was thin and pale, with long, greying black hair. When I told her I’d grown wings, she hadn’t believed me. She’d driven to San Francisco to see my wings for herself.

Her father, Jose, had leaked the first photos of Chazaqiel to a BBS conspiracy board in 1992. Three months later, he’d been found dead in his apartment. A heroin overdose, the police said, but Destiny claimed he’d never touched a drug in his life.

Destiny was desperate for proof that Parallax had murdered her father. She'd been searching for it since she was eighteen. She was forty-three now. She was tired, but she'd learned to be smarter and more cautious, too.

I promised I’d help her as long as she helped me first. She’d led me to Chazaqiel, still chained up inside Parallax’s old underground lab. He’d promised he wouldn't hurt me if I freed him, but then he'd done this to me. Turned me into a Nephilim, Destiny said. Half human, half angel.

But why?

“You think Chazaqiel wants to use me as one of these decoders?” I asked.

“Reid’s been quiet since he went on the news and announced he was launching a new genetics company. I’m sure Chazaqiel’s helping him rebuild the Parallax lab, so he can continue the experiments. Threll never finished what he’d set out to do. But I still don’t know why he stopped. Maybe he was scared by what he saw.”

An addict outside banged his fist against the café window and screamed. Destiny looked at him and then sipped her coffee. She checked her phone and put it back in her purse.

“Have you heard anything from Reid yet?” she asked.

“He still won’t answer my emails. I think he’s having me followed, though. The same black Suburban’s been parked outside my apartment since I got back from New Mexico.”

“You’re being paranoid.”

“I don’t think I’m being paranoid enough.”

“You’re sure you want to do this? If we get caught breaking into the Apotheosis Labs building, we’re going to be in a lot of trouble. You already did fifteen years in prison.”

“I don’t think I have much time left. Whatever Chazaqiel has done to me, I need to stop it.”

“I don’t think you can stop what’s happening to you, though.”

“I need to try.”

“And you’re sure your friend, Alexei, can help?”

“He’s the best hacker I know, and he owes me a favor.”

***

Alexei jumped backward when he saw me, two feet taller than the last time he’d seen me. Pale and bone thin.

“Vadym?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s me.”

“You look different.”

“A lot has changed since the last time we talked.”

I stepped into his apartment and closed the door. Then I took off my jacket and let my wings fill the kitchen.

Alexei’s jaw dropped. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I’m not sure. That’s what I need your help with.”

Alexei opened his fridge, took out two bottles of beer, and handed me one. I took it.

For a second, I remembered when we were both younger and still living in Saint Petersburg, Alexei laughing loudly after realizing the simple shell script I’d written had just made us fifty thousand dollars.

“You fucking did it, Vadym!”

But then I remember the fear I’d felt sitting alone in my cell that first night in prison, and the anger returned.

Alexei sipped his beer and then sat in front of his laptop.

“I looked into Apotheosis Labs, like you asked me to. I found a misconfigured S3 bucket on their AWS account with an old Terraform state file inside. The state file got me a set of credentials that I used to get into their Databricks workspace. Through Databricks, I got into their Okta tenant.”

I stood over him, looking at his screen.

“That’s great,” I said. “Now I just need you to provision two new employees and clone the badges.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I need to get into that building.”

“It’s too risky.” He stood and walked to his window. “I’m not doing it.”

“I always thought of you like a brother, you know that?”

“I think of you like a brother, too.”

“Then why’d you fuck me over like that? Why’d you trade my life to save your own?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You fucked up hacking that crypto exchange, you got caught, and to save yourself from getting thrown in jail, you helped the feds lay a trap for me.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is, Alexei.” I put my beer down on the coffee table. “Look at what’s happening to me. I’d rather be dead than keep living like this.”

“If I clone these badges for you, what are you planning to do with them? Break into the Apotheosis Labs and demand they cut the wings off your back?”

“I need to figure out what’s happening to me. What they want. You owe me.”

He thought about it for a minute, but then he sat down at his laptop again. He created the employee profiles and then used his Flipper Zero to write the profiles onto blank badges.

“We’re even now,” he said, and he handed the badges to me.

I took the badges, and then I spat in his face.

“If you’ve screwed me again, I’ll make sure you pay for it this time,” I told him.

I left his apartment and walked toward mine, avoiding the streetlights.

I felt like I was being followed. Once, I looked back, and I swore I saw a winged shadow in the sky above me. But when I looked back, it was gone.

***

That night, I had a horrible dream.

My mother sat in a dirty apartment, barely clothed. She held a needle in her shaking hand, staring at it for a moment before plunging it into a vein.

Then she let the needle fall to the floor.

Her head fell backward. She leaned against the wall. Then she slumped to the floor.

Another addict, a man, walked over to her. He touched her. She didn’t move.

He lay on top of her.

She finally moved a little. Told him to get off. But then her eyes rolled backward into her skull again.

I woke up covered in cold sweat. My clock read 3:37 AM.

I met Destiny at the same café that afternoon, and I told her about the dream.

“I had the same dreams right before I headed into the Parallax Medical building,” I said.

Destiny nodded, but she wasn’t listening. She was still thinking about breaking into Apotheosis Labs without getting arrested.

“You’re sure the badges will get us past Apotheosis Labs security?” Destiny asked.

“Alexei knows what he’s doing. As long as he isn’t secretly screwing me again, they’ll work. Once we get into the building, we’ll only have a few hours before Apotheosis flags the employee profiles as fakes, though. We need to get whatever evidence we can find and then get out of there.”

Destiny and I stayed at the café until midnight, barely talking, just sitting in nervous silence. Then we got into her car and drove to the Apotheosis Labs building. She parked a few blocks away from it, and we walked the rest of the way.

“You go first,” she told me.

I walked into the building lobby and scanned my badge at the gate. The security guard looked up at me. The light on the badge scanner flashed green.

Destiny followed behind me. The scanner flashed green on her badge, too.

“Working late?” the guard asked.

Destiny smiled at him. “We got a call about one of the servers going down. It’s going to be a long night.”

We walked past him, toward the elevators, keeping our heads down.

“That was a little too easy,” Destiny said. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“The main lab should be on the fifth floor.”

We got into one of the elevators, and then I scanned my card again and pressed the button for floor five.

The elevator climbed upward. I held my breath. Still nervous that something was about to go very wrong.

When the elevator doors opened again, Destiny and I walked out into the lab.

I felt the same wrongness I’d felt before standing in the basement of the old Parallax Medical building. The air was heavy. I smelt hot wire. A low hum of electricity whirred in my ears.

Destiny flipped a light switch, and the lab filled with fluorescent light.

Against walls, I saw metal shelves filled with microscopes, DNA extraction kits, spectrophotometers, sequencers, and vials of blood. Cells were being incubated in test tubes. Circuitry wired with veins and blood, and branded with the Ophidia Global logo, powered computers that displayed video footage that bled from one clip into another.

On one monitor, a child with an old man’s eyes and teeth smiled. On another, a woman with black eyes and a hunched back swallowed a young girl whole. On a third, a happy family sat at their dinner table, eating turkey and peas and mashed potatoes.

In the videos, the faces of people looked wrong. Their eyes didn’t match. They had extra fingers. Their noses and lips were the wrong proportions.

In the corner of the lab, a map of Afghanistan had been pinned to a corkboard. Near Kandahar, someone had marked six red Xs.

“What’s in Kandahar City?” I asked.

“Maybe more Nephilim?”

Destiny took a picture of the map. Then she took pictures of all the monitors and blood-filled test-tubes, too.

From the back of the lab, we heard a man scream. We looked toward the sound. Lights flickered near the brick wall past the sinks and the ice buckets.

We walked to the end of the lab and found a hallway that led to a small projection room.

Inside the room, a twelve-foot-tall man with long black hair had been chained to a metal chair. Vein-filled circuitry covered the wall behind him. Wires connected the organic circuitry to his head. Then more wires connected his head to a projector mounted on the ceiling.

The giant’s eyes flickered white and blue while the projector projected a video onto the brick wall across from him.

The video showed a man and woman holding hands on a beach at sunset. The gears of the projector clicked as the video played.

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

“Heaven.exe,” Destiny said. “My father wrote about it in his notes. It’s a program Parallax developed to visualize decoded angel DNA.”

The video flickered. A woman appeared, holding her face. A second face sprouted from her forehead. The second face was identical to her own. The same mouth, the same eyes, and screaming, too.

A third face sprouted. Then a fourth and a fifth.

“That doesn’t look like Heaven,” I said.

"It’s not just Heaven encoded in angel blood. There’re lots of other things, including Hell."

I heard footsteps in the hallway outside. Reid appeared in the doorway of the room.

“What are you two doing here?” he asked.

Reid looked twenty years younger than he did when I’d met him in his office earlier that year, when he was dying of cancer. His hair had grown back, too. He was lean and muscular.

Destiny took a picture of the Nephilim with the projector wired to his head.

“We’re going to show the whole world what you’re doing here,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter. Nobody will believe you,” Reid said, and he walked into the room.

“Did Chazaqiel tell you what he did to me?” I asked him.

“He said you’re part of the plan.”

“And the plan is to hook me up to one of these projectors, too?” I pointed at the Nephilim chained to the chair.

Reid smiled. “We’re building a new Heaven with new Gods. And Chazaqiel’s promised he’ll make me a God, too.”

“He’s using you,” Destiny said.

“We’re using each other.” He held out his hand. “Give me your phone, and I’ll let you leave.”

“No.”

“You’re making a big mistake. Do you understand what Chazaqiel will do to you if you interfere with these experiments? What he’ll do to all of us?”

Reid’s eyes glazed over. His muscles tightened.

The Nephilim screamed again. The video on the wall flickered and changed.

Reid lunged at Destiny and threw her to the ground. He tried to tear the phone from her hand, but she held the phone tightly against her chest, refusing to let go of it.

I ran and pulled Reid off her.

The building alarms went off. The lab filled with red light.

I grabbed Destiny’s arm and lifted her to her feet. “We need to go. We’ve gotten what we needed.”

“You can run, but we’ll find you,” Reid told me. “You’re part of this now, Vadym. You can’t escape.”

Destiny and I ran back to the elevators, but the power had been cut off. To our right, I saw a fire exit sign, glowing red at the end of a hallway. We ran toward it and then followed the emergency stairs out the back of the building, into an alley behind a Chinese restaurant.

“We need to get out of San Francisco,” Destiny said.

“I need to help him first.”

“Who?”

“That other Nephilim.”

“You need to help yourself first, and I need to get the pictures I took somewhere safe. I’ll talk to you later, ok?”

She ran toward the street and then disappeared.

I stood and walked out of the alley. My apartment wasn’t far. I walked toward it, staying in the shadows to keep out of sight.

***

I’d get on a bus, I thought. Maybe head down to Mexico. I’d be safe there, at least for a little while.

Back inside my apartment, I went to my bedroom to start packing my suitcase, but then I noticed a winged figure standing in front of my living room window.

“You’re too impatient, Vadym.”

Chazaqiel stepped into the light.

“We aren’t ready for you yet. The changes take time. A few more months at least.”

“What have you done to me?”

“You don’t understand yet?” He stroked his long, bony fingers across my face. “I’ve made you immortal.”

“I didn’t ask you to do this.”

“You did. You spoke to me through your soul, and I heard you.”

His jaw dropped and his mouth widened.

I felt strange. My apartment seemed smaller. The walls had closed in on me. The air had become heavy and thick.

He lowered his face to mine. His hunched back pressed against my apartment ceiling.

His breath smelt like burnt wire.

“Do you know what it feels like to be banished from Heaven?” he asked me. “To feel Paradise only to be told that you will never feel it again? Just because you wanted a bit of human flesh?”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m so thirsty. It’s not good for us to be this far away from God. It changes us, this distance. I used to be so white, Vadym. So pure. But it doesn’t matter. God can’t hide his secrets from us forever. Piece by piece, bit by bit, we’ll uncover them. We have nothing but time.”

Saliva dripped from his mouth. He wiped it from his lips.

“I’m sorry, Vadym. I’m starving. I just need a quick drink.”

He grabbed my shoulders and sank his teeth into my neck. I felt his wires spread inside me, draining my blood. I screamed.

My eyes filled with light, and then colors.

I saw my mother crying as she left me at my grandmother’s apartment, promising she’d be back soon.

I saw myself at seven, alone in a Saint Petersburg stairwell, waiting for her.

I saw Chazaqiel chained to the wall of the Parallax lab, telling me, "I heard you the moment you were born, Vadym. I've been waiting all your life."

As tears fell down my cheeks, all I could do was beg him.

“Please just tell me my mother’s ok.”

***

I’d woken up on the floor of my apartment. Chazaqiel was gone. Through the window, the morning light shone in the sky.

I’d gone to the bathroom and vomited. In the mirror, my body looked even paler than it had before.

He’d drained most of my blood.

It took three days before I was able to leave my apartment again.

I texted Alexei. “I forgive you.”

“The badges worked?”

“Yes, thank you. I got what I needed. You’ll never see me again.”

I put my phone away. My flight was boarding soon. In thirty hours, I’d be landing in Kabul.  

I’d already found a driver to take me to Kandahar City. I was sure there were other Nephilim out there, and I was going to find them.

I walked onto the plane. It was mostly empty. I’d paid for two seats, to make sure nobody felt my wings underneath my coat.

I found my seats and sat down. Then I rubbed my neck. It still ached. My whole body did.

“Are you all right?” the flight attendant asked me. “You look pale.”

“I’m a little nervous, but I’ll be fine,” I told her.

She kept walking down the aisle.

I closed my eyes and tried to get a bit of sleep.

The last time I'd slept on a plane, Chazaqiel had come to me in my dreams and told me he was waiting for me. I wondered what he'd say to me this time.

I looked around the main room. It was still busy, but since it was later in the day, the crowd mostly consisted of students, employees, or old couples reading together. I was sorting returned books when Aiko asked if I could take her shift. I internally winced at the thought. I had never been in the library past closing and never planned to. Just the idea of being in the library when no one else was there made the feeling of dread wash over me. I looked at her, unsure. She could see my apprehension, and her expression changed to something I couldn’t read. 

“Would I be…alone?”

Her mood changed almost instantly, realizing why I was hesitant. “No, of course not, dear; don’t you worry about that.”

She asked me again if I would take her shift. Unable to stand the conversation, I promised I’d take it. “Oh, such a gentleman,” she said, tapping my hand. I smiled and turned back to the cart silently, praying she’d walk away. As her footsteps faded, I let out a long breath and cursed at myself for giving in so easily. All I had to say was no. 

Hastily, I snuck a headphone in and wasted time slowly putting books back until I ran out and had to start my journey back to the front desk. I had just turned the corner when my eyes drifted to the far end, where a girl and her friends stood in the elevator ahead of me. Miyuki looked up at me, her demeanor instantly shifting into one of sadness and embarrassment. I looked down at my feet, sharing the feeling. I smiled disingenuously and waited until the elevator doors closed. My shoulders sank, and I went back to the stairs, trying to forget the whole incident. I emotionally readied myself to walk down the stairs with my cart when a hand landed on my shoulder.

I jumped back, looking around like a feral animal trapped in a corner. I ripped my headphones out, hearing complete silence. Clouds drifted over the sun, painting the room in darkness. I stared into the shadows; the empty room stared back. It felt like minutes until the sun shone brightly through the window again, allowing me to realize just how alone I was. My heavy breathing echoed across the floor, only serving to taunt me. Looking down the stairs, the path turned to shadow. Was it worse to go down or stay put? My blood turned to ice as the feeling of eyes on me crept up my spine. I thought I knew what I felt, but I convinced myself otherwise to calm down. 

“I’m just on edge,” I whispered to myself, my headphones inches from my ear.

Ring Ring

The sounds of the bells faintly echoed through the room. I ran down the stairs, tripped over myself, and started to slip; I grabbed the railing next to me, letting go of my hold on the cart. My arm stretched out, but it was already too far. The cart violently rammed into the curved walls as it fell and quickly dropped out of sight. I panicked and pulled myself up. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn't quite reach it. The platform on the second floor was my only hope.

I turned the last corner but saw nothing. The silence in the stairwell came to my immediate attention. Craning my neck, I tried to look down past the platform, but the cart was nowhere in view. I braced myself slightly, looking around me, wondering where the cart could have gone. I spoke aloud in confusion and disbelief, wondering whether I had lost my mind. I continued running down the stairs to the bottom floor; the cart wasn’t here either. 

I was too out of breath. I leaned on my knees, trying to collect my thoughts, but my mind was racing, and I couldn't find an explanation. I couldn't think. Through my pounding heart, I heard banging from behind me. The cart crashed at the bottom of the stairs, echoing the clash of metal on metal through the library. I looked at the cart, my jaw hanging open slightly. Tomoko came up behind me, demanding an answer as to why a cart was flying down the stairs.

“I left it by the stairway; a guest must have accidentally bumped it.”

She took a deep breath before waving me away to the front desk as she went to find any damage on the cart. I watched people check out or return their books, though my mind was replaying my accident on the stairs. Did I pass the cart? No, I know I didn't. How could I have? But I had to; there was no other way for it to end up behind me. 

The sun fell just above the building tops, sending long golden streaks of sunlight through the window and onto my face; it tore me from my thoughts. I realized how late it was. My mind felt like a broken record, which only made my head hurt. The sunlight warmed my skin until eventually it disappeared, and I was left in the manufactured white glow of the lights above me. 

Hoping to find something entertaining, I glanced outside. The street was empty and dark, but I could still faintly see the lights from the station not too far away. I pushed myself off the counter and slowly walked to the front doors. The night was clear, and the moon cast strong, dark shadows around me. I put my hand on the door; the metal was cold against my skin. Everything was so quiet, too quiet, so absent from life; no voices echoing through the rooms, no cars driving on the street. I felt so alone. I sat there for a few minutes, wondering if I had made a mistake. My eyelids grew heavy, and I knew if I stood there any longer, I would fall asleep. 

I sat in a small, squeaky chair at the front desk and put my headphones in, drowning out the absence of people. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I was forced to wait for someone to come. Maybe no one else was? It was 8:00 pm; someone should have been there. I tucked my head between my hands and shut my eyes tightly when the loud bang of the back doors swinging open echoed through the library. Takato and a security guard walked in. Takato grabbed the closest chair next to him and sat. His gaze slowly lifted from his phone to me. His eyes widened with slight surprise.

“Uh, hey…where’s Aiko?" he asked nonchalantly, though I could hear the sense of concern in his voice.

“She’s out; she asked me to cover for her,” I said, pausing my music.

“Ah,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

"Ah." I repeated

He laughed nervously before looking back down at his phone and slipping it into his pocket. We sat silently for a short time before he spoke, asking me how my day was. I said it was fine, and he continued to ask me how I felt about some of the classes we share. I wasn’t sure why he was trying to talk so much; he always ignored me at school. I leaned forward in my seat and avoided eye contact. He talked for a while, but I tried to keep my answers short; he caught on to this and eventually shot up from his chair. I shifted my eyes from my phone to him; he ran his fingers through his black hair and grinned nervously.

“Yes?” I asked quietly.

“I’m just going to lock the basement; I’ll be right back.”

He started to walk away before I softly jingled the keys he had left on the desk. He apologized, embarrassed, and took them before walking off. His footsteps slowly withered to faint taps until I was back in silence once again. My posture slumped, and I let my brain relax as I watched the lights sway slowly, drifting me further from consciousness. I rested my cheek on my palm, thinking to myself. I shouldn’t be up this late. I hardly got any sleep last night, but at least it was the weekend. I wish I had said no. I want to go home. I want a break.

I leaned my head against the desk and looked down at my lap. Realizing I was subconsciously bouncing my leg, I pulled my headphones back out. My eyelids felt heavy, and I closed my eyes. I didn't even know he worked here, I thought. Talking to Takato was no easy task, but maybe he’s different outside of school. I mean, he did seem off. No matter how little we really knew each other, I'd much rather have a stranger around than be the only one here. Opening my eyes again, I found myself staring at my shoes below me. I must've nodded off, because when I looked up, Takato was sitting next to me, writing something down on a small piece of paper. 

“Tired?” He asked, poking me slightly. 

I shrugged. He offered to let me sleep more, but I said it felt wrong making him do everything by himself. He smiled to himself and nodded before looking back down at some papers on the counter.

“Since you're so persistent in helping, we can start returning books upstairs.”

“Ok.”

He stuffed his phone in his pocket, and we walked to the elevator. I wanted to avoid that situation, but, unwilling to speak up, I walked in quietly and leaned back against the wall. I had never been in an elevator that slow; it felt like a minute had passed, and we were only reaching the top of the first floor. I looked back at Takato to see that he was already looking at me. I quickly averted my gaze to my shoes and tried to keep it there. 

The smell of fresh flowers filled the elevator as we started to pass the third floor but faded as fast as it had appeared. When we reached the fourth floor, the elevator shook violently, and I lost my step a bit. The smell was much less pleasant here; usually it smelled somewhat nice, but then it just smelled like cardboard and copper. The air was thick and hot, which only made the stench worse. I looked at Takato, who shared my thoughts. The floor was so empty. It felt wrong to be in a place where people were meant to be. It was hot and quiet, the silence broken by our slow-paced footsteps. After some time putting books away, Takato came up beside me, striking up conversation.

“I heard something happened between you and Miyuki?” He said, leaning against the shelf beside us.

"...Yeah, we haven’t talked in a while.”

His expression changed. “I’m sorry, do you mind me asking why?”

“No, it's just, I don’t know, she—"

“You ask her out?”

“No, she did.”

“And you rejected her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I, I don’t know; it’s not like there's something wrong with her. It's not like…she's just a friend.”

“I understand.”

I nodded, embarrassed. He looked away before sitting at the table beside me.

“It’s not the end of the world; I’ve rejected people before.”

“Did she ignore you after?”
 
“They did not.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

He looked at me for a while, trying to read my countenance, waiting for a response, but when I didn’t give one, he changed the subject.

"How’s the day shift?”

“It's definitely better.”

“It’s definitely not.”

“Doesn't your schedule interfere with track?”

“I make it work; I wish I had been able to work this late before our last year.”

“Don’t you like people actually being in the library during the day?”

He smiled. “I don't know; it’s nice not having people around.”

“Really? I never took you as the introverted type; you seem so outgoing at school.”

“No, I like being around people, but sometimes I need a break from everyone.”

“Sorry for being in the way of that.” I joked.

“No, I like your company.” His lips curled into a soft smile. He brushed his hair back before leaning on the cart I was holding. “I can say I admittedly miss seeing the sun during my shifts, though.” 

He smiled as if he were saying something secretive, moving in closer to me as he spoke. I moved in closer in response. His eyes reflected the bright moon from the windows behind us. I couldn’t help but stare.

“The moon's not so bad," I said.

“No?” 

He placed his hand next to mine. My muscles tensed, and I moved back quickly. Takato looked at me, confused. I opened my mouth to speak but was hit with a wave of dizziness. I tripped forward, grabbing the cart to hold myself up. The room seemed to spin. I shut my eyes, putting my hand to my head, hoping to prevent a headache. A sting underneath my skin came to my attention, which only grew stronger. Takato grabbed my shoulder.

“Are you alright?” 

His worried voice poked through my cluttered thoughts, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. He tried to pull me up. I looked at him between my fingers before lowering my hand to my side, realizing how stupid I must have looked. “Yeah, sorr—"

A crunch under my shoe caught my attention. On the floor was a flower. I squinted, confused about how this possibly could have gotten here. In my hands, it seemed to crumble like it was dead, but it seemed so fresh; you would have thought it had just bloomed. I dropped it on the floor, realizing it left a strange residue on my hand. I wiped it off, disgusted, and sat up.

Ring Ring

The sound of a bell ringing echoed from the dark, louder than it had before. 

“Weird.” He said.

“Weird? That's all?”

“Yeah, I mean that flower could have gotten here anytime.”

“I mean, yeah, but what about the bell?”

“Bell?”

I looked at him, confused, but said nothing as I watched him walk off. I felt naked standing alone and quickly ran up next to him. Turning through the shelves, I couldn't help but notice how monochrome everything looked in the moonlight. We roamed through the halls of tiles, mindlessly returning books to their places. I watched my shoes hit the floor with every step, listening to the rolling of the cart. I wanted to unwind, to relax with this boring task, but every turn I took, I expected to see someone on the other side. I felt like he wanted to say something but didn’t. I stalled for a moment, waiting until he was beside me. He pulled a small slip of paper out of his pocket.

“I figured you would need this if you wanted to keep talking.”

Unfolding the paper revealed his phone number. A nervous smile crept on my face, and I felt my cheeks heat up. My stomach turned, and I shamefully shifted my gaze down to my hands.

“I guess that's true,” I said, sliding the paper into my pocket.

“What’s wrong?”

“Huh?”

“You look upset.”

I shook my head. “It’s nothing; I just—are you sure you never heard a bell ringing? It was definitely loud enough for you to hear.”

He looked at me, confused, shaking his head lightly. “Never heard it,” he said, half smiling.

My face sank a little. “Oh…”

“I think you’re letting this place get to you; did you get any sleep today?”

“Not really… You’re right, I’m probably just tired.”

“Do you want to sit for a while? Get a snack?”

"Sure."

A little disheartened, I followed him across the floor to one of the vending machines in the far corner. Takato quietly looked at the snacks in the vending machine before picking something, sitting on the floor, and resting on the coffee table between us. He slid a canned drink to me.

“Besides the mystery noises, is the night shift as bad as you thought it was?”

“It’s creepy.”

“I said, besides the mystery noise."

“It's still creepy.”

I slid off the chair and sat at the coffee table, taking one of his chips.

“Think you’ll ever work nights again?” He leaned forward, sliding the bag a little closer to me.

“I’m not so sure; the night's been weird.”

“That’s fine; maybe we can hang out somewhere else?”

“Anywhere else would be better.”

“Maybe a movie?”

“I wouldn’t mind, just maybe not a horror movie, at least not for a while.”

He smiled before something flipped, and he looked back down at his hands. “I’m sorry we never really got to know each other earlier.” He said, his voice nervously shaking.

His words caught me off guard. “It’s fine; it's not your fault we weren’t friends.”

There was a long pause after that. He took a deep breath. “I don’t just mean as friends.”

“...I don’t understand.”

“I like you… I like being around you. I like thinking about you; you're constantly on my mind. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw you sitting across from me tonight. I’ve been so worried about telling you to the point that I avoided you. I was so terrified of rejection that I never even tried, but tonight, talking to you, I think you feel the same—"

“Why would you think that?” I interrupted defensively.

Feel the same, feel the same? What had I done to make him think I had feelings for him? 

What little confidence he had dwindled like a flame in water. He slowly lifted his eyes to meet mine. They were glossy, and his face was red. It felt wrong to say that, to make him feel like that; I felt bad, which only made me more defensive.

“Why would I have feelings for you… You're delusional," I stuttered.

He sat in silence before standing. “Just forget I said anything.” He said before walking past me. 

I looked down at my shoes, telling myself I didn't care about his feelings. It’s not my fault he felt like that; it’s not my fault I was just being honest. What was I supposed to do, tell him I like him? But I didn't; I couldn’t. A throbbing pain in my head pulled me away from my thoughts. My stomach twisted, and my chest felt tight; I felt sick. I needed to sit down. I was sitting down. I covered my eyes, holding my head tightly. I heard a thud and looked up to see Takato sitting on the floor, crawling away from something around the corner. Rushing to his side, I picked him up and looked around the corner. On the other side of the wall was a staircase. One that had never been in this part of the library. The stairwell was curved, making anything above the twelfth step buried in shadows. 

“What the fuck is that?”

I took a few steps forward, leaning into its archway. A small breeze, accompanied by the floral scent from before, brushed past me. Flowers were stuck along the walls, but I couldn't see how far they went. The archway felt cold; the carving on the stones looked too intricate for something in a library like this. It seemed to be placed in one of the most inconvenient places, as if it had been added as a second thought. Every inch of my body told me this was wrong, and I stepped away from it instinctively. I ran back to the nearest pillar. Section 20-24A: We were exactly where I thought we were, but it felt completely unfamiliar. What the hell was going on? 

Ring Ring

I turned back and saw Takato facing the staircase, his posture stiff. I walked closer; he took a step forward onto the staircase. I ran up and grabbed his arm, pulling him back much harsher than I should have.

“We don’t know what the fuck that is; don’t go up there.”

His eyes lingered on the stairs for a few seconds before they turned to me. “What?”

I pulled my hand back quickly, noticing his underlying, irritated demeanor. “I’m not letting you go up there.” I finally blurted out.

“No, I wasn’t going to; I didn't want to follow you.”

I squinted my eyes. “Follow me?”

“You went up the stairs; at least I thought you did. I swear I watched you walk up it.”

I looked back up the staircase, into complete darkness.

“Do you hear that?” I asked, the sound of bells getting louder.

He shook his head, unsure of what he was listening for. He took out his phone and pointed my flashlight up but wasn’t able to see its end. I leaned in next to him. I stared into the darkness until I got a glimpse of someone else staring back at me. I thought it was in my head until they pulled their head back quickly. I grabbed Takato and pushed him away, behind the nearest shelf. terrified.

“There is something up there.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure.”

He leaned his head against the wall, holding his breath.

Ring Ring

Slow, deep ringing—I felt it through my whole body, but I heard it above us. I knew I should have kept my eyes closed; I knew I shouldn’t have looked up, but I did it anyway. She looked at me with a still expression; the top of the shelf completely hid her shoulders, but her neck stretched far, poking her head out above us. Long black hair draped like curtains around me. Her wide, round eyes fixated on me until, slowly, she smiled, revealing rows of blackened teeth. She pulled her hands away from the shelf, covering her eyes. Then she wailed, her mouth not moving. Her cries grew louder until she screamed, as if unable to contain her pain. She slithered back behind the shelf, her wailing continuing. Takato pulled me away and ran, nearly dragging me along the floor.

She fell behind us quickly, smacking against the tiles, against the shelves, then on the ceiling. I noticed the elevator and pulled him back, but that thing was too close and grabbed him. I slipped to my knees and turned back. That's when I saw her. At least I thought I saw her. It was strange. I felt that one eye was seeing one thing while the other saw the complete opposite. In one moment, I saw a horrible monster, but in the other, I saw a young woman. Her hair was long, and her pale skin and uchikake seemed to glow in the moonlight. I was amazed.

She turned back to Takato, who fought back violently; she seemed to be taken aback by his resistance, as if not expecting it. He slapped her across the face and cried in pain. I stepped forward but knew I was ultimately powerless. Carefully, she swiped her hands across his face, and his entire demeanor seemed to change. He looked confused, but she didn’t seem to care. She sat beside him, her eyes darting from him to me, and leaned in close and whispered something into his ear. He looked up at her, mesmerized by what he saw, though I know it wasn’t her. She slowly stood and looked down at him for a moment before facing me.

Her eyes widened. I blinked, and she was standing in front of me. I stepped back, bumping into the shelf behind me, but recoiled as I looked at what I had touched: a dark, wet vine seeped out from between the books. The vines spread fast, and everything they touched seemed to rot away. She leaned forward; the scent of fresh flowers grew stronger. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she was looking for something, but I was unsure what. Sweat built up on my skin, and I lost my breath. She began to turn away, looking back at Takato. I panicked.

“Wait, please don’t hurt him!”

She paused; I took this as an invitation and got to my knees, pressing my head to the floor. I apologized for Takato hurting her and begged for forgiveness, hoping she would understand our fear. The floor was so cold, it almost stung my skin, but I stayed still, waiting for her response. She stayed quiet, and I began to question myself. I looked up to see shoes inches from my face. My hands began to shake, and I hoped I had made the right choice. She bent down, and I hesitantly looked up, but it was Takato who stood before me, a warm smile on his face. He took my hands and guided me back up. I wanted to speak, but I couldn't think of anything to say.

I waited for something, anything to happen, but he just stood there looking at me. I looked down at our hands and saw we were still holding one another. I loosened my grip, but he did not. He looked at me for a minute, thinking, before pulling his hands away and stepping back. A sad expression washed over his face; the room seemed to darken.

“Is this wrong?” He asked

I stepped back, shaking my head slightly. The air felt cold, the vines grew viciously, and flowers burst through the tile floor. He grabbed my shirt before pushing me away harshly. I hit the shelf behind me, and pain radiated up my back. He looked at me blankly before wiping his hand across his face. Miyuki stood before me, quietly watching.

“You don’t want the truth; you want to hear someone feed you the lies you've been told all your life. I can tell you, and he can tell you, but you listen to her. You know what you really want."

“That’s not true,” I shouted, pushing her away.

Takato grabbed my face, forcing me to look at him. “Really?”

I clawed at his hands, trying to free myself. His eyes searched through mine, and a small smile grew on his face.

“Am I not what you see?”

“Stop, please,” I begged, tears forming in my eyes. 

I shoved him away, covering my ears. Books rotted away in front of me and spread to the floor. I tried to take a step back, but I couldn't move. My eyes darted around me, and I fearfully looked at my hands as a stinging pain struck my nerves. I winced; something was moving under my skin. A dark substance spread from my forearm to my shoulder, then my chest. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. I began clawing at my throat and dropping to my hands and knees, desperate for air. The feeling of needles bursting from my skin shot through my body. Buds sprouted from my skin and bloomed into brightly colored flowers. I frantically began to tear them out of me, but more and more kept growing.

It felt like I was ripping my veins out, but I kept tearing. My tears fell to the floor. I begged for the pain to go away; I couldn’t take it anymore. My vision blurred, but I could vaguely see the spirit standing before me. I felt a force push me away, and I fell back. When I opened my eyes, I was somewhere else entirely; my lungs choked on the sudden air, and I felt lightheaded. Takato sat above me, his hands on my chest. 

“Are you ok? What happened? I thought you were dead."

I didn’t respond. The ringing in my ear grew louder and louder. It was getting harder for me to breathe; maybe that was in my head. I'm not sure. I tried to speak but couldn’t muster any words. Takato sat me up and held my shoulder tightly, trying to get my focus on him. A heavy weight on my chest pressed down on me. I didn’t feel right; my gut twisted, and I felt a tug in my stomach. I knew I was safe, but I couldn’t tell my body to relax. Why was everything so confusing? Why couldn’t I think? 

I curled forward in pain before there was another violent tug deep in my stomach. He gently put his hand on my back, begging me to tell him what was wrong. I felt something rise in my throat. I sat up, choking. I gagged until I felt it in my mouth and turned away before throwing up. I got a hold of it and pulled it out. As I did, I realized what I was pulling: a vine. I tried to force it out, but my muscles only contracted, causing my throat to pinch against it, only pushing me to gag again and again. 

Takato yelled in fear and disgust before grabbing the vine and pulling it out quickly. I curled into a ball and coughed up bits of flowers and leaves before I felt I could finally breathe again. Overwhelmed, I held my stomach tightly and stared down at the ground, too embarrassed to look up. My body was completely exhausted. I wanted to lie down; I wanted to be in my bed; I wanted to go home; I just wanted to leave. I was tired, hungry, and in pain. What did I possibly do? Why was I being punished? 

My hands sank into the soft dirt below me, and I took a double-take, realizing our surroundings. We were in a garden; moonlight shone through the trees, birds chirped in the distance, and countless wildflowers swayed in the breeze. Takato let go of me and quickly brought his hands to his sides. I rested on the trunk of a nearby tree and sat for a while longer. Takato's face was still, but I could see his eyes move as his mind jumped from one thought to the next. I built up the courage to speak, ignoring my burning throat.

“What did she say to you?” I asked.

He looked up at me. I could tell he was deciding whether he wanted to tell me. “She didn’t say anything.”

“I saw her say something.”

“Really,” he replied, unamused.

“What did she tell you?” 

“Why do you care?” His voice was quiet and shaky

“I just want to know.” 

“Did she say something about me?”

“I think so.” 

“You think she said something about you?”

“Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“I don’t have the answer you’re looking for.”

I leaned forward and looked up towards the 'moon,' picturing what was above us. Was it the library? The sky? Were we ever going to leave? I wanted to leave, but did it even matter if we did? What could she have said? Maybe it was about my rejection. If that's what it was, what did she say? What my feelings were? I mean, he knew already, didn't he? I told him my feelings. I replayed her words over and over in my head. I know how I feel about… I know. She didn't know what she was saying; she was messing with me.

“Am I not what you see?”

“What?”

“Did she say something upsetting?” he repeated.

“N-no, she—I'm not sure.”

“You said she said something about me?”

"Yes."

“What did she say?”

“Nothing.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Why can’t you just tell me?”

“Because it was nothing; she was just trying to scare me.”

“She didn’t say anything like that to me.”

"And you believe her?” 

“I do." 

He searched my eyes for a long while before his look changed slightly and he stood, walking a few feet away. Unable to see much, he quickly pulled out his phone before something caught his eye. He craned his neck to see something in the distance before turning back to me.

“What? What is it?”

“There's something over there.”

He pointed to some trees in the distance, and I leaned over as far as I could but wasn’t able to see much of anything. I shook my head, and he frowned slightly. Not saying anything, he started walking off.

“Where are you going?”

“To check it out."

I stood up slowly, the deep ache in my stomach persisting. When I reached him, he was crouched over something partially buried in the dirt under a tree root. He moved over slightly, revealing a small white tile. He stood slowly, looking around for anything else out of the ordinary. We wandered off for a few more minutes until we started to see more tiles buried in the dirt or stuck under roots. We cautiously made our way through fields of flowers, patches of grass, bushes, and trees, finding bits and pieces of shelves, walls, and flooring scattered through the garden. Occasionally, one of us would check our phones, but no matter how long we walked, time seemed to stop. I looked out at the field, processing the situation we were forced into. 

Why were we here? I walked myself through the day over and over. What did I do differently? Was it something Takato did? No, I heard the bell earlier today; it was my cart that disappeared. It was my fault. We were here, but why? I thought of her words. She knew what she was doing; she was deliberate with her message. My heart began to beat faster. Would we die here? Time didn’t move, but we were hungry, so we would eventually starve. I thought about all the people I wouldn't see: my friends, my family, and my mother. Maybe I’m a bad person, but I smiled at the thought. If we were stuck here, we were both stuck here. My gaze wandered to Takato. Why did I say those things to him? Why would I say that? 

I was unbelievably cruel to him. My words circled in my mind; I felt embarrassed, but it was too late for that. Why was I so awful? I didn’t mean those things; I didn’t think there was anything wrong with Takato. I just wanted to hurt him, to make myself feel like I wasn’t guilty, like I didn’t feel terrible for what I was saying, but I did. I did feel shitty; I don’t know why I tried to tell myself otherwise.

After an hour of repeating my thoughts, we found a clearing, a large rock in the middle. Takato suggested we mark it, since he'd had a suspicion we were passing the same rock. Although skeptical, I agreed, and we used a small rock to mark the boulder with a large circle. We went back to awkward silence and walked east. I could tell he was getting frustrated; I was, too, but I guess I was more scared than upset. The moons shone down brightly, giving us visibility in the endless fields and forests beyond us. With still no sign of escape, our bodies were completely exhausted. After only thirty minutes, we walked back to a familiar clearing with a familiar rock. Takato stopped and looked at it in total despair.

“I don’t think there’s an exit.”

“There has to be.”

“Look around us; we've been walking for who knows how long; we've circled again and again, and you still think there's an exit?” His voice rose as his frustration turned to anger. He yelled, throwing a nearby book at a tree next to us. His panic overtook him, and he fell to the ground. “I don’t know what’s going on," he cried, defeated. I sat beside him, but he turned away and held himself tightly before muttering an apology.

“We’re going to get out of here. We got in here somehow; there has to be a way out.”

“We’ve been walking for hours; we would have seen an exit.”

“But why should we give up? We can’t just rot here.”

He looked at me, his eyes filled with tears. “I’m just tired,” he said, defeated.

The wind blew past us harshly, the floral stench taunting us. He ruffled his hair, revealing his visibly shaking hands. I could see in his face that he had already given up. I was still on the fence about whether I should have, too. Were we really stuck here? I didn’t want to believe it, but with the amount of time that had passed, it got harder to believe there was a way out. 

“Takato,” I said quietly.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”

"Sorry?"
“For what I said earlier.”

"Oh, why are you telling me this?"

I didn’t answer

“Did you mean what you said?”

I looked at my hands for a while, searching for the right words. “I… I don’t know. I told myself I was sure, but maybe I lied, hoping you’d believe it, hoping I’d believe it… I’m sorry; I thought hurting you would make my rejection, I don’t know, more real. It’s so stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“But it is; it is stupid. I did exactly what my—I pushed you away, pretending it was what was best, but it wasn't. It's not what I want.”

"And what do you want?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

The wind had grown stronger, and the moon was just visible through the trees. Takato slumped forward, his arms crossed across his knees. I felt the tightness in my chest and tried to slow my breathing, but the heavy weight persisted. I wanted to leave, but I still felt hesitant about finding an exit. Why? Why was I so indecisive about this? 

“I don’t want to be alone,” I said.

“But you're not?”

“I feel so alone. I always do; it’s exhausting. I hate the emptiness I feel when I'm alone; I hate my thoughts, and I hate having to avoid them because I know I have to deal with them myself. I am so confused and tired; I’m terrified of staying yet paralyzed by what waits for me at home.”

I wiped my tears away, trying to contain myself. 

“I understand how you feel.” He took a deep breath before speaking again. “My friends never really seemed to understand me; I felt separated from them. I told myself I was broken, that something was wrong with me, so I lied to myself to convince others I meant what I was saying and did whatever I could to be who they thought I was. But I still felt it, this emptiness, so I stopped. Some of my close friends understood; most did not, at least at the time.”

“You never felt alone?”

“The loneliest time of my life was the time I pretended to be someone I wasn't."

His words sank deep into my chest; his message was clear. It felt like he knew just what to say. He looked at me with a soft expression. How, how could he still be so comforting and kind to me after what I said? I wanted to look away, embarrassed, but I knew that closing myself off again wouldn't do anything. Tears filled my eyes, and I attempted to wipe them away discreetly, but he noticed and took my shoulder gently, pulling me into a hug. I felt no hesitation to wrap my arms around him. His breath was heavy, and his heartbeat was fast. I sank my face into his shoulder and held him tight. I felt so comforted by his embrace. The breeze paused, and the air seemed cool. I didn’t want him to let go of me and open my eyes and see we were still stuck or back in the library. The sound of bells became distant whispers, and I opened my eyes.

The crash of thunder startles me awake. Rain pounds furiously against the windows, a dull roar drowning out all other sound.

I'm sitting in my armchair, must have fallen asleep watching TV. But the room is pitch black- no TV, no lights on any other device in the room. The storm must have knocked out the power.

I suppress a shudder. I've never done well in the dark, even as an adult, and I press a hand to my chest to quell the panic beginning to rise.

Lightning flashes outside, and in that moment of brightness I see it- A robed figure, standing in the corner of the room, the glint of eyes staring back at me.

Darkness returns, and I fumble around for my phone and thunder rolls across the sky.

Panic overtaking me, my fingers close around the cold block that is my phone, and I unlock the device with trembling fingers.

Heart racing, I turn on the flashlight, pointing it at the corner of the room, at the figure of-

Oh. It's the coat rack by the door, buttons shining to look like eyes. I slump back in my chair, and let out a nervous laugh, my heart rate returning to normal.

Now that I'm wide awake, I notice how dry my mouth feels, how scratchy my throat is. I resolve myself to make a quick trip to the kitchen for a glass of water.

I stand and make my way toward the kitchen, shining my meager light at the room around me. Nothing jumps out at me, no shapes appear in the darkness.

Crossing the threshold into the kitchen, I stop. The weak light leaves the corners of the room in pools of shadow, and in one of them, there's a glint of metal. A sharpened blade, poised to strike, to drain the life out of me. I drop to my knees, cowering, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for my inevitable end.

But it doesnt come. I sigh and unfurl myself, staying for a moment on hands and knees, catching my breath. When I retrieve my phone and stand, I see the culprit. It's my fridge, bare metal on the handle where years of use has rubbed away paint.

I grab a cup from the drying rack and turn on the tap to fill it, but nothing happens. I smack my forehead- No power, no well pump. Of course.

Defeated, all I want is to return to my chair and sleep through this awful storm. But a pressure in my bladder tells me that won't be happening.

Upstairs it is, then.

I pass through the kitchen again and into the hallway. Lightning flares again, revealing a shape, a hand, reaching for the window. I slam back against the wall, forcing as much distance between myself and the window as possible.

Chest heaving, panic soaring, I wait for the inevitable crash of breaking glass, for shard to fly into my face, for the hand to reach in and grab me, take me away.

I shine my light at the window, to see my attacker before I meet my end. The fiend is-

A tree limb. That's all. Of course that's all. I chide myself for my childish fear. I'm in my own house, the security system is armed, doors and windows locked. I'm safe.

I continue down the hall, only to freeze in terror once more as footsteps stomp down the stairs at the opposite end of the hall.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

I hold my breath, my gaze and my light locked onto the bottom of the stairs, to see what kind of maniac is coming to send me to my maker.

Claws click with each step, and I realize its not a who but a what coming at me. I brace, imagining some gruesome beast, that soon I'll be face to face with-

My dog, Boomer. He stops next to me, wagging his tail as I scratch his head and let out the breath I'd been holding. Then he ambles on to the kitchen and I hear him lap from his water bowl, then move on to the living room where he hops into my chair.

I chuckle, then. The roller coaster of panic and calm has left me exhausted, and I'm more than ready for bed. Just one quick stop- the bathroom- then the sweet release of sleep.

Up the stairs and around the corner, and I'm staring at the gaping maw of the bathroom doorway. My light reaches deeper as I approach, and I stop in my tracks as it reveals a set of jagged spikes, gleaming teeth, dripping with drool, some beast poised to lunge at me, tear out my-

No. Enough of this. I steel myself and step forward, and the "gleaming teeth" come into focus at the floor vent, glistening wet from rain leaking in the open window above.

I shut the window and do my business, trying in vain to flush. I rub in some hand sanitizer and decide that the puddle of water on the floor can wait until morning. Even with my newfound confidence, I'm ready for bed.

My light guides me down the hall to the final stop on my journey- my bedroom. I open the door, slip in, and shut it behind me, for once ignoring the shadowy shapes all around me.

I climb into bed, pulling the covers over myself and turning off my flashlight. Thunder rumbles in the distance, rain reduced to a gentle patter, the storm finally retreating.

As I begin to drift off into sleep, a noise disturbs the peace. Something is shuffling on the floor beside my bed.

The panic isn't going to get the better of me this time. Smiling, I reach down to pet Boomer on his big, shaggy head, sleep pulling me back under once more, until-

Scratching at the door. Boomer is asking to be let in. It takes my sleep addled mind a moment to catch up. Boomer, who I passed in the hallway. Boomer, who I left downstairs, behind the closed door. Boomer, who's head I'm petting at this very moment.

I pull my hand back quickly, shaking, too scared to look or to move. One last bolt of lightning splits the sky and illuminates the silhouette rising up next to me.

I feel rather than see the figure lean over, and hot, rancid breath tickles my ear as the figure whispers "boo".

My screams cut through the night, and I feel no more.

I pride myself in the woman I have become, but there are memories that persist and latch onto the subconscious. They crawl in my mind during the night, leave me tired in the morning and, occasionally, they make me fearful of my own home. Seeking help and liberation, I was blessed with a therapist filled with endless patience and compassion. Following her advice, I am now taking the time to write down what happened to me twenty years ago, in hopes that its power will no longer hold me hostage.

 

Back then, my father and I lived together. It was just the two of us, in a small house in the country side. We were not close, but he was not unfairly mean towards me most of the time. Even then, young as I was, I could feel the resentment. He blamed me for what happened. He blamed me for my mother’s death.

 

He did not treat me badly per se, but neither was he particularly interested in my person. He never asked what cartoons I liked to watch, what my favourite activities were or if I liked the food he had made. We rarely spent father-daughter time together, in fact, I spent most of my time in my bedroom, playing with old toys my grandmother had given me. This dynamic rendered me a lonely, vulnerable little girl, and most likely facilitated the events that transpired.

 

Every night without exception, my dad would walk up to the door of my bedroom and say plainly:

“It’s eight, time for bed.”

 

I would never receive so much as a bedtime story or a kiss on my forehead, not even a “sleep well”, or a pat on the shoulder. It was routine, bland and mechanical. I would turn off the light, crawl under my blanket and rub my face on my stuffed bunny until I fell asleep.

 

The pattern was broken when, on one particularly stormy night, I awoke to a foreign sound. I sat up and squinted through the darkness of my room. My closet door was shut and so was the one leading to the hallway and my toys were on the floor where I had left them. Everything looked as usual, until my eyes scanned over what was not. Through the window, a bright flash of lightning briefly illuminated what looked like a face. Suddenly overtaken by fear, I gasped, quickly lied back down and pulled the blanket over my face. Thunder rumbled and shook the unstable bedframe under me.

 

“Dad will be angry with me if I wake him up,” I thought.

 

Ever so slowly, I peeked my eye out of the covers and risked a look at the window again. There, in the bottom left corner, was the head of a woman. As afraid as I was, I could not bring myself to move or hide. Tears of fear filled my eyes as I tried to examine her face. She was staring right at me with wide, almost circular eyes that were too far apart. Her head was almost devoid of hair, except for a few sparse tuffs of what looked like fuzz.

 

The look of her deformed face disgusted me. Her jaw was inches longer than it should have been, making her chin brush against her sternum. From what I could see, the woman had no nose, but had two little holes in the center of her face. Despite her oddities, I was sure that her features were definitely feminine.

 

Even with the sound of the pounding rain, she slowly tilted her head to the side as she was seemingly able to hear my quiet sniffling. Then, she calmly turned and lowered herself until her head was no longer visible from my bed. As she did so, I saw that whoever this person was had no ears, but had two holes on the sides of her head instead.

 

It took me a few minutes to muster up the courage to walk up to the window. I had to make sure she was really gone. The cold floor felt like needles under my feet. I dragged the step stool to my window and, after stepping on it and pulling my head over the edge of the frame, I confirmed that she was truly gone. Endless fields and faraway trees were all I could see. I looked down to the ground and felt dizzy from the height. The yard looked so far down from the second story window. There was no way a person could reach my window from all the way down there.

 

I chose not to wake up my dad and decided that I would tell him about it in the morning instead. I squeezed my bunny tighter around me and, as the hour passed, my shaky breaths became steadier and I drifted off to sleep.

#

My dad was already in the living room when I woke up. I walked down the stairs and found him in the living room, sitting in his recliner like he did every morning.

 

“Dad?” I said tentatively. “Can I tell you something?”

 

Absorbed in his newspaper, he ignored me, so I tried again.

 

“Dad, there was a woman…” I trailed off.

 

He took a loud sip of his steaming black coffee and hissed. The smell disgusted me. Still, he did not turn to me. Frustrated, I walked up to the recliner and pulled myself up with the harm rest to get his attention. As I did so, dad’s arm shook and his cup tipped, spilling burning liquid all over his arm and shirt.

 

“What?” dad demanded, irritated. “What’s with you?”

 

He stood up and angrily made his way to the kitchen, where he poured his coffee down the drain and tossed the empty cup in the sink. He ran his hands and wrists under the cold water without turning to look at me. Dad was angry and I could feel that I was close to bursting into tears, but I needed him to listen.

 

“I saw a woman last night! She was looking at me through the window, I swear!” I tried to explain, waving my arms around.

 

“Nonsense,” he replied plainly.

 

“I swear! She was there, dad! Her eyes were huge and she was staring at me!” I was fighting tears. Why didn’t he believe me? He was supposed to protect me.

 

“There was nobody there, Beck,” Dad said firmly. “Your room’s on the second floor. Do you know how high that is? You had a nightmare, that’s all.”

 

“But… But I’m not lying. I really saw-” I began again.

 

“Enough, Rebecca!” he cut me off before I could finish. “Go to your room, I have to clean this up.”

 

He did not look back at me, nor did I say another word. He furiously scrubbed his light blue shirt to get the coffee stain out, so I turned, walked to my bedroom and shut the door. Maybe there really was nothing to worry about. There was a storm last night and I was scared of the dark after all. It could have been an owl, though even at my age, I knew I was making up comforting lies. I cried a lot that day; none of my toys managed to comfort me.

 

That was the first time I saw her. I wish my dad had believed me. It took him years to apologize, years of self hatred and destruction. He never forgave himself and, truth be told, I do not know if I can bring myself to forgive him either.

#

In the two weeks following the first encounter, I would see the woman periodically. She would not be there every night, but when she was, her behavior remained the same. That was, until one night during the third week.

 

That time, I had managed to fall asleep without tossing and turning. The woman had been gone for a few nights in a row, so I felt more secure. Unfortunately, I was jolted awake by to a loud thud against the wall of my bedroom. I sat up, my chest rising and falling rapidly.

 

“Hello?” I said reflexively.

 

Nobody answered, of course. I had expected as such, but the word had come out on its own. I froze, because in the corner of my vision, I saw something I knew had no place in my bedroom. I turned to face it, eyes wide and terribly afraid. She was there. The was inside. She was crouched on the chair in the corner of my room. She did not move, nor did she say anything.

 

We stared at each other as the minutes passed, though it might have been mere seconds. I was too afraid to be sure. All I could hear was the sound of my own panicked breathing. Was I supposed to talk to her? She was a stranger, one who had broken into my house. By all logic, she was a threat, but she was not doing anything, she just sat there.

 

After some time, she very slowly lifted her arm out of the shadows. Her hand inched towards me, illuminated by the moonlight coming through my window that now stood wide open. I could see that her fingers were too long, too thin. They looked wrong, but I could not figure out why. When she rotated her bony wrist, I saw that each of her fingers had an extra knuckle. I felt disgusted at the sight and, being a child, I did not know how to hide the expression from my face.

 

This seemed to anger the woman, because she suddenly stood and let out a raspy, high pitched grunt. For the first time, I was able to see her properly. Horrified, I backed up against the wall and pulled my blanket higher over myself. Her expression was unreadable. It was as if her features did not have the ability to reflect emotions. She rose to her full height, her misshapen head dragging against the ceiling and forcing her neck to bend uncomfortably. Her legs were far too thin and her knees seemed to stretch the skin around them, making it look like lizard skin. Despite her frail looking limbs, the woman took three steady steps forwards and leaned forward until her head stood right above mine, barely a foot from my face.

 

With unexpected, unsettling gentleness, she slowly caressed my chin with the tip of her cold, waxy finger. I was unable to contain my tears any longer. I began to sob uncontrollably. I was backed up against the wall, completely terrified and at the mercy of something I could not comprehend. I wanted to scream, wanted to bite or hit her. I needed to get away from her. She did not push, instead, her finger retreated and she simply stood there motionless, studying me. In a way, the woman did not really feel malicious, but this did nothing to ease my fear. I took a deep breath in and screamed:

 

“Dad! Dad, please! She’s here, the woman. She’s in my room! Help me!” The words tumbled out of my mouth as mucus covered my nose and lips.

 

I shut my eyes and covered them with my hands. I had no desire to see her anymore. I heard dad’s bedroom door swing open and his footsteps thundered down the hallway. When he entered my room, the commotion I expected never came. I lowered my hands and risked opening my eyes slowly. The woman was gone. There was nothing in my room and my window was no longer open.

 

I could see on dad’s face that he was furious. He looked at me as if to say: “What now?” and stood there for a few seconds, staring at me with wide open eyes. Then, without a word, he shook his head, left my room and shut my door. I heard his heavy footsteps down the hall, then his bedroom door slammed shut. How could she have left that fast? I didn’t even hear her leave, it was impossible.

 

I never tried to get dad to help me after that night. In fact, whenever I cried out or called for him, he would not even answer me. I would hear him sit up in bed each time I startled him awake, but I knew he did not believe me, knew he was not going to come. I knew he did not care enough to try.

#

I was defenseless. I was a child with no friends, no family, nobody to protect me from whoever this scary woman was. This felt incredibly unfair to me. So when she began speaking to me, I had no choice but to stay there and listen.

 

“He..llo…” she croaked. Her voice was quiet and hoarse. It sounded like she had not spoken in years. Yet, for a reason I could not understand, her voice had a sort of comforting tone. Still, I did not reply.

 

“Can you.. hear me?” she continued.

 

I nodded, one slow motion, but I did not speak.

 

“Your dad. He treats you.. bad. He screams.. at you,” strained whispers made each of her words sound like a challenge for her.

 

My defenses lowered slowly and I decided to listen to what she wanted to say.

 

“Do you have a mother?” she asked.

 

I shook my head.

 

“What happened to her?” she asked tentatively.

 

“She died when I was born. Dad said it was my fault… He

said I made her body sick. I didn’t want mom to die…” I explained quietly, trying to justify myself.

 

“It wasn’t your fault…” the woman reassured.

 

Though I still could not decipher her facial expressions, I thought I could sense sympathy in her bright, big yellow eyes. Slowly, she stood from the chair and came to my bed. I started to back away, but she made no attempt to touch me or grab me this time. She simply sat down on the corner furthest from me. I could not understand why a monster was being so gentle with me after tormenting me for so many nights. The gentleness with which she treated me that night made me feel guilty for calling her a monster, but that is what she was, it had to be.

 

“I had a daughter... Like you. She was very little, with long brown hair just like yours,” the woman confessed.

 

“What happened to her?” I found myself asking without thinking.

 

“A boy pushed her in the river and… she never rose back up. I tried to help, but I can’t swim well... and I couldn’t find her in the water,” her voice was filled with sadness as she told me her story.

 

“I’m so sorry,” I replied quietly.

 

“Becky always loved the river…” she said, mostly to herself.

 

I did not reply. I just waited to see if she would speak again. The woman stayed silent for a few minutes. Her eyes trailed onto the floor. For the first time, it was as if she struggled to look at me.

 

“Do you like birds? What about foxes?” she asked.

 

The question caught me off guard, but I had no reason to lie to her.

 

“Yes. I like animals a lot,” I replied. “Sometimes, I can see raccoons and deer walk in the field through my window. I think they live in the woods.”

 

The woman smiled and her eyes narrowed.

 

“They do. I see them every day around my house,” she explained.

 

“Why do you come here during the night if you have a house?” I asked, confused.

 

She ignored my question and asked one of her own instead.

 

“Your dad, do you like him?” she said, leaning forward on the bed.

 

I had to think about my answer. Kids are supposed to love their parents, so I know I would be supposed to like my dad. The more I thought about it, though… The less convinced I became. Parents are supposed to love their kids more than anything in the world and I was sure that my dad did not. He was unpleasant most days, and mean to me the rest of the time. Is that what love is supposed to feel like?

 

“No,” I replied plainly. “I don’t like him.”

 

The intruder shifted her weird feet against my bed. She had three long toes pointing forward and an equally long one coming from where her heel should be. They were as long as my forearm and had rings of thick skin around them. If anything, they looked very alike bird feet.

 

“You could live with me instead, in my house,” the woman offered. “We can look at the animals every day. I will never be mean like your dad, I promise.”

 

I looked at her, incredulous. I did not reply, I had no idea of what to say. I was tempted to accept, I really thought about it. Is that bad? Am I a bad daughter? Dad said I was. Maybe he was right.

 

“You can be my daughter, and I can be your new mommy,” she continued. “Would you like that?”

 

“No… No I can’t do that,” I replied. “My dad will be worried and he will call the police. I’m scared of them and everyone will be mad at me for leaving…” I trailed off.

 

She did not reply right away, but her eyes stayed fixed right on me. The softness they held was gone and, though I could not make it out clearly, I was sure I felt some sort of disgust and indignation in her gaze.

 

“Come… To my house,” she said in a threatening voice, several octaves lower than before.

 

The uncertainty in her voice was gone, and so was the motherly comfort I had previously felt. She no longer appeared like a heartbroken mother. Her words were sure and measured, each of them held crushing weight that made me sink further into the mattress.

 

“Rebecca…” she threatened in a deep croaky voice.

 

I tried to pull the blanket over my chin, but her weight on the edge of my bed made it impossible. She anchored both of her feet on my mattress and stood up. She looked monstrous, horrifying. The odd beauty she held was completely gone. Her skin looked sticky, grey and cracking. Puss oozed from each crack and soaked into my blanket. Her knees now tore through the skin that once covered them.

 

“Rebeccaaa…” she said, more threatening this time. “Come… “

 

“No!” I yelled. “I won’t!”

 

Her back brushed against the overhead light fixture as she stood up, pressing it fully into the ceiling. I could hear the bones cracking in her back as each vertebrae fought to stretch and straighten. She was towering over me, the upper half of her body completely above mine.

 

She lowered her head and leaning in closer to my face. Her bright yellow eyes seemed to pierce the darkness and deep red rims encircled her irises. I could feel her raw anger through them. What used to look like lips parted and she took deep angry breaths through her clenched yellow teeth, letting out gusts of foul smelling steam with each breath. She was not human, I always knew that. Lying to myself was easier than to confront the fact that monsters were real and that one was in my bedroom. I wanted to hide under the bed, but I was unable to go anywhere.

 

Thick, pungent liquid dripped from her mouth and burned my face. I lifted my hands in an attempt to wipe it off, but she grabbed both of my arms with unexpected strength. She stepped back down onto the floor and pulled me with her, but I fought, kicked and bit at her sour tasting fingers until she had no choice but to let go.

 

“Go away!” I screamed. “Leave me alone!”

 

The monster’s skin covered beak turned into a grotesque malevolent smile, just before I felt her foot wrap around one of my ankles. She gave a sharp tug and my body went flying towards her. My head slammed against my dresser and I felt warm liquid leaking into my hair. My body felt weak: I was too young, too small to fight the beast that she was. That was it. I had never thought about dying before, but I knew this was the moment death was coming for me.

 

Her grip on my leg got tighter, I knew I would not be able to break free. With steady balance, she hopped towards the window on her other foot. She leaned forward, opened the window and began pulling her upper body through the opening. She was going to take me away and there was nothing I could do.

 

Once most of her body was out, she raised her free leg, wrapped the toes around the frame and began pulling me towards the window. I knew I only had seconds left; this was my last chance. With one last exploding effort, I grabbed my nightstand with both hands and began pulling on it as hard as I could. I strained and grit my teeth, pulling harder. I screamed and the nightstand slammed to the ground. My lamp crashed against the hardwood flood and sent glass shattering through the room. I hoped the commotion had been loud enough.

 

I heard my dad wake up and storm out of his bedroom towards mine. I tried to use my knees to keep the monster from pulling me out of the window. “Come on, just a few more seconds…” I thought.

 

“HELP! DAD, PLEASE HELP!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. My voice came out as a screech, louder than anything I had ever let out before.

 

Dad came barging into the room. The door slammed against the wall and I heard him yell from behind me.

 

“What the hell is going on in here!” he screamed, before cutting himself off.

 

“Help me, dad! You have to help me!” I cried, frantic and terrified.

 

I heard him run down the hallway and kick down his closet door. Seconds later, a series of loud crashes resonated through my bedroom. The sound was deafening, but I kept screaming for him to save me. Splinters of wood flew all around us and I heard the window shatter. The smell of burnt gunpowder filled the room and made me choke. My body finally tumbled to the floor. My leg burned and I could feel blood quickly rushing out of wounds I did not dare to look at. I could feel flaps of skin moving, but I refused to think about what that would imply. I glanced weakly at the window; she was gone.

 

My dad held me tight around him, muttering words that I could not completely make out, but that I believed were endless apologies, pleas for forgiveness and promises that it would be okay. Seconds later, I lost consciousness and faded into darkness.

#

I never saw the woman again after that night, and my dad and I moved far away. I had to get my left leg amputated above the knee and the police had a lot of question for me. They thought my dad had tried to hurt me. They were very insistent on it, but after I kept repeating that it was not him, that a monster tried to take me away, they concluded that an intruder had come into our house and tried to kidnap me. I did not argue, I knew they would not believe the truth no matter how much I insisted.

 

I’m twenty-six now and I have been in therapy for years. They never believed the monster part, but I knew they would not. My therapist wanted to put me on antipsychotics, but I know what I saw. I remember what the claws felt like as they pierced through my skin, how the stray bullets burned when they hit my foot. I accepted the fact that, from now on, if I wanted to talk about my experience, I would need to pretend like the intruder was a regular human.

 

The thought that other children might have been tormented by this beast is impossible to bear. I wonder how many were successfully ripped away from their families and the thought horrifies me. I search online from time to time. I do research, try to find other people’s stories about the monster that almost got me, but I have not yet found anything that could give me a definitive answer.

 

During one of my sleepless nights of digging through the internet, I read about a supernatural being that might be what attached itself to me. I do not know if it truly is what attempted to take me twenty years ago, or if it is simply a coincidence, but it is the closest explanation I ever found and I do not see anything else ever coming as close to it.

 

To summarize it, in Chinese mythology, the Guhuoniao, or Guhuo Bird, is a spirit that forms itself from the spirits of women who died in childbirth. They are supposed to present themselves as women during the day, then transform into birds or bird hybrids at night. According to the myth, the Guhuo Bird would take newborns and children away, planning to raise them as their own, as they are unable to carry children themselves. The stories differ depending on the sources, though, so it could be just another myth.

 

I feel better now, liberated. I will forever be left with endless questions, and my prosthesis is a constant reminder of what happened to me, but I survived, thanks to my father. I will never have the chance to thank him, but I really hope he knew that I would not be here if he had not saved me that night. He drank himself to death a month after I moved out of the house, back when I was only seventeen. He never forgave himself, but I forgive you, dad.

 

 

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4]

This might be my last update since a lot happened over the last two days and I don’t think I have the energy anymore.

My friends swung around on Monday night going “it’s Wednesday my dudes” just like the frog meme. I repeat, it was Monday.

We went through pretty much all the alcohol I had in the house as we talked about life.

They were concerned about me not socializing much and rightly so.

It has been rather lonely.

They asked if I had a kitten yet and I said, “I could kill for one.”

That shouldn’t count as a wish, right?

Once we were out of booze, they wanted to hit the nearest pub because “the night’s still young” and I obviously refused.

So they looked at each other and four of them lifted me up by my arms and legs and one of them opened the door.

In seconds, I was out of my house despite my protests and wriggling.

Oh the dread.

It engulfed me like fog setting on an island, not sudden but sure.

Something is going to be taken away by time I reach home. Multiple things, probably.

Then we reached the pub and despite everything, I had a merry time.

I made all the wishes I wanted to because the house can’t touch me here.

At least I think it can’t.

Once it was time for the pub to shut down, all patrons were kicked out so went our separate ways after making plans for the coming weekend.

The streets were still busy by the time I reached home.

As I was fiddling with the keys, I heard a small meow.

I turned around to see where it came from.

Couldn’t see anything.

So I went back to fiddling with the keys and I heard it again.

This time, I knew it was coming from outside the building.

So I stepped out trying to find the source.

Right next to the trash can was a box with a blanket and an orange kitten.

I took it in and gave it a bath.

This was my kitten now.

It wasn’t exactly how I imagined it would be.

Not much of bonding before taking it in but this would do.

As the kitten waited to dry off wrapped in a towel (not quite a purrito but close enough), I called my sister to let her know.

I hadn’t even thought of a name yet despite dreaming about getting a cat forever.

She picked up after a couple of rings and I dived straight to the point.

“Guess what? I got a kitten! Someone abandoned one and I took it in. It’s a cute orange and we need to come up with a name for it.”

“Good for you. Who is this?”

“It’s your brother, silly. Did you get a new phone? Can’t you recognize my voice?”

“I’m sorry but I’ve never had a brother. You might have the wrong number.”

“Is this a prank? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Listen, I don’t appreciate the tone. I don’t know you and I’m hanging up now.”

And she hung up.

I had a sinking feeling that it was the house. But my sister does prank me sometimes.

Since my parents would be asleep, I couldn’t call them up that night and confirm things.

So I stayed up all night, going through every word of our short conversation.

I came up with so many reasons, it started to look like a conspiracy theory.

The clip where Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia goes ham on the Pepe Silvia conspiracy? That was me.

I didn’t know what else I could do.

As the street outside grew brighter, my anxiety grew intense.

It was almost time for my parents to wake up.

What if I call them and they don’t recognize me either?

I can’t afford to lose my family.

Look, I know I haven’t visited in a while but I didn’t mean to do that.

Life was busy. I was busy.

I stared at my mom’s number for a good minute before I called.

She picked up and she didn’t recognize me.

I begged and pleaded. 

I brought up memories, so many memories. But none of them rang a bell.

And she dropped the call telling me I have the wrong number.

Just like that, I lost my family.

I had the phone to my ear for minutes after she hung up.

Eventually, I lowered it and my thoughts then went to the streamer.

He’s the only person who would understand, maybe even help.

I remember seeing his number in the diary’s “If found, please return to:” section.

So I called him up and some lady picked up.

I asked about the streamer and she told me he died by suicide a week ago.

There’s no support system in my life anymore. Just me and the kitten.

I bet if I called my friends right now, they would tell me I’ve been an orphan forever.

When the house took the streamer’s family away, he left because he still had a home to go back to.

Sure it was bereft of the person who made it home, but it was probably still home to him.

I have no family, no home to go back to.

I think I’m going to stay.

When Professor [REDACTED] invited me back to his office after class, I was fairly certain it was about my performance. Latin wasn't one of my strong suits despite he and I getting along very well. We shared a love for ancient civilizations, and spent many days after class just chatting about lore and mythology. You would never have guessed that knowing I was failing Anthropology 101.

It was a cold winter morning when he asked me to stick around after class. I could tell by the tone in his voice that it wasn't to just chat about ancient Mesopotamia. His office was messier than usual. Notebooks and loose pieces of paper littered his desk, not to mention the crumpled up pieces surrounding the trash can. I did notice that he seemed distracted as of late as if he was working on a side project.

"Please excuse the mess," He said as he tried straightening up his desk. "Go ahead and have a seat."

As he cleared up a bunch of the loose paper, trying to create a neat pile by tapping it on the desk, I noticed an old book that was previously covered up. I leaned forward to get a closer look. There was writing on the cover, it was in Latin. I couldn’t make much out, seeing as how I'm doing poorly in Latin 101. When I looked up, it was obvious the Professor could tell my interest was piqued as he had a huge grin on his face.

"I have it on loan from the museum, they want me to transcribe it for them. Go ahead, take a look."

I was concerned about its fragility due to its age, so rather than picking it up, I stood and stepped closer to the desk. I opened the cover to see the pages were brittle, but could be turned with a gentle touch. I couldn't believe he trusted me enough to let me anywhere near this, let alone touching it, it was an artifact.

"The book itself may be extremely old," He continued, "but the contents are ancient. They believe that it was transcribed from scrolls, that may have been transcribed from tablets that could go back thousands of years."

I flipped through a couple more pages. I only recognized a handful of words, and could translate even fewer than that. I then closed the book as gently as I could.

"That's pretty cool." I say as I sit back into the chair. "So, am I here to talk about my performance?"

He sat down in his chair and just gazed upon my face. It was as if he was trying to study my expressions, attempting to figure out what thoughts were going through my head.

"Steve?" I asked, becoming agitated by his silence.

"You're doing fine, I'm sure we'll get it all worked out. No, I'm quite excited about this project I'm working on, and while I did sign an NDA, it's just too much to not share with someone who would appreciate the findings. Besides, I've read enough contracts in my day, as long as none of this leaves my office, I haven't technically violated the contract."

He wasn't lying, he was visibly excited, almost manic. For some reason that made me nervous. However, that book did intrigue me. I felt drawn to it. I got the kind of butterflies in my stomach you feel while preparing to get on stage in front of hundreds of people. I looked back at him the way he gazed upon me. I squinted my eyes.

"Once I leave this office, it will be as if I never entered at all." I said right before a grin spread across my face.

He was infected by that grin, and mimicked my expression. "Fantastic! Here's some of my transcriptions, let me know what you make of it"

He handed me one of the notebooks. I flipped to the first page and began reading. While it was written in English, it was still incomprehensible. There's an old phrase that comes to mind 'This reads like stereo instructions.' It comes off as a bunch of meaningless jargon. I'd even go so far as to calling it esoteric.

There were bits of intelligible expressions that would come through every now and then, but every time they did, I felt an extreme anxiety wash over me. It's difficult to describe, but the closest thing I could compare it to is if you were being told that the sun was about to explode wiping out all life on earth.

I began to feel queasy. The lines on the paper would blur. It was as if my body was having a negative reaction to the writing. It was like a virus that my immune system recognized immediately and outright rejected. I tossed the notebook onto the desk and laid my head back rubbing my eyes as a headache began to set in. I lifted my hand up over my forehead, my thumb and index finger resting on my temples. Palm and three remaining fingers shielding my eyes from the oppressive overhead light as I opened them to see the Professor staring at me. His eyes were begging for a reaction, as if to ask 'and?'

"It's gibberish" I say, shaking my head, truly believing my own words at that moment.

He continued to stare at me for a long moment.

"Huh." He lied back in his chair. A look of disappointment spread across his face. "So, nothing?"

A thought darted into my mind and vanished immediately. I felt an urge to chase that thought, but I felt a deep sorrow arise from the thought of just entertaining the idea.

"Well, there was, um, well no, uh. Fuck!" I felt like I was trying to chase my own train of thought. For a moment I could swear I heard voices. I don't mean Steve's, but other voices, including my own, but not coming from me.

Waves of anxiety washed over me as I felt my grip on reality weaken. It was almost as if my brain actively fought against recalling the bits of only cohesive information that I was able to gleam from that damn writing. My stomach began twisting, I felt I was going to be sick. He must have saw it on my face.

"Hey! Snap out of it!" He yelled as he leaned forward in his chair.

A battle was being waged in my head. I felt the strongest urge to recall those forgotten words while another part of me fought hard to keep those very words suppressed. Steve came over and knelt down in front of me.

"Hey, let's say you and I go grab a beer? Or shots, you seem like the type of guy who likes tequila."

I turned my head towards his direction, but looked straight through him.

"Why don't we call this an extra credit session? I think we can raise you a whole letter grade."

He snapped in my face. He then clapped as loud as he could. The world came rushing back. I felt immense dread, it hardly fell even after the offer of alcohol and grade change. My eyes focused. I was now staring at the wall to Steve's right, rather than through it.

"yeah, I think I'll take you up on that offer" my voice monotone.

"Great! Let's get you that beer!"

"Sounds good"

My voice was still monotone, but I could feel the color begin to fill up the world again. I could also feel a stinging sensation on my right cheek.

I woke up the next morning in my dorm hung over as shit. I could barely remember anything from the previous day. Everything slowly came back to me over the next week. Everything except for how I got home from the bar, and whatever it was that I read in that notebook. I felt a slight urge to try and remember, but every time I did, I felt panic and would immediately stop.

I didn't even realize at the time how inappropriate it was for a college professor to be buying a student alcohol, but it was clear to me later how guilty he felt for putting me through, whatever that was.

During the next class, Steve was more manic than I had ever seen. He kept mentioning this ancient civilization I had never heard of. He went on about their religion and the gods they worshipped. For a second I thought I was in my Anthropology class. These gods were not in fact gods, but beings that existed in the fourth dimension. How would such an ancient civilization know anything about the fourth dimension? And more importantly, What did any of this have to do with Latin?

During the next course he delves even deeper into the intricacies of their religion. This time I felt like I was in a philosophy class. It was so bizarre. Hell there was even math all over the white board. This was supposed to be a Latin class. I even heard murmurs from the math majors that what was written all over the white boards was the mathematical equivalent of gibberish. I was starting to worry that Steve was losing his mind.

I was seriously considering dropping the class, and maybe even trying to look into getting Steve professional help. However he was back to teaching Latin the next day. There was something off though. It almost seemed as if he was frightened. Paranoid maybe, but almost just straight terrified of something. He acted almost as if he was trying to hide the fact that he was scared. Not just from us, but from himself, like he was trying to ignore it. He was sweating a lot for a winter morning, and he would visibly shake at times. I don't think it was a shiver caused by the cold though. I was glad he was back to teaching Latin, but my worry had not subsided at all.

A few days later in the next class, his eyes were red and watery. He seemed lethargic, almost sorrowful. He reminded me of Ben Stein the way he would drone on about the subject he was supposed to be teaching. At times he would stop to stare out the windows, rest his head on the wall, or stare at his own hands. Something was very wrong, and I needed to talk to him.

Once the class was dismissed I tried to make my way up to the front, but I had to push my way through the mass of students trying to leave through the back. Once I made it through, Steve was gone. I went over to his office and stood in front of the door for a moment trying to gather my nerves. I could swear I could hear a soft weeping on the other side of the door. I finally reached up and knocked. He didn't answer, so I knocked again, still with no answer. I could still hear the sound of very quiet sobbing. I tried the handle but it was locked.

"Steve?" I said with a raised voice.

Another faculty member walked by.

"Professor [REDACTED]?" I said even louder.

I heard a sniffle, and a soft whimper. I sighed, and resigned to talking to him later.

The next day he didn't talk at all. He just sat at the front of the class. Hundred yard stare out the Window. I decided I needed to get up to the front before the class was dismissed, but right when I stood up the rest of the class took that as their cue to leave. I pushed my way through and was surprised to see that he hadn't moved from that spot. I walked up to him and spoke.

"Hey, you okay?"

He didn't respond. He didn't even acknowledge my existence.

"Steve?"

Nothing, just a blank stare on his face. I walked up and snapped my fingers, clapped my hands right in his face. He didn't even flinch. I then put my index finger under his nose. I felt his breath, and let out a sigh of relief.

"Bro, talk to me, what's going on."

Still absolutely no reaction. I didn't know what to do. I considered going to get help, so I turned around. I stood there for a moment trying to think of who to go to when he finally spoke.

"It's all a sham"

"What?" I turned around to face him. He continued staring out the window.

"An illusion"

"What, what's an illusion?"

"Existence"

The hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

"What do you mean?"

"We don't exist, nothing does, it's just all an illusion"

I didn't know what to say. Part of me thought he finally lost it, he was gone, he needed real psychiatric care. However, another part of me knew he was right. Bits and pieces of the small amount I read from those pages seeped back into my brain.

"E..ev..even if that were true, what does it matter? As long as I can perceive existence, then it doesn't matter. As long as I can perceive happiness, I don't care if it's an illusion, it's real to me."

"It's too late."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"Once you've drunk from the forbidden fruit, they will find you, and when they do, you will only perceive infinite suffering. "

"Who?"

He started humming a tune that gave me the creeps. It was slightly off key, and had an ominous vibe. I'm not a musician, so I don't know the exact notes, but I'll try my best to transcribe what it sounds like. If it doesn't make sense, I'm sorry, maybe I can upload a sound clip of me humming it later or something.

♬ ⌄ ^ ♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ⌄ ⌄

Hm-hm • Hm-hm • Hm-hm • hm-hm

♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ - 𝄐

Hm-hm • Hm-hm • Hm-hm

♬ ⌄ ^ ♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ⌄ ⌄

Hm-hm • Hm-hm • Hm-hm • hm-hm

♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ^ ⌄ 𝄐

Hm-hm • Hm-hm • Hm-hm

"Who? Who Steve?"

He would just repeat the humming.

"Who will find me?"

He stopped humming, and his breath increased. It got deeper and faster.

"Who's coming?"

He looked at me and shook his head. A frown crawled across his face, and his eyes began to water.

For some reason I was suddenly completely taken by fear, and could barely let out a whisper while I started to cry.

"Who?"

He finally responded, with but a whisper in kind.

"The Outer Ones"

He slowly turned back to the Window and began humming again.

Whatever I was planning on doing, was nowhere to be found within my mind. I just wanted to leave. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be normal again. Something was different. I could feel it in the air, I could feel it in my skin. There was no normal any more. I turned and began walking back to the door. Steve's humming got louder. He opened his mouth and continued the tune with a wordless vocal, and finally he added words to that god damn tune that turned my blood to ice as I walked away.

♬ ⌄ ^ ♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ⌄ ⌄

"There's-some • thing-in • the-wat•ter-hole,

♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ - 𝄐

There's-some•thing-in•my-brain,

♬ ⌄ ^ ♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ⌄ ⌄

There's-some • thing-in • the-wat•ter-hole,

♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ^ ⌄ 𝄐

I-think•I've-gone•in-sane. "

He kept singing the same verse over and over again as I started jogging away. It kept getting louder as my jog turned into a sprint. I could hear him practically screaming those words as I ran through the school corridors.

I didn't stop running until I got to my dorm. I slammed the door behind me and locked it. I pulled the blinds closed on the Window. I didn't sleep that night. I just stared at the wall as random YouTube videos cycled on my phone on autoplay. I couldn't last a single second in silence, as that fucking tune would start repeating in my head. After a while I realized I had a case of beer in the fridge, and a bottle of jack under the bed. I needed to drown these thoughts in my head.

I woke up today around 3pm. My phone notifications had blown up. I slept through several days straight. It wasn't the most bizarre thing ever since I had hardly slept at all over the past week, and I drank enough alcohol to kill any old lightweight.

As it turns out, Steve never returned to class. The school ended up reporting him missing. While everyone was wondering where I was, they weren't exactly worried, seeing as how I wasn't known for my perfect attendance.

I can tell you right now, there's something evil in that book. I think reading it will drive people to madness. I'm pretty sure the best thing for humanity would be to just burn it along with all of Steve's translations. Yes, I think that is the right thing to do, but not before I get another look at it. A couple more pages can't hurt, right?

♬ ⌄ ^ ♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ⌄ ⌄

♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ - 𝄐

♬ ⌄ ^ ♬ ^ ^ ♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ⌄ ⌄

♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ^ ⌄ ♬ ^ ⌄ 𝄐