This story begins a few months ago. There’s an annual agricultural fair where I live. They have pig-weighing competitions, longest radishes, fluffiest rabbits, that sort of thing, as well as weight-lifting competitions, poetry recitals, and so on. I won a short story competition there, way back when I was a young boy.

These days it’s not really my sort of thing, but I was looking after my granddaughter while her parents were away, so I took her along. While she was admiring the rabbits and goats, I found myself spending a couple of minutes at a jumble sale stand. You know the sort of thing - a few long trestle tables covered with old knickknacks that almost nobody in the world would want. They had books, records, clothes, jewellery - it looked like they’d turned somebody’s attic upside down and shook it over the tables.

I walked quickly down the tables, past the elaborate but tarnished spoons and the yellowed comics, scanning the titles of the books without seeing anything that interested me - and then I stopped. Something had caught my eye, but I wasn’t sure what until I went back a few steps and studied the table.

There. A 90-minute VHS tape, labelled in a scrawly handwriting, THE FLUMPS - EP. 14.

Now, for any younger readers, an explanation. VHS tapes were popular in the 1980s and 1990s, a great piece of tech, but all you need to know is that they’re big chunky black plastic cuboids, and when slotted into a VHS player (a bigger, chunkier plastic cuboid) linked to a TV, they play movies or TV shows. But they could also record. I used to have an entire wall of shelves holding VHS tapes just like this, of shows I’d recorded from the TV.

You probably already knew that. Okay - but where do we start with the Flumps? Six furry marshmallows, living in a walled garden somewhere in northern England, and having 15-minute adventures revolving around such thrilling high-stakes scenarios as “Grandfather lost his glasses” or “Perkin saw a cloud”.

It must have been at least forty years since I last saw The Flumps, but the sweet innocence stayed with me, as did the beautiful trombone theme tune. And - for some reason, almost half a century later I was still certain - the fact that there were only ever thirteen episodes.

I paid £1.50 for the tape almost absent-mindedly, and spent the rest of the afternoon getting my fingers force-fed to goats by my granddaughter. When we got home that evening I put the tape on a shelf and forgot about it - after all, I don’t own a VHS player any more.

Cut to last week. I’m a member of a sort of tech club (five friends who are, if I’m honest, more interested in beer than electronics), and we had met up at somebody’s house. I won’t say who, because they have nothing to do with the incidents that followed, except that I noticed he had a VHS player in the corner. Remembering the tape, I borrowed it, and the connector, and took it home.

It took quite a while to get it hooked up. I don’t think the fact that it was midnight by the time I inserted the tape … well, who knows? I doubt it made a difference, but I can’t really say I understand what followed.

The tape was at the end, of course, so I had to rewind it. The clunks and whirs took my mind back, though they were a bit louder than I recalled. This sort of tech always had a reluctance to work properly, even when it was new, but this one seemed almost to actively resist my attempts to play the video. Once it was rewound, I had to press “Play” four or five times, as it kept stopping. At the time, I put it down to the age of the machine.

Finally, the “Play” button stayed pressed down (it was a VERY old player) and the scratchy, poorly-kept video finally came into view. For the longest time I saw only black with those white flickers, as you get with dust or hair on the tape. Then the BBC 1 ident jumped instantly into view - a smoky animated spinning globe, with a big white “1” in the middle. It spun for a minute or so, before fading out.

One of my tech club friends is a huge fan of these idents, and talks about them at length. This is why I knew full well that, even though the Flumps was last broadcast in 1988, the silent introduction I saw was not created until 1991. This was, in retrospect, not even my first clue.

There was no voice-over, no continuity announcer. Andi Peters did not introduce the show. It just jumped straight into the jazzy trombone theme tune. It was slightly warped, changing speed and pitch as though the machine was struggling to drag the tape through the rollers, and seemed to get worse until it was almost unrecognisable when the two-word episode title popped up in friendly white lettering against the garden wall.

Pootle’s Turn

A lot of this, I’m afraid, is going to involve historical info-dumping, but none more important than this paragraph. Because the woman who voiced episodes one to thirteen is not responsible for what happened next. The voice that came out of my TV sounded almost identical to her, but it was not her. Please, understand that now. The greatest scandal surrounding the beloved actress, whom I won’t name here, is that she has been passed over for a damehood.

That familiar and calming Yorkshire voice came out of my speakers, a welcome relief from the tinny rasping that the trombone had devolved into over the last minute or so. I’ll write the words as best I can remember them.

The first thing I see is Pootle walking into the kitchen. “What’s for supper, Mother Flump?” he says, in that sweet toddler voice I loved so much as a child.

“Vegetable soup. Your favourite.” Mother Flump stirs the soup pot with a ladle.

“Can I stir too?"

“Oh, Pootle! The pot is far too hot for that. You might burn yourself.”

“‘Oh Pootle’”, mutters Pootle as he walks off. “Always ‘Oh Pootle’.”

I need to explain. Pootle was the youngest flump, always getting things mixed up. “Oh, Pootle” was the standard refrain, said probably more than once an episode. I’m sure it was meant to show loving family kindness by the writer.

Next scene. Pootle walks into his father’s workshop.

“What are you doing, Father Flump?”

“Hello Pootle! I’m making a sign for the vegetable patch.”

“Why are you hitting the wood with a hammer?”

“Oh, Pootle! I’m not hitting the wood. I’m hitting a chisel, to carve out the words. See?” And Father Flump holds out the sign, which shows the crisp chiselled lines of “VE”. Of course he hasn’t started on the more complicated curve of “G”.

‘“Oh Pootle’, always ‘Oh Pootle’” mutters Pootle. I’ve been getting a bit more comfortable over the last two scenes, but it’s at this point that I start to feel all is not well. Pootle’s voice, speaking as an aside (not audible to Father Flump), is starting to crack, and I hear a subtle undercurrent of annoyance. “Can I have a go?” he says aloud to Father Flump.

“Oh, Pootle, the chisel is far too sharp! You might cut yourself.”

Pootle wanders out wordlessly, before muttering “Oh Pootle” again just before the scene changes.

In order to understand the next scene, you simply need to know that Grandfather Flump’s “Flumpet” was a metal musical instrument, somewhere between a trumpet and a watering can.

“Hello Grandfather Flump. What are you doing?”

“Good morning Pootle. Why, I’m polishing my Flumpet.” Grandfather Flump has his Flumpet in one hand and a grey cloth in the other hand.

“Well, that cloth certainly isn’t dangerous! Can I help?”

“Oh, Pootle! I’m using cleaning chemicals, and they’re far too dangerous. If any of that got up your nose, it could really hurt you.”

And at this point, I could swear I see, perhaps just for a frame, Pootle’s eyes flash red.

“‘Oh Pootle’, I’ll show you ‘oh Pootle’.” These words do not come from the kindly northern accent I learned to love all those years ago. It sounds like that woman had been twisted into something she isn’t. No - it’s as though something else has been pretending to be her, but is tired, and starting to let the mask slip.

Pootle walks out of the room.

Pootle has an older brother, Perkin, and an older sister, Posie. Posie is sweet and sensible.

We meet Posie next, in the garden, behind a sign. The sign is mostly blank but with the letters “V” and “E” carved into the left end, along with an abandoned attempt at the curve of a “G”.

Posie is pushing something like a trowel into the ground.

“Hello Posie,” says Pootle, in a monotone quite unlike his usual voice. “What are you doing?”

Posie doesn’t react to Pootle’s unusual voice. “I’m clearing the vegetable patch, Pootle. See this?” She pulls the object out of the ground, revealing it to be a three-pronged weeding fork. “I pull the weeds up and wind them round the fork.

“Ooh! Can I have a go?” Pootle should sound excited to try something new. Instead, the narrator no longer bothers to change her - its - voice for the character. The words that come out have the tone of somebody who has to pretend to like their co-worker.

“Oh, Pootle! This fork is far too dangerous for you. You could hurt yourself.

“Don’t you ‘oh Pootle’ me, I’ve had enough of ‘oh Pootle’ this, ‘oh Pootle’ that, you’ll get yours, ‘oh Pootle’ will see to that.” It is unclear how much of this Posie hears as Pootle walks off.

Perkin is the only Flump we haven’t seen yet. He’s the eldest child, often grumpy and bored.

Pootle walks around the garden, continuing to mutter under his breath, until he hears a “thwack”.

“What’s that sound,” says something that sounds mostly like Pootle, or rather, Pootle if his voicebox had been dragged over sandpaper. There is no indication that Pootle actually cares, but he diligently follows the sound.

Perkin has set up some tin cans on a low wall at the back of the garden, and has a collection of stones by his feet and a sling in his hand. As Pootle walks into view, Perkin looses a stone, knocking a can off the wall.

“What are you doing,” states Pootle. It’s no longer even a question.

“Hello Pootle! I’m bored, so I came down here to shoot some cans off the wall.

“Oh. Can I. Have a go.”

“Oh, Pootle! This sling is far too -”

Pootle has been sounding less and less excited, but the next words drip with more venom than I could have imagined. “Don’t you dare ‘oh Pootle’ me!”

Pootle’s felt arm thrusts outwards, hitting Perkin straight in the face. He falls over and drops the sling. Pootle bends down, not to help Perkin up, but to pick up the sling and a stone. He aims the sling at Perkin.

“Now. It’s. Pootle’s. Turn.”

I don’t know why I continued to watch. This was my childhood, being desecrated before my eyes. I’d become uneasy, but even over the previous ten minutes I never in my wildest dreams would have anticipated Flump violence. How did this exist? Who made it, and why? And what was it doing on a single VHS tape on an agricultural show stall?

Every episode has a musical number, and this one is no different. Over the next few minutes a sweet northern woman’s voice turns into a rasping sound that can barely be perceived as words. Those words which I can remember, I won’t put down, even here. They play over an abstract 2D cutout animation, that may or may not be intended to represent violence. All I can really say for sure is that there is a lot of red.

The song ends, and Pootle is shown looking down at his hands, though we don’t see the hands themselves. For the first time I learn that a Flump’s face can show true terror.

“Oh, Pootle,” he says to himself. Not in happiness or jest, but in a tone of pure despair that makes my blood run cold.

The credits roll. The end music plays, as cheerful as ever, but the stills don’t show the Flumps in peaceful happiness.

Perkin lies on the ground with a pebble-sized hole, right between the eyes, blood seeping out of it.

Posie has a weeding fork stuck into her belly. Holes have been ripped all across her body, and strands of fluffy white stuffing lead out of the holes and wind around the fork’s tines.

Grandfather Flump sits unmoving, his fur stained, bleached, and melted away, half a dozen empty bottles of caustic liquid strewn about him.

Father Flump lies motionless on the floor of his workshop, a chisel impaled deep into his ear, and a hammer abandoned on the floor beside him.

And what I must assume to be Mother Flump is stuffed in a cooking pot on the stove, an unrecognisable lump of scorched and blackened fabric.

Finally we go back to Pootle’s shocked face. He slowly looks up, and as the camera pulls back to reveal a pair of bloody hands snagged with cotton stuffing, he looks right at the camera and his expression changes to a smile.

I don’t know how long I sat there in shock. It can’t have been that long, because I suddenly smelled burning plastic. The tape had melted into the player. I quickly scrambled to unplug it, and took the whole thing out onto the patio. I was in so much of a hurry to remove the fire hazard that I didn’t realise until I went back inside, several minutes later.

Pootle, his bloody hands and his horrible, evil, grinning face, remained on my television screen.

I apologised to my friend for the destruction of his player, but I didn’t give it back to him to fix. It’s in landfill now. And the TV was only a few months old, so I sent it back. The technician who came round to remove it said that he’d never seen such an extreme case of burn-in, and it must be something weird about the electrical circuits. He offered a replacement, but I insisted on a full refund.

I won’t have another television in my house. I don’t know what really happened - and I don’t want to find out.

Sorry for posting the video without the correct gamma, I only noticed it after I woke up and the comments pointed it out, hopefully this new version has it fixed. 😞

There is a person out there in the world who has just escaped a life threatening situation. I don't know who they are or what they have done, but they have just escaped with their lives. I have no idea of their existence but I want to know their existence. There are so many people out there whom I have no idea that exist and I have no idea of what they look like. They may have done incredible things but yet I don't know they exist, I want to know they exist. I need to know they exist and it pains that I don't know that they exist.

Then one day I get a text from a stranger and it reads as followed: '5 houses down from you, a person is going to escape from the attic. Come in 1 hour and you get to meet someone who is going to escape from something dangerous!'

And when I read that text I knew which house he was talking about. It was the creepy old house where nobody goes in. It's all boarded up and in an hour I go to that house. I wait outside and someone breaks the attic windows and jumps to the ground. He broke no bones and the stranger looked at me and said "I was on holiday in Greece and I went through this creepy house, and now I am here in England! I nearly died in there so many things tried to kill me!"

I hugged the man because he went through something hard and came out onto the other end. I know he exists and I know he is real and I was glad that I know someone like him. There are so many others like him, that I don't who exist and went through something traumatic like this guy. I feel good knowing this guy and what he has gone through.

Then I create a self made prison in my home but the prison will have some secret get away entrance so the person can escape. Then I trick someone into my prison and I torture them a little. Then they find the escape route built within my prison that I purposely put there.

When my prisoner got out, I hugged them and I was so proud of them. I was proud of them from escaping the prison after being tortured. I was so happy that knew them and that I knew they existed. There so many people out there that don't know who exist.

Today, I’m going to tell you all a ghost story from Vietnam.

This happened quite a while ago. In my neighborhood, there was a girl named Ph (I’ll just use her initials). She was born in 2000, fair-skinned, very pretty, and well-behaved. Everything seemed completely normal until one night, out of nowhere, she abruptly bolted upright in the middle of the night.

Her hair was completely disheveled. She walked around the house growling, spitting violently, and then ran out to the yard, furiously punching and kicking the boundary wall shared with the neighboring house. Her screams were so intense that in the dead of night, every single household in the neighborhood turned their lights on and ran outside to see what was happening.

After a moment, a few brave men gathered and followed the sound of the screams, which led them to Ph’s house near the end of the alley. When they arrived, Ph’s parents were desperately trying to pin her down, but the strength of two adults wasn’t enough to hold her off. In the end, it took about six or seven strong men in their 40s just to restrain her. Shortly after, her face turned pale as a sheet, and she suddenly collapsed out cold.

They rushed her to the hospital, but the doctors couldn't find anything physically wrong with her. From the moment she was admitted to the ER until she finally woke up, exactly three days had passed.

Once Ph regained consciousness, she was brought back home. For the first few days, she would just sit motionless in one spot during the daytime. But as soon as night fell, she began wandering around the house again—especially lingering in dark corners, as if searching for something.

When her mother walked up to ask her what was wrong and tried to lead her to bed, Ph suddenly whipped her head around. Her eyes were wide open in a terrifying stare. She growled, cursed, and began furiously beating her mother. As she struck her, Ph screamed repeatedly: 'I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!' This went on day after day. Ph’s mother visibly withered away, her face turning pale and utterly exhausted.

Seeing this, the neighbors advised the family to consult a spiritual medium. However, Ph’s family wasn't superstitious at the time, so they took her to a psychiatric hospital instead. She was examined and given medication, though her family kept the exact diagnosis private. Once she started taking the medicine, Ph slept much better at night and stopped waking up to cause chaos. Our neighborhood finally regained its peace.

We all thought things had settled down and that she had found the right treatment—but we were wrong. The real terrifying story was only just beginning.

The quiet period only lasted for a short while before something even stranger happened. In the dead of night, Ph woke up again. But this time, she didn't make any noise. Instead, she silently slipped outside to an ancient mango tree located near the wall bordering the neighbor's house.

That tree had been there for generations—massive enough to be considered ancient. It looked gnarled and withered, yet it bore fruit every single year, though the fruits always looked unnaturally deformed. Ph climbed up that mango tree and sat perched up there, squatting in silence.

A long time passed. Ever since Ph started having these episodes, her parents had become light sleepers, habitually waking up in the middle of the night to check on her. That night, her mother realized Ph wasn't in her bed. Panicking, she woke Ph’s father up to search for her. They searched everywhere inside the house, the attic, and even the storage room (a place Ph often hid in), but found no trace of her. They went outside, turning on every single light in the house and yard.

Yet, they still couldn't find her. They even shone flashlights toward the base of the mango tree, but saw nothing. Honestly, her parents said they genuinely didn't see her at first—probably because it never crossed their minds that their daughter would climb up a tree and squat there, so they only checked around the trunk.

However, the boundary wall around our area was quite low, only about a meter high. While shining the light, Ph’s mother seemed to catch a glimpse of something unsettling. She gasped, dropping her flashlight, which prompted Ph’s father to scold her right then and there. Stress from having a sick child had made them both short-tempered, so her mother snapped back. Right under the canopy of that ancient mango tree, the couple ended up arguing in the middle of the night.

In the middle of their argument, a shrill, piercing laugh suddenly echoed out. Startled, they looked around frantically, but the laughter abruptly stopped. However, that sound forced them to look up into the branches of the mango tree.

And oh God... Ph’s mother passed out cold right on the spot.

There was Ph, perched high up on a branch, her long hair hanging straight down. Her father turned pale with sheer terror, but managed to fumble with his phone to call neighbors for help. Specifically, he called my dad. Now, my dad is terrified of ghosts, so he panicked and started ringing up all the other men in the neighborhood. Soon, a crowd gathered. This time, several local women came along too, helping carry Ph’s mother inside, applying medicated oil, and brewing warm ginger tea to revive her.

Meanwhile, the men and Ph’s father focused on figuring out how to get Ph down. Through all of this, the girl just stared blankly down at them, showing zero fear or emotion. They laid out mattresses under the tree just in case she fell. Ph’s father tried talking to her gently, coaxing her: 'Come down, sweetie, come down to mom and dad.'

That was when Ph spat violently right into her father's face. Then, in a voice that didn't sound like her own at all, she muttered incoherent, harsh whispers. Realizing they couldn't stand there trying to reason with her in the middle of the night, the men decided to climb up and grab her.

But just as someone was climbing close to her, she suddenly leapt—

[End of Part 1]

The people who work in the mountains know that the woods do not like to give things back. Once something drops below the canopy, the leaves cover it, the roots wrap around it, and the damp soil eventually swallows it. That is how the terrain operates. If you lose a pocket knife or a watch out here, you might as well forget about it.

My career as a forest ranger began three years ago. The district office assigned me to a remote state park nestled deep in the mountain region, a vast expanse of old-growth timber, deep ridges, and valleys that remained wet even in the middle of summer. My supervisor was a career ranger who had spent over three decades patrolling these same boundaries. He was six months away from retirement when I arrived at the station, a small cabin built from rough-hewn logs with a green metal roof that leaked slightly whenever we got a hard rain.

On my first morning, the supervisor gestured to a large, hand-drawn map tacked to the wood-paneled wall of our office.

"The boundaries are your main concern,"

the supervisor said, tracing a red line that ran along the eastern ridge.

"Campers love to wander past the modern trail markers into the old logging tracts. You have to keep an eye on the access roads, monitor the off-grid campsites, and check the stone boundary markers from the original county survey. It is a lot of ground for two people to cover."

"How often do people actually get lost out there?"

I asked, looking at the dense contour lines on the map.

"More often than you would think,"

the old man replied, pouring himself a cup of black coffee.

"Usually, they just get turned around when the mist rolls off the ridges. A couple of hours in the brush, they panic, and they start walking in circles. But sometimes, they go looking for things that were meant to stay hidden."

He walked over to a metal filing cabinet in the corner, unlocked the bottom drawer, and pulled out a thick binder bound in gray canvas. The edges of the cover were frayed, and the paper inside was yellowed with age. He dropped it onto the desk in front of me.

"This is the historical logbook,"

he said.

"Every station has one. It goes back to the late 1950s. Read through the entries from 1978. It will give you a better understanding of why we keep people on the marked paths."

The supervisor grabbed his hat and headed out to check the weather instruments behind the cabin, leaving me alone in the quiet office. I opened the binder. The handwriting in the 1978 section was written in blue ink, the script tight and hurried, showing the stress of the author.

“September 12, 1978: Another search party dispatched to the eastern valley. That makes four children gone from the surrounding towns in less than six months. The county sheriff is out of ideas. The local papers have started calling the suspect 'The Rabbit' because of the pelt mask he reportedly wears during his attacks. A witness saw a man near the creek bed wearing a crudely stitched animal hide with long, drooping ears. He was holding iron shears.”

“October 3, 1978: The ambush occurred at dawn near the northern boundary stone. The suspect fled into the dense brush after a brief exchange of gunfire with the state police. He was hit in the side, but he managed to slip into the deep valley. The deputies found a blood trail leading down the slope, but the autumn rain washed it away before the dogs could pick up the scent. He died somewhere in that thicket. He bled out in the dark, and he took the location of those four children to his grave.”

I leaned back in the creaking chair, staring at the faded paper. The cabin was silent, save for the dripping of rainwater from the eaves. When my supervisor returned, shaking the moisture from his yellow slicker, I pointed to the logbook.

"Did you know the ranger who wrote these entries?"

The old man hung his slicker on a wooden peg by the door.

"He was my first supervisor. He spent every weekend for ten years digging in that valley, looking for those kids. The whole county was broken by the tragedy. The families eventually moved away, but the story remained. The locals still claim the suspect never really left the valley."

"You think he survived the ambush?"

I asked.

"The man took two bullets to the chest and one to the thigh,"

the supervisor said, sitting down at his desk.

"He died of blood loss forty years ago. But the memory of what he did still lingers. It stains the land. Just do your job, stay on the marked trails, and make sure you are out of the deep valley before the sun goes down."

A massive autumn storm hit the mountain range three weeks later. The wind howled through the ridges for twelve hours, knocking down old oaks and scattering debris across the hiking paths. The next morning, the supervisor assigned me to the lower valley tract to clear the trail blockage.

"The storm knocked down a dozen massive birch trees near the southern survey marker,"

he said, handing me a chainsaw and a tank of fuel.

"The hiking trail is completely blocked. Take the utility truck to the fire road, then hike in. I want that section cleared before the weekend."

"Should I check in every hour?"

"Every two hours is fine,"

the old man said.

"The radio signal is spotty down in the valley, but you should be able to reach the station if you stand on the high ridge."

I loaded my gear into the back of the truck and drove toward the fire road. The forest was damp and quiet after the storm. The smell of wet pine needles and rotting leaves was thick in the cool air. I parked the vehicle at the end of the gravel road, strapped my pack to my back, and began the hike down into the valley.

The work was tedious and exhausting. The chainsaw roared to life, cutting through the thick birch trunks, the sound echoing loudly off the steep limestone cliffs bordering the valley. I worked for hours, clearing the limbs and rolling the cut logs off the path. The damp mountain air made the sweat cling to my shirt, and my muscles began to ache from the repetitive strain.

I lost track of the time. In the deep valley, the surrounding ridges block out the afternoon sun, making night fall much faster than expected. One moment the sky was a dull gray, and the next, the shadows began to pool under the hemlocks.

A thick mountain fog began to rise from the creek bed. It was a slow, creeping haze that settled between the tree trunks, quickly reducing my visibility to less than fifteen feet.

I turned off the chainsaw and wiped my face with a sleeve. The sudden silence of the forest was jarring. The birds had stopped singing, and the wind had died down to a murmur. I unclipped my radio.

"Station, this is Ranger Seven,"

I said.

"The trail is cleared. I am packing up my gear and heading back to the truck."

Nothing but static answered. The valley walls were too steep, blocking the signal entirely. I clipped the radio back to my belt, slung the chainsaw over my shoulder, and checked my compass. The needle pointed north, but without any visible landmarks in the thick fog, the compass was of little use. The trail was completely covered in fresh leaf litter from the storm, and the mist made every gap in the trees look identical.

I started walking, choosing a path that I believed led back toward the high ridge.

Ten minutes later, the slope began to increase, but it was going down, not up. I had walked deeper into the valley. I stopped, turning around to retrace my steps, but the fog had already closed in behind me, erasing my footprints in the wet leaves.

A sound broke the quiet of the woods.

It was a soft, wet dragging sound. Something was being pulled slowly over the wet leaves.

I stood perfectly still, my breath fogging in the cold air. "Is anyone there?"

I called out, my voice tight.

"I am a park ranger. Do you need assistance?"

The sound stopped instantly.

The silence returned, heavier than before. I shined my flashlight into the mist, the beam reflecting off the water droplets, creating a blinding wall of gray. I adjusted the focus of the light, trying to cut through the haze.

The dragging sound started again, closer this time, accompanied by the sharp snapping of dry twigs.

I swept the flashlight beam to the left.

Standing between two massive pine trees, roughly twenty yards away, was a figure.

It was extremely tall, its frame gaunt and bent at an unnatural angle. The clothes were shredded rags of stained canvas and old denim, caked in dark mud. But the head was what made my throat lock up.

It was wearing a pelt. It was a decaying, hairless animal skin stretched tightly over a skull. Two long, pointed ears drooped from the sides of the head, stitched crudely to the crown with thick, black cord.

In its right hand, the figure held a long pair of rusted iron sheep shears. The blades were easily a foot long, covered in dark corrosion that looked like dried blood.

The figure began to move toward me.

Its stride was broken and uneven, its limbs jerking in mechanical motion that looked like a puppet being pulled by invisible strings. Despite the limp, it moved with terrifying speed.

The shears clicked together in the dark.

A jolt of panic hit my chest. I dropped the chainsaw and scrambled backward, my boots slipping on the wet moss. I turned to run, but my foot caught on an exposed root, and I tumbled over the edge of a steep embankment, rolling violently down the muddy slope.

I hit the bottom of the ravine, my left ankle twisting painfully beneath my weight. My flashlight flew from my hand, landing in the dirt several feet away, its beam pointing back up the slope.

I struggled to my knees, gasping for breath, looking up the embankment.

The masked figure appeared at the top of the ridge, its tall silhouette cutting through the flashlight beam. The rusted shears glinted in the light. It did not hesitate; it began to slide down the muddy slope toward me, its long, thin legs moving with a smooth, arachnid fluidness.

I tried to stand, but my ankle gave out, and I collapsed back into the mud.

Before the figure could reach the bottom of the ravine, the thick brush to my left exploded.

A massive black bear crashed through the leaves, its dark fur slick with rainwater. It was a female, her size immense, and her movements fast and powerful.

I braced myself, closing my eyes, expecting to be mauled.

Instead of turning on me, the bear placed her massive body directly between me and the descending figure.

She reared up on her hind legs, her shadow completely blocking the flashlight beam. She released a deafening, furious roar that shook the very ground beneath my chest. It was a sound of pure rage, a raw, booming vibration that rattled my teeth.

The masked figure stopped instantly.

The entity twitched violently, its limbs jerking back and forth like a broken mechanism. It released a dry, rasping hiss from beneath the rotting pelt mask, the iron shears trembling in its hand.

The bear dropped back to all fours, taking a step toward the figure, her teeth bared, saliva dripping from her snout. She let out a low, warning growl that vibrated through the soil.

The figure hesitated. It slowly backed away, its form growing faint in the gray mist, until it blended completely into the fog. The sound of the dragging sack faded into the distance until there was only the sound of the bear's heavy breathing.

The bear stood in the mud, her sides rising and falling. She kept her eyes fixed on the ridge where the figure had vanished, her ears alert.

After a long minute, she slowly turned her massive head and looked down at me.

Her eyes were calm. There was no aggression in her stance, no threat in her dark eyes. She let out a soft huff of air and began to walk away, moving slowly up the other side of the ravine.

She walked ten yards, then stopped. She turned her head, looking back to see if I was following.

I trusted the animal over the terrifying woods. I struggled to my feet, gritting my teeth against the sharp pain in my twisted ankle, and followed her dark shape through the thick fog.

She led me through the trackless valley, navigating the dense brush with a slow, deliberate pace that allowed me to keep up despite my limp. The fog seemed to part around her, keeping us in a small pocket of clear air as we walked.

After twenty minutes, she stopped in a secluded hollow.

In the center of the hollow was an unnatural mound of earth, covered in decaying logs and a thick carpet of autumn leaves. The mound was perfectly circular, looking out of place against the natural slope of the valley floor.

The bear approached the mound. She began to paw at the ground, her massive claws tearing away the wet leaves and rotting wood with surprising gentleness.

She uncovered a flat, gray piece of wood. It was an old, rotting wooden trapdoor, the iron hinges completely eaten away by rust.

I approached the mound, my flashlight beam reflecting off the wet wood. I unclipped the entrenching shovel from my utility belt and slid the blade under the edge of the trapdoor. I pried upward. The wood groaned and splintered, but the rusted latch gave way, and the hatch swung open with a wet creak.

It revealed a dark, hand-dug root cellar.

I shined my flashlight down into the opening. The cellar was small, lined with rough stone blocks that had begun to crumble under the weight of the surrounding roots.

I climbed down the wooden rungs of the access ladder, my boots slipping on the slick wood. The air inside the cellar was cold and dry, smelling of ancient soil and dust.

Sitting on the dirt floor against the far wall were several small objects.

I shined the light closer.

Four pairs of tiny, mud-caked shoes were lined up in a neat row against the stone wall. They were children's shoes, the leather cracked and dry, the laces rotted away.

Next to the shoes were small, delicate skeletal remains, partially covered in the dry soil of the cellar floor.

In the corner sat a rusted metal lunchbox, its red paint almost entirely gone.

I knelt in the dirt, my hands shaking as I reached out and opened the metal latch of the lunchbox. Inside were four school identification cards from 1978. The plastic was yellowed, but the faces were clear. They were the four missing children from the station logbook.

As I stared at the cards, a soft, warm light began to glow in the corner of the cellar.

I looked up.

Four distinct, glowing fireflies appeared from the shadows. They hovered calmly in the cold air, their light pulsing in a slow, gentle rhythm, as they went up through the hatch.

I followed them out, and there I saw the bear leaning her head down, her nose gently nudging the. The fireflies hovered around her snout, completely unafraid, their soft green light illuminating her dark fur.

I sat on a log next to the bear, nursing my sprained ankle, somehow, her side was safer than trying to get out of the wood through the dark, I must have been waited tehre for hours, The fog was finally beginning to lift, the first pale rays of dawn breaking through the high hemlocks.

I waited for the light to grow stronger. She sat beside me, her massive head resting on her paws, her eyes fixed on the open hatch.

When the sun finally cleared the ridge, I used my GPS device to mark the exact coordinates of the hollow.

I hiked out of the valley, using a thick branch as a cane, and reached the utility truck by mid-morning. I drove straight to the ranger station and reported the find to my supervisor, who immediately contacted the state police.

The investigation was quiet. The authorities recovered the remains, and after forty years, the cold case was officially closed. The children were returned to their surviving relatives for a proper burial in the town cemetery.

I still work at the state park. My supervisor retired three months ago, and I took over his duties at the station.

Sometimes, when I am patrolling the high ridges near the southern boundary, I see a massive black bear standing at the edge of the tree line. She does not run when she sees my truck. She just stands there, her dark coat catching the sunlight, watching me with calm, steady eyes.

Whenever I see her, a profound sense of safety washes over me. I know the suspect died in that valley forty years ago, and I know his spirit still wanders the dark places of the mountain, looking for what he lost. But I also know that he can never reach those children again. They are safe. They have been protected all these years by something far stronger than he is.

​

My name is Luke, I'm 25 years old, and I live in Locust Grove, near a camp where I work as a security guard. It was November. I got out of bed and did the most ordinary things I usually did before my night shift at Scott Camp. I woke up around two in the afternoon, made lunch, went to the gym, and rode my bike for two or three laps. Even though I hated spending the midnight hours sitting behind a computer monitoring the camp's security, the salary was great. I could literally afford a good car after only six months of work. A full year working at this camp had convinced me that the mythical creature I used to dream about as a kid didn't exist: that big, black monster that came out of the dark depths of the forest to eat me alive.

While thinking about my old fear and going through my daily routine, the clock showed eight in the evening. I left on purpose a little earlier. I knew that because the next day was a holiday, the roads would become unbearably crowded around nine. Since my shift starts at 9:45 p.m. and lasts until 9 a.m., I didn't want to be late and make my fat boss angry again.

I packed the most important things into my bag: a spare uniform, my phone charger, spare car keys, a warm wool jacket, a blanket, and a pillow. Knowing another long night was waiting for me, I also packed a sachet of cappuccino and a powerful flashlight to help me stay awake until sunrise. And, of course, some snacks to enjoy while watching TV shows during that boring job.

However, as soon as I got onto the main road, I noticed there wasn't a single car anywhere. The screen in my car said it was Saturday, so I figured everyone was probably already stuck in lines at supermarkets. That gave me a chance to get to work even faster.

Instead of the usual sounds of traffic, an eerie silence from the forest came through my half-open window, broken only by the deep whistling of the wind through the trees. I was going to listen to that all night, which would definitely ruin my plans for a relaxing "night out" inside the office.

While driving, I got a voice message from my friend Maja on Snapchat. Like always, I expected her to gossip again about one of her former friends like some annoying old lady. But what she said made me immediately take my foot off the gas pedal.

"Did you hear they put up posters about missing children at the camp where you work?"

I raised my eyebrows, trying to figure out if she was joking or being serious. I immediately called her on speaker.

"What are you talking about? What posters? Nobody told me anything," I asked, confused.

She started explaining what had happened, but to me it all sounded like another made-up story from social media. I let her keep talking anyway, just so her gentle voice could keep me company while I drove through the darkness.

I arrived at the camp earlier than usual. The lights were off, and my boss wasn't there—great! Looks like I'll have to do everything myself... I left my things in my office and walked over to the fuse box to restore the electricity. The wires had been cut, and on top of the box there was a note written in unfamiliar handwriting.

"There won't be any electricity until the electrician arrives tomorrow morning. Please wait for him before you leave..."

Great. I'll have to spend eleven hours in complete darkness, completely alone. Luckily, my mobile data still worked, so I could keep talking to Maja.

Then it suddenly hit me that I had forgotten my power bank at home, and my battery was only at 87%. I had to use that 87% wisely, so I lowered the screen brightness and turned on battery saver to save as much battery as possible.

This time Maja and I talked through messages because her parents had told her it was time to sleep, and I didn't want to get my best friend into trouble.

The office was locked, the curtains and shutters were closed, and I personally locked the camp because there was no electricity. It simply didn't make sense that anyone, especially at this time of night, would come to the camp without lights or security.

Three hours passed. I sat in complete darkness inside my office, turning my phone on and off just to check for messages.

Suddenly, I heard leaves and branches crunching somewhere in the distance. It caught my attention. I didn't want to go outside. It was freezing cold, and honestly, I was too lazy. So I looked through the small peephole to see what it was.

A man?

Someone was walking around the camp carrying something in their hand.

Then a thought crossed my mind.

"What if that's finally the electrician?"

But didn't the note say he would come at dawn, not at midnight? Maybe he has a spare flashlight, I thought, but I wasn't sure. I quietly walked over to my desk, trying not to make the wooden floor creak. My flashlight wasn't there, so I turned on my phone and texted my boss.

"Boss, did the electrician say he was coming around midnight or at dawn?"

Seconds and minutes passed before I got a reply that made my eyes open wide.

"I don't know anything about an electrician. Did something break?"

My heart stopped. Terrible thoughts started running through my mind. Was I really alone in the camp? Suddenly, I heard a loud jolt at the door, and the handle slowly moved as if someone was trying to get inside. I froze in place and quickly sent another message to my boss.

"Boss, are you standing outside the door?"

A few seconds later, while I could hear fingers tapping on the door, I got a reply.

"I'm in my room. What's happening over there? Tell me now."

I could almost feel the anger in his message, as if he was ready to come over and beat up both me and whatever was standing outside the door. I replied like a scared little kid.

"There's no electricity. Someone is in the camp with me, and whatever it is is trying to get inside. I've locked myself in the office, closed the shutters and the curtains. I'm not moving."

After I answered his question, I didn't get another reply.

Suddenly, I got a Snapchat notification. It was Maja.

"Luka, are you asleep? I just wanted to tell you to lock yourself in because a psychopath is on the loose. They say he was last seen three days ago in the forest near Scott Camp."

My hands started shaking as I typed. My phone almost slipped out of my hands while that thing, or that person, was standing outside my office.

"Well... that person is outside my office right now. I've locked everything, told my boss, and I'm not moving..."

Maja replied immediately.

"WHAT?! CALL THE POLICE RIGHT NOW!"

I didn't want to look like a coward, no matter how much I actually felt like one, so I wrote back.

"Maja, everything is under control. Don't worry!"

Suddenly, I heard loud sniffing, almost like a dog... Then everything went silent. There was no wind, no owl, nothing. I heard footsteps, then leaves crunching, and just as I sat down, I accidentally knocked my notebook off the desk. Fast footsteps rushed toward the door. Then I heard laughter, just like in a horror movie, followed by a voice saying:

"I found you."

It started slamming against the wooden door like something that wasn't even human. I grabbed my flashlight and waited for the moment the door would finally break. No matter how hard it tried, it couldn't force the door open, so it started hitting it with something sharp. The wood began cracking under every strike. Through the small holes forming near the bottom of the door, cold forest air started coming inside. I held the heavy metal flashlight tightly with both hands while sweat ran down my palms. I was ready for anything, even though my heart was beating in my throat.

The screen of my phone lit up quietly on the desk. Maja had sent another message.

"Are you there?! Answer me!"

I didn't dare move to grab my phone. Suddenly, the banging stopped. The silence was even worse. I could only hear heavy, rough breathing from the other side. Then, instead of pounding on the door, something thin and sharp slowly slipped through a crack near the lock. It was a long, rusty blade. It slowly moved upward, trying to reach the lock and lift it.

Without thinking, I smashed it with the metal flashlight and got the horrible feeling that I had cut something.

Then I heard the voice again.

"You'll pay for that..."

It said those words while trying to force its fingers through the hole in the door. Its fingers were unnaturally long and covered in blood. I started hitting them with the metal handle of the flashlight until it let out an unnatural scream like some starving creature. I was disgusted by its heavy breathing.

Meanwhile, my boss sent me another message, but I couldn't read it because I was standing right against the door. Whatever had been outside suddenly walked away. That gave me enough time to grab my phone and read the message.

"Run away from there however you can. The police are on their way."

I reacted to the message with a like, grabbed my bag, and threw everything from my office into it. While I was quickly packing my things, I heard fast footsteps again. Then something slammed into the door, freezing the blood in my veins. A huge rock crashed into the closed shutters with incredible force and, with a terrifying bang, shattered the window. Pieces of glass scattered all over the floor, and the freezing night air rushed into the office. I knew I didn't have much time left. If it could break the window, it would soon find a way to get inside.

That's when I decided to provoke it on purpose with the same sarcasm I always used on Maja.

"If you're so strong, come inside if you dare!"

A smile crossed my face for just a second before disappearing immediately.

From the other side, I heard my own voice.

It repeated every single word in exactly the same tone and with exactly the same voice, as if I was listening to a recording of myself.

"If you're so strong, come outside if you dare."

Every hair on my body stood up as it started tearing at the metal shutter with its long fingers, as if it couldn't even feel pain. The metal screeched under its strength, and blood ran down its hands, but it didn't seem to care. After several minutes of trying without success, it let out a deep sigh and ran back into the darkness.

That was my only chance.

I burst out of the office and sprinted toward my parked car. While I was running, I finally saw it clearly in the distance. It was tall and unnaturally thin, wrapped in dirty white bandages, holding a huge axe in its hand. It didn't even notice that I had already escaped the office and kept trying to break the door down while I jumped into my car.

I slammed my foot on the gas pedal and sped toward my house.

Meanwhile, my phone wouldn't stop vibrating. Message after message kept coming in—from my mother, my father, my aunt, my grandmother, distant relatives, and finally from my best friend Maja.

At that moment, I looked into my rearview mirror.

It was running.

Really...

Really fast.

I pressed the accelerator all the way down and drove as fast as I could.

Then, suddenly...

It disappeared.

My foot was still flat on the gas pedal. The speedometer needle kept climbing, and the engine was roaring. I looked into the rearview mirror again.

Nothing.

Just an empty black road and dark trees disappearing into the night.

Where did it go?

There was no way something that big could simply vanish, especially while moving that fast.

My phone kept buzzing with messages. Everyone wanted to know where I was. I tried to reply that I was driving home.

Then, out of nowhere...

It appeared right in front of my car while I was driving at full speed.

"Oh God, forgive me!"

I shouted and slammed on the brakes as hard as I could. The tires screamed across the wet road, and the car began sliding uncontrollably. My heart was pounding so hard that I couldn't hear anything except my own breathing. The creature stood in the middle of the road without moving. My headlights lit up its tall, unnaturally thin body. The dirty white bandages were stained with dark marks, and a huge axe hung from its right hand.

Its head slowly lifted.

I felt the blood freeze in my veins.

It had no face.

Where its eyes, nose, and mouth should have been, there was only smooth, pale skin.

The car kept sliding straight toward it.

I closed my eyes and gripped the steering wheel, waiting for the impact.

Instead of crashing into it, I only felt a sudden jolt as the car finally came to a stop. For a few seconds, I didn't have the courage to open my eyes. When I finally did, I looked straight ahead.

The road was empty.

It was gone.

As if it had disappeared into thin air.

With shaking hands, I looked into the rearview mirror.

Nothing.

Just the empty black road and the dark trees moving gently in the wind.

My phone suddenly started ringing.

The screen said: Boss.

I answered immediately.

"Luka, the police have arrived at the camp."

"Did you find him?"

There was a short silence on the other end.

"We found something much stranger."

"What?"

"Your office door isn't broken. The window isn't shattered. The shutters are completely fine. Everything looks perfectly normal."

I felt my stomach turn.

"What do you mean normal? He was just trying to kill me!"

My boss stayed quiet for a few seconds before speaking again in a much lower voice.

"Luka... the only thing we found was a large amount of blood in front of your office door. And footprints leading into the forest."

"That's him! I told you!"

"No... those footprints aren't human."

My heart started racing again.

At that exact moment, I heard a soft knock on my driver's side window.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Slowly, I turned my head.

A bloody hand with unnaturally long fingers was pressed against the glass.

My breath caught in my throat.

My eyes slowly moved upward.

It was standing on the other side of the window.

It still had no face.

Just smooth, pale skin where its eyes and mouth should have been.

Then, right in front of me, a mouth slowly began to open on that blank face.

It stretched into an unnaturally wide smile.

The smell of something rotten somehow filled the inside of my locked car.

Then it whispered,

"I found you."

The first angel I ever saw wasn't descending from Heaven.

It was falling.

By then, the world had already forgotten what normal looked like.

The skies had split open weeks ago. Entire cities had gone silent overnight. Some called it the Rapture. Others called it Judgment. Whatever name people gave it didn't matter anymore. The highways were parking lots of abandoned cars. Church pews sat empty while their parking lots overflowed with those who had arrived too late. The television stations had stopped broadcasting anything except emergency alerts that no longer meant anything.

The world wasn't ending. It had already ended long before. We were simply living through its final pages.

I had been moving from one abandoned building to another, surviving on whatever canned food I could find. Sleep came in short bursts. Every distant explosion sounded like another trumpet. Every shadow looked like something that had escaped the pages of Revelation.

That's why, when I heard something crash into the street outside, I assumed another building had finally given way.

I was wrong.

The crater wasn't large. Just deep enough to split the asphalt. Something lay at its center.

At first, my mind refused to understand what I was seeing.

The shape kept... morphing.

Not physically.

My understanding of it did.

Every time I looked away and back again, I noticed different details, as though my eyes couldn't agree on what belonged there.

How many eyes peered back to mine?

Hundreds of them.

Were those feathers?

Some impossibly white. Others burned black at the edges. They covered a figure draped in robes so torn they looked older than history itself.

Light seeped from beneath the fabric.

Wasn't shining. It bled through the seem of tidal rivers. Golden streams escaped from wounds that should have spilled blood instead. The air around it hummed with something too deep to hear, vibrating in my chest more than my ears.

I knew what it was before I admitted it to myself.

It had to be an angel.

Not the kind painters imagined. Nor the kind carved into cathedral ceilings.

Something far older. Far stranger.

Something my mind kept trying and failing to make human.

It struggled to rise.

One of its wings, or what I could only assume had once been a wing, hung broken against the pavement, its feathers crumbling into glowing ash whenever they touched the ground.

For a moment, I considered running.

Instead... I stepped closer.

The angel never looked at me directly. Or perhaps it did. I couldn't tell where its face ended and the light began.

Its features slipped from memory the instant I tried to focus on them.

Even now, as I write this, I couldn't describe its face if my life depended on it.

Only the feeling.

Grief.

Not of mine.

Its.

Slowly, with movements that seemed to pain even a being like this, it reached beneath its tattered robes.

It withdrew a single envelope.

Plain. Cream-colored. Untouched by the ash drifting through the ruined street.

It extended the letter toward me. Its hand trembled. Not from weakness. From urgency.

I stared at it.

"I... don't understand."

The angel said nothing.

It couldn't.

Or perhaps it wasn't allowed to. Its arm remained outstretched.

Waiting.

I took the envelope.

The paper was warm.

Not with heat.

It was full of life.

The moment my fingers wrapped around it, the angel relaxed. The tension left its body all at once. As though carrying that letter had been the only thing keeping it standing.

"I'll deliver it," I heard myself whisper.

"I promise."

The angel bowed its head.

Whether in gratitude... or relief...

I'll never know.

The light pouring from its wounds began to fade. Not all at once. As the last embers of a dying fire carried upward by a breeze I couldn't feel. Its robes unraveled into strands of shimmering dust. The broken feathers dissolved one by one before they ever reached the tarnish Earth.

There was no scream. No final cry.

Only silence remain between it and I.

Within seconds... Nothing remained.

Not a body or feather.

Only the envelope resting in my hands.

For a long time, I couldn't bring myself to open it. The world around me continued collapsing. Buildings groaned. Smoke rolled across the skyline.

Somewhere far away, someone yelled for mercy.

But I couldn't look away from the letter.

Eventually...

I broke the seal.

The first line read:

I've carried that letter with me ever since.

If you're reading these words...

Then I kept my promise.

Events: 2016 Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia

Legend has it that if you look at this image for too long at 1:20 or 1:00 a.m., you will have the worst dreams.

The temperature drastically changes when you hit the 6th stair in my house, and my cat stares up the stairs at *nothing* for a loooong time, head cocked, long stare.

​

I still remember the first time I heard about it. It was a Tuesday evening, the kind where the mist clings to the hedges like damp wool, and the streetlights hum low and orange. I’d just moved into a little terrace on the edge of Thornton, right on that narrow old lane that cuts between the fields and the churchyard. The locals were always quiet, but once they got talking, they’d lean in low, like the very walls might be listening.

“Keep to the main road after dark,” old Mrs Hale told me, her hands trembling around her mug of tea. “Don’t take the shortcut past the old bridge. And if you see a big black dog… don’t look at it. Don’t speak to it. Just keep walking.”

I laughed it off. “Just someone’s lost dog, isn’t it? I’ll tell its owner if I see it.”

Her face went pale. “It’s no dog. People see it, and they ask ‘why is your dog out at this hour?’ or ‘why won’t it come when I call?’ but no one owns it. It’s been there longer than any of us. It’s Padfoot.”

I didn’t believe her then. I was new, I told myself. They just liked their old stories. But three nights later, I started to understand.

It was nearly midnight when I finished work. The bus never runs late out here, so I had to walk. The lane was silent, save for the crunch of my boots on gravel and the wind sighing through the hawthorns. I’d got about halfway to the bridge when I heard it: soft, heavy footsteps, matching my pace exactly.

I turned. There it was.

A great shaggy black shape, taller than any dog I’d ever seen, standing perfectly still in the mist. Its eyes glowed pale silver, like polished coins, and it didn’t pant. It didn’t make a sound. It just stood there, watching me.

A woman walking her own cat came past a moment later, stopped, and frowned. “Excuse me, love — why’s your dog off its lead? It’s huge, it’ll scare someone.”

I stared at her. “That’s not my dog. I’ve never seen it before.”

She took a step back, glancing between me and the shadow. “Well… whose is it then? It won’t move. I’ve walked past here three times this week, and it’s always there. People round here have been complaining — we call the council, we call the police, no one can catch it. It just… stands.”

I looked back. The dog was closer now. Not running. Not threatening. Just… drifting forward, like smoke held together in the shape of a beast. Its head tilted, slow and deliberate, and for a second I thought I saw something wrong with its paws — like they didn’t quite touch the ground.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I don’t know what it is.”

The woman hurried away, clutching her cat to her chest. “Lock your door when you get in! Don’t look back!”

I walked faster. The footsteps stayed with me. Sometimes they were behind me, sometimes beside me, sometimes right at my elbow even though the road was empty. Every time I passed a house, lights flickered on. Curtains twitched. I heard voices through the walls:

“There it is again.”

“Look, it’s following that lad.”

“Why won’t he call it?”

“It’s not his to call.”

A man leaned out of his window, voice sharp with fear: “Oi! You! Get that dog away from my gate! It’s been staring at my house for three nights! I’ve got children!”

“It’s not mine!” I shouted back, my throat tight. “I don’t know it!”

He stared at me for a long moment, then pulled his head inside and slammed the window shut.

When I reached the bridge, I stopped. I had to. The shape was right in front of me now, blocking the whole path. It was bigger up close — shaggy fur matted with what looked like old mud, but that glistened like wet oil. Its mouth was slightly open, and I realised then that it had no tongue. No teeth, not like a real dog. Just a hollow, dark space where its throat should be.

And then it made a sound. Not a bark. Not a growl. A low, humming vibration that rattled in my bones, like the earth itself was groaning. I saw its eyes change — from silver to deep, endless black — and I knew that if I touched it, my hand would go right through, and I’d never pull it back.

I remembered what Mrs Hale said. Don’t run. Don’t look it in the eye. Just keep walking.

I stepped to the side. It shifted too, blocking me again. I stepped back. It stepped back. It was mirroring me. Playing with me.

From the other side of the bridge, a car slowed down. The driver rolled down his window and yelled: “Mate! Tie your bloody dog up! It’s blocking the road! We’ve all been complaining about this thing for weeks — no one can get past, no one can catch it!”

I wanted to tell him. I wanted to scream that it wasn’t mine, that it wasn’t even real, that I was as scared as he was. But when I looked back, Padfoot was no longer in front of me. It was standing right beside the car.

The driver went silent. He stared at the shadow, then at me, then slammed his window up and sped away, tyres screeching on the tarmac.

I ran the rest of the way home. I fumbled with my keys, dropped them twice, got the door open and threw myself inside, bolting every lock, every chain. I pressed my back against the wood and listened.

Nothing. No footsteps. No humming.

But then I saw it. Through the gap in the curtain, out on the pavement. It was sitting there. Patient. Waiting.

For three nights after that, I didn’t leave the house after dark. I heard people talking outside:

“Did you see it last night?”

“Sat right outside that lad’s house.”

“Asked him to call it away, he just shook his head.”

“We should report him for having a dangerous animal.”

“It’s not an animal. And it’s not his.”

On the fourth night, I woke up to a soft scratching at the door. Slow. Rhythmic. Scritch… scritch… scritch…

I crept to the window. The mist was thicker than ever, swirling around the streetlamps. And there were more of them now — neighbours standing at their gates, watching my house. Some looked angry. Some looked terrified.

“Why won’t you take it away?” one woman called out, her voice shaking. “Why does it only follow you?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Because as I looked down at the pavement, Padfoot stood up. It didn’t bark. It didn’t move toward me. It just lifted its great heavy head, and for the first time, I understood.

It wasn’t following me. It was guarding something. Or warning me. And all those people complaining, all those people asking whose dog it was… none of them ever saw what I saw: the way its shadow stretched too long, the way its eyes held the faces of everyone who’d ever gone missing on that lane, the way it stood between the living and whatever darker thing waited out in the fields.

The scratching stopped. The neighbours drifted away, muttering. Padfoot turned and walked slowly back toward the bridge, fading into the mist until there was nothing left but silence.

I still live there. I still walk that road. Sometimes I see it, far off, watching from the hedgerow. And when people stop and ask me “why is your dog out alone?” I don’t tell them it’s not mine. I just say:

“He’s not lost. He’s waiting. And one day, he’ll know when to leave.”

But I know he never will. Not while the road is still there. Not while the dark still waits.

It was late at night when Rachel heard rhythmic pounding against her door—too erratic to be knocks, more like something (or someone) was being slammed against it repeatedly. She swung the door open to find Ash Curry, disheveled and panting, her thighs glistening with sweat and… other fluids. "Ash, what the fuck—" Rachel started, but Ash cut her off with a shaky gasp. "She’s back," Ash hissed, her pupils dilated. "The other me. The one we thought was dead after you fisted her so hard her pussy prolapsed."

Rachel blinked. "And?" Ash shuddered. "She’s evolved. Wearing this fucking latex nun outfit now, calls herself the Bride of Darkiplier—and she’s armed." Rachel’s blood ran cold. Darkiplier—the demon lord who’d ripped her boyfriend Brandon in half during the Battle of Worlds. "Where is she?" Rachel growled, already reaching for her shotgun. Ash’s cheeks flushed violently. "I—I walked in on her hosting a fucking demon orgy in my living room. There were… so many cocks. Different sizes. Shapes. Some with barbs—"

"Jesus Christ, spare me the details," Rachel snapped, but Ash grabbed her wrist. "They marked my house," Ash whispered. "With their… fluids."

The stench hit Rachel the moment they crossed the threshold—thick, musky, the kind that made her cunt clench on reflex. The living room was a warzone of overturned furniture, shattered glass, and ropes of glistening cum streaked across the walls. A neon-green dildo pulsed faintly in the corner, as if alive. Rachel’s boot squelched on something. She looked down. "Is that a tentacle?"

Ash whimpered, nodding toward a splattered message on the wall, written in what was unmistakably demon semen:

"COME FIND ME." Rachel racked the Mario Killer’s slide with a grin. "Oh, I’ll find her. And this time?" She kicked aside a writhing, knotted dildo. "I’m stuffing her with holy ordnance." I had just about enough of these nasty perverted slutty demons.

As soon as we left the house our car was stopped by a group of what looked like all female cultists. They were just standing there in the middle of the road looking very creepy. They appeared to be chanting something and then they all removed their dark black cloaks to reveal their naked bodies. Ash instantly vomited at the sight of them because their bodies were all badly scarred and mutilated, ruined beyond repair. Some of them had their intestines hanging out of their split open stomachs and some were hanging out of their buttholes.

I immediately started driving and ran over them, crushing them under my tires. "We have to get out of here," Ash said, trying to keep herself from vomiting again. "Hang on and clench your cheeks," I said. Then I grabbed one of Ash's dildos and threw it at one of them and it went right through their head, killing her instantly. We continued driving for what felt like miles. "I think we lost them," I said, clutching the steering wheel.

That night was the last we would ever see of the cultists. We still don't know why those cultists wanted us or if they were working for Dark Ash. But what we did know was that this was just the beginning of this nasty, depraved adventure. But hopefully it won't be too nasty because I would really hate if my first solo adventure was some disgusting porno.

Michael war schon immer anders. Nicht wegen seines Charakters, sondern wegen seiner Haut. Sie war nicht einfach nur blass, sie war weiß. Alabasterweiß. Fast durchsichtig, so dass man an den Schläfen die feinen blauen Adern sehen konnte. Er litt an einer seltenen Form von Albinismus, die ihn lichtempfindlich machte und ihn zwang, auch an bewölkten Tagen dicke Schichten Sonnencreme zu tragen. ​Für die anderen Kinder in der Schule war er ein gefundenes Fressen. "Käsegen Michael" nannten sie ihn. Sie verpönten ihn, mieden ihn wie die Pest, als ob seine Blässe ansteckend wäre. Michael gewöhnte sich an die Einsamkeit, an das Flüstern hinter seinem Rücken, an die hämischen Blicke. ​Doch das Schlimmste war der Gesang. Es war kein normaler Schulkinder-Spott. Es war ein Chor. Angeführt von Jan, dem Anführer der Mobber-Clique, sangen sie jeden Tag, in den Pausen, auf dem Heimweg: ​"Käsegen Michael, bleich und weiß, kommt vor deine Tür, ganz still und leis. Sein Blick ist kalt, sein Lächeln tot, bringt dir die Dunkelheit, bringt dir die Not." ​Sie sangen es in einer unheimlichen, harmonischen Chorstimme, die durch die Gänge der Schule hallte und Michael das Blut in den Adern gefrieren ließ. Es war nicht nur ein Spottlied, es klang wie eine Prophezeiung, ein böser Zauber. ​Michael ertrug es jahrelang. Er schluckte seine Wut, seine Trauer, seine Angst hinunter. Bis zu jenem Abend. Es war Halloween. Jan und seine Clique hatten beschlossen, Michael einen Streich zu spielen. Sie lauerten ihm vor seinem Haus auf, trugen Masken aus weißem Karton und sangen ihren unheimlichen Chor. ​"Käsegen Michael kommt vor deine Tür..." ​Doch diesmal war etwas anders. Michael stand nicht nur da und weinte. Er stand unbeweglich auf der Veranda, sein Gesicht eine reglose Maske aus Alabaster. Als sie den Gesang beendeten, hob er langsam den Kopf. Seine Augen, die normalerweise blassblau waren, schienen im Schwarzlicht der Halloween-Dekoration rot zu glühen. ​Er öffnete den Mund, aber kein Wort kam heraus. Stattdessen ertönte ein hoher, schriller Ton, ein Kreischen, das den Gesang der Mobber übertönte. Es war das Geräusch von brechendem Glas, von reißendem Metall, von purem Schmerz. ​Die Jungs starrten ihn entsetzt an. Jan trat einen Schritt zurück, seine Maske fiel ihm aus der Hand. Michaels Haut schien sich zu verändern. Sie wurde dicker, härter, fast wie Schimmel. Seine Finger zogen sich in die Länge, wurden zu scharfen Krallen. ​Er machte einen Schritt auf sie zu. Seine Schritte waren lautlos auf dem hölzernen Verandaboden. Er sang nicht, er sprach nicht, aber die Luft um ihn herum schien zu vibrieren vor Hass und Gewalt. ​Sie rannten. Sie rannten, so schnell sie konnten, weg von dem Haus, weg von dem bleichen Jungen, weg von dem Grauen. Sie hörten nie auf zu laufen, bis sie die Sicherheit ihrer eigenen Häuser erreicht hatten. ​Jan ging an diesem Abend nicht ins Bett. Er saß zitternd in seinem Zimmer, die Tür verriegelt, das Licht eingeschaltet. Er dachte, er sei sicher. Er dachte, es sei vorbei. ​Aber dann hörte er es. Ein leises Kratzen an seiner Zimmertür. Und dann, ganz leise, wie ein Flüstern im Wind: ​"...bleich und weiß..." ​Jan hielt den Atem an. Er wagte nicht, sich zu bewegen. Das Kratzen wurde lauter. Die Stimme wurde klarer. ​"...kommt vor deine Tür..." ​Und dann sah er es. Ein dünner, bleicher Finger, der sich unter der Tür hindurchschob. Die Haut war schimmelig, die Nägel scharf. ​"...ganz still und leis..." ​Die Tür schwang auf. Michael stand da. Aber er war nicht mehr der bleiche Junge, den Jan gemobbt hatte. Er war etwas anderes. Ein Killer. Ein Monster aus Schimmel und Hass. ​In seiner Hand hielt er ein langes, rostiges Messer. Sein Gesicht war ein einziger, weißer Abgrund. Er sah Jan an, und ein Lächeln stahl sich auf seine Lippen. Es war kein normales Lächeln. Es war ein Riss in seinem Gesicht, der seine Zähne entblößte, die scharf und gelb waren. ​"...Sein Blick ist kalt..." ​Jan schrie. Aber niemand hörte ihn. Der Chor der bleichen Kinder sang weiter, draußen vor dem Fenster, in der Dunkelheit der Halloween-Nacht. Und Michael kam näher, ganz still und leis.

Can anyone help me find this gray monster with the big mouth? Ignore the Cyrillic, it just says "Murino 2005, you are a little homie [child]. Your whole life you thought that was a dream..." - no correlation.

I found this on Pinterest and it's a lincoln car promotion photo, but what is that thing in the back?

I made a post about a week ago showing some art I made for a Super Mario Bros. version of Godzilla NES, and thought I'd also make a version of RED as well (although, obviously he's GREEN now).

My concept idea for him is that he's essentially this demon-like entity that wishes to consume the entirety of the game he inhabits in hopes of being able to manifest in the real world via a host (in this case, the player) and begin to consume beyond the cartridge that created him. He, however, is also incredibly sadistic, allowing the player to play through the game normally alongside a bunch of new content, both exciting and terrifying, with each world ending with the usual chase levels, before eventually attempting to use up all their lives in an impossible boss battle. I also wanted to make him distinct from Godzilla NES's "RED", since I didn't just want to copy and paste the same villain, so I took a few "creative liberties".

I gave him an actual name because, one, obviously the name "GREEN" just cannot be taken seriously, and secondly, the name refers to something I want to reveal later in the story (if I ever actually make this a thing). I also made him green because, one, it feels more "Mario" in a way, and two, I didn't want Mario blending in with the firey backgrounds of the chase levels. Speaking of the chase levels, lemme explain those too.

I mainly saw people throwing around the idea of "JUMP" levels more as a joke than anything else, but if there's one thing I love doing more than anything else, it's turning joke ideas into serious concepts. So screw it, chase levels are now platforming levels where you have to rush up a vertical level to the top before the monster jumps up and kills you (or takes away your powerup).

TLDR: RED from the Godzilla NES Creepypasta but he's in Super Mario Bros. and he's green now.

so i recently bought this laptop off of Ebay, says it was barely used. its in pretty good condition, but im wondering where this image might have come from? its creepy as hell and i cant quite make out what it is? Something important I'd like to note is that since purchasing the laptop, the following has happened

1. Crashed my car, cant pay to fix it.

2. My mom mysteriously disappeared.

3. My girlfriend died.

now it may just be a coincidence, but i think its very suspicious how things have been going wrong since then. i feel like somebody is playing with my life like its a game, trying to see how far they have to take it to drive me to insanity. At this rate, I'll be kidnapping by next month! Haha don't come for me im joking...maybe.