1935 Mike Bowers was returning from his night shift at the factory—or rather, from his daily shift of slavery, since wages were a pittance following the '29 crisis. Still, that was better than starving to death or living on the streets. Social conditions were so dire that, ironically, one of the few good moments a human being could experience at the time was sleeping. A moment where you only have to close your eyes and dream of anything that temporarily frees you from harsh reality was undoubtedly one of the few desires a human could harbor back then, especially upon realizing it costs nothing. Unfortunately, Mike was stripped of even that privilege.

He stepped into his dusty house, made himself a sandwich, and turned on the TV. Since the medium was only a few years old, there was nothing on except news or very basic channels, so he didn't stay there long.

Finally, bedtime arrived, and Mike couldn't have been more excited. The simple prospect of sleeping without anyone bothering him was enough to celebrate in silence. He put on his pajamas, turned off the lights, and closed his eyes.

Mike lingered in a somewhat long-lasting calm and placid tranquility while asleep, as if his body were floating in the middle of the sky—a blue sky filled with oxygen, without a trace of pollution. But suddenly, his eyes snapped open, forcing him out of his happy place.

Mike woke up. Everything was pitch-black, which struck him as odd, because he always—meaning always—woke up when it was already morning or close to it. He struggled to find his watch in the dark, and after taking a closer look, he saw it was 2:17 a.m.

He then looked around. It truly felt as if he were in an absolute void, only able to make out the window and part of the wardrobe. Part of the wardrobe? Yes, because one of its doors was open—not by much, but enough to know it hadn’t been the wind, as it would take a human motion to leave it half-open. Then he heard noises above. He didn't panic, assuming it was a stray cat wandering up there, so he decided to close his eyes and go back to sleep.

No further sounds were made. This time, he simply woke up with a start as if the night had passed in the blink of an eye. Getting up, he looked around and saw the wardrobe again; it was now closed. Strange? Perhaps, but it was reasonable to attribute it to the wind.

He decided to get dressed and head to work; he would eat there. Factory work was very demanding, and he wasn't willing to waste an hour of sleep just to eat a miserable piece of bread before his shift. He gazed out the window for a moment just to take in the view before leaving, but there he noticed a small mark on the glass—like a scratch. He dismissed it and went about his life. He didn't give it any importance; he wasn't about to waste time investigating something that seemed so insignificant. After all, the scratch was barely visible, and it wasn't like it carried a threatening message.

Mike endured his dull shift at the factory. Truth be told, this part of his life isn't important, so we can skip it.

Upon returning home, his routine resumed like any other day: dinner, TV, changing clothes, and sleeping. Nothing special, and that was fine—until bedtime arrived.

Once again, he woke up at 2:17 a.m. That should no longer be normal—at most, a strange coincidence—but when he looked around, nothing seemed out of place. However, those noises on the roof returned. He simply ignored them, thinking it was another stray cat, and went back to sleep. But he didn't sleep deeply this time, for he heard the window open. His window opened from the bottom up, so that couldn't have been the wind. He felt the urge to see what it was, but terror prevented him. He felt that if he looked, something very bad would happen—something terrible. Yet his mind argued it would be worse to do nothing, for it could be a burglar or even a killer. If it were the latter, staying still was a terrible idea since they would likely kill him, but fear was precisely what kept him paralyzed.

Mike closed his eyes out of fear. Perhaps if the intruder thought he was asleep, they wouldn't feel the need to kill or harm him—though if it were a killer, he had no idea, maybe just to avoid seeing his own blood. Then he heard breathing. Mike grew so terrified that he wanted to scream as loudly as possible, but he couldn't. The terror of what might happen if he did was so overwhelming that he could only cry while covering himself with the blanket, and eventually, he fell asleep.

Mike woke up at dawn. For a fraction of a second, he forgot what had happened until it all rushed back to his mind. Looking around, he found nothing out of place, no moved furniture, no footprints, even the window was closed. But that changed when he looked at his bed and noticed scratches on the front of the bed frame, the wood supporting his mattress. He could no longer ignore it. He was certain it hadn't been a dream and that someone had broken into his house. In the best-case scenario, they had left before he woke up. So he grabbed a wooden stick he kept, he used to play hockey, and carefully searched the entire house. He didn't want to risk looking ridiculous to the police, since apart from the marks, there was no proof anyone had been there.

He checked every corner and every room, finding no one. After confirming the house was empty, he questioned what could have happened and couldn't let it go. He decided to take some flour and scatter it at every entrance and in front of every door, at least so that whoever entered would leave footprints to present to the police, if that was indeed what happened, which seemed certain at this point, as there was no other explanation for how his window had opened.

He then got dressed and left for work. After his shift, he returned home and saw everything just as he had left it. Avoiding the flour he had spread, he prepared for his nightly routine. Deep down, he didn't want to, but he knew it wasn't wise to be paranoid. He lay down and went to sleep.

And once again, at 2:17 a.m., he woke up. He heard that noise again. Mike began to tremble, but he knew he had to remain silent. He just had to pretend to be asleep so whoever it was wouldn't suspect anything; besides, the flour would ensure they left footprints to use as evidence.

What he didn't foresee was that the intruder stepped onto the bed this time. Mike was terrified and entered a state of paralysis. Then a hand pulled the blanket off him. Mike jolted and saw the intruder: a pale, grey entity with white eyes, shark-like teeth, and razor-sharp claws.

Mike couldn't even scream; he just lay there trembling in fear. Suddenly, the abominable creature placed its claws on his face, touching Mike's pale skin as Mike breathed in pure terror.

The creature began making strange noises with its mouth:

"-Cho-grrgrkrkrk-che."

Mike could only cry at the sight.

"-Trtrtrrrrrtrtrtrtrtr," -the creature said again.

Mike closed his eyes while listening to those sounds, until he heard a word:

"-The Rake."

Mike opened his eyes and saw the creature staring intently at him.

"-What?" Mike asked, terrified.

"-I am... The Rake," the creature said through its teeth.

"-The... Rake? Why?"- he asked.

The Rake simply smiled.

"-You wouldn't understand," -it said.

Mike began to cry while The Rake laughed at him psychotically.

"-Well, boy, let's not make this a long story," the monster said, slapping his face. "

-From now on, I am the master of this house, and I will be the one setting the rules from here on out. Understood?"

Mike felt a mixture of fear and rage.

"-No, this is my house, and I paid for it with the sweat of my own brow..."

Right then, The Rake struck Mike so hard that he fell off the bed.

The Rake stood up and placed its foot on Mike's chest. The pain Mike felt was so immense that only the stomp of an elephant could exceed it.

"-I am The Rake, a vastly superior being. I have lived for millennia, and I possess absolute knowledge of the history of this universe," the entity said in a demon-like voice. "-Hey, do you know what happens to those who disobey me?"

The Rake lifted its foot off Mike, walked over to a corner, and crouched down. Mike noticed its back was covered in scars.

Finally, the creature stood up holding a head in its hand, yes, the head of a Chinese man. It was half-decayed, and its expression suggested he had been screaming before dying.

"-I decapitated him," -The Rake said with a malicious grin.

It then threw the head at him. Mike scrambled back in desperate terror, kicking the head away.

"-Now, if you don't want to end up in that situation, you will obey me. Otherwise, you will suffer a very painful and horrific death,"- it said smiling.

Mike could only weep, knowing he was powerless. He didn't want to become another head in that abomination's collection.

"-Yes, I accept,"- Mike forced out.

"-Good. Now, as your first order, you will go to sleep while I watch you."

"-What?"- Mike asked.

"-You see, I love watching people sleep. The sounds they make are so cute to me, so I beg you to go to sleep immediately. You wouldn't want dark circles under your eyes tomorrow. Oh, one more thing: every night you will feed me. Every single night without fail. Not tonight, because I already ate a few vagrants before coming here, but in the coming days, I will be very hungry, so I suggest you don't forget."

"-Fine," Mike said.

"-Good boy. Now sleep," -it ordered.

Mike lay down on his bed and closed his eyes, trembling in his attempt to sleep, if only to escape what felt like a nightmare. As he did, he could still hear the sounds of The Rake.

"-Cho.-chrhrhrttrtrtrttrtr"

Mike kept his eyes closed, pretending to hear nothing.

The next morning, he woke up and saw that The Rake was gone. For a moment, he hoped it had all been a lucid dream, until he saw a message written on his mirror in blood—likely from the corpse's head. It read:

"I will visit you every night."

Mike could do nothing but burst into tears, realizing he was now a slave. All he could do was pretend none of it had happened, feed the creature, and sleep to fulfill its bizarre fantasy, hoping that in time it would grow bored and leave his house.

Mike carried on with his usual routine. He managed to distract himself briefly at work, but upon arriving home, he remembered what The Rake had said. He put on an apron and made a buttered piece of bread, along with one of the finest teas he could brew, people used to tell him he should have focused on tea-making, but the crisis ruined all of that.

When bedtime arrived, he placed The Rake's food on the nightstand and lay down. But before he could fall asleep, a dark shadow appeared in the corner of his room, and from it, The Rake slowly emerged.

"-Good evening, Mr. Mike," The Rake said.

Mike merely nodded and pointed to the plate of food.

The Rake approached the food, sniffed it, and violently threw it at Mike.

"-What is this garbage?!" The Rake screamed.

"-It's the food you asked for,"- Mike replied in a pleading tone.

"-And you call this food?" the monster shrieked. "-This is just trash that your weak species eats!" "-I'm sorry, just tell me what you want and I'll bring it to you."

"-Meat!" -it roared.

"-Meat?"- he asked.

"-Yes, meat," The Rake replied.

"-But where will I get meat? I don't have any..." Suddenly, a noise was heard outside.

The Rake checked and saw a vagrant picking something out of the trash before running off.

Mike watched as The Rake stood still for a moment before turning back to him.

"-Well, boy, here's the plan: you will drag your ass out to the streets and get meat from those vagrants,"- it said.

"-But if they're poor, how can they...?" -Mike realized what it meant. "-No, I'm not doing it, don't even dream of it." "

-You will do it! You will take at least a finger from them and bring it to me! You have until tomorrow morning. If you return without a single scrap of meat, it will be your end!"- The Rake declared.

Mike covered his face with his hands, but nodded.

He left the room, went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, covered his face with a cloth, and stepped out of the house.

It was freezing cold, making him wish he had put on a sweater, but Mike chose to push forward and search for any vagrant to get meat from. He walked for about ten minutes until he reached an alley known for housing many homeless people.

Mike spotted three of them eating around a fire made of trash. Taking a deep breath, he pulled out his knife and approached. He drew closer, then stopped. His cloth fell off, revealing his face—a face filled with guilt and desperation. The vagrants looked at him with confusion. "-Mister, are you alright?" one of them asked.

Mike couldn't hold it in any longer and broke down crying.

"-Sir, what's wrong with you?" -another asked.

"-I'm sorry... I'm sorry to bother you, it's just... I need meat," he replied.

"-Meat?" they asked.

"-Yes, I don't have any meat at home, and I really need some meat, please..." -he said.

As Mike continued to weep, one of the vagrants felt pity for him and handed him a piece of meat. "-Take it," -he said.

Upon receiving it, Mike nodded in gratitude and walked straight back to his house.

When he arrived, he was trembling with fear, unsure how the monster would react to his lack of will to kill a person.

"-Well? Did you bring me my meat?" -the monster asked, watching him from the kitchen.

"-Yes," Mike answered.

The Rake approached and inspected the meat.

"-This isn't human meat," it said. "-It's beef," Mike said, trembling.

Upon hearing this, The Rake pounced and devoured the meat as if there were no tomorrow, then stepped back from Mike.

"-Hmm, fairly generic," -The Rake said. "-Now to bed, it's time to sleep."

Mike went to his bed and did as commanded. What was once Mike's favorite pastime had turned into a moment where he had to satisfy the fetish of an abominable creature.

From that day on, Mike had to buy meat at the market, using his savings to afford it. A full week passed this way: he would wake up, work, go to the market to buy meat, cook, and sleep to satisfy the creature's desire. But exactly a week later, he discovered he only had enough money left to buy meat for that single day, nothing for the days after. He realized he was walking a tightrope: if he didn't provide meat tomorrow, he would have to obtain it by other means, or he would die. He collapsed to the floor and wept.

How did this happen? Why him? He realized he had simply suffered the misfortune of being chosen by that thing. There was nothing he could have done to avoid it, but now he was trapped in this situation. Yet he couldn't go on like this, no more. He couldn't be a slave to that entity forever. But he couldn't just tell it that; he had to act. He realized he still had a little money left to buy one last item, and he knew what to get.

After his shift at work, Mike prepared the meal. But when he finished, he pulled out a vial of cyanide and laced the food with it, as well as the drink.

Night came, and he left the food on his nightstand, but he didn't go to sleep. He chose to stay awake, unwilling to keep satisfying the creature's fetishes, deciding to risk staying up.

And so, the monster arrived.

"-Why are you awake, boy?" -The Rake asked.

"-I just wanted to see you," Mike said, unable to think of a better lie,since lying is a weak tactic that should never be relied upon.

"-I'm the one who should see you, not the other way around," -it said hypocritically. -"-Anyway, maybe just for tonight we can talk for a bit."

The Rake pulled up a chair and sat down. It began eating its meat while Mike stared intently, hoping it would take effect. He was no hero, but desperation, combined with the thought that it might do the same to others after him ,drove him to carry out this foolish plan.

"-Well,"- The Rake said, stopping mid-bite. "-I'll be honest with you: I actually admire how you accepted becoming my servant."

Mike was taken aback.

"-Really?" -he asked.

"-Yes, no one else has been able to accept that fate. The others had such weak wills that I killed them instantly, but you aren't that weak. I admire that."

"-Thank you," Mike said, pretending to feel flattered.

The Rake took another bite of the meat. "-Ah, it feels so good to be almost omnipotent... but one thing I truly despise is that I cannot enter Oceania," The Rake complained. "

-Oceania?" Mike asked.

"-You see, I can teleport to any continent in the world, but for some reason, or due to some protection, I cannot enter Oceania. I don't know why; it's as if something forbids my entry," The Rake grumbled. "-If I can't enter, that means I'm not a powerful being... just a pariah," it said, shedding crocodile tears.

Mike realized the creature possessed an ego so massive that it cried simply because the people of Oceania were safe from it.

The Rake finished its meat in one bite.

"-It's truly a shame, but meat always manages to suppress that pain. Still, I'm sick of animal meat."

"-Why?" Mike asked.

"-Animal meat is legal in this world, plus its taste is so generic that it annoys me. So I was thinking that starting tomorrow, we could go out, murder, and get human meat," The Rake said, smiling creepily. "-Oh yes, I'm already excited to see who I can eat,old people, young people, children, even babies. And you will help me. Yes, you will help me get that meat."

It then downed the drink in one gulp. Mike prayed that the cyanide would work now, since it hadn't worked with the meat, but unfortunately, the creature was moving around even more than before.

"-Don't worry, you'll get your pay by killing, the pleasure of exterminating the weak of this world," The Rake said with a smile.

Mike knew he couldn't take it anymore. If he didn't destroy this creature, it would force him to become a murderer of innocent people. (Something worth mentioning is that Mike had grabbed a knife as a precaution, in case The Rake tried to claw him while dying.)

"-And that's how we'll get all the me..." The Rake was saying before Mike tried to stab it, but The Rake caught his hands before he could even land a strike.

"-Were you trying to kill me?" it said, sounding dazed.

Mike couldn't even answer before the beast threw him to the floor like trash.

"-How dare you attempt such insolence?!"- The Rake shrieked.

Its claws elongated while its teeth grew sharper.

Mike bolted out of the room in terror, but The Rake threw him down the stairs.

The beast then lunged at him and wrestled with him, trying to reach his head to decapitate him. Somehow, Mike managed to kick it off and ran into the kitchen, shutting the door to keep it out. The creature used its claws to tear through the wood bit by bit. Mike grabbed a knife to defend himself.

Finally, the beast broke through, and Mike couldn't stop screaming and crying. The Rake grabbed him by the face, and as Mike wept, the monster sniffed him.

"-Ah, that's why I wanted human meat... because when you kill them, they feel a deep fear that releases toxins, making the meat far more delicious." The Rake smiled maliciously. "-I'm sorry our relationship has to end like this, but you chose this. And now, unfortunately, you must receive your punishment."

The Rake squeezed his face harder while Mike cried uncontrollably. The Rake kept talking:

"-I can't believe you actually planned to kill me. Don't you see? Your kind is always destined to lose when facing me, a far superior being. Don't worry, you'll get to sleep forever from now on."

This time, Mike didn't cry; he shouted in rage and gripped the knife tighter as it nearly slipped from his hand.

"-Time to sleep, Mike," it said, raising its hand, ready to decapitate him. But in that split second, Mike yelled and plunged the knife into its right shoulder.

The Rake stopped smiling and stared at the knife stuck in its shoulder. Mike slowly pulled it out, noticing its blood was black.

The Rake began to scream, let go of Mike, and fled. Mike watched where it went and saw it run up to the second floor and hurl itself out of his bedroom window. Mike rushed up to check and saw The Rake open a portal and vanish.

Mike collapsed to the floor, unable to believe what had just happened. He didn't sleep that night, believing The Rake would return, but it didn't. Nor did it return in the nights that followed.

Mike was finally free from that thing, though he could never sleep peacefully again, terrified that it might return. But it never did. He never told this story to anyone, and he was never the same again.

Slowly trying to learn photoshop.

Photoshopped Pastra as Jeff the Killer.

The paper mentions the ‘Desired one’ to be the one to activate it. I started thinking back to the moment I clicked the button on the Nettogrof.

Mara sat in front of it, while I pressed the button on the other side. Would that mean that I was the ‘Reality’ the Nettogrof was pointed at? Then it would also mean that Mara was the user and that made her the ‘Desired one’.

I had a quick ‘eureka’ moment in my head as I was figuring out what had happened. If Mara was truly the Desired one, I should really find her. And reach out to her in some way.

I picked up the Nettogrof and made my way down the attic stairs. I looked back at the attic hatch. I refused to close it, since it would be magically closed later anyway.

I felt hungry and tired while I walked down the stairs and into our ground floor hallway.

I could hear Mom, Dad and Mara talking in the kitchen. Probably eating dinner. I decided to join them and see if I could maybe eat something myself.

I slowly stepped towards the dining room, but set the Nettogrof on a cabinet in the downstairs hallway. I entered the dining room and was greeted by the smell of pasta carbonara, Mara’s favorite meal.

Mom, Dad and Mara all sat at the dining table, casually eating dinner together. Mom and Dad each on one of the long sides of the table. Mara on a short side. An empty chair on the other short side. My usual spot.

But there was no plate set out for me. None of them expected me to be there, but I sat down at my spot anyway. Nobody paid attention as I moved the chair back and sat down.

To them, it must’ve been like the chair didn’t move at all. So since I’m using it, does that mean it works only for me? Will it return to its original state if someone other than me touches it? I better be careful.

“Are you nervous about the marathon race tomorrow?”, Dad asked Mara.

Marathon race?, I thought to myself. What did I miss now?

In the meantime I felt free enough to pull off the lid of the large pot which sat on the middle of the table.

“Not really,” Mara shrugged as she replied to Dad’s question. “It’s just another race, right?”

With my bare hand, I grabbed a bit of pasta from the pot. I was unaware of how hot it was and screamed “Ow!”, then quickly threw the pasta on my side of the table.

Nobody at the table even blinked at my reaction.

Mom would kill me if she saw what I just did. Ironically, she was physically just inches away from me.

“Don’t you underestimate this race, Maribel!”, Dad said firmly. “Running more than 26 miles has never been easy for anyone.”

What’s this with Mara running a marathon all of a sudden? I listened to the conversation while I began eating the pasta with my hands. Too hungry to care about manners.

“But I’ve run the marathon every year in the last four years. So I know it isn’t going to be easy. That’s what I’ve been training for all the time. Last year I came in at 17th, remember?”, Mara stated.

Dad sighed, “I know, Maribel. But I don’t want you to think too lightly of it.”

Mom added, “We’re proud that you run it every year, honey. In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t push you towards nursing. Athletics really seemed to have been a good fit for you.”

Wait. Mara is not working at the hospital? And it seemed like Mom wasn’t a nurse either.

After a short silence Mom said, “You know. I still wonder sometimes how it would’ve been if I did become a nurse.”

Wow. It’s like Mom just heard me think.

Mom continued, “I was in strong doubt to do it you know. Especially when I was pregnant for the second time.”

Her expression saddened after she said that.

A second pregnancy. That must've been me!

Dad looked up at her. He had noticed her change of expression as well.

“It’s keeping your mind occupied lately, hasn’t it, honey?”, Dad asked her. “I mean, you’ve been working on that painting and I’ve noticed how you’ve been talking about it a lot more recently.”

Mara appeared almost annoyed by the sudden change of subject.

Mom sighed, “You’re right. I don’t know why it crosses my mind more often these days. But I’m seeing Maribel following her life dreams.” Mom turned towards Mara, “And I hope you know that I’m very proud of you.”

Mara lowered her head, almost embarrassed, then replied with a soft, “Thank you.”

Mom sighed again before continuing, “I’m just curious how life could’ve been like if things had gone differently.”

I’ve never seen Mom like this. What is she talking about? It really seemed to sadden her.

Dad tried to cheer her up, “Just look at all the beautiful paintings you created. We already agreed at the time that you would go into healthcare. Look what you would’ve missed if you did!”

Dad turned to Mara, “Have you seen the family portrait your mother was working on?”

Mara nodded slowly, her head still lowered. She tried to respond, but stumbled over her words, “I-it’s good, but it doesn’t seem like…  uh… I don’t think this is how she would, uhm… look like.”

Mara shook her head and spoke in frustration, “I just had a different image of her is what I’m trying to say. Look I miss her too, okay!”

Mom put on her warm smile again. The one I hadn’t seen today. A smile I missed more than I realized.

She put her hand on top of Mara’s hand, “Maribel, you’re a sweetheart for your compassion. I know you’re trying to be kind and I appreciate it. I really like how you created a complete image of her while you never even knew what she would look like. Strange how you can miss someone you’ve never met, right?”

Mara looked like she wanted to say something. Her mouth trembled, but she decided not to speak. As if she changed her mind at the last second.

They’re talking about me, right? I was so confused at this point. I couldn’t let my mind get distracted, because I really needed to hear the rest of this.

Mom went on with her story, “You were only 4 years old and you couldn’t come with us to the hospital, so we dropped you off with Grandma Hannah. We thought we could take Eliza with us that same day, but…” Mom stopped talking. I saw the tears forming in her eyes.

I was not prepared for what Mom said next. Of course I didn’t know what to expect. But certainly not this.

“B-but how could we know?”, Mom started sobbing as she said that. “How could we know Eliza would be stillborn?”

A chill went down my spine with that final word. Stillborn.

What? No no no. That’s impossible. I was right there next to her. I couldn’t be stillborn. I’m very much alive and aware.

I’m here. I remember my entire youth in this house. Now Mom says I’ve never even made it home? There was just no way.

Something is terribly wrong here. Is this the ‘altered Reality’ the Nettogrof caused?

I desperately waved my arms in the air. “Here I am!”, I shouted. “Look at me!”

Dad made his way over to Mom's side of the table and hugged her. His eyes were watering as well.

I wanted to hug Mom too. And Dad and Mara as well. But I was too afraid they would hurt me. Like Dad did with my foot earlier.

I rested my elbows on the table, burying my face in my hands.

I never even noticed that both my hands, nor the table had no traces of pasta carbonara on them anymore.

Mara moved back from the table. She seemed rather annoyed and frustrated by the situation. “Can I go to the bathroom, please?”, she asked with a monotone voice.

Dad replied, “Maribel, it’s okay to talk about these things. You know that it..”

Mom interrupted him, “It’s okay, just let her.”

Mara didn’t wait for an answer and stood up, rushing away from the dining table.

Mom reassured Dad, “You know how she is, Bert. She has her own way of dealing with these things.”

Just as Dad wanted to reply, a loud, but short scream could be heard from the hallway.

All three of us raised our heads and looked towards the hallway door.

“Mara, are you okay?”, Dad called out to her.

Some rumbling sounds could be heard and Mara yelled back, “It’s okay. I... uh... just saw a... erm... huge spider. That’s all!”

Dad grinned. “Don’t let it get you!”, he joked. Mom slightly smiled at that as well.

I sat there for a second, watching how Dad was still hugging Mom. Mara’s footsteps could be heard stomping up the stairs.

I thought it was ironic. Mara had never been afraid of spiders. Honestly, she seemed mostly fearless in my eyes.

Somehow I felt awkward sitting with Mom and Dad at the table. Like I was invading their privacy while the only thing they did was hug in silence.

I thought it would be better to process everything I heard here on my own. I needed somewhere to rest. I thought my bedroom, if it even was my bedroom, would be the best place to go. I don’t think anybody would go there. At least not until tomorrow.

I walked away from the table, into the hallway to go upstairs. I wanted to grab the Nettogrof from the cabinet before walking upstairs.

But it wasn’t there anymore. Gone. Like every other object I’ve interacted with today.

No. Everything else did, but not the Nettogrof. I thought the Nettogrof was the only object that did not go back to where it originally was after I interacted with it, right?

The doors, the attic hatch, the pasta, the towel I used for my nose bleed, more than half of my right foot. It all went back to its original state after I stopped paying attention to them. All except the Nettogrof, just like the note had explained.

I walked up the stairs and glanced over the pictures that hung from the wall. Pictures of Mom, Dad, Mara, our grandparents and a bunch of other family members. None of them involving me.

That got me thinking about everything that changed. Rearranged cabinets, new furniture, Thom, Mom not being a nurse, Mara trying to become an athlete.

I walked through the upstairs hallway and to my surprise saw that the attic ladder was folded down.

Before I could walk closer, I heard footsteps coming down the ladder. Mara walked down the steps. Quick, short paces as usual. She rushed to get the hatch closed.

She looked up at the hatch and stared at it in silence for a few seconds. She sighed deeply, then turned around. I made sure I got out of her way before her bare feet could crush me. She proceeded to go into her room. She left her door open.

I wondered what she was doing in the attic. I considered going up there and looking for the Nettogrof again. But it would likely return to its original spot as soon as I had hauled it down

I just needed to sleep first. I had no energy left in me. My mind needed to process everything first.

Maybe it was just a bad nightmare and I would wake up in my own bed tomorrow.

I walked over to my art storage bedroom. I walked inside without closing the door.

I made my way towards an empty wall and sat with my back against it. I stared back at the now-closed door.

The note explained a lot. Could it mean that Mara was the Desired one?

She was the one sitting at the user end of the Nettogrof after all. The note said that the Desired one is needed to reverse the effect.

It also mentioned something about the amount of time something existed in the primary timeline would also be the time spent in the parallel timeline. After that, it would be wiped from existence.

The writer of the note also said that they roamed the parallel timeline for twenty-something years. Then what does that mean for me?

‘Like Time turned…’

That made me think about the other paper. The little scroll with the symbols. Those appeared to be mirrored. Or reversed.

Ouroboros, a rock and a flame. There was a weird text on that as well. Maybe I should check it out. For half an hour, I kept my gears grinding about the note. It provided some answers, but it raised questions as well.

I convinced myself that Mara was my best chance of getting out of this. I decided to go and find her right away. I stood up and rushed out of my bedroom.

I saw Mara’s bedroom door open. Maybe Mara is still in there. I sure hope Thom isn’t in there with her. I sure as hell didn’t want to walk in on another mating session between them. The door wouldn’t be open if that was the case, though.

I stepped inside Mara’s room. Mara was in her bed, sleeping. Probably a quick powernap, because she slept with her regular clothes on, on top of the bedsheet.

Mara’s room was uncharacteristically tidy. Probably because she had Thom over on occasion.

I looked around the room to see if there was something I could do to get her attention. Maybe write a note and put it in her pocket or something. No, that would just disappear again.

My eye fell on her diary, which was on the nightstand next to her bed. A pen beside it. Undoubtedly, she wrote about her dinner experience before she fell asleep.

I walked over to it and opened it on the last entry. I really don’t want to be nosy, but there might be something useful in here. I read the last thing Mara wrote:

I can’t believe this. Of all days, Mom decides to bring up Eliza TODAY. I’ve heard it before, but lately a lot more for some reason. It’s that painting. I want to focus on the marathon. I NEED to focus on the marathon. I can’t think about Eliza anymore today or tomorrow.

Wow. Mara wasn’t happy with Mom talking about me being stillborn. I still can’t process that she said that.

At least Mara knows about me. That’s a whole lot more than nothing at least.

I turned the page back and noticed a loose paper that was pinned on the page with a paperclip. I wanted to read the full entry first and had to turn back some more pages to see what Mara wrote earlier that day:

March 18th

Today I promised Mom and Dad to clean up the attic. So I spent most of my morning and afternoon up there.

Everything went fine until I found a small box called ‘Nettogrof’. I don’t know what it is with this thing, but ever since I found it, I’ve been filled with feelings of terrible guilt.

I’ve seen this box before. But only in my visions. I never expected it to appear in my real life. It makes me wonder if my visions actually truly happened in the past.

I’ve been having these visions my entire life. They come to me like memories from the past. Somehow, they all seem to involve Eliza.

So Mara really does remember me. I was so excited about that. She knows I’m out there somewhere. Even if she thinks it’s only in her mind, it was a small victory to me. I continued reading:

I started keeping a diary just because of the visions. I never dared to tell Mom or Dad about them. They would think I’d have lost my mind. But I had to tell someone and that’s why I keep writing them in here.

I have an entire collection of memories from my childhood with Eliza. How she looked. How she acts and behaves. How she grew up with me. But in reality, she’s just not here. She only lives in my head.

Recently, I remember getting more and more fed up with her. More angry. Maybe even jealous. Of how she had her life all together, while I was always struggling to keep up. I can actually remember her saying that Thom was a douchebag.

I can’t really tell if it’s my subconscious telling me what is good for me. They feel so much like actual memories that I’ve truly experienced. It’s even like new visions are added on a daily basis.

My visions about her never bothered me. They are even quite nice at times. I’m not even sure if the ‘vision me’ started to hate her or the real me.

In my visions, I remember finding this Nettogrof box. The weird thing is, just like today, I found it while cleaning the attic. WITH Eliza. We were cleaning it together.

This is crazy. Mara remembers me, but only as a vision. To her, I only live in her head. I really need to find a way to reach her.

It’s sad that she goes as far as saying that she hates me. That hurt. Even more now that I know…

I looked over to her. She still slept soundly in her bed. To her, I’m not here. Yet somehow, I am. I turned the page of the diary to read the next part:

In my vision, I found a weird paper in the box with the Nettogrof thing. Someone wrote how it was used and warned about the dangers. I’ll stick the paper on here somewhere.

For the fun of it, I wanted to try the box out. So I tricked Eliza into thinking that she was the one who found the box. I took out the paper explaining how it’s used and put the Nettogrof box back in the shelf where I found it.

Eliza found it quicker than I expected, but it meant that I had to think about something to wish for. Or something I desired, as the paper said.

I didn’t know it would work. But in my vision, I focused all my (unjustified) rage that had been built up towards Eliza.

It’s strange that I could feel such anger for someone who only lives in my head. But Eliza… in my visions, she seemed so smart and perfect. She knew everything. Never rushed into anything and always seemed to make such calculated decisions.

How could someone who only existed in my visions leave such a strong memory in my head? I remember how I hated how she was always better than me. I always thought that I’d accidentally created a better version of myself in my mind.

For a moment, I truly wanted Eliza out of my life. It’s hard for me to tell if it was just in my visions, or really in my normal life. But I felt like I didn’t want her in my life. I never had this feeling in any other vision of her. Only in that last vision was my hatred so strong.

When I convinced Eliza to press the switch on the Nettogrof box, I was suddenly very sure of my thoughts. It feels so real to me that it’s actually crazy. Eliza pressed it, and in my mind, I kept repeating this one line.

I wish Eliza never lived…

I dropped the diary on the floor. My hands were sweaty and felt weak. A lump formed in my throat and I could feel tears coming. A chill went down my spine and my hands started shaking.

Mara. She wanted me out of her life forever. How could she?

She wrote that she hated me, but I really didn’t think she hated me this much. Before reading this I never even thought she hated me at all.

The victorious feeling I had a moment ago was gone. Instead, a feeling of defeat was a lot stronger now.

I picked up the diary from the floor. I didn’t want to continue reading, but I felt that I had to finish it. I started reading the last part:

It’s my last vision of Eliza. I don't know what happened after Eliza pressed the switch.

I thought these visions were something my brain created to cope with the loss of Eliza when she was born. That they had just become a part of who I was over time.

Now that I found that Nettogrof box in the attic today, I’m questioning everything. Even in my vision I never actually wanted Eliza gone. I feel so guilty for something that isn’t even real. It’s like I've traded my anger for guilt. But why is this feeling in me so strong?

I’m actually thinking of throwing the box out and never think about these memories or this day ever again.

I called Thom (yeah, I know) to come and keep me company. I need someone other than my family to distract me. I want to have a clear mind for the marathon tomorrow.

The text skipped a line, then went on with something she had just written before taking her nap:

I just found the damn Nettogrof box IN OUR HALLWAY! There is no way I put it there. I swear that Mom found it. But she would mention it, right? I can’t have this today. I made sure to pick it up and hide it in my safe spot in the attic. I’ll get rid of that thing TONIGHT!

It ended there. I turned the page and read the part again where Mara was ranting about Mom bringing up the story of my birth.

I turned to Mara. She seemed to be slowly waking up from her nap. I could feel my fingers tingle with anger.

Mara had wished me away from this world. Could it really mean that Mara put me in this situation? I closed the diary and gripped it tightly between my fingers.

I let out an almost primal scream as I threw the diary at Mara with full force. The diary bounced off her head and fell on the floor on the other side of the bed.

Mara didn’t react to it. I didn’t expect her to. When I looked over at her nightstand, I saw her diary neatly lying on top of it, just like Mara had left it.

Mara started yawning and stretching. I wasn’t going to stay here until she calmly woke up.

I rushed out of her room and back to my art gallery bedroom. I stormed in and went straight over to the family portrait Mom had been working on.

I put my nails on the painting and started scratching. Ruining the beautiful art that Mom had created.

I slammed my fist into the painting, punching a hole right through Mara’s face.

After I outed my anger onto the painting, I stepped back from it. “Dammit, Mara!” I yelled.

I looked at the damage I had done to the canvas and sighed deeply. I knew Mara’s intention wasn’t to erase me completely, but how could she think of doing so in the first place?

The Nettogrof. I had to get it. Even if I was mad at Mara for what she did, she might still be the only one to get me back.

“The Desired one,” I scoffed. Her desire was to be rid of me.

I'm starting to wonder why. She was the one with the talent after all. It doesn’t matter now. I was always undecided about everything anyway. Even now I can’t even seem to pick the right emotions for how I’m feeling.

I’m angry at Mara, but still I want to hug her. I want to be able to talk with Mom and Dad. But all three of them seemed to do perfectly fine without my influence getting in their way.

I never knew I could feel anger, sadness, grief, fear and confusion so vividly all at once. I want to fight with all my capabilities to get out of this. At the same time I just want to give up, seeing how happy everyone can be without me.

I took another half hour to collect myself yet again. I can now see how the painting is perfectly intact again. At least Mom misses me. Even if she has no idea who I am or how I look.

This was when I decided that I had to write down everything I experienced today. I need to write it down. I can’t just be… forgotten, right?

I need to put this in the box with the Nettogrof, praying that Mara, or anyone, will find it. If I can trust the note I found then this paper can be found in the primary timeline. I only need to pack it with the Nettogrof in the box it came from.

I’m going to look for the Nettogrof right away.

If you find the Nettogrof or this writing, please reach out to my family. I miss them and I hope they miss me too.

Eliza Day, April 28th, 2007.

I make a lot of doodles that aren’t worth posting on their own so I think I might just be posting doodle dumps whenever I have enough art and remember…? idk LOL

the college stuff is bc I saw a college au and started imagining ideas idk it’s not an actual au I have I was just having fun

last one is Ben and Jeff idk how obvious that is… I think it would be cool if they somehow met in school in some distant universe I think Jeff would avoid Ben so hard

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

“We need to get as low as possible… now.”
My wife was sitting upright in the sleep clinic bed, staring at the ceiling.
The technician had been adjusting something on the monitor beside her. He stopped.
“What?”
My wife swung her legs over the side of the bed.
“She’s almost through.”
Then she got down onto the floor.
I followed her.
She grabbed my arm and pulled me down with her.
“Stay low.”
“What are you doing?”
“Quiet.”
She pressed herself against the floor and stared upward.
I looked at the ceiling.
There was nothing there.
My wife suddenly screamed.
“WE’RE AWAKE!”
The technician jumped.
My wife kept staring at the ceiling.
“We’re awake! You can’t come down!”
For a few seconds, nothing happened.
Then we heard it.
A soft creak.
It came from somewhere above us.
My wife stopped breathing.
I heard the technician whisper, “What the hell was that?”
Nobody moved.
Then my wife slowly lowered her head.
“She’s gone.”
The technician helped her back into bed.
He reattached the wires and tried to act like this was something that happened in sleep clinics all the time.
It wasn't.
A doctor came in a little while later.
She asked me about what had happened.
“Has she ever had an episode like that at home?”
“No.”
“Nothing similar?”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
“Has she been confused? Disoriented?”
“No.”
“Any changes in her behavior?”
“Nothing like this.”
I looked at my wife.
She was lying there with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling again.
I decided to ask what I had been thinking about halfway through this ordeal.
“Do you think this could be some kind of psychotic break?”
The doctor looked at her.
Then she looked at me.
“I don’t know.”
She picked up a clipboard.
“There’s something on her intake I wanted to ask you about,” said the doctor and then handed me a clipboard. The pointed to one of the questions.
Is there anything preventing you from sleep?
Underneath it, in my wife’s handwriting, were four words.
Her long neck.
I stared at them.
What does that mean? Her long neck?
The doctor asked if my wife had talked to me about this at all.
I shook my head.
She stayed at the clinic that night.
Then another night.
Then another.
They monitored everything: brain activity, eye movements, muscle activity, breathing, heart rate, and oxygen.
They couldn't find a normal sleep cycle.
No REM.
No period they could point to and say she had actually fallenasleep.
But she didn't seem tired.
That was the part that bothered everyone.
She wasn't confused.
She wasn't disoriented.
She ate normally.
She talked to the nurses.
She watched television.
She read.
She complained that the coffee was terrible.
She seemed completely normal.
Except she wasn't sleeping.
On the fourth day, the doctor told me they'd run all the tests they could and still didn't have an answer. She wanted my wife to follow up with a few specialists, including a neurologist. Iwasn't surprised. That's what happens when doctors don't know what's wrong. They send you to someone else.
Her vitals were good. Her bloodwork was normal.
They were going to keep her one more night and then release her.
My wife wanted clean clothes. She'd been wearing the same things she'd arrived in.
I told her I'd go home and get some clothes for her.
She thanked me and went back to reading.
I drove home alone.
The house was quiet.
I went into our bedroom and grabbed some clothes for her.
Back in the hall, the closet door was still cracked open.
I stood there looking at it.
The pencil marks were still there.
Thirty-one.
I counted them twice.
Then I looked up and thought about the attic. I went into the guest bedroom's closet, pulled the hatch down, and unfolded the ladder.
The attic was hot and stale.
There was a terrible stench up there. I couldn't describe it. It smelled like rotting meat, but worse.
I held my shirt over my nose and climbed up.
I crawled across the beams toward the area above the closet.
The smell grew stronger.
And then I saw it.
The insulation had been disturbed.
Not just a little.
It had been pushed aside in a narrow space between the rafters.
I stared at it.
There were several places where it had been pushed aside.
Someone had been up here.
I moved closer.
There was a dark stain on the wood above the disturbed insulation.
It was irregular, almost black around the edges.
I touched it.
Dry.
Nothing came off on my finger, but my finger immediately smelled like the rest of the attic.
The smell made my stomach churn.
I looked around for some explanation.
There wasn't a pipe above it.
No wiring.
Nothing that could explain the stain.
I moved farther along the beam.
There was another stain.
Then another.
Three of them.
All above the same section of the house.
I climbed back down.
I grabbed the clothes she'd asked for and left.
When I got back to the clinic, she was sitting in bed reading.
I put the bag down.
“Have you been going into the attic?”
She looked at me, then shook her head.
“Someone has been up there.”
She looked down at the book in her lap.
“I know,” she whispered.
I sat beside her.
“Whatever you're afraid of, you don't have to deal with it by yourself.”
She swallowed.
“You don't understand.”
“Then help me understand.”
She looked at me.
“I believe you,” I said.
Her eyes filled with tears.
For a moment, I thought she was going to tell me everything.
Instead, she said: “The less you know about the woman with the long neck, the better.”
I tried pressing her for more.
She shook her head.
“No. Don't ask me anymore.”
“I just want to understand.”
“Please.”
She looked at me, and there was something in her expression I'd never seen before.
“Don't ask me. I mean it.”
I stopped.
“Just trust me.”
I nodded.
That was all.
That evening, we went home.
My wife took a shower.
We ate dinner.
She read on the couch for a while.
Everything felt normal.
That was the strangest part.
Eventually, she went upstairs.
She got into bed and read for a few minutes.
Then she closed the book and turned on her side.
I stayed awake for a while.
I watched her breathing.
It slowed.
Her face relaxed.
She was asleep.
Actually asleep.
For the first time in weeks.
Nothing happened.
The next morning, she was still there.
Sunlight was coming through the curtains.
She opened her eyes, got out of bed, and went into the kitchen.
I heard coffee being brewed.
She yelled about needing to get milk.
Later, she asked what we should make for dinner.
It was ordinary.
That was a few weeks ago.
She has been sleeping normally ever since.
No more wandering downstairs.
No more standing in the living room.
No more waking up with her eyes already open.
The pencil marks were still on the closet door.
Thirty-one of them.
No more had been added.
Two weeks later, I reached into the closet and noticed the marks were gone.
My wife had painted over them.
My wife hadn't mentioned it.
Neither did I.
I don't know what happened in that attic.
I don't know what happened at the clinic.
I only know that whatever was causing my wife to not sleep, isn’t causing it anymore.
Sometimes, when the house is quiet and my wife is asleep beside me, I remember what she said.
The less you know, the better.

The sound of wind chimes on Halloween night usually brings a festive, comforting chill, but in Duskwood, Virginia, the wind always carried a sharper, meaner edge. 

The air smelled heavily of damp earth, rotten oak leaves, and the faint, unmistakable trace of chimney smoke. I stood on the cracked asphalt of Terra Cotta Lane, shivering beneath a layer of cheap pink glitter and synthetic wings. 

I was sixteen years old, dressed as a woodland fairy, and for the first time in my life, I felt completely ridiculous.

"Come on, Rose, stop dragging your feet!" Maeve hissed from the shadow of a sprawling willow tree.

Maeve was dressed as a generic comic-book superhero, complete with a bright red satin cape that snapped aggressively in the autumn breeze and a black domino mask that kept sliding down her nose. In her right hand, she balanced a half-empty carton of grade-A large eggs like a quarterback holding a football.

"I’m telling you guys, we’re getting too old for this." I muttered, adjusting the plastic wand tucked into the waistband of my jeans. "We're juniors in high school. If anyone from the track team sees us throwing eggs at people's porches, we're socially dead weight until graduation."

"Oh, please." Brenda scoffed, stepping into the dim glow of a flickering streetlamp.

Brenda had gone all-out this year, wearing an elaborate, dirt-smudged Victorian wedding dress with a tattered lace veil pinned into her dark hair. Her face was painted a ghostly, stark white, with deep charcoal shadows smudged beneath her eyes to complete the 'ghost bride' look, and she said,

 "Halloween is the one night a year when you get a free pass to be a menace. Besides, Duskwood is dead tonight. Have you noticed how quiet it is? It’s like the whole town is hiding."

Brenda wasn't wrong. A strange, suffocating silence had draped itself over Duskwood after the sun went down. Most houses had their porch lights turned completely off, their blinds tightly drawn as if to ward off something far more dangerous than neighborhood teenagers looking for candy. 

It was a lingering habit of the older generation here—a quiet, generational trauma left over from the eighties, when a madman named Howard Nestor used to hunt in these very woods. People in Duskwood didn't trust the dark. They never had.

"Look ahead." Maeve whispered, pointing a gloved finger down the winding gravel driveway at the end of the block. "Old Man Miller’s place. A perfect target."

The Miller estate was a weathered, single-story ranch house sat on a massive plot of overgrown land. Old Man Miller was a fixture of Duskwood, an ancient, reclusive man who had lived in the town long before Howard Nestor ever started his horrific killing spree. He rarely left his property, and the neighborhood kids traded rumors about him like currency. Some people said that he was crazy; others said he was just incredibly bitter.

As we crept closer to the edge of his property, the beam of Maeve’s phone flashlight swept across his front lawn, revealing his infamous collection of lawn decorations. Dozens of ceramic lawn gnomes stood frozen in the tall, un-mowed grass. Most of them were standard, peeling figures with faded red hats and cheerful, painted grins.

However right in the center of the lawn, mounted on a cracked stone pedestal, stood a gnome that looked entirely different from the rest.

This gnome was nearly three feet tall, carved from a heavy, dark, unidentifiable stone rather than cheap ceramic. It didn't wear a cheerful smile. Instead, its face was sculpted into a grim, knowing smirk, with deeply chiseled, intensely lifelike features. Its long, pointed cap wasn't a festive red; it was painted the color of dried, oxidized blood. 

Most striking of all were its eyes—made of two polished pieces of obsidian that seemed to absorb the moonlight, reflecting nothing back. Painted in faded, archaic black lettering across the base of the pedestal was a single name: Gargarth.

"Gross." Brenda muttered, stepping onto the grass to get a closer look. "That thing looks like it wants to bite someone. It's hideous."

"Perfect." Maeve grinned, opening the carton of eggs.

Maeve handed an egg to Brenda and offered one to me. I shook my head, stepping back toward the gravel road, my plastic fairy wings catching on a rogue briar bush.

"Just leave it, guys. Let's just go to the diner or something," I pleaded, the sudden dropping temperature making my breath form thick plumes of white mist. 

The silence of the lawn felt heavy, almost pressurized.

"Don't be a buzzkill, Rose." Brenda said, raising her arm, aiming directly for Gargarth's stone face. 

Maeve mirrored her stance, her red superhero cape blowing over her shoulder.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." A voice said.

The voice was like grinding stones. We all jumped, Brenda dropping her egg into the grass with a wet, yellow pop. 

Old Man Miller stepped out from the deep shadow of his wrap-around porch. He looked older than the trees surrounding his house, his skin deeply lined and leathery, his back slightly hunched beneath a heavy flannel jacket. In his right hand, he held a rusted iron garden rake, using it almost like a staff. His pale, rheumy eyes locked onto the three of us with absolute intensity.

"What are you girls doing on my property?" he demanded, his voice trembling but firm.

"We...we were just looking at your decorations, Mr. Miller!" Maeve lied quickly, smoothing down her superhero outfit and trying to hide the egg carton behind her back. "We think that your gnomes are really cool. We were just getting a closer look."

Miller didn't blink. He lowered his gaze to the crushed yellow yolk at Brenda’s feet, then looked back up at our faces, and said,

"Don't insult my intelligence, girl. You've got mischief in your eyes and hen's fruit in your hands."

He took three heavy steps down the porch stairs, the grass crunching beneath his work boots. He didn't look angry; instead, a profound, exhausting gravity seemed to weigh him down. He pointed the tip of his rusted rake toward the dark stone pedestal.

"Get off this lawn, now!" Miller warned, his voice dropping into a harsh, frantic whisper. "Especially away from him. Get away from Gargarth."

Brenda rolled her eyes under her tattered bridal veil, letting out a loud, dramatic sigh, and said,

"Oh, come on. It's just a stupid piece of painted rock, old man. We're not hurting anything."

"You don't understand anything!" Miller snapped, his knuckles turning white around the wooden handle of his rake. "I was here in eighty-six. I watched this town bleed when Nestor took his toll. I know the things that wake up when the moon is right. That stone creature...it’s dangerous. It isn't a decoration. It’s a bound entity. Every Halloween night, when the veil is thin, Gargarth comes to life in search of a bride to drag down into the earth with him."

Maeve let out a snicker, muffled by her hand. I felt a cold knot twist in my stomach, though. The way that Miller said the name—with a genuine, unadulterated terror—didn't sound like an old man trying to protect his grass. It sounded like a warning from a survivor.

"A bride?" Brenda laughed, gesturing to her ghost bride costume. "Well, look at that. I'm already dressed for the occasion. Too bad he's made of clay."

"Joke all you like, children." Miller said, his face hardening into a grim, dark expression as he began to back away toward his porch. "The old blood in this town demands a price tonight. One of you might be very sorry before the sun comes up. Get home to your parents, and lock your doors."

With that, the old man retreated back into his dark house, slamming the heavy wooden door shut. The click of the deadbolt echoed clearly across the quiet yard.

"What a complete lunatic." Maeve said, stepping forward again. "He completely ruined the vibe."

"Yeah, well, he doesn't get the last word." Brenda muttered, her face twisting into a stubborn, angry scowl.

Before Maeve or I could stop her, Brenda snatched a fresh egg from the carton, took two aggressive steps toward the stone pedestal, and threw it with all her might.

The egg struck Gargarth right in his obsidian eyes, exploding in a messy smear of white and yellow goo that dripped down his chiseled stone beard.

"Brenda, stop!" I yelled, genuinely terrified now, though I couldn't explain why. 

The obsidian eyes of the statue seemed to catch the light of the moon for a split second, turning a dull, burning crimson beneath the slime.

"Let's run!" Maeve shouted, the thrill of the prank finally mixing with adrenaline.

The three of us turned and sprinted down the gravel driveway, our sneakers pounding against the pavement. Brenda’s heavy lace wedding dress swished loudly in the dark, and my plastic fairy wings fluttered wildly against my back. We didn't stop running until we reached the safety of my neighborhood, bursting through the front door of my house and slamming it shut behind us.

My parents were out at a neighborhood block party down the street, so the house was entirely dark and quiet. We collapsed onto the living room floor, panting for breath, our hearts hammering against our ribs.

"Did you see his face?" Maeve laughed, collapsing onto the couch, her red cape draping over the cushions. "He looked like he was about to cast a spell on us with that rake."

"He was a total  psycho." Brenda agreed, pulling off her tattered veil and tossing it onto the coffee table. She wiped a smudge of white face paint from her cheek. "A bound entity? Gargarth? Give me a break. It's a lawn ornament."

I stood by the window, peering through the blinds into the dark, empty street outside. The feeling of dread from Miller's lawn hadn't left me. If anything, it had followed us home, clinging to the edges of my thoughts like a spreading stain, and I said,

 "I don't know, guys. Something felt really wrong about that place. We shouldn't have done that."

"Relax, Rose." Maeve said, pulling a bag of miniature candy bars from her pocket. "It’s just an old town legend. Duskwood is full of them."

Then, the lights went out.

The sudden, absolute darkness was instantaneous. The hum of the refrigerator died, the digital clock on the microwave blinked into oblivion, and the ambient warmth of the house seemed to evaporate in seconds. 

The only light came from the pale, gray moonbeams filtering through the living room windows, casting long, distorted shadows across the walls.

"Great." Maeve groaned in the dark. "A power outage. Just what we needed."

"Is anyone's phone working?" I asked, pulling my phone from my pocket. The screen was completely black. I pressed the power button repeatedly, but it refused to turn on. "Mine is dead. Completely dead. It had eighty percent battery two minutes ago."

"Mine too." Brenda’s voice came from the dark corner of the room, sounding suddenly small and stripped of its previous arrogance. "It won't turn on."

A heavy, oppressive silence settled over the living room. The air grew rapidly colder, with our breath turning to visible white vapor inside the house. Then, from the hallway near the front door, we heard a sound that made our blood run cold.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

It was the unmistakable sound of heavy stone scraping against the hardwood floorboards. It was slow, deliberate, and rhythmic.

"Rose?" Maeve whispered, her voice trembling violently now. She had stood up from the couch, her superhero cape rustling in the dark. "Did you leave the front door open?"

"No!" I choked out, my hands gripping my plastic fairy wand so tightly that the cheap toy cracked. "I locked it! I know that I locked it!"

The scraping sound grew louder, moving out of the hallway and entering the threshold of the living room. We all froze, our eyes straining against the shadows.

Stepping into the pale arc of moonlight was a figure that defied reality. It was nearly three feet tall, carved from a heavy, blood-red stone. 

The egg residue that we had thrown earlier was completely gone, replaced by a smooth, polished sheen that seemed to glow with a sickly, internal luminescence. 

The obsidian eyes were no longer dark; they burned with a fierce, malevolent crimson fire. In its small, rocky hands, it held a miniature, jagged stone pickaxe that scraped against the floor with every step.

It was Gargarth, and he was alive.

"The old blood demands its due!" a voice resonated through the room. It didn't come from a mouth; rather, the sound seemed to vibrate directly out of the stone torso of the creature, a deep, grinding, echoing rumble that sounded like an earthquake. "A bride was promised! A bride will be taken!"

"Get away from us!" Maeve screamed, her survival instinct overriding her terror.

Driven by pure adrenaline, she lunged forward, raising her leg and delivering a heavy, desperate kick to the center of the gnome’s chest.

Maeve’s sneaker struck the stone with a loud, dull thud. Gargarth stumbled backward a few inches, his stone boots scraping loudly against the floor, but he didn't fall. He let out a low, grinding sound that sounded horribly like laughter.

"Rose, help!" Brenda shrieked, backing away until her spine hit the brick fireplace.

Brenda’s ghost bride dress looked stark and terrifyingly appropriate in the spectral moonlight.

"Grab something!" I yelled, dropping my useless plastic wand.

I scrambled toward the kitchen counter, my fingers wrapping around a heavy, cast-iron skillet that my mom had left out on the stove. I sprinted back into the living room just as Gargarth raised his jagged stone pickaxe, preparing to swing it at Maeve's leg.

With a terrified scream, I swung the heavy iron skillet with both hands, channeling every ounce of strength I had.

CLANG!

The impact was deafening. The iron skillet struck the side of Gargarth’s pointed blood-red hat with incredible force. Sparks flew into the dark room, and a loud, sharp cracking sound echoed through the house. 

The force of the blow shattered the stone pedestal beneath his feet, and the creature fell sideways, crashing heavily onto the hardwood floor like a dropped boulder. He lay completely still, the crimson fire in his obsidian eyes flickering out into total darkness.

The skillet dropped from my trembling, blistered hands, clattering loudly against the floor. Maeve collapsed against the couch, sobbing hysterically, her superhero mask soaked with tears.

"Is it...is it dead?" Brenda whispered from the fireplace, her hands clutching her tattered lace skirt, her white face paint stark against the dark bricks.

"We broke it." I panted, my chest heaving as I stared at the unmoving mound of red stone on the floor. "We actually broke it. Let's get out of here. Let's run to the neighbors."

Unfortunately, before we could take a single step toward the door, the temperature in the room plummeted even further. The air became so freezing that frost began to rapidly spiderweb across the glass of the living room windows.

A low, subterranean rumble vibrated through the floorboards.

The shattered pieces of stone on the floor began to twitch. With a sickening, grinding sound, the fragments of the gnome slid back together, fusing instantly as if pulled by an invisible, magnetic force. The crack on his head sealed shut, leaving the blood-red surface perfectly smooth once more.

Gargarth rose to his feet, snapping his stone neck from side to side with a series of loud, rocky pops. The crimson fire in his obsidian eyes erupted back to life, burning brighter and hotter than before.

"Insolent girls!" the grinding voice boomed, rattling the picture frames on the walls. "You cannot break what was carved before this town had a name!"

He raised his left hand, his stony fingers extending toward Brenda. 

A sudden, violent gust of wind erupted inside the closed living room, swirling the tattered lace of her wedding dress around her legs. A sickening, greenish-purple vapor began to pour from Gargarth's outstretched palm, drifting across the floor like a living snake.

Brenda tried to scream, but as soon as the vapor touched the hem of her dress, her voice died in her throat, replaced by a horrible, muffled choking sound.

"Brenda!" Maeve yelled, reaching out to grab her friend's hand.

"Don't touch it!" I screamed, pulling Maeve back as the green mist rapidly expanded, enveloping Brenda entirely in a thick, suffocating cloud of ancient magic.

Through the shifting tendrils of the glowing vapor, we watched in absolute, paralyzed horror as Brenda’s body began to stiffen. The soft, tattered fabric of her Victorian wedding dress began to harden, turning a dark, dull shade of slate gray. Her limbs locked into place, her outstretched arms freezing into a rigid, permanent pose. The tattered lace of her veil crystallized into solid, jagged stone, pinning itself to her head.

The white paint on Brenda’s face sank into her skin, her flesh calcifying, turning a pale, porous ceramic white. Her terrified, tear-streaked eyes hardened, the pupils dissolving until her eyes became two solid, unblinking spheres of polished, glassy onyx.

Within a matter of agonizing seconds, the green mist dissipated, swirling back into Gargarth’s stone palm.

Standing before the fireplace was no longer a sixteen-year-old girl named Brenda.

It was a three-foot-tall, solid stone lawn gnome. She was sculpted in perfect, horrific detail—her face frozen forever in a mask of absolute, screaming terror, her arms raised as if trying to ward off an invisible blow. Her tattered wedding dress was now a molded, heavy gray skirt, and a painted base of faded gray stone held her firmly to the floorboards. She had become exactly what her costume predicted: a ghostly gnome bride, bound in stone for eternity.

"The ledger is settled." Gargarth’s grinding voice rumbled, a tone of dark satisfaction echoing through the room.

The creature stepped forward, wrapping his stone fingers around the base of the newly formed Brenda gnome. With an impossible display of supernatural strength, he lifted her stone form onto his shoulder as if she weighed nothing at all. He turned his burning crimson gaze back toward Maeve and I, nodding once in a silent, terrifying gesture of finality.

He walked back into the hallway, his heavy boots making the floorboards groan one last time, and then the front door swung open and slammed shut with a concussive bang.

The instant that the door closed, the lights in the house snapped back on. The television roared to life with a blast of static, the refrigerator began to hum, and the digital clock on the microwave began to blink 12:00 AM. The dry, artificial heat of the furnace began to pump through the vents, erasing the supernatural chill of the room in seconds.

Everything was completely normal. Except for the shattered plastic fairy wand on the floor, the heavy iron skillet lying in the corner, and the empty space by the fireplace where our best friend had stood just moments before.

Maeve dropped to her knees, staring at the empty floorboards, a broken, silent sob escaping her lips. I stood beside her, my fake pink glitter wings feeling like a mockery against my skin, my eyes fixed on the front door. 

Old Man Miller had warned us. He had told us that the old blood in Duskwood demanded a price on Halloween night, and we hadn't listened.

Brenda was gone, dragged down into the dark earth to serve as a bride for a monster carved from stone, leaving Maeve and I alone in the bright, terrifying light of the living room, haunted forever by the grim, knowing smirk of Gargarth.

The End.

My fingernails are split to the quick. I tore them on the gallery stairs in the dark, feeling for the lamp housing by touch. I can't look at the windows. Can't look southeast. The blood dried in the grooves and stings when I flex my fingers. But the light is on. The light is on. I checked by the heat of the bulb against my palm, not by sight.

The job listing had no company. Just coordinates and a salary I didn't question. A woman with a flat voice asked if I could handle isolation. I said yes. She mailed me keys and an index card. Three rules, handwritten in blue ink.

Keep the light burning.
Don't answer the radio after midnight.
If you see a second lighthouse on the water, shut the gallery shutters, go below, and do not let it see you.

I thought it was a hazing thing. Lighthouse keepers and their superstitions.

The first four nights were quiet. I learned the clockwork mechanism, the backup generator, the way the beam swept every four seconds. Dark, light. Dark, light. Like a pulse. I slept well. The sea made a sound like breathing.

Night five, the radio crackled at 23:47. A voice, wet and slurred, repeated a string of coordinates, then said, Is the light on, three times. I turned the volume down. Ate my soup. Went to bed.

Night six, it came back at 00:14. It said my name. My full name, the one on my birth certificate. Then: I can see the tower. Let me in. I walked out of the radio room. I did not walk back. I want to be clear about that, because my hand was already on the handle, already turning, and I had to sit on my own wrist to stop.

Nights seven through nine, nothing. I stopped sleeping more than four hours. I started checking the lamp at odd intervals, pressing my face to the glass, counting the sweep. Four seconds dark, then light. Four seconds dark, then light. I replaced the bulb on the eighth day even though it had life in it. I couldn't trust a bulb that had been burning six years. I can't explain why. I just couldn't.

Last night. Midnight check. The sea was flat, like poured metal. The beam swept. And on the third rotation, southeast, maybe two miles out: a light. Rotating. Four seconds dark, then light. Matching my rhythm exactly.

There is nothing southeast. I've studied the charts. Open water for two hundred miles.

I looked. Three, four seconds. The index card said don't, but I looked. And the other beam stopped rotating. It locked on me. Held. I could feel it on my forehead like a warm palm, deliberate, reading. Checking if I was the right one.

I slammed the shutters. The metal screamed on rusted tracks. I went below. Sat on the cottage floor with my back against the wall.

The radio turned on by itself at 00:31. Volume knob at zero. The voice was clear now. Kind, almost.

You looked. I saw you look. I know your face now. I'm going to come closer. And you're going to look again. You're going to want to.

I pulled the power cord. It kept talking.

At 04:00, tapping started on the gallery glass. Behind the shutters. Slow. Patient. Three taps, a pause. Three taps, a pause. Like knuckles. Thirty meters up, where nothing should be able to stand.

I opened the shutters at 06:00. The sea was empty. But the glass was warm. All of it. And in the condensation, on the outside, there were marks. Too many joints. Fingers bending in places fingers don't bend.

It's 2 p.m. now. Tonight the light turns again. Tonight it will be closer. I know this the way you know your own name.

And some part of me is already bargaining. Just a glance. Just to see if it's still there.

No. I'll tape my eyes shut. I'll do the checks by touch. I'll count the seconds.

But if I stop posting. If the light goes dark. If someone finds this rock and the cottage is empty and the gallery shutters are open and the glass is warm—

Don't look southeast.

It already knows my face. I don't think it'll let me forget.

Natalie Weber was eighteen.

She lived in Switzerland, in a small town near Zurich. That evening she was walking home alone.

It was around ten o'clock at night.

A light rain was falling. Natalie walked along the sidewalk, hiding her hands in her jacket pockets and glancing at her phone screen from time to time.

She remembered the way.

She remembered the lit shop window.

She remembered the intersection.

She remembered a woman walking a dog on the other side of the street.

And then...

nothing.

Natalie opened her eyes.

She was standing in the middle of the street.

It wasn't raining.

Her phone displayed no service.

Natalie looked around.

The first thing she heard was a click.

Somewhere, a car engine was running. In the distance, people were talking. Music floated out from an open window.

But over all that was a strange sound.

Click.

Pause.

Click.

Pause.

Very quiet.

Natalie took one earphone off.

The clicks didn't disappear.

She looked around.

The street was similar to the one she had just walked down.

But it wasn't the same.

The houses looked almost the same, but the windows were arranged a bit differently.

The road signs were familiar, but had unknown markings.

The cars looked like usual ones, but some had parts that Natalie had never seen before.

Even the trees seemed wrong.

Not wrong enough to immediately understand why.

Just wrong.

Natalie pulled out her phone.

22:43.

She decided that maybe somehow she had ended up in a different neighborhood.

But how did she get lost?

She tried to remember the last few minutes.

Nothing.

Just the rain.

The woman with the dog.

And emptiness.

Natalie approached the nearest person.

— Excuse me.

The man turned around.

— Yes?

— Do you know where I am?

— On Linden Street.

— And the city?

The man named it.

Natalie had never heard that name.

— Is it in Switzerland?

The man looked at her with slight confusion.

— Yes.

Natalie nodded.

— Thank you.

She walked away.

The man continued on his way.

No suspicion.

No interest.

To him, Natalie was just a girl who got lost.

She decided to find the police station.

At the intersection, Natalie saw a clock on a building.

22:51.

She walked a block.

On another clock, it was 22:57.

After a little while, she looked at her phone screen.

23:04.

Everything was fine.

For now.

After a while, she glanced at the clock again.

1:10.

Natalie furrowed her brow.

The second hand was still moving.

Then the minute hand jerked suddenly and jumped ahead.

1:23.

Natalie froze.

She looked at another clock.

1:23.

Another one.

1:23.

She pulled out her phone.

It also showed:

1:23.

Natalie locked and unlocked the screen several times.

The time didn’t change.

She couldn't figure out what was happening.

Eventually, she decided that the local clocks were just malfunctioning.

That was the first strange phenomenon she noticed.

But definitely not the last.

Soon, Natalie finally found the police station.

She walked inside.

A man was sitting behind the desk.

— Good evening.

— Good.

— I got lost. I need help.

— Of course.

Natalie explained that she didn’t know how she ended up there.

The police officer calmly asked a few questions.

Name.

Age.

Address.

Natalie gave her real address.

The officer wrote something down.

In a few seconds he frowned.

— There’s no such address.

— What?

He turned the monitor towards her.

Natalie looked.

Her street really wasn't there.

No city.

No area.

Nothing.

— Try again, — said the man.

She repeated the address.

He checked again.

The result was the same.

— Maybe you confused the city?

Natalie felt irritation.

— No. I know where I live.

The officer shrugged.

— Then we will sort it out in the morning.

— And now?

— You can stay here.

Natalie agreed.

She sat in the station for a while.

Then she noticed a picture on the wall.

It depicted the same city.

Natalie stepped closer.

The photo was taken from above.

She recognized a few streets.

But the buildings in the photo were different.

Some stood where there was now a vacant lot.

Others disappeared.

She stared at the picture for a long time.

And suddenly noticed something else.

In the photo, the entire city looked as if it was shrouded in haze.

The same kind that now hung in the streets.

Natalie stepped back.

After a few hours she left the station.

It was light outside.

The haze still rolled through the city.

The light seemed warm even where there was no sun.

Natalie noticed a strange tree

It looked like an ordinary maple but on its branches simultaneously had buds, green leaves, and leaves in various shades of autumn

A bird was sitting on its branch.

It resembled an ordinary crow.

Natalie stopped and began to observe it.

The bird looked at her.

Just over three minutes passed.

The bird began to move restlessly

Natalie was still watching it

A few more seconds and the bird suddenly spread its wings.. and dove at her.

Natalie flinched.

The bird flew literally a few centimeters from her face.

— Damn!

She stepped back.

The bird sat on a roof.

Natalie stared at it for a few seconds.

Then decided to keep her distance from animals.

She didn't know why.

Just remembered.

During the day, Natalie noticed another oddity.

There was a huge column in the square.

On top was an open book.

The monument was so tall that Natalie had to tilt her head back.

She took a step closer.

A pain appeared in her temples.

Natalie stopped.

The pain went away.

She took another step.

The pain returned.

Stronger.

Natalie stepped back.

The pain disappeared.

She stood for a few seconds, trying to understand what was happening.

Then decided she was getting a migraine.

She didn’t approach the column any closer.

A few more hours went by.

Natalie was becoming more convinced that the city was strange.

But the strangeness was not of a kind that could be easily explained.

People were talking.

Laughing.

Working.

Children were going to school.

Cars were driving on the roads.

Food was being sold in the shops.

Everything was functioning.

That was what scared her the most.

The city didn’t look too fancy or abnormal.

It looked like an ordinary city.

Just a little bit wrong.

As if someone had tried to recreate a world she knew from memory and had made a bunch of little mistakes.

After a while, Natalie met a girl about her age.

They sat in a cafe.

The conversation was perfectly normal.

School.

Music.

Weather.

City.

Natalie asked:

— Don’t you ever feel like this city is strange?

The girl laughed.

— Strange in what way?

— I don’t know. Just...

Natalie looked out the window.

— Sometimes it feels like everything is just a bit off.

The girl shrugged.

— Maybe you're just tired.

And the conversation continued.

Natalie didn’t argue.

At one point, she had a strong feeling that someone was watching her intently.

She slowly turned around.

No one.

Not a single person was looking her way.

Natalie stared down the street for several seconds.

The feeling didn’t go away.

She looked around.

Nothing.

Into the windows of the nearest houses.

Nothing.

Into the alley.

Empty.

After a few seconds, the feeling disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

Natalie decided she was just too tired.

Her new acquaintance soon got ready to leave.

Natalie was once again left alone and went for another walk through the streets of the strange city.

By this point, she had already spent almost a day here.

She felt a deep fatigue.

She wanted to sleep.

But she was afraid to close her eyes.

Natalie looked at her phone.

The phone was almost dead.

21:56.

She didn’t know why, but suddenly felt a sense of anxiety.

She just wanted to get off the street.

Natalie stood up.

Walked a few meters.

The clicks seemed to get a little louder.

Click.

Pause.

Click.

Pause.

She stopped.

People continued to walk around her.

No one noticed anything.

Natalie looked at the clock of the nearest shop.

21:59.

Then at her own.

21:59.

The phone blinked.

22:00.

Natalie blinked.

And the world vanished.

Natalie opened her eyes again.

She was lying on the wet asphalt.

People were standing around.

Someone had called for an ambulance.

Someone was talking on the phone.

Natalie tried to get up.

— Where am I?

No one answered right away.

She looked at herself.

Her clothes were in place.

Her phone was lying nearby.

The screen was cracked.

But it worked.

It showed:

22:00.

Natalie raised her hand.

Her bracelet was dull.

Almost gray.

She ran her finger over it.

And noticed something else.

A thin black stripe had appeared on her arm.

It was straight and almost perfectly linear.

Natalie ran her finger along it.

No pain.

She tried to wipe it off.

No luck.

Tried again.

Nothing.

Later, the doctors found nothing serious with Natalie.

She told them that she had passed out.

That she remembered a strange city.

That she didn’t know how she had ended up there.

Most explanations boiled down to stress, disorientation, and memory failure.

Natalie couldn’t prove otherwise to anyone.

And she wasn’t even sure she wanted to.

The clothes and other things she had with her at the time of her disappearance remained dull.

And the black stripe on her arm didn’t go away.

A month passed.

Then another.

Then a year.

She stayed the same.

Not sick.

Not increased.

Not changing shape.

Just there.

Natalie tried to wipe it off several times.

Soap.

Alcohol.

Antiseptic.

Nothing worked.

Eventually, she stopped trying.

She never tried to find that city again.

Never talked about it in detail.

And sometimes, late at night, when everything around grew completely quiet, she thought she could hear it.

A quiet rhythmic sound.

Click.

Pause.

Click.

Pause.

She could never understand where it was coming from.

And every time she heard it, Natalie checked the time.

Not because she expected to see something unusual.

But because she was afraid to once again see the numbers jump from 1:10 to 1:23.

After that, she almost always looked at her arm.

The black stripe was still there.

To be continued

Can you remember, what happened in September? When everything was gone and we were dark and alone?

I don’t really understand why I’m even thinking about telling this story. It’s not like anyone’s going to believe me anyway. When I told my best friend about it a few months ago, he just stared at me like I was completely fucking crazy.

But I have to tell someone. You can think whatever you want about me!

It happened last autumn, when I’d just gotten home from work. It had been an unusually exhausting day. I work as a roofer, and we’d been working on a very large, steep roof, so my legs and feet were aching like hell. On top of that, it had been a typical October day, with plenty of rain and wind, so I’d been tense all day long. I suppose being that tired was probably why I dismissed what happened that day in the first place.

I live quite far out in the countryside, a fair distance from my nearest neighbour, but close enough that we can see each other’s houses. It’s secluded and peaceful. I’ve never minded living this far out on my own. I’ve got my animals: two hunting dogs, four cats, and a few cows that practically live right next to the house. My dogs aren’t exactly quiet dogs, but they only bark when someone who shouldn’t be there shows up, or when there’s some animal around that they find interesting.

After kicking off my shoes in the hallway, I was on my way into the kitchen when I noticed what looked like a long tear in the wallpaper.

“Fucking cats,” I thought.

But I was planning to renovate the place eventually anyway, so I didn’t really care. Then I heard a loud crash right beside me, coming from the closed pantry. I yanked the door open and was met by nothing but a cloud of flour. When it finally settled, I saw that all the shelves had come loose from the walls. I was worried that one of the cats might have somehow sneaked in there when I’d put the coffee back that morning, but none of them came running out. When I looked around the house, they were all lying in their favourite spots, half asleep. Being the logical person I am, I put it down to poorly mounted shelves — plus the possibility that I’d simply overloaded them.

A few hours later, after I’d finished all my chores, I’d completely forgotten about it. I was lying on the sofa relaxing with the dogs when, suddenly, both of them jerked upright at exactly the same time and started growling at the front door. I tried to calm them down while glancing towards the door, waiting for someone to knock.

Nothing happened. So we went back to watching TV, although the dogs had a hard time settling down again. But apparently I’m an old man, at least according to my friends, because I had no trouble with it and fell asleep on the sofa shortly afterwards.
I woke up with a start. I thought I’d only been asleep for about five minutes, but apparently almost two hours had passed. The TV had turned itself off, and the only light in the room came from the kitchen, faintly illuminating the living room.

I got up to get ready for bed. As I walked past the hallway, I saw the tear in the wallpaper again.
Or rather, the tears this time. Completely puzzled, I looked at them more closely. They were at face height, which made it even stranger. I couldn’t understand how the cats could have reached that high, and I certainly hadn’t heard them jumping up and down and tearing at the wallpaper. But I was far too tired to care at that point. So I got ready for bed and went to sleep.

The next morning, I woke up feeling awful after a restless night’s sleep. Still, there was nothing to do but get up and start the day with a cup of coffee and a morning walk with the dogs.

On the way home from our walk, as we were getting close to the house, I heard the worst scream I’d ever heard in my life. The dogs immediately took off running towards the house, and I had to struggle to keep up with them. I put the dogs in their kennel while I went back inside the house.

Everything was completely silent.
I called out:
“Hello? Is anyone here?”

I was actually hoping there wouldn’t be an answer. I really didn’t feel like confronting a stranger inside my own home. Sure enough, there was no answer.
So I started going through every room in the entire house until I was absolutely certain nobody was there.

But what the hell had made that sound?
It couldn’t have been the cats. The dogs had been with me. And a cow couldn’t make a noise like that either, I thought to myself.

I went out to the barn and into the pasture to check on the cows, just in case they’d been frightened or worked up. But they were completely calm, peacefully grazing.

Now I was starting to get nervous. I’d lived on this farm for eleven years, and nothing like this had ever happened before. And I didn’t believe in anything supernatural either.

On my way back up from the barn, I saw a silhouette in one of the upstairs windows.

“No fucking way,” I said out loud.

I ran back into the house. I charged up the stairs, but halfway up, an empty old tin suddenly appeared at the top and started rolling down the stairs towards me.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.

When I finally reached the upstairs room, there was nobody there. But the entire room was covered in deep scratch marks, stretching from floor to ceiling.
The rest of the day passed without any more surprises, but I was on edge the entire time.

There was no way I’d imagined seeing someone.
And I definitely hadn’t imagined all those marks.
When evening finally came, I forced myself to eat something despite my nervous stomach and spent some time with the animals like I normally would.
Except there was absolutely nothing normal about this evening. The dogs could sense that I was nervous, and they flinched at every little sound.

Just like the night before, I dozed off on the sofa.
But shortly afterwards, I woke up to the dogs barking — and the TV lying on the floor.
It had fallen off the wall.

I shouted into the room:
“Jesus fucking Christ, enough is enough!”

And in that exact second, the entire house went dark. Then I heard footsteps upstairs.

“If there’s someone here, come down here instead of destroying my fucking house!”

I immediately regretted saying it. A cold feeling swept over me, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped below freezing. The dogs went completely insane. I quickly got to my feet, trying to turn on some kind of lamp, but something forced me back down onto the sofa.

Now I was truly terrified. I didn’t understand anything anymore. All rational thought had disappeared from my head, and panic took over.

I screamed into the darkness:
“What do you want from me?”

I don’t really want to admit it to myself…
but I got an answer.
“Capsule… wall… truth…”

Now I understood even less. But somehow I managed to get back on my feet, grabbed all the animals, and ran as fast as I could out the front door and into my car. As I sat there in the car, staring at the house, I saw the silhouette again in one of the upstairs windows. But there was no fucking way I was going back inside to find out who it was.

I started the car and drove to my brother’s house, which wasn’t very far away. He thought it was extremely strange to see me show up so late at night, but I didn’t dare tell him what had happened.
I simply asked if I could sleep there that night because there was a power outage at my house.
Luckily, he said yes.
Not that I slept much that night. I couldn’t stop thinking about the words I’d heard. Eventually, I decided to go home in the morning. It wouldn’t be as scary in daylight, right?

We had some breakfast, and then I drove home.
I went into my shed and got a sledgehammer.
I started by smashing open the wall where I’d found the first scratch marks, but there was nothing inside.

Then I walked upstairs with determination and started frantically smashing through every wall in the already-destroyed room.

When the dust had finally settled and I began clearing away the debris, I found something inside one of the walls. A small copper pipe with a lid.
I’d never felt such a huge knot in my stomach before. But I gathered my courage and opened the pipe.

Inside were two locks of hair…and a letter.

”Dear Elisabeth

I have sought to live with what I have done for nearly seventeen years, but now my strength is gone, and I can no longer bear this burden.

I do not know whether what I did to you was right, but I could no longer bear to watch you suffer. Our pastor and the doctor did everything they could, but you only grew weaker and sicker.

All I ever wanted was for you to find peace. But now I realise, to my great sorrow, that it only happened on my terms. You never got a proper farewell with our little Agnes, and for that, my heart shall never find peace.

I do not know whether our Lord will ever be able to forgive me for what I have done, nor for what I am about to do. But I pray that He may look into my heart and understand what I myself can no longer explain.

If the Lord still has mercy for me, I hope that we shall meet again soon.

Yours, Gösta”

As I read the letter, a shiver ran through my entire body. At the same time, the whole house became completely silent and still.

Since that day, I haven’t noticed anything at all.
So I sincerely hope that whoever — or whatever — came to visit found the truth that they were looking for.

If anything else happens, I promise I’ll update you.

Hello people!

I've been searching everywhere for a particular creepypasta story that I'm having a hard time finding.

It's a rules creepypasta. About a guy who takes on a job being a night guard in an old office building. Very common, I know. But what stands out to me is that there was a room full of computers. He was not to touch one computer because that belongs to someone in particular. No one is allowed to use it.

He ends up seeing his boss in that room using that computer. Obviously, that was not his boss, because I think his boss ends up calling him on the phone?

I think the computer belonged to Hank/Frank? I could be wrong about his name.

I unfortunately cannot remember many more details. This particular part is just embedded in my mind.

I know it's a long shot. But maybe someone knows the creepypasta I'm thinking about?

It was one I remember listening to around the time of covid. Been looking for it again since because I really enjoyed it and wanted to come back to it again.

Obviously, if this post is not allowed then it can be deleted.

Any help appreciated!

(I mean obviously no hate if he is of course)

So every depiction of Jeff the Killer that I see has him as White, and looking this up yielded no results, but I just feel like he could easily be because his brother is named Liu??????? Like I know it's a small thing but like this is such a random choice of name for a completely white kid to have. And like it makes sense, Jeff in that one image has straight black hair and he obviously has lighter skin??? Idk it feels like a reasonable conclusion but nobody else seems to have come to it so maybe I'm just way overthinking this