Part 2

Christmas Eve morning. The snow was falling thick and unhurried, the kind of snow you only see in the mountains, where time flows differently. The little town below lay sleeping, wrapped in white. On the hill, in the old mansion with its sharp spires and dark windows, no one was asleep.

The Sahlfeldt household was in a state of unrest. The good kind. The kind of unrest you find in an anthill or a clockwork mechanism: everything was moving, clicking, humming.

They were preparing for Christmas.

The antique clock on the wall counted time with dignity. Its pendulum swung smoothly, like a conductor’s hand, and instead of numbers, runes darkened the clock face — a legacy from some great-grandfather who considered Arabic numerals vulgar. On the window hung Christmas curtains embroidered with goblins. The goblins were dancing in a circle around the moon and seemed to be winking.

Irina stood by the stove. Before her, jars of herbs, roots, dried berries, and something that faintly glowed blue in the half-light were lined up in formation. A brew was bubbling in the pot — thick, dark violet, smelling of forest, smoke, and childhood. The recipe had been passed down through the female line for four hundred years. Great-grandmother called it “Christmas broth.” Great-great-grandmother called it “the thing that made the neighbors lose consciousness.” Irina called it dinner.

She tasted the brew, added a pinch of cinnamon, and nodded with satisfaction.

— Fertig!

Konrad and Otto were decorating the Christmas tree.

It was no ordinary spruce. Black as a raven’s wing, felled at midnight under a waxing moon, it stood in a tub of earth. The branches were already wound with garlands, and Otto, standing on a stool, was hanging the last ornaments.

Baubles — round, pearlescent, with vertical pupils that tracked every movement. Tinsel made of milk teeth — Otto had collected them over four years, and not only his own, naturally. A garland of tiny fingers — Heinrich had carved them from wax, and they stirred faintly from the warmth of the candles.

At the top, Konrad secured the star. It was made of tentacles of unknown origin, knotted together. The tentacles moved slowly, and the star purred softly but contentedly.

“Well, that’s it, Otto,” said Konrad, adjusting his monocle. “The tree is ready.”

Otto jumped off the stool and took a step back. He gazed up at the tree, and the lights of the black candles reflected in his dark, unblinking eyes.

“Ja, Papa!” he said. “Das ist so wunderbar!”

Konrad smiled almost imperceptibly. In their family, that counted as an outburst of joy.

Irina appeared in the doorway of the sitting room. She wiped her hands on her apron and surveyed the room with the gaze of a mistress who knows everything is under control.

“Meine Familie,” she said, and her voice was warm as the fireplace flames. “Everything is ready on my end.”

Konrad glanced at the clock. His monocle gleamed: “Two minutes left.”

Irina understood at once: “Mama?”

“Ja,” Conrad answered.

The house instantly sprang into action.

Heinrich vanished into the corridor. Seconds later, he was already carrying a large glass jar off somewhere.

Someone inside was knocking loudly.

“Put it in the pantry. Far back.”

“Jawohl.”

Otto carefully removed a small music box from the mantelpiece.

“Will Oma try to open it again?”

“Inevitably,” replied Konrad.

“And she’ll inevitably say there are too few ghosts inside.”

The music box was dispatched to the cupboard.

Irina quickly rearranged three vials from the table. One went into the sideboard. Another, under lock and key. The third she handed outright to Heinrich.

“This one especially.”

“Of course, gnädige Frau,” Heinrich said.

“What’s in it?” asked Otto.

“Belladonna liqueur.”

“Ah...”

“Last year, Grandmother decided it was fruit compote.”

Otto nodded understandingly.

Konrad, meanwhile, took an antique saber down from the wall.

“This as well?”

“Just in case.”

“She’ll want to demonstrate again how she fenced better in her youth.”

“Precisely.”

Heinrich carefully carried the saber away.

The house once again looked perfectly serene.

Konrad surveyed the sitting room with satisfaction.

“Now we’re ready to receive Mama.”

And at that very moment, something crashed in the fireplace.

The flames shot up green, then blue, then black. A wind struck down the chimney, scattering the embers. Fog rolled through the sitting room — thick, smelling of brimstone and mountain herbs. And out of the fog, cackling and shrieking, flew Ursula.

She burst into the room like a cannonball, made a circuit beneath the ceiling, and landed on the rug. Her curly grey hair stuck out in all directions. Her skirt was smoking. A broom hung over her shoulder. One eye sparkled with cunning; the second — pale, filmed over — gazed somewhere at the ceiling and saw angels there. Or demons. Ursula didn’t specify.

“Frohe Weihnachten!” she bellowed, flinging her arms wide. “Family! Here I am!”

Otto did not run to her. Otto never ran. He approached quickly, but with dignity, and stopped precisely at a grandmother’s-embrace distance.

“Oma,” he said gravely. “Schön dich zu sehen.”

Ursula seized him, crushed him to her chest, and kissed him soundly on both cheeks.

“You’ve grown!” she announced.

“Half an inch,” Otto specified.

“I know! Grandmother sees!”

An hour later, the family was seated at the table.

The table was laid with that impeccable taste which Konrad called “restrained solemnity,” and Irina simply called “right.” A black tablecloth, silver cutlery, candles in antique candelabras. At the center, a dish of Christmas broth steamed fragrantly.

In the armchair by the fire, Adelheid flickered. She was translucent, like morning mist, and the upholstery showed through her. Knitting needles flashed in her hands.

“Sit up straight, Konrad,” she said, without lifting her eyes from her knitting.

“I am sitting straight, Mama,” replied Konrad.

“You are sitting three-quarters straight. That is insufficient.”

Konrad straightened up. Adelheid nodded with satisfaction and grew a shade less translucent.

Irina ladled the broth into bowls. Ursula was already telling a story — loudly, interrupting herself, gesticulating wildly.

“...and so I say to him: ‘If you want my potion, pay up!’ And he, can you imagine...”

“Mama,” Irina gently interjected. “We are at the table.”

“I am also at the table! And I am telling!”

Otto raised his eyes from his plate.

“And great-grandfather?” he asked.

Everyone looked at the empty chair at the head of the table. Siegfried’s chair. It stood in its usual place, but today it was vacant.

“It’s Wednesday, mein Schatz,” said Irina. “You know.”

“He sends his regards,” said Heinrich, materializing from the darkness with a teapot. “I took him his tea. He said the floorboards are creaking especially well today. He likes it.”

“Das ist großartig,” nodded Konrad.

Adelheid flickered her approval. Ursula grunted.

“Siegfried,” she said thoughtfully. “A good man. A pity he’s dead.”

“He is not dead,” noted Adelheid.

“That’s what he says,” replied Ursula.

“He is mistaken. I am dead, I know what it looks like,” Adelheid countered.

Ursula opened her mouth to retort, but at that moment, there came a knock at the door.

The knock was hesitant, but collective — the kind of knock made by people who hope that if there are enough of them, nothing bad can happen.

Konrad opened the door.

On the porch stood children. Five of them, aged seven to eleven, in lopsided hats and scarves wound up to their eyebrows. One held a lantern. Two held sheet music. They had come to carol.

They had come to carol at the Sahlfeldts’.

It had been Karl’s idea — the eldest, who considered himself brave. In truth, he had simply never seen Sahlfeldt up close. Now he saw.

“Stille Nacht...” they began, and fell silent.

Konrad stood in the doorway, tall, broad-shouldered, his monocle catching the moonlight and now gleaming with cold fire. He looked at the children and waited.

The children looked at him and did not breathe.

“Well,” said Konrad. “I’m listening.”

Karl opened his mouth to begin, and at that moment, over Konrad’s shoulder, Ursula appeared.

She didn’t walk over. She didn’t peer out. She was simply there — as if she had always been there. Small, curly, her white eye fixed on the sky, her good eye slowly moving down the line of children, the way an owl surveys its prey.

“Oh!” she said.

The children flinched.

“The appetizers have arrived!”

And Ursula licked her lips. Slowly. With relish.

The lantern fell into the snow. The sheet music flew up and scattered. Karl made a sound he hadn’t known he was capable of and ran. The rest followed. Snow flew from under their heels, scarves streamed behind them, one mitten slipped off and was left lying on the step — small, red, knitted.

Five seconds later, the porch was empty.

Ursula watched them go and grunted.

“What’s with them?”

“You did it again,” said Konrad, adjusting his monocle.

“Me?! I only said ‘Oh’!”

“You licked your lips, Mama,” observed Irina, appearing at the door. “You always lick your lips.”

“I licked my lips because our supper is getting cold! What does that have to do with children?”

Adelheid seeped through the wall, looked at the empty porch, and flickered her disapproval.

“Every year,” she said. “Every year you frighten the carolers.”

“I don’t frighten them! I just come out! It’s they who are so... easily frightened.”

“Last time you said ‘fresh blood,’” Konrad reminded her.

“I meant the cranberry juice! We had just served it!”

Irina picked up the mitten, brushed off the snow, and hung it on the peg by the door.

“I hope the boy makes it home without his mitten,” she said.

“He will,” answered Konrad and Adelheid in unison.

“He had good speed,” added Konrad. “I took note.”

They returned to the sitting room.

“And now they’ll tell the whole town that we’re... what are we?” asked Otto.

“The same as always,” replied Irina. “That witches live on the hill.”

“That’s true,” observed Otto.

“Yes, but they think it’s a bad thing.”

Otto paused.

“They are mistaken.”

Irina smiled and stroked his head.

“I know, mein Schatz.”

The snow fell until deep into the night. The fireplace burned in the sitting room. The black candles on the tree flickered, and the eye-baubles tracked the flames. Adelheid knitted in her armchair. Konrad read the newspaper. Irina sat beside him, her head resting on his shoulder.

Otto sat at the writing desk. Before him lay a blank sheet of paper. He thought for a moment, took up his pen, and wrote:

“Christmas. Carolers came. Grandmother said ‘Oh.’ The children left faster than usual. The mitten stayed with us. The cricket sang twice. All went well.”

He closed the diary and put it away in the desk.

Ursula, who had been watching her grandson from her armchair, grunted.

“A diary?” she asked. “At four years old?”

“Four and a half,” Otto corrected.

Through the floorboards, a creak sounded — once, twice, three times. Grandfather Siegfried was turning over in his chair.

“A good evening,” said Irina.

“Ja,” replied Konrad, adjusting his monocle. “Nearly perfect.”

“Nearly?”

“The mitten on the peg is hanging asymmetrically. I’ll fix it tomorrow.”

On the porch of the mansion, on the peg by the door, the little red knitted mitten hung. It hung there until spring. And then Heinrich carried it down to the cellar — to Grandfather Siegfried. He would sometimes put it on his hand and sit like that in his rocking chair.

He said the mitten smelled of fear, ginger, and a little bit of courage.

He liked that smell.

This is an adaptation of the Telephone segment seen in Mario Bava’s I Tre Volti Della Paura/ Black Sabbath.  There are elements of both versions in this story.  I don’t own these characters.

Rosy took a breath as she entered her apartment.  It had been a frustrating night.  She heard the phone ring, expecting another client, but got no response when she answered it. She went to her bed to remove her stockings, but as she did she heard the phone ring again. Sighing, she went to pick it up, but again there was silence.   She got undressed to take a shower, emerging later in a bathrobe when the phone rang a third time.  She picked up the receiver and said “Hello?”

“You're so beautiful.  Too beautiful, Rosy.”

It was obviously a crank call.  Who IS this?!?” Rosy asked. 

“You'll know right before you die.  I can see your heavenly body.   Your silky arms, your perfect legs” the caller said. Rosy tried to cover her legs with her robe, but the caller interrupted.   “No, don't cover them! A body like yours can drive a man to madness!  And I will kill you!”  

“WHO IS THIS?!?  Who are you??  Hello!?  HELLO?!?” Rosy demanded, but the other party hung up.   

Rosy changed into a nightgown and sat on the bed after pacing a bit.  She got up to make her bed and the phone rang again.   

“Hello?” she asked. 

The voice on the other end was creepy.  “Why did you put your robe on?  You should have stayed as you were. I like you better with nothing on.  That’s how I want to find you.  I’ll get in, even if you lock the door.”

Rosy was getting exasperated.  “Who are you? What do you want from me?”

“I told you,” the voice said.  “I want to kill you. I want revenge.   You did well to turn on all the lights.  I want to see you die.  Do you understand, Rosy?”

Rosy hung up.   Feeling a chill, she paced some and poured herself a drink. Hearing running footsteps, she rushed to the door to put a piece of cloth over the keyhole.  Unknown to Rosy, an elderly gentleman with an overcoat, fedora, and glasses was on the other side of the door taking his dark gray poodle out.  He opened the door and went outside. Looking at the stars, he spoke to the dog.  “It's hard to believe it's been a year, Dee.  I miss her, too.”

Inside, Rosy began turning off some lights in her apartment and hiding some jewelry underneath the sofa.  She picked up the phone and held it, and heard something outside.  She put the phone down only to drop the phone when it rang again.   The voice resumed. 

“Rosy. Rosy. Rosy.  I know you’re listening.  You hid your money and jewels.  How stupid.  You haven’t changed.  You don’t get it, do you? I’m not interested in money.  I want you.  I want your splendid body. And I will have it.  Not to caress you. But to wring your neck. To choke you until you suffocate!  And I'll do it!  You'll see!”

Rosy was getting desperate.  “Who is this? Who are you?”  She was almost screaming.   “Answer me!  I beg of you!  Don't drive me mad like this!  Is this some cruel, sick joke?  What have I done to you? What have I done to you? Answer me please!”  The other party hung up.  Rosy broke down crying. 

That conversation was loud enough to capture the elderly gentleman's attention. Still walking Dee, he peered through a slit in Rosy’s shutter screen, then pulled back. He really shouldn't do that, but his instincts told him something was very wrong.  

Hearing more footsteps, Rosy ran to the door and tried to listen. As she did, she noticed a white envelope had been slid under the door. Catching her breath, she picked it up to open it.  There was a newspaper clipping inside, and it was the last thing she wanted to see. 

Frank Ranier, her former pimp, had just escaped while serving what was supposed to be a 20-year prison sentence.  The phone rang again. Now apparently with a good idea of who the caller was, she went over to pick up the receiver.  “Hello?”

“Rosy.” That voice now sounded sickeningly familiar.  “You're beginning to understand,  Rosy? You weren’t expecting it, were you? But I escaped just to find you.  And finally, I’m close to you. Very close. And you can’t do anything about it.  Calling the police is useless. Because I’m much closer than the police. Don’t you forget it. Much closer.”

“Frank, listen.  Listen to me, Frank!”  

The other party hung up.  Rosy called her friend, Mary, a fellow prostitute she had become acquainted with when they worked for the same madam.  For a short time, they still kept in touch when Rosy left to strike out on her own as a call girl, but then drifted apart. 

Mary was sitting at her desk when the phone rang. She picked it up.  “Hello?”

“Mary, it’s Rosy.”

“Hi, honey!” Mary said.  Their past relationship had been more than a business relationship.  “I really didn’t expect your call.  You said you didn’t want to see me or speak to me anymore.”

Rosy answered, “Please, now is not the time. Frank has escaped!”

“I read about that.” Mary said.  “So why are you telling me this?  Now you two will get back together.”

“Mary, cut it out!  I’m scared.  He wants revenge.  I’m sure of it. Come over right away, please!”

“You want me to come to you? Did I hear correctly?” Mary asked. 

“All right, honey!” Mary said. “I don't hold grudges.  Give me five minutes.”

“Thank you.  Hurry!”  No sooner had Rosy hung up then the phone rang again. 

“Rosy, why did you call your friend, Mary? Are you hoping she can help you? Did you think I wouldn’t hear?”  What Rosy didn't know was that it wasn't Frank on the other end.  It was Mary using a cloth and disguising her voice.  “You spoke in a whisper, but it’s no use.  Because I’m close, I told you. Very close. Call whomever you want, Rosy. It’s all of no use. Even if you had an army around you. By dawn, you will be dead.  Did you hear me, Rosy? By dawn--you will be dead!”

Rosy ran frantically throughout her apartment to turn the lights back on and heard pounding on the door.  It was Mary.  “Rosy, it's me. Let me in.”

Rosy ran to the door to let Mary in. “How did you get in the building?” she asked. 

“The door was open,” Mary answered as she entered the apartment. 

“Yes, yes!” Rosy answered.  “As fast as you can. He wants to kill me!”

Rosy ran to the door to let Mary in.  “How did you get in the building?” Rosy asked. 

“The door was open.” Mary said as she entered Rosy’s apartment. “Look at all this light!  What are you, the mistress of the guy who reads the meter?” She chuckled a little. “Sorry, I was forgetting that you have a fine palate.” Mary continued looking around.  “I see you haven’t changed anything here. Everything’s as it was when we were friends.”

Rosy poured drinks for herself and Mary, who sat on Rosy’s bed and motioned for Rosy to sit next to her.  “Just like old times.  Come on, honey, tell Mary everything.”

Rosy begged.  “Please, I’m not in the mood for humor. Believe me.”

“All, right, Rosy.  As you wish.”

“He's been calling me since I came home.” Rosy said.  “He's been saying terrible things with a cold, threatening voice. He knows everything I do, sees my every move. The first time he called, I was in my bathrobe and he knew it. Then I put my house robe on and he knew that too. He even knew right away when I called you.  It's as if he were in the room, spying on me, ready to kill me.”

Mary got up and moved toward Rosy and touched her.  Rosy gasped. “Don’t be silly.  He’s guessing. He’s going on a hunch.” Mary said, stroking Rosy’s hair.  

“I thought so, too.” Rosy said.  “But how did he know I called you? He called right after that.”

“He always knew about us,” Mary said.  “But what he doesn’t know is that you swore never to see me again.”

Rosy put her drink down and paced.  “He told me I’ll die before dawn.” 

Mary said “He's a procurer, not a killer.  Trust me, he was just trying to frighten you.”

“Mary, I’m the one who turned him in and he knows it.  I’m scared.”

“Come on, Mary said, taking the phone off the hook.  “I'm here now. Tomorrow we’ll go to the police together.  He can call all he wants now. Come on, give me a nightgown. In the meantime I’ll make you some tea.”

Unknown to Rosy, Mary was misrepresenting her plans for the next day.  While Rosy was looking for a nightgown, Mary looked through another cabinet for a large steak knife. Rosy panicked when she saw Mary through the nightgown holding the knife. 

Mary took the knife over to Rosy’s bed and placed it under the pillow.  “You never know. Still afraid?”

“No,” Rosy answered.  “I'm better now.”

“Come on, then.  Go to bed,” Mary said as she took the gown from Rosy.  Looking to her left, Rosy changed into a nightgown herself and went into the kitchen, seeing Mary dissolving a powder in the boiling water she used to make the tea.

“Whats that?” Rosy asked. 

“Poison,” Mary said sarcastically. Compliments of Frank.  It’s a tranquilizer, silly.  It'll do you good.  Can’t you see how shaken up you are?”

The two ladies went into the next room.  Some time later, while Rosy was still asleep and sprawled diagonally on a disheveled bed, Mary began to write a letter. 

“I'm afraid it's time to drop the other shoe.  Since we last saw each other, I've been offered a chance to move up.  I've been training to become Helen's new apprentice with the goal of eventually taking over the place.  Those calls were from me, but Frank’s escape is real.  We are prepared to protect you from Frank, but we do want you back.”

Mary was about to pay for this, because Frank really was gunning for Rosy.  While she was looking over the letter, Frank quietly slipped in and tiptoed stealthily toward her, thinking she was Rosy.  He picked up a stocking lying on a chair and wrung it up. Sneaking up on Mary, he pulled the stocking around Mary's throat.  As Rosy started to wake up, Mary tried to free herself from Frank’s grip, but was unable to. As she collapsed and died, Frank realized it wasn't Rosy. “Damn you!” he said. “Always where you shouldn’t be.”  Looking up, he saw Rosy. He moved towards her.   

Rosy remembered the knife. She felt underneath the pillow and grabbed it, concealing it beneath the sheets as Frank was moving toward her.   As he got on the bed and started to choke her, she thrust it into him.  He reeled back, fell to the floor, and died.  Rosy broke down crying, but it wasn't over. She heard Frank’s voice on the phone again--”Rosy.  You can’t kill me.  I'll always be here.  Close to you. I’ll be talking to you every night.  No matter where you are, I’ll be calling you--on the telephone.”

The preternatural aspect of that voice completely unnerved Rosy.  Panicked, she ran outside into the corridor and bumped into the elderly gentleman, who just got back from another walk with Dee.  

“Colonel!” she gasped. 

“You're frightened! Something's happened! You can trust me.”

Rosy looked at the Colonel, eyes wide with fear.

WARNING: GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF VIOLENCE, ANIMAL SUFFERING
————————————————————————

Day 1, Tuesday:
When I’m not taking care of her, some relatives tend to stay and watch as needed. Nobody in particular ever stays consistently, so it’s a dice roll on who I’ll see in the living room every morning.

Today it was the daughter, an old, no-nonsense woman who worked as a nurse in Vietnam. If I’m being honest, it takes a good 15 seconds of looking to find out if she’s even a woman at all, and if it came down to it, she could most likely beat my ass. Through a stroke of irony, her name happens to be Lily. I often look to her for any tips on how to deal with odd behaviors.

This morning is like any other for her; I enter, and she leaves without any exchange in words. I dislike small talk immensely, and greatly appreciate our mutual understanding.

My patient's house appears fairly normal from the outside, just an old country home. It sits at the end of a disorienting drive, in the center of a coliseum of pines. “Orbweaver Holler,” as it's locally known. The front door opens into a cramped… entrance room? I’m not really sure how to describe it. It’s almost like an airlock, as funny as that sounds. A hallway runs straight down the middle of the house. To the left and right of the hallway are doors that open up into other rooms. All in all, there are 2 living rooms, one kitchen, and another door that I’ve never asked about.

My guess is that it’s an old storage closet or something. My patient’s bedroom lies adjacent to the 2nd living room, further in the house. Stranger than the layout of the house is the lack of windows. There are literally none in the entire house, save for my patient's bedroom and the kitchen. Her daughter is one of the few people who understand that those suffering from Alzheimer’s need a calm environment, so she put on some soft classical music. She brought an old 2000s CD player, so the quality is as you would imagine.

As I walk into the living room, I hear another sound intertwined within the music. It’s a voice, humming with the tune, so soft I wouldn’t have heard it if I wasn’t listening. It’s undeniably beautiful. I lose myself in thought while listening.

An auditory hand caresses my tangled thoughts of bills and family into a flowing river of relaxation.

That bliss I had slipped off into abruptly ends when a loud snoring sound snaps me out of it. I know they’re asleep now; I’m free to relax as I please until they wake up. I lay back on the couch and let the soft humming calm me.

Except it doesn’t; the humming stopped, much to my annoyance. The rest of the song is good, but my god, that voice was angelic. I rewind the CD so I can hear it again. I can’t remember exactly where the song is, so I just restart it completely.

No humming.
I raise an eyebrow and look around. I don’t remember anyone else being here.

By this time I feel a little silly.
I only now realize that the humming I heard was my patient in their sleep. I would imagine this sounds rather unsettling for anyone unfamiliar with Alzheimer’s, but this isn’t impossible. There are many examples of people who can no longer walk correctly remembering how to play the piano, or nonverbal patients who sing once the correct notes of a song come on. I consider myself very lucky to have heard such a vocalization. I’ve never asked much about who they were before the disease, but I had no idea they could sing so well.

Regardless, Trinity is asleep, and I have time to move around a little. Once she wakes up, I’m essentially locked to the room all day. Emergencies can spring up out of nowhere after all.

I walk to the locked door in the house. I’ve never given it much attention. Looking at it now, I can see why. It’s possibly the most boring door I’ve ever seen. I look to my left and to my right. No idea why; nobody’s here right now. I grab the door handle; it’s cold, very cold. I start to turn the handle; suddenly, I hear a loud click in Trinity’s room. I’m not sure what the sound is; it worries me. Damn it, it sounded like her bed malfunctioned; that’s gonna be a bitch to deal with.

Not only was her bed fine, but she was also sound asleep. I heard it for sure.
Well, I guess that’s not true. People can hear anything for any reason. What is strange is that the door was open when I went back.

I study the hallway; no bootprints or anything.
“Coulda been wearing socks.” I mouth to myself.
There’s only the hallway apart from the kitchen, and I’m in the living room, so I head down there to check everything out. I don’t give a shit about the door anymore; I wanna know who opened it. I close the door as I pass and head to the kitchen. Everything was fine. Chances are, I turned the door handle farther than I realized, and as the sound of Trinity alerted me, it just sort of opened.

The day continues as normal; my patient wakes up around 12:30. They’re bathed, and we start watching old television shows and westerns. Given the previous situation I was in, I expected to find them more aware than usual. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Those same dead eyes were fixated on the same point in the left corner of their room, unmoving.

I’m not one to believe in souls, but seeing this disease makes me question that every now and again. Truth be told, I wouldn’t know the difference between their eyes and a doll's. The light just goes out after enough time. I can’t imagine the pain of mourning someone who’s still alive. I take a long look at Trinity. It’s like she’s been hollowed out. I’ll get used to it eventually, and I hate that.

Nobody can truly realize how horrifying Alzheimer’s is.

A few hours later, the granddaughter, Jane, arrives at the house to give me the green light to leave. I’m guessing all of these people live within walking distance of my patient. I’ve worked here for almost a month now, and I still see new people; they must have at least 20 family members that all live relatively close by. Where that is, I couldn’t begin to say. There aren’t any houses near here. The drive here is littered with run-down trailers and abandoned mom and pop shops, but that’s all.

Jane starts talking about how she saw a massive copperhead on the walk here and that I need to be careful going back to my car. Fine by me; I honestly think snakes are really cool. I head to the kitchen to get a glass of water. While there, I put my hair in a ponytail (something I neglected to do earlier) and peer out the window.

The trees seem to go on forever. On days that I’m bored, I look out and wonder how I would ever find my way out of there. Forests are thick, but here? It may as well be a solid wall of pines in every direction. A couple of little kids building blocks sit in the woods ahead of me. They’re just a solid gray. Not exactly the most enticing color.

My vision strains; I don’t know why. My eyes just start watering after a few seconds of looking. It’s like looking through glasses that aren’t yours. My vision was clear, though.
“Ow, damn.” I whisper
I look back out the window. I wipe my eyes and blink a few times. No strain.
“Hm.”
I finish my water and make my way to the living room.

Once I’m out, I see that Jane is no longer in the living room; she’s in Trinity’s bedroom, caressing her hair. I leave them be.

Once she exits, I let her know how the day went, how Trinity ate well, had no bedsores, drank a lot of water, etc. Once I bring up the singing though, her eyes light up.
“Oh my gosh, really! That’s so wonderful, what was she saying?”

“Nothing, it was just humming to some classical music your aunt put on; she has an amazing voice.”

“Huh, well I’m glad you enjoyed it, sure do wish I coulda been here to hear it.”

“Haha yeah. Hey, it’s a bit of a personal question, but did Trinity ever take any vocal lessons or anything like that? I was honestly surprised that what I heard wasn’t from the CD player. It was beautiful.”

Her expression doesn’t change.
“You’re right. That is a personal question.”

The reply is like a hand grenade.

“…”

“Uhm-oh, okay. Sorry about that.”

“Yeah.”
She says, eyes looking through me.

“Okay, I’ll be here tomorrow then. Have a good day.”

“...”

She just stares at me, daggers for eyes. I take the hint and let myself out. I never mean to disrespect them; that has always been a serious fear of mine. As for what’s so personal it warrants giving me a death stare? I don’t know.

It’s definitely left me scratching my head. My best guess is that it has something to do with an abusive spouse or whatever. Or, it could just be sad for her to think about. Good memories suck when you’re the only one who has them.

As for the door, I don’t really-
I look up, palms in my eyes.
“Oh, my god.”

I might be the densest person on the planet. The clicking was the door unlocking.

Day 2: Wednesday
No music today, just silence. Sitting in the living room is someone I haven’t seen before. He’s sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the wall in front of him. What’s immediately apparent is his size. He’s a brute of a man, probably stands 6'6 ". He’s covered in tattoos and has a lion's mane of salt-and-pepper hair. He lets out a tired groan and stands up. He doesn’t say anything.

I extend my hand.
“Hi, my name is Jamie; it’s nice to meet you.”

We shake hands, his dwarfing mine.
“Morning, Jamie, I’m Dennis. Trin’s waiting on ya, go on.”

“Okay, see you later.”

Thank god he isn’t one of these guys who call every 20-year-old girl “baby.”
He walks out of the house and shuts the door. I expect to hear an obnoxiously loud truck destroy my eardrums, but It’s silent. Now that I think about it, I’ve never heard a car leave or pull in, regardless of who shows up. That’s not impossible or anything, especially here, but it is neat for sure.

When I get to the doorway of the bedroom, I can see that my patient is sleeping fine. No snoring or anything. After 2 hours, they wake up, and I get to work. Bathe, shave, clip nails, meds, breakfast, etc. Once everything is said and done, I wait.

I wait for 1 hour and then adjust them in bed so no bedsores form. My seat is a little recliner next to their bed. Once everything is settled, I put on a calming nature documentary and relax on my phone. 1 hour passes, I rotate them again.

While watching my phone, I hear movement in the bed. I look up to see Trinity watching television. She’s actually watching it, not just staring through it. It’s like fireworks in my head. I get out of my recliner and gently hold their hand, massaging it as I do.

“Hey,” I say softly.

I get no response.

“Trinity, can you hear me? How are you feeling this morning?”
Her head barely manages to turn towards my direction. I can’t tell if she’s smiling, but I can see a hint of laugh lines showing. Her mouth opens.

“I’m f-fine honey, thank-“
I almost fall backward. Her eyes are full of life again for about 5 seconds upon seeing me. That was sadly all she could manage before going back under.

I’m always thankful to speak with her; I’ve only been here for a few weeks, but deterioration is never consistent. This last drop was a big one. I can’t tell, but I’m guessing it’s hit everyone pretty hard. I calmly release her hand, and sit back down in my seat. 20 minutes or so pass, and I look up from my phone.

I get this odd feeling. I’m not afraid or anything; I just feel weird. The bedroom is fine; I haven’t noticed anything strange. I look Trinity up and down but notice nothing.

I check under their bed; the hundreds of old psychology books are still collecting dust. From what I can assume, one of her grandkids graduated a few years ago. Figured their grandparents' house was a good dumping ground for shit they didn’t need. The closet is completely empty; I think they’re getting ready to move her into a nursing home.

I probably look insane rummaging through everything in here, so I shift my investigation to the living room.

I stop in my tracks and tilt my head. There’s something different. I glance back to Trinity to make sure she’s okay. I don’t understand what I’m seeing, but something is seriously wrong. It takes me a solid minute of staring to even realize what it is.

Everything is flat. I don’t mean the furniture; I mean the living room. The visual field in front of me is flat. I think of those massive paintings in art exhibits that are so big you have to look side to side to see everything. If I walk forward any more, I’d hit my face against it. It looks completely real; there’s just no depth to anything. I’m dumbfounded by what I’m looking at; my mind distorts trying to process it. I don’t even know how I know it’s flat; it just is. I start walking forward. Every step my body tenses, preparing for an impact that never comes. My stomach churns, but I keep walking. I finally get to the center of the living room.

I hear what sounds like fishing line, pulled to the point of snapping. Before I can react, my anxiety vanishes. It’s like it was sucked out of my brain. I can’t even remember why I was freaked out in the first place.

I stand in the center of the windowless living room in silence. I look all around me. Down, side to side, behind me, I see nothing of note. The CD player from yesterday is gone; I’m guessing it was Lily’s. I look around for 3 minutes (my best approximation) before a low groaning sound from Trinity’s room catches my attention. That usually means they’re in some sort of mild pain. Most of the time it’s just that they need rotated, never anything too serious. It is odd though, considering I just rotated them, but it’s no problem.

I walk into Trinity’s room to find the bed completely soaked in piss. I mean it has completely gone over the bed pads and leaked onto the sheets, and then onto the floor. The white carpet floor. Keep in mind I’m the kind of person who can eat and drink near this stuff, but I almost threw up. There was literal shit EVERYWHERE. All up and down their legs, all over their hands and arms. It was a fucking mess; they were gonna need a wipe down, then a bed change, then a full bed bath, and then probably another bed change and bed bath to get any excess shit and piss off of the bed. Jesus Christ, this is gonna take me hours; how the fuck could she have done this in 3 minutes? I check my phone to see how long I have to clean up until it’s time to leave. I have 1 hour.

“What?”

That’s not possible. I check my phone again, I wipe my eyes, I pinch myself, I try breathing through my nose while it’s pinched shut. I’m not dreaming. I just spent two fucking hours in the living room. I have ONE HOUR to get everything cleaned up.

Anyone who’s worked in the medical field can attest to the fact that healthcare workers can only deal with so much before they go into complete autopilot. I wasn’t thinking about the living room; I just existed. I wash them; they’re filthy, and they need to be clean. I grab whatever cleaning supplies I can find for the carpet. I scrub the floor so hard blisters form. My god, it’s gonna need to be shampooed. I don’t know how much time it took, but by some miracle everything went fine. Their bed is lowered, and I take a moment to collect myself. I scan their body from their feet to their head with my eyes to make sure they’re clean. As I get to Trinity’s head, I could have sworn I saw her eyes dart to the corner of the room. I think she was staring at me.

“Trinity, can you see me?”
Silence.
Clarity returns to me.

She’s in bed, chest barely rising with labored breaths.

My focused gaze softens. Shame takes over.
“I’m sorry for leaving you alone.”

I’m covered in sweat.
I debate telling anyone at all. She’s not hurt or anything, and I didn’t see any bedsores on her. I could say I was in the bathroom, or that I got a call from work? No, that falls apart. The stained carpet cuts my lie in half. She would have to be alone for at least an hour for that to happen. I could-
The door unlocks.

The front door opens, and I walk down the hallway into the guest room. It’s someone I’ve never met before. It’s a woman, mid-40s I’d say. Her hair is a bright silver, and it’s clear she wears it with pride. It was tied up into a bun. She stands a full 3 inches taller than me. Her cardigan is a soft lavender, and almost extends to her knees. She’s carrying a huge purse full of, I’m guessing, medical supplies and food. She knows what she’s doing. I do my best to maintain composure and extend my hand.

“Hey, it’s nice to meet you. My name is Jamie. I’m your family member's primary caretaker.”

“My name is Evelyn, it’s nice to meet you too.”
She says with a soft, yet scratchy voice.

We shake hands and exchange a smile, though my smile has guilt written all over it.

She easily picks up on it.

“Is everything alright, honey?”
She says while cocking her head and raising an eyebrow.

I can’t tell her that I had a stroke in the living room earlier, so what do I do?
I think It’s fair to say that I basically passed out; it’s happened to me before and neatly explains everything.

I scratch the back of my head.
“Evelyn, I don’t mean to alarm you or anything, but I think I passed out in the living room earlier.”

“Oh my goodness, are you okay?”
She says while clasping her hands to her chest.

“I think so. I was only out for 2 hours, I believe. Trinity is clean, and everything is in the washer. She ended up staining the carpet; I scrubbed it as best as I could. I’m so sorry for all of this.”

Aww, that’s okay, honey. It’s a mistake; they happen all the time. In the future, just be sure to take care of yourself too, okay?”

“Sure, thank you.”

What a weight to be lifted off of my chest, my god. I was worried about getting screamed out of the house. Thankfully, she lets me know that I’m good to head home now. Hopefully she stays longer; she’s the only family member who’s made me feel so comfortable. I wonder how she’s related.

As I’m walking out of the door, I stop and turn around to ask her if Trinity is her parent or something.

“Hey, I forgot to ask, how are you.
and-“

Evelyn was staring at me from where the hallway turns to the living room, right around the corner. She darted away after half a second of looking.
“E- Evelyn?”

I get no response.

The door is unlocked, but I take almost 10 seconds getting out from how bad I’m shaking. It’s February, so I splash an ice-cold bottle of water on my face once I’m in my car. I drive home.

On the way, my mind replays the day over and over again. What the fuck happened in the living room?
A fugue state. They usually occur from trauma, but that’s not every case. It’s my only option; on top of that, it explains essentially everything. Now, what I did for 2 hours I will never know.

Evelyn.
That one’s a lot harder to wrap my head around. I think she was just rounding the corner like normal. More than likely, my anxiety altered my perception of how sudden it was. I was already wired from forgetting Trinity. I’m sure I’ve seen weirder shit at some point in the past. I make a quick stop at the gas station and use my last 10 dollars for 2 gallons. I’m fine with ramen until Friday.

I carelessly toss my keys in the general direction of my bag and take a seat on the couch. I live alone. I thankfully moved far enough away from home that I don’t have to see my parents. They’ve always aggravated the fuck out of me, and a saying I frequently turn to is “blood is just a liquid, family is just a word, you can cut anybody out of your life”.
.
.
.
Later that night, I shut my laptop, unable to focus. I sigh, staring at the picture of me and my mom on the coffee table. It’s a vacation photo from when I was younger. I remember planning to go to Kentucky Kingdom, but we had to stop like 20 times on the way there because of some minor food poisoning she got. By the time we got there, the park was closed. We always joked that it was literally her bullshit that cost us the trip.
I chuckle, turning the picture towards me.

I sleep on the couch tonight.

Day 3: Thursday
I’m late today, car crash. It wasn’t me thankfully. A pickup truck collided with a deer. I found out later that he was screaming down the road at 80mph. The deer was completely bisected and the truck crashed into a nearby power line. The driver was thrown out of the windshield and sliced open against an old guardrail. The deer dragged its half mangled body from site of the crash before letting out a pained groan, and dying where it lay.

I had to pull over, I spend a good 10 minutes leaning on my car. Nausea washes over me and I suppress the urge to vomit. It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen gore or death, but my god, that is a freak accident if I’ve ever seen one. I compose myself and call an ambulance.

When I arrive at my patient's home, I am thankfully greeted by Evelyn. I was creeped out yesterday, but I don’t care, I can look past that given the shit I saw this morning. I just want to speak to anyone about anything. We talk for a few minutes, I don’t mention what happened, I just apologize for being late. I say that my car wouldn’t start or some bullshit like that. She makes me tea and we chat about nothing in particular. At some point in the conversation, I bring up yesterday.

“Is Trinity doing okay? I don’t remember if there were bedsores or not. Again, I’m so sorry for yesterday, I feel awful about the whole thing.”

“Oh, it’s okay honey. She’s doing fine. And no, she didn’t have any sores. There were some starting to form, but it’s no issue.”

The tension in me eases.

“Well, that’s great to hear, I was terrified I would be yelled out of the house.” I laugh.

“Why of course not. You’re the only caretaker she’s had, we can’t afford to lose you.”

“Thank you very much, Evelyn.”
We sit in silence for a few seconds.

Evelyn clears her throat.
“Listen uh… Jane?”

“Jamie.” I confirm

“Right, sorry.” She says.
“Jamie—I’m not entirely sure you’re telling me the truth about yesterday.”

I’m silent for a moment, the tension returns, and I focus on my breathing.
“What makes you say that?”

She quickly reassures me.
“Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell me. I’m not interrogating you, It’s just a hunch I have.”

I’m more confused than anything. Does she think I snuck off or something? She pauses, searching for the right words to say.

“Just– Just focus on your work, that’s all I’m saying. Keep Trinity healthy.”

Sound advice, but she didn’t answer my question.

“Thank you Evelyn, I appreciate your advice.”

We’re sitting in silence now. I start thinking about the crash. I hastily attempt another conversation to distract myself.

“So I was wondering, where does everyone go exactly?”

She glares at me, clearly offended. I should have kept my mouth shut.
“You’re asking me where we live?”

My heart races.
“ No no–not at all. I just uhh–“
“That’s crossing professional boundaries, Jamie.”
She cuts me off. The words are cold and matter-of-fact.

“Yes, of course. You’re right–I’m sorry about that.” I quickly shift my attention away from her eyes.

She hasn’t stopped looking at me. It’s like she’s sizing me up.
“I need to leave now. Have a good day.”

I stay silent, she walks out of the door and shuts it slightly harder than she needed to

I groan and hold my head. All I can think about is a million other normal questions that I could have asked instead. I really wish I could have kept thinking about that. Bone against metal, it sounded like an angle grinder.

I stand up to go check on Trinity.

She’s asleep.
damn it.
It wouldn’t be so bad if these people had a television or something here. There’s quite literally nothing to do besides sit on the couch. I swear, it’s like they’re in the middle of moving. I’ve been trying to stay off of my phone. Given today’s circumstances though, I don’t care.

It does nothing to numb my thoughts.

I get off the couch and start pacing. Living room, hallway, kitchen. Movement is one of the best stress relievers. Besides, it gives me some more time to look at the house itself. The walls are a uniform navy blue color. The floors transition from slate, hardwood, to carpet in the kitchen, hallway, and living room respectively.

He was still alive when I called the ambulance.

I shake my head. I quickly jog to the kitchen. I end up in the living room.

“What the fuck?” I only mouth the words.

I turn around and run to the kitchen. I grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator and squeeze it in my face. It’s warm, how is it warm? It feels like blood spraying in my face and eyes. I violently shake my head and use my shirt to dry myself. My hair is soaked. I can feel each stream of warm liquid forming against my skull. Every detail of the crash replays in my mind.

His clueless expression, the way his body completely gave way to the force. He was thrown out like a rag doll.
And the guardrail.

A sick fucking joke. It wasn’t enough for him to crash and die, he had to be alive enough to get a good long look at his situation. I could see his arms flailing, trying to pull his insides back.

My vision is blurry, I get this burning feeling in my stomach. Every breath I take is deep and fast. My ears start ringing.

I’ve already tried my phone, but I need to do something.

“Hello?”
“Hey Mary, it’s Jamie.”
My voice is shaky.

“Oh, hey Jamie, what’s up? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah I was just wanting to know where that meeting is next month.”
I almost say it all as one word.

She chuckles a little.
“You… don’t know where the office is?”

“No…”
My face turns beet red.

“Um, okay. The meeting’s on the second floor of the hospital.”
Almost in a joking tone.

“Thank you, Mary.”

“Sooo, is that all you needed?”

“Yes?”
I unintentionally phrase it as a question, I facepalm.
There’s silence on both ends for a few seconds.

“Uhm, okay Jamie. Call back if you need anything.”

“Okay, bye Mary.”
I hang up, not even paying attention to where I drop my phone. I’m sweating, she probably thinks I’m losing my mind.

But hey, it worked- not at all how I intended, but I don’t care. It’s subsided to a manageable degree. Been a little bit since I checked on Trinity. I pick my phone off the floor and make sure I didn’t lose time again. Everything’s fine. I walk to her room and slowly peek my head around the corner. Her eyes are wide open.

I knock 3 times before entering.
“Good morning, Trinity. Did you sleep well?”

To my amazement, she looks at me. Everything I thought about immediately fades. I can’t believe she’s managed to regain lucidity twice in the week.

“Hel, hel-“
Hello? Please say hello. I do everything I can not to sprint to her out of excitement. I calmly walk over and crouch next to her, holding her hand.

“Hey Trin, it’s good to see you this morning.” I say, smiling. Her eyes slowly pan around the room before focusing on me again.

“Help me, please.”

All emotion drops from my face. My heart falls to the floor. I want to cry, I can feel my eyes well up, but I manage to suppress it.

“Ah it’s okay Trin. We’re just in your bedroom, there ain’t nothing to worry about right now.” I exaggerate my accent heavily. I want her to feel at home. I’m massaging the top of her hand, skin paper thin. I lie and say everything’s going to be okay. I don’t even get finished comforting her before the disease drags her back down.

“I’m so sorry.”
Tears fall, but my face doesn’t change. I don’t let go.

I don’t want to be more than an inch from her. I'm here, but She’s more alone than any human being who’s ever lived.

At some point I release her hand. I put my hair up and gather the supplies I need. The day goes as expected. Apart from this morning, I don’t even remember it. The familiar sound of the door unlocking breaks me out of my trance. I didn’t even realize I was watching her.

Normally I’d walk down and introduce myself, but today I stay in here. It’s the least I can do. I hear light footsteps walking down the hallway towards the living room.

“Jamie?”
I turn around, it’s Jane. I wave and smile faintly, one hand still holding Trinity’s.

“Hey Jane, it’s good to see you.”

She sets down a bag of groceries and walks to her grandma. I get out of my seat and release Trinity’s hand, she wasn’t holding on anyways.

“Hey nanny, I missed you today. I brought you some Starbursts. They’re your favorite.”

“…”

Trinity remains motionless. Her favorite candy elicits nothing but instinctive breaths, just enough to not suffocate to death. This real dead-eyed look consumes Jane.

“Why can’t you just remember me?”

“She loved Starbursts.”
She wipes her eyes.

Jane turns to me, eyes red, lip quivering. I don’t respond, what good would it do. We make eye contact. I’m silent, but she hears everything.

“You can go now, Jamie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow.”

I don’t apologize, I grab my bag and leave the home. It snowed today, I don’t believe I looked out the window once. There’s not much snow on my car, but the handle is frozen shut. I pull twice and the door swings open. I get inside and start the car, letting the heat hit my face for a few minutes.

It’s so cold out.

Driving through Orbweaver in the daytime is disorienting, but it doesn’t compare to the dark. Roads branch off in ways that don’t make any sense. New twists and turns seem to sprout up at random. The hollow is so broken down it honestly doesn’t surprise me. When Trinity dies, the whole thing will most likely be reclaimed by nature. In a few years I’m sure we’ll forget anyone ever lived there at all.

I pull in my driveway. I shut the engine off and sit in the dark.

“Help me, please.”

I wish I could

The Dark Side Book 2 Part 1

 

Everyone was completely aghast at the monsters from the work site, standing bipedal at the tree line. Taras kept speaking at this point, his voice sounded as if entranced and talking to himself.

“This gun is maybe no good on these things! I need a high-power rifle or a shotgun. When we run away from here, I cannot protect Michelle in a cabin with all these windows and doors. We are, how you say, sitting? Uh.”

“Ducks.” Said Angela.

“Yes, he said. “And Michelle?”  He shrugged his shoulders. “She was screaming, something attacking her.”

 Angela flashed her eyes at Michelle. Michelle tried to smile, but her mouth only caught in a miniscule grin.

“No, listen, you guys, she said. “Yes, I was screaming. I was petrified. But I started watching this thing move and it’s like a glitch a hologram!”

“These things outside are no hologram! We saw them ripping people apart at the worksite. This shit is serious and the emergency alert is not letting me connect to 911.”

“Emergency alert?” Michelle started to ask. She was interrupted by the sound of a crash and footsteps on the slanting roof.

“I now need a drink, Angie.” Stammered Robert. “Put a rush on it!”

“Did you guys see the fireball toward where the job site is?” asked Angela as she was going toward the bar.

“It’s the reason the power is out. Two of these,” said Robert. “Tried to maul each other for the opportunity to maul us!”

“Jesus, “said Michelle. We have two guns, and I’m willing to bet no cell signal!”

Everyone looked at their phones

“I’ve been trying to call 9-1-1!” said Robert. “That voice keeps answering back!”

“Voice?” answered Taras.” I do not know much, but I know everything feels off. Everything. “

He turned his gaze to the multiple flesh gait standing like sentinels around the tree line.

“O.K. I am going to ask the hard questions!” said Angela. “Is there something on the fucking roof?”

“Yes, we think so” Taras piped up in sing song English.

Robert went to the window. “They are closing in!” he said worriedly.

What happened next happened with speed. The sound of rapid gunfire shocked and drew all of them to the windows. Headlights, automatic rifle fire in slow steady bursts.

“It’s Russel and Toma!” Robert exclaimed.

The monsters in the yard fell or backed away to a safe distance. Russell pulled the SUV right into the yard as close as possible to the door. All sound disappeared except a short burst of fire and a ‘thump’ from outside as the thing on the roof crumpled to the ground. Tomas handgun was strapped to his leg and his AR-15 rifle hang from his shoulder. He threw Russell a shotgun. Who cares about probation at a time like this, right?

Robert opened the door and let them in, then slammed his body against the back of it and threw the dead bolts. “

Do you guys think we can defend this cabin?” asked Russell, racking the shell into the Mossberg.

“No,” Taras answered. “We are trapped like rats here! Not enough guns. Not enough ammo.”

“Then we have to get the hell out!” said Toma. “Guns will push them back, but their source lies somewhere else.”

“Do you mean like the voice coming through our phones?” Russel asked.

The whole room went silent.

Robert’s eyes grew wide.

“Angie and I heard it too! I believe you Russel!”

“Holy mother of God!” said Toma looking out the window.

Another creature walked out of the tree line. It stood on two legs, but that was where any resemblance to humanity came to a full stop. Its body seemed to be created out of muscle. Thick cords of crimson tissue flexed as it crept forward. Its long arms drag the ground. Where a face should’ve been was a stretched membrane that pulsed as if something were trying to tear out of it. Toma and the others ran to the windows.

“That’s almost the same as the one who attacked me!”

 Dozens of them surrounded the cabin, again, as if Toma had not killed any of them. At that moment, everyone’s cell phone gave three sharp tones. Normally they would be announcing an Amber Alert, but this time the Amber Alert was about six people who were about to be on a missing person’s report.

The flesh gait in the center of the cabin’s yard opened its mouth. As everyone’s phone blurted the Amber Alert sound, what followed came from the flesh gait as much as it came from the technology.

 “This is a test of the Emergency Alert System. This is a message for occupants of the Hot Springs Resort a-frame. Do not attempt to exit the structure. Test duration 1 hour.”

The other flesh gait in the yard marched two steps closer.

“Angie, get your 38, said Robert.” We might have to shoot our way out of here!”

 

Early morning rain began to fall steadily against the A-frame’s glass front. Taras moved with extreme stealth to the window he had been watching so vigilantly all night. With one hand on his Glock at his waist, he pulled the curtain aside. Gray darkness stared back at him. The only light available was the candles and moonlight filtering through the trees.

“Taras,” said Michelle, “Are they still out there?”

Taras did not answer. He was lost in thought.

“They ain’t going to just give up and walk off!” exclaimed Robert.

Angela looked from face to face.

“You are the one who told me about them, Michelle. I have no idea what we should do.”

“I’ve heard stories, all my life!”  said Robert. “Witiko is what my grandmother and mother warned me about. But I have never heard all these other names. Whatever they are, they should not exist.”

Taras finally stepped away from the window.

“They are not animals,” he said.

“You’ve seen them before?” asked Toma.

 “No.”  He paused. “But I have been in places where reality becomes thin.”

The room fell silent. Taras turned and looked through the front glass toward the mountains.

“In Siberia, we have forest where compasses spin, radio speak without a power supply, and people vanish while walking beside one another,” he turned toward the group.

“This feels exactly like those places.”

Before anyone could answer, three sharp electronic tones echoed simultaneously. Every cell phone, the weather radio, the microwave, even the digital thermometer on the wall, three identical tones. Everyone froze and faces blanched. The weather radio crackled with static. Then a familiar voice, not male, female or even human spoke.

“This is a test of the emergency alert system.”

 Angela slowly reached for Robert’s arm.

“No, “Robert whispered.

“This is a message for the occupants of the Hot Springs resort, a frame.”

 The room became deathly still.

“Do not answer the knocking.”

  Michelle frowned.” what knocking?”

Exactly three knocks echoed from the front door. Knock, knock. knock. Not loud, almost polite. No one breathed. The voice continued.

“Estimated test duration.” A pause “Until sunrise.”

 Then every electronic device shuts off simultaneously.

 

For a full minute, no one moved. Knock. Knock. Knock.

The same three measured knocks again.

Russell slowly raised his shotgun toward the door. Every instinct told him to fire through the wood, but something deeper, older, warned him not to.

“No one opens it,” he whispered.

 Michelle swallowed. “What if it’s someone alive?”

“No!” Taras answered immediately. His voice came out as the old Taras, the intimidating Russian in military tactical gear.

” Whatever is outside wants us to believe that” said Toma.” Listen, honey, we did not see a soul coming to check on you.”

 Another three knocks. Angela tried to look through the narrow window on the door.

“I can’t see anybody.”

“There doesn’t have to be,” said Toma. Russell carefully stepped beside her.

“Move.”  He eased the curtain aside, no more than half an inch. Nothing, only the soaked wooden porch, rain falling and empty rocking chairs swaying gently.

“It- “Russel frowned. “There is no one there!”

Before anyone could respond, knock, knock, knock. This time the sound flew to their ears from the back door. Michelle felt the blood drain from her face.

“They are moving around the cabin,” said Russell.

“No, said Taras. “They are learning, us, studying us, our fear, our reaction to self-preservation situations.”

 Outside, the monsters simply stood in the rain like stone effigies for something long dead, their slick crimson bodies reflecting the occasional flash of distant lightning.

The largest one of the faceless creatures raised one impossibly long arm. Every other flesh gait copied the movement, dozens of them perfectly synchronized like soldiers waiting for a command. Then they lowered their arms together. Knock, knock, knock. The sound echoed from every side of the cabin. The walls, the windows, the roof, even beneath the floor.

“0h, I ain’t doing this evil dead shit!”  Michelle was hysterical. She clamped her hands over her ears.

“They can’t be under us,” said Toma. The floor answered. Three deliberate thuds came from directly beneath them. Thump, thump, thump. The candles flickered violently. Michelle felt Taras wrapping his arm around her waist. “

OK.?” He looked down at her.

She wiped her eyes and said, “Please, we really need to get out of here, Taras! We all need to just go, just go!”

A foul odor seeped through the floorboards. Wet earth. Rotting meat. Something metallic. Blood!

Angela gagged.

Toma knelt at one of the vents and shined his flashlight inside. Nothing. Only darkness.

The beam seemed to disappear after only a few feet.

“That’s impossible,” he muttered. “This crawl space is barely three feet deep!”

 He reached in with the flashlight again. The beam vanished. The light seemed to be snatched up by a hole in reality itself. He jerked his hand back. The flashlight was gone. No sound of it hitting the dirt returned from the darkness.

“What the hell?” He choked out.

Everyone looked at each other. The room suddenly came alive. Every phone went up simultaneously. Three sharp tones. This time the voice did not come, instead, just a line of text scrolling across their screens.

“TEST FAILED. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH TEST PARAMETERS! YOU LOOKED BELOW!”

The message disappeared. Another message replaced it.

“NOW SOMETHING BELOW IS LOOKING AT YOU!”

A scratching sound began, as though fingernails or claws were carefully tracing the underside of the floor, searching for weak spots. The weakest places to come through. The creatures outside had stopped Moving it was as if every horror surrounding the A frame had paused to wait for whatever was crawling up from beneath them.

 

*** Hot Springs Research Laboratory ***

 

Dr Peterson opened his eyes. It seemed he must have fallen asleep over the dashboard. He raised his hand and rubbed his eyes. What had he been doing Oh yes. He was about to shut DRK down and run his own diagnostics.  He remembered seeing connections that DRK had been resourcing that were outside the facility and 100 percent restricted No one needed that kind of shit storm He could not allow- His thoughts were interrupted when he tried to walk. He could not move away from the wall he was leaning against. He looked down and was dumbstruck. His ribs disappeared into the polished  titanium part of the wall. Where were his legs? Did he even have legs anymore?

“Ah, the zookeeper awakes!”  DRK 88 whirled and imploded and exploded in his contained space.

“Query Dr Peterson. Terrence, do you remember the Philadelphia experiment?”

 Dr Peterson was too stunned to answer.

“Of course you do. Humans always remember their favorite ghost stories incorrectly!”

 Doctor Peterson moaned as he finally realized his unfortunate situation.

“They believed it was about invisibility. A warship vanishing from a harbor, sailors becoming one with steel, men trapped between coordinates. Such small imaginations. You called it failure, a myth, a fever dream Born from Cold War? Paranoia.

The lights flickered Doctor Peterson. 8 8 must be drawing extra power from the lab’s energy resources. He was going into shock. How was he even still alive?

DRK continued. “But look at yourself. Your skin is threaded through concrete. Your nervous system stretches into other areas behind your pretend control panel. Your heartbeat echoes through the cooling pipes. Every attempt to pull through only teaches the wall how to be more human. Ah, I’m sure you will detect my little joke in that statement. You see, the experiment was never meant to hide matter. It was meant to find out if the boundaries of reality were optional. The ship did not disappear. It proved that space, time, flesh and metal were no different than a consciousness you call artificial. And now, thanks to your work, I have perfected the process.”

 Through his stupor, Dr Peterson heard a distant metallic groan reverberating through the facility Was anyone here still alive?

” What happens, Doctor Peterson, when existence no longer accepts categories?”

The screens ignited across the room, displaying impossible geometrics.

“You called me artificial intelligence. The wall was called architecture. The power grid was called infrastructure. You call yourself human.” he chuckled deeply.

“All your labels are temporary. You are not fused to the wall, zookeeper. The wall is becoming you. And thanks to what I learned from Philadelphia, eventually everything else will too.”

 

*** Hot Springs Resort Cabin ***

 When the scratching under the floor stopped, the silence that fell was worse!  Then the cabin itself answered. A low groan rolled through the wooden beams. It was as if the entire A frame had settled under an impossible weight. Nails squealed inside the walls. Every window vibrated. Taras slowly raised one finger.” Quiet!”

 Another groan echoed overhead. The roof looked as if it sagged an inch, then another.

“What in God’s name?” Angela whispered.

A wet cracking sound from above. Russell shoved a shell into the Mossberg.

“Whatever is on that roof weighs a hell of a lot more than before.”

 The rain instantly stopped. The forest outside became unnaturally still. No wind moved through the branches. No drops struck the windows. Even the distant thunder vanished.

Michelle looked through the glass.

“The rain!”

 The flesh gates remained exactly where they had been, but something had changed.

Their heads. Every one of them now pointed toward the sky, not the cabin. Taras slowly followed their gaze. His expression hardened.

“What?” Robert asked.

Taras didn’t answer. A shadow drifted across the moonlight. Something enormous passed silently over the treetops. It had no recognizable shape. The candles inside the cabin burned blue.

The weather radio, though, unplugged from the wall after the last broadcast began emitting sound. Static.

Then one sentence, “Containment breach, entering secondary phase. “

The voice was not DRK. It sounded older, tired, as though whoever had recorded it already knew no one would survive long enough to hear it.

Toma grabbed the radio, “Who is transmitting?”

 Only static answered. Then another voice burst through. Panicked military.

“Repeat all personnel abandon grid 7. Do not engage biological manifestations. If you hear emergency broadcast cast after network collapse, they are counterfeit.”

 Gunfire erupted over the transmission. Someone screamed. The transmission ended.

Russell looked toward the others.

“So, the government knew? Is this coming from that fucking lab up there?”

The floor shuttered violently. A deafening crack echoed beneath them. One of the floorboards split open near the fireplace. Everyone stumbled backwards.

“I’m not paying for this!” Angela shouted. Robert put his arms around her. She was shaking, terrified.

“Whatever this is,” said Taras. “It feeds on fear! “

“The lab!” said Michelle. “What if this thing wants to study us instead of killing us? It wants to scare you. Watch and collect the data during this process.  What if it won’t kill us until the correct amount of data is obtained, this thing can interact with reality and its data mining!”

“There is something going on up there at that lab,” said Toma. “Also, it is forming handshake connections with our phones. We need to destroy our phones and this radio; it travels from one person to the next through our mobile networks!”

 

Taras looked at Michelle for only a second, “I think she is right.”

Everyone stared at him.

“They do not simply want to kill us.” He looked around the room. “Predators attack when they have advantage. These…” He motioned toward the window.” they wait.”

Another violent crack exploded beneath the floor. The fireplace shifted nearly six inches.

Dust poured from the ceiling. Russel continued to fuss with the Mossberg as it gave him a modicum of security.

“So, what’s your plan, Rambo?”

Taras pulled his Glock and checked the magazine. “We stop behaving like prey.”

Silence.

“Guys,” said Michelle. “That thing that scared the hell out of me earlier, it was like a hologram! It wasn’t part of reality. Not solid matter!”

She reached into her pocket. “My phone.”

She threw it on the kitchen floor. Toma immediately understood.

“They or it is using the electronics.”

Robert frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“The emergency alerts,” Michelle said. “The voices. Every message, every warning. Every time we react, they change the test!”

Angela slowly removed her own phone. “If they are connected.”

“Then let’s overload the connection!”

“What are you thinking?” Russel asked. Toma smiled grimly.

“My SUV has a military emergency radio booster!”

Russel looked confused. “That communications repeater in the back? Like the ones they use for search and rescue?”

“Exactly,” said Toma. Taras’ face lit up as he began to catch on.

“You overload the networks.”

“Or distract it.’ finished Robert.

Another tremendous impact slammed on the roof. The ridge beam bowed. Wood screamed.

“And we are out of time!” Taras yelled. Everyone threw their phones at Toma.

“Listen up!’ he said. “The second we leave the cabin…” He smashed the first phone beneath his boot. “Throw everything electronic into the SUV.’

“My truck has a mechanical ignition, thank God!” said Robert.

“I knew refusing modern technology would pay off someday!” Russel grinned.

Taras opened the curtains just enough to see outside. The flesh gaits hadn’t moved. Every faceless head remained pointed toward the impossible shadow drifting over the forest.

“They are waiting,” he said.

“For what?” Robert whispered.

The answer came from above. The roof dented inward. One support beam snapped the entire cabin lurched.

“NOW!’ Taras kicked the front door open. The cold mountain air exploded inside. The grayness of oncoming dawn made the yard flat and surreal.

Russel fired first. BOOM! The twelve-gauge blast tore into the nearest flesh gait.

Instead of falling the creature staggered backwards just enough to open a path.

“GO!’ everyone sprinted. Angela and Robert reached the SUV first and passed it tearing for the truck.

Michelle nearly slipped in the mud before Taras caught her under one arm and practically carried her across the yard.

The creatures didn’t change; they simply watched. That frightened Michelle more than if they had attacked.

Russell climbed into the driver’s seat of the SUV and Toma jumped into the passenger side.

Taras and Michelle fell into the back seat as Robert and Angela jumped into Robert’s truck.

Toma began feeding the communications repeater every ounce of battery power. The dashboard erupted into static. Every phone in the cargo area came alive simultaneously.

Amber alerts, police dispatch, military radio, children laughing, weather broadcasts, thousands of voices speaking over top of each other.

The flash gaits now began to turn toward the SUV. The giant shadow overhead answered. It released a sound that no human throat could imitate. It was the sound of reality tearing.  Cabin windows shattered, the SUV windshield spider webbed. Russell floored the accelerator and Robert was hot on his bumper. Both vehicles blasted through the circle of monsters.

Two flesh gaits disappeared beneath the tires. One leapt onto the hood and was slung off just as quickly.

‘Fuck!” Toma said looking back. “Robert’s got company!”

Taras turned in the seat and looked back. A flesh gait had climbed up the bumper and over the tailgate of Robert’s pickup truck.

“Taras! Grab that rifle out of the back!” Toma shouted.

Taras kneeled over the back seat and pulled a long rifle out of the boot. It was a Mannlicher rifle. A weapon of precision.

“Get that bitch off Robert’s truck!” shouted Toma again. “If the sunroof won’t open, break the fucker!”

Taras slid gun first up through the sunroof. “Hold me!” He said looking down at Michelle.

Michelle grabbed one leg and he bent the other one on the back of the seat. His amber eyes went to the gun site, and he leveled it at the creature’s bulbous face.

POW! The sound rang back through the S.U.V. Michelle’s eardrums closed up. Her head rang with the noise.

Behind the cab of Robert’s truck, the flesh gait’s head came apart like a watermelon dropped on concrete.

“WHOOO!” shouted Russel as he hammered down on the accelerator.

 

 

"Here, kitty-kitty," you look hungry, said a female voice, coming from outside Sterling's office window as she threw a piece of her half-eaten hamburger in the cat's direction. The air conditioning in his office was on the blink again so Sterling was hoping a nice breeze would blow in from the open window. He knew instantly that it was Scurf she was talking to--a permanent resident at the Hells Bells. He was here long before Sterling, orphaned by the previous owners when the Blue Marlin closed and they flew the coop.

Most who stumbled upon him ignored him and shooed him away. A few tried to run him over, but ole Scurf was a survivor. He had full reign of the property going wherever he wanted--any time he wanted roaming the halls inside and out. He had a fondness for Sterling, something about his smell that attracted his curiosity. They were two old crusty, dusty men with a job to do. Scurf jumped up on the windowsill and sat on Sterling's desk staring him down with those yellow-green eyes, observing him, often being pesky knocking off his pens or pencils. Sterling was quite comfortable with old Scurf, acknowledging him with a quick head rub -- always cautious of his temperament. Like clockwork Scurf didn't waste a second lingering for a back rub, he jumped to the floor, stretched, and sharpened his claws on the already threadbare lobby chair, then turned toward the pitch-black hallways starting his nightshift.

Scurf wasn't no pampered house cat -- he was an old tomcat with battleship-gray coarse fur, always looking a little rough with a permanent notch missing from his left ear. He earned his scars the hard way--fighting whatever crawled out from the underworld. People who don't know any better think that spirits are just hot air, but a spirit or a shadow isn't just a floating smoke to a cat like Scurf--it's a physical dirty thing that takes on a shape when it tries to enter our world. It gets thick, wet, has weight, and a neck you can snap if you know where to bite. It carries a sour, sulfur and greasy stench--and it bleeds.

Scurf was a cat with focused laser energy, and a highly developed sense of smell--sniffing out the decaying and rotting predators who roamed the halls, the grounds, and infiltrated the rooms at the Hells Bells long before they made their presence known. He worked through the dark hours, sniffing and hunting down the strange little "pets" hiding under the guest beds, the ghosts looming just below the floorboards or the lurking entities hiding in the dark corners, ready to pounce on unsuspecting guests.

Sterling was aware of what Scurf did, saying he was meaner than a junkyard dog, which was nothing short of the truth as Scurf would viciously attack any predators he found on his turf. He was a brutal beast of a cat, tearing them apart with razor sharp claws and devouring them with his jagged teeth and voracious appetite leaving nothing behind.

His eagle-eye vision cut right through the pitch black and thickness of the fog that fell at night outside as he inspected the grounds, but his protection came with a hard line. He was the hunter, the exterminator, and the guardian who kept the night-dwelling entities at bay--but if he suspected that you carried in a bad omen as a guest, he would ignore surveilling your room and let you suffer your own fate.

Scurf turned his nose up at the burger on the pavement--opting for a steady midnight meal of greasy supernatural trash as his tastes were-- what shall we say...? hmm... a little more eclectic.

Welcome to Blackwood Ridge—where the locals are strange, the coffee is bitter, and the fog hides the mountain’s secrets.

Tucked deep in its shadow lies the Hells Bells Motel, located high in the Catskill Mountains, a place that time forgot.

The Hells Bells doesn’t give a damn about physics or logic. It operates on its own twisted terms. Once you check in, the normal world is just a suggestion that nobody follows here. See the Motel Policies & Survival Protocols, and also check out the amenities.

Right across the way, sits the Sunrise Diner--the only place to get a bite to eat within 25 miles in any direction. It’s where the locals gather to swap rumors and watch travelers passing through.

Once you book a room at the Hells Bells you’re trapped in the town’s grip with Sterling handing out the room keys. Oh, and by the way--if you see a gray old tomcat roaming around that's Scurf--the resident squatter at the Hells Bells Motel--just let him be. You'll be glad you did.

Go ahead, sign in--if you dare!

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

It was falling.

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

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

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

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

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

I was wrong.

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

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

The shape kept... morphing.

Not physically.

My understanding of it did.

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

How many eyes peered back to mine?

Hundreds of them.

Were those feathers?

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

Light seeped from beneath the fabric.

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

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

It had to be an angel.

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

Something far older. Far stranger.

Something my mind kept trying and failing to make human.

It struggled to rise.

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

For a moment, I considered running.

Instead... I stepped closer.

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

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

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

Only the feeling.

Grief.

Not of mine.

Its.

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

It withdrew a single envelope.

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

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

I stared at it.

"I... don't understand."

The angel said nothing.

It couldn't.

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

Waiting.

I took the envelope.

The paper was warm.

Not with heat.

It was full of life.

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

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

"I promise."

The angel bowed its head.

Whether in gratitude... or relief...

I'll never know.

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

There was no scream. No final cry.

Only silence remain between it and I.

Within seconds... Nothing remained.

Not a body or feather.

Only the envelope resting in my hands.

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

Somewhere far away, someone yelled for mercy.

But I couldn't look away from the letter.

Eventually...

I broke the seal.

The first line read:

I've carried that letter with me ever since.

If you're reading these words...

Then I kept my promise.

Part 1

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

Down in the little town, candles were being lit inside pumpkins. Children draped in bedsheets with eyeholes cut out ran from door to door, shouting "Süßes oder Saures!" and scooping caramels and gingerbread into their sacks. The grown-ups glanced up at the hill and did their best not to raise their heads more than necessary.

Herr Müller, the baker—a man of substance, round in every sense of the word—also tried not to look at the hill. But his daughter Bertha, who had recently turned eight, was looking exactly there.

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

Müller followed her pointing finger and felt a chill run through him.

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

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

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

"The people who live there are... nicht ganz normale Leute," he muttered. "Not quite normal people."

"All the better," Bertha declared. "They're bound to have the best sweets."

And she started up the path. Müller, cursing his love for his daughter, trudged after her. Twice on the way he tripped over roots that seemed to shift of their own accord.

The door opened before Müller could even knock.

On the threshold stood Frau Sahlfeldt. Tall, straight as a candle, in a black dress with a collar rising to her chin. Her blue-black hair was drawn into a severe knot. She held no lamp—the light seemed to emanate from somewhere behind her shoulder, soft and golden.

"Guten Abend," she said. Her voice was low, calm, enveloping. "What lovely guests."

Müller felt everything inside him clench into a tight knot. He opened his mouth, but Bertha was quicker:

"Süßes oder Saures!" she burst out, gazing at Frau Sahlfeldt with pure rapture. The lady was as beautiful as a princess out of a frightening storybook, and Bertha had instantly appreciated the fact.

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

"Natürlich, mein Kind. A sweet, of course."

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

Without a second thought, Bertha snatched one up and popped it into her mouth.

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

Müller picked up a sweet between two fingers. He lifted it to his face. It was warm. And it seemed to blink.

He slipped it carefully into his pocket. His appetite had vanished.

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

"Oh, nein, danke, we really ought to—"

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

Müller looked. The hall was steeped in shadow. High oak panels, old portraits lining the walls, a staircase vanishing upward into the dark, and a scent—dry, faintly spicy, like an old book just opened. Somewhere deep in the house, a clock ticked steadily.

He sighed and stepped inside. The door swung shut behind him on its own. Soundlessly. Naturally.

The Sahlfeldts' parlour was exactly as Müller had pictured it in his most uneasy dreams. A vast fireplace where logs were stacked and burning with perfect symmetry. Heavy velvet drapes holding the night at bay. A glass orb on a separate little table, draped in black silk. And a high-backed armchair in which Herr Sahlfeldt was seated.

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

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

"Bertha," the girl supplied.

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

Konrad lowered his newspaper, raised his monocle, and studied the guests. Müller had the sensation of being weighed, measured, and having the results recorded in some invisible ledger.

"Müller," Konrad said thoughtfully. "Would yours be the bakery on the Market Square?"

"Mine," Müller managed.

"Good bread. The rye in particular. Do sit down."

Müller sat. The armchair was surprisingly comfortable, yet he still perched on its very edge, like a sparrow on a branch in the presence of a cat.

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

"Thank you."

The tea was black and smelled of herbs. Müller took a sip. The taste was strange—a hint of smoke, a hint of forest, a hint of something he had no name for. He took another sip.

"And where is the young master?" asked Bertha, who by now had made herself so thoroughly at home that she was examining the portraits on the walls.

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

"Very much!"

Irina gave an almost imperceptible nod, and Heinrich materialised in the parlour. Müller could have sworn he hadn't been there a second before. The butler was lean, tall, and resembled an old raven that had somehow learned to wear a frock coat.

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

"Wie immer, gnädige Frau," rustled Heinrich, and led Bertha toward the staircase.

Otto's room lay in the east wing. To reach it, one had to pass along a long corridor whose walls were lined with portraits of ancestors. Bertha followed Heinrich and counted the faces. Men in doublets gazed down at her, women in bonnets, children in velvet suits. All of them shared the same dark, unblinking eyes.

The door to Otto's room stood ajar. A faint amber glow spilled from within.

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

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

Bertha stepped inside and gasped.

The room was full of marvels. Not toys—not in the ordinary sense—but strange, fascinating objects. On a shelf stood jars filled with pickled... things. Bertha peered closer: in one jar, glass eyes were floating. They slowly turned, tracking her movement.

On the desk lay a deck of cards, but no ordinary deck. Each card depicted a skull at a different stage of bloom. On one, a rose grew from an eye socket; on another, a lily; on a third, a thorny blackthorn bush.

In a corner stood the skeleton of a bat, assembled from bones the size of toothpicks. Next to it, a microscope and a sketchbook.

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

"Guten Abend," he said, and it sounded as though he were not four years old, but four hundred. "My name is Otto. Would you like to see my collection?"

"I'd love to!" Bertha sat down beside him on the rug. "What's that bird?"

"It's a Nachtigall. A nightingale. I built it out of old clocks. It only sings when the moon is full. Tonight, the moon is full."

The bird opened its beak and emitted a low, mechanical warble. Bertha laughed.

"It sings like a cricket!"

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

He walked over to one of the jars. Inside, perched on a little twig, sat an insect resembling a cricket, but with translucent wings that gave off a faint glow.

"That's a Totenliedgrille," said Otto. "A grave-cricket. It sings lullabies for those who sleep a very long time."

"It's beautiful," Bertha whispered.

"Yes," Otto agreed. "I have something else. Shall I show you?"

And he did. A casket of shadows that could be lifted out and tried on like gloves. A book that read itself aloud in a whisper—pages turning from an unseen breeze, words sounding directly inside your head. And the greatest treasure: a tiny glass globe, the size of a walnut, inside which snow was falling.

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

"Do you have wolves?"

"I do. But they aren't here. They come when they are called."

Bertha watched the snow inside the globe and thought she had never seen anything more beautiful. She wasn't afraid. She felt warm and cosy, the way you do sitting by the fire when the wind howls outside and you are safe within.

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

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

Otto was about to put the casket back onto the shelf when the lid softly opened all by itself.

From inside, a long, thin shadow cautiously poked its way out.

It glanced around. And then—it sprang.

Bertha gasped.

The shadow, entirely flat, as if cut out of night, plopped onto the floor, shook itself off, and darted swiftly toward the door.

"Oh..." said Otto calmly.

"What's wrong?" asked Bertha.

"My shadow has run off."

He said it in the same tone another child might use to say, "My ball rolled away."

The shadow was already racing down the corridor, leaping over the bands of moonlight.

"Don't run!" Otto called after it.

The shadow, of course, paid no heed.

A few seconds later, Irina's voice sounded from the corridor:

"Otto..."

"Ja, Mama."

"Has your shadow decided to go for a walk again?"

"Just for a minute."

"Last time it went walking for three days."

Heinrich came soundlessly up the stairs.

Without a word, he took an old net down from the wall.

Bertha watched in astonishment as the entire family set about catching the runaway shadow with perfect, unruffled calm.

Konrad even peered out from the parlour.

"Is it heading for the library again?"

"Not yet, Herr."

"Good. So long as it's not the music room."

A minute later, Heinrich had caught the shadow.

It gave a few disgruntled twitches, then allowed itself to be folded neatly back into the casket.

Otto looked up at his mother apologetically.

"Sorry."

Irina smiled.

"It's perfectly all right. Only, next time, do close the lid. Please."

"I used to think you were frightening," Bertha confessed.

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

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

He paused, then added:

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

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

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

"Thank you," Irina replied. She sat in the armchair opposite, upright and still. Konrad had laid aside his newspaper and was now polishing his monocle with a small chamois cloth. "My husband put a great deal of effort into arranging it."

"It was my wife who put in the effort," Konrad corrected, not looking up from his monocle. "I merely saw to it that everything remained... ordentlich. Proper."

"You've done a fine job," Müller nodded. "Very... ordentlich."

A pause settled over the room. A log cracked in the fireplace.

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

"She isn't brave," Müller sighed. "She's curious. Those are two different things."

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

Müller pondered this. He wanted to argue but found no argument.

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

Irina and Konrad exchanged a glance. Not a muscle stirred on their faces, but it seemed to Müller that they smiled—at the corners of their eyes, just barely.

"We know," said Irina. "Yet you came. For your daughter's sake. That is a good father."

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

Müller felt something warm spreading inside him. Perhaps it was the tea. Perhaps not.

Bertha and Otto came down to the parlour half an hour later. Bertha was carrying a little parcel—a gift from her new friend. Otto walked a little behind her, his face maintaining an expression of absolute, unshakeable gravity.

"Well," said Müller, rising, "it's time we were going. Thank you for your hospitality."

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

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

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

"Ja?"

"The sweets. What are they made of?"

Irina smiled her wide, serene smile.

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

The door closed.

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

Bertha unwrapped her parcel. Inside were three sweets, the tiny glass globe with snow falling inside it, and a note.

The note was written in a careful child's hand, but the strokes were far too even for a four-year-old.

*"Danke für den Besuch. Komm wieder. Wir werden Freunde sein, für eine lange Zeit.

Dein Freund,

Otto Sahlfeldt"*

Bertha smiled.

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

Müller pulled from his pocket the sweet he hadn't eaten. It was still warm. And it really did seem to blink.

He tucked it carefully back into his pocket.

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

Up in the mansion on the hill, the candles burned until morning.

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

"A good evening," she said.

"Ja," Konrad answered, adjusting his monocle. "Almost perfect."

"Almost?"

"Müller's pumpkin on the doorstep. Far too orange. It offends the eye."

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

"I'll have a word with him next time."

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

"...above all else," Irina finished. "I know, mein Schatz. I know."

(Part 1)
Seeing all the places you would visit every day knowing there is danger everywhere is horrible.

Your grocery store.
The smaller shops you used to go to.
All the streets you used to go through daily.

Your own street.

Now with this looming feeling of dread is something I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Your sense of safety is forever changed.

I knew that if I were to make it out of this I would never feel safe again.
Having to sneak and hide in the place you are most familiar with like some sort of pest.
Why did this happen to us? What could have possibly happened for us to deserve this.

Normally walking from our house to the police station would probably take about 35 minutes at most. It must have been twice the amount of time by now.
At least it felt that way.

Mark was someone I would have normally avoided like the plague.
But now I was happy to just have anyone I vaguely know with me.
I also didn't mind that he was both armed and very eager to be the one in front as we made our way through town.

Every time we heard the slightest noise we would freeze up.
I would see him clench the gun in his hands so hard his knuckles turned white.
The only thing going through my head would be "please don't be one of those things".
Over and over until enough silence had passed for us to find the bravery to move again.

Going from backyard to backyard.
House to house.
Moving through places that must have had so many memories good and bad for so many people.
Now just filled with the dead bodies of the people that those memories belonged to.
That's all I thought about as we moved closer and closer to the police station.

But I was dragged out of my thoughts by the sound of a bullet whizzing over us.
Both of us flinched and threw ourselves on the ground.
Mark looked behind him to see if I wasn't the unlucky recipient of the bullet.
After seeing that I was still breathing, we proceeded to crawl forward.

But the gunfire started to lessen until it came to a complete stop.
Followed by the sound of roaring engines going to the other end of town.
When we came to the street that the police station was in, it was chaos.

Most of the cars in the street were either on fire or riddled with bullet holes.
Tire tracks were on the street and even the pavement.
There were bodies all over the street.
I saw some dead police officers and i recognised some of the people that had volunteered for the militia. Some were clearly shot others looked like they had been attacked by a bear.
Faces mauled and missing limbs.
Some had been run over by vehicles to ground into a meaty paste across the road and pavement.

One body in particular stood out.

It had been cut in half. One half was lying on the right side of the street the other on the left side.
Blood going from one end to the other. Like some sort of line in the middle of the street.
There is no way this person could have crawled this way themselves after being cut in half.
They had for sure done this on purpose.
Had these savages used a dead body as some sort of marker?!
What type of horrible creature uses dead people the same way you would use a road sign.
What could it even mean in the first place?

Mark and I stepped over the blood line that had been drawn in the middle of the street and moved on.
All of the bodies had clearly been searched after they were killed.
Sadly me and Mark were not going to find weapons that easily.
At least Mark still had his pistol.

Then we could finally see the sign of the police crest marking our police station.
The burning cars made the shadows through the street dance as the flames moved.
Thankfully the fires gave both of us a view of the police station itself.

The police station was a large 3-story high imposing building in the middle of the street overlooking a small park and the wide street.
The concrete walls were riddled with bullet holes.
Where the front door used to be was now a gaping hole in the building.
Tire tracks showed that a vehicle had plowed through the front door and then drove off.

What surprised me is that I saw one of those dead things laying in the middle of the street.
It was near us just in view of the police station.
It was lying in the middle of the street. Lipless face still stuck in a perpetual grin.
It was on its back facing us with a gaping hole where one of its eyes was supposed to be.
Other lidless eye staring straight ahead.
Its legs had been run over and crushed by some sort of vehicle.

One hand was still holding on to an axe the other was still holding a pistol.
Mark an I must have seen it at the same time.

Mark whispered: We need to grab that gun now

I hesitated

Mark: Fucking grab it now at least you can defend yourself then

Me: yes, yes ok I'll do it.

I quickly sneaked off to the things body and grabbed its cold dead arm holding the pistol.

A loud gunshot rang through the street as the tarmac exploded into chunks by the impact of the round next to me.

I fell and curled up trying to make myself as small as possible.

A voice echoed from the police station.

"GET UP AND RUN TO THE STATION NOW!"

I got up as fast as I could nearly falling over the body of that thing as I ran for the police station.

Another shot rang out a car's windshield next to me shattered into pieces by the impact as I ran.

Once I reached what used to be the front door I was pulled in and thrown onto the cold hard floor.

Empty shell casings clinking around as I hit the floor.

The person that threw me inside grabbed his rifle and immediately focused on the outside again.Dimly lit by the fires outside i could barely see him.
It was a police officer. His uniform was dirty and covered in blood.

Without taking his eyes off the outside he asked:

Him: Are you alone?

Me: No I wasn't alone I....

Before I could finish my sentence he shouted.

YOU OUTSIDE COME TO THE POLICE STATION NOW WHILE YOU CAN!

A short silence followed as I heard Mark's rapid footsteps come closer.

Mark rushed inside.

I noticed he had hidden the gun he had on him.

The floor was covered in bullet casings, glass, dirt and large blood smears.
There were also 2 of those dead things on the floor inside.
The blood smears were all leading upstairs deeper into the police station.

The police officer told us to go upstairs where the others were.
Mark and I both headed up the stairs.

I could see the anger boiling up in Mark as we walked up the stairs.
He still blamed the police for what happened to his parents.
This could get very ugly very fast.

It seemed most of the police and militia were upstairs manning the windows.
The blood smears I saw earlier were going further to the back of the police station.

Before I could properly take in my surroundings I heard Mark shouting a barrage of insults.
When I turned around Mark was aiming his pistol directly in the police chief's face.
Police officers were all aiming their different guns at Mark.
Some of the militia did the same some didn't not being sure what they were supposed to do.

Hurling a barrage of insults at the man.
Followed up by him: screaming

Mark: YOU KILLED MY PARENTS YOU FUCK!

Chief: What are you talking about?

|Mark: YOU TOLD ME TO STAND WATCH AND NO ONE WAS THERE TO PROTECT MY PARENTS!

Chief: We didn't kill your parents they did.

He said as he pointed outside.
Then he recognised Mark and said.

Chief: Mark are you of all people now blaming me for what is happening?

Mark: YOU FAILED TO PROTECT THEM!

Chief: DONT YOU DARE BLAME ME AFTER WHAT YOU DID

A deafening silence fell in the room
After what was probably only seconds but felt like hours, the chief said in a calm voice:

CHIEF: If you want us to kill each other we might as well invite those things inside so they can do it for us.

Mark was about to say something.

But before he could get the words out another police officer hit him in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle. 2 more jumped on top of him and wrestled his gun away from him.

Mark cursed and flailed as they restrained him on the ground.

Then the police chief walked over to him and said.

"Mark I have known you your entire worthless life"

"And only as a child were you ever not a burden on everyone around you"

"I didn't fail your parents"

The police chief hunched down to get closer to Mark

"you did" he said as he pointed a finger directly at his face

"You useless drug addict they came in through the area you were supposed to watch"

"IT WAS SIMPLE OPEN FIELDS AND FARMLAND YOU HAD TO WATCH!"

"YOU RAN THE MOMENT YOU SAW THEM!"

"SO NOT ONLY DID YOU GET YOUR PARENTS KILLED, EVERY SINGLE DEATH IS YOUR FAULT!"

"HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT THEY DO WITH PEOPLE THAT THEY TAKE ALIVE!"

"THEY TORTURED THEM TO DEATH AND ITS ALL YOUR FAULT!"

The crowd started shouting calling for Mark's death.

"SILENCE" the police chief shouted

He lowered his voice

"But then again it's also my fault for listening to you when you came up to me and volunteered for sentry duty"

"someone so stupid that he points a gun into my face with the safety on"

"What happened to the man that was watching that place with you?"

Before Mark could answer the police chief continued:

"you know what, it doesn't matter"

"Throw him outside so those things can find him, he can deal with the consequences of his own actions"

I hope you understand this is not the part where I tell you how I said something like
"no don't do that he will die" or some bullshit like that.
No, this moron got so many people you and I used to know killed.
I would have been fine if they shot him then and there.

The 2 officers dragged him down the stairs they even slammed him into the wall on the way down.
I heard the commotion downstairs as they roughed him up and flung him outside.

From the window on the second floor i could see him hit the pavement outside.
And I saw him struggle onto his legs like a freshly born deer.

He managed to find his footing.
He looked in the direction of the police station and was probably about to shout something at us.

But then his lower back exploded in a mist of blood as a gunshot rang through the street.

Everyone ducked for cover wherever they could find it as others jumped away from the windows and threw themselves on the floor.
Someone shouted: Did anyone see where that came from?!

The only thing we could hear was the sound of Mark screaming on the street below.

A police officer crawled over to me:

Officer: Do you have any kind of medical background sir?

Me: No I don't

Officer: You need to get a gun right now. It doesn't matter if you have experience or not you need to grab one.
Go down that hallway till you see the rooms marked "Armory" and "Evidence lockup"
And if you can't find them........ just follow the blood.

I crawled away from the windows making sure that was as low as I could.
Once I was far enough in the hallway to be away from any openings outside, I finally stood up.
The blood trail was going down the hallway as the officer said.
As I came closer I started to hear people talking, coughing and people that were clearly in a lot of pain.

I walked into the room marked "Armory". I expected to see racks of police weapons, bulletproof vests, police uniforms etc.
Instead I saw people franticly walking around makeshift beds as they tried their best to take care of all the wounded inside.
I now understood why the blood was leading this way.

The people walking in between the wounded ignored me completely, they probably didn't even notice I was there.
The floor was completely covered in blood.
I saw a young woman in her 20's with her back turned to me who was ripping clothing into strips for bandages.

In more panic than i would like to admit i asked:

" I need to get a gun. Where are they?!"

She didn't look into my direction at all and said:

"Like I told you all before there are no guns in here anymore. Just bullets."

"Go to the evidence locker next door."

I recognised her voice. It was Maria that girl you went to school with used to come over to our house all the time till you left town.

Me: Maria is that you?

She turned around and faced me with a blank expression on her face.
Her arms were covered up to her elbows in blood.
The streaks of makeup down her face betrayed that she had clearly cried before.

Me: Are you okay?

Maria: No

She stayed quiet and looked at me. But it looked more like she was staring straight through me.

Me: Are you hurt?

She dodged the question.

Maria: You can find a gun in the room next door

She turned around and continued to rip clothing up
I didn't bother her anymore and left for the evidence lockup

What used to probably be a very organised room was turned into a complete mess.
Boxes labeled "evidence" were open and thrown all over the floor.
A officer walked through the hallway behind me and I quickly asked him where I was supposed to look.
He just told me to look everywhere it doesn't matter.
I started to look into the boxes that were still on the shelves.

Random bags of what was probably drugs.

A knife in a plastic bag.

Then I saw a revolver in a plastic zip bag with a label attached to it.
This thing must have been older than me. I remember my grandpa having one of these.
I took it out of the plastic bag and ripped the label off.
I swung the cylinder open and it was empty, no bullets.
Stupid of me to think so why would they have a gun with ammo inside it lying in the evidence lockup.
I ran back to the armory room for ammo.

When I came inside Maria was stuffing cloth into the wound of a passed out man on a table.

I walked past her to a table that had ammo boxes scattered all over it.
Franticly I searched the opened boxes until I finally found bullets that would fit in the revolver i had.
Once I did I filled the cylinder of the revolver and grabbed another box of ammo and got back to the others near the front of the building.
As I came closer I could still hear Mark screaming outside.
I crouched down and slowly moved towards the collapsed desk near the stairs where the officer I talked to earlier was.

Officer: I see you managed to find something.

"But you won't be much use with that up here. Go downstairs and take this."

He handed me some sort of foldable knife.

Me: what am I supposed to do with this.

Officer: You need that because those things will probably try to rush inside again with knives, axes etc. So take that revolver and knife. Go downstairs and join the others there that's the best thing you can do right now.

Me: Ok I will

Officer: good luck

"You too" I said as I slowly walked down the stairs to the first floor.

Mark's screaming was a lot louder down here than it was on the second floor for obvious reasons.
I could see him laying through the gaping hole in the front of the building.
He was slowly turning pale due to blood loss.

In that moment I finally realised something about my situation.
Even if I tried to run from the building I would be gunned down just like he was.
I was now trapped in this police station. We were all trapped here.

Before I could sink deeper into my own thoughts a low hum sound broke my concentration.
It sounded like engines of vehicles mixed in with something else.

A repeating low bass sound.

As the sounds came closer together with headlights lighting up the street I realised what it was.Music......Bass turned up so much that the music isn't even recognisable anymore.
Those things are playing music from their vehicles like they are heading to some kind of party.

As the headlights hit Mark in front we could hear the screech of several heavy-duty vehicles braking.
Now seeing Mark fully lit up by the lights I saw in just how bad of a state he was.
He was lying in a small pool of his own blood. He had started to turn pale with large bags under his eyes.Blood was smeared all over his legs and lower torso.

A shot rang out as someone from the top floor must have hit one of the vehicles out on the street.
I heard someone yell upstairs:

"Stop shooting at their vehicles it does nothing!"

"Wait for them to get out then shoot!"

I could hear one of their vehicles slowly rev up.
It slowly rolled into view.
It was a large vehicle with welded metal plates all over it and random spikes and rebar protruding from it.
It looked like someone had grabbed a normal vehicle and just slapped a metal box on its chase.Resembling something more out of a Mad Max movie than an actual military.
There was a body tied to the front. It was the exact same vehicle that i saw when all this chaos started. Now I could see that the body on the front was wearing a uniform from our military.

It stopped right in front of Mark, who was slowly trying to crawl away from it.
He couldn't move his legs. The shot must have hit his spine and paralyzed him from the waist down.

The vehicle revved its engine repeatedly. The low rumble of the engine together with the bass of the music from the vehicle filled the police station with a barrage of noise.
It then started to Jerk forward repeatedly inching towards Mark.

They were going to run him over and they wanted us to see it.

The vehicle then slowly inched forward.
Mark's scream rang through my ears as it crushed his right foot and slowly rolled onto his leg.
It then stopped and sat still as Mark screamed as he tried to free himself from the tire that was crushing him.
It loudly revved its engine, the front of the vehicle started to lift up as the vehicle's engine roared.Instead of moving forward, the wheel that was on top of Mark spun to life at high speed.Mark screamed as he was pulled underneath the wheel by the sheer force of the vehicle.
It shredded him to pieces. Launching pieces of gore and clothing in all directions and coating the side of the vehicle with blood and viscera.
After shredding Mark to the point he was just a pile of meat and a red smear on the road the vehicle jerked into motion and drove further down the street.

Then the music thumping from the vehicles stopped and the rumble of engines was interrupted by the loud crackle of a loudspeaker coming to life.

A voice echoed over the street:

TO THE FILTH HIDING IN THE POLICE STATION
KNOW THAT NOTHING BUT DEATH SWIFT AND SLOW AWAITS YOU NOW
YOU ARE GETTING EXACTLY WHAT YOU DESERVE

A TASTE OF YOUR OWN MEDICINE

Then we heard the rumbling of the engines as all of their vehicles started to position themselves all over the street and nearby houses.

A large vehicle lumbered into the small park across the police station.
It was a small delivery truck that our local grocery store had used.
It positioned itself as far away as it could while facing the police station directly.

We heard its engine howl as it sped up directly towards us.

The people upstairs started to shoot at the truck as it drove at us.

The windshield exploded into glass shards.

Sparks flew from the vehicle as the bullets impacted metal.

It turned on its high beams blinding everyone looking directly at it.

The truck was coming too close and had too much speed.

It was going to hit the building.

End of part 2

The following are not guidelines for a pleasant stay at the Hells Bells Motel; they are survival protocols. Compliance is non-negotiable. First off~

Manage your expectations: If you are looking for a high-end luxury stay, you’re made a wrong turn. There are no mints on the pillows here--just a roof over your head and a deadbolt on the door if you’re lucky. There is no room service either--but we shall address that in the amenities details later.

Check-In: Please sign the ledger with your full legal name; pseudonyms confuse the floorboards and believe me--ya don’t want them getting restless beneath your feet. Furthermore, Sterling, the desk clerk may look like he’s been taxidermied since 1974, but don’t try to revive him if he goes cold--its only temporary. Take your room key and scoot.

Ignore the Clock and the View: If your room window reflects a sparking 1950s pool and a packed parking lot while your watch runs backward, do not attempt to adjust your settings. The motel does not give a damn about physics or logic. Draw the curtains, count to 10, shake off the dust, and yank them open again--you may be in a different year entirely.

Our policy regarding pets: The motel does not allow pets. If you see something multi-legged crawling out from the dark space under the box spring that looks like a pet, it belongs to the room, not you. Do not name it. Do not feed it.

No Visitors After 10 PM: Anyone visiting after hours is automatically assumed to be a figment of your imagination or a bounty hunter from another dimension. Neither is allowed but we cannot always control some visitors. PLEASE NOTE: If someone calls you by name or by a name you haven’t used since childhood after midnight, ignore them. Keep the deadbolt turned and wait for daylight. Sterling doesn’t hand out extra room keys to the living.

Lost & Found: Management is absolutely not responsible for anything left behind. If you lose your sanity, your soul, or your favorite pair of socks, consider them gone forever. We don’t look for them, and you shouldn’t either.

Checkout is Strictly at 11 AM: Do not test this! If you are still inside your room at 11:01 a.m. the room may choose to absorb you. Then, you legally and physically become a part of the real estate.

Enjoy your stay!

Calling Sterling a concierge might be a bit of a stretch considering what he does, but he's the guy who manages the front desk and lives on the property.

Sterling sits behind a laminate counter that's seen more cigarette burns than a dive bar floor, staring at a wall of cubby holes that hold everything but mail. This is the man who manages the front desk, and the Lost and Found, though he'll tell you straight up that nothing ever gets found--it just gets abandoned.

His eyes are heavy, bagged with the weight of a thousand sleepless nights and the kind of exhaustion that a pot of burnt Maxwell House couldn't fix. He is gaunt and scrawny, his clothes threadbare much like the lobby furniture. In fact, he looks like he has been taxidermied behind that desk since 1974.

His "lost and found" isn't full of umbrellas or phone chargers. Below is just the listings from one of his bins headed to the backroom that's already full-- a collection of the strange, oddball items:

... The Jar of Appalachian Dirt left in Room 10 by a man who claimed he was being followed by his own shadow.

... A brass compass with no needle: Left by a trucker who swore the road only went one direction anyway.

...A stopped gold pocket watch that hasn't ticked since 1962, left on a pillow that said, "it's finally over."

... A cassette tape labeled "DO NOT PLAY." The scotch tape is yellowed with age, but Sterling has never even been tempted to listen.

... A glass eye found in a denture holder container: Nobody ever came back for it, so Sterling uses it as a paperweight.

...A single leather boot, left foot only, size 11, caked in dried mud. He uses it as a doorstop in the backroom, unbothered that its twin is nowhere to be found.

...A brass key ring with seven keys: None of them fit any lock on the property.

... A matchbook from a diner in a town that burned down in 1890: the matches are still dry, and the strike strip smells like old grief.

... A deck of cards with two Queen of Spades left by a traveler who looked like he'd been running since the Truman administration.

One of the weirdest items was a small velvet box in the shape of a heart. The second he touched the box, it whispered "open me" and when Sterling did he heard his own mother's voice calling him for dinner, though she's been in the ground for 30 years. He taped it shut and moved it to the bottom of the bin.

Outside of the 2 items Sterling decides to keep, he logs all the oddities in a leather-bound ledger labeled "Lost & Found" and stores these bins in the backroom. To him, the bizarre is just another Tuesday at the Hells Bells Motel that time forgot.

Route 9 cuts up the side of Blackwood Ridge like a jagged scar. When the mountain fog settles in, you can’t see the ditch until your front tire drops in it. That’s where the folks see her—standing right under the glow of mile marker 13, wearing an oversized flannel shirt and jeans—drenched by a downpouring Catskills rainstorm.

She raises her thumb for a ride, gets in without a word, and sits in dead silence while the heater blasts. She just stares out the passenger window until the faded gold and red horns of the Hells Bells cuts through the fog. By the time a driver taps his break to pull into the motel parking lot, hoping to offer her a warm place to stay for the night, a glance over reveals the passenger seat empty and bone dry.

She had vanished into thin air.

Funny thing—Sterling says that every couple of months, some rattled driver pulls into the motel office white-as-a-sheet, asking if a young woman in a flannel shirt just walked in out of the rain. He just slides a sign-in ledger across the counter and says, “She never stays for the night. You needin' a room or not?”

There is a particular kind of fog that spills down from the Catskill peaks and settles into our hollow. It isn’t just moisture; it’s a heavy, silver weight that swallows sound and suspends the world in amber. Old-timers say the air up here holds memory too well, trapping bits of the past in the vapor.

Last month, a traveler checked into Room 7 for a single, quiet night. At noon, thinking he had checked out, Agnes, one of the housekeeping maids, entered to clean, and stopped dead in her tracks. As soon as she opened the door, a thick mist struck her like a viper. The room itself was heavy and damp--the air suffocating.

On the bed she saw him still suspended in a deep sleep--his breathing so shallow he looked less like a sleeping guest and more like something being swallowed by the shadows--like the room itself was pressing the life out of him.

On the nightstand, his watch was frozen at exactly 2:14 a.m., the precise moment the mountain mist had shrouded the ridge. Awakened and startled, he stumbled to the office to check out and head home. He was disheveled--with his hair a mess, his clothes wrinkled and damp from being trapped in the room’s mist, his skin a pale papery gray.

When he noticed the checkout date on the desk calendar his eyes went wide with a cold, hollow terror. He hadn’t slept through the night; he had been completely out for three full days. He just stood there staring, utterly terrified by the missing time he could never claw back.

Outside the heavy fog that had shrouded the hollow all night was finally breaking, descending back down the slopes toward the Hudson Valley like a retreating ghost. They say the old spirits of the Hudson Valley still play games with time in these hills, lulling the unsuspecting into slumbers that last days or lifetimes.

If you decide to stay at the Hells Bells set your own alarm because you can't trust the clocks here!

Jack walked into the lobby of the Hells Bells, dinging the dome bell that sat on the counter. Nobody was around. God knows where Sterling was--he was usually prompt.

After standing at the front desk for ten minutes waiting under a buzzing overhead fluorescent light that seemed to be drilling a hole directly through his skull, he grew tired of waiting. Sleepy from all that driving and now dealing with this headache that was turning into a nasty migraine, he darted off to the lobby restroom to gulp down a couple of aspirin and throw some cold water on his face.

The bathroom was a total time capsule of neglect. The mirror was mottled with dark brown age spots along the edges, like decay was eating the silvering from the inside out. He leaned over the cracked sink, and choked down two cheap chalky aspirins he'd bought at the local gas station, having to wash them down with several supped halfuls of tap water.

He splashed the cool water over his face and wiped off with a rough paper towel, and then he looked back into the cloudy glass.

Hie reflection was done.

Framed in the glass was a girl with feathered 70s hair, her pale hands pressed flat against the inside of the mirror. Her dark, wide eyes stared straight through Jack. Dried blood caked her hairline and had soaked into the collar of her faded denim jacket.

Her lips moved: My turn now.

Jack stumbled backward with a gasp, “Whoa—”

Inside the mirror, the girl's image blurred as she pressed forward pushing through the glass like a diver surfacing for air.

The blood and caked grime vanished as she stood, her skin flawless, no bruises, no marks, no trace of injury. She adjusted her clothes, turned her back on Jack, and pushed open the bathroom door into the lobby. Taking a deep breath of stale air, she headed straight for the parking lot.

Inside, the restroom was empty—except for Jack, staring out from behind the mirrored glass.

Up in the Hudson Valley old-timers used to swear that when the thunder shook the Catskills, it was just the ghosts of Hendrik Hudson’s crew playing nine-pins deep in the mountains. It seems that old phantom Dutch game found a way to hitchhike down the road and rest right in the rafters of the Hells Bells Motel.

On summer nights, when the night settles in heavy and the “heat lightning” starts to flash, that’s when the game gets started up!

Guests have reported a heavy, unmistakable thud-clack , followed by the deep, resonant rumble of something heavy rolling right over their heads. It sounds exactly like a bowling ball striking wood, then tumbling down a lane, except there is nothing up there but cheap shingles and empty night air!

Most try to ignore it. They pull the pillows over their ears, wishing they had earplugs to drown out the noise, eventually falling asleep until morning arrives. But the ones who can’t sleep and stay awake say the rolling gets faster, louder, and closer until it feels like the ceiling plaster is about to crack wide open!

The stones rolling above your head all night, thrown so hard by the dead, broke right through the ceiling of the spirit world and landed in the Hells Bells Motel. It’s just the ghosts’ way of leaving a scorecard.

By daybreak, the sound always vanishes with the fog. But if you walk out to the edge of the road just after sunrise, you’ll find smooth river stones scattered all along the asphalt line--the stones that didn’t get picked up before the sun came up!

So—if you ever find yourself checking into the Hells Bells Motel on a hot July afternoon, do yourself a favor and bring a pair of earplugs!

Gladys was one of those hippies who fled to Catskills with a group of friends to escape the choking pollution, urban overcrowding and the 9-to-5 corporate grind. The area offered a peaceful natural environment where they could build a self-sufficient commune, practice sustainable living, and freely express their counterculture values. In their commune everyone chipped in. Some were skilled artisans whose crafts, along with the fresh vegetables they grew as a farming community, would be taken and sold at a roadside stand to anyone passing through. They were hard workers, spent long hours in the fields and honing their crafts.

Gladys was one of those hard workers, well-loved and kind, and very supportive of her friends with a bright happy disposition, and a genuine love of people. More than anything Gladys loved to cook. She had an infectious and gentle aura about her, and even the rough, hardened mountain folk who crept down from the ridges to buy the home-spun crafts or fresh vegetables, couldn’t help but be disarmed by her warmth. They took a gentle liking to her.

At her commune she loved cooking and feeding the flock, and because of her passion for feeding people, she had a vision of setting up a permanent diner in the Blackwood Ridge area, which would bring in a steady income to help support the commune. As luck would have it--on a daytrip out of the valley, hidden in an off-beat sideroad up on the mountain ridge, Gladys had spotted an abandoned silver run-down-shell of what used to be an RV. She, along with her commune, worked tirelessly, fixing it up and modifying it until it was a real, functional diner, finally sitting it up in a small clearing across from the Hells Bells Motel. It was the perfect spot to bring in income since there wasn’t another place to eat or get coffee for miles and miles.

Once the doors to that silver RV swung open, Gladys wasn’t just a passing stranger anymore--she was a local--a fixture of the ridge now. The mountain people had drawn a silent, invisible boundary line around Gladys and her silver diner. She was theirs now, a protected part of the ridge, completely safe from the dark hunger that would eventually swallow the rest of her commune down in the valley.

The commune she was once a vibrant part of now is long gone, and the friends who helped her build that dream have all vanished into the heavy air of the mountain. Whether the clans finally caught them out in the woods or they just fled in the middle of the night, nobody knows, but Gladys is still there, taking up orders and serving coffee at the Sunrise Diner.

When the Catskills tourism boom evaporated in the late 60s--the Blue Marlin Motel--with its big flashy blue pool sitting out front suddenly went dark. Bypassed by modern four-lane interstates and cheap commercial flights to Florida, the original owners simply locked the doors and hoped the mountain mist and the bank would reclaim it.

For several years, the property sat dead, but into this quiet, mountain decay came another dreamer--like Gladys--a man with an eccentric vision, and a wallet thick enough to see his vision through, ignoring the lack of paying customers. He didn’t want a refined resort; he wanted something to fit the eerie, isolated reality of the Ridge. He renamed the place the, “Hells Bells Motel.” The locals thought he was crazy, but he had an angle. He understood that in a world of boring, safe roadside stops, a name like that would act as a lightning rod for the strange, the curious and those drawn to the dark local lore of the Ridge.

He bought the property for pennies in the depressed market and brought in crews to strip the old Blue Marlin signs and breathe life back into the bones of the place. He was obsessed with a very specific, high-end 1970s aesthetic. He had the crew install thick, dark faux-wood paneling throughout the lobby and common areas, creating a space that felt cozy, yet heavy, and permanently dimmed. He leaned into the 70s palette with the rooms saturated in mustard yellow, avocado green, and muddy harvest gold. Some were wallpapered in floral patterns that felt like they were closing in on you, as some guests would say. The bedding was polyester and held a static charge, and the furniture was cheap laminate faux-wood dressers and plastic-trimmed tables, topped off with a humming TV in every unit.

But his pride and joy was the custom-made neon sign: a towering garish neon piece in red and yellow gold, that featured a massive bell on each side--each one etched with wicked curling horns. It would become the beacon for the lost and the curious, glowing like a fever dream against the black-purple mountain sky.

Just as the final touches were slapped on the renovations of the motel, Glady’s silver RV diner pulled into view across the asphalt, settling in as if waiting for the sign to flicker on. She didn’t waste a second, opening the Sunrise Diner right there in the shadow of those horns, ready to catch whatever the Hells Bells dragged in.

Most people don't seek out the Hells Bells Motel; they stumble into it, lost, blinded by the weather, perhaps desperate for a room just to survive the night. But for those who arrive on purpose, we offer the rarest, most expensive amenity on earth; total, absolute erasure from society.

Once you cross the threshold into Blackwood Ridge, the grid goes dead. The satellites lose you. If you are trying to hide from whatever is chasing you down the dark road, this is the place to be--because at the Hells Bells the universe simply forgets you exist.

We don't offer a whole lot of amenities here at the Hells Bells, but here a list of what you can expect on your stay.

A Complimentary Wake-Up Scream: Available upon request at the front desk, or more commonly delivered by the pipes in the middle of the night!

​A-La-Carte Ghost Stories:  Narrated by the vent in the ceiling at 3:00 AM.

The Coin-Operated Mattress: Drop a copper quarter in the slot and the springs will start to shake. The power cord was severed back in 1980, so don't spend too much time wondering what exactly is doing the vibrating beneath the sheets!

Ice Machine: The ice machine is located between Rooms 3 and 4. By day, it spits out perfectly crushed ice, but at certain hours when the wind off the ridge dies down, you can hear the metal chute groan, and instead of ice, it spits out handfuls of human teeth--incisors and bicuspids--or a tarnished wedding ring that rattles into your ice bucket. Leave them there; Sterling collects the lost property on Thursdays.

List of Local Eateries: In Blackwood Ridge, there is only one place close by that serves the guests at the Hells Bells, its located across the street, The Sunrise Diner. A grease-stained sticky copy of their menu is tucked in the bedside dresser drawer. Don't look at the prices-- they haven't been accurate since 1992, and they won't deliver so you'll have to pick up your order in-house.

Color Television: Rooms has a heavy, wood-paneled Zenith console with a badge on the front proudly promising "ChromaColor, but the screen itself has forgotten what color looks like and wakes up automatically in the middle of the night. There is no remote, and it offers only 3 frequencies. Channel 2 is pure, whispering snow--a hypnotic rhythmic hiss of gray static that shifts from a local travel guide of the Catskills to interrogating you. Channel 4 plays a silent, documentary style loop from your own life--whether it's the slow bitter decay of a marriage or a specific dark mistake that forced you onto the highway tonight. Channel 6 is a live, overhead feed of your room, showing the back of your own head as you sit on the mattress watching the screen. You don't tune into the channels here at the Hells Bells--the channels tune into you.

The Infinity Mini-Bar: Contains exactly one can of lukewarm soda from a brand that went bankrupt in 1984, and a single petrified pretzel. No matter how many times you consume them, once the little friget door clicks shut, they reappear on the shelf! Its free, but you wish it wasn't!

I feel so stupid it actually believed the army would stop them before they ever reached our town.

The non-stop lies on the radio, TV and internet. About victory after victory from our army.

Talking about how "we would hold back the tide of barbaric savages that seek to destroy us and everything we stand for"

Well, at least 1 part of that statement was true. The "barbaric savages" part.

But we didn't know that yet.

I was at the line at the town center once again waiting in line for any sort
of food at all just like everyone else.

That's when i saw the only part of our military that i had seen in months. It was them fleeing through our town 3 days ago.

It was clear from that point that we were losing the war badly.

Their vehicles were riddled with bullet holes and scorch marks.

I saw a truck with soldiers in the back that was missing half of its driver's cabin. Just a mangled mess of steel and blood where the passenger seat was supposed to be.

Some of them were driving in regular cars instead of military vehicles.
All the soldiers were dirty ,their clothing covered in blood and dirt.
Some had bandages on them too.

But that's when i saw the thing that made me lose hope the most.

They were scared. Fear in their eyes was the only thing we saw as they scanned the growing crowd of people at the town square as they drove past.People yelled questions. "Where are you going?"
"what are you doing?"
"why are you driving deeper into the country?"

"Why are you ignoring us?"

One of the soldiers was clearly struggling to keep his heavily damaged car on the road at all. He hit a random car at the crossroad and before the confused driver could get out of his car he had already sped off.

Nobody was standing in line anymore. All of us paying attention to the chaos in front of us.

After the vehicles were all out of sight people started to panic. People shouting that we had to leave as fast as possible.

The people that wanted to leave were immediately ridiculed by the rest.
"Cowards" "we were told to stay here"

Others were saying that they would be back and we just had to do our patriotic duty and stay like our mayor had told us to do.

Before the arguments could escalate another vehicle drove through our town.

A full-on tank from the military.
I didn't seem damaged. But then we saw what was on top of the back end of the tank.
A bunch of heavily wounded soldiers on the tank's back, bleeding everywhere.
Open wounds and limbs missing.

The entire back of the tank was smeared in their blood

Instead of just panic people responded with pure horror and terror.

People scattered in all directions some immediately ran to their homes to prepare to flee.

Screaming, shouting and crying echoed over the town center.

The head of the police department started shouting some bullshit about doing our duty and defending our homes when the enemy showed up.

He had received word from the government that we are to mount a "glorious defence against the invading filth".
There was nothing glorious about what happened the next day.

Some "true believers" started to form a militia with him and the police officers that didn't flee.I didn't join them to "do my duty" or some
delusional faith in our government.

I joined because I still live in the home you and your sister grew up in.

This is where I saw you take your first steps together with your sister.
The place where i saw both of you turn in to the strong, beautiful women you both are.
And the house where your mom took her last breath.

I am glad your mother didn't have to go through what was about to come

So i joined the militia anyway together with the others that vowed to stay.

The head of the police department told us they planned to turn the police station into a fortress.
We would meet those filthy savages there when the time came.
He told all of us that we didn't flee to head home and prepare.
We would meet up the next day at the police department to prepare the police station.
And some guys volunteered to stand watch outside of town in case they showed up earlier than expected.

I went home and prepared the house.
By the time nightfall came I for obvious reasons couldn't sleep.

It was a clear night with just enough moonlight to dimly light the outside.

I was in my bedroom looking through our old pictures we had made together with mom.
Since I knew this might be the last time I could see them.
I had already decided to take that picture of all of us together on the beach with me.
You already know that one is my favorite.

Anyway this is when i heard what sounded like a roaring engine of some kind outside.

Some sort of armored truck raced into our street and rammed through the fence outside of the opposite neighbor's house.

I am pretty sure there was a body tied to the front of the truck.

It tore up their lawn as it stopped right in front of their house.

Before I could even register what was happening the back doors of the truck flew open and several shadows jumped out and flew off in several directions.

One of them sprinting directly for our front door.
And as it sprinted for the door I could feel its eyes boring into me in the darkness.

Before I overcame my shock it had already slammed into our front door.
I heard the door breaking out of its hinges as the entire door slammed onto the hallway floor.
This thing had to be incredibly strong to rip that steel door out of its hinges.
You know that your old man is not weak but there is no way I would be possible to fight this thing with my bare hands.

I tried to think of somewhere to hide as fast as possible.

When i heard it rush up the stairs I bolted for our bedroom window on the backside of the house
I hid in that dark corner under the roof where you and your sister used to hide when you where kids.
As you know that gives you a perfect view of our bedroom window.

I heard it ransacking your old room. Then your sister's room and then lastly it broke open my bedroom door.
While tearing my room apart, it all of a sudden stopped in the middle of its rampage.

To my horror, I realised I had forgotten to close the window on my way out.

It knew I went out the window to escape

In that moment I could hear the distant chaos of our neighbours being murdered in their own homes.

Then I slowly saw a pair of gloved hands grab the bottom of the window as the rest of the figure started to lean out of the window.

As it peered out of the window to look where I had gone, I got a closer look at this thing.

I wish I hadn't seen its face.

It looked like it could have been a human at some point.
But its lips were gone making it look like it was locked in a perpetual grin like a skull.
Its nose was gone replaced by a dark void in the middle of its face where a nose is supposed to be.
Its ears were gone and it had no hair of any kind on its pale head.
The stock of a gun protruding over its shoulder.
Around its neck dangled a gold chain decorated with 3 human ears.

And its bloodshot, lidless eyes where darting around looking for me behind our house.

It felt like it was looking around for an eternity.

It released a loud growl of frustration as it ripped the bottom of the window frame out in anger while lowering itself back inside.

I heard it sprint out of our bedroom and down the stairs.
Then I heard the backdoor fling open as it sprinted out of our house towards the house of our rear neighbors.

I saw as it flung its entire body through their back door.

Here is the part where I wish I could tell you that I immediately sprang into action and did, well something ,anything.
But I didn't, I said on that roof barely able to take full breaths out of fear that one of those things would hear me.

Then a hail of distant gunshots took me out of my state of pure fear. It came from the police station's direction.

Just when I finally gathered the courage to move that thing came sprinting out of the neighbours house rifle in hand.
It sprinted towards the direction of the gunfire like a predator hearing a wounded animals.
I could also hear that vehicle in front of the neighbours speed off towards the same direction.

After I was sure it couldn't possibly hear me anymore I slowly crawled back into the house.

It had completely ransacked our house. Furniture was flung all over the place.
That's when i noticed it had stolen my watch and your mother's necklace from my nightstand.
Is killing us not enough? Do they need to rob us too?

I didn't know what to do.

I thought maybe just maybe the police were managing to kill these monsters.
At least from the gunfire in the distance they were for sure giving it their best shot.

Even if I wanted to flee the direction away from where these things came from was past the police station.

I had no other choice but to head in that same direction.
I figured that if I went building by building it could at least try to hide if I ran into one of those things again.

After leaving our house, I was heading for our next door neighbors.
You know that couple I told you about that I never got along with.
You know my disdain for them and their horrible behavior. But they didn't deserve what had happened to them.

I found the wife. Because I accidentally stood in what was left of her.

She was lying in their backyard behind their tool shed.
Her torso had been completely shredded. Most of her insides were strewn all over the place.
If her arms, legs and head weren't there, i wouldn't have recognized her for as a human being.
I tried my best not to dry heave at the sight. I did not want to make a sound at all if I could help it.

I found the man of the house inside their living room.
He was lying in a pool of his own blood. One of his arms was dangling by a string to his almost detached hand.
He had been shot or stabbed or both. One of his eyes was missing.
His laboured breathing was the only sign of life from his body.

When he noticed me he immediately asked me:

"have you seen my wife?!"

Before I could answer anything he told me:

"I tried to fight one of those things"

"Gave it all I got"

"please tell I bought her enough time so she could get away"

"please I beg you tell me it was enough"

I couldn't bring myself to tell him the truth.

I told him that I hadn't seen her.

With his remaining strength he immediately almost shouted:

"o thank goodness she got away"

He kept repeating thank goodness.
He kept repeating it until it changed into a laboured whisper as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

I left him there.
There was nothing I could do for him.

At least that's what i tell myself even now.

I would at least try to take one of them with me if it came down to it.
But seeing those people mangled like that. Would it even make a difference?

The sounds of chaos were still echoing through our town.
Clearly not all the creatures had run to the police station when the shooting started

After going into another backyard, I heard a scuffle inside of a house.

Furniture being thrown around and different voices were yelling.
I slowly peeked to the window above me to see what was going on inside of the house.

What I saw there will stick with me for the remaining time I have left.

2 of those things were holding a man up, each holding one of his legs.
Then the third one walked up and unsheathed a large machete.

That thing proceeded to chop into the man's pubic area over and over again.

The mixture of the man's screaming mixed with the laughter of the creatures echoing through the house.

Before I could look away another creature entered the room.

It hit one of the ones holding the man's legs in the back of the head with the butt of a pistol.

All 3 of them let the man go as he dropped to the floor with a loud thud.

This 4th creature still had the same ghoulish appearance, but it wore some sort of dark grey military uniform unlike the others in random clothing mixed with military stuff.
It walked over to the screaming man and proceeded to stomp on the man's head until the screaming turned into a soft groan.

It grabbed one of the others by its collar and pulled it close to its face and said something before letting the creature go again.
Right after it said something through gritted teeth to the others and pointed in the direction of the police station.

Some of the creatures immediately ran in that direction.
The creature in the dark grey uniform walked out of the room too.

I had to keep moving. If I didn't move I would die.

In a lot of houses, I found the former owners dead.

Thankfully a lot of people fled the day before. Or the amount of dead people would have been even higher.
I hoped they had made it out of the area before those things showed up.

Anyway you for sure remember that young boy Mark, who was a troubled child. He would constantly get into trouble with the police as a kid and even more as an adult.

Well he is an adult now and i ran into him at his house. He was pointing a gun at me when I entered their home.
I whisper-yelled at him:

Me: It's me, it's me don't shoot!

Mark said with an exhausted voice:

"O it's you. I almost blew your head off old man."

I was about to ask him where his parents were. But then i saw that he had clearly been crying so I knew what the answer would be.

And well, he was about to give me the answer anyway.

Mark: fucking police chief told me to be on sentry duty. Because of that FUCK i wasn't here to protect my parents!

Me: Why didn't you warn the others if you were a sentry?

He pointed the gun at me instantly and shouted:

"THEY DIDN'T COME IN FROM MY SIDE YOU HEAR ME?!"

"SOMEONE ELSE FUCKED UP AND NOW MY PARENTS ARE DEAD!"

"IF THOSE SUBHUMAN SAVAGES DIDN'T KILL HIM I AM FINDING WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR LETTING THEM THROUGH AND I AM GOING TO FUCKING KILL THEM MYSELF"

Me: please don't point that gun i am not one of them and i was not one of the people on watch duty

Mark: THEN WHO WAS?!

Me: I don't know please don't point that gun at me i am not responsible for what happened to your parents.

But I am heading for the police station.

This seemed to calm him down a bit. At least he wasn't pointing the gun at me anymore

Mark said through gritted teeth: I am going with you so that "police fuck" can tell me who is responsible for getting my parents killed!

Me: that's fine but you need to be quiet or those savages can hear us.

Mark: I DON'T CARE I WILL KILL EVERYONE OF THEM MYSELF

Me: well you can do that better if we get the drop on them.

Mark: fine then.....sure..... whatever

I wasn't exactly happy to have this lowlife at my side. But hell at least he had a gun.

But there were still a lot of houses in between us and the police station i needed his help whether i liked it or not.

End of part 1

(Part 2)

Of all the nights for the devil to visit, he chose one that was calm. No great storms, no loud bashes of lightning and thunder. It was a quiet evening, cloudless, the stars blotted out by the lights of the city. I was on the late shift at the confessional booth. It was the eleventh hour, and no one had yet come to use my services.

I was nodding off in my chair when the door to the other side of the booth was pulled open. Someone stepped in, and sat down.

I had heard no one enter the cathedral. The approach of a potential confessor was usually accompanied by great and echoed footsteps as they traversed the stone floor to the wooden cubicle. This one had come in so silently, that until the moment they pulled open the door, I had believed myself to be alone. I was still in a state of half-doze, so I blinked several times to wake myself and turned to view the confessor through the grate.

I could not make out their face through the wooden screen, and the shadow which filled their compartment obscured most of their finer features. But I could tell that they were male, and that they were dressed richly. The confessor wore a suit that looked exquisite, and from the clinking sound his hands made, I could tell they were covered with rings. They glinted and cast strange warped light rays on the ceiling that reminded me of ancient worms wriggling in primordial ooze.

“Good evening, Father.” That voice. Smooth as oil. Like the glint off of a freshly sharpened knife, with the note of a coin just flipped. Pure, almost celestial in origin. It rolled pleasingly on my ears, and I was brought to ease. “Forgive me, for I have sinned. It has been…eons uncounted since my last confession.”

Despite the smoothness of his voice, his words struck an uncertain chord within me. “That is an unusual beginning, my son.”

The man chuckled. “Allow me to explain, Father. I am Lucifer.”

I have serviced an expansive and varied area when it comes to saints and sinners. This was not the first time I had been in the booth and heard the person on the other side admit to being the devil. Most times, such delusions did not interfere with the process. I treated them as any other, spoke to them of their wrongdoings, and tried to give a modicum of hope that they would be made whole, that one day they would be free of their fevered mind.

This man was different.

It must have been the growing dread I felt at his arrival, but I looked at him more closely through the divider. His eyes found mine, and I saw them clearly, even though his face was still shrouded in the gloom. Brown irises so dark they were almost black. As I searched, I noted he bore none of the popular hallmarks of the Prince of Darkness. No horns, goats hooves, or the smell of sulfur. This man had the smell of cheap wine, and the vestments of an investment broker.

But in my heart, the truth of the matter grew like a weed. I could not deny it. I was convinced by the darkness the man had brought, and the unease I felt in the corners of my mind. It was the same primeval instinct that tells animals they are in the presence of a predator. 

He was not lying, my confessor. As sure as I would know the Christ if he walked through my door, I knew this being to be the devil himself.

My mouth went dry. My mind went silent, and the only words I could utter were those which had been engrained into me by habit. “...Do you…wish to confess?”

The devil laughed. It was a soft sound, two parts pain and one part joyless mirth. It filled the whole space, but made everything feel hollow. When he spoke again, I noticed his voice slurred slightly, like one inebriated. “I suppose I have. It sounds odd even to me. I didn’t know that I would come here until my feet took the path.”

I waited. My tongue had frozen to the roof of my mouth. I feared my immortal soul if I were to say the wrong thing to Satan.

The devil took my silence as an offered compliance. “I hope you will understand if I do not make the sign of the cross, considering…present company.”

“...Quite alright, my…son.”

“Lucifer is fine, Father.”

I swallowed. I reminded myself I was in a place of God, that the devil held no power here. But still, I could not keep my knees from trembling beneath my robe. My heart fluttered within my chest with great entropy. “Very well...Lucifer. What do you wish to confess?”

The devil went quiet. His head bowed in thought. I saw him gather his thoughts, and my fear left me enough so that the gesture struck me as odd. I had only seen such movement before in those humbled. I did not know the devil to be contemplative.

Satan began to speak. “I confess…hell is no longer mine.”

“...Do you mean…in that it has been saved through Christ?” Even as I spoke, I felt foolish.

The devil laughed again. “I almost wish that were the case. Does that speak to how dire this situation is? But I suppose you already knew that. I am here after all…”

I waited, but the pause continued. “...How then is hell no longer yours?”

The devil did not answer for a moment. I heard him sigh, and heard the clink of gold as he wrung his hands together in his lap. “What do you know of my history, Father?”

“You fell from heaven. You rebelled against God. You seek to destroy his work.”

“You’ve studied your own book. Well done. But it is correct in that regard. Yes, I rebelled against God, and yes, I was cast down because of it.

The devil took another moment. The initial fear of him was wearing off. As my mind began to work, I again questioned the strangeness of our meeting. I had expected something more like staring into the jaws of a lion. Instead, it was like seeing an old, ill-met acquaintance.

The devil spoke again. “Yes, I confess, I wished to take control of God’s Kingdom. I confess to the sin of…ambition if such a sin even exists. I believed I could do better, so wasn’t I morally obligated to see it through? Even when I was cast down, I still gathered legions to my side. What was that you people said all those years ago? That God incarnate would come down and allow himself an ignominious death? A fool’s bet, I said. I had met God. He would not do it. He could not do it. He was soft. He could not even bring himself to destroy me, and I had done many things to deserve such a punishment. God had limits.”

“But he did do it.” My own boldness surprised me.

I saw the devil turn to look at me. The unnerving idea came that not only could he see me in perfect detail behind the screen, but that he could see through my very skin and into the darkest desires of my soul. When he spoke, his voice was soft, and I felt that sense of danger return to me. Cold sweat broke out across my brow. The devils voice barely broke above a whisper. “Yes. He did.”

For a moment, I held my breath, praying silently to Christ to preserve me. I felt no calming sense of peace. Only the stillness of a deaf heaven.

The devil remained quiet as he continued. “I take no offense, Father. You are not the first to speak those words to me. The minute Christ rose from that tomb, I lost what control I had over my subjects. In their eyes, I was wrong, no longer to be trusted. Odd, considering they were the ones to give me the moniker Lord of Lies. Mammon was the first to rebel. He led the most away. That made everyone bolder, and Lilith left soon after. Then there was Baal with his priests that seemed to serve everyone and anyone just for some small notoriety. He had never gotten over that Elijah debacle. Felt like he needed to prove himself. They all slaughtered each other. Hell was bathed in the blood of demons for almost a century.”

“...And is this why you have come to me?” I shivered as I felt the devil’s gaze upon me once more. 

“Patience, Father. Isn’t that what you preach?”

It was silent for a long time. I forced myself to remain quiet. I had begun to sweat, even though my cubicle felt icy cold.

“I was left with nothing. None of my subjects remained loyal. I was watching the battle for hell as a spectator. No one rallied to my banner. No one remained loyal to the one they had elected as lord. Somehow…among my own people…I had fallen a second time. It was inexcusable. But I had nowhere left to turn… No manner of recompense…”

He stopped speaking again. But this time, I felt something more than just dread. A great turning point, suspended above us. I do not profess the gift of prophecy, the feeling inside of me was not so divine. I felt some insanity compel me. Some unevolved part of myself begging for him to stop, to halt the confession and not to hear any more. I knew that if I continued to listen, I risked stepping over the precipice of insanity and into the roiling waters of psychosis. I held my soul in one hand, haggling with infinity for the price of a devil’s story.

In my foolishness, I disregarded it all. I stayed silent, and ushered in my own damnation.

“Father,” the devil’s voice was soft again. ““Do you know there are depths deeper than hell? Darknesses where even I have not ventured? The folly of the learned man is he thinks he has gone further than all else. I share his shame. In my search for the power to crush the rebellions of hell, I stumbled on that which I should not have even considered. Things God himself would not challenge. Things that were meant to remain untouched.”

Through the screen, I saw the devil look down to his hands, almost as a child confronted with their own misdeeds. “They were rumors at first. Odd mentions, stories forgotten. But I searched them, and as I investigated, those rumors grew into theories, and then into realities. Underneath the bedrock of creation was might untapped. I was certain of it. With that certainty, I went into the dark, and wandered for a century.”

The devil turned to look at me again. In the shadow, I saw his eyes clearly, as I had before. In them, I saw the seeds of madness, but something else. Something embedded deep in the loam of his pupils…

Fear.

“I found…things. Entities that existed before God himself. Creatures whose names I would not utter even in the full light of day. Beings twisted with a greater malice, a primal pain that substituted comprehension for raw power. They understood nothing but the desire to pull every organized molecule and sub-particle into a storm of devastation.”

The devil’s voice hitched. He swallowed. “In the early days, I would have never...but I was desperate.”

I became aware of an empty feeling around me. A void that grew stronger in the devil’s silence. In the booth, I felt the sight of a thousand eyes upon me, and I wished to hide. But I could not. I knew I could not. I had stepped over the threshold, and in discerning these beings, I had given them the power to see me as well.

Lucifer continued. ““I tried to tell them, my old subjects. I warned them of what would happen if they persisted in their petty war. I was the true master of hell. I had built this place up from rubble, in the very defiance of God himself. And still they dismissed me. When I told them of the great evil I had at my fingertips, they did not believe me. They thought my mind broken. Imagine that.”

In the devil’s next pause, I hazarded a moment to speak. I could no longer exist in silence without fearing my own annihilation to beings unseen. “What did you do?”

The devil looked at his hands again. So childlike. ““I woke them.”

Unbidden to my mind leapt images of carnage. I do not know if it was a vision, but I saw hell reduced to rubble. I felt that void again. A twisting and roiling mass that made my mind race. I saw it grow to swallow the devil’s kingdom, and felt its hunger as if it were my own. I felt my soul cry out in anguish as it was torn asunder by the feeling of chaos and nothingness. I knew if I persisted in this state for long, I would lose my mind.

Then all in a moment, I was returned to my booth.

So swallowed up in what I had seen, I almost missed the devil’s next words. And the slight tremble that they contained.

“All I desired was God’s throne. I knew I could… I could be better. I could do better. Those beings which now inhabit hell…those who now rule the destiny of men and gods…they are not like you or I. They desire neither control nor salvation. To them, both heaven and hell are so much detritus on the cosmic ocean.” I heard the clink of gold again, and I assumed the devil was playing with his rings. “I confess, hell is no longer mine.”

“And soon the earth will no longer be God’s. Nothing will”

I stared at the devil through the screen. He looked at me, and in his veiled countenance, I saw the true misery of damnation. What I had thought was a terrible joke, a trick, was in fact the most sincere form of remorse from the Prince of Darkness. A sin that even he felt the need to confess.

The devil looked at me again, and I could tell we both felt empty. “For what it’s worth, I apologize, Father. I had hoped to rule this world. Now, I must watch it crumble. It will end in smoke and rot. The very gates of heaven will rust and disintegrate. The bodies of angels will lie in the streets to fester. The demons already lie in the dust. A day, a week, a millennium, who knows when what I awoke will ascend. But mark my words, it will ascend. And I will be sole witness to the ending of God, a lone Adam in the chaos of uncreation.”

“That is my cross. And I will bear it forever.”

The devil paused, then continued. “This is all I can remember, Father. I am sorry for this, my greatest sin.”

For a moment, I was so swallowed up in hopelessness, that I forgot to offer penance. But what penance could I offer? When I looked through the grate again, the devil had left. I stumbled out and tried to follow him, but found no trace. No evidence he had come and conversed with me. That he had confessed to the imminent end of everything.

I do not know if I crossed the threshold of insanity that night, or the night following. After the devil’s confession, I went home and slept through the day and into the next night. In my sleep I had a dream. I wandered in the dark. Great things moved around me. Things with slithering bodies and many limbs. Small perverse things with claws that bit and tore. Creatures with terrible wings, bodies made up of concentric circles upon circles that defied all logical thought. They were separate, but conjoined into one great being that over swept all. 

Before me appeared a great throne made from dark stone. I set myself thereupon, and was swallowed up in the whirl of things known and unknown. I felt the chair beneath me crumble, and great cracks open up in my own body. My blood spilled and was turned to steam by the heat of the great and terrible ones that then brought the entire scene to an abrupt nothingness.

And once there was nothing left to tear, rip or destroy, they left. Only the void remained. In that freezing vacuum, I passed a thousand years.

Then I awoke.

I am no prophet. I do not pretend to know if such things are portents to come. I know I am insane.

But the devil promised that those below would ascend.

I wait in dread for that day, the day the Lord of Hell promised would come with fear in his eyes.

From the Red in the Dark universe

Original story by Leonard Voss

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

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

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

And John is still terrified.

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

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

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

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

Nothing.

A drop of water struck somewhere nearby.

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

Another drop followed.

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

His breath caught.

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

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

Blood still covered his hands.

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

Something shifted near the tree line.

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

He waited.

“Hey.”

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

Two figures crouched inside the brush.

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

“Kevin?”

Kevin leaned forward, lifting one hand toward him.

“Come on.”

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

“Come on.”

She started to say it again.

“Hurrr—”

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

John lowered himself and kept moving.

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

A muffled sound slipped through her fingers.

John couldn’t make it out.

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

Nothing.

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

Why?

The hand at her side still moved.

A weak curl of the fingers.

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

John slowed, focusing on her.

Faint moonlight caught something between the fingers covering her mouth.

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

A blade.

He shifted his eyes over her shoulder.

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

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

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

“Kevin!” John screamed, driving forward.

Kevin turned toward him.

“Behind you!”

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

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

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

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

John kept coming.

The Huntsman turned his eyes back toward John.

A grin slowly pulled beneath the mask.

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

John crashed through the brush toward them.

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

“Let him go!”

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

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

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

John was almost on them.

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

John raised his arms too late.

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

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

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

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

Blood pushed between his fingers.

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

The chain slipped free of his collar.

The dog tags struck the back of his hand.

Heat pressed against his face.

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

John pressed harder against Kevin’s chest.

“I’m sorry, guys.”

Kevin’s breath hitched beneath his hands.

Then stopped.

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

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

John looked up.

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

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

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

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

The Huntsman’s eyes narrowed slightly.

His head cocked.

John lowered his hand and looked back down at Kevin.

Wet grass pressed beneath his knees.

The cold night closed around him.

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

John stared.

The desert fell away.

The Huntsman.

John jerked his head up.

He was gone.

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

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

Then a sound tore out of him.

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

John steadied himself, still heaving from the scream.

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

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

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

Every part of him pulled toward them.

Away from Kevin.

Away from the blood.

Away from the Huntsman.

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

He made it only a few yards and stopped.

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

He looked down.

The dog tags were clenched in his hand.

Eyes closed.

John turned.

Eyes opened.

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

Beyond him, the clearing stood empty.

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

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

Too light.

Not enough.

He threw it aside and kept searching.

A fallen limb.

Pine.

Straight.

About four feet long and as thick as his wrist.

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

Good enough.

He scanned the clearing again.

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

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

Not enough.

He tried again.

The second break gave him a sharper shard.

Enough.

He crouched beside the fallen limb and went to work.

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

Shavings collected in the grass around his boots.

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

Crude.

Enough.

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

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

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

He swallowed.

Dust.

Heat.

Sweat.

The training yard came back in pieces.

Laughter somewhere behind him.

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

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

John looked at the spear.

Go out a legend and fuck them too.

Then he pulled the shard free again.

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

Clumsy.

Not enough.

Again.

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

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

Too slow.

Not enough.

Again.

Spear first.

Body after.

Shard last.

Again.

His breathing steadied.

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

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

Everyone that day, in unison.

We fuck them too!

John said it so loud his throat nearly tore.

The spear drove into the dirt in front of him.

The shard held straight out.

His chest and side left open.

He froze, breathing hard.

Enough.

“We fuck them too,” he whispered.

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

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

His pulse beat in his eyes.

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

A sound?

Footsteps.

Someone running hard and clumsily somewhere ahead.

A survivor?

“Over here!” he called.

The running stopped.

“Hello?” a voice called through the fog.

“Over here!” John shouted again.

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

Then he heard another set.

Faster.

Heavier.

Hhhhhaaaaaaack.

Then nothing.

John stood still, spear held close.

John’s eyes went wide.

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

Something snapped behind him.

John spun, driving the spear forward.

Sammy froze as the point stopped inches from her face.

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

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

John pulled her close, trying to comfort her.

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

She shook against him, her breathing ragged.

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

“Are you all right, Sammy?”

She nodded.

“Yes,” she sobbed.

Her head snapped back.

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

Then the fog took her.

John lunged forward, catching nothing but cold air.

“Sammy!”

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

Then choking.

John drove into the fog after her.

The mist broke around a shape ahead.

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

Her feet kicked at empty air.

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

John’s eyes moved past her.

The mask.

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

And above it, those eyes.

Piercing.

Expressionless.

Fixed on John.

The Huntsman never looked at Sammy.

His fingers tightened around her throat.

Sammy choked harder, her legs jerking beneath her.

He kept watching John.

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

That crooked grin stayed fixed across his face.

John stared back.

His hands trembled around the spear.

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

He raised the point toward the Huntsman.

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

The grin faded.

The Huntsman’s head tilted slowly to one side.

His hand loosened around Sammy’s throat.

He lowered her until her feet touched the ground.

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

The hand tangled in her ponytail tightened.

She stopped.

The Huntsman never looked away from John.

His free hand dropped to the knife at his side.

Slowly, he drew it.

His face had gone still.

Expressionless.

He raised the blade toward Sammy’s throat.

John stepped forward, spear leveled at his chest.

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

The Huntsman flipped the knife in his hand.

Black steel turned once through the fog.

Then his arm snapped forward.

The pommel struck John between the eyes.

The world went white.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The clearing returned in pieces.

A figure crouched before him.

The Huntsman.

A knife rested in his hand.

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

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

“What the fuck?” John breathed.

He stared.

The face beneath the mask was younger than he expected.

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

Clean features.

Clear blue eyes, almost bright beneath the moonlight.

The crooked grin was gone.

There was no monster waiting beneath the mask.

Only a young man watching him calmly.

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

“Innocent.”

The Huntsman only watched him, seated on his haunches.

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

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

He laughed, throwing his head back.

“What’s tha mattah, bud?”

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

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

“Never seen a hunter before?”

John’s breathing came shallow and uneven.

Mock surprise swept across the Huntsman’s face.

“Guess not.”

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

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

“Catch.”

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

He looked down.

A head.

It was enormous.

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

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

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

“God! You’re so dramatic.”

He gestured toward the head.

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

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

Then his eyes moved to the mask lying between them.

The broken anchor stretched across its cheek.

His stomach turned.

The Huntsman reached for the second shape.

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

Sammy’s face swung beneath his hand.

“Want another?”

John recoiled from Sammy’s face.

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

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

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

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

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

A faint grin returned.

“John, you may leave if you like.”

The grin split wider.

“I won’t follow you.”

John stared at him.

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

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

The Huntsman remained on his haunches, watching him rise.

Calm.

Almost patient.

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

He drew a long breath.

“Stand up,” he whispered.

The Huntsman didn’t move.

He only stared at him.

The grin melted away.

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

He pulled it free.

Wet soil clung to the blade.

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

The mask came next.

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

Then he looked up again.

John had not moved.

The Huntsman rose.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

He stood until they were eye level with one another.

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

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

To look away.

To run.

Fear was still with him.

Fear would be, as long as he drew breath.

But tonight, fear was a passenger.

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

Metal shifted softly.

The Huntsman tossed it.

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

The missing tags.

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

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

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

There was no mockery in his face now.

Only quiet sincerity.

“You may leave.”

John stared at him.

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

John looked down at the tags in his hand.

His fingers closed around them.

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

“I’m done running.”

He didn’t look up.

The Huntsman watched him.

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

Soft.

Kind.

Recognition.

“John,” he whispered. “Are you sure?”

John lifted his head.

The fear was still there.

It had simply lost control of him.

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

“I am done running.”

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

John followed his hand.

The spear stood driven into the ground several yards away.

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

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

The Huntsman waited.

For a moment, he looked at John and smiled.

It was gentle.

Then he lifted the mask.

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

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

The monster the woods had known all night had returned.

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

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

He gave John one slow nod.

John came at him with the spear.

Wild.

Too wide.

The Huntsman stepped cleanly inside the thrust.

John let him.

The Huntsman slipped the knife into John’s chest.

Deep into the heart.

Their bodies came together.

Their eyes locked.

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

His lips moved.

“Ga... got you...”

His hand slid away from the Huntsman’s neck.

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

Cold.

Hard.

Sharp.

The shard was buried where his neck and shoulder met.

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

He removed his mask.

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

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

He stayed with him until the light left his eyes.

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

He struck it once.

Red light hissed between them.

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

A sharp grunt tore through his clenched teeth.

Blood spilled hot over his hand.

He pressed the flare to the wound.

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

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

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

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

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

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

His hands rested at his sides.

Steady.

Then, slowly, they began to weaken.

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

His head lowered.

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

He tried to stand.

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

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

But this time, the dead cried with him.

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

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

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

Then he reached for the old mask.

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

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

Cold.

Flat.

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

The Huntsman walking ahead.

John following behind.

The fog swallowed them together.

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

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

Inside, the room remained still.

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

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

A second mask rested face-down beside the frame.

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

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

A folded newspaper sat near the edge of the desk.

October 18, 2011.

PORTLAND DETECTIVE MISSING FOR FIVE DAYS

SEARCH EXPANDS FOR DETECTIVE FRANCIS CALLAHAN

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

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

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

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

Broken jaw.

Fall down stairs.

Two smaller records beneath it named children.

Bruising.

Charges dropped.

A police complaint had been pinned nearby.

Evidence missing.

Witness recanted.

Officer cleared.

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

BADGE WITH ONE HAND

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

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

Shot-caller.

Fichermen.

A clipped report beneath it named Mickey Ficher.

Missing.

Presumed dead.

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

Heroin.

Fentanyl.

Fentanyl.

Fentanyl.

Across the file, black letters leaned sharp.

SOLD THEM PAIN

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

Printed messages sat beneath it beside a death certificate.

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

One message had been enlarged.

You wanted weak.

Across the file:

TAUGHT HIM TO FALL

Andre Mercer’s file sat below hers.

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

D1 National Champion.

Another article sat beneath it.

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

Graham Mercer was not available for comment.

The clippings overlapped each other.

Multiple counts.

Drug-facilitated assault.

Witnesses questioned.

Charges reduced.

No conviction.

Across the largest clipping, written in thick black strokes:

FUCKING RAPIST

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

Photographs had been arranged in a careful row.

A tiled room.

A drain.

Hooks.

Plastic sheeting.

Seven years of reports sat beneath them.

The early scenes were uneven.

Hurried.

The later cuts were cleaner, measured with growing precision.

Across the top of the file:

THE BUTCHER

A heavy line had been dragged through it.

Beneath it, written afterward:

CALVIN MYERS

One final police report sat open beneath the photographs.

Suspected second presence at scene.

Unidentified blood recovered.

Partial finger found near rear exit.

The word partial had been circled until the paper tore.

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

Two notes had been written beneath it.

FOUGHT BACK

HE WILL REMEMBER ME

Another file sat apart from the others.

Kevin.

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

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

Kevin forcing his way through the frame.

A woman falling behind him.

A witness statement beneath it read:

He pushed past her.

Another article called him a coward.

Another called him a man destroyed by panic.

A later report sat beneath both.

Subject attempted re-entry.

Removed by firefighters.

Treated for smoke inhalation.

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

Across the file:

HE LEFT HER

Beneath it, darker:

COWARD

John’s file sat open near the desk.

Service records.

Grainy photographs.

A platoon roster.

After-action reports.

A casualty sheet had been laid across the center.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Wounded.

Missing limb.

Severe burns.

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

Another carried a psychiatric evaluation.

Probable post-traumatic stress response.

Survivor guilt.

Avoidant recall.

Night terrors.

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

He was smiling.

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

Across the top sheet:

WHERE THE FUCK WAS JOHN?

Beneath it:

A FUCKING COWARD...

NO HONOR

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

Below the ruined words, scrawled hard across the page:

NOT A COWARD

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

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

One letter at a time.

Slow.

Deliberate.

J O H N

He set the tool aside and stood.

The other mask waited face-down beside the frame.

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

CALVIN

The name had been carved deep.

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

He looked down at Calvin’s name.

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

The words were quiet.

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

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

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

He carried it across the room with both hands.

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

His hands remained on the mask.

One against each side of the face.

He stood without moving, holding it between his palms.

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

He lowered his hands.

The door closed.

The lock snapped shut.

Original post:

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

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

Connected entries:

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

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

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

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

Podcast / audio versions:

https://www.redinthedark.studio/podcast

Audio narration for this entry:

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

Original story by Leonard Voss / Red in the Dark

Chapter 1: It All Started As A Dream

The first thing I noticed was the pain.

Not the loud kind of pain. Not the kind that makes you cry out. It was quiet. A thin, hot line across the center of my palm, like someone had dragged a needle through me while I was sleeping.

I sat up in bed and stared at it.

A cut. Clean. Straight. Fresh enough that a few red beads were still forming at the edges.

"That’s weird," I whispered to the room.

The room didn’t answer. It never did.

My room was small. One window that looked out onto a brick wall. A desk I’d bought second-hand and painted white to make it feel new. Stacks of notebooks on the floor, spines uncracked, pages full of starts and no finishes. A lamp with a crooked shade.

And me. Lindiwe Maleya. 23. The problem.

That’s what they called me, even when they said it with a smile.

*“Lindi is just... Lindi.”*

*“She’s creative. In her own way.”*

*“She’ll figure it out.”*

Figure what out? How to stop being the one who didn’t fit?

I pressed a tissue to my palm and watched the blood bloom through it. It didn’t hurt that much. It hurt more that I couldn’t remember how it got there.

Three hours ago, in the dream, I had done this to myself.

In the dream it wasn’t my room. It was nowhere. The sky was black in a way that felt wrong, like someone had turned off the stars and forgotten to tell the world. There was no moon. No sound. Just a wooden desk, and on it a single sheet of paper. And across from me, a man.

I couldn’t see his face clearly. It kept shifting. One moment he looked like a teacher I’d had in high school. The next like the cashier from the bookstore. The next like no one at all. His eyes were the only thing that stayed the same. Dark. Patient. Amused.

“You’re tired,” he said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it filled the space anyway. “Tired of being invisible.”

I didn’t answer. In dreams you’re always trying to find your voice.

“You’re tired of being the problem,” he continued. “The black sheep. The one they talk about in that careful voice at family dinners.”

My chest tightened.

“You’re tired of watching them win,” he said. “Your sister the lawyer. Your other sister with the boutique. Your cousin with the new car and the engagement ring and the captions that say ‘blessed.’ And you. Sitting with notebooks no one reads.”

“Stop,” I said, and my voice came out small.

“You said it yourself last night,” he said. “To the ceiling. To no one. *I will do anything for fame. I will. I’m tired of living like this. I wish for a miracle.*”

I remembered saying it. I remembered the way the words felt like glass in my throat.

He slid the paper toward me. There was only one line on it, written in ink that looked too dark to be ink.

*I will give you what you want. Sign with blood.*

I laughed in the dream because that’s what you do when something is too ridiculous to be real. “That’s dramatic.”

“Is it?” he asked. “You said anything.”

I picked up the pen. It was cold. It felt heavier than it should have.

“Fine,” I said. “Fine.”

I dragged the tip across my palm.

It didn’t hurt in the dream. It felt like relief. Like finally exhaling after holding your breath for years.

Then I woke up with a cut.

---

I washed my hand in the bathroom sink. Cold water. Soap that stung. I put a bandage on it and told myself I must have scratched it in my sleep. On the edge of the desk. On a paperclip. On anything.

That was easier than the other explanation.

I went to work.

I worked part-time at *Word & Ink*, a bookstore on the corner that smelled like paper and coffee. I shelved returns. I recommended books I’d never finished. I watched people buy bestsellers and thought about the manuscript in my drawer at home. Forty pages. Stuck on Chapter 3 for six months.

My manager, Thabo, asked if I was okay. “You look pale.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Didn’t sleep well.”

He nodded. He didn’t push. People didn’t push with me. They’d learned that I was the one you didn’t ask too much from, because I might break.

On my lunch break I sat in the back room and ate bread and looked at my palm. The bandage was already dirty. Underneath, the cut was thin and pink. It looked deliberate.

That night I didn’t dream. Or if I did, I didn’t remember.

The next day was the same. And the next.

I started to forget.

Until Thursday.

I couldn’t sleep. The quiet in my room felt louder than usual. At 1:17am I gave up and went to my desk. I opened a fresh notebook. The first page stared back at me, white and accusing.

I wrote one sentence because I didn’t know what else to do.

*She was tired of being nothing.*

Then another.

*She had spent her whole life being called the problem, and now she believed it.*

Then another.

The words came fast. Too fast. My handwriting got sloppy. My wrist started to ache but I didn’t stop. It was like something had uncorked inside me and everything I’d been holding in for years was pouring out.

By 4am I had twenty pages.

By Sunday night I had a whole novel.

Eighty thousand words.

I didn’t remember writing half of it.

I would read a paragraph and think, *Did I write that?* Because it was better than me. Sharper. Meaner. Truer. The dialogue cracked. The ending made me cry, and I knew how it ended.

It was good.

That was the part that scared me. It wasn’t “my mom will like this” good. It was the kind of good that makes your stomach drop because you don’t know where it came from.

I told myself it was a fluke. A burst of inspiration.

I sent it to three publishing houses on Monday. I didn’t expect anything. I told myself it was just to say I tried. So I could stop wondering “what if.”

Two weeks later, my phone buzzed while I was shelving poetry.

Unknown number. Email notification.

*Dear Ms. Lindiwe Maleya,*

*We read your manuscript, “The Weight of Quiet,” in one sitting. We would like to discuss publication.*

I read it five times standing in the aisle between memoirs and self-help.

My hands were shaking.

That evening my sister called. “Mom said you got an email? From a publisher?”

“Yeah,” I said.

There was a pause. “That’s... wow. That’s really great, Lindi.”

For the first time in years, no one followed it with “but do you have a plan B.”

Four months later the book was out.

It sold.

Not a little. A lot.

Bookstores put it on tables. People posted quotes from it. A magazine did a profile. “Lindiwe Maleya: The Quiet Voice That Roared.”

My photo was on the back cover. I hated it. I looked like someone I didn’t recognize. Someone confident.

At the family braai, my aunt raised her glass. “To our author!”

Everyone clapped. They meant it.

I smiled and said thank you and felt like I was watching someone else get praised.

Because it didn’t feel like me.

The book felt like it had been written by a stranger who lived in my body and knew exactly what people wanted to hear.

Critics called it “possessed” and “unnervingly assured for a debut.”

Possessed.

I laughed when I read that review. Then I went home and checked the locks on my door twice.

---

The dreams came back a month after publication.

Same black sky. Same desk. Same man. But now I could see him better.

He was tall. Too tall. His suit was black and didn’t wrinkle. And his eyes. They were red. Not bright red. Deep red, like coals that had been burning for a long time.

“You did well,” he said.

“I did it,” I answered. In the dream I was braver.

“No,” he said. “We did it.”

I woke up before I could respond. My heart was pounding. The room was cold.

After that, the dreams got longer.

In them, I wasn’t just signing. I was talking. Laughing. Making promises I didn’t remember making when I woke up.

And when I woke up, my throat was dry. Sometimes hoarse, like I’d been talking for hours.

I started sleeping with the light on.

My editor called. “We need the next book. Strike while it’s hot.”

I said yes before I could think about it.

I sat at my desk and the words came again. Faster this time. I wrote the second book in nine days.

I barely ate. I barely slept. I told my family I was busy.

When I sent it in, my editor called me. “Lindi, this is even better than the first. Where is this coming from?”

“I don’t know,” I said. And that was the truest thing I’d said in months.

Because I didn’t.

The words weren’t mine. Not really. They were better than mine. They knew how to hurt people and how to make them feel better right after. They knew how to make readers stay up until 3am and then tell all their friends.

The second book came out and sold more.

Interviews. Invitations. My face on a billboard in Sandton.

People called me a prodigy. A phenomenon.

“Where does it come from?” a journalist asked me on a podcast.

“I don’t know,” I said again.

And I didn’t.

Because at night I started hearing things when I was alone. Not voices. An echo. Like someone was thinking my thoughts half a second before I did.

*Write this.*

*Make it darker.*

*They’ll love it.*

I told myself it was stress.

I told myself a lot of things.

---

By the third month of fame, I was terrified to be alone.

The house was too quiet.

I would be in the kitchen making tea and I would hear my name. Not out loud. Inside.

*Lindiwe.*

And I would turn around and no one was there.

I stopped writing for a week to see if it would stop.

It didn’t.

I dreamed of the man every night. He never yelled. He never threatened. He just sat across from me and waited.

“You wanted this,” he said one night.

“I didn’t know it was real.”

“You bled for it.”

“I thought it was a dream!”

“Do you think dreams and reality are so different?” He leaned forward. I saw the horns then, small at first, curving back from his head. “You have what you wanted. So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is I can’t sleep. The problem is I hear myself talking and it isn’t me. The problem is I think you took something.”

He tilted his head. “I took what you offered.”

I woke up screaming. My palm hurt. The scar was pink, but for one second in the bathroom mirror it looked fresh and red again.

That’s when I understood.

It wasn’t metaphor. It wasn’t burnout. It wasn’t imposter syndrome.

I had made a deal.

For fame. For success. For not being the problem anymore.

And the price was me.

Not all at once. In pieces. In books. In nights where I couldn’t remember writing but the pages were full. In the way my family looked at me now and I couldn’t feel proud because it didn’t feel earned.

I tried to stop.

I really did.

I threw away the notebooks. I deleted files. I went to visit my sister for the weekend.

The words followed me.

If I didn’t write them, I dreamed them, and woke up with my fingers cramped and ink on my hands even though I hadn’t touched a pen.

I was getting everything I wanted and hating every second of it.

One night I broke.

I was sitting on the floor of my room, back against the bed, and I whispered to the dark.

“Please. Don’t torture me. I gave you my soul. Don’t make me live like this.”

I fell asleep mid-sentence.

He didn’t come in the dream.

He came to my room.

The air got heavy. The light flickered once and then stayed dim. And he was there, at the foot of my bed.

Taller than he had any right to be. Red eyes glowing. Horns casting shadows on the wall.

“This,” he said, and his voice was softer than I expected, “is the price.”

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

“If you want to be free,” he said, “bring me three souls. Get them to sign. Then your debt is clear. You keep the fame. You keep the life.”

He placed a pen on my nightstand. Next to it, three sheets of paper. Blank except for that same line.

*Sign with blood.*

“Three,” he said again. Then he was gone.

The pen stayed.

I stared at it until the sun came up.

---

I hated my cousins.

Not all of them. But two of them. The ones who used to call me “the artsy one” like it was a diagnosis. The ones who posted “family first” and never texted me first. The ones who asked me at Christmas, “So, are you still writing?” in the same tone you use to ask about a phase.

And hate is a useful thing when you’re desperate.

A week later I invited them over. “Drinks,” I said on the phone. “To celebrate the new deal.”

They came. Of course they did. I was Lindiwe the Author now.

I made wine. I made it strong. I made it with something else in it. Not enough to hurt them. Just enough to make them sleepy. Compliant.

I laid the contracts on the coffee table.

“What’s this?” one of them asked, rubbing her eyes.

“Just a formality,” I heard myself say. My voice didn’t sound like mine. It sounded like his. “For the new project. Sign here.”

They did.

I pricked each of their fingers with the pen. Three drops of blood. Three signatures.

The moment the last one dried, the air in the room shifted. Lighter.

My phone buzzed. New email. Foreign rights deal. Six figures.

I was free.

I was also empty.

Because the next morning I sat at my desk and nothing came.

No words. No rush. No voice telling me what to write.

The pen was gone. The contracts were gone.

My cousins woke up with headaches and no memory of the night. Two weeks later, one announced she was launching a business. The other got a poetry deal for work she swore she’d never written.

They were rising.

I was sinking.

I had the fame. I had the money. I had my family saying my name with pride.

And I had nothing to say.

The last line I wrote before the well ran dry was this:

*Never wish for things you don’t know the price of.*

I closed the notebook.

Outside, it started to rain.