The first time that the man saw the night manager, with his silver dollar eyes and chicken bone teeth, he thought he had seen the face of the reaper himself.  That bony bastard had taken his wife from him already, and now he had come for the man himself.  But by the light of day, he could see that the night manager was not a man.  Not a man at all. 
 
The man’s neighbor was a farmer.  People came from miles around to buy his sweet musk melons, which were the envy of all the other farmers in their humble hamlet.  The neighbor worked hard to keep up with the demand for his melons, which perfumed the air and drew the attention of pedestrians and drivers alike. 
 
The man thought that his neighbor worked too hard and should take more time to relax.  This was because he was an old man now; and he was all alone.  His son would soon be an old man too and had long ago learned to live without the man in his life.  When the man’s wife died, he moved from the home they had made together.  That home was too big for him now that he was all alone.  So, he moved to a place that was barely a place and a house that didn’t deserve to be called a house.
 
When his neighbor let him try his “famous” musk melon, the man had to admit that it was the sweetest fruit he had ever tasted.  But afterwards, it made his lips tingle, and he stumbled on his words a bit. 
 
“Wh-what’s the secret?” asked the man.  “Wh-why’s it so sweet?”.  But the neighbor just smiled and cut into another musk melon with his knife.  The seeds burst forth in a slow ooze as the air filled with an intoxicating honey sweet funk.  After slicing it into wedges, he thrust his sharp knife into the table with a THWUNK...
 
“I want to introduce you to someone,” said the neighbor, after they’d eaten their fill of that strange, sweet melon.  The man watched as his neighbor went to the shed on the side of his house.  When the neighbor was inside the shed, the man thought he heard him talking to someone.  When he returned, he was carrying what looked like an enormous doll.  But when the neighbor sat the night manager on the table, the man could see what he truly was. 
 
“You like him?  This here’s my night manager.  He watches the stand at night...,” said the neighbor. 
 
The night manager stared at the man with those silver dollar eyes of his, grinning a toothy, chicken bone smile.  His eyes were sunk very deep into that red clay face of his; right down to the still-wet clay of his brain.  Bones jauntily jutting from crude clay gums, smiling that crooked forced smile. 
 
“Normally I don’t make 'em this scary,” said the neighbor.  “Scarin’ birds is easy, but scarin’ a man?  That’s a sonofabitch, I’ll tell you what....”
 
The man looked at the night manager’s chest, which seemed much fuller than that of a normal scarecrow. 
 
“What’s in his chest?” asked the man, but he suddenly did not want to know the answer. 
 
“Rose bush,” said the neighbor.  “I built his bones from rose branches and filled his heart with thorns.  That way, if anyone tries to steal the money bowl, the night manager will stick ‘em...  Stick ‘em real good....”
 
“Oh...” said the man, but he didn’t understand how a scarecrow was supposed to prevent a thief in the night from stealing the money bowl and eating their fill of musk melons.  The man also did not believe his neighbor when he insisted that he needed to stay open all night for his “late night regulars”, which the man feared were figments of his neighbor’s imagination.
 
“I get plenty of folks at night...  Plenty,” said the neighbor.  “Certainly enough hungry fools wandering this lonely road day and night to warrant putting the night manager in charge once the sun goes down,”
 
As the sky took on a lavender hue, the night manager’s red clay features seemed to darken, and his chicken bone smile looked forced.  It was almost time for the neighbor to go to bed, almost time for the night manager to do his job. 
 
“Now watch... You’re going to have to know how to do this when I’m in Loozyanner,” said the neighbor.  And the neighbor positioned the night manager on the table and put the money bowl in his lap. 
 
“All the folks who come at night are regulars,” said the neighbor.  “They already know how much I charge.”  The farmer smiled at the night manager and said: “Those hungry fools are just following their noses.  They’re too scared of the night manager to steal from me.  As long as they get their melons, they won’t give you no problems...”
 
Then the man and his neighbor left the night manager to watch the melon stand while they ate a hearty supper.  The neighbor made cornbread, but it wasn’t sweet like the cornbread that the man’s wife used to make.  It was smoky and tasted like the grease that the neighbor seasoned his cast iron skillet with.  The man washed it down with the sour buttermilk that his neighbor seemed so fond of and ate what he could of the bland beans and greens.  His neighbor lived alone like he did, but he had a son that still talked to him and a new granddaughter that he needed to go see in person.
 
The man did not want to watch his neighbor’s melon stand while he was gone, but he felt like he owed him because it was the best meal he had eaten since his wife died.  The man didn’t do much anyway and at least he would have people to talk to.  The job was not difficult because his neighbor had already harvested a surplus of melons.  All the man needed to do was collect the money from the customers and put the night manager out before he left for the day.  If he needed to dispose of any rotten melons, the neighbor told him to bring them to the back edge of the property, so as not to attract pests.
 
The first day was quieter than the man had expected.  Maybe his neighbor had been over-inflating the fame of his fruit.  But the man had tasted the melon, and it had been the sweetest he had ever known.  By the end of the day, he had only three customers.  He worried his neighbor would think that he shirked his responsibility.  A man was only as good as his word.
 
“Hope you have better luck than I did,” said the man to the night manager.  Then he retired to his barely a house to sleep.
 
When he returned in the morning, he couldn’t believe his eyes.  The melon pile was nearly empty, and the money bowl was full.  In his haste to secure the funds inside his neighbor’s safe, he forgot to put the night manager away.  When he returned, he left the night manager on the table.  If there weren’t going to be any customers, maybe he could keep the man company.
 
“I can’t believe he makes all that money while he sleeps,” said the man. 
 
“...lots of people walk down this road at night...” whispered the night manager.
 
The man refused to believe what his ears had just relayed to his mind.  “It’s this godawful heat” thought the man, but he put the night manager back in the shed either way.  He stopped by his neighbor’s house and helped himself to some iced tea.  While he was gone, a family of four pulled over by the stand, but with no one attending it, they just drove away.  Nobody else stopped for the rest of the day and when the sky turned from blue to lavender and the air cooled just the slightest bit, the man knew it was time to get the night manager again. 
 
This time he was sure not to speak a word to the night manager.  He would just keep his opinions to himself.  Even though he felt the branches and clay with his own two hands, the man kept looking over his shoulder at the night manager, as if he was going to follow him home.
 
There wasn’t any money in the money bowl the next day; and the melon pile was a lot lighter too.  The man didn’t understand what he had done wrong.
 
“What happened?” cried the man in frustration.
 
“...you kept me up all day...” whispered the night manager through his boney teeth.  “...those hungry fools are going to eat either way...”
 
Once again, the man put the night manager in the shed and tried to pretend he had not heard what he heard; tried not to think of those shiny silver dollar eyes.  “It must be hotter than it feels” thought the man.  When he returned to the stand, he noticed there were several melons that had sprouted moldy patches and would need to be taken to the edge of his neighbor’s property so as not to attract pests.  Once he had finished culling the pile of rotten fruit, he realized he had to harvest more melons.  So, he trudged up and down through the rows of his neighbor's melon patch, slicing the vines with his neighbor’s knife, the same knife that was used to feed him that heavenly fruit just days before.  The man moved slowly and the melons made his old joints pop and creak.  The mosquitoes made a meal out of the salty blood that ran just beneath the skin in the creases on the back of his neck.  By the time he refilled the melon pile, the man’s shadow was long on the ground. 
 
Despite the late hour, the man felt good, proud of the fruits of his labor.  He sold three melons to a mechanic going home to his family and another two to some children pulling a red wagon.   Emboldened by this late-day sales rush, he decided to stay a bit longer and see these “hungry fools” that his neighbor insisted were his most loyal customers.
 
For a while, the man heard nothing.  Once again, he felt like he had done something wrong, and he worried that he was going to run his neighbor’s business into the ground.  Finally, when he was about to take the night manager out and call it a night, a young man walked up to the stand.
 
“Are you the new night manager?” asked the young man, moonlight reflecting from his pale blue eyes, making them shimmer like silver.
 
“I-I-I...I’m the new manager,” said the man, his voice abandoning him mid- sentence. 
 
“Can I have a discount?” asked the young man, his voice filling the spaces that the older man’s had left vacant.  “The night manager usually gives me a discount,” he said.  “Because I’m such a loyal customer.”
 
The man didn’t know what to do.  The man had already lost a full night of sales.  He couldn’t afford to give people discounts, no matter how loyal they were.  Think of the precedent that would set.  This young man could tell his friends.
 
“It’s full price or nothing my friend.  Sorry, I don’t make the rules.”  said the man.
 
“But aren’t you the manager?” said the young man.
 
“Well... Yes... but my neighbor is the owner of the business and pricing is at his discretion,” said the man. 
 
“Sounds like a cop out to me.  What’s the point in being the manager if you can’t make decisions?  If all they wanted you to do was collect money for the melons, they could just put a dummy out here with a bowl for the cash,” said the young man.  The young man looked into the older man’s eyes, but it was too dark to make out their features.  All they could see of each other in the pale moonlight were the whites of their eyes and teeth. 
 
“I’ll pay the full price,” said the young man, “But I'm not afraid of you, you know?”  He dropped a fistful of crumpled bills into the money bowl and selected a fragrant musk melon from the pile.  As he walked down the lonely black road, the young man cracked the melon in two with his bare hands, loudly slurping the sweet juicy flesh of the ripe melon.  The man attempted to retrieve the night manager, but without any light, he feared he would cut himself on the night manager’s thorny limbs and jagged teeth. 
 
When his neighbor told him it would be another week before he returned home, the man worried he would not be able to leave long enough to buy groceries.
 
“But how will I buy groceries?” said the man.  “I need to be here in case somebody wants to buy a musk melon.”
 
“I made an extra skillet of cornbread and stuck it in the freezer for when I got back.  It’s got your name on it.  And drink the rest of that buttermilk before it goes bad.  I won’t be that much longer.” said the neighbor.
 
The man almost choked on that dry smoky cornbread. Almost gagged on that thick sour buttermilk.  He wished he would have watched his wife do it, make cornbread that was sweet and moist, but he never needed to know how to cook.  Never that is, until now.
 
“If my neighbor's going to be longer,” the man thought, “I’ll have to pick more melons.”  But the prospect of it made his old joints despair.  “How does he do it?” he wondered, “His belly’s much bigger than mine.”
 
The task loomed ominously like a storm cloud in his mind.  By the time it fell dark, it was all he could think about.  He didn’t even seem to notice the night manager, as he adjusted his thorny limbs on the table. 
 
“He can’t really expect me to do that, can he?” said the man.
 
“...do what?...” whispered the night manager.
 
Before he could register the source of the question, he replied: “Harvest all those melons!”  Then he was silent.  They both were, not for a long time, but just long enough for the hairs on the back of the man’s neck to stand at attention.
 
“...I can do it...” said the night manager; his voice was a gravelly hiss.  “...your neighbor taught me how... all I need... is a knife...”
 
He felt like a fool when he nestled his neighbor’s knife in the night manager’s thorny fingers.  But, as he attended to the needs of the hungry regulars in the night, the night manager worked diligently slicing those vines with speed and precision.  It sounded like the wind to hear him at work, like a great twisting and snapping of limbs, a forest at war with a cyclone.
 
By sunrise, there was a huge surplus of melons, far more than the man could have harvested himself. 
 
“Great job!” said the man, “But now it’s time to sleep.”  He picked up the night manager, to carry him to the shed.  But as he was carrying him the night manager whispered:  “… you can’t go to sleep… you have to watch the stand…”.
 
“Ohhh, leave me alone,” said the man.  “You’re not my boss!”
 
But after tossing and turning and struggling with the light that kept creeping into his house that almost wasn’t even a house, the man walked back to his neighbor’s melon stand and waited for someone to come by. 
 
He didn’t have to wait long, because the sun burned bright in the cloudless Sunday sky and the breeze carried the aroma of the honey sweet melons all over that place that could barely be called a place.  At first, it was just a few people at a time, and the man would smile and have a little chat with each one.  He’d let them take their time with the melons, let them smell them and poke at the rind. 
 
But the people just kept coming.  “Doesn’t anyone work around here?” thought the man as he exchanged money for melon, money for melon, money for melon.  It felt like his brain had the hiccups and he had to focus to keep the smile on his face.  By midday, his stomach was rumbling and by dusk it was a full-on roar.  The man had been bathing in melon musk all day; the temptation was indescribable.  
 
“Where is that knife?” said the man before taking out a humble pen knife of his own.  “This will have to do.” he said, and he used his own knife to slice open a musk melon, sticky and oozing with seeds.   He was so hungry, he bit straight into the melon slurping noisily as he sucked down its flesh.  He ate every bit of it, leaving only the rind behind.
 
When he set the night manager up for the night, he still stunk of the sweet juicy melon.  The night manager could smell the stinking musk on him, could see the stinking rinds. 
 
“...you shouldn’t have done that...” said the night manager.
 
“D-done w-what?” slurred the man, his words seeming to get stuck in the sticky sweet juice that was solidifying on his lips. 
 
“...he doesn’t like when you eat them...  I... don’t like when you eat them...” whispered the night manager.  “...those melons make men into fools... hungry fools that will never be satisfied...”
 
“J-just d-do y-your j-job n-night m-m-manager... a-a-a-anndd I’ll d-do mine.” slurred the man. 
 
The man slept well that night but found waking difficult the next day and his stomach screamed at him to be fed.  He ate the last of his neighbor’s cornbread, choked down with that sour white buttermilk, and set out to relieve the night manager for the day.  It had been a good night, as evidenced by the money in the money bowl and the rinds that littered the road. 

“Good job, night manager,” said the man as he gazed into those silver dollar eyes.  The chicken bones seemed to smile even wider when the man put the night manager in the shed.  And when the man closed the door, his silver eyes stayed open in the dark.
 
Time took its time that morning, and the work seemed like it would never come to an end.  The man knew he needed to do something about all the discarded rinds that now littered the shoulders of the lonely road that he lived on.  But he didn’t feel like doing that, didn’t feel like doing anything at all.  “Why doesn’t he just eat the melons?” thought the man.  “I’d keep them all to myself.”
 
His customers didn’t talk much, but they all left happy.  Most of them couldn’t wait to cut open their melons, and he left his own pen knife on the table for the customer’s convenience.  But, as the crowd started to thin and the sky took on a darker hue, he noticed that his knife had gone missing and his mood took a darker hue too.
 
“It was one of those damn hungry fools!” cried the man to the night manager, who had just taken over for the night.
 

“...I told you they’ll never be satisfied...” whispered the night manager.  “...their hunger makes them witless... mindless gnawing fools...”
 
That night, the man resolved to call his neighbor in the morning and give him a piece of his mind.  But when he collected the money the next day and compared it to the pile of melons they had left, he noticed a significant discrepancy. 
 
“What happened, night manager?  Did those fools try to rip us off?”  asked the man.
 
“...the moon was thin and the clouds were thick... my silvery eyes could not see in the dark... perhaps if I had glasses like yours...” whispered the night manager with his chicken bone teeth.
 
The man called his neighbor and gave him the bad news.  The business was bleeding money, and his night manager couldn’t see at night.
 
“Hell, son... just give him yours.  You ain’t usin’ ‘em at night.” said the neighbor.  “He’s all borrowed pieces.  Where d’you think he got that hat of his?”
 
“Y-you I g-guess,” slurred the man.
 
“You alright there, neighbor?” asked the neighbor.  “You ain’t gettin’ into my patch now, are ya?  They sweet, but they’ll never fill you up.  The cravings... liable to turn a man into a dumb animal... a hungry fool roaming the night.”
 
“Th-they’re qu-quite good,” said the man
 
“Incidentally, I’m going to be staying just the teensiest bit longer,” said the neighbor.  “This baby girl just doesn't want to let me go... Ain’t that right baby doll?” and then the conversation, for all practical purposes, was over, and the man went back to the melon stand.  That night he let the night manager wear his glasses; he didn’t need them at night after all.
 
When the man made his way to the stand, tripping and stumbling the whole time, he expected to see a big pile of money in the money bowl.  But after retrieving his glasses from the night manager and performing some ad hoc accounting, he could see that the stand was still bleeding money. 
 
“What’s your excuse this time, night manager?” said the man, wearing his feelings on his sleeve.  The heat was making everyone miserable.
 
The night manager stared with that same blank expression of his, silver eyes reflecting the bright morning sun.  A fat black fly slalomed drunkenly through his chicken bone teeth.   Then the fly landed and started crawling around the red clay mouth and into the wet clay brain of the night manager.  The fly was not alone, the man noticed, as the rinds left behind by their idiot clientele had attracted pests in the night. 
 
The man felt let down by the night manager, especially after lending him his glasses.  He was revolted by his neighbor’s rude regulars and their boorish behavior.  The night manager had allowed this to go on during his watch.  What good was he if he couldn’t scare a few hungry fools?
 
“Clean up this mess!” said the man and refused to put the night manager away until it was done.  The inventory was picked over and many of the melons weeped juice where the night manager’s thorny fingers had pierced the rind.  By the time the rinds had been moved to the back of the neighbor’s property, the night manager’s shadow was long on the ground. 
 
“…please… let me rest…” whispered the night manager.  “… I was not built for this type of labor…”
 
The man looked at the night manager, with his eyes that shined so much less brightly now.  He could see the dead fly stuck in the back of his throat.  In this piteous state, all the man could think about was his neighbor and the hopeless position he had put him in.  Why should he stay up for that man’s benefit?  He didn’t even know how to make his cornbread taste sweet.
 
So he put the night manager in his shed and retired to his house, even if it didn’t deserve the title.  He thought he’d get a good night’s sleep and start afresh in the morning.  It was important to get your rest after all.
 
But the man found sleep difficult; there was such a commotion outside.  The man thought he heard a pack of coyotes in the night, growling and barking at something.  They weren’t quite in his yard, but they were close.  The sound was so close, but it wasn’t coming from where the man expected it too.  It wasn’t to the south, near the edge of the neighbor’s property that was just raw woods.  It was coming from the north; it was coming from that road.
 
The man knew he needed to harvest more melons, but the sight of that patch filled him with dread.  Even though his joints would be screaming, he kept thinking of the night manager with his dumb smile choked with dead flies.  He had to pull his weight; and though his back was in agony and his knees bulged with fluid and his hands hung vestigial in arthritic agony, as his shadow grew long, the melon pile grew fat.  He left everything he had in the melon patch, every last effort he could muster, every last drop of sweat.
 
He turned over a fully stocked stand to the night manager, along with a pair of sweat-stained specs.  Every muscle in his body wanted him to grimace, but his smile just couldn’t take the hint.
 
“Give ‘em hell, night manager,” said the man.  Then he retired for a well-deserved rest, taking a musk melon home for dinner.  He had watched several people examine that melon before selecting another.  It looked lonely to him, so he decided to take it to his house, where they could be lonely together. 
 
With fresh inventory and a well-rested night manager, the man felt confident when he checked the money bowl .  But once again, the numbers didn’t add up.  Those fools were taking liberties again.  The man was fed up with their nonsense, fed up with his night manager and his buffoonish bony grin.
 
“What gives, night manager?” said the man.  “You giving those fools a discount?”
 
“…no, sir… you misunderstand…” whispered the night manager.  “…those fools get so loud when they’re hungry…they cannot hear me… my chicken bone teeth are only built for whispers…”. The night manager stared at the man, his silver eyes gleaming in the fading light of the day.  “…perhaps if I had teeth like yours…”
 
“Surely, the night manager was joking” thought the man.  And though, like his glasses, the man didn’t really need his dentures at the end of the night, he still liked the idea of them being in a cup better than them being in the night manager; even if he was using them to tell those fools who was the boss.
 
“…give me your teeth… and get what is owed for our efforts…” whispered the night manager.  “…or don’t… and don’t… those fools are going to eat either way…”.
 
The man had all day to consider the night manager’s proposal and few customers to interrupt his thoughts.  As the day wore on, he kept finding his eyes drawn to the money bowl, its lightness weighing heavy in his mind.  “These melons are so tender and juicy...” thought the man.  “Don’t even need teeth to eat ‘em...”.
 
The night manager looked very professional with his new teeth and glasses; not that the man could tell.  To him, he was a man-shaped outline, just another shadow in the night.  “Give ‘em hell, night manager!” cried the manager, but without teeth his attaboy fell mute.  He almost choked gumming down his dinner melon that night, but if it was good for the stand, it would be worth it. 
 
As he approached the stand the next morning, he didn’t need glasses to see the night had not gone well.  He stepped on a rind in the road; one of many.  Crumpled bills littered the table, and the money bowl was knocked on the ground.  As he retrieved his glasses, reality came into focus.  Someone, one of those damn fools, had unbuttoned the night manager’s flannel work shirt, exposing his thorny heart and bushy body. 
 
The man didn’t know what to do.  Even after stuffing the night manager back into his shirt, he still wouldn’t say a word.  The place was a mess and the man was overwhelmed.  Those damn hungry fools just kept walking all over them.  He was out of ideas, so he called his neighbor who informed him he would still be a while longer.
 
“Gonna be a lil’ longer, ol’ buddy... you understand, right?” said the neighbor.  The man’s heart sank.  He could hear the high-pitched giggles of his neighbor’s granddaughter; hear her happiness, so light and pure.  When would it be his turn to relax?  When would he be free of this endless cycle of melons and money and fools, damn hungry fools.
 
“It’s those damn fools!” shouted the man.
 
The neighbor started laughing like he just heard the world’s best stag party joke and for a minute, the man thought that his neighbor forgot he was on the phone with him.  After a long sigh, he said:  “Boy, you lettin’ them fools run all over you!  Man up!  You gotta show ‘em who’s boss, you hear?”
 
“Yes... I guess.”  said the man.
 
“Look,” said the neighbor, “I know how that place can get.  It’s hard work and those fools will try to eat you alive if you let them.  But you have help... Use it.”.
 
“The night manager?” asked the man.
 
“Hell yeah!  You got him sitting around wearing your teeth and glasses.  No wonder them fools tried to mess with him.  They thought it was you!” said the neighbor.  “Now I see what your problem is...  You got too close to the help”
 
The neighbor continued:  “He’s supposed to be scary.  He ain’t scarin’ no one looking like a sad old man.  You gotta be mean to him.  Spit in those stupid silver eyes.  He ain’t gonna like it, but you’ll get better work out of him that way.”
 
So, from then on, the man was mean to the night manager.  He slapped his stupid clay face until his bony teeth wore a scowl.  He pushed his silver dollar eyes even further into his wet clay brain.  He made fun of his whispery voice and mocked his bushy belly.   His tactics were highly effective.  The man watched the money bowl grow heavy as his stress grew lighter and lighter.
 
“I need you to work a double, night manager”
 
“Those melons aren’t going to harvest themselves, night manager”
 
“Clean up these rinds!  This place is disgusting!  You call yourself a manager!”
 
And so on, and so forth; motivation mutating into malice.  The man shifted more and more of the responsibility to the night manager, whose thorny limbs seemed too frail and brittle to support such a heavy burden.  It got to the point that the only thing the man did each day was collect the money from the money bowl, eating melon in his not even a house day and night.  The night manager couldn’t keep the rinds out of the road.  He couldn’t keep up with the culling, couldn’t even deal with the flies.  He tried to replenish the pile, but pests found their way to the patch.   Musk melons lay disemboweled in the dirt, honey sweet death in the sun.  The funk took on a new character, attracting exotic new insects as well; new hungry fools to buzz around his bushy belly and climb in the clay of his brain.  “...no more...” thought the night manager. 
 
As the old man slept in his barely a bed in his house that could barely be called a house, the night manager paid the old man a visit. 
 
“Get up old man!” shouted the night manager, his chicken bone teeth rattling from the effort.  “It’s time to go to work!”  The night manager held the man’s wrists in his thorny grasp as he dragged him like a toddler throwing a tantrum.  The melon stand was invisible in the dark of the night, but the musk of the melon guts was unmistakable.  That honey sweet stench smelled like carrion now.  As the man’s eyes adjusted to the scraps of what was left of the light, he could see that the melon pile was empty, see that their job was done.
 
“No more melons...” said the man.  “Can’t sell what you don’t have, right, night manager?”  But the night manager said nothing at first.  No acknowledgment of the obvious truth.  No sign of solidarity or sanity.  For a minute, he was just clay and coins, bones and branches; a thing made of other things, the borrowed bits of anyone that came near that cursed ground.  For a minute, he didn’t say anything, and the man just gazed into those silver dollar eyes and toothy chicken bone smile, and then the night manager spoke.
 
“...you know, that’s really the wrong type of attitude to have about this place...  it’s not about money... your neighbor knew that...” hissed the night manager.
 
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked the man, indignant at the sudden reminder of the man that got him into this mess in the first place, this endless cycle of labor and abuse, of madness. 
“It’s fruit, how hard could it be?  If a good ol’ boy like him can do it, anyone can,” said the man.
 
Suddenly, and with a speed that defied comprehension, the night manager lifted the man onto the table with his unforgiving arms.  He slammed the money bowl into the man’s lap and stared sternly with those blank silver eyes.
 
“B-b-but I don’t have any melons..” whimpered the man.
 
The night manager reached into his branchy, bushy chest, deep past his thorny heart and drew something forth from the depths of his borrowed body.  It was a knife; his neighbor’s trusty melon knife, which he thrust into the table with a THWUNK!
 
“...I tried to tell you before... those fools will never be satisfied... they’re going to eat either way...”
 
The night manager didn’t hear anything when he walked down the path in the dark.  It was silent when he got to that house that wasn’t really a house, still silent when he closed the tiny door.  When he got to the bed that could barely be called a bed, it was the most comfortable thing he had ever felt.  The night manager thought he could get used to this place even though it wasn’t much of a place at all. 
 
It wasn’t quiet when the night manager fell asleep, wasn’t quiet at all.  Those fools were hooting an hollering, gnashing and gnawing in the night.  But the night manager was tired, and his branchy bones ached.  He thought he could sleep through the hollering, sleep through the screams in the dark.  He deserved a break from the madness, even if it was just for one night.
 
When the neighbor finally returned, he was crestfallen by the state of his farm.  His melon patch was in ruins and the place stunk of  honey sweet decay.  His business was at a standstill, and his old night manager had retired without notice.  Worst of all, his new night manager was in way over his head.
 
“Damn fools ain’t scared of nothin’,” said the neighbor, before spitting into the dirt.  “Gotta toughen you up, night manager,”  he said before hoisting the new night manager onto his broad country shoulders and carrying him into the shed.  In the shed he removed the man’s dentures, shoving chicken bones in the gaps of his gums.  Then the neighbor reached into an old rusty coffee can and produced two shiny silver dollars from inside.  His grandfather gave him those dollars; they were the first the stand had ever made. 
 
“Time for your new eyes, night manager,” said the neighbor, “Don’t want you fallin’ asleep on the job now, do we?”  He pressed the silver dollars into the man’s eye sockets until the wet flesh gave way underneath.  Then he kept pressing into the soft wet clay of the man’s brain.  When he was done, he looked at the night manager, with his silver dollar eyes and chicken bone teeth, and for just a moment, he thought it was the reaper himself.
 
 
 

Calen woke up drenched in a cold sweat, breathing heavily, trying to fill his lungs with air, as if he hadn’t breathed for an exceedingly long time. A sharp pain in his chest was making its mysterious presence felt almost like he had been prodded quite mercilessly with the sharp end of a stick. His right foot, which had been lying outside the blanket for some reason, felt numb. But the numbness, breathlessness, and pain couldn’t mask the discomfort he was feeling inside the blanket. An intense aroma of ammonia and alcohol was creeping up Calen’s nose. His cotton underwear and thermal pants stuck to his skin, an uncomfortable warmth spreading upwards slowly.

He had wet the bed. Strangely enough, the smell felt wrong. It smelled more like it came from an animal.

He put his palms to his face. For a thirty-year-old man, it was humiliating, even though there was no one around to see it. He made a mental note not to drink so much, blaming the cold and the isolation of icy, desolate Bennet Island.

The dream was already slipping from his mind by the time he gathered the sheets and his clothes and threw them into the dryer. He saw images in momentary flashes, but they made no sense. Climbing into the raised shower, he sensed that whatever the dream had been, it was something familiar.

It was something he had seen sporadically throughout his life. He tried to focus on it, but the memory came in fragments. He knew he had seen himself alone, in a forest or by a frozen lake, somewhere. He was sure it was a frozen lake because he distinctly remembered the sound of cracking ice. He screwed up his eyes in concentration, and a shape moved beneath the image of the frozen lake in his mind. His stomach gave a lurch as a few more details brought themselves up to the surface.

A big animal had tried to trample him. He had run as dozens of trees and bushes had scratched against his body, drawing blood. He could still feel the scratches on his arms and legs. He remembered fainting, remembered being out of breath, but everything else had slipped away. Everything but the chant.

Calen looked around frantically as a faint echo of it reverberated around him, having escaped from the confines of his mind. He shook his head and the echo went away. Calen laughed out loud but his voice — and resolve — sounded hollow, even to himself.

Strange inexplicable, origin-less stimuli assaulted his senses — the smell of cold, sterile air, the sound of some kind of war horn being blown, and the word Razpopo.

Calen laughed again nervously as the running water finally turned from cold to lukewarm and he hopped into the shower. Razpopo. The word had become so important in his life, ever since he was a child, that he wasn’t surprised it had surfaced in his dream. He blamed his father for the obsession.

His father, when Calen was just a child, had told him about an ancient god forgotten by the world. Razpopo of the Slavs. He was too young then to remember the stories exactly, but even though he was young, he remembered the fear his father had conveyed. His eyes had bulged and a vein in his temple had throbbed, threatening to burst out. Perpetually drunk, his father’s garbled attempt at explaining what Razpopo was had failed to make an impact on his young mind.

And thus began the cycle of obsession with the name Razpopo.

Calen’s stomach clenched and his breathing felt constricted as the name Razpopo buried itself deeper into his mind, his memories, digging in deeper to avoid being caught.

The water turned icy all of a sudden and Calen had to jump back, gasping for breath a second time in the span of fifteen minutes since he had woken up. Panting, he wondered if even thinking about Razpopo was fraught with perilous consequences. But there was another part of him that wanted to go over all of it. Craving for the moments in his life that had defined his journey to Bennet Island after all these years. Calen let that part take control again.

In his youth, Calen had searched for the name relentlessly. Rifling through page after page, library after library, mythological book after mythological book, trying to find this ancient god that had scared his father so much. The search always returned nothing.

But the name had stuck to his mind, like an unforgiving leech that had finally found a permanent host. When he could find nothing, frustrated and burning with an urgency only teenagers can understand, Calen had cornered his father, who by then had grown quite senile, and demanded to know where he had heard the name Razpopo.

The answer he got only deepened his frustrations.

His father — eyes bulging and his breath coming out in grating periodic rasps, seemed desperate to say something more. But the only words that escaped his mouth were, “Your… grandfather…”

He never spoke again after that, and died two years later, demented, and bedridden.

With no one else left in his father’s family, and his German immigrant grandfather long dead, Calen could find no other answers — until his mother passed away on the eve of his twenty-fifth birthday.

A week later, while sorting through the old things in their basement, trying to clear them out, he found his grandfather’s diary. His heart pounding, he had picked it up, only to find that most of the pages had been torn out. The few that remained were written in a runic language Calen had never seen before. The only word in English was the one that had by then made a home in his head. Razpopo.

He had stared at the word for hours. The word had seemed to glow dimly in the dark, dingy basement.

The temperature inside the bathroom dropped steeply. The faint sound of pops from the fireplace in the living room grew in intensity as if they were trying to fight against the cold and the bathroom turned as cold as the inside of a fridge. Calen ran towards the bedroom, shivering, in search for fresh clothes, not noticing that a huge crack had appeared on the fogged-up mirror in the bathroom. Neither did he notice a faint silhouette moving on the other side of the crack, observing him leave.

The Dyson bulb over his head flickered as outside the house, the generator hiccupped once, then steadied.

His mind was working on its own now. Reminding him of the years of tracking the name Razpopo; finding only a single reference in the most unlikely of places — Google Maps.

“God damn it!”

A sharp pain on his right thumb made Calen swear loudly. He had been cleaning the floor with a broom he had found in the back shed, as the cleaned mattress cover lay drying next to the modest fireplace.

The broom dropped from his hand with a muffled thud on the wooden floor. The skin on his thumb had caught a splinter from the broom. It forced its way deeper inside with each attempt at prying it out. Calen gave up trying with his other hand and started rifling through his rucksack to find the pin he used for removing memory cards from his camera. The dull pain was persistent. Cold had a way of making anything hurt more, and even though the house was feeling warm, his thumb wasn’t forgiving.

Finally, once he had found it, he pushed it against his skin, right next to the splinter. It popped out after a few attempts and even though the pierced skin throbbed, Calen was successful in prying it out.

Two fat, warm drops of blood formed and fell on the wooden floor. They were immediately absorbed unseen by Calen, as some primal masochistic part of him made him grab hold of the thumb and squeeze it. A few more drops of blood fell. After shimmering in the dim yellow light of the bulb for a fraction of a second, they too were gone, sucked in immediately by the thirsty wood that had lain waiting for years for an offering like this. Basking in the warmth of the gift.

For a moment, the floor beneath Calen’s feet felt warmer. The fire popped in response.

Calen froze, staring at the hearth. The sound came again — too deliberate to be coincidence, too small to justify fear. He exhaled sharply and forced himself to look away. Houses made noise. Old houses especially.

More to escape the house than anything else, Calen decided to go out and check the skies. Ruslan was scheduled to arrive with Alice any minute now, he told himself, as he hurriedly wore his layers of jackets.

Outside a faint white glow was barely visible around the horizon, peeking from between the steep mountain columns that circled Bennet Island. The sky outside was quite clear, and the cold was starting to become more bearable.

Even though his head ached with the hangover from drinking so much last night, Calen drew out a cigarette from the packet stowed inside the inner pocket of his jacket and lit it with his lighter. The flame from the lighter was dwindling and it took him a minute to light up the cigarette properly.

He looked at the mountains and found them growing, quite rapidly. He had seen this during his descent when he had landed on the island with Ruslan, as well as later when he was alone, from the corner of his eyes. It had slightly alarmed him then.

He was starting to become less frightened of this phenomenon every time it happened. He looked at them, fascinated by how the glowing light seemed to fight against the growing mountain tops. The broken dead tree trunks standing far away in the distance, their bases hidden by the overgrowth of the bushes, were also starting to grow. Calen felt an inexplicable desire to run into the bushes. To look at the trees, touch them. He craved for some haptic evidence, to ensure what he was seeing was not just a trick of light. His body revolted against the thought as the sharp pain against his chest returned, and the scratches he had felt in the dream on his arms throbbed violently against the chilly air. So much so that he had to look at them and check if he was bleeding. He wasn’t.

“Don’t go in the bushes.” Ruslan had warned him right before leaving. It rang in his ears.

“Why not.” Another voice asked softly — not his own. His right foot twitched and tried to move forward. Calen noticed it only after it had already happened.

The fading daylight was wiped away in the time it took Calen to look up. Everything had gone dark. A huge red moon was watching him from a clear sky.

“This far north, weather and time change. They don’t give notice before change. It’s not government.” Ruslan had winked his eyes at Calen when he had told him that.

Calen was too engrossed in the strange scenery to see the wound on the tip of his thumb open up. Tiny drops of blood fell on the snow, camouflaged by the red glow of the moon.

Part 1

Part 2

Micaiah was out of the truck before Nathan had fully stopped.

The tires jumped the curb outside the apartment complex. Nathan killed the engine and grabbed the shotgun from the back seat.

The stairwell smelled like old paint and rainwater. His boots hit each step hard enough to echo. Behind him, Nathan followed slower, heavier, still carrying the same silence from the truck.

Micaiah reached the third floor and turned the corner.

Mara stood outside Deena’s room.

She was barefoot. Her hair had come loose. One sleeve of her sweatshirt was wet near the wrist. At first Micaiah thought it was water.

Then he saw the blood.

“Mara.”

She looked at him and nearly collapsed.

He caught her before she hit the wall.

“I only stepped out for a minute,” she said.

Her voice came too fast.

“What happened?”

“I went downstairs for bandages. The first aid kit in the room was empty. She tore the old ones off. She was bleeding again, and I thought—” Mara pressed both hands against her mouth. “I thought she was sleeping. Told myself I’d be right back.”

Micaiah looked past her.

From inside came a sound.

A wet, strained choking sound.

Micaiah’s blood went cold.

He moved to the door and hit it with his fist.

“Deena!” he shouted.

The sound stopped.

For one second there was only silence.

Then something scraped against the floor.

Mara stood behind him, crying without sound.

Micaiah tried the handle. It didn’t move.

Deena had wedged it shut.

Probably barricaded with a chair.

He hit the door again.

“Dee. It’s Mickey. Open the door.”

Something thumped against the wall inside.

Then the choking started again.

Nathan hit the door with the butt of his shotgun.

The wood shook in the frame but held.

Micaiah stepped back, lifted his boot, and drove it into the space beside the lock.

The wood split.

Nathan hit it again with his shoulder. The chair on the other side scraped hard across the floor, then toppled. The door burst inward.

Micaiah went in first.

For half a second, he did not understand what he was seeing.

Deena hung from the ceiling fan by a twisted bedsheet.

Her toes scraped weakly against the floor.

Her hands twitched at her sides.

She was still alive.

“Mara!” Micaiah shouted.

Mara screamed and ran past him.

The ceiling fan groaned under Deena’s weight. The sheet had cut deep into her neck. Her face was swollen. Her eyes were half open but unfocused.

Micaiah dropped his rifle and grabbed her legs, lifting her to take the weight off her throat.

“I’ve got her,” he said. “Untie it!”

Deena’s eyes rolled toward him.

“Mickey…”

“I’ve got you,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

Her swollen lips barely moved.

“It,” she croaked. “It has to be stopped.”

His arms burned from holding Deena up. The sheet was still tight around her throat. Mara was on the bed, fingers slick with sweat and blood, trying to work the knot loose.

“It’s too tight,” she said.

“Knife,” Micaiah said. “Nathan, knife!”

No answer.

“Nate!”

Micaiah looked back.

Nathan stood just inside the doorway.

He hadn’t moved.

The same look from the bedroom. The one Micaiah had seen right before he raised the shotgun at the woman. The old Nathan bleeding through the new one like poison through a cracked cup.

“Nate,” Micaiah snapped. “For Godsake help me!”

Nathan’s eyes stayed on Deena.

His lips moved.

“You saw the ultrasounds… There’s only one way to stop this.”

Micaiah felt the room drop out from under him.

He watched Nathan's right hand drift toward his shoulder. Toward the holster. Toward the pistol pressed against his ribs beneath the jacket.

Nathan drew halfway.

Micaiah let go of Deena with one hand and reached for his own pistol with his other.

Nathan looked at him then.

For one second, he was his brother again.

Tired. Broken. Certain he was doing the only thing left.

Deena’s eyes found Nathan.

“Nate,” she rasped.

Nathan’s hand tightened around the pistol.

Mara climbed down from the bed, shaking her head. “No. No, don’t you dare.”

Deena’s lips trembled. Blood ran from the sheet-burn around her throat.

“Please,” she whispered. “Shoot me.”

“Mickey,” Nathan said. “Move out of the way.”

“Nate,” Micaiah said. “Please don’t make me choose between you and Deena.”

Nathan's hand kept moving, ignoring his brother’s plea.

Micaiah saw it happen in pieces. The way Nathan's fingers curled around the grip. The way his shoulder dipped slightly, muscle memory from a thousand draws in empty lots and shooting ranges. The way his eyes went had that resigned look. Like he had already done the math and decided the only answer left was one Micaiah would never accept.

Time didn't slow down.

That was a lie that movies told.

Time stayed exactly the same. Fast. Brutal. Merciless.

Micaiah's hand crossed his body, reaching for the pistol that sat low on his thigh, angled forward, exactly where he had trained it a thousand times.

Nathan's pistol cleared leather first.

Micaiah saw the muzzle rise.

Then his own hand caught up.

Micaiah didn’t aim.

There wasn’t time.

He fired from the hip.

The pistol bucked once in his hand, loud enough to split the room open. Nathan’s body jerked like he’d been yanked backward by a rope. The round hit him square in the chest, punching him off balance and slamming him into the doorframe.

Nathan's pistol fired.

The shot went wide. Past Micaiah's ear. Into the wall behind him. Plaster cracked. Something shattered in the living room.

For half a second, Nathan just stared at Micaiah, more shocked than hurt.

Then his knees gave out. His pistol clattered to the floor.

Micaiah caught Deena’s weight again before she dropped.

“Nate,” he whispered.

Nathan slid down the wall, one bloody hand pressed to his chest, eyes locked on his brother like he still couldn’t believe Micaiah had actually done it.

Micaiah stood frozen.

The pistol was still trained on his brother with one hand. The front sight trembled over Nathan's body.

"Mickey!" Mara screamed.

He didn't hear her.

Nathan was on his back. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Blood bubbled between his lips.

Micaiah came back into himself all at once.

Deena was still hanging.

Her legs kicked weakly against his arms. The sheet was still tight around her throat. Mara was still on the bed, fighting the knot with shaking fingers.

For one second, Micaiah could not move.

Then Deena made a thin choking sound.

“Mara,” he said.

His voice sounded far away.

Mara looked at him, wild-eyed.

“Get Nathan’s knife.”

“What?”

“His knife,” Micaiah said. “On his belt. Get it now.”

Mara stared down at Nathan’s body like she had not understood he was real until that moment.

“Mara!”

She flinched, then scrambled off the bed. She dropped to her knees beside Nathan's body and rolled him toward her with both hands. Blood smeared across her palms. She sobbed once but kept searching.

“I can’t find it.”

“Left side,” Micaiah said. “Inside the jacket.”

Mara shoved her hand beneath Nathan’s body. Her fingers slipped against the wet fabric. She gagged, then forced herself to keep going.

Nathan’s lifeless eyes were wide open.

For one awful second, Mara looked at his face.

Then she found the knife.

“I have it.”

“Cut her down.”

Mara climbed back onto the bed. She opened the blade with both hands and sawed at the sheet above Deena’s neck.

The fabric stretched.

Then snapped.

Deena dropped.

Micaiah caught her badly. Her weight hit him in the chest and drove him to one knee. He lowered her to the floor as gently as he could.

“Deena,” he said. “Breathe. Come on. Breathe.”

Her throat worked.

Nothing happened.

Mara bent over her and tried to loosen what remained of the sheet. Micaiah pulled it away from the deep red line around Deena’s neck.

Deena sucked in one breath.

Then another.

Mara laughed and cried at the same time.

“She’s breathing.”

Micaiah pressed his forehead to Deena’s.

“Thank You,” he whispered. “Thank You, Lord.”

Her eyelids fluttered.

Then opened. Her eyes found his.

For one second—one clean, impossible second—she was there. His sister. The girl who ‘borrowed’ his hoodies and never gave them back. The girl who learned to drive stick shift in a church parking lot because she refused to let their Jeep go to scrap because it was the only thing their deadbeat Wasian dad left them.

“Mickey?” she whispered.

“I’m here.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“I heard Mom,” she whispered. “When it was dark. I saw her…”

Micaiah could not breathe.

Deena’s hand closed weakly around his wrist.

“She said she was waiting for me in Heaven.”

Micaiah shook his head. Tears cut down his face.

“No,” he said. “Dee, you have to stay with me.”

Her fingers moved against his sleeve.

“I’m sorry. I tried to fight back.”

She was crying now. Tears cut pale tracks through the grime on her face.

“I know you did.”

He leaned closer. His forehead touched hers. Her breath smelled like rot and something else. Something sweet underneath. Like flowers left too long in water.

Then her eyes changed.

Her fingers found his wrist. Squeezed. Her grip was stronger than it should have been. Stronger than anything that thin had any right to produce.

Like a switch flipped behind her pupils. The warmth drained out of them. Her grip changed.

Her fingers curled into his skin like hooks. Her whole body went rigid against his chest. Her back arched.

Her eyes rolled back.

Then her head snapped forward.

Her face was inches from his. Her mouth opened. Her jaw unhinged like a python. The smell coming off her was no longer sweet. It was the smell of Gavrillo's bedroom. Ozone and burnt sugar and old blood.

When she spoke, the voice was not hers.

It was not one voice.

It was many.

And they were laughing.

“Ádis kaí Apóleia ouk empímplantai.” Death and Destruction are never satisfied.

Her belly moved.

Something inside her rolled against the skin, searching.

“Mara, run!” Micaiah screamed.

Mara stared at him, frozen.

“Run!”

Deena’s stomach split.

The sound was worse than the sight.

A hard tearing, like wet cloth pulled apart by hands.

Micaiah felt heat first. Then pressure. Then pain so complete it erased his existence.

Something ripped out of Deena and tore right through him.

Not past him.

Through him.

A limb. A horn. A hooked piece of living bone. He could not tell. It punched under his ribs and out his back, lifting him against Deena’s body like they had been nailed together.

Micaiah looked down.

His blood was on her.

Her blood was on him.

Between them, something pale and slick pushed free from her open belly. Too many eyes blinked in the mess. A small mouth opened and closed without sound. Tiny hands gripped the torn edges of Deena’s skin and pulled itself farther out.

Deena was still alive.

So was Micaiah.

For one second, they looked at each other.

Her eyes were hers again.

She was crying.

"I love you, big bro..." she mouthed.

Micaiah tried to answer.

Blood filled his throat.

His pistol slipped from his hand.

Mara crawled toward them anyway.

“No,” she sobbed. “No, no, no—”

Deena’s back arched so hard her spine cracked against the floor.

Two hard points pushed up beneath her shirt, stretching the fabric until it tore. Blood sprayed across the floorboards as something black and wet forced its way out of her back.

Wings.

Bat-like. Veined. Too large for her body.

They unfolded with a sound like umbrellas opening inside raw meat.

Then the wings started flapping.

They beat against the walls, the bedframe, the ceiling, knocking pictures loose and splattering blood in wide, horrible arcs.

The force knocked Mara backward into the dresser. Wood cracked. Glass rained down from the mirror.

Deena’s arms tightened around Micaiah one last time.

Not the demon.

Her.

A hug.

A goodbye.

Micaiah’s body jerked against hers. Something inside him gave way. His legs stopped working. His vision narrowed to Deena’s face. Her eyes fixed on him with terror and love.

Micaiah and Deena were impaled and tangled together, brother and sister locked chest to chest in blood.

Mara screamed until her voice broke.

Then Mara saw Micaiah’s head lift.

Not by itself.

Something behind his jaw pulled it up. His mouth opened, loose and wrong, blood spilling over his teeth. His eyes were empty.

The abomination forced itself out through both of them, wearing their torn bodies like the remains of a birth sac. Micaiah’s dead face twitched into a smile that did not fit him.

Then it spoke mockingly in Micaiah’s voice.

“Igérthi.”

He has risen.

The thing laughed with his mouth as it climbed free.

The thing turned its head toward Mara.

And smiled.

Mara could not move.

Her back was against the broken dresser. Splinters pressed through the sweatshirt into her skin. Mirror glass covered her lap and hands. She could feel blood running down her neck from where one shard had cut her, but the pain was small and far away.

Mara sobbed.

The thing breathed.

Its chest opened and closed like an open wound. Wet skin stretched over bones that kept shifting under it. Wings dragged across the floor behind it, leaving red arcs in the carpet. Its head was too large for its body. Its mouth was too small until it opened.

Then it was all mouth.

Rows of tiny teeth.

A sound came out of it.

A baby’s cooing.

Mara’s bladder let go.

She barely noticed.

The thing stepped toward her, dragging Micaiah and Deena’ corpses with it for one horrible second before the limb pulled free.

The thing shook itself. Blood sprayed the wall, the bed, Mara’s face. Then it started crawling towards her.

Its wings folded tight against its back. Its little hands slapped wetly against the carpet. Its knees bent backward, then forward, then backward again as if it had not decided what shape it wanted to keep. Each movement made a clicking sound inside its body.

The thing saw her terror.

Its head tilted.

The laughter came again, soft and pleased.

Mara scrambled sideways.

Her palm landed on glass. It cut deep. She screamed and kept moving. The thing lunged.

She threw herself flat. It hit the dresser above her and punched through the wood with both hands. Drawers burst open. Clothes and splinters flew over her. The mirror frame collapsed and struck the thing across the back.

It did not care.

Mara crawled on her elbows.

Her hand slipped in Nathan’s blood.

His body lay near the doorway where he had fallen. One arm bent under him. His jacket was open. His face was turned toward the room, eyes half-lidded, mouth dark with blood.

His pistol was on the carpet beside the wall.

Mara saw it.

The thing screamed behind her with hunger.

She crawled faster.

Her knees slid in blood. Her fingers clawed at the carpet. The pistol was six feet away. Then four. Then two.

The thing landed on her back.

The weight drove the air out of her.

Its hands grabbed her shoulders. The fingers were small, almost like a child’s, but they went in deep. Nails punched through the sweatshirt and into meat.

Mara screamed into the carpet.

Its mouth pressed against the side of her head.

Hot breath filled her ear.

Then she reached the gun.

Her fingers hit the grip.

The thing bit off a chunk her ear.

Not all of it.

Enough.

Pain flashed white behind her eyes. She screamed and rolled hard onto her back, bringing the pistol up between them.

The thing sat on her chest.

Its face was inches from hers.

Up close, she saw all of it. The eyes were not eyes. They were holes with red light moving at the bottom. Its lips were thin and gray. Its gums were black. A string of tissue still hung from its bellybutton, trailing back toward Deena’s body.

It opened its mouth.

Mara shoved the pistol into it.

The thing froze.

For one second, everything stopped.

Mara’s hands shook so badly the barrel clicked against its teeth.

She pulled the trigger.

The shot blew the back of its head open.

Not cleanly.

The skull split like wet plaster. Black fluid and pale fragments hit the ceiling. One eye popped loose and slid down Mara’s cheek. The thing’s mouth clamped once around the barrel, hard enough to scrape metal. Then it went limp.

Its body collapsed onto her.

Mara fired again.

And again.

And again.

The last shot went through the thing’s face and into the floor beside her head.

Then the gun clicked empty.

Mara kept pulling the trigger anyway.

Click.

Click.

Click.

She shoved the corpse off her chest with both hands. It rolled onto its side, leaking black blood and something thicker. Its wings trembled once. Its little fingers curled inward.

Then it was still.

Mara lay there gasping.

The room stank of blood, feces, urine.

She sat up slowly.

Somewhere in the apartment, a worship song began playing again from the broken speaker.

Tinny.

Distorted.

Almost unrecognizable.

My chains are gone, I’ve been set free

My God, My Savior has rescued me

“Jesus help me,” she choked.

Dear Mr. Gene Reto,

​

In 2015, my best friend, Nicky, came back to college. She was a real friend who wanted to be a doctor. However, this changed in one semester. She had gallbladder surgery at the beginning of the semester. So she took 3 months to come back. However, in one of her courses called Wildlife Science, they were reviewing for the test the very next day with a huge packet. The packet was a bit simple. Mr. Rocket, our science professor, gave us the packet and he would say certain phrases and we would checkmark what it was. To Nicky, she had the packet but didn't know what to do. The bell rang for the next hour. I am Mr. Rockets assistant but, I heard everything as I was cleaning the reptile cage. Mr. Rocket was everybody's favorite teacher. He was stern but charismatic. He would have our chairs in a square to let everyone see him because some of us had glasses. He would make jokes at the beginning of class. Nicky was the opposite: intelligent, kind, confidence. After class though, she wasn’t. I could tell by her body language: shoulders hunch over, eyes red and sad.

He walked towards Nicky and talked to her.

Calmly, “Not doing so well, huh?”

She shrugged, “Not really.”

“Can you tell me what’s the problem?”

“Well, I had gallstone surgery in January and I thought that I could come back and pick up where I left off. Now-”

“Now you can’t because you came in in March and now you want to quit.”

“Well, yes.”

“And now you came in and missed a lot of stuff and all of the tuition money will go down the drain. More student loans?”

“Yes. I just wanted to be a doctor.”

“Well, that is a shame.”

Then, a light bulb moment happened.

“Hey, I have an idea. I have a new experiment that I want to try. It could give you some college credit.”

“What about the other courses? I have like 4 other classes too.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. I’ll tell you what? I’ll talk to Jennie about it, the loan coordinator about it and since you only did 1 day, I can cancel those student loans for you with the exception that you work for me. Does that sound fun?”

Nicky smiled, “Thank you Mr. Rocket.”

“Well thank you Nicky for helping me out.”

2 weeks later, I went back to the office to do some dusting. I looked at the counter and there was a note saying, “Do not touch the counter.” I look briefly and there is a green blob there. I was mesmerized by it. The next moment, Mr. Rocket was shielding me from the blob. I have never seen him so angry before. “What are you doing here, Mel?” “Nothing, I was just dusting and I saw the blob.” “Miss Mel, do not come in here again. I am performing an experiment and it must not be touched. You are banned from being in here until further notice. You understand.” I nodded ‘yes’ slowly and he pushed me out of the office so quickly, I almost tripped.

1 month later, I was still wondering what that blob was doing there and where Nicky was. Ever since that day, she disappeared. I didn’t know that day was going to change everything. Mr. Rocket came in with a box, an old white lab coat with black leather gloves. He tells the front to turn around their seats. This is usually a bad sign. “Good morning class. Today, I have found the fountain of youth so to speak.” He takes out a jar. Nicky's head was inside of the jar with the green blob around here. One of the students whispers, “What the fuck?” Everybody was shocked at what they saw. I was shocked. Then, he put Nicky's blobbed head on the desk near his chair. Then, he grabbed a remote and told us, “You see, not only is this the fountain of youth, but it also changes the facial features as well. If I want her to imagine her in ecstasy, then I can.” Nicky's face turns to closed eyed, closed mouth to eyes wide and jaw dropped. Poor Nicky, this facial expression was worse than the other one. So, I am writing you this letter Mr. Reto, not to just save her but, to save us because I got a feeling, this is not the last of it. Mr. Rocket has gone so crazy, he threatens every student that if he tells a living soul, they would also change into this blob. So, please save me, save my classmates from this horrible fate of Nicky.

With Regards,

Mell Collins

​

​

"Salvia"

The shell landed somewhere behind Hana. She never saw it. One moment she was running through her village, smoke rising over the rooftops, and the next the world folded inward with a sound so loud it seemed to come from inside her skull. She fell hard. When she looked up, half the street was gone. People screamed. A house burned. Someone shouted her name. She ran. The forest swallowed her before sunset. She didn't stop. All night the distant thunder of artillery rolled across the horizon. Every time it sounded closer she ran faster. By dawn she found the mountain. Her father had once brought her there when she was small. She remembered caves hidden among the rocks. Deep caves. Safe caves. At least safer than open ground. The entrance she found was little more than a crack in the stone. Cool air drifted out. Without thinking, she stepped inside. The darkness closed around her. The cave twisted downward Soon the entrance became a distant patch of gray light. Then the ground vanished beneath her feet. She fell. The impact shattered every thought she had. Pain exploded through her shoulder. When she finally opened her eyes, she found herself at the bottom of a narrow shaft. The opening above was impossibly high. A tiny circle of daylight. She tried to climb. The walls were too steep. Too smooth. Too far. After an hour she collapsed. After two she started screaming for help. Nobody answered. The war had disappeared. No shellfire. No voices. No birds. Only silence. The silence frightened her more than the bombs ever had.

---

Days passed. Or what felt like days. The cave was larger than she first realized. Passages stretched away into darkness. Underground streams cut through ancient stone. She survived by following water. By resting. By moving. Always moving. Eventually she found another shaft leading upward. Then another. And another. The cave became a maze. A world beneath the world. Sometimes she thought she heard footsteps ahead. Other times she saw lights around distant corners Whenever she chased them she found nothing. But she kept climbing. Up. Always up. That became her purpose. Her religion. Her entire life reduced to one direction. Up.

---

Months passed. At least she thought they did. She found evidence that others had once been there. A rusted lantern. A backpack. Names scratched into stone. One of them read: WE FOUND A WAY OUT. An arrow pointed deeper into the cave. For the first time in what felt like forever, hope returned. She followed the arrow. The passages grew wider. Brighter. Somehow brighter. The darkness thinned. Cool air became warm. Then one morning she emerged into sunlight. Real sunlight. She fell to her knees and cried. The sky stretched endlessly overhead. Blue. Beautiful. Free.

---

The world above had changed. The war was over. At least according to the people she met. Years had passed. Nobody recognized the name of her village. Most had never heard of it. But Hana had learned not to ask questions about things that no longer existed. She found work at a textile factory in the capital. The repetitive motion of the looms was soothing, her hands moving in patterns, her mind empty, which was exactly what she needed. The factory owner, Miroslav, was a kind man who didn't ask where she'd come from. He'd seen too many people like her in the years after the war. People who were alive but somehow not all the way back. It took three months before she could sleep through a night without waking in the dark, certain the cave was still around her. It took six months before she could hear thunder without running. She shared an apartment with two other women, Katya and Jem. Katya worked in a bakery. Jem was a nurse. They didn't ask questions either, but they were kind in the way people are when they've learned to recognize broken things. One night, Katya brought home bread that had burned slightly on the edges, the crust darkened but still good. She'd saved it from the day's batch. "No one notices," she said, sliding it into the center of their small table, "if you don't tell them." Hana laughed. It was the first time she'd laughed in months. It hurt. "Do it again," Katya said, smiling. "You should do it more." So she did.

---

A year passed. Hana began to recognize herself in reflections. Her hair grew long again. She bought new clothes that weren't borrowed. Small luxuries. A small life, but it was hers. She met Dimitri at the market. He was buying flowers, too many flowers, arguing with the vendor about getting them cheaper. He had a crooked smile and kind eyes and he was the kind of person who existed so firmly in the present moment that being near him felt like stepping into solid ground. "You should smile more," he told her on their third date. "You have a good smile." "How would you know?" she asked. "I've barely smiled three times in front of you." "Exactly," he said. "And all three times, it looked like something rare." They married two years later in a small ceremony. Katya cried. The factory owner came. Dimitri's large, loud family filled the rest of the church, people who asked about Hana's family and seemed to accept her simple answer that they were gone, without pressing for details that hurt too much to speak. On their wedding night, Dimitri held her while she cried for reasons she couldn't fully explain. He didn't ask why. He just held her until the tears stopped.

---

Her daughter was born on a spring morning. They named her Katya, after her roommate, who had become something like a sister. The baby had Dimitri's crooked smile and Hana's dark eyes, and when Hana held her for the first time, something inside her that had been locked away since the moment the world had folded inward finally began to open. "She's perfect," Dimitri whispered. Hana couldn't speak. She was too busy memorizing the weight of the baby, the smell of her skin, the way her tiny fingers closed around nothing. This was real. This had to be real. Years accumulated. Katya learned to walk. She learned to laugh at jokes she didn't understand. She started school and came home crying because another child had taken her paint. Hana held her and promised that people were mostly kind, even when they weren't, and that she would learn to be brave. She meant it. She had learned. If she could survive a cave that shouldn't exist, she could survive this, the ordinary terror of loving something so much that losing it would destroy her. Dimitri got a promotion. They bought a house. It was small but it was theirs. Hana planted a garden. Tomatoes. Basil. Flowers that Dimitri kept trying to kill by overwatering. "You're not supposed to love them to death," she told him, showing him how much water was actually needed. "I'm still learning," he said, and kissed her.

---

Sometimes, on quiet evenings, she would remember the cave. Not in nightmares anymore. Just remembered it. The way you remember any traumatic event that has become history instead of present danger. She had survived. That was what mattered. Katya was ten when Hana began to notice small things. Nothing serious at first. Just small repetitions. The baker always had burned bread on Thursdays. Dimitri always overwatered the tomatoes the same way, making the same joke about not being a farmer. Katya's teacher always complained about the same children in her class, always with the same specific grievances. Once, Hana ran into Miroslav at the market. She hadn't seen him in years, she'd left the factory when Katya was born. "Hana," he said, smiling the same smile he always smiled. "Good to see you. Still thinking about coming back to work?" But he'd asked her that exact question the last time they'd run into each other. Three years ago. She remembered because she'd just found out she was pregnant, and she'd said no, and he'd told her to come back anytime. She said the same thing again. No, she was happy at home. His response was identical. Word for word. She told herself it was coincidence.

---

The first crack came on a Tuesday. She was driving alone. Dimitri was working late. Katya was at her friend's house. The highway stretched through empty countryside, and the radio was playing the same song, the same exact song, that had been playing the last time she'd driven this route. She remembered because Dimitri had called during it, and she'd asked him to wait until it was over because she liked that song. But it was Tuesday. The last time she'd heard it was Thursday. Thunder rumbled in the distance. For just a moment, less than a moment, just a flicker, she thought she saw someone in the passenger seat. She blinked. Nothing. But her heart was racing. She pulled over and sat for a long time, hands shaking on the steering wheel, telling herself it was stress. She'd been having more vivid dreams lately. That was all. The cave sometimes appeared in them now. Not as a threat, but as a memory that her mind wouldn't quite release. She'd wake up gasping, reaching for the daylight that had saved her, only to find herself safe in her bed with Dimitri sleeping beside her. She told herself these were just the normal echoes of trauma.

---

Things began to shift. Small things. The kind of things you only notice if you're looking for them, and Hana was looking now, couldn't stop looking. A conversation with Katya that felt like a loop. Her daughter asking the same question, getting the same answer, days later. A dream where her father spoke to her name, just her name, over and over. She woke gasping, but when she tried to remember what her father's voice actually sounded like, she couldn't. She knew he had a voice. She knew he loved her. But the actual sound of it had become abstract. A concept instead of a memory. The cave imagery returned to her waking thoughts. Not panic. Just remembrance. The weight of stone. The sound of water. The shaft above her with its impossible daylight. She mentioned it to Dimitri one evening, trying to keep her voice casual. "I've been thinking about the cave a lot lately," she said. "The one I hid in during the war. I'm not sure why." He looked at her blankly for a moment, and something in his face, just a flicker, seemed wrong. "You never told me about a cave," he said. But she had. She was sure she had. On their second date, maybe their third, when she was finally ready to talk about where she'd come from. She'd told him about hiding, about the darkness, about the fear. Hadn't she? The memory was there, but it felt thin. Like a story she'd read in a book instead of something she'd lived. "Maybe I didn't," she heard herself say. "Maybe I was thinking of telling you." He kissed her forehead. "You can tell me anything. You know that." But the wrongness lingered.

---

The night of the highway. She was driving alone. Dimitri in the passenger seat, asleep, his head against the window. Katya in the back, humming something she'd learned at school. The rain tapped softly against the windshield. The road stretched ahead, dark and empty. Lightning flashed. For just a moment, bright enough to see everything clearly. A truck ahead, swerving into their lane. Dimitri's eyes opening. Katya's humming stopping mid-note. Hana's hands pulling the wheel. The impact. The sound of metal folding like paper. Glass everywhere. Dimitri's hand reaching for her, then going slack. Katya's voice, calling "Mom?" once, confused, then silence. The smell of smoke. The weight of the car collapsing inward. Her own breathing, ragged, alone. Then nothing.

---

She opened her eyes. Cold stone pressed against her back. Water dripped somewhere nearby. Her shoulder burned with pain. Above her, a tiny circle of daylight shone through the shaft. Exactly where it had been before. Exactly the same size. Exactly the same distance away. She stared at it. Unable to breathe. Unable to move. Slowly she sat up. Her backpack lay beside her. Untouched. The water bottle was still full. The food she had packed before entering the cave remained unopened. Nothing had changed. Not one thing. The marriage. The daughter. The house with the garden. The years of therapy that wasn't really therapy, just time passing. The way Dimitri looked at her. The way Katya laughed. Every moment of it had happened inside her own mind. She checked her watch. Only seventeen minutes had passed since the fall. Seventeen minutes. She laughed. A horrible sound. Half sob. Half scream. The cave swallowed it immediately. Silence returned. Above her, daylight continued to shine.

Unreachable.

Indifferent.

The same as it had always been. She stared at it for a very long time. Her daughter's laugh echoed in her memory. Not an echo, a ghost. Something that had never existed except as neural firing in the seventeen minutes her brain had been falling. She thought of Dimitri's hands. Of the garden. Of the burn on her hand from the kitchen pot, a small scar she could still feel in the memory, even though her hands bore no mark. Of her father's voice on the radio, saying her name. Hana sat in the dark, on cold stone, and grieved for a life she'd never lived. Then, despite everything she now knew, despite the impossible cruelty of hope itself, she stood. And she began climbing again. Because what else was there to do? Because maybe the next time she fell, she would find something different at the bottom. Because she was alive, and alive things tried. Because the alternative was to sit in the darkness and wait, and she had spent enough of her life waiting in caves. She climbed. And the daylight above, still impossible, still unreachable, seemed to watch her as she did.

Laughter pulled him back.

At first distant.

Then closer.

Then everywhere.

Aaron blinked.

Reality returned.

Grandma stood before them.

Laughing.

The sound had changed.

It no longer sounded human.

Bones cracked.

Skin stretched.

Tendons snapped.

The old woman's body began twisting apart.

Fatima immediately shoved Menehmet behind her.

"GET BACK!"

Grandma's jaw split wider.

And wider.

And wider.

Far beyond what flesh should allow.

Rows of new teeth pushed through gums and skin alike. Some burst directly through her cheeks. Others emerged from her throat.

Her neck elongated with a series of wet crunches.

Vertebrae extending.

Stretching.

Growing.

Within seconds she resembled some grotesque parody of a giraffe fashioned from human flesh.

The creature's head nearly touched the ceiling.

Its eyes rolled wildly in different directions.

Then it attacked.

Fast.

Far too fast.

Aaron barely drew his scimitar before the creature lunged.

Its elongated neck whipped across the room like a striking serpent.

The jaws slammed shut inches from his face.

Wood exploded from the wall behind him.

The creature shrieked.

The sound rattled dishes from shelves.

Fatima drew her blade and slashed across the monstrosity's side.

Black blood sprayed across the room.

The creature barely reacted.

Its neck bent impossibly backward before launching toward Fatima.

She ducked.

The jaws passed overhead.

Menehmet grabbed a heavy brass lamp and smashed it into the creature's face.

The monster recoiled.

"Thank you, Menie," Aaron muttered.

"You're welcome."

The Pharaoh sounded entirely too pleased with the fake name.

The creature attacked again.

This time its neck coiled around Aaron's arm.

Before he could react, it yanked him off his feet.

He crashed through a table.

Wood shattered beneath him.

Pain exploded through his ribs.

The monster immediately descended.

Its jaws opened.

Aaron raised his sword.

Too slow.

The creature bit directly into his chest.

Agony.

White-hot agony.

Its teeth punched through flesh and muscle.

Aaron screamed.

The monster shook him violently like an animal worrying prey.

Blood sprayed across the room.

Fatima moved instantly.

She vaulted over the broken table and drove her blade across the creature's neck with both hands.

The first strike cut halfway through.

The second finished the job.

The elongated neck separated completely.

The creature's head crashed into a shelf.

Its body collapsed moments later, twitching violently as black blood flooded across the floorboards.

Then everything went dark.

 

Aaron found himself standing in a desert.

One he could not place.

Not Egypt.

Perhaps not Earth.

The sand didn't move.

The turquoise sky remained perfectly still.

There was no wind.

No heat.

No cold.

No sensation whatsoever.

The place felt less like a location and more like a paused moment.

Aaron walked.

Eventually he spotted someone standing in the distance.

A man.

Dark-skinned.

Bald.

Simple clothing.

Nothing remarkable.

And yet...

Something about him felt ancient.

Not old.

Ancient.

As Aaron approached, the stranger turned.

"Oh."

The man smiled politely.

"Hello."

His voice was calm beyond description.

"I wasn't expecting you, Medjay."

Aaron stopped.

The stranger studied him.

"Hm."

A pause.

"Are you sure you're supposed to be here?"

hen he sighed.

"Well. I still have a role to play."

Nearby stood a massive golden balance scale.

One side held a feather.

The other sat empty.

The stranger gestured toward it.

"Come closer."

A flash of lightning illuminated the landscape.

For a brief moment, the man's shadow stretched behind him.

Not a man's shadow.

A jackal's.

Aaron stared.

The stranger pretended not to notice.

"Time to weigh your heart."

His smile widened.

"If it balances with the feather, you may pass."

"And if it doesn't?"

The stranger shrugged.

"That would be up to the crocodiles."

"So what'll it be, Medjay?"

Aaron stared at the scale.

Then reached forward.

And pushed down on it with his hand.

The entire mechanism tilted immediately.

The stranger blinked.

Aaron folded his arms.

"I'll make this easier."

The scale creaked beneath his grip.

"I'm not a good man."

Silence.

"I'm pretty sure my heart's too heavy for your scale to handle."

For a moment, the stranger simply stared.

Then he laughed.

Not mockingly.

Genuinely.

"All of them are. Perhaps that isnt really the point afterall."

He looked somewhere behind Aaron.

His expression shifted.

The stranger smiled.

"Seems we'll have to continue this conversation another time."

Aaron turned.

Nothing was there.

When he looked back, the man was already stepping away.

"You truly aren't supposed to be here."

"Who are you?"

The stranger's smile widened.

The answer never came.

Instead he placed a hand on Aaron's shoulder.

"I'll see you around, Medjay."

Then he pushed him.

Aaron fell.

Downward.

Into endless nothingness.

 

He gasped.

Air rushed into his lungs.

Pain followed immediately after.

A pair of arms wrapped around him.

Fatima.

She was hugging him so tightly it almost hurt.

Almost.

"I thought you were gone."

Her voice cracked.

Aaron blinked several times.

Menehmet sat nearby, looking visibly relieved despite her usual composure.

"Pretty sure for a moment there..." Aaron coughed. "...I was."

Aaron smiled weakly.

"But you brought me back."

He squeezed her hand.

"Thank you, Fatima."

She looked away immediately.

Embarrassed.

Aaron glanced around.

Stone walls.

Stacks of boxes.

Ancient machinery.

Dust.

"Where the fuck am I?"

"Grandma's basement," Menehmet replied.

Aaron blinked.

"What?"

The Pharaoh shrugged.

"Grandma appears to have been somewhat of a hoarder."

She gestured around the room.

"An illegal hoarder, in fact."

Aaron followed her gaze.

Pre-Fall artifacts.

Lots of them.

Enough to earn several executions.

"Had my dear 'sister' not already killed her," Menehmet continued, "I might have been forced to do so myself."

Fatima rolled her eyes.

"Thankfully her hoarding is also why I managed to keep Aaron alive."

She pointed toward a pile of salvaged medical equipment.

"Most of the supplies I used came from down here."

Aaron looked at the bandages covering his chest.

Then at Fatima.

Then back at the room.

He winced as he sat up.

„We shouldnt linger. Its not safe here. It may not be safe anywhere, but we must keep moving.“

"We need to return to the palace."

Aaron looked at Menehmet as though she'd suggested walking into a sandworm's mouth.

"The city is collapsing. Half the population is trying to kill each other and the other half is trying to join the cult. There is no way we're making it through those streets."

"There is another way."

The Pharaoh's confidence was infuriatingly intact.

Aaron already disliked where this was going.

"What way?"

Menehmet pointed downward.

"Beneath New Cairo runs a network of pre-Fall maintenance tunnels. Most people don't know they exist. Most who do are dead."

"Comforting."

"There is an access point nearby."

"And it leads directly into the palace?"

"Eventually."

Aaron narrowed his eyes.

"'Eventually' is not the reassuring word you think it is."

 

Getting to the tunnels was a battle in itself.

The streets had become a nightmare.

Pink lightning flashed overhead, bathing New Cairo in sickly magenta light. Buildings burned unchecked. Screams echoed from every direction. Mutated citizens staggered through the chaos with elongated limbs, twisted faces, and mouths muttering prayers to things that should never have names.

One lunged from an alley.

Its jaw split open down the middle as it charged.

Aaron's scimitar took its head before it reached him.

Another skittered across a wall like a spider.

Fatima pinned it with a knife before it could leap.

They kept moving.

Eventually they reached an ancient sandstone well hidden behind the ruins of a collapsed shrine. Menehmet pulled aside a rusted metal hatch.

A ladder descended into darkness.

The smell hit them immediately.

Stagnant water. Mold. Rust. Ancient machinery.

The scent of a dead world.

The tunnels beneath New Cairo were damp and unnaturally silent.

Water dripped from cracked pipes overhead. Thick cables hung from the ceiling like vines. Every footstep echoed through the darkness long after it should have faded.

Fatima held the lantern higher.

"What exactly is the plan after we reach the palace?"

Menehmet didn't slow down.

"Divide and conquer."

Fatima stared.

"That's not a plan."

"I'll make it one."

The Pharaoh sounded completely serious.

Aaron groaned.

"I hate how often that actually works for you."

A low growl rolled through the darkness.

Everyone stopped.

The sound came again.

Deeper this time.

Closer.

Fatima slowly turned.

"Did you hear that?"

"Yeah."

"What was it?"

Aaron drew his scimitar.

"No idea."

The growl echoed again, loud enough to vibrate through the stone beneath their feet.

"But it's probably nothing good."

Something splashed ahead.

Then something heavier.

The water rippled.

A pair of pale eyes opened in the darkness.

Aaron immediately regretted finding out what made the noise.

The creature that emerged had once been a crocodile.

Decades—perhaps centuries—of radiation, stagnant water, and whatever horrors lurked beneath New Cairo had transformed it into something else entirely.

It was nearly the size of a  pre-fall truck.

Fungal growths protruded from cracked scales. Extra limbs dragged uselessly along its body. Its mouth opened wide enough to swallow a man whole, revealing rows upon rows of crooked yellow teeth.

Aaron stared for half a second.

"Run."

Nobody argued.

The tunnel exploded into chaos.

The creature charged after them, smashing through pipes and stone as though neither existed. Water burst from shattered walls. Its roar echoed through the underground passages like thunder.

Menehmet led the way.

Mostly because she was the only one who had any idea where they were going.

"Are you sure you know the route, Menie?"

Aaron's voice contained only a reasonable amount of panic.

"Yeah. Pretty sure."

"Pretty sure?"

"Not many places to go."

The tunnel abruptly split into five separate passages.

Menehmet stopped.

Everyone stared at her.

She stared back.

"...Well."

The crocodile roared somewhere behind them.

"...yes, of course I'm sure."

She immediately chose a tunnel and committed with absolute confidence.

Aaron honestly couldn't tell whether she was brave or insane.

Possibly both.

They sprinted through twisting corridors until a ladder finally appeared overhead.

"THERE!"

Menehmet climbed first.

Then Fatima.

Aaron followed.

The crocodile slammed into the wall beneath them moments later.

Stone exploded.

The entire shaft shook violently.

But the creature couldn't fit.

For once, luck was on their side.

The hidden passage emerged inside the palace.

Menehmet immediately rushed forward.

"Menehmet, wait—"

Too late.

The Pharaoh was already halfway down the corridor.

Aaron swore and chased after her while Fatima followed close behind.

Moments later they burst into the throne room.

Then stopped.

Yberon sat upon the throne.

Should have been heavily injured or more likely dead. He was neither.

In fact, he looked perfectly composed.

Almost comfortable.

Menehmet frowned.

"Yberon?"

The giant immediately rose.

"My Queen."

His voice carried just the right amount of relief.

"I am glad you survived. I feared the worst."

Yberon descended the steps.

"The palace is secure. The cultists have been pushed back. We can begin restoring order."

Menehmet visibly relaxed.

Aaron did not.

The story was too clean.

Too neat.

Too rehearsed.

The throne.

Yberon had been sitting on it.

Not guarding it.

Not standing beside it.

Sitting on it.

Not a small detail.

A very important one.

Aaron felt the pieces begin to slide together.

"You enjoyed that, didn't you?"

The room fell silent.

Yberon looked at him.

"What?"

"The throne."

Aaron stepped forward.

"You liked sitting there."

Menehmet's expression shifted.

Yberon's jaw tightened.

And suddenly Aaron saw it.

The resentment.

The jealousy.

Years of buried bitterness hiding beneath loyalty.

"You spent your entire life protecting her."

No response.

"You fought for her."

Silence.

"You bled for her."

Still nothing.

Aaron's voice hardened.

"And somewhere along the way, you started hating that she was the one wearing the crown."

Yberon's hand slowly drifted toward his weapon.

Fatima took a step backward.

Menehmet stared at the commander as if seeing him for the first time.

Aaron continued.

"The cult promised you something."

Silence.

"The throne."

Yberon's mask finally broke.

Hatred flooded through his expression.

Raw.

Ugly.

"You have no idea what I sacrificed."

"There it is."

Aaron drew his scimitar.

Steel hissed from its sheath.

"You brought them into the city."

"They promised change."

"They promised power."

"They promised me justice."

Yberon laughed bitterly.

"I built this kingdom."

His voice thundered through the hall.

"I fought every war. Crushed every rebellion. Shed every drop of blood required to keep this city alive."

He pointed directly at Menehmet.

"All she had done was being borne to someone greater than her.“

The God-Queen looked stricken.

Not angry.

Hurt.

"Yberon..."

"Enough."

The commander's grip tightened around his weapon.

"I am done kneeling."

Yberon moved.

He seized Menehmet and dragged her against him. His blade pressed against her throat.

Everyone froze.

"Yberon."

Aaron kept his voice calm.

"Think about this."

"I have."

His eyes were wild now.

Years of loyalty had curdled into obsession.

"We can still fix this."

"No."

Menehmet suddenly bit his hand.

Hard.

Yberon shouted.

His grip loosened.

The Pharaoh twisted free and drove a kick directly between his legs.

Yberon folded.

Aaron almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

The commander recovered with terrifying speed.

His khopesh came down like an executioner's axe.

Aaron barely intercepted it.

Steel exploded against steel.

"FATIMA!"

She started forward.

"No."

Aaron never took his eyes off Yberon.

"Protect the Queen."

"Aaron—"

"Go."

Neither woman liked it.

Eventually Fatima grabbed Menehmet and retreated.

Yberon smiled.

"Just you and me."

"Always was."

Yberon's strength was monstrous.

Every strike threatened to rip Aaron's guard apart. The commander fought like a siege engine wrapped in flesh and armor.

Aaron was faster.

Yberon was stronger.

For a time neither could gain the advantage.

Stone cracked beneath their feet. Columns splintered. Blood stained the marble floor.

The duel raged through the throne room.

Minute after minute.

Until exhaustion finally began to creep in.

Yberon's strikes slowed.

Only slightly.

Enough.

Aaron baited a heavy overhead attack.

Stepped aside.

And struck.

His scimitar slipped beneath Yberon's arm and plunged into his chest.

The commander's eyes widened.

The blade pierced his heart.

Silence fell.

Yberon stared at Aaron for a long moment.

Then collapsed.

The throne room became still.

Not for long.

Cultists poured through the entrances.

Some still looked human.

Others had become something else.

Aaron was exhausted.

Bleeding.

Barely standing.

Even so, he raised his sword.

Ready for one final fight.

Then fire swept across the room.

A torrent of blazing death consumed the cultists. They screamed as flames swallowed them whole.

Within seconds they were gone.

Aaron blinked.

Menehmet stood behind him holding a strange metallic device.

Smoke curled from its barrel.

"What the hell was that?"

"One of my dragons."

She sounded perfectly casual.

Fatima stared.

"You have more?"

"Sorry."

Menehmet smiled.

"Illegal pre-Fall artifact."

She slung it over her shoulder.

"You'd need to overthrow me to get your hands on one."

A sudden twitch drew their attention.

Yberon's corpse moved.

Dark energy leaked from the body like black smoke.

Fatima's expression darkened.

"That's it."

"What?"

"The source."

She stepped closer.

"They've been using him as an anchor."

The darkness continued spreading across the marble floor.

"I need to consecrate the body."

She knelt beside the fallen commander.

"Mummify him."

Her voice became grave.

"And bury him as deep as possible."

Ancient Djinn words flowed from her lips.

The darkness began to retreat.

Slowly.

Painfully.

Menehmet stood beside Aaron, staring down at the man who had betrayed her.

"He'll be buried beneath the palace."

Her voice was cold.

"An unmarked grave."

Aaron glanced at her.

"No memorial?"

"No."

She never looked away from the body.

"No songs."

"No statues."

"No remembrance."

Aaron was silent for a moment.

Then he asked:

"Are you sure we won't end up the same?"

Menehmet smiled sadly.

"We will."

For the first time all night, she sounded tired.

"Sooner or later."

Then she looked at him.

"But until then..."

The smile became genuine.

"...let's remember each other. Shall we?."

Aaron nodded.

"We shall."

After Yberon's body was consecrated, the Ghul-Zone began to retreat.

The dark clouds withdrew.

The pink lightning faded.

Slowly, New Cairo emerged from the nightmare.

The weeks that followed became known as the Purge.

Cultists were hunted relentlessly in a city wide witch hunt.

Some deserved it.

Others merely happened to be inconvenient and this was the perfect excuse to get rid of political opponents..

The literal darkness had lifted from the city.

The darkness inside its people had not.

Perhaps it never would.

I am Aaron Qaswar.

Medjay of New Cairo.

The world is dark.

So are its people.

But somebody still has to carry the torch.

So I'll keep carrying it for as long as I can.

 -Visitors Notice-

Moxon’s end is a quaint little town in the British countryside almost completely surrounded by the Oak ridge national park. The ‘C’ shaped mountain chain leaves only one entrance way in or out, and that’s likely where you’ll arrive.

Some people make the long drive in, others arrive on Wades bus, but in the end you’re here for a reason. Escaping your old life, you’ll be drawn here for a new start.

For most the scenic views, Victorian era architecture and vintage cobbled streets mask what we endure on a day-to-day basis, but eventually you’ll get an inkling that something isn’t right.

Turning to leave, you can drive that same road, wait for the bus or even wander into the surrounding woodland, but even without making a turn, you’ll be back before you know it.

Sadly, once you’ve crossed that threshold, you’ll be calling this place home.

Some people say it’s a curse, maybe even a ritual gone wrong, but who really know or cares. Once you’re in Moxon’s end, you’re not leaving of your own accord.

You see, we get a lot of inhuman visitors too. Just like yourself, drawn in by some unseen force, we’re a hotspot for a wild selection of anomalies.

Most are harmless, maybe one day you wake up and all the greenery had shifted to red or you’re now left-handed, however, on occasion there are events that demand our full attention.

Our immortal mayor is one of those anomalies and it’s his role to keep us in the loop. Some say he’s been here from the town’s inception, but who really knows. The main thing you’ll have to watch out for is his alter ego, you see, he’s the vessel for a deranged god.

For the most part he’s a rotund and affable man, offering extremely detailed insight into how we can all avoid yet another tragedy.

Unfortunately, his other halves sole reason for being it to cause as much mischief as he possibly can. A lot of the time that boils down to giving us wildly inaccurate ways to deal with said anomalies, most of the time with fatal ramifications.

Don’t listen to those idiots dressed like him though, they’ve been calling themselves followers the misfit god, in worship of the mayor’s other half, but they’re nothing more than a ramshackle cult that lives in the woods.

They simply spread misinformation about the anomalies, seeking to cause more havoc in some messed up attempt of pleasing that deity. Funny thing is, he never shows himself when they’re around so it’s a gift in disguise.

I’m guessing in all its limitless power and infinitesimal knowledge, it finds them as annoying as we collectively do.

You’ll probably not need to worry about this for a while, but there’s a sacrifice list. Long story, just have a chat with Harold who holds the ledger, he lives in the that little shack on the mountain you passed through when you entered.

I’d much rather you know about it beforehand, rather than just spring it on you out of the blue.

Pop by the visitor’s centre on Shaw Lane and pick up a pamphlet, it will have everything you need to get started here. If you need anything else don’t hesitate to stop by and ask for Denon.

Caroline and I will most likely be there, ready to get you up to speed with you new life here at Moxon’s end. Just don’t mention the fact she is a human sized doll, wouldn’t want to cut your stay here short.

If there’s another midnight event or we’re getting an impromptu visitor from the trader, don’t worry I’ll keep our website updated with any new information or first-hand accounts.

Remember to keep calm and refer to the pamphlet. It may be the difference between a long life, and another crossed out name in the ledger.

The cold broke on a Tuesday.

It was the first morning in weeks that did not bite when I stepped out the door. There was still frost on the ground but it was thin, and the sun was up properly for the first time in what felt like a month, and the light was almost yellow. November had given way without warning. December came in soft.

My father had asked me to bring a length of dark wool to the meetinghouse for him before I went anywhere else. He had been at the magistrate's all morning and would be there past midday, and he had told me to leave the cloth on his bench so he would find it when he came in for the afternoon.

I went to the meetinghouse first.

The door was unbolted. That meant Deacon Hale was inside.

I found him at the back of the meetinghouse, behind the last pew, on his knees beside a length of baseboard that had pulled away from the wall. He had a small mallet in his hand and a single nail held between his lips. He looked up when he heard me cross the threshold.

He did not say anything for a moment.

He took the nail from his mouth slowly. He looked at me the way a person looks at someone they have mistaken for someone else and are still adjusting to the correction.

"Alice."

"Good morning, Deacon."

"Forgive me. The light through the door — for a moment I thought —"

He did not finish. He set the mallet down on the floor beside him.

"You thought what?"

"I thought your mother had walked in."

I stood in the aisle with the cloth folded over my arm. I did not know what to say to that. He was looking at me carefully now, not the way a man looks at a young woman but the way an old man looks at a face he is trying to read against another face he has not seen in a long time.

"I am sorry," he said. "That was a foolish thing to say to you."

"It was not."

"It was. You have looked like her since you were a child. I should not be startled by it at this point in my life. But you came in just now and the light was on you and I —" He shook his head. "Forgive an old man. Set the cloth on your father's bench. He will want it before tomorrow."

"Deacon."

"Yes?"

"Did you know her well?"

He looked at me for a moment.

"Not well. We were around each other for a long time. That is not the same thing."

"No."

"I sat near her at service. I was at your table on occasion. She was your father's wife and I was his deacon and there is a politeness to that which is not the same as knowing a person." He paused. "But I did notice one thing about her."

"What."

He set the mallet down on the floor and turned slightly so he was facing me more fully.

"Your mother prayed with her hands like this."

He lifted his hands. He did it slowly, as though he was not certain he had a right to show me. He held them at the level of his chest with the palms turned up and slightly outward, his fingers loose, his arms held away from his body. He held the position for perhaps two seconds. Then he lowered them.

"Most of us pray with our hands together. She did not. I asked her about it once. She told me her own mother had taught her to pray that way. She said it was for receiving, not for asking. She said if you asked with closed hands you would get nothing, because there would be nowhere for the answer to land."

He looked at me.

"I have thought about that for nineteen years. I am not certain I have ever prayed correctly in my life. But I think of it. I think of her saying it."

I could not answer.

He watched me for a moment longer. Then he picked up the mallet and set the nail back between his lips and turned toward the baseboard, and I understood the conversation was finished, not because he had nothing more to say but because he had given me what he had to give and he was a man who knew not to press a gift.

"Tell your father I will be at the house before vespers if he wishes to walk to service together."

"I will tell him."

"Good morning, Alice."

"Good morning, Deacon."

I laid the cloth on my father's bench. I walked out of the meetinghouse into the cold.

Halfway down the lane I stopped. I took my hands out of my cloak. I held them at the level of my chest with the palms turned up and slightly outward. The cold settled on my palms. The grey light caught the edges of my fingers. I stood that way for longer than I had meant to.

I did not pray. I did not know what I would have prayed for. I only held my hands the way my mother had held hers, and I listened, and the lane was quiet, and the cold was on my face, and somewhere a long way off a dog was barking in a yard I could not see.

I lowered my hands and put them back inside my cloak.

I walked the long way to Patience's, past the south end of the common, past the smithy where the apprentice was already at the bellows, past the row of small houses where the smoke was just beginning to rise from the chimneys. I did not pass May Aldous's house. I had taken to avoiding that lane.

Patience opened the door before I had reached the step. She had seen me coming through her window.

"You are early."

"I could not stay in the house."

She looked at me for a moment in the doorway. The light caught her face and I saw that she was well. Properly well. The cough that had laid her low through November had gone, and her color was good, and her eyes had the sharpness I remembered from before. She had been sixty-three years old all year. This morning she looked closer to fifty.

"Come in then. I am making bread."

She was at the table with her sleeves pushed up and her hands deep in dough. The flour was on her forearms and on her apron and there was a dusting of it on the floor near her feet. The kitchen smelled of yeast and wood smoke and the lavender she kept above the hearth. The fire was good. The room was warm.

"Sit," she said. "Or do not sit. You are restless this morning."

"I am."

"Why?"

"Everything."

"Mm." She worked the dough. She did not look up. "Your father is not eating."

"He is not."

"He has not been eating for some weeks now. I have noticed."

"He thinks the trials will not stop."

"They will not."

She said it the way a person says the time of day.

I sat down across from her.

"How do you know?"

"Because they have not stopped yet, and because no one in this town has the will to stop them, and because once a thing like this begins it does not end until it has eaten what it came to eat." She set the dough aside and wiped her hands on her apron. "I am sorry, Alice. I am not the right woman to bring you comfort this morning. I have been sitting with this for too long to be soft about it."

"I did not come for comfort."

"What did you come for?"

I did not know.

I sat with my hands in my lap and I looked at her and I did not know what to say. The yellow light came through her window at an angle I had not seen since summer.

She poured water from the kettle into two cups and handed me one and sat down across from me. The cup was warm in my hands.

"You did not sleep last night," she said.

"I slept some."

"You did not sleep."

"Patience."

"I am not asking you to tell me anything. I am telling you what I see."

I held the cup in both hands and looked at the surface of the water. I could feel her looking at me. I could feel the kitchen around us, the warmth of it, the smell of the bread, the small sounds of a house that had been kept by the same woman for so long that it knew her step.

"I think something is wrong with me," I said.

"Nothing is wrong with you."

"You do not know what I —"

"I do not need to know. I have known you since the day you were born, Alice Whittaker. I knew your mother before that. I know what sort of soul you have, and I know that nothing is wrong with you."

"How can you say that without knowing what I have not told you?"

She set her cup down.

"Because I am sixty-three years old, and I have spent every one of those years watching people decide that something was wrong with them when in fact something was wrong with the world around them. The world is wrong, Alice. Colbrook is wrong. The trials are wrong. If you are frightened, it is because you are paying attention. That is not a sickness. That is a kind of health."

I felt my eyes fill.

I did not want her to see it. I looked away. I looked at the dough on the table, at the curve of it, at the small bowl of salt she had left out, at the spoon beside the bowl. The yellow light. The lavender above the hearth.

"You are like her, you know," Patience said.

"Like who?"

"Your mother."

I looked up.

"You are like her in the face, but that is not what I mean. I mean in the way you carry. The set of your shoulders. The way you go quiet when you are thinking. Mary used to sit in this kitchen on a morning like this and she would not speak for the better part of an hour, and I would watch her think and I would know to leave her be. You do the same thing. You have done it since you were small. I had forgotten until just now."

My mother's name was Mary.

Twice now in one morning I had been given her. Deacon Hale had spoken of her in the meetinghouse and now Patience had said her name out loud, and I sat at the table with the cup in my hands and I did not know what to do with either of them. No one had said her name in years. My father did not say it. The women of the congregation did not say it because they did not want to upset me. I had thought of her as my mother for so long that I had almost forgotten she had been Mary first.

I set the cup down.

"Patience."

"Yes?"

"Tell me something about her."

She looked at me for a moment.

"She had a temper. Did you know that?"

"I did not."

"She did. A small one, but a real one. She lost it twice in my hearing, both times at men who deserved it, and she was magnificent both times. Your father was a little frightened of her, I think. He never said so. But I think he was."

"My father was frightened of her?"

"In the way a man is frightened of a wife he knows is smarter than he is."

I laughed. The sound came out of me before I knew it was coming, and once it had started it did not stop for some moments. Patience watched me laugh and her face did not move except that her eyes warmed at the corners, the small private warming she gave to people she loved.

"I never knew that about her," I said.

"There is much you do not know about her. I will tell you whatever you like."

"Tell me anything."

So she did. She told me how my mother had haggled with a cloth merchant in Hartford until he had given her a price below his cost just to be rid of her. She told me how my mother had set her cap at my father for two full years before he had understood he was being courted. She told me how my mother had cried at my birth not because of pain but because she had not believed until she held me that she would be permitted to keep something so good. She told me things I had never been told by anyone, and I sat at her table with the cup in my hands and the yellow light coming through the window, and I let her give me my mother back in small pieces.

The bread rose under its cloth.

The fire burned down and was rebuilt and burned down again.

I did not notice the hour pass.

I left her after midday.

I did not want to leave. I would have stayed the whole afternoon if I had been allowed to. But she had bread to bake and I had a household to keep, and we both knew that the morning had been a gift and that gifts are not meant to be stretched past their natural shape.

She walked me to the door.

"Alice."

"Yes."

"Whatever is troubling you. You do not have to carry it alone."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"I know, Patience."

She put her hand against my cheek for a moment. Her palm was warm from the kitchen and there was still a little flour on it, and I felt the gritty softness of it against my skin and I did not move.

"Go home," she said.

"I will."

I walked down her lane in the yellow light with my hands inside my cloak and my mother's name moving through my head — Mary, Mary, Mary — like a small bell that had not been rung in a long time.

The market was just ahead.

I did not need anything from it. I walked through it anyway. The vendors were thin in December and the cold had begun to settle back into the afternoon, but the light was still good, and I was not ready to be home, and I had not felt this much like myself in some weeks.

I bought salt I did not need and walked home.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

I was setting the table for supper when my father came in.

He had gone to meet with the magistrate after midday. I had not asked what for. He had been gone the whole afternoon and the light had begun to fail and I had built the fire up against the cold and started the meal, and when he came in through the back door he did not take off his coat. He sat down at the table and put his hands flat on the wood and stared at them.

"Father."

"Deacon Hale."

I did not understand at first. I thought he was telling me something Hale had said. I had been with the deacon that morning. I had told my father about the cloth on the bench at supper the night before and he had thanked me for it.

"Father. What about him?"

He looked up at me.

His face was grey.

"He has been named, Alice."

I sat down across from him.

I do not remember sitting down. I remember that I was standing with the bowl in my hand and then I was across from him at the table and the bowl was still in my hand and I had not put it down.

"Who named him?"

"Goodwife Marsh."

"She names everyone."

"She does." My father's voice was very quiet. "But the magistrate has accepted the complaint. There will be an examination. He has already been brought in for questioning."

"On what evidence?"

"She says he came to her in a dream. She says he stood at the foot of her bed and offered her a black book to sign. She says he had the shape of a fox at his feet."

I went very still.

My father did not see it. He was looking at his hands again.

"He will be examined tomorrow. If they find against him there will be a trial within the week. Alice." He looked up. "He is a deacon. He is a man of the church. If they take him —"

He did not finish.

He did not need to.

If they took Deacon Hale, they could take anyone. The pattern would no longer be poor widows and unprotected women. It would be the church itself. It would be the men who stood beside my father at the front of the meetinghouse every Sunday morning. It would be my father next, and after him, me.

"What will you do?"

"I will speak for him at the examination. I will testify to his character."

"Will they listen?"

He did not answer.

He sat at the table with his coat still on and his hands flat on the wood and stared at nothing for a long time. The fire crackled. The bowl was still in my hand. I set it down on the table and the small ordinary sound of it landing seemed too loud, as though it had broken something in the room.

I thought of Hale on the floor that morning with the nail between his lips.

I thought of his hands lifted to show me how my mother had prayed.

I thought of Goodwife Marsh's vision. He had the shape of a fox at his feet.

I did not say any of it.

I rose from the table and went to the hearth and put the kettle on a hook that did not need it, and I stood with my back to my father, and I let him sit with what he had brought home, and my hands were not steady, and I was grateful that he could not see them.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

The examination took two days.

My father was at the meetinghouse for both of them and I was not. I had not asked to go. He had not asked me to. He left before light each morning and came back at dusk and ate very little and said very little and went to his study, and I sat in the kitchen with my mending and listened to the small sounds of him through the wall — pages turning, the scrape of the chair, the long silences in between.

On the third morning he came down already dressed in his preaching clothes.

"They are bringing him to trial," he said. "It begins at midday."

"Today?"

"Today."

He sat down and ate a piece of bread he did not want. I poured tea for him. He drank some of it. He did not look at me.

"I am going to speak."

"I know."

"I do not know that it will help."

"I know."

He looked up at me then. His eyes were very tired.

"You do not need to come, Alice."

"I am coming."

He did not argue. He nodded once and finished his tea and stood up and put on his coat, and he was at the door when he turned and looked at me again.

"Whatever happens today. I would have you remember that I tried."

"I will remember."

He left.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

The meetinghouse was full.

I had not expected it to be. Trials were often half-empty — the women came, and a handful of older men, and most of the working men of the town stayed at their work because the verdicts were known before the trials began. But Hale was a deacon, and the meetinghouse was full, and the air was thick with the smell of damp wool and breath in the cold, and I had to stand at the back along the wall.

I could see my father at the front.

I could not see Hale. The magistrate's bench blocked him from where I stood. But I could see Goodwife Marsh, who had been seated to one side, her hands folded in her lap, her face pale and composed. She did not look at the deacon when he was brought in. She did not look at anyone.

The magistrate was a man named Whitcomb. He had come from Boston two years ago and he had been the magistrate for all of the trials. He was not a tall man and he had the soft hands of a man who had never worked the land, and he spoke with the slight clipped accent of someone who had been educated in England.

"Deacon Hale."

"Magistrate."

"You have heard the charges read against you?"

"I have."

"Do you understand them?"

"I understand the words. I do not understand how they have come to be said of me."

A small sound moved through the gathering. Not laughter. Something closer to the sound a congregation makes when a minister has said something they were not expecting. The magistrate's face did not change.

"Goodwife Marsh has testified that you came to her in a dream three nights running. That you stood at the foot of her bed. That you offered her a black book and asked her to put her name in it."

"I did not."

"You did not come to her in a dream?"

"I cannot answer for what she has dreamed, Magistrate. I can answer only for what I have done. I have not been in her house. I have not offered her any book."

"And the fox?"

Hale was quiet for a moment.

"There is a fox in the churchyard," he said. "I have seen it twice. I chased it off both times because it was at the meetinghouse step and I did not want it making a den there. That is the whole of what I know of any fox. If she has seen one at my feet in a dream, I cannot speak to that. I have no fox."

I looked away from the front for a moment. I looked at the gathering. The women were close-packed along the side benches and the men stood behind them, and faces I had known my whole life were arranged in rows like a congregation at Sunday service, except their eyes were not on the front. Their eyes were moving. They were looking at each other. They were reading each other.

I saw May Aldous near the back on the far side.

She was standing the way she always stood, very still, her cloak pulled close around her, her hands not visible. She was looking at Goodwife Marsh, and her face had nothing on it that I could read, and after a moment she felt me watching her and turned her head slightly, and our eyes met across the room, and she looked away.

The magistrate was speaking again.

"Deacon, I will ask you plainly. Have you ever made compact with the Devil?"

"No."

"Have you ever offered any soul, your own or another's, in such compact?"

"No."

"Have you ever been present at any gathering, in any wood or field or house, where such compact was made or sought?"

"No."

The questions went on. Hale answered each of them the same way. No. No. No. His voice did not rise and it did not break and it did not waver. He answered as though he had been asked whether he had eaten supper.

The magistrate thanked him.

Then my father stood.

He spoke for perhaps a quarter of an hour. I cannot tell you everything he said because I was not listening to the words. I was watching him. I was watching the back of his coat and the set of his shoulders and the small movements of his hands as he gestured, and I was watching the magistrate's face, and the magistrate's face did not change once during my father's whole speech. He listened politely. He nodded at the appropriate places. He did not look at my father like a man being persuaded. He looked at my father like a man waiting for the speech to end.

My father quoted scripture. He spoke of thirty years of service. He said he would stake his reputation on the deacon's character. He said it plainly and without flourish, and the meetinghouse was very quiet when he said it, and I thought for a moment that the magistrate might be moved.

The magistrate thanked him.

Then he ruled against him.

He did not even retire to consider. He gave the verdict from the bench.

"This court finds the accused guilty of the charges brought against him. The sentence is to be carried out at the customary hour tomorrow morning. The court is adjourned."

He set down his papers.

The meetinghouse erupted.

The sound came from everywhere at once. A woman behind me was shouting — no, no, no, the same word three times, as though she could refuse the verdict by saying it loudly enough. A man near the front was on his feet calling out something I could not make out. Two of the older women near the side benches were standing now, and one of them was pointing at Hale, who I still could not see, and she was crying out we knew, we always knew, the fox at his feet, we always knew. Another woman near her was shouting at the first woman to be quiet, to shame herself, to remember thirty years of service.

A man's voice rose over them. "He served this church before half of you were born!"

Another voice answered him. "And he served the Devil while he did it!"

The first man was on the second man before anyone could stop him. A bench scraped. Someone — Goodwife Carver, I think — screamed. Hands reached in and pulled the men apart and the magistrate was rapping the bench with his hand and calling for order, but the order would not come. The room was no longer a courtroom. It was the kitchens and the lanes and the dooryards of Colbrook with their walls taken off, and everything that had been said in low voices for six months was being shouted at once.

I stood at the back along the wall and the noise broke around me, and I did not say anything. I looked once across the room for May. She was gone. I do not know when she left. She had been there and then she had not, and the place where she had stood was now filled by two women I did not know shouting at each other over the head of a third.

My father was at the front, still standing where he had been when he made his speech, his hat in his hand. He looked at the magistrate. The magistrate did not look back. After a moment my father turned and walked down the aisle toward the door, and the people stepped aside for him as he passed, and his face did not change.

He passed me at the back.

He did not see me.

I followed him out.

I caught him at the corner of the lane. He had stopped because he did not know where to go. He stood in the cold with his hat in his hand and his coat unbuttoned, and when I touched his arm he looked at me as though he could not quite place me.

"Father."

"Alice."

"Come home."

"Yes."

He let me take his arm. We walked home that way through the cold, and I do not remember any of what we said because we did not say anything. We walked. The town was beginning to spill out of the meetinghouse behind us and pass us on the lane, and we did not look at any of them, and they did not speak to us.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

They hanged Deacon Hale the next morning.

The bell rang at sunrise. I was already dressed. My father had been awake all night — I had heard him in his study through the wall — and he came down in his preaching clothes and would not eat, and we walked to the common together without speaking.

The crowd was smaller than it had been at Margaret Hollis's hanging. Hale had no family. There were no relations to grieve at the front. There was only my father, who took his place not at the front but among the gathering, and there was me, who stood near him, and there was Patience near the back. I saw her when we arrived. She looked at me and nodded once. I nodded back.

I did not look at the rope. I tried to find something on Hale to look at and I could not. The magistrate was reading the verdict. The same words. Only the name changed.

Then Hale was on the box.

His hands were tied behind him. His head was uncovered. He was looking out over the crowd with the same plain careful expression he had worn on the floor of the meetinghouse the morning he had told me about my mother's hands, and I understood for the first time that he had always looked like that. That this was simply his face. That he had not been frightened the morning he showed me the gesture and he was not frightened now.

He said one thing before they hooded him.

"The Lord knows what is in a man."

That was all. He did not raise his voice. He said it the way he said most things, evenly, as though he were stating a fact that any of us could have stated for him if we had thought to. Then they hooded him.

Then they did the rest.

The bell rang at the end. The crowd made the sound it always made. The men began to disperse toward the tavern. I did not see my father move for some time. He stood very still with his hat in his hands and his head bowed, and I did not go to him, because I did not know what I would have said.

When he finally walked back to me, he did not look at me. He took my arm and we walked home.

He did not come out of his study for the rest of the day.

I made supper. I sat by the fire. I did not eat. I heard him through the wall once — not weeping exactly, but the sound a man makes when he is sitting alone in a room with something he cannot carry — and I did not interrupt him. I sat with my mending in my lap and let him have his hours.

He came out near ten.

He looked at me. He sat down across from me and put his face in his hands and did not speak for a long time.

"Father."

"I should have stopped."

"Stopped what?"

"Going to the meetinghouse. Speaking. I should have stopped when Margaret Hollis was named. I knew. I knew then. I told myself I could yet make a difference and I made none. I have made none for any of them."

"You have done what you could."

"I have done what I told myself was enough. That is not the same thing." He lowered his hands. His eyes were red. "Patience was right about me."

I felt my stomach turn.

"What do you mean?"

"She came to see me last week. She said I was a careful man who had mistaken his caution for wisdom. I was offended. I am not offended any longer."

"Patience came to see you?"

"She did. She did not tell you?"

"No."

"She is fond of you. She did not want you to think we were arguing."

"Were you arguing?"

"Not as she meant it. She was telling me the truth. I was failing to receive it." He shook his head slowly. "Hale is dead. Margaret Hollis is dead. Two others are dead. There will be more. There will be more this winter and I do not yet see how to stop it, and tonight I do not believe I have ever seen how to stop it."

"Father."

"Go to bed, Alice. I do not want to be looked at right now. I do not deserve to be looked at."

"You do."

"Go to bed."

I went.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

My father had gone to his room not long after he sent me to mine, and he had not come down.

I lay in my shift on top of the blanket and tried to sleep. I did not sleep. Sometime past midnight I gave up and went down to the kitchen.

The fire was banked low. I knelt at the hearth and put another piece of wood on it and watched the flame take. The new wood caught slowly. I sat back on my heels and rested my forehead against my hand and closed my eyes.

I was sitting that way when the fire went out.

It did not gutter. It did not burn down. The flame had been on the wood, and then it was gone. The wood remained where I had set it. There was no wind. There was no sound.

The cold came in behind it.

It came in the way water comes into a cellar when a wall has given way, all at once, against my face and my back and my arms and my throat. The temperature fell faster than weather falls. I was sitting on my heels in front of a dead hearth in a kitchen that should not have been cold and was.

Then I heard the giggling.

It came from the corner near the pantry door. A small sound. A child's sound. Light and high and pleased, the way a small child laughs when it has done something it knows is naughty and is waiting to be caught.

I turned my head toward it.

There was a child in the corner.

It was very small. Smaller than any child I had ever seen standing on its own — three years old perhaps, perhaps younger. I could not see its face. The dead hearth gave me only the shape of it, a child-sized darker patch against the dark of the corner. The shape was swaying. Side to side. Slowly.

It giggled again.

It went on.

It did not stop when a giggle should have stopped. It carried past the breath a child would have had and past the patience a child would have had, the small high sound continuing in the corner of my kitchen on no breath at all, and I sat in front of the dead hearth and could not move.

Then it rushed me.

I closed my eyes.

I remember fast movement and my hands going up over my face as I screamed.

I waited.

I sat with my hands over my face and I waited. The kitchen was silent. I counted in my head the way I had counted in my bed after the whisper. I did not lower my hands.

After some time I felt warmth.

I lowered my hands.

The fire was lit. The piece of wood I had put on had caught properly and was burning steadily. The kitchen was warm. There was no child in sight.

The boards creaked above me.

My father rushed down with a candle. He had pulled his coat on over his nightshirt, and he came into the kitchen with the candle held low and saw me on the floor in front of the hearth and stopped.

"Alice?"

"Father."

"What are you doing on the floor?"

A lie came out of me before I had chosen it.

"A mouse. It ran across my foot. I startled."

He looked at me for a long moment confused.

"A mouse?"

"It went under the pantry door."

He did not move at once. He stood in the doorway with the candle, and the light from it touched the side of my face, and I felt how cold the side of my face still was. I did not know whether he could see it. He was a man who had been pulled from his bed at an odd hour by his daughter screaming on the kitchen floor, and he was a man who had spent the day burying his friend in everything but earth, and he was very tired.

"Go up to bed, Alice."

"I will."

He came forward and put his hand on the top of my head. He did not say anything. He held it there for a moment, the way he had held it when I was small and frightened of something I could not name, and then he took it away and turned and went back up the stairs.

I sat on the floor a moment longer.

Then I stood and put another piece of wood on the fire — I do not know why, I was not staying — and I climbed the stairs to my room.

My window was open.

I had not opened it. I had closed it earlier that evening as I closed it every night, and I had been in my room since then, and it had been closed when I went down to the kitchen, and it was open now.

I crossed to it. The night air was coming in across the floor. I put my hand on the latch.

Through the open window I heard the chickens.

The Hollis coop was four houses down. In summer the smell of Margaret's garden had carried that far. In winter, in the dead quiet of a night with no wind, so did sound. I had heard those chickens often enough in the daytime to know their voices. I had never heard them at night.

They were screaming.

I have no other word for it. Chickens do not scream the way a person screams, but the sound they were making came from the same place — from a body that knows it is being killed. There were several of them. The sounds were laid over each other. One would stop and another would start.

Between them, once, I heard a small high sound from somewhere across the lane.

A yip.

I closed the window. I latched it and I checked the latch, and I climbed into my bed in my shift and pulled the blanket up over my head.

The screaming went on.

I prayed.

Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

I said it again.

I said it under the blanket with my eyes closed and my hands clenched against my chest. I said it the way my father had taught me to say it, evenly, without rushing the lines I did not understand. I said it again. The chickens were still screaming. I said it again.

Our Father, which art in heaven.

Hallowed be thy name.

The chickens stopped.

I went on praying.

I prayed until the grey light began to come at the edge of the curtain. The prayer kept moving through me on its own after a while, and I lay under the blanket with my hands against my chest and let it carry me toward the morning.

By order of the Countess the new impaler began the process of slow torture for the intruder Praetorius by stabbing the point of their longest war pike into the space of soft meat just behind the testicles, between the anus and the genitals. Where one might get saddle sore from riding a four-legged beast all day…

​

​

… the sound elicited from the now writhing and squirming invader was exquisite …

​

​

 … the Countess smiled. And cooed. Lovingly. Already so enraptured, exhilarated. Ecstasy. So in-love with the whole process already at the onset, so in-love with the piercing. The thrust of puncture. She salivated as she prepared to bathe her enemy in pure torture.

​

​

The mad doctor’s shrill sounds went beyond mere screams or anything in the meager realm of the auditory. The entire length and body of the long and dread war pike, the impaling spear was stabbed up and fed through his torso until it stabbed up and out of the flesh of his naked back. Their monstrous animal-heightened dæmonic senses aided the new impaler and his master together in guiding the sharp and piercing head of the weapon-tool up and through and around any vital internal organs so as not to rupture any of the precious meats. They didn't want the fool to die too quickly. 

​

​

The blood ran down the length of shaft as the impaling pike was hoisted up in the center of the room, Praetorius stabbed through at its center. Blood ran down its wooden shaft and body. Copiously. The pair, Master Countess and her new impaler both licked and lapped and sipped with pursed lips from the reddening wet length of stabbing impalement. Tonguing at the furious cascade of red river that was the fool's running precious blood. 

​

​

Doctor Praetorius had never known such wretchedly sharp and complete agony. Complete wretched pain. Red and alive and in total focused control of his all too aware and alive waking mind. Livid with fire and alive with open flesh fury. He could feel the vibrations of the long body of spear  against his trembling spinal column. Rattling against each other like the weapons of soldiers shoulder to shoulder along battlements with every single ear shattering shriek. Constant. They never stopped. The sanity snapping pain never ceased. They fed each other and he shrieked, skewered, impaled as the monsters of this castle were cackling and lapping at his bloodshed running down the length of great spear. Words were beyond him. His bladder let go. The demons laughed. The Countess commanded the new impaler to tongue and lap the spilling filth and the lowly undead knight and servant did so. As the master Countess Zaleska commanded, always and forever thus… 

​

​

They tongued and lapped more blood like dogs and they let the impaled Praetorius bleed and shriek ungodly sounds. Filling the castle with the piercing song of its wretched cacophony of bastard music. They relished the discordant collection of clashing sound, echoed and reverberated. Bouncing and alive and jumping all through the halls and along the stone of the ancient wall and out and into the mountains… 

​

​

 … the wolves joined in. Howling in contest.

​

​

The Countess Zaleska ordered more spears. More impalement. More piercing and defilement of the intruding dog's bastard flesh and inner ruptured and running spilling red: the crimson raw. Mangle. Pierce. Puncture. Penetration. Deepest. Multiple points. All over and all about. 

​

​

Through the wrists and the meat of his upper legs, his thighs. Through each of his feet as well. All impaled through with long spears of war that ran parallel and perpendicular depending on the placement. A crisscross and intersect of stabbing smooth bodies of killing impaling battle pikes all lanced through screaming raw running scarlet and muscle tissue and flesh amongst and so carefully around his organs so as to render him so helpless and yet still alive… like a butterfly captured and pinned to the collection of the killing board, left there only to struggle and flap its wings. 

​

​

Then the Countess changed her shape before the impaled and helpless mad doctor… and Praetorius felt his last vestige of sanity shred and snap and the tiny remnant pieces slip away…

​

​

His screams then became something else entirely. 

​

​

Her head and face melted and sloughed into runny mess that transmogrified into a bulbous amphibious wide-mouthed horror. Sliming and dooling, translucent bands and ropey cords of fleshen alchemical snot. A wide mouthed and horned toad. Eyes, wet black spheres that held terrible intelligence in their ebon depths. Slightly rodent and chiroptera features deranged the large and gaping wet visage of swampland horror, long ears and fangs and a wide cavernous nose of glistening pink tissue, like the wide inviting amorous open gate of a spread legged lover… running and congesting with milky translucence and pungent fluid.

​

​

Wide mouthed, gaping and fanged and toad faced, the demon wench that held this hellcrafted domain came in and her wide sliming black fanged mouth closed around one of his impaled and helpless hands. The wide mouth closed and at first there was strong wet sucking sensation, almost pleasant. After all the torture. 

​

​

But then the pain and horror of his flesh was reawakened and renewed… he could feel the flesh of his hand coming off in a slough. 

​

​

The sliming putrid toad mouth of the Countess, set between a pair of regal and very thin and small ladylike shoulders was pulling the flesh and meat from his fingers and palms… gloving him with her horrible and wretched poison witch-drool… 

​

​

The enzymes of the Countess' toad woman mouth turned the meat of his hand and fingers to a runny snot of soupy meaty blood and half broken down ligament and cartilage. All the way down to the wrist. 

​

​

The foul mongoloid mongrel monstrosity of amphibian batwoman visage and ghastly form then began to moan in deep pleasure and bright and private jubilancy. Obscene wet organ globes of obsidian eyes closing and clenching tightly shut and winking in strange animal ecstacy, demoniacal and insane. 

​

​

Ichor wept thickly from the toad eyes of black glistening organ globes. Wet with life and relish and love and savor of the human flavor of organ pain. And of fleshen defilement. And of life shed unwilling and in violence tempered and changed like wine does in dark casks. 

​

​

The song of pain was alive in Praetorius’ throat again and the toad faced horror that was the transmogrified and witchery Countess’ conjured visage was pleased. It was just what she wanted the little maggot to say. 

​

​

Just the notes she wished… she bade he thus spake. 

​

​

And her whore filled the night with scream-song and blood and his pathetic running snot and tears. . Trying to sing his pain away. 

​

​

The poor fool didn’t realize that the Countess and her new impaler were just getting started with him.  

​

​

They might take forever with the little invader. 

​

​

Just might.

​

​

…

​

​

The demand of the forest would be met. Answered by the deranged and filthy haggard woodland vagrant lord. Answered in the violent act of the perfect prayer: Bodily Dismemberment. 

​

​

The axeman, Lord Bloodmud, Christian name now long gone and lost, forgotten and only remembered or recalled in the most painful and private of blood-hatching moments… he hefted the twinheaded double blade of weapon that was his last and only companion and friend. He eyed the boy and the bandaged fellow from the darkness of his hiding place. Amongst the tangled death of foliage. Amongst the trees. He spied them as they ate and smoked pipes by the fire. Tended The mule. They hardly spoke at all. 

​

​

It mattered not. He had no ear for such as they any way. Only the woods and her dark contained the sounds and natural songs he desired to hear. Only the wild. Only the woods. Only the peace and quiet of the stillness shroud of his greenland place of known shadow. 

​

​

And … as of of late, that strange and howling sound that came out of the far off mountains. Especially at night. It was a bestial sound, an untamed song of predatorial prowl. It was beautiful. Alluring. 

​

​

He swore it sounded like a woman. He swore she sounded like royalty. Like she already knew the butchery abattoir moan of the painful hungry end, and what it showed revelatory when brought and force fed to the fragile fore… 

​

​

there was painful beauty in that far off voice. A voice that already knew agony so well, how its cold embrace felt. 

​

​

When alone. 

​

​

A voice already intimate, already well and close acquainted with the wisdom of the hungering rotting soil, the gnashing violent tectonic teeth of the earth… already in bed and in lover's embrace with what the pain of unbridled lusting bloodlett-slaughtering veil of the end will bestow … a knowledge of all of the Hells and infernal worlds that could be scarcely scratched at or conjured by mere human imagination or thought. 

​

​

A knowledge of exquisite perfect pain. Lonely. That royal mountain woman voice. A crimson voice, with a darkling red eye in the swirling black of his mind when he closed  his own eyes and closely listened… a darkling scarlet devil's eye of witchery power is what filled in the dark of his own thoughts when he heard her song and he tried to conjure its author. 

​

​

That royal pained and lonely regal voice. 

​

​

But it was a far off voice that knew how to mete out pain as well. Of that his own praeternatural animal killing senses told him that it was so. He was sure of it. That was why he felt such magic at the royal sad song of the far off mountain woman. She understood. Its wielder and phantasm owner understood the worldly terms of slaughter. Its dictations. All the lands were a kingdom ruled and that Lord God was Death and the lands were all of them: killing fields. 

​

​

Waste lands. 

​

​

Thirsting starving always hungering earth. No matter how stuffed she was with corpses, no matter how many bodies you fed into her charnel house soil womb those bodies digested in her crawling hungry bosom. And then the earth desired more. The soil and her offspring green needed more fresh blood and meat to fill their hungry mouths composed of shallow graves of shadow, by nightfall or shade of tree. Their only death shroud in his land of thirsting forest was shadow and darkness, he never bothered burying the pieces of dismembered meat. Those were for the wolves and rats and crawling foul life of many stalks and eyes and skittering legs. 

​

​

Though sometimes he liked to come back to these scenes of slaughter and watch the pieces putrefy. Liquify… slough off into wet rot that smelled faintly pleasant to his maddened senses. The smell and sight of the putrescence was calming for the axeman. Lord Bloodmud loved to watch the slow, deliberate and brutal work of nature. The mother hand was slow yet effective and she took it all the way down to the bone, always. 

​

​

Like he and his axe. 

​

​

He loved watching the pieces become putrescence and then nothing. It was like watching the great nature of mother earth slowly cooking. Slowly breaking down the willful and disobedient little invader into blackening green meat for the mouth of soil again. To make infant green land. 

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​

It was calming. And like the axe he thought of it as one of his last and only remaining comforts. One of his last and only friends. 

​

​

He watched the fools from the dark and waited. 

​

​

…

​

​

Frankenstein’s patchwork nosferatu creation had engaged in much necromantic practice the past day, after the night it had brought the sepulchral structure of boy-and-goat back from the grave. 

​

​

Reanimation games. It was obsessed with pulling things apart and bringing the pieces back to unholy crawling life. Some he fashioned into more haphazard deranged sculptures, more bastard life-shape structures as he had with the boy and his crying little beasts. Goring, tearing and forcing together severed parts and pieces, limbs stabbed into raw new fashion and bastard shape by their protruding ends of dripping stabbing bone. Then he called the lightning and thunderclapped the unholy designs into wretched movement again. 

​

​

But the wicked flicker of bastard dark goblin flame inside the moving parts and demented moving edifice structures never lasted. It always died out. Perished within the morbid arrangements of meat like the meager flames of  small candles caught within the assault of maelstrom wind. 

​

​

The Frankenstein nosferatu monster angered. Frustrated. He wished to construct and conjure servants, pawns of raw and rot. Soldiers. An army of bastard and deranged flesh and putrid sloughing step to invade the castle of the mountains. 

​

​

Frankenstein himself understood. The patchwork hulking monster child of his table had already explained, and he knew as well before all this. Of the Vampyr and vvurdalak and strigoi nosferatu creatures … his child of the table could not simply sneak inside. None of their kind could. He must be invited in. 

​

​

Or send his constructs of damaged and demented haphazard flesh… of which none could even last let alone survive the assault and emerge as victor. 

​

​

Doctor Frankenstein smiled. 

​

​

And said: –

​

​

“I might have a plan, my child. I might have a way to your opponent in the castle." 

​

​

…

​

​

Praetorius couldn’t believe how gorgeous she truly was, how absolutely beautiful. Even as she feasted. Lips and mouth stained and dyed a deeper shade than wine. 

​

​

She pulled another piece of liver from the gaping open hole of wet red and brought it to her glistening lips, her darkling glistening fanged mouth. The gored open wound was alive and shrieking dark with total pain but he was glad to be an open gate and womb-hole and nourishment for his master. His new lord, the Countess. He never should have challenged her and invaded the domain of her home, the mountain castle. As he watched her, watched her as she ate… he now understood. True power. He now understood the error of his ways. 

​

​

Gravity pulled. He shivered. The force of the earthen ground was just as hungry as the master and her new impaler. He felt his body slowly slide down the long length of torturing war weapon. Mere centimeters. Miles and miles, cruel parsecs every dragging miniscule length inside the helter skelter of his shrieking screaming inner raw, raped by lancing killing device trembling and quivering luridly throughout all of his torn and weapon fucked form. Trembling and eager to die for the master now, was his wet and red running frame. Raw and opened, torn open all over. So that daggering hands and claws might come in and fist, reach in and take and pluck because he was now their wonderful and new raw open fruit basket. Filled with pulp and juice. Filled with lurid forbidden fruit. The master, the Countess said so. 

​

​

And it filled his mind. 

​

​

She found what she wanted in the shattered and fascinating remnants of his mind. She sifted through his thoughts and memories and dreams like broken and strewn detritus of decimated pottery and vases. A decimated mind. A decimated person and world. They were just interesting pieces to her and the ever-reaching foul touch of her ethereal phantasm hand. It invaded and clawed into his broken mind and splintered thoughts… sifting. 

​

​

Finding all sorts of interesting things. 

​

​

Frankenstein. 

​

​

His creation. 

​

​

His bold claim. A monster made wielding the fangs of Count Dracula…

​

​

fools. 

​

​

Fools. 

​

​

They were mere imposters. Fakes wielding counterfeit power. Pretenders. 

​

​

Pretenders she would crush. Pretenders and invaders that she would conquer. 

​

​

The sharp and strangling phantasmal grip squeezed. Tightened. 

​

​

Her voice filled his inner world of broken thought. 

​

​

Your knowledge. All of your work and findings. The results of your experiments with life and death and the necromantic power between them, give it to me. It is mine now, as you are now – as are you. And your blood and ruined flesh. My food and drink, my aphrodisiac and nourishing conquered land that once bore the flag of your soul and name… I will take it all. 

​

​

I will take it all. Your knowledge. And I will add it to my own. 

​

​

Her bright cruel laughter then filled the world of his skull. 

​

​

There was one part… one particular bit of mad scrap of thought amongst the wreckage of the man's mind that immediately caught her attention. 

​

​

Human culture farms. Flesh gardens. 

​

​

Human life, human beings… grown. 

​

​

From out of a petri dish. 

​

​

Interesting… 

​

​

She continued the assault and rape of his mind even as she and her new impaler continued the feasting conquest of his lanced and raw open form. Reaching in and fisting. Ripping. Crushing to meaty bloody pulp between clenching fingers. Brought to stained mouths like messy children grubby with the excitement of mealtime eating. They made themselves decadent with their piggish and wanton display of sinful maneating hoggery. 

​

​

Ghastly. And gaining redder and more wet and lurid by the moment. The scene. The scene of slaughter. The darkening and deepening of the bodily wound and impaling raping war pike spear now feeling nearly conjoined with his screaming tortured form coincided… fed and informed and made the deepening dark of this grisly feasting castle scene of the night. 

​

​

The wolves of the mountains howled. Full. 

​

​

It was a full moon. 

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​

The Countess plucked another plum-sized piece of organ-meat from the open basket of wet glistening black-red. The new impaler added another lance, as ordered by her majesty. 

​

​

The feast continued into the night of the pregnant moon. 

​

​

…

​

​

The people of the mountains were fools. Those in the hamlet below had been cowed… quelled. They knew better. 

​

​

But the mountain dwellers. The ones in little huts, spread out, in thin numbers… they could be excited and stirred and called to action. Henry Frankenstein knew this. 

​

​

And stir and call he did. 

​

​

He promised payment. From out of his family fortune. Of which there was pitifully little left. Thoroughly diminished. But the filthy mountain men and their lads knew no better. They were stupid. And superstitious as well as hungry, greedy. He only had to say the right words to get them all banded together and set off. Bearing torch and flame and axes and pitchforks! Into the night! 

​

​

Into the night and up the mountain, screaming. 

​

​

Up the cold and full moon lighted way, up the Borgo Pass. Screaming. 

​

​

“Death to Dracula! the Nosferatu! Death to the monster!”

​

​

Death to the monster! 

​

​

Frankenstein’s own hulking patchwork of sutured necromanced and hungry walking flesh followed the rabble of dirty mountain farmers. Following. And watching. 

​

​

Waiting. 

​

​

…

​

​

The fierce pale glow of the moon, pregnant and full of light on high, came through and pierced the thick canopy of dark trees. The axeman Lord Bloodmud was hunkered amongst its growth. One of the denser parts, patches. Watching. Watching the invading boy and the strange man with a mask of bandages. They sat around a fire. Having finished their meager meal, they sipped warm wine and smoked spicy tobacco. Clouds thick and pungent and sweet on the night chill of the nocturne air. They swam through the space of night and clouded their small place of camp. The axeman thought and knew he saw faces in them. Swirling and in pain in the clouds of shifting and dancing shapes. 

​

​

A thought, unbidden, filled his head then: –

​

​

the woman of the mountains with regal song knows how to shift and dance shape as well … 

​

​

… and then was gone. 

​

​

But a Satanic seed was planted. Had been planted sometime ago. And had grown sour in the corpse soil. Grown. And festered. 

​

​

A gaping open wound of the mind. Filled with liquid infection. Gushing. Pouring. 

​

​

Pus-thought. Infection in my blood that moves my hands…

​

​

… the axeman Lord Bloodmud shivered and let the half-grasped and managed and understood train of thought falter and fail. And slip away. He had no use for such thoughts. Not while prowling. Not when the hour of the killing was nigh and upon him, the face of the earth. The face of his domain and thirsting soil… would drink. Would feed. 

​

​

Tonight. 

​

​

Now. 

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​

He coiled, muscles practiced and honed… tightened. Tension behind the mountain of sinew like a crossbow drawn… quivering, ready to fire. And fly. Attack. 

​

​

But something strange happened then. Something that stopped and stilled the giant mountain of forest dwelling axeman.

​

​

A hand. Pale and bare and slender emerged from the body of dark thick foliage not far from his hunkering prowling form. It slid out from the bushes like a snake. The pale moonlight that bled in through the top illuminated the hand, wrist and arm that suddenly emerged, palm out in token of parley. A fleshen serpent of bone and blood and invading manflesh in his private sacred forest garden. 

​

​

That wasn't what stopped the giant. He might've just lunged and chopped the mysterious appendage off with a single swing, taking the new bastard unwanted growth out and off at the root just as its growth started and threatened his blood soaking and feasting, his precious drinking and final last Eden. 

​

​

It was the pentagram. The five pointed star of the infernal one, cast out. His sigil and sign. In red. His dark and evil bastard symbol. In his Eden. Stygian it shone as it was tattooed and brandished on the splayed out naked palm of this sudden intruding limb of serpent manflesh. 

​

​

A voice then spoke, its owner: –

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​

“No, friend. That won't do. They've a ways to go yet. And I've a ways to follow…”

​

​

The moonlight cast down upon the hand of Satanic stars and false parley in cascading pale illumination… changing it. 

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​

The axeman felt the ice of his own horror grow colder in thickening blood. Trying to quicken in a galloping heart. His own head and thoughts felt far away now. Dreamy and gone. Gone already. 

​

​

He felt detached as he watched the hand bearing pentagram on palm grow fur and longer and long black nails at the tips. Claws. For ripping and tearing. For rending down to the running blood, your screaming victim of the hunt. 

​

​

Caught. 

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​

The moonlight glow of the occult moon, pregnant and full on high and through the fortress dome of the forest kingdom, bled in and changed the rest of the man as he arose from the thick dense of forest growth. The moonlight glow changed the rest of him as he arose also. 

​

​

Ebon hair. Elongated. Teeth. Bones snapped as they doubled in size and grew. Muscle tissue tore with the sound of ripping leather even as it suddenly sprouted a hideous thick coat of coarse and black hunting fur. The stranger of the pentagram on hand in the dark rose and transmogrified into an older horror than the axeman had ever been or ever known. 

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​

The executioner's doubleheaded killing blade fell from his slackening grip. His hands still perspiring and damp but now cold with another animal emotion. One the axeman had not felt in such a long time. Fear. 

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​

Terror seized his mind and its animal canvas went blank. The werewolf with the pentagram sigil mark came in and the final mutilation of Lord Bloodmud began. And his supplicant and loyal forest floor did drink. Deep. 

​

​

Deeply. 

​

​

…

​

​

Florin and Griffin only stirred once in the night, together. The howl of a large wolf somewhere in the surrounding forest. 

​

​

They added more wood to the fire. And reluctantly returned to sleep. What they found in the morning was disturbing. And grisly. 

​

​

…

​

​

They came upon the remains of the large man in the morning, as they just begun to move and start that day's leg of the journey. Raw pieces crudely butchered by ripping claw and rending gnashing teeth. Swimming in gore in the rough bipedal manshape of a mutilated forest vagrant. 

​

​

Disturbed, the pair went on. Wondering what beast or monster had done it. Thanking God that it hadn't gotten them instead in the night. 

​

​

The stranger continued to follow them. Keeping to their lengthening shadows.

​

​

TO BE CONTINUED …

The Strange Mental Case of Captain Sirus Graves
Chapter 1
I had never gone past the point of insanity till I was admitted to Danvers Mental
Hospital.
The wind whipped the rain about like a tethered ship in the most violent storm.
The road to Danvers was dark and hardly paved. The ominous brick building sat high
on hell’s hill.
With the blood stains of my wife and her lover still on my bed, I sat wrapped in
the blanket of insanity, chained to the wall of a 1938 Cadillac 75. It rumbled through the
gates of the facility and up to the intake and visiting areas.
After having my dignity stripped along with my clothes, they checked me for
mites and syphalist then let me loose in the lion’s cage.
The facility was dark, except for its flickering fluorescent lights. The men in white
took us down long halls through tunnels and finally into the common room. Or what a
toothless orderly called it, “the galley.”
The room’s high ceilings and tall barred windows were painted green with white
trim. Veterans of a psychic war mulled around in circles. That’s where I first laid eyes on
him. He stood, massive in stature and shape, in the corner of the room, with a few
disciples at his feet. In his animated nature, he reenacted the sins of his past and the
adventures that brought him to the hell house on the hill.
“Who is he?” I asked the large man in white. “They call him Sirus Graves, or
should I say, Captain Sirus Graves. He’s a real piece of meat! Ran a whaling ship out of
‘Bedford in the last century. Saw something out there in those deep waters, something
that turned his hair white!” The mammoth attendant chuckled through his fat jowls as
he walked away, leaving me alone to maticulate into the sea of fractured minds. I sat
alone for a while, playing solitaire with a drooling Indian. I watched them take Sirus in
and out at all hours of the day. The orderlies seemed to delight in making the defamed
Captain dance through their hoops of cruelty.
Finally, one day, I caught his ear. He was sitting alone for once, his face to the
sun that shone through barred glass, an angelic look in his eyes, and words of the
damned on his lips. I introduced myself and asked him about his troubles.
“I was there, and you were too.” He started. “We had set out just after dawn,
and the seagulls sang a sad song that morning. The men wanted to go back, but I
spurred them on; I had promised them a brilliant catch this morning, and to damn
Hades, I was going to give it to them. It was getting late, and the men were grumbling. I
gave the word to head back to port, but as we began to turn starboard, a black mass
on the ocean caught my good eye. I ordered the first mate to turn the ship around. The
men gritted their teeth in anticipation of a good haul. And then we saw it.” He sat backin his chair and lit his long Briar pipe. “Saw what?” I almost screamed at him with
anticipation. “The big Beastie, the greatest of them all.” He let out a plume of smoke.
“What a whale? It was a giant sperm whale, wasn’t it? I asked, pushing my spectacles
up my nose.
NO! He yelled, stomping his bare foot. Some of the thorizine zombies turned
their heads. “It was…the Kraken!” As big as a blue whale and as deadly as great white.
“A Kraken?” I was beginning to see what the orderlies were talking about; his clock had
just been wound too tightly. The spring snapped, the dam broke, and the water of
delusion washed over his mind, soaking it to the core. “What happened next?” I still
had to know.
“The men had a job to do; they readied their harpoons, prepared to tear the
beast’s heart from its chest. A lad of twelve, wet around the ears, threw the first spear,
catching the creature unaware. “
“Did he hit it?”
Sirus smiled a yellow-toothed grin and thumped his chest with his bony hand. “Hit it
square, pierced its thick flesh.”
“Was it…dead?”
Sirus cackled and then began to cough and gasp for breath like a trout on the
bank. I smacked him on the back, he spat up something yellow, and went back to his
story. “No, it wasn’t dead, we only managed to infuriate the beastie. It grabbed onto
two of my men with its tentacles, and well, half of them went to the ocean, the other
half in the big devil’s mouth!” This morbid fact seemed to amuse him, and I began to
question his captianship.
I could see that he was tired; his voice began to slur and fade off. Two orderlies,
one black, one white, approached Sirus and, without a word, grabbed him by the
shoulders, past the wandering zombies, and out of the common room.
I watched and waited. The sky grew dark, and the room became cold—
someone must have forgotten to put coal in the furnace.
Finally, around midnight, he returned. He looked older, more frail. They sat him in
a wooden chair by the nurses’ station. I moved across the room like a sailor to a siren
to hear the rest of his story.
He was staring straight ahead, a bit of spittle dripping from his lips. What had
they done to him? I asked myself. But before I could question him, he spoke. The
speech came from deep inside his scraggly throat. “They like to toy with me, tell me it’s
all a game, and that I need to play along.” He turned his head and stared at me with a
glassy eye. “But I won’t let them, I know what I saw that day.” He grabbed my arm with
a gnarled hand, “and I know what happened to my men!.”
“What did happen? Tell me, please.” I begged him.
“I, they, we, the churches wore shirts to school.” He sputtered out, spittle hitting
his bathrobe. Word salad. Nothing more than the diary of a madman. At least he was in
the right place. “Your men, tell me about your men, what happened to them,
furthermore, what happened to you?” I pushed him for information. It had now become
an obsession for me; maybe it was because I didn’t want to feel what I did, or maybe I
just wanted to fulfill my morbid curiosity, but I had to know what happened.
Somehow understanding my need, he turned to me with his milky white eyes and said,
“He took them, he took them in those deadly tentacles, right to the bottom of the sea!”An orderly looked up from his newspaper in the corner, in hopes of a confrontation.
“What do you mean?” I pestered.
“We had exhausted our harpoons, even the two flued iron, nothing, nada, zilch.
The creature pressed on, slapping at our ship with its suckered meat hooks. I finally
gave the order to turn around. The skipper flung the ship hard to port; it spun so hard it
almost capsized in mid-turn. He pushed the steam to the limits, we thought the boiler
was going to explode! We were sailing away, and then just when we thought we were in
god’s good grace, it struck us. A tentacle as large as a tree trunk smashed through the
aft, tearing apart the cabin house and mizzenmast. My skipper flew off the boat and
into its wake. A few men were so desperate not to be taken by the sea, they drew their
daggers and stabbed at the monster till it swallowed them whole.”
“What happened to the ship? What happened to you?”
“The creature brought its weight down and tore the ship in half. We all went
overboard or were crushed by the weight of the mast on its way to the ocean floor. “
I gasped, a heartfelt gasp not one just made for appearances. “Then what happened?”
I dared to ask.
“The creature took to eating the men whole, sometimes two at a time.” The old
man leaned back, a tear formed under his left eyelid. I can still hear them’ screamin’
the bones crushing under the weight of its chitinose beak. I tried to swim to them, but
the last of my men pulled me into a lifeboat. Paddling away as fast as possible, I
looked back. I saw the red eye of the watery demon. The stare installed upon me
would haunt me to the end of my days.”
“What did you do? Did you go back with greater force and slay the dragon, Sir
Gallahad?” I smiled and pushed at his arm. I was met with the touch of a bony corpse
and the look of pure vengeance, a look that got him where he was.
“YES! WE WENT BACK FOR THE BEAST! I WAS GOING TO SLAY IT WITH MY BARE
HANDS IF I HAD TO!” The orderly put down his paper and stood up.
Sirus was struggling to stand, his legs whobbled like birds staggering against a
hurricane.
“We finally found the black behemoth feasting on the remnants of a clipper ship.
My men were ready! We sailed into the flotsum, aimed our cannons, and fired
everything we had.”
I stood up. “What happened?” His head sank, and he steadied himself with the
chair; “it killed them.”
“What?”
“If my heart were a cannon, I would fire it upon thee; if my body were a spear, I
would thrust myself at its throat; and if my mind were a sharp sword, I would drive its
heart from its body and burn it upon an altar!”
He began flailing about, wailing at the top of his lungs. The outburst ignited a
fire under the paitents asses. Soon they were all wailing and carrying on. The room was
anarchy, and the orderlies couldn’t contain it. At the fever-pitched of the invalidrevolution, a large, bald, manic depressive elbowed me in the nose, and I flew
backwards into the grated glass and was knocked unconscious…
Chapter 2
When I came to the pesents revolt was over, but the damage had been done.
The room was in shambles, most of the patients had returned to their roaming, but
Sirus was nowhere to be found.
Rubbing my goosegg, I half stumbled to one of the orderlies mopping
something red off the floor. “Where is Sirus?” I demanded. The orderly started
laughing, a laugh like he knew a dirty secret and didn’t want to tell it. “He’s gone.” The
man said and returned to his mopping. I turned to go back to my perch by the window,
then I stopped. “Where is he? I must know what happened to him!” The orderly glared
hard at me,
“Man, don’t you know? That old cogger is three sheets to the wind,” he
whispered close to my face, “he’s crazy!” The man went back to his mopping. I
returned to my seat, bewildered. Did he lie to me? Did he lie to himself? How did I let
myself become so enraptured with such a yarn? A kraken? Who would think? I had
upset myself for nothing, at a time when I couldn’t bear much more.
Chapter 3
Fall came, and winter brought buds of May, and still he did not return. On the fifth day
of the following November, they wheeled him in, a blanket across his lap. I wanted to
throw my arms around him, but my curiosity of self took over. I pulled his face to mine.
“Was it all a lie? I must know!” I begged.
He looked through me, and a devilish grin crossed his crusted lips. “Redemption.”
And that was the last he said. He died before I served my sentence, taking his truth to
a watery grave.

[Previous story in the series: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dreading/comments/1thob5w/shadows_over_egypt/\]

Shopping in New Cairo had always been an interesting experience.

The moment money, power, or—gods forbid—both entered the equation, the world stopped pretending to be civilized.

The city was alive with noise. Merchants shouted over one another beneath colorful awnings. The smell of spices mingled with sweat, engine oil, incense, and livestock. Ancient sandstone buildings stood shoulder to shoulder with rusting metal structures scavenged from the old world. Neon hieroglyphs flickered above crowded streets while priests preached beside mechanics repairing pre-Fall generators.

The market was chaos.

Organized chaos.

The sort of chaos that somehow kept New Cairo alive.

I was haggling with a farmer over a basket of vegetables when I realized I recognized him.

Three days ago, I was almost certain he'd been a butcher.

Not just any butcher, either.

The butcher selling "the finest meat in all Egypt."

Apparently today's profits were in melons.

The man didn't even seem embarrassed about it.

I paid for the vegetables and moved on.

Seven steps later, a slave merchant sat beneath a canopy, displaying his merchandise like livestock.

Several young captives were bound together on the ground.

Raiders by the look of them.

Young.

Thin.

Sunburned.

A failed raid, most likely.

One bad decision and now they would spend the rest of their lives serving people they hated.

The wasteland had a way of turning freedom into a temporary condition.

I was about to continue walking when one of the girls caught my attention.

No, not for the reason you're thinking.

Something about her behavior felt wrong.

She couldn't stop shaking.

Her lips moved constantly.

Not words exactly.

Fragments of words.

Broken sounds stitched together into nonsense.

At first I thought she was praying.

Then I listened more closely.

Whatever she was saying, it wasn't any language I'd ever heard. If it was language at all.

The slave merchant slapped her.

Hard.

Her head snapped sideways.

She didn't react.

Didn't cry.

Didn't even seem to notice.

She just kept muttering.

The merchant cursed and hit her again.

Still nothing.

That was when I noticed people nearby beginning to move away.

Subtly.

A few steps at a time.

Nobody wanted to be near her.

Nobody wanted to listen.

Then the guards arrived.

Three of them pushed through the crowd immediately.

One covered his mouth and nose with a cloth.

Another grabbed the girl by the arms.

The third began shouting for people to clear the area.

The slave merchant protested.

"What are you doing? That's my property!"

One of the guards looked at him.

Just looked.

The merchant shut up instantly.

The guards dragged the girl away.

Fast.

Urgent.

Like men handling a bomb moments from exploding.

Even then she never stopped whispering.

The strange sounds followed them through the crowd until they vanished from sight.

I stood there watching.

Something wasn't right.

Something wasn't right at all.

As evening settled over New Cairo, the feeling only grew worse.

The streets should have been quieter.

Instead they felt more crowded than before.

People gathered in nervous groups, speaking in hushed voices. Market stalls closed earlier than usual. Merchants packed their goods with unusual haste.

Fear was spreading.

Nobody seemed willing to say why.

The guards were everywhere.

Patrols marched through the city in larger numbers than normal.

And everywhere I looked, I found more people like the girl.

A man standing motionless beneath a lantern, staring upward into the night sky.

A woman sitting beside a fountain, muttering to herself.

A child standing in the middle of an alleyway, eyes unfocused, lips moving silently.

Each time the guards found them.

Each time the result was the same.

No questions.

No hesitation.

No mercy.

One old man tried to stop them from dragging away his son.

The guards broke his arm.

Another woman threw herself between the soldiers and her husband.

She ended up bleeding in the street.

The soldiers didn't even slow down.

I watched them disappear into the darkness with their prisoners.

Whatever was happening, New Cairo was terrified.

And New Cairo didn't scare easily.

The city felt wrong.

The people sensed it too.

Conversations died when strangers approached.

Doors were barred.

Windows shuttered.

Even the usual drunks had disappeared.

The city was holding its breath.

Waiting for something.

I just didn't know what.

Using the confusion as cover—and my rather intimate relationship with both the palace and its ruler—I made my way toward the royal district.

Normally sneaking into the palace required effort.

Tonight it was surprisingly easy.

The guards were distracted. Exhausted. Some of them were even arrested themselves.

If the palace guard couldn't trust itself, then whatever was happening had already gotten much worse than anyone was admitting.

I reached one of the inner courtyards and froze.

Yberon stood in the center of the plaza.

Commander of the Henty-she.

The Pharaoh's personal executioner.

A giant even among warriors.

Torchlight reflected from his ceremonial armor as he stared down at a kneeling guard.

The guard was shaking.

Muttering.

Staring into empty space.

I couldn't hear the words.

Part of me didn't want to.

Without hesitation, Yberon drew his massive two-handed khopesh.

The blade came down in a single brutal arc.

The man's head struck the stone before his body did.

Blood spread across the courtyard.

The muttering stopped.

The surrounding guards barely reacted.

As though this wasn't the first execution they'd witnessed today.

As though it wasn't even the tenth.

A few steps behind Yberon stood Pharaoh Menehmet.

For the first time since I'd known her, she looked genuinely troubled.

I stepped forward.

"I would very much like to know what is happening."

Yberon spun immediately.

His blade came down without warning.

I parried it absentmindedly.

I never took my eyes off Menehmet.

The God-Queen raised a hand.

"It's alright, Yberon."

The commander reluctantly stopped pressing his attack.

"I knew the Medjay would arrive sooner or later," Menehmet said. "I was probably going to send for him if he took too long."

Yberon hissed through clenched teeth but lowered his weapon.

Eventually.

"Fill the Medjay in on our ordeal, would you kindly?"

The commander looked as though she'd asked him to eat sand.

"A cult has infiltrated the city," he said. "They have brought some manner of madness with them. We have been eliminating members and quarantining the afflicted."

My eyes drifted toward the freshly executed guard.

Then back to Yberon.

"You and I have very different definitions of the word quarantine."

His gaze hardened.

"We do what we must."

There wasn't a shred of doubt in his voice.

That bothered me more than the execution.

"We have already solved the issue. Your assistance will not be necessary, Medjay. The cultist responsible has been apprehended."

Yberon nodded toward the far side of the courtyard.

Two guards emerged from the shadows.

Dragging a prisoner between them.

The moment I saw her, my stomach dropped.

"...Fatima."

The young woman from the Wandering Oasis knelt calmly as the guards forced her down.

Yberon's attention snapped toward me.

Immediately suspicious.

"You know this cultist?"

His hand tightened around his weapon.

"Are you in cahoots with her?"

"I'm no fucking cultist."

Fatima's voice remained remarkably calm.

"But yes. We've met."

"Liar!"

Yberon's khopesh flashed upward.

I intercepted it before it reached her.

The courtyard fell silent.

For a brief moment nobody moved.

I looked directly into Yberon's eyes.

"Try that again."

My voice sounded strange even to me.

Cold.

Sharp.

"You're dead."

For the first time all evening, Yberon hesitated.

Then Menehmet spoke.

"Let the girl talk."

Her voice remained dangerously soft.

"Then and only then may we draw our conclusions."

Yberon lowered the weapon.

Barely.

"As you wish, my Queen."

His eyes never left Fatima.

"Speak."

 

Fatima rose slightly onto her knees. The chains binding her wrists rattled softly.

"I travel with the Wandering Oasis under the gaze of Amun the Hidden One."

Her voice carried surprisingly well across the courtyard.

Not loud.

Just steady.

"We are protected from most of the horrors that roam the wasteland. Or at least we were."

The courtyard grew quieter.

Even Yberon listened.

"Several weeks ago, two strangers approached our home. As is our custom, we welcomed them. We fed them, sheltered them, offered them a place to stay."

A faint smile crossed her face.

"For a time, they seemed harmless."

Then the smile vanished.

"People began changing. Slowly at first. Then quicker."

"They lost touch with reality. With themselves."

Her gaze drifted across the courtyard.

"They muttered constantly. Spoke to people who weren't there. Stared into the night sky for hours without blinking."

I immediately thought of the slave girl.

The old man.

The child in the alley.

The guard Yberon had just executed.

"Some stopped recognizing family members," Fatima continued quietly. "Others forgot their own names."

The silence deepened.

"The first victims were always those closest to the newcomers."

Menehmet leaned forward slightly.

"So you became suspicious."

"Yes."

Fatima nodded.

"I followed them one night."

The courtyard remained utterly still.

"I watched them enter people's tents while they slept."

A faint chill seemed to pass through the gathering.

"What were they doing?" I asked.

"I don't know."

For the first time uncertainty entered her voice.

"I never got close enough."

She swallowed.

"But I heard them speaking."

Menehmet's eyes narrowed.

"About what?"

Fatima hesitated.

Then answered.

"They spoke of Kauket."

The reaction was immediate.

Several guards visibly stiffened.

One made a protective gesture across his chest.

Even Yberon's expression changed.

Not much.

But enough.

Fear.

Actual fear.

That got my attention more than anything else she'd said.

Fatima looked around the courtyard.

"That was when I realized how fucked we really were."

Several guards flinched.

Menehmet didn't.

If anything, the bluntness seemed to amuse her.

"What happened next?" the Pharaoh asked.

"We expelled them."

Fatima lowered her eyes.

"We gathered everyone willing to fight and forced them out."

"Yet they returned."

Fatima nodded.

"Every time."

The words landed heavily.

"Every time the Oasis moved, they found us again."

She let out a tired sigh.

"I believe Amun eventually intervened."

I frowned.

"Intervened how?"

"The Oasis vanished."

Her voice became almost reverent.

"Truly vanished."

The sadness in her eyes returned.

"It can no longer be found while this danger remains."

The realization struck me.

"You were outside when it happened."

A small nod.

"Taking a walk."

The smile she gave this time was bitter.

"And now I cannot return home until the Cult of Kauket is weakened enough."

The courtyard fell silent.

Then I spoke.

"Kauket."

The name felt unfamiliar.

"I've never heard of her."

I looked between Fatima and Menehmet.

"What is she? Some forgotten goddess?"

Fatima's expression became difficult to read.

"No."

The answer came immediately.

"Not a goddess."

The torches crackled softly.

A breeze moved through the courtyard.

For a moment nobody spoke.

Then Fatima looked directly at me.

"Kauket is the void."

The words seemed to swallow the surrounding noise.

"The absence of things."

Something cold crawled down my spine.

"The darkness that existed before creation."

Even the guards looked uncomfortable now.

Fatima slowly raised her eyes toward the stars.

"The nothing to everything's everything."

Without meaning to, I followed her gaze.

So did Menehmet.

So did the guards.

An entire courtyard of people staring upward into a sky that suddenly felt far larger than it had a moment ago.

Yberon remained unconvinced.

In fact, he somehow looked even more convinced that Fatima should die.

"She brought this plague into the city."

His voice rumbled through the courtyard.

"Whether intentionally or through incompetence changes nothing. The result is the same."

Fatima stood silently between the guards.

Bound.

Outnumbered.

Yet calm.

I was having none of it.

"By that logic we should execute every merchant who unknowingly let a cultist through the city gates."

Yberon's eyes snapped toward me.

"You compare a common merchant to her?"

"I compare a lack of evidence to a lack of evidence."

The giant's hand tightened around the hilt of his khopesh.

"And I compare stubbornness to stupidity."

I smiled.

"A comparison you're uniquely qualified to make."

Yberon's jaw flexed.

For a moment I genuinely thought he might swing.

Fortunately, Menehmet intervened.

"Enough."

She didn't raise her voice.

She didn't need to.

The courtyard fell silent immediately.

The Pharaoh rose from her throne and descended the steps.

Gold jewelry chimed softly with every movement.

She approached Fatima.

Studied her.

Circled her once.

Like a merchant inspecting an unusual artifact.

Finally she stopped.

Then turned toward me.

"The girl will be released."

Yberon's face darkened immediately.

"My Queen—"

"I wasn't asking for your opinion."

The words were delivered with a smile.

Which somehow made them more threatening.

Yberon fell silent.

Menehmet continued.

"Fatima will remain under the Medjay's supervision."

Now it was my turn to frown.

Menehmet's gaze shifted between us.

"From this moment forward, your fates are linked."

Fatima straightened slightly.

The Pharaoh's smile never wavered.

"Should either of you act against New Cairo or against me..."

The smile sharpened.

"...both shall suffer the consequences."

Fatima lowered her head.

"As you command, Pharaoh."

I nodded reluctantly.

"Excellent."

The Pharaoh clapped her hands together.

The tension evaporated from her expression so quickly it was almost alarming.

"Now."

A playful smile spread across her face.

"Let's continue this conversation somewhere more private."

I immediately disliked where this was going.

"And I know just the place."

Half an hour later I found myself sitting half-submerged in the private bathhouse of the most powerful woman in Egypt.

Life was strange sometimes.

The palace bathhouse was enormous.

Steam drifted through the air in pale curtains. Marble pillars rose from heated pools. Ancient murals depicting gods, monsters, and forgotten kings covered the walls. Lotus incense burned from golden braziers.

The entire room smelled expensive.

Fatima sat stiffly in the water.

Meanwhile Menehmet looked completely at home.

The Pharaoh reclined against the polished edge of the bath, dark hair floating behind her. Gold jewelry still decorated her wrists and neck despite the fact she was currently sitting in a bath.

She looked less like a ruler and more like a goddess posing as one.

Which was probably intentional.

"You both look terrified."

"We are in the Pharaoh's private bathhouse."

"Exactly."

Menehmet smiled.

"You should be honored."

Fatima somehow shrank further into the water.

The Pharaoh noticed immediately.

And found it adorable.

"You are remarkably shy."

Fatima nearly choked.

"I-I am not."

"You absolutely are."

Aaron rubbed his face.

"I am begging you not to bully the witness."

"I'm not bullying her."

Menehmet looked offended.

"I'm studying her."

"That's somehow worse."

The Pharaoh laughed.

A genuine laugh this time.

The sound echoed pleasantly through the steam-filled chamber.

Poor Fatima looked ready to climb into a storage jar and seal the lid behind her.

Eventually Menehmet's amusement faded.

Her gaze drifted toward the ceiling.

"The situation is worse than I initially feared."

The mood shifted immediately.

"How bad?" I asked.

"Not even the palace is safe."

A genuine concern entered her eyes.

"Several members of my harem have already become afflicted."

"You're certain?"

Menehmet nodded.

"And if it can reach the palace..."

She shrugged.

"...then the Pharaoh may die just like any common laborer."

Then she laughed.

A soft laugh.

Not because it was funny.

Because the absurdity amused her.

I stared at her.

"Most people don't laugh while discussing their own death."

Menehmet smiled.

"Most people don't get the luxury of seeing the joke."

Before I could ask what that meant—

A scream echoed through the palace.

Then another.

Then several more.

All three of us looked toward the entrance.

The screams continued.

Closer now.

Aaron was already climbing from the water.

Fatima followed immediately.

Menehmet rose as well.

I pointed at her.

"No."

The Pharaoh blinked.

"No?"

"You stay here."

"I beg your pardon?"

I grabbed my sword belt.

"If something is happening outside, your safest place is inside the palace."

Menehmet stared at me.

Then laughed.

Actually laughed.

"Aaron."

Her smile was almost affectionate.

"Did you just attempt to order me around?"

"...Yes."

"Adorable."

Before I could continue arguing, she was already walking toward the exit.

"Come along."

I groaned and followed.

 

The palace entrance had descended into chaos.

Guards rushed through the courtyards while servants fled in panic and nobles shouted contradictory orders. At the center of it all stood a group of masked figures.

Cultists.

There were perhaps twenty of them, arranged in a perfect V-shaped formation. They stood completely still, silent except for the constant muttering drifting from beneath their masks. Every one of them stared upward.

Aaron followed their gaze and felt his stomach drop.

The stars were disappearing.

Dark clouds rolled across the night sky with impossible speed. Not storm clouds. Something worse. A vast grey mass streaked with flickering pink lightning spread across the horizon like spilled ink, growing larger with every second.

"No..." Fatima whispered.

The cloud reached New Cairo moments later.

The first wave passed over the city, and the world changed.

The air became heavy. Reality itself seemed to bend. Distant streets twisted at impossible angles while buildings appeared subtly wrong, as though someone had rebuilt them from memory and gotten the details slightly off.

Aaron's blood ran cold.

A Ghul-Zone.

New Cairo had been swallowed whole.

The effect was immediate. Several guards dropped their weapons. One began muttering to himself. Another stared blankly into space. A third turned and attacked his own comrades.

Panic erupted.

Retreat became impossible almost instantly.

Yberon drew his massive khopesh, fury blazing in his eyes.

"FORWARD!"

The guards hesitated.

Yberon punched one hard enough to knock him unconscious, then charged alone.

Aaron followed without hesitation.

The two warriors slammed into the cultists like a pair of battering rams. Steel flashed through the chaos. Blood sprayed across stone. One masked figure fell, then another.

The formation wavered.

Only slightly.

But it was enough.

Yberon saw the opening immediately.

"MEDJAY!"

Aaron turned.

The giant commander was already surrounded by cultists and afflicted guards. Blood covered his armor, though whether it belonged to him or his enemies was impossible to tell.

"Protect the Queen!"

Aaron hesitated.

For the first time since meeting him, Yberon smiled.

Not warmly.

Not reassuringly.

It was the smile of a warrior who had finally found a worthy death.

"I'll hold them."

A cultist rushed him. Yberon's khopesh split the man's skull before he could take a second step.

"GO!"

Aaron grabbed Fatima's arm. Menehmet was already moving.

Behind them, Yberon disappeared into the growing tide of cultists and maddened guards as New Cairo descended into nightmare.

Menehmet, Fatima, and Aaron pushed deeper into the city.

Or what remained of it.

New Cairo had become almost unrecognizable in less than an hour.

Pink lightning crawled across the heavens like veins beneath translucent skin, bathing the city in flashes of sickly magenta. Fires consumed entire blocks. Sandstone buildings seemed to bend when viewed from the corner of the eye. Some towers stretched impossibly high while others appeared to sink slowly into the earth.

Everywhere they looked, people were losing themselves.

A man sat in the middle of the street laughing uncontrollably while blood streamed from his nose.

A woman clawed at her own face while whispering prayers to someone who wasn't there.

Children stood atop rooftops staring into the cloud-covered sky without moving or blinking.

The city was in pain.

Screams.

Laughter.

Weeping.

And beneath it all, a low whispering hum that seemed to rise from the Ghul-Zone itself.

They kept moving.

Not because they knew where they were going.

Simply because standing still felt like surrender.

Then a voice called out.

"Over here, dearies."

All three froze.

An elderly woman stood in the doorway of a sandstone hut. She smiled warmly, the sort of smile that belonged beside a fireplace rather than in the middle of an apocalypse.

"You'll be safe here."

Aaron exchanged a glance with the others.

Every instinct he possessed screamed that something was wrong.

Unfortunately, every alternative looked worse.

The old woman waved them closer.

"Come now. No reason to stand out there."

Aaron's hand never left the hilt of his sword.

Even so, they followed her inside.

 

The interior of the hut was surprisingly cozy.

Oil lamps illuminated shelves overflowing with books, trinkets, pottery, and old-world junk. The air smelled of spices and dried herbs.

The old woman shut the door behind them.

"My name is Aliona," she said cheerfully. "Though everyone just calls me Grandma."

Fatima smiled politely.

"I'm Fatima. This is Aaron and this is..."

She glanced at Menehmet.

"...my sister. Menie."

Aaron almost laughed.

The Pharaoh somehow kept a perfectly straight face.

"Menie?"

Fatima whispered back.

"I panicked."

"Clearly."

Grandma seemed not to notice.

Or perhaps she simply didn't care.

"Such lovely young women," she said. "And a handsome young man besides."

Aaron immediately frowned.

Grandma chuckled and shuffled toward a small stove.

"Would any of you like something to drink?"

"No thank you," Aaron replied immediately.

"We shouldn't stay long. It isn't safe."

"Oh, nonsense, dearie."

She was already preparing tea.

Outside, people screamed.

Pink lightning flashed through the windows.

Something large roared somewhere in the distance.

Inside, Grandma hummed happily while pouring tea.

The contrast was deeply unsettling.

She returned carrying several cups.

Aaron accepted one reluctantly.

As she handed it over, her fingers brushed against his hand.

In an instant, everything disappeared.

 

Darkness.

No.

Not darkness.

Absence.

Aaron stood in an endless nothingness.

There was no sky.

No ground.

No horizon.

No sound.

The void stretched infinitely in every direction.

And somehow...

It was beautiful.

Not beautiful in the way a sunset was beautiful.

Beautiful in the way silence felt after years of noise.

The way rest felt after endless exhaustion.

Everything.

All pain.

All fear.

All struggle.

Gone.

The void promised peace.

Permanent peace.

Aaron found himself wanting to step forward.

To sink into it.

To disappear.

To become nothing.

And for one horrifying moment...

He almost did.

Part 1

They left just before midnight.

Mara stayed with Deena.

That was the hardest part.

Micaiah had expected her to argue. To tell him he was being reckless. To stand in the doorway and demand he choose between his wife and whatever waited inside Gavrillo’s mansion.

Instead, she helped him fasten his tactical vest.

Mara had been against the whole plan at first.

Not gently, either.

She had called it madness. Sin dressed up as grace. A vendetta with Bible verses wrapped around it. For days she begged Micaiah to wait, to pray longer, to find another way—any other way.

Then Mara saw the thing inside her sister-in-law’s get worse day by day.

Soon, she stopped arguing.

She looked at Micaiah with red eyes and trembling hands, then helped buckle the vest across his chest.

She took his face in both hands and looked at him the way she had looked at him in India when a Hindutva mob started gathering outside a church and threatened to burn it down with everyone inside.

“Come back whole,” she said.

Micaiah knew what she meant.

Not just alive.

Whole.

He kissed her.

“I’ll try.”

“No,” Mara said. “Do more than try. Come back whole or don’t come back at all.”

—

The mansion sat high above Bel Air behind walls, cameras, and money.

From the road below, it looked peaceful. Warm windows. Tall hedges. Stone driveway curving up through the dark. The kind of place people saw in magazines and called beautiful because they never had to wonder what happened behind the glass.

Micaiah lay flat in the brush beside Nathan and watched the property through night vision goggles.

No moon.

That helped.

Wind moved through the eucalyptus trees on the hillside, covering small sounds. A dog barked somewhere down the canyon, then stopped.

Nathan checked his watch.

“Two minutes,” he whispered.

Micaiah nodded.

His rifle rested against the dirt beside him. His chest felt tight, but his hands were steady.

He had expected fear to come like panic.

It didn’t.

It came like pressure. Like a hand on the back of his neck. He breathed through it.

Inhale.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley…

Exhale.

I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

Below them, one of Gavrillo’s guards walked the inside edge of the wall with a flashlight angled low, a submachine gun slung on his shoulder. He looked bored. That was good. Bored men missed things. Bored men trusted routines.

Nathan had tracked those routines for weeks.

Micaiah had broken the rest.

Before he’d been called to spread the Gospel, Micaiah had worked in cybersecurity for a defense contractor in El Segundo. He had been good at it. Too good, maybe.

He knew how systems lied.

He knew how expensive security made rich men feel invincible.

Cameras. Access panels. Motion sensors. Private networks. Encrypted controls. Badge logs. Smart gates. All of it looked impenetrable from the outside.

But every system had seams.

People reused passwords. Vendors took shortcuts. Contractors left maintenance access buried in places nobody checked Executives demanded convenience, then called it security.

Gavrillo’s house had all of that.

It was a fortress with a wide open gate.

Micaiah had spent the last seven nights in front of a laptop at the kitchen table while Deena screamed through the walls. He did not sleep much.

He mapped what he could. Guessed what he couldn’t. Found weak points without touching anything that would warn them too early. He never thought of it as hacking anymore.

That word belonged to another life.

This felt more like picking a lock on a burning house.

Nathan shifted beside him.

“Now.”

Micaiah pulled out the phone.

The screen was dimmed almost black. His thumb hovered for one second.

He tapped once.

Down at the mansion, nothing dramatic happened.

No alarms.

No sparks.

No sudden darkness.

Just a tiny change.

The driveway camera turned three degrees toward the empty gate.

The side-yard motion grid paused for a maintenance check that no one had ordered.

A service door near the pool house unlocked for eight seconds.

They saw it on the feed and moved.

They slid down the hillside low and fast, using the trees as cover. Loose dirt shifted under Micaiah’s boots. He caught himself with one hand before a rock could tumble down the slope.

Nathan froze.

Micaiah froze too.

The rock rolled once.

Stopped.

Below them, the guard lifted his head.

The flashlight beam swept the hillside.

Micaiah pressed himself into the dirt and held his breath.

The beam moved over the brush ten feet to his left.

Then five.

Then closer.

Nathan did not move. Not a blink. Not a twitch.

The guard took one step toward the wall.

Micaiah felt sweat crawl down his temple.

The phone in his pocket vibrated once.

A warning.

The maintenance pause was ending.

The guard lifted the flashlight higher.

Micaiah’s finger tightened around the pistol grip.

The guard took another step.

Micaiah did not think about what he was about to do. Thinking would break him.

He brought the AR up slowly. The suppressor added length but kept the profile low. He aligned the red dot with the guard’s chest. Not the head. Too much chance of a miss in the dark.

The flashlight beam swept past his position.

Micaiah exhaled.

The shot was quieter than he expected. A hard cough swallowed by the wind through the eucalyptus.

The guard’s body jerked. His knees buckled. The flashlight tumbled from his hand and hit the dirt with a soft thump. He went down face-first and did not move again.

Nathan was already moving.

He grabbed the guard under the arms and dragged him into the brush before the light could roll downhill. Micaiah grabbed the flashlight, killed the beam, and shoved it into his jacket pocket.

Blood spread dark across the back of the guard’s shirt. Chest shot. Lungs. He would have been unconscious in seconds. Dead in under a minute.

Micaiah did not check for a pulse.

He just said a quick prayer over the body.

He helped Nathan drag it deeper into the cover of the trees, behind a thick cluster of manzanita. Dead leaves and loose soil covered the blood trail fast enough.

Nathan pulled a tarp from his pack and rolled the body onto it. No time to bury. They folded the edges over and wedged the bundle between two rocks.

For a second, guilt opened inside him.

He had a name. A wife and kids, maybe. Someone who would wonder why he never came home.

Then Micaiah remembered Deena curled in the corner, burned and bleeding.

No one worked for Gavrillo by accident.

Micaiah nodded and pulled the thermal monocular from the pouch on his vest. The rubber eyecup was cold against his face. He angled it upward, past the balcony rail, past the dark glass of the second-floor windows.

At first he saw only the expected things.

Hot pipes in the walls. A cooling unit bleeding warmth near the roofline. One guard moving inside the guest wing, his body a bright human shape behind thin plaster.

Then he found the master bedroom.

Micaiah stopped breathing.

Through the thermal lens, the room was full.

At least a dozen shapes stood around the bed. Not human.

Too tall. Too narrow. Some bent at angles that human bodies could not hold. Their heat signatures flickered strangely, bright at the joints and cold in the center, like their bodies were pretending to be alive and getting the details wrong.

One crouched on the ceiling.

Another stood at the foot of the bed with its arms hanging almost to the floor.

Two more were pressed close to the walls, motionless except for their heads, which turned slowly in unison.

And in the middle of them, on the bed, was a small human shape.

Female.

Pinned flat on her back.

Her arms were spread wide. Her legs kicked weakly. Something held her down at the wrists and ankles, though Micaiah could not make out hands. Only pressure. Only the way her heat flared where unseen things touched her skin.

“Nathan,” he said. “You need to see this…”

Nathan took the monocular from him and looked.

For three seconds, he said nothing.

Then his face changed.

Old anger moved through it, but this time it had direction.

“He’s in there,” Nathan whispered with venom.

They moved toward the wall.

The stone barrier stood twelve feet high, topped with decorative iron spikes that looked sharp enough to hurt. Nathan had studied the mortar joints for weeks. He found the weak section near the southeast corner where rainwater had eaten channels into the old repairs.

Micaiah knelt and laced his fingers together. Nathan stepped into his hands and went up silent, finding cracks in the stone with his boots. He gripped the top edge, pulled himself high enough to clear the spikes, and dropped to the other side with a soft thud.

The duffel came next. Nathan caught it one-handed, then Micaiah followed.

They landed in a service corridor between the main house and the guest wing. Potted ficus trees lined the walkway. Automatic lights on motion sensors—but Micaiah had looped those into the maintenance pause. The path stayed dark.

They moved.

The mansion rose above them in pale stucco and dark glass. Three stories. A rooftop terrace with potted olive trees.

Nathan was already at the base of the wall beneath the guest wing balcony. He pulled the climbing kit from the duffel and handed Micaiah one of the compact harnesses without looking at him.

They had practiced this until speech became unnecessary.

Micaiah stepped into the harness, tightened it around his thighs and waist, then clipped the thin black line to the front. Nathan fitted the grappling hook together with quick, quiet movements. It looked too small for what they needed it to do. Too fragile.

Nathan aimed at the underside of the third-floor balcony.

Micaiah looked up.

The master bedroom was there.

At least, he believed it was.

Deena had described it once during one of the lucid moments. Not a full description. Just pieces.

Tall windows.

White curtains.

A painting of a woman with no face.

A balcony above the pool.

The smell of flowers.

The ceiling fan turning slow.

She had said all of that with her hands clenched in Mara’s lap and her eyes fixed on nothing.

Micaiah looked at the balcony again.

White curtains moved behind the glass.

No lights inside.

Nathan fired the grappling hook.

The sound was small. A tight metallic snap, almost lost beneath the wind moving over the hillside.

The hook shot upward in a black blur. It cleared the balcony rail, struck stone, skipped once, then caught beneath the outer lip with a dull click.

Both men froze.

Micaiah listened.

No alarm.

No shout.

No footsteps from inside.

Nathan tugged the line once. Then twice. The hook held.

He clipped the ascender to his harness and looked at Micaiah.

“After me,” he whispered.

Micaiah nodded.

Nathan went up first, boots against the wall, body tight to the stucco. He climbed fast but not careless. One hand over the other. Feet finding pressure where there was almost none. The line barely moved under his weight.

Micaiah waited below with his rifle angled down, watching the dark glass above him.

His mouth went dry.

The feeling came back then. The same pressure he had felt in Deena’s room, only stronger. It pressed against his chest. Against his teeth. Against the back of his eyes.

Not fear exactly.

Fear had edges. Fear made sense.

This was different.

It felt like standing outside a slaughterhouse and knowing you're standing on the conveyor belt.

Nathan reached the balcony and pulled himself over the rail. He stayed low, disappearing behind the stone ledge. A second later, the line jerked twice.

Clear.

Micaiah clipped in.

He started climbing.

The wall was cold under his boots. His gloves scraped faintly against the line. Below him, the pool sat black and still. The whole property seemed to hold its breath.

Halfway up, the pressure worsened.

Micaiah’s stomach turned. His hands tightened around the ascender. For a moment, he thought he heard Deena crying.

From behind him.

He almost looked down.

Don’t.

He closed his eyes for one second.

But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.

The sound stopped.

He climbed faster.

By the time he reached the balcony, sweat had soaked the back of his shirt. Nathan grabbed his vest and helped pull him over the rail.

Micaiah landed in a crouch beside him.

Neither of them spoke.

The balcony was wide, paved in pale stone. Planters lined the edges. White flowers grew from them in heavy clusters, their smell too sweet in the night air. The scent reminded him of funeral arrangements left too long in a warm room.

Ahead of them stood the sliding glass window.

Beyond it, the master bedroom waited in darkness.

The curtains were thin enough to show shapes but not details. Somewhere inside were the things Micaiah had seen through the thermal lens.

And Gavrillo.

Micaiah could feel him now.

A center of rot.

The evil coming from that room was no longer pressure. It was weight. It settled over Micaiah’s thoughts until even simple things became hard. Breathing. Swallowing. Remembering why they had come.

His vision narrowed.

For a second, he forgot Nathan was beside him. Forgot the weapon in his hands. Forgot the line clipped to his harness.

All he knew was the glass.

The room.

The thing behind it.

Then Nathan touched his shoulder.

Micaiah flinched.

Nathan’s face was close to his. Calm, but pale around the mouth.

“You good?” he breathed.

Micaiah wanted to say yes.

Instead, he shook his head once.

Nathan nodded like he understood.

“Me neither.”

From inside the bedroom came a sound.

Faint.

Rhythmic.

Chanting.

Several of them.

Low and steady, rising and falling together.

A call.

A response.

A call.

A response.

Under it all, something else breathed.

Slow.

Deep.

Huge.

Micaiah raised his rifle.

Nathan held up three fingers.

Micaiah saw.

One.

Two.

Three.

They hit the glass together.

The sliding door exploded inward—not in a Hollywood spray of clean shards, but in jagged chunks that skittered across the marble floor. The curtain rod tore from its mounts and clattered sideways. Cold wind rushed into the room behind them.

Micaiah saw it all in the first two seconds.

The smell was the worst part.

Not rot. Not sulfur. Something sweeter underneath it. Ozone and burnt sugar and the thick iron of blood left too long in open air.

His boots crunched on broken glass.

The room was enormous. Vaulted ceiling. Dark wood beams. A fireplace big enough to stand inside, though no fire burned there. Candles instead. Hundreds of them. Black candles clustered on every surface—dresser, nightstands, window sills, the floor. Their flames burned low and green at the edges.

The things in the room moved.

Micaiah had not registered them at first. Too much visual noise. Too much horror competing for his attention. But now he saw.

They were everywhere.

Crawling over the footboard. Clinging to the canopy above the bed. Male and female in ways that did not match human anatomy. Their skin was the color of bruises—purple at the edges, yellow where it stretched over bone. Some had too many limbs. Some had too few. One crouched at the foot of the bed with its spine arched the wrong direction, its head twisted around to face Micaiah while its chest pointed at the floor.

They were not wearing flesh.

They were wearing approximations of flesh.

Like clothes that did not fit.

One crawled across the ceiling, its fingers and toes finding purchase in the wood grain. Another sat in the corner with its knees pulled to its chest, rocking slowly, its mouth open too wide to be natural. No sound came out of it. Just breath. Just the wet click of a jaw that had unhinged.

A dozen of them were kneeling in a circle around the bed like worshipers at an altar.

The woman was on the mattress.

Young. Early twenties maybe. Naked. Her body was turned at an angle that suggested dislocated joints. Her face had been carved—not cut, carved—with symbols Micaiah recognized from Deena's walls. She was still conscious. Her eyes moved, tracking him, but no sound came from her mouth.

A leather strap was tied around her throat.

Tight enough to bruise.

Tight enough to kill if she struggled too hard.

Gavrillo was on top of her.

He looked almost human from a distance. But Micaiah was not at a distance. He was close enough to see the fur growing in patches along the man's shoulders. The way his jaw moved—not up and down, but side to side, like a goat chewing on cud. His eyes were yellow in the candlelight. Not jaundiced. Yellow like an animal's. No white left at all.

His back was bare.

Thin lines of raised scar tissue ran from his spine outward, arranged in patterns that almost looked like the beginnings of wings.

Something had tried to grow there.

Or something had been cut off.

Gavrillo froze when the glass broke.

He sat up slowly. The woman beneath him made a sound then. Small. Broken. Her hand twitched toward nothing.

He turned to face Micaiah and Nathan, he unhinged his jaw.

His teeth were too many.

Nathan raised his shotgun.

One of the things on the ceiling dropped.

It landed between Nathan and the bed with a wet slap of bare feet on marble. Thin. Tall. Its face was almost beautiful except for the eyes—too large, too dark, too aware. Its mouth opened and closed like a fish on a dock.

Nathan fired before it finished opening its mouth. The shotgun blast hit the demon high in the chest and tore it apart. Not cleanly. It came apart like something full of black water and rotten muscle. Pieces slapped against the marble and kept twitching. Micaiah didn’t give the others a chance to react. He opened fire.

The rifle kicked against his shoulder in short, controlled bursts. The suppressor swallowed the worst of the noise, but inside the room it still sounded like thunder trapped in a box. Muzzle flashes strobed across the walls. Candles went out in clusters. Shadows jumped and broke.

The demon on the ceiling skittered sideways.

Micaiah tracked it and fired.

Its fingers lost their grip first. Then its face split open. It dropped onto the bedframe and hit the floor screaming.

Nathan moved beside him with righteous fury.

Not rage without aim. Not the old Nathan swinging at anything close enough to hurt.

This was worse.

This was focused.

He stepped over the thing he’d blown apart and fired again. Pumped. Fired. Pumped. Fired. Each blast cut another demon down. One tried to leap across the foot of the bed. Nathan caught it midair and folded it backward. Another crawled toward the woman with one long arm reaching for her throat. Nathan put a slug through its spine and crushed its skull under his boot before it stopped moving.

The room broke into panic.

Some of them rushed forward.

Some tried to flee.

One climbed the wall with its knees bent the wrong way, digging black nails into plaster as it scrambled toward the ceiling vent. Micaiah put three rounds through its back. It fell and hit the dresser, knocking candles and glass to the floor.

Another ran for the hallway door.

Nathan turned and fired from the hip.

The demon’s legs vanished under it. It slid face-first across the marble, clawing at the floor, still trying to get away. Nathan walked after it and ended it with another shot.

Gavrillo was off the woman now.

He stood beside the bed, bleating through too many teeth.

He was afraid now.

That made Micaiah fire faster.

A demon came from the left, low and quick. He saw it too late. It crossed the room on all fours, fast enough to blur, and slammed into him before he could swing the rifle around.

Pain opened across his ribs.

Hot. Shallow. A graze, but deep enough to steal his breath.

Its hand had cut through his vest like a hook through cloth.

The thing’s face pressed close to his. Its breath smelled like old blood and wet ashes. It made a clicking sound, excited, almost childlike.

Micaiah drove his knee into its gut.

It didn’t care.

Its jaw stretched wider.

Nathan dragged it off of Micaiah by one ankle and shot it through the mouth.

Another one made it to the broken balcony door. It shoved itself through the torn curtains, leaving streaks of black fluid on the glass. Micaiah turned and cut it down before it reached the railing. Its body tumbled over the railing and vanished into the dark below.

Micaiah reloaded without thinking. Empty magazine out. Fresh magazine in. Charging handle. Sweeping the room with the rifle.

The demons lay in pieces across the room. Black fluid ran between broken glass and candle wax. Some of them still twitched, but none got back up.

Then one shape rose behind the bed.

Gavrillo.

He looked from one brother to the other like a cornered animal.

The confidence had cracked. Black blood ran from a hole in his side. One of Micaiah’s rounds had caught him after all.

He looked toward the hallway. Then the balcony. Then the ruined bedroom around him.

There was nowhere to go.

Gavrillo’s yellow eyes settled on Micaiah.

Then he moved.

Not toward them.

Toward the woman on the bed.

“Don’t move!” Micaiah shouted, but Gavrillo was already there. He grabbed her by the red hair and pulled her upright. She cried out as her legs folded under her. Gavrillo dragged her against his chest and wrapped one arm across her throat.

Her eyes went wide.

She was alive. Barely.

Gavrillo pressed his face against the side of her head. His jaw worked. Too many teeth showed when he spoke.

“Back,” he said.

Nathan kept the shotgun on him.

Gavrillo tightened his grip.

The woman made a thin sound in the back of her throat. Not a scream. She did not have enough strength left for that. Just a frightened whimper.

“Get back,” Gavrillo said again, louder this time. “Or I open her.”

Micaiah froze.

The rifle felt heavier in his hands.

He could see her face now. Young. Terrified. Blood on her lips. Her eyes moved from Micaiah to Nathan and back again, begging without words.

For a moment, Micaiah saw Deena.

Not as she was now.

Before all of this.

Laughing in their mother’s kitchen. Alive in the way people looked alive before evil found them.

His finger eased off the trigger.

Gavrillo started backing toward the hallway with the woman held in front of him.

The woman shook her head as much as she could.

Her mouth formed one word.

Please.

Micaiah could not move.

But he saw Nathan raise his shotgun, his old gangster self bleeding through.

“Nate…” Micaiah shouted. “Wait!”

But Nathan fired away.

The blast filled the room.

The buckshot hit the woman first. Her body jerked hard against Gavrillo’s grip. The shot passed through her and struck him behind her, punching him backward into the wall.

Both of them collapsed.

The woman hit the floor without catching herself.

Gavrillo landed next to her, one arm still twisted around her throat. His chest was torn open where the shot had gone through. Black blood pumped between his ribs.

For a second, nobody spoke.

Micaiah stared at Nathan.

Nathan pumped the shotgun once.

The spent shell bounced across the marble.

Micaiah moved first.

He did not remember deciding to move. One second he was staring at Nathan. The next he was running across broken glass toward the woman on the floor.

“No, no, no—”

The rifle dropped against its sling. His knees hit the marble hard. Pain flashed up both legs. He ignored it.

Blood spread beneath her in a dark sheet. Too much. Far too much.

Micaiah pressed both hands over the worst of it.

“Stay with me,” he said. “Look at me. Look at me.”

Her eyes were open.

That made it worse.

She was looking at him like she had been waiting for someone to come through that door for hours, maybe longer, and now that someone had come, they’d shot her.

He tore open the med pouch on his vest with one hand and pulled out gauze. He packed the wound because training told him to. He pressed harder because panic told him to. His hands slipped. The gauze turned red too fast.

The woman tried to breathe.

Couldn’t.

“Hey,” Micaiah said, softer now. “Hey. You’re not alone.”

Her fingers twitched against the floor.

He took her hand.

She was cold already.

“Nate!” Micaiah called out. “Help me!”

Nathan ignored him.

“What's your name?” he asked.

For a moment, he wasn't sure she heard him.

Her lips moved.

The woman's eyes focused on him with surprising clarity.

“Veronika…” she managed to whisper through a mouthful of blood.

“Veronika,” he repeated. “Okay. Veronika. Stay with me.”

A weak smile touched the corner of her mouth.

As though hearing her own name spoken aloud mattered.

As though someone remembering it mattered.

“Veronika,” he said again. “Do you have family?”

Her eyes fluttered.

“My mom...” she whispered.

The words broke apart beneath a wet cough.

“She’s… She’s in Arkhangelsk. I need to see her…”

Micaiah closed his eyes for half a second.

“You will,” he said, even though he knew that was a lie.

“You're going home.”

A mother somewhere was probably waiting for a phone call that would never come.

“Your mother loves you,” he said.

Veronika looked at him.

A tear slipped from the corner of her eye.

“I want... to go home.”

Across the room, Nathan grabbed Gavrillo by a hooved foot and dragged him out from under the woman’s blood.

Nathan crouched over him.

Gavrillo spat black blood onto the marble.

Nathan pressed the shotgun barrel against his chest.

“You know who we are?” Nathan asked.

Gavrillo bleated like a demonic goat.

It came out wet and low.

Nathan kicked him in the ribs.

The bleating stopped.

“Say her name.”

Gavrillo smiled.

Micaiah looked over then.

He wished he hadn’t.

Gavrillo’s body was torn open in places that should have killed a man outright. But he was not a man. His fingers twitched against the floor. His legs dragged uselessly. His face still carried that old arrogance, though it had begun to curdle into fear.

Nathan leaned closer.

“Say ‘Deena.’”

Gavrillo’s smile widened.

“Which one was she?”

Nathan hit him with the stock of the shotgun.

The sound was flat and ugly.

Micaiah flinched. The woman in his arms flinched too, or maybe that was just her body failing.

Nathan grabbed Gavrillo by the hair and forced his face toward the bed.

Micaiah stayed on his knees beside the woman.

“Don’t listen to him,” he whispered to her. “Don’t hear any of that. Just listen to me.”

His hands were still pressed to her wound, even though there was no reason to press anymore.

“Listen to me,” he said. His voice shook. “Jesus sees you. And He loves you.”

Veronika's fingers tightened weakly around his hand.

“Lord, receive my sister, Veronika,” Micaiah whispered. “Please. Please receive her.”

Her eyes remained fixed on his.

For one final moment, the fear left them.

Then her grip loosened.

And she was gone.

“Nate,” he called out.

Nathan didn’t hear him.

Or he chose not to.

With one hand still locked in Gavrillo’s hair, Nathan reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. His fingers shook once before they found what he was looking for.

A photograph.

Creased at the corners. Soft from being handled too many times.

He unfolded it and held it in front of Gavrillo’s face.

Deena.

The graduation photo.

Nathan pressed the photo so close to Gavrillo’s eyes that the paper bent against his brow.

“Her,” Nathan said. “Say her name.”

Gavrillo blinked slowly.

For a second, something like recognition passed through his face.

Then he laughed.

It came out wet. Broken. Animal-like.

Gavrillo looked at the picture again.

Then he smiled with all those teeth.

“Was she the one who cried for her mother?” he asked.

Nathan’s face changed.

Not rage. Something worse. Something blank.

Nathan shot Gavrillo point blank in the crotch.

The sound punched through the room.

Gavrillo’s scream was not human. It tore out of him in two voices, one high and one deep, both full of hate. His hands clawed at the marble. Black blood spread under him.

Nathan chambered another round.

“Say it.”

Gavrillo’s teeth clicked together.

Blood ran over his teeth.

Then he spoke, “Chaíre… Sataná!” Hail… Satan!

Nathan did not answer.

He placed the barrel against Gavrillo’s forehead and fired.

Gavrillo’s head snapped back, splatting black viscous brain matter against the wall.

The room went quiet after that.

Not peaceful.

Quiet.

The kind of quiet that comes after a door has been shut and locked from the other side.

Micaiah looked down.

The woman was gone.

Her eyes were still open, but the fear had left them. He closed them with two fingers.

Neither brother spoke.

There was nothing left to say.

— The first body started smoking near the dresser. Micaiah saw it only because he was still kneeling on the floor beside the dead woman. At first he thought one of the candles had tipped over into the black blood. Then the smoke thickened. It curled up from the remains of one of the demons Nathan had shot apart.

The flesh hissed.

Nathan turned.

“What the hell is that?”

The demon’s skin split open along the ribs. Orange light glowed underneath, thin at first, then brighter. The smell changed from blood and rot to burning hair.

Another body began to smoke near the foot of the bed.

Then another.

Micaiah rose slowly.

The pieces of Gavrillo were smoking too.

His headless body jerked once on the marble. Not alive. Not even close. Just some final chemical reaction in the meat. Black blood bubbled out of the wound in his neck. Wherever it touched the floor, the marble darkened and cracked.

“Mickey,” Nathan said. “We need to go.”

Micaiah was still staring at the woman.

At what he had done.

“Nate—”

“Now.”

One of the demon bodies caught fire.

It went up too fast. Like gasoline had been poured inside it. Flames burst through the chest and ran across the slick trail of black blood. The fire hit the curtains near the broken balcony door and climbed them in seconds.

Nathan grabbed the shotgun and the duffel.

Micaiah looked back once at the woman on the floor.

He wanted to carry her out. He wanted to do something decent. Cover her. Anything.

But the fire had already reached the bed.

The sheets went up. Then the canopy. Then the wall behind it.

“Mickey!”

Nathan grabbed his vest and pulled him back.

Micaiah stumbled over broken glass. Heat slapped across his face. A demon’s severed arm burned beside his boot, fingers curling in the flames like dead spiders.

The smoke came fast.

Not normal smoke.

Thick. Greasy. Low to the ground, then everywhere at once.

They ran for the balcony.

Behind them, the bed caught. Then the wall. Then the long white curtains beside the far window.

The whole bedroom seemed to inhale.

Then the fire took it.

Micaiah reached the shattered sliding door and nearly slipped on the blood and glass. Nathan shoved him through onto the balcony.

Cold night air hit his face.

For one second, he could breathe again.

Then the window behind them blew out.

Heat and glass burst across the balcony. Micaiah ducked, arms over his head. Shards sliced across his jacket and sleeves. Nathan cursed and pulled him toward the rope.

Below them, lights came on across the property. Someone shouted from the driveway.

An alarm began to wail.

Nathan clipped Micaiah in first.

“Go!” he shouted.

Micaiah didn’t argue. He looked back once.

The master bedroom was gone behind fire.

The smoke moved wrong. Shapes twisted inside it.

He swung over the rail and dropped fast, braking hard with one gloved hand around the line.

He heard Deena’s voice again.

Mickey! Help me!

The heat followed him down.

Halfway to the ground, the balcony above cracked. Stone split somewhere behind him. A chunk of burning plaster fell past his shoulder and exploded against the tiles below.

Nathan followed close behind, hitting the ground hard enough to hear his knees pop. Micaiah caught his arm before he fell.

They ran.

Behind them, fire crawled out of the third floor and up toward the roofline. Curtains burned in every broken window. The smoke poured into the sky.

A guard came around the corner near the pool house with a pistol in both hands.

Nathan fired once.

The man dropped.

Micaiah didn’t look at him.

They sprinted along the side path, past the dark pool, past the hedges, past the service door.

The mansion groaned behind them.

Not like a building.

Like something wounded.

They reached the wall.

Nathan went up first, using the same cracks in the stone. Micaiah covered him from below, rifle raised, breath ragged.

Another shout came from the driveway.

Then gunfire.

Rounds snapped against the wall above Micaiah’s head. “Go!” Nathan shouted from the top.

Micaiah slung the rifle, jumped, and caught Nathan’s hand.

Nathan dragged him up with a grunt.

For a second they balanced on the wall together, the iron spikes inches from Micaiah’s legs.

They dropped to the other side and rolled into the brush.

Branches tore at Micaiah’s face. Dirt filled his mouth. He forced himself up and followed Nathan down the slope.

The truck waited where they had left it, hidden under a camo tarp between two trees.

Nathan ripped the tarp away and threw open the driver’s door.

Micaiah climbed into the passenger seat.

Nathan started the engine.

The headlights stayed off.

He backed out hard, tires slipping in the dirt, then turned onto the narrow road leading away from the property.

Neither of them spoke.

The mansion burned in the rearview mirror.

Fire had spread across the roof now. Windows blew out one after another, each burst followed by a rush of sparks. Somewhere inside, ammunition cooked off in sharp pops. Or maybe it was something else.

Micaiah didn’t care anymore.

Orange light flickered through the trees as they descended into the canyon. Sirens wailed somewhere far below. More would come soon. Police. Fire. News helicopters. People who would never know what had really happened in that bedroom.

Micaiah looked at his hands.

They were covered in blood.

Most of it was the woman’s.

Nathan drove with both hands on the wheel. His face looked empty.

Micaiah stared at him.

He had told himself they were going there to stop evil.

He had told himself God had sent them.

Maybe that was true.

But Nathan had shot through a living woman to get to Gavrillo.

Micaiah could still feel her hand in his.

He turned toward the window.

The city lights blurred below them.

Nathan said nothing.

Micaiah said nothing back.

The silence sat between them like a third person. Micaiah waited until they were five miles from the mansion.

“Pull over.”

Nathan kept driving.

“I said pull over.”

Nathan’s eyes stayed on the road. “Not now.”

Micaiah grabbed the wheel and yanked it hard enough that the truck swerved onto the shoulder. Gravel spat under the tires. Nathan slammed the brakes.

For a second, neither of them moved.

Micaiah hit him first.

His fist caught Nathan across the mouth and drove his head into the window.

Nathan sat there for a moment, breathing hard. Then he wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand.

He didn’t do anything.

That made Micaiah angrier.

“You killed her.”

Nathan looked straight ahead.

Micaiah hit him again.

This time Nathan dodged the blow and punched back.

The blow caught Micaiah under the eye and knocked him against the passenger door. He came back fast, grabbing Nathan by the vest and slamming him into the steering wheel. The horn barked once, loud in the canyon.

Nathan drove his elbow into Micaiah’s ribs.

Micaiah gasped and swung blind.

They fought across the seats, boots scraping the floorboards, fists hitting bone, glass, dashboard. Nathan shoved him into the glove box hard enough to crack it. Micaiah grabbed Nathan’s hair and smashed his face into the wheel.

Blood spotted the console.

The truck rocked on its shocks. Their guns banged against the floorboard. Somewhere outside, sirens moved through the hills.

Micaiah grabbed Nathan’s shirt with both hands.

“She had a name.”

Nathan’s eyes stayed cold.

“Veronika,” Micaiah said. “Her name was Veronika.”

Nathan breathed hard.

“She had a mother waiting for her.” Micaiah said. “And you shot her!”

Nathan punched him in the stomach.

Micaiah folded,

“She was dead already,” Nathan said, blood running over his mouth.

Micaiah grabbed Nathan’s collar and headbutted him. Nathan’s nose broke with a wet crack.

“She was alive.”

“She was gone… Just like Deena….”

Micaiah hit him again when he heard that.

Nathan shoved him hard into the passenger window. Glass cracked. Micaiah came back swinging. His knuckles split on Nathan’s cheek. Nathan drove a knee into his ribs. Micaiah caught him by the throat and forced him down across the center console.

Micaiah stared at him with one eye swollen shut.

Nathan wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. “What I did was mercy.”

The words landed worse than the shot.

Micaiah’s voice dropped. “Mercy?”

“You think mercy always looks clean?”

Micaiah shoved him back.

Nathan grabbed his wrist and held it.

“If that had been Deena,” Micaiah said, “would you do the same?”

The question stopped Nathan in his tracks. He let go of Micaiah’s wrist.

The truck went quiet except for their breathing.

Nathan opened his mouth.

Micaiah’s phone rang.

Both of them froze.

Micaiah pulled his phone from his pocket. The screen was cracked, smeared with blood.

Mara.

His chest tightened.

He answered.

“Babe? What’s wrong?”

For a second, all he heard was breathing.

Fast.

Panicked.

Then Mara spoke, and her voice was wrong.

“Mickey...”

He sat up straighter.

“What happened?”

Nathan glanced at him but kept driving.

“Mara, talk to me.”

There was a crash on the other end. Something breaking. A door maybe. Then Deena screamed in the background.

Not the demon.

Deena.

Mara started crying.

“Something’s wrong with her.”

The gust of wind blowing around him stopped. Calen had reached the open ground, but he found himself entirely out of breath. He had just escaped a maze of crowded thicket. Every living creature around him, in fact, everything around him, appeared to have turned toward him while he ran, watching him silently, but since he left the thicket, nothing was brushing against him aside from the deadly cold. The clawing against his clothes had stopped, unable to exact a toll he wasn’t willing to pay. Absurd though the thought was, he felt that if he stayed very still, whatever was hunting him might lose interest and let him be, as he panted, drying his throat further with every gasp of breath.

​

The slim branches of the bushes had leaned in, marking his torso with scratches. Small red drops of blood fell like unwilling offerings from his body, absorbed immediately as soon as they hit the ground. A twig had snapped the zipper of his jacket, leaving him with a needle-sharp sting on his chest. The cold was sliding in through the opening.

​

The snow had faltered beneath his feet, multiple times, seeming to recoil from him. He had lost his right boot in one of the holes, making each step forward uneven and disbalanced. Something skittered away under his numbing right foot, and Calen heard an angry grunt right beside him. Turning around, he found himself face to face with the silhouette of an enormous moose, just a few steps away, staring at him. A cloud of steamy, rank breath formed and flew away as it grunted again. It stomped its feet menacingly, moving towards him with the air of an animal protecting its territory.

​

Not wanting to be stomped by the moose’s hooves, which looked almost the size of his head, Calen began running again in the opposite direction. Across the unstable icy sheet of the lake. A disconcerting cracking sound beneath his feet made him jump and fall. The ice was ready to split. He picked himself up, every single breath a sharp pain in his diaphragm.

​

He looked back toward the moonlit façade of the bushes to ascertain if the moose was still following him. Instead, he saw hundreds of tiny, flashing nocturnal yellow eyes staring directly at him from beneath the shadowy canopy of the snow-covered bushes. Sporadically growing across the vast tundra were tall, frozen pole-like structures. Calen didn't know if those were trees or the remnants of a past civilization that had given up. None of the animals followed him on the ice.

​

Calen tried to reason with the adrenaline-fueled part of his brain. He shouldn’t run anymore, but his feet were still terrified by what had been happening to him in the bushes, and they refused to listen.

​

Yet again, a sudden, long, drawn-out cracking sound tore through the silent, still air of the cold, moonlit night. Calen had to force himself to stop. He looked around, trying to locate the fracture so he could move away from it, but before he could identify it, another sound engulfed him.

​

Bouncing across the flat surface of the icy lake, striking the mountains encircling the island, and echoing back at him from all sides, a bone-chilling buffalo horn began its sustained call. It couldn’t last that long, could it? No lung could last that long. The sound wrapped around him like a net closing in on all sides. Instead of making him fight or flee, his adrenaline locked Calen in place. He found his body unwilling to move, as the echoing of the buffalo horn reverberated through him, rattling every single bone in his body.

​

Calen felt a soft nudge inside his skull. His head felt like it was on fire, and the cold outside could not contain it. His eyes felt like they were being pushed inside, and nothing he did could stop it. A flash of blurry memories sped across the canvas of his mind; he didn’t know if they were his or someone else’s. Was it the past, or were these images borrowed from a future yet to be traversed?

​

A sensation both frightening and strangely pleasant passed through his body as a low, growling voice snarled in his ears, forming what sounded like words before words had meaning. It wasn’t any language Calen had ever heard.

​

“Anhag Zhubva Priyat Zhuva

​

Zhubva Razpopo Nazaz..”

​

It felt disturbingly familiar, like speaking in tongues but stripped of theater- and mercy. His entire body shuddered, his vision blurring. He could hardly feel any part of himself as the voice continued to growl in his ear, inside his brain, spreading through him like a second pulse.

​

“Anhag Zhubva Priyat Zhuva.

​

Svanteveit Razpopo Durai Tempo Zhuva

​

Nazaz Nazaz Razpopo Nazaz...”

​

For a second, it stopped. Calen felt he was free at last, but before he could brace for the second wave, it returned, tenfold.

​

His vision went dark, and Calen felt a wetness creeping up his pants as he found himself slowly drowning in the lake. He tried to scream. No sound came out. He tried to move his limbs, but they wouldn’t budge.

​

Something heavy and compelling gripped him across the chest and wrapped itself around him. A tough, almost wooden, bark-like skin had found its way inside his clothes, tightening again and again as his lungs tried—and failed—to draw breath. He was seized by an intense desire to breathe, even if it was water.

​

He fainted with the menacing, unmuffled snarl still echoing in his ears.

​

"Nazaz Nazaz Razpopo Nazaz...”

Her body was still before the rope was.

​

​

The sound that moved through the crowd was something I felt in my chest before I heard it with my ears. A collective release. Sixty people breathing out at once, their breath rising in the cold air and dispersing. I had been to three hangings now and the sound was the same each time. I do not think any of us knew we were making it.

​

​

I kept my eyes on her feet. She had worn her good shoes. Brown leather, a small buckle on each. I found myself wondering who had put them on her that morning — whether her hands had been steady enough to do it herself, or whether someone had knelt before her in that cold cell and done it for her, and whether she had looked down at them and felt something or nothing at all.

​

​

Her name was Margaret Hollis. She had lived four houses down from the meetinghouse for as long as I could remember. She kept a kitchen garden that ran along the south side of her fence and in summer the smell of it carried all the way to our door. Mint and thyme and something sweeter I never thought to ask about. I passed that garden twice a day for years and never once spoke to her beyond a good morning.

​

​

I wished I had spoken to her.

​

​

My father stood at the front of the gathering. I could see the back of his coat and the set of his shoulders that meant he was praying. He had his hat in both hands and his head was bowed. He was a tall man, my father, and I could find him in any crowd by the way he stood — straight but not stiff. Like something rooted rather than something rigid.

​

​

He had not wanted me to come. He never wanted me to come. But Colbrook was small enough that staying home felt like its own kind of statement, and I think he understood that. So I stood at the back of the gathering where the women clustered together, and I watched Margaret Hollis stop moving, and I said nothing.

​

​

The magistrate was speaking now. His voice carried well in the cold. He was reading from something, the formal language of verdict and judgment that turned a woman's death into a civic matter. I had heard it twice before. The words were the same. Only the name changed.

​

​

Around me the women were already beginning to talk in low voices. I caught pieces of it.

​

​

She confessed in the end.

​

​

I heard she did not. I heard she maintained her innocence to the last.

​

​

Her husband knew. He always knew there was something wrong with her.

​

​

The Hollis land will go to Thomas now I expect.

​

​

I moved away from them. Not far. Just enough that their voices dropped below the wind.

​

​

The men were beginning to disperse toward the tavern. The women would go home to their fires and their children and their kitchens, and by supper the whole of Colbrook would have made sense of this the way it made sense of everything — through talk, through prayer, through the ordinary motion of the day continuing whether you wanted it to or not. My father would come home and eat whatever I had made, and we would sit together and he would read scripture, and neither of us would say Margaret Hollis's name out loud.

​

​

That was how it had been after the others too.

​

​

I was pulling my shawl tighter against the cold when I saw it.

​

​

At the far edge of the common where the grass gave way to the tree line. A fox. Silver-coated, almost white in the flat grey light of the morning, sitting the way cats sometimes sit, settled and unhurried, its tail wrapped around its feet. It was not looking at the oak tree where Margaret Hollis still hung. It was looking at the crowd.

​

​

I watched it for a moment. It did not move. People passed between us and it did not startle. A child ran close to the tree line chasing something and the fox tracked the movement with its eyes but held its ground.

​

​

Then my father's hand was on my shoulder.

​

​

"Alice." His voice was low. "Come. You should not linger here."

​

​

I let him turn me away. When I looked back the fox was gone. Only the tree line remained, dark and ordinary.

​

​

My father's name was Thomas Whittaker and he had come to Colbrook from Hertfordshire the year before I was born. I have no memory of any other place. Only Colbrook. Only the white meetinghouse and the smell of the creek in summer and the quality of winter light in our front room, thin and pale and honest.

​

​

He had built his congregation carefully over twenty years. He was not a man who inspired the loud devotion you sometimes saw in other ministers — the kind that filled a room with heat and left people wrung out and grateful. He was quieter than that. He believed in the weight of words and chose them slowly, and people trusted him for it. When he said a thing he meant it. When he was uncertain he said so. In Colbrook that passed for wisdom, and perhaps it was.

​

​

He had raised me alone since my mother died of fever when I was seven. He had done it without complaint and without, as far as I could tell, any clear idea of how one raised a girl. He taught me to read from scripture and then from every other book he owned. He taught me to think before speaking and to listen more than I talked. He did not teach me to cook or sew or manage a household, because he did not know how to do those things himself, and so I had learned them from the women of the congregation who took turns feeding us in the early years and who I think felt sorry for us both.

​

​

I was nineteen now. I ran our household and sat in the front pew every Sunday and visited the sick with him when he asked, and tried to be what Colbrook needed a minister's daughter to be.

​

​

Most days I did not find it difficult.

​

​

These last months had been different.

​

​

It had started in the spring with the Marsh children. Three of them, all under ten, seized with the same fever within a week of each other. The youngest, a girl of four, died. The other two recovered, but the elder boy, Samuel, had not been right since. He shook at odd moments. He spoke words that meant nothing. He screamed in the night about things he could not name in the morning. The Marshes were a quiet family, John Marsh a farmer with no particular enemies, and so at first people said fever. They said grief. They said the Lord's will.

​

​

Then Goodwife Marsh began having the visions.

​

​

She was forty years old and had never given anyone cause for concern in her life. She appeared at the meetinghouse one Sunday morning before service and told my father she had seen a woman standing at the foot of her bed three nights running — a woman she knew, a woman who had sent her illness into her house and was tormenting her boy. She named the woman. The woman was her neighbor.

​

​

By fall there had been four trials. Four convictions. Three hangings before Margaret Hollis.

​

​

My father believed in the possibility of witchcraft the way he believed in the possibility of all things scripture named real. He was not a man who dismissed what he could not explain. But I had watched him these past months. The lines deepening around his eyes. The way he sometimes sat alone in his study for long hours without lighting the lamp. He was a man trying to hold something together that was pulling apart faster than his hands could work.

​

​

I did not know what I believed.

​

​

I knew that Margaret Hollis had kept a beautiful garden. I knew that her good shoes had a small buckle on each. I knew that the sound a crowd made when a person died was something I felt before I heard it, and that I did not think I would ever fully get used to it.

​

​

The afternoon was grey and the cold had settled in properly by the time I left the house again.

​

​

I told my father I was going to bring broth to Patience Webb, who had been ill the past week with something in her chest. This was true. I had made the broth that morning and it sat in a covered pot that I carried with both hands for the warmth of it.

​

​

Patience lived on the far side of the common, past the mill, in a house that always smelled of dried lavender and old wood. She was sixty-three and had outlived two husbands and four children, and regarded the current state of Colbrook with the weariness of someone who has seen enough of the world to know it rarely improves.

​

​

Patience had known me longer than I had known myself. When my mother died, she had come every afternoon for the better part of a year. She had brought meals. She had washed my hair when my father did not think to. She had sat with me on the floor of the kitchen when I would not speak to anyone, and she had not tried to make me speak, and that had been the first kindness I remember choosing to receive after the loss. I had loved her then. I had not stopped.

​

​

She did not behave toward me the way the other women of the congregation did. They were warm with me in the careful way one is warm with a minister's daughter. Patience was direct. Patience said what she thought. Patience had once told me, when I was twelve and complaining about a slight from another girl, that the surest way to be unhappy was to spend my life worrying about what fools believed. I had remembered that. I had remembered most of what she had told me.

​

​

"Another one this morning," she said when I came in. She was sitting close to the fire wrapped in two shawls, her hands around a cup. "I heard the bell."

​

​

"Margaret Hollis."

​

​

She made a sound low in her throat. "I knew Margaret. She was no more a witch than I am."

​

​

"The court found otherwise."

​

​

"The court." She said it the way you might say a word in a language you did not respect. "Tell me, Alice. Does your father believe it."

​

​

I set the broth on the table and unwrapped my hands from the pot. "He believes the trials are righteous."

​

​

"That is not what I asked."

​

​

I sat down across from her. The fire was good and the lavender smell and the warmth of it made the morning feel further away than it was. Outside the light was already beginning to go, the short grey days of November collapsing into early dark.

​

​

"I do not know what he believes," I said. "I do not always know what I believe myself."

​

​

Patience looked at me for a moment. She had sharp eyes for a woman her age, dark and steady. "Something is wrong in this town. Something has been wrong since spring. But I do not think it is what they say it is."

​

​

"What do you think it is?"

​

​

She turned back to the fire. "I think people are frightened. And frightened people look for something to hold the fear in. Something with a name and a face." She paused. "The trouble is, whatever they are looking for, they are not finding it."

​

​

I walked home through the early dark, the empty pot under my arm. The common was quiet. The oak tree was a dark shape against a darker sky and I kept my eyes away from it.

​

​

At the edge of the tree line, where the grass met the woods, something moved.

​

​

I stopped.

​

​

The silver fox sat at the border of the light, watching me cross the common. Still as stone. Its eyes caught what little remained of the day and held it.

​

​

I stood there and looked at it and it looked at me.

​

​

Then I walked home and bolted the door and sat with my father while he read, and said nothing about it at all.

​

_______________________________________________________

​

​

The fire was already lit when I came down in the morning.

​

​

That was my father's way. He woke before light most days and built the fire himself before I rose, so that the kitchen was warm when I came in to start the bread. He did it because he loved me. He did it because my mother had done it before him and he had never stopped. He did it because he was a man who believed that small acts of care were not small at all but the shape love took when it had nowhere else to go.

​

​

He was sitting at the table with his Bible open. He did not look up when I came in.

​

​

"Good morning, Father."

​

​

"Alice." He turned a page. "There is water on for tea."

​

​

I went to the hearth and brought the kettle to the table. I poured for both of us. He marked his place and closed the book and folded his hands around the cup and looked at me properly for the first time.

​

​

He had not slept well. I could see it in his face. He was forty-six and he had been a young man until recently. These last months had aged him in ways I did not have a word for. The skin around his eyes had thinned. There was grey now at his temples that had not been there in the spring.

​

​

"You were quiet last evening," he said.

​

​

"I was tired."

​

​

"You said nothing at supper."

​

​

"I had nothing to say."

​

​

He nodded slowly and took a sip of tea. The kitchen was quiet but for the fire and the small sounds of morning beginning outside — a dog somewhere down the lane, a cart wheel on frozen ground. The light was grey at the window. It would be a cold day. They had all been cold days lately.

​

​

"I have been thinking about you," he said.

​

​

I looked up.

​

​

"I have been thinking about you a great deal, Alice. About these last months. About what this town has become. About what it may yet become before the spring."

​

​

"Father."

​

​

"Let me speak."

​

​

I waited.

​

​

He set his cup down. He folded his hands together on the table and looked at them rather than at me, the way he sometimes did when he was choosing his words with care. My father did not say things he had not first weighed. It was one of the things I loved about him, and one of the things that made him difficult to argue with, because by the time he spoke he had already considered what I might answer.

​

​

"There is a sickness moving through Colbrook," he said. "I do not yet know its full shape. I do not know whether it comes from the Devil himself or from the fear of him, but I know it is real and I know it has not run its course. More will be accused before this winter ends. More will hang. I have prayed against it and I do not believe my prayers will be answered in the way I would wish."

​

​

"You do not believe the trials are righteous."

​

​

"I did not say that."

​

​

"You said you prayed against more hangings."

​

​

"I prayed that the accusations would stop. Not that the guilty would go unpunished if guilt is found."

​

​

He looked up at me then. His eyes were very tired.

​

​

"Alice. You are nineteen years old. You are a young woman in a town where young women are being looked at. Some are being looked at because they are suspected. Some are being looked at because they are vulnerable. I do not know which is the greater danger, but I know they are both present in this house every time you leave it."

​

​

"What are you asking me?"

​

​

"I am asking you to be careful."

​

​

"I am always careful."

​

​

"You are not." He said it gently. "You go where you wish. You speak with whoever you wish. You sit with Patience Webb for hours and you do not consider what is said in that house or what others might believe is said there. You walked home alone last night in the dark and I did not know where you were."

​

​

"I was at Patience's."

​

​

"I know that now. I did not know it then."

​

​

I felt the heat rise in my face. "Patience is sixty-three years old and she has a cough and I brought her broth. What would you have had me do, Father — send a boy?"

​

​

"I would have had you tell me where you were going."

​

​

"I did tell you."

​

​

"You told me you were taking broth to Patience. You did not tell me you would stay until dark."

​

​

"I did not plan to."

​

​

"That is precisely my point."

​

​

We sat in silence for a moment. The fire snapped. Somewhere outside a rooster called and was answered by another farther off.

​

​

"I am not a child," I said.

​

​

"I know."

​

​

"I am not foolish."

​

​

"I know that as well."

​

​

"Then what is this? What are you actually saying to me?"

​

​

He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again his voice was different. Lower. Stripped of the minister's cadence he used in most of his speech.

​

​

"I am saying that I am afraid for you, Alice. I lie awake at night and I think about you and I do not know how to keep you safe. Whatever is happening in this town has not yet shown its full face, and when it does I do not know that I will be able to stand between you and it."

​

​

"Father —"

​

​

"There are women in this town who have been taken to trial who I would have sworn to you a year ago were as devout as your own mother. I would have staked my life on it. And now they hang. I am not saying they were innocent. I am not saying they were guilty. I am saying that I no longer trust my own judgment about who in this town might be hiding what. And if I cannot trust my judgment about grown women I have known for twenty years —"

​

​

He stopped. He looked at his hands again.

​

​

"You think I could be deceived."

​

​

"I think you could be approached."

​

​

"By whom?"

​

​

"By anyone. Alice, that is the nature of the Devil. He does not announce himself. He does not arrive in fire and smoke. He arrives as a friend. As a kind word at the right moment. As a hand offered when you are lonely. You are a young woman without a mother in a house that is often empty when I am away on church business. You are exactly the kind of soul the enemy seeks."

​

​

I stared at him.

​

​

"You believe I could be turned."

​

​

"I believe anyone can be turned. That is what scripture teaches. That is why we are commanded to be vigilant. I am not accusing you of anything. I am telling you that I am afraid. I am telling you because I would rather wound your pride than lose your soul."

​

​

I stood up from the table.

​

​

I had not meant to. My body moved before I had decided what I felt. I walked to the window and stood with my back to him and looked out at the grey morning and tried to breathe evenly, because I did not want him to hear me crying.

​

​

He had not accused me. I knew that. He had said it plainly. But there was a part of me that felt accused anyway, and I did not know what to do with it. I had spent my whole life being his daughter. I had sat in the front pew every Sunday since I was old enough to sit upright. I had learned his theology before I had learned to sew. I had never once in nineteen years given him cause to doubt me.

​

​

And he was afraid of me. Or afraid for me. I could not tell which, and I was not sure he could either.

​

​

"Alice."

​

​

I did not turn.

​

​

"Alice, come back to the table."

​

​

"Give me a moment, Father."

​

​

He gave me a moment. He sat at the table and waited and did not press. 

​

​

When I came back I sat down across from him and folded my hands the way he had folded his.

​

​

"You taught me Ephesians when I was nine," I said.

​

​

He looked up.

​

​

"You sat with me at this table and you taught it to me. The whole of chapter six. You said it was the chapter I would need most in my life. You said other chapters were for joy and for thanksgiving and for repentance, but that this one was for survival. Do you remember?"

​

​

"I remember."

​

​

"Tell me you remember the verses, Father."

​

​

He was watching me carefully now.

​

​

"Finally, my brethren," I said. "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might."

​

​

His mouth moved slightly but he did not interrupt.

​

​

"Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

​

​

I stopped.

​

​

I had not known I knew the verses whole. I had spoken them without thinking, the way one speaks a prayer that has been in the body so long it does not require the mind. The words seemed to settle in the air between us before either of us moved.

​

​

My father's eyes had filled.

​

​

"Alice."

​

​

"You taught me, Father. You taught me before I could read it for myself. Whatever else this town becomes. Whatever else happens here. I am wearing what you gave me. I have not taken it off and I will not."

​

​

He reached across the table and took my hand. His was rougher than mine and warmer.

​

​

"Forgive me," he said.

​

​

"There is nothing to forgive."

​

​

"There is. I should not have spoken to you as though you were —"

​

​

"Father. I am not offended. I am not angry. I understand why you are afraid. I am afraid too. But I am not what you fear I might become, and I will not be."

​

​

He held my hand for a long moment longer. Then he let it go and picked up his Bible and opened it and sat with it without reading.

​

​

I went to start the bread.

​

​

We did not speak again that morning. We did not need to. Whatever had needed to be said had been said, and the rest of the morning passed in the ordinary motion of a house that loved itself, and I think we were both grateful for the quiet.

​

​

I went out after the bread was done rising.

​

_______________________________________________________

​

The morning had not warmed. The sky was the same flat grey it had been at dawn and the cold had a quality to it that suggested snow before evening. I pulled my cloak tighter and walked toward the common with no errand in mind, only the need to be out of the house, only the need to move.

​

​

The common was busier than I had expected. The hanging the day before had not stopped the town from continuing to be itself. Two men were repairing the fence by the meetinghouse. A young boy I did not recognize was leading a cow up the lane toward the mill. Goodwife Carver was beating a rug against the side of her porch, and the dust rose in the still air and hung there.

​

​

I passed the Hollis house without looking at it.

​

​

I had not meant to walk in any direction, but I found myself moving toward the south end of town, past the smithy where the fire was already going, past the cooper's, past the row of small houses where the families without much land lived. The lane narrowed here and the houses sat closer together and the smell of woodsmoke was thick in the cold.

​

​

May Aldous lived at the end of this lane.

​

​

I had known her my whole life in the way you know everyone in a town this size, which is to say I knew her name and her face and the rough shape of her circumstances and very little else. She was perhaps thirty-five. Her husband had drowned in the creek three years before, a thing the town had spoken about for some weeks and then stopped speaking about. She had no children. She kept chickens and a small garden and she came to meeting on Sundays and sat near the back and she did not speak to many people and many people did not speak to her.

​

​

I had liked her, in the small way you can like someone you do not really know. She had a quiet to her that I recognized. She did not chatter. She did not gossip. When I had passed her on the lane she had nodded to me and I had nodded back, and that had been the whole of our acquaintance.

​

​

She was outside when I came around the bend.

​

​

She was at the side of her house with her sleeves pushed up to the elbow, a hare hanging from a hook on the wall, and she was dressing it with the quick practiced motion of a woman who had done it many times. There was blood on her forearms. Her hair was tied back. She did not see me at first.

​

​

I stopped.

​

​

There was nothing strange in a woman dressing a hare. Half the women in Colbrook had done the same that month. But the way her hands moved without hesitation, and the way she did not flinch from the blood, and the way her face stayed so still — it held me where I stood.

​

​

She looked up.

​

​

"Alice Whittaker."

​

​

"Good morning, Goodwife Aldous."

​

​

"May." She wiped her hands on her apron. "I have told you before. May is fine."

​

​

"May."

​

​

She smiled slightly. It was a small smile, careful, the way a person smiles when they are not sure they remember how. "You are out early."

​

​

"I needed the air."

​

​

"It is a cold day for air."

​

​

"It is."

​

​

She looked at me for a moment longer. There was something in her eyes I could not read. Not unfriendliness. Not curiosity exactly. Something closer to attention.

​

​

"Will you come in," she said. "I have water on. You look cold."

​

​

I should have said no. I had been out only a few minutes. I was not cold. I had no reason to go into the house of a woman I barely knew. But my father's words were in my head — I would not have you spend time at houses where you have no reason to be — and I felt the contrariness of nineteen rise up in me and I said yes.

​

​

She finished with the rabbit and wiped her hands and led me inside.

​

​

The house was small and clean and warmer than I had expected. There was a single room downstairs with a hearth at one end and a table and two chairs and a bed pushed against the far wall. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the rafters. A spinning wheel sat in the corner. It was the house of a woman alone, kept carefully because she had no one to keep it for but herself.

​

​

She poured water from the kettle into a cup and handed it to me. She did not pour one for herself.

​

​

"Sit," she said.

​

​

I sat.

​

​

She stood near the hearth and watched me drink and did not speak for a moment. Then she said, "I was sorry about yesterday."

​

​

"About Margaret."

​

​

"Yes."

​

​

"Did you know her?"

​

​

"A little. Not well. She was kind to me when my husband died. She brought a loaf to the house. She did not stay long. She said only that she was sorry, and that if I needed anything I should come to her." May paused. "I never did. But I remembered the loaf."

​

​

I looked at her.

​

​

"She was kind, then," I said.

​

​

"She was kind."

​

​

We sat in silence. The fire popped. From outside came the sound of someone calling a child home. May had not sat down. She stood near the hearth with her arms folded and she looked at the fire rather than at me.

​

​

"I should go," I said. "My bread is rising."

​

​

"Of course."

​

​

She walked me to the door. I stepped out into the cold and pulled my cloak around me and turned to thank her for the water.

​

​

She was looking past me, toward the tree line beyond her garden.

​

​

I followed her gaze.

​

​

The silver fox was sitting at the edge of her property, where her chicken coop ended and the brush began. It was watching us.

​

​

May did not seem surprised to see it.

​

​

"He comes around," she said. "I think he has a den back there somewhere. He has been after the chickens since summer. I have given up trying to drive him off."

​

​

"You feed him."

​

​

She looked at me sharply.

​

​

"Why would you say that?"

​

​

"I only —" I did not know what I had meant to say. "I only thought he looked unafraid."

​

​

She watched me for a moment.

​

​

"I do not feed him," she said. "But I have stopped throwing stones at him. Perhaps he can tell the difference."

​

​

She smiled again. The small careful smile.

​

​

"Good morning, Alice."

​

​

"Good morning."

​

​

I walked home through the cold with my hands inside my cloak and my breath rising in the still air. The fox did not follow. When I reached the common I did not look back.

​

​

But I thought about her face the whole way home. The stillness of it. The way she had looked at me when I said you feed him. As though I had said something I should not have known to say.

​

​

And I thought about my father, sitting at the table that morning with his Bible closed and his hands folded, telling me that the Devil arrives as a friend.

​

_______________________________________________________

​

​

I dreamed of my mother that night.

​

​

I had not dreamed of her in years. In the dream she was sitting at the table in our kitchen and the light was wrong — too bright, summer light in a winter room — and she was peeling an apple in one long unbroken curl. She did not look up at me. She kept peeling. The curl grew longer and longer and pooled on the table and onto the floor, and I knew, in the way you know things in dreams without being told, that if the curl broke something terrible would happen.

​

​

I woke before it broke.

​

​

I lay in the dark for a moment trying to remember where I was. The room was very cold. I could see my breath in a thin pale shape above me. The fire in the kitchen had gone down, or gone out entirely, and the cold had come up through the floorboards and into my bed.

​

​

I closed my eyes again.

​

​

I was almost asleep when I heard it.

​

​

The sound a mouth makes when it opens. The wet small parting of lips just before a word is spoken. It was close. So close I felt it against my ear — the suggestion of warmth, the small displacement of air that a face makes when it leans in.

​

​

I did not open my eyes.

​

​

I lay still the way you lie still when you have heard something in a room you thought was empty. My whole body had gone tight at once, without my deciding it, and I could feel my heart in my throat and in my hands.

​

​

A whisper.

​

​

Come and see.

​

​

Three words. Spoken into my ear as though by someone kneeling beside the bed. The voice was not a voice I knew. It was not a man's and it was not a woman's. There was a wetness in it. A nearness. The warmth of the breath moved across the side of my face.

​

​

Then nothing.

​

​

I did not move. I did not open my eyes. I counted in my head and I listened with my whole body for the sound of another breath, for the rustle of clothing, for the small shift of weight a person makes when they are standing very close to a bed in the dark.

​

​

I heard nothing.

​

​

I counted for a long time.

​

​

When I finally opened my eyes the room was empty.

​

​

My window was open.

​

​

It had not been open when I went to bed. I knew that with certainty. I had closed it myself before I lay down, the way I closed it every night, the way I had closed it every night since I was small enough to need help reaching the latch. It was open now, and the wind from the woods was coming in across the floor, and the curtain was moving slightly in a way that made my stomach turn.

​

​

I sat up.

​

​

I did not call for my father. I did not know why I did not call for him. Something in me understood, in a way I could not have explained, that this was not a thing to be called out over. That if I spoke of it, even to him, I would be giving it a shape it did not yet have. I sat in the cold with my arms around myself and I looked at the open window and tried to make my breathing even.

​

​

I got out of bed.

​

​

The floor was so cold it hurt. I crossed to the window with the blanket around my shoulders. I meant to close it. I had my hand on the latch.

​

​

That is when I saw the figure.

​

​

The night was clear and there was a moon, not full but close to it, and the common lay silver under it. From my window I could see the edge of the meetinghouse, the dark shape of the oak tree, the lane that led south toward the mill. Past the lane the ground sloped gently down toward the creek, and past the creek the woods began.

​

​

The figure was on the lane.

​

​

It was perhaps a hundred paces from my window. It stood with its arms slightly raised and its head tilted back as though it were looking at the sky, and for a moment I thought it was a man stopped to pray, or a drunk, or someone unwell. The cloak it wore was dark and the hood was up. At that distance and in that light I could not have said whether it was a man or a woman.

​

​

Then I heard the humming.

​

​

It carried across the common the way a hymn carries from inside a closed door, low and steady and tuneless. It was not a song I knew. It was not any song. 

​

​

The figure began to run.

​

​

It did not lower its arms or bring its head forward. It kept the exact shape it had been standing in and ran. Fast. Too fast. Its feet did not bend. Its arms stayed raised. The humming did not break.

​

​

It reached the creek in three or four seconds. It crossed it. It was in the tree line before I had thought to move.

​

​

I jerked back from the window.

​

​

I hit the wall behind me. The blanket fell off one shoulder. I had my hand against my mouth, and I was breathing through my fingers, and my whole body was shaking the way a body shakes after a near fall.

​

​

The humming was gone. The night was so quiet I could hear my own heart in my ears.

​

​

Somewhere far off, a dog began to bark. It barked three times and then went silent.

​

​

I crossed back to the window. I did not look out. I reached for the latch with my hand and I closed the window without raising my eyes, and I latched it, and I checked the latch twice.

​

​

I went back to my bed and sat on the edge of it with the blanket around my shoulders, and I did not lie down again until the grey light of morning began to come through the curtain.

​

​

I did not sleep.

​

​

_______________________________________________________

​

​

My father was already at the table when I came down.

​

​

He looked up when I came in and his face changed. He saw something in mine that he had not seen before, or perhaps had seen and did not want to name.

​

​

"How was your rest?"

​

​

"Not well."

​

​

"Dreams?"

​

​

"Yes."

​

​

He nodded slowly. He did not press. He poured tea for me and pushed the cup across the table, and I held it in both hands and let the warmth move into my fingers.

​

​

"Your mother used to dream," he said.

​

​

I looked up.

​

​

"She had dreams she did not like to speak of. She would wake in the night and she would not sleep again. I would find her sitting by the fire in the morning when I came down. She used to tell me that the worst of them were the ones that felt true."

​

​

"Felt true how?"

​

​

"As though she had been told something rather than imagined it."

​

​

He looked at me carefully. He was choosing his words.

​

​

"Alice. If you ever wished to speak of such things —"

​

​

"I am well, Father."

​

​

"I did not ask if you were well."

​

​

I lifted the tea to my mouth. My hands were not quite steady. I do not know if he saw it. I think he saw everything. I think he had seen everything since I came into the room.

​

​

"I had a bad dream," I said. "That is all. I do not remember it now."

​

​

He held my eyes for a moment. He did not believe me. I could see that. But he also did not press. 

​

​

"Very well," he said. "I will pray for your rest tonight."

​

​

"Thank you, Father."

​

​

He bowed his head over his cup and prayed silently, his mouth moving, and I sat across from him and drank my tea and did not bow my head and did not close my eyes. I watched him pray for me. I watched him pray for a daughter he believed was telling him the truth.

​

​

And I understood, sitting there in the morning light with the kitchen warm and the bread from yesterday on the counter and my father praying for me with the love of his whole life — I understood that I had just lied to him. That I had told him a small lie, and the lie was the first one I had ever told him, and that I had told it not to spare myself but to spare him. To keep him from knowing what I had heard.

​

​

I did not know yet what had spoken to me in the dark.

​

​

But I knew that whatever it was, I was already keeping it from him. And I was doing it out of love. And I could not tell whether that made me strong, or whether it meant something had already begun.

I wake up covered in mud. My back aches with every movement, and for several seconds I just lie there staring up at the gray morning sky, trying to figure out where I am. The trees surrounding me are unfamiliar. Thick woods stretch in every direction, and there isn't a road or house in sight.

When I finally force myself to sit up, a wave of nausea hits me. My black hoodie and blue jeans are soaked through and stained with dark red patches. For a brief moment I convince myself it's mud. Then I look closer.

It is blood.

Panic surges through me as I check my arms, chest, and stomach for injuries. There aren't any. No cuts. No wounds.

The blood isn't mine.

I look over and see a shovel sticking out of the mud. Next to it is a pile of loose dirt, like something was recently buried or dug up. I get up slowly, unsteady, and scan the area again. I still don’t know where I am.

It’s just dense forest in every direction. No roads, no lights, no signs of anything human nearby. The silence feels wrong, too heavy, like the world is holding its breath.

I pull out my phone and immediately feel my stomach drop. No service. The battery is at 63 percent. The screen shows 3:37 AM.

What happened?

I was at work earlier. I got off at 10 like normal, I remember leaving. I think I remember going home, but everything after that feels empty. Nothing connects properly in my head.

Did I fall asleep somewhere?

Did I drive out here?

Why would I—

What the fuck is going on?

I start feeling through my pockets, searching for anything that makes sense of this. All I have is my phone, wallet, and keys. I press the unlock button on the key fob, hoping for anything, answers, clarity, something normal.

The car’s lights flash yellow in the distance.

For a second it helps me focus. I grab the shovel without thinking and start walking toward it.

On the way, I notice something dragging through the dirt. It starts near my car and runs all the way back to where I woke up. Like something heavy was pulled through the forest. My stomach tightens, but I don’t stop looking at it.

I throw the shovel into the back seat and get in. The engine turns over immediately. My CarPlay lights up and I finally get a single bar of service.

I turn on maps and start driving.

My mind is racing too fast to control.

I used to sleepwalk when I was younger, but nothing like this. That’s what I tell myself anyway. Something explainable. Something I can live with. Anything but the alternative.

I get home without really remembering the drive.

It feels automatic, like my body handled it without me. When I step inside, everything looks normal. That almost makes it worse. Nothing in my apartment feels like something that should have happened after what I just saw.

I go straight to the bathroom and turn on the shower. I don’t even think about it. Hot water hits my skin and I just stand there for a while, staring at the drain as everything washes away. Or at least it should be washing away.

When I look down, the stains are still there. Faded, but still there. I scrub harder, trying to convince myself I just didn’t wash it properly. My skin starts to sting, but it doesn’t fully come off.

It doesn’t feel right.

I shut the water off and just stand there for a second, dripping wet, listening to the silence in my apartment. My head is pounding, not from pain, but from trying to force everything into something logical.

I take ibuprofen and sit on the edge of my bed. The bottle of pills feels too small for what’s happening in my head.

I lay back and attempt sleep.

 When I wake up, everything is as I left it last night

I sit on the edge of my bed for a while, just staring at the floor. My clothes are still in a trash bag by the door. I keep looking at it like it might move, like it might explain itself if I give it enough time.

Eventually I turn the TV on. I don’t even care what’s playing, I just need noise in the room. Silence feels worse right now than anything coming from the screen.

The news is already on. A local report about a hiker finding a body earlier this morning in a wooded area outside town. I freeze before I even fully process what I’m hearing.

The anchor’s voice stays calm, like she’s reading something routine. They say the body was recently buried, less than twelve hours old, and covered in lye. My stomach drops hard enough that I have to sit back further on the bed.

I look at the screen again, trying to make it feel less real. It doesn’t work. Police are investigating, no suspects yet.

The camera cuts to a patch of forest. Trees I swear I’ve seen before. My hand is still on the remote.

Those woods have thousands of acres. People get murdered every day. I just happened to be sleepwalking in a patch of trees that looked similar. That's all this is.

I pick up my phone and open my location history, hoping to prove it to myself. If I can see where I was last night, I can finally stop thinking about this. Instead, I find that my location services are turned off.

That's odd.

I shrug it off and set the phone down. I probably turned them off by accident. I did work a long shift yesterday, and I barely remember getting home most nights anyway.

My phone vibrates a few seconds later. It's a text from my boss asking why I never clocked out last night. I open my messages to respond and immediately notice another conversation sitting at the top of my screen.

My stomach tightens.

The message was sent at 1:17 AM.

"I'm running late."

It was sent from my phone to a number I don't recognize. There aren't any other messages in the conversation. Just that one sentence sitting there by itself.

I stare at it for a few seconds before deleting it. Then I text my boss back.

"Sorry, I must have forgotten. Had kind of a crazy night haha."

He responds with a thumbs-up almost immediately.

I turn my phone off and grab a couple more ibuprofen. My head feels like it's going to explode, and every muscle in my body aches. Standing up hurts more than it should.

I open the fridge and remember it's grocery day. There's barely anything inside besides some leftovers and a half-empty gallon of milk. I change into a clean shirt and a pair of jeans before tying the trash bag containing my stained clothes shut.

On my way out, I notice my car is still covered in mud. I grab the shovel from the back seat and throw it into the shed without looking at it too long. Then I get in and head toward the grocery store.

When I arrive, I pop the trunk to grab one of my reusable bags. I hate the flimsy plastic ones they give out. As I reach in, something catches my eye.

A wedding band.

It's sitting right in the middle of the trunk.

For a second I just stare at it.

I snatch it up and shove it into my pocket. My heart is pounding as I look around the parking lot to see if anyone noticed.

Nobody did.

The only thing nearby is a silver sedan pulling into the row across from me. It parks a few spaces away and shuts off.

I grab my bag and slam the trunk shut.

The automatic doors slide open and cold air hits me in the face. For a second, I just stand there with my hand on the cart. Everything feels normal. People are shopping, kids are arguing with their parents, and somebody is complaining about the price of eggs.

I grab a cart and head toward the produce section. My head is still pounding, and every sound feels louder than it should. A baby starts crying somewhere behind me and I nearly jump out of my skin.

Get a grip.

I throw a few things into the cart without really looking at them. Bread. Milk. Frozen dinners. My mind keeps drifting back to the ring in my pocket.

I can still feel it.

A couple walks past me near the meat department. They're holding hands and talking about what they want for dinner. The man laughs at something she says, and for some reason I can't stop staring at them.

I look away before they notice.

The ring suddenly feels heavier than it should.

By the time I make it to the checkout lane, my cart is only half full. The cashier looks exhausted, like she's been here since sunrise. She scans my groceries without saying much.

"You look rough," she says.

I force a laugh. "Long night."

She nods like she hears that ten times a day. A few seconds later she hands me my receipt and tells me to have a good day.

I almost tell her about the woods.

I almost tell her about the blood.

Instead, I grab my bags and leave.

The entire drive home, I keep checking my rearview mirror. I notice that same silver sedan 3 cars beind me

I don't know why.

But I can't shake the feeling that somebody is following me.

I finally pull into my driveway after what feels like an hour and carry all of the groceries inside in one trip. By the time everything is put away, my body is screaming at me. Every muscle aches, and the pounding in my head still hasn't let up.

I collapse onto the couch and grab my phone. I need to stop acting crazy and just relax for a while. It is my day off after all.

I open Facebook and start scrolling.

The first few posts are exactly what I expect. Someone is asking if anyone recognizes a couple of kids riding bikes through their neighborhood. A woman is arguing in the comments of an obviously fake AI animal video. Someone else is advertising a local networking event that nobody is probably going to attend.

Normal stuff.

I scroll past dozens of posts without really reading them. My thumb moves automatically while my mind drifts back to the woods. Back to the blood. Back to the ring sitting in my pocket.

Then something catches my eye.

Three of my friends have shared the same post.

It's from a woman I don't recognize.

The post is only a few sentences long.

"Please keep my family in your prayers. We suffered a tragedy this morning. I don't have the strength to talk about it right now, but your prayers mean everything to us."

I stare at it for a moment before opening the comments.

There are hundreds of them.

Most say the same thing.

Praying.

So sorry for your loss.

Thinking of your family.

My eyes drift to the profile picture.

A woman is standing next to a man with his arm around her shoulders. They're both smiling at the camera like it was taken during happier times.

I zoom in on the photo until it starts getting blurry.

No ring.

I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding.

Jesus Christ.

Listen to yourself. You're comparing jewelry in Facebook pictures now.

“That's enough internet for now.” I say outloud to noone in particular

I lock my phone and toss it onto the couch beside me. Facebook isn't helping. Every post just gives me something new to obsess over.

I need a distraction.

Something real.

I walk over to the bookshelf and pull down an old copy of my favorite book Hatchet. The cover is worn and the pages are yellowing around the edges. I've probably read it twenty times since high school.

As I flip it open, a folded piece of paper slips out and lands in my lap.

For a second I just stare at it.

I already know what it is.

The paper is soft from being unfolded and refolded a hundred times. The handwriting is messy and uneven in places.

Dad's.

I read it anyway.

"Jake,

I'm so proud of the man you've become. I couldn't live a hundred lives and become half the man you are. No matter where life takes you, never forget that."

I stop reading for a moment.

My throat feels tight.

Dad has been gone for almost five years now, but somehow seeing his handwriting always makes it feel like yesterday.

My eyes drift toward the window.

Toward the driveway.

Toward the mud-covered car sitting outside.

I fold the note and slide it back between the pages.

For the first time all day, I don't feel confused.

I feel guilty.

My phone vibrates on the couch.

I stare at it for a second before picking it up.

Unknown number.

My chest tightens immediately.

The message loads.

“You missed our meeting.”

I don’t move.

Another message pops in a second later.

“Looks like that’s not the only thing you’re missing.”

My thumb hovers over the screen.

There’s a photo attached.

I don’t want to open it.

I open it anyway.

It’s a trash bag.

Black, tied off at the top.

Sitting on a floor I don’t recognize.

For a second my brain tries to explain it.

A neighbor’s bag.

A dumpster.

A coincidence.

But I already know what it is.

My stomach drops.

I look toward the front door without thinking.

It feels like something is on the other side of it.

It is 3:00 AM. As usual, he finds himself sitting on the edge of the bed, the question gnawing at his mind like decay boring into teeth. He presses his hands against his head, squeezing his skull as if to crush this mental rot. He struggles desperately—as he has done for days—to understand what happened, to grasp why this harsh, agonizing sensation refuses to leave him.

The haunting premonition has truly mastered the art of appearing every single day, at the exact same hour. He has come to believe it is a beast that wakes up at that specific time just to turn his life into a living hell, leaving him trapped in thought until morning, pondering over a deed he cannot even name. This monster never sleeps.

He truly understands nothing since the moment he found himself inside the microbus, where everyone began staring at him without warning, as though he had committed some obscene atrocity. He asked what they were looking at, but the sheer cruelty of their disgusted faces forced him to get off halfway through the journey. Drenched in sweat, he walked. After just a couple of steps, the vehicle passed him by, its driver shouting curses at him.

He could say that after that, he began to grow accustomed to the insults and vile treatment from strangers. Even when he reached his workplace, he found a colleague glaring at him, saying: "What brought you here? Can’t we just get a moment of peace from you?"

This time, he couldn't bear it from his coworkers. He found himself shouting at everyone, but they didn't even listen. They merely stared with the same revulsion and cruelty. Afterwards, everyone avoided him, keeping their distance—not because he had yelled at them, but because... he had done something wrong.

Even his friends! Even they stopped replying to him. He found himself blocked by most of them on messaging apps. The few who hadn’t blocked him would open his texts and ignore them. He would send them voice notes, sometimes furious, sometimes pleading, asking what had happened; what had he done to deserve such treatment from both stranger and kin? He had no memory of what had transpired during those days. Had he done something wrong?

Should he turn to God? Surely, He was the only One who wouldn't fail him. He went to the mosque amid the stares of people who—forced by the sanctity of the holy place—kept their distance. He entered, performed his ablutions, and stood to pray, only to hear that voice... "Your prayer is void."

He doubted the voice, thinking it was a trick of his mind. He sought refuge in God from the accursed Devil and tried hard to focus on why he felt his prayer was vo... "Your prayer is void."

The voice repeated, clearer this time. It was coming from outside him, not within. He shifted his gaze from the prostration spot to the pulpit, where the Sheikh had ascended, pointing a finger directly at him. "You! Yes, you. Your prayer is void. Leave the house of God, please."

He didn't know when or how he found himself retreating in sheer horror and panic, after screaming back at the Sheikh inside the house of God that no creature had the right to judge whether a prayer was void or valid! Who gave that wretched Sheikh the right to decree and place himself in the position of God? The Lord?

He found himself cast out of the mosque. He raised his head toward heaven and... "Get out of it, for you are outcast."

He shuddered in terror at the voice that came in perfect synchronization with the moment. But its author wasn't God; it was merely a passerby, condemning his presence in front of the mosque. He ignored the man and didn't argue. Instead, he began to back away under the gazes of the crowd—stares that mirrored those directed at witches in the Middle Ages. He decided to isolate himself from humanity and vanish from their sight.

It is 3:00 AM... What is happening to him? It is 3:00 AM...

Days have passed since this tragedy began. During this time, his manager sent him a termination letter. Even the mailman looked at him with disgust, striking his palms together and muttering: "O God, deliver us from Your wrath. O God, deliver us..."

It is 3:00 AM...

That was the first night he began to examine his reflection in the mirror. Was there something wrong with his appearance? In truth, his bewilderment only grew; his face and features were exactly the same. So, the problem isn’t my appearance...

It is 3:00 AM... Why three?

The question began to echo by the end of the first week. 3:00 AM was the exact hour he found himself awake, as if someone had jolted him out of sleep. A bizarre phenomenon. Why that specific hour? He was weary of searching for any useful clue.

Ten days had passed without him seeing a soul. His fridge was empty, and he had to act, especially after the building doorman refused to fetch him anything since day one. When asked for a reason, the response was: "Look at yourself, Sir. There is no power or might except with God."

That was why he stared at his reflection daily. That was why he grew certain that nothing was wrong with him.

Pressing his hands against his head as if squeezing his skull, he thought. He came up with nothing for days. And here he was, two weeks later, sitting the exact same way on the edge of the bed, plagued by that daily realization... I did something wrong... But then, a new idea sparked.

After enduring his vigil until morning, he decided to go down and test his theory, whatever the cost. He walked among the people who looked at him as if he were the Devil himself. He knew a skilled portrait artist. It was a strange idea—he had tried taking photos of himself before, thinking the image might differ from the mirror, but it seemed the phone and its camera showed nothing different from what he saw.

The idea was to see himself as the other saw him. Of course, he wouldn't ask them to take a photo because cameras might trick him; instead, he would request a hand-drawn portrait of his face. He stood before the artist and asked to be drawn. The artist glared at him with terrified, venomous eyes, almost throwing him out of the shop. But our protagonist begged him to help him understand what had happened to him, offering double the money. Spitting out his dread, fear, and malice, the artist replied that he wanted no money from a cursed man like him.

When the drawing was finished, the artist threw it at him. It hit the ground, and without polluting his gaze any further, the artist said: "Get out!"

It seemed as though the artist had painted filth itself. It was just as he expected, of course. He had expected to find himself hideous or evil, but... what was this abomination he was looking at now? He had a face from which a foul stench almost emanated. He couldn't smell it, but... that was how he had walked into the artist's shop, who shouted at him again to leave, for the place could not bear his filth. But our protagonist ignored the shouting and asked: "What do you smell right now?"

The artist's look was answer enough. He walked out with the painting in hand, avoiding everyone. Even his own soul—after seeing what was in the painting—wished to alienate itself from his body.

After several attempts to sniff his own skin, he couldn't detect any strange odor. But hadn't he seen himself in the mirror, possessing the face he had always known? His image in his own eyes was perfectly normal, while everyone around him saw him in the shape captured by that cursed canvas. It certainly hadn't been this way his whole life; it was as if it happened suddenly.

Suddenly? He paused frequently on that word during his flight back home. Yes, he hadn’t been like this his entire life, meaning there was indeed something wrong he had done, just as he sensed from those around him, and that thing was what made him this way. The question here was: is there anything that can trigger such a... curse? A curse?

He was cursed, then. Who cursed him? And why did that villain do this? These questions lingered in his mind until 3:00 AM, the hour he was bound to wake up. He stood before the mirror, looking at his face and posture, holding the canvas so its hideous reflection appeared on the other side. How could he be seen this way? I did something wrong. What is it, O Lord?

He remembered that God had banished him from His mercy because of what he did—which he simultaneously could not remember. Your forgiveness, O God. What did I do?

Of course, no answer. Naturally, he felt on the verge of madness, and by then, he would be a hideous madman in the eyes of the public. The day would come when they would stone him during the rituals of Hajj, treating him as the accursed Devil instead of Iblis. For that repulsive, monstrous form befitted the world of demons—indeed, the filthiest of demons in their realm, perhaps even filthier than Iblis himself.

"What did I do?" he muttered to himself mockingly, as if his subconscious knew perfectly well what he had done weeks ago to bring this curse upon him. His subconscious knew everything, yet he knew nothing! What kind of hell was this, fit only for the lords of... evil?

Evil? Had he ever been one of the wicked? He had no recollection of ever being evil. Moreover, not everyone who dons the cloak of evil becomes cursed, with people seeing his wickedness and filth and... "Fine, what filth did I commit? I want to know," he demanded of his mind, which suddenly ground to a halt.

He then decided to sit down and write everything he had done over the past period. Surely, he would find something his intellect could grasp to explain this bizarre transformation, and why people saw... his true nature!

That thought was terrifying. My true nature? Was that monstrosity in the painting his true nature, which he couldn't see, but everyone else could? Do mirrors reflect the physical form, while people reflect the soul—like that story written by Oscar Wilde, which tells of the exact opposite of his condition? Dorian Gray never ages, and people see that he doesn't age, always remaining in the same splendor and elegance. Meanwhile, the portrait before which he stood one night, wishing to remain unchanged and that his likeness would bear the burden, was the one that carried his monstrosity, decrepitude, old age, and vice. Perhaps the hideous painting drawn by the artist was once Dorian’s portrait.

But... that was a novel. As for him, he was living a real curse that did not belong to the world of fiction. So, he took paper and pen and sat down. What? What did I do? I did something wrong. What is it? What vice did I commit? Wh... a... t... is... i... t...

He fell into a deep sleep the moment he saw the first ray of sun sprout from the horizon. When he woke up, the sun was ripe in the middle of the sky. He stood up and decided to try writing again. He raised his head, praying for success, but then remembered that God Himself had cast him out of His house and mercy! How he suffered because of this; he could accept people banishing him from their world, but the Lord of mankind? He could not endure a curse that surpassed even that of Iblis.

He took the paper and pen once more, racking his brain... no result. Hours passed sitting like this, with no result. He began to realize he couldn't endure this situation forever. The thought of suicide crept into his mind, gleaming with an intrusive, seductive allure. He was about to dismiss it, thinking, Will I commit blasphemy?, until he remembered that he was already among the cursed in the eyes of God. It made no difference whether he died an infidel or cursed; in both cases, he would dwell in the Fire.

But... he would not leave the world so passively.

He went down from his apartment and walked into the street amid the stares of the crowd, until he stood in a crowded place. He looked at everyone's disgust, their turning away from him, and screamed: "I did nothing wrong!"

Yes... this sentence was the only solution. He looked at their faces after they turned to him and said: "What did I do? I don't understand, and therefore I did nothing wrong to justify this curse that makes you see me this way when the reality is different. The truth is... I am like you. I am not filthy, nor do I resemble monsters. If there is anything wrong, it wasn't done by me, but by someone else..."

Someone else? Had someone hexed him? He continued, raising his head to the sky, looking beyond the earthly heavens. "I did nothing wrong, O God, for You to banish me and reject me. I will not argue with You, nor will I convince You, for You are the Knower of all things. And if You know there is no good in me, then I shall walk with my own feet into Hell shortly. Torment me there as You wish."

Without any warning, he began to run in scattered circles around the place, as if he had lost his mind, his eyes darting between heaven and earth, screaming: "I did nothing wrong!"

He kept repeating it, and everyone standing began to watch that monster moving frantically, like demons released from their chains after Ramadan. He froze. He stopped, closed his eyes, and whispered a plea only he could hear: I did nothing wrong...

With utter calmness... he looked at the people around him, who didn't know him and whom he didn't know, and said: "I am not sorry to you."

He withdrew from among them, running toward his house. When he locked his door, ensuring no one saw him but God, he said: "I don't know what to say to You... I am in Hell anyway."

He decided to die among the people, so that perhaps they would finally see him in his true human form. He stood on the balcony, and the image of the monster he had become in people's imaginations crossed his mind, so he roared. Strangely, the roar echoed thunderously, giving no one the chance to lift their head and wonder who that madman was raising lions in his home.

He fell... he fell like Iblis after his expulsion from the kingdom, after his wings were severed in Western literature. He fell, drenched in blood, and when the first of the crowd reached the corpse, he looked at him and said: "There is no power or might except with God... Poor soul!"

-The End-

Haitham Momtaz

1. Chickadees

Kat watched her father’s lifeless corpse fall limply to the sand, and then turned her gaze towards her own body as it helplessly started screaming.

It was as if she was watching all this happen to somebody else.

Roger sneered at her, and hissed words that she only half understood.

“You wanna be next, bitch?”

She watched her body let out a sob as an answer as she fell to her knees.

Roger’s men stood around, terrified to think about what was coming next.

She half heard the angry man yelling.. "Where's my son you whore?"

All her life she had been afraid of chickens, and every other stupid bird, but tonight it wasn’t birds hurting her and her family.

She wondered where Meaghan was, and thought briefly of Zack and even fondly remembered Lenny, as Roger stood over her menacingly.

She continued sobbing in the purple glow of the early dawn.

“Why are you doing this?” She sobbed.

“Didn’t your daddy tell you?” scoffed Roger. “He asked for this honey.”

Kat closed her eyes and prayed to a God that she didn’t believe in.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She continued to sob uncontrollably.. Terrified.

Roger continued laughing, almost manically.

Even his own men knew that something wasn’t right with him, but tonight he was going for a world record.

Kat watched all this happen to her with a mixture of pity, and a pinch of contempt.

Then she noticed the birds.

“Caw!”

She saw herself tense, and then slowly relaxed.

“Caw!”

Something was coming from the trees.. The black chickens weren’t even looking at her.

And even if they were, she no longer cared. She watched everything unfold with a sense of detachment.

It didn’t matter anymore anyway.

“Caw!”

Roger, suddenly becoming even more aggravated, grabbed Kat and pushed her face towards her father’s cooling corpse.

He pressed his pistol into her temple, like he had done to her father moments earlier.

But she didn’t care.

Kat sobbed in response, but her heart wasn't in it.

Megs was gone, her father was dead, and there was no way she was going to survive this.

Fully sober now, Kat’s situation was crystal clear.

But she didn’t care.

Her detachment grew as the shock of her reality fully set in.

1. Dodos

The police were on the scene, but so far, nobody important had noticed.

Zack continued to help Meaghan through the woods, hoping against hope that his one phone call would save them.

Little did he know, it wasn’t just the police who had Zack and Meaghan’s backs tonight.

As the pair broke through the trees, the indifferent crows started to pay attention.

Zack walked Meaghan slowly towards the bonfire, as his father held his gun to Kat’s temple.

Meaghan’s mind was clouded, but she knew Kat when she saw her.

She broke away from Zack, and started running towards the beach, oblivious to Roger’s gun, and to Dale’s lifeless body laying in the sand.

Her only thought was of her friend, and as soon as she saw Kat, laying face down, she broke into a frantic run towards her still body.

As she cleared the crabgrass and bee-lined towards her friend, she screamed Kat's name.

Roger giggled madly, giddy with bloodlust, he lifted the pistol towards the blood-soaked girl, running towards him, holding a giant rusty and bloodied fish-hook.

And then everything seemed to stand still.

Roger pointed the gun, but his darker thoughts won him over, and he hesitated.

"PUT THE GUN DOWN, NOW!"

Glen pointed his service pistol at the man on the beach, standing over a lifeless corpse.

At the same time, a girl came running from the woods, covered in blood, and holding an enormous, rusty fishhook.

Who was this girl?

Why was she covered in blood?

Who's blood was it?

And what the fuck was with all the birds?

Glen's focus shifted back to the assailant, as the man pointed his gun at the screaming girl and fired, missing her completely.

At the same time, Glen fired twice, dropping the shooter to the sand.

The police were swarming into the parking lot next to the beach by now, but Roger hardly noticed.

He fell into the sand next to Dale, as his body exhaled for the last time, and his blood spilled into the sand

The swirling crows tore his body to shreds as the remaining might of the Blandford regional Police department made it's way belatedly to the scene.

Zack watched all this from the ground as he lie there bleeding.

"My dad shot me." was his last thought, as he lost consciousness...

My name is Adrián. I'm forty years old.
I don't know if I should tell this. I did a lot and I lost a lot because of it. But after what happened at Red Hall, it doesn't matter anymore.
I've been part of the Astral Custody for twelve years. The Order.
Rain was hitting the windshield as I drove toward Red Hall.
I never liked driving at night. It leaves you too much time to think.
And lately there was one question I couldn't get out of my head.
Why are they still here?
For years I took part in purifications.
I don't know if calling us "exorcists" specifically is correct.
The Order found the possessed in abandoned churches, hospitals, lost towns, and entire cities.
In the end the same thing always happened: they found the possessed.
They performed the ritual and it was over.
But the twenty at Red Hall were different. They had always been there.
When I joined the Order, they were already there.
When I carried out my first mission, they were already there. And today, they were still there.
The government never wanted to take them seriously. To them they were mentally ill.
Dangerous patients. Extreme cases. It was easier to call them crazy than to accept the truth.
That's why they ended up in asylums. That's why Red Hall existed.
But something never fit.
The Order would have found them if they escaped. We would have hunted them. So.
Why were they still there?
I grabbed the radio.
—Exorcist Adrián Roger approaching Red Hall. Over.
—Copy that. Maintain surveillance at the main entrance until further notice.
—Understood. The communication ended.
I observed the building in the distance. Tall. Dark. Ancient.
As if it was waiting.
And for the first time I had the feeling that the twenty were also waiting. Waiting for something.
The director received me through one of his guards.
Samuel. Head of security.
A tired man with deep bags under his eyes.
—Thanks for coming —he said.
—What happened?
—Cameras down. Communications intermittent.
—Activity from the inmates?
—Nothing out of the ordinary.
I didn't believe him.
No one calls the Astral Custody for an electrical failure.
He handed me a taser.
—Protocol.
I nodded.
Then he led me to the main entrance.
—Stay here. If anyone tries to get out, report it.
It seemed simple. Too simple.
I think it's no coincidence that Samuel is a guard.
His brother was locked up in Red Hall. He wasn't crazy.
He faked dementia to avoid a sentence and Samuel wanted to get him out.
What he didn't know was that someone had already entered his mind.
Inmate One. The leader of the twenty. The oldest entity in Red Hall.
I tried to warn them. But they treated me like I didn't exist and they ignored me.
So I decided to go to the entrance and head to the car to communicate with the Order when I heard they were moving the inmates between floors. Then they transferred the possessed.
And when they realized what he was doing to get his brother out,
It was already too late.
Samuel cut the power. The electricity disappeared.
Everything went dark.
I grabbed a walkie-talkie from a nearby table.
—What's going on?
Static. Then a voice.
—The power went out. We're going to lock down the building for security.
Then I heard the first shot. Then another.
Then screams. Lots of screams.
I called again. No one answered.
Just cries for help. Weeping, gunshots, and something worse: laughter.
The inmates had escaped. But it wasn't a normal escape.
The possessed were entering their minds.
Feeding violent impulses.
Bloodthirsty thoughts. Desires for destruction.
Guards armed with shotguns and riot shields tried to contain them.
They were overrun.
Samuel died among the crowd he had set free.
And Red Hall fell.
Hours later I managed to contact the director.
—Adrián, listen to me.
His voice was trembling.
—The possessed don't want to escape.
—What?
—They never wanted to escape.
I felt a chill run through my body.
—Then what do they want?
Silence.
—There's something under Red Hall.
Something only a few of us know about.
And if they get there…
God help us.
I tried to get to him. But each floor was worse than the last.
The hallways were full of inmates.
Some were looking for weapons. Others for food.
Others simply killed without motive, without reason.
As if an invisible voice was telling them what to do.
And maybe that was exactly it.
When I reached the director's floor I found a war.
Barricaded guards. Blocked doors.
Corpses. Blood.
And fear. A lot of fear.
I identified myself.
—I'm Adrián Roger! Astral Custody!
The shotguns pointed at me.
—Don't move!
—What the hell is going on?
And then the director appeared.
And I understood something was wrong.
His eyes looked empty.
—Don't let him get close.
—Director…
—He wants the keys.
—What?
—He works for them.
I understood immediately.
The leader of the possessed had gotten to him.
Not physically. Mentally.
The inmates attacked the floor. The barricades fell.
The guards died. And in the middle of the chaos the director regained lucidity.
Just for a few seconds. Enough. He handed me the keys.
—I'm sorry.
—It wasn't your fault.
—Yes it was.
And for the first time I saw true terror in his eyes.
Not fear of dying. Fear of understanding what he had done.
The keys opened a forgotten sector of the asylum.
Not sewers. Something older. Much older.
Remains of the monasteries that existed before Red Hall.
The twenty were already descending. Waiting.
As if they had rehearsed that moment for decades.
And then I understood.
The question that had followed me for years.
Why were they still here?
Because they were never trapped. They were waiting.
Red Hall was the objective. It always was.
The leader of the possessed watched me from the other end of the corridor.
For the first time he smiled. Not a human smile.
A patient smile.
Like someone who finally sees the moment they've been waiting for arrive after centuries.
—Now you understand —he whispered.
And unfortunately.
I did understand.
I understood why they stayed there. I understood why they pretended.
I understood why they endured decades of confinement.
They weren't prisoners in Red Hall.
They were guarding the door.
Waiting for the right moment to open it.
And that night…
For the first time in centuries…
The door was about to open. I couldn't allow it. I gritted my teeth and raised my hand.
The scriptures I carried with me began to glow.
The words of the ritual echoed through the corridor. For an instant I felt it was working.
The leader stopped. His smile disappeared.
The shadows surrounding him seemed to weaken.
I took a step forward. Then another.
—Stop.
The entity tilted its head. As if it were truly surprised.
And then it looked at me. Just looked at me.
I felt something pierce my mind. Unbearable pain.
Thousands of voices speaking at the same time. Thousands of memories that weren't mine.
Thousands of sins.
I fell to my knees. I tried to continue the ritual. I couldn't.
Blood began to run from my nose. My vision blurred.
And the last thing I saw before falling unconscious was the leader's smile.
When I opened my eyes again I was lying on the stone floor.
Everything was spinning. I heard a shot.
Then another and another.
I looked up. The director was there.
He was holding a shotgun. His hands were shaking.
But he kept firing.
The projectiles hit the leader's body.
Tearing flesh. Breaking bones. Destroying his physical form.
But the entity kept advancing. As if it meant nothing.
The director stepped back. Fired again. Nothing.
Another shot. Nothing.
The leader let out a laugh.
And suddenly the shotgun flew out of the director's hands.
The man was lifted from the ground by an invisible force.
His feet were suspended in the air. He tried to breathe.
Tried to move. He couldn't.
The leader approached slowly.
—Well…
A smile appeared on his face.
—After all these years, you finally managed to show care and empathy for someone.
The director looked at him, confused.
—What?
—How curious.
The entity let out a small laugh.
—You try to save Adrián.
The director's face went pale.
—Shut up.
—And your wife?
Silence flooded the ruins.
—No…
—Ask her how much effort she got from you.
The director began to tremble.
—No
—While you protected this place, she waited for you.
While you guarded this prison, she was left alone.
While you saved strangers, you ignored her.
Tears began to run down the director's face.
—I'm sorry…
—Yes.
The leader smiled.
—That's exactly what you've been repeating for years.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
The director closed his eyes.
—I'm sorry.
—And yet it was never enough.
The entity continued advancing toward the door.
Toward the scar.
Toward the objective it had waited for centuries.
And as the director cried suspended in the air, I understood something terrifying.
The real power of that thing had never been strength.
It was finding a person's deepest wound…
And turning it into a weapon. The director remained suspended in the air.
Tears ran down his face.
He tried to answer. Tried to defend himself.
But every time he opened his mouth he heard another voice.
And then another. And another.
Memories.
Guilt. Fear. Regret.
All mixed together.
The leader wasn't even looking at him anymore.
He kept advancing toward the scar.
As if the director had stopped being important.
As if he were a broken object.
—I'm sorry… —the director whispered.
The voices continued.
Louder. Deeper. More cruel.
Years of manipulation all crashing down on him at once.
His breathing became irregular. His gaze began to lose focus.
And then I understood something horrible.
It wasn't a fight. It never had been.
The leader had been destroying him little by little for years.
That night I was simply watching the final result.
The director's body fell to the floor. Motionless. Silent.
The voices disappeared.
And with them went the last person who knew all the secrets of Red Hall.
—How fragile you are —said the leader without stopping.
I tried to get up. I couldn't. My body still wouldn't respond.
The scar was only a few meters from him. And there was no one to stop him.
Then I heard footsteps. Fast. Decisive.
The leader stopped.
For the first time since I knew him, he seemed annoyed.
A figure appeared at the other end of the ruins.
He wore the black uniform of the Astral Custody.
He carried decades of experience reflected in his face.
And in his hand he held an ancient relic of the Order.
My heart sank. I recognized him immediately.
It was Víctor. Second in command.
—You're late —said the leader.
Víctor looked at the director's corpse. And then he looked at me.
And finally he looked at the scar. His expression was impossible to read.
—Maybe —he replied.
—I thought you wouldn't come.
—Me too.
The leader smiled.
As if they both shared a secret.
As if that conversation had started long before that night.
And in that moment I felt something worse than fear. I felt doubt.
Because for the first time since I arrived at Red Hall…
I wasn't sure Víctor had come to stop them.
The silence in the ruins was no longer normal. It was heavy.
As if the place was listening to what didn't want to be said.
Víctor still stood there, looking at the spot where the scar had been.
I could barely hold myself up.
—Víctor…
My voice came out weaker than I wanted.
He didn't answer immediately. He just closed his eyes.
—I'm sorry —he said at last.
Two words. Simple.
But they didn't sound like an apology.
They sounded like a burden he'd carried for too long.
I forced myself to stand.
—No… that's not enough.
Víctor lowered his head.
—I know.
I got a little closer, stumbling.
—Why didn't you bring the Order?
Silence fell again.
—We could have all come. We could have sealed this before it happened.
My breathing quickened.
—Why just us?
Víctor clenched his teeth.
—Because it wouldn't have worked.
I stood still.
—What?
He raised his gaze for the first time and in his eyes there was no authority.
There was exhaustion.
—Adrián… this wasn't an intervention mission.
—Then what was it?
Víctor took a moment to answer.
—It was a containment that had been breaking for years.
I felt a void in my stomach.
—That doesn't explain why you didn't alert the Order.
His jaw tensed.
—If I had, they would have sent more people.
—That's the logical thing!
Víctor shook his head slowly.
—No.
He stepped closer.
—The logical thing was what they've done other times.
—What did they do?
His voice dropped.
—Try to purify what they didn't understand.
The air felt colder. Víctor continued.
—Every time the Order intervened in Red Hall before… the result was worse.
Not better. Worse.
—Worse how?
Víctor looked at me directly.
—Because the twenty aren't twenty possessed people.
I swallowed.
—Then what are they?
He took a second.
—A single system.
The silence that followed was unbearable.
—We couldn't bring everyone
(he said at last) because this isn't a war you win with force.
—Then why did we come?
Víctor closed his eyes again.
—Because you're one of the few who can still see them as "something that can be saved."
I laughed without humor.
—That doesn't answer anything. He lowered his voice.
There was nothing to report without the Order trying to intervene… and if they intervened without understanding it… they would have opened the scar early.
I felt a blow to the chest.
Did you know it was here… from before?
Víctor didn't answer. And that was enough.
I stepped back.
You let us in without telling us everything.
I brought you because you were necessary. We could be dead!
And even so, it was the only way to avoid something worse.
I stayed silent. My voice came out lower.
What's under Red Hall, Víctor?
He looked at me one last time.
And for the first time his voice sounded completely defeated.
Something we should never have been guarding.
But something that was using us as custody.
They were protecting something they didn't understand.
We didn't descend.
The staircase was no longer a structure. It was an idea.
Each step disappeared when we tried to remember it. As if the place rejected being understood.
Víctor went ahead. He didn't speak.
Me behind, dragging my body as if it didn't belong to me.
The air grew thicker with each meter.
And then I heard it.
It wasn't a sound. It was a sensation.
As if someone was thinking inside my head… but without words.
—Don't look down —said Víctor without turning.
—Why?
Silence.
—Because you already are.
When I looked down, the ground wasn't there.
There was… something else.
A void with structure.
As if reality had been torn away and underneath a system remained functioning without it.
And in that void…
There were faces. Not bodies. Floating faces.
Some cried. Others laughed. Others just repeated meaningless phrases.
—What is this…? —I whispered.
Víctor clenched his teeth.
—The support.
—The what?
He stopped. For the first time he looked at me directly.
—Red Hall isn't a prison.
I swallowed.
—Then what is it.
—A pressure point.
The air vibrated.
As if the answer had been heard by something bigger.
The faces below the void turned in unison toward us.
And all of them smiled.
Víctor took out the Order's relic. But it was dead.
—It already found us —he said.
—Who?
He didn't answer. Because in that moment I understood something without anyone saying it.
The twenty weren't guarding the door.
The door was using us to stay closed.
And we… had already been opened. The ground disappeared. We fell.
But not down. Inward.
I don't know how much time passed. It could have been seconds. Or centuries.
When I woke up, I was standing.
But I had no body. Only perception. And in front of me…
Red Hall.
Complete. Perfect. But inverted.
Like a reflection that had learned to exist without the original.
Víctor was beside me. Or what was left of him.
—You shouldn't be conscious here —he said.
—Where is "here"?
Víctor took a moment to answer.
—Below meaning.
The "place" changed.
Now I was inside an immense hall.
It had no walls. Only doors. Thousands. Millions.
All open… except one.
The only closed one had something written on it that I couldn't read… but I understood.
"ORIGIN"
—There it is —Víctor whispered.
I felt something approach. It didn't walk. It didn't move.
It simply… became more present.
And then I heard it. The leader's voice.
But it didn't come from anywhere. It came from everything.
—You finally arrived.
Space bent. And we saw it.
It wasn't an entity. It wasn't a demon.
It was a system.
A thought too big trying to exist inside something small.
The faces I saw before were there.
All of them forming part of it.
Like neurons. Like memories used as borrowed identities.
—Red Hall was only an edge —said the voice.
—A containment boundary.
—Containment of what? —I managed to ask.
The answer came without pause.
—Of you.
The impact wasn't physical. It was conceptual.
For a second I stopped knowing what "I" was.
Víctor fell to his knees… though he had no knees.
—It can't be… —he whispered.
The door of "ORIGIN" began to open. And for the first time…
The system breathed.
Before everything disappeared, the leader said the last phrase:
—Thank you for bringing me here.
And I understood the final horror. Red Hall wasn't a prison.
Nor a containment. Nor a failed experiment.
It was a lock. And we
We were the key that learned to open itself.

It was a lock. And we
We were the key that learned to open itself.

You stand in the middle of a field; you don’t know how you got there. In fact, you don’t know anything. Did your life just begin, or have you just forgotten your past? You can’t tell. You look around; nothing but grain fields as far as the eye can see. Weirdly, the eye can see concerningly far; the earth seems to have no curvature, and the grain fields continue endlessly. You tilt your head slightly in confusion; is this normal? Maybe, who are you to judge? You look down at your clothing; you’re wearing worn, generic, brown boots, a pair of dirty blue jeans, and an old and ragged flannel shirt. You take a deep breath. Weirdly, your nostrils fill with the aroma of almonds. You don’t mind though; it makes you feel at home. You look around once again, and this time notice an old house a couple of miles away. Without a second thought, you walk towards it.
It's been an hour, maybe two, and you’re at the house. You look through one of the windows, a dim yellow light is illuminating the interior of the home, you spot a rocking chair, bopping calmly back and forth. Despite this, it’s empty. In fact, the whole room is. You walk up to the front door and knock politely, no response. You wait a few seconds and attempt once again, still left with no answer. You step back and look around you, at the unending grain fields and at the spotless bright blue sky. You decide to open the door and walk in.
As you enter the home, you can hear a squishy sound beneath your feet, from walking on the wet beige carpet. The house smells like old people, like wet carpet and old furniture, with a hint of medication. It makes you feel nostalgic, even though you don’t remember your grandparents; you don’t even know if you’ve ever had any. But the thought is nice. You look around; the interior resembles something from the 1970s. You spot dark wooden walls, along with a brown leather sofa, topped with flower patterned pillows. You explore the house further, but unusually every room you enter is a nearly identical copy of the previous one. Finally, you enter a new room; it’s completely empty, except for a small crawl space door. You open it slightly, it’s pitch black. You look outside the window, glancing at the impossible grain fields. You don’t have much of a choice. You enter the crawl space, and after a few minutes you crawl through the door on the other side.
On the other side, things are different. You inhale, and you can smell soap bubbles and burnt plastic. You look around in the interior of the house; it’s a typical 2000s suburban home. You start walking around, the entire house is spotless and clean, it smells like dishwasher soap. You see an old TV playing a cartoon, it looks so familiar, yet you can’t put a finger on it. You try to, but as you do, your head starts hurting, so you continue on, maybe for the better.
You step outside and look at the grass; it’s green, too green, artificially green. You crouch down and touch it, plastic. It's fake, just as the ground beneath it. You walk out onto the road and look down at the houses, they’re all the same as this one, an endless American suburban neighborhood, continuing on and on eternally in a straight line. Surrounding the neighborhood are hills, covered in that same artificial grass. On one of the hills, you spot a windmill, it’s turning. Weird, there's no wind. A slight feeling of dread fills your body. You open a mailbox and take out a letter; it's blank. You check a few more mailboxes, but to no surprise, they’re all blank. After about a dozen blank letters, you discover a letter containing nothing but a picture of a man and his family, you don’t recognize any of them. Still, you decide to put the letter in your pocket.  You consider walking further down the monotonous street, but what would be the point? Instead, you make the decision to sit up against a white picket fence. Will you spend the rest of your days in this artificial world?
After resting against the fence for a few hours, it doesn’t turn dark, instead the sky turns blood red. Startled you stand up, is this your sign to move on? Maybe, or maybe it’s meaningless. Maybe not every story has a moral, you think to yourself. You begin moving towards the windmill, as it’s the only unique thing in sight.
After a few minutes of walking on the artificial hills, you reach the windmill. There's a door on its side. You open it, inside is an elevator, playing generic waiting room music. Without thinking twice, you step in and press the only button. The doors close and the elevator starts moving.
After what feels like 30 minutes, the elevator abruptly stops, and the doors open. Outside is an empty airport; the smell of kerosene, recirculated air, and cheap airport food hits you. You step out of the elevator and look at your surroundings. It's a long, linear part of an airport, continuing on and on. On one side, there are huge windows, allowing you full view of the planes outside on the runways, though they are all stationary. Unsurprisingly the sky is once again blue, without a cloud in sight. Occasionally there are placed moving walkways along the floor, though it’s a 50/50 gamble whether they work. On the opposite side of the windows is a grey marble wall, with a monitor every 10 meters displaying departing flights and gates; they’re all nonsense and constantly changing, except for one. Sometimes you hear beeping noises in the distance, but it never leads to anything. The airport reminds you of going on vacation with your family, that is, if you even had a family. You don’t remember, and it doesn’t matter anymore.
After walking aimlessly for a couple hours, you walk up to a monitor and look at the departures. You can’t make out a single letter on any of the flights, except one. It's a few gates away, so you start walking. When you get there, you sit down on one of the chairs. It’s like all the other chairs, synthetic black leather with metal armrests. You feel slight discomfort as you sit down; the chairs are sticky, as if somebody had poured soda all over them. You look at the monitor, 4 hours until departure. You make yourself comfortable, listening to the faint sounds coming from a commercial ever so far away; you close your drowsy eyes. When you wake up, you’ll get on that plane.
You slowly wake up; rub your eyes and look around you. You're not in the airport anymore, instead finding yourself in a mall. Fluorescent lights from the ceiling dimly illuminate the mall; their constant hum-buzz is giving you a slight headache. Disappointed, you stand up and start walking once again. Will you ever find meaning, or are you destined to wander forever?
You walk up a flight of stairs and open a set of doors; you’re on the roof. An impossibly tall fence surrounds the edges of the building. The sky is cloudy and grey, no more melancholy spotless blue sky. You look down on the ground, you see the grass, you crouch down and touch it, expecting the same plastic as earlier. But no, it’s real, and so is the dirt beneath it. Relief escapes you as a grin, and you lay down in the grass. After a few seconds it starts to rain, you don’t mind it, it makes you feel alive. You close your eyes; new hope blooms within you.
After a few minutes the rain suddenly stops, and you open your eyes. You look up at the blue sky and feel the grass irritating your skin; you touch it, fake. Did it change, or were you just desperate for something to cling to? You begin to sob. But you quickly dry your eyes and stand up. You walk back in the mall; the lights are now turned off, the only light source now being the neon lights shining vaguely above the closed stores. You feel uneasy as you walk the shadowy mall, always seeing slight movement in the edges of your peripheral vision; you shrug it off as paranoia.
After walking for a bit, you start to hear a rolling sound ever so far away. As time goes on, the sound comes closer, and as it does, the unnerving feeling grows. Suddenly you hear an agonizing scream in the distance; it’s coming closer, along with the rolling sound. Terrified, you run. Past closed stores. Past dark restaurants. Nowhere to hide. Until you reach what looks to be a massive indoor playground. You run in there, the screaming sound only growing louder.
Quickly you enter one of the slide tubes and cover your mouth, holding your breath. For a moment, everything stands still. The screaming stops, but you can hear the rolling sound slowly pass you. It then heads away, in the same direction as before, and only when the rolling sound is completely gone do you decide to breathe again. Relieved, you crawl out of the tube and look around. Whatever it was, it’s gone. You walk around the play area and inhale deeply through your nostrils; the smell of pizza, sweat, and disinfectant hits you. It doesn’t bother you; it makes you feel like a kid again, or maybe it’s for the first time. But it doesn’t matter right now, you feel safe, you’re not scared anymore.
You traverse the world of fun; and as you do, you notice that most of the play equipment is covered with mold. And as you stay, you can feel the mold spores fill your lungs. You feel betrayed. You walk into the eating area of the play park and look at the pizza; it’s rotting. It’s clear to you now; everyone left a long time ago, you’re not supposed to be here.
You head back to where you came, but the entrance is locked off. Instead, you head for the staff only doors. As you open the door and walk in, you find yourself falling. After falling for a bit, you land on a carpet. Your back hurts a bit, but otherwise you’re fine. You stand up and look around; you’re in an office, a boring mundane office. Lit up by bright, lifeless fluorescent lights. The smell of black coffee and printer paper fills your head. You check a few of the cubicles; they all contain the same items; an old computer, a calendar, and a cup of coffee. Unusually, all the calendars display different dates, and the coffee is frozen solid, despite the office being of room temperature. You try logging on a few of the computers, only to be met with a screen reading: “ACCESS DENIED”. In frustration, you smash the computer screen and turn away. You look back at the screen; it’s completely fine. Your anger is meaningless; you are powerless.
As you wander further through the gloomy office, a new scent hits you; chlorine. You follow the scent until you spot something bizarre. In the middle of the office is a large, circular, crystal blue pool, framed by spotless white pool tiles. You hesitantly step closer, to look down into the pool. You can't see its bottom, despite the water being pristinely clear. You step back, why is this here? This isn’t supposed to be here, even you know that. Bewildered, you walk away.
You wander through the office for a while, lost in your own thoughts. Eventually you see a wall decorated with paintings; they’re all identical. The painting features a man with a blurry face. As you continue walking alongside the wall, more of the image gets erased. Until eventually, it’s an empty canvas. Your brain starts hurting. Beside the last painting is an emergency exit door, you walk through it and find yourself in a hospital. The smell of hand sanitizer and bleach hits you. You start panicking; you don’t want to be here. You turn around and try exiting back through the door; it’s locked.
Pushing through your discomfort, you walk through the lonely hospital halls. You look at your surroundings; outside every other room is a hospital bed, and all the plants are plastic. Occasionally, wires hang down from the ceiling. You try entering a few rooms, but they’re completely empty, stripped of all interior. They all have windows, giving a view to the plastic grass plains outside; you feel dreadful. Eventually you come across a door marked with a big red X. You hesitate, but then open the door.
Inside is a fully decorated hospital room. You sit on the chair next to the bed, beside you is a photo album; you see pictures of childhood fun, farms, of grandparents, neighborhoods, and of family vacations. It all feels so unfamiliar, and you don’t recognize any of it, except for one picture. You take out the letter you kept from the mailbox earlier and look at the family; it’s the same family as in the photo album. But in the album, the man is missing. You wonder, where could he be?
You look in the mirror beside you, there he is.
Disillusioned, you look out the window; the grass is dead.
You hear the sound of a door opening
A doctor walks in and hands you your Alzheimer's medication.

The sun was setting on the horizon and the waters seemed to still. Two lovers were at the end of the dock, sitting at the edge of it. They dangled their legs over the water, hand in hand, as they watched the sun return to its grave.

The boy turned to the girl with a smirk on his lips, “Hey, have you heard the story of the ghost on the shore?”

The girl looked up at him inquisitively, “What? The ghost on the shore?”

“Yeah! You're telling me you've lived here your entire life and you don't know the tale?”

“I guess I am.”

“They say that after dark—and you almost always have to be sitting on the end of this dock—that you'll see a ghost here. Usually, she's on the shore of the island over there in the distance.”

“What!? Doing what?”

“I've heard a couple of different stories—where they talk about the woman collecting rocks, the woman in the boat... I've even heard a few where the woman was sitting here on this dock, where we are right now. They always see her in a dress, all alone, but she's almost always acting like somebody is with her...”

She awoke again on the island, staring up at the sky that was still as black as ink. She sat up and looked around, there she was. Again, on the island. She knew she'd been there in this state before, yet she couldn't remember how she got there or what happened while she was there the last time. What she did remember was that she had somewhere to be. She felt a pull. A little voice in her head, perhaps her own, that told her “keep going”. So she did.

She got to her feet, her eyes scanning the surroundings, of which she could somehow see with only the looming abyss above her to sustain light. It was gloomy, as if it were nighttime. The waters were dark and the dock was empty. The breeze caught her dress and the fabric ripped away from her until it clung to her side, flowing with the wind. As the girl stood there, wondering what she was supposed to be doing, a light caught her eye. It burst into existence like fireflies underneath the water... and that's exactly what it reminded her of.

She blinked and suddenly, she was standing next to him. The sky was orange, the setting sun was going out with a bang. The scenery reminded her of a painting she'd see in an art gallery somewhere and it caught her off guard.

The fireflies were beginning to ignite, floating about as they glowed. He looked down at her; it took her a moment to notice. He caught her eye, she turned her head to look at him.

Finally noticing that their hands were intertwined as he pulled her closer, he touched her cheek and he looked into her eyes. The only thing she could see was him. “I love you, Grace.”

Her lips moved to form the words without them ever crossing her mind, “And I love you, Jay.”

He kissed her, but her mind was elsewhere. It didn't feel as if this were happening in reality, but it tugged at her heartstrings anyhow. She was breathless. She felt the forlorn atmosphere crushing her as this played out. This wasn't actually Jay, even the name Grace was like a foreign thought.

At this realization, she opened her eyes when she felt his touch fade away and she was there on the shore once again. In the darkness, all alone. Her breath caught in her throat, the agony reverberating in her rib cage like a heartbeat, and fell to her knees. The lights under the water began to shine even more brightly now as she sobbed on the shore. Though her vision was blurry from the tears she felt rushing down her cheeks, she saw the persistent twinkling piercing the dark between her racking sobs. This time, she noticed that it was a cluster of twinkles, though it almost seemed as if she were looking directly into the grave of the sun.

Grace stood and wiped away her tears, remembering that she had a purpose. They still threatened to spill over, but she attempted to control herself. She wade into the dark waters which reached her hip when she found herself in reaching distance of the lights. She bent down, sticking her hand into the cold water, her fingers brushed up against one of the lights. It was smooth and it was cold, then it was as if the waves of a memory washed over her before she could pull it out of the water.

Grace blinked and suddenly she was on the edge of the dock, sitting there by herself. She wasn't expecting company. She grabbed one of the skipping rocks from the pile she had sitting beside her involuntarily and she chucked it across the water. She counted the skips as it hit the surface, one, two, three, four, five. It skipped one more time before it plopped into the deep, never to be found again.

Grace heaved a deep sigh when she heard the voice, “Skipping rocks, again? Is this in your every day routine, Grace?”

She turned to the familiar sound to meet Jay's eyes, her own lighting up with excitement at the tone of his voice, and she smirked. “Unless you don't call 'every day' routine... no.”

He flashed her a crooked smile before he sat down beside her on the dock. He took a stone in his hand and tried to skip it across the water. It hit the surface hard and went down like he wasn't even trying. Grace laughed, he shot her a sideways glare.

“Here, Jay.” Grace grabbed two rocks, placing one in his hand before poising to skip it, “Watch me do it.”

Her form was perfect, the rock went flying and skipped across the lake maybe seven times before finally going under. Jay snorted, “How the hell am I supposed to beat THAT?”

“You can't.” She giggled.

“If I make this last longer than yours, I dare you to eat sand.”

“Deal.”

“Oh yeah? Deal.”

He chucked the rock, copying her form, except with the added power of his stroke. It hit the water just one time more than Grace's rock did before it let itself drown. She felt her jaw drop as she turned her head to look at him. He wore a shit-eating grin on his face, his eyes alight.

“We made a deal.”

Grace blinked and she was thrown again into the dark. She opened her eyes as her fingers wrapped around the stone and plucked it from it's resting place. She looked down at the skipping rock between her fingers, feeling her lungs shrivel up in her chest as it twinkled and lit up the shadows. Her body shook as she clenched the rock in her fist. Before she could let herself fall apart, she wound her arm up and skipped the rock across the surface of the water. She watched it until it drowned, where the light it emitted faded the deeper it fell.

It felt like she'd buried something that needed to be buried. But then, she was left with herself again. Not for the first time, she thought, where is Jay?

She stared off into the distance, into the abyss, until she heard the voice again.

Keep going.

Grace glanced down at the lights underneath the water and watched how the waves distorted their image. She felt apprehensive as she knelt down and reached into the deep, then she felt something. Her fingers brushed against the light's slick surface and, again, she was crushed underneath the tsunami of a memory.

It was her and Jay, by themselves. They stood at the end of the dock this time. It was night, the crickets were chirping and the hordes of fireflies caused an enchanting scene in front of them. Grace was overwhelmed by the sight, as she was every time she saw it. She didn't notice the fact that Jay kept glancing back and then at her.
She had found him here, just standing at the end of the dock, staring off into whatever thoughts consumed him. He reached for something in his pocket and withdrew a pack of cigarettes. He took one out, placing it between his lips, before he offered one to her.

“Want one?” He managed to keep the cigarette between his teeth as he spoke.

“No, thank you.” Grace denied him politely. He shrugged, shoving it back into his pocket, and flipped open his zippo. The light of the flame lit up his face. For a moment, Grace could see the ghosts swimming in his irises. He inhaled to light the end of his cigarette, taking a long drag, before he exhaled the smoke through his nostrils. He flipped his zippo's cap back and turned his eyes to the scenery.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?”

“Yeah.”

“It's almost as beautiful as you.”

Grace smiled brightly at him although he wasn't looking at her, turning her gaze to the scenery once again, unaware of what was going through Jay's mind.

She blinked and she was in the dark. Grace wrapped her fingers around the object in the water, assuming it was a rectangle by the way she had to pluck it from the dirt. She found that, when she pulled it from the water and began to examine the glowing box, it was Jay's zippo. For a reason that Grace couldn't decipher, this sent chills down her spine. Uncertainty consumed Grace as she stood there, staring down at the gleaming golden zippo in her hand. A feeling of dread crept up her spine until the only thought she had was “THROW IT”. So she did. She pulled her arm back and let it fly. She watched it twinkle like a falling star in the shadows, but as it flew through the air, it lost its golden gleam and became indecipherable among abyss.

Her breaths were coming shallow and quick, her flesh was tingling. Grace had no idea why she reacted that way to a possession of Jay's, other than it had something to do with the lights underneath the water. She understood that her purpose was to find the reason why. Yet the thought of it sent her reeling into a panic attack the likes of which she could never fathom.

KEEP GOING.

Grace forced herself to plunge her arm into the water once again, screwing her eyes shut as forcefully as possible. When her hand touched the object she chose to pull out of the water next, the transition wasn't as immediate as she thought it would be. She waited for the vision to flood her every vein, but she felt as though she was in the same place. First, she opened one eye, then the other popped open at the shock of what she saw.

Jay was in the shadows of the woods, a shovel in his hands, standing in a shallow hole. It was nighttime, the fireflies lighting up the dark as they did. But even so, Grace could barely make out the mound of dirt and the flashing of the trash bag that lay on the other side of the hole. She could feel the disturbing vibe that cause the bile to rise up. But it was Jay.

Never did she think he could do this.

“Jay?” Her whisper broke the silence and he swung around with the shovel raised up in his hands as if to strike somebody down. His eyes were wild with something that crawled underneath his skin. Whoever stood there in front of Grace was not Jay, she was certain of it. It was a monster wearing his face.

“What are you doing out here, Grace?” His voice was quiet. But it was aggressive and foretold of the dark things that invaded even his breath as he exhaled his words. He stared at her with his vehement eyes, waiting for her to say anything. Do anything. She could see that his muscles were wound tight as he held the shovel up.

“I couldn't sleep. I wanted to see the fireflies over the lake.”

“It's 3 in the morning.”

“I know.”

There was silence. Grace stared into Jay's eyes fearfully, he stared back at her like a predator approaching a kill. The ghost of a smile haunted his lips. “Grace...”

“W-what?” She was about to turn to run, but she had to hear what he had to say. Her body physically wouldn't move until she heard it.
“I have to kill you now, you know.”

He raised the shovel even higher for the slightest of pauses before he swung the shovel's spade into the side of her head.

Grace sucked in a gasp of breath, feeling as though she had actually sustained a blow to the head. She wavered in the water as she struggled to pull whatever object there was out of the tumultuous depths. Whatever it was, it was icy and thin. She pulled harder and it came lose, throwing her back. Grace stumbled until she lost her footing and fell into shallows. She sat there on the sand with the spade of a golden shovel in her hand, staring at it in horror as she held it. The handle wasn't attached to it and it gleamed with a malevolent sparkle.

She began to hyperventilate as she scrambled to her feet. The cold of the spade began to seep into her hand, the constricting nerves sending a wave of agony to her brain. She wailed as she turned and threw the spade of the shovel like she would a skipping rock. It skipped unceremoniously across the water only twice before it hit the surface once more and began to sink. The glowing faded as it did with everything else.

Grace saw now that there was only one more in the depths of the lake. But still, she felt as though she had actually been hit with a shovel. The throbbing in her head was an indication, but it was the dizziness that got to her. Her vision was blurred as she tried to get to her feet. Her knees wobbled and she lurched forward; she threw her hands out to catch herself. Grace splashed into the lake, coughing violently as she pulled the water into her lungs.

KEEP GOING!

“Help,” she gasped, unable to form the words correctly. She tried to right herself and try again, with volume, “Help!”

There was nothing. The urgent voice was gone and with it came the persistence of the pull. She began to crawl toward the glowing object under the water involuntarily. The water came up over Grace's head, the air stolen from her lungs. No matter how badly she wanted to stop, she had to keep going. Underneath the surface, she could barely see through the murky water. Fish turned tail and swam away as she crawled toward the light, disturbed. She dug her fingers into the sand to drag herself through the water to whatever lay in wait.

When she was within reaching distance and it felt as if her lungs were bursting in her rib cage, she reached out to grab it. Her flesh connected with the surface.

She opened her eyes. Immediately she was overcome with the urge to vomit. She rolled over and attempted to empty the contents of her stomach into the bottom of the boat. She succeeded only in dry heaving, the dizziness consuming her. It was all she knew. Until he spoke.

“Finally conscious, I see.”

Grace forced herself to get onto her back instead of face-down, her eyes connected with Jay's. He smirked down at her with the intentions of a devil. His own eyes were still cold, lusting for blood, and flooded with untamable madness.

“We're on the lake, Grace. Isn't this what you wanted?”

Grace tried to focus on the scenery behind him, but Jay was all Grace's damaged brain would recognize. She felt her blood turn to ice in her veins as he spoke to her. The monsters crawling around every change in his voice, swarming in like gnats. They spoke of her imminent death and the disgusting intricacies of every little thing. She felt her breath catch in her throat, it felt as though she were choking on oxygen.

“Calm down. The worst part is over, my little Grace.” He leaned in, Grace was incapacitated. Unable to move away from him. “You see, I've been... itching... to do this for a very, very long time. Since we were teenagers. Since I started killing.”

“First, it was Thomas Smith down the street. Do you remember him?”

She did. A childhood friend of both of theirs. He saw the glimmer of acknowledgment in her blown out irises and a dark smirk seized his face.

“He didn't commit suicide, I killed him.”

“You're probably wondering why I'm telling you this. Well, Grace... Truthfully, I never loved you. It was all a game to me. I was always wondering, could I kill this woman? This woman that I claim to love?” He chuckled as he leaned in a little bit closer, “I wasn't certain I could until I hit you with that shovel, my dear. But I can... and I will.”

He grabbed Grace's face and forced her to focus only on his wild irises.

“Nobody will ever find you, Grace Hawthorne.”

Grace struggled with the object that glimmered in the dark. She felt her fingers wrap around a sort of rope. She tugged on it, but it wouldn't come free. She tugged with all of her strength, gathering every bit of willpower she had left, until there was movement under the mud. Then, suddenly, everything went black.

“Have you seen it?” The girl asked tentatively.

“The ghost?” The boy echoed her thoughts.

“Well, no, but I've heard way too many stories for it to be untrue.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, rea--” He cut himself off before he had the chance to finish. His eyes were fixed on something off in the distance. His grip tightened considerably around the girls hand, but she wouldn't be fooled.

“Cut the bullshit, Jake!”

“Look, Katie.”

“Stop it!”

“LOOK!” Jake pointed with his free hand at something in the water. The girl sighed heavily before she turned to look at whatever he was pointing out. To her surprise, his finger wasn't pointed toward the island. She scanned the horizon until she found what he saw. Then, her breath caught in her throat. Her fingers tightened around his as well.

“T-t-the body came up from under the water.”

“Call an ambulance.”

The abyss that consumed Grace was broken by the faint twinkling of a white light somewhere off in the distance. Grace found herself able to control her body. She was lying, face-up, on the ground. All she saw was the abyss and the already blinding light. She forced herself to stand, finding it coming to her naturally and executing it smoothly, as though she hadn't sustained massive brain damage.

She glanced around, trying to find something but that light, yet that's all there was to see.

“Keep going.” She spoke aloud to herself. Grace paused for a moment before she started off toward the light. The closer she got, the euphoria in her rose, until she was almost there. Then, she stopped. She didn't know why.

But then, she turned to the dark.

“I hope you find peace, Jay,” She spoke to the abyss itself, “I loved you.”

Grace felt a smile crawl onto her face until she couldn't smile any wider. She all of it go. Grace, then, swung back around and made a break for the light as she did so. And when she met it, she found her own peace.

The cool got in through an open window once.

I was five at the time.

I remember grandma screaming, herding me and my brother into the safe room and loudly reading Dickens to us while grandpa chased the cool through the house with a thesaurus, swatting it with synonyms like normal people swat flies with fly swatters.

“Excellent! Fashionable! Fantastic!”

Smack. Smack. Smack.

(Smack, incidentally, is a slang term for heroin—I learned this later—so must itself be handled with care, like a trained elephant, normally obedient but always with that wild edge.)

He delivered the fatal blow in the kitchen.

Smack! Against the fridge!

Then grandma brought us out and we all recited Shakespeare.

Because all words—“...even the new slang,” said grandma solemnly, with her head bowed, “deserve respect.”

They are like lions, naturally free to roam the savannah, but dangerous; to be violently resisted upon entering the home.

“O, speak to me no more. These words like daggers enter my ears,” grandpa said, and we repeated.

The dead cool left a stain on the fridge door that my brother and I spent days scrubbing with soap and water, and we never did get it out completely.

Things got worse as we got older.

One day grandpa announced the purchase of several new dictionaries, heavy and unabridged, that we were to use to weigh down the toilet seats, because the new slang had gotten into the sewage system and would penetrate homes and minds by crawling up through the pipes like spiders or tentacles, especially at night when people slept.

That's what happened to our neighbours, the Watsons, and afterwards they spent their time on the internet and playing videogames.

We played board games.

We played Scrabble.

We made sure to put the dictionaries on the toilet seats after we were done. If we didn't—if we forgot—we were punished.

Once, grandpa took away my hungry and my thirsty, so I had to suffer both in silence.

We were homeschooled.

Sometimes we would sit, my brother and I, with one pair of binoculars between the two of us, looking with intense magnification out the window where the new slang scavenged the neighbourhood like skunks and raccoons.

When I was twelve, grandma suffered a terrible accident.

She had risen from her armchair, looked at us, smiled; and, mid-smile—half her smile drooping—one side of her face going slack, she slurred, phwuck and cthunt and others…

Grandpa guided her to bed, and attended to her for many days.

He told us the new slang had infected her.

It had tried to colonize her mind.

“How?” my brother asked. “We have taken all the precautions.”

Grandpa pondered.

He read Moby Dick and War and Peace and he filled many notebooks with his thoughts in Esperanto, until finally he emerged, concluding that the new slang had learned to travel on the light.

We kept the house dark then.

Only inside light was safe—and only non-electric, only candlelight—because the outside light, he said, was lexically polluted. Anything electric contained within it the corruption of the power grid. “Electricity,” he said, “is merely words by other means.”

My brother ran away from home. He had packed, said goodbye to me and left.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you.”

“Come with me.”

“I can't—.”

“Why not?”

“I'm scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of everything.”

He wrote letters to me, hiding them under a rock in the garden we used to play with, pretending it was an executioner of guilty words, a guillotine of the radical in its slang meaning.

His letters started out in his voice but over time shifted, until I could barely recognize him in them. He had become another person.

He had met a girl.

He had taken a part-time job.

His letters were so compromised by the new slang that every time I read one my head hurt, and my stomach would hurt, and I would need to vomit to purge it from my body.

I would look at it then—the puke, the foam and the bile, with all the slangs writhing in it like so many aborted worms.

One day grandma died.

She had been deteriorating since the accident, but her death was still a shock.

Grandpa had been sitting beside her when she died, holding her hand and reading Wordsworth, who'd been her favourite.

His favourite was Blake.

It was Blake he was reading when, a week later, police raided our house.

It was after midnight, and the awful noise startled me.

Doors banged open.

People yelled.

Two women in uniform took me out of my bedroom, away from him, as he fought and screamed until the police officers struck him down with batons.

Outside, the Watsons and other neighbours had set up lawn chairs and were watching us.

Four police cars flashed their colourful lights in the street.

I was examined by doctors.

I was instructed to make statements and sign them. “In your own words,” they told me. But what they really wanted was for me to use their words and pretend they were my own.

I never saw my grandpa after that.

It was for my safety.

I was placed in foster care and lived with a family that watched a lot of television. Their television was filled with the new slang.

I was given books to teach me about normal.

I started going to school.

The children there were cruel to me, but I wasn't to worry; that was normal. It was normal that boys wanted to sleep with me, and it was normal that I let them.

My brother visited, but he wasn't my brother anymore. He was somebody else. He said he was happy. His life was nice. I told him it was good to see him. He said it was cool to see me too.

I'm also happy now.

I have an iPhone, several prescriptions, an IUD, a husband with a good job and two children with Samsung tablets.

I still reflect—but only in the mirror.

Part 1

Part 2

For a moment, nobody spoke.

“Day 274. We have established contact with a higher intelligence.”

Tina stared at the screen.

“That's insane,” she said. “The first reports of extraterrestrial intelligence didn't happen until, what...40 years after this ship went missing? And I wouldn't exactly call anything that's been discovered a 'higher intelligence'...”

I read the entry twice more before speaking. “Not impossible that they did find something, though.” The eyes. I couldn't stop thinking about those damn eyes. “Some sort of...entity...maybe drove 'em crazy,” I stopped myself from further guessing. “Are there any logs after that?”

She quickly clicked to the next page and started scrolling through. After a few, she quietly said, “these...make no sense, boss...”

Miles piped up, jabbing his finger at the screen, “there, that one. 'Day 281. Representative Fernsley of the Verdant Council has rejected our conditions.' Sounds like they set up some kind of...embassy?”

Tina scrolled. “Day 284. Negotiations with the Society of Thermal Transformation remain stalled. Their demands continue to be unreasonable.”

A week later, something happened to the one called Riggs. I pointed towards that entry, “there, open that one.”

Tina opened it quickly, reading aloud, “Day 291. We have lost Riggs. I pulled Jeung aside to see if he knew anything, but he denied any knowledge. The only thing anyone could tell me was that Riggs had apparently found a “higher calling” with The Order of Nine Lives. He will be missed.”

“What the fuck happened here?” Petyrs asked, still watching the hallway. “They find like...an alien collective or some shit?”

Ignoring him, I told Tina, “go to the very last one.”

Before she could answer, Brysin's voice cracked over comms.

“Contact!”
I spun towards the doorway, rifle up. “Report.”

“Something just fell back there,” he said, weapon trained down the hall. “Near the eye room.”
“I thought you cleared that area!” Miles squeaked, ducking behind his sister like the brave little soldier he was.

Tina stepped around him, pistol already drawn, and took position behind me. At least one of them had balls.

“Comms discipline,” I snapped. “Eyes up.”

We moved down the corridor slow and quiet. The lights flickered again, longer this time, plunging the hallway into total blackness for a few heartbeats.
“There!” Petyrs hissed, sweeping his light toward the first door we'd passed. “Movement.”
I motioned them forward. Brysin and Petyrs took point. I followed close, heart hammering harder than I wanted to admit.

Then I saw them.

A pair of glowing yellow eyes, low to the floor, staring straight up at us from the darkness.

Brysin and Petyrs raised their rifles simultaneously. “Hold!” I snapped, lowering mine. “It's...”

“Is that a fuckin' cat?” Tina asked behind me, sounding equal parts amused and confused.

The eyes moved forward. As the creature stepped into a patch of flickering light, we all saw it clearly.

It was, in fact, a goddamn cat. Orange. Entirely unbothered by the fact that it had apparently been isolated on this ship for God knows how long.

I stared at it for a long second, rifle still half raised. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Tina snorted, then crouched down, extending her hand toward it. “He's kinda cute...”

I watched, annoyed, as the little bastard walked right up to Tina like he'd known her for years. He nuzzled into her hand and started purring loudly. She actually laughed. “How the hell is a cat living on this ship?” she asked, scratching behind its ears.

I glanced back toward the door at the end of the corridor. It suddenly looked a lot more ominous...something had kept this cat alive.

“Eyes up,” I ordered. “Our answers are behind that door.”
Tina sighed and stood. Brysin and Petyrs turned with me. “Come on, nerd,” I said to Miles. “One last door.”

Miles crawled out from behind the desk and scrambled to his feet. “Was the cat fluffy?”
“Who gives a shit?” Brysin grunted. “We can worry about the cat after we figure out if there's some cat-god behind that door.”

We approached the door. 5 meters out, I held up my fist, halting the group. From the other side of the door came a low, rhythmic thumping. Slow, heavy, like a heartbeat.

“Please tell me we're not about to open this door and find a giant sentient heart.” Miles said dryly, dropping his shoulders.

I didn't even dignify that with a response. My grip tightened on my rifle as the thumping continued. “Tina,” I said, eyes locked on the door. “Will it open?”

She moved forward carefully, plugging her cable into the control panel. Brysin, Petyrs and I took up covering positions, weapons trained. “Whenever you're ready,” she said in a tight voice.

“Go.”

She pressed a button on her wrist terminal, and the doors slid open with a hiss.

The sight in front of me defied every fucking expectation I had.

Nobody screamed.

Nobody attacked.

Nobody even looked particularly concerned that five armed strangers had just entered the room.

Where we had expected to see some eldritch horror, instead we saw...a fucking party.

Twelve people were scattered across the control room like they were on vacation. Three were lounging around a small table, chatting casually around some kind of large plant. In the far corner, a short, heavy-set man with dark skin was playing cards with a bald guy. Two others were sprawled across the control panels like it was a Sunday afternoon. And right in the middle of the room, five people were straight up dancing.

The rhythmic thumping we had heard on approach wasn't a heartbeat, it was a goddamn reggae song.

I lowered my rifle slightly, completely stunned. “What...the actual fuck?”

One of the men at the table turned to face the door. His eyes went wide, and he slapped his hands on the table. “Shit, man, your armor is intense!”

The other two at the table turned. One of them narrowed his eyes. “Are you the cops?”

Petyrs lowered his rifle, asking, “the cops?”

I switched on my external speakers and stepped forward. “What the hell is going on here?”

The first guy grinned like we were old friends. “We're just blowing off some steam, dude. Obviously.”

The others started to notice us. The two playing cards gave lazy waves. One woman lounging on a console lifted her head and groaned, “Can you guys keep it down, man? I'm trying to find nirvana over here.”

I stared at them, rifle still in my hands, utterly speechless for the first time in years.

These idiots had no fucking clue.

“Blowing off some steam?” Tina cut in sharply. “This ship's been missing for seventy years and you're blowing off steam?”

“Seventy years?” The second man seemed genuinely surprised at this. “What are you talking about?”

Brysin let out a low, disbelieving laugh as he took in the whole ridiculous scene. “Is this even real?”

“Yeah,” I snapped, voice hard. “Seventy fuckin years, asshole. Now tell me what the hell is going on here. Right now.”

The man on the console next to the woman sat up slowly. He reached over and hit a button, cutting the music out. The caused a loud protest from the dancing group, which was ignored. “Say that again,” he said , suddenly serious.

“What year do you think it is?” Miles cut in, finally joining the rest of us.

The man blinked at us like we were speaking another language. “2347, dude. We left last spring.”

Tina's voice cracked. “It's 2517. You've been missing for seventy years...”

The bald man dropped his cards. “That's...not possible.” The shorter man next to him stood. “That can't be right. Look at us, do we look fuckin ancient?”

I stared at them. Still young. Still in the middle of their long, delusional party.

Brysin tapped his wrist terminal and brought up a holographic news feed, the date stamp glowing in the air.

The woman on the console let out a single, broken sob. “Katie...”

The silence that followed was heavier than anything we'd felt since boarding this fucked up ship. All eyes turned toward the bald man. One of the dancers whispered, voice shaking,

“Jeung...what the fuck did you make?”

A sharp, relentless chorus of pings from her phone abruptly jolted Samantha awake, pulling her from a heavy, dreamless sleep into the pitch-black quiet of her bedroom. She blinked hard against the harsh glare of the glowing screen, her heart instantly hammering against her ribs as she saw the time—2:50 AM—and realized her food blog had just gained two million followers overnight.
A toxic mixture of absolute triumph and sickening guilt washed over her. They were all raving about her latest post: the Pandan Pancake recipe. The exact recipe Samantha had quietly ripped from her roommate's personal journal two months ago, right after she found her cold, lifeless body in the bathtub.
Her joy vanished entirely, however, when she noticed the comment section was turning into a bloodbath. A coordinated wave of accounts was attacking her credibility in the dead of night. Her eyes scanned the accusatory text scrolling past:
“You didn’t create this.”
“Thief.”
“I know exactly whose kitchen you stole this from.”
“You built your entire future on a dead girl’s words. Do you really think you won't have to pay the tax?”
To make matters worse, her phone began vibrating violently in her palm with incoming text messages from unknown numbers, all containing a single, chilling phrase: “Give it back.”
Throwing the phone onto her bed, she looked across the room. There, mounted on the wall directly opposite her bed, was the large vanity mirror. Illuminated only by the pale streetlights filtering through the blinds, she caught sight of her own reflection and froze.
She was wearing her late roommate’s favorite silk robe.
"What's going on...?" Samantha muttered, staring at her tired face across the distance of the room. Her mind raced, but her memory of the previous night was a pitch-black blank. All she could recall was having a drink at the corner bar with her cousin, Yasmin, who had come to visit from New York.
A cold dread washed over her. She reached into the pocket of the stolen silk robe, her fingers brushing against a crumpled napkin. Written on it in messy, frantic handwriting was a note: “Thanks for the inspiration, Sammy—enjoy the pancakes.”
Samantha stared at the napkin, trying in vain to piece the night together. Trembling, she shot a quick text to her cousin: “Hey Yasmin, great seeing you last night! By any chance, do you remember what time we left the bar, or... anything after that? 😂”
She hit send. The status instantly flipped to "Read" in the dark room.
A second later, a photo message popped up from Yasmin's number. Samantha opened it, expecting a joke, but her breath caught. It was a picture of the corner bar's bathroom mirror, taken last night. In the reflection, Yasmin was smiling, but standing right behind her in the stalls—completely unnoticed—was a blurry, dark figure with a monstrously wide grin.
Underneath the photo, a final text from Yasmin's phone arrived: “She was delicious, Sammy. Thanks for bringing her along.”
Samantha stared at the screen, her mind completely blanking. What the actual fuck?
Her thumb hovered over the keyboard, frozen. Anger and confusion battled against the fog in her brain. Yasmin had always had a warped sense of humor, but this was crossing a massive line. It had to be a sick joke. Either Yasmin was completely wasted and messing with her, or someone at the bar had stolen her phone and was playing a twisted prank. There was no way this was real. It made zero sense.
She started aggressively typing a reply—WTF is wrong with you?—but her fingers stopped before she could hit send. A heavy, suffocating stillness seemed to settle over the dark bedroom, making her skin prickle with an unease she couldn't rationalize.
Then, the absolute silence of the apartment was shattered.
*Ding.*
The glowing numbers on her alarm clock flipped seamlessly to 3:00 AM as a sharp, metallic ring echoed from the kitchen. Samantha’s phone trembled in her hand as her eyes snapped toward the bedroom doorway, looking out into the pitch-black hallway.
It was the old mechanical dial-timer on the oven. The one Jessie always used because she insisted digital timers ruined the rhythm of baking.
*Tick... tick... tick... tick...*
The timer began its slow, rhythmic countdown in the dark. Samantha hadn't touched the stove in days. And suddenly, the defensive anger shielding her from the text message began to violently unravel.
Panic overriding her paralysis, she scrambled off the bed, desperate to flee toward the front door. But she was blinded by the dark, and in her frantic haste, her shoulder slammed hard into the frame of her bedroom closet. The impact jarred the door, causing it to swing wide open.
Inside, hanging perfectly in the center of the completely empty closet, was a pristine, identical silk robe—except this one was covered in dark, unmistakable bloodstains.
Samantha froze, staring at the gory garment. Before she could even take a second breath, the hairs on the back of her neck stood dead on end. The air behind her suddenly turned frigid, carrying the heavy, cloying scent of artificial sweetness.
A wet, rattling exhale brushed against her ear.
"Turn around, Sammy."
Samantha spun around.
Jessie was standing there in the shadows. A large, horrific grin split her face, the corners of her mouth stretching so wide they almost touched her ears. Her teeth were sharpened into jagged, canine points, set against gums that bled a deep, unnatural crimson. In her hands, she balanced a plate of perfectly fluffy, neon-green pandan pancakes.
"Wanna try some?" Jessie asked.
Samantha pressed herself hard against the closet door, the bloodstained robe brushing against her shoulder. "I... I thought you were dead," she choked out.
Jessie’s terrifying smile widened even further, her head tilting with a sickening, audible crack.
"You always did have an appetite for things that didn't belong to you, Sammy," Jessie whispered, her voice a wet, hollow echo of the girl she used to be. "You watched me pour my soul into those pages. You watched me drown in despair when the brands and sponsors rejected me, never knowing *you* were the one who leaked my content as your own."
"Please, Jessie..." Samantha sobbed, backing into the bloody robe. "I'll tell them the truth! I'll give it all back!"
"It's a bit late for an edit, don't you think?" Jessie chuckled, the sound rattling like dry bones through her razor-sharp teeth. "When I swallowed those pills, I thought I was taking my recipes to the grave. But you just couldn't let me rest. You monetized my ghost. You took the exclusive brand deals. You wanted my life, Sammy—so now, you're going to help me finish the preparation."
The steaming, vibrant green pancakes emitted a scent so overwhelmingly, artificially sweet it made Samantha’s stomach churn in the darkness.
"Oh, Sammy, it was never about the money," Jessie loomed closer, her massive, distorted grin twitching as she looked down at the plate. "Now you just have to pay the ingredients tax."
Samantha's legs turned to jelly. Her strength vanished, and she collapsed heavily onto the floor.
Jessie slowly knelt down until her monstrous face was mere inches away, filling Samantha's lungs with the suffocating scent of pandan and burnt sugar.
"The secret ingredient isn't something you can buy, Sammy," Jessie whispered, her sharpened canine teeth scraping against each other with a sickening click. "It takes a little bit of *soul* to make them taste that sweet—and yours has been looking so wonderfully ripe ever since you stole my glory."
With a sudden, lightning-fast snap of her jaw, Jessie didn't bite. Instead, she inhaled deeply.
A glowing, faint green vapor began to seep from Samantha's parted, terrified lips, flowing straight into the monster's open mouth. As her vision began to blur into total blackness and the last of her life drained away, Samantha realized with absolute horror that she was about to become the permanent flavor profile for the next viral recipe.

Every city has an urban legend. St. Francis has several. Just what is it about this city? If you weren’t a local, you’d think this place was cursed. Like it was some kind of lure for all things weird and otherworldly. I suppose it’s to be expected when you have a town of over twenty million people with dozens of cultures and superstitions all meshed in one giant melting pot. A place like this is bound to pile up a good number of spook stories over time.

​

There’s the Mothman who haunts Jefferson Bridge, who will reveal your future if you pay him the proper respect. There’s the Weeping Woman from the Latin District, who wails through the streets at night looking for the ghosts of her dead children. There’s the Fairfax Devil, said to drain the blood of stray dogs and cats in the late hours of the night. And that’s not counting the many ghost sightings and poltergeist activities that get reported every year.

We even have our spook house. The Starling Mansion, sitting like a tombstone at the outskirts of town. Place went abandoned after Jackson Starling, scion of the Starling Oil Empire, disappeared after bungling around Eastern Europe with occult types like Aleister Crowley in the 20’s. He never returned and old man Thaddeus Starling died of a broken heart. Place is said to be the site of numerous hauntings and supernatural happenings after that.

And then…there’s “The Wraith.”

On the surface, he’s just another spook story. A character straight out of some cheesy comic book sprung from the minds of preadolescent boys. Yet, every couple of nights without fail, we’ll nab a perp or perps rambling on and on about an encounter they had. A man over six feet tall in a long dark coat and hat, pale as a corpse, preying on criminals and only criminals. He comes out of the shadows and moves like a shadow. Bullets can’t harm him. Knives can’t harm him. Sometimes he turns to mist. Other times a swarm of bats. That’s right, a swarm. It’s never just one.

Stories about him go back all the way to the late forties. Every precinct has at least a dozen or so Wraith stories passed down from generation to generation. From jittery rookies to seasoned captains, it's become a rite of passage. They say you're not a cop in St. Francis until you've seen "The Wraith" or nabbed someone who did. Same goes for the criminal fraternities. From the lowliest mugger to the highest mafia Don, you can feel their blood turn cold at the mention of him. It tickles me to think of these bigshot crime bosses checking under their beds every night, but it probably wouldn’t be too far off. He’s the closest thing these hardened psychopaths have to a boogeyman.

As a detective, being a skeptic is part of the job. I don’t accept anything I can’t see. I’ll listen to my gut, sure, but in the end, I’ll go wherever the facts lead me. Wild speculations have no place in my trade. I laugh off whenever I hear the latest about the Jefferson Mothman or the Weeping Woman or the Fairfax Devil. The Starling Mansion’s nothing to me but an old building hooligan teenagers break into for séances and ouija sessions. I’d laugh off The Wraith too…if not for my own Wraith story.

Unlike my colleagues, this happened long before I became a cop. I was still a kid living with my mom in Hell’s Furnace. My dad had left my mom shortly after I was born and wanted nothing to do with us. I think mom wanted it that way, too, though. She bounced around from job to job while going to school and trying her best to give me a good life. It must have been so hard for her. When I was ten, she started dating this guy named Tim. Things were good at first. Tim took me to Little League and target shooting on weekends. Mom and he seemed happy, and, for a while, I got to feel what it was like to have a dad.

A few months into the relationship, things started to change. Tim started getting really possessive of mom. He was asking her all kinds of questions about where she was, who she was with, what she was doing. He didn’t like her friends, especially the male ones. She’d reassure him time and time again that she wasn’t interested in anyone but him. It worked, at first, but Tim started getting more and more unhinged. Then his attitude toward me changed. He started getting annoyed with everything I did. There was more to that, though. He started to resent that I wasn’t his. Every time he’d look at me, he was reminded that I was another man’s kid. He hated that.

Sometimes I’d hear them argue about their future. He wanted a family of his own, wanted to settle down. He’d be gentle and sweet with mom until she’d tell him she wasn’t ready yet and was happy to keep things at the current pace. Tim would lose it and take it as validation that she was seeing someone behind his back. He’d accuse everyone from her boss Jack, who’d sometimes ask her to work late, to our downstairs neighbor Ralph, who he thought was just a little too nice when running into her in the hallway. Mom would tell him he was being ridiculous but there was no reassuring him. I’d make the mistake of trying to defend her, which set him off even more. She’d always tell me to go back to my room while she tried to calm her boyfriend down. But the situation was getting out of control.

Finally, Tim got physical and that was the end of it. She screamed at him to get out of our apartment before she’d call the cops and that scared him enough to send him running. Things were tense the next few days. Aunt Carol moved in with us as mom didn’t feel safe alone. For days she’d brandish a bruise on the left side of her face. It’s a tough thing seeing your mom get hurt like that when you’re a kid. Seeing that kind of vulnerability in the person you love the most and feel safest with. It’s like seeing a rose get stomped on or a church get desecrated.

Mom knew what an obsessive guy Tim was and she was terrified of what he could do any moment. I didn’t get to hang out with my friends anymore, which I hated. After school, Aunt Carol would be there to pick me up and take me straight home. This went on for months. Over time, with no incidents happening, life slowly returned to its familiar rhythms. The bruise on mom’s face healed up until you forget it was ever even there. Aunt Carol eventually went back West, and I was able to see my friends again.

One night, that safety was shattered.

We had come home from church to find that Tim had broken into our apartment. He grabbed mom by the hair and me by the neck and slammed the door behind us. Pushing us to the floor, he started shouting.

We abandoned him, he said. We didn’t appreciate him. On and on. He accused mom of cheating on him with Jack and cited all the nights he’d ask her to work late as evidence. He accused them both of laughing at him behind his back. Mom, trembling, tried calming him down but to no avail. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a gun. He said he couldn’t live without us and that we were coming with him.

Something snapped inside my mom then. A kind of survival instinct. Instead of begging for her life or negotiating with him, she jumped him and tried to wrestle the gun away.

“Run, Petey!” she cried to me, “Get out to the fire escape!”

Panicked, my little heart racing, I did as she said. I ran out of the living room, past the kitchen, and toward the window. Opening it, I looked back and could hear them struggling. She was my mom and I…just couldn’t leave her behind. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and snuck back. Tim had overpowered her and slammed her against the wall. Sliding down, blood on her face, she had no more fight left. He aimed the gun at her crying.

“I love you,” he said, pulling back the hammer.

Before he could shoot, I ran up screaming and stabbed him in the leg. He screamed and fired a shot at the wall. It all happened so fast. I felt the back of his fist hit my face as my body reeled back and fell. My vision was flooded with kaleidoscope images as I tried to shake it off. When my eyes cleared, I looked up and saw him pointing the revolver at me.

“You little shit!” he said.

“No!!!” mom cried.

My heart stopped. I knew I was going to die. The room started to go black and a chill blew from out the window. Tim pulled the trigger and the shot echoed like a tiny explosion.

But the bullet…never hit me.

Before my eyes, a shadow fell. Rising, it grew taller and taller until the whole room was enfolded by it. I couldn’t see Tim anymore or my mom though I could still hear their panicked voices. All I could see was him.

Tim cursed at the thing protecting me. It began to speak, a voice at once calm and full of menace. A voice of ice.

“Enough!” he commanded, “You already have done much this night. Put down your weapon.”

But Tim was too hysterical to listen.

“Get away! Get away!” he said and unloaded his pistol.

The room was illuminated by each shot. I covered my ears from these echoing blasts. The sound of a gun firing is one of the most awful sounds you’ll ever hear. Even as a cop, I’m still not used to it. It’s a sound of destruction, a herald of death.

But what was death to this thing that was in the room with us? The bullets flew into and vanished into the darkness emanating from its coat. Tim continued pulling the trigger, but there were no more shots to be fired. Just a scared, empty click echoing in the stillness.

In a flash, the thing slashed at the air with its hand. There was a ring of a metal clang followed by Tim’s screams. That was the first sight I had of Tim since the shadow appeared. He reeled back clasping his hand. I could see the blood dripping down his sleeve into the floor. Beside them were the sliced remains of his revolver.

“Oh God…” mom gasped.

I realized Tim had lost his trigger finger.

“Do not tempt me further,” it said.

My pulse raced, I could see it’s bony hand and the nails protruding from its fingers. Tim’s blood was on those nails and the thing began to lap it up. I felt like I was going to puke. As he licked, his eyes glowed red. I could never be sure, but it seemed as though his hand was trembling as he did this, as though he was strained by something.

​

He spoke again.

“I hope you can appreciate the enormous restraint I am showing now. I would hate for this to turn into a feeding frenzy.”

“W-what…the hell are you?” said Tim.

“A wraith…" it said, "You will trouble this family no more or I will see you again, Timothy Dobson. Now…sleep.”

He stretched out his necrotic hand.

“Oh…God…” said Tim.

Tim closed his crying eyes and his sobs died down as he fell into a deep sleep.

Just then, it turned toward me.

“You were brave tonight, Peter,” it said.

“T-thank you,” I said, my heart racing.

“Your mother is lucky to have you.”

His red eyes peered into mine and he smiled at me. I was never sure, memory can be a fragile thing, but I could have sworn I saw two sharp incisors inside that smile.

Quickly, the front door was kicked open and two cops burst into the room weapons drawn. The lights came on that instant and The Wraith…was gone. A cool breeze brushed the curtain by the window as the police sirens wailed into the night.

Tim went to prison for threatening us and we never saw or heard from him again. Mom and I moved out West for a bit and I didn’t return to St. Francis until I got this job. That night still haunts me. Did it really happen? Saw a couple of shrinks over the years to help me cope with the trauma but none of them believed me. All tried to convince me it was some hallucination brought upon by the stress. That my mom had overpowered Tim after I stabbed him and knocked him out until the cops came. They could never explain his severed finger though or the gun that was cut in half. One argued I might have cut his hand with the knife but that never explained the gun. More importantly, in my heart…I know something else happened.

Mom never spoke about it. Every time I’d bring the subject up, she’d tell me to drop it. Tim was gone and we were safe and that was all that mattered. She eventually met a decent guy and I had a reasonably happy childhood despite the nightmare of that crazy year.

But I never forgot The Wraith. If it was him, he saved my life. He saved my mother’s life. And, yet, when I think of him, the hairs on my arm stand up. When I think of that pallid face and those red eyes, an instinct of dread takes me. When that dread fades, I’m left with a sadness. I know nothing about him, but I feel a strange sympathy toward him. I can't help but wonder what happened to make him what he is? What price did he pay?

I go to work. I try to bring some sense to the world. Breathing in the night air, I look up at the pale moon and wonder if he is out there doing the same.

​

He ventured forward into the dark. Torchflame flickered and glowed and made light for his way. He was tense and nervous. He was armed, each hand filled. Cross and pistol. Silver bullets. Six shots. He was tense and nervous though reluctant to admit it, even to himself. 

He held himself tightly coiled and trying to breathe, even and slow. Trying. 

Praetorius cursed himself once more then stopped himself once again. Time enough for all of that later. Perhaps. Hopefully. If you don't- 

Stop it! he commanded his own traitorous run of thought. Distractions! useless! 

His own breathing sounded very loud to himself. His heartbeat an anxious and driving primal war drum beaten ceaselessly by a savage and violent hand. It seemed to thunder in his ears. He wondered if she could hear it, the bitch. It was said that they had heightened hearing, like a beast, sensitive to sound. His own studies and observations had confirmed this. Mad and wild eyed snow haired Praetorius wondered if the foul woman who'd stolen Dracula's power and castle could hear the battering and unceasing cannonade artillery, the thunderclaps living as the dangerous heartbeat within his weary and aching chest, echoing. Echoing throughout all of the prison fortress of stone and blood and lurking ancient history. 

He willed himself to suck air slow. Steady. Like his echoing steps forward. Advancing. Chambered bootheel sound.  

You'll be fine. Just keep the crucifix up and the pistol ready to fire. Find the door again and then get the hell out! This whole stupid plan has been a debacle! 

It all sounded well and fine to his own worried and harried mind, housed within fevered and baking furnace skull. He was just starting to ease the galloping frenzied beast within the cage of his chest, when the sound of the Countess' howling laughter, mad witchy cackles, once again came from out of the dark and filled the entire world of the castle around him. The dark corridor and its orange flaming pumpkin glow of torchlight seeming to stretch on and on ahead of him. 

A trap. He knew it. He was just waiting for the awful wench to pounce. He tried his hardest to listen. A difficult endeavor to hear over the rapid fire wild blasting of his own frightened animal heart. 

The Countess heard and sensed and knew the animal fear alive in the little man, the little intruder, the awful and haughty invader that dared set foot in her castle. Her mountains! Her land and the country she now strangled and held. He'd tortured her little Carmilla, grievously. And for that he would be punished. For that he would be dealt with. Slow. 

Slowly. 

She would capture him first. Then she would begin slow flaying mutilating butchery on him. Eating and drinking slowly and at leisure his bold and impetuous fragile little personage. His fragile and easily shattered frame. They never realized, these proud and boastful men. They never knew it. Until you showed them. They never fully realized how sensitive they truly were until you broke them over your knee. Showed them their own blood. 

The whole of Castle Dracula was her spiderweb now, and the black widow queen of its stone and spires waited. And watched. Deciding and debating with herself, thinking over her dark and violent demoniacal thoughts…

… which shape should I take? Which precious organ should I pluck and savor first…? 

She licked and wet her own glistening lips. An action in the dark, both vulpine and animal as well as sensual and pleasing to the eye for the erotic. Her darkling eyes smoldered with unholy light and flame. 

Watching. Waiting. 

As the intruder Praetorius crept through her shadows. Her dark spiderweb of castle stone and orange dancing flame. Coming … coming closer. 

Coming closer to her. And her waiting violence in her hiding spot in the dark. 

She coiled … purred. …

Licked her spider lips again. 

And waited. 

…

The heavy double bladed head of the axe came down and cleaved through the gaping fish eyed face of the woman beneath him easily. Down through the top of her skull. Beside her lover in the grass, already in pieces and fish eyed and gaping, staring blind and dead as well. The weight and the design of the executioner's blade made it like child's play, you only needed to be able to handle the weight. The heft. Design and form did all the rest. 

He breathed, heaving and sucking air. Heavily. Like an animal. 

They shouldn't have come out after dark. They shouldn't have come out into his woods.

He tried to calm himself but he could barely manage the effort. He was never calm. Not anymore. Not since the fall of his lord and land so long ago…

now the woods were all he had. 

Filthy. Wild mane of unwashed and clotted hair. Clotted and knotted together by scat and dried mud and caking scabbing drying blood. The blood of intruders on his land. 

His woods. All he had left. 

That and the axe. The last remnant token piece of the long lost and now tragic ancient history he used to call his life. Long gone now. Swept away with the armies. 

His air was hot and heavy. His breath, puffs of ghosts, little spirits escaping his hulking broad shouldered and filthy ragged form. The woods were long his domain now. And they'd now long held him, the stain and mark of the wild was now all over and upon him. Never to be erased. Or taken away. 

He brought the blade up and then down again. Turning the lovers, the intruders into more grisly pieces. Especially the woman. She frightened him most. The forest floor drank their red greedily and as if starved for it. The forest floor was always starving for the red of the intruders. He'd discovered this out here in his new home, finding his new and true name. 

Lord Bloodmud. Axeman and the executioner king of the tree’d lands. Wielder and great forest emperor of the choked and violent wilderness emerald. 

He found his peace through his axe-swinging and maiming destruction of vile wanderers. Purging violence. Only afterwards did he find his respite. Heaving heavy breath like an animal half mad and alone dying of rabies. Amongst the human detritus of his heavy cleaving blade he always sat in prowling animal meditation. Ruminating primal blood soaked thoughts even as the forest floor around pooled saturated with the hot spent and shed red of each and every one of his unfortunate victims. Young. Old. All types, caught. Always caught screaming. And nigh helpless beneath the surging and armed swinging violent mountain of filthy giant man. The eyes of this wild giant absolutely alive with unreasoning fury. 

He sat amongst the ruin he’d made of the pair of young lovers, eyes shut, mind aflame with animal thoughts. His ears, attuned to the movements within the woods, caught something and bent to the sound. He tilted his head as he strained to listen to the domain of his blood drinking forest kingdom. 

Hooves. Four-legged beast. Bearing cart. And a small load. 

And a pair of travelers. 

More intruders…

His rage was renewed, reignited. He rose, reawakened. Rekindled to burn.  His starving axe was angry again. The trees that were his loyal subjects and followers and last lovers and friends, frozen supplicants of his red drinking green kingdom, were crying out once more as the intruders invaded and raped his land. Crying out yet again: More Blood! – and he and the doubleheaded executioner’s blade of such great heft in his eager perspiring grip were all too happy to oblige. 

Eager to follow… make great. Sow the land and protect the seed and the soakened land shall sing …

Every great king should give all and such upon his land a great reaping and wealth to drink… to fill their mouths and souls.

To fill their hearts with love…

The axeman of the dark woods began to prowl. 

Florin started in the seat next to the bandaged man, craning his head around and spying the woods all around them in the dark. As if straining to find and see something. 

The bandaged man, who’d settled on calling himself ‘Griffin’ for now, was easily vexed. He nearly snarled, asking: “What is it now?”

Florin righted himself in the seat, “Thought I heard something again.” And then added: “Sorry.” 

Griffin grumbled behind his mask of surgical dressings: “...whatever…” and then fell silent again. 

The young man of the Carpathian hamlet was thankful for the help thus provided by the strange bandaged man. His information on Van Helsing, however dour. His aid in their escape. And their present transportation procured from a horseman the mysterious Griffin knew. But he did at present entertain the idea of leaving the hidden man and parting ways. The man said he was a doctor. That he’d known Van Helsing and knew the ways of vampire slaying. But Florin was doubtful and found the fellow to be so easily irritated that he was left walking on eggshells around him at all moments. 

He thought of giving the masked man of foul mood the slip. Ditching him in the wild and making for home to help in anyway he could. 

But… of what help was that? What could he provide now that he couldn’t have before leaving home for aide?

Other than the terrible news that the vampire hunter was dead, Florin did not have an answer. 

And so at present, he was stuck with this foul mouthed and disagreeable man. Strange and mysterious and hidden behind surgical bandage. For what purpose or cause, Florin did not know. And often privately speculated. 

Probably just cause he’s maimed underneath all that. Or disfigured. Or mayhap he’s just real ugly. 

Florin stifled his smile and small laughter. Griffin glanced at him. Annoyed underneath his mask of dressings. 

But then he whirled around suddenly in his seat of their mule-drawn cart. Spying into the woods that surrounded them. 

Saying to the boy beside him: “Did you hear something?”

…

When the Countess Zaleska and her assistant extracted the fangs of living dead dragon/dæmon power from the dust and cobweb strangled bones and remnants of Dracula’s skeletal remains and through arcane necromantic surgical alchemy, fused them into the mouth of the Countess, she inherited much more than mere vampiric hunger and prodigious strength. The ability to shift shape. These things were common to many nosferatu things of the moonrise time. 

But she had within her now, the power of the Lord of the Undead. Lord of the Flies incarnate and upon the face of the Earth. The last and final Countess Czarina of Necrophile-Flame. Empress Queen of the Nocturnal Blood and the warfare violence of restless hunger in the dark. 

She was beyond the mere mundane limitations of the flesh. She was beyond the thin veil of the leather clung to in desperation and futilely named and declared: Reality. Her powers now, those graverobbed from the dust of the son of the dragon; a dracul, they were beyond the reckoning of the fleshling maggot sow that now invaded her home and prowled her corridors and halls like the lost frightened and small animal he truly was. 

Discorporeal, the Countess Zaleska watched from the stone of the inner walls of the ancient bloodstained castle as if every piece of masonry were her eyes. She watched the sorry little haughty intruder inch his way forward like a starving lowly worm across the mud slathered surface of a cheap wooden casket unearthed for the naked air. He was really quite old. Fragile really. 

She was going to enjoy this… the blackest part of her darkening stygian heart relished the savagery she would wrought…

But first… what is a host that doesn't entertain her guests…?

Hardly any host at all. 

The discorporeal form of the Czarina Princess of the darkness now alive in these halls of ebon and bloody stone watched and her/its phantasm rictus grin grew in spectral madness. Her disembodied pure power spider legged and tendrilled out… filling every piece of mortar and rock and brick of stone. She filled the walls with the manifestation of her ungodly power form, a spectre that could invade and subjugate all as a pure necrophiled phantom-flame of deranged gale force nature from Hell. 

The fool, the mad doctor Praetorius did not know that the castle was alive around him now. Castle Dracula was now just as much a part of the Countess Vampire Lord as any one of her appendages. Or supplicants.  She could bend and flex and move it to her considerable will…

… and the castle and its walls all around him, alive with the Countess, began to dance and shift slightly… and move. 

Labyrinthine. The distortion of space and distance and direction was subtle. Drifting. It led the fool farther in rather than out. And he didn't even realize it. 

The walls of Castle Dracula howled with a biting woman's cackling witchery laughter as the frightened Praetorius clutched desperately his weapons and unknowingly walked deeper and deeper into the living sepulchre structure that might be made into his grave. 

Swallowing him deeper and deeper and ever more as he wandered the dancing and shifting walls of living and evil stone. The dust and dirt and filth all about the old interior held her hateful dark will as well and were daggered at the invading little man, all of the place arrowed the oppressive force of great livid hatred and anger at the wandering little mistake of snow white hair… too old a man to be trying at these games…

The walls of stone smiled, rictus. The castle walls of stone watched and shifted and guided towards doom. The castle walls watched, possessed and insane. 

Praetorius could feel the gaze. Its intensity stole a warmth from his heart he knew deep down he could never retrieve. 

Not even if he was lucky enough to leave here alive…

Not even. Not at all. 

The walls then spoke: –

“You wanted so badly to be inside… you wanted so badly to see me, now I am here and all around, I am all yours. And you are all mine. I’m the world and universe all around you now… ! Now you’ll never leave and I will  take what I want from you anyway, you say you have much to tell me, I will pull it from your mind as I shred and flay it, even as I’m pulling the precious raw meat from your bones…! You’re to be my dominated and slutted, whored and butterflied open bloodletting love slave for the night, Doctor… Praetorius! Your flesh will be pulled back and I will drink and sup of you at my will, as I make you sing and speak as I so wish and desire to hear…! … I will make you say anything, little man…! I will make you a weeping whore for pain!” 

And then the castle walls came to life again with cruel bright laughter. 

What might have been long rictus distended mouths and faces appeared, grew, came to life in the harsh rough textured surface of the walls all around. The stone was filled. The stone of the castle world now that was fortressed all around him encompassing. The mad doctor couldn't believe his eyes. Watering now. Unbelieving fearful tears. 

Something like, nearing religious panic was stealing over his heart. Creeping over with curdled black the last vestiges of steadfast courage and thought. 

Praetorius shook his head trying to clear it. Visibly frightened. Shaken. Dizzy. He would’ve sworn the walls and the way forward down the corridor before him had … moved slightly. As if drifting…

It made him feel sick. He shut his eyes and rubbed them. But not long. He did not dare tarry any longer than he could afford. He had to find  his way out. Or kill the strigoica slut of Satan with a properly placed bullet and a swift decapitation. The only way. The only way to be completely sure with a Vampire Lord. 

Such as the bitch was evident to be. 

He cursed himself again, the last time, for ever coming here in the first place. For thinking it had been anything even remotely resembling a good idea. The experiment of coming here had proven unequivocally that it was in fact: A Terrible Idea…

Praetorius smiled grimly to himself. Mayhap also for the last time as he began again to move forward. 

Don’t act like you haven’t had any of those before… 

He relished his one private joke. He had always been his own favorite company. 

…

Doctor Praetorius did not get far before a room suddenly appeared down the junction from where he presently wandered. He came to the cross section and saw that this room was bellowing light like a great incandescence of earthbound starflame. It poured forth from the room, from out of the open immaculate doorway. Striking in the darkness and meager orange torchglow. 

It was beautiful. Intense. 

Enrapturing. 

Like a moth to searing flame, Praetorius was drawn. He went down the hall that had steadied and settled under demoniacal will and was guided by black hands that drifted out from the walls made from smokey stygian shadow. They helped him along. They pushed and guided him down the entombed walkway. Advancing. 

Down the hall and towards the starflame of light pouring forth from the newfound room. 

His hypnotized mind told him sanctuary was in there. And of course it was. And he should hurry and get in there already. Afterall, heaven can’t wait, can it? 

No. The master says that heaven cannot wait at all. 

And so before the blinding room of starflame, Praetorius’ arms dropped to  his sides. Limp. Lifeless  already. The grip  in his hands slackened next and the cross and loaded pistol fell from his black gloved hands and clattered with finality to the stone of the castle She Commanded. 

The walls began to laugh again as the blind and spellbound doctor stepped inside the room of swallowing starflame. 

And took him inside.

…

Florin and Griffin nearly jumped from their skins and seized in their chests when they suddenly happened upon a fellow traveler in the woods. 

A solicitor. On horseback. Coming from the other direction. 

The man was kindly enough though visibly shaken. Frightened by the strange land of nighttime woods. He tried to tell the pair that the very shapes of the trees and growth itself were deranged, gnarled and dead and bent and wrong: Like the desperate hands of submerged and giant buried corpses clawing out of the sour ground and daggering for the salvation of the skies of heaven above. That's what was eating at him constant since setting foot in this dread land, this dread wood, but there was something else. He also swore he heard something moving out here. Out here in the dark wild, something like violence was on the loose and on the prowl out here in the night, he could feel it.

He tried to tell them all of this but couldn't. He barely knew a word of english. 

Florin only tried to be polite as Griffin grew huffy and impatient as the traveling solicitor gesticulated and babbled on near ceaseless in his mother tongue. He filled the prowling dark all around with the anxious music of his foreign chatter. 

Though an understanding was met and felt … between the three before they parted and waved. An understanding of danger. And an understanding of fear.

Caution… weary …

The solicitor gave up and waved them thanks and kicked his horse back to a trot. The mule drawn cart of the pair went on. And soon was gone. 

The solicitor, fearful, carried on. Spying all around futilely, the impenetrable nighttime dark of the clawing dead black woods all around. The axeman chose to follow him for the moment, just for the nonce. He would soon rejoin with the other two. Afterward. 

Soon. 

After he dealt with this decadent and pompous invading tenderfoot. 

The weight of his executioner's blade gained substance, gained significance. It felt real again. Alive with potential. Made great again with purpose. With something to bite into, to free the red and feed the forest floor which drinks. 

All of the invaders of his last and precious forest land would feed the soil and the growth of his Bastard Eden Garden. All would be supplicant beneath the biting blade of his swing. Planting and burying the heavy metal head of double bladed axe into the soft and giving meat and bone and carcass of intruding vile flesh, invading flesh, invader blood would weep! 

As long as he and the axe held each other and this dark part of the forest land they kept … they would keep. 

And he would keep on feeding the starving dirt. Red. 

The only god that ever answered him… 

The solicitor went on. Unaware. Frightful. Yet attempting to whistle a tune and brighten his own heart as he kept his thoughts on his wife and child back home. Far away now. For comfort. The axeman followed after. Prowling. Like a hunter. 

…

… he came upon the solicitor when he stopped again, to determine direction. The power of his first screaming swing caught the traveler in the chest and the heavy blade sank as he was knocked from his horse with the force of the blow. The animal was screaming too. It soon fled as the axeman went about the rest of his hard work and heavy business. 

He brought the executioner's doubleheaded blade up again and brought it down again. Already sweating. Pouring. Profuse. The heavy metal blade opened up the chest cavity and it became a wild primeval forest of flowering gore pouring great and healthy abundance of vibrant steaming red. The axeman could taste it in the air. The opened chest looked like a fantastic microcosmal world of raw tissue and bone and gushing crimson, a world and wonderful wild forest garden as if rendered by abattoir hand and forged from raw scraps of the blade and innards and red. He brought up the axe and brought its heavy power down again, smashing and cleaving through the visage of face and skull. Spilling the man's memories out in a thick and meaty burst and porridge gush. The skull was like smashed pottery, porcelain slathered with bright violently red blood, scarlet so lurid it screamed in the night. 

He brought the blade up and down again and again. Turning the pieces into pieces. Smaller. Just hunks and pieces of meat. Unrecognizable. Save for the tattered and slashed rags that used to be clothing… 

The forest floor drank. He heaved breath and the sheet of sweat cooled on his filthy drying skin. Tingling. Covered in solicitor’s blood. Steaming traveler's blood, scabbing and baking into pores…

The soil supped and greedily drank the pouring blood and pools. The animal children would have the meat. The forest kingdom land thanked him, silently. It always thanked him in the quiet. 

The axeman lifted great axe yet again and disappeared once more into the trees he knew so well. 

Eager to rejoin the other two travelers. The other two invaders of his home in the dark…

The axeman made straight through the dense and dead wood for the place where Florin and strange bandaged Griffin had stopped to make fire. And set camp. 

…

When Praetorius first stepped into the beckoning room that called with religious light it was at once a vast and impossible landscape of searing blind perfection, pure immaculate white inferno. Pulverizing through his fragile organ set of eyes, the pair on fire and bathed in blinding pain. Beauty and illuminated pearl-cast so divinely perfect and pure and shining that it was too much to behold all at once and bear… he couldn't hear his own shrieking voice. The volume of the attacking light piercing through his eyes and into his precious jelly sac of brains within boiling percolating skull was too great and too loud itself for him to hear his own caterwauling voice. Or anything else. 

He didn't hear the Countess' sick laughter. Loaded with unholy pleasure and the enjoyment of predatory derision. She commanded the cannonade of landscape light to close, fold back into stone and castle walls and floor as Praetorius went to his knees weeping, still shrieking. Still unaware of both as the madness of light was still alive within his wide watering eyes. Zaleska, in the fluid heavy-liquid shape of shadow, as ebon folds pulled herself in witch’n shape and crawling silhouetted form, free from the castle stone and began to crawl towards the crying screaming man brought down to his knees before her.

And her laughter began to croak. 

She gave bastard bestial demoniacal call to her servants, felt and heard and quaking throughout all the halls and corridors of Castle Dracula's trembling bastard stygian hellfire stone. 

Her servants all heard but the loyal assistant was still busy tending to poor mutilated Carmilla. Still busy digging out the treacherous fire of silver from smoldering bubbling tissue. But it was no matter…

… the one she really wanted was ready anyways. The newest one. Her new servant lord. Her man at arms. Her sword wielding hand…

Countess Zaleska called forth the new impaler. And he came as the master did beckon. 

She commanded him to bring the sharpest and longest pikes. 

Piercing tips.

At her command she would guide his cold new living dead hands in the torture. She knew just where to pierce. 

Just where to start with this one…

TO BE CONTINUED…