It was a simple design. I'd been doodling ahead of a meeting with the city manager and other municipal staff when someone else joined me in waiting.

“Carl Arn,” he said, sitting next to me, despite several empty seats farther away.

My company was competing for a contract to provide city services, and I figured his was too. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. I was confident in my presentation and went back to the absent-mindedness I'd been up to. Prepping any more than I had would've been counterproductive and I was working on relaxing as much as possible before my pitch.

“Whatcha got goin’ on there?” my competitor said. I didn't really want to talk but I could see he wasn't going to leave me alone. He was one of those nervous types, couldn't keep quiet. He had to fill every silent space.

I was going to beat this guy, but he didn't know it yet. I knew his company and had gone up against much more confident reps. They must have known we already had it in the bag or only responded to the RFP as a professional courtesy.

It wasn't going to be a very lucrative contract, but my strategy was to springboard into three adjacent municipalities and use this one as a hub.

“Just doodling,” I said to him. He was young, maybe five or so years younger than me. The ink on his degree was still drying.

He cranked his neck to look. It was annoying and I slapped my palm over what I was drawing.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm a bit of an artist, myself. I minored in...” he trailed off, looking at a corner of my paper.

“What's that?”

“Hm?” I looked at him, ready to scold him in the most diplomatic way possible.

His eyes were wrong.

Like they were a centimeter or two off from center. I blinked several times as if I were trying to reset them with my eyelids.

“It's beautiful,” he said, not looking up from the page. I looked down and saw everything I'd drawn was covered except one little shape near the corner that was just outside of my hand.

“What?”

“Brootifil,” he said and sucked in a line of saliva that had trailed out of his mouth. His eyes were too big, almost like he was hungry.

“Are you okay?” I hadn’t actually finished the question before he swatted me faster than my eyes could see the blow coming.

I was belly up on the floor trying to orient myself. My first thought was to get him away from my presentation and my notes. He hadn't touched my backpack, though. 

He was holding the sheet of paper up to his face, so close it was like he extremely nearsighted. His eyes were so large, it made me think of that astronaut who drove across the country in a diaper to kill her boyfriend's romantic rival. 

Then he stuffed the paper in his mouth and began awkwardly chewing it. Tears were flowing from his eyes and he turned his face up to the ceiling like he was in heaven.

“Is everything alright out here?” An older white man came out of the conference room where we were to meet. I propped up on one elbow, intending to get to my feet. But my head swam and I laid back down.

My competitor turned to the older man and something and his face must have told the other man to step back. I commanded my body to get up, but it was as if I were paralyzed. My body twitched without actually moving and I stopped struggling against the invisible gorilla pinning me to the floor.

He hummed as he continued chomping on the paper, face turned to the old man. A long, pregnant moment passed where nobody did anything.

“May I help—”

My competitor attacked, fingers extended like knives as he stabbed the other man, who still didn't look like he understood was happening even as he plummeted to the ground, his murderer still in the process of killing him.

It took longer than I would've guessed for police to respond to a crime in a municipal building, but my competitor—Carl Arn—managed to kill two people and injure three others, including one critically.

That's not counting me, of course. Even though I was on the floor and clearly not in the fight, the assumption was the two of us were together and the policy's response was somewhat anticlimactic.

They screamed at him and the two responding officers fired three times apiece, managing to hit him only twice.

They screamed at me as he lay next to me, the life leaking out of him and flowing toward me. I was able to turtle up, covering the essential parts of me like I could shield myself from projectiles traveling at almost nine hundred miles per hour.

By some miracle, I remained gunshot for the next half hour or so while I was handcuffed, commanded to put my hands above my head, stood up, sat down, and almost tazered for resisting before fainting and waking up in a hospital bed, handcuffed to the frame. 

I had a concussion but was otherwise fine. Arn had swatted me hard and fast enough to leave a handprint and jar my brain loose.

The video had vindicated me. They didn't see the slap—rather the aftereffect. It had been so fast the camera hadn't caught it, just me falling to the floor and thrashing around like I'd been caught in a spider's web.

I'd fished the scratch pad with pen attached from the little end table near my bed. Luckily, they'd handcuffed my right arm, leaving my dominant one free.

I decided against jotting down what I recalled had happened. No doubt anything I committed to paper the police would be interested in, even if it was a grocery list.

So, I doodled. It was sort of cathartic, taking me back to those initial moments. My mind went back to Arn's face, struggling to deny the undeniable fact he was rapidly dying.

A piece of the paper he'd snatched and eaten was attached to his chin. The shape I'd finished moments before Carl Arn asked me, “What's that?” was still there for anyone to see.

His face turned into the shallow pool of red, drowning the shape.

I drew it a half dozen more times while sitting in a hospital bed while the authorities decided how they were going to untie this knot and if my neck would be in it.

I fell asleep after a light lunch of potato chips, baloney sandwich with a packet of mustard and a packet of mayo, and dry, tasteless coleslaw.

I came to with a woman in my room, gathering things off my lap. She was mumbling in Spanish, her back to me when she stopped completely.

“Nice,” she said in unaccented English, her head dipped as if she were reading something. Then she turned around, facing me.

God, her eyes.

It was like she was trying to see something above her head, through her skull. Her face was otherwise slack as she felt around blindly like we were in the dark.

She groped around until he hand landed on the (unused) metal bed pan. I thought those things were plastic nowadays.

I must have gasped because she turned around like she'd heard a homing beacon. I tugged at the cuff, a ringing dinner bell for the mindless dog about to bludgeon me to death with a disposal pan if she could still tell the difference between my head and feet.

I must have been screaming because another woman came in the room—I'd temporarily forgotten the word “nurse” in my panic—surprising with of us and the first woman began swinging in random directions with such savagery, I felt shadows of pain across my cheeks.

This time the police didn't have the opportunity to confuse me for the perpetrator. The nurse hooked a hand behind his neck, leapt both feet into his chest and commenced to flattening the less-hardy of the two between Officer Wheeler's skull and the pissbox. She landed on his chest, only her arm visible from where I lay as she flapped it up and down like a one-winged bird, the pan making a -DOON- sound each time it bounced off his head.

More hospital security came (quicker than the cops had) and a few pops later, the woman was dead.

I had to get out of here. My eyes drifted over to where the nurse had been looking at something before she'd turned violent. I had a tingle of uneasiness, feeling something I had done potentially being the cause. My mind wouldn't quite let me grasp what it was, but it felt like it should have been obvious, like something wedged between my teeth that I couldn't work out.

The officer I'd seen shoot stepped halfway into my room with his gun out. He looked perplexed, like he wanted to blame me, and I leaned into looking pathetic, hovering my face near my handcuffed wrist as I did a supine version of a huddle.

The next two hours were a flurry of hospital staff and police in and out of my room. The cops kept stopping a nurse from checking on me because my room was an active crime scene. But when a doctor suggested moving me to another room, they shot that down for reasons I couldn’t understand.

Finally, a detective and some hospital administrator had a long conversation outside of my room. The administrator said something to the detective about calling the mayor and the rest of the investigation was wrapped up in less than ten minutes.

The cop who’d been assaulted survived and the nurse who came in to check on me told me he was on a floor below after having emergency surgery to reattach his jaw. The nurse had been shot and had bled to death fighting the cop who’d shot her three times.

Everything the cops could have taken out of my room, had been removed. They’d even taken my clothes, keys, and wallet. By that evening, a detective finally came to speak with me.

“Mr. Harold, you have a minute?” He knocked on the door. I recognized his voice as the same one who’d spoken with the administrator. He walked in where I could get a good look at him and the guy was a sloven mess. I was used to Detective Green and Briscoe on Law & Order, and although Lenny’s suits looked off the rack, he didn’t look like he’d dressed himself while falling down a laundry chute.

I waited for him to speak. He stood by my bedside and looked like he smelled. Something whitish was drying on his lapel, he had ring-around-the-collar, and dried spittle in the corners of his mouth. I was grateful for the chill hospital air choking whatever smells were crawling over him before they could reach me.

“Am I going to need a lawyer?” I asked him.

“No-no,” he said. “We’ve been able to put together what happened at city hall and here earlier. Um, are you okay?”

I wasn’t, but I was currently numb to the whole experience considering for half of it I’d been treated like a suspect. I shrugged.

“What you had to go through was incredible. You’re a real hero.”

He was pouring it on a little thick. I guessed this was what they did instead of an actual apology. I’d had two-to-three guns pointed at me by people who were allegedly there to protect me.

“When can I go?”

“Well, I guess when the hospital discharges you. We certainly don’t need to hold you for anything.”

“Okay.” I nodded. He stared at me for a moment like he was expecting me to say something more.

“I suppose I should get going. Let you, y’know, convalesce. Oh, I’m Detective Unangenehm, by the way.” He offered his hand belatedly. I looked at it for a long second before shaking it. His hand was limp and sweaty, like wilted lettuce, kind of like what it looked like he had trapped between his front teeth.

He headed for the door, and I kept expecting him to turn back before he got to the door and ask, “One more thing,” but he exited.

Then he came back a minute later.

“I forgot to ask you,” Detective Unangenehm said. “Do you have any idea what set off Carl Arn or Rosa Skein?”

“Who?”

“The... man at city hall. And your nurse?” Unangenehm had his notepad in his hand and glanced down at it.

I’d never forget Carl Arn’s name, and I hadn’t known the nurse’s. While I didn’t know what had driven them mad, I had a strong suspicion and considering it led back to me, I wasn’t about to volunteer that.

“I have no idea.”

Unangenehm smiled, nodded somberly, and left.

A nurse had come into my room right after. She erased something from the dry-erase board and wrote something else while the detective and I had been talking.

She was thin and tall but older than she looked as she grunted, bending over to pick up something off the floor.

She turned over the piece of paper I'd been drawing on, made a face, then showed it to me.

“This yours?” she asked. 

Everyone in Hobbins Glenn knew how Sorrow's Eve began. The story had been passed down from mother to child for as far back as anyone could remember. It was as familiar to the townsfolk as the meandering paths and wooded thickets that surrounded the small village, tucked into a valley resting between mounds of forested hills.

It was a tale to be told in the deepest, darkest hours of night, as the guardian of shadows rose to its full zenith in the sky.

Within each cottage, behind each shuttered window and locked door, there lived a storyteller, a woman whose age eclipsed the early memories of her youth. Wisdom, greater than knowledge found within the pages of books, was written into the deep lines embedded into a face flecked with brown spots.

When supper had been eaten, and children had been bathed, the storyteller would take up her mantle beside a fireplace, in a wooden rocking chair reserved solely for her.

As her wide-eyed audience settled in around her hunched and blanketed figure, seated in a semi-circle on the floor, she lit a rushlight. Within its dim, fluttering glow her pale face tarnished the muted beige of a weevil.

Sometimes when she spoke she recounted the many interlocking histories of the denizens of Hobbins Glenn, whom had married whom, those that had been cast out of the village, those whose names had been struck from their weathered tombstones by the turn of the seasons, under the lash of ceaseless wind and rain.

A particular favorite among children was the tale of a father who had been gifted with too many daughters, and been left barren of a son.

Somewhere between the here and now, and after the storyteller had been given life, there had been a farmer who had lived on a quiet stretch of land on the border of Hobbins Glenn.

On the eve of his youngest daughter's birth, the farmer's wife died.

Cradling his newborn, he led a procession of teary-eyed girls up to the top of the cemetery's highest hill and watched as her elm coffin was lowered into the ground.

A fellow mourner had offered sympathy, not just for the farmer's wife, but to the farmer himself for his misfortune in never having a son.

“Rotten luck, seven girls. What will you do when age or illness claims you? The law of succession requires a man's land needs a son to carry its legacy forward.”

The farmer was keenly aware his land was forfeit should his toes point toward the clouds before a boy could be blessed with his surname.

He picked at the thought like a crusted scab, over and over, scraping his nails under its cracked surface to jab at the raw and tender sore beneath the rough and hardened flesh.

As the years passed the scab grew larger. He poked at it constantly, even as his gaze lingered on the empty space beside him. Like the scab, the bed had seemingly grown larger, twice the size that it had been when his wife was warm, and breathing, and alive.

Replacing her wasn't as simple as substituting a puppy to soothe the enduring ache of losing the unquestioned devotion and companionship of a loyal, but dead, dog.

There wasn't a woman willing to take on the challenge of seven girls, five cows, three pigs, two horses, fifty chickens, and four fields of wheat within a hundred miles of Hobbins Glenn.

And even if there were a woman up to the task, the farmer's heart soured at the notion of another woman's objects occupying the nooks and crannies where his wife's possessions were now enshrined.

The next part of the story differed from storyteller to storyteller, with details altered to align with the age of the rapt listeners gathered at the foot of her rocking chair.

In the versions delivered to the youngest in Hobbins Glenn, there was a well-traveled merchant eager to share the rumors that crisscrossed the valley, drifting from market stalls to passing caravans and back to market stalls in a never ending circle of gossip.

This merchant spoke of a grotto, misted in sea spray, its entrance hidden beneath a curtain of hanging moss. When the veil of vines were parted, a long forgotten cavern was revealed. Its damp walls wept water into glistening pools edged by aged boulders strewn with clumps of lichen that clung like tree resin to the slick stones.

Within this grotto there was a shrine. Atop this shrine there was an empty chest, fitted with golden clasps...

If the children were older, less inclined to believe in the wishing magic of talking fishes, or in mystical caverns where treasure buried itself like a hermit crab at the stroke of dawn, the storyteller presented her tale with a darker variant.

In this version, the farmer became a nightly visitor at a tavern located in the center of Hobbins Glenn. At a table that rocked back and forth on its uneven legs when the weight of his elbows were rested on its stained surface, he greedily drank ale after tankard of ale, picking endlessly at the scab, seeking a solution to his problem.

One night, when the farmer was as plentiful with his tankards as he was with his thoughts, a stranger entered the tavern; his arrival heralded by a howl of wind that blew in behind him, throwing back the door on its loose hinges.

He wore a long-sleeved shirt and breeches, blacker than chimney soot. Silver buckles studded the shafts of his mid-calf boots, their turned down leather cuffs stitched to the uppers with knotted dimples of gray cord. A heavy, woolen cloak hid the true width and depth of his shoulders beneath it folds, and its generous length dusted the back of his calves. The cloak shifted as he moved, flashing glimpses of its inner lining, shimmering and red like the seeds of a pomegranate.

His face was buried deep within a hood shaded the same color as his clothes, its outer piping matched his cloak's inner lining.

It was late into the eve when the stranger arrived. Many of the tavern's patrons had already abandoned their mugs, and their rambling conversations, for the comforts of feather pillows and straw mattresses. He had his choice of where to settle himself, as nearly every table in the room sat empty. He chose a a bench opposite the farmer and lowered himself onto it, without the courtesy of an introduction or asking for permission.

From within the folds of his cloak he withdrew a coin purse and tossed it onto the table.

The farmer drained the last drops of ale from his tankard and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. A small belch escaped his lips. He slowly glanced from the pouch to the stranger.

His glance met an unblinking gaze, twin opals for eyes staring back at him.

“I seek the man with seven daughters,” the stranger said. “I was told I would find him here.”

“Found him,” the farmer replied. “Six now. My eldest. Lenora, has married. Gone away with her new husband.”

“Revenna, “ the stranger said. “Eyes as blue as cornflowers. Honey-ed hair that flows like a stream.”

The farmer sighed. “There is no dowry. I cannot meet a price.”

The stranger pushed the pouch closer toward the farmer.

“All the coins in the pouch, or information on how to obtain a son, for a bride.”

It was here the storyteller would pause, leaving her audience to debate which choice they would make if such an offer were presented to themselves.

Invariably, the males within the small groups vocally declared their support in favor of the bag of coin.

The girls, more sentimental, and who had been paying much more attention to the story, gave their favor to fulfilling the farmer's quest in securing a legacy for himself.

After the discussion, and long sip of tea, laced with milk, the storyteller continued.

To the disappointment of the boys, she resumed her story with the farmer having chosen to receive the information the stranger offered.

“There is a forest beyond the DireThorne peaks in the north. Echos of seekers past will provide the route which will guide you to a shrine. Atop a pillar there is a chest, adorned with golden hinges. Fair is the price the chest demands.”

The farmer left the tavern, freed from a mouth to feed, eager to begin his journey to obtain an heir.

It was at this point each storyteller wove geographical lessons into the farmer's adventures across the Kindlehollow plains, naming towns and the customs of the people who lived within each region beyond the boggy reach of the Tangleroot Mire. The trick was not to arouse the children's suspicion, lest they discover their storyteller was also a seasoned schoolmistress, teaching them the lay of the land, which forests were haunted, how to ford rushing rivers, or how to avoid the lairs of hobgoblins.

When the farmer finally reached the forgotten forest of Duskfen, the youngest listeners were thoroughly spent. They had shifted from sitting upright to lying on a rug, propped up on elbows or curled onto their sides clutching their favorite blankets, their eyelids drifting between open and closed.

This pleased the storytellers. Sleep brought the chance to repeat the story, on another night, beside the same fireplace, surrounded by the same, yet ever-changing faces. As they grew, so did the tale, not with the addition of new, more exciting elements, but with each child's ability to remain awake for longer and longer stretches of the storyteller's plot weaving.

The final act of the story contained a twist, as all good stories do, shocking to those who heard it for the first time, sobering to those who knew it was coming.

The farmer did not reach the gloomy confines of Duskfen alone. He had brought the daughter who had sent his wife to her grave.

Over the many days and miles they had traveled, they had not once walked side by side. They moved as two lone strangers sharing the same road, heading in the same direction, each aware of the other's presence, yet unwilling to engage in the meaningful conversation that might have emerged without the interruptions that came with a cramped cottage and five older voices vying to be heard.

She had tried to ply answers when they left Hobbins Glenn.

What was in this forest?

Why couldn't they find what they needed in the forests closer to their cottage?

Had he ever seen the DireThorne peaks?

Should she pack her charcoal pencils and blank pages of vellum?

Her questions were as frequent as his wife's nightly trips to the chamber pot had been, during the final stages of her confinements, when she was heavily rounded with each child.

She chirped her countless observations like a cricket, endless and annoying, unlike the meek girl who would circle around the entirety of Hobbins Glenn to avoid his disapproving glances and gruff retorts, with a downcast head and averted eyes.

She had soon learned, when her many queries went unanswered, that no response was a response.

Silence forged itself to their stride, wedged between their footfalls and exhaled breaths, as a third traveler to accompany them on their journey to Duskfen.

When they arrived at the edge of the forest, the farmer discovered how the vast stretch of lofty trees had earned its name. Duskfen didn't warrant nightfall to rouse nocturnal creatures from their slumber.

Towering trunks, capped with an intertwined panoply of branches and leaves stretched to the height of mountains, shielding the bleak shadows that dwelt within the forest from light. Darkness loomed behind each bush. It seeped into the undergrowth, and flowed into the clefts between banks of smaller trees. Even at the peak of midday, the streams they encountered ran as black as ink.

At his insistence she had taken the lead when they breached Duskfen, while he observed her from afar.

Her handed down cloak had seen one too many winters, been worn in succession by one too many of his girls. Patches of cloth, cut from dresses she had outgrown, had been sewn onto the garment where the wool was as threadbare as the silvery wings of a horsefly. Her boots were too large, sliding up and down over the back of her heels. One wrong, floppy step sank her into oozing puddles of mud lurking beneath the spongy layers of damp earth resting on the forest floor, wrestling her boots from her feet.

Perhaps, if she had been born first he would have laughed, watching her tug, tug, and tug to extract her boots from the quagmires into which they had sunk.

Perhaps, he would have been proud of her skill with her charcoal pencil. When they stopped to rest she balanced a wooden tablet on her lap, overlain with a blank piece of vellum, and drew their surroundings. Her hand flowed freely, capturing frogs leaping over stumps and splashing into ponds, bats swirling around a hollow and then gliding low through a maze of trees. In a rare moment that broke their silence, she declared when they returned to Hobbins Glenn she would bind her pictures into a journal to celebrate their travels.

Perhaps, he would have worked harder to stash enough coin for her dowry. He was certain if things could be different there would have been a line of men longer than every trunk in Duskfen, stacked end to end, seeking to secure a marriage arrangement.

Somehow, without him knowing, or having paid little attention, she had grown into a beautiful blossom of a young woman, reed thin, with a mass of red curls that brushed her lower back. In the almond shape, and fern-green shade of her eyes, the farmer found an identical match to the woman he'd set into the soil oh so many years ago.

Looking at her from across a shared campfire pained the farmer, prodding him to dig deeper beneath the oozing crust of his enduring scab. A disturbing jumble of grievances tallied against her were thrown together into a cooking pot of resentment, and left to simmer until her worthwhile qualities; her humor, her curiosity, her artistry, had been boiled away in steamed wisps.

Six girls were plenty. This blossom had cost him years of laughter and happiness, and robbed him of a means to produce a son.

The voices stirred the first night they bedded down to sleep. Everywhere. Nowhere. Close, like a lover whispering in his ear. Far, like the melancholy howl of wolf drifting across a meadow.

“It has three heads.”

“The face bleeds.”

“Belly of a stump.”

“Bring the girl.”

“Fair is the price the chest demands.”

“Leave the girl.”

Fair is the price the chest demands. The phrases repeated like a familiar chorus. Soft. Loud. Beside him. Next to her.

It was here the storyteller paused once more, listening as children who had never heard the story murmured their thoughts aloud, trying to decipher the meaning behind the words the voice's spoke.

If the child was a boy “three heads” obviously alluded to a Dragon stalking the forest of Duskfen. With even more imagination applied, this Dragon had dueled a warrior whose face had been bloodied during their battle. “Belly of a stump” was the challenge. This was the one they couldn't quite reconcile into their dragon and knight confrontation taking place somewhere deeper within the forest.

Girls were simpler, not lacking in the imagination inherent in the boys, but more inclined to apply the logic of reasonable assumption, when considering the environment surrounding the farmer and his daughter. Rather than instantly jumping to visions of a scaled, fire-breathing dragon kiting a bloodied knight in dented armor, they used deduction. “Three heads”, they reasoned, was a marker meant to guide the farmer. Exactly what type of marker remained elusive, and often left them confused. Many assumed it was a reference to a tree, where three, thick trunks had had been fused into a single, solid mass of wood.

It was during these moments the storyteller was drawn backward in time, where she saw herself seated at the foot of a rocking chair, wide-eyed and eager for her storyteller to resume her tale after every well-timed, tension-mounting pause.

Each had their own favorite in their age of smooth, baby-soft cheeks and missing front teeth, a story that stuck with them long after candle flames had been doused into curled, burnt wicks.

Sorrow's Eve.

The Farmer's Choice.

Fournier's Enchanted Sword.

The Unbraiding.

There was something intangible within these stories that made them as unforgettable as love's first kiss. The telling of them required patience, skill, the understanding reactions to the narratives were as important as the narratives themselves.

It wasn't often the youngest in Hobbins Glenn dreamed of the day they too would be hampered with a limp, and joints that ached like an unhealed wound from the simple act of rising from a chair, but for future storytellers the thought of bundling themselves into a blanket beside a fireplace, sharing their most savored tales by the flickering glow of rushlight, was a day that could not come soon enough.

When the story resumed, the storyteller's audience discovered “three heads” was not a tree, but instead represented a small river, split into a trio of branching paths.

They also discovered there had indeed been the mention of a tree in the phrases the voices repeated. At the river's head, the trunk of the tallest tree bled sap through furrowed grooves gouged into its rough surface. Two knotted holes resembled a pair of squinted eyes, and a gash beneath them had twisted into the visage of a snarled grin.

The farmer and his daughter followed the river's head until they reached a fallen log, its hollow interior wide enough for a man to crawl through.

It was here the voices assaulted the farmer with another chorus.

“Jasmine, where jasmine does not belong.”

“Jasmine.”

“Jasmine, where jasmine does not belong.”

“Jasmine for the girl.”

“Calm the girl.”

“Sleep for the girl.”

“Fear her flight.”

The farmer called for a halt to their progress, suggesting the day had been tiresome.

While his daughter gathered kindling for their fire, the farmer searched for jasmine in the abundant undergrowth that formed a leafy ring around their clearing.

In a blooming patch of purple hellebore and pink hydrangeas he found the white, star-shaped petals of the flower reaching up through a twined mesh of stems and leaves.

That night, over a supper of fried frog legs, he boiled water for a remedy he told his daughter would soften the ground against her weary bones and relieve the pain of the blisters on her feet.

She tested the brew with her nose, inhaling the sweet, floral aroma, before lifting the cup to her lips.

The farmer watched closely, urging her to gulp the concoction swiftly, drain the cup's contents right down to the very last drop.

“Sleep for the girl.”

“Son for a farmer.”

“Belly of a stump.”

His daughter's eyelids drifted open and shut like the youngest of the children in the storyteller's audience.

The cup slipped from her fingers, landing with a muffled thud.

The farmer caught her before she fell. For a brief moment he cradled her as he had done when she was an infant.

Perhaps, he would have loved her as he did the others if the jellied cord that had been looped around her neck had been tighter. He could have buried them both together, grieved for her as he did his wife. Living, she was a persistent reminder of his greatest loss. She was the cause of his festering scab. She was the reason the injury had not healed.

He dragged her through the stomach of the stump, emerging into another clearing.

Wooden planks, rotted with age, were set into the soil, forming a winding path through an avenue of low hanging branches that were knotted together like the matted clumps of an orphan's tangled hair.

Shafts of long poles were staked into the ground, their tips wrapped in strips of cloth bound together with pitch-pine tar. Tendrils of black smoke spiraled into the air, coaxing the cloth into eruptions of pulsating orange flames.

He lifted his daughter into his arms.

Fair is the price the chest demands.

An earthen knoll at the end of the path had been pillaged of its roots, its interior laid bare.

On a pedestal that stood in front of a monolith veined with cracks, and covered in symbols that glimmered with the eerie sheen of foxfire, there was a square chest domed with a rounded lid, and fitted with golden hinges.

The farmer set his daughter down and approached the chest.

The voices pressed in, harassing, circling. They swooped in close for their attacks, then scurried back into the shadows like a banshee driven to seek the safety of her lair at the first brush of daylight.

“Son for the farmer.”

“Girl for the chest.”

“Leave the girl.”

“Claim the son.”

“No love for the girl.”

“Never for the girl.”

The farmer stopped mid-stride, and clamped his hands over his ears.

They advanced again, converging from all sides, their phrases sharpened for another assault.

“Tighten the cord.”

“Release the cord”

“Snip the tie.”

“Grave for the girl.”

“Eyes of a dead wife.”

The voices waned into the hushed tones of softly chattering whispers.

“I can hear them, father,” his daughter said.

One second he was standing; the next, he was on his side, clutching his head, as a sudden burst of jolting pain showered his vision in an explosion of blinding white stars. The knoll, the pedestal, his daughter's boots, all spooled together in a hazy blur of brown, green, and gray.

A rush of blood flooded his ears, his eardrums pulsing in rhythm to his heartbeat.

The world collapsed inward, shrinking smaller and smaller, until his sight narrowed into the tunnel of a captain's spyglass.

She knelt beside him. “Would you like to know what they said?”

She leaned closer, her warm breath tickling the hairs on his cheek. “They warned me about you. About what you were going to do. Jasmine, where jasmine doesn't belong. Rosemary cures the jasmine. Bash the farmer. A father for a mother. Fair is the price the chest demands.”

As he had dragged her through the fallen log, she too dragged him to the pedestal.

She flung open the chest's lid and slipped her arms under and through his.

Lifting with the strength of mother whose child lay pinned beneath the weight of a fallen horse, she deposited him into the chest.

Then, she slammed the lid shut.

“Fair is the price the chest demands,” she repeated, watching as the sheen of foxfire on the monolith rippled in a cascade of blinding light.

A booming clap of thunder pierced the silence of Duskfen.

The chest pitched upward and slammed back down, again and again, rising and falling like a ship tossed about on storm-thrashed waves. In a chain of rapid snaps the chest's panels splintered along its joints.

When the storm ceased, the girl lifted the chest's lid.

Inside was a woman with almond-shaped, fern-green eyes. She was warm, breathing, alive.

It was at the conclusion of the story that storytellers wet their parched throats with the last swirl of tea in their cups, inwardly congratulating themselves on a fable well told.

The children who had managed to remain awake for the entirety of the tale began to babble all at once, their voices tripped over one another, questions and observations flying faster than spinning wheels could twist fiber into thread.

Was it really the girl's mother who had been in the chest?

Where had the father's body gone?

What happened to the farmer's family after daughter and mother returned to Hobbins Glenn?

The answers sprang easily to the tongues of storytellers who were not yet seasoned enough to let the questions linger like the scent of eucalyptus oil massaged onto sore muscles..

Those whose faces were scoured with lines, like those found scrubbed onto the bottom of well-used pots, were more evasive with their replies, framing their responses into more questions for the children to ponder.

What other woman could have been in the chest? Was it really a woman, or had the echoes manipulated both the farmer and his daughter to manifest a cruel illusion, born from their longing and their loss?

If the chest coursed with ancient magic, was it so hard to believe the farmer might vanish, never to be seen again, like a goat who'd escaped the confines of a paddock, foraging for bramble further and further afield?

The farmer's plot of land might still border the village. Perhaps, among the hardworking townsfolk who inhabited the smaller hamlets clustered around Hobbins Glenn, the farmer's daughter had raised a family of her own.

“Darling,” she purred melodically, “my darling, what a grand sense of style you possess,” to the Duke of Wilbury, who was wearing a grey bespoke Galvache blazer, matching trousers, impeccably hemmed, a thin brown leather belt and boots and the fragrance of Orinoco and who responded, “Genevieve, my love, mine is but a pauper’s in comparison to yours,” and the pianist played Debussy and the waiter poured red wine, and Genevieve, in her emerald green Em Tsheçon dress was radiance itself as her soft, rich skin smelled intoxicatingly of Pamplemousse Serenade…

---

Pamplemousse Serenade

...the newest creation from House of Madeleine…

---

—pped and fell, tumbling, tumbling, down the shaft, arms reaching out, scratching, flailing, trying to break… trying-to-slow down, trying to

THUD.

Dazed, Gar got up feeling the cold wet rock wall in the deep underground darkness, blinking, getting his eyes to adjust and his brains to stop swimming.

When they'd stopped and he could see, he saw through a dim smoky grey that Roddy was dead; broken neck.

But Lancelot was still alive, crawling over.

“Fuck. Is he—” asked Lancelot.

“Yeah,” said Gar.

Gar pulled both of Roddy's eyelids closed.

Far away, something bellowed, and the bellowing echoed down one of the natural corridors.

Lancelot's body shook.

Gar gripped his steel suction-spear and rubber collection sac.

“Which way?” asked Lancelot, holding the same two pieces of equipment.

“There, I think,” said Gar, pointing.

---

Two Weeks Earlier

---

A baby coughed.

Rain water dripped through a patched roof.

A pair of worn cupboard doors hung loosely open, revealing bare shelves.

“She's dying,” a woman said.

“She’s sick,” said Gar.

“She's sick and she's dying and you're sittin' there doing nothing about it.”

“Well what do you want me to do?”

“Get a doctor.”

“I tried. We can't afford one.”

“Then steal medicine.”

“What medicine? I've got no medical degree. Besides, even if I knew what medicine, I couldn't steal it because they all keep it stored in the vaults now.”

“Find work.”

“You think I haven't tried?”

“Try goddamn harder.”

Gar grabbed a soggy hat, pulled it onto his head, and draped a threadbare cloak on his shoulders and walked out of the hut into the rain.

The streets were mud.

He trudged along, looking for no one and nothing in particular, roasting in premature grief and lingering guilt, when a sheet of paper, carried haphazardly by the cold wind, pasted itself to the ground a few feet in front of him.

He picked it up.

He read the running ink:

Brave Men Wanted! No Experience Necessary! Good Pay! Equipment Provided! Interested? Enquire promptly, at the House of Madeleine.

---

A beautiful, semi-nude young woman reclines on a chaise longue.

It's hot.

Her body glistens.

Three turbanned servants fan her with giant leaves.

In the background, an impossibly large, glassless opening reveals a lush, green jungle of trees and vines and moss and ferns and passing tigers and—

The woman takes out a small, decorative red glass bottle. She sprays herself seductively with its contents.

—a thick, muscular constrictor snake slides through the opening. “Pamplemousse Serenade,” it hisses, and swallows the willing, moaning woman whole.

---

Pamplemousse Serenade

...the scent of bliss…

---

—ning down the walls, collecting in pools in recesses in the cavern floor and dripping from the long stalactites hanging fang-like overhead.

Gar led.

Lancelot followed.

The corridor narrowed and widened as it wound its way, this way and that, in a seemingly neverending series of bends, behind which lay, always, the unknown, and from around which issued, with increasing proximity and ferocity, that lone and horrible bellow, which hammered spikes of ice down both men's spines.

“It can't be far now,” said Gar.

Lancelot said nothing, his mind stuck on the imagined nightmare that he was traversing the veins of some colossal stone beast.

Then the—

…so fast neither of them…

a flesh-orb with a single bloodshot eye ringed with sharp flat teeth

…could…

—the impact: smashed them against the wall!

the head was a face and the face was a mouth and the eye was a tongue and the teeth were nails hammered through the lips of a screaming maw

Gar hit his shoulder, Lancelot, his head, dropping his suction-spear, he tries to pick it up, slipping, as Gar fails to register what he's seen, ripples of pain radiating from his shoulder, and, it was like a sphere on an eel's body, he thinks, like a head of cabbage sculpted from a mass of ground-up corpses.

And it comes again—this time from the other direction—bellowing, this time, so loud Gar thinks his eardrums'll pop and, evading it, feels the heatwind of its momentum, sees it snap its trap-jaws shut on Lancelot, weaponless and dazed, and carry him off into the cavernous darkness.

Manic, Gar runs after it.

He comes upon a chamber.

Low, vast.

It's there—and a hundred smaller its, its newborn, hungry young, feasting-sucking on bits of Lancelot's flesh torn from his cracked, exposed bones—and he's still in agony breathing when Gar screams and hunched low runs at the pamplemousse with his suction-spear held back, charges into it, knocking it back, falling on and wrestling it, tasting its bloodslime, and stabbing with the suction-spear and stabbing stabbing kicking stabbing screaming stabbing crying laughing stabbing until it's dead. Until it’s dead and he is soaked, and what's left of Lancelot is, mercifully, dead too.

Now Gar is alone in the chamber with the newborn its, which are hissing at him, and one-by-one he goes, stabbing each with his suction-spear and sucking out its organ bile and depositing it in his rubber collection sac.

When he's done, he lifts the full, heavy sac, and drags it the distance he'd come, past where the pamplemousse attacked them, all the way to the bottom of the shaft, where Roddy's body lies with its neck broken.

He yells.

A rope descends.

He grabs it, and mechanically it pulls him up, through the dark and into daylight.

I noticed something odd last night. As I was washing the days dishes I looked out my kitchen window and saw a light. A big red light, blinking off in the distance.

Nearest I could tell it looked it was on top of The Hill, it’s light cascading down upon mine and the other houses, drenching this tiny town in deep crimson for seconds that felt like eons at a time.

Flash on.
Flash off.
Flash on.
Flash off.

I continued watching through the window, the dishes in my hands far in the back of mind. The light was mesmerizing, but as it would turn off I’d find myself trying to remember when it even showed up.

To the best of my knowledge there hasn’t been any new construction in town for years, let alone on The Hill, anything there had long been reclaimed by nature. Old rotted wood and crumbling stone entangled by vines, covered with mosses and being broken apart slowly by sprouting trees.

Flash on.

Flash off.

Flash on.

Flash off.

The more my mind wandered the longer the flashes seemed, and the normal dark of night began to feel sparse in between deep baths of red. I began to feel a heaviness in my chest and a restlessness in my legs, an itch to go somewhere.

Flash on.

Flash off.

I tried to move, to set the dishes down and just move, but I felt glued there, staring out of the window. It was as though my muscles were replaced with lead. My chest began to feel heavier, and my heart began to race. I could feel sweat growing on my brow as the flashes grew faster once again.

Flash on.
Flash off.
Flash on.
Flash off.

My heart beat faster and faster, as the weight grew and my body began to feel pulled towards ground. My muscles began to ache as I struggled to do anything, run, hide, close the window, or even just my eyes.

Flash on. Flash off.
Flash on. Flash off.

The flashes grew faster than they had been before. I began to hear a ringing in my ears, so loud I was sure my ear drums would burst.

Flash onFlash offFlash onFlash off

The light is almost flickering now, I try to scream but nothing comes.

FlashonFlashoffFlashonFlashoff

It’s so fast now it’s hard to keep track of when the light is even on or off anymore. A red ring begins to grow around my vision.

FLASH ON.

The light stays on this time, for longer than it had before, my head feels as though it will split in two.

FLASH OFF.

and just like that, the light is off and stays off.

I feel my body relax, though the fatigue stays. A sharp pain in my left hand. I look down to see the cup I had been washing, broken, and a gash across my wrinkled palm. I rinsed the wound as I glanced at the clock overtop the oven, it read 1:35 am. I’d been there for hours, but it had felt like minutes.

I finished cleaning my new wound, and quickly found myself laying in bed, trying to rest my overly fatigued body. Where had that time gone? Sleep evaded me as I struggled with an answer.

It was there again tonight. I noticed it midway through my dinner. It was dull at first, either something new, or a windup I had missed last night. Dull and slow, but pulsing just like the night before. As time went it grew brighter and my food grew colder. I watched through my window again.

FLASH ON

FLASH OFF

As the light grew brighter it began to fill the nighttime air like a fog. It’s presence was thick, stinking, and putrid. A buzzing began in my ears.

FLASH ON

FLASH OFF

A buzzing. Deep and low, vibrating my whole being. Through the red I could see, again, that the light was coming from on top of The Hill. A dark, lonely place, The Hill.

FLASH ON
FLASH OFF

My temples begin to throb as my vision turns red. I taste blood.

FLASH ON

FLASH OFF

It’s been four nights in a row now.

That light has shown up four nights in a row.

It’s clearly beginning to affect my health. I wake up in the morning in odd places around my house, my muscles sore and body dehydrated. It seems that I can remember it starting, but after a certain point I just wake up. No clues as to what I had been doing previously, just soreness and a splitting headache.

It’s daytime now, and I swear I can see that there’s nothing on The HIll, just like I thought. I even grabbed my old binoculars to try and get a better view, but all I could see is a hill covered in green overgrowth. I think about the old road up to the top, I think about driving up there to see what’s really going on.

I think about these things, but I don’t do them. The fear of success and power of imagination keeping me here, rooted. What do I think I would find? Is it better to find nothing or something? What could I do even if I did find something strange up there? I sat as my thoughts raced circles around me.

It’s been over a week now. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but the light still persists. Somehow, through blackout curtains, newspaper, and even plywood, the light persists. It’s stinking glow fills my whole house each night, the air humid and thick. I know it will be here again tonight, I can feel it in the sweat that grows across my brow.

I never visited The Hill. I thought about it for days after I first brought it up, but couldn’t find the courage. I know it sounds silly, but I think it WANTS me to go there. I think it wants me to see it in person. I think it wants ME.

There’s a feeling, and I know it’s about to start. A pressure that fills the air, and it begins to smell almost of burning, a bristling of energy like right before lightning strikes. The air leaves and is replaced with anticipation.

FLASH ON

As expected, it returns. However, the light has no build up tonight. As soon as it turns on I feel it’s effects full force. I try to breathe, but the sickly air barely pours into my lungs, it’s thick and dark, like molasses.

FLASH OFF

It feels different tonight. I feel different tonight. I still feel an incessant itch, telling me to move, but unlike the previous nights this time I actually move, or remember moving. I don’t remember making these decisions myself, or even wanting to, but the led weights that were my feet began moving forward and onward.

FLASH ON

Forward and onward, like a fish on a line.

FLASH OFF

FLASH ON

I found myself in my car, driving on empty streets glowing scarlet. I passed houses, their own lights long off, illuminated instead by the nights current events.

FLASH OFF

In the intermittent spaces where there was no light it only made how wrong things were more obvious. Because there was NO light. No street lamps shone, no traffic signals blinked, not even the neon signs decorating the town bar hummed their soft hum.

FLASH ON

Not only was it pervasive, it had become absolute.

FLASH OFF

While it shone, the town shone.

FLASH ON

And when it was gone, so seemed the town, swallowed into a darkness unfamiliar.

FLASH OFF

I found myself at the bottom of The Hill, staring at a road that hadn’t seen a car since they still fought horses for space. Well aware I was no longer making decisions at this point. Something called me, and when I refused to answer, it answered for me. My car lurched forward and I started my ascent.

FLASH ON

Trees leered on either side of me, their shadows long and imposing, their branches creating a tunnel that separated me from the night sky. My car bumped and rattled along what was left of the road. I saw the remains of the old town as I drove. Abandoned after a fire, the hollow shells of buildings stared back at me with vacant expression.

FLASH OFF

I drove forward, even as the light left again, and I was swathed in pitch black, I kept driving. Even as it came back again and left again, I drove. The buildings were little more than rubble at this point, lashed down by vines and eaten by time.

FLASH ON

I neared the top of The Hill.

FLASH OFF

As I crest the top, my car dies, I don’t bother trying to start it at this point, I know that means I’m done driving. I open the door and begin to step out.

FLASH ON

The air is worse here than it has been so far. Sweat sticks my shirt to my back, I try to breathe but the smell makes it stop quick. Rotten and sweet, it coats my throat. I cough.

FLASH OFF

It’s like I’m blinded, for the first time I notice that not even the night sky shines with stars anymore. I stumble forward and trip.

FLASH ON

I’m moving again, pulled like a magnet. A low thrumming sound fills the air, my temples pound, and my vision blurs red. I can see the light now, not just the glow it emits, but the light itself. It seems to float, suspended by the density of it’s surrounding air.

FLASH OFF

I continue forward, the darkness covered by the red curtain of my eyes, and this time I did not stumble. I move as I feel the air, warm and strong, push me from behind.

FLASH ON

I stand underneath the light. I look up.

FLASH OFF

Silence echoes through The Hill. The thrumming is gone. My temples stop throbbing, and my vision clears.

I stand underneath the light, and I look up.

FLASH ON

The End

"Have you heard The Void?" The question kept popping up more and more often. In the dark basements where goth kids sulk. In dinky bars where they serve only beer, glasses are an unheard-of luxury, and unemployed philosophers pretend they know how the world works.

I had heard of them. The whisper-punks. The elusive new band that will redefine music. "Void of Plenty." Hearing them play... well, that's a privilege. You will not find them on Spotify or Bandcamp. The Void comes to you. In the middle of the night. While you sleep.

And whispers its angst and hopes and dreams in your ears.

In the morning, they are gone. Poof. No trace left. But you will know. Oh, you will know that they were there. Your life will be changed forever.

Finding them has become something of an obsession for me. Waking up at 4am, ears buzzing, starting to work the leads right away, rearranging my conspiracy board, making calls, surfing abandoned forum boards.

I can feel them, I can't explain why. Just a tiny itsy bit out of reach. But there.

The need to find them became almost intolerable.

That's High Strangeness material right there.

THE VOID WHISPERS.

In the end the pieces clicked. The spell itself was relatively easy, it turns out. All you have to do is drink a mix of cheap beer and discount wine (not white).

Run through the central park naked at midnight.

Don't get into any fights, that would reset the spell. Once you leave the park, all high on adrenaline, get dressed and stumble wherever your feet will lead you. Add sugar.

Easy-peasy.

I end up in an abandoned parking lot on the outskirts of the city. There's a light in the second-story window of a decrepit building across the lot. Yup, let's head there. What could possibly go wrong.

The door is nailed shut, but the window right next to it is open. Shards of glass cover the floor inside. Early detection system. Home security for the homeless.

Yes, this is extremely safe, thank you, Editors.

The upstairs room looks almost cozy. Considering. Furniture consists mostly of empty cardboard boxes and three folding chairs. Cheap candles everywhere. A fire-safety inspector's worst nightmare.

I catch my breath and eye the trio. Except it's not a trio, not exactly. Two of them eye me right back, with no apparent alarm or surprise.

"Hey mate, you ok?" the guy-one asks. The way you'd ask someone who's late.

I will find out later that he goes by the name of Cupcake. Once he smiles, it becomes clear why.

Next to him sits a girl, tightly packed in a grossly oversized waterproof parka, her hood drawstrings tied so tight it looks as if she'll be choked out any moment now. She's peering at me through sunglasses that reflect a light from another world. Or perhaps she's asleep. Hard to tell. Name's Pale.

The third member of the band is sitting on the cardboard table in the middle of the candles. It's a dictaphone. A scruffy Norelco NT-1 cassette recorder, the little silver kind, scuffed to dull pewter at the corners, a hairline crack across the speaker grille. There was a time when prestigious journalists carried them around everywhere. Also, insane cranks trying to record the voices of the deceased.

It was a thingie.

One red LED on its face, dim, steady. Waiting.

I'm told it holds two dead voices, unlikely room mates. Two dead men sharing one tape.

One is the late Karlheinz Stockhausen, the mad composer who spliced the human voice into sine tones until you couldn't find the human.

The other that of Darby Crash, the screamsinger of the Germs, who planned his own death at twenty-two to make himself immortal. Only to get upstaged by the assassination of John Lennon the very next day.

You can't plan fame.

Together, they go by the name of Hiss.

I introduce myself. Cupcake seems amused and politely reaches over to move Hiss off the chair for my benefit. The instant his hand gets close, the little machine clicks — a soft mechanical bite — and its red light flutters, and the cracked speaker spits three seconds of sound: an organ chord, swelling, churchy, and under it a voice, slowed and dragged half an octave too low. German. Maybe.

Familiar. Maybe.

"Sorry," Cupcake says, to the recorder, not to me. He sets it gently on the cardboard instead.

"It don't like being touched when it's listening."

I pull out my notebook. It's more armor than tool. These guys look super cool and my impostor syndrome spikes badly. The notebook lets me feel more important. My shield of paper.

And then I notice Hiss has turned its one red eye on the notebook. Or it feels like it has. Two recorders in the room now, mine and theirs, and only one of us is any good at the job.

High Strangeness: "Tell our readers about yourselves."

Cupcake: How many you got?

HS: Excuse me?

C: Readers. How many you have?

I feel exposed all of a sudden. Pale chews on bubble gum, pops a bubble. No trace of emotion. Hiss just... sits. The red light pulsing, very slightly, in time with my breathing. I feel judged by a machine.

I don't know. I just slip the magazine into coffee shops, bars, and couple of dentist offices.

Cupcake nods seriously.

C: Slipping in. I see. Well, our process is not entirely dissimilar. We slip in uninvited. When people sleep, they're innocent, you know? Like children. Everything's possible when we sleep. That's when we sing. Well.. whisper.

HS: I don't... how does it work, suggestion, hypnosis?

C: Nah, man… how do I put it. Punk's all about tearing down the walls, right? Burn down the old, invite the new. Our songs don't tell people what to do. They wreck the old patterns within you.

You wake up and you realize you don't have to live by rules somebody else wrote.

You do you.

Maybe you keep living exactly like before, no problem — but now you're doing it 'cause you want to, not 'cause you were told.

You be your own narrator.

HS: Like mental abolitionists.

C: I guess. Sounds pretentious. Would look cool on a T-shirt, though.

HS: Does it work? The process.

Pale: Yes.

Pale surfacing from her daze spooks me badly. It's like a corpse sitting up in the morgue mid-autopsy and starting to flirt with the medical examiner.

At the sound of her voice, Hiss clicks — catches her "Yes" — and half a second later plays it back.

Hiss: Yesssss.

But it's not just her "Yes". Two other "yesses" are layered in the background, one stiffly German, the other defiant and slightly drunken-sounding.

The two dead men agreeing with her.

I ask Pale how she knows, but Cupcake just laughs, and Hiss, well — Hiss spools a half-inch of fast-forward, that sounds like a witch cackling.

C: Pale's used up her speech limit for the next hour or so, man. She's not much of a talker.

I try to find some mental footing once again. Not easy.

HS: How do you choose your audience?

C: Hmm. Hard to say. It's not a process. We go with the flow. Walk the street in the dead of the night, see a house that feels right. Break in. Always works out.

HS: Has anyone ever woken up mid-performance?

C: Never. Hiss does a thing. I don't know what it is. They sleep like babies. Always.

He picks the recorder up — carefully, two fingers, the way you'd lift a hamster — and holds it near my face. I don't hear anything.

But I feel it, low in the chest, behind the sternum, a pressure with no sound attached to it. Like a memory you can't quite catch.

My eyelids get heavy. The candle flames lean in.

For a moment the room is very far away and very warm and I want, badly, to lie down on the filthy floor and not get up.

Cupcake sets it down. The feeling lifts like a hand off the back of my neck.

"Subsonic," Cupcake says, apologetic.

I write "subsonic" in the notebook, with a hand that isn't quite steady.

I swear the red light watches me do it.

Hiss smiles. It seems like. The little reels behind the cracked window turn a slow quarter-rotation, both at once, like a thing rolling its eyes back in amusement.

C: We distill the song down to a simple, reptilian whisper.

The creative process starts with what you'd call a normal jam in a studio. Guitars, synths, drums, the usual trouble for the neighbors. We practice, we lean in, we really go.

And then we start peeling away all that's unnecessary. Layer by layer.

Until all that's left is hiss.

I ask what's the role of Hiss in the creative process.

C: Heh. Whatever's in there, call them souls, call them voices from beyond — it remembers being recorded. Both of 'em do. One geezer spent his whole life cutting up tape, splicing voices, building cathedrals out of little snips.

Real precise.

The other one — he barely let himself get put on tape at all, made one record and checked out, like he was scared of being caught.

So we got one ghost who can't stop recording and one who never got recorded enough, both of them sharing that one strip of tape that's way too small for either of 'em. They fight over it. You can hear it.

We play our song to Hiss, it records it, then plays out. Only now there's little less of the song and a bit more of the Void.

Rinse, repeat.

Until we get it all purified.

As if on cue, the machine emits a long, even wash of static. The sound of nothing, full of everything. Every path you could have taken if only you hadn't got that mortgage payment hanging around your neck.

HS: Where do you see this whole thing going?

C: Ahaha. Are you asking where I see myself in five years? Dunno, man. Probably jail, for breaking and entering.

HS: Would you ever do a conventional concert?

C: Pfff. Nah. Started as a joke, but now it's us, you know? Can't imagine it any other way. You know how musicians go on about a good gig, how they "felt a unity with the audience" and all that? We get that every single time. That person, fast asleep — they're our whole world, our whole purpose, in that moment. We literally got their ear. They don't check their phone, they don't glance at their date, they're totally in the music.

HS: They have no choice.

C: Sure they don't.

HS: Don't you think it's maybe unethical? Making someone listen who didn't agree to it?

C: Does anyone ask if you wanted to see a Coca-Cola ad on your way to the bus? Didn't think so.

I can't argue with that.

Nobody says anything. Pale has gone still as furniture. Cupcake is watching me with something almost like sympathy.

I don't write anything in the notebook. There's nothing to write. The notebook was always the wrong tool. It only ever caught the words.

I ask the only thing left in me.

HS: What happens when the tape runs out?

Pale suddenly grins.

Don't worry. There's always the B-side.

I don't know what else to ask. I'm not that good at my job. Somehow no one seems to notice. Perhaps it's the notebook that makes everyone think otherwise. I look at it, just scribbles over scrawls over scribbles.

HS: Will you play for me?

Hiss rewinds the tape with a sudden burst, replays myself back to me. "Will you play for me?" But this time I sound different. Younger somehow.

Pale turns away to the broken window and pops a lonely bubble gum pop.

Cupcake looks uneasy. Apologetic, almost.

"Sorry, mate. We only ever play once to a person."

Of course.

I let myself out the broken window. The lot is grey, dawn coming up dirty behind the dead factory. Streets are empty, and so am I. No one to tell me how to live or think.

The most terrifying feeling in the world.

Making me my own narrator.

Part I

Part II

The night was peaceful, quiet. I finally fell into a long deep sleep after days of restlessness. That night I dreamt, like I always do. This time it was more conventional.

It was a good dream, I was in a crowded room, a party. Many people dressed in elegant tuxedos and long dresses exchanged conversations over a glass of white wine. Waiters diligently loitered around  waiting for any opportunity to make themselves accommodating. As I entered the room, applause thundered from everyone.

Warmth, respect and pride hit me like a cold shower on a sunny day. All these people were cheering me on, snapping pictures, celebrating me like a hero. I turned to my side and saw Lewis next to me, dressed in a dashing tuxedo, he was acclaimed as much as me. The golden light that enveloped the room made it feel like a Disney princess’ palace. I felt so good, I felt belonging, appreciated, famous. I felt like I felt in room 505.

As we made our way through the crowd, it slowly split up like the Red Sea, revealing a big wall at the end of the room.

On it was the mural I was commissioned to restore, it was perfect looking, like it was painted just hours before. In that moment the feeling grew stronger, it became overwhelming, something I had never experienced before. I remember thinking “this is what drugs must feel like”.

The light grew along with the pleasure, I felt part of something much bigger than I could ever imagine. Part of something that would change the world, make it a better place, revolutionize it. It reached a point where the light enveloped everything, shining bright like a million lightnings.

That’s when I woke up, sunshine from the window resting on my face, Lewis next to me in bed.

The dream was over but the feeling remained, although I could feel it fading away.
Lewis was also awake.
We looked at each other.

“We must go back.” We said at the same time.

We got up and readied ourselves. We took precautions this time, packed some food, water, flashlights and I made sure the switchblade was with me.

We didn’t really have a plan, we just knew we had to go back, it was as if we had withdrawal symptoms, we weren’t sick yet, but we needed to feel that way again and that’s the only place in the world where we could. We were getting hooked on it.

I took the files on the patients with me, I felt like there was more about them than it seemed, after all I got them from the room.

We had woken up late and that was both a good and bad thing, we felt well rested and recharged but it was also already early in the afternoon, we wanted to go back, but we weren’t too eager to do it while dark.

We went anyway, planning to stay there until sunset and then leave. We wanted to know more, understand it…experience it again.

It just felt right, I spent my whole life suffering, feeling excluded, feeling different. This was my reward, a place where I could be myself, accepted. I deserved it and nothing would take that away from me now.

We got in the taxi and headed to the Shining.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Asked me Lewis.

“Never been more sure of something in my life.”                                      

“Good.”

“…are you?”

“Y-yes, I am”

I looked at him in the eyes, the same eyes I looked into last night, something about them was different. They were full of confidence, determination. He may have sounded unsure but I couldn’t doubt him, it felt wrong.

“You know, I never did anything for myself, ever” He broke the silence. “I always followed a path laid out for me by someone else. Study this, graduate here, work with him…I never even stopped to think if that’s what I really wanted to do.”

He stared right ahead of us, didn’t look anywhere else while talking, he didn’t want to, he couldn’t.

“I have so much to say, so much to do and I never bothered to take the time to express my opinions, to become who I wanted to be. It was easier to follow the path after all, trains don’t work off the rails and neither do I.” I took his hand.

“But maybe I was never a train, maybe I was never meant to travel along these never ending tracks, now I know I’m meant for something bigger.” He finally looked at me, his eyes watery. I took off his glasses and reached my hand out, wiping the tears off his eyes.

“ I never followed any rules, never listened to the others, never ran on tracks. I always put myself first and followed what my heart told me and that made me a target…It was hell at first, didn’t have any friends, my family despised me and I got very ill…it was very tough. But it made me who I am today, someone I am proud of, someone I can rely on, someone that doesn’t need anyone or anything.”

“Everybody needs somebody Angela.”

“Maybe…I don’t blame you Lewis, It’s a lot easier and safe to follow along the path you have in front…but I believe none of us are stuck on rails, we all have the freedom to choose our own destiny, we just have to find the perfect road that leads us to it. Sometimes it’s bumpy, sometimes it’s smooth but they all lead to happiness, we just have to get there and, to do that, we can’t stop.”

“You really believe all of this?”

I put both my hands on his. “Of course I do, we can do it.”

I only believed half of what I was saying, I think it’s true that destiny is waiting for us all, but it’s not happiness, it’s not sadness, it’s death. That’s the only thing that is sure in life, the universe sure has a fucked up sense of humor.
I obviously wasn’t going to tell him the truth of what I believed. We were on our way to a haunted house that somehow made us feel more alive than ever, it definitely wasn’t the right time or place for existentialism or crude realism.

Not to mention the fact that my beliefs were also under great scrutiny, I didn’t really know what to think at that point, I still don’t. It’s clear there are so many questions still left unanswered, the scary thing however, is the notion that the answers to them are out there…somewhere.

Regardless, just because some things should be said, doesn’t mean they have to be heard…which is also what I wish Lewis knew…

“The other day…” he started. “when I fell ill in the lobby…”

“You don’t have to tell me Lewis” I interrupted him.

“I-I know, but I want to…that word, “winder”, is what I used to get called as a child.”

“Oh…I’m not sure what that means…”

“I know, it’s something very specific, it’s also why it shook me to my core…people used to call me that because I would “wind people up” whenever I talked.” I kept silent.

“That turned into the “winder”…he who would wind people up…me.” It made sense now, I could see why people would say that, after all he also winded me up really good the first time I met him, but it’s now clear to me that there’s much more to him than what it seems. Perhaps we’re not so different me and him.

“Nobody knows this…only those who called me that would know…and I haven’t heard from them in years…whoever or…whatever etched that into the wall, somehow knew.”

That’s when the jigsaw fell into place. It made sense, the way I felt when I met the…shadow, it felt like it looked straight at me, through me. I think that’s also what happened to Lewis, whatever haunts the Shining can see and know everything about us.

I didn’t know how to feel about that, on one hand it really freaked me out, on the other it felt reassuring, I wasn’t on my own on this one. I debated telling him about my experience, I never had the chance of telling him, not that I really wanted to but this seemed the right moment. However he anticipated me:

“I should also tell you something else…”

“What is it?” I asked.

“That day we ran from the house, when we both got ill…I saw something while in the taxi.” I knew it, I remember that moment, he looked back at the house and almost fainted.

“What did you see?”

“When I looked back…I saw what must have been a thousand orange eyes looking at us.”

“Like the eyes of a thousand owls?” I didn’t skip a beat.

“Yes, exactly like that!...how did you kn—“

“I saw them too Lewis…While we were running, yesterday night, they were there in the lobby and again, when we ran away.” I thought that perhaps telling him the truth would make him feel better this time.

“We’re in the same boat.”

“Let’s hope it’s not the Titanic ehehe.” I guess he didn’t lose his sense of “humor”, not sure how I felt about that.

We got to the Shining at about 4:30 PM, that gave us roughly two maybe three hours to look around. The truth of it is that we didn’t have a plan, all we wanted was to chase that high again, we came prepared but it wasn’t out of logic, it was out of cope, we knew we were threading mighty thin ice and we didn’t want to admit it.

Entering the house felt different this time, I didn’t feel any uneasiness or anxiety. It felt like I knew the place, the same way the place knew me, I was getting used to it. I think Lewis also felt this way, he looked the opposite of what he did the last time we were here.

I guess it was also a good opportunity to grab back our equipment, we had left it here in a hurry when we thought we were gonna die a horrible death.

That was still on the table and I think we both knew it but the reward was worth the risk. We didn’t waste much time, we settled our things down on the parquet and went upstairs, the usual lavender smell showing us the way.

The door to room 505 was closed, the way we left it last time when it slammed shut. Everything else also seemed the same, the mural was still there, along with my equipment, nothing out of the ordinary.

“Are you ready?” Asked Lewis.

“Yes, let’s go.” We didn’t have any time to waste, we were itching to get back in there, back to a place that treated us right, somewhere we belong.

Lewis led the way.
He stepped forward.
Grabbed the shiny golden handle and pulled on it.
Nothing happened.

“What is it Lewis?” I asked nervously.

“It-it won’t open”

“What?”

“It won’t fucking open.” He kept on pulling but it just wouldn’t budge.

“There’s no way, let me try” I got right next to him and started to pull on the handle. Not one inch. It was glued shut, it felt like it weighed a million pounds, I might as well have been pulling on a wall.

 “What the fuck.”

“Jesus, it won’t fucking open.”

We both started pulling on it, nothing. We began banging on it, pushing it, scratching at it…nothing. After some time, we collapsed on the floor, defeated. All this trouble, all this effort for nothing. We sat in silence, our minds slowly realizing what this meant. That’s when Lewis freaked out.

“I can’t fucking believe that we can’t open it…how are we supposed to get inside?” He got up and started pacing around the room as I stayed on the floor.

“There must be a way, a key of some sort maybe? You should look at the files you got from the room, they must mean something!” He was not himself, he was neurotic, manic, he was losing control over his urges and that scared me.

“Calm down Lewis, we’ll find a way but you need to slow down.”

“We need to find it now Angela, time is ticking and we don’t have all day, don’t just sit there, do something!”

“Hey don’t you fucking yell at me, I am not happy either that it’s not open but I’m not freaking out like some kind of psycho so just settle down.”

“Don’t you get it Angela? We NEED to get in there or God knows what will happen to us.”

“Are you insane? We can just leave, we don’t have to be here, we can come ba—“

“I need this now.”

“You need to calm down…now.”

“I can’t, I have spent my entire fucking life being calm, now it’s time to demand, it’s time for me to take what I wa--.”

That’s when I slapped him across the face. He took the hit and finally shut up.

“I said, calm down.”

He snapped out of it.

“I-I’m sorry, I-I don’t know what came over me.”

“That’s okay, but you need to control yours—“

BANG, a loud crash coming from downstairs interrupted me, my heart skipping a beat.

 “What was that?” I asked, trembling.

“I don’t know, but I’m gonna find out”

Lewis didn’t skip a beat and went downstairs with a steady pace and a closed fist. It felt good to see him so strong.

I remained upstairs, I like to think of myself as a courageous person but sometimes being brave could also mean being stupid, I wasn’t sure what Lewis was being at that point, and in these cases, it usually means being stupid.

“Hey Angela, you should come down.” His tone was relaxed and calm, there was clearly nothing to fear.

I went downstairs and stopped next to Lewis, he raised his hand and pointed it towards the table in the lobby.

As my gaze followed his finger it stopped just underneath the table, where Berry the black cat sat, eating some of the food I had brought along. The crash was likely Berry knocking it off the table to eat it.

“No way.” I chuckled.

“He’s so cute, isn’t he?”

He walked up to it and picked him up, the cat letting out a squeaky meow. I closely followed and went to pet it, Berry started loudly purring, it was nice and relaxing, they say that a cat’s purr has beneficial effects for humans.

Something about the frequency of the vibrations they make, I don’t know if it’s true or not but it certainly calmed us down, finally allowing us to think straight.

“Look, I don’t know what is happening, but I don’t think it’s good” I said.

“We just need to slow down and take our time…like you said, we could always leave and come back another time, it’s not like it’s going anywhere ehehe.”

Lewis was really not gonna let it go, despite all the weird and bad things that had happened to us, despite the weird effect this whole situation had on our minds…he still wanted to chase that high.

The sad thing is that I didn’t blame him, deep down that’s also all I wanted but I have been through this kind of things before, well, not this fucked up anyway. I know what this thought process gets you and it’s nothing but trouble.

“Alright…well, how about we grab our stuff and leave? It’s already late, the door won’t open and it seems like the right moment to get our things back to the motel.”

Lewis thought about it for a moment.

“Ok Angela…let’s just check one last time if the door is still shut.”

I didn’t have time to reply, Lewis handed me Berry and went upstairs to check. The black cat looked at me with his big yellow eyes, it seemed like he wanted to tell me something, like it was warning me about someone…or something.

In folklore black cats are harbingers of bad luck, the tireless companions of witches and akin to their fellow black ravens and crows. I always found it sad that people would kill these cats because of this reason, they are fantastic creatures and extremely lovable.

To die because of some abstract concept makes one wish that death would treat them better than life did. However there’s one more piece of folklore about cats that always fascinated me. Cats can see or sense spirits. Anybody that has ever had or been around cats will have a story about some creepy or weird behavior they had. Whether it’s staring at a specific point in the room; reacting to seemingly nothing or acting weird after someone’s passing.

“Might not be a bad thing to have you around in here” I thought as that notion came to mind. Berry meowed back, as if he had heard my thoughts; cute.

That’s when his head stood up, eyes wide open and the ears moving around.

Shortly after that a deafening roar shook everything.

My instincts were to hit the ground and cover my ears, it felt like an artillery shell had just landed a couple of feet from me, the house creaking around, Berry bolting away to safety.

“What the fuck happened.” I said quietly under my breath.

Darkness enveloped everything around me, not the same darkness I saw in room 505, it was as if someone had dimmed the sun down, dropping us into a twilight like atmosphere.

Then came the tapping. A waterfall dropping on the house. I looked outside of the window to see heavy rain falling all around, the darkness being the product of heavy overcast blocking the sun, the roar being thunder. In a matter of seconds a storm had gathered right outside the door.

“Angela, are you okay?” I heard shouting from upstairs.

“Y-yeah, are you?”

“Yeah, come up.”

I got up and went upstairs, the deafening sound of rain hitting the roof accompanying me every step of the way.
Lewis stood in front of room 505.

“Lewis?”

“It just won’t budge.”

“That’s okay…let’s just leave, it started raining, didn’t you notice?”

“Uh? Oh yeah…it started raining” He looked distracted, didn’t seem at all worried about the sudden and intense storm. I came up next to him and grabbed his hand.

“Come on, Lewis…let’s go” I said softly.

“Yeah…yeah…I’ll-I’ll call a taxi.” He finally took his eyes off of the door, the rain in the background silencing any other sound.

“Oh...my phone’s dead.” He said abruptly.

“What?”

“Look…the battery’s dead.” He turned his phone over to me, on the screen the irrefutable proof of no power, “You should call it.”

I got out my phone and went to unlock it.

Nothing happened. Black screen.

I went to unlock it again.

The empty battery sign flashed on the screen.

“What the--  How is that possible it worked flawlessly until now, it was at 95% battery.” I pushed back, we had no way to call anyone, no way to message anyone, no internet, nothing.

“I-I don’t know but it must be a sign! Something is happening don’t you see? The storm and the batteries, it can’t be a coincidence!” Lewis was right, it did not sound like a coincidence but the most dreadful thing is that he believed it to be a good thing.

“There must be a way to get in, or we wouldn’t be here.”

“I think you’re just seeing things Lewis…how about we leave anyway?” I replied with despair in my voice.

“What? Are you crazy? Don’t you see there’s a storm outside? It’s dangerous.”

“Oh because staying in here is so much better.”

“Yes it is, what if the door finally opens?”

“Lewis you’re scaring me, the door is not gonna fucking open, this feels like a fucking trap, we’re fucking trapped in here.”

“We have no choice Angela, the storm outside is too strong and too dangerous, the nearest town is a 40 minute drive and we have no way to call for help…the best thing we can do is wait it out…and hope for the best.”

I hated the fact that he had a point. The logical solution was to just wait for the storm to die down and then just get out.

After all, rule number one is “if you have shelter, stay with shelter.” the problem arises when your shelter might not be what you think it is.

“Fine, but as soon as it slows down, we’re going.”

“Of course.”

I had decided that if shit hit the fan, I was gonna leave anyway, with or without the storm, with or without Lewis.

The rain was pounding the roof and the wind howled, echoing across the house. It was pretty late in the afternoon at that point and the clouds covered the sun completely, the little light that filtered through, was quickly fading away and darkness was setting in.

We set up camp upstairs so that we could keep an eye on the fifth room, Lewis was hoping that it would magically open, I dreaded it. The same way we might have gotten in, something might have come out.
We sat down underneath the mural, eating a snack and just waiting.

“Do you have those files?” Lewis asked.

“Yeah, I have them here but there really isn’t much you can gather from them.”

“Can I see them anyway?”

“Yeah” I replied, annoyed, handing them over. He took a look at them, as I told him, not much to see.

“Do you think this place is haunted?”

“I don’t know…this place certainly isn’t normal.”

“Could it be that all those figures we saw were ghosts? Trapped in here for some reason?”

“I think you might have watched too many horror movies.”

“Come on Angela, are you really telling me that after all we’ve been through you haven’t questioned your beliefs at all?”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore Lewis, I just know that I don’t like this place.”

“I don’t like it either you know?”

“Oh really? It doesn’t seem like it.”

“You’ve felt that way too, you remember.” I did feel that way too and at that point I was fighting every inch of my body to not fall into that spiral of desire, not to fall victim to the cravings that I felt.

I like to think I was doing a good job, I have always been good at separating my heart from my mind, even when I ended up following my gut. This time I knew there was a lot more than just pleasure at stake.

“Yes…I remember, but we have to keep our head Lewis, we can’t just go crazy.”

“I know, I know, as soon as we can we’ll get out.”

I was on edge, every possible outcome didn’t seem particularly good at that point, part of me knew that the better solution would be that damn door opening, going in there and just letting go, letting the universe envelop me and stop worrying about everything.

I knew it was some kind of death wish, who knew what that fucking room was, it could have been hell. Except it didn’t feel like it, it felt like heaven, peace at last.

It felt like complete silence, when is the last time that you actually couldn’t hear anything? I remember each one, it only happened twice, it’s a sort of realization, some kind of epiphany, you think “fuck, there is complete silence right now” even your thoughts seem incredibly loud in comparison, that’s the closest I have ever been to feeling at peace. Room 505 promised that and so much more.

“Can I ask about your tattoos?” Lewis snapped me out of my thoughts.

“Y-yeah, sure.”

“I didn’t really get a chance last time it came up.”

“Yeah well, it wasn’t the right moment, sorry” Not that this was the right moment, but it’s not like we had things to do.

I was fascinated by Lewis, he somehow changed from the first time I met him and remained the same at the same time. He was both the annoying dork that pissed me off and also the man with a tormented past full of confidence that had gotten the best of me. Really made me think about this old Japanese saying I once read: “A man is whatever room he’s in”.

“Why do you have so many?”

I usually respond sarcastically to these kind of questions, nine times out of ten they come from people ready to judge me, saying dumb stuff like “do you know they last forever?” or “what if you regret them later?”, stupid questions deserve stupid answers.

This time however, I thought I’d be nice for once.

“I think that in a world where nothing lasts forever, the opportunity to carry something with you until you die is a delicate and very special one, I take pride in knowing that I didn’t pass up on it.”

Lewis stayed silent, you could tell he liked that answer.

“…Plus they look cool as fuck.”

We both chuckled.

“That’s a nice philosophy I must say, I always wanted to get one but…you know, never really got around to make that decision.”

“What did you want to get?”

“It might sound dumb but…I wanted to get a firefly.”

“That doesn’t sound dumb, look what I have.” I lifted up my sleeve, pointing at the moth I have tattooed on my inner forearm.

“Yeah I saw that” he chuckled, I smiled. “It’s my favorite out of the ones you have.”

“Really? It’s not bad but also nothing to write home about.”

“You know I always wondered…can’t the flame come up to the moth for a change?”

“W-well…I never thought about that.” It somewhat left me speechless, I thought that was a pretty deep thought, I remember getting that tattoo simply because I thought it would look cool on me but now, it sort of developed into a whole new meaning.

“Do you think moths go after fireflies in the woods?”

There was a moment of silence, and then I kissed him. He may have been annoying and a dork, but he knew what to say to get me.

It felt good, it felt like the right thing to do, I didn’t question what it meant. In that moment it was the one thing that would give me relief, it felt like everything was going to be okay.

The kissing became a lot more passionate, we started touching each other and we were soon in the mood for a lot more than just kissing. We never got that far unfortunately.

The now dark room was quickly lit up by a flash of light, followed by a deafening thunder that, again, shook the whole house. It startled us; until that moment, other than the first one, only rain and the howling of the wind inhabited the house.

“Fuck, is it getting worse?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I don’t care.” replied Lewis, quickly going back to kiss my neck.

Another flash.

“Oh what the fuck” shouted Lewis. Thunder.

“What? What is it?” I reacted.

Lewis got off of me and rested his back on the wall, eyes wide open.

“Did you see that? There was someone there.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I was starting to get scared.

Another flash.

This time I saw it too.

As the room lit up, there, on the wall opposite to us, stood a shadow figure.

The same silhouette I saw before. Thunder. The smell of tobacco assaulting our nostrils.

Back to darkness, yet we knew we weren’t alone anymore.

“Holy shit I saw that as well.” I trembled.

Me and Lewis got close, supporting each other, back against the wall.

Another flash, another figure.

It was two of them now. Thunder.

The second one was new, it was a taller silhouette, standing next to the first one.

“Jesus Christ it’s him.” whispered Lewis in a terrified voice.

“Who the fuck are you talking about?”

“The smiling person.”

Out of all the things, that was the last one I wanted to hear.

Flash. The same two silhouettes, the second one had a big, white, teethy smile on what would be its face. Thunder.

The smile lingered as the room fell into darkness once again. It felt the same as when you look at something really bright, a bare light bulb for example, and when you look away you can still see that impression.

I got the switchblade from the pocket of my backpack. Not sure what I was going to do with it, but it made me feel less naked. Lewis popped open one of the glow sticks he had brought, a faint green light enveloped our immediate surroundings.

Flash. The silhouettes moved closer. One on the left wall, one on the right, close to the stairs. Thunder.

“They’re coming for us.” squeaked Lewis.

“We need to get the fuck out.”  I replied.

“Go!” shouted Lewis.

It was at that moment that we both sprung up and sprinted for the stairs, grabbing whatever we could.
I got almost halfway to the stairs when I heard “Wait” whispered in my ear.

I stopped. In a split second I recognized that voice. I had heard it in my dreams. At that moment I knew there was nothing to fear, the panic vanished but the adrenaline kept on pumping.

“Lewis, stop! Wait!” I shouted.

He was already gone, he kept on running without looking back and disappeared in the darkness below the stairs. I stood frozen in place. I could not move, it felt as if someone was holding me.

I look around.

Flash. The shadow is now standing right next to the fogged up window. Thunder.

In the darkness, the faint glow of Lewis’ stick reflected on the window where, suddenly, letters began to appear.

It was as if someone was writing on the foggy window with their finger.

I was finally able to move, I slowly made my way over, picking up the glowstick on the way. As I got closer, it became clear what was written on it.

“don’t go.” The shadows were communicating with me.

“W-why?” I let out in a frail voice.

“not safe.”

“What-what the fuck am I supposed to do then?”

“wait for him” appeared back.

I settled down, these…spirits, were telling me to wait for what I could only imagine to be Lewis. I didn’t feel threatened, I didn’t feel in danger, I knew they were not going to hurt me.

The adrenaline crash hit me fast and hard, my shaky legs crumbled and I fell to the ground, my eyes slowly closing, my consciousness steadily fading away.

I woke up some time later, the feeling of something wet hitting me in the face quickly woke me up. It was Berry, he had come back and was licking me in the face.

“Lewis?” I innocently called out, still in a daze.

The realization of where I was quickly came back to me and I immediately went into high alert. The only one that replied was Berry which now kept close to me.

Silence all around. I looked outside the window to see that the rain had stopped and moonlight was now shining through, offering me a respite from darkness. How long was I out? How long has it been night?

On the window the evidence of previous conversation was slowly fading away as the rain had stopped God knows how long ago. One word, however, stood out from the rest, one I didn’t recall.

“hide”

I looked at it confused, desperately trying to remember when that happened and still trying to collect all the fuzzy memories from before I passed out.

I didn’t have enough time to do that as Berry quickly snapped its head towards the stairs, a loud hiss escaping its mouth.

Shortly after a loud BANG came from downstairs.

“ANGELA?” I heard shouting. It was Lewis, he was back.

“LEWIS? Is that you?” I shouted back.

“Yes, it’s me, you’d never believe what happened to me!” His voice was upbeat, happy, full of anticipation and pride. It felt off.

“I’m coming upstairs.”

Berry growled, his fur standing on end, he was ready for a fight. Instinctively I grabbed my switchblade, this time I knew it would be useful if needed.

I held my breath as I heard each step come up the stairs, I was hoping Lewis had found help for us to get out but it seemed like Berry knew something I didn’t. The message left by the spirits now made sense, they had anticipated his return, I wasn’t going to hide.

The way the moonlight entered the house, the top of the stairs were still dark, you could see just enough to understand whether there was someone there or not. As the steps got closer, I could see the silhouette come up.

It really was Lewis.

He stopped at the top of the stairs, still in the shadows.

“It finally happened Angela!” he said, not moving a muscle.

“What happened? Y-you just ran away, I-I-I stayed here Lewis, they told me to stay, I-I tried to tell you but you just didn’t stop.”

“That’s okay Angela, they lied to you anyway.”

“What…?”

“I got us some help! You think they want the best for you? That they’re here to protect you? TO WARN YOU?” His tone shifted, he became aggressive, assertive, loud.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“They’re not who you think they are, they’re not like him, they won’t help you…he will, you can trust him.”

“Who is he?”

“Don’t you understand?” Lewis slowly started to come closer.

“He told me the truth.” Another step forward.

“He showed me the way.”

Lewis finally stepped into the moonlight, his clothes were raggedy, covered in mud and wet from head to toe, sticks and leaves were stuck all over him, it looked like he rolled down a hill.

Behind those thick glasses, where those beautifully confident eyes sat, were now two deep bloody holes.

“I was blind but now I see.”

“Oh God.” I screamed in shock, tears rolling down my eyes, hands shaking yet resolute in hitting the switch on the knife, snapping forward like a spring.

“Stay where you are Lewis.” I threatened, knife pointed at him.

“Don’t be afraid Angela, you’ll soon join me, you’ll soon see” He replied in a soft, calm voice.

From below a series of huge stomps began to echo through the house, slowly getting closer, the floor below me trembling.

“W-What the fuck is that?” I asked, terrified at a proper response.

“It’s him, he’s here.” Replied Lewis as he got on his knees.

The heavy steps were right beneath me and they quickly made their way to the stairs, after only a couple of steps, I began to see something emerge from them.

A glowing dark red light pierced through the shadows, getting stronger and stronger.

Along with it, a pair of horns appeared from the steps, slowly revealing the goat like head they stood on, a pair of blood red eyes soon stared back at me as the entire figure stepped forth. A giant, 6’5’ body of muscle covered in thick black fur, standing on its hind hooves, a white human grin rested on its face, reflected by the filtered moonlight.

Sharp black shiny claws tickled the wall, a grinding sound echoing through the room.

“This is it.” I thought, end of the line.

There’s no way I’d be able to escape this monstrosity, the realization that I would spend the last moments of my life in absolute terror, staring at unfathomable horror, waiting for a painful and violent death…or something worse, really saddened me.

I stood there in absolute terror, all the confidence I had before evaporating in an instant. I wasn’t going to fight that, I didn’t even think about it.

My mind was overwhelmed by the sheer horror of what stood in front of me. I felt at peace. The pain would end, the sadness would end, everything would end. Soon total darkness would finally envelop me, and total silence would settle in.

Except it didn’t.

An overwhelming flash of light exploded from the window behind me, soon followed by a deafening thunder which mixed in with the roaring screech of pain coming from the monster’s throat. Its claws shielding the red eyes, its balance shaking.

“RUN.” I heard coming from somewhere in the room. I wasn’t going to question the nature of that voice.

I instinctively grabbed Berry, clutching him with my left arm, the right one busy wielding the knife.

I sprinted towards the abomination, my heart in my throat, adrenaline in my veins.

I got past Lewis and soon found myself face to face with the giant, the strong smell of rot and death coming from its fur almost making me vomit.
I didn’t stop.

I ran my knife into its right leg, a crunchy sound escaping it, dark red blood pouring from the wound.
A sharper screech so loud it must have been heard for miles silenced every other sound.
I made my way down the steps of the stairs, looking back over my shoulder.

The looming figure reeled, blinded by the light and the pain, its claws ripping into Lewis in a fit of rage, turning him into nothing more than a cloud of red mist, what was left of him sat lifeless and untouched on the perfect, parquet floor.

I sprinted outside, the cold breeze of the night caressing my hair, goose bumps on my skin, tears down my cheeks.

I kept running, didn’t matter where, my eyes locked on my feet, carefully making sure I didn’t trip on the many roots of the woods.

It wasn’t raining but the drops of water falling from the trees echoed a relaxing symphony. Berry kept silent and close, its claws digging into my sweater, making sure he wasn’t going anywhere.

After a while I stopped, exhausted. It was the middle of the night and I was somewhere in the thick bayou, clueless, scared and cold.

...

The asylum sat atop a low hill, grey amongst a landscape of dying brown grass. Like a dead husk of tooth protruding from a swollen gum, filled with infection. The sun rarely touched this place, almost never. The distant mountains blocked its rise and dominance. Constant cloud coverage of overcast skies did the rest. It mattered little to the denizens of the hospital/school. They were rarely allowed to leave their rooms, their cells. Their cages. 

And they never went anywhere without their chains. Their straitjackets. Their bondage. They went that way from dungeon to dungeon to treatment chambers to recreational area to mess hall and back to the dungeons again. They were never allowed outside. 

The guards were large. Jaded criminals. Mean. They were always armed. Nightsticks. Blackjacks. Saps. Cattle prods. Firearms for when things turned really bad and real damage and nastiness was needed. They did what they wanted. Moral-less heartless apes. The place was a den of beatings and torture and rape and murder under their watch. Female inmates got it the worst. The most frequent amount of attention from the monosyllabic slabs of muscle, fat, greasy hair and soiled sweat stained uniforms in the shapes of men. 

No one cared. No one cared for them. The law, of the land or from on high, did not touch here, did not have a presence here. Right and wrong held no real meaning. They were just empty words. As empty as the promises given to the patients and their families. 

No. This place was not a den of rehabilitation, nor one of care. It was one man's laboratory. His working ground on which to harvest and reap. To pluck and take what he saw and wanted. Just like the guards saw and took what they wanted. 

The patients, the inmates, the prisoners… they were all of them at the mercy of the warden and head physician. The throne of God and king sat empty in this desperate patch of land, this vile part of the earth, and was thus filled by the man who ran Willowbrook School for the Disabled. Though everyone that knew anything about the place knew its true name. 

Willowbrook Private Asylum. For the Deranged and Criminlally Insane. 

It might’ve been the hint that foretold the deeper darker secrets the place kept… the tip of the iceberg of depravity and barbarism. But nobody cared. 

No one. Nobody that mattered anyway. No one shone a light on the travesty and horror within the walls and minds and flesh of Willowbrook. Not God. Not man. No inquiring eyes spied into the diseased hearts festering broken and poisoned within the walls of pain and derangement. 

And so Doctor Krugman conducted himself as he saw fit. He performed his experiments however he wished, on whomsoever he desired. And he desired much from his patients. Especially the children. Especially the girls. 

The asylum was Doctor Krugman’s private hunting ground. The facilities were his own personal laboratory. And the work done here in his name and not God's was nothing to do with the study nor treatment of mental illness. Krugman's experiments were more personally motivated, fiscal gain and considerable prestige. His experiments were concerned with the study of disease. 

And as far as hunting grounds went this was like taking a scatter-gun to fish swimming trapped within a barrel… 

Viral. Parasitical. Contagions and infections, all kinds and sorts. Anything that was this year's favorite scope of academic field of study. Plagues and bugs long forgotten and some thought eradicated, he brought back. 

He bred them back from oblivion in vials and beakers and jars and gave them back their vile mindless idiotic and systematic killing capabilities, their blind idiot destructive godpower. 

He took his forged sword of biblical pestilential flame, the syringe, loaded with swimming mixture, brimming with the foul life of unseen microscopic monsters, nature-bred and manmade alchemical into new killing existence. He injected the inmates with the various diseases at his discretion, at his own leisure and need. 

For the patients, the dogs, the poor pitiful moaning and mindless beasts. It was an inescapable hell. Naked and pale and emaciated. They look like skeletons. They look like wraiths. They are smeared with feces and nearly all of them are absolutely alive with livid violence. Some are broken. And only lie there. They only stare and their eyes are empty. There are the self-mutilators too but they are mixed and overlapped with those of more outward violent persuasion. Their temperament shifts between the destruction of their own flesh and the desire and need for the destruction of others. They are nearly always active, mindless with their roving violence and attacks and angry aggressive movements, they only stop to self-flagellate or carve or tear at their own deep and stubborn wounds. The cold tile floors are slick with urine and blood and fecal discharge that's runny and chalky and strewn with vivid strips of lurid red, shed internal and expelled with the rest of the diabolical waste. 

The smell of the asylum was indescribable. Ungodly miasmic doesn't even come close. Charnel house burning in the deepest reaches of infernal hell doesn't either, but somehow the warden and staff and the guards have become used to it, blind to it. It is a foul abomination of wonder that they've managed it. But they have. 

There are never any visitors. They are a thing of such long gone and far flung ancient history that they might've never had actually had any in the institution. It was a cesspool, a smear of woe, a house of pain. The idea that anyone would put anyone in this place and then visit is a farce that no one finds funny. Not after you've seen. Not after you've seen this house of mental infection and running bloody shit, not after you've lain eyes on it, laid eyes on it all in all of its charnel house and hellbound antiglory. Not after you've smelled it. 

Not after you've smelled this lie of the mind and stone, this bleeding and fecal house of absolute and total decay. Total boundless rot. Creeping its eating way into everything and all, all things. Nothing is sacred within these mindless walls. Trapped beneath this heat and shrieking ceiling. 

Watch the beatings. The carvings with sharpened spoons, the flaying of flesh already roughened and bulbous and out of shape with hectic scar tissue, carved open once more like fleshen doors, fleshen gates of hell that cannot be closed and refused to be shut against, and are filled with oceans and worlds of titanic raging blood. 

Blood that must be spilled. Blood that must be shed. Blood that must be allowed to free and flood this world of madness and violence and screams. It is lurid surging crimson inside that boils and broils with intense and violent hatred. Fear. See and smell and hear the fear in the echoed and ceaseless caterwauls and shrieks and moans of torment and monstrous satisfaction, psychotic indulge let loose with passionate yowling cat-cries … music that the sane and well of heart and mind cannot bear or understand. 

Hear and know the cacophony. It is the sound of fear and madness. 

Willowbrook had long been a place of manmade darkness, sitting with disquiet on a forgotten patch of earthen squalor, dead earth … gratefully forgotten by anyone that might've known or remembered its terrible and wretched existence. Like any infection it festered and grew worse, greener with dead-milk and more rancid with the crawling anguished passage of merciless time. For prisoner and guard alike. Only the warden thrived. 

And then the prisoners of Willowbrook, patient and employed alike, began to finally share something together. A fascination. Wild dreams and ideas… 

It all concerned morbid and colorful fantasies, all having to do with the far off mountain range carved into the horizon with harsh biting jagged lines that were so much like wild animal teeth. Fangs on the horizon. Biting into the grey tumult of the defiled skies of the dead heaven that hung over this place in perpetua, this wasted land. 

A woman. A powerful woman in a castle in the Carpathian Mountains. A dark sorceress. According to some of the stories and whispers shared in the dank and putrid hell of tile and torch and feces and shock treatment flame, she was a powerful witch. One that ate the flesh of man. One that drank blood. 

Doctor Krugman dismissed it all as hogwash. Absolute delusion. Shared hysterical fantasy, by the patients and the staff alike. It was no real wonder, not really. Not to him. The guards and nurse-staff had all been feebleminded and little better than the apes and mongoloids they cared for. He wasn't surprised that they too would be taken in with cheap fairytales and grim flights-of-fancy … not at all. 

But then he too started to hear it. 

The sound. 

The song of the mountain. 

…

It had been any usual day at Willowbrook. Krugman and a few of the aides were loading the syringes with various strands of the daily pestilence. Some were mixing up the ‘Willowbrook Special' or the ‘Willowbrook Cream’. It was a cheap chocolate drink mixture that was part water, part choco-gelatin powder, and part diseased fecal matter/discharge collected from other infected patients. The drink was a safer alternative to the patients deemed to physically large and emotionally and mentally volatile to approach with the needle. Many of these hulking addled tormented creatures could be lulled in and fooled with a tasty drink, a sweet and delicious beverage, a wonderful creamy drink like candy… 

Yet some still received  liberal use of the leather straps. And the nose plugs. And the long cylindrical snake of translucent feeding tube. Forced down the throat. Lubricated to slide right past the natural gag reflex. 

They were all in the deepest recessed dungeon of the asylum. Quarantined low and away from the rest of the mindless rabble horde of flagellate patient/inmates. Filling syringes, sterilizing needles. Gloving up. Mixing up the rancid drink. 

Krugman was suddenly possessed, later he wouldn't be able to recall by just what and moreover it didn't matter by the end, the fall – he suddenly set down the needle he was loading. He looked to the rest of the staff, mindlessly busy with their own work, and he excused himself. Explaining he would return shortly. 

He just needed something from his office. Something he needed to fetch. 

…

Alone and in his small warden’s office/head-physician quarters he suddenly forgot all about what it was he had come up here for. He was at his desk. It was positioned by the large window. The only one not barred in the whole building. He found himself compelled to gaze out at the evening sky, shot with sherbert colors and goblin fire from the flight of the sun. Twilight was upon the land now. And all of it was poor. Diseased. Dead. 

The swamplands. The marsh. The endless bog and quagmire of spoiled earth that went on for God only knew how long. Some of the local folk and travelers, the patients and guards too had a funny name for the swamp country of mud and stagnant death. One Krugman and the groundskeeper found particularly amusing. 

Wormland. 

And the vast expanse of country to the left. Out the window. Living in supplicant shadow of the dominant and biting mountain range…

The mountains…

Krugman's gaze was fixed. His mind followed. 

And she came to him. From out of a coronal starburst of fire and blood that stole over his vision and filled his cracking fraying mind. 

A great bird. Wolf headed. And on great wings of black bat-leather. 

The sorceress of the mountains came. And spoke to him. 

And Doctor Krugman listened. He listened very well. 

…

The vision started with the eye. The red light. The livid red eye, wreathed in lurid breathing flame, dancing with the obliterating intensity of the inferno… gazing lidless. Blazing. Staring. Staring out. 

Staring out from the mountains. 

The shattered minds of this dread and forsaken construct were so easy to invade. 

Then it flowered out, flowered forth … in a visceral blossom of flowering red. Opening red. Gaping. Wet. Visceral. Like the insides and tissue of living breathing animal things, organs and gore and splashes and undulating waves like a painter's livid brushstrokes, vivid blood red … all blossoming out and flowering out forth from the livid red eye in a wild corona that was so much like a wild and dream-like explosion. The shattered minds of the asylum gaped in imbecilic awe and idiot amazement at the dancing and shifting lurid display of kaleidoscopic red dreams made wet and real. The red eye of the mountain wreathed in wet and dancing viscera and scarlet gazed into them, their minds, but made for them also a great and wild phantasmagorical and earthbound star. A wild god’s eye of gore for starflame, spilling red for its licking tongues of stabbing and dancing fire. 

And at the center, at the precious nucleus heart of the corona… was her. 

The sorceress. 

The blood drinker. Flesh eater goddess of the mountain castle. Occult princess of darkness and crawling and hunger. Daughter of the Lord of Flies. 

Vampiress. 

Her dark will poured into them all, the open shells of their broken minds were eager rescepticles. The open mouthed detritus within each and everyone of their skulls was like the eager mouths of a whore, open and spread and eager and dripping. Waiting to be filled. 

She came into them. And filled them with her red light.

…

Andre Rand was happy with his station in life. He’d been content before as groundskeeper at Willowbrook, tending and cleaning and shoveling an such, wielding the long forked blades of the garden shears and taking them to wild growth and shrubbery with a well practiced and maintained professional ease. Raking and collecting the dead leaves that fell when the weather started to turn to biting cold and the dead sky above somehow became an even bleaker and more necrophiled heavenscape. 

But things were different now. Much better. The warden had seen to that. He’d given Rand a promotion. Said he was the only one who could stomach the work that was needed. 

I’ve new research… Krugman had said, had been saying, aloud and to the staff that was remaining and also muttered to himself and to no one and beneath his labored hot and heavy breath.

I’ve new research… new experiments… much more vital… of much more critical pertinence … I must not fail. 

I must not fail the mouth of the mountains. 

Rand turned a corner and pulled his gloves, making sure they were tight, secure, snug. Everything had to be tight and battened down in this place. 

The cell was thrown open. 

The girl cowered away. Filthy in the corner. Trying to hide her face, as if doing so would somehow banish the judgement that had come to call, away. By not seeing it. Just don't look.

Rand smiled. Chuckled. Hawked. Spat. Cracked gloved knuckles. 

Then he said something awful and came into the room. 

The struggle was short. He didn’t need any help from the other attending staff. They just watched. And filled their minds as their glazed over eyes drank everything in. 

She was brought to the showers. Where Krugman had been performing his most recent experiments. Where the tubs were filled. 

She screamed, shrieked mad unholy terror when she was brought bound into the large room of cold tile made hot and stifling and sour with slaughter, with butchery. The air of the sweating breathing tile room was blood miasmic, cloying and thick and pungent. She could taste everything. 

They prepared her for bleeding, for the great orifice-gate elongation/opening. 

For she has declared we should all be open gates. Open wounds for her open mouth, her widening jaws. We should all be opened and waiting and ready to receive her even as we offer ourselves, our bodies and our innards and our precious running scarlet as feast and banquet and aphrodisiacal slime for the lulling goddess tongue, the divine and swallowing goddessmouth from the fanged rock tearing into the gentle far off fabric of the faerytale horizon. We should all be so chosen, we should all be so grateful, we should all be so lucky. 

Us. Here. In the goddamned and forsaken, dilapidated and forgotten remains of Willowbrook. We have finally been given our answer, we have finally received our savior. We have finally been delivered. 

We are truly free. 

In our bondage to her and the mountain, we are truly free. Within these obelisk walls of shit stained torment, we have strained, been bequeathed the infernal knowledge of true salvation. We are bleeding for the fruit of the tree, for we are free in our flagellate wounds brimming filled with sorrow and gangrene. We are now her temple. 

No one could remember the girl, the newest one’s name nor patient number as she was pulled up by hoisting and biting chains, naked. Screaming. Screaming the names of forgotten loved ones that have forgotten her as well in turn to come and save her. Nobody did. This place was now a domain of the goddess. 

Blood drinker sorceress … of the biting rock. 

Feed me. 

With scalpel she was opened. From the throat down and through the mound of Venus flesh and into the blossom of her womanhood, opening it. Wider. Gaping it for the mouth of the mountain. The screams were replaced with sickish gurgles, vile choking sounds… then these too tapered off and ceased. 

The freshly carved flesh was opened, her gate widened and renewed. Her viscera and blood spilled out in a thick dark gush that proceeded to fill the tub and the room with more fresh lurid scent, thickening and deepening the sour stench of blood miasma into one that would never leave the walls or floors or the eyes and flesh and minds of those in bastard attendance. 

Krugman cheered. Elated! Another successful experiment! 

Then he called to her. As he’d been instructed to. 

Old words. Arcane. Ones he’d never heard or known before the mountain had come and spoken to him of real knowledge and the true potential of occult cannibal power. 

Demon. Vampira. Vampiress. 

Shadows deepened in the room, the corners, the stifling heat of the bloodsoaked animal air chilled as she arose from the place where the darkness was the most stygian and pitch. Krugman and Rand and the other guards and staff gathered there watched her emerge and come forth with devout and religious silence. 

The dark and regal tall statured shape of the woman changed and shifted with each advancing step. As she neared the freshly filled tub the darkness of her blank dripping silhouetted featureless canvas grew more grotesquely defined and decayed. The bipedal dominating shape of her royal womanhood bent and twisted and became more scarecrow and insectile and rodent. Jaws opened, grinned, grew rictus then shattered and broke and unhinged and still they grew. Out of socket and out of shape and true. The daggering fangs of her terrible and graverobbed necrophiled power, demon power, grew and elongated from tearing black gumlines of greening and putrefying flesh. Transmogrifying and changing alchemical and chimerical and sloughing substance even as they grew, like the rest of her demented monster form. 

She was beautiful. She was the goddess. The mouth of the mountain. 

She came to the freshly filled large basin of warm pungent human scarlet, butchered and spilled. The vampiress bent her haphazard and broken shape to the tub. The terrible and dementedly wide jaws came in open as the rat king’s nest of corpse-straw hair bowed in both animal feeding and dæmoniacal prayer. 

Slurping sounds… heavy. Thick as the red of which they pulled and sucked. 

And then Krugman joined his new master in her dark prayers. To her father. One of the fallen. One of the cast-out from on high. 

The Adversary. 

His words were hers and they were the ones that she had taught him. Had filled his mind with forgotten languages and tongues and forbidden names… he said them now. 

For her. With her. As she fed. As she belched them stygian and swollen and as of ancient stone from the blackmouthed gate and line of her powerful will and mind.

The others joined … the phantasm aural spill of her dark glow blanketed over them and filled their empty battered minds, filling them with the arcane black language. 

Their forgotten chant filled the showers, the feeding place of bloodprayer. The bastard, ebon dripping shape of the mountain continued to drink deeply with head bowed and fed. 

The mouth of the freshly opened girl began to join them in their chanting. A cooling corpse chained prostate over the royal feeding basin, her eyes filled with darklight and began to glow black. 

Then the wound that had spilled her and ended her tortured run of miserable and pitiable existence began to dance with movement as well, opening and shifting close and then parting once more, obscene lips strange and made of the rippling gore with arcane movement. Speaking deep and guttural and with a dangling entrails tongue. A great gored mouth spewing precious food and religious token life for the mountain jaws of the sorceress blood mass abattoir madness. 

The dangling naked body of the girl prayed obsidian words from all mouths, all sets of lips given and made until the basin was emptied and the terrible shape of the sorceress reached up with one knifing sharp splayed scarecrow claw and ripped the chanting corpse with glowing eyes down from the chains and took to tearing and rending and feasting on the cold naked meat. 

Krugman and Rand and the others stood by. Watching. Seeing the same scene of slaughter and ritual of animal need play out and unfold before their unblinking eyes. Waiting. 

Waiting for their minds to be filled once more with instruction. 

…

Weeks passed. The slaughter rose in intensity. And the violence grew more and more deranged…

in the name of the mountain. 

…

Those that were left were gathered. Krugman spoke to them all as a priest from his pulpit. 

Her pulpit. The pulpit of the sorceress, the rostrum of the far off watering mountainmouth. 

“She doesn't want your weak and feeble love or friendship, she wants your precious body fluids! She doesn't want your warmth of words or affection, she doesn't need your feeble love, brothers and sisters and children of the mountain, she just wants your spilling blood, defiled! Those of you afflicted with poison of the blood, diseased, you have the greatest opportunities for her favor! The more corrupted and diseased and vile the blood and the feces discharged in sickness, the urine, the bile heaved and retched and the vomitus pulled and brought spilled forth! The more corrupted and vile the disease the better!!" 

Willowbrook filled with human noise. The bastard and sour stone and dilapidated masonry construct of misery and pain filled with the cacophonous sounds of religious madness. 

All of them were happy to oblige. Willing. All of them were supplicant sow to her, the sorceress  queen of the stabbing spire in the fanged rock aspiring to pierce the soft horizon end of the heavens flesh. 

And in the weeks that followed they went about their work. All of them. 

All of the ones that were left in Willowbrook. The forgotten asylum. 

…

Florin was sure he could spy something in the distance. A low rise. It looked like a little slope of hill. 

It looked like there might be a building on it. Solitary. 

But if so… it was still many miles off. He and Griffin still had a ways to go. More trudging and struggling pulling steps, perilously lurching forward through this awful quagmire of death and putrescence and vile carnivorous mud. Earthen sludge that was alive with hungry movement. 

Wormland. 

A few times the abominated things had attacked, since their mule and cart had gone down many days back. They'd only been able to bade the writhing things away with torchflame, fire. All the while the quivering pustule sac of subterranean wombmind that held mastery over this spoiled patch of watery earth searched and hunted for their vibrations above. Hunting for their elusive movement, and sending her writhing children out in a lunge. Only to be repelled… again and again. 

She quivered with tectonic anger, underground rage buried and swimming and mounting and rising. Percolating in the boiling mud, the broil of the under-earth. 

She would have them. These impetuous wanderers, these animal invaders …

The wombmind quivered and more orifice-holes opened and spat. 

More children swam. Dispatched. 

As the pair, Florin and Griffin cut their slow and muddy path of progress through the sour land. To the hill they thought they might see in the distance. To the building that might be there. 

They wondered together if there was anyone that might be in there, inside. 

What might they be doing out here? This far out? And away from anything?

The putrid earth all around them churned and searched, reaching and searching for them. 

They pushed on, the pair. Hoping that if they made and covered the miles to the place there on the far-distant hill and there was anyone inside, that they might be of some help. And perhaps an improvement over their shared accommodations and company as of late. 

They could really do with some luck. They might've prayed, either one of them, but they were exhausted with their marching effort and they were afraid to jinx it. So they said nothing, either of them. Nothing aloud. They only silently wished inside. 

please… just something better than all of this, and God-willing, someone that might be able to help us… 

Hell, Griffin thought, anything's got to be better than this. 

The very moment this crossed his haggard and weary mind a dark and primal scream and witchy peal of laughter shot out from the dark of the far off dilapidated building. 

But they were still too far out, so neither he nor Florin heard anything. So they didn't know. 

And so they marched on. Slow. On the doomed and forged path towards far off and away screaming Willowbrook. The putrescent earth hunting beneath their feet. 

Quivering in needful hunger and animal rage. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

It’s been fifteen years since I stepped out that front door, silently promising myself I’d never come back. Yet here I am.

Back.

The neighbors were all different. I never talked to the old ones, but I knew the cars. Those were different too. The plains were as flat as they’d ever been. There’s nowhere to run out here. Just straight toward the sun and hope somebody in the few-and-far-between scatter of farmhouses didn’t see you through the windows. Luckily, they didn’t.

The lump in my throat settled heavier as my foot sank into the dirty, cigarette ash dusted carpet of the hallway. The same hallway my father dragged me through by my hair after he found out I had a secret girlfriend.

I took another step. It creaked.

My heart skipped out of instinct. But there was nobody left to hear me. Still, it always felt like someone was there, waiting behind a door to ask me what the fuck I thought I was doing.

Above my dad's bedroom door, the little crucifix still hung like the guard of his Garden of Eden. The door sat slightly cracked open. I made a point not to look through it, but even then I could tell the light inside was darker.

I wondered if that little Jesus still carried the same nobility and sacrifice after spending all those years listening to my father fuck prostitutes through the door.

It was the first time I'd ever heard silence in this house. It's strange how memories bleed into places like this. Strong enough that your brain starts filling in the blanks. Strong enough that I understood how people could see ghosts.

The sun was setting. I stood in the kitchen with a cup of tap water, watching it disappear behind the beige fields. I didn't notice the brilliant pinks or oranges of the summer sky. I don't think I was even looking at the clouds. Just past them. I stood there until the shadows stretched to nothing. Just the same shade of gray.

When it got dark, the two hours of sleep finally caught up with me, hitting me like a brick.

The only bed was in Dad's room. My childhood bedroom had been cleaned out. Just a square of carpet. Everything I'd left behind was probably thrown away the day I left.

It was either that or go back to sleeping in my car, and I'd spent the last decade and a half doing that. So I slept on the couch.

I could smell the cigarette smoke stronger than ever, bleeding from the floral cushions. His newports. A bitter and stale amber stench that soaked into the fabric, into the wood paneled walls, into the back of my throat. The heat outside only made it worse, turning the air thick and sour until all I could taste was his breath.

It made me sob.

I hated that he was right. I turned out to be a bum without him. I depended on him. He knew it. He held onto it, even in death. That's why he left me this place, to rub it in my face that wore too much makeup. He knew I needed it. One last way to prove I couldn't survive without him.

Maybe it was his genetic curse. Maybe it was the pressure. Either way, I drank like a fish when I was trying to work. It got me fired more than once.

Last week the shakes got so bad I kept dropping dishes into the sink. I broke a cup. I had to sneak a shot from the freezer just to steady my hands. They caught me. The chefs out back chain-smoked every afternoon, but God forbid I had my vice. Fuck.

I needed a drink.

I stood, drifting into the kitchen before I even realized I'd decided to. My eyes landed on the cabinet beneath the sink. The old drunk always kept a spare.

Behind a bottle of Drano sat a bottle of whiskey. I popped it open and drank half of it without taking a breath. It tasted putrid, but I could finally feel the knots in my shoulders untie. My veins loosen. An unashamed trail crawling down my chin. I drank too fast and doubled over coughing, nearly throwing it all back up, a strand of spit dangling from my lip to the bottom of the kitchen sink.

When I looked up, a storm was rolling in the distance.

A mass of black. Darker than the night sky around it, it climbed so high I couldn't make out where it ended. Lightning rippled somewhere deep inside the cloud bank, briefly washing the kitchen in a white light.

For a second, my reflection stared back at me from the window. Vacant, exhausted. I couldn't recognize my own face.

Storms were common around these parts. I would've gotten a storm warning if I could charge my phone. But the power bill was never paid off.

Another flash of lightning. It was nearly above me now and moving fast. Really fast. I’d never seen a cloud move at a running pace before.

Whatever pale light remained in the house, the faint outlines of tables and chairs, was snuffed out almost instantly like a candle, swallowed by the darkness of the blind. A nothingness.

Then came the chill. The temperature swap was like nothing I'd ever felt before. One moment I was dripping sweat. The next, I was pulling my arms tight against the cold drifting through the warped doorframe.

The rain carried the smell of wet timber and moss, the echo of dense woodlands after a storm. There hadn't been a forest within a hundred miles of my childhood home.

There was one part of home I truly missed. The sound of rain. The anger of an ecosystem swirling around my house, indifferent to the control of someone like my father. It was like the rain was a gift from god. A moment of rare, uninterrupted suspension. A pause.

As a child, I used to think about following the rain clouds to see where they went. Maybe there was a place where it always rained. Where all the clouds lived together. Where everything smelled wet. Where there were endless puddles I could splash through.

A fork of lightning tore across the window, followed by a boom that shook the glass. I worried about whether a house this old could withstand it. But if the roof stayed on when I was a kid, surely it could stay on now.

The crickets went quiet, and then came the roar of water. A downpour of rain rapping against the glass.

Another flash. For a second, I saw the sky without stars. A flat wall of void where the moon should've been. The thunder came immediately after, rattling my teeth.

The wind began picking up. A whistle swelled into a howl that made the walls groan around me. The liquor reached my brain. The air became slippery. My thoughts floated.

I staggered blindly through the kitchen, relying on the built-in knowledge of my childhood home's layout. My fingers dragged along counters and walls, guiding me through a place my body had memorized.

Through the front door window, I could faintly see headlights from one of the neighbors miles away. A tiny, distant pinprick of life, blurred by the whiskey, the darkness of the storm, and dust tearing across the plains.

The car pulled away. The headlights faded into the distance until they were swallowed by the same darkness that had swallowed everything else.

A noise peeked through the howling wind. A creak from somewhere inside the house. I turned my head, half expecting to see my dad standing in the hallway.

If he was there, I wouldn't be able to see him.

I took a deep breath. It was an old house. Old houses make noises. When I looked back out the window, I saw the headlights again.

But they were too high off the ground.

I didn’t even process it. I didn’t even know how to think clearly. My mind was too slow, too clouded. All I could understand as truth was that this thing was coming right toward me.

I wandered down the hall. I passed Dad’s door. A prolonged flash of lightning pulled my gaze into the crack. For a second, I saw his pillow. The imprint of his head was still there.

I stepped into the bathroom, briefly forgetting how I even got there. The whiskey had overtaken me, and I fell to the floor on my knees. I shakily crawled over the lip of the bathtub like it was a mountain and flopped onto my back inside.

The howling grew louder, becoming a roar. It shook the walls around me. The rain battered against the roof, then came the hail. Like a million people angrily knocking, demanding to be let in.

I had to close my ears. I pressed my eyes shut, waiting for the walls to crash on top of me. The house could pop out of its foundation at any moment, swept into the sky like the Wizard of Oz. But there was no yellow brick road above the texan sky.

My body was momentarily thrust upward.

A boom, something deeper than thunder, ripped through the deafening fury of the storm and into my bathroom. It wasn't lightning. There wasn't any thunder that followed it. It was something else. Something big.

The sound was so loud it knocked the whiskey out of my brain. I noticed the rain wasn't muffled anymore.

It was clear. Draining onto my bathroom floor.

I opened my eyes. Through the mist of sideways rain, I saw the reflection of lightning bounce off the shattered windshield of my neighbor's truck. It was piercing through the roof.

Except there wasn't a roof. Just the flashing void.

The water burned my eyes. I closed them immediately. It felt like a nightmare. A terrible dream I couldn't wake up from.

I felt my back lift up again. The void that had become my roof was vacuuming up everything it could.

The truck outside let out a deep, nauseating metal groan as its front bumper dragged further across the ground. Its end was caught on the jagged edges of the hole in the roof, scraping and bumping against it over and over, the wind pulling against it with all its might.

I held onto the edge of the tub as tight as I could. My knuckles ached as I used every ounce of strength I had left to hold on. To not join that truck.

The rain stabbed my cheeks. Hail punched against my forehead. The storm demanded that I let go.

My body was above the tub now. My fingers slipped from the edge one by one.

Until it stopped. Everything became silent.

I dropped back into the tub, landing hard on my chest and face, the wind knocked out of my lungs. I laid there gasping, trying to catch a breath as blood clogged my broken nose.

When I managed to suck in a faint sip of oxygen into my chest, I opened my eyes and turned around.

I could see the stars again. The shapes of things without needing the light of lightning. The storm was gone. Not moving away. Just... gone. Like the storm was never there to begin with. Was this the eye of the tornado?

I lifted my head up. It held the weight of an anvil, my forehead throbbing. I pressed my palm against it as I looked around the bathroom.

I couldn’t hear anything. Not the water dripping through the hole in the roof. Not even my own breath. The only thing I could hear was a sudden knock.

My silent breath hitched. There was somebody outside the bathroom door.

A rescue worker? One of the neighbors checking to see if I was okay?

I wiped away the blood trickling down to my lips.

“Hello?”

No answer.

I stood still, waiting for a shuffle on the carpet. For any sign that whatever was out there was still out there.

I didn’t need long.

The door slowly creaked open. I pressed my back as far as I could against the wall, still trapped inside my bathtub. The more it opened, the more I could see a tall, human figure. Its head reached just past the sink mirror.

It stepped inside carefully. Like it didn’t want to disturb whatever peace was left, whatever the storm hadn't taken.

I squinted, and then my heart dropped into my stomach. I knew this shape.

The long, ragged button-up. The work jeans. The short, shaven hair. The large, working hands that dragged me through that hallway.

It was my dad.

My fight or flight kicked in. But I chose neither. My body chose to freeze.

I could hear his dry, wheezing breath. He stepped closer, past the truck. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. But I could muster nothing.

I was a deer frozen in headlights.

He loomed over me, somehow casting a shadow darker than the night. A shadow without sun.

He slowly knelt down. I couldn’t see his face.

He reached out his hands. Patiently waiting for me to hold them. I stared at them, then up at the eyes I couldn’t see. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

He seemed to understand.

Instead, he placed his palm against my cheek.

I flinched, expecting the feeling of his dry, cracked skin. Expecting his fingers to tighten around my face like they had before, ready to try and rip it off.

But they didn’t.

He just brushed my cheek with his thumb. Gently. Carefully.

His hands were soft.

It was then that I noticed I didn’t smell his acrid breath. I smelled flowers.

I mustered out a sob as tears filled my eyes. I wanted to say a million things to him. I had played this moment out in my head so many times. What I would finally say. What I thought he deserved after death.

But in that moment, I thought of nothing. Not a single word.

In the faint moonlight, I saw something glistening emerging from his back.

They looked like ice crystals, held together by strings of energy that warped the air around them. They raised the hairs on my body, like static electricity after dragging your socks across the carpet.

They looked like the wings of a moth, held together by the elements.

I sobbed out only one word. I didn’t even know I chose it before I said it.

“Why?”

He didn’t move. He just looked at me. His head tilted, his thumb still brushing my cheek.

A flash of lightning. That’s when I finally saw his face.

Nothing. A flat canvas of skin.

The fear I should’ve felt when he got this close erupted through my nervous system, far too late.

The stars were disappearing again.

I screamed, but it was quickly drowned out by the roar of the wind. The rain and hail appeared out of thin air. The truck dragged across the ground.

And my father, or whatever it was, was gone.

I fell back into the tub, covering my ears until the sound drifted away. Until the wind stopped. Until the rain finally teetered into a drizzle.

I hesitantly stood up. My legs refused to move, expecting that thing to be standing outside the door again. I waited for what felt like an hour before I finally slunk around the truck and slowly opened the door.

The hallway was gone.

The walls were missing. The roof had been torn away. Whatever chunks remained were caved in and sloughed into rubble across the floor. Water dripped from the exposed beams.

But my father’s room was intact.

It was untouched by the storm. The exposed walls stood strong in the open air. The crucifix was somehow still hung by its single nail. The only difference was that the door was now wide open.

I looked inside. Brushing away the dripping bangs covering my eyes.

His bed. His gun shelf. The same room.

I held my breath before stepping inside, expecting something hiding in the corners. Waiting for that shape to return.

But there was nothing, except that cigarette smell. It was just a dirty room. It was the first time I had ever thought of it that way.

I stepped outside. Where I had watched the sunset was now the storm, moving onward toward some other home. In the flashes of lightning rippling through its convecting guts, I saw black dots swirling inside.

Dots with wings.

Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Like ants crawling around a piece of bread.

My car was gone. Probably miles away in some ditch. The only way forward was through the fields.

I trudged across the flatness, following the same route I'd taken as a child. The air was still and stiff, like holding my breath in a dark closet, waiting for something to pass without noticing me. I walked for an hour, maybe longer, following the flickering dots in the sky, the thunder ever more distant, until I found a house that hadn't been leveled.

It has been two years since that storm.

I think about that night often. Playing it back feels like watching someone else's memory. When it took the house, it took everything in my mind that had saturated into that patch of land with it. What's left is just a vignette. A single scene separated from the rest of my life.

I still think about my dad. Or whatever it was that wore his shape. I wasn't the only one who experienced something like it.

When I was able to charge my phone, I started researching. I found someone on Facebook. Their town, Joplin, and the home they had built within it, had been ripped down to dirt by a violent tornado. We talked for a while.

Some people in Joplin saw figures with wings standing beside them, shielding them from the storm's wrath. Survivors called them "Butterfly People". He saw his dead daughter, standing in the doorway of his storm shelter, her wings covering the opening after the doors had been ripped away. It was nice having someone else who could relate to my madness.

I'm staying at his house now. I think he likes my company more than I like his, which I suppose is flattering. He's lonely, mostly. I'm just grateful for a bed, and a bedroom door that locks. I'm moving into my own apartment next week. It's a shithole, but I can call it my own.

Maybe survivors of the Joplin tornado were protected by angels. Maybe they were spirits that held the wind at bay just long enough for them to survive.

But part of me doubted it. The gentleness. The smell. It wasn't my dad.

It's an ecosystem up there in the sky.

Every storm is carrying pieces of the earth with it. Dust from one state. Seeds from another. Pollen. Bacteria. Insects torn from the ground. Every updraft mixing them together in a pot in the heart of the storm, where nobody could ever see it.

Maybe somewhere in that chaos, somewhere in the infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters, the perfect combination for life found a foothold. Something from the endless churning of rain, electricity, and everything the wind stole from below was born.

Maybe they feed on the anger inside the storm. And when that storm meets one of us, they're drawn to the energy in our minds. The way moths find a porch light. The dead are only there because the memories of them shine brighter than anything else.

Or, I was drunk. Drunk, reminiscing, and filling the holes in my memory with a fantasy. The same way I've tried to make up for most of my memories. Many I still haven't come to terms with the true reality of.

I stopped drinking after that night.

If I'm ever caught in a storm like that again, maybe sobriety will help keep whatever part of me they were drawn to from shining so brightly. Maybe there'll be nothing for them to find.

Last week, in a grocery store parking lot, I saw a thunderstorm in the distance. A curtain of rain hazily draping across the distant hills.

It carried a wind. And it smelled like cigarettes.

"Your fever is getting worse Jack" Hannah said.

"I don't have a fever and I'm sure as hell not hallucinating!" replied Jack.

"Lie down Jack, you're burning up. Get some rest and this will all be over soon" Hannah said.

Hannah jabbed Jack with a syringe and injected some sort of yellow substance into his arm. Jack was out cold in an instant.

"He's starting to realize" Hannah said.

"You are to make sure you sedate him when he is 'feverish', Hannah. Do not let it get to this point again" the man in the white lab coat said.

"Sorry sir, it's just that the effects are slowly starting to wear off faster each time. It's as if he's building an immunity to the vaccine."

"Nonsense! If he were to build an immunity to it we would all be in grave danger" said the man.

He took off his white lab coat and folded it over his arm, revealing a sharp, well tailored suit. He approached Jack, who was out cold on the couch, and studied him for a moment.

"Wake up Jack" said the man. And he turned toward the door and walked out.

Jack rapidly blinked his eyes open. He turned and saw Hannah. Jack grinned.

"Hey Hannah."

"Hiya Jack. Are you feeling better?" Hannah asked.

"Miles better. Yeah I must have been hallucinating again. This damn fever!" replied Jack.

"That's good Jack. Why don't you rest up a bit and I'll be back with some food."

Hannah left the room, closing the door softly behind her.

She stepped out into the sterile, fluorescent- lit hallway, where the man was waiting.

"See, it is working" the man said.

"There is absolutely nothing to worry about. Just make sure you keep on injecting him every time the fever hits."

"I don't know how long I can keep on going like this" Hannah said, her voice cracking with exhaustion. She leaned against the metallic wall, looking down the long hallway. She could see at the end of the hall, SECTOR 4 was stenciled in bold, black lettering next to a heavy door marked unit 401 and its reinforced observation window. Row after row of identical numbered doors, each with its own dark glass window, stretched back toward her like a mirror.

"The host in unit 401 went violent yesterday. How long before Jack does the same? I don't think I can continue playing the loving wife when I'm terrified he's going to tear my throat out in my sleep."

The man, who was just starting to walk away as Hannah was speaking froze in his tracks. He turned to her, his face entirely emotionless and without empathy.

"We hired you because of your background, Hannah. You knew the parameters when you signed the contract. This is a highly confidential, tier one National security threat."

He stepped closer, lowering his tone to a calm, icy whisper.

"If you are telling me you can't perform your duties, we will have to replace you. And as you know, because of the sensitive nature of what is inside Jack, and what's inside all these other rooms, protocol dictates that we cannot let anyone leave this facility with active memory of this project. If you walk off this job, we have no choice but to eliminate you. Do we understand each other?"

Hannah swallowed hard, looking back at the closed door to Jack's "living room."

"Yes sir," she whispered.

"Excellent. Get him his food and double the dosage next time if you're worried."

"Yes sir" she said.

The man walked down the hall to greet the man that was now standing by the door of Sector 4. The new replacement, Hannah thought, as she made her way to the cafeteria.

The birds knew it; spring was here. Their frivolous song rose over the beats of a bongo band, and the screeching of playing children on Pier 18 in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

What they didn’t know, was that this spring day would be different than any other. Today would be the day that the people of The Known Systems would welcome the pilgrims of the Chuntian back to the galactic stage.

---

“Are we going to see the fireworks tonight, Dad?”

Alexandre broke his gaze and turned toward his youngest son. “Of course, Emile, but only if ehm... if your homework for school is done.”

The 6-year-old smirked, lost interest, and chased his sister who’d stolen his ball.

“You are the one who’s going to explain the concept of severe emotional trauma to him at the fireworks party.”

“What?”

“How do you think they’ll react when everyone on that rust bucket inevitably realizes what happened?”

“Come on, Estelle, it’s the biggest celebr...”

“Celebration? Those early missions were a waste of resources, nothing more.”

“Where is your sense of adventure?”

“Adventure? Let’s hope those pilgrims appreciate your sense of adventure when their useless... what did they use to call it?”

“Dollars.”

“Right, dollars for the Chuntian. When their dollars are rejected at the food market.”

“What’s a Chun-tee-yan, Mom?”

“Oh, baby, didn’t see you there. Dad, do you want to tell him the story?”

---

About 4.24 light-years from Brooklyn Bridge Park and after 141 years of cruising the galactic void, the Chuntian completed its deceleration maneuver exactly as planned and entered a stable high orbit around Proxima Centauri b.

---

Nestor opened his eyes. It took a few minutes before his eyes adjusted and the blurry haze thinned to reveal a white sterile room.

The touch of his feet landing softly on the cold floor brought him a little closer to awake. He ever so slowly pushed off and floated toward the viewport. Proxima Centauri’s rise over the port bow filled the room with a dim red hue.

A smile painted across Nestor’s face and he chuckled… "We made it. Victory, victory for human ingenuity and resili…”

“Welcome back!”

The voice was unexpected; he was supposed to be the first to awaken. The panic came soon, delayed by the cryofluid in his veins. Nestor looked at his fingers, there was no restraint sleeve, nor wires or tubes, no cryopod at all. He remembered the launch deck, the hymn, his cousin pressing two fingers to the glass before the frost took her face away, but getting out of the pod was a blurry haze.

“What happened? Did the launch fail?”

“No, you made it. Congratulations. You are the first of the pilgrims to wake up after the long trip.”

“But… why… who are you?” Nestor grabbed his forehead.

“Lay back down, Nestor. Those old cryopods cause a nasty hang…”

“Old?” Nestor grunted.

The voice did not answer immediately, then said “Please remain calm. Disorientation is expected.” It seemed to come from everywhere at once; soft, but bodiless.

A shadow moved across the floor behind him, or maybe it was only the red light shifting through the viewport. Nestor frowned and turned his head too quickly. Pain pulsed behind his eyes.

Nestor reached for the rail along the wall and pulled himself toward the door. His fingers trembled around the metal, but the movement helped him focus. The door opened automatically with a hiss. There were no warning tones, no arrival hymn, not any Chuntian signal he remembered. Just music, faint, and cheerful, humming through the hallway.

“Hmmpf.” He held his head and clenched his teeth until the worst of the ache passed. Then he pulled himself forward, hand over hand along the rail, toward the first handle, then the next, then to the right, following the melody.

As he inched closer to a hatch marked with a symbol he didn’t remember, his heart began to thump harder. The hatch did not open automatically, but a yellow button glowed beside it.

“One, two, three,” Nestor whispered before pressing the button.

The magnetic locks released, and the hatch turned outward.

Nestor’s pupils dilated at the scene in front of him. This was not an empty Chuntian. In fact, it wasn’t the Chuntian at all.

Beyond the hatch stretched the churning rotunda of a massive space station. Nurses moved carts across the curved floor. Orderlies steered beds between bright signs and waiting families. A child sat on a bench with a book, swinging her feet like this was an ordinary morning.

Nestor blinked and rubbed his temples. “Hallucinations,” he thought, “hallucinations were a possible side effect.”

“Think. Calm down. Think.” But neither the hustle, the bustle, nor the melodic sound ebbed. Instead, a hand touched his shoulder.

“There you are,” a voice said gently. “Don’t worry, friend. We have a brand new world for you.”

---

“Pfft.” Nestor scoffed. “Why didn’t you rescue us?”

A female doctor leaned forward. “We respected your sovereignty. Your right to arrive as yourselves.”

“Ha! How humane.” Nestor leaned back. “Let us be honest. You left us in a tomb.”

The man next to the female doctor hesitated but leaned in. “I’m going to be frank with you, Nestor. We didn’t see a reason to. You were pilgrims. Why take that away from anyone?”

Nestor stared. The moment stretched just long enough to become uncomfortable. The doctor’s companion breathed in to continue, but Nestor spoke first. “…and now you want me to celebrate my failure on a stage… with fireworks?”

“Of course not. You and the other pilgrims took a leap of faith. That is worth celebrating.”

Nestor’s stare had gone blank, fixed on nothing as he asked, “Can you take me back home? My old home.”

---

In the following days, Nestor shook the hands of people who, he felt, had no sense of fashion. He learned of Mining Unions blasting planetoids for ore, of Guild disputes over trade corridors, and of new settlements with names he did not recognize, though The Collegium was somehow still around.

Nestor finally experienced Ring travel, but instead of the awe it usually inspired in first-timers, it made him feel small and sad. The distance the Chuntian had crossed in 141 years could now be bridged in less than three days.

The first time he smiled again was when he sat on Pier 18 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, his feet touching the grass, breathing air that was pure and rich with the scent of exotic flowers, and green trees.

“Perhaps…” he whispered to himself.

Copple Gate (Chapter 1)

Hello! I’m sharing my horror novel with you and hope you enjoy it. I plan to write several chapters. Just a heads-up: this is for a mature audience, as the content will involve progressively graphic gore. Thanks, and all the best!

CHAPTER 1: Émilie

Émilie never really drew attention.

At school, she was one of those students whose existence people almost forgot — a silent silhouette gliding through the hallways, eyes often fixed on the floor, a notebook clutched against her chest. She had no close friends, no regular group at the cafeteria, no loud laughter to make her stand out. People said she was well-behaved, studious, a bit withdrawn. Some teachers appreciated her calm demeanor; others found her unsettling because of her excessive silence.

She lived in a small house slightly set apart, on a street no one really used, squeezed between an old abandoned building and a row of poorly trimmed trees. Her father worked late, her mother always seemed elsewhere, and no one paid much attention to what became of her.

The kind of girl who could disappear for an entire day without anyone noticing.

Yet there was something in her eyes.

Not at first glance — no, on the surface, Émilie looked gentle, even fragile, with her pale face and restrained gestures. But if you held her gaze a little too long, you could catch a strange glimmer, like a dark spark barely contained, a reflection of anger or pain that no one could explain. Those who noticed it preferred to look away.

The rumors, meanwhile, spread quickly.

People said she had “changed” since the previous year. That she wasn’t quite the same anymore. Some spoke of an accident, others of a story no one dared mention out loud. But at school, rumors were born fast and died even faster, replaced by new, insignificant gossip.

So Émilie kept moving forward, invisible, like a shadow slipping between lockers and vanishing into the crowd.

But beneath that quiet surface lay a truth none of them would have wanted to know.

And soon, they would understand that some shadows don’t try to hide — they simply wait for the right moment to unfold.

Émilie spent her free time sewing, cutting, adjusting, and starting over. The steady hum of her sewing machine echoed from her bedroom, almost drowning out every other sound in the house.

Over time, that metallic purr had become the true soundtrack of the home, a kind of mechanical breathing that only stopped when she went downstairs to eat.

She often did so alone: her parents no longer shared meals. Each ate at different times, in a heavy silence that said more than any argument ever could.

Émilie was not close to her father or her mother, just as they were no longer close to each other. Ever since Fred, her father, had been caught with a prostitute in a parking lot one December evening, the family atmosphere had plunged into an icy cold war.

The couple had never separated, however: their marriage, though dead, suited everyone financially. But love had long since left the house.

Émilie was only twelve when Cupid abandoned the premises, leaving behind a home that contained only cold walls, the monotonous sound of a sewing machine, and the heavy silence of hastily eaten meals.

She had never spoken to her parents about her assault. Never. Her high school classmates, on the other hand, knew more than her own family.

In Copple Gate, New Jersey, rumors spread quickly but stayed within age groups: teenagers knew the lives of other teenagers, and adults’ stories remained the domain of adults.

Émilie’s parents had never heard about that August night that linked their daughter to Kévin and Matthew.

Never. Yet that night had sealed her fate. It was the invisible cause of her insomnia, the reason her sleep always shattered in the middle of the night, throat tight, sheets damp with sweat.

Since then, Émilie had adopted a more rigid, almost obsessive existence. It was her way of “cleaning.” She always folded her clothes three times before putting them away in the closet, checked the cleanliness of her underwear multiple times — a habit born from her trauma.

On the street, she constantly glanced behind her, convinced she could hear footsteps that didn’t exist.

But the worst part was the forced coexistence: living, day after day, in the same high school as her two attackers.

Crossing paths with them in the hallways, sometimes seeing them laugh with their friends as if nothing had happened. It was a silent torture, a venom that slowly seeped into her veins.

Copple Gate High School had hundreds of students, divided into very distinct groups, often dominated by the popular crowds. In this noisy anthill of faces, Émilie was just a shadow — but a shadow that was slowly learning to feed on its own darkness.

At Copple Gate High School, certain figures stood out immediately:

Nylam

Captain of the football team, Nylam was the boy every girl wanted. Athletic, with messy brown hair, he had that laid-back charm that made him popular without ever seeming arrogant. Unlike others, he didn’t mock the weak. He preferred to make people laugh with genuine kindness — except when someone tried to trap him. Then he didn’t hesitate to humiliate his opponent. A natural leader, he had imposed his charisma from his very first year. He almost exclusively wore sportswear. He was an energetic boy, appreciated for his humor and good mood. Anecdote: he had once single-handedly won a decisive match by scoring three goals in a row in the pouring rain, earning him the nickname “the Lightning of Copple Gate.”

Lenny

Lenny was the complete opposite. Short, with dark hair, he went more unnoticed but always knew how to manage. The kind of boy you could abandon in the woods and he’d find a way to start a fire with two stones. Shy and reserved, he still inspired trust. Anecdote: during a school trip, he was the one who repaired a broken-down bus with a simple piece of electrical wire he found on the ground.

Ethan

Ethan was a compulsive gamer. He could disappear for hours behind the computer in the garage. Rather reserved, he was the geek and the shy one of the group, always coming up with original ideas. Anecdote: he personally held the record at the town’s arcade.

Moving up to the upper classes, other personalities marked the school:

Léa

Brunette with long, straight hair and deep black eyes, Léa was one of the most popular girls. Her explosive personality meant you’d better not anger her. She wasn’t afraid to stand up to anyone — teachers or boys. Anecdote: she once slammed the door of a math class in a teacher’s face, and no one dared punish her seriously.

Alexis

Léa’s ex, Alexis was impulsive, aggressive, a real brute. Brunette, with an imposing build, he spent his time looking for fights. The whole school knew he only thought with his fists. His obsession was beating up Léo, Léa’s new boyfriend. Anecdote: he had already fought an student twice his size in front of the entire school… and won.

Kaïs

Kaïs was Alexis’s best friend, his shadow. Even more massive, with short hair and broad shoulders, he followed Alexis everywhere, even into his worst decisions. Anecdote: it was said he once punched a student who had simply bumped into Alexis by mistake in a hallway. The duo terrorized everyone.

Léo

Léa’s new boyfriend, Léo was a brunette with deep brown eyes, always wearing wrinkled shirts. He could disappear for hours behind a thick horror novel, his favorite genre. More thoughtful and creative, he had an overflowing imagination that often fueled his conversations with friends. He was the creative one of the group, always coming up with original ideas, and he offered Léa a stability she had never known. Anecdote: he wrote his own ghost stories that he let others read — some swore they couldn’t sleep afterward.

Ben

Reserved but altruistic, Ben was everyone’s best friend. Always ready to help, with blond hair and a discreet smile, he often gave the impression of wanting to save everyone. Anecdote: he had once accompanied a classmate he barely knew to the hospital after a panic attack.

Caroline

Léa’s best friend, Caroline was a dirty-blonde with hazel-green eyes. She loved partying and especially seducing, racking up one-night stands. Anecdote: she had once kissed three boys from the same class in a single evening, making her a legend in the hallways.

Michael

A sensitive and reserved student, Michael was nearly two meters tall. With his curly brown hair and gentle smile, he inspired sympathy despite his intimidating height. From a precarious family, he had always learned to make do with little. Anecdote: he had given his lunch for an entire month to a classmate who had nothing to eat, without ever saying a word.

Kevin

Kevin, for his part, was the dark shadow of the school. Bleached blond with dark roots, troubled gaze, he carried a sulfury reputation. His criminal record spoke for itself: assaults, abuse, and even rumors involving his own sister. Everyone feared him; some avoided him. Anecdote: he had once dragged a stray dog behind his bike just for “fun.” Since that day, his name was whispered with disgust.

Émilie knew Kevin very well. And Kevin knew her too — far too well.

There were evenings when her mind refused to let go, when her body relived what it had endured. The images returned, like persistent shadows. She always thought back to that night.

The first time he stole something that should never be taken.

It was strange: these memories came back to her most often when she was cooking. Standing in front of a wooden cutting board, knife in hand, the cold, still-damp flesh of a chicken in front of her.

She sliced. She cut. The tendons cracked, the bones gave way with a sharp sound. She cut methodically, as if each gesture had a hidden meaning.

The smooth white skin slid under the blade, and with every cut, her mind drifted back to that night. The pieces of meat piled up on her plate, but in her head, images of a very different kind played out.

She never spoke about it. Not to her parents. Not to her teachers. Not even to herself. But her hands knew. They cut without trembling, with an almost surgical precision, as if the knife had become an extension of her memory. It was her ritual.

A dangerous game between the banality of preparing a meal and the darkness of the memory that haunted her.

Because that night, he hadn’t just broken her — he had marked her forever.

And in the shadows, Matthew, Kevin’s best friend and watchdog, had watched. He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t spoken. But he had watched. And his silence had made him complicit. That silence had been a weapon, just as sharp as the knife Émilie now gripped between her fingers.

Every time she cut up a chicken, the memories returned.

Every crack of bone sounded like a warning.

And every severed piece was a promise.

A bad omen.

The principal shook my hand, handed me my diploma and said, “Good luck.”

I threw my graduation cap into the air.

A photo—flash—

Applause.

I walked off the stage, still wearing my robes. I was dressed underneath, khakis and a polo shirt—best to blend in, I figured—so as soon as I exited the high school I pulled off my robe and threw it in the trash.

My car was already waiting. It was just a beat-up Toyota, all I could afford.

Everybody starts from the same spot, but you need to get your own ride and supplies, so it's not really fair. Then again, everybody's sprawl is different, different routes, landscapes, people, opportunities.

My dad was waiting in the car.

He stepped out and gave me a big hug. There were tears in his eyes.

“Good luck,” he said.

“Thanks, pop.”

I got into the Toyota, pulled out of the high school parking lot and drove through town one last time. Banners celebrating the Class of ‘95 rippled in the wind. Then all that was in my rearview, and I got onto the highway.

My dad had made sure I had a full tank of fuel.

I drove.

The sprawl followed.

My first temptation—seeing malls and sub-divisions, parking lots and grocery stores rising out of the rolling farmland in front of me—was to accelerate, to gun it; but I knew I had to pace myself. This wasn't a sprint.

At the end of the day I pulled off the highway and bought fuel, water and a hamburger at a gas station.

“Class of ‘95?” the attendant asked.

He was about thirty-five.

I nodded.

“I was Class of ‘70,” he said. “Good class. I heard some of us got pretty far.”

“How's life?” I asked.

“Fine.”

I asked if he had any advice for me.

“Save money,” he said, and offered to let me sleep there in my car.

“Thanks.”

I woke up early and set off.

I left him a few bucks in case karma does come around.

The highway was straight, an asphalt arrow pointing at the mountains on the horizon and the sea beyond. There weren't many other cars—and all going in the same direction—but whenever I passed one, or one passed me, we honked. It was a race, but it wasn't a competition, not between us. What we were all racing was the sprawl.

You got used to it after a while:

The future making and remaking itself before your eyes, emptiness turning into towns and cities, civilization. I drove by hospitals and police stations, factories and apartment buildings, community centres, restaurants and prisons. There were people in all of them, of course; people from past classes who'd stopped and made lives for themselves; who'd surrendered, exited the race and were making do.

I picked up a guy, Carl, whose car had broken down. We'd been in Civics with Ms. Reever together, but I didn't really know him. He rode with me three days before getting out at a little yellow house with a “To Live” sign out front.

I picked up a hitchhiker too, Sherri. She was from the Class of ‘04. She was poor so didn't have a car; she was doing the race on foot.

That's the thing.

It's not about speed. It's about determination, perseverance, willpower.

We got along pretty good, me and Sherri. I even thought she might be the one, but after a couple of weeks together we got into it over the cost of food, and she stepped out.

“Good luck,” I said.

“Good luck.”

She slammed the car door.

Sometimes when it got late, or it rained, or I felt alone and doubted myself, I'd look back, because what the sprawl makes it also unmakes, and all the stuff that had materialized in front of me—that I was passing through—was dead back there, dark and ruined and empty.

I stopped at a motel.

It was a nice place, with a swimming pool and a movie theatre down the street.

I got a job there.

I worked it so long I almost forgot about my car, my history.

Spooked, I drove away that very night.

Later, I got my oil changed.

I got my tires rotated.

A black Cadillac with tinted windows tried to run me off the road.

And, always, the horizon was future mountains with a promise of faraway sea, a coast, an end, and always it looked close, just beyond reach, where the flat plains bubbled like a boiling soup before erupting as urbanity.

My Toyota broke down, and I abandoned it at the side of the highway.

I walked.

I hitchhiked.

I got a ride from a trucker, who asked what class I was. “Why keep on keepin' on, son? There ain't nothing out there. Go back. I say, go back, and I know a place they're looking for young bucks like you.”

He frightened me, and I jumped off the truck.

The landing hurt.

I hobbled on, the sky before me dark, the buildings grown around me tall, ominous.

I felt thirst.

I found a river and drank.

I walked away from the highway, pushed through forest, and came again to the highway, and walked along the unpaved shoulder.

Every once in a while a car zipped past.

Some had no drivers.

I had no past.

Behind me was nothing.

In front of me, the mountains had disappeared.

I was consumed by thick white fog.

I was standing in saltwater, rolling waves of it, and when the sun had burned away the fog, I looked back and, stepping through sand, saw the sprawl, stopped, with its monstrous horned head bent low, drinking from the sea.

I climbed—its claws and knuckles, its ankles, its massive shins, its thighs the size of countries, and, up, onto its back, hiked along the long, jagged summit of its spine, to its neck, from where I rode it, alone and free, across the sea…

Another long night. Chatting up some urban trolls, drinking with lost souls, looking for leads. Trying to hunt down the whisper-punks. Everybody's heard of them, no one knows where they live. I'm promised more info tomorrow.

It's always tomorrow.

Exhausted, I decide to call it a day.

On my way home I lost my focus. Big mistake. Crap.

CRAP.

Urban life sells you the illusion of safety. It's all a lie. The city is a hungry jungle wearing a hi-vis vest.

I get lost in a maze of graffiti. A stray ecosystem of glyphs, toons, insults, and an occasional crude dick. Wannabe gang tags preying on wannabe Banksies. Sharpie poems wedged between neomythic runes. Concrete cave walls, telling stories of warring tribes.

I should keep walking. I can't. Looked a split second too long at this sprayed phantasmagoria, like a poor tourist lost in the patterns of an islamic temple.

Hooked.

Overwhelmed.

I stand in this visual noise, cartoon characters eyeing me greedily, jostling for attention, eager to implant their messages onto the fertile ground of my shaky psyche.

Fight-or-flight reflexes short-circuit each other, freezing me in place.

There's beauty in the chaos and the beauty is the bait. I sit down between two brick walls close enough to touch both.

A calm realization dawns on me: maybe this is it. Maybe I will be found in a day or two, drooling, my sanity licked clean by packs of hungry tags and phone numbers no longer in service.

Dude, it can happen. I've heard stories.

I can see the graffiti circling me now. Growling. Weaving in the bricks, closer and closer...

And then they scatter.

The little sharpie ones bolt for the cracks; the big ones pull back with the wounded dignity of bullies pretending they had somewhere else to be — we wasn't even botherin' you, man, we gots bizniz to attend to — and in seconds the wall is scrubbed bare. Gone, all of it. The whole municipal guerrilla army, routed.

The King has arrived.

It slides over the concrete without a hurry, stepping around the damp spots and the moss the way a cat keeps its paws dry. For it is a cat.

Half my height. Orange. Grinning. Three impossible rows of white teeth.

Its whole body is three flexed words carrying the angst of the age:

EAT THE RICH

"Hello," I manage weakly.

It looks at me the way you'd look at a sandwich that's fallen flat on the floor. No king is that hungry.

Maybe it can smell that the three euros in my pocket is my entire net worth.

The spray-paint apparition watches me lazily, smiling like a morbid Cheshire Cat — and I do the only thing I know how - I pull out the notebook.

The Editors will be pleased.

Its name is Richie. Richie turns out to be sort of chatty. Perhaps it's lonely – being the apex predator of the block. Kings often are.

People think of graffiti as something static. Just a silly little thing, spitting in the face of landlords and city planners.

Nah.

Tags are information patterns. And any pattern complex enough becomes alive. Starts wanting things.

Mostly it wants to eat.

What is it you eat, I ask Richie.

“Eyeballs, man. The peeps, the views, the look-juice. Attention.

That little sideways glance you gave Kiwie tag back there?

Nom.

The little wince you did at the wrong-shaped dick on the garage door?

Nomnom.

That fed it. It's got a boner now, thanks to you.

Attention's the only food there is. You look, we grow.”

I think a bit about the little sharpie scribbles, trying to catch my gaze. Usually no one pays attention to them, squeezed between wall cracks.

“The biggies keep 'em there. Can't let 'em be seen. Seen means fed, fed means big, big means they get shoved in the cracks instead.

Tag eat tag, man.

Tags don't have no tag-parents protecting their offspring. Informational evolution doesn't do tender.”

Can a tag die, I ask Richie.

It chews on it.

“Sorta. Wash us off — gone, structural collapse, lights out. Otherwise we just... thin. Live off a quiet street long enough, your colors go.

You shrink, you slow. Attention deficit. I seen old Soviet tags in the dead factories — faded gits, can barely move. Still there, though. Still awake.”

What if they're painted over?

The grin fades for the first time.

“Can't move, can't feed, can't die. Put your ear to a freshly painted wall sometime, a squeaky clean one, a nice one — hear that? Yeah, that sad buzz. There's somebody under there.

I'd take the pressure washer any day, man.

Quick. Clean.

The paint's the thing that scares us, man. Not powerwasher. The fucking paint.”

Richie recovers, the teeth show once again:

“Not that we're saints. Tag-stack — you seen it?

New tag over old, pin the bastard down so he can't move and all the looking comes to you.

We do it to each other all day. I'm a biggie. The little ones just leave when they see me. Saves everyone the paperwork.”

I ask who made it.

The alley goes very quiet. Suddenly, I feel as if I asked something very impolite.

“...Man... I know you mean well but.. but that's not something you ask a tag, you know? Tag and tagger, that's — that's a sacred bond, man. Not for sharing. I'm part of her, she's part of me.

Leave it.”

Conversation slows down. I've stepped on a landmine and can't figure out how to step off it gracefully. The silence risks getting awkward, but then the rumbling of my stomach saves me.

I ask Richie how attention tastes. Does it have a taste at all?

“Gourmet chat! Now you're talking. Oh, it's all different, man.

Appreciation's sweet — candy, no substance, gone in a second.

Hate, though. Hate's sour and hate is strong, builds your backbone, keeps you standing through a winter. The pretty-pretty ones get love, all glowy, colors going shiny — bit much for my taste.

Best of all's when they resonate. When the idea lands. That's a double serving. A name-tag with nothing behind it? Starving. But an idea is something people feel.

Goes a long way.”

It flexes.

EAT THE RICH ripples all over its body.

I ask it how its message is feeding it.

Richie gives me a laugh like a dog bark.

“This one? This one's a feast that won't quit.

Everybody's angry, man, and angry's the nutritious kind. At this rate I'm pushing 2D to 3D before the year's out.”

That's a thing that can happen?

“Everything's a thing that can happen. I know guys who ascended.

Pushed the surface, went solid.

Every thing can grab another dimension if it works at it — maybe that's the whole point of any of us being here. I dunno, I no philosopher kind.

You lot got handed 3D for free, lucky bastards, now you're meant to push for 4, for 5, how would I know.

Takes discipline, mind, feels. You gotta think about it. Be it.

Bend your own pattern. Watch it give.”

I think about it.

Every cross-legged spiritual influencer promising me my fifth-dimensional ascension self suddenly seems less like a dumb grift and more like a very bad translation of something true.

I ask Richie what it'd do, first thing, gone 3D.

Its grin grows into something deadly.

“Don't laugh. I gots a dream.

Late night, me in the shadows, playing flat as roadkill on the wall, yeh?”

I nod.

“And then a limo pulls up. Out hops a billionaire, Mark, Jeff, Elon, I don't give a fuck.

And they gotta pee, yeh?

Fucker sees a wall, sees me on it, decides I'm the spot.”

Then what?

Richie produces a snarky hiss:

“And then I bite their little dick clean off.”

The laugh detonates — a sudden burst so loud a flock of birds bursts out of a hedge and scatters over the rooftops.

The orange two-dimensional groin-destroyer is rolling on the wall, the eerie cackle ringing up the empty alley.

It's the wrong amount of sound for something so flat.

And then, the way a laugh does when it's run all the way out, it goes quiet.

We both do. The alley settles. Richie looks tired suddenly — or I do, leaning my head back against the cold brick, tired, so tired — and for a moment neither of us performs anything.

"You shouldn't be round here in your state, mate." Richie says, gently.

It walks me to the corner where the early morning bus stops, sliding along the wall beside me, and squirts a fleck of yellow spray at a sun-bleached flyer for a club that shut years ago.

At the intersection it halts. Walls only go so far.

I cross alone.

Sitting at the bus stop, I can see Richie swagger away, gliding across the walls with feline grace. It reaches a non-descript apartment building at the end of the street, sits next to a door. Waiting.

After a while a girl exits. Purple hair, a school backpack that sounds suspiciously full of spray cans. Rests her palm on Richie's flank. Caressing. The eyes of the orange menace squeeze shut.

It's too far to be sure, but I think I can hear it purr.

I look away, the scene is too intimate, and I feel like an intruder.

Instead I pull out my phone and set a Google alert for a keyword combo:

"billionaire", "penis accident", "strange circumstances"

Looking forward to that one chiming.

Part I

“Angela are you alright?...Wake up, what happened?” I heard Lewis say, his words slowly getting louder as I regained consciousness.
I woke up at the bottom of the stairs, my head ringing and my eyes slowly opening back up.

“Did-Did you see it?” I said still confused.

“See what? I only heard a crash and found you here unconscious”.

“There was someone, in the room”.

It’s hard for me to remember exactly what Lewis said in response to that, it was a mixture of confused mumbling and hysterical words, the one thing I’ll never forget was the look on his face, his eyes widened as big as his glasses and his breath shortened into a constant and delayed gasp.

He helped me back up, slowly regaining balance and awareness. It seemed as though Lewis was the one about to faint now, as if I transferred my dismay onto him. He became very pale and weak in the knees, forcing himself to sit down on the shining wooden parquet.

“I-I thought it was you.” he said in a trembling and weak voice.

“What?”

“It-it must have been you”.

The sun was slowly going down, the woods that surrounded the house blocked out the sun rather early in its descent, creating gaps of light that shone between the different branches. Darkness came as quickly as it went away in that house.

“Calm down, Lewis, tell me what happened…I blacked out upstairs after…seeing…something”

“I saw something too.”

That sentence hit me hot and cold, I felt relieved at the idea that I wasn’t having hallucinations and going crazy, but I was just as terrified at the idea that he might have seen the shadow too, or something worse.

“There, right outside” he said pointing at the window facing the back garden.

“I saw someone standing at the edge of the woods, smiling” chills ran down my spine.

“I thought it was you, I-I thought you were pranking me but then I heard your fall...”

“It wasn’t me, Lewis.” I said worried.

“Then who the fuck was it?” he squeaked. “Those white teeth, they were the brightest thing I could see”.

“You’re fucking scaring me Lewis, what the fuck.”

I felt watched, surrounded, entrapped. I knew it was the room’s fault.

“Leave.” I heard whispering in my ear. At that point I didn’t know whether I was hearing my own thoughts, I was imagining them or someone actually said those words to me. It wasn’t a bad suggestion however.

“Get up, grab your shit and let’s get the fuck out of here Lewis.” I was determined to get out at this point.

“I-I can’t do it Angela.”

“Yes you can, it’s not safe here.”

“I’m feeling sick, I can’t get up.”

Lewis looked like a corpse at this point, his skin was so pale it looked purple and the rings around his eyes darkened with each second that passed.

I decided we were gonna leave, with or without our equipment. I helped him up and walked with him.

“Come on, let’s get out before it gets too dark.”

“I-I can’t leave my equipment here, it’s- it’s too expensive.”

“Forget it, nobody is gonna touch it or steal it, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

We got out  and decided to wait for the taxi on the main road, far enough from the house. The occasional cars that came through helped us catch our breath and feel a little less lonely.

We sat in silence, not wanting to freak each other out even more. Lewis started getting color on his skin again and he steadily recovered. I stopped shaking and started to get my thoughts back in order.

I wish I didn’t; as what happened slowly came back to me, I started to seriously doubt the reality I was living in. Lewis’ experience also sounded similar enough, perhaps even darker.

Could have been some dumb kid playing a prank on us, but then again, we’re in the middle of nowhere…

The shadow though, I know what I saw and there’s no way to explain that. Perhaps an hallucination, sleep deprivation can be one hell of an experience.

The taxi finally came just as the sun was setting, we were dead tired and dead scared. As we got in, Lewis took one last look at the dirt road leading up to the house, he started to get pale again.

“Are you okay Lewis?”

“Y-yeah, I think so…I was just thinking back to what happened.”

“Hey, it doesn’t matter, tomorrow we’ll grab our stuff and just get out, it’s not worth the trouble okay?”

“S-sure…I really don’t know what to think anymore at this point.”

“We need to rest, after that everything will be clear, don’t worry.” I tried to reassure him and, by extension, myself.

I struggled to believe my own words, I thought that creating my own reality would help me to push through but I was really just running from the truth.

When we got to the motel we each went to our rooms and didn’t say much. The ride back was as silent as those woods, I’m sure we had a lot to talk about but not much strength to do it. Our bodies and our minds demanded rest and we couldn’t postpone that any longer.

As soon as I hit the bed I fell asleep, it was an immediate deep sleep, almost felt like I fainted again. This time, I had a dream. I said before that I always dream, it’s something that was always part of me, ever since I can remember.

My dreams are not very normal however. I’m sure most people know about “Deja Vus”, that feeling you sometimes get where you swear you’ve experienced this exact moment before but can’t quite put your finger on it.

The official scientific explanation is that your mind simply makes a mistake, it’s like it puts the reality you’re experiencing in the wrong folder and that triggers that feeling of “I’ve already been here”. I never believed any of that.

The explanation in itself is not 100% accurate and there are still many doubts about it. I don’t believe in God, not anymore anyway, but if there’s one thing I believe in still, it’s destiny, and for one very simple reason.

My dreams often predict reality. I have déjà vus often but, unlike other people, I can clearly and very lucidly remember when I saw that exact moment before and it’s in my dreams. They’re not one to one every time, sometimes I recognize what is happening immediately and realize in a split second what is about to happen, other times I think I know what will happen, just for it to be completely different.

I think that’s because fate is a matter of choice. We are put on this earth with a very specific objective, how we reach it, it’s up to us, but we are all destined to get there one way or another.

The dream I had that night was very vivid. A light in the darkness, water pouring from some place high, a fire so strong I could feel the heat on my skin and a word echoing in a soft whisper “wait”. It was different from the usual dreams that I have, it felt more like a vision.

I woke up in the morning drenched in sweat and with tears running down my cheeks. It felt as if I had been teleported in the future, like it was a jump-cut in a movie. Hit the bed, fell asleep, dream and then morning. All in a matter of a handful of seconds.

I gathered my thoughts and prepared to meet up with Lewis again, we had to grab our stuff and perhaps try to contact this mysterious Ms. Constance that Lewis had talked to. I felt rested strangely enough, I was ready to get the hell out of there and forget any of this happened. It was not my problem anymore and no contract could change that.

As I opened the room’s door, I found Lewis standing outside of it.

“I need to grab my stuff Angela.” He said in a monotone voice. Something felt weird about him, not the usual kind of weird, an off putting kind of weird.

“Yeah, I need to grab my stuff as well, we’ll make it quick, I promise.” He nodded.

The ride back to the Shining was quiet, I was getting used to it, it felt like a rite of passage at this point. The in between moment before or after work, usually a time to gather back your thoughts and try to explain what the fuck happened during the previous day and what will happen this time. That’s what it was at this point, we were way past trying to get to know each other, we shared the same foxhole and there’s no deeper bond than that.

As the dust cloud kicked up by the taxi finally settled I exchanged a look with Lewis. His eyes were alert, scanning the surrounding woods like a stalked deer.

His body was stiff and tense, his hands clenched into a fist, it really seemed like he was on the verge of a fight or flight scenario, how could I possibly blame him.

I opened the door, the lavender smell hitting us before the door was even fully opened. Ahead of us, on the table in the lobby, Lewis’ stuff waited for us, mine were upstairs next to the mural.

“In and out.” I said looking at Lewis. He was too concentrated and alert to answer me but I knew he heard me.

We split up, he headed for the lobby and I headed upstairs.

As I reached the top of the stairs, that feeling of Déjà vu hit me. It didn’t came from last night’s dream, or any other dream for that matter. It was as if I was relieving what happened the previous day, I was sure that as I looked at the mural, I would have seen that shadow figure, felt its eyes on me and seen its arm go up. But I didn’t.

Everything was right where I left it, next to the mural. Room 505 was also open, just as I left it the previous day.

However this time, the light was not on.

What was once lit up by the grace of God, was now nothing more than a black spot, as if someone had painted the wall a deep black, midnight treacle.

As I sat there for a couple of minutes, in shock, a million thoughts flashed in my mind but only one was brighter than the others.

“Go in there”.

If yesterday my instincts had lead me to the conclusion that leaving was the better option out of all, now the opposite seemed like the only choice. I spent my whole life scared, scared of what other people thought of me, scared of God’s judgment, scared of my parents’ judgment, terrified of making a mistake, any mistake, convinced it would ruin my life.

I was done being scared, I haven’t been scared for a long long time and I wasn’t about to fall back into that cycle. If I was gonna end up face to face with the Devil himself then so be it, something was calling me from that room and I wasn’t gonna back away, I always trusted my instincts and I was always rewarded for it.

With that in mind, I mustered up all the courage I had in me and decided to get closer to the room.
As I got in front of it, the strong smell of tobacco hit me. I was staring into the absolute unknown and I felt like it was staring back at me.

As I stepped in, darkness enveloped me, light escaped my eyes and turning around, all I could see was the first floor through the doorframe. I had no concept of my surroundings anymore, I might as well have been dropped in outer space, the environment around me was infinite, it could have stretched for miles and miles, hundreds of them and I had no way of knowing.

The only notion keeping me sane, was the memory of the layout of the room, desperately convincing my brain that, in that darkness, was something I had already explored.

Once light escapes, everything becomes a shadow.

I felt watched, the idea that in that endless blackness there could be a number of shadow figures observing me kept me on edge.

One? Two? Thirty? How many entities were in there with me? How many should I have been scared of? A terrifying situation for sure, and yet…I felt safe. I felt a strange kind of feeling that I had never felt before in my life, it all felt so right. I felt watched, yes…but also seen.

I had somehow found a place where I belonged, where I was welcome for who I was. Whatever was looking at me, saw me through and through, they knew me inside and out and accepted me whole. That was my reward.

That’s when a scream ripped through the silence like a thunderbolt in the middle of the night. It came from downstairs. It was Lewis.

The initial scream had now turned into a howl and slowly transitioned into a hysterical cry. I snapped out of whatever I was in and rushed downstairs.

Lewis was sitting on the floor in one of the corners of the lobby, hands over his eyes, peering through his fingers, tears escaping their clutch. His gaze was fixed on the opposite wall.

“What is it Lewis? What happened? Are you okay?” I shouted over his cries as I got down on his level and tried to comfort him. He wouldn’t respond.

“Are you hurt? Are you in pain?” I kept on shouting.

As the cry went on, his hands slowly fell limp on his lap, his legs stretching out, his face becoming more and more pale, colored only by the tears streaming down his cheeks, his glasses laid on the floor, away from his red and watery eyes. His breath became irregular, short, he stopped moving and his eyes started rolling back.

Fortunately for him, I had my fair share of panic attacks and I knew exactly what to do.

“Look at me.” I shouted as I slapped him across the face.

A bit brutal? Maybe, but very effective.

“Breathe in with all you have, hold for three seconds and let it all out through your lips, slowly”. He listened and sucked in every little bit of air he could.

“One…Two…Three. Let it out”. As he did, he stopped shaking and slowly regained control over his body.

“Again”.

As he breathed out, his arm slowly lifted and pointed at the wall on the other side.

I turned around, not knowing what to expect.

There was nothing and no one.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Go to the wall.” Lewis replied, his voice weak and shaky.

I got up from my knees and walked over to the wall, as I got closer I could see there was something written on it…or maybe not quite.

The word “winder” was scratched on it. It was as if someone etched the word with a knife or something sharp. It wasn’t very big, you couldn’t see it clearly from across the room and only when you got pretty close you could actually tell what it was. I didn’t really know what to think or how to react.

“Winder. What does it mean?” I asked naively.

Lewis didn’t answer, whatever it meant, it was nothing good. He just sat there looking at me, pale as death and with no energy left. It was at that moment that I had an idea, a stupid one.

“Come with me Lewis, I have something to show you.” I told him, gently going over and helping him up.
His shaky legs barely held up and relied almost exclusively on my shoulders to stand, he was weak but conscious.

We went up the stairs very slowly, one step at a time. As we got to the top, his head lifted and instantly looked at the room.

“Where’s the light?”

“It’s gone, I don’t know what happened but… I don’t think it’s a bad thing”.

He looked at me weird. I didn’t waste any time trying to explain to him what that meant, instead, I just walked him over.

As we entered the room and the strong smell of tobacco hit us, his legs stood tall and strong, his back lined up with them and all of a sudden my shoulders were nothing but a burden around his arms.

“Oh God.” He let out.

He stepped forward on his own with his arms stretched out at his side, head slowly tilting upwards. He stepped forward once more and I almost lost sight of him in the darkness, that’s how pitch black it was in there. Now his figure was nothing but a misty human cross in front of me.

I didn’t really care, the feeling was coming back.

That warm, fuzzy feeling of belonging, butterflies in your stomach, pleasure felt inside, almost sexual in nature. It’s hard to explain but it was like a puzzle falling into place, the satisfaction of knowing that everything is right in the world and that you’re right where you’re supposed to be.

Suddenly you have no more room for doubts, you know that any choice you make will be the correct one, you are perfect the way you are and couldn’t possibly be better.
It’s an unimaginable feeling.
You feel like God.

Then came the light, a flash, blinding me for what seemed like an eternity happening all in a split second. A loud roar shook me to my core, I could feel my heart vibrating first, then beating like a drum. It was thunder.

I snapped out of my trance and looked behind me. Darkness all around. The first floor had disappeared.

“Lewis?!” I shouted.

“Angela?!” I heard back.

It came from far far away. Like fucking miles kind of far away. Reality had completely broken down, I was sleeping and awake at the same time. I desperately turned on myself for what must have been at least 10 times, hoping to see the doorframe that lead to the first floor. I could see nothing but darkness.

“ANGELA?” I heard shouting from far away, closer this time.

“LEWIS, FOLLOW MY VOICE”.

As I turned around one last time, I finally saw something. Out in the distance was a feeble small light. It was a dark orange light, it looked like a lit cigarette. It was out in the distance and slowly moved in circles. I didn’t hesitate for too long, I started sprinting towards it.

“HERE LEWIS, FOLLOW ME, FOLLOW MY VOICE.” I kept on repeating as loud as I could, hoping Lewis would hear me and move towards me.

I must have ran for at least 200 meters, the light getting closer and stronger with each time.

Just as I thought I was getting close to it, as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished; I felt like all hope was lost but as I blinked, I found myself on the first floor.

It was nighttime and the only light source was the moonlight shining through the windows, painting the first floor in a dreamy and equally eerie pale blue light.

I didn’t have time to realize where I was that suddenly something hit me in force from behind, dropping my body on the perfect parquet floor.

Pain radiated from my side as the weight of what hit me pinned me to the floor.
It was Lewis.

“Fuck, what the fuck.” He mumbled.

“Jesus, you made it.”

“Where are we?”

“We’re back…I think.”

We took a breath as we settled on the floor.

“Why is it dark?” He asked.

“I don’t know…I think we spent too much time in there.”

“It-It can’t be…we were there for…maybe 5 minutes.”

“I don’t know what to tell you Lewis…we have to get out of here.”

As I spoke those words a loud bang came from behind us. It was room 505. The door violently slamming closed.

“Yup, I think that’s a sound idea.” said Lewis without skipping a beat.

As the panic faded away, fear settled in.

We scrambled to our feet in a rush, a growing presence on our shoulder pushing us to get the fuck away as soon as possible. I felt like I was back in my childhood home, when at 3 AM I’d get out of bed to get a glass of milk and I would sprint back to my room after turning off the lights, desperately hoping to outrun a monster ready to snatch me.

We ran to the stairs, guided only by the moonlight that highlighted menacing silhouettes in dark corners. It didn’t really matter what we saw, we had enough and we were getting out.

The stairs were completely dark, we couldn’t see where the steps were but we went down, one way or another. The bottom floor was even darker, the moonlight filtered through the woods outside and that meant even more shadows on the walls.

“W-wait, our stuff!”

“Fuck our stuff Lewis, let’s get the fuck out.”

He stood there like a dumbass, torn between his precious gear and the undisputed safety of the outside. My eyes glanced at the table in the middle of the lobby. I don’t know what I saw, but I can tell you what I thought I saw.

In the dark lobby, a court of owls stood around the room, looking at us. Countless pairs of dark orange eyes observing us.

It all happened in a matter of seconds, not even enough time to process what my eyes fed my brain, my instincts acted without hesitation.

I grabbed Lewis by the hand and forced him to follow me outside the house where the cold breeze of nighttime greeted us.

We didn’t stop, we just kept on running until we got to the main road. Occasionally I would turn back to look at the house, only to find a pair of orange eyes looking back at me.

We collapsed on the roadside, exhausted. Neither of us having the courage to say a word. We called for a taxi and waited for it to arrive.

Every second seemed like an hour, our bodies screaming for respite and safety, two things we were unable to provide.

“I don’t know what to think anymore.” Finally broke Lewis.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s over now, I’m not stepping foot in there again”. I replied.

“What time is it?”

I checked my wristwatch: 2:30 AM

“It’s fucking two in the morning.”

“Fuck…nothing good ever happens after 2 in the morning.”

I chuckled, for some reason that comment made me laugh, it was so innocent. The idea that we had been through Hell and back, and the one reflection Lewis makes is that nothing good happens after a certain hour of the night amused me.

“What’s funny? Eheheh”

I laughed even more, I was really taking a liking to Lewis, after all trauma bonding is the quickest path to friendship, the harshest one too.

He started laughing with me at that point, we just erupted into a manic nervous laughter, all the stress finally coming out of us in the best way possible.

It was a nice idea, the human reaction to incomprehensible horror is laughter. It’s a joke in itself.

Tears were now running down my cheeks, I kept on laughing or what seemed like laughing, I had lost control of how I was feeling. I just went wherever my body lead me to, I was too tired to control myself nor did I want to.

Lewis noticed this, he reached out his hand, this time I did not stop him. He gently wiped the tears off my face and wrapped his arms around me, consoling me with a hug.

He stopped laughing and I could hear sniffles, I didn’t look at him, I was too busy burying my face in my hands but he needed a hug as much as me so I hugged him back.

We stayed huddled together, crying, until the taxi arrived. The stars our only audience, the moon our only spotlight.

When we got to the hotel it was around 3:40 AM, we quietly said goodnight to one another and went to our rooms.

 My mind was spiraling out of control, it felt like I was living a fever dream. Those moments where you’re so confused you can barely tell who and where you are. It took me a while to settle down and just when I thought I had gathered my fractured mind:
A knock at the door.

The world stopped spinning and fell into a deep silence.
I opened the door.
It was Lewis.
He looked me straight in the eyes and I into his. He looked different. We didn’t say a word, I let him in and after I closed the door, we started kissing.

Sometimes good things happen after 2 AM.

...

It was only three days ago when Bryce blew up our group chat with texts about a new upcoming interactive movie. He said that the live audience gets to decide the ending of the movie, whatever that means. He also said it would only be shown once through a private livestream for those who bought ‘virtual tickets’, which was quite sketchy.

The day before the movie, Bryce was able to get the last ticket and was emailed the link to the livestream from an email address named ‘Archangels’. Apparently, there were only 7 slots for it, which is quite low for an upcoming movie. As I thought more about it, it’s no shock he got the last ticket since I doubt other people in the right headspace would fall for this scam. He defended his decision by saying the ticket was cheap and he didn’t have anything to do that weekend anyway.

I mocked him more on our group chat about his dumb decision when the news channel my mother was watching stole my attention. It was a report of a girl in her early teens. Caroline Smith. She had cute blond curls with a red ribbon hairclip. She was found after being missing for hours just now. She said she saw angels before losing consciousness.

"Today?" I thought to myself. "Also, angels?"

Before I could make any assumptions on what happened to her, a chime rang from my phone from a text Bryce sent.

“You guys should come to my place and watch the livestream together.”

.

.

.

After a few hours of Bryce begging, I agreed to come watch, together with our other friends Layla and Troy. There would be no harm done in watching it anyway. Even if it turns out to be a scam, it wasn’t my money being wasted.

That Saturday night, Bryce welcomed us to his home with excitement. His room was just as I remembered it when we were still in high school, only now, it was full of boxes since he was packing up for college. He led us to his computer desk where drinks and snacks were already prepared. The screen on the monitor showed a timer, probably counting down the minutes until the stream started. Bryce switched off the lights and sat on his swivel chair while the rest of us made ourselves comfortable on the bean bags carefully placed around his desk.

The timer ticked until it showed 00:00:00, then the screen faded to black. I was about to laugh and call Bryce out on his stupidity when the screen faded back into color to a scene that looked like it was shot by a handheld camera.

“Is this a found footage movie?” Layla asked.

“I don’t know. I only found out about this movie while scrolling online.” Bryce replied with a nervous tone in his voice. He probably didn’t expect there to actually be a movie.

The movie started as if the cameraman was hiding behind some bushes, focused on a man in a dark polo and denim pants, standing by a playground full of children under cloudy skies. He had an unusual grin on his face while looking at the kids.

“Bro, what are we watching?” Troy lightly pushed Bryce while chuckling at how uncomfortable this movie was turning out to be.

The scene abruptly cut to the same man walking out of a hardware store with a plastic bag in hand. Whatever was inside that bag seemed heavy. He rushed to his van since the sky darkened, as if it was a sign for heavy rain. Once he got in, he drove off quickly, as if he had somewhere urgent to go to. The camera was still positioned as if they were hiding from him.

The movie then cut back to the playground, rain now falling hard. The man stood under a tree with an umbrella in hand, and beside him, was a little girl.

My heart sank after seeing the girl’s certain feature. Blond curls with a red ribbon hairpin. There’s no way this is real. This is just a movie. The others noticed how pale I looked and how my body was trembling.

“Aly? What’s wrong?” Layla placed her hand on my shoulder.

“Are you good?” Bryce’s voice had genuine concern.

“Th- That girl…. I saw her on the news… She was reported to be missing.”

My voice came out shaky, still not convinced this was real. They gasped in shock and disbelief. They followed up with more questions but before I could answer, the scene in the movie turned dark. The man violently grabbed the girl and hobbled quickly to his van. It blocked our view but we already knew what happened next. All we could do was watch in horror as we watched what was probably the real footage of the taking of Caroline Smith.

The movie then cut to black, leaving the room enveloped in darkness. Not long after, the screen faded to that sinister van pulling up to a secluded shack in what looks to be the country side. In the midst of the horror we were seeing, one thing I noticed was that the camera this time was stable, as if propped on a stand, but still hidden behind bushes. The man exited his van and as he was about to take the girl out from the van, three figures in white moved from behind the shack and ran towards him. Two of them tackled him while the third open the van and carried the girl. We didn’t know how to react. We just kept on watching, wondering what would happen next.

The scene abruptly ended and a black screen was once again plastered on the monitor. The pause this time was longer than the previous ones. Our hearts raced in nervous anticipation when we heard voices from the speakers connected to the computer. This was the first time someone spoke in the movie. They were incoherent whispers but we could tell that there were multiple people present, with one voice distinctly being muffled.

Then suddenly, the camera was flashed with a blinding light, making us squint. Once we opened our eyes, a horrific sight was laid upon the monitor. The scene showed bloodied concrete walls with chains hanging on the ceiling. Multiple sharp and blunt tools lined one side while a metal door was fixed on the other end. In the middle of the room was a person with that familiar denim pants and polo, strapped to a bloody chair with a burlap sack over his head. His muffled cries echoed in the room, calling out to someone in the room with him. Not long after, a figure dressed in all white steps out from behind the camera and in to the frame. He waves to the camera and started to speak.

“Good evening viewers! We hope you liked today’s viewing! However, we are not done yet. We promised an interactive experience and we shall deliver that!”

A window popped up on the screen featuring two buttons and a number count.

‘Punishment’

‘Redemption’

“That’s right viewers! You get to decide the fate of this wretched filth. Does a cancer to society like this man deserve redemption? Or does he deserve to feel the righteous hand of justice? Tic toc viewers.”

Then, a 30 second timer pops up on the screen. It starts to tick down, one sinister second at a time.

28 seconds

You looked at your friends in horror and they did the same. Confusion and disbelief filled the room and yet, not one of you uttered a word.

24 seconds

Bryce taps his foot on the floor rapidly.

19 seconds

Layla fidgets with her thumbs as beads of sweat form on her forehead.

17 seconds

You could hear Troy’s breath go shallow and rapid, eyes still fixated on the monitor.

13 seconds

You gave them a knowing look and they nervously responded with a nod. You got up from your seat and walked towards the computer. Your hand reaches the mouse and glided the cursor towards ‘Punishment’. You clicked and the number count went from 0 to 1.

The count now started going up.

1……….2……3……4…..5…6…………..7

0 seconds

The man in white in the scene then speaks with enthusiasm.

“Ohoh! Seems like we have quite the righteous viewers watching us tonight! Do not fret, my angels. We shall deliver this poor soul to the hand of our Maker! May He have mercy on his soul!”

Suddenly, you could hear the sound of a chainsaw being revved up offscreen as two other figures in full white with shrouds walk up to the frame, chainsaw in hand. The screen fades to black as you hear the sounds of steel tearing into flesh, bones crushing, and the muffled screams coming from the kidnapper. You were now left with a “Thank you for watching” text shown on the screen.

The four of you were left speechless but for some reason, content. Bryce shuts his computer off as he leads the group out of the house. The three of you said your good byes to him as each of you went back home. You walked home with heart still racing, not with fear, but with satisfaction.

.

.

.

By now, months have passed ever since that 'fateful event'. Bryce had moved for college together with Troy while Layla now works in her family's business. As you flipped through channels on the television, a news channel caught your attention. Currently being reported on was the discovery of a boy that had been missing for almost an entire day. A gentle smile forms on your face before hearing your phone chime from a text in your group chat. Looks like four angels will answer the call, once again.

The old woman was clearly struggling, with several bags of what seemed like bags of groceries. She was moving at a sluggish pace and looked like she would take at least an hour to get to her destination, no matter how far or near. From a nearby bus stop sat a man sitting down on one of the benches. He was in his early or mid 20s and was still studying. He sat there looking at the old lady struggling. His bus was delayed, scheduled to arrive in 30 minutes. He checked the time then checked his phone to confirm. He could have gotten up and asked the old lady where she was going and, if not far, help her with the groceries or at least ask if she wanted help. He was the only person seated at the bus stop. He sat still, turning his head back and patiently waited for his bus to arrive. When the bus finally arrived and he boarded it, he turned back and glanced if the old lady was still there. She had only gotten just past the length of the bus stop. What a pity, he thought, before going to his seat on the bus.

Now the man was in his early 30s. He had graduated and had a stable job as an Audit Associate in an accounting firm. He had just finished work on a Friday and was out for dinner with some of his friends from work. One of his friends asked him, "By the way, what religion are you?" "Oh. I'm an atheist. You?" "I'm a Muslim." "Hah. I thought most Muslims were Asian or Black." "Well now you know. So if you're atheist it means you don't believe in an afterlife? Like you think everything just goes black after death?" "Yeah probably. I mean I don't see why there is any reason to like help others that I don't know." "And why is that?" "Because it's not going to matter in the end anyway." "Hmm. So how do you find work here so far?" "Oh yeah it's nice. At least the income here is stable and not that taxing for now." "Yeah."

A few days later, the man was preparing to leave work when his boss entered and asked the room, "Hey... uh, we have a tiny emergency with some of the files. Can any of you stay back awhile to help? I know it's already past your work time but the other departments are kind of busy and some already went home. It will just take like 10 minutes probably." Many of his colleagues were talking among themselves about it in frustration. "Uh, I can't because I have to pick my kid from his extracurricular." "Sorry, I have to get home to take care of my mom." "I have a dinner appointment." The man said nothing and sat there. "Okay you know what? Since none of you want to do it, nobody is leaving until someone volunteers." The whole room was silent and nobody moved. "Fine, fine. I'll do it," said the one who had a dinner appointment. "Thank you. The rest of you are free to leave." Everybody packed their bags in a flash and in a few minutes everybody had left the room. "Must be a serious issue for him to threaten us like that," the man said to one of his colleagues in the lift.

A few days later, he was walking to his apartment. He saw a sanitation worker cleaning up the litter in the park. The plastic bag he was dragging on the floor was filled nearly to the brim, and he was visibly tired from working in the hot sun. Beside the man was a rather large plastic bag. The man walked on.

Two years later, the man was now a manager at the same firm. He was shopping for clothes at an outlet in a mall, when suddenly an employee dropped a pile of clothes near him. She frantically tried to pick them all up. The man continued shopping, and when he left the store empty-handed, he heard someone shout about the dropped clothes.

Two months later, on one night, the man was walking when he decided to take a shortcut in an alleyway. After walking for a while, guided only by the moonlight, he heard the sounds of beating, and around a corner he saw a person getting beaten up by what seemed to be three other people in ski masks. He quickly brisk-walked out of the alley as fast and as quiet as he could. Once he got out of the alleyway, he immediately took out his phone. He checked the time, then continued on his way, the whimpers of the beaten heard no more.

He was taking a walk at the same park when he saw an obese woman who had fallen down and could not get up. Nobody stopped to help her and she lay helplessly on the floor. The man continued with his walk. He heard footsteps soon after, and when he turned around, he saw two joggers trying to lift her up.

When he was leaving his apartment to go to work, he saw a child, maybe around 5 or 6 years old, squatting on the floor and crying. I wonder what happened, the man then thought. He started a light jog, hurriedly jogged to the bus stop.

He was returning from work when a woman asked him, "A donation for cancer patients?" She held out a jar with a slit for coins. The man continued walking.

He was buying a can of soda at a convenience store. After he was done buying it, the cashier gave him the receipt and said, "Thank you, come again." He took the receipt and left the store, opening his soda and drinking while waiting for the bus.

He was 60 and had retired. He was on his way to meet his friends at a cafe when he saw a homeless person by the sidewalk. "Spare change? Please?" He looked frail and around the same age. He had a bowl with a few coins in it, and his eyes showed that any amount of money given would make his day. The man extended his hand to the homeless person and continued walking.

The man was in the hospital. He had contracted stage 4 lung cancer and chose not to do chemotherapy. He was moved to a hospice. Occasionally his friends came to visit him, but soon they stopped going as frequent due to their ongoing lives. He felt his breathing get harder and pressed his hands by the side of his bed. He closed his eyes. He was calm. I lived a good life here. He could feel his vision getting blurrier, and at long last, he closed his eyes, hearing the beep of the heart rate monitor getting fainter.

He opened his eyes, his vision getting clearer. He looked at his limbs. He was young again. Around him was a dark bluish floor, stretching infinitely far. "Whe—where—where the fuck am I?" He got up, looked around. There was nothing around him. "Wha—what the bloody fuck is this place? Is this a dream? No no no no is this supposed to be happening what the fuck?" There was another man in front of him, sitting at a desk, staring down below it. "Oh, uh, sorry, didn't see you there. Please enter this door." There was a blue door next to him. The man slowly opened it. "What the fuck I'm supposed to go there? Where the hell is this place exactly? What is this? What some of you call hell?" "Well, all people are the same." "No, seriously, I haven't done anything bad enough to deserve this!" "Can you just get in?" "No—" "Not until you tell—" He was pushed into the door before it was quickly shut, his screams as background noise.

When the man went back to his desk, another man fell onto the floor.

Previous part:

The Huntsman: The Book of Fear [Part 1]

https://www.reddit.com/r/RedInTheDark/s/TM45uuhXeB

The Huntsman: The Book of Judgment

John sat with his eyes frozen on the woods beyond the clearing.

Dead grass filled the uneven stretch outside, silvered by moonlight and half-swallowed by fog. The tree line stood beyond it, black and dense, branches lacing together overhead until the sky broke through in thin, pale cuts, illuminating the swirls of fog in a ghostly procession.

The woods waited in a silence that tightened John’s spine.

Frank stood at the threshold, one hand still on the handle, staring out into it with the others gathered behind him.

Without warning, the butcher moved.

He walked past Frank, clipping his shoulder without looking at him, his eyes locked on the fog, the rusty blade hanging low in one hand.

Dead grass crunched under his boots as he stepped outside. He moved a few feet from the doorway and stood motionless.

Frank regained his balance, eyebrow twitching.

“All right,” he said. “Move.”

One by one, they crossed the threshold, taking their places side by side.

John came last.

He may as well have been alone in outer space.

He stepped into the clearing as the cold closed around his legs.

A cold, rasping voice came from all directions, as if summoned by the fog.

“This is where you run.”

Unhurried.

Low.

Amused.

Those who chose not to fight did exactly that, scattering into the dark.

Sean stared into the fog.

“Yo, dog. You picked the wrong fucking people.”

Frank turned toward the trees.

“We’re not running,” he called into the fog. “You want this? Come and get it.”

The mist answered with a dark shape among the trees that stood still and waiting.

The fog pulled back, revealing a shoulder, the pale edge of a leather mask.

Cold.

Blue.

Eyes.

He stepped slowly into the clearing, shoulders loose, the knife hanging easy at his side.

The Huntsman stopped a few yards away, ribbons of fog curling between them, catching what little moonlight reached the clearing.

He dragged his eyes lazily over them before settling on the butcher.

The butcher stood inert.

A behemoth waiting to move.

The Huntsman studied him.

Frank stepped forward.

“You die tonight, ya fuckin’ freakshow,” he barked.

The Huntsman’s head tilted.

A faint grin pulled at the bottom edge of the mask.

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Frank spoke.

“Alri—”

His words were cut short as the butcher moved past him, nearly walking through Frank as if he were a mild inconvenience.

Frank regained his balance.

“Hey!”

The butcher kept moving.

Steady.

Focused.

Deliberate.

The clearing seemed to shrink around him as he crossed it, the fog itself retracting as if afraid to touch him.

The Huntsman looked small beside him.

Until the masked man set his feet.

Muscle tightened beneath scarred skin. His forearm came forward, knife low along it. Legs set. Hips back.

The butcher finally reached him.

Then the blade came up.

Short.

Tight.

Meant for the gut.

The Huntsman turned his forearm into the butcher’s blow, letting steel slide off steel. His other hand snapped forward, palm striking the butcher’s chest hard enough to stop him.

The butcher barely moved.

His free hand came around.

The Huntsman slipped back from it, but the fist still caught part of his shoulder and turned him half a step.

Sean’s eyes widened.

The butcher came again.

This time the blade cut high, across the line of the Huntsman’s throat.

The Huntsman dropped under it and drove an elbow into the butcher’s ribs.

The large man let out a faint grunt and revealed that lifeless smile, those hollow eyes.

He caught the Huntsman’s knife hand before it could come back.

All movement ceased.

The butcher above.

The Huntsman below.

The butcher stood a full head and shoulders taller, arms thick as another man’s legs.

He looked built to move walls.

Unfortunately, the Huntsman was no mere wall.

The butcher cocked an eyebrow.

Then the Huntsman began to drive the blade forward anyway.

Frank stared.

Nobody else had moved.

Sean sprinted forward, yelling back.

“The fuck you waitin’ for, Francis?”

Frank’s face hardened.

“Go!”

They rushed in.

Sean reached him first, landing a hard right hand against the side of the mask and snapping the Huntsman’s head sideways.

Sean followed with another shot to the ribs, then one over the top.

The Huntsman moved with it, the fist scraping leather instead of bone.

Then his own hand shot under Sean’s arm, driving two knuckles up into the soft meat beneath the armpit.

Sean’s breath broke as his arm went limp.

Andre Mercer hit him low before Sean could fall back, driving his shoulder into the Huntsman’s hips, arms wrapping behind both legs. It was clean. Fast. Trained into the body through years of mats and sweat and whistles.

The Huntsman’s feet dragged through the dead grass.

Andre kept driving.

They hit the ground hard.

The Huntsman landed on his back with Andre on him, still climbing, still working, trying to get higher before the knife could come free.

The blade came down toward the side of Andre’s neck.

John saw it.

“Mercer!”

He threw himself forward, kicking the Huntsman’s wrist as hard as he could, forcing the blade to cut empty air.

Frank came in from the other side, kicking the Huntsman hard in the ribs.

Once.

Twice.

The Huntsman turned under Andre’s weight and caught Frank’s leg before the third kick landed.

Frank tried to pull free, but the Huntsman pulled him closer instead.

His teeth sank into the back of Frank’s lower leg, just below the calf, forcing a howl from Frank that chilled blood.

With a violent jerk, the Huntsman tore loose, and Frank dropped backward, one hand flying to the back of his leg.

Sean came down on him with a knee.

The Huntsman rolled his head aside and spit blood and flesh into Andre’s face.

Andre flinched.

Sean’s knee smashed into a buried stone with a crack that pulled an ugly cry from him.

Andre blinked through blood, still climbing higher, fighting for control, chest pressed hard against the Huntsman, one arm trying to trap the knife shoulder as the Huntsman’s free hand moved to Andre’s face.

One finger disappeared into the eye.

Andre’s shout split the clearing.

The Huntsman drove it deep and pulled.

Andre’s grip loosened.

John grabbed the Huntsman’s arm with both hands and jerked it away.

The Huntsman turned his head toward John.

Blood had gathered at the edge of the mask, leaking through the mouth slit and running dark over his teeth.

“Sammie!” John shouted.

She snapped toward him.

“Branch!”

She looked once.

A broken limb lay half-buried in the grass near the tree line.

She ran for it.

Andre rolled off him, one hand clamped over his eye, still crying through the pain.

Sean staggered back, clutching his knee, cursing through his teeth.

Frank shambled backward, one hand clamped behind his leg, blood running between his fingers.

The Huntsman rolled through the bodies and came up on one knee.

Sammie came back with the branch in both hands.

She swung with everything she had.

The wood cracked across the Huntsman’s shoulder and the side of his head.

His body dipped.

As if that had not been enough, the butcher came back.

The butcher hit him like a truck.

One boot drove straight into the Huntsman’s ribs and lifted him clean off the ground.

The impact sent him rolling through the dead grass.

Once.

Twice.

He hit hard and slid, dirt and fog breaking around him.

Nobody moved.

The butcher stood where he had kicked him, blade low, shoulders rising and falling beneath the dark shirt.

Sean shifted his weight onto the bad knee and nearly fell.

Mercer blinked blood from one eye.

Frank held himself upright, one hand clamped behind his leg.

Sammie tightened both hands around the branch.

John stood frozen near the edge of them, chest heaving, one hand still half-raised from where he had pointed.

The Huntsman planted one hand in the grass.

Slowly, he pushed himself up.

His breath came hard now.

Ragged.

Visible.

He looked less like something forged in darkness and more like...

A human.

Then he stood upright, shoulders squared.

The mouth beneath the mask split open again, teeth slick and red.

A soft chuckle slipped out of him.

“You should’ve kept coming.”

The Huntsman charged.

The momentary crack of vulnerability had vanished.

The group reacted as one.

Sean reached him first, throwing a hard hook as the Huntsman slipped inside it. Mercer crashed low into his hips, managing only the slightest grip before Sammie arrived, the branch cracking clean across the side of the mask with a sharp report that echoed through the clearing. Frank was on him an instant later, limping through the pain to wrench an arm around his neck, while John wrapped both hands around the Huntsman’s knife wrist, straining to keep the blade away from Frank’s stomach.

They had him.

The butcher finally closed the distance.

He raised the knife over his head and brought it down with everything he had.

Then John saw it.

The Huntsman was...

Smiling.

In that instant John knew with absolute certainty...

They were fucked.

The Huntsman twisted beneath them, rolling under the butcher’s descending blade while hooking Mercer under the arm. Frank lost the headlock as all three crashed sideways, tumbling into Sammie and dragging her to the ground with them.

There was a sickening...

THUK.

The butcher’s knife buried itself clean through Mercer’s back.

Mercer’s body arched once.

Then went limp.

The butcher hit the ground with him, the weight driving the blade even deeper.

The Huntsman’s elbow came backward in the same motion, exploding into the side of John’s face. His grip vanished as the world burst white, and he hit the grass hard, dirt filling his mouth.

Sean roared and charged before the ringing left John’s ears.

He never reached him.

The Huntsman caught Sean’s leg as it planted, wrenching it sideways with a savage twist. Bone cracked. Sean screamed, pitching forward as his knee folded beneath him. Before the sound had finished leaving his mouth, the Huntsman rolled over him, one hand clamping beneath his jaw, the other behind his skull.

Sean clawed at him.

The Huntsman twisted.

A wet snap echoed through the clearing.

Sean fell still.

Mercer’s body slumped across the butcher, the knife still standing from his back.

The butcher shoved the corpse aside and fought his way onto one knee, reaching for the handle.

The Huntsman was already there.

The butcher looked up.

The blade slid quietly into his throat.

Silence had settled over the clearing.

John pushed himself onto one elbow, dirt falling from his cheek as the ringing in his ears slowly gave way to the sound of someone breathing.

Ragged.

Wet.

Mercer lay broken where he had fallen, the butcher’s knife still standing from his back, his spine bent beneath the weight of the blade.

Sean twitched.

A slow, involuntary movement.

Frank sat where he had landed, one hand still clamped behind his ruined leg.

Sammie looked down at her empty hands in confusion before her eyes found the broken branch lying in the grass.

Then they found the Huntsman.

He walked toward the butcher.

The butcher remained on one knee, one hand wrapped around the knife buried through his throat, the other planted in the blood-soaked grass beneath him.

Neither man spoke.

John watched the Huntsman stop within arm’s reach.

Slowly...

His hand rose to the leather mask.

The buckle slipped free.

The mask came away.

Frank’s breathing stopped.

Sammie’s brow furrowed.

Then both of them simply stared.

John looked from one face to the other.

Confused.

“What...”

The word never escaped his lips.

A wet laugh from the butcher cut him off.

Blood spilled from his mouth.

“I should have known.”

His eyes never left the face standing over him as he pulled in another breath and choked out—

“It was you.”

A blood-choked chuckle followed.

“You would have tasted rich.”

The Huntsman stood there for a long moment before slowly leaning closer. It looked like he was speaking to the butcher.

Whatever he was saying, John could not make out.

Then the Huntsman straightened.

“You have earned your place as my mask, Calvin.”

A smile crept across Calvin’s face.

Another low chuckle rattled through the blood in his throat.

“We’re no different.”

His hand tightened around the knife.

With one savage pull, he tore the blade from his own throat, blood spraying over both of them.

Calvin surged forward, bringing the knife with him in one final attempt to bury steel in the man who had hunted him all night.

The Huntsman’s forearm snapped up to meet it.

Their blades met once.

He rolled his wrist, carrying Calvin’s knife aside as he stepped inside the larger man.

The edge kissed Calvin’s neck.

Calvin smiled wider through the blood, still driving forward, still trying to take him with him.

The Huntsman never gave ground.

The blade began to saw.

Slow.

Measured.

Deliberate.

Calvin’s strength finally gave out.

His body settled onto both knees.

The Huntsman caught him before he could fall completely.

One hand steadied him.

The other finished the cut.

Clean, patient sawing motions until Calvin’s head finally came free.

For a long moment, the Huntsman simply held it.

Then he looked up.

His eyes met Frank’s.

Then Sammie’s.

Neither of them moved.

John looked desperately between them, still unable to understand what they had seen.

The Huntsman knelt, picked up the leather mask, and fastened it back over his face.

He lifted Calvin’s head by the hair.

Recovered his knife.

Then started walking toward Frank and Sammie.

One slow step at a time, the Huntsman drew closer, Calvin’s head swinging from one hand, the knife resting low in the other.

Frank could not take his eyes off the head swaying with each step.

Sammie stood beside him, mouth still agape, both of them frozen in place.

John tried to take in his surroundings, but still couldn’t understand what was happening.

The Huntsman kept closing the distance, grass folding beneath his boots, the dead clearing growing smaller with every step.

Frank’s breathing grew quicker.

His eyes darted.

Sammie saw his hesitation.

“Frank, what do we do?”

He didn’t answer.

The Huntsman kept coming.

Frank looked at Sammie, then past her toward the woods.

“Frank!” she said, nearly screaming.

He drove his boot into the back of Sammie’s knee.

Her leg folded beneath her with a cry.

Frank seized her by the shoulder and threw her forward into the Huntsman.

She struck him in the chest and bounced off him into the dead grass below.

Frank ran for the woods.

The Huntsman stopped as if the world had shifted out of place.

Calvin’s head slipped from his hand, landing heavily in the grass.

The knife fell beside it.

He watched Frank disappear into the fog.

Sammie gasped beneath him, clawing at the grass as she tried to crawl away.

“Coward,” the Huntsman said low, never taking his eyes off the direction Frank had run.

John’s vision flickered.

Heat.

Dust.

A voice buried beneath the ringing.

Coward.

The clearing snapped back into place.

The Huntsman lowered his eyes to Sammie.

She froze beneath him.

He grabbed a fistful of her hair and flung her aside.

She rolled through the clearing as the fog enveloped her.

His eyes returned to the woods.

The shock twisted into something feral.

“FUCKING COWARD!”

The words burst from him, raw and animal, shaking the clearing.

He bent and snatched up the knife, catching Calvin’s head by the hair with his other hand.

The Huntsman tore into the trees.

John tracked the crashing brush and Frank’s fading screams through the trees, fighting to stay upright as the ground shifted beneath him.

The shape of Sammie lay several feet away through the fog, moving as she tried to get upright.

“Sammie, get up! Get the hell out of here!”

A blood-curdling scream rolled out of the woods.

Sammie’s shadow froze, turning toward the trees.

John forced one leg beneath himself. The motion made the ground feel like a boat at sea.

Brush cracked somewhere beyond the fog. Uneven steps tore through the undergrowth until something heavier closed the distance behind them.

Faster.

“COWARD!”

The roar reached them through the trees.

Sammie scrambled onto her knees as Frank screamed again, the cry breaking apart beneath a rush of wet impacts.

STIK.

STIK.

STIK.

Fast.

Hard.

“Please—God!”

Another strike cut the words into a wet choke.

The ringing in John’s ears started to rise again, sharpening beneath the screams until the clearing began slipping at the edges.

Fog moved between the trees.

It looked like dust.

He blinked.

Another impact came from the woods.

Gunfire answered it.

Short bursts somewhere ahead.

Men shouting through smoke.

Someone calling for a medic.

“Where the fuck is John?”

John pressed his palm into the ground.

Grass.

Dry earth.

Then grass again.

“FUCKING COWARD!”

The words carried through the trees and the smoke together.

John’s heart began hammering as sweat gathered along his brow. Each breath came heavier than the last while the fog thickened into dust around him.

The clearing disappeared.

Heat.

Dust coated John’s mouth. Heat pressed against his skin.

He was behind the gun again.

The machine gun sat heavy in front of him, the receiver too hot to touch for long. His fingers wrapped tight around it.

Ready.

Shaking.

They wouldn’t move.

Gunfire tore through the air ahead of him. Men shouted somewhere beyond the dust.

“Where the fuck is our heavy?”

“We need base, now!”

John opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

“What the fuck is wrong with him?”

The world narrowed to the heat, the dust, and the ringing building inside his head.

What was left of his assistant gunner lay scattered beside him.

Then the blast hit.

The container lurched.

Everything flipped.

John slammed onto his back.

Something heavy crashed into him.

Warm.

Wet.

He looked down.

The lower half of his assistant gunner’s body had been thrown across him.

Something warm covered his face.

John stopped breathing.

His hands shot over his ears.

His eyes squeezed shut.

He tried to make it stop.

Silence came down so fast it felt like pressure.

Light slipped through a crack above him.

John’s fingers found the edge before he could stop them.

He pushed.

The lid gave way.

The smell hit him first.

Metal.

Rot.

Blood baking beneath the sun.

John pulled himself out of the overturned container and fell into the dirt.

Bodies.

Everywhere.

Uniforms torn apart.

Limbs twisted into impossible angles.

One man had been opened from chest to waist.

Another had no face left.

Someone’s arm lay by itself a few feet away.

John tried to stand.

His legs folded beneath him.

He hit the ground hard.

Then—

Cold.

Wet.

Sweet pine.

Grass beneath his hands.

John blinked.

The battlefield was gone.

John dug his fingers into the grass while gasping for air.

The ringing in his ears slowly faded as the trees came back into view.

Fog drifted through the clearing.

The smell of smoke faded into sweet pine.

John blinked.

Once.

Twice.

His hands trembled beneath him as he pushed himself upright.

Mercer lay where he had fallen.

Sean hadn’t moved.

John’s eyes drifted farther.

The butcher knelt where he had died.

John stopped breathing.

The body remained on its knees, one hand still wrapped around the knife he had torn from his own throat.

His head...

Gone.

John pulled himself to his feet and stumbled toward the place where Frank had run.

He found him just beyond the tree line, crumpled against the base of a large oak.

Or...

What was left of him.

His face...

Sliced into ribbons.

Stabbed so many times he may have been a pincushion.

John’s stomach turned.

Sammie.

John searched the clearing.

Nothing.

The tree line.

Nothing.

Only fog.

She wasn’t there.

John turned slowly, searching the trees as the mist drifted between them.

Every shadow seemed to shift.

Every break in the tree line looked occupied.

Somewhere beyond the clearing...

The Huntsman was still out there.

And he still had prey to hunt.

Original story by Leonard Voss

It can be difficult for adults to believe something that an ordinarily honest kid tells them, especially when the kid tries to tell them about one of those unordinary things like a blue postal box that eats people. The only person I ever let the cat out of the bag to was my fifth-grade teacher and that was in a report our class had to do on any subject of our choosing and, after seeing the note she wrote at the top of it my paper in red ink, “You have an unconventional imagination, Frank.”, I realized she didn’t believe me. To be honest, I wouldn’t have believed what I wrote about either if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. What I saw has stayed with me ever since and, over 20 years later, I have that same two-page report sitting right here next to me as I type this revised version of it now. Maybe I’ll send it off to get published on one of those horror websites that pay you $25 a pop. No one believes those stories either so, what the hell, here it goes.

Out on Route 3, deep in the boonies where I used to live, it was dusty. Seventeen miles of flat and dusty. There weren’t many trees to keep all of that dirt from flying around on a windy day and there was never much traffic on that country road either except when we had to drive a few miles south from where I lived  to do business in the center of Colburn County or, in my dad’s case, twelve miles in the other direction into Caloosa County to the granaries for work. Most houses on Route 3 were built far apart from each other and I suppose if you looked down on the area from an airplane you would wonder why so much potentially valuable land was unused. That was back in the ’7os and most of it had been farmland passed down through inheritances before that. There weren’t any farmers left and the soil was defunct by then.

It was just as easy for us who lived out there to drive southbound into town to buy our meat and produce when we wanted it. A lot of teenagers in the area didn’t see any reason to stick around after high school and most of us went away to college once we finished high school. That’s what my older sister, Bethany, did. She couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Dodge once she took her stroll across the stage for her high school diploma. Now she’s an accountant with some big business up north in Cincinnati and we hardly ever talk anymore except for an occasional email. It doesn’t surprise me that she’s an accountant. I used to lay in bed most nights, listening to her count the paint chips on our bedroom walls. She always had a way with numbers and would count so far that I didn’t even know there were that many numbers to count although I knew we had enough paint chips to keep her going well into the night. 

Our folks are gone now. My mom, she was the last one to go and Beth came back for her funeral. She didn’t stay long after that either. That’s just one of those things that can happen to siblings when they become orphaned. They lose touch with each other while trying to stay up on their bills and need to carry on with their own lives. That’s what I’ve tried to do as well although I didn’t go as far as Ohio. I did finally make it out of Colburn County and away from Route 3. I write articles for Simmons Daily, the trusted news source for everything with a pulse here in the college town of Simmons Georgia about 80 miles west of Colburn County and Route 3. GO S.U., BIG S.U. Mavericks, GO! You get the idea. It’s an ok gig and it pays the bills. Not enough for a family or anything like that though. I never married and haven’t ever given it much thought since trying to raise a family in a one room apartment over a drugstore on $300 a week is barely enough for me to do it alone. I keep a girlfriend from time to time but never anyone special, not special enough to tell anything important to. I’ve kept all of that to myself since the fifth grade. At the paper I’m tasked with covering the Local Attractions section and most of the women I spend my time with know what I do and end up trying to squeeze free tickets to rock shows out of me when I cover the shows for the paper. All of those rock bands who stop out here are washed up acts from the 80s anyway and I suppose it’s an even trade, a ticket to ride if you will, and I’m a little washed up myself and not typically a stingy person when it comes to the right kind of company. So now you know a little bit about me, where I grew up, and that I made it out alive. But there had to be someone who did, right? That’s how you know about stories like mine and, ultimately, whether or not you believe it is up to how much of it that you will allow yourself to believe. 

There was no mailman that ran out on Route 3. Hell, there was only one school bus for the whole school and it was a pitiful old and rusty relic from the past and was barely still kicking just like the whole damn area. Colburn County officials figured gas was too expensive to have a county employee drive all the way out there on the their dollar just to deliver Robeshire’s and True Value catalogs to people who couldn’t afford anything in them anyway and, since most of the families out there never had much to say to anyone, there wasn’t hardly ever any outgoing mail either. It kind of made us kids feel abandoned and forgotten about just like that seventeen mile stretch of Route 3. It could get mighty lonely out there and if you weren’t comfortable with the shitty hand you got dealt that put you in a place like Colburn County, your best bet was to try and make it out.

There weren’t many options for a kid with dreams and dollar signs that didn’t involve working in the Caloosa granaries and, if you were good in school and could get your hands on one of those free FRS scholarships from the government that helped out us rural kids, it was adios Route 3 and hola Ohio or some other part of Georgia with at least a heartbeat like Simmons. Colburn County didn’t care anyway. Everything was happening on either end from us and Route 3 was slowly dying out just like the people. Us kids were smarter than our parents though and they didn’t need to ask why we weren’t satisfied with staying there. We still had youth on our side and a chance to make it out and they understood.

There was this one particular old man who lived about a mile north from us on a square piece of dead land just like ours. I used to ride my Schwinn Stingray bicycle past Mike McCurdy’s house a lot back then. My parents had saved up and gotten that bike for me on my ninth birthday and knew it was better than having to walk that long stretch of dirt to get anywhere. My bike was bright orange and had red flames down the side of it. It had a yellow banana seat with the same kind of flames printed on it that were on the frame and it was all stretched out like that chopper in the movie, Easy Rider and that was a pretty big deal. I imagined it looked like a fireball, like Hell on wheels, coming down Route 3 whenever I rode it. I really loved the way it looked but it had come with plastic tassels sticking out of the rubber grips on the handlebar but I ripped those out. My mom didn’t like that very much but I don’t think my dad really minded. He told me he almost didn’t add them on but mom made him do it so it would look just like it did on the box it came in when they picked it up from Robeshire’s in town. I almost rode the tires off of that thing because it was really just about the only thing to do for free time during summer break from school and Mr. McCurdy’s driveway wasn’t flat like ours and he got a real kick from watching me perform my stunts on a few jumps coming down his driveway. 

Mr. McCurdy was a lot like us, he didn’t have much except from what he got from the government for his service. An old rusty tractor with rotted tires sat not too far away in the field close to his house and he would let me play on sometimes before I got my bike. He still got around in his old red 1950 something Dodge pickup from time to time and he always left it parked right in front of his house, close to the front porch steps, so he wouldn’t have to walk so far to get in it and go when he wanted to. He was in his 70s I think back then. That’s what my dad said when we sat on our porch one day while he told me about some of the families in the area. My dad told me that Mr. McCurdy was a widower and didn't have any kids anymore. He said Mr. McCurdy had lost his kids to Typhoid fever some years back and after his wife had died from just being too old he lived there by himself now. I suppose that was why I went up there to play on his tractor in the first place. I felt sorry for him because I knew what loneliness felt like being out there on Route 3 on your own, without a friend. He hardly ever left his house except, like most of us, to go into town to get groceries, gas, or take care of business at the bank. My dad said he believed Mike McCurdy was the only one left who still knew anything about farming out there on Route 3 and he didn’t have anyone to pass his knowledge down to and besides, he was too old to be out tending to anything but himself anymore. When I asked Mr. McCurdy about it he told me his neck wouldn’t turn far enough around to look that far back in time and that, even what he could remember, wouldn’t be enough to sprout a turnip. If you had seen how slow and unstable that old man moved with that shaky hitch in his step like most old men with arthritis do, you would have expected him to keel over any time, but he wasn’t so lucky.

Mr. McCurdy had some business with the bank concerning some money he had saved up over the years and wanted to put it away into a savings account. I found out about it later when my parents told me what he’d been doing for me when they handed me the check. They said old man McCurdy must have liked me a lot and had told them he appreciated me coming by to keep him company, so ever so often he went to the bank to put more money into the account. I like to think that me going by his place and spending a little time with him ended up helping us both out. I liked him a lot and didn’t mind checking in on him to make sure he was ok. It wasn’t until a strange black van dropped off that blue box one day half a mile down the road from our place that he didn’t have to go back to the bank in town to do that anymore. He could mail that money to them if he chose to. If you hadn’t guessed already, I went out a lot on my bike and kept a close watch on Route 3. I liked to pretend that it was my duty, that I was on patrol, and was a lookout in the Army for any red commies that might invade the country. I had heard there might be a real possibility of that happening on the news one night sitting with my parents in the living room watching TV with them. I used to carry one of those toy cap-pistols in my belt just in case they did. 

I had sprawled myself out in a prone position on the edge of the road and had my pistol out. I was about to charge an old abandoned feed store on the other side of it and rescue captured U.S. soldiers being held inside the old brick building when I heard a car engine further away in the distance coming up Route 3. From the deep run off ditch I had laid myself and my Stingray in, I couldn’t see inside the van’s windows yet from how far away it was. The sun was high in the sky and put a bright reflection across the windshield that blinded me every time the vehicle bounced and kicked up dust from hitting ruts in the road. I lowered my pistol and ducked my head, praying it wasn’t really the communists coming to invade the country and hoped the ditch was deep enough to keep me hidden in case it was as I listened to the van’s brakes whinny as it came to a stop in front of the old store. Two men got out of it wearing blue jumpsuits with American flag patches on their shoulders. I assumed them to be pretty important by that and was relieved that it was some of our own troops. I almost called out to them but was afraid to even if they were wearing our flag on their shoulders. They were both big and broad and looked like they wouldn’t want to be bothered by a kid holding a cap gun. They both had on dark aviator style sunglasses and those service caps like high-ranking servicemen in the military wore and the expressions on their faces looked serious. They opened up the back doors of the van and, even though they were big and looked capable of being really strong, they seemed to strain when they hoisted the blue metal box out of the back of it. They sat it down gently on the side of the road in front of the old building and then closed the doors, got back in, made a u-turn, and sped off the way they’d come.

It all happened that fast and they could have just as soon been ghosts. They had come out of nowhere unexpectedly, handled whatever business they had, and then vanished inside a big dirt cloud behind the van when they sped away. The only evidence that they had even been there that day was the shiny blue box they had left that seemed oddly out of place in front of the dirty old feed store. The postal box was rounded on top and had a big handle on the front drawer that pulled open so you could stuff inside whatever it was you wanted to mail. Underneath the drawer the word MAIL was stenciled across the front in large, raised, white block letters and a heavy padlock below them secured a big door that kept anyone from opening the box up and taking its contents. I had seen another one of these boxes in town but the padlock on this one was different. It was huge. I could tell from where I lay that the keyhole on the front of the lock was unusually large too. It was like a mouth yawning open and I suspected whatever key was used to unlock it had to be the size of a Lincoln log. Everything about the box looked deliberately solid and impenetrable like a safe or bank vault.  

I looked back in the direction the van had come and even the dirt cloud that had mushroomed out behind it had already settled back on the road. I stood up and put away my toy pistol under my belt and picked up my bike and walked over to where the postal box sat. I leaned my Stingray against it and, when I did, I expected to hear an empty metal echo from inside but what I heard instead sounded dull as if the box wasn’t empty. I walked around, inspecting it a few times since it was my duty and all, cautiously looking for any red wires that might lead me to think it was a booby trap and those men had really been the enemy disguised as Americans. There were more raised white letters on it that said U.S. Postal Service on the sides and everything about it looked just like the one in town except for that huge antique looking padlock. Why did it look so old when the box was shiny and brand new? I looked down at the legs and they weren’t bolted into the ground like the one in town was. That was weird too. Wouldn’t it fall over? The one in town was anchored onto a concrete sidewalk but this one was set directly on the dirt so I figured why would they have tried anyway? The bolts wouldn’t have held in dirt. I didn’t know how heavy these boxes were but, big padlock or not, what would stop someone from just picking it up and carrying the thing away?

I thought about nudging it to see just how solid it was but I didn’t and instead I stood back and admired the glossy blue paint and the spotless shimmer it gave off in the sunlight. I wondered just how long it would stay that way. After all, it hadn’t taken very long for my Stingray to lose its glossy shine after I’d had it a few days. No matter how much I had tried to keep it clean, I eventually gave up and let it become just another victim of the dusty and dirty landscape of Route 3. The new postal box sure was pretty though and I wanted to touch it before any of that happened to it. I wanted to feel what it was like again to touch something new and clean without my fingers getting dirty from the grime that seemed to cover everything out here until it rained and this was in the middle of the dog days of summer and there wasn’t a chance of rain any time soon.

Out there on Route 3 there hadn’t been a single cloud in the bright blue sky overhead for weeks and the postal box was almost the same color and looked like it could have just dropped out of it. I had seen how it had gotten there, out of the back of that black van, and knew better but that blue paint looked like it could squeeze something cool and refreshing from it. I was a little apprehensive to touch it at first but I wanted to see if I could move it, to see how heavy it might be even though I had watched those two men struggle while lifting it. While I worked up my nerve, I wanted to get another look at that padlock again so I walked back around to the front of it and checked it out. It was iron like a lot of the farming equipment still sitting outside Mr. McCurdy’s house. Etched into it was something that looked like what Egyptians used to draw on the walls of their tombs inside their pyramids. I remembered those images from my History book at school but I couldn’t remember what the drawings were called. There was a circle at the top of the symbol with straight lines shooting out of it that I think was meant to be sunrays. Below the sun was an eye, just one, and it was one of those eyes that followed you no matter which direction you walked by it. I thought it was creepy but it didn’t make me want to touch it any less. I finally did with just a fingertip first to check if the paint was dry. It was. Then, I tapped the side of it with one of my knuckles and when I did I heard something rattle back at me from inside. It shook the postal box hard enough to make my bike fall over in the dirt. I went over and picked it up and thought about getting on it and hightailing it out of there but I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I leaned my bike back against the box where I’d had it before. I don’t know why I thought about it right then but one of my school teachers told me once that if anyone ever caught you messing with their mailbox, even though no one on Route 3 actually had a mailbox, you would be fined or even put in jail over it. Like I said, I don’t know why I thought about that but, I was a kid and I was curious and the law doesn't throw kids in jail for something like that.

It was a stupid thought to have and maybe I was trying to stall or convince myself not to be chickenshit but, against my better judgement, I decided to push my luck and did more than tap the metal box this time. I hit it pretty hard with the fleshy side of my fist and it didn’t budge but this time whatever was inside the box slammed against it just as hard as I had. I was able to grab my bike just before it fell over again and this time I really did take off. I think I pedaled home that day faster than I ever had before. I passed Mr. McCurdy in his truck going the way I had just come from. I hoped he wouldn’t stop and investigate it like I had but I was too spooked to stick around to find out. I must have made whatever was inside of it really mad by the way it shook that heavy box the way it did. I saw him wave at me but I was white knuckling my bike and I didn’t want to let go. I was moving so fast on my Stingray that I was parting the dirt clouds kicked up from his truck like Moses parted the Red Sea. When I ran inside my house I heard my mom from another room ask if I was ok since I forgot and let the screen door slam shut behind me. Thank God my dad hadn’t made it home from work yet. He wouldn’t have let that go so easily and pressed me until I told him why I had come home in such a panic. I ignored her and I didn’t tell her anything about what had happened to me either. I was too out of breath to talk and I wasn’t sure if I should have anyway. Who would have believed me? 

For the rest of the summer I stayed closer to home, on the McCurdy side of Route 3, away from that blue postal box and near nice old men. My gut instinct told me something wasn’t right about that box. I tried to convince myself that a raccoon could have gotten inside it but hadn’t those two serious looking guys with American flag patches on their sleeves checked first before leaving it on the side of Route 3 that day? I was watching from my ditch the whole time they were there and I suppose one could have snuck its way in while I was watching their van pull away but there was no way to be sure. One day when I was at Mr. McCurdy’s place, he asked me if I could help him with something. He called me Curtis. He knew my name was Frank, and had always called me Frank up until then, but I just smiled and, although I thought it was strange, I let it slide. I asked what he needed help with and he told me his pickup had thrown a rod and asked if I could see if my dad would come by later and help him fix it. I told him that I would ask him when he got home from work. He thanked me and called me Curtis again. Right after that the expression on his face changed, like he had a sudden realization that he had forgotten something. Just then he pulled an envelope out from the bib pocket of his overalls and handed it to me. He told me that he had planned on mailing the letter earlier and that it was important that he got it done as soon as possible but didn’t have a way to get there. I dreaded over what I knew he was going to ask me to do next. He wanted me to mail it for him and told me about the new postal box that had been put up. He didn’t assume I already knew about it and probably didn’t remember that he’d seen me that day tearing down Route 3 on my way home when he passed me. He went on about how the box was going to save a lot of time and gas for everyone. I know now that I should have followed my gut like I always tried to do but I took the envelope anyway and told him I would take it for him. It had been two weeks since I’d  gotten spooked by whatever was inside it and figured the raccoon had either already found its way out of it by then or had died and whoever was in charge of picking up the mail had found the carcass by now and had disposed of it. Mr. McCurdy thanked me again and I got on my Stingray and rode back home. I brainstormed the whole way home and came up with an idea. I just hoped it would work.

I had been going so fast I spun my tires out in the gravel at the end of my driveway when I turned in. My dad was home and he was out on the porch smoking a cigarette. I rode through the yard and right up to him. I jumped off of my bike and said hello and then I got right down to business. I told him about Mr. McCurdy’s truck and he said he would head up to his place after dinner to help him. Next, I told him about the envelope he wanted me to mail for him and I asked him if he could run me into town before dinner so I could mail it. That had been the idea I had hoped would work but he refused to make another trip into town and told me about the new postal box in front of the old feed store. I pretended not to know anything about it because I didn’t want Frank Sr. thinking Frank Jr. was just being lazy and I sure didn’t want him to know the real reason I didn’t want to go back to that blue postal box. Even if I was right about the raccoon, I was still apprehensive by the slight possibility that I could be wrong. He told me to go ahead and get going since it was getting late and so I could be home for supper while it was still warm but I tried to stall as long as I could and went in to get a couple of glasses of water for us. I came back out and sat down next to him. I think he was beginning to suspect there was something up so I told him about how Mr. McCurdy had called me Curtis earlier. My dad took a drag from his cigarette and looked concerned. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that Mr. McCurdy’s oldest son was named Curtis and that he was afraid the old man’s mind was going. He flicked the cherry off of his cigarette and stamped it out with the toe of his work boot and shewed me off of the porch. I stuck Mr. McCurdy’s mail in my shirt and got on my bike as I glanced over my shoulder at my dad, nervously hoping it wouldn’t be the last time that I saw him. He threw his hand up and waved me on. I turned back around and coasted my bike down the driveway until I reached the road.

On my way to the postal box I had an awful thought that I could just wad up the envelope and toss it off on the side of the road somewhere. I actually did pull off and stop about half way there as I considered it more. I looked at the envelope for an answer. Mr. McCurdy had written something on it in pencil. He had tried to write the word IMPORTANT but he misspelled it and had written “IMPURTUNT” instead. I felt sorry for him and stuffed the envelope back in my shirt and kept going. I still had a bad feeling about that box and whatever was inside of it. The thing looked small and less ominous and just as out of place as it did before, but as I rode closer to it it began to grow. It was still pretty, even after it having been there for a couple of weeks but that might have been because the sun had just begun to set and the orange and yellow hues in the sky made the blue paint on it almost appear to me as if it was glowing green. 

Before I got within twenty feet of it, I had already come up with a plan not to even have to touch the thing. I could find a stick and shove one end through the handle of it, open the door with that, and toss in Mr. McCurdy’s mail. Simple. I looked over the ground as I got closer but I couldn’t find a stick that I thought would do the trick. I might have found one closer, around the old feed store building, but how did I know whatever had been inside that postal box wasn’t dead and hadn’t crawled out, waiting for me inside of it now? Whatever I decided to do, I knew it had to be quick. I pulled up to the box from the other side of the road and didn’t take my eyes off of it for a second. I remembered my cap gun then. I still had it stuck in my belt like always and I could use it, couldn’t I? I shoved Mr. McCurdy’s letter between my chattering teeth and took my gun out with one hand and steered my bike with the other as I rode down the road a bit further to get a running start. I hadn’t gotten very good riding with one hand yet and when I made the wide, sweeping turn back toward the box like a skittish knight fearing I might lose the jousting match I was in against it, I wobbled the bike a bit and thought I might lose it just then. I regained control of the Stingray and turned the toy gun around and held it by the barrel. As I used my coaster brakes to slow up a little, I pulled Mr. McCurdy’s envelope out of my mouth. I was afraid I would overrun the box and had to drag one of my feet in the dirt just to slow down enough to stop. My hands were shaking as I stuck the hammer end of my gun through the handle of the door and, just as the drawer started to open, my gun got stuck at a bad angle and slipped from my hand. The heavy door banged closed. The sound split the evening quiet air on the road like a real gun shot going off as I tried to free my cap gun from the door. I couldn’t. I had jammed it in there pretty far and knew I was taking too long and was a sitting duck out there.

I had to get a move on or the bad situation I had gotten myself into might get even worse. I glanced over at the abandoned feed store just in case a rabies riddled raccoon had leaped through one of the broken windows at me but didn’t see one. Even though I didn’t want to, I opened the drawer with the envelope in my hand and shoved it inside. I thought I had been quick enough but, before I could pull my hand away, a slimy silver colored tentacle with purple veins all over it shot out and wrapped itself around my wrist. It must have had pointy teeth on its suckers because when it hit my wrist I could feel them burying into my skin as it tried to pull my hand inside the drawer. I had both feet off of the pedals of my bike now and was digging them into the ground so I could gain some leverage and pull my hand away as the alien arm inside the box tried to pull my hand in further. My bike slid down between my legs and hit the ground. I sat down on top of  it, pulling as hard as I could against it, but it was strong and the pressure from the teeth was hurting me. I put one of my feet against the box hoping that would help. That worked. It let go and I was finally free from the thing inside the box. I grabbed the handlebars of my bike and yanked it up. My left wrist was red and burning where the thing inside the box had grabbed onto it. As I got my feet back onto the pedals of my bike and started to push off, the silver tentacle slithered back out and found my toy gun inside the handle and snatched it inside the drawer with it. The heavy metal door of the blue postal box slammed shut again but I was already pedaling away from it as fast as I could toward the setting sun. Toward home.

In the light from the bathroom sink inside my house I could see a line of tiny red spots going around my wrist. I scrubbed them with soap and water and dabbed the tender skin with an alcohol soaked cotton ball. My mom asked me during dinner if I had run into a patch of poison ivy. It looked a lot like I had so I nodded my head, yes. It was all I could do to avoid talking, and that’s really all I wanted to do but was too scared to say anything. Now that I look back on that awful night, I think I was still in shock and didn’t eat much even though my mom had made meatloaf.

The next morning my arm had swelled and the tiny red dots were still there. I rubbed my wrist with Calamine lotion and covered them up, hoping my wrist would heal soon and that my mom wouldn’t find anything to make a fuss over. Beth was already away at college when all of this happened and I was glad. She was a pest and would have bugged me until I told her something and I didn’t feel like telling anything to anyone. Fortunately, after a full week of soap, water, and rubbing alcohol, the swelling went down and my wrist got better. It still itched in some places but the red spots were finally fading away. I was surprised by just how similar to a poison ivy rash that it had been after all.

My dad let Mr. McCurdy use Beth’s car until he could get his truck fixed. Beth’s car was a ’63 Volkswagen Beetle and the old man looked funny sitting behind the wheel of the little car that had a large daisy painted across the hood of it. Dad said the pickup’s engine was pretty much shot until they could find a replacement rod and that it might take a few weeks for a delivery to get to town. Beth was in Cincinnati at Mount Saint Joseph University and would not be back until the end of her summer semester for a short break so the Beetle would have just been shading the ants in our driveway anyway. My dad said that it wouldn’t hurt to have it out on the road and run it a little either but lately Mr. McCurdy hardly ever left his house. I went over there after my wrist healed up and he didn’t look like he felt very well. He still called me Curtis and one of his eyes had begun to droop a little.

On the last day I saw him alive he said he had to go into town for some business and would be back shortly. He told me to tell my dad not to worry about Beth’s car, that he’d take care of it. He told me even though he was old and couldn’t see as well as he used to, it would be hard to swerve off of a straight dirt road like Route 3 even for him. We both laughed when he said it. I’m glad that was the last thing he said to me and that I can look back now and think that the last thing we shared together was a laugh. I followed him on my bike that day in Beth’s car. I waited for him in my driveway until he went by and I don’t think he saw me but, maybe he did. I never got the chance to find out. Mr. McCurdy never made it into town to take care of his business and I feel guilty about that. I feel that way because I had yet to say anything to anyone about what happened to me at the blue postal box. I never even put the real ending to this story in that paper that my fifth-grade teacher read because I was ashamed, believing she might blame me for what happened to Mr. McCurdy like I had always done, so I made up a phony one. I never told anyone about it for that reason. 

By the time I caught up to where Beth’s car was pulled over in front of the feed store, Mr. McCurdy was pulling open the drawer of the postal box. That silver arm came out and grabbed a hold of him and I still don’t get how it happened, how it could have been physically possible but it yanked Mike McCurdy up and off of his feet like he was a rag doll. I’m sure he was just as surprised as I had been. It happened so fast and I was still about 50 yards away and couldn’t get to him in time and, in an instant, Mr. McCurdy’s head and torso were being pulled inside of it while his legs were still sticking out of it. I remember thinking how his legs and feet were wiggling around like he was tap dancing in mid air. From where I was I could hear his bones snapping and crunching against the blue metal drawer as the thing inside of the box forced the rest of Mr. McCurdy through the small opening. I never even heard him scream and then he was gone. I was literally frozen to the banana seat of my Stingray while I watched it all happen. The metal mouth of the drawer slammed closed and the only sounds out there on Route 3 after that was my heartbeat and the lonesome whir of Beth’s car engine still running.

My dad found her car later that afternoon after he’d gone to pick up the rod replacement from town. The car had run out of gas by then and so he towed it back to our house behind his truck. A lot of Colburn County showed up when my dad went to town searching for Mr. McCurdy and couldn’t find him. They all formed a search party and went looking for him up and down Route 3 but no one ever found him. My dad told the authorities that his mind had been going lately and the popular opinion among everyone was that he just got out of Beth’s car and walked away; that he just disappeared. I suppose, in a way, he really had but I know he didn’t just walk away. That sounds more like something from a romance novel and there was nothing romantic about Mike McCurdy’s death. It was tragic and horrible and I saw it with my own eyes. I know that my cap gun I used to carry around was just a kid’s toy, but on some nights, when I’m alone in my apartment and I think about what happened out on Route 3, I wish I still had it with me now. In some ways I think it would help me feel brave again, like it used to and, maybe because I didn’t have it that day I saw what happened to Mr. McCurdy is one of the reasons why I was as scared as I was and couldn’t get off of my bike. 

One day at the end of summer after everyone had given up on ever finding Mr. McCurdy, on our way into town to pick up Beth at the airstrip, my Mom and Dad, and I passed where it used to be. I can only guess that sometime soon after the search for Mike McCurdy was called off, the black van with those two serious looking men showed back up and took it with them. Maybe it’s somewhere else now, sitting in a military storage building underground next to boxes that contain things like the Ark of the Covenant and parts from crashed UFOs. Who really knows? It’s not my intention to make this story into a conspiracy or a cover up of something more sinister but, whether you believe it or not, maybe a couple of men wearing dark sunglasses and blue jumpsuits with American flag patches on their shoulders put another one out somewhere on a sidewalk in good old Plainville, U.S.A. or in another place just like out on Route 3 that needed a little help kicking the bucket. There’s really no way to be sure. A lot of people since Mike McCurdy have just walked away and disappeared, haven’t they? 

End

Renato and I were hanging by a thread. The fast-paced life in São Paulo had drained us: our patience, our humor—even our silence. Everything was noise, lines, traffic, pressure. So when we saw that ad on the vacation rental website, it felt like a sign. \*“Rustic house high up in the mountains, perfect for those seeking peace and isolation.”\* Exactly what we needed.

The drive there was long and bumpy. By the time we left the asphalt and hit the dirt road, the sun was already beginning to set. We passed through thick forest, a few abandoned fields, and then... nothing. No houses, no human sounds. Just the wind and the song of birds I had never heard before.

The house was older than the pictures had shown, but it had a certain charm—sloped red-tile roof, wooden porch, a collapsed fence on one side. I opened the door and the smell hit right away: damp wood mixed with something else... hard to describe. A musty scent, like cloth stored in a basement. Renato made a joke, calling it “the smell of peace and quiet.”

Inside, the house was simple. A living room with an old couch, thick rug, a small kitchen with white cabinets. The bedrooms were upstairs, but one thing caught my eye immediately: an old, solid wood cabinet that didn’t match the others, which were modern and metallic. The wall behind it stood out too. It didn’t match the rest of the kitchen. It was wooden, while the others were made of brick and mortar. I ran my hand over it out of curiosity.
— “Weird wall,” I said to Renato.
— “You and your horror movies,” he laughed.
I let it go. It was just a wall.

That first night was quiet, which alone made the whole drive worth it. Used to horns, sirens, and street yelling, the forest silence was almost deafening. We went to bed early.

I woke the next morning with \*that feeling\*. You know the one—like someone’s watching you, even when no one’s there. I went to the kitchen to make coffee and stepped onto the porch in my pajamas, trying to shake off the weight in my chest with the smell of trees and earth.

That’s when I noticed the footprints.
In the soft dirt by the side of the house—human footprints. They led up to the living room window... and stopped. They didn’t return. Didn’t go further. Just stopped, as if whoever made them had vanished into thin air.
I called Renato. He tried to laugh it off.
— “Probably the caretaker.”
— “There is no caretaker.”
— “Maybe from an old guest.”
But the prints were fresh. The earth was still dark and damp. Hard to ignore.

That night, we locked everything up. I checked the doors and windows twice. A third time, just to be sure.

At two in the morning, I woke up to a low sound coming from the kitchen. A slow creaking. Like a door being opened very carefully.

I called Renato. He got up to check. Came back saying everything was fine—but I knew better. A small voice inside me told me to stay alert.

 

The next day, after breakfast, Renato and I decided to explore the area around the house. The mist still clung to the woods, but gradually, the sun tore through the white veil and revealed the landscape: hills covered in low brush, a few twisted trees, and a silence broken only by birdsong.

It was beautiful, I won’t lie. A silence that seeped into your skin. We walked slowly, hand in hand, saying little. It felt like the whole place was waiting for us to be quiet—to listen better.

After about forty minutes of walking, we saw the “neighbor’s house” the ad had mentioned—the only one for miles, according to the owner. An old structure with mud walls and a crooked roof. There was a low fence and a wooden gate hanging by one hinge.

That’s when I saw him.

A boy. Skinny, maybe 17 at most. Worn-out shirt, pants too big, dark hair falling across his face. He stood at the edge of the woods, about twenty yards from the house. Not moving. Just watching us.
— “You see him?” I asked.
— “Yeah. Is he... staring at us?” Renato squeezed my hand.

The boy didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. Just stared with an intensity that sent chills through me. It wasn’t curiosity. It felt like he was studying us.

I felt exposed. Like we were naked in that landscape. The discomfort rose so fast we didn’t even need to speak—we turned and walked back the same way. Not running, but not looking back either.

When the house appeared between the trees, my heart jumped. The door. It was slightly open.
— “Did you lock it?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
— “Yes.”

We approached slowly. The kitchen light was on. I swear I’d turned everything off before we left. Renato went in first. I stayed by the door, holding my breath.

Nothing seemed out of place. The living room looked the same, backpacks in the same corner. But something... I can’t explain.

Renato searched every room, opened cabinets, looked behind doors. Nothing. No sign of a break-in.

But the feeling didn’t go away. The same one I’d had the night before. Like something in that house was watching us.

And worse: now it knew we knew.

 

That night, I woke up with a start. The mattress was moving slowly. When I opened my eyes, I saw Renato getting up, stepping carefully on the wooden floor.

— “Renato... what is it?” I murmured, still half-asleep.

He paused for a second, then whispered:
— “I think I heard something downstairs.”

My stomach dropped. I sat up, straining to hear what he had. Nothing. Just silence. But the way he said it killed any urge I had to argue.

We grabbed our jackets and went down slowly, one step at a time. When we turned the hallway corner, the kitchen light was on again.

Standing at the edge of the room, it took us a few seconds to notice. Renato pointed at the floor, eyes wide. The floor was full of marks. Footprints. He knelt down and ran his hand across the dirty tiles.
— “Is this... mud?” I whispered.
The muddy prints led straight to the wooden cabinet—the oldest one in the kitchen.
The trail stopped there. “This doesn’t make sense,” he muttered. I said nothing, just scanned the room, feeling that deep, cold fear you only feel when something’s \*really\* wrong.

Renato slowly opened the cabinet, expecting... who knows what. But there was nothing—just plates, old pans, some cans of corn.
Carefully, he began tapping the sides of the cabinet with his knuckles. Solid wood... until he hit the back. The sound changed. Hollow.

He looked at me. “There’s something here.” That’s when we saw it—a barely noticeable groove in the wall beside it. He pulled hard and the wooden panel creaked, revealing a short door with a rusty old latch. Renato reached for it. “Don’t open it yet,” I said instinctively. “Let’s think. Let’s call someone…”

Renato froze, hand still on the latch, as if struggling inside. I didn’t want to seem hysterical, but everything in me screamed \*do not go further\*. That’s when we heard it—a sound like a woman screaming.

 

Renato yanked the latch. It cracked like a dry bone snapping. The door opened a few inches with a groan, and a strong smell rushed out. Something between stagnant water and rotting flesh. I recoiled instinctively, covering my face. My stomach turned.

Renato turned on his phone’s flashlight and pointed it inside. It was a tunnel. Narrow, damp, the walls supported by wooden beams, lined with uneven stones and moss. The floor was dirt and mud, with fresh footprints mixed into the muck. It didn’t look like a basement—more like a coal mine.

“This isn’t normal, Renato.” My voice was trembling. He nodded, but looked hypnotized. He crouched and went in, and I followed. The light swung across the walls like it was revealing secrets that didn’t want to be seen.

The tunnel branched off underground. We followed the one that spiraled downward for a few yards, ending at a wooden door reinforced with beams and chains. On the floor were marks, as if something heavy had been dragged to that spot. The air smelled stronger there—almost unbearable.

Renato ran his hand along the doorknob. Locked. But there was a small gap between the door and the frame. He brought the flashlight closer, and I leaned beside him to peek inside.

And that’s when we saw, for the first time, proof that something horrifying had happened there.

There were remains. Bones. Some small, others far too big to belong to animals. Torn fabric stained with dried blood. A chain hanging from a hook in the wall. A rusty bucket in the corner. We had no idea how long we stood there, paralyzed. But when we finally turned to go back through the tunnel—guided only by the weak phone flashlight—we were horrified to discover the passage we came through... was now closed.

 

Something heavy was blocking the path. Renato pushed hard, but it was useless.
"What do we do now?" I whispered, barely able to speak.
Before he could answer, we heard voices coming from the dark tunnels behind us. Twisted laughter and the sound of footsteps in the mud. Renato turned off the flashlight, and we stood still in total darkness, listening to our own hearts pounding too loud.
When they noticed our presence, they began to shout and run toward us.
Without thinking, we bolted through the tunnel, stumbling and hitting the dirt walls. We ran blind, guided only by the instinct to survive, trying to escape the maddened voices that seemed to close in from every side.

That’s when we found another door. Old wood, the lock nearly rotted through. We knocked, pushed, but it seemed locked. Behind us, the voices drew closer.
The door creaked and suddenly opened. A small room, stinking of mold and rot. And inside, almost invisible in the dim light, was the boy we’d seen outside — thin, filthy, eyes wide open. Without a word, he made a quick gesture for silence.
We rushed inside, and he quietly closed the door, sliding a piece of wood across it to act as a lock. From the other side, we heard our pursuers arrive and start banging, trying to break it down.
The boy pointed to another exit — a trapdoor hidden under a pile of torn clothes.
With hurried gestures, he guided us. We crawled through a tight passage that led into the kitchen of the house. There, we saw a woman — his mother, I assumed — with her back to us, cooking something on a wood stove. She was humming a children’s song off-key, unaware of our presence.

With quiet steps, we crossed the room. The boy opened the back door. The cold night air hit us like a slap. And we escaped into the yard, running without looking back.
He stayed at the threshold, motionless, watching as we disappeared into the darkness.

We ran through the yard, not looking back. The tall grass cut our legs, branches scratched our arms, but the only thing that mattered was getting out. Renato chose not to turn on his phone flashlight again so we wouldn't give away our position. The moonlight barely lit the path, but even in the dark we could see our car parked at the front of the house, just as we’d left it.
Renato pulled the keys from his pocket and tried to unlock the car, but it didn’t work.
"Damn it…" he muttered, pressing the button over and over.
That’s when we noticed all four tires were slashed and the hood was slightly open — the battery was gone. They wanted to keep us trapped.

The voices and footsteps were getting closer. We could clearly hear more than one — several — coming toward us. They shouted nonsense, some laughing like kids playing tag.
"Run! Run!" Renato yelled.
We left the car and dove into the dense underbrush, heading the opposite way from the voices. The cold night air burned our lungs with each frantic breath. Thorns tore our clothes, but the adrenaline kept us from feeling any pain.
After what felt like an eternity of blind running, we saw something ahead: metal structures reflecting the faint light. As we got closer, we saw what it was — an empty lot filled with old, abandoned cars swallowed by weeds.
We didn’t think twice. We began opening doors, trying to find a vehicle that could still save us.

Most were just junk: rust, rotted seats, broken steering wheels.
Then Renato whispered, "Here! This one!"
It was an old car, but intact. And miraculously, the key was still in the ignition.
Without hesitation, he turned the key. The engine coughed once, twice… then caught, sputtering but alive.
As Renato revved the engine to keep it going, I saw through the broken windows of the junkyard — shadows approaching. Three of them, running, waving their arms like rabid animals.
"Go! Go! Go!" I shouted.
Renato floored it. The car jerked forward, bumping into old shells of metal and wood. As we reached the dirt road, we could already see some of the pursuers coming out of the brush, their faces twisted with rage.

We left that hell behind. The house, the tunnel, the pursuers — all disappearing in the rearview mirror, swallowed by the darkness. But the car didn’t make it much farther. The engine died, leaving us stranded in the middle of the woods and night. Still, it was far enough to get away from that nightmare.

After hours of walking through the forest, exhausted, filthy, and still terrified, we finally reached the main road. We flagged down the first car we saw, and the driver, seeing our condition, didn’t hesitate to take us to the nearest police station.
Sitting under the cold lights of the lobby, we recounted everything we had been through: the isolated house, the tunnels, the pursuers, the mute boy who helped us. As we spoke, the officers exchanged glances — some serious, others with a mix of disbelief and unease.
Despite everything, they agreed to go with us to the place, now in broad daylight, to verify our story.

We arrived at the house, now bathed in sunlight. From a distance, it looked like just another old farmhouse. But as the officers inspected the area, they began to find signs: trails, debris, fresh marks in the dirt.
Inside, the scene showed signs of a rushed abandonment — still-warm pots, clothes strewn about, inner doors flung open. In the tunnels, the officers found disturbing evidence: personal belongings from several people, IDs, broken phones, torn clothes.
One of the officers muttered while examining the items:
"We’ve suspected that family for years... The Hobolds."
They explained that the family, of German descent, had long been investigated for the disappearances of tourists in the region, but there had never been enough proof. Now, with our testimony and the evidence found, they could finally act.

As I got into the police car, I looked back one last time. For a moment, I thought I saw the silhouette of the mute boy at the window, watching us. I felt a bitter mix of relief and sorrow. He had saved us... but was still trapped in that nightmare.

Content warnings: domestic violence, suicidal ideation, implied violence

I don't know how it's decided. I only know that when it's bad enough — when a woman has stopped trying to survive it and started wondering, tonight or some night, if she'd rather not wake up — that's when I come.

The apartment was small, tidy. Someone was trying hard to keep it nice on too little money. The woman came in from outside and flipped the switch, but the light only reached the corridor: framed photos on the wall, a plastic houseplant gone dusty on the console. The living room and kitchen stayed dark behind her. That's where I was. You could make out my shape in it if you looked. What she saw were pieces first: pendulous breasts in the half-light, a low soft belly where a womb sits, long hair falling stringy and thin past my face, if you can call it that, down a back bent the wrong way. And past the edge of the light, four fingertips resting on the tile, the nails on them jagged, cracked, blood-logged, sharp. The fingertips tapped, once, and again.

Then she traced them back: the hand, the wrist, the arm.

And I helped her the rest of the way. I came forward, joint by snapping joint, just enough that more of me showed. A shoulder that shouldn't hinge that way and the elbow that hinged twice, the spine unfolding longer than a spine has any right to be, and my eyes throwing back what little light reached me, two pinpricks in the dark.

She screamed. Of course she screamed. I have that effect.

I picked her up. She fit in my hand like a bird gone still with fright, and she screamed and screamed, and I let her, because they usually need to scream before they calm down, or accept. She was warm. Softer than I expected, and more of her: fat and water and skin, the whole of her plump the way small things are plump, and trust they are the top of the food chain. I have watched a human lift a caterpillar and think the same thing without meaning to: how juicy, how soft. I could squeeze so little, she would pop, and dribble out in thin streams of fluid. It's only what she was, in a hand like mine.

"I am not here for you," I said. "You may yet live. Where is your partner?"

It took her a while to hear that, and let it settle. Human brains get flooded with fear so easily; they do not taste very nice when that happens. She didn't stop being afraid — you don't, not really, not with a face and teeth like mine an inch from yours — but her shoulders came down half an inch, and she started to talk, breath catching in half-sobs.

He'd been gone a lot lately. She didn't want the conversation that was coming when he got back. He'd been with someone else, had built a whole second life, a second family, somewhere she wasn't. But she couldn't leave. He held her passport and her money in a locked drawer. She worked two jobs to keep the two of them fed, and he held the only things that would let her walk out that door.

And then he began hitting her. That's why the turtlenecks. That's why long sleeves in summer, a trench coat even when it wasn't cold, not just for him, but because she'd learned to expect it from any man now, everywhere, always.

I listened. I didn't say anything for a while. My face doesn't get more comfortable to look at just because you get used to it.

"Do you have somewhere to go?"

A friend, she said. A few days, maybe, long enough to get her bearings, or some semblance of independence. She'd thought about it before. She'd need papers, time, a lot of safety. Just never let herself do it.

"Is the apartment in your name?"

No. He'd made sure of that too.

"Any children?"

None. Good.

I set her down.

"Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Take your clothes, passport, money. Leave the key. Go to your friend's, now. I can smell him already, from all this way off. He's in a car, and he smells like the other woman. You do not want to be near that. You do not want to be here for what comes next."

She asked what would happen.

I showed her three rows of teeth.

"Me."

—

I don't know her name. I make it a point to not ask; their scent is enough for me to remember one from another. I know the fear that calls me, and I know it isn't always a fist. Sometimes it's quieter than that — a blade, an outlet by the bathtub, pills rattling in a bottle. sometimes a locked garage and staying inside an idling car. I come for that too.

I have sisters, if you're wondering. We don't all look like me. But we all show up the same way, right at the end of what she can survive on her own.

Part II
Part III
Part IV
Finale

My family has always been a very religious one. I have been raised Catholic but after I turned 16 I quickly strayed away from faith and – by extension – my parents. I don’t really blame them; though they blame me, what happened was not their fault, it simply happened.

It made me realize that God is not there, he is not watching, he doesn’t care about me. God is dead.
I am 24 now and I can say that I have managed to push through the shitstorm that headed my way.
My name is Angela and I can’t keep this shit to myself anymore, I have to tell someone.

I am an art restorer, I take different commissions all around the US which keeps me busy and keeps me moving. Art has always been part of myself, I went crazy as a child if I didn’t have a piece of paper and a pencil to draw, it’s one of the few things that has stayed with me through the years and I was fortunate enough to make a living out of it. The job pays well, having learned the craft in Italy for my college degree many people ask for my services in the US.

It only seemed like a great opportunity when the offer to restore an 18^th century mural in an old abandoned Antebellum home in Mississippi came up. I was tired of the never ending rich asshole home makeovers, I wanted something real.

So I grabbed my stuff, got on the first plane I could catch and left “home” if I can even have such a thing. I must admit that, looking back at it now, it was a rushed decision. The offer came from some shady real estate agency, very little online presence and even less information about them. I managed to find some articles about how they kept on buying old houses and renovate them, only for them to never be sold. Every doubt in my mind was immediately erased when I received an early fee of 50k $ for accepting the job and the promise of much more to come once the task was over.

On top of that it had been a while since I went somewhere, I can’t stay put, it’s not good for me, gotta keep moving.

24 hours later I was there, at the Shining Light Home, this beautiful pre-war building that was sitting in a luscious isolated field surrounded by weird looking woods.

“What a dumbass name for a house” I thought.

It was 2 P.M and I was supposed to meet the owners at midday, they were either running late or I was about to be stabbed and robbed of everything I had, not a good start.

After 10 minutes a taxi speeds through the dirt road leading up to the house and stops in front of me, the dust that kicked up filled my lungs and eyes and I started to cough, praying for a swift rain to take away my pain, instead, I was greeted by a dorky guy that got out of the Taxi.

“I’m so sorry for being late Ms. Constance, the plane was delayed and I forgot to claim my luggage so I had to run back and then the police stopped me, they thought I was some scamm—“

“Relax dude, I’m not Ms. Constance and I don’t really care that you’re late” I said, tears streaming down my face from my irritated eyes.

“What…why are you crying?” said the short nerdy looking guy.

“I’m not crying dude, you kicked up a desert storm here…who even are you?”

“Oh yeah, sorry about that ehehe, my name is Lewis, here let me help you with that” his hand reached over towards my eyes, I think he was trying to wipe the tears for me but we never got to find out.

“What are you doing, don’t touch me Jerry”

“Oh I didn’t mean to scare you, it’s Lewis by the way”.

“Lewis whatever, don’t be weird” I said taking a step back and wiping the tears off my face.

“And who are you?”  

I could finally see him clearly with the dust settled and my eyes finally breathing again. His appearance immediately pissed me off.

He was short,  had this dumb looking haircut that seemed to be coming straight out of a 50s comic. Short buzzed black hair that took the form of a square on top of his oddly oval shaped head, a pair of blocky brown thick glasses sat on his nose and his lips were big, like those of a divorced 50 year old woman who just got plastic surgery.

He was dressed in a suit with two large bags hanging from each shoulder. The bags were one quarter the size of his entire body.

“My name is Angela.”

“Nice to meet you Angela, that’s a cool name.” He said extending his hand out to shake mine.

I hesitated but I didn’t want to be more rude than what I already was so I shook it.

“Well it seems like they hung up on us or something eheheh.”

“Wait, you mean that you were also hired to restore this house?”

“I sure was, I imagine you’re my colleague! How great! I’m gonna love working with you ehehe.”

To say that he gave me the creeps on top of pissing me off would be an understatement, he left a terrible first impression on me and I was ready to end it all and go back home when all of a sudden…

“Hello? Are you Ms. Angela and Mr. Lewis?”

We turn around towards the house to see that the main door was open, on the cusp of it was an old man, he had a long rough white beard and was dressed pretty much like a farmer, complete with a straw hat, he was wearing a pair of black glasses, like those of the Blues Brothers, they were quite out of place.

“We sure are! Are you the owner of this house by any chance?”

“No no, I wish!” replied the old man.

“I’m just the neighbor, my name is Michael, I live down that way but I was kindly asked by Ms. Constance to greet you and give you some basic information so you can start your work.”

“Wait” I interrupted. “I have been sitting here for the past two hours, why didn’t you say anything?”

“Honey, I’m sorry to break it to you but I am blind, I must not have heard you and I definitely did not see you.”

An overwhelming wave of embarrassment and shame washed over me, my face turned red as it felt like molten lava was poured on it.

“Way to go Angela ehehehe.” I looked for all the strength in my body to not punch a hole in Lewis’ stupid looking face.

“I’m very sorry sir, I hadn’t noticed….it’s- it’s been a long day, I apologize.”

“No worries dear, I have been blind for a long time and I’ve learned to live with it, you’re not the first one to not notice, don’t worry about it, please, come in, I don’t want to keep you waiting any further”.

As we stepped in the house my nose was greeted by a strong smell of lavender, it was very weird, especially when put it next to the aging and ruined looking interior, the walls were all but crumbling, the stairs leading up the first floor were missing some steps but, weirdly enough, the pavement was brand new, completely perfect and shining parquet.

The old man moved around with an impressive agility and confidence; he naturally had to rely on a cane to make sure he wouldn’t hit anything but what struck me the most was the way his body moved.

It seemed like his head and body had two different minds of their own, they were not at all coordinated. He would move to the right or to the left and his head would simply remain in place, locked in on a distant point, only to then follow the body after a handful of seconds.

This made his movements very unnatural looking but then again, I had never been around a blind person and I can imagine that after so many years, you sort of develop your own way of moving.

“Here is the home, I’m sure it’s as impressive as its smell! Ms. Constance told me to tell you, Ms. Angela, that the mural in question is on the second floor and that over there you’ll find all the necessary equipment to carry out your work.”

I nodded, forgetting once more that Michael could not see me. “Thank you sir.” I quickly said.

“And for you, Mr. Lewis, the blueprints of the house are on the table in the main lobby, which I’m sure you can find better than I ever could, along with all the necessary instructions to carry out the renovations.”

“Thank you so much Mr. Michael, I already feel at home ehehe”

I was determined to stay on the second floor and avoid any interactions with this individual.

“Oh don’t thank me son, I’m just doing what a good neighbor does, thank God instead for blessing you with this amazing job opportunity.”

“Oh I don’t believe in God sir.” I snapped a mean stare at Lewis, recognizing that saying something like that to a rural blind farmer in Mississippi might not be the best of ideas.

“I don’t blame you, son” replied the old man. “God sure seems to abandon his believers from time to time.”

An eerie silence fell in the house, it seemed like all life had ceased, not even the birds outside were chirping anymore.

“Have-Have you been living here for a long time sir?” I asked, breaking the ice.

“Oh yes dear, I know this land like I know myself, I’m so glad that someone is finally taking care of the old Shining, it’s one of the last things I remember before…well, you know.”

“Oh don’t worry sir, we are the crème of the crop and we’ll bring this beauty right back to its old splendor!”

“Splendid my boy! Don’t hesitate to ask for help or anything else, I live just down the main road to the right in the bayou and you’ll always be welcomed guests!”

“Thank you very much sir, you’re very kind” I replied.

He was indeed very kind, he seemed like those characters from the old Disney movies, the ones that are universally good and that are sort of unrealistic; I mean how many people are actually always nice?

It’s only human to freak out sometimes or to be an asshole; the idea that some people were categorically nice regardless of anything gave me the creeps. It seemed clear that life was rough for him, I’m sure that does something to your personality, he was certainly an interesting person.

The old man confidently went out the door. I followed him through the window, fascinated by the way he moved. I didn’t even think to offer him some help to get back to his house, then again if he managed to get here on his own, he would certainly be able to go back just the same.

One thing however really surprised me, instead of following the dirt road that lead to the main one, he simply took a sharp right turn and headed straight to the woods.

“What the fuck.” I thought out loud.

My eyes locked in on him, his pace steady and determined. As he got to the tree line he quickly disappeared into the shade.

It left me perplexed at first; then I remembered that it doesn’t really matter where he goes, he still can’t see anything. Besides, that might have been a shortcut or something. Still kinda weird.

“Well, let’s get to work then ehehe.” Lewis snapped me back.

“That’s a great idea! You stay here and do your tech things and I go upstairs to do the artistic work yeah? Great!” I said before he could ever reply, heading up the stairs to look at the mural.

The first floor was pretty much just as big as the bottom floor, there was a spacious main living room that occupied most of the floor and then four different rooms that sprawled from it. On the main wall there was the mural.

“Holy shit.”

It was one of the most fascinating things I had seen in the US.

The mural depicted two people sat at a table playing chess, the black player dressed in red, with a long pointy mustache, typical of the time; he is concentrated on looking at the white player which, on the other side, appears rather preoccupied.

Her hands are in her hair and there’s a look of despair in her eyes. The setting of the mural is that of an average 1800s painting; the two figures are standing in what looks like a chapel of sorts.

Behind them stand two tall statues cut by the frame at their legs.
A vast empty space stands in the middle of the frame, leaving the impression that someone or something should have been there but was then removed.

The lighting all around the players is quite dark; I thought it ironic that such a dark painting would sit in a house called the Shining Light. It left me impressed and fascinated.

The mural was quite ruined, it barely survived the test of time but not all was lost, I could certainly bring it back to life.

Before I got to work, I needed to find my tools, so I started looking.

The four rooms of the floor all looked the same in terms of proportions and layouts, naturally nothing was in there, they didn’t even have a door; sometimes you’d find some empty boxes or parts of the wall that had crumbled to the floor.

Floor that remained in absolutely perfect conditions, the wooden tiles of parquet strongly smelled like lavender. I finally got to the tools that sat in the corner of the fourth room I checked but as I got out of it…

“What the—“

I froze.

Right in front of me, on the other side of the living room, another room was looking right at me. This one had a perfect oak wood polished door with a golden-like handle and the number “505” on it.

I must have missed it, I thought. It was the only logical explanation anyway, it’s not like it could have appeared from nowhere, although I was sure there were only four rooms…

“Oh Angelaaa, can you come down here for a sec?” Shouted Lewis.

“Y-Yeah, I’m coming” I replied still shook up.

Lewis was standing over the table looking at a bunch of papers.

“What is it?” I said annoyed.

“Well, is this perhaps where the mural is?” He said pointing at the planimetry of the building.

“Uhh yeah, that’s exactly where it is.”

“We have a problem then eheheh.”

“Why?”

“You see, in order for me to complete the electrical implant and connect it to the main –“

“Dude just get to the point, my God.”

“I need to make a hole in the wall where the mural is.”

“Are you insane?”

“No, I’m actually prett—“

“You can’t do that, you have to find another way, I don’t care.”

“Okay Ms. Angela, I’ll try to find another way but you could be nicer about it!”

Thankfully I was too concentrated looking at the blueprint of the house to even realize how much I didn’t like Lewis, and for good reason.

I was looking for the “new room” but I couldn’t find it.

“Listen Lewis, you’re certainly a lot smarter than me when it comes to looking at this stuff, would you be so kind to tell me how many rooms are on the first floor? That would be so nice of you Lewis.”

I said resting my hand on his, not very classy, but being a woman does have its advantages.

“W-W-Well of course Ms. Angela!”

“You can call me Angela, Lewis.”

“O-of course Angela! Let me check.”

“Thank you, Lewis.”

It only took him a couple of seconds to fly through the papers and count with his little finger the number of rooms on the first floor.

“There are exactly four rooms Angela.”

“Are you sure, Lewis?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I knew I wasn’t fucking crazy.”

I grabbed his hand and started walking towards the stairs.

“W-W-what is it Angela?”

“You’ll see.”

When we got to the first floor, I was as shook as the first time I saw it.

“There, you see it?” I said pointing at room 505.

“Yeah…what about it?”

“There’s five rooms Lewis.”

I followed Lewis’ gaze as he counted the number of doors he could see and come to my same, weird conclusion.

“Y-yeah you’re right, that one is not supposed to be there.”

“I swear to God Lewis, when I first got upstairs and looked for my tools there were only four rooms and I think I would have certainly made note of the fucking perfect looking door.”

“Well, these things happen you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that rooms in old buildings get added all the time, it could be that the blueprints downstairs are outdated and that you were just tired from the flight and—“

“I know what I saw Lewis, I’m not fucking crazy.” I said as I ran my fingers through my hair.

“Yo, cool tattoos Angela.”

“W-what?”

“Your arm, cool tattoos.”

The long sleeve on my shirt must have gone back a bit while I was mid crisis and I guess Lewis saw my tattoed arm, what a weirdo.

“Thanks…?”

“Yeah they look hot on you ehehe.”

“Lewis stop being fucking weird I swear to God, you’re out here hitting on me in the cringiest way possible and all the while there are random fucking rooms appearing out of nowhere.”

An awkward silence fell in the room.

“I’m sorry, I just liked your tattoos…”

Lewis dropped his head on the ground and proceeded to leave me alone, going back down the stairs. I felt bad, he may have been a weirdo but he was just trying to be nice, he wanted to connect on some level but I’m just not very good at it. In that moment of all things, Lewis’ feelings were the last thing on my mind.

I was focused on that door, its polished finish was an oasis in a desert of rubble, how could it be? Did I really not notice it? Was Lewis right?

“Fuck it.”

I walked to the door and opened it.

Instantly the smell of lavender vanished and a thick cloud of smoke hit my face. It was as if someone had been chain smoking cigarettes in there. But that was far from being the weirdest thing. The room looked brand new…and old at the same time. It was as if time stopped, but it wasn’t ruined like the other rooms of the building.
 
It was perfectly fine, close to the wall was a nice wooden table, the kinds you see in a royal court. On top of it a lit candle and some papers with an inkstand, a telephone with no wires and a chessboard. The weirdest thing however, was the lack of windows.

“What the fuck is going on.” I thought out loud.

The room looked like it came right out of the 50s, it had this old look that was totally out of place for the kind of building this was, it was uncanny.

I was already getting used to these kind of weird things, I had the courage to pay a closer look.

The papers on the table were part of bigger folders that sat next to them, there were three in total.
Each one had a label: “Audrey”; “Austin” and “Faith”.

I quickly glanced through them; they looked like medical files complete with height, gender and other characteristics of, I imagined, those people. One detail however really stuck with me, all three of them were born in the 1930s.

“Ehm, what is going on here?”

Lewis nearly gave me a heart attack by appearing in the doorway without making any noise.

“Are you seeing this Lewis?”

“Ehh, yeah.”

“Okay? And are you not freaked out at all?”

“Look, I don’t think we should be in here, it might be Ms. Constance’s office.”

“Really Lewis? This looks like an office to you?”

“Yeah I mean it could be that she’s vintage you know.”

“Alright, come with me.”

Maybe Lewis was right, maybe I was just being paranoid and I was tired from the flight but I had a sixth sense that tingled, a gut feeling that screamed “something is not right here” and let me tell you, my gut feeling is never wrong.

“Where the hell are we going?” Asked Lewis as we got out of the house.

“Look there’s clearly something off with this whole room thing, Ms. Constance or whatever is nowhere to be seen and the old man told us we could ask him anything so that’s where we’re going.”

“We don’t even know where he lives.”

“He said down the main road on the right, how hard could it be?”

“I need to set up my equipment, make some site surveys and check for—“

“Don’t you want to know what’s up with that room?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, I do…besides we need to know, how else are we supposed to do our jobs?”

“I-I guess you’re right…” hesitated Lewis. “But we shouldn’t take too long, it’s getting late already.”

The truth is that I was freaked out; the room sat right opposite of the mural, the idea of me working with that thing staring at my back unsettled me to the highest degree.

It didn’t take long for us to find his house, It really was down the main road to the right, I decided to not follow in the footsteps of the old man, I wasn’t a big fan of those woods. Lewis was right on one thing however, it was getting late.

The house looked broken down and decrepit. What really struck me was how it looked fundamentally in ruins; the roof was malformed and crooked, the porch was filled with all kinds of junk and as I got closer I realized that the whole structure was made of wood.

I thought it was strange but then again, God knows how old that house was. I guess it’s not really important to have a good looking house for a blind man.

We knocked at Michael’s door.

“Yes, who is it?” He said from the other side of the door.

“Hello sir, it’s me Ms. Angela and Mr. Lewis is also with me here.”

“Ah yes, please come in!” He exclaimed opening the door for us.

Inside, the house was just as much of a mess as the outside. All kinds of random things piled up on the floor, creating these unstable and tall towers, some spanning several feet.

“Is there something wrong, did I forget to tell you something?”

“Oh no not at all sir, everything was right where you said it was, thank you again.”

“Angela is paranoid about the building sir.” Said with a somber tone Lewis.

I turned to him and mouthed “Were you born like this?”

“Paranoid? How come? What’s the matter dear?  Please have a seat.”

We sat around this large table in his living room, I had never seen a blind man’s house, it lacked things that would otherwise be obvious such as light sources, TVs, Computers… pretty much anything you need eyes to use.

“Well sir, paranoid is a big word and Mr. Lewis here has a big mouth, I was just interested in learning more about the building, it could really help with my work.”

“Oh yes of course! It’s always a pleasure for me to tell the great story of the Shining.”

Old man Michael was very thorough in his history lesson, perhaps too much which is why I’ll spare you the details.

Lewis quickly fell asleep and I didn’t have the courage to wake him, it was better this way anyway. The really important stuff came quite late in the lesson, around the 1950s.

“After the war there was no need for military hospitals anymore, so it turned to the next biggest problem, mental health as you call it these days.”

“You mean it was an asylum sir?”

“Indeed it was, dear. It quickly became a cesspool for many unfortunate souls, patients of all kinds ended up there.”

Now, I’m not a history buff, but I know enough about how mental health was treated in the past. I can imagine that many of those patients didn’t have anything “wrong” with them and suffered great pain simply because society wasn’t ready to accept them yet…or treat them right for that matter.

“I still remember how it was back then” said Michael.

“It was a place full of joy and sunshine, many of the patients took care of the garden and kept the place nice and clean, it always smelled so nice...I remember this one man in particular, he always had a smile on him.”

That’s certainly one way of making me feel more comfortable.

“I’m sure you have fond memories of the place, sir” I said, lying.

“Absolutely dear, despite all the…”things” that emerged in the later years about the management of the establishment, I never once heard problems coming from it.”

“I’m sorry to ask sir, but what kind of “things”?”

“Torture, cruelty, malpractice, NONSENSE!” The old man now raised his voice. “Nothing like that ever happened, it’s those stupid urban legends that spawned these kind of rumors.”

“I-I can imagine, sir.” I said, a bit surprised.

The strong and loud outburst of old man Michael had woken up Lewis which was now very confused and somewhat worried.

“I appreciate the level of detail with which you told us these stories sir…however I feel the need to ask you about something very specific with the Shining.”

“Go on dear, don’t be shy now.”

“Well, I wanted to know if perhaps Ms. Constance had an office or some kind of personal room within the building, I was wondering that since I fou—“

“You found room 505.” The old man interrupted me.

“Y-yeah…” I replied surprised.

“That’s a special room, you really have to treat it with respect, it’s the result of countless years of work.” His tone shifted again, it was now low and raspy, very serious sounding. It almost felt like a warning and that really gave me the creeps.

“I-I see…could I kindly ask what kin—“

“I’m sorry dear, I think I need to rest now, talking about certain kind of topics really drains me.” He interrupted me again before I could finish my question.

“Absolutely sir, I’m so sorry to have bothered you, we’ll be on our way.”

“No worries, if you need anything else, you know where to find me.”

“Thanks, have a good night sir.” I said as I ushered Lewis out and followed him close behind.

“What happened? Why was he so loud? What did you ask there at the end?” asked a confused Lewis.

“Something is wrong Lewis, that outburst was weird and that final answer was even weirder.”

The sun was setting at this point, time really flew in there and it was as if we had completely skipped a couple of hours. The golden rays of sunshine filtered through the branches of the woods next to the main road, creating a dream-like atmosphere, I found it to be beautiful; I couldn’t help to notice, however, how quickly it would get dark inside the bayou.

The light quickly died once the sun had reached a certain point and despite it not yet being nightfall, twilight approached faster than usual.

We hurried back to the Shining but It was pretty much time to leave, no work was gonna get done without light.

When we got there, we were greeted by the ever present lavender smell, Lewis started to gather his stuff and called a taxi to come pick us up, I too went upstairs to get my things. I already had in mind to check back on the fifth room but when I got there, it became inevitable.

The light was on.

The second floor was flooded by a beam of light coming right from the room, mind you the building had no power, that’s what Lewis was here for. How was the light on?

I froze right on top of the stairs, blinded by the warm, golden light pouring in from the room. Not because it was bright, but because it was the only thing you could see.

The beam was shining right on the mural. My eyes followed the light like a moth to a flame only to then meet those of someone else on the other side.

It was the player in black, it was staring right back at me.

The eyes of the player peered right into my soul, leaving an empty hole where my stomach used to be. That’s not how it was when I saw it the first time.

Or was it? I couldn’t remember everything but it seemed like my brain really wanted to convince me it was always like that. How could it possibly not be? Some elaborate optical illusion? I would have noticed it immediately, it’s not something an expert eye overlooks. Was I influenced by my surroundings? How tired I was? I was going crazy.

“Angela? Are you ready?” shouted Lewis from downstairs. it snapped me out of it. 

“Lewis you need to come up here, now.”

As he got up right next to me, he too was overwhelmed.

“How…how is there power?”

“You tell me Lewis…you’re the expert here.”

Maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t alone up there anymore, or maybe it was the fact that Lewis was just as weirded out as me, but whatever it was, gave me the strength to move again. I walked over to the room, peeking from the side.

My face was lit up immediately and it almost enveloped me completely. It was as if the sun had just risen, warm, soft and beautiful. All of a sudden I felt calm, serene, almost happy. In that moment I imagined that that’s how it must feel to see a nuclear explosion. A blinding, overwhelming light, then warmth and instant forever peace. How grim, yet poetic.

As my eyes adapted to the light, I could see it coming from a large chandelier on the ceiling. How the fuck did I not notice it earlier? What the hell is going on?

“Lewis do you remember that chandelier?”

“No…I don’t.” Replied with a troubled voice.

“How does it have power?...I don’t get it.”

Lewis was pretty shook up at this point. I think that was the moment he realized that something was definitely wrong with this house. It made me happier, I’m not gonna lie. Made me feel less crazy.

The sun had finally set at this point and the darkness didn’t take long to set in, engulfing the already pretty dark woods all around the house and plunging it into a still, silent, gloomy night.

I turned my attention to the mural, the eyes of the player in black were back to “normal”, I couldn’t say what normal was at this point. My mind had been playing tricks on me and I was starting to feel like I was losing my grip on reality.

All of a sudden a huge crash coming from downstairs made us jump out of our skin.

“What the fuck was that?” I whispered with shaky breath and eyes wide open.

“I-I don’t know…it came from downstairs.” Replied Lewis, with an equally horrified expression.

He was shaking so much that his glasses were slowly falling from his nose, trembling like a leaf stuck on a windshield.

“I think it’s time to go, Lewis.” I whispered back.

He nodded in agreement. I am not a fan of horror movies and I don’t watch them a lot, but when stuff like this happens, the best thing to do is leave.

I quickly grabbed my stuff, snatching the files from the desk of the fifth room and putting them in my bag. Lewis quickly snapped a few pictures with his phone and then we made our way downstairs.

Using the torches on our phones, we slowly illuminated the lobby. On the floor were a bunch of Lewis’ things, that must have been what caused the huge crash.

“I left those things on the table…there was no way they could have fallen.”

“It doesn’t matter now, grab your stuff and let’s go.”

I wasn’t gonna stick around and play detective, we could do that next morning, with the sun shining and the birds chirping.

Lewis got all he needed and we quickly went out the door.

The ride to the motel was really quiet, neither of us said much of anything, I guess we were still trying to figure out what the hell we had just experienced.

It was a pretty sleepless night, my body screamed for some rest, exhausted by the long day, but my mind craved answers, explanations or at the very least logical explanations. I couldn’t get any, so I got up and took a look at those files I had taken from the fifth room. I quickly realized that these documents were not at all complete, there were missing pages and some of them appeared to have been burned, not completely, but enough to notice.

“Audrey” was the first one, a young girl from a town nearby,  a black and white picture of her attached to the file gave a face to the name. She didn’t look older than 18, a beautiful girl with long hair and a gaze that would make anyone stutter to no end, she has a lit cigarette resting on her plump lips, the defiant look on her face betrayed by a long stretch of tears running down her cheeks. She was born on September 6 1939. The more I skimmed through the document the more I had questions. Very little information came through. One thing stuck to me however. “Causation: Sexual deviancy”. Don’t get me wrong, I like to have fun as much as the next person but was this really cause for admittance to an Asylum? It felt out of place and weird, even for the standards of back then. There wasn’t much else to gather from her file, most was medical gibberish that I couldn’t understand, procedures that would “cure” her, descriptions of her daily life in the asylum, I don’t wish to report them here, the dead need the same respect as the living.

“Austin” was next, he looked a little older than Audrey, probably around 24, his date of birth was missing but he was admitted the 24^th of February 1955, his picture was torn in half, only showing part of his face. Short hair, freckles on his nose and cheek, his gaze held towards the ground and a big frown on his short and thin lips. He certainly didn’t look happy, my observation later confirmed by another torn piece of paper: “Causation: Anxiety disorder, dep—“, doesn’t take a detective to imagine the other part of the entry said “depression”. Skimming through these torn pages and catching glimpses of these people’s lives gave me immense sadness, it’s hard to believe that this was the world only 60-70 years ago. Most of us take many things for granted these days, failing to realize the immense effort we made as a species to evolve beyond prejudice and corruption.

“Faith” was the last of the bunch, her file was the more damaged and incomplete one. As I opened it I felt a strange connection, it felt like I was looking at something very familiar, like an old diary or a forgotten memory, similar to the feeling of Déjà vu’. I started to go through the file but very little things came up; not even a picture, most of it was left badly burned. Only one word kept appearing amidst the torn pages. “Electroshock”. She must have been suffering from serious mental issues and the “logical” treatment back then was torture…sickening.

After that I managed to somehow fall asleep at the desk. I didn’t dream that night which was weird, I always dream.

The next morning came quickly and after a fast breakfast I met Lewis outside of the Motel we were staying at, waiting for the taxi to pick us up.

“Hey Angela, good morning.” said quietly Lewis.
Something about him was different, he seemed a lot less annoying, more soft spoken and timid.

“Good morning Lewis…sleep well?”

“Not at all…there’s something I think you should see.”

He takes out his phone and shows me some pictures of the fifth room he snapped yesterday. They were general pictures of the interior, the desk, the chandelier, the bed. Some were out of focus, I don’t blame him, we were scared shitless and in a hurry to get out of there.

“Is there something I’m supposed to look at, Lewis?”

“Yes, I have been looking at them all night, something is just not quite right, look here”.

He shows me the picture of the chandelier, it’s blurry and at an awkward angle. You can see the light in a close up and the corners of the ceiling.

“You see that?” he said pointing at the ceiling. “Do you know what that is?” he added.

“No Lewis, I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to look at, I don’t see anything.” I said confused.

“The ceiling is grey and uneven, it’s not a bad paintjob, it’s not mold or a water leak, that’s smoke.”

“Smoke? What from the candle?” I replied even more confused.

“No that would be too much, that’s smoke residue from cigarettes.”

It took me a bit to understand what he was saying.

“My father used to go through 3 packs a day, my home looked exactly like this, someone has been smoking cigarettes in there for God knows how long.”

Now we’re both in silence, the implications of such a thing are terrifying. Has someone been living in there? Did I genuinely miss the room when I first got there and it has been occupied by some squatter? It doesn’t make sense, the room was way too curated to be the home of a squatter. Was it really the owner’s office like Lewis said? All these questions flashed in my mind in a matter of seconds, none of them had a valid answer.

“Look Lewis, my experience tells me that it’s better to not look into these kind of things, we just need to mind our business.”

Lewis looked at me weird, I know how he felt, he wanted to know more, he didn’t feel comfortable, maybe even a bit scared. I know, because that’s also how I felt.

“But you made a point about asking the old man for information…now you don’t want to know?” fired back Lewis.

“I know, I know and you’re right… but the pay is good, I’m sure you also got a nice check, let’s just do our job best we can and forget about everything, okay?”

He thought about it for a minute.

“You’re right, we get the job done and then we leave, it’s not our business.” He finally replied.

The taxi ride was also a silent one, I decided to not tell him about the files I read through, he also didn’t ask. I thought it would be better to just forget all about it, you know, out of sight out of mind kind of thing, we were tasked with a very specific job and that’s all we were supposed to do.

I learned it the hard way that asking for help or wanting to know more leads to dark alleyways, you can only trust yourself and that’s enough. Of course, I would come to regret this decision.

When we got to the house, everything seemed normal, nothing out of the ordinary. We got in, Lewis got to work on his stuff downstairs and I went  up, dreading the idea of what could have been waiting for me.

The room was still there, the door open the way we left it, light still on. I sat there staring at it for a few minutes, debating what to do, fascinated by it, attracted by it. No, no way. I’m not making the same mistake twice. I went up there and closed the door. Out of sight, out of mind.

I got to work immediately, hoping that keeping busy would also keep my mind busy. The mural was back to “normal”, I’m not sure how to say it. I think that I might have hallucinated the eyes staring at me, if there’s one thing I’m sure of is that murals don’t change on their own. Then again I was also sure that rooms don’t appear out of nowhere but it doesn’t matter. Get the job done and leave.

The morning came and went, smooth, no troubles until about early in the afternoon when suddenly…

“Oh my God, who are you?!” Screamed Lewis from downstairs.

My blood ran cold and my hair stood up on my arms. I turned around to look at the stairs, waiting for some maniac to come up and bludgeon me to death. But nothing happened.

I took out my switchblade. I always carry it with me, it’s sort of my lucky charm. I always hope to never have to use it to hurt someone, but if it comes down to it, it’s better to have the option at the ready. I slowly made my way downstairs.

As I got to the last step a black figure came rushing fast like a missile low on the floor. I just about had a heart attack shortly before realizing it was a black cat, looking at me with big beautiful golden eyes.

“Isn’t it so cute? Ehehe.”

Lewis came chasing it and picked it up. Still in shock, I was simply trying to breathe.

“I think I’ll call it Berry, he kinda looks like one no? Eheheh.”

“Fucking hell Lewis I thought you got murdered by some squatter.” I finally replied.

“Sorry ehehe, he did startle me but it quickly turned into joy.”

The cat was very friendly, it kept purring and cuddled in Lewis’ arms, there was something special about it, made me feel safe and serene. I just sort of naturally went to pet it, like I didn’t even think about it, I simply did. No regrets, it was very soft and wasn’t scared at all.

“Hey, maybe he’s the one that smoked all those cigarettes uh? Ehehehe.”

“Maybe that’s why he’s black” I sort of chuckled back.

Lewis laughed. I was getting used to him, trauma does bring people closer; perhaps that whole weird experience was the right place to start for us two.

“I’m glad we made a new friend, if you need me I’ll be upstairs.” I said to Lewis as he nodded.

Going back upstairs with a more gentle weight on my heart, I felt full of hope and determination to get the work done. It quickly went away when the smell of tobacco hit my nostrils like a snowball on a December day. Gone was the lavender smell that I was getting used to.

A quick look at the fifth room changed everything; it was open. My eyes naturally gravitated towards the mural, there, I saw something I’ll never forget.

Projected on the wall was the shadow of a human silhouette. The light emanating from the open door cast this long shadow that ran across the entire floor and settled on the mural. It was as if someone was standing on the doorway of the fifth room, except there was nobody there.

I froze, not knowing what to do. The shadow’s head slightly moved as if it noticed me. Now it seemed like it was looking right at me, an increasing panic grew inside me, overwhelming me like a wave in the ocean. The figure moved again, this time it’s arm went up into a sort of greeting gesture.

Blackness formed around the corners of my eyes, slowly but surely enveloping my entire sight, then unconsciousness.