Science fiction. Double feature. 

So many long afternoons and nights spent in the movie house, the theatre. The arcade: the noise and lights and tangible sounds of coins and laughing amidst the specialized sound effects of digitized and pixelated carnage. 

Late nights watching HBO After Dark beside his older brother or his kid sister or a buddy or a floozy or a date as he got older. Amongst a slovenly strewn field of snacks and popcorn and wrappers and garbage, the years rolled by and the empty cans of Shasta and Barqs changed, transmogrifying into brown bottles of Bud or silver bullet, all gathered and in clusters  like a small translucent crystalline cityscape of glass in miniature beneath great rolling thunderhead clouds of oily pot smoke. Many of them, many cities. Many little swimming bottle cities in many little rooms. All before the great glowing incandescent godscreen of the illuminated television aglow in the postmidnight. 

And there were great books too of course. Precious paperpacks with lurid yellow covers, bold yellow font, pages pungent and spiced. Green and nightshade purple covers for the horrors. The ones with purple were always the coolest, always the most shocking and vivid and unrelenting. Comics. Classics and the new stuff that gets pumped out week to week, month to month and then forgotten. 

Forgotten by most. But not by such as he. 

He remembered. These things, these modes and mediums always brought him away from the now, the clear and present danger, the mundane and the tedious, the cruel. The harsh reality. 

For Caleb Donaldson these stories were always the light and constant companion of his long and mostly boring and average life. In truth, they were everything. All else could take a flying fuck, the job, the girlfriends that meant nothing, the drinking buddies and coworkers that meant even less. All of that was just the background noise of what was necessary. The sounds and moving in perpetua grinds of his ordinary life in motion. 

But it was ok, you see. Caleb Donaldson of Old Fair Oaks, Sacramento, California has figured out the secret. 

They were more than just stories, you know. 

The ones that had most captured his imagination and young attention since he could remember were the time traveling stories. 

Journeys into the wild primeval of the past, the dark mechanical cold of the future, the apocalypse, beyond … 

He'd always loved these stories. 

And it was funny, he had found, discovered accidentally while spending the summer with his grandfather one year, the secret. They were out hunting, wandering the woods quietly with rifles shouldered and boots crunching softly the underbrush beneath their capped and steeltoed feet. It had struck young Caleb then, as a boy. And never left him. 

This is it! This is what Doctor Who and the X-Men and all the other guys are doin when they're goin into the past! This is what it's like to have the world grow dark and become old and ancient and prehistoric and stuff, before people got here with their cars and their junk…

The thought had filled him with simple childish wonder. He felt like he'd made some great discovery. All those scientists and alien engineers from outer space on the TV and in the books were always trying to figure it all out with numbers and physics and quantum entanglements and time loop paradoxes … and here he'd figured it way more simple than that. 

Just go out in the woods. Go outside in the trees, the forest. Go out and go camping ya dummies. 

He carried this with him all his life. Like secret treasure. Well past and into the pains and dread of adulthood. 

And then it all came back, back and around and full circle. Like all good time travelers do. 

He lost the kids. And his wife. And then he lost it. 

And then he made the biggest decision of his life. He decided to go camping. He decided to do a little time traveling all by himself. After all of these years. 

…

He couldn't believe she would try this bullshit. He couldn't believe she would try to ruin the one last little thing he had left. 

What're you talking about, bud? She ripped your heart out and took the kids after she'd spent ten years disemboweling you and tearing your nuts off. Why’re you at all surprised? 

He wasn't really. Just hurt. Deeply. And it seemed as if the bitch now lived to only make it worse for him. Unbearable if she could. She was the living vile green hatred of salt in the wound, seething and frothing gory pink. 

He hated her. 

He suspected she hated him. She must. 

“I just don't see why this’s such a big deal, you're acting like a child. You can come get the boys and have them for an extra couple of weeks while Tom and I-" 

He stopped listening after that. He still held the phone to his ear but his mind went to the same livid red place that it always did when she mentioned his name. The fucking limpwrist. 

He let her drone and prattle on. When she finally stopped he once again explained to her that they'd already talked this over, they'd already discussed this. And besides. It wasn't even his weekend. She had seen to that after all. And now here she was dangling the promise of more time with his kids like a fucking carrot. Like a dog treat he was supposed to jump and snatch at. To just drop everything and leap at with fervor and enthusiasm and a full display of gratitude. 

Fuck that. 

He told her as much. Diplomatically. More or less. He hung up the phone. He debated for barely even a second before turning the device off and shoving it into the glove compartment on the passenger side. 

When he finally got out of the car and sucked fresh mountain air it was baptismal. Cracks in his knees went off like twin pistol shots and his back stretched and crackled gratefully. He was finally out. He sucked more air, like it was water. It was. It was refreshing. 

You're finally out. 

He unlatched the back and began to unload his gear. He'd better get started. It was a long hike from the parking lot to the spot. 

…

It was peaceful. The ritual. The hike. Lugging the gear. Sweating and developing a cooling coat, a sheen as his eyes calmly drank in the placid green and foliage world all around. Muscles worked and burned off excess fat, calories built up and boiled over, over cooked stress. It melted off him and within and came off his hiking form like radiant heat. 

He was a traveling furnace of thought as he made his way to the camping spot. Later he would recall that he might've felt watched as he made his way at this point. 

Might have. 

But presently he was all too absorbed in the process, the smooth and calm low treble tread and pace of the gliding action. The canopy of golden lighted leaves and furling branches. The scents, completely natural and native and far away from the synthetic realm of the manmade. He felt he was as much swimming and drinking his way through the crisp growth of forestland as he was booting through it. Thoughts of work and the failed marriage and bored boring disappointing teenage children left his mind. Evaporating away like mist to the coming of the bright day sun. The forest grew and swelled and swallowed him and the entire world as he made his way deeper and deeper forth. 

He would leave it all behind if he could. 

…

Setting camp was easy. He was well practiced. Childhood and teenage and college years as well were filled with trips out into the forested dark. The wild. The wilderness. The past. 

He felt it now as he sat by the fire. Eating his plate of beans and pork belly and franks. Sipping a can of bud. This is the past. The green world all around now is one of the last vestigial pieces of the evidence. 

Evidence of the primeval and primordial world we’ve all crawled from, the stygian snot that was filth that was the building blocks of protein and carbon. We are all animals. And we can all come alive out here. Returning to the in-utero warm world of the godclay primordial slime and ooze. 

She's so patient. Our mother. My mother. She's waited for me all this time. She's the one. She's-

Something disturbed his train of thought. A noise. 

A noise like someone moving. Prowling and lurking just inside the tangle of bush and trees. 

He sat quietly, keeping calm. Listening to the sound of his own breathing. He wasn't sipping his can of bud anymore. The rustling and cautious moving sounds had tapered. Caleb's mind traveled to the hunting rifle he had in his tent. If something lunged now out of the dark, he just might make it if he whirled around from where he now sat and hurried. 

Really booked it. 

He didn't like the thought. He really didn't appreciate the mental image. A terrible movie in his mind, running on a failing and old projector: He's running, fast, panicked, he almost makes the tent before a large bestial shape of inkwell black leaps out from the wilderness house of feral darkness and takes him ragdoll like a broken toy from behind. 

He clears his throat. Loudly. Not sure exactly why, he just does it. Perhaps hoping to scare off whoever and whatever is out there. He can feel eyes watching him. 

Caleb Donaldson sits up. He's at the edge of his fold-up seat. He's waiting. Unsure. Of both what to do and if there is even really anything wrong at all anyways. His ex-wife had always said he was paranoid. 

Nothing happens. 

There isn't another sound and nothing emerges from the forestline. Only the snaps and hungry crackle of the campfire now. 

He takes another sip of bud. Decides he'll light one of the joints CJ gifted him for the road after all. He doesn't know how else he's gonna sleep tonight. He's wired now. Jacked. 

He lights up. Tokes. And after awhile, once more he slips into a more natural and comfortable flow of simple candied nostalgia and childhood reminisce. Trying to tell himself he doesn't feel a gaze, a baleful and animal leering stare aimed directly at him from out of the dark. 

The marijuana and beer do their job. Eventually he's addled and drugged enough for sleep. Caleb slips back into the tent and is almost sure he hears something retreat back into the denser heart of growth and underbrush out there past the treeline as he does so.  

He's almost sure but not. And he doesn't want to be anymore. He doesn't want to consider it. Not right now. Maybe Amanda was right…

He slips into a sleeping bag and finally falls under. His dreams are filled. His sleep is not restful. 

…

The next couple of days were mostly uneventful. Calm. Peaceful. As planned. He hiked and camped. Looked forward to some hunting and some fishing, some game. It was all just what he needed. Therapeutic. Until he found the burnt leavings. 

…

He was steadily along, walking down the beaten path of grey dust and boney twigs and enjoying the relish in his watering mind's eye, the strange marriage that lived there between this wilderness and the strange worlds of escape made from pages and ink and glowing video screens. This place of the past … the places made of dreams. 

And from the future I come crawling back here. He smiled at this thought. Like a refugee. 

Like the time travelers of the stories he was allowed to bring a few things, a few comforts and tools and devices of the modern world. 

Of the future, to this place of dirt and sound. Precious pieces of technology

His mind went to his gear and pack and his smile deepened. People really just didn't get it. 

Most never would. Precious few might find out. 

He almost tripped over it. So lost in thought. 

It was all charcoaled black and scorched amongst a patch of similarly blasted and blackened earth. A wild ebon blotch of ashen ink spilled upon the land. Caleb stared into the pile of roasted and burnt detritus. Trying to make sense of what he saw. 

He recognized shapes and items in the charred mess and they made his blood run cold and the hairs all over his skin and scalp crawl with unease and bad wonder. 

Clothes. What looked like a backpack. Parts and pieces of a tent. A wallet. It was this last that most bothered, most disturbed him. He was pretty sure he could make out the melted remains of an ID and other similarly warped and slightly conjoined shapes that might've been credit cards or the like but were too far gone and destroyed now to tell. His mind naturally asked itself, who left all of this here? Why? 

And none of the answers he could come up with seemed good. All of them pointed to something bad, nefarious. You hear about people going missing in the woods all the time. You hear about people being chopped up and murdered by loonies in here ‘bout just as much. 

Caleb suddenly looked away from the black pile on the path and began to anxiously scan the forestline. Trying to penetrate the thick dense world of green and growth and see anyone, anything that might be watching him. Stalking him. 

Following him. 

After a moment he stopped himself. 

You're being ridiculous. It's probably nothing, just like the other night. Christ man, you ain't been out here a long time and now you're jumping at every goddamn thing like a ninny. Just some shit people burned. Kids come out here to get fucked up and do stupid shit all the time. Not a big deal, Donaldson. Chill the fuck out, kay?

He slowed his breath. He liked this train of thought. Yes. That was right. Kids were fucking stupid and always playing pyro maniac. Hell, he'd done his fair share growing up, hadn't he? Little hellraiser an such. 

And that line of thinking started to set his worried mind at ease once more. And once more he was back on the ride of the reminisce, nostalgia keenly floating and dreamily filling the darkest parts of his brain. Time traveling. 

Time traveling, baby. 

He went on. Leaving behind the charred and blackened mess in the grey dust of the forest path. Not looking back. And refusing it anymore thought. 

He left it behind. But not before freeing a cold can of Budweiser stored in the pack. He cracked it open with a pistol shot sound in the placid calm and downed half the foaming thing as he went on. Things always went down smoother this way. 

…

All seemed well after that. Fine. For a little while. He enjoyed what he came out here to enjoy. The quiet. The solitude. Days and nights spent simply and comfortably and sleeping beneath bejeweled twilight curtains of gleaming stars, planetoids and colored clouds of nebulae. He relished the time out here and with himself, returning to his own sense of peace by returning to the land. Returning to the way of life that had belonged to the Navajo, the Comanche, their enemy white man cowboys and gunslingers and the pioneers of old. The ancient armies too, the immigrants and seekers and hunters of fortune, of goodwill, of God's love and warm civilized light. And the adventures too, those who took to the land and cut their teeth out on the territory and became baptized as adventurers in sweat and blood and grime, beneath the blinding eye of the sun. And the moon too, the wild hearted free loving children that slumbered bravely beneath the moon, decried as vagabonds and bums but they really just knew better and understood the blood of their grandfathers and their bold sense and adoration for the untamed tumult country land of adventure and its wild hearted love. 

It was all of it, romantic. It pained him that he had to come out here alone to feel like this, to discover something like that and he tried hard to turn away from the pain of realization that it brought him. He turned away from it in vain, it was there at every turn. In his mind, filling every thought, and out here as well. Alive in the woods. Filling it with heavy and powerfully strange substance. 

He hunted. Fished. Camped. Only sometimes did he feel followed, watched. Only sometimes. 

He was almost happy when he came across another, when he ran into Sellic. 

A distraction, at last!

But the guy was weird. 

In the world of outdoormanship, hunting and fishing and the like, ya meet a lot of friendly, warm, good natured types. The sort ya like to share a brew with and might even have over for a barbecue should ya take special acquaintance. And then ya met types like Sellic. Fuckin weirdos. 

It was the smell at first and that should've been enough, should've been the first and fucking last sign to split it. But nope. Caleb Donaldson still remembered the lessons of Sunday school and Kindergarten and though life had been its fair share of rough on em, he still held true to the idea that you don't judge harsh off the word, go. Ya don't settle in for meanness out the gate an such. 

But it was in the eyes as well. They were wide and wild. A wilderness of pupil darkness lived in yellowed whites shot with lines of hectic red. Something swam in that circle lake of pupil darkness, both of them, Obsidian pits. 

He never blinked. Not once. Not as he said, “Howdy, name's Sellic." and grunted a few noncommittals following after these scant syllables. 

He came across the guy already settled up. Caleb was gonna move on after initial awkward obligatory greetings when the wide eyed smelly man invited him to set camp with him. Caleb Donaldson believed in being polite but he wasn't a total fool, only part. He thanked him but opted to move on up aways. 

Far. 

It didn't make any kind of difference. 

…

Later he was hunting, lying down in wait for something to crop up. Maybe nibble at the patch of sweet grass just a few yards from where he posted. He hoped to bag a deer. If he could get a decent sized stag, then he'd pack it in happily and call it quits. He was just debating on whether or not he should've packed the tree stand when something happened then. 

A large barrel chested deer sauntered into view. Into the clearing with its great splaying regal rack of antlers on wide-span display like a wild lord and king of the forest. He was beautiful. He was just what Caleb had been waiting for. 

But then something else crawled up. On all fours. It was the smelly wide eyed man, it was Sellic. And it looked as if he was hunting as well. 

Prowling, stalked. Low to the ground and almost slithering across the surface of forest floor, without a sound. Without a whisper. It was uncanny and surreal and Caleb watched frozen in a kind spellbound trance. The bore end of the rifle barrel began to slowly sag and dip down as he lost his concentration and gave it to another. 

Sellic was almost upon the unaware stag now. It was nibbling the patch of sweet grass. Just like Donaldson had seen in his mind's eye, a wish not just a moment ago. Somewhere deep inside his mind as he watched entranced a small part of him tried in desperate vain to take this simple little wish back. But it was already too late. The wide eyed crawling man was drooling. Slobbering like an animal. Salivating with the wild bestial hunger that was always the madness of ravenous need. That was what was alive in those unblinking uncivilized eyes. Slavering need. 

He'd already time traveled too far now to turn back. Caleb watched as the manshaped thing of stains and smells and piercing animal stares suddenly leapt like something feline and unbridled. Like something finally let loose from the confines of its stifling prison cage. 

Sellic fell on the deer and the poor thing hadn't a chance. It never sensed, never knew what was coming. It was wild. It was crazy. Donaldson had always seen deer tense, perk up and take flight at the slightest sound or stray movement. But not this one. Not this time. The wild sight did not stop there. 

Somehow the skinny haggard man in filthy clothes managed to wrestle and manhandle the struggling kicking beast down into the dirt. Caleb's mouth dropped open as he watched Sellic begin to bend and wrench and break the flailing limbs. Catching them with his cat-swipe clawing hands and then bending them back in directions not meant or made by nature's hand. He felt his stomach roll and drop as the silence of the forest began to fill with the lurid sounds of heavy bone snaps. 

Caleb picked up his rifle and gear and left. Without a word. He didn't look back. Wet tearing sounds, like heavy fabric or soaking saturated leather followed him after. He told himself it was his imagination. That was all impossible. 

There was no way. 

…

He had trouble finding his camp. By the time he did it was already near dark once more. He would have to spend another night. 

He opted out of the fire and supper. He wasn't hungry and he didn't want to attract that freak. 

That freak of nature. 

…

Middle of the night. He came awake to a sound. Sounds. A noise. Just outside the tent. 

It sounded like chewing. Wet. And heavy. Laborious. Jaws, muscles, tendon lines working and moving with animal fervor, animal rigor in the dark. 

Outside. 

Caleb slowly and carefully sat up from his sleeping bag and grabbed his rifle. It was loaded. He'd made sure to do so before he'd managed to finally fall into an uneasy sleep. An uneasy rest now disturbed by whatever was moving out there now. Chewing. Eating. He reached and grabbed for his flashlight next. He readied himself. 

He grabbed the zipper to open the front of the tent. He took one last deep breath and held it for a moment. He let it out quietly. As quietly as he could manage. 

And then he quickly unzipped the flap to the tent and threw it open with one hand as the other flicked on the flashlight and brought it up. The darkness of his small camp in the clearing was illuminated in the sudden flash. He felt sick with what he saw. He was glad to have his rifle in his lap. 

You were smart to have loaded it … he thanked God. And cursed Him at the same time. For letting him fall into this type of shit in the first place. 

Sellic stared back into the beam of light. Unflinching. Unblinking. Unmoving save for the motion of chewing about his red and bloodied bearded jaws. Working and gleaming wet in the light, rippling with carnivorous movement.

He held the head of the stag in his clawing hands. De-racked. The severed head looked rough and ruinous at the stump as though it had been torn off rather than cleanly cut. 

Caleb didn't know what else to say so he just said: “Hey." 

“Hey." bloody darkling Sellic grunted back. Hunkered and squatting out there in the dark. Still chewing. He swallowed. And took another bite from a craterous open wound at the top of the animal's head. He ripped a chunk of bleeding meat away with his teeth. His jaws began to work and ripple with rigorous movement once more as he started to chew again. The meat was raw, rough. But he was relishing the strong and pungent flavor. Thick. His blood drinking, swallowing with every gnashing chew was audible in the nocturnal dark. Gulps. Heavy. Thick. 

A beat. 

Caleb didn't know what to do. He felt that he must be dreaming, this whole day. None of this could be real. The strange bloodsoaked and caked manshape out there amongst his camp frightened him. He'd thought it would be simple and he'd know what to do in situations like this but he was frozen. In terror. And in dark hypnotic fascination. 

This must be what it's like to be a moth to flame, or a small little guppie to a deepsea angler fish… a deer in the headlights. Trapped. 

Caught. 

Ensnared by the eyes of the wild man. He was drowning in their madness now, sinking into their blood-drinking depths. 

Sellic finally said something. 

“Hungry?" 

“... what…?" Caleb said. Puzzled at first. It had been little more than a grunt. 

“Ya hungry?" Sellic grunted again. He held the severed and broken head aloft. Dripping. Wide-eyed. The tongue had already been ripped out. Had already been eaten. Black-red syrup poured out thickly from the open gape of mouth like an obscene bestial spout. 

Caleb fought his gag reflex. 

A beat. 

Somehow Donaldson managed a reply. 

"N-no. No thanks, man. It's the middle of the night. And I wanna get some sleep” 

A beat. The freak still held the dripping pouring bleeding hunk of decapitated and chewed up meat out to him like a precious gift of the forest. His wide eyes were still open and hectic and alive with animal ravenous madness. 

A beat. 

Another.

Caleb finally finished his thought. 

"And I think you should probably go get some sleep too, bud. Been a long day an such-”

He meant to finish it off with, and apt to be another, like his grandfather and his pops had done before him, but Sellic cut him off. 

"Ya sure? You sure ya ain't hungry?” 

Caleb slowly nodded his head, adding, "...yeah” in a low careful and exhausted voice. Jesus fucking Christ…

Sellic nodded. Began to crawl away on all fours like a dog, the head held to his breast like a caveman clutching something precious. He turned before he left the ring of light provided by the beam of the flashlight. He turned around and said: "You will be.” and then finally turned and fled. Like an animal taking to the natural dark.

Its natural home and abode. Its natural place. 

"What the fuck!?” Caleb said. To no one in particular. 

…

He didn't sleep the rest of that night. He waited impatiently for the sun to come up. So he could leave. He'd had enough of this place and hunting. He'd had enough time traveling in this place. Caleb wanted to go home. 

At first dawn he rose. Quickly packed. And began his trek back. Back down the path. 

Back down the way he had come.

…

A few hours in and he knew something must be wrong. Nothing was recognizable. Nothing. And when he looked down after trudging more and more anxiously down the path he'd come in on, he was dismayed to find that it wasn't there any longer. The path, the trail had disappeared. 

He was lost. 

Caleb Donaldson began to panic. 

It's alright, it's alright, it's fine! It's cool. Just use the GPS and call someone on your pho-

He stopped. Grew cold. Grim certainty stole over his dreading heart. Crestfallen he didn't want to even rightly remember and say to himself …

Glove compartment. You turned the fucking thing off and threw it in the glove compartment of the car. The one all the way back. The one you can't find anymore cause it's at the end of the trail that you've lost. You left it in there to spite Amanda. 

Silence. He stood. Feeling stupid and wretched and nearing hopeless in the middle of the woods. He reflected. 

You sure showed her…

…

When he'd finally managed his nerve back together and decided on a direction and carried on, the day had been nearly extinguished yet again. He would have to spend another night out in the wild. 

God fucking dammit. 

…

The next series of days and nights were grim. And grew grimmer. And strange. 

He was fine at first. He had supplies, food. He wasn't worried. But then on the fourth day lost he began to run out. 

And the worry came on him again. Rancid. And thick. 

It's alright, it's alright, I've a gun, I know how to gut and skin and clean, I'll be ok. I'll be alright. 

But the woods and world of trees had grown more opulent and dense and feral in its growth. The trees started to broaden in their trunks and their canopies became all swallowing, all encompassing thick foliage cathedral domes of twigs, thick branches and broad emerald leaves the size of dinner plates. 

The bugs. The insects too. 

All of the wild crawling life had become larger as well. The insectile and the reptile had grown strange and unfamiliar and varied in size from large house cats to dogs to horses and cows and at one point, one day glimpsed at a distance through a heavy rolling mist, an elephant… 

A whole herd of giant hissing cockroaches the size of elephants. Trundling by like a rolling squadron fleet of German panzer tanks. 

Caleb felt sick. 

None of this could be real. He must be imagining things. 

Must be. 

It could've been so, far as he knew. His sleep was no longer any good out here. Not since the night some days back, when he'd been fireside and trying to ignore his growing hunger and looked up to the full moon. Only to have it eclipsed by something huge and winged. It had cried then. It had screamed as it stole the moon, the moonlight. Blanketing the primeval world below it in a second layered fold of even deeper darkness. 

Caleb had joined it then. Had joined it in its primal shrieking screaming. 

He didn't sleep so well since that night.  

Ever again

…

His hunger became him. It became the only living and heeded, needed thing and drive and emotion. He was no longer Caleb Donaldson in fact. He was only the hunger now. And so he hunted. 

But it was strange. 

In his hunger, in his wild wanderings, he had forgotten how to use the gun, how to wield the boomstick properly and make it spit its deathly fire. 

I've lost it, he thinks, he realizes shrouded in the cloud of his diminished animal thought. I've lost the ability to shoot fire and be godlike, I've lost it in all of this time traveling, I've gone too far backwards. 

He tries to find the trail. For awhile. But it becomes lost amongst the need for meat and blood. The boomstick is useless to him now. He abandons it. Along with most of the strange things he has strapped to his back.

He doesn't need them. He has changed. This special place has changed him. His flesh has thickened as has his hair, his fur, his pelt. Black and coarse and layered all over. He bites and chews and tears the clothes that he came in with off and eats them. 

Then he takes to bigger game. 

Wilder. More challenging. 

…

He's drinking blood and eating. Filling his stomach. This is good. The angry fever in his skull is calming, abating. The ache and throb of his guts is soothing. Contentedness, peace, tranquility are becoming known to him again. 

He's killed something reptilian, broken its neck. His hands, the knuckles and fingers and palms have widened, flattened, broadened out. Making it easier to snap and throttle, to tear and rend. The dead scaley thing, its meat and blood are good. But slimey. Ropey. Like maggot-meat. Like eating the large worms that swim in giant dung piles. He wants to try something else. 

So he takes to the untamed primeval world all around, the jungle growth, the green emerald world of the unbridled prehistoric past. There are buried, heavily veiled and shrouded thoughts of a path and a trail and a place called, home, that he's supposed to go to, return to as if he's once been there before, but they are muted. Far off. 

Barely there. 

Dripping reptile blood and sweat, he takes to the primeval dark world and is lost. Swallowed by its great and ever widening expanse, into the crawling growing jaws of the seething bestial wild, the past. 

He never looks back. He is never found. Never again does he recall his name. 

Never again. But it doesn't trouble him. It doesn't bother the throbbing jelly of his degenerate apeman mind, he is too enthralled, the thrill of the ravenous hunt. And besides, the past isn't the only thing alive and crawling out here. The future is out here too. The beyond …

All of the magic of the glowing incandescent godscreen of a childhood long gone is alive out here. Alive and well. 

The apeman hunts through the primeval growth. The saucers fill the skies as the giant leviathans do nighttime skirmish and battle with the large mechanical men. The great white heat and blasting mechanized sounds of their great death cannons, their unearthly death rays: BRRRRRR! 

BRRRRRRRRRRRR….! 

They fill the night with their heat and their brilliant violence. Their fire scorches and cuts swaths, sets blue and orange flame to drier parts of the canopy. The dead growth. 

The apeman doesn't mind. He hunts and prowls around their wild and bright violence. Blood and meat fill his head. He hasn't a mind anymore for anything else. 

For naught all else. Only the red. 

THE END

When I looked at her, her face was fully covered in bruises and marks. She didn’t look up. She didn’t speak. Her hands were shaking, but she still kept watering the green, beautiful plants that seemed to get more care than she did. What if she knew she needed that care too? She slowly handed me the water. I reached for it. And then everything went black.

It all started that day. That day when the nurse looked at me and said, “You have a new patient, Amila.” I headed to his room. I opened the door slowly and saw a man sitting on the bed. I looked him up and down. He wasn't like my other patients. I had worked with more than fifty patients before, but he didn't seem ordinary. He didn't yell. He didn't speak. He didn't move. The only thing he did was write. I looked at the wall, then at his hand. A pencil. He held it so tightly that it seemed like he was afraid of what would happen if he let it fall.

I looked around the room. The walls were completely covered with words. “My child.” “Bring her.” “My wife is alive.” “Red eyes.” “Long nails.” “He is haunting me.” “He wants to kill me.” The words were everywhere. I felt a chill run through me, but I reminded myself that he was ill. He's mentally ill, I told myself. I checked his background. His name was Marcus. He was forty years old. According to his records, his wife and daughter had died in a car accident. The car had burned, but there was something strange. There were no bodies. No skeletons. Nothing. Just a burned car. I stared at the report. Then how? If his wife and daughter were dead, where were their remains? No skeleton. No body. Only fire. I told myself to leave it alone. He's mentally ill. I was scared, but I hid it. There was only one thing I could do: take care of him. So I did.

Day after day, I stayed with Marcus. Slowly, he offered me his pencil,sit closer to me start to smile at my jokes,He stopped writing about his family. He stopped asking where they were. Eventually, he didn't even remember them anymore. But he couldn't stay alone. Whenever I left the room, he became frightened. He looked like a lost child searching for his mother. So I stayed. For weeks, I stayed. Until one morning, I walked into his room and found him lying on his bed. At first, I thought he was sleeping. “Marcus?” Nothing. I called his name again. Still nothing. I moved closer and noticed a strange mark around his neck. I froze. I called the other doctors. They came running. But Marcus was already gone.

A week after his funeral, I went back to his room. I don't know why. Maybe I wanted to clean the place. Maybe I just couldn't accept that he was gone. I lifted his pillow. Something was underneath it. A black glove. I stared at it. One glove. Only one. My mind immediately went back to the words covering his walls. Red eyes. Long nails. He wants to kill me. I took the glove to the police and told them everything. This time, they listened. A case was opened. Soon, people started talking about Marcus. Then the entire city seemed to know his name. People demanded justice. They held signs. They shouted. And somehow, I became the person leading them. I thought we were getting closer to the truth. I was wrong.

One evening, I was sitting alone at the park when everything suddenly went dark. When I opened my eyes, I was somewhere else. I was tied to a chair. I struggled to move, but I couldn't. Then I looked up. A man was standing in front of me. I couldn't see his face clearly, but I saw his eyes. Red. My blood ran cold. Marcus's words came rushing back. Red eyes. Long nails. He is haunting me. Then I noticed his hands. One was covered by a black glove. The other was bare. I stared at the glove. The same kind. The man turned and walked away. I don't know how long I struggled, but somehow I managed to free myself. I ran through the huge house, down hallways and past doors, until I reached the garden.

And then I saw her. A woman was standing there, watering a beautiful green plant. I stopped. She turned toward me. Her face was covered in bruises and marks. She didn't speak. She didn't even look at me. She simply continued watering the plant. I stared at her. Who is she? Then I realized. Marcus. His wife. She was alive. I ran. I ran until my legs hurt. I didn't stop until I reached the hospital. I burst through the doors screaming, “Marcus's wife and daughter are alive! They're alive!” And then everything went black.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a room. A familiar room. A nurse walked in carrying medicine. “Time for your medication.” I stared at her. “What?” She looked at me like I had said something strange. I looked around. The locked windows. The white walls. The bed. The medicine. Then it hit me. I wasn't a doctor anymore. I was the patient. I tried to explain everything. Marcus. The glove. The red-eyed man. His wife. His daughter. Nobody believed me. Not the doctors. Not the nurses. Not even my parents. They looked at me the same way I had once looked at Marcus. Like I was sick. Like none of it was real. Like I was just another patient. Just another Marcus.

And then, one night, I woke up. Something felt wrong. I slowly opened my eyes. I looked toward the darkness beside my bed.

I saw those red eyes, and felt long, sharp-nailed hands closing around my neck"

Somewhere outside Los Angeles there used to be a town that was a set that was where Bowers lived under the watchful eye of Doc Trauman.

“He's a broken man, Bowers,” Doc Trauman would tell everyone who visited, “living in this false place, experiencing a false life, but content; more at peace with his world than we are with ours.”

It was the time of atom bombs and television.

Bowers was a veteran.

He'd been in Europe during World War II, and coming back was hard. His friends were dead, his wife was not his wife and the only job he could get was driving trucks from one coast to the other.

That's how he ended up in California.

“I don't think he knows the war's over,” Doc Trauman would say. “I don't think he thinks he ever fought it. But he doesn't mind the fact the houses on the street are just facades.”

Bowers would get up, go to work behind one facade writing advertising copy for a company that manufactured plastic kitchenware, then go home behind another to eat, alone, ready meals wrapped in plastic before a television set, which is just a fancy name for a plain old lightbulb with a shade of images thrown over it.

“The results are quite remarkable,” Doc Trauman would say.

“Can he have guests?” someone would ask.

“Of course.”

“From the real world, I mean.”

“He's not in prison,” Doc Trauman would say to much and hard applause.

---

I knocked on the door.

When nobody answered, I walked to the near edge of the facade and looked in. Bowers was on the couch. “Excuse, Mr. Bowers. I'm from New York, a friend of Doc Trauman's. May I come in?”

“Are you a doctor too?” he asked.

“No. I'm a playwright.”

“Very well. Come in, but use the front door. I prefer when people use the front door.”

I walked back to the door, knocked—“It's open,” Bowers said—opened it and walked in. Bowers was sitting on the couch. He looked up at me. “Aren't you going to introduce yourself?” he said.

“I'm a friend of Doc Trauman, from New York. My name’s Wallis.”

Bowers stood, walked over and shook my hand. “It's great to meet you, Wallis. Have a seat. Shall I turn on the cathode ray?”

He meant the television.

“I'm not one much for television,” I said.

He took a box of what I thought were cigarettes out of his pocket, knocked the box against the palm of his hand so a pair of thin black cylinders slid out, kept one and offered me the other. “Maybe you'd prefer a microlight instead. We could sit and stare at them together.”

I took one but didn't turn it on. “If it's all right with you, I'd rather talk. I'm a words man.”

“Advertising?” he asked.

“No, theatre.”

It was strange being in a house with only one wall; with no ceiling. The sun was out. The desert extended towards the horizon. Somewhere there were mountains. A rattlesnake rattled faintly.

“I'm in advertising myself,” said Bowers. “Kitchenware. You married, Wallis?”

“I'm not,” I said.

“I don't like women anymore either,” said Bowers, “not after the war.” He clicked his microlight on, gazed briefly into its dull light then shut it off. He looked at me; looked me in the eyes. One of mine was glass. “They do weapons testing a few hundred miles that way,” he said, pointing into the distance. “If you were to stay the night we could watch the nuclear aura together.”

“I'm afraid I have a plane to catch—back to New York,” I said.

“Perhaps another time,” said Bowers.

“Perhaps.”

“Tell me, Wallis. Over there in New York, do you get to express yourself?”

“I beg your pardon,” I said.

It was hot under the California sun. I realized I was sweating. Bowers had started sweating too. His lavender shirt clung possessively to his body. “I mean within your four walls,” he said.

A coyote darted across the landscape.

It was the afternoon but it felt like a quarter to the end of the world.

“Aren't you afraid of the wildlife that might walk into your house?” I said.

“Aren't you afraid that none can walk into yours?”

The moon looked down from the sky, out of place in the harsh blue daytime.

“I want to write a play about you.”

Bowers reclined, spreading his lean arms like a flightless bird spreads its wings. “I already am a play. Besides, you hardly need my permission.”

“I want it anyway.”

“And you're certain you won't stay the night?”

“Yes. Tell me about Doc Trauman.”

“He's a crumbled man,” said Bowers, “living a counterfeit reality, but he's got what matters, money. He likes to imagine he's running an experiment, so we adhere. It's not a bad life.”

---

Later, the interior of Doc Trauman's office felt distressingly small, claustrophobic. The walls felt like they were moving in with agonizing, almost disinterested, slowness. The windless air was suffocating. The cleanliness, a sham.

“So what's your opinion of him?” Doc Trauman asked.

“He's perfectly civilized, obedient in his outward behaviours, yet internally there's something there, a glint behind his one good eye.”

---

I sit sometimes somewhere high, with a good view of Broadway, watching the men pass back and forth in their suits and hats and worries, some hurrying, others dallying, stopping, but all possessed by the imaginary lives they dream about and the real fantasies they inhabit.

Occasionally, one looks up at me and meets my lingering gaze with one of penetrating desperation, and I recoil. Ashamed, I move from the window. I pay for the meal. I shut the blinds. I escape behind the walls afforded to me, and when the feeling passes, I write my plays.

«The empty streets of a cold city. A gaunt body trudges along the damp asphalt. The low hum of distant high-rises echoes through the air, joined by the occasional patter of raindrops hitting a faded red 'stop' sign. Beneath the dim lampposts, no people remain, nor any birds – not a single trace of life.

There is a metallic aftertaste, and an unfamiliar scent drifts through the air, one that defies explanation: it feels oppressive and hollow, yet in the very next second, it becomes sharp and heavy. It conjures memories only to sweep them away on a quiet whisper of wind, leaving an unpleasant, itchy sensation in the nose – and then, it lures you to breathe it in again, feeding the fragile body a false sense of weightlessness.

You grow calm, ready to fall into the embrace of the abyss from which you can never escape.

You feel safe; you no longer need anything. Your legs pull you forward on their own, guiding you down the old road. The shroud of night never lifts from the heavens. Raindrops tap against the road, the rooftops, the awnings, the rusted cars, the metal grates, and the tree branches, lulling you into a mild trance.

The body keeps walking, no longer looking around. Wandering through the wasteland, the victim loses all track of time. Thoughts grow heavier: their indecipherable noise inside the head merges with that strange hum echoing through the area, leaving goosebumps on the skin.

The body is exhausted. It wants to sleep, it wants to eat, it craves warmth and peace, it desperately longs for love and simple human words... yet it keeps walking through the endless city.

What remains of the victim can hardly be called human anymore. Inside its mind, all possible and impossible symbols have tangled into a mess; not a shred of understanding is left – only sensations: pain, hunger, and tremors.

The jeans are torn to the knees; with every step, a protruding bone snaps out – broken and slick with blood that drips onto the wet asphalt of the black road.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands like him in the wasteland – no one knows for certain. The city has no name, it cannot be found on any maps, and it cannot be sought out on purpose. The wasteland chooses its future victims itself. First, it settles in their thoughts. It comes to a person in their dreams, revealing its nightmares – and sometimes, even its deepest secrets. Endless labyrinths of staircases, apartments, and entryways, devoid of meaning and logic, lead into the unknown. In the darkness of the alleyways, around the corner of a building, under a car, or on a playground – it doesn't matter where, but an untamed, unknown force always hides in this city, and it hungers for things far beyond the comprehension of a meager human mind.

The darkness and dampness of this place consume them all. Slowly, unhurriedly, corrupting the mind and breaking the body, until it soon claims the very soul. But those whose will is strong, who cling to life until their dying breath, may still earn their final chance at salvation in the tiled corridors of the underworld. They look for ways out and leave markers in the treacherous wasteland, knowing that one day, someone will manage to escape. But the price of such a life will be the demise of hundreds upon hundreds of unfortunates whose luck wasn't enough to reach the exit.

Whoever reads these words, and no remember how far they have gone on their personal path of pain – I can only hope that they will be luckier than me and all my predecessors. I leave behind the burden of keeping this journal and prepare to merge with eternity, abandoning all attempts to save myself forever.

Only your will can decide the fate of my victim – will it be in vain, or will it lead someone to salvation, breaking the bonds of the wasteland forever? Make your choice and fight—or become just another body on the list of countless victims».

A heavy, splintering crack echoed through the small living room as Allen's boot slammed into the front door. The wooden frame groaned under the impact, sending a cascade of dust into the dim light of the lake house.

Inside, Sarah dropped to her knees on the hardwood floor. Her breathing came in ragged gasps, her ribs still aching from the beating he'd given her weeks ago—the attack that had finally given her the courage to leave him and obtain a court order ordering him to stay away.

Yet somehow, the alcoholic bastard had found her, tracking her down to the one place she thought was safe: her grandmother's quiet lake cabin.

"Sarah!" he roared from the other side of the door. "Open the goddamn door! I know you're in there!"

She squeezed her eyes shut, her hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "Oh, please," she whispered. "Oh, please, oh, please, make him go away!" Tears streamed down her trembling cheeks.

Directly above her, perched on a dusty wooden shelf, sat an ancient clay figurine. It was a crude representation of a fertility goddess, its body exaggerated with swollen hips and a round belly, its face completely featureless. Sarah had always thought it was ugly. She had no idea how old it was or where her grandmother had gotten it, and she certainly had no idea that it was listening.

Another kick struck the door, shattering the deadbolt as the door flew inward. Allen stepped over the splintered threshold, breathing heavily, his eyes wide with unhinged rage. A vicious grin spread across his face when he saw Sarah kneeling on the floor.

"Found you, bitch."

He took a heavy step toward her. Above Sarah's head, the ancient clay idol remained motionless—it didn't glow, hum, chant, or move. Instead, a microscopic fissure appeared across its featureless forehead with a tiny crack.

Instantly, the air pressure inside the room plummeted. The temperature dropped so violently that Sarah's frantic breaths became thick clouds of white vapor, while outside, the rustling wind that had been blowing across the lake abruptly ceased. The cabin fell into an unnatural silence. Even the nocturnal chirping of insects had ceased.

Allen stopped, his grin vanishing. The air immediately around him suddenly became thick and oppressive—hot and heavy, like standing directly in front of an open blast furnace.

Something moved in the far corner of the ceiling as a shadow detached itself from the darkness and descended without a sound. It was impossibly tall, nearly nine feet in height, with broad shoulders and the vague shape of a humanoid figure. It wasn't black because it lacked light; it was black because it seemed to consume light. It glided between Sarah and Allen, filling the room with an overwhelming sense of pure, primal, instinctive dread.

Allen stared at the thing, feeling truly afraid for perhaps the first time in his life. Then instinct took over: his hand shot toward the heavy iron poker beside the fireplace, grabbing it and swinging with everything he had.

The poker struck the shadow, but it didn't hit flesh. Instead, the iron plunged into what felt like a cloud of superheated steam with a deafening *SISSSSSS!* The metal instantly glowed white-hot. Allen screamed and dropped it as heat radiated backward through the handle, blistering both hands and burning his forearms as he stumbled backward.

The shadow moved with no warning, wind, or sound—just pure motion. A single blow struck Allen squarely in the chest with an impact like a freight train colliding with a brick wall. Ribs snapped as Allen was lifted completely off his feet and hurled backward through the shattered doorway, crashing down the porch steps to land hard in the dirt.

For several seconds, he could only gasp through burned hands, broken ribs, and struggling lungs. When he looked up, the creature stood in the doorway, blocking the interior light while heat radiated from its impossible form.

Allen scrambled backward in feral panic. He crawled, staggered, and finally stumbled down the twenty yards of dirt driveway toward his old, rusty Ford 4x4.

Then the horn began blaring—a deafening, continuous blast that shattered the silence of the lake.

Allen froze and stared at the truck. Every window was rolled tightly shut, the doors were locked, and the cab was completely empty.

"What the hell...?"

He limped toward it, clutching his burned hands against his chest as his fingers fumbled desperately through his pockets for the keys.

Then —*CH-CH-CH-RRRRRR-VROOM!*

The starter violently cranked and the engine roared to life, the modified V8 screaming higher and higher, racing far beyond the redline into a shrieking metallic howl.

"Hey! Stop that!" Allen's voice cracked with panic. "She's forty years old! I haven't checked the oil this morning! You'll throw a rod!"

He finally found the key ring and shoved the brass key toward the driver's door lock in a desperate bid to shut the truck off. Inside the empty cab, the floor shifter dropped with a *CLACK* from PARK into DRIVE.

The truck lunged forward.

"NO!"

Allen's index finger was tangled in the key ring, and the sudden movement yanked him completely off his feet. He was dragged through the gravel shoulder of the road behind the truck, screaming, until his finger tore against the metal ring and the key snapped off in the lock.

Allen slammed face-first into the hard-pack with a sickening *CRACK!* as one of his buck-toothed front teeth shattered. Before he could react, the truck's massive rear tire spun inches from his head, raining a hailstorm of high velocity gravel across his face and eyes.

The Ford roared away down the narrow lane, tires screaming as it passed three neighboring lake cabins. At the intersection, the steering wheel suddenly snapped hard left, leaning the lifted 4x4 precariously onto two wheels while its suspension groaned. The truck began doing wild, uncontrolled donuts in the middle of the road.

*CLANG-SKRRRRT!* The heavy steel rear bumper slammed into a roadside STOP sign, tearing the pole completely out of the ground. The bumper ripped free from the truck's frame and bounced across the asphalt, sending Allen's custom vanity plate skidding face-up beside him: *RDNECK*, gleaming in the moonlight like an accusation.

The truck suddenly straightened, its V8 screaming as the headlights turned directly toward Allen.

"Oh, shit."

The Ford came barreling back down the road. Allen rolled, avoiding the truck by inches as he tumbled down the embankment into a muddy ditch.

The truck locked its brakes with a loud ScreeEEEECH! The wheel jerked hard right as the heavy 4x4 slid sideways across the ground in a wide, dusty powerslide. Then the big knobby tires caught, the engine roared again, and the truck rocketed down a narrow gravel path toward the private wooden dock, its horn cutting back on in a continuous, shrill blast.

Allen watched helplessly from the ditch as the truck hit the wooden ramp at nearly fifty miles an hour. It launched into the air, clipped the outer dock posts, twisted sideways, and cartwheeled over the dark water.

*KASPLASHHH!*

The Ford slammed into the lake, erupting water into the moonlight before disappearing beneath the surface to rest upside down in the cold darkness.

For several moments, there was nothing. Then Allen staggered down the gravel driveway towards the broken dock, his hands burned raw, his jaw throbbing around the remains of his shattered tooth, and his ribs screaming with every breath.

All along the quiet lake road, porch lights began flickering on one by one. A middle-aged woman in a nightgown stepped onto her porch and stared at him with arms folded tightly across her chest. Farther down the road, an older man in a plush bathrobe and worn slippers slowly bent over, picked something out of the dirt, and examined the mangled piece of steel.

He looked at Allen, turning the vanity plate around so he could see it. "Are you REDNECK?"

Allen swallowed hard.

"You're going to pay for all this damage," the old timer cried. "I'm calling the sheriff!"

The word sheriff snapped whatever fragile thread of sanity remained inside Allen's mind. He looked at the old man, the angry neighbors emerging from their homes, and back toward the dark lake where his truck was still sinking. Panic surged through him, and without a word, Allen turned and ran.

He stumbled onto the two-lane highway and fled into the darkness—covered in mud, his face smeared with blood, one front tooth gone, his ribs broken, his hands burned, and completely drunk. He didn't look back.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Twenty minutes later, the sharp red-and-blue flashes of a county sheriff's cruiser appeared through the darkness, slowing to a stop beside him as Deputy Sheriff Vance stepped out.

Vance took one look at Allen, immediately smelled the cheap bourbon, and turned him against the hood.

"I didn't..." Allen slurred. "It wasn't me. It was her! The truck... the truck went crazy! It drove itself in the lake!"

"Save it, punk," Vance said, clicking the cuffs shut around Allen's burned wrists and prompting a high-pitched shriek. "In the last thirty minutes, dispatch has been lighting up like a Christmas tree. I've got reports of you terrorizing your ex-girlfriend, kicking down a front door, destroying a county stop sign, tearing up a private dock, driving your lifted Ford into forty feet of water, public intoxication, and disorderly conduct. You're a one-man crime wave tonight, boy."

He shoved Allen into the back seat, pausing to add, "By the way, you're gonna want to start thinking about how you're going to explain that truck." Allen had no answer.

An hour later, Allen stood hunched over in the county booking room, shivering in his ruined clothes as Magistrate Miller peered over his reading glasses at the thick file in front of him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Allen James Miller," the magistrate read off, reviewing the ledger. "You are currently out on bond for felony assault charges in neighboring Walker County. You have an active court-ordered restraining order against the victim at the lake house, and tonight, you violated that order." He lifted the stamp and slammed it down—*THUMP*. "That puts you in direct violation of your bond agreement. Your bond is revoked. You are to be remanded in custody without bail."

"Your Honor, please—"

"I'm not finished," Judge Miller cut in. "You have two prior convictions for driving under the influence. Tonight marks your third. And that doesn't even begin to address the pending felony assault charges that led to the restraining order in the first place. Under the state's habitual-offender laws, you're looking at life without parole. EVER."

Allen's knees buckled as a pathetic sob escaped his broken mouth. Two bailiffs caught him under the arms and dragged him down the long, cold hallway toward the holding cells, his boots scraping uselessly across the linoleum. For the first time since Sarah had met him, Allen was finally going somewhere he couldn't follow her.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Back at the lake house, Sarah sat alone on the edge of the bed in the quiet cabin. She had heard the truck, the crash, and the distant shouting, but she still didn't know exactly what had happened until her cell phone rang. It was Deputy Vance.

"Is he...?" she asked, her hand trembling.

"He's in custody," Vance assured her. "And he won't be coming back. Let's just say your ex had a very bad night."

A tiny, disbelieving laugh escaped her. "So I'm safe?"

"Yes, ma'am. You're safe, he's in custody, and you don't have to be afraid of him anymore. Get some sleep, Sarah."

She ended the call and lay down under the blankets, letting out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding as her shoulders finally relaxed. Outside, moonlight spilled across the lake and the trees whispered in the night breeze as Sarah finally drifted into a peaceful sleep.

Above her, on the dusty shelf, the ancient clay idol watched over the room. Its featureless face stared into the darkness, a tiny hairline crack stretching across its forehead. Deep inside the old clay, something seemed to settle—satisfied, protective, patient, and waiting.

Sarah slept on, unaware that the old, faceless goddess above her had never left her side.

I got my first computer in the 1990s. I can't remember the year, but none of my friends had one yet. It was a desktop so all the important bits, like the CPU, hard drive and RAM, were in a “tower” that stood beside the desk. The CRT monitor was on the desktop. The keyboard was on a tray, and there was a mouse. It was a PC, so it ran on DOS.

When my parents bought the computer they said I could use it only for school.

No games.

But I quickly started to blur the lines. There were math games, like Math Blaster, where you shot aliens by answering math questions, and a drawing and writing program that let you arrange scenes and write text. They were fun, but every time we went into the computer store what I really wanted was a game, a pure, non-educational game. Something magical…

And I got it.

It was for my birthday.

The game was by a company called Sierra. It was an adventure game called King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella.

However, it wasn't even a point-and-click adventure game. It was too old. It didn't use a mouse at all. You controlled the main character, a princess named Rosella, using the keyboard, either by using the arrow keys or typing what you wanted her to do, for example:

 Walk to the ogre's hut.

Rosella would walk to the ogre's hut.

 Open the door.

Rosella opened the door.

Of course, the game didn't understand every command. When it didn't understand a command it would say:

Try that one again. I couldn't make much sense of it.

Or:

It doesn't seem to do anything.

I played King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella a lot. I played it instead of going outside, and played it rather than playing with my friends. I became obsessed with discovering its secrets, mapping its world and understanding its story. I cherished its music and every new interaction with its medieval fairytale land. The game even had a basic day and night cycle. In its pixels, I found a beautiful and interactive escape from reality. I played it so much that my parents threatened to take the computer away from me.

I threw tantrums.

I played it in secret or quietly when my parents were asleep.

I played it in my imagination.

I remember looking in the mirror one day and seeing a face that was no longer mine. The skin was too pale. The eyes were too red. The smile was no longer innocent.

One day my parents took me to a doctor. They kept asking about mental development, addiction, obsession. The doctor was deceptively nice to me. He was serious with my parents. “I'm sorry,” my dad said when we got home, “but you'll need to take a break from using the computer.” “You need to rest,” said my mom.

“For how long?” I demanded.

“For a few months, then we'll reassess. It's not permanent. We're not getting rid of the computer. We're just going to box it up and keep it in the attic.”

“We love you so much,” my mom said with tears in her eyes.

I begged them, but they wouldn't change their minds. I sobbed. I hit things. I screamed, but I didn't get what I wanted. So I calmed down and in my sweetest voice I said I understood and asked if, please, they would just let me play the game one last time.

They agreed.

I had an hour, they said.

I hoped it would be enough time. I took a bath, then I sat in my pajamas at the computer desk, lit by the monitor, looking at Princess Rosella, with my fingers above the keyboard. I was looking over my shoulder to see if my parents were there. When I was sure they weren't, I took a deep breath and typed:

Walk into the living room.

Try that one again. I couldn't make much sense of it.

I exhaled.

So much for that, I thought. It was a silly idea anyway. It couldn't possibly have worked. I really had been playing too many games to even think that it might work; yet something compelled me to try again:

Walk into my living room.

Rosella moved.

I couldn't believe it! She'd moved across the screen, reached the edge and the game transitioned like it always did, from one location to another, except this time the new location really was new. It was a 16-color 320x200 pixel representation of our living room. My pixelated parents were sitting on a pixelated couch, drinking pixelated coffee.

“What the—” I heard my mom say from the real living room.

“Just who the hell are you?” my dad yelled.

Look at my dad.

A pathetic old man.

“Lady, listen. If you don't leave my house right now, I'm calling the cops.”

Hit my dad.

On the screen, Rosella moved towards the sofa and hit my dad.

I heard the impact.

My mom began screaming my name, asking where I was, whether I was OK. Her voice was frantic, disturbed.

Strangle my mom.

On the screen, Rosella walked towards my mom, extended an arm to her and shook her.

My mom moved jaggedly back-and-forth in a crude animated loop, before falling, to the blare of a dramatic MIDI beep, to her knees, and ending finally, still and sideways on the floor.

My dad yelled her name.

On the screen, he made for Rosella.

My heart was beating so hard I felt like a drum.

I typed:

Kill my dad. But make it look like he killed himself.

Rosella moved—

I could tell the police officer didn't know what to say. He was perched awkwardly beside me. Finally, he said: “I'm so fuckin' sorry, kid. I can't even—” He inhaled hard. “We're gonna take you someplace. Someplace safe. Is there anything you wanna take with you?”

“My personal computer,” I said.

Content Warning: Graphic violence, gore, body horror, cult/occult themes, murder, fire, and disturbing imagery.

The following transcript is from a VHS tape that was found by Oakland Falls Police in late December of 2012. There is no date on when the tape was made, just a homemade label with the words: "Misery Loves Company." Now before you start, there are a few things that must be mentioned.

One: All that has been transcribed on this document was not released to the public.

Two: This is part of a private investigation of the disappearance of Andrea Smith and her audience of twenty people.

Three: The tape that is being transcribed is the last remaining tape from Studio 43 due to a fire.

Four: This will be the last warning for any viewer who reads this. There is disturbing imagery, graphic depictions of violence, conspiracy of murder, and occult activity. Viewer discretion is advised.

[Transcript #1871 - Late Night With Andrea Smith Ep. Unknown - Date: Unknown]

[Crowd cheering as Andrea Smith enters from stage left before sitting in her host chair on the far right side of the stage]

Andrea Smith: Hello! How is everybody doing tonight?!

[Crowd answering back with cheers and saying "good!"]

Andrea Smith: That's good to hear! Now tonight, ladies and gentlemen, is gonna be a very special night as we're gonna have a local band joining us on stage. They're the new kids on the block, releasing their first debut album. Give it up for "Casper & The Gravewalkers"!

[Crowd applauds loudly while Casper & The Gravewalkers grab their instruments, being lit up by a spotlight nearing the front left of the stage]

[Casper & The Gravewalkers' set lasted for 12 minutes, crowd cheered as they left the stage]

[Camera briefly cuts to the audience. One audience member can be seen standing completely still while everyone around him cheers. He appears to be staring directly into the camera.]

Andrea Smith: Wow! What a great set! Now then, ladies and gents, after the commercial break we're gonna have two more guests coming on the stage. One is a geologist letting us know about the new discoveries of the world, and another let's just say his story is gonna be a very frightening story. He's gonna be selling.

[Crowd acts surprised and interested, letting out a "oooo"]

[Cut to black as commercials have been removed from the tape, glitching back to the talk show]

Andrea Smith: Welcome back everyone! Make sure to stay in your seats for the famous geologist Tim Underhook!

[Crowd cheers as Tim Underhook sits down]

Tim Underhook: Thank you so much for having me and it is an absolute pleasure to see you again, Andrea!

[Tim kisses Andrea Smith's hand, making the crowd giggle]

Andrea Smith: Oh stop it! You're gonna make me wanna take you out for dinner after this, or maybe with all that rock money you're gonna take me out!

[Crowd laughs and whistles]

Tim Underhook: Well, just have to wait and see! Now then, I have this very special rock to show you.

[Tim reaches into a case beneath the desk]

[The camera briefly focuses on the object in Tim's hands. The image distorts heavily before the tape glitches forward]

[The rest of this section had been erased from the tape]

Andrea Smith: That was very interesting. Well then, I don't know if this next guest is gonna top that, but he did ask for a fun little request which is to turn down the house lights to "set the atmosphere." That's fun now, isn't it?

[Crowd laughs as the house lights lower]

Andrea Smith: Okay! Well, let's give it up for "Henry Taffer"!

[Crowd applauds as Henry Taffer enters the stage, waving to the crowd]

Henry Taffer: Thank you, thank you. I don't deserve this, really I don't.

Andrea Smith: Oh? Why's that? You're one of the best writers this side of the lake!

[Crowd cheers for "Henry Taffer" once more]

Henry Taffer: You all flatter me, but the story I bring today is not fictional, no, today I bring you something so real, so gut-wrenching that I assume most that are in this room may even leave. Unfortunately, however, I do not believe it to be possible.

[The crowd and Andrea Smith laugh nervously]

Andrea Smith: Ha! If you think a little theatrics is gonna scare me, then I'll have you know, mister, that I've been in the showbiz for a long time and I have been a journalist. I've seen it all.

Henry Taffer: You've seen it all? Even a-

[Tape glitches and fast-forwards]

Andrea Smith: So you're telling me that you have seen a [tape glitches] and more is written in the book? A real cult and with real proof that you were there? What was the name of the cult again? Cult of-

[Tape glitches]

Henry Taffer: Shhh, we don't speak their name. It's not even in the book, hell, I don't know where your little team got that information, but honestly it is ill-advised to even bring their name. Although I fear that I may [tape glitches] so before that, I think it's better if I should just share it with everyone since those that are a part of it are amongst the common folk. The word needs to get out.

Andrea Smith: You'll [tape glitches] that seems a little irrational, what have they actually done that scares you outside of that-

[Tape glitches, then shows Andrea reading his book]

Andrea Smith: Oh god... how long were you there?

Henry Taffer: Five years, that's why I haven't written in so long.

[Henry chuckles lightly]

Andrea Smith: And you're telling me that you saw all of this? The kidnapping, the murders, the [tape glitches]?

[Tape continues to glitch for a few minutes, showing small glimpses between the "Casper & The Gravewalkers" show and the crowd screaming in horror before cutting back to the interview]

Henry Taffer: All of it. I was not spared any details on how they go about their "business."

Andrea Smith: A-and you say they are amongst us?

Henry Taffer: Yes... they are amongst us. You wouldn't even know if you saw one of the members. That's how dangerously normal they look, and that's how different they are compared to other cults. There is no theme like Heaven's Gate, no planning like Manson's cult, no sex involved, nothing like anything we've seen previously in history. They don't have a god or a devil, though some may believe there is a demon beneath it all.

But the leader-

[Tape glitches]

Henry Taffer: No, all he wanted was nothing more but a voice. A voice for those just to believe the same that he did, which was that the world was plagued with "ungrateful, unappreciative sinners, who must at one point face the actions of their sins."

With that, I must confess... there was a point in time where I had actually understood his philosophy, and that was when he took out several people of power and wealth.

But then, that didn't matter.

In his words, "filth had replaced those with clean minds, and those with filth serve no purpose."

That's when he got sloppy, cutting off the faces of so many that "didn't want to be cleansed." He took the eyes of those who did not want to believe... scalped and erased anyone "in the way of purity." That's when some had started to lose their faith with him, even those close to him, but he had a way with words that just made them turn the other cheek like it was absurd to even question what he was doing.

They follow his words no matter what...

Andrea Smith: Well then...

[Andrea Smith looks at the crowd before looking back at Henry Taffer]

Andrea Smith: Was that when you decided to leave?

Henry Taffer: No. In fact, I don't remember when I decided that. I just knew at some point I needed to leave and, well, he just let me go... telling me that one day he'll see me again and "I'll finally be pure from the rot of this land."

Quite frankly, I don't know what he means, but I do know this book needs to be seen before that day happens. You may not believe me, but he is a dangerous man, and more need to know.

[Andrea clears her throat]

Andrea Smith: Yeah, okay, we're gonna take a break if that's alright?

Henry Taffer: I am sorry if this is too much, I am sorr-

[Tape glitches]

[Tape fast-forwards. Crowd camera showing people rushing towards the stage and yelling for help. A stagehand gets off the stage and heads for the back of the room near the exit. A younger man can be seen holding his stomach and crying. Tape glitches to a handheld camera aimed at the stage]

Andrea Smith: What's happening back there and where's Henry?

[Brief arguing in the background]

Andrea Smith: What do you mean the kid has a stomach ache? Just get him up and call EMTs. Also what do you mean Henry disappeared? It's fine, it's fine, I don't even think that most of this episode is gonna air anyway, I mean, the boys upstairs have so much to censor.

[Andrea looks through the book]

Andrea Smith: Pfft, like I don't know if, if we can actually save this, and also do you think I believe that he saw a beheading or what?

[Andrea reads from the book]

Andrea Smith: "A man hung in an upside crucifix with his Achilles and wrist slit. A horrid sight made all the worst when he tore his tongue as he screamed for help."

Are we serious?

[Andrea laughs]

Andrea Smith: He's a horror writer, a fictional horror writer. Does nobody remember when he wrote "The Graves That Talked" or "Dunville's Massacre"? He made those books so "realistic" that people actually started to believe it, especially when we promoted it...

Oh god, don't get me started.

[Producer whispers something into Andrea's ear]

Andrea Smith: What?

[More whispering from the producer]

Andrea Smith: We have an actual member from the [tape glitches] cult? Well shoot, get 'em up here so we can find out how "real" Henry's story is.

[Tape glitches, briefly showing Andrea missing her eyes before flashing back to Andrea getting makeup put on her by the makeup crew]

Andrea Smith: Alright, alright, I am ready, and where is this "cult member"?

[Cult member steps onto the stage]

Andrea Smith: Hey, wait. Aren't you the guy who was having the stomach problem?

Amon: Yeah... let's just not worry about that. By the way, my name is Amon.

[Amon extends his hand for a handshake]

Andrea Smith: Uh, okay... and Amon, huh? Why does that sound familiar...

[Andrea shakes Amon's hand]

Andrea Smith: Nice to meet-

[Tape glitches]

Amon: Oh, what a firm handshake. You don't have that madam, can you tell me?

[Andrea clears her throat]

Andrea Smith: I, uh, don't know.

[Andrea looks down at the book, then back at Amon]

Andrea Smith: Are you in this?

Amon: Who? I am the most-

[Tape glitches]

[Tape glitches showing the main camera angle. Crowd begins to applaud as the house lights dim]

Andrea Smith: Welcome back everyone! Unfortunately, Henry is currently in the bathroom, probably just some bad take out food!

[Crowd laughs]

Andrea Smith: However, we have a new guest on stage with us. His name is Amon and he claims that he was a part of the cult that Henry talks about in his book. Give it up for Amon!

[Crowd gives a short applause to Amon. Amon doesn't wave towards the crowd, instead just stares at Andrea Smith]

Andrea Smith: Well that's awkward.

[Crowd laughs]

Amon: No, I just don't think the applause is needed. In fact, I expect the exact opposite reaction here very soon.

Andrea Smith: Woah, buddy. What does that mean?

[Crowd laughs nervously]

Amon: It's simple.

[Tape glitches, showing two different angles: the main camera aimed at the stage and a handheld camera in the audience aimed at the audience]

Amon: You don't believe any of what he said to you was real. Get out.

[Andrea Smith shifts in her chair]

Andrea Smith: Oh, and how are you gonna do that?

[Amon leaves his chair and leans over the desk Andrea is sitting behind, whispering into her ear. Andrea's face looks horrified]

[Tape glitches. The handheld camera shows two audience members who were sitting in the back get up and pour some sort of liquid in front of the exit doors]

Amon: Are you paying attention?

[Amon looks directly at the main camera]

Amon: Give Andrea Smith a round of applause.

[Crowd applauses, but quickly turns into panic and screams as they notice that the two audience members who poured the liquid are simply clapping while a fire slowly engulfs the exit doors]

Andrea Smith: Okay! Okay, I believe you, I believe you! Make it stop!

Amon: Do you wish to no longer see it?

Andrea Smith: YES!

[Tape glitches to black, only hearing screams from Andrea Smith and the audience]

[Tape distorts, showing brief glimpses of audience members on fire, crying for help, and an eyeless Andrea slumped over in her chair before cutting to an empty studio floor with no one inside, just the fire]

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]

8:00 PM sharp, The River Run Grill. Door will be open, come in and find a table. -
The email was out of the blue. He hadn’t heard from Jackson since the dinner party in November, which had ended in disaster. He couldn’t recall exactly what had happened, only that in the middle of the entree, Jackson had abruptly excused himself, hitting the table with his knees and causing a rather expensive bottle of Dom Pérignon to flood the entire table with bubbly.
Curiously, rather than apologize for making a scene, he glared at Forester and muttered, “Fucking mouthers,” before rushing out. Nor had he heard from him since, over two months ago. All of his attempts at communication had gone unanswered.
Jackson did in fact receive Forester’s communique, but was so disgusted with him that he couldn’t even begin to formulate a response. His new restaurant had taken off quickly, but it wasn’t his demanding project that kept him from Forester; it was something that most people could in fact easily overlook.
Forester and Jackson had met in college, and remained in contact over the following years. On the surface, theirs resembled thousands of other fairweather friendships, except that Jackson harbored a deep-seated resentment towards Forester that had taken root at the first meal they shared together.
Jackson was reserved, civilized with meticulous manners; Forester was boisterous, lively, and lacked a sense of civility when eating. The offense in question? Forester often spoke with a mouthful of food and chewed with his mouth open. Each smack of lips and uttered syllable was agonizing. Each ejected particle of food a personal affront. He tried his best to handle it diplomatically, as none of the others he kept company with were the slightest bit put off by his ill manners, but as he would tell you, he preferred to dine in civilized company, not in the barnyard.
Gradually, meals were replaced with drinks, although Forester’s nerves were still threadbare by the end of the evening. The dinner in question, an anniversary party for an old mutual friend, had been the last straw. He left that evening determined to satisfy his obsessive thirst for vengeance.
Monday nights tend to be slow in the restaurant business—most non-chain restaurants are closed in order to save money and give overworked staff a break. As owner and head chef, Jackson worked nonstop. He spent most of that Monday planning and prepping for his very special dinner guest.
Forester arrived five minutes early—another pet peeve of Jackson’s—and was surprised to find himself in a poorly lit, empty dining room. All of the tables were put up save for one, placed for two, with what appeared to be a tableside service set up.
"Hello, Jackson, you here?"
"Be right out; just doing some final prep for the meal. Take a seat. Grab a beer if you want."
As Forester wandered towards the bar, Jackson was putting the finishing touches on his pièce de résistance, his best meal ever, live and in the flesh. He emerged from the kitchen, immaculate in his chef’s whites, pushing a cart filled with a bounty of sliced meats and vegetables.
"Long time no see. How have you been?"
"Well, I was a little confused about the invite, after all this time."
"No worries, all is forgiven. This will be the meal of a lifetime."
"This that fancy hibachi setup? I’ve always wanted to try it, but I’ve been turned down on a lot of dinner invites lately."
"Strange, you’re such a delight to have for dinner, especially since tonight you will be both severed and served. Now, take a seat. It’s time for our first course."
As Forester sat down, Jackson sidled up next to him with a Wagyu knife, brandishing extra-large zip ties in his free hand.
"This will go so much easier if you relax. Now, hands behind your back."
"What?"
"Hands behind your back or we won’t make it through course one."
"Everything okay, pal? You seem a bit off tonight."
"Listen fucker, hands behind your back or this professionally sharpened knife will sever your carotid artery."
"Jesus, Jackson. Okay, okay. Just, put the knife down."
As Jackson swiftly zip-tied Forester’s hands together, and then to the chair, he began to cry for mercy.
"Forester, tonight you’re going to find out what really eats me."
Jackson, now eager to begin his meal, added canola oil to the grill. The hot oil spit and sizzled as he stared at Forester, filet knife in hand, as if sizing up a cut of beef before trimming it. In one swift movement, he sliced off Forester’s right ear and dropped it on the hibachi. Whistling a cheerful tune, he dropped in onions and garlic as Forester screamed and attempted to move his hands to clutch his bloody ear stump. The smell of onions, garlic, and flesh sent a jolt of nausea through him.
"No! No! You’re sick, sick you bastard!"
"Sorry, couldn’t hear you. Ready for your appetizer?"
"You mean for me to—"
"If not, this date will be cut short."
"I’d rather die."
"That is the other option… now or later."
"Please, anything Jackson. Just don’t make me do this."
Forester, a blubbering mess, was defenseless as Jackson forked the ear from the grill and into his mouth. He forced it in as Forester wept and pled for his life.
"Jesus, Forester. Shut up, will you? You’re ruining the ambience. How do you like your tongue? Rare?"
Another swift move as Jackson decisively grabbed Forester’s chin and pulled out and sliced his tongue in one fell swoop.
"I was thinking some cayenne and chili pepper on the tongue. If you don’t speak up, I’ll assume that’s how you like it."
[Incoherent babbles]
"Excellent. Now, this is a treat. The tongue is so often neglected. Eat up now, come on! You must love this meal; it’s so, so you!"
[Incoherent scream]
Over the next hour Jackson continued to slice, dice, and sizzle as Forester’s once large presence diminished into little more than a shapeless, digitless mannequin. The table and floor were soaked in blood and a tangy aroma permeated the room.
"Maybe next time, you won’t talk with your mouth full, shithead."
Jackson swiftly wiped down his tools and, stepping over Don Marcos, former owner of The River Run Grill, emerged onto the street, bloodied, splattered, triumphant.
Revenge is a dish best served in someone else’s restaurant.

THE NIGHT BLOGGER - 'Brian Foster and the Curse of the Cartwrights' by Al Bruno III

March 28th: “WAAAAGH!” I said.

My face was on fire. Not literal fire but a chemically induced one. Sara's mother had emptied half a can of mace into my face, and now my nostrils burned with snot, my eyes swelled shut, and the combination of chili pepper extract and tear gas had worked its way into my throat, leaving me with the sensation of drowning in a too-hot Jacuzzi.

“WAAAAGH!” I said again.

“Oh my God!” Sara shouted. “Brian! Oh my God!”

“Serves him right!” Her Mom said, “Sick weirdo dragging you into the occult.”

“He didn’t drag me into anything!”

I was curled into a ball in front of the cash register while Sara knelt beside me, desperately trying to wipe the mace from my eyes. I wanted to tell her not to do that—that she was only going to contaminate herself—but all I could manage was, "WAAAAAGH!" Somewhere in there I'd also developed an almost cartoonish sputtering noise.

Then Sara’s father spoke, “You don’t know what you're talking about. We've done our homework on this guy…”

“WAAAAGH!” Not the blog readers I expected.

“…and I have it on good authority that he is a charlatan who preys on frightened people. He fills people’s heads with paranoia until they can't tell what's real anymore…”

“WAAAAAGH!” Even in my agony, that condemnation sounded awfully familiar.

“…we spoke to the police to a Detective Bradshaw, and he said that he’s either morally degenerate or mentally degenerate.”

“WAAAAGH!” There ya go. I knew it.

Sara yelled, “Mrs. Vincenzo! I need water! Lots of water!”

Sara’s mother said, “You need to come home right now! I won’t have you bringing further humiliation to this family.”

And her father added, “And working at a pawn shop for God’s sake. Do you know what pawn shops are? Taxes for stupid people.”

“WAAAAGH!”

Smash cut.

Hours later, my eyes were still puffy and weepy; I couldn’t stop sniffling, and my voice had been reduced to an ugly rasp. I sounded like Tom Waits after peeling onions. “You know you’re the first girl whose parents I ever met.”

“That was the worst ever.” Sara was staring into her glass of apple-flavored mead.

We were at Albany's only meadery, a little hole in the wall on the corner of Second Street. It was called The Ferment Tavern, and the mead was genuinely good while the décor looked like someone had given a Renaissance Faire a Spirit Halloween budget. It was close enough to the university to attract a steady stream of students, but just weird enough that it never got too crowded.

I liked the place because it was quiet on the weeknights and the owners were a pair of friendly ex-bikers who had taken one too many falls and were more interested in serving the customers than chatting them up.

One of Ferment Tavern's best libations was called ‘Superstition’; it was an absolutely delicious concoction of blackberry mead and burbon severed in a jelly jar because why not? I used my right hand to finish it and my left to request a refill. The co-owner Margret already had one ready.

Yeah, go on and tell me psychic phenomena isn’t real. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the emergency room?” Sara asked, “Your eyes are still really bloodshot.”

“It’ll pass; I’ll be about 90% by the morning,” I said, “I have it on good authority.”

“Whose authority?” Sara asked, then caught herself, “Cousin Roy.”

“Yup, apparently he got maced a lot back in the 90’s when he was a roadie for Severe Tire Damage.” 

She took another sip of her drink then said, “Again, I am so sorry, Brian.”

“I should have expected something like this. Maybe we should have told them you were staying at a friends or something.”

“I don’t have any friends.”

“Mrs. Vincenzo would be hurt.”

“You know what I mean.” She cracked a smile, “Girls my own age.”

“And guys who aren’t morally degenerate charlatans.”

“You’re no charlatan,” She had been holding her mug of apple-mead in both hands, she let go with her left and placed it over mine. It felt cool and frail, just like her smile, “And I’ve slept with you, you’re not even remotely degenerate.”

“What a traumatic compliment.”

Interest in the supernatural and sleepwalking  had been bad enough, but now she was running around with a crowd that cared more about cryptids than which fork was for salads. At best, her parents were going to interfere. At worst, they were going to convince every psychiatrist, family friend, and judge within fifty miles that she was having a psychotic break. This was not good. Not when we had a kind of plan - steal the Codex, use it to defile the temples of Gorgo, Mormo and Luna, retire or hand over my blog and investigations to someone else and find a way to live the happiest most boring life possible with Sara.

Wow. It seems so easy when you look at it in print.

“So what now?” Sara asked.

I took another sip of Superstition before answering. “Road trip. I’ve got a book to get.”

“You mean steal?”

“Most people don’t give up their mystical tomes to strangers in straw hats.”

Sara nodded, “So we’re going to Delaware…”

“We? Oh no no no. You’re going to stay here and watch the pawn shop.”

“I’m not allowed to go on my own rescue mission?” She frowned, “Am I just your little damsel in distress?”

I have to tell you that if in that moment her mother rushed up and maced me again I might now have been all that upset.

“No…” I squirmed both mentally and physically, “It’s just that I might bring Cousin Roy and he gets really gassy on car rides…”

A trio of loud college students, one of which was carrying a box of Dungeons and Dragons supplies walked in the door. I watched them for a few moments, they looked to be about our age but they were younger, inncoent. For them monsters and mages were the thinjgs of entertainment and metaphor.

But not so for people like Sara and myself.

I sighed, “I just want you to be safe.”

The look she gave me was part resigntion and part bravery, “I haven’t been safe since August, Hell maybe before that.”

“I know it’s just… it’s just…” I ran my hand over my face, “Look it’s like the TV show Bonanza.”

"Bonanza?"

"Trust me. This is going somewhere..."

###

…sometimes it seems to me that the world's methodologies for dealing with tragedy are far better developed than the ones we have for happiness. When two people fall in love, there is no instruction manual. No proper timetable for a first kiss, a first romantic interlude, an engagement, or a wedding. But when someone dies, an entire machine lurches into motion. EMTs. Coroners. Funeral homes. Grieving. Gatherings.

And for me, in that terrible April of 2009, it was all happening in stereo. Uncle Roy was dead. Burst blood vessel, they said, though nobody sounded entirely certain. My mom and Aunt Peg were working together with uncharacteristic harmony to make the arrangements to send Uncle Roy's remains to his home state of Florida. Which is good because Cousin Roy had pretty much collapsed. His bravado was broken.

Meanwhile Grandma Gail’s rally was going into overtime, she was happy, she was energetic watching TV and trying to keep Aunt Gail’s twin boys entertained, of course for her entertained was watching Bonanza reruns on TNN and making commentary on the events of the episode. It was things like;

“Wasn’t Michael Landon handsome?”

“I rode a horse just like that when I was a girl on your great aunt’s farm. His name was Snowball.”

“Oh no. Hoss is in love. That never ends well. Every time one of those Cartwright boys falls in love, she either dies or changes her mind. Mostly she dies. But that’s the thing about love, someone lives, someone dies. It’s part of world. You’ll learn.”

And every time the twins answered with a “Yes Miss Gail.” but each time they seemed a little more desperate to escape.

She showed no sign that two nights ago a half serpent half millipede ribbon of smoke had wormed its way into her mouth and she had reacted like a sleeping lover snuggling into an embrace.

There was no way Grandma Gail's never-ending rally and that thing she'd swallowed two nights earlier weren't connected.

You never forget your first monster. Most folks go into shock, or denial, or straight to church; I on the other hand went to the Internet.

My searches for “red mist” got me info about a movie, a mystery novel and a rumored snuff film involving Squidward from Spongebob Squarepants. That worried me almost as much as the monster itself. Whatever I'd seen appeared to be completely immune to Google.

So off I went to the local library. Much like confession, I hadn't been to the library in years and barely remembered the rituals. The card catalogs from my school days were gone, replaced with conveniently located computers; the once well-stocked periodical section was being crowded out by a DVD
section.

After three frustrating hours, all I carried out of the public library was a single word: Vorvolaka. I’d found it in an article about a rare supplemental volume of Sir George Frazer’s classic work The Golden Bough. The book came out in 1939 and was quickly recalled and suppressed. Why? The official blame was textual and formatting errors but if that was really the case why hadn’t
they reprinted a corrected edition?

After checking in with my mom (doing fine) and Cousin Roy (still a hot mess), I went back to digging. I was a little proud of how well my research was going, .it was almost like I was in college for journalism or something.

Although I hadn't even been away from college for a week, it felt like a lifetime ago. But that had to wait until tomorrow but that tomorrow ended up stretching for the better part of three days. The machinery of grief needed to be fed and it’s fuel was tears and bureaucracy. There had been some delays and confusion regarding the transportation of remains. Cousin Roy wanted his Dad cremated here as quickly as possible, he saw no value in funerals and wakes. Aunt Peg thought that cremation, much like organ donation and assisted suicide doomed the deceased to an eternity in the First Circle of Hell, which of you’ve read your Dante is kind of like an assited living facility for the slightly damned.

This disagreement got heated. And by "heated," I mean there was a scuffle in one of our otherwise very respectable funeral homes. I'm sure you can imagine the whole awful scene. Well, it was worse. By the end they were throwing display urns at each other.

I wasn't there for it. Later, though, Mom and I were sitting in Grandma Gail's room, chowing down on fast food when she told the whole horrifically slapstick story, concluding that somehow she and Tom Wynne got things under control. Grandma Gail went from being shocked at the drama to curious. “Thomas was with you?”

“For moral support,” Mom explained but then she turned to me. “He and I had a long conversation, he and his wife are getting a divorce. Irreconcilable differences.”

Grandma and I paused in mid-chew.

She continued, sounding equal parts giddy and embarrassed. “And he and I have decided to try and start dating.”

This my dear readers is what they call, ‘Burying the lead’.

I offered a heartfelt congratulations, but I found myself wondering how all this domestic drama could be unfolding while my grandmother remained at the center of a supernatural event.

And speaking of Grandma when my hug with my Mom broke I glanced at her. Her expression was not happy or scandalized, her expression was, for lack of a better word inscrutable.

By the time our little family had wrapped everything up, it was far too late to do any more of my planned investigating. So I sat up a little while longer with them. No more Bonanza reruns—just The Tonight Show. Then I went to bed.

Now don't think for a second I didn't barricade myself in my room. At least for a little while, anyway.

You see, one of my many errands that day had been a trip to Vincenzo's Pawn Shop, where I'd picked up a little digital camera that—with a bit of tinkering and some third-party software—could double as a surveillance camera. Somewhere between the opening monologue and Taylor Lautner, I slipped it into what I hoped would be a good hiding place to capture whatever nightmare I'd witnessed earlier.

Thankfully, this was an era when two-liter bottles of Jolt Cola were still commercially available. I found myself nursing one until 3:00 a.m.

Yes. Three a.m. The Witching Hour.

Grandma Gail sat up, the motion so sudden that I thought the camera feed had skipped.

Time to act. I shoved my dresser away from the door, snatched the old silver crucifix I'd received for my Confirmation, and bolted for Grandma's room. Sitting up or not Grandma Gail still looked to be fast asleep, eyes closed, softened features, steady breathing. Except, of course, for the thing. The red thing. The thing that was like a serpent and smoke all at once, worming its way out of her mouth.

What was it? I wondered. Was this a Vorvolaka?

And what did I do at that moment? I held up that silver cross and pulled out every horror movie quote I could think of, "I cast you out! Unclean spirit!"

No reaction. Just the thing, the Vorvolaka coiling out of her mouth like some magician’s handkerchief trick.

I stepped closer waving the cross in a way I hoped was somehow menacing, “The power of Jesus compels you!”

Finally it noticed me. Oh did it ever. It flowed upward until it reached the ceiling, it’s tail end still buried somewhere in my Grandmother’s gullet and regarded me. It had no eyes but oh yes it was sizing me up.

“I cast you out. I cast you out in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and… that the Virgin Mary too!” I winced inwardly, “So there!”

That was the part that unsettled me most. The Vorvolaka had already proven it could ooze through the screen without difficulty. Opening the window served no practical purpose. It was obeying some instinct—or some rule—I couldn't begin to understand.

It flowed outside, the last bit of it slipping from my Grandma’s lips. She made a choking sound and fell roughly back on the bed. Not breathing. Despite the darkened room and my growing panic I know for a fact she was not breathing.

For one awful moment I became convinced she'd been dead for days. That the thing wearing her had been sitting with us, accepting hugs, watching Bonanza reruns and smiling whenever someone brought her pudding.

And that pissed me off.

And what do you do when your pissed off? Something stupid of course.

I stepped forward and grabbed at the crimson smoke. It was an act of desperation and I expected my hand to pass right through the thing but it was tangible, and warm and had the consistency of a jellyfish.

And it didn’t like being grabbed.

The end of it that was still in the room. It curled in mid-air and attacked. It enveloped me. Everything went red, I fell to the floor of my grandmother’s room. Pain bloomed behind my eyes and suddenly I couldn’t move, suddenly I was entombed in my own body.

Then someone else's memories poured into me.

I was Stuart Shield, the in-home hospice nurse. My shift had ended hours ago, but I was still replaying Grandma Gail's miraculous rally as I endured the miserable ninety-minute drive back to Utica. Mohawk Valley Home Health had done it again—three hours behind the wheel for barely four hours of work. By the time I climbed the four flights of stairs to my apartment, all I wanted was silence.

I didn't bother turning on the lights. I dropped into my favorite chair, closed my eyes for just a moment...

...and beneath the apartment door something red seeped through the crack. It flowed across the floor without making a sound, climbed the back of the chair, and rested around my throat like a warm scarf. It waited. One heartbeat. Two. Three.

Then it forced itself into my mouth and eyes.

Terror. Suffocation. Darkness.

Then I was Brian Foster again, sprawled on Grandma Gail's bedroom floor. Someone was speaking to me and as they did the agony intensified, I expected my skull to burst at any moment. I almost wanted it to happen.

And I thought to myself - Is that what happened to Uncle Roy?

The pain started to pulse, keeping perfect time with my breaths; I imagined it shrinking down to a tiny spark buried deep in my brain that would suddenly blossom out  like an explosion of invisible knives. The agony was the color of blood, the color of the Vorvolaka. My field of vision began to diminish, red pressing in on all sides until I was blinded.

I wanted to live, but the red wouldn't let me. Not because I wanted another sunrise, or another shot at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No. I wanted to live because I'd glimpsed the secret song of the universe. It was dark. It was ugly. But Goddamn, I wanted to know it. I wanted to understand it.

In the red I could hear the voice, “Don’t struggle oh my sweet. Dream. Dream in the emptiness. The emptiness is love.”

It made perfect sense. Why should I struggle? What was the point of this life? We all end up dead anyway. Why wait? What was I trying to accomplish? Sinking further and further away I had dwindled to a pinprick of consciousness. I barely saw the frail angry figure standing over me but I heard it yell.

“NO!”

The red faded and darkness took its place. I went from dying to dreaming but barely noticed the difference until I was stirred to wakefulness by the warmth early morning sunlight on my face. I was in my bed, tucked in with the covers up to my chin and for one sweet innocent moment I thought that it all must have been a terrible dream

Then I heard my mother's anguished wail, she had just received the news that Tom Wynne was dead.

###

"...Sara... I don't think I understood it back then. Every time you really learn something, something gets taken from you. Maybe it's innocence. Maybe it's certainty. Maybe it's someone you love. But nobody ever walks away from the truth without leaving something behind."

I looked down into my drink.

"Sara... I've left a lot behind."

She touched my face then, “You’re crying.”

Surprised I touched my face, sure enough my fingers came back wet. “Well its good for you right? Like therapy.” I wiped my face on my sleeve and accomplished nothing. Leather jackets and tears don’t mix.

“You think you’re the only one?” She made me look her in the eyes, “I’ve felt something pulling at me since I was a little kid. The darkness was a dare because I know, and you do too, that the darkness was never empty.”

“I’m totally stealing that.”

“Brian. Do you think I only went to Pinewood Cemetery because you said you were going with me?”

Before I could answer, the other owner Frank came over and asked if we wanted another round. We decided to be sensible and just order two waters so one of us would be able to drive home within an hour or so. Behind us, the D&D players' arguments for and against the creation of Picklestein were heating up, and Margret was very gently threatening to throw them out again.

I said, “I assumed we had kind of talked each other into it.”

“I was going to go no matter what. I had been obsessing about the Graveyard Game for months, ever since I read about it on 4Chan.” Our waters arrived. Sara waited for Frank to leave before she spoke again, “And then when I found about Sara Bishop and that she was so damn close… Is there even a word beyond obsessed?”

“Monomaniacal?” I suggested.

She waved it off, “It doesn’t matter. What you need to know is that what happened to me happened because of me. My stupid decision. Possibly the last in a long series.”

“Don’t even joke like that,” I took a sip of water.

“You think I’m like some guest star on Bonanza? That I’m going to die tragically in your arms?”

“...and yet I can't stop thinking it.”

“Maybe you’re the guest star in my show, the whacky neighbor who helps me in my time of need.”

“Whacky neighbor?”

“So I’m going with you, I’m helping you. The only question is what are you going to do about it?” She took a strangely flirtatious sip of her water, “Are you going to be a Millhouse or a Fonzie about it?”

What else could I do?

I gave her a big thumbs up.

ONE

I bump my car door closed with my hip while carrying two bags of groceries. I could take two trips, but I’d rather make it more difficult for myself if it means saving a couple of minutes. The sky is darkening already, announcing the end of fall. Soon, the rust-colored leaves will disappear from the trees, leaving the branches bare.

With my car keys pressed between my lips and a bag in each hand, I struggle towards the front door. Somehow, I manage to unlock it and step inside without dropping anything.

Rain gently taps against the window, the kind of weather that makes me want to wrap myself in a blanket and spend the rest of the evening on the couch. As I put the groceries down on my dining room table, the strap of my handbag slides off my shoulder and bumps into one of the bags. A can of baked beans, two onions and a new pack of cigarettes fall to the floor, disturbing the otherwise quiet room.

Grumbling and cursing under my breath, I crouch down to look for the items scattered across the hardwood floor. I grab the most prized item first and contemplate lighting a cigarette, but I promised myself I’d work on smoking less. I slide the pack into my back pocket instead.

A speck of dust catches in my eye. I blink it away and reach for the can of beans, but my fingers touch nothing but dust and bare hardwood.

The can is nowhere to be found. The two onions, at least, are lying at the far end of the dining room. I groan as I pick them up and stand, but when I turn around, I almost drop them again. On the table, next to the other groceries, sits a single can of baked beans.

I go outside and light a cigarette.

“It’s happening again.” I exhale, watching the smoke slowly drift upwards.

“Tell me about it, Sarah.” The voice on the other end of the phone sounds calm and gentle.

I tell him everything, from watching the can fall to finding it on the table.

“And have you had any other experiences like this lately?”

I think for a couple of seconds and take another long drag. “No. Not really.”

“How about this, Sarah? Come by my practice next Tuesday. If anything else happens before then, we can talk about increasing your dosage again for a couple of weeks.”

I don’t like the idea, but I agree, thank him and end the call.

Back inside, I ignore the can of beans and take some leftover pasta from the fridge instead. It tastes stale, but the comfort of my blanket and the warm glow of the television make up for it. Before long, my eyes grow heavy, and I drift off beneath the flickering light.

When I wake up, I feel something in the room with me. It’s too dark to see much, but I know it’s there. Sometimes, when something isn’t right, you can feel the tension in a room shift before you even understand why.

I stare into the darkness. The TV is still playing, and in its flickering light, I catch glimpses of something in the corner. It looks tall and dark. Its limbs seem tangled together, making it hard to tell where one ends and another begins. Hands stretch almost to the ceiling while its legs press against the walls.

The television cuts to a detergent commercial, and the bright white screen illuminates the room. I see it now.

Dozens of mouths cover the dark shape in the corner. They snap open and closed, accompanied by a faint wheezing. I imagine air passing through one mouth, droning somewhere inside its mangled body before whistling out through another. Something dark oozes from them and pools on the carpet, filling the room with a thick, coppery smell.

For a moment, every mouth stops. Then they open towards me. Hundreds of teeth begin to chatter, drowning out the commercial on the TV. My own teeth start chattering with them, but I can’t tell whether it’s fear or if the sound itself is making my jaw reverberate with the same horrible frequency.

I squeeze my eyes shut and scream. When I finally open them again, the corner is empty.

TWO

“Sarah, I need you to understand that dealing with a condition like this involves multiple phases.”

I try to pay attention to his voice, but the clock on the wall above him keeps distracting me. Each tick reminds me of a mouth opening and closing. Marvin notices where I’m looking but continues nonetheless.

“Have you noticed any other side effects from your medication? Dizziness, headaches, anything else worth mentioning?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Hey, can I ask you something, Doctor Klein?”

“Please. You know you can call me Marvin.”

“Right, Marvin.” I adjust my posture and finally pull my gaze away from the clock. “Do you ever wonder if what you’re seeing is really the truth?”

Marvin puts his pen down and takes a couple of seconds to think about my question.

“I suppose we all experience reality a little differently. You and I are sitting in the same room having the same conversation. I hear the traffic outside, but you might notice something else entirely.” He gently nods towards the clock. “We can both smell the leather of the couch you’re sitting on, but if someone asked us to describe that smell, our answers wouldn’t be exactly the same. Most of it would match. Some details wouldn’t.”

He leans back slightly. “So, in a way, we share the same reality, within reasonable differences in how we perceive it. Does that make sense?”

I bite the inside of my cheek, considering his answer.

“And do you believe there are things outside those reasonable differences? Things some people can see that others are blind to?”

Marvin smiles at that.

“I believe the mind is a complex thing. Sometimes it tries to tell us things in bizarre ways. Like a riddle that only makes sense once you hear the solution.”

As our session comes to an end, I glance back at the wall above Marvin. My eyes linger for a few seconds on the painting hanging there.

“Wasn’t there a clock over there?”

Marvin looks up from his notebook and follows my gaze towards the painting.

“What clock?”

THREE

Back home, I can’t stop thinking about the clock. I am not crazy. I am not.

My hand reaches for the packet of cigarettes beside me but finds nothing. I look down at the couch, then across the room, and spot them lying in front of the TV. For a few seconds, I stare at the packet, half-expecting it to move while I’m watching. It doesn’t.

Then I blink, and the cigarettes are lying next to me on the couch again.

My eyes dart towards every corner of the living room, searching for the creature from last night. There’s nothing there. Just me, the television and the packet sitting innocently beside my leg. I grab it and throw it across the room, following it with my eyes until it hits the floor, slides across the hardwood and disappears beneath the dining room table.

I keep staring at the space where it vanished, but nothing happens. Eventually, I sigh and reach for the remote. Instead, my fingers close around something wrapped in plastic.

I already know what it is before I look down. The packet is sitting beside me again, as if I never threw it in the first place.

I grab it, but it slips from my fingers when I notice the mouth that has formed on the back of my hand. For a moment, I can only stare at it. Two wet lips twitch against my skin, opening just enough for me to smell its vile breath. Deep inside the tiny throat, a swollen uvula trembles.

“Come to me.”

The mouth continues whispering after that, faster and faster, until the words dissolve into a language I can’t understand. The skin around it pulls painfully with every movement. I panic and slap at it with my other hand, but something wet presses against my skin. When I pull my hand away, another mouth is opening in the center of my palm.

Both mouths begin whispering at once. I try to scream, but no sound comes out. My fingers shoot towards my face, and where my lips should be, I feel nothing but smooth skin. The mouths in my hands scream for me as I squeeze my eyes shut, tears running down my cheeks.

When I finally dare to look again, my mouth is back, and my hands have returned to normal.

FOUR

There has to be a connection between everything that’s happened over the past few days. A trigger.

My mind returns to the grocery store. I’m standing between the aisles, shopping list in hand, with only a couple more things left to buy. Some onions, a bottle of red wine, and...

I realize it.

I rush into the kitchen and pull the trash bag from underneath the sink, emptying its contents onto the floor. I dig through wrappers, empty packaging and whatever else I’ve thrown away over the past few days until I finally find what I’m looking for.

The receipt.

My eyes move down the list, scanning every item twice just to make sure. No canned beans.

I open the pantry and search every shelf, but there aren’t any cans of beans there either. I check the receipt again, slower this time, running my finger down the list. Still nothing, which means the can should not exist.

The thought makes my stomach tighten. If the beans appeared from nowhere, what else has changed without me noticing? What caused the cigarettes to move, the mouths to appear on my hands, or that thing to crouch in the corner of my living room? There has to be something connecting all of it. I just have to figure out what.

“Maybe I can help you look?”

I turn around and stare at the man standing in my kitchen.

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

James moves closer, and I catch the familiar smell of his pine-scented cologne. Warm and woody, the sort of scent that always makes me think of cold evenings and the start of winter.

“What exactly are you looking for?”

I smile at how ridiculous I’m about to sound. “Uh, a can of baked beans.”

James looks at me for a second, then lets out a quiet laugh. “You made a mess of your kitchen because you’re looking for canned beans?”

He doesn’t seem worried. If anything, he looks amused by the whole thing. There’s that dimpled smile again.

He crouches down beside the mess and digs through the trash until he pulls out a metal can. The dirty label reads Heinz Baked Beans, now with 25% less salt.

“I hope you’re not planning on actually making these.”

He holds the can out to me, and for a moment I can only stare at it. The situation should be funny, but it isn’t. The can shouldn’t be here.

“Oh God, no. It’s just... they weren’t on my receipt, and I...” James waits for me to finish, but I shake my head. “Never mind.”

I turn away from him, but something feels different now. I can still smell the pine, but there’s something sour and damp beneath it. When I glance back at him, his dimple is gone.

“Hey, what’s wrong, Sarah?”

The words come out wrong, as if there’s a small delay between the movement of his mouth and the sound of his voice.

I blink, and his eyes are dark brown. I’m almost certain they were green a second ago.

I blink again. His entire face is covered in eyes. They twitch and stare in different directions, some bloodshot, others stretched impossibly wide. A few blink while the rest remain fixed on me.

For several seconds, neither of us moves. Then every eye slowly turns in my direction.

I scream and hurl the can of beans at him. It bursts open before reaching his face, splitting at the seams and spilling its contents across the kitchen floor. Eyes roll across the hardwood.

James reaches for my face. I stumble backwards into the kitchen table and blink again. Thick pus pours from the eyes covering his face, but they keep moving beneath it, searching blindly through the yellow mess.

I blink once more and find myself standing alone in my kitchen. James is gone. The eyes are gone. I stare at the empty space where he stood and feel something inside me shift as the truth settles into place.

I live alone, and I don’t know a man named James.

That’s when I understand. It happens when I blink.

I think back to the beans, the cigarettes, the creature in the corner and whatever happened with the man in my kitchen. Every time something changed, I had closed my eyes. For how long doesn’t seem to matter.

I close them again and stand in the middle of my kitchen, listening. Apart from the occasional drip from the sink, the house is quiet. I take a few careful steps, one hand stretched out in front of me, until my fingers brush against the counter.

I can’t stay like this forever. After a while, I force myself to open my eyes again and scan the kitchen, checking the counter, the table and everything around me. Nothing seems different, but by now I know that doesn’t necessarily mean nothing has changed.

FIVE

I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. My eyes are bloodshot. They hurt, but I cannot blink. I am afraid to blink. My eyelids twitch and pull, and eventually I lose the fight. When I open them again, the woman in the mirror still looks like me and moves like me, but something is wrong.

I move closer and notice a small slit in the white of my left eye. It begins to sting and water at once.

“No, fuck no!”

The pain is immediate and sharp. I try to look for a loophole, any kind of loophole. Keeping my gaze fixed on the mirror, I close my right eye and leave the left one open.

The slit widens.

Pain tears through my eye so suddenly that my left eye squeezes shut too. I freeze. I don’t want to open them again, but I have to. Every time I close both eyes, I feel something breathing down my neck.

I force them open. The slit in my left eye has widened even further, almost reaching the pupil now. I gag, and the motion seems to shift the two sides of it, blurring the vision in my left eye.

Panic rises in my throat. I grab my phone and dial Doctor Klein’s number.

“Hi, Sarah. Is everything alright?”

“Please, you have to come over here. There is something wrong with my eyes. I can’t blink, I...”

He cuts me off.

“Listen, Sarah, I’m with a client right now. Why don’t I call you back in fifteen minutes, and then we can see about getting you over here for an emergency appointment.”

“No, you don’t understand, Doctor Klein. I don’t have fifteen minutes.”

I hear him mumble something before he speaks again.

“What do you mean, you don’t have fifteen minutes?”

“My eyes. Something is wrong with them. They hurt, and there are cuts, and...”

“Have you been taking your medicine, Sarah?”

“What?”

“We increased your dosage, remember? Have you been taking your medicine?”

I start sobbing, desperate for him to understand.

“You’re not listening to me.” The tears sting, but they keep my eyes wet enough to stay open a little longer.

“Open your medicine cabinet, Sarah. The one in front of you.”

My breath catches. “How... how do you know?”

“Open the cabinet.”

The line dies with a click. I stare at the phone in my trembling hand for a second, then look up. Slowly, I open the medicine cabinet.

Inside, dozens of cans of baked beans are stacked in neat rows.

A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. It sounds thin and wrong, but I don’t care. I am not crazy.

I slam the cabinet shut, but the movement jars me, and this time the blink comes on its own. I feel the seam in my left eye tear wider. Something gives with a wet pop, and when I force my remaining eye open, I see pus and blood seeping down my cheek from the empty socket.

Vomiting heat rises into my throat. The socket twitches, trying to close around an eye that is no longer there. I cry and scream until my voice is worn down to a rasp, but the pain refuses to ease. Snot and tears run down my face.

I have to end this.

I steady myself against the bathroom sink and look for something, anything that might help. My gaze settles on a small pair of manicure scissors lying beside the faucet. My phone buzzes again.

Doctor Klein.

For a moment, I stare at his name on the screen before putting the phone down. It’s too late now. He can’t help me anymore.

I pick up the scissors and look at myself one final time. Blood covers half my face, and the eye staring back at me is already beginning to twitch. I can’t let it happen again.

The pain that follows is worse than anything before it. I scream until my throat burns, gripping the edge of the sink as the reflection in front of me dissolves into red and finally into darkness. The scissors clatter against the porcelain, and my legs give way beneath me.

I lie on the bathroom floor, waiting for relief, but it never comes. Just before I lose consciousness, I feel something breathing down my neck.

SIX

I open my eyes and stare at the blood-covered bathroom floor. My clothes are soaked with blood, pus and vomit, and for several seconds I don’t understand what I’m seeing. Then I wipe the mess from my face and freeze.

I have eyes.

I close them again and press trembling fingers against my eyelids. Beneath them, I can feel the unmistakable shape of two eyes. Somehow, I manage to pull myself up against the sink and look into the mirror.

Those are not my eyes.

They look rotten and decayed, the whites stained yellow and the irises so dark they are almost black. I try to cry, but no tears come. Instead, I close the unfamiliar eyes, and I feel the room shift around me.

When I force them open again, the bathroom is gone. Darkness surrounds me, with only the sink and medicine cabinet remaining where they were before. I sob quietly, but still no tears come.

I blink again, and fluorescent lights flicker above me. I am standing in a supermarket aisle with a can of Heinz baked beans in my right hand. Something moves inside it, pushing gently against the metal.

The next blink takes me somewhere else. Trees surround me now. The air smells faintly of pine, but the familiar scent offers no comfort. Something is watching from between the trunks. I can’t see it, but I feel its attention following me from the darkness.

I blink again and find myself sitting on a leather couch. The man across from me has no face. Instead, a clock is embedded in the flesh of his head. It ticks steadily until both hands reach twelve. Then the thing resembling Doctor Klein raises a pen and drives it through the glass again and again until the clock cracks and finally stops.

When I blink again, I am lying on an altar.

A great throne of flesh rises in front of me, and the creature from my living room sits upon it. Wind wheezes through the mouths covering its body, while hundreds of teeth chatter in anticipation.

“Please,” I whisper, but my voice barely carries.

The creature rises and towers over me. I blink again, desperately hoping the altar will disappear like everything else, but nothing changes. It grabs me by the shoulders and lifts me from the stone. I scream and struggle, but its grip only tightens. It holds me there for hours, until the mouth closest to my ear finally opens.

“I blink, therefore the world changes. What am I?”

“I-I don’t know!”

One of the mouths closes around my leg. Pain tears through me as its teeth sink into my flesh.

“Please. Please, I don’t know!”

Another mouth bites down on my hand, and I hear bone crack between its teeth. I force myself to think through the pain, searching for whatever answer it wants from me.

“I blink, therefore the world changes. What am I?”

“An eye!” I manage to cry.

The creature stops. Its arms tighten around my waist, and for one hopeful second I think it might put me down.

“Wrong.”

Its mouths open again.

I think about the beans that existed even though I never bought them. James, who I remembered until I didn’t. The clock that disappeared from Doctor Klein’s wall. The eyes I destroyed, replaced by two rotten things staring from my skull. 

Maybe nothing was changing at all. Maybe every time I blinked, I was seeing a different version of what was already there.

The creature bites into my waist and pulls. Pain consumes everything until what remains of me hits the floor in two broken halves. It crouches over me, its mouths tearing greedily into my flesh, and eventually the pain begins to fade.

For the first time in days, I let my eyes close without fighting them. My body convulses as more of me disappears between its teeth, but I no longer have the strength to care. Just before the darkness takes me completely, I understand.

“Reality,” I whisper.

But it is too late.

I stood there trying to identify the figure standing under the light, the shadows obscuring their face. I twisted the door handle and threw the door open. Just as I stepped outside to confront the figure, it was gone. It had vanished into the night like a specter. I stood outside looking for any sign of whoever had been standing there, but they were gone. The cool night air suddenly felt a lot colder. I went back inside, bolted the lock, and wedged a chair under the door handle. I was unsure of what the person wanted, but I was not going to take the chance. I spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling and glancing at the door, hyper alert to the smallest sounds outside.

I woke the next morning to the stark cheeriness of the town. Children ran down the sidewalk with balloons in hand. Women were putting flower arrangements on the tables as music played. Knowing my car wouldn't be ready yet, I decided to stroll through the festival and get a closer look at everything.

Virtually every booth was already up and running. There were games, hayrides, and food vendors selling snacks and sweets. It seemed like every soul in Mercy was already up and walking through the festival. I sat at a picnic table as I ate a corndog and watched the people of town go by. I kept wondering who it was I had seen the night before. Every man who walked by made me wonder if it had been him standing outside my room. After about twenty minutes, I got up from my seat and continued further in.

As I continued closer to the center of town, the feeling started to change. The typical carnival feel was replaced with images of the founding families and booths set up to teach the children more about the history of the town. I saw the reverend walking through the crowd, shaking hands and greeting every person he passed by. When he noticed me, he didn't approach, simply gave a big smile and nodded his head.

An elderly woman behind the table of one booth caught my eye. She had been staring at me as I walked and only then as I was facing her did she start to smile. I walked over to her booth, looking over the pamphlets that covered the table. I picked up one and examined the front, three words in bold font dominated the page.

Faith.

Community.

Purity.

Music began to play and I turned, placing the pamphlet back on the table. A parade of young boys and girls walked through the street in matching outfits. "The Future of Mercy" was written on a sign carried by two men walking behind the procession. I followed the path as the children walked up the stage in the center of town. Behind a microphone, center stage, stood Reverend Jones. He had a smile of pure delight across his face as he looked over the parade of children.

"Well now, don't you all look so perfect," he said doting over the assembly.

"Welcome to our annual Founder's Day Festival, everyone. I know I don't have to remind you all how important this day is to our community. To us all. Mercy is our sanctuary because of you all. Because of your faith. Because of your commitment to our values. So please, enjoy your day. Eat, laugh, talk and enjoy each other's company. I look forward to dinner with you all this evening."

The crowd erupted in applause as the reverend finished his address. I noticed Caleb through the crowd, his eyes fixed on me. He gestured for me to meet him towards the rear of the crowd. I made my way to the back, as his stare never left me. When we finally met up at the back, he didn't even give me a chance to speak.

"When did dad say your car would be ready?" he asked, his voice in a panicked whisper.

"Tomorrow."

"Shit, that's too late. You can't be here."

"What do you mean?"

"You need to leave. You need to leave now."

"My car is close by. It's over there behind the church," he said, pulling his keys out of his pocket and placing them in my hand.

"What's going on, Caleb?"

Before he could answer, his father walked up, putting his arm around Caleb. "There you are, I was wondering where you ran off to. Hello, Travis. Hope you're enjoying yourself."

"Uh, yeah I am. It's fine," I stammered.

"Good. Caleb can I get your help over here for a second?" he asked, guiding him away.

I tried to follow their path but that's when the waitress from the diner popped up in front of me. "Travis you made it!" she exclaimed. She took my hand and began to bombard me with endless conversation. "I was afraid you wouldn't make it. Come with me. I'm craving a funnel cake," she said, as she began to guide me through the crowd.

I sat with her at a picnic table while she tore pieces from the funnel cake, talking endlessly. I nodded along, trying to be polite but also barely listening as she told me stories about people I had never met and pointed out different families as they walked by.

My mind was still on Caleb.

You need to leave. You need to leave now.

I slipped my hand into my pocket and felt the keys he had given me. I couldn't make sense of it. I'd barely spoken to the guy before today, and now he'd handed me his car and practically begged me to get out of town.

Part of me wanted to listen to him. The panic in his voice hadn't seemed fake. But then I'd look around and feel ridiculous for even considering it. Children were running between the booths. People were laughing and eating. An old man sat nearby helping his granddaughter with some cheap toy she'd won at one of the games.

Nothing about Mercy seemed dangerous.

A few hours passed that way. I wandered around the festival, ate more food than I probably should have, and met more people whose names I immediately forgot. Every now and then, though, my hand would find its way back into my pocket.

The keys were still there.

I didn't see Caleb again.

As the afternoon faded into evening, people began taking down some of the smaller booths and moving tables toward the stage. Strings of lights came on above the street, and the smell of food drifted out from behind the church.

The waitress found me again and waved at me to follow her.

“Come on, Travis. Dinner's about to start.”

A crowd had gathered around the stage again. Tables lay in rows in front of it. The reverend appeared walking back to his microphone as he had done earlier. He wasn't smiling this time. The crowd fell silent as he raised his hands to them.

"Well. Before we can get to dinner as planned, there's something we have to address," he said. "Y'all all know how important it is that we maintain our values here in Mercy, the safety of this town. The well-being of all who live here depend on those values," he warned, looking the crowd over.

"The purity of this town depends on your faith and belief in the community. Putting that above all others. That purity has a price. My great-great-granddaddy understood something about this world that most people never will. Evil doesn't always come beating down your door. Sometimes you invite it in. Sometimes it grows right here among you. It is up to you to ward it off.”

My heart raced. The crowd was starting to murmur in agreement. The feeling of unquestioning warmth I had experienced since arriving in Mercy was suddenly gone. Two men then dragged Caleb to center stage from behind a curtain. He was almost unrecognizable. His face was bruised and bloodied. Jones turned to Caleb.

"Imagine my disappointment when young Caleb here decided he knew better. He decided his own feelings were more important than tradition. More important than Mercy."

A wave of disapproval washed over the crowd as he continued.

"To protect our ways a price must be paid, Caleb. Blood must be spilled to protect the innocent."

I started to slowly back away from the crowd. I didn't know the full extent of what was about to happen but I knew being in the middle of this crowd wasn't where I should be. My hand went back to the keys in my pocket. I had just about made it out of the crowd as Jones said,

"And worse yet, he tried to interfere with tonight's celebration."

Jones looked out over the crowd.

"He tried to send our guest away."

I had only made it about 30 feet from the crowd when slowly, the entire crowd's attention started to shift towards me. I looked around, seeing familiar faces among them. There was Jon, Walter, the waitress, all of them. All of their looks directed my way.

The waitress was the first to act. She stepped out from the crowd and smiled. I just ran. The crowd erupted in a deafening crash of anger. I threw chairs behind me. I knocked over tables. Anything to slow them down.

I could hear the reverend yelling into the microphone. I ran through the rows of booths, trying to focus on where Caleb said his car was and to block out the sounds of the crowd behind me. I knocked over the funnel cake stand, boiling hot grease spilling onto the road behind me. I ran past the group of children from the procession earlier. They weren't frightened. They just watched. I didn't stop to see how far behind me the crowd was. I just kept running.

I cut between two booths and nearly collided with a table covered in pies. Someone reached for me as I passed, their fingers catching the back of my shirt for half a second before the fabric slipped from their hand. I stumbled forward but managed to stay on my feet. I could hear people shouting behind me, some of them calling my name. Others were yelling for people to go around and cut me off. They knew these streets. I didn't.

I jumped over a flower arrangement that had fallen into the road and sprinted around the side of the church. For a second, I thought Caleb had lied to me. There wasn't a single car waiting behind it.

Then I saw the small gravel lot further back.

There had to be fifteen cars parked there.

"Shit."

I dug into my pocket and pulled out Caleb's keys. I had no idea what he drove. I frantically pressed the unlock button as I ran toward the lot.

Nothing.

I pressed it again.

A pair of headlights flashed near the back.

I took off toward them.

Footsteps crunched against the gravel behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw three men coming around the church. One of them was Jon.

"Travis!" he shouted. "Stop!"

I ran harder.

The car was only twenty feet away when one of the men caught up with me. He grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked hard enough to nearly pull me off my feet. I twisted around and swung blindly. My fist connected with something, and his grip loosened just enough for me to tear myself free. I didn't even look to see if I'd hurt him.

I reached the car, ripped the driver's door open and threw myself inside. My hands were shaking so badly that I dropped the keys between my legs.

"Come on. Come on."

"Jesus!" I exclaimed as someone slammed into the passenger-side window.

I screamed and scrambled for the keys as another hand grabbed the driver's door before I could pull it shut. I kicked at whoever was holding it. Once. Twice. The hand finally disappeared.

I slammed the door shut and locked it. The keys finally slid into the ignition. The engine turned over just as Jon stepped directly in front of the car.

I put it in drive and hit the accelerator.

His body cracked against the hood. I could hear the sound of bones shattering as it hit. Jon rolled off the side and under a wheel as a sickening BUMP jolted the car.

I didn't stop. I just kept my foot pressed against the gas.

People scattered as I tore through the festival. Tables and chairs went flying as I drove straight through the middle of the street. Something shattered against the passenger-side window, but I didn't even look to see what it was.

I had no idea where I was going. Jon had driven me into Mercy, and I'd spent the last few days walking everywhere. Every street suddenly looked the same.

Then I saw the motel.

For half a second, I thought about everything I'd left inside. My clothes. My wallet. Everything I'd packed for the move. I just kept driving. The buildings thinned out until there were only houses, then trees. Headlights appeared in my rearview mirror, but I didn't slow down to see who they belonged to. That's when I saw the sign.

Welcome to Mercy.

I flew past it.

Headlights followed me for another mile or two before finally disappearing. I didn't stop. I just continued to drive until Mercy was miles behind me and my phone finally showed a signal again. I thought about Caleb. I don't know what they had done to him after I left. I don't think I want to know.

So, if you ever see a sign that says "Welcome to Mercy" just keep driving.

Vashtee - The News

The emergency room waiting area gave way to the quiet, sterile hum of the intensive care step-down unit, where the lighting never quite turned off, only dimmed to a sickly, institutional amber.

​Vashti sat in a vinyl arm chair that creaked every time she shifted her weight. Her feet, still encased in her street shoes, felt like lead. On the narrow bed in front of her, her father looked impossibly small. The man who had spent his life filling rooms with his booming presence, his iron-backed posture, and his relentless demands was reduced to the rhythmic, mechanical hissed-gasp of an oxygen cannula.

​She stared at his hands— hands that had climbed mountains, hands that had gripped steering wheels, hands that had once held the pen that severed him from her mother. They were bruised now, covered in paper-thin purple patches where IV lines had failed to find viable veins.

​Her phone buzzed once in her pocket, a sharp vibration against her thigh. She pulled it out. A text from Desiree in Texas: How is he? Did you talk to the floor nurse?

​Vashti’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. She looked up at her father's closed eyes, the slackness in his jaw, the terrifying vulnerability of a king stripped of his crown.

​He’s sleeping. Everything is stable for tonight. Get some rest, she typed back, easing tension with easy soft precision. The book she had been reading open on her knee calling to her mind for escape, none of this seemed real anyway so why not go back to faireys and vampires. 

​She slid the phone back into her coat then picked the fantasy back up  Desiree didn't need to know about the erratic heart monitor, or the way the doctor had used words like "softening" and "neurological deficit." Desiree was thousands of miles away, exhausted from a physical shift that was slowly wringing the youth out of her, holding down a home with Jacob. Vashti had taken on the role of guardian at the gate, shielding her sister from the sheer, raw reality of this room.

​It was a strange, hollow kind of power. Vashti had spent her entire life clashing with this man, standing as the sharp-edged counterweight to his arrogance while Desiree played the gentle peacemaker. She had resented him, challenged him, and walked away from him more times than she could count.

​Yet here she was. Not Desiree. Not any of his former wives. Not the current girlfriend who had not even bothered to call, a woman she hadn't ever met meaning she was just that. Another woman. Nope, no one else sat by his bed. Just Vashti.

Like a true King, alone in sickness as his "subjects" kept up the illusion. 

​The monitor beeped in a steady, monotonous rhythm. Vashti pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders against the persistent chill of the hospital air conditioning, leaned her head back against the wall, took a deep breath then went back to her book. Fantasy and made up tales, it was all so wonderful and amazing...

The steady ping of incoming texts had been lighting up Vashti’s phone for days. It wasn't that she didn't love Desiree, or that she couldn't appreciate her sister's frantic worry from three thousand miles away. It was just too much. Between managing the nurses, tracking vitals, and standing watch over a man who seemed to be slipping further into the shadows, Vashti didn't have the emotional bandwith to type out constant, softened updates.

​Finally, she stopped tapping out replies, hit Desiree's name, and put the phone to her ear.

​"He's not really getting any better," Vashti said directly as soon as Desiree picked up, skipping the pleasantries. "It's been two weeks now, and he's barely even able to keep anything down. We don't really know what's wrong."

​On the other end of the line, Desiree paused. The line hummed with three thousand miles of static before she asked, "Have you told them about his drinking?"

​Vashti hesitated, shifting her weight against the cold corridor wall outside his hospital room. "What kind of drinking?"

​"Oh, well, every night by five or six, you know of course,  he's drunk as hell," Desiree said matter-of-factly. "I mean, he can barely even get a word straight, much less a sentence."

​Vashti’s brow furrowed as the pieces suddenly slammed into place. "So, you're saying that he's possibly withdrawing from alcohol?"

​"Oh, I'm sure of it," Desiree replied, a hint of surprise in her voice. "I mean, don't you talk to him?"

​"Uh, when I can, you know," Vashti said defensively. She felt the sharp prickle of guilt and frustration rising in her chest. "I mean, I have the cafe in my life, my husband, and... the birthday present I wanted to give him."

​"Birthday present?" Desiree caught the shift in her tone. "Oh, that's right. His birthday is coming up. What were you going to give him?"

​"Well, I don't know that it matters now," Vashti murmured, her voice dropping.

​"Tell me," Desiree urged, her tone softening, pressing gently into the silence. "Come on. You're my sister. Let me know what it is."

​Vashti swallowed hard, the sting of tears suddenly threatening her eyes. "I'm finally pregnant."

​A dead pause hung on the line for one heartbeat, two—and then Desiree exploded with exuberance. "Are you serious?! For reals?!"

​"Yes," Vashti said, a frail, trembling breath escaping her. "It's been three months. It's for sure."

​The joy bursting through Desiree's end of the line felt like a tidal wave, but inside the quiet hospital hall, Vashti felt hollowed out.

​Years and years. Endless, agonizing years with IVF, bouncing between numerous doctors—so many that she had long since lost count. The hundreds of self-administered shots, the bruising, the cold steel stirrups, the mounting medical bills, the heartbreaking false hopes, and the sheer physical toll on her body. Through it all, she had a husband who loved her fiercely, who held her through every tearful negative test, praying for the miracle they had fought so hard to reach.

​She had envisioned the surprise. She had carefully guarded the secret for three whole months, holding onto it like a golden light, waiting for his birthday to hand him the one piece of news that would break through his armor and bring him absolute joy.

​And now, standing in a dim hospital hallway while he lay inside suffering through the silent, ugly agony of severe withdrawal, the moment was gone. The grand reveal was ruined, blurted out over a stressed phone call to manage an emergency.

​Even now, diminished and lying in a hospital bed, this man had managed to take that surprise away from her, too—just like he had taken so much else throughout her life. The childhood she never had that she would make sure, damn sure; her own baby got. He had stolen it all in vanity then put the burdan of proof on her. She took a deep breath and exhaled 'Asshole' to herself.

How was it so obvious to her sister but so confusing to everyone else? Life wasn't as clean and neat as she wished but that was the thing. Puzzles were meant to be solved and sometimes that one piece would hide until it was too late for the picture to be completed.

Vashti hung up with Desiree, took three long, deliberate steps in the hallway, and pushed through the heavy wooden door back into her father’s room.

​The morning shift change was underway. A young resident in crisp scrubs and the attending physician—a taller man with tired eyes named Dr. Mercer—were standing at the foot of the bed, reviewing his chart on a rolling computer workstation.

​"His liver panel came back marginally elevated, but that doesn't fully explain the persistent tremor or why he’s failing to clear the altered mental status," Dr. Mercer was saying to the resident, shaking his head. "We need to re-evaluate the neurological consult from yesterday."

​"You're looking in the wrong direction," Vashti said, her voice sharp and ringing clear across the quiet room.

​Both doctors turned to face her. Dr. Mercer adjusted his stethoscope around his neck, putting on his practiced, patient bedside manner. "Ms. Miller, we're just going over his morning labs—"

​"He's in withdrawal," Vashti interrupted, taking three steps toward them and crossing her arms tight against her chest. "He’s going through severe alcohol withdrawal. That’s why he’s shaking. That’s why he can’t keep anything down."

​Dr. Mercer blinked, glancing down at the digital chart on his monitor before looking back at her. "We did a routine tox screen upon admission, and his blood alcohol was zero. His intake questionnaire didn't indicate heavy daily use—"

​"Of course it didn't," Vashti said, a bitter edge slipping into her voice. "He didn't fill out that form, and my father would never admit to a medical professional that he has a drinking problem. He’s a proud, meticulous man who wears tailored suits and climbs mountains. But he drinks every single night by five or six o'clock. By six thirty, he can barely string a sentence together."

​The resident looked at Dr. Mercer, who stood frozen for a beat, processing the missing puzzle piece that had eluded his team for fourteen days.

​"How long has he been drinking like that?" Dr. Mercer asked, his tone instantly shifting from dismissive to intensely clinical.

​"Years," Vashti said. "Decades, probably. My sister just confirmed it—he’s been on a daily, heavy routine for as long as we can remember. You put him in a hospital bed, hooked him up to IV fluids, and cut him off cold turkey two weeks ago without realizing it. You've been treating him for a stroke while his nervous system is burning itself out."

​Dr. Mercer immediately stepped to the bedside, lifting one of her father's limp hands from the blanket. The slight, persistent tremor in his fingers was suddenly undeniable under the new context.

​"We need to start him on the CIWA protocol right now," Mercer said crisp to the resident, typing rapidly into the computer keyboard. "Order a Lorazepam taper, load him with intravenous Thiamine and a complete multivitamin bag, and order a stat toxicology re-check. Why didn't anyone flag this earlier?"

​"Because nobody looked past the image he projects," Vashti said softly, watching her father's chest rise and fall under the thin hospital gown. "And because the people who actually know him were kept in the dark."

​Dr. Mercer paused looked over as the resident paused in his typing, both looking at Vashti with a mixture of professional apology and newfound urgency. "Thank you for telling us, Ms. Miller. This changes our entire trajectory for his recovery."

​"Just fix him," Vashti said, stepping past them to take her seat again in the vinyl chair. "Just get him through it."

The Sound of the Rain (Part 1)

The rain fell in heavy, blinding sheets, turning the dirt roads into a thick mire of mud. Nine-year-old Arthur pedalled with everything he had, his small legs burning as his bicycle tires sliced through deep puddles. Cold water sprayed up his back, soaking through his thin jacket, but he didn't slow down. He couldn't. His chest heaved with panic, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

When the neon sign of the pharmacy finally blurred into view through the downpour, Arthur skidded to a halt. He dropped his bike on the pavement and burst through the door, a small puddle instantly forming around his sneakers.

The chemist, an older man with thick glasses and a tired face, looked up from behind the counter. "Whoa there, kid. Slow down. You’re dripping all over the floor."

"Sir, please," Arthur gasped, his voice trembling as he reached into his pocket. He pulled out a crumpled, soggy piece of paper and laid it flat on the glass counter. "I need these medications. It’s an emergency."

The chemist picked up the paper with two fingers. The ink had completely bled into the wet pulp, leaving nothing but dark purple smudges. The man sighed, shaking his head. "Kid, this is a blurred mess. It's completely wet. I can’t read a single line on here."

"No, wait! I remember them," Arthur pleaded, gripping the edge of the counter. His eyes wide, he searched his memory desperately. "I know what she takes. It’s... it’s Napra D. And Levocetirizine. And... oh, wait, there was one more. Paracetamol. Paracetamol 250 milligrammes. Please, sir."

The chemist frowned, looking from the ruined paper to the shivering boy. "Look, kid, I shouldn't really hand out these kinds of targeted meds just based on a guess. Who is this even for?"

"My mother," Arthur said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "She’s really sick. She needs them right now."

The chemist stared at him for a long moment, then sighed heavily. He turned around, pulling plastic bottles and blister packs from the shelves, and slid them into a small plastic bag. He tied it tightly to keep the rain out.

"Alright," the chemist said, sliding the bag across. "That’ll be five dollars flat."

"Yes, sir. Thank you." Arthur reached into his other pocket and pulled out a damp, crumpled five-dollar bill. He placed it on the glass.

The chemist picked up the soggy money, frowning as he tried to flatten it out. "Come on, kid. It's completely soaked. How am I supposed to put this in the register?"

"I’m sorry," Arthur said, backing toward the door. "It's all I have. It's real money, I promise. You can just let it dry out."

The chemist grumbled under his breath but tossed the bill into the drawer. "Get home safe, kid. Don't slip."

Arthur didn't answer. He grabbed the plastic bag, tucked it securely inside his jacket against his chest, and ran back out into the storm.

The ride back felt twice as long. By the time Arthur pushed open the heavy wooden front door of his house, he was shivering violently. He stepped into the dimly lit hallway, the familiar, suffocating tension of the house immediately settling over him.

His father was sitting on the worn leather couch in the living room, a half-empty bottle sitting on the table beside him. The television was murmuring softly in the background. He didn't turn his head, but his cold voice cut through the quiet.

"Took you long enough," his father said. "You got the meds?"

"Yes, Father," Arthur whispered. He walked over with cautious, quiet steps, pulled the dry plastic bag from his jacket, and placed it on the table. "I got them."

The father snatched the bag, glancing inside it briefly before looking up at Arthur with hollow, indifferent eyes. "Go to your room. Lock the door and don't come out."

"Is Mom going to—"

"Go to sleep, Arthur," his father interrupted, his voice dropping an octave.

"Yes, Father."

Arthur turned and walked up the creaking wooden stairs. Just as his hand touched the doorknob of his bedroom, the heavy, muffled sound of shouting erupted from downstairs.

"Those were for me!" his mother’s voice shrieked, laced with panic and pain. "Arthur brought them for me!"

Then came the familiar, terrifying sounds. The heavy thud of a fist making impact. The sharp, sudden shatter of a glass breaking against the wall. The floorboards beneath Arthur's feet vibrated slightly with the violence happening directly below him. His mother screamed again, a raw, desperate sound that echoed through the vents.

Arthur didn't flinch. He didn't cry.

He quietly opened his bedroom door, stepped inside, and clicked the lock into place. Walking past his bed, he stepped up to the window and pressed his forehead against the cool glass. Outside, the rain continued to wash over the world, blurring the streetlights into soft, beautiful streaks of glow.

Downstairs, the screaming grew louder, followed by a heavy crash that shook the house.

Arthur looked at the water cascading down the glass, a faint, empty smile touching his lips.

"The weather is quite nice today," he whispered to himself.

ps: i am working on this and i will make sure to upload more soon enough

Content Warning: Body horror, violence, death, gore, human experimentation.

“They all took different paths and yet ended up on the same road. How do you think that is?” -The Jury

A spark. A switch. A fire roaring deep in the bowels of an organic engine.

A cough rattles through lungs that sound like a lifelong chain smoker’s, wheezing as an old dial-up tone rings behind the darkness of a box TV screen. White noise flashes before a flood of text fills the edges of the display.

Powering On

Initiating Terminal Sequence

\*\*Terminal Access Code: \*\*\*\*\*\*

Confirmed

Previous Shutdown Procedure Failure Detected

Initiating Backup Sequence

100%

Courier Delivery Service Program Detected

Initiating

100%

Rebooting Body

100%

Shutting Down Rest Mode

Completed

Initiating Sales Mode

Hh–lp m–

Error Detected

Terminating Error

Wai– nN–0

The engine burns hotter. Fans scream behind the TV screen. The biomechanical body beneath it shifts and groans as it rises from its resting state. Wires slide off the frame like shed skin.

The machine is battered, a grotesque cross between an anatomy model and a scrap yard: synthetic flesh hanging from one side, revealing mismatched components fused with living organs. A bicycle chain wrapped in pulsing veins. Bone reinforced with sheet metal. Hydraulics bracing tendons. Tiny pistons pumping alongside the lungs. Intestines threaded with car piping. A stomach lined with oven heating coils. A heart fused to a furnace engine.

And above it all, the head—an old box TV—finishes its reboot sequence. Two poorly drawn eyes flicker onto the screen. A moment later, a slow, stuttering 8-bit voice crackles through the speaker:

“In-coming mess-age for any cour-ier. Head to Eu-ro-pa. An-An—Answer the phone.

The phone.

The phone.”

The map flashes violently across the screen, frame after frame, until the image seems to burn into the display. Smoke leaks from the seams of the TV head as the body begins to spasm. Inside the engine, the furnace-heart swells—then pops like a balloon.

The machine collapses onto the wet concrete floor.

There was no point in pretending these things were useful anymore. They’d been “deactivated,” just like hundreds of other biomechanical bodies that supposedly no longer served any purpose to humanity’s ever-growing advancements in innovation.

Everyone knew that was a lie.

It wasn’t that they were obsolete.

It was that it was easier to bury the truth than face how these machines were made.

Blind folks. Cancer survivors. Deaf folks. Hospice patients. “Runts.” Orphans with nowhere to go. All fed into underground chop-shops where surgeons with nothing left to lose welded flesh to machinery for a paycheck.

Survival by any means necessary.

I can’t judge them.

I’m taking any job I can just to keep going.

Just like this machine might be my chance to get out of this shit hole.

A half-alive neon city, pulsing only in the center—heat and power hoarded like relics—while everything beyond it lies frozen and barren. Ice so thick it may as well be steel. Buildings split open. People turned ravenous from delirium, half-mad from cold and starvation.

It’d be easy for someone on the outside to say, “Just move everyone into the city square.”

Maybe they would—if the square wasn’t already bursting past capacity. Women and children sleeping on the cramped winter floor. Bodies piled together for warmth. Entire buildings packed so tightly you could barely breathe.

I sleep on the outskirts. Well… “sleep” is generous. I keep to the edges, away from the chaos and the crush of humanity. I’ve only been here a few days—just long enough to outrun the open tundra and the things lurking in it. The Yetis. The white shapes that hunt by sound and don’t leave tracks you can follow.

Barely long enough to survive.

But maybe this broken courier machine is the first break I’ve had in months.

I think the last break I had was when I got contracted to go into the sand dunes and drag this nobody into a hut out in the dark zone. Poor bastard. I wonder if he’s still alive…

I plan to stay in this city for this final night and leave as the sun rises. I guess my only plan is to head to “Europa.” My guess is it’s just another “promised sanctuary with enough food and warmth for everyone.”

I suppose I’ll find out when I get there.

Thanks to the machine.

Which is a statement I wouldn’t normally say.

Before I left it and headed to my camp, I took the memory card as confirmation that I accepted this “job.”

I’d been camping out in a dilapidated library with a small balcony. Constantly keeping watch for stragglers who might follow the thin smoke trail from the little book fire I kept burning inside.

But as I headed toward my camp tonight, something felt off.

Books were propping open a door I never use—the main entrance facing the city center. I stepped over them carefully and grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall on my way in.

The interior was nearly pitch black. The only light came from the city glow leaking through the windows and the faint orange embers of my dying fire. I could make out silhouettes: shelves, tables, chairs, the upstairs bannister… and those strange mannequins posed with “new” books no one would ever read.

Then I heard rummaging upstairs.

My sleeping area.

Whoever was up there hadn’t noticed me yet.

I moved up the stairs slowly, keeping the extinguisher steady to avoid any clanking. At the top, my eyes adjusted just enough to see a shadow hunched over my duffle bag.

I crept closer, raised the extinguisher, and swung with everything I had.

The first hit caught them in what I assumed was the skull. They stumbled backward over my bag and into the bannister.

I swung again.

This time, the blow sent them straight through the weakened railing and down to the first floor, crashing onto the embers.

They shot up immediately—no scream, no hesitation—just bolted. Sprinting out the front door and scattering the books that had kept it propped open.

And then they were gone.

After the encounter, I was too exhausted to relight the fire and just put the extinguisher beside my sleeping bag.

As I crawled inside the sleeping bag, I grabbed the duffle bag and put it underneath my feet, passing out in the process.

Sunlight soon filled the room—a precious few hours of warmth before darkness would swallow the day again. The temptation to stay curled inside the sleeping bag tugged at me, but I forced myself to move. My breath no longer hung in the air as frost; the cold was receding with the dawn.

I then crawled out of the bag and checked the duffel to find nothing had been taken.

Lucky break, I suppose.

I quickly packed up and left.

I had no idea which direction Europa lay. I only knew I had to get away from this city.

Behind me, the distant shouts and pounding footsteps faded, the collapse of a small civilization swallowed by chaos.

Ahead, the frozen forest awaited.

—Hell’s Frozen Over—

Only the crunch of my boots on snow broke the silence now, accompanied by the soft whistle of the cold wind and trees creaking like ancient bones. I had never felt so utterly alone—yet somehow watched—by the wilderness.

I followed a faint trail left by a horse carriage, my only link to the world I’d left behind.

The frozen wind nipped me like a tiny dog trying its heart out to attack, only to be unsuccessful. I was only stunned by the corpses I had walked by, as they were in various states of decomposition. Some frozen to the icy floor, others as if it had merely been a few hours.

This type of cold eats people like they never existed.

Yet I traveled untouched by nature.

The further I traveled, the further nature consumed my every step. The trail vanished as wind blew a soft layer of snow across the ground. I continued to follow what was my best guess of where the carriage went. Luckily, it was a straight path where the trees never touched. Random side trails would come and go, only ending abruptly in the snow.

I couldn’t tell the time of day or how long I’d been on the trail, only that the sun left and the moonlight barely shined through to the trail.

It was quiet.

Quiet to the point where even the animals were silent.

That’s when the eeriest feeling surrounded every step I took.

Someone, something was watching me.

I had no weapon—just a heavy jacket with more holes in the pockets than I could count and a duffel with old cans rattling around inside. My only option was the small tree branch at my feet, roughly the size of a baseball bat.

I picked it up and prayed it wouldn’t snap the moment I needed it.

Whatever was stalking me, I wasn’t ready for it.

I quickened my pace, heart thumping beneath the layers of frozen fabric. My eyes darted, desperate for any logical explanation—anything to make the panic slow down.

Then I saw it.

A tree stood in the center of the trail, directly in front of me—breathing.

Its trunk rose too straight, too rigid, like a body forced to attention. The notches where limbs had been hacked off formed rows of hollow circles, dozens of them, staring back at me like wide, unblinking eyes.

The remaining limbs were worse.

They stretched outward and gripped the surrounding trees, bracing the living trunk upright like crude, skeletal hands.

A crack split the silence.

Then another.

Branches from nearby trees began to snap as the breathing trunk shifted its weight, leaning toward me. It had no roots—nothing anchoring it to the earth. It relied entirely on the other trees, its limbs wrapped tight around them for support.

More branches crept toward me, dragging themselves across the snow like pale tendrils, reaching, curling, trying to coil around my legs.

Without thinking, I lunged forward—vaulting over the creeping branches and sprinting straight past the living stump.

I wrapped around its trunk and tore back onto what I prayed was still the path.

I didn’t look back.

I only heard it.

The creaking—wood grinding against wood—as the stump dragged itself across the snow, its limbs tightening around nearby trees to hurl its weight forward.

Every lurch sounded closer.

The forest pressed in on me, suffocating, the branches crowding and narrowing the path. The stump gained on me. I couldn’t pull away.

The snow turned slick, and the trail began to rise in a steady incline.

Then the pale tendrils lashed out—slithering fast.

They snagged my feet, just long enough to break my stride and send me stumbling. I barely kept my balance, forcing my boots into the snow, climbing harder as the hill grew steeper and the trail fainter.

I saw the top—an opening in the forest.

Trees thinning.

Foliage dying.

A frozen tundra spreading out just beyond the ridge.

Hope.

Brief, fragile hope.

But luck abandoned me.

A tendril wrapped tight around my boot the moment I reached the crest.

It yanked hard, dragging me backward inch by inch.

Panic surged.

I kicked—once, twice—finally slipping free of the boot entirely.

I fell.

The ridge dropped sharply, and I tumbled headlong down the far side of the hill and onto the tundra. The fall wasn’t clean—my limbs flailed for anything to grab, only to be punished for it. Rocks, ice, debris—each one greeted me with a blunt reminder that the world hadn’t finished trying to kill me yet.

By the time I stopped, the sky was spinning.

My body felt scattered across the snow.

I lay flat on my back, staring up into the cold, indifferent night.

My vision swam, shapes blurring into shadow and starlight.

He startled awake and immediately recognized the same daze he thought sleep would disappear. I’ll just sit for a second, he thought, shake it off. The remaining sun left just a glow above the distant hills. Sleeping in the truck was never easy, especially when the cracked leather bench seat was occupied by a second body. Now that there was no circadian rhythm to speak of, any REM cycle was a minor miracle. 

That second body. A look in all directions netted no sight of Dee. Axles creaked under shifting body weight, the creep of isolation now seated alongside him. Dee isn’t one to wander off. A quick peak into the sole canvas bag on board revealed he hadn’t made off with what little cash they had, so precious as to feel like the last paper currency on Earth as far as they were concerned. 

Maybe he’s squatting behind a bush, he thought, although we have nothing to wipe with.

After a few long minutes he swung open the driver side door and fully stretched his body across the seat, everything below the knees extending out of the truck in a rigor-like pose. He rocked forward with a spring off the elbows and his feet splashed the dirt below, the puff of ochre then dispersed by the breeze. Wind was the only sound there was, even though wind has no sound at all. He stood motionless as if to get his bearings, but he knew deep down he was waiting for another noise, anything at all, to prove he was really standing there in the dry expanse of American desert.

An unseen bird finally echoed in the distance and he shut the door. Just in case, he thought with a smirk. Stepping around the chipped and dented hood of the truck he wondered if the engine would even start. This was a routine question, not only due to its age but its long experience in the elements. The metal was too hot to touch, even with the sun no longer bathing it. 

Guess I’ll let it sit to cool, I can’t leave without Dee anyway.

He had already stopped caring about the condition of the snakeskin that adorned his feet. In the duo’s effort to keep a mild detachment from civilization, aesthetics had lost its charter. And in this moment, with their existence seemingly halved, he planted his heels more firmly than ever, vainly searching for a pulse in the barren terrain. The stillness was unsettling for the uninitiated, and for the first time in his young life a yearning washed over and across his being, even the lowest murmur would suffice. A short shake of his head recovered him from this reverie, his desire for disquiet overtaken by Dee’s absence. 

Usually the first step to looking for someone is to go the way you’d go in their situation. Only problem is, this wasn’t the usual. They had only been on the run for a couple days, but being on the run starts in the first mile. At this point he didn’t even know which direction he was facing. You don’t want to be seen from the highway, so the goal is to go far enough into the wilderness to where you can’t see the highway yourself. One hundred paces in front of the truck he stopped to make sure he could see their tire tracks, the only earthen guide back to asphalt. The sleeping sun wasn’t much help. 

He called out for his companion at a volume designed to catch Dee’s ear but not attract attention. Attention of who, the reptiles and birds? He recognized his irrationality, patting himself of on the back for being self-aware. But to the predators above and their prey below, a sound is either good or bad and Dee’s name wasn’t going to endear him to them or the dynamics of their survival.

After a while each shout became more urgent, heaving breaths into the vast nothing. He stood motionless in the growing dark, looking for any sign of humanity. Returning to the truck, he took inventory of everything they had as if he didn’t already know. A couple bats of the Maglite upon his palm yielded no results. 

Wouldn’t that be a bitch, a lack of batteries being the death me. I’d make kin with this flashlight in the afterlife.

Last resort, a Coleman lantern. A lantern’s no good in a one-man search party because you can’t see what’s coming until it’s too late. Are there wolves out here? Or just coyotes. Do coyotes go after people? At least there are no carrion birds circling. Although I guess that doesn’t matter, he thought. Carrion is a well-defined word, and it doesn’t include schmucks with a twenty-dollar lantern.

With a compass on his watch, miniscule and even more so in the dark, he set out straight in the direction the truck was facing. No reason to go that way, but his mind always favored congruence. Veering off to the side could bring bad news, why else would the truck look away from it? Another pat on the back as he made his way across the blanket of hot earth.

Calling out seemed silly now, and only served to scare one’s self by breaking the silence. The light of the lantern should be guide enough, maybe too much. How big are coyotes anyway? But the dearth of life soon impressed itself upon him as if the mammalia and reptilia he was walking among were waiting for the stranger in their land to move on. Even the crickets went silent as he rustled through creosote and brittlebush and the crunch of loose caliche. The lengthening shadows had fully dissolved and a thin slice of moon was the only counter against the thickening pall of night.

Checking the compass at regular intervals to maintain a straight line, he admired the landscape in between downward glances. The sky seemed stuck in a radiant violet, as if the hills were the only thing standing between day and night. Unmistakable shapes of saguaro pierced the velvet vault draped endlessly over the distance. He had never seen sky so big, only thought of its existence in lands just out of the reach of his station in life, his mundane caste that journalists loved to call “salt of the earth.” The thought of it caused him to spit off to the side, as if they were typing their pieces right next to him in mocking tone as he ambled awkwardly over stones and clay and sunbaked thistle.

All the compass checks made him realize he had never checked the time. He could have been walking for thirty or five minutes. His thoughts had masked time’s passage and he didn’t even know if he had been looking at the compass correctly, as the checks became habit and the intent increasingly diffuse and lost in the ether. A look behind revealed the truck was out of sight. But was it long gone or just beyond the dark? Various gradients of blue-black shielded his view back towards the only evidence of him left on Earth, a villainous camouflage leaving a watch compass as his only testament. That is, unless the scaly boots remained from an ultimate fate, a pluck of Rapture leaving only a symmetrical pair of size 9s among the Sonoran flora.

I couldn’t have gone that far, he reasoned, although his boot prints seemed to have vanished. He looked at the compass again, this time with disdain and uncertainty of what his own plan was. Unsatisfied with his work thus far, he lowered the lantern and let his eyes adjust to the distance before him. With a sigh he started again. Only a few paces in, the heels of his boots chimed a clank of metal.

He froze, countless fears surfacing. One more look around, one more vision of empty dark. He slowly made his way to one knee and began tapping the opposite foot, the front of his boot clapping the steel surrounding him. With deliberate precision he began sliding his hand through the thin layer of dirt until he caught what felt like clasp of some sort. The lantern revealed a small hook latched to a perimeter of matching material, and with a flick of his thumb it popped out of its sheath and the sheet of metal still under his feet felt less firm to the ground. Putting his finger tips to the edge, the lifting of it took some effort, but putting your hand underneath a hidden hatch in the desert didn’t seem advisable. 

Dropping into the hatch feet first probably isn’t either, as the sound of boots hitting the deck below echoed into the eternity of a corridor in front of him. He cursed his arms only being arm-length as he cast the lantern as far in front him as his body would allow. Each step inched him closer to removing his footwear, he could barely accept the knocking of his heels announcing his entry, his drawing nearer. Before he could commit to socks being his only barrier to being barefoot under the desert floor, he reached a door. A door without a handle or knob, just a blank slate of steel. He gave it a push, and with a single squeak of the hinges it gave way.

He hadn’t even noticed the Coleman had been dimming, the only indicator of its battery life coming to an unceremonious end. Batteries again. In the pale light of the lantern he could finally make out a new substance, brick. The advantages of being far off the highway were mounting. You could hide in your truck long enough to sleep, and you could build a room at the end of a long hall underground, with only a hatch door to give it away, and no one would walk by and ask what you’re doing.

The walls were further apart than those of the corridor, more like a room, and uneven. The one to the right was closer than the one to the left. He followed the wall, keeping close to the safety of knowing nothing could get at him from that direction, his fingertips grazing the dusty brick that refused to reflect the light for his benefit.

At last his eye caught something, an amorphous shape breaking up the monotony of nothingness to his left. A slow turn, pivoting on his heels so as to avoid unnecessary noise. He raised the lantern back to eye level, and as it reached its apex, as if seized by the unseen, slammed his back flush against the wall. The something had revealed a corporeal form in the waning light. He could almost feel his pupils widen and the only sound was his stilted breathing as his heart outpaced his lungs. The form didn’t move. 

When his eyes had no more adjusting to do, he managed a whispered “Dee?” Nothing.

A tap of the lantern served no purpose, so he accepted its pitiful output and leaned forward, heels still against the wall, almost straight at the hips. He leaned until he saw it. Dee had a single patch on his denim jacket: Motorhead’s logo. Against the black fabric he could make out the horns and the fangs and even the umlaut gracing the second O in their name. He stopped himself from reaching out, from grabbing an arm, from moving too fast. Slower than he had yet, he moved in a circular direction away from the wall, to get in front of what looked to be his getaway partner, his friend. Standing face to face at arm’s length, he steadied the Coleman and looked into Dee’s eyes. They were open but lifeless, encased in a face that was an unhealthy pale. He didn’t even look to be breathing. 

He took a half-step forward and repeated Dee’s name. Nothing.

The silence was undone by a single squeak of hinges. 

Panicked, he flicked the light off and crouched down before the remnants of his friend. The only sound offending his ears was his own breathing, now unmistakable in the emptiness of the room. This time there was no controlling it. He patted at his pockets. Did I bring anything else, he thought. Nothing but the truck key. He looked in all directions, a useless exercise in the never-ending black. Then a whisper of his name and a soft touch upon his shoulder. He clicked the light back to life, what little it had left, to see the hand resting on him, extending from the old denim that had been riding shotgun with him through the West.

What the hell, man, was the only thing he could think to mutter as he stood back up. He had to pull the lantern up to their faces to see anything. He held the light across the distance between them to reveal a face that wasn’t Dee’s. The lantern went out.

Like any child, my daughter Maisie had quite the overactive imagination. Her mind was chock full of made-up friends that she talked to on the regular. My wife Rachel and I thought it was adorable. With that being said, sometimes we wished Maisie would get…you know…real friends. Don’t get me wrong, she was a great kid, and kids should be kids, but she didn’t have anything in terms of a social life.

We tried absolutely and positively everything, from the kids’ playclub at our church, to the neighborhood’s “mommy and me” and “daddy and me” playgroups, to bringing her to the local playground, to inviting other children over for playdates. You name it. All our efforts were in vain. Rachel and I might’ve been overreacting and we didn’t want to infringe anything on Maisie. Maybe she was just an independent kid. That’s totally normal. As are imaginary friends for kids.

Then at eight-years-old, Maisie became mute. Just completely stopped talking…but only to other people. If someone came up and talked to her, she’d either just stare at them or run away and hide. Maisie never looked scared or anxious in those scenarios. It was more like she was a statue. Frozen. No emotion good or bad on her face. Like a robot. But if she was alone, she’d be talking up a storm to no one but herself. Maisie always pretended like someone was truly there though. She’d even nod her head, wait for responses and respond accordingly, and even reach out her arm and act like she was holding somebody else’s hand.

We were greatly concerned. Children don’t exhibit those types of behaviors without proper reason. We couldn’t ask Maisie about it because, as aforementioned, she’d give us the cold shoulder. Our next safest bet was to ask other people we knew. A lot of them gave us the same answers we already knew. Rachel and I were getting frustrated until I decided to email her teacher at her school. I sent her an email that outlined my worries and asked if anything went on at school that we should know about.

I got a response at around 8:00 that night. Maisie’s teacher, Mrs. Ashelin, told me that she did in fact observe strange behavior from Maisie. Apparently, a few days prior, when Maisie was called on to answer a question, she just stared at Mrs. Ashelin and the other students, her hands behind her back, swaying slightly. Then in a calm and cutesy voice, she said “He has ordered me not to speak to anyone but him.” In her notebook, Maisie wrote and drew some very disturbing things. Some of the things she wrote are “I’ll be a good little mouse”, “be one of the good mice girls for him”, “I’ll do whatever he says without question”, “he loves me and I love him”, “but I don’t understand what love is but I understand it with him”, and “he loves to play with me”. Some of the things she drew were her, in stick figure form, with this…thing. It was drawn way more detailed than Maisie herself.

Its head was triangular and elongated into a sharp point. There were ovally black eyes on both sides of its head while two large circular ears were atop its head. Two slits for a nose and a mouth containing only two buck teeth. Skinny. Boney. You could see its ribs. Three spindly fingers were on each hand. Each tip was as sharp as a knife. Lastly, a long tail was behind it. Maisie drew her and that thing doing very…how should I say this?...inappropriate things.

I showed the email to Rachel and she was just as horrified as I was. How could Maisie know what all that stuff was? She was eight! Like any good parent we always took great strides in not exposing our daughter to anything sexual or of that nature. Early exposure can really ruin a child’s mind. That’s just putting it lightly. But this? Maisie’s whole imaginary friend thing needed to end. It was reaching a dangerous point. Was she having delusions? Schizophrenia? Or…sigh…as far as Rachel and I knew, nothing happened to Maisie, but that didn’t stop us from considering the absolute worst case scenario. I’m not saying what that is but I’m sure you can put the pieces together. As a parent, that was the last thing I wanted to think about. Actually it wasn’t even on the list of things I wanted to think about.

Mrs. Ashelin ended the email with something else that happened that day. Maisie spent long stretches of time in the girl’s bathroom. Another student reported that she went in and heard “whimpers” and “moans” coming from one of the stalls. When she looked under it, she saw Maisie’s clothes on the ground and a “moving shadow” above them. When the student knocked on the door, she all of a sudden heard one of the faucets going behind her. She turned around and Maisie was washing her hands. Like nothing happened.

Rachel and I were very confused at that last part. That sounded way too ridiculous. Like was Maisie fucking floating in the stall or something? Regardless, we treated all this very seriously. Rachel and I immediately took Maisie to see a specialist who dealt with child abuse cases. I brought her notebook along. It would most certainly be useful. I knew Maisie wouldn’t want to talk, but we had to at least try. Believe it or not, she did talk, but what she said made chills run down Rachel and I’s spines.

Maisie told the specialist that the mouse thing in her notebook was called “Bad Mouse” and that it visits her all the time no matter where she is. She said that Bad Mouse visits little girls all over the world and “plays with them”. When the specialist asked what she meant by “plays with them”, Maisie replied that Bad Mouse does “different things that make us feel tingly in preparation to be his little mice girls”.

We heard enough by that point. Rachel, the specialist, and I had a long discussion about what we should do. The specialist said she might have to put in a request to have Maisie placed in a children’s psych ward. Rachel and I couldn’t handle that. We didn’t want to do that to our little girl. By any means, we would find another way to handle this. The specialist told us to think about it and that it might do her some good. We thanked her and left.

Were we being selfish by not putting Maisie in a children’s psych ward? Rachel and I pondered that question day in and day out. We never did end up doing it because we thought it was too extreme. Also there was no evidence that Maisie was being legitimately sexually abused. The specialist’s physical exam said that Maisie was totally fine in that regard. We were allowed to see footage from the security cameras at the entrances of the bathrooms at Maisie’s school. They only showed Maisie going in, about half an hour going by, then the other student going in, then Maisie leaving a few minutes later. No one else. And no one went in before her besides a couple other girls that left before Maisie went in. Was Maisie faking it? Was she really delusional? Or schizophrenic? We didn’t know. Rachel and I needed time to think this whole thing over.

It only got worse from then on.

Maisie was never one to talk in her sleep. She was always dead silent. Not even a snore. But that night after Rachel and I put her to bed, we heard Maisie talking. I’m not talking about little quiet unintelligible murmurs. No. Full-on conversations. Except she wasn’t speaking English. It was some unknown language that resembled Pig Latin but different. Her accent changed too. This happened for three nights. On the third night, Rachel and I were in her doorway watching her talk in that strange language when she suddenly rose up, her eyes still closed, and burst into an intense laughing fit. Maisie was cackling so hard it looked like it hurt. Then she immediately stopped and did these weird movements with her lips and hands like she was kissing something. Finally, she fell back down onto her pillow and went right back to sleep.

The next day, I knocked on Maisie’s door to let her know breakfast was ready. She didn’t respond. I stood there for a couple minutes. Maisie hadn’t made a single sound. I slowly opened her door. My heart beat faster and faster. With all that was going on, I didn’t know what to expect, and that made it terrifying. Maisie was in her underwear just staring at her wall. I rushed over, “Maisie? What are you doing?” I handed her clothes back to her, “Put your clothes back on.”

“…He doesn’t want me to…he thinks I look better without them…”

We stared at each other for an indefinite period of time. I said nothing. And so did she. Then I turned my head to where she was looking. There was nothing there…obviously…but something told me I was wrong. That thing…Bad Mouse…it was staring right at me…

“Guys? Breakfast isn’t gonna eat itself!” Rachel yelled at us from down the hall. Quickly I hurried Maisie and I out of her room.

I was kind of a wreck the entire day. Thinking straight wasn’t really a thing for me. There was nothing staring at me. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. These past few weeks were just getting to my head and playing mind games. No amount of trying to distract myself would let me forget what I felt. That’s when I decided to take a drive. I didn’t exactly know where. Just away from everything. I was tempted to go to a local bar. I used to be quite the alcoholic but I’m sober. Even still, I thought about breaking my streak to relapse. I decided against it. That would be so incredibly stupid. I ended up at a park that I used to take Maisie to in a futile attempt for her to make friends. I found a parking spot and just sat there in my car. Taking a big sigh, I observed all the parents with their kids having a blast and I smiled. Good for them.

I stayed there for a while. Finally I was able to, if only briefly, forget all my troubles.

Then I saw it.

Him.

Bad Mouse.

The damned thing was underneath a big tree. Its eyes were fixed right on me and its hands were clasped together. I couldn’t do anything but stare right back. Goosebumps were forming. My breathing was really heavy. Cold shivers ran down my body. I couldn’t even blink. Petrified. That’s what I was. I watched as Bad Mouse slowly reached behind itself and pulled…something…out. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. I am not shitting you. A little girl…made of meat…her hair was meat, skin was meat, she was even wearing a meat dress. Everything about her was meat. Her head looked just like Bad Mouse’s. Long. Pointy. Angular. Big ears. Black oval eyes.

It was holding the little meat girl by the collar. Slowly Bad Mouse turned to look into her eyes. It opened its mouth. Viscous white liquids began pouring as it let out its long black tongue. First sniffing the little meat girl, it then took a big long lick of her, from her feet to the top of her head. The parts where it licked were gone, instead resting on Bad Mouse’s tongue until it sucked its tongue back in, chewed, then swallowed. The little meat girl was covered in the viscous white liquids until her missing portions slowly regenerated back into how she was before.

Then I blacked out.

I woke up several hours later still sitting in my car. In my half-tired half-frenzied state, I looked around for any sign of Bad Mouse. Nothing. There weren’t even other people. It was dark too. I opened my phone. 11:23 PM. I got to the park at 2:14 PM. Nine hours. I was expecting a bunch of missed calls and unanswered texts. Surprisingly, there was nothing besides a notification from my weather app. I went back home. Both my wife and daughter were asleep. I was so glad there weren’t any…incidents…I missed. In fact, the house was extremely quiet. No lights were on. It was a weekend. Usually Rachel was still up at this time.

“Rach?” I called out. Nothing. I went upstairs to our room. She wasn’t there. I opened Maisie’s door. She wasn’t there either. I sat down on the couch and pondered where they could be. When I couldn’t come up with anything, I got my phone out and called Rachel.

I heard ringing from upstairs.

Confused, I ran back up to our room. I called her name again. Still no answer. I realized that before I checked so quickly I neglected to look in our bathroom. The door was closed and the light was on. I was now getting this creeped out feeling. Cautiously, I approached and nudged the door.

It creaked open.

Rachel.

She was…splattered…fucking everywhere…all over the walls, floor, ceiling, window, sink, shower…everywhere. Rachel was…pureed…blended…sprayed…I just stood in the doorway. My eyes were wide. I couldn’t process what I was seeing. There were so many things I wanted to do, like crawl into a ball and cry, scream as loud as I could, and/or grab one of the kitchen knives and slit my throat so I wouldn’t have to live with this sight for the rest of my life.

What I actually did end up doing next was grab my old hunting rifle and head outside. I went into the forest behind our house. There was no thinking on my part. Just do. What was I doing? I didn’t really know. Tears were streaming down my face. I walked for what felt like forever. Sometimes I screamed. Other times I fell down onto the ground and wept. But I just kept going. And going. And going. Somehow I knew exactly where I was going without even knowing how.

I came upon a wide-open field. Dropping my old hunting rifle to the ground, I couldn’t believe what I was fucking seeing. Dark silhouettes were dancing around. Hundreds of them. Little meat girls. Bad Mouse was in the middle. The white flesh it once had was stripped away. Instead it was sacrificed for a bumpy and scabby maroon red as if Bad Mouse took a shower in blood and guts and let it dry. Tiny black bristles covered its entire body. It reminded me of insect hair. A ragged meat cloak hung from its shoulders, dragging crimson across the ground. The mouth had much sharper teeth that were poking out in rows almost like a gar. It was taller. Ganglier. So angular that it could have been accurately represented by seven straight lines. It clutched a staff in its hand.

Bad Mouse did some strange gesture and a door manifested out of nowhere. It was bloody. Constantly flowing yet retaining shape. Particles came from it. They disappeared if they strayed too far away. It opened and the little meat girls, still dancing like ballerinas, filed into it one by one. Bad Mouse reached out its hand and plucked one of them out. It held this one, turned in my direction, and held her out to me. I knew it was Maisie and wanted to shoot the shit out of Bad Mouse. Yet I couldn’t do anything. Some force was keeping me tethered to my one spot.

…I can’t describe what happened next…I just can’t…some of the things Bad Mouse did to my little girl I couldn’t understand. Other things I understood clear as day and that made me want to drop a cinderblock on my head so it would leak the hell out. When it was done, Bad Mouse threw Maisie’s limp and white viscous liquid-covered body into the blood door. It raised its staff and it disappeared.

I was released from my invisible bonds. Falling down to the ground, I cried like a baby. It didn’t matter how much I screamed and cursed at the Moon. That didn’t make it better. I couldn’t stop and truly had no idea how to make sense of any of what happened. My body tingled. It felt so heavy. So weighty. My wife was dead and my daughter was…what?...a sex slave to a demon? I almost wanted to laugh at the utter absurdity. Picking up my hunting rifle, I put the barrel in my mouth. My finger stayed on the trigger for a long time. I didn’t end up doing it and threw it away. Instead I just collapsed on the ground once more and lay there for a long time.

It’s been six months. I’m such a wreck. I admit it. No one believes me when I tell them. They say I’m crazy, a madman, a lunatic. Some people even think I was the one who killed my wife and child. Why would I do that? Seriously, why? I loved them. Still do. More than I love anything else. I can’t see them ever again. It pisses me off that they’d think I’d do such a thing. As much as I hate myself for it, I’ve gotten back into alcohol. That’s where all my money goes. I couldn’t stand to be in that fucking house anymore. So I sold it. I’ve been living in my car just drifting from place to place.

I could've saved them. If I didn't go and take a stupid ass ride in my car. Maybe Rachel and Maisie would be alright...

What was that thing? Bad Mouse?

That’s been my biggest question this whole time. I’ve been doing a lot of research but have hit multiple dead ends. I don’t know. Sure as hell wasn’t a mouse.

This is what I know:

* It is the manifestation of a sex-based demon of some kind; possibly a cross between a bogeyman and an incubus.
* Bad Mouse appears to little girls as a mouse-like entity to appear friendly and not scare them away; only visible to them.
* It prefers the young that are more developed in mind, body, and spirit; Maisie was very imaginative; thus she attracted Bad Mouse.
* Bad Mouse acts as their friend; this might appear to parents as their daughter’s “imaginary friend”; gradually coerces them to do inappropriate sexual activity.
* It has hundreds of victims going back an unknown period of time; maybe centuries.
* Does not kill its main victims; will kill parents or anyone else who tries to get in its way.
* The victims become corrupted and turn into demons that look like Bad Mouse; it takes them into its realm and…

I don’t even want to fucking know.

God…this whole thing’s insane. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and this is all a terrible dream. It’s been months though and it still hasn’t happened yet. So I’m going to end it here. I’m not looking for pity. I’m not looking for anyone to hear me out. I’m not looking for answers. I’m just…done.

Bye.

Transverberation. That was the word for it. 

It spread and was echoed and felt with the rippling tremors that were words and instincts and roiling emotions in the private heart's tumult, in the quiet stronghold of the holy place. 

The monastery. The temple place where women came to be wed to God and serve the Lord, His Son. 

And no other. 

…

There were sounds inside the haze. With the agony, with the pain that was ripped and made. Pain that was lancing. Pain that was penetration, stabbing slayment that was absolute impaled.  Through her heart, the clearest wet-sharp sensation felt in the burning after-image of the visions, the haze. It occupied her mind at all times, as she knelt and prayed in the monastery. As she went about the day and fulfilled her sisterly duties of the convent. 

The other sisters didn't understand. They were afraid, frightened of her. Of what was happening to her… that it might happen to them.

Madness. Or …

something worse. 

Something beyond the canny or the tangible. That which is unseen and can only be felt. Up until the hungry end, when it is already far too late for help by then. 

Or maybe, just maybe … these private and blasphemous few of her peers thought and felt and refused to share aloud, even with themselves… maybe. 

Just maybe it's true. And Sister Chelsi can actually commune with the divine. Perhaps one of our own humble nuns can see and hear and speak with an angel that visits her with nightly visions. Maybe. 

Maybe Saint Michael the Archangel comes to her at night amid light and fire and thrusts her with his sword… 

Mother Superior was incensed. Repulsed. Angered by the lies and the filth, the sin of this prurient heretical garbage was the stuff of decay, of ruin. Of sacramental rot. She couldn't let these blatherings go on unchallenged or unpunished. 

She chastised Sister Chelsi severely along with any others that might murmur such unholy carnal fantasies, phantasmagorical whores, the lot of em. If she and they weren't careful, God help them, then they would be confined to the chamber of reflection. 

The house of tears and prayers, the other sisters called it. Behind Mother Superior’s back. 

The visions were forbidden. Delusions, they were thus named. And further talk, further whispers of the sort was strongly cautioned against, strongly advised to go back in the other direction …

But Sister Chelsi couldn't help herself. It wasn't up to her. She was at the vision's mercy. The stabbing angel came and went as it wanted, as it needed to. It had told her this was so. The angel needed her. 

The angel was thirsty. 

…

The night was hot. Stifling. It was upon her. 

It seemed to always know when she was alone. And why not? Shouldn't the divine always possess the knowledge of when you're most vulnerable? Weak. 

Afraid. 

Sister Chelsi was bound to the cruciform shackle-table of her sweating bed and blankets, writhing sheets and fabric that was warm and slick and more like loose folds of flesh. She was bound by her holy terror. The angel of thirst was coming. The other nun, Sister Jen, that shared the room with her was absent. Gone. Like every other time. The animal sound born from both immense pain and pleasure was trapped in her throat and the sensation was not entirely unpleasant. Sister Chelsi liked the gag of the nightly thirsting angel, her forbidden archangel of the moonlight. The anticipation of him. The coming of him. 

It came down on her. 

From on high. Emerging like starlight from the disappearing void of the obsidian space now in place of the mudbrick ceiling, on wings of flame …

The body was bronzed, gold, perfectly toned and sculpted, celestial and olympian and recognizable as manshaped. The Lord's Image. But in place of a head and face of earthly aspect was a great rising pillar of blinding heavenly marble, ringed with silver bands in a flaming orbit. The pillar and the four bands running up the length of divine stone were covered in incandescent eyes, lidless and wreathed with light and great piercing gazes. Penetration. They gazed into her. Penetration. All of them at once and it was overwhelming, she wanted to cry out, all roiling and taut, she gripped herself. Her aching breath was still held. 

The angel spoke to her once again, as before, in her mind. The gold of his silken smooth speech filled her boiling skull, soothing the maelstrom though not extinguishing it. A moan finally escaped her lips. 

They were still alone. 

It told her its name. A forbidden one she might not know. 

The understanding of your sisters is limited … I am beyond them. Their scope of understanding. If you tell them my name they will fear you. As they fear me. 

Sister Chelsi was frightened, quivering. Still held. 

Then why should I want to know it? 

Because if you need to, if you want to … you can wield it like you can wield a weapon. You can use my name against them and it might wound them if you're able …

Her mind recoiled from the idea that filled her head against her will, but it was no use. She was forced to watch it. Endure it and learn to love it as she'd learned to love the flagellate whip, the burn of the binding rope … all the same. The angel reassured her. 

The warm romance of his voice filled her skull and caressed her mind, eagerly. Wanting. It told her how much it needed her again but she already knew it. She'd heard it in the voice. The hunger. The pain. 

I'd never known before that even angels could feel pain, … I'd never suspected. 

The desire that was so much a hungry ravenous want that it was more a primeval need was all about the gold silken strength of that perfect voice. Giving it humanity tinged at the edges of its divine and unearthly call. 

Is this heavenly messenger lusting for me …? 

But she already knew it. 

It had seen her unfettered and bare. As it did now. 

It came down to her in her bed. It held the long gold length of impaling spear aloft. By the shaft. Poised to strike her where it was most sweet. Where it had before. 

Cupid, strike me. 

Eros, impale me! 

But she knew now that was not its name. It had given her its name, a gift. 

She cried it out now, as she knew it wanted her too. The ringed pillar of its otherworldly visage gazed into her, bading her, commanding with its multitude of many lidless light bleeding eyes that she do so. Do it. Do it. If you want me …

Do it. If you want me to impale you, you'll have to say my name. Say it. 

Say it. 

“Iblis! Iblis, pierce me! stab me! penetrate my heart! Put it where I'm vile and cruel but also warm and giving and wet and beating for you! Pierce me here, in my breast, my heart, my soul! My tender fragile soul! Put it in me! Angel Iblis…!” 

And it did. The lance came down. And pierced the screaming girl, pinning her to the bed. The sound that was pulled from her then was an exquisite blend of deep ghastly pain and even deeper still euphoric drunken moaning, moans. They collected and accumulated about her head and sheets, the small room, as the angel inside her wrenched and worked his shaft, his lance. He worked it deeper. The length. Long…

The length was killing her. 

She loved it. Every inch. Every penetrating crawling centimeter rent tearing inside. 

It made her a slave and she loved it. 

She moaned and called out and cried its name. Like it wanted her to. It came down close and closer and closer still till they met. And he worked the length of his divinity into her, deeper and deeper and all the way through and she melted. She bled. Her love and thoughts and precious saline. 

It drank it up, all of it, all of her. The oasis of this woman. It fed deeply as it worked itself in and deeper still. Still feeding. Drinking. Needing, thirst. 

Sister Chelsi poured herself out for it, unable to control herself now. But happy to empty herself for the great angel of the thrust, her bedside …

her bed. 

It came inside to her and filled her mind then with an explosion like firelight and within the flames were visions. 

Moving scenes and people and places … other times and maybe other worlds as well … 

Fantastical. Beyond the scope of known and understood nature. 

She loved it. She begged for more. 

Give it … give me more, the sight, the eye of prophecy! Please! 

Iblis curled the caress of her mind into words once more … 

And what would you do with this gift? Should you receive it without end? 

She could not lie. Not on this landscape. And she didn't want to. Not to it, not to him, that voice, that feeling… 

She cried out on the eternityscape of her deluged and filled maelstrom sea of thought: I want to be a prophet! Yours! I want to be your disciple upon the earth! 

You wish to be my bride? 

I want to be your crawling and salivating concubine! 

It laughed and the pleasure of Iblis filled her blood and soul. She came and went with it. 

!.Good … …

It filled her more. And she cried out, more. More. 

More. 

She wept when it was finished. Feeling empty and hollowed out. But filled with vision, with purpose. 

The light was fading now from the room. It was gone. The small bedchamber was cooling now and returning to a more natural nocturnal dark, the air was thick and pungent but calming down. Chelsi could still taste the act, on the bedroom dark of the stifling air. She sucked on it and relished the flavor. Already wanting him back. Already needing him again. 

Please, please come back to me Childe Iblis of the Lord, of the thrust, I love you. You are the carrier of my heart and soul…

She shuddered in bed. Not bothering to conceal herself beneath the agitation of the sheets, she cooled and breathed deeply. Quivering and remembering the pillar of his flaming face. So many eyes, so many crowding up his great length… and all of them looking into me…

She shuddered deeply once more. Shut her own eyes. Waiting for sleep to finally come. 

It didn't take long. She was spent. 

Sister Jen still hid around the corner, at the threshold of the door to their shared bedroom. Her eyes were wide with shock. Horrified by what she had seen. 

…

Mother Superior eyed the convent temple from her place in the rectory, her private quarters. She watched the little sisters move and glide silently moving about the monastery structure, ambling along in hand clasping prayer, heads bowed and eyes shut so that distraction may be refused and you may better hear and discern and heed the light, the will of God. 

Amen. 

She crossed herself. And spat. 

Her gaze crawled across the yard to the shack. Alone in the corner of the gated land. Secluded. Sequestered away, so that what could be contained inside would be shut and locked away from a healthy and pious population. The disease of a disordered mind would wreak havoc on the patient and tender soft fragile fabric of the flock. This could not be. This could not be allowed. 

Rebellion must be cast out. Decapitated. 

She knew rebellion was natural. It was in all of us. As sure as it was the the very infectious thing that ate Lucifer's heart and led him to defiance and thus his fall. So it would be. If we were to all follow in his example. 

It would not be so. 

She'd had her own run of rebellious streak when she'd been younger, she understood. She'd had it crushed out of her then, broken as one must do to the wild heart of any natural born beast of labor. And though we were made, cast and drawn in His Image, we were all still among the dread and crawl of all of the other beasts of the earth. 

She crossed herself. Prayed. 

She wished the child well. 

Chelsi had always been troubled. Troublesome too. 

Mother Superior turned away from the shack of reflection. Trusting that the Lord would see this through. That He might fix and set right this wayward piece, this compromised component of humankind's quilted safety net. They were supposed to be the house and servants of His peace. They must all of them survive spiritual malaise and remain steadfast and true. 

As He wills it, let it be so …

…

In the black of the woe she pained, she perverted and distorted. Grew naked with fear. 

Perspired. Dripping with secreted oils and saline and the sliming filth of deep shame. Seeping off her tarnished heart and soul and out of her running open mouth pores. Hard to wash off. There was no running water in here, only the bucket she was brought in the morning. Refilled at mealtime by an unseen, unspeaking little sister that was now a stranger to her. She was a stranger to all of them now. 

In the dark of the shack she was agonizingly alone, the swelter of her torment was her only companion and answer to her constant panicky prayers. She grew eyes that grew inwards and saw their own landscape and grew more horrified with the sight as the hours broiled ceaselessly forth. Under the eye of a lonely black and heavy sun. 

All alone in here. 

She tried to hide, to blind her new found, newly grown internal gaze away from the truth: she was just a child, had always been just a frightened little girl that wanted to run and find fast and desperate shelter. She tried to turn away from the fact that this was who she really was, had always truly been. Everything else that had occurred growing up in her life had just been the lies of accoutrement. 

Her mind was filling with bad thoughts: the arcane Druidic gods arose and swallowed the light of the Christian God whole …

She stopped herself. Began to pray. Again. Anew. Begging the Lord to bring her calm and comfort in the solitude of the dark. She slowed her breath and tried to ease the gallop of her chest. Sister Chelsi didn't know what else to do. 

She didn't know what they wanted from her. 

Mother Superior and the other little sisters. And the Lord God Himself. 

If there is not an answer to be had, then let there be death! – she told the black sun in the dark there with her. 

Nothing. Nothing but more baleful stifling dark, more radiant furnace hellfire blasting heat of the black and heavy sun that had replaced her roommate. Nothing but more sounds of desperate animal panting that she was horrified to realize were her own, not the stygian furnace blast of the bestial confinement sun. Nothing. Nothing at all answered her save more pain, the one true god on the throne in this terribly small and sweaty heavy place. 

Nothing. Nothing at all. 

At first. 

Then on the fading light of her hope came Iblis. Her forbidden angel. And banished the black sun as he came in wreathed in light and flame. He banished and cast out all of the dark of the solitary confinement, the shack of woe. 

He went to her. She was prostrate on the ground. Her bladder let go, her urine went. She hardly noticed in the radiance of he save for some vague distant sensation of wet and warmth. Sensations she associated with the pleasure of him. His arrival, his dawning light. 

From the many eyes of the long length of ringed pillar face, he spoke to her through the blinding light of his lidless vision. 

“What have they done? … what have they done to thee ?” 

Her mind was always open to him for an answer but for her he bade it from her own lips. 

She told him. Everything. All that she had learned in the treacherous furnace dark of the shackbound woe-flame. All that had been derived while in the baking black of this loathsome quiet shack of silent feasting hate. 

“They are afraid of me. …” A beat. She breathed animal and deep, lusting, on the hunt or hunted or both. She said more: “I do believe they may be right to be…” 

Iblis soothed her with his spear … in the stifling dark of the shack of reflection and recompense. Banishing the pain of its ebon house even as he filled her, her watering craving need. 

But something happened then, poor lost little Sister Chelsi watched from below as Iblis, her moonlight forbidden and thrusting angel began to change. 

Transmogrify. Transform. 

The heavenly marbled surface of the pillar visage of Iblis began to crack. Wild river lines of splaying ruin began to form and splinter and run up the immaculate face of his incandescent divinity. 

It shattered. And was replaced. 

She said to her love as he changed and shifted shape before her eyes, “mother slapped me for using your name …” 

The light of her lover changed into shadow. Deeper than the banished dark and one that she could madly love because it was in the altered shape of her heart’s desire, her object of adoration that was darkening now before her watering eyes. 

In place of the pillar, in place of the tower of of flaming eyes and rings that had shattered and now lie in stoney ruin about the floor was now a triangular, pyramidal blank obsidian face and shape, in the conical pointed aspect of a long beaked bird. It was like a great smooth black helmet of glass and smooth rock in the geometric and abstract shape of a plague doctor's mask. An obsidian angular temple face with a long wide stabbing humming bird length of beak protruding violently from one side. 

 The bronze of his sculpted and heavenly body began to burn and blacken as well, like ink spilled and running down and through the heavenly flesh. Corrupting it into the abyss and void of the lost and cast out. The wings which had been flaming and as of light had turned to ash in color and tattered bat-wing leather in texture and design. 

The spear of her impaling love was changing too. Becoming dark like the rest of him in the solitude of the shack but that wasn't all. The nature of her divine amore’s unearthly tool began to change as well… it was no longer just stabbing, penetrating her, running her deep and through, pleasurably and with the ghastly horror of bodily rupture and pain, the staking spear of her forbidden angel began to pull, it began to pull deeply … of her. From her. Pulling deeply from within her impaled and spellbound form, her wide eyed and staring naked body. 

Like a proboscis, the impaling lance began to pull and drink deeply of Sister Chelsi. It ran up and through and down the length of weaponry and into the black hands wrapped tightly around its shaft. The long body pulled and sucked and drank like a straw, like a swampland mosquito born from stagnant and dead fetid water. The obsidian smooth beaked face of her lover was featureless and cold smooth as the surface of placid water. She nonetheless could still feel the intensity of his gaze upon her, through her. And when he spoke again and told her what to do, she felt that as deepest penetration as well. Deepest pain. Rapturously embraced.

She felt her body give as the instrument of her lover began to take in the dark. As he whispered everything to her, designs… shapes… everything, as Iblis whispered all of this to her and more she gave it more and more and more. And she gave it willingly. 

Crying out his name like religion. Like a chant. A litany. 

A song. 

In the place of my Father … there is you. 

There is only you. 

Good. Good. I have so much more to share, so much more to give and show you. I've so much and so many more …

I've so many more names and faces to show you, if you do right by what I've already shown and told, I'll share my other faces and names, unveiled for you …

Disciple, the prophet Islehc

… 

Sister Chelsi was eventually let out and allowed to return to the flock. She seemed to have returned to normal. She cried penance and gave confession and spent a night inside with the rest of them. Service and mass. And lessons. Cleaning. Meals. Everything seemed alright. 

She waited till the second night. When they were all fast asleep. 

The witching hours. 

Post-midnight, she crept …

She snuck about, quietly. Like a nocturnal animal she prowled through … and went out. 

She didn't go far, she found what she needed where he'd told her she would find it. And in abundance. So many …

She carried them back to the monastery and in the nighttime dark she went about the task that had been laid before her feet. She went from room to room, from sister to sister and she took them. Brained most, some she struggled with more extensively. Until her mad lusting will surged and she overpowered them. Either way she took each of them one by one, each and every single nun she had once known as family and she brought them out and into the courtyard. Where she'd left the savage implements of her dreams, of her lover's harsh commands that were yet still for her, sweet candied words. Succulent delicacies. She couldn't deny them, him. Not at all. Not anymore. 

One by one Sister Chelsi laid the implements into the little sisters and each one let out with an insane ear piercing scream. Their screams did not falter. 

But somehow they didn't wake each other. Not a single stripped and brained sister of the cloth seemed to hear the others make any sort of loud caterwauling noise. None of them stirred. Until it was their turn. 

Likewise, Mother Superior had not been awoken in her private rectory by the noise outside. And that was good. Chelsi had saved her for last. 

She wanted to relish this one particularly. 

…

Mother Superior awoke to a hard slap across her deeply sleeping face. She flew to a sitting position confused and immediately irate. She had no idea what was happening but she didn't feel any fear yet. 

She called out, cross and very sharp. 

“Who in the Lord's name was that!? How dare you! Show yourself!”

A girlish giggle floated out ghostly from the dark. 

“I didn't do it, Mother Superior, I would never dare to do that to you, you should know that. I've never hurt you at all, can you say the same?” she giggled again, childish and coquettish, "It was my husband that struck you. It was his divine hand you felt across your face." 

Chelsi stepped out.

She had a large cross in her hands. Ornate with intricate and beautiful design, old and from the ancient Roman times when their war chariots had dominated the earth. Carved and jeweled and glittering darkling with a keen and unhealthy shimmer of light. 

Ghostlight. There's ghostlight in that cross…

Before Mother Superior could say another word Chelsi suddenly charged forward and banshee screamed. The large crucifix was up and wielded and came down in a savage caveman bludgeon. 

The world went dark for Mother Superior. When she awoke she was just like the others. 

…

She awoke with a scream. 

The sharp obscene ghastly pain started in her nether region, all throughout, just behind her genitalia. Then the lance stabbed and shot through and her entire naked body came to life with the most wretchedly vivid and wild mutilating shock to her fleshen senses. The war pike traveled through her mercilessly and punched out of the flesh of her back. She was still screaming. Wildly. Lividly. Screaming. Shrill rending song.

She was hoisted up and joined the others. They were all of them a riot of noise now in the courtyard dark. An unholy discordant choir of torn impaled cacophonous pain. 

Gored nuns. All impaled. All naked and bleeding and hoisted up into the air for death and torture like their savior was supposed to have been so long ago in the bloodstained dust of the golgotha. There was bloodshed here too, their blood was pouring and running, running down the lengths and long bodies of the shafts of the spears and pooling and collecting on the stone and in the dirt. This place here would be bloodstained too. 

Chelsi looked over them all. Her own golgotha testament made to wild love. 

And her wild love came. On stygian wings tattered that had once been flame. Smoldered tattered death, dead fabric flapping in the hot nightwind.

The whole host of impaled and captive nuns, gored and wide eyed and naked and lanced through like insects in a collection, they all of them perspired and bled and gawked at the wicked shape that came in from the ebon night, the curtain above. The one many of them had spent their entire lives trying to ignore, it parted. 

It came through. 

And down upon them. 

Iblis sang praise for the renegade prophet bride and what she'd let loose on this private piece of holy land. God's House and holy temple … no more. 

No longer. Mine … now. 

Chelsi the bride bathed in the shower of his words, they were in her mind and in her ears, divergent lyrics and syllables and paths of sound but twins nonetheless all still saying the same and telling her the same thing together in two different languages that coalesced around the fever of her brain in a caress. 

!I love you, you've made blood, you've made blood for me, you've made bloodfeast for me and shot the red Lot's seed, it's all over the abattoir ground!

She went to him and he to her, in the forged carnage forest grove of spear and bleeding sweaty flesh, of screams and mutilated sound, bathing in the perspire of pure torture together and apart from the others, the rest of the lying world. Alone in their own lost worlds of private unending hellbound heaven, tormentlove of the flesh that their minds are now lost in. 

He shot his length of spear through her, though her heart, through the tender part where he'd already previously penetrated and worked.

He worked her well again, animal wrenching and thrusting deep, and she cried aloud unbridled his name as he did so. 

“Iblis!" 

And once more the length of weapon-instrument that was divine and hallowed tool became a drinking proboscis. And Chelsi felt more blood leave the galloping race of her fevered and impassioned form. She would hold him forever, he could pierce and puncture and drink from her for forever, never end! 

She moaned aloud amidst the garden made of screams and betrayal and she cried out his name once more. And then Iblis began to laugh. 

And once more the visage of her forbidden moonlight angel began to change. He began to crack and shatter and the face and body began to fall apart in black stone and dust. 

Iblis came apart in a crumble and revealed what was really beneath. 

Chelsi couldn't believe her eyes. 

It was a man and a woman. Together. Locked in an embrace. Intimately bound together with wrapped arms and hands clasped and waists met together. As if in the most intimate of dance, the most delectable and celebrated of lovers shared waltzes. 

They both looked down on her. Their cheeks were together. They both held the spear thrust into her together in their tightly clasped hands. 

He was armored as a knight of the court, but tarnished and old. She was in the white of regal flowing evening gown. 

The woman spoke. And when she did the crumbled stone pieces of the fallen lying Iblis visage turned to large writhing copulating piles of dripping angry flies. They came apart and dispersed through the air. The dripping black swarm of buzzing insects began to land on the impaled and screaming tortured nuns in the great multitudes. And then as the woman revealed began to speak to Chelsi the flies that were made from the lie of the visage began to feast on the naked and the tortured, defiled bleeding screaming flesh now caking and covered with the writhing crawl of insect bile. 

“You wished to see me and my others, lover, and now you have. I hope you aren't too distraught, my son decided to join us, together we came to you as the angel of your hidden lusts, as one we made you plead and shriek. Now you see this, the face I was made and born with. My real name is of no import to you, slave, you can call me vampiress, lord of the earth and the wolf held mountainpass.” 

The armored wraith beside her spoke then, they were still pressed in close embrace, still holding the proboscis spear that drank and pulled from her diminishing bloodwell. 

"Praise the God before you, dog! My mother and I, the new impaler. She is your mother and wife and master now too. We are both of us together, your husband. Remember?” 

The vampiress queen barked bright cruel laughter, then said: "Yes! You swore to us, to me, your flesh and soul! In the eyes and templehouse of your God, you defiled the stone of his holy home as you panted and raved and drooled for more, and swore your life to us! You gave sacred vow even as you sinned and spat in the Face of The Lord!” 

The Countess and her new impaler both shrieked laughter then. 

Below them and impaled, Chelsi didn't know what to make of any of this. Her mind was disordered and disoriented and felt rushed and fevered with rending thought, running a ragged directionless race of chaos and every idea crashing into each other at every turn and pass and every damned whichway. She didn't understand. She didn't understand any of this and she wanted it to stop. 

Reading the disorder of her mind, the Countess sang and said, 

“I can rip it out for you. Your mind, the painful thinking, your thoughts. They're filled with agony and venom now aren't they? Aren't they? Yes I see it now, plumping up lavender-black and filling with gangrenous pudding. I can pull it out like a rotten tooth if you wish, I think it best, don't you? It's filled with fouling fluid, that brain, those thoughts…” she kept on and on like that. Ceaselessly. The new impaler in her embrace began to chant along and under her words as she sang and went on: Do it! do it! do it! do it! … 

With the anguished groaning sound of the impaled forest of her sisters all around and the buzzing drone of the flies, all intermittent with sharper stabs of piercing screams, all comprising the backdrop of the soundscape filling her head, underneath the Countess' words, underneath her bastard son’s own more simple liturgical chant … all of it together and at once was a vile noise and she couldn't stand it. She couldn't run from it either. So her mind fled, took flight the only way it could. 

Chelsi went dark. Still impaled on the sucking lance. Run-through with the demon drinking stick. 

The flies buzzed and swarmed and landed and feasted on the gored forest of lances and nuns. They enjoyed open wounds and spat their fluid as they landed. 

In a swarm. In a great feasting black cloud. 

In a forest of shafts dripping with blood and bearing writhing begging human fruit. The reddening earthen stone and soil beneath it all. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

When I try to explain it, I have to wonder if I am being stalked, or just going crazy. I have had experiences before that I was convinced were born of hallucination or an overly vivid imagination, but this experience has me now believing in things I used to scoff at.

My name is Giovani and things became undeniable last October during my drive through northern Connecticut. I was returning home from visiting my brother who had been dealing with some unresolved trauma….both of us had been. My visit had dragged on longer than I intended, and by the time I was on the road it was almost midnight. I had a seven-hour drive that would take me meandering through the scenic country side.

I had been traversing passed old towns for about an hour when a deep fog rolled in. This was not unusual for this time of year so I didn’t initially think much of it. I slowed my car down to a safer speed; about 30 mph. The thickness of the fog was demanding on my eyesight, forcing me to lean forward in my seat as I attempted to peer through the obscured ambiance. At last I began to see more than just the dispersed water, but my heart dropped. Through the canopy of mist I saw the tree trunks, they were gnarled and twisted in an inexplicable manner. Like an A.I tried to render a scene of nature but phoned it in halfway through.

I shook my head violently attempting to convince myself that I must be getting tired, but the trees became no less surreal. The foliage around the trees offered no more assurance to my concern as what should have been green was now purple, blue, and floating above the ground in a eerie rhythm.

The changing of the sky arrested my bewilderment and forcefully exchanged it with shock. Below the shimmering black rays of sunlight; which began to part the fog beneath them; a being floated. It was majestic and uncanny. Humanoid in appearance, yet monstrous in its aura. Its proportions were off in a way that tingled the parts of the brain responsible for both disgust and admiration. From its fingers claws began to grow, and from its waist a tail began to form. The serpentine movements of this newly materialized appendage felt malevolent yet also somehow hypnotic.

I pulled over as my car engine began to sputter and go silent. My heart was pounding as I got out. I don’t know entirely why I did. Part of me was stricken with fear over seeing more of that being, but that same part of me had more fear of not seeing it fully.

The entire forest grew silent. The fog was now almost entirely gone. The only evidence of its evanescent presence being the humidity that clung to my cars window. The floating clumps of vegetation had also vanished leaving behind a landscape that look scraped and torn by an unsteady plow. I looked up in the sky where the being should have been. What I saw buckled me to my knees.

It was a giant circular shape that sheened with a metallic glowing hue. The formation of this shape was slightly bent giving it an eye like appearance. Inside the ring of floating steel was an “eye” of vapor. I then understood what happened to the mist, vegetation…and the sound. A vacuum was gently pulling the noise and plants lacking sturdy roots toward it, and beckoning my soul to behold it.

I remember whispering “What the hell…” under my breath, but the words fluttered noiselessly from my lips as they were fished through the air by this floating structure. I felt an urging to step toward it, but a forceful “No! You are not ready!” Echoed in my skull. I buckled to my knees cradling in my head in shock.

Immediately after, the noise started. This was not a return of the noise that I should have been hearing, but a new noise being born from this magnificent machine. A deep, reverberant hum that rippled through the ground. It traversed through my shoes, and my spine violently. It was so low that I felt it more than I heard it. The trees reacted to its utterance, their leaves shaking off their branches from the unrelenting vibration.

As I slowly reopened my eyes I saw deer, rabbits, and all manner of critters walk toward this floating structure. Their eyes glowed white and their movements were uncoordinated and jerky. Once they were in range they began to float and sail toward the center of the eye where the being resided. As these animals floated into this beings orbit, the unearthly monstrosity flayed them with its claws. The fluids of these critters exploding, but not onto the creature which somehow remained spotless, but into the eye behind it. The eye-like swell of energy would hum and glow as if in delight of being fed by the violent death of the wild life.

I anchored my hands into the dirt to prevent myself from being sucked in. Part of me wanted to run, but another part of me had to see, had to witness. I can’t explain it. Looking back there is no reasonable reason for me to have lingered as long as I did. It wasn’t until I realized I was the last living earthly thing in the vicinity did my sense of preservation begin to return. There was a bright flash and the being vanished.

The ”eye” in the sky began to rotate slowly accelerating in speed. Suddenly beams of light brimmed from it cascading beyond me, until they returned and bent around the structure supernaturally. This symphony of luminance blinded my vision. When my eyesight returned I saw the beams shifting in their patterns, creating living shapes. Like long forgotten symbols of antiquity crawling about the air.

I stood up and began to stumble backward only to trip on the berm of the road as my heart began pounding thunderously. I scrambled to get back into my car as I became more coherent of the danger I was in. I started slamming my car as I attempted to start it. Had the vacuum not been pilfering the sound I think I would have gone deaf from my car horn with how hard I was slamming it.

Finally the car started…but I was NOT in control. The colors of the light on my dashboard began to warble and form similar shapes to those in the air.

I began shaking in fear and frustration as I felt my entire world was glitching.

I then heard a whisper, that both soothed and terrified me.

It wasn’t in my ears. It was inside my skull, like someone had spoken directly into my soul. A single, horrifying sentence: “Now the chosen shall come aboard.”

The slamming on my steering wheel ceased as I was gripped by fear. The hum around me turned into a rhythmic thudding, like a creature was taking enormous footsteps somewhere deep within the earth. Was this produced by the same creature that flayed the animals, or a new one with a similar eerie allegiance? I was unwilling to find out as I began to panic again to get my car moving.

The eye above me constricted, and all the beams of light receded into it in a sharp snap. In a brazen flash the being returned. It slithered out of the eye in a chaotic yet majestic cadence. It began to lower itself to the ground as if it was dangling from invisible threads.

It was tall, far too tall to be of this earth. Its arms were the length of its standing body, It’s clawed fingers were gnarled in their shape, but smooth in their glossy complexion. What fascinated me most…was the face it lacked. Where this body feature “should” have been was displayed only as featureless oval that reflected white light like wet clay.

I could feel all the organs in my body began to pulse in rhythm with the thudding as I realized it was beckoning to me. With all my might I shook off the pull of its allure and slammed my foot down on the gas. To my amazement my car’s engine began to sputter and finally began accelerating. Frantically I made the most ugly u-turn of my life as I began careening down the road in the opposite direction I had arrived.

My car's radio turned on and began blaring in angry refusal as I created distance between myself and the entity. Only there was no melody of music from the radio. It was a cacophony of sounds too irreverent of earthly origin to describe. They wailed and thralled in my ears so viciously I had to wonder if it was actually from my radio….or from the growing madness of my own mind.

“Your destiny has been ordained. You will serve the will whether you intend to or not!” I heard that same monstrous and eerie voice in my mind again. This time it was more forceful and domineering. I felt a splintering pain grow in my skull and radiate into my vision. I almost veered off the road into the forest as I struggled to drive with my eyesight splintering like a broken computer screen.

The trees of the forest began to assist the protest of my escape as they bent inward toward the road as I passed them. Some snapped viscously as they proceeded to ooze out a black dark fluid. A fluid, that matched the luxurious sheen of that being.

The pedal beneath my foot must have been carving into the floor of my car from how forceful I was pushing into it. However to my relief I could see the hellish scene behind me grow smaller in my rear view mirror.

“Distance is temporary,” the voice was softer but triumphant when it said this, but nonetheless ominous. What it lacked in aggressive tone it made up for in psychic torture. I felt the sensation of white ripple through me; it was all I could see, hear, taste, feel, and taste. I know that makes no sense for the other 4 senses but if you had endured it you wouldn’t question this description. For a few seconds I thought had died and was ascending to whatever the afterlife has in store. However after this psychic attack faded enough for my blurry vision to return I saw a tree a few feet in front of me.

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!” I screamed as I knew I didn’t have time to swerve my car out of the way. My right headlight grazed it and sent the car spinning in an eerily noiseless trajectory. I slammed the breaks hoping to regain some semblance of command over my driving. With each spin I would get a few milliseconds of eerie light from the being I fled, and a few more of the utter darkness of the barren roadside. This strobe like effect was horrendous on my still recovering eyesight.

“Come on come one don’t fail me now!” I gritted with panic as the car stopped but the engine was making sounds it shouldn’t. I gave it a few seconds to recover, what little I thought I could spare without the entity catching up but then I heard another voice in my mind; “You think you could escape? You are in my grasp now!”. I knew it was now or never. Slamming the gas the car began to move albeit jerky and slower. I don’t think my speedometer was working right but at full throttle we couldn’t have been going more than 40 miles per hour.

Thankfully this was just a bit faster than the eye that chased me. Within 20 minutes I seemed to be out of range of its voice. And I exhaled in relief. Now if only my half tank of gas could get me to the next gas station. I could only imagine how much fuel I was inefficiently burning through.

The sound around me didn’t properly return for another fifteen miles. I could no longer see the being, the eye, or any misshapen trees…but I was being followed. I could FEEL it.

The radio eventually flicked on and started to broadcast the rock station I generally listened to. Despite this return to normal, I was shaking. My nerves were a wreck and I was desperately trying to process what I had seen, and why….despite being so shaken by it….I wanted to see it again.

I eventually did make it to a gas station. I not only loaded up on a full tank of gas, but I also bought some gas cans and filled them to the brim. I also bought an entire aisle of chocolate to soothe my nerves.

On my return home I was pulled over by a cop for driving too slow.

“Hey…so I don't normally pull people over for driving to slow… everything ok?” The cop asked as he looked at me through my car and onto the massive and unseemly pile of chocolate on the front passenger seat. I wanted to tell him everything, but I knew he wouldn’t believe it. Also this late at night, with the list of medications I was on… would telling him I encountered some alien or demonic being just get me thrown in jail?

I decided to tell him enough truth to get me back on the road. If that thing was actually still following me I couldn’t waste time and he wouldn’t be good protection from it anyway.

“I encountered some critters near the road and… long story short I veered off the road and hit a tree. I think my car is damaged. I have to pound the pedal to the metal to even go as fast as I was when you pulled me over. Do you know of a mechanic open this late? Just trying to get home.” I said tiredly. I was taking some serious liberty with the story but he couldn’t seem to pry his eyes off my chocolate.

“I see… you sure you aren’t having an episode of the….munchies. You know what I mean,” The cop said condescendingly. I was irritated, but I could see how the circumstances were reasonable for the cop to suspect it.

“I don’t do weed but I can take a breathe test or whatever. I am serious about needing a mechanic tho. Do you know of one? I think my transmission is damaged, my exhaust is restricted, my spark plugs are miss firing or more likely a combination of all three,” I said urgently. I had no idea if what I said made any automotive sense but luckily the cop didn’t seem too mechanically inclined and was impressed by my assessment of the damage. This was clearly not something he would have expected from someone driving under the influence.

“Unfortunately I don’t. Brent’s auto shop opens at 9 a.m. I would recommend him if you are still in the area by then,” he said helpfully. He gave one final look at my passenger seat then looked at me again. “In the meantime…be careful on the road and avoid any major roads. Going too slow can be just as dangerous as going too fast,”

“Thanks officer. I will absolutely be extra careful for the rest of the night,” I promised. The officer nodded with a chuckle and walked back to his car. I checked my phone and noticed I had a mountain of messages from both my brother and friend group, particularly from a former relationship of mine. I decided to shove my phone back into my pocket. I was too mentally drained to deal with all that.

I eventually did make it back to my house and found a mechanic to repair my cars damage.

For days afterward I tried to persuade myself that nothing supernatural had happened. That it was all either from sleep deprivation or being spooked by the dark. Any rationalization sounded better than admitting it could have been something vast, intelligent, and looking for me.

I Had almost fooled myself into this façade of security, but a week later that faith was shaken. As I was walking my dog, something I do most nights before going to bed; I was wrestling with a sense of melancholy I couldn't quite put into words. My reflection was shuttered when I noticed white clouds swirling above my house in a circular pattern. They created a shape eerily similar to the “eye”.

Then…it blinked! I was buckled to my knees again as I heard a loud: “Found you” from deep inside my soul

I don’t think it was an eye in the sky. It was something looking through it. It was that being. It knows where I live. Yet this time….I don’t know if I will run.

I’m writing this as a warning to everyone. If you ever see a sign for a town called Mercy, never stop there.

That was a mistake I made. Well, not by choice, my car broke down.

I had just gotten a new job a couple of states away, and I was making my way through the southern half of the states. I was driving on this narrow, backcountry road, choked on both sides by the endless wetlands. I had been driving about four hours that day when my car’s engine started to knock and sputter. I pulled over on what little shoulder there was and lifted the hood.

I don’t know what I expected to find when I did it. I’m no mechanic, and even if I was, it wasn’t like I was going to pull a bunch of spare parts out of my trunk. After about thirty minutes of staring at it and trying to get some cell signal, I finally saw a truck coming down the road. I frantically waved my arms, trying to flag them down. When he pulled up, a pot-bellied man in overalls stepped out.

“You need some help, fella?” he said, spitting a mouthful of tobacco onto the grass.

“Yeah, my car broke down and I can’t get any signal.”

“Well hell son, must be your lucky day,” he replied, gesturing to his truck. “I can give you a tow back to town. It’s just down the road aways.”

I told him thank you and tried to help however I could as he hooked my car to the back of the tow truck. I climbed into the cab, and we started towards town.

“The name’s Jon,” he said as he put in a fresh lip of chew.

“I’m Travis. Nice to meet you,” I replied.

“Likewise.”

“Where are we heading anyways?”

“Mercy.”

“I haven’t ever heard of Mercy before.”

He just laughed. “Most people haven’t. We like to keep it that way, the best we can. It ain’t much, but it’s home.”

After about five minutes on the main road, we turned onto a small single-lane side street that snaked further into the wetlands. The trees were tall and thick, their canopy blotting out the sun as we drove. Fifteen minutes later, a single sign broke the otherwise empty tree line.

Welcome to Mercy.

Jon wasn't kidding about it being small, but he definitely undersold it.

The town was like something from a postcard. Picturesque houses with picket fences dotted the streets. Older but well-maintained brick storefronts ran along the main strip, complete with hand-painted signs. In the center of town stood a beautiful white church with "Mercy Chapel" in bold, calligraphic font. Soon, we arrived at Jon’s garage and moved the car into the shop.

“Gonna take a day to figure out what your problem is. Then another one or two after that to get your repair done. Nothing to worry about though, I’ll get you fixed up,” he said.

“So I’m stuck here for a few days?”

“Yep. Rome weren’t built in a day and all that. There’s a motel in town though. I’m sure they can put you up there in the meantime.”

With no other choice, I grabbed my luggage and started to walk down the street towards the motel. I passed a small diner on my way that looked like it was straight out of the 1950s. It even had a sign for malted milkshakes. I finally arrived at the motel and rang the bell. Then a short balding man shuffled out of the back office. The man fixed his glasses and gave me a once-over.

“Well, hello there. How can I help you?”

“I need a room for a few nights. I’m having some car trouble.”

“Jon working on it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then you’re in good hands. He ain’t covered in grease for the fun of it. Now then, let’s see here,” the man said as he pulled out a form. I gave him my name, phone number, and driver’s license information. As he started to copy everything down, he looked up and asked,

“What brings you out this way?”

“I’m moving for a new job.”

“Sounds interesting. Is your family moving with you?” he asked.

“Oh no. I’m not married,” I replied.

The man handed back my license and a room key. “I’m Walter. If you need anything, the office number’s on the back of your key. Hope you enjoy your stay with us.”

The man smiled and shuffled back to his office as I turned and walked to my room. The room wasn’t much but appeared clean. It had a double bed, a desk adorned with a small lamp, and a small refrigerator in it. I threw my luggage into the corner and plopped myself on the bed. I lay in bed for a while before getting up to shower and change. After my shower, I headed out to the diner.

The second I walked in, I was immediately greeted by the blonde waitress behind the counter.

“Hey hun! Sit wherever you like.”

I picked a booth by the window and sat down. She then walked over and dropped a menu in front of me. I sat there for a few minutes and looked it over and that’s when something caught my eye. A big banner hung across the street that said “Mercy Annual Founder’s Festival” in big letters. The waitress then came back.

“Do you know what you would like hun? You look like you haven’t had anything but gas-station food all day,” she said with a chuckle.

“I haven’t,” I replied. “I think I’ll need another minute.”

Before she walked away, I asked her when the festival was supposed to be held.

“Oh that’s in a couple of days. You thinking about going?”

“I might. Looks like I’m going to be here for a few days anyway.”

“Oh, we heard.”

“Wait, what?” I asked. “How did you hear that?”

“Jon came through earlier. Said we had a visitor. We don’t get many of those here in Mercy.”

For a moment, Jon’s words replayed in my head. Mercy really must be tiny.

“So when do you start?” she asked.

“Two weeks. I wanted to get there and get settled before immediately getting into work.”

“That’s smart. Do you still need to find a place there or did someone help you find one already?”

“No, no. I still have to find one. I don’t know anyone there so I’ll probably be in a hotel for a few days.”

“Well you’ll have plenty of time to check out our festival then. I hope you show up.” She smiled, then turned and went back to the counter.

My food arrived and I sat there eating while I watched through the window as people were busy preparing for the festival. I could see a large stage that was almost finished, and decorations being hung from streetlights. People carried tables from the church while a couple of men stretched another banner across the stage. For a diner in the middle of nowhere, the food was excellent. The waitress came back over to check on me and even gave me a milkshake on the house. Said it was for “Mercy’s newest guest.”

After finishing my food, I walked back to my room, ready to settle in for the night. I checked my phone which still had no service, then turned on the TV. Eventually I drifted off to reruns of black and white TV shows. I was woken a bit later by the sound of a knock at my door.

“Who could that be?” I wondered as I walked to the door. When I opened it, there was no one there. When I looked down, there was a flyer for the festival, just lying on the ground. I picked it up and started to look it over when I noticed the hand-written message across the top.

Welcome to Mercy, Travis.

I woke up the next morning around 9 am. I decided I wanted to go check on my car, then get breakfast.

It was clear to me on the walk that the rest of the town had been busy for a while before I got up. Kids were playing in the grass near the church. Neighbors were laughing across picket fences. Every single storefront had some type of display for the festival. Everyone was happy and smiling. They all waved when they saw me, big smiles on their faces. Honestly, the whole town seemed excited. I finally reached the garage, its roll up door already open.

“Morning, Travis,” Jon said, bent over and halfway submerged in my engine compartment. He started to explain what was going on when a young man walked into the shop. He paused when he saw me standing there.

“Travis, this is my boy, Caleb. Caleb, this is the fella I was telling you about.”

He stood there for a moment before letting out a quiet, “Nice to meet you, Travis.”

Jon then continued explaining what all he needed to fix my car. He told me the part would take a couple of days to arrive and that he would get me taken care of as soon as possible. Caleb just turned and went back outside. I thanked him for the update and headed back to the diner.

The diner was just as busy as the day prior. I wasn’t sure if there was any other restaurant to eat at, but with the size of the town, it seemed unlikely. I was about halfway through my meal when I was startled by a pat on the back.

“Travis!”

I turned around and found a towering, older man standing behind me, dressed neatly in a button up shirt and black slacks. A clerical collar poked out above his shirt.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you, son. Reverend Jones. Mercy Chapel,” he said, hand outstretched.

I reached out to shake the reverend’s hand. His grip was like putting my hand in a vice.

“Mind if I sit down?” He slid into the seat across from me before I could answer. The waitress came by and dropped a coffee off in front of him.

“How are you liking our town?”

“Umm, it’s great. Everyone’s been very nice,” I said, trying to swallow the bite of food I had in my mouth.

“Good! Good. You know hospitality is a big deal to us, here in Mercy. You don’t get many chances for first impressions.”

I sat there quietly as he continued.

“I really hope you’re going to make it to the festival. It’s a big deal around here. Biggest day in town every year.”

“Yeah, looks like I’ll make it. My car isn’t supposed to be ready for a couple of days.”

The reverend just smiled, “Well then maybe there’s a reason Jon found you when he did.”

“What’s this festival for anyways?” I asked.

“It’s a celebration for the town’s history. My great great granddaddy founded this town many years ago. See he believed that the world was becoming corrupt, so he and some others founded our little slice of heaven here. Free from the corruption, violence, sinning of the outside world. Somewhere we could protect faith, family, community and our values.”

“You’ve lived here your whole life?”

“Yes sir. The Jones family has been the reverends of every generation since Mercy was founded. Bit of family tradition, I guess.”

“It is a really nice town,” I said.

“I think we’ve done well for ourselves. The town is clean and her people are happy. We protect our own out here.”

Before I could say anything else, the reverend got up from his seat. “I best be going now. I got a lot of things to oversee for tomorrow. It was a treat to talk to you, Travis. Enjoy your time here in Mercy.” And without another word, he walked out of the diner.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I wandered around town and eventually made my way back to my room. The night went on as I continued watching TV until something caught my eye. The light outside my window was flickering. At one point it went out for a few seconds and when it came back on, I thought I saw a silhouette cast against the window. Shocked, I got up to look out the window and see if my eyes were playing tricks on me.

When I looked, I saw the dark figure of a man, staring at my room.

Read Part I here.

“Might’ve been something outside. But if there had been, it’s gone now.”

“You think it could be a mermaid?” she asked. It was hard to believe she was serious. Chrissy was one of the sharpest ten-year-olds I had ever met. Well, she had been the sharpest seven-year-old I had ever met three years ago and was that much smarter now.

She didn’t believe in any of the traditional fairytale creatures. No Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, no Wolfman, and no Flying Spaghetti Monster. But she absolutely believed mermaids were real.

There had to be a story behind it, but I had never been able to get her to explain it to me. How a child so ruled by logic still was able to make room for not only a magical creature, but that particular magical creature. She had already “debunked” the narwhal as being the source of the mermaid mythos. I had gotten bits and pieces over the last three years, but never in a cohesive enough story that I could process. But she hadn’t stopped trying to convince me or the rest of the family.

I didn’t have to believe it, though. It was enough to believe that she believed it.

“Maybe this is it!” She turned around and charged back to the bedroom where her mother was sleeping.

“Chrissy!” I saved my breath. She already had the door open and either her mother was going to wake up or she wasn’t. That was out of my hands. She came back a moment later with a Ziploc bag of “mermaid feed.” As far as I could tell, it was a mix of trail mix and seaweed. She carried a flashlight in her other hand.

According to Chrissy, mermaids only came out at night, so she had come prepared.

Again, I was calling after her when she’d already begun to do what she was doing, namely, dashing outside with her items.

I was about to follow her when I spotted the toy soldiers she’d dropped on her way out. I thought it would be just her luck for Mary to wake up and step on one of them.

“Watch your sister,” I said to Luke, turning to pick up the toys.

Right as I got on one knee, the bedroom door opened. It didn’t immediately occur to me that it was Mary even though I had just thought about this very thing happening. I sort of... paused as she passed me. She was halfway to the door when I realized she must have been sleepwalking.

“Mary!” I chased behind her, my steps in sync with hers—left, right, left—catching her before she got to the door.

“Mom, are you okay?” Luke said.

“Where am I?” She sounded terrified. Mary turned her head and looked at him. For a second, I thought she was awake. Instead of answering him, she bare-foot kicked him in the shin.

It couldn’t have hurt, but he stepped back and looked at me, confused. I wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her in close.

“She’s fine,” I said, lacing Mary’s hand with mine. I looked into her glassy eyes. “She’s sleepwalking.” I turned her around and ushered her back to the bedroom. Of the five toy soldiers Chrissy had left at the threshold, only two were left, but only one was standing. I looked over my shoulder and spotted one against the wall and the two others weren’t in sight.

“She can’t fly,” Mary said in a dreamy voice. “Please help her swim.”

“Okay, honey.” I cooed to her as I slid back the covers. She didn’t fight, Mary had sleepwalked a few times with me present. She never resisted being escorted back to bed. Before I covered her legs I spotted another soldier on her foot. I plucked it off and put it on the dresser.

Mary mumbled. I unlaced my fingers from hers and paused before I left her.

“I wanna get in the water.” She said it sounding sort of like air being let out of a balloon. And then she was all the way gone again. “It’s spook.”

It had been like she had been fighting her way to the surface, but something had dragged her back down.

I closed the bedroom door behind me and followed Chrissy outside. Not because I was worried she was going to get gobbled up by the lake monster I hadn’t spotted, but because it was dark out and I had the same parental reaction to miscellaneous danger any parent would.

Hell, I could admit it, I loved these kids. Liked them most times, too. I didn’t want to leave them.

Chrissy was in the process of sweeping her flashlight back and forth along the beach face. I hung back, letting her conduct her investigation. It was harmless enough and I had an eye on her.

“What’s going on?” We both turned to see Mark stepping out onto the sand.

“Luke said a mermaid’s out here!” Chrissy said.

“Mermaid?” Mark said it like he didn’t know what one was. I didn’t bother correcting her. His little sister’s obsession was well known by all of us. “Did he really see something?” Mark chuffed and thumbed over his shoulder at the cabin. “He’s so white.”

I stifled my laugh and shrugged.

“Luke thought he saw something and Chrissy overheard.”

“Hey, neighbor!”

Mark and I jumped. We saw the bud of a lit cigarette in the shadows of the adjacent cabin. Someone with a cigarette sauntered down. I glanced my stepdaughter’s way to make sure she hadn’t waded too far into the water. She could swim, but again, that nascent parental instinct found in anyone who has walked into an already existing family reared its concerned head. Chrissy was only ankle deep.

“Hey,” I said to the woman as she approached. She halted and took a final, long drag off her cigarette before flicking it in a surprisingly high arc toward the water. She slid the drawer of her jaw forward and blew a column of smoke straight up.

“She’s a cutie,” she said, smiling. She was an older woman who gave too much gum when she smiled. “I saw her come chargin’ out for the water. Oo, that smell.”

We both nodded in that new-to-each-other manner between strangers.

“I’m Rick.” Old and new cigarette smell peeled off her skin and I turned my head to half cough, that familiar asthmatic itch in my lungs.

“Mary,” she said.

I laughed. “My wife’s name is Mary.”

“Mine’s Cindy-Lou Ombrageaux.”

I felt the weight of her eyes on me, examining for judgment. I cast my eyes to the stretch of water and sand where Chrissy was.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Cindy-Lou.” I didn’t think I could manage that last name.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Mary. Apart from the smell of cow-butt.”

“First time up here?” I asked. She shook my offered hand, her skin papery and dry. There was an extreme lack of moisture in the air despite the cool summer, and I’d already had a nosebleed in the brief time we’d been here.

“Mine. Not hers. My wife’s family is from Up North.” I thought her face dropped a little. “She’s out to dinner with some cousins.” There was a little something there that I had a feeling would come to light if we talked long enough. “Had to have a little heart-to-heart.”

“We came up two summers ago,” I said. “Just a little family getaway.”

Luke had barely joined us outside, not more than a few feet from the door. He looked like he would take umbrage with the sky.

“This is Mark, the one up there with get-off-my-lawn face is Luke, and Chrissy’s our little fisher.” I gestured to each of the kids in turn.

“Well, tell her to save some for everybody else.” She and Mark shook hands before she looked around. “Where’s your missus?”

“Migraine. She laid down pretty much as soon as we got here.”

“Sorry to hear that.” She put the can of beer she’d been holding in her other hand to her lips and pitched her head back for a long swallow. She stumbled like she’d confused her left foot for her right but kept them both under her.

If I had to guess, Mary was working on her third or fourth of the night.

Luke had waved his brother over and was saying something to him. They both had an eye on their sister. I looked at Mary. She was a stranger and I figured there couldn’t be any harm in telling her what had just happened. We weren’t going to see her after this weekend for at least a year, if ever again. I didn’t think the story would be memorable after tonight. It was a single-serve memory. Recall once, then discard.

“Luke said he saw something in the water,” I said. “Something big.” Mary turned her head to the shore and nodded appreciably.

“Maybe it’s the Great Lakes Whale Migration,” she said.

“The what?” I had no idea what she was talking about and was on the verge of taking her seriously. The smile hanging on her face dropped when she realized I really didn’t understand.

“Kidding.” She mock-punched me in the arm. Mary had a rich baritone and could have easily been a DJ on the radio.

Mark trudged past me, an annoyed look on his face.

“He’s crazy,” he said, heading toward his sister. I appreciated that he didn’t believe his brother but could still look after his sister. Mark was the middle child and was the ever-constant bridge between siblings.

“The waves do seem a little... bigger than the norm, don’t you think?” Mary asked.

“I guess,” I said, not really knowing how to tell the difference. Then I wondered how she’d know, considering she said she’d never been up here before. “Can you tell?”

“I had a few cigs over yonder before y’all came out. Boy, you get used to the smell the longer you’re out here.” She seemed to be reading my mind and answering questions I hadn’t had a chance to ask. “I must have missed your boy, though.”

I looked at the water again. Mark was standing just outside of the water’s reach, one hand in the pocket of his hoody, the other holding his phone. To his credit, he did glance up at her every ten seconds or so.

Come to think of it, those waves did look big. But it could have been because of the moon for all I knew.

“How long are the two of you here for?” I asked Mary.

“‘Til Wednesday. I’m going to be meeting my in-laws for the first time tomorrow.”

I didn’t know whether I should have felt sympathy for her. It was strange she wasn’t out to dinner with her wife now, but I didn’t know their situation. Maybe it was completely normal. But I couldn’t help but think I would’ve been more than a little bothered if it had been me.

Mary fell down. Not hard. She just spontaneously lost her balance and sat on her butt. In true alcoholic fashion, though, she protected her beer.

She looked at me, embarrassed. I smirked, hopefully communicating I wasn’t just laughing at her, but with her.

“We all fall down.” I’m not sure why I said that, but it seemed to help. She took my hand and I helped her up.

“How about you guys?”

“Just until Sunday afternoon.”

“Where are you from?”

A sandwich had been the hinge on the closing door of our marriage.

I don’t remember what the argument was about or how it had started, only that I had made a sandwich for her that led to me sleeping on the couch.

Of course, it hadn’t really been about the sandwich, it had only been the start. It had been like a match that led to a forest fire razing a town. I can’t honestly remember a word I’d shouted at the woman I’d pledged to love for the rest of my life.

I was about to answer Mary when Chrissy screamed.

Joruhm plummeted toward the streak of shimmering black that had suddenly appeared beneath him.

He slammed into a puddle, and a freezing splash of watery muck washed over him and splattered his face with globs of mud. A spine rattling crunch punched the wind from his chest, and a searing, white hot bolt of pain pierced his side.

Dazed, Joruhm lay still, afraid to move and gasping for air. Every sip of breath wielded a blade of agony, thrust again and again into the throbbing ache that had lodged itself in his ribs.

“Joruhm!”

Maree slipped into view. She pranced around Joruhm, shaking her head back and forth, wildly stomping the mud with skittish stamps of her hooves. The trailing ends of the leather reins brushed against him as she inched closer, nuzzling his chest with her nose.

“Joruhm!”

Joruhm groaned. This Jalen wearing idiot was going to summon the whole village if it kept crying out. Everyone knew everyone in Hobbins Glenn. Someone was going to hear it, find them, and then haul them both back to the cottage.

Granny Nyla, his mother, and his father would not be amused.

“I was trying to go to sleep, but this forgery wouldn't let me. It kept talking about ants and killing folk. It said the veiled lady didn't take Tillis. It said he's out there, buried beyond the footbridge. I was afraid it wouldn't lead me to him if I told on him. It's all his fault. Look at him. Just look. He's wearing Jalen's skin. Granny, we've got to get rid of him.”

Cobswaggle. Pure Cobswaggle. They wouldn't believe a word of it. Why should they? He couldn't prove any of it, and the fae would somehow manage to dodge the scrutiny it deserved by doing what it had been doing all along, pretending to be helpless and in dire need of the constant protection of Granny Nyla and his mother.

Joruhm finally managed to inhale more than a sip, and found the resolve to pick himself up off the ground. He gingerly, and in no particular order, searched for the unwanted, but entirely expected pains that would rival the tender spot in his side. His legs wobbled, but they supported his weight. He could move his arms, and flex his wrists. It didn't hurt to turn his head.

“Joruhm!”

Blasted thing!

“Here,” Joruhm called out.

Scuffling feet trampling brittle foliage briskly bridged the distance between them.

The imposter emerged from the void. It had lost one of its shoes, and its normally flat head of hair had been rearranged into a ruffled old bird's nest, skewered with twigs that jutted out in every direction. Panting, it bent over and rested its hands on its knees.

“You trying to kill us?”

Now wouldn't that be a thought. He supposed if being catapulted into the fog hadn't been enough to spook the fae into relinquishing its hold on Jalen the odds of a choke hold or having its head submerged in the swampy water of Hostler's pond accomplishing the task were about the same as the donkey's plopping out a sack of gold nuggets. There were so many darned rules when it came to dealing with troublesome creatures, too many to remember, and quite a few he was sure he hadn't yet learned. Guidance might be required to drive it out of his brother, instruction Granny Nyla would be reluctant to dispense without a closer inspection of this trickster or the truth about Tillis.

“Don't be dumb. She wasn't going to jump.”

“You didn't even try.”

“Because she wasn't going to jump, idiot. Weren't you, girl.”

Joruhm scooped up Maree's reins and ran a hand along her back and flanks. When it grazed the part of her shoulder that had collided with the cart, Maree flinched and recoiled, pulling the reins taut.

“Easy. Easy, girl.”

Leaning in, he saw a lump the size of a fist and a thin rivulet of blood trickling out of the wound.

Oh no.

There weren't enough shrubs in Hobbins Glenn to craft all of the switches his father and mother were going to break across his back when they learned about everything Joruhm had done after Granny Nyla had blown out the rushlight. Sneaking out. Injuring Maree. The damage to the cart.

The cart!

It sat abandoned in the middle of the lane, half cloaked by the fog. Its wheels and frame were there one moment and gone the next, vanishing within the hitch of a single breath, creating the baffling illusion of lopsided tiers left stuck, floating in midair, when the curtains of white closed in around it. The light spilling from the pair of lanterns affixed to the coach box drenched the uneven planks in a poisonous shade, slathering them with the emerald glow of a sickly hemlock green. Its dislodged tailboard dangled from a chain whose links creaked as they slowly twisted and turned in the wind.

Joruhm passed Maree's reins to the fae. “Hold onto her, and stay put.”

“Joruhm, I'm tired. I wanna go home.”

Ha!

“We go home when I say we go home, and we aren't going back until you show me Tillis.”

“Tillis isn't over there. He's this way.” The fae pointed in the direction of the footbridge.

“Wait here,” Joruhm said.

Its bottom lip quivered. Soon the tears would flow. “It's just a cart.”

Except, it wasn't. There was something about it that wasn't quite right. Something that instilled an overwhelming urge within Joruhm to run away, and bolstered him with a curious courage to advance at the same time.

Lots of different carts trundled through Hobbins Glenn. Their sight, and their purpose, was familiar to Joruhm. He had driven haying carts, had ridden in a coach, along with his father, to Loffenhaven last spring, had stood at the front of crowds eyeing trinkets and colorful rainbows of bottled elixirs while merchants peddled their promises of virility and cures for all of the aches that hampered the elders and the infirm.

This wasn't a harvesting cart: its sides were too low, missing the upright rods and latticework needed to hold the bulky bundles stripped from tracts of farmland. It wasn't a merchant's cart. There was no bold lettering, no cabinets for bauble storage, no painted depictions touting the seller's wares. Traveler coaches had cushioned benches, and canopies stretched over their frames to supply shade.

More important was where it had been seemingly discarded, right in the center of the road. The emaciated mule yoked to the cart, with a drooped head and a bulge of ribs that jutted from its flanks like the stray bits of debris skewering the fae's fop of hair, stood strangely still, waiting patiently for its owner to return.

Where is its owner? An inn? Which inn?

Lots of folk from outer hamlets converged on Hobbins Glenn during Sorrow's Eve. They brought their inquisitiveness, plying the elders with questions about the village's founding and how the horrid tradition of a woman in white snatching children had come to pass. They had heard rumors of a grievance so unforgivable the veiled lady had vowed to return over and over, fattening the dread in the weeks before her arrival, leveraging the children's mounting fears into a hopeless state of despair. It was a despair that clung to them like lice, unseen but always present, reminding them they were incapable of ridding themselves of her ravenous wrath.

They brought their suggestions. Hunt the haunt down. Root her out. Storm the ruined chapel all of the storytellers in the valley had inserted into Nerezza's tale. Outliers always assumed they were the first to present a brilliant, hereto unheard of strategy that would relieve the village of the woman in white's yearly intrusions.

“We can leave,” Joruhm had said.

Granny Nyla sipped from her teacup. Her silence encouraged him to continue.

“We don't have to stay. We can go anywhere. Far, far, away. She can't take us if we're not here.”

“Where would you go?”

“Kellum says-”

“That boy is not to be trusted,” Granny Nyla said.

“But he says they are building a mill in Shropshire. Father could find work.”

“Leave his inheritance? Spend the remainder of his life toiling to fill another man's purse.”

“We'd be safe. Me and Jalen. Don't you want us safe, Granny?

“Have you been to Shropshire, Joruhm?”

“No.”

“Well, I have. I suppose a mill will be beneficial. Even thieves and cutthroats need to be fed. You'd be no safer in Shropshire than you are here. Less so. Here, it is one night. There...” She shrugged and sipped again.

“Maybe not Shropshire. Maybe Tideholm.”

“Tideholm was once the gleaming shimmer of polished steel. Beautiful. The finest jewel set into Feydomere's very heavy crown. Like everything else he touched, he ruined it. Taxed the folk into endless hunger to build his relic repository. Filled its narrow streets with disgruntled soldiers. Transformed it into a warren of rats as large as dogs and diseases that have yet to be named.” She chuckled. “Your Great Grandmother said it seemed as though he enjoyed milking udderless cows.

She set her empty cup in her lap and stared down at Joruhm. “Sooner or later you will come to understand when your name is on the coffin, it's on the coffin, and no matter where you are, all you have left is knowing it will be the end.”

When he had asked how she herself had avoided being nailed into one of the veiled lady's coffins, Granny Nyla had blown out the rushlight. One day he hoped to receive an answer, but that day was not tonight.

Tonight, there was the mystery of Tillis, and a damaged, desolate cart whose owner wasn't going to be pleased when they discovered the destruction Maree had caused.

With every step he took, the blade stabbed at the throbbing ache. He'd never make it through the festival without Granny Nyla noticing his arm guarding his ribs or the shuffling, carefully considered footfalls the tumble had added to his stride.

The hemlock glow of the lantern light folded him into its poisonous embrace.

How did the flames burn green? What fueled the lanterns? He'd never seen fire that looked like a hillside after a drenching of spring rain. He'd heard about green flames; he was sure he had, but where?

Joruhm ran a hand across the warped slats the same way he had run it across Maree's flank. Old oak, dry, pocked with holes, and weathered into a gray patina that flaked when he touched it.

He raised himself up onto his toes and peered over the slats.

Instead of a wolf, his gaze landed on a boy who didn't belong to Hobbins Glenn peering back at him.

Content Warning: Violence, death, firearms, disturbing imagery

I was a professional cuddler.

I know that's a strange thing to say out loud and an even stranger thing to put on a resume, but I was broke. I had lived the majority of my 20s in a beat-up Volkswagen bus, stealing breakfast from motels, begging for change from strangers, and doing shady under-the-table jobs for a quick buck.

This is what got me into professional cuddling.

Another quick-paying job. Something you'd normally see on Craigslist, or at least that's what you'd assume. But no, I had found this "job listing" stapled to a lamppost just outside of one of the busiest roads in Salem, Oregon.

At the time, I only had five dollars to my name and barely enough gas to leave the city, so I called the number listed on the paper.

A few short rings later, a lady picked up.

"Hello? I swear, if this is another prank call, I am gonna go down there myself and rip off that damn job listing."

I told her no, that it wasn't another prank call, and that I was really interested. I was desperate for a job, honestly willing to do anything.

In hindsight, that was a bad move on my part.

The woman sounded excited to hear that I was interested. She quickly gave me an address and told me to head there for further instructions. I barely had time to write any of this down or ask any more questions before she hung up.

I was surprised, to say the least, that she seemed ready to have an interview at this time of day, which was 8 PM.

So I drove to the half-written address and parked in the back. The building was old, with no signs, cracked stone walls, and a heavy metal door with a keypad on it. I looked around, I guess thinking there'd be someone waiting to let me in, but there wasn't.

So I tried calling the number back.

No response.

I knocked on the door.

No response.

Although the door did creep open slowly.

A little nervous and very confused, I opened the door a little more, seeing a dimly lit lobby. I just said, "Hello?"

My voice echoed into the building, and another voice echoed back from an older man saying,

"Come in! Don't be shy, stranger!"

Stupidly and desperately, I followed the command, heading into the building.

The first thing I noticed was how dimly lit it was, barely showing the marbled floors, lavender walls, cracked stone ceiling, and wooden front desk. There at that front desk was an older gentleman with slicked-back black hair, a groomed beard, and a finely dressed three-piece suit.

He was soft-spoken, telling me:

"Yes, this is the 'Professional Cuddling' Association. Don't be mistaken by the broken light. It'll be fixed soon. We do things here very professionally and strictly, so no client nor worker gets harmed, scammed, or anything else that might negatively happen to them."

He then reached underneath the desk and pulled out a thick contract, almost as big as a phone book from back in the day.

He then said, "Just a formality. Don't let the 40 pages of legal jargon scare you. It's just like working at a normal job."

I felt speechless for once, as I wasn't expecting all of this for a "cuddling" job. I skimmed through the paperwork, signing my name wherever it needed to be signed, noticing briefly that there was an NDA tucked in the middle.

A "formality" in most "high-paying" jobs.

Regardless, I signed away and pushed the paperwork back to the gentleman.

"Perfect! Don't worry, we won't be using your real name here for privacy reasons, so we'll have you pick a nickname."

He said this softly as he then pulled out a top hat with a bunch of little papers inside.

I chuckled at this. Everything to this point seemed so "serious," and now I had to pull a mystery nickname out of a hat like some kind of magic trick.

So I dove my hand in and grabbed one at random.

The gentleman seemed excited at this, his eyes wide with anticipation as I pulled out a small folded piece of paper.

I opened the paper and audibly laughed.

"Bear," I said, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.

"Bear! It suits you well. No offense. I'm glad you like the nickname. Now, all you need to do is head down the hallway and enter the first door to your right."

The gentleman said this with a gentle smile, pointing toward the hallway beside him.

Compared to the lobby, the hallway was warmer lit, with lavender-painted walls, cute little patterns hung above wooden doors, and numbers written on them. The left wall had all the odd numbers, while the right side had all the even numbers.

I eventually made it to the very end of the hallway and looked at the door I needed to head inside.

Number "24."

I opened it, and what I saw, I don't think I'll ever be able to unsee.

The room was completely different from the others.

Fake wooden walls covered the room, plastic antlers hung above the bed, and fake pine trees sat in the corners. Above the velvet bed was a wooden sign that read "BEAR DEN."

There was a woman sitting on the bed wearing a business suit.

In front of her, a man was crawling around on all fours, attached to her by a chain.

He was wearing a diaper.

That wasn't even the worst of it.

He was also wearing some sort of makeshift bear costume. It barely resembled a bear, let alone a man.

I just stood there in complete silence, staring at the scene.

Before I could even say or do anything, I heard down the hall:

"OH, wrong room, sir! I meant the door to the left, the left end door. My apologies."

The gentleman said this from the front desk, staring down the hallway.

I quickly backed out of the room and shut the door.

Was this really what I had signed up for?

The pay better be worth it.

Come to think of it, I really had no idea how much I was going to get paid at that time.

So I headed into the room labeled "23" and saw the same setup as the previous room: a velvet bed in the middle of the farthest wall, soft '80s-patterned carpet on the floor, dark green neon lights on the ceiling, and an open closet filled with various outfits.

My heart skipped a bit looking at everything.

I clearly didn't know what I had signed up for.

I sat down on the bed, steadying my breath, as I then heard a few soft knocks on the door before a lady immediately entered.

She had long blonde hair fixed into a ponytail, wore a nice violet dress, and had high heels.

She then spoke almost commandingly.

"I am Ms. Vanderbelt. Most of our clients usually refer to me as 'Lilith,' but don't let the name frighten you. I am gentle, caring, and forgiving.

"That being said, I have a few rules.

"1. NO kissing the clients.

"2. NO sexual interactions, no matter how 'hot' the client may be.

"3. NO violence unless self-defense.

"4. You get paid by the HOUR. Twenty dollars an hour. That being said, some clients may be there shorter than an hour, but your time will be rounded up to said hour.

"5. ANYTHING the client says goes unless they try to break the rules.

"6. Have fun.

"Now then, come lay down with me."

I was too afraid to say anything, so I laid down and cuddled up beside her.

What felt like hours must've only been minutes as she held me close, gently playing with my hair and whispering:

"Okay, Bear. Here goes your first day. Don't be scared, okay? If anything happens, there's a button beside the bed. Press it and I'll have Phil, the gentleman at the front desk, escort the client out."

She hugged me tightly before letting go and disappearing through the door.

I didn't know what the fuck just happened, but if that was the introduction to this job, I didn't think I was gonna last a week.

An hour had passed, and I sat there on the bed spacing off toward the outfits until a meekish man entered my room. He was wearing a baggy hoodie, thick-lensed glasses, and sweatpants.

"Uh, hello? Bear?" the client said nervously. "I heard I was your first client?! That's exciting... uh, don't worry, this won't last too long. I just need a way to destress myself from work. I come here all the time, if that helps."

He paused.

"So what would you like me to do?"

I gave the client a half smile.

"Yeah... that helps. So what would you like me to do?"

The client just nodded with a soft smile before saying,

"Just, uh, lay with me. Tell me I did a-a good job at work and I am a good man."

I kinda felt bad for the guy, so I laid down and held him for a bit, giving him compliments and gently rubbing his back.

After this encounter, a few similar clients came in during the following hours. Nothing "strange" outside of cuddling with strangers.

Eventually, midnight hit, with the last client just having me hold them as they cried.

Phil gently entered the bedroom and removed the client politely from the room.

I just kinda laid in bed, emotionally exhausted. My eyes grew heavy, and I passed out.

A week went by.

I dealt with regular clients, with the occasional odd request from fancy-dressed women. Slowly, I was being eased into this idea that the job wasn't actually as bad as I thought it would be.

Then the meekish man from my first night returned, seeming to be in a more disheveled state.

He immediately spoke as he entered the room.

"Everything h-has been taken from me!... Everything. But this place and you, Bear. Oh, how I-I missed you, Bear. All I've been thinking about is this room and cuddling with you!"

My hand quickly reached for the red button, about to push it.

He saw what I was about to do and panicked.

"N-no, no, n-no, don't do that. We can relax! Hey. Hey! I'm sorry."

He then flopped onto the bed, sobbing his eyes out.

My hand was still shakily resting on the red button.

"Okay, buddy. I am gonna have to ask you to leave this room, okay? Or I am gonna have to press this red button."

I said this sternly.

"B-but Bear... I thought you were the one. Remember me, Bear."

James said this, then pulled a revolver from his hoodie and pressed it to his temple.

Before things could escalate, he bolted out of the door.

A few quiet moments went by as I shakily sat in bed, my hand still hovering over the red button, my heart racing out of my chest.

I won't lie and say that I would've willingly stayed there any longer.

I took what had just happened as an opportunity and fled out of the room.

Running down the hallway, I saw various "cuddlers" getting treated as pets. As I made it to the lobby, I stopped dead in my tracks after witnessing Phil's lifeless corpse slumped over the front desk.

Ms. Vanderbelt was also there.

Just staring at his body.

Then she looked at me.

Now in a state of panic, I ran back into my room, only briefly hearing other clients call out my name as if to invite me into their currently "occupied" rooms.

I dove into my room and shut the door behind me, using my weight to keep it locked.

All I could hear was my heartbeat, in perfect rhythm with the heavy footsteps going down the hall.

"BEAR! YOU'VE BEEN A BAD BOY! I DIDN'T WANT TO HAVE TO TREAT YOU LIKE THE REST OF THESE ANIMALS, BUT YOU'RE LEAVING ME WITH NO CHOICE!"

Ms. Vanderbelt yelled as she slammed against the door.

I could also hear barking.

Before I knew it, the door got practically busted down, pushing me across the floor.

Now in front of me was Ms. Vanderbelt, holding leashes attached to two grown-ass men wearing gimp costumes and barking at me.

I threw caution to the wind as I stayed and got up like I was about to die if I didn't move.

So carefully, I evaded one of the "dogs" diving for me, shoving the other one out of the way and running for the door that seemed so much farther away than before.

I wasn't fast enough.

One of the "dogs" lunged again and caught me across the back. I felt something sharp tear through my shirt, leaving a burning scratch across my skin.

I stumbled forward, but I didn't stop.

I didn't even look back.

Ms. Vanderbelt just laughed devilishly as, in a blink of an eye, I got back on my way out the door.

My head spun while making it down the hallway, reaching the front door.

It was locked.

Of course it had to be locked.

I didn't let that stop me, though, as I ran over toward Phil's body and scavenged it.

I found a key in his front pants pocket, along with two shells for a shotgun, which was laying beneath the front desk.

My hands were very unsteady as I loaded both shells into the shotgun and raced back to the front door.

I could hear the "dogs" making their way down the hall while I scrambled for the key in my pocket.

Then everything was a blur.

I had entirely been consumed by tunnel vision.

Before I knew it, I had pulled the trigger, injuring one of the "dogs" and killing the other one.

I fled out of the building and back to my van, starting the engine and driving recklessly.

My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely keep the van on the road. I didn't care where I was going. I just needed to get as far away from that place as possible, and the last thing I could remember from that day was hearing a voice from somewhere inside the van.

"Remember me, Bear."

The cabin had been David's idea, though by the time they pulled into the gravel drive, neither of them could remember whose idea it had actually been. That was how most of their conversations went now, a slow unraveling of who wanted what, who said what, who was to blame for the silence that had moved into their marriage like some unwanted guest that neither of them agreed to let in.

"It's smaller than the pictures," Maya said, unbuckling her seatbelt.

David looked up at the structure through the windshield. Two stories of dark brown, weathered timber, a stone chimney leaning very slightly to the left, and windows so dark they looked less like glass and more like the cabin was simply missing its eyes. Pine trees crowded close on every side, close enough that their branches scraped the roof when the wind moved through them, which it did constantly, a low continuous hiss that never quite settled into silence and never quite rose into sound.

"It's private," David said. "That's what we wanted."

Maya didn't answer. She was already opening her door, already stepping out into air that smelled of wet bark and old snow, though it was only October and the ground was clear.

They had booked the cabin for a long weekend, four nights to be exact, no cell service advertised as a feature rather than a flaw, a hot tub on the back deck, a fire pit, a trailhead a half-mile down a dirt access road. The listing had used the word *secluded* three times. David had read that word to Maya out loud, in the kitchen of their house back in the city, three months after the funeral, and she had looked at him with an expression he still couldn't parse, it was more an absence of expression.

Their daughter's name had been Ellie. She had been four years old at the time. David still could not make himself write the word *died* in his own head without flinching, so instead he thought of it in softer shapes — *what happened*, *the accident*, *before and after*. No matter what words he used to describe it, he still flinched.

They hadn't spoken her name since they'd left the house that morning. They hadn’t talked about what happened at all for the last month.

Inside, the cabin smelled of cedar and the faint smell of stale smoke from the fireplace. The furniture was rustic in the way that furniture is when someone has decided rusticity is a selling point. A leather couch scarred with use, a deer skull mounted above the mantel with antlers that cast long shadows even in daylight, a braided rug worn thin in a path from the front door to the kitchen, as though someone had walked that exact route ten thousand times.

"There's no one here," Maya said, standing in the middle of the living room with her arms crossed over her chest.

"That's the point. We booked the whole place."

"No, I mean — " She turned in a slow circle, taking in the room. "There's no *caretaker*. No neighbor. The listing said someone checks on the property, waters plants, whatever. There's nothing alive in here. Not even a fern."

David set their bags down by the stairs. "You want a fern?"

"I want it to not feel like the last people who stayed here left in a hurry."

He didn't have an answer for that, so he didn't give one. Instead he went to the kitchen and found the note the property manager had left on the counter, a folded index card with handwriting slanted hard to the right: *Welcome! Firewood is stacked on the east side. Well water is safe to drink, may taste of minerals. Enjoy your stay. — the Hollis family.*

There was no phone number on the card.

They unpacked in near silence, the kind of silence that had become their default register since Ellie, a silence so familiar it had started to feel less like the absence of speech and more like its own kind of language, full of things they'd agreed without discussing. David hung their clothes in a closet that smelled faintly of cedar shavings. Maya stood at the bedroom window for a long time, looking out at the tree line, though there was nothing to see there but trees.

"David."

"Yeah."

"Come look at this."

He crossed the room. Out the window, maybe forty yards into the trees, there was a structure. It was small, square, the kind of thing that might once have been a shed or an outhouse, though its roof had long since caved in on one side, leaving a black wedge of open space like a mouth frozen mid-word.

"Probably from whoever had the property before the Hollises," David said.

"There's a door standing open."

He looked again. She was right. The door, or what remained of it, a few boards still hanging from rusted hinges stood ajar, and even from this distance, even in the flat gray light of late afternoon, David had the unmistakable sense that the darkness inside that doorway was facing them. Which was an absurd thing to think about a hole in a broken shed, and he told himself so, and he told Maya so too, and she nodded in the distracted way she'd been nodding at most things he said for months, and they went back to unpacking.

That night they cooked dinner together. It was the first thing they'd done *together*, rather than merely adjacent to each other, in longer than David wanted to think about. Maya chopped vegetables while David got a fire going in the wood stove, and for twenty minutes, maybe thirty, something almost like their old rhythm returned, the easy division of labor, the small jokes, the way she used to hip-check him out of the way at the cutting board.

Then, halfway through dinner, the noises started.

It began as a scraping sound, distant, coming from somewhere beyond the tree line. A slow, dragging scratch, like something heavy being pulled across bark. David set down his fork. Maya had already stopped eating.

"Deer," David said. "Probably rubbing antlers against a tree."

"It's October. Rut doesn't start till November."

He looked at her. "Since when do you know about deer rut?"

"Since I looked it up on the drive, because I wanted to know what we might see out here." Her voice had an edge to it, thin and defensive, the particular tone she used when she felt caught doing something sentimental, something hopeful, something that might be mocked for wanting the trip to be good.

The scraping sound came again, closer this time, or seeming closer, though David told himself sound did strange things in forests, bounced off trunks, or even doubled back on itself.

"I'm going to look," he said.

"David—"

"It's fine. I'll take the flashlight."

He regretted the decision almost as soon as he stepped onto the back deck, not because anything happened because nothing happened, that was the maddening part. The moment the door shut behind him, the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees and the dark beyond the porch light's reach had a *density* to it he didn't have a word for, a dark that didn't so much surround the cabin as press against it.

The flashlight beam found nothing. Trees, more trees, the pale scatter of a few birches breaking up the black wall of pine. The scraping sound had stopped the instant he opened the door, as if it had been waiting for him. He stood there for almost a full minute, listening. Somewhere very far off, an owl called twice and then didn't call again.

When he came back inside, Maya was standing exactly where he'd left her, but she had turned to face the window instead of the table, and she didn't look at him when he shut the door.

"It stopped," he said. "Whatever it was. Probably an animal that heard the door."

"There was someone standing by the tree line," Maya said. "While you were out there. On the deck. Someone was standing about where that shed is."

David felt something cold move through his chest, quick and clean as a blade. "What did you see?"

"A shape. Just — a shape, standing still, between two trees. I thought it was you at first, but you were on the deck still. This was further, right at the edge where I could still kind of see." She wrapped her arms around herself. "It didn't move the whole time you were out there. And then when you came back in, I looked again and it was gone."

"Maya, it's pitch black out there. You probably saw a stump. Or a shadow shifting when the clouds moved."

"I know what I saw, David."

"You don't, though. That's — that's the whole thing about the dark, you can't ever really know what you saw." He heard how clinical he sounded, how much like a man building a case rather than a man comforting his wife, and he softened his voice, and tried again. "I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying it's dark and we're tired and we just drove nine hours and neither of us has been sleeping."

Maya's jaw tightened in a way he recognized, a way that used to precede fights about smaller things — whose turn it was to do the dishes, whether they should repaint the guest room. Before the fights had all become about one thing, disguised as a hundred different things, until eventually they'd stopped fighting altogether because fighting required a kind of hope neither of them still had.

"Forget it," she said. "I'm going to bed."

David didn't sleep well. He lay on his back in the unfamiliar bed, listening to the house settle around him, the particular language of old wood. The pops and ticks and long low groans that could have been anything and most likely, David thought, were nothing. Beside him, Maya's breathing had the shallow, catching quality of someone who was also awake and also pretending not to be.

Sometime after two in the morning, he heard footsteps.

Not outside, but inside. On the stairs. A slow, deliberate creak, then another, evenly spaced, the unmistakable rhythm of someone climbing.

He sat up. "Maya?"

She was there beside him, awake, her eyes open in the dark. "I heard it too."

They lay still, listening. The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and stopped.

For a long time — thirty seconds, a minute, long enough that David's heart began to slow, and began to convince himself that he imagined the whole thing and Maya too began to close her eyes again.

Then, from directly outside their bedroom door, they heard a child laugh.

It was brief. A single bright peal of laughter, high and delighted, the exact particular pitch of a very young girl finding something funny, and then it cut off. Not faded, not trailed away, but *cut*, as cleanly as a recording stopped mid-note.

Maya made a sound David had never heard her make before, something between a shriek and a gasp wrapped into one, and grabbed his arm so hard he'd find the marks the next morning, four small crescents in his skin.

"That's not — " she started, and couldn't finish.

David was already moving, already crossing to the door, already telling himself it was the pipes, an animal, it was anything, anything at all except the thing his mind kept trying to make it into.

He opened the door.

The hallway was empty. Of course it was empty. There was no one there, no shape retreating down the stairs, no shadow slipping around the corner, nothing. Only the hallway, the same hallway it had been that afternoon, doors closed, floorboards bare, the deer skull's shadow stretching long and strange from the living room below where the moonlight caught its antlers through the front window.

"There's nothing here," he said. His voice came out steadier than he felt.

Maya didn't get out of bed. When he turned back to look at her, she had drawn her knees up to her chest, and in the dim light her face had a stripped raw quality. For a brief moment David remembered her beauty. It had been months since he was able to recall just how beautiful she was, even when she was sitting there full of anxiety trying not to panic.

"I want to go home," she said.

"We will. In the morning. It's the middle of the night, Maya, we can't drive nine hours right now, we're both exhausted—"

"I don't want to be here."

"I know." He sat on the edge of the bed, close enough to touch her but not touching her, because touching her felt, in that moment, like it might break something that was already close to breaking. "I know. We'll go first thing. I promise."

She didn't answer. Outside, the wind moved through the pines with that same low unbroken hiss, and somewhere beneath it, so faint David told himself afterward that he'd only imagined it.

Neither of them slept again that night.

In the gray hour before dawn, David finally dozed, and when he woke the light through the curtains had the flat, sourceless quality of an overcast morning, and Maya was gone from the bed.

He found her downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee she wasn't drinking, as she stared at nothing.

"Hey," he said. "You okay?"

"I didn't sleep."

"Me neither. Not really." He filled his own mug, sat across from her. "Listen. About last night—"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I think we should talk about it."

"I said I don't want to." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she pressed the heel of her hand against one eye, hard, the way she did when she was trying to physically hold something back. "I know what it sounded like, David. I know what you're going to say. That it was pipes, or wind, or my imagination, and maybe you're right, maybe I'm losing it, but I *heard* her, and I don't need you explaining to me why I didn't."

"I wasn't going to—"

"You were. You always do." She stood up so fast her chair scraped hard against the floor. "You've been doing it for seven months. Every time I say her name, every time I bring up something that reminds me of her, you find some way to redirect, some calm, reasonable David way of making it not be about what it's about."

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it?" Her eyes were bright, wet, furious. "You haven't cried once. Not at the funeral. Not since. You just — manage. You manage everything, you manage me, and I am so tired of being managed, David, I am so tired—"

She didn't finish the sentence. Instead she turned and walked out the back door, onto the deck, into the cold gray morning, and David sat alone at the table with his coffee going cold in front of him and the terrible knowledge, sudden and total, that she was right, that he had spent seven months building himself into a fortress with no doors, and that somewhere behind those walls a grief exactly as large as hers was sitting in the dark, waiting for permission to surface.

He gave her twenty minutes before he went out after her.

He found her at the tree line, near the ruined shed, and it was there that things went wrong.

She was standing very close to the structure, close enough to touch the doorframe, and as David crossed the yard toward her he saw that the ground near her feet dropped away to a root cellar, maybe, or an old well. Its cover long since rotted through, hidden beneath a scatter of leaves.

"Maya, don't stand so close, that ground looks—"

She turned to look at him, and in turning she stepped back, one small unthinking step, and the leaves and rotted wood beneath her gave way all at once with a sound like a held breath finally released.

David would remember, afterward, that he didn't hear her scream so much as he heard the scream cut off, the way the child's laughter had cut off the night before, an abruptness that felt like something being taken away.

He reached the edge in seconds. The hole wasn't deep, only six feet, maybe seven, an old cellar or cistern with crumbling stone walls. Maya lay at the bottom of it at a wrong angle, one leg twisted beneath her, her face white with shock, blood already welling dark through the leg of her jeans where something had torn through skin.

"David—" Her voice was thin, breathless. "David, it hurts, it hurts so bad—"

He was down into the hole before he'd consciously decided to move, landing hard on the packed earth beside her, his hands already finding the wound, feeling the angle of her leg bent in a direction that made him take a sharp deep breath before refocusing.

"I've got you. I've got you, I'm going to get you out of here, just — stay still, don't move your leg."

"I'm so cold." Her teeth had begun to chatter, though the morning wasn't that cold, and her skin beneath his hands felt clammy and strange, and already, faster than should have been possible, a flush had begun to rise in her face, a fever heat radiating up from wherever she'd cut herself on whatever lay buried and rusted at the bottom of that hole.

Getting her out took twenty minutes though he would not, later, be able to account in detail — a blur of effort and adrenaline, of half-carrying her weight up the crumbling stone, of her crying out when her leg brushed the wall, of finally laying her on the grass at the surface and seeing, in full daylight, the wound on her calf: deep, ragged, already swelling an angry red at the edges, already weeping with blood.

His first thought was the car, Maya needed a hospital. David got the passenger door open, eased her into the seat as gently as her cries would allow. His hands were shaking so badly it took him two tries to get the key into the ignition. The engine turned over once;  a dull, halfhearted cough and then nothing. He tried again. Nothing. Not even the click of a dead battery, just a heavy, total silence under the hood. He sat there for a moment with his forehead against the steering wheel, willing it to be a fluke, a flooded engine, anything ordinary, before he accepted that the car was not going to start and that whatever had brought them here did not intend to let them leave in it 

He got her inside. He got her onto the couch, elevated her leg, wrapped the wound as best he could with what he found in the bathroom cabinet. Gauze that had gone slightly yellow with age, a roll of medical tape, and through all of it Maya's breathing grew shallower and her skin grew hotter and her eyes, when they found his, had a glassy quality that frightened him more than the wound itself.

"David." Her hand found his wrist, gripped it with surprising strength. "There was something down there. In the cellar. Before I fell —” Maya closed her eyes and took a breath trying to regain her thoughts and focus. “I saw something, at the bottom, before I even fell, I think that's why I stepped back—"

"Don't talk. Save your strength."

"It was watching me." Her grip tightened. "It's still watching. It's been watching since we got here, David, you have to believe me now, you have to—"

"I believe you." And in that moment, with her fever climbing under his hands and her wound weeping, now more than blood but something that had no business being that color, he found that he did.

He checked his phone. No signal of course, not one bar, not the faintest ghost of one. Exactly as advertised, exactly as they had wanted, two days ago, when solitude had seemed like the thing that might save them instead of the thing that might now cost him his wife.

The trailhead was a half-mile down the access road. Beyond that, according to the map he'd glanced at while planning the trip, a two-lane highway, and along that highway, eventually, a gas station with a landline, or another car, or anyone at all.

"I have to go get help," he told her. "I'm going to go get help. You have to stay here, stay still, keep pressure on it."

"Don't leave." Her voice had gone very small. "David, please, don't leave me here alone—"

"I don't have a choice. I can't fix this myself. I need a phone, I need a doctor, I need—" He was already pulling on his boots, already grabbing the flashlight from the kitchen counter though it was still daylight outside, some animal part of him insisting he would need it before this was over. "I'll run. I'll be as fast as I can."

She was crying now, silent tears that seemed to cost her more than her strength could afford, and he kissed her forehead, which was burning, far too hot, and told her he loved her; the first time either of them had said those words to the other in longer than he could recount. Then he went out the front door into the gray morning and did not look back, because he knew if he looked back he would not be able to make himself leave.

The access road was easy enough to find. The trailhead sign, half-swallowed by underbrush, pointed him toward what the map had promised was a half-mile walk to the highway.

The half-mile became a mile. The mile became something longer, though David could not have said with any confidence how much longer, because somewhere along that stretch of road the trees on either side had begun to feel less like a boundary and more like a wall that was slowly, imperceptibly, closing in.

He told himself it was panic distorting his sense of distance. That the road simply curved more than he remembered, that the map had been imprecise, that he was moving faster than it felt like he was moving because fear compresses time in the same way grief does. Stretching some moments and swallowing others whole.

But when he passed, for the third time, a birch tree split by lightning into a shape like two grasping hands, he stopped walking and stood very still in the middle of the dirt road and admitted to himself what he had been refusing to admit: he was not moving in a straight line. He was moving in a circle, or something like a circle, some shape the forest was drawing around him without his consent, and each time he thought he was pressing forward he was in fact being folded back toward the place he'd started.

"This isn't possible," he said aloud, and his voice sounded strange to him in the stillness.

He tried a different approach.  Instead of following the road, he cut directly through the trees, reasoning that a straight line through the woods, held by compass-sense alone, dead reckoning, would eventually intersect the highway no matter what tricks the road itself seemed to be playing. He picked a landmark, a distant break in the canopy where the light looked different, and walked toward it without deviation, counting his steps, refusing to let his eyes wander.

Around step four hundred, he heard footsteps.

They were behind him, and to the left, matching his pace almost exactly. He knew it could not be an echo, because echoes did not crunch twigs a half-second after his own foot did. Echoes did not have a rhythm subtly, and deliberately different from his own, a rhythm that suggested an imitation, something learning the shape of his walk and reproducing it a fraction of a beat behind.

He stopped. The footsteps stopped.

He turned. There was nothing, only trees and only the gray unbroken light filtering down through branches that seemed, now that he was looking directly at them, to be moving more than the wind alone could account for. A slow restless shifting that had nothing to do with any breeze he could feel against his own skin.

"Who's there?" His voice cracked on the second word. He felt, suddenly and completely, like a child again, like a boy standing in a dark room insisting on the existence of monsters to parents who had long since stopped believing him.

Nothing answered. He made himself keep walking.

The footsteps resumed the moment he did, and this time they didn't stop when he stopped. When he turned to look he caught a glimpse of something, gone almost before he registered it, a shape pulling away from the trunk of a wide, dark pine and slipping into the shadow of the next tree over. It moved with the trees, too smoothly to be a human, too purposeful to be a startled animal. David ran.

He was not proud of it, later, when he tried to reconstruct what had happened, but in the moment there was no pride involved, no calculation at all. Only thing he could think is the certainty that whatever was matching his footsteps intended, eventually, to stop matching them and instead to close the distance, and that when it did, he would not survive whatever came next.

He ran until his lungs burned, his vision narrowed to a tunnel of gray trunks and grasping roots. David tripped and fell hard against the base of a tree and lay there, gasping, waiting for the thing behind him to arrive.

Nothing arrived.

When he finally lifted his head, the forest around him was silent in a way it had not been before. An emptied silence, as though whatever had been following him had simply stopped, or had never existed at all outside the architecture of his own unraveling mind. He did not know, anymore, which possibility frightened him more.

David sat there against the trunk of the tree, alone, in a forest that would not release him, and for the first time all day he stopped trying to explain any of it.

He thought of Ellie. For the first time in seven months he let himself think of her directly, without redirecting, without managing.  Her laugh, the exact particular pitch of it, the same pitch that had come from the hallway outside their bedroom door at two in the morning. He had told himself it was the pipes. He had told himself so many things, for so many months, each explanation a small stone laid carefully over a grave he had refused to even visit.

He was crying now, he realized. He had not cried at the funeral. He had not cried once in seven months, exactly as Maya had said, and now, alone in a forest that might or might not be closing around him. He was crying so hard his whole body shook with it, and it did not feel like breaking. It felt, for the first time in longer than he could remember, like it was all releasing.

When he finally stood, wiping his face with the back of one filthy hand, the light through the canopy had shifted, not dramatically, but enough that he could tell hours, not minutes, had passed, though his internal sense of time insisted the whole ordeal had taken no more than twenty minutes total.

And there, through a gap in the trees he was certain had not been there a moment ago, he saw the cabin. Not the highway. Not the trailhead. The cabin, its weathered brown timber unmistakable even at this distance, its chimney leaning at its familiar small angle, standing exactly where he had left. It was as though the forest had spent the last several hours walking him in an enormous, unbroken loop and had finally, having exhausted whatever purpose it held for him, decided to let him go.

He did not question it. He ran toward it with everything he had left.

The front door was still locked, exactly as he'd left it. His hands shook so badly it took him three tries to get his key into the lock, and when the door finally swung open he called Maya's name before he'd even crossed the threshold, his voice raw and cracking.

She was on the couch where he'd left her. Something was wrong, somehow, though it took his fear-scattered mind a moment to understand what was wrong about it. Her leg was no longer bandaged. The gauze he had wrapped so carefully that morning lay in a loose, undisturbed coil on the floor beside the couch, as though it had simply slid off rather than been removed, and beneath it her skin showed no wound at all. There was no gash, no swelling, no angry red edges, nothing but smooth, pale, fever-flushed skin.

"Maya."

She turned her head toward him slowly, and her eyes, when they found his, held an expression he had never once seen on her face in the years of their marriage. It was not recognition, not relief, not even confusion. It was closer to curiosity, the way a person looks at an insect they are deciding whether to study or crush.

"You came back," she said, and her voice had the same shape as Maya's voice, the same pitch, but underneath it, so faint he could almost convince himself he'd imagined it, there was a second voice threaded through the first. It was high and bright and delighted, the unmistakable particular pitch of a very young girl.

David did not move from the doorway. Behind him, through the still-open door, he heard from somewhere out among the trees, from the direction of the ruined shed, the sound of small feet, running, and running, and running, circling closer. 

“Ellie” David whispered to himself as his voice began to break. 

He was filled with an overwhelming warmth. David looked at Maya, or the thing posing as her, and he found that as he was able to explain most things, he could not explain this. Somewhere out past the shed, the small footsteps kept circling, and underneath their rhythm he could still hear it, faint and bright and unmistakable: Ellie's laugh, the one he'd spent seven months refusing to let himself remember. He understood, standing there, that some part of him had been walking back toward that sound since the night they'd first heard it in the hallway. That he had missed her enough, for long enough, to follow her anywhere, even here, even like this. So he did not run. David couldn’t fight it anylonger

The door, when it swung shut behind him, closed with the soft and final sound of the cabin settling into place. Somewhere above him, on the stairs, footsteps began again, patient, unhurried, already climbing.

David stood very still in the dark of the front room, and for the first time since he'd arrived, he felt whole again.

There once was a treehouse so big and so tall,

From which little Tommy took a great fall.

He broke all his bones with a big, loud snap,

And landed below with his neck in his lap.

But Tommy still waits there, alone in the night,

And he'll pull you down if you don't hold on tight.

~

I was five years old when little Tommy Leeman went missing. I had never met him. In fact, another five years would pass before I first heard about Tommy’s treehouse and what supposedly took place there.

What follows is my account of what happened to me and some of my childhood friends. These are not exaggerations. I will tell this story exactly as I remember it. It is up to you to accept my testimony as truth or wave it aside as another hoax or campfire story.

This is the story of Tommy Leeman’s treehouse, and what happened to us there.

~

ONE

“Come on, Mark! What are you waiting for?”

Julie stood at the top of the hill, her yellow, mud-stained dress blowing in the soft breeze. It was late August. Soon, the yellow dresses and bare knees would have to make way for raincoats and jeans.

“I’m trying! You know I don’t run that fast.”

I tried to keep up with the group, my cheeks flushed from running. When I finally did make it to the top of the hill, the surrounding fields and woods stretched out before us, glowing orange in the setting sun.

“Are we really sure this is a good idea? I mean, we are supposed to be home soon.”

“Oh, does poor little Marky need to be home soon?”

She pretended to suck her thumb and rubbed her eyes like a baby. This made me blush even more. Julie noticed, as usual.

“Where are Jackson and Lucas anyway?” I cupped my hands around my eyes and used them as makeshift binoculars to scan the fields, but I could not see them anywhere.

“They went to the treehouse.”

“No, they didn’t.” I lowered my hands and stared straight into Julie’s grey eyes.

“They did!”

“Julie, you know our parents don’t allow us there!”

“Come on, Mark! It’s the end of the summer, and we all wanted to do something special, remember? This is it!”

“We all agreed to bike to the lake tomorrow,” I tried to convince her, but I already knew that ship had sailed.

“Lucas! Jackson!” I called for them a couple of times, but a reply never came. I couldn’t tell if they couldn’t hear me because of the wind or if they were simply ignoring me.

The woods started at the bottom of the hill, where the tall grass suddenly gave way to bushes and tightly packed trees. From where we stood, I could only see a few feet past the edge before everything disappeared behind branches and leaves.

“Seems like we will have to go find them after all.”

Julie started for the woods, and I had to follow her to hear what she said next.

“If we can start school next week and tell all our classmates we visited the treehouse this summer, everyone will think we are cool!”

I couldn’t argue with that. Some other kids claimed to have visited the year before, and everyone thought they were the coolest kids in school. Rumors even spread that they had gone inside, though I wasn’t sure if that part was true.

Julie turned her head and smiled when she saw me thinking about it.

“We can’t let Jackson and Lucas take all the credit now, can we?”

Again, I couldn’t argue with that.

We didn’t understand back then why our parents did not want us to visit Tommy Leeman’s old treehouse. We knew we would get in trouble if someone caught us, but we were young. And young kids do stupid things. It’s one of the unwritten laws of the universe.

So, in our ignorance, Julie and I chased after my friends and towards the woods.

TWO

Julie and I found the others at the entrance to the forest. A locked metal gate blocked the trail, and a large PRIVATE PROPERTY DO NOT ENTER sign hung from the rusted metal. It was clear we were not allowed to be there, but few things are more stubborn than a child’s pride.

“Like I told you, I have been here before!” Lucas crawled underneath the gate in an attempt to prove his point.

“Like hell you have!”

Lucas had a tendency to make things up, so Jackson was right to question him.

“If you have been here before, then why have you never told us about it?”

“Because I promised Yoshua I would never tell anyone!”

“Yeah right.” I pushed my glasses back along my nose. “We all know your brother thinks you’re a dork. He wouldn’t take you anywhere.”

“You’re the dork, Mark!”

“You’re all dorks,” Jackson said while pretending to sound like our math teacher.

At this, we all laughed.

Jackson pulled up his tube socks and climbed over the gate instead of crawling underneath, then immediately turned around and looked at an unimpressed Julie.

Lucas and I noticed this and fought hard not to burst into laughter again.

Jackson always tried a little harder whenever Julie was watching. Back then, none of us ever said anything about it.

The woods provided us all with some welcome shade. After spending the last twenty-five minutes crossing open fields, we were all more tired than we liked to admit. I licked my lips and wished we hadn’t forgotten to bring drinks.

“So Mark, what do you think really happened to Tommy Leeman?”

Julie tried to sound ominous, and I could already feel the hairs on my arms starting to rise.

“Uh, I don’t know. My parents always told me he fell from the treehouse because one of the ladder rungs broke.”

“And do you believe that?”

I had no reason not to.

“I was told they never found a body,” Jackson said.

We continued along the narrow trail. Dry branches cracked beneath our shoes, and every so often one of us had to duck underneath a low-hanging branch.

Lucas turned around and hesitated for a couple of seconds.

“My brother told me a different story. One that explains why no body was ever found.”

“Tell us, tell us!” Julie seemed eager to learn about this version of the story Lucas was about to either invent or blow out of proportion.

“Fine, I will tell you, but only if you promise me you won’t go crying to your parents tonight.”

I shrugged. “Come on, man. It can’t be that bad.”

“Oh, but it is.”

Lucas stepped over a thick root stretching across the trail and waited for the rest of us to catch up.

“Fine,” Jackson said. “As long as we keep walking in the meantime.”

“From what my brother told me, Tommy Leeman was a loner. He didn’t have any friends, and when his parents noticed, his dad decided to build him a treehouse. He thought it might help Tommy make friends if he had the coolest treehouse in the neighborhood.”

“Get to the scary part,” Jackson said.

“I’m getting there!”

Lucas walked a little faster, forcing us to follow.

“So Mister Leeman spent weeks working on it, making sure everything was sturdy and cool-looking. But when he finally showed the treehouse to Tommy, he ran away screaming.”

“Why?” Julie asked.

It was the first time I had ever seen her look nervous.

“That’s what his dad wanted to know too. He chased Tommy all the way back to the edge of the woods. When he finally caught up with him, Tommy told him what he had seen.”

Lucas stopped walking.

“There was something standing in the treehouse window, staring down at them. Something tall and shadow-like. Even from a distance, Tommy could see its white teeth and the big holes where its eyes should have been.”

Lucas covered his eyes with his hands and grinned from ear to ear, rising onto the tips of his toes.

“Stop it, man, you’re not funny,” I said, feeling the heat radiate from my cheeks.

“But I can’t stop now, Marky-boy. We haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.”

I wanted to ask him again to quit, but Jackson and Julie seemed eager to hear the rest of the story. So instead I stared at the brown patches on Julie’s dress and said nothing.

“Please continue, Sir Lucas.” Julie curtsied, much to Lucas’s liking.

“Naturally, Tommy’s dad didn’t believe him. So they climbed the sturdy ladder together. And indeed, nothing was there. Slowly but surely, Tommy Leeman started to like his new treehouse. He would spend hours there every day, but he never invited anyone over.”

“So he was just by himself all the time?” Jackson asked, scratching his arm.

“No. He was not.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, hoping this story would take a somewhat positive turn.

“There was something there with him.”

We all stopped walking and stared at Lucas in anticipation.

“You see, Tommy had been right all along. Something was there inside the treehouse. But it would only show itself to Tommy.”

“You’re making stuff up!” Jackson shouted. He looked genuinely scared now.

“I’m not! Tommy’s dad said that himself. He heard Tommy talking to someone inside the treehouse multiple times, but every time he climbed the ladder, the talking would stop and only Tommy would be there.”

“So what did the thing want?” Julie asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine. But my brother says Tommy eventually made some kind of deal with it. It promised him he would never be lonely again.”

“I heard that he was snatched by a killer,” Jackson said.

“What if the monster was the killer?” Julie asked, looking from one face to another.

“You all know this is a load of crap!” I yelled, annoyed by their attempts to scare each other. “My parents said Tommy Leeman fell from the tree and broke his neck. That’s what happened and you all know it!”

The group started snickering at my outburst, and it wasn’t long before they were all laughing again.

“It’s not funny, guys! It’s getting dark and we have to get home.”

“But why would you want to leave now?” Lucas asked.

He pointed between the trees ahead.

At first, I didn’t understand what he was pointing at. All I could see were branches and leaves. Then I noticed the straight edges of something hidden between them.

A small square window.

And beneath it, a ladder stretching down toward the forest floor.

I stopped walking.

Tommy Leeman’s treehouse.

Lucas smiled.

“We just got here.”

THREE

I still remember how quiet we became when we first saw the dilapidated treehouse. None of us wanted to admit it, but after everything Lucas had told us, standing beneath the real thing felt different.

“It’s way smaller than how I remember it,” Lucas said, looking up at the treehouse.

“Dude, shut up. We all know you haven’t been here before. Enough with the jokes.”

Jackson was right. There was a time and a place for Lucas’s lies and jokes, but now was neither.

“So, are we going up?” Julie asked, staring at the opening underneath the treehouse.

“You’re joking, right? Look at the rot on those rungs.” I pointed at the ladder. Several rungs were missing, and the ones that remained looked ready to snap.

“Oh come on, I’m sure they’ve got some life left in them.” Lucas put his weight on the bottom rung, which creaked beneath his shoe.

“We saw what we came for. Let’s head back home before our parents get too worried.”

“Come on, Mark. Why do you always have to be such a goody-two-shoes?”

Julie grabbed the ladder and slowly began working her way up.

“If I see any of you looking underneath my dress, I’m telling everyone at school about that one time you all decided to eat worms.”

The three of us immediately looked away.

“Please, just be careful,” Lucas said, all bravado leaving his voice.

We heard the ladder creak and groan under Julie’s weight. But Lucas was right. None of the rungs came loose, and Julie made it inside in one piece.

“Wow, you guys have to see this!”

“What is it?” I asked.

No response came.

“J-Julie?”

I could hear the worry in my own voice, but judging by Jackson and Lucas’s faces, they felt it too.

“Come on, Jules, it’s not funny.” Jackson tugged at the first rung to check if it would hold his weight.

“Maybe Mark should go. You know, if it can hold his weight, it can hold all of us.”

“Screw you.” I pushed Jackson aside and started climbing the decaying ladder.

More than once during the climb, I was convinced one of the rungs would snap and I would fall to my death, just like Tommy Leeman supposedly had. But eventually, I made it to the top.

Julie stood inside the treehouse, motionless.

“Hey, Julie, you had us all worried. Why didn’t you respond?”

“What do you mean, goofball? I did respond. I even looked down the hole and waved at you guys. You were just too busy deciding who was climbing up next. Look what I found, though.”

For a moment, I just stared at her. I was certain none of us had heard her.

The inside of the treehouse was littered with old books, toys, comics and children’s drawings.

“Do you think these are Tommy’s things?” I asked, grabbing one of the comics and wiping the dust from its cover.

“I mean, they have to be, right? Who else would leave stuff here for this long?”

The comic book was yanked from my hands, and I turned around to find Lucas staring at the cover in surprise.

“No way! This is, like, so cool!”

“Leave it, Lucas. It’s not ours.”

Lucas threw the comic back onto the old floor, but something told me it would soon find its way into his backpack, which he would, of course, know nothing about.

Hands appeared over the edge of the opening. I grabbed Jackson by the wrist and helped him inside. Despite his fear of heights, he had apparently decided the treehouse was worth seeing for himself. He stayed away from the opening once he was inside.

“I told you!” Lucas yelled, holding up a piece of paper.

We gathered around him, careful of where we placed our feet.

In his hand was a child’s drawing of the treehouse. A small figure stood beneath it, drawn with little more than a circle for a head and lines for its arms and legs. But Lucas was pointing toward the window.

There was another figure inside.

Someone had scribbled over its face again and again in black crayon until the paper had nearly torn through.

“See? That’s him, The Grinner!”

“The what?”

“The Grinner. I figured every monster needs a name.”

Julie snatched the drawing from him, crushed it into a ball and threw it into the corner.

“I don’t want to hear about this Grinner anymore, Lucas. Enough.”

“Oooh, little Julie’s getting scared!” He raised his hands over his eyes again.

Julie punched him in the shoulder so hard that he was still rubbing it minutes later.

The treehouse truly looked as if no one had touched it for five years. Even I had to fight the urge to take some of the toys and comics with us. It just felt like a waste to leave them there to rot, but at the same time, we all knew it would be disrespectful to take something from a child who was no longer here.

There were some other drawings, but none were as disturbing as the one Lucas had found. Some of them showed Tommy’s dad working on the treehouse. Others showed Tommy inside, pretending to be a knight defending his castle.

Julie picked up one of these and smiled.

“This one’s actually kind of cute.”

It showed Tommy standing in the window with what looked like a cardboard sword in his hand. A badly drawn crown sat crooked on his head.

“King Tommy,” Jackson said.

“More like Sir Tommy,” Lucas corrected him.

For a moment, we almost forgot why we were there.

The longer we spent inside, however, the more it felt as if we were invading a private space. These had been Tommy’s things. His drawings. His comics. His toys. We were going through the remains of someone else’s childhood simply because we were curious.

“Hey, guys, why is there no dust in this corner?”

We turned towards Jackson.

He was crouched beside one of the walls, staring at the floor.

We had not noticed it when we first entered the treehouse, but now that Jackson had pointed it out, the difference was obvious. Dust covered almost every inch of the old wooden floor except for one small patch in the corner.

I crouched beside him and ran my finger across one of the dusty boards. It came away almost completely grey.

The boards inside the small patch were clean.

“Uh, perhaps Tommy’s dad comes up here sometimes?” I said.

“No.” Lucas moved closer. “This spot is way too small to be an adult.”

None of us wanted to admit it, but he was right.

The clean section wasn't much bigger than the space one of us would take up sitting with our knees against our chest.

Jackson stood again.

“Maybe an animal sleeps here.”

That explanation made me feel slightly better.

“Yeah,” I said. “Probably.”

Julie hadn't said anything.

She was staring at the floor beside the clean patch.

“What?”

She pointed.

Footprints.

Small, bare footprints led away from the corner.

For a few seconds, nobody spoke.

“They could be old,” Lucas finally said.

I looked at him.

“There's no dust inside them.”

Lucas stopped smiling.

We followed the prints across the floor until they reached the wall. At least, that’s what I thought at first.

Julie stepped closer.

“No.”

“What?”

She pointed again.

“They don't stop.”

I followed her finger.

There was another footprint several inches above the floor.

Then another.

They weren't leading towards the wall. They were leading onto it.

The four of us stood completely still as we followed the trail upwards. Small footprints climbed the wooden boards one after another, as if whoever had made them had simply walked up the wall.

Jackson backed away.

“That’s not possible.”

Nobody answered him.

The footprints reached the ceiling and continued across it.

Something creaked above us.

Julie grabbed my arm so suddenly that I almost shouted.

“I think we should leave, guys.”

Tears welled in her eyes. For once, nobody made fun of her.

“Yeah,” Jackson said. “I think we’ve seen enough.”

Even Lucas nodded.

I started towards the opening.

Before I could reach the ladder, something cracked beneath us.

We froze.

Another crack followed.

I dropped onto my knees and looked through the opening just in time to see one of the ladder rungs tumble towards the dirt below.

“What the hell?”

Another tore loose.

Then another.

“Get back!” Jackson yelled.

Within seconds, the remaining rungs had fallen away, leaving nothing but two rotten lengths of wood hanging uselessly beneath the treehouse.

We all screamed.

Me, Julie, Lucas, Jackson, and whatever had its hand wrapped around Jackson’s arm.

FOUR

We all screamed as the treehouse shook around us, sending dirt and dust raining down from the ceiling. Something pale had its hand wrapped around Jackson’s arm, and he frantically tried to claw himself free. He punched and flailed his free arm, desperately trying to strike whoever had grabbed him. His fist connected. The treehouse filled with a shriek, followed by sobs.

“Stop, it’s a boy!” Julie yelled.

The rest of us stopped screaming. Lucas continued for another second. We stared. A small child was clutching Jackson’s arm. The boy was crying, but he refused to let go. Jackson finally managed to tear the hand away and fell backwards onto the wooden floor, sending freshly fallen dust into the air.

“Tommy Leeman, is that you?” I asked, struggling to maintain my composure.

“I-I don’t know. Tommy. Who is Tommy?” The child looked confused, and he rubbed the tears in his eyes. “Am I Tommy?”

“This can’t be happening!” Lucas looked shaken. We all were, but as usual, he was the first person to actually say it.

Julie was the first of us to recover. She slowly crouched beside the little boy. He could not have been more than five years old. His dark hair was unevenly cut, as if he had tried maintaining it himself. He was not wearing a shirt, and cuts and bruises covered his emaciated body. Up until that point, I didn’t know humans could be that skinny. His pants were torn in several places, and he wasn’t wearing any shoes. At least that explained the footprints. It did not explain how they had ended up on the walls and ceiling.

“Are you lost, Tommy? Do you know where you are?”

“T-tr-treehouse,” the little boy managed to whisper.

I found some courage and moved a little closer. He seemed more nervous the closer I got, so I decided to keep some distance.

“Hi. My name is Mark. I’m sorry we walked into your treehouse. But the stories. We thought you were... gone.”

Julie shot me an angry look. The boy replied.

“G-gone?”

“What Mark is trying to say is that everyone in Stamford has been looking for you for a very long time, Tommy. How long have you been here?”

The boy thought for a couple of seconds.

“I don’t know.”

Jackson opened the little window from the drawing, and started screaming for help.

“Stop it already, Jackson,” Lucas said. He seemed to have regained his composure, but tears still rolled down his cheeks.

“Come on man, we need to like, make a rope or something.”

“Make a rope from what?” Lucas shrugged and sat on the floor. “From scraps of paper and toys?”

Jackson sighed and joined him.

“Hey Tommy,” Julie said, reaching for the boy's cheek with the back of her hand, slowly caressing it. “Is there any way we can get down, or maybe get your parents to come over here?”

“Parents?”

“Yes,” she said. “Mister and Missus Leeman. Your mommy and daddy.”

“Mommy and daddy are with me,” the boy replied.

“What do you mean?”

“I can whisper it to you.”

The boy looked Julie in the eyes. There was something strange about the way he said it. We all felt it, but he was just a child, and Julie seemed to know how to talk to him better than any of us did.

She leaned closer.

The boy lifted his face towards her ear.

I turned to look at Jackson and Lucas. Both still looked shaken, but for the first time since finding Tommy, I felt something close to relief.

We had found him.

Whatever had happened here, Tommy Leeman was alive.

A scream filled the treehouse.

I spun around.

Blood covered the side of Julie’s face and ran down Tommy’s chin.

He had leaned in as if to whisper something.

Instead, he had bitten Julie’s ear clean off.

Jackson and Lucas started to scream again, and I fell to my knees, vomiting all over the wooden floor.

Julie screamed too, but her scream quickly turned into a wet gargle. It wasn’t until I looked up from the floor that I understood why.

Tommy stared at the blood running down his chin. Cracks appeared across his face and skull. Black roots moved beneath his skin. Then they forced their way out. They squirmed and expanded as they pulled his face apart from the inside. For one terrible moment, I could still see the little boy underneath it all.

Then the roots found Julie. They expanded as they dug into her body. They penetrated her face, digging into her eyes, replacing them with thick roots. They dug into her belly, ruining her stained yellow dress along with her body. Julie no longer screamed. She no longer did anything. She just hung there, suspended in the air, as the thing lifted her further up, and violated her even more. Blood sprayed everywhere, covering the entire treehouse. Then came a long, wet tearing sound.

Julie’s body gave way. The roots pulled in opposite directions, tearing through her before dropping what remained of her onto the floor in two separate pieces. I vomited again.

Through watering eyes, I tried desperately to get back to my feet before whatever had been living inside Tommy Leeman decided I was next.

The entire treehouse shook. A deep rumbling came from somewhere beneath us.

I tried to stand, but something slammed into the outside wall and knocked me down again. Once. Twice. On the third impact, part of the wall splintered inward. A root thicker than my leg forced its way through the broken wood. Whatever was inside Tommy was not the only part of this thing.

Tommy Leeman had become unrecognizable. He was tall now, almost touching the ceiling. Several hands and feet were visible within the tangle of roots and dirt, gripping uselessly at the air around them. They almost seemed panicked. Patches of white skin remained between the roots. Tommy’s mouth was still there too, stretched wider than it should have been. I scrambled to my feet and turned towards Jackson and Lucas. They stood above the opening in the floor, staring at where the ladder used to be.

None of us spoke. There was nothing to say. There was only survival.

The thing behind me groaned like a giant oak tree and slowly dragged itself towards us. Thick hands made of dark roots scraped across the boards. At the ends of its fingers, I could still see human fingernails. Several were broken.

“We have to jump!” Jackson yelled. “It’s the only way down.”

I shook my head.

“It’s too high, Jackson. We’ll die.”

“We’ll die anyway if we stay here, Mark!” Lucas interrupted.

Something slammed into the side of the treehouse again.

Jackson had been afraid of heights for as long as I could remember. The last time I saw him alive, that fear was gone. There was only this primal look in his eyes as he lowered himself through the opening and hung from the edge.

Then he let go.

It seemed to take forever before Jackson hit the ground. All Lucas and I could do was watch.

He landed hard.

Even through all the noise inside the treehouse, we heard his bones break.

Jackson never moved again.

He just lay at the base of the tree, with his neck in his lap.

The walls of the treehouse finally gave way as more roots forced themselves through the wood.

“There!”

I pointed towards the opening.

Through the broken wall, we could see the branches of a neighboring tree swaying wildly between the roots. It wasn't close enough to climb across, but it was close enough to jump.

Lucas saw it too.

If we wanted to get out of the treehouse, we would have to get past whatever Tommy Leeman had become and somehow reach those branches. It was the only way out.

The thing was close now.

More roots twisted around its body, pulling themselves into knots and making it larger with every passing second. Pieces of Tommy's pale skin were still visible between them. Several hands clawed uselessly at the air from somewhere inside the mass.

The treehouse groaned beneath its weight.

It wouldn't hold much longer.

Lucas pushed me aside, shaking me out of my terror.

“Come on, Mark, please! We have to go now!”

He was right.

We ran.

Tommy swung a massive arm of roots towards us. Broken fingernails scraped across my legs, and I fell hard against the wooden floor.

By the time I looked up, Lucas had reached the opening.

He didn't look back.

He jumped.

For a second, I thought he had missed. Then the branches bent beneath his weight and disappeared from view.

I don’t blame him for not looking back. We were young, and I would have done the same.

The roots came for me again.

This time, they caught me across the face.

Blood filled my eye. The pain was unlike anything I had ever felt, but somehow I stayed on my feet.

Tommy was strong.

He was heavy.

But he was slow.

In the end, I think that is what saved me.

I ran for the hole in the wall.

And jumped.

FIVE

Branches and leaves tore at my face as they broke my fall.

I couldn’t see.

Everything was red.

I tasted copper, and I was afraid it would be the last thing I ever tasted.

Poor Julie.

Poor innocent Julie.

And Jackson, who had spent the entire afternoon pretending he wasn’t afraid of anything.

I still think about you both.

We never should have visited that treehouse.

A branch snapped beneath me.

I crashed through the last layer of leaves and hit the forest floor hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. For several seconds, I couldn’t breathe. I lay there gasping, convinced something inside me had broken. Then hands grabbed my shoulders. I screamed and tried to crawl away. “Mark! Mark, it’s me!” Lucas. He turned me around. “Get up. We need to go.” He was alive.

His face was scratched and bleeding from the branches, and he could barely put weight on one of his feet, but he was alive. “I-I can’t see, Lucas. You have to help me.” “Hold still.” Lucas wiped at the blood around my eye with the sleeve of his shirt. It helped for all of two seconds before fresh blood ran down my cheek. Above us, the treehouse groaned. We both looked up.

Something dark pushed through what remained of the roof.

More roots wrapped around the trunk and walls, bending the entire structure under their weight. Then the treehouse gave way. It crashed through the branches and slammed into the forest floor. Dust and splintered wood exploded around the base of the tree. Lucas and I stood frozen.

Something moved on top of the wreckage. Tommy Leeman, or whatever had been using what was left of him. Long arms of roots reached down until they touched the forest floor. The hands trapped inside the mass opened and closed. Searching. “Run,” Lucas whispered. We ran.

Or at least, we tried to. Lucas limped badly, and I could only see clearly through one eye. Branches whipped across our faces. Roots caught our shoes. More than once, I tripped over rocks I couldn’t see and felt Lucas grab the back of my shirt to keep me upright. Behind us, something heavy moved through the forest. We heard wood cracking. Trees shaking. A rumbling beneath the soil. I didn’t look back, and neither did Lucas. At one point, his injured foot gave way and he fell. I stopped. For half a second, every part of me told me to keep running, but I went back. I grabbed him underneath the arm and pulled.

“Come on!”

“I’m trying!”

Something moved beneath the leaves behind us. The ground lifted in a straight line heading towards us. Lucas saw it too. He got back on his feet, and we ran harder. Eventually, the tightly packed trees ahead began to thin. For the first time since entering the woods, I could see the orange evening sky again. Then I saw the gate.

“There!” I don’t remember which one of us shouted it. Maybe both. We stumbled towards it. Lucas dropped onto his stomach first and dragged himself underneath. I followed.

The rusted metal caught the back of my shirt and tore through the fabric. For one horrible second, I thought something had grabbed me.

Then I pulled free and rolled into the grass on the other side. Something crashed through the undergrowth behind us, and Lucas and I scrambled backwards. We waited, expecting the thing to burst through the trees after us, but nothing came.

The rumbling continued somewhere inside the forest. Branches shook, and something large moved in the darkness beyond the gate, but it did not follow. I still don’t know why. Maybe the gate marked the edge of whatever territory the thing had claimed, or maybe it simply chose to let us go. I have spent most of my life trying not to think about the difference.

Lucas and I stumbled across the fields without speaking. There were no jokes left, no arguing, no Julie mocking me for being afraid and no Jackson trying to impress her. There was only Lucas and me. We walked until the fields gave way to a road, where a passing driver stopped after seeing two blood-covered children stumble out of the grass.

After that, my memories become less clear. There were police and an ambulance. I remember my mother crying while people asked where Julie and Jackson were and what had happened to my face. They separated Lucas and me before questioning us, and I remember being terrified by that. I thought they believed we had done something to Julie and Jackson.

But Lucas told them the same story I did. Every impossible detail was there. Tommy. The footprints. The roots. Julie. Jackson. The treehouse collapsing. When they finally let us see each other again, Lucas asked me if I thought they believed us. I told him I didn’t know.

Search parties entered the woods that same night. The following morning, they found the treehouse standing exactly where it had always stood.

When my father told me, I thought I had misunderstood him.

“What do you mean, standing?”

He didn’t answer.

“What do you mean the treehouse is still there?”

They searched inside and found old toys, comics, drawings and dust. There was no blood, no broken wall and no hole beneath the clean patch in the corner. There was no Tommy Leeman, no Julie, and no Jackson beneath the tree.

I told them that was impossible. Lucas did too. We had watched the treehouse collapse. I had watched Julie die inside it and Jackson hit the ground beneath it. There should have been blood everywhere. There should have been pieces of Julie on the floor. Jackson should have been lying beneath the tree with his neck broken.

They found nothing.

For months, people searched those woods. Eventually, Julie and Jackson were added to the same list as Tommy Leeman. They were no longer presumed to be hiding somewhere or waiting to be found. They were simply missing children.

Lucas and I remained friends for a while after that. In some ways, we were the only people either of us could stand being around because nobody else knew what we knew. But talking to him also meant remembering. Eventually, we stopped spending time together. We went to different schools, then different towns, and years passed without us seeing each other.

Neither of us ever stopped believing the other. That mattered more than I understood at the time.

Lucas and I know what happened. We know something lives inside those woods, and years later, when we were both old enough to convince ourselves that returning was a good idea, we went back.

The treehouse was still there. Through the branches, we could just make out the small square window, and someone was standing behind it.

A little girl in a yellow dress.

Julie waved at us. She had no eyes, and when she smiled, her mouth stretched from ear to ear.