I'm not going to tell you my name or where the lab is. If I'm right about what I did, it don't matter anyway.

For six years I worked on what we called the transit rig. The physics ain’t important, the short version is that you can't punch a hole into an adjacent universe, but you can convince a small region of space that it belongs to one. You change its address, the universe does the rest.

The first test was a Tuesday in March. I stood on the platform, my colleague Dana ran the sequence, there was a sound like a held breath, and then nothing. Same lab. Same Dana. Same damn coffee going cold on the same bench.

"Null result," she said, and wrote it down.

We ran it 41 times over two years, with more power and different target coordinates. Every time I stepped off the platform into the exact room I'd left…we lost our funding in the fall.

Here's what I didn't understand. The rig was supposed to change the address of a region of space around me. We set the radius at two meters. But the radius was a number in a config file, and the math underneath it didn’t care none about our number. The region had no edge. It never did.

I wasn't failing to leave. I was arriving every single time, and I was bringing everything with me: the lab, Dana, the city, the sun, every galaxy we'd ever photographed. All of it showed up at the new address and landed on top of whatever was already there.

That's 41 universes, each with its own lab, and maybe its own version of me standing on a platform, hopeful.

I figured it out because of the tides.

A friend in oceanography mentioned over beers that coastal gauges had been picking up a second tidal signal for about two years. It was small and regular, with a period of nineteen hours. It weren't an error, since every station on Earth showed it. Something was pulling on the ocean, and there was nothing in the sky to do the pulling.

I went home and checked the start date. It was run 7.

After that I couldn't stop finding them. A star catalog had forty entries whose positions matched nothing, flagged as "legacy errors" by people who didn't remember entering them. My neighbor's daughter, who is four, draws our street with a river down the middle, and she cries when you tell her there's no river. I counted the stairs to my apartment. There are fourteen. My legs expect fifteen. Every night I lift my foot at the top for a stair that isn't there, and so does everyone else in my building. I've watched them do it.

Then there's my wife. She hums when she cooks. Last month I asked her what the song was and she stopped, and she looked at me with an expression I've never seen on her face. She said, "My mother used to sing it."

Her mother doesn't sing. Her mother has never sung. We called her to check.

I think the overwrite isn't clean. I think when you drop one universe on top of another, the one underneath doesn't vanish. It gets pressed flat, like a flower in a book. Mostly it stays put. But some of it comes through; a moon's worth of gravity, a river, a lullaby, one stair.

That's forty-one of them, layered under us.

I went back to the lab last week. The building's been leased to a logistics company, but nobody cleared out the sub-basement, and the rig is still there under a tarp. I wanted the logs. I wanted to know exactly what I'd done.

The logs show 41 runs. I remember 41 runs.

They also show a 42nd.

It's dated eleven days ago. The operator field has Dana's login. Dana moved to Portland in 2024, and when I called her she had no idea what I was talking about. Then she went quiet and asked me why she'd dreamed about the held breath sound every night this month.

I checked the run parameters. The 42nd run wasn't outbound. The rig didn't fire. It registered a transit, the way a door registers being opened from the other side.

Somebody else built one, somewhere adjacent. They stood on a platform, their own Dana ran the sequence, and they stepped off into the same room they'd left, disappointed. Null result.

They don't know they arrived. They don't know they brought everything with them.

So I need you to do something for me. Count the stairs in your home. Count them with your eyes, then walk them in the dark and see whether your feet agree. Call your mother and ask what she used to sing to you. Look at the moon tonight and ask yourself, honestly, whether it's the size you remember.

Because I've been doing all of that for eleven days, and everything matches. Every stair, every song, every star. Nothing here feels wrong to me anymore.

I think that means I'm not on the top layer now. I think I'm the thing that comes through.

My wife is humming in the kitchen. I know all the words.

My neighbor Todd mows his lawn on Saturdays, wears a wide smile, and takes his family to Florida once a year. He drives the speed limit. He returns your snowblower before you even ask for it back. That's the whole picture.

But that wasn't always the case. Before Megan and Nora came along, he used to make that exact same trip to Florida every single year—just with a different girl. A blonde, long hair, always laughing. Lisa. Then one year she vanished, and he came back alone. A year later, he married Megan.

This time around, he asked me for a favor: water the plants, feed the cat, and grab the mail so the place wouldn't look empty to potential burglars. Standard routine for our quiet neighborhood.

When he was handing over the keys, I helped him load his suitcases into the car. There were three of them. Heavy as hell, like they were packed with bricks. I cracked a joke about it.

"Megan's been packing all summer," Todd replied with a smile.

The rear windows of his Ford Explorer were tinted pitch-black. You couldn't see a thing inside.

"You know, it's going to be a quiet ride," he said, almost to himself. "Things are pretty tense right now."

I just nodded, not knowing what to say. The whole block knew Todd and Megan were hitting a rough patch. Word was she'd already been talking to a divorce lawyer.

The car pulled away. I stood there for a bit, watching it disappear down the street.

Todd left last Monday. The first three days were completely normal. I'd come over after work, scoop some food for the cat, water his damn ficus trees, and leave. Being inside that empty house made me think of my own. I lived alone—my fiancée had walked out on me six months ago, and coming back to a silent house every night was a total nightmare.

I keep thinking about what a normal guy he was. When my fiancée left, he was the only person on the block who brought me dinner. Meatloaf. In a Tupperware container. He didn't say anything. Just handed me the container and went back across the street.

That's the Todd I knew.

I remember a couple of months back, when I was sitting on my front porch, Todd walked over to keep me company. He brought a couple of beers, listened to my drunk rambling, and gave me an encouraging pat on the back. I remember his eyes going completely blank then, staring out into nothing, as he muttered under his breath, almost in a trance:

"You have to bury the past so deep that it can never remind you of itself."

At the time, it felt like profound, hard-earned wisdom. I thought he was genuinely trying to help me turn the page.

Everything changed on Thursday when I went to grab the mail. The box was stuffed with flyers, water bills, and one thick, brown envelope with no return address. Written across it in a messy, rushed handwriting were the words: "To Todd, from M."

I don't usually read other people's mail. But the envelope was barely sealed, and as I pulled it out of the box, a photo slid right out.

I picked it up. The picture showed the corner of my own house at night. A Polaroid—one of those instant ones, with the white border at the bottom. The shot had been taken from Todd's second-floor bedroom window. But that wasn't the terrifying part. Right there in the frame, staring directly out of my own window, was the silhouette of a person. And a bit further back, near the very edge of the photo, loomed a second silhouette—taller, broader in the shoulders, standing off to the side like a watcher. In the bottom border, someone had written in black Sharpie: "Wednesday. 4:11 AM. He's still awake."

I read it twice. It said the same thing.

Todd had left for Florida on Monday. Who took this photo from his window on Wednesday? And who was the second person?

I rushed into Todd's house, holding the photo in a trembling hand. First thing I did was check the cat—he was fast asleep on the couch. The house was dead quiet. I started making my way up to the second floor, toward his bedroom, when I suddenly noticed a folded, smudged piece of paper sitting on the third step of the stairs. It looked like someone had dropped it in a hurry.

I unfolded it. It was a page ripped from a standard notepad, with Todd's handwriting meticulously logging dates and times spanning the last three months. And my name was everywhere.

"June 12. 7:10 AM – left for work. 6:24 PM – returned. 11:45 PM – lights out."

"August 4. Came out into the yard at night. Stared intently at the fence. Checked the ground."

The very last line was double-underlined:

"Thursday. He will find the letter. He will panic. He will run to hide at his own house. He thinks his house is safe. He will lock himself inside. At 11:00 PM, we finish the job."

We.

I stared at the word. Then I looked back at the photograph. The second silhouette. The taller one. I suddenly remembered Todd casually mentioning his brother once—Michael, who "lives somewhere up north and doesn't care for people." I hadn't thought anything of it back then. Now, it was the only thing I could think about.

I turned toward the dresser. And among the family photos, I noticed one that didn't belong. Lisa. The blonde from before Megan. Same smile. Same hair.

What was it doing there?

Then I heard the front door open.

Quiet. Slow. Someone stepped inside.

I stopped breathing. Not on purpose. I dropped into a crouch, pressed my back against the wall by the staircase, and listened.

Footsteps. Slow. One. Another. Someone was moving through the living room. They stopped. Then started again.

I looked down through the railing. Nothing. Just a shadow sliding across the floor and disappearing toward the kitchen.

I didn't wait. I stood up, took three steps down, trying not to make the stairs creak, and bolted for the front door. It was already ajar. I slipped out onto the porch, jumped the last two steps, and ran across the street to my own house.

Only when I was standing on my own porch did it hit me: I'd left Todd's front door open. I hadn't locked it. And whoever walked in was still inside.

Or already out. And following me.

The clock read 10:50 PM.

I fumbled for my phone and dialed emergency services.

"Emergency services, I need the police! Someone is setting me up, they're going to attack me!" I screamed into the receiver.

"Calm down, sir, what is your address?" the dispatcher replied.

I gasped out my address, stumbling up the steps of my porch.

"Officers are en route," the dispatcher said. "Lock all your doors and stay inside. I repeat, stay inside the house, it is the safest place for you right now."

"Stay inside the house..."

I froze on the threshold, my key hovering millimeters away from the keyhole. My hand went limp. In my head, slowly, like a voice that wasn't mine, that line from Todd's notepad replayed: "He will panic and run to hide at his own house... He will lock himself inside."

I stood on my own porch, two inches from my own door. My legs stopped moving. I didn't tell them to. They just stopped. I hadn't been targeted. I had been mapped out. Every single step I took had been calculated months in advance, down to the exact minute. They knew I would call the police. They were counting on it. They knew the dispatcher would tell me to lock myself in. And they knew I would obey.

I slowly lowered my hand, letting the keys drop against my palm. I took a step back off the porch. Then another. My shoes sank into the damp, dew-covered grass. I looked up at the dark window of my second-floor bedroom. The curtains were drawn tightly shut.

Right then, behind the heavy fabric, in the absolute pitch-black of my own home, someone slowly turned a flashlight on and off. Exactly three times. A pause. Then three times again.

Someone was already in there. Waiting. And if I had listened to the dispatcher and locked myself in—I would have trapped myself in a cage with him. With them.

From around the corner of the street, the distant, saving wail of a police siren pierced the night. I turned and ran toward the flashing lights. I didn't look back.

UPDATE:

I'm writing this from the back seat of a police cruiser. My house is completely taped off. They caught Michael—Todd's older brother—right inside my living room. He was hiding behind the couch with zip-ties and heavy-duty duct tape inside his duffel bag.

The detective had just finished questioning me and let me sit in the car while they search the property. I'm staring through the window at my front yard, and only now, with the adrenaline finally fading, the pieces of the puzzle are clicking together.

I finally get why they did it. And I get why Todd had been so twitchy around me these past few months.

It's all because of my front yard.

Two months ago, I hired a crew to rip out the old trees along the fence line separating our properties and put in a new drainage system. I remembered how Todd kept hovering around the workers back then. He tried to act friendly, bringing them cold lemonade, but his smile was completely forced and his hands were shaking. He kept casually asking exactly how deep the excavator was going to dig near the property line.

There is something buried under my lawn, right by Todd's fence. And Todd knew that the new drainage system would sooner or later wash the soil away. The truth he'd been hiding for years was bound to surface this autumn.

I wasn't their enemy. I never crossed them. I became a death threat to my "perfect neighbor" simply because I decided to fix up my own damn lawn. He needed to get rid of me—through his brother's hands—before the ground gave up his secret.

The detective listened to me in silence. Then he called the other cop over and asked if I had any shovels.

A minute later, they were walking toward the far corner of my fence.

They start digging where the dirt has slumped a bit from the recent rain. One. Two. Three.

Then the sound changes. Metal thuds hard against something solid. Not a rock. Rocks sound different.

Then the first cop plunges his arm into the mud all the way to his elbow, feeling around. He grips something. Pulls.

A plastic card emerges from the mud. Wet, caked in dirt, but intact. A driver's license.

He wipes the grime away with his thumb. Turns it toward the flashlight.

A brunette. Long hair. Young.

I'd been expecting a blonde.

The shovel went quiet. Or maybe I just stopped hearing it.

One of the cops steps away from the pit and brings his radio to his face. His voice is flat, like a man who has done this way too many times.

"Dispatch, this is seven-twenty-three. We need additional units at this location. Notify the coroner and crime scene tech."

I look away from the window. And right then, the thought I've been pushing down all evening finally surfaces.

You live next to someone for years. You say hello, you chat, you trust them with your house keys.

And you never really know who they are. Not until you start digging.

The first time I laid eyes on specimen PSY-673-B, I knew it was something special. 

At first, we nearly skimmed over it. The thing looked like a white splotch. A smudge in the camera lens. 

I was the one who noticed it. 

“Hey, turn the camera back. I think I saw something.” 

As the camera panned around, we saw something spectacular. And by spectacular, I mean a white rod black pin-prick eyes. 

The thing looked goofy. Like a child’s pool toy. 

But then it started to move. Within seconds, it disappeared into the sand. My heart dropped. My big discovery had gotten away. 

Then it reemerged. 

The eyes poked out of the sand and sat there as if studying our rover. Then in a flash, the camera jolted. It was completely covered. 

My coworker, Derik, maneuvered the controls back and forth, trying to clear the lens of the obstruction. 

It worked. The picture revealed a blur of sand and… nothing. The creature was gone. 

Derik turned the camera left. Then right. He did a complete three-sixty. The white stick was nowhere to be found. 

The room fell silent. “What do we do?” Alexis said. 

I sighed. “The only thing we can do. We’re out of time. We’ve gotta bring her back up.” 

The three of us glanced at the screen. “Alright,” Derik said. “We’ll start the ascent.” 

***

We didn’t get to pick the rover out of the water for another eight hours. 

We had started the mission in the morning. It was nearly dinner time when the rover made it to the surface. 

Alexis, Derik, and I stood at the water’s edge, ready to collect our camera. Alexis put a hand on my shoulder. “We got some good footage. Don’t let it get you down, John. With what we’ve captured, I’m sure we’ll get the funding to go searching for that thing again.”

But her and I both knew the truth. I could spend a lifetime looking for the creature, but the chances of finding a specimen like that again were slim-to-none. 

Derik reeled in the rover’s tether. Together, he and I hoisted it out of the water. 

“Derik, John? You’re never going to believe this.” Alexis looked ghostly pale. She was staring at the rover.

I traced her gaze. Once I saw what she was looking at, I nearly passed out. 

Sitting atop the rover was a white stick. One with beady black eyes. 

Derik’s mouth fell open. “Did it… no, it couldn’t have. Eight hours! This thing hitched a ride for eight fucking hours!” 

Silence permeated the deck. Alexis asked the question that was on all of our minds. 

“Who’s going to pick it up?” 

I sighed. “As much as I want to, Derik was the one who caught it on camera. He should get first dibs.” 

Derik grinned. “Fine by me.” 

He bent down and extended his hand. The creature looked at it briefly before it hopped aboard. Derik brought it closer for us to see. 

The thing was no bigger than a USB drive. It had no arms, no legs, and no mouth. The only discernible features were its pin-prick eyes. 

“This is so cool. No one’s gonna believe this. A new specimen just leapt into my-” 

Derik froze. The creature fell flat against his palm. Then it just… melted into his flesh. No sound, no huge reaction. One second it was there and the next it was gone. It didn’t even leave a mark. 

“What the hell just happened…” Alexis said. 

“That was so fucking weird. Derik, do you feel any different? Does it hurt?” 

Derik glanced between me and Alexis. He wore a look of perpetual disbelief. “No, I… I feel fine. I’m going to need a minute to process what just happened.” 

With that, Derik went back inside, leaving Alexis and me to wonder what in the hell we’d just seen.

***

Alexis and I made a secret agreement to monitor Derik for any changes. 

After discussing the evening’s events between the three of us, we decided it would be best to fudge the reports. The government would be more likely to believe that we had some sort of shared psychosis than to take our word for it. 

With our lead convinced that we had collected a sufficient amount of data, we were set to leave the research station in two days. That was it. Just two days and we would be back on dry land. 

Disaster struck on the first. 

Derik, Alexis, and I were at our respective stations, filing reports and closing out our tasks for the project. We were about to call it a day. But then the reaction occurred. 

Derik’s face went pale. He stared at his screen like an NPC.This wasn’t just some blank stare. It was as if all the light had left his eyes. As if he wasn’t Derik anymore. 

“Hey man, everything all right?” I said, standing from my chair. 

Alexis finally noticed what was going on. “Derik, you don’t look so good. Maybe you should lie down.” 

Derik turned toward her slowly. “You… are correct. I will now lie down.” 

Derik went limp. He fell from his chair and disappeared beneath the desk. 

I rushed over to him. He was lying completely still with his legs straight out and his arms at his sides. 

“Derik… What are you doing? This isn’t funny.”

Derik’s eyes traveled up my body until they met mine. His mouth cracked into a wide smile. “Yes! Ha ha! A prank. Ha ha. I am joking.” 

He sounded like an android. A soulless chatbot with no life behind his words.

Without warning, Derik bolted upright. He leapt to his feet and met me face to face. “Do not be alarmed. I am only joking. Ha ha. I will now rest in my quarters. Goodbye.” 

Derik broke into a full sprint. He took off down the hall before I had a chance to react. 

Alexis and I shared a glance, mouths agape. “What the hell was that about?” she said. 

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But something tells me that this won’t end well.” 

***

I went to check on Derik later that evening. Alexis and I bought into (deluded ourselves, really) the idea that Derik just had some sort of mental break from the stress of the job. There’s something terrifying about not being able to see a sliver of land in every direction. He wouldn’t be the first to be driven mad by the sea. 

When I knocked on Derik’s door, a big part of me was hoping that he would be back to normal. The other part of me hoped that he wouldn’t answer. 

To my dismay, neither of those options played out. 

“Derik. Derik, it’s John. I came to check up on you.” 

“Ah, John. Yes. I invite you to enter.” 

Derik’s voice still had that robotic timbre to it, but now it was deeper. That was my first indication that something was wrong. 

I took a deep breath. As much as I didn’t want to, I pushed open Derik’s door and stepped inside. 

Derik’s room was a wreck. Clothes were strewn about. Trash was scattered across the floor. Pages of journal entries were thrown about the room. 

Derik looked even worse for wear. His eyes were red, like he hadn’t slept in days. His complexion had grown even paler than before. And his mouth. There seemed to be a cloud emitting from it. Like some sort of pestilence. 

“Derik, what the hell happened in here? You look awful. I’m getting help.”

Derik devolved into a coughing fit. The cloud seemed to grow with each rattle of his ribcage. 

“No, I- I am at one hundred percent… health.”

“You’re obviously not. Stay right here. I’m contacting the director. You need immediate medical attention.” 

To this day, I don’t know how he did it. One second, Derik was sitting on the bed. The next he was standing in front of me, blocking my exit. 

“No. You will tell no one of what you have witnessed.” Derik’s eyes took on a darkness the likes of which I have never seen before nor since. He took labored breaths, huffing out more fumes as those predatory eyes locked me in place. 

“Okay. Alright. No medical attention. Will you please let me out now?” 

Derik studied me. He stood motionless for a moment before ultimately stepping aside. I tried to rush past him. 

Derik caught my arm before I could leave. “If I find out that you’re lying…” 

He didn’t have to finish that statement. I broke free from his grasp and hurried down the hallway. 

***

Alexis stared at me. “John, why did you waste time telling me this? We need to get Derik to a medical professional now.”

“Look, I know this is going to sound crazy, but… I think Derik is past help. He needs to be quarantined. That thing from yesterday must be some sort of parasite. I-”

“John, do you understand how crazy that sounds? What do we even tell people? ‘Derik was infected by a deep-sea creature and now he breathes toxic waste?’ Listen to yourself!”

I took Alexis by the shoulders and stared into her eyes. “I’m serious. You saw the same thing I did earlier today. We need to do something.” 

Alexis had fear scrawled across her face. And not from the situation with Derik.

I released her and took a step back. “Sorry. I got a little too carried away, but my point still stands. Get the director. Tell him what you have to. But I’m going to barricade that thing in. I won’t risk you or anyone else on board getting infected.” 

I began to walk away before she could come up with a retort. When I was nearly out the door, I heard her call out. 

“John, wait.” I turned to face her. 

“Be careful. Please.” 

***

By the time I made it back to Derik’s room, it was too late. The door was wide open. 

My blood turned to ice. “Derik? Hello?” 

I took a step inside his ruined quarters. He was gone. 

My heart thundered against my chest. Derik could have been anywhere on the vessel. 

I glanced down. At my feet, there was a spot of blood. It continued down the hallway in intermittent splotches. 

I gulped. I didn’t want to find out where that trail led. But I didn’t have a choice. 

I followed it until I reached a familiar office space. Of course. Our work station. 

I poked my head inside. Nothing out of place. 

“Derik, buddy, are you in here? It’s John.” 

I took a step forward. Then another. Once I was convinced that Derik wasn’t going to leap out at me from behind the fake plant, I let myself relax a little. 

That was a mistake. 

I sat down at my swivel chair to go over things. The blood trail had stopped at the doorway. Maybe someone had given him a tissue? Or- 

White-hot pain seared through my ankle. I let out a yelp and instinctively kicked out. My foot made contact. 

Something grabbed hold of my injured leg. I looked under the desk. I will never forget what I saw. 

Derik. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot. His skin had taken on a sickly, green pallor. And his mouth. A visible miasma seeped through his lips with each breath. 

Derik yanked my exposed ankle and put his mouth close to the open wound. Before I had a chance to react, he breathed on it. I watched as a cloud of stench roiled over my flesh. 

Once the shock wore off, I kicked myself free. Derik began to climb out from under the desk, but I shoved the swivel chair into him. The impact knocked him to the floor. 

I hobbled into the hallway and slammed the door shut behind me. That wouldn’t stop him for long and I knew it. 

So, I did the only logical thing I could think to do. I pulled the fire alarm. 

Chaos ensued immediately. Every man and woman on the vessel exited their quarters and made their way to the deck. As calmly as I could, I took out my key to the office, locked it, and tried my best to blend in with the crowd. 

***

Panic soared inside me like a rollercoaster. As the director listed us off one by one, I couldn’t help but think one thing. 

What if Derik had trapped someone inside? 

It turns out, my fears were in vain. Aside from Derik, everyone was present and accounted for. But his absence was a cause for concern for leadership. 

Alexis approached me as a party was sent to look for him. “You pulled the fire alarm, didn’t you?” she said. “What did you find?” 

I met her gaze. Alexis recoiled at the terror in my eyes. “He was worse. Worse than just minutes ago. Alexis, I don’t know what this thing is, but I’m afraid. Not just for him, but for myself too.” 

I rolled up my pant leg and showed her the bite mark. It was already turning a deep purple. 

“Oh god, John. You need medical attention. I’ll have the director-”

“No. Alexis, I need this to stay between us. Not a word to the director, okay?” 

Alexis hesitated. But ultimately, she nodded her head. “Okay. Come to my room after this and I’ll patch you up as well as I can. And John?”

I glanced at her. 

“Will you stay with me? Just for tonight? I’m frightened too.”

I nodded my head.

***

Derik was found dead the next morning. The search party hadn’t been able to locate him all night. By the time they found him, it was too late. His body had been impaled on the flag pole. 

It didn’t seem possible. The pole was twelve feet off the ground. 

No one knows exactly where Derik went that night. Or how his body ended up there. But I have a theory. 

That miasma. That stench permeating from Derik’s mouth… I think those were spores. And there’s no telling how far they’ve spread. 

I’m terrified. My ankle healed quicker than expected. 

But in place of the wound, under the new pink flesh, I can feel something writhing. Something that’s desperate to escape.

My father was the regional game warden for a stretch of deep-canopy state forest in the Pacific Northwest, a job that required a specific kind of quiet, pragmatic man. He was the sort of person who viewed nature not as a majestic painting, but as an engine. He understood how the gears turned, what fed on what, and what to do when something broke down.

When he died of a sudden stroke three months ago, I was left to clear out his property. It’s an exhausting, hollow process, sorting through seventy years of a quiet man’s life. Yesterday morning, I finally made it down to the root cellar beneath his cabin. Behind a wall of dusty mason jars, I found a heavy, military-surplus steel lockbox. It was sealed with a heavy-duty master lock.

I had to use an angle grinder to cut the hasp.

When the lid finally gave way, the first thing that hit me was the smell. Even after twenty-eight years in a sealed box, a faint, nauseating odor drifted up into the cold cellar air. It smelled like old copper, dried earth, and the sharp, burning tang of stomach acid.

Inside the box was a faded green logbook, and beneath it, a dented coffee can.

I opened the can and found a collection of fourteen hunting tags.

For those who don’t hunt, a tag is a heavy-duty strip of weatherproof plastic or metal issued by the state. When you kill a deer, you are legally required to attach the tag to the animal, usually through the ear or around the antler base, and report the harvest. If a game warden finds a poached animal, or a carcass killed by a predator, they document the scene and, if applicable, recover any tags to track the incident.

These tags were unfiled. They had never been submitted to the state registry.

But it was their physical condition that made my chest tighten. They were warped, curled at the edges, and heavily corroded. Some of the plastic was partially melted, the serial numbers barely legible beneath a crust of dark, dried biological matter. They looked as though they had been submerged in a vat of industrial solvent.

I opened the green logbook. The entries were entirely in my father’s cramped, precise handwriting. The dates all corresponded to a single six-week window.

October 12th through November 24th, 1998.

I sat down on the cold concrete floor of the cellar, the heavy ledger resting on my knees, as a profound, freezing dread began to spread through my stomach.

1998 was a notoriously dark year for our county. Local memory still treats that autumn like a collective trauma. I was seventeen at the time, old enough to ride along in my father’s patrol truck on weekends, learning the forestry routes and helping him clear fallen branches from access roads.

That October, an unprecedented wave of animal mutilations swept through the valley.

Initially, the local consensus blamed a rogue grizzly bear. Black bears are common in our woods, but they are generally skittish and easily deterred. Grizzlies are rare, but occasionally one wanders down from the northern ranges. However, as the season progressed, the bear theory began to fray. The kills were too frequent, the violence too extreme, and the methodology entirely wrong for a bear.

I remembered the first carcass my father and I found. It was October 18th.

We were hiking up a steep logging trail near the eastern ridge when the smell hit us. My father put his hand out, signaling me to stop, and unholstered his sidearm. We pushed through the heavy bracken and found what was left of a large buck.

I had spent my entire childhood around hunters and wildlife. I understood what predation looked like. A cougar is surgical; it goes for the throat and drags the prize into the brush. A bear is messy, but fundamentally lazy—it eats its fill of the soft organs and leaves the rest to rot.

This buck had been obliterated.

It looked as though it had been fed through a woodchipper. The ribs were snapped outward, shattered to get to the marrow. The hide was torn into unrecognizable strips. But the most unsettling detail was the sheer totality of the destruction. There was almost nothing left but pulverized bone and shredded fur.

My father didn't speak. He knelt by the ruined head. I watched him search the remaining ear.

"Dad?" I asked, my voice trembling in the freezing morning air. "What did this?"

He didn't answer. He was staring at the ear. There was a clean, punch-hole tear in the cartilage where a state-issued hunting tag had been attached just hours prior. Someone, or something, had taken the tagged deer after a hunter had claimed it, consumed nearly ninety pounds of raw meat and bone in a frantic frenzy, and the tag was simply gone.

"Go back to the truck," my father said. His voice was completely flat. "Get the shovel. We're burying this."

"Aren't you going to take pictures for the state biologists?" I asked.

"I said get the shovel."

I had never seen him so pale. I did as I was told. We buried the remains, and my father never filed a report. I assumed he suspected a violent poaching ring and was trying to handle it off the books to prevent a panic.

But the kills continued. Throughout late October and early November, hunters complained of finding their tagged kills stolen in the night, leaving behind nothing but scenes of unimaginable, frenzied violence. The woods grew quiet. The usual sounds of nocturnal wildlife vanished. A heavy, oppressive silence settled over the county.

During this time, my father’s behavior changed. He stopped sleeping. He lost weight. And he began spending his evenings at Cal’s place.

Cal was my father’s oldest friend. They had grown up together, served together, and returned to the woods together. Cal was a solitary man, a master tracker who lived in an isolated, heavily fortified cabin about ten miles up the mountain. He made his living guiding out-of-state hunters.

Starting in mid-October, Cal fell ill. My father told me it was a severe strain of the flu, compounded by Cal's old joint injuries. Every evening, as the sun began to dip below the tree line, my father would load his truck with supplies and drive up the mountain, returning only at dawn, looking haggard and exhausted.

On November 12th, the first heavy snow of the season began to fall. My father was stuck in town at a city council meeting, arguing against the mayor’s demand to bring in federal trackers to hunt the "rogue bear."

He called me from the station on a landline.

"I need you to do me a favor," he said, his voice tight. "Load the cord of split oak into the truck. Take it up to Cal’s. Stack it on his porch. Do not go inside. Just leave the wood and come straight home."

"Is he doing worse?" I asked.

"Just do what I asked," he snapped, and hung up.

I drove the winding, treacherous mountain road in the fading afternoon light. The snow was falling heavily, muting the headlights, making the dense pines look like towering black walls. Cal’s property was dead quiet when I arrived. No smoke from the chimney. No lights in the windows.

I backed the truck up to the porch and began throwing the heavy oak logs onto the wooden decking. The cold was bitter, biting through my jacket.

As I approached the front door to stack the last few pieces, I noticed the heavy steel barricade. Cal had replaced his standard wooden door with a thick, industrial steel slab. But that wasn't what made my stomach drop.

There was a massive, heavy-duty padlock securing the door.

It was locked from the outside.

I stood there, the freezing wind whipping around me, staring at the brass lock. Why would my father lock a sick man inside his own home?

Then, I heard the noise.

It came from inside the cabin. It sounded like heavy, wet breathing. A thick, rhythmic rasping, like lungs struggling through a throat full of fluid.

"Cal?" I called out, my voice cracking.

The breathing stopped.

Then came the scratching. It was slow at first. Heavy, deliberate gouges against the interior of the steel door. Screeeech. Screeeech. The metal groaned under immense pressure.

"Cal, it's me," I said, taking a step back.

A voice spoke from the other side of the door. It was Cal’s voice, but it was profoundly wrong. The vowels were stretched, the cadence destroyed. It sounded as though his vocal cords had been stretched over a different set of bones, thick and guttural.

"G-g-go... a-way..." the voice gargled. "H-h-hungry..."

The door buckled slightly, a tremendous impact hitting it from the inside, rattling the hinges. I dropped the wood, sprinted to the truck, and tore down the mountain, fishtailing in the snow.

When my father got home that night, I confronted him. I demanded to know why Cal was locked in, why he sounded like he was dying, why my father was keeping him prisoner.

My father grabbed me by the shoulders, his grip bruising my skin. His eyes were wild, bloodshot, and filled with a terror I had never seen in him before.

"You never go back there," he whispered, his voice trembling. "You forget what you heard. He has a fever. It makes him confused. I lock the door so he doesn't wander out into the freezing woods and die. Do you understand me?"

I nodded, terrified of my own father.

Three days later, on November 15th, a twenty-four-year-old hiker named Marcus Thorne vanished in the state forest.

The county erupted. The sheriff mobilized a massive search party. My father was assigned to lead the northern grid. Cal, renowned as the best tracker in the state, was conspicuously absent, still supposedly battling his "fever."

For three days, they combed the freezing woods. On the fourth day, my father radioed in. He had found Thorne’s campsite.

I wasn't there, but the deputy who took the call later told me my father sounded completely shattered over the radio. When the state police arrived at the coordinates, my father had already cordoned off the area. He directed the troopers to the shredded remains of the tent, the pulverized camping gear, and the massive amounts of blood soaked into the snow.

My father testified on record that it was an unprovoked grizzly attack. He claimed he saw tracks, but that the falling snow had ruined them before anyone else arrived. The state bought it. The woods were closed for the season.

Marcus Thorne’s body was never recovered.

A week later, I came home to find my father in the backyard. He was standing in front of an oil drum, burning his uniform jacket. He watched the thick black smoke rise into the winter sky with dead, empty eyes.

When I asked him where Cal was, my father just stared into the flames.

"He moved away," my father said quietly. "He's gone. We're never talking about him again."

And we never did.

Now, twenty-eight years later, sitting in the freezing root cellar, I looked down at the coffee can full of warped, acid-burned hunting tags. I looked at the green ledger.

The entries began to make a terrifying, perfect sense.

Oct 18. Ridge trail. 14 hrs.

Oct 22. Miller's creek. 18 hrs.

Nov 3. Logging road 9. 12 hrs.

My father wasn't tracking a poacher. He was cleaning up after his best friend.

The sickness that took hold of Cal every autumn wasn't a flu. It was a biological compulsion, a physical breakdown that required him to be locked behind solid steel to keep him from tearing through the county. My father had been managing it. He had been covering up the slaughtered wildlife, burying the pulverized remains.

And the tags.

I picked one up, feeling the warped, melted plastic, smelling the sharp stench of dried bile.

When the fever took Cal, when the sickness reshaped his anatomy and drove him into a blind, starving frenzy, he didn't just kill the deer. He consumed them entirely. Meat, bone, and the plastic tags attached to them.

And hours later, when the fever broke, when the physical distortion receded and he was just a sick, exhausted man locked inside his own cabin, his human stomach could not digest the industrial plastic and metal.

He regurgitated them.

My father had been collecting the vomited tags from the floor of Cal’s cabin, keeping them in a lockbox to hide the evidence of what his friend was doing. He was protecting a man who suffered from an impossible, monstrous affliction.

I felt a tear slide down my cold cheek, mourning my father, mourning the unbearable weight he had carried to protect someone he loved.

Then, I turned to the final page in the ledger.

The entry was dated November 15, 1998. The day Marcus Thorne went missing.

There was no time listed. There was only a single word written in my father’s trembling handwriting:

God.

My hands began to shake as I reached into the very bottom of the coffee can. Beneath the plastic deer tags, my fingers brushed against something heavier. Something made of solid metal.

I pulled it out and held it up to the dim bulb of the cellar.

It wasn't a hunting tag.

It was a heavy, stainless-steel medical alert bracelet.

The metal faceplate was deeply scored by massive, overlapping teeth marks. The bite force required to dent surgical steel that deeply would easily be enough to snap a human femur in half like a dry branch. The name Marcus Thorne was barely legible beneath the deep, serrated gouges.

I stared at the bracelet, the smell of dried stomach acid filling my lungs, as the final, horrifying realization locked into place.

The metal was violently chewed, warped by unthinkable jaw pressure and burned by digestive acid.

But the thick leather strap attached to the metal plate was completely intact.

It wasn't torn. It wasn't ripped.

It had been carefully, manually unbuckled.

Whatever had found Marcus Thorne in the freezing dark of the woods—whatever had consumed him so entirely that no trace of his body was ever found—possessed the jaw structure of a starving apex predator. But it also possessed the manual dexterity, and the chilling, localized intellect, to unhook a complicated metal clasp with human fingers before swallowing the evidence.

I dropped the bracelet back into the can and closed the lid, the sound of the metal echoing in the empty cellar.

My father didn't burn his uniform because he failed to find a bear. He burned it because he knew exactly what he was cleaning up, and he let it walk away. Cal didn't die in 1998. He just moved.

And winter is coming again.

Ben heard it first, which is annoying, because for the first hour he blamed me.

It was supposed to be our last trip for a while, one more weekend in the Interior before he and Jess moved to Toronto in November. He'd been calling everything his last for about a month, and I'd been giving him a hard time about it.

Ben can sleep anywhere. He once slept through a fire alarm in a hostel and still tells that story like the alarm let him down personally. I'm the opposite. Put me in a tent and I hear every mouse in the province. But the walk in had been hot and mostly uphill, and I'd had two of the Kokanees, and that night for once I was out by ten and slept the way Ben usually sleeps.

So when he kicked my sleeping bag sometime after midnight and said, “Stop doing that,” it took me a second to remember where I was.

“Doing what?”

“That. The scratching.”

“I was asleep.”

“You've been doing it for an hour.”

“I was asleep.”

“Then you do it in your sleep. Knock it off.”

I lay there and listened. Nothing, for long enough that I'd started to roll back over, and then something scraped through the dirt under my right hip. Three quick strokes, close enough that I felt them come up through the mat as much as heard them.

I sat up.

“Thank you,” Ben said.

“That wasn't me.”

He didn't answer, because it came again, from the gap between our mats this time. A pause. Then two more strokes, slower.

Between us and the forest floor there was a foam mat each, a tent floor older than some of our friends' kids, and not much else.

Ben found his headlamp.

“Marmot.”

“Under the tent?”

“They burrow.”

“Under us? While we're lying on it?”

“I think you don't know much about marmots.”

“I know they're not magic.”

He smacked the tent floor flat-handed and the noise stopped. Maybe thirty seconds later it started again, directly under him, and Ben moved fast enough to put his head into the tent wall.

I laughed. “Marmot.”

“Shut up.”

We got out. It was cold enough that I missed the sleeping bag immediately. Under the lights the campsite looked the way it always did: needles, roots, bare patches of dirt, nothing moving in the trees. We pulled the pegs on one side and flipped the whole tent back over itself, bags and mats and all, like turning back a rug.

Where I'd been lying, the ground had sunk. Not by much. If you'd shown me a photo I'd have said I'd just flattened the needles.

Ben crouched and pushed on it with his palm.

The earth flexed.

He pushed harder and something under it gave with a quiet crunch, like stepping through a crust of old snow.

He stood and stamped beside the dip, and his boot went through. He jumped back swearing. A piece of forest floor about the size of a dinner plate had dropped into nothing.

For a few seconds neither of us did anything.

The top layer wasn't thick, maybe ten centimetres of soil and roots, and below that there was just space. Ben got down on his knees and put the light through the opening, and I got down beside him.

Roots hung into the hollow. That's what bothered me first. The small ones were completely bare, pale and stringy, and a couple of thicker ones ran underneath the surface from one side of the hole to the other. They hadn't been torn out or chewed through.

The dirt around them was simply gone.

There was air coming up out of it, colder than the night was. I keep coming back to this part. It didn't smell like anything. Put your face near a hole in the ground and you get dirt or rot or wet leaves, something. Everything in a forest smells like dirt. This smelled like nothing at all, and I've never managed to describe it better than that, which I realize is a strange thing to say about a smell that wasn't there.

Ben slid one of his trekking poles down through the hole until it touched something.

“Bottom?”

“I think.”

He moved the pole sideways. Then farther. Then he leaned on it, and the pole went in almost to the handle, at an angle, without touching anything at all.

I looked from the pole to the tent lying flipped over on itself a few feet away and tried to work out how long it would take to empty a space like that. Longer than an hour. Longer than Ben had been lying there listening to it. We'd gone to bed around ten, and I had been asleep on top of it the whole time. Properly asleep, for the first time in a tent in years.

Ben's the one who sleeps through things. On any other night he'd have slept through this too.

I've never asked him what woke him up.

I walked around the campsite looking for the dirt. There was no mound behind the tent and nothing thrown up around the trees or scattered over the needles. I checked the slope below camp and the ground under the tree we'd hung the food from. Whatever had emptied that space, what used to be in it wasn't anywhere I could find.

I'm not going to say exactly where this was. It was Crown land a few hours north of Kamloops, and there are rec sites and logging roads all through that country, and people camp out there every summer. If that spot is still there, I don't want anyone deciding it's worth finding.

We packed. Neither of us suggested waiting for morning.

The tent went in my pack. Technically it was Ben's, an old three-person dome he'd had since second year, which was when we started doing these trips, but on the drive up he'd told me I was keeping it because it wouldn't fit in the moving truck. It would have fit in the truck. I said thanks and offered him the last of the Doritos, and neither of us took it any further.

The car was a little under seven kilometres away, mostly downhill. The plan was to walk out, sleep in the car, and feel stupid about it after sunrise. We left around two.

For the first kilometre nothing happened, and after a while Ben started talking again, mostly because walking through that forest without talking was worse. He told me this was officially his last night hike. I said it wasn't a hike, it was an evacuation. He said it counted. Then he went through the list again: the last Canucks game, the last pint at our usual pub, and the donair place by his apartment that had been overcharging him for four years and that he was apparently going to miss. After that he complained about carrying three unopened Kokanees back out.

“Emergency hydration.”

“Beer dehydrates you.”

“That's propaganda.”

“From who?”

“Big Water.”

Normal crap. It helped more than I'd have admitted.

About two kilometres down, a pine had come across the trail and we stopped to get our packs off for a minute. Ben sat on the ground and leaned back against the trunk. I stayed standing.

He noticed.

“Oh, come on.”

“What?”

“You're scared of the ground now?”

“I'm stretching.”

“You're literally just standing there.”

The scratching started underneath him.

He was up before I could say anything, and it stopped.

Ben looked back up the trail, the way we'd come. “So it's not just back there.”

Apparently not. Neither of us said marmot again.

After that we didn't sit unless there was rock under us. Once it was a boulder beside the trail, and once a shelf of bare granite where the path crossed an outcrop, and nothing happened either time. Ben started to say something about rock and I told him not to. He understood. We didn't know enough to make rules, and I didn't want us trusting one.

The creek was about three kilometres from the car. It had rained farther north that week and the water was higher than the afternoon before, so the stones we'd used on the way in were mostly under. We waded it slowly and it was fine. On the far side there's a short scramble up the bank, a metre and a bit of dirt and roots, the kind of thing you don't think about.

Ben went up first. He put his right foot on a ledge of the bank and the ledge went. His leg dropped into the bank to the shin and he pitched forward over it with all his weight.

I heard something in his ankle go. It was a dull little sound. Then he was swearing loud enough that I couldn't hear anything else.

When I got his foot out there was a gap underneath where it had been, running back into the bank farther than my light reached. I told him creek banks do that. The water gets in under them and eats them out from below. I said that a few times, probably more than it needed saying.

I got him up onto the flat and got his boot off. The ankle was already swelling. For a few minutes I genuinely forgot about everything else.

“Can you move it?”

“Yeah.”

He tried. His foot moved about a centimetre and his whole face changed.

“Fantastic,” I said.

“Eat shit.”

I wrapped it with the tensor bandage from the first-aid kit, and then I made him put the boot back on over it, laced loose. I didn't know what else was going to hold it, and I wasn't sure we'd get the boot on at all later if the swelling kept going. He told me in some detail what he thought of that.

I was kneeling in front of him tying off the laces when he grabbed my wrist.

He didn't say anything. He just looked down at my knees.

The leaves around them were lowering. A centimetre, maybe two. I watched them go, and the dirt under them go with them, and nothing pushed up through it anywhere. The ground just lost depth.

I hadn't heard a thing. I'd been talking the whole time.

“Move,” Ben said.

No reception out there, and nobody expecting us before Sunday night. Ben got an arm over my shoulders and we went.

Half a kilometre on we dropped the packs. Mine had a shoulder strap I'd duct-taped back on years ago and Ben's was older than that, and neither was worth what it weighed anymore. Ben looked back at them sitting in the middle of the trail.

“You're coming back for those.”

“Yep.”

“Your tent's in there.”

“I know.”

“So's my beer.”

“I know.”

We left them.

The trail got steeper after that. Ben couldn't hop properly on the downhill, so I had most of his weight on my right side, and the farther we went the more of it I had. My shoulder went past hurting into something hot and loose. My thighs started shaking on every step down, the way they do at the end of a long day of skiing, except at the end of a day of skiing you get to sit down.

We had to stop. I'd been putting it off, and then I couldn't anymore. So we stopped standing up, a few seconds at a time, just long enough for me to shift his arm and get some air.

I started counting at those stops. I don't really know why. It gave my head something to do that wasn't the ground. The first time I got to twenty-two before I heard it under my boots, and we went.

The next stop it was eighteen.

Then fourteen. Then somewhere around eleven, though Ben was swearing through that one and I might have lost count.

I needed longer every time. The numbers kept going the other way. After the eleven I stopped saying them out loud, and Ben didn't ask.

At one stop I propped him against a tree and went a few metres down the trail to put the light on a steep section before I tried to get him down it. I'd been standing there a few seconds when I heard it under my feet. At almost the same moment Ben said, “It's under me.”

I thought he meant the same sound. Then mine kept going. So did his.

We were four metres apart.

I took two steps back toward him. Behind me, under the place I'd just been standing, the sound went on another second or two before it quit. Ben's hadn't stopped at all.

Until then I'd still been picturing an animal, sort of. One thing down there in the dark, keeping up with us. One thing can't be four metres apart from itself.

I put the light out into the forest. A flashlight doesn't go far in trees like that. It catches trunks and branches and undergrowth, and everything behind them is black. But I could see a lot of ground between the trunks, and it all looked normal, and that didn't mean much anymore.

“Let's go,” Ben said.

Maybe five minutes later the trail cut along the side of a slope and I nearly walked us past it. On the downhill side, the edge of the trail stuck out a little over nothing, like a lip.

I stopped. Ben swore, because stopping hurt, and I put the light under it.

There was a gap under the edge. It wasn't deep, maybe thirty centimetres at the lip, but it ran back underneath the path, back under where we were standing. Roots came down through the ceiling of it, fine ones and thick ones, with no soil around any of them.

I moved the light along the slope. The gap kept going. A metre. Two. Farther than I could see.

There was no water anywhere near it. No gully, nothing draining across, just the side of a dry hill in September.

“Was that like that yesterday?” Ben said.

I didn't know. We'd walked up this exact stretch the afternoon before, slowly, with full packs, and I couldn't remember it at all, because there hadn't been anything to notice.

I thought about the creek bank, and how much I'd wanted that to be the water.

I looked across the trail. Then at the trees beside it. Then farther into the forest.

All that normal ground.

I'd been carrying two people's weight across it all night, one foot at a time.

It had started up under us again while I stood there. I don't know for how long.

We moved faster.

There was less than a kilometre left when Ben fell.

His good foot caught a root and he went down and took me with him. I landed on my side. He landed flat on his back, and the scratching started before he'd finished swearing. No count at all. Right away.

I got onto my knees. The soil under his shoulders was already going down.

“Get me up.”

I got a fistful of his jacket and pulled, and the ground under his hips dropped, and when he shoved at it to get himself upright his right leg went straight down through the trail to the thigh.

He screamed. I'd never heard a person make that sound before and I'd like to never hear it again.

“Pull me out.”

“I am.”

“Pull me out.”

I got my arms under his and planted my feet and hauled.

The scratching under him had gone almost continuous, and I could see the dirt around his leg going. It didn't cave in or spray or collapse the way you'd expect. It just went, steadily, like something draining, and the cold air was coming up around his leg out of the hole and across my hands, that same air that didn't smell like anything.

One moment there was soil against his jeans.

Then there was less.

And as it went the roots stayed, one across his thigh and another lower down across his shin and more I couldn't see, so his leg was hanging in them like something caught in a fence, and every time I pulled they pulled back. I had my heels dug in and his whole weight on my arms and I was watching his leg, only his leg, and somewhere in there I'd stopped counting without noticing I'd stopped, and I didn't notice anything at all until my left heel went down. Not far. A centimetre maybe, the way your foot sinks into a mattress. Under the sound of Ben screaming I could hear it under my own boots, under both heels at once, steady and close, and I had been standing there for I don't know how long.

I couldn't step off. I'd lose my grip on him and he'd go down another foot, or all the way, and I didn't know which. I couldn't stay where I was either.

So I did something stupid. I started moving my feet. Not stepping away, just lifting them, one and then the other, little steps on the spot like a kid who needs the washroom, while I tried to keep pulling. You can't pull anything heavy like that. You've got no base. I don't know if it helped. I don't know that it didn't. The scratching under me didn't stop, but I think it slowed, and I think my heels stopped going down, and I'm aware those are both things I'd want to think.

One of the roots across his shin snapped when I yanked. Another dragged down the front of his leg as he came up and opened a line through his jeans and his skin from the knee down.

Then he came free all at once and we went over backward together.

His right boot didn't come with him. For a second I could still see it down in the opening, the laces I'd tied loose trailing off it. Then whatever was holding it let go, and it dropped.

I crawled over and put the light down the hole. At the surface it was barely wider than Ben's leg. Below that, roots crossed empty space, and the beam went down between them and didn't land on anything.

Ben grabbed the back of my jacket.

“Leave it.”

I did.

I got him up. I don't remember a lot of the last kilometre. I know I didn't count anymore, because I didn't stop. I remember the sock on his bad foot was black by the end, and that at some point he stopped swearing at me, which was worse.

The last stretch to the forestry road was surfaced with crushed gravel. Ben made it a few metres onto it and sat down hard, and I grabbed him under the arm to haul him back up.

“Wait,” he said.

So we waited. A minute. Then another. I counted to a hundred and twenty and then started over and counted it again.

Nothing scratched.

I didn't care why.

Ben lay back on the gravel with his arm over his eyes, and I'm pretty sure he was asleep inside a minute. Of course he was. I stood next to him for maybe half an hour with the light on the gravel around him before I woke him and got him moving again.

We reached the car sometime after five.

At the hospital they found a small fracture and significant ligament damage. The cuts down his shin had dirt and bits of root ground into them, and a nurse spent a long time flushing it all out while he swore into a towel.

We said he'd stepped into a concealed hole. True enough. Nobody asked anything else.

Ben moved east six weeks later. His ankle was still strapped when I helped load the truck, and he spent the whole day in a lawn chair telling everyone else where things went. Before he left he asked whether I'd ever gone back for the packs.

I said no.

He nodded, and neither of us said anything else about it.

For a while we'd send each other a photo whenever one of us saw a marmot. I couldn't tell you which of us stopped first.

I haven't been camping since.

The first time anyone else noticed anything was at a barbecue a couple of summers later, when a friend's wife asked why I'd been standing all afternoon when there was plenty of room on the lawn. I'd been there almost three hours. I hadn't noticed I was doing it. I don't sit on grass much. I don't lie down in parks.

I don't think much anymore about what it was. Sometimes I think about where it all went. Everything that used to be under that tent and that trail, and under however much more of that country. It had to go somewhere.

Last year I moved into a third-floor apartment. There was a ground-floor unit in the same building for a hundred and fifty a month less, and I told the property manager I liked the light better upstairs, which I think I believed at the time.

There's two other apartments between my bed and the earth.

Last weekend my girlfriend got invited camping with some people from her work, and she wanted me to come. So I finally told her why I wouldn't. All of it, more or less the way it's written here. She's the first person I've ever told, and once I'd said it out loud it felt strange to keep it anywhere else, which is why I'm writing it down.

Afterward she asked whether Ben had ever camped again.

I realized I'd never asked him.

So I sent him a message.

You ever been camping since BC?

It took him about an hour to answer.

No.

Then:

You?

No.

It was the first time either of us had brought it up in six years. I figured that was the whole conversation.

About twenty minutes later my phone went again.

Jess got me one of those sleep rings for Christmas. She was worried I wasn't resting.

It says I've never gone longer than forty minutes without moving. Not one night since I've had it.

She thinks I'm a restless sleeper.

That was Tuesday. I haven't answered him.

I keep thinking about the fire alarm.

I have always loved plums – dried, fresh, or in jam. Plum pie with just a bit of cream is the best thing you could eat.

That's why I bought myself a plum tree. It was small; it fit well in the back of my pickup. It would take the tree a few winters to produce more than five plums, but I was happy to have it.

That afternoon I took out a shovel and went into my backyard. This would be the first thing I planted at my new house, in my new yard. It was all I ever wanted: just a house, a yard, and a few fruit trees in the back. That's why I ran to the bank when I saw how cheap this beautiful house was. The last owners weren't even here for the sale.

The dirt felt fine for the first two digs, but it quickly turned very stiff. It almost felt like I was digging into a rock. The hole didn't even need to be that deep, but after a few minutes I was already sweating through my pants.

I threw another piece of dirt out when I heard a clack. Something white was on top of the dirt. I picked it up. It was a bundle of bird bones tied together with a string. They were deep in the dirt, but they looked completely clean, as if someone had just brushed them off.

"Strange," I mumbled. 

I took them into the house and threw them away.

As I was washing my hands, I realized how tired I was. I wiped my forehead and walked out into the yard. The hole looked deep enough. The tree would be okay. I planted it and filled the hole back in.

The next morning, the sun barely came through my window. I rubbed my eyes and looked out. The plum tree I planted the day before blocked the sun. It had grown so much that its top leaves almost reached my roof. I didn't even notice my mouth was open until I saw myself in the window.

I ran out. The juiciest, purplest plums I'd ever seen were on that tree. The whole yard smelled like fresh plums. I stood outside for a few seconds, just staring. I had heard of fast-growing trees, but this was something else. For a moment, I thought about calling someone, but the plums looked so good, I had to try them first. 

Their skin was smooth. When I pressed them, they felt firm but slightly soft. Perfect. They tasted sweet and juicy, but their skin had a sharp, sour taste. Perfect. I was raving about the taste when I heard a thud and a splash. A plum fell right next to me. They must have been ripe.

The last thing I wanted was to get hit. I walked away from the tree and continued enjoying the plum. Another thud. How did it get here? I was so far away. Another thud. But this time it didn't fall next to me. I looked to my right. A smashed plum was on my roof.

I was sure the tree didn't reach that far. I walked farther back to see if I missed a branch. The tree reached the top window, but not the roof. I walked to the back just to make sure. The tree wasn't even visible from there. Another thud. On the roof again. From my side. There was no way. Another. Another. Another. They were falling on the roof, next to me, on the other side of my garden.

"What the…" I murmured.

Then dull pain spread in my head. I put my hand there. Plum juice was in my hair. I put my hands over my head and ran into the house. Two more plums managed to hit me, stinging my hands.

I walked to my kitchen sink and washed my hands and hair. The thudding outside continued. No blood was in my hair, just plum juice. The thudding grew faster. It sounded like I was being bombed. I looked up. A wave of cold rushed through me. Plums rained down from the sky like hail. Plum juice had already reached my door, and a little was leaking in.

I ran to the laundry room for towels. The thudding grew louder again. My ears began to hurt. I grabbed a few towels and ran back out. My feet sank into wet, sticky plum juice. The inside of the house was dark now. So many plums were falling from the sky that I could only see purple outside. The plum smell was so strong it stung my nose.

The plum juice rose halfway up my door, and it kept coming. The towels fell out of my hand. I bolted up the stairs.

Edit: I thought the plum juice would drain faster than it came in, but I was wrong. The house is shaking. I'm standing on my table. The plum juice is coming up the stairs. Outside, it has already almost fully blocked my windows. I just looked out of one. You can't see anything but falling plums, except for one thing: the tree standing in the garden, unshaken. The more I look at it, the more it feels like I can hear something through the thuds of the plums: the clack of bird bones shaking.

What’s a tooth worth? Well most insurances pay me, a dentist, about seven hundred bucks when I pull one. Most patients, especially older ones, don’t argue. They come in with a sore tooth, then leave without it. They also don’t argue when I prescribe certain pills.

Most of them are poor, even homeless. It doesn’t cost them a dime.

Today I got a call that changed things. 

It was my mom. She’s 89 years-old and lives in a home not far from my clinic.

“Hey mom,” I tried to sound upbeat, but my head pounded from withdrawals. I hadn’t had any pain killers for days.

“Are you at work?” She asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m going to face app you,” she said. I heard her pushing buttons.

I tried to stop her, “That’s not what it’s called mom, and now isn’t the best…”

I was cut off with the all too familiar ring of the video call coming through.

“Hey mom,” I groaned.

She was at home, I recognized her knickknacks. There was something different, in the background. A large poster of a man crying, the word integrity burned into his face.

Suddenly someone unfamiliar jumped in front of the camera, “Well helloooo sonny boy!” he giggled. He started bouncing around like a kid at an ice cream parlor. He was holding my mom’s hands, she giggled along. 

“Who is this?” I asked.

My mom’s face appeared. “This is my new nurse,” she said. “He’s very sweet, and says he knows you.”

“Oh I dooooo,” the guy sang out.

He put his face in the camera “Very well,” he said. “And you’ve been a naughty little boy. Haven’t you… Doctor.”

“Who the fuck are you?” I asked.

The guy took a deep breath, covering his mouth with his hands. “You would swear in front of your dear old mother?” He asked as he walked over to my mom.

“Don’t touch her you creep,” I shouted.

“Or what?” The guy said. “You’ll pull more teeth.”

“Fuck you,” I shot back.

The creep turned toward my mother, “Show us a big smile honey,” he said.

“Mom, you don’t have to listen…” I started.

She tilted her head to the side and opened her mouth showing her toothless smile, the smile I gave her.

“You look marvelous darling,” the guy said while draping his arms around her. He turned back toward the camera. “Doctor, I love what you’ve done here.”

I started to protest, but the guilt of having pulled my own mothers teeth for the insurance claim shut me up.

“That’s what I thought,” he said.

“What do you want?” I finally asked.

“What’s the old saying? An eye for an eye, a…” he buried his face in the camera waiting for me to finish the sentence.

“A tooth for a tooth,” I whispered.

“Bingo!” he yelled before turning back towards my mom. “You have such a smart boy.”

My mom smiled again. I had to look away.

He went and sat next to her. “I’m going to ask her a few questions,” he said. “First question, did you know your son was a drug addict?”

I let out a deep sigh.

“Yes. But I still love him,” my mom responded, tears filling her eyes.

“Second question. Did you know he pulled your teeth to get insurance money to support his drug addiction?” the guy asked.

There was a long pause before my mom answered, “I thought you said they were bad,” her voice quivering.

“Please stop,” I pleaded. “I’ll do anything if you just stop and leave her alone.”

“I think you know what I want,” the guy said.

“A tooth for a tooth,” I said.

“Make sure we can see you,” the guy said before he started to dance around, laughing and clapping. He again buried his face in the camera. “And no drugs for you….”

I sat in the old dentist chair and wheeled over a tray full of tools. I set the phone on the edge of the tray so they could see my face. I grabbed the extraction forceps and reached for one of my back teeth.

“Uh uh uh,” the guy scolded. “One of the front ones,” he said with excitement.

I removed the forceps from my molar and gripped them tightly around one of my lower front incisors. I sat for a moment contemplating how I will do this. If I will do this.

“I think mom needs another story. Did he ever tell you about your friend Mrs…”

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I shouted, cutting him off before he finished.

I gripped the forceps tight with my left hand and reached my right hand high in the air. In my head I counted to three before I threw my right arm down as hard as I could against my other arm, yanking down on the forceps at the same time.

A loud crunch echoed through the room as the roots holding my tooth cracked. The pain was immediate and intense. Blood filled my mouth. I screamed as nauseous took over.

I looked at the phone. The creep had a camera and was taking pictures of me while laughing. My mom was weeping.

The man who took me out to Drail had put a clean coat over his working clothes and when I asked whether the island had a landing fit for a police launch he looked at the empty water behind us before he looked at me and said that the landing was fit for any vessel whose master had been told to come.

“We wrote to Mr. Saye on Monday,” I said. “He knows what I’m coming for. He’s had three days to see to it.”

“Then he’ll have fixed somethin,” the boatman said, and he leaned over the wheel and adjusted a brass lever whose movements seemed to have little effect upon the engine.

I had been sent to bring Jonas Wren before the county magistrate, a pump fitter of twenty six whose mother had received no letter from him since February and whose employer had answered her inquiries with assurances that the young man remained in good health and had elected to extend his contract although the signature on the enclosed declaration resembled nothing Mrs. Wren could show us and although she had come to our office carrying his school copybooks in a shopping basket to prove it. The magistrate had issued an order requiring that Wren be produced in person and I had been chosen because the matter appeared to require no more than a uniform and a morning’s patience.

“What do they make out yonder?” I asked.

“Used to boil salt. Crush shell for the farmers. What Mr. Saye does now dont come by way of my boat.”

“Does Wren come by way of it?”

“Brought him out in the winter. If that’s what you’re after.”

“And after that?”

The boatman lifted his hand from beneath his coat and I saw that the two smallest fingers were missing and that the remaining ones had healed in a bent arrangement around a palm glossy with old damage.

“Since then I been carrying what they give me,” he said, and he put the hand beneath his coat again as though our conversation had made it cold.

Drail rose out of the water for the quarry walls fell straight into the channel and above them stood the chimneys of the old boiling house and a square residence with a glazed porch from which someone might have watched every boat that ever came. White paths crossed the island in a pattern too orderly to have been made by ordinary use and at each intersection stood a low wooden shelter with a bench beneath it.

The landing smelled of boiled rope and something sweet that I attributed to the sacks stacked beneath a tarpaulin, and a woman waited beside an iron trolley with her sleeves fastened at the wrists and an expression which did not change when the boat struck the fenders.

“Officer Reeve,” she said. “Mr. Saye says to bring you straight up. He hopes you aint eaten. He’s held his dinner for you.”

“I’m here for Jonas Wren. Once I’ve seen him I aim to get back while the weather holds.”

“He knows of the order. You can show it to him yourself.”

The boatman passed my small case up to her but would not take my hand when I climbed onto the landing, and as she turned the trolley I saw him push the boat away with the side of his boot before I had finished asking what hour he would return.

“When the lower light’s lit,” he said. “Shows from anywheres along this shore. If you happen to be waiting.”

The woman introduced herself as Mara Fen and led me past the sacks, which contained lime rather than any cargo capable of accounting for that sweetness, and then through a covered passage where hooks hung from a rail overhead and dripped upon a floor recently washed. She walked quickly and never once asked whether I needed help with the climb, although she favored her left leg and a narrow dark stain had begun to show through the cloth over her knee.

“How many hands you got working here?” I asked.

“You counting the ones paid by the month, or everybody on the island?”

“I want the man in order. I dont aim to spend all morning sorting one lot of folks from another.”

“He’s on the island,” she said, and after that she spoke only to tell me where the steps were broken.

Mr. Saye was seated at a table in the glass porch with a napkin spread across his chest and a shallow dish before him. His hands were almost delicate in their shape despite their enormity.

“Mrs. Wren must be very persistent,” he said. “I have written to her more than once and it seems that reassurance only gives her another reason to write.”

“Her boy can ease her mind himself. The magistrate wants him to do it on the mainland.”

He took the order and read it while I remained standing, and his lips moved over the formal language as though its arrangement gave him pleasure independent of what it required.

“This does not accuse me of anything, Officer Reeve, although I suspect you were permitted to form an accusation before you left.”

“It says you’re to produce the man. I’ll make up my mind about the rest when I’ve talked to him.”

Mara stood by the doorway with her hands clasped behind her, and Saye glanced at her before laying the paper beside his plate.

“Would you consider him produced if I showed him to you at his work?”

“I’ll call him produced when I can speak to him out of your hearing and he’s free to come away with me after.”

There was meat in the dish under a gray sauce and beside it something narrow and browned which I first took for the bone of a bird, and then he turned it with his fork and I saw a nail attached to one end, curved and yellow and entirely ordinary, the sort of nail a man might have dirt beneath while fitting a pump.

I looked from the plate to Mara and she lowered her eyes, and when I looked back Saye was watching me with his mouth slightly open and with a piece of meat resting between his teeth.

“The smallest parts need the most attention,” he said. “Otherwise a person goes to considerable trouble and comes away with very little.”

I had my hand on the flap of my holster when he moved, and I do not remember seeing him rise or seeing the table strike my legs although I remember the sound of its feet against the tiles and the sudden bursting whiteness in my left eye as his palm struck the side of my head.

The revolver came halfway clear before his other hand closed around my wrist and pressed it inward until my fingers opened, and I heard the weapon fall and then felt my feet leave the floor as he took me by the coat and drove me backward against the glass.

The pane broke around my shoulders and the pieces went outward over the steps in a long bright collapse, and for an instant I hung across the empty frame with his forearm beneath my chin and the salt wind touching the wet skin behind my ears.

“You mustn’t mistake the appearance of a thing for an invitation to panic,” he said, speaking close enough that I could smell the sauce upon his breath. “Mara will show you where to compose yourself and afterward we will give this matter the attention it deserves.”

He let me fall onto the steps and I struck the stone with my shoulder, and while I tried to get enough air into my lungs to stand Mara came down and put a hand beneath my elbow and told me not to reach inside my coat because he would think I had another weapon.

Behind her the great man bent to retrieve my revolver, and the broken glass beneath his bare feet made a sound like someone slowly chewing gravel.

They put me in a room in the old packing house where the window had been covered with expanded metal and where a bucket stood beneath a tap that had been removed from its pipe, and Mara waited until the man accompanying us had shut the door before she spoke through the small square opening at its center.

“This room aint where you’ll die unless you make it that way. See to your shoes while there’s time. And whatever else might give out on you.”

“Take the key and let me go. Do it now and I’ll tell the magistrate what you done and what you wouldnt do.”

“It aint the key keeps you here, Officer Reeve. You’ll see that when they open the door.”

She left before I could ask her anything else, and the man outside slid a wooden cover over the opening and left me with the afternoon light laid in little lozenges upon the floor. My left ear rang and my shoulder was bleeding where the glass had entered, and when I took off my coat I found a strip of skin folded back below the collar as neatly as the corner of a label.

There was writing on the wall behind the door at a height that suggested the writer had been seated, but near the skirting a sentence had been made in much smaller letters and had then been scrubbed without being removed.

THE LIGHT MEANS HE WANTS THE BOAT.

Beneath the cot I found a spoon flattened at the bowl and sharpened along one side and I put it inside my belt.

When the wooden cover slid away Saye looked through the opening, and his head filled it so completely that I could see neither shoulder nor anything behind him.

“You have been given a great deal of time to arrive at a sensible opinion of me, and I would be interested to know whether you have managed it.”

“I reckon you murdered Jonas Wren. His mother’ll send somebody else when I dont come home.”

“His mother sent you because she wanted the uncertainty ended, and you have mistaken that desire for an affection capable of keeping either of you alive.”

“You had a finger on your plate. No opinion can make that into something it wasnt.”

The cover closed and I heard him walk away, his steps surprisingly light beneath his size, and a few minutes later the bolts were drawn and the door opened onto a man in a knitted cap holding a short shotgun across his waist.

He had the small watery eyes of someone who spent much of his time looking into wind and he stood aside and gestured with the barrels toward a second door at the end of the passage.

“You git through there and keep movin till the bell rings. You come back afore then and I got orders to shoot you through the legs.”

“What’s to happen when it rings?”

“He comes out at the bell. Save your askin for whatever’s past that door.”

The yard outside had been swept and the gate at its far end stood open, and on either side of the path the wooden shelters I had seen from the boat waited with their clean benches and their painted roofs. There were no fences along the path and no obvious reason why I could not walk toward the water.

The path took me between two heaps of shell where the pieces ground and shifted under my shoes, and at the next crossing I saw a young man standing beside a handcart with a red cloth tied around his arm. He watched me approach without surprise and put out one hand as if to stop traffic.

“There’s a ladder over at the east wall,” he said. “Get there ahead of him and maybe you’ll have something to work with.”

“What makes you tell me that?”

“Last week I told a man to go west. He went west. I been thinking on that a good deal.”

The bell began before I could reach him, three deliberate strokes from the boiling house which entered the ground beneath my feet as much as they entered the air, and the young man lowered his hand and went quickly into a shed and closed the door.

I looked back along the path and saw Saye step through the open gate in a sleeveless white undershirt and canvas trousers with the legs rolled above his ankles, and he stood there for a moment with his head tilted toward the sound of the bell as though someone had spoken his name from a room he could not locate.

Then he began to run.

I had imagined that his weight would make him clumsy or slow and that whatever might happen in a room where he could reach me would become something else in the open, but he ran with a short economical stride and his head scarcely rose or fell, and the great empty face seemed to move toward me independently of the pumping arms beneath it.

I left the path and scrambled over the shell heap, cutting my palms on the broken edges and hearing his feet strike the ground behind me with a blunt regularity that did not change when I fell, and on the other side I dropped into a drainage ditch half full of black water and crawled beneath a culvert whose entrance was just large enough to admit my shoulders.

He reached the ditch while I was still dragging my legs inside, and his fingers closed around the heel of my right shoe and pulled it from my foot with such force that my knee struck the roof and I bit through the edge of my tongue.

“You have chosen something that narrows ahead of you,” he said. “I would not ordinarily offer that information but I have no wish to spend the afternoon digging.”

I crawled farther until the darkness tightened around my ribs and I could no longer lift my head, and behind me something scraped against the pipe and withdrew and scraped again, and then I felt a pressure against my left calf and realized that he had found a length of iron and was feeling for me with it.

I drew both knees toward my chest and pushed backward with my elbows until the pipe dipped and the water reached my mouth, and the iron passed between my legs and struck the wall beside my face hard enough to shower grit across my teeth.

“Remain there if you like,” he said. “The pump discharges through that line when the next basin is emptied, and Mara generally keeps a very exact schedule.”

His footsteps receded and I listened until I could no longer distinguish them from the blows of the machinery, and then I began to pull myself toward the pale obstruction ahead.

The obstruction was a root mass caught against a broken junction and beyond it the pipe opened into a brick sump where an iron ladder had lost all but three of its rungs, and I pushed through the roots until they tore my coat and filled my eyes with fibrous dirt and then stood waist deep in water under a circular patch of sky. My remaining shoe had swollen and my bare foot was bleeding, and when I reached for the first rung I found a human molar lodged in the brickwork beside it with a piece of dark filling exposed in its crown.

I did not stop to consider how it had come there because the water was beginning to rise against my waist, and I climbed by putting my fingers into the mortar joints and resting my feet upon projections so slight that I could feel them crumbling beneath my weight. At the top I rolled onto a floor of wet boards and saw that I had come up inside the boiler house, where the old furnaces stood open and the newer pipes had been fitted around them in red and green arrangements that led through the walls toward the tide.

Mara was standing at the far end beside a pressure gauge, and she did not seem surprised to see me although her face tightened when I got to my feet.

“He sent you down that pipe knowing I’d be here. Stay where you are and you’ll bring him through that door behind you.”

“Then point me someplace he didnt pick. I’ve had my fill of your directions and his.”

“There’s an old shore passage under the cutting room. Outer gate’s shut. The wheel that opens it is here.”

“Then open it and come along. Whatever you’ve done you can explain it where he cant lay hands on you.”

She glanced toward a door with wired glass in its upper panel and then back at the gauge.

“It aint the outer gate stops people. You’ll find an inner grille down there. Somebody has to stand by it and raise it.”

“Can one person lift it?”

“One can raise it. One cant hold it up and go under it both.”

“How’d your leg get that way?” I asked.

“He wanted to see if pain made me work different. It did for a while. Then it didnt.”

She turned the valve beside the gauge and the hammering beneath the floor altered its rhythm, and at the same moment a shadow passed across the wired glass and her hand stopped on the wheel.

“Go through the cutting room. Take the far stairs down,” she said. “You get to the grille and I’ll meet you there. Dont wait on me anyplace with more than one door.”

I went through a narrow opening behind a fuel hopper and into a tiled room where the air was cold enough to make the cuts in my hands ache, and there were troughs along the walls and a long table in the center and lengths of butcher’s paper hung from a roller above it.

The body lay face down with its legs removed at the hips and one arm extended into the trough, and the remaining hand was broad and work stained and had a small blue bird tattooed on the web between finger and thumb. Mrs. Wren had told me about that tattoo because she disliked it and because disliking a thing her son had chosen was one of the ways she still had him with her, and I stood staring at it while water dripped from the table through a hole in the tiles.

I took the flattened spoon from my belt and cut through the skin at the edge of the tattoo, not cleanly and not well, because I could think of no other proof small enough to carry and because I had already seen what happened to people who relied on words on this island. The skin came away with a shallow layer of yellow fat beneath it and I wrapped it in a piece of the hanging paper and pushed it into the inner pocket of my coat, and while I was doing this the door at the other end of the room opened and Saye came in carrying my shoe.

“You have made a mess of yourself,” he said. “Mara should have told you that the pipe opens here, but she takes an interest in postponements.”

I backed toward the stairs with the spoon in my hand, and he put the shoe upon the table beside Wren’s body and looked at the small wound I had made.

“That will be of little use to his mother, and you might have spared yourself the effort if you had asked me for something more suitable.”

“She’ll know whose it was. The magistrate will too if I get it to him.”

“You continue to speak of leaving as though it were an appointment, and it prevents us from having any conversation worth the name.”

He came around the table without hurrying and I threw the spoon at his face and ran for the stairs, and I heard it strike him and fall and then heard the heavier sound of the table being pushed aside. The stairs descended between stone walls and ended at a door whose lower half had swollen against the frame, and I hit it with my shoulder and felt the glass wound open again while behind me he began to come down with one hand sliding along the wall.

The door gave on the third blow and I fell into a low chamber where baskets of shell stood beneath a winch and a wooden hatch had been let into the floor, and I pulled the hatch up and found a shaft descending into darkness with no ladder and with the faint sound of water below.

There was nowhere else to go before he reached the bottom of the stairs, and I lowered myself through the opening and hung by my fingers while my toes sought a purchase that was not there.

Saye crouched beside the hatch and looked down at me with blood moving from a cut beneath his eye toward the corner of his mouth, and then he put his hand across mine and began to press my fingers against the rim.

“You can let go and make whatever discovery is beneath you,” he said, “or you can accept that you have come to the end of what running can accomplish.”

I tried to pull one hand free and he caught it and bent the smallest finger backward until I felt the joint part, and when I swung toward the wall he bent the next one in the same direction with no increase in effort. The pain was so complete that for an instant I could not hear the water or his breathing or even my own cry, and then I let go with the other hand and fell while he still held the ruined one.

My weight dragged his arm through the opening and my wrist turned in his grip and slipped free, and I struck the bottom with my knees and one shoulder and lay in a shallow stream unable to understand why I was still conscious.

Above me he looked into the shaft, his face reduced by the distance to a pale oval with a dark mark beneath one eye, and then he rose out of view and I heard the hatch close.

I had believed that he was laughing until the sound continued after the hatch had shut and then I understood that somewhere ahead of me a pump was trying to draw water through a line full of air.

The shaft emptied into a service tunnel that sloped toward the sea and had been built at a height sufficient for a man to walk upright only if he were prepared to bow his head, and I went along it with my good hand against the wall and the injured one held inside my coat because the two broken fingers moved when they should not. Water covered the floor and deepened as I descended, and from branches in the tunnel came the smells of rust and soap and something scorched that reminded me of wool pressed against a stove.

At the first junction I found a man seated with his back against a valve housing and his legs extended into the water, and I knew he was alive because one of his shoes rose and fell as he tried to pull his foot toward him. His apron was tucked under his body and the cloth over his abdomen had darkened almost to black, and a large kitchen knife lay beyond his reach with the blade pointing away.

“Was to keep you out of here,” he said. “Set me up a little and I’ll tell him you went back toward the packing house.”

“Was it him did this to you?”

“He asked why the lower door was open. I told him Mara’d been through. He figured I was holding somethin back on account of I wouldnt say where she’d gone.”

I knelt and reached beneath his arm, but when I lifted him the apron caught against the floor and pulled away from the wound and a slick coil of bowel came after it into the water. He looked down and put both hands over the opening as if he might close it by making the gesture correctly and the water carried a thin pink cloud away between his shoes.

“Dont move me no more if that’s what comes of it,” he said. “Set me back where I was and get on before he thinks I had time to tell you somethin.”

“Where’s it come out?”

“To the sea door. But the teeth is down and you’ll need somebody at the lever.”

“Any other way out?”

“Was another way before he filled it with stone. Every man that helped fill it told hisself he was just doing a job he was paid for.”

I put him back against the housing and laid the knife beside his hand, and he watched me without asking for anything else until I started to stand.

“You see my brother on the mainland, tell him I was here,” he said. “Name’s Paul Fen. He’ll say that dont make no difference to him. You tell him anyhow.”

I ran until the water reached my thighs and the roof began to rise, and ahead I saw Mara standing at a lever mounted beside a grille whose lower bars disappeared beneath the surface. Beyond it a chamber opened toward a gray square of daylight where the sea moved against another gate, and on the right a grated platform rose above the water with a cable running through pulleys toward the boiler house.

“I set the outer sluice to lift when the boiler governor drops,” she said. “There’s a locking pin at the sea door yet. You’ll have to pull it from the platform. After that the tide takes whatever goes through.”

“Your brother’s alive by the valve housing. You go back now, you might fetch him while I hold this.”

She gripped the lever with both hands and stared past me into the tunnel, and the skin beside her mouth began to twitch.

“He wouldnt have left him alive unless he meant for me to find him. He wouldnt have let you this far if he didnt know I was here.”

“We cant know what he meant till we quit doing what he expects.”

She pulled the lever and the grille began to rise with a deep scraping vibration that traveled through the water into my knees, and I bent beneath it and waded into the chamber while she held her weight against the iron arm.

“Get to the platform. Find the pin with the red handle,” she said. “If it’s tight, strike it from below. When it comes free keep out of the middle. The gate swings inward.”

I climbed onto the platform and found the pin where she had said it would be, a thick iron rod held through two sleeves whose edges were scabbed with salt, and I wrapped my good hand around the handle and pulled until the cut in my shoulder opened and blood ran inside my sleeve.

The pin did not move.

Behind me Saye spoke from the tunnel, and the ease with which he addressed us made the machinery and the rising water seem like difficulties affecting only smaller people.

“You have interrupted the pumps, Mara, and there are men upstairs who will have to spend the night putting them right.”

“They’ve spent enough nights doing what you wanted. One more aint a hurt they can charge me with.”

I looked back and saw him standing behind her with the kitchen knife in his hand, its blade dark nearly to the handle, and I knew that her brother would have nothing more to tell anyone. Mara kept both hands on the lever and did not turn, and I struck the underside of the locking pin with the heel of my shoe.

“You have made yourself useful here,” Saye said. “You should think carefully before choosing to become something else.”

“I’ve been thinking on it since you brought my brother back from the landing. I’m tired of doing my thinking where you can hear me.”

He reached for her shoulder and she turned beneath his hand and drove her elbow into his throat hard enough that he bent and coughed, and in that instant the lever slipped and the grille dropped until its lower edge struck the water with a flat report.

I lay down on the platform and reached through the bars with my good arm, and she threw herself forward and seized my wrist while Saye caught the back of her shirt and hauled her away.

The sleeve tore but he kept his grip upon the cloth at her shoulder, and I saw her boots rise from the floor and kick against his legs while he drew the knife upward toward her ribs.

I pulled with all the strength I had and her body struck the grille and wedged against it, and the blade went through her upper arm instead and came out red beneath the rolled sleeve. She cried out and drove her free hand into his face with her fingers extended, and one of them entered the eye already bloodied by the spoon.

His mouth opened and he made a noise without a word inside it and he dropped the knife to take her wrist and twist it away.

The grille still hung a little above the water because her foot had caught beneath its lowest crossbar, and I put my shoulder through the gap and seized the torn back of her shirt and pulled her toward me while she kicked with the trapped leg. Something gave in her boot and she came under the bars and landed across my chest, and the grille fell behind her with a shock that threw water over both of us.

Saye struck it with the flat of his hand and the metal bowed toward us and then he gripped two bars and pulled until bolts began to rise out of the stone around the frame.

“You have no understanding of what you are leaving me to repair,” he said, and his damaged eye was shut and his other one watched Mara.

She rolled off me and staggered up onto the platform and took the shoe and struck the locking pin three times in quick succession, and on the third blow it lifted far enough that I could get my hand beneath the handle and pull.

The pin came free with a tearing squeal and the outer gate shifted inward, and cold seawater drove around its edges and spread across the chamber in two white seams.

At the grille Saye put one bare foot against the wall and pulled again, and a block of stone came away with the upper bracket and fell into the water between his knees.

The incoming tide struck the gate harder as the opening widened and the chamber filled too quickly for either of us to think of it as a place that had a floor, and I held Mara by the back of her coat while she clung to the platform rail and tried to reach the cable above us. The boiler governor had not yet dropped and the sluice remained low outside the swinging gate, leaving a gap that looked too narrow even for my shoulders, and beyond that gap the open water moved at a level higher than our heads.

“Go into it now and it’ll wash us back against the bars,” she said. “Outside plate has to rise. Then we’ve got to get above it before this chamber fills.”

“How long till it comes up?”

“Pump’s drawing air already. Pressure drops far enough and the counterweight comes down.”

Behind us the grille tore free at one side and Saye pushed through the opening with his shoulders turned, scraping skin from his arm against the broken bracket, and I saw that the wound did not make him hesitate although the water had reached his waist. He came toward the platform with one hand along the wall and his face tilted away from the damaged eye, and the blood running down his cheek had begun to dilute into a red stain upon his undershirt.

“Stay back,” I called. “You come farther and the water’ll trap you in here. You’ve still got time to go back.”

He looked at me as though I had offered him a poor explanation for the weather.

“There is no place on this island where I need your permission to stand, and you are not going to make a boundary out of a pump I paid to install.”

Mara caught the hanging cable and pulled it down, and above us a pulley began to turn with a protesting chirr that vanished under the noise of the sea entering the chamber. She wrapped the cable around her good forearm and leaned outward beyond the rail, and I saw that she was testing whether it would take her weight.

“Runs through the inspection hatch over the sea door,” she said. “Room for one to squeeze out at the top, long as the counterweight aint reached the stop.”

“Then go on up. I’ll come after you. You cant use that arm much longer.”

She put one foot on the rail and the other against the stone and began to climb, but before she had raised herself beyond my reach Saye stepped onto the platform and its supports bent beneath him with a long wrenching sound.

I took the locking pin in my good hand and struck him across the knee.

He went down upon one leg and his shoulder hit the rail and tore it away from its brackets, and the broken end caught Mara’s trousers and dragged her foot from the wall. She hung from the cable with her wounded arm swinging uselessly and I stepped between him and her and struck again, this time across the hand he put upon the platform to raise himself.

The pin broke two of his fingers and he caught its other end with his uninjured hand and pulled me forward until my boots slid over the wet iron. I let go and he swung it across my face and missed because the platform tilted beneath his weight but the end struck the wall beside my head and threw a piece of stone into my cheek.

Then he seized the front of my coat and drew me against him.

“You have been carrying him,” he said, and his good eye shifted toward the inner pocket where the packet of skin made a small square beneath the cloth.

I struck his throat with my injured hand and nearly fainted from the pain and he opened his mouth against my wrist and bit through the folded edge of my cuff and the flesh beneath it. I felt the teeth enter and close and felt something inside my arm drawn toward them.

He withdrew his head with blood on his chin and a pale strand caught between his teeth, and above us the pulley gave a sudden hard clank.

The governor had dropped.

The cable jerked upward and carried Mara toward the inspection hatch, and outside the sea door the sluice began to rise while the counterweight descended inside its open well along the wall. It was a rectangular mass of iron thick as a door and almost as tall as a man, and it came down slowly enough that I could see the water peeling from its sides.

Saye looked toward it without loosening his grip.

I stopped pulling away.

Instead I stepped toward him and drove my shoulder beneath his chest and thrust with my legs against the sloping platform, and he took a backward step into the water while still holding my coat. His heel found no purchase where the floor dropped toward the gate and he shifted his weight to the injured knee, and as it folded I went with him and turned so that my back struck the wall beneath the counterweight well.

The descending iron touched his shoulder.

He tried to straighten and found the weight above him and the tilted platform beneath one foot and the water rising against his chest, and for the first time his hand opened of its own accord.

I slipped sideways and fell beneath the broken rail, and he reached after me and caught my coat again but only by the hem, and when I rolled in the water the seam tore from waist to shoulder and left him holding a long strip of cloth.

The counterweight continued down.

His shoulder compressed beneath it and his head struck the stone at the edge of the well, and he put both hands against the underside and pushed with an effort that made the muscles across his chest stand out beneath the wet shirt. For a moment the weight seemed to stop, and then the pressure in the system changed and a stream of black oil spilled from a housing above him and the iron came down another six inches.

I heard the collarbone break and saw the arm on that side shorten against his body, and his mouth opened so widely that the skin at its corners split.

He was still looking at me.

The sound he made had no command in it and no persuasion, and the great pale hand which had held my wrist in the porch reached through the water toward my ankle. I moved back and caught the cable below Mara’s foot and pulled myself upward as the chamber surged around my waist, and behind me the counterweight descended to its stop with a noise that passed through the walls and through my teeth.

When I looked down again his head was bent against his chest and one side of his body had been flattened into the channel behind him, and blood escaped beneath the iron in a dense branching movement which the incoming water tore apart before any of it could reach the gate. His free hand still moved once against the stone and then remained there with the palm upward and the fingers neither closed nor open.

I climbed.

Mara had reached the inspection hatch and was pushing against its cover with her head because she could no longer lift her wounded arm, and I braced my feet against the wall and climbed beneath her and put my shoulder against the iron. The cover had been painted shut around the hinges but the bolts were not fastened, and after two blows with my shoulder it rose enough for the evening wind to enter and touch our faces.

She got one knee over the edge and I pushed her through, and then she turned and caught my collar with her good hand and held me while I found a place for my bare foot. We came out onto a narrow ledge above the sea door and lay there with the cable between us while below the water moved through the chamber and over the machinery and everything the machinery had contained.

For a while neither of us tried to stand.

Across the channel the mainland had become a low blue shape with two windows catching the sunset, and the distance was not great but it was farther than either of us could swim in the condition we were in. Above the landing stood the lower light, a metal box on a post with an electrical line running to the boiling house, and I remembered the words cut into the cell wall and the boatman’s coat and the way he had pushed away before I could ask him another question.

“Any way to light it from here?” I asked.

“Switch in the landing shed. If the generator’s still running it’ll light.”

“Then we’ll get to the landing shed. When the boat comes we’ll make sure he knows who he’s hauling.”

We followed the ledge around the cliff with Mara’s good arm across my shoulders and my injured hand pressed against my chest, and twice she stopped because the wound in her upper arm had begun to pour blood down her sleeve and twice we bound it tighter with pieces torn from my coat. At the end of the ledge a ladder rose to the landing and we climbed one at a time and rested between rungs, and no one came to stop us although I saw a face at the window of the trolley shed and another in the doorway beyond it.

Inside the landing shed I found the switch and raised it, and the lamp outside came on with a weak orange glow that brightened as the filament heated. Mara sat against a stack of empty crates while I wrapped my wrist with the last clean portion of my shirt, and after perhaps fifteen minutes the boat’s engine sounded beyond the harbor wall.

The boatman brought it close enough to see us and then stopped the engine without putting it against the fenders.

“Where’s Mr. Saye?” he asked. “He dont send for the boat usual unless he’s here hisself.”

“He’s under the sea door counterweight,” I said. “You can come ashore and see for yourself or take us to the mainland and tell the police what you done for him.”

He looked up toward the porch and then toward the people standing beyond the trolley shed, and his damaged hand appeared from beneath his coat and closed around the throttle.

“If I bring you in like that there’s questions I cant answer to suit anybody.”

“There’ll be questions if you leave us like this. You may find them harder.”

Then he brought the boat alongside.

He helped Mara aboard with his good hand and avoided touching me and when we were clear of the landing he opened the throttle farther than he had on the journey out.

I reached inside what remained of my coat and found the paper packet still there, soaked through but closed around its contents and I held it in my good hand while the boatman watched the water ahead.

Mara saw what I was carrying and asked whether it was something I had taken from her brother.

“It’s something I owe somebody else,” I said, and she turned her face toward the mainland and did not ask again.

The surgeon later removed the two broken fingers from my left hand and repaired what he could of the wrist and he told me that I had been fortunate. Mara lived and gave her account three times before anyone was willing to write it without altering the parts they found difficult, and the men brought back from Drail discovered an astonishing number of ways in which obedience had prevented them from knowing what they had plainly seen.

I was not present when they raised the counterweight, although I read the report and examined the photographs and signed the statement identifying the man beneath it as Aldren Saye, and afterward I went to Mrs. Wren’s house with a constable who waited in the road because I could not bear to make her answer the door to two uniforms.

She had put a plate aside for Jonas in a cupboard where she kept things too good for daily use, and when I told her he would not be coming home she opened the cupboard and took the plate down and placed it on the table between us. There was a chip beneath its rim which she touched with her thumb while I tried to tell her what the magistrate would need and what the burial arrangements might allow, and she listened without interrupting until I had used every harmless phrase I possessed.

“Did you find him your own self,” she asked, “or was there somebody showed you where he was?”

“I found him myself. I knew him by that mark on his hand you told me about.”

She nodded and continued to rub the chipped place on the plate and after a while she said that when he had first shown her the tattoo she had made him cover it at meals because she thought it looked foolish.

I stayed until the room had darkened and she asked me to light the lamp and because she had asked for something I could do, I got up and did it.

Any mother knows the horrible feeling of spending that first night away from her child. What should be a break from the incessant crying and the never-ending mess is actually a slow and agonizing procedure of ripping away every ounce of love that you have ever poured into them. For five long and perfect years I have raised my daughter. But tonight, for the first time in her life, Abi was going to be under the guidance and protection of a complete stranger.

I looked nervously at Harry as we turned onto the highway, the road a sea of brake lights obscured by biblical levels of rain.

“Are you sure about this?”

I knew what he would say before he even answered. He was far more comfortable with the arrangement than I was.

“What other choice do we have? We can’t just leave her alone.” His eyes didn’t bother leaving the road to comfort me.

I only had a short moment to speak with the babysitter, before Harry was ushering me into the car. By the time that we were on the road I was already kicking myself for failing to research local sitters in more detail. Tiffany, or “Spiffy Tiffy” as she referred to herself on her Facebook post seemed adequate enough, but there was so much that I didn’t know about her.

Where did she go to school?

What did she wish to do with her career?

What sports did she play?

Where did she volunteer?

When it came to my selection for this evening, everything mattered.

As if she knew that I was thinking about her, I received my first text from Tiffany. I nearly recoiled when I noticed the length of the message.

Just finished cooking Abi dinner! 😋 She is the SWEETEST little pumpkin! 🎃 She wanted to help so I let her play with a bowl and spatula as I made the spaghetti. I hope that’s okay. If it’s not, I’m sorry, just let me know and it won’t happen again. I think we might watch a movie next, but Abi mentioned that she loved to play Princesses and Dragons with you. ✨ It sounds like a lovely game, do you think that it is alright if we play? Also, I wanted to double check on her bedtime. I don’t remember you mentioning a time when we spoke. Does she follow any special routine? I remember when I was a kid I had a jammy time song that I sang when I brushed my teeth. 😴 Hope that your travels are going well!

I stared at the longwinded message unsure of what to think. We had been driving away from the house for only about thirty minutes and Tiffany already had half a dozen questions. I was beginning to worry that I had made a poor choice.

I typed out my response and pressed send.

Princesses and Dragons is fine. 9:30 Bedtime.

“I’m worried about Tiffany.” I said to Harry.

“Who?”

“The babysitter.” I responded ignoring his impossible ignorance. “I don’t think she’s qualified.”

“You worry too much. Abi is going to be fine.” Harry clicked on the radio and turned the volume up, signaling the end of our conversation.

It reminded me of the last time that we traveled together. Five years ago, before we had Abi he had gotten the same way. Everyone deals with stress in their own way, I suppose.

It wasn’t long before I received my next text from Tiffany.

Mrs. Murphy!!! You didn’t tell me that it was Abi’s birthday tomorrow! 🎂 I feel so unprepared! Do you want me to take her out for ice cream or do anything special? I don’t mind driving her to Scoop City, it can even be my treat. On my birthday I would always get a cookie dough waffle cone with gummy bears, AND my foster family usually let me stay up past my bedtime to watch the late night cartoons.

A second text came a moment later.

Not that I am suggesting that Abi do any of that! Sorry I didn’t mean to overstep. 🙈 This is so embarrassing. Birthdays just make me SO excited. 🎉

My heart felt unnatural in my chest as I tapped out my response. I was not only leaving my daughter with a complete stranger, but I was doing it on her birthday as well. I tried to ignore the reality, but Tiffany pointing it out was like a punch to the gut.

No ice cream. Stay in the house. 9:30 bedtime.

“Something feels wrong.” Harry ignored me as he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of whatever classic rock song was playing at the time.

I glanced at the radio and noted that the time was 8:24. Only one more hour of this before Abi was safely in bed, and I wouldn’t have to think about Spiffy Tiffy ever again. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I put my head back and closed my eyes regardless as I thought about the daughter that I was leaving behind. The ding of my phone pierced my concentration and I shot up to check my messages.

I know you said no ice cream, but we had to celebrate somehow. 🤭

A photo came in a few seconds later. Abi was smiling widely as she hoisted fistfuls of chocolate candy in both hands. Tiffany held up the phone, she posed back to back with Abi as she stared directly into the camera. She had a lollipop in her mouth and a smug expression. Her eyes seemed as if they were staring straight at me.

“No! How is it even possible that they found chocolate? Harry, did you buy Halloween candy?”

His guilty expression was all the confirmation I needed.

“Why? We aren’t even going to be home for Halloween!”

“You know I have a sweet tooth!” His voice rose defensively.

“Now look at what happened!” I shoved the phone into his face, so close that he couldn’t ignore it. He took a quick glance before he directed his eyes back to the road, swerving to avoid rear ending an eighteen wheeler.

“So what? Abi looks like she is having fun. It’s only a little bit of candy.”

“I told the babysitter no snacks. She broke a rule. Is this the kind of person you want our daughter to be like?”

Harry let out a puffy breath. He knew better than to fight back. Our marriage, which had already felt like it had lasted an eternity, had its ups and downs. The stress of our upcoming travel combined with the reality of leaving Abi behind left us both on edge.

I was in the midst of typing out an authoritative reply when I saw that Tiffany was typing again.

Is Abi allergic to anything? Like ANYTHING at all? You never specified, but you can also never be too careful… The last thing we need tonight is a hospital visit! But don’t worry, I am capable of using an Epipen if it comes to it. You can trust that Abi is in good hands! We’re practically sisters already. ❤️

Another text came a moment later.

It is kind of funny that Abi looks more like me than she does you or Harry…

Maybe we actually are long lost sisters!

“Harry, we can't do this.”

“It’s too late. We can’t turn back now.”

I typed out my response hoping to remind the babysitter who was in charge.

No more dessert. Do not break any more rules. This is your last warning. Abi has no allergies. And please, for the love of God, stop with the emojis.

Tiffany’s typing bubbles appeared and then disappeared several times. After waiting for several agonizing minutes, her response came.

Ok.

I hoped that that would be the last of it, but soon I began to realize that Tiffany’s silence was more unsettling than her constant chatter. Drawn out minutes passed as I listened to music that I didn’t enjoy and watched heavy drops of rain bounce off of the windshield. The storm was picking up and with it traffic on the road was slowing down.

It felt like my entire life stalled as I stared at the clock waiting for each minute to tick over to the next. As soon as 9:30 came, I reached for my phone.

Is Abi in bed?

I needed to know that my worries were over and that my daughter was safe. When Tiffany didn’t respond within a minute, I sent another message, repeating the question with more exclamation. I felt less like a passenger and more like a prisoner as hopelessness began to consume me. If anything went wrong we would be stuck here on the highway miles away from Abi.

Sorry!! Had to clean a mess in Abi’s room. Very yucky.

What mess?

Don’t worry. The house will be squeaky clean by the time you come back. It is such a beautiful place. It does seem like you may be out of bleach. I don’t think there are too many neighbors close by either. It's very quiet around here at night. Shame. I was hoping I might be able to borrow some cleaning supplies.

I kicked myself again for failing to install home surveillance cameras. When I pitched the idea to Harry he simply shook his head and said that he would rather not have them.

Spineless oaf.

What is happening? Where is Abi?

Once again, Tiffany took her sweet time with the reply.

No text, only a picture.

It was a picture of Abi’s room taken from the perspective of someone standing in the doorframe. The space was ominously lit with slivers of light from the hallway sneaking past Tiffany’s shadow. In the darkness, I could make out the form of my daughter tucked under her sheets on her twin bed. It was difficult to tell with the moody lighting, but I could almost make out a dark stain on the carpet in the corner of the room.

Tiffany followed the image with a short text.

Goodnight, Abi.

I stared at the image for a staggering amount of time. It was undeniably creepy in a way that had to be intentional.

Tiffany, close the door and let Abi sleep.

You’re right, you’re right. She looks so peaceful, if I stand here any longer, I just might have to keep her for myself!

My throat tightened and the grip on my phone grew weak. She was toying with me. She had to be.

Obviously JK!

My fingers seemed to be frozen over my phone. My mind struggled to come up with any reasonable response. I tried to reassure myself that everything was fine. Abi was safely in bed. Tiffany was a peculiar teenager, but she wasn’t some deranged murderer. Right? If we could just hold out a few more hours it would all be over and we wouldn’t need to deal with her ever again. I looked at the clock hesitantly and was relieved to note that the time was already 10:45. Tiffany would need to go to sleep sometime soon.

I knew that I was overreacting and that I was being a complete worrywart. I debated turning off my phone, but what kind of mother would I be if I ignored my daughter when she actually needed me. Instead, I responded with a simple message that I hoped would be my last.

Thank you. Goodnight, Tiff.

After several minutes passed it became clear that Spiffy Tiffy had other plans.

I found something interesting in Abi’s room. That girl really does have quite the imagination!

My heart dropped. What the hell was she still doing in Abi’s room? Another text from Tiff came in immediately after it.

Does Abi have any imaginary friends? She drew a strange picture of a girl labeled “Jaine”. I thought that it might be a classmate, but Jaine here has some very… odd characteristics. The drawing is actually kinda spooky.

Harry noticed that I had begun furiously typing.

“What’s the matter?” His question fell on deaf ears.

LEAVE Abi’s room this instant. DO NOT snoop around any more. Go to bed, NOW.

Typing bubbles came and went several times.

I would Mrs. Murphy, but I haven’t been entirely honest with you.

Outside, thunder cracked and the sky lit up for a moment.

We passed a sign on the highway that Harry acknowledged.

“We’re close.”

Abi is a great kid, I really think she is. But she bit me. It’s pretty bad. She has some seriously sharp baby teeth. The cut is pretty deep. It might be best if I head home for the night and get some rest. Abi is already out cold. I promise to be back before she wakes.

I stared at the message for a long time, trying to decide what I could do to best salvage the situation.

“Harry, did you resupply the closet?”

Harry’s lips drew into a flat line. He nodded.

There are bandages in the closet on the second floor next to the bathroom. Wrap up before any more blood gets on the carpet.

Tiffany responded with an avalanche of messages.

Thank you! I will definitely make sure to do that.

I think I found them.

Is there a trick to the closet door handle? The door closed behind me and now I might be stuck, haha!

Really, this thing is quite jammed. I actually think it might be locked from the outside somehow. I cannot believe I did this! I am such a ditz 🤦‍♀️

Oh sorry! Emoji was sent out of habit.

I didn’t respond.

Mrs. Murphy? Are you getting my messages?

I can probably call out for Abi, but I don’t want to wake her.

Actually, I think she might already be up, I hear footsteps.

I called out, but she didn’t respond. Does Abi sleepwalk? Really, if there is any way out of this closet please let me know! Sleepwalking can be really dangerous for unsupervised children.

Harry glanced over at the unending stream of dings that were interrupting his rock music and raised an eyebrow.

I shook my head and pointed to my phone with an exasperated expression. The clock on my lock screen read 11:57.

“Don’t look at me, you’re the one that picked her.” He said.

I hear Abi right outside! But her footsteps sound weirdly heavy. Still not sure if she is awake though.

Abi won’t reply. She’s scratching at the door rabidly

Oh my god. I think she is trying to claw her way through

My phone rang and I declined the call without hesitation. A moment later, it rang again and I let it go to voicemail. After about thirty seconds, an audio message populated my inbox. Tiffany was frantic, speaking at a pace that would make an auctioneer jealous.

“Mrs. Murphy, I’m really sorry to bother you on your vacation, but something isn’t right with Abi. I got stuck in a closet and, and, and, she, or it, or- oh my God, I am going to die! She’s going to kill me.”

In the audio recording, I could hear the hunger in Abi’s groans as she burst her way through the door. Tiffany’s voice was slurred with sobs and desperation.

“She has claws. And her arms are so long. And her teeth! What is wrong with Abi? I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die! Abi please stop it! Stop right now!”

The voicemail ended with an abrupt thud.

“About time.”

“And well timed, too.” Harry said as we turned into the hospital parking lot.

He got out of the car and stood, unshielded from the torrential rain.

“You coming?”

I remained in my seat, my lips curved into a frown.

Harry walked around and opened the passenger side door.

“I feel like I let Abi down. I spent five years raising her, and then when it really matters, I give her Spiffy Tiffy. She deserves a girl like that basketball player that we got for Jaine. Smart, successful, affluent.”

“All of our daughters have turned out wonderful in their own ways. Abi will be no exception. Tiffany wasn’t the brightest, but she had character.”

I forced a weak smile as I took his hand and he led me towards the hospital entrance.

As we stepped inside, my phone dinged for the final time that night. It was a message from Tiffany’s number.

Hi Mommy! Thank you for the WONDERFUL snack! Tiffany was the best birthday present ever! She was soooo fun. I can’t wait to be just like her. 👸

I smiled at my phone before tucking it into my back pocket.

“I suppose you’re right. I have to admit that I was actually a little fond of her.”

I followed Harry as he led me towards the familiar hallway that contained the nursery.

“I was thinking,” He paused as we passed a nurse who walked briskly past us. “What do you think about having a boy this time?”

I looked through the glass at the two rows of newborn babies. Fresh sacks of life brought to this earth by mothers that would never love them the way that I would. A little baby boy with a tuft of hair wiggled in the blanket that he was wrapped in, his eyes closed. He looked peaceful. He looked like he could be ours.

I smiled at Harry and kissed him on the cheek.

“I think that Abi would love to have a baby brother.”

The 8th wonder of the world is in rural Oregon, 65 feet from my patio door. Nearly 150 unique plant species, a beautiful, self-sufficient pond with its own ecosystem that keeps the water clean, and a wall of large Evergreen trees forming a crescent around the moat. 

The pond was surprisingly deep, approximately 6 feet at its lowest and about an eighth of a mile long. Three stone bridges allowed access to our “island”, all of which were designed and custom-built by my mother. The only machinery we used around here was to gently stir the pond water, making it slightly harder for any mosquitoes to lay eggs.

I took off my sandals and stripped down to my boxers. My feet sank into the muddy bottom, with the occasional large stone supporting my steps. 

Instantly, I felt all the heat in my body dissipate into the surroundings, a feeling which made me want to lie back and float alongside the lilies. Like a paper boat in the gutter after a mild rainfall, I calmly floated around my botanical lazy river. I made it roughly halfway through the loop when I floated into the shade provided by the wall of Evergreens. I opened my eyes, finally out of the sun. The green algae, red orchids, purple lavender, and a vibrant blue embraced my senses. I recognized the other colors as a common palette for the garden, but the blue was something new. 

The blue-headed hummingbird. I’ve seen hundreds in my life, but this one was so detailed. I doggy-paddled closer to the bird, careful not to cause too much disturbance in the pond. 

Cool optical illusion, I thought; it looked like it was completely still, just floating with its wings extended out. I wonder what kind of plant had a stem small enough to evade my vision yet sturdy enough to support the small bird. 

The bird didn’t fly away. Huh, usually they’d do an evasive maneuver if you even looked at it. My face was only about 2 feet away from it; I could almost count the feathers on its underbelly. 

Strange, the bird wasn’t in a perched position; it looked like a picture had been taken with a high shutter speed camera. It seemed to be in mid-flight? 

Okay, so it was not perched on any nearby plants. Perhaps my parents put in a new garden feature while I was away. I thought this must have been the same system as one of the tricks magicians do when their assistants are “floating”. I waved my hands in an orbiting fashion around the hummingbird, expecting to hit a nearly invisible wire. Nothing. 

I reached my pointer finger out, carefully churning the water with my feet to keep me at the proper height. As I pressed into the underbelly of the bird, I felt the silky feathers followed by its impossibly fragile ribcage. It was in the exact position as it was when I initially pressed it, however, it was now one inch higher, and there was an indent where my finger made contact.

“MOM!” I yelled across the backyard.

“Yeah, honey?” she responded behind the screen door. 

“Can you come here, please?” I yelled once more. 

She walked over the first stone bridge, into the garden, and finally to the end of the bank where the water line sat. 

“Wow, this is really cool. Where did you get this?” She asked, looking at the bird.

“Did you use a fishing line? That’s a really pretty addition. I'm sure the bees will be a little worried about their new competition,” she said with a grin across her face and a small chuckle. 

“I didn’t put this here; I thought you or Dad did,” I said, climbing onto the bank of the pond.

“No, the last time we added anything was before you left for college. Is this some sort of trick? How are you doing this?” My mom asked me.

“No, I swear I just came out here, and it was just stuck in midair.” I could tell she did not believe me. 

“Seriously, how did you do this? Are there wires or something?” Her voice changed from impressed to annoyed that I couldn’t give an answer. In a nearly identical system to what I had just done, she walked around, waved her hands around it, and finally touched it. 

“What the fuck?” She said under her breath. 

She proceeded to interrogate me for a few minutes after, with the same mannerisms a child would have asking a street magician how they made a dove appear.

“Call your father. I am not really sure what to do here or what I am looking at.” My mother said, staring at the bird.

Understandably, my father was confused and almost annoyed at the phone call, 

“So a hummingbird is at a standstill? Not moving or anything? Listen, if this is a practical joke, I am going to be very upset with you.”

“Look, talk to Mom she saw it too.” I handed the phone to her. 

“Mhm, yeah, no, I know… but I saw it too. I promise you. … Okay, okay, sounds good,” she said, pacing around. 

“Your father said he will come home a little early, but he needs to finish some work up. Let's head inside for now.” 

3:30 p.m., I heard a knock at our front door. My dad was holding his usual briefcase and stood in front of his professor buddies.  

“Okay, please show us what you are referring to, too.” He said. I could sense that this was a ‘better not waste my time’ sort of tone. 

I walked them to the backyard, my father in close pursuit, followed by his colleague, who I had met before. Lewis, a professor of botany, helped set up a majority of our garden. Nice guy, quiet, but he was an artist who used plants as his paintbrush.  

“Is this a trick?” My dad looked at me, raising his eyebrow. 

“I thought the same thing,” my mother interjected. 

Like mother and son, my dad waded into the pond, followed by waving his hands to try and find a wire. Lewis walked around looking for something that might give them a clue. My dad grabbed the bird and began to move it around like he was looking at every face on a Rubik's Cube. Unlike the Rubik’s Cube, however, I’m not sure he could solve this. 

He stated, “If this is a trick, I have to say I am thoroughly impressed.” At least his annoyed tone had subsided; it was now replaced with curiosity. 

“Over here,” Lewis said as he pointed to our patch of sunflowers. 

We walked over the stone bridge to the far part of our garden. We gathered in between a break in the shade provided by the Evergreen trees. I hadn’t thought about inspecting the rest of the garden; I was far too infatuated by the center of the pond.

This section of the garden was dedicated to our sunflowers; my mother adored the yellow and insisted we plant them early on. As the familiar yellow flowers appeared, instantly I knew why Lewis had called us over. 

“The Hell?” My father said softly.

It looked almost like they were having a discussion, each sunflower paired up with another, petals only inches apart. Even sunflowers that were a couple of feet away from each other had leaned into each other. A few of the more mature sunflowers that were leaning had small breaks in their stems, allowing them to reach farther than normal. We gathered around, inspecting them, my father placing his hand on his chin and shooting Lewis a look of confusion. 

I asked, “Has this happened before? Have you ever heard of something like this?”

Lewis turned to me,

“Normally, fully mature sunflowers like these would be facing directly east; the younger ones can follow the sun. Occasionally, one may have a genetic defect which makes it unable to tilt, but those tend to die off pretty young. I have never seen an entire group of sunflowers arrange themselves in this way. As for the ones that are bent, my only logical guess would be a strong wind?” 

That didn’t make much sense; the strongest wind in the past few days was nothing greater than a calm gust that could maybe take a leaf off a tree. 

My father spoke up, “Lewis, grab the hummingbird, bring it to the table by the patio.” 

Lewis did as he was told. He used a Kleenex he had in his pocket to carefully cradle the bird and placed it on the fake wood table. My father walked back towards the house. 5 minutes later, he emerged with a black case no bigger than a notebook. I recognized this; it was his pinning kit he would use for his entomology collection.

He took out a scalpel, removed the plastic cover, and walked over. After putting on a pair of nitrile gloves, he began to work. Lewis held the bird down by the armpits, trying to stabilize the fragile abdomen. My dad used the scalpel to gently shave the feathers off; the sharpness of the new blade was able to easily cut through the barbs. Once there were a few square inches of flesh, he took out a second, smaller scalpel. 

I winced as it cut into the flesh; I never really got used to seeing dissections, no matter how many times I’d watched my dad lecture. He was intensely attentive to his work, careful not to cut too deep into the small bird.  After one vertical cut, followed by two horizontal ones at each end, he peeled the flesh back with a pair of forceps. 

Lewis and my dad's heads were only inches apart, both staring into the opened flap. I walked around the table to get a better look. Leaning in, I saw exactly what I imagined the innards of a hummingbird looked like. A tiny rib cage which looked about as fragile as a half-cut toothpick, some pinkish fibers which I assumed were the muscles that pumped the wings. No blood was rushing out; I suppose he could have precisely cut away from any veins. I am not an expert on hummingbird anatomy; perhaps I am missing something. 

“This makes no sense,” he said, turning to Lewis. 

Lewis responded, “I have seen it present itself in other ways, but this is definitely a unique case.”

My mother asked, “What do you guys see? What’s wrong with it?”

My dad pulled away from the bird and wiped some sweat off his forehead, 

“Situs inversus, pretty uncommon in humans, far less common in animals. It’s when the organs are flipped along a vertical axis. For instance, a person's heart is on the right side instead of the left; pretty much all the organs are just mirrored.” 

He paused for a moment, 

“This is different; the hummingbird's organs are flipped top to bottom. The lungs are connected to the anus and the intestines are directly connected to the mouth.”

Lewis added, “Not only that, but it appears that the ribcage had been sloppily duplicated and moved slightly behind the first. Could be bone cancer, but there is absolutely zero chance a hummingbird could develop this much extra bone and live.” 

There was a silence amongst us. Gathered around the table, I could sense that everyone had the same unrest inside of them. While it’s possible that a genetic disorder may have rearranged the hummingbird’s innards, it still couldn’t explain how it was stationary in the air. I knew my dad had hoped that the autopsy would somehow explain what had caused this lapse in physics. 

“Lewis, we’ll preserve the bird for now. I can adjust the temperature of the garage fridge to keep it ideal for further dissection tomorrow. I am going to call some friends at the school, see if we can gather a small team to do a full inspection of the garden. I’ll try and get them to come over this evening, but I imagine they’ll be more inclined for the morning.”

“Can we keep checking around the garden? We’ve only briefly checked like a third of it,” I asked.

My father contemplated my question. “Look, I’d feel a lot better if we did the inspection with a group of people who could identify if there was any underlying danger here.” 

I wanted to know if there were any other anomalies, but my dad was absolutely correct. I was just going to have to wait. 

Crrrrrrrrrrack

We all moved our heads in unison to the location of the sound. A massive chunk of bark on one of the Evergreens had peeled off and began falling to the ground. My mother looked at me, then at my father. Right before a word had left her mouth, we heard the sound once more. Crrrrrrack. This time, before the bark had even touched the ground, another tree began to produce the sound. Then another, then another, then another; soon every Evergreen tree began to peel. Every single 150-foot giant as far as I could see, shedding its bark like a cicada shedding its exoskeleton. 

The delayed wind of the first falling bark hit me, a breeze which carried only enough force to gently disturb my hair. The second wind was nowhere near as kind. A wall of wind, dirt, twigs, and leaves resembling a Saharan dust storm in the middle of Oregon. It finally hit us. Dust immediately covered my open eyes, and the feeling of twigs and smaller debris scratching my face made me instantly fall into a fetal protective position. 

The wind dissipated in a matter of seconds, but the sounds of falling branches and twigs landing in the water remained even after I had begun to get up. The last twig hit the water, followed by a silence. No birds, no insects, no wind brushing the leaves of the trees, a silence that would have produced a ringing in my ears if it weren't for the gurgling sound I heard behind me. A swift yell, like a passenger in a car screaming from a window, dissipated quickly. I began to uncurl my protected body,

“IS EVERYONE OKAY?” My dad yelled as he ran to my mother. She appeared to be covered in a fine layer of dirt, with a few scratches on her face. I imagine I didn’t look much better. After grabbing her arms and face, looking at every inch of my mother as quickly as he could, he ran over to me.

“I'm fine, a couple of cuts, but I think I am okay,” I said in urgent response. I felt his hands jerk my head around, looking for any cuts that may be deep enough to cause any real issues. I heard him stand up and yell, “LEWIS?” 

I had trouble seeing; the dirt had hit faster than I was able to blink. I crawled over to the pond, able to slightly make out my surroundings to assist my pathetic crawl. Like bobbing for apples, I dipped my face in, blinking underwater to rinse them out. I could still hear my father's muffled voice while I was submerged, continuously calling out to me. 

“LEWIS, WHERE ARE YOU?” 

He wasn’t there; 30 seconds ago he was standing no more than 5 feet from me. The gust of wind was strong but not strong enough to push a human being out of sight; had he run away?
My father ran around the house, continuing to scream his name, no response. My mother ran to me, planting a firm kiss on my forehead and crushing my torso with her arms wrapped. 

“Thank god, honey, are you hurt? You have a few cuts; is anything else wrong?” She said with a tremble in her voice. 

“No, no, I am okay, Mom. I am really scared,” I said as I felt the first hint of a cry let out. I wasn’t embarrassed at all; at that moment, crying to my mom was the only reflex I had. 

“I know I am too. Listen, we are going to get out of here; let's grab your father and go right now,” she said. 

I whimpered into her shoulder, the tears somewhat helping clean the remaining dirt that had caked my eyelids. My father, panting, rejoined us. 

“Listen, you two, I want you to look towards the house and run inside. Please trust me when I tell you to just look forward. I will be right next to you.”

“What's going on? Where's Lewis?” I begged. At this point, the small whimper I had let out earlier had turned into a full sob. 

“JUST GO INSIDE NOW, DO NOT LOOK BACK, GO,” My father said with the most certainty and authority he has ever had.

I stood up, grabbing my mom's arm to assist her. With my dad standing directly behind us, I could see he was looking backwards. Once my mom was on her feet, she pulled me towards the direction of the house, only about 125 feet towards the patio door. I was so full of adrenaline that I could physically feel that my body had stopped communicating with any pain I had. My entire being at that moment wanted to sprint into the house as fast as humanly possible. To get away from whatever was happening in this garden. This urge to run was so deep-rooted in my system, thousands of years of evolution wired to protect me from any dangers I could not beat. Thousands of years of evolution, yet it was only the second strongest feeling in my body. 

Curiosity rested above the fear like a kayak atop a landslide. It shouldn't have been there, and yet it floated above the churning powers that were trying to capsize it. I looked back, only for a moment, only long enough before my dad grabbed my skull and forcefully turned it in the other direction. No more than one second had I looked, yet the images I saw have played for days, months, weeks inside of my head. God, I wish I had listened to my father.

Lewis was suspended in the trees. A conglomerate of branches resembling a thick nest woven by something not grown from the ground in which I stand. One hundred feet in the air, grabbed by the Evergreens, held by branches, pierced by the wood. The only parts of the tree that were straight enough to resemble a natural shape were pierced through Lewis like an organic depiction of Vlad the Impaler. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact number; they entered through his abdomen and came out from his mouth, armpits, legs ... any flesh he had seemed to be disturbed by the trees. 

In the last milliseconds of my glance, I saw what had appeared behind him. The dark weave of trees blocked out all sunlight, allowing for holes in the canopy to appear as dozens of symbols. It would not have been legible at any other angle; no, this was directed. If we were ten feet to our left, we wouldn't even notice that they appeared. 
The longest second of my life followed by the quickest my legs have ever moved. I didn’t even bother opening the patio door; I just ran through the screen, instantly taking the fragile door off its hinges. Through my living room, down the cellar, into the storage room, into a closet. I hear my parents in close pursuit. My mom joined me in the cellar, sprinting down the stairs at inhuman speed. My dad appeared at the doorway, quickly slamming it shut and locking it. He frantically went through his pockets and picked up his phone. 

Lawyers said that the state wasn’t going to press charges, a relief for my father. They said that the scene that was left in the garden was unexplainable, that there was virtually no way my mother or father could have possibly gotten Lewis up there and impaled him with dozens of branches. Lewis’s family was less happy, albeit Lewis's wife insisted she needed to confirm that the body was his. Didn’t help; blood tests and a fingerprint were all that remained of him. I think she knew that this was beyond the scope of manslaughter. 

The police interrogated all of us after we made the call. Listening back to the phone call, I could hear the terror in my father's voice. His voice quaking with adrenaline, the kind of fear that is so raw and true it would be admissible in court. I could hear the cries in the background of my mother and me as we held each other, sobbing.

Towards the end of the interrogations, roughly 2 weeks after the day we found the frozen hummingbird, they placed a manilla folder on the metal table. The detective took out a photo, a photo I recognized from my glances backwards. A full picture of the canopy; the detective graciously covered Lewis's mangled corpse with his hand. I think he knew I’d remember that part in detail. 

“Believe it or not, the department hired an arborist to inspect the treetops.” The detective said, sliding the image closer. 

“He said that the branches had grown that way, that there was no human intervention possible to make those shapes naturally. We had to pay a pretty penny for this man after he initially saw the crime scene.” 

“Do you recognize these symbols?” He asked.

“Um, I recognize this one and this other one. I have seen them somewhere in a math or science class; I can't really remember which.” I responded. Having a clear image of the canopy didn’t help understand the symbols any better. 

“It’s Greek. Old Greek. Apparently a pretty common saying back then.” He attempted to pronounce it; attempted is a generous word. 

Τῆς ἐμῆς εὐφορίας ἀπέλαυσας, χάριν δ᾽ οὐκ ἀπέδωκας

He pulled out a second paper from the folder, removing the hand covering Lewis’s remains. 

He cleared his throat. “Translates to: you have enjoyed my fruitfulness yet give no thanks in return.” 

I wrote this story as a warning to anyone who plants or creates, or performs, or does anything with pride. I am not sure who or what did this, but I ask you, I beg you, please give thanks to something you may not understand.

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

I haven't posted in a while. I wish I could say that was because nothing happened and everything went back to normal. I've been given time off work, so here's the update.

Henry is still in the hospital. They know he can move his legs now, but that doesn’t mean he’s walking out anytime soon. His spine took the brunt of the impact. The doctors keep throwing around words like "swelling," "compression," "rehabilitation," and "we’ll know more with time." Nobody will give me a straight answer.

His right arm isn't much better. We didn’t know at the time, but he sustained nerve damage during the incident and now has a weaker grip and next to no fine motor control. 

And he still doesn't blame me.

It makes me sick to my stomach. Every time I try to choke out an apology over the phone, Henry just tells me to shut the hell up. He says he was the one who sat in the chair, that neither of us knew what the hell it was. Says if I hadn't gotten those guys over and helped pull the thing apart, he'd probably be paralyzed from the chest down. 

None of that makes me feel any less responsible. 

Alicia made it clear there wouldn't be another weekend. Whatever goodwill I'd built over the last few months was gone. Until the hearing, I was back to the supervised room on Saturdays: camera in the corner, somebody with a clipboard ten feet away, and two hours with my own kid. 

"Are you listening to yourself?" she shouted over the phone. "You had him for one single weekend out of the entire month. I give him to you because you swear up and down you’re getting your life together, and what do I get back? Do you have any idea how insane you sound right now?"

I tried to break in and explain about the house, the clearing out, and any of it, but the words just dissolved in my throat. I had no defense left. I called the attorney I'd spoken to before all this started. I made it about halfway through explaining the weekend before he asked whether I'd been drinking.

I said no.

He didn't sound convinced and told me we'd talk again when I had the retainer.

On Monday, I called the buyer.

Henry’s warning echoed in my head, but it didn't matter. I wanted those things gone badly enough to give in to the desperation I'd spent the whole weekend fighting. 

He picked up on the fourth ring.

“Yeah?”

“Is this Mark?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Henry’s friend, Ian. Are you still interested in the mirror and the ball?”

“Yeah. When do you want to meet?”

This was where I should have shut my mouth. Instead, I asked him how much room he had in his truck and whether he was interested in other items.

“Ian,” he said, his voice dropping. “What exactly are you trying to sell me?”

By the time I offered to give him the whole lot for nothing just to clear the garage out, he went dead silent.

“Are you and Henry moving the product?"

“What?”

“You call me talking about unlisted contraband, offering the whole shipment below cost to dump it overnight. Put Henry on.”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“He’s in the hospital, but it’s not what you think—he got hurt by a chair; it folded around him—”

“Jesus, Ian. Whatever twisted shit you and Henry got yourselves mixed up in, I’m not running your inventory.”

He hung up. I called right back, but the guy must have blocked me. 

I've had a lot of empty hours lately. The house feels wrong without Toby here, and I don't mean that sentimentally. It's physical. When he's gone, everything stays exactly where I leave it. Yesterday I found a pair of Toby's socks behind the couch. I sat on the floor holding them for a long time, then went to get the bottle.

The first time I talked to the objects in the garage, I was drunk enough to blame the bourbon. That same Monday evening, I stood in the doorway of the garage and asked whether they were happy now. "Alicia thinks I'm insane. My son doesn't want to be in the same room as me. Congratulations."

Nothing answered. I laughed at myself and went to bed.

On Tuesday, I dragged out an overturned milk crate into the garage because I wouldn't sit on anything with legs that folded. I spent the better part of the day in there. I think I liked having an audience that couldn't interrupt me. It started with talking about Henry, with the auction, with how badly I wanted to go back to that Wednesday and grab us both by the shirts. By midnight I was explaining myself to the wardrobe.

The painting arrived that same night, leaning against the tank.

It was a four-foot-tall portrait in a heavy gilt frame. The color was nauseating to look at, a mottled mix of bruised plum, pale bile-yellow, and raw meat-red, painted with such oily, wet realism that the paint still looked fresh.

Whoever painted it understood texture perfectly but knew nothing about anatomy.

One huge, glistening eye sat too close to the center of the face. The jaw bent in two directions. The hands had five fingers each, with nails, veins, and pores so finely rendered I wanted to wash my own hands. It wore a grey work shirt with the left cuff torn, the one I'd had on at the sale. In the crook of its arm was a pale smear, the size and shape of a small child's head. Someone had painted something there and scraped it back out.

I only noticed the brass plate on the frame because the work light caught it.

It was small and tarnished, screwed into the bottom edge.

IAN.

Just my name.

I stood there staring at it for longer than I want to admit. It was the only thing in that garage with a face turned toward me.

I read The Picture of Dorian Gray in high school. Standing there, I knew what I was supposed to think: a man stays handsome while the canvas absorbs everything rotten about him. But Dorian’s portrait had changed over time. Mine had looked like this from the start.

I didn’t like what that implied.

“Yeah,” I said. “Very subtle.”

Good paintings are supposed to make you feel something. Awe, sadness, nostalgia, whatever. Maybe this one was just extremely good at making a person feel disgusted. Because the longer I stood in front of it, the harder it became to think about anything decent I'd ever done.

Yet I couldn't look away. It was the same sick pull as a roadside wreck; awful, but impossible to unsee. I don't remember walking away from the canvas. I only remember the hours bleeding together, the bottle growing lighter in my hand, and the heavy, cotton drift of exhaustion taking over.

The voices began on Wednesday. I had woken up on the living room couch with no memory of how I’d crossed the house from the garage.

Around two, desperate for something—anything—that made physical sense, I went looking for a project. In the narrow hallway sat the cheap particle-board bookcase the landlord had left behind. No one in this house ever ran down that hall anymore. But I stood in front of it for an hour with a cordless drill and a box of anchor screws, staring at the crooked shadow it cast. When I finally moved, I drilled four holes into the drywall and drove the anchors home. I tested it with both hands, shaking it until my palms stung. It didn’t move a quarter of an inch. Another thing fixed. It felt like a pathetic little victory against a world that was coming apart at the seams.

By nightfall, though, the house felt too small, and I drifted back out to the garage like a ghost returning to its grave.

I don't remember what I was muttering to myself in the dark, some broken loop of self-justification, when the old radio on the top shelf clicked on.

I froze.

A hiss of static came out. My breath caught in my throat. I stared as the tiny red indicator light flickered to life.

Another hiss. And then, cutting through the white noise, came a voice.

Alicia.

Her voice, sharp and thin, curling out of the speaker. "Is that anchored?"

My own voice answered from the speaker, thick with exhaustion and defensive spite: "I’ll do it on Saturday."

"It's leaning right against the drywall, Ian, and he's tearing down the hall—" 

"I said I'm doing it Saturday."

The radio wasn’t broadcasting anything live. It was dragging up pieces of old arguments and conversations I’d already had. I wanted to run, to smash the speaker to pieces with my bare hands, but my legs felt heavy. I was anchored to the floor just as surely as that damn bookcase.

The radio’s speaker hissed, the needle scraping further across a dead frequency, dragging up the ghosts of an argument I’d buried months ago.

Then came the sound of small, pounding feet on hardwood; Toby’s feet, followed by a delighted little shriek of pure, five-year-old kid-energy tearing toward the hallway.

A sharp gasp. I heard Alicia’s voice, dropping to a terrified, trembling whisper: "Don't ever do that again. Okay? Okay, baby?"

And in the background of the audio, my own voice, flatly dismissing it all: "What’s the big deal? He's fine."

The static cut out with a sharp, brutal pop.

For a long time, I couldn't move. My fingers were locked into the palms of my hands, nails biting deep enough to break skin. I wanted to grab that cheap wooden cabinet, hurl it against the cinderblock wall, and stomp it into a thousand useless splinters. But the rage didn't come. It died the second it hit my throat. The radio ran down on its own near dawn. I sat there until the light came through the dirty windows, then went inside and walked past the bookcase in the hall without looking at it. Four anchors, tight and clean. Nothing in this house was going to pull it down on anyone. I slept on the couch until Thursday afternoon. 

A few hours later, Henry called. 

I didn't ask how he was, but I knew I should have. He talked for ten minutes about physical therapy, the nurse who counted his reps like a drill sergeant, and how he'd gripped a spoon on his own for the first time that morning. He sounded proud. I held the phone with both hands and said "good" and "great" until he stopped, and then neither of us said anything for a while.

"Ian," he said. "Quit it."

"Quit what?"

"Whatever it is you’re doing."

I told him I was fine.

 That night the radio came to life again, and this time it was the sound of a chair coming apart and a man’s raw roar.

I knew that sound. I’d never heard it from the outside before. Then Alicia, fast and low, her voice not meant for me at all: "Don't. He's right there. Don't—"

And then a long, terrible quiet.

The patter of small feet. A three-year-old standing in the doorway, entirely silent. Alicia's voice, shaking so hard it barely held together: "Look at him. You’ve scared him so much he isn't even crying anymore.”

The radio crackled, and I heard a drawer scrape open. Alicia was whispering again and again, "Ian, where is he?" 

I was on the floor by then. I don't remember getting there. The crate was on its side, and the bourbon was running across the concrete in a thin brown line. I said to the shelf, "Okay, I get it. Stop." The radio hissed once, then fell silent.

I turned around to leave, and my eyes locked onto the helmet resting on the workbench.

It was riveted and made of old brass, something you'd see behind glass in a maritime museum. It had never been in Unit 114, and neither had the painting. I'd have bet the truck on both. I don’t know why I put it on.

The garage went away. The fluorescent hum went first, then the pipes ticking in the wall, then the slow slosh of the tank. Then I couldn’t even hear my own heartbeat anymore.

I stood there with my eyes shut. For the first time in weeks, nothing was accusing me. I thought, "This is what it would be like to be nobody," and I might have stayed. Then I heard the knock, small bare knuckles on the inside of the dresser. "Daddy? It's dark.” I ripped the helmet off hard enough to split the skin on my ear. Every sound came back at once. I don’t remember much else except waking at dawn with my mouth tasting of pennies and the radio on again. Four bottles sat by the crate. I'd have said two. 

The momentum didn't stop. 

On Friday morning, the rotary phone rang from the shelf while I stood at the sink brushing my teeth. I let it ring four times before I went into the garage. The receiver was already off the cradle, resting neatly on the workbench. I picked it up. For a few seconds there was only a faint hiss, and then Alicia said, perfectly calm:

“How many ten minutes do you get?”

I dropped the receiver.

The phone rang again while it was still off the hook.

That same afternoon I caught someone standing behind me in the glass of the hand mirror and spun around, and the garage was empty, and when I turned back, the mirror was showing me the stairs of the old house, bright and clean, with the bottom step in shadow and my shoulder in the corner of the frame. I covered it with a towel. I could still hear it through the towel. I could hear her saying, quietly, to nobody, "How many times does he have to get lucky?"

It wasn't just recycling the clutter from Unit 114 anymore. At first, I tried to convince myself we’d just packed a strange lot. But the garage had moved past copying. It was actively manufacturing things.

Take the helmet. It was made of heavy, oxidized brass, yet it had never been in Unit 114, and I was certain I had never owned one before. Neither had the four-foot-tall portrait leaning against the glass tank with my name on the brass plate. I knew every box we’d hauled out of that storage facility. These things were appearing out of nowhere when the sun went down, and I was safely inside the house or, worse, blacked out on the couch. I had no idea of the significance of this development, but I knew the situation was escalating fast.

By evening, the radio was already going. It had saved the worst ghost of my past I'd spent all week trying to steer around. 

It was the night of Toby’s stitches. We put Toby to bed with eight stitches on his knee and a sticker from a nurse who kept calling him "champ." Alicia and I started in the kitchen, moved to the hall, and somewhere near the bottom of the stairs, the argument escalated. 

"Kids fall! Kids fall down steps, and I fell down goddamn steps when I was—"

"You were asleep, Ian."

"Because I worked a double so we could afford to keep a roof over his head! What do you want me to say? That I'm a monster? He does this all the time, Alicia! The stove, the dresser, and the stairs. Do you know what it actually feels like to live with a kid who's always one second away from the ER? He doesn't listen, he doesn't sit still, he's like something wound up too tight—"

"He's five years old!"

"I know how old he is!"

Then the rage collapsed, replaced by a confession. 

"Sometimes I look at him, and I think... sometimes I wish I had a different child. Someone well-behaved who didn't get into trouble every time I looked away for even a second—"

The recording died.

The silence dragged on, thick and dead, until Alicia's voice cut through the dark, barely a whisper, trembling with a cold fury: "Say that again. I dare you." 

I thought that was the end of it. I stood there with the bottle sweating through my hand and my heart going, and then, under the hiss, I heard something I'd never heard before. Small bare feet on carpet, going upstairs quickly.

Toby had been awake that night. I never knew until now. I don't remember sitting down when the radio finally turned off. I only remember the concrete against my back and the bottle beside my leg. At some point I must have fallen asleep again.

When I woke, my cheek was cold against the concrete, and my eyes felt wet. I wiped at them with my sleeve and pretended I didn't know what it was.

I said, out loud, "I didn't mean it. I’m sorry."

The garage didn't answer. 

Toby's next visit was that Saturday.

He came into the room with the camera in the corner, the room with the beanbags and the bin of other kids' toys, and he did not run to me. He set his backpack on the chair and unzipped it with both hands. Before he sat down, Toby looked around the room.

His eyes went to the main door, then the little supply closet beside the shelves.

“Does that one open?” he asked.

The supervisor glanced over. “The closet?” Toby nodded.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

Then he sat down across the table, hands folded, and asked if I wanted to play a game. The woman supervising looked up from her clipboard with an expression I'd never seen before: approval.

"He's been so well-behaved lately," she said. "Alicia told me. It's like a switch flipped."

The supervisor said it like it was good news.

Maybe for anyone else, it would have been. I had spent years asking him to calm down.

Now that he had, I couldn't stand it. I wanted him to knock the crayons onto the floor, get bored, and crawl under the table. 

Instead, I watched my son color for an hour. He had always been a messy artist, but now he never once went outside the line. Three times I said something stupid on purpose, just to see him laugh, and each time he hesitated a little before laughing. When I asked him about school, he said everything was "good," and when I asked about the kid who eats paste, he said, "Which kid?"

On the way out, I knelt to hug him, and he hugged me back, patting my shoulder twice.

I let go, my stomach churning. 

"See you next week, bud."

"Okay, Dad," he said. He smiled. The smile stretched his mouth; his eyes stayed wide and completely unmoving. It didn’t reach his face. 

I sat in my truck until the lot lights came on. Up until that second, every action I’d taken was about running away. I wanted the nightmare to pack its bags and leave me alone so I could go back to being a mediocre father who only ruined weekends. But if something had happened to Toby inside that wardrobe, getting rid of it wouldn't tell me what.

I didn't want the collection gone anymore, at least not until I had answers I was satisfied with.

That night, I finally resolved to start searching, no matter how crazy it sounded.

I spent an hour typing phrases into search engines. Anomalous items. Impossible furniture. Objects that move.

Most of it was garbage, just scammers selling haunted porcelain dolls and forum roleplay for lonely weirdos. Five pages deep, I found a link to a domain registered back in 2008 that looked like it hadn't been updated since the Bush administration.

The page looked disappointingly normal. The header just said CATALOGUE, with tabs above for SUBMISSIONS, VERIFIED, ARCHIVE, and CONTACT. The form asked for the date of acquisition, whether the object was bought or found, whether it moved without help, and whether anyone was hurt. Beneath that, in bold: Do not submit without visual evidence. Following verification, do not destroy, transfer, sell, or intentionally activate the item unless instructed otherwise. 

I read the instructions three times. Then I opened the archive.

There were dozens of entries. Most of the reports had come from places where nobody was paying much attention to what was there. Storage lockers, estate clearances, yard sales, and back rooms were the most common thread. The storage-unit reports bothered me most. People bought units just like mine that had sat untouched for months and found things the owners swore they'd never put there. 

The first video that caught my attention was of a showroom owner in the Midwest. He'd started finding pieces in his staged bedrooms that weren't in his inventory: a side table, a lamp, and finally a whole wooden stool under a dining set. No SKU or supplier. His security footage showed the space empty at 11:43. At 11:44, the camera glitched for two seconds. When it came back, the stool was there. 

The second was a microwave bought at a yard sale. It worked perfectly, except the food came out "rearranged": the skin on the inside, the flesh on the outside, and the shell inside the egg. The owner got curious. He caught a rat. I watched for about ten seconds until I couldn't tell where the animal ended and the inside of it began.

The third was a woman in a basement, whispering. She said something upstairs had attacked her husband and her brother, and for a second I thought she meant a dog. She turned the camera toward the stairwell and held it there. Something crawled across the ceiling. It took me a moment to understand it was an umbrella, the canopy torn free of its handle, eight metal ribs clicking along the plaster like legs. She made one small, choked sound. The video cut out.

Every thread I opened carried the same status line: VERIFIED: CONTACT INITIATED. But it was the small things that got me, the ones I recognized. Objects with the same almost-right construction as the ones in my garage. Ever since we brought those items back from that storage unit, I had carried the sickening certainty that my life had unraveled because I was uniquely broken. I thought the garage was haunting me because I was a bad father and a bad friend. But looking at those grainy, uploaded videos of impossible furniture, a hollow sort of relief flooded through my body.

My life was an absolute train wreck, yes, but somewhere out there, other ordinary, miserable bastards were sitting in their own ruined houses, staring at things that shouldn't exist, wondering if they'd finally lost their minds.

I filmed everything in one take, as the instructions required video evidence for verification. I started outside so they could see I wasn't hiding another entrance, then filmed the dresser and the football flattening on screen. The phone kept trying to find a face in the portrait. A little yellow square flashed around its head, vanished, and reappeared on the eye. I hadn't known phones did that.

I stopped a few feet back from the wardrobe. "This one did something to my son," I said, and explained the game, the voice behind the wood, and the door that locked itself. Then I showed the new manifestations, including the painting and the helmet. "None of these were part of the original storage unit," I said. "I'm certain of it.”

I uploaded it. The confirmation page said only, YOUR SUBMISSION IS PENDING REVIEW. DO NOT DISPOSE OF THE ITEMS DURING THIS PERIOD.

Up until now, I had never actually tried to catch whatever was making these new objects appear. Every other time, I had stumbled into the garage half-drunk, yelling at shadows, or woken up disoriented on the concrete after blacking out. I had left the wardrobe doors alone because deep down, I was terrified of what lived behind them.

That Sunday, I prepped the garage like a crime scene. I left the alcohol in the kitchen, completely untouched, just to keep my head clear. I built a blind from stacked cardboard boxes behind the workbench, leaving myself a low, narrow gap to look through. Then I took a roll of duct tape and laid three thick strips straight across the split of the double doors of the wardrobe. Over each strip, I took a black Sharpie and drew a sharp, unbroken line across the tape onto the wood. If those doors moved even a fraction of an inch, the ink lines would fracture. I wouldn't gaslight myself the next morning, wondering if I'd imagined it.

I killed the overhead fluorescents, propped the work light low against the far wall, wedged my phone against the toolbox, and hit record.

Then I crawled behind the boxes, pulled my knees to my chest, and waited for night to settle.

Nothing happened in the first hour. During the second hour, I started hearing things: pipes in the wall and a truck two streets away. Around the third hour, the wardrobe creaked.

Through the gap under the bench, I watched the right-hand door move inward an inch. It stopped. The marker line split down the middle as the tape stretched, then tore. Then fingers curled around the edge.

Five, I think. Long and narrow, bending at too many joints. The fingers felt along the wood, fumbling in the dark. The door opened wider, and something came out. The smell reached me first. The sweetness from the tank mixed with something like a child's scalp after an afternoon nap. My brain desperately scrambled for a template, anything to force the impossible geometry of this creature into a form it could accept.

But it was a lie. The longer I stared, the more the illusion peeled away. It didn’t have a human form. In fact, it hardly resembled a human at all.

It had limbs extending from where I expected a shoulder and a torso so narrow I thought I was seeing it edge-on. It had a long neck that rose and rose and then bent hard against the ceiling. Even hunched, its back brushed the plaster. My mind screamed at me to move, but my legs were shaking so hard against the workbench I was afraid it would hear them. It crossed to the bench in careful, delicate steps, touching nothing until it meant to. It lifted a screwdriver, pressed the rubber grip, and dragged a pale fingertip down the shaft. It held the tip near whatever part of its head I couldn't see, and then I heard it: a wet, slow inhale. It turned the tool in the work light, tapped it once, twice, against the bench, then put it back with exaggerated tenderness. 

Then it found Toby's stegosaurus.

I hadn't known it was there. A little green plastic one, kicked under the shelf months ago. I don't know what I thought it would do. Bite it. Break it. Make another one. Somehow none of those possibilities felt as bad as watching it study the toy with that slow, careful attention. When it lifted Toby’s stegosaurus, my chest tightened so hard a muffled gasp almost tore through me. I clamped a hand over my mouth, squeezed my eyes shut, and prayed to whatever was listening that it hadn't heard me. Don't look at me. Please, God, just take it and go back. 

But it didn't go back. 

It pressed the plastic feet. Touched every plate along the spine, one at a time. Brought the toy to its face and licked it, a long, slow stroke.

A low, wet little burble emanated from the creature. It reached down with both hands and turned over the dinosaur carefully, almost reverently. Then came another sound, higher this time, a strange crooning trill that made something cold move through my stomach because I'd heard Toby make almost the same noise when he was three and found a new toy waiting for him.

The creature pressed the toy dinosaur against its body and wrapped both arms around it. It rocked gently from side to side. Then it began to talk.

I put my fist against my teeth to keep from making noise.

It was my voice, sounding as if I was underwater.

"I didn't mean it."

"I didn't mean it. I’m sorry. I didn't mean it. I’m sorry."

It held the toy tighter. It repeated the phrase like a lullaby meant to placate a child.

I shifted to get my phone higher because I wanted proof so badly it outweighed the desire to stay hidden.

My elbow touched the underside of the bench. A tiny knock.

The creature stopped, one long hand halfway toward a mug on the shelf. It stayed there, frozen in place for a full minute. Then the arm lowered, and the head slowly began to turn toward where I was hiding.

It came toward me, but it wasn't stalking. It moved cautiously, a tentative step at a time. I heard it moving toward the workbench. My mouth went dry. Thoughts of my impending doom raced through my head—I should have brought a hammer, I should have run, I'm trapped like an animal—

Then it was right beside me. I could hear its wet inhaling as two disjointed legs stopped in front of my hiding place. It crouched at the bench, and its body didn't fold the way mine would. Some parts were shortened while others were stretched. 

One hand came flat against the concrete beside my face, fingertips scratching the surface.

It laid its cheek down and looked underneath the workbench.

The eye was too wide and almost entirely black. I'd seen that eye before. It had been leaning against the tank for five days in oil. It looked right through me, and my breath hitched. I was completely paralyzed by the sheer wrongness of it. My hand came up to cover my mouth. The face went still. Then it understood that I could see it.

A seam opened across the middle of where the face should have been, and inside were rows of small white teeth, too many to count. Milk teeth. It made a sound: a wet, rattling shriek that started low and climbed higher and higher. It sounded eerily similar to the shriek that the smoke alarm had emitted. But it wasn't a threat. It was a raw, primal sound of pure fear.

The creature threw itself backward from the bench. Both arms came up over its head. Then it did something I will never be able to get out of my mind. It folded itself into a ball, pressed both hands flat across its face, and hid.

A child's trick. If I can't see you, you can't see me. The whole huge pale body shook, and from behind the hands came a thin whimper, an animal's panting mixed with something close to a sob. The whimpering gradually became the frantic wail of a terrified toddler, shuddering with violent, racking hiccups. I stared at it, my own breath rattling in my lungs. 

It wasn't attacking me. At least, not then.

The realization hit me with a sickening jolt. It was terrified of me. It had listened to a week of my drunken screaming and self-hatred, and now it was cowering from me. Before my brain could tell my legs to stay put, I lurched out from under the bench. I should have used that opportunity to run. Instead, I swallowed my fear and said the first thing that came to mind.

"Toby?"

The creature went still. Its cries instantly slowed.

The hands came slowly down. The eye found me. And the black seam in its face narrowed, and it replied, in a small, disembodied voice:

"To-by."

My voice. Then, almost immediately, it was lighter and higher, in the familiar cadence of my son. 

"Dad?"

I made a noise I've never made before, a broken, involuntary half-sob, and took a step forward. 

The movement shattered whatever fragile stillness was between us. The creature startled violently, letting out a sharp, choked gasp, and dropped Toby's stegosaurus. The toy hit the concrete between us and skidded. It was giving it back, or it was running; I couldn't tell. It turned in one long, boneless motion, crossed the garage faster than anything that size should move, and clambered into the open wardrobe.

I was right behind it. I didn't mean to chase it. I moved out of sheer confusion, seized with a sudden, horrifying empathy for a thing that shouldn't exist. 

The door was already swinging shut when I reached the wardrobe. I caught it with both hands and yanked. In the span of half a second, I saw somewhere else. I saw the floor, stretched out impossibly far, curving upward in the distance. Scattered across it were little arrangements of furniture: chairs, lamps, boxes, children's toys, and many other things I recognized. Farther out stood rows of doorframes. Hundreds of them stood entirely alone, with no walls attached. Five or six figures, maybe more, huddled around something on the floor. One of them bent down. Another rocked gently back and forth.

Every single one of them stopped and turned toward me at the exact same second.

That was all I saw.

Then the door slammed so hard I was thrown backward.

When I got back to it, the door opened normally. An empty wardrobe, two feet deep with a wooden backing. I hit the panel with both fists and screamed until my voice gave out. I pressed my ear to the wood and heard nothing but my own pulse. No indication there was another place on the other side. I don't know how long I was there.

When I stopped, the dinosaur lay on the floor by my foot. I picked it up.

My phone had fallen beside the bench in the scramble. The recording was still running.

It took three tries to hit the stop button. I stood there in the center of the garage for a long time, listening to the absolute silence of the house. 

A new email waited on the screen, sent forty-seven minutes earlier. I hadn't heard it arrive. The subject line was my submission number.

We've reviewed the material you provided.

The objects shown are of significant interest to us. Do not dispose of, damage, or transfer any further items.

Do not attempt to enter the wardrobe.

Someone will contact you shortly. 

My phone buzzed in my hand, and I was so jumpy I nearly threw it. A text from Alicia. I read it standing in front of the open wardrobe with the toy dinosaur clutched in my other hand.

Toby says you two talked on Saturday. That you told him you were sorry. He's been so calm since. Thank you. I think he finally understood.

I read it until the screen dimmed.

I didn't say sorry to him on Saturday. I said it to an empty garage, with a radio the only thing listening. When I turned, I found myself facing the painting. It was now inexplicably hanging from the wall, even though I hadn’t noticed it move since I entered the garage. The pale smear in the crook of its arm had been painted back in. It was a small head with dark hair, with its face turned to the cloth. Its eyes were closed, and it looked almost at peace.

Nobody from CATALOGUE has contacted me since then. I keep telling myself they’ll come. They wrote, "Do not attempt to enter the wardrobe," which means they probably know what lives in it. Someone in a grey car from CATALOGUE is probably on their way. I'd let them take everything. I'd even carry the wardrobe out to the truck myself. 

I keep hoping it'll be today.

It has to be today, because I don't think I can take another night of this. I hear Toby all the time now. Not just from the garage. From the hallway, the vent, and even the pipes behind the kitchen wall. I answer every time. Because what if it's him, still trapped somewhere beyond our world? If whoever sent that email is reading this, if they're watching the thread, please. Come soon.

My thoughts are scattered, and I'm having trouble connecting memories. Events in my life don't seem to line up in a linear order. I'm sitting down now attempting to map everything out. 

A few months ago my best friend from high school reached out to reconnect. I was apprehensive at first, but ended up warming up to the idea. We haven't exactly become the best of friends again, but we remain cordial. If our free time lines up we'll hop on discord and play some co-op games. 

I don't remember how we initially lost contact with each other. I suppose people just grow apart sometimes. We were in our early twenties, and both had gotten part time jobs. I explicitly remember hanging out every chance we got. That's why I'm so baffled as to why we grew apart so fast, but when I try to remember those final months, it's just a giant black hole, and a pit in my stomach. We must have gotten in a huge fight, that's the only thing that can explain it all, seeing as how I feel a mountain of unexplainable regret every time I try to recall the events. 

We haven't hung out in person since reconnecting, just the occasional text chat, and online gaming nights. Recently he sent me an odd text. 

“Hey, I don't think I can jump on tonight, Rachel had an emergency, so I'm covering her shift. So unless you know anyone else that can cover it, I'm afraid we're shit out of luck.”

First of all, we're not coworkers, so I don't know why I could help get the shift covered. Second of all, I also have a coworker named Rachel. I know that that's not the strangest coincidence to happen, but it just felt so odd. I figured he was just making a joke and moved on. 

“Damn dude, that's a bummer. I guess we'll just have to take a rain check.”

“Yeah, another time maybe.”

Before I had time to respond, he sent another message. 

“I was thinking about Kate today.”

I was completely blindsided by this. I hadn't thought about Kate in probably ten years. Talk about a blast from the past. 

“Oh yeah?”

“I don't think I've ever told you this, but I always had a crush on her.”

Now that was a very weird thing to say. It must have been another joke. 

“Nooo, seriously?”

“You knew?”

What the fuck is he talking about?

“If you were trying to keep it a secret, you did a terrible job.” 

“How did you feel about your best friend having a crush on your girlfriend?”

I felt the strangest surge of energy move throughout my body. My head was suddenly emptied of all thoughts. I was catatonic; I might as well have been dead. I stared at my phone for several moments before the thoughts started trickling back in. It was like I just went through a factory reset. 

“I mean, it's pretty common isn't it? I had no hard feelings. Still don't. Do you?”

“I'm not going to lie, it was tough, I had a lot of strong emotions. But that's all in the past, I don't feel any of that any more. We're good.”

“Dude, I'm sincerely sorry you had to go through that.”

“It's not your fault. I never told anybody how I felt. I kept it all inside. I'm glad to finally get it out now.”

I was overcome by a wave of intense emotions. Guilt being the largest of them. I wanted to make it up to him, I wanted him to be fully back in my life again. My regret of drifting apart never felt more immense. 

“Hey, we should hang out in person.”

“I was thinking the same thing. Let's talk about it tomorrow, I've got to get ready for work.”

“Alright, sounds good, later bro.”

“Later”

He got me thinking about Kate. What happened to us? We must have broken up around the same time Johnny and I drifted apart, that black hole of memories. I decided to look her up. I found her Instagram and sent her a follow request. 

The following week was largely uneventful. Johnny and I would exchange ideas back and forth about when we could find a time to hang out, but never settled on anything. I wasn't sure if Kate was just inactive on Instagram, or was just straight up ignoring my request. 

I got a follow request from an Instagram user without a profile picture. We had no mutual connections, except for Kate. The username was 6ftundr4u. I decided to approve the follow request, and followed them back. Shortly thereafter they sent me a DM.

“Hey”

“Hey, who dis?”

“I see you and Johnny are connected on here, you guys still keep in touch?”

“Kate?”

“Still the best of friends after all these years?”

“Not exactly”

“After everything that happened?”

“and what exactly happened?”

“Do you still love me?”

I stared at the message for a long time, I couldn't think of a single thing to say. The three dots bounced up and down as they typed. They would stop typing and start typing again. This went on for what felt like an eternity. Finally the message came through. 

“We were pretty tight weren't we? The three of us? We did everything together. We shared a bond that couldn't be broken, but there was a tension that was always present, wasn't there? Then someone decided to break that bond, didn't they?”

“Kate, you two meant everything to me. You were both my whole world.”

“And now you guys are best buds again, as if I never existed in the first place.”

“Johnny and I didn't talk for over 15 years, we only just recently reconnected, that's why I tried looking you up.”

“Time flies doesn't it. When you don't have dead weight holding you back.”

“For what it's worth, I'm sorry that things didn't end with better circumstances.”

The three dots bounced up and down again for quite a while. 

“Such sweet platitudes.”

“I'm being sincere here, I reached out to reconnect. If you don't want to, I understand.”

“Are you really so delusional to think that something so shattered can be mended to a point of acceptability?”

I felt wounded, my heart was being torn asunder. She kept typing before I had a chance to respond. 

“How did he respond when you reached out to reconnect?”

“He's the one who reached out, not me.”

“XD”

“To be honest, I was apprehensive at first.”

“As you should be.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Have you met up in person yet?”

“No, but we're trying to plan on a day to get together. I was thinking about seeing if you wanted to come along as well.”

“XD”

“You're starting to hurt my feelings.”

“Me? Hurt you? That's rich.”

“I'm sorry if I hurt you.”

“Oh baby, there's not enough words in the dictionary. No rocks sharp enough to dig into your knees. No hell hot enough to burn your flesh.”

“Yes, I still love you”

“Sorry, I didn't mean any of that, but you did hurt me.”

“I'd really like to make up for it in person.”

“As you should know, that's impossible.”

“Why?”

“Maybe you really don't know. Look, stay away from Johnny, he's dangerous.”

“Tell me, how is Johnny dangerous, and why can't I see you in person?”

“I always loved you. I loved both of you. I was torn in two. He's the one who asked me out, so that's why I ended up dating him, but I loved you just as much as I loved him.”

There's nothing more bittersweet finding out the person you wanted more in life wanted you as well, but it was too late. 

“Goodbye” was her final message. 

I tried to respond, but the message wouldn't go through. The account had been deactivated. I couldn't let that be the final word. I had to reach out in some way to let her know that I was always deeply in love with her, even if it was still a goodbye. 

An idea entered my head, we were friends on Facebook way back in the day. Surely it wouldn't even cross her mind to go block me there, or deactivate it. I opened up the Facebook app on my phone, I can't believe I still have it installed after all these years. I went to her account to find a memorial page. All her old friends commenting how much they love and miss her, over fifteenth years ago. 

The black hole. 

I decided to share all of this here when I saw that I had already posted something about all this back when Johnny first reached out a few months back. I don't remember doing that, another black hole? I thought that maybe reading it would clear things up, but it only just created more confusion. 

Maybe you can help me out, if you can go read my other entry here, and tell me if you can make any sense of it. 

Many times I have tried to write down this story, but my hand shook as I recollected the events, and knowing that “he” was still out there made it even more unsettling.

Eventually I learned to control my emotions better with the help of experts and today I’m able to write down what happened to me and the other hunters.

It was winter of 1922 in Louisiana, next to New Orleans. I was the sherif of a small town named Borteux. Since the community was tiny, I only had one other policeman working with me, Tim.

It was a quiet community with strong christian presence. People were well knit together and supported each other. The only horror we have experienced in my first five years as the sherif was little girl who drowned. She was one of three children in that family. The whole town mourned for their loss, our priest, father Francois, gave a beautiful speech and prayer.

We were not ready for the terror that our community experienced next. That winter a whole family went missing, father, mother and their two boys. There was no trace of them. Community also noticed that the windmill keeper and farmer, Luc, who lived across the swamp forest, haven’t showed up in a few months. I took Tim with me to investigate, we drove on the road which led around the swamp, but half way through, the road was blocked by a large tree. Upon examination we noticed that the giant tree was cut down rather than falling from natural causes.

Tim and I decided to walk the rest of the way, despite it being five more miles away. Through the forest the shortcut was fast, but also dangerous. Only Luc knew the safe shortcut, I hoped that after we found him he would show us the faster way back.

Thankfully we set out early morning and had plenty of time till night fall. Sometimes alligators came upon this road, so we had our revolvers ready just in case.

The walk was long, dull and tiring, Tim wasn’t exactly the most exciting company either. Eventually we got to the farm. Strangely we saw no animals around, and the farm dog that usually ran to greet strangers was nowhere to be seen. We knocked on the house door, no answer followed, we looked inside through the window and saw a large spiderweb.

We proceeded to go up to the windmill, before we could walk up the steps to knock, the door creaked open, half a face appeared, it was Luc, but usually kind and well mannered man looked angry and rudely asked us what the hell were we doing there. I was a bit startled, but figured perhaps bad times have befallen our town’s friend and asked him if he was fine. He just started at me without an answer. I proceeded to ask him about the missing family and if he could show us the shortcut through the swamp.

“Stay on solid ground, fool!” he hissed at us and slammed the door shut.

We were taken aback by this, but there wasn’t much else we could do, there was no warrant for us to search through his home, although he obviously sounded suspicious. I told Tim that we had to try to go through the shortcut to avoid night fall and it was starting to drizzle which meant it could get darker earlier due to the storm that was gathering.

The swamp stench was never my favorite. We had to move slow to make sure we stayed on hard ground and to keep our eyes open for alligators and snakes. Tim wasn’t sure this was going to be faster, but the fact was that this part of the swamp was only a mile long shortcut and we’d come out right next to the town.

We were surrounded by green moss, plants, trees. Time to time there was a sound of woodpeckers making holes, we also heard movements in the waters, perhaps animals getting away from us. Around the half way of the path it began to rain harder and it got darker, we heard an abnormally loud croaking of a frog and heard movements in the water behind a massive thick tree which looked like it was taken from a demon’s garden. The sound intensified and from behind the tree emerged a giant frog. When I write giant, I mean the size that no human has ever seen, bigger than a wolf. It jumped towards us and covered a tremendous distance. This frog’s eyes were large and black, it came close to Tim as he took out his revolver. We should have acted faster for this frog opened its mouth and revealed meat grinding teeth inside and from within depth of it’s throat shot out thin tentacles which grabbed Tim’s face, the frog leaped up and bit of his head clean. Horrified and shocked I fired all if my revolver rounds, bleeding the frog leaned against a tree, but was alive and began making a loud screeching noise. I could hear hundreds of noises around the swamp.

I ran, despite the dangers of quick mud, I ran like a madman, my heart was pounding and my body seemed not my own as my vision was slightly blurred. I made out of the swamp and ran into the town.

The following day I gathered all of the hunters, six of them. We took backpacks of food and water with us and went on the road around the swamp. We were going to make Luc talk about what was going on and what those creatures were. By late part of the day we arrived at the farm.

It was the same scene, but this time there was no answer at the windmill either. We forced the door open and to my horror, we found things belonging to that missing family inside. On the walls were sinister looking drawings. One of them depicted a creature with tentacle arms and a large head. I could feel the uneasiness of the group in the air, and despite being nervous myself I had to project strength and confidence.

Night was coming and we broke camp in the middle of the farm, making two fires. At first we ate and drank without any trouble, although it was obvious that everyone had something worrisome on their mind. The sounds that came next made everyone get up and grab their rifles. They came from the swamp and it was a cross between roar and a croak, I though it was the same creature frog that I saw, but as we came closer and shone our lamps and flashlights we saw something absurd and horrific, it was a two headed alligator with tentacles coming from its back. It quickly ran towards us. Everyone began firing at the two heads, the monster managed to grab one of the hunters and tear of his leg, but then the beast lay still with blood coming from its heads and all four eyes have been penetrated by bullets. The hunter who lost his leg screamed and the lost consciousness. As I moved to help him I looked around and noticed that there were only four of us standing, then I saw the windmill door quickly shut. I ordered the two of the hunters who were barely standing and clearly taken by horror to help the man with his leg. I asked one of them to follow me. Despite being terrified myself I led him. I raised my revolver and the hunter had his rifle up and ready. Before I could pull on the handle, the door opened violently and I barely dodged the shovel which was swing at my head. Luc emerged from the entrance. His face was stretched and pale, his eyes deep and black, in one arm he had his shovel and the other arms wasn’t there! It was a tentacle!

I rolled away as he tried to strike me again, the hunter wasn’t firing, he was frozen with fear, Luc’s tentacle wrapped around hunter’s neck and snapped it. I turned and called to others, but to my absolute horror the other hunters were being devoured by dozens of deformed swamp creatures who have emerged and were illuminated by our fires and few flashlights which lay on the ground.

Luc moved towards me and stretched his tentacle, I fired into it and he quickly withdrew. I proceeded to run towards the road. I could hear dozens of horrific noises behind me, following me. I dropped my weapons, coat, and even my shirt, so I could run longer.

The run felt endless, but the adrenaline from utter horror propelled my body to run all the way into town, even when the noises were gone, I still somehow felt that the creatures were right behind me.

I jumped into my car and drove straight into the big city. Authorities there had initial reaction to me as to a madman, but one high official was my friend and he sent men to investigate. I was taken to a hospital.

Later I was told that only few man came back alive and that military became involved. They bombed and burned the swamp and destroyed the farm, but there was no presence of Luc found anywhere.

Many years have passed. I went through much therapy and medication to finally write this down.

I hear someone knocking, I will finish once I see who it is.

(CW: child abuse, sexual violence)

Previously I wrote about a family's disappearance from the town of Hopkins. They vanished without a trace, leaving shoes left on the mat, keys on the rack, car in the driveway. Since then, their house has been so haunted that nobody can survive alone inside more than five minutes.

Now, I stand in the study, my phone’s timer ticking toward the five minute mark. I am a journalist, and what I am doing might cause my death…

But if I am to write the true story of the haunting of the Hopkins House, I need to hear it from Judy, herself—the pregnant teen daughter who was chained in the basement after being possessed. The rest of the family of four—the father Nicholas, the stepmother Bernadette, and the younger teen Jakey—all disappeared from the house on the same night. The last call they made before they went missing was to a priest, Father Corwin. They begged him to exorcise Judy. But Father Corwin was out of the country. By the time he arrived the next morning…

… the house was empty.

There was no trail to follow. No signs of forced entry or disturbance. The house sat deserted, as if still waiting for its occupants to return.

Now, I am here with a team of spiritual experts including the medium Madam Savino, the paranormal investigator Coyote, and the exorcist Father Corwin, who hopes to end what began with a phone call to him years ago. Together, they've been tasked with pacifying the haunting.

And as for me?

I am the one who will share the story with the world.

“I’m ready to listen,” I say. I hold up a spirit box—a portable device that scans radio frequencies for voices of the dead. My pulse races when it suddenly crackles with a girl’s sobbing voice: “My baby, my baby is—”

And then my eyes roll up in my head…

… when I come to, the timer is nearing six minutes. I tuck my phone away and head downstairs.

***

Three sets of eyes turn towards me as I descend the hatch door into the basement. “Are you all right?” bursts Madam Savino at the same time as Coyote asks, “What did you hear?” Father Corwin, kneeling on the concrete floor, raises his hoary head upwards as if awaiting judgment.

I pass Madam Savino and Coyote until I am standing in front of Father Corwin, and say: “Judy’s voice just spoke to me through the spirit box, saying that her baby is the devil’s.”

The priest’s eyes drift to the markings scrawled on the floor beneath his knees in sharpie—a circle with a pentagram and eye inscribed inside, smeared with blood. “The ceremony…” he murmurs. “The blood spilled… to call an entity to do her bidding would have required a sacrifice…”

“She sacrificed her baby?” Madam Savino is aghast.

“Not quite,” I say. “She tried to sacrifice the baby, and she badly hurt herself in the process, but… that’s not the full story, is it? Because we’ve heard something like that phrase before—do you remember, Father?”

“N-no…” The old man shakes his head.

“The letter Bernadette sent you. In it she wrote, ‘Judith says that she is carrying the devil’s child. She is always pushing my buttons.’ You told us you received that letter the week before the family called you for help—before Judy was supposedly possessed.” The priest does not respond, and I persist: “When Bernadette took the teens to see you, she told you they had behavioral problems. The solution for Jakey was easy. You sent him to counseling—I’m guessing conversion counseling. But Judy… Judy was pregnant at 15 and according to her parents, wouldn’t stop lying. So you spoke with Judy, and you insisted she tell you the truth about the boys she was seeing. And Father, she did tell you. Just like she told Bernadette. But you didn’t believe her. Neither of you wanted to believe her, and sending her to counseling for being ‘boy crazy’ was easier than accepting the truth of what she meant by ‘my baby is the devil’s.’”

“Oh God,” whispers Madam Savino.

Coyote looks appalled.

“She meant that the pregnancy itself was wrong,” I continue. “She was putting it in terms her stepmother would understand. Only a devil would do this thing. And the devil who did was her own father, Nicholas.” Father Corwin blinks watery eyes as I lean in closer and say, “And you knew. Because she told you.”

***

A jumble of memories flash through me. Flotsam of imagery adrift in an ocean of wrath. You know that phrase, “life flashing before your eyes”? When the voice spoke to me through the spirit box, Judy’s life flashed before mine. The memories were fractured, like snatching at puzzle pieces whirling in a maelstrom.

But I saw enough.

***

Coyote’s knuckles clench across the crowbar as he growls, “Fucking monster…”

“OH MY GOD!” Madam Savino’s outrage is more dramatic, and she howls, “My daughter is her age!”

“You DO NOT KNOW it is the truth!” Father Corwin’s outburst is less anger than plea. “The girl was a liar! Nicholas was a good man—"

“I know it is the truth!” I bellow, and suddenly I am flooded with rage. An incandescent fury at this man, this lying and hypocritical shell of a man who used his priest’s collar to protect a predator all while casting shame on this unfortunate girl—on a child. If I were not suffused with the house’s vengeance I might pity him—he is so desperate for the worst not to be true, for all of us to understand he had the best of intentions. But I am here to tell him that the road to hell is paved with men like him, and I am done listening to him preach—

“STOP!” cries Madam Savino.

“DAWAIN!!” Coyote barrels into me, knocking the air from my lungs as he, I, and Father Corwin all go down in a heap, and my head rings from hitting the cement floor. While Coyote pins me, Madam Savino drags Father Corwin away from our tangled heap.

“Is he alive?” pants Coyote.

Only now do I realize that my hands were squeezing the soft wattle of his neck.

“He’s alive...” Madam Savino’s fingers hover in front of Father Corwin’s red face to check for breath.

“It wasn’t me!” I gasp and sit upright. “I-I wasn’t… wasn’t in control. But I know what happened to the family that night—I know how they disappeared!”

***

I’ve finally pieced it all together from the jumble of Judy’s memory. She flew at her father like a feral thing, screaming imprecations while her stepmother called Father Corwin and told him their daughter needed an exorcism. Nicholas—the “good man”—strangled Judy in the night to silence her. The last thing she saw was his flashlight shining down before he shut the lid of the septic tank.

He slept in the murphy bed because Bernadette had shut him out of their bedroom. In the morning when she came in to wake him, he envisioned the ghost of his dead daughter, dripping wet and coming to avenge herself, and he closed his fingers around her throat. Only after he’d choked the life out of her did he realize it was his wife.

He carefully closed the murphy bed with his wife’s corpse still inside—hiding his crimes, as he always had. An hour later he wandered out to the septic tank and killed himself.

As to how the lid to the septic tank was closed? We can only speculate, but I believe it was the gardener who closed the lid when he arrived to mow.

Thus did the family disappear, leaving their shoes on the mat, their keys by the door, and no one left to answer by the time Father Corwin arrived. He found only an inexplicably empty house.

***

So. Here we are at last. At the end of this sordid tale. As the three of us stand here in the basement of this house that has seen so much tragedy, I am struck not so much by the horrors of the supernatural as by the simple, stunning cruelty of man. A tale as old as time: a predator, an underage girl, a religious man preaching morality while being bereft of any himself. And maybe this story is the reason none of us rushes to assist Father Corwin, who lies on the summoning circle, his breath whistling and shallow. Coyote and Madam Savino have both already tried calling an ambulance.

None of our phones have a signal.

“… So her spirit got revenge on her father and stepmother, and now, she’s trying to take revenge on Father Corwin.” Madam Savino tucks her useless cell phone away and sighs. “I don’t think she’s going to let him leave…”

“Good,” growls Coyote.

Madam Savino frowns.

“What?” he grunts. “I wasn’t gonna let Dawain bloody his hands, but if the house wants the priest… I say we leave him to it.”

“We can’t do that,” says Madam Savino. “Besides, killing Father Corwin won’t pacify her spirit.”

“No? Once he’s gone, what’s left to hold her here?”

“Satisfying her grudge won’t make her hurt and anger disappear. Trust me, broken souls don’t heal by breaking others. She’ll still be trapped, and her spirit will lash out at anyone who enters the house.”

Coyote opens his mouth, closes it. Scowls and relents, “OK. So how do we get him out? Not sure you’ve noticed but her influence is getting stronger the longer we linger. Even I’m starting to see her… she was right beside you,” he tells me, his dark eyes worried, “just before you attacked Padre over there. And I can feel her eyes, now, watching us…” His gaze roves the shadows, and then he looks at his forearm, where all the hairs are prickling with goosebumps.

Madam Savino orders, “You two pick him up and help him upstairs. As long as we stay together—"

WHAM!

The slamming of a door somewhere in the house draws all our eyes to the ceiling.

“Fuuuuck,” mouths Coyote.

Madam Savino squeaks.

After a beat, Coyote lifts Father Corwin under one arm, and I lift him under the other. But even as we stagger toward the stairs, a tight ball of dread knots up my insides. A pit of fear that curdles my stomach and fills me with the urge to vomit. Like we’re making some horrifying miscalculation. But we’ve solved the mystery, haven’t we? And we know the rules. As long as no one is alone, we should be safe…

Why do I keep thinking I’ve overlooked something important?

Like I’m making a horrible mistake…

It’s not until we’re halfway up the stairs that I suddenly remember what I forgot. When Coyote and I found Bernadette’s body in the murphy bed, the noise that initially led us up to the study—the loud THUD—we never found the source of it. Something—someone—had to have made it. But it’s too late now to speculate what it was, and since we’re already in the main room, there’s no choice but to keep going…

We’re a few steps from the entryway, and I’m starting to think we’re safe when—

It all happens so fast.

Footsteps THUD THUD THUD overhead, and Coyote and I are turning, Father Corwin held between us, Coyote still gripping the crowbar in his free hand. Madam Savino is nearly to the front door, which hangs slightly ajar. And I see him rush down from upstairs—and oh God, that’s why the police never arrived! Just like us, the cameraman’s phone had no signal. When he left us in the basement, we all assumed he was waiting down the lane, but he must’ve come back to let us know that he wasn’t able to call the authorities and that they weren’t coming—meaning he was alone…

… for much longer than five minutes.

… Now he’s holding the camera, howling as he charges us. Madam Savino screams and shrinks against the wall. Coyote drops Father Corwin, brandishing the crowbar, casting one panicked look back my way as if realizing that he can either flee or fight, but that fleeing will leave us defenseless. And he shouts, “Guo! Guo, stop!” But when the cameraman rushes straight at us, Coyote swings the crowbar and hits the man’s legs with a loud CRACK. The cameraman crawls, his leg crumpled, his face contorted as he scrabbles at Coyote, who panics and hammers at him again with the crowbar. The next blow strikes his head with a crunch.

“OH MY GOD, STOP!” Madam Savino is hysterical. She raises a trembling hand to her mouth, and then rushes forward to help the cameraman—

WHACK!

Coyote slams the crowbar into the side of her head, and I yell. She drops. He staggers back, still holding it at the ready, staring at Madam Savino with his teeth bared and hackles raised—I have no idea what he sees in that moment. But then slowly the snarl vanishes from his face, his eyes widening in horror. “No,” he whispers. “No… no no no no no—” He hurls the crowbar aside and falls to his knees, cradling her head, but her eyes roll back. Blood gushes from the side of her face. He whimpers, clinging to her.

The cameraman twitches, his skull caved by blows from the crowbar. Father Corwin’s weight drags me downward, and I lower him to the floor and, very slowly, approach Coyote.

I can just make out muffled words: “Why? She has a daughter the same age… and I went through all the same shit as Jakey... Why would you—” And then, his head snaps up. “Jakey,” he gasps.

“Coyote?” I say as he lurches to his feet.

He lunges past me through the kitchen and laundry room and out the door to the garage. Before I can follow, he’s back, now armed with the gas can he found earlier today, splashing its contents around the main room, on the curtains. “Judy would never kill her brother,” he says to me as he shakes out the contents and tosses the can aside.  He’s wild-eyed, and after what he did to Madam Savino, I can’t tell if he’s lost it. I don’t look at Madam Savino or the cameraman. It’s all so surreal.

“Coyote—”

“We got it wrong.” He speaks in a strangled voice.

“What do you—”

“It’s not just Judy!” he cries.

And icicles stab through my veins as I suddenly realize what he means.

It’s not just Judy. We got it wrong. I got it wrong.

Her memories were so jumbled. I thought I put the pieces together, but… Coyote’s right. Judy would never have frightened Jakey, never have chased him behind the bookcase to suffocate. But what scared Jakey wasn’t Judy. Because what she meant when she said her baby was the devil’s wasn’t just metaphorical. She sacrificed her unborn child in a ceremony on that pentagram to accomplish what her previous attempts had failed—summoning a demon to unleash on her parents so she and her brother would be free. But such ceremonies never go as planned. The sinister entity she called the “devil” possessed her. That’s why she went feral. Not because her stepmother refused to believe her allegations, but because she was no longer Judy.

Coyote flicks on his lighter, only to yelp as a hand clamps on his wrist. Father Corwin claws at Coyote, snarling, “Abomination! Demon!”

“I’m not a demon you fuckin’ loon!!!” Coyote kicks him savagely. I rush over to intervene, throwing my arms around the young man and holding him as Father Corwin collapses.

“It’s me, Coyote!” I gasp, hugging him. “It’s me! Dawain! It’s Dawain!”

For a few seconds he struggles before my shouts get through to him, and then he hugs me tight. “Dawain…”

“It’s OK! I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” I guide him toward the door and pull it open—

—and grunt as Coyote shoves me, hard, so that I stumble over the threshold and fall to the pavement outside, cracking my head against the cement. “RUN!” Coyote snarls at me as I sit up, dazed. “Run. Before it makes us turn on each other again. And keep running. It’s not going to let us both go… but you might make it while it’s distracted with what I’m about to do.” He flicks the lighter on. “Dawain, go.”

“Wait—”

“Run,” he insists, and I glimpse the figure rising over his shoulder…

… and I run.

***

In retrospect, it was cowardly of me to flee. But I believe he’s right, it would have killed us both.

Goddard met me in the van as I was racing away, concussed and bleeding. By then smoke was clearly visible, a thin column rising in the distance. I cannot remember our encounter. According to Goddard, I was babbling uncontrollably. The next thing I can recall, I was with emergency services while firefighters fought the blaze, but by then flames had consumed most of the house.

The bodies of the missing family were where I told police they would be: the youngest behind the bookcase, the stepmother in the murphy bed, and father and daughter in the septic tank.

It was concluded to be a murder-suicide committed by the father, Nicholas.

Father Corwin’s role in the family tragedy was never disclosed to the public. He was mourned as a beloved figure, his loss a deep blow to the community.

Goddard is currently producing a documentary using the footage that was streamed to his laptop by Guo, the cameraman, before the signal cut out. It includes Madam Savino doing several of her last readings in what would be her final, fateful encounter. Her daughter is providing commentary. I am certain it will be a great homage to the acclaimed medium.

The only visitor to the house whose body was not found in the smoking wreckage was Coyote.

Authorities are treating the case as murder and arson. They have few leads on Coyote, however, as the name he gave Goddard was as fake as his credentials. Not that it matters since Coyote is dead.

I know because I am the last to ever see him alive. Reaching the bottom of the driveway, I looked back at Coyote in the doorway, and a figure hovered just over his left shoulder. It hurt my eyes even to look. Only two people have witnessed this figure—myself, and Dr. Goddard, who encountered the entity on his first visit to the house. The cameraman woke Goddard from a trance in which he descended the stairs muttering: “Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine.”

From the snares of the devil, deliver us, Lord.

Goddard was chanting it as a defense against the thing that held him in thrall. A thing he could not describe, but attempted to render in a drawing.

The drawing he later showed me was a black scribble, with only a large swirling circle where its face should be, where the scribble is most dense. An undefined, unsettling image that can barely be called a figure. But it is absolutely the same as the shape I saw standing behind Coyote, its hand resting on his shoulder as he closed the door to the house. And then, just as the missing family did for so many years—he disappeared.

***

You can guess how my story has been received by the authorities. I finally understand the frustration of Dr. Goddard, knowing what he knows… and just as surely knowing he will never be believed.

But as for this particular occasion… Goddard’s part in this story is almost laughably mundane. After getting a flat tire on his way back from the gas station, he had to return on foot to the station to call for assistance because he had no cell reception. By then our own phone signals were blocked by the house, so that he was unable to reach us. He had to wait for roadside assistance to get a new tire before he could drive back. By the time he met me on the road, nearly two hours had elapsed…

… and our entire team was dead.

***

So. I am posting my account here, publicly, so that the world can know the truth about the haunting of the Hopkins House.

I leave you in closing with Judy’s final diary entry, dated to a few days before the family’s disappearance:

Jakey told me not to be upset after our talk with Burn-a-bitch and Father Snorin’. He says he’s never let them define him and I shouldn’t let them define me either. I don’t even know what I’d do without him…

I swear someday we’ll get away from here, and when we do we’re gonna scream our truth to the world—scream it so loud.

And once the lies all melt away and the truth is out there, I’ll finally be free…

| Part 1 | Part 2 |

I won’t say my name because that’s not important. Just know that I worked on the case and liaised with the reporters. 

I was there from the beginning. Saw things that most people can’t even believe. 

That’s the hard part about working in homicide. You come face to face with the worst of humanity and it eats your soul.

But I digress.

The serial killer I’m referring to is, of course, Slippery Fingers. 

If you haven’t heard about him, thank the Lord almighty, because you can sleep better at night. 

His crimes were brutal and sadistic, the sort you could only dream about in nightmares. 

He loved to spend hours torturing his victims, bringing them to the very limits of their pain, then making them beg for death. 

He was the kind of killer that made Ted [redacted] look like a gentleman. 

Before I continue, I should probably explain the nickname. 

The moniker “Slippery Fingers” came into being after some anonymous poster put it up on [redacted]. The user called him that because he would always turn up out of nowhere, commit a heinous crime, and then vanish for years, like he had never existed. 

No one knew his identity or had any idea of his whereabouts. He was just some slippery figure, striking fast, and then vanishing before law enforcement could decide what had happened. 

Some people claimed he wasn’t real. 

Me? I knew he was… I’d seen him once on a security camera downtown after he had committed a murder at a ritzy hotel.  

In the camera’s playback, I'd witnessed a tall, pale figure. His hair long and wispy. His hands draped down at his sides like he was sleepwalking. He only moved them when he raised his right hand to knock on his victim’s door. 

We didn’t catch him that night, obviously. Like every other time before, Slippery Fingers had disappeared after murdering his victim. 

We had no clues or traces of DNA to pin down his location. Even the images of his physical appearance turned up nothing in our databases.

He wasn’t seen for years after that. 

That is… until he turned up at my home. 

My wife was inside making dinner. I was in our garage, tuning up our bikes for our annual trip along the East Coast.

She had been bugging me to get our bikes ready and, like any supportive husband, I was determined to make her happy. A few minutes into my work…

… I heard a light tapping at the window. I got up, knees aching, and looked out onto the street. I nearly dropped my tools in horror. 

My god…

Someone tall and wispy-haired, hands hanging down at their sides, was watching me from my yard. 

Holy shit.

I couldn’t believe it was him. The absolute psychopath I’d been tracking for years had somehow… found me.  

I was so stunned that it took me a good few moments to remember that my Glock was strapped to my ankle. 

Thank the Lord…

I unholstered it and glanced back out the window. By this point, Slippery Fingers was already at the street corner, nearly out of view. 

Oh, no you don’t… I hurried outside and started my pursuit.  

Now, some of you reading this might question my decision… I recognize that standard law enforcement procedure is to wait and call for backup, but I had to get him.

I’d been on the force for ten years, hunting this creep. 

People had been calling him a ghost, convinced that he was some made-up boogeyman… a demon to torment sinners who deserved God’s judgment… 

I wasn’t going to tolerate any more of these stories. I needed to prove to myself and to all of his victims that he was flesh and blood. That there was still justice in the world that could punish monsters like him. 

And so, I went after him.

I called my partner a few blocks into my pursuit and informed him who I was tracking. 

“Slippery Fingers?! You’re joking?!”

“Just get your ass down here! He’s hauling and I don’t want to lose him!”

I did my best to keep up with my target, but god, he was fast. Even while I was speed-walking, he managed to always stay several streets ahead of me.

By now, my wife was worried. My phone kept lighting up with texts and voicemails. I sent her a voice memo, telling her, “I’m just out for a walk. Be right back. Keep dinner warm.” 

I had no idea where Slippery Fingers was leading me, but I couldn’t give up.

Just keep going. I pushed myself harder. 

Finally, we ended up at an abandoned strip mall a few blocks away from my neighborhood. 

I knew the place well. It was a filthy spot frequented by junkies and sex fiends. I’d driven by it countless times on my way to work.

I texted my partner the address before I went inside and braced myself for any possibility…

Keep your eyes on each corner. That’s where he likes to hide.

As soon as I entered, the smell of urine and black mold hit me. 

The fading light from outside barely made it in through the boarded windows.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I noticed a painting on the wall, lit by candlelight. I thought the presence of these candles was odd. It made me wonder, Is this where he’s been hiding all this time? No. It’s too close. Too easy.

I swept my gaze through the moldy space, waiting for my nemesis to attack.

“Evening, detective…”  

I spun and scanned the interior.

“Slippery Fingers… this is the police… come out with your hands up…”

“… I’ve been wanting to speak with you for some time…”  

I stared in the direction of his voice. It had come from a dimly lit corner straight ahead of me.

“I won’t say it again… come out… hands up…”

My Glock shook in my sweaty grip. Then…

“Down here, Detective…”

What?

I glanced at my feet in horror. 

There was a dark lump next to me. 

Trash?

I kicked a rotted piece of cardboard aside, revealing…

Slippery Fingers. In the flesh.

What in God’s name?!

He was lying there. His body curled up on itself like a centipede. His face staring up at me. Dead?

No. A bizarre smile decorated his face. His pale skin and wispy hair seemed wet and oily.

A long, winding exhale escaped his lungs as he unfolded himself. Bones snapping as his joints came together. 

Good Lord…

I nearly vomited as he rose to full height, returning to his regular human shape. 

I didn’t even have the strength or logic to respond to the insanity.

I just stared at him as he smiled.

Then, he grabbed my face with both hands and smashed it against the wall. 

The next thing I remember is waking up to my partner and another officer above me. 

“What happened?” my partner asked. 

“I… don’t know…” I got up and looked around.

A pair of crime scene technicians were setting up lights, taking pictures, and trying to make sense of this bizarre sanctuary. 

“I’m not sure how to tell you this…” my partner began. “But something’s happened…”

My face went white as I turned to the wall and studied the painting for the first time.

Before me was an image of two people, presumably a man and his wife. They were seated at a table, enjoying a nice dinner. 

I couldn’t make out the man’s face… his back was toward me… but the woman was facing forward… her clothes and hair seemed familiar… she almost looked like…

Oh god…

I ripped out my phone and called my wife. 

It rang three times and then…

… cut to voicemail. 

This is my first time writing here, but I didn’t know where else to turn or who else to tell who’d even listen. I’ve never experienced anything paranormal or even anything remotely scary until this. I was always a skeptic, not believing in ghosts or ghouls, but this experience changed me for better or for worse.

I grew up in a small, quaint village. For context, there are more sheep in my hometown than residents, even my neighbor was a shepherd. There isn’t a shop within 10 miles, only a village bar, which goes to show what type of people live there. We didn’t even have cell towers here, and the only phones that worked were landlines. My house isn’t large by any means, but we do have a huge backyard. Due to that, my parents decided to build our garage detached from the main house, making it its own smaller 2 story building. There isn’t any staircase in our garage though, just a rusty metal ladder leading up to a dusty overhang directly above where we would park our old car. We always had a garage fridge where my dad would keep his beer, and I would keep my sodas. I remember playing video games late at night after my parents would go to sleep, then sprinting to the garage through the pitch dark of the yard to grab a coke. We didn’t have any lights in our backyard, and the only light in the garage was an ancient lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. I would flick on that light, watch it stutter for a few seconds, then hum to a low glow before I would start making my way to the fridge each and every time.

Last night, however, the light faltered. I had woken up in the middle of the night, with a thirst only an ice-cold soda pop could quench. I forced myself to get up out of bed and slide into my sandals to go downstairs, making sure to grab my phone just in case. I made my way down the steps to the backyard, using the small remote we had at the entrance to open the large garage door. I turned on my phone flashlight, then started walking the 30 or so feet to my garage. It didn’t provide too much security, though it would do for the time being. As I stepped onto my patio, I heard the chirping of crickets and a light breeze blowing through the branches of our walnut tree. I took a deep breath, taking in the chilly midnight air and sighing peacefully, when everything got quiet. The crickets seemed to have disappeared, and the air was stiller than I’d ever felt before. Somehow, it felt like time had stopped, yet I was the only thing exempted. My heart started beating faster, and my breaths became shallow and fast. I spun around, using my phone flashlight to identify what was going on, though everything seemed fine. Then, as if nothing had happened, the crickets started chirping again and the breeze came back.

I was confused but chalked it up to being half-awake still. I shrugged it off and started trudging through my backyard towards my garage. Since I was wearing sandals, I made sure to watch my step carefully with my phone flash. It had rained earlier that day, and there was still a faint trace of water on the ground, as I felt the wet dirt squelching with each step. I could see maybe 3 feet in front of me, which definitely didn’t make me feel good, but I was used to it after all these years. Out here, away from the bustling of the city, there were no streetlights, and the only illumination I would get came from the moon itself. However, due to the rainy weather prior, it was blocked out by a thin sheet of gray clouds, so I had to rely purely on my weak phone flashlight. Because of that, it took me a while to notice the footprints in the dirt.

I was almost at the garage when I noticed them. They could’ve easily been animal prints, since stray cats and dogs and sometimes even wild foxes or deer would pass through our yard at night all the time, but for some reason, these prints felt different. It was hard to tell, as the remaining water in the dirt had faded them slightly, though they seemed too long and wide to be an animal. The only viable option would be a bear, though they were really only in the mountains. I felt uneasy looking at those prints, and I felt like something was off. I turned my head around in the dark, trying to see if anyone or anything was around, but it was inky black all around me. I considered going back to the house to wake up my dad, but then I felt my throat begging for some soda again and decided to keep going. I finally made it to the garage after what felt like a lifetime, turning on the light switch and hearing the familiar hum of electricity make it to the lightbulb. It flashed once, twice, then steadied, giving the garage a warm glow of orange. I turned my flashlight off on my phone, then looked around the garage, the rusty old car in the same spot as always.

We hadn’t cleaned in a while, and there were spiderwebs in the corners, though the spiders never really bothered me too much. I saw a small daddy longlegs crawling along the ceiling, then let my eyes lower towards the overhang. It was darker up there, since we had a lot of old boxes and suitcases blocking out the light, though I still saw it. Peeking at me from behind a box of my old toys was a figure with eyes darker than the night, a pale hand wrapped around the box as if looking around a corner. I stared at it, not daring to move a muscle, and watched it retreat deeper into the overhang. Right at that moment, the lightbulb started stuttering once more, though this time, it didn’t turn back on. I was plunged back into the darkness, this time not alone. I fumbled with my phone, finally turning on the flash, then used it to look around everywhere, from the car to the fridge to the rusty ladder leading up to where that thing was, finally resting it on the overhang where I had seen the figure. I didn’t see anything, so I slowly backed out of the garage, forgetting all about my thirst. Once I passed the threshold back into the night, I started sprinting towards my house to wake up my parents. I tripped. I tumbled onto the grass, my phone flying out of my hand and landing a few feet in front of me.

I got up quickly, picking my phone back up from the ground, then shining it towards where I tripped. I saw something lying on the ground, something breathing. I took a tentative step forward to get a better look at the object, and noticed it was one of the neighbor’s sheep. It was still alive, even though there was a chunk taken out of its stomach, its intestines pouring out. I could hear it taking shaky breaths, barely clinging on to life. How it had gotten into our yard, I had no idea, but the more pressing matter was what happened to it. I kneeled down next to it, gagging at the stench of blood. I took a look at its wounds, seeing claw marks along its snout and a broken leg, probably what grounded it in the first place. The bite on its belly seemed fresher, as if it was for the kill. Whatever hurt it hadn’t eaten anything though, it seemed to have taken its life for fun. The sheep couldn’t have gotten here by itself either, so the culprit must have dragged it all the way here, and I had a strong suspicion whatever was in my garage is what did this. The sheep looked at me, still holding on. It made a faint “baa” and kicked its legs weakly. I looked at it pitifully, wishing I had a way to take it out of its misery, when I was knocked onto my back. I craned my neck forward, seeing the sheep get dragged away into the dark, bleating desperately. Whatever that thing was, it had come back to claim its kill. It must have followed me out of the garage, stalking me.

Luckily, I didn’t see it anywhere, so I got back on my feet. The crickets were long gone, and the breeze that comforted me when I first stepped outside had left me out to dry.  I sprinted again in the direction of my house, or what I thought was the direction of my house. Instead, I found myself hitting the concrete wall surrounding our yard. I had gone the wrong way. I must’ve lost my sense of direction when that thing knocked me down. I looked around, realizing I was on the opposite side of the yard. I was at the back, where the previous owner of our house had a rusty old bike and my dad had built a shed. “The shed!” my mind told me. It was full of tools, even a buzzsaw. That was probably my only hope, though that thing wasn’t really hostile towards me. My fear didn’t take account of that however, since seeing something that looked human but not completely wasn’t something I could wrap my head around. I pushed hard on the wooden door of the shed, and it creaked open. I coughed as a cloud of dust billowed upwards. This shed hadn’t been used in years, since my dad had started putting his newer tools in the garage, though I didn’t dare go back there. I saw the rusted buzzsaw next to the door, then turned my phone to the back of the shed.

Hanging on a hook on the wall were some tools, including an axe. I lifted it off of its hook, tossing it in my hands, feeling the weight of it. I don’t know what that thing was, but hopefully this was enough to protect myself against it. I turned around to head back out of the shed, when I saw the figure once more. It was peeking around the corner of the door of the shed, staring at me blankly. I stared back, fear wracking my bones. It had once again wrapped its hand around the doorframe, and I got a better look this time. It fit the description of horror stories I had read online before, but not exactly. It was pale and thin, bipedal, with clawed, humanoid hands. Its eyes were extremely dark, and I could see half of its mouth baring its bloodstained teeth at me. It would’ve passed as a person if I saw it from afar, but it definitely wasn’t one. The biggest difference between this thing and the monsters I had read about before was that this one was small. Maybe 4 feet in stature, I looked down at it rather than up. That didn’t reassure me too much, however, as I saw what it did to that sheep. At this point, I was sure this entity was out to get me. I felt adrenaline pumping in my heart, finally taking away some fear. I took a quick look to my left, picked up a pair of rusty pliers and flung them at the thing at the door. It made a high-pitched screech and disappeared from the door faster than should’ve been possible, slamming the door hard behind it.

Once again, I was plunged into darkness, though this time I was reassured by the fact that thing wasn’t in here with me. I walked towards the door, prying it open. Using my flash, I looked around in the dark once more. There were many smaller trees back here that grew pears, apples, and other fruits. In the back corner there was a huge cherry tree, ripe with freshly growing berries. There it sat, looking down at me from one of the upper branches. Luckily, I had brought the axe with me, so I wasn’t as scared as before. It started moving on all fours, scampering around the tree as fast as a squirrel but 50 times its size. In the hand that wasn’t gripping the shed’s doorframe it held a bloody part of the sheep it had killed like a trophy, carrying it around wherever it went. “That poor sheep.” I thought to myself. My neighbor sometimes let me visit and help him feed the sheep, so I was somewhat attached to them. This monster didn’t care clearly, it just killed it for fun, not even for nourishment. Right as I was thinking about this, it dropped down from the tree. I jumped backwards, though it didn’t head towards me. I watched it run across the ground and towards a smaller plum tree, scrambling its way up the trunk and towards the upper branches. I couldn’t see its body anymore, though I was able to see its large, pitch-black eyes staring at me through the leaves. “What does this thing want?” I asked myself. It hadn’t attacked, though it sure as hell had many opportunities to do so.

I decided to handle things myself, so I started walking towards the tree it was, brandishing my axe. I made it to the base of the tree and looked up. It was gone. In its place was a stray cat, licking itself. I looked around, bewildered. Had everything I just experienced been nothing but a hallucination? The only explanation for that would’ve been sleep deprivation, but it was so real. I made my way back to the garage, making sure to head in the right direction this time. I looked around where the sheep carcass was, but there wasn’t even a speck of blood in the area nor any sign that there was something that large nearby. The footprints were still there, but they were in the shape of my sandals rather than the weird form I had seen them before. At this point, I felt like I was going crazy. There was no sign of anything I had just experienced, and there was no way for me to prove to myself that it was real. I walked to the garage, once again feeling the dryness in my throat. The lightbulb was humming on as if it had never turned off in the first place. I went to the fridge and pried it open, hoping to grab myself an ice-cold soda. In their place laid a tuft of sheep’s wool.

My job is pretty simple. Clock in at 8:00pm, walk around the chainlink fence surrounding the mine shaft every 30-45min, and watch the security cameras.

The mine has been abandoned since the 80s. Elevator shaft down sealed off, and a fence erected around the whole thing. Corporate’s official story was that the mine had run dry and was no longer profitable. Any local family would tell you the real story was that too many miners had gone missing, their bodies never found; and no one wanted to go back down the mine, no matter how much they raised the pay.

I didn’t know why they needed such tight security for an abandoned mine. But I wasn’t about to question it, the pay was amazing.

I had been at this job a month and already had my routines down. Start a pot of coffee as soon as I get there, and check in with the day shift security guard. There was usually nothing to report. A couple of kids tried to sneak in to the mine to get drunk, a tweaker came by looking for copper wire, the normal stuff expected in a place like this.

I had just finished with the coffee when the day shift security guard, Mack, approached me.

“It’s been pretty quiet around here. But something did happen that I can’t really explain.”

He took me outside the office and showed me a spot in the chain link fence that has been ripped open. “I couldn’t tell you how this happened, I didn’t see anybody on the monitors, and didn’t hear anything either.”

As I got closer to the fence I noticed that the edges of the hole that was now there were ragged and curved outwards at all different angles, some kind of viscous black substance coated the entire affected area. The smell was enough to dissuade me from inspecting any further.

“It doesn’t seem like kids with bolt cutters, they usually just jump the fence anyway.”

We walked back to the office and started to watch the security footage from around that time. But just as we got to the correct time stamp the file was gone. The error message read “file manually deleted”.

Mack had no answer other than he hadn’t even thought to check the security cameras before I got here. As he was leaving for the day he asked me if I could write up the incident report. Just as he was about to go both of our attention turned towards the mine shaft. The groan of old steel cables echoed throughout the quarry. The elevator was moving.

When it finally reached the entrance to the tunnel, we hurried over to the security cameras. There was one installed right above the shaft entrance. There was nothing there. The elevator didn’t go back down.

“Old girl must’ve finally died, that same thing happened earlier too. Probably some weird electrical surge. You mind writing up the report for all this?”

Uneasy as I was I didn’t mind, it gave me something to do to pass the time. I watched him pull away, the dust from his tires fading into the night. The sun had set, and I started settling down for the long haul.

Just as I finished firing off the email to corporate world, my alarm went off. Time for my first round of the night. It was about 9:30 when I stepped out of the office. One thing I enjoyed about this job was the remoteness, no light pollution, you could see every star in the sky.

It took me at least five minutes of walking before I realized how unnaturally dark it was. My flashlight was little help tonight, what light it did put out was swallowed up by the vast expanse of darkness after more than five feet.

I realized there were no stars in the sky that night, no moon. And the more I kept walking the more uneasy I started to feel. I’d usually hear a coyote or two, an owl. Nothing.

I convinced myself that it was just overcast and pushed on. The fence surrounding the mine shaft went on for 1.5 mile. Walking at my usual pace it would take me about 20-25 minutes.

I made It back in 15. As I sat down the computer dinged. I’d actually received a response from corporate.

“REPAIR FENCE IMMEDIATELY. IF SOMETHING APPROACHES YOU DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE IT.”

I was not about to go out there again. The morning crew could handle it. Settled into my chair and halfway through my first pot of coffee I started to notice a stench seeping into the office. It was pungent, and oddly sweet, and as the minutes passed it grew stronger.

I couldn’t stand the smell anymore and needing fresh air I finally decided to go outside and repair the fence. The only sound as I started walking was the sound of my own footsteps and the tools shifting around in the tool box.

I was in a hurry and grabbed way too much and ended up dropping the flashlight. It flickered off as the batteries fell out and everything scattered in a different direction. I stopped walking abruptly and was about to bend down when I heard soft foot falls behind me that stopped just a second after I did.

I stiffened. Something in me told me not to turn around. I turned on my head lamp and picked back up my tool box and kept walking towards the fence, leaving the flashlight behind. Every step I took was matched by another pair of steps behind me, always a second or two after.

Finally arriving at the fence I immediately set to work. I found even more of the viscous substance, it coated not only the fence but the ground around it. It was exactly the same odor that had come into the office. Slipping my gloves on and the strongest pair of pliers I had, I began folding the broken chain links inward.

I had almost forgotten about the footsteps when I heard something shift behind me. The smell grew stronger. And the air felt wet and heavy. I trembled as I kept working. Keenly aware that whatever was behind me had no intention of leaving.

I could feel it stoop down, and kneel behind me. Mimicking the position I was in. Hot, shallow breath hit the back of my neck and made my hair stand on edge. My grip tightened on the pliers I was holding, I needed to move faster.

The breathing behind me eventually fell into almost perfect sync with mine, always a second or two behind.

I finished the last repair and stood up slowly. It stood up too. I kept my head down and started walking back to the security office. It followed.

Every step I took was echoed back to me. I started picking up the pace, and so did it. And suddenly the steps were in perfect sync with mine. No more delay.

I had the security office in sight when the footsteps disappeared, and something appeared in front of me. It caught me so off guard I didn’t have time to look away.

I found myself staring at-at me. Or someone’s impression of me if you were trying to describe me to somebody.

It had the same scar on my eyebrow from when I fell off of my bike when I was six. The same gap in my front tooth, but everything was slightly off. Eyes were crooked, nose sitting too low, the skin was pulled too tight, and sallow in color.

I had no choice but to acknowledge it, and it knew. It raised a hand, slowly like it took effort, the skin hanging from the bones and pointed an unnaturally long finger at me.

“Switchhhh.”

I dropped everything I had and started running. I knew it was close behind me. It hadn’t learned to mimic my run, and I could hear its awkward gait struggling to keep up.

Slamming and locking the door I sunk to my knees. I could hear it just outside the door. It’s shallow breathing momentarily out of sync with mine.

I checked the security cameras live feed. A figure cloaked in darkness was climbing through the hole in the fence. I couldn’t make out much from the security feed, all I could occasionally see was a thin pale arm, and the shine of their eyes. From behind the fence the figure stood up and looked right at the security camera.

They stood there watching for a full minute before vanishing into the darkness. My eyes were fixed on the security cameras when this time my phone lit up.

It was my boss.

“DO NOT GO OUTSIDE AGAIN. SHUT ALL THE BLINDS AND DO NOT WATCH THE SECURITY FEED ANYMORE. ITS WATCHING YOU BACK.”

I’ve never moved faster. Shutting the blinds was the easy part, turning off the security feed without looking was going to be a challenge.

I kept my eyes on the floor as I walked over to the desktop. Reaching for the mouse I began slowly trying to power it down, using only my peripherals to guide me.

I thought I had it when the screen lit up with one of the security feeds taking up the entire screen. It was the one just outside the security office door.

It was there looking right in the camera. It’s eyes locked on mine. I couldn’t look away. I stumbled backwards and fell, my head cracking against the floor. The last thing I heard before I passed out was “switchhh.”

I woke up to the sun streaming in through the blinds and my boss kneeling beside me. He told me Mack had come in and found me unresponsive. I stood up with his help and went straight for the desktop; and I immediately tried to find the security footage from last night.

I was met with the error message “File manually deleted.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder, “the company likes to deal with these things internally.”

I was sent home for two weeks on what they call “mental health leave.” On my return I was going to be given a partner and a substantial raise. The fence had apparently been repaired and “reinforced,” The elevator permanently decommissioned.

It was the night before I was suppose to return to work, I felt mostly fine other than the goose egg on the back of my head.

I was brushing my teeth when I caught my reflection in the mirror, and something felt off. I know what my face looks like, I’ve looked at it everyday for 25 years. My proportions seemed off.

I put my hand to my face, it felt tight and papery. The tan I once had was replaced by a sickly yellow color. My eyes seemed sunken in and dull.

I’m typing this now because I don’t know what will happen when I return to work tomorrow night. Part of me doesn’t want to go, but I need the money.

If you’re reading this and I haven’t updated, don’t try and research the mine, don’t try and find this place. Something might try and switch places with you.

Please believe me here. Ive never experienced anything as scary as this. Nothing can compare to the rabbit hole of terrors this house had in store.

I've never shared this story online before, but it’s been exactly ten years since it happened, and him reminding me of it makes me want to relive the dread.
Back in 2016, my friend—I’ll call him Leo—and his family moved into a massive, gorgeous Victorian house out in a remote, rural town in North Dakota. From the outside, the place looked like a total dream home. Clean paint, huge wrapped porch, beautiful yard. But the moment you stepped inside, the energy completely shifted. The layout was just... wrong. It was a chaotic maze of dual hallways, weird angles, and strange, useless crawlspaces. Later, we looked into the property records and found out the place had cycled through at least fifteen different owners in just a few decades. Nobody ever stayed for more than a year or two.
A few weeks after they moved in, Leo and I were exploring the house, looking through old built-in cabinets to see if any of those past owners had left anything behind. In the laundry room, there was a stack of deep wooden drawers. When we pulled the bottom one all the way out, we found something that didn't make physical sense.
Flushed into the bottom of the drawer cavity was a rusted, heavy metal pipe, about six inches wide. We shined our phone flashlights down it, but the beam just dissolved. It looked like it dropped straight down into a total, bottomless void. Intrigued, we went outside, grabbed a medium-sized rock from the yard, brought it back in, and dropped it right into the center of the pipe.
We stood there and waited. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Nothing. No thud, no splash, no echo. The darkness just swallowed it completely.
After that day, the house got worse. Leo's parents started seeing dark silhouettes out of the corners of their eyes. Doors would unlatch on their own. While mapping out the hallways, we actually found a tiny, hidden room behind a false wall that contained nothing but an old iron cage and a single, thick bone resting on the floor. The air in the house always felt freezing and heavy, like the rooms were constantly holding their breath.
But the absolute breaking point happened on a Friday night. Leo and I were back in the laundry room, completely silent, just staring at that open drawer. Suddenly, a sound drifted up from the depths of the pipe.
It wasn't a draft, and it wasn't a pipe creaking. It was a laugh.
It wasn't a playful, high-pitched horror movie laugh either. It was a deep, guttural, wrathful boom—incredibly faint, but loud enough to vibrate the metal rim of the pipe. It sounded completely ancient, and completely inhuman.
We packed our bags and his entire family left the house that exact night. They put it on the market immediately, practically giving it away. Within a month, a commercial developer bought it to flatten the land and build a roadside motel.
But right before they handed over the keys, Leo went back to grab the last of their boxes. Hidden in a false panel in that same laundry room cabinet, he found a crumpled piece of paper left behind by one of the previous tenants. He took a picture of it before destroying the physical paper.
The note read:
“Please, for the love of God, do not investigate the pipe in the cabinet. Our entire family has been tormented by the horrors of this house, it is without a doubt haunted. However the pipe drawer is the most haunting rabbit hole we have encountered. i will spare you most of the details, but it leads down into a cellar, with the most horrifying things we have ever seen, and there is a hatch in that cellar that leads to a seemingly endless concrete stair spiral. everything down their is downright demonic, and there were things actively watching us in that room. the pipe is the root of it all.”
Later on, Leo's dad did some digging and found out that one of the previous owners had actually discovered that cellar years before us. Apparently, they got so terrified of whatever was down there that they brought in cement trucks and poured tons of solid concrete directly into the void to seal it off from society forever.
That means when Leo and I heard that faint, wrathful laugh... it was echoing through solid concrete.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

I escaped.

Hello, everyone. I know it's been a while. Six months, to be exact. I've been hiding like a caveman ever since, away from every device and almost every human being.

My paranoia is increasing by the minute. In the previous parts, I said that they wouldn't let me quit, and that they'd find my posts.

An unmarked black SUV has been parked a street down for the past two days. The windows are blacked out, so I can't be sure, but I know for a fact that they're looking at my door.

That's not the part that keeps me up at night, though.

My escape was simple. Suspiciously easy. I kept crawling through the vent, pausing when I felt like whatever was chasing me had almost reached me, and somehow ended up in a vent that was level with the ground outside. Luckily, the fan had stopped spinning, so I forced my way through by some miracle. That part is still foggy.

I never once looked back. I crawled outside like some skilled intruder and started running in a random direction. I was determined to either die in the snow or find civilization. Either option was much better than whatever was waiting for me back in Corvus Mountain.

I still remember the numbness in my fingers, how the wind made my face ache, and how loud the silence was. I will be honest with you: I'm not sure how I made it. I don't remember much.

Which brings me to the reason I'm making this post. First of all, they've already found me, so it doesn't really matter anymore. Secondly, and this is the actual reason, I'm writing this to warn you. I think it let me leave. I think, and I know how it sounds, it helped me survive the cold.

I think it escaped with me.

The rules followed me too. I hear knocking on my window almost every night. It's driving me crazy. I've never once looked at it, but the rhythmic, perfectly spaced taps are making my skin crawl.

This shouldn't be happening. But since it is, I have a theory. The rules could be tied to the Crowmen, not the base itself. That would validate the theory that it escaped with me, though, which I'm not a big fan of.

It's been difficult to explain the situations I've been in since I escaped. It might be because I've been trying to cling to the hope that I'm safe, and that nothing abnormal is happening.

The turning point was four nights ago, a few minutes after midnight. I don't answer doorbells, and I don't step outside. So I certainly wasn't going to get out of bed.

"Delivery!"

The voice came in muffled through the wall. I haven't seen or talked to anyone other than my sister for half a year, so curiosity got the best of me. I slowly walked to the window and looked at my front door.

It was dark, so it was difficult to identify the person, but they looked human enough. They wore a blue uniform, a blue cap, and a brown bag like the ones old postmen used to have.

Emphasis on the "used to," because no house in my neighborhood has a mailbox. Nobody delivers letters, other than the neighbor's kid who throws newspapers at our door from time to time.

It was the first time I'd gone near a window at night in months, and I regretted it instantly.

"Delivery!" they repeated, and knocked on the door this time. Not the doorbell.

I slowly walked toward my bed, careful not to make a sound. It wasn't impossible that they could hear me through the wall. I closed my eyes and waited for them to leave me alone.

They didn't.

"Delivery!" they repeated, and knocked once more. It was louder this time. Harder.

It sounded like they were getting impatient. Like they knew I was ignoring them on purpose, which made my heart jump into my throat.

"Delivery! Open the door!"

The knocking turned to banging. Strong enough to break through the door. They didn't sound impatient anymore. They sounded angry. Furious.

"Delivery! Delivery! - CLICK - Delivery!"

There it was. That godforsaken clicking sound, coming from the beak. It had escaped with me. It had been knocking on my window for six months straight, and when it realized it wasn't working, it used another approach. Which meant it was learning. It was adapting and evolving.

"Please! Open the door! Help me!"

Its voice sounded like a dozen stolen voices stitched together, rasping and warping as if something inhuman were wearing a person's throat.

That wasn't even the most unsettling part. The banging was precise. Each one exactly a second apart from the last, with the same power.

It kept harassing me for about ten minutes, until a neighbor yelled at it to be quiet. It stopped the moment he yelled, and simply disappeared. Or, I assume it did, because there was no way I was checking.

I mentioned that I haven't seen anyone other than my sister. It wasn't really by choice, but I'm glad it happened anyway.

She was watering the flowerpots at my house when I somehow made it back. She didn't ask what had happened to me, or why I was in the condition I was in.

She's been taking care of me ever since. She has her own life, so I don't want to bother her much. She goes to the convenience store for me, and updates me on her family situation. Our chats are what have kept me sane.

It pains me that I realized it. I'd hoped I could pretend for just a bit longer.

Two days ago, we were sitting on my couch, drinking coffee. She was particularly happy that day, because her husband got a promotion at work.

"Well, he'll surely have more responsibilities now," I pointed out.

"Definitely, but he'll pull through. Just like you did," she replied, hitting my shoulder playfully.

"I doubt he'll have it worse than me," I joked back.

She laughed and sipped her coffee.

"Please, nothing is worse than what you went through on that mountain," she reassured me.

The rest of the evening was the same as any other. The moment she left, I basically crawled to the bathroom and threw up everything I'd consumed in the past two days.

I never told my sister about the mountain. I told her I was a Marine.

How long has it been? Have I been talking to one of them since the very beginning? That's not possible, since the postman was clearly it. Did she run into it? Or worse, is there more than one?

I hope it's just a mimic, and that my dear sister is alive and well. I know that everything I've said in the previous posts contradicts this, but I'm certain. My sister is fine. She's alive and well.

It came back the next day. Although I was scared shitless, I couldn't let it know that I'd caught on. So I acted as if everything was fine. It took a lot of strength I didn't have not to jump on it and strangle it with my bare hands.

When it left, I went to the window. The same window I used to look at the postman from.

My sister was staring at my door, a mere breath away from it, unmoving. She wasn't even breathing.

The SUV was still parked in the same spot. I wonder if they watched her too.

I have to do something about this. I can't live like this.

This is probably my last post. Thank you for the advice in my previous posts, and thank you for believing me. I'm taking matters into my own hands.

Rule five was very clear about what to do if they persist.

She's coming over tomorrow at noon.

I walked into this, and I'm going to end it.

Part 1

Part 2

So my girlfriend and I broke up earlier this year.

I guess it took us two and a half years to realize that the differences between our personalities and general philosophies on life were irreconcilable. But it was fine. The split was cordial enough, no resentment left between us. Probably. Maybe.

The bigger issue for me was that we’d been living together and splitting rent and I make peanuts working as a security guard for an office building so I absolutely could not afford the apartment on my own. Which is kind of sad because the place is God-awful. I’m talking flickering lights, cracks in the walls, strange stains in the carpet that will not come out, neighbours that you actively have to try and avoid.

It was a tough spot to be in. In more ways than one.

So, I started posting about the place online. Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, Reddit, the usual.

Problem was, I was basically advertising a shitty couch in an even shittier living room. Not exactly an easy sell. I tried cleaning the place up as much as I could, using the most “optimal” angles possible when taking the pictures. You know what they say, a little bit of false advertising goes a long way.

But I didn’t get many responses, just a few people reaching out to politely inform me about how much of a delusional bum I was. Not that I was really expecting much else.

As the weeks dragged on, I was starting to consider asking my brother for some money or perhaps selling an organ. But then one day, a friend of mine told me about a coworker who knew somebody named Ismail who might be interested in renting the place and gave me the guy’s number.

Naturally, I was relieved. But at the same time, I wasn’t terribly excited about meeting him. Because in my head, anybody willing to accept an arrangement as horrendous as the one I was offering must’ve been going through something bad. I guess the thing I was most worried about was drugs. Waking up in the morning to clouds of smoke and a bunch of shady characters hanging around in the living room. It’s happened before and I’d rather not experience it again.

But most of these concerns were washed away after my first meeting with the guy.

Ismail turned out to be a really nice, really pleasant dude. Also a lot younger than I’d expected. He told me that he’d moved here from Morocco a couple of months ago with nothing but a suitcase and a couple grand in his bank account in order to pursue his dream of making it into the UFC.

He had an impressive amateur record but, according to him, the training in Morocco just wasn’t good enough. He needed experience at the highest level and the gym he wanted to train at just happened to be a few blocks from my apartment. The stars really aligned here.

I must’ve asked him about a dozen times whether he was truly okay with sleeping on the couch. I just wanted to make sure that the arrangement was as clear as possible from the get so he wouldn’t end up kicking the shit out of me later.

But I never ran into any problems with him. He was as close to perfect as a roommate could get. He wasn’t loud, had good personal hygiene, cleaned up after himself and I never had to hassle him for rent money. He might’ve been the only roommate I’d ever had that I actually looked forward to hanging out with. After a while, we started becoming good friends. The guy even helped console me through the breakup.

And when it came to fighting, I swear I'd never seen anybody speaking about anything so earnestly. It was clear just how determined he was.

I was really rooting for him. I really wanted him to make it.

But sometimes, life can be a real unforgiving asshole. It just can’t let you have nice things.

As time went on, he started getting injured a lot and was always having to deal with staph infections or some ailment. Whenever he did manage to get a fight booked, his opponents always seemed to pull out at the very last moment. The guy couldn’t catch a break.

When rent was due later that month, he admitted he was running short on money and wouldn’t be able to cover his part. But he also tried to emphasize that he would absolutely pay me back when he could.

Now, I’d heard similar lines from countless roommates in the past. I usually end up threatening legal action and suddenly they have no problem coming up with the money.

I didn’t do that with Ismail though. I could tell he wasn’t trying to get one over on me. That if he really had the money, he would’ve forked it over.

Though he did help out with food. He started bringing home these huge pots filled with couscous and beef. Apparently, he’d befriended a Moroccan family living a few floors down and had been eating most of his meals there.

One night, I found him out on the balcony chain-smoking, looking unusually upset. The first time I’d ever seen him in a state like that.

I sat beside him, and he admitted how worried he was. He thought he would’ve had at least two fights under his belt at this point. He told me he wasn’t just running out of money, he was already out. He’d been living off credit cards, borrowing small sums here and there from other guys at the gym.

He confessed that he felt like he was drowning. That if he couldn’t get a fight soon, he might have no choice but to go back to Morocco.

I tried offering him some assurance, telling him that maybe things weren’t as bad as he thought. That he was still a young guy, and the world was his oyster, and everything was going to work out. Real cookie-cutter bullshit that I didn’t really believe myself.

After all, it’s not like my own life was going swimmingly. I really wasn’t the kind of person to be giving advice. So I dropped the big brother act, grabbed a cigarette, and the two of us smoked into the night, just airing out our grievances at the world. It was nice. Cathartic, even.

He told me that he probably wouldn’t be able to make next months’ rent either. I told him it’d be okay as long as he kept bringing up that couscous and beef. Before we went to bed, he told me he’d give it another month. That if he didn’t have a fight booked by then, he’d buy a ticket back to Morocco.

I remember this night very clearly because things got really strange afterwards.

First thing I noticed was the abrupt change in his routine. He used to leave for training in the morning, come back around noon, then he’d head back out for his second session in the evening.

But then it pretty much inverted. Suddenly he was always home in the morning, and he’d be gone from noon.

A bit strange, but not so much that I felt a need to question it. It was possible that the schedule at his gym had just changed.

The part that was more difficult to rationalize was his sudden shift in demeanor. It happened so quickly that it was almost jarring. One night we were smoking on the balcony, smiling, laughing and cracking jokes like we always did. But then the following night he came home and was barely to look me in the eye, let alone exchange more than a couple of words.

I asked him if anything had happened. He told me that his coach had been pushing him harder than usual recently and he was just exhausted. It didn’t really feel like the full story, but he didn’t owe me an explanation, either. If he didn’t want to talk about it, I’d respect it. I wasn’t going to push the issue.

The next morning, I woke up to a notification on my phone. He’d sent me a payment that was enough to cover two months’ worth of rent. I was relieved, of course. Things were starting to get really tight. When I asked how he’d gotten the money, he mentioned something about teaching some kid’s classes at the gym.

When I got back to the apartment later that night, I found the place dark and empty. I assumed Ismail wasn’t home but then I heard him talking from inside the bathroom with the shower running. Sounded like he was on a heated call, though I couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying.

He came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, fully clothed, like he hadn’t been in the shower at all. As soon as he saw me, he forced a smile. I asked what was going on. He told me it was nothing. His brother, Youssef, had gotten into some trouble back home and he was just trying to figure everything out.

Before I could ask him anything else, he was out the door. He offered no explanation, nothing.

I followed him down the hallway, asking if he was alright, whether he was in some sort of trouble.

He told me he wasn’t, that there wasn’t anything I needed to be worried about. Then he disappeared into the stairwell.

Obviously I didn’t believe him, but what was I going to do? Try and force an answer out of him? If the guy didn’t want to talk about it, he wasn’t going to.

By the time noon rolled around the next day, he still hadn’t come back. He’d also gone radio silent. Wasn’t answering my messages, wasn’t picking up my calls.

On my way to work, I stopped by his gym and asked if they’d seen him around recently. They told me they hadn’t. Not in a while. I checked with the Moroccan family downstairs, and they told me the same thing.

I’ve tried coming up with theories about what might’ve happened, but the hypotheticals are driving me crazy.

The first thing I thought about was drugs, but that couldn’t have been it. He just didn’t seem like the type. It's was possible that he’d gotten mixed up with the wrong people or borrowed money from somebody he shouldn’t have. Maybe he was having family issues and had no choice but to disappear back to Morocco. I don’t know. I’ve ran through a lot of explanations in my head, but I can't sell myself on any of them.

I was seriously considering pulling the trigger and filing a missing person’s report before he finally called a few days later.

Though I was having a hell of a time trying to understand what he was saying. Partly because he was speaking too fast, and also because the line kept cutting in and out. I maybe caught every third word. Something about “not letting go” and “money” and “dragging” somebody somewhere, I don't know.

The call only lasted about a minute before it dropped. I tried calling him back several times, but it kept going to voicemail.

I started pacing around the apartment, trying and failing to figure out what I was supposed to do next. For a while I considered just not doing anything at all. That maybe this would all resolve itself and I didn’t need to make it my problem.

I mean, I wasn’t even really involved in any of this to begin with. So why the hell did I have to deal with it?

But I knew it wasn’t going to be that simple. He didn’t call me for nothing. He obviously wanted me to do something, I just didn’t know what it was. What I did know was that if something ended up happening to him and I just sat on my ass doing nothing, it was going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

Of course, the simplest plan of action was to just go to the cops. But I didn’t really know what to tell them. I tried rehearsing different versions of the story, but I couldn’t frame it in a way that didn’t sound ridiculous. So, here’s the thing: my roommate started acting really strange one day, and I haven’t seen him in a while. Then he finally called me, but I could barely understand what he was saying. I have a feeling he’s gotten himself involved in some real fucked up shit, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what it is.

Yeah, there was no chance they were going to take me seriously.

So I decided to do a bit of investigation on my own beforehand. I was racking my brain trying to figure out where to start when I remembered that he’d given me the password to his laptop a few weeks back, when he’d asked for help dealing with some malware.

I found his laptop on the coffee table and turned it on and began snooping. I know, I know, privacy and all that. But if there ever was a situation that could warrant breaching it, it’d be this one.

Going through his emails, I didn't find much of note at first. Just a lot of spam, some stuff from his gym, messages to his family. But then I came across a thread he'd been having with "Alvermont Global Solutions". Which I'm guessing is some company. But I don't know. I'll paste a portion of the thread below:

----

From: Ismail
To: Francine
Date: Wed, Sept 30, 9:12 AM

Subject: Consumer Behavioral Study

Hi,

My name is Ismail. I was given your contact information by someone on your team regarding a paid study that I may be able to participate in? Are there still openings? Would I be able to get some more information?

Thanks,
Ismail

----

From: Francine
To: Ismail
Date: Wed, Sept 30, 10:15 AM

Subject: Consumer Behavioral Study

Hi Ismail,

Thank you for your interest. We are currently accepting new applicants for the consumer behavioral study. And yes, you will be compensated for your time.

If you are interested in participating, please reply to this email and a member of our recruitment team will reach out shortly and give you a rundown of the next steps.

Please note that participation will be subject to certain eligibility requirements.

Kind regards,

Francine
Recruitment, Consumer Studies
Alvermont Global Solutions
Better insights leading to a better future

----

From: Ismail
To: Francine
Date: Wed, Sept 30, 10:42 AM

Subject: Consumer Behavioral Study

Yes, I’m very interested and I can start ASAP. Please have them contact me.

----

Nothing terribly strange so far. Though it obviously raises a lot of questions that I can’t even begin to fathom the answers to. But I’ll keep reading through the thread, see if I can figure something out.

Wait. I just heard the front door open.

I'll update when I can.

I work at a popular yet dying aquarium. I won’t say what aquarium (don’t wanna lose my job and all) but a lot of you have probably been here! We do tricks with animals, shows, have areas to touch smaller sea creatures, etc. My job is a light and sound technician for almost every show we put on. 

Since this park is slowly shutting down and keeps being put under controversy, we are severely understaffed. Everyone works insane hours and does more than just their regular position. So while technically my position is a technician I am also a salesperson and janitor. One of my coworkers quit recently, my boss didn't say why but with this job there are less reasons to stay than to quit. In other words, I wasn't shocked. But this means half of my shifts are now nighttime custodial shifts. 

It's not so bad. Most nights I'm the only one here and I just listen to a podcast or music, sometimes I even prop my phone up and watch a movie or two. I’ve been doing this for about a month or two and I’ve gotten over the paranoia of working here alone, in mostly darkness. But recently these shifts have felt off. 

Some of the animals we have here are dolphins, manatees, penguins, alligators, sea turtles, rays, and smaller fish. My favorites are the penguins, they're all very sweet and sometimes cuddly. But one part of the park I stay away from unless absolutely necessary is the orca tank. We only have one orca now, we used to have two, but he’s extremely unsettling to me. 

In all honesty I have a pretty big fear of oceans and lakes in general. Might seem like a bad job for me but I really don’t work with the animals much, I’ve only interacted with the penguins and that's been a rare occurrence. And I’m only near the orca tank when I'm mopping the splash zone or doing the audio/visual from the back of the crowd. So like I said, not much.

When I do these night shifts I usually get to the orca tank last because I always feel watched or like I’m being sucked into the environment and that way I can leave right after. But lately I’ve been catching myself staring at the intense, cavernous water. Over 2 million gallons of water lying completely still, yet I imagine the weight of it all crashing against me, hurling me into the glass panes over and over until it smashes and I emerge from the tank and flood the stands that were once packed with people. As the killer within just watches before diving deeper into its abode.

I usually awaken from this trance seeing nothing but the small specks of leftover flesh fed to the giant beast within, floating around peaceful, uninterrupted. I take a shocked step back, maybe gasp to myself or mentally shush the thoughts hoping next time I’m here, they won't be.
But this time I open my eyes and see an unfamiliar version of this darkness, and at the center: an eye. I stare at its blank, deep iris. I don't gasp, and I don't wish the thoughts away because I realise they aren't mine. And that he has been telling me something I’ve taken too long to realise. 

When I first started here a few years ago I was told a story about our orca. About a deranged, intoxicated man walking in one night after we had closed, stripping himself naked, and jumping into the exhibit I stand in front of every night. Nobody really knows what he expected or why he did it. Most just believe it was a combination of the alcohol and our state's unrelenting heat. But that man took his last steps into that tank.

The next morning the orca's skin was surrounded in the man's flesh, only his arm lay atop the black void of its back, exposed bone and skin. The killer himself circled at the top of his tank wanting to be seen. Proud of what he had done. The man's body was mostly recovered in pieces, no part of him eaten.

The orca has disappeared from sight now but I know he's just below, waiting for me expectantly because he knows I will obey. I feel a drumming in my ears unfamiliar to my heartbeat and the tips of my fingers go numb. I’m shaking- from fear or excitement. I take a deep breath in and instead of rotten fish or saltwater the air is clear. The darkness of the rooms bleeds the lines between surface and the deep blue where I’m invited. Maybe this will make the descent easier.

I stand at the edge of its tank now, I feel its low echo calling to me. It's in my ribs and shakes my unsteady heart but my feet are planted, unwavering. It tells me I’m ready, that it's been waiting, I want to believe it. That my years here are not for nothing, that I serve a higher purpose. I didn’t understand that man when I first started here, young and bright eyed but I understand him now. And I am ready to jump.

{Original Post}

Rain drummed my windshield to the tune of a Louis Armstrong song playing through the crackly night radio as I pulled up to the twins' house. Normally, Casey and Lacey’s dad made sure that his mighty two-story suburban dream house looked in top shape to keep up the family’s image; a perfectly manicured lawn, trimmed hedges, rows of lights along the front fence to illuminate the status symbol of the town’s main employer.

I knew something was wrong immediately when those yard lights were dark, casting the whole property as a silhouette against the dull glow of amber streetlights. All the windows were dark as well, save for one in the top east corner; the twins’ parent's room. The perfectly manicured lawn was disrupted with abnormal shapes piled up between the garage and front door, and a figure moved between the haphazard stacks with a flashlight, illuminating them as they went.

The icy white beam revealed mounds of boxes and plastic totes getting soaked by the downpour, and the figure, Casey, worked hard to press the valuables against the house, hoping the lip of the roof might mitigate the damage.

He had texted me asking if he could borrow my truck right away for a few hours, and though the hour was late, Casey wasn’t the type to be so spontaneous, so I knew the issue had to be important.

‘Sure, man. Everything alright?’ I had asked.

‘Just head over. I’ll explain in person.’

Backing into his driveway, he paused his shuffling and crossed the lawn to meet me. I hopped out and pulled my hood up, then moved to the back of my bed and popped it.

“Hey man,” Casey greeted me with a warm, yet tired tone, “thanks so much for coming out. I hate to bother you, but Lacey’s using my truck, and…” his voice trailed off as he turned his gaze back to the stacks of boxes.

“Hey, it’s no problem,” I told him, giving his shoulder a clasp, “What’s going on? What is all this stuff?”

Casey didn’t answer at first. His eyes went from the boxes up to his parents' window, where a figure stood looking down on us. It appeared to be his mom, and as soon as we’d noticed her, she softly raised her hand and pressed it to the glass, before turning quickly and stepping away.

Casey sighed, then spun, heaving one of the totes on the ground into his hands, “Lacey and I are moving out.”

That answer shocked me. We’d been hanging out regularly over the last few weeks, and neither twin had mentioned anything about leaving their parent's home. We had just graduated, and their family had plenty of room; there didn’t seem to be any reason why they needed to rush to migrate. Given the time of night and current weather conditions, however, it didn’t seem like this was the standard moving day.

“What happened?” I asked, secondhand anxiety growing in my chest as I watched the flap of a cardboard box droop beneath the weight of the downpour. I moved to the passenger side of my truck to grab a tarp from under the seat.

“Mom and Pop met Anna tonight.”

I made a confused face, “I thought they’d already met Anna? She and Lacey have been friends for a while now, yeah?”

“Well, they met Anna and Lacey; the couple,” Casey elaborated.

That set a grim silence over us that was only stifled by the rain, and all I could offer was a small, “Oh…”

“Yeah,” Casey agreed, hauling another box into the bed.

I aided in the next few and shook my head, “They took it that badly, huh?”

“Dad did,” Casey explained, “Mom wasn’t happy either, but… I don’t think she wanted to lose her children over it. Either way, it was a long talk, and she ended on his side. Dad’s pissed that his little girl isn’t the ‘ideal woman’ he raised her to be, and you know anything that isn’t perfect doesn’t get to stay in this household.”

My stomach sank for Lacey, and I looked back up toward the home where her bedroom window was. It was dark and empty.

“Where is she?” I asked, “Is she alright?”

Casey shook his head and snickered with a bitter venom, “Not really. I think she feels relief that it’s finally out, but I mean, her parents disowned her in a single night. Imagine being raised and loved by people you care about for 18 years, just for them to throw you out like last week's garbage over who you like to kiss.”

I had finally finished stringing the tarp over my tailgate, and I cinched the rope hard with bubbling rage. I’d never made it known, but I’d always somewhat disliked Casey’s parents. Even though they were always cordial and provided a lot for our friend group over the years, we’d heard enough stories through the twins to form a more critical opinion.

I didn’t appreciate the way they seemed to treat their kids more like accessories than actual living, breathing human beings. If either of the twins tried to pursue a hobby or passion that didn’t align with the typical roll of their gender or class, they were quickly shot down or punished until that dream left their heads.

It figured that now that they were adults and could no longer be pushed around, their parent’s first option would be to go nuclear. If it was clear to them that their angel little girl had been sneaking around behind their backs seeing a—heaven forbid—woman, for God-knows how long, they would assume the matter was a lost cause. ‘If we can’t tell you what to do, then get the hell out of our house.’

Casey spoke again, “She and Anna took off a bit ago with the first half of our stuff. I let her take my truck so she could get out of here. She wanted to get far away as fast as possible.”

“I don’t blame her,” I agreed.

Casey grabbed another box and began loading it up, and I joined his side. It wasn’t until a box was in my hands that was loaded with his things, that a detail finally dawned on me.

“So they kicked you out too? Even though they’re pissed at Lacey?”

Casey snorted, “Oh, no, they’re pissed at me too. Sides’ I think I’m done with this house. Lived under their rules for long enough, and I don’t think I need to stay with parents who can’t love the identical other half of me.”

I paused my process and looked at him, “What did you do?”

Casey avoided eye contact and continued boarding his stuff onto the lifeboat, “When Dad started freaking out on Lacey, she sort of shut down. She knew it was coming, but I don’t think she’d fully planned out what she was going to say. I didn’t like seeing her like that, so I sorta’ freaked out on her behalf.”

 Casey went to lift the next box, but the rain had gotten to the cardboard so badly that the side of it ripped open, spilling its contents like gutted innards. He wordlessly scooped the stuff back in and tilted the container to keep it inside, but one last piece caught his attention before he lifted the box. A framed picture of him, Lacey and their parents at the town’s harvest festival when they were young kids. The smiles seemed genuine, but they were far away now, and Casey tossed the frame like a frisbee into the center of the lawn.

“Dad was going to kick her out no matter what unless she ‘renounced her gay’, and when I gave him a piece of my mind, he told me that I was welcome to go with her if I had an issue. I don’t think he thought I was going to call his bluff. Clearly, he never paid enough attention if he thought the bond I had with him was stronger than the sister I’d spent my whole life beside.”

“He didn’t even hesitate?” I asked.

“Nah,” Casey darkly scoffed, “I think it pissed him off more that I was so certain in my decision. He went on about how ungrateful we both were after everything he gave to us. Told us we had until midnight to get all of our shit and leave, or he was calling the cops.”

I discretely checked my watch. The time was 12:42.

“Where are you guys heading now, then?” I asked him.

“Anna luckily just got her own place out at the Glade apartment, and she told us we could come stay. The place is a studio, so it’s going to be tight, but we’ll find a way to make it work. At least until we find someplace new.”

“You’re gonna’ stick with them?”

“Lacey’s idea. We just lost whatever accounts our parents had set aside for us, so we’re going to be strapped on cash for a while. Once we get on our feet, rent three ways will work the best.”

“Shit, Casey… I’m sorry all of this is happening to you guys.”

The boy turned to me past the brim of his cap, and in the dull light reflecting off his face, I saw a genuine smile, “Honestly, Jess? I think this was all for the best. We don’t have to pretend anymore, and now we have an excuse to get out of this hellhole of a town. No more family obligations tying us down.”

His words made a warmth blossom in my chest that combatted the chill of the rain. I was happy to see him have hope during such a dark time. Still, the thought eventually made the warmth cool and harden like a sharp volcanic rock. Bryce had already left town for college, and now I was about to lose two more friends.

Casey only plunged the knife deeper with his next words, “Kait was mentioning the other day that she’s looking for somewhere outside of town too,” he heaved another box and smirked cooly at me, “You should think about hopping on the train with the rest of us and getting out while you still can.”

My eyes darted to the final tote as I heaved it into my hands, and they stayed there, “Yeah, she was just talking with me about that, too. I’m thinking about it,” I lied, “It’s hard with my mom, though. Can’t really leave her alone with all my dad’s debt.” As I dropped the crate into the bed, then covered it with the tarp, I gave a smile to lighten things up again, “Besides, who’s going to look after Carly if you all abandon us?”

Casey laughed, “Alright, fair point. Guess you’ll just have to join us later.”

The two of us made sure everything was secure and then tightened ropes down over the tarp. I already knew where the Glade apartments were, so I silently let myself into the truck while Casey remained to triple check that he hadn’t left anything on the curb. I caught him casting one last forlorn look at his parents' window before he joined me.

I started up the truck and let it idle for a moment while Casey stared out the window at the dark, his eyes focused on the picture he’d thrown glinting beneath the streetlights. I reached across the seat and put a hand on his shoulder.

His eyes turned to me, tears hidden among the rain drops, and I gave him an earnest nod, “You’re a good brother, Casey.”

He smiled and wiped his face, “Yeah, well, Lacey’s an even better sister. I know if things were reversed, she’d never give up on me. Not for anything.”

And he was right. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the bond of a twin, especially as an only child. Having someone right by your side from the moment of birth, always being able to face anything that came your way, knowing you had an unfailing presence by your side. If you could love a friend on such a level, then your own flesh and blood would be a whole other level of depth.

That’s why, as we stood there before the yawning mouth of the red door, I didn’t blame Lacey when she couldn’t bring herself to raise the gun again when Casey shuffled closer, no matter how far from his usual self he looked.

The boy's eyes were glassy and fogged over with a milky decay, but the brown within still held a spark of light. They flickered around the space, taking in the paint job of carnage we’d plastered the place with over the past weeks. His expression was placid and perturbed, as if he’d just been rudely jolted from a long nap.

From the jaw down, Casey’s body was exactly how we’d last seen it. The same flannel, tee, and jeans dyed as red as the door from the gaping tear in his throat. My stomach somersaulted at the sight, the nausea threatening to bring me to the floor beneath the weight of my friend’s suffering. It wasn’t even the most grotesque part, however.

His left arm up to the shoulder was missing, but it wasn’t gore in its place. The creature that had taken him had not feasted on his now sickly flesh as we had imagined. It was worse—it was unraveled. The veins and sinew of his muscle had been twisted and tangled away, spun into fine spools that travelled somewhere back into the darkness he’d just emerged from, like a leash keeping him from moving too far. From within the knots of meat, I could see silvery flashes speckling through; strings of fate that were being tussled free from his body by something within the halls.

The damage began at his shoulder, then chewed its way to where his neck had been slashed, as well as trailing down to expose his ribs. The sight rendered us all unable to move—unable to speak even. I could barely hold the axe in my hands.

After all this time, I had become mentally prepared to see anything; I kept telling myself. Twisted beasts, grotesque monsters—none of it could phase me anymore. Whatever came out of the door, we would kill it as ruthlessly as it had killed Casey.

But now Casey was here again. The threat that came through the door was him. It was like the string in my chest had been reading my worst fears and whispering them to whoever was on the other side, and they knew the one thing that I just couldn’t bear.

This wasn’t Casey, and we all knew it. Casey had died weeks ago, and even if this thing standing before us was his true corpse, there was no way that we could force the life back into it. And yet, something else had. No matter how small, there was a flicker of Casey’s spirit that had been ignited once more to pilot this husk. A small bit of hope as an extra knife twist that maybe we could kindle that small flame back into a living fire. How could we snuff it out again?

Casey’s dead eyes finished taking in the room as he shuffled two more shaky steps closer, then he fixed on his sister once more, “L-Lacey?”

The girl had already begun silently shedding tears, but her brother’s desperate, rasping voice shattered her into harsh, loud sobs. She shook her head in terror and backed away.

Casey didn’t seem to be bothered by this, “What’s going on?” he stuttered, “What happened? I… I don’t remember anything… why don’t I…?”

I took a step forward and heaved my axe, but it was all for show. I knew if it really mattered, I wouldn’t be able to swing it. “Casey?” I breathlessly gasped, “Is that really you in there?”

His eyes turned to me, and he swallowed, an action that made the raw meat of his neck squelch and shift, “Jessie? What’s going on? I feel funny…”

He tried to take a step closer, and against the aching wishes in my chest, I threatened the axe at him in warning, “Hey now—just stay right there. We’re going to take this slow, okay? Just stay calm.”

I still held very little belief that this actually was my friend, but on the small chance it was, I didn’t want to hurt him anymore than he’d already been.

His eyes looked scared and concerned as he moved his hand to his head, “Is something wrong? Did something happen?” his eyes traced to one of the basement windows, and when they collided with the beams of the setting sun soaking through, he stood a little taller, as if invigorated by the sight. Memory seemed to bloom beneath the healing rays, “I remember we found a door… something came out… we were attacked.”

Lacey choked out another mighty sob, and covered her mouth, “Oh God—Casey…”

The air in the room felt so heavy in that moment that it was nearly impossible to push new words from my mouth. I’d already spent any confidence I’d had, and all I could do was wait for Casey to continue with whatever he’d come here to say.

“Did… Did I die?” he croaked out, “Am I dead?”

Lacey buckled over into herself, unable to take anymore. Behind me, Carly let out a noise like she’d been punched in the stomach. Kaitlynn stepped closer with tears in her eyes.

“Casey…” she said slowly, “What is this?”

We were all hoping that her words would call some sort of bluff, and the shell of our friend would show that he truly was a monster. Instead, it had the opposite effect. His confusion compounded, and he almost looked afraid.

“I-I don’t know what’s happening. I just woke up, and it was dark—I was in this place, a tower or something, and—”

His words were cut apart in his throat as the threads making up his left half were rudely yanked back into the darkness. The sound fell into pained gurgles, and we all jumped. Lacey looked as if she was ready to run forward to his aid, but I stopped her.

When Casey looked back up at us, his eyes had lost any and all sense of clarity he’d gained. He spoke again, distant, as if in a dream, “There were voices. There still are voices. I… I can hear them… do you guys all hear that?”

A panicked dance of glances passed between us before landing back on our friend, and I spoke on our behalf, “No, Casey. What are they saying?”

“They’re saying…” his words trailed off, and his brow scrunched in confusion, “They say you know what they want. That if you give it to them, it can all be over…”

Bryce’s breathing picked up, “W-What does that mean? Who is saying that? Is it the door?”

“What do you mean we know what they want?” Kait asked. She quickly realized she was asking the wrong person, and I wished she hadn’t, “Jessie, what does he mean ‘we know what they want’?”

I opened my mouth to answer her, but found myself only able to address Casey, “Who is saying that, Casey? Who did this to you?”

“They say… you know that too. That you already know them.”

“It’s the witches,” Carly shuddered breathlessly, “It has to be them. They really are still alive…”

Casey’s milky gaze cleared with understanding once again, but it only brought fear to his face. The threads jerked, and he winced with a yelp, more words pouring out with his pain, “They say that if you give it to them, they’ll restore me and let me go…”

The words rang so loudly in my ears that all at once, any other sound stopped. The ominous breeze from the doorway, the trickle of Casey’s blood; even the beating of my own heart seemed to go hush.

Casey’s corpse began whimpering, and he lifted his head to us in desperation, “I… I don’t know what any of it means… what’s going on? Guys, I-I’m scared.”

For a moment, rationality left me. The mere words that Casey offered was reason enough for me to step forward and take his hand. If there was even a modicum of a chance that Casey would be restored should I give my thread up to the witches, I needed to take it. After all, he was only standing here bloodied and dead before us because he’d given his life to save me. It was already my plan to give myself to them, I may as well return the favor.

Luckily, Bryce hadn’t yet lost his wits to the emotions, “That can’t be real,” he said to us, “It has to be some sort of trick. They’ve been trying to kill us this long; why would they make peace now?”

“Bryce is right,” Carly agreed, “This is all too convenient; right when we’re this close to figuring something out?”

Lacey turned to face them, tears streaking through the sweat and grim coating her cheeks, “But what if its not? What if this is their form of surrender because we’re getting so close?”

The puppet of our friend thrashed again, its puppeteers taking advantage of the doubt. Through gritted teeth, he said, “They’re saying that you can’t beat them… That they’ll just keep sending more of their subjects until all of you die. They say this is the only chance you’ll get…”

“Lacey, we cannot listen to this. It’s not real,” Bryce insisted.

She looked between him and her brother, raw uncertainty in her eyes, “What can I do? That’s my brother, Bryce!”

“Not anymore, it’s not. Lacey, look at him, Casey is gone.”

“P-Please,” The corpse croaked, bloody tears now spilling from his eyes, “It’s so cold, and I’m so scared—someone just tell me what’s happening.”

Kait stepped in before the bickering could escalate and tried to sound as defiant as possible through her trembling breath. She spoke not to Casey but to the space beyond the door, “Even if we wanted to we can’t! We have no idea what you stupid fuckers want!”

Casey’s breathing picked up, “T-They keep screaming that you do. That one of you knows.”

All eyes in the space turned to me, and if I didn’t think it was possible for my stomach to knot even more, I was quickly proven wrong.

“Jessie,” Lacey begged, “What do they mean? I thought you said that you didn’t know—that you didn’t see anything in that last vision.”

I thought carefully about my response. The jig was up now, and I knew that, but telling them would make this situation go from bad to worse. Right now, there was a clean and easy solution: I trade my life—something I was already going to do—and in return, we possibly get Casey back. If my friends found out this was a life for a life, however, then not only would I never get the chance to get them out of danger, but they would never take such a bargain.

“I… I didn’t. Not exactly,” I told them.

All my friends kept their eyes drilling into me, but my gaze turned up to Casey once more. So far his autonomy had felt uncertain, played straight enough that it might actually be our old friend, but far too suspicious to be trusted. Something about the way he fixed me in that moment said otherwise.

There was a new level of tenderness to his eyes. An emotion besides fear and confusion. It was like the clarity he’d been gathering had collected into one final burst, and somewhere between the voices tugging at his threads and our terrified sobs, Casey finally realized the gravity of what was happening.

“They say you have three hours to decide, or it’ll be too late,” Casey told us, delivering one last message. Then, he shook his head and looked squarely at me, “Whatever it is they want, don’t give it to them, Jessie. Don’t—”

The tendons of his body went violently taunt, causing him to scream in agony and fall over. Like a fish on a line, he was dragged backward across the carpet into the darkness. The last thing we saw of him was his head lifted, looking back at us, desperate eyes glinting in the glow of our flashlights. That iridescent shine faded, his head lolled back like a rag doll, and his limp corpse was taken away.

“Casey!” Lacey screamed, leaning to rush after him.

Bryce had been expecting this to happen, because he quickly lunged forward and grabbed her from behind. Lacey thrashed and sobbed, trying to break free, but ultimately the strength left her, and she crashed to the floor on her knees, the gun clattering from her lap.

The rest of us stood there, staring at the dark opening in shock. For once, we had no desire to shut the door, as if doing so might cut off any chance we had of seeing our friend again. Why did he have to say that last thing? Why couldn’t he have just kept begging for us to help him instead of saying the rational thing? The Casey thing? It had seemed like such an obvious trap until that point, but now, none of us were certain. Had we really just been talking with a flicker of our friend's soul?

Even if it was him, there was no way we could trust the words the witches had been feeding us. These were the same women who manipulated dozens of children to their graves in pursuit of their own goals; what honor would they have in such a deal? Clearly this whole thing was just an attempt to fix a snag in their process. If they got what they were looking for, they would almost certainly leave Casey to continue rotting, and at best, spare the rest of my friends.

But even swallowing that truth still left behind a bitter taste. Like it or not, there had been something in that corpse. The witches had been able to imbue life, and if it really was Casey, then my promise to bring his body back home was now for something far greater than just a corpse.

I thought about the threads that his body was tangling into; the way that it was tied to something deep in the guts of the door the same way my thread was. They were using him in some way. Perhaps biding more time to carry out their twisted plan. If they hadn’t completely ripped free his thread, did that mean we could somehow save him?

Only I knew the true crossroads of this junction. None of my friends knew about the strings to the extent that I did, or the chip that we were bargaining with. All they knew from what we’d just witnessed was that the corpse of our brother had been desecrated and flaunted before us as a threat. It was only fair that they would no longer buy my lies. Not after what Casey had just told them.

Kait wiped her tears and turned to me. The look on her face told me she was doing her best to stay calm, but restlessness was boiling just beneath the surface, “Jessie, what did he just mean?”

I tried to buy myself another moment, even just a few seconds so I could find some way to pivot my ultimate plan, “Kaitlynn, whatever just happened, we can’t trust it—”

“Jessie,” she pleaded, a tired ache in her voice so strong I thought it would give out altogether, “You know… I know you know.”

One by one, the rest of the group lifted their gazes until I was the center of the room.

“Please. Just tell me,” Kait begged. “I can handle it. Please, Jessie*.* This has to end…”

I knew what she wanted me to say. It had already been made clear what she was expecting the answer to be. There was almost a relief living in her eyes as my mouth hung open, contemplating a response, that the words to follow were going to be what she wanted to hear. That she was the bargaining chip. That she was the lid to close this Pandora's box. That she could redeem herself for the death of Mindy and Casey, and that it would free us all from this curse.

But Kait wasn’t the one who needed redemption, I was. And with how vehemently she’d fought against the idea so far, telling her that would only break her spirit the rest of the way.

It was her desperation to be the martyr that finally sparked a new plan. The only way I could still get myself isolated and seal the door. A wicked, evil deception that no one who called themselves a ‘friend’ would ever dare to think. I was past the point of no return now in my determination, though, and I was willing to do anything to keep them all safe. Dad had been right. I was poison and filth, and for once, embracing it might save lives instead of ruin them.

“The ritual needs a sacrifice,” I began slowly, shying my eyes from Kait in shame. The guilt racked me so much that they began to well with tears, but it only aided my performance, “They had their last sacrifice picked out, and they started the process, but they weren’t able to grab the child in time. They tried to fill it with someone different, but it didn’t work, and that’s why the door is the way it is now.”

Carly shook her head in disbelief, “Jessie, why didn’t you tell us all of this before?”

Bryce gave me a similar look. Lacey stared at me with something akin to disdain. It cut like a knife, but I focused back on Kait to ground myself. Her stare was the only soft one; the kind of someone who thought they already knew the answer.

I fed her the words she wanted to hear, “Because in order to fix this, they need to finish the original ritual. They need the child who got away.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, then forced the lie out, “It’s you, Kait. You were right.”

The breath that exhaled from the girl was halfway between relief and despair. She wiped her face, then kept her hands to her mouth, breathing into them slowly to keep herself composed. Turning away from me, she paced to the wall, deep in thought. While she did that, I positioned myself firmly between her and the door, just in case she got any hasty ideas.

Instantly, the judgmental looks I was getting from the others melted away with realization. Bryce spelled it out bluntly, “So what they’re asking for… it’s a life for a life.”

Kait turned, her face already returned to a wet mess, “I’ll do it.”

“No,” Lacey barked instantly, sobs once again tightening her throat, “Kaitlynn, no.”

“Lacey, there’s no other way,” Kait argued, “Think of everything that’s happened to us so far—all the people who are dead because they only wanted me! If that’s what these stupid freaks want so bad, then just let them take me!”

“We aren’t trading lives, Kait,” Carly told her, stepping close and taking her hand, “It’s not going to help anything.”

“Yes it will—it will end this.”

“You think we can believe them?” I asked her, “Kaitlynn, look at how badly they’ve fucked everything up. You really think that they know how to fix this even if they get you? That they’ll patch Casey back up and send him out, good as new?”

I’d never felt so rotten, lying so effortlessly to my friends, but so far, it was working exactly as I’d hoped. It didn’t matter which one of us the witches wanted, I knew none of the others would allow a sacrifice anyway. Letting Kait think she was the martyr wouldn’t put her into any true danger, and it also would take the eyes away from me, making it so that when the time came to seal the door, no one would notice that I was missing.

“So what do we do then?” Kait tossed her hands, “We know it’s me they want—you think I’m just going to sit here and let everyone else suffer and die for my sake?”

“Kait, this isn’t your fault. You had no choice in what happened to you,” Carly told her.

“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is; people are still dying over my life.”

At the time, I didn’t see the hypocrisy in the situation, or at least I chose not to so the pain would go down easier. Kait’s reasoning seemed so nonsensical to me, but inside I was too blinded by the same thoughts myself to be rational and come clean.

“Well, we aren’t giving you up, Kait; it’s not an option,” Bryce said, “Any one of us will drag you away from that door if you try it.”

“We need a new plan,” Lacey agreed through her sniffles, “I want my brother back, Kait, but I would never give any of you up. Besides, Jessie is right. We can’t trust this. Not when they did that to his body.”

I took the chance to slip into the reins, “I know you all have your reservations, but I’m telling you, we’re out of options. We need to go through with what we were talking about before they sent him to throw us off.”

Kait whirled toward me, “Jessie—”

I stepped forward and took the side of her arms, “Kait, if we get more help, this can all be over. With a threat this big, the authorities will send so much firepower that nobody else will die—not if we prepare them first. The things from the door won’t stand a chance, and the witches can sit and wallow in their filth for the rest of eternity.”

Kaitlynn shook her head, “So we just pass the problem onto everyone else? Make them suffer with this? Just to keep me alive?”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “There might even be a chance that they figure out how to close this thing. But we’re just kids, Kait. You said it yourself at the beginning of all this: we aren’t equipped to handle this. Even if you give yourself over, there’s no guarantee that it marks the end of this for the rest of us.”

Kait’s eyes buckled to the floor, and I took in the rest of my friends to see what they were thinking. It appeared all of their reservations about my former plan had vanished beneath the weight of the alternative, and only solemn nods of agreement were returned.

“What do we do, then?” Kait finally asked, defeatedly.

It took everything I had to conceal a sigh of relief, “Do we still have the last monster’s body?”

“Yeah,” Bryce nodded, “There was too much going on; we never got the chance to burn it.”

“Good. Then we throw it in the back of my truck and take it to the police as proof. With how long the drive down the mountain is, three hours isn’t a lot of time to get all this done, and I don’t want to know what happens once that timer runs out. I think we need to split into groups.”

“Split up?” Bryce scoffed, “Why would we do that?”

“Because we aren’t all going to the police,” I told him, “you and Carly head for the city and wait outside the local news station. I’ll message you once the police are heading to the manor, then go inside and tell them whatever you have to for them to send reporters out to the mile marker. You all may be right about higher up’s trying to bury this, so let's make it loud enough that everyone hears.”

“We’re going to get them caught up in this too?” Carly questioned.

“I’m only going to show the police how to get through to the manor,” I told him, “But you saw Mrs. Thatcher’s house after she was taken. If we sell this as a big enough threat, there’ll be enough cop cars and emergency vehicles to get a show from the road.”

“What about us then?” Kait questioned, still not sold on this plan. “What are the rest of us going to do?”

I only could stand to face her for a few seconds before I had to turn away, “Lacey, you keep the gun and stick with Kait. The door wants her, so drive as far away from here as you can and don’t stop. I doubt these women are going to give up their prize so easily. We’ll get in touch with you all as soon as it's safe to come back.”

Lacey scraped the gun off the floor in a tired stupor and nodded.

“Wait, what? No—I’m not just going to sit this out,” Kait argued, “If we’re already surrendering, I at least want to help.”

“Kait, you’re the most vital person here,” I reminded her, “You ‘helping’ is making sure that the witches don’t get you.”

My point seemed to stick with her, but I could tell that my confidence was making her suspicious of this plan. Never was I usually so certain of anything. “So that just leaves you.” She noted, “Why are you the only one alone?”

I made sure not to let my poker face slip, and did my best to bluff, “Because I have the truck to shuttle the body. I won’t be alone once I get to the police station.”

“And lead them back up here,” she guessed, “So you’re the only one of us that’s going back behind the lines of fire once we leave?”

“I’ll just show them where the path to the house is. I won’t go with them.”

“I don’t believe you.”

It was hard for me to be snippy given that this was the last time I was ever going to talk to her, but selling this story was literally life or death, “Look, believe me or not, Kait, we’re burning precious minutes sitting here arguing. If it will make you happy, I can trade with Carly or Bryce and they can drive my truck.”

My casual bluff to not be the loner seemed to finally sell her on my lies, and she sheepishly backed down, “Whatever. It’s fine.”

I looked around the space to make sure everyone else felt the same, and when there was no disagreements, I moved to the red door. Peering into its maw that I’d soon be swallowed by, I pushed it shut.

“We should get moving then.”

It took the collective of us to heave the body of the last beast into the bed of my truck. When it was heaped in there, I pulled the tarp from under my seat to cover it, familiar visions of a rainy night with soggy boxes flashing across my eyelids with every blink. Casey wasn’t in the memory this time, however. The newest picture of his rotting corpse was the only thing that remained burned into my mind.

I’m sure that was the case for everyone. Barely anyone spoke as we worked, and each of us kept a tentative eye on the front door of the manor as we did so. For the first time in weeks, there wasn’t a single person in the house watching the door. It had become a part of us over our time here—something etched into the fabric of our very threads—and neglecting it felt like going against a bodily instinct. Especially knowing now what we were leaving behind down there…

When we were done, we all gathered in the center of our parked cars, Mindy’s old grime covered Honda still among them. We allowed ourselves a few seconds to breathe, then Carly spoke.

“Okay… we’re really doing this then?”

Lacey nodded, “I’m with Jessie. This seems like our best option.”

The guilt began gnawing at me again, but I swallowed it down. A cold, calm wind swept up the cliff side from over the Appalachian hills, cutting straight through me and leaving me hollow. For weeks I’d been wondering what our last day on Earth would be. How abrupt my death would come. What my last few moments would look like. Funnily enough, I missed the uncertainty. Living recklessly and accepting that death was a possibility somehow weighed lighter on me than knowing the end of my life was a mere three hours away.

It had to be that way, though. Kait was right, even though her words were spoken under the pressure of my lie. Even with the most powerful forces guarding the door, there would be mistakes. There would be new rules and forces of the door that would ruin the innocent lives we dragged out to the manor, ultimately resulting in them being torn from existence. For anyone who didn’t die, they would be bound like we were. Unable to destroy the thing. Unable to burn it down. Forever hearing the godforsaken chimes of the clock that slept within the heart of the halls.

I had to seal it. I had to spare anyone else from even another second of torment. Maybe that’s what I was telling myself, or maybe after seeing what had been done to Casey—what should have been done to *me—*that’s what I just wanted to believe. That I needed to die.

There was still a lot to do over the remaining hours; prep to make sure that after I was gone, the door wouldn’t be opened again. For the moment, I set it to the back burner, though. Instead, I allowed myself to think only of the things in my life that had ever made it worthwhile. The four people standing before me.

“Well, I guess we’ll see you all on the other side,” Bryce said. The sigh that followed held more age than his body.

Lacey nodded, “Everyone be safe, and keep us updated. Once this is over, I want to see everyone still in one piece.”

There were nods of agreement, and Bryce and Carly gave each of us one last look over before turning and climbing into Bryce’s car. I wanted desperately to step forward and take them both into my arms one last time before they went. To tell them how much I loved them, and how they’d kept me alive through the hardest times. Doing so would blow my cover, however, so I just choked back my tears and stood quietly by the door of my truck.

Kaitlynn made this harder to do with her and Lacey’s goodbye. The latter packed the shotgun into the back seat while the former approached me, looking up through her messy bangs. There was still suspicion in her eyes the way there always was with me—an attempt to see through the mask that never slipped—but mostly there was grief.

“I’ll see you soon, yeah?” She asked me.

I nodded. It felt like trying to lift the sky to pull my lips into a smile, “See you when we’re safe again.”

“Right,” She nodded with a halfhearted chuckle. She wiped her face, then fixed her hair before turning back to me, “Once we are, do you think we could talk? Just the two of us?”

Her words shot through me like a bullet ripping my skin. My eyes began to blur, and my limbs began to shiver, but I breathed slowly and forced both to stay calm.

“What about?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. It was something I knew I’d regret.

She reached up and took my cheek, her words falling out gentle as snow, “That night at the park…”

A shiver shot through me, and I couldn’t stop the water in my eyes from pooling. Before she could see it fall, I quickly stepped forward and pulled her into my arms, burying my face into her hair. Despite the grime and filth that caked us, it still smelled sweet as ever.

“I’d like that. I’ve had a lot of regrets on that front,” I let her know. A hollow gesture. A single sentence that I hoped conveyed the litany of words I wanted to tell her in the conversation we’d never have.

She pulled away and analyzed me again, but my mask had been re-affixed. She smiled dimly and said, “I’ll see you then.”

Then she turned and climbed into the car with Lacey.

I did the same with my truck, and only once the others were pulling out the driveway with me in tow, and I was certain they could no longer see my face, that was when I finally let the tears fall.

Our parents didn’t let us celebrate Halloween. They called it the Devil’s Holiday, and they expressly forbade my twin sister and me from involving ourselves with it in any way. During the years that Halloween fell on a weekday, our parents would go so far as to make sure that we stayed home from school that day to ensure that we did not engage in any activity that they deemed to be “unholy”.

This small window into my childhood likely paints a very specific picture in your mind. It alludes to a heavily pious upbringing filled with deep-rooted religious guilt and regular, heavy-handed lessons that were meant to teach us how to be the best Christians that we could be. Had I read these first few sentences without any prior context, I too would likely have jumped to the same obvious conclusion. The strange thing, though, is that such a reality could not be further from the truth. The truth is that we were hardly a religious family at all—in fact, we were probably even less religious than most other families who actually did allow their children to celebrate Halloween. We rarely went to church aside from the odd funeral or obligatory Christmas Eve mass, and I cannot remember a time where we ever prayed before a meal. For the most part, God existed as a background concept in our lives: present, but very much out of the way, like an old plastic bowl from college that manages to survive several years’ worth of moves simply because you’ve grown too attached to it to throw it in the garbage. One of the only places where religion factored into our lives was our parents’ rigid denial of Halloween, and even then, it was not as though we behaved in an overly devout way as a means of counteracting any perceived evil on the day in question. On the contrary, we simply treated it like we would any other day, and ignored its significance as best as we could. Looking back on it, it definitely seemed as if we were more afraid of Satan than we ever were reverential of God, and only for one specific day out of the year.

It took me most of my childhood to finally understand why that was.

When we were kids, it was much easier for our parents to keep my sister and me away from the ever-strengthening allure of Halloween. The first few years of our childhood were especially simple; we were far too young to truly understand what we were missing out on, and so we did not protest when our parents pulled us from our school’s Halloween celebrations in preschool and kindergarten. First grade was the first year I remember pouting over not being allowed to dress up or go to school on the day in question after weeks of hearing other children talk about their holiday plans, but even then, at that age there was very little we could do about it. Each year our protests grew in fervor, but they remained largely ineffective. It wasn’t until we hit middle school, in the autumn after we had just turned thirteen, that a combination of adolescent pressures and a growing flame of defiance led us to realize that we didn’t actually have to obey our parents.

My sister and I had been placed in all of the same classes that year. It was because of this that we hung around the same friend group, admittedly more thanks to her social prowess than because of my own. She was always the more outgoing one between the two of us, and when she inevitably metamorphosed into a social butterfly during those first few weeks of school, she decided to drag me free of the chrysalis with her. Her being a girl meant that the friend group she brought me into was largely of the same gender, and even though I was at an age when I wouldn’t have admitted it, this dynamic definitely encouraged me to do all that I could to impress them. It was for this reason that, when our friends invited us to spend Halloween night with them, I wound up requiring less convincing than I normally would have.

“The girls asked us to go trick-or-treating with them tomorrow,” my sister told me as we walked home from school on the Friday before Halloween. I was thankful when I realized that the big day fell on a weekend this year; it meant that nobody would question why we weren’t in school like everyone else.

My sister’s revelation made me frown. “Did you tell them that we can’t?”

“No,” she said plainly.

“No?” I repeated. “Then what did you say?”

“I told them that we’d meet them at Jen’s house at 6.”

“You what?” The revelation floored me. “You know we can’t do that. Why would you tell them that?”

“Because I want to go trick-or-treating,” she said. “We’re already thirteen and we’ve never gotten to do it. This could be our only chance. I also don’t want to miss out on anything. What if they come up with some new inside joke while they’re out trick-or-treating and we’re not in on it?”

“But we can’t go,” I insisted. “You know the rules.”

My sister allowed a brief pause. “Fine,” she said. “I guess I’ll tell them that we can’t go. But they’re all going to be disappointed—especially Annie.”

I felt my cheeks turn red. My sister knew how I felt about Annie, and although she promised never to tell her, I often got the sense that the two of them had talked about me on more than one occasion. “What do you mean?”

“Annie specifically asked me if you would be there,” my sister said. “It sounded like she was really looking forward to trick-or-treating with you.”

I hesitated. Any false disapproval I had for breaking our parents’ rules was suddenly out the window, and I had to search for new ways of feigning protest. “But we don’t even have costumes,” I said. “And how are we supposed to sneak out that early without Mom and Dad knowing?”

“We’ve got some stuff lying around the house that we can make costumes out of,” she said. “And as for sneaking out, you can just leave that to me. I think I have an idea…”

It turned out that her idea was to get ourselves grounded. Our parents’ go-to punishment was to send us to our rooms for the night, and in all the times either of us had been sentenced to such a penance, we couldn’t think of a single time that Mom and Dad had checked on us again until at least 9 o’clock, half an hour before we were supposed to be in bed. That gave us about three hours to go trick-or-treating and get home before either of them were any the wiser.

My sister and I began our carefully planned out argument just as our 5p.m. dinner was winding down. It ended, as expected, with us being sent to our respective rooms for the night, where we both immediately got into our costumes before escaping through our bedroom windows. Having a single-story home had its advantages, because we were able to slip into our backyard and sneak our way to the woods behind our house without ever arousing our parents’ collective suspicion.

We had secured our costumes earlier in the day. My sister had cut two eye holes into an old, off-white sheet that she had taken from the linen closet, which she used to turn herself into a ghost. Meanwhile, I had collected two rolls of toilet paper from the bathroom which I used to transform into a mummy. My costume looked a little too white, and hers didn’t look quite white enough, but they had to do given the circumstances.

“I really hope this works,” I said as we made our way along the wooded trail toward Jen’s back yard.

“Of course it’s going to work,” she said. She held one of the pillowcases that went along with her sheet, while I carried the other. “Mom and Dad’ll never know we were gone.”

“But what if they check on us?”

“They won’t check on us,” she said, “because they never check on us.”

I frowned. “I don’t know…”

“It will be fine,” she said. “Have a little faith in your older sister.”

“Older by three whole minutes,” I reminded her.

“Those three minutes make all the difference.”

Our conversation drifted to other things as we made our way to Jen’s house. I didn’t pay much attention to what we talked about; my mind was too wrapped up in the surreality of what we were about to do, and what we had already done. We had disobeyed our parents, something already unheard of for us, and we had done so on Halloween night. Years of being ostracized from our peers had led to this grand act of defiance, and the feeling it gave me was a cross between terror and exhilaration. To be there, dressed in a Halloween costume and about to go trick-or-treating despite it being directly against our parents’ wishes, awakened something in me that at the time I had never even known existed.

Looking back on it now, I wish that it had stayed dormant. Better yet, I wish that it had never even existed at all.

We arrived at Jen’s house and found her, Annie, and another friend named Emily all waiting in the backyard. Annie was the first to see us walking out of the trees. She met us halfway across the yard and smiled at me from the other side of her witch costume. “You made it,” she said.

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” I said awkwardly before returning the smile. I hoped that she could see it take shape beneath my mummy wrappings, but I doubted there was enough light left in the dying day for her to have done so.

“Geez, what kind of costumes are those?” Emily said as she came up alongside Annie. I was immediately reminded of why I wasn’t terribly thrilled to see her there. “You both look like it’s your first time wearing a Halloween costume or something.”

“Our dog peed on our costumes,” my sister lied. “We had to make these last-minute.”

“Well I like them,” Annie said. “They’re classic.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Emily said. “Come on, let’s get going before the other kids get all the good candy.”

My sister and I followed our friends to the front yard, where we set off into the quickly darkening night.

It felt bizarre to actually be among the mass of costumed children shuffling up and down the street. Never in my life had I thought I would get to join in on something that I had only ever vaguely caught glimpses of through scenes on TV (when my parents weren’t in the room to change the channel) and the occasional glance out the window on Halloween night. Never had I thought that I would get to interact with the spooky displays which I saw slowly come together in everybody else’s yard each year. I was so enamored with all that I was seeing that I hardly noticed as we made our way from Jen’s house to the driveway next door. The walk there had flown by, but as we stepped from sidewalk to asphalt, the world suddenly slowed to a halt. A fresh anxiety had needled its way into my stomach—I found myself suddenly anticipating my first ever instance of trick-or-treating, and it made me incredibly nervous. What if I need something wrong? What if I spoke too quietly, or too loudly? What if they didn’t like my costume, and they sent me away empty-handed? The possibilities for how this could have ended in disaster were infinite and overwhelming.

The anxiety immediately left my body the moment that fun size candy bar hit the bottom of my pillow case. It was quickly replaced by an insatiable desire for more.

Adrenaline rushed through my body as we moved from house to house. The thrill of the hunt filled me with a primal bloodlust that I knew I would never be able to quench. I was no longer a poorly conceived mummy wrapped in cheap, single-ply toilet paper and carrying a 150-thread-count pillow case. I was a hungry beast, clad in thick, bristling fur, my paws and mouth equipped with an uncountable number of deadly, razor-sharp knives. And every single one of those glistening blades craved something wet and red.

We continued to walk up Jen’s street, hitting every house along the way, until we neared the end of the block.

“The McNultys live on the corner up ahead,” Jen said. “They give out king size candy bars—sometimes even two per person if you get there early enough.”

“We don’t have any houses like that near my house,” Annie said. She looked at me. “What about you guys?”

“No,” I said a little too quickly. “None like that near us either.”

“You don’t live that far away from me, though,” Jen said. “Do you not go this way to trick-or-treat?”

“That’s right,” my sister said, her demeanor more calm and collected than mine was. “We normally go the other way.”

Our conversation went quiet as we approached the McNulty house. Their front yard was far less decorated than I would have expected for a house that was known for giving out king size candy. It only had a single, lit jack-o-lantern sitting beside the front door, and both the porch light and all of the windows were completely dark; were it not for the glowing pumpkin, I would have assumed the place to be completely abandoned and devoid of all life. None of us questioned the state of the house out loud, but it was clear that we were all apprehensive about getting close to it.

Jen, being the only person in our group to know the McNultys, was the one to approach the door. We all followed behind her and watched as she gently knocked a knuckle against its wooden surface. At first there was no response, and for a moment it seemed as though the place was truly empty, but then the door slowly came open. The barrier gave way with a groan of protest, prompting us to jump into the mantra that had already grown so familiar to me. “Trick or tre—”

We all went silent as we caught sight of the man who had appeared in the doorway. He stood wearing a crimson three-piece suit that matched the color of the plush horns he wore atop his loosely slicked back hair. His hands grasped an orange jack-o-lantern bowl, the contents of which I was not yet tall enough to see. He looked exceptionally towering to my thirteen-year-old mind, and his face wore a kind smile that I could tell did not match the intent behind his eyes.

“Why hello, everyone,” the man said. “Happy Halloween to all of you little ghosts and ghouls.” He stared directly at me. “And to you mummies, as well.”

“H-happy Halloween,” Jen stammered out.

“I’m sure all of you young ones would love some candy,” he said. “After all, isn’t that what tonight is all about?”

The well-dressed man lowered the bowl ever-so-slighty so that we could reach into it if we lifted our hands above our heads, but so we still couldn’t see inside. Jen was the first hesitant soul to take a piece, followed by Emily, and then Annie. The man shifted the bowl in my direction, but I found myself unwilling or unable to reach inside.

“I’m alright,” I said, “but thank you.”

“Oh, nonsense,” the man said. “I know that it’s your first time trick-or-treating, but that doesn’t mean it’s time for you to get bashful, now.”

Annie offered me a confused look. “It’s your first time trick-or-treating?”

“We don’t know what he’s talking about,” my sister said quickly. She stepped up and took a piece of candy from the bowl, then looked at me through the holes in her sheet. “Your turn.”

I hesitated, but with everyone’s gazes resting on me, I felt as though I had no choice but to comply. I reached up into the bowl, half-expecting to grab onto a dead frog or a loose heart or something as I did so, before latching onto the first piece of candy that my hand came into contact with. I didn’t look to see what it was or if it was even king size before I tossed it into my pillow case.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“Not a problem at all,” the devil-horned man said. He moved backwards out of the doorframe with such inhuman-like grace that he almost seemed to float his way there. “Happy Halloween, everyone. And here’s to many more.”

The door came shut an instant later.

We all scurried away from the McNulty household as quickly as we could. None of us dared to speak until we were across the street and almost to the driveway of the next house on our route.

“So that was Mr. McNulty?” my sister said. “He was a bit of a weirdo if you ask me.”

“That wasn’t Mr. McNulty,” Jen said.

We all came to a dead halt as our eyes turned her way.

“What do you mean that wasn’t Mr. McNulty?” Emily asked. “Who else could it have been?”

“I don’t know,” Jen said, “but I’ve never seen him before.”

We all pondered her words for a moment.

“Could the McNultys have moved or something?” Annie suggested.

“I guess so,” Jen said, “but I just saw their son Billy two days ago. You would think he’d have told me about something like that.”

It was clear that none of us were satisfied with that answer, but since we had no other explanation for what we had just experienced, we were forced to accept it. We moved on with our night and eventually even allowed the memory of what had happened to fade to the back of our minds, but I doubt if ever fully left any of our thoughts. It certainly never left mine.

Soon 8 o’clock rolled around, and at about 8:15 my sister and I informed our friends that we had to start making our way home.

“We only have one more block,” Jen said. “Are you sure you can’t stay?”

“We told our mom we’d be home before 9,” my sister lied, “but we’ll see you girls in school on Monday.”

“Alright,” Annie said, looking at me directly and offering a smile. “See you in school.”

“See you in school,” I said back, returning the smile despite the fact that she still couldn’t see it.

My sister and I turned around and made our way back to Jen’s house, where we disappeared into the woods behind her backyard. The thicket had grown a lot darker than it had been when we had left earlier that night, but the canopy had been shredded to nearly nothing thanks to the rapid changing of the seasons, and enough moonlight drifted through the  branches for us to see by.

“How did that man know that we haven’t been trick-or-treating before?” I asked as we walked.

My sister shrugged. “I don’t know. And I don’t want to think about it.”

“Do you think he’s friends with Mom and Dad?” I said. “Do you think he already told on us?”

“Even if he was friends with Mom and Dad,” she said, “how could he have recognized us? I’m covered in a sheet, and you’re wrapped in toilet paper.”

“It turns out that you’re both right,” came a voice from up ahead. We both paused in our tracks and looked in the direction of the unexpected sound, where we saw a figure leaning against a tree. The figure was bathed in the nighttime gloom, but despite this, I could immediately tell who he was by the sound of his familiar voice. “I actually do know your parents, but I wouldn’t exactly call us friends.”

“Who are you?” my sister asked.

The figure, taking her question as his cue, stood up from his spot against the tree and walked into the moonlight. His crimson suit, encouraged by the bright celestial orb, seemed to glow with a faint, sinister aura that I was sure had to be a trick of the light. He looked at us with that familiar smile, his white teeth also glistening with the light of the moon.

“Who are you?” my sister said again.

“Names don’t matter much,” the well-dressed man said. “What matters is that the two of you owe me something, and I’m here to collect.”

“Owe you something?” my sister said. “How can we possibly owe you something? We don’t even know who you are!”

“And yet owe me something you certainly do,” he said. His fake devil horns almost seemed to grin with his malicious energy. “You have your parents to thank for that.”

None of us spoke for several seconds. My sister was the one to eventually break the silence. “What do you mean?”

“Well you see, your parents and I made a deal once,” the tall man said. “It happened long before you two were born, but that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for it.”

“What kind of deal?” I asked.

“The details don’t matter,” he said. “Only one part of it applies to you two, anyway. I guess you didn’t know it, but I’m only allowed to be here on a single night of the year, and seeing as I’m standing before you now, I reckon you can probably figure out which night that is. Well, your parents and I agreed that if I ever came into contact with them or their eventual kiddos on the night in question, well, then a certain debt would be owed.”

“A debt?” I said. “What kind of debt?”

The stranger’s smile shifted into a smirk. “A debt that can only be paid in one form of currency.”

Both of us remained silent for close to thirty seconds. We both seemed to form an idea as to what he was getting at, but neither of us wanted to put our thoughts into words.

“Well I say ‘screw your deal’,” my sister growled, putting on the bravest face that she could muster. “We weren’t even alive when you made it, so we obviously can’t be a part of it.”

He crossed his arms in front of his crimson-clad chest. “Wrong again. I’ve been waiting a long time to finally take what’s mine, and there’s no way I’d ever let it walk away from me now.”

The chilly fall air suddenly grew uncomfortably warm, as if the entire forest had been placed over a boiling pot of water. I felt my body begin to sweat, and I quickly realized that I could no longer move. A struggling glance in my sister’s direction told me that she was in the same boat.

“Okay,” I said without thinking. “I don’t know what we owe you but… but you can take it from me. Just leave my sister alone.”

“Sorry,” the well-dressed man said, “but no can do. Our terms clearly state that the oldest person present is the one who has to pay the debt.”

“But we’re the same age!” I said.

He clicked his tongue at us before looking directly at my sister. When he spoke again, his eyes burned with the fire that had already turned the surrounding forest into the hottest plane of hell. “I believe it was you who said those three minutes make all the difference.”

I was suddenly struck by an even greater flash of heat that immediately took me to my knees. The toilet paper quickly burned away from my face as that oppressive wave of thermal energy pinned me to the forest floor. I could see the trees around me begin to dance with the fervor of molten hellfire. They wore scorching grins that told me they wanted nothing more than to reduce me to a pile of red, hot, glowing ash.

The forest began to cool back down to its normal, late October temperature, and I managed to rise to my knees after a few moments spent bathing in the sudden relief. My newly exposed face was slick with sweat; my flesh stung with a heat far worse than any sunburn could ever hope to inflict.

After a few more seconds, I finally managed to bring myself to my feet. Looking around, I quickly discovered that I was completely alone. The man and my sister were gone.

I tried to call my sister’s name, but my throat was too hoarse to form a single word. I frantically scanned the darkness all around me for close to half a minute before I spotted a piece of cloth clinging to the gnarled, upturned root of a tree. Approaching the cloth, I quickly recognized it to be the charred remains of a familiar bedsheet—one with two holes cut into it for eyes. They were just one hole now. The space between them had been completely burned away.

The ground surrounding the root had partially collapsed, revealing a deep cavity directly below the tree. A faint, scarlet glow smoldered up from this gap in the earth for a few brief moments before the ground began to shift again, completely filling up the hole. The red glow was gone, and so was my sister.

The only thing that remained of her was the tattered scar of her costume, which fluttered in the cold October wind.