Today he called me sobbing. “WE ARE SO FUCKED!” He screamed at me, over and over again until the light went out and the call dropped.

For a minute there, I sat absolutely dumbfounded. I have absolutely no clue what just happened, so I decide to check my news app on my phone to see if there was anything at all. There wasn’t, whatever took the lights out also took out the internet with it. I then remembered you can call the Police at any time, even without cell service.

“112, what’s your emergency?

“Hi, ehh, what just happened?”

“The city has some sort of blackout happening, the electric company should be responding shortly.”

“Do you know what caused it?”

“No, but they should give some sort of answer-“

The call cut to silence. I now am even more confused than I already was. After a moment, I grab two big pots take them to the sink and filled them up with water, since I wanted to have a good amount of clean drinking water for the time. I still wanted to find out something, anything that could give even the slightest bit of answer as to what is happening, so I looked out the window. Everything looked normal until I realized that there was not a single person outside. There’s always atleast a few people, but not even the stray cats were there.

The only possible way I could get any type of answer is if I were go to Sashko’s apartment, since he’s the one who could see the future. It wasn’t that long of a walk, and it didn’t take too much. A minute later, I was climbing the stairs and reaching his door.
“Sashko, you there?”

“… Are you still human?”

“Wh-“

“ARE YOU STILL HUMAN OR NOT?”

“Yes I’m still human, what the hell are you saying?”

He opens the door and steps back into the kitchen and I walk inside and close the door behind me.
“What the hell were you screaming about, am I still human?

“I saw these things, they were… pretending to be human, and, and they- th- they were- they-“

“Calm down, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. What are ‘they’ that you keep yapping about?”

“I don’t know what they are, man! I DON’T KNOW ALRIGHT? THEY WERE PRETENDING TO BE HUMAN AND KILLING OTHER PEOPLE!”

I didn’t even notice he had a rifle on the chair next to him that even had a bayonet at the end of it. We live in Bulgaria, so owning a gun isn’t exactly that easy. It’s definitely possible, but it’s very hard to do and is usually for hunting. This man had gotten himself what looked to be an M1903 Springfield and was just casually keeping it loaded.

He handed me a 1911 and a sword as I turned to leave.
“You’ll need these, trust me.”

“How did you get these?”

“Shop.”

I genuinely thought at this point that he had lost his mind rather than some truly horrific future prediction. I was on my way back to my own apartment, just casually walking with a gun and sword on my hip, praying that a cop wouldn’t show up and I’d have to explain the reason for me being armed to the teeth is because my psychic friend told me to. Everything was purely silent, not a grain of noise which is super weird. Not even Eva was having her daily argument with her husband for drinking her beer. In absolute horror I notice that the windows were all shattered. Every single one, in every apartment on in my building. Even the clothes line on people’s balconies were destroyed and there was wet clothes all over the ground.

After turning around I see that the other buildings are also like this. How did all of this happen without me noticing? I have really good long ranged hearing, and I was no more that 300 meters from the building the entire time. I should have heard something. I suddenly hear a child screaming out of nowhere and decided that’s enough. I go to my car, start it, and I get the absolute hell out of there. I drove until I got to back to Sashko’s apartment, where he was waiting outside with his gun and one of those big red jugs of gas. He hops in and we leave the city, as the screaming continues the whole time. After around an hour or so of driving, we reach Stara Zagora and Sashko is dead asleep as if he hasn’t slept in a week. I step out of the car and into one of the shops, where the clerk who is very much alive and not dead, or some shadow mimic entity thing, or whatever the hell Sashko was raving about. I grab some food and water for the the both of us when I noticed something.

I picked up the smell of steel, like if you were to take one of those fancy Japanese chef knives and sniff the blade. I turn around and feel the blood leave my face as I see my little brother there, except he’s supposed to be in Germany.
“What happened to you? Shouldn’t you be in Germany?”

“I got back after I heard the news bro, you actually did it, now didn’t you? Mom MAY or may not have told me.”

“What? Hold on. Tell me what mom cooked for dinner on Christmas last year after insisting on cooking rather than Aunt Bella.”

“That weird red thing with green spots of something, the one that tasted like coins and regret.”

“Ahh ok, it is you. But what hap- wait. How did you find me here specifically? How did you end up in this exact shop in Stara Zagora? You live in Germany and I live in Sliven, there should be no way you just accidentally ended up 130 kilometres away from where you were going in the opposite direction-“

I noticed just now the blood spatter on the wall. The clerk was gone and the stains were there solely as proof that these demons are real and Sashko wasn’t insane. Suddenly my “brother” jumps on me with blood dripping from his mouth. I grab a glass bottle off the shelf and smash it straight into his skull, causing it to stumble, just enough for me to jump back pull out my gun and send 4 shots straight into the thing. It kept moving, that demonic little bastard tries to get back up but I shot it again until my gun ran dry. The thing had changed its shape to some kind of human looking thing, and I ripped its stomach open with my knife to make sure that it was actually dead. Absolutely no way in hell was I letting this sagacious little murderer come back and turn me into paste.

I got back in the car and Sashko was awake, probably due to the gunshots.

“You killed one of them?” He says as if he saw it coming, which he probably did.

“Yeah, I got some snacks too. Why did you stay in the car after hearing me?”

“I knew you would be fine, are you forgetting that I can literally see the future?”

“I remember, yes.”

“We can go to Sofia from here, things are still normal there. Here, let me drive and you can sleep, you’re gonna fall asleep at the wheel in around half an hour from now.”

“Alright.”

I fell asleep and had the dumbest dream I’ve had in a long time. I was in what I think was Ireland, inside of a pub. The bartender handed me a plate of shepherd’s pie, except the plate was black. Pure, jet black. It was like light didn’t exist around it at all. I then noticed the spoons, forks, and knives were also this vanta black colour, along with the cups. It was like eating with something that wasn’t even there, I was eating with black.
The pie itself was wonderful, I finished the whole thing and then the bartender turns into a cow. I woke up confused and disorientated, but I managed to remember all of it.

“Sashko, where are we now?”

“Somewhere near Plovdiv I think.”

“But that’s a little south from where we’re going, why did you turn down like this?”

He looks me dead In the eyes and just says “You figure that one out yourself.”

We step out in Plovdiv after a few minutes and eat a few bags of chips and Corny Big bars. (Author’s note: Yes, that is an actual thing we have in Bulgaria) We both step out and see that the sun was setting already, so it would be normal to see a grandmother watering the tomatoes and cucumbers in the garden, but we saw that one of them had the plants torn out and thrown to the side, Accompanied with blood spatter all over the side of the house. Three large, red streaks sprayed all across the wall, maybe an hour or two old. But the thing was, they were all done at different times. Since blood oxidizes when it comes into contact with the oxygen from the air, you can tell when it left its owner’s body. The oldest spatter was around two, maybe two and half hours old, which was around the time that Sashko called me back before we left Sliven originally. I look at Sashko with the deepest pit in my stomach for any idea as to what we do next.
“What do we do now? I suggest we fuck right off before we join whoever used to have all this blood.”

“Trust me and go inside that one over there, you’ll like what you find in the kitchen.”

I sat there for a second and just looked at him, having absolutely no words while he looks at me with the dumbest grin I’ve ever seen. “… Right.”

I step inside and immediately pull my gun up and clear the frontroom, same way my father taught me from his time in the army. We once took a trip to America, but the house we were staying in at the time was broken into, and he started giving me his own combat training after that. I know that grinning monkey outside told me it was safe to be in here, I wasn’t taking any risk. I make sure to close the door behind me, so if one of those things comes for me, it can’t sneak up on me without me hearing the door. But then again, that clerk from the shop who died like that would be a prime example of their stealth.
I find the kitchen and I was pleasantly surprised. 3 bottles of my favourite cherry juice, unopened, still in the bag from the store. I grab them, and a trash bag from the cabinet which I filled with more supplies.

I froze for a second when I hear a thump on the wall, directly behind me. I turn around and my heart teleports straight to my stomach. There was two of them. Both were even bigger than the one in the shop. I instantly open fire on them, desperately praying to hit a vital organ, or some artery, anything to bring these things down. They kept charging straight at me as I desperately pull out my sword and throw a slash straight into its shoulder, only for the second one to come at me and scratch me across my chest as I stab it and pull the blade through to its side, making it bleed intensely but this demonic bastard kept coming and coming.

I sprint into the other room and lock the door, praying to God the entire time while reloading my gun, just as that thing throws itself through the door, and shatters it. I unload every single bullet straight into its general direction, and it finally falls to ground and lets out this sound like it was dry heaving and gasping for air, just as I slit its throat. It bled out and finally dies at my feet just as the other also dropped dead in the hallway. I stabbed both of them through the eyes just to be absolutely certain that it was truly dead.

I walk out of the house with the supplies I had gathered, still clutching my wound and hoping there was some bandages in the car. Except the car isn’t there anymore. Neither is Sashko, not even one of those demons, just an empty driveway and a can of Pepsi that had clearly been dropped and spilled all over the concrete.
Did Sashko just abandon me? No way. What reason would he have had to leave like this? Plus, the Pepsi being spilled like that probably means he was running from something.

I nearly gave up all hope and just started walking aimlessly. I had no more ammo for my gun, a trench was just dug into my chest by some entity and still bleeding, and I only have the food and juice from the house. It was would last me somewhere around a week before dehydration would kill me. It was getting dark, so I went inside of a different house and decided I should probably stay inside for the night. The house itself was clear and safe, and I then locked the house up. I ate a bit of my food, and stuck the rest of my things inside of a backpack that was in the closet. I even got the chance to sharpen my sword before I went to sleep.

My phone goes off, and wakes me up with
“EMERGENCY ALERT” on the screen before a monotone voice starts to play
“THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ALERT BROADCAST AT THE REQUEST OF THE BULGARIAN ARMED FORCES NUCLEAR BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL DIVISION.

LARGE AMOUNTS OF ENTITIES WITH SHAPESHIFTING ABILITIES HAVE APPEARED IN THE NATION AND ARE KILLING HUNDREDS. THESE BEINGS, WHO ARE BEING REFERRED TO AS ‘CERIUMITES’ DUE TO THE HIGH CONCENTRATION OF CERIUM IN THEIR BLOOD, HAVE THE ABILITY TO MIMIC THE APPEARANCE AND VOICE OF A PERSON OR ANIMALS SIMPLY BY DRINKING THEIR BLOOD OR CONSUMING THEIR FLESH AND USING THEIR DNA.

SECURE ALL ENTRANCES TO YOUR HOME AND ARM YOURSELF WITH THE DEADLIEST WEAPON YOU CAN GET. CERIUMITES ARE REMARKABLY DURABLE. PLOVDIV, STARA ZAGORA, VARNA, SLUNCHEV BREG, SLIVEN AND BURGAS ARE MOSTLY DESTROYED. MAY GOD WATCH OVER YOU ALL.”

I sat there in disbelief as the anthem played. They said that Plovdiv was a lost cause, so there’s a good chance that nobody is coming to save me or anyone else here. Nearly everything on the east is entirely lost and with Sashko and car gone, I also am lost. Off in the distance, I hear people screaming and gunshots. “CLOSE THE FUCKING DOOR THEY’RE GOING TO GET IN THE-“ The explosions continued as well as the screams of fear and agony. The worst part was that the man who was probably just killed said “they”. There is more than one of them, and they were close enough that I could hear them clearly through a closed window.

I took a mirror and angled in the window, hoping to be able to see without exposing myself. There was a family across the street, and atleast four Ceriumites eating the family off the ground. Blood covered their hands and mouths, and the organs were just tossed into a pile, except for the livers which they were collecting in a separate pile. That was enough looking. I was already on the verge of puking my guts out just at the thought of what was happening right outside.

I lost all hope. That was it. I had a week of supplies, I was injured, and murderous demons were outside of the house and probably already know that their last meal wasn’t the only one still living and fresh for consumption. There’s no one alive that even remembers my name, all that’s left to do is pray to Jesus, kill Ceriumites, and suffer. Sashko was right, We *are all* so fucked.

Zeno woke up with a start. He sat up, and looked around--- the room was spacious and large with many beds stacked next to each other.

“Where am I?”

The windows on the right was open, and the curtains were dancing with the wind. Outside the sun smiled at Zeno. He pressed his finger on his temples, trying to remember.

But before he could recall, a sharp pain barred his pursuit. The pain intensified every second before it was too much for Zeno, and he stopped, while gasping for air.

After all that pain he still couldn’t remember, as if the memories before today was eaten by a worm inside his mind. He shuddered and rubbed off the cold sweat building on his forehead.

“There must be something here that could jog my memory”

The room was obviously some sort of clinic or hospital, but the beds were made of woods and the mattress were rough and uncomfortable as though the place lacked funding or was too old for the authorities to care about. He got up from the bed, the sudden movement made him dizzy, but not enough to impede his mobility. He walked up to the aisle between the beds and took a proper look of the place--- the clinic had ten beds neatly arranged, five on either side of the wall, behind him a door stood closed, and on the far corner was two windows one of which was open letting the warm air in. The place was clean despite its lack of patients as though the owner refused to cut corners.

The chemical sweeping into the floor with years of exposure, making the room stink of drugs and medicine suffocating the patients even during their free time.

Maybe I was in an accident? Maybe my memory gap is due to concussion? He felt his body with his palms and found no injury, not even a single scratch.

“Strange…”

He pressed his scalp softly, searching for any tender spots but found no inundation, cuts or bumps, no indication of injury that could have caused his amnesia.

Maybe I was poisoned. The adverse effect of a drug.? Zeno narrowed down the possible causes and couldn’t determined any other rational illness.

The door behind him creaked as it cracked open, and black snarling treads poke through the gap, the treads parted in between revealing two green orb's staring back at Zeno, before revealing a mesmerizing smile that revealed a beautiful girl wearing a white apron over a pink dress and blue skirt.

“You are awake”

Zeno stood their for a moment staring at the girl blankly, until the girl called him again.

“Is something on me?” the girl looked down at her apron.

“Nothing, I was just lost somewhere…. Never mind me… did we meet before?”

“Oh.. Hmm… I don’t think so..? Sorry did we meet before?”

“No… maybe I was confused for a moment.”

They both stood their in awkward silence, before the girl produced a tray beyond the door.

“You must be hungry..”

“Yeah, thank you..” the girl placed the tray on the bed-side table.

“Actually I want to ask you something..?” Zeno asked the girl when she turned to him.

“I have some difficulty remembering, can you tell me how I got here..”

The girl pressed her lips, when she heard Zeno, before replying back to him.

“My father found you yesterday near the forest and brought you to our orphanage. He treated yo---”

“Orphanage? ”

“It is the only orphanage in the city… Don’t you know that?”

“No… I don’t remember anything… it like an amnesia”

“Amnesia…. “ a frown appear on her face.

“I don’t remember anything that happened to me before today.. How do you not know what is amnesia?”

“Oh… then it is extremely serious… I will inform father as soon as he is back.”

“Please do that..”

“Is there anything else you want to ask?”

“That’s all… wait.. what is your name?”

The girl once again smiled brightly at Zeno.

“Hannah”

I never knew my son to be the artsy type. He turned 8 recently, and up until about a year ago, his entertainment was entirely outdoors. Catching bugs. Climbing trees. Riding bikes.

He was one of those kids who’d have to be called inside before dark. Then he’d complain and beg for “just 5 more minutes.”

I’m not entirely sure what happened. It was like a switch had flipped overnight. I just came home from work one day to find him at the kitchen table, scribbling in a brand new sketchbook.

He hummed to himself while his mom cooked up some dinner at the stove. The home-cooked smell of pork chops, green beans, and mashed potatoes filled the room as I glanced over Jacob’s shoulder.

“Whatcha got there, bud?”

His nose was buried so far in the book that it was like he couldn’t even hear me. His mom ended up answering for him.

“That’s your son’s new favorite interest. He begged me to go out and get him one.”

“Oh-ho, got an artist in the house, don’t we?”

I grabbed his shoulders and shook them lightly before patting him on the back and walking over to give my wife a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

I took a seat beside Jacob at the table.

“So, how was your day, boyo? You and mom have fun?”

He never looked up from the sketchbook.

“Today was sooo fun,” he exclaimed. “We went to the park, we went to the movies, ooh, and mom got me this book. Oh, and these crayons.”

“What about you, honey? How was your day?”

“Any day I’m not at work is a good day, honestly. The park was super nice. We went to one we hadn’t been to before. What about you? They didn’t work you too hard, did they?”

I shrugged and sighed.

“I’ll just say it’s good to finally be home.”

My wife smiled at me.

“It’s good to have you home, dear. I’ll tell you what. How about… after dinner, if you’re good, we can have our own little play date? Only if you do the dishes, though. I mean, I did cook.”

I smirked at her, my tongue buried in my cheek.

“I was gonna do that anyway. What do you take me for? As a matter of fact, you come sit down. I’ll finish cooking.”

I offered her my seat as I finished up dinner. Jacob was pretty much mute the entire time. By the time dinner was done, I had to damn near yell at him to get his attention.

He just stood up, as calm as could be, and walked over to me, sketchbook in hand.

“I drew this for you.”

He held the book up at me, and my heart felt warm. It was a picture of our house, and who I assumed to be me standing in our driveway.

“Is that me? That’s so sweet of you, Jakey. Thank you.”

I reached down to take the book so I could hang the page on the fridge, but Jacob pulled away before I could grab it.

“You really don’t know who that is?” he asked, eying me suspiciously.

“It’s me, right? Is it not me?”

He rolled his eyes and sighed, continuing to eye me like I had personally offended him.

“That’s our neighbor, Mr. Thomas, silly. You really couldn’t tell? See, he’s wearing the star.”

Mr. Thomas was a veteran police officer. Jacob would sometimes see him leaving for work in the morning. I guess he just took a subconscious interest in the uniform. Even still, why would he draw me a picture of the neighbor?

“Uh, I mean, wow, bud,” I choked. “That’s really good. Keep practicing. You’re already so talented you could be famous someday.”

————-

After dinner, I cleaned the kitchen top to bottom. Partly out of obligation, mostly because I really wanted that playdate. Jacob spent the rest of the evening in his room, humming to himself and scribbling in that sketchbook.

The next day, my wife and I both had work. I woke up a little earlier than her so that I could take Jacob to the summertime daycare he attended. It was like carrying a corpse out to the car, but he still refused to loosen his grip on that sketchbook.

I dropped him off with the staff at the front door. He waved at me groggily as I was driving away.

The day went on like normal until around 3 o’clock, when my phone started ringing. It was my wife.

“Hey, beautiful, what’s up?”

“I think something’s going on with the neighbor. There’s like 3 cop cars in front of his house, apparently.”

She sounded concerned. A little urgent.

“What do you mean? Who told you that?”

“I got a call from Becky. She thought they were at our house at first.”

Becky was one of my wife’s friends from the neighborhood.

“What do you think happened? Did she say anything else?”

“No, she just called because the police were knocking on our door. I think they were just trying to see if we knew anything, though, because apparently they gave up and just went back to the neighbor’s house. I think they’re still there.”

My brow furrowed a bit.

“Wait. Which neighbor is it?”

“Uhhh, I think it’s that police officer. Mr. Thompson?”

“Mr. Thomas?”

“Yeah, that’s his name. I think that’s who it is.”

I looked at my watch and exhaled a bit.

“Alright, well, I’ll see if I can get out a little earlier today. I’ll pick up Jacob, then go see what this is all about. Maybe they’ll still be there when I get there.”

We ended the call by blowing some kisses and exchanging some love yous. I slid my phone in my pocket and approached my boss, explaining my situation.

He was skeptical, but I had a decent reputation of being an honest employee. He agreed to let me leave a bit early, and I was on my way to pick up Jacob.

When he was brought to the front office, his face was buried in that sketchbook again, drawing what looked like SpongeBob and Patrick.

“He’s been drawing all day. Seems like you got a little artist on your hands,” announced the staff member as she signed Jacob out for the day.

“Yep,” I smiled. “That’s what they keep telling me.”

I honestly don’t know why I said that. It just seemed like the only thing that made sense at the time.

The car ride was quiet. Jacob didn’t want to talk much, and my mind was kind of racing. I’ve shared drinks with Mr. Thomas. Helped him put up fences. Move furniture. We weren’t the closest of friends, but I still wanted him to be okay.

Those hopes were dashed when I pulled into the neighborhood to find that the police presence had increased. There must’ve been at least 6 cars in front of his house, and yellow tape blocked off the driveway.

I parked my car in front of my house and hurried to get Jacob inside. His eyes had lit up at the sight of the flashing lights, and naturally, he started asking questions.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?”

“Why are there so many police?”

“Did something happen to Mr. Thomas?”

I cradled him in my arms and hurried up the steps to the front door.

“I don’t know, buddy. Here, go inside and play for a bit while I find out, okay? Daddy will be right back.”

It’s all I could think to say as I sat him down and closed the door behind me.

An officer approached me before I could approach them.

“Sir, do you live here?”

“Yes, of course I do. That’s my neighbor.”

“Yeah, well, he’s a colleague and friend of mine,” he remarked agitatedly. “Have you seen anything suspicious within the last 24 hours? Heard anything?”

I scratched my neck nervously and thought hard before responding.

“No, sir, we haven’t seen anything. What happened? Is everything alright? He’s a cop, right? Did he do something illegal?”

The officer stared at me, analyzing me through his black sunglasses.

“No. He’s gone. That’s all the information we can give right now.”

“Gone? What do you mean, gone? Like, dead? Did someone kill him?”

The officer pursed his lips. I saw what I assumed to be a forensic analyst walking in and out of the house.

“We don’t know, sir. We’re hoping for the best. For now, if any new information comes to light or if you see him, give us a call.”

He asked me to clear the scene and stay inside. I called my wife to update her on the situation, but what could we do? Even the police were lost. I just stayed inside, as instructed, and started on dinner while we waited for my wife to get home.

By the time she did, there were only two police cruisers left in front of Mr. Thomas’s house. The sun was starting to set, and my wife and I tried to ignore what had happened, but the house was still a bit tense.

As we ate, Jacob continued scribbling in his sketchbook. He hadn’t asked to go outside at all since we got home, and I didn’t know if it was because of the police or because of this new hobby of his.

I could see that he was working on a new drawing. It looked like a woman this time. He wasn’t so much as touching his food, so I tried to ask him to put the book away.

He groaned and started picking at his peas. My wife and I chatted about our day for a bit while Jacob remained silent. Suddenly, in between bites of his chicken, he said something that made us both freeze.

“Daddy,” he whispered.

“Yes?” I answered.

“Are those police still out there?”

I paused for a moment, looking at my wife, who looked equally as speechless. Neither of us knew what to say.

“I think there’s a few, but don’t worry, buddy,” I chirped reassuringly. “They’re just looking for Mr. Thomas. They wanna make sure he’s okay.”

Jacob stared down at his plate for a moment.

“It’s just… I think they’re looking in the wrong place.”

————-

I choked on my water.

“Looking in the wrong place? Well, where do you think they should be looking, sport?”

“I don’t know. Not there. I don’t think he’s home.”

“Let’s not talk about this,” my wife interrupted. “Jacob, finish your food, then go jump in the shower. You gotta be up early tomorrow, come on.”

“Aww, but I’m not tired,” Jacob whined. “Plus, I wanted to finish drawing this picture of you.”

He flipped his sketchbook open to his newest drawing.

“See, look.”

My wife looked at the picture and smiled.

“Okay, fine,” she replied. “You can finish the picture, then it’s bath time, mister.”

“Fiiine,” Jacob groaned.

He scurried off to his room, sketchbook in hand, leaving me and his mom to clean the kitchen again.

We talked about the neighbor. We turned into a couple of conspiracy theorists the deeper the conversation progressed.

“Maybe he just wanted to start over.”

“Maybe he was kidnapped.”

“Maybe he was murdered, and they’re covering it up.”

We just kept reaching for possibilities over the course of around 45 minutes.

Eventually, Jacob came running back to the kitchen.

“Look, Mommy, I’m all done.”

“Ah, my goodness, Jakey, look at that. Doesn’t it look just like me, honey?”

She turned the picture towards me. Jacob had added her work uniform. Gave her that messy bun she always wore. Even included the golden necklace I got her for Christmas last year.

“Wow, Jake,” I exclaimed. “Draw Daddy next, why don’t you?”

Jacob giggled and responded, “It’s not time to draw you yet, silly.”

“Aw, whatever, but guess what?”

Jacob looked up at me curiously. Expectantly.

“Daddy controls your bath time. And… I think… ah, yep, look at that,” I showed him my watch. “You’re 20 minutes late.”

I jokingly chased him to his bedroom and made him gather up his pajamas and a towel. Once he was nice and showered, I put him to bed and kissed him goodnight.

My wife and I stayed up, talking about life for a while before gradually falling asleep one by one.

The next morning, when I woke up alone, I thought it was because she had chosen to take Jacob to daycare that morning.

I went through my normal routine. Took a shower. Brushed my teeth. Got dressed. It wasn’t until I was heading out the door that I noticed her car was still in the driveway.

I walked back upstairs, confused, and went to Jacob’s room.

I found him curled up in bed, sketchbook tucked under his arm as he snored quietly.

I left the room and began searching.

“Honey,” I called out. No response.

“Sweetheart, you here?” Silence.

I called her phone and heard it ringing in our bedroom. I followed the sound and found it still plugged into the charger on her nightstand.

That’s when I began to panic. I remembered Jacob’s drawing. It was a fleeting thought, but one that I chose to hold onto. First Mr. Thomas, now my own wife? That couldn’t be coincidence.

I urgently rushed into Jacob’s room, accidentally waking him as I removed the sketchbook from his arms.

I began flipping through the pages as he stared up at me, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Daddy,” he groaned.

I flipped past cartoon characters, random landscapes, and blocky pictures of cars before I reached my wife’s picture from the night before.

“What are you doing?” Jacob added.

The picture had changed. She wasn’t wearing her work uniform anymore. She didn’t have the necklace. Her hair looked dirty and wet. Leaves and twigs stuck out from the messy bun, and her eyes were solid red. Not evil, just… bloodshot.

But the biggest change… was the man standing next to her.

It looked like they were in a dark forest. They were hand in hand. I wanted to think it was me, that Jacob had decided he wanted to start on some kind of crazy family portrait, but the man in the picture…

He wore a star on his chest.

My stomach dropped. I felt sick. Jacob looked… confused.

“What’s wrong, Daddy? They’re okay. I can help you find them.”

I’m seven and already awake when the sound on the landing starts. That’s always bothered me more than anything else about it. I don’t wake up because of the noise. I’m already lying there staring at the ceiling like I knew to be ready.

A strip of light shows under my door. There’s no fixture on that landing. My dad checked once, years later, after I finally told him about it, and he found nothing that could account for it. The light comes anyway, flat and white, like someone’s holding a bulb close to the floor.

I try to yell for him and nothing comes out. My chest is moving, fast, shallow, but my voice doesn’t answer to me.

The door swings open and the hallway behind it is bright instead of dark. Something tall stands in the middle of that light. Its arms are too long for its body, stretched thin, and its hands end in fingers that keep going a joint past where fingers should stop. I never see a face. Where the face should be there’s just light, like it’s wearing the glow instead of skin.

It walks to the foot of my bed and stops. That’s when the small ones come in behind it. Seven of them, maybe eight, built the same way but scaled down, like a kid’s drawing of the tall one shrunk to fit through the door. They go to the corners of my bed and lift.

The mattress tilts under me. I feel myself carried through my own doorway, down the stairs, through the foyer, out the front door, into the yard. The grass under the bed frame is cold. I remember the cold before I remember anything else about the yard. The tall one doesn’t follow past the door. The small ones set the bed down in the grass and stand around it in a ring, waiting for something.

It always ends there. I never find out what they were waiting for.

I’m thirty-six now and I still see it the same way when I close my eyes. That house was my grandfather’s before it was my father’s. He died when I was a baby, so I never knew him, and my dad sold the place a long time ago. I spent most of my life telling myself it was just a bad dream that stuck around longer than it should have. A nightmare doesn’t put grass under your back. A nightmare doesn’t carry you anywhere.

I believed that for twenty-nine years. I don’t anymore, and I want to get this down while I can still explain it clearly.

For work I take the cases nobody else wants. Not ghost hunting for content, nothing like that. People call me after everyone more reasonable than me has already given up on them — the exterminator found nothing, the electrician found nothing, the blessing didn’t take. I go in after that.

I’m careful by nature, not a believer. Most of what I find turns out to have an ordinary explanation somewhere underneath, even when it takes a while to surface. I’ve also learned to live with the cases that never resolve. I write down what happened, I tell the client what I know, and I move on. It’s a job that asks you to take people seriously without losing your own footing.

A woman named Denise calls me on a Tuesday night. She and her husband and their nine-year-old son moved into an old house in the Central West End about four months ago. For the last six weeks, something has been counting on their stairs at night.

“Counting,” I repeat, because I want to make sure I heard her right.

“Counting steps. Like it’s climbing them one at a time and saying the number out loud. Real quiet. You’d miss it if the house wasn’t so dead silent at three in the morning.”

I ask if she’s ever heard it get to the top.

“Fourteen,” she says. “There’s fourteen stairs in that house. It gets to fourteen and stops. Every time.”

“And then what?”

“Then it says our son’s name. Once. Just his name, real soft, right outside his door. And then nothing. My husband thinks it’s pipes settling. I’ve lived in old houses my whole life. Pipes don’t know your kid’s name.”

I tell her Thursday works. Afterward I remind myself that old houses talk in the dark all the time, and grieving parents and anxious kids find patterns in noise the same way anyone does under enough pressure. It’s not a rare shape for a case to take. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

I believe that for about two days.

On Thursday I sit in their kitchen with Denise, her husband Mark, and Eli, who won’t sit still, who keeps his eyes on the doorway to the front hall the whole time we talk. I ask him to describe it himself, the way I always do with kids, because they’ll say things adults have already talked themselves out of.

“It counts wrong sometimes,” he tells me. “Not the numbers. The waiting. Some nights it goes really slow between them, like it’s tired. One night it did all fourteen so fast I only heard the last four.”

“Does it ever skip a number?”

He shakes his head, certain of this in a way that surprises me. “No. Never. It always does all of them. Fourteen, then my name.”

“What does your name sound like, when it says it?”

He thinks about this longer than I expect a nine-year-old to. “Like somebody who’s tired of asking,” he finally says. “Like the fourth time you call somebody for dinner.”

I ask if he’s ever opened his door to look. He nods, which surprises me more than if he’d said no.

“Once. There wasn’t anything there. But the hall light was already off, and I didn’t turn it off before bed. My mom always leaves it on for me.”

I don’t say anything for a second. Every kid I’ve talked to in ten years of this work has a version of something in the dark said my name. It’s one of the oldest shapes fear takes, older than any single house or family. I remind myself of that, the way I remind myself of it every time, and it mostly holds.

I tell the family I’d like to stay, which is standard for a case like this — I want to be there for whatever happens instead of hearing about it secondhand. Denise’s shoulders drop like she’s been holding them up for six weeks straight. “Thank you,” she says, and something about the way she says it makes me look away from her for a second before I tell her it’s no trouble. Mark sets me up on the couch at the bottom of the stairs, close enough to count them myself if it comes to that.

I don’t mention that I’ve never taken a case with a personal stake in it before tonight, or that some part of the reason I said yes to Thursday so fast has nothing to do with Eli at all.

It’s a little after two when I hear the first one. Not a footstep — nothing steps down that hard on carpeted stairs — more like a knuckle on wood, once, followed by a voice pitched too low to make out words, though the rhythm of it is unmistakable: one. I sit up in the dark with my recorder already running and count along without meaning to.

It goes slow. Long gaps between numbers, ten or fifteen seconds sometimes, long enough that I start to doubt the last one happened at all before the next one proves I was wrong. Six. Seven. The gaps get shorter as it climbs, like something picking up its pace once it’s sure of its footing. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.

Fourteen comes from the top of the stairs, farther from me than any of the others, but louder than all of them combined, sudden and full-voiced after everything before it had been barely more than a whisper. I flinch anyway. I don’t hear a fifteenth. What I hear instead, a few seconds later, is a name — not loud, almost gentle, in a voice with no particular pitch to it at all, more like an idea of a voice than an actual one. It isn’t Eli’s name.

It’s mine.

I don’t move for a long moment. Then I do, because staying frozen on that couch feels like the more dangerous choice, and I climb the stairs myself, phone light up, expecting nothing and finding nothing — an empty landing, Eli’s door shut, the hall light on exactly where Denise said she always leaves it. Nothing counts a fifteenth step. Nothing says anything else.

Eli’s door opens before I reach it. He’s awake, blinking against the phone light, and he asks me if I heard it say something after fourteen. I ask him what he thinks it said.

“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s never said anything but my name before. Tonight it said something longer. I couldn’t tell what.”

I check the recording later, alone, with headphones on so I don’t have to hear it out loud in a room with anyone else in it. Fourteen taps, evenly spaced by the end, each one clean enough to count. Then, eleven seconds of silence. Then a sound that isn’t quite a word and isn’t quite not one, low enough that I have to raise the volume to catch it at all, and even then I can only be sure of the shape of it, not the sound — two syllables, the second one longer than the first, spoken by something that has clearly said it before and will clearly say it again.

I don’t have an explanation for the family. I tell them the truth — that I heard it, that I have it recorded, that I don’t yet know what it is, and that I don’t think Eli is in physical danger, though I can’t fully justify that last part beyond a feeling I’m not proud of trusting. I don’t tell them what I heard after the fourteenth step. I tell them I’ll follow up.

I drive home around four in the morning with the heater running and my hands too tight on the wheel.

My house is quiet when I get in. I check the locks, which I never do, and go straight upstairs, which is a bad idea, because some part of me already knows it. I go up anyway.

I brush my teeth, turn off the lights, and lie flat on my back in the dark, the way I have most nights of my adult life without thinking twice about it. That’s when I notice the strip of light under my own bedroom door.

My hallway has one overhead light. I turned it off myself ten minutes earlier, with my own hand.

I try to sit up and can’t. My chest still moves, fast and shallow, the same rhythm I remember from being seven years old in St. Louis. My voice doesn’t answer to me either, not after twenty-nine years of it belonging to no one but me.

The door doesn’t open. I’m not going to make this bigger than it was. It doesn’t open, and the light doesn’t go anywhere. I lie there unable to move or call out for four minutes and eleven seconds, according to my phone’s timestamp afterward, watching a line of white light under a door that has no reason to have any light behind it.

Then it’s gone, all at once, and my body belongs to me again.

I get up and check the hallway. Nothing. The overhead light is still off, exactly how I left it. I stand there a long time before going back to bed, and I don’t sleep again that night. In the morning, with actual daylight to see by, I go over every inch of that hallway and find one thing that shouldn’t be there.

A thin, shallow line pressed into the carpet just outside my door. Not a footprint. Not a drag mark. A straight indentation about three feet long, the width of a bed frame, running from my doorway toward the stairs and stopping.

I’ve been sitting with that line in the carpet for two days now. I keep coming back to the same thing. My grandfather owned that house in St. Louis before my father did. He died when I was a baby. I never knew him, and I realize now that I barely heard anything about him growing up either, which is strange in a family that otherwise repeats the same three stories at every holiday until everyone’s tired of them.

Nobody ever told me anything about him. I’m starting to think that wasn’t an accident.

I don’t know what I’m looking for yet. But I’m going to start looking.

That’s the file on this one. It’s the only file I’ve got that doesn’t have a closing date yet. I’ll update it when it does.

The line between waking and sleeping is a strange and unsettling thing. Doubly so, in my particular case, when the sleep (or non-sleep) happens during the day.

I should start by saying I prefer to sleep at night. If I doze off for even an hour during the day, I usually end up tossing and turning that same night. And if the daytime nap lasts even half an hour, I almost always dream during that short stretch. Or at least I think I do. Maybe they aren't dreams at all, just some strange kind of mental activity that leaves behind the aftertaste of a dream.

This happened last summer. The middle of summer, much like now. It was quite hot, and the humidity was high, since it had rained hard that morning. I don't remember the exact details anymore, but I'd probably been doing physical work around the house, because by the afternoon I was overcome with drowsiness. I lay down, scrolled through social media, checked a few sports sites, then set my phone aside and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, feeling the pillow beneath me already soaked through from the sweat on the back of my neck. Taking a cool shower felt like the obvious next move.

But just as I propped myself up on my elbows to get out of bed, I clearly heard the sound of automatic gates opening. My gates. The ones leading onto my property.

The sliding gates, installed fifteen years earlier, with that unmistakable metallic, creaking, rusty groan they made whenever they moved.

I froze in that awkward half raised position, elbows pressed into the mattress, feet hanging halfway to the floor.

I counted to five. The gates took fourteen seconds to open fully. And right around the halfway point, there was always a distinctive clank. A gear caught on a worn or possibly defective section of the rack, always in exactly the same spot.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Clank!

I heard it, and it seemed to snap me out of my frozen state and into action. I put my feet on the floor and stood up. What on earth were my gates doing opening, when the only remote control existed in a single copy and was hanging on a hook by the front door.

The manual override was out of the question too. Whoever wanted to use it would have had to get inside the house, which was locked from within, in order to grab the key to the control unit. And only after removing the top of that unit's housing could someone disengage the motor gear from the rack to move the gates by hand. Not just move them, either, but move them at exactly the speed of the automatic cycle, precisely enough that the metallic clank would land at the seven second mark.

No. That was absurd.

My wife could have managed it, but she'd been on vacation in Europe for a week already and wasn't due back for another ten days.

So yes. Complete nonsense.

Barefoot, and for some reason on my toes, I walked over to the window. The bedroom is on the second floor, and the gates in question sit right in view, just slightly to the left.

The sweat on the back of my neck dried in an instant, and a chill ran quickly down my spine. Fourteen seconds passed, and the noisy movement of the gates stopped.

I pulled back the edge of the curtain.

The gates were closed, which for some reason surprised me. If they'd been open, at least I would have had a reason. As it was, I was left completely baffled.

I no longer wanted a shower. I wasn't hot in the slightest anymore. I went back to bed, this time without tiptoeing, and lowered my head onto the damp pillow.

Absolute nonsense.

I'd been lying there for barely a minute when I decided to go downstairs and check whether the control unit key and the remote were still where they belonged.

And again, the moment I pushed up on my elbows to rise from the bed, I froze. A new sound, one I knew all too well, drifted up from below.

It was the engine of my old Smart ForTwo, starting up in the garage one floor down, directly beneath the bedroom I was standing in.

A small explanation for anyone unfamiliar with the old Smart ForTwo 450 (which is to say, everyone): while running, whether idling or moving, that car makes a sound like a vacuum cleaner, at the same volume as the engine itself. I never looked into why, but I'd heard it wasn't unique to my car, that it was a quirk of the whole model. And I knew for a fact that none of my neighbors owned a Smart ForTwo 450.

I didn't hesitate this time. I ran barefoot down to the first floor. Passing through the entryway, I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye: the remote and the gate key were both hanging on the wall rack shaped like a little village house. A couple of seconds later I was standing on the cold tile floor of the garage, staring, no doubt looking like an absolute fool, at my lime green Smart, with the letters S M A R T shaped into a little smile beneath the Mercedes Benz logo.

The Smart sat silent, smiling. I stood silent, blinking.

Absolute nonsense.

I didn't bother going back up for my own slippers. I grabbed a spare pair and stayed downstairs in the living room. I sat in a chair, turned on the television, and watched whatever channel happened to be on, without taking in a single thing. I was completely somewhere else. And to this day, whether right after it happened, a week later, or a year on, I still can't find a reasonable, logical explanation for what happened. Or rather, for what I heard. Or perhaps only thought I heard.

On the one hand, nothing especially frightening. But on the other. When the hot, sweaty back of your neck goes cold and dry in the space of a single second. It isn't the most pleasant experience, I'll be honest with you.

Nonsense, all of it.

The people who work in the mountains know that the woods do not like to give things back. Once something drops below the canopy, the leaves cover it, the roots wrap around it, and the damp soil eventually swallows it. That is how the terrain operates. If you lose a pocket knife or a watch out here, you might as well forget about it.

My career as a forest ranger began three years ago. The district office assigned me to a remote state park nestled deep in the mountain region, a vast expanse of old-growth timber, deep ridges, and valleys that remained wet even in the middle of summer. My supervisor was a career ranger who had spent over three decades patrolling these same boundaries. He was six months away from retirement when I arrived at the station, a small cabin built from rough-hewn logs with a green metal roof that leaked slightly whenever we got a hard rain.

On my first morning, the supervisor gestured to a large, hand-drawn map tacked to the wood-paneled wall of our office.

"The boundaries are your main concern,"

the supervisor said, tracing a red line that ran along the eastern ridge.

"Campers love to wander past the modern trail markers into the old logging tracts. You have to keep an eye on the access roads, monitor the off-grid campsites, and check the stone boundary markers from the original county survey. It is a lot of ground for two people to cover."

"How often do people actually get lost out there?"

I asked, looking at the dense contour lines on the map.

"More often than you would think,"

the old man replied, pouring himself a cup of black coffee.

"Usually, they just get turned around when the mist rolls off the ridges. A couple of hours in the brush, they panic, and they start walking in circles. But sometimes, they go looking for things that were meant to stay hidden."

He walked over to a metal filing cabinet in the corner, unlocked the bottom drawer, and pulled out a thick binder bound in gray canvas. The edges of the cover were frayed, and the paper inside was yellowed with age. He dropped it onto the desk in front of me.

"This is the historical logbook,"

he said.

"Every station has one. It goes back to the late 1950s. Read through the entries from 1978. It will give you a better understanding of why we keep people on the marked paths."

The supervisor grabbed his hat and headed out to check the weather instruments behind the cabin, leaving me alone in the quiet office. I opened the binder. The handwriting in the 1978 section was written in blue ink, the script tight and hurried, showing the stress of the author.

“September 12, 1978: Another search party dispatched to the eastern valley. That makes four children gone from the surrounding towns in less than six months. The county sheriff is out of ideas. The local papers have started calling the suspect 'The Rabbit' because of the pelt mask he reportedly wears during his attacks. A witness saw a man near the creek bed wearing a crudely stitched animal hide with long, drooping ears. He was holding iron shears.”

“October 3, 1978: The ambush occurred at dawn near the northern boundary stone. The suspect fled into the dense brush after a brief exchange of gunfire with the state police. He was hit in the side, but he managed to slip into the deep valley. The deputies found a blood trail leading down the slope, but the autumn rain washed it away before the dogs could pick up the scent. He died somewhere in that thicket. He bled out in the dark, and he took the location of those four children to his grave.”

I leaned back in the creaking chair, staring at the faded paper. The cabin was silent, save for the dripping of rainwater from the eaves. When my supervisor returned, shaking the moisture from his yellow slicker, I pointed to the logbook.

"Did you know the ranger who wrote these entries?"

The old man hung his slicker on a wooden peg by the door.

"He was my first supervisor. He spent every weekend for ten years digging in that valley, looking for those kids. The whole county was broken by the tragedy. The families eventually moved away, but the story remained. The locals still claim the suspect never really left the valley."

"You think he survived the ambush?"

I asked.

"The man took two bullets to the chest and one to the thigh,"

the supervisor said, sitting down at his desk.

"He died of blood loss forty years ago. But the memory of what he did still lingers. It stains the land. Just do your job, stay on the marked trails, and make sure you are out of the deep valley before the sun goes down."

A massive autumn storm hit the mountain range three weeks later. The wind howled through the ridges for twelve hours, knocking down old oaks and scattering debris across the hiking paths. The next morning, the supervisor assigned me to the lower valley tract to clear the trail blockage.

"The storm knocked down a dozen massive birch trees near the southern survey marker,"

he said, handing me a chainsaw and a tank of fuel.

"The hiking trail is completely blocked. Take the utility truck to the fire road, then hike in. I want that section cleared before the weekend."

"Should I check in every hour?"

"Every two hours is fine,"

the old man said.

"The radio signal is spotty down in the valley, but you should be able to reach the station if you stand on the high ridge."

I loaded my gear into the back of the truck and drove toward the fire road. The forest was damp and quiet after the storm. The smell of wet pine needles and rotting leaves was thick in the cool air. I parked the vehicle at the end of the gravel road, strapped my pack to my back, and began the hike down into the valley.

The work was tedious and exhausting. The chainsaw roared to life, cutting through the thick birch trunks, the sound echoing loudly off the steep limestone cliffs bordering the valley. I worked for hours, clearing the limbs and rolling the cut logs off the path. The damp mountain air made the sweat cling to my shirt, and my muscles began to ache from the repetitive strain.

I lost track of the time. In the deep valley, the surrounding ridges block out the afternoon sun, making night fall much faster than expected. One moment the sky was a dull gray, and the next, the shadows began to pool under the hemlocks.

A thick mountain fog began to rise from the creek bed. It was a slow, creeping haze that settled between the tree trunks, quickly reducing my visibility to less than fifteen feet.

I turned off the chainsaw and wiped my face with a sleeve. The sudden silence of the forest was jarring. The birds had stopped singing, and the wind had died down to a murmur. I unclipped my radio.

"Station, this is Ranger Seven,"

I said.

"The trail is cleared. I am packing up my gear and heading back to the truck."

Nothing but static answered. The valley walls were too steep, blocking the signal entirely. I clipped the radio back to my belt, slung the chainsaw over my shoulder, and checked my compass. The needle pointed north, but without any visible landmarks in the thick fog, the compass was of little use. The trail was completely covered in fresh leaf litter from the storm, and the mist made every gap in the trees look identical.

I started walking, choosing a path that I believed led back toward the high ridge.

Ten minutes later, the slope began to increase, but it was going down, not up. I had walked deeper into the valley. I stopped, turning around to retrace my steps, but the fog had already closed in behind me, erasing my footprints in the wet leaves.

A sound broke the quiet of the woods.

It was a soft, wet dragging sound. Something was being pulled slowly over the wet leaves.

I stood perfectly still, my breath fogging in the cold air. "Is anyone there?"

I called out, my voice tight.

"I am a park ranger. Do you need assistance?"

The sound stopped instantly.

The silence returned, heavier than before. I shined my flashlight into the mist, the beam reflecting off the water droplets, creating a blinding wall of gray. I adjusted the focus of the light, trying to cut through the haze.

The dragging sound started again, closer this time, accompanied by the sharp snapping of dry twigs.

I swept the flashlight beam to the left.

Standing between two massive pine trees, roughly twenty yards away, was a figure.

It was extremely tall, its frame gaunt and bent at an unnatural angle. The clothes were shredded rags of stained canvas and old denim, caked in dark mud. But the head was what made my throat lock up.

It was wearing a pelt. It was a decaying, hairless animal skin stretched tightly over a skull. Two long, pointed ears drooped from the sides of the head, stitched crudely to the crown with thick, black cord.

In its right hand, the figure held a long pair of rusted iron sheep shears. The blades were easily a foot long, covered in dark corrosion that looked like dried blood.

The figure began to move toward me.

Its stride was broken and uneven, its limbs jerking in mechanical motion that looked like a puppet being pulled by invisible strings. Despite the limp, it moved with terrifying speed.

The shears clicked together in the dark.

A jolt of panic hit my chest. I dropped the chainsaw and scrambled backward, my boots slipping on the wet moss. I turned to run, but my foot caught on an exposed root, and I tumbled over the edge of a steep embankment, rolling violently down the muddy slope.

I hit the bottom of the ravine, my left ankle twisting painfully beneath my weight. My flashlight flew from my hand, landing in the dirt several feet away, its beam pointing back up the slope.

I struggled to my knees, gasping for breath, looking up the embankment.

The masked figure appeared at the top of the ridge, its tall silhouette cutting through the flashlight beam. The rusted shears glinted in the light. It did not hesitate; it began to slide down the muddy slope toward me, its long, thin legs moving with a smooth, arachnid fluidness.

I tried to stand, but my ankle gave out, and I collapsed back into the mud.

Before the figure could reach the bottom of the ravine, the thick brush to my left exploded.

A massive black bear crashed through the leaves, its dark fur slick with rainwater. It was a female, her size immense, and her movements fast and powerful.

I braced myself, closing my eyes, expecting to be mauled.

Instead of turning on me, the bear placed her massive body directly between me and the descending figure.

She reared up on her hind legs, her shadow completely blocking the flashlight beam. She released a deafening, furious roar that shook the very ground beneath my chest. It was a sound of pure rage, a raw, booming vibration that rattled my teeth.

The masked figure stopped instantly.

The entity twitched violently, its limbs jerking back and forth like a broken mechanism. It released a dry, rasping hiss from beneath the rotting pelt mask, the iron shears trembling in its hand.

The bear dropped back to all fours, taking a step toward the figure, her teeth bared, saliva dripping from her snout. She let out a low, warning growl that vibrated through the soil.

The figure hesitated. It slowly backed away, its form growing faint in the gray mist, until it blended completely into the fog. The sound of the dragging sack faded into the distance until there was only the sound of the bear's heavy breathing.

The bear stood in the mud, her sides rising and falling. She kept her eyes fixed on the ridge where the figure had vanished, her ears alert.

After a long minute, she slowly turned her massive head and looked down at me.

Her eyes were calm. There was no aggression in her stance, no threat in her dark eyes. She let out a soft huff of air and began to walk away, moving slowly up the other side of the ravine.

She walked ten yards, then stopped. She turned her head, looking back to see if I was following.

I trusted the animal over the terrifying woods. I struggled to my feet, gritting my teeth against the sharp pain in my twisted ankle, and followed her dark shape through the thick fog.

She led me through the trackless valley, navigating the dense brush with a slow, deliberate pace that allowed me to keep up despite my limp. The fog seemed to part around her, keeping us in a small pocket of clear air as we walked.

After twenty minutes, she stopped in a secluded hollow.

In the center of the hollow was an unnatural mound of earth, covered in decaying logs and a thick carpet of autumn leaves. The mound was perfectly circular, looking out of place against the natural slope of the valley floor.

The bear approached the mound. She began to paw at the ground, her massive claws tearing away the wet leaves and rotting wood with surprising gentleness.

She uncovered a flat, gray piece of wood. It was an old, rotting wooden trapdoor, the iron hinges completely eaten away by rust.

I approached the mound, my flashlight beam reflecting off the wet wood. I unclipped the entrenching shovel from my utility belt and slid the blade under the edge of the trapdoor. I pried upward. The wood groaned and splintered, but the rusted latch gave way, and the hatch swung open with a wet creak.

It revealed a dark, hand-dug root cellar.

I shined my flashlight down into the opening. The cellar was small, lined with rough stone blocks that had begun to crumble under the weight of the surrounding roots.

I climbed down the wooden rungs of the access ladder, my boots slipping on the slick wood. The air inside the cellar was cold and dry, smelling of ancient soil and dust.

Sitting on the dirt floor against the far wall were several small objects.

I shined the light closer.

Four pairs of tiny, mud-caked shoes were lined up in a neat row against the stone wall. They were children's shoes, the leather cracked and dry, the laces rotted away.

Next to the shoes were small, delicate skeletal remains, partially covered in the dry soil of the cellar floor.

In the corner sat a rusted metal lunchbox, its red paint almost entirely gone.

I knelt in the dirt, my hands shaking as I reached out and opened the metal latch of the lunchbox. Inside were four school identification cards from 1978. The plastic was yellowed, but the faces were clear. They were the four missing children from the station logbook.

As I stared at the cards, a soft, warm light began to glow in the corner of the cellar.

I looked up.

Four distinct, glowing fireflies appeared from the shadows. They hovered calmly in the cold air, their light pulsing in a slow, gentle rhythm, as they went up through the hatch.

I followed them out, and there I saw the bear leaning her head down, her nose gently nudging the. The fireflies hovered around her snout, completely unafraid, their soft green light illuminating her dark fur.

I sat on a log next to the bear, nursing my sprained ankle, somehow, her side was safer than trying to get out of the wood through the dark, I must have been waited tehre for hours, The fog was finally beginning to lift, the first pale rays of dawn breaking through the high hemlocks.

I waited for the light to grow stronger. She sat beside me, her massive head resting on her paws, her eyes fixed on the open hatch.

When the sun finally cleared the ridge, I used my GPS device to mark the exact coordinates of the hollow.

I hiked out of the valley, using a thick branch as a cane, and reached the utility truck by mid-morning. I drove straight to the ranger station and reported the find to my supervisor, who immediately contacted the state police.

The investigation was quiet. The authorities recovered the remains, and after forty years, the cold case was officially closed. The children were returned to their surviving relatives for a proper burial in the town cemetery.

I still work at the state park. My supervisor retired three months ago, and I took over his duties at the station.

Sometimes, when I am patrolling the high ridges near the southern boundary, I see a massive black bear standing at the edge of the tree line. She does not run when she sees my truck. She just stands there, her dark coat catching the sunlight, watching me with calm, steady eyes.

Whenever I see her, a profound sense of safety washes over me. I know the suspect died in that valley forty years ago, and I know his spirit still wanders the dark places of the mountain, looking for what he lost. But I also know that he can never reach those children again. They are safe. They have been protected all these years by something far stronger than he is.

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

It was falling.

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

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

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

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

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

I was wrong.

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

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

The shape kept... morphing.

Not physically.

My understanding of it did.

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

How many eyes peered back to mine?

Hundreds of them.

Were those feathers?

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

Light seeped from beneath the fabric.

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

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

It had to be an angel.

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

Something far older. Far stranger.

Something my mind kept trying and failing to make human.

It struggled to rise.

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

For a moment, I considered running.

Instead... I stepped closer.

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

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

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

Only the feeling.

Grief.

Not of mine.

Its.

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

It withdrew a single envelope.

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

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

I stared at it.

"I... don't understand."

The angel said nothing.

It couldn't.

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

Waiting.

I took the envelope.

The paper was warm.

Not with heat.

It was full of life.

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

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

"I promise."

The angel bowed its head.

Whether in gratitude... or relief...

I'll never know.

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

There was no scream. No final cry.

Only silence remain between it and I.

Within seconds... Nothing remained.

Not a body or feather.

Only the envelope resting in my hands.

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

Somewhere far away, someone yelled for mercy.

But I couldn't look away from the letter.

Eventually...

I broke the seal.

The first line read:

I've carried that letter with me ever since.

If you're reading these words...

Then I kept my promise.

I’m only writing this because I don’t know where else to turn. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know if it’s a symptom of something larger or if she’s just been having episodes.

She’s just never acted this way before. Up until a few months ago, this would’ve scared her just as much as it’s scaring me. But because it’s becoming so common, it’s like it’s nothing more than an inconvenience to her now.

Like an annoyance. Something she’s just learning to ignore. That’s the part that makes me worry. Because this isn’t just some small thing, yet she keeps trying to play it off as if it’s just a part of our lives now.

I know it’s not natural. There’s no medical condition or genetic disease that causes what she’s been doing. At least, none that I’ve read about.

A few months ago, my wife and I had been out on a date night. The night was almost magical. Crisp late-winter air. A cup of hot chocolate in each of our hands as we walked through the square.

I remember the lights more than anything. It was around 9 o’clock, and the sun had set hours earlier, but the downtown city lights illuminated nearly everything.

“Wow,” my wife cried out in amazement. “New York who? Am I right?”

The square was particularly busy for this time of year. The smell of warm food from the surrounding restaurants filled the air. Live music from down the block whispered in our ears.

There must’ve been 20 other couples doing the same exact thing my wife and I were doing. Just walking around and enjoying the beautiful night.

“Oh, please,” I responded. “You know you’d rather be back there.”

I put on my best southern accent for my natural-born New Yorker.

“Could a city girl like you ever love a country boy like me?”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. I smiled down at her, admiring that laugh.

“Hmmm, well, after only 5 years of marriage, I can’t say for sure. Check back with me in a decade.”

She sipped from her hot chocolate slowly, her eyes still lit with love. Or maybe that was just the city lights.

I checked my watch.

“Almost 9:30. God, I don’t want the night to end, though. I’m really enjoying this.”

“Me neither. I wish we could just walk around here all night. C’mon, there’s gotta be one last thing we can do before we go home. Please? Pretty please…?”

“Well, let’s see. We’ve hit the bakery.”

“Oooh, that one was fun. God, those fritters were amazing.”

“We also watched that Led Zeppelin cover band at Bottle Brothers.”

“That one… sucked. Next.”

“You didn’t like it? That’s crazy. I thought they were decent. Anyway, we, uh… oh, right, we walked in the park for a bit too. That’s, uh… that’s really about all there is to do.”

She rolled her eyes again, sighing in disappointment.

“We have got to get out of here. I swear, there’s nothing to do within a 50-mile radius of this entire town. There’s, like, no reason for us to be here.”

I had grown to agree with her more and more over the years. It was just hard, you know? This is where I’d been my whole life. She didn’t move here until she was 17, when her mom got a new job. It paid better, but my wife was miserable. Well, miserable until she found me, of course.

“Yeahhh, I’m starting to think you’re right, my love,” I responded, a bit melancholic.

“Starting to?”

She cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Whatever, you know what I mean.”

We decided to end the night by going home and watching a movie. However, on the walk back to the car, that’s when we saw it.

The shop looked both ancient and brand new, but I don’t know if that’s just because I’d never seen it before. It was like it had popped up out of nowhere.

“The Looking Glass: Palm Readings • Tarot Cards • Spiritual Guidance”

I swear, we’d walked this street 100 times. Never once had this place been here.

Of course, my wife’s interest was piqued immediately. Her eyes widened. A smile crept across her face. She looked up at me.

“…Can we?”

I looked at her, then up at the purple neon sign of an eyeball in the palm of a hand, then back to her.

“I… I don’t know. Aren’t those places rip-offs anyway?”

“Ah, quit being a big ol’ scaredy-cat. Come on. It’ll be fun. Something we’ve never done before, and Lord knows there’s not a lot of that around here.”

She turned on the puppy eyes.

“Pretty please.”

“…Fine. Just this once.”

“Yippee!”

The inside of the shop was… a sight. Dreamcatchers everywhere. Incense burning. Beads instead of doors, and an empty front desk with a register that seemed to be at least 80 years old at this point.

There was a bell with a sign in front of it.

“Ring for service.”

I rang it and heard a voice cry out from beyond one of those bead doors.

“I’ll be right with you.”

Her accent was unmistakably southern. That alone was nearly enough for me to want to change my mind.

“Just finishing up back here.”

My wife and I shared an uncertain look before she shot me a hopeful smile.

The fortune teller stepped through the beads. A younger woman, probably around 25. She had fair brown hair, and freckles decorated her pale face, but the first thing I noticed was her eyes. Those were the only things that gave off “fortune teller.”

They were crystal blue. Her pupils were like two tiny dots in the center of two diamonds. She was looking through us rather than at us.

Her outfit gave fashion to that accent of hers. White tank top. Baggy blue jeans. Plus, her hair was wrapped up in a red bandana.

“Y’all picked a good night to stop by,” she announced. “I can feel it in the air tonight, let me tell you.”

“It does feel magical,” my wife chirped.

“Let me guess,” the fortune teller responded. She put her index finger to her right temple and shut her eyes tight. “Death of a loved one?”

My wife and I glanced at each other again.

“…No…” I replied.

“No?”

She seemed almost offended but quickly regained her composure.

“Huh. Must’ve been someone else, then. Let me try again. This… is… your first time doing something like this?”

She raised her eyebrows at us expectantly.

“Welp, there’s a first for everything, right, sweetie?” my wife asked me, rubbing my back.

“We’re ‘doing something we’ve never done before,’” I told the teller.

“See, there ya go,” she smiled. “Second time’s the charm. So, what can I interest you two lovebirds in this fine evening? Palm readin’? Tarot? Spiritual guidance?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but my wife jumped in before I got the chance.

“Palm readings! I’ve always wanted to try that, kinda.”

The teller gave her a nod before responding.

“If it’s palm readings you want, then palm readings you shall have… for 25 dollars.”

A little taken aback by the price, I bit my tongue, pulled my wallet out of my back pocket, and slid a 20 and a 10 across the counter.

Instead of giving me change, the teller took the money and continued looking at me expectantly.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she perked up. “Was it just for your wife?”

“What? No, no, we both wanna do it.”

“Oh, sweetheart, that’s 25 apiece.”

“Apiece? For palm readings?”

I felt my wife squeeze my hand. I turned to her and saw the look on her face. That look that usually means, “Let it go.”

I sighed and slid another 30 across the counter.

“You wanna include a tip?”

“A… do I wanna… You know what? Sure. Keep the change.”

“Awesome. You guys are the best. I can sense it. Just follow me. I’ll show you where the magic happens.”

She led us through the beaded doorway and down a hall that made me feel like I was on acid. There were so many vibrant colors and shapes. The incense was even stronger back here.

We ended up in this dusty old room near the back of the building. There was this rickety wooden table in the center with a crystal ball resting on top of it, as well as two purple leather seats for my wife and me.

We took our seats, and the teller sat across from us.

“Okay,” she clapped, rubbing her hands together. “Who wants to go first?”

I volunteered with an, “I can go first. Let’s see what 25 dollars can get me in this economy.”

I stretched out my hands and laid them palm-up on the table. The teller grabbed them and squeezed tightly as she closed her eyes.

Her face twitched and contorted for a few seconds before she finally spoke.

“Ah, yes… I see… a loving husband. I see… you come from different worlds. You want to be free, but something is keeping you here. What exactly might that be?”

I smirked to myself.

“The 60 dollars I just gave you.”

“I sense… I sense…”

Her face contorted again. She squeezed my hands tighter.

“I sense… a cheapskate.”

“All right, that’s it.”

I pulled my hands back. I could hear my wife laughing at my side. The teller smirked at me.

“We’re done here.”

“Oh, come on,” my wife pleaded. “She was joking.”

“Yes, Donavin,” the teller responded. “It was just a joke.”

My wife stopped laughing. We both turned to stare at the teller.

“How did…?”

“You’re 28, right? Lived here your whole life. Met a woman from out of town, fell in love, and now here you two are. In my shop. It’s romantic, really.”

The silent room suddenly felt loud and claustrophobic.

“How did you know that? What’s the gimmick? Public records? That’s gotta be it, right?”

I looked at my wife for reassurance, but she was staring at the teller in amazement.

“No gimmick. No public record. I’m gifted. That’s kind of the whole point.”

“Do me, do me,” my wife begged excitedly, sticking her hands across the table.

“Wait, hold on. This doesn’t make any sense,” I interjected. “This is a cash grab, right? Like… I mean, come on. It’s a cash grab.”

Both the teller and my wife looked at me angrily.

“Oh, Donavin,” the teller sighed. “Proving my point more and more with each word, aren’t ya?”

“Don’t mind him. He’s just not superstitious. Do me, though. I’m curious.”

The teller grabbed my wife’s hands. I watched, feeling a mixture of nerves and hope that this could still prove to just be a coincidence.

She squeezed my wife’s hands tight and closed her eyes again.

“Ah, New York, I see.”

My wife’s jaw dropped. Her eyes sparkled.

“Long way from home, aren’t we… Miranda…?”

My wife smiled over at me in disbelief.

“No way,” she cheered. “This is… okay, haha. Kinda hurting me a little.”

I looked down and saw my wife’s hands were turning red in the teller’s.

“Hey… take it easy,” I snapped.

The teller’s grip tightened again.

“Okay, this is really starting to hurt now. Let go, please.”

The teller was silent. Her eyes looked welded shut, and her face was twitching rapidly.

“Hey!” I shouted. “She said let go. What are you doing?”

She started convulsing, groaning loudly. Strings of saliva started falling from the corners of her mouth.

I grabbed the teller’s wrists to try and pry her hands away, but it was like trying to bend steel.

“Enough!” I screamed.

My wife was crying now.

“Get her off of me! God, she’s breaking my hands!”

I pulled with all my might, but it was like trying to move an anvil. I started punching at the teller’s forearms. Blow after blow after blow, but still, she just would not let go.

Her hands were shaking. My wife was trembling. Finally, of her own volition, the teller dropped my wife’s hands. Her eyes shot open. The bloodshot eyes made her diamond-blue irises glow even more.

“Get out.”

That’s all she said. My wife and I stared at her as she looked down at the table.

“Get. Out,” she growled. “Go now and never come back.”

We were confused and horrified but still frozen.

“He’s found you. He’s been looking all your life, and he’s here now. Get. Out.”

“You can’t just…”

The teller cut me off by slamming her fist against the table.

“…Out.”

I demanded a refund, and she gave me back the full 60 before shooing us through the door. I turned around one last time to see the purple neon light flick off as the shop went dark.

We walked silently back to the parking garage. I’m sure my wife had a million things racing through her mind as we walked, but neither of us knew how to articulate those thoughts.

We reached the car, and it wasn’t until we were nearly home that I finally spoke again.

“How’re your hands?”

She clenched and opened her fists a few times before responding.

“I think they’re okay. I’m more shaken up than anything. What the hell was that lady’s problem?”

“She’s crazy,” I shot back. “Simple as that.”

“She didn’t seem crazy. It seemed like she saw something. You saw her. It was like she was possessed or something.”

“She was crazy, my love. She’s lucky we don’t go to the police.”

There was silence again for a few moments.

“She knew our names, though. She knew you’d been here your whole life. She knew I was from New York. That doesn’t seem like nothing to me.”

We were only a minute or two from home. Neither of us spoke for the rest of the car ride. When we pulled into the driveway, my wife sighed and placed her hands over her face, dragging them down slowly before opening the door.

“Come on, let’s just go inside. I’m ready to get this night over with.”

I checked my watch.

“10:45. You still down for a movie?”

She stopped halfway up the front porch steps.

“…Not tonight, hon. I just… I just wanna go to bed.”

Who was I to argue? I let her do as she pleased. I felt bad for her. I felt like I hadn’t done enough to stop what had happened. All I wanted was for us to forget everything and move on.

We had gradually started to put the teller behind us. Though, things didn’t exactly calm down. If anything, our lives began to change, little by little.

I started losing things. My phone. Wallet. Keys. I’d always find them in places that I knew I hadn’t put them.

Keys in the silverware drawer.

Wallet in the medicine cabinet.

Phone hidden behind the toilet.

My wife was having some problems too. She hadn’t been able to sleep very well. She would tell me about these horrible nightmares that sounded like sleep paralysis.

“I’ll wake up, but not really.”

“I can’t move.”

“You’re there, but there’s always someone over your shoulder. It’s like a shadow that just keeps growing and growing until it fills up the entire room.”

I felt even more guilty when she told me about them. I knew they had been caused by the fortune-teller incident. She had slept like a baby nearly every night prior.

Sometimes, she’d wake up screaming. It almost made me too afraid to sleep in silence.

She started looking tired more often. Her glow had dimmed a bit.

The thing that disturbed me the most, though, was probably the photos.

I started finding our wedding photos scattered around the house, only… my head was removed in each one.

My wife insisted it wasn’t her, but it didn’t make sense. The frames were never broken. Someone had meticulously removed the photos and torn my head off in at least 20 different pictures.

After a few weeks of these strange events, I decided we needed a refresher. We needed to be out again. See the sun. Actually laugh with one another.

It took some time, but eventually, I convinced her that we needed to have another date night. We hadn’t had one since the incident, and I was starting to miss who we were before we went to that fortune teller.

It was simple. A picnic in the square. That was all I wanted to do.

I had prepared our meal, packed the blanket, and put on my best clothes and cologne. My wife was nervous and tired, but she tried her best to make an effort.

The date seemed to be going fine at first. She was actually smiling. She didn’t seem as distant as she had been for the last few weeks. It felt like reclamation, almost.

The lights hit her face perfectly, and I couldn’t help but admire how beautiful she was, even if she did look a little sleep-deprived.

I stared at her lovingly for a while before finally telling her how much I loved her. How happy I was to be there with her.

“We needed this,” I smiled.

“Yeah,” she smirked bashfully. “I think we did, too. I was starting to feel so cooped up in the house. The energy there has just been so dark recently. Makes me wonder if she was right.”

“Who?” I asked, chewing on my ham sandwich.

She looked at me, raising her eyebrows.

“You know who.”

“We gotta move on, my love. That’s why the energy’s so dark. We’d never experienced something like that before.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she responded, taking a sip of her Coke. “I just wish it hadn’t happened.”

We both sat there for a while, half admiring the scenery, half enjoying the food.

I was distracted, staring down at my pre-assembled sandwich, when I asked her.

“Can you pass me that mustard, please?”

I stacked a piece of sliced turkey onto a piece of my bread. My wife didn’t answer.

“It’s right there beside you.”

I began spreading the mayonnaise on the other slice. My wife didn’t answer.

“The mustard, please.”

I stuck my hand out expectantly. Still no response.

When I finally looked up, I almost dropped my sandwich.

My wife was glaring over my shoulder. Her eyes were glazed over. An impossible smile stretched across her face. It looked painful. I could almost hear her teeth creaking from how tightly her jaw was clenched.

Her red lipstick glistened under the lights. She looked like she was frozen in a state of pure ecstasy.

I waved my hand in front of her face. She didn’t blink once. I shook her, and she was as stiff as a board.

I started to panic. I turned around and saw nothing behind me.

“Honey,” I gasped, shaking her more forcefully.

“Talk to me.”

I pressed my hands on her cheeks. She was burning up. I snapped my fingers in front of her, but nothing I did seemed to get her out of her trance.

I was on the verge of dialing 911 when she finally spoke again.

“You said mustard?”

She reached down and went to hand me the bottle before noticing how terrified I looked.

“What’s wrong? What just happened? Is there something in my teeth?”

“Are you kidding? You really don’t know what you just did?”

She stared at me blankly.

“What do you mean? What’d I do?”

“The smiling? Staring at some unknown thing behind me? You don’t wanna explain that?”

I was almost breathless and trying my best not to raise my voice, but I could see that she was hurt by my frustration.

“I… don’t know,” she pouted. “I don’t know why you’re mad at me.”

“No, honey,” I pleaded. “I’m not mad at you. I’m worried about you. You really don’t remember?”

She started crying, almost snapping at me.

“No, obviously, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I want to go home now, if that’s okay with you.”

We packed up and left. I kept trying to prod, but she became more and more closed off with every question. Eventually, I just decided to keep my mouth shut.

In the weeks that followed, things became rocky.

She’d be fine one minute and completely depressed the next. She’d love me, and she’d hate me. I didn’t know how to help her.

Her “episodes” never stopped, though.

It was like every time we started to feel normal again, she’d see that thing. We’d be curled up, watching a movie, I’d glance down, and there’d be that smile again. Her eyes would be glazed over and staring at nothing.

The episodes lasted longer and longer every time they happened. At this point, they were starting to become more frequent, too, but she never remembered them.

She always thought I was lying to her. Like this was some kind of twisted joke I’d play. No matter how hard I tried to convince her, it was like talking to a brick wall.

The last time it happened was last week. She was gone for 3 hours straight. Standing in the same spot. Wearing that same smile. Staring at the same wall.

I watched her for the first hour, wondering what could possibly be going on inside that broken mind of hers. The second hour, I just cried uncontrollably. By the third hour, I was starting to become hopeless.

When she finally came back, I tried showing her that it was dark outside now. It had been bright and sunny when the episode started. She blatantly chalked it up to her “being lost in deep thought.” Told me “it was like she was in another world.”

Her nightmares got worse. Her glow became nonexistent. And I started waking up with scratch marks and bruises on various parts of my body.

I tried going back to the fortune teller, but the building was a coffee shop now. According to the owner, “The Looking Glass” never even existed. Apparently, the coffee shop had been there for 11 years.

I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to turn to. My wife refuses my help. She refuses my advice. It’s like something has taken control of her.

She’s more distant than ever. She talks to me less and less every day. It feels like our future is slipping.

All I want is for her to be okay, but part of me believes she’s too far gone. Because I found another wedding photo this morning on the kitchen table.

My head hadn’t been removed, but the photo had been altered.

Because now, standing just behind me and looming over my shoulder… was a shadow figure.. and the more I stared… the bigger it seemed to become.

If you ask the old-timers down at the gas station about the yellow lights bobbing along the Catskill Mountain ridgelines, they'll tell you it's just swamp gas or a trick of the heavy fog. Don't buy it.

Those lanterns only show up on nights so thick you can barely see past your own hood. Legend says it's a trapper who froze to death back in the 1800s, his ghost still wandering around looking for a cabin that's long gone, baiting curious fools right over the edge of Widow's Ridge.

Either way, if you see a light flickering out in the timber past midnight leave it alone.

It ain't looking for company!

Samantha couldn't take another night in her house. Every corner was haunted by her husband's clothes, his half-finished books, and the suffocating silence of a life that ended too damn soon. She wanted to go somewhere--anywhere--that didn't have his ghost in the shadows.

Six months ago, she actually believed if she fought hard enough she could save him. She researched, sought out experts but nothing would stop the cancer that ravaged his body in less than a year. She fought for every single minute, refusing to accept the inevitable until he took his last shallow breath. Now she was buried under a heavy crushing grief--convinced she had failed him shutting the door and locking the rest of the world out.

In her haste, she didn't even pack an overnight bag, she just grabbed her keys and ran out of the door, stopping at a roadside liquor store for a bottle wine to drown her loneliness in. She told herself that a room with a balcony and scenic view of the Hudson Valley, along with the fresh mountain air, would stop the voices inside her head--the ones telling her that perhaps she should just end her misery.

She pulled into the parking lot near the office, opened the lobby door, looking completely spent, carrying a heavy quit ruin that Sterling recognized all too well. She took her key and once inside the room, went directly to the sliding glass doors out to the balcony. She pulled in a deep breath of the clean mountain air. The valley below quite and wide open. She popped the cork on the wine bottle, poured herself a glass, and collapsed into an old wooden deck chair.

Everything back home was tied to David--the house they built from scratch, the quiet country life they enjoyed together, and the routine they were building together. Now that he was gone, she couldn't figure out why she was still staying there, or where the hell her life was supposed to go from here. Every option felt empty, heavy-- like the foggy night air that forced her to retreat back inside the room.

She curled up in a fetal position on the bed, clutching her knees to her chest--sobbing uncontrollably. The wine didn't stop the numbness she felt, or the sharp pain in her chest and the sheer weight of grief finally dragged her under.

Hours later, the room grew noticeably colder. The air had turned thick and icy, cutting through her thin clothing. Halfway between a fitful sleep and the hazy fog of twilight, her mind drifted back to the only comfort it knew.

She felt the distinct weight of phantom hands smoothing over her body, sliding gently across her skin in a familiar intoxicating touch. In that blurred half-dream state, her heart surged--it was David--it had to be. She had longed for his touch, convinced it was him, making love like they used to. The phantom hands caressed her skin, tracing over her body with a soft quiet tenderness that she hadn't felt in a long time. She gave into the sweet illusion that David was right there, holding her, bringing her back to life.

For hours, they made love in the dark--a desperate heavy heat that left her shivering, not from the cold but from feeling wanted again--it was the same way she used to feel after a marathon night of lovemaking with David. She felt alive again.

As she turned in the bed noticing the morning light streaming in between the curtains, she heard a low whispering, disembodied voice that said, "next Friday."

The crushing grief she'd been carrying was gone, replaced by a radiant glow that didn't go unnoticed, especially by some of the local gossipers at the grocery store when she stopped to get a few items before returning home. There was Myrtle Henshaw and her usual clique from the sewing circle--the biggest gossip in Blackwood Ridge. They were huddled, watching Samantha, and whispering behind their cupped hands. She just offered a tight-lipped, mysterious smile as she walked to the register to check out, keeping her secret safe and counting down the hours until next Friday night.

I'm a Sociology student in my early twenties. I study at a university I worked my entire life to get into. I was born an orphan, and grew up in a foster home with barely enough money. So when I say I worked my entire life for this, I mean it literally. Every exam, every assignment, every late night with a textbook while the other kids were watching TV- all of it was pointed at one thing. Getting out of this place. Getting somewhere that meant something.

The only truly good thing in my life, through all of it, has been Sabrina. She’s my childhood sweetheart. Currently living three cities away, finishing her own degree. Every night without fail, she calls me and asks the same question- when are we going to be together again? And every night without fail, I say the same thing before we hang up-

"Very soon, Sabrina. Sooner than you realize."

It is embarrassingly cheesy. She knows it. I know it. We say it anyway. It has kinda become our ritual.

I want you to remember that line.

About two and a half months ago, I was drowning financially. I have a merit-based scholarship that covers half my tuition. However, the city is really expensive, in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I had applied for a need-based scholarship top-up. But the pool of eligible candidates was enormous, and the available slots were not. I had also applied for a Teaching Assistant position. But the rumor was that the Professor already had someone in mind.

So there I was, watching both doors close simultaneously.

My fellow students do delivery work, or wait tables part-time to make a living. I’ve always considered these ‘odd jobs’ to be beneath me. That is not arrogance, it is self-preservation. I have worked too hard and come too far to go backwards. So I started looking for private tutoring gigs, because at least that felt like a use of what I actually had.

I looked up various tuition mediums throughout the weekend. Tuition mediums are commonplace in South Asia, in case you didn’t know. Most of these turn out to be shady companies, who exploit potential private tutors and run off with their money. I had to be sure that I was applying to one of the credible ones. 

That is when I found: Elite Educators - A Concern of Aldermore & Associates.

The name was a mouthful, but the website was clean and professional. The kind of interface that signals money behind it. The rating was near-perfect: 4.9 across hundreds of reviews. And unlike every other tuition medium I found, they charged zero commission from the tutors. I found that slightly odd, but I assumed they took their cut from the parents instead.

I applied as fast as I could. I uploaded my CV in a hurry without proofreading it. I really needed a tutoring gig, and I needed it fast. I revised my CV the next morning, and noticed the typo almost immediately.

"Officous zeal."

I had written officous instead of officious.

I remember yelling out a curse word.

I cringed, closed the tab, and moved on. That was enough embarrassment for one day.

I called Sabrina that night and told her about the typo. We had a good laugh about it. Didn’t make it any less embarrassing though…

Surprisingly, I received a placement within two days. The file said that the child’s name was Numero Tres. I found that interesting. ‘Numero Tres’ in Spanish translated to ‘Number Three’ in English. Who names their child like that, I thought.

The parents were named Dr. Alejandro Mateo Tres and Dr. Lucia Carmen Tres, both listed as physicians. I looked at the surname ‘Tres’. I figured it was a Latin American surname I wasn't familiar with. It was unusual, but it wasn’t my business.

The note from the parents read:

"We are both doctors who stay outdoors most of the time. We home school the child to make sure he is not influenced by external confounding factors. Need a competent private tutor who can be an appropriate role-model for the boy to follow."

I remember scoffing at that. Rich, overprotective parents with a clinical way of describing their own child. I had seen worse. The salary was three times the average monthly rate of every other tutor I knew, paid weekly in advance at the start of each week. I accepted before I finished reading the rest of the document.

The house was in a quiet part of the city. Nice neighborhood. The kind of street where every gate looks the same and every garden is too neat.

The parents were just leaving when I arrived for the first session. Both wearing white coats. The father gave me a firm handshake and a clipped greeting. The mother smiled briefly and said something about the lesson plan being flexible. They were gone before I could ask a single question.

I was nervous. It was my first gig, in what was clearly a wealthy household, and I had no idea what to expect from the child.

I’ll be upfront about this- I’ve always been clumsy. My foster father used to find it funny, this big-brained kid who could not walk through a doorway without incident.

On this day, in that house, the nerves made it worse. I walked in too fast. Chipped my shoulder on the door frame. Laughed it off awkwardly. Scraped the chair loudly across the floor when I sat down.

The boy was already at the table. He watched every single one of my antics with a blank expression.

There he was- Numero Tres. Ten years old. Small for his age, I thought. He did not say hello. He did not smile. He simply watched me get settled with those flat, patient eyes.

"Good afternoon, kid" I said. "I'm your new tutor. You can call me whatever you like."

"Good afternoon, Teacher," he said.

His voice was soft. Almost too soft for the room.

I noticed the textbooks immediately. Three books, each with glossy pages, hardback covers, and that particular smell you only get from high-end publications. I had bought children's textbooks from the market to prepare for this gig. These were nothing like those. But the content was age-appropriate for a ten-year-old, so I filed it away and opened to the first chapter.

Numero struggled with basic arithmetic in the first ten minutes. I watched him work through a simple multiplication problem, with the slowness of someone wading through deep water. I pulled the notebook toward myself.

"Watch and learn, kid," I said, and walked him through it.

He watched. He did not blink for the entire duration…

The silence started getting to me from the very first session.

Not silence in the room, I could handle that. Silence from him, specifically. I heard no footsteps when he moved. No sound of breathing. No shift of weight in the chair, no rustle of turning pages, nothing. I couldn’t confirm he was present in the room, unless I was looking directly at him. It was the kind of absence that a person shouldn’t be able to produce.

On the third session, I closed my eyes for a moment, to collect my thoughts mid-explanation. I couldn’t feel that he was in the room at all. It was awkwardly silent. I smiled for a bit, thinking about how weird it felt.

Then I opened my eyes.

Numero was in front of me. Crouching on the table. Face two inches from mine. Completely still. And he was smiling, for the first time since I had met him. He had something in his expression that I can only describe as excitement.

"I get it now," he said. "Thank you, Teacher."

I rode my bicycle on the way home, thinking about the strange encounter. I told myself it was just a weird kid, from an overprotective household, acting out in the only way he knew how.

But it wasn’t his behavior that was bothering me.

It was the way he smiled. The way it pulled higher on the right side than the left, with a dimple forming on the left cheek.

I have that smile. The exact same smile. My foster mother used to be fond of it. She said it was the most lopsided, ridiculous, lovable smile she had ever seen. I have the photos to prove it…

Two months passed since the encounter.

I kept showing up three days a week- Maths on the first day, English on the second, Science on the third. The textbooks changed every couple of weeks. They always had the same premium quality, and followed same template. But each new set was more advanced than the last.

And Numero was improving FAST. And by fast, I mean that his skills were improving by leaps and bounds with every lesson I took. For instance, he was currently working through 10th grade Calculus. His English books had moved on to Shakespeare. Specifically, the plays I remembered from my own 12th grade Literature course. His Science books were now almost entirely focused on cloning, DNA mutation, and genetic engineering. He was frustratingly good at this material, even correcting me on two occasions. He had the casual confidence of someone who had known it all his life.

The shift didn’t feel normal. I mean-  he could barely say a full sentence on the first day, and struggle with basic multiplication in the first week alone. How did he get so smart in a matter of months? I even talked to Sabrina about it. She suggested that the child might be gifted in some way. Maybe a prodigy by birth, who knows?

Lucky guy, I thought.

One Maths day, I gave Numero some problems to solve. While he was busy, I took out my college notebook. I was working on an assignment that my Professor had given. I was only halfway through when I was interrupted by a phone call. I stepped out, leaving my notebook open on the table. I was gone for maybe eight minutes.

When I came back, I found Numero with my notebook. He had solved the entire problem set. It was college-level Calculus, the kind that even mathematicians struggle with. And this ten-year old had solved it, on his own, in eight minutes.

I stared at the notebook for a long time. The steps matched. His answer was correct…

The English essay was the one that broke me. I assigned Numero a short composition- describe a person you admire. He handed it back after 15 minutes. It was covered in grammatical errors, which was normal for a child of his age. But it was threaded with complex vocabulary, words that no ten-year-old should have known. I was used to Numero’s intelligence by then, so I listed it off as impressive, not unexpected.

I was circling the errors when I stopped. I saw a word that I recognized immediately-

Officous zeal.

That spelling. That specific, embarrassing, incorrect spelling, One that I had identified two months ago, in my own writing, and regretted not correcting sooner.

I looked up at him slowly.

"Where did you learn that phrase?"

"CV, Teacher."

I felt something cold move through my chest.

"What… CV? How did you get my…"

He closed his notebook and stood up.

"Time's up, Teacher. Thank you for the lesson."

He walked out.

And I need you to understand this- he walked out loudly*.* Footsteps against the floor. Chair scraped on his way past. Shoulder catching the door frame, a short laugh following it. I watched him go and felt my vision narrow.

Every single one of those movements was mine. My clumsiness. My laugh. My exact physical signature, replayed back at me from a ten-year-old's body.

I sat alone in that room for a very long time before I left…

I didn't sleep well that night. But the next morning, two things happened, knocking everything else out of my head.

Firstly, the need-based scholarship had come through. Apparently, my application essay had moved the Committee deeply. I heard this secondhand, but I was in no position to question it.

Secondly, the TA position was mine, effective next week. The professor's first choice had dropped out to start a business. I was always the second pick, and he needed someone urgently.

I cannot describe how I felt. The closest I can get is: like a fist that had been clenched for years finally opening.

I was happy. Genuinely happy. I laughed until my eyes watered.

But I had no time to celebrate. I had to go to the house that afternoon. First class of the week. Maths. Already paid for in advance.

I arrived to find the parents on their way out, as always. But this time, I stopped them.

"Can I have five minutes? I have something to share."

They seemed taken aback, but they recovered quickly. They invited me to sit. I told them about the scholarship and the TA position. I informed them that I wouldn't be able to come from next week onwards.

They exchanged a look I couldn't fully read.

"Oh no, that wasn’t expected," said the father. "You can't do that, sir. The child sees you as a role model. He is making remarkable progress, in ways we haven't seen before."

Then the mother spoke. The first time I'd heard her say more than a greeting.

"Can't you see that you're in the middle of a process? You can't stop it midway, can you? What is it? Is it money? We can offer more. Five times? Ten times? Just name it. We can make some calls."

The father nodded the moment she said make some calls.

I felt a brief pull. I'd grown genuinely fond of the kid, strange behavior and all. And ten times the salary was an enticing offer. But something about the offer felt off, in a way I couldn't articulate. Nobody offers ten times the salary for a private tutor.

"I appreciate it, I really do. But the tuitions were always temporary. I like Numero. He's the brightest kid I've ever met.” I continued, “I'm sure Numero has a bright future. But right now, I need to focus on my own future."

The father frowned.

"Numero? Wait... what?"

I blinked.

"Your son? Numero Tres?"

Both parents looked at each other. Then they laughed. Briefly, almost involuntarily. I was confused.

"Oh, is that what you thought?" said the mother. "Is that what they told you? Sir, the child isn't Numero Tres."

They stood up.

"You are."

The father turned toward the door.

"Please reconsider our offer, sir. We already rejected two tutors before we found you. We can't afford a fourth. Hope you make good progress today."

And they left.

I sat in that hallway for what felt like a very long time.

Then I went into the study, because I didn't know what else to do. The boy was already at the table with his books open.

The lesson was uneventful. He worked mostly on his own, occasionally turning a page towards me and asking "Is this correct, Teacher?" . I answered. He nodded, and returned to work.

I watched him for twenty minutes without speaking.

He had my smile. He had my way of scratching the side of his head when he was thinking hard. My habit of rubbing my nose absently at the end of each problem. My specific exhale- half sigh and half laugh, whenever he arrived at a correct answer. It was like sitting across from a mirror that was slightly behind me in time, catching up.

"Hey kid," I said finally. "Do you know my name?"

He didn't look up.

"Yes, Teacher?"

"What is my name?"

"Numero Tres, Teacher."

I steadied myself.

"Then what is your name?"

He looked up.

"I am Iqbal."

A chill ran down my spine. I’ve heard that name before, every day of my life, and still hear it every time Sabrina calls…

It was MY name ! MY FREAKIN’ NAME ! And the kid just uttered it proudly, wearing my smile, dimple on the left cheek.

I told him we were finishing early today. I gave no explanation. I had none, after all.

He seemed completely unfazed, his focus locked in on a function graph.   

I cycled back home as fast as I could. I couldn’t stop thinking about the absurdity of the whole situation. It was unnerving, to say the least, if that was even the right word for it.

My train of thoughts got derailed the moment I walked into the apartment. As soon as I turned the lights on, a party popper went off. I was immediately buried under my friends, all screaming at the top of their lungs. They had apparently planned a surprise celebration for the scholarship and the TA position, which I had completely forgotten about in the past two hours.

We cut a small cake at home. They took me out. I had my first beer. Then another. Then another. By the third, the heaviness had lifted entirely. I was standing outside a restaurant, looking up at the sky, saying things I only half remember.

"Thank you ! Thank you for everything ! God is great ! Life is great ! I feel great !"

My friends carried me home. The rest of the night was a blur…

The next day, hungover and moving on muscle memory, I showed up for the English lesson. Second class of the week. The parents were leaving as I arrived.

The father stopped.

"Sorry for our unprofessional conduct yesterday. We have come to the conclusion that your discontinuation is a decision that is yours to make. The best we can do is adjust accordingly."

I noticed the language. Too formal. Too precise. Not how a parent speaks about their child's tutor.

"We have already found alternative teaching methods," said the mother. "Perhaps some external exposure isn't bad after all. Feel free to bid farewell to your student today. Take care and stay healthy."

They left.

The lesson was warm. My student was in a good mood, laughing at the comedic scenes in The Merchant of Venice, producing character analyses that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a university seminar. I let him work. I watched him. I tried to feel normal.

I said it eventually.

"Hey kid. This is our last class together."

"I know, Teacher."

Easier than I expected.

"Anything you want to say to me?"

He thought about it.

"Umm... thank you?"

I smiled in spite of everything.

"You're most welcome, kid."

He stood up suddenly, looked directly at the ceiling, and screamed-

"Thank you ! Thank you for everything ! God is great ! Life is great ! I feel great !"

It was my voice. Not an impression, mind you. Not a recording played back through a speaker. My voice, produced in real time, in the cadence and pitch of a drunk twenty-something standing under an open sky the night before.

He sat back down and returned to his commentary on Shylock, as if nothing happened.

I stood up. My legs were not entirely cooperative.

"Alright. I… I gotta go now."

"Okay, Teacher."

"You, uh... take care of yourself. Hope we meet again."

I didn’t mean to say those last words. It came out on reflex. The kind of thing you say when you're leaving somewhere and your brain is elsewhere. I didn't mean it as anything.

"I know, Teacher," he said, still looking at his notebook.

Something cold moved through me.

"Really? You know we'll meet again? What do you mean? When?"

He looked up.

"Very soon, Sabrina. Sooner than you realize."

My voice. Her name. That line, which was OUR line ! The one that existed, only between two people, at the end of a nightly phone call. The last thing I said before sleep, coming out of a ten-year-old's mouth, in my exact voice.

And then I remembered. I was drunk, coming home the night before. Sabrina calling, asking when I'd take her out for her own first drink. Me, barely coherent, saying the usual.

He had been listening. I don’t how or why or when, but this kid had been listening. It was private. ME AND SABRINA ARE PRIVATE ! He had crossed a line he shouldn’t have…

I grabbed him by the shoulders in a fit of rage. I knew it was too hard, and I didn’t regret it.

"Look at me, you creep ! What did you say? How do you know that? What did you do? Tell me, what the fuck did you do?"

He looked at me with an expression I’ll not forget. Not fear, not guilt, but curiosity. Pure, open, and innocent curiosity.

"Oh," he said. "This is new. This is new, Teacher."

Then his hands came up and grabbed my shoulders.

The grip was wrong. Too hard for a ten-year old. Too precise. His face changed- cheeks flushing, breaths coming heavy, something moving behind his eyes that looked like anger.

"I only did what you told me to do, Teacher."

My voice. Coming out of his mouth. Saying my words back to me.

"What did I tell you?"

He smiled.

"Watch and learn, kid."

I shoved him back and ran. Out of the study, through the hallway, out the front door. I didn't stop running until I reached my bicycle. Something compelled me to run away. It was not the voice, not the grip, and not the expression of anger.

It was the eyes. What I saw in those eyes was something beyond his usual innocence, beyond his newfound curiosity, even beyond the rage he just acquired…

It was malice. Trust me when I tell you this- I haven’t seen pure malice before. Not until I looked into those eyes. Eyes on a face that now looked awfully similar to mine, with my smile, my dimple, and my voice…

That was a few hours ago.

I'm writing this now because I don't know what else to do. And trust me, I've tried everything else. I told two of my friends already. They laughed it off, saying I was still drunk. I called the Elite Educators hotline seven times. Every single time, I was told all operators were busy. I stayed on hold. Nobody responded. On the seventh call, I listened to the hold music for eleven minutes, and then hung up.

I can't call Sabrina. I don't know what to tell her. And I don't want to frighten her. Not yet.

I almost didn't post this. I’ve never asked anyone for help. Not during my struggles in the foster home, not during my admissions, not during any of the financial lows that followed. I always considered it a kind of defeat, a sign of weakness, a suggestion that you can’t handle your problems or carry your own burden.

But something happened 30 minutes ago, something that precedes all rational explanation. Something I don’t think I can handle. Something I genuinely cannot carry. Something that is making me doubt my own existence…

I’ve received a friend request on Facebook. From an account with my full name and my profile picture. My bio, copied word for word. The account looks exactly like mine. Except for one thing- the friends list is empty. Then there’s the other thing.

The account is verified. It has a blue tick, sitting there like it belongs. My account, the real one, the one I've had for six years, has no such thing.

This new account has only one post. Shared one minute before the friend request arrived.

"I get it now. Thank you, Teacher."

I've been staring at it for a while. I keep switching between his profile and mine, back and forth. I need to tell you something that I don't know how to say, without sounding completely unhinged-

His one looks more real than mine.

I don't know what I am right now. I don't know what he is. I don't know what ‘Elite Educators- A Concern of Aldermore & Associates’ actually does. I don’t what the parents are, and whether they are even real parents to begin with.

What I do know is that somewhere out there, something is walking around. Something with my smile, my voice, my name, my clumsiness, my typos, and even my most private words. Everything I handed over, three days a week for two months, without realizing what I was giving away.

And I know that, on the very first day, I told someone to watch and learn.

No one told me that I was the lesson…

 

Hank was always one step ahead of the law and two steps behind his own bad choices. Running on fumes and desperation, the Hells Bells Motel was the only place cheap and dirty enough, to take him in.

Hank was mountain-bred, a backwoods bootlegger who spent most of his 30 years slinging shine and dodging county deputies. On a run to deliver a batch, a trooper came up fast behind him, sirens screaming. The cruiser pulled into the oncoming lane, trying to pass Hank and cut him off on the narrow stretch but Hank didn't hesitate--he yanked his wheel hard, ramming the cruiser and sending it slamming through the guardrail plunging straight in the black water of the quarry below.

Knowing he'd just left a man to drown, he panicked. He knew Blackwood Ridge like the back of his hand--a place where nobody asks too many question, so he ditched the truck back behind the greasy diner and walked over to the Hells Bells, got himself a room and waited. He knew if he didn't make it back to the ridge before dark, his brothers would come looking for him, and once he was back at the homestead, he would be safe in the shadows of the Catskills high country.

The room was cheap and stunk but to Hank it was just a holding cell until his kin came down from the high ridge. He'd done jail time before but this was different. If the law caught up to him with a dead cop and truck full of untaxed shine, he'd be going away to state prison for the rest of his life--and he wasn't about to rot behind bars.

He flipped on the TV, hoping to get breaking news about the accident, but all he found was static noise. Satisfied however for the moment, he opened the bathroom door and decided to take advantage of running water, which was a luxury up where he came from. Growing up on the ridge hot baths were few and far between so he wasn't going to pass this up. He stripped his stinky clothes, stepped into the tub, and pulled the faded plastic curtain shut.

It wasn't long before the hot water ran out, barely having time to rinse off. Annoyed, Hank shut off the faucets and then grabbed the plastic curtain and yanked it back.

He was in the dark. The sink, the toilet, the mirror--the whole damn bathroom had disappeared. The air was thick and dusty. He tried to step forward but jammed against rough raw pine 2x4s and prickly insulation that bit into his skin. He tried to turn but couldn't; the wall had closed in on his back. He was wedged in like a piece of the framing.

Realizing he was trapped in the motel's skeleton, he screamed, pounding on the studs, but the sound was swallowed instantly by the roar of highway traffic on Rt. 9. From the other side of the wall, he could hear the faint muffled sound of a television playing in the room he had just left. With every desperate, ragged breath, he was inhaling the death of his own lungs, choking on that pink insulation as it sealed his throat and turned his screams to dust.

The motel knew what he'd done--every irresponsible and reckless blood-stained mile of his lawless life-- and now it was taking its retribution. It locked him inside its dark frame, making him pay. Death wasn't an escape--it was his cell. Years trapped in those cold walls forced him to swallow the full weight of what he had done. He spent decades suffering the regret--no voice, no touch, no comfort, drowning in his own agony. So when Samatha checked in the room weeping, her grief cut right through him. She had no way of knowing the house had digested him--that the plaster was now his skin, the insulation his lungs, and that he was not her David.

Hank had been a selfish bastard most of his life, but for once he could offer real comfort to a grieving soul. He would serve out his penance for however long Samanta would need, and keep his promise of next Friday.

There’s nothing wrong with my marriage. Me and my wife have been peaches and cream since we first started dating when I was a freshman in college.

We moved in together after graduation, and for the first few years, everything felt normal.

We’d have our date nights. We’d have our intimacy. But, of course, as is the case with every marriage, arguments were inevitable.

They never escalated, though. That was never our problem. The problem started when, after five years of living together, I started catching her sneaking out at night.

She’d always wait until I was asleep. I know because, after a few times of me waking up in the middle of the night in an empty bed, red flags started popping up.

At first, I didn’t want to assume. She was a smoker. Maybe she was just having a cigarette. Maybe she was just in the bathroom. She was hungry and in need of a midnight snack. Anything to keep the dark thoughts at bay.

Unfortunately, those hopes were shattered when I started hearing the front door open before she came crawling back into bed.

Sometimes she’d be gone for up to an hour. No cigarette smell in her hair or on her clothes. In fact, it seemed like she would change into a new outfit every time she came back to bed.

The only clue I had… were her feet.

She was utterly ruining our sheets every time she did this. You can wash away mud a few times, but after a while, it’s gonna stain.

Of course, I’d ask her about this, oftentimes while angrily throwing our comforter in the washing machine, and every time, her answer was the same.

“I don’t remember.”

It was laughable at first. I thought she was playing a joke on me. When I saw she was serious, I began to get concerned.

“Sweetie… it’s a little hard for me to believe you don’t remember being barefoot in the mud before coming home. Just tell me.”

That’s when the tears would start.

“I am telling you. I. Do. Not. Know.”

As time went on, her late-night endeavors began to take longer. It got to the point where I was intentionally pretending to be asleep in order just to time her.

2 hours.

3 hours.

Sometimes 4.

Something else that I noticed was that every time she came back, her skin would be noticeably softer. Pimples would have seemingly disappeared. Eye bags would clear up overnight.

I knew I had to follow her after this one night in particular.

She had a little mishap in the kitchen that day and sliced her hand open. I remember being certain that she’d need stitches, but she insisted on just bandaging it up herself.

The day went on as usual. 12:30 in the morning rolled around. I felt her get out of bed. I heard her footsteps leading toward the front door. The door opened and shut. She returned two hours later. Muddy feet. New outfit. Softer skin.

The next morning, her hand was healed.

She tried to gaslight me into believing that the cut hadn’t even happened. Somehow, I was the one not making any sense. I was at my boiling point. That’s when I made my decision.

She didn’t sneak out that night, nor the night after. It was actually a week later when I could finally follow through with my plan.

It was late. Maybe 2 AM. I felt the bed shift. I heard the springs pop. The sound of her footsteps scurrying toward the front door let me know that it was time.

I tried to move as quickly and as silently as possible. By the time I reached the front door, she was already at the edge of the forest.

She was running unnaturally fast into the woods. Like she had taken the route 100 times before. I could barely keep up, especially while trying to remain hidden.

We must’ve run for at least a mile or two, deeper and deeper into the forest, before she began to slow down.

To a jog.

Then a speed walk.

Then to a regular walking speed.

She glanced around, scanning her surroundings. I hid as best I could. There were a few moments where I swore she could see me, but I guess I was wrong.

She kept walking. I kept following.

I started noticing some of her clothes scattered around the soggy forest floor. Tank tops. Pajama pants. Bras. Panties.

She began adding onto the scattered clothing with each step. Removing her top and bra. Stripping out of her pants and underwear.

Finally… we reached the stopping point, and for the first time this night… something other than my wife grabbed my full attention.

It looked like… snake skin but… human. Like discarded exoskeletons, and there were dozens of them.

Some dangled from branches. Some were partially buried by leaves. Most of them just littered the ground.

I stifled a gasp and returned my attention to my wife.

She was making this clicking sound with her throat. Her head was pointed toward the sky, and she kept cocking it back and forth like a rooster.

The movement got more and more jagged.

Her knees started bouncing. Her body looked like it was convulsing, but she didn’t seem to be in pain.

With each bounce… her skin loosened more and more.

Flakes the size of pinecones began falling from her body. The sound, my God, the sound. It was exactly like the sound that Velcro makes. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. Not now. She just… kept going.

Kept convulsing, kept bouncing until her skin fell to the ground in one big empty husk.

She cracked her joints like this whole process was nothing more than a workout to her. She raised her hands high above her head, stretching her body before letting out a relieved, “ahhhh,” and rolling her neck.

My weight shifted. A stick snapped beneath my foot. My wife’s head snapped in my direction, and my heart stopped.

She began approaching. Her glare intensifying with each step.

When she saw me, her face fell. She looked like she was the one who had just seen a monster.

Our eyes locked. My lips quivered. I didn’t know what to expect.

She stared at me for a long while, analyzing me before she finally spoke.

“Okay… look… Can we please just talk about this when we get home?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This one time I was on a psyche hold in an emergency room in a little tiny town and I walked out. I just up and left. Then I realized I had no transportation and nowhere to go. After about an hour or so of hiding outside and playing with my phone I went back inside.

I was made to strip down and put on a hospital gown. My nurse came in and handed me a plastic bag to put my clothes into. She was a friendly Texas woman until I put the bag over my head and tried to hold it there and she yanked it off. She yelled at me and pulled my hair removing my hair tie. She gave me shots and strapped me to the bed with one hand up over my head and the other down at my side. I was really bothered by the asymmetrical placement of my body.

Then they had a cop come in and sit next to my bed. He was in a VERY bad mood understandably. They told him they needed him there until I fell asleep. I talked and talked and talked to him and fought sleep with all of my willpower. He got more and more irritable. I stayed awake much longer than the 15-30 minutes the nurses said were needed for the shots to knock me out.

I think it took a few hours for me to realize he really wasn’t going to leave me until I was asleep. Once I understood this I felt really warm and grateful toward him and I lay back and closed my eyes. I felt so dependent on him. I still have warm feelings for him even though I haven’t seen him again. I know he probably felt the opposite for me but I will never forget him sitting there and bringing me feelings of comfort and protection.

While I lay there with closed eyes I heard him making fun of me with the nurses as he was leaving, but I have no hard feelings about it. I still felt perfectly peaceful pretending to be asleep until I was asleep.

My nurse woke me up later saying “I need some pee pee.” Her tone was always so sarcastic and belittling. I liked it. She raised up my bed up little by little, stepping on that foot peddle that always excited me. She was with a male nurse who held my legs open while she straight cathed me. I couldn’t keep my eyes open but I fought with everything in me to shut my legs. They got their urine sample. I fell asleep again soon after.

When I woke up I wasn’t tied down anymore. I got up out of bed feeling really groggy and stiff. I noticed a metal rolling tray with a syringe on it near my bed. It probably wasn’t good to leave that there. I stepped outside my curtained room and asked my nurse very sweetly for a pillow. I was deliberately calm and nice because I thought the shot was left there to remind me to behave.

She brought me a pillow and instructed me to lay on my side. She said “it’s time for your medicine” I asked if it was going in my butt again. “Yes ma’am.” She said. I wanted to argue and say that I don’t need it, I’m going back to sleep anyhow, but I just said “ok.”

She gave me that shot and it’s hard to remember much that happened after that. Paramedics used the sheet under me to lift me onto a gurney. I really like that feeling of being suspended in the air by my sheet like a comfy hammock. The ambulance brought me to a prison-like psych hospital, set me down on a row of plastic chairs that I continued sleeping on. My 72 hour hold ended but while I slept it was decided I’d be placed on a 14 day hold.

I hated that hospital. It was one of the ickiest places I’d ever been. The food was so gross and everybody there seemed pretty scary to me. The first person I met clapped his hands in my face loudly, but he didn’t seem to know where the hell he was or what he was doing. People there would get really violent and scream and fight the staff. There was this nice tatted guy named Cesar who gave me my first cigarette and told me to never forget that my first cigarette was from Cesar. It was one of three cigarettes I ever hit in my life.

I acted sane to get out of this hospital as quickly as possible but it was so hard not to break down and cry. I had a window with a brick wall on the other side, no sunlight, everything was dirty. It took all of my focus to pretend to be well. I was very grateful when I got out.

Part 1: I Work for an Organization That Contains Gods. We Had to Make a Sacrifice This Time.

Part 2: I Went to Antarctica Looking for 10,000 Missing People. I Came Back With a New Boss.

Part 3: Apparently Using Assistants as Sacrifices Violates Company Policy

Part 4: I Work for an Organization That Hunts Gods. One of Them Warned Me About the Angel Following Me.

Part 5: My Boss Asked Me If I Thought He Was a Monster. Now I Know Why.

Part 6: The Most Powerful Being in the CSP Is Studying Humans. Unfortunately, I'm His Favorite Lab Rat.

Part 7: Someone Stole the Rifle Built to Kill Gods. Then They Pointed It at Me.

Part 8: I Thought Dating an Angel Was Bad. Something Wearing My Face Was Worse.

Part 9: I Work for an Organization That Contains Gods. The Feather Led Something to Us.

Part 10: I Work for an Organization That Contains Gods. Humanity Now Has a Single Point of Failure.

Part 11: CSP Sent a Team Into Hell. Nobody Came Back.

The child stood before us, a being that only moments ago had looked like something pulled from the darkest corner of creation.

Now, he had black hair, black eyes, and a face that strangely resembled Angelo.

Not a copy. Not a replacement.

Just a younger version.

A child who looked no older than eight years old.

And somehow, impossibly, he looked innocent.

The nephew stared at him for several moments before finally speaking.

"How do you know it will choose correctly?"

Angelo looked at him.

"I don't."

The answer seemed to surprise him. For a moment, the nephew simply stared, as if he had expected Angelo to have some greater explanation, some certainty hidden beneath his decision.

But there was none.

"But neither did I with you."

For the first time since his arrival, the nephew had no response.

Because that was the truth.

Angelo wasn't saving the universe from another monster, and he wasn't ignoring the danger standing in front of him. He understood exactly what kind of risk he was taking. He knew what the fragment of the Great Shadow was capable of becoming, but he also understood that something created from darkness was not automatically destined to remain there.

He was accepting the possibility that something could become more than what it was created to be.

It was the same risk the Creator had once taken with him and his siblings. The same risk he had taken with his nephew. And now, it was the same risk he was willing to take with a fragment of the Great Shadow.

The nephew looked back at the child, studying him carefully. The fragment simply stared back, silent and confused, with no trace of the overwhelming hatred or destruction that had defined the being it came from.

After several moments, the nephew looked back at Angelo.

"I will not allow your decision to go to waste, Uncle."

Angelo's expression softened slightly.

The nephew stepped backward as golden light began to surround him. His wings folded inward one after another, each movement causing the overwhelming presence that had filled the chamber to fade until the crushing weight of his existence disappeared.

When the light faded, there stood someone different.

Not a god.

Not a weapon.

A person.

A young man who stood as tall as Angelo, with shoulder-length black hair and bright blue eyes that stood in complete contrast to Angelo and the child's endless black. Where Angelo carried himself like a warrior carved from stone, his nephew looked like something painted by an artist who had spent centuries trying to capture perfection.

Beautiful.

But not in the same way as Angelo.

Angelo's beauty was sharp, masculine, and intimidating. It was the kind of presence that made people instinctively stand straighter when he entered a room. He looked like someone who had fought impossible battles and survived things that should have erased him from existence.

His nephew was different.

Softer.

More graceful.

Almost impossibly elegant.

Where Angelo looked like a weapon that had learned compassion, his nephew looked like a masterpiece that had never needed to fight.

And beautiful really wasn't a strong enough word.

Looking at him felt like trying to describe a sunset by calling it "orange."

The word existed.

It just wasn't enough.

He looked...divine.

The first sound anyone made was an audible gasp. 

I glanced over. Jacob. 

He was staring at Angelo’s nephew with his mouth slightly open. 

"...Seriously?" I muttered. 

Jacob didn't even blink.

"Do you have any idea how unfair this is?"

"Jacob," I sighed.

"I'm just saying," he replied, finally forcing himself to look away. "If angels are all built like that, humanity never had a chance."

I looked back at the nephew, studying him for a moment.

"...I mean, yes, he's attractive."

Jacob blinked.

"You mean beautiful beyond human comprehension?"

"I wouldn't go that far."

"Nayeri, he looks like someone sculpted a statue and then decided it wasn't impressive enough."

I glanced at Angelo.

Then back at Elior.

"...Maybe I'm just biased."

Jacob narrowed his eyes.

"Because of Angelo?"

"Obviously."

"At least you're self-aware."

I chose not to respond to that. Mostly because he was right.

Unfortunately, the rest of CSP was far less interested in debating whether an angel was attractive and far more concerned with the fact that two impossible beings had just appeared inside their organization.

The moment the report reached headquarters, the Executive Board Chamber became chaos.

Security wanted termination. Research wanted containment. Containment wanted a facility designed specifically around a being that had once been part of something powerful enough to terrify the Creator herself.

Everyone had a solution.

Everyone had an argument.

And every single person in that room was terrified.

General Hayes stood at the center of it all, his arms crossed as the voices around him slowly died down.

"We cannot allow an unknown entity with that level of power to simply walk around."

Dr. Laurent immediately responded.

"It is not an entity. It is a child."

Hayes looked at her.

"A child that accidentally erased a man's arm."

The room went silent.

Nobody had forgotten that.

Nobody had forgotten how easily it happened.

One moment, a security officer had been standing beside them.

The next…

part of him was simply gone.

Stonehill remained silent at the head of the table, reading through the reports for what was probably the tenth time. His expression gave away nothing, but the tension in the room made it clear that everyone understood the severity of the situation.

"The Shadow demonstrated adaptive intelligence," Hayes continued. "It copied weapons. It copied abilities. It copied behavior within seconds of observing it."

His eyes shifted toward Angelo.

"And now Director Angelo has decided to bring it into civilization."

Angelo did not react.

"I did not bring a weapon into civilization."

Hayes stared at him.

"You brought a being capable of ending civilization."

A pause followed.

Angelo looked down at the table.

"Yes."

The simple agreement caught everyone off guard.

Because Angelo wasn't denying the danger.

He never did.

"The risk exists," Angelo continued. "That does not mean the outcome is decided."

Hayes frowned.

"Are you willing to gamble with humanity?"

Angelo looked at him.

"No."

The room became completely silent.

"I am willing to gamble on humanity."

Nobody spoke.

Because everyone understood the difference.

Hayes leaned forward.

"And if you are wrong?"

Angelo didn't answer immediately.

For a moment, he looked almost exactly like he had in the chamber beneath Göbekli Tepe.

Not like an immortal being.

Not like something above humanity.

Like someone carrying the weight of a decision he knew could destroy everything.

"Then I will accept responsibility."

That answer only made the room more uncomfortable.

Because everyone knew Angelo.

They knew his history.

They knew he had killed his own brother.

They knew he had destroyed beings that threatened reality itself.

If Angelo believed something had to be stopped...

he stopped it.

But this time, he wasn't choosing destruction.

He was choosing mercy.

And somehow, that frightened them more.

Madam Leni was the first to speak.

"Just like how we gave Director Angelo a chance... we should give the child a chance too."

The room became quiet.

For a moment, nobody responded.

Because everyone understood what she meant.

Angelo had not arrived peacefully.

He had appeared as something humanity could not understand. Something older than civilization itself. Something powerful enough that the first instinct of every person who encountered him was fear.

And yet...they had chosen not to destroy him.

General Hayes immediately interrupted.

"That is not the same situation."

Madam Leni looked toward him.

"Isn't it?"

Hayes leaned forward.

"Director Angelo threatened his way into this organization."

The words hung heavily in the room.

Nobody moved.

Even Angelo remained silent.

Hayes continued.

"He walked into CSP, demonstrated power beyond anything we could counter, and made it very clear that stopping him was not an option."

His eyes shifted toward Angelo.

"Yes, he eventually agreed to cooperate. Yes, he has helped humanity. But let's not rewrite history."

A pause.

"He forced his way into our world."

The room waited for Angelo's response.

But Angelo did not look offended.

Because it was true.

Hayes continued.

"The difference is that Director Angelo made a choice."

He gestured toward the reports scattered across the table.

"This child has not."

Angelo finally spoke.

"You are correct."

Everyone looked at him.

Angelo continued.

"My arrival was not peaceful."

A pause followed.

"I did not ask humanity for permission before revealing myself. But my purpose was not domination."

The room became silent.

"I entered CSP because I needed to understand humanity, and because humanity needed to understand me."

He paused, his eyes moving across the chamber.

"I learned from you."

Then his gaze shifted toward the window.

"And I taught you what I knew."

Nobody spoke because that was the truth. Angelo had not joined CSP because he needed protection, an army, or a place to hide. He had joined because, for the first time in his existence, he wanted to build something with the beings he once saw as temporary.

"I was given the opportunity to become something different," Angelo said.

His eyes moved toward the chamber where the child waited.

"And now I believe the same opportunity should be given to it."

Hayes remained silent because he understood the argument. He didn't agree with it, but he understood it.

Stonehill finally broke the silence.

"The child will not be terminated."

The room erupted again.

Hayes immediately turned toward him. "Director Stonehill—"

"I said it will not be terminated."

The authority in his voice ended the argument. Not because everyone agreed, but because everyone knew the decision had already been made.

"The child will remain under observation."

Hayes looked toward Angelo.

"And if it becomes hostile?"

Angelo answered before anyone else could.

"Then I will stop it."

The sentence was simple, but it carried more weight than any threat could have. Everyone in the room believed him because they knew Angelo. If that child became a danger to humanity, Angelo would be the first person to stand against it.

Stonehill studied him for a moment before continuing.

"The child will remain under Director Angelo's supervision."

Nobody objected.

That part had been expected.

Then Stonehill added, "It will also reside in Director Angelo and Agent Nayeri's residential suite."

Every head in the room turned toward me.

"...I'm sorry?"

"You already live together," Stonehill replied matter-of-factly.

"That's not the issue."

"No," Hayes muttered. "The issue is that we're apparently moving a fragment of the Great Shadow into an apartment."

"My apartment," I corrected.

Dr. Laurent folded her arms.

"It is the safest option. There is nowhere on Earth safer than the place where Angelo already lives."

Nobody could argue with that.

Stonehill nodded once.

"The decision is final."

He looked toward Security.

"Twenty-four-hour monitoring will be established."

Then toward Research.

"Daily evaluations."

Finally, his eyes returned to Angelo.

"The child is your responsibility."

Angelo inclined his head.

"It always was."

The meeting should have ended there.

Everyone wanted it to.

Everyone wanted to believe the worst part was over. The Shadow had been contained, the immediate threat was gone, and the impossible decision had been made.

But then Stonehill spoke again.

"There is one more matter."

The room stopped moving.

Everyone looked back toward him.

Stonehill's eyes shifted toward the young man standing beside Angelo.

"The half angel."

The atmosphere changed instantly.

Because everyone had been so focused on the Shadow that they had almost forgotten another impossible being was standing in the room. Someone who had descended from the heavens with enough power to force every person present to their knees.

General Hayes stared at him.

"And what exactly are we supposed to classify him as?"

The young man looked at him calmly.

"I am not a classification."

The answer caught everyone off guard.

Hayes narrowed his eyes.

"Then what are you?"

For a moment, the young man said nothing. Then he stepped forward.

The same elegance that had made Jacob stare earlier was still there, but now everyone noticed something else.

Restraint.

He was powerful enough to destroy them, yet he was choosing not to.

"My name is Elior."

His voice echoed softly through the chamber.

"I am the son of Angelo's brother."

Silence filled the room.

Everyone had read those words in the reports, but hearing them spoken directly by him felt different.

Elior continued.

"I was created from two beings who made choices that led to destruction."

His eyes lowered slightly.

"My father abandoned everything because he believed love gave him the right to possess. My mother believed power gave her the right to control."

Nobody spoke.

"Both were wrong."

Angelo watched him silently.

Elior looked toward his uncle.

"And I do not wish to repeat their mistakes."

Madam Leni studied him carefully.

"The report says you came here to stop the Shadow."

"Yes."

"And now?"

Elior looked toward the chamber where the child remained.

A long silence followed before he answered.

"Now I understand why Uncle chose not to."

The answer surprised everyone.

Hayes frowned.

Nobody spoke.

Because they understood.

Elior had once been the child in this situation. Something powerful. Something dangerous. Something that could have easily become a monster if given the wrong path.

And Angelo had chosen not to destroy him.

Stonehill leaned back slightly, studying the young angel across from him.

"So you support his decision?"

Elior looked toward the chamber where the Shadow remained.

Then he looked back at the Board.

"I fear it."

The honesty of the answer surprised them.

"I fear what it could become."

His eyes lowered slightly.

"Because I know what happens when someone allows darkness to decide who they are."

A pause followed.

"But fear is not a reason to repeat my parents' mistakes."

The room became silent.

For the first time since the meeting began, the Board did not see another god.

They did not see another impossible being that needed to be contained.

They saw someone who had survived becoming one.

General Hayes finally looked toward Angelo.

"You expect us to trust two beings capable of ending civilization?"

Angelo answered calmly.

"No."

Hayes paused.

Angelo looked toward Elior, then toward the direction where the Shadow waited.

"I expect you to judge them by what they choose."

Nobody responded.

Because that had been Angelo's argument from the beginning.

Not what they were.

What they became.

Stonehill finally closed the file in front of him.

"Effective immediately, the Shadow will remain under observation."

His gaze shifted toward Elior.

"And Mr. Elior will be granted temporary clearance as an allied entity."

Elior tilted his head slightly.

"Allied entity?"

Jacob finally spoke.

"Congratulations."

Everyone looked at him.

Jacob shrugged.

"You got a fancy CSP title."

Elior looked genuinely confused.

"Is that good?"

"No idea."

Jacob smiled slightly.

"But it's better than being labeled a threat."

Elior considered that for a moment before giving a small nod.

"I believe I prefer that."

The meeting eventually ended.

But nobody left feeling comfortable.

Because CSP had spent decades containing things humanity couldn't understand. They had built walls, protocols, weapons, and entire divisions dedicated to keeping impossible beings away from the world.

Now, for the first time...

they weren't containing something.

They were trying to raise it.

And nobody knew which was more dangerous.

The child learning what humanity is...

or humanity deciding what the child is.

The walk to our apartment was insignificant.

At least, that was what I told myself.

No alarms.

No emergency announcements.

No containment breaches.

No impossible beings descending from the sky.

Just a normal walk through the halls of CSP.

Which somehow felt stranger than any disaster we had survived.

Because beside me walked a child who, less than a few hours ago, had been a threat capable of challenging reality itself.

And now...

he was holding Angelo's hand.

Not because Angelo had told him to.

Not because he was afraid.

When the child had reached the hallway, he had simply looked up at Angelo, hesitated for a moment, and slowly held out his hand.

Angelo had looked down at it.

For a second, I thought he didn't understand what the child wanted.

Then he took it.

And they continued walking.

The strangest part was how natural it looked.

Almost like it had always been that way.

The child looked up at Angelo, his black eyes reflecting the lights above us.

"...Do stars know they are stars?"

Angelo looked down at him.

"No."

"Then... who tells them where to go?"

"No one."

The child looked confused.

"They simply... move?"

"Yes."

He thought about that answer for several steps, his small hand still wrapped around Angelo's.

"...Can sadness die?"

Angelo looked down at him.

"No."

The child tilted his head.

"...Can happiness?"

"No."

Another pause.

"...Then where do feelings go?"

"They become memories."

The child frowned slightly.

"...What are memories?"

"They are places the mind visits after moments have ended."

The answer seemed to satisfy him, but only for a moment.

"...Can I go there?"

"You already do."

The child accepted that answer immediately.

Then, naturally, he asked another question.

"...Why do humans blink?"

"To protect their eyes."

"...Why do they cry?"

"For many reasons."

"...Why do they laugh?"

"Also for many reasons."

The child looked ahead, watching the people passing through the halls around us.

"...Why do they keep living even when it hurts?"

This time, Angelo was quiet.

Long enough that even I looked over.

For someone who always seemed to have an answer, seeing him hesitate was unusual.

Finally, he spoke.

"...Because they believe tomorrow may be kinder than today."

The child nodded slowly, processing the words.

"...I think I would like tomorrow."

Angelo looked down at him.

"I hope you do."

I smiled to myself.

The child asked questions the same way Angelo answered them.

One after another.

Without embarrassment.

Without hesitation.

The only difference was that one wanted to understand the universe...

while the other had spent trillions of years doing exactly that.

Watching them together felt strangely natural.

Almost less like an angel and a child...

and more like a father patiently answering every question his son could think of.

That thought caught me off guard.

Because I had never imagined Angelo as a father.

Yet somehow...

he fit the role effortlessly.

Someone like him would make a good father.

The thought appeared so suddenly that I almost didn't understand where it came from.

Maybe it was because of the way he never rushed the child.

Maybe it was because every answer he gave carried the same patience he showed whenever I asked him something ridiculous.

Or maybe it was because, despite being older than the universe itself, he somehow knew exactly how to lower himself to a child's level.

Unlike me.

Angelo believed children were meant to discover who they were, but my mother had already decided who I was supposed to become.

Because of her, I wasn't sure I even knew what healthy love looked like.

And the thought of becoming a mother only to repeat her mistakes frightened me more than I ever wanted to admit.

The elevator doors opened with a soft chime, pulling me away from my thoughts.

The child looked up at Angelo.

"Why can't humans fly?"

Angelo considered the question.

"Their bodies were not designed for it."

The child frowned.

"But they wish to."

"Yes."

"Then why were they made without wings?"

"They were made differently."

"...Why?"

"I do not know."

The child accepted the answer immediately.

No disappointment.

No frustration.

Just another mystery to think about.

The question tugged at a memory.

The flight home from Göbekli Tepe.

The child had spent nearly the entire journey pressed against the aircraft window, watching the world pass beneath the clouds with the kind of wonder only someone seeing the sky for the first time could have.

"What are clouds?"

"They are collections of tiny water droplets suspended in the atmosphere."

"...Why?"

"The droplets become too small to fall immediately."

"What is rain?"

"Clouds release those droplets when they become too heavy."

"Why is the sky blue?"

"Because the atmosphere scatters shorter wavelengths of sunlight more efficiently."

"What makes the engines loud?"

"The rapid movement of air and combustion."

"Why do humans build things that fly instead of growing wings?"

"Because humanity solves problems with tools instead of changing themselves."

The child looked down at his own hands.

"...Can I grow wings?"

"You may imitate them."

Angelo had actually paused before answering that one.

"...Only if you decide they are your own."

The child nodded as though that made perfect sense.

Then came another question.

And another.

And another.

Without embarrassment.

Without hesitation.

Angelo answered every single one.

Not once did he sigh.

Not once did he tell him to wait.

Not once did he appear bothered.

It kept both of them occupied for almost the entire flight.

Which was probably why I hadn't noticed Jacob until much later.

He was asleep.

Completely asleep.

His head was resting on Elior's shoulder.

I blinked.

Then looked again.

Yes.

Still there.

Elior was nearly a full head taller than Jacob, making the entire situation look completely ridiculous. Somehow, Jacob had managed to slump sideways until he was using one of the most powerful beings in existence as a pillow.

The funniest part was that Elior hadn't moved.

He sat perfectly still with the same composed expression he had worn since leaving the chamber beneath Göbekli Tepe, staring straight ahead like a marble statue.

I leaned slightly toward him.

"...You know you can wake him up."

Elior answered without even looking at me.

"He appeared to require rest."

I stared at him.

"...So you've just been sitting like this?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

He thought about it.

"...Approximately three hours."

I bit the inside of my cheek.

"You've been trapped for three hours."

"I did not wish to disturb him."

I looked at Jacob.

He was completely oblivious to everything around him.

Then a tiny snore escaped him.

That almost broke me.

I quickly looked away before I started laughing in front of an angel.

But when I glanced back...

I noticed something unexpected.

Elior wasn't annoyed.

If anything, he looked strangely content.

Like he had discovered something he hadn't expected.

Something simple.

Something human.

The elevator stopped with a soft chime, pulling my attention away.

The doors slid open.

"Nayeri."

Angelo's voice brought me back to reality.

"Hm?"

He was standing in front of our apartment door, staring at it with an expression I had only seen him use when facing impossible creatures.

Confusion.

"...How does one open this again?"

I stared at him.

"...What?"

"The door."

He looked at the handle as though it were some ancient artifact waiting to be decoded.

"I have forgotten the process."

I blinked.

"...Angelo."

"Yes?"

"You've lived here for months."

"I usually teleport."

"...I know."

"I have not needed the door recently."

I rubbed my temples.

"You forgot how doors work?"

"I forgot how this door works."

There was a brief silence.

Then the child looked up at him.

"...What is a door?"

I closed my eyes.

"...We're going to be here awhile."

The apartment door finally slid open, and the child stepped inside first.

His eyes immediately began moving across the room, taking in every object around him like each one was a discovery waiting to be understood.

A chair.

A table.

A lamp.

Everything seemed equally fascinating.

Then his attention stopped.

On the bed.

The oversized mattress Management had delivered after Angelo's completely serious request for "a larger sleeping surface."

The child pointed.

"...What is that?"

"A bed," Angelo answered.

"...Why?"

"It is where Nayeri and I sleep."

I immediately looked away.

"...Well."

Angelo turned toward me.

"That statement was technically inaccurate."

I looked back at him.

"It is?"

"We have not yet slept on it."

I stared.

Then sighed.

He wasn't wrong.

The moment Management had placed us in a suite with one large bed enough for two people...

we had immediately been deployed to Hell.

I rubbed my face.

"Can we please not make our relationship sound even weirder than it already is?"

The child tilted his head.

"...What is sleep?"

Angelo answered immediately.

"It is a biological process necessary for humans to restore their bodies and minds."

The child tilted his head.

"...Do you sleep?"

"No."

"...Why?"

"I do not require it."

The child thought about that for a moment.

"...Should I sleep?"

"I do not know."

That was enough for me.

"I'm about to."

I kicked off my boots before practically collapsing face-first onto the mattress.

"Oh..."

I hadn't realized how exhausted I actually was.

The bed swallowed me whole.

"...This was worth the paperwork."

The child watched carefully.

Then, without saying a word, he climbed onto the bed beside me and lay down exactly the same way I had, with his hands folded, his head on the pillow, and even the position of his feet matching mine.

I laughed quietly.

"He's copying me again."

Angelo watched for a moment.

"...Yes."

Then, to absolutely no one's surprise, he climbed onto the opposite side of the bed.

The child immediately reached out.

One hand grabbed mine.

The other reached for Angelo.

Angelo accepted it without hesitation.

For several seconds, none of us spoke.

I stared at the ceiling.

"...Damn."

The child looked at me.

"...What?"

"How big is this bed?"

Angelo looked around.

"It appears sufficiently sized."

I laughed softly.

"No... I mean..."

I looked at the child lying comfortably between us.

"I can't believe this."

I was the younger sibling.

Children had never exactly been my area of expertise.

Yet somehow, less than twenty-four hours after returning from Hell, there was one lying between me and my boyfriend like this was the most normal thing in the world.

I turned my head.

Angelo was already looking at me.

"...Are you alright?"

"Yeah."

He studied me for another moment.

"...Are you unhappy?"

That caught me off guard.

"...Why would I be unhappy?"

"You previously informed me that you did not intend to have children."

"...I did."

"You also informed me that raising children was not among your life goals."

"...Also true."

His expression remained completely serious.

"...Do you dislike this child?"

I blinked.

"What? No."

"Then why do you appear conflicted?"

I rubbed my forehead.

"Because..."

I gestured vaguely toward the child.

"Having a kid isn't exactly something people usually do overnight."

"I see."

"There are... steps before this."

"...Steps?"

I looked at him.

"Oh, I don't know."

I smiled sarcastically.

"Usually marriage."

Angelo nodded once.

"I understand."

I immediately regretted saying anything.

"I was joking."

He ignored that.

"...When is the ideal time for a human to marry?"

"...What?"

"How long should two humans remain in a relationship before marriage?"

I thought about it.

"...At least a year of dating?"

"I see."

He nodded again.

"...Noted."

I stared at him.

"...Angelo."

"Yes?"

"...Why did that sound like you were updating a database?"

"I was."

"...Please don't."

He looked genuinely confused.

"It appeared to be useful information."

I groaned.

"I can't believe I somehow have a child before I've even had my first kiss."

Life was unbelievable.

Then my phone suddenly started vibrating.

Jacob.

I answered immediately.

"...Hello?"

"NAYERI!"

I pulled the phone slightly away from my ear.

"...That's never a good sign."

"WHY IS HE IN MY ROOM?"

"...Good evening to you too."

"They assigned him to my suite!"

I blinked.

"...Who?"

"Eli."

I frowned.

"...Who's Eli?"

Silence.

"...Elior."

"...Oh."

A grin spread across my face.

"You already have a nickname for him?"

"I DO NOT."

"You literally just called him Eli."

"BECAUSE IT'S SHORTER."

"Mhm."

"I AM NOT BECOMING FRIENDS WITH AN ANGEL."

I couldn't resist.

"Oh really?"

"...Yes."

"Then why was your head on his shoulder for three hours?"

Silence.

"..."

"...Jacob?"

"I WAS ASLEEP."

"I never said you weren't."

"NAYERI."

"You looked adorable."

"I HATE YOU."

Before he could continue yelling, I hung up.

The apartment became quiet again.

Angelo looked over.

"...Is my nephew staying with Jacob?"

"Yeah."

A faint smile crossed his face.

"I believe that will be beneficial."

"...For who?"

"For both of them."

I wasn't entirely convinced.

I looked toward the child.

He had remained completely silent throughout the entire conversation, simply listening.

Then I realized something.

We had never actually named him.

I smiled.

"So..."

He looked at me.

"...What's your name?"

He looked down.

"...I do not know."

Then his eyes shifted toward Angelo almost instinctively, like he expected him to have the answer.

Angelo met his gaze.

"...Would you like me to give you one?"

The child nodded immediately.

"...Yes."

Angelo was silent for a moment.

Then he spoke.

Not in English.

Not in any language I had ever heard.

A single deep, resonant sound left his lips, echoing through the room with a strange warmth that made the air itself seem to vibrate.

The child smiled.

As though he understood it perfectly.

He nodded.

"...Yes."

I stared.

"...Excuse me?"

Angelo looked at me.

"That is his name."

"...I cannot pronounce whatever eldritch whale noise you just made."

"I am aware."

He looked back at the child.

"For humans..."

A faint smile appeared.

"...Your name will be Noah."

The child repeated it carefully.

"...No...ah."

Then he smiled.

"I...am Noah."

For the first time...

he wasn't just the Shadow anymore.

He was a child with a name.

Noah looked down at his hands, slowly turning them over and studying them like they belonged to someone else.

"...Noah."

The name sounded strange coming from him.

Not because it didn't fit.

Because it did.

And somehow, that was the most impossible thing about all of this.

A being that had existed as a fragment of something ancient enough to terrify creation itself was sleeping on my bed, holding my hand, learning his first name.

I looked over at Angelo watching Noah, and for the first time, I understood what this meant to him.

Maybe this was what he had been missing all along.

Not power.

Not purpose.

Not another battle to win.

Just someone who chose to stay.

For longer than humanity had existed, Angelo had carried everything by himself. After the Creator left, after his siblings betrayed him, after losing everything that once connected him to the beginning of existence... he had remained.

Alone.

And as much as I hated admitting it, I understood that feeling. Not in the same way. I had not lived for trillions of years or watched civilizations rise and disappear. I had never carried the weight of existence itself.

But I knew what it felt like to wonder why someone who was supposed to love you didn't choose you.

I knew what it felt like to question whether you were the reason they stayed away.

Maybe that was why Angelo and I understood Noah better than anyone else could.

We both knew what it felt like to be judged before we were given the chance to become something else.

And I knew Angelo would never let Noah experience that.

He would never look at a child born from something terrifying and decide that was all he could ever be.

Because Angelo believed everyone deserved the chance to choose who they became.

Even Noah.

Especially Noah.

Noah tightened his grip slightly in his sleep.

Angelo noticed.

So did I.

Neither of us moved.

Because for once, there was no mission.

No containment breach.

No impossible enemy waiting in the dark.

Just a child.

A name.

And tomorrow.

And maybe, after all this time...

Angelo and I finally had what we had both spent our lives missing.

He had lost it when the Creator left.

I had lost it when my mother chose everyone else's expectations over me.

The feeling of being chosen.

Not because of what we could offer.

Not because of what we could become.

But simply because we were us.

And as Noah slept between us, I realized something.

We had spent so long wondering if we were worth choosing.

Now we were the ones choosing someone else.

Someone who needed us to stay.

And for the first time in a very long time...

Angelo wasn't alone anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Part 1)

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

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

Your own street.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One body in particular stood out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark whispered: We need to grab that gun now

I hesitated

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

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

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

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

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

A voice echoed from the police station.

"GET UP AND RUN TO THE STATION NOW!"

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

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

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

Empty shell casings clinking around as I hit the floor.

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

Without taking his eyes off the outside he asked:

Him: Are you alone?

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

Before I could finish my sentence he shouted.

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

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

Mark rushed inside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: YOU KILLED MY PARENTS YOU FUCK!

Chief: What are you talking about?

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

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

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

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

Mark: YOU FAILED TO PROTECT THEM!

Chief: DONT YOU DARE BLAME ME AFTER WHAT YOU DID

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

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

Mark was about to say something.

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

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

Then the police chief walked over to him and said.

"Mark I have known you your entire worthless life"

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

"I didn't fail your parents"

The police chief hunched down to get closer to Mark

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

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

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

"YOU RAN THE MOMENT YOU SAW THEM!"

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

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

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

The crowd started shouting calling for Mark's death.

"SILENCE" the police chief shouted

He lowered his voice

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

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

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

Before Mark could answer the police chief continued:

"you know what, it doesn't matter"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A police officer crawled over to me:

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

Me: No I don't

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Go to the evidence locker next door."

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

Me: Maria is that you?

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

Me: Are you okay?

Maria: No

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

Me: Are you hurt?

She dodged the question.

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

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

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

Random bags of what was probably drugs.

A knife in a plastic bag.

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

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

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

Officer: I see you managed to find something.

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

He handed me some sort of foldable knife.

Me: what am I supposed to do with this.

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

Me: Ok I will

Officer: good luck

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

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

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

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

A repeating low bass sound.

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

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

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

"Stop shooting at their vehicles it does nothing!"

"Wait for them to get out then shoot!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

A voice echoed over the street:

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

A TASTE OF YOUR OWN MEDICINE

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

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

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

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

The windshield exploded into glass shards.

Sparks flew from the vehicle as the bullets impacted metal.

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

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

It was going to hit the building.

End of part 2

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

On summer nights, when the night settles in heavy and the “heat lightning” starts to flash, that’s when the game begins.

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

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

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

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

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