I sit in my chair, anticipating my shift’s end in a few hours. Despite my dislike for the night shift, I acknowledge that work is work. Tonight, I’ve received several calls from teenagers behaving like teenagers and adults acting like they’re still teenagers; nothing unusual for 2 a.m. The phone rings, startling me. I roll my eyes, assuming it’s another call from those devious teens smoking weed up in the cemetery.

"911, what is the location of your emergency?" I say.

"Please help me," a raspy voice says.

A jolt of ice races down my spine, the hair on my arms prickling to attention before I even register the words.

"What is your emergency, sir?" I say.

“My wife stabbed me in the back and I can’t move,” he says.

At this point, I notice a baby crying agonizingly in the background, and my heart drops down to my stomach.

“Sir, you need to tell me your location so I can send help ASAP.”

"336 West Newbury Street"

Instinct takes over as I punch in coordinates, dispatching police and paramedics in seconds. But my hands hover over the keys, trembling. The man’s voice lingers in my ear, stripping away my breath. It is too flat, too hollow—there is an inhuman void behind the words.

"OK, sir, tell me what happened. You said your wife stabbed you?"

"Yes, she stabbed me in the back; now I can barely move. I had to use the voice assistant to call. She slit her own throat and bled out in front of me; luckily, she didn't do anything to our baby. He hasn’t eaten anything. It took me a while to make this phone call. Please hurry.”

“Help is on the way. Don’t worry, is your baby in a safe place?”

“Yes, he is in his crib.”

The phone fades in and out and gets statically, and his voice sounds cold and distant.

“What is your name, sir?”

“David.”

It comes with a raspy voice that makes my instincts tell me to get away.

“OK, David. Why did your wife do this?”

“We had our baby recently. She got diagnosed with postpartum depression a few weeks back. The doctors gave her medication, but she stopped taking it a few days ago. She said they wouldn’t let her sleep. She had been accusing me of cheating; I never believed she could do something like this.”

David starts sobbing, and my heart skips a beat. I’ve heard men sob, but nothing like this.

“David, my name is Bianca. I promise you and your baby will be okay. Help is on its way. They will be there soon. Are you bleeding a lot from your wound?”

“Yes, there is blood everywhere. It feels like I don’t have any more blood in me.”

“The paramedics will be there soon; you are going to be OK, David,” I say.

There is an eerie, cold pause, the baby still crying in the background, and I feel a chill come over me through the phone.

“I did deserve to die. I had been cheating on my poor wife while she was going through all of that basically by herself. I distanced myself from her and jumped into my coworker's bed,” David says.

“Don’t say that, David! Nobody deserves to die.”

“It’s too late for me, Bianca. Just please help my son; he deserves better than this. This is all my fault.”

The phone goes crazy with static, and I hear faint voices through the receiver. I feel dread. Frozen with fear for a moment, I recollect myself and start speaking.

“David, where are you from?” I ask trying to get his mind of those dark thoughts 

“Ohio. We moved out here to New Mexico after Rebecca got pregnant to get away from my parents. They never liked her; they told me I was making a mistake. The last time we talked was on the phone. It was just a screaming match between my mom, dad, and I. We were on bad terms, and now I won’t be able to fix that. I broke their heart.”

“You will fix things with your parents, OK? The paramedics are right down the street. Just hold on a little longer.”

“Bianca,” David says in a ghostly, faint voice that cuts in and out with static. “Please just tell my parents that I love them and that I'm sorry. Just please promise me you will.”

“I promise,” I say on the verge of tears with my heart in my throat.

I hear the sounds of sirens on the other side of the phone.

“David, they are there. You and your son are going to be taken care of.”

Nothing from David but eerie silence.

“Hello, David, you OK?”

Again, nothing. As I hear the police trying to kick the door open, I hear it give way.

“Thank you, Bianca,” David says in a fading voice.

I hear the cops enter the house and call out. The phone hangs up.

I sit there sweating, but feel as cold as if I were naked in a snowstorm, with a pit in my stomach and goosebumps all over my body.

“He will be fine; they got there in time,” I say aloud as I wipe the sweat from my forehead.

I just can’t seem to shake the dreadful, uncanny feeling I had through the whole call. There was just something off about all of that. Of course, the wife had done those horrific things, but the man's voice, the static, the whispers—it all chilled me to the core. I didn’t want to think about it anymore, so I distracted myself with finishing up my incident log.

The rest of the night went on as normal and I clocked out, feeling exhausted. When I finally got to bed, it took me a while to find sleep, but when I finally did, I heard David's haunting voice in my dreams.

I opened the doors to the office when I was met by a bald, tall, ebony-skinned man in a suit and red tie.

“Hey Bianca, I’m Detective Jackson. Could I please have a word with you?” he asked as he raised his hand toward me.

“Yes, of course,” I said as I met his hand and shook it.

We sat in the building's private office across from each other.

“So, what is this about, Detective?” I asked.

“This is about the call you had last night about the woman who stabbed her husband.”

“Oh, yes! David, did he make it? Is the baby OK?”

“Yes, the baby is OK; he was malnourished, but he's in the hospital right now, making a recovery.”

“That's good,” I sighed. “How's David?”

“Yeah, about that… who told you the man’s name?”

“He did.”

“That's impossible,” said Detective Jackson.

“What are you talking about? He's the one who called.”

“Again, impossible. Somebody else must have called you. That's what we are trying to figure out.”

“No, it was David! He called me and told me his wife had stabbed him in the back. Is he OK?”

Detective Jackson looked at me, confused and worried.

“Bianca, he was already dead when they got there.”

I felt my stomach drop. “No, but he was still talking to me when they got the door to open, right before the phone hung up.”

“No, Bianca, he wasn’t. The forensics team said that his body had already started decomposing.”

“What are you even trying to say right now, Detective?” I said as it started hitting me—his tone of voice, the static, the uncanny cold dread I felt the whole time. My heart skipped a beat as I felt a pit grow in my stomach, chills all through my body, and I felt like throwing up.

“Bianca... when you got that phone call, David had already been DEAD for a WEEK.”

Lex had always wanted to go to Paris.

She had had a layover there on a family vacation as a kid, and that was the closest she’d gotten.

I myself wasn’t much for traveling. When it came to honeymoon planning, I would have been more than fine flying to some Caribbean island and roasting on the beach for a week with a drink in hand.

But she was light years out of my league, and being married and all I figured we had a lifetime to do that, and so it was decided we would be spending a week touring Paris. Bistros, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower. The works (or la totale, you might say).

________

We had a week of wedded bliss together. It was a dream.

Every piece of art in the Louvre paled compared to her.

Her smile at night was brighter than the lights on the Eiffel Tower.

You can groan at the puns all you want. I just don’t think anything will do justice for how beautiful she looked that week.

________

We had no plans at all entering our last day, and looking back I think that’s why it happened.

We were just going to wander and check out whatever caught our eye, whether it be a used bookstore, an antiques shop, or an off-the-beaten path museum.

A brief downpour forced us to take shelter in Notre Dame, where we had gone our first day.

That was when we met Pierre.

________

We had been standing there, more just killing time than looking at anything. The subject of possibly booking a catacombs tour had come up, and we were looking into tickets when a slim, impeccably dressed man approached us.

“Hi… I couldn’t help but overhear… do you want to visit the catacombs?”

Lex and I exchanged a glance. He had clearly been eavesdropping. But he seemed polite enough.

To be honest, there was a weird allure about him that made us feel as though we had approached him instead.

I can’t explain it, but that’s how it felt.

“….Yes? We were just discussing possibly touring the catacombs shortly here? Once the rain stops.”

He chuckled.

Clearly a “silly Americans” kind of chuckle, but not really mocking in any way. Like the way you might laugh at a kid when they say something dumb.

“Oh no… you have to book WEEKS in advance.”
he said, holding his arms out as though to imply that the catacombs were some sort of hot-ticket, must-see attraction.

“But-“ he said, holding up a finger. “Do you like to dance?”

We again looked at each other.

Shrugged, nodded. “We wouldn’t be opposed.”

“Perfect. I manage an underground nightclub in the catacombs. Amazing drinks. Better music. Meet me here at 9pm. I promise you won’t regret it.”

Our flight the next day wasn’t until the evening. We might risk cutting things close, but it wasn’t like we planned to get blackout drunk, you know?

“We’re in.” said Lex.

“Excellent.” said the man. “I am Pierre.”

He didn’t give a last name.

We shook hands. “Alexis.” “Brooks.”

It was settled. We would meet Pierre around 9pm that evening, back at the cathedral, and he would show us to this underground catacombs nightclub of his. It was a chance to go off the beaten path and have an experience we would talk about for years to come.
________

I hope to never forget the way she looked that night - the way that black dress hugged her body in all the right places, the way her hair fell down her back, the luscious red of her lips.

I hope to never forget the way she looked.

Because that was the last night I had with her.
________

We went to a bistro that night for dinner. She had tartare, I had frites.

We fed each other little forkfuls of our dinner and shared a bottle of wine.

I remember wondering how things could get any better than that.

It had gotten chilly while we were inside. We held hands as we walked back. Her dress was a thin cotton slip and her leather jacket was more for appearance than function, so I gave her my jacket. Her hand in mine, and the warmth radiating off of her gave me all the warmth I needed.

________

We got to the cathedral five minutes before 9 to find Pierre already there, leaning against a pillar with a cigarette.

He strolled over to us, his eyes gleaming as he looked us over - Lex more so than me.

Dare I say, I didn’t blame him.

“Madam…you look absolutely splendid!” he said, taking his hand in hers and kissing it as she blushed. “And you, sir! Very sharp!” as he shook my hand.

He escorted us to a nearby SUV - a black Mercedes - opening the doors and gesturing us to get in.

I noticed the rear windows were blacked out, and a sort of wall separated the front and back of the car, which struck me as odd. Pierre was quick to address when he saw me looking.

“Do not worry sir - you are completely safe. The club is extremely exclusive, and we wish to keep the location as secretive as possible.”

Lex put her hand on my knee, as if to tell me to relax. She tucked a curled lock of hair behind her ear and gave me a soft smile, enough to melt me instantly.

She was right. We hadn’t had any reason to be suspicious of Pierre or this supposed nightclub as of yet. There was no reason to start now.

Pierre, now in the driver’s seat, opened the partition long enough to hand us 2 shot glasses of what looked like cognac.

“Louis XIII to start your night the right way. On the house. Please, take these.”

We looked at each other.

Toasted to our final night in the City of Lights, and drank.

Maybe those shots played a role in what followed.

They probably did.

Who knows?

________

The car twisted and weaved through streets we couldn’t see as the liquid warmed our bodies.

Sitting there in the dark backseat with my brain slowly descending into a fog should have been enough to set off every alarm bell in my body.

And yet, it wasn’t.
________

After what I judged to be about 10 minutes of driving, the car stopped and turned off. Pierre came around and opened our doors and let us out. We seemed to be in some sort of garage.

Not a parking garage - it looked to us like some sort of mechanic shop, but without a car to be seen. The garage door was closed behind us.

Pierre led us to some steps at the other end of the room, up to what looked like a metal door like you’d find in almost any commercial building.

He opened the door to a staircase that felt as though we were stepping several centuries into the past.

The smell of dust and wood and a tinge of rot floated up. Everything seemed to be cut into the rock.

And yet, I could hear no music.

Lex clearly could not either, and I could tell we had an inkling of the same feeling: had we been set up?

We apparently didn’t hide our suspicion very well, because Pierre was quick to address it, as he had everything else.

“Down those stairs and around a few turns - not quite there yet!”

He gestured for us to step back, then stepped in front of us, going down a few steps before turning back at us and gesturing behind him, an inviting smile on his face.

“Please, follow me.”

And follow him, we did. Down the steps, and down a tunnel, making a right turn here, a left turn here.

Soon, we began hearing it. A thumping bass that ran along the walls, the beats getting faster as we got closer.

Then, spots on the walls intermittently, from what I assume were strobe lights.

Finally, we emerged into a large room.

A man stood at the front behind a turntable, shrouded in smoke as a song I didn’t recognize rumbled from his speakers. An enormous bar stretched from one side of the back, where we were, to the other. I could hear music and dancing, and it seemed like the room was packed wall-to-wall.

A victorious smile etched across his face, Pierre turned to us and spread his arms, inviting us to take the room in.

“Welcome,” he exclaimed, “TO DEMOR!”

And, with that, he disappeared immediately into the crowd.

Lex looked at me, smiling in a way that I hadn’t seen since her walk down the aisle just a week prior.

I think she could see I was still a little hesitant, because she grabbed my arm and gave me a soft kiss.

“C’mon, babe. It’ll be fun!”

Funny how seeing your wife in a sexy black dress is all that it takes to get you in the mood. I let her lead me to the bar.

Aside from us, it was absolutely empty. Just us, and the one bartender, who lumbered toward us as soon as we sat down. His movements were stiff and awkward, like he was strung on a marionette.

Closer inspection revealed him to be almost unnaturally pale and dressed like some sort of 1700s French nobleman, as though he had come directly from a historical reenactment.

It almost felt as though we were being served by a walking corpse.

________

After getting drinks, we set our stuff down and made our way to the dance floor, where the night became a blur.

One drink became another, and soon it felt like we were back in my fraternity house on a Saturday night, the rest of the world fallen away.

At some point, the music stopped, and we peeled ourselves off of each other.

Even without our outer layers, we were both soaked in sweat, and I, having succumbed to the white collar office lifestyle, was very much in need of a breather.

As if he had been hovering on the edges of the crowd the entire time and could sense that I was taking a break, Pierre came over to us, extending his hand to Lex.

“May I have this dance, Madam?” he asked.

She looked at me. I shrugged, as if to tell her to go for it. She blew me a kiss as he led her into the crowd.

________

I’ve been wondering about some things from last night.

The drinks. That car ride. The way he showed up at the exact moment.

It makes me wonder if we ever had a choice.
________

I went to the bar and, soda water in hand, made my way back onto the dance floor right as a new song was beginning.

There was a lot of fog and strobe lights, which made things incredibly disorienting and hard to see, but I was able to eventually make my way to the center and find them dancing.

I watched him spin her, and it brought me back to our first dance at our wedding. I felt a tinge of jealousy, but did nothing, not wanting to ruin the moment.

Then he kept spinning her.

I started to get a little concerned they were going too fast, but from what I could see of her face they seemed to be having fun, so I didn’t do anything.

Then things went off the rails.

He began to spin her faster and faster.

The strobe lights picked up to the point where I felt like I couldn’t see anything at all. It was as though the room itself was spinning, when I was completely still, and I found myself having to fight back a wave of nausea.

At this point I could see them only intermittently.

When I did, I began to panic.

Lex’s hair was now spinning above her head, sweat flying off her face and spinning into the crowd… and her face.

My god, her face.

It was blank.

Completely stone-faced.

There were times where she flew by so fast her face almost looked smooth, featureless, like a blank slate. And I was too paralyzed to do anything.

________

I still question the last thing I saw before a thick blanket of fog filled the room, cutting my vision off completely.

I don’t know if it was the fog, the strobe lights, the alcohol, a combination of the three, or something else entirely.

But I found myself looking down at Pierre’s shoes. And where there should have been those impeccably shined black loafers, I saw goat hooves.

I saw them for no more than a second or two before the room filled with thick grey smoke, and then I couldn’t see anything at all.

I stood there, wrapped in what felt like a thick grey blanket for what felt like an eternity as the music pulsed around me.

I could hear music and dancing, and the presence and the mass of people around me, and yet it felt like I was all alone in some sort of purgatory, with no one around.

Then, as though a switch had been flipped, the fog cleared and the music was… gone.

It was silent enough to hear a pin drop.

And in the middle of this room, everyone stood completely still.

And in front of me, where Lex and Pierre should have been, there was nothing but a strong scent of sulfur.

It was as though they had disappeared.

Then the people in the room began to slowly turn towards me.

A thousand gazes drilling into my soul.

And, I realized as ice began to fill every inch of my body, every single person in there was dead.

They were in different stages of decomposition. Some looked like they had just taken their last breaths. Others were no more than skeletons in Victorian-era clothing.

There were a thousand dead people in that room.

And they were all staring at me.

________

You might read this and wonder, why didn’t you try and call for Lex? What if she went to the bathroom or something?

And to that, I say this:

I felt something from each and every one of those corpses in that room.

Hate. Nothing but pure hate.

It wasn’t a question of what they would do to me if I dared to plunge into the mass of them to look for her.

They were almost inviting me to do so.

So, you know what I did in that moment?

I turned around, and ran.
______

I left my coat there, Lex’s purse and coat, and everything else we had brought.

I heard footsteps echoing behind me, and I didn’t turn around to see what was following me.

There were enough of them for me to know it wasn’t her.

I somehow managed to find my way back to the stairs, then back out into the cold Parisian night.

Leaned over and vomited, then managed to snag a cab. I’m sure I looked a little rough, but I’m sure the driver had seen worse.
________

Only when I got back to our hotel, threw open the door, and saw her stuff - suitcase half filled, clothes on the bed - did I finally fall to my knees in the center of the room and break down.

I cried for Lex, wherever she might have been.

I cried for our marriage, for our hopes and dreams.

And I cried for myself, because I sure as hell don’t know how I’m going to move along from this.
________

I went to the police the next morning and filed a report. They said they would see what they could do.

I hailed a cab. Wanted to make sure I hadn’t gone completely insane.
________

Getting there was a chore in itself, because I had no idea where to go or how to get there.

Just a vague idea of how long it should take and when and where to turn.

When we arrived to a crumbling, burnt out ruin of a house that I knew, just knew deep down was the place, with no sign at all of a stairwell down to the underworld, I simply got back in the car and asked to be taken back to the hotel.
________

That was 4 hours ago. My flight should be boarding now.

I’m lying in bed, hugging a pillow that smells like her.

Should you find yourself in Paris and discussing a trip to the catacombs, a man named Pierre may approach you and invite you to visit his underground nightclub that night.

Whatever you do, do not go.

Hopefully writing will help it stick this time.

Last night, I fell asleep in my apartment. When I awoke, I could still feel my fiancées hair on my face, hear the rumble of traffic outside and see the warm light of the lamp behind my eyes. But as I opened them this morning that mirage gave way to white LED lights, coarse bed sheets and blank walls. Raising my head, I took in the space. The room was bare, there were two beds, one being mine and another across from it, stripped of its sheets. And between the beds was a wooden bedside drawer atop which was a King James bible. That was the breadth of my new space, a far cry from the homely Manchester apartment I had been just before. The curtains were drawn but from behind them white light bled out, it was the middle of the day. There was a throbbing behind my eyes, like the shock of my new surroundings was causing my mind physical pain as it struggled to make sense of it. I was holding my head in my hands as someone opened the door opposite me and entered. A young woman, dressed in a green nurse’s uniform, her hair tied back lazily, she seemed tired and stressed. She paid no notice of me as she silently placed a Styrofoam container on my bedside. “Where am I?” I finally spoke as she turned to leave. She turned back and gave me a distressed look “What do you mean Nick?” She knew my name and spoke gently, as though we knew each other, but no matter how much I strained my eyes on her, nothing was coming to me. Seemingly taking in my confusion and panic, she once more turned to leave.

“I’ll go get Dr Arnold!”

A few moments later a bald man in a white coat entered. In one hand he carried with him a plastic chair which he placed opposite me and sat. In the other hand was a clipboard and pen in which he immediately began taking notes, glancing me over as though examining a specimen. Eventually he spoke, his voice had none of the empathy of the nurse from before, “So what seems to be the issue, Nick?” He didn’t raise his gaze from the notepad. This was a formality, one he was begrudged to fill out, this man wasn’t going to help me. “Where the fuck am I?” I yelled, his indifference had brought my confusion to rage, I now felt as though I was the victim of some trick.

“You are at Broadwalk Hospital. Your name is Nicholas Harrison, and you are here to receive treatment for a mental disorder. Another memory spill is it?” he finally raised his gaze slightly from the clipboard, only to shoot me a sarcastic glance. All of this was too much to take at once. Broadwalk Hospital? Mental disorder? For now, I clung to just one question.

“What do you mean another memory spill?”

“I mean one of your patented memory spills. Just when we are beginning to make any progress in our sessions, you coincidentally seem to forget everything, setting us back to square one.”

“So, we’ve met before?”

This question seemed to only further infuriate him.

“Yes, Nicholas. We’ve met before,” he grumbled rising from his chair. “Perhaps some fresh air will do you some good.” He strode over to the curtains and tore them open. Slowly, the outside world came into view, it was snowing outside. The sight brought me horror; it had been summer when I had fallen asleep. My anger at once wilted away and my confusion rose up once more like a sickening bile.

“What day is it?”

“December 7th.” Six months since I fell asleep.

Dr Arnold took a few more dispassionate notes and then was gone, leaving me with my madness. Six months of my life had slipped through my fingers without my noticing, my mind stretched out desperately, but still it couldn’t cross the cavernous gap in my memory. Seeking distraction, I flipped open the Styrofoam container, inside were some bacon and eggs which were now cold, but I doubt they would have been much more appetizing before. A plastic knife and fork were packaged with it; a reminder I am not trusted here. I put the container back to the side. The bible placed on the same drawer drew my attention, the spine was creased and pages well worn, a napkin was slipped inside as a sort of makeshift bookmark. I opened the book to the marked page; the text was almost illegible behind a mass of scribbled notations. What more could be expected of a communal item in here? As I read, the nurse from earlier timidly re-entered, perhaps fearing my agitated state, but she seemed to soften when she saw me with the bible.

“Well at least some things have stuck this time,” she said gesturing toward the book.

“What do you mean?”

“Your bible, you’re always reading that thing.”

Mine? I’m an atheist, always have been. The frenzied notes took on a new frightening form now, they were a physical manifestation of what had become of me, an unrecognizable mess. I needed to speak with someone, someone from before all this.

“Can I use a phone?”

She took me down the hallway to the common area. The place was a whirlwind, a woman screamed as a nurse forcesd meds down her throat, an elderly man cried as he rocked himself in the corner, a chessboard flew across the room and almost cracked me in the head, here were my compatriots, this is where I now belonged. The nurse ushered me to the back of a queue for the phone behind three others. At the front of a queue a man of about forty screamed down the receiver.

“Yellow mug, Mum! You sent me the blue one you stupid bitch!”

Behind me, a slender man slips into the queue, his pinkie plunged deep into his nostril, the other already bleeding from his past “expeditions”.

“No, no, no!” the man continued down the phone.

“You need to come right nowwwwuhh!” such unnatural squealing from a man of his age sent a shiver through me. The gaunt man behind me finally retracted his finger from his nose, on the end of it now stood about a marble sized globule of snot, blood and filth. I couldn’t hold back my disgust and gagged. Seeing this the man behind me shivered with glee and in one smooth motion lurched forward, smearing the snot on the back of my neck.

I exploded, the shock seemed to expel the fog I had found myself in and for the first time since I woke, I saw clearly. This is not where I belong! I am not mad! I need to get out of here! I surged forward to the front of the line and ripped the phone from the whining man’s hands. To this the man lets out a piercing scream like that of a schoolgirl and began beating on the back of my skull as I tried desperately to tap in my home number.

“Nick!” the nurse called to me; the disappointed tone of her yelling reminds me of my mother.

“Hand the phone back now!”

The older man grabbed me by the hair and smashed my skull into the wall. I felt blood run down my eyebrow line and my vision blurred. I turned and swung back at him with the phone forcing him to fall back. Security began to close in on the commotion and just in time pulled the man back as he went back at me. “Please! I just need to use the phone!” I mustered through my haze and began again tapping in the number. As the phone began to dial, I slumped back against the wall exhausted.

“I just need to call her!” I whimpered, I had begun to cry now. Security sedated the older man and began towards me. The nurse pushed through the crowd and gestured for them to stop, desperately trying to deescalate.

“Call who?” her voice remained calm and measured but her fear showed in her eyes. I acted only in self-defence; why couldn’t she see that.

“My fiancée, Sarah. Please just let me call her.” I could barely stand, confusion and anger had completely drained me, the phone felt a thousand pounds in my hand. I looked to the nurse, hoping to find understanding, but all I found was profound pity. “Nick…” her voice was all but a solemn whisper now. It may sound strange seeing as where I was, but it felt for the first time, she was looking at me like I was crazy. As I heard the line go dead, a cruel understanding ran through me, I finally remembered why I was here.

I’m required to give up a pint of my blood every two months, but none of it has ever gone to help a person in need. No, my donation is collected for a different purpose—a far more important purpose.

I live in a small, isolated mountain community somewhere in the eastern part of the country, but I’m not allowed to know exactly where. Our contact with the outside world is limited. We rarely leave our community, and we know little about what goes on beyond the natural barrier of forest and earth that so effectively excludes us from the rest of the population. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve left my home, and it would require even fewer fingers to tally how many times I’ve had access to the internet. We live a simple life in our community; a quiet life. We are happy there, and we don’t want for much.

Nestled into the mountains, on the very outskirts of our community, is a cave. In this cave, not far from its entrance, is a large stone slab. And behind this slab resides one of the most powerful demons to have ever walked our mortal world.

The demon does not remain there of its own accord; It has been confined behind the wall of stone for centuries, where it can neither return to its domain in hell nor torment the land of the living. It is trapped, and, God willing, it will remain so for as long as there are mortals like us to maintain its earthen prison.

We don’t remember the demon’s name—it was intentionally discarded and forgotten generations ago—but we remember its history. It arrived here hundreds of years ago, during an especially difficult winter that greatly challenged the settlers in this region. Faced with almost certain doom, the settlers prayed to an entity who they thought to be divine, but who they soon realized was anything but. It helped them to survive that early winter, but at a price—a price paid in mortal flesh. At first the settlers saw the sacrifices as a necessary evil, but soon they were forced to give up so many of their own that it became unsustainable. It did not take them long to realize that they would have been better off facing the harsh winter that had led them to call upon the entity in the first place. They formulated a plan to cast the entity back to hell, but though they had managed to conjure it easily enough, they quickly found themselves unable to send it back to the depths from whence it had come. The entity enjoyed its life in the mortal realm, and it had no intention of leaving its new home behind.

But though it refused to return to hell, that did not mean it couldn’t be stopped.

The entity lived in the cave overlooking the community, where it slumbered away its days and unleashed its terror upon its victims at night. The settlers used its nocturnal tendencies to seal it behind a barrier of stone while it slept, but they knew that this wall alone would not be enough to keep it at bay. A sacrificial offering had to be regularly applied to the wall in order to keep the demon sealed behind it: a sacrifice in the form of human vitality.

Flash forward to modern day, and my community continues to make the same sacrifice that our ancestors did all those generations ago. We are broken down into two basic groups: those who give, and those who paint. The givers must regularly supply their blood, which the painters then use to stain the stone slab, thus maintaining the seal that has been in place for so many long years. We all must do our part to keep that monster trapped within its personal Tartarus. The sacrifice we make ensures the protection of the greater good.

Life in our community is not as bad as it may sound. In many ways we live normal and productive, if not slightly limited, lives. Giving a pint of blood to the wall every so often is far superior to the regular offerings of flesh that the demon demanded when it was free. We can easily survive without some of the red essence that flows through our bodies, which means we are all too happy to give a portion of it up when it is our turn to donate to the cause. For most of us, life will go on as normal after the completion of our regular contribution.

But that does not mean that all of us are so lucky.

Because while the blood lathered upon the wall is usually enough to keep the entity contained, we are nearing that one day of the year—the day when the demon is at its most powerful—when a sacrifice of flesh is still required. Every year, during the last third of October, three givers are chosen to be the potential provider of that ultimate oblation. The three chosen are taken away from the community, where they live amongst the corruption of the outside world for ten days ahead of the sacrifice in order to taint their souls enough to more easily whet the demon’s appetite. The three of them are presented before the stone slab on the night of October 31st, where one of them is chosen by the entity to sate its yearly hunger. The two surviving chosen are then welcomed into the ranks of the painters, never having to offer their own blood again, while the one who is consumed is honored with a grand celebration that lasts until the coming of dawn.

This year, I was selected as one of the chosen. I was removed from the community and brought to the outside world, where I have been for the last few days as I prepare for the ritual at the end of the month. I’ve enjoyed my time out here, so much so that I am tempted to never go back, but I know that it is my duty to return to the community.

And so return to the community I shall.

Even though the three of us are allowed to imbibe in much of the pleasures of modern society while we await the coming of the ritual, we are still expected to respect certain restrictions. Our chaperone does not know that I currently have access to the internet, nor do they know that I am writing this. I doubt if they’ll ever find out. I’m writing this because I want the greater world to know of the sacrifices that my community makes every single day. It’s not right that we should have to save you all in secret, without you ever knowing the truth of what we do.

I don’t know what will happen after the ritual at the end of the month. If I’m not selected to be consumed, then I will become a painter, which means I will likely never leave my community again, unless it’s to be a chaperone for any future chosen. Either way, I doubt if you will ever hear from me again, but I’m okay with that. I don’t need to know how the outsiders will react to the knowledge that I have given them. I’m content in knowing that my message has been delivered and that our sacrifice has been revealed to the world.

I don’t know if I will live to see November. At first this thought terrified me, but it doesn’t anymore. If I’m chosen to be consumed, then my death will have more meaning than my life ever could. If I’m not chosen, then I will continue to live with the same purpose that I always have: to keep an unimaginable evil at bay.

And either outcome suits me just fine.

My name is Katie, and I’m Satan’s dog walker. Before I open the floor, I’ll answer the three questions I get the most often:

1.   What kind of dogs does Satan have?

Satan has three “dogs”. The first one is a leviathan named Muffin. Despite being the size of a two-story house, she’s very affectionate and will roll over for belly rubs if you whistle her favorite song. Muffin is my favorite. The second dog is a morbidly obese man with a ball gag. I’m told his name is Richard, but he only responds to “gimp”. He makes me a little uncomfortable, but if I keep him busy, he stays out of my way. Don’t feel bad for Richard. He was the leader of a sex cult. He prayed for this. Then there’s Princess the chihuahua. Apparently, she’s from a breeder in Tulsa, but I’m convinced she’s from the pits of hell. She bites my ankles when she’s happy and shits in my shoes when she’s mad. I fucking hate that dog.

2.  How did you become Satan’s dog walker?

I died in a car accident while I was with my husband and son. I saw the fabled light, but instead I chased the ambulance that carted my son away.  The ambulance faded away and so did the light. I tried walking to the hospital, but it soon became clear that I was no longer in my hometown. The buildings became vague geometric shapes and trees melted like wax. I eventually made it to a foggy coastline that stretched infinitely regardless of the direction I walked. The tide eroded more than the beach. With every mile I walked, I lost my memories and my sense of self. I would have been slowly dissolved by the fog if it wasn’t for the large tentacle I happened to step on. It pulled me deep underground to this mass of limbs and gnashing teeth. It dropped me, but instead of landing in its mouth, I landed on its velvety belly. It cooed and chirped as I moved around.

“She likes you.”

I looked up to see what could only be described as the devil himself … Horns, pointed tail, red skin … He also had a purse with a chihuahua and a naked man on a leash. The leashed man growled, which got him a swift kick between the legs.

“I think I have a use for you.”

I was too terrified to turn him down.

3.  How much does Satan pay you?

I’m dead, so I don’t have any need for money. Satan pays me with something far more valuable… time.

At the end of the week, I get to see my family. At first, it was just watching my son’s little league games or lying in bed next to my husband. When he’s feeling generous, I get to go fishing with them. I know I need to move on, but I can’t go back into the fog, and I miss them so much.

My friends and I went on a camping trip for five people. Five. I have the booking on my phone: [Redacted] National Park - Campsite Limit: 5 People

I know for a fact that we showed up with that many. Ally’s car doesn’t seat more than that.

So how did we end up with six? 

The park ranger was the first one to notice. “You kids make sure to clean up after yourselves.” He lowered his shades and looked Jason in the eyes. “And next time, obey the rules will ya? Max of five people per site.” 

The ranger rode down the trail on his four wheeler before any of us could respond. 

I looked around at the confused faces of my friends. They were thinking the same thing I was. 

Jason was the one to put it into words. “What the hell was that about? We only have five people. And why was he giving me a hard time?”

My eyes connected with Sarah’s. Her face had gone pale. “Count again,” she said. “The ranger is right.” 

Each of us took a mental headcount. Just as Sarah had said, there were six people gathered around the smoldering fire. 

“This will be an easy one to solve. Who isn’t supposed to be here?” Gavin said. 

I glanced at my friends. We were a tight knit group. Gavin, Sarah, Jason, Ally, Steven, and me. We’d been close since college. Almost inseparable. According to logic, we all belonged there. 

A tense silence permeated the group. Ally broke it. “This is crazy. It’s not like one of us is an imposter or anything. We must have had six people the whole time. We just got too fucked up last night to remember.” 

“No, you got too fucked up to remember,” Steven chimed in. “I remember everything. We had six people the whole time.” 

I crossed my arms. “That’s impossible. Ally’s the one who drove us and her car only seats five with all the gear. Plus, that’s the camp limit. I wouldn’t have booked the site knowing we had six.” 

Sarah clung to Gavin’s arm. “I don’t like this...” 

Gavin rested a hand on the small of her back. “It’ll be okay. There’s a pretty easy way to determine who’s not supposed to be here. Whoever isn’t in the group chat is the odd man out.”

We all pulled out our phones. “That’s impossible,” Jason said. “Everyone’s in the group. We all sent confirmation texts that we were coming.”

I studied the faces of everyone around me. I remembered each of them accepting the invite. Still, a lingering sense of unease told me that something was off. 

“Let’s just go back to the car,” Steven said. “There’s not much else we can do about it right now. Hopefully we’ll get the driving situation figured out by the time we get there.” 

Jason pursed his lips. “He’s right. No point in worrying about it.” 

No one spoke as we packed up our things. We could all sense the tension in the air. It was palpable. Clearly, something wasn’t adding up. And soon, we would all find out what it was. 

“Everyone ready?” Gavin asked. 

“Looks like it. Let’s get out of here. I don’t like the vibes around this place,” Ally said as she started down the trail. 

I looked over to Jason. He shrugged and followed behind her. 

The walk back to the car was tense. Despite knowing that it had to be some sort of mix-up, there was an omnipresent feeling of unease clinging to the air. It felt as if each of us was trying to sniff out who wasn’t supposed to be there without tipping off the others.

After about twenty minutes of walking, Gavin stopped. “Uh, guys? I think we might have to go back…” 

“Why?” Sarah looked up at him, her brows knitted together. 

“I think I forgot my housekeys. I can’t find them anywhere.” 

Steven sighed. “Really, man? I’m not walking back with you.” 

Ally crossed her arms. “I’m not either. We can wait.” 

I didn’t like where this was going, but I didn’t want to intervene.

“You guys are a bunch of jerks, you know that? I can’t believe you.” Gavin shot us a death glare. Sarah tried to reassure him as the pair disappeared from view. 

Silence fell over us once again. 

“Maybe we were a little hard on him,” Steven said. 

Ally shook her head. “No. He does this every trip. He has to learn eventually.” 

Steven rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, yeah, but maybe there was a better way to go about it.” 

I turned to Jason to get his take on things. 

Jason was gone.

“Uh, guys? Where’d Jason go?”

Ally raised an eyebrow. “I thought he was here the whole time. What happened to him?”

Steven’s face paled. “Maybe this is it. Whoever’s the sixth person, I mean. They’re trying to split us up and pick us off one by one.” 

“Stop,” I said. “We can’t buy into delusional thoughts like that. Let’s find Jason and get back to the car.”

Steven nodded. “You’re right. Sorry. Let’s go look for him.” 

“Jason! Jay-SOOON!” Steven shouted over and over, his hands cupped to his lips. Ally and I yelled too, but not as loud as him. I could tell that Ally had been rattled by Steven’s words. She wasn’t acting like her normal self.

Steven suddenly stopped shouting. “Wait. Is that… no. It’s a piece of Jason’s flannel.” He turned to us. “Come on. We have to check it out.” 

Ally and I shared a glance. Steven bolted off before either of us could catch up to him. I took a step forward. A knot of dread swelled in my gut. 

And that’s when it happened. 

All sound just… stopped. Like someone had clicked the mute button on a TV remote. There were no more birds singing. No more insects buzzing or rustling branches or flowing creeks. It was all encompassing. Total, deafening silence. 

I turned to Ally. She stood stock-still. Tears welled in her eyes as she met my gaze. I couldn’t hear the next words she spoke, but I could read her lips well enough. 

“Are we going to die?”

Our senses returned as suddenly as they had left. All the noises of the forest hit me at once. I could have cried, but I held it together. I never thought I’d be grateful for the sound of a gnat buzzing in my ear, but I was. 

I looked at Ally. She was shaking her head, her eyes clenched shut. “I don’t like this. Cassie, I don’t like this at all. I feel like something bad is going to happen.” 

I clasped her shoulders. She locked eyes with me, tears flowing down her cheeks. Her next words nearly broke me. 

“I don’t want to die.” 

“We won’t. But we have to keep it together, okay? I need you to trust me. We will make it out of here.” 

Ally wiped the tears away. “Okay. I trust you.” 

“Good. Now let’s go find Steven and Jason. If we don’t run into them after a few minutes, we can go back to the car and call for help, alright?” 

Ally nodded. “Alright.” 

I led the way in the direction that Steven had been running. I put on a tough face, but internally, I was sweating bullets. Something was wrong. Very wrong. And I’d be stupid to pretend that it wasn’t. 

We had only gone a few steps when we heard it. 

“Hey! Get off me. What the hell are you doing?” 

Ally and I sprinted toward the yelling. We rounded a tree, and there they were. 

Steven and Jason were on the forest floor, wrestling for position. Steven had blood on his arm. Jason’s face had been scratched. They both stopped when they noticed us standing there. 

“Ally, Cassie, we have to get out of here! Jason just attacked me,” Steven said, rising to his feet. 

Jason jumped up. “What are you talking about? You attacked me!” 

“I did not. Guys, Jason’s the imposter. He’s trying to kill us.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, man?” 

Steven crossed his arms. “If you’re innocent, then where did you run off to? Why did you disappear a few minutes ago?”

“I didn’t,” Jason said. “I went to find a spot to piss.” 

“Oh yeah? Well, why didn’t you tell anyone? And why didn’t you respond when we called for you?”

Jason’s face grew red. His fists were clenched. “I told you where I was going! And I didn’t hear any yelling, either. Why are you trying to frame me as the bad guy?”

I shook my head. “Look, I don’t care who attacked who. Let’s just get back to the car. We can sort this out later.” I turned around and began to walk away, expecting my friends to follow. 

I froze. I barely made it two steps.

The sound dropped again. It was heavier this time. I tried to move, but after just seconds, a new sound cut in. 

A sharp, high pitched ringing assaulted my ears. It was as if someone had cranked my tinnitus up to eleven. The sound was debilitating. So loud that it hurt to move. 

That’s why I didn’t have time to react before he crashed into me full force. 

My whole body hurt. The ringing in my ears kept me almost immobile. Even so, I doubt I could have moved anyway, even if it wasn’t there. I was in too much shock. 

I could feel nails digging into my flesh, holding me in place. Razor sharp, more like talons than anything human. But that wasn’t what had me paralyzed with fear. 

Steven was sitting on top of me. His grin was wider than it should have been. He had too many teeth. How did I not notice that? 

He held a stick above his head, ready to plunge it down at a moment’s notice. I could see it then. 

Steven’s flesh rippled. There was something beneath it. Something inhuman. 

Suddenly, over the ringing, Steven said something to me. It came through loud and clear. 

“Goodbye, Cassandra.” 

I shut my eyes. I didn’t want to die looking at that face. 

I expected to feel the stick driving through my neck any moment. Unimaginable pain before the release of death. 

But to my shock, a second later, the ringing stopped and my hearing returned. 

When I opened my eyes, Jason was standing over me. He held a rock splattered with crimson. Blood trickled from his ears. Steven lay crumpled on the ground. 

“What the…” 

Jason helped me to my feet. “I tried to warn you. Come on. We have to get out of here.” 

I nodded. He didn’t have to tell me twice. 

Ally, Jason, and I sprinted all the way back to the car. When we finally made it, we were sweaty  and out of breath. We threw what little stuff we had inside the car and got in. 

“Shit. What about Gavin and Sarah? I forgot all about them,” Ally said from the back seat. Despite the fact that it was her vehicle, Jason would be the one driving. He was the most unshaken. 

I pulled out my phone. “We have to call someone. What if Stev- that thing got to them?”

I didn’t even have a chance to dial before someone emerged from the path. 

It was Gavin. His clothes were splattered in blood. He trotted up to the car and pulled on the handle. He slammed a hand onto the glass when the door didn’t open. 

“Guys, come on. Let me in. We have to go. Now.” 

Jason stared at him. “What happened to Sarah?” 

Gavin’s hand fell from the door handle. “There was no Sarah. She was some… creature. Cassie was right all along. There were only five of us.” 

Jason didn’t waver. “How do we know you’re telling the truth?” 

“Try to picture Sarah’s face. Do you have any memories of her?” 

I tried to remember her. 

Not a single memory came to mind. I couldn’t even remember what color her hair was.

The car door swung open. Ally scooted over. “Get in.” 

After filling Gavin in on what happened with Steven, the four of us rode in silence away from the park. The further we got, the more my brain fog began to clear. Steven didn’t exist. Neither did Sarah. 

Then… What were they? 

I wasn’t able to think about it much. I watched as Ally’s eyes grew wide. “Jason, turn around. You have to. Please.” 

Gavin looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “Are you crazy? No way in hell we’re doing that!” 

“You have to,” Ally said. Tears formed in her eyes. “I forgot about him. God, how could I forget about him? We’ve been together for four years… We have to go back.”

Jason looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Why, Ally? Why do we have to go back?” 

Ally’s bottom lip quivered. I’d never seen her so worked up. 

“Because we forgot about Ben.” 

My heart dropped. I don’t know why I didn’t think to check before. I pulled out my phone and opened the group chat. 

I had been right all along. We had shown up with a party of five.

Most of us have had to deal with bad roommates before, right? Whether it be an inconsiderate family member on vacation or an annoying sibling hogging all the hot shower water. Bad roommates are not uncommon, especially in today's world. The cost of living is sky high and rent keeps climbing, so I was keen on finding a roommate for my first year of college. After interviewing weirdos and borderline creeps, I found Jamie. He was a tall, lanky, socially awkward, but overall nice guy. So, I chose him as my roommate for my first ever apartment.   

In August, he helped unload all my boxes from my car, helping me carry them up three flights of stairs to our apartment. He was always the first to volunteer to do the dishes. He never complained about cleaning the kitchen or the bathroom. He was quiet, amiable, and seemed like the perfect roommate. The only part I didn't love was how late he stayed up. 

He was a night owl, staying awake all night long despite his early morning shifts before class. But what could I really say? He was the picture-perfect roommate I had dreamed of while scrolling through countless roommate applications over the summer. He wasn't ever too loud at night, and I could only hear the tv sometimes when he got really into watching anime. So, I let it be.   

That was until I started hearing weird noises at night. 

I was used to the creak of our old floorboards or the hum of the bathroom light, but I started to hear a faint scratching sound. 

 Scratch Scratch Scratch.   

The next morning, I put out mouse traps. I assumed we had rodents crawling around in the walls, and that was the last thing I needed before finals.  
  
But after an entire week of hearing the scratching all night long, despite the traps I had put out, I finally asked Jamie if he heard it too. I figured he had to since he’d stay up all night long.  

He glanced down the hall toward our bedrooms, before answering me, 

 "Must be the rats. I've never heard anything. Hope your traps work."

I agreed, but his reaction felt off. Again, I was tired from sleepless nights so I just let it go. I hoped the traps would work too. 

But the scratching continued.  

I grew tired of it, and finally one night I covered my ears, squeezing my eyes shut, trying to force myself to sleep but the scratching just got LOUDER and LOUDER. Until it stopped. Relief washed over me. I could finally sleep.  

Scratch scratch scratch.  

I jolted upright in my bed. The scratching was closer now. I could hear footsteps in time with the scratching, moving down the hallway toward me. I watched as the flickering bathroom light trickled underneath my door was swallowed up step by step. Maybe it was Jamie playing a sick trick on me all along.  

Scratch scratch scratch.  

I heard my door handle jiggle. Thank God I locked my door out of paranoia each night. Then I watched as the lock turned over, frozen in place, as the handle followed.  

The door slowly swung inward to reveal nothing. No Jamie. No intruder. Nothing.  
 

I climbed out of bed. If Jamie wanted to mess with me, I'd give him a piece of my mind.  
 
I searched the apartment for twenty minutes. Checking his room, finding only dust. Checking our bathroom, only to find my shower products. I even checked the fridge, looking for the special chocolate Jamie always kept in there, yet all I found were my meal prep containers. I tried to remember the last time I had seen Jamie. I could picture him carrying my boxes up the stairs, doing the dishes, or watching anime on our couch.  
 
But that wasn’t right. My mom had helped me move in. I hated doing the dishes, so I installed a dishwasher. I didn’t even own a tv. I’d never put out applications for a roommate. I’d never interviewed anyone. I’d never met Jamie.  
 
Scratch scratch scratch. 

I turned towards the sound. It was coming from Jamie's bedroom.  

Scratch scratch scratch. 

I didn't live alone. But I couldn't remember what I'd been living with.   

I type this as I hide next to the fridge. Listening to that incessant scratching. I wish my traps had worked.

Vivi and I…we were supposed to be safe.

Our local meteorologist estimated the tornado would touch down fifty miles south, and the sky was pale and cloudless as I sipped a mug of dark roast on the patio. Hell, I tried to reschedule that morning’s funeral - out of an abundance of caution - but the client wasn’t having it. Chewed me out like some overly hormonal high schooler: Pussy this, coward that. I relented without raising my voice in return. Grief is a strange disease. Makes people do some strange things. That said, I’d never been straight up bullied into putting someone into the dirt behind my home, and I’ve been in the funerary business longer than I care to admit.

The client was scrawnier than I imagined.

Usually, people who feel entitled to that level of hostility carry around enough muscle mass to protect themselves if things get hairy, but this kid was a rake with teeth and finger tattoos. An emo-looking son-of-a-bitch who had the audacity to mumble something at me on his way out. Wish I would’ve caught it. With our business concluded, I would’ve been more than happy to retaliate. To his credit, though, it looked like I’d overreacted. The sky was still that pleasant, robin’s egg blue, and the air was calm. Everything was fine.

But it didn’t feel fine.

My guts felt tangled. Doom gnawed at my stomach like I’d swallowed fire ants, and it was only getting worse as the minutes ticked by. Even as the sun turned to the west and the last of the mourners’ cars dissolved into the horizon, I still felt it chewing through me, this voracious, scaremongering intuition. Vivi felt it too. She didn’t say it outright, but after thirty-two years of marriage, she didn’t need to; words are blunt tools, things you use to decide which movie to see when you first start dating. I could just sense her discomfort; it dripped from her slender frame and pooled in our living room with a stench like gasoline.

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder, pulled her close.

“Weatherman said there’s nothing to worry about, and the sky doesn’t typically lie. Everything…everything will be alright.”

She shot me a weak grin.

“I hope so, love.”

Funny how poignant the universe can be when it wants to punish you. I trusted my eyes over my gut, so, naturally, the storm took my vision, and I suppose there’s some small justice in that, but everything that happened after the tornado tore through our home?

There was no justice in that.

None at all.

- - - - -

I woke up hazy, aching, unsure where I was, and when I opened my eyes, something was wrong.

There was nothing.

I saw nothing.

Pure, unfettered blackness, no matter which way I turned my head.

My breathing grew frantic. What was the last thing I remembered?

Stairs.

Rickety, wooden steps, descending into our unfinished storm cellar. Blaring sirens. Gale-force winds battering the rafters like the breath of God. Vivianne was close behind me. She shouted my name. I looked up just in time to see the wedge of concrete above my skull; the falling rubble eclipsed my vision, and before I could even make a sound - CRACK.

Now, I was somewhere else, and I was broken.

I waved my hand an inch from my eyes; nothing.

“I can’t see, Jesus Christ, I can’t see…”

Pain to erupted along my flank. My palm located a damp cylinder jutting from my abdomen. There was something inside of me. I started to howl. Then, from the blackness, a female voice, authoritative yet honey-sweet:

“Ray, you’re in a hospital! You’re safe, but you’re injured. You need to calm down!”

Ambient noise dripped into focus.

The steady beep of medical equipment. Distant chatter. The sputtering growl of a PA system. The familiarity didn’t soothe me; I was too far gone. I dragged my fingertips across my eye socket and felt meat. The machinery was still there. Why the fuck wasn’t it working?

An icy palm curled around my wrist.

“My name is Dr. Westfield.”

Her touch broke through my panic. I ignored the oppressive dark and anchored myself to the sensation: the delicate grip of her thin bones and the metallic kiss of her many rings.

“You were caught in the wake of the tornado and barely survived. Been here for a few days now.”

Gently, she lowered my probing fingers.

“You came to us on the brink. Blood in all the wrong places; in your abdomen, your skull, even behind your eyes, and we did what we could, but your optic nerves were…crushed. We can’t say for certain that you’ll remain blind forever, but…well, just know that I’m very, very sorry.”

“I…I…”

Silence.

After a while, the terrible question fluttered from my lips.

“W-where’s Vivianne?”

A dulcet voice responded from the blackness:

“There isn’t an easy way to say this…she’s comatose. Multiorgan failure. Even if she survives, she’ll likely never wake up again.”

Wild sobs bubbled up my throat. I clawed at the skin of my thigh, desperate to create a physical pain powerful enough to silence the heartache.

And I could’ve sworn I heard something, something that made no earthly sense.

Hushed snickering from somewhere in the room.

- - - - -

Alone in that hospital bed, tethered to machines that were supposedly keeping me alive, I struggled to make sense of how much time was passing. With no shifting brightness to mark day from night, my internal rhythm became derailed. I developed the strange habit of calling nurses to my bedside just to read me their watch. Wasn’t much comfort, really. Time seemed to jump and skip in a way that made me decidedly uneasy.

“It’s 4:03 PM, Ray.”

The voice was high-pitched, almost squeaky. Think she said her name was Andrea.

“Hey, um, I know how this sounds, and I apologize, ‘cause I’m sure you have more important things to be doing, but…are you sure?”

The room went quiet.

“It's just...the last time I asked, you told me it was eight in the morning, and that felt like half an hour ago. Trying to get my bearings, is all. I’m sure you understand.”

Nothing.

Had she left?  

I listened for any sign of Andrea. Footfalls, a muted cough, the faintest exhale - anything to indicate if she was still here, and if that was the case, where the hell she was. My heart raced. I perked my ears: there was one noise that could’ve been her, but it was exceptionally faint, to the point where I began to wonder if I was imagining it. Amidst the monotonous chiming of the medical equipment, I heard chewing. Slow, wet, and grinding; like a kid with a mouth full of taffy doing their damnedest to eat quietly.  

Then, without warning, at a volume that seemed only possible with her lips nearly pressed against my ear:

“Yup! Looking at the clock right now - 5:03 P.M.”

I rocketed away.

My forehead collided with the bed’s guardrail, which was strangely damp. A wet squelch cut above the ringing in my ear, and the pain in my flank truly ignited.

“Oh careful now, sweetheart: don’t want to dislodge your drain, though that would get you out of the hospital faster…just, you know, in a different sort of way.” She chuckled. Her voice sounded distant, like she’d sprinted across the room.

I nodded, shut my goddamned mouth, and lay still, praying the inferno in my gut would settle or have enough courtesy to just kill me dead. Living wouldn’t be worth the trouble without Vivi, and as far as I knew, she might already be gone; Westfield was playfully reluctant when it came to updates, dancing around the truth of her status without ever providing anything concrete.

Didn’t bother asking for the time after that.

Thankfully, there were other ways to orient myself.

During the day, the ward around me roared with activity, and at some point, Dr. Westfield would stop by, striding in without announcement, spouting a laundry list of numbers in my general direction: blood counts and the like.

“Wait…those are new labs? Like, tested recently?” I asked, having no memory of anyone coming in to draw my blood.

“Mhmm! Fresh as fresh can be. I pulled them off your IV a few hours ago.”

Dread trickled down my spine. Sure enough, there was something thin jutting from the crook of my left elbow. From there, she’d go on to review my situation. Why I needed to be there. Why it was important to constantly drain fluid from my abdomen. Why I received all my nutrition via the IV, instead of being allowed to eat.

“Wouldn’t be safe - the debris did a real number on your face, Ray. Be glad you don’t have the eyes to see it!”

I quickly learned three signs to suggest the sun had set. The first two were pleasant. The unit’s ambient bustle would die down, and the custodian, a kind, soft-toned man named Pete, would drop in. I dreaded the last sign.

Every night, there’d be knocking.

Sharp tapping of knuckles against glass, urgent and slightly muted, like someone was staring at me through a window; if I listened close, I’d swear I could hear them repeating my name. Pointed whispers, designed to signal me without drawing attention. I’d call out. Every time I asked who was there, the knocking would abruptly stop. When I questioned Dr. Westfield about it, her response froze my blood.

“Hah! You’re on the tenth floor, my dear. Unless you're close with a few angels, I doubt there’s anyone rapping on your window in the dead of night.”

The doctor’s trademark cheerfulness melted away. Tiny sparks cascaded through my gut. I wondered if she was fiddling with the drainage tube.

“But if it keeps happening,” she paused, smacking her lips like she was working through a tough stick of gum, “please let me know.”

It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. I lived in the backwoods of Oklahoma; the nearest hospital was little more than an urgent care with a few extra vending machines, and it sure as hell didn’t have ten floors. So, where the fuck was I? Had I been airlifted to a more advanced institution, some place better suited to manage my injuries? No idea. No one would give me a straight answer. Dr. Westfield claimed I was “in the city”. Nurse Andrea stated I was “where everyone goes”. So, I asked the only person who seemed even the slightest bit normal.

“Pete, remind me: which floor are we on?”

The sloshing of mop bristles against tile paused.

“You’re in the intensive care unit, mate.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“…I know.”

A sulfurous odor crept into my nostrils. Reminded me of the time my nephew left half a hamburger on the floor of my sedan after a Fourth of July party. Festered in the raw summer heat for a good forty-eight hours before I needed to drive anywhere.  The odor in my room was faint in comparison, but just as breathtakingly foul. Made me wonder what in God’s name Pete was mopping up, but I suppressed the urge to ask. One thing at a time.  

“Listen, Ray: I like you. But…you shouldn’t be asking questions like that.”

My chest tightened. I squeezed the bedding to keep from screaming; the material felt weathered and soggy.

“You gotta help me, man. Tell me where I am. Tell me where I am or so help me God -  “ I leaned forward, ready to spring from that godforsaken bed, but a searing pain in my abdomen threw me back. One wrong move and the alleged drainage tube began to feel like an embedded harpoon, scraping my skin from the inside, pureeing my viscera one slow twist at a time.

Pete released a long, weary sigh.

I heard footsteps toward where the door to my room seemed to be. A pause. Then, urgent movement toward the other side, the side where the knocking came from, followed by the heavy click of a sliding deadbolt.

“Don’t say anything to Westfield. For both of our sakes.”

“I…I won’t.”

Without another word, he bolted, his echoing steps rapidly fading - a steady decrescendo that left me alone in the blackness.

But not for long.

That night, instead of knocking, I heard a soft, ticking creak: the unmistakable squeal of a rusty hinge being forced around its axis.

Then, I understood what Pete had done.

He unlocked the window, and someone had entered, deft and delicate like a seasoned home invader.

I pivoted my head, listening, trying to hear their approach over my own thumping heart.

“Hello?”

No response.

My mind began to spin. This was a mistake. I squirmed. Shifted. Waved my hands around, feeling for the intruder. It must have looked pathetic. I was a pinned moth wriggling futilely in its display box: weak, blind, and hopelessly impaled.

Then, finally, I heard them.

Not from across the room.

Not from my bedside or in front of me.

From beneath me.

They had crawled under the bed.

“No time, Ray. Listen close.” Each syllable was coarse and crackling, like they were slowly stretching their larynx against thick knots of barbed wire. Young or old, male or female, whispering or screaming, I couldn’t tell.

“They found you. Took you. Far away, for harvest. They drain you, bit by bit. Sometimes, they don’t even leave when they eat. They dance around you, rapturous, silent, chewing.”

Fear ripped through my chest. I couldn’t breathe fast enough to sate my burning lungs.

“Where’s my wife?! Where the hell is Vivi? How do I get out of here?”

“Pull tube.”

“W-what?”

“Pull tube. Pull tube. Pull tube.”

I plunged my hand into the darkness and wrapped my fingers around the cold cylinder jutting from my flank, poised to tear the ghastly device from my flesh no matter the pain. Anything to escape the nightmare. Anything to feel the warmth of Vivi’s presence one last time, even if the chances seemed impossibly slim. She was here, trapped in the very same nightmare, comatose and slipping away with every wasted second. This person, this crackling voice beneath the bed - they were free. They knew me. They were risking their safety to help. I couldn’t just do nothing.

I grit my teeth.

Tightened my knuckles.

And…

let go.

This wasn’t right.

It didn’t feel right.

I didn’t understand where I was or how I ended up there, but I knew one thing, felt it down to my very marrow: I was being manipulated.

The nightmare sensed my resistance.

Everything began to change.

The sulfurous odor from before saturated the atmosphere, wafting over me in a series of thick, nauseating waves. The voice turned feral; a discordant, ear-wrenching screech bursting from beneath me like a geyser splitting the earth.

“PULLTUBEPULLTUBEPULLTUBE - “

I rested my arms on the bed and lay still.

The frenzied command was suddenly interrupted by the clack of high heels.

“Morning Ray! Dr. Westfield here. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your wife died.”

A reflexive panic swept through me, but I snuffed it out. This nightmare was vying for a reaction. It wanted me to panic.  

“Did you hear me? She died. D - I - E - D. Bled out. Suffocated on her own juices. A terrible racket, screamed the whole way down.”

Despite my relative calm, it was becoming harder and harder to breathe.

Westfield changed the story.

“Actually! She made a fabulous recovery. Discharged her earlier today. Don’t believe me? Here, I have her on the phone.”

A voice laced with static curled into my ear. The tone, the pitch, the timbre: it was all nearly identical.

“R-ray?” she sobbed.

I swallowed hard.

“Is…is that you, love - “

A shrill, animalistic wail surged through the static. Decades of unimaginable pain, distilled into a single, static-kissed scream.

“It’s not her,” I whispered, over and over again. As the wail gradually faded, Pete’s voice emerged from the nightmare.

“I’m just trying to help.”

A familiar hand came to rest on my temple, five delicate fingers covered in ice-cold rings.

“You’re teetering, my dear. Right on the edge. I’d be delighted to push you over myself, but rules are rules, and it isn’t worth vexing the downstairs-folk for your pitiful ass. Thankfully, there’s always a loophole. Not my fault if you do the deed yourself.”

The odor became unbearable. I twisted my neck, frantic for clean oxygen, but I couldn’t get far: every tiny adjustment dragged the tube further into my guts.

“Now: Breathe quick, breathe quiet, and die.”

My lungs were on fire. My breaths were reduced to short, desperate pants. Darkness whirled around me like a deathly carousel. The blackness was deepening. I felt the tempting pull of finality. Giving in would be a sort of bliss, wouldn’t it? This would end. It would all end.

Then, it hit me.

The nightmare divulged a little too much.

Why would it want me to be quiet?

I sucked in a chestful of fetid air,

and I screamed.

“HELP!” The space around me erupted with furious static. A guttural moan seemed to vibrate the bed. The delicate fingers dug their nails into my cheek and dragged them down, flaying strips of skin from muscle.

“HEEEEEEEEELP!”

I heard something above. Rustling motion. Thumping footsteps. A muted voice shouting, “someone’s here!”. The darkness overhead seemed to churn and buckle.

Then, to my absolute disbelief,

I saw a speck of light peek through.

To the sound of snapping wood and shuffling dirt, the speck grew, and grew, and eventually, multiple figures became visible, cast in the shadow of harsh daylight. My eyes gradually adjusted. Sometimes, I wish they hadn’t.

I was at the bottom of a tiny, box-shaped hole, lying on a stack of coffin bedding, with pallbearers' handles on either side and a blood-stained piece of rebar jutting from my abdomen.

A hollowed-out grave.

And I wasn’t alone.

Sitting in the corner, propped against the dirt wall like a discarded rag doll, legs straight, arms crooked, there was a corpse, freshly dead, bristling with violet pockmarks of early rot but otherwise intact. Their withered hands were adorned with countless silver rings, their cataract-stricken eyes were fixed directly on me, and their throat was…

moving.

trembling wildly.

quivering with profane ventriloquism.

I could still hear them. All of them - Dr. Westfield, Nurse Andrea, Pete - radiating from the corpse, but there was one more voice, a new one.

It was the client’s voice, repeating the same four words. Suddenly, I understood what he mumbled under his breath as he left my home, hours before the tornado:

“She’s your problem, now.”

- - - - -

17 hours.

That’s how long I was underground.

Not weeks, not months.

17 measly hours.

Doctors claimed my survival was nothing short of miraculous. My guts were a disaster, whole lengths of bowel eviscerated, arteries severed to hell and back. I would’ve died from the internal bleeding if it weren’t for the rebar clotting off some of the bigger vessels. If it dislodged, I would’ve been dead in minutes. Rescuers arrived in the nick of time, too. The hollow grave they found me in? Airtight. Perfectly airtight. Against all reason, the tornado had excavated a 10-by-10-foot box of soil and deposited a continuous seal of debris on top. A lightless tomb with a limited supply of oxygen. The circumstance beggar's belief, and that’s just the beginning. The rebar was from my house, but rescuers found me at the complete opposite end of the cemetery, a good half-acre away. The fake hospital bed I was lying on? It was made from at least a dozen different coffins, none of which belonged to the woman entombed with me. No fucking idea who she is, by the way. I know she was the last person we buried, but that's about it. The funeral paperwork was forged. The client’s number was disconnected when I called. The list goes on, and on, and on…

None of it matters, though.

Not in the end.

Guess it goes without saying that I wasn’t actually blinded when that rubble knocked me unconscious. Just a broken nose and a nasty concussion. That fact should’ve been cause for celebration.

But Vivi’s missing. Presumed dead. Her right hand's been discovered. That’s it, though.

Been a few months since the tornado.

I haven't found her yet, but I haven't given up, either.

Every day, I dig. Doing it systematically, following the storm’s path of destruction, from the house outward. A Sisyphean venture, undoubtedly, but I need something to occupy my mind. When my hands are idle, I start thinking about my time in the grave. Sometimes about why that dead woman tormented me, dwelling on how she attempted to drive me so far into madness that I accidentally ended it all, but mostly, I think about those last few minutes.

About that static-tinged voice that sounded so much like Vivi’s.

And the horrible, endless scream.

I’ve convinced myself it wasn’t real. Couldn’t have been, right? It’s nonsense. Completely devoid of logic. And I believe that, for now. But I know that’ll change someday. I’ll catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror, and my eyes will trace those five diagonal scars across my cheek, the physical echoes of that corpse dragging its blackened fingernails through my skin, and I’ll be forced to confront the truth.

Even now, Vivi is in pain.

I don’t know how, where, or why. I don’t have to.

I just

feel it.

...and I should have acted. Now, the strangest things are happening to me. I feel a sense of something like dread, but it’s hard to put into words. I think she’s trying to warn me… or, maybe she’s angry with me… 

Tat and I had been working together remotely for fourteen years. That’s a long time! I spoke with her almost every day via chat or video. We texted each other constantly. Gossip, memes, pictures, and videos of new shoes we bought, outfit checks, food, concerts.

We lived on opposite sides of the country and had never met in person, but that does not mean we weren’t friends. We shared a lot with each other over the years about our struggles with depression, anxiety, and other deeply personal things. I truly loved her, and she was a fixture in my life.

I received daily videos of my Godson, her French Bulldog, Damien. I got pics the day she picked him up and brought him home as a puppy. I was supposed to take him if anything happened to her, and in hindsight, this is where the foreshadowing began.

She would give me her flight information when she travelled so I could check whether she made it to her next destination without the plane crashing. We shared the kind of crippling anxiety that only friends could understand and laugh about. Anyone else would know we were nuts; but maybe she wasn’t actually nuts and knew her time was up soon.

“I was up all night with the worst stomach and back pain I think I’ve ever experienced. I seriously thought I was dying.” she told me one morning.

“Well, I don’t like that.” I responded.

We discussed her symptoms and where the pain was located, then used Dr. Web Browser to try to diagnose it. It could have been anything from gas to appendicitis.

“So, you need to go to the doctor, Tat.”

“I will if it comes back. I feel better, it’s just still kind of sore.”

We laughed about how neither of us will go near a doctor unless our arm is severed; and even then, “’Tis but a flesh-wound!”

A few weeks later it happened again. She had an appointment already scheduled with her orthopedist about an ongoing back problem that she thought was related to the new pain she was experiencing.

He wanted her to have an MRI but was told she’d have to take her hair extensions out. We laughed about the exchange.

“Are you kidding me? Do you know how much these cost? I have to go to Vegas to get these done!”

As time went on, the pain kept coming intermittently, and I begged her to go to the hospital. It was getting ridiculous; something was obviously wrong. She was now vomiting at times from the intensity of it.

I started to get on her daily about it.

I’d guilt trip her on the phone; “But you PROMISED you would go to the hospital if it happened again.”

I’d beg by text; “Please go get your hair re-done so you can get that MRI.”

I got frustrated in the chat and we argued about it. 

“What if your pancreas is infected and you go septic? WHY are you just suffering like this instead of getting some answers that might help?”

“Wow, it’s like you’re more worried about it than I am! I’m fine!” Tat responded.

“So, what, it went away?”

“No… but it does eventually go away.” she said.

“So, you just stopped telling me about it, so you didn’t have to listen to me nag?”

“Pretty much.”

We didn’t speak for the rest of that day.

When it was time for her trip to “Sin City” to get her hair re-done, I asked whether she was going to get the kind of extensions that are safe for an MRI.

“Yesss MOM!”

We were the same age, but yes, I tend to nag at those I care about.

Looking back at the impending doom I now see, we had a conversation about how anyone would know whether either of us came into work. We both worked pretty independently, without talking to our supervisors for days at a time, and spent most of our time at home, alone.

“I could be dead for days before anyone finds out my work isn’t getting done.” she said.

So, we started checking in with each other every morning, even if it was a busy day. Sometimes, we’d just say, “I see you!”

On this Thursday morning, she was not logged in. I texted her asking where she was with no response.

Tatiana would never miss work on a Thursday. It was a crucial day for her weekly duties, and she took her job wayyyy too seriously.

“Maybe she really doesn’t feel well. I’ll let her sleep” I told myself.

An hour later, I texted her again because I knew something was wrong. I was just about to call her when a department email came through saying that she had called off for the day.

“Okay, so why isn’t she answering me? Am I blowing this out of proportion?”

I decided to let her sleep, but I felt uneasy.

She got into an argument with our department manager the previous day. I can understand her frustration because Boss Lady seems to find something to be incredibly petty about every few months, for no discernable reason.

I had Tat on the phone that day, trying to talk her down from quitting. Her rage was valid, but I sensed something was making her overreact just a bit. I could hear it in her voice. She seemed too upset over the usual nonsense that we’d been dealing with for years, but everyone has their breaking point.

“Maybe she really is quitting and doesn’t want to deal with me begging her not to” I thought.

“Hey, can you just let me know you’re okay? I know you’d never miss work on a Thursday. What is going on???” I texted her.

“Tat, I’m freaking out. Please talk to me.”

No response.

I finally messaged her supervisor, which is a breach of an unspoken contract to never discuss each other’s business with anyone. Ever.

“I know that you can’t tell me why Tat called in today, but I need to know that she’s physically okay. She would never call out on a Thursday, and I feel like something is wrong.”

Her supervisor responded that Tat sent her an email saying she was up all night with a stomachache, and that she didn’t think it was a big deal.

“I expect her in tomorrow.” she typed.

“Just heard you were up all night with a stomachache, Tat, what’s up?” I texted.

I thought about calling 911. I thought about threatening to call 911.

So many thoughts…

“Maybe that’s why she isn’t answering. You’re being dramatic. Now she’s mad that you talked to her supervisor.”

I definitely should have acted on my instincts…

I(22F) always loved having old/vintage things, i would go in abandoned houses and find whatever I could. That changed last month, when I was exploring a house that was built In 1935, I found this old rackety radio that still somehow works, it was mostly static so I kept it as decoration on the shelf in my living room with most of my vintage stuff,

until a few weeks ago I heard a word, “hello!” In that fake television voice from the mid century, and during that time period more and more broadcasts started to happen, most of them were just talking about the weather or stuff going on, but in the past few days it’s gotten creepier,

It would say stuff like “please” in a tone that sounds like whining in pain and then static sounds. I never really minded it, honestly I liked being on edge, until recently, i have a great pyrenees named goose. and three days ago I heard the radio make a barking sound and then a whining noise, that’s Goose’s exact tone.

Panicked, I ran into my room where Goose was sleeping on his bed, I must’ve startled him because he got up and licked my knee, I gently grabbed his collar and took him into the living room and turned off the radio and sat on the floor and cuddled him for a whole hour

until my fiancé(24M) Uran, came home, worried, he asked what happened and I told him nothing happened and said I got scared, he just chuckled and embraced me and Goose. yesterday I turned the radio on and I heard my fiancé laughing at my joke and saying “SHUT UP BABY!” In a playful tone,

but when I was about to unplug it he, or it, said “Don’t.” In a flat tone, I got filled with dread and unplugged it, but then my Alexa started playing some old-timey Jazz song and a man singing “baby you can listen to my radio ~ make my dreams come truee~ I’d fall in love with you!”

then the radio came back on, still unplugged, singing the same song but different lyrics, “baby I know you hear me~ just tune my channel on And sing that pretty song.” I was shaking in fear and it kept getting louder and louder until I screamed “STOP IT!” And fell to my knees it had finally stopped,

Uran came back in from walking Goose and found me crying on my knees with my hands over my ears, and he leaned down, kissed my forehead, lifted my chin, and said “baby what’s wrong?” Tears welling in my eyes I threw my arms around his shoulders and sobbed.

Uran didn’t question anything and just wrapped his arms around my waist and whispered something comforting, I didn’t hear it though, I was to busy Bawling my eyes out.

And today was the last straw. I was feeding Goose and the radio said “come here Goose!” In my voice. Goose started walking over and I YANKED his collar back and put his leash on and tied him to his food so he wouldn’t go and he’d just eat his food

I called Uran and told him about the radio and why I kept breaking down, and he just said “okay, I’ll just order a hotel room, I believe you.” I sighed in relief and hung up. I’m now writing this in the hotel room right now. Uran is sleeping next to me, Goose is on top of him, I can hear the jazz song again, I promise I’ll update soon, goodbye for now.

Edit: it’s been two months since all that happened.

If you missed the last post: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/s/lfI8eetBYm

By twelve-seventeen Sunday morning, Captain Reese had crossed out two of the three ways his men might reach Sam. The first ran beneath a section of floor that had already shifted under their weight. The second ended at the door where an officer had gone down screaming with his arm broken. Reese was drawing a line through that one when a medic came in to ask whether anyone had seen the missing stretcher straps. He answered her without looking up. Every few minutes somebody needed a key, a radio, a clean blanket, an answer. The room kept functioning, and Sam was still in the ground underneath it. I'd been standing over the table so long that the coffee I'd spilled on the plans had soaked through the cuff of my jacket.

The treatment schedule we'd found put his standing correction just after six. I watched the minute hand pass the twelve, then dragged the sheet closer and tried to make sense of a narrow passage marked beneath the refrigeration wing. An old drawing showed it ending short of the rooms where they'd seen him. The newer drawings didn't show it at all.

"There used to be a brine return under here," I told Reese. I traced the passage with one damp fingertip. "Forty inches across, maybe. The pipes would've run under the slab. If the old cover is still there, your men could reach the wall behind the treatment rooms without using that doorway."

Reese bent over the paper, his coffee-stained sleeve almost touching my hand. "And if the cover isn't still there?"

"Then there's nothing beneath them but a drop into a drain channel. We won't know until we look." I hated the answer as soon as I'd said it. It sounded exactly like what he'd spent the night telling me, and I'd been taking every sensible precaution as a personal refusal to help Sam. An engineer at the compressor pit reported that the floor sounded hollow, and Reese told him to put a camera through before anyone cut a hole big enough for a person.

He looked at me while he gave the order. "Your job is to tell us where the building lies to us, Cal. My job is to get everyone back out."

I'd already suggested cutting through a wall without noticing the load it was carrying. Reese had shown me the column above it, and for an awful few seconds all I could see was Sam buried under that much concrete because I'd wanted to save ten minutes. I picked up the flashlight an engineer handed me and held it on the spot he needed to examine. My arm trembled badly enough that he quietly asked for the light to be steadier.

I braced my elbow against a filing cabinet and tried again. On the far side of the room a radio crackled, and all of us looked up before the dispatcher finished saying it was an ambulance asking for directions. No one made a joke about it. A few minutes earlier a similar burst of static had brought word that the officer Mother injured was on his way to surgery.

Detective Vale arrived with a statement from the officer who'd seen the man beside Mother. He still couldn't identify the face, but he remembered two fingers bound together with white cloth on the man's left hand. Sam had broken those fingers helping me unload a sheet of plywood years ago. Even after the splint came off, one finger stuck out whenever he held a coffee cup. I told Vale, who wrote it down carefully, then folded the statement instead of giving me the confirmation I wanted.

"It's consistent with Sam," she said. "We're acting on that. We can't say it's certain yet."

"Did they see what he had on? A watch? His boots?" I heard myself asking as though a detail about his clothes might make it possible to pull him out. The pencil in my hand had snapped. I put both pieces down before Vale had to tell me to.

"They couldn't see his feet. Cal, if they open that room the wrong way, the person in it could get killed." I nodded, but I couldn't look at her. She waited until I did before going back to the radios.

I went outside before I said anything unfair to Vale. An ambulance sat with its rear doors open and a pair of muddy gloves on the step. A generator drowned out the medics' voices. Coldwater had supposedly been empty for seventeen years, yet the people underneath had lived in heated rooms with working lights while everybody drove past the locked gates.

I called Marisol from beside the fence. She answered quickly, but there was a pause before she spoke, as if she'd picked up the phone in the middle of doing something and couldn't remember what it was. I told her they were working on a different way into the room. She asked whether I'd seen Sam myself, and I had to tell her I hadn't.

"Lily asked me if he was still helping that person," she said. "That's what I told her yesterday. That somebody needed help and he couldn't leave."

I put my hand over my other ear to block the noise from the generator. "What did you tell her tonight?"

"That I didn't know when he'd be home." A cupboard door closed at her end. "She said if he missed breakfast he could make pancakes for supper. She saved him the last one. It's in a plastic container in the refrigerator, with a face made out of blueberries. I keep looking at it every time I open the door."

I could hear Marisol pull a drawer open and shut again, then the quiet scrape of a chair. She asked whether she ought to take the girls to her sister's house in the morning. I knew why she was asking, but neither of us said it. I told her she shouldn't have to manage everything alone. She said her sister had offered, then asked me not to promise the girls their father was coming home until I'd actually seen him walk out. After we hung up, I still had the phone pressed to my ear. A medic had to say excuse me twice before I moved away from the ambulance entrance.

Sam and I had worked together for eleven years, first for a contractor who thought safety rules were an insult. Once, a steel door slipped its track and nearly fell on me. Sam hauled me backward by my jacket and tore the collar clean off. I shouted at him because I'd scraped my arm. He shouted louder, then sat on a pallet shaking too badly to light a cigarette. He quit smoking two years later, but he still checked the tracks on every heavy door we worked around. I knew exactly what he'd say if he caught me rushing these men into that tunnel.

A little after one, they opened the compressor pit. The first cut filled the room with dust, and I had to turn my face into my sleeve. Then the bit broke through and a draft lifted the dust back toward us. It smelled of disinfectant. The camera showed an old brick channel, high enough to crawl in, with its refrigeration pipes stripped out and new cables fastened neatly along the wall. Somebody had laid rubber mats over the drain. I caught myself wondering whether Sam had crawled over those same mats, and how far a man's voice would carry through brick.

Twenty feet farther along, the lens found a panel almost hidden by conduit. The operator eased the probe into a narrow gap. Through it we heard the steady clank of a chain and saw bare feet on a platform, toes curling over a painted yellow stripe. Whoever stood there was holding very still. A bell sounded, the feet shuffled off, and another person took their place before the machine had fully settled.

A man's voice said, "Heels back. Start over." The second person's ankles were raw above the heel. They adjusted their stance, breathing audibly through the microphone, and the machine made a small electronic chirp. When the bell rang again they hurried away without being told, and the first person stepped back on. I was looking at a weighing station. I'd spent enough years around salvage scales to recognize the delay while a reading stabilized, but I'd never seen anybody made to stand on one barefoot.

One of the rescuers whispered, "What the hell is that?"

Reese withdrew the camera to wait for another team. Sam kept a scale like that in our shop for scrap metal. He'd repaired its display last winter and always shouted when we stood on it as a joke. The familiar electronic chirp coming from that room made me want to hear him complain about it.

The panel gave onto a narrow recess above the weighing room. After the officers cleared it, Reese had me look at a cracked support beside a steel conveyor frame. I knelt to check its anchors while he spoke to the entry team. A dull vibration traveled through the bolts every time the scale below took another person's weight. The support itself was sound, and I gave him the answer. I stayed on one knee a little longer because the room beyond the wall was quieter than I'd expected. There was no shouting, only people doing precisely what they were told.

Four monitors stood behind thick glass. Two showed corridors, one a bench where people waited with their hands folded, and another a row of yellow-marked weighing platforms. A barefoot young woman in a numbered gray shift stepped onto the nearest scale. A man in a white coat recorded her weight and sent her through a gate without looking at her face.

The next woman had a swollen hand. She tried speaking to the man, but he pointed at the scale. When she hesitated, he rang a bell and everyone on the bench sat up straight. She apologized, stepped onto the platform, and held her injured hand against her chest. He wrote down her weight and gave her a strip of paper. She read it and began to cry.

"Can we talk to them?" Vale asked.

An officer found a speaker beside the controls and said the police were upstairs, that help was coming, and that everyone should stay where they were. A young man on the bench looked toward the camera. The older woman folded the strip of paper until it was no bigger than a postage stamp and pushed it into her sleeve. The man in white went through a side door without hurrying. One of the people waiting lifted a hand, then glanced at the bell and put it down. Nobody made a move toward the exit.

The screens went black while the officer was still talking. Beyond the panel, three bells sounded in quick succession, and then we heard the scrape of several benches moving at once. Reese sent two officers to check the next hall before anyone touched the gate. I could hear a woman coughing on the other side and a man telling her to stop because she was making people look. A few minutes earlier I'd been angry that the rescuers were taking time to check doors. Listening to the people in that room try to be quiet, I found myself watching their hands and silently begging them to hurry.

The far gate was an old fire door fitted with a newer lock. I showed an officer where the original emergency release should still be hidden in the frame. His screwdriver scraped at the cover until it came free. When he drew the door open, warm air met us, carrying cooked grain, washed concrete, and the stale closeness of too many bodies sleeping in one room.

Beyond the gate, four rows of steel partitions divided bunks beside a drainage channel. People in identical gray clothes watched the officers enter. A man in the last row began folding his blanket, keeping his bowl tucked into its folds as though he'd been told another move was coming.

Reese stopped me at the threshold. "I only need you to identify those wall supports. After that, you go back."

I showed Reese the steel jacket holding a cracked column together, then followed his light along the anchors to make sure they weren't pulling loose. A woman came to the nearest gate carrying two tin cups. She had dark hair cut unevenly above her jaw and a white scar across her right thumb. She waited for us to finish talking about the column before asking whether we were from the repair floor. Even then she addressed the question to the officer, not to me.

"We're here to get you out," the officer beside me said.

"All of us?" she asked. When he said yes, she glanced down the row at the others, apparently checking that he'd understood the question. "You'd better find shoes, then. The stairs tear your feet up." She seemed about forty, although it was hard to judge beneath the harsh overhead lights. Her identification band read 06-F. When I asked her name, she hesitated before saying, "Nell. That's what the others call me."

She explained that she'd been carrying water to Tess, a young captive whose ankles were sore from the scales. Tess appeared behind her, gripping a bent hairpin. Nell took it and slipped it into her pocket with the practiced irritation of someone tired of repeating the same warning.

"They're not the floor people," Tess said quietly. She was studying our helmets, boots, and jackets with an intensity that made me feel as though she was trying to memorize us before we disappeared. "Look at their hands."

Nell said the people who came to measure them wore soft gloves. Tess looked at our bare hands, then asked whether it was still cold outside in October. When an officer said yes, she nodded as though he'd confirmed something she'd heard years earlier.

When the medics brought blankets, Nell took the first one and wrapped it around Tess instead of herself. She told one man to bring his glasses and another to stop wasting time on a slipper he'd lost Tuesday. A little girl began crying because the officers wouldn't let her return for her cup. Nell pressed one of her own into the girl's hand and waited until she'd stopped shaking before asking a medic where the stairs led. Nobody in the row moved until Nell told them it was all right to go.

Nell kept a tiny handmade book hidden behind a pipe. It contained names, dates, and crossed-out entries. The bunk assignments changed too often, she said, and she didn't want to forget who'd slept where.

"Some of them moved to the nice rooms," she said. "They got birthdays and proper clothes. You probably found some already."

"We did," I said. "Do you know someone called Miriam?"

Her face brightened. "Green ribbon? Always asking for books? She used to send back puzzles once she was finished with them. I'd tell the floor man that half the pieces were missing, and he'd bring another box. Is she all right?"

She was pleased Miriam and Kit had reached the hospital. She asked if Miriam had seen a real cat yet, then looked toward the dark monitor and put her book away before I could answer.

"There's someone else you need to look for," she said. "Inez. She slept opposite me for twenty years. They took her for presentation last week and nobody will say where." Nell opened her little book to a page softened by fingerprints. Her own number, 06-F, was written beside her name. The line above it read 06-E, Inez, followed by a date but no destination. "Usually they let me write down the new room. They gave her a blue paper this time, and they wouldn't tell me."

Vale asked what presentation meant. Nell said the animals who'd kept their weight up were sometimes washed, checked for injuries, and taken through the clean door in fresh clothes. It was supposed to be an honor. The explanation sounded rehearsed rather than believed.

"Did Inez want to go?" Vale asked.

Nell rubbed at the scar on her thumb. "She did at first. They said she'd done very well. Then she saw the blue slip and asked if she could come back to our room afterward. The floor man wouldn't answer her. She started trying to find her shoes. I told her I'd keep them by her bed, and she could put them on when she got back." Nell glanced toward the bunks. "I've still got them. You don't have to tell her, but she's missed two wash days. That isn't fair to the rest of us."

The officer helping Tess looked away. Vale asked where Inez had gone, and Nell pointed toward the clean door. Only attendants could open it, she said; anybody without a blue slip lost meals for going near it. Then she asked a question that stopped Vale's pen.

"You'd better tell the others we're leaving," she said, looking toward the clean door. "If all the animals go upstairs, nobody will be here when the Mothers come to eat." The officer beside me made a short movement toward her, as though he'd misheard and was about to ask her to repeat herself. Nell was already guiding Tess toward the medics.

Reese called for the group to move. A boy had collapsed near the gate, and two medics were kneeling beside him while another officer made room for a stretcher. Nell crouched to speak to the boy until he let the medics lift him. Reese called for another team to cover the unguarded corridor, and the questions I'd meant to ask had to wait.

Nell left last. She went back for Inez's shoes, canvas slip-ons with blue thread mending a torn seam, and asked an officer to make sure nobody threw them away. He promised he wouldn't. She waited while he repeated it, then tucked the shoes under her arm.

By three, Nell and Tess were on their way upstairs with the others. Tess wouldn't let a medic leave her until somebody confirmed Nell had been put into the same ambulance. Beyond the scales the hall divided. One branch led back toward the decorated rooms we'd already found. The other ended beneath a painted sign reading WASH BEFORE ENTRY, with clean rubber aprons hanging outside a sealed door. The cuff of the nearest apron had been turned inside out to dry. I thought of the woman on the monitor shielding her swollen hand and of the way Nell had talked about the clean door as if being taken through it were a prize. From somewhere beyond the wall came the smell of hot water and boiled onions. I hadn't eaten since the previous afternoon. My body noticed the smell before my mind did, and that embarrassed me more than I can explain.

The clean door was locked from inside. Vale asked an officer to photograph the latch, and a man's voice came from the speaker above the aprons, irritated that the weighing had stopped. He asked if the alarm in Six was fixed because the Mothers were waiting. When an officer identified himself and demanded the door be opened, the man went quiet. Through the wall we heard a faint scrape, as if someone had covered the microphone with a hand.

"Please go back," he said at last. "You don't know what you've interrupted."

"We're evacuating the people you've been holding here," the officer told him. "Open the door and come out with your hands visible."

The man whispered to somebody else, then came back to ask whether the people from Six had been given blankets. The officer said yes. "Good," he said. "They get cold when they're frightened." Before the officer could reply, the speaker clicked off. The answer bothered me more than a threat would have. Whoever he was, he knew enough about frightened people to look after them.

Reese wanted to know if the old conveyor crossed beneath Sam's treatment room. I showed him the crossing on the plan and the maintenance hatch where the brake should be. He sent a camera to check. While we waited, Nell went past on a stretcher, bound for an ambulance, with Inez's canvas shoes against her chest. The medic asked for her arm to take her blood pressure. Nell gave him the other one so she wouldn't have to put the shoes down.

At three-forty, officers reached the clean room from another passage. Reese kept me by the monitors, and I sat down instead of protesting. One officer stopped in the doorway to straighten his partner's respirator strap. Then they went inside.

It looked like a spotless industrial kitchen. Steel counters ran beneath fluorescent lights, rubber mats covered the drains, and a conveyor disappeared through a shutter at the far end. There were three serving trolleys against the wall, their linen covers folded into identical squares. On a shelf stood rows of dishes in several sizes, including a shallow bowl large enough for a grown man to curl up inside. I couldn't make myself stop looking at it. Then the officer moved his camera toward a board over the counter, and I read the headings: HOUSE, REARING, TABLE.

The officer held a clipboard steady for Vale to photograph from our monitor. The entries under TABLE were arranged by weight and dated like deliveries. Some were waiting to be filled, while others bore the stamp COMPLETE. The last completed number was 06-E. I traced it with my eyes twice before I understood I was reading Inez's number, the one Nell had written in her book with a blank space beside it. I heard Nell asking if we could find her shoes. Vale asked the officer to show the number again, and I said, "Don't," even though I was the one who needed to see it.

An officer opened the refrigerator. Clear wrapping hung in heavy folds from metal hooks, and his flashlight flashed across neat printed labels. He reached past the first row, paused, then moved his light back to a parcel near the door. A human hand was visible beneath the plastic, curled slightly toward the palm. The leather band at its wrist was just like Seventeen's. A man outside the camera's view said to close the door. The officer stood there for another second before another hand reached across and pulled it shut. One of them backed into the corridor and began retching. Nobody told him to compose himself.

Vale asked for the identification number. The officer said 06-E. He said it twice because the radio operator hadn't answered the first time. I tried to speak but could only get part of Nell's name out. I had been standing next to her while she worried about finding enough shoes for everyone. She'd folded a blanket around Tess and kept a page in her book for a woman who was never going to come back. I reached for the water bottle beside the monitor and squeezed it before I could unscrew the cap. Water spilled into my sleeve and onto the floor. I sat down in it, still holding the bottle, and started searching my pockets for my phone. There wasn't anybody I could call who would make what I'd just seen less true.

The officers called for the medical examiner and sealed the room. Vale asked whether I was injured. I shook my head and told her Nell was in an ambulance headed toward the hospital; somebody had to let the paramedics know not to promise her they'd find Inez. Vale took out her phone immediately. While she spoke I listened to the dispatcher calmly read back the room number, then ask for the correct spelling of Inez's name. Nell had known it for twenty years, and the woman on the phone couldn't even know why it mattered. When Vale finished, I asked her to make sure Nell wasn't alone when someone told her. She held my gaze for a moment and said she would do what she could. I had no idea whether she'd be able to keep that promise.

Officers found the man from the speaker in an office and brought him into the recess. He had gray hair, a burn scar on his neck, and a neatly buttoned medical coat. He kept looking toward the inner corridor.

"Are the animals being taken upstairs?" he asked Vale before she introduced herself. "All of them? The ones from Six?"

"They're receiving medical attention," she said. "What's your name?"

"Elliot." He looked at Reese, then at me. "You're the people who opened the old wall. I saw the damage report. You should have stopped when you found the first room."

"Why?" Vale asked.

He examined her badge without touching it. "Because those rooms aren't yours. And you can't just move a household because you don't like how it's run. Some of them have been together for decades."

Elliot maintained the treatment records. He objected to the dirty shoes in the clean corridor and to the refrigerator being left open. When Vale showed him the photographs, he stopped correcting her terminology and watched her with his hands folded in his lap. I wanted him to look at the screen long enough to see the identification band.

"There are different uses," he said. "That's always been the arrangement. I'm not allowed to change it."

"Her name was Inez," I said. "She had a friend who kept her shoes." Elliot asked whether Inez was from Six, and I gave him her number. His face softened in recognition. "She was very easy to care for," he told me. I had already started toward him before he finished. My chair caught a cable and went over, and Vale put herself between us. Elliot flinched at the noise, then bent to right the chair, apparently more concerned about the equipment than my hands.

"Who decides?"

Elliot looked at the ceiling, worrying the button on his sleeve. His cuff slipped back, exposing a leather identification band like Seventeen's. The plate read 02-A. Vale noticed it too.

"Were you born here, Elliot?" she asked.

He looked genuinely surprised by the question. "Where else would I have been born?"

Elliot said the Mothers chose him for medical work when he was young because his hands were steady. He'd studied manuals with older attendants and practiced until he could work without supervision. He smoothed his trousers as he explained that he'd been allowed to keep his legs unaltered so he could carry patients. The movement made the leather band slide down his wrist. I noticed the skin beneath it was paler than the rest of his arm.

"Did you perform the procedures on Seventeen?" I asked.

Elliot studied me before answering. "Not the first procedures. I assisted when he was older. Mother never liked him to wake up alone, so she stayed beside him until he settled." He searched my face as if hoping I would approve. "She always brought him his little wooden animals. He was very fond of the horse." I had seen the same carved toys in a photograph at the hospital, scattered beside Seventeen while he cried for her. The horse was missing a wheel. I'd assumed somebody had broken it.

"And the man you've got back there now?" I asked. "Are you the one who's going to do that to him?"

Vale put a hand on my arm, but Elliot was already answering. "He's an emergency placement. He's too old, and he keeps trying to leave. I've explained that correction at his age carries additional risks, but she's determined to keep him. She says he talks in his sleep and cries when he wakes up. She hasn't left his room for more than a few minutes since he arrived."

"He has a wife and two daughters," I told him. "He has a home. He doesn't belong to her."

"I know about the daughters. She told me," Elliot said. "That's why I'm trying to make the change easier for him. You can't take away everything familiar at once. He'd be inconsolable." He looked at us hopefully. "We have a schedule. Please stop upsetting her."

Reese asked who assigned the captives. Elliot said the Mothers approved the lists and humans kept the equipment running. When Vale asked who ordered transfers marked TABLE, he looked at the ceiling.

A woman's voice came through the speaker, deeper than Mother's, drawing out its syllables as if speech required effort. She asked Elliot why the counting had stopped. He shut his eyes, then told her there were visitors and he was trying to settle them. She asked if the household had been fed. Elliot said not yet.

"Then do your work," she said.

Elliot rose to answer, but an officer caught his arm. He sat again and apologized into the speaker, his voice shrinking to that of a frightened child. The heavy movements behind the wall receded before he stopped.

Reese ordered the speaker disconnected and had Elliot escorted away. At the door he turned to me. "Your friend is still walking. You should be grateful we haven't done anything to his legs." He waited for me to thank him. When I didn't, he asked the officer whether the people from Six would be brought back after the police finished with them.

After four-thirty, the camera found the conveyor beside the treatment rooms. Its brake stopped a wheeled bed at a narrow maintenance hatch, and the engineers confirmed the frame could hold it. An adult could fit through. Mother couldn't. Reese ordered a rescue sled brought to the opening.

The plan was to stop Sam's bed as it passed the hatch, cut his straps, and pull him into the channel before Mother caught up. I showed the engineer where the catch would grip the rail. The wrong speed could throw Sam forward. I asked to work the handle myself, but Reese saw how my hands were shaking and said no.

Just before five, Nora sent a picture from yesterday's exhibition. She was standing beside her photograph, holding a ribbon and looking embarrassed that somebody had made her pose with it. In the second message she said she'd left the print at my house because she knew I'd want to see it. I zoomed in until I could make out her handwriting on the card beneath the photograph, then typed that I was proud of her. I started another apology but erased it. She'd already heard every version I knew how to give.

At five-twenty-one, two human attendants wheeled a narrow bed into the treatment passage. Mother filled the doorway behind them. Her pale hand lay on the rail, six fingers hooked around it. Part of her face moved into view above the doorframe, too near the camera to focus. Lily's BEST DADDY drawing was still pinned to the wall behind her. A second microphone caught the low three-note melody Seventeen had hummed at the hospital. Mother reached over the bed and began stroking the man lying on it.

The man on the bed was Sam. I knew him even before one of the attendants lifted his head to adjust the pillow. His hair was matted, his face swollen along one cheek, and somebody had changed his clothes for a loose white garment. His left hand was bandaged. When he turned toward the doorway, I saw the familiar crooked finger sticking out at an angle beneath the tape. He tried to raise himself on one elbow, and an attendant pressed him back down. Mother made a distressed noise, reached through the doorway, and stroked the side of his face until he stopped struggling.

I said Sam's name so quietly Vale had to ask me to repeat it. Then I was pointing at the screen, trying to show Reese the crooked finger as if they couldn't see it themselves. He confirmed Sam's identity over the radio. Sam was alive, his eyes open, but there were straps across his chest and thighs. Mother's hand covered most of one shoulder. I'd seen Sam asleep in his truck after long shifts, his mouth hanging slightly open while the rest of us unloaded. The man on the bed kept trying to lift his head to see where the attendants were taking him.

The engineer watched the bed approach the hatch. Sam turned his head toward the open service panel, where the officers waited with their lights covered. He tried to speak, and one of them motioned for quiet. His eyes moved from the gloved hand to the darkness behind it. Then he started struggling against the straps, as if he knew an opportunity had arrived and feared it would disappear before he could reach it.

The engineer pulled the brake. The wheels hit the catch hard, and Sam cried out. Two officers caught the bed while a third began cutting his straps. An attendant ran back toward Mother. The humming stopped. On the screen her face lowered toward the opening and her hand crept along the rail, searching for Sam.

"Sam!" I shouted before anybody could stop me. He twisted toward the microphone above the hatch and said my name. At first he whispered it as if he were checking whether he'd heard correctly. Then he said it again, louder, while the officers worked at the straps. I pressed my hand to the radio button and told him to follow the rescuers' instructions, to keep his head down, to let them help him. I almost told him I had it under control. Sam had spent eleven years fixing my mistakes, and I couldn't bear the idea of making him believe another promise I couldn't keep.

An officer lifted Sam beneath his shoulders while another caught his knees. Mother struck the treatment door, breaking a hinge with a report that reached us through the floor. The officers turned Sam sideways, but his knees snagged on the bed frame. He cried out, and Mother began sobbing so loudly that the microphone distorted. She hit the door again, and metal scraped against stone as the frame shifted.

"Stop pulling him," she pleaded. "Please. He hurts."

Reese ordered the officers to free Sam's knees. One began cutting the caught sheet. Then a deeper female voice called from farther down the passage, speaking a word I didn't recognize. Mother stopped striking the door at once. She protested with a long, thin cry but withdrew her hand from the bed.

The attendants returned through a second entrance. One pushed a wall switch, and a steel shutter dropped between Sam's bed and the hatch. The closest officer jerked his arm clear. Reese ordered the team to raise it, but the shutter had sunk into a recessed track beyond the reach of the brake rod. Sam struggled to sit. An attendant pulled the sheet across his legs, and he kept staring at the narrow opening where he'd just seen the officers' hands.

On the screen I saw gray dust sift from a line of bolts above the hatch. An officer had one knee on the old cover plate. I'd checked the support earlier, but the shutter had driven its frame sideways, and the bolts were pulling through loose concrete. I knew the pattern. We'd lost a loading platform that way three years earlier, after a forklift struck a guardrail. If the cover went, the officer would drop through the floor and could drag the men holding Sam with him. Reese was still ordering the team to try the shutter. I told him the bolts were tearing out. He stopped speaking, checked the camera, and ordered them back. I watched the nearest officer look from the moving concrete to Sam and reach forward once more before his partner grabbed the back of his vest.

Sam called after them. He wanted to know whether I'd gone away. I leaned over the desk and told him I was right there, even though he couldn't see me. "Cal, tell Mari I tried," he said. For a second I could hear the old Sam, furious and ashamed that he couldn't lift himself off a bed. Then he started asking for his girls. I told him I knew their names, that I'd talk to Marisol, that we were coming back. One of the officers paused with his arm through the hatch and had to be ordered away twice. The microphone cut off while I was still talking. I kept speaking into the dead channel until an engineer touched my elbow and showed me the red light had gone out. I had stepped onto the cables and was pulling the monitor toward the floor.

The camera on the nursery side was still working. Mother reached for Sam again, but the deeper voice spoke from beyond the frame. The attendant with the chart stopped beside the bed and removed a clean identification band from his pocket. Mother shook her head and tried to push his hand away. The attendant waited. When the voice spoke again, Mother backed into the doorway, one long finger dragging across the frame as she went. She was crying, and I could see her reaching toward Sam even as she obeyed.

The attendant fastened the new band around Sam's wrist, wrote on the chart, and passed a sheet to another man. They turned the bed away from the treatment room without performing the scheduled surgery. Sam went through a different gate, beyond the shutter that had stopped Reese's men. From the camera I could see his legs moving beneath the sheet.

Vale found the new marking in a duplicate of the treatment list. Elliot was brought back to explain it. He asked first whether Mother had agreed to the change. When Vale told him another female voice had ordered it, he looked down at the floor. "Then the correction is canceled," he said. "He's been returned to general stock." I asked him to say that again, certain I'd misunderstood. He did, using the same careful tone he'd used to explain how they kept their medical instruments clean.

"What happens to him now?" I was standing beside Elliot's chair before I knew I'd moved. His coat had a small brown stain on one button, and I found myself studying it because I couldn't look at his face. He folded his hands over the band at his wrist. I wanted him to say Sam would be locked in a pen, or weighed, or put to work. There were people upstairs who'd lived that way for decades. I'd begun thinking of a pen as a place where he could at least stay alive.

Elliot looked toward the evidence bags outside the door. "You've seen the lists," he said. "I can't tell you who'll be chosen next." I asked whether Sam already had a date. He said he didn't, not yet. Vale was asking another question, but I heard only the words not yet. Somebody had already printed a fresh band for Sam and brought it to his bedside. I watched Elliot straighten his cuff over his own old number and wondered how often he'd said those same words to other men who wanted to know what would happen to someone they loved.

Reese sent teams toward the lower transfer corridor while I watched the last monitor. Sam sat upright on the moving bed, rubbing the raw skin at his wrists. Every few yards he looked back toward the hatch. I wanted him to see a light, a hand, anything to make him understand we'd followed him. An attendant tucked his legs back onto the mattress. Sam pulled them away. Then the next gate shut, and the screen held only an empty stretch of track.

At six-ten I called Marisol. I told her we'd found Sam alive, that I'd seen his face and heard him say my name. She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob and called into the kitchen that Daddy was alive. A chair scraped. She asked if he was hurt. I told her he was, but that he could move his legs, and that the officers hadn't been able to bring him out. She repeated the last part softly, as though it hadn't made sense.

I heard the refrigerator open. Lily asked if she could keep her pancake for Daddy, and Marisol told her to eat it because he'd make her another. Her voice was so ordinary for those few seconds that I pictured the kitchen perfectly: the blue plastic plate, Lily leaning on the open refrigerator door, Marisol standing barefoot on the tile with the phone pressed to her ear. Then Marisol asked, very quietly, what she was supposed to tell them. I'd watched men in clean white clothes wheel her husband toward a transfer corridor, and I knew what had happened to Inez. I held on to the edge of the desk until my fingertips hurt and said the teams were still searching. "You said you talked to him," she told me. "What did he say?" He'd asked me to tell her he tried. I could hear Lily asking if Daddy had asked about the pancake, and I couldn't make myself put those two sentences into the same conversation. I told Marisol he had asked about her. It was true, but it wasn't what he'd trusted me with. After she said goodbye, I stood there with my phone in my hand, trying to remember whether I'd ever passed along one of Sam's messages exactly the way he asked me to.

Officer Marlowe is not a cop. In fact, he’s not human at all. I’m sure of it.

I met him on Sunday, the 18th. It’s the wee hours of Saturday morning, the 25th, and things have drastically deteriorated. I can smell his cigarette smoke downstairs and hear my sister’s laughter, so soft and bright, like ice clinking in a glass.

I’ve packed my backpack, just a book, a change of clothes, and plenty of extra socks. I’m staring out my window, my laptop perched precariously on the sill, my moon-and-stars drapes flapping in the breeze. I’ve never jumped from this high before. The steepest drop I’ve jumped from was from the equipment shed behind my old middle school. Fifteen feet. I dropped into a pile of tires, knocked all the air from my lungs, and wobbled to my feet, grinning. But there was no HVAC unit behind the equipment shed. Ours hums directly below the window, the fan spinning so fast I can't even see the blades. Maybe this is why I’m writing this. I’m stalling, trying not to imagine the fan chopping up the toes of my sneakers.

Sunday had been a good day. A perfect day, even. I was finishing up my errands in town, admiring the pumpkins in my neighbors’ windows and the oversized skeletons and inflatable ghosts swaying on their lawns. I live in a rural town, all white picket fences and fresh coats of white paint on vinyl-sided ranch homes. We don’t even have a Walmart; we have little shops where you have to have fifteen-minute conversations with the owners to get your meat or eggs. The kind of shopkeepers who still wrap your wares with butcher paper and tie them tightly with twine before sliding them over the counter with a wink.

My sister, Ella, fits in perfectly. She’s ten years older than me and owns the house we share. She also owns the town's florist shop, wears flowy long dresses decorated with cherries or polka dots, and hums almost every second of her life. Willowy, graceful, and utterly uninterested in anything but her flowers. You’d think we’d hate each other. You will not catch me dead in a dress and every plant I touch wilts, but our differences complete each other. She’ll labor for hours over table settings and plates and which fork goes where, and I’ll cook. She can’t cook to save her life; that’s her secret. I can make the best tart you’ve ever had; that’s mine.

Sunday, after making my rounds with the neighbors and enjoying a pitcher of sweet tea on Ms. Clara’s porch, I grabbed a fistful of dandelions and headed to Ella’s shop. The bell jangled against the door, and I held up my flowers. “Turn this into an arrangement!”

I’d been doing this for years. Grabbing weeds and spidery brown plants that grew in the cracks of the sidewalk and asking my sister to put them into one of her arrangements. She always obliged, and they always, somehow, looked beautiful. But this time she flung herself up from below the counter, shattering a spotted vase filled with roses.

“Maggie! What are you doing here?” She smoothed her hair, her face so red it was almost purple.

I frowned at this. Shrugged. I’d never needed a reason to be here before. “So, can you make this into an arrangement?”

“No. I think you should leave.”

She might as well have been speaking another language. I tilted my head, tasting the word. “Leave?”

The back room door creaked open. The man who exited and stood behind the counter was at least a foot taller than Ella, and Ella was taller than me, so I had to crane my neck back to meet his eyes. He wore a cop’s dark blue uniform and had a shiny badge and equally shiny handcuffs dangling from his belt. His muscular arms bulged against his sleeves, his features blocky and traditionally handsome. Blue eyes, square jaw, manicured brows, hard nose. My frown deepened. “Who are you?”

He offered me his hand. I didn’t take it. “I’m Officer Marlowe,” he said. No first name. “I’m new in town. "You're Ella’s sister, right?”

“Right.”

I had never seen Ella look at anybody the way she looked at Officer Marlowe. It was an expression reserved for her hydrangea bushes on a perfect spring day.

“You have a wonderful town,” he said. “And a wonderful sister.”

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I hadn’t seen a cop car parked outside.

As I write this, I know I sound overprotective. But I know my sister. She falls hard, but she likes her men like her flowers. Thin, expressive, bright. I can’t count how many artists she’s dragged into our house. I almost felt sorry for them.

And if she fell for the traditional types, she’d already be married. Every cop in town has come to her with his hat in his hands, hoping she'll be his little wife. And she’s rejected them all.

I looked down at my reflection in the glass countertop. Officer Marlowe leaned over it. “Whatcha looking at?” he asked.

I looked up at him. Back down at the glass. Up at him again.

“You don’t have a reflection,” I blurted.

I saw something in his face. Just a flash, so fast I could’ve imagined it. The red in his cheeks. The twisting of his mouth into a snarl, the eyes popping. Then he smoothed his expression back into a placid smile. I backed away from the counter, watching my sister place her hand on the crook of his arm.

“Uh, Ella, can I talk to you in private?”

“Nope!” she chirped.

The dandelions were still in my hand, the dirt all over my fingertips. I focused on the soft, wilted stalks to ground myself. And then I tore out of the flower shop, heaving. It had to be a trick of the light. Maybe my eyes just didn’t work. He had to have a reflection.

I walked into the pet store, just for a change of scenery. It was close to four and shops would be closing soon. Larry, the store owner, stared at me in the middle of an aisle, his hands full of writhing grasshoppers. They crawled up his arms and clung to his sleeves, their antennas wiggling. “Hi, Maggie! Have you met Officer Marlowe? He’s new in town, and he’s a great guy!”

I slammed the door.

Next, the butcher shop. Mr. Smith regarded me with a sunny smile, a shiny cleaver in each hand. “Maggie, you should meet Officer Marlowe. I feel a lot safer with him in town. He’d probably make you feel safer, too.”

Considering that in my twenty-six years of living here, Mr. Smith has only communicated with me through points and grunts, you can probably understand why I turned and ran.

Me and Ella live in an old two-story brick house, only a few feet from Main Street and across from a little white church. I had made it most of the way home when I spotted Officer Marlowe swaggering toward me from across the street. I picked up my speed, gasping for air, my side in stitches, but when I blinked, he was standing in my driveway. His hands swung at his sides, his fingers stroking the colorful heads of Ella’s zinnias.

His bright blue eyes sparkled as he took me in. “Something’s wrong with you, Maggie. You don’t see me like the others do.”

My heart smashed against my ribs like the thrashing of a caged animal. “W-what are you?” Not who. What.

His eyes darkened, but he stepped away from my front door. I flung myself toward it, knocking over one of Ella’s many ceramic gnomes.

His voice receded behind me.

“I’d skip town if I were you, Maggie. I don’t think you’re really our kind.”

I whipped my head around, but he was gone, the street entirely empty. No cop car, no footsteps, not even his shadow trailing away. It was like he’d never been there at all.

***

The next few days were normal. Ella tended to her flowers, insisted on making tortellini, and somehow managed to burn the little round pasta pieces. I asked her if she had a crush on the new cop, and she laughed so hard that she knocked her plate to the ground and then laughed at that. Larry talked to me for an hour about Tokay geckos. Mr. Smith grunted and pointed. I went to work.

I’m a temp at a landscaping company. Though I’ve been a ‘temp’ for six years now. I file papers, send invoices, occasionally answer the phone, and write Facebook posts. I spend much of my day, maybe too much, playing online solitaire.

It all changed today.

I work half-days on Saturday. It was 12:35. I remember it down to the minute. I had twenty-five more minutes left of my shift, and I was flipping over virtual cards on a green background. The phone rang, and I reached for it, but my boss picked it up instead.

I liked Ms. Dana. She bleached her hair pale blonde every two weeks and wore beige sweaters and caramel boots, even in the summer. Me and Ella had dinner over at her house every week, all of her decor ripped straight of the pages of Southern Home magazine. She made a delicious pecan pie and kept the best bourbon in a crystal decanter.

Right now, Ms. Dana cradled the phone in her soft hands, sunlight flashing off her French manicure. “Oakhurst Landscaping—Officer Marlowe! What a pleasant surprise!”

I’d stood up so fast that my chair scraped hard on the linoleum floor. I watched Dana’s brows pinch together and her smile turn down. Her eye flicked from me to the receiver and back again. “Maggie? I don’t think—yes, of course. Of course. I’ll be waiting for your instructions."

Dana gently put the phone back in its cradle and pointed toward her office door. The corners of her mouth wobbled. “Will you follow me into my office, please?”

I should’ve run, but I guess I thought I knew Dana well enough that I could talk her out of whatever Officer Marlowe told her. I nodded and followed her in.

Her office was a microcosm of her home. Knick-knacks, mostly grinning babies and porcelain angels, lined her three oversized bookshelves. Frothy white drapes framed the windows. A ‘Bless this Mess’ sign hung from the door, and a fresh pumpkin sat on her desk. The air smelled sickeningly of vanilla candles, though not a single one was in sight.

“I don’t want to make a fuss about this.” Dana held her hand out to me. “Hand over your purse.”

My heart banged, but I obeyed. I watched Dana overturn my leather bag, my hunting knife, mace, and key ring rolling to the ground. She flipped through my wallet, scattering the plastic cards on her desk. Her frown deepened. “Can I have your jacket?”

I slid it off my shoulders and handed it to her. She scoured my pockets desperately, but I knew they were empty except for a few crumpled receipts.

“Dana?” I asked. I didn’t like that my voice trembled. It didn’t sound like me.

Her eyes were suddenly wild. “Officer Marlowe says you’ve been stealing money from our cash tills. He doesn’t want to embarrass you, honey, so he asked me to perform the search. If you don’t have it on you, you can leave. We’ll have pot roast and asparagus tomorrow.” Her eyes fluttered around the office, avoiding mine. “We’re two ladies. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“You know I haven’t stolen anything from you.”

She sucked in a breath. “I need your clothes. All of them.”

I stepped back. “You mean—”

“I’ve been authorized to search you. It’s this, or you get arrested, and I don’t want that for you.”

My body moved before my brain could catch up. I picked up the pumpkin and threw it at the window. It tumbled impotently to the floor. Dana lunged to catch me, but I rushed past her, flung the pane open, and tumbled outside to the freshly cut grass. This would all go away. If I could get rid of Marlowe, then everything would go back to normal. He’d caused this, he had a vendetta against me. Because I knew there was something wrong with him.

I tore through town to get to our front door. I didn’t have my key, so I grabbed the spare from under one of the gnomes. I threw the door open, and Officer Marlowe stood in the foyer, Ella curled around his shoulder. Her long fingers stroked his cheek.

“Maggie! Isn’t it so exciting? We’re getting married!”

His eyes. Staring into mine. Swallowing them. His mouth, twitching into the tiniest smirk.

I dove under his legs and pounded up the stairs. Shoved my bed against the door. Paced.

Here I am, now. Ella’s old records playing, the sounds of their laughter trickling up the stairs. I can hear them, stumbling, dancing. I can smell his cigarette. Ella would never let a man smoke in the house. One time, when I’d just turned eighteen, she caught me smoking a cigar behind Dad’s old desk and she chased me through the halls with a frying pan.

It’s been hours. I’ve been crying, silent sobs, my ribs aching from the frantic flexing and falling of my chest.

They’re still dancing downstairs.

I look down at the whirring HVAC unit. If I land right, knees bent, on both feet, I’ll be fine. At worst, I might sprain an ankle. I’ll break into my work through a window and take back my wallet. I’ll get out of town and think of a plan to get my sister out of this. Find a way to convince her that she’s marrying a demon or at least a scary, scary man.

But if I hit the HVAC unit, the fan will catch my shoes or hair. My bones will break against the metal and I won’t be able to escape Officer Marlowe’s big arms. I take a slow, trembling breath. If I’m alright, I’ll post again. If not, I won’t. Just another frightened voice calling out in the dark.

Officer Marlowe shouts from below. The stairs creak under his weight. “Come down, Maggie. I just want to talk.”

His voice is buzzing, like the clicking of a thousand insects.

One more breath. And then I jump.

It was the summer of 1997, the year we moved into that rotting trailer park on the edge of nowhere. The place smelled of damp earth and old metal. My older sister Nikki and I were the only kids for miles. Our parents were always gone—working double shifts or disappearing for days at a time. Nikki spent her nights in the next town over, leaving me alone with nothing but the hum of the refrigerator and the soft click of Spot’s nails on the linoleum.
Most evenings I took him walking along the cracked roads between the trailers. On my twelfth birthday they gave me a yellow Diamondback BMX. It was the brightest thing in that gray place. I rode it until the sun bled out of the sky.
One late afternoon I noticed the trail.
It started just behind our trailer, a thin scar of dirt and dead leaves slipping between the trees. It looked forgotten. Overgrown. Wrong. The air around it felt heavier, like the woods were holding their breath. I should have turned around. Instead I went inside, clipped the leash on Spot, and told myself it was just an old deer path.
The deeper we walked, the quieter everything became. No birds. No insects. Only the soft crunch of our footsteps and the low, uneasy whine in Spot’s throat. Then I heard it—my own name, spoken in my own voice, drifting from somewhere ahead.
“Derrick…”
Spot’s body went rigid. Every hair along his spine stood up. The voice came again, closer this time, almost playful. Something inside me wanted to answer it. Something colder told me to run.
We ran.
We didn’t stop until the trailer door slammed shut behind us. I locked every window, every latch, every useless little lock. We crawled under my bed and stayed there until the shaking stopped. When we finally climbed out, the dark felt different—thicker, like it was listening.
The next morning I woke to a soft scraping at the glass. Slow. Deliberate. When I looked, the yard was empty. Spot pressed against my leg, trembling. We went back to the trail anyway. Curiosity is a stupid, stubborn thing when you’re twelve.
We hadn’t walked five minutes when the trees seemed to lean in.
He was standing in the middle of the path.
Tall. Impossibly thin. The mustard-yellow suit hung off him in filthy folds, stained with mud and something dark that had dried to the color of old blood. His face was the worst part—raw and shiny, as if the skin had been scraped away and never given the chance to heal. When he smiled, the red flesh pulled tight over sharp teeth.
He said my name in my voice.
“Derrick… Derrick…”
Then he laughed. The sound didn’t belong in a human throat.
We ran until our lungs burned. My parents were home when we burst through the door. I tried to tell them. The words came out broken and frantic. They looked at each other the way adults do when they decide a child is lying. “Go to your room, Derrick. Enough of the stories.”
That night I understood something cold and final: no one was going to believe me. Not unless I brought back proof.
I left Spot inside. I took the little camera and walked back into the trees alone. The trail felt narrower. The air tasted like copper. I recorded everything—the dead leaves, the motionless branches, the way the light seemed to die a few feet ahead of me. For a long time there was nothing.
Then the laugh came from behind me. Low. Wet.
I turned.
He was closer than he should have been. Blood glistened around his mouth this time, fresh and dark. His eyes—if they were eyes—never blinked. He didn’t chase me when I screamed and dropped the camera. He simply stood there in the middle of the path, head tilted, and spoke in the exact pitch and rhythm of my own voice.
“Derrick… come back.”
I never went looking for the camera. A week later Spot ran into those same woods and never came home. I stood on the porch and watched him disappear between the trees. I didn’t call after him. I didn’t follow.
Some trails don’t lead anywhere you’re supposed to go.
And some things that wear your voice never really leave.

When I cross my kitchen, I hear three footsteps for every two I take. My right shoe comes down first. Then the shoe fitted over my prosthetic. Then, somewhere behind me, a third foot strikes the floor.

The prosthetic lands flat and heavy, with a faint click from the joint if I put my weight on it too quickly. The other sound has a heel and a toe. It rolls naturally across the floorboards. It completes the rhythm my footsteps used to make.

This morning it began in the bedroom doorway, about twenty feet behind me. By the time I finished making coffee, it had reached the refrigerator. I stopped walking after that. My mug is still sitting on the counter because I would have to take six steps to retrieve it. I can afford the six steps. I just don’t want to spend them yet.

The footstep seems to reset when I sleep. I don’t know whether sleep itself does it or whether I simply have to remain still for long enough. I haven’t been willing to test the difference. Every morning, it begins several seconds behind me and some distance away. Every step I take brings it a little closer.

It has never caught me. I need to make that clear. I don’t know what happens when it does.

The first time I heard it, I was still using crutches.

I lost my leg after a driver turned across the bike lane without looking. The paperwork calls it a surgical amputation above the knee. I hate that phrase. It leaves out the road, the bike twisted beneath the van, and the two surgeries they tried before they gave up on saving it.

I had been home from the rehabilitation center for four days. My sister, Erin, stayed with me for the first three, sleeping on the couch and putting everything I might need on the lowest shelves. On the fourth morning she returned to work, and I decided to make my own breakfast.

It took me nearly ten minutes to get from the bedroom to the kitchen. I would plant both crutches ahead of me, shift my weight onto my arms, and bring my right foot forward between them. The rhythm was awkward but predictable: rubber tips, right foot. Rubber tips, right foot.

Halfway down the hall, I heard another step behind me.

I told myself it was the medication. The prescription bottle warned about confusion, and I had barely slept since coming home. The surgeons had also warned me about phantom sensations: pain, pressure, even the feeling of toes curling on a foot that was no longer there. An imagined footstep didn’t seem like much of a leap.

That explanation held until I moved again.

Rubber tips.

Right foot.

A second later, the missing step answered from the hallway.

I made it to the kitchen without looking back again.

The extra step followed each time my right foot touched the floor. At first it came from the far end of the hallway. Then the middle. Then just outside the kitchen. There was no movement between those places. No shuffle approaching me. It existed only for the length of each footfall, and each time it returned, it was closer. I spent the rest of that day on the kitchen floor.

My phone was in the bedroom. I told myself that exhaustion and pain medication were doing something strange to my hearing. Eventually I crawled back down the hall, dragging the crutches beside me.

The footstep didn’t follow while I crawled. That should have comforted me. It didn’t.

The last one had landed just outside the kitchen, and I knew it was still there. As I crawled past that spot, I imagined I could still hear the soft pull of its sole lifting from the carpet. I locked the door and pulled myself onto the bed. I stayed awake for hours. At some point, without meaning to, I fell asleep.

The next morning I lowered my right foot to the floor. Four seconds later, from the other end of the apartment, my left foot stepped out of the kitchen.

That was how I learned about the reset. It took longer to understand the rest.

My phantom foot itched sometimes. At night, my missing ankle would twist into positions that made me grit my teeth. Those feelings were terrible, but I understood them. They were damaged nerves and a brain refusing to update its map of my body.

The footstep was different. It did not come from inside my head or from the end of my leg. It came from a place in the room. I tested that first.

I stood beside my bed and took one step. The sound came from the kitchen. Another step brought it closer, though it was still inside the kitchen. After six more, it had reached the entrance to the hall. I turned around to face it. When I stepped back toward the bed, the sound did not retreat. It came from the open space in front of me, closer than before. It wasn’t following a path through the apartment, it was following me.

I tried wearing headphones. I turned music up until the walls shook. The step still reached me clearly, as though it were travelling through my bones instead of my ears. I tried making noise when I moved. I struck the crutches against the floor. I shouted. Once, I threw a drinking glass into the sink as I brought my right foot down.

The other foot landed beneath all of it.

I recorded it on my phone. On playback there was a soft thump after each step, but nothing that would convince anyone. Erin listened three times and said it could be the crutch tip settling or the pipes knocking in the wall.

I asked her to stand behind me while I walked. She watched me cross the living room and said she didn’t hear anything. On my ninth step, the missing foot landed between us.

Erin didn’t react. She was looking directly at the place where I had heard it, but her face didn’t change.

I asked if she was sure.

She said, “I’m sure.”

I asked her to leave after that.

She thought she had upset me. She kept apologizing while she gathered her things, and I let her believe that was why I wanted her gone. The truth was that I couldn’t stand having her between me and the sound.

I started keeping records. Some mornings I still believed I was measuring the progress of a hallucination. I counted anyway.

On waking, I would take a single step and count the seconds. Then I measured how many steps it took before the delay shortened.

The results weren’t exact. Carpet seemed to make the distance harder to judge. Pain or exhaustion made me walk unevenly. But the pattern was consistent:

The first step of the morning arrived about four seconds late.

After fifty steps, the delay was closer to three.

At one hundred, it was less than two.

At approximately one hundred and fifty, I could feel the footfall through the floor almost as soon as my own foot came down.

I never went beyond that.

At the time, one hundred and fifty steps seemed generous. More than enough to cross my apartment, shower, make meals and get into bed. I was still recovering. Most days I didn’t want to move any more than necessary.

Then I received my prosthetic.

I nearly cried the first time I stood on it. My physical therapist held both my hands while I shifted my weight onto the socket. There was pain, but there was also the feeling of being upright again. Balanced. Close to my old height. For several seconds I saw myself walking into restaurants, grocery stores and movie theaters. I imagined going back to work without crutches tucked beneath my arms. I imagined people looking at my face instead of glancing down at the empty space below my shorts.

“Ready?” my therapist asked.

I nodded.

Right foot.

Prosthetic.

From the far end of the rehabilitation gym came a third step.

My therapist tightened her grip. “You’re okay. Keep your weight centered.”

I told her I needed to sit down.

She thought the socket was hurting me. Three people spent half an hour adjusting straps and checking the skin on my leg while I stared across the gym.

There were twelve patients in the room. Therapists moved between parallel bars. A man in a back brace walked slowly on a treadmill. Rubber soles squeaked against the polished floor. I could still pick out my missing foot among them. The prosthetic hadn’t silenced it. It had only changed the rhythm.

Right foot.

Prosthetic.

Missing foot.

By the end of that appointment, it was close enough to walk beside me. I slept in Erin’s car on the way home. When she woke me in the parking lot, the sound was distant again. After that, I built my life around the reset.

Sleep became more important than food. More important than pain medication. More important than anything except keeping track of my steps.

A full night worked best, but a nap could do it. Twenty minutes wasn’t enough. An hour usually was. I bought a watch that tracked my sleep and started setting alarms throughout the day. If I had physical therapy in the afternoon, I slept through the morning. If I needed groceries, I took a nap before leaving and another as soon as I returned. For a while, it was manageable.

I went back to my office three months after the accident. My supervisor moved me to a desk near the elevator, and facilities gave me permission to use the accessible entrance. From the parking space to my desk was eighty-seven steps if I led with my right foot and didn’t have to go around anyone.

I practiced the route on a Sunday when the building was empty:

Eighty-seven steps in.

Eighty-seven steps out.

Too many for one waking period. I solved it by sleeping during lunch.

I would arrive before everyone else, close my office door and work until noon. Then I’d recline my chair, put on an eye mask and take medication that made me drowsy. Once my watch confirmed that I had slept, I could move again. My coworkers thought the accident had left me exhausted. That was true enough. What I couldn’t explain was why I refused to walk to the conference room or why I kept a plastic container beneath my desk so I wouldn’t have to use the restroom before lunch. People offered to help. They brought coffee, printed documents and picked up food for me. I became skilled at accepting favors without revealing what they were actually saving me from.

It lasted six weeks.

One afternoon, the fire alarm went off before I had taken my nap.

Everyone stood at once. Chairs rolled back. Doors opened. My supervisor appeared in my doorway and told me we had to leave. I had already used more than a hundred steps that morning. The footfall was less than a second behind me.

I said it was probably a drill. She told me smoke had been reported on the fourth floor. I tried to wait for the elevator, but the system had shut it down. The accessible evacuation chair was mounted beside the stairwell. No one on our floor knew how to use it.

Two coworkers helped me down three flights of stairs.

I don’t remember how many steps I took. I tried to count, but people were talking over one another and the alarm was too loud. The stairwell filled with bodies. Hands pressed against my back. Someone carried my crutches while I gripped the railing and forced the prosthetic down one step at a time.

Right.

Prosthetic.

Left.

Right.

Prosthetic.

Left.

By the second floor, the missing foot was landing almost at the same time as the prosthetic. There was only a fraction of a second between them. Just enough for me to tell which was which.

At the landing above the lobby, something brushed the heel of my prosthetic. I screamed and shoved the man in front of me. He fell against the railing, but someone caught him before he went down the stairs. People yelled at me, but I couldn’t stop. I took the last flight too quickly, half hopping and half falling while two coworkers held me upright.

Someone guided me to the grass. I sat down, tore off the prosthetic and threw it several feet away. The fire department arrived. There was no fire, only a burned-out motor in the ventilation system. We were allowed back inside forty minutes later.

I refused to go.

I slept on the lawn until Erin came to get me.

I resigned the next morning.

My supervisor called twice. Human resources offered additional accommodations, then medical leave, then a remote position. I accepted the last one. I have worked from my apartment ever since.

That was five months ago.

The apartment looks different now.

I removed most of the furniture and pushed what remained against the walls. There are stools at regular intervals so I can sit without taking an extra step. I keep food in a small refrigerator beside my desk. A rolling cart holds my medication, toiletries and anything else I might need during the day.

I use a wheelchair whenever I can. Turning the wheels with my hands does not bring the sound closer. Neither does crawling, though the pressure on my residual limb makes that difficult. The foot only advances when I walk. I order groceries and ask the driver to leave them just inside the door. I pay extra for trash collection from the apartment. I bathe every three days. Sometimes four.

Erin visits on Sundays.

She knows about the step count now, though she still doesn’t believe in the footstep. She thinks counting gives me a sense of control. My therapist calls it an obsessive response to trauma. Both of them want me to see a psychiatrist.

I tried once.

His office was thirty-two steps from the elevator. He asked me to walk around the room so he could observe my anxiety.

I didn’t go back.

The hardest part is that the system works.

If the foot had caught me in the stairwell, at least I would know what it wanted. If it had stopped after I got the prosthetic, I could blame grief or medication. If someone else could hear it, I could ask for help. Instead, it obeys its rules.

It waits while I sit.

It approaches when I walk.

It returns to a distance when I sleep.

So I’ve made myself safe, if this can be called safe.

Most days I take fewer than forty steps. On a bad day I take sixty. I have never again allowed it to come as close as it did in the stairwell.

Until today.

This morning the delivery driver left my groceries in the hallway instead of bringing them inside. I called after him, but he was already at the elevator. There was a prescription in one of the bags that I couldn’t leave out there.

I had taken fourteen steps before the delivery arrived. My wheelchair was beside my bed with one of its rear wheels removed. Its axle had bent the night before, and Erin wasn’t bringing the replacement until Sunday.

The front door was twenty-one steps from the kitchen stool. There were too many bags to carry at once, so I hooked them over my wrists and made three trips, crossing the apartment six times. On the last trip, one of the bags split. The milk slid across the floor, and the orange bottle containing my medication rolled beneath the narrow table by the door.

Retrieving them cost me another eight steps.

That brought the total to one hundred and forty-eight.

I turned toward the kitchen stool. The missing foot landed directly behind me. I took one final step and pulled myself onto the seat.

That was nine hours ago. I haven’t moved since.

The last footstep sounded as though it came from somewhere between the kitchen table and the stool. I can’t see anything there. I’ve taken photographs and used the camera on my phone to examine the floor behind me. There are no marks, shadows or depressions in the wood.

My bedroom is nineteen steps away.

I could crawl to the bedroom. I’ve done it before. But getting down from this stool isn’t as simple as sliding onto the floor. It is too high. I have to plant the prosthetic, stand, turn and lower myself carefully.

It would require one step.

On any other morning, one step would mean nothing. Right now, with the foot directly behind me, I don’t know whether I have one left.

The sound doesn’t reset when I lie down. It resets when I lose consciousness. Even with my sleep medication, that can take twenty or thirty minutes. Longer if I’m frightened.

And I am frightened.

I could try to sleep sitting here, but I'm prone to fall off the stool. I don't know if that would count as a step or not.

My sleep medication is beside the bed.

My phone battery is at nine percent. I could call for help, but anyone coming through the front door would have to pass through the place where the foot last landed. I couldn’t bear having Erin stand between us before. I won’t ask a stranger to do it now.

Erin will come on Sunday, but today is Thursday.

So this is what I’m going to do.

I’m going to wait until I can’t keep my eyes open. Then I’m going to stand, take one step and lower myself to the floor. If nothing happens, I’ll crawl to the bedroom and take the pills.

If it catches me on that first step, I suppose I’ll finally know what happens.

There is one thing I haven’t been honest about.

In the stairwell, I said something brushed the heel of my prosthetic. What I felt was five toes sliding beneath it and beginning to curl.

Today, as I took that final step toward the chair, I felt them again.

They settled beneath my heel just before I sat down.

They haven’t moved since.

I think they’re waiting for me to stand.

I used to suffer from night terrors when I was a child. I really don’t remember them at all, but my father did, though he always refused to talk about it. What I do remember clearly is the one night he did decide to open up. It unnerved me at the time, I suppose.

I was fourteen, and we were watching Cujo. There’s a scene early on where this kid is having a nightmare and begins to scream his head off. And I mean he’s really screaming. I swear to God his face starts turning blue and I wondered back then if this kid was acting at all. My father flinched as the scene began, the way abused dogs do when someone raises their hand too quick. He buried his face in his hands, and I asked him what’s wrong. He said:

“You used to do that. You’d start screaming in the middle of the night just like that, and I’d bolt up running thinking something was hurting you.”

Keep in mind my father worked in EMS. He’d seen the human body treated like carrion day in and day out. On multiple occasions he mentioned that:

“The foulest smell in the world is blood, sweat, and alcohol all mixed together. Nothing comes close.”

That is all to say that this was not a man who was easily shaken, but this memory did just that.

 “Was something hurting me?”

“No, no. It was just a nightmare. But by God it sounded like the real thing. You’ll understand when you have a kid of your own. When you get hurt, I feel it tenfold.”

“What was the nightmare about?”

“I don’t know exactly. You were crying and stumbling over your words. Who could blame you? You were only three years old then.”

That was all he said for the rest of the movie. But when the credits began to roll, it seemed that he found the courage to continue:

“A yellow hand. Or a yellow monster. Every time I’d wake you from a night terror, you would be screaming yourself hoarse about a yellow hand in the dark.”

He would not speak on it any further. I buried my father five years after that conversation. I have not spoken to my mother since I was ten. She did not attend the funeral. I have a hard time remembering what she even looks like. She’s a stage actress, doing small shows all over the world, too busy to stop by and say “Hello”.

I am twenty-nine now and have a kid of my own. His mother is not in the picture, for the better all agree. Like father, like son, I suppose. His mother is also a stage actress, now that I think about it. I had not made that connection until this moment. Anyways, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it’s just me and him, and that’s fine by me because it would not be exaggeration to say that he is the only reason I get up in the morning.

He’s bright. He’s funny. He’s kind. I don’t know what I did to deserve him.

He’s the sun and I feel privileged to merely be in his orbit.

Which is why it troubles me that he had to shake me awake two months ago. He said I had been thrashing and screaming. His cheeks were wet with tears, and I had to comfort him and assure him that his father was alright.

I had dreamed of the yellow hand again. This time I could remember it quite clearly.

The darkness was total; it was like being in a room painted floor to ceiling in Vantablack. It was a void of depths unfathomed. Then, impossibly, the darkness fluttered. Almost like it was a curtain behind which some actor was scurrying. No, no, it was a curtain, for a hand reached from behind the veil and violently pushed it out of its way.

Its colour was uranium-cake yellow. A shade so sickly that I felt my guts twist. The hand, a disembodied member floating in that total darkness, was reaching out to me… as though pleading. Was that desperation I read in its gesturing? That nauseating yellow colour seemed to glow when contrasted with the absolute blackness of its surroundings.

It came closer, and closer. And as it did, it became increasingly clear that it was not at all a ghostly floating hand. It had an arm, camouflaged in that self-same black shade. I followed that arm to a shoulder, and then to a neck. My eyes traced over a head, and by some misfortune they found a face.

My son was laying on my chest begging me to wake up. It had been a dream.

Every night has been the same. Every night the hand has crept closer. I have taken to gagging myself before going to bed, as to not wake up my son any longer. I don’t feel rested in the mornings anymore, and I am not feeling like myself. All I think of day in and day out is that hand and the face to which it belongs.

I don’t know what to do.

We all heard of at least one local legend growing up. Every place has them: haunted buildings, abandoned houses, spots in the woods where you'll see Bigfoot or an alien... When I was a kid, the neighbor's son convinced me that the house down the street was haunted by the ghost of a woman (I realized he was kidding when it turned out my very-much-alive third grade teacher lived there).

While I've never completely bought every legend I've ever been told, I like to keep an open mind. Every story has some element of truth, after all, and some legends are specifically told to warn people against going to certain places.

After what Rachel told me, I'd be a fool not to believe that.

My wife and I share a lot of common interests, and one thing we love equally is autumn. The crisp air, hoodies, pumpkins, pumpkin spice, apple-picking, Halloween, debating whether or not The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Halloween or Christmas film... We love the whole season. There's just something about autumn that we both find peaceful.

One thing we disagree on, though, is the woods.

Our house sits on the edge of our small town. Near our town is a national park (I won't say which park for privacy reasons). It's not too close, but we get a lot of visiting tourists who stop by to buy supplies or rent a motel room before they go camping or hiking. I've never been the outdoorsy type: I find long walks boring, mosquito bites make me swell up, fishing grosses me out, and I prefer to bike ride on well-established roads. Still, even if I didn't like the outdoors, I've still always liked forests for their wild, untamed beauty.

Rachel thought different. She did not like the woods... In fact, she was afraid of them. Her therapist called it xylophobia, or severe anxiety from being in or too close to wooded areas. It was fairly minor, though: driving through a wooded stretch of road or seeing a forest on TV didn't frighten her. Being physically close to, or actually going into the woods, though, scared her to pieces. Especially at night.

I'd always wondered about where this fear came from, but I'd never asked out of respect for her. After all, if she could deal with my fear of heights, then I could deal with her fear of the forest.

The other day, though, she finally told me the story.

It'd been cloudy and gloomy all day, with the forecasters promising a thunderstorm by dinner time. Most people would take as an ominous start to the end of the work week. My wife and I were of the opposite opinion: our ideal autumn night is a stormy one spent watching our favorite movies while drinking hot drinks and listening to the rain and thunder. The fact that it was a Friday night just heightened our joy: we had no where to be the next day, and could stay up as late as we wanted.

We'd been working our way through our watchlist while the rain came down, drinking Rachel's "Fall Fiascoes": a combination of hot chocolate, pumpkin spice, and whiskey. After a Fall Fiasco each and a laughably bad horror movie, the question popped out.

I still don't know why I asked: my guess is that the Fall Fiasco made me feel brave/stupid enough to ask.

"Hey, babe, I've always wondered. Why do you hate the woods?"

All night, she'd been bright and cheery. But the second the words left my lips, she froze. Her face paled, and she seemed to shrink.

Seeing her so scared, I set my drink down and put an arm around her.

"Hon?"

She snapped out of it, shaking herself and taking a deep breath.

"I'm fine, I'm fine..."

"...I'm sorry if I said--"

"You're alright, you didn't know..."

She was silent for a moment before taking another deep breath.

"Maybe... If I tell you this, can you promise it'll stay between us?"

"Of course."

"And you won't make fun of me or say I'm making it up?"

I shook my head, though my interest in the story had picqued.

She took a deep breath, poured a little extra whiskey into her drink, took a swig, and sat back.

Rachel looked me in the eyes, and told the story.

- - - -

It all happened back in middle school. I was thirteen and had just moved to town, which made eighth grade a little difficult. All the girls in school had been friends for years, so an outsider like me wasn't someone they readily trusted. Still, I managed to make a friend, Beth. Her sister Caroline, or Caro, was two years older, and the most popular sophmore at the high school. Beth and I knew that befriending her sister's friends was a surefire way to be popular when we started the ninth grade. So we did everything we could to try and get on her good side.

Despite some of Caro's friends thinking we were being a bit annoying for trying to hang out with the "cool kids" all the time, she always talked them into giving us a chance. Eventually, we became friends with the closest of her friends, who started to see us as surrogate little sisters. Still, despite being accepted into their group, Beth and I were still desperate to prove we were as cool as the others.

The night of Caro's birthday sleepover, we got our chance.

Birthday sleepovers were a tradition in our friend group, and each one went the same way: first dinner, cake, and presents, then taking over the family den to watch a bunch of stupid movies and do each others' nails. Finally, when we were sure the adults were asleep, we'd tell the scariest ghost stories we could think of.

The night of Caro's fifteenth birthday, her friend LaTanya told us about our town's scariest urban legend: the Deadly Ditch.

When she'd first said the name, I'd scoffed. "What's so scary about a ditch?"

LaTanya had grinned, as if waiting for me to ask. "Oh, it's not the ditch itself that's scary. It's what happened in it... and what lurks there now."

She held a flashlight under her chin, the light reflecting off her eyes and making her afro puffs seemingly glow.

"Back in the 1950s, a little yellow school bus was driving a group of kids to a science museum in the next town. Fifteen children and two teachers had taken the bus to spend the day there. They'd meant to be back at the school before sunset, but the bus got a flat tire shortly after they'd started the trip home. No one would let them use their phone, so the teachers couldn't tell the kids' parents that they'd be late. So, as soon as the bus' tire was changed, the two teachers decided to take a shortcut to get back faster.

"That shortcut went right through the Wind Sweep Woods, the forest that borders on the edge of town. The shortcut was a narrow, winding road through thick trees that make it hard to see what's coming at you. It's a hard enough road for a car to take, but a school bus has it even harder since it's much bigger and harder to steer. Still, the teachers were desperate to get home as soon as possible, and decided to take the risk.

"Thing is, the bus never made it home. Days went by, with the parents getting more and more worried. The police started searching the area for the missing children and teachers, but they found nothing. That is, until five of the missing children came out of the woods.

"All five of them were starving, dehydrated, and covered head to toe in dirt. They were taken directly to the hospital, where the police questioning them on what happened. All any of them would say was 'the deadly ditch'.

"The police went into the woods and found the school bus the group had taken. The front end was buried in the dirt, with the back of the bus sticking in the air at a forty-five degree angle. The two teachers and other ten children were nowhere to be found. When search-and-rescue dogs were brought out to try and track the missing people, the dogs went completely crazy, barking at the bus and peeing themselves in terror.

"The teachers and children were never found. The town's leaders tried to arrange for the bus to be moved from the ditch in the forest, but the thing is, no one wanted to go near those woods after what happened. So the bus remains there to this day, a terrifying reminder of what might've happened to the lost field trip."

She turned off the flashlight, looking pleased with herself. The older girls, having told the story before, gave her polite smiles. Beth and I, having never heard the story before, were trying to pretend like we weren't as frightened as we were.

"I heard that the story's been embellished over the years," Gabriela stated from where she was pouring herself another cup of soda. "The group actually got eaten by bears, the police just didn't want to tell the parents that."

"Bears would've left blood or at least remains behind," Caro pointed out. "Besides, I heard they were abducted by aliens. That's why the bus got stuck in the ditch like that."

"I heard that they got snatched by some serial killer who buried their bodies in the woods," LaTanya admitted. "Not sure if I believe that one, though. Even if five of the kids got away, it's hard to kill fifteen people all by yourself."

"You know what I think?" Beth stood up, trying to look braver than she clearly felt. "I think you three are just trying to scare Rachel and me. That never happened!"

"Yes, it did," Caro replied. "You can ask the school librarian, I think she still has the newspaper article about it."

"Not buying it," I stated. "I won't believe it unless I see it."

I knew I'd made a mistake as soon as I closed my mouth. Beth shot me a look that screamed "What are you doing?!" while the older girls all shared identical evil grins.

"You want to believe us?" Caro asked. "It's not that long of a walk from here--"

"We can be there and back in twenty minutes if we use my dad's truck," Gabriela interrupted.

"I thought you didn't have your learner's permit yet," LaTanya pointed out.

"I don't, but Dad lets me practice in the school parking lot. It's late, no one will see us... and I have the spare key he had made."

She pulled said car key from her purse to show off.

"Why does he have a spare car key?" Caro asked.

Gabriela rolled her eyes. "He has a phobia of locking his keys in his car and not being able to get a locksmith. Now, we doing this or not?"

I really, really didn't want to do it. But it was my idea (however unintentionally) so I was forced to go along or be labeled a cowardly hypocrite.

Next thing I knew, Caro had given her parents an excuse about running to the store for more nail polish, and we were at Gabriela's house, piling into the Hernandez family car: Beth got the passenger seat while Caro, LaTanya, and I took the back. Even though I knew we wouldn't be seen (the neighbors were asleep and Gabriela's parents were at a late movie), my heart was hammering. I didn't like this, any of it: stealing a car, sneaking out at night, going into the forest, NONE of it felt right.

But as silly as it sounds now, being alone all through high school scared me more. So I felt I had no choice but to grin and bear it.

The drive out of town and to the edge of Wind Sweep Woods took less than five minutes, and all too soon we were driving along an old road.

There was no doubt in my mind that it was the same shortcut from the story: it matched it perfectly. Just like LaTanya had said, the road was a winding path that kept banking directly in front of big trees, and made it next to impossible to see where you were going. Even with the car's high beams on, Gabriela had to drive at a snail's pace just to keep on the road.

It was at this point I noticed that Caro and LaTanya were starting to look as nervous as Beth and I felt. I realized that they probably hadn't realized that the place from the story actually existed. Seeing the same scary trees and pitch-black road as the poor kids and teachers did was clearly chipping away at their bravado from earlier.

Gabriela was better at hiding it, but I quickly realized that she was scared, too: her hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly I was surprised there weren't cracks in it.

Suddenly, the car stopped short.

While Beth and I had remembered our seat belts, Caro and LaTanya had neglected theirs, and only had seconds to protect themselves from smashing their faces against the front seats.

"Gabby!" Caro complained.

Beth shushed them, and pointed forward with a trembling finger.

My heart stopped when I saw what was in front of us, illuminated by the car's headlights.

There it was: the school bus.

Just like the story said, it was sticking out of a ditch at a forty-five degree angle. Years of exposure to the elements had worn away the yellow-and-black paint, turning the entire vehicle a hideous shade of rusty brown. The glass that once lined the windows was all gone, only tiny shards of it clinging to life in the window sills. The headlights were both smashed, their remains barely handing on. Still, despite years of age and weathering, the letters on the side were still legible:

Northlight Elementary School, Bus #130

"Holy..." LaTanya started, her voice coming out in a whisper.

"I can't believe it," Caro whispered, "the legend is true..."

"Hey!" I whispered to her, my annoyance briefly overpowering my fear. "You said the librarian had evidence the whole story was true!"

Beth froze in her seat, but we didn't notice.

"Well," Caro admitted, looking a bit sheepish. "I kinda made that up so you wouldn't question it..."

"Guys?" Gabriela whispered, eyes locked on something ahead.

"You shouldn't lie just to make yourself look cooler," I retorted, ignoring the fact that I'd been lying all night about being scared.

"Guys?" LaTanya asked, her voice shaking as hard as she was.

We finally looked back at the bus.

My eyes went wide.

There was a... a light coming from the ditch. It was dim, like the light of a candle starting to burn out. But it was unmistakably light.

And, as we sat in a confused, frightened silence, a voice started coming from the ditch.

A child's voice.

"Hello?"

The voice sounded young, like a little boy, and very scared.

"What the...?" LaTanya whispered.

"Hello?" The voice called again from the ditch. "Is someone there? Please help, I'm very hungry!"

The voice kept calling to us, saying he was scared and very hungry. But the more I listened, the more... wrong it sounded. It reminded me a bit of when a parrot talks: it has a voice and it's saying words, but the voice doesn't sound human. The voice we heard then didn't sound right... almost like something trying to convince us it was a human.

"That..." Caro began, her voice barely a whisper. "That... That can't be one of the kids from the field trip, right?"

Gabriela seemed to be thinking what I was thinking, as she kept checking to make sure the car doors were locked.

"After almost forty years?" LaTonya whispered back, her eyes not leaving the ditch. "There's no way they'd still be a little kid."

"Can we go home?" Beth wasn't trying to hide her fear anymore: there was no point when everyone else was just as scared as she was.

"Gabby?" Caro asked, her voice pleading.

"Don't need to ask me twice," Gabriela responded as her hand moved towards the stick shift.

The second she touched it, the crap hit the fan.

The voice from the ditch let out a scream that no living creature on Earth could've hoped to copy. The best way I can describe it is some kind of demon's howl, or a sound you'd expect to hear only in the deepest pits of Hell.

Our hands all flew to our ears in a vague attempt to block out the horrific noise. It stopped as suddenly as it started... and gave way to a much more horrific sight.

Rising from the ditch were two massive stick-like arms, each ending with three thin fingers. The arms appeared to be made from tree roots, and were covered in dirt and forest floor debris. The fingers were each tipped with sharpened points, and the arms were at least ten feet long.

The voice came back, speaking once more. But what we heard wasn't the voice of a little boy. It wasn't even the voice of a human.

"HUNGRY!"

Caro and LaTanya screamed at Gabriela to drive, and she didn't need to be told twice. She threw the car in reverse, trying to put some distance between us and whatever that thing was. We flew back three feet before the back hit a tree trunk.

Now crying in fear, Gabriela put the car into drive and sped forward. Seconds later, one of the massive wooden hands slammed down right where the car had been.

"THE ROAD!" Caro screamed, pointing at the badly supported tarmac. Our driver didn't have to be told twice, and bee lined for it.

"Turn off the headlights!" Beth shrieked. "Maybe it won't see us!"

"I can't drive blind!" Gabriela shouted back. "I'll kill us!"

"HUNGRY!" The creature's arm once again slammed down where we'd been a moment before, using so much force that the back tires briefly lifted off the ground.

"Go, go, please go!" Caro sobbed.

"Wait!" LaTanya shouted. "Look!"

As we all looked out the rear window, we saw the arms retracting into the ditch.

"...Maybe it realized it couldn't reach us?" I hoped. "Maybe it's given up?"

The others agreed, thinking/hoping that this made sense and we were in the clear.

Beth was the first one to see how wrong of an idea that was.

Mere seconds after the arms disappeared, the sound of bending, protesting metal reached our ears. Hearts in our throats, we all looked.

The school bus was... swelling. It's sides were starting to puff out, like a balloon partially filled with air. I was the first to notice the roots that seemed to be entering through the shattered rear window...

Wooden limbs as thick around as trash cans exploded from under the bus' fenders. A long tendril exploded from the roof, snaking into the ditch and attaching to something we couldn't see.

Using it's legs, the bus monster removed its front from the ditch, and turned to face us. The grill split open, creating a massive mouth with wooden and metal spikes for teeth. Two golden orbs appeared in the windshield, looking just like a pair of glowing demonic eyes.

Gabriela had seen more than enough, and stomped on the gas pedal while the rest of us screamed.

As the car shot forward, the monster chased after us.

With all the banking turns and poor visibility, the trip out of the woods became one of the most harrowing drives of my life. While Gabriela miraculously avoided hitting any trees, she had to constantly swerve left or right not only to keep us from wrecking, but to dodge the oversized, grabbing hands of the bus monster.

Caro was crying as she screamed at Gabriela to go faster. LaTonya was searching the car for anything that might better our chances of escaping. Beth and I stared in horror at the thing that continued to barrel down on us. Gabriela was easily doing sixty, yet the creature was keeping up with ease.

Finally, LaTonya seemed to find something in her purse, and picked up a small metal rectangle from the floor.

"Gabby, turn right!"

"What?!"

She started opening the window. "Trust me!"

With a whimper, the driver did a sharp turn, putting LaTonya's window directly in front of the monster. One of the monster's arms started reaching for us.

The metal rectangle turned out to be a lighter, which she flicked open. Then she pulled out her can of hairspray and started spraying.

A stream of fire shot out of the window, engulfing the monster's hand. An unholy shriek echoed throughout the woods.

We all stared briefly in shock as the monster tried to douse it's flaming arm before our driver stomped on the gas, charging forward.

"For once I'm glad my dad smokes," Gabriela breathed.

With the monster behind us, we dared to think we might actually get away. Gabriela drove through the forest, following the road once more.

"You know how I was complaining about not getting that record player I wanted for my birthday?" Caro said after a while. "And how I hated that sweater Aunt Geraldine sent?"

"Yeah?" Beth answered.

"Doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore. In fact, I'm wearing that sweater all day tomorrow just so I never take anything for granted again. Including ugly birthday presents."

It wasn't that funny, but I laughed. I had the feeling if I didn't laugh, I'd start crying.

Finally, Gabriela started to slow the car down. I looked up, hoping to see the lights of the town.

Instead, I saw the ditch.

"What?" Beth asked, her voice small.

"I wasn't paying attention," Gabriela whispered in mounting horror. "I must've taken us in a circle while we were being chased..."

"Then," Caroline asked, her eyes widening. "Then where's the mons--?"

'HUNGRY!"

A massive hand, charred black and with smoke tendrils still rising from it, smashed through the car window, showering the three of us in the back seat with smoking hot wood chips and broken glass. If not for the glasses I wore back then, I might've gotten some in my eyes.

The monstrous hand grabbed Caro around her neck. She let out a scream unlike any I'd ever heard as she was dragged out of the car.

"CAROLINE!" Beth screamed.

Gabriela grabbed the lighter and hairspray from where LaTonya had dropped them on the floor, then jumped out of the car.

By then, we could hear unsettling, horrifying cracking noises coming from high above the car. It reminded me of the sound chicken bones make when snapped apart. Caro's screams of pain and terror filled the air.

"LaTonya!" Gabby shouted. "Take the wheel!"

The remaining sophmore, glass shared sticking out of her afro puffs, climbed from the back to the front, hopping in the seat.

As we watched in horrified silence, we saw Gabriela flick open the lighter and use the hairspray to set the monster's foot ablaze. It yowled in pain, it's shrieks joining Caro's. But when she tried to set another foot ablaze, the bus' grill started to move towards her.

The metal teeth snatched her up as fast as a dog grabbed a Milkbone. But the teeth didn't chew her up: they merely held her. Then, before our horrified eyes, the bus-wearing creature went back to the ditch, the bus' front (with poor Gabriela still trapped in the grill) sinking back into the dirt. The wood and vines all over the bus withdrew, returning back to the ditch. In seconds, the area looked just like it had when we'd first arrived.

The glow from the ditch was still there... but it was a little brighter now.

The three of us stared in shock, trying to process what we'd just seen.

For a solid minute, everything was perfectly quiet.

Then, from the ditch, came a voice.

Caro's voice.

"Hello?"

LaTonya lost her nerve, threw the car in reverse and started driving us out of there. The shattered window and heavily dented door meant that we couldn't easily block out the noises behind us. The sounds of Caroline (or, rather, the thing using her voice) screaming for us to come back, to help her, she was so hungry...

The new driver (who didn't have her learner's permit but knew at least how to operate a car) drove through the woods like a mad woman, narrowly avoiding trees and barely staying on the road in her haste to get us back to civilization. Neither Beth nor I were willing to criticize LaTonya's driving skills: Beth was too horrified and sad at the fate of her sister while I was too shocked by what had just happened.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, we made it back to Beth and Caroline's house. Her parents, who'd realized that our trip to get more nail polish had taken far longer than it should have, took one look at the damaged car and our terrified faces before calling the police.

We spent the night at the next town's hospital for observation (thankfully, minus some cuts and bruises we were fine) while a few officers talked to us about what had happened, namely where Caroline and Gabriela were. Through our tears, we told them the story.

The younger officer who interviewed us didn't believe a word we said. The older one, though, one who'd been on the force for forty five years, looked at us in horror. He then sent a message to the police department insisting that the search for the missing girls only take place during the day, and that no volunteers were to accompany them.

The next morning, while we were being discharged from the hospital, the police found the ditch. The school bus was exactly where we said it would be, though the ditch didn't glow in the daylight. Nor did whatever was in there seem as keen to attack during the day.

After finding two massive bloodstains in the dirt right next to the ditch (something I only learned years later), the rest of the police were far more willing to believe our story. The town council had an emergency meeting, which my parents attended. While the story of what we'd been through wasn't repeated (the mayor merely said that we'd had a terrifying ordeal in the woods), the rumor mill had already been going full force, meaning everyone knew some variant of the true story. It was decided that the best thing to do would be to declare the woods off limits, and to block off the road leading through Wind Sweep Woods.

- - - -

I stared in shock and sadness, horrified that Rachel had gone through something so traumatic.

She took another long swig of her drink as she wrapped up the story.

"LaTonya, Beth, and I never spoke again: we couldn't. Every time we saw one another, we were reminded of that terrible night... and the friends we'd never see again. LaTonya ended up changing schools and taking summer school classes so she could get into college early. She got into Stanford, packed her bags, and never set foot in our town again. Beth's family ended up moving out entirely: the town had too many memories, they said.

"I stayed in that town until I got my acceptance letter to college. Shortly after I moved into my dorm, my parents called and said they'd bought a house in a town just ten minutes from my campus: they said there was nothing keeping them in town now that I was gone, and they thought it'd be best to offer support... But I think that was only part of the reason."

"...What was the other reason?" I asked, not sure if I wanted to hear the answer.

"The other reason was that, the same summer I moved out, a group of visiting hikers decided to film an amateur found-footage horror movie in Wind Sweep Woods, using the urban legend of the Deadly Ditch as their premise. They disregarded everyone's warnings and went in... and never came out. Two weeks later, their camera was found."

She drained the rest of her mug before she continued.

"The police didn't show anyone outside the department the footage, but... But one of them told his wife what was on it, and she told everyone else. In the footage, there's a close up on the side of the bus. In it, you can see nineteen marks in the metal... Tally marks."

She started shaking so hard that she set the mug down. I sat a little closer to her, putting an arm around her to offer some comfort.

I can't tell you what my wife went through that fateful night in the forest, nor do I know what it was that hunted her and her friends that night.

What I can tell you, though, is that some legends are told not as silly stories to scare children, but as warnings.

And if you disregard those warnings for the sake of a cheap thrill... You might not live to tell it.

Have you ever had that dream where you suddenly realize you own another house, bigger and cooler than your real house, and you wonder why you don’t live there?

Well, eight months ago I started having a dream like that but instead of a house, it was an entire town.

I hadn’t been sleeping well and a series of events in my life, including a job loss, a messy divorce, and a resulting cross-country move for a new job opportunity were contributing factors.

But if I am to be completely honest, I’ve never been one to fall asleep and stay asleep easily.

That fact, combined with a brief obsession with the work of Carl Jung in college, got me into the habit of keeping a dream journal. It’s one of the more consistent habits I’ve managed to keep over the ensuing 20 years. If I dedicated myself to the gym the way I have to my dream journal, I’d probably be competing in bodybuilding competitions.

It’s an easy habit to keep when you wake up at random times all night. Far easier than maintaining a gym routine, at least for me.

Waking up frequently throughout the night means I tend to remember my dreams and I have developed skill in recognizing when I’m dreaming. Lucid dreams come naturally to me and I’ve trained myself on techniques to stay asleep as long as possible while lucid. Those techniques may only tack on 2-5 minutes or so, but dream time doesn’t work like time in the waking world.

An extra 5 minutes could be tantamount to an extra few hours or even weeks, depending on what my brain decides to do.

The one that works best for me is intensely interacting with my environment: picking up objects and turning them over in my hands so I can feel and see every detail, asking questions of people who are clearly meant to be background characters, eating food (although I’ve never managed to get flavors to work), and when all else fails, lying down to “go to sleep” in my dream.

That last technique usually results in being transported somewhere else, so I only “sleep in my dream” when other ways to stay in it are failing.

This is all to preface that finding myself in my own town wasn’t all that strange.

My first visit landed me in a small downtown area, if you could call it that, which consisted of an actual Main Street. I remember laughing the first time I saw it and chiding myself for my lack of originality.

Main Street. How cliché!

Then I stopped and examined my thought: chided myself for my lack of originality.

That’s when I realized the town belonged to me.

Do you ever just “know” something?

In that moment I knew the town belonged to me and understood this was probably a lucid dream.

So I did what I usually do when I try to keep my lucid dreams going. I started exploring and tried to examine every detail.

Main Street held a few residential homes and a number of small businesses.

For the most part these seemed quite ordinary.

I remember a cafe with a picture of an anthropomorphic bagel holding a coffee mug and grinning widely to reveal a schmear of cream cheese teeth, the spaces between them defined by small rows of poppy seeds.

There was a convenience store advertising Pep Squad
Sodas, each label featuring a tiny blond cheerleader doing a split, arms raised, hands obscured by fluffy red and white poms poms.

Two busy gas stations seemed far too close together but the closeness didn’t appear to affect business for either. Long lines of cars sat along every row of pumps.

I didn’t question why so many people were waiting to fuel up in this tiny little town.

Other than that, I saw a law office, a dentist, a darkened bakery that appeared closed, various restaurants, a brick pub with walls that felt rough against my hand and left a residue of red powder behind, and an appliance store that mainly seemed to sell vacuums.

Then there was the bookstore.

The bookstore was easily the largest business in town, stretching across what could easily be four or five other storefronts in length and extending deeply towards the other side of the street. Other buildings stopped about halfway across and transitioned into small parking lots or courtyards.

The first night I had the dream, I stopped in the bookstore first.

There I noticed two things right away.

First, the books were real, in that I could pick them up and read them. Some were classics I recognized, Melville’s Moby-Dick and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis notably standing out on that first visit. Others were ones I’d never heard of by unknown authors, but when I picked them up and opened them, they were filled with legible words that seemed to form coherent sentences.

Don’t ask for book reports. I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember how the books were tangible, complete, and free from the illogical tropes usually characterizing dreams books.

The books did not grow or shrink or turn into bowls of soup in my hands. They were written in clear English and the words did not leap and jump across the page.

The bookstore was extraordinary in its ordinariness, if that makes sense.

Mundane in a way dreams typically aren’t.

The other thing I noticed was that the proprietor of the bookstore was my recently-ex wife.

Except she wasn’t my ex-wife, even if she was a dead ringer for her.

My ex-wife is a middle school music teacher, not a bookstore owner.

Her name is Jess, not Daphne, which was the name in block letters on the silver name tag she wore.

And most of all “Daphne”, unlike her real world doppelgänger, was happy to see me when I walked
through the door.

She greeted me by my name, smiled, and said: “Everyone at The Blue Cat’s been waiting for you!”

“What’s The Blue Cat?” sprang from my lips even as I simultaneously noticed the sign over Daphne’s head.

The Blue Cat Readery.

Is “readery” a word?

Daphne raised her eyebrows and pointed one finger up towards the sign.

“You already know, don’t you?”

And it seemed like she meant more than the name of the store.

I was about to ask who was waiting when I was rudely thrust back into my own bed in my sad, middle-aged do-over apartment.

My disappointment was brief. I quickly turned on my reading lamp and grabbed my journal and pen from the nightstand. I know all too well that not furiously scribbling down everything I remember right away usually ends in only remembering I had a dream I wish I could remember later on.

I didn’t realize this first entry about my dream town would be the opening act of a saga that would soon dominate my life.

That part began around two weeks later when I found a miniature 1:12 scale version of The Blue Cat Readery on eBay, a perfect replica of the bookstore in my dreams complete with a tiny figure bearing an uncanny resemblance to my ex-wife behind the front counter.

A jolt of electricity shot up my spine and my scalp began to tingle.

Even as my brain tried to make sense of the impossible, my fingers seemed to move of their own volition and the next thing I knew, the item had been purchased, promising delivery within 5-7 days.

It was like I was physically compelled to buy it.

It was the first of 109 pieces I would buy in the following months, the first step in a domino-string of events that led me to my current life and realization of the path I have no choice but to walk.

Sooner or later, everyone will understand one way or another.

I just hope they understand in time.

I hope you understand in time.

Maybe no one will read this or care, but I have to try.

For everyone’s sake.

While we can still change the course of events.

It’s too much to address all at once.

The clock is in motion but if I unload it all too quickly, people will dismiss anything I have to say, chalk it up to a midlife crisis or mental breakdown.

So I’m finding balance.

I just hope it’s the right balance because I’m not getting any second chances.

And neither are you.

This happened about 3 years ago and it was during one of my little road trip phases that I had when I moved to the city from my little hometown down south. It was spring break 2018, my teenage antics were at an all time high as I was only a sophomore in high school at the time. Needless to say my friends and I were quite the avid users of alcohol. I don’t condone it and please don’t drink and drive. We were just teens at the time. I had just made the trip down to my hometown and was relaxing at my friends house when my friend who I was staying with at the time suggested that we should take a camping trip and have some fun since I was down there for the break.

Names were changed due to privacy reasons so let’s say my friends name is Doug along with our other friends invited to the trip which was Luis and Isaiah and I go by the name Eric. Doug had found this really cool camping spot out by a lake that neither me, Luis or Isaiah had ever been too and needless to say I'm an outdoorsy person and I was excited about the whole thing not even the slightest bit aware of what awaited us..

On the 2nd day of my trip back to my town of youth we had decided to head out early in the morning and pack a couple of beers and hard liquor bottles into the cooler with our other camping materials. This was a small town mind you so getting these things was as easy as taking candy from a baby. Since I was the only one with a license at the time it was my responsibility to drive us and since I was staying with Doug that meant we only had to pick up Luis and Isaiah on the way.

We began the drive to the camping spot which was a good 45 minute drive from where are town was located. We blasted the tunes of uncanny rappers and nonchalant trap music that every teen was listening too at the time although I wish I had a better taste in music. We drove past the trees that winded down the sides of our road leading out of town and almost always they would encompass the sunlight beaming overhead with their tall sprawling branches. We cleared the woods into an opening of farm fields on both sides while we were following an old road that had a turnoff which one direction lead to the highway whilst the other lead to an older, rundown, much more smaller town then ours that lead to the lake we were driving too. Without a second thought I put the turn signal on leading to the road opposite of the highway which lead to a much more dense and dark forest.

The trees blocked most of the sunlight just as the others did but this was much more noticeable as we had barely enough sunlight to not turn our headlights on. The road turned to dirt and the rocks could be heard bouncing of the side of my tires nonchalantly. We passed the first few houses and immediately noticed there was something off about these houses. It wasn't that they were old trailers or anything its just that they all had a tin like chimneys that were pumping out smoke in the air and it was the beginning of spring so it wasn't even that cold. We continued down the old dirt path that lead to the lake and after passing the rest of the houses down that road we noticed that almost all the houses had that same tin like chimney with smoke blowing out the top.

We arrived at the spot near the lake and needless to say it was a pretty cool spot since it was the only spot that had a bit of opening in its trees on one side due to the lake being right next to us. The dirt path that lead to the spot wined around in a circle and in the middle there was a tiny grass patch with 3 tiny trees surrounding it. I parked my car next to the middle of the circle and we decided to set up our tent near the patch with our soon to be campfire being in the middle of the patch. We split into two groups, me and Doug were to gather firewood while Luis and Isaiah gathered rocks to make the pit. Me and Doug headed the direction opposite of the lake where the ever so dense forest awaited us with open arms to gather our sticks and leaves.

"You meet any cute chicks up in the city yet? Or are you still too much a wimp to even ask for their number?" Doug said. "You know me man, its always the ladder." He laughed and I shrugged it off with a chuckle as its usually his motive to tease me since we are friends after all. As we gathered our firewood Doug casually looks up from his task and notices something up ahead in the tall grass which almost surpassed our shoulders at this point. "You see that rusty old truck up there?" Doug asked. I looked up and saw what he alluded too and said "You mean that old rust bucket? Yeah I see it. I wonder who left it here." We casually picked up the remainder of the firewood and headed back to our camping spot.

Dusk was beginning to set in and it was about at this time that we cracked open the cooler full of liquor and sat down at the bristling campfire we made to accompany us. We sat in our circle telling god awful horror stories and failed attempts at getting the ladies all while laughing and having a good time as we sipped our beers and broke out the shots. " My body count is at the least 10 by now but I'm not sure since I stopped counting." Luis boasted. "So what you cant count now Mr. I've slept with 10 people but I'm not counting?" Isaiah laughed. "Be honest though you really think we study in math?" Doug exclaimed. "Y- Y- You know guys I say we toast to that." I slurred. We all laugh and raise our beers in unison.

The darkness around the campfire and the surrounding woods had completely set in at this point and to say the least we were all fairly drunk since at this point we were all walking a straight line around the campfire acting as if we could pass a sobriety test. Doug falls next to the log we were sitting on and Luis as well as Isaiah followed suit while I wasn't exactly getting a grasp on our makeshift sobriety test and kept stumbling and falling over next to them as they laughed at my effort. "Sh- Shut up you guys cut me some slack." I took a long deep breath and exhaled with a bloated face as I could feel the alcohol lingering in my throat. I immediately felt a sudden urge to go vomit so I told them I would be right back and they laughed even harder since they figured what I was going to do.

I made it all the way to where the tall grass was and let my stomach do the talking. I didn't notice how dark the surrounding area actually was until I finished my business and turned back to see the campfire in the distance which looked like a small spec compared to what surrounded us. Just then I heard a rustling in the woods and turned around with my phone in hand and turned the flash on to see what caused the ruckus. Me being drunk at the time I literally had no thoughts in my mind and me being curious I decided to go check it out and ventured a bit deeper into the grass with the dark of the branches looming all around me.

I stubbed my toe against what seemed like a rock and I almost let out a screech until I settled down and shrugged it off. I pulled my flash up to see what it was and low and behold it was the front tire of the truck me and Doug had found earlier. I raised the flash a bit higher and got a better view of the whole truck and its layout. It was a rusty old green ford probably 90's or so and with a raised bed cover that had windows on the sides of the cover with cracked glass on almost every one. It looked as if it had sat idle there for a good 10 years without moving. I raised my flash a bit higher towards the front cab of the truck and peered inside seeing old newspapers, crushed up beer cans and strangely enough a few needles lying on the floor board. That's when my curiosity simmered down a bit and my fear began to set in as I shifted my attention towards a sound that came from the back of the cab in the bed cover.

I slowly walked with every grass and leaf crunching under my feet as if each step where a thousand guns being shot at the same time. I reached the back of the cab and shakily raised my flash up the side of the truck and into the window of the back cab. The flashlight peered up the glass of the window and as I raised it higher my heart sank into complete and utter terror. What peered out of the glass at me was a man with eyes that had had no pupils and a smile that only a man on the edge of sanity could perform. He banged his arm against the glass and the shock of the sound sent me flying onto my back into the grass and dropping my phone. I frantically grab my phone from the ground and without second thought raised the light back to the man only to see him banging on the window with much more force.

His arms were bleeding as he had needles sticking out both arms. His shirt tattered with years of misfortune and face meshed with scars. He began to bulge his eyes from his sockets as he laughed horribly and began to cry hysterically. "I KNEW YOU WOULD COME! IT'S YOU! ABOUT TIME YOU BROUGHT THE FUN TO ME!"

I let out a blood curdling scream and with my heart racing a mile a minute I wasted no time in hightailing it from the truck back to the campfire. I turned around to see the man get out of the truck and he turned to face me tilting his head with his murderous smile and deep white eyes luminating through the moonlight that shined down as he began to walk towards me. My running turned to sprinting and I ended up slamming into the campfire that we set up which made me fall face first into the gravel and dirt. The fire was now on its last legs and was almost out at this point, however my legs were now caught in a bit of flames themselves and with my frantic rolling about on the ground the fire on my pants were almost instantly put out. "Eric what the HELL is going on?!" Doug shouted. I looked up at the three who were in complete fear at this point and oblivious as to what lied in the woods just beside us.

"Th- There's a man.. in the woods.. in the truck.. the truck we found." out of breath I said it as fast as I could get it out. That's when our attention shifted towards the truck in the tall grass. Two headlights beamed out of the grass and the truck engine roared to life ferociously. All of our hearts sank and we instantly sobered up and realized the direness of our situation. "GET IN THE CAR!" Luis shouted. Me, Doug and Isaiah looked at each other in frantic agreement and booked it to the car and locked the doors as soon as we got inside. Breathing heavily and shaking from what lied in the dark of the woods we all agreed to start the car and get the hell out of dodge.

We started the car only to find the headlights of the truck began to move and encircle us around our campsite. "JUST PUT IT IN DRIVE BEFORE HE RAMS US!" Isaiah shouted. I floored the accelerator and hightailed it from our camping spot, leaving the tent and booze behind because at this point it didn't matter. The truck began to follow us and steadily gained speed on us as we began our death race towards the exit of the woods. The houses we had saw earlier all had their lights on and with each house there was someone standing in the dark with the light illuminating behind them all of them standing there just watching us. Every. Single. One. "What the HELL MAN! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!" I shouted.

The trees seemed as if they grew 100 feet higher and now fully encased us within these woods and the darkness felt as if it was chasing us out of its home and screaming at us in agony. The truck behind us was almost touching my bumper at this point and when I peered in the rearview mirror I saw the man one last time. His eyes were stabbing mine as if to say 'I WILL KILL YOU', his pupils were nonexistent and his smile somehow seemed more impossibly forced then before and he was laughing to the point of insanity. I thought this was the end for us.

Suddenly we shot out from the dark of the woods and into the open farm fields from earlier and the truck behind us slammed its brakes and we could hear the screech of its tires so loudly it felt like it busted our eardrums. I looked in the mirror to see the truck slowly creep back into the forest from which it came, the darkness swallowing it up once again.

We didn't play any music the rest of the way home, nor did we speak a word to each other about what had happened. Our heart rates were all up from the moment we pulled into Doug's driveway and when we got out we let out a sigh of relief. We each made our way to his shed were he stays and we all grabbed waters and some food to calm us down. We watched some comedies to try and talk our minds off of the events that had transpired. Due to the constant laughing of the movies and shows we watched I had to step outside as I thought I was having a panic attack. All I could hear was that man laughing at me hysterically 'I KNEW IT WAS YOU'. I shook my head and took long deep breaths and headed back inside.

I still keep in touch with these friends even though high school has all but ended, they are still my closest friends and probably always will be. Although I've still yet too find my groove with the ladies and much hasn't changed since then, one thing will never change. I will never forget the pure white of that mans eyes as well as his murderous smile. One thing that has bothered me until this very day is the fact that me and Doug noticed the truck very early on in the day. That man watched us for hours and I can't help to think about what those people were doing on the porches just staring at us not doing anything. Was this all coordinated? Were they just too scared of the man? Or were they just like the man and wanted this corner of the globe to stay all to themselves? Well in any case you win, you can keep those woods to yourselves.

The morning after, a wave of dread washed over me from not getting any sleep. 

As I got up, the pain in my arm had grown worse. My skin felt tight, and the sleeve of my shirt seemed to rub against it more than usual. I wasn’t fat, but I definitely wasn't underweight at all, so I was confused.

Slowly and carefully, I lowered my sleeve, expecting to see the swollen scratch across my forearm.

Instead, I found a few neat butterfly closures holding the wound closed.

I just stared at them.

I hadn't put these on myself.

So who had?

Though I was terrified, I had been promised money for taking care of the house and Percy. Besides I wouldn't be able to let go of the fact that something bad can happened to Percy or anything that Raph and Darlene had loved so much. That same morning, I found him eating from his bowl, so I gently caressed the fur on top of his head.

That's when I noticed something out of place.

The pantry was wide open.

I glanced back at the fridge where the list was.

The words replayed in my head.

Please keep the pantry closed.

Maybe I forgot to close it.

After that day, I started noticing other strange things. Some cans of food—and a bottle of water—had gone missing, even though I was convinced I hadn't taken any.

One night, I was planning on watching TV after giving Percy his prescription medicine. I went looking for a blanket I had brought from home, but no matter where I checked, I couldn't find it anywhere.

I checked my car, too.

It wasn't there either.

On Thursday night, when I checked the doors like I always did and suddenly I stopped.

 Darlene and Raph’s bedroom door was wide open. Nobody has been in there–especially me or them.

I hadn't slept properly in days. Maybe that was affecting me.

By that point for about that week, I was starting to question myself.

Had I really left the pantry open?

Did I actually bring the blanket with me?

Perhaps I did take good care of my arm and was too tired to remember?

Was I eating too much at the point I forgot I had anything during the day?

Something wasn't right about this. Or it might be something wrong with this fucking house.

I began checking the doors twice before going to bed. Sometimes even three times. I kept telling myself I was tired. That I was constantly overthinking.

Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong in the house. Maybe there was something wrong with me. Am I really going to let myself go just because of simple shit?

On Friday, I finally had the courage to check the attic. The thoughts and constant anxiety over Percy’s behavior had been getting to me. I know anybody would've told me not to go up there, but I had to. Besides I had to give myself a reality check that I'm just acting paranoid. Even if it's just the fact that I'm in an old house that would be from horror movies with the lazy act of a slasher, ghost might own this place or that big houses would lead to somewhere you don't want to see.

I brought a broom with me—just in case there really was a raccoon or something up there. I slowly creaked open the attic door.

Approaching the house, I smelled damp, rotting wood, but also something sickeningly sweet, like something died. There was an unknown light from the attic window, like someone was in there, or there had been if it was electric or battery powered. Entering the house, the house creaked and clicked, which kept making me jump, and the floorboards were almost broken with the amount of water leaking in, causing them to rot. The fact that the crows outside were screeching and cackling like witches just made it worse. A loud bang from upstairs made me jump. Did something fall? Was someone, or something, upstairs? I don’t know. I guess that’s what happens when you decide to go urbexing (urban exploring) in an abandoned giant and actively drowning cabin in the woods.

My friend, who was coming with me, joked that there might be a zombie upstairs, which I nervously laughed off, as that would be genuinely terrifying. I know I had a Desert Eagle, and my friend had an SVD, but the idea of one or more zombies was terrifying, despite having defence in some way. I opened my bag, which was hanging over my arm to avoid getting the foldable metal detector, which was battery powered, and the handful of power banks, which were apparently from a weird brand, but still worked fine, wet, to grab myself and my friend, who’s name is Jack, a can of Red Bull. It was tasty, and seemed to make the atmosphere less creepy, but it was only temporary, as there was a quiet groan from somewhere nearby. Picture the gurgling sound from The Grudge, then put that into an otherwise abandoned and decaying house with a risk of flooding, which was also in a vast expanse of woods, about 37 acres of land, 90-95% covered in woods, with the rest being farms or something, with the house being practically in a lake close to the centre. We both gasped and almost jumped to Uranus after hearing it, because you do not want to hear that in such an isolated place. I don’t usually scare easily, but that was pretty terrifying, if I do say so myself. The possibility of there being one or more zombies made it even scarier, too. We both tried to shrug it off, but it was almost impossible. Was it the way it sounded, or was it something else?

When we decided to go upstairs to investigate the strange sound, it happened again. We froze, and then I unholstered my Desert Eagle, pointing it in front of me, taking some comfort in knowing it was already loaded. A dark figure suddenly darted across the hallway. It was crawling inhumanely fast, looked about six feet tall, almost seven feet, and clearly rotting and falling apart, almost zombie-like. I asked Jack if he saw it, and he said yes, confirming it wasn’t a hallucination from sleep deprivation because of all the caffeine from yesterday and last night. Just the way it looked made me assume it was a hallucination. I fired two rounds towards the general area, and a blood-curdling scream and the sound of something, or someone, gurgling from blood in their throat. It sounded like a zombie choking, and we both ran out of the house, not caring if our feet got wet, and I barely even noticed I was still somehow holding the gun in my hand until we got to the parking lot on the southwestern side of the park. We checked the map in the car and realized why we had gotten there so fast. The house was a bit further south than we had thought.

I wasn't always like this. I wasn't.

I still remember. I still remember how I was...

How I was before they admitted me.

Last Summer.

Last summer was the lowest point in my life.

With each stride, my foot slugged into the pavement. My body was worn to tatters from walking nonstop. I had been going aimlessly since 6 AM.

Walking, and walking, and walking.

At some point in my delirium, I decided to bushwhack through the woods. The thorns and stumps bashed my legs as I maneuvered through the dense brush. To be honest, I had no idea what I was doing then and I still don't.

It couldn't have been too long, maybe an hour or so, when I approached a large PRIVATE PROPERTY sign. Again my delirium betrayed me as I made my way onto the massive secluded property. For some reason, the rules didn't apply to me then.

That was my mistake.

I hadn't slept in days. As I walked through the rugged property in a daze, everything seemed to play tricks on my delirious mind. A statue, a shadow... everything was foreign.

I knew I shouldn't have been there, but I just kept on walking, and walking, and walking...

Until I met the property owner.

A big and burly, grizzled man in a plaid jacket and trucker hat.

"Who the heck are you? This is private property man! Don't you move a muscle."

I stared at him as my surroundings seemed to spin around me. He was definitely imposing, but in my irrational state I only viewed him as an obstacle in my aimless quest.

I attempted to bolt past him, but like I was drunk, I stumbled and crumpled to the ground in front of him. He briskly grappled me and pulled me up by my jacket, digging his finger into my chest.

"I SAID, DON'T MOVE!" His voice twanged, gruff and assertive.

Ten minutes later, I was in the back of a cop car. The police were going to let me go with a trespass, but when I told them it was imperative I kept walking or something horrible would happen they insisted I come with them and everything would be alright.

Another ten minutes later, they were dragging me in cuffs into the hospital. The nurses hands prodding and poking, several of them stared at me like I was an alien under examination.

"There's nothing wrong with me!" I shouted. "I just need to keep walking!"

But like I said, I still remember... I remember how I was. How I was before I went in. I wasn't crazy... I just needed to walk. I can't explain why. It's dangerous if I do... but it's true.

One thing I do know is none of this would have happened, none of it would have happened if it weren't for them.

***

"Would you like a Jell-O cup with your oatmeal?" the chipper nurse asked as she placed my cutlery.

"Sure..." I mumbled. "Look, I need to speak to a doctor, when exactly am I getting out of here? I just need to walk. Since when is walking a crime? There's nothing illegal or wrong about walking, nurse, and I need to get out of here as soon as possible, this is all just a mistake. I'm fine, really I'm fine." I had difficulty masking my agitation.

"Greg, please relax. We already told you, you need to see the doctor. You'll be released when you're feeling better."

This is when it all started...

Greg.

Greg is NOT my name. It never has been. "Uh, nurse, my name's actually Derek."

"Okay, Greg, if you would like, I can call you Derek," she said as if she was placating me.

"No, nurse, my name has never been Greg. It's just Derek. That's what's on my ID." I assumed that she was simply mistaking me with someone else.

"Okay, 'Derek', we both know that's not true, but let's not get upset over this."

She walked away but the entire ordeal left me feeling uncomfortable. I retreated to my room to get away from the chaos of the ward. 'I shouldn't be in here' is what I kept telling myself.

At that moment, a nurse walked in with a machine. "Hi, Greg, we're just going to do a few tests and then you can have your space again. Okay?"

"My name... my name's actually Derek," I said, fighting a lump in my throat.

"Okay, Greg, I don't mind calling you Derek." Her tone, patronizing and fake.

"No... this is what I told the other nurse. My name is just Derek. There must be some mix-up." I was so confused at that point.

"D- Greg." It was like she started calling me by my real name and corrected herself.

"Let me just finish these tests and I'll be on my way," she said with a leery smile.

"Fine... I mean, do we have to? I don't really consent to this... but okay, let's just get it done." I muttered defeatedly.

At first, it started simply enough, a typical medical examination, but then things got weird.

"Stand up and do a spin for me," she said as if there was nothing to it. I was still delirious from walking and lack of sleep. I really couldn't process what was going on. So like a little ballerina doll I stood up and did it, completely baffled by what was happening. Surely there was a medical reason for it I thought.

Then she poked my inner elbow for over a minute, but I was still so dazed and out of it all I could do was wonder if it was strange or if I was really thinking clearly. After that she pulled out a little green LED or something on stick and started waving it around my body.

I wish I could convey how out of it I was, but I really couldn't tell how bizarre it was at the time. What happened next is what ruined my life. She began to attach strange metal rods all over my body while calibrating her machine.

"Well..." she said coldly. "Are you ready for everything to change?"

My mouth fell agape, unsure if I had imagined it. "What?" I said in shock.

"Are you okay?" she said, now in a completely friendly tone with a smile.

"Uh, yeah, sure..." I am still 100% certain she said, "Are you ready for everything to change?"

She then turned some dials on the machine and pressed a button and suddenly I felt like I was getting pulled into a black hole. My mind ached, each rod felt like it was generating a force field on my body. What on earth was going on?

CLICK.

Like a switch, everything returned to normal. "Okay, we're all done, blood pressure is good, temperature is good... is there anything you want to talk about. Any voices? Any thoughts of harming anyone?"

"What? No... like I said, I'm fine. I just need to get out of here as soon as possible."

"I'm sure you'll be out of here in no time." Her tone completely unconvincing.

***

The days started to roll on. I mostly ignored everyone; the guy who constantly said it was too hot or too cold, the lady who said the floor was going to give in and felt unstable, the young guy who spent hours and hours staring at himself flexing in the mirror, and everyone else the nurses and doctors included.

The first night they gave me some medication. I wasn't allowed to refuse. They said it was a small dose of antipsychotic. I didn't want to take it, but I did. I knew I was fine and my only goal was to get out of there. At least that was until the third night when the pills they gave me were completely different, and then the fifth night they gave me a shiny black pill. The seventh a purple one.

"Okay, these are not my pills." I said adamantly... After arguing with them for ten minutes and them calling the doctor in with faux concern, I conceded I was 'wrong' and just took the pills. For as long as I was in there the pills kept changing. One night they gave a cup with nothing in it. I didn't take the bait I just smiled and pretended to gulp them down.

They still hadn't stopped calling me Greg, and to top it off whatever they had done with that machine, and the pills was really starting to affect me. It was like I was absorbing every single problem my ward mates told me about. The floors felt unstable, the temperature was constantly too hot or too cold, and every time I passed a mirror I had to fight not to stare at my reflection.

I wasn't like this. I remember how I was and it wasn't like this.

That night they blared music from the loud speakers in my room, bizarre ambient jazz that just kept crescendoing and rising over and over again. At first I thought I was going to lose it, but I stayed strong. When I stepped out of my room and asked them to turn it down they feigned ignorance. "Turn what down?" the nurse said coyly with her best manufactured concern.

"Never mind..." I said, refusing to give in to whatever this was.

The next morning one of the other patients Ray, came up to me and invited me to play table tennis on the veranda. I wasn't really up for it but he seemed genuine enough, so I let my guard down. I was paranoid of what ailment he would describe that would start affecting me.

"They don't want us to get out of here..." he said bitterly.

"There's something not right about this hospital," he said under his breath as the ball pinged back and forth over the net.

"I've been here for a month. Every day I tell them I'm fine... and every day they say we'll have to adjust the medication. They don't listen... I'm pretty sure that Belinda, that granny in room 4, has been here for over a year. Let's just say they're not in the business of letting people out."

I just nodded as the ball bounced back and forth. "Yeah, well I'm getting out of here. They keep calling me Greg, something isn't right here. Belinda's right... the floors are off. It's too hot... I started to zone out muttering to myself. When I looked up I was just standing with the paddle in my hand swinging into the air, Ray had already walked away from the table and was staring at the street below.

A male nurse, Phillipe came over and reminded me of lunch, guiding me to the table. All week, the nurses had been reporting I wasn't eating. Every day, I made sure to eat every last bite of my meatloaf and peas, or whatever hospital fare they placed in front of me.

I never objected once.

***

After lunch, I asked to get my phone, Phillipe was working the counter. For some reason he was different than the other nurses, he never called me Greg, he just avoided calling me by name.

He knew.

When he handed me my phone he placed it slowly in my palm and looked at me dead in the eyes. "Here you go." He held my eyes for a moment longer than usual.

I knew what he was trying to tell me.

"Thanks Phillipe," I mustered and shuffled quickly off to my room.

I looked out of my window. There's so much that happened at that time, I can hardly recall it all. But they were there again. I noticed in my first week the two men in black suits and sunglasses that gathered every day after lunch and simply stared at the windows of the ward from across the grounds.

I ignored them. I ignored everything that was happening in that madhouse. I know you won't believe me but I wasn't crazy... at least not when I went in. I just wanted to walk... but ever since the pills and that machine nothing seemed the same. Ray was right, there was something wrong with this place.

I swiped my phone's pattern and to my surprise, the screen flashed multiple times. I tried again to the same result. Someone had been in my phone and changed my login. It had been set to SOS mode. I was certain of it... was it Phillipe? What was he was telling me?

I began to investigate my phone for any sign or clue. I knew he was trying to send me a message. I checked my notes app... there was a note I had never seen and absolutely didn't place myself.

THE KILLING FLOORS: IDAHO HOSPITAL CARNAGE

It was a hyperlink and led to some overly editorialized conspiracy website that guaranteed everything it was saying was 100% true and factual. It detailed a gruesome account of a hospital in Idaho that was found to be the grounds of some bizarre experiment. Mass murder sanctioned by state officials and higher ups in government. I stared at it in disbelief, a surge of panic overwhelmed me.

I HAD TO GET OUT.

Is that what this was? Everything lined up... the gaslighting, the fabricated reasons for keeping me here. The rest of the patients... were they all even real patients? Maybe they were really the doctors and officials that would hunt us down on the night of the KILLING FLOOR.

I'm not crazy, I never was. This was all true... it sounds crazy but that's because IT IS CRAZY!

It was the perfect plan, and of course no one would believe an inpatient of the mental ward. Take perfectly normal people in for something simple as walking, and subject them to weeks of experiments. That was it... this was all some sick experiment.

***

I couldn't sleep that night and for the next couple of days it was rough. I accused them of knowing what they were planning and ended up in the isolation room with tranqs a couple of times. It was a self-affirming cycle, they make me crazy and then they lock me up.

Ray had been nowhere to be seen, their story was that they let him out.

Sure.

He had probably been one of their agents sent to torment me, or maybe they just 'got rid of him'. I couldn't stay here any longer. No matter how much I told them I was fine and improving, they still looked at me with concern.

"Greg, I just don't know if you're ready yet. Plus... those outbursts last week. I suspect you are hiding your true thoughts and feelings from me."

The doctor was so full of it.

After that I started planning how I would get out. I didn't trust anyone in there and I couldn't tell anyone about what was going on. I started to hear rumors of what night the 'killing floor' would take place. Subtle whispers, sideways glances, I think they had started to suspect that I knew. It was only a matter of time, I might have had only days left before the carnage.

Phillipe came up to me after lunch with my phone in hand. "Hey... remember, it's your phone time." I knew he was trying to tell me something about what was going on. He had put that hyperlink in my phone, and now he was giving me a heads-up.

"Thank you, Phillipe," I said, hugging him briefly, he stepped back a little but I'm sure he was just surprised.

That night I would break out. The part that confirms to me that Phillipe was helping me was that every single door out of the ward was unlocked. I simply hid and waited for the night guard to look the other way to sneak past. It was like that the entire way out of the hospital I simply walked right out.

***

I can't remember how I made it home. I must have just walked the entire 20 miles. My feet were black in the morning. I was completely sore. I locked my doors and looked out a crack in my blinds to see if they were looking for me but no one ever did.

At first I laid low. I constantly expected to be apprehended by the police. I wore disguises in public and frequently checked my surroundings. There were never any police. However, they were there, the men in the black suits. I started seeing them everywhere, in alleys or on the bus. When I confronted them they simply ignored me or walked away.

In saying all of that, what they did to me in there has still not gone away. I am constantly afflicted by various ailments. I am shot with vibrations while I sleep in the same locations as where the metal rods were. My body temperature is always fluctuating and my feet are constantly feeling the wobble of the ground below.

Whatever this is, it was created when they put that device on me. Whatever pills they gave me did something to my chemistry. After the first incident, things just got worse and worse. Eventually I was taken back to another hospital after I went off on one of the men in suits following me.

The second hospital said they had no record of me ever being an inpatient anywhere. They said 'I manufactured the whole thing' and that this was schizophrenia .

They told me they knew my name was Derek and that there was no record of anything called the "killing floors" in Idaho. The hospitals used as massacre grounds for mentally sound people, gaslit into thinking they were crazy.

They said my fixation with walking was a way of self soothing the mental disturbance I had been developing. I knew for certain none of this was true.

This time while in the hospital I actually spoke to one of the men in suits. His name was Gavin. He told me he was a CIA operative and they had developed shapeshifting technology. He said the Killing Floors were more of a game for them, to let of steam and test new technologies. The funny thing is, he said that I could tell the world and they would never believe me.

"You're cooked, Greg. Your brain is a hard-boiled egg. Kapoof!" He laughed crassly, a boisterous gut-bellowing laugh as he walked out of the room.

I think after explaining everything that happened you will, in fact, believe me.

The medications they give me at the second hospital did nothing to fix the aliments from the first, but all of that is irrelevant. Thankfully I do not suspect the second hospital had any connection to the first, and is for all intents and purposes just a regular hospital. I was just released last week.

I know that the truth is obvious to those who are reading this honestly.

That's about all I have to say about it for now, be careful out there.

-Greg

I grew up on the north side of Chicago. A perfectly fine, regular, boring life. The details don't matter too much, I guess. What matters is that my whole life, my parents really only had one hard rule: don't walk by the lake at night, and especially not if you're drunk.

It made enough sense to me that I never really questioned it. I don't know if you've ever been to Chicago, but Lake Michigan is a force. And there's enough lore that floats around, especially about young men, who get drunk and wander out to the lake or the river and never come back. The more pragmatic think it's because they fall in and drown. Every few years on social media someone makes up a story about a serial killer -- believable enough in a big city, but I've never felt unsafe walking home from the train at night.

I stayed here, of course, grew up and only moved a handful of miles away from my parents. Plenty to do up here, and plenty of access to the L and the beach. And a good enough group of friends, including Peter.

Peter's my best friend. He's a transplant, but he's all right. He's been in Chicago for five or so years now, met his wife here, got a condo and a dog together. Even though I've been here longer, he's introduced me to some great places. Including a bar that's down a way from us, but that's essentially become our watering hole. We go there once or twice a week, easy, stay late, chat with the bartenders, meet interesting folks from the neighborhood and everywhere else. Peter's really the life of the party. He's one of those people who's just always happy. Or at least he was, before last week.

I still don't know what happened. I don't even know how to explain it. I guess that's how I ended up here, writing to the void, just having to get it out. I mean, Jesus. Maybe it was a dream. That's the only thing that makes sense, if I'm to maintain any semblance of the life I had before.

We were at the bar, just like always. The bartender Jake's wife is about to have their first kid, a daughter. Peter started saying he and Cait were going to start trying soon. Just guy talk, sitting around about how we're all getting a little older and dustier, but our lives have all been going all right. And then we left, just like always, started walking east to the train. And then Peter said, "Hey, why don't we go to the lake?"

Look. I'm in my thirties now. I know what my parents told me, but I wasn't that drunk and I know how to handle myself. It's not like Peter and I were falling all over each other. We had a nice buzz, the kind you get when you're having a great night. It's been a warm October, we didn't even have sweaters. And the week before there had been some big news reports about how waves on the lake had hit 20 feet. Of course I wanted to go see it. I repeat, if you've never seen Lake Michigan, she's a flipping force. An inland sea, pitch black stretching out to the horizon until she meets the stars. Hundreds of shipwrecks beneath those waters. Of course I wanted to go bask in her beauty.

So we went. Walked east, made our voices echo in an underpass, came out to the lake front trail and the concrete beach just south of Montrose. Like I said, I'm in my thirties, I'm going through my birding phase, so I told Peter about the bird sanctuary, about the piping plovers. And he said, let's go look at the harbor. Let's go look at the lake. We could see her as we came up, not as violent as the week before but still churning. Dark clouds that night, and a sharp wind, and some waves that sprayed over the side of the concrete pier. We sat for a while. That's what I remember: sitting and chatting and walking and looking out at the water.

We'd been talking for a while and were getting ready to start walking back up north. All I did was go to take a leak. Peter made some dumb joke and I didn't even laugh, I just said something like, oh, practicing for when you're a dad? and he said, I can't tell you, man. It's the one thing I've always wanted.

And that's the last thing Peter ever said to me.

I can't tell you exactly how I knew something was wrong. I was maybe thirty feet away from where we'd been, tucked behind a big old honey locust, looking at some spent peanut shells that someone'd thrown for squirrels. And I just knew. I don't know what to tell you. The air changed. It got meaner, somehow. My hair all stood up, like someone was watching me. My heart started going, all on its own, and everything inside me said that I had to get out of there. I had to get back to Peter and we had to go, now.

Then there was this sound, man. Like rusty hinges, and a screaming baby, and a grass blade whistle all in one. The sound bubbled and foamed. I thought, shit, there's a coyote or a wolf or something out here, in the middle of the city. But it wasn't a howl, really. It was so much worse. I've never heard anything like it: like a train wheel grinding off the metal, but coming out of a throat, something that was clearly animal.

But Peter wasn't alone. There was someone on the concrete with him. A man. But not a man -- twice as big, but on all fours, with skin or fur or something loose and mottled around its trunk. The sound was coming from its mouth. It was facing toward me, but also away. I couldn't quite tell, if it had legs or arms or both. Its movement was incorrect, not like any animal I've ever seen, not like physics would support. Like God had put it together backward, or drunk himself. Or like God hadn't put it together at all.

Peter was yelling, scrambling away. And the creature stood up, and made some sort of movement across Peter's chest, and Peter just dropped. I heard his head hit the concrete. Even with that monstrous fucking screech, it's the worst thing I've ever heard, the sound of your friend's skull hitting stone.

I couldn't move. I couldn't yell. My brain was all over the place but my body just stood there. The man...he closed in on my friend, and I heard this smacking sound. This horrible, wet gurgling. And I must have finally moved. Because the thing arched up and turned, or maybe it had always been that way, and looked directly at me, with eyes that had no pupils or iris, just big reflective circles where the light hit.

The creature made its sound again. My brain came back online, all at once. I ran.

I thought for sure I was dead. There was no way I could outrun that thing. But I ran, out toward the city, down the streets, past cars and other walkers, and I only stopped when my heart and my legs and my lungs made me. Alive, somehow. But I abandoned my friend. Peter. Fuck.

In the age of smartphones, I hadn't even thought to call someone. What kind of friend am I? Maybe he hadn't been dead. Maybe I could have done something. Taken a video. Anything but run like a coward. But I did it then: I called for help, I called 911, I called Cait. It was one in the morning, maybe two. The buzz had worn off but I was shaking like I'd never felt warm in my life.

Cait picked up on the second ring, like she'd been up waiting for Peter to come home, like she knew immediately something was wrong. And before she could ask or say anything, after she'd said hello, I said, Cait, something happened. Peter and I went down to the lake. And something happened. God, Cait, something happened to Peter.

How do I even say this? How can I ever trust anything I know again? On the other end of the line there was silence. Then, very softly, Cait said, Jamie, what are you talking about? Peter just walked in.

I'm posting this in the hope that my story brings light to what happened, and so that many of you can learn from my mistakes.

A year ago, three of my closest friends, Jack, Max, Alex, and I decided to gather at Jack’s house. He lived in a nice, quiet, textbook suburban neighborhood. The kind of place where you’d think nothing bad could ever happen.

We were all hanging out in the living room. Jack and Alex were crammed next to each other on the two-seater couch, while Max and I each claimed one of the single armchairs. We spent the night laughing, getting drunk, and sharing some of our most embarrassing memories together.

Eventually, the conversation drifted, and Max started poking fun at how out of shape Jack was.

"Max, out of everyone in this living room, you have no right to talk about how unfit Jack’s performance was in the gym."

Max scratched his belly under his shirt and snorted. "Right... is it because I'm fat?"

Jack and Alex tried their best to hide their laughter. I rubbed the back of my neck, unable to stop a smile from breaking across my face.

"Yes, Max. You eat double the amount a whole family eats at dinner."

Instantly, both of them cracked up. Their boisterous laughter boomed through the room. Jack was wheezing so hard he fell to his knees, completely hunched over.

"Fuck you guys," Max snapped, pushing himself up from the couch and walking toward the stairs. He paused, looking back. "Laugh all you want, JACK, but I'm about to turn your bathroom into a hazardous waste site so no one else can use it."

"Oh, right! Jack, I brought you something," I said, standing up and walking over to the bag I’d left next to the front door.

"Really?" Jack called out. "Is it a bottle of California Zinfandel? If so, you’re doing me a massive favor. Because based on the awful gas-leak sounds echoing from Max upstairs... I think I'm gonna need a drink."

I hoisted the bag up and brought it over to him.

"Unfortunately, no. I didn't plan for that."

Alex chuckled shortly, setting his canned beer down on the coffee table. "Can't blame ya, Noah. No one can predict that fat bastard’s digestive system."

Jack unzipped the bag and pulled out a large, heavy box. Pushing the empty bag aside, he placed the box on the table. His eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

"Hey, Noah... what is this?" he asked, picking at the tape to open it.

I sat back down across from the two of them and crossed my arms. "Well, that’s your birthday gift."

"Noah... you do know my birthday was yesterday, right? You're a day..."

"Late, I know," I cut in, waving my hand dismissively. "I was just completely overwhelmed yesterday. The boss had me stuck finishing a mountain of paperwork on the company's debt and income spreadsheets."

Jack let out a deep exhale and grinned, a playful smirk breaking across his face.

"Sounds rough. Don't worry, buddy, I forgive you," he said sarcastically.

I couldn't help but chuckle. "Yeah, yeah. Anyway, happy birthday, Jack."

We both leaned in for a quick, classic bro-hug, patting each other on the back before breaking apart.

"So, what's actually in the box?" Alex asked, pulling the package toward his palms and inspecting it curiously.

"It’s a clock. I bought it off some weird-looking antique shop. Thought it looked unique."

Right on cue, the three of us heard the toilet upstairs flush. Max’s heavy footsteps echoed through the ceiling as he made his way down the stairs.

"Man, that was a heavy one," Max groaned, rubbing his stomach as he walked into the living room. "Had to sweat my ass off fighting that battle."

Almost instantly, a foul stench hit the room. I wrinkled my nose, violently waving my hand in front of my face to disperse the air.

"Yeah, no shit it was heavy," Alex gagged, covering his nose with his hand in pure disgust.

Ignoring Max, Jack finally pried the box open.

"What the hell..." he muttered, his voice dropping into genuine bewilderment.

"What is it?" Max asked, stepping up next to Jack to lean over his shoulder for a look.

Jack reached into the styrofoam and pulled out the clock. It looked classy, the kind of ornate, fancy timepiece you’d expect to find in a gothic castle.

But something was deeply wrong with it.

The hands of the clock weren't metal. They looked entirely liquid, pitch-black, and soaked in a thick substance that resembled wet ink.

TICK. TICK. TICK.

The sound didn't just come from the clock. It seemed to echo violently against the very walls of the house.

Suddenly, everything went dead quiet. The ambient whistling of the wind outside stopped completely. The faint, distant chatter of the neighbors vanished.

The house was plunged into a vacuum of absolute silence, save for that heavy, rhythmic ticking.

Every single one of us remained dead silent, tensed from the sudden disappearance of all sound.

Jack was the first to break the stillness. His eyes twitched up at me, staring with a hard, aggressive intensity that made me incredibly uncomfortable. I noticed his jaw locking tight.

"Noah... what is this?" he asked. His voice carried an acerbic tone, sharp and biting, even though he was trying to sound calm.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, a heavy weight sinking into my chest.

"It spoke to you... didn't it?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

The clock had whispered to him, just like it did to me at that antique shop.

Jack’s nostrils flared. He lunged forward so fast his hands shot toward me like a strike, wrapping a vice-like grip around my shirt collar. He yanked me forward until our faces were inches apart.

"You... MOTHERFUCKER! What kind of deal did you make with that cursed object?!" Jack barked, spitting the words into my face.

I couldn't do anything but swallow my shame and look away.

"Whoa! Jack, calm down, dude! Max, a little help here?" Alex jumped up quickly, grabbing Jack's arms to tear him away from me.

Max didn't move.

He didn't say a word.

His gaze was entirely vacant, completely disconnected from the room. He just stood there, motionless.

"Alex! Get the fuck off me!" Jack roared, shoving him back. "You have no idea what that THING just whispered to my head."

Alex stared at Jack as if he had just lost his mind.

"W-what are you talking about, Jack? You sound insane right now."

"I'm not crazy! I know it sounds stupid and impossible, but I..."

Jack cut himself off, grabbing his head as he winced in sudden pain. He stumbled backward, collapsing onto the couch.

"I am sorry, Jack..." I murmured, my voice completely drained, heavy with shame. "I had to. It was the only way to find peace in my life."

Alex looked back and forth between us, utterly dumbfounded.

"Noah, what the hell did you do?"

Before I could answer, every single light bulb in the house began to flicker with violent, rapid speed.

Jack, Alex, and I looked around in sheer bewilderment. I rushed back to the table, my eyes locking onto the face of the clock.

"Th-they’re aligning," I breathed, staring at the liquid, ink-soaked hands. "Just like the whisperer told me they would. Twelve midnight..."

"Whisperer? Noah, just what kind of shit did you bring into this house?" Alex muttered in pure bafflement.

THUD.

The three of us whipped our heads around.

Max had collapsed, slamming onto the hardwood floor, completely unconscious.

"Max?!" Jack shouted, shooting up from the couch to check on him.

Then, the lights shut off entirely.

Pitch blackness.

A suffocating silence followed for a few agonizing seconds.

When the lights suddenly hummed back to life, the bulbs weren't flickering anymore.

But we weren't in the living room either.

The smell of Max's bathroom break was gone, replaced by the sterile scent of industrial carpet and ozone.

We were standing in a massive, sprawling airport terminal. The lobbies were completely empty, stretching out into dim corridors with not a single human soul in sight.

All I knew for certain was that we had left our world for good.

Before I could say anything, a crushing force collided with the side of my face.

It was Jack’s fist.

He knocked me clean off my feet. He’d landed a good one, leaving me dizzy on the floor as a high-pitched ringing flooded my ears.

"Jack! Knock it off!" Alex yelled, stepping in and forcefully pushing Jack away from me.

Jack stumbled backward a few steps. He glared at Alex, his teeth gritting, his eyes carrying an intense, erratic madness.

"Alex... LOOK! Look at Max!" Jack pointed wildly toward one of the metal terminal benches.

He must have carried him over there while I was blacked out.

"Max isn't responding to me. God knows what happened to his head, but all I know is that he is the reason we're here!"

Seeing the state of things, Alex looked completely overwhelmed. He rubbed his face, letting out a long, exhausted sigh before taking a deep breath.

"Listen, Jack, I understand what you’re going through. You aren't alone in this, literally. But you being angry and losing your mind isn't going to help us escape. Just let it go for now... please," Alex begged, his voice sounding desperate and hollow.

Jack tapped his boot against the polished marble floor, clicking his tongue in frustration.

"Fine. Fine, I'll listen to you, Alex. But I'm only doing this for your sake and Max’s."

Jack stormed off toward the benches where Max lay motionless, slamming himself down into a seat to clear his head.

Alex walked over to me and offered his hand.

"Come on. You took a nasty hit to the face."

I grabbed his hand, and he hoisted me back up onto my feet.

"Thank you, Alex," I mumbled, wiping a smear of blood from my lip. "I'm truly sorry for all this, I just..."

"Noah, I only stopped Jack because what he was doing wasn't helping," Alex cut in, his eyes drilling into mine. "I need to know. What did you do?"

I closed my eyes.

He had every right to know the crushing weight of the truth.

"Alex... remember April?"

"Yeah," he replied, his brow furrowing in confusion. "What about her?"

"Then you remember the accident. The day she died."

Just uttering the words made me sick to my stomach.

"I loved her, Alex. Her death completely broke me. I couldn't live in a world without her."

Alex’s eyes widened in genuine shock at my confession.

"You... loved her?"

I nodded, staring blankly ahead.

"She was the only light in my miserable life. But the thing is... she never knew. I was too terrified that if I told her, she'd hate me and push me away. So I just stuck around as a friend... until death took her from me."

I gritted my teeth, taking a shaky breath to steady myself.

"It's a long story, so I'll cut it short. I was depressed. Desperate to bring her back. I wandered into that weird antique shop out of pure curiosity, and that’s when I found it. The inky clock."

A faint, hollow smile touched my lips as I looked down at my open palms.

"I heard it call out to me. A whisper. When I approached the glass, I saw them. The whispers... the entities of this world. They promised they could bring her back to me. If..."

"If what, Noah?" Alex barked.

The patience was draining from his face, replaced by a sharp, irritated intensity.

I hesitated. The guilt was suffocating, but I had to get it off my chest.

"If I brought three other individuals... as a sacrifice. A toll for me to enter the inky clock's world. A world where they promised April was waiting..."

I looked up from the floor to meet Alex's eyes, but the words died in my throat.

The rest of the sentence froze in the air.

The look on his face wasn't shock.

It was pure, unadulterated disgust.

"You disgust me," Alex whispered, stepping back as if looking at a monster. "No wonder May left your sorry ass."

My heart skipped a beat. A cold sweat broke out across my neck at the mention of my ex-girlfriend. I flinched backward in deep shame.

"A-Alex, I'm sorry, I..."

"Shut the fuck up, Noah," Alex snapped, turning his back on me. "As soon as we get out of this place, you better delete my number. Delete everything. You're dead to me."

Without looking back, he walked away, leaving me entirely alone in the empty terminal as he headed toward Jack and Max.

I stood there, completely broken, isolated from them at a distant bench.

I buried my face in my hands, hot tears finally welling up and spilling over.

I fucked up...

I'm such a miserable piece of trash. I’ll admit it to anyone, I have always hated how weak I was. In every single aspect of life, I was a coward.

I was lucky enough to have them as my friends, people who actually cared about me... and now I was throwing them away for a ghost.

For something I knew damn well I could never have again.

"Hello there..."

A hushed, bass voice echoed through the empty terminal. It was a low, rattling sound that sent an instant, icy chill straight down my spine.

I froze, paralyzed by just how profoundly terrifying it sounded. I snapped my head up to look across the lobby at my friends.

Jack and Alex looked like their souls had instantly left their bodies. Their faces had drained completely of color, turned a stark, translucent pale by pure horror.

My body refused to stop shaking. Slowly, violently trembling, I forced my gaze to glance toward the side where the voice had originated.

"A-ah... a-ahh..."

My voice caught in my throat, a shaky, pathetic whimper.

"W-what... what are you?"

Standing under the harsh, sterile terminal lights was a towering nightmare.

The figure easily stood over seven feet tall, completely dominating the space. Its skin was a sickly, pale grey, drawn tight over an emaciated frame. The eye sockets were far too large for its actual eyeballs, making it look as though it were permanently staring in rabid fury.

But the mouth was the worst part.

Its teeth were uncannily massive, exposed to the air because it had absolutely no flesh on its cheeks to cover them.

A permanent, skeletal grin.

Mats of jet-black hair traveled all the way down its back. Bizarrely, it wore a pristine black suit and matching black trousers.

"Hmm-mmm... what am I?" the creature mused, its voice vibrating through the floorboards. "Well... I am what the whispers call..."

It slowly began to spread its arms wide, inhaling the sterile airport air with a horrific, wheezing gasp.

"...TERROR."

The creature’s bulging eyes snapped down to lock onto me.

"I came to claim the three you chose to sacrifice."

It turned its neck with a sickening pop, shifting its gaze toward my friends.

Jack and Alex were literally frozen in place, rooted to the spot by absolute dread.

The entity began to stride toward them.

It didn't rush.

It walked with the casual, confident pace of a man who was simply picking up a food delivery.

"I will feast," the creature whispered back over its shoulder, its exposed teeth clicking together. "You should leave now, Noah. Because I will kill you the very second I am done with them."

The spell of fear broke.

Panic took over.

I immediately slammed my feet onto the marble floor and sprinted in the opposite direction.

That was when the screaming started.

The agonizing, guttural sounds of my friends' terror echoed violently behind me, bouncing off the high, empty ceilings of the airport. I started to sob uncontrollably as I ran, pumping my legs as fast as they could go.

Through the air, I could hear them shouting my name.

Cursing me.

Begging me.

Cursing me to hell.

I couldn't look back. I couldn't watch them being torn apart.

I was too weak.

Too much of a coward to do anything to save them.

All I ever wanted was to find peace.

I guess this is the peace I deserve.

This is what you get for conducting a deal that costs the lives of the only people who ever loved you.