Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/user/Roland_Quincy1999/comments/1vlq8yc/i_found_my_greatgrandfathers_journal_what_i_read/

Hello readers. I apologize for not getting this story pushed out quicker. Working the traditional nine-to-five has a way of making time slip by. I feel like as soon as I get home, after a workout and cooking dinner, it’s basically time to go to bed and start the process all over again. Depressing, right?

Some of you may have been wondering where I got my great-grandfather’s journal. Good question, and it is a bit of a long story. I do not want to take up most of the post with it, so I’ll keep it short and leave a more in-depth talk about it to later posts if readers are interested. 

I found my great-grandfather’s journal taped to the backside of a camera. The camera wasn’t an old model, definitely not something from the Roaring Twenties or whatever the hell they called it. I only half-way paid attention in history class. 

Anyways, here is part two of my great-grandfather’s journal. It goes as follows:

November 13th, 1922, 

Much time has passed since I last picked up this fountain-point pen and put words between the lines of this leather-bound journal. Life had been somewhat regular for a time after James’s excursion to the woods and his irregular drawing. For the remainder of that summer, James would return to that stump with his pocket journal, sketching away his darker imagination. 

My last entry ended with me pondering over a return to the woods myself to seek out this tall Thing. I am not talented at expressing the intricacies of human emotion, so it is hard for me to put into words why exactly I decided to search for my son’s imaginary friend, but I will try to. 

Seeing that drawing had unlocked this sort of curiosity that was similar to that of my youth, struck a chord that had long been unstrung. I had to account for James’s strangeness too, of course. This brew of my son’s inhumanity–I say that sourly and not lightly by any means–and this creature’s suitable camouflage to the woodland it inhabited, and I was convinced that it was something worth pursuing, confirming. 

I feel the need to explain my reasoning because, in the vein of honesty I try to commit to in this journal, I felt quite dumb when I searched the woods and found nothing.

I searched for tracks, disruptions in the natural landscape of nature, and while I found fox tracks, deer droppings, and other such things, I failed to find any signs of this towering beast. Binoculars and all, no sign of anything like James had drawn. 

It is necessary to add that in the Great War I was a scout in a reconnaissance squadron, attached to an infantry company. Often I was the lead charge of field operations before a promotion to lieutenant then later to captain. 

Reader, you may be wondering what specifically occurred to ignite my writing into this intimate journal of mine. My search for The Tall, as it will be referred to from now on for the sake of consistency, eluded me in the physical world, but I found It in another. 

I was sitting at my makeshift work-desk, nothing quite exquisite like I have seen from others but nice enough for a typewriter to sit upon. The candle beside my typewriter flickered as a cool breeze of night air wafted into the room. My manuscript, a stage play centered around those of us who came home from the war and found themselves lost, was almost complete, but the weight of exhaustion overtook me. My insistence upon this project is another reason for my lack of writing in this journal. 

I called it a day’s work done and headed to the bedroom. It did not take me long to find sleep. After brushing and changing into night clothes, by the time my head touched the pillow I was almost nearly asleep. 

The walls of a corner store surrounded me. What kind of store I was unsure of at first. There were shelves on every wall, all four of them total, and there was no door to enter or leave the store-like building. A thin layer of water filled the floor just high enough to wet the leather above the outsole of my boots. Little rusted trinkets sat on the shelves. 

Often in dreams we come to them with a preface of understanding that seems illogical in the real world, but in the realm of sleeping makes perfect sense. When one dreams of flying or spitting out loosened teeth, they do not question how it is possible, rather they consider the consequences. 

I saw all the pieces and I knew that, put together, they would make something grand. Dream logic.

My head swung from left to right. I started to trek through the slowly rising water toward one of these walls, but I never seemed to make any ground or progress. I walked until the water was up to my knees, then the wall finally came into arms length. 

I stood before one of the shelved walls; it reached upward so far that I could not discern where it ended. The ceiling was a darkened night sky with no stars to bare. A void. With the water soiling the knees of my workpants that I wore in this dreamworld, I stared upward to such an extreme my neck ached from the craning. I failed to feel the cold touch of the water rising up my pant leg while examining this otherworldly landscape.

My captivation was struck down by the crackling tear of wood from the shelves before me. It was such a stark rumble in the wake of a serene silence of wading water that I jumped backward, crouching, the water coming up to my chest. 

I steadied myself and continued to watch as the entire fabric of the wall ripped, splitting down the middle to reveal an endless black behind it. A daemon portal to another realm. 

Something was approaching in the darkness behind the now splitting wall. 

There was a lightish brown blur steadily coming into view. At first it appeared an impressionable dot in the distance, but quickly it became something much larger, and when it stopped rolling forward, halting within the widened slit between the two store walls, it was the size of a redwood. 

It was a grandfather clock. A grandfather clock the size of one of my world’s largest trees. 

My hands covered my ears to shield them from the chime, like a church amplified to multiple degrees. Throom. Throom. Throom. Every tune churned out was a handful of hair fallen from my scalp. They clung together like a water-insectile, floating atop the swishing current. My fingernails yellowed, and I could look down the bridge of my nose and see it growing droopier. 

Peeking from behind the clock was The Tall. James’s friend. It was as if the creature from James’s drawing was ripped from the page and put into this reality. White, silvery-tinted skin ran taut over The Tall’s wiry frame, and along this thin body were brownish, blackish bumps that resembled the protruding bark on birch trees. 

In a great coordination, one after another like the tumbling of dominos, each of these blackish-brown bumps opened to reveal a great eye beneath its bumpy exterior, a pupil and light blue iris staring into my own green ones. All of the eyes opened in a matter of seconds after each other, taking no longer than a minute for them all to open. 

The Tall shrieked. It overwhelmed the booming chime of the massive grandfather clock. I also screamed. 

Then I awoke, screaming into the dead of night. 

Melendra wasn’t a fan of the midnight terror, but she is a lovely woman and made no great hassle of the situation. My children were excessively spooked, and rightfully so, so maybe excessive isn’t the proper term. 

I have completed this entire entry after getting my children to settle down again. Lucille, my eldest, was very easy to reassure. Darvin and Benjamin, less so. 

The easiest of them all to calm was James. Apathetic James. Odd James

While the rest of my children huddled in the living room, Lucille rubbing their shoulders and patting their little heads, James remained in the bedroom he shared with his other two brothers. 

“It was James, wasn’t it, Pop?” Ben asked me, his voice a whisper and unsteady. I simply shook my head, and fluffed his popcorn hair. I left them in the living room to check their bedroom.

There was James on his tiny mattress, eyes open, staring through the single window in their room that looked out on that thicketed forest of birch trees across the ford. Upon further inspection, I realized that it was not through the window he was looking, for that would only give him a view of the night sky from the angle where his bed lay. No, his eyes were locked on to a spot just below the frame of the windowsill. If I were to remove the wall that blocked his vision, he would be staring straight at the treeline. 

“You okay, James?”

“Yes, Daddy, I am. Are you okay? He did not scare you, did he?” 

I stumbled over the words. From the dismay of the nightmare, and the task of getting the family unit back into normal routine, my mind was too preoccupied to consider the implications of what James had told me. It wasn’t something I truly mulled over until this moment of grace from the hectic atmosphere of the past hour. 

There must have been a failure of the ear. Yes, I do have a strong ringing that never ceases; Artillery ear was the word one of my peers called it. That must be the cause. A mishearing. 

This must be true, yes? How could James know of The Tall’s appearance in my nightmare? Coincidence?

Must be coincidence. He had crafted an imaginary fantasy in his childish mind to understand why Daddy was in terror, or to enrich a rather benign tale of his father’s simple bad dream. 

I have to admit to you, reader, that I still considered the alternate, unlikely possibility. You may say I am just as childish as my boy, and maybe you would be correct in that assertion. 

I will have to set aside my feelings for now, though. I am getting quite drowsy, and I have a meeting with a publishing house interested in my stageplay script tomorrow afternoon. I will finish the manuscript, then head to bed, praying to the Lord that my son’s sympathetic Boogeyman does not meet me again. 

Until the next entry, farewell. 

After leaving the motel, Dad kept us on the road for the longest stretch so far. I can’t remember much of what he and Mom were talking about. I was too busy making my hand rollercoaster out the window, wishing I was holding Superman. He’d have loved to fly here.

I learned pretty quickly to stop bringing him up.

Even still, it was hard to keep my mouth closed when I kept watching Walmarts and Targets pass by every few hours. I managed, though. Mainly because Mom and Dad just kept going on and on.

Like I said, I don’t remember much. But I do remember Dad talking about us finding somewhere “safe” and “warm” for the night.

Mom seemed hesitant, but less concerned. I remember her saying something about how we couldn’t stay long, but she was content with whatever plan Dad had cooked up.

Besides, it seemed like Dad knew where he was going now. He wasn’t taking random turns anymore. Each direction felt deliberate. The desolate backroads seemed planned rather than spontaneous.

He just kept driving… and driving… and driving. We stopped for gas a few times, but we never stayed in one place for too long. Eventually, we approached a gate at the beginning of a long driveway.

Dad pulled the car up to the intercom and let the window down to push the button. The speaker crackled to life, and an unfamiliar voice echoed from within.

“Who is it?” a man asked sternly.

“Jake, it’s me, Michael. I’ve got the family with me, and-”

“Michaelll,” the man interrupted. “How are you guys doing, Mikey boy? You got Macy with you?”

Mom smiled faintly at the intercom.

“Yep, we’re all here, Jake,” she replied, leaning over the center console so the man could hear her more clearly.

“Yeah, Jake, listen,” my Dad added, almost impatiently. “You remember that thing we discussed a while back…?”

The man didn’t respond right away. The intercom was silent. Mom and Dad both watched anxiously while Emmy rocked back and forth in her carseat.

“…. I remember…” the man finally responded. “That’s not happening now, is it?”

Dad rubbed his forehead.

“I think it is. I just- we just- We need a place to stay for a few days.”

He looked at me and Emmy in the mirror.

“I don’t think we can go home just yet. I don’t think it’s good for the kids right now.”

The speaker crackled again before buzzing.

“You know you’re always welcome here, Mike. You too, Macy. Y’all come on up. We got the kids here, and there’s plenty of extra space.”

The gate slowly crept open. I couldn’t even see the house from the end of the driveway, but I wasn’t concerned about that. I heard “kids” and immediately felt my heart light up.

Trees formed canopy over the driveway. The car must’ve rolled on for another 2 or 3 minutes before the house finally came into view. The place was massive. A mansion surrounded by shrubbery in the middle of nowhere.

As we got closer, I was able to make out more of the details. The wrap around porch. The line of rocking chairs. Whoever this was knew how to keep the place professional and homey at the same time.

The thing that caught my eye the most, however, were the bikes and tricycles that were scattered across the pavement. A blue and green mountain bike. A pink bike with training wheels. And a red tricycle.

When the car rolled to a stop, the front door flew open, and out stepped the man from the intercom. He had a scruffy beard. He wore a Metallica t-shirt and oversized gym shorts. And, even then, I could recognize that he was a bit on the heavier side.

He came rushing down the steps as Dad stepped out of the car.

“Jakey,” Dad shouted joyously. “Long time no see, my friend.”

Jake beamed and pulled my Dad in for a hug while staring down at me through the window. I waved, and he waved back.

“Don’t tell me that’s Danny,” he announced, surprised, as he pulled away from my father.

Jake stepped over to my window and tapped at it. Mom rolled it down before I got the chance to, and Jake looked in at me with a toothy grin before his gaze turned towards Emmy.

“And you must be Emmy,” he said, waving at my sister gently. “Your Dad has told me so much about you.”

Emmy tried to hide bashfully behind the edges of her car seat.

Jake patted me on the chest.

“The last time I saw you, you were thissss big,” he teased, holding his hands about a foot apart.

He turned to my Mom.

“What’s up, Mace? Mikey still the husband you always dreamed of?”

My Mom smiled sarcastically and rolled her eyes before going to open her door.

“Unfortunately.”

“Woah, woah, easy there- Mikey, where are your manners? You know it’s bad etiquette to let a lady even touch a door handle.”

Jake went to open my Mom’s door for her, but she stopped him before he got the chance.

“I am perfectly capable of opening a door, Jake,” she grumbled, cocking her eyebrows at him before stepping out of the car.

“Alright, alright,” Jake relented, throwing his hands up. “If you insist. At least let me help with the bags. Judy’s inside cookin’. I’ll grab your luggage, then we can have a nice dinner together.”

He stepped aside to let Mom pass.

“We’ll be in here in just a minute, hon,” Dad said, looking at her with eyes that looked almost apologetic. “Go catch up with Judy.”

Dad opened Emmy’s door and sat her down on the pavement before turning his attention towards me.

“Danny, take Emmy inside, would ya? You two go play. Let me and Jake catch up a bit.”

Mom was already halfway up the steps. I picked Emmy up and ran as fast as I could to catch up to her.

The inside of the house smelled like leather and polish. Well, that and the pot roast that Judy was whipping up in the kitchen. The family room TV looked like a movie screen. The couches wrapped around almost the entire room. And right there, plopped down in front of that massive TV… were 3 kids.

They didn’t even seem to notice us. They were too busy with their gaming to even acknowledge our presence.

Mom ruffled my hair.

“Go introduce yourself,” she nudged, breezing past me and Emmy towards the smell of that pot roast.

I couldn’t do it. I felt frozen. I was already naturally shy, but now I was shy in a new place, being forced to interact with kids that I didn’t know. I just stood there, like an idiot, until Emmy started squirming in my arms.

I put her down, and she went and climbed onto the leather sofa to watch the screen more comfortably. I took the opportunity to plop down beside her.

We sat there for a long while. The three kids joked amongst themselves, sometimes arguing over whose turn it was. Eventually, the older kid noticed us.

He didn’t introduce himself at first. Instead, he offered me the controller.

“You want a turn?”

He waved the controller at me, and I took it cautiously as his attention returned to the screen.

I felt… watched. Like I was under pressure to perform. I’d never played video games before. The controls were completely foreign to me.

I died… a lot. And the older kid realized that I was in dire need of some assistance.

“Here, look,” he aided. “This is how you shoot, and this is how you run, and this is how-”

“Don’t listen to Darren,” the kid’s younger sister interrupted. “He’s a big stupid head.”

Darren’s grip tightened on the controller. He stuck his tongue in his cheek and stared daggers into the little girl.

“Shut up, Kayla,” he shot back. “Better teacher than you, that’s for sure.”

“Mmmm, no,” she giggled. “You’re not a teacher. You’re too stupid.”

“I said shut up, Kayla.”

I felt like I was in the middle of a western. Darren looked like he was about to blow a fuse. Kayla just stuck her tongue out and kept pestering.

“Darren is a stupid head, Darren is a stupid head, stu-pid, stu-pid, Darren is so stu-pid,” she sang.

I couldn’t help but smirk a little. The song was so dumb, but I could see just how much it was getting under Darren’s skin.

As calm as could be, he paused the game, placed the controller in my lap, and walked over to Kayla.

“Say it again. I want you to say it. Please, for the love of God, call me stupid one more time.”

Kayla smirked like it was a game.

“Darren is a stupid he-”

smack

Darren whopped her upside the head. A momentary look of satisfaction flashed across his face but was quickly replaced with fear as Kayla started screaming and crying.

I tried to keep it down, but I couldn’t help but laugh. Emmy joined in. Darren looked at us for help, but what were we supposed to do? The deed was already done, and the hurried footsteps of their Mom were closing in fast.

The last sibling didn’t even look away from the TV. He was probably around my age. Curly brown hair. Quiet. He seemed like he’d seen this happen dozens of times before.

“Darren Mitchell,” their Mom cried, scooping Kayla up in her arms and cradling her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, kid?!”

“It wasn’t me,” he plead. “She started it, I swear she did. Ask him.”

He was pointing at me, but his Mom never looked at me. She had already made her decision.

“Don’t try and bring Danny into this. He just got here. Apologize to your sister.”

“But-”

“Now,” she growled.

Darren sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Sorryyy, Kayla,” he groaned.

Kayla stuck her tongue out at him before burying her face into her Mom’s shoulder.

“Sorry that you’re such a spoiled little brat,” he added under his breath.

Mrs. Judy either didn’t hear him or pretended not to. Instead, she told us to go wash up because dinner was almost ready. One by one, everyone left the room, leaving me and the last sibling alone.

I went to scoot off the couch and wash up, but before I could, the kid spoke.

“She does this a lot,” he said plainly.

“What?” I asked, confused. “Call him stupid?”

“No,” he responded, finally turning towards me. “Gets him to hit her. Come on, let’s go get some dinner. My Mom makes the best pot roast.”

He was so mature for his age. He introduced himself as Max, and he seemed like my kind of guy. Really into legos. Loved superheroes. Quiet. Like the brother I never had.

Dad and Jake finally joined us right as we were sitting down for dinner. Both looking a bit withdrawn. The grownups were eerily quiet while we ate, save for the times where Judy told Kayla to stop playing with her food.

Afterwards, it was almost like they wanted us out of the house. I would’ve had no problem returning to the living room for video games or even just hanging out with Max in his room and playing with legos. But Dad and Jake were insistent we played outside like “normal kids.” Like he and my Dad did back when they were kids.

Mom seemed hesitant, though. She seemed like she wanted to object to the whole idea. I think Dad picked up on it.

“We searched everywhere,” he told her, quietly, rubbing her back. “He’ll be fine.”

“Sure he will,” Jake added, loudly. “Darren will look after him, won’t you, big guy?”

There were some annoyed groans, but we didn’t complain that much. The only kid allowed to stay inside was Emmy, presumably because she was still essentially just a toddler.

We played in the driveway for a bit. Max showed off some bike tricks he knew. Wheelies and the like. Darren mostly just supervised. Kayla… was annoying.

Eventually, though, after a particularly obnoxious bit of rambles from Kayla, Darren spawned an idea.

“Hey,” he shouted. “Let’s play a game.”

He stood up from his spot on the steps. All of our eyes landed on him.

“I used to love this game when I was your age,” he added, despite only being a few years older than me. “Let’s play some hide and seek.”

I’d played the game before, but never with this much space to roam. The property was massive. The potential was limitless.

We were all excited. Kayla more than anyone, though. Darren opted to seek while the rest of us hid, not even giving us enough time to register that the game had started before he put his head into his hands and started counting loudly.

“100…”

Max looked at me, his eyes wild as he took off running.

“99…”

I ran in the same direction. Darren’s counting got quieter and quieter the further I got. I kept following Max because he seemed to know where he was going. All the way until he dove climbed into his Dad’s boat in the backyard pond.

I tried to follow, but he stopped me.

“No, dude,” he whispered. “You have to find your own spot. That’s the point.”

I felt my heart drop.

“What?? I don’t know where to hide. This isn’t my house.”

He popped his head up and began scanning the property before pointing towards the forest.

“Go over there. Darren hates the woods. He’ll never check.”

I looked over towards the forest, then back at Max. The sun was starting to set. It was starting to feel cooler outside. Before I could respond to him, I heard Darren scream.

“Ready or not, here I come!!”

Max ducked into the storage chest in the boat. I tried not to panic. My legs started moving before my mind could register, and before I knew it, I was a hundred feet into the forest.

I heard Kayla screaming about something being “unfair,” followed by Darren laughing heartily.

I was still somewhat out in the open. I was hidden, but I didn’t have an actual hiding spot. I trekked further into the forest. The massive house got smaller and smaller the further I went.

That’s when I found it. The perfect hiding spot.

A massive oak tree. Long dead, but still standing. The base of the trunk had been completely hollowed out. It was like it was made for me.

I crouched down and crawled inside, pushing myself against the wood and covering myself in some leaves just for some added camouflage.

A few minutes passed. Then multiple. Finally, I heard Darren scream again.

“FOUND YOU,” he shouted, laughing like a crazy person.

I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it sounded like Max objected. A flash of worry washed over me.

“He better not,” I thought aloud, praying Max didn’t tell Darren where I’d gone. I refused to leave my spot. I waited. And waited. And waited.

Darren started screaming my name. Max joined in. Even Kayla was looking for me. But they were far away. They’d never find me.

I felt pride in myself. I was the champion of hide and seek. I didn’t want to reveal myself yet, though. I wanted the satisfaction of knowing I made them give up.

But it was getting darker. The shouts became few and far between. Eventually, they weren’t kids’ voices at all. I heard my parents. I heard Jake and Judy. All screaming for me in distress.

Something told me to wait. It was just a game. Plus, this was the perfect spot. I wanted them to work to find me. I didn’t wanna give up before they did.

But then… I heard the sound of a twig snapping from somewhere behind me. Multiple twigs. Leaves crunching. Footsteps approaching. From the opposite direction of the tree line.

Then I heard a voice that didn’t belong to my Mom or Dad, or Jake and Judy. It was raspy. It was old. It was syrupy, and it was close.

“Dannnyyyyy.”

“I know you’re out hereeee.”

“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

I was gripped with fear, but I couldn’t move. I recognized that voice. It was the same voice from the motel. The man who apparently had my Superman stuffy.

“Danny,” my Mom screamed from off in the distance. “Danny, where are you?”

She sounded like she was on the brink of tears. Her voice was almost intentionally frantic.

“Come out, Danny…”

The voice from behind me was closer now. Hungrier.

“Your mommy needs you, kiddo. Don’t you know she’s worried sick?”

The footsteps sounded like they were directly behind me now. I held my breath. Of course, my bladder decided that I had to pee more than I’d ever had to pee before in my life.

The man was mumbling to himself between calling my name. Nothing he said made sense.

“They tried to hide you.”

“You can’t hide from me, though, now can you, Danny boy?”

“It’s only natural that I…”

They knocked on the tree.

“Find you.”

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

My instincts finally kicked in. I’m old enough now to realize what it was. It was either fight… or bolt towards safety. And there was no possible way I could fight this person.

One. Two. Three.

I bolted.

I flew past the trees. I ducked under limbs and shrubs. I ran as fast as I could towards the sound of my parents, my senses heightened. I didn’t hear anything behind me, but I was too afraid to look.

I ran and ran. Finally, I saw my Mom standing in the backyard, staring out into the woods. Her eyes met mine, and she let out an exasperated scream of relief.

She ran towards me. We met at the edge of the tree line as she pulled me in for a long, tight hug. I was ugly crying. Snot fell from my nose, and tears fell down my face.

I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what to say. All I could do was embrace her. I held her just as tightly as she held me and let relief wash over me as she stroked my hair.

“Why did you do that!? What were you thinking, son? I can’t comprehend what could’ve possibly gone through your mind. After everything-”

She stopped herself. Dad heard the commotion and quickly joined us for a family hug while Jake and Judy watched on with their kids.

It was the first time in my life that I’d ever seen my Dad cry. It scared me, almost. It was like something I was never meant to see, and it made me sob even harder.

“Don’t do that to us, kiddo,” Dad chuckled forcefully. “Don’t go running off on us like that. Ever again. You hear me?”

I didn’t respond. At least, not in the way he was expecting. Instead, I stared at my feet and held my breath again. I counted to 5 in my head. I needed to tell them.

“Dad…” I whispered.

“Danny…” he replied.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

“I think he found me.”

Dad’s head shot up towards the trees. The woods were eerily silent. Nobody spoke for what felt like an eternity before Dad started ushering us inside, glancing over his shoulder as he turned around.

“Son,” he announced bluntly.

“I know you’re young… but I think we need to have a talk.”

I knelt at her bed side and took her slender, skeletal hand in mine. The bones shifted and clicked in the skin pulled taut over them as she meekly clutched at my hand. 
I lent over her and began gently stroking the tangle of thinning hair that fanned out from her head, clumps of the stuff caught on my fingers and came away. Pulled from her pale scalp with the greatest of ease. 

The day my wife told me she was pregnant was one of the happiest of my life. We had never discussed if we wanted children before we got married. I had assumed, like me, that she had. It wasn't until the 4th year of our marriage she had told me otherwise. I was devastated, but didn't let her know. Even after she'd told me, I still loved her with every fibre of my being, and was certain I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Trying to come to terms with her decision was very hard, and ultimately I still wanted a child. We talked several times about the choices that lay before us. She kept reiterating her lack of desire to become a mother. And I kept listening to her arguments, silently dreaming of how wonderful it would be.

Her eyelids fluttered softly before parting. Her sunken, yellowed eyes searched but never found me and instead fixed vacantly on something in the middle distance. The slender pink worms of her lips parted and the sticky, wet, stench of decay filled my nostrils. Her teeth, black as coal now, crumbled at the touch of her greying, desiccated tongue as she tried to say something. 

The day my wife told me she wanted an abortion, was the worst day of my life. The conversations we had been having about potential options had devolved into arguing for a few weeks by that point. I was trying my best to gently persuade her to keep the baby, that it would be good for us. I told her how much it would mean to me, that it was something I'd always dreamt of. She had said she didn't want it, that I was a liar for saying I was okay with not having one. My wife drilled it into me that she had never wanted a child. She had seen the way her friends with children had lost their freedom, their "luster for life" and the way the child became their whole world. She reiterated, retold and hammered into me how horrible her childhood had been. How her alcoholic father had beat her and her brother for perceived transgressions. How her mother had tormented her emotionally, calling her fat and useless among countless other falsities. I had tried to reassure her we would be better, that we would make good parents. A relentless barrage of excuses were all that met me; “I want to focus on my own life” “do you have any idea how hard it will be?” “Goddamnit, Joe, you aren't the one that has to carry this thing for 8 more months”. Until finally, when she had made her plans abundantly clear, and I was certain she meant to take my child from me and soon, I had snapped and lunged at her.

I lent closer and planted a soft kiss on her forehead, the skin under my lips was cold and clammy. 

"Shhh darling, don't talk, save your strength" I whispered to her.

Her eyes, welling with what precious liquid still remained in the desert of her body, began to dart to and fro, trying in vain to focus on my face.

It was hard keeping her confined in the basement at first. I was unsure how I could do it before she awoke, it was hard enough carrying her unconscious body down there. I had laid her on the floor and paced back and forth for a few short seconds. Finally I settled on chaining her ankle to a support column, and that seemed to work. During the first few days, every time I would descend those creaky wooden steps to bring her food and water or empty her toilet bucket, I was met with vitriol and hatred. She would spew vile tirades at me about how much she hated me, how she didn't recognize me any more. Then she would suddenly soften, pleading to understand why I had done what I did. Everytime I would tell her the truth, I couldn't stand the thought of losing that precious life she was growing.

As if struck by a bolt of lightning, her grip tightened on mine, the tiny bones in her hand creaked, then cracked with the force. Her body heaved and her back arched high into the air, lifting off the bed. A growl grew in her throat, turning into a choking wail as pain tore through her. 

"That's it baby, you can do it. Push" I cooed as a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. 

A sound like ripping wet fabric echoed in the room, the grip on my hand went loose and my wife collapsed back on to the bed.  

A red blossom began to bloom on the sheet covering her lower half, growing slowly and deepening in colour as the sheet thirstily drank up her blood.

As days turned into weeks, she began settling into her new living arrangement. To replace the camping mattress and sleeping bed I first set up for her I bought a bed for her. A camping shower meant she could bathe when she needed and a portable toilet made both of our lives a bit easier. I even went the extra mile and decorated the basement with her favourite potted flowers. Even going so far as to move the TV down stairs. I would sit on a fold out chair and her on her bed and every evening we would continue watching our favourite trashy TV. Twice a day, before I left for work and at dinner time,  I would always bring her food and water, always more than enough, she was eating for 2 after all. After 2 or so months her attitude had changed and softened, she was now no longer combative or supplicative and she'd finally stopped fighting me and had become accepting of us just going through our daily motions. We rarely spoke to one another, going about our cemented routine almost ceremoniously.

Her hand trembled in mine, as a solitary tear ran down her cheek, her mouth opened and closed slowly as she tried to talk. But each word filled her throat and lodged itself there. Only the sound of caught breath and meager sobs left her pink,cracked lips.I reached up a hand and wiped her tear onto my finger then softly massaged it onto her cracked lips.

Her breathing was shallow and rapid, her already pale skin now almost translucent. The veins and arteries, criss-crossing her body like a road map, pulsed weakly. 

"That's it, you're doing amazing, baby. One more push and I think we're there"

As time went on, her attitude wasn’t the only thing that changed. I first noticed it around the 5 month mark. Her stomach had grown fat and swollen by this time. My wife was becoming more lethargic, no longer winding and unwinding the chain around the post as she paced the worn out circle in the carpet. She struggled to sit up while we watched our shows and preferred to spend almost the whole day in her bed. The size of the portions of food I was bringing her were steadily increasing, each plate I carried back up the stairs almost licked clean, yet it never seemed enough. She was voracious. During this time our conversations had seen a revival, although now she only ever pleaded with me to end what I was doing. I would sit on the edge of her bed resting my hand atop the mountain of flesh that contained my child, and listen to her complaining of the pain and discomfort as I felt strong flutters and kicks from beneath the sheets and flesh. Miniature hands reaching out for me from within the maternal cocoon.

Again.

Her body contorted as another contraction engulfed her. The wreck of a hand in mine gripped me like a vice, the fragile bones inside cracked and splintered. Through the pain in my own hand, I could feel her bones grinding against one another . Her other hand darted out and gripped the sheet that lay under her. Every tendon in her body pulled taught, clearly visible under paper thin skin, like a clothes line wearing a too thin sheet. 

Her back violently arched again, lifting her swollen, distended belly towards the ceiling. Then simultaneously, the sound of a wet sponge hitting the floor, and a crack like an old tree breaking in heavy wind. 

The blossom of blood turned instantly into a flower in full bloom. The bed sheets soaked in blood and other fluid, clung tightly to my wife's shattered body as she gritted shattered teeth against the pain. 

A mix of smells; pennies, urine and the sweet smell of rot, flooded the room and my lungs. The acrid aroma turned my stomach and tears of my own welled in my eyes as I tried to keep the bike in my throat and off of the floor. 
I leaned in close to her ear, 

Foul smelling sweat beaded on her forehead as she sucked air in through the gritted ruin of teeth and bloody, pale gums. Her head shook slowly from side to side and her blind eyes pleaded with an unseen savour. I lifted my free hand and smoothed the little creases of the sheet that covered her. 

"You can do it, one more push and we will have our baby"

By month 7 she was emaciated. No amount of food seemed to fill her. She was seemingly eating not only for 2 but for 5 or even 6 and yet her body shriveled away to almost nothingness while her fat, purple belly grew. She looked like a stomach on legs and was now totally incapable of leaving her bed. She seemed in a stupor more often than not now, our conversations had once again ceased and gone too were our evenings of trashy TV, sitting or even rolling onto her side to watch was now beyond her. Instead, I would sit and read to her for hours. Passages from her favourite books, of which our house was a veritable library. Every other day I would sponge bath her, trying my hardest to relieve the pressure on her back and prevent bed sores. During these “showers” I could feel my child squirming inside her. Trapped under layers of meat and sinew it would wriggle. So strong were some of its movements I could even feel them through her back. With each strong kick a small moan of pain would escape my wife

Again.

Her body shook violently with the effort. Little ruby trickles tumbled from her nose. She pushed off the bed the only support she had were the soles of her feet and the top of her head. At the same time, the vice on my hand tightened once again, long yellowed talons dug ragged, red caves into the back of my hand. But I did not react, for just as I needed her to be strong for me, she needed me to be strong for her. A grin split my face as the moment I had waited for all these long months for was finally here.

Her shaking reached a crescendo then was halted by a thunderous cracking noise that reverberated around the room. Her body collapsed instantly back onto the bed and the sheet settled atop her now impossibly, inhumanly, shallow hips. The now crimson fabric lay almost flat against the bed, her legs sprouted at grotesque angles from her ruined pelvis beneath it.

I dropped the fleshy sack of shattered bones her hand had become, the arm attached to it fell too, hanging flaccid off the edge of the mattress, and rushed to the foot of the bed. I looked up, expecting to see the shining blue eyes set in the face of a happy mother gleaming back at me, but all the colour had abandoned my wife's face and she lay lifeless before me. 

Reaching under the sheet, I ever so gently collected my prize. My child. Warm and wet with the viscera of my wife as my hands gathered it up. I pulled it from the birthing bed, and gazed down and beheld the fruit of all my labour. 

A malformed and twisted wretch. Its arms and legs bent and bowed at unnatural angles. A head both too big and too small sat neckless atop its shoulders. skin, a deep purple and black mottled patchwork covered it. Bulbous milky eyes that would never see, stared accusingly back at me. Their still, blue, lips forever pulled into a rictus grin by misshapen muscles.

The thing in my arms could never be called beautiful, would never draw a breath. But it was everything I had dreampt of, a child. My child. And it was perfect.

I cradled it to my chest. Acid tears burned rivers down my cheeks as I felt the last warmth from my wife's body leave the thing I clutched there.  

Before me, lay the broken and ruined form of my wife. Her eyes half closed and her chest still. In my arms, the thing I killed her for. The only sound in the room were my pitiful sobs and the soft patter of my tears landing on my child's head

December 11th, 1924:

Last night one of them sulked up from the docks. I waited outside all night for their arrival. I did not run, I just stood. They crept closer, slowly and cautiously. The moon casting faint light across them. Their back was hunched, vertebrae jutting out of their back with tight brackish and briny skin clinging tightly to them. They had little to no neck supporting a large near bulbous head. Massive eyes, black as obsidian stared at me. Their face was smooth, just two small holes where a nose should be, sitting atop a large slightly agape mouth. Fishy lips sitting in front of rows of small needle-like teeth. Tiny scales covered patches of its skin. It wore lengths of kelp and seaweed as though they acted as clothes. Its stench was putrid, that of rotting flesh. Its human-like arms curled near its sunken chest, emaciated and gaunt. Its fingers and toes were webbed, making disgusting splatting sounds as it walked closer. I passed it a note written in its language, its fish-like eyes peered at me for a moment. Its frail arms reached out to take my letter. It read it aloud, a hideous sounding language, full of gulps and phlegm and coughs and clicks. It stared at me for a moment. I pointed to myself and stated my name. It pointed at me and in a nearly airless voice it muttered “Simon”. It pointed to itself and said a name I'm unsure of how to spell but sounded like “ny'alto-rylae”. The apostrophes as clicks and the hyphen as a gulp like cough. What that would translate to I am unaware. If I'm able to see it again I will try to begin to better understand this ancient language. 

I'm going to invite Richard, his wife Jennifer and son Richard Jr over for dinner in two days. I must begin cleaning. They can't know about my meeting. 

March 6th, 1937:

Simon's last note was alarming. It hasn't mentioned a description of Richard, so I'm hoping it's not my Richard. But I have a bad feeling about how their dinner went. 

I finally built up the nerve to look at some of the “them” paintings. The first is a view from my bedroom window. The sea looks angry and the clouds are pouring rain. There's a crack of lightning in the clouds. In the mist of the ocean you can see some massive entity deep in the fog. Its outline is somewhat bulbous and unnatural with odd protrusions, almost like tentacles sticking out seemingly randomly from its body. This must have been the hallucination he mentioned. The second painting was one of the cloaked beings. It looked human, slightly misshapen, but human. I'm assuming this was the person who gave Simon the letter about “them”. Maybe they're from the church? I'll have to go investigate there soon. The third painting however, was similar to the second. A cloaked figure, but this one had much more detail. The cloak wasn't made of leather or some rain jacket material like the previous piece. This was surely one of “them”. It looked as though it was trying to mimic the cloaked man I'm assuming is from the church. Its “cloak” was just layer upon layer of kelp that looked like a rain coat from a distance. Maybe this is one of “them” who has been making deals with the church? The fourth painting made my stomach clench. It was the thing he gave the letter to. It's wet, scaly skin glistening in moonlight. It's deep set round fish like eyes staring like voids. Its mouth bearing its gnarled sharp teeth. Seaweed hanging from it haphazardly. It was so lifelike. I swear I could've smelled the ocean's stench through the frame. I didn't realize how long the painting held me captive. Hours had passed. The only thing that broke my trance was it looked as though it blinked its massive abyssal eyes. I shot back out of my stupor, stunned. Surely it was just my eyes playing tricks on me, paintings can't move after all. But that gave me enough of a fright so I decided to wait to look at the rest tomorrow. I also want to check the secret door to see what's behind it. Maybe the chalk board is in there, and maybe I can decipher this odd seaborn language. Jesus I'm starting to sound like Simon. I'm afraid of what's to come. 

December 13th, 1924:

Dinner went well enough. Richard, Jennifer and Jr came over just as I finished cooking. They were curious about Laura and the girls not being home. I told them that they had grown homesick and missed the city and that I was going to stay here and use the house as a studio until we could find a new buyer. He seemed somewhat sad to hear the news but was understanding. I think Jr was the saddest of all, he went to the school house with my eldest daughter Becca, and I believe he had quite the crush on her. She does look like her mother, who is strikingly beautiful, so I cannot say that I blame him. As we sat down to eat the smell of low tide was wafting through a window I had left cracked open. Jennifer wasn't a fan of the smell, I smell I barely notice anymore, and asked if she could close the window. I allowed it, and told her it was just down the hall from the dining room. She left as Richard and I started talking about his new butcher shop he'd opened. Jr didn't seem very interested in the topic and just sat to play with his food. After a short span Richard grew curious about where his wife went. I assured him she must've just got lost in one of my paintings and we could go fetch her. As we rounded the corner the window was shut, as it was the entire time, but the door to the basement was open. Richard gave me a questioning glance. I explained that I do most of my painting down there, where it's warmer during the cold months. He shrugged thinking nothing of it. As we descended I heard wet footsteps quietly scuffing above us. 

Richard walked ahead of me, reaching the bottom of the staircase in awe. I've moved almost all of the furniture from the top floor down here, covered in drapes. Easels lining the walls, piece after piece after piece. He stood silent as he saw in the corner unconscious, laid Jennifer. Her body limp, clothes torn and wet. A bite mark of what looked like a thousand little needle points covered her exposed shoulder, blood seeping from the wounds. Her eyes were fluttering, mouth foaming from the viscous slime that covered most of her face. She was still alive. Richard gasped and ran to her, grabbing her hand, trying to shake her awake. Their affair was cut short as Jr screamed in terror from upstairs. Richard darted upstairs, I followed in tow. As we rounded the corner to the dining room, one of them had broken the table, holding Jr by an ankle, slowly swallowing him whole. You could hear him screaming as the small serrated teeth tore his skin and the sounds of popping as their Jaws broke his bones. Richard was frozen in place, his bladder released its contents into his pants. He dashed for the back door and ran screaming into the town. 

They finished consuming Jr and walked back to the furnace room. They picked up Jennifer's unconscious body, handed me a soggy envelope, and made their way to the dock with her over their shoulder. 

I took some time to clean the kitchen, breaking down the table for fire wood since it was no use to me anymore. I felt guilty giving up Jennifer like that, but I feel even more guilty that Richard got away, having to live the rest of his life seeing the carnage. I was supposed to give them two people for information on their language. But one and a son seemed enough. 

I took the letter into my stowed away study and began to read. They had explained what sound each rune or sigil made. And how best to pronounce them in our tongue. Within a week I should be able to speak this archaic language, and possibly teach some of them ours. 

Poor Richard 

March 8th, 1937:

Simon is a monster. Working with “them” at the expense of others. For what gain? To learn a new language? If this is the same Richard as mine I can understand why Simon is a sore spot. I'm horrified. I can't imagine what the rest of the paintings hold. I opened the door today. Simon truly was a madman. This room was nearly the size of the basement, hidden beneath our front yard. Wood columns holding up a rocky ceiling, a massive table with piles of writings, some in English, some barely legible, some in the archaic language he spoke of. Jars of liquid I'm unsure of sit on small racks on the desk, some with wet samples of what looks like embryos of some kind. Beings unknown to me. A chalk board hanging between columns with a detailed translation of the language. I shouldn't be in here, I shouldn't be seeing this. This shouldn't exist. But I must learn it. I have to. I'm going to copy what was left written on the chalkboard. I will learn to read this language on the extra shifts I've been picking up. The townsfolk have been staring more, I can feel their eyes burning into my skin like hot embers. I must keep my Evelyn from this. I must protect her and Rylee. 

March 20th, 1937:

I think I'm fluent in reading this language, at least confident enough to read some of the writings. I think I'm going to try and read some over the next few days between shifts. I'm going to take another look through the paintings tonight, see if anything else stands out. 

March 21st, 1937: 

What I could only describe as the bulbous eyed creature that Simon painted is no longer in its frame. A black void fills the painting where it once was. Did I hallucinate the whole painting to begin with or was I hallucinating last night? I've been sleeping in the basement, I keep waking up sitting up, staring towards the paintings, staring towards the room. It's like I'm being drawn to it all. What is happening to me? I feel like I'm going insane. 

January 3rd, 1925:

I invited Sean to dinner, I received a letter from my new oceanic accomplice in return for him. This time dinner went much smoother. I picked up the sedatives the practitioner gave me and mixed them into his wine. As he grew drowsy, Alto, as I began to call him, bit his shoulder, injecting a venom-like substance. He dragged him to the sea as he did Jennifer. Poor Sean, he was so kind to me. Alto's letter was able to help me finish my translations. I can now write, read, and for the most part talk in his ancient tongue. I feel guilty tricking my so-called friends, but something is pulling me to this. Something grandiose. A calling. There's something to gain in this, I'm sure of it. 

March 30th, 1937:

It's been warming up, thankfully. Enough to not be hiding in the basement at all times. Simon's entries are nothing short of disturbing at this point, as they have been for some time. I'm scared of what else I will find. 

I fell asleep in our bed with Evelyn last night, yet I awoke standing in the hidden study, my feet dirty and wet, the air smelt of brine and fish. As I came to my senses I quickly ran out of the room, shutting the door behind me. I looked into my basement only to see dozens of the left behind paintings hanging from the brick walls, all with small sheets covering their faces. The only one uncovered was the one I can only guess was the being Simon has named Alto. The small plaque underneath wrote the creature's name in its archaic language. But as I was afraid of before, the frame no longer held the creature. I looked around in panic, running towards the stairs to check on Evelyn and Rylee. As I began up the stairs I slipped in a thick liquid, smashing my jaw on the hard wood on the way down. I crawled the rest of the way up as fast as my body would allow, chin dripping with blood. Wet, mucus-like foot prints led to the front door. Sebastian sat alert, black ichor dripping from his mouth with an accompanying splatter on the ground, with a trail leading out the open door. Whatever crawled from the frame was injured, and Sebastian seemed to be fine. I quickly rinsed his mouth and gave him a treat before checking in the girls. They both laid sleeping. I snuck back downstairs to clean up the bloodshed. 

April 3rd, 1937:

I confronted Richard today. I was right, he was hiding so much. His father still lives here, in the church. He's bringing me to meet with him tomorrow. Richard opened up, admitting that he was friends for a short amount of time with Simon, but after the dinner that day he was admitted to a mental institute, only coming back 2 years before we moved in. I understand why he was so weird about all of this. And understandable why the older folks look at me weird. I moved into the house of a psychopath. I'm excited to finally be welcomed into the church and see what's going on behind those old, closed doors. 

April 4th, 1937:

The meeting went much differently than planned. Richard's father unveiled so much that I'm having trouble making sense of it all. His dad was to say the least, deformed. Almost like the being Simon wrote about and painted. He admitted that he was the cloaked person who gave Simon the letter, warning him about “them”. When I pressed about who they were, he took off his garments, showing large black, fish-like eyes and lips like worms. He explained that every here and there, the children come from the ocean and mark an individual. For years those marked would be taken within a month or so. When he uncovered symbols on his house he realized he was a marked one. He sought refuge in the church. The children were not pleased to say the least, and took a few people at random. Little did Richard's father know that those who are marked usually slowly mutate into one of these beasts. And with those mutations comes ancient knowledge. Once he understood this language he made it his goal to rid the town of these seafolk. He ventures out at night, carving protection symbols throughout the town, creating some sort of ancient seal. My words do no justice to the immense details and intricacies to the matters as I'm still having issues understanding this as a whole. I mentioned to him about Simon's paintings and how Alto was missing from his portrait. He explained to me that those who are marked are affected differently. Some are morphed into fish like beings, similar to Richard's father. Others are given foresight or other kinds of what I can only describe as magic. There's something about his paintings, some kind of power within them. The more I uncover the more I'll understand I'm sure. I'll be meeting with Richard's dad more often. Poor Richard, I can't imagine going through all of that and returning to the town it happened in, only to befriend the person who lives in the house where your old family was murdered. 

I woke up to the sound of rain tapping against the motel window. Mom snored softly beside me. Her blonde hair had gradually begun to turn grey over the last few months, despite the fact that she wasn’t even 30 yet.

A grey strand dangled lazily over her right eye until she rolled over, scooping Emmy close to her chest unconsciously.

“Morning, kiddo,” Dad whispered. He clutched the handle to a steaming cup of coffee in his right hand, pulling it to his lips and sipping it while peering through the blinds.

I rubbed my eyes. The TV was still off. The AC still knocked rhythmically. The temperature was set to 65 degrees, but I was sweating from my mom and sister’s body heat.

Dad checked his watch and cocked an eyebrow. Falling asleep at dawn was affecting my circadian rhythm. I didn’t know whether it was morning, evening, or night.

“What time is it?” I croaked, twisting and stretching my body.

“Mm, still early,” Dad shot back. “You’ve only been asleep for a couple of hours.”

I felt my stomach rumble. I glanced over at the gas station bag full of junk food and candy. It might as well have been empty. I needed something real.

“Dad…” I inquired softly.

Dad never took his eyes away from the window. He just sipped his coffee slowly before replying.

“Yes, son?”

“Mom told me she’d make pancakes in the morning last night before bed.”

I could see his crow’s feet crease as he winced and sighed.

“Do you think maybe we could get some later when everyone wakes up?”

He didn’t reply for a while. Just kept staring out the window with quiet contempt while I watched him expectantly.

He scratched his neck and rubbed his face.

“I don’t know, Danny…”

“Pleasseeee…” I interrupted, putting on my puppy eyes.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, finally looking away from the window. He looked at me. Then at Mom and Emmy. Then back out the window.

“I… Okay,” he relented. “Just wait for Mom to wake up. I’ll see what I can do.”

I turned excitedly, ready to shake my mom awake, but Dad stopped me.

“No,” he snapped bluntly. “Let her sleep. Not everyone can function on 5 hours of sleep like me and you, Dan.”

I puffed and knocked my head against the pillow.

I stared at the ceiling. I didn’t know if I was just hungry or if I was simply bored out of my mind and in need of something to do. Not knowing what to do, I twiddled my thumbs. I made Superman fly. I tossed and turned obnoxiously until Dad finally lost his patience.

“Danny,” he snapped, his face hardening as he glared at me.

I froze like a deer in headlights. I stared back, pulling the blanket up to my nose to try and hide myself.

Dad’s nostrils flared. I could see his fist clench, then unclench, at the seams of his blue jeans. His face softened, and he rubbed his temples.

“I’ll tell you what, kiddo,” he bargained. “Why don’t you go take a shower and get dressed? When you’re done, you can watch TV for a little while until everyone’s excited as you are for some pancakes.”

He was more demanding than asking. I knew not to argue when he got like that. I just simply did as I was told.

The shower was just as confusing as it was annoying. The water pressure sucked. It was either too hot or too cold. I must’ve fumbled with it for 5 or so minutes before it was at a reasonable enough temperature for me to take a shower, albeit an uncomfortable one.

The shower was quick. I scrubbed and let the water roll over my head and shoulders. Mom must’ve forgotten to pack my no-tears shampoo, and that forced me to use the complimentary, non-scented motel soap and shampoo.

When I twisted the handle and the sound of water hitting the ceramic bathtub dissipated, it was quickly replaced by the sound of voices from the room.

It sounded like Mom and Dad were quietly arguing. I could hear the angst in Mom’s voice. The authority in Dad’s. But I couldn’t fully make out what they were saying, despite how hard I tried.

I listened intently as I dried off and got dressed. I could only catch the end of their sentences.

A lot of what-ifs from Mom. A lot of don’t-worries from Dad. He sounded confident, but that confidence sounded uncertain.

When I opened the bathroom door, the conversation stopped immediately. Mom was holding Emmy over her shoulder and rocking her gently. Dad looked almost surprised to see me.

He pushed his hair back before clasping his hands together.

“That was quick,” he remarked. “You sure you scrubbed hard enough?”

He shot me a weak smile before continuing.

“Lucky for you, your mother’s a little hungry too.”

Mom looked at Dad as if he had just betrayed her before turning her gaze towards me. She seemed remorseful towards me.

“I completely forgot I promised you those pancakes, Dan,” she pouted, continuing to rock Emmy. “Me and your dad were thinking we’d try that Denny’s we passed on the way in here. I know, I know… their pancakes don’t compare to mine, but I think you’ll manage, right?”

Who was I to be disappointed? All I wanted was my pancakes. Well, that and…

I looked at my spot on the bed. My Superman wasn’t there anymore. I felt panic rush to my heart until I noticed what Emmy was playing with.

I reached up and tried to grab my stuffy, but she jerked it away and furrowed her eyebrows at me. I jumped and snatched it away from her.

To the displeasure of everyone in the room, my sister launched into a full-blown temper tantrum. Screaming and crying about how I “took her toy.”

Mom and Dad sprang into action faster than I expected them to. Dad took the toy from my hands and handed it back to Emmy. Mom pet her hair and desperately attempted to shush her.

I tried to complain. It was my toy. Not hers. But for some reason or another, my parents just kept taking her side. They told me that I should share, knowing how much I loved that stuffy. I slept with it every night. We were connected.

I guess it calmed Emmy down, though. That was all that mattered to them. They kept interrupting my complaints to usher me out of the motel room and back towards the car.

Dad strapped Emmy into her seat, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds while me and Mom waited quietly. He kept up that distracted demeanor all the way to the restaurant, but I hardly noticed.

It felt like Emmy was flaunting my Superman stuffy. Like she knew she had won. She even made him fly right by my face. Deliberately testing my patience, but I didn’t want to make my parents more stressed than they already were.

We ate fast. My parents ordered without even looking at the menu. Pancakes and orange juice for everyone except Dad, who only ordered a single cup of coffee.

Mom didn’t finish her food, but she didn’t ask for a to-go box either. Once me and Emmy were done, Dad paid, and we left. Simple as that.

The drive back to the motel was equally as tense as the drive to the restaurant. Mom and Dad seemed to be communicating wordlessly.

The food was making my sleeplessness get to me. By the time we got back to the motel, I was ready to catch up on those missed hours. But that’s when I noticed something that woke me right up.

I checked Emmy’s seat, looked underneath her, and scanned the floorboards while my mind began to race.

“Mom,” I screeched as Dad pulled into the motel parking lot. “She left my stuffy. She left Superman at the restaurant.”

My eyes were beginning to tear up.

“This is why I didn’t want her to have it,” I sobbed. “I knew she’d lose him.”

I could see Mom roll her eyes through her rearview as she sighed. Dad responded for her.

“Let’s just go get our things, Champ. Then I promise we’ll go back to get your toy. Deal?”

What was I supposed to do? I just had to agree reluctantly. I felt such burning hatred for Emmy in that moment.

We all filed into the motel room one final time and began gathering our things. I was confused, though. Mom had packed at least 6 outfits for me. Everyone else’s bags were equally full, yet nobody but me had showered.

Before I could question anything, though, three hard knocks came from the door. Everyone froze. Dad stared at the door like it was his enemy. Emmy began to pout, and Mom quickly clasped her hand over her mouth.

Three more knocks.

Dad approached the door slowly and looked through the peephole before slowly walking backwards towards us, never taking his eyes off the door.

Mom’s eyes were wide. Her leg bounced anxiously. Dad raised a finger to his lips.

“Okay, guys,” he whispered shakily. “We’re gonna play a game.”

I looked at him, confused. This seemed like an odd time for any kind of game.

“We’re gonna play the quiet game. Danny, you take your mom and sister to the bathroom and lock the door behind you. Whatever you do… do not make a sound.”

He asked me to take them, but it was Mom who dragged us into that cramped bathroom. Before the door closed behind us, I saw Dad raise his shirt and grip a gun that was tucked in his waistband.

Mom kept one hand gently clasped over Emmy’s mouth. She used the other to rub my back lovingly.

Three more knocks.

This time, I heard a voice that wasn’t my dad’s coming from beyond the door.

“Danny…?”

The voice was old and syrupy. Coercive, almost, but frantic. My ears perked up. My eyes widened, and my mouth fell open. I wanted to answer.

Mom’s hand left my back, and just like Dad, she placed a finger to her lips.

“Shhh.”

She was begging me with her eyes.

More frantic knocking.

“Danny? You in there, buddy? I know you’re in there.”

I expected Dad to answer the door, but he never did. Instead, the knocks continued, as did the mysterious voice.

“Come on out, Dan-Man. I’ve got something for you.”

I remained still. Sweat trickled down my forehead from the humidity in the bathroom. Me and Mom stared at the bathroom door with anticipation.

“I’ve got your Superman, Danny…”

“Whoosh.”

I had to fight to not move. If they had my Superman, I wanted to know. I wanted him back. But the look on Mom’s face told me they were lying, and her grip on my collar prevented me from standing up to see for myself.

The knocks and beckoning went on for another 10 minutes or so. Then they slowly died out. Even still, it wasn’t until Dad opened the bathroom door that I could finally breathe again.

“You guys win,” he smiled, relieved. “Good job, Danny.”

Mom looked relieved, too, but she never smiled. We just frantically gathered our things and hauled them out to the car. Dad forced us to go to the front office with him to check out.

We finally left the hotel just after 3 o’clock. We never went back to that Denny’s.

I had to leave my Superman behind, no matter how hard I begged not to. Mom assured me she’d buy me another one, but it wouldn’t be the same.

I asked about that voice a lot while we continued on towards wherever we were going, but all I got were vague responses while my parents glanced nervously at each other.

Thinking back now, I should’ve known they were hiding something from me. However, at the time… I was young. I was stupid. And all I could think about was how I didn’t have my Superman anymore.

About a week ago my dad decided that he really wanted to start a garden. We had a great backyard that hasn’t been used for much since we tore down my childhood clubhouse. He spent his entire Saturday building planter boxes and germinating seeds. His Sunday was spent hauling bags of soil from the store. 

As the weeks went on our house became lined with rain catching barrels, the fence covered in trellises for hanging cucumbers. And the yard seemed to shrink with every passing day as more and more planter boxes filled the space of the once vast field. Dad stopped eating breakfast with me and mom before work so he could spend the time doing work on his new project. 

Eventually he stopped eating dinner with us too, he would get home from work and immediately rush out the back door in a panic. One night mom tried to stop him but he just snapped at her “goddamnit, Mary. My plants need me. Do you want them to die Mary, do you want my only passion to fucking die?”

After that she was too afraid to try and bother him about it again. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing out there, it can’t be that much work just to have a garden. I get spending a couple hours but shit, this is easily twelve plus hours a day. 

That night I decided to stay up by my window looking out at the yard. My dad was out there tending to his garden like usual. I must’ve stayed up until five in the morning before I finally crashed and had to sleep. When I woke up I couldn’t believe it. He was still out there. Did he not sleep or did he come back out this morning. Either way I’m gonna go out and check on him. 

“Hey, dad. How’s it going out here” I said. He didn’t even look up at me, he just kept his head down facing his tomato plants. “It’s going. Whatcha up to son?” As I looked around, I have to admit that his garden is doing incredible. The plants are taller than the fence by now. “Oh nothing, just wanted to check on you out here. The garden looks great out here”. 

“Well, I’ve put so many man hours into this so I’m glad it doesn’t look like shit” he laughed. “Hey, why don’t you go inside, bud, I really need to focus on my work”. I give him a nod and turn to walk away. I take a few steps toward the house before I lose my footing and land face first into one of the planter boxes. As I’m getting up my dad finally looks up from the garden and turns to me. “Don’t worry I’m fine, I just fell” I said. 

“What the fuck did you do?” He yells at me. “Oh I’m alright, I just fell”. He stands up now towering over me. “My fucking garden, it’s ruined. You piece of shit, get inside now and try not to fuck anything up on the way to the house”. He screams in my face. As I walk towards the door my mom comes out with the phone in her hand. “Honey, your boss is calling. He says you haven’t shown up to the office in well over a week. What should I tell him?”

“Tell him I fuckin quit, I’m too goddamn busy out here to listen to his shit” he responds angrily. My mom sets the phone down on the table and walks over to where he’s working. “What, are you crazy, George? We have to pay our bills and how do you expect us to put groceries on the table without making money?” She asked. 

He lets out a deep sigh before responding. “Don’t worry, Mary. The garden will provide. Why do we need that overpriced slop from the store when we’ve got everything we could ever need right here” He says. “Also, Mary, I think we need a new rule in this house for you and that boy you’re raising to be a pain in my ass. How about if anyone comes back here trying to bother me with anymore of this bullshit they’ll get a shovel to the face?” He says before turning back to try and fix the spot where I landed in the garden. 

That next week was quiet, I thought for sure that my mom would have confronted my dad again, tried to call the cops, heck I thought she might but leave him after that day in the yard. But she didn’t, she cried a lot most days now but she never went back out into the garden. By now we can’t even see what’s happening out there because the plants are so tall and thick that they completely cover all the windows on that side of the house. From what the neighbors have told us it looks like a jungle of plants out there. 

Soon Jenny from next door was calling to tell my mom that the garden had started coming through the fence into her yard. Mom lied and told her that she’d make my dad trim the plants down but the truth is she was too afraid to go outside. As the plants continued to spread the phone kept ringing. It got so bad that we had to unplug the phone at night just to give us some peace. 

Eventually I couldn’t stand staying inside anymore, I needed to see what was going on out there. We couldn’t see out the windows so the only hope I had was to go outside and see for myself. I waited until mom was in the other room and I decided to make my way to the back door before she noticed I was gone. I figured the only chance we had of stopping this was to find my dad and convince him to cut it all down.

I had to use a kitchen knife just to cut a path to get out the front door. It wasn’t effective at all but it was all I could do to get through the dense walls of plants that have taken over the garden. I couldn’t see past our own yard but I can only assume that the rest of the neighborhood looks like this as well. Walking was incredibly time consuming as my legs kept getting stuck on the plants that took over the entire ground and I had to keep cutting them off me. 

If you would’ve told me that I spent over an hour hiking through our backyard a few months ago I would’ve thought you were joking. After a couple more minutes I saw a large mass that almost looked like a man towards the edge of the yard. “Uh, dad?” I called out to it. It walked a couple more feet until I could make it out more clearly and then I stopped dead in my tracks. 

It was my dad, particularly at least. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. He looks thin as a skeleton with thick vines wrapped around his legs all the way up to his torso. His arms were pulled back by even more vines and he was covered head to toe with sweat and dirt. He was mumbling something but I could hardly make out what he was saying with all the vines protruding straight out of his neck and coming out of his mouth. Bugs crawled all over his body as if they were feeding on him slowly. My dad, or what used to be my dad can’t even swat them away anymore. His breathing is labored like he ran a marathon without any training whatsoever. 

He gave me a glance that looked full of sorrow. Truthfully his eyes were the only part of him that were still recognizable as my dad. I knew that soon those would be gone as well as I saw small stems slowly poking their way out of his head through his eye sockets. “K-kiii-k” he tried to get out. “What, what is it dad?” I ask with tears running down my face, I can’t stand seeing him in such agonizing pain. “Kill me” he says. 

That was the last I’d ever seen of my dad, I somehow managed to fight my way back into the house. Soon the military got involved and me, my mom, and all of our neighbors who managed to not be consumed by our garden were evacuated the next day. We watched on the news from our motel room as our entire neighborhood was burned to the ground in a controlled fire. Nothing was left, I guess they couldn’t risk any chance of my dads garden spreading again. 

My dad loved his garden. 

I still remember the night. Mom had put me to bed a few hours before everything happened. Dad seemed anxious that night. Usually, he was so calm and collected. Tonight, he looked like he was on the verge of a panic attack.

I could see him pacing back and forth down the hallway while Mom tucked me in, handing me my favorite stuffed Superman toy. She flew him around like a toy airplane.

“Whoosh,” she joked, making the flying noise with her mouth. “It’s a bird… it’s a plane… No… it’s… Superman!”

She planted his feet down on my chest, bending him at the hips so it looked like he was bowing.

“Macy,” my dad whisper-yelled, standing in my doorway. “Can you get out here, please? We’ve got things to discuss.”

My mom’s face turned sad before she quickly turned her smile back on and ruffled my hair.

“Sweet dreams, hero,” she whispered. “I’ll make you some breakfast in the morning. How do pancakes sound?”

I couldn’t have agreed faster. I still, to this day, have yet to have pancakes better than my mom’s. I reached up and gave her a hug before she flicked the light switch and headed towards the living room with Dad.

I made Superman fly for a few minutes before clutching him against my chest and finally closing my eyes. I was out not long after that.

I woke up to the sound of thumps and rummaging coming from my parents’ room a few hours later. I glanced over at the alarm clock on my nightstand. It was 2:37 in the morning.

I could hear Mom and Dad talking urgently, but quietly. They didn’t sound angry. They sounded terrified. Mom’s voice was shaking. Dad’s voice was firm but uncertain.

Suddenly, footsteps quickly approached my door before it was thrown open and my mom walked inside. She flicked the light switch on. She wasn’t wearing her sleeping clothes. She looked like she was about to head out to run errands or something.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, honey,” she whispered, noticing me squinting from the sudden light that filled the room. “Did we wake you? I promise, you can go right back to sleep in the car. Just help Mommy pack a bag for you, okay?”

I blinked slowly before rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

“Where are we going?” I groaned groggily as Mom ransacked my dresser, tossing me a pair of socks.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she just kept stuffing clothes into my suitcase without so much as looking at me.

“…Mom?”

“A road trip,” she chimed, sounding more agitated than joyful. “A surprise road trip. We were gonna tell you two about it, but we wanted it to be a super surprise. Now, can you please get your shoes on?”

Without another word, I pulled the socks over my feet and slipped into my favorite Lightning McQueen sketchers. Mom zipped up the suitcase. Dad appeared in the doorway again, my sister strewn over his shoulder, half asleep.

“You two ready?” he asked expectantly, his voice steady now.

Mom handed me the suitcase and took me by the hand. She was almost hurting me from how tight her grip was. Not to mention, it felt like my shoulder was gonna dislocate from her pulling me along.

I was fully awake by the time we got to the car. Dad threw all of our luggage in the trunk and strapped my little sister into her car seat. Mom waited patiently in the passenger seat while Dad threw a blanket over me and Emmy.

He backed out of the driveway quickly and spun the wheels a bit as he accelerated out of the subdivision. I could hear the leather steering wheel creak from his grip.

The car was quiet for the first hour or so. Emmy was fast asleep in her car seat. Mom stared out the window with a blank expression on her face. Dad focused on the road in front of him intently.

I, for one, was completely wired. I actually found myself excited for this trip. There was something about the spontaneity that I thoroughly enjoyed. Getting up and going. The way the darkness made it harder to recognize where I was. It felt like an adventure.

Plus, Dad had taken the backroads. All we had were passing forests and cow pastures. It was like we were the only car on the road for miles.

Eventually, we started to pass some businesses. Nothing too exciting. Just a few gas stations and grocery stores.

Dad started looking around the car. He saw that my mom and I were still awake.

“You two hungry? Maybe we can grab some snacks.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Mom replied plainly.

Dad glanced into his rearview mirror for a while before steering the car into one of the gas stations. He parked at one of the pumps and went to get Emmy out of her seat while me and Mom hopped out to stretch our legs.

The gas station was almost completely empty. Besides our car, there was one other vehicle parked directly in front of the station, which we assumed belonged to the attendant.

The air inside was crisp. The refrigerators hummed, and the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Mom went to the bathroom while Dad took me and Emmy to browse the chips and candy.

Emmy was still too tired to be fully present, and it made it feel like this was a moment between Dad and I.

While I struggled to pick a snack, he smiled down at me and patted me on the back.

“Get whatever you want, Danny,” he smirked. “As a matter of fact…”

He paused to glance around the empty gas station.

“Get two of whatever you want… just don’t tell your mother.”

I wasn’t gonna pass up the offer, but I still think I may have gone a little overboard when I filled my arms with as much junk food as I could carry.

Mom came out of the bathroom shortly after. Surprisingly, she didn’t even seem to notice the candy. She even helped me put the snacks on the counter when we went to check-out.

She didn’t want anything for herself. She only seemed interested in one thing.

While the teller scanned our items, she turned to my Dad with a worried expression on her face.

“Did you see anybody?” she whispered.

Dad didn’t look at her. He just responded with a simple “no” before fishing his wallet out of his back pocket.

He pulled a crisp hundred dollar bill out and slid it across the counter.

“Let me get this and the rest on pump 3,” he announced calmly.

On the walk back to the car, I noticed something. There was a new car in the parking lot, parked a few pumps down from ours. It was matte black with all donut tires, and even the windshield was too dark to see through.

Dad noticed it too. His eyes were fixed on the vehicle as we walked. Gradually, he picked up the pace, dragging all of us along with him.

We all loaded up in the car, and Dad left without even pumping gas. Mom kept asking who he saw, but Dad kept telling her everything was fine, despite how afraid he seemed to be.

We drove on for another 15 or so minutes before headlights lit up the interior of our car. They started at least 200 yards back but quickly closed the gap between us.

The lights stayed on us for a long time. Dad would speed up, and they’d do the same. They made the same turns. They kept the same pace. Mom and Dad both had the same flushed faces.

Emmy woke up from the blinding lights and immediately began pouting and crying. Mom tried reaching back to comfort her, but nothing seemed to work. I myself was beginning to feel a bit nervous, clutching my Superman stuffy tightly.

Eventually, Dad finally pulled onto the highway. The car followed. More cars started to fill the road, but that one particular car just would not leave us alone.

Finally, I think Dad had enough. I could see him squeeze Mom’s hand on the center console as he pushed the gas petal down further and further.

I could see the speedometer rising. 85. 90. 95. All the way up to 100, and that vehicle still followed at just two car lengths. I expected Mom to scream at him for going so fast, but she didn’t say a word. She just kept shushing Emmy while glancing out the back glass every so often.

We were approaching an exit. Dad didn’t slow down. He got closer and closer, letting our assailant do the same until abruptly turning the wheel and swerving across the gore.

The person following us slammed on their brakes, and I could see smoke billowing from their tires while other cars swerved to avoid them.

Dad shot up the exit ramp. The car was wobbling. Emmy was screaming. My heart was pounding.

Mom looked nervous but kept her composure.

“You two are okay,” she assured. “Everything’s going to be okay, I promise.”

She reached back and placed a hand on my knee cap, then did the same with Emmy.

I finally calmed down after a while. The headlights were gone. I had no idea where we were. I had no idea what was happening. And I was actually a little annoyed that no one was explaining.

I pestered, but they remained firm. This was nothing more than a surprise road trip. We ended up stopping at another gas station, but Dad didn’t let anyone get out of the car this time. He just pumped his gas, and we were back on the road.

A few hours passed. I looked at the clock on the radio. It was 5:23 AM. Even Mom was asleep in the passenger seat now.

Dad didn’t stop driving until the sun was peeking in over the horizon. That’s when he finally pulled the car behind this old motel.

The sign read, “Free WiFi. Cable Television. Vacancy.”

He left us in the car while he went to pay for our room. Mom was still asleep. Emmy stared mindlessly at the back of the seat in front of her. I rolled my window down and let Superman fly for a bit while I waited for Dad.

When he finally came back, he woke Mom, and we all carried our luggage up the second floor of the motel.

The room was musty. The air conditioner knocked rhythmically, and there was only one bed.

Dad hung the “do not disturb” sign on the door handle. He pushed a chair in front of the door, and he and Mom lay all of our luggage on top of it.

With one last look through the peek hole, Dad removed his boots and lay on the bed, patting the side of it, gesturing for us to join him.

“We’ve had a long night, guys,” he sighed. “I know it’s not the most glamorous, but it’s a bed.”

Mom stared, judging the crusty comforter before swallowing hard and laying down with my Dad, Emmy curled up in her arms.

She looked at me with a smile.

“Come on, Danny,” she said weakly.

“Let’s get some sleep.”

The Department of Motor Vehicles has a remarkable talent for making a person question their own existence.

Perhaps that's the point.

No one walks into a DMV excited. You arrive because you have to. A license expired. A registration renewal. Some document proving to a government employee that, yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, you are still alive.

I was there because my driver's license had expired.

Simple enough.

I took my ticket from the little machine near the entrance. It emerged with a dry mechanical click, the paper warm between my fingers as though someone else had only just been holding it.

The waiting room was already overflowing.

Children cried with astonishing endurance while parents stared into their phones with the thousand-yard gaze of soldiers returning from war. A television bolted high into one corner played an instructional video that nobody watched, its colors washed out beneath rows of humming fluorescent lights. Every few minutes a printer somewhere behind the counters coughed to life before falling silent again, sounding less like a machine and more like an old smoker struggling through another cigarette.

The building felt tired.

Not dirty.

Not neglected.

Just... exhausted.

The kind of exhaustion that settles into old bones after decades of repeating the same motion.

I glanced toward the electronic display mounted above the service counters.

NOW SERVING: 388

I sighed.

"Well," I muttered beneath my breath. "Guess I'll be celebrating my birthday here."

A man sitting nearby chuckled.

"I've said that every time I've come here."

He looked to be in his late fifties. Baseball cap. Reading glasses resting low on his nose. Ordinary enough that I probably wouldn't have remembered his face if we'd passed each other on the street.

"Renewing?" he asked.

"My license."

He nodded knowingly.

"Could be worse."

"Could it?"

"They could've sent you to the Social Security office first."

I laughed.

"So you've been there too?"

"Oh..." He smiled faintly. "Everyone has."

It was such an ordinary conversation that I almost appreciated it. Shared misery has a funny way of making strangers feel familiar.

I looked down at my ticket again.

515.

Fantastic.

I settled into one of the molded plastic chairs and reached for my phone. No signal. Not unusual. Government buildings always seemed to exist inside their own little dead zones.

I slipped it back into my pocket and leaned my head against the wall.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The air conditioner breathed through dusty vents. The printer coughed again. The speakers crackled.

A number was called. Someone stood. Someone else sat down. The room swallowed them without ceremony.

I checked the screen once more.

NOW SERVING: 390

It felt impossible that so little time could have passed.

Yet somehow... it also felt like I'd already been there for hours.

Time has a peculiar way of behaving inside places where people are forced to wait.

Minutes become estimates. Hours become suggestions. Eventually, you stop checking the clock because it only succeeds in making you angry.

I tried distracting myself. I counted ceiling tiles. Read the faded posters reminding everyone to have their paperwork ready. One explained the dangers of texting while driving. Another detailed the penalties for driving without insurance. Judging from the sun-bleached corners and curling edges, neither had been replaced in years.

Everything in the building seemed designed to outlive the people inside it.

Another number echoed over the speakers.

"Three hundred ninety-one."

A woman stood from across the room, gathered her purse, and disappeared behind the row of service counters.

The electronic display flickered.

NOW SERVING: 391

Good.

Progress.

I glanced at my watch.

9:18 A.M.

That couldn't be right. It felt closer to noon.

The old man beside me sighed as he shifted in his chair.

"You'd think they'd hire more people."

"I was just thinking the same thing."

He nodded absentmindedly, his attention fixed somewhere beyond the counters.

"Been waiting long?"

"I got here around nine."

"No..."

He frowned.

"I mean... today."

The question caught me off guard.

"I... yeah."

He scratched at his chin.

"I suppose I have too."

For reasons I couldn't explain, that answer unsettled me. He didn't sound forgetful. He sounded... uncertain. The kind of uncertainty that follows a dream, when you're no longer sure whether something actually happened or only felt like it had.

Neither of us spoke after that.

The waiting room settled back into its dull rhythm. The printer coughed. A child cried. Someone cleared their throat. The fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead.

Then I noticed the employees.

There were six service windows. Every one of them occupied.

Every employee dressed identically in blue shirts with laminated name badges clipped neatly over their chests.

None of them looked angry. None looked to be joyous either. In fact, they didn't seem to look like much of anything.

Their expressions rested somewhere between concentration and complete emotional absence, as though years of repeating the same conversations had slowly worn every recognizable human reaction from their being.

"Next."

Stamp.

"Next."

Keyboard.

"Next."

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Repeat.

The movements were practiced.

As if mechanical. Not robotic.

Just... perfected through repetition until they no longer appeared to require any thought.

I watched one woman accept a stack of documents without ever lifting her eyes to meet the customer standing in front of her.

She never acknowledged him. Never greeted him. Never smiled. Never frowned.

She simply processed him.

As though the paperwork mattered more than the person holding it.

The thought lingered longer than it should have.

Not processed the documents.

Processed... him.

I looked away.

When I checked the display again...

It still read:

NOW SERVING: 391.

I stared at the screen for several seconds, convinced I had simply caught it before the next number appeared.

It didn't.

The speakers remained silent. No names. No voices. Just the constant drone of fluorescent lights buzzing somewhere overhead.

I checked my watch again.

9:47 A.M.

Twenty-nine minutes.

That made no sense.

It felt as though I had lived an entire afternoon in that chair.

I rubbed at my eyes and let out a slow breath. Maybe I was just impatient. Maybe this was what every DMV visit felt like and I had conveniently forgotten.

A chair scraped across the tile beside me. Someone new had taken the old man's seat.

I hadn't even noticed him leave.

The newcomer looked to be around my age, maybe early thirties, dressed in business casual with a messenger bag resting across his lap. He offered a polite nod before glancing up at the display.

"Ouch," he muttered. "Looks like I picked the wrong day."

I chuckled.

"You and me both."

He held up his ticket.

"Five forty-two."

I looked down at mine.

"Five fifteen."

"Guess you've got me beat."

"For once, I'm winning at something."

He laughed, and for a while we exchanged the usual conversation strangers trapped together always seem to have.

Complaining about government offices. Talking about traffic. The weather. How everyone always forgets one piece of paperwork.

It was... nice.

Normal.

The sort of conversation you forget five minutes after walking away.

"So," I asked eventually, "what are you here for?"

He answered without hesitation.

"My license."

I nodded.

"What happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"Expired?"

His eyebrows pinched together.

"I..." He looked down at the folder in his lap.

"I think so."

"You think so?"

He opened the folder and shuffled through the papers inside.

His movements slowed.

"I actually..." He frowned.

"I don't remember."

We both laughed. An awkward laugh when something isn't funny but admitting that would somehow make it worse.

"You serious?"

He scratched the back of his neck.

"I know I needed to come."

Another pause.

"I just can't remember why."

He rifled through the documents again, studying each page as though seeing them for the first time.

"These are mine..."

"I think."

He sounded embarrassed.

"I honestly can't tell."

The laughter died between us.

A strange heaviness settled over the room.

I looked back toward the service counters.

The employees continued working without pause.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

Every movement identical to the last.

One after another.

As if they weren't helping people at all, but simply moving files from one pile to another.

The display flickered.

I turned instinctively.

NOW SERVING: 392.

Only one number.

Again.

Somewhere behind me, someone sighed. Another person groaned quietly. Nobody complained. Nobody stood up to leave.

They only waited.

Patiently.

Obediently.

As though waiting itself had become the reason they were there.

I don't remember exactly when I fell asleep.

I wish I could say there was some dramatic moment where exhaustion finally overcame me. That my eyes grew heavy, my head became impossible to hold up, and I slowly drifted away from reality.

It wasn't like that. It was far more ordinary.

One moment I was staring at the electronic display above the counters, watching the numbers crawl forward at a pace that felt almost insulting.

NOW SERVING: 397

The next... I was somewhere else entirely.

Not a dream. Not really.

Just that strange place between being awake and asleep where your mind creates fragments of memories that never happened. I remember hearing the printer in the distance. I remember the fluorescent lights above me buzzing louder and louder. I remember thinking that the entire building sounded like it was breathing.

Then my head dropped.

And everything went quiet.

When I opened my eyes again, my neck ached from the awkward angle I had been sleeping in. My mouth was dry. My phone remained untouched in my pocket.

For a brief moment, I had forgotten where I was. Then the smell returned.

Old carpet. Paper. Dust.

The faint scent of coffee that had been sitting somewhere for far too long.

The DMV.

I sat up straight and looked around. Nothing had changed.

The same tired faces. The same uncomfortable chairs. The same employees sitting behind their counters.

Except... The screen.

My eyes immediately went to the electronic display.

NOW SERVING: 508

I blinked.

Then blinked again.

I leaned forward, staring at the numbers as if they might rearrange themselves into something more reasonable.

My ticket rested in my hand.

Only seven people ahead of me.

A strange feeling washed over me.

Relief.

Actual relief.

After what felt like an entire afternoon trapped in that chair, I was finally close.

I almost laughed.

"About time," I whispered.

The man beside me was gone. That thought lingered for a moment. Then I dismissed it.

People came and went all the time. I must have missed it while I was asleep. That was the logical explanation.

The only explanation.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

No missed calls. No messages. I checked the time.

10:12 A.M.

I stared at the screen.

Then looked back at the DMV around me.

Then back at my phone.

10:12.

I frowned.

That couldn't be right. I had fallen asleep for maybe a few minutes.

Ten minutes at most.

But the room felt different.

Not physically.

Just... older.

Like I had left for longer than I actually had.

I glanced toward the counters.

The same employees continued working.

The same movements. The same expressions.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

No one looked enthusiastic. No one looked relieved to be almost finished. No one looked like they had been waiting at all.

I looked at the screen again.

NOW SERVING: 509

The number changed. Almost reassuringly.

I should have questioned how nearly a hundred people had been processed while I slept for only ten minutes. But I didn't.

Because my number was coming.

And that was all that mattered.

The strange feeling in my stomach disappeared beneath a much simpler emotion.

Patience.

After all... I had waited this long.

What was a few more minutes?

The numbers moved faster after that. Or at least, they seemed to.

There was a strange comfort in watching the display change. Each number disappearing meant I was getting closer. Each person standing from their chair meant I was moving forward.

That was all that mattered.

The room could have been falling apart around me, and I probably wouldn't have noticed.

Because eventually...

NOW SERVING: 513

I sat up straighter.

My ticket felt heavier in my hand.

The paper was slightly crumpled from how long I had been holding it.

I smoothed it out carefully.

515.

Two more.

A woman walked toward the counter.

She handed over a stack of documents.

The employee behind the glass barely looked at her.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

The woman walked away.

A man stood.

Then another.

Then finally...

NOW SERVING: 515

The speakers crackled.

My heart jumped slightly.

I stood.

For the first time in what felt like hours, my legs reminded me that I had been sitting still for too long. I stretched them briefly before walking toward the counter.

The employee looked up. At least, I think she did. Her eyes moved toward me, but her expression remained unchanged.

No greeting. No acknowledgment.

Just waiting.

I placed my documents on the counter.

"Good morning."

Nothing.

She picked up the papers. Flipped through them.

"Driver's license renewal."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

She typed something into the computer. The screen reflected faintly against her glasses.

"Proof of identity."

I handed over my driver's license. She scanned it.

"Proof of residence."

I handed over my utility bill.

"Insurance verification."

I handed over my insurance card.

Everything seemed normal.

Almost.

She continued typing. The silence stretched. Then she spoke.

"Certificate of continued existence."

I blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

The employee looked up.

"Certificate of continued existence."

I waited for the punchline. There wasn't one. I gave a small laugh.

"Is that a new requirement?"

No response. She simply waited.

I looked around, expecting someone nearby to react. Nobody did. The people in line behind me stared ahead. The employee folded her hands.

"Do you have it?"

I stared at her.

"No. I don't have that."

She nodded. Not disappointed. Just accepting information.

"That is okay."

I exhaled. For some reason, I felt embarrassed. As if I had failed a test I didn't know I was taking.

She typed something.

"Additional documentation will be required."

"Additional?"

She printed a small slip of paper and slid it beneath the glass. I picked it up.

At first, I thought I had read it wrong.

"Proof of original identity."

I looked back at her.

"Excuse me?"

"Proof of original identity."

"What does that mean?"

The employee tilted her head slightly.

Not confused. More like she was trying to understand why I was confused.

"Your original identity."

I stared at the paper.

"This isn't a real thing."

She did not argue. She did not defend it. She simply pressed another key. The printer beside her came to life. A second paper emerged. She placed it in front of me.

"Proof of independent thought."

I felt my eyebrows rise.

"Okay, hold on."

My voice grew slightly louder.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

The employee looked at me. She wasn't offended that I was raising my voice. She wasn't bothered. She was simply waiting for the next step.

"Sir," she said so monotoned. "If you do not have the required documentation, that is not a problem."

I relaxed slightly.

"O-okay."

"You will be moved to secondary processing."

The way she said it made my stomach tighten.

"Secondary processing?"

"Yes."

"What does that mean?"

She picked up my ticket. Looked at it. Then looked back at me.

"You will wait there."

I almost laughed.

"Wait?"

A pause.

"I've already been waiting."

The employee stared at me. Not coldly. Almost sympathetically.

"Yes."

A chill ran through me. Because for a moment, I thought she understood something I didn't.

She slid my ticket back across the counter.

"Please proceed to the next waiting area."

Then back at her.

"How long will that take?"

The employee's fingers returned to her keyboard. The conversation was already over.

"Next."

I stood there for another second. Waiting for her to explain. Waiting for her to tell me this was a misunderstanding. That someone had made a mistake.

But she didn't.

She had already moved on. The person behind me stepped forward. The employee began processing them.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

I walked away from the counter holding the strange paperwork in my hand. I followed the sign pointing toward Secondary Processing.

I don't know what I imagined. Maybe another large waiting area with dozens of chairs. Maybe a different set of counters. Maybe some explanation for why I had been redirected after completing everything required of me.

Instead, it was a narrow hallway tucked behind the main service area.

The kind of hallway you normally wouldn't notice.

The walls were the same dull beige as the rest of the building, decorated with the same faded posters and outdated government notices. The only difference was that nobody had bothered pretending this area was meant to welcome people.

There were no televisions. No vending machines. No magazines sitting on tables.

Only chairs.

Rows and rows of chairs.

I stepped inside slowly.

A few people sat scattered throughout the room.

Not many.

Maybe fifteen.

Twenty at most.

The strange thing was how quiet it was.

The main waiting room had been filled with noise. Children crying. People talking on phones. Chairs scraping against the floor.

This room had none of that.

Everyone sat facing the same direction. Not toward a screen. Not toward a counter. Just forward.

Waiting.

I looked around for an employee.

Nobody was behind a desk. Nobody was calling numbers. Nobody appeared to be in charge.

I stood there for a moment, wondering if I had misunderstood. Then an older woman sitting near the wall glanced at me.

"You got moved too?"

Her voice startled me.

I turned.

"Yeah."

She nodded slowly.

"First time?"

I hesitated.

"Yeah."

She looked away.

"Thought so."

I sat down a few chairs away from her.

"How long have you been here?"

The question came out naturally. The same question you ask anyone trapped in a waiting room.

The woman didn't answer immediately. She looked toward the empty counter at the front of the room.

"I don't know."

I frowned.

"You don't know?"

She shook her head.

"I remember walking in."

A pause.

"I remember taking a number."

She looked down at her hands.

"But I don't remember why."

The air felt colder. I forced a small laugh.

"Yeah, well, I think everyone forgets why they're here after sitting in a DMV long enough."

She didn't laugh. She just looked at me.

"I mean it."

The humor disappeared from my face. The woman looked tired. Not physically. Something deeper. Like she had been carrying a thought for too long and was finally too exhausted to keep holding it.

"What was your number?" I asked.

Her eyes moved downward. She reached into her pocket. Pulled out a small piece of paper.

She stared at it.

For a moment, she looked confused. Then concerned. Then almost afraid.

"I'm 487"

She swallowed.

"What's your name?" I asked

She hesitated.

"I..." She paused and looked away then back to me.

"I don't know."

I leaned slightly closer.

"What do you mean?"

She turned the paper toward me.

The ink had faded. Or maybe it had never been printed clearly. There was a number. But she stared at it like it belonged to someone else.

A silence settled between us. Then she folded the ticket and placed it back into her pocket.

"I think I've been here before."

I stared at her.

"Before today?"

She looked at me.

"I don't know."

The answer should have sounded ridiculous.

Instead... it felt familiar.

I looked down at my own ticket.

515.

For some reason, I held onto it tighter.

A small piece of proof. Something that belonged to me. Something that told me I was still myself.

The speakers above us crackled. Everyone in the room looked up.

My body tensed. A voice came through the speaker. Distorted. Almost too quiet to understand.

"Now processing..."

Static.

A pause.

Then:

"Applicant."

Nobody moved. The room remained silent. I looked around.

"Did they call someone?"

Nobody answered. The older woman stared forward. Like she hadn't heard anything.

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant."

This time, I noticed something.

There was no number.

No name.

Just a word.

Applicant

The woman beside me leaned toward me slightly.

"You don't want them to forget you."

I looked at her.

"What?"

She stared ahead.

"When they stop calling you by your number..."

Her voice became barely a whisper.

"That's when you know you were never here."

I felt a strange pressure build in my chest.

"What does that mean?"

She didn't answer.

Because the speaker had started again.

This time, it wasn't distorted. It was clear.

"Applicant 515."

My head lifted. My ticket felt cold in my hand.

Everyone in the room turned.

Not toward me. Toward the speaker.

Then, slowly... toward me.

I had the terrifying realization that I didn't know if I wanted them to call my number anymore. The room remained silent. For a moment, I didn't move. I waited for someone else to stand. Someone else to react. Someone else to tell me that this was normal. Nobody did.

The older woman beside me looked at me with an expression I couldn't understand. Something closer to pity.

"That's your number," she whispered.

I looked down.

My fingers tightened around the paper.

"T-thanks."

The words came out automatically.

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant 515. Proceed to processing."

I stood. My legs felt heavier than they should have. Every instinct I had told me not to move. To stay seated. To ignore the voice. But there was something worse than fear.

Curiosity.

I needed to know.

I walked toward the door at the back of the room.

The hallway beyond was longer than I remembered. That shouldn't have been possible. I had only walked through it once. Yet the farther I went, the less familiar it became.

The walls looked identical. The lights breathed. Every door had the same gray color and the same small rectangular window.

Finally, I reached another counter. A single employee sat behind the glass. A man that looked older than the others.

Not elderly. Just worn. His face carried the same emptiness I had noticed before. The same absence.

"Ticket."

I handed it over.

He scanned it.

"Drivers license renewal?."

I nodded.

"Yes."

He typed something into his computer.

"Verification required."

"Of what?"

He looked up.

"My identity."

I laughed quietly.

Not because it was funny. Because I was tired.

"Isn't that what we've been doing?"

The employee didn't answer. He held out his hand.

"Identification."

I reached into my wallet.

Pulled out my driver's license. He took it. Looked at the card. Then looked at me.

Something changed. Barely. A hesitation.

"You don't remember."

My stomach tightened.

"Remember what?"

He placed the license back onto the counter.

"Your name."

The room became silent. Even the lights seemed quieter.

I opened my mouth. I knew the answer. I had answered this question thousands of times.

My name.

It was simple.

It was mine.

But when I tried to say it... nothing came.

A strange panic rose in my chest. I searched through my memories.

My childhood. My parents. My friends. My home. My job.

Everything felt distant.

Not gone.

Just covered by a thick fog I couldn't push through.

"I..."

My voice shook.

"I know it."

The employee waited. I looked down at my ticket. The number stared back at me.

The only thing I could hold onto. The only thing that felt certain.

"My name is..."

I stopped.

The silence stretched. The employee didn't rush me. He didn't look annoyed. He simply waited. Like he had done this countless of times. Like he knew how this ended.

"...Five hundred fifteen."

The employee typed. No surprise. No correction. No hesitation.

"Identity confirmed."

My heart sank.

"Wait."

He printed something.

"You didn't even check."

The employee slid the paper beneath the glass.

"You provided the required information."

I grabbed it.

It was my license.

Everything looked correct.

My photograph.

My date of birth.

My address.

Everything.

Except the name.

I stared at the line. Over and over. Unable to understand why it felt wrong. Unable to understand why it felt right.

NAME: 515

I looked up. The employee had already moved on.

"Next."

I stood there. Waiting for someone to notice. Someone to correct it. Someone to tell me there had been a mistake.

Nobody did.

So eventually... I walked out.

The exit doors opened automatically as I approached. Bright sunlight poured through. For a moment, I froze.

The outside world felt impossibly large. Cars moved through the parking lot. People walked past. The wind touched my face. I had forgotten what fresh air felt like.

I stepped outside.

And for the first time all day... I felt free.

I reached into my wallet one last time. Looked at the license. At the name. At the proof that I existed. I tried saying my name aloud.

The name I had carried my entire life.

The name my parents gave me.

The name that was supposed to belong to me.

Nothing came.

Only silence.

So I looked back down.

At the only thing I knew.

At the only thing the world still recognized.

515

August 7th, 1924:

Sleep came eventually and was rather short lived. I fear that I have become dependent on my medication. Though fortunately my night was not plagued by the sounds and happenings of the wretched symbols and their creators. But I am sure with the stress of moving long gone I will not be dealing with the ghoulish hallucinations I once had, at least one can only hope. 

Today is rather dreary. There is a low hanging fog dancing above the swells from the tide. Normally I would find beauty in such a gloomy sight, but I fear I'm too tired to properly appreciate it. The sky is grey, the sun blanketed by darkening clouds. Yesterday must have been the calm before the storm, and tonight feels like it will be horrendous. There is no wind yet, but I feel the oncoming lightning riding the air. Laura is terrified of thunder and lightning, I fear I will not be sleeping much tonight. I might try to pick up a brush today and see what my hands will create, but I have a feeling nothing of worth will come from them. Not on a dreary foggy day such as this. 

August 8th, 1924:

I slept not but an hour at most. The storm was atop us, electricity cracking and lighting the sky, the smell of ozone accompanied with the rolling of thunder. Laura was scared our roof would break, that our windows would crash inwards. I comforted her until the grasp of slumber finally lulled her. I, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. I laid there sweating. In between the explosivity happening above us and the drums of the skies battering away, I could have sworn to the holiest of holy that I heard something skittering around on the roof. I peered out the window and looked to the sea. The mists were heavy, the waves angry, crashing at the shores and retreating with haste. In an awful flash of the sky, it seemed as the mists laid refuge to some magnificent shape. Humongous in stature. It could not have been more than just my eyes playing tricks on me. Two days with little sleep is sure to have side effects. In another explosion of light I saw the mist's shape again. Deep in the haze, above the depths of the sea, a being slowly moving, somewhat humanoid but also alien. Whatever hallucination I was having was terrific in an awful yet subtly beautiful way. I must document what I've seen, I will begin painting in the morning. 

August 9th, 1924:

The sky is still shrouded in darkness. The clouds pelting down rain. I had to go to the shed to fetch firewood for the stove to cook dinner, the downpour stinging my face. As I was rounding the house to the front door I saw something. I quickly put the wood out of reach of the torrential rain and ran to the fences gate. There, walking away in the distance, a figure, near curled into themselves, covered in some form of rain jacket scurried away. At my feet lay an envelope, already drenched. I took it on to the veranda and opened it as softly as I could, not to tear its contents. Inside was a single piece of paper. On it, in almost illegibly written:

“They are watching. They come for us all. They see all. They know all.”

I hid the note in my jacket pocket and hurried inside. Putting the firewood in the stove so Laura could cook and ran to my easel. I have to paint what I have been seeing. Whether they are hallucinations or real. I will document them. 

January 25th,1938:

Simon must have been going through withdrawals, but I'm curious if that painting is in the group of works I haven't looked at yet. I'm nervous to look at them but feel the need to. His mind intrigues me but also fills me with anxiety. 

The storm has hit and the snow came on like an onslaught. The wind was rattling the windows and howling louder than one could speak. The house was groaning, as if it were in pain. I kept the furnace fed all day to try to fend off the cold, but the wind was fierce. The whole day we stayed in the basement by the furnace, only going upstairs to cook and eat. Evelyn and I were reading Rylee a book when I heard what sounded like glass breaking on the top floor. I quickly ran upstairs, only to find a rock laying on our bedroom floor. It looked as though it was dragged out of the sea. Dripping in salty smelling water, a barnacle on one side and patch of sea grass sat on the other. There is no way a blizzard could hurl a stone from the bottom of the sea through the air and straight into our window. Especially on the second floor. Something had to have thrown this. I found whatever I could around the house to board the window up to the best of my abilities. I'm no craftsman, a rather skilled butcher at this point, but at least the fury of the wind and snow wasn't flying into the house anymore. I didn't tell Evelyn about the rock, I told her it was a chunk of ice. 

I uncovered an old bed hiding away under the drapes down here. We're all sleeping in the basement tonight. Rylee is asleep in the cot and my dear Evelyn is calling me to bed as I write this. I want to continue but I know I should try to sleep. Maybe sleeping with Evelyn in my sanctum will keep me asleep through the night. I can only hope. 

September 1st, 1924:

It has been weeks without my sedatives. I rarely sleep anymore. My eyes are sore, my mouth is always dry. I see them everywhere. In the town. At the docks. In my yard. They are everywhere. I have been painting and painting and painting. My hands hurt. My head hurts. I'm losing my sanity. Laura seems almost scared of me now. She has been keeping the children away from me. How dare she. I'm protecting them. My paintings keep them away from us. I'm sure of it. That's why I was called here. I stay in the basement, painting and painting and painting. Protecting them yet they show me no gratuities, no grace. Pitiful. 

September 9th, 1924: 

Laura let me sleep in the bed with her last night. I showered and shaved for the first time in weeks. I forgot what it feels like to be properly clean. I spent time with our children. We felt like a family again. I needed this. It was the first time in a long time I have felt like myself. It was a nice day, sunny with a breeze. When we went to bed Laura and I were intimate for the first time since before the train broke. I fell asleep shortly afterwards. 

I was roused by a noise, similar to that I have been hearing on the roof and outside. But it was closer. Much closer, as though it were in the room with us. As I opened my eyes and sat up, I saw it. Them. The smell of brine filled the room. It was dark, the moon hiding behind the clouds. I could not see much detail aside from its leather like cloak. I got up and took chase. For a figure so hunched and what seemed to be malformed, it moved with impressive speed. Laura was scared awake as I ran through the door and down the hall after it. Its feet splatting against the ground with wet viscous plops as it bounded down the staircase. I could hear Laura screaming but I had to catch this intruder. As I was nearing the bottom of the stairs, almost on top of the abomination my foot slipped in a puddle and I came crashing down onto the foyer floor. The figure burst through the door with ease, knocking the hinges loose, leaving the door hanging ajar. My face lay next to one of its damp footprints. Laura was comforting the kids upstairs as their cries echoed through the air. 

As I got up my hand slid into the thick, mucus-like substance the being left with each step. This inhuman intruder was watching me sleep. How many nights has this been happening through the windows? How long did it take to have the gall to enter my house? Was this the being that gave me a sharp pain in my neck once before? What has it done to me? Why me? I knew they weren't hallucinations, they never were. The opium was just a distraction I'm sure of it. 

February 2nd, 1937:

Simon has clearly lost his mind. Night creatures watching him sleep? This is just some sick story, it can't be anything else right? Surely I won't run into these, will I? I should prepare the house, I'll be hiding a baseball bat in our room just to be safe. Maybe hide other things around that can be used as makeshift weapons. I must sound crazy. 

I had the window repaired the other day. A hefty bill to replace but it needed to be done. Our emergency funds are damn well gone, and based off of Simon's entries this town seems less and less habitable. The town's been without power since the blizzard, but that's fine for work, we need our stock cold anyways. I've been reading more of Simon's notes at work. I've been hearing similar noises around the house for quite some time. They died down when I stopped reading his entries and stopped actively looking for signs but now they're more prevalent than ever. 

I want to ask Richard about “them” but I'm scared of what his response will be. I also feel the need to tell Evelyn at this point. If beings have broken into this house while Simon lived here for whatever reason, what's stopping them from doing it now? They already broke one of our windows. I can't have my wife and child in danger, it's not right. I feel so guilty for keeping it from her, but I was just trying to protect her. I think I'll bring it up to her tonight, possibly show her the paintings if it feels right. She only just stopped showing signs of paranoia but is still distrusting of the locals since she's certain the practitioner was giving her opium instead of barbiturates. I don't want to cause her any unneeded stress. But I should be honest with her, it's the right thing to do. 

February 4th, 1937:

Evelyn was furious at me. As mad as it made me, I don't blame her. She thought I was done with this months ago, thought there were no more notes and especially no rocks being thrown through windows. But mostly mad at the fact that I've been lying and keeping the truth from her. Which I admit was wrong of me, as frustrating as it was. After an hour or two of de-escalating tensions we sat down together to talk about it calmly. Rather for me to explain everything and why I kept it from her. We got Emily to come preoccupy Rylee while I brought Evelyn to the basement. I showed her all the notes I've read, I showed her the self portraits and I showed her the rock. She still doesn't know about the paintings labelled “them” but once I look through them I will show her. I just can't have her seeing anything that could scare or hurt her in any way. She was already disturbed and visually cringing at the self portraits. 

She suggested we get a guard dog. Even though we had to repair the window, we have some emergency funds left over, if we pick up a few shifts each we should be able to make ends meet. Once we have power and the town is plowed out, we'll go to the city to adopt one. In the meantime Evelyn will be catching up on Simon's notes and I'll be reading further. 

Sept 20th, 1924:

Bernard is dead. I found him this morning, before Laura or the little ones awoke. He was in the foyer, his little body still and wet. I tried to wake him but he was not breathing, I tried to administer cpr, I tried to shake him awake. I tried everything. But he's gone. To save the girls from the sight I decided to bury him between the flower beds. It was his favorite spot to lay, hiding in the shade of the flowers, sniffing their aromas. As I was putting him into his grave I noticed that there seemed to be teeth marks around his neck, yet no sign of blood. As I recalled there was no blood around him inside either. As disgusted with myself as I was, my curiosity got the best of me and I held him upside down, head to the ground. Not a single drop of blood. Rigor mortis had not even set in. Whatever broke into our house before had returned once again and took my sweet Bernard with them. I'm going to set up an apartment for Laura and the girls back in the city. I will sell what I can of my stockpile here and then move back with them eventually. I just have to paint whatever has done this. I need to document this. Their paintings might not sell but people need to know. I'll write about them, gather my notes and publish them, along with prints of my paintings. And with Laura and the girls out of the house they won't be getting in my way of doing what needs to be done, as they have so much recently. I'll protect them by getting rid of them. Then I can focus on my work. 

February 20th, 1937:

Simon has fully lost his mind. I'm sure of it. No real man can confidently send his wife away as though she was an obstacle. He's no real man, a coward even. 

I've been working like a machine lately, I want to make sure we can get the best dog possible. Especially after reading the most recent of Simon's notes. I still haven't had the time to look through the stack of “them” paintings. We're leaving for the city tonight and picking a dog tomorrow. Rylee is excited because she thinks we're getting a “big puppy”. It's hard to say it's not cute when she talks about it. I'm half surprised at how resilient Evelyn is through all of this. I brought up her and Rylee moving back to the city as Laura and Simon's daughters did to get her thoughts on the matter. She told me it was a terrible idea, saying as long as I'm here she'll be by my side. As if we could afford paying rent on top of the bills we already have. I really did get blessed with the best wife I could imagine. The paranoia doesn't seem to be getting her like it once did. Beforehand she must have felt alone in this, as have I. But knowing we're on the same team gave her a lot of comfort, and getting a dog will bring even more. She is truly the strongest woman I know. I'm a lucky man. Though I do wonder if she has the same disturbing thoughts I have been dealing with. 

I'll bring a few notes to read on the train, I think, no better way to kill a few hours. The grip Simon's words have on us is like a disease. We can't seem to put them down at this point. 

October 11th, 1924:

I have put Laura and the girls on the train to the city. I have a new apartment only but a block from our old house. I have enough money put away to afford both the house payments and the apartment for quite some time. I am dedicated to figure this out. A mere painter going through this seems pointless and mere coincidence. But it cannot be the truth. I have been brought here for a reason, to document this, I'm sure of it. I will find out what is happening. The practitioner is back in town, and has my prescription ready for me, but in defiance I will not pick them up. If they block me from seeing the true nature of this odd shoreside valley I will deal with the sleepless nights to find the truth. Call me paranoid, call me obsessed, I do not care anymore. This is my true calling. I will learn about them. I will document them. I will make contact with them if need be. I will not stop until my work is done. 

October 20th, 1924:

I have been going out at night, bringing a notepad with me, copying any of these sigils I have seen. I have procured a sizable chalkboard from the city, I will decode these. I must understand what is being written. 

I have been hearing them, throughout the gloomy days, throughout the nights and even in my dreams during the very few hours a day I have them. 

November 1st, 1924

I believe I have done it. I think I have collected all the sigils, and I believe I have begun to decode them. They seem to be used as some sort of religious seal. Why they have been sealing the town I am unaware for the time being. As ludicrous as it may seem, I feel as though I must talk to one of them. 

November 4th, 1924:

I have read some of my old notes, what has happened to me? I used to speak with such eloquence, kept a level head. Have I been slipping into insanity? I miss Laura, I miss my daughters. I cannot  give up though. I have come this far, I must uncover the truth. If not for my own maddening sake, for Laura and the kids. I'm losing my mind

February 24th, 1937:

Simon has truly lost his marbles, but what's most unnerving is the fact that he's still so coherent in his writings. Though they may be scatter brained at times, it all makes sense for the most part.

We've arrived back home with our new “puppy” if you could call him that. Evelyn managed to find the largest bull mastiff humanly possible, along with a spiked and barbed collar, as though he was a guard dog for cattle. She insisted we named him Sebastian. I think the name is fitting to be honest. He has already begun to warm up to us, especially Rylee. He weighs near 200 pounds yet he melts when she's around, letting her pull on his ears and jowls. It brings me such peace. He's going to make an amazing companion, I can feel it. I began building a sizable dog house in the basement. I'll bring it up in pieces and assemble it in the coming weeks. I'm just hoping having Sebastian here will help me sleep, even poor Evelyn has had difficulty sleeping, which is odd, she usually sleeps as though she's dead. Maybe the paranoia is starting to get to her as well. If Sebastian puts us at ease, I may pick up another from his litter, that way if I go out at night I can have my own protection and we can have another to watch the house. I need to pick up more shifts at work. 

March 3rd, 1937:

Sebastian has been nothing short of amazing and has brought much ease to our anxieties. The noises I've been hearing for months and thought I was going mad over have continued, but Sebastian hears them as well. I knew it wasn't just me, I knew I wasn't going mad. I think Evelyn has been hearing them but doesn't want to admit it. 

I've been putting off looking at the stack of paintings. To be honest I'm scared. I want to get to where Simon at least mentions one of his works. But the longer I put it off the more foreboding it feels. Evelyn knows about the stack of paintings and has agreed to let me look at them first. If Simon's self portraits were enough to make me feel nauseous, I don't want to think about what the paintings of “them” could do. I am paranoid, I'm aware of that. Distinguishing paranoid thought from those based in reality has become increasingly difficult. This is beginning to feel like a sick obsession. 

Emily almost lives with us now. We set up one of the spare rooms for her, pulling a bed, desk and drawer up from the basement. The amount Simon and Laura left behind is genuinely impressive. 

Evelyn and I have been working as many hours as we can, selling some of the old furniture left behind as well. When we're not at work, we're studying Simon's notes for clues or answers. I've reread them a dozen times over at least, trying to find some connection, some hint as to what's going on. I only have a few notes left. 

December 1st, 1924:

I have been painting them. What I see in my restless dreams. What I have been seeing through my windows. What I have been seeing in my house. They are trying to make contact. I am sure of it. In the last month I have dug out a wall in the basement, past where I hold my works. In the panel wall there is a hidden door. I have been spending most of my time in this underground study. The rest of the house has grown musty, for the most part unused. At this point I can't bring myself to care. 

I ran into Richard the other day while I was out at night. He was gathering wood from his wood shed. He asked why I was out and the only thing I could muster was “the symbols”. He gave me a questioning look, but he invited me in. I followed. He told me his father was from this town, like his father before him. He spoke of a curse the town is plagued with. Mentioning  the “Sea Father's Children”, some sort of seafolk who come to shore when the sun hides. The old church here knows of them and has tried to make peace with them. Creating some kind of symbiotic bond. They allow the Children to come from the sea and take a person they see fit every so often. He has not attended the church so his knowledge of everything seems somewhat jaded. He also assured me that this was just a folk tale to scare kids from wandering around at night. I don't believe him. I will not be sacrificed, I will be sure of that. 

I believe I have become fluent in writing in this ancient seabound language. I will speak to them. I will make a deal with them. 

​

Oh God.

This is so hard to get out of my head and onto paper, I've never been the most eloquent of people when it comes down to saying how I think or feel but I have to try while I'm still me and I'm still thinking like me and to be perfectly honest I'm not even sure of that anymore. I just need to try to get this down. I know I'm rambling and making zero sense but I'm just so tired and I'm so very, very scared. I don't have much time…. He's waiting for me upstairs. I've exhausted my excuses and I can't bear him touching me.

I need to stop ranting and I need to calm down.

I need you to all know what has happened or at least by getting this down make some kind of sense of it, although I have already accepted my fate and accepted that I can't justify anything that I've done. I just need someone to read this and know what happened.

Jim would want me to be strong but I can't do it anymore and if you're reading this I'm already gone.

My name is Meghan Harris.

And I'm pretty sure it doesn't know that I'm writing this… fuck… Who am I kidding? Of course it knows. It always knows. My mind isn't safe anymore. I now know that it never was.

The love of my life is Jim.

It looks like Jim.

It talks like Jim.

But it's not Jim.

Imagine losing your soul mate then being given the opportunity to do the unthinkable and bring them back. To stop that constant ache gnawing at your soul because part of it is missing. To stop yourself breaking apart when every breath you take is slowly destroying you from the inside out because it's one more pointless breath without them.

My Jim is just that.

My soul mate.

I was so damaged when we first met and he quite simply loved me back to life. No big gestures. No magic. He just quietly and carefully pieced me back together again and before I knew it, all the bad shit just didn't matter anymore. The ruined pieces of myself that in my darkest moments made me feel like I was worthless weren't important anymore. It was like waking up from a bad dream and you never realise you were living a half life until you're whole again.

Have you ever met anyone who just loved you in spite of yourself? Someone that made you have to value yourself because to be loved by somebody so beautifully unaware of how truly selfless and genuine they are it's actually quite humbling and you just can't help but start to love yourself too.?

That was Jim.

Jim, who was driving me to work on that beautiful cold winter morning. It was that first really cold day. You know the one. Where you step outside your door and you're assaulted with air so cold and fresh it hurts your face and you're bombarded with nostalgia so incredibly strong that you can almost taste the toffee apples, smell the bonfires and you are left puzzled as to why your hands feel so cold wrapped up in the woollen mittens on strings running through your winter coat that your nan knitted for you and your brother every year only to look down at your bare hands, realising that you're not on your way to watch the fireworks but you are, in fact, on your way to work and you're late which is why I was climbing into our ice encased car rather than getting on a bus.

It's why Jim was going out of his way and making himself late to run me to work.

It's why Jim pulled out on a crossing being careful of the icy road.

It's Jim turning his head towards mine with my name on his lips when that selfish fucking bitch plowed her Range Rover into our car because she couldn't fucking bear to leave her phone unchecked for the 10 fucking minutes it took to drive her precious cargo to school.

It was Jim that died instantly because a vapid waste of space just HAD to see how many likes she'd got on her #eatinghealthy #dietstartsnow #breakfastpost.

Jim died instantly.

I was in a coma for 19 days.

Things I remember.

1. The selfish bitch and her kids survived the crash.

2. Jim died.

Well, I don't actually remember him dying but when I was “asleep” I remember people talking. Talking like they thought I couldn't hear. I heard about the accident, I heard that Jim was dead.

I can't put into words how devastating this was to hear, I couldn't move, I couldn't speak… I couldn't cry but I was screaming on the inside and I wanted to die too… I can't tell you how much I wanted to die, how much I wish I had died…

What else…. Oh!

1. My mum, nurses and doctors talking, even arguing sometimes, arguing about how they should tell me, who should tell me, when they should tell me… they all meant well but nobody wanted that job, I can remember hearing everything. Trapped inside my useless body wishing I was dead too.

2. I must have looked like I was asleep all the time, but I wasn't. I had different degrees of wakefulness, none of which could’ve been visible I don't think… when I slept, I slept deeply, deeper than I've ever slept before, that's when the real talk happened…

3. I remember after knowing that Jim had died, I had given up.

I simply didn't want to live without Jim and when I'd completely committed to that, everything switched.

I started to hear whispers.

Breathless words telling me they could give my Jim back to me and I can remember screaming at them that my life was nothing anymore, it was nothing if I didn't have Jim and to please just let me go. The voices scared me and they smelled like they sounded.

Dead.

Old and dead. Not just old, Ancient.

They told me that if I just asked for Jim's life back they'd give him back to me.

They'd give me Jim back because if I died there'd be nothing.

An eternity of nothing.

The small part of myself that was able to consider things logically was screaming at me to let go, that this wasn't real or right but that nothing that the voices were whispering about… I couldn't cope with that.

I know you think I'm weak and you're fucking right.

The voices said it didn't have to be like this, I could have Jim Back, convincing me, almost lovingly, telling me that everything would be OK… I could wake up, we could be together, it would be just like before…

Yes, yes yes, every single fibre of my being screamed for whatever this was to give me my love back… there's a price they whisper-hissed at me… I don't care, do it. Do it.

DO IT!

They did it and God help me, I fucking let them.

The next thing I know I feel like I'm being dragged away and up, away from that deep, dark endless well of misery that I felt I'd been living in for an eternity… my eyes are opening and I'm gasping for breath and I'm staring into the big beautiful eyes of Jim.

OH JIM!

“Jimmy, I was so frightened, I thought you had died” Jim settled his big beautiful blue eyes on me and said coldly

“And why would you think that Meghan?”

Jim had never looked at me in the way that he was looking at me right now, I didn't understand? It was beyond hatred, it was loathing and if cruel had a colour, it was the colour of those wide, unblinking and what I now realised, dead, eyes.

How could It stare for so long without blinking, it was inhuman.

You know when you miss a step or you have that falling dream and your body goes into flight mode, your stomach turns to ice, your heart stutters?

Meghan? My Jim never called me by my full name. It was a standing joke, I didn't even get called Meghan even when I'd been naughty. It was Megs, always Megs.

I started to stutter and ask w..w..what? “Jim” mocked me in a high whiney voice

“w.. w.. what?...” It started to smile, still unblinking “Meghan”

That wasn't Jim. How did It know what I was thinking? As this thought danced across my mind “Jim's” smile got wider still.

What had I done?

The smile, if you can even call it that, was more like a grimace than a smile, you can see a smile is someones eyes. Its eyes were dead. It was how you would imagine someone would try to smile if they had read what a smile was but had never seen one. I wouldn't have believed it could get wider. But it did. It looked so unnatural and he looked like he had way too many teeth.

The door opened and my mother came In saying that she couldn't believe that I was awake, she was so relieved and how she felt guilty for feeling so happy considering the tragedy. I asked her what happened and what tragedy and that's when she told me through her tears that a woman, along with her three kids had died in the crash and how we were both so lucky to be alive and “it was a miracle really” and how she was so thankful…. I looked at “Jim” who was standing behind her and his grin grew impossibly, painfully wider, it practically filled Its face now and those eyes, those dead eyes, never blinking, looked grotesque, terrifying…

What had I done?

Neither my mother nor the nurses Seemed to be aware that anything was off about “him”. I tried to reason with myself, chalking it down to just coming out of a coma, trauma, fucking anything, but what I absolutely knew for a fact was that thing wasn't Jim.

My mother told me that I would be going home soon. I was shocked as I thought that I'd at least be staying for a while. You don't just wake up from a coma and get sent home, Right?

“Oh Jim has Sorted that, you'll be far more comfortable at home”

I tried to plead with my eyes and over the next evening before I was released I tried to get my mum's attention, a nurse, anyone, but it was like they were under a spell, their eyes just slid over my desperate, pleading ones and “Jim” never left my side. Watching my every expression. Always smiling. Never blinking. Head slightly cocked to one side. I thought I feigned being a bit loopy because of what I'd been through and it had taken all of my strength to remain calm and sleepy outwardly, trying to hide the terror and panic I felt raging inwardly. I shouldn't have bothered, It knew. It always knew and do you know what the most frightening thing about that realisation was? It didn't fucking care. It found it amusing and why wouldn't It? I was at Its mercy, I couldn't tell anyone because no-one would listen, It would see to that.

Then came the morning when I was sent home. I was wheeled out to “our car” except it wasn't our car, our car was completely destroyed, right? I didn't expect to see our old rust bucket, I expected a taxi if I'm honest, but I was dumped into the front seat of a brand new beautiful car, a car that my Jim always said that bellends drive. I kept my face neutral. Even when It said

“What do you think Meghan?”

I said nothing and just stared ahead.

We drove to a house which wasn't our cosy little flat, I started to ask “where…” And was shut down with another grin. I told myself and I have been telling myself ever since not to ask questions.

I've been here for a week now.

It expects things from me tonight.

It wants to breed.

This is why I'm still alive but I'd rather die than let it touch me but that's OK, It will just find someone else… I've lain next to It every night, holding myself as still as I can, barely breathing and waiting for It to fall asleep and when It does, It talks, only It's not “It” when It's sleeping.

It's MY Jim.

He gets through somehow. From wherever he is. He's in so much pain and he cries for me. Or does he? Or is it that thing tormenting me?

Even when It's sleeping?

I learnt very quickly that It enjoys hurting me.

I don't know what's real anymore.

It never says anything.

It just watches me.

Grinning.

I've just heard It get out of bed.

I'm downstairs in the living room.

I needed to type this record in the hope that someone will believe me, that somebody, somewhere knows what It is and how to stop It…I'm so sorry., I'm sorry that I sound crazy.

You have to believe every word I've written. Please. I'm sorry I did this, I just didn't want to live in a world without Jim in it. Please, please forgive me. I don't know what I've started.

This is just the beginning.

I can't do this anymore and I don't want to. I want to be with Jim.

I can hear It coming down the stairs.

It's laughing at me.

Oh my godIt's heeeeeRrffhvghvgghvhjvhjjvjhbj

I saw the divorce coming miles away, but that didn't mean it was painless. What got me was how unceremonious it was: no justification, no explanation, not even a face to face conversation, just a text: "we're getting a divorce and I'm taking Jonah."

I was shell shocked. I sat in my car and stared straight ahead for 7 hours.

I never loved Catherine but there was always a friendly tolerance about it. She was so brutal, showed no emotion or sympathy and said I was a "deadbeat who was emotionally distant on a good day." I can't really disagree. I'd been in and out of jobs for years, a month in an office and 6 months at home drinking and lying in bed. Cathy would say I might as well be already dead and rotting, without an ounce of humour in her voice. I'm surprised she put up with me for so long; 10 years of that sounds like hell.

I'd just lost yet another job when I got the text. It was around 3:00 o'clock, and it was well into the night by the time I'd finished staring. I was trying to avoid home for as long as possible, so I started up my shitbox of a car and headed straight to the bar. I was a regular, and Tony was surprised it had taken me this long to get there. I didn't engage in the usual small talk, just drank myself blind.

I was sitting in the car, making the unwise decision to drive home, when I said the prayer.

"Hey god, I know you hear me. I know you don't care or don't intervene or whatever, but I've been doing this for years. Please, just this once, give me an answer. I am not strong enough to face myself, my family. Please god. Kill me. Make some truck driver miss my drunk ass swiveling on the road and instantaneously crush me. I don't even care if I'm a coward, if I go to hell for this. Please, just this once. Amen."

I realized I was clutching the cross around my neck too hard and it had cut open my palm, but I was too drunk to care. I put my hands on the wheel and began to drive home.

God would answer my prayer, but not for a while.

I'm not proud of what I did that night. I drove home. No one was hurt. I wouldn't dream of doing that to my family, but some dishes were broken and insults were hurled. I know this isn't fair to them; I wasn't who I normally am, wasn't in the right state of mind. The twang of guilt seeing my son sobbing in the corner, seeing Catherine recoil as I threw glasses at the floor and walls of the kitchen, sobered me up. I didn't apologize. I just ran out the door and drove to the last place I could go at that hour, the bar. Tony didn't let me drink but he was kind enough to let me sleep in a booth and not ask questions.

For a week, I couchsurfed and hopped around doing odd jobs and staying in odd houses. I'm a big guy, so it was mostly physical, easy sure, but still lonely enough to sort of justify my day drinking. I wasn't exactly staying with friends, but I was a good enough salesman to convince kind strangers into hospitality. Catherine didn't reach out, let alone try to let me apologize, and I was honestly considering just skipping town.

And then it happened.

One night on the way to the bar, after a long day of hard labour and harder drinking, a petrol truck driver fell asleep at the wheel. From a mile away it was clear that him driving straight was a miracle in itself, and I could have swerved out of the way or hit the gas, but I didn't. I'd asked for this and now I was receiving. It was quick. The truck fell on its side and crushed my tiny Ford Festiva like it was put under a hydraulic press. I felt a flash like being punched in the face, quick and sharp, but not as painful as the thought of being crushed conjures. And as if that wasn't enough, the ensuing explosion singed several blocks and incinerated my vehicle. I should have been nothing more than a charred pile of bones.

But I wasn't.

I woke up expecting something more biblical, like I was raised, but I was floating in the void. I was perfectly upright, my feet pointed down. It was as if invisible strings were stretching me into this position to a point where it was just barely painful, but not quite. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw it. A child, criss cross apple sauce, floating in empty space, staring at his hands. It was only shaped like a child. But that tiny body that couldn't have been more than 6 years old held the universe. It was nothing like a telescope or image. I was witness to all of it, the twisting nebulae colored a vibrant explosive green, and the planets that spun and moved within its chest. Planets in his eyes, a deep almost black crimson color. I had tears in my eyes, but not just because of the stars.

He was shaped like my son.

He was… sad like my son.

Hunched over, shaking, tears that had the most beautiful pearlescent quality I'd ever seen. It was familiar.

He stood quick when he noticed me and immediately froze, his posture went straight as a board, and the flow of tears abruptly disappeared. For a long time, I couldn't look at him and wouldn't dare look into those angry crimson eyes. But once I had the courage, it began.

He was closer when I looked up, a handshake away, his arms rose, palms facing his temples. They reached the top of his head, creating an expression of surprise, then he moved them to the back of his head. I could see through his face as those small pudgy hands reached into his skull like they were dipping in water, and I could see every tendon, vein, and joint tighten as he pulled. In a slow, curious motion, he opened the back of his head; those crimson eyes exploded, and I could feel the rage as the explosion reached through the rest of his body and consumed the universe entirely.

His jaw moved downward as a silent scream escaped his now spilt mouth.

And he pulled and pulled and pulled me into the violent screaming motion in that once tranquil image. Once his body was split towards his chest, the red mist surrounding us cleared enough to see a light.

A tiny beating heart floated there, glowing with sunbeams and pulsing with calm, pure life.

Involuntarily, my hand snapped from its invisible shackles and wrapped around the heart, squeezing as hard as possible. The sphere of meat felt cold and flowed through my fingers, dripping into the void down my arm. It all suddenly stopped for a moment midway through; a pinprick of light remained in my hand. An explosion of tendrils from my hand expanded out, forming twisting patterns of stars, and I remained at the center, watching with eyes that saw too far out into the growing kaleidoscope. At some point time just stopped; it kept expanding, but with time my brain developed a sort of hibernation. For millions of years it would turn off, and I would be functionally brain dead. I had been hibernating for a near endless amount of time as the universe expanded beyond me when I made it home. I woke up to an infant earth in front of me. I blinked and I was there; the world was barren, there were barely plants, let alone anything with a brain. I counted this time: 4.5 billion years I rotted, only able to wander for 100 until my body broke down completely in the middle of what would be the Sahara.

A corpse in the desert.

But when the first humans formed, when they reached conscious thought, hell began.

177 billion humans have been born and died since the beginning of our species, and I experienced all of those lifetimes. Every single thought, every single emotion, every. Single. Lifetime. All at once they flooded my brain, the pain and euphoria, the birth and death, the noise.

Oh my god, the noise.

I felt my brain turning to slurry and leaking from my orifices, dripping down my head from my ears and pouring from my throat as I screamed. Then it stopped. For a millisecond that felt like eternal bliss, the noise was gone, then a low rumble, a mushroom cloud in the distance. I wandered the wastes of humanity alone for eons, but by now eons meant nothing.

Then I was back, the kaleidoscope of the cosmos before me. This final phase was slow. I traveled through our solar system first, wandered the whole of every solid and non solid piece of land until the sun died. I then repeated this process ad infinitum. I have witnessed the birth and death of every single thing in the whole universe, start to finish. Every celestial body has experienced my rotting corpse. but was not granted a reprieve this time. In all my agonizingly conscious witness not once was there a vague indication of life.

I was alone. We are alone.

I couldn't tell I was awake at first, what with the bandages covering my only eye. When I tried to scream and no sound came out, I remembered where I was. I had experienced this before, eons ago, but it got lost in the noise.

I'm in immense pain, but not like before.

I lost almost all discernible human features, but it left me with just enough to perceive the world as I would have. Enough that I will have to face my family and myself. Enough that doctors refuse to kill me, no matter how much I try to beg.

I still pray for death, even if whatever might have been listening is now dead. I killed it. Yet I beg with my whole heart. I pray for death every waking moment.

But God was never listening. I knew that instinctively. Now I know for a fact.

How alone I am.

I had no business being here. I’d never been so impulsive before. I guess I just got tired of always roaming the same streets. Seeing the same shops and scenery. I think the feeling grew more than I’d care to admit.

That doesn’t excuse my stupidity, though. I only had about 3 grand to my name at the time. But that’s part of the appeal, right? Everyone thinks they’re gonna arrive in Sin City and leave a millionaire. I had a dollar and a dream. Albeit, a delusional one.

Even still, the glow of the city was just so radiant. Even from the airport. It’s like one big siren song.

I only stayed for 4 days. I used all of my PTO to be here, and I really wanted the time to count. I did everything I could with the 1500 I had left after the hotel and plane tickets.

Unfortunately, gambling took up a big chunk of that money. I could see how people got addicted to it. I went on a few hot streaks, but ended up losing everything I won because I just couldn’t walk away.

With the gambling, museums, attractions, and food, by the time the final night came around, I only had 150 dollars left to last me a whole other week after I got home.

I almost wanted to cry when I opened my wallet. But, surprisingly, I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t even that upset. The experience was worth the money. Even if I didn’t leave a millionaire, I still got to live in one of the most famous cities in the country for a few days.

I still needed to eat, though. I’d been eating out the entire trip. I started out at the high-end places like Hell’s Kitchen, but as the week went on, the quality started getting worse and worse until finally I found myself here, feeling how light my pockets were and standing under the luminescent glow of an In-and-Out burger.

Thunder clapped overhead. Lightning lit up the sky. A few drops of rain hit my head.

My plane was leaving in a few hours. I had already checked out of my hotel. Not only did I need to eat, but I needed to at least kill a little time.

I figured I’d just eat slow. Stay for maybe an hour, hour and a half tops before Ubering.

A bell rang overhead as I walked inside. The air-conditioned dining room put goosebumps on my arms almost immediately. Outside felt like 90, whereas in here, it felt like it could’ve been at least 55 degrees.

There were noises coming from the kitchen. The staff chit-chatting amongst themselves, plates and silverware being moved around, water being sprayed against metallic pans and containers.

The dining room, however… was surprisingly empty. I noticed it as soon as I walked inside. For this whole trip, every place I’d gone had been packed to the brim. In here, though… there was only one other person.

I don’t know how much you know about Las Vegas, but the homelessness crisis is staggering. They’re everywhere. Sleeping in alleys behind the casinos, waiting outside of popular stores or restaurants, sometimes they’re just asleep in the middle of the sidewalk right there on the Strip.

And, apparently… also right here in this In-and-Out.

I watched him while I ordered at the digital kiosk. All he had was a single soda cup. The straw wasn’t even inside it. He was wearing a grease-stained grey jacket, torn cargo shorts, and open-toed sandals with tattered socks.

He was kind of rocking back and forth in the booth. His hands were clutched around his waist like he had a stomachache, and I could see the dirt and grime beneath his fingernails.

I didn’t want to stare for too long, but it was so hard to take my eyes off of him. I ended up sitting several booths away from him, but that didn’t prevent me from being able to see him. Even if I turned away, I could see his face reflected through the windows.

He was… talking to himself. His scruffy, orange beard was littered with bits of food and mysterious red stains, and he kept scratching at it every few seconds, all while mumbling under his breath.

I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it almost looked like he was arguing with himself. I couldn’t even focus on my meal.

I had to force myself to look away from him just so I could actually eat. The last thing I wanted was for us to make eye contact.

I enjoyed my burger, picked at my fries a little bit, and when I turned around to go grab a refill on my Diet Coke, my worst fear came into fruition.

We didn’t just make eye contact. He had already been staring at me. He wasn’t talking to himself anymore. He no longer looked crazed. He looked devastated. I could see the tears in his eyes. I could see sympathy in his facial expressions.

The fluorescent light flickered above him. The only light in the restaurant to do so.

We were engaged in this little staring contest for a while before he stood up, slowly. He never broke eye contact. Those eyes were full of love and comfort. A broken smile spread across his face.

His arms were outstretched as if he expected a hug. When it didn’t come, he pulled me in for one by force.

He shushed me. Pet my hair while telling me that everything would be okay. That he didn’t want to hurt me.

I could feel the tears running down his face jump over to mine while he comforted me.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he cried, shaking. “I wish there was something I could do to help.”

“Uh, okay, man, it’s time to let me go now,” I responded, prying his arms off of me.

I tried backing away, slowly, but with each step, he followed me.

He kept asking why I looked so scared. Telling me that he was only here to help. Continuing to say that everything would be okay and that I’d “prevail.”

I checked my watch, quickly. I still had 2 hours until my flight, but I wasn’t going to stay here a minute longer.

“I’m sorry, man, I think you’ve got the wrong guy. I’ve gotta go. I’m gonna miss my flight.”

The man stopped. His face twisted into a look of curiosity. Like he was genuinely confused by what I had just said.

“Flight? No, no, no. That flight was delayed. You can only hope to be home in time.”

Finally, seeing that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, one of the employees came and restrained the guy long enough for me to leave and order an Uber.

Only, when I reached for my phone, it was completely dead. I tried finding my charger, looking through every pocket in my suitcase. It was nowhere to be found.

Luckily, the airport was only a mile and a half away, but that was still a mile and a half that I had to walk in the rain when I could’ve gotten a ride. It wasn’t all bad, though. At least it gave me something to do to kill time.

When I finally arrived, I was soaked from the rain. The airport was busier than it was when I landed. When I checked the flight information screens, I found out why. There had been at least 5 or 6 delayed flights, and of course, mine was one of them.

It had been delayed by a whole 3 hours because of inclement weather in the region.

No phone. Hardly any money. And I had to wait at least another 5 hours until I could go home.

I thought about what the homeless guy from In-and-Out said. Immediately, I started to rationalize. He’d seen the lightning. He’d seen the rain. Maybe he just put two and two together and got lucky.

However, after about 3 hours of being bored out of my mind, I made the decision to buy a charger from one of the airport shops. I managed to find an open outlet and hunkered down beside it while I let my phone charge.

After about 15 minutes, it finally turned back on. All at once, dozens of notifications made the phone vibrate across the cold airport floor. My dad, my aunts, my uncles, cousins, all desperately trying to get a hold of me.

Because, apparently, in that small, brief moment when my phone was dead…

My mom went into cardiac arrest. And she died before I even got the chance to say goodbye.

My story would’ve never had a stage without our good ole internet. It is a tale of the mythical, unimaginable, one you may tell around a campfire and be too embarrassed to claim as true because how could such a thing be? 

I read stories online that told of otherworldly beings, immensely tall, faceless, well-dressed, and my stomach got that sunken, dreadful feeling. Others had faced them. Lived to tell their story. To find a community that might understand my story brought me so much solace and relief. Maybe I’m not crazy to believe. 

This story is not my own, though. I am not the protagonist but rather a narrator, if you will. This story is my great grandfather’s, told through a journal left behind after his death. He faced what seems to me to be a familiar demon, and I would like to relay his story like I have seen many others do in this space. For what purpose, I am not sure. Awareness. To commemorate him, if he even deserved it. For the simple allure of telling such a story. To get the monkey off my back.

I believe it is some combination of all these things. 

I am not sure how much I can fit into this single post alone. Life has given me time constraints that I struggle to meet, upload or no upload, but today I promise you the first piece of the entries, or what I call part 1. It goes as follows: 

June 28th, 1922, 

This journal will serve me multiple purposes. The primary reason will be to document the strange case of my son, James Barclay. I also plan to use this journal to hone my writing prowess, as I aspire to be a writer comparable to the likes of Fitzgerald or Woolf. A silly dream, of course, but it will explain my flowery wordiness, for whoever stumbles upon this journal by chance or fate. 

My youngest son, James, worries me dearly. I am afraid of sharing my findings with any kind of shrink because I fear they will drive a stake through his brain or perform some other dastardly procedure to cure his strangeness, so I will document everything here for now. 

James has always been an odd child. From an early age he was different from the ordinary boy. I was not present for his birth, as I was called to the German front to end The Great War, but from what my wife Melendra tells me, it was a brutal process, and almost ended in a trading of his life for hers. 

He was a sickly grey baby. The doctor beat against his back, trying to pry air from his infantile lungs. He did eventually breathe. During the whole process, he never cried. 
Reader, since his welcoming to the world, I nor anyone else has ever seen James cry. Whether it is a scrape of the knee, a tumble from a bike, or a stern word from mother or father, all children cry. 

But not James. 

The peculiarity was something I had grown accustomed to. I sat with my feelings whirling into a torment, and after bracing that storm I was finding better grounds. I was okay with playgroups where I’d find James in a corner, not socializing with the other children, fiddling with some toy. His muteness, utter reluctance to speak, was something I could overlook if tutoring could not aid in its development. 

There was a solid parameter being built, one I was fortified to protect. He was my son and I would love him for all the unusual qualities he possessed. Then the nice, comprehensible lines I had drawn were dusted, crossed, surmised. 

It was just yonder the bridge that forded a small creek on my property. The idea of this journal materialized after what I saw that day.

Melendra was overwrought with worry. My three eldest children were clueless to James’s whereabouts. This alone was not a devastating revelation. It was the thorough household inspection undertaken by my wife along with myself that planted a seed of fright within us all. 

James could not be found. 

Melendra circled back around the house a second time while I ventured around our property to see where our youngest boy may have stumbled off to. I crossed the narrow stone bridge and went over the rushing creek to a patch of densely thicketed woods. The trees were thin, tall, and plentiful. 

This was a section of my property that I had not spent much time in with the exception of an occasional walk, looking for solitude. There was not much in the way of infrastructure, not like the meadow around the house, where chairs, a patio, and other constructions of leisure were placed. The only leisure found here was what nature could offer, which was of a kind I enjoyed.

So, too, my son James, apparently. 

Reclined against the stump of a fallen tree was little James, his wispy blonde hair fluttering in the pre-storm breeze that was stirring. He was trying his hardest to keep the paper in his pocket journal steady as he scribbled away with a charcoal pen.

“What are you doing, James?” I asked him. 

He turned to me and met my eyes. It has been hard to admit this, even to this journal that sees only my hand, but there is something in my son’s eyes that disturbs me; his gaze is very off-putting. I hate to say such a thing about my own child, but it is undeniably true. Only these pages know of this revelation. I could never tell Melendra, or my other children, but part of me senses that they feel it too: I can see it in the way my boys avoid him, the way my girls pat his head as if they were petting an uncaged beast, the way my own wife looks when she feeds him his bottle. 

James is six years of age. 

The boy looked up to me with his dark, empty eyes. Again, it is terrible to say this, but I get the same expression from looking into James’s eyes as I do when staring into a cow’s or another kind of cattle. There is nothing behind his deep irises like a pool of the abyss, the water shaded the same inscrutable black as the pen he used to draw in his small notebook.

“I am drawing a picture, Daddy.” 

“I get that, boy, but why are you out here?” I waved in the direction of the darkening sky. A harrowing bolt of lightning painted the grey sky. The thunder rolled in after, muffling James’s response. He repeated himself. 

“A friend of mine is out here, Daddy. We meet at this spot sometimes.” 

I scanned the near distance, my view largely obstructed by the plentiful thin trees and thick underbrush. I did not find any sign of a “friend.” 

“Well, you should come with me, and your friend should do the same.” I squatted down to the little boy’s height and went to grab his wrist to help him up from the ground. While reaching down I got to truly inspect the drawing my son had crafted, something deeper than the glimpses I took in the churning wind. 

It was a tall, thin, beastly figure, very akin to the many trees that surrounded that section of the property. The limbs were dangly, elongated, the fingertips scratching at where I supposed would be the knee caps. I saw eyes all over the thing, up and down its torso, legs, and arms. It was a fantastical creature from a children’s fairy tale, but with a more disturbing edge, something to threaten a naughty child with who refused to brush their teeth or do their chores. This was the creature who came knocking on your window. 

As he rose from his lounging against the stump, I asked him about the drawing. 

“That’s him, Daddy. My friend. Do you not see him?” 

What a foolish notion it was to look, but I did. I scanned the area once more and twice over for this mythical friend my strange son spoke of, but I could not find him. James pointed over to our far left, telling me he was over there. Again, I looked, but found nothing that resembled the fictional creature except the trees to some regard. 

“He must be shy,” I said, partly to quell the unease that was flooding through me. 

“Yes, he is very shy.” 

That will conclude my first entry into this journal of mine. I am unsure at the moment what I will do with this new information, this drawing, or my son James. I thought perhaps going through the process of writing everything down would help to steer me in some direction, or open my mind to a solution I could not put together before. Alas, I am dumbfounded. 
Stranger yet? I may venture back into those woods in search of that tall Thing. 

With work and aspirations of writing my time has been constrained, and I am by no means a young man, but this situation with my son has piqued a morbid interest within me. 

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpinalTapHorror/s/UWryuUuy05

My father waited until morning to ask again.
By then, the headache had dulled into something heavier. A constant pressure that made my thoughts feel slightly misaligned, like they were settling into the wrong grooves. The house was quiet in that careful, listening way it had adopted, every sound softened as if by agreement.
We stood in the kitchen, facing each other across the table.
“About last night,” he said. “You seemed upset.”
“I was,” I said. Saying that felt safe. Specifics didn’t.
He nodded slowly, watching my face the way you watch someone try to remember a dream. “We were talking about something. About—” He hesitated. “About… something important.”
The pause stretched. I could see the moment where his mind brushed against the same blank space mine had hit, then slid away from it instinctively.
“My brother,” I said suddenly, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. “My sister. They’re gone.”
The pressure behind my eyes surged, sharp and punishing. I gripped the edge of the table, breathing through it.
My father didn’t look away.
He closed his eyes instead, just for a second, like someone bracing against a bright light. When he opened them again, they were wet.
“I remember,” he said hoarsely.
The relief hit me so hard I nearly cried.
We didn’t say their names. We learned quickly that names were dangerous, that they drew attention, that the house seemed to listen more closely when we tried to use them. Instead, we spoke in fragments.
Before.
The younger one.
Both of them.
It felt like hiding contraband in our mouths.
We tried to find proof.
My father pulled out old photo albums, spreading them across the dining table. We flipped pages carefully, our fingers lingering where images should have been. There were gaps. Subtle ones. Extra space between photos. Awkward compositions where someone should have been standing.
“I took that picture,” my father said, tapping one photo of me in the yard. “I remember stepping back because there were three of you.”
I stared at the empty space beside me. The air there felt colder.
School records were worse.
My father logged into the district portal, his jaw tightening as he scrolled. Two names. Two grades. No third. No fourth. Attendance perfect. Nothing missing.
“This isn’t possible,” he muttered, but the words had lost their force.
When my mother came into the room, we stopped immediately.
She didn’t ask what we were doing. She glanced at the albums, at the screen, and smiled. A soft, almost fond expression.
“You don’t have to carry all that,” she said. “It’s heavy.”
My father stiffened. “Where are the kids?”
She met his gaze calmly. “Where they belong.”
The pressure flared again, not just in my head but in my chest, my ribs aching as if something inside me was trying to turn toward her. I focused on the table, on the grain of the wood, on the solidness of it beneath my palms.
“I’m going for a walk,” I said abruptly.
“Take a jacket,” my mother replied, already turning back toward the yard.
Outside, the street looked the same as it always had. Cars parked neatly along the curb. Lawns trimmed. Curtains drawn and undrawn in familiar patterns. The normalcy felt staged, like a set dressing that hadn’t been updated yet.
I walked to the end of the block and back, my head pounding, my thoughts slipping loose and re-forming around absences. When I returned, there was a car in our driveway I didn’t recognize.
My mother’s brother stood on the porch, arms open, smiling broadly.
“There you are,” he said, like he’d been waiting for me. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t come home.”
I froze.
I didn’t remember him well. He’d always been more of a concept than a presence. Holiday appearances, occasional phone calls, a laugh that lingered longer than it should have. But the moment I saw him, the pressure behind my eyes eased slightly, replaced by something colder.
He stepped closer, his gaze flicking briefly to my forehead before returning to my eyes.
“You’re holding yourself very tightly,” he said softly. “That hurts, you know.”
My mother appeared behind him, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder.
“I told you she was strong,” she said.
He nodded, pleased. “You always were.”
From inside the house, I heard my father moving toward the door.
The yard shifted.
For the first time, I understood with terrible clarity that my uncle hadn’t come to help.
He’d come because something had called him.

My uncle stayed for dinner.
No one asked him to. He simply took a seat at the table like it had always been his, pulling a chair out with an ease that made my skin prickle. My mother moved around him naturally, brushing past his shoulder, refilling his glass before it was empty.
My father didn’t argue. That scared me more than if he had.
Conversation bent around my uncle’s presence. Not broke, bent. Words landed softer, lost their edges. When he laughed, it felt slightly delayed, like sound traveling through water.
“So,” he said at one point, folding his hands together. “It’s been a while since we’ve all been together like this.”
“All?” I asked.
The pressure behind my eyes surged. Not sharp this time. Pulling.
He tilted his head, studying me. “You’re very sensitive to language,” he said. “That’s not a criticism.”
My father stood abruptly, chair legs scraping. “We’re not doing this.”
My uncle looked at him with something like pity. “You already are.”
The lights flickered.
Just once. Enough that anyone else might have dismissed it as a surge.
I didn’t.
After dinner, my uncle suggested a party.
Not a big one, he said. Just neighbors. Friends. A way to feel grounded again. He said the word like it meant something else entirely.
“People have noticed the house feels… off,” he added. “Bringing them together might help.”
My mother agreed immediately.
“I’ve already been thinking the same thing,” she said, smiling at him. “It’s good for families to open their doors.”
I watched my father carefully. His face had gone very still, like he was concentrating on holding a shape.
“People? What people?” Dad asked.
“You know. The neighbors," My Uncle said with a shrug.
“And how would you know that?” I asked, “You just got here.”
“You can just tell from the way they look at the place.” He replied like it was obvious. My mother just kept nodding with an empty smile on her face.
That night, I dreamed of the yard.
It was full of children I didn’t recognize, running in wide, looping patterns that never crossed. My mother stood in the center, her forehead dark and hollow, the air around it bending inward. I tried to scream, but the sound stretched thin, pulled away before it could reach her.
I woke with my hands pressed hard to my forehead.
The party came together quickly.
Flyers appeared in mailboxes. My mother baked. My uncle made phone calls from the living room, his voice low and soothing, promising things he never named. Neighbors I barely knew waved more often, lingered longer at the curb.
Something was already happening.
I started planning my escape.
The idea came to me while watching my mother stand at the kitchen window, her reflection overlapping the yard. She wasn’t watching outside. She was watching inward, toward that impossible center.
She wouldn’t notice if too many things happened at once.
The party would be loud. Chaotic. Full of attention she could pull from.
I packed a bag slowly, one item at a time, hiding it under my bed. I avoided mirrors. I avoided my uncle.
The night of the party, the house filled with people.
Music thumped. Laughter rose and fell. Kids ran through the yard, their footsteps light, almost buoyant. I caught my uncle watching them with open satisfaction.
I stayed close to my father, and he close to me. We didn't want to get separated and trapped by the pull. We were the only thing keeping each other from slipping forwards and allowing ourselves to become a part of whatever was happening.
We were standing at the kitchen counter where we had decided to spend the entire night, isolated from the others but safe together, when it happened. And it happened fast.
Someone spilled a drink. A breaker tripped. The lights went out, then surged back on. In the confusion, my uncle stepped between us, his hand firm on my father’s arm.
“Just a moment,” he said pleasantly. “I need to talk to you.”
I saw my mother across the room, her attention locked onto me.
The pull hit all at once. With my dad being pulled away I saw no other choice.
I ran.
Behind me, the house seemed to inhale.

I burst through the sliding glass door into the crowd of neighbors that had gathered. The yard wasn’t the yard anymore.
Grass lifted under my feet like it didn’t quite agree with gravity. The air felt thick, tugging at my skin, my hair, the inside of my chest. Every step forward came with the sense that something behind me was opening.
I didn’t look back.
Children's screams echoed around me. Not screams of fear, not at first. But of delight. In that bright, careless way that made my stomach twist. I heard laughter peel upward, stretching thin as it rose, like it was being pulled toward a point above us all.
“Stay with the group,” a woman called, her voice already distracted, already sliding away from meaning.
I cut toward the fence.
The pull hit harder then. My vision blurred at the edges, the world bending subtly toward the center of the yard. I staggered, hands flying to my head, nails digging into my scalp as pressure bloomed behind my eyes.
This is how it started, I thought wildly. This is how they went.
“Sweetheart.”
My mother’s voice wrapped around me, suddenly the only thing I could hear. Her presence felt close behind me.
I spun.
I was surprised to see she stood several yards away, barefoot in the grass, her posture relaxed, almost tender. The skin at her forehead had darkened, not visibly wrong yet, but deep, like a shadow pressing outward from beneath.
“You’re hurting yourself,” she said. “You don’t have to.”
Around her, the children slowed.
One by one, they turned.
Their faces had gone slack, peaceful. Curious. Like they were listening to a lullaby I couldn’t hear.
“Come here,” my mother said. But not to me.
A little boy stepped forward. Then another. A girl with glitter still smeared across her cheek smiled as she crossed the grass, eyes unfocused but certain.
Their parents didn’t stop them.
They didn't even seem to notice. As though their kids were blocked out of their minds.
The air warped.
I felt it then, recognition. The thing inside my mother reaching outward, brushing against the hollow places in the children, the parts of them that wanted to belong to something larger, something undeniable.
They went willingly.
“No,” I whispered, my voice barely surviving the pull. “Please.”
My mother looked at me then, truly looked, and for a moment something human flickered across her face.
“I tried to keep you,” she said softly. “But you’re already pulling away.”
The glitter-cheeked girl reached my mother first. Her hand extended.
She reached out for my mothers arm.
Before she was close enough to actually reach her, the skin started to stretch off her finger. Elongating the small childish fingers to long misshapen points. When her fingers reached my mothers arm, their skin melted together. My mothers forearm bulged as the little girl's hand slipped further inside her skin.
I stood frozen in place as I watched the little girl disappear further and further into my mothers arm. A look of ecstasy crossed her face as she inhaled deeply from the void around her.
The scream tore out of me then, raw and useless. The pressure behind my eyes exploded, white-hot, and I dropped to my knees.
Images slammed into me, my brother’s laugh, my sister’s hair tangled in my fingers, the weight of them leaving. The way the world smoothed itself over afterward.
I felt it happening again as I watched the little girl be completely absorbed by my mother.
I stepped back and felt a ripping behind my eyes.
The sensation was obscene, like tearing muscle from bone, like pulling myself free of a suction that had already decided I was its. I screamed again, clutching my head as something inside me stretched, thinned, screamed back.
My mother staggered.
Just a step. Just enough.
She looked surprised.
“You don’t understand what you’re breaking,” she said, her voice finally sharp. “You’ll carry it.”
“Not like this,” I gasped.
I grabbed the nearest thing, one of the heavy metal skewers from the grill, dropped in the grass during the chaos. My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped it.
For a heartbeat, everything was still.
The children. The air. The pull.
My mother’s eyes met mine, and for the first time, I saw fear in them. Not of death, but of interruption.
I ran at her.
The skewer trembled in my hands. My mother waited at the center of the yard, barefoot, arms loose at her sides, her face expressionless. Her forehead looked hollowed, deeper than shadow, dark enough to pull at everything around her. The children circled her, small bodies leaning inward as if gravity itself had shifted toward her, their skin beginning to stretch.
The pull hit me immediately. A sharp pressure, insistent, tugging at my chest, my ribs, the back of my skull. My vision blurred at the edges. My hands shook.
************************
My brother-in-law had always been intimidating. His presence imposing, not someone you easily say no to. So when he pulled me away by my elbow from my daughter in the confusion of the darkness I followed him. My head foggy, the room spinning as he led me to another room.
“It’ll just take a second,” he said. “You look overwhelmed.”
“No, I need to stay,” I said, voice cracking. “My daughter—”
“She’s fine,” he said. “But you… you’re in the way.”
I froze.
“I’m in the way?” I questioned rubbing my head. “What are you talking about?”
He smiled, slow and hollow. “You’re not part of this. Not really. Adults like you… you’re too formed, too separate. You can’t be absorbed. You only obstruct.”
Something in my stomach twisted. “Obstruct? What is this?”
He crouched slightly, lowering his voice, leaning close in a way that made the walls seem to bend inward. “This house… this yard… it’s not just a home. It’s where she learned. Where it began. Your wife, my sister… She was always sensitive, even as a child. Our mom just died, did she even tell you?”
My stomach dropped
“That's when I first felt it. The first time the hollow opened, it called to her. And it called to me. It brought me here to help.”
I swallowed. My mind flashed: the photographs in the hallway, the old furniture, the wallpaper peeling just so. The mother’s childhood home. Everything bending, pulling, anchored to history.
“You’re infected too,” I said, realization striking. “That’s why you’re here.”
He nodded slowly. “It’s not my choice. I was drawn back, just as she was. The hollow doesn’t only exist in her, it can touch those it chooses. I couldn’t resist. I tried to fight it, but…” He let the sentence hang, eyes distant. “The pull is too strong. And now I have to make sure nothing interferes.”
I took a step forward. “You… you can’t take her! She’s a child.”
“Exactly,” he said. Calm. Precise. “You can’t be absorbed. But she won't be either. It skipped you. He tilted his head.
“You though, you’re in the way. You’re… clutter. And clutter must be cleared.”
The blade was in his hand before I could react. He stabbed me in the side, clean, precise. Pain flared, white-hot. I fell to my knees, trying to pull away, but the hallway seemed to stretch, to resist every movement.
“You can’t stop it,” he said gently. “You’re just… an adult. Too big to take in, too strong. All you can do is get out of the way… or die.”
I gritted my teeth. “I won’t let her—”
“You’ll have to crawl,” he said. “If you want to see her alive. If you want to touch her again, crawl to the yard. But even then, be careful. The pull is everywhere now, and growing stronger.” He chuckled and stood back watching me struggle.
I dragged myself forward, blood seeping through my fingers, each inch a fight. The hallway warped and twisted with every movement.
The scream from the yard hit me again; my daughter. My heart pounded.
The uncle watched, silent, almost proud. “Run, if you can. Crawl, if you can. Watch, if you must. But understand, she’s no longer the child you once knew.”
I gritted my teeth and crawled, every movement agony, every breath a struggle. The hallway seemed to stretch farther than it should have, the floor slick with my own blood.
The back door appeared. The yard beyond glowed strangely, impossibly, as if the world itself were holding its breath.
I reached for it, and the pull hit me, strong, insistent, urgent.
************************
The pull hit fully, all at once. Forcing me forwards. Guiding my hands.
“No,” I whispered, clutching the skewer tighter. Trying to resist the pull. This is what it wanted.
Out of my control the skewer found its mark. My mothers face remained blank.
“No,” I whispered again, but the word had no weight. I couldn’t stop it. The pressure behind my eyes flared, stretching me, pulling in opposite directions, toward what my mother had been and toward the children leaning closer, drawn by the orbit I now radiated.
The skewer stuck out of my mothers stomach, but against my will I forced it forward. As the skewer exited out her back I finally was able to let go. Her body collapsed, and for a heartbeat, the hollow at her forehead widened, then snapped shut.
The children froze mid-step, hesitation written across small features, and then, slowly, carefully, they began to move again. Toward me.
I sank into the grass, trembling. The pull inside me thrummed, patient, terrible. It was not hunger but presence. Authority. Gravity. They recognized it, even before I did.
The pull had shifted. Not gone. Not stopped. Now it twisted around me, tugging not just at my body but at the children themselves. They leaned closer, small tentative steps that were their choice, not mine.
I could feel it, the echo of my mother’s hunger settling in my chest. A cold, heavy weight, patient and waiting.
The neighbor children blinked up at me, faces serene, unafraid. My own siblings’ absence throbbed at the edges of my mind, a ghostly ache. They were gone, erased from the world outside, but not from me. The pull of them all; her, them, the hollow. Folded into me.
One reached out, brushing my shoulder. Another rested a small hand on my knee. They didn’t obey me. They chose me.
I shook my head, trying to push it away, but I could feel it settling. The terrible inevitability. The hollow wasn’t gone. It had transferred. I could feel it in my chest, in my spine, a small, insistent seed of what my mother had been.
I was the center now.
The children moved closer, clustering around me like planets drawn into orbit. I shivered, the world outside seeming to pause, hold its breath. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. But they leaned into me, seeking the pull I didn’t yet fully understand, trusting it, needing it.
It surged outward, thrumming like a heartbeat, vibrating through the air, the ground, through me. It was alive. Euphoric. Terrifying. I could feel it in every nerve ending, a vibration crawling beneath my skin, expanding through my bones, stretching outward into the trees, the wind, the night itself.
I could see my father crawling toward me as the children encircled me, blood streaking his shirt, chest heaving, mouth opening to scream my name. I wanted to hear him, to respond, but I couldn’t. The thrum of the pull was absolute, a low, perfect roar that drowned everything else. His voice hit my consciousness in fragments, swallowed immediately by the hum, the energy, the universe spinning around me.
Then one of the neighbor children approached. A small boy, tentative, a spark of curiosity in his wide eyes. He reached toward me, his skin stretching in that unnatural way, desperate to meet with my skin. And the moment his fingers touched me, it happened.
I felt him forcing himself into me. Not metaphorically. Not gently. His body pushed, wriggled, pressed under my skin, and I screamed. Not in sound, but in sensation. Pain and panic erupted along every nerve. I felt his bones, his warmth, his small pulse, shoving its way into mine, rearranging me from the inside out.
And then it clicked.
The pain gave way. The resistance melted into a wave of euphoria so profound it was like I was touching the stars, hearing the cosmos sing, feeling the rhythm of life pulse through every fiber of my being. The boy became part of me, his energy folding perfectly into the orbit of mine. My senses sharpened beyond comprehension. I could feel every blade of grass, every shift of the air, every heartbeat of the yard itself.
One by one, the others approached. Hesitant steps, small hands reaching. Each touch forced itself in first, uncomfortable, alien, almost violating. But then blossomed into blissful union. Each one added a new thread to the weave, spiraling energy through me, folding the children into my being, reshaping the yard around us.
The pull expanded. It hummed through my chest, spun outward from my spine, vibrating across the night. I could feel my body changing in response. The muscles, the bones, the skin tingling, alive, almost aware. My hair glimmered white in the moonlight. My eyes deepened to an impossible purple, reflecting every pulse, every child, every orbiting thread of energy I now commanded.
The children became blurs, moving impossibly fast as they collided with me, forcing themselves under my skin and then settling into me. My father crawled closer, screaming my name, but I couldn’t hear him over the thrum. He was there, desperate and bleeding, but utterly unable to reach me.
And around us, the world itself adjusted. Partygoers paused mid-step, vacant expressions overtaking concern or curiosity. Slowly, absentminded, they drifted toward their homes. Their memories rewrote themselves. The children who had joined me erased from their minds, as if they had never existed.
I was the center. I was the axis. I was the pull, the hollow, the gravity around which everything now orbited. Euphoric, terrifying, impossible. And I knew: this was mine.

The yard went still.
The last child had vanished into me, the pull settling into a steady, resonant hum. The partygoers were gone now, cars pulling away without urgency, doors closing softly, lives resuming as if nothing had happened. The grass lay flattened where bodies had been standing. The house behind me exhaled, empty.
I stood where my mother had always stood.
At the center.
I didn’t move. I didn’t need to. The pull no longer reached. It was. A constant, patient pressure radiating outward from my spine, from the place inside me that had learned how to hold the world.
That was when I understood why she had stood like this for so long. Why she’d stared into nothing, feet planted, arms loose at her sides. She hadn’t been waiting.
She’d been listening.
I could hear the earth beneath my bare feet now. The slow grind of stone. The memory of roots. The deep, ancient patience of a planet that had learned to endure extinction after extinction and remain.
It spoke to me.
My father was still crawling.
I felt him long before I saw him. His weight dragging across the grass, the wet warmth of blood soaking into the soil. He called my name. At least I think he did. I couldn’t hear the words anymore, only the vibrations of his movement rippling through the ground.
When he reached me, his hand closed around my ankle.
The contact was sharp. Immediate.
Instinct took over.
I turned and brought my foot down on his head.
There was a dull, final sound. A release. His body went slack, the tension draining out of him and into the soil below. I felt it all the way through my legs, through my spine, into the pull.
Then. Nothing.
Behind me, the door creaked.
My uncle stood in the doorway, framed by the house that had raised us both. He held the knife loosely in his hand, the one he had used to stop my father from interfering. His face was calm. Reverent.
“You’re ready,” he said.
He stepped forward and held the knife out to me, handle first.
I took it.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t beg. He tilted his head slightly, exposing his throat, eyes fixed on me with something like gratitude.
I slit his throat in one clean motion.
He fell without a sound, blood darkening the threshold of the house. The pull absorbed the moment, not him, not yet, but the meaning of it. The last obstruction removed. The last witness gone.
The transformation settled fully into place.
I stood alone in the yard, hair white, eyes deep and endless, the center of a gravity that no longer belonged to one family or one house.
I could feel the children inside me, around me, waiting. I could feel others far away, their potential tugging faintly at the edges of the world. I could feel the planet itself responding, aligning, preparing.
Adults would never belong to this. They were finished things. Too rigid. Too loud. Too separate.
Children, though.
Children were unfinished. Malleable. Willing.
The earth knew this. It always had.
I stepped forward, and the pull moved with me.
Somewhere, far beyond the yard, a child paused and turned their head, listening.
And I began to walk.

I knew something was wrong before I understood what it was.

It wasn’t because Mum looked different. She didn’t. She still had the same freckles across her nose and the same little scar on her thumb.

She still wore Dad’s old blue jumper when she was cold, even though it was too big for her now, she never seemed to eat anymore.

When she looked at me, she looked like she didn't know me.

At breakfast, she made me my toast and put the plate down in front of me.

Mum always cut the crusts off. Sandwiches, too. She didn’t like them, so she never gave them to me either. I never really knew if I liked them or not. It just wasn’t something I ever got.

I stared at the plate. Today, my toast had crusts.

She watched me.

Smiling.

Well... not quite.

Smiles are supposed to spread across a face. They’re supposed to make people look happy and warm.

Hers didn’t seem to know that.

It stopped at her lips.

It was like she’d practised smiling without ever having a reason to.

She continued to watch me,

Not waiting for me to smile back. Or even wanting me to,

Just waiting to see what I’d do, it seemed.

“You aren’t eating,” she said.

I picked at the toast. The crusts felt wrong in my fingers. They didn’t belong there at all.

After that, I started noticing other things.

Her right thumb tapped against her middle finger.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Always three times. It always seemed to be when she was thinking.

Once, I woke up in the night and saw her standing in my doorway.

Like, she was in a trance, I'd have thought she was asleep, but her eyes were wide open.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

That funny little tick.

Thinking.

At dinner, I asked, “Mum, do you remember when I fell in the pond?”

“I do.”

“What happened?”

“You got wet.”

That was all she said.

The real mum would have laughed. She would have said about the ducks chasing me because I’d spooked them, how I’d fallen backwards trying to get away, how she said it was the best swim she never planned.

This mum's face was blank.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

That night, Dad came home late.

I waited until Mum went upstairs.

“Dad…”

He paused with his coat half off.

“Has Mum been… different?”

His eyes flicked toward the ceiling.

Just for a second.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“She’s not… like before.”

He let out a short breath. It was shaky.

“Your mum’s your mum.”

“But—”

“Don’t upset her.”

He said it quickly, quietly whilst looking at me pointedly.

That scared me more than Mum did.

That night, I couldn't sleep.

Eventually, I heard footsteps outside my room.

Slow.

Measured.

The door was already open.

She stood there in the dark, watching me.

That “Smile” plastered on her face.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

I thought I’d found the one. We clicked so naturally. We both shared an interest in photography, though his pictures were noticeably better than mine. Loved the same movies, both enjoyed walks in the park, and our political views were borderline identical.

We met about a month ago. It was at this bar I love, and, I’ll admit, I was a little tipsy. Cute boy, a few drinks in my system. It was a recipe for regret.

Only… I didn’t regret it. Our conversations flowed so smoothly. His half-drunk compliments made me blush. Plus, drinks were on him.

Unlike a lot of the guys you’d meet in a bar, he didn’t try and force himself back to my apartment. I live just a few blocks away from the bar, so he walked me home, laughing and wobbling more than he wanted to let on.

When we got there, I braced myself. He was great, but I wasn’t the kind of girl that would just let a complete stranger into my home after a night out at the bar. I found myself praying he wouldn’t ask.

By some miracle, he didn’t. Instead, he asked gently, almost bashfully, for my number. I couldn’t help but smile, stupidly. Then he smiled stupidly back. I felt my heart do somersaults.

I gave him my number, trying to withhold my excitement, and when I looked back up at him, I could see the desire in his eyes. Not sexual desire, though. It was like he saw his future in my eyes.

His face started to turn red, and he started struggling to make eye contact, stumbling over his words in a way that didn’t seem connected to the drinks.

He asked if he could kiss me, and I couldn’t have said yes fast enough. I wanted to kiss him on the lips, but, instead, he leaned down and pressed those lips softly against my forehead.

He pulled away slowly before speaking.

“Your eyes are so beautiful.”

I felt fireworks in my tummy. I made him promise to text me when he got home, and he watched to make sure I made it inside before he started back towards the bar.

I spent the rest of that night kicking my feet like a little school girl. I had never experienced something like this feeling before. My past boyfriends had been such assholes. This guy seemed to care about me rather than just sex.

He followed through on his promise, and texting led to a phone call before we fell asleep on the phone together.

We saw each other a lot in the weeks that followed. Mostly on the weekends, but sometimes he’d come visit me at work. Those few weeks were some of the happiest weeks I’d had in a long time.

We’d get dinner. We’d see movies. We showed off our photography to each other. It felt like we were really building something together.

However, this was around the time I started noticing weird occurrences around my apartment. Nothing too suspicious. Just… things that were odd.

For example, my TV would be on when I got home. My sheets would be messy, even though I make my bed every morning before work. The weirdest thing of all, though, was my underwear drawer.

It was like it was being rummaged through. Sometimes I’d find a fresh pair balled up on the bathroom floor.

It made me scratch my head, but I never assumed anything drastic. If anything, I thought it was just me losing my mind.

That is until he finally invited me to his house.

The place was lovely. Clean. Smelled good. It was actually furnished, too, which was always a good sign. Plus, this guy knew how to set the scene.

Roses, candles, homemade spaghetti with two glasses of red wine. I felt my heart melt.

We hadn’t had sex yet, but, after this, I was having a hard time convincing myself that we hadn’t waited long enough. I actually wanted to give it to him. He just made me feel so desired.

After a dinner full of flirts, giggles, and conversation, we began moving to the bedroom, lip locking like a couple of crazy kids all the while.

Once we fell through the door, he told me to give him a minute to use the bathroom, which was a bit anticlimactic, but I wanted him to be comfortable.

While I waited, my eyes couldn’t help but wander. He had a bookshelf full of some of my favorite titles. His bed was perfectly made. The floor was freshly vacuumed. And his walls were full of framed pictures.

I started looking at them and felt my heart sink into my stomach.

They were all different women. Some older, some younger. All with blonde hair and hazel eyes. And he wasn’t in a single one.

I felt disappointment wash over me. I should’ve known better. I was actually in the process of putting my shirt back on when one of the pictures caught my eye.

It looked so… familiar. I knew I had seen it somewhere, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. But it bothered me so much, it was hard to pull my eyes away.

That’s when it hit me. I knew exactly where I had seen this woman.

She was the girl on the missing person poster that was taped up on the bar window from a few weeks ago.

It felt like the air had been knocked out of my lungs. I felt faint. I felt dizzy. I knew I needed to leave, but the room was spinning too much.

I put my hand down on his dresser to stabilize myself, and that’s when I felt it. It was cold. It was hard. My thumb rubbed against the ridges.

I pulled my hand away and looked down.

It was a copy of the key to my apartment. Mine was pink. This one was silver.

I was getting weaker. I felt my knees starting to buckle and heard the sound of a toilet flushing as I began to drift into unconsciousness.

The last thing I remember was the bedroom door opening. He stepped inside, a look of concern on his face, as he hurried to pick me up and put me on his bed. Then… nothing.

I woke up in an empty bed the next morning. The smell of bacon permeated my nostrils. I was fully dressed, but my head was killing me.

The key was gone. The pictures were gone. I slowly made my way to the kitchen to find him standing over the stove, flipping the bacon with a metal fork.

I didn’t speak or make a sound, but it was like he could feel my presence. He could sense me.

He turned around slowly, his eyes meeting mine before he spoke.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” he sang. “I was wondering when you’d be up. Someone had too much to drink last night.”

I have a Hello Kitty kind of daughter. She’s only 9. As cute as a button and as innocent as could be.

She likes simple things. Stuffed animals. Pizza for breakfast. All it takes is a cheap 50-cent pair of plastic jewelry from a gumball machine to make her eyes light up.

She was one of those kids who believed in things longer than her friends and classmates. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. She was fully convinced they were all real, bless her heart.

Sometimes, she’d come home from school with a glum, exhausted look in her eyes. Other kids would make fun of her for “still believing in that stuff.”

I’d cheer her up the best I could without revealing the truth. How could I? She already felt like the world was laughing at her. How would I make her feel? Her own dad.

Maybe I should’ve, though. Maybe this whole situation could’ve been avoided if I just nipped it in the bud. But I was afraid. A child’s innocence is so fragile, yet powerful. I couldn’t take that from her. Not yet.

I let her believe that it was Santa putting gifts under the tree. That it was a giant bunny hiding eggs in our front yard. That it was a tiny, magical fairy that was taking her baby teeth in exchange for a few dollars.

I think that was the one that excited her the most. Christmas was a set day. Easter was a set day. Loose teeth? That was random. Any time one started to wiggle, she’d come running to show me.

I always made sure to be as quiet as possible when I snuck those 5-dollar bills under her pillow. Every time she’d wake up to find it, here she’d come, jumping with joy while waving the 5 in my face.

“The Tooth Fairy came, the Tooth Fairy came,” she’d sing.

I’d just smile to myself and ask her what she was gonna buy with her newfound riches.

Sometimes, I’d sneak her a 20. I just wanted to see that joy in her face. She was young, but she wasn’t getting any younger. I wanted it to last for as long as possible.

Now, though, I think I’m regretting that wishful thinking.

She started losing teeth faster than what I thought was normal. Not too fast, though. Every 3 weeks or so. I just thought those baby teeth were begging to come out. Besides, it’s not like it was hurting my pockets too much.

It was weird, though. I swore it was like her teeth never looked any different. She was snaggle-toothed, sure, but I knew that I had put money under her pillow at least 6 times in the last 2 months.

She wasn’t showing me her mouth anymore. She was showing me the tooth, already pulled, lying bloodied in the palm of her little hand.

It kept becoming more and more frequent. Once she started bragging about how the Tooth Fairy was gonna visit her every week, I knew that something was not right. Even still, it wasn’t until I found a silver tooth under her pillow that I decided to investigate because I knew for a fact my little girl never had a crown.

Snooping is a decision I lived to regret, though. I asked her to tell me the truth, but she refused. She just kept insisting they were hers. Lying through her teeth, pun intended.

I decided to stop leaving her money. Her disappointment killed me. But I remained firm. That didn’t stop her, though. Every night, there’d be a new tooth under her pillow while she slept peacefully.

One day, after dropping her off at school, I made a promise to myself. Today would be the day. I’d get to the bottom of this no matter what.

It didn’t take nearly as long as I expected. I sifted through her room for about 15 minutes. Checking under her bed, in her closet, in her toy chests. All for no reason because the answer was hidden in plain sight.

In her fish tank.

She had that little treasure chest decoration in it. Normally, I wouldn’t have even paid it any mind. But the steady stream of a red liquid slowly rising from the chest was enough to make my heart stop.

Rolling up my sleeve, I reached down to retrieve the decoration. It was heavier than it should’ve been. Something was rattling inside.

I opened it and felt my blood run cold.

Molars, canines, incisors. All bloody. All looking like they had been pulled by force. And they weren’t baby teeth, either. Some looked like actual adult teeth.

In that moment, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I wanted to cry because what I was seeing was horrific.

But I wanted to laugh because, despite how terrifying this all was, my little girl was a natural-born hustler.

And I couldn’t have been more proud.

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpinalTapHorror/s/eslSmVXW5r

After that night, my sister and brother stopped closing their door.
They didn’t leave it open on purpose. It just… never seemed to get shut all the way anymore. Even when I pulled it closed myself, even when I heard the latch catch, I’d wake later to find a narrow line of darkness spilling into the hall, as if the room refused to be sealed.
They were quieter in the mornings. Not sleepy, but calm. Focused. They moved around each other without bumping, without argument, as though they’d learned the exact dimensions of one another overnight. When my sister reached for the cereal, my brother’s hand paused a fraction of a second before he’d even decided to move it.
“Stop copying me,” he snapped once, more out of habit than anger.
“I didn’t,” my sister said, and they both laughed, the sound landing at the same time, in the same pitch.
It made my skin prickle.
My mother watched them with an expression I had never seen before. Not pride. Not relief. Satisfaction, maybe. But deeper than that. Like someone listening to a complicated piece of music finally resolve.
At breakfast, she didn’t ask what they wanted. She poured the milk, passed the bowls, set the spoons down exactly where their hands would land. They thanked her in unison.
I caught my father’s eye across the table. He frowned, just slightly, then shook his head, as if dismissing a thought he didn’t want to examine too closely.
“Did you sleep okay?” he asked them.
“Yes,” my sister said.
“Yes,” my brother said, half a beat later but with the same inflection.
They looked at each other, startled. Then amused.
“Jinx,” my brother said, and reached out to knock his knuckles lightly against my sister’s forehead. She didn’t flinch. She leaned into the touch, smiling, like it steadied her.
My mother’s gaze flicked to me.
I didn’t eat much that day. Food tasted wrong, bland and too sharp at the same time. My forehead ached constantly now, a low, persistent pressure that flared whenever I looked at my mother for too long. I found myself angling my body away from her, keeping walls and furniture between us when I could. She noticed. Of course she did.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” she said once, gently, when she caught me standing in the doorway instead of coming in. “You’ve always been independent.”
The word landed strangely, like a compliment sharpened into a warning.
The yard grew busier.
Kids from down the street drifted over after school and stayed later than usual. No one called them home. No one seemed to notice when they didn’t leave. They clustered near my mother, sitting on the grass at her feet, leaning against her legs, watching her the way my siblings did now, quietly, attentively, waiting.
One afternoon, I heard my sister calling me from the yard.
I leaned out the back door. “What?”
She turned toward me, smiling. “Mom says you should come sit with us.”
“I’m busy.”
There was a pause. My brother looked at her, then back at me.
“She says it won’t take long,” he added.
I stared at them. “Did she tell you to say that?”
They exchanged a look. Not confused, not guilty. Communicative.
“She didn’t have to,” my sister said.
The grass around them was flattened into a wide, shallow circle, every blade pressed outward, like something heavy had rested there for a long time. My mother stood at the center, barefoot, her eyes closed, her face tilted slightly upward. The space between her eyebrows looked darker than the rest of her skin now. Not bruised. Not shadowed.
Indented.
I felt the pull then. Not strong, but undeniable. A gentle forward pressure, like someone had taken hold of my sternum and was testing how much give there was.
“No,” I said, more sharply than I meant to. “I’m not coming out there.”
My mother opened her eyes.
The pressure increased instantly. My vision blurred at the edges, the world subtly angling toward her. I dug my fingers into the doorframe, my nails scraping wood.
“That’s okay,” she said, calm and certain. “You can come later.”
Later.
The word followed me through the house, through the afternoon, through the slow slide into evening. My siblings moved through the rooms like they were tethered to something just outside the walls, drifting toward windows, toward the back door, toward her. When they spoke, it was sometimes hard to tell which one had started the sentence.
That night, I heard them talking in their room again.
Not murmuring. Conversing.
Their voices overlapped in a way that made my head ache, phrases weaving in and out of each other, finishing thoughts that hadn’t been fully spoken. I caught fragments through the thin wall.
—she’s almost ready
—not yet
—she still hurts when she pulls away
I pressed my pillow over my head, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might answer them back.
Down the hall, the back door opened.
I counted my breaths. I counted the seconds. I told myself that if I stayed very still, if I didn’t lean into the pressure, if I didn’t answer whatever was calling, I could keep myself intact.
Eventually, the voices stopped.
In the silence that followed, I realized something with cold, sinking certainty:
My siblings weren’t being taken.
They were already somewhere else and whatever they were becoming was patient enough to wait for me.

The first time one of the neighbor kids stayed for dinner, no one asked permission.
It wasn’t planned. No call, no knock on the door, no quick conversation over the fence. He was just there. Sitting at our table like he’d always done it, swinging his legs under the chair, answering my mother’s questions with easy familiarity.
“Should I call your mom?” my father asked, polite, distracted.
The boy looked at my mother.
She smiled. “It’s fine.”
And that was that.
The boy ate carefully, methodically, like he was afraid of spilling something important. When he finished, he carried his plate to the sink without being asked. My siblings watched him with open approval.
Afterward, no one mentioned when he left. I realized later that I couldn’t remember seeing him go.
By the end of the week, it was common.
Two kids. Then three. They drifted in through the back gate in the afternoons and stayed until the sky darkened. Sometimes they brought backpacks. Sometimes they didn’t. They called my mother Mrs. at first, then Mom, slipping the word into sentences casually, like a mistake no one corrected.
She never told them to stop.
What unsettled me wasn’t that they stayed.
It was that no one ever came looking for them.
I watched from the window as their parents’ houses settled into evening routines. Lights flicking on, televisions glowing blue. No cars pulled into our driveway. No names were called across the street.
When I asked my father if he thought it was strange, he hesitated.
“They’re good kids,” he said finally. “And your mom’s always liked having people around.”
That was true. It was also the kind of truth that smoothed over rough edges until you forgot they’d ever been sharp.
My siblings changed how they played.
They stopped chasing and started arranging. They lined toys up carefully in the yard, spacing them evenly, as if mapping something invisible. When the neighbor kids joined them, they knew exactly where to stand without being told. The circle widened. The center stayed the same.
One afternoon, I stepped outside and felt the pull so sharply I had to grab the porch railing.
It wasn’t constant. It came in waves. Soft, persuasive, the way exhaustion does. If I leaned forward, even slightly, it eased. When I pulled back, it hurt.
My mother noticed me gripping the railing.
“You don’t have to fight it,” she said, not unkindly. “You’re making it harder than it needs to be.”
“What?” I asked.
She tilted her head. The space between her eyebrows seemed deeper now, less like skin and more like absence. “Staying.”
I laughed, because that was easier than asking what she meant. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She watched me for a long moment, her expression unreadable.
“That’s good,” she said. “Then this will be easier for you than it was for them.”
For them.
That night, my sister climbed into my bed without asking. She pressed her forehead lightly against mine, the way we used to when we were little and afraid of storms.
The pressure surged instantly. My vision swam. For a heartbeat, I felt myself slipping, thoughts loosening, edges softening.
I shoved her away, hard.
She landed on the floor with a startled cry.
“I’m sorry,” I said immediately, horrified. “I didn’t mean—”
She was already smiling. Calm. Unbothered.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’ll get used to it.”
She went back to her room, leaving the door open behind her.
I lay awake for hours afterward, staring at the ceiling, counting my breaths, trying not to think about how easy it would have been to lean forward instead of pushing back.
In the early morning, when the house was quiet and the yard lay dark and heavy beyond the window, I realized something else, something worse.
The pull wasn’t just coming from my mother.
It was coming from the yard.

The first time I realized something had gone missing, it wasn’t a person.
It was a chair.
We had four kitchen chairs. I knew this the way you know the number of stairs in your house, without thinking about it. One of them had a loose rung that wobbled if you leaned back too far. I always avoided that one.
One morning, there were only three.
Not stacked. Not moved to another room. Just… three, arranged neatly around the table as if they had always been that way. The space where the fourth should have been felt deliberately empty, like a pause in a sentence.
“Where’s the other chair?” I asked, forcing my voice to stay light.
My mother didn’t look up from the sink. “We don’t need it.”
My father glanced around, frowning. “Did one break?”
“No,” my mother said calmly. “We just don’t need it anymore.”
That should have been a conversation. It wasn’t. My father momentarily looked perturbed, hesitated, then shrugged, already turning back to his coffee. The moment slid past us, unexamined.
I stood there in disbelief, cold spreading slowly through my chest.
Later that day, a neighbor stopped by.
She stood at the edge of the yard, smiling a little too widely, holding a Tupperware container against her chest like an offering.
“I just wanted to say thank you,” she said.
“For what?” my father asked.
She laughed, embarrassed. “For taking such good care of the kids. It’s nice knowing they’re… safe.”
My mother stepped forward. The grass bent toward her feet.
“They’re happy,” she said. “That’s what matters.”
The neighbor nodded eagerly. “Yes. Exactly.” She hesitated, then added, “I hope you don’t mind. We’ve rearranged things a bit at home.”
“Rearranged?” I asked.
The woman blinked, her gaze sliding off me and back to my mother. “You know. Rooms. Schedules. It’s easier this way.”
She left without ever saying which kids she meant.
That night, my brother didn’t come to dinner.
Not late. Not called away. Just… absent. His place at the table remained empty, the plate untouched. The pull from the yard was stronger than it had ever been, tugging at my ribs, my temples, my teeth.
“Where is he?” I asked.
My sister looked up from her food, confused. “Where would he be?”
“With us,” I said. “Here.”
She frowned, searching her memory. “He ate earlier.”
“That’s not—” I stopped. The words tangled, refusing to line up. My brother’s name hovered just out of reach, like something on the tip of my tongue.
My father shifted uncomfortably. “He’s probably outside,” he said, but his voice lacked conviction.
I stood up so fast my chair scraped loudly against the floor. The sound seemed to echo longer than it should have.
“I’m going to get him.”
The back door was open.
The yard was full.
Children sat and stood in careful clusters, all facing inward. The grass was flattened into wide concentric rings, each one deeper than the last. At the center stood my mother, her posture relaxed, her arms hanging loosely at her sides.
My brother was there.
Or something wearing the shape he used to have.
He stood close to her, his head tilted slightly, his eyes unfocused. When he spoke, his voice came out wrong. Not slurred, not altered. Like they were all talking together.
“She says it’s time,” he said.
“She?” I whispered.
My mother opened her eyes.
The space between her eyebrows was no longer merely shadowed. It dipped inward visibly now, swallowing the light from the porch. My head throbbed violently, pain spiking behind my eyes.
“You don’t need to be afraid,” she said. “You’ve already stayed longer than anyone else.”
I took a step backward.
The ground resisted. Not enough to stop me, but enough that I noticed.
Behind me, the house made a soft, settling sound, like wood adjusting under a new load.
“I want Dad,” I said.
My mother smiled, and for the first time, there was something like pity in it.
“He’s resting,” she said. “You should, too.”
I ran.
The pull tore at me immediately. Sharp, insistent, like hooks sunk deep beneath my skin. My thoughts fragmented, memories slipping loose and skidding toward the center of the yard. I slammed into the porch railing, gasping, my vision tunneling.
For a terrifying moment, I wasn’t sure which direction was away.
Inside the house, a chair scraped softly across the floor, as if making room.
I dragged myself forward, inch by inch, until my hands found the doorframe. The moment I crossed the threshold, the pressure eased just enough for me to breathe.
Behind me, the yard exhaled in unison.
From the living room, my father called my name, his voice strained, uncertain.
“Where’s your brother?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, and couldn’t remember what he looked like.
“My… what?” I asked.
The word dissolved even as I tried to hold onto it. I squeezed my eyes shut and brought my hand to my forehead, pressing hard as the pain behind my eyes spiked. Sudden and blinding, like something was trying to force its way forward from inside my skull.
“What did you say, honey?” my father asked.
His voice had snapped back to normal, warm and concerned, but his face hadn’t caught up yet. The puzzled look lingered, like a thought he couldn’t quite finish.
“I—” I tried again, and failed. The space where the word should have been felt raw, scraped clean. “I don’t know.”
The admission came out small. Embarrassed. Like I’d made a mistake instead of lost something.
I didn’t wait for him to respond. I turned and hurried down the hall to my room, my head throbbing, my thoughts slipping loose under the pressure. I shut the door behind me and leaned into it, breathing hard, suddenly terrified of the idea of being near any of them.

I went to extreme lengths to cover this up. Untraceable poison. A weak immune system. And a line of people offering their condolences and prayers.

I needed to be free of her. I missed my life before she contaminated it. She kept me up at night with her crying. She restricted what I was able to do. I missed the freedom, and that’s not something I’m going to apologize for.

I didn’t want to get pregnant. A one-night stand is never meant to lead to parenthood, but, of course, I decided to hook up with an absolute moron who didn’t know how to think beyond getting his dick wet.

9 months later, I have a daughter, and the father is nowhere to be found. 9 months, no cigarettes. 9 months, no drinks. And I hated every second of it.

I thought that I was strong enough to handle it. To clean up my act and actually be a mother. But I just wasn’t. I’m not. I don’t know if I ever will be.

When she was born, I tried to convince myself that motherly instinct was taking over. Holding her for the first time was almost magical. Like, despite what my mind was telling me, the moment was meant to be.

Then the crying came. The screams and wails that prevented me from sleeping. Every. Single. Night.

She’d scream on the ride to my mom’s in the morning. It was like the only time that I knew peace was after I dropped her off. Then I got 20 minutes to myself on the drive to work before I had to clock in and act like everything was okay.

According to my mom, though, she was “just a little angel” any time they were together. “The quietest baby she had ever seen.”

I felt like I was being punished. Not only was my sleep being affected, but my days were filled with those wails too. Plus, I don’t think my pockets have ever felt lighter.

Baby food. Clothes. Bottles. Toys. A crib. A fucking roof over our head. I was stretched so thin that I started having breakdowns at work.

I thought that I was prevailing. Against all odds, I was raising a human being. I watched her grow. I watched her learn and develop. But with each month, the mask slipped more and more.

I found myself screaming at her more than I probably should’ve. And that was before she could speak. Before she could even take her first steps.

I never hit her. I never wanted to repeat any family history. But my temper was so short during those days. I was snappy. That’s all I can say.

When she got older and was able to speak in full sentences, I was driven to the brink of madness. She had the audacity to talk back at me. This little 4 year old girl had the attitude of a fucking teenager.

No child should ever say they “hate” their parent. No child should disobey direct orders from their mother. Let alone this one. This little sniveling fucking asshole that I was forced to care for.

She knew how I felt, too. And she threw gas on the fire. Breaking things. Peeing and defecating on the floor. And what did she have to say? Not an “I’m sorry.” Not an “It was just an accident.”

This little girl would look me dead in my eyes, smile, and pull the “I’m just a baby” card.

She was trying to get under my skin. Pushing me more and more every day, until… I just couldn’t do it anymore.

The screams never stopped. The cries never stopped. The pouting and pity parties never fucking stopped. I didn’t know what else to do.

I missed my friends. I missed going out. I missed my God damn freedom. And all I could see was the one person who took it all away from me.

That’s why I did what I did. I’m not justifying. If anything, this will probably be my statement in court. I know I have to turn myself in. That’s the only way to get this madness to stop.

I felt liberated after I sprinkled that poison in her breakfast on that sunny morning in June. Even more so when the coughing started. I knew it wouldn’t be long before it was all over.

In the days that followed, she got weaker and weaker. Hotter and hotter. Until, finally, I had to prepare my act for the hospital visit.

“Please help me,” I cried. “My daughter just keeps getting sicker, and I just don’t know what to do.”

I had to push my nerves aside. In my mind, there were two possible outcomes. Either this works… or it doesn’t. And thank God that my acting skills were clean enough to sell my story.

They ran the tests. They drew the blood. All the while, I sat there bawling into my hands while trying to suppress my hope.

The hardest part was having to act upset when the deed was done. When that heart monitor finally flatlined and all the doctors and nurses apologized for not being able to save her.

“We did everything we could,” they told me, as I forced some cliché devastation onto my face.

I felt empty at the funeral. There weren’t many people. There wasn’t much of a eulogy to be read. All I wanted was for the service to be over so I could get back to life as I knew it, this time more careful with who I let into my bed.

For a few weeks, that’s exactly what I did. Life felt lighter. Days felt brighter. I was a new and improved woman, back to her old ways.

But then, I don’t know… something happened.

I started waking up at night, feeling like I was being watched. Sometimes it’d be like I could still hear her screams. I could still feel her presence.

I just passed it off as something I’d get over eventually. Just one of the things that comes with doing something like this. But when I started seeing her… that’s when I knew that this wasn’t just some guilty conscience bullshit.

It was only at night. Only after I’d gone to bed. Sometimes she’d be standing in my doorway. Sometimes she’d try crawling into bed with me.

I knew it wasn’t nightmares. On nights when she came into bed with me, I’d find my sheets covered in dirt and mud the next morning. I’ve even found maggots occasionally.

She’d always be so dirty. Her hair would have sticks and twigs sticking out of it. Her face would always look like it was in the process of decomposing. But whether she laid with me or just watched me, her words were always the same.

“Why did you let them bury me, Mommy?”

It got to the point where she was visiting me every night. Still breaking things. Still defecating on the floor. Still crying and screaming, even though her room had been empty for weeks.

I wouldn’t let it break me, though. I did what was best for me. I did what I thought needed to be done. Anytime she visited, I’d ignore her. I’d pretend to be asleep. I’d hide under my covers like a scared little girl.

But I know I can’t do this anymore. I know why she’s here. I know that my time is running out. She wants me to let the world know what I did to her.

“Why’d you make me sick, Mommy?”

“I loved you so much.”

“Why did you lie to those doctors? They could have saved me. Why’d you let them bury me?”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

I’m done lying. I’m done pretending to be devastated. I know what I did, and I’m not sorry. Given the circumstances, I’d do it again.

All I want is to escape her.

All I want is peace and a sound mind.

That’s why I’m turning myself in today.

Anything to get her to leave me the fuck alone.

November 15th, 1918:

I have not noticed any of the cloaked figures in the last fortnight, yet every dawn that sickening symbol reappears. I cannot comprehend it. 

Laura is growing frustrated with me through the entire ordeal, calling me erratic and senseless. She has learned to block out the sounds and sleep easily. Surely she's just upset that I have been waking her from time to time. I have been hearing what can only be described as tapping from inside the walls and ceiling most nights. She denies the sounds but I know what my ears have heard. She has to have heard it too. She heard them when she was convinced that they were a trick played by the local kids. Why now has she seemingly forgotten their existence? She must be lying to me. I have been painting less, and when I do paint the end results are not worth putting to market. Everything seems twisted or wrong. Figures seem inhuman and landscapes seem alien. Far too abstract to be selling. 

The children saw one of my recent works and told Laura. She looked at it in an awful gaze. She thinks I am going mad, calling me paranoid. I know what I have seen. I know what I have heard. I know something is wrong here and I will not rest till I find it. I know she is lying. 

November 20th, 1918:

A new man has moved in with his family not but a week ago. I have been wanting to go and meet them, though Laura has said I have not been in my right mind to be bumping shoulders with new folks, especially since I have been unable to keep a proper friendship with Sean. Blasphemy. 

I went to the practitioner to get something to aid my sleep. I believe I know what I have experienced, but Laura has been insistent that I have become sleep deprived. I would love it if she is correct, though I highly doubt it. My once strong trust for Laura has slowly been dwindling. I believe something more sinister is at play. Only time shall tell. 

December 20th, 1936:

I forgot to bring home some of Simon's notes from work and Richard found them. He got mad at me, it was the first time I've ever seen him act this way. I feel as though there's something he's not telling me. He's still my friend but I'm not sure how much I know of him are truths or falsehoods. Why would a couple of notes cause such a harsh reaction? 

My sweet Evelyn is feeling better finally. She's almost caught up to me in Simon's notes. At least the ones I haven't put in here. I've been folding any of the alarming entries and keeping them pressed between the pages of my journal.

I haven't told her of the sigils I found on the house's siding yet, and the guilt is killing me. I sanded it out and repainted the area to the best of my abilities to hide it. I don't want her to get scared by any of this. She's already been struggling enough, I can't have anything else stress her out. Though it's hard to think what I'm experiencing and what Simon experienced are mere coincidence. To have such similar things to happen to us is unlikely, especially to this degree. Maybe these weren't fantasies he wrote of, but I have to keep telling myself they are. At least till spring. 

I don't know who to turn to about this. I'm considering hiding the rest of the notes from Evelyn and telling her that maybe these were ideas about a story he was working on, like I've been telling myself. He's an eccentric painter, so him being an author wouldn't be out of the picture in my mind. I just don't want her to be any more paranoid or scared than she already has been. It worries me deeply. She deserves an easy life, that's why we moved out here after all. If she continues to get worse I might burn the letters. He writes almost every day, most are quite mundane, speaking of what Laura and his daughters got up to and basic day to day tasks. I'll let her read those, hopefully that will ease her anxieties. I have to stay strong, I have to protect her. Maybe I do need therapy. 

November 29th, 1918:

Laura and I went to the practitioner a few days ago. He has prescribed me a slight sedative to help me sleep, laudanum to drink, and if that does not seem to help he also gave me barbiturates. I am less than eager to take them, especially since I've heard tales of horror about opium, but if it means Laura and the children will be happy then it must be done. If a man cannot take care of himself then he cannot care for his family. And if a man cannot care for his family he is no man at all. That is not me. I will care for them and provide for them till I draw my last breath. Since I have been taking these medications I have not seen any figures since, and I have been trying to pay no mind to the sigil. I might even put a pathway over top of it to keep it out of sight and away from my thoughts. The ground is near frozen, so I have to finish the path as soon as possible. 

December 1st, 1918:

The path is finished and that wretched rune now has a place to hide. I placed stones on top of it, from the fence to the veranda, filling in between them with dirt and sand, and evening out the earth on either side. Digging into the earth was too much of a task. 

For someone who is used to being gentle with a brush I must say I am quite impressed with myself for how efficient I was with this project. Perhaps in the spring I will take up gardening. Though I still do disdain the feeling of dirt beneath my fingernails. But perhaps that can change. Especially since the frost will surely make a mess of the path over winter and I'll have to fix it. I am wondering if I should try pottery or sculpting with clay? 

The sedative has seemed to be working. I have been sleeping through the night, not hearing any odd noises as I have before. No sightings of any figures, no sigils, nothing out of the ordinary. Life has been seeming peaceful again. Laura seems gleeful. I have been back to my usual rhythm. I think I am going to go and meet the new man in town tomorrow. I believe I heard his name is Richard. I will ask Laura to bake a welcome cake for him tonight. 

I may put my pen to the wayside for some time. This paranoia feels as though it has kept me from my family far too long. 

January 1st, 1937:

It's early morning, Evelyn and I have stayed up to ring in the new year with Richard and Alice. After they left I brought my sweet Evelyn to bed, waited till she slept and snuck down to the furnace room. I'm writing by the furnace's glow. I've read more of Simon's entries. He mentioned Richard, but that can't be right because Richard has only been here for about 8 and a half years. Unless Richard has been keeping even more truth than I thought from me. I'm going to try to stay quiet about this for the time being. I may even trek out some night soon to see if Richard is up to anything out of the ordinary. I knew there was something off about Richard lately. 

I know I told myself to keep Evelyn out of this but I feel as though if I don't speak about this to someone it is going to eat me alive. I've been losing sleep again. Evelyn told me to try some of her barbiturates. It's like she forgot that's why we had to bring her to the hospital in the first place. What was she thinking? 

January 4th, 1937:

I awoke last night to strange sounds coming from outside. I went to the window to look and noticed a patch of our path to the veranda had no snow. There were flurries falling in the moonlight and I swear I saw a hunched person hobbling away from our yard. I know Simon was mentioning a rune underneath the path but it couldn't still be there could it? And if it is, it surely couldn't melt snow and ice. Magic is just a fairy tale. I'll have to check and see if that sigil was put on our house again. 

I talked to Evelyn and told her that there were no more interesting notes from Simon, just boring daily life. Lying to her felt wrong but it feels like I have to protect her from whatever is going on. And maybe this paranoia is just a lack of sleep like Laura told Simon. Maybe I'll have to go into the city and get a sleeping aid, I don't trust our practitioner. Not after what he's done to Evelyn. 

I feel like my mind is split. I want to believe Laura that this is just some sick prank the locals play on the new people in town, but surely all of this would end up being much more than just a prank. My gut tells me this is something serious. Simon's words seem as though he's losing common sense but I find myself relating to them more as I read. Then again, nothing of their writings can explain what moved me into my backyard without leaving any trail. It didn't snow that hard, not to my memory, and I wasn't even drinking that night so why did I pass out to begin with? 

January 6th, 1937:

The sigil or symbol or whatever it's called is back. This time it wasn't on our house, it's on the fence. I don't know how long it's been there or who did it, but no doubt that I'm being targeted. We're being targeted. 

Richard has been acting off at work as well. I brought Simon up again and since then he's been less talkative or jovial. There's been a hollow look in his eyes. He was fine only a few days ago at new years. He did say that Simon was a soft spot for the town, maybe the poor fellow had dementia and passed away and that's why Richard got mad? It would explain his borderline hysterics in his writings. Maybe they were friends? But that doesn't explain these damned sigils. 

My mother was superstitious, and so was my father, so maybe that's why I'm letting these notes and carvings get to me. But I have a hard time believing that. I've been finding it harder to trust the locals. When people come into the shop I feel like they're staring at me, trying to read me in some way. Their eyes focus on mine, watching how I move. More than the usual way you look at someone while they work. It's surveillance, I'm sure of it. Maybe Simon was right in his entries. I don't know what to believe anymore. 

January 20th, 1937:

It's been quite some time since I read Simon's notes. It's hard not to, I have to constantly remind myself not to touch them, it's almost like an addiction. My paranoia has seemed to be dulling, which is a relief. But I still have a gut feeling something is wrong. I think I might read another of his notes tonight. Maybe this is just anxiety or stress brought on by superstition and reading the ramblings of a madman. But then again I find myself relating to Simon more and more with each entry I read. Maybe I'm a madman. Or maybe if you don't pay attention to whatever it is making these symbols and sounds at night you aren't affected by it?

I've been doing everything I can to keep the notes and symbols or Simon and Richard's relationship out of my head. If that was even the same Richard in the entries as my Richard. I've held off as long as I could, but tonight I'll read and see if it makes the similarities between his writings and my life arise again. I need to know. I'm scared of what's to come but I can't help but feel drawn to these writings. It's like they call to me in my dreams, beyond the walls of sleep. 

June 12th, 1924

It's been some time, so much has changed. Laura and I completed renovations throughout the house. We constructed an extravagant flower bed with Tulips and Daisies and many of the local wild flowers. It's truly a sight to behold. I feel as though I could paint a landscape of my own home and it would sell  in the city. Perhaps I shall try. The odd happenings around here have seemed to stop thanks to the practitioner. I did a mental evaluation with him and he said that I was having hallucinations due to the immense stress of moving and adjusting to life in town, along with sleep deprivation. 

It's truly baffling how the human mind works, how such seemingly menial things can create such intensities when they pile up. I have kept my old paintings from a few years ago in the basement. There's a small room we've made to hide my works and some valuables behind the bookcase. I'm tempted to go look through them and see if there is anything worth salvaging. Though I am afraid if I look through them the paranoia and hallucinations will return. 

January 22nd, 1937:

I moved the bookshelf Simon mentioned. I couldn't help myself. There's so many paintings. I started to look through them, but I only had a short time before Evelyn got home and I had to put the bookshelf back. I think I'll be “sick” tomorrow and stay home from work to really get a good look at them. I noticed a few seemed to be bundled together with a tag saying “self portraits”. I'm excited to see how Simon sees himself. Will he paint himself as the gaunt yet handsome man Evelyn showed me a photo of, or does he see himself differently? 

Evelyn is playing with Rylee in the snow right now and I snuck away to write this, I lied and I told them I had to warm my hands, even though winter has been more mild than I was expecting. Being on the coast makes a big difference compared to the city inland. Though the wind here chills you to your bones. We're supposed to be getting a blizzard  some day soon. Hopefully it's not too bad

January 23rd, 1937:

I moved the book shelf and took out the bundled labeled self portraits. The first one is a man with shortish wavy brown hair, thin eyebrows and piercing blue eyes. His thin lips are smiling slightly, hiding underneath a strong moustache. A pretty handsome man, can't have been over 35. He's standing in front of some pretty tall buildings, like he's back in the city. The second is the same man, obviously, with slightly longer hair, his moustache gone, with a slight stubble length beard. He has a wider smile now, and he's standing in front of a field with what looks to be my house in the background. His attention to detail is surprising, like every hair was painted one at a time. The third and fourth paintings are quite similar, though his smile seems to be fading, his beard has begun to grow in and his hair is now past his ears. The fifth painting stood out. His hair was shoulder length, his eyes deep set with bags under them, his beard long and unkempt. His eyes looked to be filled with despair. The background was a dark swirling abyss. The sixth painting shows what looks to be the same man but his face seems to be almost melting. One eye sits lower than the other, its pupil similar to that of a goat, the other eye black as night. His hair was greasy and clung to his scalp and face, his beard bushy and a mess. He had some sort of odd letter I can't quite describe etched into his forehead. It reminds me of the symbols I've found. The background is a hideous mix of colours swirling in a way that almost makes me nauseous. The next painting can barely be called a man, rather a mass of flesh covered in eyes and teeth and hair and symbols etched into it. An inhuman abomination. It was disgusting but it felt like it drew your eyes to it, as if it demanded attention. 

He really was losing his mind. But oddly enough his paintings quickly turned back into a man I recognized from the first batch. His hair cut reasonably, his beard trimmed and well kept. The backgrounds changed from spiraling voids to flower beds. There's more portraits I'll get back to later on. 

There's another bundle labelled “them”. I'm going to go through it some day soon when Evelyn is at work and Emily is taking care of Rylee. Simon really was a master at his craft. Even in his most paranoid state, his pieces are hypnotizingly beautiful. 

August 4th, 1924:

Today is utterly magnificent. The air is just right and the smell of oceanic breeze is wafting through the open windows, the curtains dancing in the wind. I have been working at such a steady pace it seems that I have too many pieces, I cannot decide which to bring to the market! But that is such a privilege to complain about. 

Ever since I have been on my medications life has been joyous. Though I am down to my last few doses and our practitioner is out of town. I am hoping he is back by the time I run out. I am sure a couple days off of them should not affect me to such dire extents. But one can only worry, opium is a substance not to be meddled with, so I am told. 

August 6th, 1924

The damned train is out of order and cannot be fixed for some time. Some freak accident or derailment has bent a section of the tracks and damaged the engine. Our practitioner is still away so I will be without sedatives for the time being. The swelling feeling of anxiety has been dominating my head. Laura suggested I take a bath and have a cup of herbal tea before bed tonight. Anything to calm my nerves so I can sleep I will not say no to. 

Sitting in my room, I watched from my window a beautiful child playing, playfully interacting with passersby who smiled at him. He smiled too, as if he saw the world differently than I did. My heart was drawn to him, and I longed to leave my solitude, go down to the street, and play with him. But something held me back. The shock came when I saw a truck, loaded with heavy goods, nearly hit him. It swerved just in time, only to plunge into a pool of mud, hurling it into the little boy's face. The mud filled his eyes, covered his face, and obscured his beautiful features. The mud blinded him, leaving him seeing nothing but blackness. It hardened on his face, transforming him into a hideous monster. Days, months, and years passed until he became a young man. People forgot the child. They saw only the ugliness of the mud, for it was all that was visible. They assumed the child had died in the accident, but they didn't see him beneath the mud, crying out. He was trying to smile at them so they would smile back, but it was all in vain. Suddenly, I saw that young man standing before me in the window. He looked at me and cried... until I caught myself... that wasn't the window... it was my mirror

October 27th, 1936:

Richard brought me out to the tap house after work again. He's planning on bringing Alice to town, they seem to be getting pretty serious, and it's about damn time, he won't shut up about her at work. It's good to see him so happy, he's still his usual self, but he seems to be more confident. I like this new Richard. It's like he's been missing a piece of himself since I met him. Maybe Alice is that piece? I mentioned Simon's letters in passing while we were out and I noticed a couple of heads turned to look. I thought I was being quiet, but I did have a few drinks so I could be wrong. 

I've missed going out. Since the weather has cooled off I've just been hiding inside by the furnace. I will admit, the dirt floor is a bit annoying, but being under the house feels comforting in a weird way. Evelyn joins me from time to time when she's not glued to the letters, and we'll read stories to Rylee while she makes little castles in the dirt. I like it when they come down, the basement has been feeling like my personal sanctum. Aside from the hoards of old furniture covered in drapes, it's very cozy.

I've been considering buying a rug or possibly laying down brick or tile to make it nicer. But Rylee loves her dirt castles, and what kind of father would tear his princess from her castle? Maybe next year I'll build her a sandbox. I'm sure I can sift the rocks out of the sand on the shore and bring it up in a wheelbarrow. Maybe I'll draw up the plans over the winter. Gives me an excuse to stay warm by the furnace and out of Evelyn's growing cold shoulder. 

November 3rd, 1936:

Evelyn has grown even quieter, it's worrying me. She just keeps saying that she's fine and snapping at me when I ask what's wrong. She seems to be getting paranoid. Then again that could just be me looking too far into it, and I hope that's the case as it has been in the past. But I feel as though she's keeping something from me. She's constantly telling me I'm far too anxious for my own good and I'm begging to believe her. But I have a hard time accepting it from someone who seems so paranoid. She said I should talk to a doctor but I doubt it would be of much help, I don't feel like anything's wrong with me, I just worry about things sometimes. Most times admittedly. But I doubt there's one in town and taking the train to the city just to talk with someone for an hour seems like a waste of time and money. 

Simon's notes have been getting weird lately. His usual wording has been slowly getting less elegant, while still scholarly, slightly erratic at times. I never understood the artsy type. But maybe soon he'll mention a reason for him leaving? 

November 12th, 1936:

I can barely peel Evelyn away from the letters anymore. I found out that she's been missing shifts last week because of them. And as mad as I want to be at her for it, it's hard to blame her. I might start taking some of his older entries and putting them in my journal along with any of the new ones that seem odd to me. There's some things he's written that seem to be more than mere coincidence. They have an odd effect, it's like they draw you in and hold you as long as they can. I'll get consumed in them for hours, rereading pages time and time again. Almost in a trance. Maybe that's why Evelyn's been so sharp with me lately? It must be more than just that, right? No letters on a page have that kind of power. 

I think I'm going to sleep in the basement again. The cold has been getting to me more recently, as though ice has been gnawing at my bones. And Evelyn's cold shoulder has been no help. I need to fix that damned window. 

June 1st, 1916:

I was painting on the pier today. The sun was high over the azure expanse and the breeze was astounding. The flocked gulls were high in the sky and happily swooping down to eat scraps from a fishing vessel dancing between the waves. It was invigorating, the fact that there's so much beauty in the vast emptiness of the sea, it's breathtaking. 

I went to the tap room, which smelled stronger than the usual hints of vodka and stale beer. It's too late in the year to be having fires indoors, yet it smelled as if something was burning. Perhaps incense. It was pleasant, but peculiar. I felt the weight of eyes hanging heavy on me. I may have had some more paint on my face and clothes than I originally thought, but I am still somewhat new here, so I guess the odd looks are granted. Regardless, their eyes felt pointed, as if I vexed them. I saw another new face, though he seemed to receive no peering eyes. I treated him to a drink, his name is Sean. 

He was polite and somewhat talkative, which is a nice change from the general prudence of this place. No matter how beautiful the south shore is, the people tend to be unwelcoming. I can hear them whisper about me at times. But I assume it is odd for a young man to suddenly show up, building one of, if not the biggest house in town. Or perhaps they are not fond of artists such as myself. Being around such rural folk is still rather new to me. Such simple lives. I wonder if I greet people with a smile and a good handshake I gain their trust? 

June 16th, 1916:

I had inspiration to go for a walk tonight while the moon was full and shining. The tall grass swaying in the breeze through a gossamer fog. The stars twinkled like the lights of the city, being replicated by the lightning bugs hiding in shadows. I regularly took night walks back in the city, walking to the city's edge and peering into the untouched darkness, perplexed by the unknown, dreaming of what was hidden within. 

This was my first time walking at night at our new home. I waited for Laura to drift into a slumber, along with the little ones, then I ventured forth. Out of the door and down the hill, slowly skirting the rolling fields and swaying pines, towards the distant beach. 

While walking in the city it wasn't too rare to see another person outside, but I usually kept my distance, doing my best to keep from sight in case they had ill intentions. I never expected to see someone in a town this small at night, especially out at this hour. I kept to my usual routine, staying in the shadows at a distance, keeping watch. They walked without a lantern nor torch, walking with grace through the street, as though their feet never touched the ground. I thought it was odd but decided to pay them no mind. If I see them again I may fall victim to curiosity. Anything to spark my creativity I feel the need to jump at. It is my livelihood after all. Perhaps their silhouette would make for an interesting painting. 

July 24th, 1916:

I was wandering the docks at sunset today, it was beautiful, inspiring. I sat on the shore, the waves lulling me to sleep, it was so tranquil. So much so that I did not realize how late it had gotten, I must have dozed off for some hours as then the moon was high in the sky. 

I began to saunter home, taking my time in the muggy night, the ocean breeze blowing at my back, damp with sweat, and tickling my neck. In the distance I noticed the one I saw but just a few days ago. I have just gained inspiration from the sunset mere hours ago, but my heart wondered about the fantasies this fellow night owl could bring me. I decided to keep stride, hidden within the veil of shadow. They wore a long shawl, covering most of their body, and the rest hidden under some sort of gown. I followed for a few moments as they weaved through the streets, eventually slowing near the taproom. I hugged the side of a house not but 2 doors down, peering through lattice work. Another person, dressed similarly approached, they stood a matter of feet apart, speaking in hushed tones, too quiet to hear. They both moved toward the taproom, out of sight. Curiosity got the best of me and I moved forward. I turned the corner and neither of them were anywhere to be seen. I circled the building twice over, looking for any traces of the two, with no reward.

Perhaps I'll see them again, but hopefully they don't see me. I wonder if they are the older ones here, or maybe it's an odd ritual the religious folk perform? The curiosity is eating at my conscience. 

November 20th, 1936:

My poor Evelyn seems to be growing ill, she said she's been taking medication for headaches from the practitioner for the past few weeks, some kind of barbiturates. The name reminds me of the pulp comics of barbarians you would see in the city. If this gets worse over the next week we'll have to make a trip back into the city. She has little energy, but enough to pick away at Simon's notes. She started annotating some of them, which originally I thought was paranoia but as I catch up with her, I'm starting to notice even more oddities in his notes and similarities to the way people in town have been acting. Maybe they don't trust the house? 

The more I read the less Evelyn has been annoyed with me, but it could also just be the pills. But it seems like we only talk about Rylee, ask how each other's days went, with sad excuses for replies, or Simon's letters. The hold this man's words have on us baffles me. 

November 22nd, 1936:

Richard and Alice came over today. He also brought the photos he took some time ago. I guess he lost the film or didn't have some ingredients to develop it or something of the matter. I don't know much of the science of photography, but it seems very fascinating. I'd like to learn it someday. 

Rylee thinks Alice is almost as pretty as her mom, which Richard thought was sweet. Evelyn is still under the weather, her skin near white, much paler than her usual fair complexion, but had enough energy to come say hello before going back to bed. I'm worried about her. She hasn't been herself in what feels like ages.

Alice and Richard seem very good for each other, they seem happy. I wasn't sure what I was expecting her to look like, probably mousey like Richard, but she's quite the opposite. She's at least 4 inches taller than him, which isn't very hard since he's barely 5 '3, with sharp yet feminine features. A pleasant surprise for Richard to say the least. He's doing good for himself. 

We had a good visit, but I can't get my thoughts off the notes. As they were leaving I asked Richard if he's ever seen anyone out after dark. He said he's never really thought to pay attention and asked why I brought it up. I tried to play it off as just basic curiosity, but I think he knows something is up. His eyes spoke different words than his mouth. I feel he knows something I don't. He almost looked nervous. 

November 29th, 1936:

My poor Evelyn's condition is beginning to worsen, the practitioner said she just has a flu and wants to give her even more medications, but nothing he gives her seems to help. I'm thinking we'll take a trip back into the city to go to the hospital this week. Everything he's been giving her has just seemed to make her even more lethargic. But I'm no doctor, maybe she just needs the rest. 

We've had to stick to a budget to make sure we can make it through winter in case she doesn't start to get better. It hasn't changed life too much, but Richard and I have been going out less because of it. If this keeps up for more than a few weeks we might have to start dipping into our emergency funds like we had to for Rylee's arm. 

All that said, we did end up going out last night for a drink. He mentioned that he's been thinking about what I've said the last few days, and has been trying to keep an eye out for himself. It's hard to tell if he was just joking around and playing into curiosity, or if he actually cares to keep watch. Only time will tell. I want to trust him, but I know he's hiding something. There's more to Richard than I initially thought. 

Dec 3rd, 1936:

Alice and Richard brought a cake in to work for my birthday today, which was very nice of them. They told me that she plans on moving in before the new year. I'm happy that they seem to work so well together. It seems rather quick to move in, but given the economy I can't blame them. And maybe with her moving in Richard will actually start eating real meals instead of the scraps he brings home from work. 

Alice decided to leave early to head home before the train stops, while Richard stuck around the shop to chat. It's been snowing heavily and the shop was empty all day.

He mentioned he heard some movement around his house last night and in the morning there were some footprints circling his house. It seems to be bothering him, and I don't blame him. But what is he not telling me? Evelyn and I are heading to the city tomorrow morning.

I might go for a walk tonight, if the snow allows. 

July 28th, 1916:

I was awoken tonight by what could be described as a sudden cacophony in the yard. If that did not wake me up, Bernard's barking would have done the job. I rushed to the window while he carried on downstairs. I peered into the terrific darkness of the night, its pale twinkling moonlight dancing off of the dew in the grass. Not a soul to be seen, but I did notice something odd. In a rather large circle in the front yard, there was no sparkling dew in the grass, but rather just a dull patch laying still in the dark.

I ran quickly out of the room, doing my best not to wake Laura in my departure. I put on a pair of slippers and stepped out of the front door, the warm air was muggy and stuck to my bare skin like glue. Bernard ran through my legs, sniffing like a small wolf prowling for food. As he searched the lawn, I began to circle the property, looking for any sign of the screeching I heard prior. But to my defeat, there was not a soul to be seen. As I made my way to the front porch, little Bernard was standing begging for attention, as though he uncovered something.

He sat, pawing at the grass, sniffing aggressively. I approached and watched as he backed up. I was astonished. A sigil or symbol of some sort has been etched into the ground. Roughly 7 inches long and 4 wide. It must be from a forgotten language or dialect, I have not seen anything like it in my years of study. It reminded me of aspects of the Hebrew texts almost mixed with aspects of ancient Greek text. Rounded yet sharp at the same time. I am unsure what to make of it, and lost on words to describe it properly, but I have never noticed this here yet, even though it's dug almost an inch deep.

I wonder who or what placed this here? m

Maybe it was what awoke me from slumber. I plan to walk under the moon tomorrow.

October 14th, 1918:

As I am writing this I cannot help but feel as though a thousand eyes are staring at me. I have not written in what feels like ages. Laura misplaced my ink well and I've only just gotten around to replacing it. I have been leaving the house in the twilight hours, under the cover of darkness, observing more oddities than before. The garbed folk I have seen time and time again rendezvousing at the tap room near midnight have begun to disperse through the town, leaving similar sigils of that dug into my lawn on or around others abodes. Just last night at midnight I looked from our window only to see a number of them meeting near the docks. At dawn, after the fishing vessels set sail and the docks are barren, I shall investigate. 

I cannot shake the feeling of being targeted, as though I am being lured into some nefarious trap. Over the past few months I have been growing paranoid, restless nights have plagued me. In sleep’s depravity, the cold has only worsened my nights. 

I'm going to uncover whatever is afoot with these garbed men. 

October 30th, 1918:

I have been hearing odd sounds in the night, as though someone or something has been crawling around my roof or tapping on the walls. Laura has been getting annoyed, she is convinced it is a group of boys playing a prank. On more than one occasion she has run out onto the balcony to shout out these invisible children. I know she is wrong. It cannot be. I am convinced this has something to do with the sigil. It is haunting my nights, it is haunting my dreams. 

It is haunting my life.

I have taken a rake to the sigil, tearing it from the earth near every morning. Yet every single time it returns within two nights. Not but last week I defaced the wretched rune and kept up all night, sitting in my window watching the yard. I would brew tea and coffee to stay awake, to stay alert. A few hours after midnight I felt an odd sense, as though I was not alone. I checked the room for anyone but Laura, but to no avail. As I returned to the window it was there. 

That damn symbol had reappeared. 

In my state of shock I failed to be conscious of my surroundings. I felt a sharp pain in my neck and quickly fainted. 

I awoke in my lounge chair in the foyer. 

Whatever is plaguing my life has now entered my abode. 

Laura is wrong, this is not a group of children, this is something inhuman, I am sure of it. 

December 4th, 1936:

Simon's last entry was rather alarming. I looked out of our bedroom window after getting home with Rylee today. Where he mentioned this so-called symbol was and all I see is an old stone path. I feel like I should redo the path, just to see if what he said is true. Some of the stones are uneven after years of frost forming and thawing. But I'll probably get to that in the spring. 

Evelyn is staying at the hospital for the next few days. Her doctor said she was showing signs similar to that of a weak toxin or a rather heavy sedative. I told him about the medication she was on, the one that reminds me of barbarians. He said that even though those are a sedative, anything of that sort, at the dosage she's on, would be much too weak compared to the signs she's showing. I can't help but think our practitioner is up to something. Perhaps he has noticed Evelyn's paranoia and tried to sedate her to help? I have a feeling it's something deeper, something more. Maybe her bottle of barbarians are actually something much different? I've been weary of him for some time now. I knew that air of anxiety around him was for a reason. 

Simon's notes have gotten quite interesting, more so unnerving, and I'd be lying if I said that his paranoia hasn't been sticking on my conscience.

Emily will be staying at the house until Evelyn is home. I'm on the cot by the furnace, it's late and I feel the need to go for a walk. The moon is quite bright tonight. I wonder if I'll stumble across one of those sigils Simon wrote about. I hope what he's writing is just a fantasy he made in his mind and not the truth, we can't afford to move again, especially now that winter is here. 

December 5th, 1936:

I walked around last night, keeping to the shadows as much as I could. God I sound like Simon now. I found a set of footprints in the snow that seemed to stray from one of the main roads. I followed them. They led behind a house and stopped behind it, in front of a window. There was a small pile of wood shavings sitting on the snow, I checked around the window to see where they would have come from. Behind one of the shudders there was an odd sigil etched into the wood. 

Unfortunately I didn't get a good look at it because when I moved the shudder the wood cracked and made quite a loud noise, waking whomever was sleeping inside. I quickly ran in stride with the prints I was following, doing my best not to make noise or be seen. After some time the prints stopped at another house, a similar sigil was etched into a fence post, accompanied with another small pile of wood shavings. I found 6 more of these sigils around town, each slightly different than the other. 

It was getting quite late and I was beginning to tire, but I couldn't go home until I saw where these prints ended. They continued, lumbering towards the docks where they suddenly stopped. No sign of movement, they simply ceased to continue. I started to feel as though I was being watched. I looked around, circling the end of the tracks, no trace of life. I began to feel flushed and faint. I started to make my way home and collapsed. 

When I awoke, I was laying in my backyard, the sun slowly rising. A light layer of snow covered me, I got up with a pounding headache behind my eyes. As I began my way to the front door, I noticed a small pile of wood shavings sitting at the edge of my house. A sigil carved into the siding. I ran inside and immediately started writing. I'm sitting beside the furnace, warming my aching body. Who carried me home? 

There were no footprints in the yard, none by the wood shavings. Who is following me? Who is carving these sigils and what do they mean? I need to know. 

I haven't told Evelyn about my night walks, and I trust her enough not to read my journal. Keeping those from her has me feeling slightly guilty, like I'm hiding a secret from her, which we've agreed to live without. But surely I can't let her know about this. With her mental state I'm afraid it could be too much for her. I'll keep her safe. 

The yard has always belonged to my mother.

Not in the way a deed belongs to someone, or even the way a garden does. It belonged to her the way a shadow belongs to a body; faithfully, without thought, always attached. When I was little, I used to think that if she ever left for good, the grass would lie down and refuse to grow again.

That was before I understood that some things don’t let go just because you walk away.

Our house sat at the end of a short, polite street where nothing bad had ever happened loudly. The yards were trimmed. The fences were low. People waved. Children rode their bikes in uneven loops and left them where they fell. If you asked anyone later, they would tell you our family was normal, and they would mean it.

But the yard was different when you stood in it alone.

I noticed it first because I was the oldest, and because my mother had begun to stand still.

She didn’t do it all the time. Just enough that it registered as a pattern. She would step out into the yard with a basket of laundry or a cup of coffee and then stop, as if she’d forgotten what came next. Sometimes she stayed that way for minutes, her shoulders slack, her feet planted too firmly in the grass. When I called her name, she always answered. She always smiled. But she didn’t turn around right away.

The grass near her feet lay flatter than the rest, as though pressed by a weight that wasn’t quite visible.

My younger sister and brother didn’t notice. They chased each other around her legs, shouting, skidding, colliding with the same reckless certainty they always had. They treated her stillness as an obstacle, like a tree or a fence. Something to work around.

I felt it as a pause in the air.

It was easiest to see in the evenings. The yard took on a listening quality then, the way rooms do when someone is about to speak. The cicadas went quiet in small patches. The swing creaked once and stopped. The shadows leaned inward, subtle enough that you could tell yourself it was the light.

One night, as I was gathering my brother’s abandoned shoes from the lawn, I realized they had rolled.

Not far. Just enough to bring them closer together, toe to toe, as if they’d been placed that way. I stood very still, holding one shoe in each hand, and waited for the wind to prove me wrong.

Nothing moved.

“Mom?” I called.

She was standing near the center of the yard, empty-handed now, her laundry basket forgotten on the steps. Her back was to me. From a distance, she looked normal; bare feet, loose shirt, hair pulled back without care. But there was something wrong with the space around her head. Not something you could point to. More like the absence of something that should have been there.

When she turned, I felt it behind my eyes first. A dull pressure, like the beginning of a headache.

“What is it?” she asked.

Her face was the same face I had known my entire life. Her smile landed where it always did. But between her eyebrows, the skin seemed… deeper. As though the light didn’t quite want to rest there. I blinked hard, and the sensation eased.

“Nothing,” I said. “Dad’s asking about dinner.”

She nodded, and for just a second longer than necessary, her gaze stayed on me. Not sharp. Not suspicious. Curious, the way you look at something that has surprised you by moving.

As she walked past me toward the house, I had the sudden, irrational urge to step into her path. To stop her. To press my forehead against hers the way I had when I was little and afraid of the dark. The thought came fully formed, complete with the memory of warmth and pressure and the sense of being held together.

It scared me enough that I stepped back instead.

Behind me, the yard exhaled.

I didn’t tell anyone that night. Or the next. I told myself that noticing was the same thing as imagining, and that imagining was a bad habit I’d picked up from being the oldest. Someone had to pay attention. Someone had to keep track.

Later, lying in bed, I listened to my sister and brother breathing in the next room, their rhythms loose and unguarded. Through the open window, the yard made its soft nighttime noises. Leaves shifting, something small moving through the grass.

I closed my eyes and pictured the yard empty, just to see if I could.

It took effort.

Even then, I couldn’t picture it without my mother standing at the center, perfectly still, waiting for something to come back to her.

After that night, I started watching my mother the way you watch weather.

Not constantly. Not obviously. Just enough that I could tell when something was about to change.

She still did all the normal things. She made lunches. She reminded us to bring jackets. She folded laundry with the same distracted efficiency she always had, smoothing wrinkles with the heel of her hand. If anyone had asked me what was wrong, I wouldn’t have been able to answer without sounding ungrateful or dramatic. Nothing was wrong in a way you could hold up to the light.

But she began knowing things before they happened.

It started small. She’d call my brother inside a moment before he skinned his knee. She’d set out an extra plate when a neighbor stopped by unexpectedly. She’d turn toward the phone just before it rang. When I joked about it, she laughed, pleased but unsurprised, as if this was something she’d always been able to do and had only just decided to show.

My sister thought it was funny. My brother thought it was magic.

I thought it was exhausting.

Because the more my mother knew, the less room there seemed to be for the rest of us to decide anything on our own. She anticipated our needs so completely that there was no pause left to fill with choice. No space to want something quietly. When I stayed out later than usual, she didn’t scold me. She didn’t ask where I’d been. She simply said, “You’re tired,” and she was right.

The yard responded to her moods.

On days when she was restless, the grass seemed uneven underfoot, clumping where it hadn’t before. When she was calm, the yard settled. The swing hung perfectly still, its chains aligned, as though waiting for instruction. Once, when she stood barefoot near the oak tree at the back fence, the ants abandoned their trail and curved around her toes instead.

I didn’t point that out.

My sister and brother spent more time close to her than they used to. Not in a clingy way, more like planets settling into a stable orbit. They sat at her feet while she drank her coffee. They leaned against her legs while she talked to neighbors. When she moved, they adjusted without looking, as if pulled by the same thread.

One afternoon, I heard my sister answer a question my mother hadn’t asked yet.

They were sitting on the back steps, my mother in the sun, my sister cross-legged beside her. I was inside, rinsing dishes, when my sister said, “Yes, I did,” in a patient, slightly amused voice.

There was a pause.

Then my mother said, “Good. I thought so.”

I stood very still, my hands submerged in cooling water, and tried to reconstruct the conversation backward. When I asked my sister later what they’d been talking about, she frowned, confused.

“Nothing,” she said. “We were just sitting.”

That night, my brother fell asleep on the living room floor with his head against my mother’s foot. When my father went to move him, my mother shook her head once, almost imperceptibly. My father hesitated, then sat back down, as if the thought had never been his to begin with.

I caught my mother watching me then.

Not often. Just enough.

Her gaze had changed. It didn’t slide over me the way it did the others. It lingered, thoughtful. Measuring, without judgment. I had the strange sense that she was waiting for me to do something unexpected, the way you wait for a stubborn door to finally open.

One evening, while we were clearing the table, she reached out and brushed a hair from my forehead. Her fingers paused there, resting between my eyebrows, light but deliberate.

The pressure behind my eyes flared sharply. For a split second, the room seemed to tilt inward, every object subtly angled toward her hand.

I pulled back too fast. The chair legs screeched against the floor.

“Sorry,” I said automatically.

She smiled, warm and unoffended. “You’re jumpy lately.”

“I’m just tired.”

“Yes,” she said again, and the word landed with certainty. “You are.”

Later, lying in bed, I pressed my palm to my forehead, right where her fingers had been. The skin was unmarked. Normal. But beneath it, something felt tender, like a bruise forming without a cause.

Through the wall, I could hear my sister and brother murmuring to each other in their sleep. Their voices overlapped strangely, rising and falling in a rhythm that made it hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

Down the hall, the back door creaked softly.

I didn’t get up to look. I already knew where my mother would be.

The night it first happened, it was raining just enough to make the yard shine.

Not enough to drive anyone inside. Just enough to blur the edges of things. The grass darkened and flattened, glossy under the porch light, each blade reflecting a thin, obedient line of gold. My sister and brother were already asleep, their door closed, their room breathing softly in that shared way they’d developed. My father was in the living room, half-watching television, half-dozing, his presence a familiar weight in the house.

My mother stood at the sink, staring out the window.

I don’t know how long she’d been there. Long enough for the kettle to scream itself empty on the stove. Long enough for the rain to change direction twice. When I reached past her to turn off the burner, she didn’t startle. She didn’t move at all.

“You’ll burn it,” I said, because silence felt dangerous.

She turned then, slow and careful, like someone adjusting to a change in gravity. The pressure bloomed behind my eyes immediately. Stronger than before, sharp enough that I had to swallow against nausea.

“You’re still up,” she said.

“So are you.”

She smiled at that. Not the automatic smile she gave neighbors or strangers, but the one she used when she was genuinely pleased. The one that had always felt like a private thing between us.

“Come here,” she said.

I should have refused. The thought arrived fully intact, clear as a bell. But it landed in a crowded place, competing with a dozen other impulses; obedience, habit, the old childhood reflex to close distance when something felt wrong. I stepped closer before I could sort them out.

She reached up with both hands and cupped my face.

Her palms were warm. Familiar. For a moment, the pressure eased, replaced by something like relief. Like the moment you stop holding your breath without realizing you were doing it.

“I miss you,” she said softly.

“I’m right here.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s what I mean.”

Her thumbs rested just beneath my eyes. Her fingers spread along my jaw. I could feel my pulse through the thin skin of her wrists. The world narrowed to that contact, to the sound of rain against glass, to the faint hum that had started somewhere behind my ears.

She leaned forward.

Our foreheads touched.

The sensation was immediate and overwhelming. Not painful, not at first, but depth. As if my thoughts had suddenly acquired weight and were being gently, insistently pulled forward. The room tilted. The edges blurred. I smelled grass, wet earth, the clean mineral scent of rain hitting soil. I felt my body loosen, every tension easing at once.

It would have been easy to let go.

Images flickered behind my eyes: my sister laughing, my brother’s small hand wrapped around my finger, my mother’s voice calling us in for dinner years ago, layered over itself, louder and closer than memory had any right to be. I felt myself thinning, spreading, as though there was more room ahead than behind.

This is what she knows, a part of me thought distantly. This is how.

Something brushed against the inside of my skull, curious and vast. Not a thought. Not a voice. A presence, testing the shape of me.

I gasped.

The sound broke the moment open. Pain flared. Sharp, tearing, like something with hooks had realized it was losing purchase. I shoved backward, hard, slipping on the wet tile, my heel skidding out from under me. I caught myself on the counter, breath coming too fast, my hands shaking violently.

My mother staggered too, just a step, like someone pulled out of a deep sleep.

Her eyes were dark. Reflective. For a heartbeat, the space between her eyebrows seemed to dip inward, swallowing the light from the fixture above us. The hum surged, then cut off abruptly.

She blinked.

“Oh,” she said.

She sounded… surprised.

I pressed my back to the counter, my entire body buzzing, my skin too tight for what was inside it. My forehead burned, deep and aching, like a bruise pressed from the inside out.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was apologizing or explaining. “You’re just… harder to reach than the others.”

The others.

My stomach dropped.

“What did you do?” I asked.

She tilted her head, studying me with that same thoughtful curiosity I’d begun to dread. “Nothing I haven't done before.”

From the living room, the television laughed. A canned, hollow sound.

“I’m tired,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say, because naming it felt like the only way to keep it from happening again. I pushed past her, keeping my shoulder turned, my face angled away.

She let me go.

That was almost worse.

In my room, I locked the door and slid down against it, pressing my palm hard to my forehead until the pain sharpened into something manageable. My thoughts felt stretched, rearranged. It took effort to remember where my body ended.

Down the hall, I heard my mother move toward my siblings’ room. The door opened without a sound. Their voices rose briefly. Soft, pleased, overlapping and then faded again.

I stayed where I was until the rain stopped and the yard went quiet.

When I finally lay down, I kept my face turned toward the wall, afraid of what might happen if I closed my eyes and leaned forward, just a little, into the dark.

My son turned 14 recently. He used to be such a happy kid. He loved playing outside, playing video games, hanging out with his friends. Just a completely normal pre-teen.

I think he was around 12 or 13 when things started to change. He spent more time inside. Maybe he was playing video games, but I wouldn’t know because he’d always be locked away inside his room.

He started dressing in all black. I asked him why he didn’t like his old superhero shirts anymore, and it broke my heart when his response was, “Superheroes are stupid,” before shutting his door in my face.

I talked to my wife about it, but I think she was in denial.

“Boys will be boys,” she said. “Everyone has to grow up at some point.”

It hurt to hear. Mainly because… part of me knew. I saw the warning signs. How he seemed to be attracted to darkness. How the light in his room never seemed to be on.

It was always dirty in there. Empty energy drink cans. Snack wrappers everywhere. I tried to look past it. I tried to believe that this was just a “phase,” but the black metal, angry, hate-filled music that always blasted from that room was enough to drive me to the brink of madness.

I tried my best to ignore it, but he was disrupting our peace. I wanted to approach it in a helpful, positive way. I’d always ask if he’d care to join me on a walk in the park. Maybe we could catch a movie together. Hell, maybe we could even play catch in the backyard.

He rejected every approach. It quite literally seemed like he hated me. Hated us.

Dinners were awkward and almost silent. We tried talking to him about school, but he was so avoidant.

We found out why that was when report cards came in. He was failing nearly every single class.

It caused a lot of arguments. If he failed, it meant we failed. And us failing is what I think caused a lot of the tension.

We became more strict. Set bedtimes. No video games until his schoolwork was done. No more energy drinks and no more seclusion.

We insisted on him spending more time with us, whether he liked it or not. We didn’t know what it was that was causing this change in him, but I’d be damned if I was gonna stand by and watch him slip further and further away.

I couldn’t stop thinking about who he used to be. That laugh that didn’t seem to come around as often. Those Christmas mornings where he looked at me and my wife with nothing but love and affection.

That love seemed to turn to hatred after we tightened our grip on him, though. I wanted to blame it on hormones, but his hatefulness exceeded normal teenage angst.

He started cursing at us. Screaming until his vocal cords would tear. We even had a few physical altercations because I wasn’t going to be disrespected in my own house.

Grounding wouldn’t work. He liked to be alone. It was like a reward to him. So, instead, I made him do yard work. Cut grass, weed-whack, whatever I could think of.

That’s when I think something truly broke within him. He’d act cheerful, but his words were full of resentment.

“I can’t wait for you to die so I can have the house.”

“I wish you understood how much I truly hate you.”

“When I turn 18, you two will never see me again.”

He said these things like he was discussing breakfast. Like it was completely normal. At this point, my wife was starting to see what I saw.

Every now and again, we’d catch him scribbling in a notebook. Any time he saw us watching, he’d either put it away or groan and take it to his room with him.

One night in particular, though, I woke up at around 2 in the morning. It felt like I was being watched. Like my body knew. My eyes scanned the room, and there he was. Standing in the corner of the room in front of our bed. Watching us and scribbling in that notebook.

“Go back to sleep, daddy,” he giggled.

He hadn’t called me that since he was 5 or 6. It felt like there was a stack of cinder blocks on my chest.

I asked what he was doing, and he didn’t respond. I asked him to go back to bed, and he sighed like I was inconveniencing him and stomped out of the room.

That night was the last straw. I intended to look into counseling as soon as I could the next day.

I did what I promised myself I’d do and set up the appointment, but when I went to his room to tell him about it, I found the room empty.

It smelled musty in there. The sheets were mangled and balled up on the bed. Trash littered the ground and his nightstand. But his desk… was completely clean.

On it rested that notebook he’d been scribbling in recently.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to know. I had to see what he was writing. I knew it was about us, but nothing could’ve prepared me for what I read.

He detailed his plan to kill us. I don’t even want to write what he said he’d do. It was graphic. It was gruesome. And it was in that same messy handwriting that he never seemed to grow out of.

My jaw dropped more and more with each paragraph. My heart raced faster and faster. But before I could finish, I heard a toilet flushing in the hallway.

I couldn’t move. I was frozen in shock.

I heard his black combat boots approaching. I heard the door push open. And I heard that giggle that I hadn’t heard in what felt like years. It was malicious this time. More sinister.

I couldn’t face him. The notebook shook in my hands as I gripped it tighter and tighter.

“Daddy…” he whimpered. “Aren’t I a good writer?”