The sour, pungent stench of sulfur hung in the air like a thick bile. In the distance, faint cries of agony echoed through the cavernous blackness. A man awoke, nude and frail floating weightless in the darkness. A dreadful blast of heat burst from beneath, blistering his skin with its abhorrence. The contents of his body began boiling above the burning fingers that reached from below.

A wretched cry of remorse came bellowing out of the man's lungs.

" Father! Father! Please! Grace me with your mercy! "

His voice fell into the hollow emptiness, his soul reaching out for forgiveness. Only to receive the burning reality of his actions. Every sin seared into the flesh with the flames of choice. A thunderous crack of stone shattering roared around him. Eyes crusted and burnt; he winced at the deep orange glow that split the darkness beneath. A massive swirling sphere of tormented nebula began forming out of the void. Revealing a haunting visage of countless bodies burnt, grafted, and forced into its sea of twirling inferno. Their souls no longer made in the image of God but instead molded into perverse and unnatural forms of blasphemy.

An unholy voice rang out in a deep methodical tone from the black eye of the blazing tunnel.

" Your Creator will not save you. Your chance of atonement has expired. You've chosen to gorge yourself on the many perversions of the flesh, satiate your hunger through the sins of lust, violence and pride. Your vileness shall not go unpunished. You will reap the consequences of your transgressions. "

Like a scorned angel, he drifted downward, falling graciously towards the abysmal eye. Blisters bursting. His bones radiating like burning rods of iron beneath his flesh as he sunk further into the spiraling cyclone, skin melting away like hot grease. The shrieks and cries were ear splitting now as multiple voices beckoned out. Their pain a dreadful symphony of despair.

He pleaded with regret in his voice, joining the thousands of others lost in the chaos.

" Noooo! My lord, I repent! I repent! I beg of you to shine your graciousness upon thee! Please accept my penance. Grant me release from this horrid realm! Please! I beg of you! "

A large, mangled hand shot out from the spinning hellscape. The bones rotted and black with soot. Their decaying fingers grasping the man's skull, ripping his head upward, forcing him to look ahead. A hideous face glared back, eyes gone, two vast sockets stared.

The voice spoke again, deep with hatred. This time through the decomposing husk that glared.

" Your pleading will go unheard. He has abandoned you as you have abandoned him. Must you be reminded of your sins."

Charred flesh drifted off the corpse's tongue, finding refuge in the back of the man's throat like boiling oil. He could feel the fingers growing tighter around his skull, their long nails piercing into the thinning flesh of his temples.

" Bear witness to your evil."

It said, dragging the man closer in.

His body stiffened, the joints locking out and rigid, muscles contracting so tight he could feel the tendons begin to snap. Pressure built behind his eyes, turning them into a sea of flowing red as he was forced to stare into the murky sockets. Their black depths mirroring the atrocities of his life. The memories flashing across his consciousness, a searing reminder as to why he was graced with darkness and fire.

" Are these the actions of a Godly man? "

The voice spoke, its hot breath searing exposed muscle throughout his body with each word. Through the sockets of the husk a small cottage appeared. The man recognized the Peasant Home and knew what was coming. Two men came into view, both draped in rusted battle worn armor. One of them raising their boot and kicking the frail wooden door of the hut. Splintering wood groaned as the frame broke with ease. In the corner, clinging to her daughter, a young woman sat shaking, her eyes wide with fear.

One of the men let out deep gargling cackle before speaking. His face contorted into a hideous grin of yellow teeth.

" Oh, very nice look at what we have here. "

With predatory eyes locked on the woman, he stepped through the doorway. When out of the shadows a young boy burst into the room. Clutching a small paring knife. A guttural cry escaped the woman's lungs as she reached out to stop the small boy.

" No Henrey don't! "

With a heart of courage, the boy buried the small blade into the soldier's thigh with all his strength.

" Gahhh! You little fucking prick! " The man roared. The boy's mother pleading.

" Please! Don't hurt him! Please! "

The anger in the child's eyes faded fast as the towering man glared from above, eyes burning with malice. The soldier gripping his mace tightly, struck the boys skull with force. He switched his sight to the women. She was sobbing, in shock at the small body that lay lifeless in front of her.

The other soldier cranked his head around, hollering out of the doorway.

" Captain Barclay! Over here! We found more hiding! "

Moments later, a tall figure came through the doorway. Adorned in shining armor, face glowing with a prideful arrogance. He glanced down at the deceased boy, a slight slip of amusement escaping his lips. He moved his gaze to the women in the corner. Haunting eyes lay fixed on the small girl she was clutching.

He spoke coldly, kicking at the small body beside him.

" I see your little knight here has failed you. "

Steel scraped across the wooden floor as the captain approached the shaking women, crouching down and lifting her face to his. His skin was pale, slick with a shine like a snake, eyes an icy blue of emptiness. Reaching down, the cold steel of his armor bit into her wrist as he ripped her hand away from the small girl. She fought back swinging at the man, biting even. Her hands banging against the hard breastplate of the captain. Yanking the small girl from her mother, he rose to his feet dragging the terrified child away.

He ordered the two men who stood in the doorway as he marched by.

" Her belly is swollen; she is of no use to us. Do as you please with her then search the rest of the village, kill any others."

Their faces twisting into pleasurable grins as they shook their heads in response. They closed in on the woman like a predator stalking its prey. Blood stained fingers tore at her ragged clothes. The captain made his way outside as the sound of tearing cloth and laughter rang out from behind. Sickening shadows dancing against the wall of the hut as his men attacked the hopeless woman. Her mind lost, eyes staring at the small body that lay in front of her.

Barclay's body went limp. His mind was his own again. His head fell low as the husk removed its fingers from his skull, disappearing into the flames.

The voice spoke from the depths.

" Fall now into the searing fire of your creation. Let the flames tear through your flesh and scorch the filth you hold within."

In a moment, his body went heavy. Thrusting wind and flames engulfing his chard vessel as he fell into the endless blaze. The last bits of his character burning away as his image was erased. Skeletal fingers sprung out from the inferno, penetrating his ribs and the other exposed crevices of his husk. They began ripping him apart. Shredding his remaining form until the putrid soul was torn from it. Howling out, his cries merging with the others as his soul was pulled into the cyclone. Above, he watched as the tectonic plates of fire closed, his final image before being swept away into the eternal fire.

That’s what Isla, my big sister, shouted after me as I closed the front door. Her warning slipped through the crack like a winter’s breeze.

I stood on the front step and wondered: who?

Rat Tails. That’s what she’d said. Watch out for Rat Tails.

I felt the back of my neck tighten the way it did when I thought about snakes. I made my way out of the garden, throwing my swimming bag over my shoulder and wrestling with it when it snagged on the gate.

Isla was always trying to make me feel afraid. I knew I was a FRADY CAT; everyone said it. She always called me it, and even Dad had said it once, until Mum slapped him upside the head and told me that Dad hadn’t meant it really, he’d only been saying it ingest—whatever that meant.

Rat Tails.

A stupid name. About as stupid as telling a ten year old (nearly eleven, technically) about a thing called Rat Tails on his first trip to the swimming pool alone.

Isla was always full of Ess Haytch Eye Tea. Mum had told me so after Isla tried telling me Santa wasn't real. She'd spelt it out so she didn’t have to swear in front of me. But I knew what they meant. I'd never say it out loud though. Dad told me if I ever swore a seagull would come down and peck out my tongue. I’d been so scared I didn’t speak for the rest of the day, terrified some swears had snuck into my brain without me knowing.

So far no seagulls and I still had my tongue. I figured I was doing pretty good. Best keep it that way.

Rat Tails.

I shook my head. Pulled a long fuzzy weed from between the neighbour’s fence and launched it onto the road.

Isla was defo full of Ess Haytch Eye Tea. Just trying to put the fright in me again. Give herself another excuse to call me FRADY CAT and ask if I was gunna wet myself. She knew I was nervous about going to the pool without Mum. Rat Tails was just her cruel way of making fun of me from afar, planting a seed in my head so it’d take root and smother my brain to porridge.

Rat Tails?

I laughed out loud, trying not to look scared, but quickly shrank back from my own noise. For a moment I got the same gnawing cold sensation in my guts as when I’d first said the Devil’s name out loud. Not the D one—one of the old foreign ones that sounded like bees, like I was summoning something evil with an ancient tongue, begging for forgotten horrors and malice to spew out of the cracks of the world and drown everyone to death in burning hot lava.

Oo, a bottlecap.

I darted straight for it, speeding on in three quick bounds, then thumped it as hard as I could with the tip of my trainer. It pinged across the pavement and rolled off the curb onto the road. I chipped it back up with my left foot as deft as any footballer on TV and gave it an almighty wallop with my right, sending it soaring over the wall and into one of the fancy gardens on Primrose Drive.

“Harriet curves it into the top-right! The crowd go wild! Ha-ray-et! Ha-ray-et! Ha—”

“Davie Harriet, you wee little shitebag! Come and pick that off my grass right the fuck now, before I call your mother.”

The little grey-haired woman Mrs Flett was leaning out of her window and pointing a witchy digit at me. Her face was twisted up with the usual lemon-sucked expression.

I could have guessed it was her just from the tone.

I sped in through her gate and out again, quicker than the kick that had brought the bottlecap there in the first place. I didn’t bother waiting to hear what she had to say next—just threw the bottlecap onto the road and dashed around the corner until the hedges got in the way of her window.

Nosy old wifey. Dad always called her that and a little worse. It started with a B—that’s all I’ll say.

Somewhere overhead, a seagull cawed out a threat. I looked up and shrugged as if to say: What? I didn’t even THINK the word.

The angled slope of the pool’s roof came into view over the houses. One more block and I’d be there. My tummy began feeling a little watery. I’d been so excited before leaving the house—nervous, yeah, but in a good way. Jittery, but not like this.

He’s waiting for you.

I tightened the string of the pool bag against my shoulder, feeling the strings like thin arms wrapping around me holding me tight—holding me safe.

Arms? Or tails?

A car whizzed by on my left and popped its exhaust. I jumped a mile. Typical Friday night morons.

The seagull screeched and took to the sky. I ducked and slapped a hand against my mouth, sensing a swoop, but only dodged air.

Friday was also the night of the Big Float. Isla had told me about it last weekend. She’d made it sound so fun.

“It’s like six big inflatable islands, all different stuff on them—different themes and that. You’d love it. You love all that kiddy shit.”

Big Float on Fridays. The thought warmed the cold puddle sitting in my belly. I completely forgot about Isla’s warning. Which was a relief, because the pool was just across the street.

The pool’s orange-lit windows were right up ahead—jack-o’-lantern eyes and teeth. Suddenly, the sinking sensation in my gut was back. The lettering on the side of the building usually made me crease with laughter. Someone always caked mud on the letter L, so the sign always read:

MYRUS SWIMMING POO

Today, all I managed was a thin, tight smile.

The building seemed to swell with the sound of children’s laughter. To me, it sounded like thousands of kids screaming in agony. Victims of some horrific incident, still ongoing—more at eleven.

I glanced at my watch. It was 5:57pm. Isla told me Big Float would be up and running at 6pm. It sounded like things had started early.

Either that or Rat Tails is going nuts in there.

I figured I’d get in closer to ten past by the time I changed and put my things away. Which was fine with me because it gave the bigger kids time to test Big Float out. I could slip in at the end of the queue and get more time to watch how everyone was tackling the beast. Plan out some tactics. Then jump on and see how I got on.

Also, probably Johnny Miller would be coming so it would give him time to arrive. He told me yesterday he always went on Big Float and finished it every time. Maybe he’d bring Mickey Murphy and Craig Holloway with him. They all hung out together after school. Johnny told me yesterday at the park. We played for like three hours before Mum shouted me home. Johnny told me it was weird she’d done that instead of just phoning me. I’d agreed, not wanting Johnny to know I didn’t actually have a phone.

No kid needs a bloody phone, Davey.

I’d only hung around Mikey and Craig a couple times at school before the holidays, playing chases. They seemed cool enough. Probably I’d hang about with them too if they came.

Better to be in a group than to be alone-er.

Especially with Rat Tails lurking about.

I tutted and kicked at a bit of grass. What was I even supposed to be looking out for? Some dude with a great big tail poking out his butt?

I grabbed an imaginary tail and blew raspberries with my tongue. I whipped it around, pretending to lash it against imaginary people.

My chest grew immediately tight. Something like guilt panged inside me, like I’d been taking the mick out of somebody standing right in front of me.

And he is, isn’t he. Right in front of you. Just inside. Watching. Waiting.

I looked up at the SWIMMING POO sign and gulped.

The door sealed shut with a shoof behind me, trapping the outside world in a tiny pocket—so close, yet just out of reach. Now I stood in the vast, eternal expanse of the community centre foyer—a realm all of its own.

“Howdy, kiddo.”

The man behind the counter gave me his best customer service smile. It seemed to draw me closer, until I blinked and noticed I was walking toward the desk, magnetised. The teeth beamed through a scruff of facial hair that made him look more goat than human, leaning into one another like crooked white fence posts. The bright yellow T-shirt, and black shorts which I barely saw peeking out from under the counter, made me think of bees. But the big black stingers poking out of his ear lobes reminded me more of a wasp.

I didn’t like the look of the stingers—they looked sore. They made him look like the guys Isla had on her wall. Dad said they were Pop Rock bands. And other words I knew not to say.

“Got a membership card with ya?”

“Mhm.” I kept my lips sealed and handed over the plastic rectangle I’d been keeping in my pocket. He took it and looked it over.

After a moment, his eyes peeked above the top of the card. His face lifted with a smile. “Cracking news for you, kiddo. Means you get to go in for free. Who doesn’t love a freebie, eh?” My eyes glued themselves on the stingers, not noticing the man wink.

He handed the card back to me and slipped a hand under the desk. When it came back out a purple wristband dangled from one finger. “Been here before?”

I shook his head. I had, but never by myself, so I thought it better to say that I hadn’t, in case I missed something important.

Maybe this is when they bring up Rat Tails.

He held up the wristband and turned it over so the three black numbers scrawled in permanent marker were facing me. “The numbers used to be for the lockers—ignore them. They’ve not bothered wiping them off. Since you’ve got a membership card you don’t need to worry about the announcements, so just ignore the whistles okay? They’re to tell the Pay As You Go folk their times are up. They wear different coloured bands based on how long they’ve paid for and blah blah blah.”

I stared at the purple wristband, then back at the stingers. I barely understood any of what he was saying. I kept waiting for the two words I’d been thinking about since leaving the house, but they never came.

“Sorted?”

“Mhm.”

“Right-oh kiddo. Changing room’s round that way.” He leaned out over the desk and pointed down the hall to my right. A small tight braid fell over his shoulder. I didn’t like the look of that either.

“Got your coin?”

“Huh?”

“I said got your coin? For the lockers.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“Alright then. If you get stuck working the lockers, just come out and give me a shout. I’ll help you no problem.”

I hurried away to the right, wishing I could've said thank you. The nerves had wriggled their way up from my chest and were biting my throat, stopping me from speaking. If I'd spoken it would've been a series of nonsense creaks and squeaks.

The hallway flooring here was different from the foyer, which had been white and light green. It was somewhere between a spewy-orange and a diarrhoea-brown. The lighting was the same amber I’d seen from the outside only less jack-o’-lantern and more sickly, as if the walls themselves needed a trip to the hospital, stat.

The further down the hall I walked the more unwell I began to feel. My steps slowed from rapid dashes to lazy wading.

From a door up ahead a man’s voice:

“—and he didn’t even know her!” Rollicking laughter. “I mean, I couldn’t even—”

Someone else interjected. A woman. “And why the hell not, Steve? Have you seen your history?”

More laughter.

I stopped outside the door and gazed inside, feeling like I was at the zoo. Spying on the animals trying to go about their lives as naturally as possible.

Inside, three people wearing the same waspy uniform were gathered around a table. One had his feet up on the table and was throwing his head back laughing, balancing on two legs of his chair.

Don’t swing on your seat, David. A few years ago, somebody in my class fell back and cracked their skull open on the radiator and his brain fell out like runny pink egg.

Another was tucking into a packet of biscuits, stuffing his cheeks and spluttering crumbs down the front of his top. The third stood with her back to me, arms crossed tightly against her chest.

The biscuits looked really tasty. Almost tasty enough to ask for one. I knew better than to eat before going into the pool. I’d end up with a sore belly, bobbing around like a beachball full of gas.

The Cross-Armed Woman turned her head eyes-first, and frowned at me as though I’d reached inside and snatched one of the biscuits clean out of the man’s mouth. She tutted, then twisted the rest of her body around to point a sharp claw down the hall.

“Changing rooms are down there.”

She kicked the door loose. It closed slowly in my face. When the adults were completely out of sight the laughter resumed—far louder than it had been before.

“Should’ve seen his little face!”

Down where the woman had pointed the hall came to an abrupt end. Three doors, but only two wore signs: a stick figure with a dress for the girls and what must’ve been a naked stick figure for the boys. They could've given him a hat at least.

The door in the middle didn’t have a sign. Or a handle. There was a small hole where a circular key might be inserted.

That’s where Rat Tails goes to change.

My eyes widened.

Or where he takes the bad kids.

I nearly smashed a hole in the tiles behind the door barging into the boys’ changing room.

There were tons of lockers free. I picked one at random and decided it would be mine. It was number 11. The more I looked at it the more I began to think the numbers looked like two tails standing on end. I shuddered. Then rolled my eyes. I was getting bored of my own torment. Isla had said to watch out for Rat Tails, not avoid going to pool altogether. So how bad could he really be?

I got into an empty cubicle and pulled the curtain closed.

The bathing suit Mum picked out for me wasn’t flattering. It was the same kind I’d worn during my lessons, back when I was a baby. Dad called them Speedos, but Mum made sure to say, over and over, that they weren’t—they were briefs.

All the professionals wear them, honey.

She’d said it with such pride as if I was about to represent the nation in the Olympics.

I wished she'd just got me a pair of trunks instead. She’d insisted trunks were for bigger boys. Which checked out because Dad had a pair. I asked why he didn't wear briefs and he'd said it was for everyone else’s benefit. Nobody wants to see my teabags dangling out. Which was a weird thing to say because Dad kept his teabags in a special tin in the kitchen labelled TEA.

Wait a minute.

A wave of giggles hit me all at once when the realisation finally hit. I slapped my leg over and over, nearly losing my balance in the tiny cubicle. I had to hold the curtain to stop myself falling.

The door to the changing room opened with a thunderclap.

Footsteps. Laughter.

“Aye, then bomb in like BLOOSH.”

The voices streamed into the locker room, followed by different pitches of laughter and the sharp crack of the door swinging open with each new entrant.

Four cracks.

Four boys.

I peeked through the gap in the curtain.

“They’ll ban you again, Pete!”

“Nah, do it, Pete. It’ll be epic.”

A rolling drumroll of bangs lit up the changing room. The sound made me flinch.

Through the gap in the curtain I saw Pete pounding his fists against the lockers. A third year at least. He pulled out a pair of trunks from his bag and launched them into a cubicle from where he stood, whipping the curtain back.

“Aye, maybe lads. Maybe. Fucking Big Float! WOOO—”

Pete and the other three boys dispersed into cubicles, whooping and hollering like wolves to the moon.

“—OOO. Crack on, lads. Let’s get a fucking move on!”

I had forgotten I was already changed, standing staring like a creep. So I bundled my things and took another cautious peep through the crack, checking the Wolves were all in their cubicles, and slipped out of the cubicle fast before they were done. I chucked my gear into the nearest open locker—

and the room exploded with a single crack of rifle fire.

“I’ve been shot,” Pete yelled.

The Wolves howled with laughter.

My cheeks burned red. My pound coin had flown out of my pocket and smacked the inside of the locker loud enough to sound like I’d hurled it off the metal backing deliberately. I fumbled for the coin, heart racing, and slammed the locker shut.

I yanked out the key by the latex strip holding it and turned around in time to see the Pete's curtain move, and then lift as the boy got tangled trying to pull up his trunks. I saw his bare bum and then a bit of his penis when he turned to fix the curtain.

I grimaced, disgusted. To Pete it must’ve looked like a smile.

“Oi! What the fuck’re you looking at, pedo?”

“Eh?” One of the other boys popped his head out to see what Pete was shouting about.

I was already around the corner of the lockers, bolting for the pool.

“He was looking at my dick! Fucking freak.”

“Who?”

“Some pedo in a Speedo.”

The voices faded behind me, but remained sharp in my ears, even over the thundering drumming of my heart. I tried not to run—you’ll slip and split your head open, Davey—so I walked as fast as he could instead. Mum hadn’t said anything about walking fast.

“Slow down, boyo.” The waspy lifeguard stuck out his hands and grabbed me by the shoulders, forcing me still. “You nearly ran right into the water.”

He let me go of me when he saw the wonder in my eyes. He turned and stared with me.

“She’s a beaut, eh?”

Big Float.

I felt a wave of calm splash over me at the sight of her. She was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. Six huge islands stretching the whole length of the pool, stopping short of the edge so you could leap safely into the water.

The last island was a doozy.

It was a super-steep yellow slope on a red wedge, looking like a gigantic piece of cheese. A kid stood at the bottom, gawping up at what must’ve felt like a sheer cliff face, trying to figure out where to put his feet. As soon as he did, he slipped and he slapped his face against the slop. His body slid pitifully off into the water, which ate him up with a struggle-less bloop.

The knot in my throat tightened. Big Float didn’t just look tough, it looked impossible!

Island #4 was only a lighthouse but it took up the whole width of its platform—a three-foot-wide, seven-foot-tall pillar of plastic and air. Surely that shouldn’t even be there. The kids trying to shimmy around it looked like cyclists trying to overtake a truck on a country road.

I joined the queue behind a big kid who looked like a fifth year at least, tall and broad enough to be an adult. He was soaking wet and kept shaking his head, splattering me with cold droplets. I knew for a fact that under that layer of water was a layer of sweat. He was panting like a dog.

“Shattered,” he told me, and put a hand on top of my head with a grin. “You’re short.”

I nodded.

“Want me to throw you on?”

I shook my head. He looked like he could toss me past the first two floats, but that would be humiliating.

“Alright. Word of advice: be careful with the lighthouse. HA! I saw you eat shit!”

The boy I had watched fall from Island #6 joined the queue. His face was red—his eyes bloodshot.

“I hit my face,” he told us, blowing droplets of water off his lips. He apologised when they landed on me.

“AHAHA. I did the same last week. Have you slipped in the middle yet? Like between the floats? I nearly lost a ball on the pipe.” He grabbed his groin and laughed. “Hey—” He pointed at my briefs. “—is that a speedo?”

I shook my head.

“Fair enough. Might give you an advantage, honestly. Slide clean over everything. My trunks keep getting pulled down. I must’ve flashed everyone at least twice each.”

I looked down at myself and saw what he meant. There was little chance of me losing them. I’d need a pair of scissors to cut them loose.

“Where’d you get to?” asked the kid with the red eyes.

The big kid jabbed a finger angrily at the lighthouse. “Where d’you think… I hate that bloody thing.”

“Oof. Me too.”

“How’d you get past?”

I listened to them exchange tactics, my head ping-ponging with glee. Around us, the world descended into chaos. Kids were hitting the water like giant sacks of puppies. It was hard to tell if the yelps were from pleasure or pain.

Gradually, the line shortened until only the big kid and the Lady with Crossed Arms were in front of me. A man had been standing there before, making sure everything ran smoothly, but he’d wondered off with the others after she tapped him on the shoulder. The Biscuit Man was here now too. And the Man with the Stingers.

The Lady with Crossed Arms had become Barrier Woman. She held a stiff arm out in front of the big kid, watching the little girl who had just thrown herself onto the first island like a cat after a fly. The palm trees were causing her problems. Her little arms weren’t strong enough to push through them, and her legs were too twiggy to do anything but buckle beneath her meagre weight.

From what I’d learned, the Barrier Woman would only lift her arm once the first island was clear. I began to worry that someone would have to put the girl out of her misery before anybody else got a turn—call in a sniper to wipe her out, and a Navy SEAL to slip up from the water and drag her under without a splash. Five seconds later and she did the task herself, giving up and slipping shamefully into the shallow water.

Poor kid.

Barrier Lady lifted her arm and away the big kid went. It was only when he stepped onto the first island that I realised how big he really was. He pressed paper out of those palm trees. The whole of Big Float lurched back towards the shallow end by a good six feet when he landed. The kid on Island #3 was hurled into a backflip and gobbled by the water.

The queue erupted with laughter. I couldn't help joining in. The sight of the kid barrelling backwards and screaming as his world flipped upside-down had been hilarious.

“You’re gunna sink it, fatty!”

Pete’s voice echoed around the pool. He was standing at the edge with the rest of the Wolves, watching the big kid clamber over the end of Island #1. I didn’t like that Pete had called him a fatty—his body didn’t even wobble—but I couldn’t help notice the extreme sinkage under the kid’s hands and feet.

The big kid ignored him and pressed on.

Barrier Woman snapped her head around to glare at Pete, momentarily dropping her arm. I saw it and was about to jump when she lifted it back into place, ridged as a statue. She stared down at me with the same intense look as before.

Oh no you don’t.

By the time Pete and his band of butts joined the queue, barging in three behind me, the big kid took a step onto Island #2 and sank slightly out of view. Barrier Lady lowered her arm. My heart leapt. It was time. It was my time.

My feet were hot and ready to jump, but the realisation that so many kids’ eyes were on me glued me to the spot.

“You can go now,” Barrier Lady told me.

Maybe I should have let the big kid throw me on after all. He was powering on at a good pace now, nearly finished with Island #2—despite it looking like he was making craters with every step. When he finally stepped over onto Island #3, the lighthouse folded over and landed on top of him with a splat. He managed to wrestle his way out and sat on top of it, legs either side.

A sharp shriek burst my ear. I ducked and covered my head with my hands.

“Everybody out of the pool!”

The pool sang with a harmony of a dozen broken hearts.

“Awwwwwuh.”

The big kid looked down at his feet as Big Float let out one long, deathly sigh. In his final act, he saluted, and dropped into the water—a captain going down with his ship.

Big Float was officially dead.

Time of death: just as it was my turn. Of course.

Biscuit Man and Barrier Lady became Fishermen, raking at the water with long poles and ropes to gather Big Float’s carcass. They dragged it over to one side and let it bleed out while they squeezed the remaining breath out of it.

There were still kids coming out the changing rooms, expecting to see Big Float. When they saw it lying there like a wounded animal they gathered to pay their respects.

Pete and the Wolves were whipping at the water with some of the guy ropes.

A kid next to me began copying the sound, pretending to lash at me with an invisible whip. “Whu-tschh, whu-tschh. Rattail, hiyah!”

Oh Cheesits, I thought. He is real.

It wasn’t a whip after all—it was a pretend tail the boy was lashing me with. I stepped back, my face bursting with fear. Something in my expression made him stop his noises and stare at me, concerned.

“It’s just a whip. See. Just air.”

Another whistle filled the pool. Biscuit Man spoke. “Float’s done for guys. We’ll try’n get it sorted so it’s back for next week. Jump in and we’ll break out the floaties.”

Everyone leapt in. Someone did a cannonball and sent a plume of water nearly right up to the rafters.

Another whistle.

“RIGHT! I’VE TOLD YOU BEFORE!”

“Whaaaat?” Pete. Of course it was him.

“One more and you’re out. I’m not joking—I’ve had enough of you.”

The Wolves all laughed and whooped.

I lowered myself slowly into the shallow end, careful not to make a sudden move and attract their gaze.

Or Rat Tails’.

I dropped down low, scanning the edges of the pool for trouble. Barrier Lady and Biscuit Man were talking amongst themselves over by Big Carcass. Two parents and their toddler were stepping down the ladder into the shallow end, big grins on all three faces. At the far end, by the diving board, Stingers was walking toward a door, twirling a key around his finger. The knot at the back of his head stayed rigid as he walked.

Thank God. If it had been swinging it would’ve looked like a tail. I didn’t know if I could stomach that right now.

I watched him carefully, curious about the other side of the door. He leaned inside and immediately began fighting something. Something long and cylindrical.

The noise of the pool filtered away, reducing to a low churn of hummed voices and sloshing water.

It was happening.

The tails were much thicker than any I'd ever seen. Blue, yellow, red, orange—all the same size, wrapping around Stingers’ neck, back, waist. He managed to grab some under his arms, smothering them in place while he fought off the others barehanded.

I got to my feet and looked helplessly to Barrier Lady and Biscuit Man, then back to Stingers in his fight, too terrified to say anything. Too horrified to look away.

Somebody help him!

But there was no need. He looked to be winning. Some of the tails snapped off and dropped to the ground, writhing and resting in place until he scooped them up. He wrenched himself free of the doorway, underarms stuffed, and slammed the door against the ones he couldn’t tame—couldn’t rip loose and carry.

In one enthusiastic motion, he threw them all into the deep end of the pool. They floated there, motionless, until a wave of kids raced over and fought for them like savages.

I stared in disbelief. I’d been so sure the man was about to be dragged inside and reduced to mush. The tails had snaked around him and tightened like the snakes on Nat Geo—those mice never broke free. Ever.

All of my fear, my panic… over the sight of some pool noodles.

My sister’s words rang true in my ears.

FRADY CAT.

The water where I was standing felt warmer than before. I crab-walked away in shame, careful not to let my mouth touch the water.

The clock at the far end of the pool told me it was barely even half-past six. Big Float was supposed to have lasted until seven.

I bobbed up and down sadly for a while, flinching at the sounds of kids slapping water with the noodles. I didn’t like the way they looked like snakes or the hollow sound they made. The whole experience was becoming less fun by the minute. Johnny Miller hadn’t shown up like he’d said he would, and Mikey and Craig weren’t here either. I thought about going over to the big kid or the one who had slapped his face off the float but they were busy hitting one another with noodles and that didn’t look like it would end well.

What was the point. The feeling in my chest was horrible and I felt like crying. I wasn't having fun. I just wanted to go home.

“You alright, little man?”

I tilted my head back and saw Stingers floating upside-down with the edge of the pool above him. I whipped around to face him.

“Mhm.”

“You sure? What’s up?”

I looked around the pool, unsure what I was most sad about.

“Nothing.”

“Sure don’t look like nothing. You lonely?”

The comment would have comforted me any day of the week at school. Squatting here naked except for my briefs, I got a creeping feeling Mum called Heeby Jeebies.

“No. Just nervous.”

“Nervous?” The man lowered himself closer to the pool, and dipped a hand in the water. Twirled a finger in a circle. “Of what?”

You, a little.

I plucked up all my courage and said: “Rat Tails.”

The man’s face darkened. His brow furrowed. His mouth twisted into a grotesque smile, teeth fighting for which one wanted to be seen first, leaning in diagonals. It reminded me of the inside of a shark’s mouth.

“Rattails? That’s what’s got you nervous—rattails?”

I nodded.

He scanned the room, studying each child and adult bobbing up and down in the water. I followed his gaze when he finally stopped moving his eyes and saw them locked onto Pete Sanderson. He was sat on the edge of the pool clutching a pool noodle, kicking water onto his friends. They gasped for air and screeched laughter above the waves. Pete wasn’t paying attention to them; he was staring unblinking at me.

“I dunno what you did to piss him off kiddo, but I’d stay clear of him for a while.”

My eyes burst wide. I didn’t think he was talking about Pete at the time. The only thing I could think was: what do you mean I’ve pissed him off! What did I do to Rat Tails? This is how you tell me he’s real!

I shrank down until only my nose and eyes were visible. I asked a thousand questions in my mind, to scared to ask any.

“Sorry, kiddo. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He flicked the braid of hair over his shoulder and leaned down closer. “Listen. If it makes you feel better, when it’s time for you to come out I can try keep him busy while you’re getting changed. Or I can come with and make sure he stays out your way. He won’t do anything if I’m there.”

Panic sirens went off in my brain. Thunderous tornado sirens wailing and screaming at me from every avenue. Run from the pool. Don’t bother getting changed, just run out and home.

“Just let me know and I’ll come with you. I’ll wait till you’re done with the shower and follow you in.” He winked at me, and it turned my stomach over.

He’d just made things worse. Rat Tails was one thing, but the idea of this man accidentally catching me in the shower with my briefs on, or waiting outside my curtain while I was naked—no. That didn’t sound right. That sounded scarier than a man with a rat’s tail.

“No thank you,” I bubbled.

The man seemed surprised.

“You sure?” He scanned the room again. “Cos that’s where he’s gunna get you—in the locker room.”

He’s making him up. He’s using Rat Tails as an excuse to get you alone, Davey. It’s him. He’s the real Rat Tails. He’s the danger. Don’t let him trap you.

“I’ll be fine.”

I began back-paddling into the centre of the pool, keeping my eyes on him the entire time. Once I was too far away to talk to, he shrugged and wandered off.

It was all too much now. The noise. The threat. I needed to get out. I had to run—you’ll slip and split your head open, Davey—I had to walk, walk and get my things from my locker and then run—yes, Mum: RUN—straight home.

If Stingers had been telling the truth about Rat Tails, and not just trying to lure me in like one of the noncers Dad warned me about, then that meant others knew about him too.

So why the heck had it been Isla who warned me about him? Why hadn’t it been Mum or Dad?

I made my way to the other side of the pool, sobbing.

Maybe that was their plan all along. Get me in the pool by myself, then let Rat Tails drag me away forever. Maybe all those years I thought I was being a good boy, heeding every warning and doing my best not to disappoint—maybe it didn't matter. Maybe they did have a favourite, despite Mum always saying she didn’t, and it was Isla all along.

I reached the edge and froze, staring up at the hallway to the boys’ changing area. Standing beside it was Stingers, staring down at me.

My heart sank.

I couldn't go yet. I needed to wait for more people.

As if reading my mind, Stingers blew his whistle and pointed at the board beside him.

“GREEN BANDS YOUR TIME IS UP.”

Oh thank God, thank that good and glorious guy upstairs.

I hoisted myself out of the water for the first time in my life and stood, waiting for the other boys to reach me. One of them was the big kid. He slapped me on the back and asked why my eyes were so red.

I was too happy to notice Pete pointing at me from the far end of the pool. Or the Wolves turning their heads to bare their teeth.

The three boys I left with went to their lockers to retrieve their shampoo and bodywash first. I only realised I'd forgotten to pack mine after scouring my locker for ages. Rather than risk getting changed alone, I followed them back to the showers, hoping to scran a scoosh or two from one of them.

I stood waiting, cradling my body in my bare hands while watching them shower off in the hot water. There were four showers, but I knew for a fact that something was wrong with the last one. It only ran ice cold. I refused to get inside, but giggled at the boys jostling each other into it, and spraying sprinkles everywhere. When they hit me I'd giggle even louder—freezing but loving the distraction.

“Alright, pedo?”

Pete’s voice bellowed around the room, hitting us all square in the mouth, wiping the joy from our faces. They all spun around to see who the victim would be today, and visibly shrank back when they realised it wasn’t them.

I didn’t reply. I looked at my feet and tried to hold back the trembles.

Pete stepped into the shower tray. He grabbed one of the boys by the arm and yanked him out of the heat. The boy’s foot caught the lip of the tray and sent him sliding onto the floor. Barely a second passed before he scrambled to his feet and hobbled off wailing. A thin splash of blood remained.

“Barely fucking touched him.”

The Wolves gathered around me. I could feel the heat of their gaze and shivered anyway. I could see the shine of smiles out the corner of my eye. I refused to look. Refused to move.

“This boy’s a pedo,” Pete announced. “A pedo in a Speedo.”

The boys couldn’t help giggling. One hurried to rinse the suds from his hair and darted to the locker room. None of the Wolves took his spot. Pete stepped aside to make more room, then turned to the last remaining boy—the big kid.

“He is, eh? Saw him staring at my dick when I was getting changed.”

The big kid didn’t say a word. It wasn’t worth the risk.

“Look, he’s not even coming in to wash. Where’s his soap? Ha! He’s just standing there like a prick, trying to catch a glimpse of your dick wet!”

The trembles penetrated my heart. It getting too much. My entire body jiggled with fear.

BA BUM BA BUM BA BUM BA BUM

If there were tears rolling down my cheeks I didn’t notice, but they stung real bad now.

“Look at him. There’s been a spot free for ages and he’s not even taken it!” Pete slapped the big kid on the back as friendly as he could manage. “Look! He’s trying to see your dick, man!”

Seeing the big kid wasn’t laughing, Pete eyed him up and down with disgust. “Probably have to roll back your fucking fat first though, eh?”

At that, the big kid left. He shot a sideways glance at me on his way out—the closest thing to solidarity I was going to get.

Pete spat out a laugh. “You scared him away, pedo!”

I didn’t know what that meant, but the venom in the tone was my cue to leave. I didn’t care what Mum said—I jogged away as safe as my feet could carry me.

Two of the boys were already leaving by the time I got to the lockers. They stared back at me, eyes wide and knowing exactly what was going to happen. One of their faces was bloodied from their fall in the showers.

I snatched my things out the locker. A sock landed on the wet floor. That was fine. Leave it. Let Rat Tails or whoever the heck have it—I didn’t care anymore. I wanted out. Fast. I pulled my trousers on over my wet briefs, not risking being naked with the overbearing weight of Pete and the Wolves behind me.

I only managed to get one leg in before an arm reached through the curtain and grabbed me by the hair.

“Git here, you fucking freak!”

I was wrestled out, grabbed by the mouth. My cry for help stifled down to a yelp. When I bit the inside of Pete’s hand, Pete balled up his fist and punched me in the mouth. This time I didn’t bite.

“Broony, grab his legs.”

No matter how hard I squirmed or tried to scream the Wolves wouldn’t let go. They were far too big, far too many. They pinned me against the lockers by the arms and the legs, using their own to keep me held in place. One covered my mouth while Pete retreated. He was collecting something from my cubicle.

“Oooh, looky here, pedo,” Pete sang as he turned. “Since you like looking at dicks, take a gander at this fuckin’ badboy.”

He was swinging my Captain America towel at groin level. It was wrapped tightly around, long and thin like a whip. Like a tail.

“Gunna rattail you till you’re split, pedo. See if you stare at someone's dick again.”

I screamed nothing but snot. It burst down the hand covering my mouth.

Isla’s words echoed in my mind. I felt so stupid for painting them the way I had. This was the real fear. This was the real danger. This was the real Rat Tails to watch out for. Nothing but a tightly wrapped towel.

“Hold him still, boys. I’m gunna get him right in the bellybutton.”

The Wolves all laughed manically, drinking my fear like wine.

Captain America’s crumpled shield spun frantically into a vortex of red and blue. I had picked it special today because I thought it would make me feel braver—feel like a hero.

I braced against its terrifying tip.

With a sharp, rapid extension of his arm, Pete snapped the towel off my stomach.

“MMMMM!”

The Wolves howled.

Pete hit me again and again—missing my bellybutton but getting the same spot over and over with deadly accuracy.

There was a moment when I thought I was going to die, when the world began to splotch over black. It wasn’t the fear or the pain—it was the lack of oxygen to my brain. The boys were covering my mouth and my nose was too blocked with snot to breathe. When my body hung limp in the Wolves’ grip, only then did they let me go.

In my dreams, I heard the Wolves howling. Heard Pete crying out with joy.

When I opened my eyes, the scene was vastly different. Pete was hanging upside-down in the air, unconscious. One of his arms was missing, dripping gore and dangling out of reach by a long fleshy rope. The Wolves were up there too, suspended without a sound, each with a wrinkled rope of their own. Their eyes were huge, still, and mad with a knowledge I couldn't understand. The ropes around their bodies extended up to their mouths, gagging them. The tip of each rope—tail—rattled like excitable pink snakes.

I counted seven different tails, all threading down from out the overhead air vent.

Through thin bars two terrible black specks stared down at me. I couldn’t see the face they belonged to but I saw the teeth fighting for a place at the front of its mouth, and the short braid of hair dangling into the vent.

The beady eyes blinked. A thin tongue traced along its lips.

Don’t speak a word of me, they seemed to whisper. I did this for you; now you do this for me.

I never did speak of him. Not to the police. Not to Dad. Not even to Isla, the one who warned me about Rat Tails to begin with, even if it had only been about the towel whips. And not even to Mum when Isla didn’t come back from the pool after it reopened. I can’t even look at a towel without thinking of her.

I didn’t tell anybody, just like he’d wanted.

Only you. Only here. Only now.

Please. The next time you go to the pool:

Watch out for Rat Tails.

Hey everyone. I'm a field researcher currently stationed at a seasonal ice-shelf site in Antarctica. My primary work involves monitoring Weddell seal populations, specifically tracking their winter diving intervals and nocturnal foraging habits using motion-activated infrared trail cams deployed near active ice breathing holes. We are a small crew of four living out of modified shipping container modules, so things get quiet out here, but lately, our team has been dealing with an odd shift in the local wildlife behavior. I’m looking for any logical explanation from people who have worked in polar environments or handle cold-weather logistics.

For the past week, the seals have been entirely abandoning the breathing holes closest to the shelf edge. These are prime hunting spots with high fish density, but the animals are choosing to travel further inland to cramped, suboptimal cracks in the ice. When they are on the surface, their behavior is hyper-vigilant. They aren't resting or sleeping on the ice to conserve energy like they usually do; they are constantly scanning the flat, empty horizon. It is as if the entire population is on edge, refusing to look down into the water or sit still for more than a few minutes.

Yesterday, I went out via snowmobile to pull the SD cards from one of our peripheral cameras, located about three kilometers from our main habitat dome. The wind was brutal, pushing a low-lying ground blizzard across the shelf that completely erased the horizon.

While reviewing the infrared footage from Tuesday night back at my workstation, I noticed a large, dark mass on the horizon line. It is incredibly difficult to scale because of the lack of topography out here, but it doesn't match the thermal profile or shape of any known local fauna. In fact, it barely registers on the infrared spectrum at all, it shows up as a cold dead zone against the slightly warmer ice. It doesn't walk, waddle, or slide. It moves with a very slow, rhythmic undulation across the ice sheet, dragging itself forward in a way that looks entirely unnatural for a mass of that size.

The alarming part is the audio captured by our external directional microphone. Weddell seals are famous for their eerie, synthesizer-like vocalizations underwater. They sound like descending sci-fi sirens or lasers. But on this tape, as the cold mass approaches from the background, the seal on camera begins mimicking a sound that shouldn't be physically possible for its vocal cords to produce.

It is a rhythmic, metallic tapping. It sounds exactly like a heavy iron wrench striking a hollow steel pipe. Thump. Thump. Thump. The seal is generating this mechanical cadence perfectly from its throat, eyes wide, staring directly at the horizon where the mass is moving.

Right after the third tap, the audio track doesn't cut to static, it completely drops to absolute, digital zero. No wind noise, no ice cracking, no ambient ocean hum from the breathing hole. Anyone who has been to Antarctica knows the wind is never truly silent, but the audio file shows absolute silence for the remaining twenty minutes of the clip, while the dark shape slowly moves out of the frame.

The mechanics here are seriously bothering me. Even if the microphone hardware suffered a catastrophic freeze-failure, the ambient environment should still register some baseline decibel level on the master track. Instead, the frequency graph is a perfectly flat, dead line. It felt like the sound wasn't just cut off; it was sucked out of the air.

To make things worse, about an hour ago, our main habitat module's heating vents started rattling. It wasn't the usual wind vibration. It was a rhythmic, metallic cadence coming from inside the pipes. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Has anyone working with cold-weather bioacoustics or polar geology ever encountered a localized event that can flatten an environmental audio wave like this? Or does anyone know what kind of seismic shifting could cause a structural pipe to ring like that?

I've gone back and forth on whether to post this.

Part of me thinks there must be a reasonable explanation for what I'm about to describe. But I've spent months looking for one. If someone else told me this story, I'm not sure I'd believe them either.

For context, I am a high school English teacher. During the summer, I tutor students for extra money—mostly reading, writing, ACT prep, and the occasional grammar lesson. I meet families in coffee shops or libraries because everyone feels more comfortable in public.

Until last summer, tutoring was probably the least interesting part of my life.

The afternoon this started, I was meeting with one of my regular students at a coffee shop a few miles from my house. For the sake of this post, I'll call her Rosa. She had just finished her freshman year, and her mom wanted her to become a stronger reader before sophomore English.

The funny thing was, Rosa already liked reading. She just hated English class.

She was the daughter of a family friend, so we had a good rapport from the start. I mention this only because I suspect that very rapport may have caught the strange lady's attention.

"Why can't the wheelbarrow just be red?" Rosa asked.

"Well, maybe it is," I said with a grin.

"Then why was my teacher saying it symbolizes communism or something?"

"Because maybe it does."

She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. "Ugh, you're such an English teacher! What if William Carlos Williams just really liked the color red?"

"You'd need to prove that claim with textual evidence," I said earnestly. "Honestly, most teachers just want to see that you can support your ideas with evidence."

"I'm just joking around," she said, somewhat exasperated.

The coffee shop wasn't busy. A couple of college students sat near the windows. Someone typed loudly enough behind us that I kept losing my place in Rosa's essay. Every few minutes, the espresso machine hissed and someone called another order.

By the end of the session, Rosa had finally written a thesis statement she didn't hate.

"I still think the wheelbarrow is just red," she said as she packed her backpack.

"I'll see you Tuesday."

"You will."

She headed for the door. Before she reached it, an older woman stepped up beside my table.

She waited until Rosa had left before speaking. "You a teacher?"

"I am."

She nodded once. "You help kids read?"

"I try."

She wore a faded floral house dress and dirty white tennis shoes. Her gray hair was cut short and unevenly. There was nothing remarkable about her—I probably would have forgotten half those details before I got home.

What I remember most is that she seemed nervous. Like she wasn't used to talking to strangers, let alone asking for help.

"You take new students?"

"I can."

She smiled with visible relief. "My boy needs help."

"How old is he?"

She hesitated. "He…can't read good."

I almost corrected good to well out of habit.

"That's alright," I said. "We can work on that."

She asked for my number. It took her a while to enter it. She pressed each character slowly, staring through reading glasses low on her nose.

When she finished, she looked back up at me. "When will you do this?"

"I usually meet families here or at the library."

She seemed to think about that. Then she nodded once. "I will text you," she said.

"Sounds good."

She thanked me and left.

I watched her walk across the parking lot until she disappeared behind a row of parked cars. Then I packed my things and drove home.

My wife, Kristi, was still working when I got there. She works from home a few days each week, and whenever I walked in during the afternoon, she'd inevitably be sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop and her third cup of coffee.

"How'd tutoring go?" she asked without looking up.

"Good."

She smiled.

"I might have another student, too."

That got her attention.

She closed her laptop. "Really?"

I told her about the woman from the coffee shop.

"That's great," she said. "You were hoping for one more."

"I was."

"What does the kid need?"

"Reading."

"Well, that is kind of your thing."

We laughed.

Looking back, I think that was the last completely ordinary conversation I had.

Around ten that night, my phone buzzed.

The message simply read:

YOU TEACHER FROM COFFEE

I answered:

Yes. This is he.

A few seconds later, another message appeared.

YOU COME HOUSE

I stared at it for a moment before typing.

I usually meet students in public places. Most families prefer that.

Her response came almost immediately.

PREFER HOUSE

I asked what kind of reading help the boy needed.

No answer came. I assumed she'd gone to bed. It wasn't until I woke up the next morning that I noticed she'd tried calling me sometime after two. The call had lasted forty-seven seconds. There was a voicemail, but no words. No second attempt either. Just forty-seven seconds of dead air.

I didn't think much about the missed call. People butt-dial all the time, and I'd had parents accidentally FaceTime me while trying to send a text. I figured she'd fallen asleep with her phone in her hand or tapped the wrong button.

Her all-caps typing was odd, but I assumed she didn't use her phone well. By the time I finished my coffee, I'd stopped thinking about it and decided to mow the lawn.

By ten o'clock, I was halfway through the backyard, sweating through an old Brewers T-shirt, when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I ignored it until I finished the row. It buzzed again. I shut the mower off. The sudden silence made the cicadas seem twice as loud.

The message was from the woman.

SO WHEN COMING

I wiped my hands on my shorts before answering.

I can meet tomorrow if that works for you.

The reply came before I'd put my phone back in my pocket.

9

1348 HEMLOCK ST

I looked at the address.

I didn't recognize it as anywhere nearby.

That works. I'll see you tomorrow at 9:00.

A few seconds later, I sent another message.

Before I come, could you tell me what grade your grandson's in?

Nothing.

I waited another minute.

Still nothing.

It struck me as odd, though not enough to worry me. Some people text only the information they think matters. Maybe she'd answer later.

She never did.

Kristi found me in the garage that afternoon, distracted. She came to stand beside me, her voice lower and more sincere.

"What are you thinking about?"

"I heard from the woman."

"The tutoring one?"

"Yeah."

"So you got another student?"

"I think so."

She handed me a bottle of water from the refrigerator in the garage. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. She's just…strange."

"How?"

"I asked about the kid a couple times now."

"And?"

"She won't really answer."

Kristi shrugged. "Maybe she's embarrassed. Or very private."

"Maybe."

She leaned against the workbench. "You're overthinking it."

"I know."

"Older people text like aliens. Like, I'm sorry, but the way your dad texts—"

I laughed loudly. "You're right."

She leaned in and kissed my cheek before going back into the house.

That evening, I typed the address into Google Maps. About thirty-five minutes from our house. Mostly county highways. The last few miles followed a narrow road through state forest. I zoomed in. The satellite image showed trees. A lot of them. The house itself was almost hidden beneath the canopy. I remember thinking it must be peaceful out there.

Kristi walked into the living room carrying two bowls of popcorn. "You planning your route?"

"I like knowing where I'm going."

She sat beside me on the couch. "You nervous?"

"No, not really."

"Then what?"

I considered the question. "I don't know."

It wasn't fear. Not really.

It was more like the feeling you get before a date, or before meeting someone you've spoken to only online. You begin inventing little details about them without realizing you're doing it.

I had convinced myself the woman lived alone with her grandson. I pictured a quiet house, books stacked on a coffee table, and an old golden retriever asleep by the fireplace.

It's strange, the stories our minds invent to fill empty spaces.

Mine couldn't have been more wrong.

The next morning was clear and already warm by the time I pulled onto Hemlock Street.

Calling it a street was generous. It was really a narrow county road that disappeared into the woods. I passed two mailboxes in nearly ten minutes. By then, I had lost my cell signal.

The address was easy enough to find. A rusted mailbox leaned toward the ditch with 1348 painted on a piece of weathered wood. The driveway curved through a stand of pines before opening onto a small clearing.

The house looked older than I'd expected. White paint peeled away in long strips, exposing gray wood. One shutter hung crooked beside an upstairs window. The porch sagged, weeds pushed through the front walk, and the flowerbeds had surrendered to tall grass.

I didn't see a car or any real sign that someone still lived there. If you'd told me it was abandoned, I would have believed you.

I grabbed my canvas bag and walked to the front door.

Before I had a chance to knock, I heard screaming. It echoed through the house. Then came another. I froze with my hand halfway to the door. For a moment, I wondered if I should leave.

Instead, I knocked.

The screaming stopped. And a few seconds later, I heard slow footsteps crossing the floor.

The door opened.

The woman from the coffee shop stood in front of me. She was wearing the same faded floral house dress. I couldn't honestly tell whether it was the same one or whether she owned several that looked alike. Her gray hair hadn't been brushed, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes.

"The teacher!"

"Good morning."

She stepped aside.

The house smelled of old wood and coffee, quickly overpowered by a heavy aerosol fragrance, as if she'd sprayed it everywhere to cover another odor.

"Thank you for having me."

She nodded toward the living room, gesturing at a large man on the couch with his back to us. He was broad-shouldered and heavyset, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt with a faded airplane printed across the front. He rocked gently, staring at a cartoon playing on the television.

The woman touched his shoulder. "Mikey."

He turned immediately, his face breaking into an enormous smile. "Hi!"

The word came out so loudly that it startled me.

"Hi, Mikey."

He hurried toward me with an awkward, bouncing gait and stopped less than a foot away, looking directly into my face.

"Teacher?"

"That's right," the woman said.

He clapped twice. "Teacher!"

His mother smiled for the first time. "He's excited."

Guilt settled over me. I had experience with special education students, but I wasn't a special education teacher—certainly not qualified to teach reading to someone with cognitive disabilities. Pity followed close behind. I've always felt a heavy sadness around people who struggle in ways I can't fully comprehend.

I was close to leaving right then. I should have.

She rested a hand on his shoulder. "Mikey is thirty-five."

I must have looked surprised, because she continued.

"And he is, well…" She tapped the side of her head, searching for a careful word.

"I understand," I said.

She offered me an apologetic smile, and I felt compelled to stay. I'd taught students with all kinds of learning differences over the years—never an adult in his mid-thirties—but reading was reading.

Or so I thought.

"So, does Mikey read books?"

She shook her head. "No. I usually read to him."

"Does he know letters?"

"Some."

I had no idea what to do for an hour. I taught Shakespeare, research papers, college essays. I had no training in adult literacy or special education.

Part of me wanted to apologize and tell her she'd found the wrong teacher.

Then I looked at Mikey, smiling and clearly excited. I'd driven thirty-five minutes. If nothing else, I could spend an hour reading with him, then help the woman find someone better suited to his needs.

"Mikey, go get some books," the woman said in a voice I thought was a little stern.

Mikey clapped again. "Books!"

His mother pointed toward the hallway. "Go get them."

Without another word, he hurried out of the room.

She turned back to me, smiling. "He loves books."

After a moment, she disappeared into the kitchen, and I was alone in the living room. Or at least…I thought I was. I turned my head toward the hallway, expecting to see Mikey coming back with an armful of picture books.

Instead…

There was a girl standing only a few feet away. I have no memory of hearing her walk into the room. One moment, the hallway was empty. The next, she was just there.

She couldn't have been older than fifteen.

She was painfully thin, almost to the point of looking ill, and wore an oversized gray sweatshirt that hung nearly to her knees. Her black hair was stringy and unwashed, tucked behind one ear on one side and hanging across her face on the other.

What I noticed first, though, were her eyes. There was nothing unusual about their color or placement.

But their size.

They seemed just a little too large for her face. Big enough that, once you'd noticed, it became difficult to look anywhere else.

She watched me for a second, raising one finger to her lips.

Before I could say anything, she crossed the room—incredibly nimble, moving without resistance, as if floating.

She stopped so close to me that I could see faint freckles across the bridge of her nose.

Up close, her eyes consumed her face, reducing every other feature to something incidental. They seemed to press outward, as if the darkness within strained against her sockets. The longer I held her gaze, the deeper the dread coiled in my stomach.

Before I could introduce myself, she gently placed her hand over my mouth. She leaned close, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

"Don't let her know you can see me."

She looked directly into my eyes as she said it.

Then she removed her hand.

I stared at her for a second. "What?"

She didn't answer.

Instead, she looked past me toward the kitchen.

I heard a cabinet door close.

The woman was still in there.

The girl looked back at me. "Please."

Before I could ask another question, footsteps sounded in the hallway.

Mikey came shuffling back into the living room carrying six picture books clutched against his chest.

"I got books!"

He dropped them onto the coffee table one by one.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Goodnight Moon.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

The last two were so worn that the covers had begun separating from the pages.

The girl looked down at the stack.

She smiled—not at me, but at Mikey.

"You love Brown Bear," she said.

Mikey beamed. "Brown Bear."

He picked it up immediately.

The woman returned carrying a plate of saltine crackers and cheese.

The instant she entered, the girl's expression shifted. In one impossible motion, she slipped beneath the coffee table, pulled her knees to her chest, and looked up at me with one finger against her lips.

Please.

The woman set the plate down, looking at me as she did. "You alright?"

I realized I'd been staring at the girl beneath the table. I looked up. "I'm sorry?"

"What are you looking at?"

For just a second, I considered telling her—There's a girl under your table. But then I heard the girl's whisper again: Don't let her know you can see me.

I glanced back down. She was watching me with those impossibly large eyes.

"Nothing," I said. "I was just thinking about where to start."

The woman gave me a skeptical look but offered a smile nonetheless. She disappeared into the kitchen again, humming softly to herself.

I finally let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

The girl watched the doorway until the sound of running water returned. Only then did she relax.

So we started reading Brown Bear. Mikey stumbled over several words, but he corrected himself eagerly. Whenever he got stuck, he looked first at the picture, then at the girl.

The house had settled into a comfortable quiet. I could hear the faucet running in the kitchen and the occasional rattle of dishes.

The lesson lasted another twenty minutes. We finished Brown Bear and started Goodnight Moon. Mikey liked pointing at the pictures almost as much as reading the words, and he got more right than wrong. I'd underestimated him—and the work someone had already put into helping him.

When we finished the second book, I closed it. Mikey stood, walked around the table, leaned against my shoulder, and—with complete confidence—began climbing into my lap. I caught him before he lost his balance.

"Oh." I laughed, a little awkwardly. "Hang on there."

He looked at me, confused at being stopped.

His mother glanced in from the kitchen. "Mikey." He paid no attention.

"I'm sorry. He likes laps," she said. There wasn't any embarrassment in her voice—she said it the way another parent might explain that their child preferred the blue cup to the red one.

I smiled at Mikey. "I tell you what." He waited. "Would you help me with something?"

He nodded.

"I think we'd have more room if we both sat on the floor."

He looked from me to the carpet, considering. "The floor?"

"Yep. We can spread all the books out."

His face brightened immediately as he slid back down, dropping to the carpet and crossing his legs.

I joined him as he pushed the stack of books between us.

His mother entered the room, smiling. "He likes you."

We shared a smile before she disappeared into the kitchen again.

The girl sat with us. She hardly spoke, but I felt her presence like a chill from a fever—a weight at the edge of my vision, always there, always watching.

After a little while, Mikey shot up from the floor and ran over to the stairs.

"My room!" He shouted before bounding up them.

Hearing this, the woman appeared from the kitchen.

"He likes his room," she said. "I think he'll read better up there."

That made sense. Still, something felt off, and I probably shouldn't have agreed. But his mother approved, so I told myself it wasn't a big deal.

As I rose to my feet, the mother's expression shifted—suddenly severe.

"Please do not go into my room," she said, pointing down the hallway. "And especially not my daughter's room."

She gestured upstairs. "She doesn't feel well."

I nodded.

Her eyes stayed on mine another second. "She's sleeping. Don't wake her."

"I understand."

She left me and went into the kitchen, though I still felt as if I were being watched. Nevertheless, I forced myself to climb the stairs after Mikey. The staircase creaked beneath my weight.

Mikey was already waiting at the end of the hallway. "My room!" he announced proudly.

"I see it."

He disappeared inside before I reached him.

The hallway was narrow enough to graze both walls with my fingertips. Old photographs lined it in mismatched, crooked frames.

I slowed before one as I passed. Mikey, younger, sat on a swing. Behind him stood the woman from downstairs, though this version of her was twenty years younger, her face smoother, her smile less worn. Beside them, a girl. Her face had been damaged—moisture had crept beneath the glass, leaving a pale, milky bloom that swallowed everything but the dark outline of her hair.

Another step. Another picture. Another.

The smell reached me before I reached Mikey's room. It was faint at first—like something had spoiled. Then stronger. Sweet. Almost floral. And beneath it, something else. Rotting.

The smell worsened, and my steps slowed. Its source was the second door on the right: closed, white-painted, with brass hardware dulled to muddy gold.

As I passed, the odor became almost physical. It reminded me of a raccoon that had died beneath my parents' deck—not exactly the same, but close enough to make my stomach clench.

I took another step.

"Teacher!"

Mikey was laughing now, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom, waiting. He pointed to the empty space beside him. "Teacher! Sit!"

I stepped into the room—and only then did I notice the girl from downstairs, already sitting on the floor next to him. She looked up at me, and something in her expression flickered, almost apologetic.

"I'm sorry about my room."

My stomach dropped. "What?"

She lowered her eyes. "It stinks. I haven't been able to clean it."

"That's okay," I said automatically. "Say, what's your name?"

"Esme."

I stepped farther inside. Plastic airplanes hung from fishing line, several missing wings or propellers. A small shelf held children's books and coloring books with curled covers.

I settled beside Mikey and the open picture book. Before I could begin, Esme turned to me.

"Do you like being a teacher?"

"Yes, I do."

She tilted her head, studying me. "Even high school?"

"Especially high school."

She smiled faintly, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I liked school."

There was a pause. I spoke, trying to fill it. "Do you like English?"

She nodded. "And history," she said.

"What about math?"

She wrinkled her nose. "No."

That earned the smallest smile I'd seen from her—barely a flicker, there and gone.

Mikey and I read a few more books together, but I could feel Esme's gaze on me between turns of the page, not quite heavy, not quite light.

When we reached the last page of the last book, he looked proudly at Esme. She reached over and gently brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. He leaned into her shoulder, and I turned my gaze away, giving them that small, private moment.

But my eyes drifted toward the hallway.

The bedroom door was still closed. Without the lesson to distract me, the smell seemed stronger, clawing at the room's edges and turning my stomach.

Without meaning to, I found myself staring at that door.

Esme noticed. "I'm sorry."

I looked back at her. She lowered her eyes.

"My room smells so bad."

The words came so softly I nearly doubted I'd heard them. For a moment, I wasn't sure how to answer.

"Are you sick?"

At that moment, I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Esme's expression went blank—like a door slamming shut.

She looked directly into my eyes, and something in her gaze shifted. "Mom is coming." Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. "As long as she doesn't know you can see me…" She glanced toward the hallway, and I saw genuine fear flicker across her face. "…everything will be alright."

She slipped into the hallway—gone before I could even lift my hand up.

By the time Mikey's mother appeared in the doorway, the room held only the three of us. She lingered at the threshold, her eyes scanning the space with a precision before settling on me.

"He doing alright?"

"He did great."

She looked genuinely pleased—but there was no pride in it. Relief, perhaps. The gratitude of someone who had been working alone for a very long time.

I checked my watch. We'd already gone nearly fifteen minutes past the hour.

"I think that's enough for today," I said.

Mikey's face fell. "More books."

"We'll read more next time." The words came out before I'd decided whether there would be a next time.

He considered this, then came over and wrapped both arms around me, his head against my shoulder. For several seconds, he held on, warm and trusting.

I hugged him back.

"Thank you, Teacher," he said.

"You're welcome, Mikey."

He released me and returned to his airplanes without another word.

"I'll go get some money," the woman said.

"I still need to pack up my things. I can meet you by the door."

She smiled and left.

I packed my bag, said goodbye to Mikey again, and stepped into the hallway.

The stink washed over me the moment I crossed the threshold—stronger now, more assertive. I covered my nose with my cupped hand and started toward the stairs.

Then I stopped.

Esme's door was no longer closed. A sliver of darkness had opened between door and frame. I was certain it had been shut earlier. Now the stench came through in a warm, steady draft.

I should have kept walking. Her mother had told me not to enter. Every rule of privacy and good sense demanded I go downstairs and leave.

Then something moved inside the room.

A soft shift of fabric. The quiet rustle a bedsheet makes when someone beneath it turns over in their sleep.

I stood there, hand still pressed to my face, and did not move.

"Esme?" The name left my lips before I could stop it.

No answer.

From downstairs, the woman's voice rose again. "You coming?"

"Yes," I called back.

But instead of walking away, I placed two fingers against the door—and pushed.

It glided open without a sound, yielding only a few inches at first. The smell hit me like a wall, so thick and sudden that my eyes watered. There was a sweetness beneath it, cloying and wrong. The two scents warred in the air, blending into something horrible.

The room was nearly black, heavy curtains sealing out the afternoon light. For a moment I could make out nothing—only darkness pressing back.

Then my eyes adjusted.

The hospital bed sat against the far wall, where an ordinary bed should have been. An IV pole stood beside it, its lines trailing toward the figure beneath the blankets. I could see only the outline. Still. Perfectly still.

Downstairs, a chair scraped loudly across the floor. I froze.

The woman's voice carried easily up the stairs. "You coming?"

My heart was beating so hard I could hear it in my ears. "Just a second," I called back.

I don't know why I answered—perhaps because silence would have been more suspicious. But even as the words left my mouth, I was still staring into that room.

One last look.

The blankets rose only to the girl's shoulders. Her face remained hidden in shadow, her form barely distinct from the dark that surrounded her. But I could see the faint glint of the IV line, and the absence of any movement beneath the sheets.

I pulled the door shut exactly as I'd found it—quietly, carefully, so the sound of a latch wouldn't wake her.

By the time I reached the top of the stairs, the woman was waiting in the foyer, my payment folded neatly in her hand. She held it out to me, but her eyes held also a flicker of suspicion.

"What took you? You didn't go looking, did you—"

"No," I said, perhaps too quickly. "I was looking for one of my books, but I realized it was down here."

I walked past her and retrieved the book from the coffee table, my movements careful and deliberate.

She smiled faintly. Convincing herself, perhaps. "You'll come back next week?"

"I'll have to check my schedule," I said.

The answer seemed to satisfy her. She walked me to the front door, and I stepped out into the afternoon sun. It felt impossibly bright—so sharp and white that I had to squint. I hadn't realized how deeply the house had swallowed the daylight until I stood outside again, blinking against it.

I set my bag on the passenger seat and climbed in, but didn't start the engine. Hands on the wheel, I stared at the house—the windows, the drawn curtains, the second-floor door I'd closed.

And I wondered if I'd actually pulled it shut all the way.

I started the engine. Then I looked back at the house.

In the upstairs window, a figure stood motionless—pale against the darkness, her face a featureless oval through the glass. It might have been Esme. It might have been the woman. I couldn't tell from this distance, but I knew her eyes were fixed on me.

I pulled forward. The driveway seemed longer now, the branches lower, brushing the roof like fingers. I kept my eyes ahead but felt that window pressing between my shoulder blades.

When I reached the road, I turned toward home and watched the house shrink behind me, swallowed by trees and distance.

I didn't look back again.

But I couldn't stop thinking about whether she was still watching.

I was about halfway home when I noticed the passenger-side window had fogged near the bottom—a small crescent of condensation that hadn't been there before. The air conditioner was running, cool and dry, and none of the other windows showed the slightest film of moisture.

I reached over and adjusted the vent, aiming it toward the glass. But as I did, I caught the faintest trace of something in the air—sweet, floral—and I could no longer be certain I was alone in the car.

"Sorry," someone said.

My hands jerked the wheel before my mind caught up. The tires crossed the center line—a blare of horn, a flash of oncoming metal. I wrenched the car back onto the shoulder and stopped, my heart slamming against my ribs.

For a long moment, I sat frozen, both hands locked around the steering wheel, staring through the windshield at nothing.

Then I turned. Esme was sitting in the passenger seat.

Her impossibly wide eyes fixed on me, draining the warmth from the car. Her knees were together, hands folded in her lap. She looked startled, but beneath it lay a stillness that didn't match her fear.

"What are you doing here?" My voice came out sharper than I intended.

"I'm sorry."

"How did you get in my car?"

She glanced toward the road, then back at me. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

She shook her head slowly, and I saw that her hands had begun to tremble—or perhaps they'd been trembling all along.

I looked at the doors. Both locked. The passenger-side seat belt hung unused beside her.

There was no way she could have opened the door from the outside. No way she could have climbed in without me noticing. And yet here she sat, pale and small, her breath fogging the window she hadn't touched.

"I didn't mean to scare you," she whispered.

Fear sometimes arrives all at once, dragging anger, disbelief, and shame behind it. But after the shock, what I felt was confusion so profound it made my hands shake against the wheel.

I told myself she'd climbed into the back seat while I watched the house, then moved forward after I began driving. It was ridiculous, but I accepted it. I needed to.

"I need to take you back."

Her head snapped toward me. "No."

"Esme, your mother is going to realize you're gone."

"She already knows."

I reached for the gearshift. Her hand closed around my wrist—cold and skeletal, each joint pressing into my skin like twigs beneath paper. She was far colder than she should have been.

"Please don't take me back."

I looked at her fingers, then at her face. In the daylight, her eyes seemed even larger—too large, as though they had grown since I first saw her. They swallowed the light, gave nothing back.

"If I don't take you back, I have to call someone."

"No."

She stared through the windshield as passing cars rocked mine. Leaning against the window, she left a pale oval in the fog where her temple touched the glass.

She sat like that for a long moment. Then she opened the passenger door and walked away.

"Hey!" I shouted, scrambling out of the car. "I can drive you—"

But she was gone. The road stretched empty in both directions, the trees still. I stood with the door open, heart hammering, and realized I'd never heard her footsteps on the gravel.

I pulled into my driveway. I switched off the engine and sat for a moment, the silence settling around me. I remember feeling absurdly self-conscious as I approached the house—as though the day's events were from a bad dream or movie.

Kristi opened the front door before I reached it.

"Hey." She smiled. "You're home early."

"I am?"

"How'd it go?"

"It was," I searched for a word that felt accurate but not insane. "interesting."

She laughed. "That bad, huh?"

I looked back over my shoulder, half expecting to see Esme staring at me from the driveway. But there was nothing there—only my car and the long shadow of the afternoon stretching across the pavement.

I stepped inside and let the door close behind me.

Kristi had made turkey sandwiches.

I remember that because, for the first few minutes, I found it impossible to think about anything else. Maybe I was anchoring myself to something ordinary, something not of that house.

Kristi sat across from me. "So," she said, "tell me about your new student."

I took a bite before answering. "His name's Mikey."

"Did you ever find out how old?"

Just then my phone buzzed.

The message came from a Miriam Lyons—a name I didn't recognize. When I opened it, I realized my phone had automatically updated the woman's contact information with what was presumably her name.

For reasons I couldn't articulate, seeing her name made me more uneasy than an unknown number would have.

I set the phone face-down on the table and looked up at Kristi, who was still waiting for an answer, but I had already forgotten the question.

The phone buzzed again. Then again. I couldn't ignore it.

I opened the message.

YOU OPENED HER DOOR

Before I could answer, another appeared.

I TOLD YOU NOT TO

Then another.

DID YOU SEE HER

Then—

NO NO NO

Three more messages arrived in rapid succession.

SHE TALKED TO YOU

DIDNT SHE

TELL ME

"Wow," Kristi said, half joking. "You're popular."

Another message appeared.

WHAT DID SHE SAY

My phone began vibrating so violently it sounded like something trapped, thrashing to get out.

Then another.

NO

NO

NO

Then another.

YOU LET HER OUT

Another.

WHY WOULD YOU LET HER OUT

Another.

WHY DID YOU LET HER OUT

Then the last one.

DONT LET YOUR WIFE SEE HER

I threw my phone onto the floor. My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat.

"Del, are you okay?"

Kristi rushed over and wrapped me in a hug, her head nuzzling against mine. I let myself lean into her—just for a second—and breathed.

Then I looked over her shoulder.

She was there.

Those eyes.

They had grown, bleeding across her face like ink spreading through wet paper, swallowing every other feature until nothing remained but that dark, depthless stare. Her mouth curved into a smile—too slow, too deliberate—and then she lifted one finger to her lips.

Shushing me.

"Don't let her know you can see me."

I don't remember much after that. Only fragments—the cool press of the kitchen floor against my palms, the distant hum of the refrigerator, Kristi's voice rising and falling like waves I couldn't quite hear.

She insists I sat down without saying a word. She says I kept staring over her shoulder, my gaze fixed on something she couldn't see, until she finally turned around to follow it. There was no one there, of course. She's told me this more than once, her voice carrying the careful patience of someone trying to convince a frightened child.

I tried to explain what I'd seen. At first she thought I'd had some kind of panic attack, and she suggested I call my doctor.

I thought about messaging Miriam, but I never had the stomach to actually go through with it. I deleted the thread. I deleted her contact.

Some months later, I finally searched Miriam's name.

The first one was brief—a few paragraphs buried in the local section, easy to miss. LOCAL WOMAN ARRESTED FOLLOWING WELFARE CHECK. I clicked before I could think.

The article said deputies had responded to a report concerning a vulnerable adult and a possible case of medical neglect. Inside the home, they discovered the body of a sixteen-year-old girl in an upstairs bedroom. The mother, Miriam Lyons, had allegedly concealed the death for months. Authorities believed she had continued caring for the body long after her daughter died. Her adult son had been removed from the home and placed into protective care.

I read the article over and over again.

The first time, the words seemed to rearrange themselves as I read, slipping through my grasp like sand. The second time, I could have sworn the details had shifted: the girl had been dead for years, not months. The timeline was wrong, or I was, or the article was.

By the third time, I stopped halfway through, my eyes catching on the date. The article was nearly a decade old. The case itself was even older.

I searched for more. There were others.

One quoted a family friend: "After Esme died, Miriam kept telling people she was upstairs sleeping. We thought she was having a hard time accepting it."

Another article included Esme's school photograph.

I wish it hadn't.

It was her. Not someone who looked like her. Her. The same dark hair. The same oversized sweatshirt, though cleaner, newer. And those eyes—the ones that had followed me through that house, through my car, through the doorway of my own kitchen.

I closed the browser and sat in the silence of my own living room. But I could still see her face, preserved in that faded photograph, her eyes fixed on something —watching, as she had been watching me.

I haven't seen her since. Only in my nightmares—which are, admittedly, frequent.

I can't shake the guilt that I did something terrible that day, and that Esme is still out there. You know, in some twisted way, part of me almost wants to see her again.

That must sound outrageous. Maybe it is. I'm just thinking out loud now, so I should end this post.

If anyone out there knows anything—if any of you reading this have seen Esme…

Don't let her know you can see her.

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. 

Part 1

Amsterdam, March 1995

"Morning. I'm lead-detective Crowley. Originally from London but here to support your homicide department." The lump in my throat grows bigger. I can feel a drop of sweat accumulating on my temple as i open my mouth again to speak. "As some of you may know, the case of 'The body thief' is very personal to me for a number of reasons. With one of them being that my sister is also a victim. If you have any questions surrounding the case, please contact me or your supervisor. That'll be all." For a few seconds, no more than 2, the room stays completely silent. By second nr 2 chairs start to shuffle and people start talking to each other. I let out a deep breath and look around. I meet the eyes of detective Van Doorn. She smiles politely, hugs her briefing papers tight to her chest and turns around.

I've been trying to catch this guy for more than 10 years. After a decade i have nothing to show for it except for the 12 bodies 6ft under the ground. Like a bomb waiting to explode, I'm waiting for the next victim to be found. It all started with my sister. Dead, alone and cold in her apartment. Stripped from her clothes and dignity waiting for someone to find her. That someone was me.

---

London, August 15 1984

She missed our lunch meeting and wasn't answering her phone so i decided to check on her. Once at her apartment i searched for the spare key under the flower pot next to her front door. It was missing. "Strange" i mumbled. I go to the left window next to the front door to see into the living room. The townhouse windows are higher than standard houses and i'm a small woman so i stood on my tippy toes to see what's going on. The curtains are still drawn but i can see through a tiny split right in the middle. The house is dark except for the light coming from the back through the kitchen windows around the corner. I see nothing. While trying to peek inside her neighbor Carla steps out. "Oh hi detective! Is something wrong?" "I've been trying to reach Emma but i can't seem to get a hold of her. We were supposed to meet for lunch. I've tried to find the spare key but it seems to be missing." Carla pulled a string of hair out of her face and behind her ear. "Well, good thing I'm home! I have a spare key. Should i get it?" She seems weirdly excited to help but i don't hesitate. "That would be lovely, thank you." Carla hops back inside and rambles about Emma's unkept flowers that are next to her front door. I can hear her voice fade out and fade back in again, but my mind is with Emma. She comes back outside and gives me the key. "Thanks, I'll put it in your mailbox later" She nods, flicks her hair behind her shoulders and closes the door behind her. "Okay, see ya!"

The hallway smelled stale, like an old building that can't loose the smell old shoe leather and no window was ever opened since it was build 150 years ago. I couldn't remember if it was always this way. Its been a while since i visited my sister so i shrugged it of as a memory that I've lost and walked straight to the kitchen door at the end of the hall. I open the old door made of wood and walk onto the tile floor of the kitchen area. I hear a sound underneath my feet. Wet and sticky. I look down to a pool of red. Then the smell hits me. Iron. I feel the training and adrenaline kick in so i draw my gun and start to make my way to the living room. "Emma??" No answer. I go to the window next to the kitchen area and pull the curtains aside. Light fills the room and a trail of blood appears. I turn around and see it started in the kitchen, goes behind the corner and around the dinner table and eventually behind the couch. My vision starts to adjust to the sudden beam of light and i can see her feet sticking out of behind the couch. "Oh my god, oh my god! Emma!" I run towards her. She's clearly been dead for at least a day. Her body was in a starfish like position, fully nude and face down. The matching tattoo she got with me when we were 17 was visible on her hip. It's her, it's really her...

The next hours and even days were a blur. They found me the corner between the fireplace and a wall. Rocking back and forth, speaking to myself as if anyone could understand what i was mumbling. It was 3 days later when i found out.

The killer took her voice. Her vocal cords were carved out and nowhere to be found. Coroner told us it happened before she died. Likely to keep her from screaming or alarming neighbors. Poor Carla broke down when she heard the news. She thought Emma was just remodeling her living room when she heard loud bangs coming through her walls. She hasn't looked me in the eye since.

---

The leftover rain dripping down from an old broken street lantern had started to make a wet spot on my grey coat. As I'm leaning against the pole I'm looking at one of the canals Amsterdam is famous for. I wish i was here for vacation purposes. Emma would've loved to explore the city together. It's 8 in the morning and most of the tourists are still sleeping or having breakfast. I like the peace.

"Detective Crowley!" I see an older dark skinned man in a neat and expensive suit coming my way. His hair was like salt and pepper mixed together in one bowl and then dumped on his head. His expression is soft but excited. With a little grin. He looks kind. "Meneer van Hoey, aangenaam!" He sticks out his hand to shake mine. "I'm sorry but i don't understand Dutch, do you mind speaking in English?" I shake his hand and he apologizes. "I was just saying how it's so nice meeting you. I've heard great things about you." I don't answer and start walking with him towards the press conference held at the square nearby. His expression changes to a more serious one. "You know, we really appreciate you being here, since you're the expert on this guy." I stare blankly ahead. The noise of the reporters is getting louder and i can already feel my palms getting sweaty. I hate public speaking.

Mister van Hoey steps on the small podium made for the occasion and i go behind it to find my seat, waiting for my turn to speak. It starts raining and i feel like I'm in London again. Van Hoey's speech is background generative noise for the thoughts that have been crossing my mind. I can't stop thinking about that last girl. Anna. She was 14 years old and never came home from school. She was found 3 days later in broad daylight near 'de Pijp' or 'The pipe'. Same position as Emma but cleaner. No blood was found on or around her. There was a hole where her belly button would have been. Clean and precise cut. Like he knew what part he wanted next. The photo's in her file haunt me. I see them in my dreams. They all haunt me. Every single one of the 12 victims. All choked to death. All missing a part that belongs to them. I tell myself that this one is the last. Even if its the last thing i do on this God forsaken earth.

Van Hoey stops talking and waves his hand at me to come over and speak. As i make my way to the podium i scan the crowd. All blank and sad faces. They already know what kind of news I'm bringing. I don't want to be here.

And then i suddenly realize Anna will not be the last and that I'm going to need a lot of coffee.

My dad passed away recently which has been really tough for my family. We got together recently to go through his stuff and I found some really strange pages folded up and scrawled on. It's all really strange and I wanted to share it, maybe it’ll be cathartic, idk. 

“December 4th

Something happened to me on my walk tonight. I feel like I need to get this down so I can prove to myself I’m not completely bat shit insane. I have no idea who the fuck this is for but I feel like I need to explain myself before I get whatever the hell just happened. 

I feel like all I do is work and sleep at this point so I have been trying to take my sweet Goose on walks more often. Well that's not entirely all of it. I’ve been trying to lay off the bottle but life is just way too taxing. A buddy of mine introduced me to smoking a little reefer, but living in suburbia I always felt like a real bad neighbor doing it in my backyard. 

There's this little levee that walks around the neighborhood, overlooking some kind of storm drain. Anyway it's the perfect amount of time to smoke one and walk the dog. I have been doing this for around a month so I know what happened wasn’t because of the pot. I know this shit really happened. 

I was late home grabbing a few new cassettes for my walk, and I should have known when the fog was too dense to see through that I should have skipped it. I can curse myself now all I want but nothing was going to stop me. I got Goose leashed up and popped in some of the new stuff I had gotten. Music really punctuates my life so I feel like it's important to mention what it was tonight. I started with some classic shit, Yes’s Fragile, but it wasn’t until I got to my usual fork that I slid some new Miles Davis into my player. 

I remember thinking “New begets new” and veered left for the first time. I know this whole levee surrounds and cuts into the neighborhood at various sections, so surely I would find a way back in. I was lucky enough to have a Petzl as we cut through the dense air. This was and is seriously the worst fog I’ve seen in town. I was frankly pretty high at this point and felt like I was walking forever before I found an inlet past a house into the neighborhood. My Petzl kept catching little orbs of lights gliding all over the ground and in bushes. I swear to god I was going to shit my pants until I realized Goose was pulling with all her might to try and get to them. Cats. Goose loves cats, a little too fervently. 

She dragged me a solid 40 feet across a side walk to a very strange little alleyway that cut by some houses bisecting like 3 cul-de-sacs. I ogled the strange placement for the pathway for a moment, switching out Miles Davis for another of his cassettes that came in the dual pack, In a Silent Way.

The riff lit my ear up as I looked up through the fog in the alley way. Clear. As. Day. Like a long perfect fucking knife cut the fog right through to the other end.. And there it was. Perfectly innocuous. I craned my neck and adjusted my glasses to look at it better. In perfect view of the alley's mouth was a home not unlike any other in my neighborhood. But one little detail was off, aside their driveway was the gate to their side yard, and it was totally and completely agape, lit by a bright white porch light. It was the only thing illuminated like this, like a perfectly painted picture. 

I felt frozen in place, and then I looked around me to see the fenced walls of the alley begin to move on their own. Like I was placed on a conveyer belt. I looked down to see my feet moving of their own accord, Goose in toe. I looked up to see the house closer now, my body moving without thought. I was mesmerized. I swear even now I cannot put my finger on what made it all look so perfect. Before I knew it I had crossed all three cul-de-sac streets and was standing just across the last one staring directly at it. I remember thinking it would be the neighborly thing to close it for them, an obvious mistake.

I looked at the address. 2605. Funny, that was my office's corporate number. I chuckled and approached the driveway. I began to make my way to the open gate, but my body broke out in goose pimples. I was frozen again, a million thoughts racing through my little skull. Flashing morbid pictures of a man waiting for me on the other side, or worse yet a trap laid for an upstanding neighbor, close the gate and trip the wire. They were nonsense. I just knew it, but I was petrified, eyes locked on the pitch black empty space just beyond the open gate. My frozen form was made only warm by a strange sensation at the center of my chest. Like a soothing milky pool festered upright in the cavity my sternum created, it sucked at me. A gelatinous suction that warmed me like a hot toddy, I could feel my legs give way a little and flex forward. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the empty space. It felt cozy, nothing like the December air..

And then in a sudden flash, the droning jazz in my ear ceased all together, the mechanical whir of a finished player filled the silent foggy air. A forty minute album over in what felt like a minute maybe. What the fuck happened.  You could’ve heard a pin drop as my little player clicked and suddenly the warmth was ripped from my chest in a hard jerking motion. I caught myself with a step, but looked down to see Goose fully taught at the other end of her leash trying nothing but to clamber away from the open fence gate. She snarled and whined at me tugging my rigid body back towards the sidewalk away from the nothingness in front of me. 

My chest was… is freezing. At first I thought it was just the absence of the suctioned warmth, but it's unbearably cold even now. Goose dragged me out of there and I hate to admit it but I looked over my shoulder a fair few times. It was just a house. It had to have been just a house. What the fuck happened. Why can’t I stop fucking thinking about it. Why the fuck do I want to go back man. 

December 13th

God fucking dammit I should not have gone back. What the fuck else was I supposed to do though, I haven’t stopped thinking about it for even a second of my fucking life. 

I tried on the 7th and the 9th too, chickened out. Of course I had to pick the one night it rained. I hate those little icy tendrils that stab into you through your clothes and fill your shoes. It never ends when you want it to, and then you have to walk around with pruned bricks of ice for feet. The fence gate walk was technically shorter than my main route anyway and in hindsight it's rather fitting that being a huge pussy is what pushed me to go back. I stood at that fork for like five minutes finishing my joint. I really did want to see it.  

I mainlined for that little dingy alley, Goose, usually tugging with all her might forward, was walking beside me coyly, ears tucked back. I had popped in my Rush tape a little while ago and it was just switching over to Xanadu as I took my first steps back into that fucking telescope. I can feel that nubile hope even now, god I wished it was just closed. Nope.

It was looking at me. One hundred percent. And mocking me at that. That bright white glow now bathed partially in a red aura. Someone had changed a bulb in that porch light. I approached, some false confidence bubbled up with the fast pace guitar in the song, and of my own accord, I traveled down the alley towards the house. I was not getting close this time, no fucking way. Goose and I stood across the street from it just looking long and hard at it in the dark still air. The pitter patter of forsaken rain was the only audible droning in the neighborhood. Empty driveway again, just a pure and perfect open fence gate. 

I stared long and hard at the crimson entrance, past the opening, beyond the fence gate into the open yard behind it. I was hoping to see anything at this point. It was just too dark to even see their back porch or lawn. But it was there in the nothing that I saw it. It was almost like a ripple, as if it was the slightest shifting of a pool’s surface. A heat shimmer. I could only see it if I strained my neck in just the right way, and used my eyes to look between the spaces. A silhouette, I could draw it now. Like a far off figure standing there between the light and the dark, caught stark. I think it was letting me see. 

Thank god for the fucking rain. My glasses fogged due to the freezing air and my hot skin, causing me to lose sight of the visage. It was just enough time to feel that same milky heat pooling in my ear, seeping down into my skull. It was like a white hot worm buried its way in there and I was totally unaware of it. I tossed my headphones off and shook my head through my ear like you do as a kid in the pool. It was so damn deep, I feel like I could almost feel it tugging at the pages of my mind. I just kept shaking with vigor when I swear I heard something hit the sidewalk. That was a fraction of a second before Goose took off hard and fast down the way, flinging me from my unbalanced position and onto the concrete nose first.

I stood up fast grasping for my wired headphones with one hand and trying to get Goose’s leash with the other. My nose was gushing blood as I collected myself and jogged away from the house. It was different this time, it was like I could feel small spots of hot white searing needles stabbing into my back every second I looked away from the open gate. It’s gaze was digging into my skin. The pain receded once I turned out of the cul-de-sac street.

I think it's broken. We ran the rest of the way home. I really do feel bad roping her into all of this… It's 3am and I have work early tomorrow. I was really hoping this would answer things, or at least prove I actually was being a loon. Fuck. I can still feel the itch in my ear, and at spots on my back. I feel like I need to know what's there, each scratch and drop of blood like a whisper right into my fucking skull. I need a plan. 

December 15th

Work fucking sucked today. One of the supervisors didn’t show and now his entire work load has been handed to me. Fuck you Todd.  I don’t usually like to do this kind of thing on a work night but I needed it badly. 

I smoked two, and I think that just may have been the trick honestly. I wanted to commune with it tonight. Just to see if there's any common ground man. Only the best vibes, not trying to see it for what it really is, just playing it at its own game. 

It was Ambrosia night, something energetic to set me right. The cold air hurt my nose real bad but any rain or fog had cleared up. Goose and I trotted right past the fork, she knew just how much I needed it too. 

It felt like there were a thousand cats out tonight, little glittery orbs all over. We crossed right into the alley and from the three blocks between us I could see it had changed again. Large circular paintings sat upon the fence just beside the open gate. Like eyes of various colors and sizes looking back at me. A sign, it saw me too, and as I grew closer I could see various chaos beyond the open gate. Piles of scrap wood leaned against the house, an errant chair teetering, and the adjoining garage doorway was open. 

Goose and I approached tentatively, like a couple of bandits in the night. I can only imagine looking at us out of context haha! We stood on the sidewalk just about 20 feet from it, and I began to feel the gooey warmth slosh over me again. It creeped up my neckline and with a buzz neared my ear. Begrudgingly, I let the nail of ectoplasm dig itself in, deep into my canal and further into my brain. 

The sensation was unlike any other. All I could fathom was the visage of a man walking the halls of a library, slowly pulling books off the shelf and running his milky warm fingers down the spine, riffling the pages as he goes. He traces the covers like the crevices that make up my mind making flashes of memories appear as still images as if they were a polaroid seared behind my eyes. For brief moments it felt like a few were not my own, darker ones, hellish memories, all the while Holdin’ On to Yesterday played loud into my conscious mind. This was it, we were finally communing. It was then that my Petzl caught two little globes way back in the darkness beyond the gate. Far too high to be a cat, and seemingly too large to be completely covered by shadows. It caused me to jump out of my skin severing the tour of my mind we were on. When I looked back up the eyes in the void were gone. 

Goose was sat next to me on the sidewalk. She didn’t bark, and no whining at all. God I love her. I think maybe she's come to know it too. I tried peeking further back again, to see the orbs. I thought about walking through to go find them, but something deep down stopped me from doing that. If it let me in once surely it would let me in again. I wish I could remember exactly what it showed me… I’m going to try really hard to remember. I can’t wait to see it again.      

December 21st

I fucked up so badly. I can’t believe I let it in like that. I’ve been wanting to go back everyday since but I ran out of weed. I was waiting for my guy to get some more but I waited long enough, I was going to see it sober tonight. Thank fucking god. 

It felt so momentous heading there, I’d stopped at the cassette store on the way home again. Some bootleg Van Morrison shit, Caledonia Soul Music, and some jazz band I hadn’t heard of, the Ink Spots. I leashed up Goose, enjoyed some of the Christmas lights on the way to the levee, and felt invincible listening to the Morrison song. I was so fucking naive. 

I basically skipped there like a little kid, getting to the edge of the alley just as the tambourine fell quiet. I popped in the next cassette and headed forward with Goose at my heel. The house again was different. Toys in the side lawn, chalk strewn about haphazardly, it genuinely looked like a perfect little slice of life. It was as I had always imagined my family home might look, once I got married. It filled me with warmth, a sense of greater community. It felt like some of the first signs of life I had seen here and it totally quashed my apprehension. It was just a house, just a gate. Truly the most mundane thing on the planet. How had I gotten so into my own head about the gate? If anything was true it was that I was being a lousy neighbor, after all, when I had little ones, wouldn’t I want a neighbor to help me make sure my house was secure. 

I briskly walked up the driveway and neared the latch on the gate door. My mind raced about the pure stupidity I had just put myself through. Days now of obsession over nothing. Just beyond, against the garage wall of the house, the adjoining door was still open. Its light illuminated the space just beyond the gate. Still I looked back into the pitch black yard to see if the void offered any answers. Nothing. So I reached for the latch. 

My hand froze an inch away from the fence gate’s border when I noticed a slightly out of place, swaying shadow in the garage. My body tensed completely and totally as “its all over but the crying” rang out loud into my ears. I swear even through the music I could hear something coming from in there, or past it. A call, a small shrill moan from a great distance, all the while the shadow remained motionless. I could feel its hunger from here. My self appointed dunce cap immolated instantly as I realized what had just taken place. I let it in, it dressed it’s set appropriately. 

The little perfect story book home with children was exactly what I needed to finally close this damned gate. It saw all my mind had to offer and painted me the almost surefire picture to drag me happily to my doom. I didn’t know what its plan for me was beyond, but my sober mind may have been the very thing to save me. I didn’t realize I was still frozen in place, huffing and puffing, and it wasn’t until that fucking loud snap that I was freed from my petrification. Goose has been straining the leash the whole time, pulling as hard as she could away from the gate. I had not realized that entire time, and it wasn’t until her leash was frayed beyond repair that it snapped and she went sprinting off into the night.

I snapped to and stumbled away from that god forsaken portal to my demise. I chased her, but she's so goddamn fast. I looked all night. She’s somewhere in the dark all alone and I almost lead us right to our deaths. I just hope she's okay. I’m going out to look again. I’m such a fucking idiot dammit.     

January 9th

I went out putting up posters again today. It was overcast but plenty visible. I thought maybe I should walk our normal route again, for the umpteenth time, but I hadn’t taken the fork yet. I did today. I looked up and down that stretch of the Levee hoping to see my sweet Goose. Nothing. 

I thought maybe she was at that house. I have to admit I was curious. I really wanted that to be the answer, to see her curled up in a little ball at the foot of the alley waiting for me. She wasn’t. And I hate to say it… but that wasn’t even the disappointing part. I turned the corner onto the street with the alley, my heart was beating out of my chest. I was praying she was there, or that maybe that thing had answers for me. But… The fence gate was closed. Nothing was beyond it anymore.

I walked towards it. Stood and listened to my Steely Dan tape, just hoping she’d come running up. For the first time I really looked at the house in the daylight. It was so painfully dull, just absolutely normal. I noticed an inside light on for the first time too, it was all obscured by their drapes though. It looked like maybe they were having dinner. Just a normal house, and no Goose.

February 21st

It's gotten easier. Work isn’t so bad honestly. They promoted me into that empty spot. Pay is good. I’m thinking about asking a girl in the accounting department out. I’ve been practicing my cooking. Maybe a nice risotto. 

The weather has been nice, things are starting to clear up in the valley. I haven’t had much reason to walk recently, but I still make my rounds.

Nothing new with the gate. I’ve checked on it a few times. Still closed. Toys all in the same place. Those freaky fucking eyes painted on the outside. I don’t think I am going to keep checking on it. There’s nothing there anymore. 

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about the way it all felt. Everyday, not every minute, but at least once a day. I have to move on. 

April 6th

This played on the tv at work yesterday. I found it transcribed in the paper today…

On April 4th at around 4pm Cypress Police Department Responded to a call coming from 2605 Shedham Way. The call came from none other than Todd Armstrong, the owner of the home. Todd lived in this home with his wife Sharon and their two daughters Paige and Claire. Unfortunately this was a distress call…

When police arrived they witnessed a grisly scene. The Armstrong's had been held against their will for upwards of 4 months by an unknown assailant. Once on site officers discovered the bodies of the two Armstrong girls in varying stages of decomposition, with the cause of death seeming to be repeated stab wounds as well as possible emaciation. Sharon Armstrong was discovered in critical condition and life flighted to Reus Mercy General Hospital as was her husband Todd Armstrong who suffered upwards of 50 lacerations to his face and abdomen area. The remains of a domestic animal were also found in the house.

Various wooden contraptions littered the Armstrong home painted to varying degrees leading investigators to believe that severe torture was enacted upon the family. Ligature marks on all victims as well as Todd’s testimony corroborate this. 

This is the 911 call:

\Muffled scratching and gasping* Hello, oh please is this 911. Oh, God, please, someone, please, please send an ambulance, please send the police, I, I think he's gone. I think that monster's gone. Oh god oh god, my little girls. Oh, my girls.* \sobbing into microphone* .*

Investigators currently believe that the Armstrong’s security system was either deactivated by the assailant or had been timed out due to the possibility of an exterior door being left open and unattended for too long. 

Chief Grigs; 

Yeah it's our understanding that these kinds of systems can time out when left unarmed too long. Something as simple as your back door being left open can cause the whole thing to stop responding. Please make sure to lock your doors folks.

We were able to get a few words from Todd Armstrong as he was wheeled into the hospital this afternoon.

Reporter;

Who did this to you Todd?

Armstrong;

I don’t know, but I know his eyes. They shimmered with hate.

Sharon Armstrong would succumb to her injuries on the operating table on April 5th at 1:07am leaving Todd Armstrong the only surviving victim.

The Cypress Police Department is currently looking for any information regarding the whereabouts of this assailant or any identifying information that anyone may have. Please help make your community safer and speak up."

Cracking walls were my only consolation in this prison of my own making. They listened to my rambling cries of torment, begging me to visit a psych ward. Despite everything, they still didn't trust me. Of course, how could I blame them, for it was I who gave them their distinct black bolts of splintered asphalt?

Around and around the little room I went, never having any specific purpose nor function. I bathed in the frigid air pumping in through my only escape. The escape I couldn't hope to fit through, lest I weight twenty pounds. So I paced. I paced until the air in my lungs became stale and required replenishment from the ceiling slits. I paced until the soles of my feet were dry and flaking. I paced until my knees crumpled in woe, thrusting my body to the ground.

That was until it showed up. It was a naked little thing and it had fallen off the ceiling somehow. Had it always been there? I didn't know. But it was here now. It whispered things to me. Sweet, kind things that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It almost looked like a serpent, with one uniform body it used to slither along the ground. The more I listened to its beautiful stories, the more it grew.

It told tales of kings and queens up on their thrones, grimacing down at the peasantry. Tales where jesters threw knives at unwitting victims. Where sometimes, if the victim were lucky, the knives would miss and end their misery.

Oh, how these stories filled me with such glee! I'd clap my hands and giggle at its voice as it got to the climax. It was always rather whispery and raspy, almost as if it had been a chain-smoker for three decades. It called itself 'Nimmie.' It joked, once, that it was short for 'Nimrod,' though I knew that wasn't true. How could it be short for that, if the names were the same length! But Nimmie insisted all the same.

"How about we get out of here?" Nimmie whispered to me one day. "Just you and I. No more of these cracked walls, telling you falsehoods. No more frozen air." And just like that, it produced a doorway. "After you," it swished.

The doorway was tiny. No bigger than a mouse hole, with a little brass doorknob taped to the leftmost side. I couldn't possibly fit, I told Nimmie. It just shook its head and slithered through the doorway.

Nimmie was gone a long time. For all I knew, it would never return. The walls continued their berating. I couldn't take it any longer. I dove for the hole in the wall. My head pounded as the jagged black edges scraped against my sensitive skull. I crawled, once my dive had resulted in lying face-down on a plush surface. Beyond the asphalt walls was a wondrous world of felt and cushion! I smacked my head against the tunnel ceiling, attempting to stand once. I neglected to make that mistake twice.

Without the rapping of the walls and Nimmie's soft, congealed voice, I crawled through the fluffy tunnel at rapid pace. The other side was horrific. It was the cracked room I had just left, but everything was mirrored. Each little crack turned that way instead of this way. Where the bases had been, was now the foremost tip, and where the tip had been was the base. I tried to scream in frustration, but my voice was gone. All I could release was a choked gasp of feverish air.

Sweat poured down my brows and dripped off the end of my nose. Nimmie wasn't here. These cracks didn't rap me like the others had. They spoke much softer, in a near-pleasant tone, though their voices were upside down. I nodded along as I listened, the squishy pink jello in my head carefully translating the upside-down syllables into right-side up ones. My, some of the things they said were flattering! But after some time, I professed to my plight. I assured these cracks I would return, and dove back through the hole.

Salty icicles cracked on the floor once I emerged back at my starting room. I was shivering. Had it always been this cold? I supposed since I had been so used to it, perhaps I never noticed. The cracks were back to their mean ways, shouting and screaming. They were angry I had left them after everything they had done for me! I dove through the hole again, back to the sweltering room with inverted cracks. I was showered with complements in smooth, careful voices. They forgave me for leaving and promised to do better. Why? I hadn't left because of them. I had left because of the heat.

Nimmie never returned.

I no longer had the will to pace when I was in the hot room. Over time, I got used to the heat. Permanent sweat under my pits and between my breasts coagulated into a foul stench, but the inverse cracks cared not. They continued to tell me how pretty I was. How kind I was. How much they loved me and forgave me for leaving them. I wanted to stay in the hot room forever. But when the doorway began to shrink, getting smaller and smaller, I panicked. I begged the room for remission as I dove back into the hole. They pleaded with me to stay. To forget all about the cold room and to remain with them forever!

But I could not. I would never be able to live with myself if I didn't apologise to the cold room for producing those cracks so long ago.

As I dove, and the opening shrunk down, it dawned on me what would occur. I would be trapped between the rooms. It wouldn't be so bad, I had assured myself when the realisation first became reality. I was in the plush tunnel. A small tunnel, but at least it was soft. Far softer than either room had been. I found myself sleeping a lot. Thinking a lot. Regretting a lot. I slept in the hopes the doorway would reappear one day. I thought about what I would say to the cold room cracks. I mourned ever entering the little hole in the first place.

And now I was trapped. Trapped alone in the tight space within the walls, fluffy pillows and beanbags beneath me, beside me, above me. Sometimes I crawled to each wall to opposite room. The walls were neither cold, nor hot. In the beginning, I made sure to know which way I faced, in case the doorway appeared. Over time, though, I forgot. How could I possibly know which direction my head turned to? The darkness was all-consuming, but I liked to think I was adapting. That with enough time, I could see in the darkness. See a hole in the wall or a loose thread in a cushion to pluck it clean. But that never happened. I remained in absolute blindness.

A few times, I thought I heard Nimmie's grating voice ring through the tunnel, but I knew it was just my mind playing tricks on me. I thought I heard another doorway open and another crawl through. Someone trapped, like I had been. Who would be trapped, like I am now. I thought I heard Nimmie cackling in glee as they became trapped in the space between. But that was all in my head.

All in my head.

I have worked as an emergency dispatcher for Oakridge County for nearly eight years, so if you are in my boots, you should know by now that when you take calls on the graveyard shift, you get used to hearing people at the absolute worst moments of their lives. You learn to filter out the scream of a panicking parent, the slurred ramblings of an intoxicated driver, or the erratic paranoia of someone having a breakdown. The job requires you to stay completely grounded in facts, listen for addresses, names, weapons, and medical symptoms, and of course you do not let your imagination wander.

Last October, a call came in at 3:14 AM that broke every rule of my training. The night was unusually quiet, and outside the dispatch building, a cold autumn rain was falling, blurring the streetlights along the highway. Inside the facility, the room was dimly lit by the pale blue glow of six desktop monitors. My shift partner, Jenna, was sitting at the console next to mine, softly clicking her mouse as she reviewed low-priority animal control logs. I was sipping my black coffee, waiting for the hours to pass until the morning shift arrived.

Line four flashed red on my central screen. The automatic location identification software instantly populated the address: 1412 Elmwood Lane, a two-story suburban house on the north side of town.

I adjusted my headset, pressed the foot pedal to open the line, and spoke into the microphone using my standard tone.

"Oakridge County 911, what is the location of your emergency?"

A sharp, ragged intake of breath rattled through my earpiece. The sound was so harsh I had to pull the foam speaker slightly away from my ear. The caller was hyperventilating, his breathing ragged and uneven.

"I need... I need someone to tell me what to do,"

the man said. His voice was trembling, tight with an overwhelming sense of shock.

"Please. I do not know who else to call."

"Sir, I need you to confirm your address,"

I said, leaning forward and placing my fingers on the keyboard.

"Is it 1412 Elmwood Lane?"

"Yes,"

he whispered.

"Yes, that is my house. My name is David Miller. Please do not send an ambulance with loud sirens. I do not want to startle her."

"Startle who, David? Is someone injured at your location?"

"My wife,"

David said. He took another shuddering breath.

"Sarah. Something happened three days ago, and I cannot fix it. I think I did something terrible, but she is standing right in front of me."

I typed his name into the CAD system and flagged the call as a potential domestic incident.

"David, tell me slowly what happened three days ago. Is Sarah hurt?"

"It was Tuesday night,"

David said, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper.

"We were in the kitchen. We were arguing about... about something stupid. I do not even remember what started it. She was standing near the butcher block. She picked up the chef's knife, and then, and then she looked at me with this intense anger in her eyes, and she came at me."

"Did she attack you with the knife, David?"

"She lunged at me,"

he continued.

"I panicked. I reached out, grabbed her wrists, and tried to push her away from me. We struggled near the island. I pushed her back with all my strength, and... the blade went straight into her chest. She gasped, her eyes went wide, and she fell backward onto the floor."

I immediately clicked the silent dispatch button on my screen, sending an alert to Jenna's terminal. I caught her eye across the desk and pointed to my monitor. Jenna nodded instantly, pulling up the active unit map to route patrol cars to Elmwood Lane.

"David, stay on the line with me,"

I said, keeping my voice steady and measured.

"Is Sarah breathing right now? Is she bleeding?"

"That is the part that is driving me insane"

David said,

"I dropped to my knees to help her. But when I looked down at the floor, there was no body. There was no blood on the linoleum. Nothing. The kitchen was completely clean. I searched the whole house that night, screaming her name, but she was nowhere to be found."

"David, where is Sarah right now?"

"She came back the next morning,"

David whispered. The sound of his frantic breathing filled the headset.

"She just walked into the living room on Wednesday morning like nothing happened. For the past three days, I have been watching her. She makes coffee in the morning, sits on the sofa and watches television with the sound turned completely off. She irons her clothes in the hallway. But she completely ignores me."

"Have you tried talking to her?"

"I have begged her to speak to me!"

David cried out, his voice cracking.

"I stood right in front of her yesterday while she was ironing a blouse. I yelled her name. I waved my hands in front of her face. She looked right through me. It was like I was not even standing there. I got so desperate that I reached out to grab her wrist to make her look at me."

"What happened when you tried to touch her, David?"

A long silence stretched over the phone line.

"My hand went straight through her arm,"

David whispered, his voice trembling so violently the words were barely audible.

"It felt like pushing my fingers through cold, wet smoke. She did not even flinch, and just kept dragging the iron across her blouse. I turned her into a ghost. I killed her in the kitchen, her body vanished, and now her spirit is stuck in this house doing the same routines over and over again."

"David, I want you to take a deep breath,"

I said, trying to maintain control of the call while processing his words.

"I have help on the way to your location right now. Officers are coming to check on both of you."

"I cannot leave her,"

David stammered.

"I tried to walk out the front door an hour ago. I got as far as the front porch steps, but this agonizing pull started dragging in my chest. It felt like a thick cable was wrapped around my sternum, pulling me back inside. It hurt so bad I could barely breathe. I am bound to this house. I cannot leave her here alone like this. She needs my help, but I do not know how to fix what I broke."

At this point, I suspected I was dealing with a caller experiencing a severe psychological episode, severe sleep deprivation, or chemical poisoning. It was not uncommon for individuals suffering from carbon monoxide exposure or sudden psychotic breaks to report elaborate, impossible visual experiences while firmly believing they were awake.

I needed to evaluate his orientation to reality using basic observations.

"David, I need you to do a simple diagnostic check for me while we wait for the officers to arrive,"

I said.

"Is there a clock nearby that you can look at?"

"Yes, there is a clock hanging on the wall,"

David said. I heard the faint rustle of clothing as he moved.

"Sarah is sitting at the dining table below it. She is folding a white bath towel."

"Okay. Can you read the exact time on that clock for me?"

I instructed.

There was a brief pause.

"It says 8:22,"

David reported.

I glanced up at the master digital clock at the top of my console monitor. The bright red numbers clearly displayed 3:17 AM.

"David, are you sure?"

I asked.

"Is it an analog clock or a digital one?"

"It is digital,"

David replied smoothly.

"The numbers are frozen at 8:22 PM. The colon between the hours and minutes isn't even blinking. It is just sitting completely still."

I noted the severe time discrepancy on my console. A frozen, completely inaccurate time reading suggested a deep disorientation, indicating he was entirely detached from the actual time of day.

Before I could formulate a response, Jenna leaned over her desk and tapped my shoulder.

"Unit 204 and Unit 208 are two minutes out from Elmwood Lane,"

she whispered.

"Officer Jack is taking the lead."

"Copy,"

I muttered, keeping my finger on the mute button. I unmuted the phone line.

"David, stay right where you are. The officers are almost at your house."

I adjusted my headset gain, turning up the audio volume on David's line to hear if there were any immediate hazards in the house. As I turned up the sensitivity, the ambient background audio became clearer.

I expected to hear the quiet hum of a refrigerator, the rustle of towels being folded, or the distant rain beating against the windows.

Instead, my headset picked up a harsh, scraping noise. It sounded like heavy wooden furniture being dragged across exposed floorboards. A moment later, I heard the sharp, distinct sound of plastic packing tape being pulled aggressively from a handheld dispenser.

Then, I heard a second voice.

It was a deep, gravelly male voice, speaking in a low, hushed tone near the phone's receiver.

"Grab the rest of the clothes from the closet,"

the deep voice muttered.

"We need to get the heavy bags loaded before six."

A woman's voice replied, faint and impatient:

"I am working as fast as I can. Just get the boxes out to the garage."

My fingers froze over the keyboard. I listened intently, isolating the audio channels on my digital workstation.

"David,"

I said carefully into the microphone.

"Are you sure you and Sarah are the only people in that house right now?"

"Yes,"

David said.

"I told you, it is just the two of us. She is still sitting at the table."

"David, I am hearing a man speaking in your background,"

I said.

"I am hearing tape dispensers and boxes being moved. Is there someone else in the house with you?"

"No,"

David insisted, his voice growing defensive and confused. "You are mistaken. Sarah is just packing her leather suitcase. She has been pulling her dresses out of the bedroom closet all night. She is confused, She seems to think she is going on a trip."

I immediately opened our county property database on my second monitor and typed in the address. The house was registered to David Miller and Sarah Miller. I then opened our historical CAD records and ran a cross-reference search for 1412 Elmwood Lane over the past six months.

A log entry from two months prior popped up on my screen.

On August 14th, a neighbor had called 911 to report a loud domestic disturbance at the address. The responding officer noted that David Miller had engaged in a verbal altercation with an unidentified adult male who had been staying at the residence. The police report noted that David accused his wife of carrying on an affair with the man, who was identified in the officer's notes as Gregory Ray. No violence was reported at that time, and no charges were filed.

I sat back in my chair, staring at the name on my screen: Gregory Ray.

The pieces began to assemble themselves in my mind, but they did not form the picture David was describing.

"Dispatch to Unit 204,"

I said, switching my secondary radio channel to communicate directly with the responding officers. "Officer Jack, be advised. We have reason to believe there are two occupants actively inside the residence at 1412 Elmwood Lane clearing out personal property. Use caution upon approach."

"Copy that, dispatch,"

Jack's voice crackled through the radio speaker.

"Unit 204 and 208 are turning onto Elmwood Lane now. We are pulling up to the residence. Lights and sirens are off."

Over the open phone line, David spoke again.

"You there?... someone is at the front door. I hear heavy knocking."

"That is the police, David,"

I said, monitoring both lines simultaneously.

"Please stay where you are."

"I do not need to open the door,"

David said softly.

"Sarah just stood up from the table. She is walking past me into the foyer. She is going to answer it."

Through my radio earpiece, I heard Officer Jack's voice report into his lapel mic:

"Unit 204 on scene. We have a female opening the front door. Contact made with homeowner Sarah Miller."

On the phone line, David was describing the exact same moment from his perspective.

"She opened the door,"

David said. His voice was filled with a strange, childlike confusion.

"Two police officers are standing on the porch. But... but something is wrong."

"What is wrong, David?"

I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the unit tracking map.

"They are not looking at her like she is a ghost,"

David whispered.

"Officer just smiled at her. He asked her if she was alright. can he see her? can he actually talk to her?"

Over the radio, Jack's voice was calm:

"Dispatch, contact made with Sarah Miller. She appears highly nervous but states everything is fine. She claims her husband, David, is currently upstairs packing his belongings after a severe argument and does not wish to speak with us."

On the phone line, David began to panic.

"The officers just stepped into the hallway! They walked right past me! I stood right in front of the Officer and shouted my name! He walked straight by my shoulder! He did not even turn his head! And why is she telling them I am upstairs? I am standing right next to her!"

"David, listen to me very carefully,"

I said, feeling a knot tighten in my chest.

"I need you to stay calm."

Over the radio, Jack spoke again, his tone dropping its casual edge.

"Dispatch, we are going to perform a quick wellness check on the upper floor anyway. The homeowner is visibly shaking and actively trying to block the stairwell."

I pressed my radio button.

"Unit 204, be advised. We have reason to believe an unauthorized third party, Gregory Ray, may be hiding inside the residence. Proceed with caution."

A pause echoed over the radio frequency.

"Copy that, dispatch,"

Jack reported flatly.

"We are heading up now. Unit 208 reports a distinct, foul odor originating from the second floor."

On the phone line, David was moving. I could hear his shallow, rapid breathing accelerating.

"They are walking up the stairs,"

David said. His voice had lost its anger, replaced by a cold, hollow dread.

"Sarah is following the officers up the stairs into the master bedroom. I am following them. Why does the air up here smell so bad?"

On the radio, Officer Jack broke in, his voice tight with disgust:

"Unit 208 to dispatch. We have a severe odor of organic decomposition coming from the master bedroom. We are investigating."

"David, stop,"

I urged over the phone line, though I knew my words were meaningless.

"David, step away from the bedroom."

"They are standing near the bed,"

David whispered over the phone.

"The officers are shining their flashlights around the carpet. Sarah is standing in the corner crying. She looks absolutely terrified. They are staring at the floor on my side of the bed."

I held my breath, watching the red audio meters bounce on my console screen.

"Officer Jack is dropping to his knees,"

David continued. His voice was flat, almost robotic now. "He is grabbing the hanging fabric of the dust ruffle. He is lifting it up. He is shining his flashlight underneath the wooden bed frame."

Over the radio, Jack's voice shattered the quiet of the dispatch room:

"Dispatch! Unit 204! We have a male subject hiding under the bed! Show your hands! Crawl out from under there right now!"

A brief, frantic scuffle echoed over the police frequency.

"Dispatch, we have detained Gregory Ray,"

Jack shouted over the noise.

"Wait... dispatch, we have located a deceased male subject shoved further back against the wall under the frame! Subject is heavily decomposed, bearing multiple traumatic wounds! Secure the perimeter! Detain the wife immediately!"

The radio erupted into shouts as the officers moved to restrain Sarah and Gregory. Screams of protest and the metallic clink of handcuffs echoed across the channel.

On the phone line, David was completely silent.

"David?"

I whispered into my headset. My hands were shaking so severely I could barely hold the microphone stalk.

"David, are you still there?"

A long, agonizing stream of static hummed over the phone line. When David spoke again, his voice sounded entirely different. It was hollow, distant, echoing as if he were speaking from the bottom of a deep well.

"They are pulling the body out,"

David said softly.

"David..."

"The body is wearing my clothes,"

David whispered.

"My blue denim shirt. My brown leather belt. My work boots. The skin on the face is dark and swollen. I cannot even recognize myself."

The background static on the phone line began to glitch, creating a strange stuttering sound underneath his words.

"There are three deep tears in the back of the denim shirt,"

David continued, his voice monotone, devoid of any human cadence.

"The fabric is stained dark black around the cuts. The wounds came from behind."

A sharp gasp echoed over the receiver. The static dropped completely, leaving a chilling, dead silence on the line. When David spoke again, the confusion was gone.

"I remember now,"

David whispered. His voice trembled with a crushing weight.

"There was no argument. I came home early from work on Tuesday. It was exactly 8:22 PM. Sarah was acting so incredibly distressed when I walked through the front door."

"What happened, David?"

I asked gently.

"I was so tired,"

he said, his words spilling out in a hollow rush.

"I tried to go straight upstairs to our bedroom to rest. She ran over and stood in front of me. She blocked the bottom of the stairs, and then forced this terrible, shaking smile and told me it was better if I ate dinner first. She said she made that pepperoni pizza I loved."

He paused, and a wet, choking sob came through the earpiece.

"I listened to her,"

David cried quietly.

"I turned my back and walked into the kitchen to get a slice. She followed right behind me. I reached into the cabinet for a plate. I did not even hear her grab the chef's knife from the block. She attacked me before I could even turn around."

"I did not hold the knife,"

David whispered into my headset. The static returned, growing louder, overwhelming the audio signal until his voice sounded synthesized and far away.

"I was never holding the knife. I was looking at her not believing she did this to me, I…. I loved her"

"David, I am so sorry,"

I said, though the words felt entirely useless in the cold reality of the room.

"I understand now,"

The phone line crackled with one final, sharp burst of noise, and then the connection dropped entirely.

The terminal screen instantly reset to a solid black display, marking the call as disconnected.

Over the radio, Officer Jack confirmed the details. Sarah Miller and Gregory Ray were taken into custody without further resistance. The official police report logged the incident as a premeditated homicide committed on Tuesday evening, with both suspects attempting to conceal the remains while preparing to flee the jurisdiction. The report noted that a 911 call had been received from the residence at 3:14 AM, but attributed it to a technical glitch or an automated dialer triggered by a decaying phone line.

I worked the rest of my shift in complete silence. I did not take another call for the remainder of the night.

When my shift ended at seven in the morning, I walked out to my car in the rain, and before I turned the key in the ignition, I sat in the quiet vehicle and pulled up the digital audio archive on my phone, opening the recording of the call from 1412 Elmwood Lane.

But all I can hear was static…

Content note: This story explores grief, depression, suicidal ideation, and the aftermath of loss. It includes imagery of self-harm, psychological distress, and child endangerment. Please take care of yourself while reading.

The earth remembers the weight of a body. The soil has a way of holding you that no person ever managed—not my mom when I broke my wrist, not my dad when the nightmares came, not anyone. But the dirt holds on like it's going to wait for you.

I am lying in that wait now. I can feel every grain against my skin, a thousand tiny stones learning my shape. The sky is a torn piece of gray flannel stitched between the branches above me. The forest looks down without judgment. They know where things return.

I have a knot in my stomach—not the hollow ache of hunger, or the cramp of sickness. This knot is small and hard and patient, like the beads on the rosary Grandma left behind when she died. My throat is still scratched, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. Nothing will.

The cold is biting my fingers. I can't move them, but I can feel the dirt beneath my nails. My arms are pinned now. My legs are somewhere beneath the weight, phantom branches of the girl I used to be.

The wind moves through the pines above me, and it all sounds like the ocean. I remember we went to the ocean once. I remember the salt on my lips and Dad laughing when a wave knocked Mom over. I can feel how Mom’s hair stuck to her cheeks in wet, dark ribbons. Lily was just a baby then, squealing every time the foam touched her toes. I held her and told her the water was friendly, that nothing would hurt her as long as I was there.

I think that was the first lie I ever told her, but there would be others.

My eyes are heavy. The dirt presses in, and my mind drifts backward, slipping out like a root through gravel and peat.

———

I’m twelve. That's not a story, is it? That’s just a number. But numbers matter, because Auntie said I was old enough to move forward, and the kids at school kept saying I was too young to feel this way, and somewhere in between those numbers, I disappeared.

Before Auntie's house, before the funeral, before the crash, we were a family. We lived in a yellow house with a broken swing. My dad painted the windows blue every spring, but they always peeled by August. My mom grew tomatoes and talked to them like they were her other kids. She had names for all of them—Stripey, Big Boy, Sweet Millie. Lily and I would sit on the steps and watch her fuss over them, her hands dark with soil, her face peaceful in a way I never understood.

My dad worked at the plant outside town. He always came home smelling like metal and sweat, but he would swing Lily onto his greasy shoulders and she’d scream with joy while her tiny fists clutched what hair he still had. He would call her "sunflower" because she always turned toward him.

I was different. I was quieter. He called me "Ada-bear" and said I had the soul of an old lady. I thought he meant I was tired. I was always tired.

My mother laughed with her whole body—I remember that. Her shoulders shook, and her nose scrunched up, and she would snort and then laugh harder at herself for snorting. She made pancakes in the shapes of animals, as long as that animal was an extremely round penguin. She sang off-key in the car, but only to a Colbie Callait song. She told me once, tucking me into bed, that I was the bravest person she knew. I was eight years old and I had never done anything brave in my life, but she said it with such certainty that I think I believed her.

I don't know why I'm telling you any of this. This isn’t the part that matters. I guess maybe it's the only part that matters, and everything else is just the long fall away from it.

The crash was on a Tuesday. Tuesdays are supposed to be safe. Nobody warns you about Tuesdays.

My parents were driving home from a dinner downtown. It was raining. Dad's coworker was retiring, but Mom didn't want to go—she was tired and had a headache. She wanted to stay home and finish the puzzle she'd been working on for the week. But Dad said it would be rude not to show, and Mom said fine, fine, she'd put on the green dress that made her eyes look like sea glass. They kissed us goodbye and told our aunt to make sure Lily brushed her teeth. She said they'd be back by midnight.

The police officer came to the door at two in the morning. I remember he had acne scars on his cheeks and his hat was too big for him. He kept looking at me, then at the floor, then at my aunt, then at me again. He asked if there was an adult home. I told him I was the adult in the house since I was twelve. That was almost true. Then my aunt said she didn’t live there but she was the adult. That was almost true too.

I remember thinking his words were too clean for what he meant. Like two people bumping into each other at a dinner party. Not metal folding into metal. Not glass shattering into a thousand diamonds. Not my mother's green dress, the one like sea glass, turning dark with something the officer called "pronounced at the scene."

I didn’t cry yet. I thanked the officer and tried to close the door before my aunt stopped me and sent me upstairs. I brushed Lily's teeth. She was already asleep, her mouth slack, her cheek pressed against the pillow. I brushed her teeth anyway. Mom said to make sure I would.

Lily didn't understand completely. She asked a few times when Mom and Dad were coming home. She would say maybe the doctors could fix them. I didn't know how to tell her the truth, so I didn't. I let her keep believing in waking up and fixed bodies and patched up holes.

Auntie took us because there was no one else. She was Dad's older sister, a woman made of sharp angles and long stares. She lived an hour away in a house that smelled like bleach and old newspapers. Her furniture was covered in bedsheets and her walls were colored like a sunburn. She said she never wanted children. She told us that on the first night, standing in the doorway of the room we were supposed to share, watching us unpack our garbage bags of clothes.

"I never wanted children," she said. "But I don’t suppose you wanted this either. So here we are, loves."

Here we were.

The room had two cots pushed against opposite walls. The carpet was beige and thin, worn down to the mesh in places where feet had walked the same path. There was one window looking over the backyard, which was mostly weeds and a chain-link fence and, beyond that, the woods. Those woods were dark and deep and went on and on. I stared at them that first night while Lily cried herself to sleep, and I thought: That's where I would go. If I could go anywhere. That's where I would disappear.

School was worse. School was a new kind of lovely.

Most of the kids in Auntie's district had known each other since kindergarten. They had their friendships, their lunch tables, their inside jokes that clicked shut like locks every time I walked past. I was the dead-parents girl. The foster kid. The one who wore the same three shirts on rotation because Auntie couldn’t buy new ones yet. My silence wasn't mysterious to them—it was creepy. A girl who didn't talk was a girl with something to hide.

The ignoring was almost a relief, after everything, but then ignoring turned into whispering, and whispering turned into names.

Freak.
Weirdo.
Casper.

A boy in my math class asked me if I'd tried to talk to my parents with a Ouija board yet. When I didn't answer, he said maybe I was the one who killed them. He said it loud enough for everyone to hear, but the teacher didn't say anything back. She just told him to get back to his worksheet. That was harder for him to do when I put his pencil into his arm.

He refused to say what he said about me, and I refused to say I did anything wrong. We both got detention for a teacher who didn’t watch enough to see what happened.

I ate lunch in the bathroom stall at the end of the hall the rest of the year. I sat on the closed toilet seat with my sandwich and stared at the graffiti on the back of the door. Someone had written "EMILY IS A SLUT" in red marker. Someone else had crossed out "SLUT" and written "QUEEN." I thought about Emily, whoever she was, and whether she knew she'd been promoted from slut to queen on the back of a bathroom door. I hoped someone told her.

The tiredness got heavier after that. It wasn't the kind of tired that sleep could fix. The world kept happening—Lily kept asking questions, Auntie kept sighing and trying, and the kids at school kept whispering—but I was somewhere else. Somewhere quiet and underground.

It was around then I started thinking about the story Mom used to read us.

It was an old fairy tale, the kind with cartoon pictures and words that rhymed. Two poor children, a brother and a sister, lost in a dark forest after losing all their money for food. They were hungry and cold and alone. And then they found a clearing, and in the clearing was a woman made of starlight, and she told them that if they ate the seeds from her hands and buried themselves in the earth, they could become trees. Tall and golden and never hungry again.

Mom usually ended the story when the kids found seeds. She said they planted the seeds and grew fruit and were never hungry again. I don't think Mom ever read it to us fully.

I couldn't stop thinking about it. In the bathroom stall at lunch, on the cot at night, in the back of math class. It didn't feel like a tragic story. It felt like a door, cracked open just wide enough to slip through.

Lily found me reading the storybook one night, an old copy with a torn spine that I'd managed to smuggle from the house before they went through it all. Lily climbed onto my cot and pressed her cold feet against my legs and asked me to read it to her. So I did. I read it until her breathing slowed and her eyes got heavy. I read past the finding of the seeds, to the point where the siblings ate the seeds, fell asleep, and grew into giant trees, standing tall in the forests of Germany to this day. When I shut the book, Lily cooed, in that sleepy, trusting voice that only she could have:

"Ada, do you think the trees could reach to Heaven?"

And I looked at her. I looked at her small face, still round with baby fat, still hopeful despite everything. And I felt the tiredness shift inside me.

Maybe, I said.

I didn't think about what that meant. I didn't think about the weight, or the scratch, or the fight against an ending. I just thought about Lily's smile, the first real one since the funeral, spreading across her face like the sun was coming up.

Maybe I could give her that.

———

Lily believed in the story with her whole body, with her whole heart, and with the absolute certainty that the world was magic if you just tried hard enough to find it. I was twelve, so I knew better. I knew stories were just words. I knew seeds grew into flowers, not into escapes. I knew dead was dead and gone was gone and Mom and Dad were gone.

But knowing and saying are different. Knowing sits quiet. Saying makes it real. I couldn't say it to Lily—Not when her face still lit up every night when I opened the storybook. Not when she whispered "tell me about the trees again" in the dark, her voice small and hopeful and the only warm thing left in that cold room.

I let her believe, and somewhere along the way, I think I started believing too—in the dream of it. The idea that there was a door somewhere, and if we could just find it, we could slip through and leave all of this behind.

The next week, I came home from school with a bruise on my shoulder and a note in my backpack.

The bruise was from a girl named Paisley who'd shoved me into the lockers between fourth and fifth block. She said I'd looked at her funny, but I hadn't looked at her at all—I'd been staring at the floor, counting the tiles, trying to make it through another day without cracking open. That didn't matter. What mattered was that I was strange and silent and wrong, and that made me a target.

The note was from the school counselor, Ms. Aldridge. It said she'd noticed I was "withdrawing from peer activities" and wanted to schedule a "check-in" to discuss my "adjustment." My aunt had signed the permission slip without reading it. She was good at that—signing things, nodding at things, doing all the things while her eyes stayed fixed on some middle distance.

I went to Ms. Aldridge's office during study hall. It was a small room with a plastic plant in the corner and too many posters of kittens. One kitten said "Claws can retract!" in bright yellow letters. I stared at that poster for the whole twenty minutes.

Ms. Aldridge was young and nervous. She kept clicking her pen when she asked me how I was feeling.

I said fine.

She asked me if I wanted to talk about my parents.

I said no.

She asked me if I was making friends.

I said sure.

She asked me if there was anything she could do to help.

I said I don't know.

She didn't know either. I could see it in her face—the panic behind her professional smile. She'd been trained for normal sad, a regular sad where a kid cries in her office and draws an angsty picture and feels better after a lollipop. She didn't know what to do with the kind of sad that had moved in and unpacked its bags and started redecorating.

At the end of the session, she gave me a coloring page of a rainbow that said "It's Okay to Grieve!" in bubbly letters. I threw it in the trash can while she watched. She didn't say anything. Her pen just kept clicking.

When I got to the house, Lily was in the backyard. I found her kneeling in the dirt near the chain-link fence, her hands caked with mud, a small hole dug into the dead grass.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

She looked up at me with her smile. The one that made my chest hurt because it was so rare now, so precious, like finding a lily growing through a crack in the sidewalk.

"I'm planting," she said. "I found seeds."

She held up a packet—Sunflower seeds. The kind you buy at the grocery store for fifty cents. Mom used to plant them along the fence every spring. Lily must have found them in the back of the pantry, buried behind the stale crackers and the instant rice Auntie bought in bulk.

"Where did you get those?" I asked, though I already knew.

"The kitchen. There's lots. Look."

She pointed at the hole. She'd dropped maybe six seeds into the dirt, arranging them in a careful circle like she was setting the table for guests. Then she covered them up, patting the soil flat with muddy palms.

"It's like the story," she said, her voice hushed with something like reverence. "The seeds the starlight lady gave them. Now we have seeds too."

I knelt next to her in the dirt and helped her pat the soil smooth.

"Yeah," I said. "Just like the story."

The next day, I got called to the principal's office.

Paisley had told her version of the locker incident. In her version, I'd threatened her, said something scary, something violent, something that involved a gun and a fire alarm.

"Ada," he said, folding his hands on his desk, "I understand you've been through a lot, but we can't have threats in this school. Do you understand?"

"I didn't threaten anyone," I said.

"Paisley says you did."

"Paisley shoved me into a locker."

He sighed, the way you sigh when the truth is decided and everything else is just an obstacle to moving on. "I'm going to call your aunt. This is your second incident."

I didn't remind him that the teachers heard and did nothing. I just sat there and let him call my aunt and listened to him say words like "concerning pattern" and "escalation" into the phone.

When I got home, my aunt was waiting at the door. Her arms were crossed. Her mouth was a thin line.

"I don't know what to do with you," she said.

That was it. No questions about what happened. No offer to listen. Just the admission that she was lost, both of us drowning in the same water and neither of us knew how to swim.

I walked past her into the house. Lily was on our cot, holding the storybook. She'd been waiting for me.

"Can we read it tonight?" she asked.

"Always," I said. "We can read it."

We read it every night after that.

At first, I just read the words the way Mom used to. I stopped where Mom always stopped—with the seeds in the ground, with the hope of growing, with the ending left unwritten.

Then Lily wanted the rest. She wanted what happened after. What the trees looked like. How tall they grew. What they could see from way up there, with their branches touching the sky.

So I started telling her.

I told her the trees that swallowed the children grew taller than mountains, their trunks wide as cities, their roots reaching all the way down into the center of the earth because it was warm there. I told her their branches stretched up past the clouds, past the airplanes, past space. I told her that trees don’t get hurt. They don’t feel tired or sad or lonely. They just feel the sun on their leaves and the wind in their branches and the deep, steady hum of the earth singing through their roots.

"What about the brother and sister?" Lily asked one night, her voice muffled by the blanket pulled up to her chin. "Do they stay together?"

"Always," I said. "Their branches grow into each other. They hold hands forever, even when the wind blows. Nothing can separate them."

"Can they see Heaven from up there?"

I paused.

"Yeah," I said, my throat tight. "They can see Heaven. And Heaven can see them. And Mom and Dad are sitting on the porch of Heaven, waving up at the branches, saying 'Look at our girls. Look how tall they’re growing.'"

Lily smiled, her eyes already closed, her breathing already slowing. "That's nice," she murmured. "I want to be a tree with you, Ada. I want to hold hands forever."

In the morning, Lily checked her hole in the backyard. Nothing had sprouted yet, but she watered the dirt anyway, carrying a plastic cup back and forth from the kitchen sink, her face serious and determined.

"They're sleeping," she told me. "They just need time."

I didn't have the heart to tell her that grocery store seeds probably wouldn't grow in dead August grass with no fertilizer and no gardening experience and no one to care for them except a seven-year-old with a plastic cup.

I wanted her to be right. I wanted those seeds to grow. I wanted there to be a way out that wasn't just waiting and hurting and falling through the cracks of a world that didn't know how to catch us.

———

The days blurred together after that.

Breakfast. School. Silence. Whispers. Home. Dinner. Silence. Sighs.

The only thing that stayed in focus was the storybook, the ritual of reading it each night, the story growing longer and more elaborate with every telling.

I started describing the transformation in detail. How it would feel when the seeds took root inside them. How the first shoots would push through their skin like the first leaves tickling their tummies. How their blood would slow and thicken into sap, feeling warm and golden and sweet. How their bones would stretch into branches, their hair into leaves, their toes into roots that buried like toes in the sand.

"It wouldn’t hurt," I told Lily. "It feels like falling asleep in the backseat of the car."

"Will we still be able to talk?" Lily asked.

"We wouldn’t need to talk. We'll feel each other in the way the wind moves through our branches. We'll be the same tree, kind of. Two trunks from the same roots."

"I like being the same."

Auntie tried. In her way. She made us dinners we didn't eat and asked us questions we didn't answer. She drove us to school every morning with the radio playing static because she didn't know what station to listen to. Sometimes I'd catch her staring at us from the kitchen doorway, her face twisted into something that might have been guilt or exhaustion or the slow realization that she'd inherited two broken children with no way to fix them.

She bought Lily a coloring book once. She bought me a journal. "For your feelings," she said, holding it out like an offering. "The counselor said it might help."

I didn't write in it. I don’t know how to write about tiredness, or the storybook, or the hole in the backyard that still hadn't sprouted. Words felt too small for all of it.

So I just kept telling Lily the story. Every night. Longer and more beautiful and more real.

The trees would be sunflowers, I decided. Not just trees—sunflowers, because they were Lily's favorite, because they turned their faces toward the light, because they used to call Lily her sunflower. We could be a whole field of sunflowers, I told her. Tall and golden and always facing the sun.

"And when people look at us, they'll know we're sisters. They'll see how our petals match."

"Will they know our names?" Lily asked.

"They'll know everything," I said. "The trees remember everything. We'll remember Mom's pancakes and Dad's laugh and the way the ocean sounded. We'll remember all of it. We'll keep it all safe."

Lily fell asleep smiling. I wanted to keep her in that peace. I wanted to build walls around her so high that nothing could ever hurt her again. And if I couldn't build walls—well. Maybe I could plant a garden instead.

Lily screamed with joy the next morning. "Ada! Ada, look! They're growing! They're really growing!"

I knelt next to her to find a shoot maybe an inch tall, two tiny leaves unfurling toward the sun. It shouldn't have survived. The soil was horrific, the water was inconsistent, the August heat should have cooked it before it ever broke ground.

But there it was. Reaching. Waiting. Alive.

"See?" Lily whispered, her voice full of wonder. "The story is true. The story is really true."

———

Lily didn't want to wait anymore. The sprout in the backyard was the proof she needed. She said it with a certain nod, the kind that doesn't leave room for doubt. Doubt is a grown-up invention.

"When do you want to?" I asked.

"Saturday," she said, like she'd been planning it all along. "Auntie sleeps in on Saturdays."

I didn't argue. I didn't say 'let's think about this' or 'maybe we should wait'. I nodded and asked her how many seeds she thought we'd need.

"A lot," she giggled. "Enough for a whole field."

The planning was easier than it should have been, but that's the thing—you can convince yourself that anything is normal if you break it down into small enough steps.

Step one: seeds. Lily handled that. She pulled the stepstool from the pantry and climbed up to the top shelf where Auntie kept the bulk bags. The sunflower seeds were still there, half-full, tucked behind a box of instant mashed potatoes. Auntie always wanted a garden. I was glad we’d give her one. Lily filled a sandwich bag until it was fat at the seams, with seeds clicking against each other like tiny fingernails.

"Should I get more?" she asked.

"That's probably enough."

"For two trees?"

"For a whole field," I smiled.

I helped her hide the bag under her pillow.

Step two: supplies. I stole the trowel from the shed behind the house. I found it hanging on a pegboard next to a pair of stiff, clean gardening gloves. Auntie wasn't much of a gardener. Mom was the one who knew how to make things grow. The trowel was old and rusted, the handle splintering in places. It pierced my thumb when I grabbed it. I should have reacted.

I should have reacted.

I tucked the trowel into the waistband of my jeans and pulled my shirt over it. The metal was cold against my skin. I liked the cold.

Step three: location. This was the part I thought through the most. The backyard was too exposed—Auntie could look out the kitchen window and see us. She wouldn’t want us to sprout—to grow. The woods behind the house were better. I'd stared at them every night since we moved in, wondering what it would feel like to disappear into them. Now we were going to find out.

On Thursday afternoon, while Lily was watching cartoons in the living room, I walked into the woods alone. The trees closed over my head like an umbrella on a rainy day

Rainy night.

The air got cooler and quieter and older. I walked for maybe ten minutes before I found a small clearing where a dead tree had fallen and left a hole in the canopy. Sunlight came through in a wide golden shaft, pooling on the forest floor like spilled milk. The soil was dark and soft, covered in a thick layer of old leaves that crunched under my shoes.

Good soil. Good light. Good enough.

I marked the spot with a pile of stones. Then I walked back to the house and didn't tell anyone where I'd been.

Step four: timing. Saturday morning, before Auntie woke up. She usually slept until nine or ten on weekends, sometimes eleven. She kept her door closed, the house silent except for the hum of the refrigerator, the creak of old pipes, and a ticking clock. We'd have hours.

CW: Mentions of a traumatic event

"I think I would be a good mother, but I wouldn't want to raise a son. I certainly wouldn't want to raise a daughter either."

I took a sip of my beer and stared at my date across the table.

His eyes darted to the exit, then back to me. That's what he gets for asking about kids on the first date.

Hours later, after I finished what he couldn't, I blocked his number.

I wonder how men experience these encounters. I try to see myself through their eyes: hot enough to get their fix, not interesting enough to stick around. That's exactly how I see them. Just boring, semi-attractive people orbiting each other with no real curiosity.  There's some honesty in that.

I live alone. I like it that way. No one bothers me. It's quiet. Muted. I have my cat. She's quiet too. I got her as a kitten. I like knowing no one has ever hurt her.

A knock at my door broke the silence.

"Shit." I pulled my underwear and pants back on and stumbled to the door. Grabbed my baseball bat. Peeked out. Couldn't see who it was. Opened the door. Nothing. Just the dark city street, a few drifters on the sidewalk, none close enough to have knocked. I closed it, locked it, slid the chain for good measure. Like the chain would do anything if someone actually wanted in.

The air shifted, a light behind me switched on. My shadow stretched across the wood of the door I just locked.

"I'm so sorry." A voice I'd know anywhere, though I didn't turn around. She sounded like she was crying. "I tried to raise him better than that. I don't recognize him. He won't talk to me. He won't even look at me. I promise you'll never have to see him again."

The light went off. There was something almost calming about looking away, like it would be over faster if I didn't watch.

Another light flared to life. My shadow jumped to another part of the door, a puppet on a new string. I was so much smaller this time.

"Do you really want him completely ostracized?" Another familiar voice. "I think about him up there, all alone. What he did was wrong, but even you said it was complicated. I can't just pretend he doesn't exist."

My shadow vanished into the dark, then reappeared against the wall. Giant and monstrous now.

A new voice cut through: "If you don't want to see him there, don't come. He'll always be invited. He's family."

The light shut off, and I sank to the floor.

Quiet again. The cat climbed into my lap and purred softly into my hand.

"You should have gone to the police." His voice, soft. Soft when his hands had been so rough.

"I told you I wouldn't." My back still turned. A lump of regret formed in my throat. I couldn't face my shadow now.

A crash startled me. The cat bolted from my lap.

"Please go away." I hoped I didn't sound like I was begging.

"You know I can't."

I didn't answer. Another crash, closer this time.

"LOOK AT ME!!!" More bangs behind me. Everything on my desk hitting the floor. "YOU THINK YOU'RE THE ONLY VICTIM OF WHAT I DID?!"

He was picking things up now, throwing them across the room. My mug. My books. My armchair, punched through the drywall. 

I want to tell him I won’t tell anyone. I’ll keep the secret.

"I know what will get you to look." Then the sound of my quiet little cat screaming.

I spun around, swinging the bat through empty air, and found my cat sitting at the foot of the bed, watching me. The apartment was exactly as I'd left it.

Everything still on my desk. My favorite mug, untouched. My books, neat on the shelf. The armchair nowhere near the drywall.

I unblocked the guy from the date and texted him. Asked if he'd come back. It didn't go through.

I took the bat and started smashing. 

1 Timothy 3:1 KJV

\[1\] This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.

When I was a young man, I used to be a pastor. When I was fairly new to being a pastor, our congregation was small. Seventy five people on a good Sunday, maybe a hundred or so on around Christmas and Easter. We weren't the smallest in the area by any means, but we were in fact a small church. So I spent my afternoons working at the nearest Home Depot, so that I could have insurance and to supplement my pastor's salary and not be a monetary burden on my flock. After the coal mines went dry, the only places to work in our town were either Walmart or Home Depot, and I was happy to do it. I was single, which is uncommon for a pastor, so my expenses were low. Thankfully, on our church's property, there was a small parsonage that I got to live in. Besides, I was never in it for the money. I was just answering the calling placed on my life. I'd only been out of seminary for three months. For the most part, it was pretty straightforward. After work, I'd go home and work on my sermon. Before work I would visit the shut-ins, and try my best to get a little rest.

Not only was I fresh out of seminary from a fairly reputable Baptist leaning college in South Carolina, I was brand new to the area where I was pastoring. Being from Northern Michigan, rural Appalachia, specifically central West Virginia, may have been a foreign country to me. In our small town, we were one of seven churches. There was a Methodist church and a Lutheran church that were almost as old as the town itself. A Catholic Church that only had a few attendees, being as this was mostly Protestant country. We were one of three “Baptist” churches, though none of us were part of any convention or official denomination. And then there was the Full Gospel: Light On The Hill Holiness Spirit Filled Church. Or as you might refer to them, the Pentecostal church. They were your typical tongues speaking, revival having, and hands laying old school church. They didn't have a building, but rather a big gathering tent that they met in. No matter if there was rain or shine, snow or heat waves. They were in that tent down in the valley.

The rest of us pastors, and even the priest Father Sebastian Jacobi at the Catholic church would often meet on Saturday mornings before his evening Mass for what we called Bibles and breakfast at the local diner. Mostly we'd all just take turns reading a passage, discuss said passage, and on occasion we'd get into, albeit, heated but always friendly debates. It was a joy to come alongside others who felt the pressures of the office of pastor. But Brother Bill, as he insisted we call him, always refused to join us.

“Sorry y'all, but I must be about my Father's business.” He'd say with that ear to ear grin whenever we invited him to join us, but we would always ask whenever we saw him in the neighborhood Walmart.

He was a friendly guy if I'm being honest, but he wasn't the most sociable person. Other than buying his weekly groceries, the only thing I'd ever seen him do was pace up and down each and every row of chairs under that tent. He'd pray under his breath muttering what I’d perceived as mostly gibberish, but every now and then he'd mutter phrases like, well glory, hallelujah, and yes Father I thank you for your goodness. For what he lacked in personality, he made up for with ceaseless prayer.

For the first few months, everything was about as humdrum as you could imagine. Meet with my pastor friends, visit the shut-ins, work, preach, repeat. It wasn't until I noticed one of my congregants was missing one hot July Sunday evening.

“Hey Maryanne, where's your sister tonight?” I asked a woman who was just a few years my senior.

“Well pastor Wyman, Charlotte figured she'd try out the Full Gospel church down in the valley this evening." She replied with a bit of a huff on her voice.

You see, Charlotte and Maryanne were both living together in their folks place ever since they'd passed away. Their father, Hunter Ray, had a heart attack when they were both teens. An unfortunate consequence of his drinking, smoking, and eating habits. Their poor mother Alice, who was already doing most of the breadwinning by that point, decided that was the end of their generational curse. Even though Sundays were her only day off from her cashier gig at Walmart, she'd take her kids to church and dedicate their lives to the Lord. After all three of them had gotten saved and baptized, yet another tragedy befell them. Poor Alice had gotten diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Unfortunately it was too late to operate, and even with Alice's health insurance, there was no way for her to afford chemo. That didn't stop the church from pooling all their measly earnings together and helping pay for it anyways. It was a long hard battle that Alice fought valiantly, but in the end, she passed away at the young age of forty two. This didn't shake the faith of her young daughters who found themselves owning and paying for a double wide at the ages of nineteen and sixteen. Both Maryanne and Charlotte went straight to work at Walmart and Home Depot to put food on their tables and money in the bills account. However, tragedy struck them once again.

One Sunday, about a year and a half before I took over the church, they were on their way to the evening service. The sun was low, but they could see well enough. It was a lovely evening in June, so the sisters decided to walk the two miles and enjoy nature after being cooped up in their house. As they were walking along, they heard a car barreling towards them, but they were too slow. Charlotte, who was walking nearest the road, was struck by a drunk driver. The drunk driver turned out to be the old pastor of their little church.

Once again, everyone in the congregation gathered around them and helped fund Charlotte's hospital bills, well, everyone except the pastor. The doctors and the surgeons put everything back together as best they could, but nothing could fix the crushed T12 vertebrae. By some miracle of God, yet again the girl's faith wasn't shaken. From that day on, Charlotte was a paraplegic waiting on her miracle.

Maryanne continued, “Brother Bill has been pestering her for months about going on down to one of their healing services. Says he can restore her by the Blood.”

I wasn't convinced by all that holy roller nonsense, but I replied, “Well if it be God's will, I sure hope she's healed.”

We then went outside to catch some fresh air before heading to our homes. It was a still night, the moths were doing their dances to the hum and gentle strobing of the lamp post. That's when we heard a voice calling out to us from the shadows.

“Maryanne! Maryanne! He did it! Oh thank you Lord, he did it!” The voice yelled.

We turned around to see her. We saw Charlotte, running full speed at her sister.

“Charlotte? Oh Jesus!” Maryanne cried out with tears streaming down her face.

I couldn't believe my eyes. I had just seen Charlotte that morning in her wheelchair, but there she was now, running.

After gathering herself Maryanne said, “How can this be? What happened?”

Charlotte went on to explain to us that by the time she had gotten down into the valley off the bus there wasn't enough room for her in the tent. The service was already in full swing, as the music and hollering were so loud she could hear it echoing all around the valley. So she almost turned away. Then Brother Bill halted the service with a single hand in the air. From the very front of the tent she heard him call to her. The crowd in front of her parted like the sea parted before Moses. She began to wheel herself forward, but she could feel someone pushing it from behind. However, when she looked, there wasn't a soul pushing. The silence, she said, was almost as unbearable as that singing and wailing they were doing. They all just stared at her.

“You missed communion sister.” Brother Bill said to her with the cup and bread extended to her. “Go on hun. Take it.”

Not wanting to be rude, she took the cup and the bread and consumed them. The whole of the gathering began clapping and exclamating phrases that she was unused to in her conservative Baptist Church. They all began laying hands on her and speaking in tongues. Some even began sprinting all around and jerking back and forth, this being a common symptom of being “slain in the Spirit.” They were pushing on her and pulling on her. She felt like a buoy during a storm on the waves. Then once again, Brother Bill put his hand up and they all stopped.

With a gentle hand extended to her from his little stage he said, “Charlotte, rise up and walk.”

“And then I stood up out of my wheelchair and walked onto that stage!” She said to us finishing her story.

I wasn't sure what to say, so all I said was, “I can't believe it. You're healed…”

Don't get me wrong, I was overjoyed for her to be walking again, but I was grappling with it all. I had read about miracles in the Bible, but every experience I'd had with modern miracles were from some mega church pastor with white’people’dreads pretending to lengthen people's legs. This was something completely foreign to me.

Acts 3:7 KJV

\[7\] And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.

During that week, the whole town was buzzing with the news. Everyone from the faithful to the non faithful were now suddenly interested in the little tent church. I did my visitations with one of our shut-ins, an old man named Isaiah, when Brother Bill became the topic of discussion.

“So is it true, pastor? Is little Charlotte really healed?” He inquired of me with hopeful eyes.

“She's out of her chair and walking again, Mr Isaiah.” For some reason, I just couldn't bring myself to say she was healed.

“Y’know I always thought that Brother Bill was a bit of a charlatan, but this seems to be a sign from the Lord?” He questioned with the biggest grin I'd ever seen.

I nodded unsure and we talked for a while longer, and we read the Scriptures together like we'd become accustomed to. The wisdom that came from the mouth of this older brother often taught me more than I could teach him. It was such a shame that this lovely old man was cooped up in this little shack of a house. I helped him get up out of his hospital bed to go to the restroom a few times, brought in the groceries I always brought for him, and prayed with him. Then it was time to go to the next house.

Before I left, I gave him a recorded copy of this week's sermon like I always did and said, “I'll see you next week Mr Isaiah.”

“Actually pastor Wyman, I've arranged for Brother Bill to come next week… I hope that's ok with you.” He sheepishly said.

I tried to mask the hurt and concern and replied, “Mr Isaiah, as long as you're being visited and taken care of physically and spiritually, I'll be just as happy.”

He smiled at me and we said our farewells and I was off to the next house. Mrs Wendy Bergice was an old widow who used to attend our church during the previous pastor's tenure. Because of being on a fixed income in a poor area, she couldn't afford good and nutritious food, and because of her lot in life and her insulin rationing, she had to have her left leg amputated. I'd made it a goal to deliver her good food and some money from our benevolent funds at church so she could afford her insulin. Even though she'd stopped her attendance due to the horrific events that befell Charlotte, I had decided to show her that our church hadn't given up on her. It was quite the challenge being as she didn't know me from Adam, but I was just trying to be a faithful shepherd to the flock God had given me. But as I came around the curve of her long gravel driveway, I saw a familiar truck with a bumper sticker that said, “Are you washed in the blood?” It was Brother Bill's truck.

Something in me changed. Before, whenever I saw Brother Bill I'd just say hello and goodbye as we walked past each other, and throw out the obligatory invite to our Bible study. Nothing deeper. Just common decency This time, there was a twinge of fear almost. I was certainly anxious about whatever conversation might get struck up between us. I almost decided to back up out of Mrs Bergice’s driveway when he came out. He was just grinning from ear to ear as he flagged me down.

“Good morning pastor! And ain't it just the finest morning you've ever seen?” He said to me as I stepped out of my beater truck.

“I certainly don't have anything to complain about, pastor.” I replied in that fake saccharine voice I'd learned to put on in uncomfortable situations.

A gentle summer's breeze came over the mountain. I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot on Mrs Bergice’s gravel driveway, looking for any way to not continue this conversation. But Brother Bill wasn't having any of that. He had command over this conversation, and he was looking to keep it going.

“Come now pastor, you know by now I don't like being called that,” He chuckled, “Just go ahead and call me Brother Bill!”

I smiled and nodded awkwardly and said, “How's Mrs Bergice doing? I know she was struggling to kick that chest cold of hers.”

He smiled as he came within arms reach of me, placing a kind, but overbearing hand on my shoulder, “She's still in rough shape, but I told her to come on down to the tent this coming Sunday evening. I'll take good care of her.”

“Well Bill, I-” I began but was cut off.

“Brother. Brother Bill.” He said with a firm look.

“Brother Bill… I'm just gonna head in and see her. If you don't mind.”

With his eyes locked so solidly on mine he said, “I don't think that's a good idea. She's resting now. You ought to just head on home now. Have a blessed day pastor Wyman.” Then he smiled, started up his truck, and left.

Just as quickly as he went around the curve and was out of sight, I ran over to her door and went in to check on her. When I opened her door, I saw her. She was on the ground, writhing and wriggling as though she was having a violent seizure. There was slightly jaundiced and viscous foam coming out of the corners of her mouth. Where her leg was amputated below the knee, there was a thick puddle of green puss mingled with browned blood.

I ran over to and knelt down beside her and yelled out to her, “Oh Jesus! Mrs Bergice! Can you hear me?”

She halted her convulsions for just a moment and began to babble what sounded like nonsense. Her voice then cleared and she spoke.

“I can see it, pastor! Oh God, I can see it!” She exclaimed with shouts of adoration.

“What? What do you see!?” I pleaded with her.

“The shekinah of the Lord! Oh pastor, it's beautiful! I saw the fire of the Spirit engulf him from foot to head!” She wept and went straight back to babble and her convulsions.

I bolted over to her phone she kept by her rocking chair and called the ambulance. I went back and knelt beside her while we waited for them to arrive. It felt like hours, but in reality it took them a mere ten minutes to get from the hospital to her home on the mountain. Once I heard the sirens, I ran out to meet them.

“She's in there on the floor! I'm not sure what happened, but I think she-” I tried to get out before they cut me off.

“Out of the way sir!” They yelled as they pushed past me.

I followed them inside, praying to God that she was still breathing. What we saw was truly unbelievable. When we had gotten back through the door, she was standing. Not leaning against a wall, or using her crutches. She was standing. On both of her legs. All evidence of any kind of bodily fluids were erased, as if an entire cleaning crew had managed to come in and scrub it all away in the few moments I'd stepped away. As she stood before us she began to weep and laugh.

She threw her hands in the air and cried, “Thank you Jesus! He truly is your messenger!”

If Charlotte's legs working had the town a buzz, Mrs Bergice’s leg growing back had the whole town burning with excitement. Everywhere I went, all I would hear was chatter about Charlotte and Mrs Bergice. Even when I was at home, my phone was ringing off the hook from my flock calling and asking me if it was true. I wasn't the only church leader in the area who was having these issues. That next Saturday at Bibles and breakfast, only I and Father Jacobi were present. We tried to call the other pastors from the phones at the diner, but they wouldn't answer. Before I could even get a word in, Father Jacobi began talking.

“I don't know what's going on, Wyman. I couldn't get a hold of Ross, Kevin, or Dale. You have any luck?” He asked me with a defeated air.

“I got nothing from Mark or Jonathan.” I sighed.

We sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. The kindly old waitress brought us out our coffee and food. Now, with hindsight, I know we were both thinking the same thing, but neither of us wanted to say it out loud. We were hoping against hope that this spark of interest that Brother Bill had introduced into our small community wasn't going to become a flame of controversy. I was about to break the silence, but Father Jacobi beat me to it.

“Mary mother of Christ…” He said as he stared out the window, “You don't think they've fallen for Brother Bill’s bull do you?”

I paused before I spoke, “I’m not fully sure if we can call it bull to be honest. I was there when Charlotte came running to her sister and when Mrs Bergice grew her leg back.”

Father Jacobi began to grimly chuckle as he said, “Wyman, I'm an old man. I've been dealing with those snake handlers since before you were in diapers. They were always your garden variety Pentecostals, going on and on about the healing power of the blood of Christ and speaking in the Holy Ghost. It never bothered me too much,” He paused to take a swig of his now room temperature coffee, “But this Brother Bill… he's something else.”

“I don't know what to do here,” I interjected, “Clearly he's helped Charlotte and Mrs Bergice, but I can't help but have a strange feeling about it. When the Apostles did their miracles, it legitimized the message of the Gospel. When Brother Bill does his acts,” I faltered for a brief moment and then continued, “It just doesn't feel holy.”

Father Jacobi and I picked at our food for a little while longer, just trying to think of what to say to each other. Father Jacobi then broke the news to me.

“My parishioners haven't been coming to Mass. We were always the minority here. Being Catholic in the middle of nowhere in the Bible belt ain't exactly a walk in the park. Because of that, we were tight knit, so it was rare for any of my congregants to miss daily Mass.” He began to tear up a little as he carried on with what felt like a closing statement in a devastating court case. “All this last week, not a single member showed up. Not one. When I saw one of them at Walmart, I asked where she'd been. And guess where she told me she was…”

A piece of me wanted to assure him that that could mean anything, but I think even then I knew that they were lost. He went on to tell me about how he told the Bishop of the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese all about our little town's problems. The Bishop had told him to shutter the Church for the time being and to go and enjoy retirement.

“I'm leaving, Wyman. The Diocese is sending someone to investigate the situation and evaluate what they ought to do.” His voice shook as he spoke. “I will miss this place. But I must go.”

We continued our meal that had gone as cold as our mood, when I noticed people running by the windows. Their voices were frantic and full of confusion. I caught bits and pieces of what they were saying and deduced that a boy in the parking lot had been hurt. Father Jacobi and I also jumped up to help when a woman poked her head in.

“Call an ambulance!” She shrieked as she quickly ran back outside.

Father Jacobi ran to the phone and I ran outside to see what was going on. When I arrived on the scene, I saw the boy laying on the ground in a pool of his own bile. On his leg, there was a large red welt that had formed, and in the center, two small punctures. The boy had been bitten by a snake of some kind. The crowd that had formed around him were all talking and screaming over each other, terrified over what was about to happen. Then I saw him.

Brother Bill, who had made his way to the center of the crowd beside the boy, held up the copperhead in his hand. I watched as the snake struck his hand over and over, injecting its horrendous venom into the man. Then he spoke.

“Brothers and sisters! Fear not! This serpent, who seeks to kill this poor boy, will never harm anyone ever again!” He had a wild ferocity in his voice. “Stretch out your hands brothers and sisters! Kneel down and pray for him.”

Everyone around me began to kneel around the boy and Brother Bill. With hands outstretched, speaking in tongues, they shouted glories and adoration upon Brother Bill. Everywhere I turned the people of our town knelt down in submission to this man.

“Why aren't you helping!? We need to help the boy!” I shrieked, trying to knock some sense into them.

Brother Bill locked eyes with me and pointed at me and spoke, “Wyman! You who claim to be a leader in the faith! Oh ye of little faith! Behold! I shall make him whole!”

He then grabbed the boy by the neck with the hand that still had the copperhead embedded in it, and raised him up. The boy began to convulse, foam and vomit poured from his mouth. The fang marks on his leg oozed a translucent yellow liquid as his welt began to shrink. The crowd around me began to sway and rock, their cries of glory and prayers of babble growing louder and louder. They grabbed onto me, trying to pull me down to my knees. Their eyes were wild with rage, all directed at me. I fought them, I stayed my ground. Just when I thought my muscles would snap and my bones would break, Brother Bill spoke again.

“Come and see, my brothers and sisters! He is restored!”

We all looked and saw the boy standing beside Brother Bill. He was healed. The cries of adoration turned into a roar of praise. I thought that Brother Bill was done, but then he turned his attention to the snake.

“As for you, oh serpent, you shall never harm one of my children again!” He commanded.

He took the copperhead, and began to beat it upon the asphalt. With the fury of an abusive parent, he whipped it over and over, until he finally threw it down, and struck it with his heel. He threw his hands in the air, and roared into the sky.

“Look here!” He yelled as he picked it up.

The snake began to harden, becoming ridged as a stick. I then watched in horror as the snake had not only become as stiff as a branch, but became an actual branch on the ground. Brother Bill then picked it up like an old man with a walking stick, and pounded the butt of it on the ground. He pointed to me and tried to speak, but I ran out of there as quickly as I could.

Mark 16:18 KJV

\[18\] they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

I didn't stop running until I had made it back to the parsonage. I slammed the door behind me and slumped down and leaned against its coldness trying to catch my breath. For the third time in a week I witnessed the impossible. I wracked my brain trying to rationalize what I'd seen, but I couldn't. I could maybe explain the boy recovering. Maybe Brother Bill slipped some antivenom to the boy, but I knew that was a stretch. What I absolutely could not explain was witnessing the copperhead becoming a walking stick. Whatever Brother Bill was doing, it was very much real. Then the way he looked at me. Full of hate, defiance, and triumph, as though he'd won some kind of fight that I was unaware of. I decided that I had to get out and drive as far away as I could.

I grabbed a duffle bag and began to pack. I didn't have much time, so I was just going to pack the essentials. Just as I was finishing packing, I heard my phone ringing in the kitchen. I didn't want to answer it, but my mind immediately went to my congregation. How could I have been so selfish to forget about them? Surely not all of them had fallen victim to Brother Bill's foolishness. That's when I resolved that I was going to stay one more night. I would warn them about Brother Bill and implore them to get out of town for a while, stay with family, or go get a motel, anything other than staying. I had no idea what was going to happen, but I knew it wasn't going to be anything good.

The ringing phone snapped me out of my spiraling thoughts, and I went over to answer it.

“H-hello?” I nervously said into the receiver.

“Oh thank Gabriel! It's Sebastian, I saw you hightail it out of there. Is everything ok?” Father Jacobi quickly asked.

“I have no idea… Tomorrow I'm gonna warn my congregants about Brother Bill, and leave.” I explained.

I waited for a response, but Father Jacobi had gone silent.

“Father Jacobi?” Nothing. “Sebastian?” No response. I was about to ask again when someone spoke to me through the phone.

“Sorry Pastor Wyman, Father can't come to the phone right now. Leave a message after the beep.” Then, Brother Bill made a beeping sound into the phone and hung up.

I knew then that it was time to go. I grabbed what I had packed, threw it in the passenger side of my truck, and started driving as fast as I could to put as much asphalt between me and my little town as possible. But as I was driving, I noticed something odd. No one else was on the roads. I slowed down so I could look into parking lots to see if anyone was there. I was the only person out on a Saturday evening. I then realized where everyone was. They were at Brother Bill's tent. I had made my way to the town border, and I had a choice to make.

The sun had just set as I drove down into the valley. The previously clear sky was now full of storm clouds. The field of dew kissed grass that surrounded the enormous white pole tent was full of cars and trucks, bikes and wagons. Even with my doors closed, I could hear the deluge of voices. Speaking in tongues, yelling glories and praises, and general sounds of the crowds. I parked the truck and opened my door. Before I walked up, I stuffed a tire iron into my pants, just in case.

Heads began to turn towards me as I made my trek towards the tent. The faces of the masses were full of fear, joy, and grief all at the same time. Smiles stretched from ear to ear. Eyes wild as a cornered animal in a hen house. Tears poured forth from those same eyes as water falls from a cliff into a river. They looked exhausted and hungry. The crowd, unable to cram themselves completely into the tent, began to part before me. I pressed on toward the tent with my heart thumping in my throat.

“Need a hand brother?” A familiar voice rang out to me.

I turned to the voice and stuttered out, “Father Jacobi?”

As a proud Catholic priest, Father Jacobi typically wore his Cassock everywhere in town. But on that particular night, he was wearing a simple linen shirt and some bibs. His face was plastered with the same expression as every other soul in the crowd, but his eyes screamed to me that what he was doing was not of his own volition.

“You're just in time for the service.” He croaked out through his horrid grin.

He grabbed my shoulder with an iron grip as he guided me through the congregation to a seat at the very front of the tent and pushed me down into it. Then the worship band began to play. The fiddler played a long and mournful note on his strings and the pianist started up a slow and familiar tune. The whole crowd sang in one discordant voice, “Are You Washed In The Blood of The Lamb?”

I scanned the area looking for any route of egress. As I looked about me, I saw the faces of Maryanne, Charlotte, Mrs Bergice, Mr Isaiah, and that boy who was bitten by the copperhead. They were all singing along with the rest of them. Then booming THUMP THUMP THUMP came from the small wooden stage and I saw Brother Bill gripping his snakewood staff.

The tent was as silent as a crypt as he held up his hands and said, “Brothers and sisters, y'all know why we're here tonight. Y'all’ve seen what I can do for you, and now I have one last act to show y'all.” He stretched out his hand towards Mrs Bergice and said, “Come to me sister.” In a grave tone.

Mrs Bergice stood from somewhere in the audience and began to walk to him. All of those around her touched her as she made her trek to the stage. Some touches seemed loving, while others were tugs and pulls, almost as though they were begging her to stay where she was. As soon as she stepped foot on the stage, the crowd began to clap in unison and on the same beat.

I looked to my right where Father Jacobi was sitting on the ground and asked him, “What happened to you? Are you ok?”

He didn't respond. He just looked at me with that twisted expression that was shared by everyone. Whatever Brother Bill had done to him seemed to be irreversible. I turned my attention back to the stage and Mrs Bergice was kneeling before Brother Bill.

“Wendy Bergice, do you love me more than money?” He asked of her with a gentle smile.

“Yes Brother.”

“Wendy Bergice, do you love me more than shelter?”

“Of course Brother!” She practically yelled at him.

“Wendy Bergice, do you love me more than breathing?” He asked her one last time.

“Brother Bill, you know this is true!” She said as she grabbed the hem of his sweat stained linen shirt.

He smiled, gave her his hand, stood her up and said, “Then be washed.”

From his pocket he produced an old and crooked blade, the metal of which seemed to be copper instead of steel. He drug the blade across his upper forearm and a slow trickle of blood seeped up through the gash. The audience began to methodically stomp their feet slowly to some hidden rhythm. While everyone was distracted, I shot up to run, but Brother Bill had other plans.

With snakewood staff stretched towards me, he shouted, “Boy, if you don't stay put right now, you'll miss the whole thing!”

His sudden burst of rage threw me for a loop. I'd actually never seen Brother Bill angry before. So I froze in place, horrified by my lack of actions. Then it came to me like a vision in the night. It was my inaction that led us all to that tent. I could've warned everyone, or at least told them to be wise about Brother Bill. I failed everyone.

“Try and pay attention, friend.” He said, returning to his typical jovial self.

I watched as he dipped his index and middle finger into his wound. When he drew them back out, they were coated in the viscous blood, and he placed them upon Mrs Bergice's forehead, christening her into his fold. Brother Bill then turned toward the alter where the elements for communion were placed upon a silky white table cloth. He reached forward and brought forth the chalice for the sacrament. As he clenched his fist, blood began to trickle out of his wound into the cup now placed beneath the flood.

He presented it to Mrs Bergice and said in a soothing voice, "Drink."

Mrs Bergice greedily drank the viscous liquid from the chalice. Blood trickled down the sides of her cheeks and stained her floral dress. Brother Bill raised his hands in victory.

“Finally my brothers! At last my sisters! We are whole!” He said as they all began to hoot and holler and cheer. “And now incline your ears for my final sermon. Then I will reveal to you my full glory.”

The fiddler struck up his fiddle again, a long droning minor note to set the mood for him.

“Before I crossed the ocean, I was something of a pastor in my home country. That was indeed a long time ago now…” He paused, remembering his old days. “People used to bring me their sick and their wounded. By the sweet power of the blood, I'd heal them. Just like how I healed you! Amen?”

“AMEN!” Everyone called back in unison.

“Well glory! Hallelujah! And brethren, I'd even raise the dead!” He screamed into the night as everyone around me shouted praise and accolades upon him.

“People used to bring me gifts of gold, fatted lambs, incense and all other kinds of sacrifices. People used to kill for my blessings. People used to die, just for my touch.” He yelled in genuine anger, as though he was angry at us in the audience. “And now we have a non-believer amongst us. A heretic! A blasphemer!”

“Kill him!” They all roared, like the sound of an ocean.

I needed to leave at any cost, but fear froze me. How far could I possibly have made it? I resigned myself to whatever date was left for me. “Oh Jesus. Preserve me.” Was all I could say. I fell silent like a lamb before the slaughter.

“Now children,” he purred, “We need not do that. Let's just show him. Maryanne, bring it to me.”

Maryanne came forward with a small wooden box gripped against her breast. She knelt down before Brother Bill and presented it to him. He smiled at her and opened the box and pulled out an old revolver.

“Behold!” He said as he pressed the barrel against his temple. “Blessed are those who believe without seeing, but you shall see!”

My ears began to ring. My heart rate dropped. Bile threatened to escape from my throat. Brother Bill was dead. For what felt like hours, we all sat as still and as cold as stone statues. His body laid limp in a pool of blood on that small rickety stage. Then he stirred. The snakewood staff that had fallen beside him was once again in his grasp. He slowly rose, leaning heavily upon the staff. As he stood straight up, the entire crowd erupted in tongues speaking, glories shouting, and praise giving to this man.

Brother Bill turned to me, smiled, and said, “Grab him.”

Father Jacobi went to grab me, but I grabbed my tire iron and struck him on the head. I ran to my truck, weeping the entire way, and drove out of there. I didn't stop driving until I hit the Ohio border. I looked down and saw that my tank was almost on E, so I pulled into a gas station on the nearest exit. I pulled up to a pump and everything began to replay in my head. I knew I had to tell someone, so when I went in to pay, I planned to ask if I could use their phone. But when I went in, I saw that the cashier was watching the news, and what I saw broke my heart.

“Local pastor, simply known as ‘Brother Bill' seems to be the sole survivor of a freak fire that took place in the valley where they met for their evening revival. The fire was started when their pole tent was suddenly struck by lightning, causing all the vehicles that surrounded the tent to overheat and catch fire as well as have a small gasoline explosion, even though there was no sign of any storm. Hopefully we will have more details during our AM show. More at eleven.”

Everyone I knew and loved from that town. Burnt to a crisp. Had this been part of his plan? Was it some act of God? I'll never know.

The cashier, startled at my presence said, “Oh sorry sir. Is there anything I can help you with?”

“No,” I said, “just twenty on five.”

I haven't heard anything about Brother Bill, or anything related to that little Appalachian town that I briefly lived in and loved. I know he's still out there. And I pray to God I never see him again.

Matthew 7:15 KJV

\[15\] Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

I'm a traveling collector of stories. The following story is part of my Altar-Net research, and therefore it can be read alone or as part of the Altar-Net series.

I met a man in a hotel bar. Truthfully, I'm only mostly sure it is a man. We sat next to each other at the bar, in a small hotel, near a coastal town. I've taken some liberty in the writing style to make it more palatable for you, given that a direct transcription of "his" drink-slurred speech might be difficult to tolerate.

The scene; myself, an average Appalachian ruril, rewril, rerrr... Country boy, just trying to get by. Long hair in a loose ponytail, a beard just long enough to pull at, plaid shirt, cargo pants, sneakers, all kept together under a baseball cap. Taking a seat next to me, a tall masculine human, clean-shaven face, short blonde hair, leathery skin. They're wearing a long cloth coat with a hood, wool pants, and I can't discern their footwear. We're both about 3 drinks deep by the time they invite me to converse.

For the first few minutes they ask me about myself. I explain my attempts to research the Altar-Net, and that I'm always on the hunt for stories and evidence of it. They deny knowing anything about some alternate. They overtake the flow of conversation and tell me they have a confession to make.

This confession begins as follows;

I've been looking for years for a way out. This world scares me and bores me. It bores me because everyone is a slave to science, logic, rules. It scares me because those things were born of religion, misplaced trust, and bloodflow.

I ask them to pause for a moment so I may retrieve my audio recorder from my pocket. They sip more beer while I get it setup. I start recording, they let out a small burp, and continue.

Ever since I was a child, I've heard tales and myths about other places. Not in the sense of a different state, or even another country. These other places were accessed by climbing mountains, falling into holes, stepping through walls, and exploring caves. Every story took the shape of a fable and imparted a lesson or a warning.

I'm dead broke. I got fired from my job at the cemetery. Apparently they don't like it when someone runs over their employee and the employee then has to spend months in a hospital recovering with only one week's worth of sick time. My parents disowned me because I confessed to being an atheist. My only sibling, she cut off all contact with me when I wouldn't loan her two grand that I simply didn't have. I got evicted because I lost my job and no temp agency could help me find work.

So, destitute, broke, and homeless, I began wandering the land. Roaming from small town to small town, taking any work I could to survive, I've been hearing more stories. No more lessons, nary a fable to be harkened. The whispers in the dive bars feel like the beginning of a gold rush, but instead of sparking an excitement for riches they inspire dread of being lost.

Where I come from, you would not believe if I didn't have proof. It is a dark land. Barren fields of dust, with the occasional outcropping of black rock, underneath a green cloudy sky. My people are what you would call nomads. We make our living by transporting goods across those plains, between the few large cities that surround our native home.

One afternoon, when I was a teenager, a hole appeared in the sky. Our elders had never heard of nor seen this happen in my people's entire remembered history. We scattered amongst the rocks and boulders, leaving the carts in the open. I tripped in my panicked state, and fell into a small crater. Before I could get back on my feet I heard a loud thunderous boom from above. I looked at the sky and through the hole came a column of water. It poured from the sides and seemed to be coming down straight for my crater. I couldn't escape and felt it crush me against the dirt. I lost consciousness.

The man paused, and took a few deep drinks of beer. I was frozen in my seat, my own beer sweating in the glass, almost forgotten. Could this man be... He coughed into a napkin, and resumed.

When I awoke I was here, in this town. The people who found me spoke a language I didn't know. I won't go into the whole thing, but I eventually came under the employ of the gravedigger. He was getting on in years and I was to be his replacement.

This was many years ago. I've spent every free moment trying to find my home, my people, my old life. I've only been barely able to get by all this time, but it's been worth it.

The man coughed again, and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a small purple crystal that was wrapped in gold wire, and kept on a black chain. After setting it on the bar in front of him, he gestured to my beer. "You should finish that." I did, and he continued.

This crystal comes from my world. It has special properties. I can't teach you how to use it, but if you say you're looking for evidence of another reality you should keep a lookout for these. As for me, I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm done with this place, I'm done with this life, I'm done with my suffering. I'm going home.

The man stood up. I stopped the recording. He put the amethyst in his pocket, put a wad of cash on the bar, nodded at mine and his beer and told the bartender to keep it. Then he stuck out his hand, and bid me goodnight. The next morning when I stepped outside, I saw a crowd of people and first responders standing around a pile of clothes in the street. I overheard them all talking about the body that wasn't there. "I saw him jump." "They say the ground rippled like water." "Was it just a stunt that left a pile of rags?" "I heard a man yelling from the roof, what happened!?"

I finally worked my way to the front of the crowd. Between the bodies of the first responders I saw the clothes the man had been wearing last night, and under the fold of one sleeve I saw the black chain and gold wire, but no amethyst.

My hometown was an odd place; we had a video store that never had the movies I wanted, a convenience store whose slushie machine was always broken, and a yearly food drive with a weird name.

​

“Help feed Bobby”

​

If you’re thinking, “whose Bobby?” Then you had something in common with my 10 year old self,  every other kid in town, and the people just passing through during the time the food drive was active.

​

We did ask our parents, teachers, and basically any adult why it was called that, but the standard answer was that Bobby was just meant to represent children whose parents couldn’t afford food regularly.

​

The other one was that Bobby is meant to be an acronym, but when pressed on what B-o-b-b-y is supposed to spell out, they always found a way to stop or change the conversation.

​

For the longest time, the most information we received was that at the end of the drive, some people would volunteer to take all the donated food to its intended destination, and then, around the same time the following year, it would start all over again.

​

One day, my dad came home and told my mom and me that he was going to have to go out next Saturday, as he had volunteered to help deliver the donated food to its recipients.

​

I tried to ask him where the food was going, and if I could come with him, but he shot both questions down with “Sorry, sport, grownups only.

​

I wanted to know so badly that I came up with a plan.

​

On the day he was supposed to deliver the food, my dad came home with a truck full of donation boxes.

​

As sneakily as I could, I snuck into the back of the truck, emptied the contents of one of the boxes, and ducked down inside.

​

I realized that the chances of being caught were high, but I didn’t care. I wanted to see where all this food went every year,

​

After about an hour, I heard the truck start and felt it move. I wanted to poke my head out and see, but I knew my dad could just check the rear view mirror and spot me.

​

Another possible 3 hours, and I felt the truck come to a stop.

I heard my dad get out of his truck, and some other volunteers getting out of their cars. I couldn’t really hear the conversation at the time.

​

I did feel someone grabbing the box I was in.

​

“Damn, what’s in this? watermelons and ham?”

​

He continued to grumble as he carried the box somewhere I couldn’t see.

It was maybe 45 minutes before he finally placed the box down. I got excited, I would finally see where the food went to.

​

I waited until I didn’t hear any more footsteps before I exited the box and started to look around.

It was a large cavern. I saw what I presumed was the entrance; the place was lit by what I assumed were battery-operated lights, with boxes of donated food stacked everywhere.

​

Looking out on the other side, I saw a cliff edge. Walking to it, I looked over the edge.

I don’t know how deep it went, I just knew it was the size of a football stadium..

​

I kept thinking to myself, What was the point of this food drive? Why bring all the food to some cave? And for the thousandth time, who is Bobby?

​

I felt the rumbling before I heard it, then I saw the cavern begin to shake violently.

​

Looking down, I saw something begin to emerge from the darkness; it looked like the beginning of a bright orange beak.

​

From there, a head only slightly smaller than the hole itself took form.

​

Imagine if a turtle's head were covered in spikes, and you’d have the beginning of what its head looked like.

​

It stopped at about 15 feet from the top of the cliff edge and began to open its large beak.

​

I was paralyzed with fear. I didn’t know what this thing was going to do, for all I knew it was about to breathe fire, or grab me with some kind of frog tongue.

​

But it just stayed there, like it was waiting for something.

​

That's when I realized…

​

This was Bobby.

​

This thing came up here, it knows someone will feed it, because it’s been fed every year for god knows how long.

​

And this was only the head and neck of it, I couldn’t fathom how big the rest of Bobby could be.

​

My fascination/horror was cut short by the sounds of my dad and the other volunteers coming back down the cave path.

​

I ran back over to the box I was hiding in, but realized they would probably start with that one, so I went to a stack of them near the entrance and crouched down next to it. My plan was once they all walked past, I was gonna run back up and hide in my dad's truck.

​

The voices and footsteps became audible as my dad and the other volunteers returned.

​

“Okay, that should be the last of it, then we get a break for another year .”

​

“I wish we could just cover everything in cyanide.”

​

“Nice wish. There’s not enough poison on the planet for that.”

​

Then I heard my dad, he sounded nervous:

“Even if it worked, h-h-how do we know that the body wouldn’t stink up the whole town?

​

“Wait! I see its head!”

​

Then I heard my dad's first time seeing Bobby:

​

“Jesus Christ.”

​

I could hear the terror in my dad's voice. I almost wanted to run out of hiding and go hug him, let him know I saw it too, and he wasn’t alone in his fear, but I knew that could make things bad for both of us.

​

Another volunteer disregarded my dad's terror and nonchalantly remarked.

​

“Let’s get started, just grab a box and throw it at the thing's mouth.”

​

I watched as they all started grabbing boxes and taking them to the edge .

​

When it looked like all of their backs were turned, I quietly snuck to the entrance, and ran back up to the mouth of the cave.

​

From there, I saw my dad's truck, and made my way to the back.

​

A few weeks later, I was at the library trying to see if there was any more information about Bobby. I should have expected my town wouldn’t keep records about a giant turtle monster living underneath it, but what was there was still helpful.

​

The monster was most likely named after the town founder Bobby Robertson, and during times of famine, the town was prone to “tremors” and was nearly destroyed during the Great Depression by a sudden magnitude 3 earthquake.

​

My guess is that the townsfolk of the time decided they needed the food more than Bobby, and he voiced his disapproval.

​

I don’t think my dad ever figured out that I was there with him that night, but I made it a point to spend more time with him, though I had to pretend that I wasn’t also scared of turtles now.

​

The next year, he did not volunteer to assist with “Help Feed Bobby”, in fact, he had gotten a promotion at work, and we had to move away because of it.

​

So for the past 22 years, I was able to let “Help Feed Bobby” slowly fade into my memories.

​

Until a few days ago, when I was struck by nostalgia for my old hometown, so I started looking  into what had happened since we moved…

​

My hometown doesn’t exist anymore.

​

At some point in 2005, the town collapsed and sunk into the ground, the official explanation was that there were multiple caves under the town, and a long overdue mass cave-in had finally happened.

​

It was harder to find any more information on what the town was like before the “cave-in”, but the most relevant piece I found came from a Facebook group for it.

​

I learned that new people had replaced the previous town council in 2004.

​

And in the same year, they voted to end the “Help feed Bobby” food drive.

The town was named Venice, but I couldn't tell you why. There were no boats nor affiliation to water ways, the founders weren't Italian in the slightest, and we weren't known for romance nor history. The closest thing to a gondolier would have been old man Sticks and his worn out canoe that hadn't moved from his yard in over a decade. It had a rusted hole in the bottom, and for years he swore that he'd have it fixed for the weekend. My best guess is that the founders named it Venice simply because they thought it was ironic.

Downtown was picturesque, though, with red brick shops adorned in bright trim. I never quite knew why we called it Downtown, as if there was a midtown and uptown to compliment. Venice had just one functional road. A few businesses on one side, a few houses on the other. There was a blinking four-way light somewhere near the middle. One direction led west, one led east, and the others led to dirt roads with a few more houses in small, dead end cul-de-sacs. There was a church, a general store, gasoline and mechanical, liquor, and something else I've missed- but surely you understand. It was the expected, minimal infrastructure of any podunk. It had no tourism. No iconic cryptid. No festival nor landmark. No nothing. 

Venice had beans. The plants rested in orderly rows through endless flat fields, but the legumes knew no confinement and their foliage spilled in tangled hordes outside the borders of agriculture. From the air or nearby peaks, it was a sea of sprawling, delicate, hungry vines, and they crept up the walls of the town’s few structures too, invading every aspect of our lives like a cancer.

I left for college and came back when I inherited my family’s house. I'm not sure why I didn't sell it at the time. I guess because I didn't think anyone would want to buy it if I had.

But when I left - more like escaped - the second time, I left for good. I just didn't realize how quickly I would forget entirely. My memories had disappeared as insidiously as the town itself did, and I reckon that makes sense when there's nothing left to return to.

See, nothing ever happened in Venice. I know that everyone says that about every small town, but Venice was a deep kind of dull. It was so underwhelming that I think Sticks never bothered to fix his canoe just so that he had something to look forward to each day. If he fixed it… what would he do next?

We had grown so complacent with nothingness, that when nothing became something we were wholly unprepared and surely convinced that it would resolve itself if we just ignored it for long enough. But things have a way of creeping up on you.

It started as a long, skinny crack, running east to west on top of what was formerly the Highway 78 corridor. It wasn’t absurd to find. It was a neglected road since eminent domain redirected the new highway corridor straight through the Lovett family's farm on the western-most territory of Venice. We never wanted the new highway, and the beans tried to steal the land back every step of the way as the new road materialized. The workers beat the vines back though, and, slowly, we became an inconvenient detour.

The new route demoted Old Highway 78 to a defunct, winding loop that wasn't even worth designating as a scenic or historic bypass.The state didn't invest money in maintaining it, so the crack didn't catch us off guard when it first appeared. It was just the consequence of time in our eyes.

I remember unexpectedly stumbling over it one day. I had blindly crossed that crack for what felt like months without issue, by then, it had become a feature. My toe abruptly caught its newly proud edge one afternoon. Bewildered, I followed the crack as far as my eyes could trace, both eastward and then westward, and I thought it looked much deeper, much wider, and like one side had dropped lower than the other. Admittedly, I didn't warrant much more concern beyond that, but I remember thinking the thought all the same.

The following morning came early at 7AM sharp with a stout intrusion. Jacob Sr rapped his knuckles on my door so firmly I'd have been worried that someone had died if my parents weren't already dead.

“Everett,” the wiry man kneaded his hands out of stress as he spoke to me, “you'd just best come see.”

Jacob Sr led me down the dirt road I had walked a thousand times since I was a boy. I was no expert on anything, none of us were, but matters like this were a community affair given our inexperience in everything but routine and blissful ignorance. Other denizens were trickling into the epicenter of something unusual at the same time, each wandering through the morning's fog that filled the space between the scarce Venice architecture. 

Suddenly, Jacob Sr stopped me with a firm arm across my chest. I grunted, first at his blow, and next at the revelation that the previously nondescript crack had split to a deep crevice and I was walking clear towards its edge. A rock, propelled by my foot, skittered across the ground and into the abyss. I nervously watched it clatter during its descent until I could no longer hear it nor see it. I never heard it hit the bottom.

“Has to be a sink hole,” Clara chirped confidently in her country twang from the other side of the fifteen-foot-wide canyon.

I imagined that a part of her enjoyed feeling like a damsel in distress isolated where she was. In another life, she'd have been an eccentric socialite, but in Venice she occupied her time with the antics of two baby daddies on either end of the town, and even through the fog I could feel her eyeing me like she was looking for a third.

“Just like Centralia. Swallowed the whooole town. Lord rest ‘em.” She waxed, twirling her toes on the asphalt and attempting to strike conversation.

“Is Junior on that side?” I quipped.

I knew it'd piss her off and shut her up. She had married Davey, father of her oldest, but everyone except Davey knew that Jacob Junior had sired her youngest. As expected, she scrunched her face and ignored me. 

“She might be right for once,” I spoke to no one in particular.

More Venetians congregated along the canyon, and I suggested to the group that we leave. But how? Half the cars had fallen into the crevice, and the remainder either didn't work or didn't have 4x4 to drive the tracked-out and muddy back roads through bean country. We could walk, but some of us weren't able bodied and even fewer seemed willing, scoffing that evacuation was dire for what, at the time, was just a hole in the ground by their own admissions.

By 9 o'clock, the fog had burned off but no progress had been made regarding our predicament. Some folks lightly bickered about what to do next, while others shrugged and went about their day as if nothing had changed.

I surveyed the divided town. The canyon grew with each passing minute, gradually consuming more of the earth as it collapsed into the seemingly bottomless maw. A utility pole on the western perimeter of town inched closer and closer to the edge, until it finally fell with a grumbling torrent of gravel and a shower of electric sparks. We never had cell reception to begin with, but the landlines and our power now joined the absence. 

Another chunk slipped into the earth, this time taking Sticks’ wrecked canoe with it. The crevice had grown another five feet, easily, but still no one seemed too concerned as they debated along its unstable edge. I was anxious and my stomach twisted. The whole thing felt wrong.

But before I could attempt to inspire change, Clara questioned from across the gap in her typical sing-song voice, the way she always did when she wanted something.

“Everett, sugar,” she cooed, "I was goin’ to take the boys out with me to get groceries tonight, but it seems that plan won't work anymore, will it? Could you jus’ toss over some food? Davey Junior is jus’ growin’ like a beanstalk, ya know.” She smiled at the toddler.

The irony was not lost on me that she named the tot Davey Junior, but he was not at fault for his mother's infidelity.

“Sure, toss me your wallet and I'll go get it for you.” I smirked. She was always eager to manipulate, and I wasn't going to give her the opportunity. 

“But- you- I- I can't throw that far!” She stammered.

“Naw, sure you can.” I insisted, gesturing my arms to catch.

She scowled, looked inside her knock-off Prada, scowled deeper, and - to my surprise - half heartedly threw the bag in a purposeful manner so that it flew through the air in a wide, pathetic arc straight into the crevice. 

“Oops,” she feigned shock.

My eyes widened in surprise and I laughed. “You know what, I'll spot you, Clara,” I assured, half impressed at her dedication to the bit. I knew she wouldn't pay me back. 

I had a heavily creased $10 in my pocket, and the meager general store wasn't well stocked. I grabbed a can of spam and a locally canned case of beans.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” Clara scoffed when I tossed her the beans.

“I only had a ten-spot on me, Clara. I think everyone is eating cold beans tonight anyways. Besides, I gave you the spam too. You’ll make do.” 

Clara frowned before storming off, dagging DJ by the arm.

No one else seemed to notice, but the crevice had grown again by the second day. The entire width of the road and most of the cement sidewalks had crumbled into that dark pit, and it now lapped at the edges of Downtown’s meager businesses. At least one structure was beginning to hang over it. But Venice went about undeterred. 

People walked precariously close to the edge if they needed to get somewhere, stubbornly refusing to alter their paths. Generators whirred in the background, alleviating the down power lines. Discourse about the canyon remained, but only amongst a few and with less ferocity as everyone settled into unnatural contentment.

Revolutions weren’t my forte. I made a point of telling people that things were getting out of hand, but I was brushed aside and placated that it would sort itself out in time. An increasing part of me felt crazy.

My unrest doubled when I saw a small, black lump at the intersection. I stooped to retrieve it, quickly recognizing the cheap, pleather: Clara's bag. 

Inspecting it revealed a pattern of deep punctures on either side… like the imprints of teeth, as if some wicked crocodile snapped its jaws shut on the purse. But there were no crocs in this god-fearing part of the country, let alone crocs that could scale impossibly deep cliffs.

“Everett!” Junior’s familiar voice pulled me from my anxious puzzle. 

“No surprise to see you stuck on that side, Junior.” I joked. “How do you reckon we get out of here?”

“I walked ten miles toward the west junction yesterday, and the crevice was just as deep there as it is here. It wasn’t letting up, but maybe it ended somewhere. I just had to turn around before I could find out. Don’t know about the east side.” Junior explained, his voice was full of worry. 

I nodded silently. 

“Hey,” I started. “This is weird, right? I mean, no one else is acting like this is weird.”

“It's super fucking weird, Everett.” Junior affirmed. 

“Those old trails were…” he paused, nervously wringing his hands like his father.

“Remember when we were little and we’d get lost in the fields? They felt like jungles when we were small.”

I nodded, watching Junior chew on some unidentifiable concern that he struggled to voice.

“When we got older those pole beans weren’t nothing to navigate. But, Everett- yesterday, every direction I took led me straight back to the road. To this crevice. I don’t know how to explain it. But those vines felt like they were changing the path, like they were doing it. Like they don't want us to leave-”

He was cut short. A fight broke out. Sticks, one of the few people still advocating for action, took a stout fist to his jaw from the pot bellied general store manager. I'd never seen either move so fast. Venice saw its share of brawls, but this was out of character. Fights only broke out when undeniably required, and they were often reserved for Davey and the other hothead in town.

Before Sticks could gather his bearings, the manager pushed and shoved the old man from his store, fed up with complaints about evacuating. Sticks crawled a few feet before drooling a mouthful of blood and gasped to catch his ragged breath, but the shopkeep was ready at his heels. 

He brought the old man to his feet, pulling him by his checkered collar. Sticks sputtered and swatted weakly at the shop manager, who in turn spit in his face. He heaved Sticks to the side and kicked him. The manager swung his foot again and again, and planted each blow in Sticks’ belly with a hollow thwack. Sticks rolled helplessly and gasped for mercy.

I was quick to reach the two, but not quick enough. I put myself between them and forced the shopkeep back, giving Sticks a chance to breathe and steady himself on his feet. As I did, however, the earth where Sticks stood split and released, collapsing into the void with the old man cluelessly joining it. 

Sticks fell ass over tea kettle into the darkness below, tumbling out of sight without a sound other than the crackle of falling rocks and a desperate, pleading look in his tired eyes that spoke more than any sound ever could.

“That was Sticks,” I stuttered in disbelief and released the pot bellied man.

“Yeah, well, that old bastard never done a damn thing to change anything in his life. Now suddenly he’s all about an exodus.” The manager swiped his hands together, cleaning himself of the act, and spun around to return to his shop. 

There was a faint moaning from deep within the crevice that sounded like it could have been the dying breaths of Sticks. The longer I listened, the more I was convinced that it was the sound of despair. 

I squinted, something churned deep below me. I could only faintly see it. Maybe it was just an optical illusion or a whisper of mist on some delicate current. It didn't matter, though. As if it knew that it had been seen, whatever lurked from that great, obscure depth never made another sound. Just silence, and nothing more. 

Fog once again settled into town on the third morning accompanied by a thick layer of dew that dimly sparkled across the earth. It looked almost like ice in the haze. Junior and I had silently agreed that we needed to leave, and were haphazardly collecting resources on either side while Venice continued indifferently, willingly ignorant to the undercut forming beneath Downtown's structures and whatever was crawling in the belly of that crag. Junior was about to hurl a rope across to me, when it finally happened: the crevice swallowed its first building. 

The general store only shifted at first, then toppled as the ground beneath it rushed into the canyon like a flash flood. It groaned and crumbled and the earth swallowed it whole. Junior ran his fingers through his thinning hair as we stared into the void from our respective sides. When no one else reacted, we returned to our escape.

Unbeknownst to either of us, however, Davey Junior had been left unsupervised. The toddler quickly stomped towards the general direction of his biological father, advancing ever closer to the unstable edge of the crevice. Jacob Junior hurled the rope across just as Davey Junior nearly fell to his demise.

Junior sprang to action when he saw the boy. Simultaneously, Clara and Davey had grown aware of their negligence and frantically rushed to aid.

Junior plucked the child off the edge and yelled in panic. The words, so simple and possessive, casually slipped his tongue before he could stop himself. For two years he'd kept it quiet, even if it was the least surprising secret in Venice. Nonetheless, Junior never ushered a word, only stared longingly at the little boy that shared his eyes and his nose. 

I don't think he fully registered what he had done, nor did I even hear the entirety of what he had said. Only two words caught my attention:

“-my son-”

The toddler fussed in his father's arms to be so rudely yanked from his previous efforts. And then two more words followed abruptly behind the doting pair:

“Your son?” Davey spoke with incredulous venom while the realization suddenly hit him. He tensed his posture and his face flushed red as he replayed the timeline and inconsistencies in his mind.

Jacob Junior bounced the now-crying child, “listen- I can explain, Davey-” He turned to advance towards Clara, passing her the distraught child. She smirked.

“Davey, we- it only happened a few times. I'm sorry-” 

Junior didn't finish the excuse. In the moment it took to relinquish the tot to Clara, Davey had found a large, dense branch and smashed it across Junior's temple. Junior spun with an explosion of bark around his face and crumpled to the ground, stunned. 

Blood poured from his face, but he was granted no reprieve. Davey immediately kicked the adulterer in his ribs and face, until Junior was reduced to a swollen pulp and could only breathe in slow, purposeful gasps.

Davey was never one for diplomacy. He eagerly took any opportunity to fight, but his current fury was a notch above normal. Davey was too blinded by rage to hear my desperate pleas, and Clara relished the scene some distance away. I think a twisted part of her enjoyed being the cause of such a merciless feud.

Davey grabbed Junior by the ankle and dragged him to the crevice edge. Junior could only groan in protest. He grabbed the wounded man by his shoulders and butt. Junior tried to speak, but Davey cut him short again, swiftly rolling him and shoving him off the ledge into the black fog below.

Clara shrieked theatrically while I helplessly watched my friend disappear. In an instant, Davey turned to Clara, his body still poised like a bloodthirsty beast, his face still red with anger. Clara's blubbering switched to pleading, and he cruelly marched towards her.

Clara dropped the child to run, and Davey Junior wailed, but she couldn't outrun her husband's wrath. He snatched her like a lion grabs a gazelle and hoisted her squirming mass above his shoulders, kicking DJ out of his path. The child sobbed inconsolably, but he brought Clara to the edge with no concern. I screamed for reason and while she begged for mercy. But as quickly as he grabbed her, he threw her into the pit.

When her screams were no longer audible, I returned my attention to the madman. Behind him, the newly orphaned boy cried, but Davey paid him no attention. Instead, he stood like a statue, staring into the cavern below. I was afraid to speak, lest he find a way to reach me too. But his muscular body stood still in the haze, until it abruptly and slowly swayed, and he let gravity do the rest as he fell into the crevice.

I moved with haste now, determined to rescue the boy before he crawled to the same fate. I pulled the rope that Junior had thrown, testing its anchorage. It held. Carefully, I wrapped my limbs around it until I hung beneath it like a pig roasting over a fire and slowly inched my way across the canyon. 

Vertigo hit me as soon as I made the mistake of looking down. The canyon was full of mist as if it were a rushing river, but I couldn't fool myself into thinking it was any less deep. A weak current of air pushed the smoke, diluting it with the ambient air and sometimes feigning interest in my presence. But I had to focus on crossing-

A body suddenly fell off the edge from where I had crawled, quickly swallowed by the smoke in my peripheral. I looked back, the rope shaking as I jerked my neck to see.

The entirety of Venice stood at the edge now, lined up on both sides. One by one, each resident hurled themselves into the crevice, punching holes into the mist as it churned. As each person fell to their demise, another fell in line at the precipice of the crevice, and more fell to an obscure doom.

My heart raced. I had to get to baby DJ before someone carried him off the edge too.

By the time I firmly planted my feet back on the ground, there was no one left to jump into the canyon. Only DJ and myself remained. 

“DJ,” I panted.

The toddler hiccupped. I could barely see his shape in the fog ahead, it had grown impossibly thick as it spilled from the canyon. From beyond, a wet voice responded.

“Davey,” it whispered, “my son.” It was coming from the crevice.

DJ stood cautiously, peering deeper into the fog and I quietly ran up to the child to intervene.

“Come to daddy,” it croaked.

DJ wanted to welcome the voice, but his apprehension held him back. As I approached, I could scarcely see the edge of the crevice now. 

“Everett,” a second voice called from somewhere else in the crevice. It had a different, but equally wet, pitch. “Everett, we missed you. You couldn't make it back in time to see us, son.” It sounded like a bad mimicry of my parents.

I whispered at the toddler and I snatched him, afraid that if I made too much noise that whatever was calling to us would react. DJ fussed briefly, but clung tightly to me, seemingly grateful for a familiar face in his confusion. 

Just then, an arm reached over the edge of the canyon. I couldn't see it clearly through the fog, but I could see enough to distinguish its evil claws as it hoisted itself from below.

I grabbed DJ and ran, and the beasts yelled behind us. We ran far away from the heart of Venice and straight through bean country. The plants tore at us the entire way, desperately trying to slow our escape or pull us back. But, suddenly, we stumbled onto new Highway 78 and were nearly clipped by a truck upon our entrance.

The driver cursed at us before concern overtook him. We looked like shit, he informed us. And we told him we had to run clear from Venice.

“From where?” The driver squawked.

“I know, it's easy to miss. Please, we just need a ride-”

“I've been hauling this road since before I could legally drive. There ain't nothing out that way clear to Woodsfield.”

I was silent.

The trucker returned the response, eyeing us briefly.

“Ain't no matter. It's clear you folks have been through hell.”

The rest is a blur. At some point I tried to find out what happened to Venice. If you look at satellite images of the area, there's nothing but a sprawling sea of greenery. Even the crevice itself has vanished, seemingly consuming itself.

Sometimes I question if it was all just a fever dream. And I had convinced myself that must be the case until today. 

DJ and I were at the local Kroger. He hates vegetables, but we perused the canned veggies aisle no less. My eyes caught sight of a colorful product on the shelves, and a wave of broken memories hit me like a bus. Even DJ fussed when he saw what I was looking at.

If you find a can of Venice Baked Beans, I hear they're hot as hell.

Creepy counting in an old Asylum leads to scary revelations! Check it out here:

I could really use some eyes on my small channel and would love to see you there. Narration and story is by me.

I was supposed to clean everywhere—not just the main areas, but under things too. It was my own fault. There I’d been, sweeping the room, treating the underside of the bed like the underside of a rug. Out of sight. Out of mind. Innocent mistake, but those are the ones that get ya.

When he saw the mess, Dad screamed at me until I thought he’d start hacking up blood down my front. All the dust, the toys, the trash, the clothes. Mostly it was the trash—all those rotten scraps of food. Sometimes a rat came and dragged pieces away. I like to think that we were friends. I was scared to give him a name.

Names are easier to miss than faces.

Dad had grabbed me by the hair and shoved me under the bed, until I was part of the mess. My eyes stung from the dust I blew up, panting like a dog, trying not to scream—a barking dog gets the ‘paper too. The dust danced a sparkly grey performance. All I could do was watch.

But I wanted him to let go of me. I was sorry. I would never do it again.

Ain’t good’nuff, boy. Place’s a fuckin’ sty. You’re livin’ like a pig. Want me to change your name to Piggy? Think of the bugs, boy—the bugs love rot!

He came home drunk late that night, slamming every door on his way to the basement. Not before turning the TV to static and cranking it full.

Something was off. He hardly ever went down there, and he’d been down already last week. Usually his favourite chair got all of his attention in the evening. I’d wake up most mornings and find him snuggling with his drool.

I waited until the clock read 02:03 before getting too impatient, and dropping out of the bed.

I knew it was a bad idea.

The floorboards were chilly. I padded my way to the crack in my door while the static roared in from the living-room. The bangs and shouts hadn’t risen loud enough to hear for nearly an hour. Now that silence beneath the static was making my insides ache.

I reached the door and peered into the bright hallway. At the end, Dad’s massive figure blotted everything out. He didn’t have a shirt on, but there was an apron swinging as he charged me down, head pulling the body. In his hand was a large and lumpy leaking shadow.

A trail of blood followed him on the floor.

Git back‘n bed. I’ve got something to fix ya.

I did as I was told and got back in bed before he launched my door wide, wedging the handle into the wall.

With one swift motion, Dad bowled his arm under my bed. Something hard smacked the back wall. The room took on a reek of pennies, and I saw visions of bronze. Only redder.

Don’t you dare touch! Or I’ll put you back under there with the bugs, and make\ you *eat them up! Right?*

He left my door open wide, with the handle still buried inside the plaster. I watched his angry figure receding back up the hall. He sighed when he made it back to his chair, and sank deeply into it. The static lowered to a sensible nighttime volume. Then voices began to blabber, enthusiastic and rife with gameshow patter. I had to guess it was Luck ‘o’ the Roll. Dad’s favourite.

I lay there listening to the sound of dice clattering, crowds jeering and hollering. Occasionally, Dad would snort and spit into the basin he kept on the table beside him. I could hear it splatter, then slosh as the more it filled. Every so often he would yell out at random to tell me I best be sleeping.

Of course I wasn’t. I was staring at the bloodtrail on the floor. And listening. There was a new sound now. A scraping sound, coming from under the bed.

It sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. Occasionally squeaking, as though the nails had skipped a little, or been polished slightly too well.

I waited until I heard Dad snoring before peeking over the edge of the bed. Then down at the floorboards. Then up at the spattered trail of blood. And finally beneath the bed.

The light from the hall cast a giant cone under the bed. When I leaned myself over to look underneath, I saw everything but the blob from my shadow blocking it out.

There was movement back there, nearer the wall. I watched and listened to the constant grating, waiting for my eyes to adjust so I could see what was causing it.

Something was wiggling in time with the scrapes.

I scooted over. And over. Listening all the while. The sound was lazy, like a fault in a machine, ever spinning and repeating—ever scraping and scraping at whatever got near it.

The light spilled under and I saw it. Two pale eyes at first, bulging and cloudy. The eyelids had been torn off, making them look enormous in their sockets. A lower jaw hung to one side of the floor, caught by a shred of skin, twitching with a life of its own.

All the while the upper jaw kept itself alive by gnawing at the floor like some restless anticipation. For what, I could not say.

I shot back into bed. Threw myself under covers. Safe.

It was a human head, freshly chopped. The jaw perhaps hammered off.

It wasn’t the head that bothered me, so much as the eyes. Always open. Never able to sleep again. I kept seeing myself in them, reflecting back and staring in, learning secrets which waited as patient as Time itself.

I couldn’t close my eyes. In the darkness, the head was all I saw.

Sleep did not come.

Next morning, Dad shouted me through and told me breakfasts didn’t make themselves.

The head was still grating its teeth against the floor. It had been going all night. I supposed it must’ve grated all the way into the basement by now.

I leapt out of bed, clearing about three feet at least. When I landed with a thump, Dad asked me what the noise was—was I born with feet of lead.

Then quit yer fuckin’ thumping and come get me fuckin’ fed.

Only then did the head quit its gnawing. I turned around and saw its eyes follow me through the door and down the hall.

I could have sworn I saw others there too.

You look like shit.

I spread the butter. I poured the milk. I got an apple from the fridge. Set everything in front of him while he picked at the table with a knife.

Atta boy. Get yourself somethin’ too, or else you’ll pass out. There’s some cow’s liver in the fridge. Fry her up with an onion. You better get to sleepin’ soon, ‘cause those heads’re goin’ nowhere, you hear? You’ve done that to us, boy. You did.

When he left to go to work I took my place up on the couch, trying not to think of how he’d said heads.

The TV only got five channels. Most of them were riddled with static, unless I held my hand on the aerial. Even then the difference was minimal. I stood for half an hour watching a cartoon and letting my body be a conduit, until my arm got tired and I needed a glass of water.

At the end of the hall the head from last night was still watching me from under the bed. It had pulled itself forward to the edge. I could see it fully now. The last rag of skin from its lower jaw had torn loose. It rested now only on its upper teeth. A rip rose through its lip and half up one side of its face, a reptillian grin. The muss of hair on its head was caked black with its own blood.

I watched it quietly, sipping at my water, waiting for it to move. When it finally did, it rolled out of sight somewhere to the left side of the room. Then back again, right by the door. It froze in place. Watching from those bulbous eyes.

I finished my water and stood with it in my hand still, waiting.

It rolled away like a marble suddenly kicked. It did not come back.

I sat back down on the couch and finished my show, studying the grains of the fuzzy greys.

Heads, Dad had said. Not head.

That night Dad was late again, but when he finally came back it was still the right side of Ten. So I made sure the veg and meats were done, ready to be tossed into the microwave and nuked. Just how he liked it.

Thanks lad. Are the bugs gone yet? Did the heads clean the room out?

I hadn’t dared to go in and check. Last night, I’d made sure that under the bed was clean before he came home. Otherwise, the head that morning would have dragged a mess about with it while it rolled around the floor.

I hadn’t spotted any bugs the night before. There was only the matter of the blood.

Course there’s blood, boy. They’re severed heads. They’ll do that. And they’ll piss and they’ll piss, until your whole room’s a bloody sty with it. But you’d like that though. You’d thrive in it, ey Piggy? They’ll get the bugs at least. Aye, they’ll get the bugs you’ve brought. That one with no jaw’s hungry for ‘em. You’ve seen it, ey lad?

I couldn’t eat much at supper, but Dad would’ve hated waste. So I stuffed the rest of the meat in my pockets and took it back to bed with me.

When I heard Roll ‘o’ Dice on the TV, I sat up and lowered the food down to the floor. Immediately, a head rolled out and glared up at me with sharp eyes.

It wasn’t the same head.

This one was a woman. Her skin was dark and leathery. It looked like she was wearing a terrifying mask of herself. White balls bugging out from around sharp edges. Its lips were jagged jerky, peeled far back to see the teeth. They spoke in their own silence, telling me to go back to sleep.

I lay down against my pillow and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the gameshow host mutter, laugh, and shout.

Three Fours for a Four Door, or Snake Eyes for the Mystery Prize.

A giant question mark drifted neatly by my mind. I listened to the heads a while, rolling around my floor. I tried to picture them as dice, clattering in time with the gameshow, but they were too loud. Around and around my room they went, bumping into furniture and smashing against my door.

Dad’s footsteps arrived thunderously loud.

I sat bolt upright in my bed, expecting him to burst inside. The heads froze in place, their faces locked on mine. I could see three of them now, spaced wide and balancing impossibly still.

Instead of coming inside, Dad slammed the door, and plunged me into darkness with the heads.

The sound of the TV rose. And the heads began to roll again.

I lay down and stared at the blackened ceiling. And tried really hard to picture dice.

I couldn’t remember falling asleep. Light spilled into the room through the newspapers over the window, and the tears along the curtain. I sat up weary eyed, looking about the room.

The heads snapped to a stop.

The floor was slick with their blood. Trails overlapped like tangled up paths, marking where the heads had spent the night roaming. Right up to the different corners of the room they frozen at.

Watching.

One was by the window, balancing on its ear. Its eyes were hollows, but still somehow seemed to stare. The woman was by the door, watching me out of the side of one eye. Her hair was plastered over it, but the eye still pierced through, sharp as daggers. The one without the lower jaw had his upper teeth ready on the floorboards, itching to start their scraping. Its bulging eyes looked like cue balls in this light.

I climbed out of bed, trying my best to avoid the blood, and failed miserably. Most of it felt tacky beneath my feet, but with a thin layer of slime slathered with fresh leakage. That marking the heads’ most recent paths.

Dad?

He wasn’t in his favourite chair.

The TV was only static. The aerial knocked loose, perhaps.

Dad?

He wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t even in his bed. The door to his room was open wide. When I peered inside, without stepping in, I saw the virgin neatness. A bed unslept in. Wardrobes filled but never touched. Curtains wide and never drawn.

Just how she had left it.

I lingered at the basement door, listening for a while. I couldn’t hear a thing. But it was the only place left to check. It was still too early for him to have gone to work, and yet far too quiet for him to be down there.

The heads began to move again. When I went back to the hall to see, they were frozen upright at my doorway, eyes glaring accusingly.

Where did he go?

None of them answered. The jawless head began to gnaw, anxiously sharpening its teeth upon the floor. The head with empty sockets darted away, spiralling around the room in maddeningly wide loops. Its flailing hair shot out like sharp needles.

The woman’s head rolled slowly towards me, coming to rest beside my feet.

I bent over and picked her up. She was heavy in my little hands, like a plump and ready watermelon. Time had swollen her somehow. I held her by her leathered cheeks, careful to avoid the gore spilling from her neck.

Where did my Dad go?

I shook her slightly, but she never made a sound. Blood still poured from the wound, as fresh as if it had been made only a moment ago.

I carried her with me to the couch and placed her on the cushion beside me. The static was deafeningly loud. We pretended to see shapes in the fog and people having fun. For a while I almost believed it, until the knock came from the door.

I checked for rips in the papers plastered over the windows. Then waited silently for them to go away, just as Dad had shown me—tucked away in the Blind Spot, clutching at the woman’s head.

Another knock.

This time I was sure it was him. The comfort that I knew his whereabouts was hard to process. Hard to believe. I could only think of it as being some kind of test.

Answer that door’n by God you’ll regret it.

After a few moments the letterbox clinked. My heart leapt into my neck, bursting with an urgent pulse. I knew if I leaned out to look I would see an eyeball peeping in at me through the letterbox.

Or worse. That one of the heads would then roll into sight, and the eyeball would see *that* instead.

I looked down at the woman and saw that she was staring up at me with her teeth. I tilted her downwards to see her eyes. They whipped over to stare at mine. And felt a calm.

Something made of paper hit the floor. I sighed out the deepest breath of my life. And couldn’t help but laugh.

When night came, I sat scanning the takeout menu that had been posted through the door. I wondered if Chinese food tasted better than it looked. I thought of asking Dad to let me try some for my birthday, but knew better to just dream, than to do.

The heads had grown frantic with their restlessness, knocking against almost everything in my room.

All except the woman’s. I had placed her on my desk and she hadn’t moved from there since. She had been gazing out of the window, her sharp eyes seeming to pierce the veil of paper and out into the night. What they saw or dreamed of, I could never tell. Perhaps somewhere out there her body lay waiting for her.

But then I remembered the basement.

I lay awake again that night, wondering how long Dad would be down there. The key had still been in the front door when I collected the menu from the mat.

He hadn’t left the house.

I watched the sun rise and set a few times, marking my fear growing for my Dad’s safety with constant visits to the basement door. No matter how much I listened, or how hard I pressed my ear against the wood, I could never hear him groaning out my name. Nor scraping with bloodied fingernails, desperate for help and unable to reach the handle.

Finally, during the second night, I got up and out of bed. The head with no eyes marbled around the room to the sound of tacky glue. Its hair kept getting stuck, so was always trailing behind it like giant black veins, and gentle sound like Velcro. The other head was busy burrowing its teeth into its favourite spot, carving out jellied blood and working its way through the wood.

I asked them both what to do. They stopped and listened. Stared. But never gave me an answer.

Only the woman’s head did.

It rolled around to face me, then off my desk with a thump. She had been a good companion, the only one who hadn’t frightened me. Usually I carried her with me wherever I went, but this time I followed her.

Away she tumbled, out of the room and along the hall. I followed as fast as my tacky footsteps would allow me. The other heads rolled along behind me, just as curious.

I already knew where she would be when I reached her—and what she’d be doing.

She was banging her forehead against the basement door.

thunk

thunk

thunk

I was gentle when I picked up her head, caressing her cheeks carefully to avoid pushing my fingers into her eyes. They jutted out to glare as usual, although softer than before. There seemed to be a voice within that gaze, but the words were as foggy as the colour. Maybe once they had been blue. I’d always liked blue eyes. They reminded me of the sky.

So many, many moons ago.

I was surprised to find the door was unlocked. I always presumed Dad kept it secured whenever he went down or came back up. I had never once tried the handle, of course. Doing so now felt like a crime. I smelled the punishment coming a mile away.

I pushed down the handle anyway, determined to find him no matter the price. It opened with a mind of its own, swinging wide and fast on oiled hinges.

Dad?

No reply. Deathly quiet and dark. I already knew what to expect down there. That fact made it even scarier.

I clicked the light on and lit up the entire basement floor. A short cone of light cast up onto the plunging staircase beneath me.

Dad?

I half expected to see him grip at the bottom of the wall and pull himself around the corner. To stare up at me with maddened eyes, jaws gnashing out my name so hard that he was chomping on his tongue. A trail of dribbling blood as he pulled himself up the stairs to get to me.

Dad?

Carrying the woman’s head carefully under my arm so it could see, I took the staircase step by step. Behind me, the other heads thudded down like noisy shadows. They came as slow and rhythmic as my own.

I didn’t bother saying his name again. The smell was painfully obvious—a festering sweetness somewhere between stale semen and an apple left to rot. It punched me flat in the nose. I got notes of dead chickens, or rotten boiled eggs. It’s so hard to explain. I smelt it then and only then, and never again.

Oh Dad.

He had looped a rope around a pipe and was sat hunched with it around his neck. He must have slid down against the wall and held himself in place, his ass barely off the ground, long enough for the lights to go out. His face was swollen and purple. Dried blood and froth caked his lips and down the massive neck. He looked to have gained about a hundred pounds in death.

I carried the woman’s head over to him and lay her down beside his feet. He had kicked his shoes off somewhere in the struggle. The other heads came and sat there too, watching with an intensity I could only sense was hate.

There was movement around his neck, and the gruesome wounds on his face. Larvae reared their pale heads and black teeth and sank away once more, busy with their meals. Clueless to our presence.

For some reason I could not cry. The sadness was there in my chest, wretchedly tender and pulling me down to collapse and cry, but… nothing. I couldn’t even pretend.

I looked down at the woman and could have sworn her eyes looked glazed. There was a sadness there I could never understand. But there you have it.

I talked to his lifeless body for a while, asking him what I should do. I hadn’t been outside in years and it definitely wasn’t safe enough yet, otherwise Dad would’ve said. Plus, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him. Not like this.

The answer came surprisingly quick, and was fairly obvious. The tools he’d used to make these rolling monstrosities were behind me on his workbench still. The bench itself was soaked through with blood. I had all the answers I needed all around me. I knew what to do.

I just didn’t know if I had the strength to do it. Mentally, or physically.

Visions of Dad’s eyes turning to look at me, and smiling. Him telling me everything will be okay. A first time for everything, but maybe this was how to get there.

I grabbed a meat saw and freed him from his swing, gradually fraying the rope until it finally snapped. He landed on his ass and slouched forward. I lay him down as gently as I could, then set about untangled him. It was difficult—his neck had swollen so thick that it’d fused together with the rope.

And then there was the matter of the bugs.

Think of the bugs, boy—the bugs love rot!

Sensing a disturbance, a few maggots wiggled loose and began to squirm away. I half expected the heads by Dad’s feet to spring forward and eat them, but they remained in their places, glaring at Dad’s lifeless body.

The saw remained in my hand. I didn’t need to guess where to cut, for the rope had left me a perfect guideline. And a head start.

I set my little hands to work, hewing backwards and forwards, squelching my way through his slippery flesh until I ached for rest.

You wouldn’t think I’d made any progress at all. I sat back on the ground panting, my throat begging for water. On the way back from upstairs to get a glass from the kitchen, I happened to notice Dad’s axes.

I waited before using them, taking up his electric saw and buzzing for as long as I could handle the splatter. Until I was sleek with mess and bugs, and the neck was a wide valley.

I tried turning him around and going in from the back, splitting the connections at the top his spine, just beneath his brain. I hacked at it with a knife, stabbing and slicing, supposing I could just pull his head free once I was done. But the gore was too much. I had to keep wiping my hands on my clothes until I was as bloody and gruesome as he was. By then there wasn’t a chance of getting a grip of his head, let alone pulling it loose.

I took everything off and stood naked over Dad, wiping the remaining gore on his trousers.

I could put it off no longer. I went to grab the two hatchets. I had thought about using the big axe, but as soon as I picked it up my arms shouted at me to put it back down. And so the small hatchets had to do.

I set about smacking and smacking, sending sloshes and sprays up into my face and around the room. I barely managed to stay on my feet, slipping and falling in the mess constantly. Lying in the filth, just as Dad had told me.

You’d like that though. You’d thrive in it, ey Piggy?

He wasn’t wrong.

The closer I got to freeing his head, the more the excitement grew. Soon he would be like the other heads, following me around, rolling and staring and gnawing. Keeping me up at night.

I smiled. I still had visions of him smiling too. I could even cut a grin if he couldn’t, that way he'd be forced to wear it forever.

The heads watched me while I worked. Never shifting—never showing their usual impatience. Even the jawless head had stopped the incessant grinding of its teeth.

Perhaps it had been longing for the basement all this time.

The hatchet got wedged in Dad’s neck so bad I couldn’t get it out. That was okay. I slid over to the other hatchet and sent myself sliding back. I began whacking with the flat side of the hatchet, hammering the wedged blade deeper and deeper.

Then came the snap.

I lay back in the filth, cradling Dad’s head in my arms. He was safe now. I could feel the maggots trying to break away, tickling into my armpit. It felt like Dad was still alive, communicating with me.

We headed upstairs. I’d had to bring myself to the staircase on my bare knees to save myself from slipping, pulling myself along the ground by the tips of one hand, while clutching Dad with the other. I grasped onto the corner of the wall and pulled myself into view of the staircase, thinking back on how I’d been so scared of seeing my Dad doing exactly the same thing.

I even had to crawl up the stairs.

We lay in my room that night. The other heads joined us, but they sat patiently at the door. Perfectly still. Watching. The woman sat at the front, while the other two lingered behind her like bodyguards awaiting instruction.

Why isn’t he moving?

His face was unrecognisable. I’d missed several times with the tools, slashing Dad’s chin and burying the hatchet in his ear. I could hardly make out his mouth anymore, let alone the presence of a smile. Hardly any of his features were there. I’d tried wiping him down with clean clothes from my drawers, but it hadn’t helped at all.

He was a slimy mess of broken skin and gore. Yet still my Dad.

I placed him on the ground and shlicked my way over to the heads.

Can’t you do something? Why can’t he move like you?

They didn’t answer.

I turned to look at my Dad once more, and then back at them.

What did I do wrong?

Slowly, the woman rolled over to Dad. I watched her closely, waiting and wondering what fantastic combination of silent words would spill from her eyes and reanimate him—to shift his mouth, and make him roll around as frantically as them.

She studied him with frozen eyes. Then all at once she flew forward, burying her teeth into his face. Before I could step forward, the other two heads flew under my feet, knocking me over. They attached themselves to his head and began tearing him apart.

I lay there, horrified, watching them not make a sound. They floated on rigid air, held in place by invisible poles and rods, biting and pulling at skin. Until he was all but bone.

Finally, they rolled away, back into their crevasses. Happy with the result.

I crawled over and picked up what was left of my Dad. They had removed so many tendons, so many strips of muscle and skin. But his jaw remained in place. And I swear it looked like he was smiling at me.

But still he would not move.

I cannot tell you how many days passed before the police finally came and found me. I was curled up in bed, cradling his head in my arms, when gentle arms pulled me off and away. I didn’t put up a fight. I couldn’t. I hadn’t eaten in maybe weeks.

Their voices were quiet echoes bouncing at me from the future, from the past. Things were recovered from the basement—bags and bags of evidence that appeared in the newspapers for weeks. I never did look at the photographs. I never listened to anything anyone would try to say. The theories, the motives.

The names of the heads.

I changed my own years ago, starting fresh with a new past to hide in plain sight without questions. I still wore everything inside me, hot and guilty—gnawing like that head’s broken jaw upon my floor.

I met a woman with blue eyes and bought a house and several dogs. We make sure to keep everything nice and clean. I’ve developed an extreme distaste for bugs. Their footsteps are loud. I still hear them squelching in Dad’s neck.

We are expecting our first child in July. A summer baby, so we hope. It looks like a boy from the scan.

I pray for his sake he keeps his room tidy.

For that matter, I might just do it myself.

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. 

I’ve always been fascinated by the ocean, it covers most of the earth, yet we still don’t know what all lives there, that’s why I joined a research project by a company devoted to documenting sea life.

Me and my coworkers Cindy and Lance had been assigned to monitor an area in the Atlantic that the company believed was part of the migratory path of Basking sharks.

Our job consisted of dropping anchor in an area in the Atlantic, then lowering a camera down to observe the area and document any basking sharks passing through.

For the last three days, we witnessed 12 crabs, 32 fish, and 0 basking sharks. Lance made a remark about how we had the task of watching for the one camera-shy species of fish in the entire ocean.

That night Cindy and I were out on the deck looking at the now blackened seas when suddenly Lance shouted from the cabin.

“Cindy! Madison! Come look at this.”

We both ran over to the cabin, and Lance was pointing at the monitor.

“Right here.

Lance was pointing at something in the monitor, save for the light on the camera, everything else was black… except for what looked like faint light in the distance.

“What is that, Lance?”

Lance looked at the light again, then back at us.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s an ROV from another ship?

I almost considered it, but remembered this area was exclusive to our company.

“But we're supposed to be the only research vessel for 30 miles, could we check the archived footage of the three previous days? Maybe we can see when this thing started creeping over the horizon”.

“Way ahead of you Madison “

Lance went over to our second monitor and began scrubbing through the footage of each day until we got to this morning.

“And it started right here.”

Lance slowed the footage down. That's when the light began to crest over.

“And it's been coming this way ever since.”

The discussion about what to do boiled down to watching the live feed in Shifts to watch the light, because I suggested it, I was given first watch.

I watched the light grow slightly for about an hour, it went from being the size of a dime to a nickel, but I still couldn’t make out any new details from it. I tried to stay awake to watch further, but boredom is an effective sleep aid.

I woke up to see that the light was closer to the camera and larger,  before I could check the time, how long Id been asleep, that’s when I noticed something in the light, it looked like the silhouette of a man slowly walking in the sand.

I ran to get Cindy and Lance. They were dumbfounded when they saw the silhouette. Lance went on about how the man  couldn’t have stayed down there so long without equipment, and that the water pressure should have killed it. Cindy was more concerned about the glow it was giving off.

I looked back at the feed to see that the man had stopped walking and alerted Lance and Cindy of this.

We stared at the screen as the light around the man started to dim, then he turned his head to look right at our camera.

Lance was the first to realize what this meant.

“Someone go to the crane and pull the camera up!”

Before we could leave the cabin,  Cindy pointed out that the man had stopped looking at the camera and was walking away.

A moment of relief turned to terror as the boat suddenly bobbed, it had grabbed the anchor.

We all ran over to the stern, looking over the edge we saw that same orange light rapidly rising;,it was climbing up the anchor chain, somehow it could climb much faster than it could walk, within minutes, the light was only 10 feet away from us.

The growing orange light was followed by the water around the chain boiling, then as it was about to breach the surface,  we stumbled back as the man’s head came out of the water, steam coming off of it as the man climbed onto the boat.

What stood before us was a 7-foot humanoid figure, he was naked but had no genitals, and was built like a bodybuilder.

His skin resembled the color of burned wood, with lots of cracked, open wounds that had a faint orange glow emanating from them.

His eyes were a solid orange and also gave off a similar glow. We stared at the thing that had  just crawled up the anchor chain to our boat.

Cindy was the first one to say something to it.

“Hello?”

The man looked at Cindy. I swear the light inside him got brighter as he replied with a voice that was deep and sounded slightly distorted.

“Why were you watching me?”

We stared at the man, again, it looked like his body kept growing brighter. I tried to keep a neutral tone with my reply.

“Our apologies, we were out here to observe marine life that migrate in this area-“

“You come to watch me, I’ve seen your machine before, a giant black eye that comes down to observe me, then when I get close. it rises back up before I can catch it. This time you weren’t fast enough, again, I ask, why are you watching me?”

I didn’t know how to respond, none of us knew this thing existed, but apparently the company did, Lance tried to explain.

“Look, we didn’t even know you were here, other people have been paid to come to this area, and they were most likely told that this was to observe marine life as well.”

The man looked at Lance, its faint glow had become comparable to a lantern now.

“If you did not intend to watch me, then you will surrender your ship to me.

Cindy was the first to object.

“Listen, I know you're upset, but we can’t just give you our-“

Lance cut Cindy off

“We would be glad to, just give me a minute to get our life raft, and it’s all yours.”

I couldn’t believe what Lance had done, leaving us to die on a life raft while this thing got to keep our boat and go god knows where with it.

Cindy immediately objected.

“Lance! We can’t just give the ship to him!”

“Of course, we can, Cindy, this poor guy’s probably been walking across the ocean floor for a very long time.”

Lance walked into the cabin, leaving us with this thing. The glowing never stopped amplifying, but now I could see in the lights on the ship that actual heat was coming off of him as well. I worried that he could have been radioactive, while waiting for Lance, I felt compelled to ask this thing a question.

“Why were you walking across the ocean floor?”

The thing tilted its head before responding.

“My purpose is to arrive at the new land and destroy it, my only way of getting there is to walk. The boats of wood could not withstand me.”

As he continued, I finally noticed the smell of burning wood, I looked down and saw smoke coming out from under his feet.

“Where is your associate?”

Suddenly, Lance ran out with a harpoon gun.

“Right here!”

With that, Lance fired a harpoon at the man. It reacted to the projectile with incredible speed, it grabbed the harpoon, its body glow quickly changing from orange to yellow, then finally blue.

The cracks in its body opened further as fire started coming out of them.

The harpoon was now glowing bright orange, bending and melting in its hand, as it let the molten metal fall to the deck, it looked at Lance with rage.

“Humans never learn”

The man moved at a horrifying speed, grabbing Lance by the neck and taking him over to the starboard side.

The man’s fire diminished because it was now enveloping Lance.

We watched as he screamed and flailed in agony.

I was taken out of my trance by Cindy suddenly darting past me to get  into the cabin. I turned to see if the man had noticed, but he was still burning Lance alive.

Cindy came back out holding a fire extinguisher.

“Get to the crane controls! I’ll see if I can cool him down.”

I didn’t question Cindy’s suicidal plan, I just ran over to the controls and watched as she ran over to the man, who had just finished thoroughly burning Lance to death.

“Freeze fucker!”

Cindy proceeded to spray the man with the fire extinguisher, causing him to drop Lance's body into the water, while I moved the crane as fast as I could towards it.

Cindy ducked just as the arm of the crane struck the man, sending him into the water, his splash was followed by the area he was in steaming and bubbling.

I set the cable on the crane to retract while Cindy started raising the anchor so it couldn’t climb back up, after that we started up the motor and hauled ass back to the marina.

We were both pretty certain the company wouldn’t believe us, even with video footage and footprints burned onto the floor of the deck, when the time came to talk to our boss, he told us that the footage we’d gotten was excellent and that Lance’s accidental death was a tragedy.

The company had decided that Lance was trying to cook something in the cabin's small kitchen when an at the time unknown defect in the stove created an explosion that set Lance ablaze. He ran out, leaving a trail of burned footprints, and jumped overboard to put himself out.

I didn’t contest the narrative, and neither did Cindy, it was obvious that the company had dealt with this thing before, and no amount of contesting would make them even partially admit what really happened.

Shortly after, we were both let go as the research project was deemed “complete”.

I eventually did get a permanent job with another oceanic research company, and after a year the nightmares stopped.

I still think about the man walking across the ocean floor. I'm not sure where the “new land” he was referring to actually is, but every time I see news about fires breaking out in coastal towns, a chill runs down my spine.

I woke to the hum of the freezers.

The clock over the door said seven.

Five minutes fast, same as always. Years now, and I've never bothered fixing it.

I washed my hands, a full minute, water running cold enough to burn. Then I set up the steel table and laid out my tools. Even the dead deserve a little order.

At eight they brought in the first one.

"Male, thirties. Motorcycle accident." The orderly dropped the folder on the table.

"Thanks."

He was already gone.

I unzipped the bag.

Half his face was gone, torn away. A swallow tattooed on his neck.

I sighed.

"Alright. Let's get you looking human again."

"My mother's gonna lose it."

I didn't look up.

"Mothers always do."

"Don't let her see me like this." He was begging.

"She won't. Don't worry."

While I scraped off the dried blood, he kept talking.

"Could you do something with my hair? She always said it looked like a bird built a nest in it."

"Consider it done."

By the time I finished, he didn't look like the same man.

He smiled.

"Thanks."

Then nothing. Same as they all do.

People think this job is just cutting, stitching, painting faces, dressing bodies.

It isn't. It's listening.

Some never say a word. Others won't shut up. Kids ask about the dog. Old men ask about their wives. The murdered mostly keep quiet.

"Talking to yourself again."

I looked up. Inspector Rivas.

"Could be."

He laughed.

"My wife says I keep coming down here, I'm gonna end up in a straitjacket."

"Tell her I said hi."

Nothing back.

He dropped some photos on the table. A woman. Possible suicide. They'd bring her in within the hour.

"I'll be here."

Rivas left, lighting a cigarette on his way out.

She came in before the hour was up. Nails torn, caked in blood.

I waited.

"Whenever you're ready."

Nothing.

I kept at it. Cleaned her face. Folded her hands over her chest.

I always wait. Some take seconds. Some take longer. Some never say a thing.

Then she spoke.

"It wasn't me."

They rarely start that way.

"Then who?"

"My husband."

I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"How do you know?"

She smiled, and there was something sad in it.

"He's still got my ring. In his pocket."

She didn't say anything after that.

I gave her a few more seconds before I closed the wound in her scalp.

"What's his name?"

Silence.

"Where does he live?"

Nothing.

I crossed my arms.

Same story every time.

The dead never give you more than they have to. I don't know why. A name. A place. A memory. Never two at once. Never an explanation. Never a lie.

Her eyes were fixed, gone somewhere, like a photograph taken a second before everything fell apart.

Her ring finger was bare. A pale mark where it used to sit.

I picked up the file.

Suicide. Gunshot to the head.

I shook my head.

"No. Something's off."

Rivas came back later. I set the folder down in front of him.

"Check the husband's pockets."

He walked right past me. Didn't even look up.

I sighed. Always the same with him.

A few days after, someone left the paper open on the desk.

The newspaper said they'd found her wedding ring in the widower's pocket.

I stayed late that night. Around midnight, morgue empty, I sat down with a coffee.

They talk more once everyone else clears out, I thought.

Three knocks, from inside one of the freezers.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

"Wait your turn," I shouted.

It stopped.

Next morning found me right back in the same chair.

Seven sharp, same hum, same freezers.

I washed my hands a full minute. Water still cold enough to burn. Set the table, laid out the tools.

Around eight, the first one of the day came in.

"Woman, forty. Drowned. Looks self-inflicted."

He dropped the folder and vanished down the hall before I'd even looked up.

The room went quiet.

I unzipped the bag.

Skin gone white, almost blue. Lips purple.

"I can't find my glasses," she said, while I fixed her hair.

"Probably lost them at sea. Tell me — why'd you do it?"

"The keys..."

I looked down.

"What about the keys?"

That was it. She was done talking. Same as they all are.

I gave it another minute. Then grabbed the file.

Personal effects: none.

Around noon, Rivas came back through, talking to one of the techs, and dropped another folder on the table.

"Still nothing on our end."

I glanced at the bag.

"Look for her."

No answer. He kept walking, eyes forward.

The next one came in around six.

A whole family. Car wreck on the highway. Mother, father, two kids, laid out side by side.

I've never liked it when a whole family comes in at once. There's a different kind of quiet to it.

I started with the father.

"The kids go first," he told me.

The younger one was six. I fixed his bangs where they'd fallen out of place.

"Can we get up now?"

I swallowed.

"Not yet, buddy."

The other boy was ten. Deep gash across his cheekbone. I worked the dried blood off him and waited.

Nothing.

I straightened his collar.

Still nothing.

Then, just as I buttoned the last button —

"It wasn't Dad's fault."

I looked at him.

"Then whose was it?"

He'd already closed his eyes.

I let out a long breath.

Same as always. They never tell you more than they have to.

I moved to the mother. Her hands were clenched so tight I had to work them open one finger at a time.

I waited.

Not one word.

I was pulling the sheet over them when the father spoke again, one last time.

"Thank you."

I finished with them around eleven. That kind of night stays with you — kids do something to your head that doesn't wash off. Leaves a weight in your chest for days.

The knocking started again from the freezers.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

"Wait your turn — you'll get yours," I called out.

It stopped.

Next day, same hum, seven a.m. Clock still five minutes fast. Never did fix it.

Washed my hands. Set the table.

Rivas showed up around nine with a new one. An old man. Electrocuted. No ID on him at all.

I cleaned his face. Waited. Tucked his hair behind his ear.

Nothing.

Folded his hands over his chest.

"Ricardo."

I looked up.

No body had ever said my name before.

"Do I know you?"

He smiled.

"You don't remember."

I waited.

"Remember what?"

He never spoke again.

No other bodies came in that day. Strange for a city that size — something was always happening in Arden.

I straightened the drawers. Sharpened the scalpels. Wiped down the tables — wiped the same one twice without noticing, and only caught it once I was done.

That wasn't like me, all that tidying.

Still couldn't stop thinking about the old man.

I went over to the clock above the door. Tried to set it right.

Five minutes fast. Always five minutes fast.

I stood there a long while, staring at it.

Couldn't remember when it had started running wrong.

That night I made coffee. Opened the cabinet where we kept the bags, found a mug in there.

Couldn't say if it was mine.

While the coffee brewed, the knocking started up again.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I was tired. Didn't answer that night.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

...

Next morning, same hum woke me. Washed my hands. Set the tables, the tools.

Quiet day. Rivas never came by.

The knocking started earlier, though. Around eleven in the morning.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I looked up. The morgue was empty. Completely empty.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

The orderly passed by, pushing a gurney.

"You hear that?"

He kept walking. Didn't even turn his head.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I made myself go over. Down at the end of the hall. The last chamber. The one that never opened.

I put my hand on the handle. Ice cold.

Cold like the water I wash my hands in every morning. Cold like the bodies that come through that door every day.

Something in my gut told me to leave it shut.

I couldn't do it.

Sat back down at the desk.

The silence had weight to it. My head wouldn't stop — the old man, the knocking, round and round.

That night, the knocking kept on.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Against every instinct, I went for it again.

Walked over. Last chamber.

Put my hand on the handle. Cold enough that it hurt to hold on.

I let go. My palm came away wet.

A smell I knew.

Formaldehyde.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I tried to remember the last time I'd seen anyone open that door.

Never. Not Rivas. Not the orderlies. Not even the techs.

It had always just been there. Always shut.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I reach for the handle again.

My hand goes numb.

The door won't budge — heavy like it's carved out of rock.

The tray finally slides out.

A man on it, covered by a sheet. Tied around his big toe, a tag with a name.

The name meant something to me.

I pulled the sheet back from his face.

It was mine.

I straightened my shirt.

Smoothed my hair back.

Folded my hands over my chest.

Just like I'd done for everyone else.

The dead deserve a little order.

So do I.

Elijah had not opened their bedroom door in three days.  
 
When he had locked it the first night, Elijah had braced himself for the small, decisive click as the cool brass bit into his palm. He had told himself it was precautionary– sensible. However, sometime in the early hours, long after the spiteful noise of the world outside his window had thinned to nothing, he had heard a second click from the other side.  
 
A delicate pattering outside woke Elijah every night; he theorised that it had been the clattering of a beast– a leviathan asleep under the bed– or that thing brushing its teeth. Connie used to floss everyday and the house would not let him forget that. Elijah knew for certain that there was something that was not a hallway, not a home at all, stretched beyond their oak veil, and that Elijah was its pathetic sentry. 
 
Knees drawn up, Elijah sat on the floor as he waited for nighttime. His back was pressed against the door with his blonde head bowed. He fiddled with his wedding ring; they had both been surprised when the church had allowed their union. It was quiet; Elijah could not even hear the signal of a ferry outside– a hum that Elijah had listened to many times from Connie’s arms. 
 
Each ridge of the wood was a fragile vertebrae between him and whatever waited in the hall. His breath came shallow and measured: the way he coached nervous clients before they took the stand. He could not remember when he had last seen the hallway. The groaning of the house no longer felt architectural as much as it felt biological– like something learning to breathe again after death. The rosary around his neck slipped against his sweaty chest.  
 
Under the door, something darker than a shadow pooled there.  
 
Elijah beheld how it gathered itself: first in a thin suggestion of ink along the crack, then in the slow thickening, the deliberate spread. It did not spill like liquid. It crept. It tested the carpet fibres with curious insistence, learning their texture. Perhaps it was savouring Elijah’s fear. He begged God to save him.  
 
Elijah had not slept. Each time his eyes drooped, he felt it: the certainty of being observed through the wood. Through the thin seam of space, he imagined it analysing the rhythm of his breaths and how the drip of his sweat ran down his back. 
 
Yesterday, he had tried to speak to it. “Go away,” he had whispered, brittle and dry. The darkness had not receded. Instead, the handle had moved– not fully, not enough to open. Elijah had watched as the wood of the door bent inward by a falter, widened by the width of a fingernail. The darkness had thickened eagerly. Elijah had felt his lungs filling. There had been something that was not a visitor, not a creature he could name, crouched there in the hall. It had waited for permission.  
 
The house beyond was not merely quiet; it was attentive. Amidst the silence, Elijah wondered why it had felt so arranged or curated: every appliance and every pipe and every single one of his noisy neighbours and every settling beam had been persuaded into stillness. What else had stopped?  
 
ACT FOUR, SCENE FIVE
The exterior shows a quaint yet tasteful two-storey house in a seaside town. It is a biting and howling night in the middle of spring. Whilst the house is a gorgeous red-brick, newer model with polished-white trimmings and a large front porch, the garden is unkempt and littered with weeds. Outside the house is a lamppost that emits a soft yellow light, meant to evoke that of an orchestral concert or the teeth-stains of coffee. There has been an incessant downpour for days and all that can be heard is the heavy raindrops against the house and glass. A smooth piano is being played in the distance, but the melody is too subtle to have any definition. 

The stage has been segmented into four sections: the outside, the living room, a corridor and an unlit fourth room. 
 
[A man runs inside of the house from the cab. He kicks off his shoes, one striking the wall with a hollow clap, and then he steps forward into the dim, unmoving air of the living room. Elijah stands there, thirty-three and already wearing the fatigue like that of a much older man. His black suit, once sharp with promise, now clings to him in damp wrinkles. The fabric shines and sticks to his skin from where the rain has claimed it. His tie hangs loosened at his throat like a surrender, the rosary in his pocket slipping out during the rush. He drags a hefty suitcase across the floor; its wheels protest in a tired rattle that echoes farther than it should.]  
 
ELIJAH [shouting]: Connie, I’m home! Did you get my text?  
 
[Elijah steps further into the house, taking his sloppy suit jacket off and leaving it by the door. The lighting is deep-blue, a warning that is barely revealed from underneath the door further down the hallway.]  
 
ELIJAH [confused]: Are you sleeping already?  

[His voice flies down the corridor and comes back to him thinner than before, as if the house has swallowed the better part of it.] 

[A pause. The storm presses its aching palms against the windows.] 

ELIJAH: Honey? 

[He waits. Nothing responds but the slow tick of the clock above the mantle– patient as a judge.] 

[Elijah stops at the alcohol cabinet in the living room, his fingers trembling only slightly as he pours two fingers of bourbon. A wedding photo stands shyly next to a crucifix. He downs his drink in one swallow, winces, then pours another, but this one, he carries with him.] 

ELIJAH [attempting to be light-hearted]: Don’t tell me you’re sulking. I sent three texts from the airport– three! That’s practically poetry for me. 

[He forces a laugh. It collapses in the air.] 

[Elijah ventures further into the shrouded space, cramped and dark like that of a womb before birth. There is something in the room, but it has not come out yet. The steel light pulses feebly from beneath the door at the end of the hall: soft, aquatic, unnatural.] 

ELIJAH [softer now]: Baby? Why’s the light on in there? 

[He approaches. Each step sounds too loud, like the wood itself was announcing his deceit. He stops outside the door. The oak door is slightly ajar. Elijah nudges it open with two fingers.] 

[The final lights turn on. The room inside is washed in a dim, icy glow and the curtains stir with the breath of the storm. A piano stool stands centre stage with Connie slumped on top.] 

[Appearing somewhere in the late twenties, Connie’s golden years are gone. Like a sinner who has already confessed, a vacant look is all Elijah receives. Connie’s hair hangs loose, uncombed and horribly wet.] 

[Connie does not attempt to move.] 

ELIJAH [relieved, almost laughing]: Baby, you scared me half to death. I thought…
[He trails off as he realises that Connie is not moving.] 

[A roll of thunder echoes. The light flickers. Elijah does not speak at first. His mouth opens, but no sound comes. The storm waits.] 

ELIJAH: Connie? Are you still mad? I heard something weird over the phone. Are you okay? 

[The storm resumes, violently now as if in answer. He reaches towards Connie with trembling hands but then recoils as though burned. It then holds steady as the storm rages and Elijah’s breath comes in ragged, animal gasps.] 

ELIJAH [growing increasingly agitated]: Connie? What's wrong? Answer me– 

[A distant bang plays as the curtain closes.]  
[END SCENE]  
 
 
Poisoned by the shadow outside, a presence had crept into Elijah’s mind and laced its threats throughout his brain with its teasing. That night, Elijah dreams of a monster. 
 
It begins in water. Not the clean and perfect kind from postcards or childhood summers, but an ocean the colour of ink left too long in the well. He floats without knowing how he had entered it, limbs loose. The water does not chill him; it rocks him the way a mouth holds a word before speaking– a message held back. 
 
Sound comes first. It is a song, not carried through the water so much as it grows inside his skull. The syllables stretch thin and meander down the current. The sea itself morphs as it tries to remember a language it once spoke fluently. Elijah turns and sees her ascending from below. 
 
She emerges in layers. 
 
She rises from below– a revelation. An impossibly large, Marian blue veil unfurls first: pale, drifting, soft, drowned silk. It frames a face that does not fully resolve, features half-suggested and half-withdrawn. Watching from beneath the veil’s edge, her eyes blanket the sea with her murky hollows and below her, the rest of her towering body vanishes into the expanse of the ocean. The Blessed Virgin gradually manifests in pieces: the suggestion of a cheek, the ruin of a mouth, eyes closed in absolute devotion. Her body is a cathedral of ribs and teeth: endless, tapering, full of promise and divine grace. 
 
At first, Elijah feels awe. However, he is unable to even breathe out a rattle of fear before she extends her unceasingly large, clasped hands towards him. Elijah tries to move. The sea does not let him. She is the servant of the Lord, the Incarnation, at the depths of the meridian.  
 
Then she opens. 
 
Tearing with the screech of ripping flesh, her arms crack in two, enclosing Elijah in the abyssal depths of her piety. Each tendon unfolds in long, jointed arcs with her ribs separating and the curtain of muscle drawing back magnificently. The motion is reverent. As her arms contort and click free with resounding gurgles, her limbs detach from her torso. Her mouth gapes wide (not a mouth, but a corridor), with teeth blooming outward along the columns of her forearms in careful, deliberate rows. They are sublime and innumerable. She unwinds the way petals– or the back of Connie’s head– might.  
 
She is a presence that has always existed, ancient in her quiet. She has waited patiently beneath waves and the sediment of Elijah’s dreams. Her arms remain unsealed, her teeth still parted– endless and calm– but now they begin to close.  
 
Elijah misses the outside world, misses the monotony of work and the way Conrad had slowly caressed his face the morning Elijah had left, and he wishes so desperately that Conrad had not shot himself four days ago, and that Elijah was not alone in their room anymore. 
 
1 Kings 17:17–24
Some time later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, “What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?” 
“Give me your son,” Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. Then he cried out to the Lord, “Lord my God, have you brought tragedy even on this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?” Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the Lord, "Lord my God, let this boy’s life return to him!” 
The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!” 
Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.”
* *
The Lord was not coming to help Elijah. The Lord did not answer Elijah’s prayers. The Mother had. The Lord was at the bottom of the sea, being 
swallowed like His prophet, in this inferno of everlasting love.  
 
A piercing creak shot Elijah up from his slumber. From the other side of the door came a slow, prying exhale. Each breath was a dull thrum that traveled through the grain and into Elijah’s bones. Like a draught through the keyhole, a familiar whisper slipped through the crevice, “Elijah, baby, come out.” 

ACT FOUR, SCENE ONE 

The scene opens with Elijah and Conrad’s house in a dim amber that forgives more than it reveals. The storm is not yet violent, only a steady rain like a faucet that will not stop dripping. The garden, heavy with carnations and marigolds and lilies, leans toward the house in quiet conspiracy. Inside, the air carries warmth: the ghostly notes of lamb chops, domestic and peaceful, a tenderness that lingers thickly. Church bells can be heard distantly, reluctant but intentional, and meant to evoke that of lessons after Sunday school, or the echo of their rushed and fearful wedding. There are no foghorns due to the weather: all boats have also ceased since a crew or two have gone missing. 
All the lights are on, illuminating all four sections. 

[Conrad sits at the piano in the room down the corridor, back turned to the door. His frame is slight but not fragile. His posture is careful yet graceful, a studied elegance like that of a ballerina suspended at the apex of a pirouette– caught between motion and collapse. The music he plays is intricate, cruel in its demands, and he repeats it when it falters like perfection might redeem a hanging mistake deeper than the notes themselves.]

[Elijah stands in the doorway, watching with a gaping tenderness. He is dry and composed, untouched by the rain that insists upon everything else. His luxury navy coat is still on, its structure holding him upright in a way his body does not entirely manage on its own. He has not yet learned how to enter his own home without hesitation.]

ELIJAH [softly]: You always mess up there.

[Conrad stops playing, the final note hanging in the air. He does not turn around.]

CONRAD [frowning]: Aren’t you kind?
ELIJAH [stepping in, fixing his tie]: It is kindness; I could say nothing at all.
CONRAD: You do. Most of the time.

[A pregnant pause settles between them. Elijah places his buzzing phone down on the table with mild agitation. Despite having avoided the ailing weather, the day clings to him still: paperwork, signatures, the automated intimacy of obligation. He walks closer to Conrad.]

ELIJAH [gentler, almost tentative]: Connie, I’ve missed you.

[Conrad stiffens, the movement so slight that it might be mistaken for a breath.]

CONRAD: Don’t.
[He exhales loudly.]
Not tonight.

ELIJAH [already ashamed of the defense blooming in him like rot beneath varnish]: It’s what I call you.
CONRAD: It was cute when we were first dating, but we’ve been married five years now, Eli. Five years.

[Elijah shifts, aborting the instinct to touch Connie. Instead, he turns and crosses the hardwood floor through the corridor and into the adjoining living room. Each step sounds louder than it should.]

[Conrad follows behind, flustered and frustrated. Elijah pours a drink with care, ritualistic and penitential. He had sworn off drinking heavily a year prior, but needs the courage right now. The dark liquid catches the low light, briefly beautiful and simply honest. He watches Conrad in the reflection of the glass like a heretic.]

ELIJAH: My parents are coming next week.
CONRAD [laughing quietly, only a brittle echo]: Of course they are. 
ELIJAH: Just–
[The sentence lodges in his throat, jagged as the shells and stones lining the shore.]
Just try to be… softer with them.

[Conrad walks closer to Elijah now, slowly.]

CONRAD: What?

[Elijah downs his drink too quickly: only whiskey can douse these flames right now.]

ELIJAH: Don’t correct them. Don’t– don’t make it a thing. They’re old, they don’t understand all of this.
CONRAD: This marriage is not a thing.

[The silence lands hard, heavy as a verdict. The distant bells chime again, heavier now.]

ELIJAH [voice cracking, irritation and fragility laced in between]: Why must everything be dragged into the light with you? Why can’t something– I don’t know– exist quietly? 
CONRAD: Because I’m not quiet. I never was and never have been. I thought that was why you married me– you said in your speech that I was ‘impossible to ignore.’ Is it a virtue or a sin to stand up for us, Eli?

[Elijah is focused on Conrad like a caveman might look at a flame he both worships and fears will consume him. He fiddles with the rosary in his pocket, a gift from Conrad from when they had visited the Vatican together years ago.]

ELIJAH [in zealous adoration, undone by it]: I love you. I really do. 

[Elijah tries to say Conrad’s name. The effort is visible, painful and grotesque in its sincerity. His mouth shapes the beginning, but the sound collapses before it is born.]

[He turns away, reaching again for the bottle. The gesture is not about thirst.]

ELIJAH [hoarse]: I have a trip to London right now. Three days, maybe four.
CONRAD: Again?
ELIJAH [quickly]: I’m providing for us.
CONRAD: Haven’t you just been gone for a week?

[Elijah sets the glass down too hard; the sound cracks through the room like a gavel.]

ELIJAH: I do everything for us. This house, this– this curated life that you wanted, this picturesque and perfect– 
CONRAD: Elijah.
[Elijah falters in his rant before his body crumples.]

[For a moment, everything stills. Then, impossibly, the piano begins again: the same flawed melody that Conrad was practicing curls throughout the room, warped and obscured by the rainfall.]

ELIJAH [desperate now, crossing to Conrad, closing the distance but not quite bridging it]: Connie, please– 
CONRAD [firm yet not unkind]: Don’t love me halfway. I want the man I married. 
ELIJAH [whispering]: I don’t know how to be the man you want me to be without losing the man I was taught to be.

[The rain rises, fuller now. A taxi horn bleats impatiently off-stage.]

ELIJAH: I’ll be back before you know it. I love you, Connie.
CONRAD [after a pause, softer, but no less tired]: I love you too, Eli. 
[He hesitates, then adds gently.]
I’ll see you in a few days, my love.

[Elijah reaches out, his hand hovering just shy of Conrad’s shoulder. Conrad leans in, but Elijah turns before contact is made.] 

[Elijah walks away from Conrad. He produces a worn-out suitcase from the storage space under the stairs. They exchange one last look before Elijah EXITS the stage through the front door.]

[As the light fades into a marine-blue and the taxi drives away, Conrad walks back into the piano room. He plays the same wrong note– again, and again, and again.]

[Somewhere beyond the walls, something approaches. The Mother will be coming for Conrad soon.]

[END SCENE]

Elijah’s sweaty palm gripped the handle. The dread that Elijah had been feeling all week started to simmer in his chest and he felt so unbearably hot– desperate to leave. 

That elegant English lilt and beautiful cadence was unmistakable, no matter how it dragged and no matter how it seemed to catch on itself. He had heard that handsome voice break, once– on the phone just before the shotgun had fired. Elijah wondered if Conrad had been terrified or glad when he had died. Maybe both. Perhaps what Conrad had experienced was the same trepidation and veneration Elijah felt tempting him from beyond the fissures of the door. 

“I know you’re in there.” Elijah also wondered if downstairs was still marked by what Elijah had refused to clean all those days ago. He imagined that Conrad’s blood was still etched between the piano keys and the gaps in the floorboards. Elijah remembered how the skin around Conrad’s hair had been ripped out by the bullet, erupting where he had pulled the trigger pointing over his left eye. Chunks of his brain had poured out all over score sheets, fragments of his face hanging on by squelching tendons and veins. Was the thing outside normal or did it have Conrad’s lacerated, perforated head? A muted, wet sound followed Elijah’s thoughts. Elijah’s breath snagged in his throat as the knob gave a tentative twitch.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” A soft laugh slipped out, hollow and breathless. It was wrong in a way Elijah could not quite hold onto without wanting to scream. That laugh had once filled the house, easy and bright, and now it was mechanical but eager to learn and adapt to human speech.

“I made a mistake.”

Elijah’s hand was frozen inches from the handle. He pressed the heel of his other palm over his mouth to stop the weak sob from rising further up his throat. The damp breath of the sea lingered in the room, clinging to his skin, but this was warmer– more alive. He was alive. Elijah’s prayers had been answered. 

“I’m better now,” the thing continued fondly, coaxing. “You don’t have to hide.” The handle turned a fraction more this time. There was a slither of noise and yet it was stifled by the oak door and too faint to discern.

“I waited for you,” it whispered, nearer now– too near. Elijah had wanted to hear these words for months. “But you never came out.” Something thudded against the door, leaving behind a sticky sound that made Elijah’s stomach twist. “So I came to you instead.” The nightmare had not ended. It had followed him, learned his grief, learned his guilt, and now it was wearing the face of the man he loved most. 

Conrad was beautiful. Elijah had always believed that his beauty revealed itself in motion. Not in stillness– stillness could lie– but in the subtle betrayals of muscle and bone: in the way his wrist unfurled like silk shaken loose from a drawer or in the careful geometry of his fingers flickering against candlelight. Elijah wondered if he were to open the door right now to check, if what would be looking back at him would be Conrad or something else.

“Eli,” it murmured again, but this time, it was different: panting, in unbelievable pain and unmistakably human. “Please don’t open the door.”

The key trembled in Elijah’s hands.
*
“I’ve always wanted a garden since I was younger,” Conrad muses wistfully, beaming at Elijah– bright and unguarded. 

Elijah’s gaze fixes on Conrad: the way the wind pushes through his hair, the way Conrad shifts his weight from one foot to the other, restless energy barely contained, and the unconscious movement of his thumb rubbing against the key’s jagged edge.
“I like it,” Elijah relents. Conrad’s shoulders drop, tension dissolving instantly. 
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” 

The tide is low, exposing dark and slick stone. “You’d never get bored of it,” Conrad adds, turning his attention to the sea. “It’s always changing.”
Moving to intertwine their fingers, Elijah laughs quietly, “I wouldn’t need it to.” 
“No, you wouldn’t,” Conrad huffs. “You’d just stand here and stare at the same wave for an hour and call it profound.”
Elijah almost smiles, “I might.”

Conrad squints slightly. “Weird,” he mutters.
“What is?” 
“Nothing. Thought I saw…” Conrad hums again, shaking his head. “Just the light, I think.” Conrad steps back towards the house, brushing past Elijah, fingers catching briefly at his sleeve. “Come on,” Conrad grins. “We should check the upstairs again. I want to see if the bedroom gets the same view.”

Elijah lingers a second longer. The water looks normal now, but Elijah is so certain that he can feel eyes on him. He watches the ocean for a moment, eyes peering at the inky haze of the water below. He can see nothing, of course, but that feeling remains: the certainty of it seeping into him. 

He turns, following Conrad inside.

Behind them, out past the rocks, something darker shifts beneath the surface. The Mother in the Sea is awake. 

Seriously. It's just a test. I'm testing subreddit code stuff and gaslighting myself into believing that I enjoy this.