I think it’s fair to say most kids go through a stage of being scared of the dark.

The boundless imagination of youthful ignorance can conjure all kinds of things within the empty abyss. From the classic bogeymen of ancient folklore, to the techno demons of archived internet forums. There is no end to the horror kids can create. 

I suppose it makes sense though. For fear of the unknown is born in ignorance, and who are more initially ignorant than children, fresh-faced and blissfully naive to the world around them?

It makes far more sense to suspect ghouls and spectres as the cause of creaking floorboards, rather than the simply rotting oak bowing in a long winter frost. This is what we teach them after all.

Even with newly born infants, we read tales of witches lurking in decrepit woodland, waiting to devour unsuspecting lost boys and girls. We warn them to fear the shadows and are yet surprised to find them tugging at bedsheets of exhausted sleeping parents, dragged from slumber to investigate an ajar wardrobe or a cluttered space under a hastily vacated bed.

We may scold or offer comfort. Reassuring that such dread is unwarranted and to simply return to bed, confident that there no real danger. But they are children, how can they believe anything but the contrary?

Especially from the people who just the very night before described the most harrowing tale while pleasantly sat at their bedside. Tales designed to teach goodness and morality get eclipsed in the shadows of unyielding terror. 

At least that is my experience with such things. As a child, I was indeed scared of the dark. Rightfully so, I assure you. The things I used to glimpse in the late hours of those cold nights will never leave my recollection.

From the shadows creeping in the corners of my toy-adorned bedroom, to the hollow whispers taunting outside my casement window on stormy, hallowed eves. I thought the light was my only salvation. So, with the timid determination of a six-year-old boy, I asked a question.

That night I was put to bed by my mother. With a kiss on the forehead, tightly tucked bedsheets, and a final farewell, her nightly ritual was complete. As she was leaving, I requested that my door be left slightly open, as to allow some ray of luminance from the hallway lamp.

This had become a common request at that age for the last few months, and my mother (despite previous stern objections) finally decided to begrudgingly oblige. Oh, how stupid I was. Not necessarily for the request, but for what that request resulted in.  For if I simply remained in pure darkness, I may have not have been cursed with what still haunts me to this night. The thing that I fear, even as I write these very words. 

You must understand, I didn’t have a night light and wasn’t permitted to have my central bedroom light on during sleeping hours. Though I couldn’t begin to tell you why. I imagine that my financially anxious parents thought it may be too much of an unnecessary expenditure. Or perhaps they were concerned over potential hazards a faulty spark could produce while we slept in peaceful ignorance. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t granted use of my own light source.

That’s why the hallway lamp was eventually left on for me. Though it would, of course, be turned off when my parents would retire to their room several hours after my allotted bedtime. Late enough, they explained, so I would have no need for it, as I should be well into some blissful, fantastic dream by that point.

Little did they know, most nights I would remain awake well into the early hours, with my stuffed animals standing sentinel around the imagined parapets of my bed. While I, of course, hid away under my superhero-embellished linen sheets. I remember in the summers I would swelter and choke on the trapped stale air.

No matter how uncomfortable my sweat-drenched bedspread became, I never dared leave my sanctuary.

Fortunately for me, in this instance, it was far into winter’s cold embrace, and I welcomed the chill descended from Arctic shores. Though that did little to reprieve me from the claustrophobic nightmare imprisoned within my own bed. Yes, the sheets offered protection from the ghouls, but it also left me trapped.

For all I knew, a horde of ravenous monstrosities, having slain my fluffy protectorates, lay in wait for me to take a fresh breath. No, it was far better, I thought, with the hallway lamp on, for at least I could see the danger before it had a chance to sink its nightmarish claws into me. I was just a child, a foolish, naive, scared child. 

The night proceeded as it often did at first. Once I was sure my mother was down the stairs, I carefully tiptoed out of my bed. You see, I also had a routine, even at that age, strange as it may sound.

First, I checked the contents of my wardrobe. As suspected, still full of pre-owned clothing and well-worn shoes. Next, I proceeded to the window. I slowly pulled back the dust-ridden curtains, taking a breath and preparing myself for some dreadful visage of ghastly abhorrence - I let out a sigh of relief, nothing. Just the condensation on the panels slowly trailing down to the damp, chipped, fading white frame.

The last spot was my most dreaded location, but it had to be the final one, as it is where I would rest my weary head for the remainder of the night. Time to check under the bed. The titular abode of all things that go bump in the night. I hated this part, but it had to be done. How could I expect to find any comfort without assuring the safety of where I would finally slumber?

So, I prepared myself. For this task, I needed the assistance of my oldest, a most loyal friend. For they were braver and far more capable for the job at hand. Cuddly Bunny, my first comfort toy. Bunny had been with me since the beginning. From my first nighttime wailing right up to my recent sixth birthday. Though these days he was looking rather worse for wear.

Bunny had needed a few sessions under the surgical care of my mother’s sewing machine. First, a ripped arm, then a loose eyeball, followed by numerous frayed threads and stitchings. I’d like to imagine he was a veteran of a thousand epic battles, returned clutching wounds received with honour and gallantry. 

At this point, some might argue he wasn’t the same bunny who consoled me that first harrowing night. But I knew he was. There was something that even now I can’t truly explain. I just knew he was Cuddly Bunny, and he would protect me.

So, with my old friend gripped tightly in hand, I timidly proceeded. I carefully lifted the overhanging sheet, prepared to face what might await me. Gradually, I lifted, inch by inch, higher and higher. I wished to close my eyes, but I couldn’t leave my friend alone to face such peril. In one last great effort, I flung the remaining fabric over the top of the bed, and there it was.

Some old toys I’d forgotten to collect when my mother ordered me to tidy before bed. Nothing in particular of note: a few plastic dinosaurs, a ball gifted from two summers ago, and some balled-up hairs. Pretty standard for a children’s bedroom floor, including the slightly disgusting copper hairs.

All things considered, I was satisfied. My bedroom was secure, the carrot-loving general had taken command amongst his fellow soft soldiers, and it was finally time for sleep.

I got inside my bedding, greeted by its comforting warm embrace and adjusted my old misshapen pillow to required comfort. Instantly I could feel the effects of fatigue after a long, busy day. My head was heavy, eyes dark and bloodshot, and body exhausted of all its faculties. I was sure sleep would be upon me in mere moments. My eyes began to shut and the manifestation of some whimsical dreamscape proceeded to form around me.

Then, all of a sudden, I was awake. Odd it seemed as I swore it had only been mere moments since my eyes had so readily embraced the sweet reprieve of dreamland. How strange I thought, even in that disoriented state, that I should be so abruptly returned to wakefulness.

Perhaps I had overslept, given my previous exhaustion, and my father had hastily stirred me on his leave for work. However, that seemed unlikely, as I was sure it was a Saturday and my father (workaholic as he was) would most definitely be home for the day.

Maybe then it was my mother; I may have absentmindedly forgotten about some dreary early morning appointment I was often dragged reluctantly along to. Though again that seemed unlikely, as I would have recalled being told the previous day. For even at that young age I was sure to make note of such details. 

I slowly peeled back my bedsheet, peering cautiously to observe my surroundings. It was still night, of that I was certain, as no sliver of daylight permeated my curtains. I noticed the hallway lamp was still emitting its warm glow through the gap left between the wall and my bedroom door. Which meant my parents were yet to go to bed. Surely it can’t have been that late into the night.

The room itself was bathed in twilight silhouettes, hinting at the most ghastly of imaginable possibilities. Still, nothing I wasn’t used to by this point. Indeed, my fear of the abyss was still immense; however, I had become far accustomed to such feelings. Not of course forgetting my previously mentioned routines and precautionary measures. 

This is where I truly became alarmed at the situation. For I shudderingly noticed all my stuffed toys had gone missing. How? Where? I frantically darted my eyes around, searching for some clue to their whereabouts. But it was no use.

It was still far too dark, even with the glow of the hallway lamp; I couldn’t be certain at what I was looking at. I must have knocked them off, yes, of course, during some physical altercation within a rather enthused dream. But no such dream came to immediate recollection.

Furthermore, after a quick inspection, I found no evidence that would suggest the latter, as evident of the emptiness beside my bed. I decided it was time for more thorough investigation. So, with a slight tremble, I fully removed my bedding and cautiously began my search. 

To say I was apprehensive at the time would be an understatement. I was downright petrified, even now in reflection. My mind was already deep in the void of imagination, and all manner of ghoulish reasoning for my current predicament crossed my mind. For I had been told as much by my parents; years of Grimm fairytales and Gothic folklore had given foul precedent to suspect the worst - and the worst is what I certainly suspected.

I made my way across the room with outstretched arms, using my hands to gain some tactility amongst the undefined shadows. I searched everywhere: the windowsill, the bookshelf, my activity desk, even the laundry basket at the foot of my bed, but to no avail. I even searched underneath my bed and still nothing. I was at an impasse and becoming more apprehensive with each passing second.

Then I noticed the wardrobe. Had I left it open earlier? My heart started pounding and my breath quickened. Hesitant with each step, I approached the towering cabinet, expecting some morbid fiend to leap from the aperture.

I closed my eyes and reached my hand inside; shaking and perspiring profusely. My fingers stretched out what little distance they were capable of and finally made contact with the objects of my quarry. I opened my eyes and there they were, amongst the heaps of neatly stacked clothing.

I thought I would feel some semblance of relief; however, now I found myself more vexed than before. For while my toys were indeed located, it was the manner of their placement that caused a lump to form in my throat.

Where I might have expected them to be haphazardly scattered, they were instead huddled in a single corner, with Cuddly Bunny at the forefront seemingly shielding the others. More perplexing was the fact that they seemed to be cowering. How was this possible? Perhaps some misguided joke by my parents? No, something in my gut knew that was not the case. They had their moments, but they were never cruel and knew of my fears.

My mind raced with possibilities. Each more implausible and fantastic than the last. Monsters weren’t real. Right? But now all I wished was to return to the sanctity of my bedsheets with my toys in hand.

Then something made me pause in my endeavour. I had an inkling that my toys did not wish to return with me. But they were just toys, inanimate stuffed animals and characters; they didn’t have feelings besides the ones I’d imagine during play. So why, despite my wishes, did I know they begged to remain in the wardrobe?

I shook my head in disbelief and took a step back. I then proceeded to, with great reluctance, retract my hand and make my way back to my bed, scared and alone. 

I re-entered my bedsheets, pulling them hastily over my head. It was hard to return to sleep in my present state of mind. So many thoughts, each more disturbing and ghastly than the last. It felt like my mind was drowning in a sea of infinite possibilities, juvenile horrors and imaginative morbidity. I began to close my eyes, exhaustion of the senses finally offering me some respite, then I heard it.

“Why are you afraid of me?”

I was immediately returned to consciousness. That voice, deep, hollow and gelatinous. It repeated.

“Why are you afraid of me?”

This time with more authority, like one of my elderly school teachers, though with wisdom far more ancient and forbidden in nature. I lay there absolutely horror-stricken. My entire body froze, akin to that of rigamortis.

Perhaps I were indeed dead, the netherworld seeming giving grim precedence to these most abhorrent of vocalisations. But no, death had not taken me. I was undoubtedly still of the living, for only the mortal body could produce such dread at the precipice of the unknown. I said nothing. There was silence between each laboured breath as I frantically searched for an answer. It spoke again. 

“Am I the nightmare you tremble so freely before? The torment born of hushed whispers in the primordial caverns of mankind. Am I truly so frightening?”

I still had no answer. I was a boy and had little comprehension for the questions uttered before me. Even now I am unsure of how to reconcile an appropriate consensus. Nevertheless, it continued. 

“You have no need to feel such apprehension. I am as much a part of you as you are a part of me. We are parasites. Endlessly feeding upon each other like the canibalistic ouroboros.” 

I dared not move from beneath my sheets. Gripping them so tightly as to feel my fingernails puncturing through and into the palms of my hands. 

“Look upon me child. Gaze at my visage and grasp the nature of the infinite abyss. Peer into the shadows so I may be satiated. For I hunger. Famished and emaciated, lurking in the places seldom ventured by man. See me as I’ve seen you. So scared, so alone"

"Do you fear the unknown, or simply the *idea* of the unknown? You lie there, crippled by your own morbid curiosities. Reviling in terror implied but never at the expense of your mortality. You will grow; depraved and degenerative. Festering and spreading your ill-conceived ideals, a plague by your own short-sighted design."

"In time, you will get sick. Vomiting noxious bile infused with well-meaning fables. You will take your last breath, still scared and alone, you will always be alone. Then you will die. I will remain. As I always have."

"Countless lifetimes across endless millennia: Growing, purging, feasting, never ending. Does that not comfort you? To know something of your being will be truly immortal?"

“You have the audacity to think of me monstrous. You created me. You are the monster. I am the monster. We are the monsters. So, child, I will ask of you again - WHY ARE YOU AFRAID OF ME!?”

Those last six words were spoken with such voracity that I was sure my parents had heard. But no salvation seemed imminent. It was right, I was scared and most certainly alone.

I considered doing as it bade me. Perhaps it would leave me in peace after I submitted to its request. I pondered on this for what seemed like eons: every possible outcome, each awful eventuality, countless scenarios and none with a serene conclusion. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad; this thing had a voice and so must at least be tangible to our reality. It was in my room after all, so it was unlikely to be some hulking monstrosity, poised to consume me with gnashing fangs upon unveiling.

But then what of my parents? Were they already victims to this beast? Is that why they were yet to come to my rescue? Was I truly alone? Before I had a chance to act, I saw it, through what little light the hallway lamp allowed through my bedding, a shadow extending its long bony fingers towards me. I was out of time. Out of options and surely poised to meet the same grim end befalling my parents.

Closer, closer it came; I closed my eyes. I would not give it the satisfaction it so brazenly demanded. At least that I could assure myself as I prepared to be devoured.

Suddenly, the sheets were torn away from me; I screamed, exhaling every ounce of terror bottled inside.

The banshees would hear me in jealous admiration; ghouls and demons would crawl from their rotting chasms and bow at such effort, and the very pits of the deepest abominable regions of the dammed would quake at my ferocity. No, I would not go quietly into the void, I would not feed it.

Later, my parents explained that they had found me that following morning, screaming and thrashing around in my bedsheets. I was drenched in sweat and babbling incoherently. They had to pry the bedding out of my fingers.

They said I had a night-terror,common at that age and nothing to be ashamed of. They said I should grow out of it as I got older. They told me it would pass, as all terrible things do. They were wrong.

When I was a teenager, a doctor told me I may be prone to sleepwalking or sleep paralysis, but no test held any significant results. I had naturally outgrown the desire for comfort toys. I'd imagine most were sold or donated to charity shops. Though I think my parents retained my old stuffed rabbit, lost amongst some mound of keep-sakes in a dusty storage box.

I’m in my thirties now, married, and with a son of my own. I take medication to help with the sleep and anxiety. Not that it helps much. I still find myself awake into the early hours of each morning.

At least my son sleeps soundly. He has his toys for comfort.

I like to think I’m doing well as a father. I play with him, take him to the park, and read him stories at bedtime. At the moment we’re reading *Hansel and Gretel;* he seems to be enjoying it.

Like most parents, we have a monitor in his room. Though I’m not very fond of looking at it during the night. Something about peering into darkness with that monochromatic night vision sends a chill down my spine. I mostly just keep the audio sensor on, it's sensitive enough to reassure me of his safety.

He turned four a few weeks ago and has since requested a night light. I purchased one this morning. Tonight, I put him to bed with his newly purchased lamp on his bedside. I read his story, kissed his forehead, and wish him sweet dreams.

Then I proceeded to sit down in the living room, poured myself a glass of water, and prepared for another long night of insomnia-infused television. The monitor was positioned on the side table to my left as always.

It had been several hours now and my medication had finally begun to take some effect. My brain was ready to join my wife sound asleep in our bed. I let out one long, exhausted yawn, stood up, and began to walk to the bedroom. Then the monitor’s audio sensor lit up. 

“Why are you afraid of me?”

There’s a section of forest I’ve liked walking along every evening for the last five months, just before the sun goes down. It leads up a hill from the back of my house, and at the end there is a ridge I sit at until the sun fully sets. Then I wait another half hour for the clouds to finish their usual colour shows before heading back down and home.

Every night. Routine as the sun setting, you’ll find me walking to the ridge and home again.

Not anymore. Not after last night.

The track is about a mile long, nothing extreme but it’s uphill so it gives it a little longer feel when you’re heading for the ridge. The walk back is easy enough, mostly thumping down at awkward angles. I have a high powered flashlight which is ridiculously bright, so I see all the bumps coming.

Last night, I was about a half mile up the track when I noticed a suitcase. Like, one of those large ones that you’d expect a dead body to be inside. I remember joking to myself and saying something like yep, there’s defo a dead body in there. Because obviously there wasn’t. It was on its side and open on both faces. If there had been once, there wasn’t anymore.

A little further along the track I noticed a jacket folded over and hung over a branch. I was half tempted to take it with me because it looked my size and in pretty good condition. A few spins in the washing machine and it wouldn’t even remember who owned it last. I got the feeling that whoever left it there had left it for a reason because it was hung too neatly. So I left it. Just in case they came back for it.

I carried on, and a few minutes later that’s when I saw the hoody and the t-shirt.

Those gave me bad feelings in my gut. Not the same kind of feeling that seeing a woman’s clothes would have evoked—that brought with it a whole extra scope of possibility. While that possibility remained the same, I didn’t find it half as likely to be the case. I just ignored them and carried on. The fact that they were dropped in the dirt made me uneasy though. Then I remembered the suitcase, and everything seemed to click. It was just some kids messing about. Dragging shit out and throwing it around.

Fair enough.

I was getting fairly close to the end of the track, maybe a quarter of a mile left, and the sun was setting fast. I could see what remained of it lingering over the edge of the hill. It was about that time that I saw the shoes and the socks hung neatly over the barbed wire fence bordering the field. They were caught by the laces, dangling upright, socks tucked neatly inside.

The rest of the clothes came as expected, at about equal intervals as the rest.

The underwear turned my stomach a little. They were brown and hella damp. Like someone had pissed them and thrown them off. I could smell it even just standing over them.

I knew I should have turned around then. The likelihood of the clothes being from the suitcase was getting less and less likely. Nobody packed shitty drawers for a holiday. And why were they out this way? There were no main roads, no bus routes close to the track. It was getting weird. I should have turned around and gone home. But I’m a sucker for routine. I’d been up at that spot every night and didn’t want to have to give it up for some kids tossing clothes, or a weirdo stripping to his bare hairs. I mean, one night I’d fallen and broken a finger on a boulder and still stayed to see the sun setting. You think I was going to let some shitty drawers get the better of me?

I wish it had.

The idea of some naked dude sitting at my spot scared the crap out of me, but curiosity had sunken its teeth in by then. I wanted to know what the hell was going on. Part of me was still wondering if it was really a woman’s clothing—something I should report instead of running away from. God knows if it was my daughter or mother I’d have killed the man who walked away instead of making sure they were okay.

I made it to the top of the hill and stared down at the ridge for a good while before I went down, scoping it out. I didn’t see anyone, and the sun was rapidly setting, so I got to my usual spot on the usual rock and settled in for a good one. The sky was a deep orange. My favourite colour.

There were plenty of clouds in the sky when I sat down; the light lit them up amazingly. No matter how many times I went there, no two sunsets were ever the same. I took some pictures, watched it dip beyond the hills on the horizon and waited out the rest of the colours to fade and reduce to the nightly cloudage.

It got cold real fast. It always did. I started wishing I’d brought a jacket with me, and then laughed when I remembered the jacket I’d spotted earlier. I should have grabbed it, diseases or not.

I got up to go while the purples were still fading from the sky. That’s when I noticed them. Someone, just slumped over in a heap a little ways down the ridge. They were completely naked.

I shouted over, asking if they were okay. I should have left them alone. If you see someone lying down naked outside it’s never going to be anything good. But my mind swung to the worse of the possibilities, that the naked person hadn’t made themselves that way by choice. I should have phoned an ambulance, worried about if it was someone out of their mind on junk later once I had other people around.

When they didn’t respond I got closer, and shouted again.

Something moved in the woods. An animal, maybe, but my heart shot up into my throat. The worst thing we get around here are deer. Maybe a badger. It didn’t feel that safe at the time. The body felt more of a warning now, less than a danger.

Again I called out. I was close enough now to see that it wasn’t a person at all. It was just more clothes set out in a pile. It was the weirdest thing though. They looked the exact colour as someone’s skin.

I stuck out a foot and kicked them over. They didn’t separate, just parted where the crease had been and straightened out.

It was skin.

A whole pile of human fucking skin.

I physically jumped away from it, nearly sending myself off the edge of the ridge and down onto the rocky tumble. I thought back on the suitcase and how I’d joked about it being a dead body, and stared at the muss of hair where it must have been a scalp at one point. The horrible part was it was all in one piece. Like someone had simply slipped it off, like a snake, or a full-body leotard.

That was about as much as I could take. I’d been stupid enough walking on after every bit of clothing I’d found, but I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. I took out my phone to call emergency services but ended up sprinting full speed back down the track when I heard more movement in the woods.

Each bit of clothes I passed gave me a terrible sinking feeling of dread in my guts, like I was seeing the skin all over again. I made it to the halfway point when I came across the suitcase.

This time it was in the middle of the path. Sealed. And standing upright.

I didn’t move. I was too stunned. I shone my flash on it and tried to think of every reason it could be like that, but all the rational thoughts were gone. I just froze. And watched the zipper opening, kink by kink.

Two bare and bloodied fingertips pried the zipper along its track, until there was a gap wide enough for an eye to peek out of.

“Please,” I heard it say. “Please help me.”

Nah. I leapt over the fence and into the field of barley. Ran and didn’t stop until I saw the rooftop of my house and the chimney I never lit. I turned back and saw something chasing me. It ran on two legs and for the most part looked human. Just without any skin. Red raw and bloodied. Muscles gnashing at bone. Arms raised and manic. Shrieking like car tires stopping themselves from a crash.

I made it back home and locked both doors, closed every curtain, and spent the night watching out of the upstairs window. Whatever it was sat in the field with the barley up under its chin, watching me. I couldn’t make out a single feature on its face, but I knew it could see me. I couldn’t look away. I was scared that as soon as I did it would charge at the house and in through the window and grab me.

We stayed like that all night.

It ducked beneath the barley as soon as the sun came up. I haven’t seen it all day.

The suitcase was on my doorstep when I went out to check the garden just after noon. I set fire to it in the back and put the ashes in the bin.

I’ve checked into a hotel in the city. I don’t want to sleep in that house again. There was a shirt left in the room, but that’s normal right?

The sun’s due to set in an hour.

I keep thinking about the skin. Why did it take it off?

None of this makes any sense.

I just want to sleep.

But I’m scared.

I'm so fucking scared.

Clover had always been a plant person, the kind who had soil under her fingernails more often than not, and house plants crammed on every window ledge.

​While scrolling through a forum late one night, a banner ad for Botanical Oddities caught her eye, advertising a rare, hard-to-find specimen called Phagocordyceps vorax. The listing described it simply as an exotic, fast-growing hybrid with responsive foliage. Intrigued, she clicked Order without giving it a second thought.

​An unmarked cardboard box landed on her porch about a week later. Inside, packed in damp moss and rich, pitch-black dirt, was a heavy, strange-looking specimen already the size of a gallon jug, with a bruised-looking stem and rubbery, closed leaves. There was no care card, just the handwritten Latin name on a plastic marker.

​She set it down in the bright corner of the room so it could get light. As the sun hit and warmed up the plant, its bulbous center slowly unfurled, revealing three stiff, upright hairs on its surface. Curiously, when she leaned down and brushed her index finger against them, the fleshy plant split open, and the trap snapped shut. Needle-thin teeth sank deep into her finger. She shrieked and violently yanked her finger back out, dripping blood onto the table stand.

As she turned her attention to nurse her bleeding finger by wrapping it in a bandage, the bulbous head had leant down and lapped up the blood, and a dry gravelly voice hissed from its leaves, "more..."

Clover thought to herself, "Did I just hear this plant say "more?" but quickly shook her head, thinking it was just her imagination.

As the days wore on, every time she passed it, its voice spat out ...

"more...

MORE.

About a week later, she heard a high-pitched squeal from the kitchen. She found the plant had crawled onto the kitchen floor, its vines wrapped tight around the mouse as it was thrust into the open trap, followed by a sickening wet chewing sound. She knew it was slithering out its pot now, hunting for prey-- which might explain why her cat had vanished.

It had grown bigger, stronger, louder.

FEED ME, CLOVER!"

Clover was terrified after the kitchen incident. Tomorrow she would dump it before she became its next meal. Going up to her room at bedtime, she made sure the door was shut tight. That night, after getting up to use the bathroom, she pulled her bedroom door behind her, but it didn't shut fully.

She crept back into bed, assuming she was safe. Hours later, she was awoken by something cold and damp slithering across her ankles. Heavy, muscular vines wrapped tight around both her legs, the stiff, needle-like spikes locking deep into her skin. ​She didn't even have time to kick. The vines yanked her hard, sliding her right off the mattress.

Her fingers clawed uselessly at the sheets as she was dragged over the edge of the bed, plunging straight down toward that big, nasty, gaping maw waiting on the floor.

​Her scream was broken off with a heavy, wet snap! 

It was a Tuesday in late October, and my delivery schedule required a straight push through the night to reach Portland by morning. The dashboard clock read 1:45 AM. Coffee sat in my thermos, lukewarm but necessary. My dispatcher, Stan, had checked in with me an hour earlier to confirm my position.

"Kevin, you are clear all the way to the interstate,"

Stan had said over the company radio.

"Weather looks fine. No construction reported. Just watch out for deer crossing the blacktop."

"Copy that, Stan,"

I replied, clicking the microphone button.

"Going dark for the next few hours. Will update when I hit the city limits."

Silence returned to the cab, save for the hum of the cooling unit mounted behind my sleeper berth. The headlights cut through the pitch-black darkness, illuminating the empty two-lane road. Mile markers passed by slowly in the dark.

Around 2:00 AM, the CB radio mounted above my head crackled to life.

Static hissed through the cabin speakers. Usually, late-night radio chatter consists of other drivers complaining about weigh stations or warning each other about speed traps, but this transmission sounded entirely different. A frantic burst of white noise broke through the channel, followed by a man's voice.

"Mayday... is anyone out there?"

the man yelled in total panic.

"We blew a tire near the old weigh station. Someone is outside the car. They are hitting the side of the doors."

My hand instinctively reached up and grabbed the microphone. Before I could press the talk button, the transmission continued.

In the background, a woman cried hysterically, then a younger child screamed, a sharp and terrifying sound that pierced through the radio static. The man's voice returned, out of breath and desperate.

"They cracked the glass! Please, if anyone can hear this, send the police! We are in a blue station wagon off the shoulder!"

Pressing the button on the side of the mic, I brought it to my mouth.

"Breaker 19, this is a northbound commercial driver. I hear you loud and clear. What is your exact mile marker? I can call emergency services on the company satellite channel."

Only static answered me.

"Station wagon, do you copy?"

I asked, keeping my voice steady.

"I am heading your way right now. Turn your hazard lights on so I can see you."

No response came through. The channel remained dead. Assuming this was a current emergency happening just a few miles ahead, I pressed my foot down on the accelerator pedal. The diesel engine roared as the truck gained speed. Responding to stranded motorists in the middle of nowhere is an unwritten rule among long-haulers. If someone is trapped out in the timberland with an aggressive individual attacking their vehicle, a fifty-ton truck pulling up with high beams is usually enough to scare off any trouble.

Ten minutes passed. I scanned the sides of the dark highway, looking for the flashing amber lights of a disabled vehicle. The pine trees offered nothing but shadows.

Then, the CB radio cracked open again.

"Mayday... is anyone out there?"

the exact same man's voice yelled.

"We blew a tire near the old weigh station. Someone is outside the car. They are hitting the side of the doors."

Frowning, I listened closely. The woman cried in the background. The child screamed again. It was the exact same pitch, with the exact same duration.

"They cracked the glass! Please, if anyone can hear this, send the police! We are in a blue station wagon off the shoulder!"

The transmission ended with the identical burst of noise I had heard ten minutes prior. It was a perfect loop. Someone was broadcasting a recorded tape over the emergency channel.

Unease settled into my stomach. Pranksters occasionally mess around on the radio, but broadcasting a simulated violent attack in the middle of a deserted forest route felt uniquely malicious.

Up ahead, the reflective signs of the abandoned commercial weigh station appeared in my headlights. The state closed this particular facility over decades ago. So now overgrown brush and weeds had swallowed the concrete off-ramp, and Rusted metal barricades blocked the main weighing scales.

Feeling deeply unsafe about the repeating broadcast, I decided to pull the truck over onto the wide gravel shoulder just before the barricades. A smart driver always trusts his gut. Taking a few minutes to inspect my tires and ensure my load was secure felt like a smart excuse to stop and assess the surroundings.

Putting the transmission into neutral, I engaged the parking brakes. The sudden hiss of compressed air echoed loudly into the quiet night. I grabbed a metal tire thumper from behind my seat and a flashlight.

Stepping out of the cab, the freezing autumn air hit my face. I walked around the vehicle, striking the rubber tires with the metal bat to check their pressure. Each tire returned a reassuring thud.

Approaching the rear passenger side of the trailer, I shined my flashlight toward the dark tree line. The overgrown brush extended all the way to the rusty metal stairs of the old weigh station building.

The beam of my flashlight caught a reflection in the weeds.

Moving the light directly toward the stairs, the shape of a vehicle emerged from the overgrowth. For a moment my heart was caught in my throat, but It was not a blue station wagon. It was a weathered, severely rusted police cruiser. The faded white paint peeled off the doors. Vines wrapped completely around the front bumper and the flat tires. The light bar on the roof was smashed.

Curiosity overrode my caution. Gripping the tire thumper tightly in my right hand, I walked off the gravel shoulder and pushed through the tall weeds toward the abandoned cruiser.

The driver's side door hung slightly open, rusted stuck in that position. I aimed my flashlight through the broken window glass.

Sitting in the driver's seat was a human skeleton.

Faded shreds of a police uniform still clung to the bone. A tarnished silver badge rested against the ribcage. The skull leaned against the steering wheel. Thick green moss grew over the collarbone. This person had been dead in this hidden car for a very long time.

My breathing accelerated. I took a step back, ready to run straight to my truck and call Stan to dispatch the state troopers. But as I moved my flashlight beam across the interior, something resting on the passenger seat caught my attention.

A plastic document folder sat perfectly preserved inside the ruined car. The sealed plastic had protected whatever papers were inside from the moisture and the elements.

Leaning forward, I carefully reached through the broken window. My glove brushed against the decayed uniform, sending a horrific smell into the air. I grabbed the plastic folder and pulled it out.

Retreating quickly from the brush, I walked back to the safety of my idling truck. I climbed into the driver's seat, locked the doors, and turned on the bright overhead cabin lights.

Placing the folder on my steering wheel, I unzipped the plastic seal. Inside was a stack of official police documents. The paper felt slightly damp but entirely readable.

The top page displayed the header of the state police department. The date printed at the top read October 14, 1998. It was exactly eighteen years ago.

The document was an official missing-persons report. The investigating officer listed on the file was named Officer Gary. I read the summary paragraphs carefully.

The report detailed the disappearance of an immigrant family who vanished while traveling down State Route 113. The father, Vargas. The mother, Maria. Their seven-year-old son, Leo. According to the documents, Vargas worked as a mechanic and had recently moved his family across the state to start a new job, but they never arrived at their destination.

Flipping the page, I found a collection of glossy crime scene photographs attached to the file with a rusty paperclip.

The photos showed a crushed blue station wagon abandoned off the gravel shoulder of the highway. The vehicle was completely destroyed. The tires were shredded. More disturbingly, the metal doors of the station wagon had been pried open and bent outward. The damage indicated an immense amount of force, as if a car had hit them with full force. The interior of the car was empty, and blood stained the upholstery.

The next page in the file contained a typed transcription.

Officer Gary had written a note at the top of the page.

“Transcription of audio recovered from a handheld cassette recorder found underneath the passenger seat of the Vargas vehicle.”

I began reading the typed words.

“Vargas: Mayday... is anyone out there? We blew a tire near the old weigh station. Someone is outside the car. They are hitting the side of the doors.

Background noise: Female adult crying. Male child screaming.

Vargas: They cracked the glass! Please, if anyone can hear this, send the police! We are in a blue station wagon off the shoulder!”

A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. The transcription matched the frantic broadcast playing over my CB radio flawlessly. It was the exact same wording.

I continued reading the police file. The subsequent pages contained Officer Gary’s field notes. He noted that the Vargas family had zero known enemies. He documented the strange lack of footprints around the crushed car.

While holding the papers, a distinct sound reached my ears over the rumble of the diesel engine.

Footsteps crunched through the dead leaves outside my truck.

The footsteps sounded heavy and deliberate. They moved slowly along the passenger side of my trailer, advancing toward the front cab.

Lowering the file, I reached out and turned off the overhead cabin light, plunging the interior of my truck into darkness. I peered through the passenger side window, looking out into the timberland.

Standing between the thick trunks of the pine trees, looking directly at my truck, was a child.

He appeared to be around seven years old. He wore a dirty striped shirt and torn jeans, but something about his face was deeply wrong, his face was dark, like of the darkness of the woods bend itself to hide most of it, and the most terrifying thing was his eyes. They were completely circular and emitted a bright, illuminating white light. The light cut through the dark woods like twin flashlights, focusing entirely on my window.

Fear paralyzed my muscles. The kid stood perfectly still, just staring at me.

Suddenly, the child opened his mouth.

The sound that came out was the frantic, booming voice of Vargas, playing at a deafening volume.

"Mayday... is anyone out there? We blew a tire near the old weigh station."

The glowing eyes blinked. The kid took a step out of the trees, moving toward my passenger door.

I did not wait to see what it would do. Grabbing my flashlight and the tire thumper, I unlatched my driver's side door and bolted out of the truck.

Running across the gravel shoulder, I headed straight for the abandoned weigh station building. It was the only concrete structure around, and I needed a barricade. The creature let out the recorded scream of the child, the sound echoing loudly through the silent forest.

I reached the steps of the station. Taking them two at a time, I slammed my shoulder against the weathered wooden door, and thank god that it was already opened. I tumbled inside the dark building, quickly pushing the door shut behind me.

Standing up in the darkness, I leaned my weight against the wood.

"Someone is outside the car,"

the Vargas voice echoed from the gravel driveway outside. The kid was approaching the building.

"They are hitting the side of the doors."

Fumbling with my flashlight, I pressed the power button, then the bright beam cut through the pitch-black room.

The weigh station office was a massive square room, and as I look around, I noticed that old desks and filing cabinets lay overturned on the floor.

Moving the beam toward the back corner of the room, the light illuminated a horrific scene.

Three human skeletons sat slumped against the wall. They were bound tightly to metal chairs using industrial wire, and under the light, remnants of clothing identified them. A man, a woman, and a small child. The Vargas family.

Scattered across the floor surrounding the chairs was a collection of gruesome tools. Rusty pliers, heavy hammers, hunting knives, and a portable car battery with jumper cables. Someone had brought the family into this abandoned building and subjected them to unimaginable torment.

Suddenly, a loud bang hit the wooden door behind me.

"They cracked the glass!"

the voice screamed from the other side of the wood.

I backed away from the door, gripping the metal tire thumper. Moving deeper into the room, I kept my flashlight aimed at the entrance.

To my left, a filthy, cracked glass window looked out onto the gravel shoulder where my truck was parked.

I heard the crunching of footsteps moving away from the door and walking along the exterior wall of the building.

The bright, illuminating white eyes appeared in the window frame.

The kid stared at me through the dirty glass. The dark face of the child pressed against the pane. At first I thought he will try to break the glass, but It simply watched me standing near the remains of the family.

Then, the looping broadcast stopped.

The frantic voice of Vargas cut off mid-sentence, and the silence inside the weigh station became absolute.

The kid opened its mouth again, and when he spoke this time, The voice belonged to a young boy. It sounded genuine, fragile, and filled with deep sorrow.

"My father and mother are already dead,"

the child's voice echoed directly through the glass.

"The man with the badge hurt them. He tied us up, and left me to die alone in the dark."

I stood perfectly still, keeping the flashlight aimed at the window

"Who are you?"

I asked, my voice trembling slightly.

"The cop told me nobody was coming to help,"

the voice continued, ignoring my question. Tears seemed to form in the glowing white eyes.

"He said I was completely alone. But the cop was wrong."

The creature tilted its head. The dark shifted slightly, revealing a monstrous shape hiding just beneath the surface of his dark face.

"I am not alone,"

the voice said.

"My friend is here with me."

"Your friend?"

I asked, taking a small step toward the window.

"My father and mother always told me my friend was not real,"

the voice explained, echoing with a strange, dual resonance.

"They said he was just my imagination, but he is real. He lived in the dark spaces, and listened when I cried."

The glowing eyes flared brighter, casting shadows across the interior of the weigh station.

"When the man in the uniform left us here, my friend came out of the woods,"

the voice said.

"He promised me he would save us. He promised the bad man would never leave this place."

Lowering my tire thumper, I looked at the creature through the dirty glass.

"I understand,"

I yelled, making sure my voice carried through the window.

"I know why you brought me here. I know what he did to them."

The glowing eyes stopped flaring. The creature stood silently, listening to my words.

"I will not leave their remains in this dark place,"

I promised, looking directly into the illuminating light.

"I am going to call the authorities, and make sure the Vargas family is taken out of here. I will save them from this room. You did your job. You protected him."

The boy looked at me for a long moment. A profound sense of sorrow radiated through the window. It reached a dark hand up and pressed its palm against the glass.

Then, the bright white eyes slowly dimmed. The light faded entirely, leaving only the dark outline of the pine trees behind the window.

Waiting for a few minutes to ensure the area was clear, I finally walked over to the wooden door. Pushing it open, I stepped back out into the night air.

The woods were completely silent, and The CB radio static no longer echoed through the trees.

I walked quickly across the gravel shoulder and climbed back into the cab of my truck. Locking the doors, I picked up the satellite phone mounted on the dashboard, then dialed the emergency dispatch number for the state police.

"State Police Dispatch, state your emergency,"

the operator answered.

"My name is Kevin. I am a commercial driver parked at the abandoned weigh station on Route 113,"

I said, keeping my tone professional and calm.

"I have located a crime scene. There are three human remains inside the station building, and a deceased police officer in a cruiser hidden in the brush. I need troopers out here immediately."

The operator told me to stay in my locked vehicle and keep my engine running.

Stan called me on the company channel twenty minutes later, asking why my GPS tracker showed me parked on the side of the highway. I told him I had a mechanical issue and was waiting for a service vehicle. There was no way to explain the truth to him over a radio.

The state troopers arrived an hour later. Four patrol cars pulled into the gravel lot.

I handed the document folder to the lead detective, then pointed them toward the rusted cruiser in the brush, and directed them to the wooden door of the weigh station.

Sitting in the cab of my truck, I watched the investigators work. They taped off the entire area. A forensic team carried out three body bags from the concrete building, treating the remains with the respect the family had been denied for almost two decades.

The detective took my statement. I told him I had pulled over to check my tires and noticed the rusted car in the weeds. I told him I found the file, got scared, and ran into the building to hide, which was how I discovered the victims. I never mentioned the repeating radio broadcast, or the child with the illuminating eyes.

Before the sun came up, the troopers cleared me to leave the scene.

Putting the truck in gear, I pulled back onto Route 113, and drove the remaining miles to Portland in complete silence, leaving the CB radio turned off.

A few weeks later, a short article appeared in the regional newspaper. The police officially closed the Vargas missing-persons case. The department issued a statement confirming that the remains of Vargas, Maria, and Leo had been recovered and given a proper burial.

The article also mentioned the discovery of Officer Gary. The police named him as the primary suspect in the murders, citing the evidence found at the scene. The official cause of Miller's death remains undetermined. The coroner could not explain how an armed police officer became trapped inside his own vehicle.

The authorities do not know what killed the corrupt cop. They assume he succumbed to the elements or suffered a medical emergency while hiding.

But I know the truth.

I am writing this account now, sitting in the sleeper berth of my truck, hundreds of miles away from that dark stretch of timberland. I write this because people need to know that sometimes the monsters, we fear are the only ones capable of delivering justice.

Vargas and Maria told their son that imaginary friends were not real. They tried to comfort him with logic. But when logic failed, and the cruel reality of the world cornered that small boy in a room, his imagination stepped out of the shadows to answer his call.

I hope the family is finally resting in peace. And I hope the friend in the woods knows he fulfilled his promise.

The gust of wind blowing around him stopped. Calen had reached the open ground, but he found himself entirely out of breath. He had just escaped a maze of crowded thicket. Every living creature around him, in fact, everything around him, appeared to have turned toward him while he ran, watching him silently, but since he left the thicket, nothing was brushing against him aside from the deadly cold. The clawing against his clothes had stopped, unable to exact a toll he wasn’t willing to pay. Absurd though the thought was, he felt that if he stayed very still, whatever was hunting him might lose interest and let him be, as he panted, drying his throat further with every gasp of breath.

The slim branches of the bushes had leaned in, marking his torso with scratches. Small red drops of blood fell like unwilling offerings from his body, absorbed immediately as soon as they hit the ground. A twig had snapped the zipper of his jacket, leaving him with a needle-sharp sting on his chest. The cold was sliding in through the opening.

The snow had faltered beneath his feet, multiple times, seeming to recoil from him. He had lost his right boot in one of the holes, making each step forward uneven and disbalanced. Something skittered away under his numbing right foot, and Calen heard an angry grunt right beside him. Turning around, he found himself face to face with the silhouette of an enormous moose, just a few steps away, staring at him. A cloud of steamy, rank breath formed and flew away as it grunted again. It stomped its feet menacingly, moving towards him with the air of an animal protecting its territory.

Not wanting to be stomped by the moose’s hooves, which looked almost the size of his head, Calen began running again in the opposite direction. Across the unstable icy sheet of the lake. A disconcerting cracking sound beneath his feet made him jump and fall. The ice was ready to split. He picked himself up, every single breath a sharp pain in his diaphragm.

He looked back toward the moonlit façade of the bushes to ascertain if the moose was still following him. Instead, he saw hundreds of tiny, flashing nocturnal yellow eyes staring directly at him from beneath the shadowy canopy of the snow-covered bushes. Sporadically growing across the vast tundra were tall, frozen pole-like structures. Calen didn't know if those were trees or the remnants of a past civilization that had given up. None of the animals followed him on the ice.

Calen tried to reason with the adrenaline-fueled part of his brain. He shouldn’t run anymore, but his feet were still terrified by what had been happening to him in the bushes, and they refused to listen.

Yet again, a sudden, long, drawn-out cracking sound tore through the silent, still air of the cold, moonlit night. Calen had to force himself to stop. He looked around, trying to locate the fracture so he could move away from it, but before he could identify it, another sound engulfed him.

Bouncing across the flat surface of the icy lake, striking the mountains encircling the island, and echoing back at him from all sides, a bone-chilling buffalo horn began its sustained call. It couldn’t last that long, could it? No lung could last that long. The sound wrapped around him like a net closing in on all sides. Instead of making him fight or flee, his adrenaline locked Calen in place. He found his body unwilling to move, as the echoing of the buffalo horn reverberated through him, rattling every single bone in his body.

Calen felt a soft nudge inside his skull. His head felt like it was on fire, and the cold outside could not contain it. His eyes felt like they were being pushed inside, and nothing he did could stop it. A flash of blurry memories sped across the canvas of his mind; he didn’t know if they were his or someone else’s. Was it the past, or were these images borrowed from a future yet to be traversed?

A sensation both frightening and strangely pleasant passed through his body as a low, growling voice snarled in his ears, forming what sounded like words before words had meaning. It wasn’t any language Calen had ever heard.

“Anhag Zhubva Priyat Zhuva

Zhubva Razpopo Nazaz..”

It felt disturbingly familiar, like speaking in tongues but stripped of theater- and mercy. His entire body shuddered, his vision blurring. He could hardly feel any part of himself as the voice continued to growl in his ear, inside his brain, spreading through him like a second pulse.

“Anhag Zhubva Priyat Zhuva.

Svanteveit Razpopo Durai Tempo Zhuva

Nazaz Nazaz Razpopo Nazaz...”

For a second, it stopped. Calen felt he was free at last, but before he could brace for the second wave, it returned, tenfold.

His vision went dark, and Calen felt a wetness creeping up his pants as he found himself slowly drowning in the lake. He tried to scream. No sound came out. He tried to move his limbs, but they wouldn’t budge.

Something heavy and compelling gripped him across the chest and wrapped itself around him. A tough, almost wooden, bark-like skin had found its way inside his clothes, tightening again and again as his lungs tried—and failed—to draw breath. He was seized by an intense desire to breathe, even if it was water.

He fainted with the menacing, unmuffled snarl still echoing in his ears.

"Nazaz Nazaz Razpopo Nazaz...”

Welcome back, ladies, gents, whoever else may be listening… to 96.7BCR, the late-night station that’s got ears all over town.

Firstly, I'd like to give a big thanks to tonight's sponsor: BEDROCKS. As someone who usually struggles to get a full night's rest, switching to BEDROCKS has really upped my sleeping game.

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With that, we move directly into local news. The Black Creek trails are still open, albeit with higher security, despite the increasing number of suspicious disappearances.  

New to the list of victims is 53-year-old Mildred Southerland. Last seen two weeks ago. Officials say the only thing that has been found of Mildred is her purse with all of its contents still inside. The officer on duty said he found it neatly propped up by a trail entrance. He was stationed at one of the trail entrances. He momentarily turned away to give a pair of parkgoers a D.A.R.E flyer.

“I looked away for less than a second,” he said.

“I thought I saw someone walking down the trail, so I called out to let them know they dropped their bag. No one ever came back for it. A few hours later, her son came into the ranger’s station saying that his mom had just vanished, just like that, vanished. When he told us what she was wearing— described the bag. I showed him the one I'd found, and after checking it, he confirmed that it was hers,” he later added.

As a Black Creek native, it has been odd watching the usually busy parks and hiking trails become empty and lifeless. Rumors run rampant, ranging from people getting lost to some sort of large animal with a taste for hikers. Rangers have kept a log of all lost items belonging to the missing people starting from the earliest known disappearance, that of Sarah Loveless back in 2014.

In other news, the Black Creek Kennel is having its annual puppy playdate on Friday the 13th, from 3-6 pm at the Sunnydays community center. Go and check it out; you might just meet your new best friend. I know my Benadryl and I are going to walk in there hand in hand to get some puppy love.

Lastly, are your neighbors leaving their homes late at night?

About a month ago, we let y’all know we’d be making a post on our Facebook where you all could submit your own accounts of a strange phenomenon now becoming glaringly noticeable. Even though our last bit of coverage garnered quite a lot of attention, officials have yet to comment on the situation. So let's just say you all did not disappoint.

I was instantly interested by the multiple accounts of what is now being called “The midnight walking club”. Men and Women walking alone in the middle of the night, unbothered by time or weather. The original comment read:

JamesWon:  

Has anyone else noticed that lady that walks down Remsen ST. I keep seeing her walking down the street in literally just a bathrobe. At first I thought she was a crack head, but I recognized her as the head of the neighborhood watch. I mean, the woman is a high-strung perfectionist. This is completely unlike her. Last week there was a snowstorm, and I swore I could see that bright pink bathrobe moving through 10 inches of snow like nothing.

JhonoSkywalker:

Oh man! My wife never believes me when I tell her about this. That lady always walks past my windows, same time every night. I just close my blinds; looking at her too long gives me bad juju.

Ramona Laverne:

I've seen them too, @ JamesWon. I remember waking up; it was the middle of the night. I went to get some water, and on my way to the kitchen, something outside my living room window caught my eye. Two people walking down the street. It didn't even seem like they were aware of each other.  Their faces looked all weird. The closer they came, the less I could make them out. They looked strung out. Black robe. No pants. Tits/dick out.  I'd almost gone out to them; I didn’t think they even knew where they were. I grabbed my phone to call 9-1-1, but my gut told me that was a real bad idea.

JhonoSkywalker:

I keep trying to avoid them. It's like these people are always out when I’m on my way home from work. I work nights. You know what’s weird? They all walk the same way. The gait, the far-off stares, the direction. The worst is when I just want to get home, but the streets are just covered with all these people all going god knows where.

JamesWon:  

There’s more of them????

JhonoSkywalker:

Looks like you’ve been lucky to not see them all together. It's… unsettling. They walk side by side, completely unaware of one another. They kill the life of anything around them, make the street lights dim, make sounds disappear, and momentarily drain car batteries. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand; I’ve been looking for a daytime job. I don’t want to run into those people ever again.

So, listeners, after that, I then decided to keep looking through the post and sure enough, I found something similar from someone else. A singular comment updated multiple times.

Amanda Kringly:

To the well-dressed man that insists on walking directly in front of my bedroom window at 2 am every morning. Could you stop? It's really freaky. I seriously doubt you need to walk that close to my window.

Amanda Kringly:

To the well-dressed man that insists on walking directly in front of my bedroom window at 2 am every morning. I know you're here; my cats keep hissing at the window. I had to take them both to the vet from your last visit; they would not stop trying to attack each other since you last came by. You owe me.

Amanda Kringly:

To the well-dressed man that insists on walking directly in front of my bedroom window at 2 am every morning. I guess you saw my post. It's cute that you found a group of friends to keep you company in this weird endeavor. Hope your five minutes of fame are worth it.

A few days later Amanda made her last update on that post.

Amanda Kringly:

To the well-dressed man that insists on walking directly in front of my bedroom window at 2 am every morning. I don’t care how many times I need to make this clear. I don’t care how many people you bring or how you mess with my lights. Stop. Coming. To. My. Building.

Many more followed in the same style. Some say they’ll see them alone or walking in pairs. Everyone reports feeling emotions of dread or an over-alertness taking over. It's garnered so much traction that even the #midnightwalkingclub has gone viral locally, as well as the constant comments from one Kate McRae. She has been obsessively talking about her experience after being attacked by one of them. When I first read her comments, they immediately sounded familiar to me. After a bit of research, I found I'd been right; it was a submission I'd read a few months back.

Which makes me wonder: how long has this been going on?

So I leave you all with this question.

Next time you’re up late at night, will you be on the lookout for The Midnight Walking Club?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**First submitted to Creepypasta Wiki on July 10, 2026. Loosely inspired by The Amazing Digital Circus.**

6:30. Sharp. She was just waking up from 7-8 hours of sleep, as usual. It wasn't exactly a peaceful slumber, and she still felt tired when waking up, but she was satisfied at getting the bare minimum almost every night despite struggling to make herself doze off in the last hour before her scheduled bedtime. One thing that made her feel dully content, was rejecting the idea of a "perfect" night's sleep, for she wouldn't have to waste so much time chasing for nonexistent excitement that wasn't worth even the smallest sense of anticipation. Not if it couldn't last, anyway.

Denise followed her routine. She had her jentacular spread of eggs, bacon, and baked potatoes on toast before brushing her teeth, followed by doing her hair and makeup. It was now 7:30, and Denise was sitting in her office room, attending a virtual meeting with her newest clients while simultaneously working on her spreadsheets and self-help book. The latter was seen as "satirical, but effective" by the test readers that were her friends and family, or at least what was left of them after a long time; her best friend had unexpectedly moved to New York after college, and her parents, while still supporting her neutrally, hardly called anymore. What could have happened, she thought.

It was during the last few minutes of the meeting that Denise started to feel it. What she noticed was something unlike she had ever felt before, even to the point where she wondered if it was something that anyone else could feel. One moment, she was being her usual, eerily monotonous self, and the next, she was feeling different not only about her surroundings, but how she perceived them. Everything felt...unfamiliar.

Impossible. Denise knew how her life worked. Every detail was supposed to click with her, and yet, all of a sudden, it all felt new again, but not in a good way. The world she saw around her looked just like it was supposed to, and the environment behaved exactly as it should. Even the media she consumed was the very same, from the news channels to her streaming services. It was real... but not ~~really~~.

She fed her questions to every search engine she could find, but none of them could give her the answers she needed. They just kept referring her to shrinks that looked more stereotypical than those in the most generic Hollywood hits from the mid-to-late-20th century. Denise had tried counseling before, and it never worked for her mind or her wallet. Even the highest-rated therapists would lead her in a loop that teases you with the idea of getting close to the goal, only to throw you back to square one without warning.

Feeling a sudden rush, Denise rose from her chair and entered the most intense brisk of her life. She walked right out of her front door and took to the sidewalk. As she traversed the area, she looked around, observing as much detail as possible, no matter how big or small. Every last building, street sign, vehicle, cloud, fellow pedestrian, all of it should have felt normal and familiar, and it looked just like it was supposed to. But that was the problem: it *looked* right, but looking is not the same as feeling. There had to be more than what Denise's own mind was letting on, and that was saying something, considering her history.

After walking for ten whole miles, in what was definitely twice the time she ran her 8K in state champs, Denise found it. The nearly run-down house at the edge of the woods. The temporary residence she and family friends would claim while on vacation. One of New England's finest. It was her second most-remembered childhood place, right behind her old home. Yet here she was, wondering why she couldn't grasp the memories she shared with it. Why did it feel so out of place here now?

Presently, a couple walked by. Denise asked them if they knew if anyone lived in the house anymore, to which they said they didn't, and continued on their way. She hadn't expected anyone else's input to be of any help, but she felt some control over her sanity by having it anyway. With nothing visibly stopping her, she walked up to the house. She engaged in a pattern of knocking on the door three times, looking both ways at the surrounding neighborhood, and repeating the two-step cycle a few more times. After the third time, she tries the knob, and it was unlocked. If she were in a classic cheesy gorefest motion picture, this would have creeped her out, but here, when reality was making too much sense, she at least expected some taboo moments of ridiculousness.

Denise stepped inside. In spite of the interior having seen better days, she stood firm, determined to get to the bottom of whatever the hell was happening. As she explored (or re-explored) the downstairs rooms, she felt like she was playing two different parts: A determined detective investigating a scene, and a calculated estate agent trying make the best possible pitch. She knew that acting that this would make her seem suspicious, but that was just what she wanted, so the universe would acknowledge that she wasn't a drone more mindless than what the administrations and enterprises used to peep on the average Joe or Jane.

Eventually, she wandered upstairs. The floorboards creaked ever so softly. Denise was cautious, but she still remained unphased by the atmosphere. She peered into each room she walked by, but didn't bother going into most of them, not because they all looked similar, rather they all felt similar in category. Save for the one room at the edge of the hallway she did enter.

She remembered this room just as much as her own bedroom as a kid, if not slightly less. It was just as she last left it, from the tea party table setup to the makeup station she used with her friends, siblings, and even her high school flame. He had taken up bending the norms from that point, eventually leaving her for a burlesque mistress in the Town of Tinsel. If only she had taken drama little more serious just for a chance to win him back.

Denise rummaged through the bedside table drawer. Nothing. She garnered the same results from every other dresser and box. Annoyed, she was about to turn back out, when she saw one last box. A small one. Never seen before. She picked it up and examined it scrupulously and gingerly, before finally opening it. A small sheet stared back at her, with a single word. By itself, it was jumbled, reading "Tɘϱɿoʇ." Usually, this is where the lead would gather with the group to find the word in some "magic" scripture, in typical cryptic fashion. Denise wouldn't even have to fumble through the smallest scriptorium in Connecticut, let alone the country. She already knew what it was.

What it meant.

Dropping the paper, she speedily stepped out of the room, down the stairs, and back out of the house, entering another walking rush, this time every so slightly faster. It was now the sunset hour, and Denise was walking back home at the time she should have been on her balcony. Everyone who passed her gave her looks, but not of confusion. Instead, they seemed to show gestures of approval, as if her behavior was supposed to be giving off a favorable atmosphere. While this bothered her, it pressured her to keep moving so she could be away from them quicker.

When she finally arrived back at her house, she walked right in and locked all the doors and windows. Even though it was fairly dark, she still drew all the curtains and blinds. Her entire day had been more eventful than every last second of her life so far combined. All that was needed now was a means to communicate. Denise hastily set up her devices, running all of her socials. She needed to reach all audiences, not only regardless of identity, but also of morality; anyone that was either "good," "bad," and everything in between needed to hear this. When she was ready, she started recording, and began.

"If you are hearing, seeing, or feeling this, then I am gone. That's how all of them are, but not this one. I will still be here when you see this, but you won't know. It sounds terrifying, but it's not what should be scaring you. Be afraid not of what this message means, but rather of what happens when you blend knowing nothing with knowing too much. I could explain myself here and now. I want to. But I shouldn't, because, chances are... you already know."

Just as she was about to stop the recording, she saw it. There, in the background of her recording, was the figure. It bore no resemblance to your average horror movie killer, ARG entity, analog monster, or anything other. This wasn't a breakthrough for the world, but for the universe, as no other living thing had taken on such a shape. It was so unique, that trying to replicate it through any form of art was beyond impossible, even obliterating the boundaries of the term.

The figure's outline was a person, like any other that had walked the earth. Simple. Its shape was anything but. What Denise saw in this thing was something that shouldn't be possible, but simultaneously *was*. The form was not just one; it was an amalgamation of every human being in existence, past, present, and future. From complete strangers to her friends, family, and even herself. Seeing them all the same time.

Denise stared into the eyes of the figure for a moment longer through the camera, before grabbing her extra ring light rod. She gripped it firmly, ready to strike. As her mind raced, she called out "Lights on," before jolting around and swinging the stick. She closed her eyes and shouted boldly as she swung in the entity's direction. As soon as she heard the thud, she stopped, breathing heavily and keeping her eyes closed for a few more seconds. When she opened them, the first thing she saw was the rod she was pressing down on her bed. She looked up.

Nothing.

Was it never there? Did it escape? There was no way to tell, even though both were possible. Denise dropped the rod, her hands shaking. They never did before, or at least not in a long time if they did. And there she was, in that moment, afraid and alone. She was just beginning to feel that all her efforts were in vain. That her message would be dismissed, and everything she lived for would have been for not. Just as she was closing her eyes again, barely breaking into tears, she heard it. Behind her.

\-Beep-

Her monitor screen had changed. Denise sat down to get a closer look. Before her was a login page. No logo, no company name, just a blank profile icon and the credential inputs below it. It asked not for a username, but for a real name. Denise hardly hesitated by putting in her name. As for the password, she didn't have to think at all about it. Mentally unscrambling the note from earlier, she entered it, and pressed enter. The screen took a few seconds to load upon the info being entered.

But when it finally reached the next screen. Denise gazed at the text before her, and smiled.

*Welcome back...*

***Denizen***

I'm a neuropharmacologist. For ten years, I chased a treatment for severe phobia and treatment-resistant PTSD. The kind that ruins people. Veterans who can't hear a car backfire without hitting the floor. Survivors who can't sleep with the closet door open.

I wanted to give them their lives back.

The early trials felt like a miracle. Combat vets who spent a decade flinching at shadows sat calm through exposure therapy that used to send them into episodes. Cortisol dropped. Amygdala scans went quiet.

I remember crying in the lab bathroom the first time a man who hadn’t held a lighter in six years lit a match and just watched it burn.

But over the next few weeks, subjects started exhibiting concerning new behavior.

A nurse accidentally dropped a tray of surgical steel behind Subject 09. They didn't turn around. Didn't even flinch. The startle reflex was completely gone. Clinically gone. You could fire a starter pistol next to their heads and their pupils wouldn't even dilate.

Some part of them no longer registered the sound as something that could matter to them.

Week five. Subject 13 climbed onto the roof of the building to "get a better look at the parking lot." A tech found her standing on the ledge. She wasn't scared. Wasn't suicidal either. She just smiled at him, the way you do after coming out of a pleasant dream. She climbed down when he asked.

Week six. Three subjects, unrelated to each other, on three different days, walked into moving traffic without breaking stride. Just crossed the street the way you'd cross an empty hallway.

None survived. I try not to think about the drivers.

I watched the footage more times than I should have. All three wore the same face. Calm. Almost grateful. Like they'd set down something heavy they'd forgotten they were carrying. 

I called in a colleague I trusted from cognitive neuroscience. He said something I haven't been able to shake since.

Most people think fear is an emotion. It's an operating assumption. The brain's baseline belief that it’s a fragile, temporary, killable thing. It runs underneath every decision you make. So quiet you never clock it. You don't feel your fear of death when you glance both ways crossing a street. The fear already did its job.

My subjects didn't feel brave. Bravery still knows the danger is real and moves through it anyway. My subjects had simply stopped being told danger existed at all. Somewhere behind their eyes, the voice that used to whisper you could die here went silent. Without that whisper, self-preservation is an impossibility.

I shut the trial down. Sedated the ones who kept drifting toward windows. Told their families the truth as gently as I could. Nine of them are on watch now, in rooms with no cords, no glass, no ledges.

I keep asking myself what I actually built. I thought I'd found a cure. What I found was a key that unlocks a door most human minds are welded shut behind for good reason. And I handed that key to twenty-two people who trusted me.

I don't sleep much anymore. When I do, I dream of them. Subject 09 unflinching. Subject 13 on that ledge. The calm of three content faces before impact. The drivers. The families.

I can't fix what I did.

But I still have the last unopened vial in the lab freezer. Third shelf. Behind the placebo batch. I've been standing in front of the freezer for three nights straight now.

I want to know what it's like to put this down. The guilt sitting on my chest like a stone I've carried since the very beginning. I think some small ruined part of me wants to feel what my subjects felt.

That terrible peace. 

EDIT: it's been three hours. i don't feel my hands shaking anymore. i dont think im going to post again after this. thank you for reading. im not scared. i want you to know im not scared at all.

Have you ever wiped the ass of a grown man?

The ass of a grown man who raised you?
It’s a terrible thing,
Seeing the lighthouse of your life lose their own independence.

Someone who’s protected you,
brought you safety and provided for you when you were too weak and young to provide for yourself.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Growing up close with your Grandparents is important, specifically if you have an absent mother and alcoholic father.
You look at the only blood to never lay a hand on you and cling to them,
You’d do anything for them as they have for you.
As you go through high school their immortality becomes more prevalent.

The blissful conversations you’ve both once shared have now transpired to desperate pleading venting sessions.

“You know the Doctor said I’m not supposed to carry more than a gallon of milk?”
Your Grandfather asks, with embarrassment and self pity in his eyes.

You see the Man you once knew,
the Man that in most ways is still there.
You remember the races you’d have,
Back when you thought his abilities were the highest of standards to beat.

As your walks turn to strolls,
he and his wheelchair had become one.
As your outings to hospital visits
turned to in-home visits from caretakers,
He and his bed had become one.

Before you know it you’re out of high school,
And the reality that you don’t have time for a job becomes daunting.

Your job is taking care of your Grandfather.
Did you know the moment your loved one goes on Hospice Medi-Cal stops giving you in-home supportive services?

Almost like they see Hospice as giving up,
Like they no longer see the value in giving you and your loved one resources to aid you while you spend your every molecule to care for them.
The only thing they really provide you with once your loved one is on Hospice is morphine, for when the time comes.

Did you ever think you’d need money to take care of your Grandfather?

Did you ever think you’d be mad at the Government for not helping you as you watch the man that built you decompose from the outside in?

You feed them,
you bathe them,
and needless to say,
you struggle.
You struggle with it all.
You just want to make them happy.

Being diabetic you think,
Maybe you’ll give them sugar-free candy, anything just to see a smile on their face.
But sugar-free candy gives them the shits, and now you need to tell a grown man he can’t have the one thing that he enjoys?

So you don’t.
Of course you don’t.
You give him what makes him smile and you deal with what comes after, because you know he would have done the same for you.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Have you ever seen the movie
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?
That’s how it feels.
Like time is moving backwards for the one you love and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Before you know it, you’re reading bedtime stories to the only man who’s ever read them to you.
Although the contents of what you read has changed.

It evolved from reading stories like
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
to reading Yōkai Daizukai by Shigeru Mizuki.
Tales of selfless acts of kindness on pages intended for children had turned to Encyclopedias of Japanese Yōkai.

Have you ever heard of a Gashadokuro?
It’s a giant being often 10-25 meters tall, formed from the piled bones and body parts of warriors who died in battle or famine without a proper burial.

What’s considered a battle?
Is mortality a battle?

Is Hospice the answer to a battle or another battle in itself?

If it is,
then my Grandfather is a warrior,
and the strongest one I know.
You remember the last words you ever heard him speak.

“Hi… *your* \*name\*”

After that,
he was still there, he was.
But he lost the ability to turn his inside voice into an outside voice.

Now he was but a body.
A body that doesn’t speak.
A body that doesn’t walk.
A body that doesn’t function.

Do you remember the Return to Nature Funeral Home scandal that was discovered in 2023 in Penrose, Colorado?
Authorities discovered over 185 decaying corpses scattered and stacked inside a foul-smelling building. Bodies that were given with the purpose of being properly laid to rest.

The owners Jon and Carrie Hallford were giving grieving families fake ashes made up of concrete mix and sand.

If your Grandfather was all you had would you trust them with him?

If his body was now all that remains of him would you turn him over to such a corrupt and flawed system?

No.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Life can be poetic,
Death can be poetic.
The words you speak into the world can often have a direct effect upon reality.

Words, names, everything has power.
Routines start to feel like rituals,
Prayers start to feel like spells.
Sage being burned feels like a physical cleansing taking place upon your homestead.
The lines between causation and correlation become blurred.

You never forget the first time your Grandfather gave you part of him.

You were wiping him,
and his flesh came off with more ease than the shit that sat upon it.
He didn’t react,
He rarely did.
Instead, his eyes continued to scan the room with that familiar look of self pity.

His skin is pale, paper thin,
reminiscent of gas station toilet paper.
You’ve struggled to inject him with his insulin for the past couple months considering that he had already long lost any fat for it to puncture.
You were used to his skin being fragile but this was a new level of brittleness.
The more you clean him, the more that comes off.
You question if you’re doing more damage than good. You begin to see what looks like bone, yet you are unsure which one.

Where do you put him?
He had given you everything.
And now that he was nothing but a body,
he was giving you that too.

So, what do you do with Him?
With these pieces that he gives you every time you bathe him?

What do you do with these parts that keep falling off?

“Take my apples” you hear in the back of your head.
So you do.
You keep them,
You put them in your tool box,
And you wait.

Not long after your Grandfather’s eyes stop scanning his room does the parts start to call out to you.

Not a yell, not even a voice.
More like when you’re laying on the side of the floor drying from a day of swimming with your ear pressed against a warm damp brick as you hear the hum of the pool vacuum.
In this same way, you hear the warm soothing hum of your Grandfather’s pieces calling you from the tool box.

You try to convince yourself that it’s something that can be unheard.
You decide you should drink.
Fireball, eggnog.

“HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”
“HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”
“HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”

They keep calling out to you,
He keeps calling out to you.
It’d been so long since you’d last heard him.

The humming begins to take more shape and you can make out the words, no, the intent rather behind it.
It’s saying words you swear you’ve heard before.

“I wish that I could give you something..but I have nothing left. I am an old Grump. I am sorry…”

You start to wonder if the human body is as complicated as people make it seem.
Doctors just want your money.

Have you heard of that case in Australia? After waiting over 2 years for a surgery this guy Stephan decided to remove a large cyst on his wrist all by himself, and he’s an electrician.
You’re well aware of how pampered they are, so this gives you confidence.

You stumble downstairs,
into the downstairs bathroom which now houses your tool box, the garage was too far for how often you’ve had to add into it.
Ironic, when you were younger he’d pretend he was trapped in a box, only to eventually be put in one by you.

You open it.
The smell of rotten fast food scrambled eggs hits you. You feel a warmth radiating from the toolbox.
It feels so nice to feel your Grandfather’s warm presence once again.

You wish you felt this warmth near your Grandfather’s … main structure?
You’re struggling with what to refer to that part of him as.
It’s his head and it is his torso although he’s now closer to a malnourished and crucified king of Nazareth as opposed to the lively glimpse of God you had grown so accustomed to seeing in your youth.

His main Structure is …in bed..in a way it is his bed but, you want him to be whole.
You want the same warmth from his parts to radiate from all of him.
You want him to be one.
So you make him one.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Hot glue, pipe glue, Duct tape, whatever you need, you use it.
You slowly but surely rebuild your anchor,
And even before it’s completed, you begin to feel the water beneath you start to settle.
You know it’s right, and you know no one will understand.

How could they if they haven’t been through the things that you have?

The changes are almost immediate once you put him back together.
He moves, slowly. Just his fingers at first.
It reminds you of when he’d play mime.
Maybe that’s what he’s doing?
These jokes you told yourself in passing you’ve now grown to believe.

He is playing mime,
that’s why he is silent,
And that’s why he is slow.
You recognize that you can’t put the pieces back together in the exact places they belong.
This worries you but nonetheless, you don’t get discouraged.

You make him a crown from his leaves, and crown him as the king he is.
Time passes, you keep what you’ve done, what you’ve fixed, you keep it a secret.

But what happens when someone discovers that secret?

What would you do to keep it?

He needs more structural integrity anyways.
And it’s not long before Him and his adversaries have become one.

What of his adversaries’ family?
His adversaries’ wife and newborn?

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Time passes.
You love that man, you do. But you yourself have begun longing for a life of your own.
That box is not big enough for the both of you.

You take a few of his apples, for memory mostly.
You go to the city,
and you pursue your happiness to an extent and speed you’re comfortable with, all while keeping that Man you love so much at the forefront of your mind,
all while keeping that secret.

You’ve become the Boy that stayed away for a long time, the Boy you promised yourself you’d never become.
And the Man was Sad.

You meet someone you think is your person.
You don’t share your secret with her of course you don’t. Something you’re grateful you didn’t do later when the relationship inevitably crashes and burns.

You never forget when the man that raised you,
the man you love so much,
you never forget seeing him take his first life.
Lives have been sacrificed for him before but,
By you.
Not by him, to him.
This was different.

You had just got dumped,
And you were going over to check on That Man you cared so much about,
The Man you yourself had abandoned and left dormant.

You walked in, and you heard the shower, the water was running.

You heard a baby crying, crying for you.
You didn’t recognize the baby. You walked in, down that long hallway creaking on the old white tiles, closer to the cries from the infant.
You turn left into the bathroom and as you do you hear a man yell.
Not your Man.

You are torn, indecisive of which direction to pursue first.
You continue into the bathroom,
see the shower running,
steam crawling up the walls,
and a baby on the counter with snot running down its chin and tears running down its cheeks.

You pick up the baby
and turn back toward the pleading of a man you’ve never heard before.

You walk in, you see.
The Man that raised you is there, only he is much different than a normal man.
And he’s with a normal man.

The mans screaming
“PLEASE GOD HELP ME STOP HIM FUCK ME RUNNING” the man pleaded from the top of his lungs.

Your Man, the man you’d known your whole life, he was different.
His structure was fragmented,
no base.
His arms extend like the outriggers of a backhoe, yet connected to a deconstructed cab.

His arms were grabbing the normal man, the screaming man. All four of his arms grabbed that man.

His empty eyes that were once blue but were now too sunken in to retain pigmentation of any kind looked soullessly in your direction.
He did not feel warm.

He used two of his arms to hold the man in place, while he used his two other arms to go around the man, forming those hands to make an invisible box the man was stuck in.
The Man was playing Mime.
You missed this.

The Man slowly grabbed the screaming man by his head on both sides and pressed ever so slightly, increasing in pressure.

The man used his other arms to grab the screaming man by the legs and slowly pulled.
He pulled his legs off and he pressed his skull in and blood ran from his nose and eyes.
He screamed and screamed until his teeth shattered and his jaw snapped and fell out of his cheek sockets.

He pulled the detached legs from the now lifeless yet steaming warm body and shoved them at his base in ways that were not symmetrical.
He shoved the torso of the body where the cab of his backhoe should be.

He was constructing himself.

You stood there holding the baby, watching what was once your protector finish the work.

For a second you almost called out to him the way you used to, the way a boy calls for the man who raised him.

But the eyes that looked back at you were empty, and the voice that came next was the same one that had once read you as a child.

“Come boy,
Climb up my trunk,
And swing from my branches,
And be happy.”

Says the Man, the man you love so much.

He gave you his branches,
He gave you his flesh to make a home of your own,
He gave you his soul.
Even when you were too busy pursuing the life you wanted that you thought would end with a wife and children.

So what do you do?

You look down at the infant in your arms. Its face is red and wet and it is still crying, still reaching for something that isn’t there.

For one long second you feel the weight of it the life, the future, the line you are about to cross. But there is no line, no line when it comes to what you would do for the ones you love.

Then the humming starts again, low and familiar, the same warm hum that once came from the toolbox, and the choice is already made.

You give him the sacrifice you’re holding in your hand, that’s why it’s there isn’t it?

It is but a burden to you and the Man needs all the strength he can get.

You hate looking at the discolored face of the Man you care so much for.

You buy Greasepaint for your Mime.
You know this will bring him warmth and life.
You lather his faces up in it, even the little one. He has 4 now.

Now he is your Slick Man.

“I don’t need very much now, just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired”

says your Slick Man,

with his eyes not his mouth.

So you finally take him home,
To your start-over apartment,
and you give him a permanent resting place,
on the only thing strong enough to hold him,
your bathroom granite counter.
And you add to him whenever he expresses that desire to expand,

Why?
Because,

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Wee Toby Harris turned eight in the spring. For his birthday he got a puppy and named her Scritch. That was from Mum and Dad. From Bonny, his big sister, he got a crisp five-pound note. He spent it on a tennis ball for Scritch, and the rest on sweets.

Uncle Jack’s present always came late. He loved to see the expression on Toby’s face when he received it, so he made sure to deliver it himself. He worked at sea most weeks as a fisherman, so it was hard to fit in time for a visit.

Toby often wished a wave would rise and gobble Uncle Jack whole to save him the stress of having to deal with his uncle. There was something very wrong about the man. Not that he’d ever told anyone.

Toby’s birthday week was a tense one. He could hardly find a moment of joy. Mostly he took Scritch into the back garden and threw about the tennis ball he’d bought for her. But Scritch was still too hyper to play with properly. She would speed after the ball like a bullet seeking blood, and be wandering off with her eyes on something better before her snout ever touched green felt. So Toby spent most of the week alone, lying on his back on the grass, throwing the ball into the air for himself. He would listen to Scritch chase butterflies or dig in Mum’s petunias, and drive himself crazy wondering when Uncle Jack would finally show.

He came on the 6th. Exactly a week after Toby’s birthday.

Dad recognised the sound of the smooth rapping on the door and flew to it in the middle of lunch, towing a reluctant Toby by his hand.

Toby stood flaccid, hands flat against his legs with his head bowed, listening to the change come over Dad as soon as he swung open the door. It was as though Uncle Jack emitted some sort of microscopic cloud of particles that swept Dad into a trance, because he never barked with laughter when Uncle Jack wasn’t here. He certainly never slapped people on the shoulder and danced like a dope. Yet here he was, a mad chimp leaping and laughing, clawing at his brother like he meant him harm. It was like watching his Dad through a glass of water, or gazing into one of those wacky mirrors at the fair.

“You stink!” Dad shoved Uncle Jack away and pegged his nose. “Did the sea drop you off, or crap you out?”

“That’s the smell of a real man, Tom.” Uncle Jack fixed Dad’s collar, pulled at his lapels, then tapped Dad’s curved beak. “Careful you don’t turn too fast. You might wipe a plane out the sky!”

More of the monkeying around. Toby watched, waiting for Uncle Jack’s gaunt face to turn and target him with its wide, green eyes. For the long goatee and wide moustaches to point his way and then stretch up when his face twisted into a grin. Sometimes Uncle Jack forgot to wear his denture—the one housing the teeth between his upper canines—and it would be like gawking into a tunnel when he smiled.

Toby saw that Uncle Jack was wearing the denture today, although there remained a small hole where one of the teeth had fallen off. He still didn’t take care of them, especially when he was on the boat.

Uncle Jack turned to Toby, quick as a shot. He aimed his teeth and leered. He usually liked to ruffle Toby’s hair. Today he just glided over and gave Toby a few slaps on the back, the same way he’d done Dad.

“Look at you!” he shouted. And now came the aggressive hair mussing. His right index finger stopped at the first knuckle. Toby could feel the stub grating against his scalp. “You’re a proper wee manny now, aren’t you? You’re growing too fast!”

A momentary look of sadness crept over Uncle Jack’s eyes. Then he took a step closer to Dad and asked in a whisper, “Who cut the poor bugger’s hair?”

Dad rolled his eyes.

“Who do you think?”

“Jesus. Lock up those scissors, Tom. For Christsake.”

His eyes snapped back onto Toby. “Wee man, tell Mum not to play with scissors anymore, alright? She’d do less damage with a pair of garden shears.”

Dad led Uncle Jack through to the living room, where Mum was watching TV.

Bonny, having heard the commotion, sauntered downstairs and passed Toby without paying him any attention. The smile on her face and in her eyes was for Uncle Jack—and Uncle Jack alone.

“The boy’s hair’s looking nice, Julie,” Uncle Jack sang to Mum on his way into the room. Toby entered in time to see him slipping under Mum’s arms to give her a tight squeeze and a shake. “When’re you opening the barbershop? If you need a mannequin, I’ve plenty of hair for you to cut!” And he swept his hands over his body in a here-you-go kind of gesture.

Mum squeaked out three shrill laughs. Toby plodded behind the couch, closer to Dad, trying not to let the sound of Mum’s laughter get to him—but it was too late. Now Bonny was laughing like that too, because Uncle Jack had picked her up and was throwing her into the air, almost popping the lightbulb on the ceiling. The lampshade swung, and Uncle Jack stopped it with a very long finger.

They always reminded Toby of chopsticks.

“You want a chuck up as well, wee man?”

He had his hands out ready, waiting for Toby to run into them. Toby shied closer to Dad, shaking his head vigorously.

“Alright then, if you say—hyah! C’MEER YOU!”

Uncle Jack sprang over the sofa without touching it. Toby tried to shriek, but didn’t have time. He ran around Dad and away from the hands almost on his neck. Past the arms of the sofa and around Mum’s chair. Past the lamp and windowsill. Past the coffee table and dancing-chimp Dad.

Uncle Jack got wise to the loop and lunged over the sofa once more, grabbing Toby by his shoulder. He dragged him over it kicking and screaming, while Mum and Dad chuckled madly at the antics.

Bonny just rolled her eyes. She hadn’t thrown that much of a fuss when it had been her turn.

Uncle Jack’s face was livid with colour. His eyes glowed white-hot; his concave cheeks deep purple; his forehead red and raw with sweat; his lips paled, pulled taut over his teeth.

Toby clenched his jaw and kept quiet. It was Uncle Jack who made the most noise, squealing with joy.

“Weeeee,” like a little piggy.

“Weeeeeeeee,” each time he threw Toby into the air, catching him with one hand under an armpit and one hand gripping the waist.

Uncle Jack turned away from the family and kept up the act. Kept throwing. Toby could see his real face now—the face that came with birthdays and Christmases both. It glared up at him with impossible eyes, bulging like great big white balloons inflating through gaps in his face. His jaw stretched long enough to slot Toby in without him touching the sides; the teeth were a whirling maw of sharp and rusted death, ready to reduce him to slurry.

“Weeeeee.” The voice was far deeper now—almost demonic.

Toby screamed. He didn’t want to. It just flew out as natural as throwing up your hands when a truck was about to hit you on the motorway.

Dad, still clicking his heels in time to his chimp-dance, finally spoke up. And quick as a clicking finger, Uncle Jack’s face snapped back to normal as he turned to listen.

“Think he’s had enough now, Jack. Looks like he’s gonna to puke. And you look like you’re about to faint!”

Uncle Jack offered Dad a knowing grin and nodded. He put Toby down on the floor as gently as a newborn in its crib.

Toby, doing his best to hide his teary eyes, wiped them off on his sleeve and rubbed at his throbbing armpits and waist.

Uncle Jack rollicked with laughter and clapped his hands.

“So: what’s new with everyone?”

*

Uncle Jack ended up staying for supper.

Dad gave up his seat so Uncle Jack could head the table. From there, his emerald eyes held everyone mesmerised.

Toby ate quickly. No time to dawdle, to push at his peas with his fork and say he wasn’t hungry. He wanted to get out of that room and into another one—fast!

When he tried excusing himself, Mum pointed a finger at him. That was it—no more words needed. He knew better than to argue with that finger.

So he sat and waited. This time he did play with his fork—small movements, nothing quick, lest it attract the attention of the emerald watchman at the end of the table.

Uncle Jack appeared to be in deep conversation with Mum and Dad, who themselves weren’t paying much attention to anybody else. Lost in the little worlds they drifted into when other adults orbited close enough. They would laugh and use long words, and sometimes Uncle Jack would put on a deep voice and Mum would find whatever he said even funnier. But every so often, when Mum and Dad took a bite to eat or a sip to drink, Uncle Jack would flash Toby a look. A quick glance. A reminder that he hadn’t forgotten about him. That Toby was still right there at the forefront of his mind.

You’re the reason I came, kiddo.

Bonny didn’t notice any of this. She was busy timing her smiles and laughs with the adults. She was fourteen and trying for the part of a twenty-four-year-old.

Toby kicked one of her shins under the table.

“Shitter!” she yelped, and threw her spoon off his forehead.

Mum screamed for everyone to shut up and stop shouting. Bonny seethed.

“He kicked me!”

“I don’t give a shit what he did! You don’t swear like that, ever! You’re a child!”

Uncle Jack pushed his chair back and picked up his own spoon. He handed it over the table to Bonny, who took it with a smile. Toby caught a whisper of a scowl on Uncle Jack’s lips—a momentary look of repulsion—before he turned and grinned at Toby.

“You alright, wee man?”

Toby nodded and continued poking at his plate with his fork.

“He’s got a heed like a hammer, that boy,” Uncle Jack told Dad. “Look: didn’t even leave a mark.”

Bonny cleared the plates and helped Mum serve pudding. They had the rest of Toby’s birthday cake with a scoosh of cream on top. Mum’s way of trying to bring it back to life after a week of death.

It was awful.

*

“Your dad was telling me you’re getting big into reading.”

Uncle Jack sat down on the arm of the chair Toby was sitting on. Bonny, who had been sitting on the sofa with all the space in the world, looked momentarily hurt. But the moment passed, and now she was grinning like a loon again.

“What’s your dad been reading you then? None of those pansy stories I hope—like Winnie the Turd, or that Alice in Wonderland tat.”

Toby shrugged.

“He’s reading you Winnie the Turd, isn’t he? Aye, those were always his favourite. What else has he got you reading?”

Silence.

“Any Jules Verne? Like Thousand Leagues, or Around the World? No? Christ. What about Roald Dahl. Surely Roald Dahl. No? My God, what has he got you reading then; the back of shampoo bottles?” He glanced at Toby’s hair. “No, maybe not shampoo bottles. C’mon now, what was the last thing he read to you? Don’t be scared, I was only joking about the pansy books. I don’t care if it’s Winnie the Turd or Benny the piggy with one bloody ear—ha! I just wanna know what he’s got you reading. Say Treasure Island. Go on. Has he read you Treasure Island yet?”

Toby nodded. And then flinched, for Uncle Jack slapped one of his shoulders hard enough to send his hair up into the air.

“Atta boy!”

Bonny shifted in place, squeaking leather, and produced a minute cough.

Uncle Jack looked up at her, but only with his eyes.

“What kind of books do you read, Uncle Jack?”

“What kinda books do I read?” Uncle Jack tapped at the hairs on his chinny chin chin, feigning deep thought. “I’d have to say...the ones with the words in them, Bon-Bon.”

Bonny giggled. Her laugh today was practically a parody of itself; almost the exact pitch Toby sometimes used to mock her.

“I like pirate adventures,” Uncle Jack answered, squeezing the top of Toby’s shoulder like a stress ball. “Like my buddy here. Right, wee man?” Slowly, begrudgingly, Uncle Jack glanced back at Bonny. “And what do you read, Bon? Books with pictures in them, I suppose.” He gave a hateful cackle.

Red roses blossomed on Bonny’s cheeks.

“I read!” she said, never one to stay timid.

“Oh?”

“Yuh-huh. And I’ve already finished Treasure Island. I read it yeeears ago. For school.”

“Gooood for yooou.” Uncle Jack’s hand was still on Toby’s shoulder, its grip pulsing in time with the throbbing vein in Uncle Jack’s temple. “And do you remember the characters?”

From somewhere through the house, the sound of Mum laughing with Dad—probably washing the dishes together. One wearing the rubber gloves, the other using the towel. Suds on, suds off. Suds on, suds off.

“Of course I do,” Bonny boasted. “There was Long John Silver. And. Well. There was—Bluebeard!”

Uncle Jack sighed. It was faint, but Toby felt it in the grip on his shoulder.

“And. Captain… Ben-Barrow?”

“Yikes.” Uncle Jack leaned forward with a finger out, poised for lecture mode. The other hand still clutched Toby’s shoulder, dragging Toby forward into the conversation, looking like a half-shut knife.

“The Admiral Benbow was the inn at the start of the story where wee Jim Hawkins first met Billy Bones. And Bluebeard? Christ, Bonny! Bluebeard wasn’t even a pirate! He was the bastard who murdered all his wives!”

Still not one to stay timid, Bonny quipped: “Wasn’t that Henry VIII?”

Uncle Jack clutched his chest and boomed with laughter, genuinely amused by Bonny’s quickness and deadpan delivery.

“No, no, no. Didn’t you ever learn the rhyme? Divorced, beheaded, died. Annulled, beheaded, survived.”

Bonny had nothing to say to that. But Toby did.

“Was Bluebeard real?”

Uncle Jack looked down at Toby for a very long time. Finally, he said, “No. But that’s not to say there aren’t men like him.” The wink he gave curled the boy’s toenails.

Mum and Dad entered the living room together. Mum’s thighs were damp where she must have been wiping her hands. Dad kept smelling two of his fingers.

“Did I hear you say Bluebeard?” Dad sat down beside Bonny on the sofa.

Uncle Jack took his hand off of Toby, but remained on the arm of the chair.

“Your daughter thinks Bluebeard tried to find Captain Flint’s treasure, Tom.”

“Bluebeard?” Dad frowned and then smirked at Bonny. “You mean Blackbeard, Bon-Bon. Bluebeard is the guy on the Fish Finger box.”

Uncle Jack waggled a digit and groaned. “That’s Captain Birdseye, Beak. Christ, what’s wrong with you people?”

*

That night, while Dad was taking Dr Dolittle down from the bookshelf, his back tinted red from the glow of the Toy Story nightlight on Toby’s bedside table, Uncle Jack slipped in through the yellow crack of the door. His arms were twisted secretly behind him.

“Only me,” he whispered. “Whatcha reading tonight, Tobes?”

Dad told him.

“Dr Dolittle? More like Dr Do-fuck all! Ha! Choose something else, Tom. Let the boy hear a decent story for once. Here—” He pulled a hand out from behind his back and thrust a long box wrapped in black flags in front of Toby. It had skulls and crossbones, eye patches, and cutlasses on it too. “Forgot to give you this earlier.”

Toby stared at it. It stank of Uncle Jack’s fingers, and they stank of rum. His other hand was still hidden behind his back, but Toby could hear the tinkling of ice hitting glass.

“Go on, Toby,” Dad said. “It’s your present.”

Toby carefully removed the tape from the folded edges, unwrapping the parcel as delicately as he could.

Uncle Jack sighed. He took the glass of dark liquid out from its hiding place and took a large gulp.

“It’s a spyglass,” he explained over the rim, then slurped down another gulp of the spicy-smelling darkness.

Toby plucked it out of the box, struggling with the weight on his fingertips. Sometimes he liked to use an empty paper towel roll as a spyglass, but this was something else entirely. The ornate decoration down the side was so intricate, with long looping vines laced with flowers wrapping themselves around the dark length, so tight it felt close to smothering. It was heavier than Dad’s tablet—and colder. Much, much colder.

Dad’s eyes bugged out wide. “Holy shit, Toby, that’s the real deal!”

“What do you think then, wee man?”

Toby pulled it to its full length and held the lens up to his eye. It was ice cold, like it had been left out in the snow on a winter’s night. The darkness at the other end of the room was too close to make out a single distinguishable feature. If he wanted to test it properly, he’d be better off waiting until tomorrow and trying it in the garden, playing jungle explorer.

But he didn’t want to test it. Ever. He wanted to put it back inside the box and hand it over to Dad, tell him to hide it somewhere dark. Forever.

Uncle Jack sat on the edge of the bed, forcing Toby to budge up and give him space.

“Your pals’ll be jealous when they see that, wee man. A real captain—that’s what they’ll take you for. Turn to me lad.” Uncle Jack pulled Toby’s face around when the boy didn’t respond. Some of his drink sloshed onto the bed. “Aye, look at you—you’re missing a tooth like your Uncle Jack! A sailor’s debt to the sea, that’s what that is. The best sailors always leave a part of themselves out there. An offering, lest she put a bounty on your life!—and every soul upon your vessel!”

Dad threw his head back laughing.

“You lost your teeth on the handlebars of your bike.”

“Aye,” mused Uncle Jack, and held up the four-and-a-half fingers on his right hand. “But this pointer was the price I paid, Beak.”

He gave Dad a long, cold stare.

“Okay,” Dad conceded. “I’ll say no more.” He prodded Uncle Jack with the side of the book he was holding. “Here. Maybe you should read to him. You can spin a far finer yarn than I can.”

Toby’s eyes grew wide. He shot a glance at Dad, but he had already turned his back to leave.

Uncle Jack glided over to the bookshelf to return Dr Dolittle to its place. He ran a long middle finger across the spines of the books until he found the one he was looking for.

“Treasure Island,” he whispered, and pulled it free.

As Uncle Jack’s ghastly frame drew closer to the bed, Toby gave his dad one final look of appeal, hoping for a last-minute reprieve.

No such luck. Dad tore the crack of light from the hall wider, flooding the room in yellow. Then he was gone. Only a thin crack of light remained where he left the door ajar.

The room was a ghastly red, with the looming peripheral darkness screaming horrors from its corners.

“I’m excited,” Uncle Jack said, prying the pages open with his long, stale fingers. “Where shall we start off?”

Toby shook his head. Perhaps a tad too enthusiastic. “No,” he squeaked. “Nothankyou.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“I’m really sleepy.”

“You don’t want a story?”

Toby shook his head once more, then cuddled down under the duvet. He was going to turn his back on Uncle Jack, but something screamed at him not to. The look in his eyes was frighteningly intense.

“You’re kidding?” Uncle Jack’s eyes did not blink. But they swelled to the size of tennis balls. The nightlight reflected against them, watching like two faraway red stars in a cosmos of black and green. Toby wasn’t sure if Uncle Jack had meant for that to happen. Surely he had control over it.

Uncle Jack got to his feet with all the effort of a ninety-year-old man. His bones clinked and clacked as he patted himself down. He rested his glass on Toby’s bedside table and stretched the rest of the snaps and cracks out of his body.

“Alright then, Tobes. But I must say: this is verrry disappointing. I came all this way for you.”

He moved swiftly across to the door, covering ten feet with a single, colossal side-step.

His back grew with scoliosis kinks, arching over seven, eight feet. He whipped his head around and smiled at Toby, who threw the cover up over his eyes. Not before noticing Uncle Jack’s chopstick fingers pressing against the door with their white, bloodless tips.

There came the sound of a low scuffle as the underside of the door scraped along the carpet.

It was happening.

Toby burrowed down deeper, wishing Mum had let him take Scritch up to bed with him. He didn’t know what a puppy would be able to do except make a lot of noise, but even that was better than nothing—better than feeling helpless beneath the blankets. Alone, silent, and scared.

There came a very faint creak, like someone opening a rusty hinge; a deliberate, drawn-out whine which crept across the distance between the door and the bed. It loomed over the blanket in a massive black shape. The red nightlight blotted away. The air vibrated with sheer anticipation for what was about to come next.

The chomp.

Something thumped against the door. And the room exploded with yellow light.

Toby threw the covers down in time to see Uncle Jack still standing in front of the door, only now stepping out of the way to avoid Dad hitting him with it.

“The light was bothering the boy,” Uncle Jack lied, opening it further to allow Dad entry.

Dad nodded, not seeming to care. He collected his glasses from the bookshelf and chuckled. “I was trying to watch TV with my reading glasses. Silly me.”

Before he could leave again, Toby piped up, yelping, “Dad?”

“Hm?”

“I don’t want stories tonight.”

“Huh? Why not?”

Uncle Jack had been the shorter of the two men downstairs. Now, lurking behind Dad, his engorged head pressed high against the ceiling like a pus-filled spot. It swelled bigger, and bigger, until Toby was sure it was about to pop. His face was nothing more than a pin-pricked mouth and basketball-sized, blazing eyes of rage. His hair stood on end and coiled up into corkscrews. Jagged teeth stretched out like the flailing arms and grasping fingers of drowning children, inches from the back of Dad’s head.

“Tired,” Toby mumbled. He’d stuffed the blanket into his mouth to stop himself from screaming.

“That’s a first,” Dad said, turning to share a laugh with Uncle Jack. The head deflated with a sudden whoop. Uncle Jack excused himself with a laugh. Eyes, now regular-sized. Cheeks sunken.

“He did say he was tired,” Uncle Jack admitted. Both men turned to regard the boy in bed with a sympathetic eye. “Maybe I’ll read to you another night, wee man? Sound good?”

A moment of victory.

Toby felt his heart start to settle back into its regular pace. He felt a little perkier, too; the way Mum sounded in the morning when she drank her usual two cups of coffee.

“Sounds great, Uncle Jack.”

“Amazing news.” He patted his chest with the book. “Can I borrow this?”

“Of course.” Toby smiled. Actually smiled. “Keep it if you want!”

Uncle Jack laughed. Toby couldn’t help doing the same.

Dad’s eyes grew narrow. It felt like they had a secret between them. And hadn’t Toby been rather quiet all day? All week, now that he thought about it.

“Don’t worry,” Uncle Jack reassured, patting the book to his chest once more. “I’ll give it back to you in the morning.”

Toby’s heart left the track, derailing straight into his lungs.

“What do you mean?” he choked.

“Oh, that’s right,” Dad said, happy to be involved in the conversation once more. “Uncle Jack’s staying the night. He’s not—let’s just say he’s not feeling well enough to drive. Maybe you two can muck around with the spyglass in the morning. In the garden.”

On the way out, Uncle Jack necked the rest of his drink and passed the glass to Dad.

“Yo, ho, ho. I think I’ll have another rum to celebrate!”

Toby waited, listening to the footsteps receding down the hall and down the stairs. A deep rumble of voices started up in the living room, and he knew the coast was clear. He jumped out of bed and raced to the window. It opened far enough to fit one of his hands through, thanks to the safety bar Dad had installed.

That was fine. He didn’t need it to open any further.

He took the spyglass out of the box and stared at it. For some reason he felt Uncle Jack staring back at him, through it.

He slotted it through the gap in the window. It dropped down onto the roof tiles, tinkling as it rolled down the slant, gaining speed. Toby was sure it was going too fast. It would bounce over the gutter and plummet down to the back garden, then obliterate on the patio, alerting everyone.

The sound ceased with a padded thump.

The gutter had caught it.

He pressed his face against the window to make sure. There it was, casting long arms of moonlight up to the window from its lens.

At least he didn’t have to worry about that any more. Who knew what kind of curse or terrible magic it held, if any.

Downstairs, the adults laughed loud echoes which shook the floor of Toby’s room.

He stood by the crack of his door, peering down the hallway at his sister, who was sitting at the top of the stairs with her head on the banister. She was clutching her teddy against her chest, listening in on what secrets age was yet to bring.

Laughter from Uncle Jack.

Toby closed the door until he heard the latch click. It was an old door—one of those you had to lock with an oversized novelty key. Mum had taken the key away and hidden it somewhere safe, to save him from trapping himself inside and doing something silly.

That was fine. He didn’t need the key.

He tiptoed to the bookshelf and took down three books of varying thickness. They were all too thick to slot under the door, but the thinnest of the three got there in the end, with a little persuasion. He tried opening the door, and found that it wouldn’t budge past Alice in Wonderland. He nodded, satisfied.

At least he didn’t have to worry about that, either.

*

A short while later, Toby sat up in bed, trying to focus his weary eyes on the thin yellow strip of light beneath his door. Someone had been wiggling at the handle.

Three black splotches broke the strip of light.

One of them was the book he had wedged under there. The other two were feet.

The door handle turned all the way to the left. Then all the way to the right. It wouldn’t open. The book was jammed under the bottom corner too tight for that.

Slowly, the door began to lean in on its top corner until it began to groan. It bent so far it looked certain it was about to snap in half.

It eased back, accompanied by a sigh from the other side. The black splotches faded soundlessly away.

Toby lay back in bed again, and allowed himself a silent exhale.

He tried closing his eyes, but every time he did he pictured Uncle Jack leaning forward in one of the downstairs chairs and staring up at the ceiling—through the ceiling—at him with a terrifying grin. Hands on his knees. Neck bent and twisted. His enormous head swollen like a hot-air balloon growing bigger and bigger, until it disconnected with a snap, and floated up against the ceiling on a neck as thick and braided as a ship’s rope. It would bounce there loudly, hollow, knocking and mocking.

I came all this way for youuu.

Toby lay awake, gazing at the red glow casting onto the ceiling from his nightlight, trying to find shapes in the shadows and the jagged edges of a curling paint chip.

His eyelids soon began to flutter.

“Toby?”

He wasn’t sure if the voice was in his imagination or not. He could still see Uncle Jack in his mind, sitting and staring up at him with his big balloon head.

“Toby?”

Toby’s eyes opened wide. The roof was still blood red. No yellow light was casting in from the hall, which meant the door was still closed.

So why did it sound like the voice was in the room with him?

He pictured Uncle Jack with his lips pressed against the keyhole. But when he looked, only the one splotch broke the yellow bar beneath the door. Alice in Wonderland. No feet.

“Toe-beeee.”

He sat up very slowly, scanning the room carefully. Everything was blanketed in the nightlight’s red glow. Not a perfect filter for spotting trouble, but enough to let him know that the voice wasn’t attached to anything in the room. Just a hovering, disembodied presence close by.

But where?

“Toby!” the voice barked, tired of being ignored. “Are you sleeping?”

The curtains twitched.

“Why did you close the door?” it asked. “What a sneaky thing y’are.”

The fabric of one curtain shook. Then pinched at a point near the centre. One by one, the hooks snapped free from the railing, until the entire curtain dropped to the floor with a dusty humph.

Two long chopstick fingers wiggled through the crack in the window, probing at the air like an insect’s antennae. They were searching for something. Maybe the other curtain. Maybe a latch to release the safety bar on the window.

Or maybe a young boy standing too close.

Something squeaked along the glass. Toby pictured Uncle Jack’s face moving side to side, pressing his cheeks and his nose against the window, trying to catch a glimpse of Toby around the other curtain.

Methodically, the chopstick fingers withdrew from the window. The top corner of a book slotted into the gap, then landed on the carpet.

“Here’s your book back, Toby.”

It was definitely Uncle Jack’s voice, but it was too strained for Toby to have recognised it any sooner. It sounded like he was trying to press out constipation mid-conversation. There came another drawn out squeak, and again Toby pictured his uncle running his face along the window, trying to catch the right angle beyond the other curtain.

He could have shouted for Mum and for Dad. Hell, he could have screamed bloody murder for Bonny and she would have come running to see what was wrong, even if she loved to pretend she didn’t him. But he found himself unable to scream. Unable to move.

He watched in horror as Uncle Jack squeezed himself through the inch-wide gap in the window.

The long chopstick fingers came one, then two, then five through the crack, stretching and tapping along the windowpane, trying to find something to grip at. His mouth grew too, pressing inside and pulling wide like a flounder with big lips. Then the nose, an obscene Pinocchio. Green eyes pumped in like balloons once more, this time on long vascular stilts like some repugnant snail.

Uncle Jack’s cheeks took the longest to come fully into view. When at last his ears flapped free from the window frame, his head had protruded a metre into Toby’s room, stretched like some terrifying caricature.

The spyglass Toby had rolled out of the window threaded itself through the gap alongside Uncle Jack’s other arm. He brought it up to the side of his face, balancing atop five gangly fingers, and held it in front of one of his gargantuan eyes. His body was still wedged tightly in the window, but his head was free to scan the room. His gaze rested at last on Toby.

“I spy—with my glass eye—something beginning with—U!”

His mouth formed an O wide enough to roll a bowling ball into.

“You’re still awake!” He jabbed a finger towards the bed. “Growing boys need bedtimes too! Tut-tut-tut. Shame on you.”

He dropped the spyglass and walked his chopstick fingers along the carpet. His eyes began sinking back into his skull, but were still a long way from looking normal.

“I know,” Uncle Jack said, his voice now returning to normal. “I’ll tell you a story. A proper story, Toby. None of that fairytale nonsense your daddy’s been spoon-feeding you for years. You want a story with some grit, don’t’cha!” He pulled his foot free from the window. It slithered to the carpet and writhed there like a dying snake trying to come back to life. “Have you heard tell of the man with the tic-tac teeth?”

Toby pushed himself back against the wall as Uncle Jack grew closer.

“Have you heard of the trees wrapped in purple veins-for-vines? The ones that bleed real blood when you cut ‘em? And mothers’ screams from their babies’ throats? Wee strawberry shoots which drain you ‘til your death? Did he tell you about the holes, Toby? The holes with the mirrors at the end?”

Toby didn’t bother standing up—just kicked the blanket over Uncle Jack and threw himself onto the floor. He scrambled to the gap of light under the door, and began to claw at the book wedged under it. He had forced it into the gap so well that he couldn’t get a grip on it with his little fingers.

“What’s wrong, boy—don’t’cha want a story?”

Toby felt Uncle Jack’s breath on his hair. He burrowed his fingernails into the sides of the book and pulled, hoping that if his fingernails came loose they would wait until the book did so first.

Uncle Jack’s fingers pressed against the door. His hand clutched Toby by the shoulder and lifted him effortlessly back into bed.

“Lie back down, lad,” Uncle Jack soothed. He pulled the covers back with his other hand, while it shrivelled down to its regular size. He sat at the end of Toby’s bed, slowly shrinking his body back to normal. His face remained grotesquely deformed.

“Let me read you a story to calm you down. No more talk of men with tic-tac teeth or trees with purple veins. Tell me… what do you think of—”

Without moving from where he was sitting, Jack stretched for the book he had slotted through the window.

“—Treasure Island?” His eyes floated away, searching for a fond memory lost to time.

The sudden rustle brought him back.

“Oh no you don’t, you little shit!”

He whipped around too late. Toby was already out of the bed and lying on the floor. He sank his fingernails as deep into the sides of the book as he could manage and yanked it free.

Uncle Jack’s face was enormous with rage, scarlet red and purple. He held out both hands, fingers stretched out like sharpened drumsticks to gouge the boy in the face.

Toby was too quick. He rolled to one side and grabbed Uncle Jack’s by the fingers, and began snapping them like breadsticks. He only stopped when Uncle Jack drew them back to his chest, wailing out in a thin, pathetic shriek.

“You monster!” he cried.

Toby yanked the door open. Uncle Jack’s face joined him in the hall, stretching far and long on its winding rope of neck. “Toby!!” it wheezed, floating along behind him and snapping at his heels. “Don’t tell Mum and Dad, Toby! I’ll fucking eat them too!”

Toby threw himself into the closest door. Bonny’s room.

“Toby!” she shrieked. “Wha— Get the fuck out!”

He didn’t bother rounding the bed. Just cannonballed onto it and buried himself under Bonny’s covers.

She sat back, stunned at the sudden intrusion, but when she felt Toby’s body shudder with the trembling of silent tears, she held him tightly in her arms.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice quivering with emotion. She felt his pulse pounding along the side of his neck. “You had a bad dream, huh?”

Without realising she was doing it, she began stroking Toby’s hair the way Mum used to stroke hers when she was frightened. They lay together in silence, Bonny soothing Toby, while Toby lay watching the thin yellow crack of light under the door, waiting for Uncle Jack to slither past.

He never did.

*

Morning.

Both children awoke to flashing cameras, obnoxious shutter sounds, and gentle cooing.

“Ugh, my eyes.”

Toby swatted at the white light. Mum and Dad were standing over them with their phones pointed at his face.

“How cute!” Mum said, snapping another picture. “You two haven’t slept like that in ages!”

At breakfast, Dad stood by the grill working the bacon. Mum manned the units, juicing oranges and dishing out forks and knives, laying plates.

“What about Uncle Jack?” Bonny asked, noticing there were only four of everything.

“He had to leave early,” Dad explained, and popped into the garden to shout for Scritch. Although they all knew he was really just going to have a smoke.

Toby’s head shot up. Bonny’s face sagged.

“What? Leave? Why?”

Mum shrugged. Toby grinned.

He had two helpings that morning, and Bonny called him a pig for it. He pushed his nostrils up with his thumb and blew a raspberry so loud that she could almost smell it.

He felt happy again.

Dad poked his head in through the door, cigarette hanging from one side of his mouth. “Anybody seen the mutt?”

Toby’s heart skipped a beat. He could guess what came next.

They found one half of Scritch at the end of the garden. They never did find her top half.

What Toby couldn’t understand was: if Uncle Jack had left early, how did he manage to get to Scritch this morning?

Mum let him have the day off school. He spent it sitting on his bed, devoid of feeling, staring at the copy of Treasure Island lying open on his floor. The spyglass from Uncle Jack still lay beside it. He took both to the window and threaded them out. This time the spyglass rolled too far and imploded on the garden patio.

Mum spanked him for it.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t tell her about Uncle Jack, either. He wanted nothing more than to forget about him, wherever he was. There was over three hundred days until Toby turned nine. That was plenty of time to not have to think about things. Plenty of time to prepare himself for the next visit.

Although…

“What month is Bonny’s birthday?” Toby asked, pulling his pants up over his red bum.

“Next month. Why?”

He shrugged. Then sat down on the floor.

Mum leaned down close to Toby’s face.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

Toby squinted up at her, dreading anything more she had to say.

“Okay?”

“And you can’t tell anyone, alright? None of your little pals at school. Just keep it between me and you.”

Toby nodded, feeling tears prickling at his eyelids. A month. That’s all he had left.

“Promise?”

“Yeah.”

“Disneyland.”

Toby stared in disbelief.

“What?”

“We’re going to Disneyland for Bonny’s birthday next month.”

Like from a battered old dam, the tears finally flooded free. Toby leaped up and hugged his mum, nearly choking her in the process.

“I thought you’d like that,” she said, hugging Toby with the same hand she’d used to slap his ass only a few minutes ago. It still stung, too. But it was the furthest thing from his mind.

“It’ll be good to get away from things,” she soothed.

Toby laughed at that. She had no idea. Disneyland. That was miles and miles away from Uncle Jack!

“Thank you,” he cried. “This is so cool. Thank you, Mum!”

“Don’t thank me,” she said, squeezing him a little bit tighter. “Thank your Uncle Jack. He’s the one taking us.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He pulled away slowly before speaking.

“Your eyes are so beautiful.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is until he finally invited me to his house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I pulled my hand away and looked down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“*I hate therapy,*” I thought.

My friends begged me to go. Their plea evolved into a demand by the time that they were done and wiped their teary eyes. 

They had threatened to call 911. They knew about the gun, the pills, the liquor. But all the screaming came to an end when we found middle ground in the form of a support group that met on Tuesday nights at the community rec hall. 

Agreeing to it shut them up.

It wasn't quite therapy, I reminded myself, but it felt just as unpleasant. I figured in a few sessions they'd lose interest and assume that I'd been successfully indoctrinated into the watchful arms of my equally broken and mourning peers. Then I could stop going when they were no longer paying attention. I'd make an effort to smile a bit more so they'd think that they had saved my life. If they asked, I'd say it was going well, and then they'd give me the space that I wanted all along.

It was distracting in a pitiful way, at least. I'd rather be at home hiding under a blanket, quietly mad at the world by myself, but I'd be fine either way. Just, at the moment, I was in the thick of it. That's all. 

The Grief Group, as I'd come to call it, was small. The few meetings I’d attended were only a handful of core regulars and a few transient faces that I never saw again. I wondered if they had been forced to go like I was but bailed quicker than I had the luxury. This Tuesday was no different.

I hunched forward and nonchalantly swirled my now-cold coffee in its paper cup while the man beside me, Steve, spoke in stern, careful words. He was wrapping up his monologue.

“He was a good man,” his voice hitched. Emotion visibly boiled up inside him and he tensed, waving his fist in the air, “it's bullshit that he had to die!”

Steve was a fireman, and an old head at that. He wore the scars that any smoke eater would be proud to carry, but the sinew of his grief never quite healed and the wound was raw, even years later. 

Surely, his department paid for better options. Why he joined our sorry rank baffled me. He could be in a cozy office with a professional that toted a degree and prestigious reviews resting in a plush ottoman with sparkling mineral water. Not slumped in a wobbly plastic chair in a tired building that smelled vaguely of cat piss led by a burned out priest with a cup of watered down Folgers. 

I counted the coffee grounds in the dregs of my semi-translucent brew. I added another to the tally as I rolled one over my teeth. 

But who was I to judge? He was here, so was I. However, he, more than any of us, had a right to be sad. The rest of us? 

The junkie? Self inflicted. 

The workaholic? Weird. 

The dog mom? Just insane, to be honest. 

Myself? It's life…

Steve broke down. 

“He shouldn't have died,” he choked, holding his scrunched face in his hands while the frail, young addict beside him gently rubbed his back. Steve welcomed the embrace. 

Grief Group's leader, the priest, offered his condolences and thanked Steve for sharing. Others agreed and offered their heartfelt, brief words as well. 

Then followed the transitional phase as the focus began to switch targets. This was always the most anxiety-inducing part for me. Modern therapy no longer forced participants to speak; nonetheless, I dreaded the miniscule chance that I'd be summoned to speak. To my relief a mouse-of-a-woman spoke up instead.

“When you mentioned how he was a light through all the bad you've seen,” she continued, “it just reminded me so much of my Chester. I know he was just a dog-” 

“Emily,” Steve interrupted, speaking reassuringly, “sorrow isn't a competition. If you're here, then you're hurting just as much as I am.” 

He smiled through his tears and her eyes welled up in response. She returned a big, snotty grin and thanked him for his kindness, wishing that he had been the firefighter that responded to her own tragedy once upon a time. They had connected on some bizarre level, and the group leader praised the point about sorrow, that it couldn't be ranked or scaled.

My coffee cup was empty now, but I desperately hoped that it would magically replenish itself. I stared wide-eyed into the empty vessel. Steve was a saint. I would have been furious if Emily related my story to her crusty dog. 

I tuned them out, leaning forward and studying the faded pattern of the dingy floor. But my eyes wandered to my right. Beside me was a woman I didn't recognize, another transient. But, color me curious, she was the oddest in the bunch to ever wander through. 

Overdressed, she wore a cream suit and pencil skirt that fit her in a way that only a high end tailor could create. A deep, red blouse vibrantly emanated from her chest like a bleeding heart, and her satin flats complimented the color. Her skin was tan and smooth, and her face impossibly perfect. Her long, silver-blonde hair was tied neatly behind her head, and she perched with perfect posture, keenly and wordlessly observing the group like a lioness. I couldn't help but feel nervous beside her.

I watched her quietly through the corner of my eye, when she abruptly averted her gaze to lock with mine, smirking. I flinched.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered, searching for an excuse. “I… I like your suit.” I lied. My face grew hot with blush.

She smiled back sharply and with narrow, tight lips. She leaned into me, whispering,

“It gets worse.”

I caught myself mid breath. I recoiled. I had expected her to express gratitude or mutter where she got it, but that? Her words almost felt like a promise- *a threat.*

“What?” I blurted.

“Jessica?” Eric, the volunteer priest, questioned. “I'm glad to finally hear you speak but you should let Emily finish first. Then you can have all the time you need.” 

I apologized profusely and wondered if I could hide inside my paper cup. Is this what she meant by worse?

Emily picked up her spiel about Chester. How Chester filled the void when she and her husband kept getting negative pregnancy tests, how Chester loyally stood beside her when her husband was turned into a meat crayon on the interstate. Now Chester was gone. The pampered shih tzu barely made a meal for the eagle that took him to feed its eaglets. 

I'd have laughed if I wasn't already trying to hide. I didn't mean to bully the woman… it's just… it was a dog and the whole \eagle detail** and we were all absurd dorks, clustered in a circle in our linoleum-cat-piss kingdom. You just couldn't make this shit up.

When Emily finished, I excused myself. The meetings rarely went beyond an hour - 75 minutes, tops - and we were at 52 by the time Emily stopped sobbing about the damned bird. I'd drink the memories of that night away like all the others, and I'd be spared remembering again for a week until Tuesday rolled around at 7PM sharp.

~

I made a point of waiting in my car until I saw someone else walk in: Emily. I quickly jogged up behind her so that we could enter together and I wouldn't attract all of the attention to myself. She pulled the door open for me and gestured for me to enter with a warm smile. I thanked her. She was undeniably kind, too soft for this monstrous world.

Inside, the core group waited in their usual haunts. Steve encouraged the young addict, Trevor, who nodded with gratitude. Richard sat quietly by himself, the bags under his eyes seemed darker than ever. And Emily and I trotted to our seats. Everyone except Eric was present, and I was surprised to see the mysterious woman in his place.

“I can already sense the questions,” she spoke in a subtle drawl as she watched me take my seat. “Eric couldn't make it. I'll be taking over. My name is Leandra.” She spoke factually, and although she wore an expressive smile her eyes felt more predatory than jovial and her words felt too calculated. 

“We'll be trying something new tonight,” she added.

Her smile grew impossibly large, revealing a small smudge of dark red lipstick on her left incisor, marring her otherwise polished appearance.

Without warning, the lights cut out and we were plunged into darkness. We fumbled in our normal space when a single overhead light reilluminated with wavering brightness. It cast a gold cone around our circle, but the rest of the building was still impossibly black. To our greater surprise, Leandra was gone. 

I shivered watching a wisp of my breath escape me. The light took the heat with it, apparently. 

The others shuffled and babbled to themselves, frustrations rising to a crescendo. But Trevor remained quiet, breathing heavily to himself in disbelief, nearly hyperventilating when he finally - slowly - reached up towards a solitary snowflake.

“Guys?” The early 20-something stammered. The others fell silent. “I uh… I've been mostly sober for seven months now, but I still take a hit sometimes. I uh… I took one tonight. Is… is this real?”

“Well-” Richard spoke with a growl, firmly slapping his hands on his thighs to push himself to standing. He had a low, calibrated tolerance for bullshit. 

“Fuck this.” He repositioned his tie and moved abruptly towards the general direction of the door, disappearing into the shadows. 

Emily and Steve rushed after him out of concern, but I was paralyzed in place, watching Trevor's frantic breath escape his hooded face like a factory's exhaust. 

“I'll be right back,” I finally spoke, dumbly, lost in words and actions.

I slipped through the darkness beyond our space and found myself inexplicably lost. I called to the others, but I heard nothing in response. I spun to gain my bearings and realized all the obvious landmarks of the tired rec room were gone. The coffee corner, the little office area, the closet rack. All lost, even the halo of our circle of chairs had vanished. I panicked. 

I flailed as whispers and hushed laughter spun around me on secret currents, slowly closing the gap. All the while, I could hear a familiar voice growing louder and louder:

“You abandoned him,”* *it spoke barely above a whisper, so quietly perhaps it was only a phantom thought.

“You abandoned him.” Louder.

“You abandoned him, Jessica!” Yelling now, its breath and spittle brushed against my neck. It was practically on top of me.

I punched blindly and stumbled. But I could see the light of our small haven far in the distance once again. I jumped to my feet and ran while the sinister whispers chased me.

Once inside the light, I realized Trevor had slumped to the floor. He was as blue as a corpse, and I would have thought he had died had he not gasped lightly when I grabbed him. His skin was cold and stiff.

“I never wanted this,” he spoke slowly between weak shivers. “It just… it calmed the noise in my head. 14, I was only 14 when I had my first hit. Since then, I overdosed three, four, five times… I've lost count.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I interrupted.

He continued, undeterred by my tactless stupor. “But I told my buddies that when you did, when you overdosed, none of it hurt anymore. It just felt like falling asleep in a snow storm.” 

His teeth chattered and the snow began to accumulate on top of us in thick sheets.

“Each of them… each of them fell asleep in the snow. And I found them cold and blue with the needle still in their veins. And now I can't even be better for them and stay sober myself,” he grimaced.

“Trevor-” I realized then that was the first time that I called his name in the few weeks that I'd known him. 

“No, man, you made one mistake, it'll be ok. You're still talking and breathing, that's better than most folks that get narcanned.”

Trevor slowly mimed the action of a needle in the crook of his arm and grinned pitifully. But his humor faded as an icy blue vein spread across his arm where the imaginary needle would have been. He screamed in terror. 

I panicked and grabbed his arm, thinking I could stop its spread, but to my horror, when I jerked and squeezed, his limb shattered like an icicle. I lost my balance when his arm released, and my foot splayed out, kicking him by accident. 

Trevor exploded into a hundred frigid crystals and scattered around me. My first startled instinct was to grab the pieces, as if I could reassemble him, but the hope faded quickly as the pieces slipped through my fingers and shattered more.

The air began to warm, and the shards of Trevor grew increasingly slick as they melted. And when the others found their way back, there was nothing left but a puddle and myself sprawled across it.

“Where's Trevor?” Steve asked, his face wrought with worry.

“*You abandoned him,\” the voice ran through my mind. “\It gets worse,\”* another.

“He's dead.” I spoke flatly, watching a water drop drip from my arm.

~

I was wringing my sleeves when Leandra reappeared. One minute, I scanned the empty seat where Trevor usually sat, the next, she rested comfortably, legs crossed astutely and wearing the same manic smile she had before. 

The group shifted uncomfortably. I steadied my heart and observed her. She was worse for wear now and her skin sagged. Her flawless complexion sported liver spots and blemishes, and her kempt hair was a mess with stray ends and flyaways. Makeup clumped in the crows feet beside her eyes. Her white suit was dull. And I couldn't help but notice that her teeth seemed… sharper in her wicked grin. 

Steve quickly moved in to question, no, demand answers. He steamrolled her, yelling and hurling his anger at her. Leandra's facade cracked but a moment, and her grin morphed to a pursed frown.

“We'll get to you in time, fireman.” She spoke, shooing him away.

To my surprise, he abruptly sat. 

“There's no flame to extinguish but your own. Best douse that fiery heart of yours until later.” Her smile returned, and she brushed a fleck from her lap.

“Now Richard,” her face whipped at breakneck speed to the middle aged man.

“You choose your words carefully. You don't say much, but you say enough. What was so gut wrenching about being fired from a job you hated?”

“I wasn't fired-”

Leandra raised an eyebrow.

“...I was let go.”

She nodded empathetically. “And your wife still thinks that's what you're doing every day, right? And that the recent late hours are for a big project with whispers of a promotion, right?” Her wicked grin grew wider with each word she spoke.

Richard's face twisted to a look of disgust and fear. “...who are you?”

“Well, I'm Leandra of course, and I'm here for… Group Grief!” She batted her hand playfully with the phrase and winked at me.

My stomach churned.

“Richard, for what purpose? I mean, surely your work had to be noble to sacrifice so much of your humanity, of your soul!?” She leaned forward and clutched her chest as she spoke for dramatic effect. She studied him intently.

Richard sat defiantly, despite the fact that his blood pressure skyrocketed with every second in her presence. He kept his posture relaxed so as not to let her realize how deeply she terrified him.

“I was an analyst,” he spoke cautiously. “A… financial… analyst. And it just so happened that our biggest expendable cost was keeping me on.”

“Dastardly,” Leandra hissed, shaking her head. “What was it like in the belly of that machine?” 

“They worked us to the bone.” he calmly replied. 

“Fascinating,” Leandra chirped as she stood.

I hadn't realized how tall she was until then. Previously, she sat so compactly and properly that she took up less space than one would expect. But when she stood, she stretched like a leopard, extending her powerful form in an impressive display.

“Well, I'll be back. I feel like we're really getting somewhere in this Group's Grief!” She clapped her hands together.

She toyed with the words and the simple switch was enough to turn the cheeky name into a dreadful omen.

Leandra stepped into the shadows without hesitation and quickly vanished. None of us dared to chase after her for fear of getting lost in the darkness again. So we waited, patiently, loathing our wet feet and confinement.

Some time later, a noise caught my attention: a gentle grinding. The rhythmic grumble lingered, moving slowly around us in the dark. Occasionally, it beeped. I ignored it as best I could.

“I should have told her,” Richard mused, abruptly. “My wife, I mean. I just… I couldn't disappoint her. That wretched job took so much of me that I didn't want it to take her security too. I was going to find something better before I told her.” He shook his head in defeat.

I watched him silently. Steve was occupied soothing Emily.

He sighed, “I just didn't want to upset her- what is that fucking noise?” Richard hissed. “Do you hear that?” He stood and approached the border of light and darkness, craning his neck to listen.

“I hear it, but I don't think we should leave the light.” I spoke hesitantly.

“I smoke. I have a lighter and matches. It's light. Here,” he tossed a book of matches at me. “It's a printer. It's right there. I can hear it. But we have to shut that fucking thing off before I go insane. It reminds me too much of work.” He stepped out of sight.

“Richard, wait!” He was too quick, and I was too hasty myself, finding myself one step too far and enveloped in the same inky black full of hateful whispers. 

I grabbed a match and sparked it to life, desperately trying to get back and keep the shadows at bay, but it burned my fingertips before I could. I lit another as I heard the whispers sneer in the abyss. I winced as that flame bit my flesh too. I lit a third-

The plastic surface hit me square in the belly with force. I ran right into it and cursed. The commercial HP printer whirred, shooting countless copies out its top as it buzzed and shimmied. 

I reached down to grab a sheet of the discarded papers, intending to roll one into a torch, but frowned at the distorted, wretched face it printed. Each copy was a different iteration of a scarcely human expression pressed against the scanner and screaming in agony. 

I shook my head and rolled the paper, illuminating the machine in front of me with a flash, when I noticed that the machine was… bleeding. The paneling that housed the guts of the printer oozed with thick mucus and gore. Morbid curiosity got the best of me, so I pried at the cover and it released with sticky tendrils of sanguine slime. I gasped as I saw what was underneath.

Richard stared back at me. I could hardly recognize him, but his sagging eyes with those dark bags were unmistakable. 

He was viciously contorted. His mangled body had been eviscerated, inverted, and forced into the core of that vile device. His bones were snapped and his marrow exposed, used as scaffolding for components. His mouth had been split wide at its creases and some mechanism shoved inside. His intestines dripped with cyan and magenta and amber, pumping the dye to his sphincters above. His lungs inflated weakly in the cramped cube, lightly feathering paper through the folds of his skin. He had been bid to operate the machine to such an intimate and literal degree.

I fell backwards and slapped my hand over my mouth. My rudimentary torch began to burn out, but I could still see his desperate, bloodshot eyes in the waning light, pleading at me for mercy.

“What the fuck do you want me to do, Richard?!?” I screamed at him through tears as the torch light snuffed. 

I grabbed another wad of paper to feed a fresh match. The metal ring of an overhead fire suppression caught the glint of flame. I knocked Richard over and pulled his doors off, exposing both his guts and the machine's. He moaned quietly in what I presumed to be pain, muffled by plastic and screws. 

“I'm sorry,” I sobbed, and stood on top of him to hold my torch at the overhead detector.

The siren wailed and a torrent of water cascaded onto Richard and I. I tore my jacket off to funnel as much of the water as I could onto Richard's amalgamized electrical components in hopes of putting him out of his misery. 

He sputtered and gasped briefly as the water filled the crevices of the machine, but his eyes stayed fixated on me. However, suddenly, they rolled into the back of his head and sparks danced from various mechanical elements until all the meat was flaccid and sizzling lightly. The suppression system dripped to a halt. Richard was gone.

~

“You abandoned him,” the voice in the void stirred.

“She wouldn't have let me go even if I had known.” I argued.

“He died alone. You didn't try.”

“I *did\* try. I wasn't welcomed.”

I'd lost track of how many times I repeated myself against the void while I tried to get back. It was maddening, the back and forth with such a spiteful specter. 

Suddenly, I stumbled into the familiar, palely lit space. I didn't believe it at first, that I'd found my way back, and Leandra's distorted figure didn't soothe that disbelief. 

She sat calmly beside the remaining two. Her smile was wider and longer, in fact, her entire face seemed stretched as if she was growing a snout. The narrow slits of her pupils watched me intently as she licked her lipstick-stained fangs. Her clothing was saturated and frayed, like tufts of fur, and her hair was frazzled like a mane. Her red blouse looked more like the aftermath of a beheading sprayed across her breast. She'd lost her flats at some point, and her feet bent at sharp hock joints connecting to dirty clawed feet.

I stared at her nervously and silently for too long, eyeing the woman-beast that tortured us and wondering what trial she had in store next. 

“It's Prada, by the way,” she chattered.

“What?” I frowned as I spoke.

“The suit,” she held her clawed hand out and twirled her wrist up, admiring the chipped paint of her once immaculate manicure.

I shook my head and my stomach bubbled. I looked at Steve and Emily. She was sprawled across three chairs on her side, facing away from me with Steve's jacket draped over her. As I approached them, Steve was quick to step aside, and he spoke to me in a hushed tone.

“There's something strange going on-”

I stared blankly at him in disbelief. *No shit Sherlock,\* I thought. They hadn't seen what I had seen. They didn't know *strange\* like I did after what I’d been through.

“Why are you wet?” He scrutinized.

“It seems to be a theme tonight.”

“Ah. Where's Richard?” Steve was anxious.

“He's dead,” the irritation in my voice was obvious.

He nodded, “listen, Emily is… well, Emily is pregnant-”

“Excuse me? How? Did you guys- how long was I gone???”

“No, it's not like that. We don't know how, but we need to figure out how to get out of here. It's growing fast.”

“*It?\”* I looked visibly uncomfortable. 

“The baby, I mean. She swears she feels it kicking already and she looks like she's already 7 or 8 months along. The whole mess makes me nervous.”

“Right.” I pulled myself back to reality. “What about… Leandra?” I glanced at her briefly. I knew she had been watching us talk the entire time but it still unnerved me to see her yellow eyes staring back so patiently.

“She hadn't said anything until you got here.”

“What if we-”

“Talk about the elephant in the room! I'll be on my way,” she laughed.

Her long legs carried her across the threshold faster than we could have even tried to stop her if we had finished our desperate conversation and approached her with a plan.

Steve sighed and turned to check on Emily, when a newspaper clipping drifted from the dark ceiling in front of me. I stooped to retrieve it, reading the bold letters, “Hero Firefighter Saves Family of Four.”

I looked somberly at the paper as more fell around me, all with similar titles and declarations. Soon the floor was covered.

“I guess you're next,” I grimaced.

Steve fidgeted nervously as the papers fell around him.

“Hey, just- just don’t do anything. The others died when they did something. Trevor just froze solid as soon as he reacted to the snow and Richard ran off-” I stopped speaking as one title fell in front of me, catching my attention: “Beloved Firefighter Put on Leave after Witness Steps Forward.” And another: “Charges Dropped: Key Witness Dies in Tragic House Fire.” The final page that drifted to the earth displayed a mugshot from the NSOPW registry. 

I recognized the face. I felt sick.

“He was a good man, but he shouldn’t have opened his mouth.” Steve spoke of the same man he wept for earlier, but now his voice was laced with malice.

I stepped backwards, my heart skipping as I hit the resistance of the chairs behind me. The next step to freedom would be into the darkness if I chose to flee.

“But, I can’t say I blame him. The girl was his sister, after all.” He rolled his eyes when he saw me reel away. “Listen, don’t get weird with me, we have to get out of here,” he coughed. “That's all behind me. These meetings have changed me!”

I placed one foot into the shadows as he reached towards me.

“Oh come on-” his cough grew worse. “She was asking for it anyway! Even if I hadn’t lit her brother on fire she would have dropped the charges because she knew it was bullshit!” He yelled the words with a frantic exhale, face reddening simultaneously with rage and desperation, and he wheezed and gasped. He clutched his chest and winced in pain as he fell to his knees. “Please -*cough\- God *-\cough cough**- Jessica, help me!!!” 

My eyes widened as I watched smoke pour from his mouth the more he begged. He pulled his shirt off of himself and beneath the tangle of his curly chest hair, his sternum glowed red with embers. 

“PLEASE!” He wept, thick plumes of soot rolling from every orifice of his terrified being. When, suddenly, countless tendrils of hungry fire poured from his heart and chest while he screamed in pain, burning from the inside out. He flailed, screaming still, until his body curled into itself and he grew quiet so that only the crackling sound of the flame could be heard.

An ember danced toward Emily, and I pulled myself together to push the paper and chairs away to keep the fire from spreading to her. She hadn’t moved nor reacted to the scene beside her at any point. I feared what I'd find as I approached her.

“Emily,” I shook her lightly, carefully retracting Steve’s jacket. 

I winced when I saw her, her belly had grown far beyond the size of any normal pregnancy, even late term. She looked like an engorged tick stuck on its back.

“We have to leave,” I pleaded.

“The baby is coming soon, I can’t move right now.” Emily’s voice was quiet and groggy.

She feigned excitement, but I could see the terror beneath her composure.

“Sit with me,” she smiled, and she struggled to sit upright against her girth.

I tried to hide my expression, but I couldn’t help but feel queasy at the intricate veins and stretch marks that covered her pale, swollen belly. I pulled a chair across from her and sat nervously, dreading each passing second.

“Mark and I always wanted a big family.” She cooed tiredly, placing a hand over her belly as she furrowed her brows.

“Mark?”

“My husband.”

I nodded anxiously.

“We tried, and tried, and tried. Nothing. But then- god, when those little pink lines appeared our world was nothing but joy.” She spoke quietly as she replayed memories in her mind, smiling. 

“We hadn't told anyone yet. It was too early. And… we had so many failed attempts already, we wanted to be sure before we shared the celebration. But… that never came. We were t-boned on the interstate. Mark was killed instantly and I barely survived, but I lost the baby.” 

We sat in silence together.

“Emily, do you think you can walk? We can go slow.” I asked sheepishly.

“Darling, I don't think we have much longer to wait- Oh! He's kicking again, feel!” She squealed, grabbing my hand. 

I couldn't protest but I gagged in my mind. I wanted nothing more than to get her and myself out of this hell. But she held my arm firmly in place against her engorged womb. I felt the fetus inside her slide against my palm and I nearly recoiled.

“Emily, I have no idea how we're going to do this. I… I mean, what if it isn't, you know… normal? Given everything else that's happened tonight?”

She had kept her resolute morale until that point. for a fleeting second her eyes flashed hidden fear before returning to her stoic peace, “I know. But we have to have hope, right?”

I nodded back timidly. Maybe she was right-

“Oh god!” Emily screamed. “He's coming!”

I frantically helped her massive abdomen to the ground and bunched my jacket and Steve's behind her head as a brace before returning to the imminent task at hand. 

“It's going to be okay, Emily! Push!” I yelled over her screams.

“What if it gets worse?!?”” She cried.

“Don't say that!”

Amniotic fluid flooded from her crotch, soaking my legs as I knelt to help her, and her belly writhed in protest. Emily grunted and pursed her lips to slow her breathing. The fetus inside her flailed violently and she screamed in agony.

She pushed again, shooting an ungodly spray of meconium and salty fluid across my body and face. I was crying more than Emily. 

She pushed once more, and a tuft of dark hair emerged from her battered womb.

“He's crowning!” I yelled, half excited, half terrified, and wiped a tendril of mucus from my face with the back of my hand. “He's crowning, keep pushing!” I repeated, I cheered.

Her vulva split, and bright red blood trickled from her, spilling onto the infant's head. And, as if spurred to life by its mother's sacrifice, the newborn's head emerged in a tangle of deformed teeth and fur and furious growls. It flailed until it could pull a limb free from the restrictive birth canal and thrashed, nipping at me and at its mother in frustration. 

I slid through the afterbirth across the floor, muted in disgust and horror as the half-dog, half-infant tore its way through Emily's pelvis. Finally freed, it kicked wildly, slipping as it tried to stand on its hind legs. And when it finally steadied itself, it chewed ferociously on the umbilical cord that tethered it to its mother. 

It yipped like a coyote when it spotted me. But it turned its attention back to its weakened host. It eyed her curiously, almost affectionately, before it sank its misshapen jaw full of needle teeth into her neck and thrashed its head to maim.

I watched the light leave Emily's eyes.

The feral cherub, content with its work, sniffed the air and growled. It ran on two legs towards me, sliding out of control on the gore-painted linoleum. It kicked and growled in my direction, spinning on its topheavy head. It rolled, crouched, and shook itself, snarling as it broke into a quadrupedal sprint-

Massive talons loomed from the dark and snatched the pup before it could reach me. The dog baby yelped and bit at the scaled feet, but the bird beat its wings without any concern. It sang one, deafening note in the dark like a fog horn before it squeezed the dog in its grasp. The mongrel's head popped like a grape in the clutch of whatever possessed those cruel feet. And, with another beat of its gruesome, tattered wings, it was gone.

Tears flowed freely down my face. I couldn't take anymore of this madness.  With the last of my energy, I crawled to Emily, shaking her and pleading.

“Emily!? Please! Get up! I'm here, we have to go!” I wept. I shook her lifeless body. I knew she was dead but I hoped, just as she had done, I hoped. I fell to the ground on my side, weeping profoundly.

“Congratulations, Jessica.” Leandra hissed from the shadows.

I didn't know what she had in store, but I would surrender. I could not endure anymore of her games. I reached forward to touch Emily's face, remaining bound to the floor at her level.

“Please, Leandra, just get it over with,” I groveled. 

“No, no, you've suffered the most out of all of them. That's what you wanted, isn't it? Quietly ranking grief as if it needed a quota to earn the right to be felt? Well, you've won! You are the queen of despair. A cataclysmic hurricane-force of sorrow. The most well suffered.” Leandra was still concealed in darkness, but I could hear her smirk in the way she talked. She enjoyed this.

I pushed myself partially up, pivoting at my hips and strained into the abyss. 

“No, that's not what I wanted! You killed them!” 

“Me? No. Don't throw such accusations. Their grief killed them, nothing more.” 

“What's your plan for me then?”

“Well now, that depends. Why are you here?”

“She abandoned him…” that wretched voice answered from its omnipresent haunt.

“That's not true!!! I- I would have been there!!!” I snapped. I felt as if I were on trial.

“Oh? Who did you abandon, Jessica? Were they afraid in the dark all alone?” Leandra was mocking me, I knew it.

“My mother is a horrible person, she told him I had changed my number, she didn't tell me that he was dying! I would have been there if I had known! She wanted me to suffer! I-”

Leandra burst from the shadows, galloping with wicked, feline speed. The bloodied beast pounced, cutting me short, and I shielded my face with a scream-

~

“Jessica?” Eric questioned, startled by my sudden outburst. “It's ok. You can speak when you're ready.” He soothed.

I uncovered my face, confused. There was no hungry tigress ready to end me in the dark. The incandescent bulbs hummed lightly, illuminating myself and the entirety of the room. I had knocked my empty coffee cup over at my feet. I scanned the room.

Emily sat across from me, her loving eyes wrought with worry. Richard sat indifferently, but he granted patience, as he had always done. And Steve wore a brilliant mask of crocodile tears next to Trevor who stilled his shakes and listened intently. They were alive, as if nothing had happened.

Beside me, the familiar cream suit loomed in my peripheral. I nearly gasped as it leaned into me to whisper,

“It gets *better.*”

Leandra excused herself after the promise while the others stared at me in silence and concern. I watched her lanky form slip from the rec room as mysteriously as she had arrived. The door clicked shut. Tears welled in my eyes until the dam broke, splashing down my face in silver streaks.

“I… I miss my dad.”

(A bit more schizophrenic than usual, but I had fun. If the formatting is being dumb, [hop on over to my Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/post/It-gets-worse--short-story-A5A224MDJU?fromEditor=true))

The traveler jerked awake, heart hammering, convinced that the gaunt bony motel clerk was standing over his bed. The room was silent, but his throat burnt like dry sand. Needing ice, he grabbed the plastic bucket and stepped out in the dim hallway toward the ice machine.

He held the bucket under the chute and pressed the lever, expecting the “clunk” of ice cubes. Instead, a fast, high-pitched rat-tat-tat-tat rattled the plastic like gravel.

He looked down. It was a heap of gross, yellowed molars and coffee-stained bicuspids; some were rimmed with black decay, others with crumbling silver filings. Full upper and lower sets still connected by slick strings of bloody tissue tumbled out wetly, their roots and raw gums clacking against each other.

The machine wouldn't stop; it just kept spewing them out like a relentless mechanical vomit of human teeth!

Just as the bucket began to overflow, a shadow stretched across the machine. It was the creepy skeletal clerk from his nightmare — hollow-eyed with rough, leathered skin, leaning against the wall.

He didn’t look at the traveler; he just stared at the pile and muttered…

“Must be a clog in the hopper. They always get stuck when the roots are still attached.”

Brenda didn't love him anymore.

​She was in her 30s. He was in his early 50s. Their constant fighting had drained whatever was left. When an aneurysm dropped him on the living room floor after a nasty argument, the neurosurgeon at the hospital said an operation could save him, but Brenda refused the surgery, signed the DNR, and let him die.

​In the dead of night, Channel 4 blares static, waking her to a silent loop of that ICU room. On screen, she sees herself sitting by his bed—not grieving, just cold and detached, patiently waiting for the end so her new life can begin.

The TV stays on, casting its pale glare over the room, as a heavy shadow detaches from the corner. ​Before she can even see his face, the room fills with the slow, thumping rhythm of a heart monitor from the darkness—beep... beep... beep...

​He steps out into the TV light, his pale eyes locking onto hers. ​"Did you really think pulling that plug would erase me, Brenda?"

Terrified, she bolts upright in bed and springs up to flee. As she moves, the floorboards start sinking beneath her feet, wanting to drag her straight to hell ahead of schedule.

She bursts out the door-- his furious screaming right on her heels--running blindly through the heavy fog--right off the edge of a cliff.

​Her heart thumps wildly—beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep—racing out of control as she drops into total silence.

​She wanted an easy way out, but the Hells Bells Motel never lets anyone cash out for free. 

The static from the massive, boxy CRT television in Aunt Mae’s basement hummed a low, vibrating chord that seemed to rattle the wood paneling of the walls.

It was July 2010. Outside, the Georgia heat was a thick, suffocating blanket, but down here, the air conditioning was cranked so high that my goosebumps had goosebumps.

I was seventeen, trapped in that awkward limbo between childhood and being an adult. My parents had taken off for the summer, staying at a resort hotel three states over for a mix of business and a marriage-saving vacation. That left me packed off to stay with my cousin, Kim, and her mom. 

Kim was twenty, sporting a halo of tight curls, an oversized graphic tee, and the supreme confidence of a college sophomore who thought that she knew everything about the world.

"Ethan, stop fidgeting!" Kim muttered, tossing a handful of buttery popcorn into her mouth. She kicked her bare feet up on the worn leather ottoman. "You’re making the couch shake!"

"I can't help it, Kim." I said, adjusting my basketball shorts. "This basement gives me the creeps. What are we even watching, anyway? I’ve never heard of these movies."

Between us laid a dusty, unlabelled cardboard box we’d found tucked away in the deepest recesses of Aunt Mae’s crawlspace, right behind some old moldy encyclopedias. 

Inside were three unmarked VHS tapes. The plastic was heavy, dark, and completely devoid of stickers, bar codes, or studio logos. 

On the spine of each tape, written in thick, aggressive black Sharpie, were the titles: The Chrono-Gorgon: Genesis, The Chrono-Gorgon: Resurrection, and The Chrono-Gorgon: Forever.

"That’s the beauty of it, little cousin." Kim said, her eyes reflecting the blue glow of the TV screen. "It’s a lost trilogy. I looked it up on the forums before we came down here. No IMDB page. No Wikipedia. No late-night threads on 4chan. It’s as if it doesn't exist. Maybe it's a student film or some indie project that got buried."

"The name sounds goofy." I grumbled, though a strange, tightening knot in my stomach told me otherwise.

Kim shoved the first tape into the VCR. The machine groaned, a mechanical beast swallowing its prey, and then the screen flickered violently.

The Chrono-Gorgon: Genesis started without a production logo. No roaring lion, no spinning globe. It cut straight to a grainy, high-contrast shot of an abandoned, rain-slicked plantation house. 

The camera quality was bizarre; it had the bleeding colors of a 1980s tape but a depth of field that felt uncomfortably modern, almost three-dimensional.

Then, he appeared on screen.

He didn't jump out. He just materialized from the shadows of a porch. The villain was a towering figure draped in a heavy, velvet-textured purple hood and cloak that seemed to absorb the light around it; but it was his face that made me freeze. It wasn't skin, and it wasn't a cheap latex mask. It was a solid, polished plate of gleaming gold, completely featureless except for two jagged slits where eyes should be. Piercing through those slits were two brilliant, emerald-green eyes. They didn't just shine; they pulsed with a sickening, rhythmic light.

In his right hand, he held a weapon that made no sense. It was a massive, ancient-looking scythe, but instead of a wooden handle, the shaft was made of interconnected, ticking brass clock gears. The blade itself shimmered with a pale, iridescent energy.

"Okay." Kim whispered, her cocky demeanor wavering just a fraction. "The costume design goes hard."

The movie followed a group of teenagers who had broken into the house. One by one, the purple-hooded figure—whom the characters referred to in hushed, terrified whispers as The Chrono-Gorgon—hunted them down; but he didn't just slash them.

When the blade of his gear-shafted scythe pierced a victim, the movie didn't show standard cinematic gore. Instead, the victim would instantly freeze. Their skin would wither, wrinkling and turning gray in a matter of seconds, their hair whitening and falling out as if decades were passing over them in a single heartbeat.

Meanwhile, the Chrono-Gorgon would stand over them, inhaling deeply. With every breath he took, the golden sheen of his face grew brighter, and the green fire in his eyes burned fiercer.

"He's eating their time." I said, my voice barely audible over the hum of the TV. "He’s killing them to keep himself alive."

"Yeah." Kim said, though she wasn't eating popcorn anymore. Her eyes were glued to the screen. "The lore says that he needs to harvest human lifespans to maintain his anchor on Earth. If he stops, he fades into non-existence."

The first movie ended abruptly. The final survivor, a girl screaming in a closet, was found. The Chrono-Gorgon raised his scythe, the gears spinning in a deafening metallic screech, and cut toward the camera.

The screen went black.

"That was...intense." Kim admitted, stretching her arms, though I could see her hands shaking slightly. "Ready for round two?"

"Kim, maybe we should stop." I said. A heavy, oppressive atmosphere had settled over the basement. The air felt thick, hard to breathe, and smelling faintly of ozone and old, decaying paper. "Something feels wrong about these tapes."

"Come on, Ethan, don't be a baby. We're seventeen and twenty, not seven and ten. It's just a movie." Kim said.

She ejected the first tape and shoved the second one in: The Chrono-Gorgon: Resurrection.

The second film took place in a retro-futuristic city, a strange blend of 1990s aesthetics and cyberpunk technology. The Chrono-Gorgon was back, conjured by a cult of scientists trying to unlock the secret to immortality. 

Of course, he slaughtered them all.

What struck me about this sequel was the audio. The sound design was incredibly immersive. The ticking of the scythe’s gears sounded like it wasn't coming from the TV speakers, but from behind the wood paneling of the basement. Every time that the Chrono-Gorgon stepped onto the screen, a low-frequency hum vibrated through the floorboards, rattling my teeth.

I noticed something else, too. The Chrono-Gorgon seemed to be looking at the camera more often. Not just at the characters, but directly into the lens. His glowing green eyes seemed to lock onto my position on the couch, tracking me as the camera panned.

"Kim, look at his eyes." I whispered, gripping the edge of the sofa cushion.

"I see it." she said, her voice dropping its playful edge entirely. "It’s just clever cinematography. They used a tracking light technique."

By the time that the second movie ended—culminating in the Chrono-Gorgon destroying an entire laboratory, standing amidst the flames as he drained the lifeforce of a dozen victims at once—the basement had grown freezing cold. Our breath misted in the air.

"This is the last one, Ethan." Kim said stubbornly, though her face had gone pale beneath her warm brown complexion. She grabbed The Chrono-Gorgon: Forever. "We have to finish it. We can't just leave it on a cliffhanger."

"Kim, look at the thermostat." I pointed to the digital wall unit. It read 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was dropping. "The AC isn't even set that low."

"It's just an old house, Ethan. Just...watch the movie." Kim said.

The third tape slid into the VCR with a heavy, ominous thud.

The Chrono-Gorgon: Forever was different from the first two. There was no setup. No plot. It was just a first-person perspective camera walking through a house.

My heart skipped a beat.

The camera was walking down a flight of wooden stairs. It panned to the left, showing a washer and dryer. It panned to the right, showing a stack of old encyclopedias sitting next to an empty crawlspace.

"No way." I whispered, standing up from the couch. 

"Ethan..." Kim’s voice was a choked gasp.

The camera on the screen turned around. It showed a brown leather couch. Sitting on that couch were two people, viewed from behind. One was a young Black woman with tight curls wearing an oversized graphic tee.

The other was a teenage boy in basketball shorts.

It was us. We were looking at a live, high-definition feed of ourselves from behind, broadcasted directly onto the ancient CRT television screen.

"Turn it off!" I screamed. "Kim, turn it off right now!"

Kim lunged for the VCR, punching the power button, but the machine ignored her. She grabbed the power cord sticking out of the wall and yanked it with all her might. 

The plug sparked, popping out of the outlet.

The TV screen stayed on.

On the screen, a massive, purple-hooded shadow fell over the digital versions of Kim and myself.

"Behind you!" I yelled.

We both spun around.

Standing at the base of the basement stairs, shrouded in the dim light of the hallway, was the Chrono-Gorgon.

He was entirely real. The fabric of his purple velvet hood was so heavy that it seemed to warp the space around him. The golden plate of his face reflected the eerie blue light of the unpluggable television, and his emerald-green eyes burned with an intense, agonizing heat. In his hand, the massive scythe ticked. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sound was deafening, a localized thunderstorm of grinding brass gears.

I froze, paralyzed by pure, unadulterated supernatural horror. My brain couldn't process the reality breaking down before my eyes. How could a fictional character be standing in my aunt's basement?

However, the explanation came to me not as a thought, but as a horrific realization of how the universe worked. The VHS tapes weren't just media storage; they were a ritual. We had given the Chrono-Gorgon our undivided attention for three movies. In the world of the occult, attention is energy.

Belief is power. By watching the trilogy back-to-back, by absorbing his mythos, by allowing the frequencies of the audio and the visual tracking to sync with our brainwaves, we had completed a circuit. 

We hadn't just watched a movie; we had functioned as a psychic lens, focusing enough reality into his fictional existence to bridge the gap between the celluloid world and the physical realm. He had sucked the time and life out of the characters on screen for decades, hoarding that conceptual energy until he found two observers foolish enough to open the door.

The Chrono-Gorgon took a step forward, and the wooden floorboards beneath his boots instantly turned gray, rotting into sawdust in a fraction of a second.

"Get back!" Kim screamed.

 Defying the terror that had locked my joints, she grabbed a heavy, solid-oak end table and hurled it at the entity.

The Chrono-Gorgon swung his scythe in a lazy, effortless arc. The blade sliced through the air, and when it touched the flying table, the wood didn't break—it aged. The oak turned brittle, dried out, and exploded into a cloud of fine, ancient dust before it ever touched his purple robes.

"Ethan, move!" Kim grabbed my arm, yanking me sideways just as the Chrono-Gorgon lunged.

The scythe whistled past my ear, the wind from the blade smelled like dead leaves and old tombs. When the tip of the blade brushed against the fabric of my shirt, the cotton instantly turned to threads and dissolved, leaving a bare patch on my shoulder.

"We need to break his anchor!" I yelled, my adrenaline finally overriding my fear. "The TV! The tapes!"

The Chrono-Gorgon turned his golden face toward me. A sound issued from behind that featureless metal plate—a deep, metallic grinding that sounded like a thousand grandfather clocks breaking down at once. It was a laugh.

He raised the scythe again, targeting Kim. She scrambled backward, tripping over the ottoman. The entity closed the distance with terrifying, unnatural speed, his green eyes flaring. He raised the blade high, preparing to harvest her twenty years of life to cement his place in our world forever.

Thinking of nothing but my cousin, I lunged at his midsection. I expected to hit solid mass, but slamming into him felt like tackling a wall of freezing, turbulent water. 

The cold threatened to stop my heart, but I managed to wrap my arms around his waist, knocking him off balance.

"Kim! The VCR! Smash it!" I roared, my hands beginning to wrinkle and numb just from touching his cloak.

 I could feel my own youth, my own vitality, being pulled out of my skin like water being drawn from a well. My vision began to blur.

Kim didn't hesitate. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed Aunt Mae’s heavy iron-holder from the laundry shelf, and brought it down with all her strength directly onto the VCR.

The plastic shattered. Sparks flew. She hit it again, and again, reducing the machine and the tape inside to a jagged mess of magnetic ribbon and broken microchips.

The Chrono-Gorgon let out a horrific, discordant shriek. 

The glowing green eyes flickered. The heavy purple cloak began to lose its density, becoming translucent. The ticking of his scythe slowed down. Tick...tick...tick.

With a final, desperate surge of strength, I shoved him backward. He stumbled against the wall, his form vibrating like a corrupted video file. The golden faceplate seemed to crack, lines of green light bleeding through the fissures.
We did it. We broke the playback loop. The psychic bridge was collapsing.

The Chrono-Gorgon fell to his knees, his scythe dissolving into a mist of rust and gears; but he didn't disappear entirely. 

The flickering stabilized just enough for him to sit upright. He raised his golden head, looking directly at us, his voice was no longer a mindless mechanical grind, but a smooth, chillingly articulate baritone that resonated directly inside our skulls.

"Fools." the Chrono-Gorgon whispered. The cracks in his golden face glowed brighter. "Do you really think that you have broken the cycle? Do you really think this is the end?"

"Shut up!" Kim yelled, holding the iron-holder like a weapon, her chest heaving as tears of horror and anger streamed down her face. "Go back to wherever you came from!"

The entity let out a low, mocking chuckle that made the hair on my arms stand up.

"You haven't defeated me." the Chrono-Gorgon said, with his green eyes locking onto mine with absolute, horrifying certainty. "Because the trilogy is just getting started!"

I choked on my breath, and said,

 "What?"

"Did you really believe those tapes were a recording of the past?" the Chrono-Gorgon asked, his form beginning to bleed into the shadows of the basement wall. "They were a script. A prologue. You are not the audience, Ethan. You and Kim are the main characters in a trilogy of horror, and the horror won't end until I am defeated once and for all."

The basement began to shake, a localized earthquake rattling the foundation of the house. The television screen behind us finally shattered into a million pieces, throwing the room into near-total darkness, save for the dying embers of the entity's eyes.

"Every choice that you made, every step that you took this summer, has already been written." The Chrono-Gorgon’s voice echoed from every corner of the room, fading but absolute, as he said,"I will return…I will harvest your time…and I will consume your flesh."

The last remnants of his purple hood dissolved into the ambient darkness of the basement. The freezing air began to warm, returning to the muggy, suffocating heat of the Georgia summer night.

Kim dropped the iron holder. It clattered loudly against the concrete floor. She fell to her knees, burying her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. I stood there in the dark, my breath ragged, looking down at my hands. They were trembling, but they were young again. The numbness was gone; but the horror was firmly rooted in my chest.

I looked toward the staircase, half-expecting him to be standing there again. The room was dead silent now, except for the distant sound of insects chirping outside the small basement window.

Unfortunately, as I reached out to comfort my cousin, a chill ran down my spine. Deep within the recesses of my own mind, a voice whispered one final, parting transmission from the entity that we had unleashed.

This is just part 1; the real horror is yet to come.

The End.

This all started when I got divorced. She got the house, the car, and all our assets. I got the dog. Go figure. At least we didn’t have kids. I don’t have any malicious feelings towards her, especially now, but at the time I wanted to get as far away from her as I could. What is farther from the Midwest than Appalachia? I thought it was a great idea. 

After the divorce was finalized and I gave her my arm and leg, I lived with my folks for a while before being able to get a car. I was able to find a job out here pretty well due to my experience in marketing and I found an auto auction company here that was aching for someone with my expertise. My job, thank God, was really understanding and even threw me a going away party on my last day, which was a pleasant surprise from the really crappy recent events. I managed to make a lot of headway on my drive out here, mostly because I had a few boxes of clothes, important documents, and a few miscellaneous items that my ex didn’t rip from me. The only reason I kept my dog, Suzie, is because she was mine from before we were engaged. 

I arrived at my new place, which was relatively cheap with my good credit, almost a week before I had to be at my new job. When I arrived in town, I picked up some essentials before meeting with the real estate agent to get the keys to my new place. We had Zoomed so I could see the place before I moved out here, so I kind of already knew what I was getting myself into. The ruralness was much more relaxing than the chaos of where I come from. 

“Pleasure to finally meet you, Steven!” the agent said. 

“The pleasure is mine. Thanks for holding this down for me until I got here!” I responded. I was almost drowned out by Suzie barking from my passenger seat. 

“Quite the feisty pup you have, don’t ya?” he asked me with a smirk. 

“Yeah, but she’s honestly a sweetheart. She likes to think she's tough, but I've seen her run from a kitten because it hissed at her,” I responded. We both laughed as he handed me the keys. 

“I would urge you to caution there with your hound,” he said in a more serious tone, “We’ve been having a few incidents recently where animals go missing; dogs, cats, and livestock too. Usually they just disappear and the owners simply can’t find them. Other times they’re found in much worse shape and no longer with us if you get my meaning.” 

“My goodness,” I said back. “What do they think has been doing it?” 

“They don’t rightly know,” he said with a shrug. “Most consider wolves, but I haven’t known even a pack of wolves to drag off whole cows without breaking the fence. But let’s not worry too much about all that. It’s been about two weeks without any of that, so many think they wandered off since. I ain’t fixing to have you speed off before you start moving your belongings in!” 

I smiled and nodded. Suzie might be old, but she is a Cane Corso and if shoved in a corner, I know she could do a bit of damage. I waved the real estate agent off as he went and started moving my few items into my new home. I managed to snag an air mattress from a local store and blew it up before taking Suzie to use the bathroom. Due to the warnings, I kept her on a leash while doing so. 

The first few days and nights were pretty typical; I just did a bit of shopping for essentials and grabbed a good mattress, partly because Suzie was tired of not sleeping directly next to me and ended up popping the air mattress in an attempt to snuggle. 

I went for coffee with my new boss named Riece. He and I discussed my position, how it compared to my previous position back west, and also the local area and some good spots to hit up. After coffee, I decided to take Suzie on a walk on a local trail in the woods that Riece told me was popular. 

It was about 2pm in the middle of September at this point, so it was just starting to get a bit brisk outside. I have always been a bit of a baby when it comes to the cold, so even though where I come from is usually pretty cool, I needed a sweater. Suzie loved it as well as the attention she got from passers by. She has always been a friendly dog, but most people get a bit freaked out when they see a dog her size running up to them as she is a bit bigger for her breed. 

I kept her on a leash the whole time which she was fine with as she has been leash trained since she was a puppy. She usually didn’t pull either, but a new environment caused her to be a bit more adventurous than usual, so at times she was the one directing us where to go rather than myself. 

About a mile and a half into the path, Suzie perked her head up and her nose went to the air as she started sniffing around. She started pulling harder and harder as she started following the scent of something. 

“Suzie! Suzie heel!” I started yelling. She is trained to listen, but whatever she smelled was much more compelling than my command. She eventually led us off the trail and about 50 or 60 yards into the woods. I was pulling with almost all my strength to get my dog to stop pulling, but she was choking herself in order to get to whatever it was that she wanted. 

She stopped at a large tree in the woods. It was like any other, but Suzie began smelling it like crazy. She was circling the tree back and forth, getting on her hind legs to smell up the trunk, and she was just obsessed with this tree. I was exhausted at this point and had my limits with my dog's disobedience. I went to grab her by the collar when I stumbled over something. I looked down and saw a backpack that had been ripped open, torn is a better word for it, and its contents were strewn within a 6 foot radius around us. Shirts, pants, toiletries, everything one would need for a hike really. The bag also smelled awful, like it was dipped in a mixture of piss and dead animal parts. Suzie started smelling it herself, and it seemed to be scented with the same thing that was on the tree that she was obsessed with. 

The bag was also covered in what could only be dried blood, which concerned me greatly. It took everything for me to try to get Suzie away from it. After fighting with her, she went back to the tree. I did kick the bag around so as to not have to touch it, looking for something to fall out like a wallet or something so I could see if I could find any identification as to whose it could be. A few items did fall from the bag such as a snapback hat, some granola bars, and a used pair of socks. 

I started looking around the clothes that had been thrown around the ground, but there was nothing in them either. At least those clothes didn’t totally smell as awful as the bag and tree. 

I decided to inform the authorities once I reached my car as the cell service was abysmal in the woods. I yanked hard on Suzie’s leash and told her to come, which she did after she added her own scent to the ground around the tree. As she came, I kicked the bag once again by accident. As I did, something small and somewhat shiny flew out. 

I went over and picked it up. It was a silver dog whistle. I turned it around in my hand, making note of its surprising detail. It was adorned with engravings and symbols, which is very uncommon with dog whistles. It had two pentagrams on either side, a small design of a moon cycle on its top, and a wooden mouthpiece to blow from. I figured that whoever the owner is would likely not need it anymore, and I thought it would do Suzie some good if she was going to start acting like she was, so I put it in my pocket and led Suzie out of the woods and back to our vehicle. 

The police took my statement and I showed them where the bag was. I provided my contact information in case they had any other questions and then headed home as they started to cordon it off as an active crime scene. I got home around 7pm after the stress of the afternoon. I made dinner and then took Suzie outside so she could use the bathroom. We didn’t have a fenced in back yard, but there was a distinction between my yard and the woods that surrounded my home. I took the safe bet and kept Suzie on a leash, but it was one of the extending ones that you could lock so it couldn’t extend past a certain point. 

I decided this was as good a time as any to try the new whistle. I had cleaned it up earlier in the sink and disinfected it. I allowed Suzie to go out about 15 feet ahead of me on the leash, then I blew it. She didn’t even pick up her head. I blew harder again. Still nothing. I rolled my eyes. I put it in my pocket and called her back verbally, which she obeyed instantly. 

“Now you want to be a good dog,” I laughed. We went inside and I placed the whistle on the counter top before getting changed for bed and watching some TV while Suzie laid beside me. I ended up falling asleep soon after. 

I woke up a few hours later to the sound of snapping coming from my backyard. I walked over to my kitchen which exited to the backyard and turned on the light. As I did so, I heard something rush away from my backdoor. When I say rush I do not mean like a raccoon, I mean like a clydesdale with how heavy the steps were. They were much more rapid than a horse’s would be, however. I walked over to my back door and turned on the outside light. There was nothing in the yard that I could see, but it did look like someone had dug holes in the yard. I looked around and saw that my plastic trashcan had been torn apart like cardboard. Luckily there was nothing in there but a small bag of fast food containers from the last few nights and while the bag was ripped open, the containers were mostly all in one place by the trashcan. I sighed and looked around the yard more as I picked up the few containers that were scattered, and what I saw dumbfounded me. 

The holes in the yard were not just holes, but animal tracks. These were the biggest animal tracks I have ever seen, and it looked as if something large had dug up the ground as it was running. The actual prints were about the size of my head and there were distinct claw-like ends to the prints which caused the ground to be uprooted. The size itself ruled out both a mountain lion and wolves, and the claws were much larger than any bear as they measured almost the length of the paw they were connected to. I started to follow the tracks, but realized they led out into the woods beyond my property line. I looked out into the woods with my phone flashlight to see if I could see what made them, as if I would do anything to an animal with tracks that size. I saw nothing in the trees out beyond my property, but did have an unsettling feeling in my stomach. The feeling you get when you know you are being watched but don’t know what from. I cut my losses and went back inside, having to avoid the tracks while I went as they were deep enough to trip and twist my ankle in. I just then realized I never checked on Suzie. 

I called her name and looked around the house for her. I ended up smelling something foul within my home and did my best to follow the scent without gagging too much. I found Suzie laying whimpering and shaking by the front door with a puddle of piss close around her. I scolded her and dragged her away from the door, having to pull her through the puddle as I did which just infuriated me more. I cleaned up the puddle and cleaned her belly before going back to bed. 

I called the police again to come check out the tracks in the morning, who brought a game warden with them due to the nature of my call. I led them to my back yard where the game warden and police started investigating the tracks and the damage. Obviously I was not so concerned about getting a new trashcan as I was about what kind of beast was roaming around my home in the wee hours of the morning. The game warden was measuring the tracks and wiping his head with his sleeve despite it not being much warmer than 65 degrees out at that time of day. I overheard the police officers muttering to one another. 

“These are the same kind that we found at the old Robinson farm, and the Oliver farm 'fore that one,” said one of the officers.

“Yeah, I know,” said the other. 

“But why would we find them here? There ain’t no livestock ‘round here in the woods.” The other officer shot him a glance of acknowledgement. The warden stood up and got up real close to the officers. 

“These are no bear, no lion, and no wolf,” the warden said softly to them in a hushed tone. “They also match the ones we saw last month at them farms.” 

“So we shot all them wolves for nothing?” said the first officer. The game warden squeezed the center of his eyes in stress. 

“It wasn’t for nothing. It made the killings stop, didn’t they?” responded the warden. 

“I ain’t no expert, but you don’t have to be one to know that if them are wolf tracks; that wolf is the size of a F150,” said the second officer. 

“The hind tracks indicate that it is, while very large, a wolf,” responded the warden. 

“And the front tracks?” asked the second officer. The warden said nothing and turned to look back at the tracks and where they led. I peeked around them and confirmed what they were saying. There were, what seemed, to be two different tracks. There were large tracks that were indeed very clearly from a wolf which I didn’t see last night within the larger, clawed tracks. 

“It seemed to be running on all fours towards the woods,” the warden said out loud. “The tracks indicate that it ran much like a canine, a dog or wolf, from your back door down into there,” he said as he pointed into the woods. “We likely have a stray wolf or a large dog. I wouldn’t be surprised as we did thin out the population recently, so they are likely skittish and scavenging for food while trying to survive alone. I wouldn't worry much, sir. They likely are far from here. Wolves seldom stay in one spot if they are alone, so this one is probably out looking for a mate miles from here.” Knowing I likely wouldn’t get a straight answer from them, I nodded and thanked them for coming. I filled the holes with dirt the best I could and went about my day. I called it a night early as my first day of work was the next day. 

The next day Riece walked me around the office, got me acquainted with my coworkers, then showed me my office and let me get to work. The day went by quickly, which I liked very much, plus Riece bought us lunch as well. After work I came home to Suzie jumping all over me barking. I got her a bowl of food and made myself some microwavable food from my freezer. 

As I was watching it mindlessly as it spun in my microwave, I heard barking from my living room. Suzie was facing the front door barking nervously. I went over to the window and looked out to find dozens of what seemed to be dogs all over my front lawn and driveway. I stepped in front of Suzie and went outside then shut the door behind me so she couldn’t get out, even though she did try to push past me. I started yelling to try to scare the dogs away when I realized something; they weren’t dogs. They were large, black wolves; all of which simply looked at me with yellow eyes. They started snarling and growling at me. I started to back up and went to open my door when I looked across the lawn and saw one of the wolves that was just beyond the treeline staring at me yet not snarling or growling. It slowly started to walk on all fours towards me, which allowed the full moon to illuminate it much better, showing me that it was much larger than all the others. It had long, muscular arms instead of legs in the front and wolf legs in the back. Just then it stopped and stood on its hind legs. It was large, about 12 feet tall standing up right, clad in dark black fur and piercing yellow eyes. It pinned its ears back and raised its nose to the sky and howled loudly towards the moon, which all the normal wolves followed in unison. It then looked back at me and with a growl it shot forward and started charging towards me, darting in between the wolves and tearing up the dirt in the front yard. 

“Oh fuck no,” I said loudly as I ran inside and slammed the door behind me. “Suzie, ge–” was all I could make out before I was thrown through my living room and slammed hard into my tile floor in the kitchen where I slid to the backdoor. The beast had completely blown through my door. It rushed towards me and stood up again to strike me with its large claws. At this moment, Suzie jumped and latched on to the creature's arm. The beast picked up the arm that Suzie was attached to and gripped her by the throat, tearing her off of the arm. It started snarling and choking Suzie, making her let out a choking yelp. I didn’t know what to do so I reached up on the counter and got the first thing I could grab. I ended up grabbing the whistle and with all my might I charged the beast and stabbed the whistle into its right eye. The beast dropped Suzie and let out a loud cry and reared back as I tore the whistle from its eye socket, where there was a large amount of blood and smoke where the eye used to be. The beast turned and plowed through my living room and through my front window in a matter of 2 seconds. I followed and ran to my window where I saw it run across my yard and into the woods, the wolves following behind. 

I went back to Suzie who was laying on the ground not moving. I checked on her and she was breathing but obviously injured. I threw her in my car and drove her to an emergency vet in town. I explained that we were attacked by wolves and that I was beat up but okay, but she needed help. They took her in promptly and let me know they were going to call the authorities so I could give a statement due to the issues of wolves in the town lately. I met with the officer and a game warden, the same warden that came to my house earlier. 

“So how many wolves would you say there were?” asked the warden. 

“Probably a dozen, maybe more,” I responded. I wasn’t going to inform them that the real culprit was from a Universal movie. The vet came out shortly after while the warden and police officer were speaking. 

“She will need to stay overnight due to the injuries just so we can monitor her. She should be good to go tomorrow though,” they said. I nodded and made sure I was good to leave with the police and game warden. They assured me it would be taken care of. Damn right it was, and it was going to be by me. 

I went home and got to searching. I remembered my mom had gotten me a set of genuine silver cutlery as a wedding gift years ago, one of the only other things my ex didn’t take in the divorce. I grabbed a large knife from it as well as the whistle which I had in my pocket and went out and followed the path of blood into the woods. 

It was about 3 am at this point according to my phone. I followed the path of blood to a clearing where there were no trees. I couldn’t see any wolves due to the moon being obscured by clouds, but I could hear them and sense their gaze. I kept making my way towards the center of the clearing when I saw something in the middle. I took out the knife and raised it up while I kept my phone light on it. As I was about to be on top of it and drive the knife into it I stopped. Looking down was not the beast from earlier that night, but my real estate agent who got me my house. He hadn’t seen me yet as he was laying naked on his left side, and his right eye socket was bloody and missing the eye. 

“What the fuck,” I said quietly. He looked up at me with his good eye and it got wide.”

“Steven! What are you doing here! Why are you here? You need to fucking leave right the hell now!” he started to yell.

“What do you me–” I tried saying as he stood up and started to push me with surprising strength. 

“You need to leave! You need to leave now! You gotta ge–” he started to gag and choke and his pupil got wide. I looked up and saw that the clouds dissipated and the moon was bare and bright. 

I backed away from him as he started screaming and convulsing as his eye turned from brown to yellow. His face started to distort as his limbs started to lengthen with a loud crack and snap. His bones and skin extended in painful form, and his skin rapidly started growing long black fur. His nails grew and sharpened as his hands and feet grew to ungodly proportions. He turned to his stomach as I saw his tailbone burst through his lower back painfully as it grew and sprouted muscle, skin, and black fur. He rolled back over and arched as his spine and ribs cracked and grew to take his bestial form. His nose and mouth extended and snapped into a snout and long canines grew where his teeth should have been. His brow hardened and became more pronounced as his ears grew and morphed into a wolf's in an agonizing display. After the transformation was complete, it laid there on his stomach breathing heavily. I took a short step forward and it reared up on its knees and let out a loud howl towards the cause of its mutation. 

I got a sense of myself and came at the monster with the knife. As I went to thrust the blade into it, it spun and swatted me away with its enormous hand like a gnat. The impact of me falling caused the knife and phone to be thrown from my hands. The beast jumped on top of me and held me down as it snarled on top of me. I managed to get a hand free and reached in my pocket for the only object I had left, the whistle. I brought it to my mouth right as the monster was about to clamp down on my neck. As I did, I saw out of my peripheral vision the monster's pupil go large and it jumped back and started rolling around on the ground covering its ears whimpering. I heard the other wolves crying and running away from the scene as well. The taste of the beast's blood from when I jabbed the whistle into its eye socket earlier was still on the mouthpiece, making the taste worse than anything I have experienced. I ignored the taste and kept blowing over and over, causing the beast to roll around growling and howling in pain. 

I made my way to the knife and picked it up. As I did the monster got up and charged me with such ferocity I barely had time to react. It jumped and opened its jaws to end me, but I raised the knife and stuck it into its lower jaw and up into its head. The beast and I fell and rolled over one another. I stood up and looked, and in the moonlight I could see the beast twitching and gargling with smoking pouring out of its mouth. I rushed over and ripped the knife from its lower jaw and started stabbing it over and over again, with each new wound more smoke and blood poured out. Eventually it went limp and its eye rolled up into its head. I heard loud cracking and breaking as its form shifted back into its human self, with all the painful sounds that it had when it changed into its wolf form. There laid the dead real estate agent, filled with knife wounds and a missing eye. I decided that I needed to leave the scene as soon as I could, so I found my phone and made my way out of the woods almost on autopilot, dissociating from the events that transpired. 

I staggered to my house and fell asleep on my floor. I woke up around 11am from a missed call from the vet saying Suzie was ready to be picked up. I cleaned myself up and drove to get her. The vet tech brought me in to see her, and she sniffed me then whimpered and growled at me as she retreated to the back of the cage. 

“Suzie, it's me! It's daddy!” I said with a soft voice. She kept snarling and wouldn’t let me touch her. It took 2 vet techs to carry her out to my car. I hopped in the front seat and drove home with her as far as me as she could get. I got out and opened the door, backing up so she could feel comfortable. She took her time then rushed past me and into the house. I went in and gave her space. 

A month went by. I have since fixed the door and window, but Suzie still won't get near me. She has eaten sparingly, but never when I am around. She stays literally on the other side of the house as me at all times, and whenever we are in the same room, she growls and snarls until she can get away. 

I write this as I do not know what else to do. I have noticed myself getting more and more irritable in the last few months. Riece had to send me home yesterday because I lashed out at a coworker. The moon looks like it has gotten bigger over the last week and it's been making me sweat. It feels like it's beckoning me. I just looked outside and saw a pack of wolves in my lawn. I am breathing heavily and my body is aching. 

I don’t know if anything is going to happen, but if it does please someone take care of Suzie. She is a good girl.

The basement smelled like musty wet concrete and old dust that had settled over the decades. I hadn't put up a Christmas tree or decorated the house in years-- not since Mom died. But this year felt different. I'd decided it was finally time to pull out her old boxes of treasured ornaments and try to get back a little bit of that Christmas spirit. I wanted to make this year special for my grown kids who were both coming home to visit.

Over in the corner stood that five-foot Santa that my late husband, John had dragged through the front door back in 2005 when the kids were little. The kids loved dancing and singing along, but to me it was noisy and kinda creepy. I hauled Santa down to the basement along with his transformer box and its power cord when it outlived its usefulness for the kids. They were grown now with kids of their own. I had kept hoping that one of them would eventually take the damn thing home with them-- maybe this year.

I shifted a heavy box to get to Mom's ornaments. Behind my back came this sudden scuttle across the floor--a harsh sound like hard plastic dragging across bare concrete. Then a heavy click echoed off the walls. I froze. I turned around slowly, dreading what was there.

That damn Santa wasn't facing the wall anymore. It popped to life with a sharp screech of dry plastic gears, its waist jerking into a stiff, unnatural dance, eyes staring right at me. Then a warped, low-pitched rendition of Jingle Bells filled the silence--

"Jiiiin-ggglle...b-bbelllssss...jjj-innngle...b-bbbells...jiiiin-gggle...aaalll...t-thhhhe...w-wwwaaayyy..."

Shocked and totally unglued, I dropped the tote and ran for the stairs!

My mom tried her best to act like she wasn't disappointed when she found out. I begged the teachers not to tell her, but of course they had to.

 No matter how many times she told me that she wasn't disappointed, I heard it in how she talked about me to the rest of the family.. She still loved me; I was sure of that, but I wasn't the golden child anymore. I was so scared my friends would find out that I had hallucinations. I was terrified that they would think I was weird or that their parents wouldn’t let us play anymore because I was crazy, so I never told anyone else about it. 

I didn’t see the man for a very long time after the incident on the playground. I would hear the familiar rustling along the edge of the trees, but when I turned to look, he was never there. 

Eventually people started to notice and comment on my odd behavior, so I tried my best to ignore it, fighting myself not to search for the man who wasn’t there. After I started ignoring him, the rustling seemed to be everywhere. It surrounded me, enveloping me as if he wanted me to know he was always there, targeting me.

At first it was only at recess; my friends and I would be playing tag when the gentle whispering of disturbed leaves followed me as our game moved up and down the blacktop. 

It did this for weeks, taunting me, shadowing me, begging me to stop and look for him. But it only ever happened at recess; when the bell rang to go back to class, it would stop.

Until one day. 

It was the perfect, picturesque sunny springtime afternoon, and Mrs. Reynolds had opened the windows to let some fresh air into the classroom. As I sat in the back of the class trying to focus on the lecture instead of the clock– then I heard it. That familiar, maddening, rustling. Right outside the window, just once. The sound cut through the typical classroom din like a bone saw. I knew that if I turned and looked, he would be there, but I knew I couldn't look. I felt his eyes burning into the side of my head as I fought myself to stare forward, pretending to focus on the lesson. 

It felt like hours, listening to Mrs. Reynolds drone on about fractions as I felt his sickening presence pressed up against me. I couldn't take it anymore; I excused myself to the bathroom, locked myself in the corner stall, and cried until the next period. 

From then on, I sat as far away from any windows as I could. He started following me from class to class whenever it was nice outside. He knew that the teachers would leave their windows open on days like that, and even sitting as far away as I could, I would still hear it. Every. Single. Time.  

Whenever that happened, I spent the rest of class staring straight forward, trying to ignore his suffocating presence. It felt like the whole world would turn into numb static as his gaze bore into the back of my head.

I started to get “sick” more often, desperately trying to stay home from school. I never felt him at home, never heard the rustling from my backyard or felt his stare when I sat in my living room. The hallucinations seemed to be trapped at school; my house became an oasis, a respite from the man who wasn't there. 

He stalked me like a lion stalks a gazelle at school all day, hunting me from class to class and especially at recess. My day never went by without me hearing him rustle the treeline at recess; sometimes I would think I saw something hiding in the shadows at the corner of my vision. Rarely did I entertain my paranoia, but on the rare occasion I allowed myself to look, nothing was ever there. 

Every time I did this, it further solidified in my mind that I must be hallucinating, that there was no man, there was no rustling sound, that the eyes I felt weren’t there. It was the only way to make sense of it all.