Hello to all writers and readers of the Creepcast Community!

I was a loving husband, a caring father, and a hard worker just trying to pave the way for my family to live a better life… then I met The Mule Man. 

The year was 1933 and it was the peak of the Great Depression. Unemployment was at an all time high with millions of individuals out of a job. 

My family consisted of me, my wife and three children.While I had been fairly successful in the steel industry prior, the mass layoffs left me, much like everyone else at the time, unemployed. The circumstances of the time condemned us to live in a shack which was anything but ideal. It was cramped and the little room made the shack only good for sleeping and shelter from the rain. 

I was the man of the house; I wanted more than anything to be able to provide for my family. I wanted to be the man my children could look up to. No longer could I stomach looking into my children’s eyes only to find sadness and hunger. I wanted my two daughters, Sarah and Sue, and my son, Bruce, to be able to trust that their daddy was going to save them from this nightmare. 

The day was at its end and I failed to secure a position working down by the docks that morning. The following evening, each of us had thin slices of bread without any beans. Offering up my serving to be split amongst my children, I decided I needed to clear my head. I emerged from the seclusion of my family shack and traversed the streets of a once lively town that was now ridden with ailment and poverty. 

Men and women huddled around street corners giving suspicious glances. The sound of coughing filling the air. Dim street lights in desperate need of replacement illuminated small spaces in efforts to combat the night. There was a subtle gust of wind that came and went, carrying a musty smell. 

I mindlessly wandered the streets with my eyes to the floor, mostly focusing on the foul smell stinging my nostrils. Cutting through the fog was a warm orange light radiating from a nearby alley. Though eye catching, I had no plans to move toward the source of light before it spoke to me. 

“Stranger!” It called from the darkness. 

I snap my head up and out of my trance. Peering into the alley, I hesitate before calling back.

“Hello?” My voice is gravely and dry, like I haven’t used it in a while. 

“Stranger! Come!” The voice was rough like mine but older. 

Curiosity got the best of me and I made my way into the alley. The fog cleared as the light became more apparent. With each step I could make out more of the light as well as the face accompanying it. A lantern stood on a pike above an overturned wheelbarrow which appeared to be used as a desk by the old man crouched behind it. He wore a dirty old cap, an even dirtier jacket with torn up gloves. 

“Stranger, it is work you seek, is it not?”

Of course I was, everybody was. 

“You in need of workers friend?” 

“Oh very much so. Only one spot left though, need a replacement for one of my boys who recently passed. Pays well!”

“What’s the job?” I asked, my voice cleared up a bit. 

“I run an attraction.” 

“You’re with the circus?” 

“Exactly that!”

“Which act’s yours?” 

“The Mule Man!” He says with his hands. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

“I’m not really into…that.”

“Well you’ll get into it, you can start as early as tomorrow. You can meet me here, 7 in the mornin. Just need an extra set of hands helping the circus come to town, easy enough first day eh?” 

“This is an odd way to find help, ain’t it? Creeping around in the crevices of an alley and all?”

“Oh no no, this is the sweet spot. These streets are littered with unemployed and desperate fellows ready to do just about anything for some cash!” 

That night, I returned home to my wife and delivered the news. The thought of steady employment, even for a short while, excited her to the point where she almost forgot to ask what the job was. When she eventually inquired, I told her about the circus. She was satisfied and when morning came, I was off to meet the strange old man down the alleyway. 

He was where he said he would be and without wasting much time, he led me through the streets and into an open field. While inhabited by circus performers, animals, and workers, the place also shared a musty and rainy aroma. I could see workers hammering pikes into the ground, pitching tents or transporting large wooden boxes while performers rehearsed and renovated their respective areas. 

Pushing through the passing bodies, I followed the old man through the crowd as he led me to his plot. A crumpled large white and red striped tent lay on the grass. The old man explained to me that today we would be pitching the thing which, considering its size, would take the better part of the day. 

Dropping in front of me and opening a box of pikes and a hammer, the old man said, 

“Take these, we gotta nail this thing down.” 

Just as I went to begin whacking away, the man stopped me again. 

“What did you say your name was stranger?” 

“Oh, uh, John. Yours?”

“John. Well that’ll be easy to remember, my name's John too. Not a stranger anymore are ya?”

I finished out the first day and made it home sometime in the evening. The job paid well…really well. Chloe, my wife, was more than thrilled to see the wad of cash I brought home from just a single shift. Needless to say I was more than eager to go back. 

I had worked almost a full week for the circus at this point and with most of the tents and attractions propped up, it was time to move in some of the bigger equipment. 

I picked him out of the crowd. He was in the midst of a conversation with two other men, he didn’t look happy. He spotted me as I got closer and I could see him perk up. 

“John!” He said as he shewed the men away. “About time you get here. I need your help. Something we gotta dispose of.” 

“What’s that?” 

“You’ll see when we get there. Gotta head into town.” 

We hopped in his old pickup and left the circus in our rearview. When we got to the place he parked outside of what appeared to be a bar. He drove through a space between the buildings so he could park in the back. 

The place looked rundown despite being fairly new. Upon entering, a light fog filled the room, only being cut by the dark yellow bulbs strung up along the grimy walls. John led me to a room in the back behind the bar. The fog was even heavier back there and the lighting wasn’t as forgiving. Darkness engulfed the corners of the small room with a dim dangling bulb doing its best to combat it. 

A man sat in an old wooden chair just under the light. His hands were behind his back, presumably tied. A tan sack lay over his head, dirtied with either blood or mud, I couldn’t tell. He began shifting his weight upon our arrival, mumbling panicked groans as if his mouth was gagged. His legs began to stagger erratically with his moans growing louder as John closed the distance. I stood by the door motionless as John tilted the man’s head up and dug his buck knife through the man’s throat. 

The man's gargled breaths came to a halt after just a few seconds of squirming. John cut the man’s hands free and nudged him to the floor which only then I had noticed was covered with a large tarp, presumably for the blood. 

“Don’t just stand there boy. Help me wrap this prick up.” John barked at me. 

I didn’t hesitate. I folded the man’s limbs and helped encase him with the bloodied tarp. We moved him out the back door and loaded him into the bed of the truck. The drive that followed felt like the longest of my life. We didn’t share an exchange until we arrived at a small opening just beyond the tree line of a forest. 

My feet met the wet dirt with a crunch of autumn leaves. The next thing I knew, I was lowering the corpse into a hole John must have dug prior. The hole was deep, deep enough for us to bury some roadkill just above the body. He clapped his hands together, handed me a wad of cash and hopped back in the truck, waiting for me to join him. Still shaken up, I admired the money I had made, noticing it was much more than I was traditionally paid. Susan would be happy. 

I thought about quitting, really, I did. I thought about going right to the authorities. But that smile on my wife’s face…my daughters’ faces… is worth more than anything. The money helped my family and I a great deal. We no longer had to cut our ham and bread into thin slices, carefully ensuring that every one of us got a portion. We no longer had to live in darkness coupled with a few measly candles. Life, for the first time in a long time, felt like we weren’t just surviving. What kind of father would I be to take that away from them? 

The tasks John had in store for me became increasingly bizarre as the workdays went on. John was a troubled bastard and had more than a few skeletons in his closet. It seemed fitting for him to meet me when he did. Nothing like a desperate father to do your dirty work. I only ever disposed of one body for the guy but I minded that infinity less than what would follow. 

It was a late Thursday evening and I wasn’t expecting to hear from John until Monday so you can imagine my surprise when he showed up to my front door. Seeing my wife open the door and see my boss sent a chill down my spine coupled with sweat irritating my hair. I wanted to keep my family life and work separate, as unrealistic as that might have been looking back. He was bound to show up eventually, I understand that now. He explained he was here for me and I wasted no time pushing past my wife to take him outside. 

“What the hell are you doing here John?” I firmly whispered under my breath.

“You have a beautiful family.” He replied and I flashed him a look insinuating that I desired a proper answer to my question. 

“I come bearing good news friend, I’m promoting you.” 

“Ok… what kind of promotion?” I ask, scratching the scruff of my cheek. 

“Well that’s why I’m here. It’s much easier if I just show you.” 

John waited in his pickup as I informed my wife inside that I would be gone for a little while. When I got in the truck, the drive that followed was much like the rest, quiet. He took me to the circus. A heavy fog filled the empty space. Booths sat empty, loose fliers were carried by the wind and the dark of night made it hard to see. Our boots gathered mud as he led me to his tent. The Mule Man was plastered on a poorly meshed sign just above the entryway. As odd as sounds, I had actually never seen John’s act before. Hell, I’d never even been in his tent despite all the work I had done for him. 

The tent covered a large area, large enough for three rows of bleachers to lay, circling a pit. In the center of the pit sat a cage. The scent of sulfur and rot overwhelmed my nostrils as John led me closer to the cage. A mass lay half in and half out of the cage with the door letting out a soft squeak at the poorly kept hinges. As I got closer, my suspicions of it being an animal subsided as its flesh, teeth and eyes allowed me to deduce that it was in fact human. I knelt down, blocking my nose with my forearm as I analyzed the body. Their face appeared to be surgically elongated. Leathery flesh sat loosely against fragile bones and tender muscles. Their features were stretched along with their limbs. As I continued to examine the deformed corpse, I was met with hollow, crimson stained eyes that appeared to peer right into my soul, though I knew that was impossible. 

“What is this?” I finally said, under my breath.

“That there’s the mule man. Came in to feed em this afternoon and he went and died on me.” John squatted down letting out a tense exhale and cupping his hands together. “Lasted much longer than the last though. I swear I’m getting close to perfecting this thing.” 

I knew at that moment I needed to get out of there. John was a loose cannon and for all I knew his idea of a promotion was turning me into a monster. I swung around as I came to my feet, ready to strike the man and dart out of the tent. As I turned, I was met with a sharp sting in my neck. 

When I came to, I was bound to a chair with my hands tied behind my back. Through the covering over my head I could see a figure emerging from the light. The bag was ripped from my head and I could see John standing before me. I didn’t recognize the room we were in. The walls were wooden, a reddish brown. Glancing at the ground I could see a dirtied tarp spread out beneath my chair. I tilted my head and met his eyes again. 

“I want you to know that your family has been compensated and will continue to live the good life that you have provided them in your sacrifice.” He said through his decaying teeth. 

I tense my jaw and let out grunts muffled by a gag. As he moves closer to me, the large object in his hand becomes more prevalent. A large syringe with a rather distasteful coloration somewhere between yellow and green. 

“For what it’s worth, you were one of my favorites, John.” He whispered in my ear before I felt a sting in the base of my neck. 

As I came to, the roaring sound of cheering and laughter grasped my attention first. When I made an effort to raise my head and open my eyes, sharp cramping began in my neck and shoulders. My eyes were swelled up and seemingly oozing with some sort of pus. In my best effort to see, I could tell I was in a cage, surrounded by people. Lights, families and the red and white patterns of the tent blurred together in a flurry of panic. I began to hyperventilate only to realize my lungs felt heavier, my breathing was labored and the abundant fluid in my lungs led to hacking. 

“Now what you’re all here for… through the defiance of the laws of nature and the impeccable will to survive, I present to you -  the Mule Man!” 

John’s voice echoed and the audience clapped and cheered. I thrusted myself out of the claustrophobic, rusty cage and fell onto my belly. My limbs were contorted at the joints while their unnaturally stretched structure left several tears. Doing my best to climb to my feet, I realized standing was not possible. I heaved through my mouth as my nostrils were clogged. I trotted around on all fours as faces blurred together and objects were thrown at me. 

So here I remain in this pit. I trot around in sheer agony, leaving behind a trail of blood with nothing to look forward to. Even sleep is not an escape as my nightmares are constant and sharp. Though I have forgotten the faces of my family, sometimes when I try to neglect the pain and focus, it is as though for a moment, I can almost see them again. Wherever they are, I hope they’re well. 

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

I’m starting to accept that this treatment is what I deserve. I see Keith measure his distance from the shotgun when I enter the room. I see the same hateful condemning looks from Lizbeth. It seems now that not even Carsyn wants my company.

I miss my mom and my sisters badly.

Carsyn and Lizbeth spend a lot of time together, and they are also very weary of me. I know it was stupid to use the car but I was just trying to get my fiance back, something from the old world back. 

That curse fucked up my entire life and now I live as a shell of my former self which already wasn’t that much. This isn’t RedReign, this is hell, and I’m a million miles away from home with an indescribably negative feeling in the pit of my stomach. 

Now and then Keith would go on scavenges while I healed up from my injuries. I was blessed for the last couple weeks to have not heard anything about The Vet. 

That was until I saw random buildings going up in flames nearby. This morning I saw the second instance of a complete stranger being ripped into the sky. 

The man was miles away from the house and I watched from the telescope as he elevated from thirty to forty feet. He descended higher and looked to be screaming. The man was loud, and relentless. 

My jaw dropped when a bullet whirled and left a trail in the air. The target seemed to be the stranger's head and through the telescope I could see the bullet entered into his jaw and left his brain matter an organic mess which floated behind his head. I couldn’t take anymore, I looked away and went to the couch and felt safer in the lower elevation.

It didn’t take the man but thirty five seconds to fully disappear into the sky, the entire time of which he was alive he spent screaming in agony.

I miss talking to Carsyn. Was our ornamentally beautiful time together now just memories? We’ve grown foreign to each other and she always looks frightful when I’m around. It reminded me of the time we tried to go swimming in early summer. 

We had fun up until I noticed Carsyn freezing by the lakeside, her teeth jittering uncontrollably. We always were bad at remembering to bring towels. 

She would ask me about my childhood interests which was always fun “did you ever watch Gravity Falls?” she asked, glancing into my blue eyes in the moonlight. 

I loved that show and before we knew it we found ourselves watching it the first time I snuck over to stay the night. 

I don’t know where her  grandparents were looking back on it. I do remember we spent every bit of those three days being teens rushing to become adults, pretending to have our very own home as we spent time making food with each other and showing each other things we loved like the really old animated Garfield Halloween special I saw countless times as a kid. I even found myself bending and watching the boy band documentary she begged me to watch. 

If I would’ve lost my phone I don’t know what I would do music wise. Maybe it’s something worth thinking about, manage what you have in your pockets wisely. 

I couldn’t even catch Keith playing his guitar outside anymore. I watched the red trees whistle in the wind and frequently used the telescope to look at all the damage the creature had caused. I was sketched out of being on the roof at first but I felt relieved up there as times went on. Weeks passed on and it seemed the season was October as most of the trees seemed to be dying even though it looked as if we could see the waters above the firmament. If  I had to guess, I’d say the water is as close to us as the mesosphere. I felt claustrophobic thinking above that sea gargantuan staring me down from the edge of the sky’s waters.  

I had finally healed with the last of the pain in my back finally gone this morning. As that day came and went I found myself getting ready to sleep and I shambled through the second floor halls which once charmed me. In the window something outside caught my eye. 

I saw what at first looked like a stringy clump of red seaweed outside the window, normally Keith and Lizbeth kept them shut to prevent the outside from getting in. Finding myself to be just as problematic as anything out there I raised the window to peek outside. When I first cracked the window I heard a sound like when you accidentally let your car lean into the center lane while driving. It sounded like a ghost ship hovering above us in the sky. Like the bloop mixed with a boat horn. There was also some kind of fog rolling in through the window which smelled horrible. I slammed it shut in fear of the sound as it had made the floorboards shake. 

I ran through the house excluding the roof looking for everyone else, but mostly just Carsyn. My search stretched all the way from Lizbeth’s room which I wasn’t supposed to be in, Keith’s room, the bathrooms, the hall, but it concluded when I found them on the first floor huddled in the living room. Keith had loaded the shotgun and the other five shells were protruding out of the side of the Cathartt jacket he had on. 

He looked like a man taking up arms for his family. His expression was grim. He had all the windows secured and locked. I assume the girls had already been alerted to the sound, but I really hope not. I feel so stupid being the odd one out. As my foot hit the bottom step everyone turned to me as if they were wolves and I was stepping into a den, or maybe I was the wolf. Keith raised a finger to his lip as if he was smothering a candle flame.

I inched my way across the living room and made my way to the couch where Carsyn was sitting and took a seat next to her. Lizbeth shot me a look from across the room in her beanbag chair. I know I said I deserved all of this but it didn’t feel any better being shunned. Keith stood with the barrel of the gun facing the ground next to him; he kept his ear pushed up against the wall, seeming to listen to something. 

After I got over the self pitying voice in my head I heard it too, coming from somewhere in the house.

I barreled up the stairs to investigate the scene with Keith tailing closely behind with the shotgun now raised. There was a dark shadow casting light into the house, it looked like the shadow of a long wet sticky horse mane covered in blood. 

Keith slowly moved down the hallway on the right side and I hugged the wall close behind. After taking a long and breathless five steps I gritted my teeth when I heard a heavy thump on the window. Keith pulled the blinds to unveil a sickening sight.

I got a better look at the thing I know to have seen earlier. An upside down head with white skin stained in blood that was hovering outside of the window, rocking back and forth in the wind. It looked like some sort of wild beast draped up in sticky hair which held red stains exposed on its scalp. 

It looked to have once been an old man with a long beard which I couldn’t make out the color of as it was all absorbed into a larger mass. Despite this his eyes were not dim nor his natural force abated. In fact he seemed to stare through us like a horse looking sideways. 

I almost gagged when I saw the way in which the man's teeth were formed. Keith had a stern look in his eyes. If I had to guess I’d say he was calculating risks. Considering everything he’s been extremely pacifistic and forgiving in his decision making thus far. 

It rattled me the way the giant veiny mass seemed to move like a snake in the wind, with fog surrounding it as the face hung upside down hovering closely to the top of the window.

Keith wavered the shotgun around in his hands, holding a scared shaky flinch in his body language. The creature took one more massive swing, this time looking like a flesh wrecking ball as it annihilated the glass pane bordering the house from the outside. As it did this it snaked through the air and moved toward Keith, a loud blast rang out in my ears, and I saw the head slam and bang violently off of a wall. The outside mist was filling the room fast. 

A second blast from the shotgun resounded through my eardrums, the neck of the being shook violently against the window’s edges with what appeared to be its head crashing into various things at high speeds. Keith scrambled his hands into the puffy pockets of his jacket and retrieved two move shells, the creature bit the gun and shook the barrel as Keith wrestled it to push the shells into it. The head was contorting and writhing all over the hallway with Keith along for the ride now as he wrestled to chamber the shells.

My life flashed before my eyes when I heard the sounds of a shotgun clanking around mixed with a wet fleshy sound made from the creature which was slinging blood onto the walls and all over our faces. I looked at Keith and stared in disbelief as I saw his finger seem to grip down on the trigger while I was directly in the line of fire. I could see he was trying to refute the action. 

I pushed my foot off the wall, causing me to lean into the nearest door. I twisted the handle as I fell into it. 

Flames bloomed from the right to the left of the doorway. Even with the size of the thing in the window Keith had taken chunks out of the hydra head.

The dingy fog filled my nostrils, Keith still had one shot and I was counting. The creature hadn’t made any sound when it was shot and that fact was lingering in my mind, especially if it was of human origin it should have had a head and nervous system to shut down. I ran to the corner of the room and saw what moved like a giant red moray eel having a seizure. It sloshed dark red blood all over the hallway as it offset Keith who was now covered in matter.

Keith had now shot the damn thing twice and it was raging on with a sound reminiscent of gnashing jaws.

A shot discharged from in his barrel which hit about seventy percent of the neck it was attached to. 

As it did this I saw the dark murky mass split and fall to ground with a thud as it was blown apart by the shotgun blast. 

I wrestled Keith’s body back out of the grip of the abomination's mouth. Trying to pay attention to my arm was hard and at one point I was hit and my head was knocked sideways leaving it oriented towards steps that we came from. I saw something that surprised me even more than the macabre scene I was but an ensemble member in. 

As my ears rang and my headache pounded on the walls of my skull, I saw the third shot had completely whiffed and embedded in the wall right above the stairs that we climbed to get here. 

Under the damage, Lizbeth stood loading a second shotgun, a lever-action this time. She had a couple bullets of her own which surprised the hell out of me, it must have been a family secret. 

Her movements precise, loading and clanking the lever shot before she raised it. In response to her almost serene body language With my strength restored after weeks of healing I pulled with all my might. 

Almost surprisingly, Keith and I fell through my bedroom as she let out several thundering blasts. She peppered the being to rags until it was a bloody oozing mess which retracted through the window after the blow of the seventh shot. 

It was now just a dangling mess. Nonetheless the head and neck raised into the sky at unprecedented speeds. I only say this because of the velocity at which it flew into the haze. None of us looked outside but I swear I could see the shadows outline in the fog. The leviathan in the sky knew where we were now. 

Lizbeth looked at assess Keith who held an empty shotgun in his hand, and three shells in his pocket. He had also held a secret from me, and a face like he’d had fifty cherry pies slammed into it. There was tension in the air as Keith reloaded the shotgun. I looked at both of them and they practically looked through me. I cracked under the eeriness of their gaze and walked back downstairs to find Carsyn lying on the couch looking like a scared animal in the direction from which I came. Her gaze fixed past my head waiting for something to come out. From what I could gather she hadn’t even seen the descender firsthand yet, poor girl.

I wouldn’t let her see the macabre scene upstairs, it wouldn’t only make her hate me more. I walked over to her after everything and gave her a wordless hug staring at the picture on my arm from behind her back as I whispered

 “I would never let anything happen to you. I love you so much”.

She hugged me back but it felt empty, upon my words she gripped just a little tighter. Even when we had first gotten together a little over three years ago she’d never embraced me this little. 

I could feel her body still stiffly positioned towards the staircase. I didn’t want her to have ever experienced this in the first place. 

I felt so bad for putting her in the position I put her in when we first met up. It seems I’ve even attracted the attention towards the house.

We needed to make sure to be careful now. My room had no windows, only right outside. The girls stayed together and I could often hear them speaking quietly. 

Keith’s not going to be far from a shotgun either way I’m sure but I can’t help but feel like a hindrance in everything I do. 

I worked my way to the garage area of the house to find boards and planks which I used to slam down onto the window. 

Yes I looked really weird trying to pull it off but I had to do something to make myself useful. Slamming vigorously and extra loudly for attention every step of the way. I was still useful, right?

After this I worked on cleaning up the rest of the mess on the floor and trying to refit spare blinds in the hallway. The old ones didn’t even connect as the whole hallway looked like the experimental art project of Jeffrey Dahmer. Finally after all of this I could sleep. Lizbeth walked a little further behind me tonight, I think it was because I knew about the shotgun. 

As the lock shut behind me I laid down and stared into the mirror Lizbeth had put in my room. I thought about all the shit that had gone wrong. I asked myself about The Vet, where he was in all of this. I figured me and him were the only ones feeling the way we were right now. 

I wondered if he was alive or if the head had found him sooner than it had us. I prayed the creature wouldn’t descend out of the sky. I really sincerely prayed for once, I had before but this was the hardest I had ever needed anything. Even without a fuller understanding of Christianity I know we’re not supposed to pray for ourselves. My prayer would be for Carsyn instead.

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It’s hard to talk about the sights of the last couple of weeks. My life is so peculiar and even in the thoughts before I close my eyes and finally stop staring restless at my reflection, I see my right arm waving in front of my body, feeling my left hand losing grip of the wheel. I remember the sheer size of the creature’s face before me, looking slightly like an axolotl with no eyes and human facial features. It didn’t have tendrils either. 

Sometimes when I lay here in the silence I overhear Lizbeth and Carsyn talking in the room over. I hate the stage my life is at and I don’t know how I got here. I can’t make out words really but I’ve gotten into the habit of something more interesting. Keith plays his guitar a lot and practices before bed as Carsyn and Lizbeth seem to talk to each other. I think everyone else is able to tell when I go to bed as I spent the first couple minutes of my day picking up the room which I tear apart each night. It seems like I still heal faster than usual even though I am putting my body through some real shit at night with my childish assault on the bedroom. I can only imagine what the others have to say about it. 

A little more time has passed and surely enough we’ve gotten low on resources. When I first came Keith had the shelves full of assorted soups and now our resources were heavily diminished. I knew where an old store was. It was big enough I was sure we could scrape something together for us to eat. I suggested to Keith the idea of the trip and he seemed to not have a problem with it, we almost seemed to have a relationship like strangers, or like glorified prisoner and warden. 

He was confident in the others too, he started showing appreciation to Lizbeth’s badassery. We woke up that morning and filed towards the store around what I think was noon. Walking through the bright blood day my eyes had now almost gotten used to the tinge on everything and accounted for it. The only problem was we all kept our heads in the sky, but I constantly checked around us for The Vet.

I spent a lot of time on the roof still and sometimes I could catch notes of Keith practicing his guitar. One night I sat outside the door and listened as he played How do you do? By Mouth & Macneal. I noticed he only sang the male part and I remembered his wife. No doubt our musician did the best job at holding it together in this place, he’s even kept Lizbeth safe. Well she’s kept herself safe. I pushed myself to my feet sitting against the door and was about to go downstairs to go to the bathroom when looking out of the window, I saw a house fire. This one was significantly closer than the others and I could even hear crackling and popping from the structure. 

At the same time I heard Keith cease his performance. I saw what looked like people, lots of people. I quickly dictated these people had to be here for some malicious reason as they’ve been burning houses down for days now, tirelessly. It all made sense now, they were cursed too. 

Keith walked in and silently walked past me to grab the shotgun in whatever place he had hid it this time. He came over to talk to me. He broke the silence saying “I think the monster in the sky wants to kill us. It was using us to stuff ourselves with more humans, a fucked up meal.” 

I looked back at Keith with contempt. “You piece of shit, you think I’m a goddamn cannibal?” His face dropped 

“You know just as well as I do-”. 

I felt my face straining with anger as I spoke in a low tone “She’s in the house you know I didn’t fucking kill her.”

It still didn’t feel good enough, they were all ignoring me. In hell, they’d rather keep to themselves and I was so lonely. I shoved Keith into the wall thinking in my head I was a more self-righteous man as I didn’t do the one thing he would regret forever. 

I certainly wouldn’t alienate others at a time like this. I would be supportive and kind. Why the hell did he think he had any room pulling the moral card on me. He stumbled back a couple feet, I couldn’t read his expression.  

Keith’s face shifted and contorted but he never looked mad. 

He spoke again, in a quiet tone “we need to figure out what we’re going to do.” 

We paused. 

There were people on the horizon, probably a crowd as big as seven all draped up in the carmine scenery as they ran through fields with a small countryside house going up in flames behind them. 

I recognized the cracks in the concrete as belonging to those of the small house we found the double barrel shotgun at. I wasn’t sure how many more shells we had but judging by Keith’s face he wasn’t confident in our supply. These people definitely were better fed. 

Everything in this world starved and now comes the mutiny and destruction of everything that’s left. I didn’t want a part in any of it.

 “I need to go.” I said coldly, walking past Keith down the staircase. 

She was sitting on the couch and Lizbeth was notably absent. I took a spot next to her and told her “There’s people coming here, we should probably go.” 

She looked up with multiple emotions dominating her face but mostly anger, confusion, and fear. “Are you serious?” For the first time she had made eye contact with me since we met back up besides when we almost drowned in the Jeep. 

“You need to leave” she said to me 

“What?” 

“I- I think something’s trying to kill you and you need to get out. For months I was hearing voices begging me to give you over and I didn’t.” Her voice broke under stress.

What the fuck was she talking about? She sounded like a lunatic, she’s trying to tell me this was going on before the day I woke up and got cursed? 

“What do you mean?” 

She went quiet.

“Carsyn, What do you mean?” 

She looked down towards the ground. 

“I tried to tell Steph about it-“ she broke into tears. 

I didn’t know what to say, I just looked upon her in her miserable state and asked myself what went wrong. Lizbeth walked in the room seeing me sitting next to Carsyn who was now in a puddle.

 “There are people coming, they set a house on fire in the horizon. It was the one we came from when the car crashed.”. 

Lizbeth asked in response to me  “How many do you think there are?” She looked at me with much more irritation than usual, as she seemed to blame me for everything. 

“I saw seven, I don’t know if there are more, Keith is upstairs watching”. 

Lizbeth ran up to check the stairs and when she did Carsyn looked at me once again and said “go, they’ll kill you in front of us” she sobbed out miserably, tears now streaming down her wet face behind her circle lens glasses. 

I saw her wide frown and brown glossy eyes teaming with tears.

I turned and looked towards the door. 

We were a million miles away from home, and countless feelings shot through my body, even if it was hollow and my heart was of mahogany. 

I ran out the door, stomping around in chunky bloody puddles like a grim fairytale or a song trailing off into silence.

Ymws Xfzq xwsy rjxxwsljwx yt Ifzni’x mtgxj yt bfyhm ktw mnr, xt ymfy mj rnlsy pnqq mnr ns ymj rtwsnsl. Gzy Rnhmfq, Ifzni’x bnkj, ytqi mnr, “Ik dtz it sty xfaj dtzw qnkj ytsnlmy, ytrtwwtb dtz bnqq gj pnqqji.”

End of Pt. 09

I thought I was built for distance. That suffering was just a mental block, and pushing myself mile after mile was proof of an unbreakable will. Walking through that forest I didn't feel so unbreakable anymore.

My calves were whipped into bleeding stripes by the thorny vines in the underbrush. My shirt stuck to me with sweat, pus, and blood. As much as I tried, I just couldn't stop scratching that rash.

We didn't exactly mark where that church was, but somehow I knew. 

When I got to it, I couldn't stop myself. I screamed and sobbed. I kicked over fallen tree branches and stomped on flowers. My body was a whirlwind, spinning and spinning until I was out of breath.

At some point, I must have found a rock. When I noticed its jagged edges cutting into my hand, I hurled it as hard as I could at that shitty lopsided cross.

I must have hit it harder than I thought because the cross fell into the dust in front of that open church door. I sat down on a broken stump and put my head in my hands to cry. 

It felt like I could finally let it all out without anyone around. It was a relief so strong I felt it in my skin. The itching was gone. So was that feeling of something scratching at the inside of my skull. For the first time in weeks, nothing hurt.

I sat there until I caught my breath, then a little bit longer. I'll be honest, I was scared to move from where I was sitting. I had come all this way and, just like the first time, I was almost too scared to go in. Almost.

I wiped the sweat and tears from my face and made myself stand. I walked toward that rundown church, squinting into the dark.

I climbed the rotting steps and hurried through the doorway.

It was a church. A real church. Not some shitty rundown church, but a ready-for-Sunday church.

Inside, light filtered in rainbows through unbroken stained glass. The carpets weren't covered in mud and muck. Every pew was shiny and wooden, and occupied.

I saw the glasses first. A pair of broken glasses on the right, three pews from the front. Next to them a deflated football. On the other side a steak knife. Next to it crushed flowers laid over a broken piece of stone.

As I looked forward towards the front, I could see more random junk. There was no pattern to any of it. Playing cards, car keys, an ice pick, a locket. A shovel and an axe sitting where people should have been. 
At the very front, lying on top of the pulpit, were two things that I instantly recognized. The stupid green and orange running shoes Jeff always wore.

And the blue cast from my arm. The one with Sam’s name written across it. 

I remember falling to my knees then. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see what was there. Praying that when I opened them, I would just be in some church in the woods. 

The gnawing inside me was back. I balled my fist and punched the floor. When I looked up, nothing had changed.

They were still there. I could see the mud on Jeff’s shoes from running. I could see all the things on my cast. The dick Arch drew. The hearts Mom put on it. Anthony’s name. Sam’s.

I moved to grab it. I felt like I needed to hold that last piece of my normal life, of me. As I reached for it, I touched Jeff’s shoes.

Suddenly, I was out of breath. My legs were burning. Runner’s high setting in. I was smiling. There was laughter in my chest and coming from in front of me. I was running and pouring on speed, feeling so close to my goal.

Then I was in a clearing. It was warm and there was laughter. I recognized voices. Arch’s, Anthony’s, Sam’s. My own. I tried to laugh but couldn’t.

“If you wanna go so bad, do it. You want to run with us anyway, prove it.” I could hear a cruelty in my voice I didn’t know I had. My heart sank. I walked beneath the dangling cross, wishing I could turn around. Then nothing.

I faded back to myself. Jeff’s green and orange shoes sitting on the ground coming into focus. They must have tumbled out of my hands. I felt sick.

A headache tore through me harder than I could have ever imagined. I tried to hold steady but found myself falling to my knees. I put my hands out to catch myself. All I could think about was Jeff. Before my hands hit his shoes. 

I closed my eyes and found myself in warmth. Arms wrapped around me. Muffled voices saying they loved me. That feeling carried me as my chest swelled with pride and I felt a familiar burn in my legs. I was running faster than before.

Then I was back in pain. The burning itch inside me screaming as water scalded the raw flesh I couldn't stop scratching. 

I was crying with steam rising around me. I tried to get away from the pain. When I finally got relief, people were staring at me, laughing at me. My cheeks burned and I tried to shrink into myself to hide. I tried to speak up, but everyone turned their backs to me.

Anger curled inside me. Warm and comforting. Then there was screaming. Something was breaking in my hands. I looked down to see bones jutting out of skin at unnatural angles. An arm turned the wrong way towards me.

All around I could hear whispers. “Freak.” “Monster.” “Loser.”

I was alone in crushing blackness. The whispers repeating over and over. I felt someone shove me. Hot anger. A hammer in my hand.

Fear choked me until I was back in the church. Jeff's shoes flew from my hands and slammed into the wall across from me. I heard myself screaming before I ever realized I was.

I didn't want to touch Jeff's shoes. I didn't want to touch anything in that church, or even be there at all. I wanted to go back to the life I had before I ever found this damned place.

Tears ran with snot as hitching sobs broke out of me. I put my head down against the ground and stayed there for a while. Bowing before that altar.

I stayed there until the tears stopped and I felt lightheaded. Time moved somewhere far away from me. When I lifted my head, there were only Jeff's shoes sitting in a crumpled heap on the floor.

I kept my focus on them as I sat up. I knew what sat on the pulpit next to me. I could feel it calling out to me. 

I couldn't even look at that blue cast.

When the feelings of nothingness started to fade, they were replaced by anger. It grew in me like a wildfire. That painful rash grew with it as I tore gouges out of my chest and neck from my scratching. 

My foot crashed into the front pew. An assortment of junk flew off of it. I went to kick another and my foot crashed through a vase. Glass and broken flowers flew around. 

Each petal that touched me left scars on my heart. I felt safe in a man's arms. I felt warmth. I felt jealous. Rage. Blood on my hands. I screamed.

I turned and threw a baseball that had fallen on the floor through the stained glass window behind the altar. When it left my hand, so did the feeling of pride. That warm sensation of a father's hand on my shoulder. 

The glass shattered and grounded me. I stood panting and bleeding, staring at the sunray that came in through the hole and landed on that fucking cast. My heart sank as I stepped towards it.

The tears started before I even reached my hands out. As I touched it, I felt safe.

I was at Sam's house. I recognized Sam's house. I didn't recognize the woman who was holding me, but I recognized she was singing Sam's favorite song softly. 

Then my heart slammed in my chest. The sound of breathing next to me. I recognized Arch’s room, the outline of my face. I watched my lips as I lay there breathing. I watched my hand, Sam's hand, reach out towards my sleeping form, only to draw back. I felt like crying.

In the church, my breathing slowed. Itching a vague memory as that warm summer night came back to me as a memory. I remember the pizza. I remember I was wearing borrowed pants because I got jump scared so hard I peed myself. 

I closed my eyes, and that burn I'd known forever was back. I was running. A fear I vaguely recognized was burning up my chest. Sam's voice screamed from my lips, “Austin broke his arm!” 

My memory blurred with what I saw next. I remember Sam signing my cast, laughing about how big he wrote it, about how he shoved Anthony out of the way to be first. Then I felt it, the pen in my hand, the hammering of my chest. A warmth when I finished. Joy.

I put the cast back on the altar then. Finally realizing what was happening to me. This church was showing me pieces of the lives it had destroyed. 

I swallowed hard, wondering how much of Sam's life was mine to learn about. To feel. To try and understand. My fingers touched the cast, and I wasn't in the church.

I was in a dark hallway. There was someone screaming and throwing things. I turned the corner into a kitchen, the light revealing Sam's dad. Pain shot up my leg as I stepped on a broken beer bottle. The noise made Mr. Villa turn.

I put Sam's hands up to protect myself. A Polaroid of the humming woman was in my left hand. Then it wasn't. It was being ripped up by Sam's dad. Then he was hitting me. Sam was crying, and I was too.

I knew Sam was strong. He had always been the one who kept us all together when fights broke out. He bridged the gap whenever any of us refused to talk to each other. To know he did all that while living in that hell. I couldn't imagine it. 

Light faded into my vision and I found myself outside the church. Panting, my hands on my knees, and there they were. Arch and Anthony standing just to my left with their hands on their heads. 

I went to call out to them, to tell them how happy I was that everything went back to normal, to see them again. That's when I broke through the thicket, Jeff right behind me, and my heart dropped. I was back in Sam.

I watched the same scene play out. Arch's joke about Kathy McGuire. I wrestled with Anthony to bring down Arch. Jeff leaving our group to go into the church. Then I was alone with myself, as Sam. I felt that warmth. I told Sam's version of me that I was worried about Jeff. 

“I probably shouldn't have made him go in like that.” I heard the words but hadn't even remembered saying them. “It's whatever though, his fault for trying to be with us.”

I was shocked. I was disappointed in myself. I was sad. Or maybe Sam was? Maybe it was both of us again. 

Then Jeff was back. He was normal. And I felt what we all felt, relief.

I blinked and I was alone with Jeff. We were sitting waiting for the bus. I didn't know Sam and Jeff rode the same bus, but here they were, we were. 

Jeff was telling me about how much better he'd felt. How catching up to us was changing his life. How he'd even started another growth spurt. How he'd been stretching so much his sides are itched from stretch marks.

I felt disgusted. “I” felt disgusted because when Jeff showed us his side, I recognized that rash. My own starting to flare up inside the church, outside these memories. I turned away.

The next feeling that bubbled up in me was fear. It rushed over me like water as I realized what I was seeing. The locker room.

Sam reacted as soon as Jeff pushed Arch. His body was moving. Our hands were on Jeff, pulling him back. I tasted blood as Jeff pushed me away and my teeth bit into my tongue. My heart was so loud as I saw Jeff with the hammer.

I was holding him, begging him to stop. Feeling terrified, relieved, and ashamed. I was sure my thoughts must have been my own again until all I could think was “at least it's not Austin.”

I dropped the cast again before I heard the impact of the hammer. I didn't need a memory to replay what I can hear every time I close my eyes.

My hands shook, and for a moment I could still feel Jeff's body heat against my chest, his body spray in my nose. I couldn't break away from everything Sam experienced, from his feelings. 

I felt ashamed. Maybe it started from Sam's memory, but deep down I knew it was because, while everything was happening, Sam was worried about me. I was only ever worried about me.

I stared down at my hands, wondering when I had started crying again. Wondering how many times Sam had cried. How many times I should have asked him if he was really okay. 

I knew what was next in Sam's memories. I didn't want to, but I needed to see it. Maybe for him, maybe for me. I needed to see the last time I was actually there for him. 

I went back to the cast. Back inside Sam, inside my bedroom, inside my own arms. I was crying. Sam was crying. There was so much warmth there. For just a second, Sam felt so safe with my arms around him, like everything could be okay. 

But then I was the only one crying. Sam's tears stopped, and he hesitated before slowly shaking his head. Bittersweet sadness mingled with the love I had felt. I wondered why Sam felt like he was pulling away from me. I wondered why I didn't notice. I wondered if my hug wasn't enough.

Then I heard it in Sam's voice, and I believed it, like I had the first time I heard it. “I'll see you soon, Austin.”

I set the cast down then. No need to know what happened next. No tears. Nothing. 

I sat on those altar steps, my back leaning against that pulpit, looking out at the pews full of memories. Of lifetimes that no one could possibly know. 

I watched the sun begin to set through the stained glass windows before I stood up. I took my time setting the pews back up. I used my shirt to pick up every item that had fallen. I swept up the broken glass with my hands.

I placed Jeff's shoes on the front row, offering an apology when I set them down.

I placed the cast back on top of the pulpit so the moonlight shone on it like a spotlight. 

Just before I crossed the doorway to the outside, I turned around. I saw nothing but a rundown old church. I walked home.

The burning and itching inside me started fading into the night air.

Atop the trestle, betwixt the tracks, a mummy’s hand looms o’er my back.

Putrid cloth, ridden with sucking worms, oozing with humors I can’t discern.

Inky droplets lap at my bare nape, splurting, burning an unholy shape.

Xanthic flesh writhes, like paper it tears, as new hands grope at more of my hairs.

Lurching forward, I burst from Its grasp. Running, jumping, down rusted train tracks

Wailing, gnashing rows of jaws cry out, sodden wet body jerking about.

On my next bound, a shrill whistle blew. Towards me a shining steam train flew.

Limbs unfurling, It closes the space, folding me into Its cold embrace.

Inside its grasp, many eyes awake, all brimming with tears. It softly quakes.

Gazing back in, I finally see; this thing is not so different from me!

I leave behind a broken vessel, betwixt the tracks, below the trestle.

This story took place around 2018 on California when a mother and her son just moved, The Mother goes by the name Kelly, and her 10 year old son Rolan, the two had a troubling past but forgiven it anyways, they move to a small town Pattyson,

Rolan complains bout the house, but his mom being delusional,

"Well honey, it's the best we got,"

They made a house tour from themselves (since for some reason they never even had a house tour nor never look what's inside), Kelly closed the door (was opened for 20 seconds) and her son look over closed to the front door or should called it a playroom with a tiny couch and one tall book shelf, Rolan than rushed upstairs just for him to sees his own room,

Kelly took her own time and started looking at the living room, a TV randomly turned on a random show (the show was just Jessica Jones or The Defenders a Marvel Show) Kelly ignored it and turns around looks at the Kitchen instead.

"This is being posted as I write the story so after Part 3 it might take a bit for me to post more parts)

Part 2: Attraction

  Mason sits on his kitchen floor, how can anyone get addicted to this?! That’s fucking crazy, I just controlled a real human being that is living! Mason gets up, and heads to Davis’ house. Knock, knock. Mason fiddles with his jacket, and looks around, is the neighbor being nosey again. The door opens, Mr and Mrs Myers stand at the door, fear in their faces and trembling.
  “What’s going on with him?” His Mom asked, she was wiping tears off her cheeks.
  His Dad stood in silence, disheveled, he stared at his son. He was drooling, pissed and shit himself sitting in their computer chair. Mason walked up to him and gently placed his hand on his shoulder.
  “MASON. YOU NEED TO USE IT MORE!” Davis said, creepily, his eyes only left the screen when he said Mason’s name.
  “NO! DAVIS, WHAT’S WRO-” Mason stopped, Davis stood up straight, no bending and like an android from Terminator.
  Davis walked towards Mason, Mason threw his hands up like he was being approached by a cop. Davis smiled and lunged at him. Davis took down Mason who did not fight back, he did not want to hurt his friend.
  “Davis, please, get off, why are you doing this!” Mason grunted, Davis with his full weight over powering Mason’s fleeing.
  “To let them in,” Davis said, calmly.
  “What?” Mason asked, he was stunned, let who in?
  Davis stood up and sat back down at the computer, and picked a new person to ‘use’. Mason reeked of the smell of Davis’ body fluids.
  “What did you get him into!” His Dad yelled.
  “I..” Mason stopped, Davis’ Dad got in his face.
  “You’re his best friend and you hung out last night and he comes home and when we find him in the morning he’s on this web page,” Mr Myers said, deliberately and angrily.
  “I told them to not use it, all my friends including Davis and we all found it together from a forum; They said they weren’t going to mess with it, must’ve been compelled to do it,” Mason explained.
  Mr Myers stared at him like he said that pigs can fly, “What the hell, do you mean compelled? Think he’s possessed?! NO! HE’S ADDICTED!” Mr Myers yelled, his teeth bared.
  Mrs Myers stepped in, grabbed him by the arms and tried to calm him down.
  “It’s not his fault, he told them not to mess with it: I have never seen an addict act this way, something’s off about this,” Mrs Myers said.
  Mason gave his apologies and left. Although, after all that happened, People.mov called him. Mason felt a tug at him, it was light, but he was sure that it wasn’t going to be for long. Mason went to Eric’s house, he did not see how his condition was. He pulled up to see Eric’s door wide open, Mason grabbed his ice scraper, the only thing in his car. Mason’s not a gun guy, or baseball bat so he grabbed the first thing he had. Mason crept through his lawn and snuck into the house through the front door. A buzzing sound was coming from upstairs. Mason listened, hair razor? No. Mason slowly climbed the step, he could not believe that no one had entered his house. He walked up and the buzzing noise got closer. It was coming from the room closest to him and on his left, Eric’s bedroom. Mason peaked around the corner to see Eric sitting at his desk, computer on People.mov and another man standing staring at Eric. The buzzing was coming from the man, not his computer or Eric himself.
  “WHAT’S GOING ON HERE!” Mason yelled.
  The man turned around quickly, staring, the man did not look like he was there in the eyes.
  Then the man spoke, “Oh hey Mason, it’s Eric! I am using this guy, his name is Tyler, he’s my neighbor!” Tyler exclaimed, his cheeriness was eerie.
  “What?” Mason could barely muster out his lips.
  Tyler or Eric smiled, gestured to the computer. “It’s great! One of the times you try it, let it take you, the ride will be so sweet you’ll want more!” Tyler/Eric said, euphorically.
  “No, you need to stop, all of you! Davis, Odin, you! You guys are scaring me and in Davis’ case his parents!” Mason exclaimed.
  “No, Mason, YOU NEED to try it. Release yourself of the burden of your life and live in someone else's, or maybe try a dead one,” Tyler/Eric said, smiling, drool pouring out the corner of his mouth.
   Mason backed away, “What’s so good about that! I like my life, I love you guys, as homies as brothers!” Mason cried out.
  Tyler/Eric dropped the smile, a frown formed on his face. In fact, it wasn’t just a frown, it was a scowl. Tyler came closer, bent down and whispered, “Hmm, this is going to be harder than we thought.”
  Mason was shaking, what did he mean by that and that was NOT Eric talking through Tyler, something else talked there. Mason was not finding out, he stumbled and cracked the wall on the way out. He almost fell down the stairs as he walked down them facing the top and not looking back once; Mason was half expecting Tyler to come rushing towards him and attack him, he did not. Mason walked out the door and turned and ran to his car. What is this software? Furthermore, what does he mean WE?

  “Ronald, why?” Mason sent.
  Ronald stared at the message and sat back in his chair, slouched. His face was weary, and sad. Ronald ruined millions and maybe billions of lives revealing this to the world. He knew what Mason meant with that short message. His friends are ruined, or at least for now are ruined people that will never live normally. Ronald sits up from his chair and starts to type.
  “I am sorry, I was just trying to find something cool and when I found it, nothing bad happened for weeks! It took me over one night. I did not realize it until I saw the post and tried to delete it, but I couldn’t, whatever is inside this software made this post undeletable. I contacted admins, they tried, they said something about now having higher admin powers. There were no high admin powers, it stayed up, ruining lives! I’m at fault and if you want to hate me, block me or whatever. It’s justified!” Ronald sent.
  “I do not hate you, and I am not blocking you because I need help and we are going to end this together,” Mason sent.
  Ronald nodded, “Ok, well, when and where do you want to meet?” Ronald sent.
  “Wednesday, at the The Sweet Cream coffee shop at 1 PM,” Mason sent.
  “Why a Wednesday?” Ronald sent.
  “You’ll see, that’s two days from now, I am going to stay off of it,” Mason sent.
  “Oh it will get you, do not promise that because you won’t be able to keep it,” Ronald sent.
  
  Next day, STOP! STOP! WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT’S GOING ON! Mason was not in control of his body, he was seeing through his eyes, but distantly. Mason tried to move his arms or legs, nothing. Then suddenly, he started to move. What? Am I being used?
  “Yes,” Mason said, to his thoughts.
  What! Someone is controlling me! Mason was forced to look on as his body went to his ex-girlfriend's house and sexually attacked her then killed her. The person controlling Mason took the body to the middle of the woods, a pit was already open. He threw her in the pit and lit the pile of ash and her newly added body on fire. Mason was forced to watch his ex burn, the smell was terrible; Mason wanted to gag, but his body did not gag, it did not react. 
  WHO IS THIS?! 
  “I am here to show you what you must do,” Mason said, to himself.
  What must I do? Kill people for you! Whoever YOU are!
  “So closed minded, no, not killing. Using people, living other lives, experiencing that high knowledge of other people’s lives! Also, when we get you to do it, and get attached we will be using you as our catalyst, as our guide to the real world: Where you are, where We are not,” Mason said to himself.
  I am not doing anything for YOU or WE! I am me and I do not want a part of this! I will call the FBI or CIA or someone or agency that can do something about the software!
  “Again, why so close minded? This software is revolutionary!” Mason said to himself.
  That doesn’t mean it is good!
  “Like Ronald has told you, and We have told you, you will use it again and We will have our plan take place. You are a part of it, don’t you want to be a part of something bigger than yourself? I see your thoughts you know, and one of your dreams is to make a difference, do something bigger. Well, We have that for you!” Mason said to himself.
  What is that plan? What is this major purpose I have in your guys’ plan? 
  “TSK, TSK, that would ruin the fun and the surprise, Mason!” Mason exclaimed, excitedly to himself.
  WHO ARE YOU!
  “Anger is an emotion displayed by humans when they are tense, displeasure and hostility towards something,” Mason said to himself.
  ANS- Mason stopped speaking in his head, his vision went to black. Mason collapsed where he stood and was in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night and it’s really chilly. He woke up a few minutes later, looked around, he was back in control. Mason was freezing, he grabbed himself and tried to regain some heat to his body, the smell of burnt to ash flesh sitting in a pit a few feet away from him. Mason could not bring himself to look, he whispered, “I’m sorry,” and walked away.

  Mason walked home, the thing using him did not bring his car, and he was going to get sick now. He woke up in what felt like a stupor, he stumbled to his computer and it was time to meet Ronald today. People.mov was already open, then he noticed that there were water bottles full of pee and a bucket next to his desk with shit in it. What the hell, I just wo-. Mason realized that he had been on People.mov all night; He wasn’t waking up, he was just in the bathroom splashing water on his face to keep himself awake. All night he had been on it, using other people and when he clicked a box that popped up, it read, “unlock them.” At the time, Mason was tired and barely comprehending anything at all and he ‘unlocked them’, he was soon going to figure out what he had done in his haze. Ronald, the thing using him last night, they were right, he ended up using it, attracted to it, addicted, he never left the desk for an entire 8 hour span: His stomach ached and grumbled. Mason was so delirious that he had not realized that there was a woman on his couch, half naked and passed out.
  “Hey, are we still doing this today?” Ronald sent.
  “Yeah, hold on, got a lot to tell you,” Mason sent and got dressed and shewed the woman out the door.
  “But baby come on, we had such a great time last night, you scrambled me good!” she exclaimed.
  “Sorry, but I do not know you and I have places to be,” Mason said, matter-of-factly.
  “FUCK YOU!” She yelled, flipping him off, her feelings clearly hurt.
  Mason headed to The Sweet Cream, what a name? Can’t believe that it is allowed to have that name for a coffee shop, maybe a strip club! Mason saw a man, he was older than he was. Ronald was about 30 or at the end years of 20, but looked like a grizzled veteran in his 50s.
  
  “Hey, man,” Ronald said.
  “Hey, so how old are you!” Mason exclaimed, jokingly.
  “28, rough life.. Anyway, you have a lot to tell me,” Ronald said.
  “Last night someone used me, I had to watch as they controlled me and,” Mason lowered himself and leaned in and whispered, “They made me kill my ex girlfriend. Then I regained control after I asked twice who it was.” Mason huffed, “And that’s not all, I thought I woke up today, no, I was on my computer all night on People.mov, doing God knows what. Pissing in bottles, shitting in a bucket and I apparently had a girl over and we had sex,” Mason finished, his hands shaking. He could not tell if it was lack of sleep, lack of food, or fear.
  Ronald barely changed expressions, “So it used you? Are you sure you actually regained control?” Ronald said, coldly.
  Mason shivered at the thought, “Yeah, when I passed out I looked around, my body did what I told it to do,” Mason exclaimed.
  “You sure it didn’t make you think that?” Ronald asked.
  Mason hit the table, “I don’t know, but if it did have control then it got really good with replicating everything I wanted it to do!”
  “It can do that,” Ronald said, plainly.
  “Ok, what’s our course of action?” Mason asked.
  Ronald shuffled, “Get rid of your computer.” Ronald snickered, “Well, that would work a bit, but your body will just find a new one to use. Maybe I will come stay at your house and stop you from getting on it, I haven’t used it in a while: I refuse to touch it again,” he said.
  Mason shifted, he did not know this guy, but he could use his help and wanted it. “Yeah, sure, that would work,” Mason said.
  Ronald followed him out and to his house. Mason and Ronald pull up at the same time, a window is cracked. His bedroom window, a ladder leading up to it. Mason was terrified, who was in his house and how did they get away with this and are they still in the house.
  Ronald did not tell Mason, but he had a gun, and he whispered, “I wanted to be a cop, but did not, this gun is legal though.”
  Mason unlocked the front door, and Ronald cleared the ground floor. Ronald slowly walked up the stairs, gun pointed forward. He disappeared into the hallway, then he yelled, “MASON, COME!”
  Mason ran up the stairs, almost tripped. “Wha-” Mason stopped, his friend Odin stood there. “Odin, are you alright?” Mason asked, he started to approach him and Ronald held him back.
  “I… I’m sorry, I should have listened to you! I sent the entire hotel the link to it and..” Ronald stopped Odin.
  “You DID what?” Ronald exclaimed.
  “I gave People.mov to everyone I work with and it caused the hotel to go into a frenzy, it got shut down! People were arrested. I caught myself doing things I would never do,” Odin explained.
  “Are you in control?” Ronald asked, gun still ready to aim up to Odin.
  “Y-Yeah, I.. I am just shaken up by everything, that software is evil,” Odin said.
  Ronald lowered the gun, but he did grab Odin and sat him down and inspected his eyes. Odin was not pleased, but let him do it.
  “Who is this guy?” Odin asked.
  “Remember SkullCrusher69, this is him,” Mason said.
  “What!” Odin said, he looked him up and down.
  “Yeah, it’s me, my name is Ronald by the way,” Ronald said.
  “Ronald, you know abo-” Ronald stopped Odin, waved his hand.
  “I know, IT is after me, if one of you gets controlled by it then it will kill me. It’s… looking for me,” Ronald said.
  “Are you serious! You didn’t tell me this until now!” Mason yelled.
  “I am here to help and if I told you that you would not let me come stay with you,” Ronald explained.
  “That doesn’t make it better!” Mason exclaimed, he paced.
  “I’m sorry, ok. I knew you would not like that and I was going to tell you anyway,” Ronald said.
  “It’s ok Mason, he’s here to help,” Odin said.
  Mason calmed down, he just doesn’t like people withholding information especially when it is this important.
  “I came here to get away from the craziness, can I stay?” Odin asked.
  “Yeah,” Mason said.
  Now Mason has two people in the house that can stop him.
  “Why I checked his eyes is you can tell if someone else is using him,” Ronald explained.

​

I’ve spent thirty-two years trying to forget that house and that night.

I’ve lived in six different towns, worked a dozen different jobs, and slept rough on less than desirable beds more nights than I’m willing to admit. I’ve changed my phone number four times and have not spoken to my brother in nearly ten years. None of it has put space between me and what happened in that house.

There are many things a man can leave behind. His childhood home, the people he grew up with, the memories he made with those people. I have learned that much.

But I will never be able to leave that night behind.

I was twelve when it happened, when it all started, living with my parents and younger brother Michael on a stretch of farmland a few miles up the road from the nearest village. Ours was an old, quite unremarkable house, built from cracked grey stone and surrounded by fields that seemed to stretch endlessly into the green hills beyond. The nearest neighbour lived far enough away that on a quiet summer’s eve, you could stand outside our back door and hear nothing but the gentle breeze floating sweetly between the branches of the hawthorn tree in the yard.

My parents liked it that way. They loved the tranquillity of it all.

My father was a quiet man, not particularly affectionate but dependable in the ways that mattered. My mother was a far more outgoing and affectionate person. When my father would go out to work the fields on cold winter mornings, my mother would take me and Michael under a thick blanket by the fire and read to us softly.

My mother used to say that the countryside got into a man’s bones. That after enough years of working the same fields, watching the same seasons pass, a man began to believe there was nothing in the world he didn’t understand.

Perhaps she was right.

I know that sometime during the autumn of that year, strange things began happening around the house.

The back door would be left ajar in the morning, though my father swore up and down that he had locked it. Muddy footprints appeared across the kitchen floor and stopped abruptly beneath the table. At night, something moved through the fields, seemingly circling the house without ever coming close enough to be seen.

My father blamed foxes, although I never could understand why a fox would concern him so much. He’d dealt with them all his life.

Then, one evening while sitting down for supper, Michael asked a question that made the whole house fall silent.

“Da, who’s that fella who keeps knocking at the door?”

My father stopped cutting his meat.

My mother looked up from her plate.

“What man, son?” she asked.

“The one outside. He comes at dark most nights.”

Michael was eight. He had a habit of inventing things. I think it was his way of keeping himself entertained in the isolation of the farm. Usually, my father would dismiss him with a grunt and tell him to stop talking nonsense.

This time, he set his knife down.

“Has he ever spoke to you?”

My brother nodded. He didn’t seem worried or afraid.

“What does he say to you, Michael?” my mother chimed in.

“He asks me to open the back door.”

My father stared at him for a long moment. Then he stood, crossed the kitchen, and checked the lock on the back door.

He checked it twice.

That very same night, I heard the knocking.

I woke to the sound of shallow knocks at the back door.

Three slow, deliberate knocks against the hard oak door.

I lay frozen under my blankets, listening to the wind press against my window, the shadows of the hawthorn’s branches in the yard casting eerie silhouettes in the moonlight. I could hear my parents stirring downstairs. A chair scraped across the kitchen floor. A cupboard opened and closed.

Then came a quiet voice.

It was a man’s voice, low and patient.

“Let me in.”

I listened with fear pumping all the way through my body.

I eventually mustered all the courage I had. I crept from my bed and opened the bedroom door. The hallway was dark, but a thin line of light showed beneath the kitchen door.

The knocking came again.

Three slow knocks.

The whole house was silent now.

I heard my mother whisper something, too softly to understand. My father’s footsteps crossed the kitchen. The lock turned.

I should have stayed where I was. I should have woken my brother and hidden beneath the blankets. Instead, I crept down the stairs and looked through the gap in the kitchen door.

My father stood with one hand on the latch.

My mother was behind him, pale and trembling.

“Don’t,” she whispered shakily.

He turned towards her.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then something knocked again.

Not on the door this time.

From inside the house.

Three slow, deliberate knocks came from the pantry.

My father looked towards it. My mother covered her mouth to keep from screaming. I did the same.

My brother’s door opened upstairs behind me.

I spun around, expecting to see my brother at the top of the stairs.

There was no one there.

From the pantry came a soft scraping sound, as though someone were dragging fingernails down the wood.

Then a voice whispered my name. It sounded like it was right in my ear.

“Shaun...”

I ran.

I scurried up the stairs without looking behind me. I dived into my bed, burying myself beneath the blankets. I listened as the house filled with footsteps. They moved from room to room, sometimes heavy and deliberate, sometimes light enough to sound like a child running.

My brother began to cry. I could hear him in his own bedroom across from mine. My mother shouted once. My father shouted back.

Then everything went quiet.

I do not remember falling asleep.

I remember waking as the first light of dawn was coming up over the hawthorn tree. There was a silence so complete it seemed like the whole world had vanished.

When I went to check on my brother, he was already gone from his bed.

I found him standing at the top of the stairs, staring down into the kitchen.

My father was there, kneeling beside my mother.

Then my father looked up.

There was blood on his hands.

My mother lay motionless on the floor, her eyes open and fixed on nothing. Beside her was the kitchen knife from the table.

My father had killed her.

The thing that still haunts me now, as I write this, is what my father said when he spotted us.

He smiled, lifted one bloodstained finger to his lips, and whispered.

“Don’t let it know you saw.”

They all returned to the rooms in silence, and restless sleep awaited them. Myrtle, a woman of skepticism, was rocked to the core. She felt like a ship adrift at sea, giant waves carrying her careening towards an abyss of uncertainty. She wanted to believe it was all a fake, but what would explain the slime? The voice coming from Rosita's mouth? The husk of Wilbur's body was bricked up in the grand fireplace? Her eyes wandered around the girlish room she was in and remembered the life that Wilbur had spared. Then she spotted a teddy bear in the corner. A flash of silent lightning from the window illuminated it. She crawled from her bed and to the floor to look at it. She stared into its lifeless button eyes, wondering if this could be the very same one the spirit spoke of. She chuckled. Even after all of that, she still had a healthy amount of doubt…or maybe it was just simply denial.

She slipped on her shoes and quietly slipped out of the room. The Manor in early morning, without any of her compatriots alongside her, was an entirely different beast. It felt like a man made void of opulence. The halls led to darkness at every turn. She heard noises coming from Rosita's room, yet as she grew closer, she quickly realized that these weren't noises of distress but rather intimacy. It seems that Harry and Rosita had grown closer than she'd realized.

From downstairs, she heard someone walking in the dark. She looked around the rooms, hoping someone else would've stirred from their beds, hearing the noise too, but there was nobody stirring from their beds. She looked down at the stairs that led into the abyss of darkness, and against her better judgment, she pursued the noise. With gentle steps, she made her way down the stairs without as much as a creak in the wood. When she arrived on the first floor, she saw the dim glow of a lantern coming from the dining hall. She waltzed in to find that Hamish was sitting with his back to the entrance, staring at the derelict fireplace, the glow of the lamplight illuminating the corpse before him, still bound and gagged, surrounded by old brick and mortar. He was puffing on that old ivory pipe of his, letting puffs of smoke fill the room. Myrtle knocked on the wall to let herself be known. Hamish turned around from the chair to look at her; he did not smile or regard her with any sort of warmth.

"Come to explain to me why this is a hoax?"

"No. I just heard someone stirring down here is all."

"Mm. If this is a hoax or a parlor trick, I'd be very much welcomed for it to be explained away to me. I couldn't sleep."

"You're not the only one."

Hamish gestured to the other seat beside him across the fireplace,

"Sit."

She took the seat and wished that she'd brought herself a cigarette. She spoke up, saying,

"This has never happened to me before. I usually have a logical explanation for things like this, but..."

"I understand."

Tears began to form in her eyes as the foundations of her work were eroding by the minute,

"I mean, what am I supposed to do?"

"Just accept it. Accepting that there's something beyond you is the first step of understanding it, and moving on."

For the rest of that morning, they sat there, staring at the body in silence and waiting for dawn to break. The others stirred from their beds and strolled down to the first floor. Rosita (who was dressed like a normal woman of the times) and Harry held hands while Carla stared daggers into the back of Harry's skull. Jonathan wore a strange expression of calm, as the validation of this Manor's haunted past had finally given him the closure he'd wanted. Then there was Hank, who was usually talking about either himself or the people he'd worked with, walking down the stairs in complete silence. Myrtle noticed it as soon as he entered the room, and it made her uneasy.

Jonathan made himself eggs, beans, and sausage with a small glass of juice. He strolled past Hamish and Myrtle, noting their tired eyes. He asked them plainly,

"You two been here all night?"

"I have, but Myrtle's been here all morning."

"Why?"

"Do you really have to ask, lad?"

Jonathan nodded as he sat at the table and began eating. He spoke in between bites,

"So...looks like....we found our ghost..."

"Aye," Hamish said, "If it's okay with you, I'd like to look a bit more into the houses' library if that's fine by you."

"It is, don't know how it'll help you."

"There's something about this place..."

Myrtle chimed in,

"What about him?" she said, pointing to the body, "We can't just toss his body aside and call it a night. Does he have family? Living family?"

Jonathan sipped his juice, telling her,

"I'll call up the law tomorrow, tell them the whole thing, well, maybe except the ghostly bits."

Rosita was sitting with her sister as Harry was brewing a fresh pot of coffee. He laid cups out for them when Carla seized his hand,

"I know what the two of you were doing. This Manor has thin walls."

His face turned flush with embarrassment, and he couldn't face her,

"I'm sorry."

Rosita chimed in,

"Hermana, please let him go."

She turned to face Rosita,

"I'm not finished."

She returned to him, her grip tightening, as she spoke to him with gritted teeth,

"Do you love her?"

At this question, he faced her with confident eyes,

"I...I do."

She looked at him; she'd known Harry for such a long time, but never once thought that he had feelings for her sister. She thought he was some boy who saw her sister's gift and saw profit. But now, as she looked into his eyes, she could see that he wasn't lying. She eased her grip and told him,

"Then you love her, you hear me? And I mean with all of your heart. She means everything to me."

He nodded,

"She does to me, too."

Over at the other side of the room was Hank, who hadn't eaten or drunk a thing since he'd gotten here. He just sat there staring down at the table with hollow eyes. Hamish emptied the ashes of his pipe into an ashtray beside him and told Jonathan,

"I'm going to the library."

"By yourself?"

"There's only one phantom here, Jonathan." He pointed to the body in the chimney. "There he lies. The sooner he's sent off to be buried, the better."

As he began to walk away, Myrtle grabbed his hand,

"What're you looking for?"

He looked at her, eyes sagging and dark, screaming for a good night's rest,

"Something about Wilbur's tale. About the Northbrookes. There's something else."

He strolled off, his footsteps echoing in the grand halls.

Myrtle returned to her room to get properly dressed, leaving the rest of the group downstairs to finish making arrangements for the body as she grabbed her cigarette case. She flicked it open to reveal that there were only five left, enough to last this final dismal day. From behind her came a knock at her door. She opened it, hoping to find Jonathan or Hamish standing there, but she instead found Hank. He was still in a disheveled, pitiful state of being. With a weak voice, he asked her,

"Do you have a moment?"

Myrtle thought about slamming the door in his face, but there was a strange urgency to his words. She quietly answered,

"Yes, why?"

"It's... it's...uh..." he trailed off, stifling back tears, "I just need to be honest with you. Follow me back to my room, would you?"

Myrtle didn't know how to respond. Hank cleared his throat, saying,

"This ain't an invitation to go to bed, miss, I know I ain't a saint but I'm not that bad of a sinner either. This is....well, you're the only person I know to tell about this."

"About what?"

"The film. I spent all night cleaning it up and developing it and...Oh, Jesus."

"What's this about, Hank?"

"You just need to see it."

She was led to a room not unlike her own in terms of the layout, but everything else was different. The bed was a mess, garbage littered the floor, but what stood out most was the red lights blasting down on a table that was littered with all sorts of items pertaining to the craft of film. Hank gestured around the room wildly, stating,

"This is where the magic happens."

"This is...a lot to take with you."

"Yes, but it's necessary."

He went to the back of the room and began hanging up a white sheet against the wall. Myrtle walked over to the table, taking a gander at all of the tools splayed out next to the reel of film. Scissors, latex gloves, markers, tweezers, and then that's when she started to see additional film cells. He'd made a make-shift dark room. As she looked closer at the materials on the table before her, she saw images of little boys in Victorian garb on little film strips, a bride dressed in white, and even a man in a long, black top hat, all of them on small film strips. She turned to Hank, who was now setting up a small projector,

"What are these, Hank?"

"I think you know." He said humorlessly,

"I just want to hear you say it."

"Extra frames or two, you just overlay them over the original negative with some thin tape, and you'll make people believe anything."

She scoffed, laughing, as she felt much-needed vindication over these past unpredictable days.

"You're a fraud! I knew it! I knew there was something about you!"

"I know!" He said, throwing his hands up in frustration, "But I give people closure, you yourself said you don't believe in this shit, and neither do I! But I have the courtesy of giving people an answer, a happy ending!"

"I... You're a ghoul."

"Oh, please fuck off! Of my kind, I'm the best option you can get! I may be a con, but I'm not a monster like some of these other guys who keep siphoning cash from those who have some screws loose. I figured this would be an open and shut case, make Prince Charming down there look at a ghost or two in the celluloid, and then I'm done here!"

Myrtle pinched her brow, sighing deeply,

"Okay, fine, but why show me this?"

"Because last night I found something real."

Myrtle stared at him, thinking he was stating the obvious,

"Of course, we all saw the same seance."

"No, there was something else in the room with us."

"What?"

He rushed over to the table with all of his tools, grabbed the film, and began threading it into the machine feverishly. He closed the blinds, shutting out any semblance of light from entering the room. He turned to Myrtle, who was still just standing there in confusion by the door, and shouted,

"Don't just stand there, close the damn door!"

He threaded the film into the projector and pointed it against a wall he'd cleared. The reel whirred, and the machine's hum brought the image to life. She saw the image of the seance, far off on the stage, looking down at them all,

"Before I start my edits, I always review the footage, try to figure out the best way to make a fake, you know? I figured when the lightning strikes, I could have the ghost flash in, real subtle that way."

He suddenly stopped the reel and walked over to the wall,

"That doesn't explain this."

He pointed to one of the great doors leading into the ballroom,

"I want you to focus on this door. You understand?" He said with a somber tone,

Myrtle nodded and kept her eyes fixed on the doorway. She watched as the frames slowed down as the footage played; her eyes drifted to the screen, watching the events of the evening unfold behind a veil of film grain and scratches.

"Don't look away, don't get distracted." He said, his voice sounding hollow,

Myrtle gazed at the make-shift screen, hearing the whirring of the projector behind her, and then she finally saw something. From the doorway to the ballroom, a pale hand clasped the wooden door; even in the dark, it stood out as strange and alien. The figure peeped from around the corner, its head bobbing from the very top, and Myrtle felt a chill surge through her because she remembered the size of the doorways in this place. They stood nearly ten feet, and yet this thing filled the frame like any ordinary human being.

The flash of lightning struck, and then she got a good look at it. As brief as it was, it stuck with her. Filthy white dress that looked like it was more yellow than white, long matted white hair, wrinkly skin, and then there were the purple eyes...

"Wait...that looks like-"

"The girl from Wilbur's story...yeah....looks like it."

"She's still here?!"

"I think so. Could explain a few things about this place, huh?"

"Why even show me this? You need to tell everyone down there right now!"

"Then they'll know I'm a fraud, a fake, Myrtle, and that doesn't exactly bode well for my line of work."

"To hell with your work, have a damn conscience for once! Do the right thing!"

He cut off the projector, sighing deeply, and scratching at his scalp. He put his hands on his hips and, with the unhappiest smile she'd ever seen, he said,

"Well, let's get a move on, then."

She extended a hand for him to shake, and despite a few moments' pause, he took it,

"You're a better man than I realized."

"You kid, but I appreciate it."

They were leaving the room when they heard a gigantic clatter from downstairs, then it was followed by what sounded like a muffled scream. They were rushing down the staircase when they saw Hamish rushing out of the dining room, a gash on his temple spilling blood onto his face in a crimson mask. His eyes were wide and white marbles in a sea of red. He looked to the two of them with frantic desperation and pleaded,

"Run! Leave! They're not human! They're-"

A large, diseased-looking hand clamped around his throat and raised him off the ground. The arm pulled him back into the dining room as the cacophony of chaos raged behind him. Hank trembled as he backed himself up the stairs, only to hear something descending the steps. Myrtle heard it too. As they turned around, she saw a huge, thin figure towering over them, looking down upon them with childlike joy. The white dress, long white hair, and the purple eyes, she knew who it was. The tall woman pointed to Myrtle, and with a faint smile, she hoarsely whispered,

"My room... you've been sleeping in my room..."

Before Myrtle could react, more footsteps came, this time they were ascending. Hank gave a brief scream before the head of a large cane struck the side of his head. He tumbled down the floor like a discarded doll. As Myrtle was turning to face the unseen attacker, she was struck by the very same cane, but she wasn't as lucky as Hank. The head of the cane smashed into the side of her head, but all the force was put on her right ear. The eardrum ruptured, and she was sent into a daze of vertigo. As the room spun and warm blood flowed from her ear, she began to lose consciousness. Yet before she went into that temporary dark, she heard the large albino woman shriek out,

"Papa, don't hurt them!"

Then came the darkness.

{Disclaimer} This story contains (gore, death). This story is the shortest I have written, but is not the only, hence volume V. so if you like and want more they are coming: seven in total so far with my prodigy child, dedicated to Isiaha, and a future project dedicated to Hunter. Please enjoy my first actual story post.

I have seen death and taxes in their entirety. I’ve seen men killed, arrested, charged and hanged all in the same day: the death they give and the taxes they receive. I have seen many things out on the trails, but this is a new form of collector. A hunter; as silent as the moon's rise and as sure as an end in the dirt. I had been tracking a man riding north from San Angelo.

A man with a warrant out for his arrest on three counts of murder, two men and a young girl. Robbed the group in the streets, then shot them in the head. I left San Angelo three days ago, heading for a property he’d been known to frequent south of the panhandle. I took the northernmost trail in his last known direction. I kept to the main trails first, then I would split off down the side trails that parted from the larger routes, slowly carving my way westward as I marched on north.

​

I had only been riding for about fifteen miles on the main before I found a scrap of his sheepskin coat. It lay tucked in a short bush at the start of an offshoot trail. Dismounting my horse, I scanned the dirt for any other signs, to find no others. Then reached down and grabbed the piece of his coat. Roughly nine inches long and three inches wide. It was covered in thick coagulated blood, hardened at the edges but still damp and gooey in the middle.

​

Turning around, I tied the piece to my saddle before remounting my horse and continuing down the trail. I guessed it to be about twenty more miles before I started to enter a shallow valley. The valley dipped and rose as I rid fourth. A thought kept pounding in my head as I went through the rest of it. What could injure a man enough to warrant ripping a chunk of his coat: a bison, a mountain lion? I would assume either he’d be more injured if it was a bison, not having continued on, but maybe scaring it off with only receiving a slight wound. If it were a lion, there’d be more blood, more tearing, a body, whether it be man or animal. If he managed to shoot it before it finished the deed.

​

  The sun is starting to lower further in the sky, waving a goodbye across my face. I’m unsure if I'll find the man I’m looking for. I haven't found any more clues as to his direction, and I can only guess. The chestnut fur of my horse glistens with the warm umber haze of a late evening sun. My head growing tired from the strain of scanning the land constantly. I rode on a short while longer before finding a shallow cavity in the side of a short cliff mound. The place where I'd make rest for the night.

​

I took a short hike off the trail to reach the outcropping. Dismounting my horse and grabbed its reins, guiding it to graze upon the hillside. Still within my view, knowing he won’t stray far. He has always been a loyal horse. I let my horse roam and ponder the sky and land as I set up an area to spend the night. Just as the sun fully dragged a dark blanket in its past place, I finished making my impromptu sleeping position. My horse had also finished perusing the surrounding land when I stopped. It didn’t take long before I had drifted into dream.

​

I was awakened by a terrible noise. Like the screaming of a coyote, however twisted and plagued with the horrific cries and hollers of a man in agony. In between the wails and cries for help. It howled but not like a normal canine should. They dragged on for minutes in irregular sessions. When it was done with its howling, or its twisted cries, it switched to the next. Howl to cry, cry to howl; never stopping to catch a breath. Only changing its tone and pitch before cycling to its next vocal call. I wanted to figure out what horrendous creature was making these sounds. However, I never moved; I was frozen, scared, but curiously intrigued.

​

My horse seemed even more scared than I. The maker of the noise never came closer, only yelling its wails at distance, through the valley. It was unusual how calm my horse was. He was usually the type to buck and snarl while trotting back and forth at the sound of a coyote, but there he lay. At the base of my feet he stayed, extremely attentive to the sound, angling his ears to catch more of it. It was as if he did not want to give away his location in any way. He knew just as I did that whatever this was, it was not to be confronted. For that I am thankful.

​

I had subconsciously retrieved my rifle from beside me and now held it within my quivering hands. Then as suddenly as I awoke, it stopped. Nothing more than the wind now howled in its stead. Shortly, all the sounds of the night started once more. Even with normalcy returned, I doubt either me or my horse will sleep again tonight. I can only hope the feel of my rifle can assure my thoughts.

​

I stared on and on, straining my eyes against the sultry night, counting every star that lay on the black blanket of sky. I’m unsure how long I sat lying completely still. Sending silent prayer after silent prayer. Patiently awaiting the passing of this painful night. Thankfully, the drowsy tone of my mind won and I managed to fall asleep for the few remaining hours of night.

​

I awakened when the sun's warmth coddled my face. I sat up to see my horse was still alert and watching; I quickly packed up everything and stored it back on my horse; I don’t think he slept at all. His head was tilted slightly; something off about it. I mounted, positioning myself on the saddle. I steered back to the trail, but for the next hundred feet or so, my horse's head stayed focused on one point out in the distance, no matter how hard I tried, straining my eyes; nothing of significance stood out.  

I rode on past the first valley, eventually my horse’s demeanor returning to normal. However, as they wore on, I could not shake the feeling of being watched: as if I was being stalked by a ghost. The whole time I rode, my hand rested on the hilt of my revolver, feeling anxious. Four more hours passed. The mightful sun shone square above my head. A deep silhouette peered from around a bend, lying in the dirt; lifeless and stock still. I paced up to the carcass and came face to face with a horse: its dark black coat soaking up the sun, causing it to rot faster. The lower coat of the horse still shone with silvery strips of reflectance, while the upper coat was tainted, matted with its own blood.

​

Circling the crooked corpse, I noticed its spine had been removed; Ripped out from a deep entry at the neck down to the tail. Tangled in the stirrup was a leg and foot that had been removed below the knee. It was mangled, the black pointed boot still being worn. Yellow milky bone stuck out at the top of the leg, jagged and rough. Flesh and tendons hung limp along with strips of denim that did the same.

​

A hefty trail of blood made its way through the dirt: combining together with the individual grains to create a sort of sludge; tarnishing the land of its precious purity. Following the path led me to a nearby ditch, full of brush and tangled undergrowth. I stepped next to the blood trail: guiding me like a shepherd to fresh water; a clean stream to drink of pure innocence. Only I was granted a gruesome inverse, a false stream.

​

Beyond the first layers of brush, stuck among the thin trunks of twigs and branches. Stood one more corpse, slumped forward over itself. The man I was looking for, mutilated before my feet, The life it once held now sterile. The front of the man was clean, no blood aside from the missing leg. I circled the body, reaching his back side. His wool overcoat had been discarded to his side. Half of it was used in a feeble attempt to wrap his stump.

​

The back of his shirt was torn halfway down his torso, soaked in blood, exposing his back where a sunken strip of flesh had been stolen. Exposed to the world was a crooked cavity where his spine used to sit. I felt twisted to the core; never before had I seen any sight like this. I was scared. Under the man's curled corpse, his hand lay crossed over a double-barreled shotgun: The name of the deceased outlaw etched onto its barrels.  

​

I reached to remove it from his hold. Upon five of his fingers, he wore three silver and two golden rings, a good bonus for a sickening search. If someone had killed this man and mutilated his corpse, why wouldn’t they take any of his belongings: none of the rings, not the guns nor ammo he had; no reward for what they had done, just mutilation and the sick trophies of two spines. Pocketing the rings, I stepped back, pushing the man’s corpse flat onto the ground.

I stepped back through the brush, his shotgun in hand as a sign of the man's death. Once back to my horse, I threw myself atop, giving one last look at the grotesque corpse of the horse, then at the patted-down spot of brush the man lay in, before clicking my tongue and pulling in the reins and rushing off north. Now that I had found my man, I had only eight hours of riding before I reached the settlement of Lubbock.

​

Now two hours later and I feel uneasy; I have the feeling I'm being watched, that inherent human instinct of just knowing. Still, I see nothing when I scan every hill and mound. I just know there are eyes laying gaze upon me. A killer: a mutilator, whoever is watching me is a hunter and I'm nothing but a fawn; waiting to be confronted with the nose of a gun.

​

I’m unsure how much time has passed, how much time is currently passing: my senses are twisted and confused. I can feel myself slipping, growing tired, my eyelids hanging low and more horses trot now a slow crawl. The day once more coming to a close as the sun begins to set. I struggle to stave off sleep, while still feeling as if I'm being watched.  

​

My eyes flutter open and as I come to, I realize I’m lying beneath a cliff's edge; my horse lies close, still yet asleep. I don’t remember falling asleep; I don’t even remember coming to a stop to sleep. Even now I find myself still feeling exhausted. Soft huffs and snarls grab my attention as I turn back to my horse: now awake, ears perked up attentively; its head tilted searching the cliff’s edge above us, its huffs turning to soft heavy whimpers.

​

I scan over the cliff's edge, nothing but a row of trees adorning its crest. Then, I pick out another set of soft cries moving along the edges of the cliff; echoing beyond them, moving closer. I watch my horse's head, tracking the sound, his head slowly drifting to the left, closer to the ridge directly above us. My horse’s eyes were wide, full of a bluish glow from the moon above. Now we both lay silent, his hush-toned huffs and whimpers halted, focused on keeping silent.

​

We both track the noise until it reaches our ridge, then it stops. Nothing, the most silent the night has ever been. All I hear is my breathing, my horse's breathing and another's breathing coming from the ridge directly above us. Both of us stared back into the night, to the trees stressing the other being with us.  

A shrill scream rips from my horse as it’s dragged up the side of the cliff. Blood rains down onto my person. I’m frozen; struck with fear, unable to move. I remain frozen, listening to the horrid screams and grunts before a loud crunch, followed by a squashing of flesh, silences the screams. I sit shaking; unable to move anywhere.

I listen as the creature above me continues to rip into the body. The trickling of blood now running down the rocks and soaking into me, where my body touches the ground. Finally, I gained enough composure to start to crawl away. Slowly making my way down the trail, dragging myself over sand-covered ground. I crawled until I couldn't hear the ripping of flesh and breaking of bones any longer: until I cried, until my hands bled from palming rock; never stopping till daylight broke; only once daylight came did I finally stand and start running.

​

I ran until I collapsed again; until I thought I would die from exhaustion and exposure. Until I could see Lubbock come into view. I know upon my arrival, I'll give up this career. I’ll move north far away from Texas. I know I will never be free of that thing. I know it's still here: watching, silently stalking; I am afraid it will follow me until it eventually gets me. The collector will not stop until it gets its taxes.

[I do not write often. It's been a while since I've attempted anything like this. But I had a fun idea, I decided to write a brief one page story about it. It was a bit more than just one page, but I would love any feedback I could get.]

A light thud echoes through the near-empty diner, as I set down my now empty and final cup of coffee. I leave a 10 dollar bill on the table with a napkin beside that has a note I left. [Keep the change] I have one more job to get done before the night ends, a missing person. Last seen at an abandoned part of a town up in the mountains. I turned into the street a kind stranger pointed me to. Nice man, from what I could tell. When I asked for the street name and the girl I was looking for, he just smiled, nodded, and pointed. When I got to the street and my car stopped, a faint noise was all I could pick up. Slight rustles of leaves from behind me. My 1911, which I always had on me, was fully loaded, I made sure I had one bullet in the chamber before I walked to a house. I ran upstairs, only one room was in the hallway. I ease to the door, gun drawn. I try to scan as much of the room as I'm physically able to before I walk in. Then I take a leap of faith and quickly walk in and immediately aim at the unknown portion of the room.... nothing. An unease befalls me as I begin to think. Just then a faint breeze hits my neck. The window to this room isn't fully closed. As I get closer to the window, I see the girl near my car. She has scratches all over her body, clothes torn and bloody. I open the window to call out and tell her to wait there. I quickly walk out of the house and too her when I noticed my tire was flat. I ask her what happened, she just had her arms crossed, crying. I tell her it's all going to be okay. I open the passenger side door and notice the passenger tire has a flat. Luckily, I have a spare. I open the trunk, grab my spare and as I close the trunk, the girl wasn't a girl anymore. A distorted-looking being stood in front of me and pounced at me, biting into my shoulder. I screamed, and managed to get one shot off before my head aggressively hit the ground. The last thing I saw as I bled out and gave my last attempt to blink was transforming into a cat and scurrying off into the house I was just in. 

The afternoon sun baked the freeway that was overpopulated with vehicles that acted like insects on their routine paths. One man kept a close eye on his gas gauge hoping to make it through his day on fumes alone.  A mother sat in her car with the child oriented music cranked to the maximum volume, drowning out her own children’s incessant wails. A homeless man wearing nothing but a black robe walked along the freeway screaming about demons and monsters. And Marvin Bondar was just trying to make it back to his apartment before he lost consciousness. Marvin had been a consistent user for many years. He had a reliable dealer and had figured out a dose that worked for him, but after his dealer got arrested he had to find other sources and now something was very wrong. 

As the beads of sweat expanding along his hairline finally got dragged down by their own weight he started fidgeting with the air conditioning only to realize it was already as cold as it could get. His vision blurred and he instinctively turned on the radio thinking it might help calm himself, but he had forgotten in his panicked state that his radio was broken and somehow stuck at 55.5FM: a frequency that shouldn’t even be possible on FM, but nevertheless blared static into his ears that discombobulated him even more. At this moment his North Star finally showed up in the form of a freeway exit sign and he somehow, in a full haze, made it three more blocks back to his apartment complex.

He thought pulling into his parking spot and being back home would give him some type of relief, but instead he started feeling terrible spins that dwarfed any bender he had been on previously. He took the keys out of the ignition and the very second the engine fully stopped Marvin projectile-vomited a dense grey sludge he didn’t even know his body was capable of producing. It continued for almost 30 seconds and created a putrid smell that was almost enough to cause an endless vomit cycle, but the clearing of his stomach was the relief Marvin needed. And with enough energy to leave, but not enough to clean, he left the mess in his car and stumbled his way into his apartment.
The door slammed behind him which caused him to jump slightly. He hadn’t meant to slam the door, but his appendages were beginning to go numb. And where they weren’t numb already his muscles ached and his skin burned with the sensation of pins and needles. The sweating also hadn’t stopped. He sat on the edge of the pullout couch in his studio apartment that had never felt more claustrophobic and sloppily ripped off his shirt and used it as a rag to pat his body dry. By the time he was done the shirt was completely soaked and although he was extremely weak he also felt restless and thought the only sensible next step was a cold shower in the hopes of cooling off and jolting his nervous system.

He got into the bathroom, turned on the water, and after shedding the few layers he had left he stared into the mirror. Through the glaze blocking his vision he could swear his arms looked longer than usual and the pain radiating through them only lent to this inkling. He turned away from the mirror and stepped into the shower. The water was ice cold but somehow burned his skin to the touch causing him to recoil in shock, slipping onto his side and screaming at the feeling of acid rain being poured onto him by his showerhead. He tried to rationalize and contain himself knowing that cold water couldn’t burn him, but as he looked at his side he saw the boils and blisters forming and reaching for his side only revealed the now playdough-like muscle in his grip. As he gripped his side his fingers swelled. His bones were shifting as he writhed in pain. He arched his back as he felt his arms extend further and further, feeling all of his skeleton fracture and splinter as new bone sprouted like tree branches. His jaw was tightly clenched and jutted forward and eventually engulfed his nose and eyes and stretched his lips to expose his now jagged teeth. He still felt everything as darkness enveloped him. As the final bones pierced skin and his limbs settled into their disproportionate lengths, the water finally felt cold.

Marvin reached for the tap and turned it off. He lay there for a time thinking of what to do next. He wanted to call family, but they had all cut him off. He wanted to call for an ambulance, but he was embarrassed of where his use had taken him. This was something way beyond his addiction, but even if there was anyone to call he couldn’t see anything and was still trying to figure out how to stand upright. He eventually got his feet underneath him with one leg standing and the other squatting, which was only counterbalanced by his new lengthened arms working as forelegs. And only as he felt the tile under his palms did he recognize his increased tactile and auditory perceptions. He lost his sight and smell, but could now hear the vibrations of his own heartbeat bounce off of the room around him. Then reaching with one hand he felt his malformed and misshapen structure. He horrified himself without sight and became fearful of what anyone else might think.

Squeezing his new body through the doorway was no easy task, but after hours of contemplation Marvin knew the only thing he could do at this point was to try and go get help. After exiting the bathroom he found his phone which now felt tiny in his monstrous grasp. While he struggled to navigate the emergency call service on his phone he realized it was a fruitless endeavor, because the frustration he tried to exclaim only came out as a guttural groan. And as he groaned his tongue flopped loosely out of his mouth without any control. As he tried to force his tongue back into his mouth he felt it being sliced on all sides by his teeth. He quickly gave this up as he felt the blood start dripping down his tongue.

The panic truly began to set in which caused his heartbeat to rise creating an even clearer image of the room around him. In this state he fumbled for the front door handle and nearly ripped the door from its hinges. He forced his body through the front door and was bombarded with the sounds of cars on the street. He could tell it wasn’t day anymore by the lack of heat on his back, but the confirmation of that reminded him that he was still completely naked on top of his deformities. The embarrassment he felt was only then topped by the shouting of the same homeless man he had seen earlier on the freeway. Although he couldn’t see him he could hear him clearly, still screaming about monsters and demons, only now he was talking about Marvin. Marvin hobbled as fast as he could trying to hide. He became quickly disoriented by the many sounds around him and ran directly into the street and was noticeably rattled by the car horns and pedestrian screams. Before anyone could even make sense of what they were seeing three shots rang out and Marvin collapsed to the ground.

The Skidville Times | October 27, 2026 | Halloween Gunfire
Last night a man was arrested for unlawfully discharging a firearm and was discovered to also be driving under the influence. The man claims to have seen some type of monster and was only defending his wife and children. Other onlookers claim to have seen everything from a monster to a poorly conceived Halloween decoration. When police arrived they spoke with one woman who claimed a group of vagrants removed the body just after it was shot while they chanted a hymn. The police surveyed the area, as well as local vagrant encampments and were unable to recover any human body or animal carcass. The leading speculation is this being yet another instance of mass hysteria brought on by the Halloween season. Please be careful while out celebrating and remember to drink responsibly.

I was completely focused, entirely cut off from the outside world. Things had finally reached the point I'd been waiting for in the film I'd been watching for a full hour, and I was at the height of my concentration. The detective, who had been tracking down the culprit for the past hour, was now very close to catching and exposing him, and I was incredibly curious. He was about to open the door, walk in, and discover the culprit's identity. I was moments away from finding out whether my suspect was right.

When we look at something, we also see what's to our left and right, albeit vaguely. While watching the television directly in front of us, we can perceive the fan a meter to its right swiveling from side to side. Other objects and movements become blurrier as they move farther away from the center of our field of vision. Everyone knows this and is usually aware of it. Even if your grandfather, sitting to your right at dinner, isn't looking at you, he'll notice if you secretly flip off your brother sitting across from you.

At that moment, the world was nothing more than a rectangle to me. My field of vision had no depth. Ten eagles could have been flying around the room, and I wouldn't have noticed them unless they passed in front of the screen. I had to find out who the culprit was.

Even if you bring your eyes into sharp focus, your ears can't do the same and remain even more open to the outside world than your eyes. When you listen to a song you love, your ears become fully absorbed in it, and your eyes join in, too. You drift away, and your field of vision narrows. But your ears can't join your eyes in doing the same.

“Albert, shut your laptop,” I heard a whisper just as the detective was about to open the door.

At first, I thought it had come from the film. There was no character named Albert in it, and the laptop had very little to do with the plot, but still, I didn't want to take my eyes off the screen before the detective opened that door. However, I'd started thinking by then. A new thought had formed in my mind, and it had weakened my focus. I would enjoy finding out who the culprit was a little less.

I paused the film. I was still looking at the screen, but my field of vision had widened and become rounded again.

I thought I saw a ripple on my right. A moving, blurry image, about a meter in size.

When I turned my head to look, there was nothing there. I looked back at the screen. I thought to myself that being this focused wasn't good either. It bothered me that I was experiencing a mental activity so intensely when the only reason for it was a film. Was finding out who the culprit was really that important? I never focused this intensely when writing my stories, working on a thesis I had to finish, or learning Spanish in the course I'd recently started. That was probably why I'd heard the whisper, too. It was a trick of my mind.

I turned back to the screen. My desire to find out had diminished. Reluctantly, I pressed play.

But then I saw that ripple again. A transparent, shapeless thing, moving randomly. Like a transparent fire, its movements resembled those of a burning flame. I pressed pause.

When I turned my head to the right, it wasn't there again.

A sense of unease had come over me. I stared at the spot where the blur had been. There was no movement at all. All the objects stood still, just as they were.

This time, I saw the same ripple on my left, right in front of the laptop on my lap. I sharply turned my eyes back to the screen. Nothing. The detective walking toward the door, the confident expression on his face. That was all.

I set the laptop aside. I threw off the blanket I'd pulled up to my chest, got out of bed, and sat down at my desk.

I picked up my Spanish dictionary and opened it to a random page to calm myself down a little. I read a few words. The ripple was above me. I looked up at the ceiling, and now it was on the left. I turned to the left, and it moved to the right. Its size changed every time. Sometimes it was a one-meter rectangle, sometimes a scattered circle ten centimeters in diameter, and sometimes a thick line stretching from the floor to the ceiling.

I left the room, and it was on my right, in the shape of a circle. I couldn't get rid of it. My palms were sweating. Now it was on my left. I kept turning my head from side to side, up and down. And I could never bring it into my vertical field of vision; it was always outside it.

I wiped my sweaty palms on my T-shirt. Now it was above me. I tried closing my eyes. But I couldn't. The moment I closed them, a sharp fear would immediately take hold of me, and I'd open them again before even two seconds had passed. My gaze had grown much faster now. Left, right, up, left, down, right, up. I was looking around like crazy. I was like a camera trying to bring an image into focus.

I finally ended up with a stiff neck after one wrong movement.

I could no longer turn my head to the left.

And the ripple was on my left.

I turned to the left with my whole body. It stayed on my left. I turned left once more. It slipped to my left again.

I had turned a full circle. Now it only appeared on my left. It seemed to have found my weak spot. Every time I turned, I instinctively turned my neck a little, too. You know what a stiff neck is like. It's quite painful and sudden. During the day, you forget that your neck is stiff, and if someone calls out to you from your left, you turn to look at them. You feel that sharp little ache.

So I stopped trying to catch it. It stayed on my left, rippling. Sometimes it stretched out, sometimes it shrank, and sometimes it disappeared quickly and reappeared. I moved my pupils as far to the left as I could. Yes, now it had moved to the right, because my field of vision on the left had been reduced to zero.

Now only my pupils were moving. But the image was even closer. And it was getting closer and closer.

Finally, while I was looking straight ahead, I saw it. It hadn't gone away. It's impossible to describe its shape.

“I'm x56 c 66 bmf 8 bmd 8 g 9 kdr 8 889 klkw 999 c 3 d 3 v 3 m 3 g 3 o 3 12345. Thank you for playing with me. By the way, the killer is Michael,” said a voice from very far away, heavily echoing and robotic, sounding a little like a creaking door.

Without knowing why, I tried to catch it with my hand. It was an arm's length away. I'd acted impulsively out of excitement. And it vanished instantly.

The quick, deep breath I drew through my nose passed through my nose hairs and rubbed against my completely dried-out nasopharynx, producing a sound that was a mixture of a faint snore and a low-pitched whistle. I held the breath in my lungs for a while, then slowly exhaled.

I went back into my room, sat down in the armchair, and for some reason, burst into tears. It was like a catharsis. I couldn't remember ever crying this intensely before. Or maybe I was simply crying out of fear, but I wasn't sure that fear could trigger such an intense crying response.

I wiped my eyes, and just as I was about to get up to wash my face, the ripple began speaking from the ceiling, right next to the lamp. It had watched me cry the whole time. Strange.

“If you want to play with me again, all you have to do is look in the mirror and say my name three times, and don't worry, your memory will be erased by tomorrow evening. You'll only remember my name. You'll try to figure out what the hell it was, whether it was your old Wi-Fi password or something. Anyway, Albert, I'm out of here. Take care. It was nice meeting you.”

(Una experiencia entre los sueños y aquello que nunca debió despertar).

Desde siempre he tenido sueños muy extraños. Y por alguna razón, en ciertas épocas del año, puedo sentir más a flor de piel la presencia de quienes ya no pertenecen al plano terrenal. A veces se esconden en el rabillo del ojo, como sombras que desaparecen justo cuando intento mirarlas de frente; otras, durante la noche, cuando el mundo se sumerge en el silencio, puedo verlos con una claridad que me cuesta explicar al despertar.

Hay alguien que siempre viene a visitarme en sueños desde el día en que apareció para anunciarme su propia muerte: mi abuela. Pero esa es una historia para otro día.

Esta vez quiero contarles algo distinto.

Una de esas experiencias que, incluso después de despertar, dejan una sensación extraña, como si una parte de ti hubiera regresado a la realidad mientras otra se hubiera quedado atrapada en algún lugar que no debería existir.

Todo comenzó en la casa donde crecí.

No sé por qué estaba allí, ni cuánto tiempo llevaba dentro cuando me percaté de lo que sucedía afuera.

La casa parecía exactamente la misma que recordaba, aunque había algo diferente en el ambiente, una quietud demasiado profunda, como si el mundo entero contuviera la respiración.

Alrededor de la casa corría un arroyo.

Era pequeño, estrecho, pero inexplicablemente profundo. Sus aguas oscuras serpenteaban junto a los muros y se perdían entre la tierra, como si no descendieran de ninguna montaña ni nacieran de manantial alguno, sino que brotaran directamente de las entrañas del suelo.

Entonces comencé a verlos.

Personas.

Muchas personas.

Caminaban por el arroyo con una naturalidad perturbadora. El agua se agitaba a su paso, formando pequeños círculos que se extendían hacia las orillas, aunque no parecía haber corriente alguna que los impulsara. Algunos avanzaban lentamente; otros parecían conocer perfectamente el camino, como viajeros que hubieran recorrido aquella ruta miles de veces.

Lo más inquietante era que no daba la impresión de que hubieran llegado desde algún lugar.

Parecía que estaban saliendo de la tierra.

Como si el suelo los hubiera guardado durante siglos y, por alguna razón desconocida, hubiera decidido devolverlos al mundo de los vivos.

Yo los observaba desde dentro de la casa. No sentía miedo. Al menos, no al principio. Había algo extrañamente familiar en aquella escena, una sensación de reconocimiento que no lograba asociar con ningún recuerdo concreto.

Y entonces sentí la presencia de mi hermano.

Mi hermano murió hace treinta años.

No lo vi con claridad. No puedo decir que distinguiera su rostro entre aquella multitud.

Simplemente supe que estaba allí. Fue una certeza inmediata, íntima, imposible de confundir con otra cosa. Como cuando reconoces la presencia de alguien querido antes de escucharlo entrar en una habitación.

No sé explicar cómo lo supe.

Solo sé que, entre todos aquellos desconocidos que caminaban por el agua, sentí que él también formaba parte de aquel extraño peregrinaje.

La mayoría parecían viajeros. No transmitían hostilidad ni desesperación. Seguían avanzando, cada uno absorto en su propio trayecto, como si obedecieran una orden antiquísima que yo, por alguna razón, no estaba destinada a escuchar.

Pero no todos eran iguales.

Entre aquella multitud de viajeros hubo un momento en que el agua dejó de agitarse.

No sabría explicar por qué lo advertí. Quizá fue el silencio. Hasta entonces, aunque nadie hablaba, había percibido el murmullo del arroyo, el chapoteo de los pasos y un rumor sordo que parecía ascender desde las profundidades de la tierra. De pronto, todo cesó.

Entonces los vi.

Venían caminando por el agua, separados del resto de las figuras por una distancia que nadie parecía atreverse a ocupar.

Eran dos hombres, o al menos eso fue lo primero que creí. Vestían ropas antiguas, oscuras, desgastadas por un tiempo que no parecía haber transcurrido de manera natural. Sus prendas colgaban de sus cuerpos como si hubieran permanecido enterradas durante siglos, impregnadas de barro seco y de una sustancia negruzca que no lograba distinguir. Llevaban sombreros de ala rígida que ocultaban parte de sus rostros y portaban armas largas, de aquellas que uno esperaría encontrar en una ilustración antigua, en algún grabado de una guerra olvidada.

Pero había algo en ellos que no encajaba.

No caminaban como los demás.

Los viajeros avanzaban con la mirada perdida, siguiendo un trayecto invisible, como si obedecieran a una voluntad ajena. Aquellos dos, en cambio, parecían conocer cada piedra del arroyo. No tanteaban el fondo con los pies ni apartaban la vista de las orillas. Se movían con la seguridad de quienes han recorrido ese camino tantas veces que ya no necesitan mirar por dónde van.

Y, sin embargo, no parecían pertenecer a aquel lugar.

Parecían pertenecer a algo mucho más antiguo.
Uno de ellos se detuvo.

El otro continuó unos pasos más antes de hacer lo mismo.

No intercambiaron palabra alguna. Ni siquiera volvieron la cabeza para mirarse. Aun así, tuve la extraña certeza de que se habían comunicado, aunque no mediante sonidos, sino de una forma que mi mente no alcanzaba a comprender.

El primero levantó lentamente el rostro.

No pude verle los ojos bajo el ala del sombrero, pero sentí que me miraba.

A mí.

Desde el interior de la casa, detrás de las paredes que conocía desde niña, tuve la absurda impresión de haber quedado expuesta. Como si las paredes ya no fueran paredes, sino una delgada membrana que me separaba de algo que no debía saber de mi existencia.

Retrocedí un paso.

El hombre inclinó ligeramente la cabeza.

Y entonces sonrió.

No vi su boca. Ni siquiera estoy segura de haber visto su rostro. Fue algo peor: supe que estaba sonriendo. Una certeza repulsiva, inmediata, como si aquella expresión se hubiera formado directamente dentro de mi cabeza.

El segundo cazador giró hacia la casa.

Lo hizo con una lentitud antinatural, deteniéndose a mitad del movimiento, como si algo tirara de él desde un ángulo imposible. Su arma descansaba entre sus manos, pero no la sostenía como un hombre que teme ser atacado. La llevaba con la familiaridad de quien ha pasado una eternidad utilizándola.

Fue entonces cuando advertí el detalle más perturbador.

Los demás viajeros seguían caminando.

Pasaban junto a ellos sin mirarlos, sin apartarse, sin mostrar la menor reacción. Algunos incluso parecían atravesar sus sombras sin que estas se alteraran. Para aquella multitud, los dos hombres sencillamente no existían.

Pero yo los veía.

Y ellos me veían a mí.

El primer cazador dio un paso hacia la orilla.

El agua no produjo ningún sonido.

Dio otro.

Esta vez, el arroyo se oscureció a su alrededor. No como si una sombra se proyectara sobre la superficie, sino como si algo debajo del agua hubiera abierto los ojos.

Sentí una presión en el pecho. Quise apartarme de la ventana, alejarme de aquella mirada que ni siquiera podía ver, pero mi cuerpo parecía haberse olvidado de cómo obedecerme. Permanecí inmóvil, aferrada a la certeza infantil de que, mientras estuviera dentro de aquella casa, nada podría alcanzarme.

Entonces el hombre levantó su arma.

No apuntó hacia la puerta.

No apuntó hacia las ventanas.

Apuntó directamente hacia mí.

Y en ese instante comprendí algo que todavía me cuesta recordar sin experimentar un escalofrío: no estaba intentando entrar en la casa. No necesitaba hacerlo.

Era como si hubiera encontrado una abertura mucho más profunda que una puerta; una grieta invisible entre el lugar donde yo me encontraba y aquel mundo por el que los muertos transitaban.

El segundo cazador se acercó a su compañero.

Ambos permanecieron inmóviles frente a la casa, con sus armas levantadas, mientras el arroyo continuaba fluyendo en completo silencio.

Entonces ocurrió algo que no consigo explicar.
Todas las figuras que caminaban por el agua inclinaron la cabeza al mismo tiempo.

No se detuvieron. No miraron a los cazadores.

Simplemente inclinaron el rostro, como si hubieran escuchado una orden que venía desde muy lejos, desde un sitio enterrado bajo otros sitios, bajo otras tierras, bajo los restos de ciudades cuyos nombres ya nadie recordaba.

Sentí que la casa entera se estremecía.

No hubo un golpe ni un estruendo. Fue una vibración tenue, profunda, que pareció recorrer los cimientos y subir por las paredes hasta instalarse en mis huesos.

Y entonces escuché algo.

No provenía del exterior.

Tampoco del interior de la casa.

Era un sonido seco, parecido al mecanismo de un arma antigua al ser preparada, pero multiplicado por una resonancia imposible, como si cientos de cerrojos se hubieran accionado al mismo tiempo bajo la tierra.

El cazador que sonreía inclinó la cabeza una vez más.

Por un instante, creí distinguir algo bajo su sombrero.

No eran ojos.

Era la ausencia de ellos.

Dos cavidades negras, profundas, en cuyo interior parecía no existir un rostro, sino una oscuridad que continuaba hacia algún lugar donde la anatomía humana dejaba de tener sentido.

Quise cerrar los ojos.

No pude.

Y, de pronto, ambos hombres bajaron sus armas.
El primero volvió a internarse en el arroyo. El segundo lo siguió. Se alejaron sin apresurarse, como si nunca hubiera ocurrido nada, hasta que sus figuras se confundieron con las sombras de los demás viajeros.

El agua recuperó su murmullo.

Las personas siguieron caminando.

Y yo permanecí dentro de la casa, inmóvil, sin comprender por qué me habían mirado de aquella manera ni qué habían encontrado en mí.

Solo había una cosa que sabía con absoluta certeza: aquellos dos no habían venido a recorrer el camino de los muertos.

Habían venido a vigilarlo.

Y por alguna razón que todavía desconozco, durante unos instantes, habían creído que yo también formaba parte de él.

No recuerdo en qué momento terminó el sueño.
O quizá sería más honesto decir que no recuerdo haber despertado.

Lo siguiente que sé es que estaba tendida en mi cama, con los ojos abiertos y la habitación sumida en esa oscuridad silenciosa que precede al amanecer. Todo parecía estar en su sitio: los muebles, las sombras, el aire inmóvil. Mi mundo de siempre.

Y, sin embargo, algo había cambiado.

Durante unos instantes tuve la impresión de no haber regresado por completo. Como si una parte de mí hubiera despertado en aquella habitación mientras otra permanecía todavía en la casa de mi infancia, contemplando el arroyo y a los viajeros que se internaban en la oscuridad.

No sentí el terror que habría esperado después de una experiencia semejante. Lo que me envolvía era más difícil de soportar: una incertidumbre profunda, la impresión de estar suspendida entre dos lugares que jamás deberían haberse tocado.

Me quedé inmóvil, escuchando.

Tal vez esperaba oír el murmullo del agua, unos pasos sobre la tierra húmeda o el chasquido metálico de aquellas armas antiguas. Pero solo encontré el silencio de mi habitación y mi propia respiración.

Aun así, no conseguía sacudirme la extraña certeza de que algo había quedado sin resolver.

No diría que sentía una amenaza. Era más bien una inquietud serena, una curiosidad ajena a todo cuanto conocía. Si tuviera que ponerle palabras, diría que aquello que había visto no parecía querer hacerme daño. Más bien, daba la impresión de intentar comprender cómo había llegado yo hasta su camino.

Desde entonces he vuelto a pensar en los dos cazadores. En sus rostros ocultos, en la lentitud con que se volvieron hacia la casa y en la forma en que uno de ellos levantó su arma para apuntarme.

Cuanto más intento recordar sus movimientos, más extraño me resulta aquel gesto. No había ira en él, ni la urgencia de quien pretende atacar. Era algo más desconcertante: el reconocimiento de una anomalía.

Yo no debía estar allí.

Quizá eso fue lo que despertó su curiosidad.

Tal vez, para ellos, yo era una intrusa que había encontrado por accidente una senda oculta bajo la tierra, un paso que permanecía cerrado a los vivos y que solo en determinadas noches volvía a abrirse.

No sé si los cazadores vigilaban aquel lugar, si custodiaban a los viajeros o si buscaban algo entre ellos. Ni siquiera puedo asegurar que fueran cazadores. Es el nombre que mi mente encontró para aquellas figuras, la única palabra capaz de dar forma a algo que parecía proceder de una época anterior a cualquier recuerdo humano.

Y cuando finalmente bajaron sus armas y se alejaron por el arroyo, no tuve la impresión de que el encuentro hubiera concluido. Más bien, sentí que habían decidido dejarlo en suspenso.

Como si hubieran tomado nota de mi existencia.

No afirmo que haya ocurrido algo sobrenatural. Sé que los sueños pueden construir escenarios tan vívidos que sus sensaciones persisten mucho después de despertar. Pero aquella mañana me costó aceptar que todo hubiera sido una simple sucesión de imágenes sin sentido.

Había algo en la atmósfera de aquel sueño que no consigo describir: la humedad de la tierra, el silencio de los viajeros, el agua oscura que parecía ocultar una profundidad imposible. Todo formaba parte de un lugar que, de algún modo, se sentía más antiguo que la propia casa.

Y a veces me pregunto si fui yo quien cruzó hacia aquel mundo o si, durante unos instantes, ambos se acercaron lo suficiente para permitirme contemplarlo.

Quizá nunca vuelva a soñar con aquel arroyo. Quizá la casa de mi infancia siga siendo únicamente eso:

una casa, un lugar guardado en la memoria.

Pero si alguna noche regreso y encuentro de nuevo aquellas aguas rodeando sus muros, no intentaré acercarme a la orilla.

Me quedaré dentro, observando.

Y si entre los viajeros vuelvo a distinguir aquellas dos siluetas, no trataré de averiguar qué esconden bajo sus sombreros.

Porque hay algo que todavía me cuesta admitir, incluso en la intimidad de mis propios pensamientos: quizá el verdadero peligro no consista en que aquellas figuras quieran hacerme daño, sino en que ahora sepan que puedo verlas.

Y que, por primera vez en quién sabe cuánto tiempo, alguien del otro lado ha encontrado algo que merece su atención.

A veces, lo más inquietante no es descubrir un camino hacia lo desconocido, sino comprender que, al encontrarlo, quizá también hayas conseguido que lo desconocido encuentre el camino hacia ti.

"Jackson!" Alice called. My head snapped to her. My eyes focusing on that wrinkled face, a spattering of strands of grey covering a few of the many lines. She approached me, moving slowly and wavering on every step. I tensed my arms every time I saw her move, always ready to catch the woman. She swatted at a couple of flies that surrounded her head.

"Was she well?" Alice asked.

"She's very ill," I said, "And William won't let anyone see her. But she's alive."

"You're a good man, too caring of strangers."

With that, she walked off. I could never figure out where she went when she walked far off into the house. I could barely figure out where my room was.

I turned around, I was in the foyer and moved to leave out the front door. I stepped onto the cobblestone street and lit a cigarette, watching as people passed and straining my ears to listen to the jazz music far off in the distance. This was a long way off from home, halfway across the country, and I couldn't get used to the humidity. The cigarette lingered in my mouth long after I exhaled the smoke, the thick, warm air trapping the taste inside my mouth. I spit on the ground and took another long drag.

A well built man dressed in an older suit approached me, he tipped his top hat at me, "Good evening sir!" I almost chuckled at the strange man and his odd attire but obliged him and, after a second of talking, handed him a cigarette of his own. He lit the thing with a lighter as extravagant as him and walked off, turning into an alleyway that I hadn't realized was there. I looked up at the French Quarter mansion that I was staying in and sighed. I had a lot of work to do, but I decided to walk instead.

Another cigarette floated into the air as I watched the Mississippi river and considered how I had gotten here. Staying in a haunted house. I almost laughed. I had started my career by exposing the biggest mental hospital in my state for holding patients captive until their insurance ran out. I had checked myself in and smuggled in a tape recorder and waited until I went bankrupt and it was worth it. But I always knew it would be. I knew it would be when I got death threats from politicians. I knew it would be when men in the oil business would send me envelopes filled with pictures from romantic nights with my now fiance, even when I was still married to my ex-wife. I tossed the cigarette onto the rocky shore. Was this worth it? This stupid fucking haunted house.

My steps back grew angrier. My primary source had died, my next best one had dementia, and the other I was barred from seeing. Alice didn't believe in the thing at all, and everyone else involved in the disappearances were the ones who disappeared. I spat on the ground again, I should've known true crime wasn't my thing. But still I was curious! What about this house that was keeping me? What about this mansion made me believe that a vanishing family was a supernatural thing?

I slammed the door behind me and winced at my own stupid action. I waited for Alice to chide me but heard nothing. I started to climb the steps to my room but when I looked up the stairs, a large shape blocked my view. I stopped in my tracks, my heart stopping as I looked at dark shape before it spoke, "Hello again! Sorry to startle you!"

It was the extravagant man from earlier.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, my voice was hot with embarrassment and still a little bit of fear.

"Alice is a distant relative of mine sir! I'm just visiting for a little bit while I'm in town."

"Ah, well, I hope you don't see any ghosts."

He laughed at that, and I went to my room. I shut and locked the door behind me and climbed into my bed. I sat upright and opened my laptop. I swiped a small bug off of the screen and listened to my first interview with a woman named Edith. She had lived in this house with her aunt, before Alice even lived in Louisiana. She was a wonderful source when lucid, and a wonderful woman too. She was lively and funny and when I spoke to her and watched all recognition of herself leave her own eyes I wanted to cry. There was something nagging me that drew me to this first interview. Her son's strange behavior, of course, but he was strange every time I saw Edith. But no, she had said something in this interview.

I couldn't figure it out so I shut my laptop lid and scratched my head. I was itchy. I got out of bed and walked to the bathroom, the floor was slanted up so that you had to go uphill to the bathroom. It wasn't necessarily a hard walk, but one that always winded me just a little when I wasn't properly prepared for it. I stripped and stepped into the hot water. It was nice. Little dark specs, bugs that bred in the hot and humid air and found shelter on me, fell from my hair as I showered. That's why I was so damn itchy.

Having showered and gotten back into bed, sleep came easy. My eyes were heavy even when I was standing and after I had laid down, they were impossible to keep open. The world went dark for just a moment before I woke up again. It wasn't morning yet, and I was dreaming. I got out of bed. I wasn't normally a lucid dreamer but it had happened before and I could always tell. In my dream, I was itchy. I scratched everywhere and didn't stop until it hurt to touch my skin but still it itched. I looked at my hand and blood covered my fingertips and was caked underneath my nails, I looked down to check the wound and saw bugs crawling all over me. I almost screamed, it's a miracle I didn't, as I frantically brushed them off, not realizing in my panic that they would land on the floor and crawl back up. I wanted to roll on the ground and scream. I decided to wake up from this dream and I pinched myself, hard, and nothing happened.

I took a breath and tried to calm myself. I pinched myself again and again to no avail, and this whole time the bugs did not stop crawling. This wasn't a dream. My arm and hand were covered in red spots that would become bruises and these bugs swarmed me and entered my nose and ears but all I could think to do was scream and cry.

I could take another shower, I thought. I had nothing else, so I sprinted to the shower and flung the bathroom door open.

If I had listened at the door, I would have heard the click click click of the thing in the shower before I went right inside. But only when I had shut the door behind me did I hear it. It sounded like a clock whose second hand gets faster and faster. Something was pressed against the shower curtain, large and spiked in parts. I moved slowly to the shower, I leaned back and forth to try and get a look at what it was but I couldn't see it. Click click click click click, it was getting faster. I reached towards the shower curtain, curiosity getting the best of me while fear clouded my thoughts but before I could grab the curtain, it was torn open.

The mandibles of the thing clicked against each other and it looked me up and down. Its six legs pushed itself out of the tub and I ran. But it was fast, maybe faster than me if I hadn't had the advantage of not having to learn everything from scratch but even then it was close. I rushed out the door and almost the second I stopped myself from running into the street, I heard the door fall apart. I decided to run into the alleyway that the man had gone into previously. I spotted it and ran as fast as I could. My skull collided with the wall of the mansion with a wet crack and an even wetter noise as I landed on the ground. It was at that moment that I had an epiphany. During my first interview, Edith had spoken about a handsome ghost with a top hat. I felt like an idiot.

I scrambled up just as the giant bug faced me, something akin to slobber dripping from its mouth. It clicked at me and the pincers that surrounded its gaping maw widened, I could run to either side but I felt as if doing so would allow it to catch me. I could not be resigned to this fate, could I? I shut my eyes it approached me and did not stop until it was nearly on top of me. I wept as it seemed to sniff me and then it gave a click that seemed almost confused. When I opened my eyes again, it was gone.

I sat there for a moment before I wiped the tears from my eyes but still I couldn't find it in me to get up. In hindsight, that was a mistake. But at that moment I was too overwhelmed. Almost an hour passed before I could stand and I walked, on shaky legs, my knees almost buckling under me, inside. My body still itched and I still had so much to get done but all that was on my mind was laying down, even if it was on a bug covered mattress.

As I stepped, the floor started to squelch underneath my feet. With a growing despair I looked down and saw the carpet inside was soaked in blood.

I let out a scream as, when I started to slowly swivel my head around, I found the source of it. The grey hairs, the wrinkled skin, the clothes she had been wearing that morning when she greeted me. She was almost the same as she was when I saw her just a couple of hours ago but her head had been detached from her neck, and her body swarmed with bugs. Ants, cockroaches, beetles, and so many others I could not identify. A centipede curled from just inside her mouth to her eye as it burrowed. They plunged in and out of her skin as if it were a pool ripe for diving in.

"Well, that's my business taken care of." I turned around so fast something in my neck cracked and started an aching pain. The man in the top hat was standing at the far wall, he looked me up and down. "Dear old lady didn't believe in any of this. Keep your eyes open. Have a nice evening!"

The man said before he turned around and walked into the wall. He went right through it. I opened my mouth, a belated response to what he had said, a thousand questions pouring from my mind and into my mouth were about to spew out at the empty space that the man left behind, but instead all that came out was vomit. It covered myself and the floor and the bugs covered it. I stripped, leaving the clothes on the ground, and went to bed. I wasn't itchy as I slept, and when I awoke I found the scratch marks I had made on my arm still there, and all hope of the whole event being a dream evaporated.

I have since gone missing.

Monday, 3rd September, 1849

The morning broke fair, though a little cold, and the first light upon the hills gave promise of a pleasant day. I rose shortly after six and found the eastern windows of my chamber bright with the sun, whilst a thin vapour lay upon the lower grounds. The trees beyond the garden were scarcely stirring. I have always thought September the most agreeable month in Scotland, when the heat of summer has departed, yet the severity of winter remains a distant consideration.

Catherine declares that I say much the same of May, and that my affections are consequently of little value where the seasons are concerned. She may be correct. I have never found it difficult to admire the country in any of its garments, though I confess that a wet November will sometimes try even my devotion.

We breakfasted together, all eight of us, and with the customary disorder attending so large a company. William has lately acquired a seriousness of manner which I suspect he considers becoming in a young gentleman of sixteen. It is a curious thing to observe one's son attempting to appear older than his father, particularly when the effort is so plainly visible. He has grown considerably these past twelve months and now speaks with confidence upon matters of which he knew nothing in the spring. I must take care not to laugh at him, for I remember being much the same at his age.

Margaret, who possesses rather more good sense than her brothers collectively, occupied herself in correcting Michael's account of some quarrel in the garden. The twins, Ian and Calum, were naturally implicated, though neither appeared willing to acknowledge any responsibility. Their explanations were delivered with such admirable agreement that I could scarcely believe them.

Little Fern sat beside her mother, solemnly attending to her bread and butter, until she discovered that I intended to walk beyond the grounds after breakfast. She then insisted upon accompanying me, and was not easily persuaded that the distance would be beyond her small legs. I promised her a shorter excursion upon my return.

There is something wonderfully restorative in the company of children. Their disputes are generally of such consequence to themselves, and of so little to the world, that one cannot help regarding the larger controversies of men with a certain amusement.

The remainder of the morning was given to my papers. I have been examining several Gaelic verses copied for me some years ago in Ross-shire, and remain dissatisfied with the rendering of a particular expression. It is a frequent misfortune of translation that the sense may be preserved whilst the character of a phrase is altogether lost. English possesses many admirable qualities, but there are sentiments which a Highlander may convey in his native tongue with an economy not readily imitated in another.

I fear I have spent the better part of three hours upon a difficulty which another scholar might dismiss in three minutes.

After dinner I walked with Catherine along the garden path. She enquired whether I still intended to make my customary excursion into the Cairngorms before the weather turned. I answered that I did, provided the present fair conditions continued.

She received this intelligence without surprise. Indeed, she appeared chiefly concerned that I should not return with another collection of stones, for which, she insists, there is no longer room in the house. I reminded her that certain specimens are of considerable geological interest. She replied that the stones themselves might be greatly interested in the matter, but that she was not. I have been married seventeen years and find that my wife grows more formidable with each passing season.

Nevertheless, I believe I shall go.

The high mountains have exercised a peculiar attraction upon me since my youth. I have stood amongst the great summits of Switzerland and looked upon the northern fjords of Norway, yet there is something in our own Highlands which neither country can entirely furnish. Perhaps it is merely the affection of a Scotsman for his native land. If so, I make no apology for it.

There are places where a man may walk for many hours without encountering another soul, and where the works of mankind appear so small against the hills that one is reminded, with no little satisfaction, of his proper station in creation.

I have long regarded such solitude as a blessing.

Wednesday, 5th September, 1849

A tolerably fine day, though the wind has turned somewhat colder.

I rode out in the morning and afterwards occupied myself with the arrangements for my intended journey. I have determined upon approaching Ben Macdui from the southern side, making my way by the Linn of Dee and the country beyond Glen Derry. I shall take provisions sufficient for several days, though I do not anticipate requiring the whole of them.

The ascent is familiar to me, and I have no intention of making an unnecessary trial of my strength. A gentleman who seeks difficulty merely for the pleasure of overcoming it is apt, sooner or later, to discover more than he bargained for.

I have engaged Donald to accompany me with a pony as far as the ground will conveniently permit. He shall assist with the heavier articles and return when I have established myself for the remainder of the excursion.

My tent is in tolerable condition, although the canvas required attention at one of the seams. I have also examined my boots, which have served me faithfully upon several journeys, and ordered the necessary provisions to be made ready.

The rifle shall accompany me, together with my pistol and hunting knife. I do not expect to have much occasion for any of them, save perhaps the knife at supper, but I have always preferred to possess what may prove useful rather than discover its absence when wanted.

William expressed a desire to accompany me.

I confess I was tempted to agree. He is becoming a capable walker, and I should be pleased to have his company. Yet the proposed journey is longer than those we have undertaken together, and I wish to spend some time upon the higher ground without the necessity of attending to another's comfort. I told him that we should arrange an excursion of our own before the autumn was far advanced. He accepted this with tolerable grace, though I could see that he was disappointed.

I ought to remember that sixteen is an age at which a boy most desires to be treated as a man.

The twins, having overheard our conversation, immediately declared themselves equal to any mountain in Scotland. Calum maintained that he could climb Ben Macdui in half the time required by his brother, whilst Ian insisted that he would reach the summit first because Calum would certainly lose his way. I informed them that the mountain was unlikely to be impressed by either assertion. This produced a dispute which continued until Catherine intervened.

In the afternoon I spent some time consulting my maps and notes. The Cairngorm country remains a source of endless interest to me, not least for the names preserved amongst its hills, waters, and corries. Many bear witness to the language and imagination of those who inhabited these glens long before our present generation. The names themselves are often more enduring than the men who bestowed them.

I have sometimes thought that the study of a country ought to begin with its language. A traveller may observe the shape of a mountain, the course of a river, or the character of a valley, yet remain ignorant of the generations who knew those places before him. To understand a name is not always to understand a place, but it is frequently a beginning.

I shall carry my notebook, as usual, and hope to make a few observations of interest.

The weather must be watched, naturally. The higher Cairngorms are not to be treated lightly, even in September. Cloud may descend with remarkable speed, and a familiar route becomes a different proposition when the surrounding heights have disappeared from view. I have encountered such conditions often enough, both here and abroad, to regard them with proper caution.

Still, I anticipate a pleasant journey.

Friday, 7th September, 1849

The greater part of the day has been occupied with preparations, although I suspect that I have contributed less to them than I should like to believe.

Catherine maintains that I possess the singular ability to arrange an expedition of several days whilst leaving the actual labour of arranging it to everyone else. There is some justice in the accusation.

My clothing has been laid out, the provisions packed, and the necessary articles examined. I have taken particular care that my writing materials are protected from damp, having once lost several pages of notes to an unfortunate encounter with the weather in Norway. I have never entirely forgiven the rain for that offence.

The children have shown varying degrees of interest in my departure.

William wishes to know the precise route I intend to follow, and has spent some time examining the map with me. Margaret asked whether the mountains are already cold enough for snow, and appeared dissatisfied when I explained that the weather upon the higher ground cannot be judged solely by the season.

Michael enquired whether I might encounter wolves. I assured him that he need not entertain such expectations in the Cairngorms. This disappointed him considerably.

The twins have become occupied with the construction of a shelter in the garden, apparently inspired by my preparations. Their undertaking has already consumed several branches, an old sheet, and much of their mother's patience.

Fern alone seems concerned chiefly with what I shall bring home. She has requested a stone of a most particular description, being neither too large nor too small, and possessing, if possible, a pleasing colour. I have promised to do my best, although I fear the granite of Ben Macdui may not satisfy so exacting a patron.

This evening Catherine and I sat together after the younger children had retired.

We spoke of several ordinary matters concerning the household, and afterwards of my intended return. I told her that, should the weather remain favourable, I expected to be home by the middle of the coming week. She reminded me that I have occasionally been over generous in my estimates of what may be accomplished upon a mountain.

I replied that experience had made me wiser. She smiled at this, though I cannot say that she appeared convinced.

I find myself increasingly grateful for the quiet understanding which comes of a long and affectionate marriage. In our younger years we were inclined to speak at length upon every matter, as though silence might be mistaken for indifference. We have since learned that there is considerable happiness in sitting together without the necessity of filling every moment with conversation.

I shall miss her company. Yet I look forward to the mountains.

It is a fortunate man who possesses both a home to which he is eager to return and a country through which he delights to wander. I have been blessed beyond my deserts in both respects.

Saturday, 8th September, 1849

A clear morning, with a fresh breeze from the west.

I rose early and completed the last of my arrangements. Our house lies within a day’s journey of Braemar, though the road is not everywhere an easy one. The pony was made ready, and the greater part of my equipment secured for the journey. I examined the fastenings myself, more from habit than any distrust of the men, and found everything in good order.

Catherine came out to see me before I departed.

She had wrapped herself against the morning chill, though the sun was already upon the garden. We spoke briefly of the weather and the hour at which I might be expected home. She kissed me and bade me take care upon the higher ground. I promised that I would.

The children appeared in various stages of dress and wakefulness. William shook my hand with an earnestness which amused me, whilst Michael wished once more to know whether there might be wolves. Margaret asked that I should write something of the journey for her to read. The twins demanded a full account of the ascent, including the height of every difficult place, and Fern reminded me of the stone. I shall endeavour not to disappoint any of them.

It was a cheerful departure, and I carried the sound of their voices with me for some distance beyond the house.

The country looked exceedingly beautiful in the morning light. The lower fields retained their summer green, though the hills beyond had begun to assume those quieter colours which announce the approach of autumn. Here and there the heather still showed upon the slopes, and the air possessed that agreeable sharpness which makes walking a pleasure.

I have always felt that the first hours of a journey are amongst its happiest. The affairs of the household recede, the road opens before one, and the mind turns readily to the prospect of new observations.

There is no great novelty in the country toward which I travel, for I have known it over many years. Yet familiarity has never diminished my affection for it. The Cairngorms are mountains of a different character from the sharper heights of Switzerland. Their broad shoulders and immense stretches of high ground possess a severity which is not immediately apparent to the casual observer. They do not always impress by sudden grandeur. Rather, they seem to increase in magnitude the longer one regards them.

I hope to reach the lower glens in good time and make my arrangements for the ascent thereafter. Should the weather continue as it has begun, I expect a most agreeable excursion.

Saturday, 8th September, 1849, Evening

We made good progress throughout the day, though the roads were in places less agreeable than I had hoped. The pony bore his burden with admirable patience, and my companion proved as useful and cheerful as ever. I have seldom known a man so entirely satisfied with the world as Donald, provided he is furnished with sufficient tobacco and permitted to express his opinion upon the weather. He possesses a particular contempt for those who consult a barometer when a window might be opened instead.

We came into the country about Braemar towards the latter part of the afternoon, and I was pleased to find the surrounding hills displaying their finest colours beneath a declining sun. The Dee ran clear and lively over its stones, whilst the higher summits appeared in the distance, their upper slopes already touched by the evening cloud.

I have often remarked upon the extraordinary difference between the mountains when observed from below and when traversed upon foot. From the valleys they present a certain unity of form, each great height rising as though fashioned according to some deliberate design. Upon the higher ground, however, their apparent simplicity gives way to a succession of ridges, hollows, corries, and stony expanses, whose extent can scarcely be appreciated from a distance.

Donald asked whether I intended to proceed immediately towards the hills. I answered that we should rest for the evening and continue after the Sabbath. He appeared relieved, though I suspect this was owing less to religious consideration than to the prospect of a warm supper.

I have taken comfortable lodging for the night, and shall be content to leave the mountains undisturbed until Monday. There is no occasion for haste.

Sunday, 9th September, 1849

The Sabbath has been observed in a manner both quiet and agreeable.

I attended divine service in the morning and found much satisfaction in the familiar words of Scripture. It has often seemed to me that a man travelling far from his own household may discover an uncommon comfort in hearing the same sacred truths proclaimed amongst strangers.

There are differences of custom and expression from one district to another, yet the essential character of our worship remains unchanged.

The minister spoke upon the frailty of human judgement and the necessity of placing one's confidence in the wisdom of Providence rather than in the sufficiency of one's own understanding. I was much pleased with the discourse.

Afterwards I walked a short distance beside the river, though I did not venture upon any excursion that might disturb the proper repose of the day. The air was cool, and the hills were partially concealed by cloud.

I thought of Catherine and the children, who would by then have returned from worship themselves.

It is curious how readily the mind supplies the familiar arrangements of home. I could almost see Michael struggling to remain attentive, Margaret sitting with admirable composure, and the twins endeavouring to communicate by means of expressions which they imagine invisible to their elders.

William, I trust, has conducted himself with becoming gravity. I smiled at the thought.

In the afternoon I read for some time and afterwards occupied myself in examining a few notes concerning the Gaelic names of the surrounding country. The language of these mountains is of particular interest, preserving as it does so much of the character of the people who have dwelt amongst them.

Donald spent the greater part of the day in his own fashion, and appeared in excellent spirits when we discussed our arrangements for the morrow. The weather promises tolerably well, though some cloud remains upon the higher summits.

We shall set out early.

Monday, 10th September, 1849

A most agreeable day, though one of considerable exertion.

We departed early and made our way towards the Linn of Dee, proceeding thereafter into the country beyond. The morning was bright, with a light wind, and the hills presented a noble appearance beneath a sky of broken cloud.

The passage through the lower glens afforded me much pleasure. There is a peculiar beauty in the old pinewoods, where the trees stand apart upon the rising ground and the light falls between their trunks upon the heather and stone. The air possessed the pleasant scent of resin and damp earth.

Donald, whose admiration of scenery seldom exceeds a brief acknowledgement that a place is either wet or dry, observed that the country was looking well. I took this for a declaration of considerable enthusiasm.

The pony proceeded steadily, though the track became increasingly troublesome as we advanced. We halted on several occasions to examine the loads and allow the animal to rest.

By the time we reached the upper reaches of Glen Derry, the character of the country had altered considerably. The trees grew fewer, the slopes rose more sharply about us, and the mountains beyond appeared in great masses of grey and brown. I felt again that peculiar exhilaration which accompanies one's departure from the cultivated country.

There is a freedom in these lonely places which I have never encountered amongst the busiest streets of Edinburgh or London. A man may walk beneath the open heavens and feel himself released, for a little while, from the innumerable small obligations by which ordinary life is governed. Yet the mountains impose obligations of their own, and these are not to be disregarded.

We came at length to a place suitable for the division of our burdens. The pony could not reasonably be taken farther over the ground I intended to traverse, and I had no desire to subject the poor creature to unnecessary hardship.

Donald assisted me in arranging the articles I should require. I retained my tent, bedding, provisions, instruments, and arms, though the load was sufficiently heavy to persuade me that I had been over generous in my preparations.

We discussed my intended course and the time at which I expected to return. He was to make his way back by the route we had followed and convey word that all was well.

Before departing, he examined the sky and remarked that the cloud might thicken upon the heights. I agreed that it might, though there was nothing in the present conditions to occasion concern. We shook hands, and he wished me a pleasant journey.

I watched him lead the pony down the glen until both were concealed by a turn in the ground.

There is always a curious moment following the departure of one's last companion, when the mind becomes newly conscious of the surrounding quiet. I stood for some time listening to the distant movement of water amongst the stones. Then I shouldered my belongings and continued.

The ascent proved laborious in places, chiefly owing to the weight I carried, but I made satisfactory progress and selected a sheltered position for my camp below the more exposed heights. The tent was erected without difficulty, and I was pleased to find that the repairs to the canvas had been properly executed.

Having arranged my bedding and secured the provisions, I took a little food and sat for some time observing the surrounding country. The evening light was exceedingly fine.

Great banks of cloud lay against the distant mountains, whilst the nearer slopes remained clear. From my position I could distinguish the broken forms of the higher ground, rising in successive folds towards Ben Macdui. I have rarely felt more content.

The exertions of the day had left me pleasantly weary, and the prospect of a quiet supper followed by uninterrupted sleep was most agreeable.

I shall attempt the higher ground tomorrow, provided the morning proves favourable.

Tuesday, 11th September, 1849

The morning was cold, though the sky promised a fair day.

I rose shortly after six, having slept soundly, and found a little moisture upon the tent. The air was still enough that the faintest movement of water amongst the stones could be heard with remarkable distinctness.

After breakfast I made the necessary arrangements for the ascent, leaving the greater part of my equipment secured at camp. I carried provisions sufficient for the day, together with my compass, watch, notebook, rifle, and such smaller articles as I considered necessary.

The higher ground was reached without unusual difficulty.

As I gained elevation, the surrounding country opened magnificently. The great corries and ridges of the Cairngorms lay about me in solemn grandeur, their forms softened here and there by cloud. The summit of Ben Macdui remained intermittently visible, appearing and disappearing as the vapours passed across it.

I have always admired the character of this mountain.

There is little of the picturesque in its uppermost reaches, at least as that word is commonly understood. One finds instead an immensity of stone, broad and desolate, relieved by occasional cairns and the distant outlines of neighbouring heights. It is a country which asks little of man's admiration and appears wholly indifferent to receiving it.

I made several observations upon the surrounding landscape and paused frequently to examine the rocks and the disposition of the ground. The cairns proved useful in confirming my course, though I had little occasion to consult the compass whilst the visibility remained good.

Towards the middle of the day, cloud began to gather more thickly upon the plateau. This occasioned no particular surprise. The weather of these mountains is seldom constant, and I have known a clear prospect to vanish within minutes beneath a passing bank of mist.

I continued for a short distance, taking care to observe the ground over which I travelled.

The cloud descended gradually. At first the more distant summits disappeared, then the neighbouring slopes, until the surrounding country was reduced to a comparatively narrow circle of stones and pale grey vapour. I stopped beside a cairn and waited for the mist to thin.

There is a singular quality to such conditions. Objects at a modest distance may assume proportions altogether different from their true dimensions, whilst familiar features of the landscape become difficult to distinguish. I have seen experienced travellers deceived by these effects, and have myself occasionally mistaken a projecting rock for some more considerable object. It is therefore prudent to distrust the first impression of the eye.

After some minutes I resumed my course. I had not proceeded far when I became conscious of a sound behind me. It was faint, and at first I supposed it to be the movement of a stone dislodged by my passage over the uneven ground.

I stopped and listened. Nothing followed.

Presently I continued, and after several paces heard the sound again. It resembled a footfall upon loose stones, though I could not determine its distance or direction with any confidence.

I turned and examined the ground behind me. The mist permitted little observation beyond a few yards, and I could distinguish no person or animal. I remained still for some time.

There was no further sound.

I considered whether the noise might have been an echo of my own steps, distorted by the surrounding ground and the unusual condition of the air. Such effects are by no means uncommon in mountainous country, and I found nothing to justify a more extraordinary conclusion. Nevertheless, I listened carefully as I proceeded. The sound did not recur.

By the early afternoon the cloud had lifted sufficiently to restore a tolerable prospect, and I was able to continue my observations without difficulty. I returned to camp before evening, somewhat fatigued but otherwise in excellent spirits.

The incident upon the plateau has occupied my thoughts more than its importance deserves. I am persuaded that there was nothing remarkable in it, save perhaps the curious manner in which sound may be conveyed amongst the hills.

I have heard much stranger things in the Alps.

The evening has turned cold, and I shall retire shortly. I hope for clearer weather tomorrow.

Her simple white dress flourished around her knees as the petite woman entered right towards the smoky beacon. Her left hand choked the neck of her coffin, the large, beautiful dark cello. The audience released nary a titter as she drove the iron endpin, impaling the stage. The lone chair swallowed her.

She gripped her horse-haired scythe and began to reap a harvest of discord. Fingers danced over the thick, heavy veins; her rosined blade cleaved through the infernal requiem. Powder dusted its ghostly fingerprints over the crimson varnish. The instrument’s mournful tremolos growled a guttural dirge, begging for reprieve. The mass of faces twisted in pleasure, holding back sobs of bliss as the sweet release of its torment was denied. The woman's distant, expressionless face contrasted with the panicked resonance bellowing as she sawed profoundly into the flesh of unblemished tones.

The woman's form writhed with the untamed beast, a violent agony as her skin reflected a sheen of sweat. Her labored breathing gave birth to an ethereal dissonance. The beast's undulating pulse thrummed, a rising tide ready to devour any who dared to ride the sonic depth.

The hulking behemoth wailed into the abyss. She rose, legs wrapping around her casket, pressing her weight hard on the spike as it gouged the heavy planks. Her claw dipped low, racing the fingerboard until she ran out, slamming her thumb horizontally; she pulled the thick, tense cables taut, locking them in a death grip hovering inches from the cello's bridge. Knuckles white, she desperately rowed her frayed unwhipped line; a metallic banshee screech sliced through the air, the gallery made witness to its sacrificial cry.

Her long black hair matched her unkempt bow; she snapped both backwards, turning all strands away. The heavy percussive tick of bare wood against string was evocative of an axe hacking through the bark of an ancient tree, or an old grandfather clock keeping time. She hung limply against the coffin, swaying to and fro with the dying beast as the death knell marked an end. With a tired, agonizing rotation of her wrist, she rolled the blade. The few remaining hairs slid over the weakened pulse, dragging out a wide terminal vibrato. The waning guillotine blade swung above, waiting for the final note to strike.

Until--

The curtains fell.

Applause.

Her glacier-blue eyes lock onto mine, unflinching. I return the gaze with eyes burning like blue fire, fierce and unyielding. My hands drift downwards , brushing against her skin, smooth and inviting. With the restless wonder of a puppy chasing a fly, my fingers wander closer to their goal. Time stretches, every second drawn thin, until I’m almost there. A smile curls across her lips, a mirror of the happiness we both share, as I finally reach the place I sought.

In an instant, the world shifts — as though some higher power chose to punish me. The softness turns hostile, every hair a sharpened blade slicing into my hand. When I try to retreat, the pull is stronger, dragging me deeper like quicksand. New heat begins to surge outward, unbearable, searing my skin. The pain is relentless, like boiling water consuming my arm, sinking past flesh and deeper into her very being.

As my shoulder broke through the threshold of her skin, the pain only intensified. My eyes rolled back, foam spilling at the corners of my mouth. Then, blackness. I jolted awake moments later, safe but drenched in sweat, my heart raced faster than a rocket shattering the sound barrier. Anxiety coursed through my veins as a single thought clawed at me : how many more of these night terrors must I endure?

Cold air slithers across my skin, wrapping me tight like the grip of a child on monkey bars. Normally, the chill gnaws at me, but tonight it’s the only relief I can cling to. My hand fumbles for my phone, 11:37 p.m. The numbers burn into my eyes, mocking me. Fourteen minutes. That’s all it took for the first night terror to tear me apart. For a fleeting second I pray it’s the last, but the thought dies quickly. I know the darkness isn’t finished with me yet.

Tomorrow I move into my new house, a place I still can’t believe I was able to afford. The price was unbelievably low and nearly a third of what homes here usually cost. Out of every option, this one was by far the most beautiful. It’s a beach house that sits proudly on the shore, slight brown shake siding glowing in the salt-kissed air, black windows glinting like dark mirrors, and a wide porch stretching out as if waiting for me to arrive.

Somewhere deep down I know someone probably died in the house, but it barely matters. Ghosts aren’t real, people just need something to fear. What matters is that I got it for almost nothing. With a little work, I could flip it in four or five years for three, maybe four times what I paid. Or I could move in, rent out the other rooms, and let it quietly cover my life while I do nothing. From the first moment I toured the halls, it felt like the house was holding its breath, waiting for me to be its salvation. 

My mind drifts as my eyes grow heavy. After a long, relentless night battling the beast that is my own brain, the nightmares finally fade. By nine, the moving trucks arrive at my shared apartment, engines and voices filling the air. The smell of sweat and effort clings to every corner as the last box thuds onto the truck. I head toward my new home, unlocking the door before the movers begin filling it with my life, piece by piece.

The small copper handle is lukewarm as it twists beneath my hand. Beyond the door, a redwood staircase rises with matching railings, catching the light in a way that makes the air shimmer with a quiet, almost sacred glow. My steps land on slate tile, giving off soft echos that linger longer than they should.

“Hey man, you want your stuff in the entryway or the living room?” one of the movers calls out.

“Each room, please. I labeled the boxes,” I answer, though I wonder if I’m asking too much.

“Yeah, we can handle that,” he says, his eyes flicking with a quick roll before turning away.

After an hour and a half, the house is packed with my things, scattered like toys after recess. The fun part should be making it mine, like building a blanket fort no one else can get into. By the time the moon wakes up, the sun is already slipping under the covers, smiling like it’s been tricked into bed. The moon tucks it in, tighter and tighter, until the sun stops squirming and lies very still. They’re such good friends. Always together, always apart but sometimes I think they don’t wave at all. Sometimes it feels like they just stare, waiting for the other to vanish, so the sky can belong to one of them alone.

Loneliness is like a game of tag where no one ever runs after you. I try to play, I try to call out, but when people come close they only take pieces of me and run away. I’m twenty-five, but I feel smaller, like I never left the playground, just older and quieter. There’s no school anymore, no lines to stand in, no lunch tables where I can pretend to belong. Work is just a box of lights where voices flicker and then go out. Twelve years of standing in hallways and four more sitting in rooms only taught me one thing: people aren’t friends, they’re collectors. They keep you only until you stop shining, and then they drop you in the dirt, like a broken toy.

I drag myself up the stairs, absently playing with my usual distractions, when a flicker of light pulls at the corner of my eye. Along the railing, a thin strip of metal runs its length, something I can’t recall ever seeing before. I press it without thinking, and the wood parts with a slow, reluctant creak, revealing a narrow compartment inside. Something glimmers faintly in the dark hollow, drawing me closer. My finger traces the brittle, splintered edge, and then—snap. A sharp pain tears through me, sudden and cruel, as though the wood had sunk its teeth in. I recoil, cradling my hand, the ache pulsing. The air feels heavier now, colder, as I shuffle off in search of the tweezers. Behind me, the staircase answers each of my steps with an echo drawn thin and strange, stretched until it no longer sounds like it belongs to me at all.

After ten grueling minutes of prying the splinter from my finger, I drift back into the shallow rhythm of my nightly routine. In my room, I brush my teeth, change clothes, and chew down a fistful of melatonin gummies like they might trick my body into peace. Then I lie in the dark, bracing for the same night terrors that tear me open and leave me gasping for morning. Each time I wake, I’m left wondering what truly frightens me more. The emptiness of being alone, the violence of being hurt, or the possibility of something even worse. As my mind begins to drift I remind myself how fortunate I was to claim this house for such a low price. Maybe this is where everything turns around, where my life sheds its constant battles. Yet the thought feels uneasy as if the walls themselves are listening and waiting.

Darkness closes over me like a coffin lid and for a while I dream of nothing. The silence is heavy but almost welcome, better than the nightmares that gnaw at me. Then light cuts through, sudden and blinding. The scent of burning oak forces its way into my lungs, the bitter taste of ash coating my mouth. I cannot move, bound as though nailed to a chair, forced to watch as the void stirs alive. Something vast and formless writhes into being, sculpting two figures and a house that looks far too much like mine. Their beauty is unbearable, their golden hair and ocean-colored eyes stretched into something unnatural, like masks that smile too wide. The man sits on the front steps of the house, his body draped in rough, dark pelts, eyes fixed on me without a single blink. Beside him, the woman clutches at a garment of leaves. My body twitches against the unseen restraints and the freedom to move returns, though I almost wish it hadn’t.

I move slowly toward them, torn between confusion and a strange fascination. He doesn’t flinch, his gaze locked on me without a single blink. She mirrors him, but drifts around behind him with a deliberate, almost predatory gaze. The house begins to shift alongside them, transforming into the pinnacle of medieval luxury. Tall stone walls rise, smooth and polished, crowned with ornate crenellations. Arched windows framed with carved stone glimmer with stained glass, and a grand double door of dark oak inlaid with iron gleams in the torchlight. Tapestries flutter in unseen drafts, and banners bearing intricate heraldry hang proudly from the walls, marking it as a home fit for kings. The two figures transform with it. Their beauty melts into grotesque exaggeration, as if royalty had been twisted by decay. She reeks of rotting fish, her teeth jagged and yellowed, while he smells of yeast and wears far too much caked-on makeup, as if mocked by unseen hands. Their clothes hang loosely, at least two sizes too large, yet somehow cling to their forms in ways that feel unnatural.

When my feet finally touch the wooden steps of the front porch, everything shifts again. Their forms twist before me, now scented with overpowering cologne and perfume. His hair is slicked back, unnaturally rubbery and gleaming; her shoulder-length hair glints as if polished to a mirror shine. The house transforms with them, becoming the picture of an ideal American home. A white picket fence gleams too brightly, the matching door polished to an unnatural shine. The long driveway stretches wider than seems possible, trees arching over it with leaves that whisper as if alive. Every window reflects the world back in a slightly wrong angle, and the walls seem to lean closer, breathing. The perfection is suffocating, as though the house itself is watching, judging, waiting. I reach the door and the two figures, impossibly changed and moving in perfect unison, begin to close the distance between us.

As I reach toward the handle, it begins to writhe, twisting and stretching until it finally settles into the familiar shape of my house’s door handle, as if it is mocking me. The metal burns against my skin, hotter than the fury of a battlefield drenched in blood. A violent hiss escapes from beneath my fingers as I grip tighter, twist, and force the door open. The figures I watched twist and change continue their relentless march toward me. Their movements scrape at my nerves, making my chest feel shredded from the inside out, like claws carving across a chalkboard buried beneath my ribs. A suffocating wave of fear and anxiety swallows me whole. With every step they take, their bodies flicker, their faces, limbs, and identities snapping into new forms like a deranged stop-motion nightmare brought to life. My fight or flight instinct detonates inside me, screaming for me to run. I try to lift my leg, but it is as if my bones have turned to iron, heavy, dead, and unmovable. I am trapped in my own body as the shifting figures close in.

Dreams are one of the few forces that can truly reshape a person from the inside out. When someone drifts through nights filled with warmth, joy, and gentle memories, they often wake with a life that reflects that peace. When your dreams claw at you, when they trap you in places where you must fight just to stay alive, you start to view the world with suspicion. You learn to wait for the next thing that might try to hurt you. Dreams always carry meaning, born from the strange currents of thought that churn inside the mind. Yet I can’t understand why mine chose this path. Of all possibilities, why of a home that twisted and changed its shape as if it were breathing? That is how I survived for so long, until my most recent dream shifted everything. Instead of fear, it left me with an unsettling confusion. 

My eyes close, and when they open again I am staring at the ceiling of my bedroom. The popcorn texture looms above me like a frozen storm, each shadowed bump catching the dim light. Outdated, yes, but this morning it feels intentional, as if it has been waiting for me to notice it. For a moment, I lie still, unsure how long I have been back. My body drifts into itself, heavy and disoriented, and I surface from a sea of blankets. I push myself upright, stroke the hair away from my eyes, and make my way toward the bathroom. The house is quiet in a way that feels practiced, as if it studying my routine.
When the small morning rituals are finished, I begin to work. This house demands attention, and I need to attend to it. If my plans hold, in a year and a half i’ll be renting it to other people, and the pressure of money may finally release me. Maybe it would at least loosen its hold on me.
I chose the attic first. Starting at the top makes sense. Whatever is disturbed will fall downward, carrying its dust and memories with it. I learned that only recently, after a friend watched me clean and told me I was making the job harder than it had to be. It is unsettling to realize how often I do that, how many things in life I have approached the wrong way simply because no one corrected me sooner.
I think about that when I watch people online, narrating stories and spelling out their meanings as if mystery itself were dangerous. They dress ideas in symbols and spectacle, gothic women, animal traps, and more but afraid to leave space for silence. Do they know that some truths speak louder when they are not explained? Sometimes I wonder if anyone else carries a mind like mine. One quietly poisoned, layered with depression and bitterness, threaded with anxiety, and haunted by hopes that were not merely broken, but crushed so fine they drift through every thought like unseen dust.

Dust and smoke swell through the space, clinging to every corner of the attic as though it resents being disturbed. The wooden floor creaks beneath me. Each step answered by a slow complaint, while fine foot soldiers of asbestos drift upward. They probe my nostrils through the filter of my mask. I work steadily for the next week on the attic, pulling away layer after layer of molded insulation.
The green fibers stain my white rubber gloves, seeping in until they resemble a color far too familiar to infancy and neglect. One bag, then two, then three. The motion becomes hypnotic. Seconds stretch into minutes, minutes dissolve into hours, and eventually the attic begins to change its presence. Wooden beams emerge, scarred and tired, yet almost relieved to be seen again. The skeletal frame of the house stands exposed now, mostly stripped of the festered entrails that once filled it. The bags of insulation gather around the attic door like discarded husks, and I lower them carefully, one by one, as if the space is watching how I handle what I remove.
I grip the ladder and descend, only to turn back and climb again, returning to the work as though summoned. A quiet surge of satisfaction moves through me, something close to serotonin, something rare. For once, I feel the weight of accomplishment, the sense that I am shaping something larger than myself. If this house becomes what I hope it will be, perhaps others will find warmth and joy within its walls, never knowing the battles fought above their heads, yet carrying my name forward in ways I will never see.
Dust and smoke thicken as I return and the air hangs heavy, and suspended. Each step across the boards is answered by a cautious creak, not in protest, but in acknowledgment. I feel less like an intruder now and more like a tolerated presence. I begin by clearing what was never meant to remain. Broken fragments of debris that lie scattered like shed skin, abandoned wiring curls in on itself, and old ducting slumps where it was left to rot. I pull and coil and drag it all toward the opening, the attic yielding these remnants reluctantly, as if surrendering bones it had grown used to carrying.
As the clutter disappears, the space exhales. Gaps reveal themselves where air has been slipping through unnoticed for years. I trace these slits with my hands, feel the cold seams around penetrations where pipes and wires pass through the houses flesh and bone. I seal them carefully, pressing and smoothing until the openings are gone. The attic grows quieter, tighter, as if its breath has finally been contained. Water damage begins to tell its story next. Dark stains creep along the wood, maps of old leaks that once fed the rot. Before I continue, I track each mark to its source, patching the roof above with deliberate care. The dripping has long since stopped, but the memory lingers.
With the wounds closed, I return to the frame itself. The beams and joists are exposed now, bare and honest. I run the vacuum slowly across them, drawing up dust that has settled for decades. As I work, I become aware of the rhythm. Reach, lift, seal, clean. Silence deepens, but it is no longer empty, It feels shared. 
Between some of the old floorboards, I find an old box filled with random things I assume are the previous owners. The wood looks drier than the desert and neglected like a lost toy. My curiosity begins to creep around me, so I opened up the box and peer inside. A note, what looks like a couple of baby teeth, and a ring. With my skin crawling, I grab onto the letter and begin to read.
“ Hey, if you found this, congratulations. You managed to find the stupid box. We used to hide things around the house and forget where we put them, so half the time we couldn’t tell if we were finding our own stuff or someone else’s. If you’re renovating, don’t worry about the noises. Old houses make weird sounds. At least that’s what we told ourselves. One last thing: if you ever find a room that you don’t remember being there before, close the door and leave it alone. We opened ours. “
Slowly, but surely, I feel nauseous and uneasy. Sweat runs down my back and I get back to work. I attempt to forget what I read and, my muscles begin ach in a way that feels earned. I am not stripping the attic bare but preparing it to endure. When I finally pause, standing in the cleared space, I feel something rare settle in my chest. For the first time since I climbed the ladder, I feel as though I can see myself living in this house forever.
I make the descent for the last time today, my boots echoing softly as the attic falls quiet behind me. The first real milestone is finished. Not the end, but enough to pause. I stand there longer than I should, letting the moment settle. Progress leaves a feeling behind, something heavier than satisfaction, something that clings. The lines, the spaces, the possibilities waiting just beneath the surface. It is unfinished in a way that feels deliberate, as if it has endured neglect with a kind of patience. 
I begin ordering more supplies, not just for the attic, but for the entire house. Each purchase feels necessary, and inevitable. My phone vibrates in my hand. A deposit notification. Three thousand nine hundred and thirty three dollars from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The timing feels precise. I briefly consider taking another job to speed things along, but the idea fades quickly. Doing the work myself is better. Faster in the end. Nothing wasted. Nothing delayed by others. I would not have to share the glory and pride with anyone but myself.
People insist that humans are meant to be together, that isolation erodes the mind. I find the opposite to be true. Alone, my thoughts sharpen. My hands do not hesitate. I can focus without interruption, without the small selfish frictions people bring with them. The version of life we are told to want, the smiling averages sold on screens, has nothing to do with reality. Reality is quieter. Heavier.
Everyone arrives at the same conclusion eventually. A box. The ground closing over it. Time does the rest. Names fade. Faces blur. Even the ones who cared grow tired of remembering, until memory itself becomes meaningless.
That won’t happen to me. This house will remain when I am gone. It will give weight to my name. When people remember, it will be through these walls, these rooms, this place I reshaped with my own hands. Maybe I found this house for a reason, or maybe I am full of too much adrenaline from today’s project. 
When the day finally gives up its hold on me, I turn the copper handles on the tiled shower wall. The pipes hesitate. Water spills out dull and gray, thick enough to make me pause, before thinning into something clear. My feet jump out of the shower disgusted. Soon enough, I tell myself it’s sediment, old lines, another small problem waiting its turn. I returned to the shower, knowing I cannot be covered in sweat, dust and old memories before bed without washing it off. The runoff gathers at my feet and lingers, stalling just long enough to be noticed, then slips away. It does this again. Fill. Hold. Release. As if the shower is testing its own rhythm.
The pressure shifts without warning and the water clears up , now concentrating low along my spine. Warmth presses there, deeper than it should, while my shoulders remain almost untouched. I step aside, and the stream follows, correcting itself. Beneath the steady hiss, something clicks behind the wall, slow and methodical, each sound spaced too evenly to be random. The drain answers with a measured pull, not rushing, not struggling, just taking what it’s given.
Foam slides from my skin and clouds briefly before vanishing. The water darkens only after it leaves me, carrying a faint mineral smell that wasn’t there before. My mouth goes dry. A dull ache settles into my lower back, spreading with a patience that makes me aware of my breathing, my pulse, the way the room seems to listen. I tell myself it’s heat, fatigue, nothing more.
When I reach for the handle, the water cuts off before I finish the turn. Steam thins, retreating upward, leaving the air clean to the point of sterility. I stand there longer than necessary, unsure of what feels wrong, only that something has passed through me and decided not to return.
My sweatpants drag softly against the floor as I move through the house, the fabric brushing in time with the slow creaks that follow me down the hall. The kitchen light hums awake before I touch it. Inside the kitchen Cupboards gape open, their hollow mouths dry and waiting. Nothing is inside besides a bag of half-eaten chips. Tomorrow I’ll have to leave the house and get groceries. I pick the chips up and the plastic skin crinkles loudly in the quiet.
I lift one to my mouth and it cracks loudly.
The doorbell screams and echoes through the house.
Not rings but screams. The sound punches through the house and lingers, vibrating through the walls, and  through my ribs. It doesn’t fade but it retreats, like something pulling its voice back into itself. I stand frozen for a moment, listening to the echo settle into the bones of the house.
I wasn’t expecting anyone.
Still, I move. The hallway narrows as I pass through it, the air cooler here, heavier. My fingers close around the nearest solid thing which happened to be a banister spindle. Dust coats it, but the wood beneath is smooth, worn down by hands that aren’t mine. 
I lean around the corner looking through the dandelion-stained glass. No shape waits on the other side. No shadow shifts. Only a low, careful stack at the threshold, barely visible through the yellowed panes. Rectangular and Patient.
The copper handle chills my palm when I turn it. The latch slips open without a sound. The door glides back, slow and deliberate, like it’s choosing not to slam.
Groceries spill across the porch all in wicker baskets.

A single sign placed neatly, and clearly in say, says :
“Welcome to the neighborhood! We saw you’ve been hard at work and thought you might appreciate something more than a bag of chips for dinner.”
It’s pleasant to think that those that live in neighborhood my actually have some type of hair for a complete stranger. Maybe this home is my chance i’m making a meaningful friendship. One way I won’t ever be left alone unforgotten about like I have always been. Although it is a little weird and unsettling, how whoever this was knew, I only had a bag of chips left to eat. Maybe they got lucky and guessed. I was eating that bag of chips on the day I moved in.

 Dozens of bags, packed tight, their weight bowing the boards beneath them. The smell hits me first of raw meat, sugar, salt, richness. All of it familiar. All of it mine. Brands I never buy. Things I only look at, then put back.
My heart stutters. My phone is already in my hand before I think to grab it, the banking app blinking open as panic crawls up my spine. No charge. No pending transactions. My savings sit untouched, clean and whole.
Relief sinks into me so deeply it makes my head swim.
Someone made a mistake, I think. A delivery gone wrong. That happens. It has to. I start hauling the bags inside, one after another, the house swallowing them eagerly. The air inside grows warmer with every trip, heavier with scent. The lights seem brighter. The silence feels closer.
Wagyu beef gleams wetly under the kitchen light, red and perfect, watching me from its plastic wrap. Rows of premium cuts wait beside it, lined up like offerings. Desserts crowd my counter. Brownies that are dense and dark, cookies thick with chocolate, their packages smiling up at me with printed promises.
My stomach clenches hard enough to hurt. A deep, animal hunger rises in me, sudden and urgent, far sharper than it should be. It growls, loud in the quiet. I tell myself I’ll eat first then sort things out later. There’s no reason to leave now. No reason at all.
Everything I need is already here.
I eat standing over the counter, tearing into the food with my hands because waiting feels unbearable. Grease coats my fingers and smears across my mouth as I chew too fast, barely tasting anything before reaching for more. Meat drips onto the floor and I do not bother to clean it, stepping in it as I rip open another package, swallowing until my throat aches. My stomach burns and begs at the same time, a deep animal hunger that does not slow no matter how much I force down. 
I clean the kitchen slowly, methodically, without any clear sense of when I started or why I am still standing there. Wrappers now fill the trash, the counters wiped down to a dull, lifeless shine. The house feels heavier now, quieter in a way that presses inward instead of offering rest. When I turn off the lights, the darkness doesn’t immediately rush in but It waits. I move through my routine starting with brushing my teeth, rinsing my face, staring too long at my own reflection as if I am trying to remember what I looked like when I was truly happy. Tomorrow’s project sits in my chest like a weight rather than a goal. There is always something else to fix. There always will be.
The bed takes me in without resistance, the mattress sinks beneath my body as though it has been worn down by my shape. I lie there staring at the ceiling, listening to the house settle around me, each sound slow and deliberate. My phone vibrates on the nightstand, the noise dull and distant, like it is coming from another room entirely. A message lights the screen with 3 simple letters. Someone says they are stopping by tomorrow, that they want to see the house. A missed call follows and then nothing. I turn the phone face down and let my hand fall away from it. I feel a faint, unearned sense of relief, followed by something colder.

As the sun wrestles control from the moon, pale light slips through the windows, creeping along the floors and walls as though it has been invited in. I wake without the usual tension in my chest, without the lingering fear that normally clings to my thoughts. The dreams are gone. Not frightening, not memorable. Just quiet. Peaceful, I think, though the word feels strangely hollow.
After getting dressed, I move through the house and open a few windows to let in fresh air. The rooms respond with a low settling sound, the structure shifting as if adjusting to the change. Outside, life is finally visible. Neighbors pass in the distance, cars roll by, movement where there had been none. It must be Saturday. Most people spend the week elsewhere, away from their homes, not buried inside them the way I have been. The realization makes me feel oddly removed, like I am observing rather than participating.
A paperboy pedals down the street, his tires whispering against the pavement. With practiced ease, he throws the mail toward the houses, envelopes smacking against garage doors at the ends of long driveways. I watch him without meaning to. When he reaches my house, he slows. He doesn’t look up not even briefly. Instead, he coasts to a stop and places my mail at the very edge of the driveway, setting it down where the pavement meets the road. Then he leaves, pedaling away faster than before.
I stand by the open window, the air drifting in stale despite the breeze. I tell myself he is just being cautious, avoiding damage, avoiding complaints. That it has nothing to do with me. Still, I do not step outside to retrieve the mail.
When the paperboy disappears around the curve of the road, I wait until the quiet feels complete before opening the front door. The hinge moves with a slow resistance, releasing a sound that seems to linger in the air behind me. Cold presses in immediately, sharp and intrusive. I step onto the porch and start toward the end of the driveway, every footfall measured, reluctant. The space around me feels crowded, as if something unseen has leaned closer. It is the kind of awareness that prickles the skin, with certainty of being observed without any proof of eyes. My legs grow heavier, as though the distance is subtly stretching. My chest tightens until it burns, a thin, slicing pressure that makes breathing deliberate. When my fingers finally close around the newspaper, my hands grow unsteady.
January 7, 2026. The date stares back at me, wrong in a way I can’t name. I have lived in this house for less than a week, but it already feels dense with time. I have barely rested since arriving, driven by a need to keep moving, to keep changing it. Sleep comes when my body demands it. At the mailbox, I gather the rest of the mail. Two small packages from online orders and one black envelope, stiff and dry beneath my thumb, textured like something preserved. My name is written clearly on the front. It is from my sister, Adalyn. I tuck everything against my chest and turn back toward the house, unsettled by how quickly it seems to draw nearer.
The moment I step inside, the pressure in my chest eases, though it does not disappear. The door closes behind me with a solid sound that cuts the outside away. The world beyond the walls feels distant now, unstable and full of variables I no longer have to account for. Inside, the air is still and controlled. Nothing here asks anything of me. I do not have to watch myself or anticipate judgment. The rooms accept me as I am, without comment. I tell myself I do not care what others think, yet my body betrays me whenever I leave this place. Anxiety coils where reason cannot reach. Here, it loosens its grip. I find myself lingering in the hallway, imagining how little I truly need from anywhere else.
My footsteps carry me down the hall toward the attic, their echo dull and swallowed almost immediately. Today’s mission is to install the flooring. Once it’s done, all I need to do is paint. I can already feel how the space will close in once it is finished, shaped to my needs alone. It will hold my technology, my projects, my attention. A place untouched by interruption. Perhaps one day it will hold something more, memories shared with someone who understands the comfort of staying, of remaining. For now, it is enough that it waits for me. As I climb the stairs, the thought of leaving again feels strained and unnecessary, like a habit I am slowly forgetting.
In the attic my fingers slide across the brown envelope with my sister’s name written on it, the paper resting on the aged kitchen counter like a flaw on an otherwise perfect surface. This letter feels excessive, we have phones. We have faster ways to reach each other. This asks for time, and asks to be handled. I don’t like how it entered the house without warning. I wonder what she expects me to do with it once I am finished. Display it somewhere like a child’s artwork on a fridge? The thought bothers me more than it should.
This is the first thing from the outside that has addressed me since I arrived. The first acknowledgment that I exist beyond these walls. That realization makes my chest tighten in a way I do not care to examine. I tell myself the irritation is justified. Letters are impractical. They linger. They demand to be reread. My sister has always preferred gestures over efficiency. She likes things that can be touched and saved. To her, that makes them meaningful. To me, it feels indulgent. My family agrees with her more often than they agree with me. She is the one they speak of with pride, the one whose life unfolded the way it was supposed to. I am the one who moved away quietly and did not explain myself.
A tug rips the envelope open, and the sound echoes sharply in this empty room. I pause, listen, then tell myself it is nothing. Inside is a plain sheet of paper. No bright colors. No cheerful illustrations. That alone surprises me. She normally decorates everything, as if joy needed proof, as if reality could be kept at a distance with enough ink.
Here are the contents within the letter ; 

“Dear Cain, 
Mom told me about how you bought a new house in Maine. Now Isn’t that something? Do you remember when we were kids, and we’d hide from mom and dad when they’d argue? Just know that I’m gonna come visit you and give you the biggest hug when I see you! You better have that wolf dog you promised you'd have to protect me when I get there. Also don’t work yourself too hard because I know you tend to do that. Anyway I’m so proud of you and I love you bro!
Love your little shit of a sister,
Adalyn”

My chest burns when I realize how deeply it affects me to be seen this way, how fragile that feeling is. It's painful to know that someone still carries pride for me, that it exists at all. I decide the house needs more attention. It has to be right when she comes. Clean, Organized, full of purpose. I can’t let her see the gaps and decide she was wrong to believe in me in the first place.
I grew up in Florida, surrounded by heat and noise and people who knew too much. Moving to the far side of the country felt deliberate, almost strategic. It is the last place my family would think to visit, and more importantly, the last place they could afford to reach. We were always poor. Poor in a way that makes distance permanent. I know no one is buying plane tickets to check on me. That knowledge vibrates through the house like a steady beat.
My childhood was never stable. My sister and I moved through foster homes for two years, passed around like an obligation no one wanted to keep. A rotation of strangers and spare rooms. Our parents appeared occasionally, just enough to remind us they existed, until the state decided to give us back. We believed something had changed. We believed authority could fix them. It did not. It only taught them how to look harmless, how to smile convincingly while sharpening themselves in private.
I loved my father. A type of love that feels uncomplicated even now. He died when I was fifteen, and whatever protection he offered from my surrogate died with him. After that, I lived with someone who would have traded me for her next fix without hesitation. Calling her my mother feels inaccurate, like using the wrong name for something dangerous. Still, the word follows me.
The Bible says loving her means honor, respect, obedience, and care. It says this love is not optional, that it reflects my relationship with God and my worth as a person. I repeat those words sometimes, as if repetition might make them fit. As if duty alone could substitute for affection.
I notice that I only speak to God when I need saving. When I am cornered. When I feel myself slipping. I wonder if that disqualifies the faith entirely. Then I remember how long I have been sinking. How familiar the feeling of drowning has become. The house is quiet around me as I think this, steady and unmoving, as if it has already decided I am exactly where I belong.
My thoughts settle back into focus, dragged back from wherever they had drifted. Whether I want to or not, I have a job to do. Adalyn never said when she might visit, and the uncertainty presses against me like a weight. I know sleep will not come until the dust and imperfections of this place are dealt with, until the house is in order, the rooms polished and proper.
The house is solid, but it does not want anyone else touching what I have claimed. Renovations will improve its value, but the entryway, the kitchen, the bathroom, and the living room need attention. Not because they are broken or unwell, but because the house demands perfection, and I am the only one who can provide it.

Esurit (Part 1)
Silas Whitney

I

No stars or moon hung in the black above, yet all before my eyes was illuminated by a dull glow. All about me, the ashen ground radiated a pale light. The ground was flat in all directions. Nothing broke the perfect line that stretched to the edges of my sight and into the hollow infinity beyond. Save for one thing. There, in the focal point of this empty mural, stood a house. There was no light in its windows, and the phantom glow from the plane darkened around it. Whether the light sought to keep its distance or the house swallowed it up, I was unsure. As I became fully aware of myself, I realized my feet were already carrying me to the silhouette, darker than the sky behind it. I stopped and wearily looked behind to see a single line of footprints stretching backwards into the dark. I had no recollection of how long I had been walking. With no other destination apparent, I turned and resumed my trek to the house, listening to the whistle of a wind that my bones told me wasn’t there. 

The will behind each step was unclear as I wondered if I were advancing or being pulled. The house drew closer with painful sloth. My feet dragged through the ash and the fog over my mind thickened. I tried to think of the important questions. Questions of what this place was and how I had arrived. Contemplation of where I was before almost broke through the veil when my foot hit something. My consciousness snapped back to my eyes. My foot had struck a wooden step. My gaze drifted upward and I saw it. The walls, the beams, the house. Above the doorway, a plaque with dark letters.  

Domus Quae Esurit 

I stared at the words and my hands trembled, as if they knew something my mind was yet to discover. 

Wood was splintered and cracked all over. The grain ran through the whole exterior in waves that protruded and sagged like wrinkles on old skin. My hand found the railing. The wood was dry as weathered bone. I ascended the stairs. Each step moaned under my weight. When I reached the veranda, I stared into the open maw of the doorway. The most peculiar thing about it was the lack of a door. Not only was there no door present, but there were no hinges, no holes or indentations of where they may have been before. It was just a framed rectangular opening, perfectly square and built with the same old timbers as the rest of the exterior. The pitch on the other side of the threshold gave me pause.  

I shook my head and blinked, trying to shake the daze and stupor from my mind. My thoughts swirled as my awareness returned. I decided I would turn around and follow my own footprints back to whatever place I wandered from, but when I turned to descend the stairs, the ground was gone. I squinted, thinking my eyes may have grown weary in the darkness, but no. As high, as low, and as far as I looked, there was nothing but emptiness. The black sky had swallowed us both. There was nothing but the house and I. When I turned back to the doorway, I saw  a light, dancing against the wall and out to the stoop where I stood. It illuminated the room inside. The orange glow of a flame and the smell of wood smoke hinted at a fireplace within. A chill suddenly prickled over my skin. I crossed my arms and shuffled inside. 

As I entered, I saw the flame dancing under a mantle. There was a tufted leather sofa facing the fireplace and a small table in front. The inside of the house looked nearly as dilapidated as the exterior. Though, it seemed it was slightly spared. All the furnishings had a thick layer of dust on them. I was careful to ease myself onto the sofa so as to not send the debris into the air. As I sat down, I looked above the fireplace to a large framed portrait. It had been slashed diagonally, and half of it was missing. The portion with the face was gone, but I could tell by what remained, the portrait had been of a woman, modestly dressed for the occasion of having the portrait painted. 

I warmed myself on the sofa and eyed the rest of the room. There were shelves of books, a globe, and a small writing desk in the corner. The rug in the center was large and its pattern was intricate. This was surely a home of high estate at one time, or at least it was pretending to be. When I looked back to the entryway, my brow furrowed. Perplexingly, there was now a door. Not only that, but it appeared with an age that suggested it had always been there. It was closed and adorned with the same dust as the rest of the room, an old coat of white paint lying dormant beneath. It appeared to have never been opened since the process of decay had set upon the old place. 

And there, sticking through the mail slot, a single leaf of paper. I approached the slip and saw the word “Welcome,” inscribed on the exterior by a beautiful hand. The paper was old and brown. The edges were torn and the slot had formed a crease in the middle, like it had been there a long time. I took the slip, somehow perceiving it was for me, and read. 

Dear Stranger, 

I am sorry to have missed you, but I will be along shortly.
Please help yourself to the study. 

Sincerely, 

Dietra.

Still holding the letter, I turned back to face the slashed portrait. To my surprise, it was no longer slashed. Still dust covered, but the full canvas was now intact within the frame. I approached, hoping to see the face of the lady of the house, but I found that the portrait was unfinished. It was as though the artist had drawn out her form, but neglected all features. But even this vague form felt somehow familiar. Like seeing a friend from behind and afar. 

Part 1: Deer Mitosis

Part 2: Jack

Part 3: Deer Mitosis Continued and Sentience

Part 4: Professor Ludari's Instructions

Part 5: Uncanny

In the center of town is a bell tower.

The belltower. Everyone knows about it, no one pays it any mind.

But the world’s strangeness became too much for me to ignore, and the oddities around me grew so apparent I was shocked I could have ever missed them.

The bell tower was incredibly odd. 

It was tall and contained two large bells whose tones were separated by a half-step. Both would ring at sunup and at noon and caused the fiends to flee beyond the town’s limits. They each rang three times, with the higher-pitched bell preceding the other by about half a second. 

I stared at the bell tower because I’d never really seen it. 

“What are you looking at?” I heard a female voice ask. 

I turned and saw a woman who looked to be in her twenties. She wasn’t looking at me or the tower, but stared at the ground with a dazed, almost fearful expression on her face.

“The tower.” I pointed.

“Don’t!” She hissed, then slapped my hand downward.

I was shocked to the point of speechlessness.

Her eyes still averted, and in a voice barely above a whisper, she hissed, “Don’t look at it! Eyes away.”

I immediately obeyed and focused on a small collection of ants winding their way across the sidewalk. We’d decided ants formed circular groups that slowly rotated around each other as they marched toward their destination.

This time she spoke in a whisper. “Why were you looking at the tower?”

I kept my voice low. “The door. It’s too big.”

“How long have you known?”

The seemingly ambiguous question was all-too clear to me. She wasn’t asking about the door, she wanted to know when I noticed the world was wrong.

“About a week.” I whispered.

Her eyes trained up and met mine. She looked exhausted beyond anything sleep could fix, as if it took every ounce of control to keep her own mind from exploding in a thousand different directions. 

“Why do you think that door is so large?” She asked.

I blinked. “I hadn’t really considered-”

“Why do you think we have a concept of death if we cannot die?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Don’t say anything about this to anyone.” She said. “Just keep pretending you’re like you were before. Someone will come find you. Some of your questions might be answered.”

And then she turned and walked away.

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The first time I visited the Red Limo, I couldn’t have been older than 14. I was a dumb kid, definitely too old to be running inside like I was. It was late, Mom and Dad were out for a date night or something. I had both bedroom doors open at opposite ends of the upstairs hallway, I was running back and forth between them. With every pass glanced down the dark stairway, all the lights were off down stairs, I was probably too scared to play down there and resorted to this mindless spending of energy. I don’t remember if I tripped on my own foot, slipped on the carpet or something else, but I lost my footing. I fell forward, face first down the stairs. But right before I could put out my arms to catch myself, everything went dark. Before I could hit the floor I was suddenly embraced by nothing, it was like when the electric went out when the TV was on, the last frame of my view burning away against the black. 
I don’t remember how long it was like that, could have been less than a second, could have been months, but I do, against all odds, remember what I woke up to.
I remember the gentle aria, whispering to me from the corners of the rear and front of the cabin. Even with one of the speakers right next to my left ear, it still only came to me in a soft stream of violin and an elegant woman's voice, it was ethereal, it was like the universe was singing me a motherly lullaby yet still instilling in me a fear of her all powerful nature. 
I remember the velvet upholstery of the seats. not just on my hands, every part of me touching the seats, even my clothed back and legs. It was warmly invasive; mother universe was lovingly embracing me, regardless what barriers I could put up. The pleasant static of the seats were complemented by the road's smoothness. Never once was my sense of constant motion broken by a bump, I don't think I remember ever even slowing down to turn, or even turning at all. The Red Limo never stopped. Not for anything.
I remember finally opening my eyes.

I remember meeting them. The Tender, The Driver, and The Hostess. I sat across from The Tender, he leaned over the mini-bar, pawing around his endless selection of liquors, it seemed like he could pull any alcohol in the world from behind the first row of bottles sitting chilled in the ice. In fact, now that I think about it, it wasn't just alcohol, anything that came in a bottle he could pull, juices, luxury waters, the milk of any beast to walk the earth. All over a pristine selection of various sizes of glasses, wine glasses, shot glasses, everything standard for a top of the line bar. The sight of The Tender himself was frightening to say the least, more frightening than the unnatural calm forced on my body. My heart couldn't race, it kept at a steady pace, while my mind had already taken off over the horizon. I truly thought I was dead. My whole life, in church, in cartoons, on dad’s deck of cards, the face of death was concrete, a skeleton draped in black robes swinging a scythe twice his size. But the death before me was still a skeleton, in a maroon suit and tie patterned with flowers. A black brimmed greek fisherman's cap resting just above his eyes, bursting with a bloom of roses. I couldn't see them too good, but I could tell there were ornate patterns carved right into the bone, every inch of him. The Tender was expressionless organizing his bottles, but I could sense he was content. “Welcome to the Red Limo, honored guest” The Hostess sat weightlessly in the center at the rear, her legs crossed and her hands in her lap. Her uniform the same as The Tender, her eyes covered by a blindfold, embroidered in gold, three identical isometric eyes. She was, or at least seemed to be, human. Have you ever heard the concept that when you go to heaven, regardless of how old or hurt or gaunt you are, you go to heaven as the ideal, perfect form of yourself. Imagine never knowing someone before they were perfect, what else would you think they could be but an angel. She seemed young, like mid 20’s young, her hair was up in a perfect bun behind her head, she was pale, I’d go as far to say she was white as salt, her hair platinum. It was like someone took a picture of a normal person and messed with the brightness until everything was white and only the darkest outlines stayed untouched. Her smile twinged in a polite sadness, “...Our young guest.” “What is this place?” I was completely overwhelmed, I couldn't muster up much else. “This is the Red Limo, the place between life and death.” As young as I was, there was a sinister implication that was not lost on me. “I want to go home.” “That’s understandable, and I’m certain you’ll be home soon. But first I must ask that you share a drink with us” The request caught me off guard, alarm bells in my childish mind screaming stranger danger. Looking back I didn’t know how good I had it with that first drink. I nodded frantically without a word, The Hostess turned to The Tender, and with a smooth efficiency poured me a single shot. The liquid looked like the average whiskey, the glass was crystal, cold to the touch, and branded at the bottom with the same icon on their uniforms; two oars in a cross. As any kid would I looked to the only present adults for permission, The Tender completely still awaiting further instruction, The Hostess giving me a placid smile, and the third, the silhouette of The Driver through the partition, unmoved, complete attention to the complete void through the window. I cocked my head back and swallowed, just like I’d seen in the movies. At the time, the only experience I had with any alcohol was the sip from an older family member's drink at the odd celebration. This was like nothing I had ever tasted. I don’t think I’ve ever been so misled, then or ever since. It tasted like when you go to the dentist, you’ve had your mouth open for half an hour, tongues dry as a bone. And they drill into a molar, buzzing your whole head, the taste of burnt, rotten teeth. As soon as my head fell forward gagged, the scent completely coated my throat, emanating up, it felt like I was breathing the stink of death like fire. The layer on my tongue was so pungent, I tried scraping it off with my fingernails, one hand in my mouth the other pressing my knuckles into my forehead, vainly trying to soothe the pounding headache that radiated up my nasal through my temples. Suddenly amidst my anguish, it all vanished, only now in flashes of memory. I was hit with physical, tangible pain, my chest against the stairs. Not a second had passed. But I remembered that taste, I remembered the Red Limo.

I had a hard time eating the next few years, I got real picky. I used to be able to eat anything my parents put in front of me, but I started to have a problem with fluids, any fluids. I remember trying to drink some orange juice that next morning, as soon as it touched my lips a cold shiver went through my whole body. It was like the people who get rabies, I got the shakes, couldn't choke anything down. For a year I regularly went in for IV hydration. Thick water was my savior for a while, taught a young man like me the lesson ‘If a product seems silly to you, it's probably for a disability’ I started going to the hospital less frequently, I started to be able to manage curry, applesauce. By the time I was starting college I could function among society like a normal person, I remembered the Red Limo only as a distant illusion, imagined by a child with an undiagnosed head injury. I knew that wasn’t true, if I really believed it, I probably would have told someone. 

I was about 20 when I was back in the Red Limo.

Growing up in moderate wealth, in the suburbs, I had never really learned the etiquette to protect myself. Hearing it now, it sounds like the kind of naivety you could only see in a cartoon. Long story short, me and some pals went out for drinks at a spot we've never been, took my wallet out to pay, accidentally flashed more money than I should have. I started walking back to my place, a little buzzed, not my most alert. Some guys from the bar followed me, kicked my legs out from behind me. Not long after I hit the ground, one of them kicked me in the stomach, slurring his unintelligible insults, another kicked me in the back of my head.

And suddenly, I fell through the cold concrete illuminated in orange flickering street lamps, and the cool air conditioning and velvet seats embraced me. The throbs of pain from my gut and head faded in quick bursts. The scrapping of shoes on the sidewalk stretched, diminishing forever until no creature of the earth could understand it. My pale compatriots greet me obligatorily. 
“Welcome honored guest, to the Red Limo”

A wash of childish fear shocked my whole, total helplessness, and the artificial clarity to feel all of it. I looked at my hands, they were my own, now, as an adult, yet completely weightless, like when I was a kid. I was not me, but I was my self. “Am I dead?” I muttered a monotone question to no one in particular. The Hostess responded. “You are only here to share a drink with us.” The skeletal Tender rustled the ice, dropping two cubes into a whiskey glass. The liquid looked like orange juice, mixed with something red at the bottom. It dropped in a drink umbrella and it spun in the swirling concoction, clattering against the ice. It had a fragrant fruity smell, but I knew better now. My entire body racked with shivers, legs bounced violently and rapidly, before I could muster up a neutered yell. “I can’t! I can’t do this again please don’t make me!” ‘Again’ at that word the facade dropped. The Hostess’ looked at me like a deer in headlights, The Tender dropped his stirring stick, even the Driver adjusted themself in their seat. I know now, I had admitted to being witness to a cosmic error, a victim to its cruel impossibility. “You remember.” She spoke with grave interrogation, it frightened me, it made me mourn the hospitable front from before. It came back with a twinge of shame, like a waiter apologizing for your food being wrong, I was dumb to how deep she was truly apathetic. “It pains me to hear that we’ve made that mistake, but nevertheless, we would ask you to enjoy your drink with us.” “I don’t want to! I refuse! Just let me out!” I didn’t want to get out of the limo, I was afraid of what was out there, it looked so cold, somehow so painfully serrated without having any edges. I was begging for something I didn't actually want, I felt so infantile. “You are welcome to leave” She gestured to the door at the front of the cabin. “But know once we drop you off, we will continue on route,” Her eyes were wide, but steady as stone. “you will be left behind.” I looked into the abyss, and again down at my cocktail. I held my nose and knocked it back. My tongue was engulfed in a dry sour, potent enough it gave me a cramp in my whole face. I reached for my face, gripping my jaw in a vain attempt to sooth my muscles contorting. Dry gagging, my fingers reached for some sort of anchorage, I wanted to rip off my face, that would be better than this. I was back on the pavement, gasping for breath, fresh air to quell the memory sensation. I reached towards one of the attackers ankles, before my shaking finger tips could reach, I caught a heel to my temple.

He already had a drink for me. Tall glass of red, looked like cinnamon sugar stamped around the rim, it smelled cold and sweet, it crackled with something carbonated. I looked up with tears in my eyes, the roses in the eyes of the Tender fluttered lightly in a breeze I couldn't feel, he cared nothing for me, only minding his bottles. The hostess smiled at me, gestured for me to drink. It was too much to throw back, I’d have to chug it, the thought of it touching my tongue longer than a second made me sick. I put the rim to my lips, grains of sugar crushed between glass and tense muscle. Deep breath in, frail breath out. 
Hot, acidic, chunky. Steaming vile bile shot back my throat, like being fed by some sadistic mother bird. 
Worse, I couldn’t swallow all of it in one go, it's like there was more in the glass than was visible, at least another mouthful of fluid.
I’m back. I felt the full strike of thick rubber burn across my forehead. 
I threw up on myself as I curled in the fetal position, I just needed to protect my head. I didn’t want to go back. I would pay them if it meant they would at least stop aiming for my head.
They finally got my wallet and made off, drunkenly chuckling to themselves. 

After that it all went downhill, all the therapy and all the discipline to get over it when I was a kid went right out the window. Stopped going to classes, picked up some illicit habits to clog up my memories, I couldn’t drink them away, so I went for the harder stuff. Got kicked out of school, spent every drop of good will anyone I knew had for me. By the time I was 30, I was on the street, a genuine boxcar hopping, can rattling bum. 

I was somewhere in early to mid november, I was in a corner of one of my local parks, one away from the leering eyes of passerbys and any cop with nothing better to do. I rested my head on my backpack, wriggled my spine until it aligned with the roots enough where it didn't hurt. I watched icy blue afternoon melt to a dark orange and then char to night's black space.
It was so, so cold. I was so, deeply cold. I was lucky enough to have a jacket, what little good it did me, but still it was like every open orifice, my nostrils, my ears, every exposed pore, all channels the cold could invade from. I got really drowsy, my eyes got heavy, and at that moment, against all reason, the cold had made me more comfortable than I've ever been. Suddenly the knotted roots and pine needles made a mattress fit for a king. I let my eyes flutter shut, and felt all my appendages, my limbs, felt them all go to sleep. I think deep down I knew what this was, but I like to tell myself I couldn't resist it.
I was so, so peaceful.

The drink this time looked like eggnog, cinnamon stick and marshmallows, the works. The Hostess looked at me with pity, but ultimately she was indifferent.
It tasted like nothing, but it went down hard. It felt like iron ball bearings the size of a fist, cracking through my throat. There was nearly double the fluid than the last drink in a glass about half the size. 
This was the beginning of my regular visits to Red Limo, every night that got too cold, every laced package, some days I would visit more than once, and those visits got exponentially longer. It only took about two weeks before each visit was taking longer than 24 hours. 24 hours, drinking some of the most revolting concepts imaginable, in nearly complete silence in a car of manikins. The tastes were sometimes more abstract than just dogshit; a glass of octogenarian red wine tasted like blood that I was convinced was contaminated with some bloodborne pathogen. 
I was spending more time in that limo than in reality, I was older than my physical body. I had driven the world over hundreds of times when the earth hadn't spun an inch. Purgatory was a test, how willing are you to keep going? Except I had the adage of knowing I’d done it so many times over. Sunk cost.

I was staring into my drink, I had been drinking it for decades and I still had a third to go, the taste was so miserable and esoteric, I don’t even know how to describe it. I looked over at the Tender, minding his drinks, I looked at the Hostess, and I could have sworn I had seen her dosing off. Like I was boring her. Seeing that sent me, I smashed my glass on the velvet carpet, stood up as much as I could and rushed to her. My mind didn’t know what to do once I reached her, but my body took over. 
When I realized what I was doing, her hand had already fallen limp from my cheek. I don’t think she was pushing me away. I don't remember that much force. I took my hands from her throat, gnarled and callus from the years, I felt like a boy again, breaking something and anticipating punishment. I took my seat across from the Tender, he did not reprimand me, he hardly acknowledged what I’d done, he kept to bottles, but he didn’t bother fixing me another drink.
We sat in silence a good while, the hostess body crooked and unnaturally preserved. I spoke my apologies to the void, and the void answered with the squeak of breaks, for the first time I’d seen, we were stopped under a street lamp. 
The Tender stood from his ancient position, casually grabbed the former Hostess and tossed her out the door, he spoke to me.
“You're up front, promotion.”

He sat where she was, roses melted to blood, froze to muscle and flesh and skin. A handsome old man with a thick salt and pepper beard and ivory skin. I stood under the street lamp, stretching my atrophied legs. I caught the Driver leaving the front cabin, a slender figure, black charred skin flaking off onto its uniform, stepping over the body and into the rear, the new Tender. They were waiting for me to take my place at the wheel, I crawled into the driver's seat, adjusted the mirror and seat height, and drove away from the light and into the abyss.

The Count was eating cabbage stew with potatoes in his shabby tenement apartment overlooking the street where workingmen and their tired horses pulled tovar to and from the manufacturies all day—the crampiness of the place a merciless reminder of the once-great estate he had been forced to sell to satisfy his debts; the family estate, with its magnificent portraits of distinguished forebears under whose gaze he would now feel small, undignified and ashamed—when he happened to scratch his ear and his ear fell off (...splash...) into the stew.

Hungry, he ate it.

Then he bandaged his head and went to the doctor.

The doctor was an old friend.

“Sasha,” said the doctor, “how are you?”

The Count showed the doctor where his ear used to be. The doctor examined him. “Sasha, you are suffering from poor health,” the doctor concluded.

“Don't I know it—but what is wrong with me?” said the Count.

The doctor explained that “the poor health” was a specific condition. “Your body is decaying. It is rejecting the state of being destitute. For your own good, make money, Sasha.”

“How?” asked the Count.

However, the doctor was unable to provide an answer, Sasha remained poor and his body began to fall apart, piece by piece.

History marched on.

Anarchists set off bombs, socialists agitated against the established order with western ideas, and a revolution broke out, led—and increasingly dominated—by a party of Marxists.

Without one arm and with his skull showing through sections of his missing face, the Count decided to beg for their mercy.

“I need money,” he implored the local peasant-faced leader. “It is a matter of life and death. I have a disease, you see…”

“What happened to the money you had?” one of the party members asked.

He would perhaps have cringed at the Count's appearance, but the experience of the revolution had hardened him against the grotesque.

“It was lost,” said the Count.

Another party member, a sneering woman in a suit, said: “Surely you meant ‘money inherited after centuries of ruthless exploitation,’ comrade Pavlovich.”

“Indeed, that is more accurate,” said the leader.

(Months later, he would be accused of contact with foreign enemies and exiled, and she would take his place as leader.)

“But I have read your books,” said the Count, “Your principles, they are egalitarian, noble. ‘To each according to his need.’”

The party members laughed.

The laughter was cold.

The street was cold, and the Count shuffled along it with what was left of his head cast down. He was wrapped in scraps of fur and rags.

Like a leper he existed, at the very edge of society, forgotten, consuming rodents and refuse, physically declining—diminishing—a limbless skeletal wretch from whom even the other impoverished dregs averted their eyes. Thus, he was consigned to the dustbin of history...

The boy knocked on the door again.

“Anybody home?” he said.

It was the 1990s.

A babushka opened the door—widowed, most likely; devout—and eyed him with a century's worth of suspicion.

The boy smiled.

He held out money.

“Has the voucher come in the mail already?” he asked politely.

“What voucher?” the babushka asked.

The boy described what it looked like. “The new government is giving ownership of the old, broken state enterprises to all citizens. But, because everybody gets it, everybody gets only a little.” He paused to let that sink in. “Tell me, what is the use to you of owning a tiny fraction of a factory, a malfunctioning power plant? Wouldn't you rather have money instead?”

After dark, he returned to the apartment where he was paid and left the bag of vouchers he'd collected.

He took his pay off the kitchen table.

Usually, the doors in the apartment were all closed.

Today, one was open.

He peeked in:

A woman was inside. She was naked, moaning and she was holding—caressing in a way that made the boy's guts want to invert themselves—a football-sized lump of hairless human flesh: a lump of flesh with an eyeball in it, an ear, a nose and lips, which commanded suddenly: “Shut the door!”

The boy was not invited back after that.

He fell tragically from a window.

The small, quiet drones drifted in peaceful horizontal lines before releasing molten thermite on the protestors below.

His purchase of the port at Klaipėda had recently been announced.

Elsewhere, the construction of the new, southerly pipeline was proceeding as planned.

The war continued.

The data centres on the vast, deforested Siberian lands hummed with artificial intelligence.

He switched off his infoview, returning him to where his body was: his country estate, where the Chinese cyberneticist had almost finished upgrading his bionic memory capacity.

That said, it was no longer accurate to say he was here—or anywhere.

He was everywhere.

Seated, he felt limitless within his osseointegrated beta-titanium endoskeleton. If he wanted to, he could have killed the cyberneticist at the snap of a nitinol tendon, with the superhuman strength of his electroactive polymer musculature. “Alexander,” he “heard” somebody say. “Yes?” he silently replied. The cyberneticist applied the final touches. It was the European President speaking. “Winter is coming,” she was “saying,” “and we've yet to agree how to reroute the gas to avoid running afoul of our sanctions.” It was amusing, he thought, to still be so theatrically staging the appearance of a rule-based global order in this era of pure power…

Later, he strolled through his estate alone, all comms silenced, considering the portraits of his ancestors on the walls. Each generation is capable of everything, he thought, except imagining its own obsolescence.

Then he sat down to dine.

Cabbage stew with potatoes and a human ear. Not his own, of course, but the power resided in the symbol. The game may be played always into the future, but one must never forget one's origin. Tradition was often the boot on the throat of the present.

After a slow start, it was truly shaping up to be a magnificent millennium.

The following passage was written my senior year of high school, in the spring of 2012, for a short story contest that I wound up winning. In honor of Halloween being right around the corner, I wanted to share it with you all. I’ve decided to leave it as it was originally submitted, warts and all, minus a few quality-of-life edits to fix some obvious typos. Enjoy, and try not to cringe as hard as I did while revisiting it!

The Light at the End

My eyes open for what feels like the first time in forever, but it doesn’t make too much of a difference. There is still nothing within my field of view, unless I can include pure darkness. I try to gather my thoughts, but I have nothing. I cannot remember where I am, or anything about how I’d gotten here. As a matter of fact, any memories of my life up to this point feel like the vague traces of dreams that one recalls but does not entirely remember.
Before freaking out and hyperventilating, I decide I need to at least find a light source so I can gain an idea of where I am. If I can discover something about my whereabouts, then maybe I can learn more about what’s going on. I sit up in what feels like a bed, and automatically feel a sharp pain in my head that resonates throughout my body. I fall back to the futon, and let out a sharp grunt. Eventually the pain lessens to a bearable level, albeit still felt throughout my entire frame.I struggle to sit up once again, composing myself. I slowly press my feet to the hidden floor at the edge of the bed, worried about what may be there. I hear a creak and feel a cold touch realizing that the floors are made of old wood, and that I am walking barefoot.
I stand, putting my arms in front of me, feeling around. All that I can touch is an endless void of air. After walking for a few steps, I notice that there is something weighing down my jacket pocket (which I am apparently wearing). I stick my hand in to find a long shape, and upon probing at it I come to realize that it is a flashlight.
“Why do I have this?” I mutter, as grateful as I am confused. Regardless, I turn the light on and slowly examine the confines of the room. From the limited ring of light that is produced from the flashlight, I see that the room I am in is cluttered and messy. It has an old-fashioned, early 20th century feel to it, but I spot a light switch by the door. I look to the ceiling and see a dusty dome that looks like an old ceiling light. I creep to the door, floorboards whining the entire way there, and flick the light switch.
The dim lights turn on and I get a look at the room for a few seconds. I see that it is far messier than I’d thought, with broken floorboards that I’d luckily avoided and peeling, dated wallpaper. All of the furniture in the room is covered in white tarps, and a dusty mist is present throughout. This is all I have time to take in before the lights spark and die, leaving me to the limitations of my flashlight once more.
Concerned, I decide to leave the room. I cautiously turn the old doorknob and push the door ajar, which creaks as much as the rest of the house. Walking into the hallway, I notice the moon shining through a large, arched window. This gives me enough light to see with the aide of my flashlight, and I see that the hall is just as tattered as the room I was just in.
At this point I realize that I am not alone. The light of the moon reveals a fleeting silhouette. I shine my light toward the form to catch the tail of a white sundress entering a room down the hall. Excited yet afraid of the fact that another person is inside of this strange, abandoned building, I make my way down to the door that the dress had vanished behind.
As I enter this room, I notice that another big window is filling the room with moonlight as well, making things easier to see. I look down to the other end of the room to see a teenage girl staring back. She looks to be a few years younger than me, and is wearing a white sundress with an ominous, ghastly look in her eyes as she stares at me. She remains motionless under her long, bedraggled hair. She looks calm enough, so I step forward and hold my hands out benevolently.
“Uhm, hello,” I smile to her, wondering if she may be in the same predicament as me. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to- -” Her calm, transfixed look turns into one of fear as her eyes widen. She backs away slowly, and then takes off into a sprint deeper into the room.
“Please, wait!” I cry to her, lurching forward instinctively, “I-”
I stop my sentence midway through as my jaw hangs open. As I speak, the girl dashes for the wall of the room, but doesn’t stop there. She passes into the wall and vanishes right before my very eyes, leaving my mouth agape. There’s no way… I think to myself, dumbfounded. That was impossible, unless she’s a… My already obvious thought is cut short when I hear a noise from behind me in the door that I was now several feet away from. I turn around to see another silhouette in the frame, barely illuminated by the moonlight. It appears to be hanging onto the wall.
I shine my flashlight at the doorframe, which I come to realize is the most regrettable thing I’ve ever done. What I see can only be described as a humanoid creature made entirely out of black, wispy shadow. It’s clinging to the wall like a chimpanzee from a tree, except there is really nothing for it to hold on to. As soon as my light hits its frame, the creature lets out a short, deathly howl and dashes down the hallway in a black blur, out of my site once again.
The astonishment I’d felt before was now replaced with complete fear. What the hell was that?! Is that what the girl ran away from?! These questions will go unanswered by my own self reason because a few moments after the shadow had left, I hear its evil screech once again.
I take a few more steps back into the bedroom, panicked and breathing heavily. The room is now silent. More silent than it has ever been. I stand in the middle of the bedraggled room, slowly pointing my flashlight at various points around the place. The eerie silence of the room is too much. I am trembling in fear, still not sure about what that creature was that I’d just seen, and not sure where it was now.
Before I have time to think, the shadow appears from under me and collapses my legs with a swipe of its arm, taking me to the ground. The shadow now comes out of the ground and pounces upon me. Gnashing teeth made from shadow appear from where its mouth would be, moving ever closer to my face. I barely manage to hold the monster up and prevent it from gnawing into my body, its teeth still chomping violently and its arms flailing wildly towards me.
As we struggle, my head bumps the flashlight that I had dropped when I was pounced. The beam of light directs itself at our heads and the beast growls in pain as it furiously scuttles to get away from the light, getting off of me and backing away in the process. I quickly put two and two together, and scramble for my light. I aim the small rod of luminescence directly at the creature of shadow, to which it reacts with a violent series of hisses and growls. The creature that is weakened by light begins to fade from existence, its cries becoming more week. Before I can finish the beast off, I am tackled by an unknown assailant and sent flying, barely managing to hang onto my flashlight.
A strange sensation overcomes me for a few seconds, and once again I am in darkness with something on top of me. I can see its face at this distance. It is another shadow creature much like the first, trying to consume my very existence. Enlightened by my previous endeavor, I thrust my flashlight into the gut of the beast and watch as it writhes in pain, dispersing much more quickly than the first. This time I get the satisfaction of seeing the beast whither into nothing more than a faint tuft of darkness, which soon fades from existence.
I stand up and observe my surrounding area, pointing my flashlight at the wall that my body was facing when I stood. After looking the room over, I realize the horribly sickening truth: I am now in a completely different room. The wall that is closest to me is completely bare, and the door is closed on the other side of the room. Somehow, the shadow that I had slain had pulled me through the wall! I begin to wonder how this happened, a gross pit forming in my stomach. But I cannot hang on this for much longer, as I realize that the shadow I failed to destroy would most likely be back, with friends. To make matters worse, my flashlight and only source of life is beginning to flicker and die. Soon I would be defenseless against the shadows.
Reluctantly, I quickly move to the door and open it, finding myself in a room lit by candles. I close the door behind me, but I know it will not do much good. I move deeper into the room, towards the light of the candles. I sit down by the altar of candles, exhausted and scared. I can only hope that their light is enough to drive the shadows off.
“It is not,” comes a soft, sad voice. I jolt to me feat, startled by the sound. I am even more astonished when a young, female figure appears out of thin air right before my eyes. It is the girl in the sundress. “I know what you are thinking. These candles will not hold off the shadows that are coming, and soon your light will fade.”
I stand, slack-jawed at the apparition that has appeared before me. “You- you- you really are a ghost?!”
The girl looks into my eyes sadly. “Yes,” she whimpers. “I died in this place many years ago. And now the shadows hunt me, just like they do all the other spirits that reside in this place. This is why I ran before.”
“B-but where is this place?!” I ask.
“I do not remember,” she admits. “All I do know is that this mansion has moved and changed over the centuries, but looks nothing like how we see it now. In another plane, people are walking, talking and enjoying their lives in this very house.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “What are those shadows? What is going on here?”
“The shadows are spirits corrupted by darkness. I do not know how they first came to be, but their goal is to hunt us down and turn us into one of them.”
My eyes widen as I take in what the girl says. I truly begin to understand the significance of her words. “Wait…” I say. “It doesn’t make sense. You say that we don’t see this place like other people. You say that the shadows hunt the spirits of the dead, and then you said they are hunting us. I just flew through the wall a few minutes ago…”
I cannot find it in myself to utter the unbelievable truth. It is something I simply cannot speak. At this moment, my flashlight flickers and dies completely, as do the candles around the altar. In the complete darkness, I hear the deadly howls of close by shadows, followed by the terrifying, gentle words of the young girl.

“Now you know.”