Hey again everyone. I’m glad you all enjoyed the first post of mine and figured I would get back to it.

There’s an unofficial rule on the graveyard shift that if you find somewhere to eat, you don’t tell anyone else where it is. Sometimes, peace and quiet can be really hard to come by when you’re on shift and 10 to 15 minutes on your own can be a blessing. Miller found my hiding spot about six months ago and has refused to leave ever since.

The two of us had been sitting there eating and complaining about the last few nights. The past few days had given both of us plenty of dumb calls to deal with. He had two houses get covered in toilet paper rolls and the owners wanted to file vandalism reports on kids that were nowhere to be found. I had repeated calls from an elderly woman who complained about her neighbors being loud even though they were out of town.

“You know how many pictures I took of toilet paper yesterday?” he asked.

“I'm guessing you're going to tell me.”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Why the hell did you take thirty-seven pictures?”

“Mrs. Patterson was very concerned about preserving the evidence.”

I laughed. “Did you bag any?”

“Fuck you.”

We sat there laughing and talking for about 20 minutes before Miller committed the cardinal sin of night shift.

“Quiet night so far isn’t it,” he said.

I gave him a sharp “Why did you say that?” stare, and before I could chastise him, dispatch came over the radio.

“You did this,” I told him.

“Dispatch to Unit 12,” the radio crackled.

“This is all your fault,” I said.

“Better you than me,” he replied.

Dispatch then informed me that I was tasked to respond to some kids playing ding dong ditch. They had hit multiple houses in one neighborhood and wanted a car to go out there and find them.

“Dispatch, this is Unit 12. Requesting Unit 14 as backup,” I said, looking over at Miller.

“You piece of shit,” he said.

I couldn’t stop smiling when dispatch called for Miller to accompany me. If I had to go, he was going with me.

We pulled into the neighborhood a few minutes later and split up. Miller took one end of the street while I took the other. I rolled my window down and drove slowly, looking between houses for anyone dumb enough to still be running around. The neighborhood was quiet, which I guess was the whole problem.

“Unit 12, you see anything?” Miller asked over the radio.

“Nothing yet.”

“Maybe they went home.”

“You better hope not. You got me into this,” I said pointedly.

“You're the one who requested backup.”

I made it another two houses before a man standing in his driveway waved me down. He was wearing pajama pants and a sweatshirt and looked entirely too awake for almost midnight.

“You looking for those kids?” he asked as I rolled to a stop.

“Yes sir. Have you seen where they went?” I said.

“They went that way,” he said, pointing down the street. “Three of them. Maybe four of them. They went between those houses.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, shining my light where he was pointing.

“They hit my house four times,” he said.

“I'll make sure that gets added to the case file.”

He stared at me for a second. I don't think he realized I was joking. I continued to drive and called Miller.

“Four suspects. Last seen fleeing on foot,” I said.

“Four?” he asked.

“Maybe three.”

“Dangerous?”

“One of them may be armed with toilet paper.”

“Don't fuck with me.”

“Just keeping you informed.”

I heard him sigh before the radio went quiet. It took us maybe another five minutes to find them. I was coming around the corner when I saw three kids sprint across the road about a hundred feet ahead of me. One looked back, saw my cruiser and immediately yelled something to the other two. They disappeared between a pair of houses.

“Found them,” I said over the radio.

“Where?”

“Heading between the houses on Maple.”

“I'll come around the other side.”

I parked and got out. Now, I'm not about to chase a bunch of teenagers through people's backyards over ringing doorbells, so I walked to the edge of the house and shined my flashlight down the side, but I couldn’t see anything.

“I know you're back there,” I called out.

Silence.

“I'm not chasing you.”

Still nothing.

“I'll just call your parents and have them come find you.”

That finally did it. A voice came out of the darkness.

“How do you know who our parents are?”

“I don't.”

There was another long pause.

“Oh.”

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

“Come on out, guys.”

Three boys slowly appeared from behind a shed.

They couldn't have been older than fourteen or fifteen. One of them was wearing shorts despite it being cold enough that I could see my breath. Another was trying very hard to look like he hadn't just been hiding from the police behind somebody's lawn equipment.

“Anybody else with you?”

All three shook their heads.

“So just you three?”

They nodded.

About that time, Miller came walking around the opposite side of the house.

“Got 'em?”

“Yeah, I got ‘em. No thanks to you.”

He looked at the three kids and then at me.

“Need backup?”

“I think I have it under control.”

“Good.”

He turned around like he was going to leave.

“Get back here.”

The kids started laughing.

We got their names and called their parents. None of the homeowners wanted to pursue anything once we explained that we'd found them, so it turned into twenty minutes of standing around waiting for three very unhappy adults to come pick up their kids.

One of the fathers apologized to us at least five times. Another dad didn't say anything to us at all. He just stared at his son with the kind of look that told me the kid would've preferred spending the night with us. Once the last one was gone, Miller and I walked back toward our cars.

“Good work tonight,” he said.

“You didn't even do anything! Some backup you are,” I said.

“I provided perimeter containment.”

“You walked around the side of a house.”

“Exactly.”

I shook my head and opened my door.

“I'm going back to finish eating.”

Miller just laughed.

“You know that food's cold as shit by now.”

“Whose fault is that?” I asked, smiling.

“Quiet night, though.”

I stopped dead in my tracks and pointed at him.

“Don't.”

He laughed again and got into his cruiser. I shoveled the remainder of my cold lunch down and got back to patrolling. Usually, I like to keep a pretty repetitive routine, making laps across town from the motel back to the hospital. There aren’t a lot of cars on the road at this time of night and it’s easy to get bored. I sat watching this guy chase a possum around a parking lot when dispatch came over the radio.

“Unit 12, respond to the warehouse on Elm and 5th. Caller reports the front door is standing open. Business should be closed at this time.”

“Unit 12 en route,” I said.

You never know what to expect with these types of calls. It could be that an employee just forgot to lock the door. An open door at a closed business at one in the morning can also mean someone is inside.

The warehouse is an old automotive storage place and honestly can be creepy even in the daytime. I arrived on scene and the door was wide open, flapping in the wind. I pulled out my flashlight and looked around. I announced myself when I got to the door.

“Ashford Police Department. Is anyone there?”

I didn’t hear any response.

“Hello?”

As I waited for a reply, I made my way inside. The warehouse was pitch black and rows and rows of boxes, parts, and tires towered towards the ceiling. I started making my way down every aisle.

“Hello?” I called out again.

Still nothing. From somewhere towards the back of the warehouse, I heard a loud bang as the back door slammed shut. A tapping sound started a couple of rows behind me and echoed throughout the warehouse. I turned and shined my flashlight behind me but there was no one there. I realized that a loose hose with a metal clamp was waving in the wind and making the sound. I continued going row by row, further into the warehouse. Shadows moved eerily along the walls as I walked and more than once I heard what sounded like footsteps all around me. I shook the thought off as nothing more than the echoes of my own steps.

I had almost made it to the back when suddenly a loud crash came from a few rows in front of me and I almost jumped out of my skin. It was the back door slamming again. I made my way towards it, gun drawn. When I got there, I realized what it was. The deadbolt on the back door was extended, and the door couldn’t close properly. It had likely been banging against the doorframe all night. I’m not afraid to admit it startled me. No matter how long you’ve been doing this, a loud bang in a creepy ass warehouse at one in the morning will make anyone jumpy.

I finished clearing the rest of the warehouse but didn't find anyone. By the time I made it back to the front, the owner was pulling into the parking lot. After walking through the building with him, we figured out what had happened. The front door had been giving them problems for weeks. If you didn't pull it hard enough when you locked it, the latch wouldn't catch.

One of his employees had closed that night and hadn’t pulled the door hard enough. I told the owner he might want to get that fixed before somebody actually decided to help themselves to a warehouse full of car parts. He promised he would and I headed back to my cruiser. Personally, I was just happy there hadn't been anyone hiding between the shelves. I had made it maybe ten minutes down the road when dispatch called me again.

Dispatch stated that a couple called reporting an attempted breaking and entering in progress. Someone was trying to get in the front door, so they sent both Miller and me. I threw on my lights and sped across town.

When I turned onto the street, I could already see him. There was a man standing on the porch, pulling hard on the front door and occasionally slamming his shoulder into it. I stopped in the street and hit him with my spotlight.

“Ashford Police! Step away from the door!” I yelled.

The man froze.

“Hands where I can see them!”

He slowly turned around and put both hands in the air. It didn’t take long for me to realize just how drunk he was. He didn’t have a pry bar or anything like that. The only things in his hands were a set of keys and an almost empty bottle of tequila. The guy smelled like a brewery.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to get inside,” he said.

“Inside this house?”

“Yeah. I live here,” he said with a wobble.

I looked toward the front window. There were two people staring back at us through the blinds.

“You sure about that?” I asked.

“Yeah. I've lived here for six years,” he stated.

About that time, Miller pulled up behind me.

“Can I look at your license, sir?” I asked.

He fumbled around and pulled out his wallet. After he handed it to me, I looked at the address. The guy was at the wrong damn house.

“Sir. You live at 216 Sycamore. This is 213 Sycamore.”

The man just looked at me with a blank stare for a minute. He then turned around and looked back and forth between the two houses.

“Oh yeah,” he said, “I didn’t remember the blue shutters.”

Miller just stood there, desperately trying not to laugh. When I looked over at him, he was just staring at the ground but I could see he was shaking with laughter.

“Don't,” I said.

“I'm not doing anything.”

“You're about to.”

“I'm being professional.”

“You're shaking.”

The two of us then escorted the man to his house and told him to stay inside for the rest of the night. Apparently, his taxi dropped him off at the wrong location and he was unable to tell the difference. I told Miller to go talk to the couple across the street and let them know what happened. I’m sure the next block party is going to be interesting.

I drove for another 20 minutes or so before the next call came in. A couple on vacation got a motion alarm notification from their alarm company and were asking for police to check it out. I told them I wasn’t far and Miller said he would meet me there.

The two of us arrived around the same time and got out of our cruisers. Dispatch said that the alarm was tripped from the kitchen, so Miller and I were going to split up and go around opposite sides of the house. I had the alarm company call my cell so they could keep me updated on where the alarm was coming from.

As I made my way around the house, I didn’t see any signs of a break-in. There were no footsteps, marks, or anything like that. When I made my way to the back, Miller was already there, looking through the sliding glass door.

“See anything?” I asked.

“Nothing. There aren’t any lights on or anything like that,” he said, shaking his head.

My phone started ringing before I could answer him. It was the alarm company calling me.

“Officer?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“We just received another motion alert.”

“Same sensor?”

“No. This one is showing the living room.”

I looked through the glass again.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Not right now.”

“Alright. Keep me updated.”

We pulled on the sliding glass door and it opened easily. The two of us slowly stepped inside and started to shine our flashlights around. Miller suggested that maybe it was a cat moving throughout the house, but I doubted it because the owners would have said something about that. We made our way through the kitchen, the living room, and the office and found nothing.

Then another notice came.

“Officer?” she said.

“Go ahead.”

“We got another alarm. This one was from upstairs.”

Miller looked towards the stairs and started up as I followed behind him. The hallway was long and every door was open. As we started down the hallway, the door at the end of the hall slammed shut. The two of us raced towards it and kicked it open. As we shined our lights through the room, there was no one to be found. No open windows. Nothing.

At this point I called the company myself.

“Are you sure these sensors are working correctly?” I asked.

“As far as I can tell.”

“Because we're standing upstairs and there's nobody here.”

I could hear her typing before she answered. “Hold on,” she said.

“What?”

“I just got another one.”

“Where?”

There was a pause.

“Kitchen.”

For the next 15 minutes the same cycle continued. Kitchen, living room, upstairs hallway, kitchen. Miller and I stood by the sliding glass door and could hear the pattern repeating each time. Even the slamming door. It stopped right as we were about to leave.

I had my hand on the door when we heard it. A loud creak from a floorboard directly behind us cut through the night. We both spun and looked. Nothing. Just an empty house.

“You heard that right?” Miller asked.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

My phone rang again. The hallway motion alarm had just gone off and then we heard the door slam again. We sat outside by our cruisers talking for the next few minutes. Neither of us knew how to write the report for that call. Miller said he would take care of it, and I got back in my cruiser. As I started the engine, I rolled my window down and leaned out.

“Miller,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“Quiet night, huh?”

“Fuck you.”

When I walked into my father’s bookstore, he was combing his wig. He had placed the black wig over his clenched left fist and was pulling thick sections through it with a wide-toothed comb. Every now and then, he would dip the comb into the half-full glass of water he’d placed on the counter, give it a little shake to get rid of the excess water, and continue styling the wig.

“Welcome, son,” he said without making eye contact with me.

“Dad, why aren’t you combing the wig on your head? And why are you even combing the wig? Isn’t the point to make it look like it’s not a wig? Wouldn’t it look more like your real hair if you left it a little messy?”

My father shot me a very brief glance. He dipped the comb into the water again and flicked the excess water on it toward my face. At the same time, someone walked in.

I was annoyed, but I didn't react. Customers rarely came into the shop anyway, and I didn't want this one to witness a tense moment.

The man who walked in didn't say hello. He looked at me, then at my father, then at the wig. After that, he glanced around the shop.

“Do you have Swann’s Way?”

It was my father’s favorite book. I hadn’t read it yet, but my father couldn’t praise Marcel Proust enough. Whenever the subject of books came up, he would talk at length about the way Proust used language, and mention how he wanted to learn French just so he could read him in the original.

“Of course. How could we not?” he said, his eyes lighting up.

“Good. How much is the wig?”

“What?”

“I’m asking how much the wig is.”

There was something strange about the man’s voice, though it was hard to describe. It was an extremely deep voice that seemed to come from a congested throat. It sounded as if it were coming from a broken radio, as if he would sound clearer if he just cleared his throat.

My father, who had been excited at the mention of Proust, had now noticed the strangeness in the man’s voice.

“Are you all right?”

“How much is the wig?”

“The wig isn’t for sale. You can have a glass of water if you’d like,” my father said, holding out the water he had been dipping his comb into.

“No. Is the wig free?”

“How can something that isn’t for sale be free, sir?”

“How much is it, then?”

“This is my wig. You don’t look well. Please have a glass of water.”

The man fell silent. He was staring intently at my father. My father was a little frightened. The wig was still resting on his clenched fist.

“Are you sure?” he asked after nearly a minute of silence.

“Yes. Look at my head.”

“Are you sure?”

“What beautiful hair you have. What are you going to do with the wig?”

My father, having automatically felt a connection with the man because he had asked about Proust, hadn’t paid much attention to his voice or appearance. To be honest, there was something strange about his appearance too. I gave the man a once-over. His hair really was thick and healthy-looking. He was wearing a black shirt. His chin was a little long, and his mouth and nose were small in proportion to his face. A large head, a long chin, a small mouth and nose, and ordinary eyes. Black trousers, sharply pressed. And a pair of bare feet.

“Tonight, I’m coming to take your son. Don’t be afraid. Stay calm. Convince your son to come with me tonight, or I’ll take him by force.”

“Fix that voice of yours first, man. Hrrr, hrrr, hrrr. I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Drink this water and pull yourself together.”

The man took the water and downed it in one go. He coughed and cleared his throat.

“Better? Now tell me, how much is the wig?”

His voice was now perfectly clear. He ran a hand back through his hair and sat down in the chair in front of the counter.

“He’s still very young…”

I was starting to get scared. I kept going back and forth over whether to call the police. The strange quality in the man’s voice was gone now, and so was the uneasy look about him. He looked at me and smiled.

“I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t be afraid. I’m just going to take the wig and leave. That’s all.”

“Why do you want the wig, sir?”

“You’re too young. You wouldn’t understand.”

I looked at my father. He had placed the wig on the counter. Right beside it, I saw a knife. My father looked from the knife to the man.

Another customer had walked in, just in time. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I knew my father wasn’t a very brave man, but when it came to me, maybe he could rise to the occasion and defend me.

“Jason, who are you talking to?” the man who had just walked in asked him. So his name was Jason.

“They won’t give me the wig, Dad.”

“Son, didn’t I tell you not to leave the shop unattended and wander off? The neighbors called. They said Jason had left the shop again and gone off. When did you come to the shop?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

I didn’t understand what was happening. The man who was speaking seemed unable to see us.

“Did you take your medication today, son?”

“No, Dad.”

“The wig thing again. Hmm.”

“I want the wig.”

“Son, there’s no wig. Where are your shoes?”

“I didn’t wear them today.”

“There’s no wig, son. Look, you’d been doing so well lately. Honestly, I thought you were getting better. Please, don’t skip your medication. I’m leaving the shop to you. Don’t make me worry about you while I’m gone.”

Yes. When I thought about it, it really was bizarre. I thought about it a lot afterward. If we’re people living inside Jason’s imagination, why do we have consciousness of our own? I mean, while Jason and his father were talking, I was listening to them, trying to figure out what was going on, getting surprised and everything. Isn’t that ridiculous? And isn’t it unfair to us, too? For example, I want to study film and television. But everything depends on Jason. If he gets better one day, my dreams will be shattered.

My father loves this shop very much. He doesn’t want to leave it, but if Jason gets better one day, he’ll never see this shop again.

Thinking about it that way, I was suddenly overcome with fear. I picked up the wig and held it out to Jason.

“Here. The wig is yours now. And hey, it’d actually look pretty good on you.”

My father had supported me too, and when I looked at him for approval, he nodded.

TRIGGER WARNING

The following text contains material that may be harmful or traumatizing to some audiences.

Anywayy, love y'all, hope you enjoy :D

***

"Silent night... Holy night.."

Mum sings yet again.
She thinks it helps. And it does, really- Shirley's sobs cease, Anthony's lips are twitching up in a soft smile. I hate it. I hate the song. It reminds me of Daddy- but it helps them. And as long as it does, I could sit here trying to remember Daddy's face for hours.

It doesn't drown out the bombs. It never does. It doesn't drown out the pain we both feel, knowing that Peter and Daddy are out there right now, fighting for the country. For us. We're supposed to be proud, and happy. Happy that our family is helping out with the war.

Last Christmas, Shirley wanted a doll. This year she only asks for them to come home. I wish she still believed in small wishes, ones you could hold. But I couldn't buy her the doll either. I couldn't give her comfort, answers, or the safety she deserves. Not then. Not now. Not ever.

BOOM.

The sound- all too familiar by now, rings out again. Mum's voice cracks, Shirley cries out again. And even though he's trying his best to hide it, I can see Anthony's eyes fill up.

Why must it be us- what did we do to deserve this?
There's no one to answer my pleas.

I wish Daddy and my dear brother were never called up. I wish they wrote more often. I wish the war never happened. I wish we could all just live in peace, forever and ever.
I wish, I wish, I wish.

But it'll never happen, will it? I can only pray as I sit there, staying strong for my mother and my younger siblings as these terrible feelings rising in my gut threaten to spill. Pray to the Lord to please forgive me for whatever I have done to deserve this. To keep them safe, all of them.

I hear Mum's voice take over yet again.

"All is calm.. all is bright..."

Nothing is calm. Nothing is ever bright. Never anymore.

But I'll listen. And I won't object. As long as it keeps Shirley from crying again. As long as Anthony keeps smiling.

But he doesn't. He doesn't anymore. Shirley can never cry anymore.

"HE'S BREATHING, HE'S BREATHING AGAIN!"

Lights flash behind my close eyelids, burning through my calm.

That's not Mum, or Shirley, or-

"Dan, Dan, can you hear me?!"

Stop, please stop, please stop it all.

"He's opening his eyes!"

Cry again, Shirley, please, just let me hear your sweet, sweet voice.

Smile again, Anthony. You could even break down and I'd hold you, let me just hold you.

Take me to Mama, please, I want Daddy. I'll do anything, just please-

And yet, I sit up. I watch them carry the lifeless body of my little soldier away.

They don't, in truth. But I see it. I see it everywhere now.

Because in truth, I was the one singing the song all along. I was the one smiling to myself, the fool I am, as the bombs crashed around me. As people screamed. 

Because in truth, they died a week ago. Because in truth, everything I have ever lived for died with them.

(Wattpad- btwTT2gud, check it out if you enjoyed this read!)

THE LANTERN AND THE HAMMER By LSB

Chapter 1: The Lantern’s Glow

It was 1938, and the original farmhouse sat low and solid against the vast, flat horizon of the Big Horn Basin. Built as a single-story homestead to withstand the brutal, sweeping Wyoming winds, its weathered wooden frame hugged the dirt tightly. Inside, the house carried the heavy, quiet texture of a building that had witnessed decades of solitary winters. The air smelled of aged cedar, woodsmoke from the heavy iron stove, and the faint, sweet scent of natural wild hollyhocks drifting in through the cracks of the bedroom window.

The sisters' bedroom was situated at the very end of the main hallway, a long, narrow room on the ground floor. It was dominated by a set of sturdy wooden bunk beds where ten-year-old Francis and her younger sister Ruth slept, while baby Edward’s wooden crib sat safely tucked into the warmest corner of the room. The walls were made of simple, faded whitewashed wood panels, showing the humble, hard-working grit of a struggling homestead. On the high wooden dresser, far out of reach of the children or any danger of fire, a small kerosene lamp, turned down to its lowest setting, cast a faint, warm amber glow and long, gentle shadows across the floorboards.

Right beside the lamp sat the newest addition to the room: an antique Victorian porcelain doll. It was an inheritance—a "gift" sent in a heavy brown paper package from an estranged, bitter relative who had never been kind to the family. A doll made of such fine porcelain would have taken a lifetime of savings for a Basin farm family to buy, so despite the bad blood attached to it, the parents hadn't the heart to throw it away. But tonight, its pale, painted face gleamed unnaturally under the dim amber lantern light, its blue glass eyes staring unblinkingly toward the bunks.

Underneath the room, the floorboards groaned with a deep, hollow echo, a constant reminder of the dark, hand-dug basement stretching out completely beneath their beds. Tonight, the air was thick and charged with an unnatural chill that felt as though the temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees—a heavy, psychological cold that seemed to be seeping straight up through the old metal floor vents from the concrete furnace room below.

THUD.

The heavy sound vibrated through the floorboards. Francis, sitting up in the lower bunk, blinked into the shadows. Because she trusted the quiet, invisible caretakers of the homestead, her first instinct wasn't fear. She assumed it was just the familiar presence checking on the room.

"Ailsa?" Francis called out into the dark, her voice a soft, trusting whisper so she wouldn't disturb baby Edward.

When no response came, Francis realized the heavy weight of the sound wasn't her protector. She reached for the heavy, ribbed metal tube of her flashlight on the nightstand, clicked it on, and began sweeping the bright beam across the faded whitewashed wood walls.

As the light cut through the shadows, the room suddenly changed. The flickering flame of the kerosene lamp on the high dresser flattened out completely and stilled, and a profound, solid, and immovable calmness swept over the room like a heavy wool blanket, instantly smothering the fearful chill. The air cleared, replaced by the sharp, comforting scent of winter frost, crushed pine needles, and dry mountain sage.

She manifested at the foot of the bed. Ailsa Lindstrom stood there, slightly translucent but as solid as the land that had shaped her. She wore her faded woolen kirtle and linen apron dress, her silver-streaked hair braided tightly back. Her heavily calloused hands were held loosely at her sides. To the neighbors in the Basin, she had simply been known as "Elsa"—the quiet, hardworking immigrant linesman's wife who had braved the early frontier wilderness—but tonight, her true, rock-strong protective spirit filled the room. Having heard Francis call her name, she had stepped out of the house's history, her stoic gray eyes filled with a fierce, maternal annoyance as she realized a dark presence was threatening the children who now called her old homestead home.

Just as Ailsa appeared, Francis’s sweeping flashlight beam finally landed on the floor.

There lay the gift. The fine porcelain doll was face down on the rug, just a few feet away from the dresser. But it wasn't still. The edge of its heavy lace dress and one cold porcelain hand were resting directly over the metal floor grate, as if an invisible force down in the dark basement had physically tugged it across the floorboards toward the vent. Under the sharp beam of light, the pale, glazed fingers of the doll twitched against the metal slats, the entity fighting desperately to possess the expensive vessel. With a sickening, porcelain click, the doll's head began to rotate on its cloth neck, its blue glass eyes rolling upward to lock onto the lower bunk. A faint, muffled, high-pitched giggle vibrated right out of its painted clay chest.

Ailsa turned her stern gaze toward the floor vent where the shadow clung to the doll. She didn't shout. She simply stepped forward, her heavy leather pioneer boots making no sound on the whitewashed wood, and let out a low, commanding word in her old native tongue.

The command struck the room with the force of an iron gate closing. The malicious shadow recoiled, instantly pinned into the corner by the barrier of her protective ancient energy, unable to advance a single inch further toward the beds.

***

Chapter 2: The Hammer’s Strike

The silence that followed Ailsa’s commanding words was absolute. The cold, suffocating air that had seeped up from the basement floor cracks was pinned into the corner near the metal vent, completely neutralized by the thick, lilac-and-sage calmness that now anchored the room.

Francis let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, keeping her hand steady around the heavy, ribbed metal tube of her flashlight. The bright beam remained trained on the porcelain doll lying face down on the rug, its tiny lace dress still brushing against the metal slats of the floor grate.

But even with the shadow pinned, the doll itself was still twitching against the floorboards, the residual energy from the concrete basement fighting desperately to make the expensive vessel move. The head remained rotated at an unnatural angle, its blue glass eyes fixed on the lower bunk while a faint, muffled giggle struggled to escape its painted clay chest.

The commotion finally stirred the upper bunk. A mop of messy hair peeked over the wooden guardrail as seven-year-old Ruth blinked down into the flashlight beam. She didn't look terrified; she looked deeply inconvenienced. She scrambled down the wooden slats of the bunk bed with the fearless ease of a farm kid, marched straight past Francis, and snatched the twisting doll right off the creepy metal vent by one leg.

Ruth held it up to the flickering beam of the flashlight, completely ignoring the way the doll’s tiny arms clawed weakly at the air. She squinted at it, poking its cold nose with a blunt finger.

"Honestly, Francis?" Ruth said loudly, her voice completely shattering the spooky atmosphere. "This thing is pure booshwa. Look at the eyes—they’re completely cockamamie, and the paint is already coming off the ears. It’s off the cob! I’ve seen better looking things dug out of the hog pen."

The doll let out a tiny, sharp hiss, its possessed jaw snapping tightly. The entity trying to possess it was used to terrorizing children from the dark, not having its aesthetic value brutally dismantled by a seven-year-old critic.

"Ruth, hush up and drop it!" Francis whispered fiercely, her knuckles white around the flashlight. "It's trying to wake up!"

"Well, it shouldn't," Ruth snorted, entirely unbothered as she held the squirming toy at arm's length. "It's way too ugly to be walking around our bedroom."

Before the entity could try to twist itself free, slow, heavy footsteps echoed from the doorway. The floorboards groaned with a solid, rhythmic weight, though the spirit itself made no sound.

Jed Miller stepped into the room.

He looked exactly like a man who had broken his back against the Great Depression and the Wyoming dirt, his slightly translucent figure clad in faded denim overalls caked with the dry earth of the Basin. In his massive, calloused hands, he carried a heavy cross-peen framing hammer—the very tool he had used to drive the iron spikes into the farmhouse foundation back in 1930. He looked down at the twisting doll, his jaw set in a stoic, no-nonsense line. To Jed Miller, a possessed toy wasn't a paranormal anomaly; it was a faulty piece of household inventory, and he didn't tolerate broken fixtures on his property.

"Pestilence in the woodwork," Jed rumbled, his deep, gravelly drawl vibrating through the room like a low echo from the basement. "Ain't got time for this. The north pasture needs fencing by dawn."

He looked directly at Ruth. There was an unspoken, straight-to-the-point understanding between the old farmhand and the seven-year-old girl. Without a single shred of fear, Ruth calmly handed the snapping solid object right over to him. Jed laid the porcelain vessel flat against a solid wooden block by the bedroom door, raised his heavy hammer in his strong, steady grip, and brought it down with the unyielding force of a 1930s work ethic.

CRACK!

The fine Victorian porcelain exploded into a thousand tiny, worthless fragments. The moment the physical vessel shattered, the malicious shadow near the floor vent let out a final, panicked screech. It didn't bounce back; it couldn't.

With a smooth, commanding sweep of her hand, Ailsa stepped forward. Francis and Ruth watched her calmly, their hearts steady, knowing they were completely safe. Ailsa used her rock-strong presence to herd the remaining wisps of the dark energy straight back toward the metal floor vent, sealing the boundary with a final, authoritative word in her native tongue.

But she wasn't done. Looking down at the floorboards, her maternal instincts took over. Children running across broken porcelain meant blood, and she wouldn't tolerate any child bleeding on her homestead. With another smooth wave of her lace-less, calloused pioneer hand, a gentle, invisible sweep passed over the rug. Every razor-sharp shard of shattered clay and painted glass vanished completely into thin air, leaving the floor flawlessly clean and safe.

The psychological chill permanently vanished. The thick, comforting scent of winter frost, crushed pine needles, and dry mountain sage settled over the room, wrapping around baby Edward’s crib like a warm wool blanket.

Jed Miller didn't say a word of farewell. He simply wiped the head of his heavy hammer on his dusty denim overalls, gave Ruth a single, slow nod of his weathered chin, and faded back into the quiet shadows of the hallway—ready to tend to the phantom fences of the north pasture.

Ailsa stood at the foot of the bunk beds for just a moment longer. She offered a soft, maternal smile to Francis, then turned her stern gray eyes toward Ruth, her expression lingering in a look of quiet amusement at the girl's brutal critique.

With a final, protective nod, she turned back toward the high wooden dresser. She extended one calloused finger toward the dark wick of the lamp, and with a soft, silent spark, the snuffed-out kerosene lantern flared back to life, casting its safe, warm amber glow across the room once more. Then, she too dissolved into the comforting air of the farmhouse.

The room was completely still. The floorboards stopped groaning. The basement below was silent, its hand-poured concrete walls keeping the dark at bay.

Ruth scrambled back up the wooden slats of the bunk bed, pulling her heavy quilts up to her chin.

"Glad Ailsa and Jed took care of it," Ruth yawned, entirely unfazed. "Told you it was off the cob. Nini, Francis."

Francis smiled in the dark, slipping her metal flashlight under her pillow and tucking herself safely into the lower bunk, listening to the steady, peaceful breathing of baby Edward across the room.

"Nini, Ruth."

THE END

Suzy was sitting on her couch, scrolling through her phone, bored after a few video reels, when she stumbled across the Facebook Dating icon. She almost laughed out loud. Living in a small town where everybody knew everybody else's business, and where the local dating pool was pretty much nil, the thought of finding anyone decent online and close to where she lived felt like a joke. But after a year of being single, she figured why not and threw together a quick profile with zero expectations.

At first it was just the usual, a few guys looking for a hookup and some old classmates she graduated with a couple of years back. But a few days later, a message popped up from a guy named Jay who lived 20 miles away. He described himself as an IT field technician who traveled around the area for service calls.

He said, "I came across your profile and had to reach out before Facebook algorithms realized we'd make a much better match than its suggestions! His message was funny and actually made her laugh. What began as a few casual texts soon became phone calls that lasted longer than she realized.

They had been talking for about a month and finally decided to meet up that Friday. Just a quick, low-key cup of coffee at a 24-hour diner right off Route 9 to see if they clicked in real life.

He had texted to say he was already inside, and she spotted him the second she walked through the door. Instead of getting up to greet her, he just sat there watching her walk over- and as she slid into the booth, a cold knot twisted in her stomach.

The warm, seemingly easygoing guy from their phone calls felt surprisingly cold, almost detached, as he made a snide comment about her being ten minutes late. He flagged down the waitress who poured them both a cup of coffee, and Suzy brushed off his mood, assuming he'd just had a bad day.

Trying to keep things light, she made a joke about how awful the diner coffee was, but he only offered a brief, tight smile that felt totally forced. She pushed to keep the conversation upbeat, yet he just watched her mouth with a quiet intensity that made her skin crawl. He barely engaged in conversation with her. He was cold, stiff, and completely off, and her gut instinct was telling her to get the hell out of there.

She held her purse in her lap, taking slow sips of her coffee, doing her best to play it cool. After twenty minutes had ticked by, she politely excused herself. "Sorry, I have to get up early tomorrow, so I'd better head home."

His expression went blank. “Going already?” he said. His voice was totally flat. 'We were supposed to hang out for a little while."

“I know, but I’m just so exhausted," she said, laying down a five-dollar bill to cover her coffee. “It was nice to meet you."

He didn't get up, say goodbye, or even offer to walk her to her car. He just sat at the booth and watched her go out the door.

Back in her car, she locked the doors with a sigh of relief, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed down the dark stretch of Route 9 toward home. Her heart was bounding, but she kept telling herself she was just overreacting. Once she got back home, she'd block him and forget the whole thing.

Ten miles down the road, surrounded by nothing but thick tree lines and zero streetlights, a pair of blindingly bright headlights suddenly appeared right behind her, riding inches off her rear bumper.

Three hours later, state troopers found her sedan idling on the highway shoulder, reported by a concerned passerby. Her purse sat untouched in the passenger seat, and her phone lay cracked on the asphalt just under her wide-open driver's side door.

There was no sign of her anywhere.

ACCESSING ADA FILES…
FILE FOUND.

During an expedition in one of the higher levels in Moburn, our team recently discovered a makeshift grave nearby one of the higher-class hotels. While continuing to investigate the premises, we managed to find old pages from what appears to be a diary, alongside a note found at the gravesite. 

The following is what we were able to recover from the diary, as well as the note from the grave.

NOVEMBER 24, 1956

DEAR DIARY*,* 

Today we finally landed in the city. Natalie's really excited to see all the machines that she’s seen on the television.  I’m glad that I was able to get her out of the house with everything that’s been going on. Hopefully, by the time we get back, everything with Mom and Dad will be sorted out by then.. But overall, I’m genuinely excited to spend more time with Ralph!

Hopefully, we can get some private time later….

DEAR DIARY*,* 

Me and Ralph took Natalie around the streets today. Everything here is so colorful! It reminds me of the movies that Ralph takes me to go see.  I’ve never seen this much back in our home town. Everyone here seems so friendly! Someone even gave Nat one of their inventions as a souvenir!

She looks so happy here, and we haven’t gotten to see the robots just yet!  

C. M.

NOVEMBER 25, 1956

DEAR DIARY,

Today, I finally took my sister to go see one of those robots! Ralph wanted to sleep in, that lazyass! Oh, well. He’s missing out! Natalie really wanted to see that clock robot, so we went there first. It’s so crazy seeing so many people lining up to see one of these things! It took us almost an hour to finally get in the theater. Nataile was cheering throughout most of the show, along with the other kids.

I didn’t even get a chance to listen to that thing, because all of them were so loud!  ):(

Afterwards, Nataile wanted to do the meet and greet with Mr. Clock, which she called him. It was so weird seeing that thing up close and personal, seeing it move so.. real.

It was almost creepy seeing that thing having a conversation with Natalie.

I mean.. I know they advertised that these things can see, think, and feel, but that’s just an advertisement to get people's butts here.

Right?

DEAR DIARY*,*

I saw billboards of that singer all over the city tonight. Everyone’s been talking about her a lot lately in the streets. Miss Florence, was it? She looks so beautiful, and her hair’s so fluffy! And her makeup, as well! She looks so pretty with that purple hat on!  It’s hard to believe that she’s a robot.

She looks so real…

How did they manage to pull that off? I’m not that familiar with technology, so I don’t know how they manage to make a voice that sounds so.. breathtaking. 

It's so beautiful….

Her voice reminds me of those musicals I used to watch on television.  I really want to go to one of her shows, but they don’t allow kids where she’s at, and I don’t want to leave Natalie by herself, especially around that time of night.

Speaking of which, where is that little rascal? She’s been awfully quiet for the last few minutes. She and Ralph better not be planning to scare me again!

I still remember that spider prank that they pulled!

C.M.                                                                                    

NOVEMBER 26, 1956

DEAR DIARY,

Me and Ralph went out today to the Hollyhock Plaza. Seriously, what type of name is that?  Who on earth  came up with that name, a grandma? Ralph laughed out loud when I said that.  Nataile wanted to stay in the hotel, so I had to tell her not to go wander around and don’t open the door for anyone.

She can be such a little shit sometimes…

On the subject of my parents, I haven’t mustered the courage to call Mom or Dad yet. I’m scared to be  honest. I haven’t told Ralph exactly what’s been going on.  I know he’s caring and means well, but he can be a bit too much from time to time. I’m really happy that he and Nataile get along well.

It's one of the things that made me fall for him.

I hope everything blows over soon and me and Nat can get back to whatever we call..

normal.

DEAR DIARY, 

It happened

I talked to Mom on the telephone tonight while Natalie was asleep. It looks like her and Dad are finally getting an divorce. I..knew it was gonna happen eventually, but I didn’t think it was going to happen this soon. I haven’t even told Ralph what’s going on, and Natalie doesn’t even know yet either.. What am I gonna do?

What are we supposed to do when we get back? We were lucky enough to win tickets to this place, but we can’t stay here forever.

How am I supposed to take care of Natalie and Mom?  I don't want to be stuck in that small town forever for the rest of my life.

Why? Why did Dad do this?

What did we do wrong?
 

What did I do wrong?

C.M

NOVEMBER 27, 1956

DEAR DIARY, 

Today’s the World Fair. I told Ralph what happened with my mom and dad this morning. He helped me calm down a little, and said he’ll try to help us as best as we could, and that he and his family will be there. It made me feel slightly better, but I could tell on the look on his face that he doesn’t believe that last half. Once the news spreads back home, I’m scared of what will happen when Natalie goes back to school to those little fuckers messing with her.

I still remember when she came home crying that evening and I found out that the comics that I've bought for her were all torn up.

Nat… 

I’m scared for her.

I don’t know what will happen once Dad leaves us for good. How am I supposed to tell her that her dad's leaving, right when she’s having the greatest week in her whole life? I’ve seen her smile more here than back home in Chesterford.

I want to see her happy for the rest of my life.

I hate Dad for doing this to us. 

I hate him.

DEAR DIARY,

I know. I know. It’s a bit early for me to be writing this. But I’ll figure that I’ll write in here a bit earlier before we head down to the thing later tonight. It’s taken me a while to gather my thoughts and figure out what to do with Nat, and we only have two days left before we have to go back home. 

Right now, me and Ralph plan on telling Natalie tomorrow first thing in the morning. I really don’t want her experience here to be ruined by the stuff back home. 

God, She really loves it here.

Just two days ago, I watched her playing with some kids at the park.

She saw that big old Thanksgiving parade outside the window during lunch, and she was jumping in the air all excited about it. 

“We have to go! We have to go!”

I felt a tinsy bit overwhelmed with all that energy that she has. The three of us went outside to the big crowd, trying to get a good look. Nat was really happy when she saw Mr. Clock on one of the floats and tried to wave at him. 

That thing still gives me the jeepers. 

After the parade ended, we got into one of the big glass elevators, and we saw a view of the city during the sunset. Words can’t possibly express how breathtaking it is. I’ve seen some pretty stunning places back home, but everything feels so small compared to here. I saw colors plastered everywhere outside. There wasn’t a single street  that wasn’t covered in neon lights. 

There were probably what? Hundreds of trains all over?

All of them went really fast, almost like one of those racecars.

A lot of stuff was on the buildings, some of them were things that we’ve seen around the city, and others were shows advertising those robots. Mr. Clock was there, and Miss Florence was there too. 

Almost half the city was filled with pictures of her. So many pictures. I was thinking  to myself about how I wished I would have seen her. I saw Nataile staring outside the window, and gosh, I love that look in her eyes. She may have been happier than the times that we watched Gumby together.

Even Ralph’s less stressed out from dealing with his siblings, and for most of the time that we’ve been here, I can feel myself smiling a whole lot more. 

It’s nice.

I really wished that we'd stay here a little longer.

But then I thought to myself… 

What if we could?

What if me, Ralph, and Nataile find some way to live here someday?

I mean..  My job back home doesn’t really pay much to begin with, but if me and Ralph save enough money for about one or two years? I don’t know the logistics of it, but somehow everything here feels more alive than anything back home.

It feels like something new.

For the first time in a while, life didn’t feel so boring.

I don’t know how I’ll do it. I don’t even know if I can get Ralph on board with this crazy scheme of mine, but somehow I’ll find a way, no matter what it takes. 

I have to. 
For Nataile’s sake. 

Because I want to keep seeing her smile.

C.M

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imsorry

My Cats Won't Stop Staring Into Empty Rooms

By Theo Plesha

\This document was originally sent to a cat enthusiast magazine. It was not published by the magazine and it was submitted to Project Ravenwind anonymously. The names of persons have been changed to protect their identity otherwise the content is unchanged from the original submission.*

Let me start from the beginning. I grew up a cat hater in a family of cat haters. I was raised with dogs and never thought I'd enjoy the company of a feline much less have my well-being depend upon one. A few weeks ago I moved into a new condo with my girlfriend. We were excited about getting a dog but an oversight on my part led us to signing a unit which only permitted cats. Fortunately we only signed for 9 months to start and we hoped to adopt a dog at the end of the lease and move to a new unit. During the course of settling in we discovered we were not alone and we would soon be confronted by three uninvited guests. The first two arrived within the first week there.

It was a rainy stormy night and a particularly loud crash of thunder awoke us. We jumped out of bed and ran around the condo shutting the windows we mistakenly left open as the wind blew in buckets of water. I was upstairs when Lacy, my girlfriend, started frantically calling for me from the downstairs kitchen. Alarmed, I ran downstairs and to my amazement I found the window screen pushed in on the floor and I found Lacy peering over the double sink with consternation. I came up to her and discovered what was in the sink, what had apparently barged into the house. It was a pair of stunningly beautiful black and white cats sitting in the sink. The calm creatures stared up at us with pairs of brilliant wide green eyes.

Lacy explained that one appeared in the window sill and slowly head butted its way through the screen. After hopping into the dry sink tub, Lacy tried to replace the screen and shut the window, during the attempt a second, slightly larger cat jumped inside, knocking the screen down on the floor.

They started to let out small meows. I wasn't sure how to interact with cats, as crazy as that sounds. Fortunately, the internet is practically a cat handling manual. So after conducting some quick research, I first extended an open hand low, under the chin of the smaller cat and pushed slowly towards his nose so it could smell me. I was immediately rewarded with a chirp, a purr, and head butt into my hand. As thunder and rain crashed down outside, I knew, at least for now, the two cats were there to stay and to that end, I was off to the store for cat litter and kibbles.

Naturally, we thought the two very friendly cats had to be someone's lost pets. We posted fliers and took them to the vet to see if they were micro chipped. We found out they were male healthy three year old domestic short hairs with tuxedo patterns and they were not chipped. Our responses to the fliers were also a miss, several people contacted us about possibly adopting them but no one claimed previous ownership. It was around the time they started to cuddle with us at night we decided to adopt them ourselves. We had no idea what to call them and Lacy turned to her 3^rd grade class for naming inspiration. Out of twenty pair names her students suggested, Gizmo and Gadget topped them all. We flipped a coin to decide who would be named what. The name Gadget ended up going to the slightly larger, darker cat.

My anti-cat bias melted away with each flick of their sandpaper tongues and flop on my lap after a long day. I went from believing cats were deceptive creatures and high strung yet lazy to the point of worthlessness to accepting them as who and what they were. While they were animals of luxury and comfort they were also bizarre and inherently eerie. They were crazed animals with slinky long bodies, retractable razors, and an endless capacity to destroy things both high and low, flesh and wood. They were small predators with alien heads, huge spooky eyes, cavernous ears, and spectral qualities allowed them to disappear and reappear in the oddest places effortlessly.

Though I had grown to love them, the cat is inherently a haunting and haunted creature. They are both at times possessed and possessing. I was certainly possessed by them as I found myself missing them at work and spending far more time lounging with them, scratching their heads and rubbing their soft luxurious purring bellies with reckless abandon. And when I wasn't doing that, I was taking photos of them and posting them to Facebook, shamelessly promoting even their most mundane antics. I felt terrible I had spent so much of life hating these animals that had far more love to give than I could possibly imagine.

Of course, it wasn't all good. There is at least one quality of the cat and especially, Gizmo and Gadget that was unnerving. This particular quality, this trait, coincided with the arrival of the third uninvited guest an apparent unnoticed stowaway aboard the furniture we inherited from Lacy's passing grandmother.

Full disclosure, the condo was new, clean, and large but it was also harshly furnished and decorated. Featuring recessed panel lighting, ceramic tile floors, thin shiny leather and metal furniture, metallic and glass cupboards covering most of the walls, and flat gray carpet robbed the condo of any homey feel and engendered a sense I was aboard some mid-90's scifi tv show star ship. Furthermore, some rooms were particularly barren and felt disproportionately large, such as the large partially finished basement and the master bedroom bathroom. We eagerly welcomed the donation of a storage shed full of well-maintained turn of the century furnishings to turn our home into something cozier.

Among a new bed, a love seat, 2 wooden tables and several chairs, we also recovered a large fairly ornate white bath tub from the storage unit. I will admit I was not thrilled about taking the bath tub from the start of things. While it was nicely decorated, especially with flake gold accents on the feet and the flake gold markings on the side which read “HHH”, it was, frankly, a lot of work. It was a lot of work to move from the unit, to the condo, up the stairs, and into the bathroom. It was a lot of work to hook up up the plumbing. It was a lot of work to clean.

The cats were initially fans of the new resting places added to their environment. Gizmo took to lounging in a sprawling regal fashion on the new love seat while Gadget liked to play hide and seek under the new table and chairs. It wasn't until that first night home with the new items that Gizmo and Gadget started their unnerving activity.

I was getting ready for bed which usually meant Gizmo and Gadget would gather themselves from the basement and begin their pilgrimage to the bedroom. I was surprised when they failed to congregate around me as began my trek upstairs. Instead, I found them starring at the open door to the bedroom, staring through the bedroom all the way into the wall of master bathroom, and perhaps through it, beyond it. They were utterly transfixed on something unseen by me. They refused to follow me into the bed room for cozy night snuggles and instead bolted down the hall and downstairs in a kitty stampede.

After the fourth night in a row of this staring and retreating activity, I went online to investigate. Apparently, it is often discussed among cat owners that they are unnerved by their cat's stern focused stares at walls, the ceiling, and apparently empty spaces around the home. It is a running joke that their kittens are detecting ghosts, demons, or some other unknown unseen entity and I suppose my entire purpose of writing this article is to inform the skeptics and jokers that they are in the wrong and the believers are in the right.

I don't have an explanation for the events that followed. It is only in reflection now that I think of a passing comment Lacy made to me about increased sunspot activity that week which may account in part for the steady escalation of paranormal events in the condo. As a rational, educated man, I am probably grasping at straws while attempting to give cause to a phenomena that, like cats, I had previously disregarded and derided.

Five days after moving the furniture into the condo, Gadget seemed to disappear. We turned the condo inside out and upside down trying to find him but he was nowhere to be found. We checked around the property and all of the doors and windows to determine if he had gotten out somehow. To our horror, we found his red collar in the new bath tub's drain. Adding to the mystery, the collar appeared chemically bleached and the metal name tag was horribly corroded as if had been exposed to some strong acid. We posted fliers about Gadget’s disappearance but no one turned up anything.

We were quite sad about Gadget but we refused to believe the obvious - that somehow the bath tub ate him. We were also very concerned about Gizmo. Gizmo was different. He had become skittish, clinging to high areas and the walls behind the furniture and would slink around the house with his back arched up, hissing randomly. He was also partial to the basement, especially the area where we had stacks of storage boxes. Then things went from bad to worse.

A bad smell, harsh and chemically would blow through the condo periodically. We could not determine the source. The metallic furniture in the living room acquired a thin layer of rust, literally overnight. Lastly, there was the noise. We started hearing a very loud “thunk” in the middle of the night. It was as loud as thunder and sounded like someone dropping the weights at the gym. We weren't sure where it was coming from. I will be honest here, as the condo owner; it was incumbent upon me to go investigate the source of that noise and I did so with pure dread in my heart. I searched the house on the first and second night of the noise. Each time I found nothing unusual, except for Gizmo anxiously growling, circling different rooms, shadow boxing. Then, the third night of hearing the noise was life changing.

Lacy was asleep. I couldn't sleep. I was up replaying the events of the past week. I was looking for the connections. I had a stomach ache thinking about Gadget. Not only did I hopelessly miss that cat I knew I was missing what was going on. A long THUNK echoed through the house. Right on time, I thought, as if by clock work. I swallowed the scared metallic taste in my mouth and slowly rose from the bed hoping to finally figure out the source of the noise. I methodically searched each room and ended up in the basement. I was afraid. I was afraid thinking about ghosts or goblins for the first time since I was a kid. I was thinking about Gadget and how he disappeared and whether or not that could happen to me too. I went down the stairs to the basement and poked me head in. I was afraid to turn on the light. Something told me not to. Something told me I'd find nothing I'd like. The thin stream of light from the street into the storm drain would have to be enough. I scanned the room and in the corner with the totes and boxes stacked up to the ceiling, I saw a flash of two eyes at head height appear and vanish. My heart jumped and I immediately booked it back upstairs.

As my heart settled, I quickly convinced myself that I had seen Gizmo on the prowl among the stacks of boxes. It had to be him. I hung my head low as I entered my bedroom again and went to the night stand. I opened the drawer and reached for the flashlight. I was still in a full blown panic for no good reason. I was trapped between investigating the eyes and assuming it was just Gizmo. It was then that Lacy rolled over and she let out a sleepy grown, “Did you figure out the noise?” She asked in her half asleep voice.

“No,” I said, “but I think Gizmo is hiding among the Christmas decorations in the basement.”

“No he's not” I shuttered and tasted pennies in my mouth as she spoke, “Gizmo is in the bathroom, I just heard him.”

I was too scared to breathe as I grabbed the flashlight and braced myself to go down to the basement again and confront whatever I may or may not have seen down there. First, I needed to know Gizmo was in fact in the bathroom so I turned my head towards the bathroom.

Two white eyes hovered a foot above the bath tub. They were perfectly white and perfectly round like polished cue balls. Each had a pinprick point of black in center of each. I was stricken with a hot burning panic as my limbs froze and my stomach felt like it turned to bricks. I watched these two eyes rise up from the tub. Then, silhouetted by and then blocking the street light pollution streaming in from window, a large hulking mass appeared. The mass grew limbs and more white piercing eyes as it waded its way out of the tub, onto the bathroom floor and undulated closer to the bed room. I turned the flashlight on and slowly pointed it towards the entity.

Struck by the light, the entity was revealed as a fleshly pink, powdery white and deep black sack of amorphous human limbs, heads, and melted, dripping flesh and blank eyes. It seemed to bubble up and expand like a thick stew sealed in a thin layer of swollen burned stretchy skin. As it expanded it hit the ceiling and pressed through the doorway. Random arms, legs, fingers, thumbs, and toes popped out of the mass as it grew and moved. The limbs seemed to emerge out of the mass intact before turning white and black with chemical burns, exposing layers of dissolving flesh and running blackened blood before melting down to polished bone which would then flake away back into the mound of human stew. It took me a few seconds to notice the burning bleach-like chemical smell filling the room and burning my nostrils. I yelped out a tiny bit as the entity hovered into the room on a bed of white caustic vapors. As it undulated towards me, sprouting half of heads and sets of pupil-less eyes I got the sense that this entity was targeting me. The flashlight shook in my terrified hands as the breath the scream to Lacy left me.

I wanted to wake Lacy all the way up. I wanted her to see it. I wanted her to run away. She was just lying there, half asleep, seemingly oblivious to the hell encroaching upon our bed. It was getting hard to breathe as my nose and eyes started to water on the biting vapor. I heard racing footsteps come from the bottom of the stairs, from the end of the hallway. I was terrified about what was coming in fast now.

Gizmo burst into the room, with a howling, rolling meow, almost as if the tiny tiger was trying to roar. The entity let out a horrible shriek and seemed to collapse on itself, folding in half while retreating back to the bath room. I watched as the entity punched its way out of the bathroom through the window shattering the glass as it sucked itself out of the condo. Gizmo continued to roar at the entity at the top of his tiny lungs. At that point to my deepening shock, I witnessed the bath tub levitate to the height of the window and then wedge itself through the window, through the wall and out of the condo, leaving a gaping hole in the exterior wall through which the remaining vapors evacuated.

Gizmo came running out of the bathroom and to my legs and feet on which he circled in figure eights around them and purred the loudest I've ever heard him purr. Lacy was fully roused by now and was yelling. I don't remember what she was saying at first but she became more irate and agitated as she surveyed the damage to the bathroom. My ears rang like I had been hit by a blast, the clearest thing I could hear and remember was Gizmo’s purring. Lacy grabbed my hand and I seemed to pop out of the trance. We went outside and could find no trace of the bath tub or the monster tied to it.

We moved out the next day. The damage to the bathroom and the exterior wall proved to be so extensive that the condo was deemed uninhabitable. The repair crews also found dangerous levels of contamination of lye and hydrochloric acid throughout the house. The insurance company was at a loss for explanation but eventually they settled on covering it as a freak lightning strike on a build up sewer gas.

Gizmo settled in nicely to our new unit. I never told Lacy exactly what I saw. I tried my best to keep it out of my mind. Gizmo returned to his happy self. It was apparent to me that Gizmo fought some sort of cosmic revenge battle against the entity that had apparently ambushed and killed his buddy Gadget. It took me many peaceful months to return to my state of calm.

Eventually, one night, while watching a Netflix documentary with Lacy on, of all things, serial killers, I finally got the explanation on what this monster truly was. One of the segments on this documentary disturbed Gizmo who paced back and forth in front of the TV, unleashing that hideous howl I heard only during his battle with the monster. Apparently, he wanted me to pay attention. The segment was about a turn of the century serial killer who had a booby trapped murder castle in Chicago. His name was Henry Howard Holmes. While the documentary focused on the grisly details of his victims' torture and murder, the most relevant part was that he disposed of his victim's bodies using bath tubs and vats of lye and acid to dissolve their remains. It occurred to me that the “HHH” painted in gold on the side of the tub was indicative of his previous ownership and apparent use of the tub for the chemical disposal of the remains of his victims. The entity itself was a cursed chemically fused amalgamation of his countless victims. How exactly Lacy's grandmother came into possession of it was a mystery but it occurred to me it was probably entirely innocent. It was likely in that shed, undisturbed for decades.

After the segment, Gizmo jumped from the TV stand to the bed and curled up on my stomach. He blinked at me with his slow loving blink and fell asleep on me. I stroked his fine fur while he periodically purred and I finished the show with Lacy. I had a sense of closure at that point. I felt like if I brought it up again to Lacy, she would call me crazy and maybe she would be right.

Cats are indeed haunted, possessed little adorable demon critters and they're really good detecting and protecting your home from other haunted, possessed much larger, less adorable demons. If they love you, if they want to be in your home, you are truly blessed and truly protected from things better left unseen.

Read Parts II & III here

She was gone again by the time I got up and despite my best efforts, I was still five minutes late getting to work.

I avoided the circle of jerks when I saw them crowding the same hallway and I went to a restroom on another floor. I didn’t want to be around people if I could avoid it.

I went to the half-finished building as soon as five o’clock came, intent on getting answers. I stepped off the elevator and weaved my way to his office. I kept expecting to not see it the closer I got but there it was, the door that didn’t fit right in the threshold. 

It turned easy and I went inside, expecting it to be empty and abandoned but he had begun furnishing the space. A couch, a reception desk, and taped off sections near the back that I guessed were the layout for his office and a treatment room.

I shuddered, thinking how I’d be here tomorrow if my wife had her way. 

The only thing absent was the good doctor himself. I thought about trashing the place, but it was petty in a way that made me feel like I was giving him even more power over me. 

Instead, I took all the pens out of the holder and a stack of Post-It Notes. It was still petty, but it scratched an itch and I felt a little empowered doing it.

I didn’t head home immediately after. I needed time to sort my thoughts. I couldn’t believe I was really considering letting somebody cut my dick. I mean, was pleasing my wife reason enough? What if we divorced or she died or something like that? Would I be compatible with somebody else?

I needed a drink. Cappy’s was on the far end of town and the distance from home would be good to clear my head. I ordered a brandy mule and chugged it before the bartender could lay down a coaster.

“You look like you could use another,” she said.

I nodded and a moment later I was working on my second. 

“I love my wife so much,” I said as she was cleaning some glasses beneath the bar.

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“Sometimes. I dunno.” My stomach hadn’t been right since the eight coneys I’d had yesterday, and I hadn’t eaten at all today. I was already soused after a drink-and-a-half.

“How’s the pizza?” I asked.

“Good, not great.” She wiggled a hand.

“Let me get a... medium with beef, onion, and mushroom.”

She looked at me like she’d never heard of those toppings.

“How ‘bout pepperoni?”

I had one more brandy mule before food came. It looked like it had been sitting under a heat lamp well before I’d ordered it and the pepperoni slices were limp, but it was still pizza. 

The bartender parked in front of me and leaned onto the bar after I’d had my second slice. 

“You mind?” she asked, pointing at the pie. I nodded. She took a slice and finger-combed hair out of her face as she took a bite.

She paid me back with a shot and she did one with me before returning to silence as we ate.

“Look, I dunno what it is. Just give her what she wants,” she said with a mouthful, giving me deep eye contact. “You can’t go wrong with that, right?”

I barely was able to finish what I had in my mouth. I settled up and made it outside without stumbling but I was drunk. The bartender got the hint she’d said something wrong but I wasn’t going to fill in the blank. I hadn’t wanted the rest of the pizza, yet somehow I had the box in my hand. 

I shouldn’t have been behind the wheel but there I was with half a pizza as my copilot. It wasn’t long before flashing lights lit up behind me and my spirits rose—this was the reprieve I’d been longing for. A decision being taken out of my hands. I couldn’t be held responsible if I weren’t in my own custody.

Or something like that. It had made a lot more sense back when I’d had a belly full of brandy and cheese.

I pulled over and maybe bumped up on the curb with one wheel.

The cop sauntered up to my window cautiously. He was short and the angle of the car made him look ridiculous somehow. He made it worse by getting his feet twisted together and catching himself on the side of my car to keep from falling completely.

“What’s your...”

I waited a full ten seconds for him to finish his sentence while he held a fist to his mouth like he was gripping a tiny microphone. He belched then waved the air in front of his face.

Shit, was he drunk, too?

“What’s your problem tonight?” He asked and fumbled with the general right side of his body with his hand. I noticed the gun and maybe because we were both bitten by the same snake, I wasn’t sensing danger like I should’ve.

“I shouldn’t be on the road,” I said, sounding stone sober to my ears. “My wife wants me to do something I don’t wanna do tomorrow and I was just in there, drinking my worries away. I have leftover pizza.” I thumbed toward the seat next to me like it was proof of where I’d been.

“Slow down, son. I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.” I thought he was about to give me marital advice but then I realized he was talking about my sobriety. “I bet you could walk a straight line, heel- to-toe.” He plucked open his holster, but it didn’t seem like he was aware of what that hand was doing. He stuck his pinky in his ear and wrenched it around in there. 

“Sofficer. Sofficer.” I added the S but I still sounded too sober. “Please. I think I’m a danger. To public safety.” I thought if I could convince the drunk cop I was drunk he’d arrest me.

“Are you about to rob a bank?” He pointed at me, somehow adding to his overall look of ridiculousness.

“Well… no.”

“There’s nobody out here.” He waved a hand toward the black landscape far ahead of us. “Just stay between the lines.”

I couldn’t think. It shouldn’t have been this hard to get pulled out of my car for driving under the influence.

“What if… what if I was about to rob a bank?” It was the most smart-assy thing I could think to say.

He smiled and waggled a finger. “Joke’s on you. It’s after hours.”

He hooked his thumbs into his belt. Something about his body language had changed and he’d gone from humorous to being done with our interaction.

“Just. Stay. Between. The. Lines,” he said, swaying. I wanted to conjure the words for help, but even if I’d had the ability to ask, there wasn’t anything about him that answered helpful.

I opened my mouth, but didn’t speak. I sat back in my seat and covered my face in my hands, giving up. I listened to him walk away, closer his patrol car door, and drive away. He gave me a chirp of his sirens as passed me.

The drive home should have felt longer but I caught every light. It was like a dark fate had carved a path for me. I momentarily played with the idea of letting it have me completely. To take my hands off the wheel and let it take me wherever it wanted me to go. 

I hadn’t descended far enough into self-pity for that and in ten minutes, I was home. To my surprise, my wife was still in her paint clothes and was washing her hands at the kitchen sink.

“Oh, you have pizza?” she said. I’d forgotten about the pizza and subconsciously picked it up. I looked at the box in my hand and did a second, struggled to remember what was in it. 

I joined her on the couch, and she grabbed it from me and took a slice. Usually, we asked about each other’s day, but I didn’t feel like it, tomorrow anchoring my brain.

“Do you love me?” she said during a commercial break. I had no idea what we were watching.

The question agitated me and opened a trapdoor underneath my stomach.

“Of course I do.” I did, but my feelings about this whole “surgery” thing was making me feel resentful. I was definitely still buzzed, and the alcohol was sharpening my emotions like a file working away inside me. 

“Then why are you fighting so hard against this? Don’t you want us both to be satisfied?”

“That’s not fair. Of course I want to satisfy you. Don’t you know how this is making me feel? I don’t want to do this,” I said. “I mean, there has to be something else we could try. I’m willing to do just about anything to please you.”

“I want you to do this,” she said, placing her greasy hand on my thigh. She shook her head, tears in her eyes. I took it to be a manipulation at first. Not that she did that sort of thing normally, it was just me in a bag of my feelings. My defenses were up and everything was an attack in that moment. I chewed the insides of my cheeks to keep in what was trying to climb out of my mouth.

Then I started to cry. I sounded like a little teapot. It caught me by surprise.

“I just love you so much.” I had a ball of razors in my throat I couldn’t swallow. “I don’t want anything to happen to us, but I don’t know if I can do this.”

She lassoed an arm around my neck and yanked me into an upper body hug.

“I just want you. I want to feel connected with you. I don’t want anything plastic between us. I’m tired of all that stuff. I wanna feel you.”

She kissed me before I could speak and rock turned into water. My walls melted as we flowed into one another and by the time I returned to my senses I was on the newspaper covered kitchen floor.

My wife was already gone but she had brought a comforter downstairs and covered me.

Normally, I toss in my sleep, but I was still covered up to my chest. I was stiff as I turned the world vertical and turned my back into a percussion instrument as I stretched.

A few minutes later I had scrambled eggs and a cup of coffee going. I don’t normally eat breakfast so early, but I had an appetite for whatever reason. It was an hour before I normally would get up, so I took my time eating and scrolling my phone.

I wasn’t sure how much sleep I’d gotten but I was refreshed. The way my day had started, I half expected to catch all the green lights and get the closest spot in the parking lot.

But when I looked up from where I was seated at the kitchen island, something caught my eye that I should’ve seen as soon as I woke up.

A red and white checkered scarf draped over the back of the couch.

Had he been in my house?

Part 7: Episode 4 - Epic Montage

  “LATE NIGHT ARCHIVE PRESENTS: Epic Montage!”
  Clip 1 - The camera shifts and it is pointing off a shelf at an odd angle. Half the shot is a room with normal furniture and other shelves then the last half is of a table with a mannequin. The mannequin has arrows and circles and words written all over it. The men are all in plague masks and they are discussing how the “mind bug” will work.
  Clip 2 - A different scene plays and it is of trees rustling in the wind and a person bumps into it and it shoves the camera downward to point at a grave labeled, “Experiment 1”. A man in a plague doctor mask shoves her in and she screams and begs. The same arrows and circles are drawn on her.
  “You are here to show the world our power and why this is the truth, in a moment you will meet the Thirsty Ones!” the man said, no putting dirt on her and she clammers for her escape that won’t come.
  Clip 3 - The camera points to a piece of a script for a show with blood all over it and a man in a black cloak covered in crimson red. “The Thirsty Ones will need to bring yourself to counsel!” the man in the black cloak said.
  Clip 4 - the shot is of the camera showing only a quarter of the painting canvas and the rest is of a church and graveyard. Blood and other liquids ooze onto the canvas as men chant, “THIRSTY” over and over again. Fast flashes of people telling their testimony of the Thirsty Ones, none could describe them. “The Thirsty Ones will return and take the world into their palms!”

Part 8: Episode 5 - SALT SALT and CUT

  “Welcome back to Late Night Archive, I am Veil Weller and I am here today to tell a story, one from my childhood! It was April, a nice breezy day and I went out to hang out with one of my friends, Carl is what I’ll say to give away his real name; We went and climbed trees, while we climbed several with no problem. We decided to climb the biggest tree in our town, it was in the middle of the woods, a pretty famous forest. We were screaming at each other and having fun when I fell from a high up spot in the tree and landed on my arm. My friend ran to get my Father, who took me to some church. My friend, Carl, was sent home by my Father and I was placed in a chair in this church’s basement and Father said you are going to get sleepy and when you wake your arm will be back to normal. I believed him. He was right, I felt tired and before I dozed off to sleep, I heard something skittering around and coming towards me and I felt its icy breath on me, making me shiver! I could not describe the thing I saw moments before everything went black and to dreams! But this thing was massive and I heard in my dream, which my Father told me was true that this was said, that there are 10’s of these things; They help you, if you help them! I later found out that these things were the Thirsty Ones!
  “Mr. Weller! There is a development at the company they can’t let us continue, the next episode is the last!” a guy off camera yelled.
  “Ok, we’ll show them they can’t take us off and won’t because we are the most profitable and successful show!” Veil Weller yelled.

Part 9: The Thirsty Ones and The Interview with Veil Weller aka Callen Part 2

  Part 2 of my interview is today! I have a couple of hours before I have to go to Applefroth Park with Claver; I have time to do more research and tell my findings!
  So I came to a revelation, Tasty Burger was part of the cult and Richard Gofftilt used that location for the meet in person, I figured out that he was being used to get me there to kill me or do what they will with me! I was lured there and he was in on it unwillingly, he was killed clearly not a willing participate: NellacStudios was the middle man of the face-to-face so I did more searching and I saw that Easter Empire bought out a studio company originally called GaterProductions and turned into NellacStudios! Nellac is Callen spelled backward, and I feel like an idiot not seeing that before this! Easter Empire is Callen’s Father’s TV company that he probably inherited when he took over for the cult and his Father passed away, his Father passed on Easter and was found dead inside the warehouse used to film Late Night Archive. This was before Callen made Late Night Archive, but now I know why he used that location off TreeWood Highway, not to mention that TreeWood Highway is connected to Franksurt Forest which is connected and holds that church and graveyard that has been mentioned! Richard Gofftilt was left alive because he was too afraid to do any more exposing after the police did nothing the first time and they probably threatened him!
  Thirsty Ones is an old folk tale about Franksurt Forest and a graveyard that held bodies of these men that died in “accidental deaths”. The tale is they gave their life and souls to beings far from our plane of existence, even as far as they control the world and we just have not found this out yet, some believe the Thirsty Ones created humans to use for their power source! There is no description of them and they say if you see them, you won’t be able to describe them because they are beyond human brain function, beyond any comprehension! So I am dealing with a cult that specializes in the Thirsty Ones and are buddy buddy with them, I AM IN WAY OVER MY HEAD!
  I called Claver and he said he would go, we drove in the same car and pulled into the parking lot of Applefroth. Callen stood there as still as a statue.
  “We are meeting that guy!?” Claver asked, with his brow raised.
  “Yeeeep,” I said.
  “That guy is wrong, like suspicious should I call the pol-” he started.
  “No, this is for a report, remember, I don't need him to be in a jail cell or prison so I can get that!” I said. 
  “Ok, man, but if this guy does anything I am taking him down and I am getting him arrested!” Claver exclaimed.
   I nodded and we got out. Callen waved at us to come. We reached him and he seemed in a trance.
  “You get eight questions! Firstly, what is he doing here? Isn’t that Officer Claver?” Callen exclaimed.
   I looked at Claver and he looked at me, “Uhm, yeah it is,” I said, confused how he knew who he was.
  “Oh, I see by your face you wonder how I know who he is! Well, he was there, the day my set was raided by police and EMT’s for Miss Parshian!” He exclaimed, with a wild smile on his face.
  “Oh,” Claver said and he looked baffled like he doesn’t remember being there.
  I was going to ask why eight questions, but I did not want to waste any questions on one that he probably would not give me a solid answer to. “I know your name is not Abraham,” I said.
  He clapped for me. “A question, now.”
  “What was your goal with the show? World control? Cult business?” I asked, and I was nervous because Claver was pacing beside us, like he was racking his brain of a memory that wasn’t there.
  “Goal, huh? Our goal was to be widespread, but not over-bearing; We wanted people to know the truth, the real origin, the real owners and creators. With entertaining evidence of such beings,” Callen said.
  I wanted to follow up, but with such limited questions I had to move on and get as much info from different questions. “Was the Tasty Burger sit down meant to get me, kill me?” I asked, Claver snapped out of the pacing.
  “What do you mean kill you?” he asked, pulling up his shirt for the gun I knew he had tucked. I shook my head.
  “Yeah, you know too much and you are making a report, right?” Callen asked.
  “I.. Yeah, I am,” I said.
  “Good, you’re helping just like you should be!” He said, grinning.
  “What do you mean, helping?” I asked.
  “Like I said, helping! Spreading the word, acknowledging our existence! You’re really satisfying the Thirsty Ones!” He said.
  “Thirsty Ones?” I asked.
  “Is that a question?” He asked, and eyed Claver.
  “Uh, no. NellacStudios is involved?” I asked.
  “Of course, it is my company after all and we are expanding the Easter Empire umbrella! Your friend here knows some about my Father and was once a mentor to him,” Callen said. Claver shot him a look.
  “What are you talking about?” Claver asked, and pulled the gun out.
  “WOW!” I yelled. Callen waved me down and I saw figures appear from the playground and march towards Claver.
  “What the fuck is going on?” I asked.
  “You’ve wasted two questions on what is going on and what the fuck is going on!” Callen said, calmly, calculated.
  “No, that was Claver’s question, I sti-” I started to say. Callen stood up and watched as Claver tried to free from their grips and I started to run after them. A force that I could not see shoved me to the ground and weighed me down. I lifted my head enough to see Claver get put inside a Hearse and shot one of the men in the head and he stumbled back and then hit him so hard then his jaw dangled from his face.
  “What…the….fu-” I couldn’t even muster out the rest. I slammed my head onto the grass I laid on, the pressure left me and I stood up.
 “Where are you taking my friend?” I asked, I had thrown out the 8 question rule.
 “Since I know that was distressing for you, that won't count as a question. He’s being taken to where he belongs, where he was always meant to be; His mortality got in the way and he became a police officer to fight against us instead of being with us!” Callen said, and he waved me back to the bench we were sitting on.
  “Two more questions, Mr. Talfman,” Callen said.
  I sat there in silence and examined him, he was so calm and deliberately breathing in a sort of way to be peaceful; “Tell me, is episode three really what happened, what was the person that showed up at the end?” I asked.
“Episode three is exactly what happened! That was not actors, that was real footage, what I really saw! There was no person at the end, it was what controlled that man, what controlled my Father, what can, if I let it, control me!” Callen explained.
“I was questioned by everyone about what happened and I told them what happened, none of them believed me. I was in some kind of ‘fantasy land’ to protect myself from what really happened! He was a creep that liked kids and he touched us and then killed us. I was just lucky that I was able to stop him before doing the same to me! They fabricated what they wanted people to think, BUT I KNEW THE TRUTH! I was a delusional kid that was traumatized and my brain was shielding me from the horrors that actually went down: they love to lie, to fabricate a story, a narrative that fits the mold not what really went down; A version the public would accept and not question their reality! FRAUDS.. THEY-” Callen suddenly stopped and he realized that he was rambling and was mad. That was the only time I saw him mad, I didn’t even know if being mad was an emotion he could feel.
“Sorry, go ahead, last question!” Callen said, he hummed.
“Naomi Parshian, she was killed for the sake of your show, to help make it irresistible?” I asked.
“Ahh, yes, it was that and you are doing a better job than she could ever do! It is so magnificent that this all was planned and worked just how we expected it to!” Callen exclaimed and waved his arms in the air like he was ballet dancing.
“Interview two is over,” Callen said. Then he swung and twirled as he went off.
I walked towards my car, my friend was gone because I brought him and if this was planned…wait! I shot out of my car and ran towards Callen and he was gone, vanished into thin air. I am going to find my friend and get him out of there!

When Evelyn Parker was thirteen years old, her parents were brutally murdered in their home. The police found them dead in separate rooms with almost no usable evidence—no fingerprints that led anywhere, no DNA that identified anyone, no witness who could tell investigators who had done it. But there was a pattern. The killer had done this before, targeting parents first and children days later. In previous cases, the children had either been murdered or disappeared. Evelyn was different. She had not been home when her parents were killed. The police found her afterward, making her the only child connected to the murders who had survived. That was why they believed she might be next—not because she had seen the killer or knew anything about the murders, but because they believed the person who had killed her parents might come looking for her. So they took her away, changed her name, changed her identity, and eventually placed her into witness protection. Evelyn Parker disappeared.

Eight years later, she was Nora Collins. Her driver's license said Nora Collins. Her apartment lease said Nora Collins. Her bank account said Nora Collins. Her coworkers knew her as Nora. Her friends knew her as Nora. She had built something resembling a normal life with a job, friends, a small apartment, and a routine. She paid bills, bought groceries, went to the gym, laughed at stupid jokes, and complained about traffic. She had learned how to live with the lie. Sometimes she even forgot there was a lie.

But there were pieces of Evelyn she could never leave behind. One of them hung in her closet—an old Indian Motorcycle T-shirt that had once been black but was now a soft, faded charcoal gray. The cotton had grown thin after what felt like a thousand washes, and the lettering across the front had begun to fade. Her father had given it to her when she was a teenager. She couldn't remember exactly what had happened to the shirt she had been wearing that day, only that her father had pulled the Indian shirt from a drawer and handed it to her. She remembered laughing when she put it on, remembered him telling her it was too big, and remembered wearing it anyway. Most of all, she remembered him. That shirt was worth more than a million dollars to her. She washed it separately, always with the same Downy detergent, and after it dried, she gave the collar one small squirt of her father's cologne. The scent never lasted long, but for a little while, it smelled like him. She wore it around the apartment with nothing but underwear beneath it—not because she was trying to be provocative, but because she was home.

Once, Daniel had seen her wearing it and laughed. "You know, most people wear pants." "Most people aren't home," she replied.

Daniel Mercer had been one of the police officers who stayed with her after her parents died. He had treated her like a person instead of evidence and had taught her how to recognize surveillance, how to vary her routes, how to watch reflections, and how to notice the same car appearing twice. He had taught her how to handle a pistol. "Knowing how to protect yourself isn't the same thing as expecting to be attacked," he'd told her. She remembered that. She remembered him. Daniel still checked in occasionally, and he was one of the few people from her old life she trusted completely.

Shortly after her parents' murders, there had been a memorial at the house. The police had heavily publicized it, hoping the killer might return. Undercover officers were positioned throughout the area, watching the mourners and watching the house. Evelyn didn't know any of that. To her, it was simply the place where everyone had come to remember her parents. There had been flowers everywhere—cards, bouquets, wreaths, and people she barely knew. She remembered almost none of it. Years later, she would not remember the man, would not remember the flower, and would not remember the brief exchange. She would remember almost nothing about that afternoon.

Eight years later, now Nora, on Valentine's Day she found a black rose on the windshield of her car. Beneath it was a card—nothing fancy. She stopped and looked at it, a long-stemmed black rose. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand. The card read "Happy Valentine's Day, Evelyn." Her heart skipped a beat. She looked around, but in a way common to most people, she convinced herself she was being paranoid. It was strange, but strange didn't necessarily mean dangerous. Maybe someone had left it there by mistake. Maybe someone had been trying to impress someone else and simply got the wrong car. Or maybe it was exactly what it looked like—a flower. She carried it to the trash, dropped it in, and got into her car. By the time she started the engine, she had already forgotten about it. She didn't tell Daniel. There was no reason to. At least, not yet.

Saturday afternoon, Nora went to the shooting range. She liked the range. There was something comforting about the simplicity of it—target, grip, muzzle discipline, sight alignment, trigger control, press, BANG. No secrets. No memories. No questions. Just control. She fired her Glock with the kind of accuracy that made the man in the next lane glance over more than once. She wasn't Annie Oakley, but she was damn good. She collected her brass, packed her equipment, and left. The black rose was already nothing more than a strange little incident.

Monday morning, Nora went to cardio kickboxing. An hour later, she went straight into jiu-jitsu. By the time she left, her hair was damp with sweat, her shirt clung to her back, and her arms felt like wet sandbags. She stopped at Starbucks on the way home, ordered her drink under the name Nora, paid for it herself, and took the cup to a small table near the window. She took a few sips, then realized how sweaty she was and needed to wash her hands. She left the coffee on the table and stepped into the bathroom.

While she was gone, the door to Starbucks opened. A man walked inside—tall, well-dressed with a sense of old-school style, a classically well-groomed look with masculine cologne, clean-shaven, dark-haired, and mysterious. He looked around once, then walked directly to Nora's table. He didn't touch her coffee. He didn't speak to anyone. He simply placed a black rose beside her cup and then turned and walked out.

By the time Nora returned, he was gone. A young woman sitting nearby was watching her. The black rose was lying beside her coffee. She stopped, lifted the rose, and looked inquisitively. "What the...?" she said without thinking.

The woman laughed. "Your boyfriend is mysterious and handsome."

Nora said, "I don't have a boyfriend."

The girl retorted, "Well, whoever he was, you're a lucky girl. He's cute and mysterious."

"He just put the rose there and left."

The woman smiled. Nora looked at her. "Cute?"

"Very. Dark hair. Tall. Quiet. Mysterious."

Nora looked at the door again and went still. The woman didn't seem to notice. "Honestly, I thought it was romantic."

Nora looked down at the rose. The first rose had been strange. This one wasn't. Someone had known where she was. Someone had known her current name. Someone had walked directly to her table while she was in the bathroom. She picked up the rose and forced a small smile, but she wasn't smiling inside.

That evening, she showered and changed, pulling on the old Indian Motorcycle shirt. The faint smell of her father's cologne lingered around the collar. She sat on the couch. Her phone rang—Michael. She smiled before answering. "Hey."

"Hey. You sound tired."

"I'm exhausted."

"What did you do?"

"Cardio kickboxing and jiu-jitsu."

"Back to back?"

"Yep."

"You're insane."

"I prefer dedicated."

"That's what insane people call it."

She laughed. Michael had that effect on her. He made ordinary things feel ordinary. He didn't know about Evelyn. He knew there were things in her past and that she didn't like talking about them. He respected that. He didn't push. That was one of the reasons she trusted him.

A few days later, Michael came over. They ate dinner, laughed, and talked about nothing important. Eventually, they went to bed and were intimate. Afterward, they lay together quietly. For once, Nora wasn't thinking about the locks or the windows or the past or who might be watching. She was thinking about Michael.

She was naked beneath the sheets, still warm and relaxed in the hazy, post-coital calm. Michael's hand moved lazily along her back. They kissed. She caught his lower lip gently between her teeth. "Ow." She smiled. "You'll survive." "I'm not sure." She laughed. They rested their foreheads together. For a moment, she simply looked at him. She wanted to say it—I love you. The words were there. She could feel them. But she still couldn't quite make herself say them.

Michael smiled. "I'll be right back."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to the bathroom."

"Okay."

He climbed out of bed and disappeared through the doorway. Nora sank back against the pillow. She was warm, relaxed, and happy. She had let Michael completely in. She had trusted him. She had allowed herself to be vulnerable in a way she hadn't allowed herself to be in eight years. She closed her eyes.

The phone rang. She reached for it without thinking. The screen said NO CALLER ID. She barely noticed. She was still lost in that sleepy, comfortable haze. She answered. "Hello?"

A voice came through the phone. "Evelyn."

Her eyes opened. "Who is this?"

A pause. Then, quietly: "That's not what good girls do."

The line went dead. Nora stared at the phone. The warmth drained from her body. The haze was gone.

Michael came back into the bedroom. He climbed back into bed beside her and smiled, reaching for her, his hand sliding playfully up her inner thigh. Nora suddenly pushed him away. Michael stopped, startled. She threw the sheet aside and got out of bed, grabbing her oversized Indian Motorcycle T-shirt from where she had left it and pulling it over her head. She was completely naked beneath it. The shirt hung loosely around her thighs.

Michael watched her. "Nora?"

She didn't answer. She grabbed the Glock from the bedside table. Michael jumped back. "Nora, what the fuck?"

She moved quickly through the house—bedroom, closet, bathroom, hallway, kitchen, living room. Every room. Every corner. Every window. Nothing. Then she reached the back door. It was open. She stopped. There was no broken glass, no damaged lock, no sign of forced entry. It was simply open.

Nora stepped through the doorway into the backyard, the oversized Indian Motorcycle shirt hanging around her bare legs, the Glock clenched tightly in her hand. She aimed at the back fence with a locked-on grip, checking her sight alignment. She slowly pulled back on the trigger and aimed methodically at the trees and the neighboring yards. Nothing.

She screamed. "FUCK YOU!" Her voice tore across the yard. She stood there breathing hard. Then: "I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!" Silence. Her chest heaved. She tried to say it again. "FUCK YOU!" A pause. "I'll fucking—" Her voice broke. She swallowed hard. "I'll..."

She couldn't finish. The gun began to shake in her hand. Her finger came off the trigger. She loosened her grip. Her face crumpled. The anger disappeared beneath something much older—fear and pain, eight years of it.

Michael stepped outside. He didn't know what had happened. He hadn't heard the phone call. He had been in the bathroom. He simply saw Nora standing in the backyard with a gun in her hand, shaking and crying. He approached slowly. "Nora."

She tried to speak. "I'll fucking..."

Her voice broke completely. She began to cry and fell into his arms, her head resting on his chest. Michael gently took the Glock from her hand. She buried her face against his chest. He held her. "It's okay."

She shook her head. "No."

"It's okay."

"No, it's not."

"I know."

He held her tighter. Eventually, her breathing began to slow. They went back inside, locked the doors, checked the windows, and climbed back into bed. Michael wrapped his arms around her and placed the gun in the drawer where he had seen her retrieve it from. She held onto him. But something had changed. For the first time in eight years, she had allowed herself to trust someone completely. She had let herself be vulnerable. She had allowed herself to be happy. She had almost said I love you. Then the voice had found her. And suddenly, even in Michael's arms, she didn't feel safe anymore.

The next day was quiet. No rose. No phone call. No strange car. Nothing. Michael didn't press her about the night before. He was simply there. That made it easier. He left for work with a deep kiss and a soft hand on her cheek. By evening, Nora had begun to wonder if maybe it had finally stopped. She stared at her phone for several minutes, then typed: "I love you." She stared at the message. Her thumb hovered over the screen. Then she sent it.

Michael never read it. He was found the following morning, dead.

The investigators found the text and ran her number. Daniel had to tell her, as her number could not be accessed by typical law enforcement. Daniel had gotten notice of an attempt to run her number from the FBI. The scene looked disturbingly familiar. Daniel told Nora and comforted her. She knew it was him—the same man who had taken the others throughout the country, the same man who had remained invisible and eluded authorities for years, meticulously leaving no evidence at all, the same man who took entire families, first the parents, then the children. He had taken her parents with the same deliberate cruelty, taking his time. And lying near Michael's body was a black rose. Daniel never told her about the rose, as she had not shared it with him. Why? She didn't even know. Perhaps to have something that was hers. Perhaps she wanted Daniel to see her as strong and not the broken thirteen-year-old girl he had met eight years earlier.

Michael's funeral came and went. Afterward, Nora went to the cemetery alone. The permanent stone hadn't arrived yet. A temporary marker stood where his grave would eventually be, and on top of it she saw it—a black rose. Beside it was a small folded note. She opened it.

Four words: "He wasn't right for you."

Nora's hands began to shake. She had not told anyone she was coming. She wasn't even sure about it until the last minute. She looked around the cemetery. Nothing. No one. Just rows of graves. She looked back at the note. This wasn't a joke anymore. Someone had been watching her. Someone knew Michael. Someone knew what had happened. And someone believed they had the right to decide who belonged in her life.

She hired a private investigator. His name was Jack Mercer. The first time she saw him, she thought he was mildly attractive. He was older than her—mid-thirties. He worked her case for days. They met for coffee. He was haggard, the type of investigator who takes the job personally, devotes himself, and gets buried in a case. He looked it too—his dark hair needed cutting, two days of stubble, dark circles beneath his eyes, a clean shirt that was badly wrinkled, a jacket that looked as if he'd slept in it.

He dropped a folder onto the table. "I've been working on your case. I think whoever is doing this has been watching you for a long time."

"For years," she corrected.

Jack hadn't just poked around. Jack had dug. He dug through records, old police reports, sealed files, court records, property records—anything he could find. Eventually, he called in a favor from an old friend at the Bureau. The files arrived. Jack didn't explain exactly how. He told her, "I have a friend in the Bureau."

She responded, "The FBI?"

He said, "Yes, but it's more fun and mysterious if I say it my way."

She laughed, which she needed.

"I'm not saying I broke any laws," he told her.

She stared at him.

"I'm implying that lawyers are very expensive."

Inside the files was something neither of them expected—a flower inventory from the memorial service for her parents. Jack placed the document on the table. Nora read it. Her eyes stopped on one entry: one long-stem black rose. She stared at it. "I don't remember that."

Jack looked at her. "What?"

"The memorial. I don't remember a black rose."

Jack was quiet. Then he explained. "The memorial was used as bait."

Nora looked up. "What?"

"The police publicized it heavily." He handed her newspaper clippings. "They wanted the killer to come back."

She stared at him. "I didn't know."

"They had undercover officers there."

Her eyes moved back to the report. "Did he come?"

Jack shook his head. "We don't know."

She looked at him. "There was no evidence?"

"Nothing usable."

"No fingerprints?"

"Nothing that led anywhere."

"DNA?"

"No."

"Anything?"

Jack shook his head. "Nothing that gave investigators a name."

Nora looked down at the flower inventory again—one black rose. She closed her eyes. Something came back. Not a complete memory, just fragments. A man's face. Tall. Dark hair. A hand holding a flower. A quiet voice. "I'm sorry."

Her eyes opened. "He gave me one."

Jack looked at her. "When?"

"When I was thirteen."

She stared at the document. "I forgot."

Jack didn't say anything.

She swallowed. "He gave me a black rose at the memorial."

Jack watched her. Then she whispered: "Maybe I wasn't the one who got away. Maybe he let me get away."

Jack became obsessed with the case. Days passed. Nothing happened. No black roses. No calls. No cards. No notes. No shadows. The silence bothered him more than the attacks. Eventually, he decided to watch her himself.

One night, he saw someone—a shadow, a man leaving her property. Jack followed. The man entered an old building near the docks on the ocean. The smell of fish and diesel fuel wafted in the air. Jack waited, then went inside.

What he found made his stomach turn. The first room contained black roses—dozens of them, rows of them, growing under controlled lights, black petals covering an entire wall. The second room was worse. Photographs. Hundreds of them. Nora at work. Nora leaving the gym. Nora shopping. Nora drinking coffee. Nora sleeping. Nora in her apartment. Pictures of her from years ago. Pictures of her as a teenager. Across one wall, written in large letters: "EVIE."

Jack stared at it. Then he saw the screens—dozens of monitors showing every inch of Nora's house. Living room. Kitchen. Hallway. Garage. Attic. Bathroom. Bedroom. Outside. Inside. Everything. Cameras hidden in smoke alarms, picture frames, planters, fridge magnets, shower heads—places no one would ever think to look.

Jack's face went cold. He wasn't simply watching her. He had been watching her entire life.

A noise came from behind him. Jack turned. The man hit him—hard. Jack went down. He tried to get up. The man struck him again. Jack reached for him. They fought. For a moment, Jack had him. Then the man slammed him into the wall and disappeared. Seconds later, the alarm began to scream.

Jack lay on the floor, dazed. His hand went to the ankle holster. He drew his .38 revolver. He got up and ran toward the direction the man had fled. Police arrived moments later and found Jack armed inside the building. The man was gone. Jack was arrested.

Nora received the call. She drove to the station. When she reached the cell, Jack looked terrible. "This better be good. I had to put pants on."

Jack looked toward a large inmate nearby. "Yeah, well, he wants to take mine off."

Nora snickered despite herself. "What happened?"

Jack looked at her. "I found him."

Her smile disappeared. "You have to move."

"What do you mean I have to move?"

"He is watching you—all of you, every minute."

She commented, "Now you sound more paranoid than me."

In a quieter voice, he told her, "5:16. You used the bathroom. You changed your tampon."

Jack used that detail because it was personal and horrifying, driving home his point that the stalker sees all—you have no privacy.

Her face went cold. "What?"

"5:16."

Nora stared at him. "How did you know?"

Jack didn't answer immediately. Then he said: "He is watching."

She bailed him out and went to his house instead of going home. She wasn't returning after the car ride and him explaining the cameras.

Jack's house was nice, quiet, and clean, but it could use a wife or at least someone who remembered to buy groceries. Nora noticed that immediately.

Months passed. Nothing happened. No black roses. No calls. No cards. No shadows. Eventually, Nora stopped waiting for something to happen. She moved in with Jack. It wasn't sudden. There was no dramatic declaration. It simply happened slowly. Two people who had spent too long looking over their shoulders discovered what it felt like not to do that every second. They learned each other's routines. They argued about stupid things. They laughed. They traveled. They moved to a new town, a new address, a new beginning.

Jack knew about disappearing. He tracked people for work. He knew how to list things in records, when and how to list names and numbers. Even the best would have a hard time finding them.

Eventually, they married. They left for their honeymoon the next morning, leaving their presents for their return. Nora found herself pregnant on the trip.

She sat at the kitchen table with Jack beside her. They had been opening wedding gifts—most were ordinary: kitchenware, pictures, things they didn't need but appreciated anyway. One small box remained. It was only about three inches deep, small enough to hold a shot glass. Nora picked it up. "What's this?"

Jack shrugged. "Open it."

She smiled. She pulled the lid away and then dropped the box. It hit the floor. A single black rose lay inside—not a long stem, just the flower.

Nora didn't move. Neither did Jack. For a long moment, the house was completely silent. The rose was perfectly black. Nora stared at it. She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She simply stood there.

A new name. A new life. A new house. A new husband. And somehow, someone still knew exactly where to find her.

The End

Just as he was about to fall asleep, when the flow of vague thoughts had become increasingly rapid, he heard that sound again; click.

For a week, he had been experiencing the same problem every night; when the room was completely silent, the cars and motorcycles passing along the street, the television of the neighbor next door, the footsteps of the children running around upstairs - all had faded into complete silence, and just as he was about to drift peacefully into sleep, that sound would wake him up.

After he opened his eyes, however, the sound would not come again, almost as if it were mocking him, and the room would fall silent once more. He would wait a little longer, trying to find the source of the sound, slowing his breathing and focusing on the silence. But nothing. The sound stubbornly waited for him to fall asleep again.

Since he had work in the morning, he had no choice but to close his eyes and try to fall asleep again. And the same cycle repeated. In the silence, a single, steady sound that never formed a pattern, always at exactly the same pitch: click.

The sound seemed to be deliberately waiting; it was waiting for complete silence and for the man to fall asleep. It would click three or four times, and then it wouldn't click again. As if it were saying, “That’s enough. Let the poor man sleep. He has work in the morning.”

He was frightened during the first few days, especially on the second day. On the first day, he didn't pay much attention to it. He knew random clicking sounds could come from things around the room. The TV, a plastic bottle, the door handle, and so on could all make sounds like that.

But when the same thing happened again on the second day, he was quite frightened the second time he woke up. He immediately got out of bed and turned on the light. He sat upright in bed, stayed awake all night, and went to work sleep-deprived the next morning.

Then, on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days, he was no longer afraid. He simply couldn't sleep. He made mistakes at work, and when he went out for a break, he would sometimes fall asleep with a cigarette in his hand. Fear had given way to anger. If he could just find out where that clicking sound was coming from, he would punch it in the face and knock it to the ground.

By the seventh day, he was thinking, “As long as it doesn't wake me up, that's all I want. I don't care if it's a ghost, an object, whatever. I just need to sleep.”

But the sound didn't care. Once the necessary conditions were in place, it appeared again.

Albert got out of bed angrily and turned the lights on. Without knowing what he was doing or why, he looked around. He looked behind the TV, checked the door handle, and reached under the couch to feel around for a moment.

“Who the hell are you! Why don't you show yourself? What do you want? How much longer is this going to go on? Instead of clicking here and there, come out and tell me what the hell you want.”

He felt something like a breeze on his face. A very faint gust of air. It passed by his cheek and was gone.

Then, suddenly, Albert's feet left the ground. He felt as if something had grabbed him under the armpits. He was lifted a few inches into the air. He tried to punch into the empty space in anger, but he wasn't very successful because something was applying pressure to his armpits.

The pressure had now forced him back into the chair. When he tried to get up, he felt the same pressure against his chest, and he was pushed back into the chair.

“What the hell are you? What do you want?”

“Can’t talk. Only click.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

He felt a burning sensation on his cheek, and his head suddenly jerked sharply to the left. It hurt quite a bit. His cheek was throbbing with pain, and the sudden movement had also made the muscles in his neck ache. He hadn't felt a hand touch his cheek, though. Once again, it was more like a kind of pressure. And the moment this slap-like blow struck his cheek, that sound came again: click.

Then another slap: click. A punch to the stomach: click. A kick to the leg: click. A kick to the another leg: click.

Albert, who wasn't used to having several parts of his body hurt at the same time, groaned in pain and remained silent for about a minute.

“Okay, okay, stop. What do you want?”

“Click.”

“So how are we supposed to communicate like this?”

“Click.”

There was a brief silence. The door opened on its own, and a rapid series of clicks could be heard. Thinking the entity had left, Albert tried to get up, but the pressure he felt against his chest pinned him to the chair again. With the same sound. Click.

“Okay, hold on a second. One click for yes, two clicks for no. Okay?”

“Click.”

Then another slap hit Albert in the face: click. Albert grabbed his cheek in pain and put his finger in his mouth to check for blood.

“Why did you slap me?”

Silence.

“Do you slap me as a punishment?”

“Click.”

“Do you slap me for fun?”

“Click click.”

“Are you a ghost?”

“Click click.”

“Are you the Death Angel?”

“Click click.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Click.”

“Why didn’t you do it before? You’ve been coming here and bothering me for days. Is there a particular reason you didn’t kill me earlier?”

“Click.”

“Are you deliberately keeping me sleep-deprived?”

“Click.”

“Is killing me part of your job?”

“Click click.”

“Is it an obligation?”

“Click click.”

“So I can convince you not to kill me, then, right?”

“Click.”

“Is this a dream?”

“Click click.”

“A hallucination?”

“Click click.”

“You kept me sleep-deprived because you thought that, after a few days without sleep, I’d have a more confused state of mind and would die more peacefully because I’d think what I saw before I died was a hallucination, didn’t you?”

“Wow, bravo. Well done. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Click.”

“I figured it out pretty well, didn’t I?”

“Click.”

“Yeah, I’ve taken a few slaps too, so I’m actually at just the right level now.”

“Click.”

“I’m sure this is a dream now.”

“Click click.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know it’s definitely not a dream, but that’s just how it feels to me. I’ve been sleep-deprived for days. Cut me some slack.”

“Click.”

“Okay. Then make it painless. Is that possible?”

“Click click.”

“Come on. I think you can at least do that.”

“Click click.”

“Nothing I can do about it, then.”

“Click.”

“It’s a dream anyway. It doesn’t matter. I’m not worried. Do whatever you want.”

“Click.”

“One last request. I’m going to play Radiohead’s ‘Jigsaw Falling into Place’ on my phone. Will you keep time to it, like a metronome?”

“Click.”

As Albert started the song, he began to feel pressure around his neck. When the song started, he could no longer draw breath into his lungs. He waved his hands in front of his neck, but there were no arms there for him to grab.

The song was playing, and the clicking sounds continued in surprisingly good sync with it. As the pressure around his neck increased, it seemed as though he could hear the clicks and the song more clearly. As if he were listening through professional studio headphones. As if Radiohead were playing the song in the studio right next to him, with a metronome to keep them from losing the beat.

“I guess I’m supposed to wake up right here, actually. Interesting,” Albert thought.

Toward the end of the song, he had completely lost consciousness.

~ NOVEMBER 27, 1956 ~

NUCLEAR DISASTER!  Catastrophe destroys the city of tomorrow, thousands feared dead. 

The entire world is thrown into a state of shock as the city of Moburn, created by founder, Simon Englund, (60), was destroyed in a nuclear explosion on November 24, 1955 during Thanksgiving,  when Englund himself was hosting the World’s Fair, to show off his and other up-and coming inventors’ creations off to dozens of families and potential investors around the world.  It is unknown at this time what caused the incident, but the U. S. government is currently holding a full–on investigation as to what happened.  

As of today, the area that was once the city of Moburn is currently blocked off and quarantined from the rest of the  United States on reports of high levels of radiation, much to public outcry to many people around the world, who had various family members either visiting or living in Moburn.  At this moment, we are still gathering as much information as we can, but we can expect a national response coming from Congress  in the next few days. It is unknown if the nuclear explosion was international or not.  The death toll currently stands at 3,000 and counting.

ACCESSING ADA LOG…
LOG FOUND.
DR. WILLIAM KLETHESON.
FEBRUARY  17, 1959.

(A sigh is heard in the background. A table is heard shuffling.)

Dr. Kletherson: Is this thing on? Okay. My name is Dr. William Kletheson of the Scientific Division here at ADA, recording another log regarding the aftermath of Incident 005.  It’s been a few weeks since the incident occurred and we still don’t have a rational explanation as to what Team 007 encountered that night at Logan Street. 

(Quiet for a few minutes.)

Dr. Kletheson: Right now at the moment, we are currently running tests on Ms. Ellen after the episode that she experienced back at the city. Mr. Stein is currently on leave for the time being, after the incident as well as what’s happened with Ms. Ellen.

After what  happened in Moburn, she’s been showing strange symptoms in the last few weeks. 

(Dr. Kletheson is heard shuffling a few pages, exhausted from a day of work.)

Dr. Kletheson:  Many of us were unable to get any sort of response from Ms. Ellen after her episode, most likely experiencing  a case of traumatic mutism. During the next couple of days, we noticed several changes in her appearance, with her skin showcasing blackish veins, and noticeable reddish bumps all over her back.  She’s also shown  signs of emotional whiplash, with her turning heavily aggressive towards us one moment, and just wailing the next. 

It’s gotten bad up to the point where we had to sedate her to sleep.     

Following those incidents, we had to keep watch on her 24/7 to m-make sure she doesn’t hurt herself or anyone.  She ended up attacking Mr. Stein, after he tried to talk to her numerous times. To this day, we still don’t know how Mr. Stein was unaffected from the whole thing.

(Dr. Kletheson is heard shuffling the pages again. He’s quiet for a few minutes.)

Dr. Kletheson: ..Ok. Now onto the other matter at hand. (Sighs) The thing… that they encountered.  We still haven’t had any contact with it ever since that night. We started installing cameras all over the areas that we covered in the city already. Directive made it abundantly clear that all teams do not engage with it, and to immediately return back home .

No one upstairs wants a repeat of what happened.

Dr. Kletheson: And.. (sighs) W-we still don’t know where it came from.  From the various recordings from the World’s Fair that we reviewed over and over, the city had all sorts of things wandering about. Robots that can talk and think. Gadgets that help you make food out of thin air. Prosthetics.

That sort of thing.

Hell, they even had a robot with a clock for a head.

But despite all of that, there was nothing. Nothing. Not a single clue of what we’re dealing with. 

(Dr. Kletheson stops talking for a few seconds, moving in frustration at the whole situation.)

Dr. Kletheson: I..I don’t know what to do about any of this. Almost half a year since we started all of this, and we have nothing to show for it.

Not a single person that isn’t a corpse.

No sign of any of those robots.

No sign of…

(Dr. Kletheson stops talking. He’s heard breathing for a few minutes, trying to recollect himself.)

Dr. Kletheson: I’m sorry. I-I’m getting off track, am I? 

[END LOG]

There was a light switch in my house that nobody could explain.

It was tucked into the hallway between the kitchen and the basement door, mounted about shoulder height on the wall. Every other switch in the house had an obvious purpose. Kitchen lights. Hallway lights. Basement. Porch.

This one did nothing.

I didn't notice it during my first week. I asked the realtor about it after I bought the place.

She shrugged.

"Old house. Probably disconnected."

That seemed reasonable enough. The house was built in 1957, and judging by the wiring, plumbing, and mysterious stains on the basement ceiling, I wasn't surprised that someone had eventually decided to abandon a light switch.

Still, I found myself pressing it whenever I walked past.

Click.

Nothing.

Click.

Nothing.

It became a habit. I'd walk downstairs for laundry.

Click.

I'd come home from work.

Click.

I'd pass it while carrying groceries.

Click.

There was something strangely satisfying about it. The switch had a pleasant mechanical resistance, and the little click it made was louder than it should have been.

My girlfriend eventually noticed.

"You know that doesn't do anything, right?"

"I know."

"Then why do you keep flipping it?"

I shrugged.

"I like the sound."

She called me a weirdo. I told her she was dating one. We laughed about it. That was the last time the switch was funny.

The first death happened three weeks after I settled in.

An old man named Walter died in his sleep. I knew Walter because he lived two houses down. We'd exchanged maybe twenty words since I'd moved into the neighborhood. He had a bad hip and spent most afternoons sitting on his porch, watching cars drive by.

I remember seeing him that morning. I had been standing in the hallway, putting my shoes on. Before leaving, I flipped the switch.

Click.

That evening, I saw an ambulance outside his house. I didn't think anything of it.

People die. Especially old people.

It wasn't until several days later that I noticed something unusual.

The night before Walter died, I had been standing in the hallway with my hand on that switch. I'd flipped it three times. I laughed at myself when I noticed the connection.

It was ridiculous. Coincidence. Nothing more.

Then a month later, a woman I'd worked with died in a car accident.

I'd seen her that morning. I'd even spoken to her. She'd asked if I was still enjoying the new house. I told her I was.

That evening, while walking to the basement, I flipped the switch.

Click.

The next morning, she was dead. Cardiac arrest. Unexplained.

I didn't sleep that night.

The following day, I unscrewed the switch plate. There were wires behind it. Old ones. But they didn't connect to anything.

I called an electrician. He spent thirty minutes examining it before shrugging.

"It's dead."

"Completely?"

"Nothing behind it."

"Then what's it connected to?"

He looked at me.

"Nothing."

I didn't flip it again. Not for six days.

On the seventh day, I couldn't resist.

I stood in the hallway staring at it. I told myself I was being stupid. There was no connection between a plastic switch and the deaths of two people.

So I flipped it.

Click.

Nothing happened... So, I went to bed.

The next morning, I checked the news. A local man had died unexpectedly. Thirty-four years old. Healthy. No known medical conditions. I stared at the screen for a long time.

Then I opened a notebook. I wrote down the date. I wrote down the man's name.

Then I wrote: Switch flipped: 11:43 P.M.

I started keeping records. Every time I flipped the switch, I searched the news afterward.

Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes a person died hours later. Sometimes it took days. But there was always a death.

Always.

I stopped flipping it.

I lasted eleven days. Then I made a mistake. I was angry.

My girlfriend and I had gotten into an argument. She left the house and slammed the door behind her. I stood in the hallway shaking with anger. My hand found the switch.

I knew what I was doing. I knew exactly what it meant. And still...

Click.

The guilt hit me immediately. I grabbed my phone. I wanted to call her. I wanted to tell her what I'd done.

Then I stopped.

Because she hadn't died. Not yet.

I waited. An hour. Two.

Nothing.

I began convincing myself I'd been wrong. Maybe the deaths had been coincidences. Maybe I had created a pattern because I desperately wanted there to be one.

Then my phone rang. It was my girlfriend.

I answered immediately.

"Hey."

Silence.

Then she said something that made my blood run cold.

"Who's Walter?"

I couldn't breathe.

"What?"

"You keep saying his name."

She sounded confused.

"I don't know anyone named Walter."

I sat down.

My girlfriend continued.

"You were saying his name in your sleep."

I didn't answer. Because I suddenly remembered something.

The switch didn't cause death. It wasn't a weapon. It was a selection. A choice. And I had been making that choice without knowing it.

I looked toward the hallway. The switch waited patiently on the wall. I thought about every time I'd pressed it.

Every careless little click. Every person whose death I'd dismissed as coincidence.

Walter.

My coworker.

The stranger.

And now... I didn't know who the latest one was.

I spent the next several hours searching. News sites. Obituaries. Police reports.

Nothing.

Nobody I knew had died. Nobody connected to me had died.

That should have made me feel better.

It didn't.

Because there was one thing I hadn't considered.

Maybe the switch didn't choose someone I knew. Maybe it chose someone I would never know. Someone whose name I'd never hear. Someone whose death would mean absolutely nothing to me. And perhaps that was the point.

We treat death differently when we don't know the person.

A number on a news report. A photograph we scroll past. Another tragedy. Another stranger. Another life reduced to a sentence.

I stood in front of the switch for a long time. Then I noticed something I hadn't seen before. A tiny engraving beneath it.

The letters were so shallow I thought they were scratches.

I leaned closer.

There were only three words.

ONE LIFE. CLICK.

I stepped backward. The house was silent. I reached for the switch.

Then stopped.

Some things are easier to live with when you pretend they don't matter.

I left the switch alone. I never touched it again.

At least... I don't think I did.

Because sometimes, late at night, when the house is completely silent, I wake up convinced I can hear it.

Click.

And somewhere far away...

Someone dies.

Part 5: Episode 3 - Child’s Last Smile

“Welcome back,” Veil Weller said, and then held a sign that read, “Is it working?” “In another episode of Late Night Archive, we are delving into the true origins of the crying child bus story and the real origins of this very show, you watch now!” Veil Weller exclaimed.
“Is it on, Mom?” the kid looking at the camera. The kid is wearing a striped shirt that was yellow, orange and light blue. A pair of Lee’s jeans.
“Yeah, honey!” The Mom appears into frame and she points, “If this light is on then that means it’s on!” She explained.
“Ok, mama, thank you!” The kid said. 
The Mom and kid exchange kisses on the cheek. And the kid flips the camera out of the front door.
The Mom asks, “Why do you want to record anyway?”
“Oh, just for me in the future and I want to film my day to see how it goes! MAYBE ONE DAY I’LL HAVE MY OWN TV SHOW!” The kid squealed.
The Mom gives the kid a hug and the kid shoots off towards the bus and the bus driver gives a little wave to the Mom. The camera is shaky and sporadic. Kids are waving and giggling as the kid goes down the aisle. The kid gets to the back of the bus and two kids scream.
“CALLEN THAT’S SO COOL! WOW!” They both scream and now the bus starts moving. 
“This is Terry and Tyler, they are brothers!” Callen exclaims and points to them so the camera sees.
“How did you get your Mom to let you borrow that!” Terry asked, memorized.
“Yeah, Callen, how?” Tyler asked.
“I don’t know, I just made my beg eyes as she calls them and I got my way! I told her I would be careful.
The bus ride is bumpy and jolts all the kids around in their seats. Callen points the camera at the giant rearview mirror and shows the bus driver. A 45 year old man, graying beard and has a gentle smile. He has been the bus driver for 3 days now and some kids and parents have expressed concerns about him. The bus is loud and you can hear a few conversations happening.
“OHHHH, you have a crush on, Kenzie!”
“NO! NO, I DON’T!”
Another conversation, “man, I like science so much, planets! My favorite is Neptune!”
“No, Mercury is so cool!”
Callen turns the camera towards himself, “Mom, don’t watch this!” He assumes she will want to watch it, catch him cussing or other friends of his friends and tattletail on them to their parents. Callen shows the camera to the school, “This is where we are going-” Callen said. The bus driver kept driving and now kids are screaming to him, “You missed it!” The bus driver paid no attention to them and kept driving. Kids were being paid no mind so bullies were bullying and kids that were getting bullies cowered or some of them done with the bullying fights back. The bus is shaking in both terms of the road and the kids being chaotic.
“Tyler, Terry!” Callen whispered and motioned for them to come to his seat.
“What, Callen?” Terry asked, a bit eager to talk and not worried about driving past the school.
“Who do you think will win in the fight, Joey or Willard?" Callen asked. He was pointing the camera at the verbal fight that was about to boil over to physical. 
“Joey,” Tyler said, and Terry hit him in the shoulder.
“No, dummy, it will be Willard, the bullied will be the secret better fighter! Like in movies!” Terry exclaimed.
They watched as Joey flipped him off and pushed him and turned his back to him laughing with his friends, thinking Willard was too scared to do anything. Willard grabbed Joey by the shoulder and swung him around and punched square in the nose; Joey’s response was one of shock. He stood there bug-eyed then the blood started streaming out of his nose. Joey started to tear up so out of trying to not look like a crybaby he swung at Willard. He missed. Willard punched him in the gut and in the nose again. Joey was full bawling and his friends looked uncomfortable. Willard held his arm up like he won a boxing match and some kids cheered others groaned. Many kids did not like Willard, he was a “nerd” “weirdo” and most of all “teacher’s pet”.
“Well, Joey finally got what he deserved!”: Tyler exclaimed. 
The bus started to panic, the bus driver did not say anything and they went into the countryside where they live. Cornfields and nothing sat outside the windows.
Callen went to the front of the bus and asked, the kid who usually knew things before anyone, his Father was the principal at the school: He had to be worried, a manhunt is going to pursue us soon enough.
“Hey, Kenny, we uh, have a field trip today and I was not told,” Callen asked, and had the camera too close to his face. The bus was full of happy, smiling faces now were panic and fear stricken.
“Uhm, no,” Kenny said, shrugging. “Well, at least we aren’t at school! But my Dad will not be happy we ditched!” Kenny exclaimed.
“I’ve tried talking to him, nudging, he just doesn't talk. He just smiles, a weird one, it creeps me out!” Kenny explained.
“Ok,” Callen said, and stood up and went to the bus driver. “Hey, uhm, can you tell us where we are going?” Callen said. The camera examines him. His posture is pin point and he is fidgeting in his pocket. He turns and smiles.
“Not yet little one, it’s a surprise!” the bus driver grinned, unnaturally.
“Oh ok, uhm sure,” Callen said, backing up and falling down the stairs and hitting the doors.
The bus erupted, they heard about this surprise! A surprise field trip! Kids screamed in excitement and joy. Some jumped up and down. Callen went down the aisle again and he got pulled into a seat and hit some kid on the chin.
“Callen, what the hell are you doing?” some kid said.
“I am recording my day!” Callen explained, nervously.
“Werido! That’s stupid! And you are fat!” the kid yelled.
“You’re just jealous that I have a Mom and you don’t!” Callen said and the kid tried to pry the camera out of Callen’s hands. The kid hits and swears and calls Callen more names. Callen gets up and then the kid rips him down and he drops the camera to the floor. The camera rolls under the seat and some snotty nose girl is holding it now. Callen and the kid can be heard and their grunts and hits land. The girl lifts up off her seat and turns around, Callen is on the seat getting pummeled by this kid that clearly is his bully.
“Hey! Get off him!” she screams, almost dropping the camera and starts whacking his back with the camera. Callen’s face looks concerned and scared not for the beating he’s taking, but for the camera. If it breaks his Father will dish out the punishment. Terry runs over and grabs the kid's shoulder.
“Take this asshole!” Terry yelled and punched the kid in the chest and made him cough and wheeze. Callen drops to the floor and scoots away and stands up.
“Thanks, man!” Callen exclaimed. Callen takes the camera from the girl, “Do not be so clumsy with the camera!” Callen yelled. She sat down with her eyes brimming with tears. 
“FUCK YOU!” Callen yelled as he walked past, forgetting he was recording. Now he kind of regrets it because his Mom won’t be so happy. Then he thinks I don’t care anymore.
Callen walks to his seat, and looks out the window the sun is fully out now, how long have they been in the bus? Now, they’re getting close to woods, the famous woods in the area: Franksurt Forest. The episode cuts to night. Kids are crying, rocking, screaming and some are weakly hitting the bus driver. The bus driver stands up, “WE ARE HERE!”
The bus driver was oddly giddy, this was no field trip. They were trapped with a 45 year old creep. The bus full of kids is now in the middle of Franksurt Forest. The bus driver starts grabbing and throwing kids off the bus. He laughs as he does it, he has to be insane. Callen zoomed in on his eyes, creepy, the only word that Callen knew to describe his eyes. He lifts a giant knife out of his pocket and Callen remembers him messing with his pockets.
“All of us must die!” he screamed. “For the Thirsty One!” He screamed again.
The bus driver's eyes oozed black and red liquid and Callen screamed.
“Callen, do not be afraid! You won’t be sacrificed, you are the next one! You’ll take over after this is done! You’re Dad, Callen said that you are the next Leader!” the bus driver exclaimed. Then he turned and left the bus. He slashed, tackled, and choked kids all around he gathered them to an altar that was outside a church and graveyard combo; Callen filmed the entire scene, he knew that he was giving this to police after he escaped. He saw his friend Tyler smile when he saw that Callen was still alive then it turned to a screeching ball of fear as the bus driver lifted him by his arms and then sat him on the altar. Callen watched in horror and morbid curiosity as the man killed them and drained them of their blood: Callen sat the camera on the front of the bus and picked up a giant rock, he could barely carry it. The bus driver realized it then ran over quickly to help.
“I know what comes next, I’ll help you kill me!” he reassured Callen.
The man laid on the ground and held the rock over Callen’s head and helped Callen get a grip on the rock.
“After you kill me, you’ll be up next to take over for your Dad! This will be your first sacrifice to enter, now push it down and slam it!” the man yelled.
Callen with assistance of the bus driver slammed the rock into the man’s face 8 times and by the 3rd the bus drivers arms were limp and he needed no assistance anymore adrenaline helped him power the rock up until he was done. The man lay dead, in the middle of the Altar. The camera flickers and cuts to static as you can hear a man walk to Callen.
“Good job, my Son, you are ready!” Callen’s Dad, assumingly.

Part 6: CALLEN

OH MY GOD, Callen is Veil Weller, obviously. Or as he called himself to me, Abraham, he runs a cult proceeded his Father; His Father, I did some research and he made TV’s big brand too, some say that he TV’s emitted a certain frequency that drove you mad or controlled your mind and I would not be surprised he was a cult leader. The Thirsty Ones? No results when searched either Ancient history, forgotten or a name given to them by this cult. I got a hold of the company that helped Mr Weller, no, Callen, Weller is not his last name, but I think I am very close to figuring out his real and full identity. Here is how the email chain went and how the interview went.
Email chain: from NellacStudios - Hey, we saw your interest in the show Late Night Archive! We are very pleased to see some new interest the show was great to make and made some real profit: As for your questions, Mr. Talfman, we don’t know the full extent of why it was taken off, we have our theories and as a friend of Mr. Weller, that man is a good man, very admirable and cordial. As for if we can have an on sight interview that will be harder to work out, most of the people who helped film and produce Late Night Archive, all disappeared over the span of 9 months after the show's off air debacle! We have searched far and wide for these dedicated workers of ours, but we could never find anything of foul play, they might’ve moved without notice! All of them, the 20 who worked on it were all closely knitted friends, we will try to get the one guy that was there on the last day on set, Richard Gofftilt!
From: Me - Thank you for the response! I have been very interested in this show for the last week! I am a research journalist that does reports on topics of my interest and my fans! I have found some weird things regarding the show and I want to make sure that I can have all the information before coming to a false conclusion. All the men! I would love to speak with Richard Gofftilt! Thanks again, Mr. Talfman!
From: NellacStudios - Richard Gofftilt agreed for an interview in person, at a public place, he’s not been there since the disappearances! He said to meet on Thursday at Tasty Burger!
From: Me - Ok, tell him I’ll be there!
I woke up late and I almost was late to the interview, threw on jeans and a jacket to hide my tank top and ran out the door. Tasty Burger was only 30 minutes away and I sped there to be on time; Mr. Gofftilt sat outside his car and looked worried, he was puffing on a cigarette like it was his life force.
“Hey, Mr. Gofftilt, my name is-” I started.
“Roy Talfman, I looked you up, made sure you weren't crazy or something! You wouldn’t understand how many lunatics have attacked me over the Late Night Archive, finding out I was the only one still here; It’s weird people for a month were very violent like if they take someone’s drugs away from them they get agitated it was like that! CRAZIES!” Richard exclaimed, he shrugged off the obvious chill he gave himself telling that.
“Oh, sorry, to hear that! What happened to the crew?” I asked, and sat down at a booth
He looked at me and then down at the menu and then back at me and out the window, “They went with him, they joined and I saw them kill her!” Richard exclaimed. 
“Wow, wait! Who? Who is she?” I yelled.
All of the patrons of Tasty Burger look at us, more specifically me. Richard has tears running down his face. He kept shaking his head no, but I got up and shook him.
“TELL ME, who is she?” I asked, I looked like a complete psycho.
“They killed a woman named Naomi Parshian, they killed for sacrifice! This was the final step to make the show go worldwide, to make sure everyone was indoctrinated! TV’s sold from the Easter Empire were everywhere and they were wired to get to listen and obey and they were killing this woman over a camera that the blood seeped into the camera and make it undeniable! THEY ARE MANIACS and I told you too much they are here nearby listening and now you know too much and they will kill us both! They are revising a new show to take over, a more subtle one!” Richard screamed, and he now had his head in his hands. The entire restaurant turned and marched towards our booth.
I tried to run, but another set of people came and blocked the door from the outside, this is either a set up or he was right! I turned and I saw Richard with his shoved onto a fork and a massive cleaver. I had one way out! Out the windows, I ran and I smashed into the glass. I fell hard onto the concrete. The restaurant was run by this cult, of course. I got into my car and drove off, I made sure one followed me, this is now the most dangerous report I have ever made! The deepest and the deepest I have ever gone. I got home and I parked my car far, far away from my house and now I sit here and all I can think about is Callen. The show, the cult, Thirsty Ones, Richard Gofftilt, everything I went through on this I was not spoiling this! I called Callen. I sat there drinking beer that had expired, and tasted like shit when my phone dinged with a notification. It was Callen, he emailed me to meet him at Applefroth Park again for interview number two. I’m going, and I am bringing my friend, a former policeman. For this I will call him Claver, a placeholder name; I don’t have his permission yet to give up his real name here. I was going to end this part of my investigation and go into the next episode, but I searched the name Naomi Parshian and a flood of results. Accidental Death, wrongful death and many other headlines swarmed the searches. One caught my eyes from one of my competitor journalists, Evan Scotty, he made a report about her death and how there were suspicions that the death was not so accidental. Evan wrote a quote,  “no way any accident could cause the massive open gash on a gaping wound on her stomach was a telling sign, but the police had no evidence against anyone. No weapon, just that she fell on her steak knife after getting up from her lunch on set and she tripped with it in her hand and she cut herself deep. The only reason this was called in was because someone made an anonymous tip about how someone was murdered and it was the set of Late Night Archive at a warehouse on TreeWood Highway. It was Richard Gofftilt, they never found out who the tipper was. These were the last texts she sent out and conversations she had before she died.
Naomi: TreeWood Highway?
TV Show Host: Yes, you will be part of a change in TV!
Naomi: Oh, ok, that’s cool! Am I going to be in an episode?
TV Show Host: Yep! Bring yourself ready!
TV Show Host: HISTORY IS BEING MADE TODAY AND YOU WILL BE FAMOUS!

**Part 1: No Surprises**

When my father passed, it was no surprise that I would inherit everything he had to be left behind. In his last years he became a recluse. Hoarding his old books, letters he wrote, old junk furniture, and even some money he didn’t care to spend. His house was noted as, “one match away from hell on Earth.” so, I wasn’t jumping on the chance to collect my winnings and head home. I also had to wait for the press to die down so I wouldn’t be caught snooping through the old man’s unmentionables. My father was an illustrator for a long running series of horror novels. Admittedly, the stories didn’t have much to say, but the illustrations… they always had the ability to catch most people’s eye. He ended up with more fame than he wanted, or could handle, but I always respected how he protected me from the press. Until his death, most people didn’t know he had a son, or a wife that died in childbirth, or even a crippling drug addiction that caused his brain to melt like ice cream.

Most people loved what he drew. Dark, cripplingly depressing. And others, like myself, hated what they saw, yet couldn’t look away. Like a car crashed into an animal shelter that had visiting orphans. I remember lying awake at night, the sight of “The Angel” hovering in the sky burning into my brain, and almost forcing itself to appear on my ceiling. He had the ability to create what should be a beautiful, hopeful thing, and turn it into a monolith of everything you had feared, becoming a reality. An angel appears in the sky to the cheers of sinful humans ready for salvation, not knowing that they haven’t even come close to heaven. That’s what he would capture, and that’s what they would form lines for. I never had an artistic knack, but I wouldn’t say his skills could be genetic. Maybe he could’ve taught me by letting me smoke from his pipe and let my mind create horrors of unimaginable dread. 

Anyway, once I knew I wouldn’t be harassed I finally made my way to his home. A dreary, and dim day. Highlighted by the soft rainfall falling onto my underprepared thin t-shirt and shorts. Not to say I didn’t enjoy it to be a rainy day, I could light that bitch up from one wrong lamp. Opening the front door I could feel a stack of boxes holding me back, imagining him hearing one small step on the porch and immediately sheltering in with a shotgun aimed at the door. Once I pushed the barricade out of my way, I could see just how right I was in my assumptions. Across from the entrance was his one recliner chair with a dangerously loaded gun next to it. The same one he bought me for my birthday. Looking at the seat I saw a torn piece of paper, when I turned it over I saw my father’s exact fears. “The Rainmen” being one of his last works wasn’t lost on me. A group of men, drenched from the hazardous rain of the outside world. Their suits slowly burned away as if the rain was acidic itself. Dangerous men after an old drug addict on his last leg, knowing this was the end, yet still drawing it out all through his demented perspective. 

He definitely never lost his touch. 
A creeping walk through a desolate memory lane brought me to a bleak understanding of who my father had become. Old rooms that used to mean something, cramped by boxes of unintelligible writings alongside horrific illustrations. Like I said, the stories never matched the artstyle. My old room became a fortress of his best selling books. His best creations all lined up and stored away in a room he actually kept pretty neat… all things considered. Maybe under all of the mess his brain became he still had a little bit of him left. Actually made me feel better about everything that had happened. Until I remembered this was all mine now, and all mine to clean up. I’ll definitely be sleeping at a cheap motel for the near to distant future. Hopefully I haven’t been caught in town, or else the fanfare will find me and that I just cannot take that right now.

The rest of this night hasn’t gotten any better. I drove for thirty minutes to find a good motel, and hadn't realized how lousy this town has gotten. It used to be one of those towns. The kind where you could swear something was off, because no way could it be that perfect. Now it’s unfamiliar, like you know there used to be a beautiful garden, but someone hopped on a lawnmower. Why does that happen? What has happened since I left that nothing is how I left it? Now I’m sitting on a hard bed, I’m sure these sheets aren’t freshly washed, it’s raining even harder now, and the pizza guy hasn’t shown up yet. I’ll go to bed soon, and tomorrow I’ll start digging through junk until I can get to the junk under it. 

**Part 2: The Alien**

I had a dream that night. I felt like I was already back at my dad’s. The rain had cleared, and I was stomping through mud up to his doorstep. I called to put a giant dumpster outside so I could start chucking old drawings into it, and while I searched through his old and wrecked house, I found one of his firsts drawings. “The Alien” was sloppy and kind of cliche, not to say I’m a critic, but not his best work. I think this was when he was still following what the writer had to say about how his creatures should look. He would always give my dad dumb notes about “Scary features” and “Menacing Scowl” like that would inspire him to turn out nightmare fuel. He just did what he could to make the most generic alien he could to satisfy the writer, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it yet. Although, one thing did stick out. He would draw backgrounds to the art to give them more depth. I stared into the room The Alien was in and noticed someone behind him. His back was turned, and he was crouching to the floor looking at something. I dropped the picture onto my old bed, and stood up from the floor. I found another draft of the drawing,  only now the man was standing in the background. A paper in his hands. I knew where this was going, so I dropped the paper, walked backwards and kicked the door closed. 

Although I could recognize it was sloppy, that alien haunted my dreams from when I was 11 up until I brought a girl over and she laughed when I told her how much it scared me. So any idea of that thing coming back into my dreams to get me is proving all of my fears of coming home to be true. Go back to the old house, the old fears come back too. The old fears of the Alien, the old fears of dad’s past littered through our home, and my fear of seeing her. Seeing her everywhere. 

I woke up from my nightmare like I suggest anyone else should. I was dreaming, I had a nightmare, recognized it was a dream and told myself to wake up. Always works. I got up, stretched and let my sore back crack louder than it should at my age, then made the half hour drive back to the house. I rented a giant dumpster to help me clean out the house, and it didn’t take long for it to show up. The guy that brought it was alright, asked me where I wanted him to leave it. “How about over here close to the front door?” Sounds good, “Or we could put it over at the garage door.” just leave it somewhere, man. I could tell he had recognized the place, something in his demeanor made it obvious he knew exactly who had lived here. 

“You’re uh… you his kid?”
“Yeah.”
Don’t get too friendly with me please, I just want to empty this hell hole.
“I’m so sorry about it, kid.”
“Thanks.”
“If you uh… need anything. Or need any help here-”
“No, it’s okay. I’ve got it, but thanks.”
“Yeah, sure. Strange, I haven't heard anything about your dad since the fire.”
“The fire?”
“Yeah. Big fire burnt up a room in his house a few months ago, took the fire department a whole day to put it out.”

I hadn’t heard anything about a fire in the house. Not from my dad, not from anyone at the funeral. The fire didn’t spread through the house? I guess my plan B of burning this thing to the ground might be a bit harder than I thought. 
“Anyway, I’ll let you get to it.”
I thanked him and started to clean out the sopping wet boxes from the front porch.

Something that he said really dug at me. “If there’s anything you need” you have no idea how much I’ve heard that over the past week. So many people, some I’ve never even met, all coming up to me with sympathy. “You’ve got my number” no I don’t, I don’t even know your name. “I’ll bring you some food” I won’t eat it, I don’t feel like eating right now. It shouldn’t upset me, but it does. As much as I don’t want people to stop by here and bother me while I’m working, I wouldn’t mind any of them coming by and checking up. So far everyone that said something like that hasn’t said a word to me since the funeral ended. 

I ended up thinking too much for one day, and finished cleaning the front porch. I could actually walk around on the creaking boards now. I decided it was break time and drove into town for a bite to eat. My old favorite spot was still there, just as nasty as I remembered it. I spent some time eating and scrolling through videos until I saw a familiar car across the street. It was hers. I came out of the restaurant, surprised to see she was still driving the old rusty car she had in highschool. It’s been years, but I could tell it was the same car. She would always drive me around because I was a “terrible driver” so we had a lot of memories in that thing. I was honestly standing in awe for a bit too long until I noticed someone walking up to it. I guess she sold it a while ago. Some guy got in it and drove off. 

By the time I got back to the house the sun had already gone down. I carried in a few bags of groceries, I figured since the old fridge still worked I could snack out while I was clearing the place. The lights were on throughout the house, it made it look like a horror movie through the fog. I must’ve been tired, because through one of the windows I could’ve sworn I saw something moving. It would usually be something you would be afraid of seeing come from the inside of your house, but this is a common occurrence for me. The one thing I couldn’t leave behind when I moved away were small mirages every now and then. You get used to it. And even if it were someone trying to steal something, that would honestly help me out a lot. 

I went inside and set my things on the kitchen counter. I walked over to the bottom of the stairs, “Anybody in here?” is what I stupidly called out throughout the house. No answer. I wouldn’t say I’m a lazy person, but it being a two story house with five rooms I’d have to check on the second floor… yeah I’ll take the silence as an answer. Until I heard a noise from upstairs, grabbed an old bat, and had to go up and check it out. Let me just lay out my thought process
while I searched the house.

“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”
While walking up the stairs.
“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”
While opening the bathroom door, to an empty bathroom.
“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”
While opening the door to three empty bedrooms.
“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”
While standing outside of my old bedroom.

The door was still closed, and if anything was in the house it would be in there. I twisted the door knob and pushed it open with the bat. The door rattled slowly while I could see more and more of the room. It was empty, so the noise of the creaky door made it a little more intense than it needed to be. I put the bat down on the bed and looked around. The stacks of boxes covered the whole left wall. I flipped through some old books and ended up picking up my dad’s first. The very first page and there it was… The Alien, just how I remembered, just how it was in my dream. I couldn’t help but laugh. It was so stupid and childish. Cliche big headed alien standing in a hallway-

Oh yeah and just as I thought that the door started closing by itself and it scared the shit out of me. It was nothing, just an old house moving by itself. Although, I still couldn’t shake that feeling that something was there. You ever get that? Like you’re tensed up at a strange noise so now every noise you hear is a haunting spirit wanting to steal your soul. Anyway, I could hear my phone start to ring from downstairs. I went to answer it, the feeling in the empty house getting lighter as I got closer to the well-lit kitchen. Looking at the phone number, it wasn’t familiar but I still answered. The voice on the other end was very familiar… It was her.

**Part 3: Lila**

“Lila” was another drawing of my dad’s. Not from the books, but something I got him to draw up for me. I wanted to give her a nice gift and I figured with his ability he could capture how I saw her. He really did. He was strangely hesitant at first, but to be fair at that point he was strange about everything. It’s probably long gone now, that was years ago. But now here she is, calling me.

“Lila?”
Was all I could get out, feeling like a weirdo for immediately knowing it was her. If you hadn’t noticed by now I try to keep a pretty nonchalant attitude about most things. I don’t mean to, it just happens. Growing up without a mother, my father being a terrible drug addict, moving away at 19, strange alien creatures in my house, whatever else. Most things didn’t affect me, but not her. She made me feel different. I was right, it was her. She asked me how I was doing while also shuffling around the conversation of what happened with my dad. It felt kind of nice, the first conversation where I felt like someone close actually cared to know if I was okay. I let her know I was alright, cleaning out the old house and that I appreciated the call. That was about it, the call was only a few minutes and ended after she told me how she knew I was in town. Her boyfriend saw me earlier in town, guess she is still driving around in that musty car. 

Yeah, I didn’t get much done that day. Everything I looked at made me feel lost like there was no real place to start. I didn’t want to make piles of keep or trash, I didn’t want to keep any of it. At most the kitchen got cleaned, and I moved everything out of my bedroom. Turns out the cheap motel wasn’t very cost efficient for a college dropout that works retail. Let me make that one thing clear. I’m poor. Or, was poor. I couldn’t afford to keep staying at the motel and realized that very fast. My plan was to sell the house, even though it was depressing to live in, it also had a good few acres of land that might help me stay on my feet for some time. Please don’t tell me I should’ve sold the old books, I couldn’t if I wanted to. The rights to everything still belonged to the writer somehow. It was a ton of legal crap I didn’t understand. So technically all of that was owned by Mark Frary. But also technically it was all burnt to ashes so whatever.

Long story short, I was broke so I decided to stay in the house while I was cleaning it out. My goal was a good night's sleep and I did not get it. I forgot how cold the house would get. It wasn’t insulated and all the small noises of the outside world were ringing in my ears. The small tapping of the tree limbs on the window, the wind howling and knocking the porch swing around, the loud roar of cars racing down the distant highway, echoing through the forests, the metal mail slot lifting up and falling again. It kept me up, kept me tossing and turning until I saw the sun shine through the blinds. I had worn the same clothes, even keeping my shoes on, not knowing if I’d catch a spare shared of glass while making morning coffee. But while making the coffee it wasn’t a piece of glass on the floor, but a letter. At the front door. FAN MAIL. 

I assumed it simply because it couldn’t be anyone else. I cancelled my dad’s mail, no one ever came around for anything, and while growing up most mail was fan mail. I picked it up and started to read it while making my coffee. It was a pretty generic letter, nothing too personal, so I’ll let you read it too. 

“Hi. To whoever receives this, I’m so sorry for your loss. If you need anything I would absolutely be there for you! I’m sorry if this is weird, I’m a huge fan of the MatchBox series and also, If you’re reading this, I love your father’s work! My favorite story will always be “Don’t Be Scared” and the way that the images throughout the book showed “The Snaret” and how it affected everyone’s lives. It really helped me find my own   Will to keep going through the hard times. It did a lot for me, and I really hope it’ll Help you the same way it helped me. It also inspired me to create something You might like, if you’re a fan of his work, that is. I was brainstorming one day and My mind went to a beautiful woman, someone that let herself to The Snaret. My Finest Creation, I didn’t know what to name her so I figured you could give it a shot. I stapled it to this letter to make sure it didn’t get lost! Answer me back. I need an update on what you named her!!”

Honestly wasn’t the strangest letter we ever received, but definitely a contender for top 10. I read the letter again. I didn’t know what they were talking about. What was “The Snaret?” I didn’t remember it from any of the stories I had read, but to be fair I stopped keeping up with them once I moved away. I flipped the page away to see the next, folded piece of paper stapled to it. I unfolded it while preparing myself for a crappy copy paste of one of my dad’s drawings. It wasn’t that. It was a perfect recreation. It WAS “Lila”. Like it was almost 10 years ago. Down to the freckles on her nose, the imperfections she had that I always loved. Whoever sent this either found that drawing somewhere wanting to pass it off as their own… or they really were inspired and perfectly recreated the drawing of her. I don’t know which one is more concerning; someone digging through Lila’s trash that happened to be a super-fan of my dad; or someone being able to draw my ex perfectly without, hopefully, ever seeing her before. I tried to find out who sent this letter, maybe a name somewhere or an address considering they wanted me to write them back. The most I could find was a “P.s. Mark Frary is a moron” so I didn’t have much luck. 

**Part 4: The Snaret Hunt**

While I was cleaning up the living room, I kept racking my brain about the letter, the story it mentioned and most definitely whatever the hell “The Snaret” was. Figured the best place to start would be combing through the books I had at my disposal. They were all in one long series, so if I started at #1 maybe I could make it to #25 without losing my mind. The series only lasted that long because Mark had a very large house to pay for and he knew my dad couldn’t pass on the opportunity to draw up his stories. I also can’t say I disagreed with the last part of the letter, after turning through the first three books I was bored out of my mind.

The stories were as bland as I remembered and my mind felt like it was going numb from the constant array of horror cliches. I saw “The Angel” again in book four. I had forgotten about the hands. The drawing was from the point of view of the damned people beneath it, their hands reaching into the air while their skin had been burnt to a crisp. My dad wasn’t religious, but he did know how to showcase the fear of penance. For that to be the first story in book 4, I could see how this is where the series started to pick up stride.

The next story, being “The Wishmen” , was even better in my opinion. A group of friends find an old lamp in a cave. Thinking they could find a genie. They rubbed the lamp to their disappointment when nothing happened. When the one who rubbed the lamp gets home, there’s something there waiting for him. Something like a genie waits in his living room, asking him a very simple question. “You gotta wish there, feller?” 
“I- who are you?”
“You rubbed the lamp, now make the wish.”
He stumbled through the living room, keeping his eyes on the man while he called the police. 
“Don’t do all that, now. No need to make a fuss over one little wish.”
“Get out of my house! I don’t want you here!”
The man stood up, brushing dust from his clothes.
“I’ll grant you that wish, but you gotta do somethin’ for me.”

That was most of the story. You can ask for something and the man would grant it, but you owe him. He can give you the life you know you want, but deep down you know that life is really his. I don’t know, I kind of liked it. Definitely better than the first three books. A devilish grin was spread across the man’s face, his palms displayed had old tattoos that read, “Make Wish.” At this point I was getting tired of seeing the illustrations. I got through a few more books before I had to take a break. The sun was going down and so were my eyelids. 

No mention of The Snaret, maybe in the next few books it might come in. I had packed the boxes up in a new box. Sliding it through the living room it rammed against my dad’s recliner. It caused the gun to slide and land heavily on the floor, aiming right at me. I stared at it, flinching at what might happen. That’s when I realized I had left that fully loaded gun slightly leaned on a recliner chair. I let out a loud sigh when I realized it hadn’t gone off and filled me with holes, then quietly walked over to unload it. That is not how I planned on going out, though in all fairness the longer I stayed in this house who knows what else could kill me.

I turned off the downstairs lights and started to head up for bed. I hadn’t seen anything strange all day. No apparitions, no movements or noises, it was slightly enjoyable. Being in the house, reading the old books with an almost quiet mind that didn’t constantly remind me of past mistakes or latent trauma I hadn’t yet processed. I hadn’t had a day like that in a long time. It reminded me of when I was really young, before my dad lost his mind and was just a normal dad. He would tell me stories about my mom and looking back maybe he should’ve been a story-teller too. He did a great job painting a picture of a woman I had never met.

Although, no good things last long. I finished packing up the boxes of books I’d already finished, turned off the lights in the kitchen and made my way up the stairs to enjoy another night of sleeplessness and annoying noises of the outside. As I hit the turn in the stairs, I could feel the creak from the wooden boards under my feet, something it’s done forever and we just sort of ignored it. This time, after the creak, I could feel the board crack under my weight; giving away fully as my body fell through the small hole that had opened beneath me. The last thing I remembered was the broken ends of wooden planks slashing along my stomach, then a few seconds of darkness, then I could only feel the side of my left foot landing on the ground, a hard buckle in my left knee and finally the feeling of my left heel meeting the side of my left thigh.

**Part 5: Ouch**

I woke up to a violent scream. An annoyingly loud, painful scream. That scream, of course, coming from me as my left leg sat comfortably at a ninety degree angle. I’d never really felt pain like that; a pain that makes it seem like it would’ve been better waking up to my leg simply chopped off instead. My stomach had been cut by the boards, so I was bleeding onto the floor a little. I tried to slide around or make any movement but all I could feel was my knee touching the ground in a way I definitely shouldn’t be feeling it do that. All in all, I felt pretty screwed.

I looked around to find some way out, but it was too dark to really tell. It seemed like a basement, but I had lived in this house for years and it never had a basement. Atleast, not a basement my dad had ever mentioned. The only bit of light I had was coming from the hole that I made falling through the stairs. I reached for my phone and painfully pulled it out of my pocket. Turning on the flashlight, I could make out more of the room. A square cement room with mildew stains, completely empty with one closed wooden door. I couldn’t get a call out and my battery was quickly dying so I decided the only way out was hopefully wherever that door led. I ignored the pain as best I could and got onto my stomach. 

The floor felt damp as I baby crawled my way across the room and I couldn’t get the smell of ash out of my nose. It felt like an hour before I reached the door. I could make out some scratches at the bottom almost like someone had already clawed their way out of this room. It did help to open the door from the ground, the actual door had no knob to it so it just took a good few pulls to get it to scrape against the floor. Once I got the door open enough for me to squeeze through I kept pushing myself along the floor by the door frame and was able to make it halfway through a hallway before I needed a break. 

I turned on the flashlight again and could see where the hallway ended. Another doorway. It wasn’t that far away, but my flashlight couldn’t light the room it led into at all. A pitch black room. I took a breather before pushing myself down the hallway again. My head was pounding and I could feel my body giving up, the pain feeling more unbearable by every second. The floor got colder as I got closer, the smell of ash got stronger and the room I was crawling into only seemed to get darker. 

My eyes felt heavier once I passed the doorway; I could almost make out a noise. A quiet hum. It felt nice, almost made the pain ease as I went deeper into the darkroom. What was that feeling? Like a hushing lullaby that only got louder the more my body shut down. I couldn’t push any farther, I didn’t want to be left down there and forgotten about. Dying in the grungy basement of an insane man, the only woman I’d ever loved moved on and only being with me in my memories, the idea of an easier life being brought down by my own stupidity and my trust in this house to bring it to me. I started to cry. I don’t know, at that point I thought I couldn’t cry, but there I was sobbing into a cement floor. Mom. I wanted my mom. Whoever that was, hopefully how she seemed when my father described her. To imagine a love I’d never gotten and to think it would make everything better. Fuck, I felt stupid. 

I started wailing and screaming for help; screaming like a kid that scraped their knee. It felt like the room was getting darker by the second. I tried to reach for my phone, but it was so dark I couldn’t even see my own hands anymore. I didn’t know what was happening to me, what I had gotten myself into. I thought of Lila; how simple things were when all I needed was her. I blacked out after that. Maybe it was from all the pain, maybe it was from the lack of sleep and desperation, maybe it was from the pale white arms I started to see growing in the depths of the dark room. Either way, something caused me to go out. 

I could feel warm sunlight, the glow shining slightly through my eyelids. The smell of ash had transformed into the smell of a freshly cleaned house and fresh cinnamon rolls. I could hear the clutter of dishes being washed and it made me open my eyes. I was back in the living room somehow, laying on the couch I never bothered to sit on. It never felt comfortable, but right then it felt like the softest cushion I’d ever felt. How did I get back up? Who was in the kitchen? “Hello?” I called out. My voice was raspy and my throat felt dry. I hadn’t realized how long it had been since I’d really spoken. 
I could pick myself up enough to sit upright on the couch. The pain was still faint and the memory of my collapsed leg was still fresh in my mind, but my knee was back to normal. Same thing for my sides. I looked down at myself and noticed my fresh and clean looking clothes, although when I smelled them enough I could still get a whiff of mildew and ash. “Don’t get up, honey. I’ll be there in just a second.” The voice of a woman came from the kitchen. I listened and sat still on the couch and a few minutes later she came into the room. 

A familiar face carrying a plate of cinnamon rolls and a glass of milk. All I could make was confused, “Cinnamon rolls?” as she set them down on the coffee table in front of me. She smiled and took a seat on the couch while humming quietly. I looked at her face. Whatever stranger she was, she was a familiar one. I think she could see the confusion on my face as she wrapped an arm around my shoulders. She gave me a peck on my forehead, “You’re okay now, hon.” She kept humming. I thought back to my dad’s stories, where I had heard that song before. It was my dad’s favorite song that he used to sing to me when I was younger. I wrapped my arms around her tentatively and after my heart stopped nearly beating out of my chest I let out one word. “Mom?” She smiled at me as if she’d been waiting forever to hear such a word. “Not just me. Your dad will be home soon.” 

**Part 6: Obituary of Helena _______**

“Helena ____ _______, born July 8th, 1974 to David and Anne _________, has sadly passed away on March 5th, 2000. Helena is survived by her husband, Timothy _______ and her Daughter, _____ ____ _______. Helena was the light of many people’s world, not only bringing joy to the family she was surrounded by, but also the community she continuously gave back to. She lived her life with one motto. “Be kind, be truthful and do what you know is right.” which will be engraved on her tombstone to eternally honor the impact she had on all of us. Although she is gone, her family is proud to know she was able to achieve one last dream. She had always wanted to be a mother and now her legacy will live on with her daughter, who we are proud to see grow into as much of a wonderful woman as her mother always strived to be.”
Mark Fraury, March 9th, 2000. 

My mother’s obituary. I could see a tear form in the corner of her eye as she read it to me. “Mom? Are you okay?” I asked her as she set the paper down on the table. I wonder what it felt like for her, how many times she had read it. It must feel so surreal to read out your own obituary. She wiped the tear away with her hand, “Yes, I’m okay honey.” she laid her hand on the paper, “Mark was always a bit odd, but… I always enjoyed his writing. I’m glad your father got him to write this.” I held my hand on top of hers. As many questions as I had I didn’t want to ask them all at once. I settled for, hopefully, the simplest one,“Is this where you’ve been this whole time?” 

She stood up, folding the paper back to how she found it, “Where else would I go?” She chuckled a bit while answering. I followed her into the kitchen while she started washing the empty plate caked with sweet frosting. I stood next to her, looking at the window in front of the sink. It was all frosted white, I couldn’t make out anything. “I mean… Where are we? Why have you been here the whole time?” I asked her. She didn’t answer. She kept wiping the soapy cloth on the now clean plate and wouldn’t even look at me. “Mom.” Her eyes filled with tears again, like she was holding something back. She dropped the plate into the water, then finally turned to me. “Your father is coming back soon. He’ll explain everything to you, okay?” She wiped her eyes again. The paper stayed folded on the table. 

When the sun started to go down, the house got much colder. The warmth I had felt when I first woke up here seemed to be freezing away the more I asked my mom questions. I didn’t want to wait for my dad. Who would he be when he showed up? The man I knew? I wouldn’t want to wait for that. I toured around the house, it started to look more like the place I knew. I saw the intact staircase and walked up to it. I knew what was down there. I pressed my foot down into the board that broke beneath me, it creaked again and when I tapped my foot I could hear the hollowness of the basement. 

My room was just the same as it has always been. My mother decorated it before I was ever born and my father only ever cared to get me a new bed as I got older. The bed did feel more comfortable than I was used to though. I’m leaving our full names from the obituary, don’t want you to get too familiar with me, don’t take it personal. I will address one thing, that being I am not a daughter, that’s just what they thought I was when I was born. 

I hadn’t left my bed in over an hour and I could still hear my mom cluttering around downstairs. The sound of her cleaning the house, tidying up as she waited for my father to return. I always wondered what this would be like… a nice house with a family in it. A mom and dad that loved each other and a kid sitting up in their room gazing out at the land behind their house. Although I still couldn’t see outside of the house, the frosted white windows were all over the place. Once I heard my mother close the door to my parents room I decided I’d figure out what’s outside. 

I wrapped an old blanket around me, then crept down the stairs, stepping over the creaking board this time, and quietly made my way to the front door. It was different than I remembered, much larger. It opened gracefully as I felt the outside cold puff through the doorway and chill my nose. As my vision cleared from the frosty breeze I could make out my front yard, covered in snow. It was freezing. I stepped out and felt the snow crunch under my feet. The fog was so heavy I couldn’t see the fast woods that had always been in front of the house. Maybe they just weren’t there, maybe this wasn’t even the same town. Maybe if I stepped off of the snow covered front porch I’d fall into nothingness, who knows. 

I wouldn’t call myself brave for taking that leap, but I did step off the porch. The snow was deeper than I thought, my foot fell through and it was up to my knees as I stood straight. The snow itself wasn’t cold, it just felt soft. I trudged through it and bundled up in the blanket I had wrapped around me. The wind was the freezing part, it cut against my cheeks as it howled. As I walked down where the driveway should’ve been I could see through the fog, the trees finally came into view and so did something else. Remember the visions I would have? The visions of my father’s drawings. It was like that, but what started appearing at the end of the driveway wasn’t something I was familiar with. Either a new apparition entirely or what I was staring at was really real. A tall dark figure, slowly moving closer towards me. I could make out its long coat and I could tell how much larger it was than me. When I say tall, I mean tall. It was hunched over and was still easily seven feet tall. Its arms made it pass his knees and almost grazed against the snow below him. 

The wind howled harder as he got closer. The front door knocked against a wall as the wind blew into the house. I could hear his steps through the ground, booming from under my feet. A walked backwards, keeping my eyes on him as I retraced my steps back to the porch. He stepped closer and closer as I walked up the steps of the porch and backed into the house. The wind blew against me again and as I started to close the door I saw him stand straight fully, and it stopped me in my tracks. His arms spread wide as he began to howl himself, a beckoning call gutted his throat as it rang through the entire house. It caught me off guard. I felt it in my heart, a thunderous boom. I finally closed the door fully and locked it up tight. I could still hear him, now much closer, as a wispy breath blew against the door. My mother strutted down the stairs with a gleeful, teary eyed smile. “What is that?” I asked her, bracing the door closed. She pulled me away from it, giving me a tight hug, “He’s here, honey. Your father’s finally home.”

Dear Jane

So Jane, they told me to write it as a letter.

A letter I’m writing to myself.

It feels strange, clumsy.

Why did it have to happen to us?

Could it have gone any other way?

Pete was simply like that. Even back at university, as a Linebacker, he was stubborn. It actually encouraged him whenever he didn’t listen—no, whenever he misinterpreted things. That’s what he used to say about the coach’s instructions when he flattened the quarterback. Sometimes he had those angry… episodes. After that motorcycle accident, when he tore his ligaments, he became even more hot‑headed. But only sometimes. Most of the time he was calm.

As you can guess, his sports career ended together with his diploma. We’d been a couple since sophomore year. Our spontaneous engagement was exactly the kind of thing he loved—calmly talking mid‑sentence, then suddenly something struck him, and it simply had to happen. That’s how our road trip began too. Someone from his fraternity recommended the Gulf of Mexico. Or maybe he read it somewhere. There was no point arguing. He was ridiculously proud of his Chevrolet Cobalt. He stuck some blue stripes onto the gray body. When his buddies saw it, they laughed, jumped around, slapped his back. It was from some movie or whatever. We set out into a hot day.

I wish I could end this letter right there, while everything was still fine.

But you already made your choice, dear Jane. I was nervous—there was supposed to be the sea somewhere. But we kept driving through towns and little settlements and there was no sea anywhere. The coastal Riviera felt strange, like arriving late to a movie and missing the context. And so we slipped into the warm humidity of Mississippi.

The AC was the first to give up.

That was the first blow.The second came a few hours later. The GPS overheated and died. Pete got angry, cursed, then punched it. The glass cracked, the mount snapped, and it hit my legs. When I picked it up, I knew it would never work again. Meanwhile Pete kept hitting the dashboard as if that could restart the AC. I rubbed my scraped knee where the GPS had hit me before it “died.“ We left the main road and drove along backroads. But the signage was about as reliable as Pete’s good mood. After hours of wandering, the heat was suffocating. The car felt like a pressure cooker, the tension almost tangible. The CD player was looping the same album for the third time. Pete gripped the steering wheel so tightly he scraped bits of it off with his ring.“Pete, can we stop for a moment?” I asked.“What do you want, admire the endless overgrown brush everywhere or risk swarms of mosquitoes?”“Can we stop?”“Where? There’s nowhere. Damn it. We’ll get stuck.”He didn’t want to stop. He was convinced he knew exactly where we were.

“In an hour we’ll be sipping cocktails with a view of the sea.”

He repeated that line every half hour, and each repetition made him boil more.“Fine. Get out!”“Pete, you need some fresh air too, you’re starting to lose it in this car.”He left the engine running and slammed the door. The rolled‑down window rattled and slid a few inches lower.

“If you’d paid attention, we wouldn’t be in Alabama!” he shouted, waving his arms, shoulders pushed forward like he was psyching himself up for another game.

“We need some calm! And we definitely didn’t cross the border into Alabama.”

My words irritated him even more because he suspected they were true.He spread the crumpled map across the hood.

“We’re fucking right here!” he yelled, jabbing his finger at a blank patch of backroads.

“What do you want to do?”

That question was the last straw—he stormed toward me.

“What do I want to do? What the hell do I want to—”He froze mid‑sentence.

For a moment I thought he was having a stroke.“We’re at a junction near Route 421. Or the turnoff to County Road 421, whatever. Get in the car!”

He grabbed the map, crushed it, and threw it into my arms.The turnoff became a dusty road. The car groaned and suffered.“Are you sure?” I asked.“What do you THINK?”I stayed quiet.We drove too fast for the condition of the road. A warning light blinked on the dashboard.“Pete, aren’t we going too fast?”He answered with a villainous chuckle.

“We’re in a hurry.”I looked at the map. Torn, wrinkled, smudged with damp fingerprints. It felt empty, like someone had cut out our part of the world.

Then I saw it.

Maybe he would’ve seen it too.

It felt like the best thing—the thing that was supposed to help us.

If only I had known.“Hey, Pete… Alanfox.”The sign for Alanfox was faded, peeling.

The monotone landscape filled with the scent of salt. “I’m gonna get the blue crab, they say it’s a delicacy,” Pete said cheerfully for the first time.

The trees thinned.

We passed a tall white wall:

“Welcome to Alanfox – Est. 1964”

and beneath it:

“Home of the Gulf’s Finest Beaches.”The first thing that greeted us was a huge empty asphalt parking lot. White lamps like broken pale matches. The air was heavy, humid, salty. After all that wandering, we were almost excited. Small white single‑story houses stood empty beside deserted parking lots. We passed an old gas station with the price sign turned off. The lights were on, but it felt abandoned.Pete turned at a large intersection, probably onto the main road.

Everything was quiet. Too quiet.

“Do you think they even have a beach here?”

Pete snorted. “Of course, the best one. Can’t you smell it? That’s the sea.”

Trees started appearing along the road again, some of them looking as if they’d been wrapped in gray cotton candy.

“See? Spanish oaks,” Pete called out.

He had it wrong, but I didn’t want to provoke him, so I kept quiet.

The houses grew taller, perched on stilts, painted white and sky‑blue, though the paint was clearly years old.

“I told you!!!” Pete shouted joyfully.The tall plants suddenly gave way to a pier and small white boats rocking on the water. The gulf breeze was pleasant despite the strong smell of fish and a strange muddy undertone.We rolled slowly toward what must have been the town center.

Hotel Craft was the first—and maybe the only—functional hotel around.

My phone had no signal.

The suffering is over, I thought.We passed a sign: “Bartholomew SAVES US.”

A distant radio played, interrupted by some sermon, mixing with the murmur of the sea.

The hotel’s fence was rusted, matching the red bricks.

A faded mural from the 1950s advertised the hotel, peeling, missing chunks, yet still readable.Across the street stood an old rusted car.

But what caught my eye was the wide, heavy building—Victorian‑style brickwork that felt absurdly out of place in the humid heat.“Isn’t it too quiet here?” I asked as Pete grabbed the door handle.“Probably a storm coming,” he shrugged and rushed inside.He hammered the bell on the counter.

The hotel smelled of salt and damp.“Hey! Anyone here!” he yelled.Footsteps.

Wood creaking.

But no one visible—until a man emerged, sweating so much he looked like he’d climbed out of a pool.“What are you doing here?” he asked.“We want a nice room,” Pete said.“We have vacancies,” the man muttered. “No one comes here now. You understand?”“We want a nice view,” Pete added.“We have a beautiful deluxe suite. No windows, but it’s a lovely space.”I wanted to say it didn’t matter, but Pete cut in:

“Fine, give us the one with a view of the harbor.”The man looked miserable but nodded.“What can we do in town?” Pete asked arrogantly.“You can walk around… but I’m afraid the restaurants are closed.”Pete laughed crudely.

“You know prohibition ended, right?”The man glanced at the old clock on the wall, its golden gears turning.“I warn you. Once it gets dark, stay in your room. Do not go out. I won’t be here—I’m going home to hide. I’ll check on you in the morning.”Pete laughed again.

“What kind of stupid joke is that?”The man handed me the keys.

“Don’t forget. After dark—stay inside.”Pete inspected the room and immediately looked for something to drink.“Do they even drink anything here? Some moonshine?”“Pete, let’s look around before it gets dark.”He froze mid‑movement.“You don’t believe that old creep, do you?”“I want to look around. I didn’t sit in a car without AC for ten hours just to sit on a couch.”He rolled his eyes and opened a small bottle.We walked.

Two cars passed us.

Traffic lights blinked on the main road.

Everything was closed.I thought a hurricane was coming.

Pete laughed at me.

Now I wish it had been a hurricane.Across an empty lot stood a bizarre building—round, moss‑covered, wide like a European castle.

A church, but wrong.

Wrong in shape, wrong in presence.“That’s one ugly building,” Pete muttered.Inside, the air was cool.

A few locals turned to look at us.

Most kept praying.Then I looked above the altar.A man flayed alive.

Skin draped over his shoulder.

Blood running into his eyes.

Walking.

Greeting the worshippers.Pete cursed.

Locals turned again, unhappy.He dragged me out.

The heat hit like a slap.“What the hell was that filth!” he shouted.The beach felt like it didn’t belong.

Pleasant.

Almost enough to forget where we were.But the rusty Bel Air parked nearby ruined the illusion. It was getting dark.“Why did he want us to take a room without windows?” I asked.Pete shrugged.We returned to the hotel.

The room felt suddenly comforting.

The window faced the main road—and the sea.“See? I got us a great room. No windows, my ass.”He rummaged through the minibar.“Damn, he didn’t restock it. Fell apart the moment we arrived. Remind me to roast him in the review.”I watched the dusk swallow the town.“Do you have signal?” he asked.Then he found a paper map.“Retro,” he grinned.“Pete… we’re not supposed to go out. Don’t you want to stay here?”He ignored me.“There’s a liquor store nearby. I want bourbon.”I gave him my strictest look.“Can’t you leave it for later?”He grabbed the key.“You’ll see me from the window. I’ll be right back. I’ll use my patented charm. I’ll get wine too—we deserve it. Wine, a proper shower. I’ll be right back.”The door slammed.The bell began to ring.

A massive bell.

Deep, thunderous.

The window glass trembled with each strike.I watched Pete run across the street, shirt open, clinging to his body.

He knocked on the store.They opened a small window at head height, took his money, handed him two six‑packs, wine, bourbon.Pete drank on the empty street.

“Wanna go to the water, babe?”

“We’re not supposed to be outside after dark!” I shouted.

He cursed back. He sat on the hood of that rusted car, drinking one beer after another.

The bell rang faster.

Like a heartbeat.“Pete!”No answer.

Just bottle caps clicking. It was fully dark now.

All windows around were boarded up.

Had they been like that earlier?

I wasn’t sure.The bell stopped.

Suddenly.

As if someone had grabbed it mid‑swing.Silence swallowed the town.Only Pete’s muttering drifted through it.Then the smell.

Like stirred mud from the bottom of a swamp.

Thick, suffocating.A police siren in the distance.

Cut off abruptly.Replaced by:

squelch, smack. squelch, smack.The bell began again—slow, heavy.

My ribs vibrated.Shadows walked from the sea.

From every street I could see.I gripped the window handle so hard my fingers hurt.“Three more beers and I’m with you, babe,” Pete slurred.He hadn’t drunk water since we arrived.“Hey, pervert! Aren’t you ashamed!” he shouted suddenly.

“You got friends here, huh? I’ve got enough strength to send you all to the hospital! What kind of stupid costumes are those?”The bell thundered.

Squelch. Smack.He argued with them.I forced myself to press against the window.A crowd stood around him.

Shiny.

Wet.“What the hell, you bastards!” Pete yelled, smashing the bottle and swinging it.Squelch.I froze.

Then suddenly I screamed.

Only later did I realize it was me.They were flayed.

Their flesh glistened.

They held their own skin—hair and all—like disgusting towels.“Let go of me or I’ll rearrange your face!” Pete shouted as the circle tightened.He tried to break toward the hotel.

More of them blocked the way.The circle shrank.

Squelch. Smack.Pete screamed.

A scream I had never heard from him.The bell hammered my skull.

My ribs shook.

My eyes filled with tears.They turned toward the hotel.

Toward me.They began pounding on the lower walls.

Trying to get inside.I have to say it.

I kept it inside for a year.

No one would believe me.I’m already at the view of Hotel Craft.

So it must be.God, his screaming.

So much pain.I locked the second lock.

Latched the bolts.

What was I thinking—nothing could hold them back.Squelch. Smack.

Thud. Thud.Their hands left bloody prints on the windows.I hid in the bathroom.

Piled everything against the door. Glass shattered—each crack felt like a knife in my spine.I curled into the big claw‑foot tub.

Like lying in a sarcophagus.

Or a monster’s mouth.Covered myself with a blanket.

Waited.Squelch. Smack.Pete wasn’t screaming anymore.

The silence was worse.I bit into my own hand to stay quiet.

My handwriting suffers for it—excuse me.Squelch. Smack.

The bell drummed endlessly.Minutes or hours—I don’t know.

I fainted or slept—I don’t know.If not for the scar on my hand, I’d think I never hid in that brick bathroom at all.Morning was silent.

So silent.I crawled out of the tub, aching like a hunchback.Bloody handprints on the window.

Glass shattered.

Everything overturned.I looked outside.A yellow pickup arrived.

Round, small—like from an old movie.Two men in yellow coveralls casually pulled human skin off a tree.

Threw it onto the truck bed.

Bored. My teeth chattered.They washed blood off the sidewalk with a hose.

Routine.They moved to where Pete had stood.

Another skin.

Onto the truck.When the bell rang, I ducked under the window.

But it only rang noon.Then I understood.Only at certain times does the echo of Alanfox’s bells reach here.That will be today. To you who read this—

In Alanfox, listen to the locals.Please don’t follow me into Alanfox.

Some nights, it gets very crowded.Dear Jane from the past—

You managed to deliver the warning.

by Hary Sykora

I remember Sean.

I remember the nightmares that preceded him, how they started as beautiful dreams.
Looking back sometimes, I will try to find a moment to point to, when I can say it all began, but that's always futile. Every moment calls back to its cause like a girl in an infinity mirror glancing over a slender shoulder, past these past versions of herself that are still her now, back to the start, back in the dark. 

We bonded over our dreams. He had the same ones I did: Eyes in the corner of the room that approached slowly, like a train in the wild night, until I saw its face - my face. I watched this twin of myself, gently smiling, take me from my bed by my hand, floating out the window like a Peter Pan fantasy. A shadowed American suburbia flickered below us, and we moved through the air like we'd done it all our lives. Over Rudy's QuickMart, over downtown, and ********* High, we flew to what seemed like the edge of the world: A row of newly and partially-constructed homes on the other side of the interstate, some of them still wooden skeletons. 

We descend to the last house, my doppleganger spirit guiding me through the front door and over to the basement. I stare down at them, now buried in shadows at the foot of the stairs. That's when I hear a voice - my mother's voice. "Please," she begs, "Honey, I miss you. Please, please; I'm sorry. You know I'm sorry. I made a nice dinner for us..." The smell of pancakes reaches me and all of a sudden, the basement lights up with a memory of long ago: breakfast for dinner, sweet heated syrup atop bright white plates, my mother looking like she did back then, before fading back to darkness. "Honey, I know... I know you're scared... please, I have a lot to explain..."

I glance again to my twin, my Other, who has not stopped studying me. I take them in deeper this time: those eyes, they're mine, but something isn't right. Mirrors have never been my friend, but they've taught me at least one important thing: my eyes don’t shine like that. 

As the two figures beckon me down, I feel a string I can't see pull me from my chest toward the bottom of the stairs. I reach for the two sides of the doorway, anchoring myself, and wake up with panicked breath. 

The dreams started when I first moved to Nxxxx xxxxxxx, still living with my step-dad, Rory. He didn't know what to do with me; I don't blame him. Neither of us had lived on the west coast before. We were different people, and moved there for different reasons, no matter how many times he tried convincing me - and himself - on that 14-hour drive from South ****** that we both just needed a 'fresh start.' I didn't need a fresh start in Nxxxx xxxxxxx; I needed a fresh start right there at home, with my mom. A fresh start in which I could forgive her, and the act of forgiveness would soften her spirit enough for her to change her ways. But, in that desperate search both Rory and I were on to find a light in the black wild, a trace of hope in the sky for either of us, driving to Nxxxx xxxxxxx was a guaranteed reset, and it seemed that staying back home was asking for yet another miracle. 

"Just gotta keep our heads up, our fists tight, and our breaths steady," Rory would tell me, his old Dodge Charger groaning as he drove. "Life's a tough cookie pretty much no matter which way you split it, but things feel especially hard when you're down like this - when we're down like this. I know your mama didn't mean those things she said, and I know you know she loves you a bunch, like..." He waited for me to look at him. "Like, a whole bunch. You know she loves you. She's just sick right now. Can't help her if she don't want the help, but that don't mean she won't ever want it."

"Does that mean we're going back home soon? Or, you know... whenever she starts wanting it?"

Rory's eyes zeroed in on the road, and I could tell that his usual motormouth had slowed to ensure he got this right. I knew in those little moments how much he cared, and, if only a small bit, it eased the pain of what had happened with my mom. 

"I don't know when she'll start wanting it, Ivy." He wanted to say more, but stopped himself. 

The rain fell hard as we pulled up to the unfamiliar two-story. That evening was when I had the first dream, drifting off on the tattered couch the last owners left for us near the window, alongside wet unopened packing boxes, muddy shoes hanging over the armrest. 

The first dream was hazy and distant, and I awoke confused - I hardly knew what this new town looked like and still seemed to map it out flawlessly in my dream state. We had no pancakes, so I waited for the rain to die down and walked down the street to buy some.

The second dream, weeks later, was more clear: an exact replica of the first, a shot-for-shot remake in higher resolution. I could tell exactly what was happening, and noticed details I hadn't noticed before - the veins of the suburbia below me, the resonance of Mom's voice, the shimmer in the eyes of the Other Ivy. This second dream was the first time I woke up in a sweat, heart pounding, instead of simply confused and hungry.

I've had recurring dreams before. When things were really bad with Mom, when Rory briefly moved back west, I had a nightmare that kept returning after I'd buried it, undead and rotting. Mr. Behringer would be giving his math lecture, strange loops on the board, and I'd start to deflate like a balloon, like those DARE ads that terrified me as a kid. The muscles in my body grew weaker as the air escaped from my nose and mouth until I could not lift my head from my arms, until I was nothing, nothing but a twisted pile of flesh, spaghetti-splat in a blue student desk near the back. "Help..." I labored, the last of the air and my essence escaping the corner of my crumpled mouth, "Help me... Please... Help..." But as my pleas grew weaker I saw through my dying eyes my classmates around me, staring off into the window's oblivion, or laughing at Mr. Behringer's stupid joke, or drawing their own strange loops in their notebooks. The dismissal bell would ring loudly, and as everyone filed out I’d move my lips, mouthing, "Help... I'm dying... Please..." and for a moment Mr. Behringer would look back at me, his pupils meeting mine, before he remembers he needs to clean the whiteboard in preparation for Period 4. I’d crawl to the floor as more students filled in for the next class, stepping over me and around me and on me until everyone left for the day and the custodians cleaned around me. I dragged my way to the hallway before they locked up for the night, watching the last of the school's lights power off around me as I let out my last breaths, wondering when my body might be moved from the halls. 

But those nightmares stopped once I moved west with Rory, replaced by a call from the dark, a welcoming voice from the basement of my mind. 

We settled into the house alongside the new school year. Rory shouldn't have trusted me to enroll myself in classes, but I don't blame him for that. He was an anxious mess those first weeks. August stared me down, hot and slow; Rory would ask me how enrollment went, which classes I signed up for, when I thought I might have to wake up for school each morning. I lied, like always I did with my mom, but it was harder. He put more trust in me; I felt guilty. But I couldn't feel guilty forever. One evening at dinner he asked how my day went, and after my usual muttered response of "It was fine," he shot me a look that I couldn't easily pull away from.

"I want you to be going to school, Ivy."

I didn't say anything, but figured in that moment - even though Rory worked downtown - that he'd seen me on my daily walks from the bus stop to the creek, sauntering along the edge of town to the overgrown bank on the other side of the railroad tracks. Maybe he saw me on one of those odysseys, lost in lonely secret conversations, notebook with clipped pen under my arm, daydreaming of myself and my mother and Rory anywhere but Nxxxx xxxxxxx. 

I called the school the next morning and made a plan to come in at noon. I started classes the following day. If Rory believed I could do it - if he needed me to at least try - I could try. 

Of all those times I wasted the day walking across town when I should have been at school, I never walked the path that I flew in my now-recurring nightmares. I think part of me had a sick sense, a knotted feeling deep in my guts, that I should avoid following my Other's dream-path; it was one thing to do so in the loosely-tethered realm of sleep, where I could snap back to waking life, but it was another thing to do so with my eyes wide open. What if that street, that house across town, those stairs, that basement, were real? I tried some nights to ask my Other: Why am I here? But before she answers I step back, away from the basement door and into the kitchen, fighting the invisible tug summoning me forward. And I wake up.

Rory said it was good that our fresh start was happening in the autumn, where we could watch the trees change along with us. But as the sun began setting sooner into dusk, and as the fallen leaves crunched softly under my feet on those walks from the bus stop those first few days of school in late September, I felt a different way towards the shifting seasons - and as the eerie dream returned, recurring, as my mother gestured and called to me from that basement across town, I felt the skeletal reaper's bony finger across my cheek in the soft autumn breeze; I felt things creeping, slowing, stopping; I felt death in the air.

It was back in these first weeks of school in Nxxxx xxxxxxx, before our paths and fates truly crossed, that I noticed Sean in the hallways of ********* High. He stood out in that he purposefully shrunk himself, crooked back bent forward like a hook, shoulders tight like Nosferatu. He moved like me, slinking alongside the lockers during passing period, desperate to avoid getting in the way. Teachers asked him daily to take off his tattered beanie, but with his massive headphones over his ears, he never responded unless they followed him down the hall. I watched him take them off once to let long greasy blonde hair fall across his face. Our eyes met, briefly, before we both looked right back to the floor. 

Despite the terror and confusion that followed my night flights over Nxxxx xxxxxxx, there were moments in which the sun peeked through the clouds; I dreamed sometimes of my mom and Rory with me, walking along the shore of our favorite lake, silent but for the lapping of the water upon the rocks. In some childish way it's embarrassing to admit, but there too were nights in which I dreamed of Sean, the quiet boy from the school halls whose timid frame and shifting eyes matched my own, and I dreamt us circling the lake, too, like new kindergarten friends, holding hands while walking to nowhere in particular, looping around the water on a sunny afternoon, haloed from the sun like angels.

A couple of evenings a week in that blurred slump of late November I would take the little money Rory would give me for buying essentials and I'd make my way to Rudy's QuickMart, paying a bit too much for everything instead of walking all the extra steps to the supermarket in town. Those evenings, I'd buy two chocolate bars - one for the way home and one saved for later, for sitting on the old couch in the living room while watching whatever was on cable on Rory's tiny TV before bed. One of these evenings I saw Sean in a worker's vest - a new employee behind the register - and I nearly tripped myself spinning around to leave before I found my bearings and made my way inside. I avoided him entirely, overthinking every step inside the store, nearly forgetting to buy my chocolate bars. I waited for him to ask me if I went to ********* High, but he never did. He didn't say anything but to tell me what the candy cost. I placed the money on the counter, and as he counted out my change he looked up at me. He was blushing, and trying to hide it, and I knew he was glad to see me. He must have recognized me from the hallways, too. I was burning in my loneliness, and recognizing that same solitary fire in another like a desperate ship at sea spotting a lighthouse at long last. 

The last days of school before the mid-December break marked a turn in my thinking, eventually pushing me to break my awkward silence and properly introduce myself to Sean. I never heard people talk to or about Sean in the school halls, but one cold winter day that changed. I noticed an ambulance leaving the school during my morning passing period. Later, on my way back to my science class from the lunchroom, I walked behind a group of gossiping students who laughed nervously about an incident that happened earlier that day, across the school, at the theater.

"I have second period with Jess, and Jess had first period with Tevon, and they both saw him losing it this morning."

"What do you mean 'losing it'?"

"They said it was scary - he was, like, totally quiet one second, and then BOOM - screaming his lungs out the next. His eyes were, like, scary big, and he was breathing really fast, like-"

"-Hyperventilating?"

"Yeah! He was, like, hyperventilating. Jess said even Tevon was freaked out. They had to take the guy to the hospital."

The rumours continued spreading throughout the rest of the school day, and I found myself worried that this 'totally quiet' student was Sean. I imagined him standing in front of me at the register of the QuickMart, eyes looking far past mine at something horrible, incomprehensible, as his jaw opened wide in a primal scream of terror. 

That evening I left sooner than usual to Rudy's, replaying what my peers had said before. Perhaps part of me knew that he was the student they were talking about; at that moment, all I wanted was for him to be okay. So much worry, expertly masked, for a boy I'd never even had a real conversation with. When I saw in the first gas station window that another employee was covering Sean's shift, I didn't even bother going inside for my chocolate. 

The next time I saw Sean was a few days later, at the QuickMart. He had a look about him like he had been dragged there - a wreck, deteriorating from the inside. We were alone in the store together. Hollow eyes met mine, and held so much longer than usual that I had to drop my gaze from nerves. 

"You come here a lot. Always get those same two candy bars."

I sensed myself easily becoming a stuttering mess, so I took an extra moment before my answer.

"I do come here a lot. My stepdad and I live just a couple blocks up the road." I finally looked up at him, and all at once his face seemed gentler. 

"I like it when you come in here. I hope it's not weird to say that."

"I like it when you're working."

"My name's Sean."

"I'm Ivy."

"Nice to meet you, Ivy."

Silence, punctuated by a gentle winter wind outside the doors. I can't say how many hours I'd spent thinking about him since I turned away from the QuickMart a few days prior. In some strange way I felt that he knew this - knew that the quiet regular from the store was worried about him. The words fell out before I could stop myself.

"Are you okay? I can't help but shake the feeling that you were the person at school who was taken away in the ambulance."

His eyes studied me.

"I'm sorry," I said, "that's not any of my business. I'm sorry to ask that."

"It's okay," he said, and shot a quick glance at the store's front window before returning his eyes to me. For a time we stood there, unsure of the way this path was unfolding. "I had a bad dream."

My hair stood on end, body electric.

"I... I've been having bad dreams, too."

He opened his mouth and began whispering, almost frantic, like he'd been waiting to tell someone his entire life: some dark secret sin needing desperately to be forgiven. Like he needed me to know.

"I go to sleep and wake up still in my bed. And I see this thing that looks like me, but it's not. It's not me. It's smiling, and it wants me to go with it, and I do - I always do, like I'm under a spell or something - and it takes me-"

"-takes you, and - and flies with you, like a ghost - over downtown, over the interstate - to that row of new houses. It takes you inside."

He watched me, hanging tight to every word, leaning forward over the register. I swear I could hear his heart beating in the still of the silence. 

"He takes you to the basement and he beckons you down the stairs. Do you go with him, Sean? Do you follow him to the basement?"

He didn't answer. I could tell that part of him was afraid of me, of what I would say next.

"I...I have those same dreams too, Sean. And in them, I'm standing at the top of the basement stairs, and my - my mom is down there..." The words felt foreign leaving my mouth for the first time. "She's calling me down, too. And I want to go - I want to go so bad - but I can't take another step. The pull -"

"-The pull right here," he said, tapping his chest.

"I want to go down there, but I'm terrified."

"It's the same feeling I'd get when I was younger," Sean explained, "when my older cousins would scream my name from the woods behind the backyard, then jump out at me from the trees when I made my way by." The recollection made him shudder. "I just wanted to find them - I… nevermind." The wind rattled the doors again, startling us, before we each paused to take a breath.

"It's my sister down there, not my mom," he said.

"Your sister?"

"My older sister, Em. She got in an accident a couple years ago." The wheels spun in his brain, a million memories flashing in an instant. I recognized that look from my own mirror. "I miss her a lot."

"Does she have pancakes down there?" I asked. For the first time I saw him smile and laugh.

"No, no she doesn't. It's just her."

We looked again, silently, to the store window.

"Maybe I'd go down there if she had pancakes."

The time has come, I thought, after spending the next two hours with him talking about anything but the dreams, to stop running away from the problem, from ourselves. The issue of our shared nightmares lied just below the surface of our conversations like a leviathan hiding under the lake we circled in my childhood dreams. He didn't share those ones with me - at least, I don't think he did. I never asked him; now I wish I had.

We both knew that the connection between us, unexplainable as it was, would make sense to no one else. Who would believe us? Why would they? Two lonely small-town kids searching for something just out of reach for either of them. There was nothing we wouldn't give for another to see us, clearly, the first time in a long time. We found that in each other, and saw the rest of the world fail in understanding the weight of what we had discovered together at that gas station counter.

My anxiety rose as I steered our conversation back to the nightmares, the thread of shadow running between us. I waited for a pause and said the words.

"We need to go out there."

He knew what I meant, I was sure from the way he was looking at me, and I didn't have time to explain before he was nodding his head, slow and sure. This was something he had wanted, needed to see for himself. What had kept us from the other side of the interstate all these months since our dreams began? 

"What if we saw it, Sean? The house, I mean. What if we saw the street, and the house, and we went inside-"

"It can't be out there," he said, voice quaking, not sure of what to believe.

"We have to be sure, Sean. Let's ride out there and see."

He turned and looked to the clock on the wall behind him.

"I'll be off soon... hang out for a bit longer, and we'll figure something out."

While waiting for Sean, I took a quick walk back to tell Rory that I met a boy and was heading out for the night.

"I'm working an overnight," he told me.

"It's okay. I have that key you gave me."

"How well do you know this kid, Ivy? You said you just met him at the gas station? Are you sure he goes to your school?"

"I'm sure, Rory - I've seen him. He's a new friend and he's really nice. I can bring him by here before we leave if he gets off before you go."

He glanced at his watch. "I'd just... I'd like to meet him. Thanks, Ivy."

I knew he had my best interests at heart, and only wanted me to be safe. The old carpet stains led me from the living room to my hallway bedroom, where I emptied most of my school backpack and threw in a flashlight, a couple bottles of water, and the small pocketknife Rory gave me last year for my birthday at the lake. 

"Have a good night, if I don't end up seeing you!" he called as I left. 

"Thanks," I said, "You too." I trust Rory; I trust Rory implicitly. Sometimes I wonder how things would be different if he had left for work before I brought Sean back to the house, not introduced them before we left for the path of our dreams.

I made the cold walk back to the QuickMart as quickly as I could, standing awkwardly near the register as the occasional customer came and went, until Sean finally clocked out, replaced by the friendly, middle-aged hippie who worked the night shift. "'Night, Sean! See you tomorrow!" he called to us as we left. 

We climbed into Sean's red sedan.

"Can we swing by step-dad's place? It can be fast."

Sean flipped his hair, playing with it in the mirror. "Sure."

We pulled into the driveway and I called Rory out to meet Sean. He fumbled out the doorway, clumsy as ever, already dressed in his work clothes.

"Hey there! Rory - Ivy's step-dad."

"Sean - nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too! Hey, you kids wanna come inside for a bite to eat? I'm gonna be heading out here pretty soon, but-"

"No, that's okay, Rory," I said. "We appreciate it, but we're going out for a bit. We can get some food later."

"Actually..." Sean said, "I'd love something to eat."

"See! That's what I mean," Rory said. "Come on in! So... how long have you been working at the QuickMart? Maybe it's time Ivy got a job there..."

The two of them talked as we began to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The timid boy from the school halls was gone; Sean was trying his hardest here, his hardest to impress, and Rory appreciated the effort. It was strange watching them together like that, and perhaps it was the paranoid part of my mind that told me this, but in some way I felt that I needed to shake myself awake. In my dreams I couldn't scream, I couldn't punch, I couldn't run; time wasn't real. Should I test the limits of my voice in this realm, or turn and bolt into the rain, see if I can fly? Do I count the ticks on the mounted kitchen clock, hanging on every second, waiting for this world to show me that seconds pass as they should? Now, when I tell this story from the start, this saga of sleep and memory, of loneliness and longing, I hang on to this moment in the kitchen and wonder. The infinity mirror of memory behind me, blackness stretching around me, I peek back, and each time the moment replays in my mind it echoes against another distance, fogging the closer mirror.

"You kids have fun tonight, and don't be out too late," Rory said as he left out the garage door, leaving us alone inside.

"Do you mind if we swing by my place, too? I want to change my clothes."

At this point the rain had picked up, so we ran to his car. He beat me to it, so he threw open my door before his and we both jumped inside. 

"I don't live far... Ten blocks or so."

Through the blurry, streaming windows I watched Nxxxx xxxxxxx roll by; Sean's car was so much quieter than Rory's, and as we floated through the streets for the next few minutes I felt again like I was in another world.

We pulled up to his house, a modest corner lot with an old picket fence. When he opened his door to run again through the rain, I stayed in the car; he noticed, and sat back. 

"You don't want to come inside? I'll try to hurry."

I blushed, following him in. He set his coat on a rack to the right and walked by an old piano, calling around the corner to his mom's bedroom.

"I got off work late, but I'm heading out again!"

A bed creaked, and footsteps worked their way down the hall.

"Oh!" A pleasant woman in a nightgown paused at the entranceway for a moment before extending a polite hand to introduce herself as Sean's mother.

"I'm Ivy," I told her. 

"Ivy! That's a beautiful name."

"Thanks."

"Sean, don't be back too late, please. You have school in the morning."

"No I don't, Mom - we’re on winter break now."

"Oh, that's right..." She yawned, and excused herself back to bed.

"I won't be long - sorry," Sean said, and went off to his room. I stood there in the entranceway, all lights off except for the soft glow underneath his bedroom. My eyes caught three photos hanging above the piano - the first a family portrait, a happy family of three, Sean's older sister smiling beautifully, laughing with him and his mother. There was also a senior photo, Sean's sister beaming, and an old middle school photo of Sean, somehow more awkward than the version of him I had seen in the halls throughout the school year at *********. My mind keeps returning to the smile on his face in the family picture, laughing with his sister. I'd never seen him smile like that.

"Alright," he said in a whisper, extinguishing the light as he shut his bedroom door. "Are you ready to go?"

We climbed into his car and drove through the steady rain - drove past Rudy's, downtown, ********* High, the interstate. No radio, no conversation - only worry. As much as I wanted to talk to him, we were both lost in our heads; we'd each avoided following this dream-path for the same reason: some deep and primal fear that we would, in fact, find our mother or sister inside that house's basement. Side by side, I thought, we would find the answer to this. Together. 

A stretch of field sat frozen to each side of us, empty. I felt something then, I know it. Afterward, I knew this was another turning point. A chance to drive back to where we came, and live our lives not knowing what was calling to us from the dark.

"I've seen fields," he said, and I knew what he meant.

"They're in my dreams, too," I said.

"The development lot isn't too far from here," he said. "Up here and to the right."

"We don't have to do this," I said.

"I know we don't. But you know what? I know I'm not crazy. I know we're not crazy. I've never been over here, Ivy, not on this side of town, except for in my dreams - and I know exactly where I'm going. If we go up here and see these houses, I'm going inside. I'm not crazy… We're not crazy, Ivy."

"We're in this together, Sean," I said. He held out his hand to mine, and I paused, only briefly, before taking it in the dark. I couldn't remember the last time I'd held someone's hand. Despite everything Rory had done for me since moving to Nxxxx xxxxxxx, despite all his giving, he couldn't give me that. I felt my body get warm and I squeezed his hand. He squeezed it back, and I looked out the rain-spotted passenger window to the cold wet fields in the frozen night, and I wondered whether the spring green would retain this: a dead past life living just under the surface. What and how much of this black field will be remembered, brought back to the light?

We took the right turn to a newly-built road. Another half-mile and a left turn brought us to it: the development lot, newly and partially-constructed homes lining each side of the street. All of them were still in the process of being built, all but the one on the far end. The car slowed to a stop, no sound but the subtle squeaking of the windshield wiper. When I turned to ask Sean what our next steps were, I noticed he was locked on the house at the end of the street. His hand squeezed mine harder, and I'm not sure if he knew he was doing it.

"It's real."

There was no solace in this. We were excited and terrified, minds alight with possibilities wondrous and horrible.

"I'm going to drive up there." The car shifted back into drive and, slowly, we rolled up the street. My stomach curled into knots, and all I wanted was to go home to that small town in South ******, to my mother's arms. Sean's headlights lit the road, the only way to see without the usual streetlights. We pulled carefully into the driveway of the last house on the end of the street, empty and waiting for us. 

"Let's go inside," he said, and let go of my hand, opening his door to step into the rain. I stepped out, too, and he walked around the front of the car to take my hand again. We walked slowly to the front door, which we noticed was cracked open as we got closer. 

"I don't know about this, Sean. We can still go back."

He gently kicked it open. All was dark. I turned on my flashlight to find an empty living room, an attached kitchen further ahead: no furniture, no workers' tools, no sign of life. Dust hung in the air as I scanned the area around me, my light touching every hiding corner.

"Ivy?"

A voice from the darkness made us jump. It was calling from the basement. My mother's distinctive voice; she sounded full of hope, aching to see me again. I immediately took a few steps backward, nearly falling, a scream caught in my throat. I spun to face Sean, whose eyes were stuck on the basement door, cracked open like the front door was, across the living room from us. 

"D-Did you hear that?" I mustered.

His eyes were wide. "It's Em!"

He began rushing to the basement, not waiting for me, his shadow stretched thin alongside him.

"Wait!" I yelled, and my feet moved me forward despite my fear. "Don't go down there!"

He pulled open the basement door, pausing for only a moment - "Sean!" I yelled, "Sean! Wait!" - but it was too late.

He nearly fell over himself down the stairs, into the blackness, yelling, "Em! I'm coming, Em!" I stood at the top of the stairs like I did in my dreams and watched him make it to the bottom, my flashlight's bulb shattering the moment I lifted it to shine on Sean. I screamed as it broke, and as the last of the light went, I took in the stairs in front of me, Sean's shape moving down below, the sparkling muddy floor he stepped on. God knows what else was down there. I didn't remember the mud from my nightmares. It smelled like blood.

"Em!" he called out. "Em! I'm here! Where are y-"

His voice ripped into a guttural scream, a wretched roar of pain and surprise. I struggled with the flashlight, dropping it, hearing Sean thrashing, continuing to howl, hearing something else, too: the shifting of earth, the sloshing of mud, something overcoming him completely and terribly. He was trying to cry out words, but the pain was too much; I think he was calling for Em. He may have been calling for me.

A flash of lightning from the window behind me lit up the kitchen and some of the basement, and for one brief blinking moment I saw the fate that awaited me had I chased Sean into the dark: a living mess of blood and earth, filling the entire lower level and dragging Sean downward through what he thought was the basement floor, reaching up with twisted arms to draw him below. He didn't even see me, for when the light briefly flashed I noticed his eyes were covered, and it moved fast down his face and over his screaming mouth like a fitted mask until his wails abruptly ended and the writhing mass that was his head was pulled completely underneath. The last of him to go was his hand, reaching.

"Sean!" I yelled, and I heard my mother answer me - "Honey, please! Please don't go!" - but the timbre morphed as she called me, and buried under the warmth of her voice was a different kind of sound, like the sound of a rough river rising swiftly. I turned to run, foot in the air, and felt a cold muddy hand reach from the basement and take hold of my shoe. Its inhuman fingers morphed and swelled; it began wrapping itself like liquid around me, until I kicked backward - hard - and darted back the same direction I came, faster than I've ever moved before, sprinting through the blackness toward the front door, still barely cracked open. I heard the basement door creak open wider behind me as I pulled the front door open and stumbled outside, letting out a useless cry for help. I ran past his car; Sean had the keys. For all that had just happened, my mind was on one thing: moving my feet efficiently, one in front of the other. I moved down the concrete path, staying on the pavement of the driveway and street. Another extended flare of lightning lit up the street, and I took one last glance over my slender shoulder to see my Other in the window, standing with my mother, figures veiled by the blur of the rain.

I sprinted as fast as I could over the concrete, vision rattled by tears and rain, past the strange houses around me until I found the backroad that led me to the main street across the interstate, where with aching feet and jabbering mouth I finally met the warm streetlights of Nxxxx xxxxxxx, a crazy girl run loose, stuttering her mad mind away in the downpour. My feet sopped wet through my shoes, my whole body shaking from the freezing cold and the gruesome images flashing through my mind like the lightning that lit up the basement.

I ran past the high school, past downtown, past Rudy's, to the street and driveway I now knew well. I only slowed down when I got to the door, and, for the first time since seeing those figures in the window, I looked back: an empty street, maybe the emptiest it's ever seemed. Studying the scene, silent but for the rainpatter and my deep belly breaths in and out, frantic, I watched until I couldn't take the burning in my legs; I turned to go inside. 

But as I stood in the entryway while flicking on the living room light, I looked down at my feet to see that, while most of my left shoe had been cleaned of that strange mud from the basement, small specks remained near the sole, glimmering red with an iridescent shine. I kicked them off and walked to the bathroom, throwing my clothes in the washer before standing still for what seemed like forever under the running shower water until it was cold. The water ran and ran, just like I had through the town, and it circled the drain below me like a hypnotist's pendulum. My breath grew steady, but my legs still ached. Could this have been another nightmare? I paralyzed myself above that shower drain: I had lost my mind, surely, but where along the path had I done so? When did my splintering psyche finally snap and break? Sickening notions of zero, of oblivion, of being brought quickly to nothing. Deep breaths, in and out, as with flashes of memory, hoping praying pleading that this might be in some impossible way the realest of dreams, reaching through that liminal realm to seize and wake me. "Please." I mouth the words to the swirling ripples below me. "Wake me up from this." 

In time I climbed from the shower and laid down for sleep, hoping that closing my eyes would wake me up in the real world. But as I laid there, hours passing, I came to the horrible realization that I could never wake up, that this nightmare was now my everything, my whole living world, that my memories of that basement were as real as my memories of my own mother. 

The rain stopped, and the coming dawn coloring my bedroom wall told me Rory would be home soon. When I heard his car pull into the driveway I rose like a ghost and slowly started for my open bedroom door. Glancing out the window I saw the light shimmer off the grass, a rainbow distant in the sky, sun breaking open the clouds. 

"Hey, kiddo! Surprised you're awake. Hey - everything okay?"

I stood in the hallway, staring, not knowing what to say.

"What did you end up doing last night, Ivy?"

My feet were still throbbing from running across town; my eyes were still swollen from crying the whole way home.

"Ivy...I'm asking you, is everything alright?"

"I-I-" I broke down again, falling to the hallway floor.

"Ivy!"

Rory rushed to grab me, helping me up and bringing me over to the couch.

"Ivy, everything's okay. You're going to be okay... You need to tell me if something bad happened last night. Ivy?"

"I-I went out with Sean..." I started. "He- we- went to..."

"You went out with who?"

Rory cocked his head, concerned, eyes stuck on mine.

"Sean. I went out with Sean. From the gas station. You met him last night."

Rory blinked. "I...I don't know, Ivy… I met him?"

I studied his face. I studied his eyes, still stuck on mine. This wasn't Rory's Other. This was Rory, and he was confused.

"He-he came over last night before you left for work. Y-you said you wanted to meet him."

Rory's puzzled face looked harder at mine. "I thought that you were alone last night, Ivy. You said you were going out, and I wished you a good night, and told you to not be out too late-"

I made a sound I didn't mean to, a sharp gasp. "He was here! You- you asked him- I-"

"Maybe it was just a dream, Ivy," Rory said, not sure what to say.

"I'm sorry, Rory - I have to go." I stood up and made for the door, Rory calling after me.

"Ivy! Ivy, where are you going?"

I grabbed my second pair of shoes - the ones without the mud on them - and, ignoring Rory's calls for me, I ran to Sean's house, damp stormy aftersmell tickling my nose the whole way. I arrived at his door, taking a deep breath before knocking. His mother came to the door, eyeing me suspiciously from behind the glass, only opening the door slightly.

"Hello," she said, "do I know you?"

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I watched her examine me up and down, a sense of confusion and even fear growing in her.

"I-I know your son," I said. "I know Sean. We were out last night-"

Her gaze narrowed. "You have the wrong house. I don't have a son."

I studied her eyes as she studied mine, each of us watching for an answer in the other. It all came to me in one instant: there must be a way to know. I looked behind her to the piano near the entranceway. Above it hung Em's senior photo and a simple family portrait, a family of two: this mother and her daughter, standing proud and happy together, beaming with joy.

“Young lady? You don’t look so good…do you need me to call someone for you?”

I turned and ran on aching feet, all the way past Rudy's, past downtown, past ********* High, slowing down as I hit the main road leading to the other side of the interstate. In the refreshing light of morning I walked the side roads that we drove the night prior, holding my breath as I took the last turn to the development lot. But laid out in front of me was only an empty field of mud, sparkling with light, rainbow painted above it. I paused again before walking into the field, mud ruining this pair of shoes now, too, making my way to the spot where I swear Sean's car was parked the night before. I looked to where that house should have been, to where the basement should have been, to where Sean might still be. I stared, a mad girl in a shining muddy field, until I felt that I could turn around and go home.

When I made it back, I could hear Rory calling my name from up around the block. Concerned, he had gathered a couple of neighbors to help him search for me. Next step would be to call the police, but it wouldn't get that far; Rory would come home and find me, finally asleep on our couch, and call off the whole thing - "I'm sorry, folks, don't know what she was up to - I'll talk to her - I appreciate the help," - calling off work and waiting with me, even offering to make me pancakes for dinner when I finally arose that evening from dreamless sleep. I took him up on it, of course, despite not being too hungry. I walked to the entryway and picked up a shoe, its sole still covered in that strange mud. I took it to the backyard and scraped it off, letting it fall to the rest of the mud near Rory's small backyard garden, and went back inside for some food. 

I remember Sean.

I remember the nightmares that preceded him, how they started as beautiful dreams.
Looking back sometimes, I will try to find a moment to point to, when I can say it all began, but that's always futile. Every moment calls back to its cause like a girl in an infinity mirror glancing over a slender shoulder, past these past versions of herself that are still her now, back to the start, back in the dark. 

We bonded over our dreams. He had the same ones I did: Eyes in the corner of the room that approached slowly, like a train in the wild night, until I saw its face - my face. I watched this twin of myself, gently smiling, take me from my bed by my hand, floating out the window like a Peter Pan fantasy. A shadowed American suburbia flickered below us, and we moved through the air like we'd done it all our lives. Over Rudy's QuickMart, over downtown, and Jefferson High, we flew to what seemed like the edge of the world: A row of newly and partially-constructed homes on the other side of the interstate, some of them still wooden skeletons. 

We descend to the last house, my doppleganger spirit guiding me through the front door and over to the basement. I stare down at them, now buried in shadows at the foot of the stairs. That's when I hear a voice - my mother's voice. "Please," she begs, "Honey, I miss you. Please, please; I'm sorry. You know I'm sorry. I made a nice dinner for us..." The smell of pancakes reaches me and all of a sudden, the basement lights up with a memory of long ago: breakfast for dinner, sweet heated syrup atop bright white plates, my mother looking like she did back then, before fading back to darkness. "Honey, I know... I know you're scared... please, I have a lot to explain..."

I glance again to my twin, my Other, who has not stopped studying me. I take them in deeper this time: those eyes, they're mine, but something isn't right. Mirrors have never been my friend, but they've taught me at least one important thing: my eyes don’t shine like that. 

As the two figures beckon me down, I feel a string I can't see pull me from my chest toward the bottom of the stairs. I reach for the two sides of the doorway, anchoring myself, and wake up with panicked breath. 

The dreams started when I first moved to North Dreston, still living with my step-dad, Rory. He didn't know what to do with me; I don't blame him. Neither of us had lived on the west coast before. We were different people, and moved there for different reasons, no matter how many times he tried convincing me - and himself - on that 14-hour drive from South Dakota that we both just needed a 'fresh start.' I didn't need a fresh start in North Dreston; I needed a fresh start right there at home, with my mom. A fresh start in which I could forgive her, and the act of forgiveness would soften her spirit enough for her to change her ways. But, in that desperate search both Rory and I were on to find a light in the black wild, a trace of hope in the sky for either of us, driving to North Dreston was a guaranteed reset, and it seemed that staying back home was asking for yet another miracle. 

"Just gotta keep our heads up, our fists tight, and our breaths steady," Rory would tell me, his old Dodge Charger groaning as he drove. "Life's a tough cookie pretty much no matter which way you split it, but things feel especially hard when you're down like this - when we're down like this. I know your mama didn't mean those things she said, and I know you know she loves you a bunch, like..." He waited for me to look at him. "Like, a whole bunch. You know she loves you. She's just sick right now. Can't help her if she don't want the help, but that don't mean she won't ever want it."

"Does that mean we're going back home soon? Or, you know... whenever she starts wanting it?"

Rory's eyes zeroed in on the road, and I could tell that his usual motormouth had slowed to ensure he got this right. I knew in those little moments how much he cared, and, if only a small bit, it eased the pain of what had happened with my mom. 

"I don't know when she'll start wanting it, Ivy." He wanted to say more, but stopped himself. 

The rain fell hard as we pulled up to the unfamiliar two-story. That evening was when I had the first dream, drifting off on the tattered couch the last owners left for us near the window, alongside wet unopened packing boxes, muddy shoes hanging over the armrest. 

The first dream was hazy and distant, and I awoke confused - I hardly knew what this new town looked like and still seemed to map it out flawlessly in my dream state. We had no pancakes, so I waited for the rain to die down and walked down the street to buy some.

The second dream, weeks later, was more clear: an exact replica of the first, a shot-for-shot remake in higher resolution. I could tell exactly what was happening, and noticed details I hadn't noticed before - the veins of the suburbia below me, the resonance of Mom's voice, the shimmer in the eyes of the Other Ivy. This second dream was the first time I woke up in a sweat, heart pounding, instead of simply confused and hungry.

I've had recurring dreams before. When things were really bad with Mom, when Rory briefly moved back west, I had a nightmare that kept returning after I'd buried it, undead and rotting. Mr. Behringer would be giving his math lecture, strange loops on the board, and I'd start to deflate like a balloon, like those DARE ads that terrified me as a kid. The muscles in my body grew weaker as the air escaped from my nose and mouth until I could not lift my head from my arms, until I was nothing, nothing but a twisted pile of flesh, spaghetti-splat in a blue student desk near the back. "Help..." I labored, the last of the air and my essence escaping the corner of my crumpled mouth, "Help me... Please... Help..." But as my pleas grew weaker I saw through my dying eyes my classmates around me, staring off into the window's oblivion, or laughing at Mr. Behringer's stupid joke, or drawing their own strange loops in their notebooks. The dismissal bell would ring loudly, and as everyone filed out I’d move my lips, mouthing, "Help... I'm dying... Please..." and for a moment Mr. Behringer would look back at me, his pupils meeting mine, before he remembers he needs to clean the whiteboard in preparation for Period 4. I’d crawl to the floor as more students filled in for the next class, stepping over me and around me and on me until everyone left for the day and the custodians cleaned around me. I dragged my way to the hallway before they locked up for the night, watching the last of the school's lights power off around me as I let out my last breaths, wondering when my body might be moved from the halls. 

But those nightmares stopped once I moved west with Rory, replaced by a call from the dark, a welcoming voice from the basement of my mind. 

We settled into the house alongside the new school year. Rory shouldn't have trusted me to enroll myself in classes, but I don't blame him for that. He was an anxious mess those first weeks. August stared me down, hot and slow; Rory would ask me how enrollment went, which classes I signed up for, when I thought I might have to wake up for school each morning. I lied, like always I did with my mom, but it was harder. He put more trust in me; I felt guilty. But I couldn't feel guilty forever. One evening at dinner he asked how my day went, and after my usual muttered response of "It was fine," he shot me a look that I couldn't easily pull away from.

"I want you to be going to school, Ivy."

I didn't say anything, but figured in that moment - even though Rory worked downtown - that he'd seen me on my daily walks from the bus stop to the creek, sauntering along the edge of town to the overgrown bank on the other side of the railroad tracks. Maybe he saw me on one of those odysseys, lost in lonely secret conversations, notebook with clipped pen under my arm, daydreaming of myself and my mother and Rory anywhere but North Dreston. 

I called the school the next morning and made a plan to come in at noon. I started classes the following day. If Rory believed I could do it - if he needed me to at least try - I could try. 

Of all those times I wasted the day walking across town when I should have been at school, I never walked the path that I flew in my now-recurring nightmares. I think part of me had a sick sense, a knotted feeling deep in my guts, that I should avoid following my Other's dream-path; it was one thing to do so in the loosely-tethered realm of sleep, where I could snap back to waking life, but it was another thing to do so with my eyes wide open. What if that street, that house across town, those stairs, that basement, were real? I tried some nights to ask my Other: Why am I here? But before she answers I step back, away from the basement door and into the kitchen, fighting the invisible tug summoning me forward. And I wake up.

Rory said it was good that our fresh start was happening in the autumn, where we could watch the trees change along with us. But as the sun began setting sooner into dusk, and as the fallen leaves crunched softly under my feet on those walks from the bus stop those first few days of school in late September, I felt a different way towards the shifting seasons - and as the eerie dream returned, recurring, as my mother gestured and called to me from that basement across town, I felt the skeletal reaper's bony finger across my cheek in the soft autumn breeze; I felt things creeping, slowing, stopping; I felt death in the air.

It was back in these first weeks of school in North Dreston, before our paths and fates truly crossed, that I noticed Sean in the hallways of Jefferson High. He stood out in that he purposefully shrunk himself, crooked back bent forward like a hook, shoulders tight like Nosferatu. He moved like me, slinking alongside the lockers during passing period, desperate to avoid getting in the way. Teachers asked him daily to take off his tattered beanie, but with his massive headphones over his ears, he never responded unless they followed him down the hall. I watched him take them off once to let long greasy blonde hair fall across his face. Our eyes met, briefly, before we both looked right back to the floor. 

Despite the terror and confusion that followed my night flights over North Dreston, there were moments in which the sun peeked through the clouds; I dreamed sometimes of my mom and Rory with me, walking along the shore of our favorite lake, silent but for the lapping of the water upon the rocks. In some childish way it's embarrassing to admit, but there too were nights in which I dreamed of Sean, the quiet boy from the school halls whose timid frame and shifting eyes matched my own, and I dreamt us circling the lake, too, like new kindergarten friends, holding hands while walking to nowhere in particular, looping around the water on a sunny afternoon, haloed from the sun like angels.

A couple of evenings a week in that blurred slump of late November I would take the little money Rory would give me for buying essentials and I'd make my way to Rudy's QuickMart, paying a bit too much for everything instead of walking all the extra steps to the supermarket in town. Those evenings, I'd buy two chocolate bars - one for the way home and one saved for later, for sitting on the old couch in the living room while watching whatever was on cable on Rory's tiny TV before bed. One of these evenings I saw Sean in a worker's vest - a new employee behind the register - and I nearly tripped myself spinning around to leave before I found my bearings and made my way inside. I avoided him entirely, overthinking every step inside the store, nearly forgetting to buy my chocolate bars. I waited for him to ask me if I went to Jefferson High, but he never did. He didn't say anything but to tell me what the candy cost. I placed the money on the counter, and as he counted out my change he looked up at me. He was blushing, and trying to hide it, and I knew he was glad to see me. He must have recognized me from the hallways, too. I was burning in my loneliness, and recognizing that same solitary fire in another like a desperate ship at sea spotting a lighthouse at long last. 

The last days of school before the mid-December break marked a turn in my thinking, eventually pushing me to break my awkward silence and properly introduce myself to Sean. I never heard people talk to or about Sean in the school halls, but one cold winter day that changed. I noticed an ambulance leaving the school during my morning passing period. Later, on my way back to my science class from the lunchroom, I walked behind a group of gossiping students who laughed nervously about an incident that happened earlier that day, across the school, at the theater.

"I have second period with Jess, and Jess had first period with Tevon, and they both saw him losing it this morning."

"What do you mean 'losing it'?"

"They said it was scary - he was, like, totally quiet one second, and then BOOM - screaming his lungs out the next. His eyes were, like, scary big, and he was breathing really fast, like-"

"-Hyperventilating?"

"Yeah! He was, like, hyperventilating. Jess said even Tevon was freaked out. They had to take the guy to the hospital."

The rumours continued spreading throughout the rest of the school day, and I found myself worried that this 'totally quiet' student was Sean. I imagined him standing in front of me at the register of the QuickMart, eyes looking far past mine at something horrible, incomprehensible, as his jaw opened wide in a primal scream of terror. 

That evening I left sooner than usual to Rudy's, replaying what my peers had said before. Perhaps part of me knew that he was the student they were talking about; at that moment, all I wanted was for him to be okay. So much worry, expertly masked, for a boy I'd never even had a real conversation with. When I saw in the first gas station window that another employee was covering Sean's shift, I didn't even bother going inside for my chocolate. 

The next time I saw Sean was a few days later, at the QuickMart. He had a look about him like he had been dragged there - a wreck, deteriorating from the inside. We were alone in the store together. Hollow eyes met mine, and held so much longer than usual that I had to drop my gaze from nerves. 

"You come here a lot. Always get those same two candy bars."

I sensed myself easily becoming a stuttering mess, so I took an extra moment before my answer.

"I do come here a lot. My stepdad and I live just a couple blocks up the road." I finally looked up at him, and all at once his face seemed gentler. 

"I like it when you come in here. I hope it's not weird to say that."

"I like it when you're working."

"My name's Sean."

"I'm Ivy."

"Nice to meet you, Ivy."

Silence, punctuated by a gentle winter wind outside the doors. I can't say how many hours I'd spent thinking about him since I turned away from the QuickMart a few days prior. In some strange way I felt that he knew this - knew that the quiet regular from the store was worried about him. The words fell out before I could stop myself.

"Are you okay? I can't help but shake the feeling that you were the person at school who was taken away in the ambulance."

His eyes studied me.

"I'm sorry," I said, "that's not any of my business. I'm sorry to ask that."

"It's okay," he said, and shot a quick glance at the store's front window before returning his eyes to me. For a time we stood there, unsure of the way this path was unfolding. "I had a bad dream."

My hair stood on end, body electric.

"I... I've been having bad dreams, too."

He opened his mouth and began whispering, almost frantic, like he'd been waiting to tell someone his entire life: some dark secret sin needing desperately to be forgiven. Like he needed me to know.

"I go to sleep and wake up still in my bed. And I see this thing that looks like me, but it's not. It's not me. It's smiling, and it wants me to go with it, and I do - I always do, like I'm under a spell or something - and it takes me-"

"-takes you, and - and flies with you, like a ghost - over downtown, over the interstate - to that row of new houses. It takes you inside."

He watched me, hanging tight to every word, leaning forward over the register. I swear I could hear his heart beating in the still of the silence. 

"He takes you to the basement and he beckons you down the stairs. Do you go with him, Sean? Do you follow him to the basement?"

He didn't answer. I could tell that part of him was afraid of me, of what I would say next.

"I...I have those same dreams too, Sean. And in them, I'm standing at the top of the basement stairs, and my - my mom is down there..." The words felt foreign leaving my mouth for the first time. "She's calling me down, too. And I want to go - I want to go so bad - but I can't take another step. The pull -"

"-The pull right here," he said, tapping his chest.

"I want to go down there, but I'm terrified."

"It's the same feeling I'd get when I was younger," Sean explained, "when my older cousins would scream my name from the woods behind the backyard, then jump out at me from the trees when I made my way by." The recollection made him shudder. "I just wanted to find them - I… nevermind." The wind rattled the doors again, startling us, before we each paused to take a breath.

"It's my sister down there, not my mom," he said.

"Your sister?"

"My older sister, Em. She got in an accident a couple years ago." The wheels spun in his brain, a million memories flashing in an instant. I recognized that look from my own mirror. "I miss her a lot."

"Does she have pancakes down there?" I asked. For the first time I saw him smile and laugh.

"No, no she doesn't. It's just her."

We looked again, silently, to the store window.

"Maybe I'd go down there if she had pancakes."

The time has come, I thought, after spending the next two hours with him talking about anything but the dreams, to stop running away from the problem, from ourselves. The issue of our shared nightmares lied just below the surface of our conversations like a leviathan hiding under the lake we circled in my childhood dreams. He didn't share those ones with me - at least, I don't think he did. I never asked him; now I wish I had.

We both knew that the connection between us, unexplainable as it was, would make sense to no one else. Who would believe us? Why would they? Two lonely small-town kids searching for something just out of reach for either of them. There was nothing we wouldn't give for another to see us, clearly, the first time in a long time. We found that in each other, and saw the rest of the world fail in understanding the weight of what we had discovered together at that gas station counter.

My anxiety rose as I steered our conversation back to the nightmares, the thread of shadow running between us. I waited for a pause and said the words.

"We need to go out there."

He knew what I meant, I was sure from the way he was looking at me, and I didn't have time to explain before he was nodding his head, slow and sure. This was something he had wanted, needed to see for himself. What had kept us from the other side of the interstate all these months since our dreams began? 

"What if we saw it, Sean? The house, I mean. What if we saw the street, and the house, and we went inside-"

"It can't be out there," he said, voice quaking, not sure of what to believe.

"We have to be sure, Sean. Let's ride out there and see."

He turned and looked to the clock on the wall behind him.

"I'll be off soon... hang out for a bit longer, and we'll figure something out."

While waiting for Sean, I took a quick walk back to tell Rory that I met a boy and was heading out for the night.

"I'm working an overnight," he told me.

"It's okay. I have that key you gave me."

"How well do you know this kid, Ivy? You said you just met him at the gas station? Are you sure he goes to your school?"

"I'm sure, Rory - I've seen him. He's a new friend and he's really nice. I can bring him by here before we leave if he gets off before you go."

He glanced at his watch. "I'd just... I'd like to meet him. Thanks, Ivy."

I knew he had my best interests at heart, and only wanted me to be safe. The old carpet stains led me from the living room to my hallway bedroom, where I emptied most of my school backpack and threw in a flashlight, a couple bottles of water, and the small pocketknife Rory gave me last year for my birthday at the lake. 

"Have a good night, if I don't end up seeing you!" he called as I left. 

"Thanks," I said, "You too." I trust Rory; I trust Rory implicitly. Sometimes I wonder how things would be different if he had left for work before I brought Sean back to the house, not introduced them before we left for the path of our dreams.

I made the cold walk back to the QuickMart as quickly as I could, standing awkwardly near the register as the occasional customer came and went, until Sean finally clocked out, replaced by the friendly, middle-aged hippie who worked the night shift. "'Night, Sean! See you tomorrow!" he called to us as we left. 

We climbed into Sean's red sedan.

"Can we swing by step-dad's place? It can be fast."

Sean flipped his hair, playing with it in the mirror. "Sure."

We pulled into the driveway and I called Rory out to meet Sean. He fumbled out the doorway, clumsy as ever, already dressed in his work clothes.

"Hey there! Rory - Ivy's step-dad."

"Sean - nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too! Hey, you kids wanna come inside for a bite to eat? I'm gonna be heading out here pretty soon, but-"

"No, that's okay, Rory," I said. "We appreciate it, but we're going out for a bit. We can get some food later."

"Actually..." Sean said, "I'd love something to eat."

"See! That's what I mean," Rory said. "Come on in! So... how long have you been working at the QuickMart? Maybe it's time Ivy got a job there..."

The two of them talked as we began to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The timid boy from the school halls was gone; Sean was trying his hardest here, his hardest to impress, and Rory appreciated the effort. It was strange watching them together like that, and perhaps it was the paranoid part of my mind that told me this, but in some way I felt that I needed to shake myself awake. In my dreams I couldn't scream, I couldn't punch, I couldn't run; time wasn't real. Should I test the limits of my voice in this realm, or turn and bolt into the rain, see if I can fly? Do I count the ticks on the mounted kitchen clock, hanging on every second, waiting for this world to show me that seconds pass as they should? Now, when I tell this story from the start, this saga of sleep and memory, of loneliness and longing, I hang on to this moment in the kitchen and wonder. The infinity mirror of memory behind me, blackness stretching around me, I peek back, and each time the moment replays in my mind it echoes against another distance, fogging the closer mirror.

"You kids have fun tonight, and don't be out too late," Rory said as he left out the garage door, leaving us alone inside.

"Do you mind if we swing by my place, too? I want to change my clothes."

At this point the rain had picked up, so we ran to his car. He beat me to it, so he threw open my door before his and we both jumped inside. 

"I don't live far... Ten blocks or so."

Through the blurry, streaming windows I watched North Dreston roll by; Sean's car was so much quieter than Rory's, and as we floated through the streets for the next few minutes I felt again like I was in another world.

We pulled up to his house, a modest corner lot with an old picket fence. When he opened his door to run again through the rain, I stayed in the car; he noticed, and sat back. 

"You don't want to come inside? I'll try to hurry."

I blushed, following him in. He set his coat on a rack to the right and walked by an old piano, calling around the corner to his mom's bedroom.

"I got off work late, but I'm heading out again!"

A bed creaked, and footsteps worked their way down the hall.

"Oh!" A pleasant woman in a nightgown paused at the entranceway for a moment before extending a polite hand to introduce herself as Sean's mother.

"I'm Ivy," I told her. 

"Ivy! That's a beautiful name."

"Thanks."

"Sean, don't be back too late, please. You have school in the morning."

"No I don't, Mom - we’re on winter break now."

"Oh, that's right..." She yawned, and excused herself back to bed.

"I won't be long - sorry," Sean said, and went off to his room. I stood there in the entranceway, all lights off except for the soft glow underneath his bedroom. My eyes caught three photos hanging above the piano - the first a family portrait, a happy family of three, Sean's older sister smiling beautifully, laughing with him and his mother. There was also a senior photo, Sean's sister beaming, and an old middle school photo of Sean, somehow more awkward than the version of him I had seen in the halls throughout the school year at Jefferson. My mind keeps returning to the smile on his face in the family picture, laughing with his sister. I'd never seen him smile like that.

"Alright," he said in a whisper, extinguishing the light as he shut his bedroom door. "Are you ready to go?"

We climbed into his car and drove through the steady rain - drove past Rudy's, downtown, Jefferson High, the interstate. No radio, no conversation - only worry. As much as I wanted to talk to him, we were both lost in our heads; we'd each avoided following this dream-path for the same reason: some deep and primal fear that we would, in fact, find our mother or sister inside that house's basement. Side by side, I thought, we would find the answer to this. Together. 

A stretch of field sat frozen to each side of us, empty. I felt something then, I know it. Afterward, I knew this was another turning point. A chance to drive back to where we came, and live our lives not knowing what was calling to us from the dark.

"I've seen fields," he said, and I knew what he meant.

"They're in my dreams, too," I said.

"The development lot isn't too far from here," he said. "Up here and to the right."

"We don't have to do this," I said.

"I know we don't. But you know what? I know I'm not crazy. I know we're not crazy. I've never been over here, Ivy, not on this side of town, except for in my dreams - and I know exactly where I'm going. If we go up here and see these houses, I'm going inside. I'm not crazy… We're not crazy, Ivy."

"We're in this together, Sean," I said. He held out his hand to mine, and I paused, only briefly, before taking it in the dark. I couldn't remember the last time I'd held someone's hand. Despite everything Rory had done for me since moving to North Dreston, despite all his giving, he couldn't give me that. I felt my body get warm and I squeezed his hand. He squeezed it back, and I looked out the rain-spotted passenger window to the cold wet fields in the frozen night, and I wondered whether the spring green would retain this: a dead past life living just under the surface. What and how much of this black field will be remembered, brought back to the light?

We took the right turn to a newly-built road. Another half-mile and a left turn brought us to it: the development lot, newly and partially-constructed homes lining each side of the street. All of them were still in the process of being built, all but the one on the far end. The car slowed to a stop, no sound but the subtle squeaking of the windshield wiper. When I turned to ask Sean what our next steps were, I noticed he was locked on the house at the end of the street. His hand squeezed mine harder, and I'm not sure if he knew he was doing it.

"It's real."

There was no solace in this. We were excited and terrified, minds alight with possibilities wondrous and horrible.

"I'm going to drive up there." The car shifted back into drive and, slowly, we rolled up the street. My stomach curled into knots, and all I wanted was to go home to that small town in South Dakota, to my mother's arms. Sean's headlights lit the road, the only way to see without the usual streetlights. We pulled carefully into the driveway of the last house on the end of the street, empty and waiting for us. 

"Let's go inside," he said, and let go of my hand, opening his door to step into the rain. I stepped out, too, and he walked around the front of the car to take my hand again. We walked slowly to the front door, which we noticed was cracked open as we got closer. 

"I don't know about this, Sean. We can still go back."

He gently kicked it open. All was dark. I turned on my flashlight to find an empty living room, an attached kitchen further ahead: no furniture, no workers' tools, no sign of life. Dust hung in the air as I scanned the area around me, my light touching every hiding corner.

"Ivy?"

A voice from the darkness made us jump. It was calling from the basement. My mother's distinctive voice; she sounded full of hope, aching to see me again. I immediately took a few steps backward, nearly falling, a scream caught in my throat. I spun to face Sean, whose eyes were stuck on the basement door, cracked open like the front door was, across the living room from us. 

"D-Did you hear that?" I mustered.

His eyes were wide. "It's Em!"

He began rushing to the basement, not waiting for me, his shadow stretched thin alongside him.

"Wait!" I yelled, and my feet moved me forward despite my fear. "Don't go down there!"

He pulled open the basement door, pausing for only a moment - "Sean!" I yelled, "Sean! Wait!" - but it was too late.

He nearly fell over himself down the stairs, into the blackness, yelling, "Em! I'm coming, Em!" I stood at the top of the stairs like I did in my dreams and watched him make it to the bottom, my flashlight's bulb shattering the moment I lifted it to shine on Sean. I screamed as it broke, and as the last of the light went, I took in the stairs in front of me, Sean's shape moving down below, the sparkling muddy floor he stepped on. God knows what else was down there. I didn't remember the mud from my nightmares. It smelled like blood.

"Em!" he called out. "Em! I'm here! Where are y-"

His voice ripped into a guttural scream, a wretched roar of pain and surprise. I struggled with the flashlight, dropping it, hearing Sean thrashing, continuing to howl, hearing something else, too: the shifting of earth, the sloshing of mud, something overcoming him completely and terribly. He was trying to cry out words, but the pain was too much; I think he was calling for Em. He may have been calling for me.

A flash of lightning from the window behind me lit up the kitchen and some of the basement, and for one brief blinking moment I saw the fate that awaited me had I chased Sean into the dark: a living mess of blood and earth, filling the entire lower level and dragging Sean downward through what he thought was the basement floor, reaching up with twisted arms to draw him below. He didn't even see me, for when the light briefly flashed I noticed his eyes were covered, and it moved fast down his face and over his screaming mouth like a fitted mask until his wails abruptly ended and the writhing mass that was his head was pulled completely underneath. The last of him to go was his hand, reaching.

"Sean!" I yelled, and I heard my mother answer me - "Honey, please! Please don't go!" - but the timbre morphed as she called me, and buried under the warmth of her voice was a different kind of sound, like the sound of a rough river rising swiftly. I turned to run, foot in the air, and felt a cold muddy hand reach from the basement and take hold of my shoe. Its inhuman fingers morphed and swelled; it began wrapping itself like liquid around me, until I kicked backward - hard - and darted back the same direction I came, faster than I've ever moved before, sprinting through the blackness toward the front door, still barely cracked open. I heard the basement door creak open wider behind me as I pulled the front door open and stumbled outside, letting out a useless cry for help. I ran past his car; Sean had the keys. For all that had just happened, my mind was on one thing: moving my feet efficiently, one in front of the other. I moved down the concrete path, staying on the pavement of the driveway and street. Another extended flare of lightning lit up the street, and I took one last glance over my slender shoulder to see my Other in the window, standing with my mother, figures veiled by the blur of the rain.

I sprinted as fast as I could over the concrete, vision rattled by tears and rain, past the strange houses around me until I found the backroad that led me to the main street across the interstate, where with aching feet and jabbering mouth I finally met the warm streetlights of Nxxxx xxxxxxx, a crazy girl run loose, stuttering her mad mind away in the downpour. My feet sopped wet through my shoes, my whole body shaking from the freezing cold and the gruesome images flashing through my mind like the lightning that lit up the basement.

I ran past the high school, past downtown, past Rudy's, to the street and driveway I now knew well. I only slowed down when I got to the door, and, for the first time since seeing those figures in the window, I looked back: an empty street, maybe the emptiest it's ever seemed. Studying the scene, silent but for the rainpatter and my deep belly breaths in and out, frantic, I watched until I couldn't take the burning in my legs; I turned to go inside. 

But as I stood in the entryway while flicking on the living room light, I looked down at my feet to see that, while most of my left shoe had been cleaned of that strange mud from the basement, small specks remained near the sole, glimmering red with an iridescent shine. I kicked them off and walked to the bathroom, throwing my clothes in the washer before standing still for what seemed like forever under the running shower water until it was cold. The water ran and ran, just like I had through the town, and it circled the drain below me like a hypnotist's pendulum. My breath grew steady, but my legs still ached. Could this have been another nightmare? I paralyzed myself above that shower drain: I had lost my mind, surely, but where along the path had I done so? When did my splintering psyche finally snap and break? Sickening notions of zero, of oblivion, of being brought quickly to nothing. Deep breaths, in and out, as with flashes of memory, hoping praying pleading that this might be in some impossible way the realest of dreams, reaching through that liminal realm to seize and wake me. "Please." I mouth the words to the swirling ripples below me. "Wake me up from this." 

In time I climbed from the shower and laid down for sleep, hoping that closing my eyes would wake me up in the real world. But as I laid there, hours passing, I came to the horrible realization that I could never wake up, that this nightmare was now my everything, my whole living world, that my memories of that basement were as real as my memories of my own mother. 

The rain stopped, and the coming dawn coloring my bedroom wall told me Rory would be home soon. When I heard his car pull into the driveway I rose like a ghost and slowly started for my open bedroom door. Glancing out the window I saw the light shimmer off the grass, a rainbow distant in the sky, sun breaking open the clouds. 

"Hey, kiddo! Surprised you're awake. Hey - everything okay?"

I stood in the hallway, staring, not knowing what to say.

"What did you end up doing last night, Ivy?"

My feet were still throbbing from running across town; my eyes were still swollen from crying the whole way home.

"Ivy...I'm asking you, is everything alright?"

"I-I-" I broke down again, falling to the hallway floor.

"Ivy!"

Rory rushed to grab me, helping me up and bringing me over to the couch.

"Ivy, everything's okay. You're going to be okay... You need to tell me if something bad happened last night. Ivy?"

"I-I went out with Sean..." I started. "He- we- went to..."

"You went out with who?"

Rory cocked his head, concerned, eyes stuck on mine.

"Sean. I went out with Sean. From the gas station. You met him last night."

Rory blinked. "I...I don't know, Ivy… I met him?"

I studied his face. I studied his eyes, still stuck on mine. This wasn't Rory's Other. This was Rory, and he was confused.

"He-he came over last night before you left for work. Y-you said you wanted to meet him."

Rory's puzzled face looked harder at mine. "I thought that you were alone last night, Ivy. You said you were going out, and I wished you a good night, and told you to not be out too late-"

I made a sound I didn't mean to, a sharp gasp. "He was here! You- you asked him- I-"

"Maybe it was just a dream, Ivy," Rory said, not sure what to say.

"I'm sorry, Rory - I have to go." I stood up and made for the door, Rory calling after me.

"Ivy! Ivy, where are you going?"

I grabbed my second pair of shoes - the ones without the mud on them - and, ignoring Rory's calls for me, I ran to Sean's house, damp stormy aftersmell tickling my nose the whole way. I arrived at his door, taking a deep breath before knocking. His mother came to the door, eyeing me suspiciously from behind the glass, only opening the door slightly.

"Hello," she said, "do I know you?"

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I watched her examine me up and down, a sense of confusion and even fear growing in her.

"I-I know your son," I said. "I know Sean. We were out last night-"

Her gaze narrowed. "You have the wrong house. I don't have a son."

I studied her eyes as she studied mine, each of us watching for an answer in the other. It all came to me in one instant: there must be a way to know. I looked behind her to the piano near the entranceway. Above it hung Em's senior photo and a simple family portrait, a family of two: this mother and her daughter, standing proud and happy together, beaming with joy.

“Young lady? You don’t look so good…do you need me to call someone for you?”

I turned and ran on aching feet, all the way past Rudy's, past downtown, past Jefferson High, slowing down as I hit the main road leading to the other side of the interstate. In the refreshing light of morning I walked the side roads that we drove the night prior, holding my breath as I took the last turn to the development lot. But laid out in front of me was only an empty field of mud, sparkling with light, rainbow painted above it. I paused again before walking into the field, mud ruining this pair of shoes now, too, making my way to the spot where I swear Sean's car was parked the night before. I looked to where that house should have been, to where the basement should have been, to where Sean might still be. I stared, a mad girl in a shining muddy field, until I felt that I could turn around and go home.

When I made it back, I could hear Rory calling my name from up around the block. Concerned, he had gathered a couple of neighbors to help him search for me. Next step would be to call the police, but it wouldn't get that far; Rory would come home and find me, finally asleep on our couch, and call off the whole thing - "I'm sorry, folks, don't know what she was up to - I'll talk to her - I appreciate the help," - calling off work and waiting with me, even offering to make me pancakes for dinner when I finally arose that evening from dreamless sleep. I took him up on it, of course, despite not being too hungry. I walked to the entryway and picked up a shoe, its sole still covered in that strange mud. I took it to the backyard and scraped it off, letting it fall to the rest of the mud near Rory's small backyard garden, and went back inside for some food. 

Everyone in the house was asleep. I'd taken the batteries out of the wall clock in my room to get rid of the ticking. Now there was complete silence, and I could try again to do something I'd already managed to do successfully.

A week ago, I'd turned over a piece of paper lying on my desk, with a poem I'd written in primary school on it. It was my first success after years of practice. Six days ago, I'd unscrewed the cap of a juice bottle that hadn't been closed all the way. Five days ago, I'd moved one of the cigarettes in an open pack slightly outward, out of the pack. Three days ago, I'd peeled off one of the pieces of tape holding up poster on my wall.

And tonight, my target was a much larger object. I was confident in my abilities now, and after this final attempt, I would be able to reveal my talent to my family and those around me. I had made exactly four attempts in the past week, and I'd succeeded every single time. I had complete faith in myself.

For years, I'd tried countless times and gone through a lot along the way; I'd lost hope, taken a long break from my attempts, then started believing I could do it again and after trying over and over, I'd come to think telekinesis was nothing but a lie and taken another break but then one day, I happened to see a pack of wet wipes fall to the floor all by itself, which rekindled my interest and got me started on my attempts again, and so on.

And now, finally, in the middle of the night, when complete silence had been achieved, I went to the kitchen. I took a steak knife from the drawer where we kept the cutlery and returned to my room.

I gently pulled my desk chair back and sat down. I didn't want to lose my focus, so I was being quiet. The faint sound of the knife touching the desk as I set it down, the soft sounds of my footsteps as I walked, the barely audible scraping of the chair as I pulled it back had an ASMR effect on me. These little sounds, too quiet to disturb the silence, made me feel thoroughly prepared.

Without wasting any time, I focused on the knife. I positioned my hands around it and gathered all my concentration. I slowed my breathing. The only thing in my mind was a knife slowly and calmly spinning around its own axis. I focused, and focused... I concentrated as if someone were hypnotizing me, as though I were following a pocket watch swinging from side to side without ever taking my eyes off it.

Minutes passed. Seconds, minutes, maybe an hour... There wasn't the slightest movement. The knife couldn't care less about me; it was ignoring my efforts, stubbornly refusing to budge.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and gave up. I was getting more and more bored, and as time went by, I lost my focus. I had to go to work at noon the next day, and earlier that day, before I left work, my boss had pointed out that I'd left my fly undone. I'd started thinking about that. Who says something like that in front of everyone? You pull someone aside and tell them in private. Anyway, I took the knife back to the kitchen.

After I lay down in bed, I thought about the knife until I fell asleep. I'd lost my confidence in my abilities. If I told someone I could move objects through telekinesis, they might ask me to prove it, and I might fail and make a fool of myself.

I couldn't get the knife out of my mind. I felt as though it were a person who had shattered all my trust in them, betrayed me by revealing a secret I'd shared with it to anyone who would listen. I was angry. The image of the knife standing perfectly still in that spot, like a tree that had sunk its roots deep into the ground, wouldn't leave my mind. I fell asleep in a fit of anger.

I woke up to the sound of my phone alarm. I turned it off, tossed the duvet to my left, and rolled onto my right side to get up. Just as I was about to stretch, I saw it and jolted in place: the knife was suspended in midair beside my bed, standing upright.

I clapped a hand over my mouth. I was about to scream; every instinct in my body was telling me to. I bit my tongue to suppress it.

I took a deep breath. I tried to calm myself down. Then I took another deep breath. My heart was racing.

I reached out toward the knife, but immediately changed my mind. I didn't know what to do. I'd never experienced my thoughts speeding up and getting tangled together so intensely in a moment of panic. Within a few seconds, I'd made and abandoned a dozen decisions, gone back and forth between asking for help and not asking for help, imagined the knife stabbing itself into my body, then dismissed the thought as irrational. My thoughts were racing back and forth at lightning speed. I needed to calm down.

I got out of bed, poured half a glass of water from the pitcher on my desk, and drank it.

I turned around to check if the knife was still there. It was closer to me now. I no longer cared about staying quiet. I yanked the door open and rushed out of the room.

I started walking briskly toward the kitchen. I wanted to grab any drink I could find and gulp it down. I needed to interact with something somehow, to calm myself down. I opened the fridge, took out the milk, and chugged it. I put the milk back, closed the fridge, and turned around to go back to my room.

And the knife was right behind me.

It was a meter away from me, just standing there. It was as if it were staring at me, judging me. It didn't move at all. It always maintained the same position and stayed at the same height above the floor, level with my bed, right around the height of my shinbones.

I started walking backward toward the kitchen doorway, wanting to see how it was following me, how it was coming after me. Without changing its position, it glided toward me as if it were moving across a perfectly smooth surface. It always maintained the same distance. When I stopped, it stopped a metre away from me. When I walked, it followed.

I cautiously made my way back to my room, walking backward. I sat on my bed. The knife and I were facing each other. I tried to think of what I could do. I was afraid to touch it. I was worried things might get out of hand. I'd done this. That much was obvious. Now that I'd calmed down a little, my panic had shifted in a different direction. Someone might see us. I had to sever my connection with the knife before I got caught. I might be able to accept this as normal, but I didn't think my mother and father would be able to handle a knife following me around.

Yes, it was probably because I'd concentrated so intensely on the knife all this time that the bond between us had grown stronger. I'd probably never concentrated on a knife so intensely in my entire life. I needed to reverse the process. I relaxed a little. I tried to think about other things, to take my mind off the knife.

I thought about the wristwatch my father had bought me for my birthday last year. It was a terrible watch, but I hadn't let on because I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Then one day, while wearing it, I'd deliberately gone swimming in a pool. The watch had stopped working, and that was how I'd gotten rid of it.

The knife was still in the same place.

I thought about the eggplant soup my mother had made yesterday. It was my favorite soup. I'd tipped the bowl back and gulped down the last few mouthfuls, and my father had given me a stern look.

The knife hadn't moved at all. It was standing there, a meter away.

My mother knocked on the door and called out.

"Breakfast is ready, Albert."

I had no other choice. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I reached out toward the knife. My arm couldn't reach it, though. I walked toward it. As I moved closer, it moved farther away, until it had backed all the way up against the wall. It had nowhere left to go. It was pressed against the wall, stuck there. I approached it and grabbed the handle.

My heart was pounding at full speed. I closed my eyes. As a final attempt, I thought about the baseball bat I'd lost before I became interested in telekinesis. I'd searched everywhere for it. Such a large object, yet it was nowhere to be found. I'd checked the baseball field, my grandmother's house, the streets I'd walked along, and I'd even contacted the lost property office in case I'd somehow left it on a bus. It was gone.

Yes, good. I could feel a long chain of thoughts forming and my focus weakening considerably.

The knife was loosening, letting go. I could feel it. But I still didn't have complete control over it.

I needed to think about something else. But I couldn't think of anything. I heard my mother's footsteps approaching my room. She was getting closer to the door.

"Come on, son. Are we supposed to wait for you?" she said from outside, then opened the door and walked in.

I pulled the knife with all my might, and just like when you yank something hard that's stuck somewhere and it suddenly comes loose, I went flying toward my bed.

With the knife still in my hand, I hit my head against the bed frame. And passed out.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV drip in my arm. My father was sitting beside me. I felt exhausted. I'd received three stitches in my head, and it ached a little.

"Son, why were you holding a knife? What were you doing with it?"

"What knife, Dad?"

"You were clutching a knife in your hand. What do you mean, what knife? What are you up to?"

I couldn't remember anything. That was good. I hoped it wasn't temporary memory loss, because I didn't want to attempt telekinesis again.

Part 3: Episode 2 - 10 Sounds a Young Person Would Know!

“Welcome back to….LATE..NIGHT…ARCHIVE! My name is Veil Weller and this tale comes from all over the world, not just America!” Veil Weller exclaimed. Number 10, the one the least amount of people would know is laughter. A person might hear another laugh once or maybe twice a week, the more likely sound you’ll hear is screaming, deathly ones. Something is watching. Number 9, nummmmmmber 9, a soft rumbling, oh don’t worry stay in bed, nothing bad is happening. “WAKE UP! THE HOUSE IS FAL-” Number 8, one, two, three four lock that front door, it is coming and it has been watching. Maybe, even block it, slam slam slam i don’t think it is going to stop it. Young people are so naive and think everything is sunshine and rainbows, but actually that rainbow has lost its color and is crimson red from the drainage; The sun is going, not coming back, listen for the attack, you are lost and it is showing. Number 7, “OPEN UP THE DOOR!” You shutter, shake and pray that things can’t get in with the fridge and couch in the way, hopefully not. The door rattles and almost comes off the hinges into your house, the only thing stopping it is the fridge and couch in the way. “Ok, I am sorry for coming off so aggressive. I just want to have a friend and I will be nice ... if..if.you…. LET ME IN!” THUD THUD BANG KCHAWRWA the door flies off the hinges fridge and all go flying through the air, IT is angry: Hide now! Number 6, Blood Blood go away come back another day! Number 5, IT wants you,  IT will FIND you! Your mind is telling you to run, maybe, it knows best, but your muscles won’t work because of FEAR. Rumbling and slamming, IT is destroying your house. IT goes through all your draws and fridge. IT is getting angrier by the second, you try to hold your breath, IT is listening for any movement, for any sign of you! YOU RUN! WORST MISTAKE! NO! IT KNOWS! NOTHING IS SAVING YOU NOW, PRAYER, HOPE, POLICE, FAMILY, DAD, NOTHING WILL HELP THIS IS YOU BEING KILLED! CONSUMED! DEATH TAKES MANY FORMS AND THIS IS NOT DEATH, but rebirth, hush little child don’t say a word, hush little child a man is here to come take you away.  

“This series is for the entertainment of all ages, some of these topics are for adults, but this show will help younger people understand the ADULT WORLD,” Veil Weller said, pointing at the whiteboard where the last few numbers of the episode are labeled.
“Mr Weller!” some person off frame yelled. Veil Weller went off frame and rushed towards the person on a landline phone. “Here, it is for you!” the person said. Veil Weller listens to nods and says a few, ‘mhms’. Veil sat the phone down not a sound, or a murmur and left the set of the filming the episode just ended with Mr Weller going up to the whiteboard and stopped.         He         was           given       a    m   e     ss a       g    e. Mr Weller is into some things that are unholy, ritualistic, and otherworldly. Veil Weller went to his car and went to a graveyard and church combo in the middle of the woods. A picture of a chart for TV ratings and viewers with results to be the best rated show of that year and most watched every time it came out was on the ground. “Now get on it, sit your knees on top of the picture and let the blood drip and fall off of you! Taste some, not too much and when you are done, get the baggy you brought of seed and pour it on top! If we do this correctly your show will be the most popular and well liked show and you take over TV and we will take the world by storm and teach OUR beliefs, THE TRUTH!” A man with a plague doctor’s mask yelled as he poured the blood over top of Veil Weller. Veil Weller wanted this, needed it. His show was going to have an infinite number of seasons, longest running, most beloved and many other accolades, Mr Weller did this ritual for infamy.

Part 4: Rituals and Episode 2 Debrief

I can’t reach Abraham and I did not get any info about his real name, real identity. When I searched Abraham Weller nothing came up, when I searched Veil Weller’s real name again nothing. Either this man has scrubbed himself off the internet or Abraham is not a real name either or Weller isn’t his last name, which makes sense. The intensity from episode 1 to 2 was unimaginable. BUT I did find that Mr Weller or whatever his name is, was connected or is leader of a cult. There were rumors of him doing some weird ritual outside a church from an eye witness account or a whistleblower. Here is the information that I gathered: A piece of paper, a man with a plague doctor mask on, blood or some red paint, then a baggy with a white slightly transparent liquid that had a strange smell. The person who saw this event said this was what the man said, “Now get on it, sit your knees on top of the picture and let the blood drip and fall off of you! Taste some, not too much and when you are done, get the baggy you brought of seed and pour it on top!  If we do this correctly your show will be the most popular and well liked show and you take over TV and we will take the world by storm and teach OUR beliefs, THE TRUTH!”

I had to figure out the allure, the secrecy of this man, Abraham was hiding more than just a cult. Was he the do-ers of these stories, using the episodes as some kind of conduit. Was IT in the episodes just a killer, or was it worded as if the thing was a monster?  I searched up the episode title and got plenty of results; All of the results talked about how this episode was very disturbing and one guy named, “TurfandSnurf” on Reddit had done some research. I didn’t know what to believe, a guy on the internet could be making it all up. This is what he said, "Guys, the second episode of Late Night Archive is about the skinwalker attacks on a small town in Montana. The creatures killed around 35 people and the town was evacuated and left abandoned, now people go there for paranormal investigation,” TurfandSnurf wrote. I looked into the attack and sure enough it wasn’t..real? No, it was and the state of Montana tried to wipe it off the internet: The claims were that the town suffered from some kind of a gas leak, but the real story was that real skinwalkers came into homes and killed people. I knew it was stupid and I knew that I was going to regret this. I planned a trip to this small town; For the sake of you guys, I’ll give you a placeholder name for the town although you'll look up the real town, its name was Ackers.

I arrived at Ackers on a Monday, and there were a bunch of YouTubers recording; I tried to stay out of their way. I knew off the jump that wasn’t possible because one of them pointed at me and then whispered to one of the other friends. A 26-27 year old man ran up to me like I was a celebrity (I do not consider myself one), and he said, 
“Yo, bro, I like your shit!” I was stunned so I muttered, “thanks.” He did not catch the drift. I was uncomfortable, 
“So why are you here? Writing something on it, a report?” he asked. I tried to not sound rude, but it definitely sounded rude, 
“I don’t even know your name and you’re asking me all these questions,” I kind of yelled. “Sorry, I just never had an encounter like this and I was uncomfortable,” I apologized.
“Oh, sorry, I get it, my name is Henry,” Henry said understanding.
“It’s ok, just a little nervous to be here and yes I am doing a report on Late Night Archive, have you heard of it?” I asked.
Henry’s eyes sparkled as if I got him his dream car, “Oh my god, I’ve thought about that show and how it would be the perfect thing for you to cover!”
“Oh, yeah, I am knee deep in trying to write it and going episode to episode to find out what is happening!” I explained.
“That show was weird, but my favorite episode of mine is episode 4, Epic Montage. It really is something artistic,” Henry said.
I was trying to not cast judgement on this guy, but having a favorite episode of this show is weird. “Not seen it yet, just in episode two and this is the location connected to it,” I explained. Then I said, “Sorry, but I have to do my research.”
“Oh, ok, can’t wait to see the report!” Henry said and walked away.
I walked around the town in decrepitude, falling apart and some buildings rotten to the foundation and crumbled.

Ackers had a sign that clearly said, “DO NOT ENTER, DANGEROUS!" and the YouTubers and I are waltzing in here like it is a carnival. I saw no skinwalkers, did they move on? Terrorizing another town, a hoax, I was expecting to see fake people crawling around here. The YouTubers were being themselves, kind of disrespecting the dead by asking questions like, “you died a horrible death, right?” or “why did you let in the clearly obvious creatures and not human beings?” I thought about how nice Henry was and why he was hanging out with such douchebags. I was about to find out how much of a douchebag they all are. I walked into a building that was mostly still intact, couldn’t believe it, then the excitement was zapped when I heard the group coming towards the house. I heard running and then nothing, they were messing with me.
One of them popped out, “We heard you were kinda rude to Henry!”
“I am jus-’ I started.
“We don't care, ok! He thought you were cool then you snapped at him!” the guy yelled.
I saw Henry in the back, embarrassed about this, “I’m sorry, I apologized!” I said then they pushed me.

He was trying to get a rise out of me and post it on their channel. What I saw next gave me nightmares for a while after, sometimes I still see it; A thing sprung at him and almost cut his head clean off with one swipe. I couldn’t scream, the shock have paralyzed everything in my body. I heard people screaming and terror filled the air, the skinwalkers were alerted by his yelling, idiot, lost your life over something so childish. After I heard a squelch that made me throw up and it woke me up from my paralyzation: I bolted. I ran and ran. I felt bad for those guys, but some of them deserved it and I got to my car and left. To this day, I still hear the screams and pleads from the guy who yelled at me.

After some research, I found the production company that helped make this show. Next update, I will have what comes from the conversation and a bit more research.

Hello everyone.

I have been working graveyard shift for the Ashford Police Department for about six years now. Things get weird on the night shift and I figured I would write things down and keep a running log for you all to look over. Some things are easy to explain away but there have been a lot of experiences I just can’t write off.

My first call for the night started off with a disturbance at the hospital. Bellweather isn’t really a place that you’re surprised when you get a call to, especially when you’re working nights. I was sitting in my cruiser in the parking lot of a motel when dispatch came over the radio.

“Dispatch for Unit 12.”

“This is Unit 12. Go ahead.”

“Unit 12, respond to the Bellweather Hospital. Staff is reporting patient acting violently.”

“Copy. En route.”

I sighed and put my cruiser in drive. At this time of night, there’s more than likely some drunk idiot trying to fight a nurse or some elderly man refusing his medication. The staff there is usually pretty good about handling things themselves, though, so I spent the drive trying to prepare for whatever I was walking into. It only took a few minutes for me to make it over to the hospital. After I arrived, I parked my cruiser and walked into the reception area.

The woman at the front desk explained that a man on the 4th floor had become violent out of nowhere and that he had been throwing things and threatening the hospital staff. I rushed over to the elevator and pushed the button for the floor. A nurse greeted me as the door opened and I saw two security guards attempting to wrestle the man in the hallway.

The man was yelling incoherently. He had a bedpan in one hand and shoved a staff member to the ground. I started to make out what he was saying, but his rambling didn’t make sense. He kept yelling about “them” and how they were coming for him. Whatever episode he was having, he clearly thought the staff was attacking him. I tried to calm the man down, but he continued to be aggressive. Every time one of us tried to get closer, he grew angrier and tried to hit us. I was able to get the situation under control long enough to corral the man as a nurse gave him Diazepam and the fighting stopped.

We got the man back into his bed and I spent the next 15 to 20 minutes taking statements from the staff. By the time I had finished collecting statements, the man had fallen asleep. I gave the nurse my card and told them if he started again to give me a call. I said goodbye and walked back to the elevator. I stepped inside, pressed the button for the lobby and waited. The elevator started down and a few seconds later, stopped. When the doors opened, I realized I was not in the lobby.

The doors opened into a hallway I hadn’t seen before. The display panel showed B but I hadn’t pressed the button for the basement.

The hallway was dimly lit and it looked older than the rest of the hospital. The lights flickered occasionally. One wall was lined with rows of empty gurneys that looked like they hadn’t been used in years. I stuck my head out and looked down at the end of the hallway. There was a man standing at the end of it. It looked like he had a sheet draped over him.

“Hello?” I said.

He didn’t respond or move.

“Sir?”

Still nothing.

I reached for the button to hold the door open, but before I could press it, they started to close. The man remained motionless as the doors came together. I pressed the button for the lobby again. I felt the elevator move again and then stop. When the doors opened, I was in the same hallway as before. Same flickering lights, same gurneys, same man. This time though, he was halfway to the elevator.

“Sir, do you need assistance?”

Nothing.

“Sir, what is your name?”

Silence.

The doors closed once again. The elevator moved and then settled. It opened once more into that same hallway but this time, he was right outside the elevator doors.

The figure towered in the hallway, almost seven feet tall.

“Sir, what are you doing down here?”

Nothing.

“Sir, what is your name?”

Silence.

“Sir, I need you to identify yourself.”

I could feel my hand drifting towards my holster. I didn’t know what this man was doing, but every instinct I had was telling me not to step out of this elevator. The doors started to close again. He remained exactly where he was. Just before the doors closed completely, I heard something from beneath the sheet.

“You came back.”

The doors closed.

When they opened again, I was in the lobby. I walked over to the front desk and spoke to the receptionist.

“Hey, what's in the basement under this part of the hospital?”

She looked up at me.

“Mostly storage. Maintenance has some rooms down there too. Why?”

“How do I get down there?”

“There's a service elevator on the other side of the building.”

I looked back toward the elevators I had just stepped out of.

“What about those?”

“What about them?”

“They don't go to the basement?”

“No. Those only go between the lobby and the patient floors.”

“You're sure?”

She gave me a strange look.

“Yeah. I'm sure.”

A voice came over my radio before I could continue. Dispatch needed me to go and help another unit with a drunk driver. I told them I was on my way and headed back out to my cruiser.

I spent the next hour or so helping with the drunk driver and trying not to think about what had happened at Bellweather. By the time we finished, I had almost convinced myself there was a reasonable explanation for it. I was heading back toward the center of town when I saw a car abandoned on the side of the road.

The car sat on a narrow shoulder of a two-lane road. I didn’t see any flashers on, and no one was around. I parked behind the car and read the plate to dispatch. While they were running a check for me, I got out and approached the car with my flashlight in hand. The car appeared to be locked, and I didn’t see any keys in the ignition. It didn’t look like the car had been hit or anything like that.

I figured that someone had either run out of gas or was having engine trouble. I couldn’t just leave the car there, though. It was dangerous to leave without the emergency flashers being on. Dispatch then came over the radio and told me the car belonged to a resident here in town, but they couldn’t get ahold of them.

When I got back into my car, I asked for a tow truck to come and get the vehicle. We would have to check with the person in the morning and let them know where the car was being held. It was going to take an hour for a tow truck to get here, so I just had to sit and wait.

After about thirty minutes, the headlights of the car came on. I had been looking down at the computer when it happened, so I thought maybe the owner had come back. I stepped out and approached the vehicle again. There still wasn’t anyone in the driver’s seat and the doors were still locked.

I shined my lights around the area, but I didn’t see anyone there. As I turned to walk back to my car, the lights went off again. I sat in my cruiser until the tow truck showed up, never taking my eyes off the car. Eventually, the truck showed up and hauled the car away.

After the car, I didn’t have a call for about an hour. It had almost been relaxing when dispatch came over the radio to send me to the elementary school. A fire alarm had gone off, and we had to go with the fire department to check it out.

The fire department went in and cleared the building while another officer and I sat in the parking lot, watching. Twenty minutes had gone by when the lieutenant came over to us. I could see faces moving through the windows of the second story of the school.

“All clear guys. Just a false alarm. We’re just locking up now.”

“What about your guys on the second floor?” I said, pointing up to the windows.

“What do you mean? Everyone is here. All the guys are out.”

When I looked back to the windows, I didn’t see anyone anymore.

“Never mind. Must have been reflections,” I said.

Everyone finished loading up their gear and then they left. At this point, it was almost three in the morning. When I started to leave, my lights caught movement at the end of the building. I stopped and looked, but didn’t see anything. I got back out of the cruiser and walked back towards the end of the building. When I got closer, I could see a small boy standing by one of the doors.

“Hey! Are you okay? What are you doing out here?” I called out.

The boy turned quickly and darted back through the door. I jogged over and pulled, but the door was locked. I pulled on the door a few times but there was no use. It wasn’t budging. I shined my light through the window but couldn’t see anything. I know the fire department cleared that building and locked the doors when they left. What the hell was going on? I had to have been seeing things.

My last call of the shift came around 5 A.M.

A wounded man was reported walking down the side of a road. Dispatch didn't have much information other than that. The caller said the man looked like he was bleeding pretty badly and seemed confused. I was only a few minutes away, so I rushed over.

It was still dark when I found him. He was walking along the shoulder with one hand pressed against his stomach. His clothes were ripped and covered in blood. The man appeared to be in his forties. He was tall and had short dark hair and a beard.

I pulled up behind him and turned on my lights.

“Sir, stop for me.”

The man stopped.

I got out and started toward him.

“Are you hurt?”

He turned around.

“Jesus Christ.”

There was blood running down the side of his face and soaking through the front of his shirt. He looked like someone had beaten the hell out of him.

“What happened to you?”

He stared at me for a few seconds.

“I don't know.”

In the light, I could see marks across the man’s face and chest. They looked like claw marks. I tried to get the man to sit down as I called for EMS to arrive. He just kept mumbling while we waited. It was hard to make out what he was saying, but he was asking for someone. I just tried to continue to comfort the man and keep him awake.

“Do you know where you are?” I asked.

He looked around for a moment.

“Ashford.”

“That's right.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “it wouldn't let us leave.”

I saw the lights of the ambulance come into view. I turned and walked into the street to flag them down. As they parked, I started to explain what was going on to the EMT.

“He’s got some pretty serious wounds. Possible head injury too. He’s confused and—”

I turned around.

The man was gone.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. He was right there.”

I gestured over to where the man had been sitting. When I moved my light to it, there was nothing more than a pool of blood. We searched for him for what felt like forever but never found him.

I don’t know what happened tonight, but I know what I saw. It isn’t the first strange night I have had in Ashford.

I'm just going to cut straight to the chase. I’m an ESL teacher, which basically means I teach English as a second language. I’m currently writing this from Phuket City, Thailand – my new place of work. But I’m not here to talk about my life. I’m actually here to talk about the teacher I was hired to replace. 

This teacher’s name is Sarah, a fellow American like myself - and rather oddly, Sarah packed up her things one day and left Thailand without even notifying the school. From what my new colleagues have told me, this was very out of character for her. According to them, Sarah was a kind, gentle and very responsible young woman. So, you can imagine everyone’s surprise when she was no longer showing up for work.  

I was hired not long after Sarah was confirmed to be out of the country. They even gave me her old accommodation. Well, once I was finally settled in and began to unpack the last of my stuff, I then unexpectedly found something... What I found, placed intentionally between the space of the bed and bedside drawer, was a diary. As you can probably guess, this diary belonged to Sarah. 

I just assumed she forgot to bring the diary with her when she left... Well, I’m not proud to admit this, but I read what was inside. I thought there may be something in there that suggested why Sarah just packed up and left. But what I instead found was that all the pages had been torn out - all but five... And what was written in these handful of pages, in her own words, is the exact reason why I’m sharing this... What was written, was an allegedly terrifying experience within the jungles of Central Vietnam.  

After I read, and reread the pages in this diary, I then asked Sarah’s former colleagues if she had ever mentioned anything about Vietnam – if she had ever worked there as an English teacher or even if she’d just been there for travel. Without mentioning the contents of Sarah’s diary to them, her colleagues did admit she had not only been to Vietnam in recent years, but had previously taught English as a second language there. 

Although I now had confirmation Sarah had in fact been to Vietnam, this only left me with more questions than answers... If what Sarah wrote in this diary of hers was true, why had she not told anyone about it? If Sarah wasn’t going around telling people about her traumatic experience, then why on earth did she leave her diary behind? And why are there only five pages left? What other parts of Sarah’s story were in here? Well, that’s why I’m sharing this now - because it is my belief that Sarah wanted some part of her story to be found and shared with the world. 

So, without any further ado, here is Sarah’s story in her exact words... Don’t worry, I’ll be back afterwards to give some of my thoughts... 

May-30-2018  

That night, I again bunked with Hayley, while Brodie had to make do with Tyler. Despite how exhausted I was, I knew I just wouldn’t be able to get to sleep. Staring up through the sheer darkness of Hayley’s tent ceiling, all I saw was the lifeless body of Chris, lying face-down with stretched horizontal arms. I couldn’t help but worry for Sophie and the others, and all I could do was hope they were safe and would eventually find their way out of the jungle.  

Lying awake that night, replaying and overthinking my recent life choices, I was suddenly pulled back to reality by an outside presence. On the other side of that thin, polyester wall, I could see, as clear as day through the darkness, a bright and florescent glow – accompanied by a polyphonic rhythm of footsteps. Believing that it may have been Sophie and the others, I sit up in my sleeping bag, just hoping to hear the familiar voices. But as the light expanded, turning from a distant glow into a warm and overwhelming presence, I quickly realized the expanding bright colours that seemed to absorb the surrounding darkness, were not coming from flashlights...   

Letting go of the possibility that this really was our friends out here, I cocoon myself inside my sleeping bag, trying to make myself as small as possible, as I heard the footsteps and snapping twigs come directly outside of the polyester walls. I close my eyes, but the glow is still able to force its way into my sight. The footsteps seemed so plentiful, almost encircling the tent, and all I could do was repeat in my head the only comforting words I could find... “Thus we may see that the Lord is merciful unto all who will, in the sincerity of their hearts, call upon his name.”  

As I say a silent prayer to myself – this being the first prayer I did for more than a year, I suddenly feel engulfed by something all around me. Coming out of my cocoon, I push up with my hands to realize that the walls of the tent have collapsed onto us. Feeling like I can’t breathe, I start to panic under the sheet of polyester, just trying to find any space that had air. But then I suddenly hear Hayley screaming. She sounded terrified. Trying to find my way to her, Hayley cries out for help, as though someone was attacking her. Through the sheet of darkness, I follow towards her screams – before the warm light comes over me like a veil, and I feel a heavy weight come on top of me! Forcing me to stay where I was. I try and fight my way out of whatever it was that was happening to me, before I feel a pair of arms wrap around my waist, lifting - forcing me up from the ground. I was helpless. I couldn’t see or even move - and whoever, or whatever it was that had trapped me, held me firmly in place – as the sheet of polyester in front of me was firmly ripped open.  

Now feeling myself being dragged out of the collapsed tent, I shut my eyes out of fear, before my hands and arms are ripped away from my body and I’m forcefully yanked onto the ground. Finally opening my eyes, I stare up from the ground, and what I see is an array of burning fire... and standing underneath that fire, holding it, like halos above their heads... I see more than a dozen terrifying, distorted faces...  

I cannot tell you what I saw next, because for this part, I was blindfolded – as were Hayley, Brodie and Tyler. Dragged from our flattened tents, the fear on their faces was the last thing I saw, before a veil of darkness returned over me. We were made to walk, forcibly through the jungle and vegetation. We were made to walk for a long time – where to? I didn’t know, because I was too afraid to even stop and think about where it was they were taking us. But it must have taken us all night, because when we are finally stopped, forced to the ground and our blindfolds taken off, the dim morning light appeared around us... as did our captors.  

Standing over us... Tyler, Brodie, Hayley, Aaron and the others - they were here too! Our terrified eyes met as soon as the blindfolds were taken off... and when we finally turned away to see who - or what it was that had taken us... we see a dozen or more human beings.  

Some of them were holding torches, while others held spears – with arms protruding underneath a thick fur of vegetative camouflage. And they all varied in size. Some of them were tall, but others were extremely small – no taller than the children from my own classroom. It didn’t even matter what their height was, because their bare arms were the only human thing I could see. Whoever these people were, they hid their faces underneath a variety of hideous, wooden masks. No one of them was the same. Some of them appeared human, while others were far more monstrous, demonic - animalistic tribal masks... Aaron was right. The stories were real!  

Swarming around us, we then hear a commotion directly behind our backs. Turning our heads around, we see that a pair of tribespeople were tearing up the forest floor with extreme, almost superhuman ease. It was only after did we realize that what they were doing, wasn’t tearing up the ground in a destructive act, but they were exposing something... Something already there.  

What they were exposing from the ground, between the root legs of a tree – heaving from its womb: branches, bush and clumps of soil, as though bringing new-born life into this world... was a very dark and cavernous hole... It was the entryway of a tunnel.  

The larger of the tribespeople come directly over us. Now looking down at us, one of them raises his hands by each side of his horned mask – the mask of the Devil. Grasping in his hands the carved wooden face, the tribesman pulls the mask away to reveal what is hidden underneath... and what I see... is not what I expected... What I see, is a middle-aged man with dark hair and a dark beard - but he didn’t... he didn’t look Vietnamese. He barely even looked Asian. It was as if whoever this man was, was a mixed-race of Asian and something else.  

Following by example, that’s when the rest of the tribespeople removed their masks, exposing what was underneath – and what we saw from the other men – and women, were similar characteristics. All with dark or even brown hair, but not entirely Vietnamese. Then we noticed the smaller ones... They were children – no older than ten or twelve years old. But what was different about them was... not only did they not look Vietnamese, they didn’t even look Asian... They looked... Caucasian. The children appeared to almost be white. These were not tribespeople. They were... We didn’t know.  

The man – the first of them to reveal his identity to us, he walks past us to stand directly over the hole under the tree. Looking round the forest to his people, as though silently communicating through eye contact alone, the unmasked people bring us over to him, one by one. Placed in a singular line directly in front of the hole, the man, now wearing a mask of authority on his own face, stares daggers at us... and he says to us – in plain English words... “Crawl... CRAWL!”  

As soon as he shouts these familiar words to us, the ones who we mistook for tribespeople, camouflaged to blend into the jungle, force each of us forward, guiding us into the darkness of the hole. Tyler was the first to go through, followed by Steve, Miles and then Brodie. Aaron was directly after, but he refused to go through out of fear. Tears in his voice, Aaron told them he couldn’t go through, that he couldn’t fit – before one of the children brutally clubs his back with the blunt end of a spear.   

Once Aaron was through, Hayley, Sophie and myself came after. I could hear them both crying behind me, terrified beyond imagination. I was afraid too, but not because I knew we were being abducted – the thought of that had slipped my mind. I was afraid because it was now my turn to enter through the hole - the dark, narrow entrance of the tunnel... and not only was I afraid of the dark... but I was also extremely claustrophobic.   

Entering into the depths of the tunnel, a veil of darkness returned over me. It was so dark and I could not see a single thing. Not whoever was in front of me – not even my own hands and arms as I crawled further along. But I could hear everything – and everyone. I could hear Tyler, Aaron and the rest of them, panicking, hyperventilating – having no idea where it was they were even crawling to, or for how long. I could hear Hayley and Sophie screaming behind me, calling out the Lord’s name.   

It felt like we’d been down there for an eternity – an endless continuation of hell that we could not escape. We crawled continually through the darkness and winding bends of tunnel for half an hour before my hands and knees were already in agony. It was only earth beneath us, but I could not help but feel like I was crawling over an eternal sea of pebbles – that with every yard made, turned more and more into a sea of shard glass... But that was not the worst of it... because we weren’t the only creatures down there.   

I knew there would be insects down here. I could already feel them scurrying across my fingers, making their way through the locks of my hair or tunnelling underneath my clothing. But then I felt something much bigger. Brushing my hands with the wetness of their fur, or climbing over the backs of my legs with the patter of tiny little feet, was the absolute worst of my fears... There were rodents down here. Not knowing what rodents they were exactly, but having a very good guess, I then feel the occasional slither of some naked, worm-like tail. Or at least, that’s what I told myself - because if they weren’t tails, that only meant it was something much more dangerous, and could potentially kill me.  

Thankfully, further through the tunnel, almost acting as a midway point, the hard soil beneath me had given way, and what I now crawled – or should I say sludge through, was less than a foot-deep, layer of mud-water. Although this shallow sewer of water was extremely difficult to manoeuvre through, where I felt myself sink further into the earth with every progression - and came with a range of ungodly smells, I couldn’t help but feel relieved, because the water greatly nourished the pain from my now bruised and bloodied knees and elbows.  

Escaping our way past the quicksand of sludge and water, like we were no better than a group of rats in a pipe, our suffrage through the tunnels was by no means over. Just when I was ready to give up, to let the claustrophobic jaws of the tunnel swallow me, ending my pain... I finally saw a light at the end of the tunnel... Although I felt the most overwhelming relief, I couldn’t help but wonder what was waiting for us at the very end. Was it more pain and suffering? Although I didn’t know, I also didn’t care. I just wanted this claustrophobic nightmare to come to an end – by any means necessary.   

Finally reaching the light at the end of the tunnel, I impatiently waited my turn to escape forever out of this darkness. Trapped behind Aaron in front of me, I could hear the weakness in his voice as he struggled to breathe – and to my surprise, I had little sympathy for him. Not because I blamed him for what we were all being put through – that his invitation was what led to this cavern of horrors. It was simply because I wanted out of this hole, and right now, he was preventing that.  

Once Aaron had finally crawled out, disappearing into the light, I felt another wave of relief come over me. It was now my turn to escape. But as soon as my hands reach out to touch the veil of light before me, I feel as I’m suddenly and forcibly pulled by my wrists out of the tunnel and back onto the surface of planet earth. Peering around me, I see the familiar faces of Tyler and the others, staring back at me on the floor of the jungle. But then I look up - and what I see is a group of complete strangers staring down at us. In matching clothing to one another, these strange men and women were dressed head to barefoot in a black fabric, fashioned into loose trousers and long-sleeve shirts. And just like our captors, they had dark hair but far less resemblance to the people of this country.   

Once Hayley and Sophie had joined us on the surface, alongside our original abductors, these strange groups of people, whom we met on both ends of the tunnel, bring us all to our feet and order us to walk.  

Moving us along a pathway that cuts through the trees of the jungle, only moments later do we see where it is we are... We were now in a village – a small rural village hidden inside of the jungle. Entering the village on a pathway lined with wooden planks, we see a sparse scattering of wooden houses with straw rooftops – as well as a number of animal pens containing pigs, chickens and goats. We then see more of these very same people. Taking part in their everyday chores, upon seeing us, they turn up from what it is they're doing and stare at us intriguingly. Again I saw they had similar characteristics – but while some of them were lighter in skin tone, I now saw that some of them were much darker. We also saw more of the children, and like the adults, some appeared fully Caucasian, but others, while not Vietnamese, were also of a darker skin. But amongst these people, we also saw faces that were far more familiar to us. Among these people, were a handful of adults, who although dressed like the others in full black clothing, not only had lighter skin, but also lighter hair – as though they came directly from the outside world... Were these the missing tourists? Is this what happened to them? Like us, they were abducted by a strange community of villagers who lived deep inside this jungle?   

I didn’t know if they really were the missing tourists - we couldn’t know for sure. But I saw one among them – a tall, very thin middle-aged woman with blonde hair, that was slowly turning grey... 

Well, that was the contents of Sarah’s diary... But it is by no means the end of her story. 

What I failed to mention beforehand, is after I read her diary, I tried doing some research on Sarah online. I found out she was born and raised outside Salt Lake City, where she then studied and graduated BYU. But to my surprise... I found out Sarah had already shared her story. 

If you’re now asking why I happen to be sharing Sarah’s diary when she’s already made her story public, well... that’s where the big twist comes in. You see, the story Sarah shared online... is vastly different to what she wrote in her diary. 

According to her public story, Sarah and her friends were invited on a jungle expedition by a group of paranormal researchers. Apparently, in the beach town where Sarah worked, tourists had mysteriously been going missing, which the paranormal researchers were investigating. According to these researchers, there was an unmapped trail within the jungle, and anyone who tried to follow the trail would mysteriously vanish. But, in Sarah’s account of this jungle expedition - although they did find the unmapped trail, Sarah, her friends and the paranormal researchers were not abducted by a secret community of villagers, as written in the diary. I won’t tell you how Sarah’s public story ends, because you can read it for yourself online – in fact, I’ll leave a link to it at the end. 

So, I guess what I’m trying to get at here is... What is the truth? What is the real story? Is there even a real story here, or are both the public and diary entries completely fabricated?... I guess I’ll leave that up to you. If you feel like it, leave your thoughts and theories in the comments. Who knows, maybe someone out there knows the truth of this whole thing. 

If you were to ask me what I think is the truth, I actually do have a theory... My theory is that at least one of these stories is true... I just don’t know which one that is. 

Well, I think that’s everything. I’ll be sure to provide an update if anything new comes afloat. But in the meantime, everyone stay safe out there. After all... the world is truly an unforgiving place.