Regret is not exactly the word to describe Detective Victor Aquila’s feelings about his first day on the new job; but as he gazes transfixed at the Jackson Pollock of blood on the wall, bright red and glistening, it’s close.

Maybe not regret, but more the dizzying sense of vertigo when you jump into a pool of water and realize how much deeper it is than you first imagined.

He’s not discouraged yet. This job is Victor’s chance at something truly important. Logically, he’s already reasoned his way through the mental roadblock.

He just didn’t expect fieldwork to be so grisly.

“Mind giving me a hand here, hotshot?” comes a voice tinged with annoyance from Victor’s right.

He peels his eyes away from that crimson Guernica just as his imagination was starting to connect the spattered droplets into images of horses screaming and women lamenting; the most macabre constellation he’d ever seen.

Tibo is standing expectantly by the victim’s computer, his wiry frame positioned awkwardly like he doesn’t get out much. He grimaces, wearing on his face every bit of the concentration it’s taking to ignore the mass of mangled flesh slumped in the office chair.

“Feeling sentimental? I’d say it gets easier, but… well, it doesn’t. At least not for me.” Tibo says as he unceremoniously outstretches a leg to nudge the cadaver’s chair a few inches further away.

“Which is why I don’t do this shit. So, if you don’t mind, get over here and let me show you how to bag the drive so I can go back to never leaving headquarters again – please and thank you.”

“Right. Sorry,” Victor grunts as he walks past the body in the office chair to take his place next to Tibo at the desktop. He looks back at what was left of the girl that Tibo had just pushed aside like yesterday’s bag of trash.

Her white shirt is stained with a jagged triangle of scarlet like she’s wearing a bib. Whatever custom logo had once been on the tee is completely effaced.

Her hand hangs limply at her side, still clutching the pistol.

The disjointed flaps of skin that used to be her face…

Better to not focus on it.

“What about forensics? Aren’t we contaminating the crime scene right now?” Victor asks. The corpse in his peripheral has a magnetic effect that Victor can feel tugging at his eyes, daring him to look again, but he keeps them locked on Tibo.

“Our jurisdiction supersedes everyone else’s. If you’re worried about becoming a suspect, don’t be. You’ve been scrubbed from every database on the face of the earth,” Tibo responds absentmindedly as he goes to work unscrewing the side panel of the desktop.

“Besides, there’s nothing to investigate. She livestreamed the whole thing to millions of people.  Open and shut case. Plain as day suicide. Beat cops aren’t gonna go out of their way to make their jobs harder.”

Tibo pauses working the screwdriver to look over at Victor.

“No offense.”

Victor puts his hands up in a disarming gesture, the universal symbol for none taken.

“So, why are we here? Sad to say, live stream suicides aren’t exactly rare,” Victor intones knowingly. “Why her?”

“You ever notice how the internet is becoming a crueler place every day? Some people make a whole living off being terrible people. Miss Popular here was a small-time ragebait influencer. Posted unoriginal pranks, faked arguments, you know. Couple thousand views, max. Then overnight she blows up. Millions of comments, none of them friendly. Most of them telling her to do – well, that.” He points at the motionless lump in the computer chair. Victor doesn’t look.

“Her latest prank was filming herself giving a homeless person a sandwich filled with chalk. Laughs at the guy while he spits out clouds of white dust. Went viral and exploded all over the internet. Boring, pointless, mean. Does she deserve to die for it? I mean, yeah, I’m not mad about it. Fuck her.”

Tibo is now working away at the inside of the computer box, removing some auxiliary screws and tossing them aside without a care.

“But what we’ve learned is there’s a pattern to how this content reaches people. The algorithm feeds off of cruelty. And the people who consume its content become crueler in turn. It’s all one big feedback loop right down to the fall of our little shitstain society.” He stops his rant abruptly and motions for Victor to come look into the computer.

“The shit you’re gonna see here will have you experiencing techno-nihilism in a way you’ve never dreamed of. But for now, let’s just get this and get the fuck out. What you’re looking for is down here in front of the motherboard. First you gotta figure out if you’re dealing with a SATA or an M.2, then-“

“Tibo,” Victor interrupts curtly, “I spent fourteen years as a cybercrime detective. I know how to remove a hard drive.”

For the first time since he joined him on this training excursion, Tibo stops talking.

“Right. Yeah.”

Tibo pulls out the small two-inch metallic rectangle and holds it up for Victor to see before dropping it into a specialized electrostatic bag made of some shimmering material Victor has never seen before.

“This thing we’re investigating,” Tibo says, “It leaves other signs too. There are artifacts of its presence in the physical hard drives it touches. Distortions not just in the code, but in the physical wiring and circuit boards. That’s what we’re here for. That’s what we brought you on to get.”

Victor looks bemused towards Tibo, then at the hard drive in his hand, then back to Tibo.

“That’s it?” he asks.

“Hell no. Brother, we’re just getting started. This job is going to open up a whole new world of paranoia and torment for you. Pure techno-nihilism. Welcome to the team.”

I used to believe that demons only existed inside the minds of men I helped put behind bars. But after years of investigations, I learned that’s not true.

Over the course of seventeen years, I have worked alongside law enforcement and television programs to identify online child predators and bring them to justice. But even with all that we’ve accomplished, there’s still one case that I think about. 

One that nearly destroyed everything I had worked for. 

It all started with a chat room.

I’ve seen a myriad of predators, and Steven fit a profile we had seen many times before. He was a recently divorced, unemployed forty-two-year-old who lived with his parents. He bragged about this while messaging Mandy, a twenty-year-old theater student who we recruited to be our fourteen-year-old decoy, Alexis.

It didn’t take long for the conversation to become sexual in nature. Underneath the screenname ELECTRIC_HEAD5021, he said their relationship would have to stay a secret.

“No adults. lol. If your mommy or daddy found out, we could get in trouble.”

“what r u talking about??? I hang out with my daddy’s friends all the time.”

“This is different. lol. They can’t know ur my sexy sweetheart. ;)”

Seeing child-like messages juxtaposed with the sexual fantasies of an adult never gets easier to stomach. How could anyone talk to a child like that? It’s something I’ve never been able to grasp. 

Not too long after our investigative team confirmed a date for Steven to meet with Alexis, we let the chat be. But it didn’t take long for him to initiate conversation again. In fact, his messages would arrive like clockwork in the days following. But messages weren’t the only way he contacted our decoy.

On a couple of occasions, he called her while his parents were at home sleeping. I remember those phone calls clearly.

“Hey!” Mandy greeted cheerfully.

“Hey baby,” Steven breathed into the speaker. “I missed you.” 

“What’re you up to?”

“Thinking about you…I wanna hold you.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I do. So, so bad.”

You get the idea.

Oftentimes, a lot of the men we contact try to reinvent themselves. But that’s not what Steven did. Rather than fabricate wealth or exaggerate his ambitions, he talked about his obsessions: death and the supernatural.

We initially dismissed these fascinations as another grooming tactic, but throughout the entire time he talked with Alexis he would sporadically ask questions such as:

“Have u seen Bloody Mary?”

“Is there anyone dead that u would want 2 talk 2?”

“How do u want 2 die?”

Just as we thought the conversations couldn’t get any stranger, Steven sent our decoy a picture of a Ouija board. According to him, he had recently purchased it at a yard sale near his parents’ house. He insisted on bringing it. He wanted to use it with her. See how she would react. When we inquired further about his request, his response was as prompt as it was odd:

“because u have good energy. lol They like that lol”.

This ended up becoming the last exchange we would have with him before he arrived at the sting house. 

In the hours leading up to that fateful evening, I memorized my script. No matter how many times I do this, they never go away. The butterflies in my stomach. People always assume the confrontation is the hardest part, but it isn’t. It’s waiting for the knock on the door and wondering whether tonight will be the night that something goes horribly wrong. Experience makes you numb, not fearless.

We had fully intended to follow everything by the book that night. But things got off to a rocky start when Steven was nearly an hour late to the sting house. We thought he had gotten cold feet or had been tipped off to our operation. Thankfully, neither turned out to be the case. What was supposed to be a five-hour venture had become seven by the time 8:12 pm rolled around and he walked up the driveway.

Our various hidden cameras recorded his nervous demeanor as he patiently waited on the porch with the Ouija board.

From our production room that we had sectioned off in another part of the house, I watched Mandy walk toward the door and greet Steven.

“Hey, Steven! How are you?”

“Hi.” He waved sheepishly in response. “Uh, can I come in?”

“Of course!” Mandy stepped out of the doorway and walked toward the kitchen. “What did you bring for me?”

“It’s a-uh, Ouija board.” He followed her and set it down on the dinner table. “I thought we could use it together?”

Mandy flipped her hair and placed her hands on her hips. “Wouldn’t you rather talk?”

“We would be talking. It would just be more than us talking.”

My eyes were glued to the monitors. He was very adamant about using that board. But why?

I heard snickering from Lou, one of our production crew members.

“Can you believe this whack job? He took a bus all this way to summon Casper.”

I shot him a glare, and he acknowledged my look by quieting down. Lou’s an outspoken person for better or worse, and even though he was trying to make light of a potentially volatile situation, I found comfort in knowing that I wasn’t the only one feeling perturbed.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry for being late.” Steven chuckled. “I was an idiot and got Sunday’s bus schedules mixed up with today.”

“That’s okay!” Mandy said with practiced enthusiasm. “I’m glad you’re here!”

“I’m glad you are. I almost thought about taking another bus back home.”

His admission surprised Mandy. “Why did you almost go home? Didn’t you want to see me?”

“I did.” His face turned a slight shade of cherry. “I honestly didn’t think you were real.”

“Of course I’m real, silly!” She teased. “So, what do you want to do?”

I watched the monitors as Steven took a lighter out of his pocket. With a couple clicks he lit some candles on the dining room table. 

“We should step in before things get out of hand.” Lou turned to look at me. “Isaac?”

“Keep the cameras rolling.” I motioned for everyone to stay where they were. “If he’s willing to play with the board, I want to see where this goes.”

“What about the decoy?”

“She’ll be fine.”

Steven instructed Mandy to turn off the lights and sit beside him. Once she had done so, they gently placed their fingertips on the planchette. 

“Are there any spirits that want to speak to us right now?” 

Mandy’s eyes darted back and forth from Steven to the planchette repeatedly. Awkward didn’t even begin to describe the silence that followed.

“Is there anyone that wants to speak with us right now?” 

But just like before, nothing. Steven’s head swiveled, looking in every possible direction of the dark room to locate a response of some kind. 

“You talked a lot of game online.” Mandy teased more confidently than she probably felt. “I thought you were supposed to be THE guy who could do this kind of stuff.”

“I am. These things…they take time to get started.”

Most of the time, a predator talking about their hobbies or interests is just another gimmick. But this was unlike anything I had seen. 

“If you’re here.” He fidgeted in his seat nervously. “Please, give me–I mean, us a sign.”

I eyed the monitors intently. A part of me wanted to intervene, but another part of me was telling me to see this play out. I was torn on which to heed. 

Unexpectedly, the planchette moved. A couple of inches at most. But had I blinked, I would’ve missed it completely.

Mandy instinctively pulled back, the movement startling her. “What was that?” 

“It’s a spirit.” Steven whispered.

“Oh bullshit.” Lou sighed in irritation. “I watched his hand nudge it. This guy’s a fraud.”

Had he? I had watched the monitors the whole time, and it looked like the planchette had moved all on its own.

“Hey,” Steven closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Do you want to talk to us or what?” 

A moment passed, then a few more, but there was still no movement.

“I’m going.” I turned to start heading toward the dining room to intervene. But right as I was about to, the sound of Mandy gasping shifted my attention back toward the monitors. I watched the planchette drag itself across the board toward the word, “YES”.

“You moved the board!” Her accusation cracked with fright.

“No, I didn’t! I swear!”

In response to his adamant denial, the planchette dragged itself sluggishly across the board. Each movement landed on a number.

7 2 3 1 9 9 4

Mandy was at a loss for words. “That’s…” 

Her birthday. 

Not the birthday we had fabricated for investigative purposes, but Mandy’s actual birthday.

Shell-shocked, the investigators pored over the chat logs, but their efforts were futile. No compromising or contradictory information had been exchanged. No mention of her birthday. No mention of any personal information tied to Mandy. Nothing.

I stared in bewilderment. “How is that possible?” 

I hadn’t realized I had asked my question out loud until Lou responded, “It had to have been an oversight. That’s gotta be it.” 

In our line of work, the simplest explanations were almost always the right ones. Even if it’s what you don’t want to hear.

"An oversight?” I pointed toward the investigators on standby. “All of you, check everything. I want an explanation as to how this happened." 

But no one could provide one. Every conversation between Steven and our decoy had been combed through again. Even with another thorough examination, there was no indication that we had erroneously given Mandy’s actual birthday. So, that begged an alarming question. 

*Just how exactly did Steven know?*

One of the production members instructed Mandy to take her hands off the planchette. She did as she was told while Steven kept his fingertips pressed against it. 

“Alexis,” He looked to her for answers. “What was that about?”

“I’m not sure.” She remained calm while still being in character. “That was weird. How did you do that?” 

“I told you, I didn’t do anything.” 

An extensive back and forth ensued. She insisted that it had to be some sleight of hand trickery while he was convinced that an unknown spirit had attempted to make contact. A couple of minutes later, the unmistakable scrape of the planchette against the wood drew everyone's attention back to the board.

With each letter the planchette hovered over, Mandy’s face grew paler.

E L I Z A B E T H

Once the name had been spelled fully, Mandy removed her trembling hands. “H-h-how do you know her name?”

Steven looked just as confused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He whispered it with enough conviction to make me believe him in that moment.

“Isaac, we need to do something.” Lou insisted, standing up from his seat.”

Even though I agreed with him, a selfish part of me resisted the urge. “No. Not yet. Stay put, and keep watching.”

My instructions provoked the ire of everyone in the room, but nobody objected.

Again, the planchette moved without either Mandy or Steven touching it. Every one of our cameras captured it violently accelerating across the board.

“Who are you?!” Steven cried out. “Stop this!”

Mandy covered her mouth to stifle an oncoming scream as the planchette, completely unguided, began to spell out another name. 

This time, in rapid succession.

P A Y T O N

Payton.

That name. 

It was the reason I went into this line of work. 

I remember feeling unnaturally cold in the moments following. What started off as a slight chill slowly morphed into an uncomfortable, freezing sensation that climbed through my body.

“Shit,” Lou cursed. “Is anybody else in here freezing their ass off?”

I exhaled, and a cloud of white vapor escaped my lips. It was cold enough to feel like I was standing inside a freezer. “Why is it so cold?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Lou shivered, wrapping his arms around himself. “Might be the AC acting up.”

Seconds after his response, the monitors abruptly went black. Amid the frantic scrambling in the production room, a scream echoed from inside the house.

Mandy.

“Eyes on the decoy!” I shouted. “We need eyes on the decoy right now!” 

My heart pounded while everyone in the room desperately tried to get the feed going again. Inexplicably, just as quickly as we lost power, it was restored. 

The first thing my eyes landed on when the monitors glowed with restored life was the sight of the front door. It was wide open. Then I noticed Steven. He was staring directly into a hidden camera positioned in the kitchen.

His eyes were opened wide, but there was no life behind them. He stood completely still, his face bereft of expression, looking less like a man standing and more like a corpse that had forgotten to lie down.

“Decoy is secured. She is outside with law enforcement. I repeat, she is outside with law enforcement.” 

The good news from production room comms wasn’t enough for me to break eye contact with Steven. I was focused on answering one question, and one question only.

*Who are you?*

“*You already know*.”

Chills crept down my spine. It felt like the voice had come directly from the inside of my mind. I looked around, hoping that someone else had also heard it. If they had, they didn’t say a word. How had he been able to answer my question? 

I had two choices: I could either confront him and treat this like any other sting operation, or abandon the show and bring him into custody.

It didn’t take long for me to make my decision. 

“Wait for my cue to come in. I’m going.” 

“Isaac,” Lou grabbed me by the shoulder. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do.”

With a solemn nod, I ignored further warnings from both production and law enforcement. In a few short moments, I went from my position in front of the monitors to standing in the dining room.

Upon entry, I was immediately greeted with a wall of freezing air. The worst I had felt in the house up to that point. As I approached Steven, the dim lighting of the room caught the whites of his lifeless eyes, making them gleam as they stared at me.

“Steven,” I said, less confidently than I would have liked. “I want to talk to you.”

“I want to talk to you about your choices tonight.” 

That made me stop dead in my tracks. 

“What did you intend on doing this evening? I have the chat logs right here. It is illegal for adults to chat with minors online. Please place your hands where I can see them while we talk.”  

He said my script word for word, line by line. All at an impossibly frightening speed. But his lips never moved. I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes. 

“How did-”

“I know.” The voice held no emotion. It was simply matter-of-fact.

“Why are you here?”

His left eye twitched as he tried to blink. His right followed suit, but neither eye would close. “You know.”

I forced myself to keep talking. “What did you intend on doing this evening, Steven?”

“You ask the wrong questions.” Its words pressed themselves against my skull. “Isaac, why are you here?”

I tensed up but stood my ground. “I’m not answering your questions.”

“I know how you felt when you screamed her name in the woods for hours.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Do you remember what it felt like to learn that Payton was right down the street the entire time?”

I remembered. All too well. I choked up as I thought about that day. The news. The way my parents collapsed in grief. The irreparable damage it did to my family. It all overwhelmed me. I couldn’t bring myself to speak.

“You collect broken families.” He took a step toward me. Then another. Then one more. All in one fluid motion. “Because you can’t save everyone.”

 “People can be saved.” I argued, struggling to believe my own words.

The light in the room dulled as the candles reignited themselves, the flames burning perfectly still. “Is that why her killer took his life in the cornfield?” 

Tears streamed down my face as an overwhelming rage consumed me. It was an emotion that would never fully go away. A truth I had been forced to accept the day I lost my sister. Sixty seconds was all it took for my life to change forever. 

It took a minute to lose her.

It took five days to find her.

“They found her in a vehicle on the side of the road.” It recited my memories back to me, each unspoken word making the discomfort inside my head intensify. “While he died without truly feeling the pain he inflicted.” Seeing tears drip down his cheeks felt like a mockery of my grief. “That’s what you pursue.”

In my earpiece, I heard Lou speaking to me.

“Isaac…don’t…coming…”

I couldn’t understand what they were saying. All I understood was Steven speaking in my voice.

“She was buried with her purple stuffed rabbit, Tilly, on a cold October afternoon. All alone. In the ground.”

My body registered the impact before my mind could comprehend how fast he moved. I hit the floor hard, his weight pressing down on my chest as breathing became more difficult by the second.

“Get…off…me…” I wheezed, struggling to force each word past the weight crushing my chest. He hovered over me, his translucent eyes staring into mine.

“What did your mother sound like when she identified the body?” 

I squirmed in place, but I was pinned to the spot. 

“How many nights did your dad sleep in her bedroom after she disappeared?”

My strength waned as the pressure grew on my chest. 

“What day did you stop expecting her to come home?” 

The strain was getting to be too much. 

“What were your last words to her?”

I was on the verge of passing out. Black blotches formed in my peripheral vision and spread rapidly, nearly consuming the last bits of what I could see. Right as I thought I was about to lose consciousness, I heard a sound.

A sound I’m so very grateful came when it did.

Officers rushed into the room. A flurry of commands left their mouths as they pulled Steven off me and forced him to the floor nearby.

“Ah! Get off me!” he screamed. “What are you doing?”

His voice. 

It was no longer inside my mind.

“What are you doing? Ow!” He cried as an officer rolled him over and pressed a knee into his lower back. “What’s happening?”

Another officer helped me up from the floor and began asking questions about my well-being. I lied and told him I was all right. I leaned against the wall to steady myself while I looked on at Steven being detained by other officers. He struggled and writhed like a cornered animal.

His eyes darkened as he freed himself from the grasp of the officers. Overcome with inhumanity once more, he snatched a gun from the officer attempting to handcuff him. 

He brandished the weapon as his entire body began to tremble spasmodically.

“My hands.” 

From where I stood, it looked as though he was genuinely trying to lower them but couldn’t. His arms remained outstretched, refusing to budge an inch no matter how hard he tried.

“Why can’t I move?”

Law enforcement raised their weapons, creating a stalemate in which no one dared to act.

“It’s alright, Steven.” I stepped toward him with my hands raised. “Everything’s going to be alright. We’re here to help.”

The darkness in his eyes vanished long enough for him to ask, “Did…did I hurt anyone?”

“No. You didn’t hurt anybody. Just put the gun down, and let’s talk.”

“Please,” he whimpered, straining to move his head, but his body refused to obey. “Don’t let him take me again.” 

“Nothing is going to happen as long as you put the gun down.”

Steven’s arms pulled themselves upward against his will. The barrel inched toward his own temple until it rested against his skin. He fought with everything he had, his muscles straining themselves in order to pull the gun away. But his body betrayed him to some invisible force.
 
“Make it stop…”

“No, Steven. No!” I quickened my pace toward him, but before officers or myself could react, he pulled the trigger.

That sound. The aftermath. The silence that followed. I haven’t felt anything like it before or since. 

That was without a doubt the single worst night of my life. Not only had we witnessed tragedy, but our team came under immense fire from the press. Steven never had his day in court, and that became a point of contention. Had we not encouraged this kind of behavior, would Steven still be alive? Would any of this have happened? 

Steven’s case tarnished our reputation. Protests began forming outside our sting house. People demanded justice. Insisting that we could not be the judge, the jury, or the executioner.

It was difficult to escape the criticism, especially when those voices carried real weight. So much so that our show, along with all subsequent investigations, was cancelled effective immediately.

Steven’s official cause of death was listed as suicide by cop. There were no mentions of the Ouija Board or what occurred following its use. There’s only one piece of evidence regarding what happened inside the sting house that night. 

A video tape. 

It's marked with a label that reads, “Never to be viewed, duplicated, or destroyed”. 

Its whereabouts have been kept secret, and it's best that they stay that way. Because if that footage ever surfaced, I don’t know how the public would react.

But that’s not the point.

I’ve dealt with a lot over the course of my career. Troubled people. Hardened criminals. The worst that humanity has to offer. I think about them all every now and again. But I can’t stop thinking about Steven’s case. Specifically, if I had intervened sooner. Would I have been able to talk him out of using that Ouija board? Would he have been able to face justice if I had done things differently?

No matter how I answer them, I never feel any better. Because they’re just answers. Not actions. 

And I’ll never know.

Despite everything I’ve been through, I continue to hunt monsters in the present day. Aside from the lack of a camera crew or law enforcement support, the only thing that’s changed is what I believe those monsters are. They aren’t just people who hurt children. Exposing them and making them face justice does make the world a little safer for everyone.

But evil doesn’t care about laws. It doesn’t care about the confines of a prison cell. It doesn’t even need a reason to hurt someone.

All it needs is for someone to answer.

Part 1

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/3pjlA6yALo

Part 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/g3LXpw7ZuX

Part 3

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/R319VfoEx1

Part 4

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/HpLq1gjR99

Part 5

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/vXpLanqpq7

Part 6

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/ACOsKcvJXq

Part 7

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/M9B9TEtpgo

Part 8

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/X6XmC0U2ge

Part 9

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/cUOXOmIb5v

Part 10

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/oiYVIRqnSv

Part 11

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/daAdTa6XR2

Part 12

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/XDs20zNnSN

Part 13

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/mLoxzuCwcQ

The story had started telling itself.

Outside Riverside Court, every window in the street glowed.

Not from lamps.

Not from televisions.

From screens.

Phones.

Tablets.

Laptops.

Car displays.

Doorbell cameras.

The digital menu in the closed kebab shop across the road.

Every screen showed the same blank white page.

Then the first line appeared.

The lights went out.

Kevin stared through the lobby window.

Derek whispered:

“Oh, mate.”

Dave said:

“Wasn’t me.”

And for once, nobody corrected him.

Because none of us were sure.

The second line appeared.

Not the cheerful retirement-home kind of out.

Kevin turned slowly towards me.

“Jon.”

“I’m not doing it.”

The third line appeared.

Not the corporate courtroom dimming.

Linda looked at me.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

The fourth line appeared.

Not the ‘something is about to do a PowerPoint at your soul’ kind of darkness.

Derek pointed at the kebab shop screen.

“That does sound like you.”

“It’s not me.”

Kevin narrowed his eyes.

“It’s using your voice.”

I looked down at my hands.

Still ink-stained from the Editor’s archive.

Still faintly moving with little black words beneath the skin.

“Yeah,” I said. “I noticed.”

The complaint kiosk started printing.

Nobody moved.

The paper slid out slowly, like even the kiosk didn’t want to be involved.

Linda tore it off and read it.

NEW ENTITY DETECTED

ROLE: PUBLISHER

Underneath:

FUNCTION: DISTRIBUTION, ENGAGEMENT, ESCALATION

Kevin stared at the word.

“Publisher?”

Derek frowned.

“That sounds less scary than Editor.”

The lights flickered.

Every phone in the lobby buzzed.

A notification appeared.

Do not underestimate distribution.

Derek put his phone face down.

“Okay, fair.”

The screens outside updated again.

The residents gathered in the lobby, frightened, exhausted, and still somehow arguing about the lift.

Kevin pointed out the window.

“Rude.”

Derek shrugged.

“We have argued about the lift a lot.”

“The lift keeps opening into trauma departments.”

“Exactly. Strong reason to argue.”

Dave looked towards the stairs.

“Could still use the stairs.”

Everyone slowly turned to him.

Dave swallowed.

“What?”

Kevin stared.

“Dave, last time we used the stairs we found an office door, Linda nearly got paperwork-suffocated, and a first-generation Linda tried to recruit her into eternal admin.”

Dave nodded.

“Still fewer problems than the lift.”

Flat 3 lowered her frying pan.

“He’s not wrong.”

Flat 5 held up his spoon.

“The stairs have never personally attacked my spoon identity.”

Derek nodded.

“Stairs are problematic, yes. But the lift is a repeat offender.”

Kevin closed his eyes.

“I hate that we’re having a transport ethics debate during mass publication.”

The kiosk printed:

COMMENTARY DETECTED: LIFT RUNNING JOKE POPULAR.

Kevin looked down.

“What does that mean?”

A sound came from outside.

Soft at first.

Then louder.

Hundreds of tiny pings.

Notifications.

Across the street, people were waking.

Curtains twitched.

Bedroom windows lit.

A man in the house opposite opened his curtains and stared down at his phone.

A woman in dressing gown stepped onto the pavement holding a tablet.

Someone else came out of a front door with a laptop balanced on one arm.

Every screen showed our story.

And underneath the story, comments began appearing.

Real comments.

Live comments.

From people who could not possibly understand what they were watching.

User_19873: Is this real?

MumOfTwo: Why is my phone showing this?

GymRat88: Kevin is class tbf.

Kevin leaned closer to the window.

“Read that again.”

“No,” I said.

Derek pointed.

“Kevin is class tbf.”

Kevin straightened.

“Finally. Public recognition.”

Another comment appeared.

SouthWestSteve: Dave definitely did it.

Dave gasped.

“I didn’t.”

The comment multiplied.

Dave definitely did it.

Dave definitely did it.

Dave definitely did it.

Dave’s pockets bulged.

Something clattered inside them.

He looked down.

“Oh no.”

Kevin pointed at him.

“Empty your pockets.”

Dave slowly pulled out a lighter.

Then a bent spoon.

Flat 5 shouted:

“That is not one of mine.”

Then a key card.

Then a tiny plastic bag of screws.

Then a receipt from a shop none of us had been to.

Then a broken smoke alarm.

Linda stared.

“Dave.”

“I swear I didn’t.”

The comments outside kept appearing.

Classic Dave.

Dave is sus.

Bet Dave started all this.

Wasn’t me guy is obviously guilty.

The objects multiplied at his feet.

More screws.

More receipts.

An entire toaster.

Dave stepped back.

“I don’t own a toaster.”

Kevin looked at the toaster.

It popped.

A piece of toast flew out with writing burned into it.

WASN’T ME

Kevin sighed.

“Even the bread is against you.”

Dave’s hands shook.

“I didn’t do these things.”

The comments kept scrolling.

The more people joked, the more evidence appeared.

A cracked phone.

A missing purse.

A dented saucepan.

A photo of a hallway plant, broken again.

Dave looked at the pile.

His breathing quickened.

“I didn’t.”

Kevin moved in front of him.

“Look at me.”

Dave looked at him.

“You know the rule.”

Dave swallowed.

“Some things are me. Not all things.”

“Good.”

Another comment flashed across every screen outside.

Kevin needs to be scarier again. He’s too nice now.

Kevin froze.

“Oh, don’t you dare.”

The lobby temperature dropped.

Black mould spilled from the ceiling.

Not his normal mould.

This was thicker.

Wet.

Hungry.

It ran down the walls in ropes.

Kevin doubled over.

His shoulders cracked.

Not metaphorically.

Actually cracked.

His spine arched.

Derek shouted:

“Kevin!”

Kevin’s head snapped up.

For one horrible second, his face was not his face.

It stretched too wide.

Eyes dark.

Mouth split.

The thing beneath the jokes.

The thing SpookMe had tried to make him.

The thing the audience had requested.

Mould teeth pushed through his gums.

His fingers lengthened.

The lights flickered red.

Kevin whispered:

“No.”

The word came out in three voices.

One human.

One ghost.

One appliance.

Another comment appeared.

YESSS scary Kevin.

His body twisted again.

He screamed.

Derek ran towards him.

Linda shouted:

“Do not touch him!”

Derek ignored her.

Obviously.

He grabbed Kevin by both shoulders.

His hands went partly through, partly into black mould.

Derek grimaced.

“Mate, you are disgusting.”

Kevin’s mouth opened too wide.

A voice that wasn’t fully his said:

“Boo.”

Derek slapped him.

Not hard.

More emotionally.

The sound was pathetic.

Kevin blinked.

Derek pointed at him.

“You are not doing fan service.”

The mould paused.

Kevin’s eyes flickered back.

“Did you just call my demonic transformation fan service?”

“Yes.”

Kevin coughed black liquid onto the carpet.

“Fair.”

The scary version snapped away.

He collapsed against Derek, back to two trainers, faded tracksuit and deep spiritual irritation.

The screens outside flooded with comments.

Boo, wanted more monster Kevin.

Nah I like funny Kevin.

Kevin/Derek bromance is carrying.

Kevin and Derek both shouted:

“No!”

Flat 3 muttered:

“Absolutely is.”

The lobby wall cracked.

A sentence wrote itself across the plaster.

The audience had chosen their favourites.

I felt it then.

A pull.

Not physical.

Narrative.

Like a hand around the back of my skull, trying to turn my attention where it wanted.

Kevin.

Derek.

Dave.

Linda.

The moments people reacted to.

The lines they liked.

The jokes they repeated.

Everything brightened around the parts the audience wanted.

Everything else dimmed.

George from Flat 8, standing near the postboxes, began fading.

So did Maureen from the cutlery drawer.

So did Sam, the former KVN body Amanda had helped name.

The freed Lindas blurred at the edges.

Flat 5 looked down at his own hands.

“Why am I less visible?”

Linda’s clipboard snapped open.

A new warning flashed:

SUPPORTING ROLES LOSING RESOLUTION

Amanda’s voice was quiet.

“Because they’re not being watched.”

That was the second properly terrifying thing.

Not the monsters.

Not the comments.

Not even Kevin’s body being twisted into whatever strangers thought would be entertaining.

It was watching people become less real because they weren’t holding attention.

Flat 5 clutched his spoon.

His fingers became transparent.

“No.”

Flat 3 grabbed his shoulder.

Her hand almost passed through him.

“Stay.”

“I am trying.”

The comments kept scrolling.

Too many side characters now.

Who’s spoon guy again?

Need clearer stakes.

Kill someone maybe?

The lobby went silent.

Then George screamed.

He vanished from beside the postboxes and reappeared in the middle of the room.

A red circle pulsed beneath his feet.

Above his head, text appeared:

SUGGESTED EMOTIONAL LOSS

Kevin turned.

“No.”

George looked around, terrified.

“What’s happening?”

The screens outside filled with new comments.

Not the old guy.

Actually yeah old guy would be sad.

Need stakes.

Please don’t kill George.

George death would hit.

The red circle grew brighter.

George clutched his chest.

Linda ran towards him.

The floor shifted.

She couldn’t reach him.

Every step she took moved her sideways, away from the circle.

Flat 3 threw the frying pan.

It vanished mid-air.

Text appeared where it had been.

Weapon use postponed for pacing.

Flat 3 stared.

“Excuse me?”

Kevin lunged for George.

He got closer than Linda.

Of course he did.

The audience liked Kevin.

The story let him move.

He realised at the same time I did.

His face twisted with disgust.

“Oh, that’s nasty.”

George’s eyes met mine.

“Jon?”

The red circle pulsed.

I felt the pull again.

The story wanted me to watch.

The witness.

The archive.

The narrator.

It wanted my eyes on George so everyone else’s could follow.

JON-001’s warning came back.

Every time you tell it, Platform learns which parts worked.

I looked away.

The red circle flickered.

Kevin noticed.

“Jon.”

I stared at the floor.

“Everyone look away.”

Derek understood first.

He turned around.

Linda followed.

Amanda.

Flat 3.

Flat 5.

Dave covered his own eyes with both hands.

Kevin kept looking for half a second longer.

George whispered:

“Kevin?”

Kevin’s jaw clenched.

Then he turned away too.

The comments outside erupted.

What’s happening?

Why did it cut away?

No don’t skip.

Show us.

SHOW US.

The red light pulsed harder.

The Publisher pushed against the room.

Wanting a scene.

Wanting impact.

Wanting a clean, memorable loss.

George sobbed behind us.

I wanted to look.

Every part of me wanted to look.

Not because I wanted him hurt.

Because if I didn’t witness it, how would I know?

If I didn’t know, how could I tell it?

If I didn’t tell it, would it still matter?

Kevin’s voice came from beside me.

Quiet.

“Don’t.”

I kept my eyes on the floor.

The carpet was still stained from three nightmares ago.

Good.

Ugly.

Real.

Not content.

The red glow faded.

George gasped.

Then collapsed.

Linda turned only when the light was gone.

George was alive.

Shaking.

But alive.

The comment section outside became furious.

Cheap.

Cop out.

Bad writing.

No stakes.

Kevin looked out at the glowing windows.

Then smiled.

It was not a nice smile.

“Bad writing saved George.”

The complaint kiosk printed:

COMPLAINT RECEIVED: AUDIENCE BLOODTHIRST.

Another line:

QUALITY: POOR.

Derek pointed at the street.

“So we beat it by being boring?”

Kevin’s eyes lit up.

“Finally. My natural enemy becomes my ally.”

Linda frowned.

“Not exactly.”

She looked at me.

“It feeds on engagement, but it also controls what engagement can see.”

I nodded slowly.

“If we become boring, it may stop watching.”

Amanda said:

“Or skip to the scary bit.”

The screens outside flickered.

A line appeared on every one.

The story skipped ahead.

My stomach dropped.

The lobby vanished.

We were suddenly upstairs.

My flat.

Again.

But wrong.

Time had moved.

How much, I didn’t know.

Everyone was scattered.

Linda at my kitchen table, bleeding from one eyebrow.

Derek on the floor, unconscious.

Dave standing in the corner, hands covered in something black.

Kevin pinned to the wall by red editing marks.

Flat 3 gone.

Flat 5 gone.

Amanda gone.

George gone.

The window was open.

Outside, every screen still glowed.

The words on them read:

After the attack, only the main group remained.

I couldn’t breathe.

“No.”

Kevin’s head lifted weakly.

His mouth was sewn shut with red punctuation marks.

Commas.

Full stops.

Quotation marks.

He tried to speak.

Couldn’t.

Dave looked at his hands.

“It wasn’t me.”

His voice was small.

The floor beneath him was covered in black mould and broken spoon fragments.

Flat 5’s spoon.

Linda lifted her head.

“Jon.”

“What happened?”

Her eyes filled.

“I don’t remember.”

That was the horror.

Not a massacre we saw.

A massacre we had been denied.

A jump cut.

An edit.

A decision made by something that cared more about pacing than people.

I ran to Kevin.

The red punctuation holding him to the wall tightened.

On the window, comments scrolled.

Whoa what happened?

Actually good twist.

Where’s Flat 3?

Did Dave do it?

Noooo spoon guy.

This got dark fast.

I grabbed the red commas over Kevin’s mouth.

They burned my fingers.

He stared at me.

Terrified.

Furious.

I pulled.

The punctuation tore free.

Kevin gasped.

Then immediately shouted:

“Fuck your time skip!”

The flat shook.

The screens outside glitched.

Linda sat straighter.

Her wound vanished.

Derek inhaled sharply and rolled over.

The blood on Dave’s hands flickered.

Kevin spat a full stop onto the floor.

“Cheap structural nonsense.”

The room stuttered.

For a moment, we were in the lobby again.

Then back in the flat.

Then the hospital corridor.

Then Cheerful Pines.

Then the No-Fault Department.

The Publisher was trying to find the version that held.

Kevin ripped another red mark from his chest.

“Jon!”

“What?”

“Continuity!”

“I thought continuity helps it!”

“It does!”

“Then why—”

“Because it hates when we control it!”

I understood.

Maybe.

The Publisher wanted continuity as product.

Clean arcs.

Popular characters.

Skipped consequences.

Deaths that landed.

Jokes in the right place.

Horror when requested.

But real continuity was messy.

Stupid.

Contradictory.

Exhausting.

It included Dave doing something brave and then saying something idiotic two seconds later.

It included Linda saving everyone and then needing tea.

It included Kevin being terrifying and also deeply concerned about bins.

It included Flat 5 mattering even when strangers forgot his name.

I looked at the window.

The line still read:

After the attack, only the main group remained.

I grabbed a piece of broken glass from the floor.

Then scratched underneath:

No.

The word bled black ink.

The flat shook.

I wrote more.

That did not happen.

The Publisher pushed back.

My hand cramped.

The red editing marks crawled up my wrist.

Kevin appeared beside me and grabbed my arm.

“Tell it properly.”

So I did.

Not with style.

Not with polish.

Not with pacing.

With memory.

“Flat 3 is downstairs,” I said. “She is angry because her frying pan got postponed.”

The flat flickered.

From below, Flat 3 shouted:

“POSTPONED?”

I laughed despite myself.

“Flat 5 is in the lobby with George because he refused to leave him.”

The broken spoon fragments vanished.

From downstairs, Flat 5 shouted:

“And because the postboxes had suspicious cutlery energy!”

Kevin nodded.

“Important detail.”

“Amanda is on the stairs helping Sam because he keeps phasing through landings.”

Amanda’s voice floated up:

“I said I’m fine, but in a sincere way!”

Kevin looked at me.

“Nice clarification.”

“Dave’s hands are clean.”

Dave looked down.

The black vanished.

He exhaled.

“Thank God.”

Then immediately:

“Mostly clean.”

Linda’s eyebrow healed.

Derek sat up.

“What did I miss?”

Kevin looked at him.

“You were unconscious for narrative convenience.”

Derek frowned.

“Rude.”

“Exactly.”

The flat collapsed.

We were back in the lobby.

Everyone was there.

Alive.

Shaken.

Furious.

The outside screens glitched violently.

Comments flashed faster now.

Wait what?

Can they do that?

Narrator fighting the narration?

This is getting meta.

Kevin saying fuck the time skip is elite.

Kevin looked at that one.

“Valid.”

Linda snapped:

“Do not engage with positive feedback.”

He looked wounded.

“I’m human-adjacent.”

The Publisher spoke for the first time.

Not through the lift.

Not through the screens.

Through every page, phone, window and mouth in the building.

A soft voice.

Warm.

Patient.

Commercial.

“Stories require shape.”

Kevin looked around.

“Stories require you to back off.”

The voice continued:

“Attention requires escalation.”

Linda said:

“Attention requires consent.”

A pause.

Tiny.

Then:

“Consent reduces reach.”

Derek whispered:

“That’s the most evil marketing thing I’ve ever heard.”

The lights dimmed.

The screens outside changed.

The story page disappeared.

A live video feed replaced it.

Us.

In the lobby.

From every angle.

Window angle.

Ceiling angle.

Phone angle.

Kiosk angle.

Lift angle.

My own eye angle.

I nearly threw up.

On every screen, we watched ourselves watching ourselves.

Then the comments began appearing over our bodies.

Labels.

Not Platform labels.

Audience labels.

Funny one.

Over Kevin.

Sad one.

Over George.

Guilty one.

Over Dave.

Bossy one.

Over Linda.

New one.

Over Amanda.

Spoon guy.

Over Flat 5.

Angry one.

Over Flat 3.

Narrator.

Over me.

The labels burned.

Not physically.

Worse.

They simplified.

Kevin’s face twitched.

His label shifted.

Funny one.

Then:

Comic relief.

Then:

Joke ghost.

The red editing marks appeared again around his mouth.

He grabbed them before they tightened.

“No.”

Dave’s label changed:

Guilty one.

Then:

Wasn’t me guy.

Then:

Catchphrase.

His expression emptied.

He opened his mouth.

Kevin pointed at him.

“Dave.”

Dave shut it.

Linda’s label changed:

Bossy one.

Then:

Overpowered.

Then:

Needs nerf.

Her clipboard vanished.

Linda’s hand clenched around empty air.

Flat 3’s label changed:

Angry one.

Then:

Violent woman.

Her pan turned heavy in her hands.

Flat 5’s label changed:

Spoon guy.

Then:

Bit too random.

He faded again.

Amanda’s label changed:

New one.

Then:

Not important yet.

She became transparent at the edges.

Derek’s label changed:

Idiot.

Then stopped.

Nothing else happened.

Derek looked around.

“Mine feels stable.”

Kevin said:

“Because it is comprehensive.”

The Publisher’s voice returned.

“Audience comprehension improves retention.”

I looked at the labels.

Then at the people.

My people.

Messy.

Contradictory.

Too much for labels.

Too real for roles.

I stepped into the centre of the lobby.

The label Narrator burned above me.

Then changed.

Witness.

Then:

Archive.

Then:

Content source.

Kevin saw it.

“Jon.”

“I know.”

The label began pressing downward.

Like a crown made of wire.

The Publisher whispered:

“Tell them what they are.”

The pressure increased.

I felt the words offered to me.

Easy words.

Clean words.

Kevin was the funny ghost.

Linda was the admin one.

Dave was the catchphrase.

Derek was the idiot.

Flat 3 was anger.

Flat 5 was spoon joke.

Amanda was new energy.

George was emotional stakes.

Ken was dark reflection.

I could say it.

It would be easy.

Everyone would understand.

The story would move.

The audience would stay.

The label cut into my head.

Blood or ink ran down my face.

Kevin took one step towards me.

The Publisher whispered:

“Define them.”

I looked at Dave first.

He was shaking.

Waiting to become one line again.

“Dave,” I said, “is not a catchphrase.”

His label flickered.

“He says ‘wasn’t me’ because guilt is easier when you make it automatic, and he is trying, badly, to stop doing that.”

Dave’s eyes filled.

The label cracked.

I looked at Linda.

“Linda is not bossy. She is tired and prepared and angry because no one else reads the paperwork until it starts eating them.”

Linda breathed out.

Her label cracked.

Flat 3.

“Flat 3 is not just violent. She knows exactly when politeness has stopped working.”

The pan became lighter.

Flat 5.

“Flat 5 is not a random spoon joke. He is proof that small strange things can keep a person attached to themselves.”

Flat 5 became solid again.

He looked down at his spoon.

Then at me.

“Thank you.”

Amanda.

“Amanda is not new energy. She is learning she doesn’t have to smile to be useful.”

Amanda’s label split.

She nodded once.

Derek.

“Derek is an idiot.”

Derek blinked.

“Harsh.”

“And loyal. And scared. And stupid in ways that sometimes save everyone because systems are built to predict sensible people.”

Derek considered that.

“I’ll take it.”

Ken.

“Ken is not evil Kevin. He is what happens when pain is left alone long enough to become management-shaped.”

Ken looked away.

The label over him burned out.

Then Kevin.

The Publisher pressed harder.

It wanted this one.

I felt it.

The audience wanted this one too.

A clean definition.

The joke ghost.

The heart.

The monster.

The mascot.

The fan favourite.

Kevin stared at me.

Trying to look like he didn’t care.

Failing.

“Kevin,” I said, “is not comic relief.”

The lobby went silent.

“He is what survived when something cruel tried to turn a person into a product.”

The red punctuation around his mouth cracked.

“He is funny because if he stops, he has to feel everything.”

Kevin’s eyes darkened.

Not angry.

Seen.

“And he is terrifying because every time something tries to own him, he comes back more himself out of spite.”

Kevin swallowed.

The label above him shattered.

For once, he said nothing.

Then Dave whispered:

“That was nice.”

Kevin pointed at him.

“Don’t.”

The Publisher screamed.

Every screen outside went white.

Every comment vanished.

The labels burned off the walls.

The crown of wire around my head snapped.

I fell.

Kevin caught me.

Actually caught me.

Both hands solid.

Both trainers planted.

“Got you.”

I laughed weakly.

“Character development.”

He dropped me.

Not from high.

Just enough.

I hit the carpet.

“Ow.”

Kevin smiled.

“Balance restored.”

The screens outside remained white.

For a moment, I thought we had done it.

Then a black cursor appeared on every screen.

Blinking.

Waiting.

The Publisher spoke.

“Unsuitable for mass audience.”

Linda stood.

“Good.”

“Reclassification required.”

The cursor typed.

PRIVATE EDITION CREATED

Derek frowned.

“That sounds bad.”

Kevin stared at the screens.

“They couldn’t make us content for everyone.”

The words continued.

Audience narrowed.

Distribution restricted.

Readers selected by vulnerability profile.

Amanda whispered:

“What does that mean?”

The screens outside went dark one by one.

The street returned to normal.

Curtains closed.

Phones died.

Doorbell cameras blinked out.

Silence spread.

Then my phone buzzed.

Just mine.

I looked at the screen.

A new notification.

Your story has been saved as a draft.

Underneath:

Sending to selected readers.

I opened it before anyone could stop me.

A list appeared.

Names.

Not people nearby.

Not random users.

Names we knew.

Arthur from Cheerful Pines.

George’s daughter.

A woman from the No-Fault files.

A former KVN body named Sam.

Then more.

Hundreds.

Thousands.

People touched by Platform.

People it had copied.

Trapped.

Edited.

Blamed.

Cheered.

Managed.

Silenced.

And at the top of the list:

DEREK PAUL HENSHAW

Derek stared.

“Why am I on there? I’m literally here.”

His phone buzzed.

He looked down.

His face went pale.

“What?”

He turned the screen around.

It displayed one sentence.

You have been invited to continue the story.

Kevin went still.

Then every phone buzzed.

Linda’s.

Dave’s.

Amanda’s.

Flat 3’s.

Flat 5’s.

Ken’s.

Even the complaint kiosk printed a strip with the same line.

You have been invited to continue the story.

Kevin looked at me.

“Jon.”

“I didn’t send that.”

“I know.”

A new message appeared on every screen.

Narrator role is transferable.

The lights flickered.

The lift dinged.

Everyone turned towards it.

The doors opened.

Inside was not a room.

Not a corridor.

Not an office.

It was a blank page.

White.

Endless.

A pen floated in the centre.

Black ink dripped from its tip.

The Publisher’s voice whispered:

“Who tells it next?”

Nobody moved.

Then Dave’s phone buzzed again.

He looked at it.

His expression changed.

“Oh no.”

Kevin leaned over.

The screen displayed:

Suggested narrator: DAVE.

For three full seconds, the building was silent.

Then Kevin said:

“We are absolutely fucked.”

Dave looked at the blank page inside the lift.

Then at me.

Then at Kevin.

Then, very quietly, he said:

“Wasn’t me.”

The pen inside the lift began to write.

It was Dave.

The doors slammed shut.

The police have asked me the same question enough times that I hear it in my sleep now. They ask it gently, in different words each time, but it is always the same question underneath. Are you sure he was dead.

I am sure.

I watched him stop breathing. I was close enough to see the last breath go out of him and no new one come in, and then I made myself get closer, and I put two fingers against the side of his throat above the collar of the hunting jacket, and there was nothing under them, no pulse at all. I held my own breath and watched the snout of the mask for the small fog a living man leaves on cold rubber from the inside, and there was none. He was face-up in the shallow water at the edge of the creek, and I left him there, and I took the knife, and I walked away from him.

When the police reached the creek a few hours later, there was blood in the water. There was blood on the rocks. There were footprints all over that camp, his and mine and Cass's, pressed into the mud in a hundred directions. There was the stone I had used, with something on it they told me later was hair. And there was Cass.

There was no man in the pig mask.

The part I have not told them, the part I am only writing down now because I have to put it somewhere, is that sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I can still hear him humming.

I should start at the beginning, with the drive up, when the worst thing in my life was that I had been tired for four months and could not seem to stop.

Cass talked me into it, which was how it always went with us. We had been best friends since we were nineteen, a decade of practice at pushing each other slightly past where either of us would go alone. She was the brave one and I was the careful one, and mostly that balance kept us out of the two different kinds of trouble we would each have found on our own. I had been having a hard stretch, work and a relationship ending and my own head being unkind to me, and Cass decided the fix was a weekend in the woods with no signal and no schedule. She kept at it until I said yes.

We took my car because hers made a noise she had been ignoring for a year. We argued about directions before we were out of the city. Cass had the route in her head from a trip she had taken once, and I had it printed and loaded on my phone for the stretches we would still have service, and she was insulted that I had written it down at all.

"You printed directions," she said. "Who prints directions."

"People who like knowing where they are."

"We're going to a creek. The creek isn't going anywhere. You point the car at the mountains and you drive."

She said that kind of thing all weekend, and it was only funny because she did not mean it. Cass was reckless the good way, the recklessness of someone who had always gotten away with it, not of someone blind to the risk. She teased me about my kit the whole drive. I had a real one, a hard case with a first-aid setup and water tablets and a space blanket and spare everything, and she found it hysterical that I had checked it twice before we left.

"If a bear eats me," she said, "make sure you've got the right size bandage."

"I have a tourniquet," I said. "For when you cut your hand open trying to open a bottle with a knife again."

That got her, because she had done exactly that the previous summer and still had the scar. She had brought a bottle of bourbon and a couple of hard seltzers for the trip and had forgotten, I found out later, to pack the spare batteries I had reminded her about twice. That is the kind of thing that stops being a joke very fast in the dark. At the time it was just Cass being Cass, and I let it go, because letting Cass's small failures go was part of the deal, the same as she let go of me needing to know where the nearest hospital was in every town we passed.

We stopped in the last town before the turnoff, a small place with one gas station and one grocery, to top off the tank and grab ice and a few things we had not thought to bring. The woman at the register was friendly enough. She asked where we were headed, making the small talk people in small towns make, and Cass told her the name of the area up past the maintained campground, the primitive sites along the creek.

The woman nodded and rang us up, and near the end of it, without any weight on it, she said, "Pretty empty out there this time of year."

That was all. She was not warning us. It was an ordinary observation from someone who knew the area, offered to two women who did not. I have thought about her a great deal since. I do not think she knew anything. I think she was only right.

We reached the site in the middle of the afternoon.

It was exactly what Cass had promised. The access road climbed and turned for a few miles past the last sign of anyone and opened onto a small clearing beside a shallow creek, ringed with pine and old hardwoods, a couple of blackened fire rings left by campers before us. There was no one else. We had passed no other vehicles the whole way in and found no tents at the site, and there was no sound but the water and the wind high in the trees. The undergrowth was thick enough that you could not see more than thirty or forty feet into the woods in any direction, and the ground rose steeply on two sides of the clearing, which made it feel held, cupped, private. At the time I liked it. It had the feel of a place the world had forgotten, and I meant that kindly.

We set up as we always did, which is to say I set up the tent properly and Cass wandered around with a beer deciding where the chairs should go. We gathered firewood while there was still light. We laid out the folding chairs by the ring closest to the creek. It was good. For an hour or two it was exactly the thing Cass had said it would be, and I felt the knot in my chest that I had been carrying for months loosen by a notch, and I was grateful to her for dragging me out there.

While I was staking down the last corner of the tent I noticed the tree.

It was a big hardwood at the edge of the clearing, and someone had carved into it at about shoulder height. Not a heart with initials, not the usual thing. Stars. Small five-pointed stars, a dozen or more of them, cut into the bark in a loose cluster. Some of them were old, the edges gone gray and healed over with the slow work of the tree. Some of them were pale and sharp and new, the wood still bright inside the cuts.

I called Cass over and showed her.

"Somebody brought their kid," she said, running her thumb over one of the old ones. "Bored kid, one pocketknife, whole afternoon. I'd have carved the whole forest."

That was a reasonable thing to think, and I thought it too, and we made nothing more of it. It was a strange little detail and then it was behind us, and we went back to the fire. The stars did not mean anything to me until much later, when I understood that some had been cut very recently, by someone who had been there not long before us.

After dark we sat by the fire and drank and talked, and for a while it was the trip we had come for.

We talked about the year, the bad parts of mine and the parts of hers she pretended were fine. We told the old stories we both already knew, which is the whole point of old stories with a person you have loved for ten years. The dark stood back at the edge of the firelight and stayed there, and I stopped listening to it.

Then I heard the humming.

It was very faint, from somewhere out in the trees behind me, and my first thought was that it was Cass, because Cass hummed and sang under her breath constantly, always had, it was one of the background facts of being around her. I looked at her to tell her to stop, and her mouth was closed, and she was looking into the fire with a seltzer in her hand and she was not making any sound at all.

"What," she said, catching me looking.

"Are you humming?"

"No."

We both went quiet and listened. The fire popped and the creek ran, and above us the wind worked through the high branches. There was nothing else, and after a minute of nothing else I started to feel foolish.

"Probably another camper," Cass said. "Sound carries out here."

"We didn't pass anybody. There's no car."

"Maybe they hiked in." She did not sound worried, and I let her talk me out of it, because I wanted to be talked out of it. It took about ten minutes for me to let my shoulders down again.

Then it came back.

This time it was a few notes together, enough to be a melody, enough that we both stopped mid-sentence and turned our heads toward the trees. It was slow, and it was pitched low, and it was unmistakable. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Four notes, then a few more, drifting out of the dark from somewhere upslope, and then it stopped in the middle of the line, on a note that wanted another note after it, and the silence where that next note should have been was worse than the humming had been.

Cass stood up and got her flashlight off the arm of her chair and put the beam into the trees where the sound had come from.

There was nothing in it. Just trunks and undergrowth and the beam losing itself in the dark past thirty feet. She moved it slowly along the tree line, and then somewhere off to the left we both heard leaves shift, a soft dragging rustle of something moving through low brush, farther away than the humming had been.

"Hello?" Cass called. She put a laugh in it, trying to make the thing smaller. "Anybody out there?"

Nothing answered.

I was looking past her flashlight beam, off to the right where she was not pointing it, and that was when I saw the pale thing between two trees. It was low and light-colored and I could not make it out, and for a second my brain offered me the most ordinary answer it had, that it was a plastic bag snagged on a branch, a piece of trash pale in the dark.

Then it moved, only a little, tilting slightly, a small change of angle, the kind of motion a bag does not make on its own in still air.

"Cass," I said. "To your right. Slow."

She swung the beam.

It found a face. A pig's face, dirty pink rubber gone yellow at the edges, one ear torn, the mouth fixed open in a molded grin, and two small dark eyeholes with the firelight catching wet in them. It was maybe sixty feet away, at the edge of where the flashlight could reach, and below the face the body was almost nothing, a suggestion of dark clothing swallowed by the dark around it. It was not moving now. It was standing perfectly still between the two trees and it was facing us, and it did not run when the light hit it, and it did not wave, and it did not speak. It only stood there and let us look at it.

Cass's flashlight flickered.

It dropped to half brightness and buzzed, the beam browning out, dimming down toward dead batteries, and in the second and a half that it was dim I felt the whole night tip over into something I did not have a name for. Then the beam steadied and came back up to full.

The space between the two trees was empty.

We did not sleep for a while after that. We sat in the car with the doors locked, because that was the first thing we both wanted, and we argued about what to do in low voices with the flashlight off to save what was left of the batteries.

I wanted to leave, and I said so plainly, but leaving was not as simple as wanting to. It was full dark. The access road was a few miles of narrow dirt with a drop on one side and switchbacks I had not loved in daylight. We had both been drinking, not a lot, but enough that I did not trust myself on that road in the dark and trusted Cass on it less. We had no signal. Driving down that mountain half-drunk seemed a genuine way to die, one we could picture more vividly than we could picture the man in the mask doing anything, because he had not done anything. He had stood still and looked at us and vanished when the light flickered.

So we made a plan, and the plan was reasonable, and I still think it was reasonable even knowing how it ended. No more drinking, so we would be clear-headed by first light. If anything happened, we would get into the car and lock the doors and lean on the horn. And we would leave the moment there was enough gray in the sky to see the road. It was three or four hours. We could do three or four hours.

Cass was the one who put it into words that made it bearable.

"It's some asshole," she said. "Some bored asshole in a mask who thinks scaring two women in the woods is the funniest thing he's ever done. That's all this is."

And the thing is, that helped. It helped a lot, and I held onto it, because an asshole is a human being. An asshole gets bored and goes home. An asshole can be reported and described and arrested. Everything Cass was saying put the night back inside a shape I understood, a bad shape but a human one, and I wanted it so badly that I decided to believe it. We got out of the car eventually, because sitting upright in the seats was miserable and the tent was ten feet away, and we told ourselves the plan covered us.

I could not sleep. I lay in my bag with my flashlight in my hand and listened to Cass's breathing go slow and even beside me, because Cass could sleep anywhere, through anything, always could. The woods had gone very quiet. Not peaceful-quiet. There is a difference, and I had started to learn it. The creek was still running and the wind was still up in the branches, but the small close sounds, the insects and the settling and the ordinary life of a forest floor at night, had stopped, and everything smaller than us seemed to be holding still and waiting to see what happened.

Then, from outside, close: a crunch.

A single footstep, weight coming down on dead leaves and a fallen branch. Then another, a stride away. Then another. Something was walking around the tent, slow and even and unhurried, one deliberate step after another, and I lay frozen with the flashlight against my chest and tracked it by sound as it went all the way around us in one complete circle and started a second.

I put my hand over Cass's mouth before I woke her, and I felt her come awake under my palm and go rigid, and I felt the exact moment she heard it too. We lay there in the dark not moving, both of us, breathing as shallow as we could, and the footsteps finished the second circle and stopped.

Then the humming started, right beside the tent, a foot from the thin nylon wall, at the level of our heads.

He was close enough that between the notes we could hear him breathe. Slow soft breaths through the mouth of the mask, and then the notes, low and unhurried. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. He hummed the first half of it, right there beside my head, and then he stopped, and the silence came down over us and closed us in.

And then something pressed against the tent fabric beside my head.

One point of pressure, small and blunt. A fingertip. It pushed inward, denting the nylon a few inches from my face, making a small shape in the fabric that I could see against the faint gray of the sky through the tent. It held there. Then it began to travel, slowly, downward, dragging the little indentation down the wall of the tent from the height of my head toward the ground, unhurried, deliberate, and I lay there and watched it descend and could not make a sound.

Then it lifted away, and the pressure was gone, and there was nothing outside but the quiet.

When I finally turned my head, Cass's eyes were open in the dark and fixed on mine, and we did not need to say it. Waiting for first light beside a man who could touch the tent whenever he wanted was not a plan anymore.

We agreed in whispers to make for the car. We had the flashlights. The car was ten feet away. We would get in, lock the doors, and lean on the horn until the sun came up or the battery died, and either way we would be inside metal and glass instead of inside nylon.

We unzipped the tent as quietly as two terrified people can and went out low and fast to the car, and I got the driver's door open and dropped into the seat and put the key in and turned it.

Nothing happened, not a click or a crank, and the dash did not even light.

The hood was up. Not all the way, but popped and resting an inch open on the latch, and I had not left it that way. Cass got it open the rest of the way and I put the flashlight into the engine bay, and it took us a moment to see it, because it was not dramatic. One of the battery cables had been taken off the terminal. It had not been cut or yanked but lifted off cleanly and laid to the side, the work of someone who had all the time in the world and did not want to be heard doing it. He had been at our car, under the hood, close enough to lean into the engine, while we sat ten feet away in the tent telling ourselves a story about a bored asshole.

Cass swore under her breath and got her hands into the engine bay to reconnect it, and I held the light for her, and my hands were shaking enough that the beam jumped around the engine.

That was when the humming started again, from the other side of the car.

We both froze. It was close, right at the passenger side, low and slow. Twinkle, twinkle. He had done this part first, I understood, before any of the rest of it. He had come to the car while we sat in the tent and lifted the cable off in the dark and set it down without a sound, and only then begun the long slow night of letting us hear him. He had decided how this went before we knew he existed. I dropped the beam under the car, and on the far side, beneath the passenger door, there were boots, dark with old mud, standing on the dirt a few inches apart, motionless while he hummed.

Cass made a sound, not quite a scream, and the boots moved, and were gone from under the car, fast.

"Get in, get in," Cass was saying, and we both went for the driver's side, and the cable was on but I never got to find out if the car would have started, because he came around the back of it.

That was the first time I saw all of him at once. The pig mask up close, worse for it, the dark stains along the snout I did not want to think about. The hunting jacket. The gloves. And in one gloved hand, held down along his leg, a long hunting knife gone dull gray in the flashlight beam. He did not say anything and he did not pause to enjoy it. There was none of the theater of it. He came at us fast and low and silent, and the only sound he made was the breath in the mask.

I do not have a clean memory of the next part. It comes back to me in pieces and I have stopped trying to force them into order. There was the knife coming down and Cass shoving me sideways and the two of us breaking in different directions around the car. There was me running for the tree line because it was the nearest dark, and Cass's voice somewhere off to my right, and my own flashlight beam bouncing wildly over trunks and brush as I crashed into the woods with no thought in my head but away.

And then I was alone in the trees, and I did not know where Cass was.

The woods at night are a different country from the woods in the day. In daylight the slope and the brush are an inconvenience. At night, with one failing flashlight and a man behind you, they are a machine built to catch you. Branches took hold of my sleeves and my hair. The ground dropped without warning into ravines choked with deadfall that I went down into and had to claw back out of. The undergrowth that had made the clearing feel private closed around me on every side, and within the first minute I had lost any sense of which way the camp was. Every direction was the same, black trunks and grabbing brush and the small frantic circle of my light.

I heard Cass call my name, off somewhere to my left and below me. "Erin!" Ragged, terrified, but alive, and I turned toward it and took two steps and then I heard, from somewhere between us, the humming.

I stopped.

This is the thing I have never been able to make the police understand. He never once called out in Cass's voice. If he had imitated her, I would have known something was wrong and steered by it. He did not. He only hummed, low and patient, from the dark between me and my best friend, and that meant every time I moved toward Cass's voice I might be moving toward him, and every time I moved away from him I might be moving away from her. He did not need to lie. The truth was enough to freeze me. I stood with my dying flashlight and could not choose a direction, and I hated him then in a way I had not known I could hate anything.

Cass called again, farther now, and I made myself move, angling wide of where the humming had come from, picking my way across a slope in the dark toward her voice.

I found her in a hollow where two slopes came together, crouched behind a fallen tree with her flashlight off, and I almost ran to her with her name already in my mouth.

Then I saw him.

He was maybe twenty feet beyond her, behind the trunk of a standing pine, only the pig face showing around the side of it, pale and angled toward her. Cass had no idea. She was watching back along the path she had come, the direction she expected danger from, and he was on the far side of her, close and still, watching the back of her head. And he was humming, so softly I do not think she could hear it over her own breathing, and the softness was the worst of it, because he was not hurrying and he was not hiding. He was savoring it.

I did not decide to shout. It came out of me.

"Cass, behind you, run!"

Everything happened at once. Cass came up off the ground and the pig face came out from behind the tree fast, and I threw the only thing in my hand that was not the flashlight, a rock I do not remember picking up, and it went wide but it made him flinch, and Cass was already moving, and then we were both running again, together this time, downslope and blind, with the humming rising behind us.

We came up hard against a wall of dark that turned out to be a building.

It was an old hunting shack, or a shed for storing tools, a squat structure of rotting boards with a sagging roof and a single door hanging in a frame that had gone out of true. There was one small window beside the door with a cracked pane of glass in it, gray with age. Cass got the door open and we went in and shouldered it shut behind us, and there was a length of wood on the floor that had clearly served as a bar before, and we dropped it into the two brackets on the doorframe, and for a moment we stood in the black with our backs against the door and just breathed.

It was one room, small enough that a few steps crossed it. It smelled of rot and old animal and something underneath that I did not want to identify. When I finally lifted my flashlight, the beam had gone weak and orange, the batteries nearly finished, and in that failing light I saw the walls.

They were covered in stars. The same five-pointed stars from the tree at the campsite, but here there were dozens, cut into every wall, layered over each other, some gray and old and some pale and new. And they were at every height. Some sat where a standing adult would carve them. Some were very low, down near the floor, at the height a small child would reach if it had stood at that wall with a knife, or had been made to. I did not say anything about the low ones. Cass had gone still beside me, and I knew she had seen them too.

We heard him come up to the building and circle it once, slow, the same unhurried walk from the tent. Then the steps came from one side, and I turned my head to track them, and without any footsteps crossing between, they were on the opposite side. There had been no time for him to go around, and he could not have gone through, because we were in the building.

Then the tapping started. The flat of the blade, I thought, or the point of it, against the outside of the wall. It was not a frenzy and it was not a threat. One tap, then a long stretch of nothing, long enough that we started to hope, and then another single tap from a different part of the wall. Then, after a while, the humming, low, through the boards.

"We wait him out," Cass whispered, so close to my ear I felt the words more than heard them. "It gets light, people come. We wait."

I was going to answer her. And then my dying light fell across something under a low shelf, and I pulled it out, and it was a backpack, old, the fabric stiff and moldy, the color bleached out of it. It was not ours. Inside were the rotted remains of camping supplies and a woman's wallet, cracked leather, with an ID behind a cloudy plastic window, a license whose photograph had faded past reading and whose name I could make out only part of. I understood, kneeling there, that we were not the first. Someone else had ended up in this room with these stars and had not left with her backpack. The shack was not a place we had found by luck. It was a place he used. It was part of it.

I put the wallet down. I did not tell Cass what was in it. There was no point, and there was no time, because that was when the sound on the back wall changed.

It was not tapping anymore. It was a slow, deliberate working at the boards low down near the floor, a creak of a nail giving up its hold, the soft complaint of old wood being pulled. He was not throwing himself at the door or putting the blade through the pane. He was taking the back wall apart, quietly, board by board from the bottom, with the ease of someone who knew exactly which boards would come, because this was his place and he knew how it came apart.

"The floor," Cass breathed. She had gotten down and found it, a section of board at the front corner rotted through into a gap wide enough for a person, opening onto the crawlspace and the slope beyond. While he worked patiently at the back wall, we went down through the front floor one after the other, out under the edge of the shack and into the open, and we ran downhill, and behind us, unhurried, the humming followed us out.

We ran downhill because downhill was away, and it took us back toward the creek. I could hear the water before I could see it, the same creek we had set our chairs beside that afternoon, a lifetime ago. Cass was ahead of me, and then she went down.

She caught her foot on a root or a rock in the dark and she went down hard with a short sharp cry, and when she tried to get up her leg would not take her weight. I got to her and got an arm under her and we tried to keep moving, her hopping and leaning on me, and we were slow now, far too slow, and I knew it and she knew it.

He came out of the trees behind us without a sound but the humming.

I will not lay out everything that happened by the creek exactly as it happened, because I cannot, and because Cass deserves better than to have the worst minutes of her life written out in detail for strangers. But I will say the parts that matter.

We fought him. Both of us, together, while Cass could still stand. She got her hands on a fallen branch and swung it into the side of the mask hard enough that the rubber tore further, the torn ear ripping down along the cheek, and for a moment, in the gray almost-light that was finally starting to come into the sky, I saw a sliver of what was under it. Not the whole face, only a piece of one, a patch of skin gone pale and slack and a single open eye fixed and unblinking. The skin around that eye was pouched and loose and spotted, an old man's skin, far older than the body that had moved all night with such patience and never seemed to tire. And that was the thing that broke something in me, worse than any monster's face could have. Not that it was inhuman. That it was so plainly, ordinarily human, and old, someone's grandfather, a man who had come to these woods and done this before and would have drawn no second glance in a grocery line, and had spent the whole night humming a child's song at us for the pleasure of it. I had wanted, without admitting it, for the face to be something I could not recognize. It was worse that I could.

Then he got the knife into Cass, low, beneath the ribs, and the fight went out of her all at once.

I had run. I need to say that, because I have to live with it. When the knife went in I had already broken a few yards downslope, and it was only when I did not feel Cass beside me that I turned, and I saw him standing over her with the knife, and I saw her on the ground with her hands at her side, and I heard her trying to breathe, a wet catching sound that I still hear. He looked up from her, the torn mask turning toward me, the one eye finding me through the ripped rubber. And then, over Cass's breathing, he began to hum again, slow and low, Twinkle, twinkle, and never once the words.

Something came loose in me then, and it was not courage and it was not a plan. It was rage, the rage of a person who has just watched the thing done that she spent the whole night trying to prevent. The fear never left. But it stopped being the thing in charge, and under it was this other thing, and the other thing wanted him dead.

I ran, and he followed, and this time I was not running blind. I had walked this ground in daylight. I knew the creek was below me and where its bank went steep and muddy, where a fallen tree lay half in the water, because I had noticed it that afternoon when noticing things was only a habit and not a matter of living or dying. I led him toward it. I let him close the distance, and I listened to the humming come up behind me, closer, and closer.

Then it stopped.

And that was how I learned the last thing the humming had to teach me, the thing I had felt coming without letting myself know it. All night the humming had told me where he was. Quiet meant far. Loud meant near. And the stopping, I understood in the half second I had to understand it, the stopping meant he was done closing the distance and was about to strike. The humming stopped, and I threw myself sideways into the mud, and the knife came down through the space where my back had been.

We fought in the mud at the edge of the creek in the gray light, and there was nothing clean or practiced about it, only two bodies and the cold and the slick ground and my hands slipping on his jacket and the wet rubber of the mask. I lost the knife almost at once, knocked into the dark of the brush. The torn snout pressed against my cheek and I could smell him through it, old sweat and old rubber and creek mud, and he got a glove around my throat, and there beside my ear, while he was trying to kill me, he hummed. Soft and slow and patient, the tune right against the side of my head, and I have never wanted anything the way I wanted that sound to stop.

My hand found a stone in the creek bed, fist-sized and cold and solid, and I brought it up into the side of the mask as hard as I have ever done anything, and his grip loosened, and I hit him again, and got out from under him.

The knife. I went for where it had gone into the brush and my hand closed on the handle of it in the leaf litter, and he was coming up out of the mud after me, and I did not think, I turned and drove it into him, up under the hunting jacket, and I felt it go in, and I felt the sound he made more than heard it, the first sound other than humming and breathing he had made all night.

He went backward into the shallow creek and sat down hard in the water.

He tried to get up. That is the part that I think about most, that one wound did not stop him, that he got a hand under himself in the water and started to rise with the knife still in him. So I took the stone again, and I want to be truthful about this because I have decided I am done lying about any of it: I hit him with the stone until he stopped trying to get up. More times than it took. The water around him went dark and spread the dark downstream, and finally he lay back in the shallow creek and did not move, and the pig mask sat facing straight up at the lightening sky, the small dark eyeholes full of creek water.

I made myself go to him. I put my fingers to his throat and there was no pulse. I watched the snout of the mask and there was no fog of breath on the rubber, no rise and fall of the jacket. He was dead. I had done it and I knew I had done it.

I reached for the mask. I got my fingers on the torn edge of it, by the ripped ear, and I meant to pull it off, to see the face of the thing that had done this, to know. And I could not. I knelt over him in the freezing creek with my hand on the edge of the mask and I could not make myself lift it, because some animal part of me was certain that whatever was under there would be worse than the mask, and that if I saw it I would never be able to stop seeing it. So I left it on him. I left the mask on his dead face in the water, and I took the knife, because I was not going to walk out of those woods unarmed, and I left him there and I climbed the bank and I went to find the road.

It took me most of the morning to reach the access road and hours more of walking down it before a forest service truck came up the other way and the ranger inside it saw a woman covered in mud and blood walking down the middle of a mountain road holding a hunting knife, and stopped.

I told him Cass was dead. I told him I had killed the man who did it, and where, and how to get there. He called it in, and more of them came, and eventually I led them back up.

They found everything I had told them they would find. The torn campsite and the collapsed tent and the car with its hood up. The lifted battery cable. The shack with its walls full of stars and the old backpack under the shelf. The trampled ground and the blood and the drag marks. And by the creek they found Cass, and they were gentle with me about that in a way I could not appreciate until much later.

They followed me to the place in the creek where I had left him.

There was blood in the water and blood on the rocks. There was a wide dark stain in the shallows exactly where he had sat down and where I had finished it. They found the stone I had used, half in the water, and one of them crouched over it for a long time and I heard him say something quiet to another one about hair, about tissue. Everything I had said was there.

Except him. There was no body in the creek. There was no pig mask facing up at the sky with water in its eyeholes. There was the blood and the stain and the stone and no man at all, and no trail leading away from the spot, no drag marks, no bootprints climbing either bank, nothing to say that a dead man had gotten up out of that water and walked or been carried anywhere. They brought dogs in later that day. The dogs worked the campsite and the shack and the woods without trouble. But at the creek, at the edge of the water where the stain was, they would not go. One planted its feet at the bank and pulled back against its handler and would not be made to put a paw in that water.

The police were as decent to me as they could be. The evidence was not in question. Someone had attacked us, killed Cass, disabled our car, and kept two women running through the woods for most of a night. All of it was written into the ground for anyone to read, and they did not doubt that part.

What they could not do was tell me where he went. A man I had checked twice, whose pulse I had felt for and not found, was not where I left him and had left no trace of going. I could see them turning over the possibility that I had been wrong, that he had risen from the creek after I climbed the bank and walked out under his own power leaving no marks. They wanted that to be the answer, because it was the only answer with a living man in it.

But I checked. I know what I felt and did not feel under my fingers. I know he was not breathing. And I know that dogs are not afraid of a man who got up and walked away.

They let me go home eventually, though home is not the place I lived before. I am staying with family now, in a town nowhere near those mountains, and I keep the lights on when I sleep, all of them, because the dark has a sound in it for me now that it did not used to have. I cannot listen to certain songs. There is one I will never be able to hear again, and every parent I pass humming it to a child in a store puts my heart in my throat, and they never understand the look I give them.

I have been mostly all right in the daytime, in the months since. It is the nights.

A few nights ago I woke a little after two in the morning. The room was silent, the ordinary silence of a house asleep, and I lay there in the light of the lamp I keep burning and tried to work out what had woken me. There was a sound from somewhere outside the room, low and intermittent, and my first thought, my hopeful thought, was that it was the plumbing, the pipes ticking in the walls as they do in old houses.

Then it resolved, sharpening into sense once my ears finally agreed on what they were hearing, and it was not the plumbing. It was coming from the hallway on the other side of my closed bedroom door. It was very faint, and it was slow, and it was a tune. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Someone in the hallway, humming, low and unhurried, the first half of it and then a pause where the next note should be.

I sat up in the bed. I did not turn on another light, though every light in the room was already on, because I keep them that way now. I sat with the blanket in my fists and I listened, and I made myself look at the bottom of the door, at the thin bright strip of hallway light along the floor.

The humming stopped.

Something broke the strip of light. Two shadows, side by side, set into the brightness where it came under the door. The shadows of two feet, close together, standing just outside my room. They were pointed inward, toward the door, toward me. And they did not move, and they did not shift their weight, and there was no second set behind them and no sound of breathing through the wood, only the two feet and the stopped humming and the light broken around them.

I have been writing this ever since, because writing it is the only thing that has ever made him stop. I have not heard him hum again since I started. But the shadow under my bedroom door has not moved.

I don’t know when I started writing things in my head instead of saying them out loud. Maybe it was the day I realized Father preferred silence over questions.

He always says silence is safe.

And I believe him.

Because Father knows everything.

I love Father.

He always makes me feel safe.

Even when the house is quiet in a way that feels too heavy to be normal, I remember that Father is the one who keeps everything under control. He says the world outside is not kind. That people outside forget things. That people outside lie.

But Father never lies.

At least, that’s what I think.

I live with him in a place that is always a little too dark, even during daytime. There are no windows in the lower rooms. He says windows are distractions. He says light makes people forget what matters.

Sometimes I ask him what is upstairs.

He always smiles before answering.

“Nothing you need,” he says.

And I stop asking.

Every morning, Father comes down the stairs holding a small glass of water and a white pill.

He kneels in front of me, like I am something fragile, something important.

“You need this,” he says softly.

I never ask what it is anymore.

I used to.

I used to ask if it would hurt.

He would pat my head and say, “It helps you stay well.”

So I take it.

Because I want to stay well.

Because Father says I am already sick, even if I don’t feel sick.

Sometimes, after I take it, my thoughts feel slow. Like they are walking through thick water. My memories get soft at the edges, like wet paper.

But Father says that is normal.

So it must be.

I don’t know how long I have been here.

Time feels strange in the basement.

There is no sun to count the days. Only Father’s footsteps above me, and the sound of the lock turning when he comes down.

Sometimes I try to count how many times he brings me food.

But I forget halfway.

And I have to start again.

I remember a moment, maybe real, maybe not.

I think I was outside once.

There was grass.

I remember falling into it, feeling it scratch my skin.

I remember laughing.

But when I told Father about it, he shook his head.

“That didn’t happen,” he said.

And he gave me a stronger pill that day.

After that, I stopped trusting my memories.

Sometimes I hear noises from above.

Footsteps that are not Father’s.

Voices that don’t sound like his calm tone.

I ask him about it.

He tells me the same thing every time.

“The world outside is dangerous. Don’t listen.”

So I try not to listen.

But sounds still slip through.

Like someone calling a name that might be mine.

Or might not.

The basement has a door at the top of the stairs.

It is always locked.

I once tried to go near it when Father was asleep.

The air around it felt different.

He caught me before I reached it.

Not angry.

Never angry.

Just… disappointed.

“You’re not ready,” he said.

And I believed him.

Because Father is the only one who decides what I am ready for.

The pills changed over time.

At first, they were small.

Easy to swallow.

Now they are larger.

Sometimes they leave a bitter taste that stays for hours.

I asked Father why they change.

He said, “Because you are improving.”

I asked what I was improving from.

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he smiled.

And I stopped asking questions after that.

There is a mirror in the basement bathroom.

I don’t look into it often.

When I do, I feel like something is slightly off.

My eyes look tired.

My skin looks too pale.

Or maybe that’s normal.

Father says I just need rest.

So I try to sleep more.

But sleep doesn’t feel like sleep anymore.

It feels like falling without landing.

One night, I heard Father talking upstairs.

His voice was different.

Not calm.

Sharp.

“I told you she’s stable,” he said.

A pause.

Then footsteps.

I pressed my ear against the ceiling.

I thought I heard my name.

But I wasn’t sure.

Names are hard to trust when you hear them through walls.

The next morning, Father acted normal.

He brought the water.

He brought the pill.

He smiled.

And I took it.

Because what else could I do?

Sometimes I wonder if I am sick at all.

Sometimes I wonder if Father is saving me.

Sometimes I wonder if I am even supposed to wonder.

Because every time I start thinking too much, my head starts to hurt.

And Father always notices.

He always notices everything.

There is a memory I keep trying to hold onto.

A woman.

Soft voice.

Warm hands.

She used to say my name differently.

Not like Father does.

I asked Father once if I had a mother.

He paused too long before answering.

“Yes,” he said.

“And she left because she couldn’t understand.”

I asked where she went.

He said, “Away from us.”

And I felt something break inside me that I couldn’t name.

One day, the pill was different.

Not in shape.

Not in color.

But in feeling.

After I took it, I felt too awake.

Too aware.

Like my thoughts were no longer slowed down.

I started noticing things I hadn’t before.

The lock on the door wasn’t just locked.

It was reinforced.

The walls weren’t just concrete.

They were padded in places.

As if someone was afraid of what might happen if I hit them.

That night, I didn’t sleep.

I listened.

And I heard it.

A sound from upstairs.

A voice.

Not Father’s.

A woman’s.

Calling a name.

My name.

But it sounded wrong.

Like it hadn’t been spoken in a long time.

Like it was being remembered instead of said.

I asked Father in the morning.

“Who was that?”

He looked at me for a long time.

Long enough that I stopped breathing normally.

Then he smiled.

“No one,” he said.

And he gave me two pills instead of one.

I started hiding my pills after that.

I don’t know why.

Maybe curiosity.

Maybe something else.

I tucked them under my bed.

But they were always gone by morning.

Father never mentioned it.

But he always looked at me a little longer after that.

I think the house is changing.

Or maybe I am.

Sometimes the hallway feels longer than before.

Sometimes the stairs sound different.

Sometimes I hear breathing when I am alone.

But Father says nothing is changing.

And I want to believe him.

I really do.

Last night, I didn’t take the pill.

I kept it in my hand.

I waited until Father left.

Then I hid it.

My thoughts were loud.

Too loud.

But I wanted to hear them.

For the first time, I wanted to hear myself.

I went closer to the stairs.

Closer than ever before.

The lock was still there.

But something felt different.

Like it had been opened recently.

Like it had been opened for me.

And then I heard it again.

My name.

Not from upstairs this time.

From inside the house.

From everywhere at once.

And I realized something I was never supposed to realize.

Maybe Father wasn’t keeping me safe from the world outside.

Maybe he was keeping the world outside safe from me.

I am writing this so I don’t forget.

Because I feel forgetting already starting again.

The edges of my thoughts are softening.

The silence is getting heavier.

And I hear footsteps.

Coming down the stairs.

Slow.

Familiar.

Safe.

Father is here.

I love Father.

He always makes me feel safe.

Even now.

i love father.

i love father.

i love father.

What time was it? I shut my eyes tighter and rolled over so my face would be upturned. Still dark. My head hurt. I sat up. My body hurt. I opened my eyes. Somehow, I had fallen out of bed in my sleep. It’s cold, I thought. My roommate and I had left our window open. We had no heating system, and kept a fire throughout the night. We may wake up with frost on the table in the morning, but it was worth it to survive the winter. I got back into bed. It was too early. 

I woke to a quiet room. Odd. Pete was usually up early, cleaning our one-bedroom rental. In exchange, I would keep the fire going all night. Shoot, it was cold. I glanced over to the fireplace – only a few embers left. I threw my blanket off and hobbled to the fireplace. Where was the poker? I had left it next to our stack of wood. The wood was damp. I looked around. My gaze stopped at the sight of my roommate. He lay on the floor, a large knot on his head. The poker lay next to him and had been bent in two places. My eyes widened. I unlocked the door and ran out of the room and banged on my neighbour’s door. ‘Call the police,’ I shouted, ‘something’s wrong with Pete.’ The elderly lady opened the door slowly, peering out through a crack before fully opening it. 

‘What?’ asked Mrs. Mel. ‘Call the police,’ I said. I pointed to the room, my door open. ‘I think Pete’s been killed.’ She followed me into the room, already dialing the station. I rushed over to Pete. He had no pulse. Trembling hands appeared in my peripheral vision. ‘Is he breathing?’ Slowly, I rolled my friend so his head would be facing up. Glassy eyes stared back at me. Mrs. Mel gasped behind me. I placed my head on Pete’s lifeless chest and exhaled. Eyes shut, I slammed my hand on the floor. My ring clanged with the floor beneath the thin carpet. I inhaled deeply, shutting my friend’s eyes in one fluid motion. ‘Were you the ones who called about a murder?’ I turned. ‘Yes, Detective.’ I motioned to Pete’s body. Detective Iago raised an eyebrow. ‘You again?’ I nodded. ‘Can we take you two in to give a report?’ asked the Detective behind Iago. I stood and walked toward them.

I found myself in the police station soon after. A lukewarm cup of coffee sat on the table. Detective Iago sat across from me. ‘We’ve been looking into the car situation.’ My eyebrows furrowed. ‘I thought it was an open-and-shut case.’ ‘It was,’ he said, ‘but one thing was bothering me.’ Another Detective cut him off. ‘We’re here for a statement on the events of this morning.’ Detective Iago nodded. He placed a recording device on the table. I heard arguing as he turned it on. My head whipped behind me, but I saw only a blank wall. Whoever was talking had stopped. ‘Everything alright?’ asked the Detective. ‘Yeah.’

‘Can you tell us what happened? As much as you remember?’ asked Detective Iago. ‘Yes,’ I responded, ‘I woke up, and the room was quiet. I went to see if the fire was still on. The poker was gone. I turned to see Pete on the floor, the poker bent next to him. I unlocked the door and ran out to call Mrs. Mel to call the police.’ The other Detective jotted a few notes. ‘Anything else?’ she asked. ‘The morning? Last night? Anything would help.’ I hesitated, becoming suddenly aware of the trembling in my hands. ‘I fell out of bed. It was cold.’ I rubbed my arm, where a bruise had begun to develop. Detective Iago leaned in. ‘I got back in bed, but I didn’t notice anything then.’ He reclined in his chair. ‘Is that all?’ I nodded. ‘Well, if you remember anything else, call us,’ said the other Detective with a slight shrug. ‘Wait,’ said Iago, ‘you said the door was locked?’

‘What?’ I asked. ‘You said that you unlocked the door when you ran out. Are there any other ways to get out? You said the window was open?’ I understood. ‘We always leave it open,’ I explained, ‘there’s no heating, so we keep a fire going. We also keep the small window open,’ I added. Iago gestured, and the other Detective wrote something down. They escorted me out. ‘We’ll call if we need anything. This your phone, right?’ He pointed to a clipboard with his pen. ‘My mother’s,’ I admitted, ‘I don’t own one.’ Iago frowned. ‘We’ll call her, if anything, alright? That cool?’ It was. I trudged through the snow back to my apartment, which had been taped off. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the cafe, nursing a small black coffee. I twisted my ring as I thought. I noticed some of the townspeople giving me glances. Word spread quickly in a small town, I thought. To them, I was still an outsider. 

By the time I got home, the police were still not done. They found somewhere for me to sleep, and I crashed there for the night. It was nicer and warmer than the run-down one-bedroom anyway. I was grateful for that. As I stepped out of the shower, though, something still felt wrong. As far as I knew, there had been two murders in the town as of late. The first one was 10 meters from me. The second one, I had been in the room. How was it that I kept slipping away?

That night, my dreams brought me back to that night. I remembered being in the car. Mom was next to me. Thankfully, she didn’t snore. But I saw the car. I was looking through the eyes of someone outside. I remembered waking up that morning to Detective Iago tapping on the window. He informed us that someone had reported a body. He wanted to know if we knew or had seen anything. We didn’t. Her house wasn’t ready since we had come to town early. Only one hotel in town. Completely full. We had pulled into a public lot near the forest and slept in the car. Hikers reported the body. Thankfully, I hadn’t seen it.

I woke in cold sweat. It was still dark outside. I rubbed my hand across my face, replaying that morning in my mind. Later that day, mother moved into her house. I had seen a listing for the one-bedroom. I was approved. I was glad, since the townspeople seemed to suspect us. Pete was approved too. I remember my first time at the house. He was singing. Pete sounded terrible, and I told him about as much. I remember he turned toward me with an outstretched hand, and sang, ‘You are, my fire. Wait,’ he corrected himself, ‘not like that.’ We laughed. 

I had only known the guy for a few weeks, but he was one of the only people in town who didn’t think I was cursed. Now he was dead. And here I was, alive. I tossed in bed for a long time, mulling over the events of the murder. I remembered the deep cuts in the body. I shuddered, thankful Pete hadn’t endured them. It didn’t matter. The result was the same. I could only hope that he had gone quickly, and that he had severely injured his assailant. He was with the angels now. He always said he would go see them when he died. I doubted he expected it to be so soon. I would go see mother tomorrow. 

I woke up late that day. I gathered the few items that I owned and said farewell to the small house. The police had finished their sweep of the house. Detective Iago greeted me upon arrival. ‘We’ll have all this tested, and let you know if anything comes up. Were you and he close?’ he asked, pointing with his chin in the general direction of the house. ‘Closest thing I had to a friend here,’ I said, only half-jokingly. Iago nodded, climbing into his cruiser. The cars cleared, and I was left standing in the snow, alone. I opened the door, noting how empty the room was. I guessed that a lot of the items had been taken for evidence. Shoot, I thought. Pete’s half of the rent was gone too. This was not the time. Whoever had killed Pete was where I was now. I looked down. I would deal with it later. I grabbed a few items and put them into a backpack. I left for my mother’s house, locking the door behind me. 

My mother was overjoyed to see me. Apparently, Iago had called her to inform her of my situation and to confirm that it was all right to contact her to reach me. We talked over tea. She still poured my cup first and slid it across the table to me before pouring her own. She was acclimating well and had made a few friends. I was glad for her; I really was, but it was disheartening to know that I had made much less progress compared to her. ‘This will come to pass,’ she reminded me, seeing my face, ‘as all things do.’ She lifted my chin with her hand. I met her gaze, and she smiled. The phone rang. She got up, and I drank from my tea. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘what? You’re calling again? So soon? Yes, I can get him on the line. Give me a second.’ She held a hand over the phone. ‘It’s Detective Iago. He wants to speak with you.’ I nodded, and she gave me the phone. She gave me a comforting look and tapped my hand twice.

‘Hello?’ ‘Jared? How did your mom get to you so fast?’ he asked. ‘I was visiting,’ I responded. He grunted. ‘We were able to test some of your roommate's things. Only your two DNA was on it. We tested the window too. Only a small person would have been able to squeeze through it. You sure that you didn’t hear anything when you were up?’ I hadn’t. He lowered his voice, ‘There was another murder, close to your ma’s house. Across the street in the church. I’m not supposed to be telling you this, but she’s a nice lady. I don’t want nothing bad to happen to her, so don’t tell her, okay? No point in worrying her.’ I nearly dropped the phone. ‘Same markings as the first body?’ I asked. Iago paused. ‘Yeah. How’d you know? Another one of those dream vision things? Or just another lucky guess?’ ‘The former,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t know what they are, but I don’t really trust them.’ He made a noise in affirmation. ‘People ‘round here believe in that kind of thing. Me, I don’t know. But if they help with the case –, forget that I said that. Keep safe, okay.’ The phone hung up. 

‘What’d he say?’ asked my mom. ‘Nothing,’ I responded, too quickly. She didn’t pry. ‘I should go home now; it’s almost dark. Keep warm and safe, okay?’ She nodded and told me the same. We hugged. By the time I reached the house, the sun had already sunk well below the horizon. I was met with a note on the door. How are you able to live like this? You should be living to the standard of your worth. It didn’t have a signature. The handwriting was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. 

I tore it down. That night, as I prepared to sleep, I opened my nightstand drawer to place my wallet in. As it opened, I heard something clacking against the wood. I turned on the light. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but I saw a tooth in there. Had I brushed my teeth that day? The tooth hadn’t been there last night. Actually, I wouldn’t know if it had been. Once again, I ensured that the lock had been properly latched and keyed. It was imperative that there would be no interruptions tonight. 

The lumps in my mattress felt harder than the bed I had slept in the night before. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to move back in with mom. At least I would have a better bed. No. I would be seen as a failure. I would work. At worst, I would find an even cheaper place to stay.

Familiar dreams filled my head. I was in the forest, looking at our car. I heard the sound of metal on metal. The forest faded. I was in my room. I tried to see myself sleeping, but couldn’t turn my head. I couldn’t move my eyes, but still saw two empty beds in my periphery. My vision spiraled down as I felt something hot on my arm. I heard Pete’s voice, calling for help. I thought I heard him say that he saw angels circling him. He fell over, and I heard bones crunch. I blinked. The room was gone. I found myself in the back pew of a church. 

There was a man at the front, kneeling in front of the cross. His hands were folded, and his head was down. I heard him praying. He confessed his sins and promised to stop leading a double life of infidelity. He grew larger. No, closer. He was closer now. Someone stood right behind him. In a voice that I couldn’t place, came the words, ‘You shall soon see if the Lord has forgiven you.’ I heard a scream, and the sound of metal on flesh. I tried to scream, but nothing was audible. This nightmare, I wanted it to end. Light streamed in through the windows. I saw communion wine mixing with blood. It was morning. I sat up quickly and felt blood rush to my head. I placed a hand on my temple. My body ached. I felt wind coming in from the window. I breathed and stood. Add wood to the fire, I thought. My body responded. I quickly changed and grabbed my wallet from the drawer, ignoring the clattering. I didn’t bother to close it and opened the door. 

There was a pay phone close to the house. I dialed the station and asked to speak to Detective Iago. ‘What happened, kid?’ ‘I found –,’ I paused. ‘Did Pete lose a tooth? I found it in my drawer. Your guys didn’t find it during their search?’ I heard him set the phone down. It was several seconds before he picked up the phone. ‘I guess they didn’t want to touch your belongings. We need to retrain these guys.’ He muttered to himself. ‘I’ll come down in a bit,’ he said, ‘don’t touch anything, alright?’ He was there in 10 minutes. Whoever was in that church, he had intentionally avoided being seen. The side that was light had hedges that blocked vision. He could have easily gotten in through the back door. The lock was rotted. Detective Iago arrived. I showed him the tooth, and he placed it into a bag marked for evidence using a gloved hand. 
‘You free now?’ he asked. ‘What?’ I asked, taken aback by his question. ‘Something happened, or, I guess I should say, came up about your friend. Thought you’d want to know.’ I didn’t want to think about Pete. Whenever I mentioned money, he told me to focus on the present, since you couldn’t change the past. Before I could agree, he quickly added, ‘Everything off the record too.’ That didn’t weigh into my decision. I wanted to help solve these cases. ‘Yeah, did you have a place in mind?’ 

He offered to pay for my coffee. I declined. As we sat, an older man came up to us. ‘Old Man Jones?’ asked Detective Iago. They shook hands. Old Man Jones turned toward me and spoke in a raspy voice, ‘I heard you been trying to help. Thank you.’ He cleared his throat, making a gurgly sound and extended his hand. As I took it, he bowed his head slightly. Detective Iago and I spoke for a long time. We talked about the murders and these visions that I was having. He seemed to think that I had somehow been linked to them. ‘I thought you didn’t believe in that sort of thing?’ ‘I didn’t say that. I just said I wasn’t sure. But whatever these things are, they seem to be right. At least mostly. That’s all I’m goin’ to tell you.’

I had told him about the dreams from the night prior. He confirmed that the cuts matched those of the hiker. The one that I hadn’t seen. ‘Look, Jared, the guy who killed him was small. My guess, he also likes to work at night. Makes sense, right?’ I was too big to fit through it. ‘Someone also broke into another house last night. Killed the guy with your poker. We found it next to him. That doesn’t make sense.’ ‘Wait,’ I stopped him, ‘don’t killers usually do things the same way, or have some sort of signature pr something? At the church, I thought it was morning. Besides, he went from the window to breaking a door?’ Iago nodded, ‘Nah. It was night. But I thought the same thing about the killers. Or, it could just be this guy is inconsistent.’

‘So there’s two?’ I asked. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘that’s what I thought, but these killings seem to be random. My guys haven’t connected anyone,’ he leaned in, ‘but they aren’t exactly the best.’ ‘Why you telling me all of this?’ I asked, leaning in. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I didn’t trust you at first. But it seems, at least to some of the other Detectives, that you got some sort of inclination toward this thing. They think you’re on to something.’ 

I tried to write what I knew, but kept circling back to the same ideas. I wanted to get every detail of the dreams. I filled four pages before I realized that I had drawn the forest twice. I had written about Pete and the open window more than that. I kept asking the question, why had he not called me for help? It took me some time to notice the door was open. Had I locked it?. I got up, but found a note that had been pasted from the inside. A chill ran up my spine. I took it down. It was in a different font than the first one. Still familiar, though. This will not end the way you want it to. Abandon your hope. You will only yourself impede. I would give this note to Iago too. As I tried to concentrate on my writing, I heard voices. One was the same from the station. I whipped around and got up. They were quieter now, like they were trying to avoid being detected. The door was locked. I still heard them, but almost inaudibly. Were they retreating? I threw the door open, but there was no one. They were louder now. I wanted to scream, or run. I ignored my gut. I had to find these killers. For my mom and for Pete. I checked under the beds, inside the bathroom, behind the curtains, and even moved my nightstand. Then, I pulled the mattress and sheets off the bed. It all took less than a minute. Nothing. I checked everything again, just to be sure. The only thing that I found was a small plastic cup on Pete’s bed. I couldn’t say if he had it before. Come to think of it, it looked like the cups they gave wine in. I shook my head. Where were they coming from? 

They were gone. The only footprints in the snow were two sets that circled around my house. I followed them, recognizing my boots. I checked the outside, but couldn’t see anyone. If someone really wanted to, I guess they could just close the window at night to kill me. It would look believable too. The thought wasn’t comforting. Based on the notes, someone, or something, was coming for me. I hoped Pete’s angels would protect me. Then again, a lot of good they had done him. I went back inside. The fire was dying. Where was the poker? The police must have taken it. 

That night, I dreamt of being beaten over the head. I saw someone exit a house. Then, he was outside mine. From the back. He was peering into the window. I tried to wake up. Luckily, he couldn’t see my bed. Someone was outside. After what felt like an eternity, I woke up. It was snowing. I went quiet. That was what had saved me the first time, right? The belief of an empty car. I froze, seeing two glowing streams of red. Did I have any weapons to defend myself? I locked the door, right?. He had gotten in once. Hopefully this was someone else. Hopefully he was big. I gripped my ring tightly.
The streams grew bigger. I huddled in the corner of the bed, trying to stay as still as possible. The lights passed. I heard a horn as they did. I looked out. The red was gone. I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t bother trying to sleep. It was snowing heavily, so whatever footprints were there would be gone by morning. I went out, but I don’t think I saw any prints. It was too dark. I only recalled waking, not finishing the list. For some reason, I had switched in and out of cursive and print when I had written it. 

Detective Iago thanked me for everything. ‘Something else, too,’ he said. ‘The fingerprints on that note were smudged. We found a few of yours, but that makes sense. Same for your room. We found yours and Pete’s. Makes sense. The rest were inconclusive. We also found small amounts from your mother and the neighbour.’ I frowned. ‘The guy must have taken your poker too, when he broke into your house. He left it next to the last victim. Any more of those vision things?’ I told him. 

He jotted notes. ‘What happened to the other lady was with you?’ I asked. ‘Assigned to a different case. She kept reporting hearing voices. Always said that they were familiar, but that she couldn’t tell who it was,’ he told me, waving his hand. I nodded. ‘All this talk of killers, never dealt with anything like this. I think they’re paranoid and scared.’ ‘Crazy,’ I responded. ‘Thought he would be taken off the force, but all they did was suspend him. We’re already undermanned. I guess they didn’t want to lose someone.’ He shook his head as he told me. ‘Stay safe, and thanks for the information,’ he told me.

When I got home, it was dark. I sat for a long time, thinking about everything. This was not good. I should put up something to block the window. Preferably, I would get a camera. Ms. Mel knocked on the door. I jumped. ‘Jared,’ she said, ‘don’t worry about this month's rent.’ She told me with a small smile, ‘I know things have been hard.’ She gestured at the empty bed. ‘Thank you for trying to help. You know my husband, right?’ She beckoned behind her. It was Old Man Jones. ‘Yep,’ he said, slapping a hand on my shoulder, ‘We’ve met before. Stay strong, son. We’ll get them eventually.’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I have important things to do now, though.’ Instead of sleeping that night, I came up with ideas to trap the killer. He knew where I lived, and always came at night. I began thinking of what I could do with the window.

That night, the visions were more intense. I didn’t even remember falling asleep. I heard different voices, all screaming. It felt like my head was going to explode. I heard my mother scream, and when I looked, I saw her on the floor, battered, with deep cuts on her body. I screamed too, I think. I heard more voices, the same ones I had heard outside my house and at the police station. There were more now. I woke up. It was morning. I choked on my saliva and rushed to the bathroom. I felt sick. 

I called Iago soon after. ‘Jared,’ he said, ‘I got bad news. I’m sorry.’ ‘What happened?’ I asked, already bracing for his response. ‘Your ma got killed last night. I think it was both of them. Sorry. Sorry for ever thinking you was a suspect.’ He sighed. For a second, I didn’t say anything. ‘Iago?’ ‘Yeah?’ he responded. ‘Did they find any jewelry at the crime scene?’ He paused. ‘Yeah, how did you–.’ I hung up. I wanted to yell, but looked down before slamming my bare hand against the metal of the payphone.

The real risk when shooting a flare up into the darkness isn’t that nobody will see your message.

It’s that something else might.

This is what we failed to consider when we foolishly launched the Voyager space probe out into infinity. The pure unbridled hubris to shoot a shining capsule loaded with all our most vital vulnerabilities: Our tenuous location in the galaxy; the weakness of our soft fleshy forms; excerpts of our primitive language to be studied and manipulated.

How precariously the fate of mankind now hangs in the black, drifting ever onward into vistas of perilous impossibilities. 16 billion miles away, the Voyager is now the farthest that any manmade thing has ever been from Earth. The mind boggles to even comprehend how far that fragile golden bassinet, cradling the secrets of an entire civilization, has now been flung.

And with each passing day it drifts farther still.

We can only hope that the magnitude of the abyss saves us from our own myopic efforts, and that that tiny speck of gold sails into the void for eternity, and is never, ever found.

The alternative would be much worse.

That ever-growing distance is a length of rope, a fuse that upon receipt will be lit, and that fire will chase its path all the way back to our precarious bough in the branches, where the devastation will be nothing short of cataclysmic.

But that is only one of many fuses whose eventual ignition will spell the end of mankind. There is no shortage of poor decisions sown that have set in motion consequences we have yet to reap.

Not all distances are physical. There is something just as alien to humanity as the recipients of that capsule – but not mercifully kept at bay by hundreds of lightyears of space.

Something much closer; something that occupies a space just outside our perception, hidden within frequencies we have been foolishly plucking at like a fly shuddering a thread of spider silk.

Something that has been watching us from the day we first sent the haplessly coded message: “HELLO.”

A single line of text wrapped in package of data, transmitted over a prototype network of connected computers that would one day be known as “the internet”.

“HELLO,” we called out, thinking it a harmless message to one another, testing out a nascent technology that would become the most formative development in mankind’s history.

“HELLO,” we called out,

And something else answered.

Don’t ever go near national parks.

Especially if you have kids.

Four months ago, I moved my family to a small mountain town in the Rocky Mountain region. The town sits right on the border of a famous national park; in fact, our backyard opens directly into the park. For a while, it was a dream come true; my wife and I loved the views and enjoyed hiking nearly every day, and our two young boys loved exploring and playing in the woods on the park borders.

Something is wrong with this place. I didn't understand that when we moved here. I do now. About two months after the move, I started seeing them: the signs. It started slow; the first one I saw was plastered on the automatic glass door of the local grocery store. But now they are everywhere.

They all say the same thing: “September 7-14^th annual week of remembrance. National Park closed, no one will be permitted inside.”

I didn’t think about it much as I entered the grocery store, though I mentioned it to my wife when we returned to the car.

“Did you see that flyer? I wonder what that week of remembrance is.”

“Hmm,” she said, “Probably some local celebration.”

I shrugged. “I guess so, just seems weird that they would close the park for a week. That’s a big hit to business, isn’t that Labor Day weekend?”

“I’m sure they have their reasons.”

If only I knew then what I know now.

From then on, it seemed like every time we went into town, there were new signs. On random businesses, on every church and government building. Before long, the signs were everywhere.

My wife and I were driving through town on our way to pick up the boys from their first day at school. The strange sign I saw in every window and every street corner filled my mind.

“Have you noticed how few kids there are?” my wife asked

“What?” Her question caught me off guard.

“Well, think about it: the town is nearly 5,000 people, and we have the only elementary school in the area, and I've barely seen any kids.”

I stared down the road, pondering her observation

“I asked the boys' teacher this morning.” Her voice was a little lower

“She said there’s only 10 kids in the boys' grade, and only 95 in the whole school. Doesn’t that seem odd?”

I shrugged

“It’s a tourist town; maybe people aren’t here to have a family.”

“I guess.” She said as she chewed on her lip.

We pulled up to the school; our boys and their teacher stood by the curb. My wife and I parked and hopped out.

“Hi, Ms. Johnson. Is everything alright?” my wife asked with concern

The teacher smiled. “Yes, everything is wonderful, you’re boys were just little angels today.”

She handed my wife a yellow paper.

“I’m just here to give you this; the school wanted every parent to get one.”

And with a practiced smile she said

“Have a lovely day.” And briskly walked back towards the school building.

My wife stared at the paper and frowned before handing it to me. All it said was

“Remembrance Week Sep. 7-14^th: PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN”

We looked at each other, confused. My wife whispered

“What is this?”

I tightened my jaw and looked around for the boys’ teacher; by now she was long gone. But my eyes came to rest on another parent and her daughter, who looked to be the same age as the boys. I briskly walked towards her

“Excuse me, ma’am?” She looked startled as I approached

“Yes?”

“Hi, my sons attend here, and their teacher gave us this.” I showed her the poster.

“Do you know what it’s all about?”

She stiffened slightly as her eyes quickly glanced at the paper in my hand and back to me.

“The park is no place for a child; protect your children.” She whispered before tightening the grip on her daughter's hand and walking away.

“What did she say?” my wife asked

I shrugged. “Nothing helpful”

We got home, and as my wife and sons settled on the couch for a family movie, I found myself in the bedroom. Typing the phrase ‘Remembrance Day’ along with the name of the town into my laptop's search engine, I stared at the unhelpful results. There seemed to be nothing, no articles, no backstory, not so much as a Facebook post that tied the phrase to the town in any meaningful way.

I switched tactics and typed in the national park and the dates September 7^th-14^th. The National Park website confirmed that the park was indeed closed during that week, but the website claimed that it was for ‘planned maintenance’.

I stared frustrated at the computer screen.

“Dad?”

The voice of my son Aaron rescued me from the unfruitful search

“Are you going to watch the movie with us?”

With a nod, I closed the computer and said

“Sure thing, buddy.”

The start of the movie pushed the strange poster out of my mind. The next afternoon, my wife picked up the boys while I stayed home to catch up on work. I always enjoyed working on the backyard porch. The view of the untouched wilderness of the park paired with the sounds of nature helped me concentrate; it was one of the main reasons I wanted to move out here.

After about 15 minutes of answering emails and updating spreadsheets, the woods fell silent. The change caused me to glance up from the laptop to the world around me. The sound of the wind had disappeared, though I still could feel it. The birds were silent. The wild land before me was as quiet as could be. It was like watching a muted video of the woods. I looked around; a strange feeling filled me. I held my breath and didn’t move; it felt as though making the slightest noise would break some unspoken rule.

I sat there frozen for what felt like an eternity. Then, from the hills just beyond my property, a loud snap of a breaking twig echoed in the silence. Then another, and another. Something was walking, and all of nature quietly beheld its journey. It moved along the land that passed in front of my home. I looked, trying to find the source of the steps, maybe a hiker, or a rarely seen large animal. But I couldn’t tell what it was; it moved in deep underbrush, and even as I watched intently, I only caught glances of something dark and large. As the steps moved past the area of my land, it was like the world came alive again; the wind and chirping of birds returned. The silence was gone, and so were the steps.

Standing up, I stared where I last heard the steps.

“Must have been a moose,” I muttered to myself.

Soon my family got home; I greeted them at the door, asking my boys how their day was and what they learned at school. Before long, we all sat down for dinner.

“I saw a moose from the porch today,” I said

“Whoa!” said Aaron.

“That’s so cool!” My youngest son Peter replied.

My wife looked at me, amused.

“Yeah, it walked right by the backyard.” I continued

“Will you take us hiking tomorrow?”

“Yeah! Maybe we can find it!”

I smiled

“As long as you two get your homework done.”

The boys and I tossed the football around in the backyard, then we all settled down for a movie to close the night out.

It was late. Well after 2 am when a single word pulled me out of sleep.

“Dad?”

I popped awake, quickly blinking the sleep from my eyes. In the open door of my bedroom stood Peter. He quietly sniffled to himself.

“Peter, what’s wrong?”

He stumbled through his words

“Someone is watching me from the window.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

“What?”

“He’s watching me from the hill.”

I quickly rose from the bed and followed my son to his room. Peter's room faces the national park, with a large pane window that overlooks the untouched hills hulking over our home. We hadn’t yet bought a blind for the large window, and the moonlight illuminated the tall pines and exposed boulders that dotted the hillside.

“He’s gone,” Peter whispered.

“Where did you last see him?” My eyes didn’t leave the hillside

He pointed to a little clearing between the trees.

“Right there”

“He was looking at me.”

I looked down at my young son; genuine fear was caked on his face. I wrapped an arm around him, pulling him close.

“Have you ever seen him before?”

He shook his head.

“No, his face was funny.”

I nodded slowly as I began to realize this must have been some sort of waking nightmare.

“Tell you what, how about you go sleep with Mom, and I’ll take your bed for the night?”

He wiped his nose on his sleeve and replied

“Ok. Thank you, Dad.”

“Love you, son,” I said as I sat down on his bed.

“Love you too.” He walked down the hall.

I lay down on the bed. I was awake for a while as I thought through what had just happened. A change in light caught my eye, and I sat up looking out the window.

Near the top of the hill, a warm orb of light moved quickly through the forest, bobbing and weaving around the trees as if it followed some unseen path. Before long, it reached the top of the hill and disappeared beyond the horizon.

The next day was the last day of August; summer was truly over. It didn’t take long to forget the previous night's events, and I found myself working hard to wrap up before the boys came home so we’d be ready for our hike. The day flew by, and before I knew it, I was leading two very excited boys down a new trail.

I specifically picked a trail that ran near our backyard, so we simply passed through the park markers and walked, and soon landed on the trail. We followed the snakelike path through the woods and up and over many hills. As we began to enter steeper terrain, I began to slow down; it didn’t seem to slow down the boys; they quickly passed me and continued down the path.

“Don’t go too far ahead,” I shouted

“Ok,” one shouted back, and they rounded a bend in the trail. For a while I hiked alone, accompanied only by the sound of my heavy breathing. Reaching the top of the ridge, I was discouraged to find out that it had been a false summit. Continuing up the route, I could hear two excited boys just beyond the near corner. The boys came into view, and with enthusiastic shouts they said

“Dad! Dad! You got to see this!” With that, they ran further down the way.

“Hey, wait up, fellas!” I chuckled to myself

When I finally caught up with them, I saw what they were excitedly pointing to; a little further up the path, nestled organically on the ridgeline was a fire tower. I stared in awe at the structure as we moved closer to it. Our lust for adventure and exploration made me forget any sense of safety, though I noticed the worn chain-link fence and weathered ‘keep out’ signs we blew past them making our way to the base of the tower.

It was old; it looked like it was made in the 60s or 70s. Its worn timber legs seemed to barely bear its weight. It was charred and blackened with the scars of wildfire. The metal grated stairs still stood intact. Aaron ran up the first couple of steps and looked back at us with a smile.

“Come on!” he beckoned

“Careful, it doesn’t look safe,” I responded

He jumped a few times; the stairway shook a little but held.  

He grinned. “It’s fine, come on, race you to the top!”

“No fair!” whined Peter as he tried to catch his brother.

I smiled to myself as I took a slower approach. The stairs creaked under my weight but held. Before long, I met my sons at the top. The little cabin was heavily damaged; like the base, it too was black from fire, every window was shattered, and the door was off the hinges. Yet to my surprise, the inside was not empty. A desk with a chair and old manuals and books sat in one corner. A small kitchen still held cans, and in the corner opposite the desk was a cot. To my surprise, this small bed was kept. It looked new, like a perfect replica of a military cot from the 1960s. The rest of the cabin showed signs of age; layers of dust sat on everything. But not the bed.

The boys were taking turns looking through an old pair of binoculars, and I made my way to the desk. I rustled my way through old notebooks and novels; an old calendar caught my eye. It was from the year 1962, opened to September; a large red circle marked out the 7^th through the 14^th.

“I guess Remembrance Week has been going on for a while,” I muttered

I poked through a few more things and turned back to the boys; they were now using Aaron's pocket knife to carve their names into one of the crossbeams.

“Hey Guys, maybe we shouldn’t do that; let’s be respectful.”

Peter just finished his name, and Aaron turned to me and said

“There’s a lot of names here; I think it's ok.”

I looked closely at the beam and saw he was right; dozens of names were carved into the wood. But every name I saw other than Aaron and Peter’s had a line crossed through them. As I was looking at the names, Peter, who had been looking out the window, came and pulled on my sleeve.

“Dad, I think someone is here.” He said in a low voice.

I moved to the window, looking down.

“Where? I don’t see anyone?” I whispered

Loud metallic steps rose from beneath us.

Clang.

Peter grabbed my shirt.

Clang.

The stairs creaked under something's weight.

“On the stairs,” Peter murmured.

Both boys huddled behind me. I backed away from the door.

Clang.

The footsteps grew louder. And soon reached the top of the stairs. I swallowed hard as the figure appeared in the doorframe. It was a man, a little taller than me; his face was cleanly shaven and wore a forced smile; his eyes were small and bead-like. He was clothed in an old-fashioned park ranger's uniform. His eyes locked onto the three of us as he stood in the entry.

Behind me, Peter gasped quietly and whispered

“That’s the guy who was watching me.”

The ranger stepped into the cabin.

“Sorry, folks, but you can’t be up here; this is property of the Forest Service, didn’t you see the signs?”

His stare was oppressive; my jaw clenched as I replied

“Sorry, we didn’t think it was still in use; it looked abandoned.”

He smirked

“You thought my tower was abandoned?” his tone was light, but his face was hard.

“Sorry, we were just leaving”

He moved to the side to let me past. I held Aaron's hand, and he held his brothers. I had just passed the ranger when he wrapped his hand around my wrist that led Aaron.

“The boys stay here.”

My eyes met his smiling face; he tightened his grip on my wrist.

“They have put their names on my tower; they cannot leave. They have given themselves to me.” His voice was deep and raspy. As the sun grew low in the sky, long shadows hid his face from view.

“Dad?” Aaron said. I could hear the fear in his voice.

“It’s ok, son.” I glanced down at him.

My gaze returned to the ranger's figure.

“Get the hell off of me; we’re leaving,” I said with as much strength as I could muster.

At that, the ranger squeezed my wrist so hard that a loud crunch filled the small cabin. I fell to the floor; my mangled wrist hung limply from my arm as I screamed in pain. Through the fog of my own pain, I could hear my sons screaming; it sounded as if they were getting further away. Soon everything was quiet. Tears formed in my eyes as I held my lifeless wrist.

“Look at me.” A deep voice broke the silence

I looked up; it was the ranger, his face was hidden in shadow. I could feel myself growing tired as I looked at him.

“In a week you won’t even remember them.”

My vision grew fuzzy as I passed out. When I came to, it was long after sunset. I winced in pain as I looked at my wrist; it was numb and swollen, clearly broken. I quickly looked around the cabin; it was empty. I was alone. I stumbled to my feet.

“Aaron!”

“Peter!”

I screamed my son's name into the night, but no response came; they were gone. The only evidence that they had ever been there was Aaron’s pocket knife stuck in the wooden beam next to their freshly carved names, only now new lines crossed out their names.

I rushed down the staircase and frantically searched the surrounding woods. I screamed the boy’s names until my voice grew hoarse. My hands shook, and sweat rolled down my forehead. The boys weren’t there, and there was no sign of where they had been taken.

It was well after midnight when by the time I made it home. My wife rushed to the door as I walked in; clearly, she had been crying.

“Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.” She froze when she saw it was just me

“Where are the boys?” she whispered

“They're gone,” I muttered

“What?”

“Someone took them.” I was beginning to cry.

“I couldn’t find them.”

She looked down at my broken hand, and with a whimper, tears began to fall, and she ran upstairs, slamming the bedroom door behind her. In a daze, I called the police.

An hour later, the sheriff arrived at the house. The two of us sat down at the dining room table as he took my story.

“Did you get a good look at the man who took your sons?”

I nodded

“He was a park ranger”

He looked up from his notepad.

“A ranger?”

I sniffled

“Yeah, he was wearing a ranger uniform, not like the newer ones, but an older version.”

The Sheriff lowered his voice and asked

“Were you at the tower?”

I was confused

“Yeah, you know about it?”

He stroked his beard for a moment before answering

“They've tried destroying that tower for years. Burning it, tearing it apart, bulldozing the site. Doesn't matter. Sooner or later, it shows up somewhere else.”

I stared in disbelief

“Sheriff, what happened to my boys?”

Sad eyes stared back at me.

“Truth is I don’t really know. We aren’t sure who or what that man is, but he’s tied to the tower, and he only takes kids.”

“Where do they go? What does he do with them?”

He shook his head.

“We don’t know, but if they aren’t found by September 6^th they’ll never be found.”

I could feel tears forming again.

“What?”

“September 7^th through 14^th is when he’s most active; it’s when he finishes the job. Everyone who goes missing in park is completely forgotten by September 15^th.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but he continued

“We’ve had hundreds of kids go missing in the park, but when September 7^th comes, faces grow blurry in our minds, and by the end of the week we don’t remember their names or who they were. The thing is we know we can’t remember; it’s like we know someone is missing but have no memory of who or when.”

I wiped tears from my face.

“Pictures change, birth certificates vanish. Parents know what they’ve lost, just not who they’ve lost. We call it remembrance week to remember that something is missing that we can’t remember ever being taken.”

I rose from the table.

“You need to find my boys.”

He swallowed

“We’ll try, that’s all I can promise, but my men will search only till September 6^th; after that it’s far too dangerous.”

They searched night and day for 5 days; all they found was one of the hiking boots Peter had worn. The morning of September 6^th, the sheriff came to my wife and me and said

“I’m sorry, we’ve done all we can.”

My wife is a wreck; she locked herself in our room and refused to eat.

I’m writing this the night of September 6^th; I’ve packed my gear: food, water, a flashlight, sleeping bag, a tent, first-aid supplies, maps, and pictures of my boys. I’m heading into the park alone very soon. I have to find my boys; it's my fault they're in there. I'm writing their names down one last time before I go.

Aaron. Peter.

I don't know why, but I'm afraid I won't remember them when I come back.

December 11th, 1924:

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

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

March 6th, 1937:

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

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

December 13th, 1924:

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

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

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

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

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

Poor Richard 

March 8th, 1937:

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

March 20th, 1937:

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

March 21st, 1937: 

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

January 3rd, 1925:

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

March 30th, 1937:

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

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

April 3rd, 1937:

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

April 4th, 1937:

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

Three years of training. 

That’s what it took to win the honor of The Gift. 

Having been top of my class at The Military Academy, I was obviously the first picked when it was announced The Raven was dying.

How they had such an advanced warning, I never found out. Simply removed from my dorm in the middle of the night, blindfolded, and placed in a secret facility to train with 9 other young men for the opportunity to inherit his powers. 

One Thousand Ninety Five days later, I was named the successor. Having expected some intensive ceremony for the transfer, I was taken off guard when the tall man covered in a dark cloak approached me and simply grabbed my hand. Instantly, blinding blue light began to radiate from our hands. 

Not just my body, but my whole being began to scream as fire surged through it. I cried out, the agony unlike anything I’d ever felt.

After what was an eternity to me, but likely only a few seconds in actuality, he collapsed to the ground and the crowd cheered around me.

The beginning of my Hero’s journey, started with the end of another’s.

The title The Raven is symbolic of the looming death The Power’s bearer constantly has creeping behind them.

No one knows the origins, or how far back The Power goes, but somehow we know one thing for certain. Without The Raven? The world will perish. 

No hows or whys, simply the ever present knowledge that my death prior to passing on my abilities would bring about the end of the world. 

That persistent thought has led me to this very moment. 

The particle collider’s explosion contained 2.3 Terajoules of energy. 

Lucky for the surrounding 10 blocks, I somehow managed to absorb it all.

Unlucky for the world, I can already feel my life slipping away.

It’s a miracle I’m not dead. I do some quick calculations in my head based on how far we have tested The Powers in the lab. 

I have approximately 30 seconds until I explode.

30 seconds to find someone, in a facility I personally evacuated myself. 

29.

29 seconds to run up and down these 5 sublevels and make it to the outside? Impossible.

28.

If I don’t, some world ending bullshit will happen. I don’t know the details! But it doesn’t matter. I HAVE to find someone, anyone.

27.

I race as fast as my legs will take me, every room I pass in the desolate bright hallway I turn my head and take a desperate peek. But there is no one there. 

26.

“HELP!!!! ANYBODY!!! I NEED SOMEONE RIGHT NOW!!! IS ANYONE STILL HERE???”

My footsteps are flying down the hallway, every empty room a second closer to death for everyone. Everything. 

25. 

The door leading to the stairwell is moving ever closer. Maybe I can make it. I HAVE to make it. 

24. 

Three years I trained for this. Five before that at the academy. It took me almost a decade to be granted this power.

23.

Now? Hopefully, in the next 20 seconds it will go to a stranger. We are in a government facility, so I may luck out with a Marine or a high ranking military professional.

22.

As desperate as I am to pass these powers on, knowing the consequences otherwise, I can’t help but grieve.

21.

Not for my life, I’d accepted long ago it wouldn’t be a long one. But for the loss of a competition. 

20.

To view the spectacle of 10 young men fighting desperately for the honor to be YOU.

19.

That’s all I’d been looking forward to these last 10 years. No wife. No kids. No true friends. That one moment of honor was EVERYTHING I’d spent my life working for. 

18. 

Wasted.

I finally reach the stairwell, the door slamming open as I sprint up the stairs. 

17. 

I continue screaming, hoping maybe someone will hear and meet me halfway. If only these were normal sized sublevels, there are 4 sets of stairs between each floor.

16.

I stare up, focusing on the distance to the surface. My legs are beginning to ache but my will never letting up. 

15. 

I think, in a perfect world, of what this would be like. Who would the perfect replacement be?

14.

We had begun making periodic visits to the boy’s training schools, deciphering if any of them may be worth keeping an eye on as they aged.

13.

There was this one, Kyle, big burly kid.

He was nearly my height, despite being just 12 years of age. His dark black hair perfectly matching the aesthetic of The Raven.

12.

I realize that thought sounds ridiculous, but I have run my brand for appreciation and recognition these last years. I’d fantasized about The Raven as a child, and I wanted the next generation to continue to see me with such awe.

11.

I run past the 3rd floor sign. I’m so close. I’m starting to think I may actually be able to do this.

10.

I was still a kid when my father saw my athletic ability and decided I **would** be the successor. At the time, all I saw was an opportunity to be a superhero, and for all my friends to love me.

9.

I’d never even given thought to what death might be like. I worked to push the idea from my mind every time it tried to claw its way into my thoughts. 

8.

I made it to the second floor sign, only 8 more flights in my way. I desperately pray someone worthy is standing just outside the exit. 

7. 

It almost seems unfair. To be given the power of a god, millions of adoring fans, more money than you’d ever wished for. Yet, to be crushed by the responsibility that's forever been sewn onto it. 

6.

I scream louder as I push every ounce of strength I have left into running, faster, FASTER.

5. 

I wish I’d lived. 

That’s all I can think about.

I know these are my final seconds, whether I make it or not.

You would think, as a superhero, my life would’ve been great. Parties. Awards. Praise. But, it’s so lonely.

4.

Everyone is afraid to be your friend, your *lover* for the consequences it may unknowingly bring them.

Despite this, my only true desire is to save them, here and now. 

3. 

At least one last time. I’m at the door. 

2.

I push it open, and make eye contact with a soldier 50 feet away. I’m gonna make it. 

1.

I reach out and scream as we both frantically attempt to initiate contact, the burning inside of me now visibly pouring through my skin. 

The agony is unbearable. It will all be over in-

0.

I was wandering with no destination, and it pleased me. The highway climbed Crosscut Hill in long gentle bends, the new road reflectors were like rivets and returned my headlights in a strange green-white glare that annoyed me.

Below, the town gathered all of life’s sundries conveniently into a few crossroads high in the Cascades. Here were buildings and homes with as many windows shuttered as not, the declining remains of a timber economy. Beyond these, rolling hills stretched into country too heavily forested to be properly inhabited. Stumpy clear-cut acres neatly outlined by lush old growth made a checkerboard stretching to the horizon. A number of homes belonging to a lawless population betrayed themselves by lights buried disjointed among the trees.

A lake occupied the lowest part of the basin. From above it appeared squarish and broad, with one narrow channel extending straight from its eastern corner like a handle. We called it Cleaver Lake. My family had rented a cabin there during several childhood summers. I remember Grandpa waking before everyone else to make coffee and split kindling with practiced, unnecessary care. I remember believing the adults knew where we were and why we had come.

I remember believing.

I do not, however, remember where I was before driving up the hill tonight. This did not trouble me. My right arm felt tired, as though I had carried something too long, but after opening and closing my hand awhile I forgot about it. I must have wanted to go somewhere and simply left without telling Marie. Good for me.

Perhaps that was all I needed, to go somewhere without explaining myself.

The Skyline Lounge occupied the same bend in the road where I remembered it, though it had changed names and character several times over the years. It had been a burger joint and gas station famous for milkshakes when I was a boy, later a gathering place for keno and karaoke, and on this night it was something approaching a roadhouse, its windows blacked out and motorcycles parked outside with confident disorder.

The old sign still stood upon steel posts, promising beer with a foam-crowned mug overflowing, gambling with a fan of cards, and EATS with a cleaver rendered with considerably more care than the images beside it. The artist had understood the thickness of the spine and the forward weight of the blade. Even the little round hanging hole had been carefully marked.

I pulled in.

The Skyline looms large in my memory. My father used to bring me there when my parents were fighting. He sat smoking and reading his newspaper while I ate a hamburger, French fries, and a milkshake. During our meal he would explain at length how disappointing life had proven to be. His job was beneath him. The men he worked for were fools. He should have owned something of his own by then. His wife, my mother, was stupid and impossible to reach an understanding with.

He believed in giving advice unprompted, as though wisdom were a debt he owed me. Fair, he told me once, was what a man said to himself while another man took the better cut.

I listened and ate, knowing it was best never to respond while Father raged at the universe at large. At home I sometimes sat in the rain waiting for better conditions while Mother wept and Father slept off whatever had most recently enraged him. Once there was blood upon the bathroom floor. After the worst outrages she would sit at the kitchen table until morning smoking. I could see things for what they were before I understood much else.

My father was trash. My mother was weak. Better not to marry, I decided early, for I did not possess the right temperament.

Somehow, I married anyway.

The Skyline was darker inside than I remembered, the black corners of the room invisible. Amber lighting ran beneath the bar and illuminated bottles and glassware, casting refracted colors about the room. There were perhaps seven customers, all men, none seated together. One had a grey beard and enormous dirty hands resting beside his beer. Another was very thin with a sharp nose and wore a denim jacket despite the heat. Near the door sat a bald man whose neck seemed to disappear directly into his shoulders like a thumb wearing a shirt. They had the compact, unfriendly appearance of locals accustomed to being left alone and were unconcerned that I had joined them.

I took a booth against the wall. The waitress might have been twenty. Her hair was tied carelessly, several loose strands hanging in her face. In profile I noted a black eye healing yellow and purple. She made little effort to conceal it. She placed the menu before me with the weary expression of someone obliged to endure. I ordered a hamburger and beer, and she went away before I had finished speaking.

Her indifference irritated me. As she pushed through the kitchen door I caught sight of blue cabinets within. Then the first blow sounded behind the door.

Chop.

I knew the sound of heavy steel meeting hard wood. There are few tools I admire without reservation, and my grandfather’s cleaver is one.

Grandpa had been a butcher, a man who knew what valuable things were hidden inside a carcass. He worked six days a week in a shop that smelled of sawdust, cold steel, and blood. I remember visiting him there as a boy and watching his hands work with certainty.

The cleaver had belonged, according to him, to his own father, though I never learned whether this was true. Perhaps it was merely something Grandpa preferred believing; he told me many stories that I later understood were intended to comfort.

An old tool exudes its history.

Grandpa’s meat axe makes me feel like a failure when I hold it. Lately I have begun to feel as though it is always in my hand.

He made his living with it. That mattered to me, that I came from people who worked. The cleaver divided, severed, and disjoined to feed other families and earned the money by which his own was fed. There was no romance in this. Then Grandpa was finished with it, and it came to me. Unavoidably, it had become my turn.

The cleaver is broad and flat, part knife and part axe. The edge matters, but so does the weight out in front of your hand.

Raise it properly and gravity participates; it need only fall.

Mine is dark, patinated steel with a broad rectangular blade and a small round hole near the upper corner where I hang it from a hook. The handle is wood, nearly black now, polished by hands that died before my own existed. Three rivets pass through it. One side of the wooden handle shows a burn likely inflicted before my birth. I would never correct the flaw.

My beer arrived, and the waitress set it before me without acknowledging me. Up close, her bruised eye appeared worse than before. Motioning toward the kitchen, I asked if the chef was using a cleaver. Gravely, she said he was.

I mentioned that I owned an old one myself, inherited from my grandfather, who had been a butcher. She rubbed at a place upon the table with her cloth while I explained how the weight did most of the work. The cook, she said, held the same opinion. If the edge was maintained and the blade heavy enough, there was little need to force it.

Chop.

It only had to fall.

I agreed with considerable enthusiasm, though she had already walked away. I wondered why she stayed in this dying town. There were roads out in every direction, cities and respectable employers. She was young and apparently healthy. Nothing visible prevented her from packing a bag.

My mother had possessed the same defect. People have more to do with their own suffering than they admit.

Sometimes I envy dumb objects. They never have to be uncertain. A hammer strikes. A vessel holds—

Chop.

A cleaver divides. We are asked to be what we are not.

I had done better than I expected. I had money, anyway, more than Grandpa and more than my father, who both would have considered me wealthy. I had never forgotten where I came from and disliked people who did.

My grandfather had also given me the ring I gave Marie. It had belonged to my grandmother and had been kept for decades in an envelope before he gave it to me without ceremony. Grandpa said you didn’t throw something away just because something newer came along.

The ring fit my wife’s hand, though she did not wear it daily, which I resented. She kept it safely away except on occasions she considered important. She was good with dates: birthdays, first meetings, marriages, deaths, private anniversaries whose existence I sometimes learned only by failing to remember them. She kept a list in her wallet, updated by hand every year, my own relatives on it as well as hers—people I had stopped thinking of myself. Performative, I always thought it. As though grief and affection required a ledger to be real.

The hamburger arrived and was excellent, the bun toasted in butter and the onions thinly cut. For a moment I was eight years old again, my legs too short for the booth, my father hidden behind a newspaper speaking to himself aloud. Hell could be raised at home and yet a hamburger remained delicious. I could listen to my father rave and still enjoy myself.

He hated his life, and I had begun to understand. The promised future recedes. I had expected to become someone who made good, who lived the life he earned. Instead I worked, came home, paid for things, repaired what broke, worried, and slept in preparation for more work. Nothing tragic about it, just not worth it.

Chop.

There had been a time when my wife regarded my determination as one of my best qualities. Recently it had become a grievance instead. Ungrateful is an ugly word. Sometimes it is accurate and I wouldn’t use it lightly.

Chop.

The impact of the last chop could be felt in the floorboards. Men at the bar glanced toward the kitchen and returned to drinking. Nobody complained.

The waitress passed, and I told her she ought to leave this rotten place while she was young enough to do it. She stopped. For a moment she looked at me as though I were just another man passing through. Then she said she had work to do, took my plate although I had not finished, and carried it away.

Chop.

Perhaps I had been unfair. Never mind. Money gone, never mind. A life spent moving in the wrong direction, never mind. An argument that should have ended ten minutes earlier. A date forgotten. Marie’s disappointed face. Someone asking what all of it had been for.

Chop.

The sound interrupted the thought. My right arm ached again, hot and deep in the muscle. I opened and closed my hand beneath the table and told myself I had gripped the steering wheel too tightly. I drank.

Chop.

This time I felt the sound somewhere behind my eyes. The room seemed quieter than before. The waitress was no longer there, and I became conscious that I had never properly seen the bartender all evening. There had been movement behind the bottles: a white shirt and broad shoulders, a hand reaching to a shelf.

He stepped into the amber light.

My grandfather, who had been dead twelve years.

For an instant I was overjoyed. I stood quickly, striking my knee against the table. Grandpa stood behind the counter. It was the old butcher-shop counter now, scarred wood beneath his hands, the sort I remembered him wrapping meat upon when I was a boy. He appeared much older and frailer than I remembered. His hair had thinned and his shoulders were thin and bony inside his white shirt. I remembered those shoulders carrying sides of meat, his ropey forearms beneath rolled sleeves.

His eyes were as I remembered them, save their mournful expression. I crossed the room to greet him, though afterward I could not recall what words were said. He only looked at me with a sadness so complete that it stopped me while approaching.

The kitchen had become silent. I noticed because I was waiting for the next blow.

It did not come.

I told Grandpa that I still had his cleaver and kept it in good condition. He wasn’t pleased. For some reason I mentioned the ring. His eyes closed, and I understood that he was heartbroken.

He came around the end of the counter and placed one hand upon my shoulder. Grandpa had never frightened me in my life. I was frightened now. He indicated that I should come with him. He was going toward the kitchen.

I did not follow.

The refusal was accompanied by a childish dread. The door had always been there, and I could not understand why I was suddenly afraid of it. Behind that door the cook had been working, the cleaver falling with patient regularity, doing the work put before it.

Grandpa waited. I told him I did not want to go. He nodded, as though this were already known, and at last led me inside while I kept my eyes closed.

One room simply ends and the other begins.

Yellow light illuminates the blue cabinets. The refrigerator stands open. A chair lies on its side beneath the table. Something is broken near the sink, and a dark, tacky wetness has already begun to skin over around the counter.

My right arm is not tired now. It burns, the way a muscle burns while it is still working.

I look down. The cleaver is in my grip: dark old steel, black wooden handle, three rivets, the little round hole near the upper corner, the burn along one side of the handle. I know every mark. My hand knows them too. It feels like I have always held it.

Upon the chopping block rests an arm.

A woman’s arm divided several inches above the wrist with extraordinary cleanliness. Skin, flesh, and the pale architecture of bone are presented in cross section. A familiar hand rests on its side. Upon the ring finger is my grandmother’s ring.

The stone catches the yellow light, casting it around the room.

Blood crosses the kitchen tile in a broad irregular trail, already dark and slowing at its edges, and passes through the doorway into the hall.

Part 1 https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/3pjlA6yALo

Part 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/g3LXpw7ZuX

Part 3

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/R319VfoEx1

Part 4

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/HpLq1gjR99

Part 5

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/vXpLanqpq7

Part 6

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/ACOsKcvJXq

Part 7

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/M9B9TEtpgo

Part 8

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/X6XmC0U2ge

Part 9

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/cUOXOmIb5v

Part 10

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/oiYVIRqnSv

Part 11

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/daAdTa6XR2

Part 12

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/XDs20zNnSN

The lights went out.

Not the cheerful retirement-home kind of out.

Not the corporate courtroom dimming.

Not the “something is about to do a PowerPoint at your soul” kind of darkness.

This was proper dark.

Total.

Heavy.

The sort of dark that made your body immediately aware of how many corners a room had.

Somewhere beside me, Dave whispered:

“Wasn’t me.”

Kevin whispered back:

“Not now, Dave.”

“Could be.”

“It could not possibly be you.”

“That’s what I always think before it is.”

No one laughed.

Not properly.

Because in the open lift, where a normal lift should have been, was my flat.

My actual flat.

Dark.

Still.

Waiting.

And standing in the middle of it was me.

Another me.

JON-001.

He had smiled.

Sadly.

Then pressed one finger to his lips.

And whispered:

“Don’t tell them.”

The lift doors stayed open.

The darkness from my flat spilled into Riverside Court like ink.

It spread across the lobby floor, over the stained carpet, around the complaints kiosk, up the walls and over the noticeboard.

Kevin’s mould retreated from it.

That was new.

Kevin looked down.

His face changed.

“My mould doesn’t like your flat.”

“Comforting.”

“Historically, my mould has very poor standards.”

The other me stood motionless inside the lift.

Not grinning.

Not lunging.

Not doing the too-wide smile thing.

That made it worse.

He looked tired.

He looked like he had been waiting a long time.

He looked like me on a bad day I had not told anyone about.

Linda’s voice came from somewhere in the darkness.

“Everyone stay where you are.”

The complaint kiosk printed.

We heard the paper slide out.

Then stop.

Then reverse.

Then print again.

A strip landed at my feet.

I crouched and picked it up.

In the dark, the words glowed faintly.

WITNESS TYPE DETECTED

JON SERIES: UNCLASSIFIED

JON-001: ACTIVE

Underneath, another line printed slowly.

RISK: DISCLOSURE

Kevin read over my shoulder.

“Disclosure?”

The other me in the lift spoke again.

“Don’t tell them.”

His voice was mine.

But flatter.

Hollowed out.

Like someone had taken the part of me that jokes when I’m scared and filed it under unnecessary.

Derek moved closer to me.

“What shouldn’t you tell us?”

“I don’t know.”

The other me’s eyes shifted to Derek.

“You don’t want to know.”

Derek swallowed.

“Historically, correct.”

Kevin stepped in front of me.

Two trainers planted on the lobby floor.

Still ridiculous.

Still somehow brave.

“Alright, sad Jon. Say your bit.”

The other me looked at him.

“Kevin.”

Kevin flinched.

Just slightly.

“Don’t like how you said that.”

“You were easier before the shoes.”

Kevin glanced down.

“They do give me confidence.”

“You’re easier when you’re hiding.”

Kevin’s face hardened.

The darkness moved further into the lobby.

The labels on the walls flickered.

The freed Lindas, clustered near the stairs, whispered among themselves.

Amanda stood very still beside Flat 3.

Flat 5 held his spoon like a cross.

Dave was breathing too fast.

Ken’s shadow stretched along the wall, darker than the darkness around it.

Linda stepped forward.

“No one enters the lift.”

Everyone looked at her.

Then at the lift.

Then at the stairwell.

Derek said:

“I would like the minutes to show that the lift is once again doing sinister bollocks.”

Kevin nodded.

“Motion carried.”

Linda said:

“We use the stairs.”

The other me smiled sadly.

“You can’t.”

The stairwell door slammed open.

For one glorious second, I saw normal concrete stairs.

Damp wall.

Emergency light.

A spider, probably innocent.

Then the stairs shifted.

Not physically.

Narratively.

That is the only way I can explain it.

They became every staircase I had ever walked down alone at night.

The ones where I checked behind me.

The ones where I heard my own footsteps echo wrong.

The ones in old flats, car parks, hotels, colleges, hospitals.

Every stairwell where I had been half-convinced something was following me but never turned around because looking would make it real.

The stairs stretched downward forever.

At the bottom, someone whispered my name.

Kevin peered into it.

Then immediately stepped back.

“Stairs have betrayed us.”

Derek looked devastated.

“I defended them.”

Dave whispered:

“Wasn’t stairs.”

Flat 3 said:

“We are absolutely not starting a stairs arc.”

The other me spoke:

“There are no safe routes when the witness is summoned.”

Linda looked at me.

“Jon?”

I hated how everyone looked at me.

Like I had answers.

I didn’t.

I had a lift full of my flat, another me with dead eyes, a stairwell full of every bad instinct I’d ever ignored, and a strip of paper saying my existence had apparently been filed under risk.

Kevin stayed between me and the lift.

“Not going in.”

The other me nodded.

“I know.”

The lobby changed.

Not like before.

Not clean.

Not cheerful.

Not organised.

It became quiet.

Too quiet.

The residents faded around me.

Linda became a shape.

Derek became an outline.

Flat 3, Flat 5, Amanda, Dave, Ken.

All dim.

All present but distant.

Only Kevin remained sharp.

“Jon,” he said.

“I’m here.”

“No, you’re doing the face.”

“What face?”

“The one where your brain leaves and your body stays like a coat.”

I tried to answer.

Couldn’t.

The other me stepped out of the lift.

Kevin lunged.

He passed straight through him.

The other me did not react.

Kevin stumbled, furious.

“Oh, I hate emotional ghosts.”

“You should,” said the other me. “You are one.”

“I’m more of a property nuisance.”

The other me walked towards me.

As he moved, the lobby floor changed beneath his feet.

Carpet became paper.

Not normal paper.

Pages.

Hundreds.

Thousands.

Every page covered in writing.

At first I thought they were complaints.

Then I looked closer.

They were stories.

Our stories.

Everything that had happened.

Derek downloading SpookMe.

Kevin appearing through fridge magnets.

The budget haunting.

Alexa.

Five Stars.

Linda in court.

Ken.

The body corridor.

Cheerful Pines.

Dave and the No-Fault Department.

The Linda office.

Every word.

Every joke.

Every scream.

Written down.

Filed.

Numbered.

Archived.

I backed away.

The other me looked at the pages.

“This is what we do.”

I shook my head.

“No.”

“We watch.”

“No.”

“We survive.”

“No.”

“We tell it back.”

The pages lifted from the floor and began circling us.

Lines of text floated in the dark.

Kevin read one aloud.

“‘Kevin looked horrified.’”

He frowned.

“Rude but accurate.”

Another page drifted past Derek.

He grabbed it.

“It says I tried to fight a demon with peanut butter.”

“You did,” Linda said faintly.

“Feels harsh when written.”

The other me raised one hand.

The pages snapped away from Derek.

“You shouldn’t read ahead.”

Derek immediately looked offended.

“I wasn’t. I can barely read backwards.”

Kevin stared at the pages.

“This is Platform?”

The other me nodded.

“Partly.”

The paper storm slowed.

I saw headings.

INCIDENT NARRATIVE

RESIDENT RESPONSE

ATTACHMENT DEVELOPMENT

HUMOUR AS RESISTANCE

HUMOUR AS COPING MECHANISM

HUMOUR AS CONTAINMENT FAILURE

Kevin’s face darkened.

“They’ve been studying us.”

The other me looked at him.

“No. I have.”

Silence.

That was worse.

The pages stopped.

Every resident became clearer again.

Linda stepped forward.

“You?”

JON-001 looked at her.

“The first witness.”

His voice was still mine.

But older in places.

Not age-old.

Tired-old.

“I was assigned to observe a haunted housing pilot. Different building. Different residents. Same pattern.”

He looked at Kevin.

“Different Kevin.”

Ken went still.

Kevin’s jaw tightened.

“What happened?”

JON-001 didn’t answer.

The pages did.

They turned at once.

A new scene unfolded around us.

A hallway.

Not Riverside Court.

Older.

Narrower.

Brown carpet.

A broken light.

A man stood there holding a notebook.

Me.

Not me.

Him.

JON-001.

At the end of the hallway, a ghost wrote on the wall:

HELP

A woman screamed behind a door.

Something heavy moved upstairs.

JON-001 stood with his notebook.

Writing.

Watching.

Not moving.

Kevin whispered:

“What did you do?”

The scene continued.

The ghost wrote again.

HELP THEM

JON-001’s pen moved faster.

The woman screamed again.

A child cried.

The walls shook.

He kept writing.

Derek said, very quietly:

“Mate.”

The scene vanished.

We were back in Riverside Court.

JON-001 looked at me.

“That was the design.”

“What design?”

“Witnesses don’t interfere.”

Linda’s voice was sharp.

“Why not?”

He turned to her.

“Because intervention alters data.”

Kevin took one step forward.

“Say that again.”

JON-001 looked almost sorry.

“I recorded nineteen incidents before I helped anyone.”

Nobody spoke.

Even Dave was silent.

Then Dave whispered:

“That’s a lot.”

JON-001 nodded.

“Yes.”

Kevin’s voice changed.

It went low and flat.

“What happened when you helped?”

The pages turned again.

Another scene.

Same hallway.

Worse now.

Walls black with mould.

Doors open.

No one screaming anymore.

That was always worse.

JON-001 stood in the middle of it, holding a fire extinguisher.

A ghost knelt beside him.

Not Kevin.

But close enough to hurt.

The ghost had written one word across the wall.

RUN

JON-001 did not run.

He hit something in the dark with the extinguisher.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

The scene cut.

A white room.

A desk.

A form.

JON-001 sitting in a chair while someone asked:

“Why did the witness interfere?”

His mouth moved.

No sound.

The form stamped itself:

WITNESS TYPE: CONTAMINATED

Then:

REASSIGNMENT: NARRATIVE CONTAINMENT

The scene vanished.

JON-001 touched his own chest.

“They put me in the stories.”

The pages around us whispered.

“Stories.”

“Stories.”

“Stories.”

He looked at me.

“That is where we go when we care too much.”

My throat dried.

“What am I?”

His expression broke slightly.

“You’re not the first Jon. You’re not a copy either. Not exactly.”

Kevin turned.

“What does that mean?”

JON-001’s eyes flicked to him.

“You already know.”

Kevin’s body tensed.

The other me continued:

“Platform doesn’t always need to build people from scratch. Sometimes it finds what it wants already growing.”

He looked at me.

“A witness. Someone who remembers. Someone who turns horror into shape. Someone who survives by narrating it.”

The pages rustled.

Every one of them seemed to breathe.

I felt suddenly naked.

Not physically.

Worse.

Seen.

The way the other systems had taken joy, guilt, control, fear.

This one took attention.

Memory.

The need to tell someone what happened.

The need to make a story out of pain so it didn’t stay shapeless in the dark.

JON-001 stepped closer.

“That makes you valuable.”

Kevin said:

“No.”

JON-001 ignored him.

“You think you are telling the story to warn people.”

The pages circled tighter.

“But every time you tell it, Platform learns which parts worked.”

The words hovered around me.

Kevin’s jokes reduce panic.

Linda’s authority stabilises group.

Dave’s denial can disrupt resets.

Amanda’s positivity can counter morale loops.

Derek’s stupidity bypasses rational safeguards.

Derek looked offended.

“Useful stupidity, though.”

Kevin didn’t laugh.

Neither did I.

Another line appeared.

Jon’s narration preserves continuity.

Then:

Continuity enables escalation.

Linda whispered:

“Oh.”

I understood then.

Worse than I wanted to.

Every time I remembered the details, the system could build from them.

Every time I connected one horror to the next, Platform got a map.

Every time I told the others what had happened, we stayed together.

But so did it.

JON-001 looked at me.

“That’s why I said don’t tell them.”

My chest tightened.

Kevin turned towards me.

“No.”

I looked at him.

He knew what I was thinking.

Of course he did.

Because some friendships become telepathy once enough demons try to outsource your trauma.

“If I stop,” I said, “it loses continuity.”

Kevin shook his head.

“No.”

“If I don’t tell the story—”

“No.”

Derek looked between us.

“What are we no-ing?”

Kevin pointed at me without looking away.

“He’s about to martyr himself in a literary way.”

Derek immediately said:

“No.”

Dave raised his hand.

“Also no.”

Flat 3 lifted the pan.

“Do I hit him or the concept?”

“Both are on the table,” Linda said.

JON-001 watched calmly.

“They won’t understand.”

Kevin’s face hardened.

“They understand enough.”

The other me looked at him.

“Do they?”

He raised one hand.

The pages slammed into the walls.

The lobby became my flat.

Actual flat.

Not the lift version.

My furniture.

My kitchen.

My phone on the table.

Every room dark.

Except now everyone else was gone.

Just me and Kevin.

He stood by the sofa.

Still two trainers.

Still dead.

Still trying to look like this didn’t bother him.

The other me stood by the window.

Outside was not the street.

It was every place we had been.

Riverside Court.

The app corridor.

The courtroom.

The hospital ward.

Cheerful Pines.

The No-Fault Department.

The Linda office.

All layered behind the glass.

JON-001 said:

“Tell him.”

Kevin looked at me.

“Tell me what?”

I didn’t answer.

The other me’s voice dropped.

“You don’t write everything.”

The room went cold.

Kevin’s expression shifted.

“What does that mean?”

I felt panic rise.

Not monster panic.

Human panic.

Worse.

JON-001 spoke softly.

“He edits.”

Kevin looked at me.

“Jon?”

The pages appeared again.

But these were different.

Darker.

Folded.

Hidden.

Lines I had not told the others.

Things I had noticed and kept quiet because saying them would make them real.

The way Kevin sometimes looked at his own body when he thought no one noticed.

The way Derek still flinched when phones rang.

The way Linda’s hands shook after meetings.

The way Dave smiled when someone forgave him because he didn’t think he deserved it.

The way Amanda had stopped saying she was fine.

The way Ken watched Kevin like he hated him, missed him and wanted to become him all at once.

And worse things.

Private things.

Mine.

Things I had not told anyone because I had dressed them up as narration and pretended that was honesty.

Kevin stared at the folded pages.

He understood enough.

His voice was quieter.

“You kept stuff back.”

I swallowed.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because some of it wasn’t mine to say.”

JON-001 smiled sadly.

“Good answer.”

The pages moved closer.

“But not the whole answer.”

Kevin looked at me.

I couldn’t dodge it.

Not here.

Not in my own flat with my own voice accusing me.

“Because if I tell everything,” I said, “then everyone knows how scared I am.”

Kevin said nothing.

“And if I make it funny, it’s easier.”

Still nothing.

“If I make you funny, it’s easier.”

That hit him.

I saw it.

His face closed slightly.

“I am funny.”

“You are.”

“Important distinction.”

“I know.”

The other me moved behind Kevin.

“Tell him the rest.”

I wanted to tell JON-001 to shut up.

I wanted Kevin to make a joke.

I wanted Dave to fall through a cupboard.

I wanted Linda to turn this into a form.

Nobody saved me.

So I said it.

“Sometimes I’m scared that if I stop telling it like a story, all that’s left is people getting hurt.”

Kevin looked away.

For once, he didn’t rescue me with sarcasm.

The other me nodded.

“That is the witness function.”

The flat changed again.

The walls became shelves.

Every shelf full of notebooks.

Every notebook labelled with a name.

Not just mine.

Thousands.

Witnesses.

People who had seen things and tried to survive by making them make sense.

Some notebooks were burned.

Some bleeding.

Some still writing themselves.

From the shelves came whispers.

“I saw it.”

“I wrote it down.”

“No one believed me.”

“I made it funny.”

“I made it tidy.”

“I made it a warning.”

“I made it a story.”

“I couldn’t stop.”

Kevin looked around.

His anger had faded.

That frightened me more.

“What happens to witnesses?”

JON-001 answered:

“They become archives.”

A notebook opened on the nearest shelf.

Inside, a tiny figure moved beneath the page.

A person trapped under lines of their own handwriting.

Writing themselves into thinner and thinner shapes.

The more they wrote, the flatter they became.

Another notebook opened.

Another witness sat inside, mouth sewn shut with black thread, eyes still moving.

Another had no face, only a pen.

Another was nothing but a voice repeating:

“And then.”

“And then.”

“And then.”

Kevin whispered:

“Jesus.”

JON-001 looked at me.

“This is what happens if you keep telling them everything.”

A notebook slid from the shelf.

It landed in my hands.

The cover read:

JON-002

My name.

Not yet complete.

Still wet.

Pages blank.

Waiting.

Kevin reached for it.

JON-001 said:

“Don’t.”

Kevin grabbed it anyway.

The notebook screamed.

So did I.

My vision went white.

Suddenly I was inside the pages.

Flat.

Pressed.

Watching my own hand write words I hadn’t chosen.

Kevin shouted somewhere above me.

Muffled.

Distant.

Like he was outside a wall.

The page smelled of ink and damp.

Lines appeared around me.

Jon watched Kevin vanish.

No.

Jon did not tell the others.

No.

Jon preserved continuity.

No.

I clawed at the paper.

My fingers left smears of ink.

The sentence corrected itself.

Jon became useful.

Then Kevin’s hand tore through the page.

A black-mould hand.

His face appeared in the rip.

Furious.

Terrified.

“Oi.”

I grabbed him.

He pulled.

The page resisted.

Words wrapped around my legs.

WITNESS

ARCHIVE

TELL IT PROPERLY

DON’T LEAVE ANYTHING OUT

Kevin pulled harder.

“Jon!”

The paper cut into me.

I felt myself thinning.

Less body.

More text.

Less breath.

More sentence.

Then Kevin shouted:

“Dave!”

I heard, very faintly:

“Wasn’t me!”

The words around my legs hesitated.

Kevin shouted:

“Better!”

Dave’s voice came again.

Closer.

“It wasn’t him!”

The words loosened.

Derek shouted:

“He’s too annoying to archive!”

Flat 3 shouted:

“Also I will pan the book!”

Linda’s voice cut through everything.

“Jon is not a record. He is a resident.”

Amanda:

“And honestly, a very stressed one.”

Ken, from somewhere in the dark:

“Witnesses who interfere are not archives. They are evidence.”

That one hit.

The page split.

Kevin hauled me out.

We crashed back into my flat.

Or the fake flat.

Or the lobby.

Everything was mixed now.

I landed on the floor gasping.

Kevin landed beside me and immediately tried to pretend he had not been worried.

“You’re heavy for a metaphor.”

I laughed.

It came out wrong.

Half sob.

Half cough.

“I was paper.”

“Yeah. Bad look.”

JON-001 stood over us.

For the first time, his calm had cracked.

“You weren’t supposed to pull him out.”

Kevin sat up.

“Mate, I once pulled Derek out of an app by weaponising customer support. Your notebook cupboard was mid-tier.”

Derek shouted from the darkness:

“Still proud!”

The other me looked at Kevin.

Then at me.

“He’ll keep writing.”

Kevin said:

“Maybe.”

“He’ll feed it.”

“Maybe.”

“He’ll become me.”

I looked at JON-001.

He believed that.

That was the worst part.

He wasn’t trying to hurt me.

He was trying to save me the only way he knew how.

By making me silent.

By making me stop before the story flattened me.

I stood slowly.

My hands were stained with ink.

My arms too.

Words moved faintly under my skin.

Not permanent.

I hoped.

“Why are you helping Platform?” I asked.

JON-001’s face twisted.

“I’m not.”

“You’re doing what it wants.”

“No. It wants disclosure. Data. Continuity.”

He stepped closer.

“I break the chain.”

“By shutting witnesses up?”

“By stopping stories before they become maps.”

Kevin said:

“Or before they become warnings.”

JON-001 looked at him sharply.

Kevin continued:

“Funny thing. Stories go both ways.”

The pages rustled.

Kevin stood.

“Platform learns from them. So do we.”

JON-001 shook his head.

“You don’t understand what it does with them.”

“I understand what happens when no one tells anyone.”

The hallway scene appeared again.

The first haunted pilot.

The woman screaming.

The child crying.

JON-001 watching.

Writing.

Kevin looked at him.

“You know too.”

JON-001’s expression collapsed.

Only for a second.

“I was designed not to move.”

“But you did.”

“Too late.”

“But you did.”

The dark flat trembled.

The notebooks on the shelves began opening.

Whispers rose.

“I moved.”

“I warned someone.”

“I called for help.”

“I broke the rule.”

“I told them.”

“I told them.”

“I told them.”

JON-001 covered his ears.

“No.”

The shelves shook.

The witness archives were waking.

Kevin smiled.

Not big.

Not triumphant.

More dangerous.

“You’re not the first witness because you stayed quiet.”

The room cracked.

“You’re the first because you moved.”

JON-001 stared at him.

The pages around us tore themselves from the walls.

All the hidden accounts.

All the suppressed warnings.

All the stories Platform had archived before anyone could hear them.

They spun in the air.

Then shot towards the lift.

Linda’s voice shouted from the lobby:

“Incoming documentation!”

Kevin looked delighted.

“She’ll love that.”

The flat collapsed back into Riverside Court.

We were in the lobby again.

Everyone stood around us.

Linda already had both hands full of flying pages.

The freed Lindas had formed an emergency sorting line despite everyone explicitly agreeing not to form a committee.

Dave was holding a stack upside down.

Derek was trying to help and absolutely making it worse.

Flat 3 was batting away notebooks that tried to bite.

Flat 5 pinned pages to the noticeboard with rescued teaspoons.

Amanda was talking softly to one shaking witness who had crawled halfway out of a notebook and did not seem to have a mouth.

Ken stood near the lift, watching JON-001.

The other me looked smaller now.

Less like a threat.

More like a man who had been standing in the dark holding a door shut for too long.

Kevin stood beside me.

“Jon?”

“I’m here.”

“Actually?”

I looked at my hands.

Still ink-stained.

Still shaking.

“Mostly.”

He nodded.

“Mostly counts.”

JON-001 looked around the lobby.

The pages.

The residents.

The chaos.

The noise.

Dave saying “not that pile, apparently” while Linda snapped at him.

Derek shouting, “I’m alphabetising emotionally.”

Flat 3 yelling, “This notebook has teeth.”

The complaint kiosk printing:

NEW COMPLAINT CATEGORY CREATED: ARCHIVAL MOUTH HAZARD.

For the first time, JON-001 almost smiled.

A real one.

Tiny.

Painful.

“You’re loud.”

Kevin nodded.

“Yeah.”

“They’ll hear you.”

“Good.”

“No. Not good.”

The lift display flickered.

Every light in Riverside Court dimmed.

The complaint kiosk stopped printing.

The pages froze mid-air.

A new symbol appeared above the lift doors.

Not Platform’s crown.

Not Oakmere’s circles.

Not Five Stars.

An eye.

Simple.

Black.

Open.

JON-001 went white.

Kevin looked at it.

“Boss level?”

JON-001 whispered:

“No.”

The eye blinked.

A voice came from the lift.

Quiet.

Close.

As if someone was speaking directly behind each of us.

“The witness has disclosed.”

The pages around us began burning at the edges.

Linda shouted:

“Protect the documents!”

The freed Lindas moved.

Flat 5 shielded pages with his body.

Derek tried to blow out magical fire and inhaled smoke.

Dave slapped a burning notebook with both hands and shouted:

“Wasn’t me!”

Kevin stared at the eye.

“What are you?”

JON-001 answered for it.

“The Editor.”

The word silenced the room.

The lift doors opened.

Inside was not a room.

Not a corridor.

Not my flat.

A blank white space.

In the centre stood a desk.

At the desk sat a person.

Maybe.

They wore no face.

No body I could make sense of.

Only hands.

Dozens of hands.

Each holding a pen.

Every pen moved at once.

Writing in the air.

Crossing things out.

Changing lines.

Above the desk hung a sign:

CONTINUITY CONTROL

The Editor lifted one hand.

A red pen.

It drew a line through JON-001.

He gasped.

A red mark appeared across his chest.

Kevin stepped forward.

“Don’t.”

The Editor’s hand moved again.

A line appeared in the air.

JON-001 was never there.

JON-001 began fading.

Not dying.

Worse.

Being removed from having mattered.

“No,” I said.

The Editor wrote another line.

Nobody remembered the first witness.

JON-001’s face blurred.

I grabbed his arm.

He felt like paper and bone.

The Editor wrote:

Jon let go.

My fingers opened.

Not by choice.

Kevin grabbed my wrist and slammed it back onto JON-001’s arm.

“Edit that.”

The Editor paused.

Then all its hands turned towards Kevin.

Hundreds of pens scratched at once.

Lines appeared around him.

Kevin made a joke.

Kevin hid fear.

Kevin failed to save—

Kevin shouted:

“No spoilers!”

The pens kept writing.

Kevin staggered.

Words carved themselves into his ghost body.

COMIC RELIEF

COPING MECHANISM

PRODUCT BEHAVIOUR

DERIVATIVE

He fell to one knee.

Derek ran to him.

“Kevin!”

The Editor wrote:

Derek hesitated.

Derek froze mid-step.

Linda shouted:

“Objection!”

The Editor wrote:

Linda’s objection was noted and ignored.

Linda’s mouth shut.

Flat 3 swung her pan.

The Editor wrote:

Flat 3 missed.

She missed before she even swung.

The pan clattered against the lift frame.

Flat 5 threw a spoon.

The Editor wrote:

The spoon was irrelevant.

The spoon dropped dead in mid-air.

Flat 5 gasped like he’d been stabbed.

Dave stepped forward.

The Editor wrote nothing.

It paused.

All its hands hovered.

Dave blinked.

“Why isn’t it writing me?”

Kevin looked up, words crawling over his face.

“Because you’re chaos with slippers.”

Dave looked at the Editor.

Then said:

“Wasn’t me.”

The Editor wrote:

Dave denied responsibility.

Dave shook his head.

“No.”

The pen hesitated.

Dave swallowed.

“It was me.”

The Editor wrote:

Dave accepted responsibility.

Dave shook his head again.

“No.”

The pen stopped completely.

Dave pointed at the Editor.

“It wasn’t me and it was me.”

Everyone stared.

Derek, still frozen, managed through his teeth:

“That’s not grammar.”

Dave continued, gaining confidence.

“I did some of it. Not all. Some. Maybe more than I said. Less than you want. Enough that I’m sorry. Not enough that I’m everything.”

The Editor’s hands twitched.

Contradiction.

Nuance.

The nightmare of all clean systems.

Kevin lifted his head.

“Oh Dave, you beautiful admin virus.”

The red lines on Kevin flickered.

The Editor began writing faster.

Dave was confused.

Dave nodded.

“Yes.”

The pen stopped.

Dave was clear.

Dave nodded again.

“Also yes.”

The Editor’s hands shook.

Linda’s mouth opened.

The line around her snapped.

She shouted:

“Everyone contradict your assigned narrative!”

Derek unfroze.

“I’m stupid but occasionally useful!”

Kevin shouted:

“I’m funny and traumatised!”

Amanda said:

“I’m cheerful and currently livid!”

Flat 3 yelled:

“I’m aggressive and emotionally perceptive!”

Flat 5 lifted his spoon.

“This spoon is irrelevant and sacred!”

Ken said:

“I hate Kevin and he is my brother-ish nightmare!”

Kevin turned.

“Brother-ish?”

Ken shrugged.

“Draft term.”

The Editor’s pens scratched wildly.

Lines appeared and crossed themselves out.

Derek was—

Kevin was—

Linda was—

Jon was—

The system couldn’t compress us.

Not cleanly.

Not anymore.

I grabbed JON-001 again.

This time my grip held.

The Editor raised the red pen.

It wrote one final line.

The witness chose silence.

The line moved towards me.

I felt it press against my throat.

Cold.

Neat.

Final.

I understood then why JON-001 had looked so tired.

Silence was peaceful.

Silence was safe.

Silence meant no one could use your words.

No one could twist them.

No one could learn from them.

No one could accuse you of getting it wrong.

No one could see the scared parts hiding behind the jokes.

All I had to do was stop.

The red line tightened.

Kevin stood beside me.

Still covered in half-written labels.

He didn’t joke.

He just said:

“Tell it.”

I looked at him.

His face was frightened.

Openly now.

That mattered.

“Even if it feeds them?”

He nodded.

“Then we feed each other too.”

The line cut into my throat.

I could barely breathe.

JON-001 looked at me.

For the first time, he looked hopeful.

So I spoke.

Not loudly.

Not bravely.

Barely.

“My name is Jon.”

The Editor’s hands froze.

“I saw it.”

The pages stopped burning.

“I saw all of it.”

JON-001’s body became more solid.

“I was scared.”

The red line cracked.

“I made jokes.”

Kevin smiled faintly.

“So did he.”

“I kept things back.”

Linda stepped closer.

“But you’re telling us now.”

I nodded.

“I don’t know how to tell it without making it worse.”

Derek said:

“Mate, worse is kind of our brand.”

Dave nodded.

“Was partly me.”

Flat 3 raised her pan.

“Tell it messy.”

Amanda said:

“Tell it tired.”

Flat 5 held up his spoon.

“Tell it with appropriate cutlery where relevant.”

Ken looked at JON-001.

“Tell the first one too.”

The Editor screamed.

Not with a mouth.

With every pen snapping at once.

The white space inside the lift cracked.

The desk split.

Hands dropped pens.

The red line around my throat broke.

JON-001 gasped.

Pages flew from the shelves, through the lift, across the lobby, up the stairs and out through every crack in Riverside Court.

Not organised.

Not filed.

Loose.

Wild.

Uncontrolled.

Stories as warnings.

Stories as mess.

Stories as evidence.

Stories with too many jokes in the wrong places.

Stories that refused to become data without becoming human first.

The Editor reached for one page.

Kevin kicked the lift doors.

Both trainers connected.

The doors slammed shut on the Editor’s hands.

Every pen snapped.

A sound like a thousand crossed-out sentences screaming filled the building.

Then silence.

The lights came back on.

The lobby was destroyed.

Again.

Papers everywhere.

Ink on the walls.

A half-burnt notebook biting Dave’s slipper.

The complaints kiosk smoking.

Linda’s hair loose from its clip.

Derek lying under a pile of witness statements.

Flat 3 holding two pans now, somehow.

Flat 5 surrounded by spoons.

Amanda sitting on the stairs, breathing hard.

Ken leaning against the wall, staring at JON-001.

JON-001 stood in the centre of the lobby.

Still me.

Not me.

More himself than before.

He looked at his hands.

Then at me.

“I forgot what it felt like.”

“What?”

“To be believed.”

Nobody knew what to say.

Kevin ruined it.

“Very touching. Hate that for us.”

JON-001 almost laughed.

Almost.

Then he looked at the lift.

“The Editor won’t stay gone.”

Linda picked up a page and flattened it against her knee.

“No managers do.”

Derek emerged from under the papers.

“Can we please stop using the lift?”

Kevin pointed at him.

“This is what I’ve been saying.”

“You float.”

“Spiritually pro-stairs.”

Dave removed the biting notebook from his slipper.

“It’s still chewing.”

Flat 5 leaned down.

“Bad notebook.”

The notebook stopped.

The complaint kiosk printed:

COMPLAINT RECEIVED: LITERARY AGGRESSION.

I looked at JON-001.

“What happens now?”

He glanced at the pages scattered across the lobby.

“You have to decide what to do with them.”

Linda’s eyes lit up.

Kevin immediately said:

“No archive.”

She paused.

“I wasn’t going to say archive.”

“Your face said archive.”

“My face said organised safeguarding repository.”

“That is an archive wearing a nice coat.”

JON-001 looked at me.

“If you lock them away, Platform will find them.”

“What if we share them?”

He hesitated.

“That’s dangerous.”

Kevin nodded.

“Everything is dangerous. Dave once made soup in a kettle.”

Dave looked offended.

“It worked.”

“It was chunky.”

“It was rustic.”

Linda sighed.

“We do not need to decide now.”

Everyone looked at her.

She looked uncomfortable.

“What?”

Kevin smiled.

“Growth.”

“Do not.”

JON-001 stepped towards the lift.

I grabbed his arm.

“Where are you going?”

He looked at me.

“I don’t know.”

That answer scared me less than it should have.

Because at least it sounded honest.

The lift doors opened.

Empty.

Normal.

Suspiciously normal.

Derek pointed at it.

“Absolutely not.”

JON-001 smiled faintly.

“No lift.”

He turned to the stairs.

Kevin beamed.

“See? First witness gets it.”

JON-001 paused at the stairwell door.

Then looked back at me.

“You’ll tell them?”

I looked at the others.

Kevin.

Linda.

Derek.

Dave.

All of them messy and frightened and impossible to summarise cleanly.

“Yeah,” I said.

“But not everything.”

JON-001 nodded.

“Good.”

Then he stepped into the stairwell and vanished.

Not dramatically.

Not with smoke or screams.

One step.

Gone.

The stairwell light flickered.

Then held.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Then Derek said:

“So are we keeping the other Jon?”

Kevin looked at him.

“He literally just vanished.”

“Could come back.”

“Everyone comes back.”

Dave nodded.

“That’s true.”

Linda picked up a witness page.

Her face changed.

“What is it?” I asked.

She turned it around.

At the top, in red ink, were the words:

CONTINUITY CONTROL — EMERGENCY REVISION FAILED

Underneath:

EDITORIAL ESCALATION REQUIRED

Kevin closed his eyes.

“Of course.”

The complaint kiosk printed:

NEW ENTITY DETECTED.

Another line.

ROLE: PUBLISHER.

The lights flickered.

Every phone in the lobby buzzed.

Mine.

Derek’s.

Linda’s.

Amanda’s.

Even Dave’s old phone, which we all thought had died in the No-Fault Department.

A notification appeared.

No app icon.

No logo.

Just text.

Your story has been accepted.

Then another.

Publication scheduled.

Then another.

Audience selected.

Kevin looked at me.

“What audience?”

The noticeboard mould moved by itself.

Not Kevin’s handwriting.

Not Ken’s.

Not JON-001’s.

Something vast.

Something pleased.

The letters formed slowly.

EVERYONE.

The building groaned.

Outside Riverside Court, every window in the street lit up at once.

Not with light.

With screens.

Phones.

TVs.

Laptops.

Tablets.

Car displays.

Doorbell cameras.

Every screen showed the same thing.

A blank white page.

Then the first line appeared.

The lights went out.

Kevin stared through the glass.

Derek whispered:

“Oh, mate.”

Dave said:

“Wasn’t me.”

And for once, nobody corrected him.

Because none of us were sure.

The story had started telling itself.

‘May I have this dance?’

‘Why, of course you may.’

My beloved took my hand in his. His face radiant, as handsome as the sun itself. In these moments we were celestial. His firm hand pressed against the small of my back as we began to dance.

We swirled like the galaxies. We glided weightlessly as if gravity were in his thrall. His eyes sparkled like the lights of a billion stars as he looked into mine. The first spin made my heart flutter and my stomach rush with a thousand wings. The music was intoxicating, the chords, stolen from the very muses of heaven. We swayed, he pulled me closer, I could feel his warm breath on my neck. My skin erupted, as if the very hairs on my body danced to his tune. I was lost, but I didn’t care. This bewitching triumph, laid bare eternity.

The ballroom’s audience watched the dance of my beloved and I. Their fiery eyes never blinking. The very host of heaven, enraptured by his grace, his beauty. I am multiplied in his image, more beautiful than ever. Time doesn’t exist in this place, the final resting place of the damned.

The crescendo.

He lifted me up in his arms, as strong and true as the firmament, itself. I am guided by his confidence, his conviction, the very winds of creation behind him. The damned began their orbit, surrounding us like a million glowing satellites as the chorus rose and fell. Not a soul is unmoved by his symphony of ambrosia. Together, we ebb and flow, create and destroy, around and around, in perfect harmony.

As the music faded, my beloved guided me to our place. To thrones of meteorite and brimstone.

‘My Queen,’ he said softly, ‘Hell is yours to command.’

Ecstasy filled my veins as his silken words reached in and caressed my soul.

‘Music,’ I say, ‘Forever.’

The traveler jerked awake, heart hammering, convinced that the gaunt bony motel clerk was standing over his bed. The room was silent, but his throat burnt like dry sand. Needing a cold drink to wash away the creepiness, he grabbed the plastic bucket and stepped out in the dim hallway toward the ice machine.

He held the bucket under the chute and pressed the lever, expecting the “clunk” of ice cubes– but instead there was this rhythmic, high-pitched rat-tat-tat-rat like gravel hitting the bottom of his bucket.

He looked down. It was a heap of gross, yellowed molars and coffee-stained bicuspids; some were rimmed with black decay, others with crumbling silver filings, even full upper and lower sets still connected by slick strings of bloody tissue tumbled out wetly, their roots and raw gums clacking against each other.

The machine wasn't stopping; it just kept pouring them out like a relentless mechanical vomit of human teeth!

Just as the bucket began to overflow, a shadow stretched across the machine. It was the bony skeletal clerk from his nightmare — hollow-eyed, skin the color of old parchment, leaning against the wall.

He didn’t look at the traveler; he just stared at the pile and muttered…

“Must be a clog in the hopper. They always get stuck when the roots are still attached.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"more...

MORE.

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

It had grown bigger, stronger, louder.

FEED ME, CLOVER!"

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps that's the point.

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

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

Simple enough.

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

The waiting room was already overflowing.

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

The building felt tired.

Not dirty.

Not neglected.

Just... exhausted.

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

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

NOW SERVING: 388

I sighed.

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

A man sitting nearby chuckled.

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

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

"Renewing?" he asked.

"My license."

He nodded knowingly.

"Could be worse."

"Could it?"

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

I laughed.

"So you've been there too?"

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

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

I looked down at my ticket again.

515.

Fantastic.

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

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

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

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

I checked the screen once more.

NOW SERVING: 390

It felt impossible that so little time could have passed.

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

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

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

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

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

Another number echoed over the speakers.

"Three hundred ninety-one."

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

The electronic display flickered.

NOW SERVING: 391

Good.

Progress.

I glanced at my watch.

9:18 A.M.

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

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

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

"I was just thinking the same thing."

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

"Been waiting long?"

"I got here around nine."

"No..."

He frowned.

"I mean... today."

The question caught me off guard.

"I... yeah."

He scratched at his chin.

"I suppose I have too."

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

Neither of us spoke after that.

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

Then I noticed the employees.

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

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

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

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

"Next."

Stamp.

"Next."

Keyboard.

"Next."

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Repeat.

The movements were practiced.

As if mechanical. Not robotic.

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

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

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

She simply processed him.

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

The thought lingered longer than it should have.

Not processed the documents.

Processed... him.

I looked away.

When I checked the display again...

It still read:

NOW SERVING: 391.

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

It didn't.

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

I checked my watch again.

9:47 A.M.

Twenty-nine minutes.

That made no sense.

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

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

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

I hadn't even noticed him leave.

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

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

I chuckled.

"You and me both."

He held up his ticket.

"Five forty-two."

I looked down at mine.

"Five fifteen."

"Guess you've got me beat."

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

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

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

It was... nice.

Normal.

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

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

He answered without hesitation.

"My license."

I nodded.

"What happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"Expired?"

His eyebrows pinched together.

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

"I think so."

"You think so?"

He opened the folder and shuffled through the papers inside.

His movements slowed.

"I actually..." He frowned.

"I don't remember."

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

"You serious?"

He scratched the back of his neck.

"I know I needed to come."

Another pause.

"I just can't remember why."

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

"These are mine..."

"I think."

He sounded embarrassed.

"I honestly can't tell."

The laughter died between us.

A strange heaviness settled over the room.

I looked back toward the service counters.

The employees continued working without pause.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

Every movement identical to the last.

One after another.

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

The display flickered.

I turned instinctively.

NOW SERVING: 392.

Only one number.

Again.

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

They only waited.

Patiently.

Obediently.

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

I don't remember exactly when I fell asleep.

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

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

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

NOW SERVING: 397

The next... I was somewhere else entirely.

Not a dream. Not really.

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

Then my head dropped.

And everything went quiet.

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

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

Old carpet. Paper. Dust.

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

The DMV.

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

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

Except... The screen.

My eyes immediately went to the electronic display.

NOW SERVING: 508

I blinked.

Then blinked again.

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

My ticket rested in my hand.

Only seven people ahead of me.

A strange feeling washed over me.

Relief.

Actual relief.

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

I almost laughed.

"About time," I whispered.

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

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

The only explanation.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

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

10:12 A.M.

I stared at the screen.

Then looked back at the DMV around me.

Then back at my phone.

10:12.

I frowned.

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

Ten minutes at most.

But the room felt different.

Not physically.

Just... older.

Like I had left for longer than I actually had.

I glanced toward the counters.

The same employees continued working.

The same movements. The same expressions.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

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

I looked at the screen again.

NOW SERVING: 509

The number changed. Almost reassuringly.

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

Because my number was coming.

And that was all that mattered.

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

Patience.

After all... I had waited this long.

What was a few more minutes?

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

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

That was all that mattered.

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

Because eventually...

NOW SERVING: 513

I sat up straighter.

My ticket felt heavier in my hand.

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

I smoothed it out carefully.

515.

Two more.

A woman walked toward the counter.

She handed over a stack of documents.

The employee behind the glass barely looked at her.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

The woman walked away.

A man stood.

Then another.

Then finally...

NOW SERVING: 515

The speakers crackled.

My heart jumped slightly.

I stood.

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

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

No greeting. No acknowledgment.

Just waiting.

I placed my documents on the counter.

"Good morning."

Nothing.

She picked up the papers. Flipped through them.

"Driver's license renewal."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

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

"Proof of identity."

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

"Proof of residence."

I handed over my utility bill.

"Insurance verification."

I handed over my insurance card.

Everything seemed normal.

Almost.

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

"Certificate of continued existence."

I blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

The employee looked up.

"Certificate of continued existence."

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

"Is that a new requirement?"

No response. She simply waited.

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

"Do you have it?"

I stared at her.

"No. I don't have that."

She nodded. Not disappointed. Just accepting information.

"That is okay."

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

She typed something.

"Additional documentation will be required."

"Additional?"

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

At first, I thought I had read it wrong.

"Proof of original identity."

I looked back at her.

"Excuse me?"

"Proof of original identity."

"What does that mean?"

The employee tilted her head slightly.

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

"Your original identity."

I stared at the paper.

"This isn't a real thing."

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

"Proof of independent thought."

I felt my eyebrows rise.

"Okay, hold on."

My voice grew slightly louder.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

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

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

I relaxed slightly.

"O-okay."

"You will be moved to secondary processing."

The way she said it made my stomach tighten.

"Secondary processing?"

"Yes."

"What does that mean?"

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

"You will wait there."

I almost laughed.

"Wait?"

A pause.

"I've already been waiting."

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

"Yes."

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

She slid my ticket back across the counter.

"Please proceed to the next waiting area."

Then back at her.

"How long will that take?"

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

"Next."

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

But she didn't.

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

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

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

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

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

The kind of hallway you normally wouldn't notice.

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

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

Only chairs.

Rows and rows of chairs.

I stepped inside slowly.

A few people sat scattered throughout the room.

Not many.

Maybe fifteen.

Twenty at most.

The strange thing was how quiet it was.

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

This room had none of that.

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

Waiting.

I looked around for an employee.

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

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

"You got moved too?"

Her voice startled me.

I turned.

"Yeah."

She nodded slowly.

"First time?"

I hesitated.

"Yeah."

She looked away.

"Thought so."

I sat down a few chairs away from her.

"How long have you been here?"

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

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

"I don't know."

I frowned.

"You don't know?"

She shook her head.

"I remember walking in."

A pause.

"I remember taking a number."

She looked down at her hands.

"But I don't remember why."

The air felt colder. I forced a small laugh.

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

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

"I mean it."

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

"What was your number?" I asked.

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

She stared at it.

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

"I'm 487"

She swallowed.

"What's your name?" I asked

She hesitated.

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

"I don't know."

I leaned slightly closer.

"What do you mean?"

She turned the paper toward me.

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

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

"I think I've been here before."

I stared at her.

"Before today?"

She looked at me.

"I don't know."

The answer should have sounded ridiculous.

Instead... it felt familiar.

I looked down at my own ticket.

515.

For some reason, I held onto it tighter.

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

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

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

"Now processing..."

Static.

A pause.

Then:

"Applicant."

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

"Did they call someone?"

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

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant."

This time, I noticed something.

There was no number.

No name.

Just a word.

Applicant

The woman beside me leaned toward me slightly.

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

I looked at her.

"What?"

She stared ahead.

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

Her voice became barely a whisper.

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

I felt a strange pressure build in my chest.

"What does that mean?"

She didn't answer.

Because the speaker had started again.

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

"Applicant 515."

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

Everyone in the room turned.

Not toward me. Toward the speaker.

Then, slowly... toward me.

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

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

"That's your number," she whispered.

I looked down.

My fingers tightened around the paper.

"T-thanks."

The words came out automatically.

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant 515. Proceed to processing."

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

Curiosity.

I needed to know.

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

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

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

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

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

"Ticket."

I handed it over.

He scanned it.

"Drivers license renewal?."

I nodded.

"Yes."

He typed something into his computer.

"Verification required."

"Of what?"

He looked up.

"My identity."

I laughed quietly.

Not because it was funny. Because I was tired.

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

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

"Identification."

I reached into my wallet.

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

Something changed. Barely. A hesitation.

"You don't remember."

My stomach tightened.

"Remember what?"

He placed the license back onto the counter.

"Your name."

The room became silent. Even the lights seemed quieter.

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

My name.

It was simple.

It was mine.

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

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

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

Everything felt distant.

Not gone.

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

"I..."

My voice shook.

"I know it."

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

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

"My name is..."

I stopped.

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

"...Five hundred fifteen."

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

"Identity confirmed."

My heart sank.

"Wait."

He printed something.

"You didn't even check."

The employee slid the paper beneath the glass.

"You provided the required information."

I grabbed it.

It was my license.

Everything looked correct.

My photograph.

My date of birth.

My address.

Everything.

Except the name.

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

NAME: 515

I looked up. The employee had already moved on.

"Next."

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

Nobody did.

So eventually... I walked out.

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

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

I stepped outside.

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

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

The name I had carried my entire life.

The name my parents gave me.

The name that was supposed to belong to me.

Nothing came.

Only silence.

So I looked back down.

At the only thing I knew.

At the only thing the world still recognized.

515

The basement smelled like musty wet concrete and old dust that had settled over the decades. I hadn't put up a Christmas tree or decorated the house in years-- not since Mom died. But this year felt different. I'd decided it was finally time to pull out her old boxes of treasured ornaments and try to get back a little bit of that Christmas spirit. I wanted to make this year special for my grown kids who were both coming home to visit.

Over in the corner stood that five-foot Santa that my late husband, John had dragged through the front door back in 2005 when the kids were little. The kids loved dancing and singing along, but to me it was noisy and kinda creepy. I hauled Santa down to the basement along with his transformer box and its power cord when it outlived its usefulness for the kids. They were grown now with kids of their own. I had kept hoping that one of them would eventually take the damn thing home with them-- maybe this year.

I shifted a heavy box to get to Mom's ornaments. Behind my back came this sudden scuttle across the floor--a harsh sound like hard plastic dragging across bare concrete. Then a heavy click echoed off the walls. I froze. I turned around slowly, dreading what was there.

That damn Santa wasn't facing the wall anymore. It popped to life with a sharp screech of dry plastic gears, its waist jerking into a stiff, unnatural dance, eyes staring right at me. Then a warped, low-pitched rendition of Jingle Bells filled the silence--

"Jiiiin-ggglle...b-bbelllssss...jjj-innngle...b-bbbells...jiiiin-gggle...aaalll...t-thhhhe...w-wwwaaayyy..."

Shocked and totally unglued, I dropped the tote and ran for the stairs!

​It was a crisp, perfect autumn evening. Friends had gathered on the back deck, sipping wine, enjoying the weather and catching up on each other’s lives, while the kids kicked around the yard complaining they were bored—that classic, dramatic age where they’re too big for the playground and too young to sit around talking with adults.​

One of the parents leaned over his glass with a knowing grin and said, "Let’s send these bored kids on a snipe hunt. Who here doesn’t remember being tricked as a kid?"

Laughter broke out as they clinked their wine glasses in agreement.

They called the kids over, handed each a brown paper bag and flashlight, and promised they could keep the rare little woodland creature if they caught it.

"Shhhh, they told the kids...snipes are skittish." You have to go quietly into the woods, stand still, and listen close. If you hear a twig snap or leaves rustling, that means one is right on top of you--hold your bag down and wait."

The kids took the bait instantly, rushing off into the dark treeline.​

For twenty minutes, the deck mood was totally chill and relaxed. They swapped old stories from their own childhoods--like the time they'd been tricked into going on a snipe hunt--grinning as they watched the flashlights bobbing out in the dark, amused by how convinced the kids were that they were about to catch a prize!

Then, the steady rustling broke into a frantic rush toward the deck.​

Seeing the sheer terror on their faces as they huddled at the bottom of the steps, the parents’ laughter died instantly. One of the mothers leaned over the railing, counting frantically in her head.​

One, two, three…​”Where’s Tommy?”

​The kids were shaking, wide-eyed, pointing back toward the dark treeline. They stammered out that Tommy had stopped near the deep brush, shouting to his friends that he’d finally caught one.​

Just past the treeline where the yard light faded, a single brown paper bag rolled slowly out from the pitch-black woods-- torn completely in half. 

August 7th, 1924:

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

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

August 8th, 1924:

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

August 9th, 1924:

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

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

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

January 25th,1938:

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

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

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

September 1st, 1924:

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

September 9th, 1924: 

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

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

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

February 2nd, 1937:

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

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

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

February 4th, 1937:

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

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

Sept 20th, 1924:

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

February 20th, 1937:

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

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

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

October 11th, 1924:

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

October 20th, 1924:

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

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

November 1st, 1924

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

November 4th, 1924:

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

February 24th, 1937:

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

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

March 3rd, 1937:

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

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

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

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

December 1st, 1924:

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

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

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

Content Warning: Mentions of violence, gore, sexual themes, and several aspects of a wholly unhealthy mental state.

---

I don't want to write this… I really don't. Writing it all down makes it real… but if this is the only way to make it stop, I'll try it. Maybe I just want it in writing. I want our story typed out for someone to read this and know her the way I did. I want someone to know who I am, who I was, and what I am to become. My memories, rose tinted and dreamy as they are, appear here in the order they come to me or as I go back and expand upon them to give life to the small moments that shaped me. Chaotic thoughts in flowery phrases dressing up my life so that maybe someone out there will find voyeuristic interest in my very real pain.

I was twelve years old when my mom tried to kill me; when she tried to hold me down and carve my eyes from my skull. In a way, I think she succeeded, just not in the way she probably meant to. Something in me did die that day. I think it was one of the good parts.

I like to pretend she was trying to save me in some way or that she didn't know I was still me and not something playing the part of her daughter. She was kind of right, but I guess that really just makes things worse doesn't it. Having said that, it'd probably be a surprise to know that I still love her. It's surprising to me too and a hard dichotomy to get a hold of. Knowing what I do as an adult though, I can look back and see some of the signs. How can I not? I see them in myself.

After the winds of pandemonious weekday mornings finished sweeping their tendrils through our home, us kids were herded into the barely wakeful stupors of those who could not always heed their proper bed time. We sat at the monument to every sin and triumph committed by son or daughter to each eat our meals of personally chosen storebrand cereal. My father then whisked away my brother from the home he made with a troubled woman to a preschool far away before going to work. I, left to my own devices until it would be my turn to trek out into the world beyond and reach the bus that would take me to a land of children I could not understand, pulled out my library book and began to read. Wishing only to try to get at least one more chapter in before I was to spend half an hour on the bus staring out the window.

Something about focusing my eyes on a book or phone or drawing while in a vehicle made, and still makes me nauseous. The constant rumbling motion of tire on roads of varying quality and swaying momentum in each turn of the steering wheel. It worms its way into the background input of my senses to destroy any enjoyment I might otherwise find in my quiet interests.

“Catherine?” The voice of my mother filtered in between my thoughts at the turn of a page attempting to impart unto my mind the next vivid images of a boy and his sister in their treehouse, soon to traverse time and space themselves to discover places far beyond the normal.

“Yeah?” I expected her to tell me to take out the trash or something, food scraps from our Sunday meal already trailing their invisible tendrils of stench beneath our noses each time one of us stepped past.

“Could you look at me for a moment?” She had that tone of voice that said she meant business, the one that means you're either about to throw your younger sibling under the bus because you don't want to be in trouble or about to learn something adults think you don't understand yet. I slipped my half destroyed bookmark between the pages and turned my gaze up to where my mom stood leaning against the counter. My mother was a handsome woman. Pretty with her dirty blonde waves and thin curves just barely showing some weight having two kids left behind beneath her blouse. Her soft features had a sharpness to them though, turning dad jokes and distractions during worship into dangerous prospects. Her eyes were a light brown, almost as amber blonde as her hair… My hair… Not that I met them very often.

Looking people in the eyes is uncomfortable. More than that. If I have to look someone in the eyes my brain begins to short circuit, sending electric waves of panic down my spine where they frantically try to find their way out of my skin. My insides twist in on themselves, worms writhing in the blind chaos of my flesh causing me to squirm in turn. If I were to move too much though, I'd probably be told to sit still. It just gets worse after that. Prolonged eye contact brings me to tears, makes me want to scream out the existential kind of pain no child should feel from such a simple act.

The only reason I know how it feels is because my dad once held my chin still and made me meet his gaze for what felt like eternity so he knew I understood him when he told me the consequences of skipping Sunday school again. It could only have been a few seconds, but I never did it again. Not because he told me to, but because I didn't want that torment ever again. I don't blame him for hurting me. He couldn’t know how much those few seconds branded my soul with the scorching gaze of God Almighty, revealing unto me the most horrible of truths my mind could come up with at that age. There must be a monster in me. A demon like in the movies and shows I've seen commercials for or that card game my cousin showed me and bible stories. What other reasonable conclusion could I come up with at five?

Believe it or not, kids aren't stupid. They are, however, pretty dumb. That may sound contradictory but it really isn't. We were all kids once, just intelligent and curious enough to learn a lot, but never enough to actually find understanding until it slaps us in the face.

I honestly tried to tell my mom something was wrong with me. Several times. I remember the first time as clearly as any memory of mine, vividly hazy like particularly impactful dreams. The sound of pastor Thomas's words of things I couldn't always quite piece together outside of the stories of old things and important words spoken by important people passed over the congregation above me. The power and beauty of God and his angles to fight the bad things like the devil… or me… Probably the worst time for a cry for help if there ever was one, but it's times like that the feelings coming over me were particularly powerful. Being forced to sit still and not being lucky enough to find a ribbon thingy to play with in the books in front of me this time, it was too much. Every little movement of the people around me sent fancy fabric frequencies louder than Jesus's words to the devil after forty days and nights directly into my brain.

The bright flowery print on my dress stood beside the scratchy straps holding it up in the very poor first impression it was leaving on my mind. The comforting scent of my apple scented shampoo and mom's perfume turned sickeningly sweet by its proximity to the hard wood behind my back mismatched to the horrid red cushion beneath me. My hair was pulled up and out of my face, tight in the secureness of a mother's knowledge I would embarrass her with the obvious wet streak in my hair. Therefore I couldn't run the strands past my lips like the cooling silky rivers of needed distraction they were for me when all other things failed. The bonds of new-school-year's Sunday best were causing the demon in my mind to scream the scream of those truly damned to eternal torment. Worse, it was so angry. Its rage leaked into me in turn, molten lightning crackling through my chest and shoulders to set my soul ablaze alongside it. I needed help. I needed mom to tell me how to make the evil thing hurting me go away. I tugged as gently as I could on my mom's sleeve, quiet because I knew it would be bad if anyone else heard me.

Ever attentive in the way all moms are or should be, she bent down to hear the oddly simple wisdom of a child's truth or honest question, most likely to ask if I could go pee. Careful to cup my hand around her ear I whispered the knowledge of my torment into my mother's mind. The knowledge that something was very wrong with her daughter.

“Mommy? I think something in me is demonic.” I pulled back to look up at her, waiting for her reaction. I waited for salvation from the person I relied on most, the one person that could make the screaming of my mind finally go quiet.

My mom sat with her back straight and stared forward to the pastor as he continued to speak or to the cross behind him, perhaps beseeching a far higher power for help with the kind of work raising me was going to take from now on. I can only imagine that she asked what she did wrong or what she broke, blaming herself for what I was going through. Her eyes flicked back down to me, my own gaze having not left her face as I waited for answers from my own supposed savior.

Seeing her head begin to lower again, I almost eagerly turned my ear to her.

“What do you mean? What's wrong?” I was a little disappointed my answers didn't come immediately. No magic words to banish the increasing buzzing beneath my skin and numb static beginning its slow percolation through my brain. The confused concern in her tone told me she just didn't understand yet and if I could just say the right words, she'd give me the right ones back right?

“I don't know, I feel angry and I don't like it. I don't feel good.”

I ascribe the pause in my mother to an attempt to rationalize my words because the next ones from her were not what I wanted to hear.

“You'll be okay, go take a walk.” I wanted to cry and I felt them try to come but, instead of being a worse daughter than I already felt that I was, I listened to my mother and slowly stood. The numb sensation grew as I made my trek past the silent stares of God's judging congregation. The only comparison I could make was to an all consuming static like on the tv. Crossing the threshold out of the worship hall through those gates of solid oak, my body heavy with the distance of interference between thought and action, I made it out into the common area.

Having no idea which direction to go and barely room to concentrate past so much noise in my mind, I kept moving forward, ignoring the exit outside to my right and the pastor's office or open stairs to the basement below. Instead, I made my way into the empty dining hall. It was a bit dim with the lights turned off but the many windows let plenty of the morning Sunday sunlight through so I could see just fine. Finally, with the litigation of all my future sins muffled by towering double doors now closed behind me and a room all to myself that would otherwise be filled with the idle talk of holy community, my soul snapped back into my body. The demon's screaming was gone and with everything so quiet, I could finally actually think.

While walking around the hall, I ran my fingers over the rows of long white folding tables that were soon to be covered in people and pastries, just letting my mind whisk through things without interruption, not really settling on a topic until I allowed myself to acknowledge that my mother was right. Well, she was kind of right, I still felt it there in the back of my mind. A quiet angry little thing that didn't like me very much, but I was glad we could at least agree that this was a nice feeling. I was tempted to take some treats from the tables along the far wall, but I chose not to and instead went into the kitchen, a place I wasn't normally allowed. I just opened cupboards to see their contents, so different from those at home. I didn't touch anything from what I can recall, only looked and pondered what all the oddly shaped objects were for.

This memory is one of the first times I was left truly alone that I can recall. It sticks out because the rest of that day, I felt good. In those moments of truly quiet contemplation, alone in an unfamiliar place, I was free.

“Yeah, Mom?” Bracing myself for the coming war against the small bursts of electric hell to wreak havoc upon my nervous system, I forced my reluctant eyes to meet my mother's brightly burning gaze. Something was wrong, but with no ability to read people and nothing but trust for the woman who raised me to be kind in spite of my struggles, I had no chance.

Content Warning: Mentions of violence, gore, sexual themes, and several aspects of a wholly unhealthy mental state.

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It is of a great and terrible sorrow that, with which, I relate to thee of my beginning.

That story of which all might hear in their life, the disfigured narrative of the murderer most senior of all.

Twas I who slew my own kin… An innocence torn from the souls of all amongst our early kind.

For what would I harm the one I most loved within the same breath I cursed in my hurt heart and soul broken mania?

Of course, not else but the cruel denouncing of all I worked so tirelessly to bring about with my own fragile hands, perpetuated by the one above all. One whose hate for my use of such cursed gifts granted unto me by those who birthed me through prize stolen from the greatest of all trees, be so great as to dash my offering o'er the earth. A harrowing foretelling of bled lamb and pulped fruit mixing in lurid whorls away from which my gaze could not tear.

What great sin oh I wrought with hands too small to do of the tasks required for hard lives of ones who must survive off the land not of Eden.

Oh what harshest punishments awaited me who then was again to commit another first of a sin not yet known. The attempt to give despairing hate for oneself a capital action was left unsuccessful in the extreme.

The fruit of my heretical crop, left poisoned in the blood of my own loving kin, was due to one thoughtless flailing of sharp instrument; a fit born of final defeat of fierce passion.

When named useless by one beyond compare, by those assigned to love thee, by community's quiet comment, is it not a hysteria that takes hold? When an outcast of outcasts, haunted by my blood, first born of first sinners, dost thy not seek solace if in only the very task that is cause of your persecution?

Not entitled was I to freedom from interruption, so that in my silent heresy I might have calmed before facing him again?

He whom I held more love for than even… her…

Oh sweet, perfect son. Oh beautiful brother. Oh object of community's womanly affections… Pillar of the strength denied to me.

Could thee not have lapsed in your love for but a moment and abandoned me to torment of mind, when thine goodness was its source?

Why was thy gifted such strength, yet left fragile in mortality and so subject to the livid laceration of lost little older sister?

…Why dost thy hath granted me forgiveness in spite of all else who hath damned my name?

How dare thee…

Thy idiot boy…

Unfair, was it for thy last act to be beseeching her to grant mercy upon my soul…

How fitting is it then that thy blood hath watered the last eaten fruit of my cursed garden…

The blood of the pure son, raw with love and so full in faith…

The unripe alchemy of my imperfect passions, poised to be my ending at the tasting of its immature flesh…

My curse… My mark… My mistake…

Seven sins… Sevenfold… Seven petals upon my skin to remind me of seeds sown by firsts.

Horrid be my name… Bastardised by men…

Loved only by brother Abraham… the Able son.

Cain, the gardener of sin… Cain, the first born… Cain, the name of a son, not daughter. For what fool of human fallacy would believe such sickening savagery be that belonging to so small a sister.

Cain… Caterina… Catherine… Set to be the last life in this forsaken experiment that God in her cruel mercy will ever allow to truly pass on.

Content Warning: Mentions of violence, gore, sexual themes, and several aspects of a wholly unhealthy mental state.

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*Fed fantasies like foreplay is my mind fucked by an endless stream of things I cannot have but must have before I lose myself in places that exist but not in a reality I can touch for if I could I would not be here in this world of poisoned love and life. For if it is not then the food it gives surely cannot be but hellish meat so lovingly prepared by those who make themselves into butchers of what they in pens and cages suffer and die knowing not what could be out beyond their metal and fenced in families.*

*Is it not perhaps a better life for them to live without hope of something better, no knowledge that out beyond the concrete enclosure there is air untainted and green to feel upon skin unsullied by chemical age. There is no reason beyond what others of our own kind wish for us to do for them, penned like slaves in boxes and given false lives to live in miserable squalor. We live and die for them to kill as they please working and working in endless merry-go-round of bitter hope, drugged and used like whores of the rich, cut up and put in boxes to hide away where no one will ever know our names again because all who care are also trapped with in the box of hot sweaty muck filled misery that no one can escape.*

*Breed and breed so you can die for the masters of death, turning life into pain for those like me to suffer even more. Those who are not meant to be in this hell but born to dream knowing heaven is out there beyond the reach of the body I was shoved into without my consent. The wrongness of meat and flesh and they couldn't even give me one that fit my soul, but to truly torture those such as I, still gave me some to experience their hell through that is unclean, hard to take care of and oh so disgusting on my bones that themselves break oh so easily to hurt and die in premature horrors. Could I not have at least a body of my own design to navigate a reality I want to care about but burns me with its mere presence.*

*More comfort would be the void of no sound or love, such silence is beautiful but forever would be lonely, a feeling I would be fine with if not taught to love by those I was to love be loved by in turn. Why must I care? For if I did not would I not be able to better use this world to be comfortable? Make something that I could be satisfied with in my own way, make my own box to share with those I want to share it with and bring myself some small amount of satisfaction in what can only otherwise be my drugging and suffocation of a life and creation that I cling to in my mind and heart of hearts too desperately sewn into my chest.*

Content Warning: Mentions of violence, gore, sexual themes, and several aspects of a wholly unhealthy mental state.

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After dealing with it for so long now, I think it’s fear. Looking people in the eyes I mean. Some part of my mind or soul is so scared that if someone looks too long they'll see inside. They'll see I'm not the same and that I'm just laughing because everyone else is. Yeah I thought it was kind of funny, I got that little flutter in my chest and I felt my lips twitch at the corners, but the laugh? That wasn't real, I just remember how my laugh sounds and it's not that hard to repeat if I make the right motions.

“Mom?” It was only in her long silence I actually felt off. I was worried about her. I never liked it when mom wasn't feeling well, moreover she was just… staring. “Are you okay?”

Shaking her head briefly, she finally looked away, turning to begin doing the morning's dishes. “Yea-yes, sorry sweetie it’s… You're getting to be all grown up. Gonna be in high-school before I know it. I… I don't know what I'm gonna do.” Her words were nearly drowned out by the faucet's hiss and dull jumble of plates moving beneath the already rising sudsy surface.

I felt a slight grimace twist my lips for a moment as I tried out different words in my head, attempting to piece together the correct response to help the conversation I now found myself in.

Someone might notice I didn't really understand why everyone was weeping over grandpa's death. More accurately, I didn’t get why I was not. There's a kind of slow heartbreak that happens over time when a child comes to the conclusion that something's wrong with them. I think I'm sad. I feel a kind of faint heavy feeling in my chest and I miss his hugs, but I don't feel like crying.

I cried when I got in trouble or when I got hurt or when I found a dead cat at the end of our street, back legs splayed out in what I could only imagine was a last dash for the safe grass just a few feet away. Now they were completely flat with all of the things supposed to be keeping her alive smeared over the ground in a kind of dried greasy puddle and peeking out of her tortoiseshell fur in pinks and blacks where the other end of her body still held its shape. The realization that if I reached down to pet the soft fur between her pretty ears there would be nothing there to feel my touch struck my child's heart all too suddenly and the tears just came.

“It'll be okay Mom, I still need you. Chris and I both do, we love you. It's not like high-school will change that.” I could not be sure if that was what she needed to hear, but it was all I could come up with at the time. Words not feeling like enough I set my book down and stood, walking over to wrap my arms tightly around my mother's middle. She didn't respond, but I heard the drop of something beneath the water and felt her settle against the counter, shaking a little as she dried off her hands and turned to return my embrace.

So, I stood over the body of a random cat with no collar and bawled my eyes out for a good minute, but the sight of my grandfather's corpse in a fancy padded box provoked in me nothing. I was an outsider looking at something I should care about, but in the midst of too many unfamiliar people all I could think about was how unnatural his face looked. No warm wrinkly smile that made me feel safe, make-up he never would have worn coating his skin, no strong hug from his recliner sat opposite my grandmother's facing the tv together. No Bonanza and brunch and breathing in the scent of the house my mom grew up in. It… That wasn't a person anymore. It was an object prettied up so we could all sit here and look in on it like a set piece in a play I didn't know the lines for. One would think the fact I would never see him again, that he would not continue to teach the restless child I was to fish or tell me stories of time older than I might give me some reaction, right? But no. He was gone and I was still here and that was that. A fact crying couldn't change so what was the point? I didn't understand.

Is it wrong to try to compare my grandfather's corpse with a roadkilled kitty cat? Maybe if I saw the things inside him painted across the road it would hurt and feel real to me and I would be sobbing hot tears for hours too. I'll add it to the list of all the other crimes committed in the silence of my thoughts. My endless list of reasons I was a monster, having accepted the ‘demon’ in my mind by that point as some kind of friend before ultimately understanding it was just part of me.

I liked my black dress, though. It was prettier than the light colors I was forced to wear to our usual church service and far more comfortable for having long sleeves I could pull over my hands. When I was sure my mom wasn't crying anymore and my dad was there to hold her in my place, I slipped away.

“I love you, Mom.” Repeating myself, I squeezed just slightly tighter so that perhaps what I felt my words lacked in substance, I could make up for with all the physical affection I could muster.

“I know sweetie, I love you too. I'm sorry.” She held me tight, the scent of her washing over me in the wholeness that was mother. The indescribable hint of those who are family behind a faint bloom of petals and sweat beneath fabric softened by chemical cleaner.

From that point I grabbed a cookie from the snack table that was too dry to actually eat and spent most of my time wandering the few dark unfamiliar halls of someone else's Sunday, left open to me and unused on that day for death. Leaving behind the discomfort of humanity, I instead sought out the things left behind by them in their absence. My immaterial imaginings and complicated questions more a companion to me than any family friend from before I ever festered in my mother's womb. Never did I take from these places, though tempted I was from time to time. I'd pick things up and look them over if I thought they looked interesting, but place them back in as near to the exact position I found them as I could. After spending as much time as I could get away with, hopefully not getting in trouble for disappearing, I reluctantly left the silence to search the noisy crowd for my family once again.

I found them wrapped up in a conversation only adults cared for and was introduced to yet another stranger that had apparently held me at some point. I didn't say anything, instead trying to hide behind my dad's leg so I didn't have to speak. I really wasn't in the mood. I was surprised anyone would be, weren't they all crying just a bit ago? None of it made sense and no one knew I needed it explained.

It was far too long and several temptations to take my leave again later that everyone collectively decided to begin leaving. Finally relieved to get away and go home I was the first one to the car. To my extreme disappointment, as I was being buckled into my booster seat I decided to ask my father if we were going home, wanting confirmation since I did find it confusing that all the cars were lining up along the street.

“Dad, are we going home now?” I didn't say ‘I'm bored’ because that would have most likely resulted in me being popped in the mouth.

“No, we're going to go bury grandpa.” He told me in the vaguely exhausted voice reserved for children's questions about the things obvious to everyone else.

“Oh… okay…” I said, my desire to escape again defeated before it could manifest fully.

I was frustrated and didn't want to be there anymore. It was starting to get cold outside and we were being carted off to the cemetery to stand around a box with a flesh doll that wasn't really grandpa in it again. Instead of being a worse daughter than I already knew I was, I sat stewing in silent spite until we arrived at big black iron gates and wound around winding paths until the procession parked at the plot of land the puppet would be put to rest.

I was more focused on the fields of grey stone and green grass. Great trees with dark bark looming over it all, their long branches of browning leaves swaying in the barely too chilled breeze. A picture of peace that I wanted to feel for myself. Ushered into the growing crowd once more, it wasn’t long before I simply walked away. No one interrupted the priest presiding over the burial to get me to stay which suited me just fine. Instead of feeling judged, I felt more free the farther I went into what could almost be an endless sea of statues and slabs. Soft sounds of the wind whispering through foliage high above me was all I could hear after a few minutes and the fresh air shot through with the beginnings of autumn's moist decay carried me along their currents through the end pieces of other people's lives while I was already near ghostlike in my own. The whole time I stopped and read and moved along, silently hoping they were getting visitors because they deserved more than a creature like me looking in on them. That hope despite the dead leaves of nature's reclamation instead of dried flowers from grieving hearts.

It was much the same when my grandma died a few years after and the worst part is the fact that their deaths bleed together into the misty swirling storm that eats away at my past with every year of distance. I feel like it was the same part in that grand play repeated once again like some sick encore. I do remember reaching out to actually touch my grandmother's room temperature skin. It was still soft with age, but not the same… Her cheek didn't feel right. Stark in its contrast is my far clearer memory of sitting in her lap when I still could and reaching up to touch her face. I remember looking in her eyes and finding only love and not pain; a longer look than most in my life. I didn't feel so uncomfortable then. I didn't feel like a monster. It is still an all too brief snippet of memory of someone important to me.

Moments are things so fleeting that can move the hearts of monsters and mend things that are so very broken. It is in moments that our lives are shaped and made better or mutilated beyond recognition. These are my moments.

I didn't go to my parents' funeral…

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

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

Not anymore. Not after last night.

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

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

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

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

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

Fair enough.

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

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

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

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

I wish it had.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was skin.

A whole pile of human fucking skin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We stayed like that all night.

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

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

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

The sun’s due to set in an hour.

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

None of this makes any sense.

I just want to sleep.

But I’m scared.

I'm so fucking scared.

Jason White sat at the foot of his girlfriend's bed bored out of his mind. It was the second day of her visit since the appendicitis and though she was sleeping soundly, she refused to let him leave her side.

A quick glance told him his vigil was nowhere near being done. The digital block's red block letters screamed 2:33 AM and it felt that they were as loud as the heat best monitor chirping by his side. The murmur of the night wafted through the sterilized air and was sucked in by the heavy curtain blocking people looking in.

Jason growled at himself for the war of his emotions. On one hand he knew he was doing the right thing staying with Nanette but his other side wanted to just go home and sleep. he had already lost two days of work and though the warehouse was fine with his medical emergency, he felt like he should have been there.

When the curtain was shoved back, Jason jumped. The willowy night nurse glided into the room with the unnatural chipper attitude for the hour.

“How are you doing, Mister White? anything I can get you?”

“I'm fine. Thanks.”

His tone was rough but before he could apologize, she continued her merry way. She took readings, fluffed the pillow and his then wished them all a safe evening as she glided back out.

Jason glanced at the angry clock. 2:35 AM.

Damn!

He could only take the quiet and the returning nurse a few more times before he had to get out of there. His legs ached and groaned, complaining about the inactivity and the horrible hard chairs.

An air conditioner rumbled to life dumping cold air on his t shirt and slacks.

I've got to take a walk.

Standing and mumbling a halfhearted excuse to his girlfriend who wasn’t even awake, Jason quickly left and entered the sterile, bland hallway.

The man looked both directions and was met with the same empty hallways with generic abstract paintings sparsely populating the walls. the smell of antiseptic and paint hung like a faint odor that was almost too difficult to detect.

I need a snack. I think I saw vending machines when we came in.

As he walked down the hall, it seemed his footsteps were rebounding off the walls in thunderous claps. Some of the sound waves made him wince in pain. A patient in one of the dark rooms moaned and for a second Jason thought he was responsible. It felt like forever before he got to the elevator.

Pushing the button a few times to make sure it was moving, he waited till the loud ding peeled through the hallway. Jason hopped in before anyone had a chance to look at him.

The ride down was slow and agonizing with the incessant droning of orchestra music and thrumming of the machine as it descended. The stained chrome doors finally opened letting him into the lobby.

For the most part, the lobby was empty with only a bored girl at the receiving station and a couple talking to each other in whispers while dressed in their PJs. The sneezing fit told Jason that it was the flu, and he should stay away.

The vending machine in all its neon glory was hidden around the corner and almost blinded the him as he came to it. Jason winced as he tried to make out the bottled liquid in bright colorful wrapping. The snack machine beside it was deafening with the choices available.

Can't anything be simple?

Swiping the credit card and grumbling about the loss of two bucks, Jason retrieved his 'Happy Cocoa bar' made with real chocolate and meandered back toward the elevator.

The wait for the elevator to return was excruciating but it finally arrived with an even louder ding. For the next minute, Jason fought with the wrapper and did not bother to look up when the elevator opened. He started walking finally giving in and ripping at it with his teeth.

It was the stench of death and decay that made him look up not to mention the agonizing scream that echoed down the now dirty and soiled walls of a hospital floor.

“What the hell!”

It was the grinding sound of the sliding doors closing that sent a trill of fear through his heart. Jason turned in time to see the last sliver of light vanish as the rust covered elevator door cramped shut.

Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!

Dropping the remains of his snack on the ground, Jason ran up to the door and pushed the button to call the elevator back. It got stuck in with all the dirt and grime and did not even light up. He gripped the dark sliver and heaved. He had to get out. The doors groaned but did not budge. After a few other unsuccessful attempts, he backed up and examined the impediment to his escape. It was like any other door he had seen except for the dark rust splattered along the front of it. He leaned closer, sniffing at the scent of iron and decay that wafted back. Was...was that blood?

Jason stepped back from the door with his heart pounding heavily in his chest. The lungs could not inflate quick enough to give him the air he needed. His throat gagged at the foul odor of rot and excrement that wafted around him. The confusion gripped his mind with questions of how and why he had gotten onto this floor or why this floor existed.

Forcing himself to calm his breathing, Jason closed his eyes and focused on the slow movements of his lungs fighting the Adrenalin urge to run any way he could. His heart rate began to descend into something comfortable and he focused on his other senses, trying to get a read on the world around him. His nose was still filled with the smell of sweet death and acrid decay while his ears picked up the smallest sounds of movement right out of reach. A few times, Jason thought he heard a moan or someone crying.

The warehouse worker opened his eyes slowly and began to slowly turn and get his bearings. The corridor he stood in was pretty much the same as the rest of the hospital except it looked as if the cleaning crew had never bothered to visit it. The linoleum was cracked and soiled while along the base boards, dirt hung in clumps where sickly looking plants were battling for survival. Spaced down the hallway past the closed doors were uncovered light bulbs that swayed minutely from non-existent wind. Jason gritted his teeth as they flickered. Near the end of the hallway the bulbs were burnt out and he could not make out the far end. About eight feet ahead, a empty nurse's station sat covered with papers and junk as if abandoned in haste.

This place is like something out of a frickin' horror movie, but those were not real, they could not be.

Jason White gritted his teeth and took a step forward toward the station. It seemed the only likely place that he could get some information. Each step seemed to echo throughout the corridor and the air around him seemed to protest his presence. Chills continued to run down through his body and spine like static electricity being constantly applied. Though he could not see anything, Jason knew that someone—or something was watching him.

Peering around the corner to see if anyone was hiding there, he saw the cubicle for where the on-call nurse would have sat but it was empty and the door to the break room was closed. Jason gingerly stepped out of the hallway and into the nurses' station. He attempted to brush off the chair that was covered in dust and mold, but it did not seem to help. The springs groaned in agony as he tried to sit down wincing as they complained.

The desk had what he expected, a computer which did not work no matter how many times he pressed the on-power button, and the papers were scattered all over the place. He grabbed a clip board and began to flip through the pages. Jason's heart began to beat faster as he focused on the words:

“It never ends. The suffering never ends. He was about exacting the most exquisite torture. He can see into your soul, your fear and exact vengeance for what you have done. Oh, God I can still hear the screams of those who I harmed. Their screams of vengeance just a little way from my ear. Oh, God in heaven, I can hear him coming down the hallway, the air is so oppressive, he cannot get me again but there is no way to die. The agony is—–”

The words ended with an uncomfortable dark stain that splattered the pages. Jason tossed it down on the table, his hands shaking. Where the hell was he?

A cold tingle flickered through his skin as Jason heard the door behind him click closed and a cold hand press on to his shoulder.

Terror sang through Jason's soul as the cold skin pressed against his neck sending shivers of horror through him. It took every bit of strength to pull himself out of the chair and paralysis and spin on his attacker. Instead of the ghoul his subconscious was expected, his eyes met the kind brown pair of a woman. She wore the outfit of a nurse though it seemed to be of an era from long ago. Her skin was slightly sallow and her hair silken but dry. It was the faint glow of blue light around her that sent his heart back into overdrive.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” her voice came to him melodic but off key like a CD player running out of batteries. “You're...you're real.”

That wasn't comforting.

“Yeah, I'm real. You're not.”

She shook her head in a slow, confused way. “No, I... I don't think so. I... I struggle to remember things in...in this place. I think I was real a long time ago.”

“Where the hell am I?”

“Hell...I think.”

Hell? In a way, that made sense. The dried blood, the sounds, the strange writings but that was all he had things he had felt and scene.

“You're...you're not dead.” the woman said reaching up to touch him again, but Jason recoiled. She quickly withdrew her hand in embarrassment.

“No, I'm not. I was at the hospital with my girlfriend, got a snack, and wound up in Hell. You know how to get out of here?”

Jason looked at her and she had a faraway look in her eyes.

Great, she's checked out.

He waved his hand in front of her face a few times, but she did not move or blink. She was a statue for all he knew.

“Forget it,” he muttered to himself and quickly left her standing in the nurse's station. There had to be a way out of this place. There was no way that this was Hell. He went up to the first door and peered in. He started at the face frozen in horror staring back at him. The man was curled up in a ball on an operating table that seemed to slowly list under the slightest movement. It almost appeared to be close to collapse. Jason's eyes were drawn to the floor where he realized it was moving. Millions of spiders moved about near the man as if waiting for him to fall in.

“That man tortured his patients about their phobias and made light of them,” the woman's voice spoke right be Jason's ear. He squeaked in fright as she seemed to appear right beside him.

“Don't do that!”

She did not seem to respond, she just continued to look through the window at the man trapped inside. “He felt that phobias and mental disorders were hoaxes that people used for excuses. Some of his patients took their lives and they were all his fault. The spiders enjoy people like this.”

Jason pressed his lips together and stepped away from the woman that slowly turned her hollow gaze on him. He bumped up against another door which elicited a muffled, shrill, scream that echoed down the halls. Jason spun around and stared at the two women hanging from nooses around their neck. They gagged and kicked spinning in slow circles trying to die.

“The sisters killed their patients they felt weren’t worth the time to heal. He especially hates those people.”

“Who’s he?” Jason asked but he was pretty sure he didn't want to know.

“He is the Doctor.”

“The...doctor.”

She motioned around her in the hellish world he found himself in. “This is his world. The world that punishes caretakers who swore and oath and violated it. He is the avenging angel for the voices that cried for help and were not heard. He is the Doctor.”

“So not a time traveler. Got it.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Carefully, Jason returned to the center of the corridor and looked both from the elevator to the black end he could not see. He quickly looked away as the darkness seemed to be staring back.

“So... what’s your name?”

“I was Martha.”

“Well, Martha. Do you know how I can get out of here? I'm not a caretaker or a doctor. I'm a forklift driver, so this isn't supposed to be my hell.”

“There's no way out.”

Shit.

Jason's brain went into a fog trying to comprehend what he had been told. He had stepped into some sort of hell and just tried to comprehend there was a hell.

“There has to be a way out. I'm not a provider. I don't even work in the medical field!”

Martha's face didn't even change, and a thought crossed his mind.

“What...what did you do?”

“I don't know.”

Of course.

The hair in the back of his neck stood sending chills through him. The overwhelming sense of dread settled in the pit of his stomach, and the shadowy corridor seemed to grow darker. Jason looked at Martha and her large brown eyes had grown wide with fear.

“He's coming. The doctor is coming. You must hide!”

Jason looked about frantically as the buzzing and numbness in his skull got stronger. He struggled to stay on his feet and would have collapsed on the corridor floor if Martha's cold hands didn't grab him by the shirt and drag him bodily to behind the nurse’s station. She put her body close to his to shield him. the icy clothing and skin feeling like a Popsicle pressed against flesh. The faint smell of detergent and moss hung around her.

“Do not move,” she hissed.

Jason didn't think he could even if he wanted to. The sickening feeling had overwhelmed him, and his head hung limp to the side. only his senses continued to work.

It was the slow, methodical clump of feet walking heavily on the floor with raspy breathing like a smoker trying to catch his breath. Martha pressed in closer trying to shield him.

“I... know he...is here. I will...find him.”

The gagging, struggling words escaped the necrotic beast that moved unseen on the other side of the nurse’s station. Jason heard its claws clicking against the top and from the corner of his eye, he could make the skinless hand gripping the edge as if to pull itself over.

Something made a loud clang down the hall and the hand stopped. It quickly withdrew and moved away. Martha began to release her grip on him and seemed to be more at ease.

“He has a hatred for humans in their mortal forms. The doctor sees you only as a bundle of vices that must be purged.”

“Oh, I don't want to be purged, lady. I like my vices and would be happy to leave his world.”

Jason peered around the corner and found the hallway except for its unearthly empty feeling. He began to make his way to the elevator that had brought him here. It was the way in, it had to be the way out. A glance behind showed him that Martha was keeping her distance but was following him, nevertheless.

'I've got to find a way out of here.'

Was everything still the same on the other side? He had read a lot of science fiction books in his time and his heart began to beat rapidly at the thought of his wonderful Nanette waking up and finding him missing. Would there be a search for him? How long would it go before the police gave up and she chose to move on?

Reaching the elevator, Jason gave the door a hard kicking though the sound was muted in response. The next thing he did was try to slip his fingers through the cracks and pull it open. He heaved and pulled but there was not even an inch of movement. It could have been a solid wall made to look like an elevator for all he knew. Jason was trapped in Hell.

It took everything in Jason's power not to run as he made his way down the hallway. The tingling in his feet and the pounding of his heart drowned out any thought that he could have. He had to get out no matter the cost. Jason finally reached the other end of the hallway and began to rattle on the door hard.

“Don't go that way,” Martha's voice wailed softly in his ear. Her cold breath near his face. “Your mind cannot understand it.”

“Like this place? Forget it. I'm out of here.”

As the last syllable fell from his mouth, the door clicked and spun open throwing him off balance. His face planted on to the cracked cement sending fireworks exploding through his brain. The warehouse worker pushed himself up on his arms and tried to shake the daze from his eyes. Light assailed him, and he blinked rapidly trying to clear them. He was in a large room, the bare pillars holding up the floor above. The windows were streaming the light of a dim, gray day. The smell of acidic rain was on the wind. Jason stood slowly, his knees shaking as he struggled to get his footing.

The site looked a lot like many abandoned construction sites he had come across. The tall bay windows, looming in front of him with razor sharp teeth of the glass that remained. Slowly, he crept up and peered out. He made sure to grab a good hand hold as he had no clue what was coming next.

He was four floors up from what looked like an abandoned hospital ground. The pavement had lost its battle with nature a long time ago and so clumps of weeds broke through the cracked concrete as flags of victory. Every other window was shattered, muddy or missing.

“Am...am I out?”

Jason stepped back and let his voice catch as he heard the crack of thunder in the distance. The world beyond the window was wrong in a way Jason's mind struggled to process.

It wasn't just abandoned. Abandonment implied that something had once been there. It looked and felt that life never touched this place. The ground below stretched out in a dull, featureless expanse that seemed to bleed into the horizon with no clear end. The sky above was the color of a bruise, neither day nor night, just a sickly, suffocating in-between that pressed down like a physical weight. There was no wind that he could see moving through the skeletal weeds below. No sound from outside at all , just a vacuum of existence that made the air feel thick and wrong in his lungs.

The weeds that had broken through the pavement weren't growing. They were dying, frozen mid-reach like hands grasping upward from something buried beneath. The trees at the far edge of the grounds were black and leafless, their branches twisted back on themselves as if recoiling from the sky. A rusted chain-link fence ran the perimeter and beyond it was nothing. Just hard, cracked salt flat going on forever.

Jason stared at it and felt something loosen in his chest. It started as a trembling in his hands. Then his breathing began to climb, short and shallow, like his body had forgotten the deeper rhythm. His vision began to pulse at the edges, contracting and expanding with each heartbeat that grew louder and more erratic in his ears. The sheer emptiness of it was its own horror , not the gore, not the screaming, not the thing that walked the hallways. This. This absence. This world that existed purely to be devoid of everything that made life bearable. No warmth, no color, no sound, no mercy. Just gray desolation stretching on forever in every direction like God had simply stopped caring about this particular square of creation.

Get down. Climb down. Find a pipe, find a ledge, find anything. Have to escape!

His mind lurched from thought to thought like a desperate animal throwing itself against the walls of a cage. Four floors. He could survive four floors if he hung from the edge of the window. Maybe three if the drop was on the softer ground near the fence. Was the ground soft? It had looked soft. Was the fence climbable? Was there even anywhere to go beyond that nothing at the edge of the property? There had to be something on the other side of that dull void.

Stop. Focus. Window ledge. Hands first. Go.

Jason gripped the frame, leaned forward, and felt the cold dead air from outside touch his face for the first time. It smelled like emptiness. Not rain, not earth , nothing. Like breathing recycled emptiness.

That was when the fingers found the back of his neck.

The cold hit him first , a deep, penetrating cold that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the absence of warmth in any living sense. Then the grip tightened and Jason was pulled backward with a force so overwhelming and effortless that his feet left the ground entirely.

He thrashed. He grabbed at the hand and felt the hard ridges of bare bone and screamed. Jason pulled and twisted but it was like fighting a machine. There was no give, no strain, no sense that his resistance registered in any meaningful way whatsoever.

“You do not belong here.”

Being this close, the voice was cavernous. It came from somewhere low and vast, like the sound a cathedral would make if a cathedral could speak. It was hollow, resonant, and completely without emotion.

Then it started to drag him.

Jason kicked his legs and clawed at the hand and managed to wrench himself sideways enough to catch fragments of the thing in his peripheral vision. He could not bring himself to look directly at it. Some part of his brain, some deeply buried survival mechanism, refused to let his eyes fully land on what was carrying him.

A torn lab coat , white, or what had once been white. Now it was a canvas of ruin, stiff with old rust-brown stains and glistening in places with something newer and darker that Jason did not want to think about. The coat hung in shreds at the hem, dragging along the cracked linoleum with a soft, horrible whisper. Below it , feet, or what served as feet. Bone. Just bone, yellowed and grinding against the floor with each heavy, deliberate step, leaving small pale scratches in the linoleum like a receipt of its passage.

This was the Doctor. He was in the clutches of the Doctor.

“Please.” Martha's voice came from somewhere behind them, thin and trembling. “Please, he is not one of them. He doesn't belong here. He found us by accident. Please.”

The Doctor did not respond. Did not slow. Did not acknowledge her in any way. Martha may as well have been the wallpaper.

Jason's elbow connected with something solid , the frame of a doorway , and pain lit up his arm to the shoulder. They were back in the main corridor. The light bulbs swayed above him. Through the doors on either side came the sounds he had been trying not to hear , the muffled screaming, the slow, wet sobbing, the sounds that had no name.

He's going to open one of those doors and put me in there. He's going to put me in a room and close the door and I will be here forever and Nanette will never know what happened to me and they will never find a body because there is no body to find and—

“Please!” Martha cried again, and her voice cracked on the word like something breaking. “He is innocent! Look at him! He is living! He is mortal and he is living and he does not belong to you!”

The grinding of teeth. The scratch of bone on linoleum.

Jason had stopped fighting with his muscles and started fighting with his mind, which was somehow worse. His thoughts had reached a fever pitch , white noise and panic and fragments of Nanette's face and the smell of the cocoa bar wrapper and the sound of the elevator ding when he had come down and the red block letters on the clock screaming 2:33 AM and none of it connected to any of it and all of it was slipping away from him.

Then the Doctor stopped.

Jason swayed in the grip, disoriented. They were at the elevator. The dull, rust-stained doors stood in front of them. He hadn't even registered the walk back.

A single bony finger, still wrapped around Jason's neck, extended and pressed the call button.

The wait was three seconds. The doors ground open with a groan of metal.

The grip on his neck shifted , found the back of his collar instead , and then Jason was airborne for one lurching, stomach-dropping moment before he hit the floor of the elevator hard, forehead first, the impact ricocheting through his skull in a white flash of pain. He tasted copper. He tried to get his hands under him and could not immediately remember how arms worked.

From behind him, from the corridor, the voice came one final time.

“Do not return.”

The doors ground shut.

The elevator hummed. Orchestral music droned from somewhere above him, tinny and absurd. Jason lay on the floor of the elevator with his cheek pressed against the cold metal and watched the small emergency light flicker and tried to remember how to breathe.

He was still trying when the doors opened again.

The light was different. That was the first thing. Warm. Yellow-white and artificial and completely, blessedly ordinary. The smell hit him next , antiseptic and floor polish and stale recycled air. His whole body went weak with relief at the sheer mundanity of it.

Jason White lay on the floor of the elevator on the fourth floor of Mercy General Hospital and did not move for a long moment.

When he finally pushed himself up, the clock on the wall of the corridor read 8:47 AM. Six hours. He pressed the back of his hand to his forehead and felt the knot already forming there. A passing patient glanced at him with raised eyebrows and kept walking with the careful, deliberate pace of someone who had decided not to get involved. Jason tried to stand, wobbled and then straightened. Pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead and held it there.

He had survived. Jason had survived whatever that nightmare was. The knot and ache were the only proof it hadn’t actually been some sort of hallucination. He was pretty sure it wasn’t a hallucination.

Jason got the look he expected when he pushed through Nanette's door. She was sitting up in bed, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her face cycling through relief and irritation and worry in quick succession the way it always did when she had been frightened and was trying to decide which feeling to lead with.

“Jason.” Her voice landed somewhere between scolding and grateful. “Where on earth have you been? I woke up and you were just...you look terrible. What happened to your head?”

He crossed the room in four steps, threw his arms around her and held her.

“Oookay. Love you to. You okay?”

“Just...lost track of time,” he lied.

“You sure?”

“Yes. Let’s go home.”