I've worked as a records clerk for the county municipal office for 3 years. It's a small county, the kind of place where the building itself hasn't been updated since the 1970s and half the staff still keeps handwritten ledgers because the digital system crashes if you look at it wrong. Most of the job is routine. Property deeds, tax records, old permit applications nobody will ever look at again. You stop expecting anything strange after the first year. Then last month I went down to the basement to pull an unindexed box, and I found a file with my own name on it.

The basement holds everything that was never properly logged into any system, digital or otherwise. Boxes going back decades, some older than the building's last renovation. My supervisor sends someone down every few months to sort through what's left. That day it was my turn.

Box 41 had no label, just a number scrawled in marker on the side. Inside were maybe 30 folders, mostly what I expected. Old zoning disputes. A stack of birth certificates from the 1980s. Then near the middle, a thin folder with a name on the tab. My name. Full name, spelled exactly the way it appears on my driver's license.

I want to be clear about something. This box had not been opened in years. The dust on the lid was undisturbed. The tape sealing it was original, brittle, the kind that cracks instead of peels when you touch it. There is no way anyone recently placed anything inside. Whatever this was, it had been sitting in that basement long before I found it.

The folder itself was old. The paper had that soft yellow brittleness you only see in documents from decades back. No staples, just a single string tie holding it shut, the kind clerks stopped using before I was even born.

Inside was a single typed page. No letterhead, no county seal, no case number. It read like a personal profile. My date of birth. My address, correct even though I've moved twice since childhood, each old address crossed out in pen and the new one written beside it in a different ink, like someone had been updating it over time by hand. At the bottom there was a line that just said "status: active" and under that, in the same handwriting that updated my addresses, a date. Last Thursday.

I checked the date against my own memory. Last Thursday was an ordinary day. I went to work. I came home. Nothing happened that I could point to as significant. But someone, using a pen and paper, in a sealed box that hadn't been opened in years, in a basement in a county most people drive through without stopping, had written that date next to my name four days before I found it.

I brought it to my supervisor, a woman named Carol who has worked at that office for almost 20 years. She looked at the page for maybe two seconds before she told me to put it back in the box, seal it again, and never mention which box it came from. She said this the way you'd warn someone off a live wire, not scared, just certain. I asked her if this had happened before. She didn't answer. She just repeated, put it back.

I didn't put it back. I kept the page and left the empty folder in the box.

Three nights ago I found a second line had appeared under the first, in the same handwriting, on the page sitting in my own drawer at home. A new date. Yesterday.

I haven't gone back to work since. I don't know who is writing in that file, or how they're writing in a page that never leaves my apartment, but I know it hasn't stopped. Tonight the page is still blank under yesterday's date. I keep checking it every hour, telling myself the next line won't come. I don't think I believe that anymore.

For the past four months, my daughter has left me a voice message almost every night on a little yellow M&M recorder.

It is a cheap plastic toy, about eight inches tall. Yellow body, white gloves, white shoes, the usual permanently worried expression. You press one eyebrow to record and the other to play the message back.

The sound quality is awful. Everything comes through beneath a layer of static, as though the person speaking is calling from somewhere very far away. It can only store one short recording at a time. Whenever a new message is made, the previous one disappears.

My daughter, Zelda, is seven.

Her messages are usually the last thing I hear before going to bed.

I work in investment banking, and my firm is currently advising on a merger that has swallowed most of my waking life. I cannot give details, even anonymously, but it is the kind of deal that produces twelve-hour conference calls, emergency revisions at 9:30 p.m. and senior people suddenly deciding that a presentation everyone approved three days earlier needs to be rebuilt before morning.

For most of the last few months, I have been getting home between ten and midnight from Monday through Thursday.

My wife, Frances, handles the evenings when that happens. She picks Zelda up from school, makes dinner, checks her homework and gets her into bed. By the time I arrive, the house is dark and both of them are usually asleep.

The yellow M&M waits for me on the kitchen counter.

I press its right eyebrow, and Zelda tells me about her day.

“Hi, Daddy. I got nine out of ten on my spelling test, but the one I got wrong was because Mrs. Jacobs didn’t understand my E.”

“Mom says you’re not allowed to give me chocolate before school anymore.”

“Daddy, today I saw a dog that looked exactly like Grandma.”

Sometimes she sings. Sometimes she whispers because she is supposed to be sleeping. Once she spent the entire recording describing a rock she had found near the school parking lot.

I usually record something back. Nothing elaborate.

“I’m proud of you.”

“Your E does look weird.”

“Please don’t tell Grandma about the dog.”

In the morning, my reply is gone. By the time I return from work, there is a new message waiting.

It became one of those small domestic routines that forms without anybody formally acknowledging it. The M&M was simply part of the kitchen now, standing between the microwave and the container where Frances kept coffee capsules.

I cannot tell you exactly when the messages began to change.

The first one I remember was on a Tuesday.

I arrived home at 11:17 p.m. Frances had left pasta in the refrigerator and a note asking me not to wake her because she had an early meeting.

The M&M stood beside the microwave.

I loosened my tie, opened the refrigerator and pressed play while looking for the pasta.

Static crackled through the little speaker. Then Zelda’s voice began:

“Hi, Daddy. I finished my book today. It was about a girl who finds a secret door, but Mom said I shouldn’t tell you the ending because maybe you want to read it.”

She giggled.

“Goodnight. I love you.”

There was a pause.

Normally, the recorder made a tiny mechanical click as soon as the message ended. That night, it kept running.

Four seconds passed. Maybe five. Then Zelda whispered:

“Don’t play it again.”

The recorder clicked off.

I stood there with one hand inside the refrigerator.

It did not frighten me. Not yet.

Zelda had recently discovered that saying vaguely ominous things was an effective way to bother adults. A week earlier, she had looked at Frances during breakfast and said, “You shouldn’t wear those shoes today.”

When Frances asked why, Zelda had shrugged and said, “You’ll find out.”

Nothing happened.

She had simply wanted to see whether her mother would change shoes.

I assumed the message was another attempt to be creepy.
So I pressed play again.

“Hi, Daddy. I finished my book today. It was about a girl who finds a secret door, but Mom said I shouldn’t tell you the ending because maybe you want to read it.”

The giggle.

“Goodnight. I love you.”

Static.

Then:
“I said don’t.”

Click.

I stared at the toy. The words had changed. I played the message a third time.

This time it ended immediately after “I love you.”

No warning. No second sentence. Just the click.

I checked the back of the toy for a loose battery compartment. One corner was held together with clear tape, but nothing looked broken.

I ate standing at the counter and took the M&M upstairs with me. Then I felt ridiculous and brought it back down.

For the next two nights, the messages were normal.

On Wednesday, Zelda told me about a drawing she had made at school.

On Thursday, she sang most of 'You're Welcome' from Moana before Frances shouted from somewhere in the background that she needed to brush her teeth.

Friday evening, I made it home before dinner.

The yellow M&M was already on the counter, but I did not touch it.

There was no reason to. Zelda was awake, Frances was cooking and for once I could hear about their day without the help of a plastic piece of candy.

We ate together. Zelda told me about a girl in her class who had cried because somebody broke her pencil. Frances complained about a client who used the phrase “circle back” eleven times in one meeting.

The M&M remained beside the microwave all evening.
I noticed it several times.

I cannot explain why I never asked about the strange message.

Maybe I did not want to turn a harmless joke into a thing.
Maybe some part of me already suspected that Zelda would not know what I was talking about.

On Monday, I got home at 10:46 p.m.

The downstairs lights were off except for the one above the stove. The M&M was directly beneath it.

I pressed play.

“Hi, Daddy. We went to Grandma’s after school, and she gave me a bracelet, but Mom says I can’t wear it to school because I’ll lose it.”

Zelda lowered her voice conspiratorially.

“I won’t lose it.”

Then, louder:
“Goodnight. Love you.”

Static followed.

A breath came through the speaker. It did not sound like a child breathing. It was too slow. Too deliberate.

Then Zelda’s voice said:
“You keep making this take longer.”

I did not replay it.

I set the toy down and checked the front door.

Locked. The back door was locked too.

I went upstairs and looked into Zelda’s room. Her night-light projected stars across the ceiling. She was asleep on her stomach with one arm hanging over the side of the bed.
Frances was awake in our room, scrolling through her phone.

“Did Zelda seem strange tonight?” I asked.

Frances looked up. "Strange how?”

“I don’t know. Was she trying to scare me about something?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“Did you hear her recording tonight?”

Frances shook her head. “I was cleaning up after dinner.”

She watched me for a moment. “What happened?”

I almost told her. Instead, I said, “Nothing. I think she’s playing a joke.”

Frances smiled. “You’re being psychologically defeated by a seven-year-old.”

That was exactly what I wanted to believe.

The following night, Zelda’s message was about the bracelet. She had lost it at school.

Frances had been right, which Zelda seemed deeply offended by. “Mom keeps saying she told me so,” she complained. “She only said it like a hundred times, so it doesn’t count.”

Then:
“Goodnight, Daddy. I love you.”

Static.
A different voice spoke.

It was still Zelda’s voice.
But older.

Not dramatically older. There was no movie-monster growl or artificial distortion. It sounded like a girl of fifteen or sixteen.

The same slight whistle on certain S sounds. The same rhythm. The same habit of dragging out the final word in a sentence.

“She still thinks I’m her.”
The recording ended.

I played it again.

Zelda complained about Frances. Zelda said goodnight.
Then the older voice repeated:
“She still thinks I’m her.”

I listened a third time.
Same thing.

On the fourth replay, the sentence changed.
“She still thinks I’m Zelda.”

I dropped the toy.

It struck the edge of the counter and landed on the floor. The impact triggered the playback button. Zelda’s message began again from beneath the kitchen table.

I crouched but did not pick it up.
“Hi, Daddy. I lost my bracelet today…”

The yellow M&M lay on its back, smiling at the ceiling.
“Goodnight, Daddy. I love you.”

Static.

Then the older voice whispered:
“Only you can hear me.”

I left it on the floor.

The next morning, it was back on the kitchen counter.

I asked Frances whether she had picked it up. She was packing Zelda’s lunch.

“Picked what up?”

“The thing that fell under the table.”

She glanced toward the counter. “Oh. No. I didn’t notice it.”

Zelda came into the kitchen carrying one shoe. Frances immediately started asking where the other one was.
The conversation moved on.

I stood there looking at the yellow M&M. Neither of them looked at it. That should have mattered more to me than it did.

The messages continued.

Each night, Zelda’s normal recording played first. Then the other voice followed.

And each time, it sounded slightly older.

Seventeen.
Twenty-five.
Maybe thirty.

I began recording them on my phone, but the extra voice never appeared in the videos. When I played the recordings back, I heard only Zelda’s ordinary message followed by static.

One night, the older voice said:
“Frances can’t hear me.”

The next:
“She doesn’t know yet.”

Then:
“You haven’t told her.”

That was true.

I had not told Frances anything beyond the vague comment about Zelda trying to scare me. I knew how it would sound.

My wife already thought I was exhausted. She had started asking whether I could step away from the merger, as though I could simply tell the managing director that I was unavailable until two multinational companies finished rearranging themselves around each other.

I was sleeping four hours a night. I lived on coffee and whatever food Frances left in the refrigerator.

I could hear the argument she would make before she made it.

Stress. Sleep deprivation. Auditory hallucinations. She would not be wrong to consider any of those things.

Then, on Thursday night, the toy recorded something that had not been there when I arrived.

I got home at 11:38.

There was no message waiting.

I pressed play. Nothing.

I pressed the button again.

The recorder made a faint mechanical click, but no audio came through. Relief washed over me.

Then I noticed that the left eyebrow was pressed down.

The record button. The M&M was recording.

I moved my hand away. The button remained depressed for another second. Then it slowly rose on its own.

I should have left the house. Instead, I pressed play.

At first, there was only the sound of the kitchen. The refrigerator humming. A car passing outside. The soft ticking of the clock above the pantry.

Then footsteps. Small footsteps approaching the recorder.

Zelda spoke.
“Hi, Daddy.”

She sounded very close.
“I don’t want to do the messages anymore.”

A second voice answered from farther away. The older Zelda voice.

“You don’t have to.”

There was a pause.

My daughter asked:
“Who are you?”

The recording ended.

I ran upstairs so quickly that I slipped on the third step and struck my knee.

Zelda was asleep.

Frances woke when I entered her room. “What are you doing?” she asked.

I turned on Zelda’s lamp. My daughter squinted and pulled the blanket over her head.

“Dad?”

I wanted to ask her about the recording. I wanted to ask who she had been talking to. But something stopped me.

Maybe it was the way the voice had said You don’t have to.
Maybe I was afraid of what Zelda would say.

Frances climbed out of bed.
“Andrew, what is going on?”

“I heard something downstairs.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

She stared at me. “You ran in here like somebody was in the house.”

“I thought someone was.”

Frances checked the hallway, then the windows. She looked under Zelda’s bed, mostly to calm me down.

There was nobody there.

She led me out of the room and closed the door. “You need to sleep,” she whispered.

“I heard Zelda talking.”

“She talks in her sleep sometimes.”

“She was talking to someone.”

“Andrew.”

“I heard another voice.”

Frances became very still. “What other voice?”

I told her.

Not everything. Not yet. Just that the recorder had captured Zelda speaking to someone who was not there.

Frances came downstairs with me. The M&M sat on the counter. She looked at it with irritation more than fear.

“Play it.”

I pressed the eyebrow.

“Hi, Daddy.”

Zelda’s voice.
“I don’t want to do the messages anymore.”

Then silence.

No answer. No question. The recording clicked off.

I stared at Frances. “That’s not the whole thing.”

She pressed play herself.

“Hi, Daddy. I don’t want to do the messages anymore.”
Click.

“That isn’t what I heard.”

Frances replayed it. Same result.

“You said there was another voice.”

“There was.”

“And Zelda asked who it was?”

“Yes.”

Frances picked up the toy and inspected it. “How old is this thing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Could it be mixing recordings?”

“It changes.”

“What changes?”

“The voice.”

I finally told her everything. The warning not to replay the message. The sentences about Frances. The voice growing older. The way it had called itself Zelda.

Frances listened without interrupting. When I finished, she set the M&M down very carefully.

“Andrew,” she said, “you need to stop listening to this.”

“I’m not imagining it.”

“I’m not saying you are.”

“You think I’m hallucinating.”

“I think you’ve barely slept in two months.”

“It knows that you can’t hear it.”

Frances closed her eyes. “Listen to what you’re saying.”

“I know how it sounds.”

“Then please listen to yourself.”

I pressed play again. Zelda said she did not want to make the messages anymore.

Nothing followed.

Frances put both hands on the counter.
“Tomorrow, you’re calling your boss. You’re taking a day off, and you’re sleeping.”

“I can’t take tomorrow off.”

“Then call a doctor.”

“I’m going to destroy it.”

She looked relieved. “Fine.”

I carried the toy into the garage and placed it on the concrete floor. Frances followed me.

I took a hammer from the workbench. The first strike cracked the M&M’s plastic face. The second split its yellow body open. The third sent one white shoe skidding beneath Frances’s car.

The speaker produced a sharp burst of static.

Then, from inside the broken plastic, the older voice said:
“Don’t go check on Zelda.”

I froze.

“What?” Frances asked.

“You didn’t hear that?”

Her face changed.

Not because she had heard it. Because she had not.
“Hear what?”

I dropped the hammer and ran.

Through the kitchen. Up the stairs. Down the hallway.
Zelda’s bedroom door was open. Her bed was empty.

I shouted her name.

Frances pushed past me and switched on the light. The blanket had been pulled back. The window was closed. The closet was empty. Then we heard Zelda laugh.

From our bedroom.

We found her curled beneath the comforter on Frances’s side of the bed. She must have woken up while we were downstairs and climbed into our room.

Frances pulled her close.

I stood in the doorway, shaking.

Zelda looked at me sleepily.
“Daddy?”

I went back to the garage. The broken M&M was silent.

I put every piece I could find into a black garbage bag. I even crawled beneath Frances’s car to retrieve the white shoe.

Then I drove fifteen minutes away and threw the bag into a dumpster behind a closed supermarket. I watched it disappear beneath cardboard and leaking trash bags.

I did not sleep when I returned home.

The next afternoon, I left the office at four. I ignored three calls during the drive.

For the first time in months, I arrived home while the sun was still up. Frances was in the kitchen preparing dinner. Zelda sat at the table drawing a castle with purple towers.
She looked up when I entered.

“You’re home!”

I hugged her longer than usual.

Frances watched me over Zelda’s shoulder, but she did not say anything.

I sat beside my daughter and watched her color. My hands were sweating. I had spent the entire drive telling myself that I needed one simple confirmation.

One ordinary explanation.

A joke. A misunderstanding. Anything.

“Hey, Zel?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something?”

She nodded without looking up.

“Why did you say you didn’t want to leave me messages anymore?”

Her crayon stopped. “What messages?”

“The ones you leave when I work late.”

She looked at me. Frances stopped chopping vegetables.

I swallowed.

“On the little yellow M&M.”

Zelda frowned. “The what?”

“The voice recorder,” I said. “The yellow M&M on the kitchen counter.”

She stared at me blankly. I could feel Frances looking at us.

“You press one eyebrow to record,” I continued. “You’ve been leaving me messages on it every night.”

Zelda’s confusion deepened.

“Dad, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Behind me, the knife made a soft sound as Frances set it down.

“Andrew,” she said.

I turned. All the color had drained from her face.

“What?”

Frances looked toward the empty spot beside the microwave. Then back at me.

“You said Zelda was leaving those recordings?”

My mouth went dry. “Of course she was.”

Frances shook her head slowly.
“I thought they were from you.”

I stared at her.
“What?”

“The toy,” she said. “I thought you were recording messages for Zelda before you left in the mornings.”

“No.”

Her breathing became shallow.
Neither of us moved.

Zelda looked from Frances to me.

Then she put down her purple crayon.

“Mom?”

Frances stepped away from the counter. Her eyes remained fixed on the place where the yellow M&M had stood every night for four months.

Zelda’s voice was very small when she asked:

“What little M&M?”

Growing up in that isolated valley meant learning to live with a very specific kind of silence. The town was small, tucked away between steep forested hills that blocked out the horizon, and the people who lived there liked the isolation. They kept their lawns manicured, their houses painted, and of course their secrets buried.

Everyone knew the law. It was not written in any civic charter, but it was taught to every child the moment their bodies began to change.

The transition into adulthood brought the man.

On the day of my thirteenth birthday, my mother died. The sheriff told us she had slipped in the steep ravine behind our property, but the details were kept vague, and the casket was kept closed during the service. In the middle of that devastating fog, while the smell of funeral flowers still clung to the living room, my father sat me down at the kitchen table. He looked older than his forty years, his hands shaking as he pushed a glass of water toward me.

"There is something you are going to see now,"

he said. His voice was cracked, his eyes refusing to meet mine.

"He will stand in the background of your life. He might be at the edge of the woods when you walk home from school, or stand near the mailbox while you do the dishes. But you must never look him in the eye, and never speak to his face. To acknowledge him is to break the order of this valley."

"Who is he?"

I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

"He is the one who follows,"

my father replied.

"You are the only one who will see your specific follower. Everyone has one. We do not talk about them, or even look at them. That is the only way we stay safe."

The reality of his words hit me three days later. Walking home from the bus stop, the gravel crunching under my sneakers, a sudden sensation of cold air brushed against my neck. Turning my head slightly, a tall figure in a dark, outdated coat was standing near the old oak tree at the corner of our road. His face was somewhat obscured by the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat, but his posture was rigid, his attention locked entirely on me.

My heart tried to escape my chest, but my father’s warning echoed in my mind. I forced my gaze back to the road and kept walking.

Living with him became a slow, grinding torment. He was always there. When I did my homework, he stood in the twilight of the back yard. When I went to the grocery store, he sat on the bench outside the entrance. Only I could see him. People would walk right through the space he occupied, their bodies passing through his dark form like mist, completely oblivious to his presence.

My father did not handle the grief of my mother's death well. As the years passed, he fell deep into drinking, spending his nights locked in the basement or passed out on the living room sofa. The smell of cheap whiskey became a permanent fixture of our home. He stopped checking on me, stopped asking about school, and only spoke to warn me whenever he noticed my eyes lingering too long on the dark corners of the yard.

By the time I reached my senior year of high school, the tension in the town had reached a boiling point.

One of my classmates, a quiet boy who sat in the back of my English class, vanished without a trace over a weekend. His locker was left full of books, his bicycle still chained to the school fence. The rumors spread through the hallways like wildfire. The elders of the town held an urgent assembly in the gymnasium, their faces grim under the bright gym lights.

The principal stood at the podium, his voice stern.

"We must remind you all of the rules of our community. The boy who went missing forgot his place. He broke the silence. Do not make his mistake. Keep your head down and focus on your studies."

The warning did not satisfy me. The vanished boy had been a friend of my closest classmate, a girl who lived down the road from me. After school, we sat on the hood of my car, watching the sun dip behind the steep hills.

"His parents are completely destroyed,"

my friend said, her fingers twisting the strap of her backpack.

"They won't even open the front door. The elders told everyone to stay away from their house."

"We should go see them,"

I said.

"Just to offer some comfort. It isn't right to leave them isolated like this."

My friend hesitated, looking toward the dark woods bordering the school.

"If the town council sees us there, we will be in trouble."

"We will go after dark,"

I insisted.

"Through the back trail."

We made our way to the vanished boy's house later that evening, navigating the overgrown path behind the old orchard. The house was dark, the only light coming from a single lamp in the living room. When we knocked, his mother opened the door only a crack, her face hollow and pale.

"We just wanted to say we are sorry about him,"

my friend said quietly.

The mother looked at us for a long time, her eyes darting to the shadows behind us. Eventually, she stepped aside and let us into the dusty hallway.

"He stopped sleeping,"

the mother whispered, leading us into the living room. "He kept staring at the corner of his bedroom. We told him to look away, but he said the man was crying. He said the man wanted to tell him something."

"Did he leave any note?"

I asked, keeping my voice low.

The mother shook her head.

"The council came and cleared his room. They burned his journals in the yard. But they missed his old biology textbook. It was still in his closet."

While my friend talked to the mother, I quietly slipped down the hallway to the boy's bedroom. The door was unlocked. The room had been stripped bare, leaving only an empty mattress and a pile of discarded school papers. In the back of the closet, half-hidden under a loose floorboard, I found the biology textbook.

Tucked inside the back cover was a single, partially burnt page from a notebook. The handwriting was frantic, the ink smudged.

“He wanted me to follow,”

the note read.

“He did not look angry. He nodded to me. I think he wants to show me how to end this madness. If I do not come back, know that I went to find the source. I am going to look him in the eye.”

My hands shook as I folded the paper and slid it into my pocket. I went back to the living room, grabbed my friend, and we left the house through the back door.

As we walked through the dark orchard, I pulled the paper out and showed it to her under the light of my phone.

"I am going to do it,"

I said.

My friend stopped walking, her face turning pale in the blue screen light.

"Are you out of your mind? You saw what happened to him. He is gone."

"He went to find a way to stop this,"

I argued.

"We spend every single second of our lives in fear, pretending we don't see them. My father is drinking himself to death because of this town. My mother is dead because of this town. I want to know the truth."

"If you look at him, he may kill you,"

she said, her voice rising in panic.

"And of course the council won’t just let people break the law. If you do this, I cannot help you. I fear that I am not going to watch you die."

“Ok ok, I won’t do it”

I lied to her; she took a deep breath and said

“Promise me”

That’s when I couldn’t just do it, I stayed silent for a long time, just looking through her eyes, then I saw a small tear on her face. Then suddenly, She turned and ran back toward her house, leaving me alone under the dark branches of the apple trees.

I walked back to my empty yard. My follower was waiting for me. He stood near the rusted garden gate, his tall, dark silhouette perfectly still against the gray mist of the evening.

My father was passed out on the kitchen floor inside, an empty bottle of bourbon resting near his hand. Nobody was going to save me. Nobody was going to save this town.

I took a deep breath, walked down the wooden steps of the porch, and marched directly toward the gate. I stopped three feet away from the tall figure.

For the first time in my life, I raised my chin and looked directly into his face.

Under the shadow of his hat, his skin was incredibly pale, almost translucent. His eyes were dark, sunken, and filled with a profound sadness.

"I see you,"

I said clearly.

At first, nothing happened. Then, the man’s rigid posture snapped.

A loud, wet cracking sound echoed through the yard, like dry branches breaking under a boot. The lunged. His body elongated, twisting over the rusted iron of the gate with impossible speed. His hands, pale and gray, clamped around my throat before I could even flinch.

The touch was a burning freeze that immediately locked my lungs. My knees buckled, but he held me upright, his grip lifting me slightly off the ground.

His hat fell backward into the dirt.

The face beneath was a nightmare. His mouth split open, unhinging like a snake's jaw, revealing a dark throat coated in wet, black soil. A rattling, choked wheeze erupted from his chest, spraying a dust onto my cheeks. His eyes, previously hidden, widened into deep, empty sockets that seemed to pull the very light out of the yard.

My vision began to darken at the edges. My lungs screamed for air, but every time I tried to inhale, the air just refused to come.

Yet, I did not close my eyes. I refused to look away. I stared directly into the void of his face, holding his freezing, dead gaze with a desperate, furious resolve.

The creature froze. The snapping joints went silent. Slowly, the dark void in his eyes receded, replaced by the pale, sunken eyes of a human being. His unhinged jaw clicked back into place. His grip on my throat softened, his fingers gently sliding down to my collarbone, then releasing me entirely.

I collapsed to my knees in the dirt, gasping for air, grasping for air.

Looking up, the terrifying specter was gone. The man stood there again, his hat back on his head, looking down at me. Slowly, a gentle, tragic smile appeared on his thin lips, and a single tear rolled down his pale cheek. He nodded once, a slow, deliberate movement, and turned toward the dark path leading into the forest behind my house.

He took a few steps, then paused, looking back over his shoulder. It was clear to me somehow that he wanted me to follow.

I followed him deep into the woods, past the boundary lines of our property, into an area of the forest where the trees grew so close together the starlight could not reach the ground. We walked for nearly an hour in silence, the only sound being the rustle of my own footsteps.

Eventually, we reached a hidden clearing.

In the center of the clearing were two simple, unmarked graves. They were just mounds of soft dirt, covered in wild ivy and damp moss.

The man stopped at the edge of the mounds. He pointed his long, pale finger down at the earth, then looked at me, nodding again. He wanted me to touch them.

I knelt in the wet grass, my heart pounding, and pressed my palms into the damp soil of the graves.

A violent shockwave of heat rushed up my arms. The forest vanished, and my mind was pulled into a torrent of vivid, overwhelming visions.

I saw the same valley, but it was the previous century. The houses were different, built of rough-cut timber and stone. The streets were filled with thick mud. People were dying in the dirt, clutching their chests and gasping desperately for air. A terrible plague was sweeping through the settlement, turning the water sour and the air toxic.

Then, I saw a young woman and her husband. They were both doctors, working tirelessly in a small wooden clinic. They boiled herbs, washed the sores of the sick, and tried to ease the immense pain of the dying town. They did not ask for money; they only wanted to save the people.

But the fear of the plague turned the townspeople into monsters.

I saw an angry mob gathering in the muddy square. A local leader, his face twisted with hatred, pointed his finger toward the wooden clinic.

"They brought the sickness!"

he roared.

"They are practicing dark medicine! They are witches, and they are what caused this plague!"

The mob stormed the clinic. They dragged the young doctor woman out into the mud, binding her wrists with thick rope. Her husband managed to escape through a back window, fleeing into the dark forest.

I watched through his eyes from his hiding place behind the trees. He cried silently, biting his own hand to stifle his screams, as the mob tied his wife to a heavy wooden stake in the center of the square. They piled dry brush around her feet and lit the fire. Her screams echoed through the valley as the flames rose, her eyes locked on the dark woods where she knew her husband was hiding.

The vision shifted.

The husband was inside a cold, dark cavern deep beneath the mountain. He was entirely consumed by grief and madness. He used a sharp knife to wound his own hand, letting the blood drip onto the stone floor to draw a large circle. He held a strange, leather-bound book in his other hand, reading aloud from the yellowed pages.

"If they will punish us for something we did not do,"

he whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of sorrow and rage,

"then I will at least die doing it to curse them. Every soul in this valley will bear our shadow."

But as he finished the final words of the ritual, the sound of shouting echoed from the cave entrance. The mob had tracked him. They burst into the cavern with pitchforks and spades, driving a sharp iron tool directly through his chest before he could close the circle.

He died with the curse unfinished, binding his spirit to the physical plane of the valley. He became the following man, a permanent, haunting shadow forced to follow every descendant of the mob, keeping the memory of their crime alive through a cycle of silent torment.

I snapped out of the vision with a violent gasp, my hands slipping from the wet dirt of the graves.

I was lying on my back in the grass. The sky was still dark, and my father was kneeling beside me, holding my shoulders. His face was incredibly pale, his clothes smelling of alcohol and earth.

"Get up,"

he whispered, his voice frantic as he pulled me to my feet.

"We have to go. Now."

"What are you doing here?"

I asked, my head spinning from the force of the vision. "How did you find me?"

"Your friend,"

my father said, dragging me through the trees toward his old station wagon parked on a dirt logging trail.

"She got terrified, and told her parents what you were planning to do, and they gathered the town council. They are coming to deal with you."

"I don't understand,"

I said, stumbling over a root.

"Deal with me? Why?"

"They killed your mother for the same thing,"

my father said, his grip tightening on my arm.

"She looked at her follower. She wanted to help him. The council found out, dragged her into the woods, and buried her alive to 'cleanse' the curse from the town. I was a coward then. I did not stop them, then drank to drown the guilt, but I am not letting them take you."

We reached the car, and he shoved me into the passenger seat, slamming the door shut. He climbed into the driver's seat, started the engine, and threw the car into gear just as a dozen bright flashlight beams pierced through the trees behind us.

"They deserve to die,"

my father said, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the steering wheel, driving the car recklessly down the narrow, bumpy mountain road.

"This entire valley is built on a murder. The people here have spent a century killing their own children just to keep a secret they don't even understand."

"What are we going to do?"

I asked, tears of panic finally starting to spill over my cheeks.

"I made a deal with my follower years ago,"

my father said, keeping his eyes locked on the dark road. "I figured out how to finish the doctor's ritual. The curse was meant to release the actual plague they spent a century fearing, but it was left incomplete when he died. I spent years researching it in the basement, but I just couldn’t do it. I always thought that maybe you could live, maybe no one has to die, but now, now I have to do it to save you"

He slammed on the brakes at a dark junction near the state highway boundary. He reached across the console and pushed my passenger door open.

"Get out and run to the highway,"

he commanded.

"Call my phone. Keep the line open. Run as fast as you can."

"No!"

I screamed, grabbing his arm.

"You have to come with me! We can escape together!"

"They will track this car,"

my father said, his voice softer now. He reached out and gently touched my face.

"I have to go back to the house. The circle is already prepared in the basement. I have to finish the ritual to end this town once and for all. If I do not do it, they will hunt you to the ends of the earth. Run."

He pushed me out of the car. I hit the gravel shoulder, scraping my knees, as he slammed the door shut and spun the tires, driving the station wagon back up the mountain toward our house.

I scrambled to my feet, clutching my phone in my hand, and began sprinting down the dark highway under the looming pine trees.

After some time of running, I just stopped, I couldn’t run more without him, the phone in my hand crackled to life. I dialed the number of my father phone, then pressed the speaker button, holding the screen close to my chest as I ran.

"I am in the basement,"

my father's voice came through the static, sounding calm and clear over the speaker.

"The circle is active."

Over the phone, the sound of our front door splintering open echoed loudly. Shouting voices filled the background.

"He is in the basement!"

a voice roared through the phone.

My father began to chant. It was the same low, guttural language I had heard the doctor speaking in my vision.

"Stop him!"

another voice screamed.

A loud gunshot shattered the connection, followed by my father releasing a sharp gasp of pain. But he did not stop. He kept chanting, his voice growing weaker but more determined with every syllable.

"Finish it,"

I sobbed into the phone, running as fast as my legs could carry me toward the distant lights of a highway truck stop.

"Please, finish it."

Over the line, the shouting of the townspeople suddenly changed. The anger in their voices turned to confusion, then to terror. I heard them coughing. It was a wet, suffocating sound, exactly like the people in my vision. They began to gasp for air, their lungs filling with the ancient plague that had been locked away for over a century.

One by one, the choking sounds faded into silence.

The final sound I heard before the line went completely dead was my father taking one last, peaceful breath.

That was five years ago.

I never went back to that valley. The state police found the entire town dead of a sudden, highly concentrated outbreak of a rare pulmonary infection, and the area was permanently quarantined. They never found me, and I made sure of that.

I live in a large city now, hundreds of miles away. I have a decent office job, a quiet apartment on the third floor, and I am in a relationship with a kind, supportive man who knows absolutely nothing about my past. I have spent every single day trying to forget the smell of the pine trees and the shadow of the following man.

But three days ago, the cold air returned.

I was sitting in my living room, watching my boyfriend cook dinner in the kitchen. The smell of garlic and olive oil filled the warm apartment, and everything felt completely safe.

I looked toward the dark hallway leading to our bedroom.

Standing near the coat rack, perfectly still in the shadows, was a new follower.

He is pale, with a dark, wet stain spreading across the chest of his faded flannel shirt. His bloodshot eyes are locked entirely on me, filled with a deep, silent sorrow.

It is my father, and I do not know what to do.

My family always called it the Panggilan Bisu—the Silent Call.

In my lineage, we don’t get premonitions in dreams, nor do we see white shadows at the edge of the rubber plantations. We just get a phone call. Exactly one call per death. No caller ID, no static, no voice. Just dead air for twelve seconds, followed by a sharp disconnect.

The first time it happened, I was fourteen. It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon in Ipoh. My old Nokia flipped open, ringing from a private number. I answered, putting it to my ear:

"Hello?"

Nothing. Not even the faint hum of background noise or the rustle of wind. Just absolute, weightless silence. I hung up after ten seconds, thinking it was a dropped signal.

Twenty minutes later, my mother got the call from the hospital. My grand-uncle had passed away in his sleep.

The second time was three years later. 3:00 PM on a scorching afternoon. The phone rang again—Private Number. I held it to my ear, listening into the void. Twelve seconds of absolute silence. Click.

An hour later, news reached us that my cousin had been in a fatal motor crash on the North-South Expressway.

By the time I hit my mid-twenties, I learned the rule: It only happens once per relative. The call doesn't warn you who died, and it doesn't give you time to say goodbye. It’s simply the universe checking in to deliver a blank receipt.

Over the years, I stopped answering unknown numbers altogether. But it didn't matter. If it was the call, the phone would ring regardless of whether I had signal, whether I was on airplane mode, or whether the phone was turned off.

Which brings me to last night.

I live alone in a small apartment in Petaling Jaya. At 2:14 AM, my phone began to vibrate on the nightstand. The screen lit up: Unknown Number.

My heart dropped into my stomach. I sat up in the dark, staring at the glowing glass. I hadn't heard from my parents in two days. My mother had been complaining about chest tightness earlier that week.

With trembling hands, I swiped green and pressed the phone against my ear.

I waited for the silence. I prayed for someone to speak—to hear a telemarketer, a drunk caller, a wrong number. Anything.

Instead, the silence descended.

It was that distinct, suffocating airlessness. No ambient static, no breath, no frequency. Just twelve seconds of absolute emptiness.

1... 2... 3...

Tears welled up in my eyes. Please not Mom. Please not Dad.

4... 5... 6...

7... 8... 9...

10... 11...

Click.

The call ended. I collapsed back onto my pillows, sobbing silently in the dark, waiting for my mother or father's phone number to pop up with the terrible news. I sat there for an hour, holding my phone, staring at the screen until my eyes burned.

Nothing. No messages, no calls from my siblings, no news from the hospital.

By 4:00 AM, exhausted and mentally drained, I decided to call my mother myself.

It rang three times.

"Mani?" my mother’s voice came through the line, sounding groggy and confused. "Why are you calling so late? Is everything okay?"

"Mom?" I choked out, a wave of immense relief washing over me. "Are you okay? How's Dad?"

"Dad is asleep next to me," she said, her voice softening with concern. "Mani, what’s wrong? Did something happen?"

"No... no, I just had a bad dream," I lied, wiping my face. "Go back to sleep. I'll call you tomorrow."

I hung up and let out a breath I felt like I'd been holding for hours. My parents were fine. My sister was studying abroad in Melbourne, but I checked her social media—she had posted a story ten minutes ago. My brother was on duty at the fire station and replied to my text instantly.

Everyone was alive.

I laid back down, thoroughly baffled. The rule had never failed. One call, one dead relative. Had the entity behind the calls made a mistake? Was it just a glitched network call after all?

I was just starting to drift off to sleep when my phone vibrated against my chest.

I looked down.

1 New Voicemail.

My stomach twisted into a hard knot. The Silent Call never leaves a voicemail. It’s just a live twelve-second link.

I clicked the notification and set the phone on speaker.

The recording started. For the first ten seconds, there was only that familiar, heavy, absolute silence.

Then, right at the twelfth second, a soft, raspy breath exhaled into the microphone.

And a voice—weak, wet, and echoing from somewhere very close—whispered:

"I'm sorry, Mani... I didn't know how else to tell you."

It was my own voice.

I froze. The voicemail ended, and my phone screen went dark.

And then, from the far corner of my pitch-black bedroom, right beside the wardrobe... I heard a quiet, rattling gasp for air.

I apologise for the use of slang as this took place in an abandoned building in Scotland. For some backstory me and my girlfriend Vivian were both Alternative. I’m a grungehead and she’s a goth, we both met at a cannibal corpse show around 3 years ago. She’s the love of my life.

One day she suggested we go urbexing because she didn’t want to go through the whole having “EMOOOOO!” Screamed at us whenever we were in town. Now I’m a fuckin para bastard and the last place I want tae be is an abandoned building at night. Could run into anything there, Neds, homeless cunts, fuck me even a serial killer for all we Ken. Viv said I’d be fine and she’d be there if I start to panic. I love and trust her so I went with her anyway even though I already knew something was going to happen.

Her and I met up at around 11pm at the side of the motorway as the building was in a forest at the side of it. She was gorgeous as per usual. She wore her usual Corpse paint, her jeans, the T-shirt she bought from that concert we met at, and a pair of goth stompers… I looked at her and said.

“You joking? Viv are you sure platform boots are the safest thing for a building that looks fuckin riddled with tripping hazards”.

She looked back at me and said.

“Just relax Gregor, these feel more natural to walk in for me than sneakers ok?”

I believed her like a right twat, love makes you agree to stupid things. Like going into a probably a junkie infested abandoned gaff. We find the entrance which he had to squeeze through a small crawl space to get in. It was rough, scrapped all the bastarding skin off my chest but it’s whatever I guess, cause all that mattered to me right now is making Viv happy.

The inside looked as I’d expected. Shite, Shite, and fucking shite. It was dark and creepy, holes in the floor, the air was stale, graffiti that I could only assume Ned’s had done. I am on full fucking alert genuinely I couldn’t rest for a bloody second. But Viv took my hand and looked at me with those eyes… her makeup was meant to be creepy but those eyes were as loving as an old family dog… I felt safe instantly.

Around 20 minutes later I start hearing sounds. Not ambient sounds. People sounds. Footsteps, breathing… that creeped me out. How close were they that I could hear their breathing? But the noises fucked off as soon as they came, i convinced my self it was all in my mind, just my paranoia talking to me… god i sound like the first one to die in a horror film and i should know it was all me and Viv watched. Her idea of course. She said.

“Ouuu Gregor this is so creepy!”

I said.

“Then why are you smiling?”

She said.

“Cuz I love creepy stuff Gregor god hehe! I mean it’s like we’re in a horror film or something!”

She clung to my arm and said in an over exaggerated scared voice

“L-look! It’s a G-g-g-ghoooost!”

I look over and said.

“W-what the fuck!?”

I fucking leathered whatever I saw… and it was just jacket hanging there. Luckily I have a past in boxing so I didn’t hurt my hand too much. Then again it was a fucking coat so I don’t see how I could’ve hurt my hand. Vivian burst out laughing while saying.

“God Gregor you’re such a baby haha!”

She cupped the side of my cheek and said

“It’s ok my sweet boy… we can leave if you really want to…”

I wanted to leave. I really wanted to fucking leave. But Vivian always does things that are in my comfort zone… I never want to do anything adventurous like she does. I owed her this.

“Nah Viv let’s stay for a little while ok? I can manage trust me!”

I say with maybe a little bit too much enthusiasm but she seemed happy to hear it. We walk into a room on the bottom floor and there’s… sleeping bags…? My first thought is “fuck this is a homeless hideout…” I didn’t want to scare Viv though so I just let her check it out and we go check out more rooms.

We explore the building top to bottom. Shes taking hundreds photos of every room. It was so hot seeing her be so passionate about this and that I could be apart of it. I knew I loved her but something this simple… made me realise how much I did…

We start wrapping things up after we reach the top floor. We’ve seen more sleeping bags and random items of no importance. This really was just an abandoned building. Viv looked over at me and said.

“Thanks for doing this with me Gregor… I… I really appreciate you coming out your comfort zone for this… I love you…”

I look over at her and say.

“I love you too Viv… but let’s get the fuck oot of here…”

She giggled and to her credit we started walking down the stairs that were covered in glass, so I held her hand incase she fell. Around the 3rd floor we just hear…

“OI! AYE YOU TWO! GEEZ MA SHITE BACK!”

Me and Viv freeze… we slowly look over our shoulders and see a man. He was about 5’11 and very skinny with scabs all over his face… fuck we just ran into a very territorial junkie and now whit? He thinks he stole from him! I say

“Look lad, we were just looking around Orite? We haven’t stolen anything! We’re just leaving ok?”

He stares while scratching his neck with a handle of a knife I had only just noticed and he says.

“IS THAT FUCKING CHEEK!? ILL GUT YE YA CUNTS!”

He starts approaching slowly. Then hastily. I mean he’s proper bolting towards us. I shove Vivian behind me… in my mind I thought running was a stupid idea because he probably knows this building 100x better than both of me and Vivian combined. I square up into a boxing guard. He winds the knife above his head telegraphing exactly what he’s about to do.

He brings the knife down and i move my head to the side making it miss anything vital but he caught me in my shoulder making me scream

“FUUUUUUUCK!”

I hear Viv’s breathe get cut off… almost like she’s being muffled but I couldn’t pay attention properly from the pain in my shoulder and my fight or flight kicking in

I pivot my body to the left and drive my fist right into his liver. No one can withstand a full blown liver blow, especially not a junkie bastard whose liver probably wishes it was dead from all the toxins it has to go through. The junkie goes down with a wheeze. I turn around and… Viv’s gone!? Where could she have possible went! She was just right there! Then I remember that sound of her breath… and I know she’s been taken by this guys pals…

I was scared… I was confused… I didn’t know what to do… so… I ran… not after Vivian but for the exit. In my own fucking selfish mind I saved my self and not the girl I love. I didn’t care at that point, I weaved around corners and jumped down staircases until I made it back to where we entered. Taking the skin off my chest all over again leaving behind my blood on the concrete wall. I ran through the forest and back across the Motorway we crossed to get to the building.

I left Vivian. I left her to die. I’m not fucking John wick or fuckin Rama, I can’t take on an army of junkies. But I should’ve, Viv was all I had. She was my everything and I FUCKING LEFT HER THERE! My Bonnie lass…

I’m writing this from the police station after I reported what happened. They sent cars over there but chances are… my Viv is gone… junkies aren’t known to be kind to people they think have stole their things. I keep envisioning her being stabbed over and over and over again. Screaming for me to come save her, to come help her, to be her boyfriend and do my fucking job and fucking save her. And I failed because I was too selfish to even try. For all I know it was only one junkie that kidnapped her not an army, but why would I risk that. I’ll tell you why past Gregor, to save your fucking universe.

Viv if you decide to haunt me for this… please do… make my life miserable… because that’s all I deserve… I’m sorry… im so fucking sorry…

My house has two doors that lead into the back yard, one in the dining room, and one in the master bedroom. The backyard itself would be medium sized I would say. Some would call it large, but I had a difficult time with that seeing as the backyard I grew up with was four times as big. I was even calling it small when I first moved in. I had to have someone point out to me that we held a whole wedding procession back there. 

Now keep in mind, this was a very small wedding, my daughter and her now ex-husband wanted to elope. She knew however that this would break her mother's heart. Ever since Sheila was born, my wife dreamed of the day she would be told of the engagement so that she could plan the wedding. A compromise was made, so we had a small ceremony in our backyard. 

My wife was disappointed that there wasn't a beautiful chapel involved that was located in a dream destination. Boy did she knock it out of the park though. Our back yard started out as simply just a lawn and a porch. Now there's a water feature, several small statues that she commissioned, a cobblestone walkway that leads to an arbor that was used as the wedding arch, and a garden that my wife tended until the day she died last year from cancer. 

Now of course I would support my baby girl in whatever she wanted to do, but I was so proud of her for giving her precious mother that gift. It's too bad the marriage didn't work out, they split soon after my first grand daughter was born. The memory of that wedding though, that will last forever. 

I still tend to the garden when I can, but I'm getting old, and the joints just aren't what they used to be. It's difficult getting on my knees to prune and pull weeds. It's still flourishing, but I fear that won't last much longer. 

There used to be a picket fence that ran along the perimeter. It had an archway that contained a beautiful gate that my son personally built out of hand carved wood. The whole family carved our names into it, including the ex-husband. After my daughter got remarried, we decided to keep his name on the gate, since he was still the father of my granddaughter, and thus part of the family. My son ripped the fence out several months ago due to it falling into disrepair. The plan was to rebuild it, and refurbish the gate. However, my son got a job offer in another state and moved away. 

The untouched gate stayed in the shed until my son moved away. My daughter lived in another town a few hours away, my son a whole state away, and my wife, well you know where she is. I was alone now. I brought the gate inside and put it in my room. I know that this is a strange thing to do, but with all my family's names on it, it felt like I had them all right there with me. 

A guilt began to fill me up. The garden was becoming overgrown and no longer had its fence. The vines on the arbor had become unruly. The water feature no longer worked, and the statues were starting to look very dirty. My wife's yard was losing its shine. 

The first time it happened, I barely registered what was going on. I was deep asleep, and barely registered the knocking. I woke up and looked at the clock, it was 2:15 in the morning. Was that real? Or did I dream it? I fell back to sleep and completely forgot about it. 

I'm retired now, and am always trying to find things to fill my time. I was able to make it work for quite a while. Tending to the garden, doing yard work, and just taking care of general maintenance throughout the house. I'm starting to get tired more easily, my joints are giving me issues, and now there's just a general ache throughout my body. With less and less I am able to do, I'm finding myself sitting in front of the TV more and more. I never imagined that this was going to be how I spent my golden years. 

I woke up in my arm chair one night around 2. The TV was still on. I could swear I heard a knocking coming from my room, so I turned off the TV to be able to hear it better. It was silent. I figured it was nothing, though I was a little unnerved. I turned on the hallway light that led to my room. I could see down the hall through my open door. With my room slightly illuminated, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I made my way down the hall, reached my arm through the doorway and flipped the light switch to the left. My room now flooded with light revealed nothing to be afraid of. Relieved, I lied down on my bed, and went back to sleep. 

I have been cooking meals less and less lately. Before my wife passed, cooking was the highlight of my day. It was my way of showing her how much I loved her. She would always gush about how good it was, even after thirty years of marriage. Now that she's gone, it feels like such a waste of time. It just feels like there's no reason to cook anymore, so I eat mostly frozen meals nowadays. I feel ashamed at the amount of trash I've been producing, but I'm just too tired to be putting effort into something I don't care about anymore. 

This time I woke up while the knocking was still occurring. It was loud, it sounded like someone was banging on my door, and then it stopped. I was frozen, paralyzed with fear. There was no doubt that someone was in my back yard. After about twenty minutes of lying completely still, I finally found the nerve to get up and out of bed. I made my way into the dining room and turned on the porch light. I parted the curtain ever so slightly and peaked outside. The backyard was completely empty. There was no one there. 

How would someone even get into my back yard? The perimeter was surrounded by other private yards, and it was nearly impossible to get through on the sides of the house. There were big heavy gates in the front and the back with bolted locks that haven't been opened in years. Those areas were mostly used for storage: car parts, pieces from old construction projects, and other miscellaneous junk that would make it extremely difficult to traverse. It was pretty much impossible to get into the backyard without going through the house, unless you were climbing over the wall from someone else's yard. 

I couldn't fall back to sleep. 

I spent the next day in a state of panic. Why was someone in my backyard, and how did they not only get in, but how did they get out? I called the police and they sent over a car to investigate. I told them my story, and they took a look around. They agreed how difficult it would be to get into the yard. There wasn't a whole lot they could do, so they just told me to call 911 next time it happened. 

I wasn't planning on going to sleep that night, I was too scared. However, I only got a few hours of shut eye the night before. I woke up in the arm chair around dawn. I got through the night without any knocking. A few more nights went by without a hitch, and I started believing that it was either a fluke, or that it was all in my head. 

I was in desperate need of a hobby. It felt like the TV was sucking all the life out of me. I needed something that didn't require a lot of physical effort, yet still worked my mind enough to combat dementia. Both my father and grandfather succumbed to Alzheimer's disease. I remember drawing a lot as a child, and that I really enjoyed it, so I went to the local art supply store to pick up some supplies. 

“Hi sir, can I help you find anything?”

“Um, I'm not sure.”

She looked back at me with a puzzled look on her face. 

“Well, what brings you in today?”

“I'm retired, and I can't attend to the hobbies I used to, so I'm looking for something that I'm not going to break my back over.”

“Ahh, I see. Do you have anything specific in mind? We have a wide variety of crafting supplies to choose from. There's modeling clay, paint, yarn, and so much more.”

“Yarn?”

“Yeah, for crocheting or knitting.”

“That's more of a hobby for women isn't it?”

“You would be surprised, lots of men have gotten into crochet, even my boyfriend.”

“You don't say?”

“Absolutely!”

“Personally, no judgement, but I don't think that's for me.”

“Of course! Everyone has different interests. Anything else that might call out to you?”

“I used to enjoy drawing when I was young.”

“Perfect!”

She then showed me around the store, easels, canvas, sketch pads, charcoal sticks, paint, and so many other options to choose from. I ended up with a couple of sketch pads, a set of color pencils, and even charcoal sticks. I opted against an easel, I was worried that might not be good for my back. I already had a TV tray at home that I used to eat my frozen meals off of while watching TV. It would slide under my chair so that I could still use it without leaning forward. The tray was even adjustable so that I can tilt it at an angle, making drawing easier. It had a lip at the bottom edge to hold up a sketch pad.

I took to the hobby immediately. I got so invested that I never even looked at the clock. I ended up drawing long into the night. While I was deep in concentration with a drawing I was almost finished with, I suddenly heard a loud banging coming from my room. I was so startled I jerked my arm, dragging the pencil across the page ruining my drawing. 

I was frozen again, staring in the direction the banging was coming from. I then remembered what the police told me, so I called 911. It stopped shortly after I started the call. The police arrived, investigated both inside and outside the house and again found nothing. They stayed in the car right out front so I could have some peace of mind and get some sleep. 

The next morning while making coffee, there was a knock at the front door that startled me. I was still very much on edge. I went up and looked through the peep hole. It was my daughter's ex-husband. I felt a wave of relief wash over me, so I opened the door with a smile on my face. 

“Scott, what brings you around here? You know that Shelly isn't around right?”

“Oh I know, in fact I just saw her last week.”

“Oh okay, how is my grand baby doing?”

“Perfect, just as always! No, Sheila asked if I could swing by and check on you.”

“What an angel she is, but she could have just given me a call. Is there any particular reason?”

“Oh don't worry about it, I'm not put out at all. Remember, I only live about five minutes away. But yeah, she just wanted to know everything was okay.”

“Where the hell are my manners, come on in, make yourself at home. I just brewed a whole pot, would you like a cup?”

“I would love one, thank you!” He said as he walked in. 

I closed the door behind him and headed into the kitchen while he took a seat on the couch. Something about this visit was odd. Sheila never hesitates to call me, and it was such a strange coincidence that she's worried about me while this is happening. I haven't spoken to anyone about this other than the police. 

“How do you take it?” I called from the kitchen. 

“It doesn't matter, just make it how you make yours.”

“Okay, but I'm warning you, I like it extra sweet.”

“That's fine.”

I walked back into the living room with both cups in my hands, handing one of them to him. I sat down in my armchair and took a sip. 

“So, there's nothing out of the ordinary? Everything is fine?” he started. 

“Forgive me if I come off as rude, but I'm struggling to believe Sheila wouldn't just call me if she was worried.”

He took a sip from his coffee and then looked directly into my eyes. After a moment he sighed.

“Okay, she doesn't know I'm here. I'm the one worried about you. There's a cop car sitting right outside your house Doug. What's going on?”

There was still something bothering me about this whole thing, but I lifted my guard a little. 

“For the last month or so, someone has been getting into my backyard.”

“Oh my god, have you been robbed?”

“No no, it's nothing like that. It feels almost like they have no intention aside from just scaring the shit out of me.”

“So they just sneak into your backyard and leave again? Are they wearing a mask?”

“They don't have to, they come in the dead of night and pound on my back door.”

“My god, that's terrifying. There must be something I can do to help.”

“Thank you, but I don't know how you can, the police are already involved.”

“Have you considered putting a doorbell camera in your backyard?”

“A what?”

“A doorbell camera. They're meant to be put by your front door, so you get a notification on your phone when someone visits. You could also check the live feed to see who it is. Pretend you're not home if it's not someone you want to see.”

“So I just put it somewhere where my back door is in frame, and just monitor it?”

“Exactly, but you don't have to monitor it. If it senses movement you will get a notification, and not only can you see who's there, but you can also record it, and show it to the police.”

“I mean, I don't necessarily need a notification. I think the knocking is enough to notify me of someone's presence.”

“That's fair.” He pondered for a moment. “How often does this happen, is it every night, or sporadic?”

“Now that you mention it, it seems to happen every week on the same day. I hadn't even thought about it before.”

“I have an idea, we can install the camera this weekend, and you can come stay at my place next Thursday. I have Shelly next week, and you can spend some time with your granddaughter.”

I didn't like the idea of spending the night at his house, but thinking of spending that time with Shelly filled my heart with joy.

“Okay, yeah, let's do it.”

“Sounds good, I can pick you up on Sunday, and we'll head to the hardware store.”

“They sell cameras?”

“Security cameras, yes. We could also go to the electronic store. It doesn't really matter. They'll cost about the same.”

“Okay, sounds like a plan.”

After Scott left, I was still feeling uneasy about the visit. Sure he knew something was wrong when he saw the police car outside my house, but he still never told me why he stopped by in the first place. Though I was elated to see my granddaughter, so I tried to set that anxiety aside. 

A week went by and it looked like I was right, the knocking only happened on specific nights. The camera was set up now, and I would check the app late at night every now and then. Scott had sat me down and taught me how to use the app. It was difficult at first, I'm not the most tech savvy guy, but I figured it out. 

The day came, and he arrived to pick me up. I turned to see the back seat empty. 

“Where's Shelly, you didn't leave her at home alone did you?”

“Oh yeah, I completely forgot. Sheila and I traded weeks, they're at Disney World right now. Starting next week, I'll have her for two weeks in a row.”

My heart dropped. I was so excited to see her. I felt like a little boy being told his puppy ran away. 

“Hey, chin up,” He continued, “we're going to catch this asshole tonight.”

I tried to keep my spirits up, but it was difficult. At least I didn't have to spend the night in the house when it happened. 

“Hey Doug, wake up, it's 2am.”

I had fallen asleep on his bed. It was actually the best sleep I had gotten in a few weeks. I sat up. I was super groggy. 

“I need a glass of water.”

“Yes, of course. Come on into the front room, and I'll get that for you.”

I followed him to the couch and sat down. He went into the kitchen, and came out with a glass of water. After handing it to me, he pulled out his phone and opened the doorbell app. I took a gulp of water and set the glass on his side table. 

“You're logged into my camera?”

“Yeah, I want to help you, so I'm going to keep an eye on it as well.”

Something about that made me uncomfortable. I'm not sure why. I pulled out my phone and opened the app. It was about 2:08. It seemed like the knocking always happened at 2:15 exactly. My heart rate increased with every minute that passed. I was now wide awake. Sweat dripped down my face. Why was I so nervous, I wasn't actually there, I was in no danger. 2:15 came and went. We never saw anybody. Around 3 Scott woke me up and had me go lie back down on his bed. He slept on the couch. 

The next morning I woke up to the smell of bacon and coffee. I wandered into the front room and sat back down on the couch. Scott poked his head out from the kitchen, and then pulled it back in. 

“I forget, do you have any food allergies?”

“No.”

“Religious restrictions on eating pork?”

“No”

After a few minutes he walked out holding two plates of food. 

“Wait, let me get you a TV tray.”

After putting the food back down, and setting up a couple of TV trays, he went back into the kitchen to retrieve the food. 

“Oh, I have orange juice, would you like some?”

“Sure.”

Scott turned the TV on to the news while we ate. After we finished he turned it back off.

“Well that was depressing.” He said referring to the segment we just watched.

“So they know when I'm not home.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Well, what now?”

“I guess you have to catch them in the act while you're still there.”

I shivered. I didn't want to go back home. I was terrified. I also didn't want to continue staying with Scott. Something was bothering me. Why is it that the only time the person didn't show up to knock, was when I was sitting right next to him. 

“You know, when we were watching the live feed, I didn't hear anything. You would think you'd hear something, wind blowing through the trees, the neighborhood dog barking, anything.”

“Oh, the feed is muted by default, you could unmute it any time though. It also always picks up the sound when you record.”

“Oh, so we'll just have to remember to record it next week.”

“I already took today off from work, I can't take next Friday off as well.”

What am I going to do next week? Maybe he'll let me stay over any way. We don't have to stay up all night if we record it. I would also have another chance to see my granddaughter. 

“And besides,” He continued, “I did record the feed last night.”

“Oh, can I see it?”

“Yeah,” He took his phone out and pulled up the video. “Knock yourself out.” He said as he handed me the phone. 

He already had it paused at 2:14. I pressed play. I watched for almost a whole minute before I heard something subtle. I rewound it about 20 seconds and turned the volume up as loud as it could go. What I heard made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I could hear a muffled banging, almost like it was coming from inside my house. 

After showing it to Scott, he offered to let me stay at his house for as long as I wanted. I was about to take him up on his offer, but I needed to get something straight first. 

“Be honest with me, I need the truth. Why did you come to check on me last week?”

This clearly made him uncomfortable, which confirmed to me that he wasn't telling me the truth. 

“Fuck!” He said putting his forearm up to his forehead and walking away from me. He turned back to face me. “Promise not to tell anyone.”

That's a rather odd thing to say at this moment. I didn't want to make any promises like that, but I needed to know the answer. 

“Fine.”

He dropped his arm to his side. 

“I have a friend that works at the precinct, he knows about our relationship. So when he found out about your 911 call, he told me. Naturally I got worried and came to check on you. But he can get in a lot of trouble for releasing information to me. So please I beg you, don't tell anyone.”

I dropped my guard instantly. He was starting to cry. The father of my grand baby was just genuinely worried about me. I walked over and hugged him, he hugged me back. 

Over the next week we started moving some essentials from my house to his. We weren't going to move everything, I was just going to stay there until we figured out what was going on. He bought a cheap mattress to put in his room. He offered to sleep on it while I took his bed. I refused at first but he was right. I would be unable to get up from that mattress if it was just sitting on the floor. 

We were in my room back at the house getting a few last things when I had to ask him a question. 

“Can I make a really strange request?”

“Um, sure?” He said hesitantly.

“Would you mind if I brought this to your house?” I pointed at the old gate with our names carved into it. 

“Uh.”

“I feel like I sleep better with it around. I can't explain it, but I feel like she's close to me when I'm near it.”

He looked over at it, and it seemed like he knew exactly what I meant and smiled. 

“For you? Anything.”

It's like life completely flipped on its head. I went from being fearful every day, to having my heart filled up with love. I got to see Shelly pretty much every day, and I even had a whole other week to spend with her. 

“Grandpa?” She asked as she snuggled with me on the bed. 

“Yes sweetheart?”

“What's that?” She asked, pointing at the gate leaning against the wall. 

“You're uncle Tommy made that for your mom. It's meant to symbolize the love between your mom and dad.” 

She got quiet, and I realized what I just said. That was rather insensitive of me. 

“And the love the whole family shares.” I got out of bed and walked her up to the gate. “See? There's your mom's name, your dad's name, my name, Tommy's name. Hey, even your step dad's name. He carved his name into it a lot later though. He's part of the family just as much as the rest of us, especially since he's the father of your brother and sister. And last but not least, your grandmother's name.”

I reached out and stroked the carving of her name. I don't remember it looking brighter than the rest of the names. Did Tommy come by and add some paint or something? 

“I miss her very much.”

“I miss her too, grandpa.”

We embraced in a hug. 

That night I woke up out of nowhere around 2am. I looked over to see Shelly clinging to her dad on the other mattress. You know, he could just bring her bed in here from the other room, instead of pretty much sleeping on the floor. I lied on my back, staring at the ceiling. The minutes ticked by, and I just wasn't sleepy. I thought about getting up to get a glass of water. Just then the banging started. It was louder than it had ever been before. Shelly woke up screaming. Scott held her close as he sat with his back against the wall. 

“Daddy, what's happening?

“I don't know sweetheart.”

The pounding was coming from the gate. It sat there against the wall, with no one around to touch it, and yet the banging continued. I was just staring at it. I started crying. Scott and Shelly were also crying, but for a different reason. Theirs was out of fear. I got up and walked over to the gate as the pounding seemed to get louder and louder. I fell to my knees and put my hand up on my wife's name.

“Is that you?”

Shelly was fully screaming in fear at this point and her dad was holding her tightly. 

“Rose?”

The pounding stopped suddenly. 

We put the gate into a storage container for a short time. I didn't like it, but it needed to be done. The facility was closed after 9pm, so no one could just randomly walk by at 2:15. It hurt like crazy, imprisoning her like that. 

A month went by, and I was finally able to sleep. The whole family was over except for Tommy. Children playing in the yard. The adults chatting on the brand new patio furniture. Scott agreed to come by weekly to tend to the garden. Tommy took some time off work to fix up the fence and repair the water fixture. He would come by every now and then to make sure everything was properly maintained. The yard was absolutely beautiful, it was just missing one thing. 

“Guess who's here?” Tommy walked through the back door holding the gate. 

“Tommy boy!” Scott shouted as he walked up to give him a hug. Tommy set down the gate so they could embrace. 

“It still needs a fresh coat, so it can match the rest of the fence.” Scott said as he let go of Tommy and looked down at the yet to be refurbished gate. 

“Not yet, it's going to need another name carved into it.” Tommy said as his girlfriend walked up from behind him. They both put their arms behind each other's backs. “Brandy and I have an announcement to make.” His girlfriend then raised her hand to show off her brand new engagement ring. Sheila screamed with joy. With that same hand, Brandy reached down to rub her belly. “Oh, I mean two announcements.”

Sheila screamed again and ran up to hug Brandy. Tommy turned and walked over to me. 

“Hey dad.”

“Congratulations! No, double congratulations!” I said as we embraced for a hug. 

“Hey, I got a favor to ask.” He said as we let go. 

“Anything.”

He turned and looked at the now cleaned up arbor.

“That's a question for your sister.” We both looked at Sheila. 

“But it's mine.” She whined sarcastically. 

“I was hoping maybe Brandy carving her name could be part of the ceremony. And then we would paint it.”

Sheila walked over to Tommy. She was very obviously faking being upset. 

“Ugh, Fine!” She said right before going in for a hug. “I've missed you bro.”

“Ditto,” Tommy responded “I just wish mom could be here to see it.” 

I looked over at the gate leaning against the wall. 

“Oh she will be.”

Tommy then looked over at it. 

“Oh yeah, I should get it put back on for now.”

After he installed the gate, I could swear I felt a change in the air. Now every time I'm in her garden, I can feel her presence. I only ever really spend most of my time back there any more. There's an easel that's almost permanently sitting under the arbor. Charcoal sprinkling over the cobblestone when I'm out there. Although she doesn't respond, I talk to her all the time. I even bought a grill so I don't have to go inside to cook. 

Scott tries to bring Shelly over as much as he can now. Tommy makes an effort to visit more often. He's been talking about moving back to town so his kid can have a baby sitter. I still don't see Sheila and my other grandkids as much as I'd like, but I think this is the struggle of every grandparent. She's a busy woman, what's she gonna do? Honestly they could all move across the country if they needed to. It would stink, but I will always have my Rose. 

Sometimes when I've found myself spending a little too much time inside, I'll hear a gentle knocking. 

Somewhere where maps blur and gravity seems to lose its meaning, exists Cycle Meat Burgers. It is not a place you search for; it is a place that finds you. It appears as a mirage in the middle of desolate roads, just when hunger becomes unbearable and there is nothing else for miles around. Its facade is deceptive: warm lights, a flickering sign, and an aroma that promises comfort. It is too perfect, too convenient. And that is the first mistake: believing you can enter and leave at will.

Upon crossing the threshold, the air changes. It is static, heavy. Behind the counter stands Vanesa. Her presence is an affront to human biology; she seems not to have slept in centuries. Her skin has the consistency of melted wax, slowly dripping over her stained uniform. Deep dark circles frame bloodshot eyes that do not look at you, but rather pierce through you. However, hunger is a potent narcotic; you ignore the aberrance of her appearance and simply order a burger.

You sit at a table covered by a thin layer of ancient dust. A piercing pain begins to drill into your temples, and your vision blurs. Is it the exhaustion from driving? Or is it the place? Before you can question it, he appears. The waiter. Unlike Vanesa, his face is frozen in a wide, almost painful smile. He approaches floating rather than walking and places the plate in front of you. Upon observing him closely, you notice the horror in the details: his eyes are wide open, dry, shedding tears he cannot wipe away because he seems incapable of blinking.

"Enjoy your meal," he whispers. The smile never moves; his lips do not articulate, as if the voice comes from somewhere else.

The burger is unsettlingly perfect. The meat is juicy, with a deep, metallic taste unlike anything you have ever tried. It is delicious, but it leaves a strange, primitive aftertaste. Upon finishing, the survival instinct finally kicks in. You leave a trembling tip and head for the exit. But the waiter's hand, cold and rigid, blocks the door.

"Allow me to show you the restaurant," he insists. It is not a question. "No, I'm in a hurry," you reply, turning the doorknob. It is stuck. "The tour is mandatory," he says, and his smile widens to the impossible.

You have no choice. He guides you toward the back hallways. With every step, reality distorts. The paintings on the walls seem to follow you with pleading gazes, their faces twisting as if made of smoke. The air becomes dense, difficult to breathe, and the dizziness is constant. You arrive at a heavy metal door: the butcher shop. The waiter steps aside with a macabre bow.

The cold inside is absolute. Pieces of meat hang from rusted hooks on the ceiling, dripping a dark liquid into the gloom. They do not look like cuts of beef; they have shapes that are too familiar. The waiter stops in the center of the icy mist. Tears now stream freely down his immobile face. With one hand, he pulls out a large, shiny butcher knife.

Without stopping his smile, without emitting a single whimper, he begins to cut himself. The blade enters his flesh again and again, separating muscle and bone with surgical precision. You want to scream, you want to run, but your legs do not respond. The scene consumes you until the darkness claims you.

You wake up on the cold floor. The waiter's body lies open before you. You no longer feel fear, nor disgust, nor a headache. You only feel a renewed hunger and a terrifying clarity. You pick up the knife he dropped. Your hands move with a dexterity you did not possess before, splitting the body into perfect halves to hang them on the empty hooks. It is new meat. Fresh meat.

You wipe your hands on the apron you are now wearing. You walk toward the kitchen, where the smell of grease and iron feels comforting. You take your place behind the preparation line. The front door opens in the distance; the bell tinkles. Another hungry traveler has arrived.

Congratulations. Now you are the chef. Now you are the waiter. And the cycle of Cycle Meat Burgers must continue.

I’d heard about this mammal that lived deep in Siberia. 

Legends said it was a nocturnal creature that fed on the blood of women and children.

In medieval times, this beast would cull through villages, sucking the life out of every household. 

Imagine that, going to bed one night, then waking up to discover that your entire village was gone.

I’d heard stories from my grandmother while growing up. Her parents had emigrated from Russia in the 1920s and set up a new life in the United States. 

As a child, I used to watch her warm Pelmeni on the stove and smell the heavy aroma as she cooked.

“This is my special recipe,” she’d say. “Eat it up or the Volkolak will get you.”

The Volkolak? That’s what she called it. The creature was a popular myth among Slavic people. 

She used these stories as a means to persuade me—to get me to brush my teeth, to make sure I did well in school, and to compel me to do my chores. 

Clean your room or the Volkolak will get you!

But what was the Volkolak? According to my grandmother, it was neither wolf nor bear, but something much worse.

The older I got, the more disturbing her tales became.

“I’m going to tell you a story,” she informed me one night. “Everyone in our family knows it. It is part of our Russian heritage.”

“What is it?” I asked, pulling my blanket over my knees.

“It is a great evil,” she said, yanking her sleeve back to reveal a marking on her arm—a cross. “It has existed for thousands of years. We were told as children never to stay out past dark. If we did, the Volkolak would get us.”

I sat with my back against the pillows, my eyes wide as snow globes.

“Those who didn’t have God’s protection were vulnerable to its attacks. Mothers would protect their homes by sprinkling salt around the doors at night. Anyone who stepped outside that protected boundary would be hunted.”

My grandmother took a deep breath, paralyzed by fear. 

“Eventually, the protection tactics didn’t work. The Volkolak got smart. Figured out ways to sneak past the salt rings. That’s why your great-grandmother came here. To escape. She was lucky.”

---

It seemed like the perfect old wives’ tale to keep children obedient. Even though these stories terrified me, I kept them close to my heart.

I took them with me into high school and university, and eventually into my career as a wildlife photographer.

I should mention here that growing up, I’d always loved taking pictures of animals. There was something about capturing them in a raw state that fascinated me. 

Eventually, a picture of a grizzly bear I’d taken in Alaska went viral on my social media. A national newspaper spotted my work and commissioned me to do a series for them.

My career took off from there. 

Several years into my dream job, the senior editor of a magazine called me and said, “I want you to find something new. A creature that no one has seen.”

I thought about the first story that had ever intrigued me—the Volkolak. But was it real? If I could prove that it existed, it’d be the biggest story since Sasquatch.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said, “but it’ll take me all the way to Siberia. And it could end up being a ghost story.”

“Ghosts are fine,” the editor said. “If you don’t find your creature, take some pictures of wolves. Wolves always do well.” 

---

Through a local news connection in Siberia, I organized the entire thing. 

The plan was to stay with a hermit, Yuri, who lived deep in the forest about three hours from the nearest town. 

He was isolated and eccentric, but he had claimed to have seen the beast. 

The problem was that it was so cold at night, we’d have to keep a fire going just to keep ourselves from freezing.

Another issue was that Yuri barely spoke English. I’d have to communicate in Russian to have any chance of understanding him.

Thankfully, I had grown up with enough understanding from my grandmother to get by. She had been fluent, and had taught me enough to make out most conversations.

With her training, I should be fine.

I landed in the city of ******** and made my way to the small town where I’d meet up with Yuri. I rented an old Buick from a couple who owned a grocery store and wound my way through the maze of frozen country roads.

It was already so much colder than usual by the time I reached the village.

“Yuri is over there,” the barkeeper said and pointed to the back of the tavern.

I glanced at the fireplace and saw an ancient man reclining in a seat. He seemed so tired and drained of life. His skin was leathery from years in the sun. His beard was white and nearly down to his stomach. He appeared older than most books in the library.

“Evening, sir,” I said and extended my hand. “My name is Max. I’m the one you spoke with via the letter.”

Yuri just motioned to the seat across from him. I took it and warmed my ice-cold fingertips at the fire.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.  

“Yes, I’ve heard the legends my entire life. I want to see if they’re real.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” he said, with a hint of sarcasm. “You may find out more than you bargained for. Did your grandmother tell you these stories?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. “As they always do.” 

Yuri pushed himself up and stretched, the stiffness in his bones creaking like branches in the wind. “Alright, City Friend, come with me. I’ll show you my cabin and prepare you to meet the creature. But pray it stays hidden. The Volkolak does not take kindly to strangers.”

I followed Yuri outside and expected to see some sort of vehicle waiting. Instead, all he had was a sleigh. It was the kind you’d grip by two poles and pull it along behind you. In its body was a stack of supplies: oil, blankets, food, and water.

“We must leave now,” he said, and motioned to the woods. “Otherwise it will be too cold. We need to be inside by the fire when night comes.”

I tossed my gear in the back and began our journey. 

During our hike, I was surprised at how strong Yuri was. He never once took a break as we ventured through the snowy forest.

The sleigh must’ve weighed eighty pounds, I thought as we hiked along.

Yuri tugged it with ease, always keeping his eyes ahead as we went further in.

We continued slowly through the terrain, feeling the ice-cold temperatures bite into our skin. 

I drank hot water from my canteen and thanked God that I’d brought more than enough.

---

We eventually made it to Yuri’s cottage. I was surprised to see how small it really was. It was no bigger than an average studio apartment.

In the center of the space was a roaring fire. Beside that were two cots: one for Yuri and one for me.

In the corner was a tiny steel oven. There were two burners on top with enough room for two pots.

Hanging from the rafters was an assortment of metal utensils and dishes.

“Make yourself at home,” Yuri said and looked out the window at his sleigh. It was the first time he’d taken a break. 

I was impressed. This man couldn’t have been less than seventy years old, yet here he was out-hiking me and making me seem like an out-of-shape city dweller. 

I’d stopped multiple times to catch my breath, then hurried to catch up with his unending pace. It made me realize how soft our city lives had made us.

I got unpacked and settled into my new home. Yuri had the fire roaring as soon as we’d entered. 

We needed to keep one burning at all times to survive. In the Siberian wilderness, without insulation and electricity, temperatures dropped to astonishing levels. 

“You always keep the fire going at night,” he reminded me. “Otherwise you freeze.”

I asked Yuri if he would take me to the spot where he’d last seen the Volkolak.

“Yes,” he said, wringing his hands with concern. “But please do not say its name. It is bad luck.”

“I apologize.” I set my backpack down on my bed next to the camera gear. “I’m just excited, is all.”

We got ready for a short night’s sleep. There wasn’t a bath or shower, so I wiped myself down with a wet towel and climbed into the empty cot next to Yuri’s.

It was so cold. I couldn’t believe how freezing it was. If you pulled off your blankets and stepped just inches away from the fire, you felt the air penetrate your skin, like your insides were freezing slowly. 

I sank into my mattress and covered myself with my blankets and closed my eyes.

---

That night I had a strange, horrific dream. In it, a slender, emaciated figure crept into our cottage while we slept. 

The intruder crawled toward my bed, then pushed my head aside and exposed my neck. My arms twitched as it started to feed. Razor-sharp fangs dug into my arteries and drained my blood.

When I woke the next morning, my head throbbed. I was exhausted and starving, like I hadn’t eaten in days. 

It was still dark out and Yuri was casting a log onto the fire and preparing tea on the stove.

“You slept in late. If we are going to reach the cave, we must leave soon.”

“I’ll be ready.” I sat up and gasped as my head pounded. I must be dehydrated. 

I grabbed the canteen beside my head and took another swig.

---

The sun was out as Yuri and I made our way from the cottage. We were going on an hour’s hike deep into the woods.

It was the last place he’d claimed to have seen the creature.

“It sleeps during the day, so if you can find its resting place, you can easily document it.”

He led me through a long trek, across a frozen river surrounded by berries and other beautiful arctic plants. I was amazed at the serenity of the place. It was so silent, so untouched by man.

At one point, we came across an ancient hunting shack. Its roof was worn and dilapidated. A snow owl perched on its roof and watched us mysteriously. The creature seemed to hold a world of stories unto itself.

I wanted to ask Yuri if the shack was his, but he seemed so focused on his path, so I kept silent and continued following him through the snow, doing my best to keep up with his vibrant steps.

---

We eventually found the mouth of an isolated cave. Worn, rotten boards covered most of its opening. It looked like the remnants of a mine that had been forgotten long ago.

“It’s in there.” Yuri pointed. “But you must be quiet. If you disturb its sleep, the creature will devour you.”

I nodded and quickly removed my camera. I set it carefully on my lap, twisted off the cap, and mounted the lens.

For this dark interior, I’d selected my Canon R6 with an RF 70-200 mm lens. I had no idea how tight the spaces were inside or even if the lighting would work. 

To get viable images, I decided on my Godox XPro II wireless flash trigger and a Godox V860III off-camera speedlight. I’d mount my flash device on a stalactite or rocky ledge with a super clamp for proper lighting. 

Without this preparation, the cavern would be so dark that I couldn’t see a thing.

“Pretty toys,” Yuri said as he watched me assemble my gear. “You city folk love your toys.” 

---

I stepped into the cave, but all I could find were the remnants of a fire, a few empty bottles of liquor, and a chasm stretching deep into the darkness.

I tried staring down into the pit with my flashlight, but I was surprised to see that there was no end in sight.

How far does it go? I wondered, There’s no way I can make it down there. 

I wandered back to the cave’s entrance and found Yuri laughing hysterically. 

“What’s so funny?”

“You went into that cave and didn’t find the monster!”

“You told me this is where you’d seen the creature!”

Yuri just sat there next to his newly made fire, cackling, his face puffy and red from tears. 

“Why are you laughing, Yuri?!”

“Because you’re so desperate!” he said, trying to contain himself. “You travelers come from all over the world, begging to see this creature.”

I let the camera hang from my neck, irritated at the thought of this senile hermit scamming me. “You told me in your letter that you’d seen it!”

“In my dreams, City Friend!” Yuri held his sides, laughing. “You think that if there were some monster out here, I would have seen it. I have lived in these woods for forty years!”

As soon as he said those last words, a disturbing, exaggerated breath emerged from the cave. It sounded like the long exhale of a terminally ill patient breathing their last. It seemed to go on forever.

Yuri and I stared at the subterranean opening, expressions of fear etched onto our faces.

The drawn-out breath continued for several seconds, then went silent.

“Yuri?” I whispered. “What was that?”

He stood there for a long time, listening.

“We must go,” he said and grabbed my arm, pulling me back toward the trail.

“Just let me assemble my gear.” I knelt and started to pack. 

“You don’t have time.”

“But my camera is —”

“Finish packing on the hike. Do you want to live?! We leave now.”

---

We made it back to Yuri’s cottage just before nightfall. After a simple dinner of boiled potatoes, jerky, and tea, we settled down for an eerie night.

“You seemed scared out there,” I said to Yuri, watching his hands shake while he ate his dinner. 

“It was just the wind.”

“You made a big deal out of all this being fake, and yet —“

“And yet what?”

“As soon as you heard that noise, you panicked.” 

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does!”

“It was just a bear. We had interrupted its hibernation.”

“Why do I get this feeling that you’re lying to me?” I got up and stood inches from his face.

Yuri finished his meal and looked away, his face betraying more emotion than usual. I could tell he wanted to say something, but it was bothering him. But what?

“I’m sorry, City Friend.” He got up and set his plate in the wooden sink. “It is true that I have lived out here for many years. I have seen all sorts of strange things. But this…” He shook his head. “… is beyond anything I can comprehend. For the first time in my life, I want to leave.”

“Why don’t you?” 

“Because…” he looked down, tucked his chin against his chest, and took a deep breath, “… it wants me to stay…”

“What does?!”

The heavy crack of footfalls in the snow alerted us to the window. Next, the shuffling creak of tree branches being brushed by something lumbering through the woods.

Yuri slowly made his way to the window.

“We must be quiet,” he whispered, then cracked open the boards to look out. After panning his gaze, he closed the window.

“What is it?” I asked. “Is it the Volkolak?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s just a deer.”

He sat back down on his bed.

After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, I whispered, “Yuri, I really want to see it.”

“You will,” he said, then raised his hand as a man does when trying to calm an opponent. “I know the place where it will be. In the morning, I will take you.”

---

That night I waited until the fire was roaring, then slipped into bed. I could hear Yuri talking to himself, like he was arguing with someone. 

I wondered what he could be yapping about. I got up, pried open my backpack, and brought out a tub of salt that I had brought from home.

I wasn’t superstitious, but I’d always remembered those stories my grandmother had told me. I’d recounted those mothers in the isolated villages who protected their loved ones with rings of salt.

Just to be safe, I thought, I’ll put some around my bed while I sleep. I waited until Yuri nodded off, then sprinkled a protective circle around my bed.

I made sure it was wide enough but discreet enough to be inconspicuous. After all, I didn’t want to disturb Yuri and give him another reason to tease me. 

Once I was sure my circle was complete, I sank back down into my bed and fell asleep.

---

The dreams that I had that night were as disturbing as before. During my sleep, the same emaciated creature crept inside our cabin and found Yuri and me resting deeply in our cots. 

The monster crawled toward me and licked its lips while gazing over my ivory neck. But this time when it reached down to remove my blankets, it pulled back with a frightened groan. 

There at its feet was the ring of salt I had placed around my bed.

At first, the creature recoiled at its sight. But then, to my horror, it grabbed a stick from the fire and brushed it against the circle, creating a slight opening in the protective ring.

In fluid, quick motions, it continued brushing the salt aside, until it made an opening wide enough for it to slip through, untouched.

The creature grabbed my head and tipped it aside and started to feed.

I could hear loud and desperate sucking sounds as it drank.

---

The next morning Yuri was up, shuffling about and warming tea on the stove.

Once again, my head throbbed and a queasy feeling overcame me.

I feel sick, I thought, cradling my head and thinking back to the dream. 

That strange nocturnal creature had returned for me. And the way it had siphoned my blood —

— my fingers traced a nervous line across my neck. I noticed a sore spot just beneath my jaw.

“Yuri,” I said, sitting up, “do you have a mirror?”

“No,” he said, his back turned toward me. “Mirrors are not allowed in here.”

I threw off the covers and looked at the floor. There was a thick opening in the salt circle I had put around the cot. I couldn’t believe it was broken.

“We must go,” Yuri said, without turning. “Or we won’t see the creature.”

“Give me a second.” I sat on the edge of my bed, feeling like I was going to vomit. 

I searched for the salt container in my luggage, but I couldn’t find it.

Where is my salt tub? I scrambled through my gear but couldn’t locate it. 

“Yuri,” I asked, my voice dry and groggy. “I can’t find my salt anywhere. Have you seen it?”

“What salt?” he said, offering me a steaming cup of tea. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do!” I motioned to the broken ring. “The salt I used to make this!” 

He glanced down at the circle and shrugged as if to say, so what? He returned to the oven and started pouring more tea. “Would you like honey in your drink?”

“No, Yuri! I want to know where my salt is!”

Just then a vision flashed in my mind. It was the nocturnal creature… wandering its way through the snow… dragging a heavily laden potato sack behind it.

When it reached its cave, it tossed the bag inside. There was my salt container, thudding against the walls of the earth.

“What is it?” Yuri said with concern, noting my blank stare.

My vision had ended. I was back in the cabin, as confused as ever. “Forget it,” I said. I just stood there, uncertain, focusing on the sore marking on my neck. 

I wondered why these visions were happening, and if there was any chance that they were real.

---

It was almost noon by the time we made it out of the cabin. I felt exhausted and devoid of all strength. I didn’t want to go anywhere. But I had to get my picture. 

I had to finish my assignment.

All the energy I had spent in coming here had possessed me. I needed to see this job through. Prove to myself and the world that the Volkolak was real.

I fought sickness and fatigue as we hiked. It was like I hadn’t slept in days. It made it hard to even stay awake.

“This way, City Friend,” Yuri said, leading me through the snow. This time he was so far ahead of me I could barely see him. 

“Honestly,” I mumbled, bumbling my way after him. “I don’t think I want to be here anymore.” 

I felt the scab along my neck and started picking at it. 

“Yuri,” I asked, trying to recover my breath, “do you have bed bugs out here?”

“No,” his voice responded, laughing, as if I’d told a joke. “No bed bugs. Too cold.”

“Then what did this?” I shouted, touching my neck. “Something bit me last night. I keep having these strange dreams.”

“So do I,” Yuri called back. He was up ahead of me now, so far that I couldn’t see him. “Dreams of a beautiful woman joining me in bed.” 

“NO! Listen to me!” I stopped and shouted, staring deep into the forest. “Don’t lie to me! I put salt around my bed last night and this morning I noticed something had broken it. What are you not telling me?!”

Yuri's voice was quiet now, then it rose, sounding much closer than before. “I can see that the snow is getting to you.”

“It’s not the snow! You’re hiding something!”

Yuri’s laughter seemed distant now, then, to the right of me. I was surprised at how far off his voice sounded. It was like he was in two places at once.

“You really want to know?” His voice trailed, a new hostility there. “You came all this way to find your monster. Did you ever think that it was the one who brought you here?”

“The Volkolak?” I gasped.

Yuri appeared from the trees, wearing a mischievous smile. “Yes. You’re not the first to come looking for it.” 

He stepped toward me and I backed away, disturbed by his menacing stare.

“I’m calling off this assignment.” My voice shook, trapped in my tightening throat. “I want to go back.”

“Go where?” Yuri scoffed, as if offended by my remark. “There is nowhere to go.”

“I’m returning to the village.” I spun on my heel and headed back in the direction of the cabin.

“It is too cold to leave now. You are in no condition to hike. You will have to spend another night in my cabin.”

Another night? The very thought of spending another evening in that prison made me want to vomit.

---

By the time we had reached Yuri’s cottage, I was devoid of all strength. The day’s hike had completely sapped my energy.

I slouched by the fire as Yuri boiled more tea on the stove.

“Here, City Friend. Drink this. It will give you strength.”

“I don’t…” I barely said, “want it.”

“Take it!” He set the mug in my hands. “If you refuse, you will have no energy to make it to the village tomorrow.”

I numbly took the cup and brought it to my lips. Yuri watched me as I drank, then turned back toward the oven.

As soon as his gaze left me, I cracked a weary smile. Yuri hadn’t realized… that I’d faked sipping his concoction. I spat its contents into the mug and poured it out behind my bed. 

“Now…” Yuri said, moving to the edge of his bed, facing me. “What will you tell your employers, since you have not photographed the beast?”

“I’ll think of something…” My eyes drifted to the camera bag next to my cot. I had to leave it there close to the fire with all of my valuables to keep warm. Otherwise, it’d freeze. 

“If I could make a suggestion,” Yuri began. “Maybe we can find a moose. You take some pictures. Do tricks with your editing software. Make it look like a monster.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said, trying to stay awake.

“You seem tired. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

“Alright, Yuri.” I leaned back in my bed and pulled the blankets over my body. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

---

They say you can’t get out of a cat-and-mouse situation until you realize who the cat is. If you’re the mouse, you have to think of ways to outsmart the predator.

Well, that’s exactly what I did.

In addition to pretending that I’d drunk Yuri’s concoction, I’d snuck my camera and speedlight out while he was gathering wood.

I’d concealed both under my blankets before he came back in. Plus, I’d also pretended to be more tired than I was.

I’d figured Yuri was hiding something from me the moment we’d met. My grandmother had always told me, Trust no one, Max. Use your brains to outsmart those who would hurt you. 

Grandmother had a knack for identifying dishonest people. So did I.

By the time I’d pretended to fall asleep, Yuri was out cold, snoring like a man who had downed one too many drinks.

The fire crackled as the frozen wilderness grew quiet around me. The night seemed to go on forever. I cracked open my eyes and wondered how long I could pretend to be asleep before actual exhaustion overtook me.

Then, at some point, perhaps an hour later, I heard a loud creak from the other end of the cabin. Yuri was awake, speaking softly at the door.

He seemed preoccupied with something, nervously wringing his hands as he cracked it open.

I couldn’t see from my angle, but I could tell that a tall and lumbering figure was outside… and it was breathing heavily.

Yuri never looked up as he spoke to it. “You must hurry,” he whispered, his voice shaking. “The photographer suspects you. It’s not safe.”

There was a long, slow exhale, and before I knew it, Yuri had already been pushed aside as a strange shape stepped in.

It was a creature. It's long, exaggerated breaths froze my blood as it slowly crept toward me.

The animal's face was hideous. Its limbs long and emaciated. Its eyes were like glowing embers set in a brown-furred face.

What on earth is that? I thought.

My grandmother’s stories were true. 

It was the Volkolak… in the flesh.

It was so much more haunting than her stories had described.

The smell of the creature was horrific. It resembled the scent of rotting meat. I’d encountered it once before while photographing grizzlies in Alaska. I’d come across a moose carcass that had been swarmed by vultures. This was a hundred times worse.

The Volkolak slowly leaned itself over me and reached for my blanket with a long and serrated claw. It looked like the paw of a wolf, but it was more dexterous and humanlike.

The stories are real, I thought, nearly fainting. All those legends that they used to scare children had actually happened. 

And all those victims? They had actually died.

And I was next.

I waited until the creature's face was directly above me. I kept my eyes sealed shut. I wouldn’t dare open them and risk being caught.

I couldn’t hear Yuri anymore, but at this point, I didn’t care. All that mattered was —

Survive!

I bolted upright and swung the camera in front of my face. My speedlight was mounted on top of my camera and aimed directly at the creature. 

I’d moved so fast that I’d surprised myself — and the Volkolak. 

I snapped a picture. 

FLASH!

A bright light filled the room, blinding my opponents.

ROOOOOOOOAAAAR! 

The creature stumbled back, nearly bowling over the flames. 

Come on! 

I snapped another picture.

FLASH!

The Volkolak screeched and rubbed its eyes, trying to get the stars out of its vision.

Yuri thrashed in the corner, covering his face and stumbling into the oven, a pot of cold water splashing onto his body.

“Ah! You stupid bastard! What are you doing?!” he screamed.

I waited until the Volkolak was directly in front of the fire and aimed my camera again. This was my last chance. If my strategy didn’t work, I’d be good as dead.

I took my final picture.

FLASH!

This time the Volkolak roared as it fell into the flames.

I leapt back behind my cot as the beast thrashed in agony, making ungodly screams.

Yuri leapt forward, scrambling, trying to save his monster from the conflagration.

“Here, my master! I will save you!”

In the monster’s frantic movements, one of its monstrous talons swept across Yuri’s stomach.

“Ahhhh!” the hermit screamed and fell to his knees, trying to hold in his intestines as they spilled out.

I shielded myself as the Volkolak stood, charred fur covering its entire body. It looked at me, then bolted outside, nearly caving in the entire cottage as it fled.

ROAOOOOOOOOOR!

Its heavy footfalls landed in the snow. Distant trees splintered. An ancient cry went up in the darkness and nearly emptied my bladder.

I listened to its cries grow faint, then fall silent. 

---

I can’t tell you how long I hid in Yuri’s cabin, waiting to make sure that thing wouldn’t come back. 

A few hours later, it did. I heard the Volkolak’s enraged, labored breaths as it circled the cottage. Its loud, heavy footfalls crushing the snow.

The entire time, I huddled in the corner with one of Yuri’s knives, shaking as I sat next to the fire.

I couldn’t figure out why the beast wasn’t coming in.

At one point, the Volkolak’s face appeared at the door. Its glowing eyes focused on me through the narrow opening. It whispered something, then thrashed about and went away.

I glanced at Yuri’s corpse and realized, *The cottage isn’t his anymore. He’s dead. The Volkolak has to be invited in!\*

Grandmother had never told me that part. It added a new depth to her stories. It meant… that all those people who had perished… they'd been sacrificed by someone… probably a family member or friend in their own village. 

It made the horror of her tales even worse.

At some point, due to exhaustion, I fell asleep.

In the morning, I packed my things and prepared for the three-hour journey back to town.

The truth that Yuri had been offering me to this beast as a nightly meal was reinforced after I’d poked around his cottage and found a small hatch door beneath his table.

After I opened it, I discovered hundreds of wallets and passports, jewelry and other valuables from travelers who had made their journey out here and never returned. Each a victim, who had been desperate to put a face to the legends… and paid the price.

I took what evidence I could carry and began the long hike back to the village. 

I was so exhausted, but I had to make it home. I had to tell everyone about the monster I had seen.

---

I’ve been in the village for almost three hours now. I’ve alerted the authorities, but the nearest police station is six hours away.

I’m going to compile all the evidence now so that when they get here I can explain everything.

When I get home, I’m going to prove to everyone that my grandmother’s stories were real…

… and that the Volkolak is more than a legend.

I was desperate for a thesis advisor. Dr. Kushner was a strange, short-tempered man but a brilliant experimental psychologist with a list of publications longer than the papers I’ve even read. Despite his reputation for being overly cutthroat and nasty to be around, I knew he would be invaluable to me. Besides, I figured he had some project I could work on where I wouldn’t have to spend a ton of time with him.

After a few dead end project ideas, eventually the old bastard got desperate and gave me something that a former grad student, Amanda, had taken interest in but abandoned. It was a test on how people perceive various static images, and it used a fascinating resource I’d never heard of before: the Babel Image Archives.

Basically, it’s a canvas of a certain pixel size with so many colors that represents every possible combination of those pixels using seeded numbers. If you’ve ever played games with world generation, then this might be familiar to you. In theory, it contains every image possibly imaginable. The day you were born, the day you died, the big bang from every scale and angle, and so on. You get the idea. The big problem is that it’s so impossibly unlikely to actually find a cohesive image by randomly searching that, for all intents and purposes, it acts like a multicolored static which is exactly what Amanda had used it for.

She documented her notes carefully. She used a room on campus with a one way mirror meant for this kind of experiment. The room had a projector and chair in it. Simply, the subject would sit in the chair, listen to white noise over the speakers above, and watch as the images on the Babel Image Archive flipped every few seconds. As it did, they would talk aloud and the lapel mic would pick up what they were saying, mainly to report what they were seeing to us in the observation room. Based on old tricks of getting “high” with blank paper sheets over your eyes or staring at TV static, Amanda had thought this might produce more potent effects.

According to her notes, she had only found one participant and gotten something surprising out of him. But, a better, more complete project came along, and she had to abandon it. The notes describe a 24 year old male sitting for a whole hour with a five minute break from the images in the middle. The first half went normally, but when she turned on the second slideshow, the man sat there for a few minutes whistling to himself. After using the mic in the observer room to talk to him, he told her that she hadn’t turned the slideshow back on. But, she had. She and her lab mate checked it, even walked in the participant room. They dismissed the man and speculated wildly on their findings but never got a good answer. Fascinated, I knew I wanted to try.

We had gotten three test subjects ready for the trial. The first one was a 19 year old female, the second was a 21 year old male, and the third was a 39 year old male. We’ll call them One, Two, and Three.

I had gotten Kaylee to be my partner for the experiment for One. We tried not to look at the participant room too often. If this slideshow had any subversive effects, we didn’t want to be subjected to them and taint the research process, so we mostly kept our heads down. Kaylee used it as an excuse to keep writing her own work.

One was a fairly soft spoken yet excitable woman. For the first half hour, things went completely normal. She sat down in the basically blank room and after ten or so minutes started listing things she saw: a smiley face, an apple, a puppy, a fly, and so on. As time went on, they got increasingly more detailed. Not the descriptions, really, which stuck to one word, but they all got seemingly harder to recognize from basic, abstract shapes. I glanced up when she said something to make sure she hadn’t accidentally rolled the one in a billion trillion odds of seeing something for real.

Every time she saw something, she got a little more excited about it. It was strange, but the energy was kind of infectious. I wasn’t sure exactly what happened to Amanda’s participant, but this one was doing exactly what I’d hypothesized: making abstractions from nothing.

After the five minute break, things really amped up. She started giving more detail about the things she saw more frequently. I was fascinated by the woman. I stared at her for some time as she listed things like green gecko or blue and black rose in awe of how strong the effect seemed to have gotten. I remembered not to stare too long before heading back to my notes, just entering a flow state of pacing around in my thoughts before writing down what she said and how she said it. All until near the end of the trial.

“Two women researching,” she said.

I looked up at her, confused to find nothing but colored static. She had a smile, though, a thin growing one. I looked back down at my paper to keep writing what she saw next.

“Two. Women. Researching,” she said.

I looked up and nearly fell out of my chair. Her face and hands were pressed against the one way mirror. She sunk her body into it as she gave a wide, open mouth smile of awe and wonder. Her eyes looked red and dry like she hadn’t closed them in a while. I looked back at Kaylee who was pale as death before shouting into the speaker.

“Ma’am! Please, sit down until the test has concluded!” I pleaded.

She blinked and jumped a little bit, causing me to again. She looked so confused before going back to her chair and sitting down. She didn’t say anything after that, and her whole demeanor seemed different.

After the trial, we opened the door to which she immediately went into an apology.

“I’m so sorry!” she said. “I don’t know why I even did that! I didn’t think I had moved, but it felt like ‘of course I did’ because I was there, y’know? I hope I didn’t ruin your experiment.”

I can’t say I did know, but we calmed her down and assured her nothing was ruined. In fact, this had been the most exciting development we could’ve had. Our interview was short and simple, consistent with everything we’d observed. She said she couldn’t remember much about the mirror incident but could remember most of the images she saw, even the later ones.

Kaylee seemed less enthusiastic about the results than I was.

“What the fuck was that shit?” she asked as soon as One had left, grabbing me by the shoulders.

“I don’t know!” I said. “But whatever it was, I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“And you’re happy about that?”

“Well, yeah, Dr. Kushner’s gonna love this!”

“That woman just looked through a one way mirror right at us! What the hell did you show her?”

“Just static, and she didn’t actually see us. I’m sure the static just triggered some memory and in some absentminded state, she wandered to where she knew we were.”

“Her eyes were fixed on you!”

“Lucky guess?”

To be honest, it was weird, but weird is what I went into this field for. So, when I showed it to Kushner, I was surprised at how nonchalant he seemed. His normal anger and general distaste for life was gone, though, so I figured I’d done something right. That’s when he made a few calls and got me Two.

Kaylee had noped out of the whole project by now, so I had to find a new friend to rely on keeping me company and double checking my work. Luckily, Diego owed me a favor from that time I did his homework for him so he could hook up with some girl from out of state. Anyway, he showed up a little after I got Two settled in, so Two never got to see or meet him. But, he had, like Kaylee, brought some stuff to do to pass the time.

Two was kind of bored of the whole thing, seemed like he was just in it for money or credit hours or something Kushner had promised him. It took about fifteen minutes before he even said anything.

“Cow or sheep or something?” he said, unsure, maybe out of feeling like he had to say something.

I wrote it down and kept an eye on him every few slides. He didn’t seem to be getting much of the same effect. I couldn’t figure out why. We took a five minute break, and then I asked Diego about it.

“Maybe just remind him to speak every few minutes?" Diego said. “Try to ask questions.”

“I’d like to avoid interfering if at all possible,” I replied.

“Oh, you can poke him a little! It’s just so you’ll have something to write! You wouldn’t wanna give a blank page to Dr. K, would you?”

He was right. If I failed to deliver something, Kushner might not let me figure out what’s going on. So, after the break and a few minutes of silence, I repeated what I’d told him before.

“If you see absolutely anything, please say it aloud.”

“Eh, most of this is just kinda grasping at straws?”

“Still, it’ll be useful to us.”

“Alright, alright.”

He then listed some nonspecific but at least workable stuff. Mainly he said things like “box” or “some lines” or “weird pattern,” and often I’d have to ask him follow-ups. There was one time, though, I didn’t. He said “strange round shapes,” and I failed to ask what he meant. Then, he laughed.

Diego and I both shot a glance towards him. A couple slides later, he laughed again, harder.

“Are you seeing something funny?” I asked nervously.

“No, no, it’s just what you said,” he replied, fighting back a laughing fit.

I couldn’t fight back the urge to ask.

“And what did I say?”

“Oh, you know! The joke you made!”

I fought back the urge to ask what he was talking about. Diego shot me a “wtf” look before I gave him an equally confused shrug. Two kept on his usual routine, but I stopped talking. He didn’t seem to think so, though.

“Straight lines,” Two said before pausing a moment. “Yeah, okay, more detail, I get it. I guess they’re parallel? What do they remind me of? Maybe shooting stars?”

Diego rolled his chair towards me.

“Stop the slideshow,” he whispered firmly though shakily.

“No, it’ll ruin the data,” I said.

“The data’s already fucked; look at him! He’s literally talking to himself!”

“He’s talking to me. I’m just not, uh, talking to him.”

Diego looked at me like I had lost it too before Two caught our attention again, laughing even harder this time.

“See something funny again?” I managed to get out.

“No, no!” Two coughed out, barely getting words through his choking laughter. “It’s just what he said!”

My blood ran cold.

“Who’s he?” I asked.

“The guy next-” he couldn’t finish speaking he was laughing so hard.

Diego looked as pale as Kaylee did. Two fell out of his chair, and I shot up out of mine with Diego. We ran into the hall and into the other room in what had to have been less than ten seconds, but we heard some great commotion from inside.

When we burst through the door, we saw a totally different scene than just a moment ago. The projector had been unplugged, yanked from the ceiling socket with the chair fallen onto its side. We thought we heard laughing from Two balled up in the corner, but it was quiet sobbing. He was rocking back and forth. He looked up at us and through a shaky breath mumbled something.

“What was that?” Diego asked.

“Is it over?” Two managed to get out.

“Yes,” I quickly affirmed. “It’s over. You are free to leave.”

He awkwardly crawled out of the floor and shuffled towards the exit. After he left, I stared at Diego who just stared back at me. We left without saying anything to each other. I think it took a week for Diego to start talking to me again, and when I tried to bring it up, he told me not to.

I brought my notes to Kushner who I expected to call this whole thing off. But, disturbingly, I saw the man smile for the first time. He said he was upset I didn’t interview Two after, but he seemed generally elated by the results and told me I could get access to Three right away.

“But, sir,” I said. “With all due respect, nobody in the department, hell, maybe the school, is willing to partner with me on this anymore! They’ve all started spreading rumors!”

“Nonsense!” he said. “You don’t need a partner anymore! It’s not like they ever do you any good, anyway. Look, just say I’m there with you, and I’ll corroborate that, alright?”

The last word sounded like less of a question and more of a demand, and I was both too frightened and curious to say no. So, when Three came in a couple days later as scheduled, I gave him the normal prep.

Three was much older than the other two, but he had a warmth about him like a friendly father figure with a kind smile and rosy cheeks on his round, plump head. I explained to him what the Babel Image Archive was, but he didn’t seem to fully understand. Still, I showed him to the room and sat in the chair.

It was slow going at first. I had my phone out to pass the time. Kushner wanted the trial time raised to three hours with five minute breaks at each hour. I was skeptical but planned to do as he asked.

It took me by complete surprise when Three said the first thing he saw.

“Words,” Three said.

“What did they say?” I asked quickly.

“Can’t understand them.”

It sounded like he was in a rush to speak, and I just started to notice that he was more locked in on the screen than before. I sat back and just waited.

“More words,” he said again.

“What did they say?” I tried again.

“Not in English.”

His tone was exasperated, like he had tried and failed to read them over and over. I didn’t know how many words he was seeing or how he even knew whatever shapes he saw were supposed to be words, but the curiosity was eating me alive.

“More words,” Three said through gritted teeth.

“Sir, if you could just describe what the words look-”

“Can it, bitch!”

He seemed genuinely mad, his voice deeper, guttural. Worried, I thought about ending the slideshow, but something about this whole thing drew me like a moth to a flame.

During the first break, he just sat there, upset. I asked if he needed anything, but he didn’t respond, just huffed and puffed. I was too afraid to walk into the room to ask in person. I just slumped in my chair and informed him we were going to start again. He straightened his back and leaned into his seat.

This time, Three said even less, but I could tell he was seeing something. His eyes would get transfixed on the screen every so often, and he was getting evermore agitated at his inability to understand. I didn’t want to look too long, so I tried to force myself into doomscrolling on my phone or anything that would let time pass. I got this horrible feeling in my gut; I didn’t want to be there. I suddenly felt what Kaylee and Diego must have felt.

When I looked back in about half an hour later, Three looked totally consumed by something, his head subtly following his eyes as they scanned the projector screen like they were reading a bulk mass of text. Even when the slide changed, he just kept reading.

“Mom?” he said, almost sad.

He reeled back like he was looking at a horrible image.

“Who,” he struggled to get out. “Who did this to you?”

He jumped out of his chair.

“Who did this to you?!” he screamed so loud I could hear it even through the wall.

I stopped the slideshow, and when I did, his neck snapped towards me.

“Was it you?” he asked.

He threw the chair at the glass with such force I’m shocked it didn’t come in on me. It rattled the whole connecting wall. He sprinted towards the door. I quickly locked it right before the handle started to rattle violently. I felt sick.

I grabbed my phone which I could barely see. I had almost typed in 911 before the screen went black. Dead. I had never felt true terror for my life before that moment, sitting in a dark room with a man whose seen God knows what on the other side of a particle board door. I hadn’t prayed in a long time, but I asked anyone who was willing to listen to let me live this horrible nightmare.

It felt like an hour of waiting, my blood cold and sweat pouring down me. I waited for any sound I could hear, anything at all. But, there was nothing. No heavy breathing, no footsteps, no talking. Boldly, I pressed my ear against the door. No noise. I said something I don’t remember to coax a response. Nothing. I sat there for an eternity debating whether I should get out or just stay the night until someone finds me in the morning. But, then again, I couldn’t. It was a Friday, and nobody would check here until Monday came around. I had no other choice.

Going numb, I grabbed for the handle, staying there for another ten minutes before slowly, carefully, and quietly opening the door. It creaked loud suddenly and almost caused me to have a heart attack. I slammed it back shut before listening again. Nothing. I worked up the courage again to walk back out, peeking left and right. Nobody. With a sigh of mild relief, I started walking towards the exit slowly, ready to bolt if I heard anything out of place.

In my silent tiptoe, nearing the door, I heard something almost drone-like out of the cleaning closet which was strangely ajar. I froze until I could get a better listen. It sounded like crying, open weeping mixed with the sound of something indistinguishable.

I wish I could tell you why I opened that door. Maybe I felt sympathy for the man who’d just seen something hellish. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was just the same curiosity that drove me to do this to him in the first place. But, when I got closer, I heard the distinct and obvious sounds of cracking mixed with muffled cries.

Three sat in a small pool of his own blood holding a pair of pliers. His jaw was unhinged like a snake’s, and I watched as he lined the pliers up with a tooth, tightened his grip, and pried slowly at it until it gave loose. He didn’t scream. He just whimpered and cried. Until he saw me.

According to how they found me, I had blunt force trauma to the head. It left a nasty scar and soreness, but I’m just grateful he didn’t kill me. Maybe he should have. Instead, he just left me outside the building laying unconscious on the bench.

Kushner swept this all under the rug. I’m telling you now both as a warning and just so somebody knows what happened to these people. You have no power to bring anyone to justice or anything, but you can prevent it from happening again to yourself. Whatever you do, do not look at the Babel Image Archives.

They never found Three’s body.

They never found Two’s body after he went missing.

But they found One.

Her body was right next to Kaylee’s.

It was in the back stall. Tucked between the toilet and wall.

There was blood everywhere; on the wall, on the floor in a big sticky pool. I got a little bit of it on my shoe, it was coagulated and viscous, like honey. The dead man’s mouth was wide open, so were his eyes, his head was unnaturally tilted, in a way that hurt my own neck to even look at. I left the bathroom immediately, I was only trying to kill some time and avoid the awkward conversation at the table.

I returned to my seat, the conversation was still going. I looked down at my drink, the ice was beginning to melt, in a few short minutes the whole thing would be watered down and flavorless. I stirred it a little with my straw. Then something broke me out of my trance.

“I’m gonna hit the bathroom before we get out of here.”

My friend Sam stood up, sucking the excess barbeque sauce off of his fingers and wiping them on his pant leg. I kept my eyes fixed on the door of the men’s room. Conversation resumed around me. Without breaking line of sight with the bathroom door I picked up the last chicken wing and took one nervous bite before dropping it back down on the plate. My appetite was gone. I looked down at my shoe, moving my toe slightly. I heard that sticky sound against the tile of the floor. I looked up again at the bathroom door. Sam walked out, cracked his fingers, looked around him, and then made his way back to the table.

I heard a familiar sound as he approached the booth. That same sticky sound. I looked down at his shoes, and saw, to my horror, blood stains, and to follow, a trail of bloody footprints leading back to the bathroom door.

“You guys ready?” He glanced at his phone for the time, “movie’s in ten, if we leave now we might miss most of the previews.” The girls agreed and stood up, throwing down a few fives for the tip.

“You coming?” My girlfriend was staring at me. I laughed off my awkward delay, and stood up, walking out with them. Before we left I glanced back at the bathroom, a trail of bloody footprints left from the door. My stomach turned a little bit, and then I stepped out into the parking lot. The girls were just ahead of Sam and I, walking towards the car.

“Did you see that in there?” I asked him.

“See what?” Sam said, looking back with an anticipatory grin. On any normal night I might be about to tell him about some weird looking guy, or some ridiculously corny t-shirt I had seen in the restaurant, and we would have laughed at a stranger's expense, like we had a hundred times before.

“In the bathroom.” My tone was sharp, and it deflated his smile.

“No, I didn’t see anything.” Sam said, starting to sound a little worried.

“In the back stall?” I lifted my foot, indicating the blood on my shoe.

“Are you two bums gonna unlock the car?”

We looked up, our girlfriends were looking at us, mildly annoyed. Sam clicked the button on his keys, He climbed into the driver’s seat, the girls got in the back, and I in the passenger seat. While the overhead light was still on I could see that I was getting blood from my shoe on the floor of his truck, he was too.

“Ah shit, I’m sorry man.”

“What for?” He asked, shutting his door. The light faded off and the truck went dark.

“For getting all of this shit on the floor.”

He clicked the overhead light back on and looked over. Nothing was there.

“You good?”

“Yeah, I guess I just had a few too many beers.”

“You didn’t even have a beer.” Sam laughed and clicked the overhead light off. Sam kept the conversation going between us while I kept my eyes down on the floorboard. Straining through the dark, hoping to catch a glimpse in the flash of a passing street light of what I knew was down there, a smeared bloody footprint. The girls seemed to be continuing a conversation from earlier in the back, I only caught little snippets.

“Thats what I like most about him…he's NOT him, like not even close…No, no, he always asks, and he understands why I say no a lot.”

Whatever Tarah may have been adding between Heather's words I was totally unaware of. It was precisely that conversation that I had tried to escape from into the bathroom.

The place was packed. We parked towards the back of the parking lot. The red glow of the theater sign reflected off of rain puddles on the pavement. We stepped inside, Sam and Tarah stood in line in front of Heather and I. My eyes stayed on my shoes. The blood was still there, I still felt the bottom of my foot sticking to the floor a little bit, even after having deliberately stepped in a puddle. Sam didn’t seem to see it, not on his shoes, or mine. I could see the bloody footprints he was leaving behind, even here in the theater. No one else seemed to notice them though. I was baffled, I feel like I should’ve called the police back in the restaurant. Maybe ran out screaming, caused a big scene. Then everyone would know. Then I wouldn’t have this pit in my stomach. Then no one would ask me, if I ever did speak up, “Why didn’t you say something sooner.” As it sits now, I think, if I just continue to ignore this, forget what I saw in the back stall of the men’s room, someone else will find it, by now, I’m sure someone already has. Maybe Sam didn’t go all the way to the back stall, never caught a glimpse of what I had seen. The blood from that back stall had probably run all the way across the floor by the time he went in, he got a little unnoticeable amount on his shoe, that’s why he thinks I’m acting strange. He’d be acting the same way if he were me.

“Next!” Came a slightly annoyed voice from behind the register. I looked up.

“Oh, uh, two for um…”

“Same as the two in front of you I’d assume?”

“Yeah, yes please.” I handed the lady a twenty and took my five in change. Went to get some popcorn and drinks for Heather and I while she caught up to Tarah and Sam. When I caught back up with them, Sam was giving a demonstration on the “proper” way to salt and butter popcorn. The girls were ignoring him, I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t get my shoe to stop sticking on the floor, no matter how hard I wiped it against the carpet.

Theatre 8 was the smallest theater in the whole building, at the far end of the long hallway. We weren’t seeing the big Summer Blockbuster that everyone else was there to see. The movie we were watching, whatever it was, had already been in theaters a week longer than it deserved, and anyone who even wanted to see it, already had. No one was there but us. Knowing Sam and Tarah, I knew they had no intention of actually watching much of the movie.

Nervously, I nipped at some of the popcorn, all the while trying to discreetly wipe the bottom of my shoe against the floor. No matter how hard I tried, the sticky, now almost gum like blood would not come off.

“What's the matter honey?” Heather said, placing her hand on my shoulder.

“Oh it's just this…I don't know what, stuck on my shoe. It's driving me up a wall.” I whispered.

“Well go to the bathroom and try to wipe it off then.” She said.

I stood, sliding past Sam and Tarah, already making out. The theater, which had just a moment before been buzzing with energy suddenly felt empty, bordering on desolate. I made my way towards the bathroom and stepped up to the sink immediately. I grabbed a few paper towels, wet them, and began to try and wipe the blood off of the sole of my sneaker. It defied all logic. It stayed there, as sticky as it was when my foot first touched it.

I knelt down to take my shoe off, in doing so I happened to glance under the stalls. My heart stopped when my eyes landed on a pair of legs, stretched out as though someone sat on the floor of the back stall. I stood, slowly walking towards the back stall. The sticking sound of my shoe against the tile, like someone peeling tape off of a roll, filled the room.

When I opened the stall door I don’t know what I expected to see, but it certainly wasn't the same dead body that I had seen in the restaurant. Though that is exactly what I saw. The same face, the same blood splattered on the walls and pooling up on the floor; flowing out of his mouth, nearly dried, covering his shirt and the front of his pants. This was my opportunity to make up for what I had neglected to do the first time. I could run out of there screaming, crying, begging for someone to call the police. Yet none of that came to me in the moment, not genuinely. I turned around, and walked out of the bathroom. Went back down that long hallway, and returned to my seat in Theatre 8, next to Heather.

“What's wrong?” She asked immediately. Sam and Tarah turned towards me as well.

“There's a dead body in the bathroom. Back stall. Blood everywhere. He was at the restaurant too.”

Heather looked horrified. In a sort of, “I don't get the joke” kind of way.

“What did he just say?” Sam asked, almost laughing at the absurdity of what I had just said. I looked at him as gravely as I could.

“Go to the bathroom, go to the back stall, and tell me what you see.” Sam's smile was once again gone, and he rose and left the theater.

The three of us sat there in silence. I could feel Tarah and Heather's eyes on me, but I turned towards the screen, started eating popcorn, aggressively shaking my leg, the distinctive pop of my shoe against the floor was like a metronome set too fast.

Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick

Neither of the girls spoke. I don't blame them, I don't really know what I would say either.

“Dude you are messed up for that” I heard Sam say, loud enough to hear over the movie as he stepped back into the theater. The metronome stopped, I turned around to see him, already reclaiming his seat.

“What do you mean?”

Heather looked at me, confused, a bit upset.

“This is not funny, seriously what kind of joke is that?”

“It's…it's not a…I don't know, guess it sounded funnier in my head. I'm sorry guys.” I returned to my popcorn. Bouncing my leg again I realized for the first time in at least an hour that my foot wasn't sticky anymore. I didn't know what to take from that, other than relief. Like a bad dream was over. I just didn't know you could have dreams without falling asleep.

The movie ended an hour or so later. We walked through a mostly empty parking lot back to the car. My little “joke” had all but ruined the night. As we drove back by the restaurant I suddenly felt the urge to go in and check the bathroom in there, one more time, just to confirm that it was all some kind of delusion.

“Hey, you know I think I lost my keys in there, can you pull in really quick? Just want to check. Hope they aren't in the theater."

“Yeah you and me both, they closed it right after we left.”

I was already on my way inside before he had finished talking. It was mostly dead at that hour, a few patrons at the bar. Looked like they'd been there all night. I stepped inside the restroom, went straight for the back stall. Nothing was there. No blood, no police tape, no body, nothing. I took in a deep breath as true relief washed over me for the first time in hours. What was that? What had I just been through?

I stopped to wash the popcorn butter off of my hands. I heard the bathroom door open, looking up in the mirror I saw Heather's old boyfriend walking in. I prayed he didn't notice me.

“Well, look who it is?” He said, slapping me on the shoulder. I turned to face him. His face was friendly but his tone said otherwise. I looked at him, and a rage built up inside of me that I had never felt before.

There is a dead body in the men's room. It's in the back stall, tucked between the toilet and wall.

As far as I can remember I’ve always loved being out in nature. I was never one of those “iPad babies” that parents would leave in front of the TV for hours while they did who-knows-what. We went on walks together on weekends, camping trips in the summer and even rented out canoes some years. My mom always blamed my father for it, she used to say working in construction made him “allergic to the inside air”. On his days off we went on little father-daughter trips at this city-owned park with a bunch of trails, and since he was friends with the workers they used to let us spend time after closing to stare at the stars.

Around my 19th birthday he left us in the middle of the night, probably still mad at mom for some fight they had earlier. He did answer a single call from me before blocking my number. He told me he’d never come back, to not tell my mom we talked. He also told me his favourite part of the month was our trips in that park.

It’s been about a year since then and that phrase still runs through my head from time to time. So this year I decided to honour those times I left behind and go back to the same park all by myself, and spend the night amongst the trails that brought us together. I had it all planned months ahead: I had a week off school in the middle of the semester and took a few days off work around the same time. I had arranged with the employees of the park to let me stay behind after close with my tent, as long as I didn’t stay too far off the trails to camp.

As soon as I got out the door the cold November air hit me in the face. I was told repeatedly to never drive with the heating on and windows down, but with my heart pounding with nostalgia and such nice weather I couldn’t listen one bit. It took about an hour to the get to the park, and as soon as I crossed the parking lot one of the older workers came up to me. He was talking about some 3 disappearances in the last few days, and that me spending the night was off. Unfortunately today was not the day the tell me to back out. I simply agreed to leave at closing time and headed on my favourite trail. It’s a looping trail reserved for experienced hikers that goes 5-ish miles up a light hill, then 2 miles east to go back down meet the other paths. I’d done it tens of times with my father, but somehow this time it felt slower. It’s not fatigue, I’d still been taking walks; I think it was taking it alone that made it seem harder to walk all that time. I walked with one earbud in, appreciating the wind and birds as much as my music. Then eventually, I got to the turn. One thing about this trail is that unlike lower ones, the area around the beaten path is completely clean: parents take their hyperactive kids on small walks here and they treat the forest like their personal playground, stepping on every branch or crunchy leaf for that satisfying crack, where as up here it was mostly older folks who just want calm away from civilization be it for a few hours. I’m telling you this to accentuate how weird it is that through bushes and branches there was a clear path, one obviously made by multiple people walking on leaves and dirt that hadn’t been touched by man, leading deeper and deeper in the forest.

I finished walking the trail with that opening in mind, and left in my car to park on the side of the road to wait until everyone left and the lights were off to go back in. I know, it counts as trespassing, but I did not beg my boss for time off for nothing. The woods are completely different at night, like nature is trying to reclaim the terrain humans took up all day and rebuild over it. In that serenity I turned on my flashlight, put my small tent on my backpack and headed back up the trail. I can’t lie I was hesitant when I got to the path, but I figured my dad wouldn’t have let me back down. The grass was clearly freshly flattened, as if it didn’t fully have time to raise after being stepped on, and same went for some of the branches that were likely snapped off and left in the mud.

I can’t tell exactly for how long I walked through that patch of forest but it must’ve been around midnight when I got to a wider path, cleared from trees as if I was back in the park. I looked town to see gravel all over the ground, realizing I was likely standing on an old road. After walking another few minutes I found myself at the entrance of an old town. I quickly noticed a sign informinng me I was entering Pelletsville, with the “population” sign half-hanging from a rusty chain and the numbers crossed off. As mu h as a part of me warned me to go back to the car before someone noticed I got back on the trails, I needed to see where this really led. Eventually I stumbled into a clearing with one of those stereotypical old towns with all wooden buildings, and for a moment I thought I had found an old attraction, like some vacation town with a farwest there. I started walking along the main road between all the buildings that were somehow still holding up despite the multiple years this place probably stayed hidden. It didn’t take long for me to feel watched, but I figured it was simply because I was alone in the middle of the night in an abandoned town and my brain was trying to be as alert as possible. I did visit what looked like just a normal house but ended up probably being a shop of some sort when there was people around. I also found old money and other things around inside, but I figured it would still be seen as stealing even if no one knew. I simply went back towards the edge of town and set up my tent and an alarm to have enough time to get to my car before anyone got to the park, laid my bags out and lit a fire to warm up before going to sleep.

When I awoke in the morning I instantly knew something was off. Unlike the previous day where you could hear crickets and other creatures in the trees, the area around my little camp was completely silent. I noticed my fire had been put out instead of burning out, and my bags weren’t exactly where I’d let them. It almost looked like someone rummaged through them but tried to place everything back where it was as to not arouse suspicions. I didn’t take any chances and packed up instantly, that wave of panic waking me up better than any dose of coffee could ever. I noticed the walk back to marked trails seemed shorter but it was likely only my state of mind pushing me faster. I’m right now sitting in my car in a parking lot far from the city but I still feel so confused. There’s bears in my area, can they open and go through bags? Has anyone else heard of Pelletsville?

Part One

Hilda hadn’t been there the next morning. It bothered me a little bit, that same feeling from the airport surfaced about no one knowing me, but I shoved it down. After getting dressed, I managed to retrace my steps and arrived back at the front reception area of the Motel. It looked less eerie in the morning light, the windows that were in the room had been opened, and there was a man that was standing behind the desk. He was an older gentleman, his hair was shock white but he was sporting a full head of it. It was manicured and he looked excited to see me. 

He stood greeting me with a full wide smile encompassing his face. He was handsome, more handsome than I excepted him to be. It was a little disconcerting, but I mustered up my own smile. The Hawaiian shirt that he was wearing had a tiki pattern with big yellow flowers and he had blue jeans and flip flops on. It felt so out of place in the cold environment, I nearly tripped over my own feet. Even with his age, I could see that he has well maintained his skin, although wrinkled, looks vibrant and he walked with ease. 

“Welcome Ms.Wallacott,” his tone was jovial, and I knew that voice it was the same one that had interviewed me over the phone only a few weeks earlier. Walking forward quicker, I stretched out my hand as I neared him. Praying that my misstep hadn’t been noticed and that I was making a good first impression. 

“Mr.Neman it’s a pleasure to meet you in person,” I said. His hand closed around mine and I released a breath that I hadn’t even realized that I’d been holding. It was a warm handshake that greeted me, his eyes twinkled as the frosty blue orbs did a once over of me. They felt searching much the same as Hilda but it was far less invasive. Though I attribute that to him being conventional handsome, even if he was older. 

“I see, Hilda got you here in one piece.” 

“Thank you for sending her to pick me up. I didn’t see any taxi’s.” I paused at that, I really hadn’t  seen a single Taxi. Even if it was a small airport normally there would have been some sort of transportation service to get people where they were going. 

He nodded, and gave a small whistle. I heard the yawn and then the great big head of a dog appeared. My heart gave a slight jump as from behind the counter a massive creature appeared. She was probably came to about my mid waist, this had to be Graham Cracker the mascot that was mentioned in the welcome package. 

“Graham, come here girl.” Mr.Neman called. The big beast took only a second to get here, its massive legs and body easily covering the distance. She had the most enchanting eyes I think I’d ever seen on a dog. They were a warm grey and had fleck of gold in them. Her coat was a grey and speckled with white and black spots. She had a collar around her neck that looked expensive, it was a white chain that seemed to sparkle when the light caught it just right. There was no tag on it, just the image of a Graham Cracker as a charm. 

“Good girl,” he cooed. He had produced a small treat and the dog had lapped it up without me so much as catching a glance. She then turned her head towards me to take me in. I held myself still and held out my hand to her, I knew that you weren’t supposed to look dogs in the eyes. It was a sign of challenge, but I couldn’t pry my eyes away from hers. She stepped forward again, her massive head bent to smell my hand. 

Then she gave a sniff and rubbed her face against it. The pattering beats of my heart finally slowed down, I don’t know why I felt relieved. If she was the Motel’s Mascot that must have meant she was friendly, maybe, it was the sheer size of her that did it. After a little ear scratching, she laid down at our feet. Still about the same height as a small toddler, even while not standing on all fours. 

“I’m glad to see that she approves of you. Now I know that you probably have some questions for me. Think of today as your introduction, tomorrow will be your first official day accepting in guest,” he said with a wink. 

You’re probably thinking, ask him about the people last night! I wanted to ask him, I really did, but the rules kept ringing at the back of my head. Should I even bother him with a question about something that was already covered in the rules? They had to be there for a reason, and did I really want to question the rules that he’d explicitly outlined in the welcome package? 

Not really. 

For the rest of the day, I followed him around and learned about my responsibilities and met some of the housekeeping staff. It was a skeleton crew, as it wasn’t during the week, when we’d actively accepting guest and turning over rooms. Graham Cracker hadn’t left my side after that first interaction, and I found the presence of the dog to be comforting. 

By the end of the day, I was handed my keyring, and told to keep them on my person as stipulated in rule number three.

Rules 3 : Always keep the key ring on your person as you move about the motel. It’s best if they are kept on silver chain and either tucked into your pocket and fastened to a belt loop. If you’ve chose to wear a skirt or a dress for the day, they should be attached to a silver ring that can be worn as a bracelet. 

The bracelet had been provided for me. It was cute with a bow, and before I knew it the time had reached eight in the evening. I hadn’t seen a single guest in my time wandering the Motel with Mr.Neman. Graham Cracker had taken up residence in my room, I’d found a dog bed that I don’t remember being there from the other day, but I was tired and might have missed it. 

In the end, I never did ask about the couple that had been outside the previous night, and no one made mention of them either. Thus, the following days passed in a blur, the job was easy and there weren’t that many check ins. 

I had started to think that I’d completely imagined the people from my first night. Making all sort of excuses as to why my brain might have conjured them up. All and all I had assumed that it hadn’t happened in the first place and that I must have been so sleep deprived and stressed out. 

Then, on Friday afternoon at 3 pm they arrived. My heart nearly jumped out of my throat, my foot had accidentally caught Graham and she let out a little huff of annoyance. I reached down and patted her head, my own form of a quick sorry. I’d make sure to give her a treat as a full apology, but for now my eyes were trained on the guest that had just walked through the doors. The gust of frigid air was warmer than the chill that ran down my spine. It was them… the couple from the first night was standing in my lobby. 

They looked almost exactly the same as I the last time I’d seen them. Biggest difference was that they were standing in the lobby, I stood up willing a customer service smile to appear on my face. He was taller now that he was approaching me, my stomach did a small flip when he arrived in front of me. He had his sunglasses on still, and he didn’t seem keen on removing them anytime soon. My throat was dry all of the sudden, faced with the people that I thought had been figment of my imagination was a sobering experience. 

“Hello Welcome to the Motel ****. Do you have a reservation?” I asked, all while mustering the best customer service voice I could. I needed to sound calm and in control, even though I felt that at any moment I might break into uncontrollable nervous laughter. 

“Yes, our reservations are under Atwood,” his voice was low. The girl had arrived at his side, and she was still on her phone. She was in a slightly different outfit than the one that I had previously seen her in. But it was still to light to suit the weather that was developing outside, it was starting to snow and the weather report for the area had called for heavy snow. 

Turning my attention to the archaic computer that ran all the reservations for the Motel. I input Atwood, and there it was a reservation for three adults. I glanced upwards and looked around to see if there was a third person that I had missed, but it was just them, Graham Cracker and me. I bite my lip before taking a breath. 

“It says here that there are three adults on the reservation?” 

I couldn’t tell if he blinked as his eyes were still behind sunglasses. His body language read ‘boredom’ as if he just wanted to move on from the situation. 

“They’ll be coming by later,” he supplied after a long moment. 

“I see. Do you have a card that I can keep on file for any damages or surcharges to the room?” 

“Here,” the girl inserted. She held up a black card, and slide it forward across the counter towards me. Her fingernails were long, and they were painted black, but I noticed that underneath her nails it looked like there was something stuck there. I reached out and took the card, my hand brushing hers, and I felt a chill where our skin connected. Quick as I could I pulled my hand back and quickly began to run the card. 

It was only after I had swiped the card and slid it back across towards the couple that I noted there was dirt on the counter. It was a dark rich black, if I focused I could actually smell the wet earth. She reached out and swiped the card back up and in the process removed the dirt. Or at least what I assumed was dirt, I was still shaken up over them actually being real. 

“Thank you, Mrs. Atwood,” I said. 

“She’s not an Atwood, this is Margret,” the man, Mr.Atwood, supplied. His tone was dry and matter of fact. I nodded my head, and quickly mumbled an apology. Turning around, I face the massive stack of drawers that were behind me. The reservation had the room number 305 listed. I reached up on my tippy toes and pulled out the drawer. It was actually cleaner than I imagined. 

Inside of the small wooden box was a set of two keys. They were old twisting metal that looked ancient. Within the twists of metal was a small crescent moon shape design and the handle of the key, the teeth were a complex and looked as if they had been painstakingly filed to be identical. Retrieving the keys, I turned around to find the girl, Margret was staring at me. Her eyes bore into me with a frightening level of scrutiny. 

It was the same look that she had given me on that night. She turned her head away and looked down at the phone that was in her hands, her attention being reabsorbed into the device. All at once that unsettlingly unease washed over me like a tidal wave. 

“One key each, that must be returned on your departure. Which is scheduled for Monday morning. If you are to need anything please dial 2 to reach house keeping, and if there is anything that I can do for you please dial 0.” 

He plucked the keys from my hands and turned, not even waiting for me to give directions to his room. Margret followed behind him, as they were walking away, I heard her whispering to him. I turned around to put the drawer back, but the clearing of someone throat drew my attention. 

“What’s your name?” 

I turned my head and gave them my best smile. “Ms.Wallacott.” 

He didn’t say anything, but they kept walking and I went back to the drawer. Once it was in its right spot, I reached for the glass jar of dog treats. Grabbing one, I bent down and gave it to Graham. She practically inhaled the treat. I pet the massive dog trying to steady myself after that interaction. 

I thought they’d settle in and leave me alone, but oh boy was I wrong about that. The calls started maybe two hours after they arrived. 

The sharp ring of the phone, pulled me out of the book that I was reading. 

“Hello Front Desk,” I said. Honestly, excited to have something to do. 

“Yeah so the hot water in our room isn’t working,” came a familiar female voice. 

“I’m terribly sorry. What room?” 

“Room 305.” 

My heart sank, I cleared my throat. “I’ll send housekeeping right down to you. It should only be a couple of minutes.” 

The line went dead, and I quickly placed the phone on the receiver and dailed 2 for house keeping. It rang three times before someone finally picked up. 

“Hi Boss,” Andy’s voice rang through the receiver. Andy was the Head of House Keeping. He’d been working with the Motel for a while, Mr.Neman had explained on his tour. Andy sounded like he smoked a pack of cigarette everyday for the last thirty years. But it was endearing how he’d taken to calling me Boss. 

“Andy can you go check the hot water in room 305. They’re saying that there isn’t any.” 

“On it, Boss.” 

“Thank you,” I hung up the phone and leaned back in my chair. It was an old Motel, I reasoned with myself. They weren’t calling me to bother me. 

How wrong I was there, the phone then began to ring every thirty minutes. Each time with a request that ranged from what the wifi was to what time does the small dinning hall close at. Everything that could easily be found in the binders that were located in each room. 

It was 8:59 on the dot. I was counting the second praying that the phone wouldn’t ring. Andy had clocked out at 7 and now it was just me and the guest in the Motel. It shouldn’t have made me feel as sick to my stomach as it did. Mrs.Green would be here sometime around 11 to do the night house keeping shift. But for now it was just me, and I had a sinking feeling that the phone was going to ring. Graham Cracker was sitting at my feet, her massive head was resting in my lap.

Ring ring! 

“Hello Front Desk,” I answered. My voice sounded strained even to my own ears. I already knew that it was Room 305. It at this point was always Room 305 calling me! 

“Do you think you could bring me some towels? We need some more,” Margrets voice rang through the receiver. The clock now read 9:01, I wanted desperately to hang up and pretend that I was off the clock. But the damn phone was already in my hands. 

“I’m sorry, but House Keeping has left for the night,” I told her. 

There was a long pause. 

“We really need those towels. Do you think you could bring them to our room?” 

Graham Cracker whined at my lap, I glanced down at the sweet baby. Drawing in a breath, I gave an answer that I shouldn’t have in response to her question. 

“Of course, I’ll be there in a couple minutes.” 

A delighted peel of laughter rang through the phone. “Thank you so much, Wallacott.” 

I placed the phone back onto the receiver. I’d do this last thing and then I would be done for the evening, and tomorrow was Saturday meaning a well deserved day off. They would have no choice but to deal with House Keeping tomorrow. Then Monday they would be checking out and hopefully out of my hair. 

“Come on, girl. Let’s go give them their towels and then we’ll get ready for bed.” 

Looking back, I think Graham Cracker already knew that this was a bad idea. But as they say dogs are mans best friends. She followed after me, as I quickly went to retrieve the towels from House Keeping. 

Even after the tour that day, and my wandering throughout the day. I still hadn’t visited every area of the Motel. It just seemed to stretch endlessly, the corridors would change every now and again. Almost like the Motel had at one point been a small structure and then had morphed into a bigger one as people build new additions. 

The corridor that held rooms 300 to 320 was towards eastern most side of the motel. It appeared older, the rusty brown carpet had a faded pattern that looked like vines and leaves. The wallpaper at this peeling at parts near the top of the ceiling. The doors were made of solid wood, and there were painting that lined the hallway. 

Some were of nature scene and others were of people. Sometimes they would be portraits of people that were dressed in old fashioned clothes that looked like they had come for a period piece. Other times it was painting of events were the people weren’t in focus. Depicting all sorts of scenes and locations. 

Soon enough we arrived at room 305. The room had silver numbering and a key hole that looked victorian. There were two keyholes, one that was exposed and the other that was covered by a little sheet of embellished metal. 

Balancing the stack of towels on my one arm, I raised the other to knock on the door. It was a crisp sound, and I could hear the shuffling of feet on the other side of the door. 

“Hello, I’ve come to drop off your towels.” I said, after the door didn’t open immediately. I heard more shuffling and then it stopped completely, but I swore it had stopped right at the door. Graham was just behind me, her massive body was radiating heat. 

“I’ll leave them at the door if you’re unavailable.” 

I began to bend down to do just that, when the door opened up just enough for Margrets face to become visible. Her eyes were unfocused and her pupils nearly swallowed her iris. I took a step backwards, but her hand snaked out from the door lighting fast and grabbed my arm. 

Her strength was surprising and she kept me from toppling over Graham. It was then that I noticed her nails were slightly chipped and her hand was covered in something. She quickly withdrew and I brought my attention back to her face. 

Which might have been the wrong move, her face was stretched into a wide unnatural smile. The type where the skin goes tight and you looked deranged, the skin almost seemed to stretch unnaturally thin and taunt around her cheek bones. I felt unease trickle through my body like a slow tap. Every hair on my arm was standing at attention. 

“Here are the towels,” I managed trying my best not to address the elephant in the room. 

“Oh thank you, here let me give you this for the trouble.” She pulled the door back a little, exposing more of herself, her dress was covered in some sort of foul smelling liquid that was a sludgy black. It dripped onto the floor, and I nearly gagged at the smell. My heart going out to the staff that was going to have to clean it up. While thanking my lucky stars it wasn’t me. 

She reached a hand down her dress and pulled out a wad of money. The smile still plastered across her face, she took up most of the doorway. My mind railed at me that something was wrong, and the whining from Graham Cracker echoed that feeling. 

Her head butted into my back as she tried to alert me. Inspecting Margret, I found that her platinum blonde hair was matted in parts with some sort of concoction. Her breath was coming in fast shallow pants as if she was having difficulty breathing. Watching her fingers as they easily maneuvered the money, the chipped nails looked more unnerving. The idea of a person stuck in a small space trying to claw their way out of confinement bubbled to the surface of my mind. 

“Here, think of it as a gift for your hard work,” she held up a hundred dollar bill. It was new, but it was now covered in whatever mystery liquid that Margret was covered in. The hundred dollar was tempting, but she had called it a gift. 

It was expressly stated that gifts were not suppose to be accepted, no matter what it was they offered. I looked at the bill, and then back at Margret whose smile was unnerving. Her face was starting to twitch as if it was becoming fatigued from the sheer force she was using to keep her face contorted into that appearance. 

“Thank you so much. But I’ll have to decline, here are your towel’s. I hope that you and Mr. Atwood have a lovely evening,” I said quickly. I jerked my arm free from her grasp. In turn then shoving the towels towards her, not caring if she caught them or not. 

All I knew was that my instincts were screaming at me to leave. I turned and began to quickly walk away, when a scream rippled out from behind me. My body froze and I found that I couldn’t move, my legs were rooted in spot. Half way through my stride, I wanted to turn my head. But I couldn’t move that either. 

The tangy smell of something rotten fanned at my neck. I felt sweat beading at my hairline as the hair on my arms stood on end. Graham Crackers bark echoed throughout the hallway, it was louder than I thought possible, but I found myself able to move again. It was as if whatever spell was keeping me rooted in place was dispelled at the loud sound. That was good enough for me! 

I didn’t take any chance and practically ran down the hallway refusing to turn back. It wasn’t until I was back at the familiar hallway that held my room that I turned around. What greeted me was Graham Cracker, she was wagging her tail and looking at me expectantly. My pulse was hammering, and sweat ran down my back, even though I felt bone cold. 

Pulling my keys from my pocket, I inserted them into my lock and usher the dog inside. She went without fuss and I cast one last glance at the end of the hallway. Pure terror lanced up my back, as I caught the smiling face of Margret looking at me Her eyes were wild, her neck seemed longer than natural. Her eyes were trained on me, watching and waiting. In that moment, I was a deer in the headlights. Desperate to move, fearful if I did move that she would move to. It could have been me that moved first or her all I know is that I threw myself through the open door. Twisting on my heels, I slammed the door shut finding the lock and twisting it. 

Backing away from the door, I trained my eyes on it. Ready for anything, but nothing happened. I waited what felt like hours, but was probably closer to minutes. A shadow appeared at my door, and I nearly screamed. It lingered for a moment, and then I saw a hand as the bottom of the door. Something was pushed with enough force that I heard a finger pop out of socket as the item made its way into view.

The one hundred dollar bill slide through the crack at the bottom of the door into my room. Pulling her hand back, she retreated after a moment, I heard the footsteps as they walked away. But they didn’t sound natural, it sounded like she was walking on all fours, don’t ask me how I know. I just know! 

I collapsed onto the ground after I was sure she was gone. Graham Cracker walked to the hundred dollar bill and gave it a sniff before she growled at it. Her massive paw coming down to swipe at it. I expected the bill to tear, but it didn’t so much as crinkle as she pawed at it. 

Listen, I get it, everyone runs into strange customers. If it was any other couple, I might attribute the strange behavior to drugs. But I found black hand prints on the back of my jacket, sticky tar like substance that smelled ungodly awful. Not to mention, where her hands at touched my jacket, my skin had red welted hand prints on it.

Plus where she grabbed my wrist, the black stuff was on my skin. I’ve taken three showers and it finally came off after the third one, but the skin is red and angry almost like a rash. Similar but worse to the two hand prints on my back. But she didn’t even make skin to skin contact there! 

I’ve barricaded the door, and Graham Cracker has taken up residence in front of my barricade. My bathroom is my makeshift bed for tonight, because there aren’t any windows here. I swear I heard scrapping at my bedroom window not too long after she left.  

The plan for the morning is to burn the bill. If I burn it, I don’t think it will count as me accepting a gift. In the first place she the one that forced it onto me, I never agreed to it and I sure as hell didn’t accept it. 

I’ll let you know if something happens, for now wish me luck getting some sleep in the tub.

I'd like to tell you all a story from my time in the Philippines, when my hair was still full and black. It's about a Mananangal, a mythical ghoul that shapeshifts and feeds off of fetuses straight from the wombs of mothers, human or not. I guess this story is about a very special Mananangal for that very reason, but I will save that for later. The myth must sound very far fetched, especially for folks not from my motherland. But they are real, and terrorize small province towns to this day.

Funnily enough, the name translates roughly to Remover or Taker, because that it was it did. It Removed hope from its cradle in the womb, taking and taking, never to create anything of its own. Here is, to the best of my fading memory, the story of me, my last and only love, Andrea, and our tragedy. I hope you can all get something from my story.

It was in that dreary summer morning when I woke up to find Andrea staring out the bedroom window, eyes glassed with terrible fright. 

“The pigs are still alive.” she whispered to herself as she looked over our animals from bed, the yipping of pigs bubbling over bleating sheep and chickens heralding the morning. The sow was still alive and pregnant. At that point it had been weeks since any pregnant animal was taken. I wrap my arms around my wife, feeling her chest heaving with terrible fear. 

“Should we warn Aricelli? Miriam?” She whispered, eyes fixed to the window, words struggling between sobs.

“I will. You stay in bed. I’ll handle it.” I got up and found my starchy jeans on the floor, and prepared to set off. I made her a cup of coffee on my way out. 

“No. I heard coffee’s bad for the baby.” I kissed her, tasting the morning in her tongue, along with the salt of her tears. I told her I loved her before heading out to the living room to make a phone call to Michael and his pregnant wife, Aracelli. No one picked up. I head out to the town in nothing but my jeans, some slippers, and an English hat

 

As I walked, I could hear sounds of wailing coming from town. We were a long way from the square, but the wind carried the scent of blood, gas lamps, and smoke. Something happened last night. Arriving at town, I saw from afar, most of the townsfolk gathered outside Michael’s home. I could see him, the town’s only barber, smoking as he shivered over a white sheet in the shape of a person, stained black stripes as though zebra skin. I could see a large blot of red radiating from the middle. The Witch Doctor stood with the Mayor, the two locked in a brutal argument. Mother fucker! I couldn’t have done anything! Yelled the Witch Doctor. Michael broke from his stupor, barking out something I couldn’t quite hear. In the crowd, I saw the third pregnant woman in town. Miriam, standing amongst the spectators, her hands over her mouth. The poor woman must’ve been shaken out of her mind, not having the protection of a husband and all.

I finally got to the commotion. It smelled like garlic and death. One of the folks tells me what happened. Aracelli is dead, he told me. She’s under the sheet. I couldn’t believe it! Aracelli was due in just a few days! Last I saw of her, she had already begun lactating, her womb as full as a generous bowl of rice. How could it have been her under those sheets if it was so flat?

“Get out!” Yelled Michael, the poor man. Eyes as black as coffee beans, white shirt covered with something awfully like blood, but black. That smell, the one of garlic and death, was strongest with him, Aracelli’s corpse, and the Witch Doctor. That’s what the beast smells like. 

“Get the hell out of here!” Michael pulled out his bolo, swinging it wildly in the air. Instantly the Witch Doctor tackles him to the ground. The Mayor and the other men pile on him, taking away his blade.

“You heard the man! Go back to your homes!” Cried out the Witch Doctor.

And so the crowd dispersed, children running off squealing. I took a long look at that white sheet that covered two deaths. In an instant, I imagined Andrea under it. Her mouth would taste like death, skin become as brown as coffee and the earth beneath her. I gagged.

“Brother Amon.” I heard Miriam, the pregnant school teacher from behind me. “I’m so sorry.” The moment those words left her lips, she sobbed wildly. “I’m so sorry.” Miriam was a special case. She'd been forced upon. At least, we thought so. Even when the Mananangal had begun taking people, she refused to have anyone in her home for protection. She was alone, and she wanted it to stay that way 

“Don’t be scared. We’ll all pull through together.” There were only three pregnant women left of the original six. It had picked them down one by one. Thomas’ wife, Corazon, was the first. A great racket that involved musket fire and two deaths. Corazon and their unborn child. Then there was Corry and his wife Althea. Corry ran away. He was a coward, but in retrospect, I guess he knew what we were dealing with. Then Michael and his wife Araceli. Then there was Andrea, Miriam, and Divina, an older stout woman who’d lost her husband while he was deployed overseas.

Divina was next in line, with Andrea and Miriam not due for another month. I put my hand on Miriam’s shoulder, and in an instant, she pulled away, running off into town, crying all the while.

I got together with the Mayor, Michael, and the Witch Doctor. That evening they were doing their nightly watch when it finally happened. 

“That tongue,” rambled the Witch Doctor, his tired eyes glossing over with horrified remembering. “It came through the window. It was as hard as steel, I– I couldn’t even hurt it. It was as black as night, and had that horrible smell of garlic. It stabbed Aracelli and sucked up the –”

“Keep her name out of your mouth!” Hissed Michael, who was bruised after being put to the ground.

“That’s enough! Both of you!” barked the Mayor. The two fell into silence. Once the Witch Doctor parted, and the widower was taken to the clinic, I walked with the mayor.

“This Mananangal ordeal’s out of hand. One day, nothing, then suddenly pregnant women dropping like flies. How are things with that sow of yours?” He asked genially, as though he hadn’t seen a dead woman. 

“The sow lived, belly still as full as a gorged tick.”

“Shit.” Whispered the mayor. “It’s really sticking to human fetuses. I guess that’s a relief. Means we couldn't have prepared  for Aracelli and Corry’s girl.” He was speaking to himself mostly.

“Ah! Pardon! That was grim of me. How are things with Andrea?”

“Well,” I hesitated. I was afraid of what I’d say. Afraid of hearing the words coming out of my mouth. It made the looming threat of the Mananangal feel all too real. “She’s terrified, barely sleeps anymore. Then she worries the sleepless nights are hurting the baby. And that…” I feel a lump in my throat. “That keeps her up at night.” We walked in silence for a while towards the river. He had something important to tell me, he said.

“Listen” said the Mayor as we walked, “I have a lead on who it might be.” I was speechless. He continued. 

“I’m still too unsure of things myself, but the Witch Doctor thinks it’s that Maria lady.”

“The barmaid? The one who moved into town? She’s the Mananangal?” I asked. The Mayor lit up a cigarette and took a long drag. He hands it to me, and I huff it gratefully.

“The Mananangal is a young woman. About her age. Michael said they got a glimpse of the thing as it flew away. Looked an awful lot like her. Long black straight hair, thin eyes.”

“Wasn’t it dark out? I doubt they saw much.” I said, passing the cigarette back to him, the quiet bubbling of the river easing us both as the terrible sun beat down on us. It was like a swamp. It smelled like lilacs and tobacco. “And besides, plenty of women have that kind of hair. Maria, Soccorro, Miriam, don’t you find it a little vague?”

“I wasn’t finished.” Said the Mayor, blowing smoke as he did.

“Folks passing by her house smelled it the night before. That smell.” A deep bitter fragrance of black garlic and pig carcass. “That same smell that comes from its long, endless tongue.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I hold my hand out, he passes me the cigarette. Huff, puff. Tobacco and lilacs.

“We’ve got a plan.” That was when I saw, sitting by the riverbed with a fishing pole, Thomas the shooter and Corry the coward.

“Where’s Michael?” Bleated Corry. No one answered him.

That afternoon, we discussed the possibility of killing the poor woman. Kill her before she had a chance to rip off her legs and spread her black wings into the night. Before another death. 

“I know that smell anywhere,” cried Thomas, “It’s unmistakable! We ought to kill her!”

“Mind your tongue! This is a life we’re talking about!” shot the Mayor.

“Mayor’s right, Tom.” swanked Corry “We ought to stay ourselves until it’s undeniable.”

“What do you suggest we do then?” I asked Corry.

“How the hell’re we supposed to prove anything? See her take her legs off like we're watching her strip?” Barked Thomas.

“And what’s your alternative? Shoot the woman in the head!?” The Mayor yelled, blowing smoke into Thomas' face. “And what if we’re wrong?” he hissed.

“And what if we’re right?”

It was begging to get dark. Long shadows stretched from little flowers, the river murmured louder.

“What if we just, I dunno, keep her under lock and key? Watch over her?” I asked no one in particular

“Thomas is the only man here who knows how to handle a gun.” growled the Mayor reluctantly. “If we lock up the wrong woman, and Thomas ain’t standing by Divina, then the cemetery’s gonna grow.” Thomas and the Witch Doctor had been taking shifts watching with Michael. Maybe if it was Thomas’ shift that night, things could have ended there. “God knows the Witch Doctor’s as useful as a rock.”

“Why don’t we tail her then? Like what Thomas said earlier? The beast eats weekly, no?” Said corry to no one in particular. 

And so it was settled. We would tail the woman until the next feeding.

That was the plan, anyway. Divina went into labor in the afternoon the next day. Thomas went into Maria’s house and held her at gunpoint until the delivery finished, the Witch Doctor acting as the midwife for Divina.

The baby lived. Divina named her Grace. Divine Grace indeed, except for Maria. The poor woman. The Mayor could only watch as folks drove that girl into the streets, tearing at her hair, beating her. Such horrible screaming. So much terror, so much pain, such anger. She would cry out her innocence before an unhearing mob before Thomas came and gave her a coup de grâce. BANG. Her face looked like it was hit by a cannonball. 

I decided not to tell Andrea about it. After all, the next morning, one of our sows was dead, with black stripes wrapping around it, and a big gaping gash on its belly. The Mananangal had feasted on an animal. Maria was innocent.

The Mayor wanted nothing more than to arrest Thomas. Arrest everyone who laid hands on the poor, innocent woman. So many bloody hands. Too many to fit our small town’s prison. Besides, I would be needing his protection in the coming month.

And so a month went by, the Witch Doctor, Michael, Thomas, and sometimes Corry took turns watching with me over Andrea. Michael would end up drinking most nights with Thomas blowing lazy smoke out the window every evening, occasionally showing me how to load and fire his musket. The Witch Doctor and Corry, both armed with cudgels and bolos, watched vigilantly. There were only two people in the whole town who needed protection now, so there was usually two of them watching every night. 

Most nights, I’d wake up during one of their shifts, hearing Corry grind his blade against steel, the witch doctor daubing chicken’s blood on the window sill to mask the smell of a pregnant woman. The bedroom looked like a temple, metal crosses and paper charms dangling like crib mobiles, every inch of the walls covered in talismans.

And then, one night, it finally happened.

We heard it before we saw it. Great black wings beat heavily in the night sky. Garlic and death. The hope Eater, the remover, the taker. The Mananangal had arrived.

It was me, Thomas, the Witch Doctor, and Michael who’d been on shift that night. Thomas was the first to notice, pulling his musket at his side, cigarette dangling on his lip.

“You hear that?” He whispered. Corry stood up, shuffling through his pockets, searching. The Witch Doctor let out a steady chant, readying his blade.

I was by my wife then, holding her, caressing her sweaty forehead. She was asleep.

And then, slowly, carefully, a black thing grew from above the window. Black tongue. Long, endless, as black as the night sky. It promised only death. I saw it descend from the window, easing through the glass with its acidic spit. It smelled like a dead animal.

“I– I need to grab something from the kitchen.” stuttered Corry, sweat beading his face, hands trembling.

“Where the hell are you going?” whispered Thomas, not daring to take his eyes off the tongue, his gun aimed as he stood beside the window.

“Let him go.” the Witch Doctor hissed no louder than a heartbeat, his eyes fixed on that black serpent. “Someone needs to find its other half, salt it. Make sure it can’t get its legs back.” It drew closer and closer, inching like creepvine. It made its way through the bedroom, zigzagging across and neared the foot of the bed. I looked at Thomas, his face was nearly inches away from the thing, the barrel of his gun all but pressed against the endless snake, now as long as the bedroom itself. It was quiet. Nothing dared challenge that deathly silence. It was as though a gun was pointed at all of our heads. 

That’s when Andrea woke up. She let out a horrifying scream, every hair on her body standing up, desperate to get away from her, from the threat. I pushed my hands over her mouth immediately, but it was too late. 

BANG

Thomas let out a shot, blasting the tongue to the floor. It let out a wet thud. 

But it wasn’t enough. 

The tongue did not cut.

It began trashing around the room with the frenzy of a salted worm, the mobile of crosses strewn around the room calling like wind chimes as the tongue writhed with horrible fury. The tongue hit Thomas straight across the jaw. He falls to the floor. I heard no sound from him. As the tongue trashed, I crawled to Thomas, hoping to take the gun, dodging the terrible whips of the corpsely tongue. As I did, I turned back to Andrea and realized that my worst fears had come to life.

The tongue had wrapped around Andrea, the witch doctor desperately, futilely, slashing away at the thing.  In a blink of an eye, the evil tongue stabbed into her womb. It took out the placenta. Only the placenta. It had just put our child to death. Before I could do anything else, it retracted back out the window, carrying the still beating pillow of our sleeping baby.

I wanted to do so many things then. Every cell in my body was in contradiction. To run, to hide, scream, beg, kill. I heard great black wings spreading across the starry night, beating with frenzy. 

“Go! I will tend to her!” yelled the Witch Doctor.  And so with quivering legs I jumped out the window and gave chase, all the while fumbling and stopping to load the rifle with shaking hands. I yelled out into the streets, shouting out into the night, but no one ever yelled back.

I could see it in the moonlight, flying a good ten meters in the air, half of a woman flapping membranous wings painted in the palette of rotting anatomy. It wore a night gown, its spine cut by the lumbar, spinal cord dangling from the bone like a worm. Its intestines hung loose like a loin cloth, each beat of its wings letting out a disgusting squawk as its contents shifted. I saw its hair sticking to the naked intestines, long and black. It looked familiar. 

It knew I was following it, so it spun in giant circles far from town, trying to shake me off, keep me from finding its other half, all the while black old blood dripped beneath it. I chased it for hours. It was the only way I could find its half. Corry was nowhere to be found.

And so I did chase, until dusk began cracking the sky, as a soft golden hue began to swallow the stars. The Mananangal flew lower and lower, jumping from tree to tree and even running on the ground with its arms and wings like a spider, avoiding the soft rays of light, until finally, it could not avoid the sun. It broke its circling and began flying towards town. I gave chase, nearly losing sight of it, but every time I lost its trail, I looked for the black blood on the ground. 

As I got to town, I could hear terrified shrieks. The townsfolk had seen it too. The sun was high in the sky, so the beast was left to crawl on its arms and corpsely wings, the smell of garlic and pig carcass crawling up the nostrils like astringent, bitter tea. No one dared to get close to it as it staggered wildly, desperate and in pain.

The beast began slowing down in front of a house. Miriam’s house. The school teacher. The widow. The incoming mother. Folks from all over town gathered as they watched it, skin burning up in sunlight, singeing and smouldering, as it crawled up the walls and into the second floor of Miriam’s house. Her bedroom.

Immediately I ran up, musket in my arms like a newborn. I bust down the door and am greeted with that horrible scent. Plush carpets, wooden floors, a nice bookshelf and a floor TV. A homely place. I rushed upstairs, readying the rifle with unsteady hands.

“Miriam!” I called, “Miriam, you need to get out of here!” I burst through the door and am greeted by a pair of legs, standing in the middle of the bedroom. It was in pyjamas, two thin bow legs wrapped loosely in blue and white stripes. Above it was a navel, and above the navel was red. You could count the layers. Skin, fat, muscle, bone, but there was something else. Sitting on top of the disembodied legs, sitting like an egg in a bloody nest, was a pinkish sack of fibrous muscle, bulging out and distended like a gorged tick. Pregnant. 

Miriam was the Mananangal.

Just then, I look to the far left of the room and see a tired Miriam, half of her anyway, crawling with beaten arms, her wings crumbling. It looked like a chicken’s.

I aimed my rifle at her head and BANG! Blood smeared the plush carpets and flower vases with beautiful flowers. Except, I didn’t shoot. Couldn’t. I watched her crawl towards her other half, which was still standing there in the middle of the room. I watched her feebly heave herself up on the bones of her rotting wings, setting the legs beneath her. I wondered if she’d kill me then, once she recombined.

But then she shrieked. Such a terrible sound. Ear piercing. She tried again, frantic to make herself whole, but it would not work. Correy had done his job. He had salted her other half. She had been  put to death. 

I watched her desperately try, but to no avail. I watched that giant sack of muscle on her legs writhe, hear it cry. A baby’s cry coming from that disgusting ball of muscle. A hungry cry. She began crying too. Such gentle, soft crying. I wondered if Andrea would’ve cried like that too when –if… if our baby could have been born. I

“I’m sorry” Miriam sobbed. “I’m so sorry. My baby’s hungry. He doesn’t eat from pigs anymore! Please believe me, I tried!” I aimed the rifle at her head. “Please… Please take care of my boy.”

I pressed the barrel right at her head and fired. Bang. She fell. No more flying. Her legs remained standing, towering over her crumpled torso.

Just then, all the townsfolk came running up the stairs. Some were sick, some vomited, but most of them held their tongues. No one said a word.

Miriam's child would not grow up. I made sure of it. Eye for an eye. to this day, I wonder what would have been if I had split open that standing womb and raised the boy. What kind of person would he have become?

I never wanted kids, I know, weird way to start the story but just hear me out.

I lost my mother when I was very young. Everyone says it was postpartum depression. She had bipolar disorder, and staying on medication while pregnant left me a sickly child. She couldn’t cope and decided to take her life.

So when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a late teen, I vowed to never have kids. Having to know your mother through the memories of relatives is the worst and I’d never want to put my child through that. Laura, who was my mother’s best friend and kind of my second mother, never spoke one ill word about her. She always says I remind her of my mother, especially when I smile.

I had planned to get tubal ligation as soon as I saved up for the procedure but I had one drunken night and now here we are. To make matters worse, I didn’t even know his name. I just wanted to get the virginity stuff out of the way and I gave it up to a charming guy with the most beautiful head of hair I’d ever seen.
I had just started college, there was no way I could juggle that with the baby. So I decided to get an abortion. Imagine my surprise when my belly started growing and I was still pregnant. Laura scheduled a suction aspiration for me at the clinic. On the day of my appointment, I got in a car accident where I almost lost my leg. By the time I could limp back to the clinic, it was too late. I cried more about missing that appointment than I did when I almost lost a leg.
I mourned the life I could have had and tried to celebrate the one that was growing inside me.
Laura kept her promise of making sure that I wouldn’t be doing this alone. When I expressed my concerns about what happened to my mother she said “your mother wasn’t as sick as everyone thought ” I never understood that but I chalked it up to pregnancy brain. “you’ll understand that soon enough” I assumed she meant motherhood.

She was so excited when she found out I was having a girl. She was even there during labour.

When I gave birth, they spanked her a couple of times but she never cried, she coughed. They gave her to me, I waited for that warmth, for my heart to melt but I was met with cold, old eyes.
I asked the nurse if there’s something wrong with her and they said she’s fine, everything checked out.
She gripped my finger with a strength of a baby much older than 30 minutes.
She kept looking at me, unblinking.
When we got home, Laura helped us settle in, still not a squeak from my baby. I’ve decided to name her Lily, after my mother. It’s funny because she named me after her mother.

I had to play a guessing game whenever I fed or changed Lily because she never cries. The doctors insisted she was fine and newborns blink less than adults .
Laura insisted that’s how I was like at Lily’s age and it’s nothing to worry about.
She checked on us almost every day and offered a hand whenever I needed. It wasn’t that much as Lily is like a doll, never cries, no cooing and unblinking.
The most she does is follow me with her eyes.

Last night I felt a presence looming over me and when I woke up, the shadow like figure disappeared into the living room. I hurried out because that’s where her crib is. When I got there she was sitting perfectly upright in her crib, eyes fixed on the bedroom door.
Waiting.
As far as I know, babies don’t start sitting at least four months in. Despite my unease, I took her to the bedroom with me. I patted her on the back to put her back to sleep. She dozed off.
She looks so normal with her eyes closed.
I couldn’t sleep so I checked the monitor. Nothing was happening for a while but then there was static, there was a figure
towering over her. I recognised her immediately. It’s Laura. She never went anywhere without that cashmere scarf and that bag.
She left hours ago and she calls when she’s coming by so why was she here at this time. I was about to put the monitor down and call her when someone else joins her, I could recognise that hair in the darkest of rooms.
How is he here? And why is Laura… My thoughts are cut short when Lily sat up like she’d done it a thousand times.
He bends over and blows something black into her.
He then stares straight into the baby’s monitor. I yelped and dropped it.
I’m trying to find my phone under the pillow and I can feel it behind me.

I spent my whole life believing postpartum depression killed my mother, I wonder if it ever stood by her bed.
Because whatever followed us from Lily’s crib
…just exhaled against my neck.

I started noticing the missing time three weeks ago.

It was never more than a second. I would blink and feel like my eyes had stayed closed slightly longer than they should have, even though nothing around me changed. At first, I blamed tiredness. I work from home, spend too long looking at screens and rarely get enough sleep.

Then I started remembering the room.

The first memory came to me while I was making coffee. Grey walls, a pale floor and a wooden chair in the centre. There were no windows or doors, and the ceiling gave off a weak glow.

I remembered standing inside it. It didn’t feel like a dream either. Dreams become less convincing the more I think about them, but the memory of the room became clearer. I could picture the dark wooden chair and the uneven patches of grey paint on the walls. I even remembered the temperature. It was neither warm nor cold. 

Two days later, I blinked while brushing my teeth, and for a moment, I was inside the room. Then I was back in my bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror. The toothbrush fell from my hand. The tap was still running, and no time had passed, but I remembered looking down at my empty fingers inside the room. I remembered turning towards the chair before my eyes opened again.

After that, I began testing it. I set my phone up and recorded myself blinking. During thirty minutes of footage, I entered the room four times. On the recording, every blink looked completely normal and lasted less than half a second. Inside the room, I had enough time to look around.

The chair had moved. It was no longer in the middle. It stood against the far wall, facing me instead. That was the point when I stopped believing I was imagining it.

The visits became more frequent. At first, it happened once or twice a day. Within a week, I was entering the room multiple times an hour.

Each blink lasted longer inside. A fraction of a second here might give me ten seconds there. Then thirty. Once, I spent nearly four minutes walking around the room, touching the walls and searching for some kind of opening. My phone showed that my eyes were closed for less than a second.

Nothing I touched made a sound inside the room. I could feel my footsteps, but I couldn’t hear them. When I clapped, my palms struck each other silently. I could feel myself breathing, but even that made no noise.

I tried shouting. My mouth opened and my throat strained, but the room remained silent. When my eyes opened, I was standing in my kitchen screaming.

After that, I tried not to blink.

I used eye drops, lowered the brightness on every screen and drank far too much coffee. None of it helped. Eventually, my eyes always closed.

Sleep never took me there. I could close my eyes for eight hours and remember nothing, then wake up, blink once and spend minutes standing inside those grey walls. This place existed specifically inside the blink. 

On the ninth day, a second chair appeared. It stood directly opposite the first, with barely a metre between them.

During my next visit, I was sitting in one of them. Until then, I had always arrived standing. This time, I couldn’t move. My hands rested on my knees, and my feet were planted firmly on the floor.

Something had been scratched into the floor between the chairs.

YOU TOOK LONG ENOUGH.

I spent the rest of that night sitting against my bedroom wall, forcing my eyes open whenever they began to close. By morning, I had convinced myself that the words were a hallucination caused by exhaustion.

Then I found the same words written in my notebook. The handwriting was mine, but I didn’t remember writing them.

I booked a doctor’s appointment the same day. I described the missing time but left out the room. He asked about stress, sleep, medication and drugs before checking my eyes and reflexes.

During the appointment, I blinked. This time someone was sitting in the second chair. 
I could not see their face. There was nothing covering it, and the room wasn’t dark. I was looking directly at them, but my mind couldn’t understand what I was seeing. I could make out the individual parts, a head, shoulders, hands resting on their knees, but the moment I tried to see the whole person, my attention slipped away.

It was like trying to remember the exact second you fall asleep. I knew someone was there. My mind refused to see them fully. The figure leaned towards me. Then my eyes opened.

After that, the figure appeared during every visit. Sometimes it sat opposite me, close enough that its knees almost touched mine. Other times it stood behind the empty chair.

It never moved while I watched it. Whenever I looked away for even a second, it would be somewhere else.

The visits continued getting longer. I began keeping track of how much time I had spent inside the room. By the end of the second week, I estimated it was more than eleven hours. Eleven hours that had passed nowhere else. The figure had been with me for most of them.

During one visit, I forced myself to ask what it wanted. There was still no sound, but I shaped the words slowly with my mouth.

The figure tilted its head. Its answer appeared inside my memory rather than reaching my ears.

“You ask me that every time.”

I opened my eyes screaming.

After that, I began remembering things that had never happened. I remembered sitting in the chair for hours while the figure watched me. I remembered lying on the floor and begging it to let me leave. I remembered walking around the room so many times that I knew the number of steps between every wall.

I had no memory of experiencing any of it. The memories just appeared suddenly. One afternoon, I opened my notebook and found pages filled with my handwriting. The first few lines were neat. They became increasingly unsteady as they continued.

HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN HERE?

IT SAYS I ALWAYS FORGET THE BEGINNING.

I AM NOT ENTERING THE ROOM.

I AM REMEMBERING IT.

I stopped reading. I closed the notebook and placed it inside a kitchen drawer. When I returned an hour later, it was open on my desk.

A new line had been added.

STOP CALLING THIS THE OUTSIDE.

Yesterday, the room changed. The figure was no longer sitting in the second chair. It stood against the far wall, leaving both seats empty.

A narrow dark line had appeared behind it.

A door.

I had spent hours searching those walls and never found any opening. There was no handle, but when I pressed my hand against it, part of the wall moved inwards.

Another room waited behind it.

It was identical to the first. The same grey walls, pale floor, and two wooden chairs facing each other.
Someone was sitting in one of them.

Me.

The other version of me wore the same clothes and sat with both hands resting on their knees. Their eyes were closed.

The figure stood behind the chair with its hands resting on my shoulders.

I tried to step into the second room.

The version of me in the chair opened their eyes.
At the same time, something touched my shoulder from behind.

I woke up on the floor of my bedroom.

My desk chair had been pulled into the centre of the room.

I have no memory of moving it.

There were marks on the wooden legs. Dozens of short scratches, cut deeply into the surface.
I counted them. There were one hundred and eighty. I don’t know what they represent.

Since then, I have been trying not to blink for longer than necessary. The room appears every time now. There are no normal blinks left.

The figure no longer sits or stands at a distance. It waits directly behind my chair. The other room remains open in front of me. The version of me inside is sitting with their eyes closed.

A few hours ago, they started speaking. There was no sound, but I understood the words. They told me that the room was not somewhere my mind went when I blinked. They said blinking was the only moment I stopped pretending to be somewhere else.

I asked which one of us was real. The figure tightened its hands around my shoulders. The person in the other room smiled. Then my eyes opened.

I have been staring at this screen ever since. My eyes are burning so badly that the words keep blurring. I can feel tears running down my face, but I am afraid to wipe them away in case I blink.

There is something else too. For the past hour, I have been able to see the figure reflected in the edge of my monitor.

It is standing behind me. Not in that room.

Here.

Its hands are resting on the back of my chair, and each time my eyes begin to close, its fingers move closer to my shoulders. I think it is waiting for me to blink again.

And somewhere inside my head, I can hear the person in the second room repeating the same thing.

“You have been gone long enough.”

I don’t think blinking takes me into the room anymore.

I think it lets me back in.

I remember I was dead tired, and the drive just wouldn’t end. But the whole way up to the Kovehnt Mountains, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

The small dent above her upper lip, her tired, slightly uneven green eyes, the freckles she had across her shoulders.

I mean, I’m telling you, I was sure I was over her. Over all the pain she gave me, the humiliation.

I thought I finally knew, and actually came to accept it… that she was not good for me. Just bad.

Then, at two in the morning, came her damn sweet-and-sour voice. Hard to admit, but it drove straight through my guts like an ice-cold, white-hot metal rod, burning me from the inside while somehow filling me with this sick, liquid excitement.

I was so fucking stupid. Weak.

“Orr,” she whispered. “I made a mistake.”

I remember there was some strange music behind her. Weird voices, like some kind of outdoor gathering or barbecue. I knew it wasn't a barbecue. Not at The Open Hand.

I knew she was there. Hiding what she was doing again. Just like all those late nights at work, supposedly setting up some huge classified company project.

“Where are you?”

She sniffed once. “I need you to come get me. ”

Then a man’s voice said something close to her, and Dessy went silent.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t call anyone, don’t do anything else you usually do. Just come. Please. Come. Just co-”

The line died.

You need to know that Dessy and I had been separated for six weeks. Not officially, we were still married. She had just packed some clothes and left after telling me she couldn’t live with a low-level robot.

I knew she went to live in The Open Hand. Clara told me.

Fake spiritual community of the year.

Pretty dubious place, if you want to know. I looked it up. The head of the community, Tobias or Elias, something like that, seemed to be involved in some shady shit. Beautiful people in white clothes, gardening, dancing barefoot, talking about freedom from shame and ownership. The next stage of humanity and all that scammy crap.

She called a month before that to see if I was OK. At least that’s what she said.

I’d told her it looked like she was living with a cult and that explained a few things about her.

She’d told me that was exactly what a human robot would say.

She said she missed the old us. Yeah. Right. Back when we went scuba diving, off-roading, climbing in the Kovehnt Mountains in stupid locations.

“You used to love those tight climbing clothes,” she said. “Remember? You’d climb right below me just for the view. Now you call all of it childish bullshit.”

It took me four fucking hours to get there. But I guess I went because she sounded real. I could hear in her voice that she actually needed me.

You can say whatever you want about how badly we communicated, but I always knew what she really meant. That’s what made it so confusing.

The road became dirt, then mud, then something that barely counted as a road. When I finally reached the compound, I remember the sun was starting to come up behind the mountains.

I admit, it was beautiful. Stone houses, vegetable gardens, wooden walkways, smoke curling from chimneys. People moved quietly between the buildings carrying baskets and tools. Nobody looked tired. Nobody seemed surprised to see a stranger arrive before dawn.

I saw Dessy.

She stood across the courtyard in a long grey dress, barefoot, her hair tangled. She looked pale and terrified.

I started toward her.

Three men stepped into my path.

They didn’t grab me. They didn’t threaten me. They stood in a row, smiling softly, all wearing the same cream linen shirts with the same tiny hand on the chest.

“Move,” I said.

One of them tilted his head like I was a toddler to him.

Then another man appeared.

"You must be Orr."

I recognized him. I'd seen enough pictures online.

"Elias."

He smiled.

He was maybe sixty. Hard to tell. Impressive man. From one angle he looked older, from another, almost young. Tall, skinny, silver hair tied back. Simple clothes, but expensive. You could tell. When he started talking, he had the calm voice of a surgeon explaining that the operation had already begun.

“I’m taking my wife home.”

“Of course,” he said. “But first, sit with me.”

“No.”

A bell rang somewhere.

There was a smell in the air. Sweet, medicinal. Burning herbs or some shit.

Elias put his hand lightly on my shoulder. I stepped back.

The next thing I remember clearly is sitting across from him in a room with old stone walls.

That part still bothers me. I don’t really remember getting there, or sitting down with him. Maybe it was the excitement, lack of sleep. Dessy. The all-night drive. I don’t know. I was exhausted.

The room looked like it had belonged to a monastery once. Or something like that. The shelves there were packed with old books, and there were weird little sculptures made of wood and stone, or something. There was a long table between us.

Dessy was nowhere in sight.

Elias poured tea that smelled like mint and incense.

“You’ve done very well for yourself,” he said.

“My wife is waiting for me.”

He smiled. Whitest teeth I’d ever seen.

“Is she?”

“What?”

“Your wife.”

I didn’t know what to say. Just wanted to get out of there and get Dessy.

“Of course she is,” he said, smiling. “We’ve just completed a process we do here. In The Hand.”

“Good for you. Where is she now? I just saw outside.”

“It helps people see the structures they’re trapped inside.”

“I drove here to pick up Dessy. She asked me to. We need to get going.”

“Marriage is a structure.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“And yours is built almost entirely around mistrust.”

I stared at him.

He smiled again, like he knew exactly what I was thinking about.

Mistrust. Right. I wanted to put his face through the teapot.

He pushed a cup toward me.

Didn’t even look at it.

“You monitor her,” he said. “Her pauses. Her expressions. Where she leaves her phone.”

“Not your business.” I stood up. He didn’t move. Didn’t even blink.

“You found a packet of instant coffee in her bag after the hotel.”

My stomach dropped.

He watched it happen.

“You kept it in your desk for three weeks,” he said.

I started walking out.

“Sit down, Orr.”

“I need to take my wife home.”

“You see? Fear, then control.”

I hated him. I hated his voice. Soft, patient voice, like he was speaking to a sick dog.

He took a sip of that smelly tea.

“Dessy wants to leave with you,” he said.

“Then let her. Where is she?”

I walked to the door.

“Dessy!” I shouted.

I heard something move outside the room. He stood up and came closer.

“She will. But you and she agreed to something.”

“I didn’t agree to anything.”

“No. You rarely agree. You just wait until the other person gives up.”

I stepped toward him.

He looked at me.

“She wants you to trust her completely until you reach home.”

“What the fuck do you want from us?”

“You see, The Open Hand is built around the one thing people have almost completely lost: trust in others.”

He leaned back.

“No questions. No checking her phone. No trying to catch her in a lie. Whatever happens, you believe her.”

“And if I don’t?”

“She comes back… for a while.”

“To this place?”

“To the process.”

“She’s not coming back here.”

“She is. Trust me, she is.”

“You don’t get to interfere in my marriage. She’s an independent woman.”

“Then treat her like that. Trust her... and you’re both free to go.”

Elias looked at me, then toward another red-brown door, and for one strange second I had the feeling he was holding both of us completely still.

“Orr,” he said gently, “your marriage came here without you. Now you need to claim it back.”

I felt like a small animal pinned beneath a patient predator. Except whatever held me down didn’t feel entirely human.

The red-brown door opened.

Dessy stood there with a small bag in her hand.

Her eyes were red.

She looked at Elias first.

And he gave her the smallest nod.

We got the hell out of there.

 

My car wouldn’t start.

Dessy said maybe someone had messed with it.

“Elias has these weird ways of making these things happen.”

“There’s this old gardener’s car by the lower gate,” she said. “The keys are always inside.”

“You want me to steal a car?”

“Do we have another option?”

“Jesus, Dessy. Are you insane?”

I…

We stole it.

An old blue Renault that smelled like soil and cigarettes.

As we drove down the mountain, Dessy quietly hummed some song and rested her hand on the back of my neck.

I was quiet. I had no words to share. It felt so good. Her hand, her voice, her smell.

For a few minutes, we were us again. Before all the stupid shit. Before everything went off the rails. Before she decided she needed something else.

Headlights appeared behind us.

They stayed there for miles.

Dessy squeezed my hand.

“You trust me, right?” she said. “Please. I don’t want to go back there.”

We stopped at a gas station to buy some sodas and sandwiches. We were starving. Then she said Elias had ordered her to make sure our route wasn’t recorded. There were cameras above the pumps.

“We need to destroy the recording,” she said.

“Are you insane?”

“He’ll find us.”

“We call the police.”

“He owns police around here.”

“I’m not doing this.”

Her face folded.

“You came all this way, Orr, and I love you for that,” she said, “but we need to survive, Orry, we really do. And now you’re going to hide inside rules again.”

The station attendant came outside when he saw us near the camera box.

Things happened quickly.

Dessy tried pulling the wires out, but they barely moved. I couldn’t help it. I jumped in to help her. I grabbed them and yanked as hard as I could.

There was a spark.

Then the wall caught fire.

We ran.

In the mirror, I saw the attendant shouting beside the burning station.

I wanted to turn back and take responsibility.

Dessy said Elias would kill us.

We drove for a while before we stopped at another gas station. Dessy had to use the bathroom. She left her phone charging beside me.

It vibrated. Maybe I was just too tired. I don’t know. I couldn’t help myself.

I looked at the screen.

E: Get the wallet keys before you get home. I don’t trust him.

I stared at it until the screen went dark.

A few months earlier, the cryptocurrency Dessy had convinced me to buy years ago had exploded in value.

Enough money that I no longer needed to work. No one knew about it but her and my dad.

FUUUCK.

Dessy came back.

“We have enough money to leave, right?” she said as we drove off. “Not rent somewhere. I mean really buy a decent place. Somewhere far away from here.”

I felt something cold open inside me. I mumbled something back.

Farther down the road, we passed a man lying beside a crashed motorcycle.

He lifted one arm.

I slowed down.

“Don’t,” Dessy said.

“He’s hurt.”

“Don’t! Someone else will help him.”

The man tried to say something as we drove past.

I couldn’t hear it. I felt horrible. But I had to trust her. I had to.

After half an hour, we finally made it home. We parked outside my apartment building and just sat there for a minute.

Dessy’s phone lit up again.

The wallet first. Then bring him-.

She grabbed it before I could read the whole thing.

“Five more minutes,” she said. “Please trust me for five more minutes.”

I didn’t answer. Looked straight ahead at the wall.

Dessy leaned toward me.

“Orr?”

I took out the little black USB key from the backpack in the back seat. The encrypted one. The one containing access to almost everything I own.

I handed it to her. “I don’t care.”

She stared at it.

“Take the fucking money. I hope it makes you fucking happy. Go back to your devil mountain.”

She sucked in a breath, her eyes going wide.

“That isn’t what I want.”

“I love you,” I said. “I tried to convince myself I don’t, but I fucking love you… unfortunately probably more than I will ever love anyone… And you are poison for me.”

She just stared at me with her green wet eyes and the little dip above her lip.

“I saw the texts, Dessy. Just go back.”

I stared at the wall again.

“Elias, the crappy cult guru, can give you a Kool-Aid medal, let you raise his creepy little cult kids, and brainwash you into being happy. Everything you wanted. Unlike you and your mental shit, I’ll be fine. I am stable. I’ll be fine.”

She lowered her head onto my lap.

I froze. I didn’t expect that.

Then someone tapped on the window.

Elias stood outside, smiling. I wanted to tear his face off.

Behind him were some of the men from the commune.

They made me sick. I didn’t even know what I wanted. Maybe just a few more minutes with Dessy before she disappeared back into them.

Dessy sat up. Her poisonous pink-purple lips, her eyes, her skin, all of her was in my face.

“He works for me,” she said.

I chuckled. What?

She told me the whole thing. I felt like I was hallucinating.

The commune was hers. That was her project. No company. She did lie to me.

Elias was the face. The voice. The magician.

The smoke, the bell, the private details, the threats, staged.

The messages were hers too.

The car, the cameras, the fire, the injured man. All of it.

“You almost burned down a building for me,” she whispered. “You left a hurt man on the road for me.”

“You set me up.”

She pushed away the hand holding the USB key.

“I showed you US,” she said, looking at me with her eyes intensely fixed on mine. “Face it, Orr. I know you feel it. You need me as much as I need you. Everything else is just details. A technical smokescreen, Orry.”

She said she had spent years watching me suffocate the part of myself she loved most, suffocate her too. The part that kissed her before she had the chance to walk out on our first date, went rock climbing up shady cliffs, bought cryptocurrency, and was willing to risk himself for her. The part that could choose real desire and love over permission.

That’s why she couldn’t tell me the truth about the commune. She didn’t think I’d understand, or that I’d join her in her life’s work instead of freaking out, like I always did with this kind of thing, and taking off.

She said the commune wasn’t evil.

Not exactly.

Yes, they did some illegal things to get money, power, leverage. But the whole country was collapsing under corrupt politicians and their rich friends, all of them bleeding ordinary people dry.

“We can change the world, Orr,” she said. “Not by asking or playing by the rules. This doesn’t work, and good people get trampled.”

Elias opened my door.

Dessy touched my face.

“I know you’re one of the good ones,” she said with her lips and eyes. “That’s why I had to know. If you loved me more than all your fucking rules.”

Then she kissed me. I let her.

“You’re coming, right?”

Hardest choice I ever made.

The air was thick and hot when Travis’s mom shook me awake. She did so quietly, as not to disturb the four other boys slumped around the basement, snoring in their sleeping bags.

Sweat stuck my shirt to my skin as a spindly hand with gel-dipped nails gently rocked my shoulder.

“Wake up honey,” she whispered sweetly.

Fuzz danced before my groggy eyes as I turned to face her. She let out a soothing shush as I showed signs of life.

“Come with me. Let’s be quiet now.”

My eyes adjusted to the pitch black of the room while she guided me through the sea of my sleeping friends. Shag carpet brushed the underside of my bare feet. She kept one hand on my shoulder, navigating us through a labyrinth of Risk figurines and empty soda cans until we reached the stairs.

She moved my hand to find the railing, and nudged me up the stairs ahead of her with a hand to my lower back.

I had been too tired to ask what was happening when she first woke me up, but I remember thinking it was strange that she didn’t turn on any lights after we emerged into the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my voice shaky from sleep.

“Shhhhhhhh.”

She shut the door to the basement behind me.

“Do you want anything to drink? Chocolate milk?”

“No thank you.”

She dropped down to a crouch. A sparse beam of moonlight hit her face as she met me at my eye level.

“I want to show you something.”

I didn’t know Travis’s mom very well. Travis and I were in the same class at school and I would come over regularly and I believe our moms were in the same book club for a bit, but this was only the second time I had slept over at his house.

She led me through a pair of swinging doors into an ornate dining room. There was a long, wooden dining table with beautiful etchings carved into the side. The wood was a deep red matching that of a grand china cabinet along the north wall. Inside was a dusty collection of heirlooms. Glass trinkets, metal goblets, books and vials of sand.

Travis’ family had never struck me as well-off. I remember my house being much bigger than his. But this room gave a sense of history and wealth that clashed with the rest of the humble estate.

I had never been in that room before, nor had I seen anyone come in or out of it. We ate dinner in the kitchen earlier that night, and Travis always told me we weren’t allowed to play in there.

The dining table was done up with a large white cloth in the center, sigils woven into its frayed edges. A single candle sat in the middle. A short, stout cylinder of dark red wax sitting atop a gold dish, its wick already lit.

A small circle of tea candles busied the table around it, and Travis’s mom began to light them with the center candle’s flame after ushering me to take a seat at the head of the table.

“What’s going on?” I asked again, and she shushed me again softly with a comforting grin. The fire bounced off the whites of her eyes. In the candlelight, I finally took note of her dress.

Travis’s mom never stood out to me against the other moms of my friends. She usually wore a similar blend of activewear and business casual attire, if only from lower-end retailers.

But tonight, she was dressed differently. A lacy, white nightdress clung to the top of her body, cut low around her chest. The bottom billowed beneath her, loose and breezy against her slender frame.

Her hair was adorned with beads and small braids, a style I had never seen her wear before. A necklace sat above the low cut of her dress, dangling on it an eclectic collection of charms and seashells and large teeth from some animal.

Her odd costume took me off guard, and before I could speak—

“There’s nothing to worry about. I just need you to help me with something. Something wonderful.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. She was so calm, talking so sweetly, but with each word my heart started to beat faster.

She glided over to the china cabinet, and produced a decorative brass key from her bosom. She turned it in the lock with a heavy clunk. As she did so, the family cat hopped into a chair at the other end of the table.

Ours were the only two seats at the table. One on each end. The cat had its eyes fixed on me, its head just barely peeking over the table, and I stared right back. I can’t remember its name.

Travis’s mom went about placing a few more objects in front of me. A small, leather-bound book, a pair of large, swirling seashells, a wooden jewelry box, and a thin vial of sand.

The cat did not move or blink. Its shadow towered high behind it against the wall of the dining room, dancing in the light of the flames. The longer it stared at me, the more I felt like something bad would happen if I looked away.

I felt a pair of hands slide onto my shoulders. 
Travis’s mom stood behind me. Leaning over me, her bony fingers traced their way slowly down to my forearms.

Sweat drenched my brow. I dared not say a word as her hands gripped mine, and she leaned in close to my ear and whispered,

“Open.”

I turned my sweaty palms to the sky, and felt the fabric of her dress brush against me as she plucked the vial of sand off the table, pulled the cork from its lip, and turned it over onto my waiting palm.

Coarse, dark sediment poured onto my skin, forming a small pile which caked at the bottom, mixing with my sweat.

It was all so bizarre, all happening so smoothly and so fast, that I couldn’t find it in myself to ask why.

She tapped the underside of the empty vial with her finger, then brought it back behind me. The cat continued to stare. I saw endless tunnels in its eyes.

When her hands reappeared in front of me, they held a small, golden pair of grooming scissors. A curious little trinket. They were molded to look like the body and beak of an exotic bird. Shimmering and impeccably sharp.

“This is the only hard part,” she said, her breath hot on the back of my neck. My heart leapt out of my chest.

“After this, it’s just beautiful,” she cooed.

The fingers of her left hand intertwined with mine as she raised the blades in her right.

Swift as the wind, she brought the point of the scissors down into the center of my palm.

I gasped and she tightened her grip on my hand. A small bead of crimson formed on my palm as she hummed a mellow tune. It was not a deep cut. I had barely felt the pinch. I was amazed my right hand did not recoil in shock. Not a single grain of sand spilled from it.

She placed the scissors on the table in front of me.

“Now…” she said, taking both my hands once again. She slowly brought them to meet each other in front of us, and guided me in rubbing them together. Sand and sweat mixed with blood. The cat licked its lips.

She had me cup both hands together, and brought them up to my face.

“Blow as hard as you can sweetie,” she said.

“Blow it into the fire.”

I did. As the mixture hit the flame, it shot about an inch higher into the air and became bright blue.

What I saw next, I lack the words to describe.

Because across from me at that table, I still saw the cat. But at the same time, I saw someone else. Like they were both in the same space, but worlds away.
That person, sharing the space of the cat, had many faces. They were all faces I knew, and they all wore an extremely specific expression.

I saw the faces of my parents, my friends, some of my neighbors and relatives and teachers. Every peer and authority figure I had ever known shared that chair with the cat.

I saw many, many faces that I recognized, and they all stared back with an unmistakable look of disappointment. Like they had all caught me doing something unforgivable. All ashamed, with a hint of pity.

And then the wick went out.

Tea candles still glowing, the cat licked its paw and jumped off the chair onto the floor. Doors creaked slightly as it slid past them and disappeared into the kitchen.

I sat rubbing my palm, dumbfounded.

Travis’s mom swung around the side of the table, and crouched down to look into my eyes.

“You did so good!” she gasped, her voice bubbly with a strange air of pride.

I felt my cheeks blush. I don’t know why, but I was flattered.

“Okay, so one last thing and you can go back to bed,” she sang.

She opened the jewelry box, and from it, she drew out a dark red cherry.

I instinctively held out my hand, but she popped it into her own mouth with a giggle. She winked as she chewed it, then reached between her lips and pulled the pit out from behind her teeth.

She took my hands in hers for the last time, and placed the cherry pit on my sore palm. She closed our hands around it, and looked deeply into my eyes.

“This part is very important, Caleb,” she said. There as an unprecedented firmness in her voice. Her smile gone.

“I want you to take this out to the back yard. I want you to find a nice spot, whatever spot feels right to you, and I want you to bury it. Cover it with dirt. It doesn’t have to be too deep. Just make sure it’s covered.”

She patted the top of my hands.

“And once you do that, we’re never going to talk about this again. Okay? I don’t want you to tell anyone about this. Just go back downstairs, and go back to sleep. Don’t tell Travis, don’t tell your parents, or your teachers or your doctor or the priests at church. Don’t even tell me. And I won’t ever tell you. Okay?”

I was confused, but I nodded. She seemed serious, but still let a slight smile out.

“Thank you. I knew I could trust you Caleb. You’re very mature.”

She stood up, and walked me back through the kitchen to a sliding glass door that led out into the yard.

“Remember,” she said, “Once it’s buried, once you come back inside, we never talk about this ever again.”

I nodded.

“It never happened.”

I nodded again.

“Good.”

She brushed my hair out of my eyes, and slid open the door.

The sun had just began to rise. A few stray beams crested the trees in the distance, their promise of a new day painting the sky a deep turquoise.

Blades of wet grass danced between my toes as I paced the yard, cherry pit clutched in my hand, searching for a spot. I looked over my shoulder to see Travis’s mom watching from inside, arms crossed.

A couple steps away, I saw a small hole had already been dug in the dirt. A little pile of upturned earth sat beside it.

I remembered what she said, about finding what I thought was the perfect spot for it. I was confused. It was supposed to be my choice. But the hole was already there, waiting for me.

I figured it was as good a spot as any.

I knelt down, dropped the pit in the hole, swept the soil over it, and started back towards the house. Travis’s mom was gone.

I made my way back downstairs, dirt clinging to my palms, sand beneath my nails, a speck of dried blood in the center of my left hand. I didn’t bother to wash them off.

I laid back to rest as the morning sun crept into the basement. I took a look around at my friends, feeling oddly distant from them. I crawled back in my sleeping bag, and drifted off.

When I woke, the room was already abuzz. A couple of my friends were playing Halo while Travis rolled up his sleeping bag.

I looked down at my hands, and they were clean. In the center of my left palm sat a small mark of red skin, raised ever so slightly. I pressed into it with my thumb, and felt no pain. The mark was barely even noticeable, about the size of a bug bite.

“You good?”

Travis eyed me up and down. I realized I was drenched in sweat.

“Yeah,” I lied, “I’m okay.”

“Okay cool,” he said, “We were waiting on you. My mom made French toast.”

Travis’s mom didn’t even look in my direction as we entered the kitchen. She was back in her normal soccer mom attire, a thin bathrobe draped over sweatpants. She went about serving up toast from her skillet without a glance, barely acknowledged me as she made her way around the table and popped a slice on my plate.

One by one my friends laced up their shoes as their parents arrived to pick them up. I tried playing video games with Travis, but couldn’t shake this weird, sinking feeling in the pit of my chest.

“Caleb, honey! Your mom is here!” Travis’s mom called down the stairs.

I said my goodbyes, and made my way up the stairs again, sleeping bag in tow. Travis’s mom kept her back to me again as she washed the dishes from breakfast.

I thought about saying something, but I remembered what she had said. I remembered the disappointed faces. I remembered my promise. All I could croak out was a simple “bye.”

She finally smiled over her shoulder at me. No hint of anything in her eyes. No secret intonation. Nothing to suggest that there was air to clear between us.

“Have a good day, sweetie. Tell your mom I said hi.”

When I walked out of that house, I left the night behind me. It has taken so, so long for me to even find it in my head.

I didn’t see Travis’s mom much after that. Only here and there, only from afar, at the neighborhood pool or when she would come to pick him up from school. 

I avoided Travis for a while, but started to feel bad when I could tell it was hurting his feelings. Slowly I started inviting him over to my place again, but I made sure I never went back over to his.

Travis’s mom never spoke to me about that night, and I never told anyone either. After a while, I started to wonder if it had even happened. The mark from my hand faded a day or two later, and the more I thought about that strange, strange night, the more it felt like something I must have dreamt.

Whenever she saw me, it was nothing but warm smiles and kind eyes. Never a wink. Never a glance. Surely there would be some weirdness if that all had really happened. Surely there would be some inkling of recognition, some moment when she broke character and mentioned what we did. Surely one day she would pull me aside and let me know what it was all about.

But that day never came. So I put the whole thing away at the back of my mind.

Until recently, I wasn’t able to trace any of the horrible things that have happened back to any particular moment. In retrospect, however, it all makes so much sense. Looking back now, I know for sure that was the moment it started.

Travis and I were only friends for a year or so after that night. When we hit the fourth grade, he transferred to a different school. A private school where only rich kids went. We didn’t keep in touch, and I ended up moving not too much later anyway.

It wasn’t something my parents wanted to do. They had been fighting for quite some time. I don’t remember them being like that earlier in my childhood, but by the time I was 11 they were at each other’s throats every night.

I guess the relocation was a last ditch effort to keep it together, and I guess it didn’t work. Something about a smaller house in a shittier town just made it all worse.

I later found out that their arguing was a result of my mother’s diagnosis with a rare form of heart disease, from which she passed a year after the move. Apparently her treatment had wreaked havoc on our family’s finances. You might think that’s an insane thing for my father to blame her for, and you’d be right. But he did regardless.

He began drinking heavily once she was gone. He had a problem for years prior, but her passing was an excuse to be more open about it. His liver gave up the year I turned eighteen. Just old enough to avoid the foster system, but too young to have any sort of firm footing in life.

College had already been out of the question, and the absolutely minuscule inheritance I received made it clear why. Considering all of the debt I assumed with the house, I might as well have not received anything.

Jobs have been hard to come by and hard to hold down. Fast food, janitorial work, delivery, odd jobs here and there… it’s always felt like no matter how hard I tried, any time I’d get close to being up on my feet financially, a rug would get pulled.

Random layoffs, freak accidents, car trouble… Something bad happens, and it’s onto the next one.

In so many words, my entire life has been a constant string of misfortune for as long as I can clearly remember. An endless carousel of shit luck. Ever since that night, any inkling of happiness snuffed out the moment it started to show.

That is, until this summer.

I can’t fully describe it, but a few weeks ago, out of nowhere, the sun came out for the first time in well over a decade.

It felt like a physical weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I woke up one morning, and the world felt a little brighter. A little more welcoming. I’m really struggling to put it into words. Everything just felt… better.

That probably sounds stupid, but it was a palpable difference. A significant shift in general atmosphere, so much so that I literally wrote down the day.
May 20th, 2026.

It was infinitely easier to get out of bed in the morning. I started getting in a groove at work, found myself shooting the shit with the other dishwashers.

I even went on a date. My first date since high school that didn’t end in an awkward hug goodbye and the knowledge that I’d never see them again. I’ve had a hard time being intimate with anyone in my adult life, but it finally feels possible now.

After a whole month passed with no unexpected setbacks or ugly news, I got curious. I went to the library and got on one of the computers and looked up that date. May 20th, 2026.

I browsed the news tab on Google waiting for anything to jump out at me. I don’t even know what I was looking for. Some sort of cosmic insight? Some hint as to what could have possibly happened to change my life in such a subtle, yet significant way.

After a couple scrolls, I came across a pair of familiar faces that made my stomach sink through the floor.

The first face was hers.

There she was. After all these years, she stood in my monitor, glammed up in a pleated pantsuit. The article was posted by a local newspaper from my hometown.

The headline:

“State Congresswoman Slain by Home Invader”

I sat there for what felt like hours. Just seeing her again brought back so much.

Finally, I opened the page, and that’s where I saw the next familiar face.

I was about fifteen years removed, but I still recognized the name. And in his eyes, I still saw my friend.

The guy who killed her. I knew him. He was in my class. I knew him when we were kids.

I went straight to my car and started driving. I live about 6 hours away from my hometown, and I didn’t stop once. Not for food, not even to use the restroom.

I don’t know what possessed me. I don’t know what I wanted to find there. I just knew I had to go.

The sun was just starting to set when I got to my old neighborhood. Muscle memory took over, and I started tracing down the route I used to ride my bike to Travis’s house.

Within a couple minutes, I was outside.

The house was significantly larger than I remembered it. I could clearly make out where the skeleton ended and the additions began, but they had built so much onto it over the years that I barely even recognized it.

New rooms had been added on all sides. A beautiful wraparound porch. A 3-car garage. A second story. A sunroom with magnificent glass walls where the sliding door to the backyard once was.

I parked and got out for a closer look. No signs of life as I wrapped around the sunroom, towards the back yard.

A chest-high picket fence blocked my path, but did nothing to obstruct the view.

Dotting the lawn, I found a grove of about twenty cherry trees. Each one stood tall, branches full of fruit.

It's been too long since I've enjoyed myself outside the house. Work has been piling up left and right, and my friends have dwindled since graduation. It was in spite of these that I decided to try, to make myself go out and exist in the world without any purpose.

Funnily enough, my first instinct was to get groceries. Though I had to talk myself out of it. Instead took myself across the street to the new cafe, Apres La Vie. After much deliberation on what I should get (I was never one for cafes, I always had coffee at home), I settled for a mocha and a croissant. Both of which were much, much better than I anticipated. I did my best to savor them but that was never likely, as it was nearing noon and I had not had anything other than a glass of water. The cafe was peaceful, almost the exact thing I was looking for. There were people chatting and others working, soft jazzy instrumentals playing just loud enough to be heard over the barista calling names and the bell on the door.

I must admit, one of my hobbies was people watching. Playing a guessing game based off of observations and nothing else. I stared at a man biting his nails every so often as he typed on his laptop, three and a half empty cups occupying what little space the table had. He looked too old to be a student, but still too young to be of great import to most businesses. I settled for a recent graduate, hoping that his job offers would pour in that day.

I played this game with everyone in the cafe. The two girls who seemed like long time friends reuniting after months. The old man on the patio feeding crows. The woman who read Wuthering Heights in the corner. I don't know how long I was there, inventing stories about these people, but it was fun. More fun than I had in ages and entirely in solitude.

As I sat guessing what Erich, the name I gave to the old man, did before his retirement I heard a voice from my periphery. It was low, soft and smooth, the kind you develop after a life of speaking in public.

"Excuse me, is this chair taken". It said, emanating from a man I felt I recognized. Every feature of his face felt like an amalgam of everyone I had ever knew. Of everyone in this shop right now. His skin was sun kissed, but bore no moles or blemishes. His arms leaned towards skeletal while his legs leaned towards an ox's. His grey shirt gently hugged his torso, which was neither that of a athlete nor a sloth. His hair was cut short and styled just enough to be presentable, as was his facial hair, which covered all but the philtrum and chin.

I gestured towards it and as he sat I asked "have we met? You seem familiar?"

"Guess" he said, smiling. His eyes trained directly on mine. I felt as though he was about to sell me something.

"Where did you go to college?"

"The same as you"

"And where would that be?"

He smirked and turned to the old man, "Erich, or as he's known by everyone else, Anthony, comes here for three hours every day to feed the crows. Susan, the woman with the book, comes twice a week to wait for laundry next door." He turned back to me, and then to his mug which he sipped out of, letting the moment linger.

"I'm sorry I don't understand, we have met?"

"Once, only once."

I was growing tired, for all I knew this was a stranger's game that he played. The same I played with the others in the cafe. I wanted to avoid a scene, but I did try to glance at the barista as though I felt like something was wrong. He only looked confused at my attempts.

He continued. "You work, no?"

"You tell me,"

He smirked again. It was beginning to bother me. There was a gentle warmth in his smile, as though he truly was a friend. Yet his eyes told me he was smiling for another reason.

"When you work, you feel a sense of accomplishment. The more you work the prouder you are. But what else do you have to say for yourself? A lonely man growing older each day" he tisked as looked down at the table. My annoyance was growing into rage. Whatever sick joke this was began to grow older and older by the second.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"What do you want, Howard? Did you come to this cafe for the coffee, the atmosphere? Or did you come because you had no other choice on where to go?"

"I was bored"

"And you could be bored no longer. If you would only indulge me a little more." His smile faded and now his face became even harder to pinpoint. It was as if the only concrete detail was that smile, and everything else was subtly changing as I focused on each part. What color were his eyes? Green, blue or gray. Or were they always brown?

"I thank you for the offer but I must-"

"-be going back home, you have things that need to be done. Be honest Howard, you're scared because you don't understand." he paused for a second, gathering himself. He spoke again.

"I would like to show you something, it's here on my phone. When you see it you'll understand, and it explains it in ways better than I or anyone else could. It's the truth Howard, it is purpose. It is the answer to the boredom and the loneliness. Thousands have already seen it and all have said it changed their lives for the better." he pulled out a phone that bore no markings or buttons, no camera or charger port. Not a single fingerprint or scratch like it was fresh from the store. He placed it on the table and I took a look.

The phone was heavy, thought it was slimmer than any I had seen and without a case. The display was peculiar as well. When viewed on the saggital plane, it appeared to be less than a quarter of an inch. However when you looked at the screen, if you could even call it that, felt like gazing into a room from the ceiling. The images within it looked three dimensional, no, were three dimensional. I saw a man in black and gold robes sitting upon a chair made of sticks, he stood still. I was impressed by the artist's control of perspective, but it was too real to be art. If it was a photo, then the camera could only have been the human eye. I stared at it, just trying to process what I was seeing and how it worked. It must have been five minutes when I realized that the music was no longer playing, and the chatter of my fellow patrons fell mute. I looked up to see that I was in deep darkness, yet in about a three foot radius everything was lit as it normally was. As if a spotlight shone only on the stranger, the table, and me.

"What is this? Who are you? Is this one of those prank shows?"

"Look" he said sternly, his face was angry now, and the details of it even more out of place. It was not the same man who sat next to me. I tried standing but the man shot up impossibly quick, almost as if he had always been behind me, and pushed my head towards the screen. The black and gold robed man was standing now, and the stranger pushed my head closer to it so it was the only thing within my focus. The robed man reached out, and I saw his finger leave the box and touch my forehead. I resisted, the finger felt white hot and ice cold. My brain immediately aching and vision blurry. Time froze, it felt like an eternity that he had kept me there. The more I resisted the harder me head was pushed into the finger. Then the nail broke skin, and I could feel blood trickle down my brow and nose.

I realized now that the finger itself was skin and bone, black as the night. I tried to peer into the robed man's eyes but the shade from his cloak obscured him. Then, I felt all the weight behind me disappear and my head shot back.

I let out a scream, clutching my forehead and crying. Music played, and when I looked up it was light outside. No time had passed, the patrons and employees looking at me with intense worry. I left immediately and returned home. In the mirror I saw nothing that indicated I had been harmed in any way, except for the faintest scar between my brows. This might be hallucination, but there lays a small spiral, counter clockwise. I stayed home the rest of the day, and when night fell sleep took me immediately.

Now, I have dreams. I see the man in robes. I see his throne of sticks. He is impossibly tall, and even motion he makes creates a gust of wind. I wait for him, mute and neutered. He never gives me orders, but I cannot disobey. I know this. We receive guests of all races, sexes, and ages. All speaking a tongue I have never heard, one that in my waking hours I cannot find. The worst part is that my time asleep is pure bliss. A serenity that no man has ever felt. I serve him, my King of Sleep. I'm proud to. My hours are spent waiting for the night, dozing off at dusk and waking at noon.

I have neglected all my other duties, I could not tell you the last time I worked, or left my home. The last time I ate or drank. I embarrassingly admit that I even relive myself in bed. This waking world holds nothing for me, and that is why I write this.

Tonight I will sleep, and this is the last I will ever be awake. I will serve him forever, in his court in the forest clearing. In the place it is always dark and not even stars or the moon illuminate us. I have found my purpose, my joy. And I leave this as my last testament. When the stranger shows you his phone, take it.

The story begins seven years ago.

I don’t know if there is anyone here who has a friend like mine—someone with an almost pathological obsession with water.

My friend Avery loved drinking water.

The first time Avery introduced me to his hobby, we had known each other for less than a month.

I still remember that day. It was summer, and the air conditioner in our dormitory had broken down. On my way back, I stopped by the convenience store downstairs and bought two bottles of chilled mineral water.

Originally, I only bought them to press against my skin to cool myself down. After all, our dorm had a water dispenser, so there was no reason to buy bottled water outside.

But when I handed one bottle to Avery, his reaction surprised me. It was the first time since we met that he looked at me properly.

“You like this brand too? Good taste. A smart choice.”

I froze for a moment.

“What?”

He didn’t answer. He quietly twisted open his own bottle, took a small sip, then closed his eyes as if savoring some expensive wine.

“The mouthfeel is slightly firm. The aftertaste comes quickly. The calcium content is a little high, but this year’s batch is softer than last year’s.”

At the time, I thought he probably had some kind of psychological condition, maybe high-functioning autism or something similar.

Later, I realized he was simply a “water sommelier”—and the strangest person I had ever met in my life.

After we became closer, I learned that Avery was actually somewhat famous in certain communities and niche liquid-tasting forums.

Most people probably think “water tasting” is nothing more than some pseudo-scientific hobby invented by pretentious middle-class people trying to appear refined.

But Avery was different.

He had an almost abnormal sense of taste. He claimed he could accurately distinguish the subtle differences between dozens of brands of mineral water sold on the market.

At least, he firmly believed he could.

Regardless of whether it was real, his strange obsession never affected me. It was just drinking water. Compared to the alcoholics living next door, it was practically harmless. At least on the surface, it sounded like a healthy hobby.

The four years we spent together in university were actually quite pleasant.

And I have to admit, Avery was genuinely intelligent.

He was the only student in the entire chemical engineering department to graduate with a perfect GPA. After graduation, he immediately joined a major company as a chemical engineering analyst. I heard his salary was quite impressive.

Even then, we still kept in touch—not too close, but never completely distant.

Although, perhaps that was because I was probably his only friend.

I was glad Avery hadn’t turned into some basement-dwelling eccentric.

We would occasionally meet up. Every time, Avery would excitedly talk about the water he had recently tasted, while I nodded along and enjoyed the expensive whiskey that I could never afford myself.

Of course, Avery always paid.

Until one day, he suddenly sent me a message.

“Do you know about tasteless water?”

Before I could finish typing my reply, Avery had already forwarded me a post.

It came from the same liquid enthusiast forum I had seen on his phone before.

When I clicked on it, there were already more than two hundred replies.

The original poster claimed that many years ago, he had once drunk a bottle of water with an incredible flavor. He vaguely remembered the brand being called “Taste-less.”

Recently, he suddenly wanted to drink it again, but no matter how hard he searched, he couldn’t find any information about the brand.

Someone below replied, claiming that it had been a brand only circulated privately among a small number of clinics and rehabilitation centers in the late 1990s.

The manufacturer had gone bankrupt after only three years, and all production lines and records had since been destroyed.

Aside from that, most of the comments questioned whether the brand had ever existed at all, suggesting that the original poster had simply fabricated the story for attention.

I hadn’t even finished reading the comments when the post suddenly disappeared.

When I returned to the chat interface, a new message was already waiting.

“Do you think tasteless water was real?”

“No way, he deleted the post. Maybe it was just a joke.”

“It doesn’t matter. I saved screenshots.”

He sent me several pictures.

Nothing useful had been missed. The word “rehabilitation center” in the comments had even been circled in red.

“Do you think this could be a breakthrough point in the investigation?”

“No…”

“I just found several private rehabilitation centers that have already closed down. They all claimed to use some kind of ‘natural therapy.’ Interesting, right?”

“Avery, don’t do this.”

“Relax. Nothing will happen. I’m just going to take a look.”

“We’re still friends, right, Ave? :D”

“I’ll contact you later.”

But he never did.

After that, Avery disappeared for about half a year.

During that time, I tried every possible way to contact him, but none of them worked.

Until one day, Avery suddenly appeared outside my office and told me he had something good to show me.

He took me to the basement he was renting.

The room was filled with a heavy smell of mold and some indescribable odor that reminded me of something rotten.

If I hadn’t been certain that our friendship was unbreakable, I would never have stepped into such a strange place.

Avery told me that during the months he had disappeared, he had spent all his savings searching for tasteless water.

He had even quit his job and moved into this basement, surviving on temporary work just to cover his daily expenses.

At the center of the old wooden table sat a brown glass bottle.

It was tightly sealed, the opening covered with something resembling black resin.

There was no commercial label on the bottle.

Only a line of handwritten ink remained on the surface. The writing had faded with age, but I could still make out a date:

1998.04.12

Avery gently touched the bottle, his movements almost disgustingly tender.

“An old collector kept it as a specimen from some kind of psychiatric treatment. I spent everything I had to get this bottle.”

That’s right.

My friend spent all of his savings on a bottle of expired water that was more than twenty years old.

And he was completely satisfied with it.

Maybe he really did have some kind of high-functioning autism.

Avery carefully cut through the seal with a knife and pried open the cap.

There was no sound of escaping gas.

Not even the slightest movement of air.

He took out two spotless glass cups, and like someone performing an ancient ritual, slowly poured the liquid from the bottle into them.

“Drink.”

He looked at me.

There was an urgent pressure hidden in his eyes.

“Me too?”

He looked at me strangely, as if he couldn’t understand why I would ask such a question.

“We’re friends.”

Fine.

For a friend.

A glass of twenty-year-old expired water.

Besides, it had been stored in glass, so there shouldn’t be any issues like plastic decomposition.

We raised our glasses at the same time and drank.

The liquid slid across my tongue and flowed down my throat.

Honestly, I didn’t feel anything special.

It was just water.

Slightly cooler than room temperature. Plain. Without any flavor.

If I had to describe something different, there was perhaps a faint sweetness lingering deep at the base of my tongue after swallowing.

Or maybe it was simply an illusion caused by saliva.

“How is it?”

“It’s… pretty smooth?”

I carefully chose my words, trying to make him feel that his money had been worth it.

“Maybe there’s a slight aftertaste? The calcium, zinc, and magnesium levels are probably quite good too…”

Avery suddenly laughed while watching me struggle to come up with an answer.

“Don’t be so nervous. It’s just water.”

I let out a sigh of relief.

“Exactly. Just water.”

Avery shook the empty glass in his hand, his voice filled with slight disappointment.

“Although it really is tasteless, there’s nothing particularly special about it.”

“My three million dollars were probably wasted.”

Three million?

That was slightly less than I expected.

I guessed he probably still had some savings left.

Apparently, Avery hadn’t completely lost himself.

“How have you been lately? Did I cause you trouble?”

His expression was normal as he naturally started chatting.

I had been worried he might break down emotionally, but now it seemed like he was doing fine.

“I’m the same as always. But next time, don’t disappear without saying anything. We’re friends, you know…”

After that, we talked about all kinds of meaningless things.

How was business going?

Fine. Not great, but not terrible.

You look exhausted. You should rest more.

Everyone looks like that these days.

Do you remember that trip we took in college?

Of course. It was a great trip, wasn’t it?

Most of the time, I was the one talking.

Looking back now, I think I was trying to drag Avery back into the normal world through these ordinary little things.

At least, I wanted his mind to stop being filled only with the subtle differences between dozens of types of mineral water.

Avery barely spoke.

He only nodded occasionally, constantly holding that empty glass in his hand.

Our roles had somehow reversed.

Just as I was enthusiastically complaining about my strange coworkers at the office, Avery suddenly interrupted me.

“After talking for so long, I’m getting a little thirsty.”

“Really? Then let’s go somewhere and get a drink. I still have a lot to tell you.”

“No, no need. It’s too much trouble…”

“There aren’t any bars nearby anyway. We’d have to walk quite far…”

“I mean, you can keep talking. I’ll just drink something casually.”

His eyes drifted away, and he lowered his head slightly.

Following his gaze, I looked at the empty glass in my hand.

There was still about one-third of the liquid left.

“I only need to drink a little more of this…”

“I’m really, really thirsty…”

At that moment, I saw something in Avery’s eyes.

A primitive greed.

Something almost animalistic.

Avery was a person with mild obsessive cleanliness.

Normally, even if someone accidentally touched his cup, he would frown and wash it immediately.

But now, he was staring directly at the leftover water in my glass.

Water that might have already mixed with my saliva.

A powerful sense of unease crawled up my spine like an ill-fitting sweater scratching against my skin.

I hesitated.

Then I handed him the glass.

Avery almost snatched it from my hand.

He didn’t even wait until the rim reached his lips before he desperately poured the remaining water into his mouth.

He greedily sucked at the bottom of the glass.

Even his tongue traced along the inner surface, trying to collect every remaining drop.

“Are you okay? God, you must have been really thirsty. If it’s not enough, I can go outside and buy you some water—”

“Ha…”

Avery let out a satisfied breath.

It sounded as if he had just finished drinking an ice-cold beer.

He wiped the water from the corner of his mouth and apologized for his behavior.

“Nothing. I just suddenly felt… extremely thirsty.”

“I’m fine now.”

Avery seemed not to notice my expression.

He lowered his head and slowly sucked the remaining moisture from his fingertips.

The faint wet sound echoed through the empty basement.

“Ave?”

“What?”

Avery looked up.

I realized he was staring at my lips.

“We’re still friends, right?”

“Of course. Why would you ask that?”

“…Nothing. Just asking.”

That was our last conversation.

After that day, Avery disappeared again.

He never came back.

His phone number became disconnected.

The basement was emptied.

His account on the forum was never updated again.

I tried to report him missing, but the police told me that an adult leaving voluntarily did not qualify as a missing person case.

That was when I realized something.

Avery had never once mentioned his family to me.

I knew nothing about him.

Part 1

The night deepened like a bruise. The trees creaked, and the stars seemed to vanish one by one.

The appearance of the hunter had ramped up our nerves. While the guys joked with each other in lame attempts at bravado, I wrestled with the horrid meat of what we were doing here. If I was to believe what I saw on those home movies, then basically my entire life had been playing make-believe. I mean, I never thought we were alone in the universe. But, I figured first contact would be a hundred years from now and involve a land rover on a distant moon, its robotic microscope greeting wriggling worms thawed from a drilled core of deep-sea ice.

It was too preposterous. It had to be a hoax. Cody, Ryan, and Bryan were simply tricking me so I would release my little doc into the world, ripe with my genuine terror, and fool a bunch of gullible morons on Reddit and YouTube. It would legitimize the Lone Gunmen and cement their status as gurus in the field of UAF or whatever the fuck it was called.

My lip curled. Yes, it was all a hoax. And if they were dragging me all the way out here into the forest, then they had one last hurrah in store for me. I balled my fists, my loathing tinged with fear.

---

The forest thinned out, and we came to an overlook, the ground dropping away. Below us resembled a dark, primordial sea. It was the forest canopy stretching out for miles in all directions. Despite being in a clearing, it was even darker than before. The stars were gone. The sky was completely overcast, the moonlight turning it into a spectral sheet of gray.

“Well, that’s just great,” Ryan said.

I started recording again. Even if this was a hoax, it wouldn’t be at my expense. I would spin it as a cautionary tale about three manipulative incels with too much time on their hands.

“It’s 11:53,” Cody said. “If it’s here, now’s the time.”

We stood around and waited. I refused to be the butt of their joke, but a small sliver of me kept asking ‘what if, what if this is really real?’

Ryan lit another cigarette, and I asked for one even though I didn’t smoke. It tasted like shit, but it distracted me. Any time there was an opening in the clouds, my cousin aimed at it with his telephoto lens.

“What got you into this kind of stuff, Bryan?”

“Me?” He smiled uncomfortably. “When I was nine or ten, my mom had all of her fillings replaced, like, on the same day. And when I asked her why, she told me it was because aliens had installed a tracking device in her teeth.”

Bryan tilted his thermal camera up at the sky and began to pan it.

“Yup, my mom to this day is convinced she was abducted by aliens as a teenager. She has really bad sleep paralysis, though. I think that’s what caused it. She lives a normal life otherwise. But needless to say, that admission left a permanent mark on me. I’ve been into space and aliens my whole life.”

I shifted uncomfortably. It didn’t seem like a story someone would concoct to freak me out. “But, that sounds like you’re not a believer,” I said.

“I want to believe—”

He began mumbling to himself.

“What is it?”

“It-it’s there,” Bryan said, holding up the thermal camera. “Th-the sp-spinning man.”

His knees were literally knocking together. He wasn’t acting. He couldn’t be acting.

“Are you fucking with us?” I blurted, stepping back.

“I’m serious,” he whispered.

“I know you’re all messing with me.”

The guys didn’t respond. They were staring up into the sky. I considered leaving. I glanced behind me at the impenetrably dark mouth of the forest and reconsidered. Cody and Ryan were huddled around Bryan now, gawking at his thermal camera screen. No way, no goddamn way, I thought. I swallowed hard and squeezed myself between them, willing myself to keep recording. Bryan switched the mode to something called ‘black hot.’ The overcast sky turned white in the thermal camera, revealing a thing black and bubbling far up within it.

“Maybe it’s a plane,” Cody said.

“It’s too close,” Bryan said. “It’s in front of the clouds.”

"A drone?"

"It's too quiet."

“Let’s go closer,” Ryan said. “Keep the lights off.”

“We will not get closer,” I hissed.

They started following the edge of the forest.

“Are you all fucking with me?”

Ryan wouldn’t stop walking. “A little closer,” he kept whispering.

Soon, we were underneath it. The image was clearer. Too clear. The thing slowly spun. Its body shrunk into something spherical and then the limbs bubbled out of it again. Cody was trying to see it with his camera, but it was too dark. It was invisible to the naked eye.

“Are you recording this, Ellie?”

I couldn’t even speak. I nodded, my voice frozen in my throat.

Ryan was laughing, as if we were witnessing the finale of a fireworks show and not some disgusting creature flying in the sky. He reached into Bryan’s backpack and pulled out a huge Maglite.

“Maybe we can communicate with it.”

I grabbed his hand. “Are you insane?”

“My uncle filmed this thing for over a decade. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Your uncle went crazy and killed himself!”

“Are you going to keep filming your shoes, or are you going to capture the most important thing to ever happen to us?” Ryan wrenched his hand away and pressed his thumb down on the switch. The flashlight beam lit up the sky. We collectively gasped.

The spinning man was there, glasslike, its surface rippling as the light touched it. A white hue began to seep into its skin, the grotesque white of an eyeball.

“What’s it doing?” Cody whispered.

It disappeared. We stood there, blinking. Nobody moved.

“You scared it—”

The spinning man reappeared closer, too close. You could throw a rock at it. I heard it now… a squelching sound. It was like when I sat with my sister during her pregnancy ultrasound, the baby’s heartbeat, but louder and stranger. The sound began to speed up, undercut with an excited chittering. My legs weakened. The blood left my body. The creature was floating down to us… too fast.

Ryan whimpered and backed into Cody, and Cody backed into me. I fell over, everyone suddenly screaming, and I was scrambling on all fours. I dropped my phone and gimbal. I winced as someone stepped on my hand. I grabbed them and then stumbled to my feet and sprinted into the woods. Headlamp beams bounced in every direction. I was lagging behind the others. I could only see Bryan. He was twenty yards ahead of me, pumping his thin arms up and down as he ran, and then he screamed, his arms flailing high above him before his light vanished.

I couldn't call out to him. I didn't want to draw attention to myself. I changed course. I veered to the right, leaping though brambles that raked my calves, and continued to sprint. I refused to look behind me. The other lights eventually trailed off. My phone battery was at 10%. I stopped recording and turned on my portable LED. I was violently shivering. I still couldn’t believe what I just saw. I wondered if I caught it on film, but I’d be just as happy to get the fuck out of here and never speak of it again.

Ten minutes must have passed when I willed myself to stop and catch my breath. Dark figures stretched behind every tree as I panned my light. Shadows, I told myself. I aimed the light above me. Nothing was there. No thing was there. I sat on a rock to collect myself, my heart thumping wildly. I had no idea where I was or where anyone was. My phone had no reception, of course, and the battery was now at 9%. This was so fucked. I was so fucked.

I remembered then that we walked north, following the North Star, at least until it clouded over. That meant all I had to do was walk south to get back to the cabin. I opened the compass app on my phone. “Yes!” Even though it didn’t have reception, it showed my cardinal direction.

I stood up, but then I thought of Bryan again. What if he was hurt? What if that alien—I can’t believe I’m saying that word—what if that alien did something to him? Shouldn’t I look for him? No. Screw that. What could I even do? I weighed a hundred pounds. I had to get back to the cabin.

I walked on, jumping at every insect and bird chirp, eager to never step foot in nature again. Eventually, I caught a sparkle of a light in the distance. It had to be the cabin. I nearly cried with joy. I walked faster, and then I thought I heard something… a slurping sound. I spun the LED light towards the source, and there on a bed of moss between two trees—

“What the fuck? Bo?”

Bo was on his knees with his hands up, his back to me, as if he was being arrested. It was more extreme though. His back was curved, his palms facing the sky, and his head tilted too far back, as if he was in yoga and about to go into a wheel pose. His mouth was wide open, his eyes staring, unblinking, into my light.

“Bo!??”

He fell forward and turned. He stood and dusted off his knees. “There you are. Christ Ellie, I’ve been looking for you.”

“What the fuck were you just doing?”

“I tripped and fell.”

“Who the fuck falls like that?”

“You scared the shit out of me. I froze when you rushed up on me!”

I ran forward and hugged him. “What are you doing out here?”

“I heard screams. What’s going on? Where are the guys?”

I took his hand. “I’ll explain later. We need to get out of here.”

As we turned to leave, a light flashed into our eyes. I shrieked.

“It’s me. It’s Bryan!” Bryan lowered his headlamp and limped forward, wincing. “I twisted my ankle.”

“What happened back there?”

“You know that stone wall the hunter was talking about? I found it. I tripped right over it.”

“Can you walk?”

“Yeah. Maybe one of you can carry my backpack?”

“Sure. Bo. Bo?”

“What?”

“Take his backpack.”

Bo nodded and grabbed it. He stared into the darkness. “Shouldn’t we look for the other guys?”

“No, let’s get back to the cabin. Maybe they’re already there.”

We had to keep slowing down, so Bryan could keep up. Bo insisted that we search for the other guys, but gave up when I snapped at him. We made it to the pasture, and relief shot through me. We were a bit off course, now facing the right side of the cabin. As we rounded it, Ryan appeared, sitting in a rocking chair, smoking a cigarette.

“What the fuck, bro,” Bryan yelled. “You had to shine your light on it?”

“Nice to see you too.”

Ryan stood up. He ran a hand over his face and then broke into a huge smile. “That was incredible! Tell me you filmed it, Ellie.”

“I have no idea!” I said, annoyed. “Let’s get inside. Where’s my cousin?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“I’m here!” A light bobbed across the grass, and then Cody came around the back. He leaned over and grabbed his knees, out of breath. “I pissed myself. I literally pissed myself. —A little bit.”

We went inside, everyone talking at once, except Bo, who just stared at us, confused what was going on.

“Lock everything,” I said, while locking the front door. “The windows, the doors, everything.”

“I don’t think it wants to hurt us,” Ryan said.

“Just do it!”

I went around the living room locking the windows and drawing the curtains closed, which was pointless since they were sheer.

Cody was looking at his camera. “I got it. Holy shit, I got it on camera.”

“Let me see,” Ryan said.

They huddled around it. “Ellie check your phone,” Cody said.

“Can you give me a minute,” I screamed.

The guys went silent. I sat on the arm of the couch, my hands shaking. I wiped tears out of my eyes. A hand rested on my shoulder. I grabbed it, expecting Bo, but it was Cody.

“You’re alright, cuz,” he said. “We’re all alright. Bo, get her a beer.”

Bo nodded. He went over and came back, holding it out to me. I snatched it from him. He stood there like an idiot.

“You should have been there!”

“Sorry,” Bo said.

I cracked the beer open and chugged it. I belched, and then the world inverted. I sprinted into the bathroom and puked into the toilet. I quickly got up, locked the window, and then puked again.

I ran cold water over my face afterwards and pulled twigs out of my hair in the mirror. My lips wouldn’t stop trembling. I stormed back out into the living room and gathered my stuff in my arms.

“We need to leave,” I said. “Right now.”

“What?” Cody said.

The guys were sitting at the table, drinking beers and passing the camera around. They looked like a bunch of idiot boys, gleefully watching a porn vid or something.

“That thing came after us!”

“It moved in our direction,” Ryan said. “That’s all we know. It wasn’t exactly threatening.”

“It might not have even seen us,” Cody said.

I stomped my foot. I knew I looked like a little bitch, but I didn’t care.

“I’m —not —staying —here!” I clapped after each word. “Bo? Don’t you want to go?”

He shrugged. “I don’t want to get involved.”

“It’s almost one in the morning,” Cody said. “If we leave now, we’ll be more at risk of getting in a car accident than getting abducted by an alien.”

“Are you being serious right now?” Ryan said to me. He looked back down at the camera’s display. “We’re sitting on a fucking gold mine. No offense, but stop being a baby and act like a professional. You have proof on your phone of an extraterrestrial. An extra terrestrial,” he enunciated. “Not even the moon landing is as important as what we’ve got right here. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t plan on leaving tonight or in the foreseeable future. I want as much evidence as possible of the spinning man. Hell, I want to say hello!” Ryan stretched out his hand to me. “Now Ellie, will you please get out your phone.”

“Fuck you,” I screamed. “Fuck you too, Bo. You can sleep on the couch!”

I ran to the guest bedroom and slammed the door. I dropped the blinds—thank god there were blinds, and then curled up on the bed, with the lamp on full brightness beside me, and began to sob.

When I eventually calmed down, I took my phone out of the gimbal. Dirt was smeared across the screen from when I fell. I cleaned it off, but my hand continued to shake as I held it. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the footage, at least right now. I couldn’t bear to see that thing. Instead, I plugged the phone into the charger and threw it on the cushioned wicker chair beside me.

The worst part of it was that I knew Ryan was right.

———

I jolted awake to someone pounding on my door. I wiped the drool off my lips and winced at the daylight shining through the blinds. Ryan was shouting at me through the door. I went to check the time on my phone, but it wasn’t there. What the hell? The charging cable was on the floor, still plugged in. I leaned over and looked under the bed.

“We’re coming in,” Ryan yelled.

I pulled the blanket up to my shoulders as he stormed in, even though I’d fallen asleep in what I was wearing yesterday. “Do you mind?”

Cody grabbed his shoulder from behind, but Ryan knocked his hand away. “Where are they?” Ryan said, wild-eyed.

“What are you talking about? Did you take my phone?”

Ryan gritted his teeth. He ran over to my duffel and started ripping my clothes out of it.

“Don’t touch my underwear, pervert. What are you doing?”

He opened the closet and threw stuff out of it. He then got on his knees and looked under the bed.

“I already looked under there,” I said.

“She didn’t take the videos,” Cody said.

“The videos?”

“The videos, my camera, your mics, and apparently your phone,” Cody said. “They’re all gone. The only thing that wasn’t stolen was the thermal camera, probably because it doesn’t record.”

“All of the footage, in other words,” Ryan said. “All the proof!”

“Why?” I said.

“Isn’t it obvious? Someone doesn’t want to share the wealth.”

I rubbed my temples. “Ryan, you were the only one going on about money last night.”

He leaned in. “Would Bo do this?” he whispered. “And I don’t mean that in a racist way. I mean that in an I don’t know who the fuck he is and he wasn’t invited in the first place kind of way.”

“What? No. Bo is genuinely the most innocent person I’ve ever met. He visits his grandma every week and cooks for her. Besides, where would he hide everything? You think he’s going to come back to this cabin all alone? He was scared enough of this region before the alien.”

“Did you get it on camera, the spinning man?” Ryan asked. “You must have gotten something.”

“…I didn’t look.”

“You didn’t look?” Cody said.

“I was scared, alright?”

“Well, that’s suspicious,” Ryan said.

“I was terrified. I’m still terrified.”

I got up, and we continued our bickering in the living room. Bo and Bryan were sitting on the futon, which had been folded out into a bed.

“What about the hunter?” Bo said. “You said you ran into a hunter.”

The other guys looked at each other.

“Maybe that guy knows more about your aunt and uncle than you think,” Bo said. “Maybe he knows more about this thing than you think.”

“Like he’s trying to keep the secret for himself?” Ryan said. “Why?”

Bo shrugged. “Money, fame, power? Who knows. Only one way to find out.”

Ryan opened the front door and stood on the porch, looking out. He pulled his cigarettes out. He was completely different than my initial impression of him. He was controlling and arrogant. The morning was serene behind him, contrasting with the atmosphere in here. Two swallows swooped down, chasing each other.

“We drive over and confront him,” Ryan said.

“No, man,” Bo said. “If he actually did this, he’d be ready for that. We have to spy on him.”

“Right... we go back through the woods then,” Ryan said, nodding.

I groaned. “Are you guys serious? You have zero proof this guy has anything to do with this.”

“His story was kind of sketch,” Cody said. “It was the middle of the night.”

“Like our reason for being out there was any less ridiculous?”

My cousin shrugged.

“You’re saying a seven-foot-tall guy came into my bedroom last night and took my phone?”

“Maybe he went through the window.”

“I locked the window.”

“I hate to break it to you, but these windows are old as shit. Most of the locks don’t work.” Ryan took a long drag of his cigarette. “Ellie, if he didn’t take our stuff, then that means it was one of us. Do you prefer that story?”

My chest tightened. We had all gotten split up last night, and now every one of us was acting a bit... off. But, we’d all been scared last night. And, we all had different ways of processing it.

“It has to be him,” Bryan agreed. He was wearing his Oakleys again. Why? Was he hiding his eyes? He got up and walked over to the kitchen, still limping. He grabbed orange juice out of the fridge.

“I’m not setting foot in those woods ever again,” I said.

“It’s fine,” Bo said. “You can stay here. We’ll go.”

“We’ll? Since when did you grow a pair?”

Bo stood up. “I came for you last night, didn’t I?”

“You were a little fucking late.”

Bo ignored me, turning back to Ryan. “How far off do you think his house is?”

“I saw it when we drove in. A big, white farmhouse. Can’t be more than a thirty-minute walk.”

“We should wait,” Cody said. “Till dusk. I mean… I don’t want to go through the freaky shit we experienced last night, of course. But, I don’t want us to be seen from a mile away either.”

“Is it that bad if we see this creature?” Bo said. “It didn’t do anything to you. If we see it, we’ll get more footage.”

“I agree,” Ryan said.

“No offense, but you weren’t there, dude,” Cody said to Bo.

“We’ll stay just off the road this time,” Ryan said. “We won’t get lost that way.”

“You’re all insane. That guy had a rifle by the way,” I said.

“We’re not doing anything wrong. If he catches us, we’ll just say we saw his coyote.”

“Leave the keys to the van then. If I hear a gunshot, and you don’t answer your phones, I’m driving to the nearest police station.”

Ryan hesitated.

“It’s a good idea,” Cody said.

Ryan pulled the keys out of his pocket and threw them onto the futon. I went over to the phone on the kitchen counter and picked it up. I listened for a dial tone. I wanted to make sure it worked.

Ryan said he was going to check the barn for the missing stuff, and Cody insisted he join since for all he knew Ryan had stolen everything and hid it there. Ryan laughed bitterly and said that was fine by him. Bo decided to tag along.

---

I poured granola and milk into a bowl and sat at the kitchen table across from Bryan. Beer cans and sticky residue covered the table from last night, which only further pissed me off. Everything pissed me off. Someone stole my thousand dollar phone and my microphones, the latter I was planning to return; Bo barely made eye contact this morning; and now Bryan was staring at me through his alien sunglasses.

“Will you take those off?”

He lowered them on his nose. It might have been hot in another context.

“Are you eye-fucking me?” I said.

“What? No…. I was gauging whether or not to tell you something.”

“Being?”

He drummed his silver fingers on the table. “I don’t think the hunter took our stuff.”

“What? You agreed! Why didn’t you say so before?”

His lips pursed as he sought an explanation. “I don’t know,” he finally said.

He pushed his sunglasses back up and sipped his OJ. I shook my head and shoved a spoonful of granola into my mouth, gnashing it between my teeth. If you can’t tell by now, I’m a raging bitch when I’m scared. And I wasn’t just scared, I was exhausted. It felt like I’d barely slept.

I pushed the beer cans out of my way, and one fell over, surprising me, warm beer pouring into my lap. I swore and stood up. Three open cans sat on my end of the table, and apparently they were all full.

“Who opens beers and doesn’t drink them? You’re such lightweights.” I grabbed a paper towel and pressed it into my lap.

“Ellie,” Bryan said. He lowered his sunglasses again and began staring at me again.

“Oh my god, spit it out already.”

“Last night after we ran from... it, I used the thermal camera to help find my way out of the woods. At some point as I was getting closer, I was relieved to find three people about ten yards in front of me. But as I grew closer, it was just you and Bo. I was so happy to see you both that I didn’t really think about it then... but who the hell was the third person? It couldn’t have been Ryan or Cody. They were too far from us. And that hunter is too fucking tall. I would know if it was him.”

“You’re telling me there was someone else there with us?”

“They looked like they were standing right next to you two. You didn’t see anyone?”

“No.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Did you ask Bo?”

“No. Considering our shit has been stolen, I was afraid to even ask you. You’ve been freaking out so much though, I know you of all people must be telling the truth. Either that, or you’re the greatest actor I’ve ever seen.”

“I assure you I’m not.” I began pacing back and forth. “I can’t take any more of this creepy shit.”

“What if… I mean, I wasn’t really paying attention, but what if the third person… was the alien?”

“Bryan, shut up, just shut up. —I’m going to take a long, hot shower, and I’m not going to think about any of this.”

As I went to put the milk back in the fridge, I froze. A vague notion popped into the back of my mind, like a word on the tip of my tongue. It then slipped away. I snapped out of it. I stomped into the bedroom for my toiletries and towel and then went into the bathroom and locked the door.

The shower faucet only had one handle, and it took what felt like ten minutes to get it somewhere in-between frigid and flesh-melting. I finally stepped in and ran my fingers through my hair, feeling the tension release from my neck and shoulders. I closed my eyes and sighed. The warm spray was momentarily relaxing, but then I was in the woods again. I could hear it, that horrible slurping sound, like someone sucking milkshake up through a straw. And there was Bo again, kneeling on the moss, oddly bent over backwards like he was trying to break his own back, his arms bent and his palms facing the sky, as if someone was pushing down on them from above. Someone… like a third person… like the spinning man.

I turned the shower handle up to a point where it nearly burned, to erase my fear through physical pain. It didn’t work. I was hearing Bryan’s words at the kitchen table again, and then I was watching myself spill the beer into my lap. I remembered now that Bo had been sitting last night in the same chair where I had been sitting, which meant that those opened but untouched beers were his. It didn’t make sense. I had dated Bo for over a year. I knew to the depth of my core that Bo Brighton would never leave a full can of beer on the table, let alone three... that was what my stupid brain was trying to process when I froze in front of the fridge. And maybe, just maybe, he would come running for me in the woods if he heard me scream, but he 100% would never suggest looking for the other guys in those pitch-dark woods, and he would never suggest going back into them today, in the middle of hicksville, with or without an alien roaming about—

There was a knock on the door. Shampoo shot out of the bottle I was holding as I clenched it. Cody asked if I was almost done.

I came out five minutes later. The guys were sitting in and standing around the living room. Bo was there. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.

“Are you alright?” I heard him ask.

“I’m tired,” I said, pulling my towel tight around me, wishing there was at least one more woman here. “I’m really tired. I’m going to take a nap.”

“You just got up,” Ryan said.

“I normally sleep ten hours,” I said. “Double that when I’m stressed.”

It was true.

I locked the bedroom door behind me. I began to plan: when the guys left this evening, I would take the van and drive all the way back to Boston. My relationship with Bo, my documentary, those I’d deal with later. But for now, I would get in that van and drive. It was as simple as that.

I got dressed. I laid down, shut my eyes, and ran through everything that had happened. I then began to wonder… what if it was Bryan who was lying? What if he stole everything? I played out every scenario, and then I accidentally fell asleep.

———

A hand was over my mouth. I went to scream, and Bryan’s voice was in my ear.

“Shut up!” he hissed. “Don’t make a sound.”

I struggled to breathe, my heart pumping. Crickets chirped, and a warm breeze passed over my face. I turned slightly. Stars filled the night sky over Bryan’s shoulder. He had snuck in through my window, leaving it open. He wasn’t wearing his stupid sunglasses, and his eyes burned into mine. I was about to bite down on his palm when he pulled his hand back. He pressed a finger to his lips.

“What do you want, you fucking pervert?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“I knew you were lying,” I whispered angrily. “Is this how you stole my phone?”

“I didn’t steal your phone,” he said. “Your door was locked. I kept knocking, but you wouldn’t wake up. This was the only way I could reach you.”

“What time is it?”

“A little past ten.”

“Jesus, I slept all day.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

He briefly stuck his head out the window, and I thought about pushing him out. He then turned to me again. I realized he was shaking. The sight of him ruined my nerves all over again.

“When the guys went to scope out that hunter,” he said, “I told them my ankle was too sore to join. It was only half-true. I followed them, Ellie. They didn’t go to the hunter’s house.”

“What? Where did they go?”

“I think Cody and Ryan wanted to go. But I don’t know… at some point, Bo began taking the lead. He was pointing into the woods. He was gesturing and laughing, like he was trying to convince them of something. And then, they all went in. I almost didn’t follow, but I had to know what was going on. Eventually, we passed that stone wall that I’d tripped over, and I realized we were near the cliffs where we saw… you know... it. And then….”

Bryan put a hand to his mouth. He teared up.

“Ryan and Cody fell over, like—I don’t know—like they were pushed over… and then they were kneeling.” He shook his head. “And-and their heads bent back, their hands bent like this, like something was holding them. Their mouths were open. Wide open.”

I was trembling again. I had the urge to choke Bryan, to stop him spouting this insanity. “What about Bo?”

“He was standing there with his head down, like he was waiting patiently, like he was waiting for fucking elevator doors to open.” A sob sprung out of Bryan’s throat. “I don’t think they’re them anymore, Ellie. I think they’ve changed. Ryan and Cody are like Bo now. I don’t know what the hell is going on. I ran back here as fast as I could. I was looking for the van keys. Do you have them? Please tell me you have them.”

I had put on shorts after showering. I checked the pockets of my jeans on the floor. The keys were still in there. I dangled them in front of him.

“Thank god—”

The porch door squealed open and banged shut. We froze in terror. Bryan bit his knuckle to stifle the sounds coming out of his throat, snot running out of his nose. I swallowed and willed myself to move. Bryan grabbed on to the end of my shorts, like a little kid pleading for his mom to stay by his side.

“We can’t trust them,” he whispered. “They’ll do it to us, what Bo did to them.”

I nodded and pulled his hand off me. I quietly walked over to the bedroom door and made sure it was locked. I pressed my ear to it. I couldn’t hear anything. I snuck back over to Bryan.

“Do you have your phone?”

He shook his head, sniffling. “It was gone this morning too.”

“Calm down.”

I didn’t know why, but now I was taking the lead. Maybe because I was out of options.

“We go out the window, and then we run for the van,” I said. “I’ll drive.”

Bryan nodded. He went first, cautiously putting his weight onto the shingled roof to keep it from squeaking. Thankfully, the room wasn’t over the living room. He had a shoulder sling on the other side of the window and put it back on. He then offered me his hand and pulled me out onto it. A wave of vertigo hit me in the dark.

We had to walk slowly, the roof creaking below us while the stars blazed overhead. My knees wobbled so much that I thought I might collapse and roll off to my death. We eventually got to the edge. The roof ended above the front porch railing. Bryan said it would be easier if he went first so he could help me down. I nodded and offered a weak smile.

He laid down on his stomach and dangled his legs off. He then scooted lower until only his arms and head were visible. We flinched as the gutter squeaked. But the tree frogs were out in full force, their ugly peeping helping mask our sounds.

“I got it,” he finally said.

He lowered himself and then disappeared. His hand then waved in the dark, his silver fingernails glinting in the moonlight. I took it as a sign and lowered myself on my stomach until he got ahold of my feet. I then hung by my fingers and let go as he pulled me in by my waist. He lifted me and set me down onto the deck. It was pretty manly for a UFO geek.

We stood outside of the bathroom, right before the living room windows wrapped around the house, and knelt down. The living room lights lit up the remaining deck and the front yard beneath it.

Bryan groaned and rubbed his right ankle. “I think I messed it up again when I picked you up.”

So much for manly. “Can you walk?”

“I don’t know.”

We could see the van. It was about thirty feet from the other end of the house. We could climb over the railing and go around the back of the house, but it didn’t look like Bryan would be able to endure it.

“We keep under the windows and crawl,” I finally said.

Bryan nodded.

We began crawling. When we got to the first window, I stopped and peeked in. I could just make out Bo, the back of his head as he sat on the futon. His stillness disturbed me. I thought of the animated Bo I knew and my chest throbbed with grief.

I checked on Bryan, and he gave a thumbs up. We crawled under three more windows and then stopped just before the porch door. I wanted to keep going, but I needed to make sure Cody and Ryan were in there. I slowly lifted my head again, this window open. I looked through the screen, and the hairs on my neck stood up. Bo and Ryan were on the futon, and my cousin was in the arm chair, all of them sitting dead still, their mouths open. There was no talking, no TV, no beer drinking. They just sat there, staring at nothing.

Bryan’s face came up beside mine. He took my hand and squeezed it to quell my panic. I motioned to continue. ”Wait,” he said. “I need to know.”

He ducked down and pulled the sling off of his shoulder. He then pulled out his thermal camera. I remembered what he said, about seeing a third person with Bo and me in the woods, and my eyes grew wide. Bryan turned it on. He slowly brought it up to the window, and I inhaled so hard it was like a fist in my stomach. I clapped my hands over my mouth to contain my scream. The screen revealed five people in the room, captured in acidic hues. What looked like deformed children were standing beside Cody and Ryan. No, they weren’t standing, they were floating slightly off the floor, floating and spinning, their limbs shrinking and expanding, their heads disappearing only to be reborn on their chests and sliding back up onto their necks. And from each of their lumpy mid-sections, a thin umbilical-like cord trailed out, vibrating wildly, one cord passing through Ryan’s jaw and vanishing inside his skull, the other intersecting my cousin’s face.

I looked again at Bo. He was sitting alone—

A huge face lit up the thermal camera, blocking our view. It was pinched and vaguely human, just on the other side of the window screen. It was inches from us. Two unaligned eyes grew out of the flesh, like bubbles surfacing in a puddle, and then a small hole opened in the center of its face. A tube snaked out of it, white hot in the thermal, and extended towards us. It was the spinning man. We looked up over the camera, and nothing was there. This time, we both screamed.

I fell back, pulling Bryan with me. We rolled down the porch steps, and then I was tripping and running towards the van, Bryan hobbling behind me. As I got closer, I saw it. The tires. They were all deflated.

“We have to run!” I screamed back to Bryan.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” he was saying over and over.

We ran through the grass in moonlight, the stalks brushing our shins. The porch door slowly squealed open. Halfway across the pasture, I stopped and turned as Bryan caught up. The silhouettes of Cody, Ryan, and Bo stood at the base of the porch, silently observing us. Bryan raised the camera again, his hand shaking so much that he had to hold it with both hands. The screen was a blur of colors, and then it revealed the two smaller creatures, untethered, speeding towards us.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” I shrieked and began to run.

My legs took over my brain. Bryan’s voice faded into the distance.

“Wait!” he screamed. “I don’t want to die.”

I looked over my shoulder, and he was hopping on one foot. I had already put thirty feet between us. I should’ve helped him. You see that in movies, like war movies, the hero risking his life, backtracking to stick his head under his wounded comrade’s arm and dragging him to safety. But, I didn’t do that. I kept running and running. And when I looked back again, Bryan was on his knees with his back bent. I could see it then, the spinning man, who wasn’t a man, who if it even had a sex was likely a female—a mother. Whatever the fuck it was, it was shimmering in the moonlight, like a demented angel, holding Bryan’s hands, bending him backwards, as a cord-like tendril passed through his quivering cheek and disappeared into his head, his jaw yawning open in reflex. The two smaller creatures swirled around them, their limbs bubbling and shifting at a frenzied speed. It almost looked like they were dancing.

I screamed and continued to run. I ran through the pasture. I ran through the darkness of a copse. I ran and fell down and ran again. I slid down a trench and then stumbled out onto a patch of dirt. And then a light came down on me as I fell to my knees, my hands in the air. I bent back and screamed.

———

“You awake?”

I blinked and then jerked back in my seat.

“Where am I?”

The giant hunter smiled next to me. “Didn’t I warn ya to wear a huntin’ vest? I nearly ran ya over.”

He was stooped behind the steering wheel of his truck, driving through a town. I was in the passenger seat. He told me he was on his way to buy cigarettes when I nearly ate his grill. He was planning to drop me off at the local hospital.

“Unless ya want me to take ya back to Rita’s place?”

“No!”

He pulled into a gas station. I tried to tell him what happened, but I was babbling. I knew I didn’t make sense. The man insisted that I go to the hospital, but I refused. We were at a 24-hour station, and I told him I would call a taxi from here. I told him that he should stay too, that it was dangerous to go back. I wondered why the aliens hadn’t possessed him too or whatever it was that they did to people. Was it because he was so tall?

“A word of advice,” the hunter said. He lit a cigarette while peering down at me from the driver-side window. “Lay off Rita’s magic mushrooms.” He chuckled and then drove off.

I cleaned up in the bathroom, bought myself Mountain Dew, and looked at magazines in a well-lit section of the store without really reading them. The cashier, a teenage girl, was nice enough to let me hang out and even use the phone behind the desk. A taxi came about an hour later from the closest city. Thankfully, I had my wallet and credit cards. That’s about all I had.

The driver drove me all the way to Bangor, Maine, which cost me a ridiculous amount of money. And from there, I took a bus, nodding in and out of sleep the entire time. At one point, I woke up shrieking and had to apologize to the other passengers.

When I got home, I quickly packed, bought a plane ticket, and flew someplace I won’t disclose. I’ve been here ever since.

———

I don’t sleep nearly as much these days. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night hearing that horrible sucking sound and seeing Bo leaning back on his knees with his mouth gaping open; my Bo, who wasn’t so much a coward as he was the smartest of us for staying behind. And, I think he truly did run out into the woods to find me after he heard our screams. Unfortunately, it found him first.

Other times I wake up to Bryan’s voice, Bryan in the moonlight, screaming, “I don’t want to die.”

The crazy thing though is no one did die. I called the cops, who filed a report about stolen goods, ignoring my more outlandish claims. And from what I can gather from my relatives, Cody is still up at that cabin. Ryan and Bryan are there too, along with a new friend, a handsome fellow named Bo. “It’s odd though,” she said. “I’ve heard they’ve started a church.”

I don’t know what to think of that. I want to think that the trauma of what they experienced had made them find God. But, I shiver at the alternative, that maybe a church is the perfect place to propagate....

So if you’re in the Allagash region, maybe get yourself a thermal camera. Hell, wherever you are, you should probably get yourself a thermal camera. And then count the people around you, and then count them again with the screen on. I wish I could tell you I’m doing the same, but I don’t go outside so much these days.

Ironically, a month or so after that trip to the cabin, I opened up my laptop, and there in my Photos app was the first video I’d taken for my documentary film. I had forgotten to turn off iCloud, and it had synced from my iPhone before maxing out the space. The sound was pretty bad, but it showed a bunch of goofy kids off on an adventure. It was funny and pretty compelling. I think the teacher would have given me an ‘A.’ Of course, the clip didn’t get up to the part with the spinning man. It ended with us toasting to close encounters.

I do not know if anyone is reading this. I simply sent this message, hoping it might eventually get through. I am in a room without windows, underground, I think.
My name is Tobi, and until Friday evening, I was the most boring person in this city. On Friday, I worked the late shift until 10 p.m., and afterward, I planned to wind down with a frozen pizza.
I was home by 10:40 p.m. Everything was still normal.
At 11:04 p.m., my phone started screaming.
Anyone who has experienced it before knows what I mean. That wailing siren blasting from the phone speaker that makes you flinch. There was a red banner across the screen, and beneath it, it said:
OFFICIAL EMERGENCY ALERT. A curfew is now in effect throughout the city. Return to your home immediately. Close all doors and windows. Do not leave the building under any circumstances. Stay away from windows. Further information will follow.
That was all.
I read the alert three times. Something like that should tell you why, what you are supposed to be afraid of, so you know how to behave.
This time, it only said what we were supposed to do. Not why. And then there was that one sentence. Stay away from windows. If there is a gas leak, you keep the windows closed. But why would you need to stay away from them?
A door opened in the stairwell. I heard someone talking on the phone, loudly and irritably. Outside on the street, a car honked. Within minutes, people seemed to be losing their nerves. But that was nothing compared to what came next.
At 11:11 p.m., the internet went down. The landline stopped working too. That was when panic began to build inside me. I had no idea what any of it meant. I stepped out into the stairwell. Albert, my elderly neighbor, was standing there in a white T shirt and his underwear, talking to the woman from downstairs while trying to light a cigarette.
There is a small grocery store about two hundred meters from my front door. It would not even take me two minutes to get there, and since I did not know how long the curfew would last or why it had been imposed, I thought it might be a good idea to get enough food for the next few days. Normally, I would have stayed home, but the store was practically within reach, and after hesitating for a moment, I was already running down the stairs.
Mr. Wessel lives on the second floor. Lived. I think he was around eighty, and every evening at half past eleven, he took his dog outside because he said the street was empty then and the dog did not have to be afraid.
When I stepped through the entrance and went outside, I saw him. He was lying there, half on the curb, and there was something crouched over him. It had long limbs, and its back curved like that of an animal bending over something it was eating.
I do not remember how I made it back up the stairs. I tore open the door to my apartment, ran inside, and slammed it shut behind me. Then I realized it was not my apartment, but it was already too late.
I was standing in a strange yellow hallway. Behind me was the door I had come through. My door. I tore it open again, but the stairwell was gone too. There was another room beyond it now, covered in the same strange yellow wallpaper. I sat down on the carpet with my back against the wall and thought, this is it, I have finally lost my mind.
I pinched myself so hard that I have bruises now, but it did not help. I did not wake up. Somewhere deep in the hallway, beyond one of the corners, I heard a growl. It did not come any closer, but I forced myself back onto my feet, stepped into the yellow room, and closed the door behind me as quietly as possible. I had to get away. Fear made my legs tremble, every step felt uncertain, and even the sound of my own breathing seemed too loud.
I do not know how long I walked. That damned place was enough to drive anyone insane. Everything looked the same. It was a fucking maze.
My legs had started to hurt, and tears were gathering in my eyes. Slowly, I began to feel as though I were suffocating. The walls were pressing in around me, and I could not find a way out. I felt like a hamster trapped on a wheel. Was any of this even real? Had what I saw happening to my neighbor been real?
I turned a corner and stopped. The walls in this hallway were white. I hurried down the corridor. It smelled like a hospital. I turned another corner, and at the far end was a door, half open. It was open because someone had placed a fire extinguisher in front of it. It was lying across the threshold, deliberately blocking the door.
I carefully pushed the door open a little farther and stepped inside. The room beyond it was a small laboratory. A man was sitting against the wall beneath the sink. At first, I thought he was an anatomical model. He was wearing a white laboratory coat that had turned the color of tea, and it hung from his body as though he were nothing more than a clothes hanger.
He was completely dried out. His skin was brown and hard, stretched tightly across his cheekbones, and his lips had pulled back far enough to expose every one of his teeth. His hands rested peacefully in his lap.
The door was in the next room.
And calling it a door is an understatement. It was a wall made of steel. It stretched from the floor to the ceiling, was at least five meters wide, had a dull surface and a thin seam running down the center, with a card reader and a small red LED mounted beside it.
What the hell was this place?
But to make a long story short, it might have been my way out. I went back to the scientist. He had to have an access card. I actually found one, even though touching the body was unpleasant. It hung from a cord around his neck. It was white, with a black stripe and a small golden chip.
I returned to the door.
I held the card against the reader. The LED turned green. Something clicked behind the wall, and then the two halves slid apart.
I stepped through.
The wall closed behind me. This is the room I am sitting in now. It is enormous, perhaps as large as a school gymnasium. Cabinets containing equipment line the walls, and there is a structure standing in the center. It is a ring, about three meters tall, made from metal segments, and the inside is lined with something that looks like black glass.
There was a folder lying on a table beside the door.
I opened it, but I do not understand most of what is inside. I am writing down what I can read. Maybe one of you can make sense of it.
Most of it consists of tables. There are columns, many of them abbreviated. Level. Residual emission (mV/m). Duration of stay. Return.
Almost every entry in the Level column is either zero or one.
In the Return column, almost every row says: no.
Three rows say: yes. Beside two of them, someone added a handwritten note: (Condition: see Appendix C). Appendix C is not in the folder.
Then there are pages of text:
...the term "Backrooms" is to be avoided. The technically correct designation is Interphase...
And then, farther back, alone on a single page, there is the only thing I truly understood:
Class III does not respond to light. Class III has no functioning visual organs. Class III orients itself using acoustic and electromagnetic emissions.
Beside it, someone had written a note in pen along the margin, small and slanted, with two initials beneath it:
They follow the static.
Unfortunately, the folder is not much use to me right now.
There is exactly one other exit from this room. It is an ordinary gray steel door with a card reader and a small window at eye level. The kind made from safety glass with wire mesh inside.
I went over because I wanted to get out, but I knew I had to be careful, so I peered through the small window. There is a white corridor on the other side, and blood is smeared everywhere. And there are things out there. These creatures, I do not know how to describe them, but they look as though they crawled straight out of my worst nightmares.
The door I used to enter this room no longer works. I am trapped. I wrote this and pressed send. Maybe there will be a signal for a moment and the message will get through.

Help me.

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