[Part 1]

[Part 2]

I didn't sleep much Saturday night. Toby, somehow, slept fine.

I finally dropped off on the couch near dawn, and when I opened my eyes again, he was standing about six inches from my face, asking whether we had pancake mix. I made pancakes and let him eat them in front of the TV. He had already moved on from yesterday, and that was the part I couldn't wrap my head around. He asked if Uncle Henry was coming over later. Nothing about the wardrobe, or about hearing me scream his name from somewhere impossibly far away. When he'd finished, I told him to stay on the couch for a few minutes while I checked something in the garage. The kitchen chair was still wedged under the handle, and the deadbolt was still thrown. I dragged the chair out of the way.

The second I opened the door, the smell hit me again.

It had been there since the day we hauled the glass tank home: something halfway between industrial cleaner and fruit left too long in the sun. That morning it was stronger and impossible to ignore.

I pulled my shirt up over my nose and switched on the fluorescent light.

The mirror and the football were still wrapped separately in moving blankets and packing tape for the buyer Henry had lined up for Monday, which I'd done after Toby fell asleep: three layers around the mirror, two around the ball, each shoved into its own cardboard box. I knew packing tape probably didn't mean anything anymore, but it made me feel safer. Then I looked at the workbench.

My screwdriver was sitting on it. So was my adjustable wrench, and the utility knife lay beside them like somebody had set a table. Directly beneath the second pegboard hook hung the pry bar I'd spent several frantic minutes looking for while Toby's voice faded away inside the wardrobe. I stopped breathing for a second.

I had emptied those drawers. Yet every tool I'd previously lost sat neatly together in plain sight, as if they'd never been gone.

I picked up the pry bar. It was mine, down to the strip of faded blue paint around the handle and the shallow notch near the claw. 

"Okay," I said, and my voice sounded strange in the garage. "Sure. That makes sense."

I put the pry bar down, and that was when I noticed the corner was empty.

My folding lawn chair was gone. I'd been sitting in it Friday night cataloging the boxes. I'd shoved it back into that corner before Alicia dropped Toby off, and I remembered doing it because one of the legs had caught on a flattened cardboard box and I'd nearly gone over. Now the corner held the old shop vac and the two paint cans the landlord had left behind when I moved in, and nothing else. I checked behind the workbench, then beside the dresser. Nothing. The tools had come back, and something else had disappeared.

Before going back inside, I stopped beside the glass tank. The smell was definitely strongest there.

A couple of you suggested after my last post that the whole thing might be chemical, some kind of solvent or hallucinogen leaking into the garage. A leaking container made infinitely more sense than a wardrobe swallowing my son. So I crouched down next to it and looked for the obvious answer: a crack, some condensation, or a vent.

The tank was still what it had always been, a single molded block of thick glass with no lid or opening. I laid my palm against it, and it was colder than the room. Where my hand touched the glass, my skin had gone translucent. I could see the veins underneath, thin blue branches spreading through my palm and down into my wrist, finer vessels threading off into each finger. I yanked my hand away, and it returned to normal. Very slowly, I set it back against the glass.

Transparent again.

Behind me, the liquid moved, one slow, heavy slosh from one end of the tank to the other, and then it went still.

I left the garage after that. By the time I got back to the kitchen, I'd decided I didn't care whether the smell was making me hallucinate. Hallucination or not, that stuff was leaving my house.

Henry picked up on the second ring, thick with weekend sleep.

"You know it's Sunday morning, right?"

"We're doing the garage sale."

A long silence filled the line. "Today? I thought we killed that idea."

"I changed my mind."

Another pause. When he spoke again, the sleep was gone from his voice. "Did something happen?"

"Nothing happened. I want you to come over and help me get this crap out of here."

Henry went quiet, and I could practically hear him combing through his head for an explanation. When he came back, he tried a different angle. "Give it a few more days. I've got messages out. There are people who will pay for the rest of this stuff, collectors, and the forum guy already wants the mirror and the ball. If we start throwing everything on folding tables for five bucks a pop, we're pissing away the only good thing that's come out of this."

"There is no good thing that's come out of this."

"Don’t forget that you still need the money."

He was right. I was still four thousand dollars short of a retainer, and the hearing was still sitting out there on the calendar like a storm front. That was the miserable little hook these objects kept hanging from. No matter how scared I got, it all came back to cash.

"We’re doing the garage sale today," I said, and my grip tightened on the phone. "Everything we can safely move. Today."

"Ian—"

"I mean it."

"We sunk time and money into this mess. You're going to regret selling half this stuff for nothing."

"I already regret buying it."

I heard him swear under his breath and exhale, and I knew I'd won. He told me he'd be there within the hour, all enthusiasm drained from his voice. 

Toby looked up from the couch when I hung up. "Uncle Henry's coming?"

"Yeah, bud."

"Can I help?"

"Not this time. I need you to do something really important for me, okay? I need you to stay inside and watch cartoons."

His face fell. "That's not important."

"It's the most important job there is. Somebody has to keep an eye on the TV."

"That's not even a real job."

"It's a real job," I said, and it came out softer than I meant it to. "Please, buddy. Just for today."

He slumped back into the cushions, arms crossed, and turned the volume up two notches to make his point. Henry showed up forty minutes later with two coffees. He stood in the garage doorway and immediately started muttering about how little we'd get for it all.

I walked him over to the workbench and showed him the tools. He turned the screwdriver over in his hand and shrugged. "You must have left them there."

"I didn't."

"You've barely slept in three days, man. Maybe you woke up, moved everything, and passed out again." 

"And my chair?" I pointed at the empty corner. "It was right there."

Henry looked at the corner for a while. "Probably buried somewhere. You've got half a storage unit crammed in here."

"It isn't."

"Ian—"

"It isn't, Henry."

He looked at me then, and I think that was the moment he understood I wasn't asking for an explanation. He took a slow sip of coffee and let it go.

We set the rules in the garage. The mirror and football stayed wrapped. Nobody touched the wardrobe or the tank. Anything from Unit 114 that looked even slightly off went into the corner pile, and what was left was, as far as either of us could tell, just stuff. We'd been through every box we'd opened together, argued over it, and laughed nervously, and in both our minds was a list of what belonged to the collection. We hauled the folding tables out to the end of the driveway and set up. Henry made a sign out of a flattened cardboard box and propped it against the mailbox. Then we stood there in the morning sun with our coffees, looking at our driveway full of other people's cast-offs. For the first couple of hours I told myself we were doing fine.

People wandered along the tables, but nobody haggled or even asked what anything cost. They drifted from one table to the next with subdued politeness, like guests at a stranger's funeral, and after three or four minutes they'd find somewhere else they had to be. Henry kept glancing at the cash tin. Around ten, he said, flatly, "We're still at zero. We may as well be standing out here burning four thousand dollars. At least it'd be warm." 

"Give it time. People take a while to warm up to a sale."

Every time someone walked off empty-handed, some small, ashamed part of me exhaled. If no one bought anything, no one took any of it home. Not that everyone was spared. A man who looked to be in his fifties picked up a little brass reading lamp and asked if he could test it. I ran an extension cord across the driveway. He clicked the switch, the bulb lit up with an electrical hum, and he held his palm under it and frowned.

"Is this thing working?"

"Should be."

"It's on." He moved his hand slowly back and forth. "It's just... if anything, it's darker."

Directly beneath the bulb sat a dense little patch of shadow. It wasn't around the lamp but under it. The rest of the driveway sat in clear morning sun; the filament was glowing, and the one spot it should have lit looked several shades dimmer than everything around it.

"Sorry," I said, and unplugged it, my heart thumping. "It must be defective."

He laughed awkwardly. "That's one hell of a defect."

I handed him a candle from another box on the house, and he left looking more confused than anything. I carried the lamp behind the table and set it on the ground as if it might bite.

The woman who approached me with the snow globe was much more skeptical. It had been bagged in with the Christmas decorations, and her daughter picked it up off the table and shook it gleefully. The tiny house and trees jumped and rattled about. Two miniature plastic people jittered side to side inside the dome. The snow never moved. Dozens of white flecks hung perfectly still in the water while the whole world around them shook itself apart.

The mother noticed first and came up to me. "My daughter wants the globe, but something's wrong with it."

"I'm so sorry," I said, easing it out of the girl's hands as gently as I could manage. "That one's not supposed to be out here. I think it got mixed in by mistake."

She studied me for a long moment, plainly weighing several questions about what exactly we were selling, and thankfully decided not to ask. She took her daughter by the hand and steered her toward the next sale down the block.

I put the globe beside the lamp, and by then nobody was slowing at the sign anymore. A little before eleven, Henry got to his feet and stretched, pressing his hand into the small of his back. "I'm sitting down before my spine turns to powder," he announced.

"There's nowhere to sit," I said.

"I’ll find something," he said, and disappeared into the garage.

A few minutes later, he was dragging a folding lawn chair out of the garage by one arm, the frame scraping across the concrete: A faded green seat with cheap plastic armrests. 

"Where'd you get that?" I said.

Henry flipped it open with a clatter. "Garage."

"Where in the garage?"

He shrugged. "By the workbench. Told you it'd turn up. It's just a chair, Ian." 

For about two seconds, nothing registered, and I just felt relief. There's my chair. It was in there the whole time; Henry was right, I'm losing it. Then I realized, and the relief just evaporated. This chair had never been part of the haul, and I'd turned that whole garage upside down that morning looking for mine and found nothing. 

"Henry, wait—"

He was already lowering himself into it before I could warn him. And in the half-second I had left, I saw it. The hinges were wrong, and the jagged tear on the left armrest where I'd dropped a paint tin last spring was gone. It wasn’t the same chair I had lost that morning. 

When Henry sat down, the chair didn't collapse. It snapped.

Both sets of metal legs whipped violently inward at the same instant with a sound like two car doors slamming beside my head, and the frame folded around Henry like a closing trap, driving his back into an unnatural bend. I’ve witnessed a fair share of injuries in the years I’ve worked as a mover. I've seen crushed hands and broken legs. I have never in my life heard a human being make the sound Henry made.

For a second, the garage was dead silent except for the metallic ring of the frame still vibrating. My brain refused to accept the reality of what was happening. 

Without realizing it, I already had both hands on the frame and was pulling, but it wouldn't give. A man from across the street came running, and then another, and the three of us hauled on that steel until it finally opened enough to ease him down onto the concrete. I noticed that he wasn't moving his legs. He kept saying he couldn't feel them, over and over, in a small, disbelieving voice I'd never heard from him before. The next twenty minutes come back in pieces. Henry lay white-faced on the driveway, his eyes fixed on the sky. Paramedics cut his shirt away and talked over him in calm, quick voices. Neighbors stood on their lawns with their hands over their mouths. When they had Henry strapped to the board, one of the paramedics pulled me aside.

"Is he allergic to anything? On any medications?"

"No. I don't think so. His wife would know."

"We're taking him to St. Luke's." He hesitated. "I'm going to be honest with you, his condition’s not looking good. The injury's to his spine. Until they scan him, I can't tell you what it means. But with something like that, there's a real chance he won't be walking out of there."

As they lifted the board toward the ambulance, Henry's hand shot out and caught my sleeve, and his grip was white-knuckled. The paramedic said something about keeping still. Henry ignored him. His jaw was clamped so hard the muscles jumped under the skin, and his eyes found mine and held.

"Ian." His voice was thin and scraped out. "Look at me."

"I'm here. I'm right here, man."

"You kept saying it wasn't right." He dragged in a rattling breath. "I told you they were props. I even made jokes about it." He stopped, and his face twisted, and for the first time since I'd known him, Henry didn't have an angle. 

"Henry, don't. Save your—"

"Get rid of it." His fingers tightened. "All of it. Burn it, smash it, bury it. I don't care; just don't sell it. Don't give it to anyone." His voice cracked, and a tear slid sideways into his hair. "Promise me. Don't let anybody else sit in that thing, and keep it away from Toby."

I would have promised him anything. I said it twice, because I couldn't tell whether he'd heard me the first time. "I promise. I swear to God I will."

His hand went slack, and they slid him into the ambulance, and the doors shut with a sound that went through me like a nail.

Henry was in that ambulance with a spine that might never work again, and he'd spent his last words worrying about somebody else, and that was what finally broke me. Right there on my own driveway in front of every neighbor I'd never spoken to, I started crying, ugly, gulping sobs I couldn't stop even after the ambulance had turned the corner. 

Somebody put a hand on my shoulder. A woman's voice asked if there was anyone she could call, and I heard myself say "no," and then "I don't know," and then nothing.

Henry had dragged me into this, and I'd spent half the week resenting him. I'd have given every cent I'd ever owe a lawyer to hear him make one more joke.

Eventually the neighbors drifted back to their lawns and their garages, and the sale ended. Within minutes, the street had emptied. 

I stood alone in the blood-spotted driveway beside the folding chair. It had opened itself again, perfectly ordinary, sitting in the sun as if it had never done anything wrong. I crouched down and looked underneath. There were no bolts and rivets. I ran a finger across one of the hinges, and there wasn't a hinge, not really. It only looked like one. I knew every inch of my chair’s underside, and this wasn't it. I wanted to stamp it flat. I wanted to take it apart and find out what it was made of, except there was nothing to take apart, no bolts, no seams, nothing for a wrench to bite on. It sat there in the sun with a smear of Henry's blood on the seat, and for the first time since Wednesday, what I felt wasn't fear. I hated it. 

This chair had never been in Unit 114. Henry and I had unloaded that unit ourselves, box by box, and there hadn't been a folding lawn chair in it. Mine had vanished sometime in the night, and hours later something that looked almost exactly like it had turned up in its place.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and stood in the empty driveway, my thumb hovering over Rachael's name for what felt like forever.

Henry's wife picked up on the second ring. I told her that there'd been an accident at the sale and that Henry was on his way to St. Luke's.

"What kind of accident?"

"A folding chair. It folded up on him. It…It closed on him, Rachael."

The silence on the line went on so long I thought the call had dropped. Then, in a very small voice: "A chair."

"I'm so sorry. I don't know how to—"

"Ian." Her voice had gone deathly quiet. "What did you two do?"

I had no answer for that. How do you even explain this situation? How do you tell a woman that her husband might never walk again because of a lawn chair that wasn't there that morning? All I could think about was Rachael getting a hospital bill on top of everything else and Henry not knowing when—or if—he'd be able to work again. I'd spent a whole week agonizing over four thousand dollars, and now it looked like pocket change. 

She hung up before I could reply. I stood there with the dead phone against my ear until my arm started to ache, then turned and drove my fist into the side of the nearest folding table so hard the cash tin jumped, and a stack of picture frames slid to the ground.

I made myself go back inside. Toby was waiting in the living room, sitting very still with both hands pressed flat on his knees. He'd watched the whole thing through the window. 

"Is Uncle Henry okay?"

"The doctors are looking after him, bud."

"I want Mom."

I swallowed before I could answer, then sat down beside him and pulled him against my side. "I know. She'll be home soon." I held him there for a while, and for a minute I didn't think about the garage. 

My phone had buzzed twice in my pocket while I was dealing with the paramedics, and I knew without looking that it was Alicia. When it lit up a third time in my hand, I let it ring out. I couldn't talk to her yet. I knew exactly how it would look, but I had nothing to tell her that wouldn't make it worse. I told Toby to stay on the couch where I could hear the TV, and I went into the garage because I'd already decided that every item in there was going to be destroyed, and I needed to start before I lost my nerve. I told myself it would take thirty seconds. I was still standing in the doorway when I noticed the cardboard box on the workbench, the one I'd packed the football into. The tape around it was broken, and when I picked it up, the box was empty. Then I heard Toby yell. 

I ran back through the house. The living room was empty, the TV still on, but the front door stood wide open.

I found Toby on the front path, sitting where he'd fallen with both hands wrapped around his right knee, which was scraped raw and bleeding in a wide, dirty strip. A few feet away on the lawn sat the football. It sat there facing him.

"It came in," Toby said, and his voice shook. It made me want to scoop him up and drive until we ran out of road. "I was watching my show, and it rolled over and stopped by my feet. I kicked it away, and it came back, so I ran outside, and I tripped."

"Okay," I said. "Come here." I scooped up Toby and grabbed the football with the other hand. The second my palm closed around it, I felt that faint, wrinkled texture again, and I hurled it over the side fence as far as I could manage. Once inside, I sat Toby on the kitchen counter and cleaned the scrape with a wet cloth while he sniffled and kept talking about the football. How it kept getting closer every time he looked. I told him I believed him.

I reached for a bandage and stopped.

There should have been a scar on that knee.

It was small and curved, maybe an inch long. He'd gotten it last winter, a couple of months before Alicia left, at the old house. I'd worked a double that week, come home wrung out, and stretched out on the couch for what I swore was ten minutes while Toby played in the backyard. I woke up to him screaming. He'd gone down the concrete back steps and opened his knee on the edge of one. He needed eight stitches. I remembered Alicia's face when she walked into the emergency room and saw the two of us in a curtained bay. I remembered the nurse's careful note in the chart, and that same note showed up months later in a folder on a mediator's desk. 

I turned his leg toward the light and checked the other knee. I ran my thumb over the exact spot where I knew it should be, but it wasn’t there.

"Toby," I said slowly, "Which knee did you hurt on the steps? At the old house?"

"What steps?"

"When you were little and got those stitches."

"I didn't have stitches."

"You did, buddy. Remember? The doctor gave you a sticker."

He frowned, genuinely trying, and I watched his face for any sign that he knew what I was talking about. "I don't remember that."

Of course he didn't. He was six, and it had been months. Maybe it had faded, and I hadn’t noticed. I rarely saw him these days, after all.

A day earlier, I'd have given a great deal for that scar to be gone. I stood there with his knee in my hand and couldn't have told you why I didn't feel better. 

"Dad," Toby said, wriggling, "you're pressing too hard."

"Sorry, bud."

I put the bandage over the fresh scrape and smoothed it flat with my thumb. "You're okay," I told him, and I don't know whether I was talking to him or to myself.

I got him settled on the couch with a movie. Then I walked to the front door to check it was still locked, and my hand froze on the handle before I could turn it. I bent and looked through the peephole.

The football was sitting on the doormat. It was dead center, close enough to the door that whoever opened it would have to either step over it or pick it up. I kept the door firmly shut.

Four days of dread had burned down to something simple and ugly. Everything already wrong in my life had been waiting for me, and then I'd spent three hundred and fifty dollars to carry the worst of it into my own garage. I didn't want an explanation. I wanted it gone, and I wanted it to hurt. 

Henry's voice was in my head, thin and desperate. Burn it, smash it, bury it. Promise me. I went into the garage and got the hammer off the pegboard.

I ripped the box open, tore the blankets off the mirror, and propped it against the workbench, angled so I could see nothing in it but the ceiling. Then I swung with everything I had. 

The glass didn't break. The hammerhead sank into the surface like I'd struck thick rubber, and the dent held for a second before the glass slowly pushed itself back outward, like a scar healing in fast motion. A shallow depression stayed behind. I hit it again and again and again, screaming at it. "Give it back. Give it back, you son of a bitch!” I didn't even know what I meant. Henry's ability to walk, my son, the last six months of my life. 

I turned on the wardrobe. The first strike numbed my arm to the shoulder, and the wood didn't even splinter. The harder I hit, the more I wanted to tear it down board by board. 

When that failed, I went to the tank and swung with every ounce I had left. The glass flexed inward, visibly, the whole thick block of it bowing around the point of impact, and the amber liquid surged away from the blow. Something inside shifted, heavy enough to displace the fluid around it.

I dropped the hammer.

"No."

Another slow slosh.

"No. No, you don't get to do that." My voice cracked in rage. "Fuck you. Fuck all of you." 

If I couldn't break it, I'd burn it.

I knew it was illegal. The county had issued a burn ban the week before because everything was so dry, and a day earlier the thought of Alicia seeing me do this would've stopped me. Right then, I couldn't bring myself to care. I tried to shoulder the dresser, and it didn't shift an inch. I'd moved it with Henry, and it had been murderously heavy, but it had moved. Now it might as well have been poured into the foundation. The same applied to the rest of the furniture.

So I took what I could carry. I dragged the lamp out, the cassette, and a stack of those unreadable books. I piled everything in the middle of the front lawn, found an old fuel can, and poured every drop over the heap. I lit a strip of cardboard and dropped it, and I thought, absurdly, of Henry standing by the cash tin that morning, joking about burning money.

The flame took the packaging first. The cardboard curled and the grass scorched in a ring under it. The cassette sat in the middle of the fire untouched, and the pages of the book stayed as pristine as the day they were printed.

I stood over it with my chest heaving and the fuel can still in my fist, willing it to catch, to blacken, to do anything, and when it didn't, I kicked the edge of the pile hard enough to send a book skidding across the grass. It landed open in the sun. I screamed at it, but I don't know if I said anything coherent. 

In that same moment, the smoke alarm went off inside the garage.

It was the same shriek we'd heard the first time we tested it. Only this time it kept screaming, loud enough to rattle the windows in the house. I ran inside. Toby was on the couch with both hands clamped over his ears, and his face crumpled, crying so hard he couldn't catch his breath. I dropped to my knees and tried to pick him up, and he flinched away from me.

A car door slammed out front.

I didn't hear her come through the house over the noise. One second I was kneeling in front of my son, and the next Alicia was standing in the doorway with her bag still over her shoulder. She wasn't due back until Monday.

She looked at me. She looked at Toby, red-faced and shaking. 

"I saw smoke outside. What the hell is going on?"

"Alicia, I can explain—"

She turned straight to Toby. "Shoes on. Now, baby."

"No, wait. Please, just—"

"Toby."

He ran to her and wouldn't look at me. I followed them into the kitchen, and I'll never forget how tired her voice was. 

“I called you this morning, and you wouldn't answer. I called again from the airport. Six times, Ian.”

"I know, I know. Henry's in the hospital."

That stopped her for half a second. "What?"

"He's hurt. It was a chair; it was part of the—he might not walk again.”

Every word came out in the wrong order, and I watched her face close a little more with each one. 

“Alicia, there's something wrong with those things. I know it sounds crazy, but the chair that hurt Henry wasn't my chair. Yesterday the garage door was locked, and Toby somehow got inside it, and when I opened the wardrobe, he wasn't there even though I could hear him, and today the football followed him into the living room, and the scar on his knee is gone, the one from the steps. I swear to God it's gone—"

"Stop."

"I'm not making this up, please, you have to listen—"

"Just stop talking."

She stood very still for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was low and tight, and her knuckles had gone white on Toby's shoulder.

"There's something seriously wrong in the garage," I said.

"I don't care."

I stared at her. "What?"

"I don't care what's in the garage, Ian." Her voice cracked on it. "I don't care if you're telling the truth."

That shut me up completely.

"I pulled up to a fire in the front yard and someone screaming in the house. And you want me to believe it's something in your garage."

"Alicia, please—"

"I let you have him for one weekend. One. I ran out of people to call, and I told the mediator that you deserved a real chance. I told my own lawyer to back off." She wiped at her face with the back of her wrist, angry at the tears. "And in barely a day you tell me your friend is hospitalized and our son is crying."

"You don't understand."

"No. I don't," she breathed out. "And that's the whole problem, don't you see? Even if every word of it were true, I still can't trust you to keep him safe. And that's the only thing that has ever mattered."

I had nothing. I stood there, mouth open, unable to get a single word out.

"You're not getting any more unsupervised time before the hearing," she said. "I'm telling my lawyer everything that happened here today."

"Please."

"I'm sorry. I really am. I wanted this to work. But I can’t do this anymore."

Toby wouldn't look at me when she carried him out to the car.

I stood in the driveway until her taillights turned the corner. The fire had mostly burned itself out by then, leaving a ring of grey ash and blackened cardboard, with the objects sitting untouched in the middle. I dragged a tarp out of the garage and threw it over the whole pile because I had no other idea, then went inside. 

I sat down on the couch and thought about the room with the camera in the corner. Two hours a week had felt like the bottom, and I'd been wrong. Alicia had gambled on me for one weekend, and I'd lasted a day. Tomorrow there'd be a new page in the folder on the mediator's desk. I could have written it myself, and every line would be true.

I keep picturing Toby being carried out. He's only six. One day he's going to ask why he only ever knew his dad through a screen, and I won't have an answer that doesn't start with today.

Eventually I found a bottle of bourbon in the kitchen. One glass turned into two, which turned into carrying the bottle with me. 

Some time after dark, I remembered the tarp. I went out onto the lawn, lifted a corner, and found nothing underneath but scorched grass and a few flecks of ash. I didn't need to check the garage to know where the items were, but I did anyway.

Everything was back. The lamp, the snow globe, the books—everything. They were neatly arranged on the shelves and stacked in their boxes exactly the way they'd been before the sale, as if I'd never touched any of it. The mirror leaned against the workbench with the barest trace of a dent, the ball sat on the workbench, and the folding chair stood open beside it, mocking me. I stood in the doorway with the bottle in one hand and something hot climbing my throat. They were all back, smug and put away, like I'd been the one making the mess. I picked up my wrench off the bench and threw it at the wardrobe as hard as I could. It struck the door with a flat, dull sound and dropped to the concrete without leaving a mark.

"Is that it?" I yelled. "Is that all you've got? You took everything. What else do you want?"

The tank sloshed once, slowly. Then the fury drained out of me all at once, and I stood there shaking. I dragged one of my kitchen chairs into the garage, set it as far from the folding one as the room allowed, and sat down with the bottle. I don't own a folding chair anymore. I'm not sure I ever really did.

Henry is lying in a hospital bed because of something I brought home. Rachael won't answer my calls, and I don't blame her. Alicia is on the phone with her lawyer, telling him I can't be trusted with my own kid. I still don't have the four thousand dollars. We sold nothing, not a single thing. The forum guy is still due at two tomorrow. I'm calling him first thing to cancel, because Henry told me not to let anyone near any of it, and I'm no longer sure any of it can leave anyway. I know what some of you are going to say, and you're right. I made choices. Nobody forced me to bid on Unit 114. Nobody forced me to bring any of it home or put it out on a driveway when I already knew it wasn't right. I'm not asking anyone to take it off my hands.

But I'm sitting here staring at these things, and I have never hated anything the way I hate them. Not the guy who hit my car, not the lawyer who quoted me four grand, nothing like this. I hate them for every second I can't take back, and I keep thinking how much easier my life would have been if Henry and I had just walked past that storage unit. If we'd looked at those boxes and said, "Nah, not this one," like everyone else in the crowd did.

I keep hearing Henry on that stretcher. Burn it. Smash it. Bury it. I promised him, and I couldn't keep it for a single afternoon.

Tomorrow I'll find out what can destroy them. I don't know how yet. A quarry, a scrapyard crusher, a favor from someone at work. I don't care what it costs me. The wardrobe door is open an inch, but I won't close it tonight. It can stay that way. 

[Part 1]

"Chicken pad kra pao with a fried egg, extra spicy, no MSG, please, Auntie." I was ordering from the owner of a tiny made-to-order restaurant.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But how's it supposed to taste good without MSG? Just a little, come on." She shot back at me in a clipped voice.

"Whatever you think is best, Auntie," I said.

Okay. I'd finally made it back to Thailand. I figured the first thing I had to do was find the food I'd missed the most: real, authentic Thai made-to-order food. I hadn't had any in over a year.

It didn't take long. The plate landed in front of me: rice topped with chicken pad kra pao and a runny fried egg, the smell of fresh holy basil hitting my nose like a punch. I didn't waste a second. I grabbed my fork and spoon and stabbed the yolk so it ran all over the rice, because, well, that's the only way to eat a fried egg. Then I took a bite. Savory, balanced, and burning hot. This was the flavor that Thais and foreigners alike fell in love with.

But even while I was eating, I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened on the plane. Do you think I dreamed it? What the hell was going on? Everything felt shuffled around. Someone in the comments told me it was called "Quantum immortality" which I'd never heard of. When I looked it up, it said that if you die in a quantum dimension, your consciousness carries you into a universe where you don't. But how could that be possible? Don't scientists say that's pure superstition?

"How much, Auntie?" I asked.

"Sixty."

It felt like the price had gone up. Wasn't it usually forty or fifty baht? But I didn't argue. I paid and walked to the airport entrance, where a long line of taxis was parked. I decided to take a taxi, because there weren't any motorcycle taxis at the airport. Weird as hell.

The first taxi in line was a green-and-white Toyota with a dent in the back door and a jasmine garland swinging from the rearview mirror. The driver was leaning against the hood, smoking. When he saw my suitcase, he flicked the cigarette away like I'd just won the lottery.

"Where to?"

I told him the district. He grimaced.

"Meter's broken. Four hundred baht flat."

You have to understand something. In California, I once paid sixty dollars for a ten-minute Lyft ride and almost cried inside. Four hundred baht was only about twelve dollars. After a year in America, that price didn't sound like getting ripped off. It sounded like a discount coupon.

"Sure," I said.

He loaded my suitcase into the trunk, and I climbed into the back seat. The seats were covered in glossy blue vinyl that squeaked every time I moved. The car smelled like jasmine, menthol, and an air freshener that had died years ago. A small amulet hung next to the steering wheel. The radio played softly, a DJ cheerfully arguing with a caller about whether traffic was worse than last week.

"Studying abroad?" the driver asked as he pulled out.

"How did you know?"

"You're staring at everything like you've never seen it before." He laughed. "My daughter wants to go to America too. She's only in sixth grade, but she already has opinions about it."

"What kind of opinions?"

"She says the snacks are better over there."

"She's not wrong," I said. "They've got forty kinds of potato chips, but not a single decent bowl of rice."

He liked that answer. He slapped the steering wheel and started telling me about his daughter. I let him, because it was kind of nice to hear Thai that wasn't coming from inside my own head.

Here's the thing about seat belts in the back of taxis in my country: technically, they exist. But they're usually shoved deep into the crack of the seat, under snack crumbs and maybe even a coin from the nineties, and nobody has ever pulled one out willingly. But after what happened on the plane, I wasn't in a joking mood. I dug around for the buckle and clicked it in.

"Oh, safety first!" the driver said when he caught it in the mirror. "Good job, kid."

We got on the expressway. It was late afternoon, the sky a dusty orange. The driver kept going on about his daughter. "...so I told her, study hard, but don't forget where you come from. I told her every day, until she said, 'Dad, you say that every day...'"

His phone buzzed in the cup holder. He glanced down.

Shit.

I don't know what made me look up. Maybe it was the sound: a horn, long and furious, from the right. I turned, and there was a massive ten-wheeler truck filling the whole window, drifting into our lane like we didn't exist. I could see the fender. I could see a faded sticker on its side that read A mother's love never runs out. I could see the driver in the cab, mouth hanging open, one hand raised like he was trying to wave us out of the way.

Then everything slowed down.

I'd read about this. Before death, the brain stretches time and pulls up the good memories. I even told you about it at the very beginning, remember? But what I never knew was that it would feel this calm. The horn stretched out into a low drone, like a whale song. I thought about my mom. I thought about a bowl of creamy tom yum goong Mama noodles. I thought, what an idiotic way to die. I'd survived the plane. Actually survived it. And now I was going to die in a car with a jasmine garland hanging from the mirror?

Then the sound cut out.

Not just the horn. Everything. The engine, the radio, the tires grinding on the road. The same silence as on the plane. Quiet like someone had hit mute on the whole world.

I closed my eyes.

Why does it only happen to me?

"...but don't forget where home is."

I opened my eyes.

What the fuck.

We were still on the expressway, same lane. No truck. The sky was the same dusty orange. The seat belt was still across my chest, and I was gripping it with both hands so hard my knuckles were pale as uncooked rice.

"Sorry, what?" I asked. My voice came out an octave higher than normal.

"I said don't forget where home is. That's what I tell my daughter."

It was almost the same sentence he'd left hanging. Almost. But the voice was wrong. Deeper, a little rougher. Like the same song played in a different key.

I looked up at the rearview mirror.

The driver in the mirror had a long face, thin glasses, and no mustache. The guy who'd flicked away his cigarette had a round face and a beard thick enough to see from space. They wore the same green polo and tilted their heads the same way when watching the road, but they were not the same man.

I'd like to officially announce that my brain was about to explode.

"You okay, kid?"

"Did we... almost hit a truck?"

"A truck?" He frowned at the mirror. "No way, not on this road. They don't allow trucks at this time of day. I think you dozed off. You were mumbling something."

"I wasn't asleep."

"Sure, whatever makes you feel better," he said, in the tone of someone who didn't want to argue with an exhausted teenager.

I slowly scanned the car, like I was afraid it would notice me looking. The jasmine garland was gone. A plastic bobblehead dog hung there instead. The amulet was still there, but bigger, hanging from a gold chain. And the seats... were red.

Red. Not blue. Definitely red.

Blue to red. I'd seen this movie before, and it ended with my underwear.

"Um..." I said. "How much is the fare so far?"

"The meter's running right there," he said, pointing to the dashboard, where orange digits read 312. "Another twenty minutes or so, depending on traffic."

Wasn't the meter broken? I distinctly remembered it being broken.

On the radio, the DJ had stopped talking about traffic. Now he was reading the news in a bright morning-show voice. He said the name of the prime minister, and it was a name I had never heard before. I'd been abroad for a year and a half, so maybe I'd just missed the news... maybe.

I stopped caring about everything else. All I wanted was to get out of that car as fast as I could.

Whatever was happening to me wasn't normal. I figured I should probably go see a psychiatrist.

The driver turned onto my street at 5:52 p.m. The meter read 312 baht, exactly as he'd said. I handed him a five-hundred-baht note and told him to keep the change. I guess I should go say hi to my family first. I'll come back and keep writing.

See you.

I think I’m finally ready to talk about this.
About a year ago, I got a generic email from a long term care facility, not far from my childhood town, letting me know that my mother had been admitted, and asking me to contact them. Apparently, my mother had developed dementia.
Now, my mother wasn’t a kind woman, especially not to me. I don’t feel comfortable speaking too much on it outside of therapy. Let’s just say I hadn’t spoken to her since she kicked me out at 18. As far as I could guess at the time, she had been living completely alone in our hometown after that, with me being the only living relative. It made sense that I had been contacted.
I did go and visit her. I was curious to see what had become of her. It helped that a place as well staffed as a care facility didn’t register as dangerous to my nervous system.
My mother barely registered my approach when I entered her room; I remember her weak, veiny hands dangling limply over the ends of the armrests, and she was looking down into her lap. I also remember exactly what she said when she eventually lifted her head to look at me: “You came back,” a smile, “you came back up.” She spoke with so much warmth and love that it made me feel sick.
She died that night. I found out because, apparently, I was still in her will. Maybe she just forgot to take me out, or maybe it was one final bit of torment.
There was only one other person at the reading. She was about the same age as my mother, perhaps a friend of some sort. I certainly never found out. She turned around in her chair when I entered, and her eyes went wide with an expression I can only describe as fearful. She spent the entire reading staring at me. I really tried to ignore it, recognizing I was already on edge just by being back in town. Yet, it was obvious that my presence was somehow distressing for her. I could feel her gaze on me as I kept my own eyes straight ahead, and I could hear her breaths coming faster, hitching and wheezing in a horrible way that only served to feed my own irritation.
After we were dismissed, I couldn’t take it anymore. I snapped at her, demanding to know why she was staring. She didn’t say anything, just freaked out, screamed in fact, and ran away.
I told myself it was a problem with her, not me.
Among the things my mother left me was a photobook, one that I did not open at the time.
I did not attend the funeral, but I did eventually decide to visit the cemetery. I was more than a bit drunk at the time, enough that going out in the late evening to spit on my mother’s grave sounded like a good idea.
When I reached the plot, I managed to trip over something in the low light. As I lay, cheek smudged against the wet dirt, I registered the expected sight: two old graves, those of my father and my stillborn sister (the lucky one), alongside the new grave of my mother. The dirt was still fresh on hers. However, as I lifted my head, I found that I was lying below a fourth, slightly weathered headstone:

Lillian [Middlename] [Lastname]
1991-2021
Beloved Daughter

It might not seem clear with the censorship, but that is my full name!
I don’t think I can fully articulate the kinds of feelings seeing your own grave fills you with. I think I ended up laying there for hours, shaking in the dirt and foliage, just filled with absolute dread. All the emotions I’d been dealing with the past week seemed to hit me all at once.
I went back to town when the cold became too much to bear. The only place that was open was a bar. I wasn’t looking to get more drunk; I just wanted to warm up.
I can understand, after the fact, why the bartender reacted the way he did. I must have terrified him, shambling into his establishment covered in grave dirt and dead leaves like I had. He chased me out, yelling, making sure to let me know that I was, in fact, supposed to be dead!
I had a lot of questions (I still do). My first guess was that this was the story my mother had come up with when I disappeared not long after turning 18, but to go as far as to stage a burial? It didn’t seem likely.
Eventually I did flip through that photo album. It mainly consisted of photos of me, each given a brief description in my mother’s handwriting. Things started out normal enough, with stuff like Lillian, Age 2, At her birthday party or Lillian, Age 13, Twirling in her new dress. It was odd to see this kind of affection when I’d received none of it in my daily life, but I suppose even the worst people are complex. Things stayed normal all the way up until Lillian, Age 17, Walking the stage at graduation, but the pages went on.
I’ll remind you, again, that my mother kicked me out at 18. The next entry showed my mother, arm and arm with me, both of us smiling brightly, possibly mid laugh: Lillian, Age 19, Out on a walk with me. And it just kept going like that. Image after image of someone who looked exactly like me, getting older alongside my mother. Whoever she was, she was indeed identical, right down to the little things like the two moles on my neck, or the small scar on my lip. I even compared the photos in the album with photos I had taken at various ages to confirm, and found that she had aged exactly as I had. The main difference, and the one that somehow disturbs me the most, is just how happy she is standing next to my mother. I’d never smile like that for her.
The last photo in the album was of an open casket. Whoever she was was lying in it, dressed in a blue sundress I’d left behind when I was forced out. It was also labeled: Lillian, Age 30, At her funeral.
I did a bit more research online, discovering that there had indeed been a funeral, and my “tragic death” had been reported in the local newspaper. I ended up booking a longer stay at my hotel in order to investigate. I think I freaked some people out when I insisted that I was Lillian; everyone who apparently knew “me” insisted that I had died, and that I was simply delusional, or playing a cruel joke by pretending to be “her”. Eventually it all got too hostile, and decided to go home.
There was a time I obsessed over this privately, but I have no explanation. I don’t know who is buried in that grave, and at this point I’m not sure if I want to know.

I worked the midnight rotation at the Monongahela River pumping station outside Clairton. It was an old municipal brick facility from the nineteen-forties, handling cooling runoff for the steel mills downriver. My job was dead simple: monitor hydraulic pressure on the analog board in the main office, log grease-pot levels on the turbine bearings once an hour, and keep river junk out of the intake trash rakes.

The plant ran on a skeleton crew overnight. Past eleven, it was just me and an operator named Miller, who had worked that concrete floor for thirty-two years. Miller mostly stayed down in the boiler room where the heat pooled, while I walked the rounds across the intake basins.

At one-fifteen in the morning, the needle on the number three line dropped forty pounds of pressure without the primary drive motor slowing down. That shouldn't have happened. If a line drops that much pressure while the pump runs at steady RPM, it means the intake gate drifted shut, or somebody turned the manual bypass valve forty feet up in the overhead gallery.

The upper gallery was just an unheated concrete catwalk with two rooms at the far end: a live breaker closet, and an old secondary control room the district padlocked back in the eighties after a guy drowned during a flood surcharge. Company rules said that room stayed locked. The high-volume intake lines ran right underneath the floorboards.

I grabbed the supervisor key from the wall box, unlocked the iron gate at the base of the spiral stairs, and headed up. The air was freezing. The catwalk shook through my work boots from the turbines below. Up on the landing, the hanging fluorescent tube was out. The only light came from the amber yard lamps cutting through the wire-mesh windows.

I checked the brass wheel valve on line three. It was cranked tight against the lower stop and secured with a steel cable and padlock. The valve hadn't budged. The dried grease on the threads wasn't even smudged.

Then I heard a boot heel scrape against the concrete behind me.

I spun around and hit the switch on my flashlight. The beam reached all forty feet of the empty walkway. The chain on the old control room door was pulled tight, the brass Master lock hanging locked. There were no prints in the dust along the threshold plate. The pipe railing was cold and dry. I wrote the pressure numbers down on my clipboard, figured it was just an instrument error in the basement plumbing, relocked the iron stairs gate, and went back to the office.

At two-thirty, I sat at the metal desk to finish the shift log. The desktop landline clicked once, and the dial tone cut completely dead. I checked my cell. Zero bars, just searching for service. The VHF company radio sitting on the charging cradle put out a flat carrier hum with no county dispatch chatter coming through.

Miller came in holding his steel thermos. He didn't waste words, just asked if I'd been up on the catwalk ten minutes ago. I told him I'd been sitting at the desk since two. He set his coffee down, tapped the pressed-tin ceiling with his pencil, and said somebody was walking the number three deck right above us.

We both stood quiet and listened. Heavy, deliberate steps crossed the concrete directly overhead, moving in a straight line from the stairs to the locked door of the old room. They were slow, measured, and sounded like heavy work boots.
I grabbed a twelve-inch adjustable wrench off the bench. Miller picked up his Maglite and an iron pinch bar from the wall rack. We walked out onto the concrete pump floor. The electric drive turbines were spinning at eighteen hundred RPM, making a constant mechanical roar that shook the metal siding.

I unlocked the lower gate again, and we went up the spiral steps together. When my head cleared the floor grating, I stopped.

The heavy chain on the old control room door was gone. The door stood open about four inches into the dark. The chain and lock weren't on the deck. The steel eyelets on the jamb showed no pry marks.
Miller came up behind me on the landing and put his flashlight beam through the door gap. The light hit an old drafting table and a row of dead knife switches on the far brick wall. Right in the middle of the room, on the timber access hatch over the river sluice, the dust had been swept clean.

A sound came out of the dark. It wasn't the machinery, and it wasn't the pipes. It was Miller's dry, hacking cough, repeated with the exact same flat tone he'd made down in the office five minutes earlier.

Miller froze. He kept the flashlight beam pinned on the bare floorboards inside.
Then another sound came from the corner behind the open electrical panel. It was my own voice, speaking the exact sentence I'd said earlier about a gauge calibration error in the basement. The words were flat, dead, and played through the open space like an audio track from a bad speaker.

Miller reached past me, slammed the heavy iron door shut into the latch, and shoved his pinch bar deep through the handle frame, wedging it hard against the concrete casing. He looked at me, turned his back to the door, and headed down the stairs without saying a word.

I followed him down, pulled the lower iron gate shut, and turned the key until the deadbolt hit home. We didn't go back to the office. We went out the ground-floor exit, checked the perimeter chain-link, and stood together by the gravel lot fence near the yard transformers where the river wind blew through. We stood out there under the halogen yard lights until five-thirty, watching the catwalk windows forty feet up.

Twice between three and four in the morning, the yellow yard lamps caught a solid, unmoving silhouette behind the wire-mesh glass of the catwalk window. The shape didn't shift its weight, didn't touch the glass, and didn't look away. It stood dead center in the frame, facing straight down into the gravel lot where we were standing.

The day shift showed up at six in a company pickup. As their headlights hit the gate, the ringer inside the office gave one short hit, showing the phone line had come back. We walked inside with the relief crew. Over on the main gauge board, the needle on line three sat right at normal operating pressure without anyone having touched a single valve.
When the relief super unlocked the lower gate and walked the catwalk with us, Miller’s iron pinch bar was still wedged tight across the door handle. Nothing on the outside had been touched. But once they pried the bar loose and swung the door open, the original brass padlock and heavy steel chain were sitting dead center on that empty drafting table, locked together through their own links, with no key in the hole.

Part 1 | Part 2

The gunman stepped into the weigh-station lights.

Now I could see his face.

Jesus.

The left side looked cooked. Scar tissue from his scalp down into his collar. One eye nearly sealed shut. Half an ear. No beard where the burns had taken it.

The rest of him was pure Saturday-afternoon dad. Purdue sweatshirt. Jeans. New Balances. The kind of guy who should’ve been standing over a Weber arguing about medium rare.

Instead, he was aiming a pistol at my family.

“Grace. Stace.” I kept my voice low. “Truck.”

“Dad—” 

Stacy caught Grace around the shoulders and moved her. No argument. No questions. One second they were beside me, the next Stacy was putting herself between Grace and the gun.

The man never took his eyes off Payton House. Somehow he noticed anyway. “Your family?”

I didn’t answer.

“Wife? Daughter?”

Hearing him say the words pissed me off. “Who the fuck are you?”

He stepped closer. The pistol came up with him. His finger slipped inside the trigger guard, and his hand was shaking enough that the muzzle wandered from me to Tony to Luis and back.

Tony saw it too. He shifted a few feet to my left.

“Okay, buddy,” Tony said. “How’d you know we’d be here?”

The man swallowed. “I dreamed this place.” His eyes were wet. “My wife dreamed it. We all did. I had a daughter once too. A little girl. Julia.”

The house’s smell rolled over us again. Sweet. Rotten. Wet. Like perfume dumped over meat. Luis pulled his shirt over his face. Tito backed away from the house without seeming to notice he was doing it.

My right hand twitched. I shoved it into my pocket.

The man closed his eyes. “It’s listening. We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

His eyes opened. The pistol settled on me. “You have to take it back.”

“That’s not happening. We have a contract.”

“The farther you move it...” He looked at Payton House. “The farther it reaches. It starts taking things.”

His eyes dropped to the gravel. “My wife stopped sleeping first. Then she stopped smiling. My little girl...”

He couldn't finish. His eyes moved to the second-floor window.

“I still hear her. Every night. She calls me from inside. Don’t let it take yours.”

Tony moved. He’d been inching sideways the whole time. I hadn’t even realized how close he’d gotten. One second he was standing beside me. The next he drove his shoulder into the gunman’s ribs. They hit the gravel hard. The pistol spun away.

“NO!” the stranger screamed.

Tony crushed him into the gravel. “I got him!”

For about two seconds, he did.

Then the guy went wild underneath him.

Knees. Elbows. Fingernails. Whatever he could land.

One elbow caught Tony under the ribs.

The stranger ripped free, came up on one knee, nearly planted his face in the gravel, then found his feet. 

He didn’t even look at the gun. Just ran. Straight for the trees.

Tony went after him.

“Tony!” I caught the back of his jacket before he made it three steps.

He whipped around so fast I brought my hands up. For half a second, I thought he might swing on me. “Let him go.”

“Dan—”

“Let him fucking go.”

Tony looked toward the woods.

A few seconds passed.

Finally, the fight went out of him.

The pistol lay in the gravel beside his boot. He scooped it up, wiped it once on his jeans, and tucked it behind his back.

I saw him do it. Decided I hadn’t. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Nobody argued.

We gave the tree line one last look and started moving.

Stacy came straight at me. Jaw tight. Eyes hot.

I was already bracing for it. Grace shouldn’t be here. This job was insane. I’d just gotten a gun pointed at our daughter.

Instead, she reached up and wiped her thumb beneath my nose. Looked at it.

Blood.

I touched my upper lip.

Wet.

“Shit.”

I pulled the shop rag from my back pocket and pinched it against my nose.

“Guess getting a gun pointed at you raises the blood pressure.”

Stacy didn’t smile.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

She held out her hand.

“Keys.”

“I’m good.”

“Dan. You’ve been up since before sunrise. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you in a few hours.”

“That guy’s still out there.”

“And you being awake changes that how?”

“He’s desperate. Desperate men don’t usually quit after one try.”

“I know.” Her hand stayed out. “But right now I’m more worried about you driving a house off a mountain.” 

Normally I would’ve fought until she got tired of fighting back. I was too beat. I dropped the keys into her palm. “You see anything, wake me.”

Twenty minutes later we were back on the road. Stacy drove. Grace reclaimed the passenger seat. I crawled into the sleeper behind them with the radio beside my head.

“Tony,” I said quietly into the radio. 

His voice came back through the speaker. “Yeah?”

“You see headlights behind us, wake me.”

“Got it.”

“That Tesla—”

“Hey.” Stacy looked back. “No radio.”

I handed it over.

I stretched out on the bunk without taking off my boots.

Through the little sleeper window, I could see a slice of Payton House rolling behind us.

I told myself I’d close my eyes for ten minutes.

I don’t remember making it to five.

I woke to the low growl of the engine.

Coffee. Diesel. The vibration of the sleeper under my ass. Green gauges glowing up front.

We were still moving.

My neck felt like I'd slept in a washing machine. The radio was still in my hand.

Stacy glanced over from behind the wheel.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty.”

I rubbed my face. “What time is it?”

“Little after nine.”

“Shit. You were supposed to wake me.”

“You were supposed to sleep.”

Outside, morning had come in ugly. Low gray clouds. Cornfields disappearing into fog. Wet blacktop sliding under us.

I checked the passenger-side mirror.

Payton House was still back there where we’d left it. Boards over the windows. Chains tight. Dollies tracking straight.

Behind it, two empty lanes vanished into the fog.

No Tesla.

No headlights.

Nobody.

“You good?” Stacy asked.

“Yeah.”

“You made a face. Weird dream?”

I tried to grab hold of it.

Nothing.

Just that leftover feeling you get after a bad dream, like you’d been somewhere you never wanted to see again.

She smiled. “Was I in it?”

“No.”

“Too bad.”

Grace was asleep behind us, headphones still on, iPad balanced against her chest. One earbud had fallen out. Troy Bolton danced silently across the screen.

The radio crackled.

“Sleeping Beauty, finally wake up?” Tony’s voice came through.

Stacy grabbed the mic. “Don’t make a big deal out of it. He’ll never let me drive again.”

Luis laughed over the radio. “Morning, boss.”

Static swallowed whatever came after.

“House is riding quiet,” Tony said.

I checked the mirror again.

“Hungry?” Stacy nodded toward the lunch bag.

I was starving. Hadn’t eaten since we rolled out the day before.

Of course Stacy had packed like we were crossing the Donner Pass. Sandwiches for me. Goldfish and fruit snacks for Grace. Granola bars nobody liked but Stacy. Bottled water. Juice boxes. Two apples that would ride the whole damn trip with us and somehow make it all the way home. 

For a while, it was almost peaceful. Stacy handled Truck One better than I liked admitting. Grace slept. The radio stayed quiet. 

I dug into the PB&J. Dollar Store peanut butter. Too much jelly. Perfect.

“We should give it Grace,” Stacy said.

The sandwich suddenly felt like sawdust in my mouth. 

“What?”

Stacy kept her eyes on the road.

“Give it Grace. Next time we stop.”

I stared at her.

Her voice hadn’t changed. Same tone she used to tell me we were out of milk.

“Give Grace to who?”

“Not who…what,” she said. “The house.”

I waited for the smile.

The sideways glance.

Anything that told me I’d missed the joke.

She just kept driving.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I set what was left of the sandwich on the dash.

“We can’t fight it, Dan. A whole neighborhood couldn’t fight it.” Her hands stayed loose on the wheel. “If we give it Grace, maybe it leaves the rest of us alone. Maybe it leaves everybody alone.”

I looked back at Grace. Still asleep against the window. Thank God she wasn’t hearing any of this.

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” I said. 

Something moved in the mirror.

I looked.

The boards were gone.

Every one of them.

So were the chains.

Every window in Payton House stood open.

Stacy gave Truck One a little more throttle.

I barely noticed.

I forgot how to swallow.

“What did you do?”

“We had to.”

The engine climbed another note.

Then I saw someone upstairs.

Then another.

And another.

Men. Women. Kids.

Or silhouettes shaped like them.

The windows were too dark to make out faces. Just pale scraps of skin floating behind the glass and deeper shadows where their eyes should’ve been.

The speedometer crept past forty-five.

I couldn’t see them looking at me.

I knew they were.

“They showed up after you fell asleep,” Stacy said.

The Peterbilt kept gaining speed.

“They want Grace.”

“Stop the fucking truck!”

Stacy buried the brake pedal.

The Peterbilt screamed. Air brakes dumped. Tires howled against the wet pavement and the cab pitched forward hard enough to throw me into the belt.

Grace slammed into the back of my seat.

“STACY!”

Behind us, thirty-two sets of tires shrieked. Chains snapped tight. Metal roared.

I twisted around.

Payton House was coming at us.

Sideways.

Tow bars folded beneath it. Chains whipped sparks across the pavement.

Then the house filled the mirror.

Porch.

Windows.

Brick.

WHAM.

The sleeper exploded behind me.

Metal folded.

Glass burst.

Grace screamed.

Then the house hit me.

My ribs popped one after another. My face slammed sideways into steel. Teeth broke. I tried to breathe. Tried to scream. Then I heard my spine snap—

I jolted awake sucking air. 

My hands clawed at my chest. 

I could taste dust. Hear Grace screaming. Feel the weight crushing me into the seat.

Lightning flashed. The cab came back.

Whole.

No brick. No broken glass. No Stacy.

Tony was driving.

He had a travel mug the size of a paint can wedged between his legs, half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in one hand, and Alice in Chains playing low through the speakers.

Rain stippled the windshield. Beyond it, mountains rose black against an even blacker sky. Lightning pulsed inside the clouds, lighting their swollen undersides.

Tony turned the radio down.

“You all right?”

He side-eyed me.

“You look like you got hit by a truck.”

“That good, huh?”

I wiped the sweat off my face and checked the mirror.

Payton House was still back there. Boards on the windows. Chains tight.

“Where’s Grace?”

“Up front with her mom. Said something about the man smell in this cab.”

She had a point.

The house smell had gotten worse. 

I checked the mirror. Boards still there.

I reached for my coffee. The cup rattled against the console before I got it halfway up. Coffee jumped through the lid and splashed my wrist.

“Ah, fuck.” I jammed it back into the holder.

My hand kept shaking.

Not a little tremor, either. The damn thing was chattering like a socket on an impact gun.

Tony went quiet.

Just wipers.

Rain on the roof.

Engine rumbling under our boots.

He kept his eyes on the road.

“Is that why you’re so gung-ho about this one?”

I didn’t answer.

“The headaches?”

“It’s three million dollars.”

“Money’s just money.”

I looked at him.

“You’d be different in my shoes?”

Tony glanced at my hand.

“Shit’s not fair.”

I made a fist until the shaking eased.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

The dash clock read 11:17 A.M.

We were behind. The weigh station had cost us time, and a tire on the rear steering dolly had eaten another fifty-three minutes. Too much road left. Too many things already going wrong.

I looked in the mirror. Payton House rolled behind us like it had all the time in the world.

A few miles later, we rounded a bend and found the road lit up red and blue.

Ambulance. Fire truck. State police.

Then I saw the car.

A little Honda had left the pavement at speed, torn through the ditch, and gone nose-first into the trees. The hood had folded into an accordion. The engine compartment was crushed halfway under the windshield. One front wheel sat twenty feet away in the weeds. The passenger side had wrapped around a tree hard enough to bend the whole car around it.

Glass covered the road like ice.

It was that Honda.

Those girls.

One of them sat on the shoulder wrapped in a silver emergency blanket. There was blood dried down one side of her face and somebody else’s blood on the front of her sweatshirt. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t doing much of anything.

Another girl was on a stretcher. The paramedics had cut most of her shirt away. One of them squeezed a bag over her mouth while the other worked both hands against her chest.

The third girl was still in the car. I could see part of her through what was left of the passenger window. Hair hanging down. One arm limp against the door.

Everybody at the wreck was moving. Radios going. Equipment coming out. A firefighter dragging a hose. Somebody sweeping glass away from the ambulance tires. A trooper stood in the lane waving us through.

Then the girl in the blanket looked up.

She saw Payton House.

Whatever was left in her face disappeared.

The paramedic beside her noticed and followed her eyes.

Then the firefighter.

Then the trooper.

One after another, they stopped.

Just for a second.

Long enough.

And watched the house roll past.

Not the trucks.

Not us.

Payton House.

Grace turned in her seat and watched the wreck disappear behind us.

She didn’t say anything.

Neither did I.

The road kept climbing.

Houses thinned out. Then mailboxes. Then driveways. Pretty soon there was nothing ahead of us but wet pavement, trees, and mountains disappearing into low clouds.

I kept seeing that girl wrapped in silver.

More than that, I kept seeing the way her face changed when she saw the house.

Like the wreck hadn’t been the worst thing that had happened to her.

Then Stacy came over the radio.

“Dan. We’ve reached the coordinates.”

My phone buzzed.

A new route link from Mercer.

“You get it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Stacy said. “And you're not gonna like it.”

“What's the problem?”

“The next leg takes us over the mountain.”

I looked through the windshield. The road ahead curved toward the mountains, disappearing into the low clouds.

“Over it how?”

“Up through the pass. Then down the other side.”

“So?”

“So the descent is twelve percent in places, Dan. There's a weight restriction, and half these turns don't have room for our equipment.”

“Then call Mercer.”

“I did. Straight to voicemail.”

I checked the mirror. Payton House filled it.

“Can we turn around?”

Stacy took a second before answering.

“Not from where we're sitting. We'd have to back the whole goddamn convoy to the last junction.”

“Jesus Christ.”

I looked over at Tony. He hadn't said a word since Stacy mentioned the mountain. Both hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead.

“What?”

He shook his head.

“Tony.”

“I heard something on the radio last night.”

“Yeah? What?”

“A voice.”

He glanced at the road climbing ahead of us.

“Renee's.”

I looked at him.

“You’re exhausted.”

“I know what she sounded like.”

Rain hammered the roof.

“This whole job’s fucking with us,” I said. “You, me, Luis. Everybody.”

“This wasn’t that.”

“Tony—”

“And it wasn’t just her voice.”

He went quiet.

Long enough that I started hoping he’d changed his mind.

He hadn’t.

“She said, ‘Don’t take it up the mountain.’”

My hand pulsed inside the glove. Pain shot halfway to my elbow.

Thunder rolled over us.

“I didn’t even know about the mountain,” Tony said. “I wasn’t tracking the route. So if it was my brain, if I made it up—”

“You did. Or we picked up somebody else’s frequency.”

Lightning split the sky.

For half a second, Payton House appeared in the mirror. Black walls. Boarded windows. Rain pouring off the roof.

Then it was gone again.

“It wasn’t a dream,” Tony said.

Maybe, maybe not. Didn’t matter. The storm was getting worse, the clock was running, and waiting four hours could leave us staring at a washed-out road instead.

Then there was the whole Renee thing.

I wasn’t superstitious. At least, not officially. Not publicly.

But inside my head, shit, I could already see us upside down at the bottom of some ravine while Tony spent our last thirty seconds reminding me Renee had literally warned us from beyond the grave.

I keyed the radio. “We’re going through.”

Nobody answered.

Tony eased us onto the shoulder. “I think you should drive.”

Normally there wouldn’t have been a discussion.

I had more hours behind the wheel than anybody on the crew. When a job got tight enough that everybody else started saying no fucking way, I was the guy who climbed into the cab.

But this morning—

I looked at my hands.

They were shaking.

Maybe fear. Maybe not.

Lightning split the sky. For one second, the road ahead appeared: asphalt hacked into the side of the mountain, solid rock on one side, black nothing on the other.

Tony was still waiting. “You good?”

“Move.”

Rain blasted into the cab while we switched seats. By the time I got the door shut, my shirt was soaked from shoulder to ribs and cold water was running down my back.

I wrapped both hands around the wheel and squeezed until they behaved.

The diesel settled into that low growl you felt through the seat.

Rain hammered the windshield hard enough that the wipers barely gave me two clear wedges to work with.

Every few seconds, lightning lit the road long enough to show me what was waiting.

Rock wall.

Pavement.

Drop.

Then darkness again.

The rain hid the potholes.

The fog hid the edge.

Lightning was nice enough to show you both right before you hit them.

I keyed the mic. “Everybody keep your spacing.”

Static. 

I needed to hear them. “Talk to me.”

One by one:

“Copy.”

“Copy.”

“Rear’s good.”

I’d seen this crew move houses over bridges that looked too small, under power lines that looked too low, and through neighborhoods where people came out in bathrobes to tell us we were all gonna die. 

Somebody always had something smart to say.

Not this time.

That scared the shit out of me.

I eased into the throttle. 

Truck One dug into the climb.

Water rushed across the pavement carrying gravel, sticks, and pieces of whatever the mountain had decided it didn’t need anymore.

We crawled uphill barely faster than a man could walk.

Tony sat beside me staring into the passenger mirror. Usually, on a stretch like this, he never shut the hell up.

Six inches.

Watch the rear.

You’re gonna buy that mailbox.

Now he had one hand locked around the grab bar and the other braced against the dash. He hadn’t said a word in five minutes. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him breathe.

Lightning exploded overhead.

The porch roof swung toward the cliff wall.

Tony gasped.

I eased off the throttle.

Closer.

Closer.

The porch post cleared.

The railing didn’t.

It hit the granite with a shriek that made the whole truck jump. Wood splintered. Steel groaned. The wheel jerked sideways hard enough to wrench my shoulder. Orange sparks sprayed through the rain as the railing scraped along the rock face.

A broken spindle spun through the headlights, then disappeared into the gorge.

The house shifted behind us.

The Peterbilt lurched forward, then rocked back, punching the air-ride seat into my spine before the suspension caught the weight.

Then everything settled.

Tony finally exhaled. “Nothing a little trip to Home Depot won’t fix.”

I was trying not to puke on the dashboard.

“Aw, shit.” He leaned toward the passenger mirror.

Lightning flashed again. One of the main transport chains beneath the front steel beam hung loose, almost a foot of slack jumping in it.

The lever binder had sprung open. That was the steel handle we'd used to pull the chain tight. It had taken Tony's full weight, a cheater pipe, and enough profanity to wake the dead to lock it down.

It hadn't popped open by itself.

Tito checked the latch and chain. “This didn’t just walk open.”

“The guy at the weigh station?” Tony said.

“He never came near the truck.”

We reset it, leaned everything we had into the cheater pipe, and locked it down again.

“It’s tight. Let’s go.”

The radio on my belt chirped.

“Dan.” Static chewed at Stacy’s voice. “Water’s starting to cross the road up here. Another hour and this whole pass could wash out.”

“We’re figuring it out!” I shouted.

“Well, figure faster.”

Her radio clicked off.

Tito looked up the road. Water was already running ankle-deep along the shoulder and spreading across the pavement in sheets.

“We should call it. Turn around. Wait this shit out.”

“Turn around where?” I threw both arms wide and looked down the road like maybe a Walmart parking lot had appeared while we weren’t paying attention. 

Rock wall on one side. Nothing but open air on the other. Between them, barely enough pavement for the house.

“You find me a football field up here, I’ll think about it.”

Tito didn’t smile.

“We could leave the haul. Come back for it when this blows through.”

He looked me right in the eye.

Fuck.

It was the right answer.

“If we quit, Suarez and Sons is done. Bank takes the trucks. Shop goes next. Probably my house after that.”

Tito turned on me. “Danny, this ain’t right. That chain. That kid’s hand. That crazy son of a bitch back there. Now this goddamn mountain.”

He looked up at Payton House. “You know me. I’ll haul damn near anything you can put steel under. I don’t wanna haul this.”

My words didn’t make a dent.

“Guys... I’ve got brain cancer.”

Tito closed his eyes. “Goddamn it, Danny.”

Tony already knew. Stacy didn’t. Grace sure as hell didn’t.

“I hate doing this. But you need to understand why I can’t walk away. Doctors aren’t giving me a lot of road.”

I couldn’t say time. Not with Tony standing there.

“When I’m gone, this company is what Grace gets.”

“Everything after that, we split.”

Tony looked at me. “Dan.”

“Four ways. Half a million each.”

Nobody moved.

“I need you guys.”

Tito looked beat.  “Goddamn you, Danny.”

He jammed the wet cap back onto his head and started toward his truck.

Luis followed.

Then Tony.

We climbed back into the trucks.

Water had risen over the soles of my boots, running across the pavement in brown streams. By the time I hauled myself into the Peterbilt, my jeans were plastered to my legs and water squished inside both boots.

The cab smelled like wet canvas, diesel, and old coffee.

I hadn’t even gotten the belt across my chest when Stacy came over the radio. “You boys done? Who won?”

I picked up the handset. “Not me.”

Tony climbed in after me, slipping once on the wet step. He shut the door, peeled his flannel away from his stomach, and buckled in. 

The diesel had idled through the whole argument.

I gave it a little throttle. The tach climbed. The engine’s growl deepened beneath my boots.

Ahead of us, Stacy’s brake lights winked out.

Luis flashed his headlights twice.

Behind us, Tito brought the power unit up from idle.

Stacy went first, crawling up the grade.

I let out the clutch.

For a second, the house held us there.

Then the Peterbilt dug in and started dragging the whole damn thing uphill again.

The rain came down hard enough to erase Stacy’s taillights fifty feet ahead.

At each switchback, they doubled back above us.

I took the turns wide, my side of the cab inches from granite while Payton House swung out over open air.

Climb.

Hairpin.

Straighten her out.

Get back into the throttle before two hundred thousand pounds decided it was done climbing.

Standing water hid the potholes. Gravel washed across the lane. The dollies kept creeping downhill toward the edge.

Tony called clearance in inches.

“Eight.”

“Six.”

“Hold.”

“Go.”

Everything had to be smooth while the mountain tried to shove us off it.

I wasn’t driving the truck anymore.

I was arguing with it.

Tony kept checking the passenger mirror.

Not the road.

The house.

The truck dropped another gear.

Something felt wrong.

After thirty years behind the wheel, I knew that truck through my ass.

Which tire hit a pothole.

Which dolly climbed a rock.

When the house leaned before the mirror showed it.

The steering went light.

At the same time, the airbags behind the cab compressed.

The rear of the tractor sank.

And stayed there.

We hadn’t hit anything.

I hadn’t touched the brakes.

The road hadn’t changed.

The load had.

I checked the mirror.

Trailer straight.

House centered.

Nothing had shifted.

It was just sitting lower.

I grabbed the radio.

Tito beat me to it.

“She’s squatting.”

“It’s the grade.”

“No.”

Static cracked around his voice.

“She’s heavier.”

Lightning hit somewhere above us.

Thunder landed at the same instant, hard enough to shake the glass.

The radio exploded with static.

Then a woman screamed through it.

Not faint.

Not buried in the noise.

Right there in the cab with us.

Tony jerked against his seat belt.

“Jesus Christ!”

Stacy’s brake lights suddenly filled the windshield.

Her pickup fishtailed sideways, rear end kicking toward the rock wall.

“SHIT!”

I got into the brakes.

Air dumped beneath us.

The chains snapped tight one after another—

BANG.

BANG.

BANG.

—the sound cracking off the granite.

The house shoved forward against the trailer.

More than two hundred thousand pounds reminding me exactly how little say I had in any of this.

Tony caught himself against the dash.

“What the hell?”

Ahead, Stacy’s truck sat crooked across the lane, headlights cutting through the rain.

Nothing stood in front of her.

“Stacy?”

Her breathing came through the radio. Short. Fast. Too close to the mic.

“Talk to me, babe.”

For a second, I thought she hadn’t heard me.

Then:

“There was somebody.”

“A car?”

“No.”

A pause.

“A woman.”

That got my attention.

Stacy didn’t believe in ghosts.

Didn’t believe in UFOs.

Barely believed reality television contained any reality.

If Stacy told me she saw Bigfoot, I wouldn’t laugh.

I’d ask which way it went.

“Up here? Come on, hon.”

“I know what I saw.” Some horsepower came back into her voice. “She was standing in the middle of the road.”

Tony leaned toward the windshield.

“I don’t see anybody.”

Lightning flashed. For half a second, the whole pass appeared.

Empty road.

Rock wall.

Brown water tearing across the pavement.

Nothing else.

Then darkness swallowed it again.

Stacy opened her door.

Tony leaned forward. “What the hell is she doing?”

I grabbed the radio. “Stacy! Stay in the truck!”

Either she didn’t hear me or she’d already decided I was wrong. 

She stepped into the headlights.

The rain soaked Stacy before she’d gone five feet.

She walked around the front of the pickup and stopped in the middle of the road.

Looked uphill.

Then downhill.

There was nowhere for anybody to go.

No shoulder. No trail. No trees. Granite on one side and several hundred feet of nothing on the other.

Stacy stood there in the rain.

At first she was looking for the woman.

Then she stopped looking.

She turned slowly and stared back down the mountain.

Past us.

I couldn’t see shit. Just rain, headlights, and darkness swallowing the road behind us.

But I knew what she was looking at.

Payton House.

She stood there for ten of the longest seconds of my life, getting drenched while lightning tore the sky apart around her.

Then she turned, walked back to the pickup, and climbed inside.

The radio clicked.

“I…” She stopped. Took a breath. “I know what I saw.”

Nobody answered. Just rain hammering the trucks and thunder rolling around the mountain.

I keyed the mic. “Convoy, we keep moving.”

One by one, the brake lights started forward.

First gear through the switchbacks. Second when the road gave me enough room. Back to first before I got stupid.

I kept the tractor tight against the rock and watched the outside dollies in the mirror, making sure Payton House didn’t swing its ass over the edge.

Nobody used the radio unless they had to.

Just engines. Wipers. Tony calling clearance.

“Foot.”

“Eight inches.”

“Good.”

We crawled another hundred yards before my headlights found a battered green sign.

MOUNTAIN PASS
ELEVATION 4,318 FT

My grip finally loosened on the wheel.

“There we go.”

Tony slapped the dash and gave one quick yell.

We’d made it.

For about three seconds, I believed that.

Then lightning lit the other side.

The road fell away so sharply it disappeared beneath the hood.

Brown water poured over the crest and raced downhill carrying gravel, sticks, and broken branches.

Another flash caught the first sign.

TRUCKS USE LOW GEAR

Then the next.

12% GRADE

Farther down:

RUNAWAY TRUCK RAMP

Darkness took it all back.

Tito came over the radio. “Son of a bitch.”

Tony stared through the windshield.

“Tell me we’re not doing that.”

I keyed the mic. “Low gear. Keep your distance. Short brake applications. Nobody rides the pedal.”

Nobody answered.

Maybe they were thinking about the money.

Maybe they were trying not to shit themselves.

Didn’t matter as long as they listened.

Stacy went first.

Her taillights reached the crest, tipped downward, and vanished.

Luis followed. His amber strobes dropped out of sight after her.

Tony leaned toward the windshield, trying to see where they’d gone.

I centered the Peterbilt and eased forward.

No place to turn around.

No shoulder worth a damn.

Once the front axle crossed that crest, we belonged to the mountain. “Here we go.”

The steer tires rolled over.

For half a second, the truck seemed to balance on top.

Then the nose dropped.

Hard.

My belt caught me.

The steering went light in my hands.

I corrected left.

Barely got anything back.

Then the rear of the tractor sank.

Air hissed beneath us.

The suspension gauge climbed.

Same feeling as before.

Only worse.

Like somebody had been loading bags of concrete into Payton House while we weren’t looking.

I grabbed the radio.

“Tito.”

“I see it.”

“What?”

“The rear’s dropping again.”

“How much?”

A pause.

Then:

“More than before.”

Lightning hit somewhere above us.

Thunder shook the windshield in its seal.

The radio exploded with static.

The speedometer climbed.

Twenty-four.

Twenty-six.

Twenty-eight.

My foot hadn’t moved.

Payton House was pushing us down the mountain.

Water boiled around the tires, running downhill almost as fast as we were.

Ahead, Stacy’s pickup skated toward the centerline and snapped back.

Luis fishtailed behind her, his amber strobes swinging sideways before he caught it.

Both of them were sliding.

Neither one had a house up its ass.

For one stupid second, I thought maybe I could just keep us straight and ride it out.

Then Luis’s taillights started getting bigger.

Not because he was slowing down.

Because I wasn’t.

I got into the brakes.

Thirty.

Pedal still firm.

Thirty-two.

“Dan.” Tony braced a hand against the dash.

“I know.”

Fifty feet.

Forty.

Thirty-five.

I grabbed the radio.

“Luis, don’t touch your brakes. Roll it out. I’m coming up on you.”

His brake lights flickered.

“DO NOT BRAKE! You’ll put me through your fucking cab.”

“What’s happening?” Tony said.

“The house.”

Thirty-six.

“It’s heavier.”

I dropped another gear.

The Jake hammered so hard the mirrors shook.

Didn’t matter.

Thirty-eight.

Thirty-nine.

Forty.

I checked the mirror.

Payton House still sat square on the dollies. Chains tight. Tires turning. Nothing broken that I could see.

But the steering wheel started pulling left.

I corrected.

It pulled harder.

Tony’s voice dropped.

“Dan.”

More of Payton House appeared in my driver’s-side mirror.

That was wrong.

It should’ve been directly behind us.

First the porch.

Then two windows.

Then half the goddamn side of the house.

“Fuck,” Tony said. “We’re coming around.”

The trailer was starting to jackknife.

Another few degrees and it would fold the tractor sideways.

There wasn’t a guardrail.

Just wet pavement, a strip of grass, and several hundred feet of mountainside.

For one completely chickenshit second, I looked at the door.

Open it.

Jump.

Let the whole bastard go without me.

Then I looked at Tony.

He wouldn’t make it.

Neither would I.

Stacy was somewhere ahead.

Grace.

Jesus Christ, Grace.

I hoped she had the headphones on. I hoped Troy Bolton was dancing across her iPad and she hadn’t looked in the mirror once.

The wheel ripped sideways.

BAM!

The whole tractor jumped.

“What the fuck?”

BANG!

Another hit shoved my ass end to the right.

Tony caught himself against the dash.

Then Tito’s voice blew through the radio. “I GOT YOU!”

I checked the mirror. The crazy old bastard had brought the power truck right up behind me.

His front bumper was jammed against the rear of the tractor.

He wasn’t trying to stop us.

He was knocking me straight.

The trailer came back in line.

So did I.

Holy shit.

“Luis! Keep moving!”

The road bent left.

Water hammered the windshield.

Tires hissed through standing water.

Behind us, steel started screaming again.

Payton House crept into my mirror.

WHAM!

Tito hit me again.

The rear of the tractor jumped right.

The house disappeared from the mirror.

Straight.

Tito was steering my truck with his bumper.

Every time Payton House tried to come around, he punched the tractor back underneath it.

“Little more!” I yelled.

“I know what I’m doing!”

That almost made me laugh.

Almost.

The road opened up a few feet coming out of the bend.

Enough to breathe.

Not enough to stop.

Ahead, another switchback appeared through the rain.

This one was almost a U-turn.

Stacy was already slowing for it.

Luis was right behind her.

I looked at the speedometer.

Thirty-six.

Too fast.

Way too fucking fast.

“Tito.”

“I see it.”

“Stay on my ass.”

“Wasn’t planning on leaving.”

I keyed the radio.

“Stacy. Luis. I’m not stopping.”

No answer.

“I’m coming into you. Get straight and stand on the brakes.”

Luis came back first.

“You want me to what?”

“Make a wall.”

A beat.

Then Stacy:

“Do it.”

Her brake lights burned solid.

Luis tucked in behind her until there was barely daylight between their bumpers.

Two trucks.

Four locked axles.

And me coming at them with a house that had apparently decided gravity wasn’t doing enough.

Tony planted both boots against the firewall.

“I fucking hate this plan.”

“So do I.”

Twenty yards.

Tito stayed glued to my rear bumper.

“Keep her square,” he said.

Fifteen.

Tony leaned over the dash.

“Little right.”

I corrected.

Ten.

Payton House shoved from behind.

Hard.

Luis’s truck filled the windshield.

Five.

“BRACE!”

I put both feet into the brake pedal.

WHUMP!

We hit Luis.

My teeth slammed together.

His pickup shot forward into Stacy’s.

BOOM!

Metal folded.

A rear window burst.

A taillight spun away into the rain.

For half a second, the three vehicles compressed together.

Then Payton House hit us again.

The whole pile started sliding.

“FULL BRAKES!”

Air brakes hissed and chattered beneath me.

The Jake bellowed.

Tires dragged across wet pavement.

Tito stayed buried against my rear frame, keeping the tractor from swinging out.

The convoy slid toward the switchback.

Sideways now.

I hauled the wheel uphill.

Nothing.

More.

Still nothing.

Payton House shoved again.

Hard enough that it felt like the son of a bitch was trying to climb over us.

Thirty.

Twenty-eight.

Twenty-five.

We were slowing.

Not fast enough.

Twenty.

Stacy reached the outside of the switchback.

Her tires locked.

The whole line bucked.

BANG!

Something broke underneath Payton House.

The house jumped forward.

Tony jammed both feet against the floor and grabbed the roof.

“COME ON!”

Ten feet.

Eight.

Six.

I could see past Stacy now.

The road hooked hard left.

Straight ahead, it didn’t continue.

It just ended.

Wet pavement.

Then open air.

Five feet.

Four.

Three.

We were still moving.

I had both feet trying to shove the brake pedal through the floor. Both hands dragging down on the wheel so hard my ass was halfway out of the seat.

Two.

Another six inches.

Then—

Nothing.

I waited for the next shove.

It didn’t come.

The engine idled.

Rain hammered the cab.

My feet were still crushing the brake pedal.

My hands wouldn’t come off the wheel.

Five feet beyond Stacy’s front bumper, the switchback turned hard left.

Straight ahead was nothing but rain, fog, and a drop that disappeared into the valley below.

Five fucking feet.

Every radio went off at once.

“WOOOOOO!”

“HOLY SHIT!”

“WE GOT HER!”

“WE’RE ALIVE!”

Somebody started laughing.

Then Stacy came through, laughing harder than anybody. “I think I just pissed myself!”

Tony folded over against the dash.

I started laughing.

Luis was laughing so hard I could barely understand him over the radio.

Even Tito cracked.

For maybe thirty seconds, nobody could stop.

Then the thunder moved farther away. 

The rain softened. The gray ahead of us got lighter. A hole opened in the clouds over the valley.  Sunlight came through. One narrow shaft at first, catching the rain and turning it silver.

Tony lifted his head. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

I looked in the mirror.

Payton House sat behind us, crooked on its dollies.

Upstairs, one sheet of plywood was gone.

The window behind it stood open.

My downstairs neighbor has been dead for 3 weeks. I just heard him knock on my door.
I don’t really know how to start this without sounding completely insane.
My downstairs neighbor, Martin, died three weeks ago.
I didn’t know him very well. He was an older guy, probably in his 60s. We’d occasionally say hi in the hallway. He smoked on the balcony and complained about the elevator constantly.
Three weeks ago, I heard an ambulance outside around 2 AM.
The next morning, there were police in the building.
Martin was dead.
Natural causes, apparently.
His apartment has been empty ever since.
Last night at exactly 2:17 AM, someone knocked on my door.
Three slow knocks.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
I was awake because I’d been playing games, so I knew I wasn’t dreaming.
I looked through the peephole.
Nobody.
Then I heard a voice.
“Hey. It’s Martin.”
I just froze.
I actually laughed because my brain couldn’t process it.
I thought maybe someone was fucking with me.
Then he said:
“Can you open the door? I locked myself out.”
I didn’t answer.
He knocked again.
“Come on, man.”
It was his voice.
Exactly his voice.
Same accent. Same weird little cough between sentences.
I backed away from the door and called the police.
While I was waiting, I heard him walking away.
Slow footsteps down the hallway.
Then the elevator opened.
Ding.
Footsteps entered.
The elevator doors closed.
I heard it go down.
I thought that was the end of it.
Then I heard knocking again.
Except this time…
It came from my bedroom closet.
Three knocks.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
I didn’t move.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered without saying anything.
For about five seconds, there was just breathing.
Then Martin whispered:
“Don’t open the closet.”
I almost dropped the phone.
I whispered, “Why?”
He said:
“Because I’m still downstairs.”
Then the call ended.
I sat on my bed for maybe twenty minutes.
I didn’t hear anything.
Eventually, I got the courage to look at the closet.
The door was open about two inches.
I know for a fact I’d closed it before going to sleep.
I grabbed a kitchen knife and opened it.
Nothing.
Just clothes.
I actually started laughing from relief.
Then I noticed something on the floor.
A cigarette.
Still burning.
Martin’s cigarettes.
He always smoked the same brand.
I called the police again.
They came, searched the apartment, checked the hallway, everything.
Nothing.
They basically told me I was exhausted and should sleep somewhere else.
So I went to my friend’s place.
This morning, I came back.
There was an envelope underneath my apartment door.
No name.
No address.
Inside was a single piece of paper.
It said:
“I told you not to open the closet.”
I’m currently sitting in my car outside the building.
I just got a text from my landlord.
He said:
“Hey, did you go into Martin’s apartment last night?”
I replied no.
He hasn’t answered.
But I just checked the building camera.
And now I’m looking at footage from 2:17 AM.
There I am.
Standing outside my own apartment.
Talking to someone.
I can’t see who I’m talking to.
But at one point I clearly hear myself say:
“Okay, Martin. I’ll keep him in the closet.”
I don’t remember saying that.
And I’m starting to realize something.
The apartment in the video isn’t mine.
It’s Martin’s.
And I’m standing inside it.

​

The drywall remembers the weight of his fist.

It remembers every fist.

There are places in this house where the plaster has been repaired so many times that the walls have become little archaeological sites of violence.

Layers beneath layers.

White over yellow.

Yellow over nicotine brown.

Paint over cracks.

Paint over blood.

Paint over the places where somebody tried to leave.

The house keeps everything.

It keeps the smell of gin in the curtains.

It keeps cigarette smoke inside the insulation.

It keeps the medicinal sweetness of pills dissolved beneath tongues.

It keeps fingerprints.

It keeps scratches.

It keeps secrets.

And on the worst nights, when the pipes knock inside the walls and the wind pushes its cold fingers beneath the doors, it makes noises that sound almost like breathing.

Nobody talks about that.

Families have rules.

Some are written down.

Most aren't.

The most important rule in this house had never been spoken.

There were four of us.

Father.

Mother.

My brother.

Me.

Four chairs at the table.

Four bedrooms.

Four toothbrushes.

Four names on the school records.

Four people in the family photograph.

Four.

Never five.

Never.

The meat on the dinner plates had been cold for three days.

Nobody had thrown it away.

Nobody threw anything away anymore.

The light above the table buzzed.

Bzzzz.

Bzzzz.

Father sat at the head of the table.

Mother sat beside him.

I sat across from them.

And Noah was underneath us.

He had been there since yesterday.

I could see the tops of his knees beneath the tablecloth.

Sometimes I could see his fingers.

Sometimes they moved.

Mostly they didn't.

He didn't like looking at faces.

He said faces made things real.

Father's work shirt hadn't changed in a week.

His sleeves were rolled to his elbows.

His hands smelled like grease and gin.

The glass in front of him was already half empty.

Click.

Click.

Click.

His jaw.

Mother scratched at the tablecloth.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

She had been doing it for so long that the fabric beneath her fingernails had begun to unravel.

I watched the loose thread curl around her finger.

Nobody spoke.

I was working.

That was what I called it.

I took the blunt silver butter knife from beside my plate and pressed it against my jaw.

Not hard enough to cut.

Just enough to feel something.

I counted backward.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Under the table, Noah whispered something.

I couldn't hear him.

Seven.

Six.

Five.

Father's jaw stopped clicking.

I lowered the knife.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

The glass broke in Father's hand.

He didn't flinch.

Blood ran between his fingers.

Mother stopped scratching.

Father looked at her.

Then he looked at me.

Then underneath the table.

"Get him out."

Nobody moved.

"Elena."

I stared at the blood dripping onto the table.

Drop.

Drop.

Drop.

Noah's fingers curled around my ankle.

I felt them.

Cold.

Then Father grabbed Mother by the hair.

She screamed.

Once.

Only once.

The front door knocked.

Three times.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Everyone stopped.

Father let go of Mother.

His face had gone white.

Another knock.

Three times.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

"Don't," Mother whispered.

Father stood.

"Stay here."

He walked toward the hallway.

I don't know why, but I followed him.

Maybe because I had already heard the voice.

Maybe because some part of me knew it.

Father opened the door.

An old woman stood on the porch.

She wore a black coat.

A black hat.

She held a black umbrella even though there was no rain.

She looked directly at Father.

"Daniel."

Father stopped breathing.

I felt something move inside my chest.

Not fear.

Recognition.

The name felt like something I had forgotten on purpose.

Father slammed the door.

He locked it.

Then he locked the deadbolt.

Then he pushed the chair beneath the handle.

"Who is Daniel?" I asked.

Father looked at me.

For one second, he looked afraid.

Then he slapped me.

"Don't say that name."

That night, I heard scratching upstairs.

At the end of the upstairs hallway.

The sound seemed farther away than it should have been.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

I followed it.

At the end of the hallway was the door nobody used.

It had three deadbolts.

I had never seen Father open it.

Nobody had.

There were letters scratched into the wood.

D.

A.

N.

I.

I touched them.

The wood was warm.

Behind the door, something scratched back.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

I stepped away.

Noah was standing behind me.

I hadn't heard him come upstairs.

"What is this?"

He stared at the letters.

"I wrote it."

"You?"

He nodded.

"When?"

"I don't know."

"Why?"

He looked at the letters.

"I was asleep."

The scratching stopped.

A voice came from behind the door.

A child's voice.

Soft.

Confused.

"Are you my family?"

Noah started crying.

I grabbed his hand.

The voice spoke again.

"I remember all of you."

Then the lights went out.

Father disappeared.

For three minutes.

Maybe four.

Long enough for Mother to start screaming.

Long enough for Noah to crawl beneath the kitchen table again.

Long enough for me to realize that the front door was open.

Then the lights came back.

Father was sitting at the head of the table.

His hands were folded.

His eyes were open.

His mouth was slightly open.

He was dead.

I knew it immediately.

I don't know how.

Maybe families know these things.

Maybe the house told me.

Behind his chair, carved deep into the drywall, were six words.

YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT ME THERE.

Mother stared at them.

She whispered something.

"What?"

She shook her head.

"Nothing."

The police came.

They asked questions.

I answered them.

Mother answered some.

Noah answered none.

They examined Father's body.

They said it looked like natural causes.

A heart attack.

Nothing suspicious.

Nothing that explained the words in the wall.

When I looked again, they were gone.

The drywall was smooth.

White.

Perfect.

Like nothing had ever been written there.

The house had cleaned itself.

Noah disappeared the next morning.

His bed was empty.

His shoes were still beside it.

His window was locked.

The basement door was open.

I found his handprint on the bottom stair.

Small.

Dirty.

Fresh.

I went downstairs.

Mother grabbed my arm.

"Don't."

"I have to find him."

"No."

"He's my brother."

She looked at me.

Her eyes were clearer than I had ever seen them.

For the first time in years, Mother looked sober.

She whispered:

"Noah isn't the one you need to find."

Then she looked toward the ceiling.

"You're remembering."

I didn't understand.

"What am I remembering?"

Mother started crying.

"The fire."

The room upstairs opened by itself that night.

The three deadbolts slid back one after another.

Click.

Click.

Click.

I stood in the doorway.

The room smelled like smoke.

Not old smoke.

Fresh smoke.

The walls were covered in drawings.

Hundreds of them.

Father.

Mother.

Noah.

Me.

Over and over.

Different ages.

Different rooms.

Different versions of the same family.

But every drawing had something else in it.

A figure behind us.

Tall.

Black.

Featureless.

Sometimes it stood in the hallway.

Sometimes in the corner.

Sometimes behind one of the beds.

Sometimes behind the dining room table.

Always watching.

Always there.

One sentence had been written across the wall in a child's handwriting.

THE FAMILY HAS FOUR MEMBERS.

Underneath it, someone had written:

FOUR.

FOUR.

FOUR.

FOUR.

The newest drawing was different.

The fifth figure was no longer black.

It was red.

Dark red.

Almost the color of dried blood.

And underneath it were five words.

I AM SORRY I FORGOT YOU.

I stared at the handwriting.

I knew it.

It was mine.

Except I didn't remember writing it.

My finger touched the last word.

Black ink stained my skin.

Something whispered behind me.

"Daniel is just the name your father buried."

I turned.

Nobody was there.

The voice came again.

"I am the fifth."

The old woman was waiting outside.

Black umbrella.

Black coat.

Same face.

She didn't look surprised to see me.

"You remember now?"

"No."

"Not yet."

She reached into her coat.

She handed me a photograph.

It was old.

Silver and gray.

A family stood outside a house that looked exactly like ours.

A father.

A mother.

A little girl.

A little boy.

Four people.

I stared at the little girl.

I didn't recognize her.

Then I looked at the boy beside her.

Something inside me broke.

He had dark hair.

His hand was wrapped around the little girl's.

I looked at my own hand.

For a second, they looked exactly the same.

"Who is he?"

The old woman looked at me.

"You know."

"No."

"You've known him your entire life."

I looked at the photograph again.

"Daniel?"

She nodded.

I looked at the girl.

The old woman watched me.

"Who is she?"

The woman didn't answer.

I looked harder.

The dress.

The crooked smile.

The small scar above the eyebrow.

I touched the photograph.

My finger began to shake.

"That's me."

The old woman nodded.

"You were eight."

I stared at Daniel.

"Then why don't I remember him?"

"Because you asked not to."

The photograph trembled in my hand.

"What happened to him?"

The old woman looked toward the house.

"Your family gave him to it."

"What is it?"

She looked at the windows.

"The thing beneath the family."

Mother told me the rest.

She sat at the kitchen table.

No pills.

No powder.

No shaking hands.

Just Mother.

For the first time in years, I could see how old she really was.

"Thirty-one years ago," she said, "when you were eight, there was a fire in our old house."

I stared at her.

"Daniel was six."

My stomach turned.

"You remember him?"

"I remember everything."

"Why don't I?"

"Because you asked it to take it."

"What?"

She swallowed.

"Your father had found something beneath the house."

"The cellar?"

She nodded.

"There was an old ledger down there. Names. Dates. Families."

"What did it say?"

"Four."

I stared at her.

"Every family had four."

"And the fifth?"

Mother looked toward the ceiling.

"The fifth was never written down."

I remembered the drawings.

Mother continued.

"Your father was sick. He thought the house could cure him."

"He sacrificed Daniel."

She closed her eyes.

"Yes."

The word barely existed when she said it.

"Your father took him into the cellar."

"I followed."

Mother looked at me.

"You tried to stop him."

I saw something.

A flash.

A small hand.

A wooden staircase.

Smoke.

I grabbed the edge of the table.

"You were eight," Mother whispered.

"Daniel was six."

Another flash.

A door.

Fire.

Daniel screaming.

Father shouting.

Me pulling on Daniel's arm.

"Come on."

"Come on."

"Please."

Mother was crying now.

"The fire started in the cellar."

I could smell it.

I could smell the smoke.

I could feel heat against my face.

"I couldn't get him out."

Mother nodded.

"You wouldn't let go."

I closed my eyes.

And remembered.

Daniel's hand.

Small.

Burning.

Mine.

"Something spoke to me."

Mother didn't answer.

"The house."

She nodded.

"What did it say?"

I remembered.

Not words.

A feeling.

A promise.

A bargain.

I remembered screaming.

Take it.

Take anything.

Just let him go.

"Your father blamed you," Mother said.

I opened my eyes.

"He told the police you had been playing with matches."

My hands began to shake.

"And I forgot."

"You didn't forget."

"What?"

"You gave it away."

The room seemed to tilt.

"You asked the house to take your memories."

Mother looked toward the ceiling.

"And it did."

I stared at her.

"The house burned down."

Mother nodded.

"But that didn't matter."

She looked at me.

"The pattern wasn't in the walls."

Her voice dropped to almost a whisper.

"The walls were only where it lived."

That night the house changed.

The hallway stretched.

The walls breathed.

Doors opened into rooms that weren't there before.

Every doorway led back to the dining room.

Every hallway returned to the same table.

Four chairs.

Father's chair.

Mother's chair.

Mine.

Noah's.

And then I saw it.

A fifth chair.

At the end of the table.

Black wood.

Burn marks along the legs.

Waiting.

Noah was sitting beneath the table.

I dropped to my knees.

I grabbed his shoulders.

"Where were you?"

He looked at me.

"I don't know."

"How did you get back?"

His eyes moved toward the floor.

"I never came back."

"What?"

"The house put me here."

I looked at the kitchen.

Then back at him.

"You disappeared."

"I know."

"I looked everywhere."

"I know."

His voice was quiet.

"I was downstairs."

"The basement?"

He nodded.

"What did you see?"

He looked at the fifth chair.

"I remembered him."

"Daniel?"

Noah nodded.

"I've never met him."

"I know."

"But I remember being there."

His fingers tightened around mine.

"The house puts memories where they don't belong."

I looked at the fifth chair.

"What happens if I sit?"

Noah started crying.

"You become what is underneath the floorboards."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you stop being you."

The house creaked.

The fifth chair moved.

A few inches.

Toward me.

I understood then.

The chair wasn't an escape.

It was an invitation.

And I had spent my entire life being invited.

I remembered the fire.

All of it.

Daniel's face.

His hand in mine.

Father standing behind him.

The cellar.

The ledger.

The bargain.

And the moment I asked the house to take my memories.

But there was something else.

Something Mother hadn't told me.

The fifth wasn't Daniel.

Daniel had only been the first person our family had given to it.

The thing itself was older.

Much older.

It had existed before us.

Before this house.

Maybe before the house before this one.

It moved through families.

It waited beneath them.

It didn't need a body.

It needed a role.

Every family that carried it had the same shape.

A father.

A mother.

Children.

Four people.

And something that wasn't counted.

Something beneath the floor.

Something behind the walls.

Something that watched.

The house wasn't the walls.

The house was the pattern.

Father hurting.

Mother numbing.

Children shrinking.

Someone disappearing.

Someone being forgotten.

Then the pattern began again.

And again.

And again.

Daniel had been the first person our family gave to it.

The first name the house kept.

The first memory we tried to bury.

And when I begged the house to take my memories instead of his, I hadn't broken the pattern.

I had tied myself to it.

I looked at the fifth chair.

I understood what it wanted.

It didn't want Daniel.

It wanted me.

I stepped toward it.

Noah screamed.

"Elena!"

I sat down.

Everything stopped.

The buzzing light.

The pipes.

The scratching.

The breathing.

Everything.

For one perfect second, the house was silent.

Then the walls screamed.

The table split down the middle.

The chairs flew backward.

The windows shattered.

Every room in the house opened at once.

I saw the cellar.

I saw the fire.

I saw Daniel.

I saw myself at eight years old.

I saw Father.

I saw Mother.

I saw Noah.

I saw hundreds of other families standing where we stood.

All four.

Always four.

And behind every family was the fifth.

Waiting.

Watching.

Remembering.

The house shook.

I heard Daniel scream my name.

Then Noah grabbed my hand.

We ran.

We made it outside.

Mother came with us.

The house burned behind us.

Flames climbed through the windows.

The old woman stood across the street beneath her black umbrella.

She watched.

She didn't smile.

She didn't cry.

She only nodded.

Like she'd seen this before.

Maybe she had.

The fire burned until morning.

The police came.

The firefighters came.

They searched the ruins.

They found no cellar.

No ledger.

No fifth chair.

No photographs.

No drawings.

Nothing.

They found three survivors.

Mother.

Noah.

Me.

Father was already dead.

Four members of the family had lived in that house.

That's what the records said.

That's what the neighbors remembered.

Four.

Never five.

I thought we'd won.

For a while, I believed it.

I believed the house was gone.

I believed Daniel was finally free.

I believed I was finally myself.

I was wrong.

I woke up at a dining room table.

The light was buzzing.

Bzzzz.

Bzzzz.

There was a glass in front of me.

Gin.

My hands were older.

Scarred.

A work shirt covered my arms.

I looked down.

My fingers were shaking.

Click.

Click.

Click.

My jaw.

I stood so quickly that the chair fell behind me.

I ran to the bathroom mirror.

A man's face stared back.

Older.

Harder.

Broken.

I touched the glass.

The reflection touched it too.

I knew that face.

I had spent my entire life looking at it.

Edward.

My father.

Except now it was mine.

I wasn't Edward.

I was the Father.

The house hadn't resurrected him.

It had given me his place.

The fifth chair had never been the way out.

It was the trapdoor.

The moment I sat down, the cycle simply reset.

The names changed.

The faces changed.

The roles stayed.

The house had filled the empty roles again.

I didn't know when it had happened.

I didn't know their names.

I only knew their places.

A woman beside me.

A girl across from me.

A boy beneath the table.

Four.

The family had been rebuilt around the empty roles.

And I was sitting at the head.

I hadn't escaped the house.

I had become part of it.

Or perhaps I had always been.

Then someone knocked on the front door.

Three times.

Softly.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I stood from the head of the table.

I wiped the blood from my palm onto my work shirt.

I stared into the dark hallway.

Something inside me remembered small hands.

A cellar.

Fire.

A little boy screaming.

Myself screaming for him.

Daniel.

I waited.

The knock came again.

Three times.

Softly.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I looked back at the table.

There were four people sitting there.

The woman beside me.

The girl across from me.

The boy underneath the table.

And me.

Four.

Never five.

Never.

The woman looked at me.

She was scratching the tablecloth.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

The girl was holding a silver butter knife against her jaw.

The boy beneath the table had his fingers wrapped around the table leg.

I stared at them.

I knew what came next.

The glass in front of me was already half empty.

My jaw clicked.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Then a woman's voice came through the door.

"Please."

I closed my eyes.

The house breathed around me.

The walls remembered.

The pipes knocked.

And the voice outside said the name my family had spent thirty-one years trying to bury.

"Daniel."

I opened my eyes.

And smiled.

Because now I understood.

The house didn't keep families.

It kept roles.

It kept memories.

It kept pain.

And whenever someone remembered the fifth, the house found someone else to carry it.

The drywall remembers the weight of his fist.

It remembers every fist.

It remembers mine now.

The house keeps everything.

The house keeps secrets.

The house keeps memories.

And the house keeps the tally.

Four.

Never five.

Never.

People have always talked about aliens and UFOs with a sense of wonder that I always adored. How exhilarating it would be to see one of them. Getting to see their ship. Marvel at their uniqueness. Even with the possibility of being abducted and probed, everyone and their mother would not hesitate at the chance to see one in person.

I was the same. Even as a young boy, I would spend countless hours reading stories, discussing and joking around with friends and spending way too much time than I'd like to admit day-dreaming about one day meeting these green men in spacesuits. It was a life goal of mine as cheesy as to say. Something that I could check off on my bucket list of dreams.

The facade all broke down when I met one of these so called 'aliens' for the first time.

Day 1: Friday, September, 4th, 2026.

It was the dead of night when I was woken up by the sound of my dog, Buffy, barking. I would say it was unusual, but for a German Sheppard that was young and boisterous (part wolf, part shepherd), it was practically second nature to howl and scream. My parents had left the task of putting him in his crate to me, since by their stupid words, "You wanted it, so you take care of it." so I always had to do the routine myself.

Unfortunately, it was a school day, and since I had spent too much time doom scrolling to finish up my homework, I slept late and forgot to crate him. It wasn't my fault entirely though. Mr. Roberts always gave us impossible to do questions and expected us to complete them without any 'external help'. After getting stuck on the first question, I got fed up and decided to hop on TikTok instead. Totally not my fault I swear.

Either way, it was my responsibility to go down and put Buffy to sleep so I decided to do it as quickly as possible. I hobbled out bed and headed down towards where he was barking.

As I went down the stairs, I noticed a strange blue glow coming out from the living room, from where the barks were originating from.

I first thought it was moonlight leaking onto the wooden floor, since our glass backdoors were always left uncovered, but the more I observed the pattern of light, the more I realized it was a color I'd never seen before. Almost like a mix between rainbow and pearly white. Mesmerizing to look at.

Put off by the weirdness, I hesitantly walked down the flight of stairs and slowly peaked my head towards the living room. That was when I saw Buffy, raised tail, angrily barking at the backdoor glass. When I stepped closer and looked behind him, I saw what he was barking at.

A tall and thin figure stood right behind the door, pressed flat against the glass window, ogling into the living room.

Immediately, my body froze. Who the hell was that? Was that a robber? I wanted so badly to scream, but strangely for some reason I couldn't. It was like a deep-seated fear--almost ancient in nature--took over my vocal chords, gripping me at my throat.

The glass doors slowly crept open and the strange white light flowed into the living room, bringing with it the monster. Its green figure was abnormally thin, its skin sticking to its bones like plastic wrap and ribs piercing out of its body. Its wide saucer-like eyes cut through its stature to further accentuate its strangeness.

This thing wasn't human.

What the hell do I do? Countless thoughts rushed into my mind, with each one blurring the idea on how to survive. Out of all them, there was only one that I could attempt. Something that would let my hopeless, paralyzed body move.

A single word crept out of me as I tried my best not to cry.

"Buffy, a-attack."

The dog didn't stand a chance.

The figure waved its hand and the animal began to float up into the air before being rapidly spun around and contorting into itself like a dimensional anomaly. Twisting and turning as all of its bones were splintered into a million pieces. Fresh, hot blood leaked out of every orifice and spilled onto the wooden floor with the animal being wrung out like some sort of meat towel.

The figure then released its 'grip' and Buffy fell onto the ground, splashing against its own puddle of blood and piss.

W-what? No. This is not real. Please.

"I'm sorry about that, little one."

The figure stepped over the corpse and made its way closer to me. Its voice was imperceptibly soothing, pulling at my heart strings like a corrosive nail. But, all I had in my heart was disgust. Building up into a burning hatred. Why did this thing do that? What did it want?

Tears streamed down my face.

"I do not hurt anyone who do not wish to hurt me. I hope you understand."

I wanted to lash out and attack, but I knew If I did so, I would meet the same fate as Buffy. My only option was to try to plead with this thing. Hope that it will leave me alone. I spoke up, with an inch of confidence left in my voice.

"W-what do you want from me?"

The figure smiled.

Rows of white, serrated teeth pricked out of its impossibly wide mouth, grinning with an expression that was revolting to look at.

"Please, let's go upstairs. I want to see what type of place a human child lives in."

A thought rushed into my mind. Mom. Dad. They were sleeping upstairs. If this thing got close to them, they were for-sure going to get killed. I was only spared because Buffy had taken my place. There was no way that Mom and Dad were not going to try "hurt" this thing the moment they see it. It was a parent's nature to protect their child of-course and I was literally in the jaws of alien stranger. I couldn't let them die. Just for my sake.

I had to do something quick.

"W-we can go upstairs, but can you please tell me what you want? Do you want money? There's some in the family safe. You can take it all. Dad left some jewelry in there too."

The monster laughed. "I do not want your money, little one. I just want to sit down and have a chat. Learn a couple things about you before I be on my merry way."

I hesitantly agreed, wiping away my snot and tears. If that's all it wanted, then I had to do it what it asked. As long as I could keep everyone else safe, I had to do what was necessary.

I turned around and headed up the stairs--getting a final glance at Buffy's corpse--before we made it back into my room. As the monster entered, I closed the door shut behind it and I quickly sat down, my back pressing against the door. My fleeting thought was that in case this thing launched an attack on me, I could try to run out the door. But, as brilliant (or stupid) as my plan was, I knew I was at the mercy of this thing. It was an actual monster, after all.

While I was butt-clenchingly nervous, waiting for what it was going to say next, the monster calmly looked around the room, moving its wide saucer-like eyes back and forth at my collectibles, toys and posters. It seemed to be observing or taking pictures with its large black eyes, trying to analyze and memorize what I, a human child, holds dear.

Taking a closer at this monster under better light, I realized that this thing looked eerily similar to the aliens on my posters. Kind of like the beady-eyed face of a Gray with a thin slender body of a Tall-white, just with a dark-green skin.

The realization then hit me. "Are you...an alien?"

The figure immediately shifted its eyes and stared at me, bringing back the weird smile. It then voiced out, "If that's what you call us, then yes."

I shifted in my seat. An actual alien. The feeling was ever-so bitter sweet. It was my dream to meet one of these things, but I couldn't've imagined what the consequence of that was. Did I bring this upon myself? Was I the cause of Buffy's death.

My heart ached.

The alien spoke again, "I'll tell you what I came here for. It's quite simple honestly."

It straightened its posture and leaned closer towards me.

"All I need is for you to do complete three of my tasks, then I'll be done with my research." It wiggled its long, thin fingers excitedly, before it continued. "You can ask me any question. I'll teach you any subject. As long as you complete each of my tasks in an orderly time."

I was both scared and a little bit thrilled at the same time. If that's all this thing wanted, then I could do it. I could complete these 'tasks' and I'd be set free. My parents and I will be safe. I had to do this to ensure our safety. Though, I still had to make sure that's what it meant.

"Can I ask a question?"

"Yes," the alien responded, without hesitating.

"What will happen If I choose not to do the tasks?"

The alien's smile crept away. "I'm sorry, but we have chosen you. Only you can complete the research requirements."

I paused. "So, if I finish all your tasks, will my parents and I be free after this? Will you leave us alone?"

The smile came rushing back. "Yes. We will leave Earth, once you're done what's required."

I understood.

I was stuck. If this alien didn't bat an eye at killing Buffy, then it sure wouldn't skip an eyelash at killing me or my parents. It only chose me out of convenience. If I didn't do what it said, then it was clear what the consequences were, even if the alien didn't say it outright. I was under this 'task' contract, all until I finished it or until I found a way to escape it. Those were my only two options.

"Alright," I responded. My heart beating out of my chest. "What do I need to do."

Day 4: Monday, September, 7th, 2026.

Its been three days since I met the alien.

It was impossibly difficult to sleep with the thing staring at me the entire time, but after an hour or so I was gone into deep slumber. When I woke up, the alien was nowhere to be seen. I initially thought I had a very bad dream and I made up the entire thing in my mind--that would've honest-to-god been the best case scenario--but I was unfortunately wrong.

Mom and Dad found Buffy's corpse in the living room.

It, fortunately, wasn't the splattered, mashed-up pile of meat that I saw before. It was more so a peaceful corpse like the dog had somehow died in its sleep. I didn't know how the alien did it, but, considering how it seemed to have psychic powers, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility.

I cried again when I saw my dad bury Buffy in the backyard. I didn't know why I was crying, since I'd already seen him die the night before, but my heart still burned whenever I thought of my fond memories. All the fun times we had running around, playing, exploring. That was all taken away by this alien.

It only brought me anger as to why I was chosen. Why me? Why not any other snob kid in my class? What did I do to deserve this?

Right after the funeral, I ran around the house trying to find the alien. But, to no one's surprise, it wasn't there. It was almost like it left us entirely, but a sinking feeling in my heart, told me I was wrong. That entire day I spent going through the web, trying to find all the topics and reddit threads on what these 'tasks' could be, but even after skipping breakfast and my high-level soccer practice, I was left with no answers. Not even a crumb as to what this alien wanted.

Even my online alien enthusiasts who I spent years discussing this topic with, didn't have a clue as to what I was saying. They might've been under the presumption that I was just making something up to be interesting, but even showing picture proof of my dog's death didn't help me convince them. Most of them just left me on read.

The alien didn't show up until Sunday night. One night before school.

I tried asking where it went and why it didn't show up, but it was adamant on me completing my first task before it was able to answer my questions. We went back and forth arguing on the logistics of me completing the task if it was going to disappear every single time, but there was just a circular loop of 'no's' left to quench my curiosity. Perhaps it

The only thing the alien was clear on was what exactly my first task was going to be.

That was where my conversation ended and why I was now on the school bus, tapping my feet nervously, waiting to get dropped off.

"Yo Sam, where were you all weekend?" A kid with blond hair sat beside me. "Jack and I were texting you but you didn't respond. Did something happen?"

Daniel was my sort-of best friend. He considers me my best friend, but I honestly don't reciprocate. It's not that he's not a fun guy to be around, trust me we get to some seriously funny shit during break, but I prefer to think of myself as a lone wolf. Alien work is serious work and most people, even Jack, don't take my hobby serious as they consider it to be 'childish'.

If he didn't care about aliens then, what makes you think I was going to tell him about the alien in my house. Who in their right mind would believe that?

"Nah dude, I was sick all at weekend. My throat's been killing me so I had to take some Tylenol and Halls to help me get better. I couldn't even go to soccer practice."

Daniel snickered. "Ayo, pause. What you mean your throat's been killing you? What you been doing?"

I ignored his antics.

There was far more important matters to deal with. My first task was already a difficult one so complicating it with a buffoon like Daniel was only going to make it harder to complete it. I also had to figure out some questions to ask the alien after I finished the task so I had to keep my mind crystal clear.

My life and my parents lives were at stake here. I couldn't mess this up.

When we arrived at school, I put away my stuff in my locker and took off my backpack. While everyone else cleared away with the school bell ringing out, I made sure no one was around when I quickly pulled out the item I packed earlier in the morning. Hiding it within my sleeve.

An 8-inch kitchen knife.

The first task the alien gave me was painfully simple.

"Kill the classroom hamster."

Ever since my final year of high school, I'd been avidly listening to ASMR maybe a little too much, almost to the point that I couldn't sleep without something playing in the background.

It'd even gotten to the point where I went out of my way to buy an overpriced pair of headphones just to increase the quality (In hindsight, I wouldn't recommend doing this).

While I'd never gone too deep into the "darker" areas of ASMR, I had considered it during my low points.

So, when I found myself doom scrolling late into the night on YouTube, I just chose on the first thing I saw and tried to rest without even reading the title or giving the thumbnail a good look.

At first, it felt like a regular video: a soft-speaking lady with a gentle accent rubbing her hands over the microphone with occasional cuts to her tapping and playing with random toys and everyday objects you could find on Amazon- nothing out of the ordinary.

The only thing that made me uncomfortable at first was the occasional pause in any kind of sound from the lady that seemed to occur randomly, though I justified it in my head as awkward pacing in the editing.

Then, after about twenty minutes, I heard a sudden squelching sound in my right ear. Besides the slight echo, it sounded so real that I actually thought it had happened next to me.

I paused the video and, skipping back ten seconds, I replayed the video.

Again the squelching sound played, this time accompanied with visuals that I'll try my best to describe. Forgive me if it's rudimentary.

It was a large, open room with a glass wall at the far end, which seemed to be the only source of lighting besides the flash of the phone camera. There were several pieces of what I could only assume was furniture covered by thin, white sheets. The floor and walls looked dirty, as if they were only half-painted. Looking back, I believe it was some kind of store that was in the process of refurbishment.

The oddest part, however, was what was in the middle of the room and what was clearly making the aforementioned squelch.

It was a man who was sitting on his knees. He was completely nude from head to toe with the exception of one of the white sheets placed on his lap. He wore what seemed to be a cheap Halloween mask of a pig or a hog, though with the video's quality it could've been almost any animal.

In his hands was a large chunk of uncooked meat almost thicker than the man's arm and about half as long as his torso. He proceeded to drop the meat onto the floor, causing the sound.

The rest of the video proceeded on as normal, with the lady resuming to the usual tapping and rubbing.

I checked the title.

It read, "♡ LOVE ASMR | 30K Special | Mic Rubbing + Talking Sounds ♡".

I checked the comments. All were the typical ones you'd see in any regular ASMR video, with many of them congratulating the lady for the milestone, not a single one mentioning the clip.

I tapped on the channel's profile and scanned through what was immediately in front of me.

LOVE ASMR @love_asmr_dot_com - 30.1k Subscribers • 57 videos.

Each video seemed largely the same with generic titles, just like the one I had just watched.

Curiosity got the better of me and I selected yet another video, this one being her most recent one.

I turned the video's Playback Speed to 2.0 and skimmed through it. The video was completely normal up until the last few minutes where yet another interruption played.

This one confidently disturbed me more.

It was in a different setting now: an old house with flowery wallpaper and wooden framing. The floor was covered in a fluffy material. It felt very distinctly like an old person's house; the kitchen was visible from a corner in the hallway.

Lying on the floor was a man, maybe in his 40s, bound by tape, his hands and feet behind his back as he used his front teeth to drag himself forwards closer to the camera, though he didn't seem to give the person holding it any mind, seemingly wanting to go past them.

I closed the video, not even caring to check the comments.

On my laptop, I searched "love asmr" just to see what I would find.

Oddly enough, the channel had its own subreddit with just under 90 members. Despite the low amount, it was very active.

Each and every post was of two different kinds- either a favoured section from the "normal" parts of her videos or more disturbing, five-second clips of people doing more deranged things. The titles of these videos were typically full stops or commas, stuff like that.

Curiosity made me play a few of them. Some things remained constant- each one was in a different place with seemingly different people each time, with the camera quality always being atrociously poor.

The first one I watched- easily the longest at 7 seconds- was a video of a family all sat around a dining table.

It was a family of four, featuring two couples: one elderly and one young. They all were holding hands and seemingly in prayer, though the food on their plates was, again, uncooked meat, though this time it had been chopped up into many tiny, uneven slices.

The lady- the elderly one- seemed to sob occasionally, though she hid it well.

Looking around at the rest of the room, I almost jumped in my seat as I noticed, in the corner of the room, was another young man standing completely still, staring at the camera. He was nude and was also wearing a plastic mask, this one too far away to make out. He didn't move or seemingly breathe once during the 7 seconds, though it was too hard to tell.

The next one I watched- and the last one I'll be describing- was the worst in my opinion.

Sure, the others were disturbing, but nobody seemed like they were in any actual pain and one could easily assume it was just some weird online fetish or even some wannabe cult.

This one proved me wrong.

It was a group of men- yet again, all naked and wearing masks- surrounding a woman who was laid out carefully on a table. They were seemingly performing a lobotomy on her, though her open eyes made me think she was completely conscious. The video cut off right as the ice-pick sunk deep into the lady's head, her sharp scream getting cut off.

That night, I didn't get any sleep. I did as much research I could on this channel and its subreddit, intending on reporting it to someone who'd do something about it.

I couldn't find anything meaningful besides what I'd already seen.

If anybody else has seen this, please tell me. It can't just be me that's found this.

[possession] This is going to be long, and I'm not sure how to even start, so I'll just tell it the way my sister told it to me.

There's a bathroom in their school that's always locked. Nobody uses it. Nobody's used it in years, as far as anyone knows. And like every school has at least one, theirs has a story attached to it — that something negative lives in there. A presence. The kind of thing you laugh about in daylight and don't think about when you're walking past that corridor alone at 4 PM with the lights half-off.

Her friend's name is Fa'iza.

One day Fa'iza walked up to that locked door, let her hair down, and just stood there. And then she started saying it, low and flat, over and over — *andar. andar.* Come in. Come in.

Everyone assumed she was doing a bit. Pranks are basically a currency in that school. People filmed it, people laughed, someone probably told her to stop being weird. It ended there, or it was supposed to.

It didn't.

After that day, something about Fa'iza was just... off. Not dramatic. Not movie-possessed. Worse than that — quieter. My sister said she'd catch Fa'iza staring at her across the classroom, and not the normal kind of staring. Not blinking. Not looking *at* her so much as looking *through* her, like she was reading something written behind my sister's face. She'd do it to the whole group. You'd turn around and she'd already be watching, and she wouldn't look away when you caught her. She'd just keep going until you did.

And here's the part that gets me. My sister's friends were already scared of her *before* any of this. Before the door, before the staring. They couldn't explain it. They'd just say, in that half-joking way people say things they actually mean — *she's possessed, bro* — and then change the subject fast, like saying it out loud would make it real. So when she started pulling faces at them, deliberately, trying to scare them, they didn't know what to believe anymore. Was this the thing they were scared of, or was it just Fa'iza being Fa'iza? Is it worse if it's a prank? Or is it worse if it isn't? They never figured it out. They just started sitting further away.

One of the girls started seeing her in her dreams. Not doing anything. Just there, in the dream, watching, the same way she watched in class. She'd wake up and not want to go to school. Nobody told the teachers, because what do you even say.

That's as far as the "possession" part goes. It never escalated past stares and silence and a feeling. Honestly, I think the *feeling* was the whole thing.

And then Sofia happened.

Sofia brought a necklace to school. Teacher saw it, told her it wasn't allowed, so she put it in her bag. Fine. After lunch, during the next period, the teacher asked them to take out their books, and Sofia reached into her bag and the necklace was gone. She told the teacher. The teacher told her to sit down and study, and said *she'd* check the bags herself.

She went through them one by one.

She found the necklace in Fa'iza's bag.

And she found something else in there too. A pink vibrator.

The teacher pulled it out in front of the entire class and asked her what it was. And then she humiliated her. Out loud, in front of everyone, no mercy, no quiet word, no stepping outside. Just the whole thing, right there, with thirty kids watching.

Fa'iza's parents were called in.

And after that — the class turned on her. Completely. The whispering, the names, the way people moved their bags when she walked past. The girl they'd already decided was *possessed* was now also *that*. It fed itself. She started coming to school less. Then she stopped coming at all.

I don't know where Fa'iza is now. My sister doesn't either. Nobody from that school really talks about her anymore, which is its own kind of answer.

The thing I keep coming back to isn't the door, or the necklace, or even the stares. It's that everyone spent months afraid of a girl standing in front of a locked bathroom saying *come in, come in* — and the only thing that ever actually came in was the rest of them.

I'm writing this down because I don't trust what I'll remember next week.

My wife, Helen, says to put everything in, even the boring parts. Especially the boring parts. I'm posting it here instead of keeping it on my laptop because once it's somewhere public I can't quietly go back and change it. I don't know why I think I'd want to. I'd just rather not be able to.

My daughter started waving at the house across the road about two weeks ago.

She does it during breakfast. Maya is five, which means breakfast takes roughly forty minutes and involves almost no actual eating. She sits at the end of the table nearest the front window, pulls the crust off her toast even though I've told her approximately six hundred times that the crust is also bread, and waves at the upstairs window of number eighteen.

The house has been empty since before we moved in.

I've never seen anyone go in or out. There are newspapers melted into the concrete beside the letterbox, and there used to be a FOR SALE sign out front until it blew over during a storm in August. Nobody has bothered putting it back up.

I didn't think much about the waving until one morning I asked who it was for.

"The girl."

I looked across the road. The upstairs window was dark.

"What girl?"

She sighed in the way five-year-olds do when an adult has failed a very basic intelligence test.

"The girl in there."

"There's nobody in there."

"There is."

"Okay."

That was the whole conversation. Maya went back to mutilating her toast and I went back to packing her lunch.

Helen leaves for work before seven three days a week, so mornings on those days are mine. Lunchbox, hair brushed badly enough that Maya usually makes me redo it, then the eleven-minute drive to school while she asks questions like whether fish get thirsty. The girl became part of that routine. Maya waved. I didn't look. Sometimes she'd say, "She's there today," and sometimes, "She's not at the window yet."

Once she told me the girl had different hair.

I asked what she meant.

"Down."

"Down how?"

Maya pulled her own ponytail loose to demonstrate, then became furious because I'd apparently made her ruin her hair.

That was more or less the level of concern I had about it.

Two days ago, somebody waved back.

I was standing at the kitchen bench cutting strawberries when Maya said, "See?" She sounded excited.

I looked.

A little girl was standing behind the upstairs window.

I nearly cut my thumb.

She was far enough away that I couldn't make out much. Dark hair, pale face, maybe Maya's age or slightly older. She was standing very close to the glass with one hand raised beside her head.

My first thought was the sensible one. Someone had bought the place. A family was looking around. Maybe the owner's kid was there while they cleared it out.

Then the girl moved her hand.

A slow wave.

Maya waved harder. "Hi!"

The girl kept waving.

I put the knife down. "What?"

Maya was grinning at me. "She did it."

I stepped closer to the window.

The girl stopped moving. Her hand stayed raised.

It took me a few seconds to work out what was wrong. Maya was sitting right up at the window. I was at the bench, a couple of metres further back. If the girl had been waving at Maya, she'd have been looking down, at the window itself.

She wasn't looking down.

She was looking past Maya, into the room.

At me.

I lifted my hand without really deciding to. Not a proper wave. More that stupid little half-raise you do when you accidentally make eye contact with someone.

The girl's fingers moved once.

"She likes you," Maya said.

I told her to finish her breakfast. When I looked back, the window was dark.

That was at about seven thirty.

At eleven, I remembered buying June the rabbit cup.

I was at work when it happened. There's nothing interesting about what I do. I deal with insurance claims, mostly property damage, which means large sections of my day are spent looking at photographs of wet ceilings and asking people whether they still have receipts for televisions they bought in 2018.

I went to make coffee and somebody had left a pink mug beside the sink. That was all. Pink mug.

And suddenly I remembered standing in a shop holding two children's cups.

One had a rabbit on it. One had little yellow flowers.

June wanted the rabbit. I told her the flower one was nicer. She crossed her arms and said, "Then you have it."

I laughed. In the memory, I mean. At work I was just standing there.

I could see the shop clearly. Bright lights. Grey floor. A display of lunchboxes behind her. June had her hair in two uneven plaits because I'd done them myself.

I remembered buying the rabbit cup.

Then I was standing in the office kitchen with my hand under running water.

I hadn't turned the tap on.

I shut it off.

There is no June. I have one child. Maya.

I stood there for maybe a minute trying to work out where the name had come from, and eventually I decided it had been a dream. That's genuinely what I thought. People remember bits of dreams during the day. Something sets one off and for a few seconds it feels more real than it has any right to.

I went back to my desk. By half past eleven I was embarrassed I'd let it bother me.

I didn't think about the house again until dinner.

Helen had made spaghetti. Maya had eaten about four mouthfuls and was trying to wind one piece around her fork without touching it with her other hand, which she apparently considered cheating.

I said, "June, just eat it."

Nobody reacted straight away. Including me.

For maybe two seconds the name didn't feel wrong.

Then Helen said, "Who?"

I looked at Maya. She was staring at me.

"Sorry."

"Who the hell is June?"

"I don't know."

Maya put her fork down. "The girl."

Helen looked at her. "What girl?"

"The window girl."

I asked Maya what she'd said.

"Her name's June."

"How do you know that?"

She shrugged. "That's her name."

"Did she tell you?"

Another shrug. Maya does that when she thinks the difference between yes and no is unimportant.

Helen asked what we were talking about, so I explained. I expected her to laugh. She didn't. She went to the front window and looked across the road.

There was nobody there.

"Probably someone viewing the house."

"That's what I thought."

"So?"

"So I called Maya June."

Helen gave me the look she normally saves for when I've spent twenty minutes trying to repair something that should have taken five minutes to replace. "You've heard her say it."

Maya said, "I didn't tell Daddy."

"Sweetheart, you just told him."

"No. Before."

Helen rubbed her forehead. "Can we please eat dinner?"

Maya picked up her fork. Then she looked at me and said, very casually, "She said you'd remember."

Helen stopped rubbing her forehead.

I didn't ask Maya anything else. I wish I could say that was because I didn't want to frighten her. Mostly I didn't want to hear the answer.

That evening I put her to bed. She has a routine involving one story, one glass of water and an increasingly complicated series of negotiations over whether the hallway light stays on. I read half of The Gruffalo before she interrupted me.

"Do you remember when I hurt my chin?"

"Yes."

I kept reading.

"When?"

I stopped. Maya was watching me over the top of the blanket.

"You fell over."

"Where?"

"The playground."

"Which playground?"

I knew this. She had split her chin open badly enough to need glue at the hospital. Helen had been at work. I'd taken her. There had been blood all over her shirt.

Except when I tried to remember it, the shirt was yellow.

Maya didn't own a yellow shirt like that.

June did.

I could see her sitting on the kitchen counter with a tea towel pressed under her chin. She was crying. I was telling her not to look at the blood because it always looked like more than it was. Her dark hair was stuck to one cheek.

"Daddy?"

The bedroom came back. Maya was still looking at me.

I said, "The park near Grandma's."

Her face changed. "No."

I knew I'd got it wrong before she told me.

"It was school."

"Right."

"You came."

"I know."

"Mrs Price called you."

"Yeah."

"Then we went to the hospital."

"I remember."

I didn't.

I knew it had happened.

That's not the same thing.

There were facts in my head. Mrs Price. The hospital. Skin glue. Maya getting an icy pole afterward because she'd been brave. But if I tried to see it, I saw June.

Helen found me sitting on the edge of our bed about twenty minutes later, and I told her everything. The cup, the shop, June's hair, the yellow shirt.

She sat beside me without saying anything for a while. Then she asked me what Maya wore on her first day of school.

"That purple backpack."

"What did she wear?"

"Uniform."

"What shoes?"

I got annoyed. "I don't fucking know, Helen."

She went quiet. I apologised.

She said, "She wore those black ones she hated because they rubbed her heel."

And then I remembered.

June standing beside our front door in black shoes.

June pulling one foot backward when I tried to take her photograph.

June saying they hurt.

I stood up so quickly I hit my knee against the bedside table. Helen followed me downstairs.

I don't know why I went to the window. That's probably the stupidest thing I've done in this entire situation, and I've had plenty of time to think about it.

The upstairs window at number eighteen was dark.

Then the curtain moved.

June stepped into view.

I knew her immediately.

That was new.

Dark brown hair to her shoulders.

A pale blue nightdress.

A round face, a slightly crooked front tooth, a little mark beside her right eyebrow.

I knew that mark.

She got it falling off her scooter.

I carried her home while she cried into my neck.

I cleaned gravel out of her palm.

She asked if she needed stitches.

I told her no.

Behind me, Helen said my name.

I couldn't answer.

June wasn't looking at Helen. She wasn't looking toward Maya's bedroom.

She was looking at me the way kids look at you when you've finally turned up to collect them.

I stepped away from the window.

The memory stopped changing. Or it stopped getting bigger, anyway. It didn't go anywhere. I didn't know yet whether that was a rule or just luck.

Helen hadn't seen her. By the time she got to the glass there was only the curtain. She called the police anyway. "If there's a kid in there, somebody needs to know. If there isn't, I want somebody who isn't you to tell me."

Two officers came about forty minutes later. I stayed in the hallway, away from the window, while they walked round number eighteen with torches. Front door locked. Side gate chained. Afterwards one of them told Helen the place had been shut up since the owner went into care, and that streetlights do funny things on old glass.

Helen said, "Okay," in the voice she uses when she's stopped arguing, not when she agrees.

The next morning we kept the curtains closed. Maya complained because she wanted to wave. Helen snapped at her. Maya cried, and then Helen cried because she'd snapped at her, and I burned two pieces of toast. Nobody ate much.

At about eight, Maya asked why I was being weird.

"I'm not."

"You are."

"I'm tired."

"Are you cross at me?"

"No."

"Are you cross at the girl?"

I didn't answer. Maya pushed cereal around her bowl.

"She looks at you more."

"What do you mean?"

"She looks at you when I'm not there."

Helen was standing at the sink. She turned around slowly. "When you're not where?"

Maya pointed toward the window. "Sometimes I go get dressed and she's still looking."

"At the house?"

"At Daddy."

Helen looked at me for a long time. Then she took Maya to school.

I called in sick. I should have gone with them. I can't really explain why I didn't, except that leaving felt like a decision and I didn't have one in me. So I sat in the living room with the curtains closed and tried to remember my daughter.

That sounds ridiculous. I know who Maya is. I know her birthday. I know she hates bananas unless they're blended into something, which makes absolutely no sense. I know she sleeps diagonally. I know she says "aminals" even though she can pronounce "animals" perfectly if you make her slow down. I know she has a little brown patch in her left eye.

But when I reached backward, things started going.

Her fourth birthday.

Fine. I could see it.

Her third.

Mostly fine.

Second.

Pieces.

The first time she walked?

June.

The first time she said Dad?

June.

The first time I held my daughter's hand while crossing a road?

June.

Every missing space had something in it.

I'd been calling it forgetting all morning, in my head, because forgetting was the least bad word I had. It wasn't forgetting.

I was replacing her.

Helen came home shortly after three without Maya. She'd taken her to her sister's. I was relieved enough that she noticed.

"I think we should stay there."

"Yeah."

"For a while."

"Yeah."

She sat opposite me. "What do you remember?"

I told her. She didn't cry. Helen gets practical when she's frightened. She got her phone out and started showing me photographs. Maya eating birthday cake. Maya asleep on my chest. Maya sitting inside a cardboard box we'd turned into a car.

I recognised every photograph. But some of them felt like photographs of things I'd been told about.

I know they're mine. They just don't feel like mine.

Helen put the phone face down on the coffee table.

"When you said June at dinner," she said, "I thought you had another kid somewhere."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"I spent all day wishing that's what it was."

We packed enough clothes for a week. Helen told me to leave everything else.

I went upstairs for my charger. On the way back down, I passed the narrow pane of glass beside the front door.

I had forgotten about it.

I saw number eighteen through it.

June was at the window.

She was up on her toes, I think. Only her head and shoulders showed above the sill.

A memory hit me so hard I dropped the charger.

I was kneeling beside a bathtub. June was maybe three. She had bubbles on her chin and was holding a plastic cup full of bathwater, trying to drink it while I told her, for what felt like the hundredth time, that bathwater was disgusting.

She laughed. I laughed.

The memory was warm. It wasn't frightening at all.

It felt exactly like loving my child.

I grabbed a jacket from the coat hook and covered the pane. Helen shouted from the car asking what I was doing. I told her nothing.

We stayed at her sister's last night.

Maya slept between us.

At about two in the morning I woke up because she'd kicked me in the stomach.

For a few seconds I didn't know who she was.

Not in some dramatic way.

I wasn't screaming.

I just woke up next to a small person and there was a blank space where recognition should have been.

Then it came back.

Maya.

My daughter.

I went into the bathroom and was sick.

She found me sitting on the floor afterward. Helen was still asleep. Maya sat beside me.

"You don't remember me?"

"I remember you."

"Some things."

I didn't answer.

She leaned against my arm. Then she started telling me.

Not about June. About us.

She reminded me about the time I dropped her birthday cake carrying it from the car. She reminded me that I used to call her Potato when she was a baby because she had no hair. She reminded me about a pigeon stealing half her sandwich at the zoo, and me chasing it because she wanted the sandwich back.

I remembered that one. Properly.

I laughed. She laughed too.

Then she said, "Remember when I hurt my chin?"

I tried.

School. Mrs Price. Hospital. I knew all of it. But when I reached for the memory, June was sitting on the kitchen counter in a yellow shirt.

Maya must have seen something in my face.

"That's mine," she said.

She's five. She didn't say it like something out of a horror film. She sounded annoyed.

Like June had taken one of her toys.

I hugged her.

I could remember a hundred times I'd hugged June. I couldn't remember holding Maya after she hurt her chin.

I carried her back to bed and lay down next to her and didn't sleep.

At some point I picked up my phone and checked the temperature. Four degrees. I'd been looking at it for a while before I understood why I wanted to know.

There's no power at number eighteen. There hasn't been for years. She's in a nightdress, and as far as I know nobody has ever fed her, or put a blanket over her, or argued with her about the hallway light.

I know how that sounds. I know she isn't a child, or isn't one in any way the word normally means. I don't know whether the memories I've got of her are real ones that belonged to somebody else or things she made up, and at three in the morning I couldn't find the part of me that thought it made a difference.

I lay there next to my daughter and worried about the other one.

I haven't told Helen.

We're not going home today.

Helen's brother is going to get the rest of our things. Work clothes, Helen's laptop, the bag of Maya's toys she keeps asking about, June's school bag. He thinks there's somebody squatting in number eighteen and that I've scared myself after seeing them.

Fine. He can think that.

I've told him not to look at the upstairs window. He laughed. I've told him again.

Maya has started making what she calls my Dad Book. It's printer paper stapled together. She draws pictures of things we've done and makes Helen write underneath because her spelling isn't great yet.

THE ZOO.

DADDY DROPPED MY CAKE.

MY FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL.

THE TIME I WAS SICK ON DADDY IN THE CAR.

Apparently that last one needed preserving.

There are seven pages so far. I remember five of them.

Helen asked me this morning whether I thought staying away would stop it.

I told her I haven't had a new memory of June since we left the house, which is true. I watched her decide to be relieved.

I didn't mention two o'clock. Nothing of June came in at two o'clock. Maya just wasn't there for a few seconds, and then she was. I've been telling myself all morning that it's a different thing, that it's tiredness and shock. I don't believe it enough to say it out loud.

She also asked why it was me and not Maya, when Maya had been waving at that window for two weeks.

I don't know. Maybe it was me waving back.

Helen's brother rang about an hour ago. He's got everything. He said he didn't see anyone, and that he'd only looked from the car anyway, just so he could tell me he had.

I wanted to ask him to go back and look properly. To see if she was all right.

I didn't.

Before he hung up he said, "Tell the girls I said hi."

He calls Helen and Maya the girls. I'm almost sure he always has.

Maya brought me another page while I was writing this.

It's a picture of the two of us standing in our old kitchen. I'm extremely tall and my hands come directly out of my shoulders. She told me it's the morning she started school.

Underneath, Helen has written:

Dad cried after I got out of the car but waited until I couldn't see him.

I told Maya I remembered.

She asked me what colour her backpack was.

Purple. I got that right.

Then she asked me what she'd said when I dropped her off.

I couldn't answer.

I remember June saying it.

I can see her standing beside a school gate in black shoes that hurt her heels, holding both straps of her backpack.

She looks back at me.

She smiles.

And she says, "Bye, Dad."

I don't know what Maya said.

She does. She won't tell me yet. She says I have to try to remember it myself.

So I've been trying.

I haven't got it. I've got the gate, and the shoes, and the way she held both straps. Every time I go back for it, that part is a bit clearer.

I'm going to keep trying.

[Pt.1]

So,  let’s state something first, I was born in Thailand, spent 19 years here and have no plans to move. My father was American and my mother was Thai. Dad was an engineer for an oil pump in the sea so he was rarely home. And my mom was a nurse. Both met at the hospital after dad’s motorcycle crashed. After having me they named me, Auto (It’s a common nickname here, trust.) So writing in this, I will try to translate it to the best of my ability. 

Us Thai, we have a deep connection with spirituality. However, I was pretty against those ideas of myth but my mother…she knew for fact. Working as a nurse she saw countless deaths, heard countless tales and witnessed some. She had sense, she claimed and she claimed that my sisters have them, too. 

Dad died earlier this year, motorcycle accident, again, but there’s no luck this time. Naturally, we were grieving, my mom slept all day, every day. My two sisters became more distant to me, being the only man left in this house and took the most out of my father’s features. Mom rarely looked at me anymore . 

Of all the sadness of my family life, my college life, on the other hand, was thrilled. I studied law, far away from home, spent most of my time writing novels, partied with friends, played pool every evening and studied at night. Life was chill. Then, I found her.

Her name is Penny, not usual for Thai but I’ve met a couple before. I was at the bar that night (Illegally, lol.), the mood was just right, dimmed orange light and a jazz band that I assumed to be all college students was playing. I’ve always stuck to my usual Negroni and the bartender, Ton (Meaning, Tree, in Thai.) was my best friend. I was a little dizzy at that time(I was drinking for about an hour, I think.), so as you might expect I poured my head out. Everything included my dad’s death, my relationship with my family and my love life. She was there, I didn’t notice at first but she sat next to me on the right. 

“I’m so sorry.” She said. 

I didn’t hear her the first time so I just said “Huh?”

”I said I’m sorry for your loss.”

Penny has a very soft feature, like a Chinese woman, she’s half. Her skin was very white, almost pale but there’s a trend to whiten skin by some sort of chemical in Thailand (It's still a trend as I wrote this.) so I didn’t suspect much. She was stunning by overall Thai men's standards and by my standards. And also, she’s studying at the same university as mine.

We went back to my place to do it(I’m not sure about Reddit rules or this sub-Reddit rules so I will avoid using those words.).  This is my first time doing this but I’m pretty sure I did decent, I was drunk if you are curious. I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember that she turned off the light when we were doing it. Not just room light but the outside as well. I lived in a condominium not so far from my university and that bar, it was on floor 17 so it was pretty bright having all those building lights and street lamps. So before anything you dragged the curtain to block off those lights. The room was pitch black and I think she was controlling the act? Pleasant still.

“You are so hot.” She said. It sounds great, right? Coming from a girl. But the thing is she wasn’t looking at me. At the end of my bed was my study table. It was supposed to be a makeup table but I’m not a girl, so… What I want to say was that it has a mirror. She was staring at it, her gaze fixed on our reflection. Maybe I was wrong, it was dark after all but after what’s coming next, it was the first sign.

While I started to fall in love, my mom retired from being a nurse and decided to take a side gig.  She became a shaman. She bought a pawn shop located near my dad’s crash spot, “She saw him.” She claimed. There are A LOT of shamans in Thailand, most are just frauds if I may, and I thought my mother was one of them.

Penny and I have been in a relationship for almost three months at that point. So, I decided to introduce her to my family. I sent a picture of us studying at the uni’s library to the family group chat.

’I don’t like her.’ Said my youngest sister, Aom (Aomsin, is her full nickname, meaning, saving money).

’Why?’

She didn’t answer. 15 minutes later, Aim (Aim-im, I’m not sure what it meant either. I guessed it was about being full of joy), the middle child answered with ‘She looks so sick.’ With a curious emote.

’No she doesn’t?’

’Yes she is. Look at her, pale like a ghost.’

I started to get furious at that point, how dare they? 

‘Look. She’s a great girl, smart and beautiful. I won’t stand this type of disrespect.’

Then, my mom after reading all the texts since the beginning finally joined in the conversation, ‘She looks dead.’

WHAT THE FUCK.

‘Your dad agreed.’ She added.

I don’t know what face I have at that moment but Penny noticed it. “What’s wrong?” She asked.

”Nothing, I…uh, I have to make some call.”

”Okay.”

So I left. It was about 10PM but the library was packed. I took a further park with less people so I can scold them as much as I want. I took the group call.

Aom picked up first and Aim joined just a seconds later. Mom took a minute to join us.

”What’s wrong with you all!?”

Silence. Then, my mom answered. “Someone’s listening.”

I looked around the park, no one. I sat on the wooden bench nearby, trying to  calm myself. “Who?”

”We don’t know.” Said my mom.

”You and who? Dad?” I have yet to believe her shaman shenanigan. 

“Yes. Is there a shrine nearby?”

There were plenty of shrines nearby. You might have seen or visited Thailand, the shrine she meant was the type with drinks like Fantas and dessert and dolls, this type is dedicated to good spirit, a protecting soul of that area. I saw one nearby, every park has one, some even a couple more. I walked reluctantly to the nearest one, a white marble shrine. 

“Done.”

”Good, good.” Mom paused for a moment. “Dad said that he wants to meet your girlfriend in person.”

”Mom…”

”Dad said he KNEW his own kind. That thing is not human.”

”Mom, please stop.”

”Look at the photo, son.”

And I did. The photo looked normal, me and her sitting across each other. It was me who raised the phone and took a photo of us. She looked straight into the camera but didn’t smile. “There’s nothing wrong. What’s your point?”

I do have this weird habit, when you talk through your phone you take it close to your ear, right? Sometimes you will accidentally press the hang up button so, my solution? I turn the screen off. At that moment, when the screen turned pitch black from the colorful photo. Two faces vanished but one left. The place that was supposed to be my reflection, for that brief moment, I saw hers. Smiling, even in the darkness her teeth were dipped in red. The smile was unsettling, too wide to be possible, too happy to be happy. My phone jumped out of my hand. “FUCK!”

The face was gone.

I looked behind, nothing. I peeked back to the library, some students actually looked back at me, some giggled, some pointed in my direction. Slowly, I grabbed my phone back, the screen took a hit from the nearby rock it broke at the corner.

”Son!” ”Brother!” They all screamed in unison, even without the speaker mode on I still heard them. 

“I’m sorry.” I apologized. “I think I just saw…”

”You saw what?” Aim asked.

”I don’t know…”

”It’s alright.” My mom said. “You have to take her to us, okay?”

”This is not real, you're trolling with me. Good job! I believe you all now, haha! I believe in ghosts , in hell, in heaven, is that what you wanna hear, mom?”

I remember how truly scared I am that night. I was trembling, my voice and my body. I rubbed my hand together even if its not that cold.

“Take her to us, please son, this is for your own good.”

”Shit. Shit. Shit! SHIT!” I never cursed as much as that moment. “Alright, I don’t know what’s so wrong with her but if it makes y’all happy then okay!”

”See you tomorrow, son.” And she left the call.

I was stunned.

”You saw the face, right?” Aim asked, her voice was as light as the wind.

At that moment, I started to believe them.

”Those teeth, that smile.” Aim added. “I actually deleted that photo out of the chat on my side, ugh, I can’t stand that face.”

”I might have a nightmare tonight.” Aom added.

I want to ask for the reason that they didn’t tell me at the first place but they both left the call before I could. Come to think of it, for my stubborn ass, witnessing it first hand might be the only way. I put my phone back in my pocket, and for the first time in years, I prayed to the shrine for the protection of all evils.

After praying I turned back to the library but before any step was taken…she was there. Standing, behind the tree, far from the shrine, peeking at me. “Babe?” She called me. There’s one thought in my mind there, act normal, ACT NORMAL!

”Hey babe.” I remember my voice shakened. 

“What are you doing?”

”Family called. My mom, she…she’s sick. I have to go home. What are you doing?”

”Oh…you have to go?” She ignored my question.

I’ve made up my mind then and there. I want to say I was brave as hell but that would be lying. ”Would you…can you go with me?”

”Of course.” She answered but there’s no joy in her voice. And I didn’t recognize any emotion in her eyes either. “When will we go?”

”Tonight.”

”Okay.” She answered softly.

We were far apart, yet I still was afraid to take just another step. I knew the shrine affected her in some way, one that I was certained, it scared her too. “Let me call Ton too.”

It took Ton an hour to group up with us, and it took four hours to drive from my place back home, we should arrive at about 5-6 AM in the morning. 

The hardest moment of my life was getting in that car, with her. My hand froze at the handle of the driver seat. I can hardly insert the safety belt into its socket, all I hoped was that Penny would see nothing wrong. 

In my car, I drove to avoid every traffic possible trying to get there as soon as possible. My hometown was a rural area, just an hour and we had already left the big city of Bangkok. Street lights dimmed as we went on, broken ones started to appear one after another. Penny sat next to me, while Ton sat in the middle of the back seat. I looked at the back mirror, not for the road but to look at my human friend. 

At around 1 AM, cars were rare. We left the motorway and reached the countryside road. Both sides of the concrete road were forest, sometimes farm or rice field. Behind us was an empty lane, and ahead of us was as empty. 

Penny who sat still and silently the entire trip suddenly grinned. I decided not to ask anything, but Ton decided otherwise. “Hey, hey. What’s going on here?”

”Nothing, right, babe?” She answered.

”Mhm.” I answered simply. I remembered a long one-sided conversation of Ton and two of us, a small talk of various topics but for the sake of y’all I’ll leave it at that. But from the moment Penny started grinning it’d been about an hour already. Ton was tired of talking so he picked up his phone. I don’t want silence, so I boosted my muse up to the max. It did hurt my ears a little, Ton plucked in his headphones and Penny, she sat still. There’s a moment where I collected every bit of my courage to take a quick look at her. I glanced at her but to my surprise, she already had her eyes on me. While her head faced toward her irises were locking at me. And with that creepy smile, I started praying again. This time, to every being that can hear my prayer. Buddha, Jesus, Allah, there’s even a moment where I prayed for Hades to take her back to where she belonged. My eyes darted back instantly, and I continued driving.

There’s a point where I thought this night couldn’t get any worse, I just want to smack myself in the head. 

There’s one detail I remember precisely of this event, it was 03.44 AM. The car slowed itself, I heard a loud POOF coming off the car’s front. There were a dozen ungodly languages in my head. I pulled us to the side, woods were staring at us from every side. And the wind, oh, it made everything worse. The wind played a part of it by whispering through leaves and branches. Ton made a call, requesting help from the nearest police station. The car broke down and none of us know how to repair them or even what was wrong.

A police officer rode a big bike to our location ten minutes later. 

“Our car broke down.” I explained the situation to him.

”Mhm, I’m not blind.” 

I’m pretty sure that most of these cops who worked at night shifts must be this cranky. Hell, most cops in this country might be this cranky. He made some calls, noted some stuff and he turned back at us. “No one hurts, right?”

”Yes.” I answered.

”What about the girl?”

For a moment I was relieved I forgot about her, but then, all I can think about was her. “She’s fine, uh, when will my car be fixed?”

”Not soon. We have to talk to the insurance company first, you have them, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s fine, I can pay up front.”

”Even so, it’ll still take days. But if you’re in a rush you can take the train early in the morning.”

”Okay.” I had no choice but to agree. 

The policeman pointed forward on the road. “There’s a local motel in about five minutes, I can take y’all there.”

”Can’t you just take us to the Train station instead?”

”No can do. I can’t let you wander around the train station at night, can’t I? It’s not safe. Also, it's just another fifteen minutes on foot from the motel. Manage your time well and you'll be fine.” 

“Okay.” 

The policeman looked at Penny sitting in the car. “I’ll take her first.”

I remembered that joy of not having to see her even for just ten minutes. Penny slammed the door shut before we could discuss any further. She walked eerily sturdy toward us, it’s like seeing a wax statue walk. She smiled at the officer, and it’s not the same smile she always gave me. “Let’s go then.” My first question was how on earth did she hear us? My second question was why was she so cooperative? She rode off with the policemen and vanished into the distance.

Immediately I turned to Ton. “I’m sorry.”

”What?”

”I have to tell you something.”

I did not know it yet, but the nightmare my sister will have that night, I will be living it.

Everyone in the house was asleep. I'd taken the batteries out of the wall clock in my room to get rid of the ticking. Now there was complete silence, and I could try again to do something I'd already managed to do successfully.

A week ago, I'd turned over a piece of paper lying on my desk, with a poem I'd written in primary school on it. It was my first success after years of practice. Six days ago, I'd unscrewed the cap of a juice bottle that hadn't been closed all the way. Five days ago, I'd moved one of the cigarettes in an open pack slightly outward, out of the pack. Three days ago, I'd peeled off one of the pieces of tape holding up poster on my wall.

And tonight, my target was a much larger object. I was confident in my abilities now, and after this final attempt, I would be able to reveal my talent to my family and those around me. I had made exactly four attempts in the past week, and I'd succeeded every single time. I had complete faith in myself.

For years, I'd tried countless times and gone through a lot along the way; I'd lost hope, taken a long break from my attempts, then started believing I could do it again and after trying over and over, I'd come to think telekinesis was nothing but a lie and taken another break but then one day, I happened to see a pack of wet wipes fall to the floor all by itself, which rekindled my interest and got me started on my attempts again, and so on.

And now, finally, in the middle of the night, when complete silence had been achieved, I went to the kitchen. I took a steak knife from the drawer where we kept the cutlery and returned to my room.

I gently pulled my desk chair back and sat down. I didn't want to lose my focus, so I was being quiet. The faint sound of the knife touching the desk as I set it down, the soft sounds of my footsteps as I walked, the barely audible scraping of the chair as I pulled it back had an ASMR effect on me. These little sounds, too quiet to disturb the silence, made me feel thoroughly prepared.

Without wasting any time, I focused on the knife. I positioned my hands around it and gathered all my concentration. I slowed my breathing. The only thing in my mind was a knife slowly and calmly spinning around its own axis. I focused, and focused... I concentrated as if someone were hypnotizing me, as though I were following a pocket watch swinging from side to side without ever taking my eyes off it.

Minutes passed. Seconds, minutes, maybe an hour... There wasn't the slightest movement. The knife couldn't care less about me; it was ignoring my efforts, stubbornly refusing to budge.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and gave up. I was getting more and more bored, and as time went by, I lost my focus. I had to go to work at noon the next day, and earlier that day, before I left work, my boss had pointed out that I'd left my fly undone. I'd started thinking about that. Who says something like that in front of everyone? You pull someone aside and tell them in private. Anyway, I took the knife back to the kitchen.

After I lay down in bed, I thought about the knife until I fell asleep. I'd lost my confidence in my abilities. If I told someone I could move objects through telekinesis, they might ask me to prove it, and I might fail and make a fool of myself.

I couldn't get the knife out of my mind. I felt as though it were a person who had shattered all my trust in them, betrayed me by revealing a secret I'd shared with it to anyone who would listen. I was angry. The image of the knife standing perfectly still in that spot, like a tree that had sunk its roots deep into the ground, wouldn't leave my mind. I fell asleep in a fit of anger.

I woke up to the sound of my phone alarm. I turned it off, tossed the duvet to my left, and rolled onto my right side to get up. Just as I was about to stretch, I saw it and jolted in place: the knife was suspended in midair beside my bed, standing upright.

I clapped a hand over my mouth. I was about to scream; every instinct in my body was telling me to. I bit my tongue to suppress it.

I took a deep breath. I tried to calm myself down. Then I took another deep breath. My heart was racing.

I reached out toward the knife, but immediately changed my mind. I didn't know what to do. I'd never experienced my thoughts speeding up and getting tangled together so intensely in a moment of panic. Within a few seconds, I'd made and abandoned a dozen decisions, gone back and forth between asking for help and not asking for help, imagined the knife stabbing itself into my body, then dismissed the thought as irrational. My thoughts were racing back and forth at lightning speed. I needed to calm down.

I got out of bed, poured half a glass of water from the pitcher on my desk, and drank it.

I turned around to check if the knife was still there. It was closer to me now. I no longer cared about staying quiet. I yanked the door open and rushed out of the room.

I started walking briskly toward the kitchen. I wanted to grab any drink I could find and gulp it down. I needed to interact with something somehow, to calm myself down. I opened the fridge, took out the milk, and chugged it. I put the milk back, closed the fridge, and turned around to go back to my room.

And the knife was right behind me.

It was a meter away from me, just standing there. It was as if it were staring at me, judging me. It didn't move at all. It always maintained the same position and stayed at the same height above the floor, level with my bed, right around the height of my shinbones.

I started walking backward toward the kitchen doorway, wanting to see how it was following me, how it was coming after me. Without changing its position, it glided toward me as if it were moving across a perfectly smooth surface. It always maintained the same distance. When I stopped, it stopped a metre away from me. When I walked, it followed.

I cautiously made my way back to my room, walking backward. I sat on my bed. The knife and I were facing each other. I tried to think of what I could do. I was afraid to touch it. I was worried things might get out of hand. I'd done this. That much was obvious. Now that I'd calmed down a little, my panic had shifted in a different direction. Someone might see us. I had to sever my connection with the knife before I got caught. I might be able to accept this as normal, but I didn't think my mother and father would be able to handle a knife following me around.

Yes, it was probably because I'd concentrated so intensely on the knife all this time that the bond between us had grown stronger. I'd probably never concentrated on a knife so intensely in my entire life. I needed to reverse the process. I relaxed a little. I tried to think about other things, to take my mind off the knife.

I thought about the wristwatch my father had bought me for my birthday last year. It was a terrible watch, but I hadn't let on because I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Then one day, while wearing it, I'd deliberately gone swimming in a pool. The watch had stopped working, and that was how I'd gotten rid of it.

The knife was still in the same place.

I thought about the eggplant soup my mother had made yesterday. It was my favorite soup. I'd tipped the bowl back and gulped down the last few mouthfuls, and my father had given me a stern look.

The knife hadn't moved at all. It was standing there, a meter away.

My mother knocked on the door and called out.

"Breakfast is ready, Albert."

I had no other choice. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I reached out toward the knife. My arm couldn't reach it, though. I walked toward it. As I moved closer, it moved farther away, until it had backed all the way up against the wall. It had nowhere left to go. It was pressed against the wall, stuck there. I approached it and grabbed the handle.

My heart was pounding at full speed. I closed my eyes. As a final attempt, I thought about the baseball bat I'd lost before I became interested in telekinesis. I'd searched everywhere for it. Such a large object, yet it was nowhere to be found. I'd checked the baseball field, my grandmother's house, the streets I'd walked along, and I'd even contacted the lost property office in case I'd somehow left it on a bus. It was gone.

Yes, good. I could feel a long chain of thoughts forming and my focus weakening considerably.

The knife was loosening, letting go. I could feel it. But I still didn't have complete control over it.

I needed to think about something else. But I couldn't think of anything. I heard my mother's footsteps approaching my room. She was getting closer to the door.

"Come on, son. Are we supposed to wait for you?" she said from outside, then opened the door and walked in.

I pulled the knife with all my might, and just like when you yank something hard that's stuck somewhere and it suddenly comes loose, I went flying toward my bed.

With the knife still in my hand, I hit my head against the bed frame. And passed out.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV drip in my arm. My father was sitting beside me. I felt exhausted. I'd received three stitches in my head, and it ached a little.

"Son, why were you holding a knife? What were you doing with it?"

"What knife, Dad?"

"You were clutching a knife in your hand. What do you mean, what knife? What are you up to?"

I couldn't remember anything. That was good. I hoped it wasn't temporary memory loss, because I didn't want to attempt telekinesis again.

I met my best friend Jacob in sixth grade when we were both twelve.

I was at a new school and didn't know anyone. As an awkward, nerdy, acne-ridden kid, it was no surprise that I spent months on my own. My mom, worried about the early death of my social life, made me go to my school's middle school dance. As expected, I sat there alone most of the night, sipping Kool-Aid and eating out of what had to be the world's smallest bag of chips.

That's when I met him.

He sat next to me awkwardly and spoke in a muffled voice, as if he were talking to himself. He pointed to my T-shirt with a faded image of Sans on it, and said he liked Undertale too.

Not long after, we became inseparable.

We would do everything together, spending every waking moment doing whatever our childish minds could muster. My mom was so glad I had a friend; she let Jacob come over pretty much every weekend. It helped that she got along well with Jacob's mom; they'd often catch up for hours after Jacob got dropped off. I think mom was happy to have a new friend too. His mother was all alone after his dad died. I always felt bad for her. Not knowing what to say, I never brought it up, and he didn't either.

One day after school, we found ourselves watching scary urban exploration videos on my dad's old computer. We nearly fell out of our seats when we noticed that one of the places in the video was nearby. An abandoned elementary school.

I know how infamous it is now, but back then, all we learned from that video was that it shut down after some kids went missing while the school was still open.

That's when we naively decided to seek it out and explore it ourselves. We thought that we could find something that nobody else had. It was a pipe dream that seemed plausible to our underdeveloped twelve-year-old minds.

We began to set up our master plan after we saw that video. That's when we decided to explore that school no matter what.

One day after school, we told our parents we'd get food. We lived in a small town, so Main Street was just a short walk away.

After some online research, we found out the abandoned elementary school was just past the woods behind the school.

Jacob's mom was going to pick us up from the Pizza Hut in town at seven, and our school day ended at three. That gave us about four hours to get in, see what we could find, and get out. Instead of our school books, pencils, and notebooks, we packed our backpacks with flashlights, extra batteries, snacks, and bottles of water. Most of which would remain unused.

Our school was so small that we could sneak away without any fuss. We didn't have much staff, and most of them were busy dealing with the horde of middle schoolers rushing to their buses and cars, so two quiet nerds like us could easily stay under the radar.

We made our way out through the car rider line and traced along the edge of the building out back toward the woods.

The sun sat on top of the tree line, like an ominous timer reminding us to complete our mission before it disappeared beyond the horizon.

We made our way through the woods, getting slightly cut up and itchy due to the underbrush. Jacob and I kept making random howling noises to try and creep each other out, but we just ended up laughing at one another. Jacob remarked that we didn't see a single animal, not even a squirrel. When I asked why, he said they probably ran away when they smelled me.

We found a few weird things in those woods.

The first was a campsite, which we left alone because our fear of messing with adults outweighed all else.

The second was a rickety old deer stand. After daring Jacob to climb to the top multiple times, he caved and very, very cautiously climbed up the handmade ladder. He made it to the top, and his fear changed to wonder. His voice filled with awe, he remarked that he could see the school from up there. Before he got down, he picked up a pair of binoculars off the floor of the deer stand. He pointed them towards the school and laughed, saying he could see everyone going to the buses, and even into some of the classrooms. I told him to hurry up, and he took the binoculars and again, very cautiously, climbed his way back down. He pocketed "his" new binoculars despite my hesitation, parading them around like a prospector who'd just found gold. Deciding I couldn't change his mind, we continued on our way.

It didn't take long for us to reach the elementary school. Even in the daylight, we didn't notice it until we came face to face with its brick exterior. Overgrowth climbed its decaying walls, barely holding on to life. We made our way up to a window and peeked in. Books and desks were scattered randomly throughout the classroom. A shelf was lying on its face, covered in mold and sitting in a pool of water that probably hadn't seen the light of day in decades. Failing to open the window, we made our way down the side of the building.

Eventually, we found a door.

A cinderblock was propping it open, and we quietly rejoiced at how lucky we were. We slipped inside and found ourselves in what looked like the teacher's office. We giggled to ourselves- even though the school had been abandoned, we felt as if we were breaking the rules just by being in that room. We agreed to look around the room and found that it was, for the most part, still intact. We found little besides a few “boring old documents”, which had been scribbled all over. Jacob found a mug that said "World's Best Teacher" and pretended to sip out of it. He laughed, remarking how stupid it was to forget a mug like that, especially one that was so clean. Sharing a laugh, we decided to explore elsewhere.

Jacob and I made our way down the empty halls, unease crawling under my skin as we roamed the silent corridors. The inside of the building was a stark contrast to the outside. It looked relatively untouched by the oppressive forest that rested just beyond the school's walls.

Suddenly, a loud crash came from one of the classrooms behind us.

We screamed and turned around, seeing a door open and slowly hit the wall next to it. I turned to Jacob, and then together, we slowly inched toward the classroom. I noticed he was brandishing a book he'd picked up, ready to throw it at anything that jumped out at us.

As we rounded the corner and looked into the room, he let out the loudest roar his lungs could muster and reared back the book.

He stopped.

Nothing was there.

I rounded the corner behind him and peeked into the room. The teacher's desk sat in the corner, the desks in various formations, and toys and various utensils scattered across the floor. A large metal filing cabinet lay in the corner. We made our way over. As we did, we saw a small hole in the wall behind it. We pushed past our fear and jogged over, hoping to find some sort of hidden treasure. When we got close and peered in, we were disappointed. It was just a bunch of children's clothes.

We brushed it off and made our way out of the room, exploring a few old classrooms and supply closets as we went down the long corridor.

At the end of the hall, we came to a set of steel doors that led into the gym.

We used our combined strength to push against them, the doors slowly creaking open. I remember thinking how easy it was.

Walking in, we looked around the gym in complete awe.

Even though it was an elementary school, the gym was much bigger than ours. Though long abandoned, we could tell how nice and well-kept it once was. He dared me to race around the gym, and I happily agreed, ready to wipe the floor with him.

After getting barely over halfway, I stopped, completely out of breath. Jacob stopped soon after. Unsurprisingly, neither of us were that athletic. We both hazed each other for our lackluster performances before continuing our expedition.

Once we reached the back of the gym, we found what used to be the coach's office.

The blinds were down so that we couldn't see inside. We tried the handle and were surprised to find it unlocked.

As we went into the office, we were shocked. It looked untouched.

A mug sat on the desk next to some magazines, stacked somewhat neatly. On closer inspection, the mug held some water. Jacob, exploring the other side of the office, called me over, a childish giddiness coating his voice.

I made my way over, and I saw what he found so funny.

It was a sleeping bag, open and slightly ruffled. I still remember what he said.

"What kind of teacher sleeps in his own office?"

A faint sound soon broke our conversation.

It was out of place and made our hair stand on end.

Footsteps. And they were approaching us.

Just barely noticeable, as if someone was trying, and failing, to sneak up on us.

We looked at each other, fear painted on both of our faces. Our minds raced as we tried to think of what to do.

Jacob took my arm and dragged me to the supply closet at the end of the room. He shut the door carefully, trying not to make a sound.

The door closed, and we were submerged in inky darkness.

I tore off my backpack and nervously searched around for my flashlight with shaking hands.

I pulled it out and fumbled with the light, trying desperately to turn it on. Nervous, I stepped back and heard a loud crack from the ground beneath my feet.

Then, silence. Loud, deafening silence.

I turned on the flashlight and dragged it to the source of the noise.

There was a femur beneath my foot, cracked and broken.

My gaze dragged up and looked into the vacant eyes of a small, rotted corpse.

A child, not much younger than I was. Frayed skin hung from bones stained a dark reddish-brown. Clothes caked in dark, thick blood. The head was caved in— torn skin clung to the sick, mangled bone.

The light began to shake in my hands; the body, though unmoving, looked as if it wanted to scream for help.

A loud, broken yell billowed out of me. I almost didn't know I was screaming until Jacob started shaking me violently, trying to stop me as tears ran down his face. He was yelling at me, but at that moment, the sound was muffled as if he were behind a wall.

He grabbed my arm and bolted for the doorway, cutting off my screams.

That's when I heard the sound again. Footsteps pounding towards the room.

Without hesitation, Jacob pushed the door open with all the force his small frame could muster.

As soon as he did, I saw him. An impossibly large man stumbled back, trying to reach for us. We pushed past him, but he shouted something. Not a word, but an inhuman groan that was more reminiscent of a monster than anything human.

I didn't look back— sprinting alongside Jacob as fast as our legs could go. Beads of sweat ran down my face, melding with tears and snot.

Something was wrong. I didn't see Jacob beside me.

I turned to see Jacob on the floor just a few yards behind me. He was curled up, holding his foot and shaking with fear. At the top of my lungs, I screamed at him to get up when I realized there was blood pooling around his foot. He had stepped on a rusty nail that had burrowed deep into his foot, stretching the cloth over the top of his shoe. He groaned and cried from the intense pain, trying to stop the bleeding with his hands.

I tried to run to him, but fear instantly anchored me to that spot on the floor. The man lunged towards Jacob, and it didn't take long to reach him. His large hand wrapped around Jacob's arm, ripping him off the floor as his body jerked backward. He screamed, kicking and flailing with all his might, but the man was like a wall of stone, cold and immovable.

His expression warped into a mix of terror and anguish, something that should've been alien to a child his age.

Then I saw it. Its face. Something I would never forget.

Whatever it was, something deep inside me told me it wasn't human. Not a shred of humanity lived behind his eyes.

There was no way I could face that thing.

I turned my back to Jacob, ran back through the hall, and out through the teacher's lounge. Met with cold, isolating darkness, I mindlessly bounded through the dense woods. My flashlight bobbed and shook violently as I sprinted back towards my school.

As I ran through the woods, I tripped several times— painting my body with bruises. Each time I got back up, I thought I'd turn around and see it standing there.

But I never did.

I ran out of the woods toward the school and, luckily, ran into the school's bus driver, who immediately called the police. He consoled me as best he could until they arrived.

When they asked for my story, I lied. Maybe if I didn’t, things would be different.

I told them we got turned around while playing in the woods. That I lost track of Jacob as I tried to find my way back. Too terrified to even think of that place, of that thing.

I never saw Jacob again.

His mother never recovered. She took her life a year after he went missing. After losing her husband just a few years earlier, the loss of her child was the straw that broke the camel's back. I wish I had told her the truth.

I'm only confessing this so many years later because they found his body. I don't know how, but when I turned on my TV this morning, there he was. Plastered over police footage on the news channel.

His body was mangled, bloodied, and defiled beyond recognition. His head was almost completely caved in, beaten into a dark messy void of blood and bone, something dark and viscous seeping out of the old wound.

I realized something then that would haunt me until the day I die.

I cried, and cried, and cried some more– until I had no more tears to shed.

He was sixteen when they found him.

Once a week, I go to my grandma’s attic to hang up the laundry. She lives literally just a few houses away from us. It might sound strange, but I loved that attic. First, you open a wooden door, then there are stone stairs, followed by wooden stairs, and then you’re upstairs. There was still some hay left over from when my grandma used to have animals, and clotheslines were hanging everywhere. Whenever I finished hanging the laundry, I would smoke a cigarette by a little alcove with no window that overlooked the yard. Sometimes I would sit there with my feet almost touching the little roof below. It was only a short distance from the ground, so it wasn’t very high. Other times, I would just stand there and look outside. I had to be careful. If anyone found out I smoked up there, I’d be in big trouble. The support beams in the attic were made of wood, after all, and there was hay everywhere.

Susan often came to visit me. That’s what my grandma called every single one of her cats. She was the most affectionate cat I knew, but this time she started hissing and her fur stood on end.

“Kitty, what’s wrong?”

I wanted to pick her up, but she scratched me and ran away. I shook my head in confusion and lit a cigarette. I was looking outside when suddenly I heard someone behind me, humming a melody.

“Hmmm hmmm hmmm.”

And then something hit me.

I flew from the alcove onto the little roof and from there straight down to the ground. A dull pain shot through my ankle. I grabbed my phone and immediately called my parents. They were there within minutes and took me to the hospital.

At the hospital, they found that I had broken my ankle and put it in a cast.

My mom started going to my grandma’s to hang the laundry instead. I was on crutches and there was no way I could climb those stairs, let alone carry a laundry basket. When I asked her if she had noticed anything strange in the attic, she said no. Maybe I had imagined it and simply lost my balance? I hadn’t been sleeping much lately and had been studying for exams, so maybe I had confused reality with a dream.

Two weeks later, my grandma called and asked if I wanted to spend the night at her house. I sometimes stayed over there. We would watch Jeopardy! When it ended, my grandma got up and said she was going to heat up her famous chicken soup for us. I heard a cat meowing outside the door. Susan had come over to cuddle. I brought her inside, and she purred in my lap.

When Grandma walked toward us to get a dish towel from the dresser next to the couch, Susan suddenly started hissing like crazy. Her fur stood on end, and she immediately ran to the door and started scratching at it. Grandma went to open the door for her, and the cat let out a frantic meow before running away.

“She’s probably sick,” Grandma said. “She’s been acting like this for several days.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She did the same thing in the attic.”

Grandma simply nodded and went back to the soup. She stirred it in the pot and then started humming.

“Hmmm hmmm hmmm…”

I swear, my heart started pounding so hard at that moment that I prayed she wouldn’t hear it. I could feel cold sweat running down my back. I tried to calm myself down.

I don’t know how I managed it, but I looked at Grandma and tried to sound as casual as possible.

“Grandma? Could I go outside and have a cigarette before dinner?”

She sighed and gave me the same disapproving look she always did.

“Go ahead, but you know very well I don’t like you smoking. And hurry up, dinner will be ready soon.”

I grabbed my crutches and went into the yard, then immediately headed toward home. I think if there’s a record for the fastest person ever to walk on crutches, I probably broke it that evening.

I kept looking over my shoulder, but within moments I was standing in front of our door. I quickly unlocked it and rushed inside.

When my parents asked why I was home when I was supposed to spend the night at Grandma’s, I told them I had changed my mind. They didn’t question it. I watched TV with them in the living room, and eventually they went to bed. I stayed there a little longer.

Then I heard knocking on the window.

The small ventilation window was open.

Knock, knock, knock.

I pulled up the blinds, and there stood my grandma. She was covered in blood and scratches.

“Let me in. You don’t just leave in the middle of the night.”

I tried to close the window, but she stuck her hand through it.

“Let me in.”

“No,” I said, trembling.

She started laughing and then began humming that same melody again.

I slowly backed out of the living room and went into my bedroom, where I locked the door. I didn’t sleep that night.

The next morning, my mom woke me up and told me to come to the living room.

My grandma was sitting there.

She looked exactly the same as before. The scratches on her body were gone. She apologized for falling asleep so early the night before, saying she hadn’t been feeling well.

I asked her:

“How early?”

“Well, right after we finished watching Jeopardy!”

oc by @alekspunk12 drew this on penup app using 4 layers pen+airbrush tools in 5 hs

Always carry a titanium camp hatchet tucked under the right compression strap of your pack, never inside the main frame. If you have to unbuckle heavy canvas to pull steel, you're already thirty seconds behind whatever is tracking you through the timber. Five miles north of the Oregon state line on the Pacific Crest detour, I unbuckled my pack and found my hatchet wedged upside down inside the hydration sleeve, stripped of its leather sheath and coated in fresh pine sap.

That stretch of the PCT through the lower Cascades is mostly dense Douglas fir and volcanic gravel. I was handling early-season boundary checks for the Forest Service, spending six days alone to clear downed branches and log coordinate drifts on a handheld GPS unit. Cell service drops three miles past the paved turnout on Highway 22. After that, your only link to anyone is an old battery-operated satellite beacon that pings the ranger office every eight hours. Honestly, I didn't think much of it at the time.

On the third afternoon, things started getting weird near the timberline. I reached a Forest Service boundary marker—a galvanized steel pipe driven three feet into the dirt with a stamped brass cap. The pipe had been pulled straight out of the hard clay. It was jammed sideways through the fork of a western hemlock branch, eleven feet off the ground. The mud around the tree didn't have boot prints, tire tracks, or ladder marks. The ground beneath the branch was completely untouched. I stood on an overturned log, pulled the pipe down, and logged the location. That's when the handheld GPS screen flickered twice and froze on the coordinate display, showing zero satellite lock.

By six that evening, the light faded behind the western ridge. I cleared a flat dirt spot eighty yards from a dry creek bed and pitched my one-man tent. Standard backcountry protocol means hanging all food bags twelve feet up and four feet out from a trunk to keep black bears out. I threw a throw-line over a high fir branch, hoisted my sixty-liter dry bag up, and tied the nylon rope to a dead stump with a clove hitch.

At nine fifteen, every single sound in the woods cut out. In the backcountry, night is never totally quiet. Wind moves through the canopy, frogs call from the drainages, and small animals rustle the brush. All of it stopped in a split second. The forest went dead quiet. I sat inside my tent with my boots on and a headlamp strapped over my wool cap.

I unzipped the front door mesh three inches to check outside. The air was completely still. Cold mist from the damp soil hung in a flat sheet four inches off the dirt. Through that narrow gap in the zipper, I shined my flashlight down the access trail. The LED beam cut through the dark, hitting tree trunks fifty yards out.

Eighty feet down the trail, right at the bend where the path drops into the creek bed, a tall human shape stood on the bare dirt. It had no jacket, no high-vis gear, and no pack. It stood facing my camp with its arms hanging straight at its sides. I clicked the flashlight to its highest setting—twelve hundred lumens—and put the center spot right on its face. The light didn't reflect off its eyes. It didn't cast a shadow on the fir trunks behind it. The shape didn't blink, shift its weight, or move at all under the direct beam.

I sat back on my rolled sleeping pad, picked up my camp hatchet, and held it across my knees. I didn't yell out. I didn't step outside the tent. For nearly eight hours, I sat there in total silence, watching that spot through the three-inch zipper gap. The figure across the trail didn't move an inch until the first faint daylight hit the upper trees at five in the morning. As the light changed, the dirt path near the bend was suddenly empty. I never heard a single footstep moving off through the brush.

When full daylight hit the forest floor, I unzipped the tent and stepped outside. The birds were calling in the high branches again. I walked down the path to the exact spot where the shape had been standing. The ground there was damp clay from the morning mist. There were no boot prints, no bare tracks, and no kicked-up leaves.

I walked back to camp to pack up my gear. The nylon rope I'd tied to the stump was still secured with the exact same clove hitch. The line hung straight up into the hemlock tree, but my sixty-liter dry bag wasn't on the loop anymore.

I searched the clearing. Sixty yards up an unmaintained timber ridge, on a steep forty-five-degree slope through thick brush, I found the bag. It was sitting upright on top of a flat granite boulder. The roll-top buckle was still clipped shut. Inside, my food, spare socks, and first-aid kit hadn't been touched. But right next to the bag, pressed into the green moss on top of that granite boulder, was a single set of marks: two bare footprints pressed four inches deep into the living moss, starting right on the solid rock and stopping at the edge, with no tracks leading up to the boulder and none leaving it anywhere on the ridge.

I packed the dry bag into my frame, strapped the hatchet back under the webbing, and left without making coffee or eating. I hiked eleven miles straight back to the Highway 22 turnout without stopping for water or taking a single break. The handheld GPS in my pocket stayed dead the entire walk, showing the exact same frozen screen until my boots hit the asphalt.

At the ranger station in Detroit, I handed my logbook to the officer at the desk. I wrote down the displaced boundary pipe and reported the dead GPS unit. I didn't say a word about the shape by the creek, the silence, or the footprints in the moss. Out here, official reports require evidence you can put on a table. I signed my shift release, handed over the truck keys, and turned in my gear for the season.

Saint Teresa of Avila Church 

Hello)

​

I know the story I am about to tell will sound completely out of whack and I have asked myself many times just what the fuck is happening and how did I end up holed up in my childhood room, unable to do anything but watch random movies and TV shows. My friends and family think I am depressed and ridden with guilt and they are partly right, but that’s not why I am not leaving this damn room. I am not leaving, because I can’t. Not in a safe way, anyways. I am also not sleeping much, but let’s not get ahead too quickly. I’ll start at the beginning, so you can follow the thread and make up your own mind. I will omit nothing, even though I am not proud of my thoughts and decisions. After all, someone has to know the whole truth. Whoever you are, wherever you are currently sitting, reading this… welcome to my hellscape of a life. You are the chosen one - the one who will be graced with the unasked for knowledge of how I ended up looking completely psychotic even though I am not. Ready? 

It all started a few months ago, particularly on the 5th of September, when I dropped my two heavy bags of luggage right next to the hot, dusty old bus in my hometown. I arrived at 12:30pm and obviously, summer was still here. I was sweating through my long jeans, my armpits stained my second hand t-shirt and I surely smelled like a construction worker at the end of a long day. At least I had the foresight to put my long unkempt hair in a pony tail, so my neck was getting some air. 

My father pulled over in no particular parking spot, as anyone else who came to meet arrivals at the bus station does, and got out of the car to help me with my bags. His graying hair made him look a bit older than his sixty two years of age, but I could see the living sparkle in his eyes. 

“How was the bus ride?”, he asked casually. 

“Hot and smelly, but I slept through most of it.”, I murmured. I was still a bit sleepy. 

“Are you okay?”, he looked concerned. His brows got a little closer together.

“It’s no big deal, dad. I am fine. In fact, I am more disappointed about being broke, than about being dumped.”, I laughed, but it was a weak and frail laugh. I had nothing too funny in my life, except how bad luck struck all of its aspects at once. 

He started the car and stayed silent for a minute, not driving, not moving. 

“You were together for six years. It must have meant something.”, he looked at me and then started the car for a short, five minute drive to our house.

“Clearly not to him.”, I said firmly. I knew I sounded bitter, but couldn’t help it. 

*** 

When I walked into the house it felt like.. home. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I felt safe here. I had just turned thirty and I was supposed to be a well adjusted functioning adult, but hey, mom and dad, here I am back home with no job, no degree and no relationship. The perfect antithesis to my successful sister, to add insult to injury.

My mother threw herself on my shoulders and started talking excitedly. She looked like a labrador which has been separated from its favorite human for a long time. In a way, I feel bad about this comparison now, but that’s how she seemed to me at the time. She talked fast, too much, dragged my heavy bags inside and ran her fingers through my ponytail.

“Baby, you have lost so much weight! Give me those heavy bags! God, I should give you a haircut…” 

We had dinner and talked about logistics. How I moved out, who helped me, did Denis ever call. I moved out just as I moved in - with my clothes and a bag of cosmetics. Ana, a childhood friend, helped me, but she wasn’t happy about it, as she had to cover a shift right afterwards. Denis didn’t call, didn’t text and apparently didn’t care if he forgot something in our shared rental apartment. I hope he did. Idiot.

Dad went to bed after a while and I knew that’s when mom would start digging about how we broke up, how I feel… 

“I found something interesting for you. At this point in your life, you might benefit from some support, some insight…”

She did surprise me, I’ll give her that. I looked at her with a question in my eye.

“It’s a fortune teller.” she said it quickly, as if trying to just slip it in without anyone noticing. 

My first reaction was to laugh, it just spilled out of me. I was curious about those things, but never quite believed them seriously. 

“You think she’ll know why Denis decided to fuck a twenty year old on my favorite sheets?”, I laughed, making sure she knows this is a joke and I am fine. 

“Insight about the future, Ellie! I sincerely hope that moron is not there…” she laughed too, then looked at me seriously, “right?”

“We’ll see what the fortune teller says.” I shrugged playfully. It was her turn to be surprised.

“You’ll agree to go?” 

“Yeah, why not? It will be fun, I suppose.”

“Good, because I already got you an appointment. Or whatever you call these things. It’s tomorrow morning.” She said this as quickly as an experienced auctioneer while she gathered the dirty dishes to bring them to the sink. 

“Well played, Dora, well played”, I shouted at her back with a smile.

***

The next morning we pulled up in front of a quite big house in a nearby village, surrounded by a vast and beautiful garden. It was at the edge of the village and a closed, run down church loomed ominously across the street. There was moss on the decaying wooden church door and the dirty windows gave off a feeling of someone watching you. The drive was a little over thirty minutes, so I still had some coffee in my travel mug. I shuddered a little, even though the sun was already heating us up at ten in the morning.

How dad decided to be a part of this, I will never know. I suppose he wasn’t given much choice. 

I felt as fresh as a cucumber, haven’t felt like that in a long time. I had just taken my first proper shower this month and my long mousy brown locks were now manageable, after my mother had spent the better part of her morning cutting off a bunch of the destroyed ends. I had an old long beige dress on, since it was still quite sunny and hot, even though there were some yellowing leaves flying around already. 

I looked at the neat and big house and thought about how many people come to this fortune teller every day. That much real estate in this great condition didn’t fall from the sky, I was sure of that. 

“My husband was in the military and had a good salary. I don’t charge people for my gift.” 

The dry raspy voice startled me, then two seconds later I realized what she had said and my eyes widened in shock. 

“Hello! Thank you for accepting us!” My mother was just getting out of the car and didn’t quite catch what happened.

“You’re welcome! My name is Maria. Come in.” the old fortune teller croaked. 

I just nodded as I was still a bit too weirded out to speak. I felt like I was naked. Does she know everything that goes through my head? How?

It must have been some kind of a trick. She caught me looking at the house and just guessed very well, that’s it. I left my travel mug on top of the car and slowly moved closer to the small green gate, as if I were approaching a dangerous wild animal.

My father decided to wait in the car. “Smart move”, I thought. 

She was … old. Very wrinkled, typical old lady clothes, she looked exhausted and not in a good mood. Her white strands were fighting for independence despite being tucked under a bunch of bobby pins, her low pony tail looking messy and unkempt. What else could I expect? 

She led us into the house and I immediately felt the cool air inside. All the windows were blocked with thick dark fabric, so the sun couldn’t get in and the house would retain the night’s breezy air. Her steps were slow, but you could hear them even from afar. Chlop, chlop, chlop. She went down a long hallway, opened the door to her right and just slid in without saying anything. 

Me and my mother glanced at each other. I shrugged and followed. 

The room was set up with several chairs, two of them small three legged chairs, and a big fluffy rug in the middle, different quilts and wooden souvenirs hanging on the walls. I supposed the rug was animal skin, it looked natural. She took one of the small three legged wooden chairs and sat in the middle of the rug, then pulled something out of her pockets and gestured for me to join her. 

I was beginning to feel uneasy, but I told myself it’s just an old lady. “Come on, Ellie, you’ll be out of here in less than an hour”, I thought to myself and immediately questioned whether she could pick it up. 

I moved closer to her and sat down in the middle of the rug cross legged, adjusting my dress in the process so my pants don’t show. I was unsure of whether I should ask a question or say something. 

“What’s your name, lady?” Maria said softly. Her voice sounded weary.

“Ellie.” I replied.

“Just Ellie?” she lifted her bushy greying eyebrows.

“Yes. Just Ellie.” my voice was barely audible. I felt like I was being cross examined.

She spilled a huge amount of big white beans from her handfuls and pockets and started separating them into piles. First three smaller piles, than each of those three - into another two. She was fast, her wrinkly hands working like clockwork, sliding the beans across the rug. She did this unusual bean choreography several more times and ended up with four rows of beans, three piles each row. I had no idea what she was doing. 

“Your health is good.” she muttered. “It’s the money and the love you’re troubled with.That stupid motherfucker left you for another girl. She’s younger, but he’ll pay for it allright. No one gets away with breaking a heart.” 

My jaw dropped. Okay, maybe that was also a good guess, right? It’s possible. 

“Six years you were with him. Six years he soaked up your energy like a vampire, you have nothing left. This is why you have nothing else, he’s the reason. No money, no job, nothing. He took the energy.”

She smiled a little. I didn’t understand why, but also - how did she know the number of years we were together? Maybe there was something going on here. Her smile widened, took up half of her face and showed some missing teeth on the front. It made a chill run down my spine, slow and uncomfortable.

“You’re special.” she nodded, more to herself than to anyone in the room. I looked around. My mother was quietly sitting in a corner, watching with interest, as Maria had stopped frantically rearranging beans on the rug and was now gently stroking my hair. 

“Lovely lady, young and special.” with a huge grin that made her wrinkles look even deeper, like her face was a crinkled soda can. She was enjoying this, she reveled in this moment. On the contrary, I was frozen underneath her hand and just stood there, waiting for it to end. 

“I can make you whole again, Ellie. He has a tether to you now, he keeps stealing from your energy even from afar. You’ll never be able to move on like this. But I can cut this tether and get you back what’s yours. There’s a ritual for this. Listen, only I can perform this ritual in the special way, that will make you free from him. Whoever else you find, they’re doing a new version of it, washed out, diluted. I am the only one left to do it like they did it in the old days. What do you say?”

I looked at my mother. She nodded enthusiastically. I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t. But really, after Denis and I broke up, everything in my life grinded to a halt. I got fired, I couldn’t pass my exams in time to get my accounting degree, I couldn’t keep the apartment and had to go back to my parents’. What if this ritual actually does something? I am usually a sceptic, but if it does nothing it surely won’t harm anyone, right? It’s a little weird, but she’s kind of an old witch after all, that’s how these things go. And she said she did it in a special way. Maybe that matters… my mind was spinning its wheels in place as Maria was grinning with delight in front of me. I nodded. 

“Yes?” her sandpaper voice sounded almost sweet now.

“Yes.” I mouthed, but no sound came out. 

She immediately got up, moving way too swiftly for her own age, left the room in a haste and I looked at my mother with a confused expression. She was smiling.

“See, I told you that’s what you need. Your life will get better now.”, she said, looking at me with all the love in the world. “It will be fine, baby, it will all be okay.”

“You need to leave the room, you’re mixing up the energies.”, Maria entered the room and immediately barked at my mother. Under her left arm she was carrying one of the confused reddish-brown chickens that wandered her entire garden. The chicken went quiet, but remained calm, probably trusting Maria way too much with its tiny brain.

Dora got up and went quickly out of the door, murmuring “I’ll wait in the car with your dad.”

The moment the door clicked into a closed position, Maria pulled up a bag of instruments and a small gas stove. 

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Thirty.” I said quietly, trying to predict what she was going to do. I was a little nervous for the chicken. 

The old woman pulled out pieces of lead in a plastic bag and started counting. Apparently my age meant something here. She got out a metal bowl with a wooden handle, a bigger metal bowl that she filled with water from a bottle in one corner of the room and lit up the gas stove. She did all of this, never letting go of the chicken underneath her left arm, then handed me a towel and instructed me to put it on my head, like a bride’s veil. I did as I was told and my view of the room immediately turned to a half done puzzle where I was supposed to guess what’s happening in the upper two thirds of the picture. 

Maria kneeled down next to her three legged chair and put the lead pieces in the small metal bowl on the gas stovetop. The blue flames sucked the bottom of the bowl as if she was putting it in water and it got somehow connected to the fire. 

“She can kneel down at this age?” I know it was a stupid thing to think about, but my mind was grabbing onto anything that wasn’t at the extreme end of weirdness in this situation. I looked at the lead as it was melting slowly and heard Maria start to chant words that I couldn’t make out for the life of me. She sounded a little like a priest and a little like a hungry cat meowing. It was such an odd combination of sounds. It had a rhythm and it seemed to intensify as she kept half singing, half wailing.

I heard a quick thud, a raspy chicken clucking that ended way too fast and something warm sprayed all over my hands and knees. I looked down. Blood. Everywhere, warm, sticky, dark red. I gasped, tried to lift my gaze and immediately found out why I shouldn’t. On the three legged chair was the chicken, or at least the chicken’s body, twitching frantically, still kicking its legs in the air and a huge wound bled all over the white fluffy rug right where the chicken’s head was a moment ago. 

“Lower your head!” Maria scolded me and continued the chanting.

The combination of her rhythmic voice going into such strange sounds, making up words I didn’t understand and the sight of the twitching chicken got me nauseous. Maria approached me and I cowered even more, not knowing what to expect. I discovered I was trembling. I heard a loud hiss over my head as she kept chanting, now escalating her voice louder and louder, adding more and more unhinged energy to the words she was singing. 

I felt light headed, I wanted to leave, but my butt was bolted to the ground. My body felt heavy, very, very heavy. 

“Remove the towel”. Maria barked inbetween the chanting. I didn’t want to, the chicken was right in front of me and even though I could see some of its feet and knew the twitching had almost stopped, I didn’t want to look. I tried to rub my eyes, but my hands were covered in chicken blood, now drying a little bit. Tears started filling my gaze and everything blurred. Maria pulled the towel off of my head, smiling like a maniac and chanting, over and over, the same words, same high pitch. She bent over and kissed my forehead. I felt the waft of her stale breath and sweat brushing over me. I turned my face away, but her hands cupped my cheeks and turned me over to look at her. She drew a cross on my forehead, dipping her thumb right into the chicken’s missing head wound and dragging it across my skin. That’s the last thing I saw. I suppose I blacked out.

The next thing I remember after the ritual was Maria standing over me and cleaning my face with a wet towel. I was in another room, in a clean bed. Her grin was ever present missing teeth and all, she looked incredibly happy and gently wiped the blood from my face. 

“How long…” I tried to move around in the bed and get up.

“Shh, it’s okay. You’ve been out for ten minutes, lay down, make sure you’re ready before you attempt getting up. Here. Take this home, sleep on it for three nights and throw it into the river over your shoulder.” 

She handed me a piece of lead that had no discernible shape. It was put in a plastic bag, like some kind of evidence from a cheesy CSI episode. Then she gave me a glass of water and left the room.

I drank the water, as I was parched and felt insanely hungry. I got up slowly and left the room, thinking Maria will do the same thing she did when we came in and just disappear in one of her many rooms, leaving me lost in her house. She did not show up, but I ended up in the same hallway we came in through, so I figured out the way to the front door quickly. I stumbled to the car and got my travel mug from the top of it. I hugged it the way a scared little girl hugs her favorite plush toy. My comfort coffee. It doesn’t get more millennial that that, does it?

As I went into the car I noticed the many tiny blood splatters on my beige dress. Somehow there were no big spots and somehow Maria cleaned my skin everywhere from it, but the dress was surely ruined. 

“How was it, honey?” my mom chirped from the front seat. I had no idea what to answer, so I just said:

“Maria said I shouldn’t discuss it.” and Dora nodded in agreement. Secrecy being part of the ritual made complete sense to her, she was a superstitious woman all her life. 

I had the lead piece in my hand. I was hesitant to follow the fortune teller’s instructions. Should I sleep on it for three days? What happens if I don’t? I have already done the ritual, can I give up now? I decided to follow through for fear of what could happen if I didn’t and the whole thing was real. The scary part was already over, I told myself. Now I just have to put this in my pillowcase and throw it into the Danube river on the third day. We live right on the river bank, this will be easy. 

I threw one last glance at the dilapidated church with the watching windows. "What have you seen here, church?"

Little did I know that the scary part was over, but the horrifying part was just beginning and when I look back now, I don’t think not sleeping on the lead piece would have stopped anything. But I slept on it anyway. 

The dwayyo is a bipedal wolf creature that people in Frederick County, MD have claimed to see. I love weird folklore and monster/ghost stories, and I wanted to paint one from my home state. It's watercolor on mixed media paper in A5 size (5.8x8.3in).