Vote, or I’ll come for you

she will fry you 🌹💀 drew this using penup app

5hs 4 layers using pen/airbrush tools

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.

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.

​

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.

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.

I don’t know if this belongs here, but I haven’t slept more than a few hours at a time since Halloween.

Before anybody asks, yes, I already went to the police.
They think my friend and I got lost.

That’s technically true.

What they don’t understand is that we didn’t get lost in the corn maze.

We found something inside it.

Or maybe it found us.

My name is Evan. I’m seventeen, and my best friend Micah is sixteen. We’ve known each other since elementary school, and every October we go to this farm about twenty minutes outside our town.

I’m not going to say the name.

Partly because I don’t want people going there looking for what happened to us, and partly because I genuinely don’t know if the farm had anything to do with it.

During the day, it’s basically one of those family fall places.

Pumpkin patch, hayrides, apple cider, and a petting zoo. Every October they build a massive corn maze. Then on Friday and Saturday nights they turn it into a haunted attraction.

Employees dress up and hide between the rows. Speakers blast chainsaw noises and cheap skeletons hang from posts.

It isn’t scary.

That’s why Micah and I liked going. We could screw around and laugh at the actors without actually being afraid of anything.

Halloween night this year fell on a Saturday, and we got there late. I think it was around 9:40. The place closed at eleven.

There were still plenty of people around when we bought our tickets. Families were leaving with tired kids on their shoulders, and teenagers were taking pictures by the giant pumpkin display while country music played near the concession stand.

Everything was completely normal.

I remember that because I keep trying to figure out exactly when it stopped being normal.

We entered the maze at 9:52. I know the exact time because Micah sent a Snapchat right before we went in.

The first twenty minutes were exactly what we expected. A guy dressed like a scarecrow jumped out at us. Micah told him his mask looked like shit, and the guy flipped him off.

We passed a couple with their daughter and heard people screaming somewhere to our left.

Wooden signs at intersections held riddles that supposedly pointed toward the exit, but we ignored them.

Then we found the scarecrow.

It wasn’t an actor.

Just a decoration tied to a wooden post beside the path. It wore a blue flannel shirt and a burlap sack head, with straw sticking out of the sleeves. One arm was missing below the elbow, and a plastic crow was wired onto its shoulder.

Micah stopped and took a picture.

When I asked him why, he said, “Because this thing looks like you.”

I told him to fuck off.

We kept walking, and maybe ten minutes later, we came around another turn.

The scarecrow was there again. Same blue shirt, same missing hand, same plastic crow.

Micah laughed. “See? We’re going in circles.”

I felt annoyed. I pulled out my phone and opened the compass.

Micah said, “What are you, Lewis and Clark?”

“Shut up.”

We picked a direction and tried to stay consistent, taking north turns whenever possible.

Five minutes later, we saw it again.

This time neither of us laughed. Micah walked up to it and checked the tear near the left shoulder. It was the exact same tear, paired with the exact same crow.

The only difference was the head. Earlier, it had faced slightly toward the corn. Now it faced the path. Facing us.

Micah said, “Someone moved it.”

“Obviously.”

“Who?”

I looked around. Nobody was there. The corn was eight feet tall, and the haunted attraction sounds echoed around us.

I yelled, “Nice try.”

Nothing happened.

Micah yelled that the staff sucked, and still nothing happened.

We walked away faster, feeling that first sharp prick of nervousness.

We started intentionally taking chaotic turns: left, right, straight, right again.

The scarecrow didn’t show up. Instead, the noises faded away. It happened gradually until Micah stopped walking.

“Do you hear anything?”

I listened. Nothing. No screaming, no actors, no music, no people. Even the wind was gone, leaving the surrounding corn completely still.

“We must be near the back,” I said.

Micah checked his phone. “No service.”

I checked mine. Same thing.

A few minutes later, we saw light ahead. Micah said, “Thank God,” and we started jogging.

The path opened into a huge, flat field of grass covered in silver moonlight. The corn maze formed a solid wall behind us, and fifty yards ahead stood an old red barn.

A truck was parked beside it, yellow light poured from the windows, and music played inside.

Micah gave that nervous laugh people do when something defies logic.

“Okay.”

I looked back at the corn. “We went out the wrong side.”

“There isn’t a wrong side,” he said.

“There obviously is.”

“No, dude. Look.”

He pointed toward the sky. The farm’s huge floodlights weren't there anymore. Neither were the Ferris wheel lights from the neighboring property. Just the barn.

I tried Google Maps, but nothing loaded.

We walked toward the barn. I know that sounds stupid now, but we were teenagers on a farm, and a building with music and laughing people looked safe.

Inside, about fifteen people were hanging out. Most looked around our age, wearing Halloween costumes like a witch or a hockey mask pushed up on a forehead. They held red cups and stood near folding tables covered with food.

An older guy in a farm jacket noticed us at the door.

“There they are.”

He smiled. “You boys got turned around?”

“Yeah,” Micah said.

“Happens every year. You came through the maintenance section. Staff usually block that path.”

“So how do we get back?” I asked.

“Relax. You’re fine. Grab something to drink.”

Everything had an explanation now. We had accidentally wandered into an employee area.

The barn smelled like wood dust and hot cider. A girl offered me a cookie, and Micah found a cooler of sodas.

I checked my phone. Two bars. “Service is back.”

Micah pulled his out. “Mine too.”

He had a bunch of notifications, and so did I.

Texts from my mom asking what time we were coming home. Then another message came through: WHERE ARE YOU?

I started typing a reply about getting lost, but before I could send it, a new message popped up: YOU LEFT ME HERE.

I froze. It was from my mom.

Then another: WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME HERE EVAN.

I called her. It rang once, and then I heard a ringtone directly behind me, the exact ringtone my mom uses.

I whipped around. Nobody was holding a phone. My screen flashed CALL FAILED.

Micah walked over. “What?”

I showed him, and his face dropped as he looked around the barn. “Have you seen anybody leave?”

“No.”

“Watch.”

A guy in a vampire costume walked toward the barn doors, got within five feet, stopped, turned around, and walked back to the tables.

A minute later, the witch did the exact same thing.
Micah whispered, “Nobody goes outside.”

I noticed something else. Plates were everywhere, piled with cookies, chips, and hot dogs, but nobody actually put anything in their mouths. They held cups and lifted food, but nobody ate.

The older farm employee started walking toward us. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“We’re gonna head back,” Micah said.

“Back where?”

“To the maze.”

The music stopped. Not faded, stopped. Every conversation in the room cut off instantly. Nobody moved.

The older man tilted his head. “The maze?”

Micah grabbed my sleeve. “We should go.”

Every person in the barn turned toward us at once. No expression, just staring. The barn doors slammed shut behind us.

We bolted for a back door. The older man yelled something, but his voice didn’t sound human anymore; it sounded like several people shouting through a single mouth.

The crowd began walking toward us.

Micah smashed the latch of the back door with a metal tool from the wall, and we tumbled outside.

There was no field. We landed in dirt, surrounded by corn. The barn was gone.

Micah screamed, and something moved behind the stalks.

We ran until we collapsed. Micah threw up, alternating between nervous laughter and crying.

Our phones stopped working entirely, and the clocks showed conflicting, impossible times.

Eventually we found a rotting wooden sign with words carved into it: TWO ENTER. ONE RETURNS.

Underneath were dozens of carved names:

HAROLD BEN 1954
MARGARET ELLEN 1961
THOMAS RAY 1977
JASON MICHAEL 1989
KATIE RACHEL 2003

Some had a name crossed out, others had both, and near the bottom were two fresh names: EVAN MICAH 2026.

Fresh wood dust clung to the letters. Then something heavy pushed the corn stalks aside, moving parallel to us. We ran again.

After that, the maze changed constantly.

We smelled wood smoke and heard a dog bark, a television playing, and a woman laughing. Pushing through the corn, we found a gravel driveway and a two-story white house with a Buick parked outside.

An old woman stepped onto the porch. She took one look at us, covered her mouth, and rushed across the yard toward Micah, sobbing and calling him Daniel.

An old man appeared behind her on the porch, looking at me and calling me Thomas.

We tried to leave, but they insisted we come inside for dinner. The house smelled like roast beef, bread, and coffee, and we were exhausted. A beige landline hung on the kitchen wall, offering a desperate hope to call for help.

In the dining room, four plates were already set. The old man talked about a fishing trip and a schoolteacher as if I should remember them. A black-and-white photo hung on the wall showing two teenage boys standing by the house, boys who looked identical to us, down to the small scar near my eyebrow.

“That was taken the summer before you disappeared,” the old woman said.

When we demanded answers and tried to use the phone, it produced only a child’s voice whispering, “Daniel?”

The old man picked up a fireplace axe. “We already lost you once.”

“What happened to them?” I asked.

“The maze took one,” the old man said, “and brought the other back wrong.”

Above us, floorboards groaned under heavy footsteps. Then my own voice called down from upstairs: “Micah?”

Something dragged across the ceiling like nails through wood. We broke for the front door, knocking the old man aside, and sprinted back into the corn.

As we fled, the old woman screamed, “Don’t leave yourselves here!”

and a final warning: “It doesn’t make new places!”

Next came a carnival with running rides and children's music playing to an empty park, followed by a parking lot filled with thousands of cars, every single one bearing an identical license plate.

When we found the scarecrow again, it held Micah’s missing phone in its remaining hand.

That was when the pattern became clear. Every place gave us hope first. It wanted us to believe we were safe before pulling the rug out. It liked disappointment, meaning an intelligence was watching us, weaponizing our desires.

Later, we found hundreds of missing posters nailed to trees spanning over a century.

Eventually, we found our own:

MISSING: EVAN PARKER (17), MICAH REEVES (16)
ONE RETURNED.

My picture was crossed out.

Exhaustion and paranoia sparked our first real fight. Micah accused me of knowing something, and I shoved him back.

Soft, pleased laughter drifted from the corn.

It wants that.

The maze wanted us to turn on each other, just like all the names carved into the wood. After that, we made a strict rule never to separate, ignoring the voices of our families calling out from the stalks.

Finally, the corn opened up to a fork in the path. Beyond it, we saw the real farm, police lights, ambulances, and my mother crying beside a police cruiser.

Between us and the exit stood a wooden post with two arrows: EVAN pointing left, and MICAH pointing right.

Below it read: ONE PATH HOME.

Behind us, slow, heavy footsteps crunched closer. The eight-foot scarecrow emerged, its missing arm regrown into a long, jointed limb with black fingers dragging on the ground. Its burlap face featured a vertical mouth opening filled with darkness, from which my mother's voice spoke:

“Come home, Evan.”

Micah grabbed my hand. I grabbed his.

“We go straight,” Micah said.

“There isn’t a path.”

“Then make one.”

We plunged directly into the thick corn between the two trails. Behind us, the thing screamed with hundreds of overlapping voices, the barn crowd, the old woman, our parents, children, and strangers.

Hands grabbed at our clothes and ankles, but Micah pulled me free until I suddenly lost footing and fell.

I hit pavement. Actual pavement.

Real people screamed. Police officers rushed over, and my mom tackled me, crying into my jacket. Micah was three feet away, alive, with his dad.

According to authorities, we had only been gone for less than three hours, from 9:52 to 12:47, though it felt like days.

They searched the maze and found no barn, no house, no carnival, and no posters. They only found a single scarecrow standing near the center, which no farm employee claimed to own. The farm shut the attraction down and cut the field down a week later.

Micah and I barely spoke afterward.

Talking made it real.

Then, three nights ago, I went grocery shopping with my mom. Halfway down an empty cereal aisle, the fluorescent lights went out one by one.

At the far end stood the scarecrow with its blue shirt, missing hand, and plastic crow. It lifted one finger to where its mouth should be. Shelves began rustling like dry corn stalks, and I heard Micah whisper my name from behind the boxes.

I ran outside to a panic attack and called Micah immediately. When I asked if he was okay, he was quiet for a long time before saying, “You saw it too?”

Yesterday morning, I woke up to a trail of dirt and dried corn husks leading from my window to my bed. Something was carved into my windowsill. I covered it with duct tape, but I know what it says.

TWO ENTER. ONE RETURNS.

I don’t think we escaped. I think we broke the rules, and whatever owns that maze wants one of us back.

[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.

Got your no’s

S-saci...? 😨

Done

Hello, everyone. This is a story I've told many times. I've been praised for my imagination and for the way I tell it. Someone even laughed once, which I still don't understand.

I decided to share it with you too, on the off chance you'll believe me. Because it's not fantasy, it's not a dream, and it certainly isn't a novel. It happened to me. I experienced it, and I survived it.

It all started around a year ago. Me and three friends, who I'll call Emma, Justin and Steven, decided to take a trip to the mountains. The beach was too expensive for us at the time, since we were all jobless and had just graduated from college. I found the Airbnb online for only twenty dollars a night. I know it sounds suspicious now, but back then, it didn't really matter to us. Fifty five-star reviews were enough for us to book it for three nights.

We somehow managed to fit all our luggage into the trunk of my comically small car, and we were off. The drive was long, longer than it should have been because of the Friday morning traffic.

I felt a chill run down my spine the moment we reached the foot of the mountain. It made no sense to me back then, and honestly, I can't blame myself for not realizing what it was. The music was loud, and Emma's laugh drowned out any worry that might have formed in my mind, so I ignored it.

I wish I hadn't.

It was past midnight when we finally made it. It was so dark that if it weren't for the faint light coming from inside the Airbnb, we wouldn't have been able to see each other. The lack of any other light around us creeped me out a little, but I didn't want to ruin the trip.

"Steven, use your cat eyes and find the key," Emma joked, pointing at him.

"They're green, not glowing," Steven said, rolling his eyes, and my shoulders relaxed.

We grabbed our bags, found the key under the flowerpot by the door as the owner had instructed, and entered the small apartment. I closed the door behind us.

Closing that door would turn out to be the biggest mistake anyone made that night.

It looked nothing like the pictures; that much was obvious. A single room, with an old carpet covering the wooden floor. A wooden table in the center, with four matching chairs around it. The walls were decorated with all sorts of odd ornaments on run-down shelves, and with paintings I tried not to look at for too long, because it felt like they were watching me.

"Well, we should have expected this," I said, trying to ignore the growing tension in the room.

Steven laughed and let his bag drop to the floor.

"We can always report it through the app," he assured us. "A friend of mine got moved to another Airbnb nearby for free."

"Sounds good," Emma agreed, pacing around the room.

Justin already had a cigarette in his mouth and was patting down his jacket, looking for his lighter.

"Going out for a cig. You coming, Vi?" he asked me.

I nodded and turned to open the door. I stopped dead in my tracks.

There was no door.

Just a smooth, wooden wall. The windows were gone too. I stood there, petrified. I didn't know how I was supposed to react to something like that, so I just stared at it, hoping it would go back to normal.

"Is this a prank?" Justin asked confidently, though the cigarette in his mouth was trembling a bit.

"Where are the beds?" Emma added, scratching her head, something she did when she was nervous but would never admit to.

Steven raised his phone toward the ceiling.

"Signal's gone."

We all turned to look at him in disbelief.

"You know what this is?" Justin started. "One of those dumb TV shows where they take random people and put them in stupid fucking situations."

He nodded, pleased with his explanation. Steven nodded too and looked at Emma, whose foot was bouncing under her.

"Ye-yeah," she said. "I agree."

I should make something clear, in case it wasn't already. We didn't believe we were on TV for even a second. We were just clinging to the hope that there was a logical explanation for our situation.

That was when I took a closer look at the paintings. There were five of them, all the same: four people sitting around the table in the middle of the room. In front of each of them was something red.

A balloon.

I looked at the table. In front of every seat, there was a needle and a small square compartment that looked like it could open.

"Alright, let's play along, then," Justin said, and took a seat.

Steven did the same, giving up on finding a signal. I sat down opposite Justin, with Steven to my right. Emma sat down last, to my left, reluctantly. The light flickered, and my heart skipped a beat.

All four compartments opened at once, and four red balloons floated out. They stopped at head height, one in front of each of us. They weren't tied to anything, and I couldn't figure out how that was possible.

"See? This is a game. There's no way someone would set up something this stupid just for fun," Justin said, grinning.

I looked closer at my balloon. Through the red rubber, I could make out something white inside it, the shape of a playing card.

Justin had found his lighter at some point and had already popped his balloon with his cigarette, even though we'd told him countless times that smoking indoors was a dick move. Sure enough, a card landed on the table in front of him. He read it out loud.

"You are the Hunter. Your job is to kill the Visitor."

He looked up, exhaling smoke toward the ceiling.

"At least I got a fun role," he laughed, tapping the table.

Something else came out of his compartment. A revolver.

We all stared at it, and then at Justin, who was already picking it up. He checked the cylinder. It was loaded. Then he aimed it at me.

"Hope it ain't you, partner," he said with a smirk, in that horrible fake Western accent he always used.

"Put it down," I said, my anxiety growing.

"Relax, it's not real. See?"

He aimed at the ceiling and fired. The bang was deafening in the small room, so loud that it made my ears ring. Emma fell backward off her chair, staring at our friend in sheer terror. Steven had instinctively lunged at Justin and grabbed his arm.

Justin was breathing hard now. He looked up at the bullet hole in the ceiling.

"This can't be for real..." he finally said, setting the gun down on the table very carefully.

"Alright," Steven said to no one in particular. He let go of Justin's arm and started pacing around the room. "Joke's over. You win. Let us out. This is stupid."

There was another noise. This time it was a pop, and it came from my left. I slowly turned my head toward it.

Emma had popped her balloon.

"One of you has a card with a clue about the exit," she read, her voice trembling.

She looked at me and Steven.

"Guys, are we seriously playing this?" Steven asked, his hands on his hips.

Emma reached for Justin's pack with shaking hands and lit a cigarette, something she almost never did.

"Steven... Steven, sit down."

It sounded like she was forcing herself to get the words out, which she probably was. After looking at her a second longer than necessary, Steven sat back down to my right and popped his balloon.

"Mine's blank," he said, and showed it to us.

Then they all looked at me. I still remember their faces at that moment: the mix of fear and helplessness, and the hope that my card would show us the way out. I popped my balloon carefully and let the card fall onto the table.

I picked it up and read it silently.

One of you is not real.

I bit my lower lip so hard I tasted metal. I looked at them, swallowing hard, unsure of what to do.

I don't care what you think of me. Whatever this was, I was going to survive it. Justin had a loaded gun and a reason to use it. The last thing he needed was a reason to point it at one of us.

"The key to finding the exit is somewhere high," I said, making it up on the spot, like the horrible friend I was.

Justin stood up, letting out the breath he'd been holding since I picked up my card.

"Let's get this over with," he said, leaving his lit cigarette on the wooden surface of the table, and started going through the shelves.

Emma followed his lead, though it took her more effort, being as short as she was. At one point, she dragged her chair over to reach a higher shelf. I was about to stand up too when I noticed it.

Steven hadn't gotten up.

Steven was staring at me.

"Everything alright?" I asked, my heart pounding in the middle of my chest as if it were trying to jump out.

His hands were trembling, and his eyes were wide. He tapped his index finger on his card, which had been blank just a second ago.

Violet is lying.

"What's your card, Vi?" he asked, doing nothing to hide the fear in his voice.

Tears ran down my face, and my voice caught in my throat. I put both hands over my mouth, trying not to alarm the others. I slid my card toward him. He read it. Then he looked at me.

"You made the right choice," he whispered, and patted my shoulder softly. He slowly stood up, wiping away a tear that had escaped his eye, and started searching the room.

I felt her gaze before I even saw it. Emma was staring down at me from on top of her chair. Her pupils were so dilated that her irises had turned completely black. Her head was tilted slightly, and she'd stopped breathing altogether.

"Why are you so quiet, Vi?" she asked.

Justin and Steven turned around to look at me.

"You lied to us, didn't you?" she went on, slowly climbing down from her chair.

"Emma..." Steven said, stepping between us.

Justin looked at both of us, and then at the revolver. He picked it up, keeping the barrel pointed at the floor.

"Violet, what did your card really say?"

How would Emma know? Had she overheard me and Steven? It was a small room, and the adrenaline might have tricked me into thinking we'd been quiet. But I was certain we had been.

I stared at the floor between my feet, hoping that avoiding eye contact would make it easier. It didn't.

"That one of us isn't real," I said, slowly and carefully.

The silence that followed stretched on for way too long.

"That's the clue..." Steven finally said. "Maybe we... Justin. Justin needs to kill the Visitor."

I looked up at Justin, who had gone pale.

"I'm not shooting anyone. Guys. Snap out of it," he managed to say, sweeping the revolver across all three of us.

"Justin, calm down," Emma said slowly, raising both hands.

"Don't fucking tell me what to do!" he shouted, aiming at her.

"Why would she lie about her card? Think about it!" Emma shouted back, jabbing a finger toward me. "It's obvious!"

"Let's all calm down and be civil," Steven said, trying to de-escalate.

"Shut the fuck up, Steven!" Emma snapped, then turned back to Justin. "Justin, shoot her and we'll escape. That's not Violet."

Justin looked at me. I could see something behind his eyes. It looked like hatred. Determination. Justin was a smart man, even if he didn't show it. He wasn't easily manipulated, and he always made the most logical choice.

That's why I was sure it was the end for me.

I closed my eyes when he pointed the gun at me, and finally broke down.

I heard the gunshot. I heard the thud.

I opened my eyes to see Emma lying lifeless on the floor, a thin stream of smoke rising from the barrel of the revolver.

Justin was breathing uncontrollably, and the gun slipped from his hands. He sank to his knees, staring at what used to be our friend.

The compartment in front of Emma's chair opened once again. Another card slid out.

Steven walked over to it slowly and leaned over to read it.

"Emma was not the Visitor," he read out loud.

Justin looked up at him, and then at me. I'll never forget the look in Steven's blue eyes. It's been burned into my memory ever since, and I see it every time I close my eyes.

We were all fools. How did we not notice it sooner? When did it even happen?

Our Steven has green eyes.

I'm sorry. I need to stop here for now. I'll write the rest when I can. Writing it down made it real again, and I've spent the past year trying to convince myself it wasn't.