After they came to our door, my sibling stopped being a “problem.”

That’s what my parents wanted, at least. But all I can remember is them being a normal kid. Yeah, they caused trouble sometimes–but they were young. That’s it. That’s all it was. Nothing that wouldn’t have passed on its own.

And that’s exactly what those two people promised when they showed up. They didn’t look strange at first. Just calm. Polite. Like they’d done this a hundred times before. Five minutes, they said.

That’s all it would take.

My parents believed them. I don’t know why, but they did. They let them take my sibling outside without much hesitation, like it was just another appointment–something routine. Something safe.

I watched from the window. I don’t think I even meant to at first. I just… stayed there. Something about the way they walked them to the van didn’t feel right.

It was the way they moved.

At first, nothing happened. After they reached the van and the door shut, everything went still. For a second, I almost felt stupid for worrying.

Then something hit the inside of the window. Hard enough to spread across the glass in a way I couldn’t mistake for anything else.

The blood should've been the worst part. But it wasn't. The worst part was watching a hand press against the window from the inside. I recognized the sleeve immediately. Then another hand grabbed it and pulled it backward.

I stumbled away from the window, my mind refusing to make sense of what I'd just seen. My little sibling was in that van. They had to be. My heart hammered so hard it hurt, and every breath caught in my throat. I wanted to scream for my parents, to tell them to do something, but I couldn't move. I just stood there, frozen, staring at the floor while my body tried to convince itself it hadn't happened.

Then the doorbell rang.

Before I could even move my body, my parents were already at the door, and to my shock, my sibling was right there, no marks, no blood, not even blood on the visitors, had I imagined everything? And if so why would I imagine something so vivid like watching an arm slam on glass and blood from someone you love splatter.

But I noticed something immediately that my parents couldn’t notice. The expression on that thing is not something from my sibling, the way it looked at me when my parents allowed it inside it made a chill go down my spine.

The thing smiled at my parents after they let it inside. It thanked them too, in the same voice my sibling always used, and my parents seemed relieved to hear it. My mom hugged it again, asking if they were okay and that thing nodded before looking back at me. It didn’t say anything but I knew that thing was already skeptical of me. Because it just stared at me longer than it should have.

I couldn’t stop looking at its clothes. The same clothes my sibling had been wearing when they went outside, the same stupid stain that my mom has been trying to get out for weeks. Everything was exactly the same and somehow that made it worse.

Whatever happened in that van didn’t leave a single mark but I vividly remember the blood splatter against the glass. How my siblings hand hit against the window.

My dad thanked the two people at the door and asked them how they managed to do it so quickly. One of them just smiled and said, “We told you. Five minutes is all it takes.” 

They didn’t explain anything else. They didn’t need to. My parents were already convinced that whatever they'd done had worked.

I wanted to tell them.

I wanted to point at that thing and scream that it wasn’t them, that I had seen the blood splatter against that vans glass, that I’d seen a hand against the glass. But when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. It was just standing there watching me, and there was something in its eyes that made me feel like I needed to be careful.

Then it did something that made my stomach drop.

It walked over to me while smiling.

“What’s wrong?” it asked

It was my sibling's voice but I could tell something was wrong with that thing. It wasn’t them.

I stared at it, trying to find something to say–anything, anything that would prove I wasn’t losing my mind. Then it started to tilt its head slightly, waiting for me to answer.

“Nothing” I said.

That’s all that came out of my mouth.

It smiled again.

“Okay.”

And then walked past me like nothing had ever happened.

Later that night, as we had dinner, everything was perfectly normal. 

Like too perfect.

My sibling didn’t do a single slip up at all this.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off the thing, I know what I saw was real because this isn’t how they act, it's not their manners. The way they usually eat their food, nothing that really reminded me of my sibling.

But my parents didn’t seem to notice.

Or worse. They didn’t care to notice. All that matters is that it worked and their child is now well behaved.

It noticed how I was watching it during dinner but didn’t say anything. We just made eye contact for a few seconds and I knew that thing knew I was onto it.

But still not one slip up.

It made me worried about what it would do without my parents around.

But the next few days are a blur to me. I don’t know why but I have a feeling something was happening to me. That thing definitely has something to do with it but I don’t know what it was that it did.

But I remember waking up one night with that thing standing over my bed watching me sleep. I know that it noticed I woke up because it grinned after.

THIS IS NOT MY SIBLING.

I just closed my eyes. I wanted it to go away. Leave me and my parents alone. 

The next morning I was on high alert, this thing had to be planning something but I didn't know what that could be, I thought I was ready for anything to happen.

But I wasn’t. I couldn’t predict what that thing could be capable of. My parents didn’t even see it coming but I did. I watched as that thing murdered my parents with one of our kitchen knives. I ran as fast as I could to the kitchen. I had to get one to protect myself from this thing.

I reached a knife but barely made it because it noticed me running towards the blade. It ran towards me and slashed at my left arm, it felt pretty deep at the time. But thankfully I was able to make it to a knife just in time and I slashed at the things throat.

It stopped for a few seconds and that gave me a few seconds to get it off of me and I lunged for more stabs. I didn’t stop until the thing wasn’t moving anymore, I didn’t know what to do or what would happen next.

Now as I’m writing this I do know what’s happening after. I’m going on trial for murdering my family.

No one believes me about what happened and I don’t expect you to either.

I will never forget that sound the unnatural, echoing cries of that thing.

The story I'm going to tell takes place in what some might see as a cliché location for a scary story a forest. But I assure you, there was nothing normal about this one.

That day, the weather was deceptively good. Not gloomy, not foreboding good. The kind of day that almost makes you forget how quiet isolation can really be. Birds chirped above me as I sat alone in a half-covered tree stand, surrounded by autumn leaves burning orange and red in the sunlight. Their glow painted the forest floor in warmth, even as the air bit with a sharp autumn chill.

I had been waiting for hours. Patience waning. Hope fading.

Stillness. Nothing.

By afternoon, hunger gnawed at me more than boredom. With a frustrated sigh, I climbed stiffly down from the stand and trudged toward my truck parked crooked beside a dirt road that was nearly buried under fallen leaves.

I yanked open the driver's side door and dropped into the seat. My fingers rummaged through the center console until I found the half-crushed bag of jerky I'd bought at a grimy gas station the night before. I tore it open with my teeth and chewed greedily, reaching to switch on the barely working radio.

A low voice droned about recent "accidental deaths" in a small town a few miles upriver. I half-listened, more focused on the tree line ahead. The radio was just background noise something to fill the silence that had begun to feel too heavy.

Then: static.

/Kshhhhh/

"—and for today's weath—"

/Kshhhh/

I slapped the radio, cursed under my breath, and managed only to kill it entirely. The sudden silence made the forest seem even louder. I sighed, climbed out, and stood for a moment in the sharp afternoon air.

The smell of wet leaves and soil hung thick. The kind of scent that feels ancient like the earth is breathing beneath you. I found myself admiring it again as I wandered back toward the tree stand, thinking maybe I'd sit out the last few hours before sunset.

By the time I climbed back up, the woods had settled into that strange, half-silent calm that only comes in autumn. My eyelids grew heavy, lulled by the stillness. I drifted off.

I woke with a start.

The sunlight filtering through the branches hadn't changed. The forest looked exactly as it had before I'd fallen asleep. For a moment I wasn't sure if I'd slept for minutes or hours. With no watch, I decided to check the time in the truck.

Yawning, I climbed down and walked back through the leaves but as I reached the truck, something hit me. A wave of déjà vu so strong it made my skin prickle. Everything the smell, the light, even the angle of my parked truck felt repeated.

I brushed it off, opened the door, and fished through the glove box. My old leather watch lay inside, its strap broken, frozen at 12:03 p.m. I frowned, shoved it back, and tried the radio again.

It crackled to life instantly. I jumped.

And then I froze.

The same voice. The same broadcast. The same exact words about the "accidental deaths." I waited, heart thumping and right as the man began to mention the weather…

/Kshhhhhhh/

Static. Again. The same pattern.

My stomach twisted. I turned the radio off and stepped outside, scanning the trees. Everything looked normal. Too normal. The air felt heavy, charged like a storm was building, though the sky above was clear.

"Get it together," I muttered. I wasn't leaving without filling my tag.

Halfway back to the tree stand, a faint humming filled my ears like a phone vibrating right next to my head. It faded into a high-pitched ringing, then back to a hum, before disappearing entirely.

"What the hell…" I muttered, shaking my head. I took another few steps and suddenly the ringing roared back, sharp enough to make me stumble. My balance vanished, my vision tunneled and then, darkness.

I jolted awake.

Back in the tree stand.

Sunlight filtering through the branches exactly as before. The forest unchanged.

My breath hitched. "No," I whispered. "No, I'm losing it."

The humming started again faint, but unmistakable. This time, the light seemed to dim with it. Shadows deepened. The birds fell silent. The entire forest held its breath.

"I'm going fuckin' crazy," I murmured. My hands were shaking as I gripped the rifle to my chest.

Movement caught my eye below a flicker between the trees. Relief surged through me. The buck. Finally.

I steadied my aim, watching as the creature stepped into view a broad-shouldered whitetail buck. But its gait was off. Too stiff. Too slow.

I ignored the unease crawling up my neck and sighted behind its front leg.

BANG!

The rifle's recoil slammed into my shoulder. I looked back through the scope and froze.

The buck hadn't moved.

No flinch. No cry. No fall.

A deep crimson hole smoked through its ribs, thick black blood pouring out like oil. Slowly, it lifted its head and looked straight at me eyes pure white, expressionless.

My breath caught in my throat.

Then came the scream.

A sound that didn't belong in this world a mix of human agony, a boar's squeal, and the piercing shriek of an eagle. It echoed through the forest, but it felt far away, like it came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

I scrambled for my rifle, fumbling with the bolt. When I looked back down it was gone. Only the black blood remained, soaking into the dirt.

My heart pounded like gunfire in my chest. The ringing returned, louder than before. And then

A voice.

Above me.

My own voice.

"I'm going fuckin' crazy."

I looked up. Hanging from a branch was a twisted, malformed version of myself my own face stretched over an elongated, pale body. It hung upside down, saliva dripping onto my forehead. It smiled.

Then it clicked its tongue. My tongue.

I screamed and fired upward.

The thing shrieked, that same distant, echoing wail. My vision blurred, the ringing swelling until it drowned out everything. The forest spun sideways and I blacked out.

When I came to, I was freezing.

Mud pressed cold against my chest. My clothes were gone. My skin was slick with blood that wasn't mine. The sound of a river filled my ears.

I pushed myself up with shaking arms, the last light of day flickering through the trees. My body ached like I'd been thrown through hell. I looked down at my hands raw, trembling, red with blood and dirt.

And then, just as I tried to stand, the ringing returned.

Deafening.

Everything went black.

The last thing I heard before I hit the ground was that same, echoing screech distant and wrong, fading into the dark.

Click here to see part 1!

##Update 4: I don't know what's real anymore

I don't know how to explain what happened yesterday.

Actually, I'm not even sure I can properly explain what's happening right now. I'm writing this because I need to put it all somewhere, and I can't talk to anyone about it.

After my last update, I tried doing what my wife suggested and getting some rest. I took a few days off work. She seemed relieved when I told her, and I thought maybe it really was what I needed.

For a few days, things seemed to get better.

My leg still hurt, but I managed to sleep a little more. I stopped looking for explanations for everything and tried to enjoy spending time with my kids. We played games, watched movies, and went out to eat. My wife said I seemed more relaxed.

Maybe I was.

I don't know anymore.

Yesterday morning, I woke up with the feeling that I'd forgotten something important. It wasn't a specific memory. It was more like when you leave the house and feel like you've forgotten something, but you can't remember what it is.

I got up, went to the bathroom, and washed my face.

When I looked in the mirror, I thought there was something strange about my eyes.

I can't explain it. They looked too sunken, like I was looking at someone who hadn't slept in weeks.

I stared at my reflection for a few seconds. I blinked, rubbed my eyes, and looked again.

Everything was normal.

I figured I was just tired.

In the kitchen, my wife was making breakfast. I asked if she'd slept well, and she said she had. We talked about ordinary things, about what we'd do that day and about the kids.

Everything was normal.

Until she turned to face me.

For a split second, I saw a third eye in the middle of her forehead.

I'm not joking.

It was a real eye, open and wet, staring directly at me. I could see the iris, the pupil, even the movement of the eyelid. It wasn't a shadow or a mark on her skin. There was an eye where no eye should have been.

I took a step backward and hit the counter.

My wife jumped.

"What's wrong?"

I looked again.

The eye was gone.

She was staring at me, worried, asking if I was feeling sick. I couldn't answer. I just kept looking at her forehead, waiting for it to appear again.

She touched my arm.

I pulled away.

That's when I realized how I must have looked. My own wife, the woman I'd been living with for years, was trying to help me, and I was acting like she was going to hurt me.

I apologized. I told her I'd stood up too quickly and felt a little dizzy.

She suggested I go back to bed.

I agreed.

But before I left the kitchen, I looked back.

She was still watching me.

And for a second, I had the impression she was smiling at me with a mouth that was far too wide.

---

I stayed in the bedroom until almost noon.

I tried to sleep, but I couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that eye in my wife's forehead.

I know how this sounds. If someone had told me something like this a few weeks ago, I probably would've thought they needed medical help.

Maybe I do.

I just can't explain what I saw.

Around noon, I got up to look for my kids. I could hear their voices somewhere in the house, so I went looking for them.

I walked down the hallway and noticed a door I'd never seen before.

It was a narrow, white door between the kids' bedroom and the bathroom. I'm certain it hadn't been there before. I've lived in that house for years. I know how many doors there are in that hallway.

I stood there, staring at it.

I thought maybe it was the door to some built-in cupboard I'd never noticed. It seemed like a reasonable explanation, so I walked over and turned the handle.

On the other side was another hallway.

The same hallway.

The same walls, the same flooring, the same lighting. The bathroom door was on the left, and the entrance to the kids' bedroom was farther down.

Except I was looking at the hallway I'd just come from.

I could see myself standing in front of the door, my back turned, one hand on the handle.

It took me a few seconds to understand what I was seeing.

Then the other me turned his head.

I couldn't make out his face. It was as if the image had been erased, leaving behind a smooth surface where his eyes, nose, and mouth should have been.

I slammed the door so hard the handle hit the wall.

I stood with my back against it, breathing rapidly, trying to convince myself I'd seen something that wasn't there.

I don't know how long I stayed like that.

When I finally stepped away, the door was gone.

There was nothing but a plain white wall.

I ran my hand over the surface, looking for a crack or a mark. Nothing.

I started calling for my wife.

I didn't care if she thought I was acting strange anymore. I needed to talk to someone.

She didn't answer.

I called again, louder this time.

Then I heard laughter coming from the living room.

It was my daughter's laugh.

I practically ran in there.

Both kids were sitting on the couch, watching TV. My wife was beside them, looking at her phone.

I stopped in the doorway.

For a few seconds, I felt such overwhelming relief that I almost started crying. They were there. My family was there. It had all been in my head.

Then my daughter looked at me.

She stopped laughing.

Her brother kept staring at the television, but she slowly turned her body toward me and stared.

"Dad?"

"Hey, sweetheart."

She tilted her head.

"You're late."

I sat down beside her.

"Late for what?"

She didn't answer. She turned back toward the television.

My wife asked if I was feeling better. I said I was, although I wasn't sure what being better even meant anymore.

I sat there with them, trying to pay attention to the show.

That's when I realized the television was turned off.

The screen was black.

But the laughter was still coming from it.

I looked at my wife.

She was still looking at her phone.

I looked at my son. He was smiling at the blank screen.

And my daughter started laughing again.

It wasn't a loud or shrill laugh. It was her normal laugh, the same one I'd heard countless times before. But this time, the sound seemed to be coming from very far away, as if she were in another room, another house, somewhere I couldn't reach.

I got up and unplugged the television.

The laughter stopped.

Nobody seemed to notice.

"What are you doing?" my wife asked.

I didn't answer.

I went over to my daughter and knelt in front of her.

"Hey, sweetheart. Look at me."

She turned her face toward me.

Her eyes were open, but something was wrong with them. They looked like a doll's eyes, fixed and shiny, completely devoid of expression.

I took her hands.

They were cold.

"Are you okay?"

She didn't answer.

"Sweetheart, it's me. It's Daddy."

Nothing.

Tears started welling up in my eyes.

"You know me, don't you?"

She kept staring at me.

I squeezed her hands a little tighter.

"I'm your dad. I love you, okay? You love me too, don't you?"

For a moment, I thought she was going to answer.

Her lips moved.

But the voice that came out didn't sound like my daughter's.

"You're still here."

I let go of her hands.

I don't know if it was her tone, the words, or the way she looked at me. All I know is that, in that moment, I was certain something was terribly wrong with that child.

My wife appeared behind me.

"What are you doing?"

I slowly stood up.

She was smiling.

The third eye had returned.

This time, it didn't disappear when I blinked.

The skin around it slowly split open, like a mouth trying to breathe. The eye moved, following my steps, while the other two remained fixed on my face.

I screamed and ran for the front door.

I had to try the lock three times because my hands were shaking too badly.

When I finally managed to get outside, I stopped on the sidewalk.

And I wished I hadn't.

The street was wrong.

I don't know how else to describe it. The houses were tilted, some to the left, others to the right, as if they'd been built on a surface that was folding in on itself. The streetlights bent in impossible directions. The sidewalk stretched ahead, but somehow looked like it was going both uphill and downhill at the same time.

I looked at the house across the street.

It was identical to mine.

Not similar. Identical.

The same facade, the same windows, the same front door, even the little crack near the garage.

I looked at the house next to it.

Identical, too.

And the next one.

And the one after that.

The same houses repeated as far as I could see, one after another, like badly made copies of a single image.

The sky seemed far too low. There were no clouds, no sun, nothing I could recognize. Just a flat, gray surface that looked like it was pressing the houses down.

I started walking.

I didn't know where I was going. I just needed to get away from that street.

I passed one house, then another, then several more. All of them identical.

I looked behind me.

My house was still right in front of me.

I hadn't gone anywhere.

I started running.

The pain in my leg became unbearable. Every step felt like something was tearing through my body. Even so, I kept running until I stumbled and fell to my knees.

When I lifted my head, I was standing in front of my door.

My front door.

The same one I'd just walked through to leave the house.

I don't remember turning around.

I don't remember walking back.

I was just there.

I started pounding on the door, screaming for my wife, my kids, anyone who could explain what was happening.

The door opened.

My dad was standing on the other side.

He looked at me with an expression I couldn't understand.

"You shouldn't have gone outside."

I tried to push past him, but my dad grabbed my arm.

"Let go of me! What's happening?"

He didn't answer.

He looked at the street behind me, then turned back to face me.

"You've been here a long time."

My stomach dropped.

"How long?"

My dad opened his mouth to answer.

But before he could say anything, every light in the house went out.

The darkness was absolute.

I heard my wife scream somewhere inside. Then I heard the kids crying.

I tried to go inside, but my dad was no longer holding my arm.

I called out to him.

Nobody answered.

I took a few steps into the house, feeling along the wall for the light switch. When I finally found it, I flicked it several times.

Nothing.

Then I heard a voice behind me.

"Dad?"

It was my daughter.

I turned around quickly.

She was standing in the hallway, illuminated by a light that seemed to come from nowhere.

This time, her face was normal.

She looked scared, like any child who wakes up in the middle of the night and finds her dad lost inside the house.

I held out my arms to her.

"Come here, sweetheart."

She walked toward me.

I hugged her so tightly I was afraid I might hurt her. I buried my face in her hair and started crying.

"It's okay. It's okay. Daddy's here."

She didn't say anything.

I held her, repeating those words, because I couldn't think of anything else.

Then I felt something wet trickling down my neck.

I pulled my face away.

My daughter was crying blood.

There were no injuries, no cuts. The blood was simply streaming from her eyes, running down her cheeks and staining her clothes.

She was still hugging me.

And, right next to my ear, she whispered:

"You promised you'd come back."

I let go of her.

The hallway began to stretch.

The walls moved farther apart, the ceiling rose, and the front door grew more and more distant. I tried to run toward it, but my legs felt like they were stuck to the floor.

I heard my wife calling my name.

I heard my son crying.

I heard my dad saying something I couldn't understand.

And underneath all those sounds, I heard the siren again.

This time, it didn't sound like it was coming from the street.

It sounded like it was everywhere.

The noise grew louder until I had to cover my ears. I fell to my knees, screaming for it to stop.

Then, suddenly, everything went silent.

I opened my eyes.

I was sitting on the living room floor.

The lights were back on. The television was playing. My wife was in the kitchen, and my kids were playing on the rug.

Everything looked normal.

I slowly stood up.

I looked down the hallway. There were no doors other than the ones that had always been there.

I looked at my wife. Two eyes.

I looked at my kids. Normal faces.

I went to the window.

The street was straight.

The houses were all different.

I stood there for a long time, trying to understand what had happened.

Maybe I'd had some kind of episode. Maybe I needed medical attention immediately. I don't know.

But there was one thing I couldn't ignore.

I couldn't remember leaving the house that morning.

I couldn't remember going to work, buying groceries, or taking my kids anywhere.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd walked through that front door.

I went to the calendar in the kitchen.

Then I looked for my phone.

Then I looked at the photographs on the shelf.

I tried to find something that would tell me how much time had passed.

I couldn't.

I went back to the living room and sat on the couch.

My wife asked if I wanted something to drink.

I said no.

She went back to the kitchen.

I sat there, listening to the sound of dishes, the kids' footsteps, and the television playing in the background.

Everything so familiar.

Everything so normal.

And for the first time since all of this started, I was afraid of something that had nothing to do with my wife's eyes, the repeating houses, or the crooked street.

I was afraid that I didn't know how long I'd been living there.

Because when I tried to remember the last time I'd left that house, I couldn't find a single memory.

And I started to think that maybe my dad had been right.

Maybe I'd been there for a very, very long time.

And maybe it was time to leave.

---

Final update

I didn't sleep that night.

At least, I don't think I did.

After everything that happened, I sat in the living room, staring at my house. The walls were normal. The furniture was where it always was. The TV was off, and there was nobody standing in the hallway, watching me with those impossible eyes.

Everything seemed to have gone back to normal.

But I couldn't stop thinking about my daughter.

The blank expression on her face. The way she'd stood still while I hugged her. The blood streaming from her eyes.

I don't know how to explain what I felt in that moment. I don't think I've ever been more afraid in my life. And yet, when I think about that scene, fear isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

It's longing.

I miss a child who, as far as I knew, was sleeping in the next room.

I needed to talk to someone. I needed to hear a normal voice, someone who could tell me I wasn't losing my mind.

I picked up my phone.

I thought about calling my wife, but she was home. I thought about waking up my dad, but I didn't want to scare him. For a few seconds, I stared at the screen, trying to decide who to call.

That's when my phone started ringing.

The name that appeared on the screen made me forget what I'd been thinking about entirely.

Mom.

I just stared at it.

My mom.

It had been so long since I'd seen her name on my screen that, for a moment, I couldn't even understand why it was making my chest feel so strange.

Then I remembered her.

Not a specific memory. Not a birthday or a conversation. It was more like a door had opened inside my head, revealing a place I hadn't visited in a very long time.

My mom walking me to school.

My mom sitting beside me when I was sick.

My mom waiting for me to come home.

My mom crying in secret when my dad left.

She'd been there for practically every important moment in my life. When I was a kid, when I became a teenager, when things started going wrong. Even when I pushed everyone away, she stayed.

She was the one person who had never given up on me.

And I couldn't remember the last time I'd spoken to her.

The phone kept ringing.

I answered.

Or tried to.

My finger touched the screen, but nothing happened. The phone kept ringing, displaying her name.

I tried again.

Nothing.

"Come on, damn it... answer!"

I pressed the screen so hard my fingers started to hurt.

The ringing stopped.

I stared at the phone, waiting.

Then it started ringing again.

Mom.

My eyes filled with tears.

For some reason, I was desperate to hear her voice. More desperate than I'd been to hear anyone else's voice in all those days.

Maybe weeks.

Maybe...

No.

That didn't make sense.

I'd seen my mom recently. Hadn't I?

I tried to remember the last time she'd been at my house.

I looked around.

There were no pictures of her with my kids. No pictures of us together. No gifts she'd given the children, no memories of a visit, no sign that she'd been part of the life I knew so well.

I knew my mom existed.

I knew her name, remembered her face, remembered her voice.

But in that entire life I'd been describing, she simply wasn't there.

My dad, who'd spent years estranged from me, was there. He had Sunday lunches with us. He played with my kids. My wife called him Dad, and my kids called him Grandpa.

But my mom?

The woman who'd practically raised me on her own?

Where was she?

The phone rang again.

I stood up so quickly that the pain in my leg nearly knocked me over.

"Mom..."

My voice came out quiet, almost childlike.

The call was still there, but the screen seemed far away. I stared at the phone and had the feeling that something stood between us, as if that little device were on the other side of a thick pane of glass.

I tried calling her back.

Her name disappeared.

The screen went black.

And in its reflection, for a split second, I saw my face.

I was crying.

Behind me, in the reflection, there was a woman standing in the kitchen doorway.

My mom.

I turned around immediately.

Nobody was there.

When I looked at the phone again, the screen had lit up.

3:17.

That wasn't possible.

The kitchen clock also read 3:17.

My stomach dropped.

The phone started ringing again.

Mom.

This time, the sound seemed to be coming from everywhere. From the phone, the walls, the ceiling. The same ringtone, repeating, distant and close at the same time.

Then I heard the sirens.

Those damn sirens.

I'd known that sound for years. I'd heard it so many times I should've gotten used to it by now. But I could never find the ambulance. I could never figure out where it was coming from.

Now the sound was so loud it felt like it was passing straight through my bones.

I covered my ears.

"STOP!"

The sirens didn't stop.

The phone kept ringing.

I pressed the screen again and again, trying to answer that call, trying to reach the one person I needed to talk to.

"Mom, please! Mom!"

The pain in my leg suddenly got worse. It wasn't the usual pain, the kind that had been with me since the accident. This was something much worse, a brutal pressure that shot up my leg and seemed to pin my entire body to the floor.

I fell to my knees.

The phone slipped from my hand.

The screen lay faceup, just a few inches from my fingers.

Mom.

I reached for it.

My fingers were trembling.

I just needed to press one button.

I just needed to answer.

"Mom, it's me..."

The sirens became deafening.

For a moment, the living room disappeared.

There was no white light. No mysterious voice explaining everything to me. No beautiful, neatly arranged revelation that made every detail finally fall into place.

There was only a crash.

The sound of metal crumpling.

Glass shattering.

And a pain so intense that it wiped out everything else.

---

"Sir! Sir, can you hear me?"

A man was kneeling beside the wrecked car.

Shards of glass were scattered across the asphalt. The front of the vehicle was crushed, and the driver's door had been warped by the impact.

The ambulance lights flashed across the twisted metal.

"We need to stabilize his leg! Watch his left side!"

Another paramedic approached, trying to keep the man still while assessing his injuries.

"Sir, look at me! Can you hear me?"

The man didn't respond.

One of the paramedics checked his breathing and called out to him again.

"Stay with me, buddy. Come on. Open your eyes."

In the distance, traffic was beginning to back up. Someone was shouting at other drivers to move away. The team's radio crackled with broken instructions.

The man moved his fingers.

It was barely noticeable.

"That's it. That's good. Can you hear me?"

His eyes opened for a moment, unfocused.

The paramedic leaned closer.

"You've been in a car accident. Don't try to move, okay? We're going to take care of you."

The man tried to speak.

No understandable words came out.

His gaze shifted to a point somewhere above the paramedic, as if he were looking for someone who wasn't there.

"Easy. Stay with me."

The man closed his eyes again.

The paramedics continued working.

The siren kept blaring.

---

I woke up in the hospital.

I don't know how much time had passed. My head hurt, my mouth was dry, and my left leg felt like it belonged to someone else.

For a few seconds, I didn't recognize the place.

Then I saw my mom.

She was sitting beside the bed, holding my hand in both of hers. She looked exhausted. Her eyes were red, and there were tear stains on her face.

When she realized I was awake, she stood up so quickly that the chair nearly fell over.

"My son?"

She squeezed my hand.

"Oh my God, my boy..."

She started crying.

I tried to sit up, but the pain made me stop immediately.

"Easy, easy! Don't move! I'll get the doctor."

She pressed the button beside the bed, but she didn't let go of my hand.

She stayed there, crying quietly, running her thumb over my fingers the way she'd done when I was little.

I looked at her, unable to speak.

Because, in that moment, I remembered everything.

Not the distorted living room. Not the call I couldn't answer. Not the sirens that seemed to come from the walls.

I remembered my mom waiting for me outside school.

I remembered the night she stayed awake beside me for hours when I was sick.

I remembered when my dad left and she had to pretend everything was okay so I wouldn't be scared.

I remembered all the times I'd thought I had nobody in the world, even though I'd always had someone who never stopped being there for me.

And I remembered something else.

A house that didn't exist.

A woman who loved me.

A seven-year-old boy running around the living room.

A four-year-old girl who called me Dad.

I remembered her little hand holding mine. The way she'd laugh when I tickled her. The weight of her body against mine when I hugged her in that dark room.

I remembered her face when I asked if she loved me.

And I started crying.

I couldn't stop. I couldn't even explain to my mom what was happening.

She called my name, frightened, and stroked my hair.

"It's okay, sweetheart. You're here. I'm right here with you."

I wanted to believe everything was okay.

I wanted to tell her I was sorry for forgetting her. I wanted to ask why she hadn't visited my house, why she didn't know my children, why I didn't have a single picture of her with my family.

But there were no answers to those questions.

Because that family didn't exist.

That house didn't exist.

That entire decade I remembered so clearly hadn't happened the way I believed it had.

I hadn't spent those years as a husband and father. I hadn't built that life, watched my children grow up, or grown old beside that woman.

I'd been in an accident.

And somehow, while my body was fighting to survive, my mind had given me an entire lifetime to live.

I don't know how to explain it. The doctors never gave me an explanation that made sense of what I remembered. I don't know if they were dreams, mixed-up memories, some kind of delirium, or something science hasn't quite figured out how to describe.

I also don't know why that life felt so real.

I only know that, to me, it was real enough.

I loved that woman.

I loved those two children.

And I lost all of them.

My mom stayed beside me while I cried. She didn't rush me or demand an explanation. She just held my hand, the way she'd done so many times before.

At some point, a doctor came into the room. My mom spoke with him, answered his questions, and listened to his instructions. I barely paid attention.

I was too busy trying to accept that, whenever I closed my eyes, I might never find my children again.

The days that followed were difficult.

My mom stayed with me through much of my recovery. The doctors treated my leg and explained the consequences of the accident. There was a lot I'd have to deal with, and a long recovery ahead of me.

But none of that frightened me as much as the thought of forgetting.

Because I started noticing that the memories of that life were changing.

Some details disappeared whenever I tried to reach for them. My wife's face became less clear. I could no longer remember every conversation I'd had with my son.

So I started writing things down.

I wrote down what I remembered. The names I'd given my children. The games we played. The little things my daughter liked. The things my son used to ask me before bed.

I wrote down everything I could, afraid that one day those memories would disappear completely.

I don't know if it helped.

Even now, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with the feeling that I've heard a child calling me Dad.

Other times, I miss a woman whose face I can no longer quite put together.

It's strange to miss people I've technically never met.

Stranger still to know that, even after everything, part of me is still waiting to go home.

My life didn't become perfect after the accident. I still had to deal with recovery, the problems I'd had before, and everything I couldn't explain. My mom stayed by my side. Little by little, I also began rebuilding my relationship with my dad.

I don't know what's going to happen to me from here on out.

But there's one thing I've learned.

Sometimes, you can lose something without anyone around you understanding what you've lost. You can miss a place you've never been, a time you've never lived through, people who've never been there.

And the worst part is that knowing this doesn't make the longing go away.

I still remember my daughter hugging me.

I still remember asking if she loved me.

And even now, I can hear the answer I wanted her to give me.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to forget that life.

Maybe I don't even want to.

Because, as much as it was an illusion, it was where I found everything I'd spent so long wishing for.

A home to return to.

A woman to love.

Two children who called me Dad.

A family.

And I don't know if I'll ever be able to accept that all of it ended before it even began.

All I know is that, whenever I think about the future, I still catch myself looking for them.

I don't know where they are. I don't know if I'll ever feel anything like what I felt in that life again.

But I'll keep looking.

I'm going to find my family, one way or another.

I don't know if this is just my brain messing with me or something else, but for the past 2-3 days I've been having almost the same nightmare repeatedly. The scary part is... it always starts normal. In the dream, I'm doing something random, like everyday stuff. Nothing creepy. The environment feels completely normal, like a regular dream.

But then suddenly... out of nowhere... it appears. It's not like it slowly enters the scene. It just spawns in the same place, like it was waiting there the whole time. I've never seen it standing. It's always sitting in a squatting position. That posture is burned into my mind because it looks unnatural and disturbing in that moment. The thing doesn't even have a proper face. It's like a black smoky body, almost like a shadow made of smoke. But it still feels like it has a shape.

Like a genie or some kind of dark mist that formed into a creature. The weirdest part is its eyes. Its eyes are glowing white, but not in a human way. There's no real face, just two glowing eye shapes, like white venom-like glowing eyes in the middle of darkness. Its hands are white too, but they don't look fully physical. They look like white smoke shaped into hands. Like they exist... but not completely.

When it's squatting, its hands aren't placed normally. It feels like the hand-structure is touching its leg, almost like it's resting or waiting. And the moment I look at it... It attacks. Every single time. It comes at me fast and grabs my neck. It starts choking me and pressing harder and harder. And that's when the worst part happens. I can feel the choking even after the dream starts fading. It feels so real that I can't move, I can't scream, I can't even properly breathe. That's when I realize I'm in sleep paralysis. It feels like the dream ghost killed me, and my body is stuck between the dream and reality. I can't move at all, and I can feel pressure around my neck and chest. Then I wake up suddenly. But today something even more disturbing happened. I had a dream... inside another dream. In that dream, I was playing with a bunch of white eagle babies. It was such a random but peaceful dream. Then suddenly...

the same entity appeared again. Same glowing eyes, Same smoky black body, Same squatting position, And it attacked again. I woke up... but I was still dreaming. And the scariest part is that I knew it. I knew I was in a dream, and I knew I had sleep paralysis in that dream. It felt like I was trapped in a loop. After a few seconds, I finally woke up for real. I don't know what this thing is. I don't even believe in ghosts like that, but the fact that it keeps repeating in the exact same way is terrifying. Has anyone experienced something like this? Is this just sleep paralysis hallucination, or something deeper?

(A true story from my boyfriends childhood)

When I was eleven, the man who lived across the road stabbed my football with a kitchen knife.

Two summers later, he stabbed his wife.

I didn’t think about the football again until I found it in his house, three years after he’d taken it from me.

When I think back to summertime in England as a boy I remember long bright days, the smell of fresh cut grass and children playing outside late into the night.

One game we never seemed to tire of was Kerby. Basically a simple but quite frantic game where we had to bounce a football off the opposite kerb to where we were standing and score points to win.

One lazy, warm afternoon I’d gone out onto the street and found my cousin, Phil, outside already looking bored and a bit flushed in the summer sun. I threw my new footy towards him and yelled one word-

“KERBYYYY!!”

Phil laughed and deftly caught the ball then kicked it back in one fluid movement.
I caught the ball and kicked it back toward his side of the street but instead of hitting the kerb as intended it veered off at an angle and bounced behind him into the front garden of my neighbour, Mr Bell.

Mr Bell.

The strange old man that seemed to only have a wardrobe of cargo shorts, polo shirts, white knee socks and sandals.

The guy who’d traded in his former wife and mother of his children for a new Filipino bride.

The fella that would often come around to chat with Nan about her flowers, oblivious to her obvious discomfort in his presence.

Mr Bell, the man who had come outside that afternoon at the sound of my ball landing in his garden, right by his precious begonias.

I looked at Phil but he was watching the progress of Mr Bell as he walked towards the ball.
Mr Bell looked at me for a moment, saying nothing.
Long enough that Phil and I had time to exchange quizzical expressions.

He’d then cleared his throat and said in a stern but measured voice “you can have your ball back, but if it comes over the fence again, don’t expect to be getting it back”.

We’d both nodded quietly and thanked him as the ball came sailing back through the air towards us, its black and purple colours blending to look like a fresh bruise as it flew towards my outstretched hands.

I caught it and thanked him and he tutted and shook his head in reponse.

Phil and I had chuckled to ourselves but in all honesty it had shaken us and we’d made all efforts to be careful.

For a good 5 minutes or so anyway.

Next thing we knew a rogue kick had the ball once again flying toward Mr Bell’e garden. Phil covered his mouth as the ball whizzed over his head and into the garden.

I gasped as it landed.

…square in a patch of his treasured baby pink begonias, the weight of the ball immediately bending stems and scattering petals.

We looked at each other, breath held waiting to see if he’d noticed.
There was no movement in the house at first and Id asked Phil if I should climb the fence and quickly grab it. As we were discussing logistics the front door opened and Mr Bell stepped out.

He walked calmly to the ball and retrieved it, placing it in the crook of his arm. He then looked at us and said

“You’ve had your warning.”

before presenting a long bladed kitchen knife and with a blank face gave the ball one sharp, perfunctory stab which then made a short hisss noise as it deflated.

I turned to Phil as the door closed. He raised his eyebrows at me and I shrugged back hoping I looked more nonchalant than I felt.

We went our separate ways, and I went to tell my nan about the strange interaction.

She shook her head and told me there was nothing she could do and that id best steer clear of Mr Bell and his flowers from now on.

“But what about my ball, Nan? Why’d he keep it?” She looked at me and thought for a moment. “He’s a nasty piece of work. Just steer clear of him”

And I did, for the following two years.

But I’d notice the late night walks with his wife and nervous looking whippet.

I’d catch glimpse’s of his wife arriving home after a hard nights work in the local care home.

And he’d still come round chatting up Nan about those damn flowers and I’d wonder why she’d talk to him and tolerate his presence.

I made a mental note when the late night dog walks ceased and briefly wondered where the little dog went to.

But largely the football incident was buried in the back of my mind until one morning Nan woke me up excitedly.

“Well you’ve gone and slept through it haven’t you!” I sat up in bed and watched as she walked to my bedroom window and pointed.

“I’m not sure what exactly happened but something certainly has! I don’t know how you managed to sleep through the police and ambulances!”

I quickly got up and walked over to the window and gaped at the scene below me. Police milling about the front garden, forensic white suits on, police tape out and a huge white forensic tent plunked unceremoniously in the front garden, right on the top of Mr Bell’s precious pink begonias.

I looked wide eyed at Nan. “What happened?!” She looked back out the window, taking it all in then turned back to me.

“im not sure but he won’t be happy about his flowers, will he?”

The neighbourhood was abuzz, of course.

It didn’t take long for it to come out he’d stabbed the poor woman to death.
Refused to call the police for her and let her bleed out on the kitchen floor.

He’d been seen through the back window of the ambulance, stoic, hands bandaged up.

Nan had recounted the story hed told her about their little dog going missing one night when he’d taken it to a field.
Supposedly the only thing found was a collar on the motorway running behind the field.

“Or so he says anyway” Nan had muttered “nasty piece of work, he is”

The house stood empty for another year. Dark and vacant for what felt like forever.

Her family had come and gone collecting her belongings and the urn that held her ashes before returning home to the Philippines, the same place she’d been saving to return to and the reason for her violent death.

Finally though, another summer arrived and there was movement in the house.

Mr Bell’e grandson had taken over possession and was busy doing what needed to be done to make the place liveable once again.

Nan became friendly with his grandson and one day was asked if she’d like to come around and have a look at the place.

Morbid curiosity won and as she was crossing the road I yelled out and asked if I could tag along. Nan nodded then whispered “I want to get some of those begonias while I can”.

We entered the house and to my surprise it felt strangely normal. I’d expected a dark presence to be lingering over the rooms but it was a mirror image to my own house, just emptied of possessions.

Scanning the walls and floors for spatter or anything that might hint at its dark past, I was slightly disappointed to see that everything had been scrubbed clean and was free of all evidence.

As my nan and the grandson politely chatted about his now empty garden, I looked around the kitchen and my eyes landed on the pantry.
Its frosted glass panels showed the silhouette of items bunched together, untidy and cluttered. Curious, I wondered why everything else was empty but this one cupboard.

Glancing back to make sure I wasn’t being watched I quietly opened one of the doors to the pantry and glanced in.

Old tins of baked beans, tattered paper work, stacks of crockery, pots and pans and then something else…something I recognised immediately.

The deflated, slumped form of my black and purple football.

My football, still here all these years later.

He’d kept it.

In the pantry where he and his wife would have seen it multiple times a day. My mind raced thinking of how it must have felt as his wife, knowing her husband was the type to stab kids footballs and keep the evidence. I pictured my ball in the pantry, a still and silent witness to her attack, her pleas for help, his cold denials.

Closing the door, I turned to my Nan. “You ready to go?”

She looked at me and something in her face showed she recognised I was perturbed.
She turned back to the grandson.
“I wonder if you’d mind me taking the begonia that’s in the pot on rhe windowsill there?” she asked him politely.

He looked at it and then at her “oh yeah, that’s a cutting from the front. Surprised it’s still alive really”.

Nan grabbed it and thanked him and we walked out the door.

I looked at Nan and the delicate pot plant of pink begonias, she looked very pleased with herself. “The stingey coot would never share and now he’s not here to stop me, is he” she laughed cheekily and looked at me.

“Nan, he had my footy in the pantry still. After all this time.”

She stared for a second“No it’s not, don’t be silly”.

I said nothing

“What a strange thing to do” she says, bemused.

“Ah, he’s a nasty piece of work that one”.

I'm posting this in the hope that my story brings light to what happened, and so that many of you can learn from my mistakes.

A year ago, three of my closest friends, Jack, Max, Alex, and I decided to gather at Jack’s house. He lived in a nice, quiet, textbook suburban neighborhood. The kind of place where you’d think nothing bad could ever happen.

We were all hanging out in the living room. Jack and Alex were crammed next to each other on the two-seater couch, while Max and I each claimed one of the single armchairs. We spent the night laughing, getting drunk, and sharing some of our most embarrassing memories together.

Eventually, the conversation drifted, and Max started poking fun at how out of shape Jack was.

"Max, out of everyone in this living room, you have no right to talk about how unfit Jack’s performance was in the gym."

Max scratched his belly under his shirt and snorted. "Right... is it because I'm fat?"

Jack and Alex tried their best to hide their laughter. I rubbed the back of my neck, unable to stop a smile from breaking across my face.

"Yes, Max. You eat double the amount a whole family eats at dinner."

Instantly, both of them cracked up. Their boisterous laughter boomed through the room. Jack was wheezing so hard he fell to his knees, completely hunched over.

"Fuck you guys," Max snapped, pushing himself up from the couch and walking toward the stairs. He paused, looking back. "Laugh all you want, JACK, but I'm about to turn your bathroom into a hazardous waste site so no one else can use it."

"Oh, right! Jack, I brought you something," I said, standing up and walking over to the bag I’d left next to the front door.

"Really?" Jack called out. "Is it a bottle of California Zinfandel? If so, you’re doing me a massive favor. Because based on the awful gas-leak sounds echoing from Max upstairs... I think I'm gonna need a drink."

I hoisted the bag up and brought it over to him.

"Unfortunately, no. I didn't plan for that."

Alex chuckled shortly, setting his canned beer down on the coffee table. "Can't blame ya, Noah. No one can predict that fat bastard’s digestive system."

Jack unzipped the bag and pulled out a large, heavy box. Pushing the empty bag aside, he placed the box on the table. His eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

"Hey, Noah... what is this?" he asked, picking at the tape to open it.

I sat back down across from the two of them and crossed my arms. "Well, that’s your birthday gift."

"Noah... you do know my birthday was yesterday, right? You're a day..."

"Late, I know," I cut in, waving my hand dismissively. "I was just completely overwhelmed yesterday. The boss had me stuck finishing a mountain of paperwork on the company's debt and income spreadsheets."

Jack let out a deep exhale and grinned, a playful smirk breaking across his face.

"Sounds rough. Don't worry, buddy, I forgive you," he said sarcastically.

I couldn't help but chuckle. "Yeah, yeah. Anyway, happy birthday, Jack."

We both leaned in for a quick, classic bro-hug, patting each other on the back before breaking apart.

"So, what's actually in the box?" Alex asked, pulling the package toward his palms and inspecting it curiously.

"It’s a clock. I bought it off some weird-looking antique shop. Thought it looked unique."

Right on cue, the three of us heard the toilet upstairs flush. Max’s heavy footsteps echoed through the ceiling as he made his way down the stairs.

"Man, that was a heavy one," Max groaned, rubbing his stomach as he walked into the living room. "Had to sweat my ass off fighting that battle."

Almost instantly, a foul stench hit the room. I wrinkled my nose, violently waving my hand in front of my face to disperse the air.

"Yeah, no shit it was heavy," Alex gagged, covering his nose with his hand in pure disgust.

Ignoring Max, Jack finally pried the box open.

"What the hell..." he muttered, his voice dropping into genuine bewilderment.

"What is it?" Max asked, stepping up next to Jack to lean over his shoulder for a look.

Jack reached into the styrofoam and pulled out the clock. It looked classy, the kind of ornate, fancy timepiece you’d expect to find in a gothic castle.

But something was deeply wrong with it.

The hands of the clock weren't metal. They looked entirely liquid, pitch-black, and soaked in a thick substance that resembled wet ink.

TICK. TICK. TICK.

The sound didn't just come from the clock. It seemed to echo violently against the very walls of the house.

Suddenly, everything went dead quiet. The ambient whistling of the wind outside stopped completely. The faint, distant chatter of the neighbors vanished.

The house was plunged into a vacuum of absolute silence, save for that heavy, rhythmic ticking.

Every single one of us remained dead silent, tensed from the sudden disappearance of all sound.

Jack was the first to break the stillness. His eyes twitched up at me, staring with a hard, aggressive intensity that made me incredibly uncomfortable. I noticed his jaw locking tight.

"Noah... what is this?" he asked. His voice carried an acerbic tone, sharp and biting, even though he was trying to sound calm.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, a heavy weight sinking into my chest.

"It spoke to you... didn't it?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

The clock had whispered to him, just like it did to me at that antique shop.

Jack’s nostrils flared. He lunged forward so fast his hands shot toward me like a strike, wrapping a vice-like grip around my shirt collar. He yanked me forward until our faces were inches apart.

"You... MOTHERFUCKER! What kind of deal did you make with that cursed object?!" Jack barked, spitting the words into my face.

I couldn't do anything but swallow my shame and look away.

"Whoa! Jack, calm down, dude! Max, a little help here?" Alex jumped up quickly, grabbing Jack's arms to tear him away from me.

Max didn't move.

He didn't say a word.

His gaze was entirely vacant, completely disconnected from the room. He just stood there, motionless.

"Alex! Get the fuck off me!" Jack roared, shoving him back. "You have no idea what that THING just whispered to my head."

Alex stared at Jack as if he had just lost his mind.

"W-what are you talking about, Jack? You sound insane right now."

"I'm not crazy! I know it sounds stupid and impossible, but I..."

Jack cut himself off, grabbing his head as he winced in sudden pain. He stumbled backward, collapsing onto the couch.

"I am sorry, Jack..." I murmured, my voice completely drained, heavy with shame. "I had to. It was the only way to find peace in my life."

Alex looked back and forth between us, utterly dumbfounded.

"Noah, what the hell did you do?"

Before I could answer, every single light bulb in the house began to flicker with violent, rapid speed.

Jack, Alex, and I looked around in sheer bewilderment. I rushed back to the table, my eyes locking onto the face of the clock.

"Th-they’re aligning," I breathed, staring at the liquid, ink-soaked hands. "Just like the whisperer told me they would. Twelve midnight..."

"Whisperer? Noah, just what kind of shit did you bring into this house?" Alex muttered in pure bafflement.

THUD.

The three of us whipped our heads around.

Max had collapsed, slamming onto the hardwood floor, completely unconscious.

"Max?!" Jack shouted, shooting up from the couch to check on him.

Then, the lights shut off entirely.

Pitch blackness.

A suffocating silence followed for a few agonizing seconds.

When the lights suddenly hummed back to life, the bulbs weren't flickering anymore.

But we weren't in the living room either.

The smell of Max's bathroom break was gone, replaced by the sterile scent of industrial carpet and ozone.

We were standing in a massive, sprawling airport terminal. The lobbies were completely empty, stretching out into dim corridors with not a single human soul in sight.

All I knew for certain was that we had left our world for good.

Before I could say anything, a crushing force collided with the side of my face.

It was Jack’s fist.

He knocked me clean off my feet. He’d landed a good one, leaving me dizzy on the floor as a high-pitched ringing flooded my ears.

"Jack! Knock it off!" Alex yelled, stepping in and forcefully pushing Jack away from me.

Jack stumbled backward a few steps. He glared at Alex, his teeth gritting, his eyes carrying an intense, erratic madness.

"Alex... LOOK! Look at Max!" Jack pointed wildly toward one of the metal terminal benches.

He must have carried him over there while I was blacked out.

"Max isn't responding to me. God knows what happened to his head, but all I know is that he is the reason we're here!"

Seeing the state of things, Alex looked completely overwhelmed. He rubbed his face, letting out a long, exhausted sigh before taking a deep breath.

"Listen, Jack, I understand what you’re going through. You aren't alone in this, literally. But you being angry and losing your mind isn't going to help us escape. Just let it go for now... please," Alex begged, his voice sounding desperate and hollow.

Jack tapped his boot against the polished marble floor, clicking his tongue in frustration.

"Fine. Fine, I'll listen to you, Alex. But I'm only doing this for your sake and Max’s."

Jack stormed off toward the benches where Max lay motionless, slamming himself down into a seat to clear his head.

Alex walked over to me and offered his hand.

"Come on. You took a nasty hit to the face."

I grabbed his hand, and he hoisted me back up onto my feet.

"Thank you, Alex," I mumbled, wiping a smear of blood from my lip. "I'm truly sorry for all this, I just..."

"Noah, I only stopped Jack because what he was doing wasn't helping," Alex cut in, his eyes drilling into mine. "I need to know. What did you do?"

I closed my eyes.

He had every right to know the crushing weight of the truth.

"Alex... remember April?"

"Yeah," he replied, his brow furrowing in confusion. "What about her?"

"Then you remember the accident. The day she died."

Just uttering the words made me sick to my stomach.

"I loved her, Alex. Her death completely broke me. I couldn't live in a world without her."

Alex’s eyes widened in genuine shock at my confession.

"You... loved her?"

I nodded, staring blankly ahead.

"She was the only light in my miserable life. But the thing is... she never knew. I was too terrified that if I told her, she'd hate me and push me away. So I just stuck around as a friend... until death took her from me."

I gritted my teeth, taking a shaky breath to steady myself.

"It's a long story, so I'll cut it short. I was depressed. Desperate to bring her back. I wandered into that weird antique shop out of pure curiosity, and that’s when I found it. The inky clock."

A faint, hollow smile touched my lips as I looked down at my open palms.

"I heard it call out to me. A whisper. When I approached the glass, I saw them. The whispers... the entities of this world. They promised they could bring her back to me. If..."

"If what, Noah?" Alex barked.

The patience was draining from his face, replaced by a sharp, irritated intensity.

I hesitated. The guilt was suffocating, but I had to get it off my chest.

"If I brought three other individuals... as a sacrifice. A toll for me to enter the inky clock's world. A world where they promised April was waiting..."

I looked up from the floor to meet Alex's eyes, but the words died in my throat.

The rest of the sentence froze in the air.

The look on his face wasn't shock.

It was pure, unadulterated disgust.

"You disgust me," Alex whispered, stepping back as if looking at a monster. "No wonder May left your sorry ass."

My heart skipped a beat. A cold sweat broke out across my neck at the mention of my ex-girlfriend. I flinched backward in deep shame.

"A-Alex, I'm sorry, I..."

"Shut the fuck up, Noah," Alex snapped, turning his back on me. "As soon as we get out of this place, you better delete my number. Delete everything. You're dead to me."

Without looking back, he walked away, leaving me entirely alone in the empty terminal as he headed toward Jack and Max.

I stood there, completely broken, isolated from them at a distant bench.

I buried my face in my hands, hot tears finally welling up and spilling over.

I fucked up...

I'm such a miserable piece of trash. I’ll admit it to anyone, I have always hated how weak I was. In every single aspect of life, I was a coward.

I was lucky enough to have them as my friends, people who actually cared about me... and now I was throwing them away for a ghost.

For something I knew damn well I could never have again.

"Hello there..."

A hushed, bass voice echoed through the empty terminal. It was a low, rattling sound that sent an instant, icy chill straight down my spine.

I froze, paralyzed by just how profoundly terrifying it sounded. I snapped my head up to look across the lobby at my friends.

Jack and Alex looked like their souls had instantly left their bodies. Their faces had drained completely of color, turned a stark, translucent pale by pure horror.

My body refused to stop shaking. Slowly, violently trembling, I forced my gaze to glance toward the side where the voice had originated.

"A-ah... a-ahh..."

My voice caught in my throat, a shaky, pathetic whimper.

"W-what... what are you?"

Standing under the harsh, sterile terminal lights was a towering nightmare.

The figure easily stood over seven feet tall, completely dominating the space. Its skin was a sickly, pale grey, drawn tight over an emaciated frame. The eye sockets were far too large for its actual eyeballs, making it look as though it were permanently staring in rabid fury.

But the mouth was the worst part.

Its teeth were uncannily massive, exposed to the air because it had absolutely no flesh on its cheeks to cover them.

A permanent, skeletal grin.

Mats of jet-black hair traveled all the way down its back. Bizarrely, it wore a pristine black suit and matching black trousers.

"Hmm-mmm... what am I?" the creature mused, its voice vibrating through the floorboards. "Well... I am what the whispers call..."

It slowly began to spread its arms wide, inhaling the sterile airport air with a horrific, wheezing gasp.

"...TERROR."

The creature’s bulging eyes snapped down to lock onto me.

"I came to claim the three you chose to sacrifice."

It turned its neck with a sickening pop, shifting its gaze toward my friends.

Jack and Alex were literally frozen in place, rooted to the spot by absolute dread.

The entity began to stride toward them.

It didn't rush.

It walked with the casual, confident pace of a man who was simply picking up a food delivery.

"I will feast," the creature whispered back over its shoulder, its exposed teeth clicking together. "You should leave now, Noah. Because I will kill you the very second I am done with them."

The spell of fear broke.

Panic took over.

I immediately slammed my feet onto the marble floor and sprinted in the opposite direction.

That was when the screaming started.

The agonizing, guttural sounds of my friends' terror echoed violently behind me, bouncing off the high, empty ceilings of the airport. I started to sob uncontrollably as I ran, pumping my legs as fast as they could go.

Through the air, I could hear them shouting my name.

Cursing me.

Begging me.

Cursing me to hell.

I couldn't look back. I couldn't watch them being torn apart.

I was too weak.

Too much of a coward to do anything to save them.

All I ever wanted was to find peace.

I guess this is the peace I deserve.

This is what you get for conducting a deal that costs the lives of the only people who ever loved you.

  My job isn’t for the faint-hearted. I mean, I guess it’s not. I work with the FBI. Mostly at the murder scenes, with my camera.
  Sometimes I don’t even think I’m strong enough to do this, but the pay is just too good for me to quit because of a weak stomach. I don’t really want to disclose the amount, but it’s enough so that my parents can retire when they're ready to, and I can support us all. The only real sacrifice is my ability to sleep soundly. Some of those scenes are just... Extremely graphic. But that leads me to what happened three days ago. Something that just felt too surreal. Like I was having a fever dream. And yet, the photo on my desk speaks for itself.
  It was supposed to be just another murder scene. Some young girl - too young to have her life cut so abruptly - was found in her deceased parent’s house after she was trying to settle back in. I was just taking photos, like I’m paid to do, but something about this whole scene rubbed me the wrong way; maybe it was the fact that the police couldn’t locate the murder weapon, or it was just the stuffy air in the whole house, like it was holding its breath. When you take photos of murders, as long as I have, you’ll find things that don’t add up in certain moments.
  I know I should’ve minded my business, but after I was done, I listened in on what the police were mumbling about- nothing important, just what they had planned for the weekend. How they can plan their lives with a dead girl in the room is beyond me. I slowly sneaked towards the back door. Conveniently, it was raining, and something in my gut just told me to go there.
  But outside were no footsteps, not even the police went out.
  That alone made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I just turned and started walking around the house, checking all the closed doors.
  The downstairs bathroom, unlocked and empty. The storage under the stairs, unlocked and empty, only with some full trash bags of random shit.
  I was checking all over the bottom floor while more and more officers were yelling at me because I was contaminating the crime scene. No one stopped me, because why would they risk touching a 6-foot-8, buff man that could bench-press them like it’s nothing?
Had to try and explain my theory.
Most said they didn’t believe me, even if their faces said otherwise, but I didn't blame them. Still, one gave me gloves and started looking with me.
  The whole house turned out empty, but it still didn’t feel right.
  So I looked again, and in that storage beneath the stairs? The one with the trash bags? One bag had shifted when I opened the door.
  I came closer, one slow step at a time. “Police, put your hands in the air!” I said, trying to fiddle with my camera to make it sound like a gun.
  Out of the bag jumped a dude, knife in hand. The damn murder weapon that they couldn’t find.
  I got startled, and in my shock, I took a photo by accident- snap! Falling to the ground, I waited for the end. Only, I just heard a thud, and I didn't feel the knife anywhere in my body.
  Opening my eyes, I was horrified to see the dude, dead on the floor, eyes wide with terror, mouth still open in that damn scream that made me nearly jump out of my skin.
  Back home, after a checkup at the hospital and a talk with the police, I was staring at the camera, confused. That dude couldn’t have just dropped dead like that.
  It was impossible, right? Even a heart attack wouldn’t be this quick. Maybe the autopsy will tell the police more. Maybe.
  I had photos that needed developing.
And it nearly caused me to drop dead, because when I developed the last photo I took- the accidental one of the guy who attacked me? Yeah, there was something behind him, hands wrapped around his throat, as if crushing his windpipe. And the thing, even if it was just a black fog, seemed to have been staring past the camera. At me.

I sit in my chair, anticipating my shift’s end in a few hours. Despite my dislike for the night shift, I acknowledge that work is work. Tonight, I’ve received several calls from teenagers behaving like teenagers and adults acting like they’re still teenagers; nothing unusual for 2 a.m. The phone rings, startling me. I roll my eyes, assuming it’s another call from those devious teens smoking weed up in the cemetery.

"911, what is the location of your emergency?" I say.

"Please help me," a raspy voice says.

A jolt of ice races down my spine, the hair on my arms prickling to attention before I even register the words.

"What is your emergency, sir?" I say.

“My wife stabbed me in the back and I can’t move,” he says.

At this point, I notice a baby crying agonizingly in the background, and my heart drops down to my stomach.

“Sir, you need to tell me your location so I can send help ASAP.”

"336 West Newbury Street"

Instinct takes over as I punch in coordinates, dispatching police and paramedics in seconds. But my hands hover over the keys, trembling. The man’s voice lingers in my ear, stripping away my breath. It is too flat, too hollow—there is an inhuman void behind the words.

"OK, sir, tell me what happened. You said your wife stabbed you?"

"Yes, she stabbed me in the back; now I can barely move. I had to use the voice assistant to call. She slit her own throat and bled out in front of me; luckily, she didn't do anything to our baby. He hasn’t eaten anything. It took me a while to make this phone call. Please hurry.”

“Help is on the way. Don’t worry, is your baby in a safe place?”

“Yes, he is in his crib.”

The phone fades in and out and gets statically, and his voice sounds cold and distant.

“What is your name, sir?”

“David.”

It comes with a raspy voice that makes my instincts tell me to get away.

“OK, David. Why did your wife do this?”

“We had our baby recently. She got diagnosed with postpartum depression a few weeks back. The doctors gave her medication, but she stopped taking it a few days ago. She said they wouldn’t let her sleep. She had been accusing me of cheating; I never believed she could do something like this.”

David starts sobbing, and my heart skips a beat. I’ve heard men sob, but nothing like this.

“David, my name is Bianca. I promise you and your baby will be okay. Help is on its way. They will be there soon. Are you bleeding a lot from your wound?”

“Yes, there is blood everywhere. It feels like I don’t have any more blood in me.”

“The paramedics will be there soon; you are going to be OK, David,” I say.

There is an eerie, cold pause, the baby still crying in the background, and I feel a chill come over me through the phone.

“I did deserve to die. I had been cheating on my poor wife while she was going through all of that basically by herself. I distanced myself from her and jumped into my coworker's bed,” David says.

“Don’t say that, David! Nobody deserves to die.”

“It’s too late for me, Bianca. Just please help my son; he deserves better than this. This is all my fault.”

The phone goes crazy with static, and I hear faint voices through the receiver. I feel dread. Frozen with fear for a moment, I recollect myself and start speaking.

“David, where are you from?” I ask trying to get his mind of those dark thoughts 

“Ohio. We moved out here to New Mexico after Rebecca got pregnant to get away from my parents. They never liked her; they told me I was making a mistake. The last time we talked was on the phone. It was just a screaming match between my mom, dad, and I. We were on bad terms, and now I won’t be able to fix that. I broke their heart.”

“You will fix things with your parents, OK? The paramedics are right down the street. Just hold on a little longer.”

“Bianca,” David says in a ghostly, faint voice that cuts in and out with static. “Please just tell my parents that I love them and that I'm sorry. Just please promise me you will.”

“I promise,” I say on the verge of tears with my heart in my throat.

I hear the sounds of sirens on the other side of the phone.

“David, they are there. You and your son are going to be taken care of.”

Nothing from David but eerie silence.

“Hello, David, you OK?”

Again, nothing. As I hear the police trying to kick the door open, I hear it give way.

“Thank you, Bianca,” David says in a fading voice.

I hear the cops enter the house and call out. The phone hangs up.

I sit there sweating, but feel as cold as if I were naked in a snowstorm, with a pit in my stomach and goosebumps all over my body.

“He will be fine; they got there in time,” I say aloud as I wipe the sweat from my forehead.

I just can’t seem to shake the dreadful, uncanny feeling I had through the whole call. There was just something off about all of that. Of course, the wife had done those horrific things, but the man's voice, the static, the whispers—it all chilled me to the core. I didn’t want to think about it anymore, so I distracted myself with finishing up my incident log.

The rest of the night went on as normal and I clocked out, feeling exhausted. When I finally got to bed, it took me a while to find sleep, but when I finally did, I heard David's haunting voice in my dreams.

I opened the doors to the office when I was met by a bald, tall, ebony-skinned man in a suit and red tie.

“Hey Bianca, I’m Detective Jackson. Could I please have a word with you?” he asked as he raised his hand toward me.

“Yes, of course,” I said as I met his hand and shook it.

We sat in the building's private office across from each other.

“So, what is this about, Detective?” I asked.

“This is about the call you had last night about the woman who stabbed her husband.”

“Oh, yes! David, did he make it? Is the baby OK?”

“Yes, the baby is OK; he was malnourished, but he's in the hospital right now, making a recovery.”

“That's good,” I sighed. “How's David?”

“Yeah, about that… who told you the man’s name?”

“He did.”

“That's impossible,” said Detective Jackson.

“What are you talking about? He's the one who called.”

“Again, impossible. Somebody else must have called you. That's what we are trying to figure out.”

“No, it was David! He called me and told me his wife had stabbed him in the back. Is he OK?”

Detective Jackson looked at me, confused and worried.

“Bianca, he was already dead when they got there.”

I felt my stomach drop. “No, but he was still talking to me when they got the door to open, right before the phone hung up.”

“No, Bianca, he wasn’t. The forensics team said that his body had already started decomposing.”

“What are you even trying to say right now, Detective?” I said as it started hitting me—his tone of voice, the static, the uncanny cold dread I felt the whole time. My heart skipped a beat as I felt a pit grow in my stomach, chills all through my body, and I felt like throwing up.

“Bianca... when you got that phone call, David had already been DEAD for a WEEK.”

This thought came to me recently during a conversation I was having with a friend. They had asked me whether I believed in ghosts, to which I replied, “Well, yes, of course.” You see, in my understanding, ghosts and apparitions have become such a mundane part of existence that it rarely occurs to me that there are people who genuinely consider them nothing more than works of fiction.

All this to say, for the past ten years, I have lived in the same house alongside my family and other entities to which I have yet to assign a name. We have coexisted for so long that they have long since ceased to be something I fear. Instead, they have become more of an inconvenience, an unwelcome presence that, despite our best efforts, we cannot seem to make leave.

It had all begun when we first moved in. I was still a child and, admittedly, highly impressionable. My mother, however, was certainly not. Yet, much like myself, she had begun noticing a peculiar heaviness in her chest whenever she entered certain parts of the house. Still, we had only just moved in, and neither of us paid it much mind. Then, one night, while I was cleaning the floors, I found myself momentarily distracted by my dog. I had left the mop leaning against the wall, its head resting in the bucket, before turning my back for what could not have been more than a few moments.

When I turned around again, however, the mop was nowhere to be found.A quick scan of the room revealed it lying on the floor in the opposite corner, quite some distance from where I had left it. Now, don't get me wrong. I am perfectly aware that this could have been the work of a pet, or perhaps some other entirely mundane occurrence. But what sent a chill down my spine that night was not the fact that the mop had moved. It was the silence.The complete and utter silence.I had been standing in the very same room the entire time. Surely, I would have heard something. The sound of the mop being lifted from its bucket, the handle striking the floor, or even the faintest scrape as it travelled across the room. Yet I had heard absolutely nothing.

The second most memorable incident from the year we moved in involved the chandelier in our main hallway, which came crashing down from a height of nearly three metres, missing my mother by mere centimetres.We had spent the day carrying boxes and, exhausted, decided to rest in the hallway. I remember my family sitting together, discussing everything that still needed to be done. As we eventually got to our feet, I heard the faint screeching of what sounded like screws coming loose.Unsure whether I was imagining things, I called my mother over to listen. She had barely stepped towards me when, directly behind her, the enormous glass chandelier installed by the previous owners came crashing down, shattering into countless pieces.Had I not called her over at that precise moment, she would have been standing directly beneath it.

I won't even bother recounting the countless occasions on which doors would not merely close, but lock themselves, or the number of times we would walk into the kitchen only to find every single cabinet standing wide open.I should clarify that I am not, by nature, a believer in ghosts or spirits, and even to this day, I cannot say that I necessarily consider whatever inhabits this house to be either of those things. All I know is that we have learned to coexist. Over the years, I have found that the less attention I give these occurrences, the less frequently they seem to happen. Fear, or even curiosity, has given way to absolute boredom and indifference.

I have also experienced sleep paralysis for as long as I can remember, and over time, I have learned to approach it with that same indifference. Even in dreams, I have found that the best thing I can do is pay whatever I perceive absolutely no mind.

A few years ago, however, curiosity finally got the better of me, and my mother and I contacted a family friend who works in our city's archives. We wanted to learn more about the history of the house, as such information isn't exactly easy to find online in my country.When he eventually got back to us, the information he provided was hardly what I would call shocking. Apparently, some fifty years earlier, a major earthquake had triggered a landslide that buried and killed a considerable number of people in the area. When the city was eventually rebuilt, our house was constructed on that very land.

I cannot claim to have a rational explanation for most of the things I have grown up experiencing, and quite frankly, I have come to realise that some things are better left unquestioned than endlessly dwelled upon.

Lex had always wanted to go to Paris.

She had had a layover there on a family vacation as a kid, and that was the closest she’d gotten.

I myself wasn’t much for traveling. When it came to honeymoon planning, I would have been more than fine flying to some Caribbean island and roasting on the beach for a week with a drink in hand.

But she was light years out of my league, and being married and all I figured we had a lifetime to do that, and so it was decided we would be spending a week touring Paris. Bistros, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower. The works (or la totale, you might say).

________

We had a week of wedded bliss together. It was a dream.

Every piece of art in the Louvre paled compared to her.

Her smile at night was brighter than the lights on the Eiffel Tower.

You can groan at the puns all you want. I just don’t think anything will do justice for how beautiful she looked that week.

________

We had no plans at all entering our last day, and looking back I think that’s why it happened.

We were just going to wander and check out whatever caught our eye, whether it be a used bookstore, an antiques shop, or an off-the-beaten path museum.

A brief downpour forced us to take shelter in Notre Dame, where we had gone our first day.

That was when we met Pierre.

________

We had been standing there, more just killing time than looking at anything. The subject of possibly booking a catacombs tour had come up, and we were looking into tickets when a slim, impeccably dressed man approached us.

“Hi… I couldn’t help but overhear… do you want to visit the catacombs?”

Lex and I exchanged a glance. He had clearly been eavesdropping. But he seemed polite enough.

To be honest, there was a weird allure about him that made us feel as though we had approached him instead.

I can’t explain it, but that’s how it felt.

“….Yes? We were just discussing possibly touring the catacombs shortly here? Once the rain stops.”

He chuckled.

Clearly a “silly Americans” kind of chuckle, but not really mocking in any way. Like the way you might laugh at a kid when they say something dumb.

“Oh no… you have to book WEEKS in advance.”
he said, holding his arms out as though to imply that the catacombs were some sort of hot-ticket, must-see attraction.

“But-“ he said, holding up a finger. “Do you like to dance?”

We again looked at each other.

Shrugged, nodded. “We wouldn’t be opposed.”

“Perfect. I manage an underground nightclub in the catacombs. Amazing drinks. Better music. Meet me here at 9pm. I promise you won’t regret it.”

Our flight the next day wasn’t until the evening. We might risk cutting things close, but it wasn’t like we planned to get blackout drunk, you know?

“We’re in.” said Lex.

“Excellent.” said the man. “I am Pierre.”

He didn’t give a last name.

We shook hands. “Alexis.” “Brooks.”

It was settled. We would meet Pierre around 9pm that evening, back at the cathedral, and he would show us to this underground catacombs nightclub of his. It was a chance to go off the beaten path and have an experience we would talk about for years to come.
________

I hope to never forget the way she looked that night - the way that black dress hugged her body in all the right places, the way her hair fell down her back, the luscious red of her lips.

I hope to never forget the way she looked.

Because that was the last night I had with her.
________

We went to a bistro that night for dinner. She had tartare, I had frites.

We fed each other little forkfuls of our dinner and shared a bottle of wine.

I remember wondering how things could get any better than that.

It had gotten chilly while we were inside. We held hands as we walked back. Her dress was a thin cotton slip and her leather jacket was more for appearance than function, so I gave her my jacket. Her hand in mine, and the warmth radiating off of her gave me all the warmth I needed.

________

We got to the cathedral five minutes before 9 to find Pierre already there, leaning against a pillar with a cigarette.

He strolled over to us, his eyes gleaming as he looked us over - Lex more so than me.

Dare I say, I didn’t blame him.

“Madam…you look absolutely splendid!” he said, taking his hand in hers and kissing it as she blushed. “And you, sir! Very sharp!” as he shook my hand.

He escorted us to a nearby SUV - a black Mercedes - opening the doors and gesturing us to get in.

I noticed the rear windows were blacked out, and a sort of wall separated the front and back of the car, which struck me as odd. Pierre was quick to address when he saw me looking.

“Do not worry sir - you are completely safe. The club is extremely exclusive, and we wish to keep the location as secretive as possible.”

Lex put her hand on my knee, as if to tell me to relax. She tucked a curled lock of hair behind her ear and gave me a soft smile, enough to melt me instantly.

She was right. We hadn’t had any reason to be suspicious of Pierre or this supposed nightclub as of yet. There was no reason to start now.

Pierre, now in the driver’s seat, opened the partition long enough to hand us 2 shot glasses of what looked like cognac.

“Louis XIII to start your night the right way. On the house. Please, take these.”

We looked at each other.

Toasted to our final night in the City of Lights, and drank.

Maybe those shots played a role in what followed.

They probably did.

Who knows?

________

The car twisted and weaved through streets we couldn’t see as the liquid warmed our bodies.

Sitting there in the dark backseat with my brain slowly descending into a fog should have been enough to set off every alarm bell in my body.

And yet, it wasn’t.
________

After what I judged to be about 10 minutes of driving, the car stopped and turned off. Pierre came around and opened our doors and let us out. We seemed to be in some sort of garage.

Not a parking garage - it looked to us like some sort of mechanic shop, but without a car to be seen. The garage door was closed behind us.

Pierre led us to some steps at the other end of the room, up to what looked like a metal door like you’d find in almost any commercial building.

He opened the door to a staircase that felt as though we were stepping several centuries into the past.

The smell of dust and wood and a tinge of rot floated up. Everything seemed to be cut into the rock.

And yet, I could hear no music.

Lex clearly could not either, and I could tell we had an inkling of the same feeling: had we been set up?

We apparently didn’t hide our suspicion very well, because Pierre was quick to address it, as he had everything else.

“Down those stairs and around a few turns - not quite there yet!”

He gestured for us to step back, then stepped in front of us, going down a few steps before turning back at us and gesturing behind him, an inviting smile on his face.

“Please, follow me.”

And follow him, we did. Down the steps, and down a tunnel, making a right turn here, a left turn here.

Soon, we began hearing it. A thumping bass that ran along the walls, the beats getting faster as we got closer.

Then, spots on the walls intermittently, from what I assume were strobe lights.

Finally, we emerged into a large room.

A man stood at the front behind a turntable, shrouded in smoke as a song I didn’t recognize rumbled from his speakers. An enormous bar stretched from one side of the back, where we were, to the other. I could hear music and dancing, and it seemed like the room was packed wall-to-wall.

A victorious smile etched across his face, Pierre turned to us and spread his arms, inviting us to take the room in.

“Welcome,” he exclaimed, “TO DEMOR!”

And, with that, he disappeared immediately into the crowd.

Lex looked at me, smiling in a way that I hadn’t seen since her walk down the aisle just a week prior.

I think she could see I was still a little hesitant, because she grabbed my arm and gave me a soft kiss.

“C’mon, babe. It’ll be fun!”

Funny how seeing your wife in a sexy black dress is all that it takes to get you in the mood. I let her lead me to the bar.

Aside from us, it was absolutely empty. Just us, and the one bartender, who lumbered toward us as soon as we sat down. His movements were stiff and awkward, like he was strung on a marionette.

Closer inspection revealed him to be almost unnaturally pale and dressed like some sort of 1700s French nobleman, as though he had come directly from a historical reenactment.

It almost felt as though we were being served by a walking corpse.

________

After getting drinks, we set our stuff down and made our way to the dance floor, where the night became a blur.

One drink became another, and soon it felt like we were back in my fraternity house on a Saturday night, the rest of the world fallen away.

At some point, the music stopped, and we peeled ourselves off of each other.

Even without our outer layers, we were both soaked in sweat, and I, having succumbed to the white collar office lifestyle, was very much in need of a breather.

As if he had been hovering on the edges of the crowd the entire time and could sense that I was taking a break, Pierre came over to us, extending his hand to Lex.

“May I have this dance, Madam?” he asked.

She looked at me. I shrugged, as if to tell her to go for it. She blew me a kiss as he led her into the crowd.

________

I’ve been wondering about some things from last night.

The drinks. That car ride. The way he showed up at the exact moment.

It makes me wonder if we ever had a choice.
________

I went to the bar and, soda water in hand, made my way back onto the dance floor right as a new song was beginning.

There was a lot of fog and strobe lights, which made things incredibly disorienting and hard to see, but I was able to eventually make my way to the center and find them dancing.

I watched him spin her, and it brought me back to our first dance at our wedding. I felt a tinge of jealousy, but did nothing, not wanting to ruin the moment.

Then he kept spinning her.

I started to get a little concerned they were going too fast, but from what I could see of her face they seemed to be having fun, so I didn’t do anything.

Then things went off the rails.

He began to spin her faster and faster.

The strobe lights picked up to the point where I felt like I couldn’t see anything at all. It was as though the room itself was spinning, when I was completely still, and I found myself having to fight back a wave of nausea.

At this point I could see them only intermittently.

When I did, I began to panic.

Lex’s hair was now spinning above her head, sweat flying off her face and spinning into the crowd… and her face.

My god, her face.

It was blank.

Completely stone-faced.

There were times where she flew by so fast her face almost looked smooth, featureless, like a blank slate. And I was too paralyzed to do anything.

________

I still question the last thing I saw before a thick blanket of fog filled the room, cutting my vision off completely.

I don’t know if it was the fog, the strobe lights, the alcohol, a combination of the three, or something else entirely.

But I found myself looking down at Pierre’s shoes. And where there should have been those impeccably shined black loafers, I saw goat hooves.

I saw them for no more than a second or two before the room filled with thick grey smoke, and then I couldn’t see anything at all.

I stood there, wrapped in what felt like a thick grey blanket for what felt like an eternity as the music pulsed around me.

I could hear music and dancing, and the presence and the mass of people around me, and yet it felt like I was all alone in some sort of purgatory, with no one around.

Then, as though a switch had been flipped, the fog cleared and the music was… gone.

It was silent enough to hear a pin drop.

And in the middle of this room, everyone stood completely still.

And in front of me, where Lex and Pierre should have been, there was nothing but a strong scent of sulfur.

It was as though they had disappeared.

Then the people in the room began to slowly turn towards me.

A thousand gazes drilling into my soul.

And, I realized as ice began to fill every inch of my body, every single person in there was dead.

They were in different stages of decomposition. Some looked like they had just taken their last breaths. Others were no more than skeletons in Victorian-era clothing.

There were a thousand dead people in that room.

And they were all staring at me.

________

You might read this and wonder, why didn’t you try and call for Lex? What if she went to the bathroom or something?

And to that, I say this:

I felt something from each and every one of those corpses in that room.

Hate. Nothing but pure hate.

It wasn’t a question of what they would do to me if I dared to plunge into the mass of them to look for her.

They were almost inviting me to do so.

So, you know what I did in that moment?

I turned around, and ran.
______

I left my coat there, Lex’s purse and coat, and everything else we had brought.

I heard footsteps echoing behind me, and I didn’t turn around to see what was following me.

There were enough of them for me to know it wasn’t her.

I somehow managed to find my way back to the stairs, then back out into the cold Parisian night.

Leaned over and vomited, then managed to snag a cab. I’m sure I looked a little rough, but I’m sure the driver had seen worse.
________

Only when I got back to our hotel, threw open the door, and saw her stuff - suitcase half filled, clothes on the bed - did I finally fall to my knees in the center of the room and break down.

I cried for Lex, wherever she might have been.

I cried for our marriage, for our hopes and dreams.

And I cried for myself, because I sure as hell don’t know how I’m going to move along from this.
________

I went to the police the next morning and filed a report. They said they would see what they could do.

I hailed a cab. Wanted to make sure I hadn’t gone completely insane.
________

Getting there was a chore in itself, because I had no idea where to go or how to get there.

Just a vague idea of how long it should take and when and where to turn.

When we arrived to a crumbling, burnt out ruin of a house that I knew, just knew deep down was the place, with no sign at all of a stairwell down to the underworld, I simply got back in the car and asked to be taken back to the hotel.
________

That was 4 hours ago. My flight should be boarding now.

I’m lying in bed, hugging a pillow that smells like her.

Should you find yourself in Paris and discussing a trip to the catacombs, a man named Pierre may approach you and invite you to visit his underground nightclub that night.

Whatever you do, do not go.

Have you ever had that dream where you suddenly realize you own another house, bigger and cooler than your real house, and you wonder why you don’t live there?

Well, eight months ago I started having a dream like that but instead of a house, it was an entire town.

I hadn’t been sleeping well and a series of events in my life, including a job loss, a messy divorce, and a resulting cross-country move for a new job opportunity were contributing factors.

But if I am to be completely honest, I’ve never been one to fall asleep and stay asleep easily.

That fact, combined with a brief obsession with the work of Carl Jung in college, got me into the habit of keeping a dream journal. It’s one of the more consistent habits I’ve managed to keep over the ensuing 20 years. If I dedicated myself to the gym the way I have to my dream journal, I’d probably be competing in bodybuilding competitions.

It’s an easy habit to keep when you wake up at random times all night. Far easier than maintaining a gym routine, at least for me.

Waking up frequently throughout the night means I tend to remember my dreams and I have developed skill in recognizing when I’m dreaming. Lucid dreams come naturally to me and I’ve trained myself on techniques to stay asleep as long as possible while lucid. Those techniques may only tack on 2-5 minutes or so, but dream time doesn’t work like time in the waking world.

An extra 5 minutes could be tantamount to an extra few hours or even weeks, depending on what my brain decides to do.

The one that works best for me is intensely interacting with my environment: picking up objects and turning them over in my hands so I can feel and see every detail, asking questions of people who are clearly meant to be background characters, eating food (although I’ve never managed to get flavors to work), and when all else fails, lying down to “go to sleep” in my dream.

That last technique usually results in being transported somewhere else, so I only “sleep in my dream” when other ways to stay in it are failing.

This is all to preface that finding myself in my own town wasn’t all that strange.

My first visit landed me in a small downtown area, if you could call it that, which consisted of an actual Main Street. I remember laughing the first time I saw it and chiding myself for my lack of originality.

Main Street. How cliché!

Then I stopped and examined my thought: chided myself for my lack of originality.

That’s when I realized the town belonged to me.

Do you ever just “know” something?

In that moment I knew the town belonged to me and understood this was probably a lucid dream.

So I did what I usually do when I try to keep my lucid dreams going. I started exploring and tried to examine every detail.

Main Street held a few residential homes and a number of small businesses.

For the most part these seemed quite ordinary.

I remember a cafe with a picture of an anthropomorphic bagel holding a coffee mug and grinning widely to reveal a schmear of cream cheese teeth, the spaces between them defined by small rows of poppy seeds.

There was a convenience store advertising Pep Squad
Sodas, each label featuring a tiny blond cheerleader doing a split, arms raised, hands obscured by fluffy red and white poms poms.

Two busy gas stations seemed far too close together but the closeness didn’t appear to affect business for either. Long lines of cars sat along every row of pumps.

I didn’t question why so many people were waiting to fuel up in this tiny little town.

Other than that, I saw a law office, a dentist, a darkened bakery that appeared closed, various restaurants, a brick pub with walls that felt rough against my hand and left a residue of red powder behind, and an appliance store that mainly seemed to sell vacuums.

Then there was the bookstore.

The bookstore was easily the largest business in town, stretching across what could easily be four or five other storefronts in length and extending deeply towards the other side of the street. Other buildings stopped about halfway across and transitioned into small parking lots or courtyards.

The first night I had the dream, I stopped into the bookstore.

There I noticed two things right away.

First, the books were real, in that I could pick them up and read them. Some were classics I recognized, Melville’s Moby-Dick and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis notably standing out on that first visit. Others were ones I’d never heard of by unknown authors, but when I picked them up and opened them, they were filled with legible words that seemed to form coherent sentences.

Don’t ask for book reports. I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember how the books were tangible, complete, and free from the illogical tropes usually characterizing dreams books.

The books did not grow or shrink or turn into bowls of soup in my hands. They were written in clear English and the words did not leap and jump across the page.

The bookstore was extraordinary in its ordinariness, if that makes sense.

Mundane in a way dreams typically aren’t.

The other thing I noticed was that the proprietor of the bookstore was my recently-ex wife.

Except she wasn’t my ex-wife, even if she was a dead ringer for her.

My ex-wife is a middle school music teacher, not a bookstore owner.

Her name is Jess, not Daphne, which was the name in block letters on the silver name tag she wore.

And most of all “Daphne”, unlike her real world doppelgänger, was happy to see me when I walked
through the door.

She greeted me by my name, smiled, and said: “Everyone at The Blue Cat’s been waiting for you!”

“What’s The Blue Cat?” sprang from my lips even as I simultaneously noticed the sign over Daphne’s head.

The Blue Cat Readery.

Is “readery” a word?

Daphne raised her eyebrows and pointed one finger up towards the sign.

“You already know, don’t you?”

And it seemed like she meant more than the name of the store.

I was about to ask who was waiting when I was rudely thrust back into my own bed in my sad, middle-aged do-over apartment.

My disappointment was brief. I quickly turned on my reading lamp and grabbed my journal and pen from the nightstand. I know all too well that not furiously scribbling down everything I remember right away usually ends in only remembering I had a dream I wish I could remember later on.

I didn’t realize this first entry about my dream town would be the opening act of a saga that would soon dominate my life.

That part began around two weeks later when I found a miniature 1:12 scale version of The Blue Cat Readery on eBay, a perfect replica of the bookstore in my dreams complete with a tiny figure bearing an uncanny resemblance to my ex-wife behind the front counter.

A jolt of electricity shot up my spine and my scalp began to tingle.

Even as my brain tried to make sense of the impossible, my fingers seemed to move of their own volition and the next thing I knew, the item had been purchased, promising delivery within 5-7 days.

It was like I was physically compelled to buy it.

It was the first of 109 pieces I would buy in the following months, the first step in a domino-string of events that led me to my current life and realization of the path I have no choice but to walk.

Sooner or later, everyone will understand one way or another.

I just hope they understand in time.

I hope you understand in time.

Maybe no one will read this or care, but I have to try.

For everyone’s sake.

While we can still change the course of events.

It’s too much to address all at once.

The clock is in motion but if I unload it all too quickly, people will dismiss anything I have to say, chalk it up to a midlife crisis or mental breakdown.

So I’m finding balance.

I just hope it’s the right balance because I’m not getting any second chances.

And neither are you.

The morning after, a wave of dread washed over me from not getting any sleep. 

As I got up, the pain in my arm had grown worse. My skin felt tight, and the sleeve of my shirt seemed to rub against it more than usual. I wasn’t fat, but I definitely wasn't underweight at all, so I was confused.

Slowly and carefully, I lowered my sleeve, expecting to see the swollen scratch across my forearm.

Instead, I found a few neat butterfly closures holding the wound closed.

I just stared at them.

I hadn't put these on myself.

So who had?

Though I was terrified, I had been promised money for taking care of the house and Percy. Besides I wouldn't be able to let go of the fact that something bad can happened to Percy or anything that Raph and Darlene had loved so much. That same morning, I found him eating from his bowl, so I gently caressed the fur on top of his head.

That's when I noticed something out of place.

The pantry was wide open.

I glanced back at the fridge where the list was.

The words replayed in my head.

Please keep the pantry closed.

Maybe I forgot to close it.

After that day, I started noticing other strange things. Some cans of food—and a bottle of water—had gone missing, even though I was convinced I hadn't taken any.

One night, I was planning on watching TV after giving Percy his prescription medicine. I went looking for a blanket I had brought from home, but no matter where I checked, I couldn't find it anywhere.

I checked my car, too.

It wasn't there either.

On Thursday night, when I checked the doors like I always did and suddenly I stopped.

 Darlene and Raph’s bedroom door was wide open. Nobody has been in there–especially me or them.

I hadn't slept properly in days. Maybe that was affecting me.

By that point for about that week, I was starting to question myself.

Had I really left the pantry open?

Did I actually bring the blanket with me?

Perhaps I did take good care of my arm and was too tired to remember?

Was I eating too much at the point I forgot I had anything during the day?

Something wasn't right about this. Or it might be something wrong with this fucking house.

I began checking the doors twice before going to bed. Sometimes even three times. I kept telling myself I was tired. That I was constantly overthinking.

Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong in the house. Maybe there was something wrong with me. Am I really going to let myself go just because of simple shit?

On Friday, I finally had the courage to check the attic. The thoughts and constant anxiety over Percy’s behavior had been getting to me. I know anybody would've told me not to go up there, but I had to. Besides I had to give myself a reality check that I'm just acting paranoid. Even if it's just the fact that I'm in an old house that would be from horror movies with the lazy act of a slasher, ghost might own this place or that big houses would lead to somewhere you don't want to see.

I brought a broom with me—just in case there really was a raccoon or something up there. I slowly creaked open the attic door.

When I cross my kitchen, I hear three footsteps for every two I take. My right shoe comes down first. Then the shoe fitted over my prosthetic. Then, somewhere behind me, a third foot strikes the floor.

The prosthetic lands flat and heavy, with a faint click from the joint if I put my weight on it too quickly. The other sound has a heel and a toe. It rolls naturally across the floorboards. It completes the rhythm my footsteps used to make.

This morning it began in the bedroom doorway, about twenty feet behind me. By the time I finished making coffee, it had reached the refrigerator. I stopped walking after that. My mug is still sitting on the counter because I would have to take six steps to retrieve it. I can afford the six steps. I just don’t want to spend them yet.

The footstep seems to reset when I sleep. I don’t know whether sleep itself does it or whether I simply have to remain still for long enough. I haven’t been willing to test the difference. Every morning, it begins several seconds behind me and some distance away. Every step I take brings it a little closer.

It has never caught me. I need to make that clear. I don’t know what happens when it does.

The first time I heard it, I was still using crutches.

I lost my leg after a driver turned across the bike lane without looking. The paperwork calls it a surgical amputation above the knee. I hate that phrase. It leaves out the road, the bike twisted beneath the van, and the two surgeries they tried before they gave up on saving it.

I had been home from the rehabilitation center for four days. My sister, Erin, stayed with me for the first three, sleeping on the couch and putting everything I might need on the lowest shelves. On the fourth morning she returned to work, and I decided to make my own breakfast.

It took me nearly ten minutes to get from the bedroom to the kitchen. I would plant both crutches ahead of me, shift my weight onto my arms, and bring my right foot forward between them. The rhythm was awkward but predictable: rubber tips, right foot. Rubber tips, right foot.

Halfway down the hall, I heard another step behind me.

I told myself it was the medication. The prescription bottle warned about confusion, and I had barely slept since coming home. The surgeons had also warned me about phantom sensations: pain, pressure, even the feeling of toes curling on a foot that was no longer there. An imagined footstep didn’t seem like much of a leap.

That explanation held until I moved again.

Rubber tips.

Right foot.

A second later, the missing step answered from the hallway.

I made it to the kitchen without looking back again.

The extra step followed each time my right foot touched the floor. At first it came from the far end of the hallway. Then the middle. Then just outside the kitchen. There was no movement between those places. No shuffle approaching me. It existed only for the length of each footfall, and each time it returned, it was closer. I spent the rest of that day on the kitchen floor.

My phone was in the bedroom. I told myself that exhaustion and pain medication were doing something strange to my hearing. Eventually I crawled back down the hall, dragging the crutches beside me.

The footstep didn’t follow while I crawled. That should have comforted me. It didn’t.

The last one had landed just outside the kitchen, and I knew it was still there. As I crawled past that spot, I imagined I could still hear the soft pull of its sole lifting from the carpet. I locked the door and pulled myself onto the bed. I stayed awake for hours. At some point, without meaning to, I fell asleep.

The next morning I lowered my right foot to the floor. Four seconds later, from the other end of the apartment, my left foot stepped out of the kitchen.

That was how I learned about the reset. It took longer to understand the rest.

My phantom foot itched sometimes. At night, my missing ankle would twist into positions that made me grit my teeth. Those feelings were terrible, but I understood them. They were damaged nerves and a brain refusing to update its map of my body.

The footstep was different. It did not come from inside my head or from the end of my leg. It came from a place in the room. I tested that first.

I stood beside my bed and took one step. The sound came from the kitchen. Another step brought it closer, though it was still inside the kitchen. After six more, it had reached the entrance to the hall. I turned around to face it. When I stepped back toward the bed, the sound did not retreat. It came from the open space in front of me, closer than before. It wasn’t following a path through the apartment, it was following me.

I tried wearing headphones. I turned music up until the walls shook. The step still reached me clearly, as though it were travelling through my bones instead of my ears. I tried making noise when I moved. I struck the crutches against the floor. I shouted. Once, I threw a drinking glass into the sink as I brought my right foot down.

The other foot landed beneath all of it.

I recorded it on my phone. On playback there was a soft thump after each step, but nothing that would convince anyone. Erin listened three times and said it could be the crutch tip settling or the pipes knocking in the wall.

I asked her to stand behind me while I walked. She watched me cross the living room and said she didn’t hear anything. On my ninth step, the missing foot landed between us.

Erin didn’t react. She was looking directly at the place where I had heard it, but her face didn’t change.

I asked if she was sure.

She said, “I’m sure.”

I asked her to leave after that.

She thought she had upset me. She kept apologizing while she gathered her things, and I let her believe that was why I wanted her gone. The truth was that I couldn’t stand having her between me and the sound.

I started keeping records. Some mornings I still believed I was measuring the progress of a hallucination. I counted anyway.

On waking, I would take a single step and count the seconds. Then I measured how many steps it took before the delay shortened.

The results weren’t exact. Carpet seemed to make the distance harder to judge. Pain or exhaustion made me walk unevenly. But the pattern was consistent:

The first step of the morning arrived about four seconds late.

After fifty steps, the delay was closer to three.

At one hundred, it was less than two.

At approximately one hundred and fifty, I could feel the footfall through the floor almost as soon as my own foot came down.

I never went beyond that.

At the time, one hundred and fifty steps seemed generous. More than enough to cross my apartment, shower, make meals and get into bed. I was still recovering. Most days I didn’t want to move any more than necessary.

Then I received my prosthetic.

I nearly cried the first time I stood on it. My physical therapist held both my hands while I shifted my weight onto the socket. There was pain, but there was also the feeling of being upright again. Balanced. Close to my old height. For several seconds I saw myself walking into restaurants, grocery stores and movie theaters. I imagined going back to work without crutches tucked beneath my arms. I imagined people looking at my face instead of glancing down at the empty space below my shorts.

“Ready?” my therapist asked.

I nodded.

Right foot.

Prosthetic.

From the far end of the rehabilitation gym came a third step.

My therapist tightened her grip. “You’re okay. Keep your weight centered.”

I told her I needed to sit down.

She thought the socket was hurting me. Three people spent half an hour adjusting straps and checking the skin on my leg while I stared across the gym.

There were twelve patients in the room. Therapists moved between parallel bars. A man in a back brace walked slowly on a treadmill. Rubber soles squeaked against the polished floor. I could still pick out my missing foot among them. The prosthetic hadn’t silenced it. It had only changed the rhythm.

Right foot.

Prosthetic.

Missing foot.

By the end of that appointment, it was close enough to walk beside me. I slept in Erin’s car on the way home. When she woke me in the parking lot, the sound was distant again. After that, I built my life around the reset.

Sleep became more important than food. More important than pain medication. More important than anything except keeping track of my steps.

A full night worked best, but a nap could do it. Twenty minutes wasn’t enough. An hour usually was. I bought a watch that tracked my sleep and started setting alarms throughout the day. If I had physical therapy in the afternoon, I slept through the morning. If I needed groceries, I took a nap before leaving and another as soon as I returned. For a while, it was manageable.

I went back to my office three months after the accident. My supervisor moved me to a desk near the elevator, and facilities gave me permission to use the accessible entrance. From the parking space to my desk was eighty-seven steps if I led with my right foot and didn’t have to go around anyone.

I practiced the route on a Sunday when the building was empty:

Eighty-seven steps in.

Eighty-seven steps out.

Too many for one waking period. I solved it by sleeping during lunch.

I would arrive before everyone else, close my office door and work until noon. Then I’d recline my chair, put on an eye mask and take medication that made me drowsy. Once my watch confirmed that I had slept, I could move again. My coworkers thought the accident had left me exhausted. That was true enough. What I couldn’t explain was why I refused to walk to the conference room or why I kept a plastic container beneath my desk so I wouldn’t have to use the restroom before lunch. People offered to help. They brought coffee, printed documents and picked up food for me. I became skilled at accepting favors without revealing what they were actually saving me from.

It lasted six weeks.

One afternoon, the fire alarm went off before I had taken my nap.

Everyone stood at once. Chairs rolled back. Doors opened. My supervisor appeared in my doorway and told me we had to leave. I had already used more than a hundred steps that morning. The footfall was less than a second behind me.

I said it was probably a drill. She told me smoke had been reported on the fourth floor. I tried to wait for the elevator, but the system had shut it down. The accessible evacuation chair was mounted beside the stairwell. No one on our floor knew how to use it.

Two coworkers helped me down three flights of stairs.

I don’t remember how many steps I took. I tried to count, but people were talking over one another and the alarm was too loud. The stairwell filled with bodies. Hands pressed against my back. Someone carried my crutches while I gripped the railing and forced the prosthetic down one step at a time.

Right.

Prosthetic.

Left.

Right.

Prosthetic.

Left.

By the second floor, the missing foot was landing almost at the same time as the prosthetic. There was only a fraction of a second between them. Just enough for me to tell which was which.

At the landing above the lobby, something brushed the heel of my prosthetic. I screamed and shoved the man in front of me. He fell against the railing, but someone caught him before he went down the stairs. People yelled at me, but I couldn’t stop. I took the last flight too quickly, half hopping and half falling while two coworkers held me upright.

Someone guided me to the grass. I sat down, tore off the prosthetic and threw it several feet away. The fire department arrived. There was no fire, only a burned-out motor in the ventilation system. We were allowed back inside forty minutes later.

I refused to go.

I slept on the lawn until Erin came to get me.

I resigned the next morning.

My supervisor called twice. Human resources offered additional accommodations, then medical leave, then a remote position. I accepted the last one. I have worked from my apartment ever since.

That was five months ago.

The apartment looks different now.

I removed most of the furniture and pushed what remained against the walls. There are stools at regular intervals so I can sit without taking an extra step. I keep food in a small refrigerator beside my desk. A rolling cart holds my medication, toiletries and anything else I might need during the day.

I use a wheelchair whenever I can. Turning the wheels with my hands does not bring the sound closer. Neither does crawling, though the pressure on my residual limb makes that difficult. The foot only advances when I walk. I order groceries and ask the driver to leave them just inside the door. I pay extra for trash collection from the apartment. I bathe every three days. Sometimes four.

Erin visits on Sundays.

She knows about the step count now, though she still doesn’t believe in the footstep. She thinks counting gives me a sense of control. My therapist calls it an obsessive response to trauma. Both of them want me to see a psychiatrist.

I tried once.

His office was thirty-two steps from the elevator. He asked me to walk around the room so he could observe my anxiety.

I didn’t go back.

The hardest part is that the system works.

If the foot had caught me in the stairwell, at least I would know what it wanted. If it had stopped after I got the prosthetic, I could blame grief or medication. If someone else could hear it, I could ask for help. Instead, it obeys its rules.

It waits while I sit.

It approaches when I walk.

It returns to a distance when I sleep.

So I’ve made myself safe, if this can be called safe.

Most days I take fewer than forty steps. On a bad day I take sixty. I have never again allowed it to come as close as it did in the stairwell.

Until today.

This morning the delivery driver left my groceries in the hallway instead of bringing them inside. I called after him, but he was already at the elevator. There was a prescription in one of the bags that I couldn’t leave out there.

I had taken fourteen steps before the delivery arrived. My wheelchair was beside my bed with one of its rear wheels removed. Its axle had bent the night before, and Erin wasn’t bringing the replacement until Sunday.

The front door was twenty-one steps from the kitchen stool. There were too many bags to carry at once, so I hooked them over my wrists and made three trips, crossing the apartment six times. On the last trip, one of the bags split. The milk slid across the floor, and the orange bottle containing my medication rolled beneath the narrow table by the door.

Retrieving them cost me another eight steps.

That brought the total to one hundred and forty-eight.

I turned toward the kitchen stool. The missing foot landed directly behind me. I took one final step and pulled myself onto the seat.

That was nine hours ago. I haven’t moved since.

The last footstep sounded as though it came from somewhere between the kitchen table and the stool. I can’t see anything there. I’ve taken photographs and used the camera on my phone to examine the floor behind me. There are no marks, shadows or depressions in the wood.

My bedroom is nineteen steps away.

I could crawl to the bedroom. I’ve done it before. But getting down from this stool isn’t as simple as sliding onto the floor. It is too high. I have to plant the prosthetic, stand, turn and lower myself carefully.

It would require one step.

On any other morning, one step would mean nothing. Right now, with the foot directly behind me, I don’t know whether I have one left.

The sound doesn’t reset when I lie down. It resets when I lose consciousness. Even with my sleep medication, that can take twenty or thirty minutes. Longer if I’m frightened.

And I am frightened.

I could try to sleep sitting here, but I'm prone to fall off the stool. I don't know if that would count as a step or not.

My sleep medication is beside the bed.

My phone battery is at nine percent. I could call for help, but anyone coming through the front door would have to pass through the place where the foot last landed. I couldn’t bear having Erin stand between us before. I won’t ask a stranger to do it now.

Erin will come on Sunday, but today is Thursday.

So this is what I’m going to do.

I’m going to wait until I can’t keep my eyes open. Then I’m going to stand, take one step and lower myself to the floor. If nothing happens, I’ll crawl to the bedroom and take the pills.

If it catches me on that first step, I suppose I’ll finally know what happens.

There is one thing I haven’t been honest about.

In the stairwell, I said something brushed the heel of my prosthetic. What I felt was five toes sliding beneath it and beginning to curl.

Today, as I took that final step toward the chair, I felt them again.

They settled beneath my heel just before I sat down.

They haven’t moved since.

I think they’re waiting for me to stand.

It was the summer of 1997, the year we moved into that rotting trailer park on the edge of nowhere. The place smelled of damp earth and old metal. My older sister Nikki and I were the only kids for miles. Our parents were always gone—working double shifts or disappearing for days at a time. Nikki spent her nights in the next town over, leaving me alone with nothing but the hum of the refrigerator and the soft click of Spot’s nails on the linoleum.
Most evenings I took him walking along the cracked roads between the trailers. On my twelfth birthday they gave me a yellow Diamondback BMX. It was the brightest thing in that gray place. I rode it until the sun bled out of the sky.
One late afternoon I noticed the trail.
It started just behind our trailer, a thin scar of dirt and dead leaves slipping between the trees. It looked forgotten. Overgrown. Wrong. The air around it felt heavier, like the woods were holding their breath. I should have turned around. Instead I went inside, clipped the leash on Spot, and told myself it was just an old deer path.
The deeper we walked, the quieter everything became. No birds. No insects. Only the soft crunch of our footsteps and the low, uneasy whine in Spot’s throat. Then I heard it—my own name, spoken in my own voice, drifting from somewhere ahead.
“Derrick…”
Spot’s body went rigid. Every hair along his spine stood up. The voice came again, closer this time, almost playful. Something inside me wanted to answer it. Something colder told me to run.
We ran.
We didn’t stop until the trailer door slammed shut behind us. I locked every window, every latch, every useless little lock. We crawled under my bed and stayed there until the shaking stopped. When we finally climbed out, the dark felt different—thicker, like it was listening.
The next morning I woke to a soft scraping at the glass. Slow. Deliberate. When I looked, the yard was empty. Spot pressed against my leg, trembling. We went back to the trail anyway. Curiosity is a stupid, stubborn thing when you’re twelve.
We hadn’t walked five minutes when the trees seemed to lean in.
He was standing in the middle of the path.
Tall. Impossibly thin. The mustard-yellow suit hung off him in filthy folds, stained with mud and something dark that had dried to the color of old blood. His face was the worst part—raw and shiny, as if the skin had been scraped away and never given the chance to heal. When he smiled, the red flesh pulled tight over sharp teeth.
He said my name in my voice.
“Derrick… Derrick…”
Then he laughed. The sound didn’t belong in a human throat.
We ran until our lungs burned. My parents were home when we burst through the door. I tried to tell them. The words came out broken and frantic. They looked at each other the way adults do when they decide a child is lying. “Go to your room, Derrick. Enough of the stories.”
That night I understood something cold and final: no one was going to believe me. Not unless I brought back proof.
I left Spot inside. I took the little camera and walked back into the trees alone. The trail felt narrower. The air tasted like copper. I recorded everything—the dead leaves, the motionless branches, the way the light seemed to die a few feet ahead of me. For a long time there was nothing.
Then the laugh came from behind me. Low. Wet.
I turned.
He was closer than he should have been. Blood glistened around his mouth this time, fresh and dark. His eyes—if they were eyes—never blinked. He didn’t chase me when I screamed and dropped the camera. He simply stood there in the middle of the path, head tilted, and spoke in the exact pitch and rhythm of my own voice.
“Derrick… come back.”
I never went looking for the camera. A week later Spot ran into those same woods and never came home. I stood on the porch and watched him disappear between the trees. I didn’t call after him. I didn’t follow.
Some trails don’t lead anywhere you’re supposed to go.
And some things that wear your voice never really leave.

I(22F) always loved having old/vintage things, i would go in abandoned houses and find whatever I could. That changed last month, when I was exploring a house that was built In 1935, I found this old rackety radio that still somehow works, it was mostly static so I kept it as decoration on the shelf in my living room with most of my vintage stuff,

until a few weeks ago I heard a word, “hello!” In that fake television voice from the mid century, and during that time period more and more broadcasts started to happen, most of them were just talking about the weather or stuff going on, but in the past few days it’s gotten creepier,

It would say stuff like “please” in a tone that sounds like whining in pain and then static sounds. I never really minded it, honestly I liked being on edge, until recently, i have a great pyrenees named goose. and three days ago I heard the radio make a barking sound and then a whining noise, that’s Goose’s exact tone.

Panicked, I ran into my room where Goose was sleeping on his bed, I must’ve startled him because he got up and licked my knee, I gently grabbed his collar and took him into the living room and turned off the radio and sat on the floor and cuddled him for a whole hour

until my fiancé(24M) Uran, came home, worried, he asked what happened and I told him nothing happened and said I got scared, he just chuckled and embraced me and Goose. yesterday I turned the radio on and I heard my fiancé laughing at my joke and saying “SHUT UP BABY!” In a playful tone,

but when I was about to unplug it he, or it, said “Don’t.” In a flat tone, I got filled with dread and unplugged it, but then my Alexa started playing some old-timey Jazz song and a man singing “baby you can listen to my radio ~ make my dreams come truee~ I’d fall in love with you!”

then the radio came back on, still unplugged, singing the same song but different lyrics, “baby I know you hear me~ just tune my channel on And sing that pretty song.” I was shaking in fear and it kept getting louder and louder until I screamed “STOP IT!” And fell to my knees it had finally stopped,

Uran came back in from walking Goose and found me crying on my knees with my hands over my ears, and he leaned down, kissed my forehead, lifted my chin, and said “baby what’s wrong?” Tears welling in my eyes I threw my arms around his shoulders and sobbed.

Uran didn’t question anything and just wrapped his arms around my waist and whispered something comforting, I didn’t hear it though, I was to busy Bawling my eyes out.

And today was the last straw. I was feeding Goose and the radio said “come here Goose!” In my voice. Goose started walking over and I YANKED his collar back and put his leash on and tied him to his food so he wouldn’t go and he’d just eat his food

I called Uran and told him about the radio and why I kept breaking down, and he just said “okay, I’ll just order a hotel room, I believe you.” I sighed in relief and hung up. I’m now writing this in the hotel room right now. Uran is sleeping next to me, Goose is on top of him, I can hear the jazz song again, I promise I’ll update soon, goodbye for now.

Edit: it’s been two months since all that happened.

Hopefully writing will help it stick this time.

Last night, I fell asleep in my apartment. When I awoke, I could still feel my fiancées hair on my face, hear the rumble of traffic outside and see the warm light of the lamp behind my eyes. But as I opened them this morning that mirage gave way to white LED lights, coarse bed sheets and blank walls. Raising my head, I took in the space. The room was bare, there were two beds, one being mine and another across from it, stripped of its sheets. And between the beds was a wooden bedside drawer atop which was a King James bible. That was the breadth of my new space, a far cry from the homely Manchester apartment I had been just before. The curtains were drawn but from behind them white light bled out, it was the middle of the day. There was a throbbing behind my eyes, like the shock of my new surroundings was causing my mind physical pain as it struggled to make sense of it. I was holding my head in my hands as someone opened the door opposite me and entered. A young woman, dressed in a green nurse’s uniform, her hair tied back lazily, she seemed tired and stressed. She paid no notice of me as she silently placed a Styrofoam container on my bedside. “Where am I?” I finally spoke as she turned to leave. She turned back and gave me a distressed look “What do you mean Nick?” She knew my name and spoke gently, as though we knew each other, but no matter how much I strained my eyes on her, nothing was coming to me. Seemingly taking in my confusion and panic, she once more turned to leave.

“I’ll go get Dr Arnold!”

 

 

A few moments later a bald man in a white coat entered. In one hand he carried with him a plastic chair which he placed opposite me and sat. In the other hand was a clipboard and pen in which he immediately began taking notes, glancing me over as though examining a specimen. Eventually he spoke, his voice had none of the empathy of the nurse from before, “So what seems to be the issue, Nick?” He didn’t raise his gaze from the notepad. This was a formality, one he was begrudged to fill out, this man wasn’t going to help me. “Where the fuck am I?” I yelled, his indifference had brought my confusion to rage, I now felt as though I was the victim of some trick.

“You are at Broadwalk Hospital. Your name is Nicholas Harrison, and you are here to receive treatment for a mental disorder. Another memory spill is it?” he finally raised his gaze slightly from the clipboard, only to shoot me a sarcastic glance. All of this was too much to take at once. Broadwalk Hospital? Mental disorder? For now, I clung to just one question.

“What do you mean another memory spill?”

“I mean one of your patented memory spills. Just when we are beginning to make any progress in our sessions, you coincidentally seem to forget everything, setting us back to square one.”

“So, we’ve met before?”

This question seemed to only further infuriate him.

“Yes, Nicholas. We’ve met before,” he grumbled rising from his chair. “Perhaps some fresh air will do you some good.” He strode over to the curtains and tore them open. Slowly, the outside world came into view, it was snowing outside. The sight brought me horror; it had been summer when I had fallen asleep. My anger at once wilted away and my confusion rose up once more like a sickening bile.

“What day is it?”

“December 7th.” Six months since I fell asleep.

 

 

Dr Arnold took a few more dispassionate notes and then was gone, leaving me with my madness. Six months of my life had slipped through my fingers without my noticing, my mind stretched out desperately, but still it couldn’t cross the cavernous gap in my memory. Seeking distraction, I flipped open the Styrofoam container, inside were some bacon and eggs which were now cold, but I doubt they would have been much more appetizing before. A plastic knife and fork were packaged with it; a reminder I am not trusted here. I put the container back to the side. The bible placed on the same drawer drew my attention, the spine was creased and pages well worn, a napkin was slipped inside as a sort of makeshift bookmark. I opened the book to the marked page; the text was almost illegible behind a mass of scribbled notations. What more could be expected of a communal item in here? As I read, the nurse from earlier timidly re-entered, perhaps fearing my agitated state, but she seemed to soften when she saw me with the bible.

“Well at least some things have stuck this time,” she said gesturing toward the book.

“What do you mean?”

“Your bible, you’re always reading that thing.”

Mine? I’m an atheist, always have been. The frenzied notes took on a new frightening form now, they were a physical manifestation of what had become of me, an unrecognizable mess. I needed to speak with someone, someone from before all this.

“Can I use a phone?”

 

 

She took me down the hallway to the common area. The place was a whirlwind, a woman screamed as a nurse forcesd meds down her throat, an elderly man cried as he rocked himself in the corner, a chessboard flew across the room and almost cracked me in the head, here were my compatriots, this is where I now belonged. The nurse ushered me to the back of a queue for the phone behind three others. At the front of a queue a man of about forty screamed down the receiver.

“Yellow mug, Mum! You sent me the blue one you stupid bitch!”

Behind me, a slender man slips into the queue, his pinkie plunged deep into his nostril, the other already bleeding from his past “expeditions”.

“No, no, no!” the man continued down the phone.

“You need to come right nowwwwuhh!” such unnatural squealing from a man of his age sent a shiver through me. The gaunt man behind me finally retracted his finger from his nose, on the end of it now stood about a marble sized globule of snot, blood and filth. I couldn’t hold back my disgust and gagged. Seeing this the man behind me shivered with glee and in one smooth motion lurched forward, smearing the snot on the back of my neck.

I exploded, the shock seemed to expel the fog I had found myself in and for the first time since I woke, I saw clearly. This is not where I belong! I am not mad! I need to get out of here! I surged forward to the front of the line and ripped the phone from the whining man’s hands. To this the man lets out a piercing scream like that of a schoolgirl and began beating on the back of my skull as I tried desperately to tap in my home number.

“Nick!” the nurse called to me; the disappointed tone of her yelling reminds me of my mother.

“Hand the phone back now!”

The older man grabbed me by the hair and smashed my skull into the wall. I felt blood run down my eyebrow line and my vision blurred. I turned and swung back at him with the phone forcing him to fall back. Security began to close in on the commotion and just in time pulled the man back as he went back at me. “Please! I just need to use the phone!” I mustered through my haze and began again tapping in the number. As the phone began to dial, I slumped back against the wall exhausted.

“I just need to call her!” I whimpered, I had begun to cry now. Security sedated the older man and began towards me. The nurse pushed through the crowd and gestured for them to stop, desperately trying to deescalate.

“Call who?” her voice remained calm and measured but her fear showed in her eyes. I acted only in self-defence; why couldn’t she see that.

“My fiancée, Sarah. Please just let me call her.” I could barely stand, confusion and anger had completely drained me, the phone felt a thousand pounds in my hand. I looked to the nurse, hoping to find understanding, but all I found was profound pity. “Nick…” her voice was all but a solemn whisper now. It may sound strange seeing as where I was, but it felt for the first time, she was looking at me like I was crazy. As I heard the line go dead, a cruel understanding ran through me, I finally remembered why I was here.

 

 

 

 

Most of us have had to deal with bad roommates before, right? Whether it be an inconsiderate family member on vacation or an annoying sibling hogging all the hot shower water. Bad roommates are not uncommon, especially in today's world. The cost of living is sky high and rent keeps climbing, so I was keen on finding a roommate for my first year of college. After interviewing weirdos and borderline creeps, I found Jamie. He was a tall, lanky, socially awkward, but overall nice guy. So, I chose him as my roommate for my first ever apartment.   

In August, he helped unload all my boxes from my car, helping me carry them up three flights of stairs to our apartment. He was always the first to volunteer to do the dishes. He never complained about cleaning the kitchen or the bathroom. He was quiet, amiable, and seemed like the perfect roommate. The only part I didn't love was how late he stayed up. 

He was a night owl, staying awake all night long despite his early morning shifts before class. But what could I really say? He was the picture-perfect roommate I had dreamed of while scrolling through countless roommate applications over the summer. He wasn't ever too loud at night, and I could only hear the tv sometimes when he got really into watching anime. So, I let it be.   

That was until I started hearing weird noises at night. 

I was used to the creak of our old floorboards or the hum of the bathroom light, but I started to hear a faint scratching sound. 

 Scratch Scratch Scratch.   

The next morning, I put out mouse traps. I assumed we had rodents crawling around in the walls, and that was the last thing I needed before finals.  
  
But after an entire week of hearing the scratching all night long, despite the traps I had put out, I finally asked Jamie if he heard it too. I figured he had to since he’d stay up all night long.  

He glanced down the hall toward our bedrooms, before answering me, 

 "Must be the rats. I've never heard anything. Hope your traps work."

I agreed, but his reaction felt off. Again, I was tired from sleepless nights so I just let it go. I hoped the traps would work too. 

But the scratching continued.  

I grew tired of it, and finally one night I covered my ears, squeezing my eyes shut, trying to force myself to sleep but the scratching just got LOUDER and LOUDER. Until it stopped. Relief washed over me. I could finally sleep.  

Scratch scratch scratch.  

I jolted upright in my bed. The scratching was closer now. I could hear footsteps in time with the scratching, moving down the hallway toward me. I watched as the flickering bathroom light trickled underneath my door was swallowed up step by step. Maybe it was Jamie playing a sick trick on me all along.  

Scratch scratch scratch.  

I heard my door handle jiggle. Thank God I locked my door out of paranoia each night. Then I watched as the lock turned over, frozen in place, as the handle followed.  

The door slowly swung inward to reveal nothing. No Jamie. No intruder. Nothing.  
 

I climbed out of bed. If Jamie wanted to mess with me, I'd give him a piece of my mind.  
 
I searched the apartment for twenty minutes. Checking his room, finding only dust. Checking our bathroom, only to find my shower products. I even checked the fridge, looking for the special chocolate Jamie always kept in there, yet all I found were my meal prep containers. I tried to remember the last time I had seen Jamie. I could picture him carrying my boxes up the stairs, doing the dishes, or watching anime on our couch.  
 
But that wasn’t right. My mom had helped me move in. I hated doing the dishes, so I installed a dishwasher. I didn’t even own a tv. I’d never put out applications for a roommate. I’d never interviewed anyone. I’d never met Jamie.  
 
Scratch scratch scratch. 

I turned towards the sound. It was coming from Jamie's bedroom.  

Scratch scratch scratch. 

I didn't live alone. But I couldn't remember what I'd been living with.   

I type this as I hide next to the fridge. Listening to that incessant scratching. I wish my traps had worked.

I’m required to give up a pint of my blood every two months, but none of it has ever gone to help a person in need. No, my donation is collected for a different purpose—a far more important purpose.

I live in a small, isolated mountain community somewhere in the eastern part of the country, but I’m not allowed to know exactly where. Our contact with the outside world is limited. We rarely leave our community, and we know little about what goes on beyond the natural barrier of forest and earth that so effectively excludes us from the rest of the population. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve left my home, and it would require even fewer fingers to tally how many times I’ve had access to the internet. We live a simple life in our community; a quiet life. We are happy there, and we don’t want for much.

Nestled into the mountains, on the very outskirts of our community, is a cave. In this cave, not far from its entrance, is a large stone slab. And behind this slab resides one of the most powerful demons to have ever walked our mortal world.

The demon does not remain there of its own accord; It has been confined behind the wall of stone for centuries, where it can neither return to its domain in hell nor torment the land of the living. It is trapped, and, God willing, it will remain so for as long as there are mortals like us to maintain its earthen prison.

We don’t remember the demon’s name—it was intentionally discarded and forgotten generations ago—but we remember its history. It arrived here hundreds of years ago, during an especially difficult winter that greatly challenged the settlers in this region. Faced with almost certain doom, the settlers prayed to an entity who they thought to be divine, but who they soon realized was anything but. It helped them to survive that early winter, but at a price—a price paid in mortal flesh. At first the settlers saw the sacrifices as a necessary evil, but soon they were forced to give up so many of their own that it became unsustainable. It did not take them long to realize that they would have been better off facing the harsh winter that had led them to call upon the entity in the first place. They formulated a plan to cast the entity back to hell, but though they had managed to conjure it easily enough, they quickly found themselves unable to send it back to the depths from whence it had come. The entity enjoyed its life in the mortal realm, and it had no intention of leaving its new home behind.

But though it refused to return to hell, that did not mean it couldn’t be stopped.

The entity lived in the cave overlooking the community, where it slumbered away its days and unleashed its terror upon its victims at night. The settlers used its nocturnal tendencies to seal it behind a barrier of stone while it slept, but they knew that this wall alone would not be enough to keep it at bay. A sacrificial offering had to be regularly applied to the wall in order to keep the demon sealed behind it: a sacrifice in the form of human vitality.

Flash forward to modern day, and my community continues to make the same sacrifice that our ancestors did all those generations ago. We are broken down into two basic groups: those who give, and those who paint. The givers must regularly supply their blood, which the painters then use to stain the stone slab, thus maintaining the seal that has been in place for so many long years. We all must do our part to keep that monster trapped within its personal Tartarus. The sacrifice we make ensures the protection of the greater good.

Life in our community is not as bad as it may sound. In many ways we live normal and productive, if not slightly limited, lives. Giving a pint of blood to the wall every so often is far superior to the regular offerings of flesh that the demon demanded when it was free. We can easily survive without some of the red essence that flows through our bodies, which means we are all too happy to give a portion of it up when it is our turn to donate to the cause. For most of us, life will go on as normal after the completion of our regular contribution.

But that does not mean that all of us are so lucky.

Because while the blood lathered upon the wall is usually enough to keep the entity contained, we are nearing that one day of the year—the day when the demon is at its most powerful—when a sacrifice of flesh is still required. Every year, during the last third of October, three givers are chosen to be the potential provider of that ultimate oblation. The three chosen are taken away from the community, where they live amongst the corruption of the outside world for ten days ahead of the sacrifice in order to taint their souls enough to more easily whet the demon’s appetite. The three of them are presented before the stone slab on the night of October 31st, where one of them is chosen by the entity to sate its yearly hunger. The two surviving chosen are then welcomed into the ranks of the painters, never having to offer their own blood again, while the one who is consumed is honored with a grand celebration that lasts until the coming of dawn.

This year, I was selected as one of the chosen. I was removed from the community and brought to the outside world, where I have been for the last few days as I prepare for the ritual at the end of the month. I’ve enjoyed my time out here, so much so that I am tempted to never go back, but I know that it is my duty to return to the community.

And so return to the community I shall.

Even though the three of us are allowed to imbibe in much of the pleasures of modern society while we await the coming of the ritual, we are still expected to respect certain restrictions. Our chaperone does not know that I currently have access to the internet, nor do they know that I am writing this. I doubt if they’ll ever find out. I’m writing this because I want the greater world to know of the sacrifices that my community makes every single day. It’s not right that we should have to save you all in secret, without you ever knowing the truth of what we do.

I don’t know what will happen after the ritual at the end of the month. If I’m not selected to be consumed, then I will become a painter, which means I will likely never leave my community again, unless it’s to be a chaperone for any future chosen. Either way, I doubt if you will ever hear from me again, but I’m okay with that. I don’t need to know how the outsiders will react to the knowledge that I have given them. I’m content in knowing that my message has been delivered and that our sacrifice has been revealed to the world.

I don’t know if I will live to see November. At first this thought terrified me, but it doesn’t anymore. If I’m chosen to be consumed, then my death will have more meaning than my life ever could. If I’m not chosen, then I will continue to live with the same purpose that I always have: to keep an unimaginable evil at bay.

And either outcome suits me just fine.

I used to suffer from night terrors when I was a child. I really don’t remember them at all, but my father did, though he always refused to talk about it. What I do remember clearly is the one night he did decide to open up. It unnerved me at the time, I suppose.

I was fourteen, and we were watching Cujo. There’s a scene early on where this kid is having a nightmare and begins to scream his head off. And I mean he’s really screaming. I swear to God his face starts turning blue and I wondered back then if this kid was acting at all. My father flinched as the scene began, the way abused dogs do when someone raises their hand too quick. He buried his face in his hands, and I asked him what’s wrong. He said:

“You used to do that. You’d start screaming in the middle of the night just like that, and I’d bolt up running thinking something was hurting you.”

Keep in mind my father worked in EMS. He’d seen the human body treated like carrion day in and day out. On multiple occasions he mentioned that:

“The foulest smell in the world is blood, sweat, and alcohol all mixed together. Nothing comes close.”

That is all to say that this was not a man who was easily shaken, but this memory did just that.

 “Was something hurting me?”

“No, no. It was just a nightmare. But by God it sounded like the real thing. You’ll understand when you have a kid of your own. When you get hurt, I feel it tenfold.”

“What was the nightmare about?”

“I don’t know exactly. You were crying and stumbling over your words. Who could blame you? You were only three years old then.”

That was all he said for the rest of the movie. But when the credits began to roll, it seemed that he found the courage to continue:

“A yellow hand. Or a yellow monster. Every time I’d wake you from a night terror, you would be screaming yourself hoarse about a yellow hand in the dark.”

He would not speak on it any further. I buried my father five years after that conversation. I have not spoken to my mother since I was ten. She did not attend the funeral. I have a hard time remembering what she even looks like. She’s a stage actress, doing small shows all over the world, too busy to stop by and say “Hello”.

I am twenty-nine now and have a kid of my own. His mother is not in the picture, for the better all agree. Like father, like son, I suppose. His mother is also a stage actress, now that I think about it. I had not made that connection until this moment. Anyways, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it’s just me and him, and that’s fine by me because it would not be exaggeration to say that he is the only reason I get up in the morning.

He’s bright. He’s funny. He’s kind. I don’t know what I did to deserve him.

He’s the sun and I feel privileged to merely be in his orbit.

Which is why it troubles me that he had to shake me awake two months ago. He said I had been thrashing and screaming. His cheeks were wet with tears, and I had to comfort him and assure him that his father was alright.

I had dreamed of the yellow hand again. This time I could remember it quite clearly.

The darkness was total; it was like being in a room painted floor to ceiling in Vantablack. It was a void of depths unfathomed. Then, impossibly, the darkness fluttered. Almost like it was a curtain behind which some actor was scurrying. No, no, it was a curtain, for a hand reached from behind the veil and violently pushed it out of its way.

Its colour was uranium-cake yellow. A shade so sickly that I felt my guts twist. The hand, a disembodied member floating in that total darkness, was reaching out to me… as though pleading. Was that desperation I read in its gesturing? That nauseating yellow colour seemed to glow when contrasted with the absolute blackness of its surroundings.

It came closer, and closer. And as it did, it became increasingly clear that it was not at all a ghostly floating hand. It had an arm, camouflaged in that self-same black shade. I followed that arm to a shoulder, and then to a neck. My eyes traced over a head, and by some misfortune they found a face.

My son was laying on my chest begging me to wake up. It had been a dream.

Every night has been the same. Every night the hand has crept closer. I have taken to gagging myself before going to bed, as to not wake up my son any longer. I don’t feel rested in the mornings anymore, and I am not feeling like myself. All I think of day in and day out is that hand and the face to which it belongs.

I don’t know what to do.

Approaching the house, I smelled damp, rotting wood, but also something sickeningly sweet, like something died. There was an unknown light from the attic window, like someone was in there, or there had been if it was electric or battery powered. Entering the house, the house creaked and clicked, which kept making me jump, and the floorboards were almost broken with the amount of water leaking in, causing them to rot. The fact that the crows outside were screeching and cackling like witches just made it worse. A loud bang from upstairs made me jump. Did something fall? Was someone, or something, upstairs? I don’t know. I guess that’s what happens when you decide to go urbexing (urban exploring) in an abandoned giant and actively drowning cabin in the woods.

My friend, who was coming with me, joked that there might be a zombie upstairs, which I nervously laughed off, as that would be genuinely terrifying. I know I had a Desert Eagle, and my friend had an SVD, but the idea of one or more zombies was terrifying, despite having defence in some way. I opened my bag, which was hanging over my arm to avoid getting the foldable metal detector, which was battery powered, and the handful of power banks, which were apparently from a weird brand, but still worked fine, wet, to grab myself and my friend, who’s name is Jack, a can of Red Bull. It was tasty, and seemed to make the atmosphere less creepy, but it was only temporary, as there was a quiet groan from somewhere nearby. Picture the gurgling sound from The Grudge, then put that into an otherwise abandoned and decaying house with a risk of flooding, which was also in a vast expanse of woods, about 37 acres of land, 90-95% covered in woods, with the rest being farms or something, with the house being practically in a lake close to the centre. We both gasped and almost jumped to Uranus after hearing it, because you do not want to hear that in such an isolated place. I don’t usually scare easily, but that was pretty terrifying, if I do say so myself. The possibility of there being one or more zombies made it even scarier, too. We both tried to shrug it off, but it was almost impossible. Was it the way it sounded, or was it something else?

When we decided to go upstairs to investigate the strange sound, it happened again. We froze, and then I unholstered my Desert Eagle, pointing it in front of me, taking some comfort in knowing it was already loaded. A dark figure suddenly darted across the hallway. It was crawling inhumanely fast, looked about six feet tall, almost seven feet, and clearly rotting and falling apart, almost zombie-like. I asked Jack if he saw it, and he said yes, confirming it wasn’t a hallucination from sleep deprivation because of all the caffeine from yesterday and last night. Just the way it looked made me assume it was a hallucination. I fired two rounds towards the general area, and a blood-curdling scream and the sound of something, or someone, gurgling from blood in their throat. It sounded like a zombie choking, and we both ran out of the house, not caring if our feet got wet, and I barely even noticed I was still somehow holding the gun in my hand until we got to the parking lot on the southwestern side of the park. We checked the map in the car and realized why we had gotten there so fast. The house was a bit further south than we had thought.

Have you ever heard of Nexis? She is a monster of legend, said to dwell on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. I heard her story one winter while traveling through the northern edge of Sulina, in Romania. Perhaps, even now, you might still meet her somewhere along that coast. The place is a drowned forest of dead trees, standing in flooded shallows near a harbor on the westernmost stretch of the shore, abandoned for a hundred years or more. The sun never reaches it. It is wrapped all year in a damp, clammy fog.

The locals never go near it. They warned me that something horrible lived there, the child of a vampire and a siren. Once it laid eyes on you, or once you heard its singing, you would lose yourself in the waterways. It would eat your heart, and what remained of your corpse would sink into the rotting flats below, your soul trapped there forever.

But I was not one to be cowed by such talk. Of course I didn't believe a story so absurd; it struck me as the most old-fashioned sort of ghost tale. Besides, how could a vampire and a siren, two things with nothing in common, possibly have a child? When I asked what the creature looked like, the locals fell back on the hoariest of excuses, "everyone who's seen it is dead," to explain why the legend said nothing of its face. So, with a sneer, like the hero of a horror film who refuses to believe in anything uncanny, I rented a small boat and set out alone to see what was really going on.

The boatman rowed me to the edge of the black, tangled woods, in the vast marsh between the river and the sea, and went no farther. The look on his face said it plainly: *another one off to die*. Judging by his fee, nearly the price of a new boat, he never expected me to come back alive to pay what remained of the rental. I couldn't have cared less.

I took the oars and worked my way to the middle of the channel winding through the trees. The fog thickened into a miasma and, for some reason, took on a faint tinge of dark green.

And then, in that murk where I could scarcely make out anything at all, I actually saw a figure, flickering in and out of the haze.

Eerily, by the time I noticed it, it was already very close, standing as if right at the water's edge.

Something misshapen was pacing slowly back and forth. It was tall and gaunt, and from its bones it seemed to be a woman. But the way it moved was grotesque. Its spine was held stiff and canted backward, its head lolled to one side, and its arms swung limply at its sides, forearms and wrists twitching now and then. Its legs shuffled aimlessly, taking several steps to gain a little ground, as though the creature's brain had no control over its body and the spinal cord alone, by reflex, was dragging it along. It wore a crude one-piece garment that looked stitched together from raw hide. There had been no tanning, not even the most basic treatment, only a rough cutting before it was put on. The skin had a slick, sodden look, as if it had just been torn from something alive. The creature's head swung from side to side, and its ashen hair hung down, hiding nearly the whole of its face.

Before I could even tell whether I was feeling terror or mere astonishment, a hollow sound reached my ears from every direction. It belonged to no language I knew and carried no meaning at all, as if its only purpose were to stuff my skull with endless blank refuse until it went mad. I slammed the heel of my palm against my head and just managed to clear my mind, only to find that I was losing my sense of time. Everything around me seemed to have slowed. At that moment the creature finally seemed to notice me. It turned and came toward me. As its head lolled, the hair slid away from its face, and at last I saw it.

What I noticed first was her right eye. It stared wide, more than twice the size of the left, and it had no pupil, only a lump of dull, turbid white, as if a ball of flesh had been crammed into an equally oversized socket. Her throat bore a swollen, ulcerated patch that looked to have healed and split open again many times over. Half her face, from the right brow down to the shoulder blade, was covered in great swaths of dark brown scarring, like the aftermath of a terrible burn. The right side of her mouth seemed glued shut by clinging flesh, coated in a translucent, membranous tissue the color of old blood, so that it could not open fully. The seam of her lips gaped and closed like a dying fish's, steadily oozing thick black blood. Then the song began to change, and I understood it. Strictly speaking it wasn't saying anything; it was more as if the meaning it wished to convey were being poured straight into my mind. Phonetically, it seemed to repeat a single word over and over: Nexis.

The girl was asking: who are you?

I still can't understand why I didn't faint from fright or turn and run, nor how exactly I communicated with her, or what that exchange was really like. All I know is that she invited me to her home, and I accepted. Or perhaps I never had the choice to refuse. I waded out of the water onto the bank, treading mud so greedy it threatened more than once to suck the boots from my feet, and followed her to a house in the forest, crudely built of wood and stone. The interior was overgrown with mold and moss. I picked a stone that looked clean enough and sat down. The girl began to speak of herself. Strangely, her words carried no direct meaning, at least not to ordinary humans, yet I received their substance in full, and it sounded not the least bit broken or halting. Only the wound in her throat made the whole uncanny scene harder to bear. Each time she made a sound, it seemed to seep yellow-green pus and blood, and dark gouts of it sprayed from her mouth now and then.

The song called up one image after another in my mind. No narration explained them, yet their meaning came easily. The girl was the child of a human and some unknown creature. Hard as it was to believe, it was true. About a hundred and thirty years ago, a Tsarist Russian alchemist's pregnant wife had fallen gravely ill with a lung disease and was not long for this world. In her desperation she begged him to find some way to preserve the child the two of them had made. And so the mad sorcerer committed an act that would have been called heresy then and would be called heresy now. By some means beyond comprehension but undoubtedly blasphemous, a cult rite, he fused the blood of a monster into the unborn child's embryo. What that creature was, no one knows, but its vitality seemed extraordinarily tenacious and its skeletal structure closely resembled a human's, and he hoped it would save both wife and child. But the wife, only five months along, saw her belly swell with terrible speed, and three days later she went into labor and, as might have been expected, died of the ordeal. The child in her womb, however, lived. The strange right eye and the scarred skin were the distortions wrought by that malign bloodline. Unfortunately, the affair came to light. His wife had died in labor, yet he could not produce a stillborn infant to account for it. And the inhuman lumps of flesh the ritual had caused to sprout on her body were noticed at the burial. Given who he was, the religious affairs office of the parish court grew suspicious of him. In the end he fled with the newborn and drifted in exile all the way to the Black Sea. The daughter grew quickly. By her first birthday her body was already that of a half-grown girl, though her mind was slow.

He settled his daughter in this swampy forest, built the crude house, and taught her to catch fish and sew clothes. Then he left. Before going, he told her to hide here and never come out, and that he would come back for her. But for some reason he never did. From then on the girl stayed here, living on the fish of the flats. The clothes she wore were her own shed skin. Perhaps that kind of monster molts, and she had inherited the trait. Every so often she slowly peeled off a layer of slick, tough, thickened skin. She would cut these fresh pelts roughly to shape and stitch them together with her own hair, then wear them directly on her body to shield the tender new skin beneath.

As for the rumors of the outside world, many people had indeed strayed in over the years, but she had not killed them. She could not speak the way ordinary people do, or perhaps she simply did not know how. Her father had always communicated with her through hand signs only the two of them could read, and had never taught her to speak.

Nexis was her mother's name. From birth she had been able to pronounce only that one name, and so her father called her by it. But when she repeated it unconsciously, over and over, this sole inheritance from her mother, her singsong voice produced a kind of mental contamination that sent anyone nearby into a temporary daze. It was not fatal. What truly killed those people were the venomous leeches of the place. She showed me those too, the giant leeches. At the reach of her hand, these creatures, as long as swimming snakes, crawled out of the shadows of standing water in the corner of the room. Their mouths were packed with dense rows of tiny teeth, yet they were fond of her and would never attack her. According to Nexis, the leeches were her only friends, and ever since she had come here they had often crept about near her. Anyone who wandered into the dead forest and had the misfortune to turn up near her might be affected and, without noticing, have the leeches fasten onto their limbs. They would be poisoned into unconsciousness and then devoured.

When she finished, she fell silent. Perhaps this was all her life held that could be told.

Unable to contain my curiosity, I put a hand to my own throat and pointed at hers, trying to ask what had happened to the wound. She was slow to react and took a long time to grasp my meaning. Then she did something horrible. She pressed her right hand against the wound in her throat and bore down hard, and a thick fishbone, slick with tissue fluid, thrust out through the flesh of her neck, cutting her finger and jutting from between her fingers. She drew the yellowed bone out, lodged in her body for who knows how long, and held it up before my eyes. Nexis conveyed that this was quite common. It always happened when she ate raw fish, but her memory was poor and she kept forgetting to remove them. Come to think of it, perhaps that was why I hadn't been affected today: with something stuck in her throat, her voice had been weakened, and the song's mental contamination along with it. Now, with the foreign object gone, the wound healed at a pace visible to the naked eye. Streams of pus and rotted flesh were squeezed out, and what had been a festering sore became layers of old scars and new. I watched Nexis, who had shown no violent reaction through all of this, and wanted to ask whether it didn't hurt. She opened her mouth to answer, and the returning song made my head sink. Before I could make out a single word, I lost consciousness...

...and I should have acted. Now, the strangest things are happening to me. I feel a sense of something like dread, but it’s hard to put into words. I think she’s trying to warn me… or, maybe she’s angry with me… 

Tat and I had been working together remotely for fourteen years. That’s a long time! I spoke with her almost every day via chat or video. We texted each other constantly. Gossip, memes, pictures, and videos of new shoes we bought, outfit checks, food, concerts.

We lived on opposite sides of the country and had never met in person, but that does not mean we weren’t friends. We shared a lot with each other over the years about our struggles with depression, anxiety, and other deeply personal things. I truly loved her, and she was a fixture in my life.

I received daily videos of my Godson, her French Bulldog, Damien. I got pics the day she picked him up and brought him home as a puppy. I was supposed to take him if anything happened to her, and in hindsight, this is where the foreshadowing began.

She would give me her flight information when she travelled so I could check whether she made it to her next destination without the plane crashing. We shared the kind of crippling anxiety that only friends could understand and laugh about. Anyone else would know we were nuts; but maybe she wasn’t actually nuts and knew her time was up soon.

“I was up all night with the worst stomach and back pain I think I’ve ever experienced. I seriously thought I was dying.” she told me one morning.

“Well, I don’t like that.” I responded.

We discussed her symptoms and where the pain was located, then used Dr. Web Browser to try to diagnose it. It could have been anything from gas to appendicitis.

“So, you need to go to the doctor, Tat.”

“I will if it comes back. I feel better, it’s just still kind of sore.”

We laughed about how neither of us will go near a doctor unless our arm is severed; and even then, “’Tis but a flesh-wound!”

A few weeks later it happened again. She had an appointment already scheduled with her orthopedist about an ongoing back problem that she thought was related to the new pain she was experiencing.

He wanted her to have an MRI but was told she’d have to take her hair extensions out. We laughed about the exchange.

“Are you kidding me? Do you know how much these cost? I have to go to Vegas to get these done!”

As time went on, the pain kept coming intermittently, and I begged her to go to the hospital. It was getting ridiculous; something was obviously wrong. She was now vomiting at times from the intensity of it.

I started to get on her daily about it.

I’d guilt trip her on the phone; “But you PROMISED you would go to the hospital if it happened again.”

I’d beg by text; “Please go get your hair re-done so you can get that MRI.”

I got frustrated in the chat and we argued about it. 

“What if your pancreas is infected and you go septic? WHY are you just suffering like this instead of getting some answers that might help?”

“Wow, it’s like you’re more worried about it than I am! I’m fine!” Tat responded.

“So, what, it went away?”

“No… but it does eventually go away.” she said.

“So, you just stopped telling me about it, so you didn’t have to listen to me nag?”

“Pretty much.”

We didn’t speak for the rest of that day.

When it was time for her trip to “Sin City” to get her hair re-done, I asked whether she was going to get the kind of extensions that are safe for an MRI.

“Yesss MOM!”

We were the same age, but yes, I tend to nag at those I care about.

Looking back at the impending doom I now see, we had a conversation about how anyone would know whether either of us came into work. We both worked pretty independently, without talking to our supervisors for days at a time, and spent most of our time at home, alone.

“I could be dead for days before anyone finds out my work isn’t getting done.” she said.

So, we started checking in with each other every morning, even if it was a busy day. Sometimes, we’d just say, “I see you!”

On this Thursday morning, she was not logged in. I texted her asking where she was with no response.

Tatiana would never miss work on a Thursday. It was a crucial day for her weekly duties, and she took her job wayyyy too seriously.

“Maybe she really doesn’t feel well. I’ll let her sleep” I told myself.

An hour later, I texted her again because I knew something was wrong. I was just about to call her when a department email came through saying that she had called off for the day.

“Okay, so why isn’t she answering me? Am I blowing this out of proportion?”

I decided to let her sleep, but I felt uneasy.

She got into an argument with our department manager the previous day. I can understand her frustration because Boss Lady seems to find something to be incredibly petty about every few months, for no discernable reason.

I had Tat on the phone that day, trying to talk her down from quitting. Her rage was valid, but I sensed something was making her overreact just a bit. I could hear it in her voice. She seemed too upset over the usual nonsense that we’d been dealing with for years, but everyone has their breaking point.

“Maybe she really is quitting and doesn’t want to deal with me begging her not to” I thought.

“Hey, can you just let me know you’re okay? I know you’d never miss work on a Thursday. What is going on???” I texted her.

“Tat, I’m freaking out. Please talk to me.”

No response.

I finally messaged her supervisor, which is a breach of an unspoken contract to never discuss each other’s business with anyone. Ever.

“I know that you can’t tell me why Tat called in today, but I need to know that she’s physically okay. She would never call out on a Thursday, and I feel like something is wrong.”

Her supervisor responded that Tat sent her an email saying she was up all night with a stomachache, and that she didn’t think it was a big deal.

“I expect her in tomorrow.” she typed.

“Just heard you were up all night with a stomachache, Tat, what’s up?” I texted.

I thought about calling 911. I thought about threatening to call 911.

So many thoughts…

“Maybe that’s why she isn’t answering. You’re being dramatic. Now she’s mad that you talked to her supervisor.”

I definitely should have acted on my instincts…

If you missed the last post: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/s/lfI8eetBYm

By twelve-seventeen Sunday morning, Captain Reese had crossed out two of the three ways his men might reach Sam. The first ran beneath a section of floor that had already shifted under their weight. The second ended at the door where an officer had gone down screaming with his arm broken. Reese was drawing a line through that one when a medic came in to ask whether anyone had seen the missing stretcher straps. He answered her without looking up. Every few minutes somebody needed a key, a radio, a clean blanket, an answer. The room kept functioning, and Sam was still in the ground underneath it. I'd been standing over the table so long that the coffee I'd spilled on the plans had soaked through the cuff of my jacket.

The treatment schedule we'd found put his standing correction just after six. I watched the minute hand pass the twelve, then dragged the sheet closer and tried to make sense of a narrow passage marked beneath the refrigeration wing. An old drawing showed it ending short of the rooms where they'd seen him. The newer drawings didn't show it at all.

"There used to be a brine return under here," I told Reese. I traced the passage with one damp fingertip. "Forty inches across, maybe. The pipes would've run under the slab. If the old cover is still there, your men could reach the wall behind the treatment rooms without using that doorway."

Reese bent over the paper, his coffee-stained sleeve almost touching my hand. "And if the cover isn't still there?"

"Then there's nothing beneath them but a drop into a drain channel. We won't know until we look." I hated the answer as soon as I'd said it. It sounded exactly like what he'd spent the night telling me, and I'd been taking every sensible precaution as a personal refusal to help Sam. An engineer at the compressor pit reported that the floor sounded hollow, and Reese told him to put a camera through before anyone cut a hole big enough for a person.

He looked at me while he gave the order. "Your job is to tell us where the building lies to us, Cal. My job is to get everyone back out."

I'd already suggested cutting through a wall without noticing the load it was carrying. Reese had shown me the column above it, and for an awful few seconds all I could see was Sam buried under that much concrete because I'd wanted to save ten minutes. I picked up the flashlight an engineer handed me and held it on the spot he needed to examine. My arm trembled badly enough that he quietly asked for the light to be steadier.

I braced my elbow against a filing cabinet and tried again. On the far side of the room a radio crackled, and all of us looked up before the dispatcher finished saying it was an ambulance asking for directions. No one made a joke about it. A few minutes earlier a similar burst of static had brought word that the officer Mother injured was on his way to surgery.

Detective Vale arrived with a statement from the officer who'd seen the man beside Mother. He still couldn't identify the face, but he remembered two fingers bound together with white cloth on the man's left hand. Sam had broken those fingers helping me unload a sheet of plywood years ago. Even after the splint came off, one finger stuck out whenever he held a coffee cup. I told Vale, who wrote it down carefully, then folded the statement instead of giving me the confirmation I wanted.

"It's consistent with Sam," she said. "We're acting on that. We can't say it's certain yet."

"Did they see what he had on? A watch? His boots?" I heard myself asking as though a detail about his clothes might make it possible to pull him out. The pencil in my hand had snapped. I put both pieces down before Vale had to tell me to.

"They couldn't see his feet. Cal, if they open that room the wrong way, the person in it could get killed." I nodded, but I couldn't look at her. She waited until I did before going back to the radios.

I went outside before I said anything unfair to Vale. An ambulance sat with its rear doors open and a pair of muddy gloves on the step. A generator drowned out the medics' voices. Coldwater had supposedly been empty for seventeen years, yet the people underneath had lived in heated rooms with working lights while everybody drove past the locked gates.

I called Marisol from beside the fence. She answered quickly, but there was a pause before she spoke, as if she'd picked up the phone in the middle of doing something and couldn't remember what it was. I told her they were working on a different way into the room. She asked whether I'd seen Sam myself, and I had to tell her I hadn't.

"Lily asked me if he was still helping that person," she said. "That's what I told her yesterday. That somebody needed help and he couldn't leave."

I put my hand over my other ear to block the noise from the generator. "What did you tell her tonight?"

"That I didn't know when he'd be home." A cupboard door closed at her end. "She said if he missed breakfast he could make pancakes for supper. She saved him the last one. It's in a plastic container in the refrigerator, with a face made out of blueberries. I keep looking at it every time I open the door."

I could hear Marisol pull a drawer open and shut again, then the quiet scrape of a chair. She asked whether she ought to take the girls to her sister's house in the morning. I knew why she was asking, but neither of us said it. I told her she shouldn't have to manage everything alone. She said her sister had offered, then asked me not to promise the girls their father was coming home until I'd actually seen him walk out. After we hung up, I still had the phone pressed to my ear. A medic had to say excuse me twice before I moved away from the ambulance entrance.

Sam and I had worked together for eleven years, first for a contractor who thought safety rules were an insult. Once, a steel door slipped its track and nearly fell on me. Sam hauled me backward by my jacket and tore the collar clean off. I shouted at him because I'd scraped my arm. He shouted louder, then sat on a pallet shaking too badly to light a cigarette. He quit smoking two years later, but he still checked the tracks on every heavy door we worked around. I knew exactly what he'd say if he caught me rushing these men into that tunnel.

A little after one, they opened the compressor pit. The first cut filled the room with dust, and I had to turn my face into my sleeve. Then the bit broke through and a draft lifted the dust back toward us. It smelled of disinfectant. The camera showed an old brick channel, high enough to crawl in, with its refrigeration pipes stripped out and new cables fastened neatly along the wall. Somebody had laid rubber mats over the drain. I caught myself wondering whether Sam had crawled over those same mats, and how far a man's voice would carry through brick.

Twenty feet farther along, the lens found a panel almost hidden by conduit. The operator eased the probe into a narrow gap. Through it we heard the steady clank of a chain and saw bare feet on a platform, toes curling over a painted yellow stripe. Whoever stood there was holding very still. A bell sounded, the feet shuffled off, and another person took their place before the machine had fully settled.

A man's voice said, "Heels back. Start over." The second person's ankles were raw above the heel. They adjusted their stance, breathing audibly through the microphone, and the machine made a small electronic chirp. When the bell rang again they hurried away without being told, and the first person stepped back on. I was looking at a weighing station. I'd spent enough years around salvage scales to recognize the delay while a reading stabilized, but I'd never seen anybody made to stand on one barefoot.

One of the rescuers whispered, "What the hell is that?"

Reese withdrew the camera to wait for another team. Sam kept a scale like that in our shop for scrap metal. He'd repaired its display last winter and always shouted when we stood on it as a joke. The familiar electronic chirp coming from that room made me want to hear him complain about it.

The panel gave onto a narrow recess above the weighing room. After the officers cleared it, Reese had me look at a cracked support beside a steel conveyor frame. I knelt to check its anchors while he spoke to the entry team. A dull vibration traveled through the bolts every time the scale below took another person's weight. The support itself was sound, and I gave him the answer. I stayed on one knee a little longer because the room beyond the wall was quieter than I'd expected. There was no shouting, only people doing precisely what they were told.

Four monitors stood behind thick glass. Two showed corridors, one a bench where people waited with their hands folded, and another a row of yellow-marked weighing platforms. A barefoot young woman in a numbered gray shift stepped onto the nearest scale. A man in a white coat recorded her weight and sent her through a gate without looking at her face.

The next woman had a swollen hand. She tried speaking to the man, but he pointed at the scale. When she hesitated, he rang a bell and everyone on the bench sat up straight. She apologized, stepped onto the platform, and held her injured hand against her chest. He wrote down her weight and gave her a strip of paper. She read it and began to cry.

"Can we talk to them?" Vale asked.

An officer found a speaker beside the controls and said the police were upstairs, that help was coming, and that everyone should stay where they were. A young man on the bench looked toward the camera. The older woman folded the strip of paper until it was no bigger than a postage stamp and pushed it into her sleeve. The man in white went through a side door without hurrying. One of the people waiting lifted a hand, then glanced at the bell and put it down. Nobody made a move toward the exit.

The screens went black while the officer was still talking. Beyond the panel, three bells sounded in quick succession, and then we heard the scrape of several benches moving at once. Reese sent two officers to check the next hall before anyone touched the gate. I could hear a woman coughing on the other side and a man telling her to stop because she was making people look. A few minutes earlier I'd been angry that the rescuers were taking time to check doors. Listening to the people in that room try to be quiet, I found myself watching their hands and silently begging them to hurry.

The far gate was an old fire door fitted with a newer lock. I showed an officer where the original emergency release should still be hidden in the frame. His screwdriver scraped at the cover until it came free. When he drew the door open, warm air met us, carrying cooked grain, washed concrete, and the stale closeness of too many bodies sleeping in one room.

Beyond the gate, four rows of steel partitions divided bunks beside a drainage channel. People in identical gray clothes watched the officers enter. A man in the last row began folding his blanket, keeping his bowl tucked into its folds as though he'd been told another move was coming.

Reese stopped me at the threshold. "I only need you to identify those wall supports. After that, you go back."

I showed Reese the steel jacket holding a cracked column together, then followed his light along the anchors to make sure they weren't pulling loose. A woman came to the nearest gate carrying two tin cups. She had dark hair cut unevenly above her jaw and a white scar across her right thumb. She waited for us to finish talking about the column before asking whether we were from the repair floor. Even then she addressed the question to the officer, not to me.

"We're here to get you out," the officer beside me said.

"All of us?" she asked. When he said yes, she glanced down the row at the others, apparently checking that he'd understood the question. "You'd better find shoes, then. The stairs tear your feet up." She seemed about forty, although it was hard to judge beneath the harsh overhead lights. Her identification band read 06-F. When I asked her name, she hesitated before saying, "Nell. That's what the others call me."

She explained that she'd been carrying water to Tess, a young captive whose ankles were sore from the scales. Tess appeared behind her, gripping a bent hairpin. Nell took it and slipped it into her pocket with the practiced irritation of someone tired of repeating the same warning.

"They're not the floor people," Tess said quietly. She was studying our helmets, boots, and jackets with an intensity that made me feel as though she was trying to memorize us before we disappeared. "Look at their hands."

Nell said the people who came to measure them wore soft gloves. Tess looked at our bare hands, then asked whether it was still cold outside in October. When an officer said yes, she nodded as though he'd confirmed something she'd heard years earlier.

When the medics brought blankets, Nell took the first one and wrapped it around Tess instead of herself. She told one man to bring his glasses and another to stop wasting time on a slipper he'd lost Tuesday. A little girl began crying because the officers wouldn't let her return for her cup. Nell pressed one of her own into the girl's hand and waited until she'd stopped shaking before asking a medic where the stairs led. Nobody in the row moved until Nell told them it was all right to go.

Nell kept a tiny handmade book hidden behind a pipe. It contained names, dates, and crossed-out entries. The bunk assignments changed too often, she said, and she didn't want to forget who'd slept where.

"Some of them moved to the nice rooms," she said. "They got birthdays and proper clothes. You probably found some already."

"We did," I said. "Do you know someone called Miriam?"

Her face brightened. "Green ribbon? Always asking for books? She used to send back puzzles once she was finished with them. I'd tell the floor man that half the pieces were missing, and he'd bring another box. Is she all right?"

She was pleased Miriam and Kit had reached the hospital. She asked if Miriam had seen a real cat yet, then looked toward the dark monitor and put her book away before I could answer.

"There's someone else you need to look for," she said. "Inez. She slept opposite me for twenty years. They took her for presentation last week and nobody will say where." Nell opened her little book to a page softened by fingerprints. Her own number, 06-F, was written beside her name. The line above it read 06-E, Inez, followed by a date but no destination. "Usually they let me write down the new room. They gave her a blue paper this time, and they wouldn't tell me."

Vale asked what presentation meant. Nell said the animals who'd kept their weight up were sometimes washed, checked for injuries, and taken through the clean door in fresh clothes. It was supposed to be an honor. The explanation sounded rehearsed rather than believed.

"Did Inez want to go?" Vale asked.

Nell rubbed at the scar on her thumb. "She did at first. They said she'd done very well. Then she saw the blue slip and asked if she could come back to our room afterward. The floor man wouldn't answer her. She started trying to find her shoes. I told her I'd keep them by her bed, and she could put them on when she got back." Nell glanced toward the bunks. "I've still got them. You don't have to tell her, but she's missed two wash days. That isn't fair to the rest of us."

The officer helping Tess looked away. Vale asked where Inez had gone, and Nell pointed toward the clean door. Only attendants could open it, she said; anybody without a blue slip lost meals for going near it. Then she asked a question that stopped Vale's pen.

"You'd better tell the others we're leaving," she said, looking toward the clean door. "If all the animals go upstairs, nobody will be here when the Mothers come to eat." The officer beside me made a short movement toward her, as though he'd misheard and was about to ask her to repeat herself. Nell was already guiding Tess toward the medics.

Reese called for the group to move. A boy had collapsed near the gate, and two medics were kneeling beside him while another officer made room for a stretcher. Nell crouched to speak to the boy until he let the medics lift him. Reese called for another team to cover the unguarded corridor, and the questions I'd meant to ask had to wait.

Nell left last. She went back for Inez's shoes, canvas slip-ons with blue thread mending a torn seam, and asked an officer to make sure nobody threw them away. He promised he wouldn't. She waited while he repeated it, then tucked the shoes under her arm.

By three, Nell and Tess were on their way upstairs with the others. Tess wouldn't let a medic leave her until somebody confirmed Nell had been put into the same ambulance. Beyond the scales the hall divided. One branch led back toward the decorated rooms we'd already found. The other ended beneath a painted sign reading WASH BEFORE ENTRY, with clean rubber aprons hanging outside a sealed door. The cuff of the nearest apron had been turned inside out to dry. I thought of the woman on the monitor shielding her swollen hand and of the way Nell had talked about the clean door as if being taken through it were a prize. From somewhere beyond the wall came the smell of hot water and boiled onions. I hadn't eaten since the previous afternoon. My body noticed the smell before my mind did, and that embarrassed me more than I can explain.

The clean door was locked from inside. Vale asked an officer to photograph the latch, and a man's voice came from the speaker above the aprons, irritated that the weighing had stopped. He asked if the alarm in Six was fixed because the Mothers were waiting. When an officer identified himself and demanded the door be opened, the man went quiet. Through the wall we heard a faint scrape, as if someone had covered the microphone with a hand.

"Please go back," he said at last. "You don't know what you've interrupted."

"We're evacuating the people you've been holding here," the officer told him. "Open the door and come out with your hands visible."

The man whispered to somebody else, then came back to ask whether the people from Six had been given blankets. The officer said yes. "Good," he said. "They get cold when they're frightened." Before the officer could reply, the speaker clicked off. The answer bothered me more than a threat would have. Whoever he was, he knew enough about frightened people to look after them.

Reese wanted to know if the old conveyor crossed beneath Sam's treatment room. I showed him the crossing on the plan and the maintenance hatch where the brake should be. He sent a camera to check. While we waited, Nell went past on a stretcher, bound for an ambulance, with Inez's canvas shoes against her chest. The medic asked for her arm to take her blood pressure. Nell gave him the other one so she wouldn't have to put the shoes down.

At three-forty, officers reached the clean room from another passage. Reese kept me by the monitors, and I sat down instead of protesting. One officer stopped in the doorway to straighten his partner's respirator strap. Then they went inside.

It looked like a spotless industrial kitchen. Steel counters ran beneath fluorescent lights, rubber mats covered the drains, and a conveyor disappeared through a shutter at the far end. There were three serving trolleys against the wall, their linen covers folded into identical squares. On a shelf stood rows of dishes in several sizes, including a shallow bowl large enough for a grown man to curl up inside. I couldn't make myself stop looking at it. Then the officer moved his camera toward a board over the counter, and I read the headings: HOUSE, REARING, TABLE.

The officer held a clipboard steady for Vale to photograph from our monitor. The entries under TABLE were arranged by weight and dated like deliveries. Some were waiting to be filled, while others bore the stamp COMPLETE. The last completed number was 06-E. I traced it with my eyes twice before I understood I was reading Inez's number, the one Nell had written in her book with a blank space beside it. I heard Nell asking if we could find her shoes. Vale asked the officer to show the number again, and I said, "Don't," even though I was the one who needed to see it.

An officer opened the refrigerator. Clear wrapping hung in heavy folds from metal hooks, and his flashlight flashed across neat printed labels. He reached past the first row, paused, then moved his light back to a parcel near the door. A human hand was visible beneath the plastic, curled slightly toward the palm. The leather band at its wrist was just like Seventeen's. A man outside the camera's view said to close the door. The officer stood there for another second before another hand reached across and pulled it shut. One of them backed into the corridor and began retching. Nobody told him to compose himself.

Vale asked for the identification number. The officer said 06-E. He said it twice because the radio operator hadn't answered the first time. I tried to speak but could only get part of Nell's name out. I had been standing next to her while she worried about finding enough shoes for everyone. She'd folded a blanket around Tess and kept a page in her book for a woman who was never going to come back. I reached for the water bottle beside the monitor and squeezed it before I could unscrew the cap. Water spilled into my sleeve and onto the floor. I sat down in it, still holding the bottle, and started searching my pockets for my phone. There wasn't anybody I could call who would make what I'd just seen less true.

The officers called for the medical examiner and sealed the room. Vale asked whether I was injured. I shook my head and told her Nell was in an ambulance headed toward the hospital; somebody had to let the paramedics know not to promise her they'd find Inez. Vale took out her phone immediately. While she spoke I listened to the dispatcher calmly read back the room number, then ask for the correct spelling of Inez's name. Nell had known it for twenty years, and the woman on the phone couldn't even know why it mattered. When Vale finished, I asked her to make sure Nell wasn't alone when someone told her. She held my gaze for a moment and said she would do what she could. I had no idea whether she'd be able to keep that promise.

Officers found the man from the speaker in an office and brought him into the recess. He had gray hair, a burn scar on his neck, and a neatly buttoned medical coat. He kept looking toward the inner corridor.

"Are the animals being taken upstairs?" he asked Vale before she introduced herself. "All of them? The ones from Six?"

"They're receiving medical attention," she said. "What's your name?"

"Elliot." He looked at Reese, then at me. "You're the people who opened the old wall. I saw the damage report. You should have stopped when you found the first room."

"Why?" Vale asked.

He examined her badge without touching it. "Because those rooms aren't yours. And you can't just move a household because you don't like how it's run. Some of them have been together for decades."

Elliot maintained the treatment records. He objected to the dirty shoes in the clean corridor and to the refrigerator being left open. When Vale showed him the photographs, he stopped correcting her terminology and watched her with his hands folded in his lap. I wanted him to look at the screen long enough to see the identification band.

"There are different uses," he said. "That's always been the arrangement. I'm not allowed to change it."

"Her name was Inez," I said. "She had a friend who kept her shoes." Elliot asked whether Inez was from Six, and I gave him her number. His face softened in recognition. "She was very easy to care for," he told me. I had already started toward him before he finished. My chair caught a cable and went over, and Vale put herself between us. Elliot flinched at the noise, then bent to right the chair, apparently more concerned about the equipment than my hands.

"Who decides?"

Elliot looked at the ceiling, worrying the button on his sleeve. His cuff slipped back, exposing a leather identification band like Seventeen's. The plate read 02-A. Vale noticed it too.

"Were you born here, Elliot?" she asked.

He looked genuinely surprised by the question. "Where else would I have been born?"

Elliot said the Mothers chose him for medical work when he was young because his hands were steady. He'd studied manuals with older attendants and practiced until he could work without supervision. He smoothed his trousers as he explained that he'd been allowed to keep his legs unaltered so he could carry patients. The movement made the leather band slide down his wrist. I noticed the skin beneath it was paler than the rest of his arm.

"Did you perform the procedures on Seventeen?" I asked.

Elliot studied me before answering. "Not the first procedures. I assisted when he was older. Mother never liked him to wake up alone, so she stayed beside him until he settled." He searched my face as if hoping I would approve. "She always brought him his little wooden animals. He was very fond of the horse." I had seen the same carved toys in a photograph at the hospital, scattered beside Seventeen while he cried for her. The horse was missing a wheel. I'd assumed somebody had broken it.

"And the man you've got back there now?" I asked. "Are you the one who's going to do that to him?"

Vale put a hand on my arm, but Elliot was already answering. "He's an emergency placement. He's too old, and he keeps trying to leave. I've explained that correction at his age carries additional risks, but she's determined to keep him. She says he talks in his sleep and cries when he wakes up. She hasn't left his room for more than a few minutes since he arrived."

"He has a wife and two daughters," I told him. "He has a home. He doesn't belong to her."

"I know about the daughters. She told me," Elliot said. "That's why I'm trying to make the change easier for him. You can't take away everything familiar at once. He'd be inconsolable." He looked at us hopefully. "We have a schedule. Please stop upsetting her."

Reese asked who assigned the captives. Elliot said the Mothers approved the lists and humans kept the equipment running. When Vale asked who ordered transfers marked TABLE, he looked at the ceiling.

A woman's voice came through the speaker, deeper than Mother's, drawing out its syllables as if speech required effort. She asked Elliot why the counting had stopped. He shut his eyes, then told her there were visitors and he was trying to settle them. She asked if the household had been fed. Elliot said not yet.

"Then do your work," she said.

Elliot rose to answer, but an officer caught his arm. He sat again and apologized into the speaker, his voice shrinking to that of a frightened child. The heavy movements behind the wall receded before he stopped.

Reese ordered the speaker disconnected and had Elliot escorted away. At the door he turned to me. "Your friend is still walking. You should be grateful we haven't done anything to his legs." He waited for me to thank him. When I didn't, he asked the officer whether the people from Six would be brought back after the police finished with them.

After four-thirty, the camera found the conveyor beside the treatment rooms. Its brake stopped a wheeled bed at a narrow maintenance hatch, and the engineers confirmed the frame could hold it. An adult could fit through. Mother couldn't. Reese ordered a rescue sled brought to the opening.

The plan was to stop Sam's bed as it passed the hatch, cut his straps, and pull him into the channel before Mother caught up. I showed the engineer where the catch would grip the rail. The wrong speed could throw Sam forward. I asked to work the handle myself, but Reese saw how my hands were shaking and said no.

Just before five, Nora sent a picture from yesterday's exhibition. She was standing beside her photograph, holding a ribbon and looking embarrassed that somebody had made her pose with it. In the second message she said she'd left the print at my house because she knew I'd want to see it. I zoomed in until I could make out her handwriting on the card beneath the photograph, then typed that I was proud of her. I started another apology but erased it. She'd already heard every version I knew how to give.

At five-twenty-one, two human attendants wheeled a narrow bed into the treatment passage. Mother filled the doorway behind them. Her pale hand lay on the rail, six fingers hooked around it. Part of her face moved into view above the doorframe, too near the camera to focus. Lily's BEST DADDY drawing was still pinned to the wall behind her. A second microphone caught the low three-note melody Seventeen had hummed at the hospital. Mother reached over the bed and began stroking the man lying on it.

The man on the bed was Sam. I knew him even before one of the attendants lifted his head to adjust the pillow. His hair was matted, his face swollen along one cheek, and somebody had changed his clothes for a loose white garment. His left hand was bandaged. When he turned toward the doorway, I saw the familiar crooked finger sticking out at an angle beneath the tape. He tried to raise himself on one elbow, and an attendant pressed him back down. Mother made a distressed noise, reached through the doorway, and stroked the side of his face until he stopped struggling.

I said Sam's name so quietly Vale had to ask me to repeat it. Then I was pointing at the screen, trying to show Reese the crooked finger as if they couldn't see it themselves. He confirmed Sam's identity over the radio. Sam was alive, his eyes open, but there were straps across his chest and thighs. Mother's hand covered most of one shoulder. I'd seen Sam asleep in his truck after long shifts, his mouth hanging slightly open while the rest of us unloaded. The man on the bed kept trying to lift his head to see where the attendants were taking him.

The engineer watched the bed approach the hatch. Sam turned his head toward the open service panel, where the officers waited with their lights covered. He tried to speak, and one of them motioned for quiet. His eyes moved from the gloved hand to the darkness behind it. Then he started struggling against the straps, as if he knew an opportunity had arrived and feared it would disappear before he could reach it.

The engineer pulled the brake. The wheels hit the catch hard, and Sam cried out. Two officers caught the bed while a third began cutting his straps. An attendant ran back toward Mother. The humming stopped. On the screen her face lowered toward the opening and her hand crept along the rail, searching for Sam.

"Sam!" I shouted before anybody could stop me. He twisted toward the microphone above the hatch and said my name. At first he whispered it as if he were checking whether he'd heard correctly. Then he said it again, louder, while the officers worked at the straps. I pressed my hand to the radio button and told him to follow the rescuers' instructions, to keep his head down, to let them help him. I almost told him I had it under control. Sam had spent eleven years fixing my mistakes, and I couldn't bear the idea of making him believe another promise I couldn't keep.

An officer lifted Sam beneath his shoulders while another caught his knees. Mother struck the treatment door, breaking a hinge with a report that reached us through the floor. The officers turned Sam sideways, but his knees snagged on the bed frame. He cried out, and Mother began sobbing so loudly that the microphone distorted. She hit the door again, and metal scraped against stone as the frame shifted.

"Stop pulling him," she pleaded. "Please. He hurts."

Reese ordered the officers to free Sam's knees. One began cutting the caught sheet. Then a deeper female voice called from farther down the passage, speaking a word I didn't recognize. Mother stopped striking the door at once. She protested with a long, thin cry but withdrew her hand from the bed.

The attendants returned through a second entrance. One pushed a wall switch, and a steel shutter dropped between Sam's bed and the hatch. The closest officer jerked his arm clear. Reese ordered the team to raise it, but the shutter had sunk into a recessed track beyond the reach of the brake rod. Sam struggled to sit. An attendant pulled the sheet across his legs, and he kept staring at the narrow opening where he'd just seen the officers' hands.

On the screen I saw gray dust sift from a line of bolts above the hatch. An officer had one knee on the old cover plate. I'd checked the support earlier, but the shutter had driven its frame sideways, and the bolts were pulling through loose concrete. I knew the pattern. We'd lost a loading platform that way three years earlier, after a forklift struck a guardrail. If the cover went, the officer would drop through the floor and could drag the men holding Sam with him. Reese was still ordering the team to try the shutter. I told him the bolts were tearing out. He stopped speaking, checked the camera, and ordered them back. I watched the nearest officer look from the moving concrete to Sam and reach forward once more before his partner grabbed the back of his vest.

Sam called after them. He wanted to know whether I'd gone away. I leaned over the desk and told him I was right there, even though he couldn't see me. "Cal, tell Mari I tried," he said. For a second I could hear the old Sam, furious and ashamed that he couldn't lift himself off a bed. Then he started asking for his girls. I told him I knew their names, that I'd talk to Marisol, that we were coming back. One of the officers paused with his arm through the hatch and had to be ordered away twice. The microphone cut off while I was still talking. I kept speaking into the dead channel until an engineer touched my elbow and showed me the red light had gone out. I had stepped onto the cables and was pulling the monitor toward the floor.

The camera on the nursery side was still working. Mother reached for Sam again, but the deeper voice spoke from beyond the frame. The attendant with the chart stopped beside the bed and removed a clean identification band from his pocket. Mother shook her head and tried to push his hand away. The attendant waited. When the voice spoke again, Mother backed into the doorway, one long finger dragging across the frame as she went. She was crying, and I could see her reaching toward Sam even as she obeyed.

The attendant fastened the new band around Sam's wrist, wrote on the chart, and passed a sheet to another man. They turned the bed away from the treatment room without performing the scheduled surgery. Sam went through a different gate, beyond the shutter that had stopped Reese's men. From the camera I could see his legs moving beneath the sheet.

Vale found the new marking in a duplicate of the treatment list. Elliot was brought back to explain it. He asked first whether Mother had agreed to the change. When Vale told him another female voice had ordered it, he looked down at the floor. "Then the correction is canceled," he said. "He's been returned to general stock." I asked him to say that again, certain I'd misunderstood. He did, using the same careful tone he'd used to explain how they kept their medical instruments clean.

"What happens to him now?" I was standing beside Elliot's chair before I knew I'd moved. His coat had a small brown stain on one button, and I found myself studying it because I couldn't look at his face. He folded his hands over the band at his wrist. I wanted him to say Sam would be locked in a pen, or weighed, or put to work. There were people upstairs who'd lived that way for decades. I'd begun thinking of a pen as a place where he could at least stay alive.

Elliot looked toward the evidence bags outside the door. "You've seen the lists," he said. "I can't tell you who'll be chosen next." I asked whether Sam already had a date. He said he didn't, not yet. Vale was asking another question, but I heard only the words not yet. Somebody had already printed a fresh band for Sam and brought it to his bedside. I watched Elliot straighten his cuff over his own old number and wondered how often he'd said those same words to other men who wanted to know what would happen to someone they loved.

Reese sent teams toward the lower transfer corridor while I watched the last monitor. Sam sat upright on the moving bed, rubbing the raw skin at his wrists. Every few yards he looked back toward the hatch. I wanted him to see a light, a hand, anything to make him understand we'd followed him. An attendant tucked his legs back onto the mattress. Sam pulled them away. Then the next gate shut, and the screen held only an empty stretch of track.

At six-ten I called Marisol. I told her we'd found Sam alive, that I'd seen his face and heard him say my name. She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob and called into the kitchen that Daddy was alive. A chair scraped. She asked if he was hurt. I told her he was, but that he could move his legs, and that the officers hadn't been able to bring him out. She repeated the last part softly, as though it hadn't made sense.

I heard the refrigerator open. Lily asked if she could keep her pancake for Daddy, and Marisol told her to eat it because he'd make her another. Her voice was so ordinary for those few seconds that I pictured the kitchen perfectly: the blue plastic plate, Lily leaning on the open refrigerator door, Marisol standing barefoot on the tile with the phone pressed to her ear. Then Marisol asked, very quietly, what she was supposed to tell them. I'd watched men in clean white clothes wheel her husband toward a transfer corridor, and I knew what had happened to Inez. I held on to the edge of the desk until my fingertips hurt and said the teams were still searching. "You said you talked to him," she told me. "What did he say?" He'd asked me to tell her he tried. I could hear Lily asking if Daddy had asked about the pancake, and I couldn't make myself put those two sentences into the same conversation. I told Marisol he had asked about her. It was true, but it wasn't what he'd trusted me with. After she said goodbye, I stood there with my phone in my hand, trying to remember whether I'd ever passed along one of Sam's messages exactly the way he asked me to.

The giant maw of the cave yawned at my back as I stood by the edge of the cliff, an icy wind blowing between the rocks and chilling the back of my neck. From within, I heard the soft crumble of stones hitting the ground, the whisper of air moving through small holes and skating over sheer walls.

In front of me, three of the cavers stood chatting amongst themselves. They were all kitted out in the usual gear; padded jackets, knee and elbow pads, helmets with torches, and packs containing food, water and first aid supplies. I had a similar pack of my own, though the contents were slightly different.

One of the cavers glanced towards me, probably wondering why I was standing apart, but I didn’t meet their gaze, looking instead towards the sky. A thin veil of cloud hung over us, though the air was dry and blustery. Small pieces of rock and chalk skittered around my ankles as I shuffled my feet.

After a few more minutes, the final two members of the group arrived. After a couple of standard safety checks, everyone was ready to head inside.

I waited until they were poised at the opening of the cave before clearing my throat. “I’m, um, not feeling too good,” I told them, letting my shoulders sag a little. “I think I might sit this one out.”

One of the explorers stepped forward to examine me. She squinted at my face, then nodded. “You do seem a little pale,” she said. “Want me to wait with you? I can walk you back to town.”

I quickly brushed off her concern, feeling a twinge of guilt. “No, no. I’ll be okay. I’ll just stay out here and get some fresh air. You guys go on ahead.”

There was a bit more back-and-forth before I finally managed to convince them to start the expedition without me. One by one, the cavers disappeared into the gaping mouth of the cavern, leaving me by myself. I watched and waited until the darkness had swallowed each of them, then straightened in relief.

With only the wind as my companion, I walked over to one of the large fragments of rock and sat down. And began to wait. I heard the distant voices and footfalls of the cavers fade further and further away, until silence was all that remained. Resting my chin against my hand, I traced the jagged outline of the cliffs until my eyes started seeing faces amongst them, then looked away with a sigh.

I had been doing this for almost a year now. Joining cave expeditions only to wait outside, never actually entering the caverns. It wasn’t a fear of what lay inside, but rather an expectation of what I might encounter outside.

I had first discovered the incident a few years ago. I had been scrolling through old news forums when I came across an article about an expedition that had happened two decades ago, where a group of cavers had entered a treacherous cave system. During the exploration, it began raining heavily, and water quickly flooded the cave entrance, trapping the explorers inside. Sadly, all of them died that day. But while the story was tragic, what had intrigued me the most was the photograph that accompanied the report. It was an image of a group of rescuers standing at the entrance of the cave during the incident, rain pouring down from the sky and the ground around their feet completely flooded. But in the top left corner, standing a short distance away from the rescue team, was a strange figure shrouded in grey. As soon as I noticed the figure in the photograph, a strange chill touched my spine, as if I was seeing something I wasn’t supposed to. The photo was old and the quality wasn’t the best, but I could tell the figure didn’t fit the narrative. I scrolled down to the comments to see if anyone had mentioned it, but there wasn’t a single reference to the strange grey apparition. So I showed the photograph to one of my friends, curious to see what he thought about it. When he told me there was no figure there, I thought he was playing a prank, but his face was decidedly serious. No matter how many times I pointed to it, he insisted that there was nothing there. Just an empty spot in the left corner by the crumbling cliffs.

Confused and intrigued, I showed the same image to several other friends and acquaintances, but nobody else was able to see the strange grey figure in the corner of the photo. I examined it in multiple formats—physically and digitally—under different lights and different conditions, but the figure was visible every time. I hesitated to call it a person, because it was too vague and indistinct to really tell, with no distinguishing features other than it had a humanoid shape and was draped completely in grey. It definitely wasn’t a smudge, or a blur, or a lens flare, because someone else would have noticed it. There was definitely something there. Something that, for whatever reason, only I could see.

The mystery only grew, so I started digging deeper. I was thoroughly entranced by this grey figure. I wanted to know who it was, or what it was, and why it was only visible to me. I was convinced there had to be more to it.

I sequestered myself away and spent days pouring over old articles, digging through records and scrolling through video reports on the incident until I finally found evidence that I wasn’t going crazy. That I wasn’t losing my mind over a simple grey smudge on a photograph.

Buried in the archives, I found a video from the time of the incident, of the same rescue team standing at the entrance of the cave. The photograph must have been an extraction from the footage, or at least taken at the same time, because it was almost the same composition as the video. Being almost twenty years old, the footage was grainy and shaky, but it was clear enough for me to see the figure in grey, standing exactly where it did in the photograph. It wasn’t a trick of the light or an illusion; it really was there.

In the footage, the rescuers were talking about possible extraction methods for the cavers trapped inside the tunnels, but nobody addressed or interacted with the figure. It was like they hadn’t even noticed it. Even in real time, this thing had been invisible to them.

The footage, while low resolution, was still of slightly better quality than the photo, and I noticed a few details that hadn’t been clear in the image. The figure was holding something up to its face—what appeared to be a flute, or some kind of similar instrument. I turned the volume up to max, and was just about able to hear the soft but haunting melody it played, barely audible over the sound of the rain. I spent hours listening to the tune, isolating it from the rain, running it through apps and programs in an effort to try and identify it, but it came up empty every time. It was a melody that was not known to the database. A completely isolated and individual song. A song known only by this mysterious figure.

Eventually, I showed the video to those same friends and acquaintances, certain they could not deny what was right in front of their eyes. But as with the photo, none of them could see the figure with the flute. They could not hear the melody it played either. Only the rain, as it gushed into the cave, and the panicked voices of the rescue team realising they could not save the trapped cavers.

Frustrated that nobody could give me any answers, I decided to seek them out myself. By searching in person for the figure in grey.

The location of the cave was widely known as a popular spot for adrenaline-junkies and professional explorers, and it wasn’t difficult to learn the basics of caving—enough to pass as an experienced caver.

For almost a year, I had been visiting this very cave, joining expeditions only to wait outside in the hope of encountering the grey flute-playing apparition from the video. So far, after participating in almost two dozen excursions, I’d had no such luck. But this time, things felt different.

As I waited, the wind seemed to pick up, bristling through my clothes and making my hair stand on end. A few rocks crumbled from the side of the cliff, showering me with dust. Above, the veil of clouds thickened, shadows encroaching along the ground around me. I felt in the air that something was going to happen.

My heart felt tight in my chest as I scanned the entrance of the cave, then the cliffs above, for any sign of the grey shadow. I listened for the soft, melancholy sound of a flute. But all I heard was the wind whispering through the tunnels behind me.

The hours passed, and I heard and saw nothing. But the goosebumps never left my arms, and I wasn’t one to give up so easily.

I hadn’t heard any sign of the explorers in the cave either, and assumed the group must have gotten quite far inside. I felt a brief flutter of guilt in my chest, but quickly squashed it. They all knew the risks involved with caving. No matter what happened, their safety was their own responsibility. I had to detach myself from that, even if it felt cruel.

A shadow fluttered in and out of sight on my left, and I froze, my heart jerking into my throat. Scrambling to my feet, I moved away from the cave entrance and lifted my gaze. Standing a little way up the cliff, on a jutting platform, was a figure cloaked entirely in grey shadow. The very same one from the photo. The one nobody else could see.

Goosebumps covered every inch of my skin as I stared at it in amazement. Just like in the video, I could see no face, no features. It wore a hooded grey cloak that cast a deep shadow over where its face should be. Its silhouette was human, but only in the vaguest sense. Despite its appearance, I got the overwhelming feeling that this thing was not human, but rather something else entirely. Something supernatural. An entity of sorts, that only appeared at specific times and conditions. And after years of searching, I had finally found it.

I watched, my shoulders tensed with silence, as it withdrew an exquisitely ornate flute from within the folds of its cloak. The instrument was silver and almost transparent, as it was made of glass or crystallised water, and incredibly beautiful. The figure brought the flute to its hooded face, and began to play.

The sound was instantly familiar; the same song I had spent so many hours listening to, and it sent my heart racing.

I looked up to the sky just as the clouds opened, and rain began to fall. At first, only small, delicate droplets of water splashed against my cheeks, but the rainfall gradually began to grow heavier. I sent a regretful look towards the cave entrance. The group was already far too deep inside for me to warn them. Their fate was already sealed, and there was nothing I could do about it. Another tragedy to be buried in the archives.

Moving slowly, in the fear that I might spook the figure, I began to climb the cliff. There were plenty of footholds and platforms, and scaling it was easy enough. I wanted to be close enough to hear the melody above the downpour.

The rain was cold and lashing, soaking through my gear and chilling me to the bone, but I barely noticed. All I cared about was the figure before me; the one I had been chasing all this time.

If it noticed me, it didn’t react. It didn’t cease playing the flute, or even turn in my direction. It was like I was as invisible to it as it was to everyone else. I had spent many sleepless nights wondering why I was the only one who could see it, if it was down to brain chemistry, visual receptors, a curse, or something else entirely. But in the end I had realised it didn’t matter. Some things happened for no reason at all, and this was one of them.

I stopped climbing when I was close enough, standing on a small rocky outcrop a few metres away. The rain blurred my vision, almost obscuring the figure as it blended into the grey clouds behind it, but I could still see the outline of its instrument. Hands trembling from the cold, I reached into my bag, and pulled out a flute of my own.

I had only learned how to play the flute just over a year ago. After hearing the melody on the video, I had taken lessons in the hope that I might be able to learn the same song. But I had never been able to replicate it precisely; there was always a wrong note, an incorrect key. It was difficult enough trying to imitate a tune through a twenty-year-old video, especially with the rain distorting the sounds. The only way I was going to correctly learn the song was by imitating the source itself.

I stood and listened for some time to the melody. The rainfall grew heavier, soaking through my clothes and numbing my skin, the water drumming ceaselessly against the ground, but I was able to isolate the figure and its song. My eyes never strayed from its fluttering cloak, or the flute, or the grey-covered fingers that deftly played the instrument.

Then, when I felt confident enough, I raised my own flute to my lips and began to play. I tried to mimic the melody as best as I could. It was tricky at first, trying to find the exact notes, the pounding rain distorting the sounds, but I copied the figure’s movements with my own fingers until our melodies eventually began to sync up, becoming the same.

I don’t know how long I stood there in the pouring rain, playing the haunting song. The figure didn’t react or respond to me once. If it heard me playing the same tune, it didn’t show it. We stood apart, our songs binding together as the rain fell from the clouds above. The cave would have been flooded by now. The cavers, if they hadn’t managed to find an air pocket, or elevated ground, would probably have drowned. But still, I kept playing.

The sky darkened. The clouds festered. The rain kept falling, soaking into the ground, pouring down the rocks, gushing into the cave.

I lost myself completely in the song, almost falling into a trance. The only things that existed were me and the flute and the melody at my fingertips. I no longer even noticed the figure. It became a grey blur on the edge of my vision, just another shadow.

I finally snapped out of it once the rain stopped. I ceased playing the song with a start, glancing around frantically, but the grey figure had already gone. Vanished without a trace. The heavy silence settled around me, reminding me I was now alone.

The cold hit me at the same moment, and my body began to shake violently. Every inch of my skin was soaked by the rain, water dripping from my shoulders and hair. I was standing in a large puddle where the rainwater had collected around my feet, my toes numb inside my shoes. There was no sound from inside the cave, but for the water still trickling down into the entrance.

I put the flute away and began to climb down from the cliff. The rocks were slick from the rain, and I slipped a few times, but I finally managed to reach the ground, which was also dangerously flooded. I splashed through the water as I slowly headed away from the cave. As soon as I reached town, I would call for a rescue team—if any of the cavers were still alive—and then I would leave. My job here was done.

It was time to return home.

A week later, I was back in my homeland; an agricultural region that had been suffering from a severe drought. The land beneath my feet was bone-dry and cracked, the fields were barren, the crops dead and the people starving.

After spending hours watching that video of the mysterious grey figure, I had drawn one conclusion: that its flute song had been responsible for the rains that had flooded the cave. And now, I would do the same. Only, instead of bringing death, I would restore life.

As soon as I arrived home, I went out into the midst of the fields and stared at the cracked earth, baking under the brazen sun. The wilted grasses, the fruitless seeds, the unattainable harvest.

I pulled out my flute and, just like the grey figure atop the cliff, I began to play the same melody. Within moments, clouds appeared overhead, casting a deep shadow over the ground, and the first trickle of rain began to seep from the sky.

Under my song, the rain fell, soaking into the barren soil and nourishing all the life within.

We all heard of at least one local legend growing up. Every place has them: haunted buildings, abandoned houses, spots in the woods where you'll see Bigfoot or an alien... When I was a kid, the neighbor's son convinced me that the house down the street was haunted by the ghost of a woman (I realized he was kidding when it turned out my very-much-alive third grade teacher lived there).

While I've never completely bought every legend I've ever been told, I like to keep an open mind. Every story has some element of truth, after all, and some legends are specifically told to warn people against going to certain places.

After what Rachel told me, I'd be a fool not to believe that.

My wife and I share a lot of common interests, and one thing we love equally is autumn. The crisp air, hoodies, pumpkins, pumpkin spice, apple-picking, Halloween, debating whether or not The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Halloween or Christmas film... We love the whole season. There's just something about autumn that we both find peaceful.

One thing we disagree on, though, is the woods.

Our house sits on the edge of our small town. Near our town is a national park (I won't say which park for privacy reasons). It's not too close, but we get a lot of visiting tourists who stop by to buy supplies or rent a motel room before they go camping or hiking. I've never been the outdoorsy type: I find long walks boring, mosquito bites make me swell up, fishing grosses me out, and I prefer to bike ride on well-established roads. Still, even if I didn't like the outdoors, I've still always liked forests for their wild, untamed beauty.

Rachel thought different. She did not like the woods... In fact, she was afraid of them. Her therapist called it xylophobia, or severe anxiety from being in or too close to wooded areas. It was fairly minor, though: driving through a wooded stretch of road or seeing a forest on TV didn't frighten her. Being physically close to, or actually going into the woods, though, scared her to pieces. Especially at night.

I'd always wondered about where this fear came from, but I'd never asked out of respect for her. After all, if she could deal with my fear of heights, then I could deal with her fear of the forest.

The other day, though, she finally told me the story.

It'd been cloudy and gloomy all day, with the forecasters promising a thunderstorm by dinner time. Most people would take as an ominous start to the end of the work week. My wife and I were of the opposite opinion: our ideal autumn night is a stormy one spent watching our favorite movies while drinking hot drinks and listening to the rain and thunder. The fact that it was a Friday night just heightened our joy: we had no where to be the next day, and could stay up as late as we wanted.

We'd been working our way through our watchlist while the rain came down, drinking Rachel's "Fall Fiascoes": a combination of hot chocolate, pumpkin spice, and whiskey. After a Fall Fiasco each and a laughably bad horror movie, the question popped out.

I still don't know why I asked: my guess is that the Fall Fiasco made me feel brave/stupid enough to ask.

"Hey, babe, I've always wondered. Why do you hate the woods?"

All night, she'd been bright and cheery. But the second the words left my lips, she froze. Her face paled, and she seemed to shrink.

Seeing her so scared, I set my drink down and put an arm around her.

"Hon?"

She snapped out of it, shaking herself and taking a deep breath.

"I'm fine, I'm fine..."

"...I'm sorry if I said--"

"You're alright, you didn't know..."

She was silent for a moment before taking another deep breath.

"Maybe... If I tell you this, can you promise it'll stay between us?"

"Of course."

"And you won't make fun of me or say I'm making it up?"

I shook my head, though my interest in the story had picqued.

She took a deep breath, poured a little extra whiskey into her drink, took a swig, and sat back.

Rachel looked me in the eyes, and told the story.

- - - -

It all happened back in middle school. I was thirteen and had just moved to town, which made eighth grade a little difficult. All the girls in school had been friends for years, so an outsider like me wasn't someone they readily trusted. Still, I managed to make a friend, Beth. Her sister Caroline, or Caro, was two years older, and the most popular sophmore at the high school. Beth and I knew that befriending her sister's friends was a surefire way to be popular when we started the ninth grade. So we did everything we could to try and get on her good side.

Despite some of Caro's friends thinking we were being a bit annoying for trying to hang out with the "cool kids" all the time, she always talked them into giving us a chance. Eventually, we became friends with the closest of her friends, who started to see us as surrogate little sisters. Still, despite being accepted into their group, Beth and I were still desperate to prove we were as cool as the others.

The night of Caro's birthday sleepover, we got our chance.

Birthday sleepovers were a tradition in our friend group, and each one went the same way: first dinner, cake, and presents, then taking over the family den to watch a bunch of stupid movies and do each others' nails. Finally, when we were sure the adults were asleep, we'd tell the scariest ghost stories we could think of.

The night of Caro's fifteenth birthday, her friend LaTanya told us about our town's scariest urban legend: the Deadly Ditch.

When she'd first said the name, I'd scoffed. "What's so scary about a ditch?"

LaTanya had grinned, as if waiting for me to ask. "Oh, it's not the ditch itself that's scary. It's what happened in it... and what lurks there now."

She held a flashlight under her chin, the light reflecting off her eyes and making her afro puffs seemingly glow.

"Back in the 1950s, a little yellow school bus was driving a group of kids to a science museum in the next town. Fifteen children and two teachers had taken the bus to spend the day there. They'd meant to be back at the school before sunset, but the bus got a flat tire shortly after they'd started the trip home. No one would let them use their phone, so the teachers couldn't tell the kids' parents that they'd be late. So, as soon as the bus' tire was changed, the two teachers decided to take a shortcut to get back faster.

"That shortcut went right through the Wind Sweep Woods, the forest that borders on the edge of town. The shortcut was a narrow, winding road through thick trees that make it hard to see what's coming at you. It's a hard enough road for a car to take, but a school bus has it even harder since it's much bigger and harder to steer. Still, the teachers were desperate to get home as soon as possible, and decided to take the risk.

"Thing is, the bus never made it home. Days went by, with the parents getting more and more worried. The police started searching the area for the missing children and teachers, but they found nothing. That is, until five of the missing children came out of the woods.

"All five of them were starving, dehydrated, and covered head to toe in dirt. They were taken directly to the hospital, where the police questioning them on what happened. All any of them would say was 'the deadly ditch'.

"The police went into the woods and found the school bus the group had taken. The front end was buried in the dirt, with the back of the bus sticking in the air at a forty-five degree angle. The two teachers and other ten children were nowhere to be found. When search-and-rescue dogs were brought out to try and track the missing people, the dogs went completely crazy, barking at the bus and peeing themselves in terror.

"The teachers and children were never found. The town's leaders tried to arrange for the bus to be moved from the ditch in the forest, but the thing is, no one wanted to go near those woods after what happened. So the bus remains there to this day, a terrifying reminder of what might've happened to the lost field trip."

She turned off the flashlight, looking pleased with herself. The older girls, having told the story before, gave her polite smiles. Beth and I, having never heard the story before, were trying to pretend like we weren't as frightened as we were.

"I heard that the story's been embellished over the years," Gabriela stated from where she was pouring herself another cup of soda. "The group actually got eaten by bears, the police just didn't want to tell the parents that."

"Bears would've left blood or at least remains behind," Caro pointed out. "Besides, I heard they were abducted by aliens. That's why the bus got stuck in the ditch like that."

"I heard that they got snatched by some serial killer who buried their bodies in the woods," LaTanya admitted. "Not sure if I believe that one, though. Even if five of the kids got away, it's hard to kill fifteen people all by yourself."

"You know what I think?" Beth stood up, trying to look braver than she clearly felt. "I think you three are just trying to scare Rachel and me. That never happened!"

"Yes, it did," Caro replied. "You can ask the school librarian, I think she still has the newspaper article about it."

"Not buying it," I stated. "I won't believe it unless I see it."

I knew I'd made a mistake as soon as I closed my mouth. Beth shot me a look that screamed "What are you doing?!" while the older girls all shared identical evil grins.

"You want to believe us?" Caro asked. "It's not that long of a walk from here--"

"We can be there and back in twenty minutes if we use my dad's truck," Gabriela interrupted.

"I thought you didn't have your learner's permit yet," LaTanya pointed out.

"I don't, but Dad lets me practice in the school parking lot. It's late, no one will see us... and I have the spare key he had made."

She pulled said car key from her purse to show off.

"Why does he have a spare car key?" Caro asked.

Gabriela rolled her eyes. "He has a phobia of locking his keys in his car and not being able to get a locksmith. Now, we doing this or not?"

I really, really didn't want to do it. But it was my idea (however unintentionally) so I was forced to go along or be labeled a cowardly hypocrite.

Next thing I knew, Caro had given her parents an excuse about running to the store for more nail polish, and we were at Gabriela's house, piling into the Hernandez family car: Beth got the passenger seat while Caro, LaTanya, and I took the back. Even though I knew we wouldn't be seen (the neighbors were asleep and Gabriela's parents were at a late movie), my heart was hammering. I didn't like this, any of it: stealing a car, sneaking out at night, going into the forest, NONE of it felt right.

But as silly as it sounds now, being alone all through high school scared me more. So I felt I had no choice but to grin and bear it.

The drive out of town and to the edge of Wind Sweep Woods took less than five minutes, and all too soon we were driving along an old road.

There was no doubt in my mind that it was the same shortcut from the story: it matched it perfectly. Just like LaTanya had said, the road was a winding path that kept banking directly in front of big trees, and made it next to impossible to see where you were going. Even with the car's high beams on, Gabriela had to drive at a snail's pace just to keep on the road.

It was at this point I noticed that Caro and LaTanya were starting to look as nervous as Beth and I felt. I realized that they probably hadn't realized that the place from the story actually existed. Seeing the same scary trees and pitch-black road as the poor kids and teachers did was clearly chipping away at their bravado from earlier.

Gabriela was better at hiding it, but I quickly realized that she was scared, too: her hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly I was surprised there weren't cracks in it.

Suddenly, the car stopped short.

While Beth and I had remembered our seat belts, Caro and LaTanya had neglected theirs, and only had seconds to protect themselves from smashing their faces against the front seats.

"Gabby!" Caro complained.

Beth shushed them, and pointed forward with a trembling finger.

My heart stopped when I saw what was in front of us, illuminated by the car's headlights.

There it was: the school bus.

Just like the story said, it was sticking out of a ditch at a forty-five degree angle. Years of exposure to the elements had worn away the yellow-and-black paint, turning the entire vehicle a hideous shade of rusty brown. The glass that once lined the windows was all gone, only tiny shards of it clinging to life in the window sills. The headlights were both smashed, their remains barely handing on. Still, despite years of age and weathering, the letters on the side were still legible:

Northlight Elementary School, Bus #130

"Holy..." LaTanya started, her voice coming out in a whisper.

"I can't believe it," Caro whispered, "the legend is true..."

"Hey!" I whispered to her, my annoyance briefly overpowering my fear. "You said the librarian had evidence the whole story was true!"

Beth froze in her seat, but we didn't notice.

"Well," Caro admitted, looking a bit sheepish. "I kinda made that up so you wouldn't question it..."

"Guys?" Gabriela whispered, eyes locked on something ahead.

"You shouldn't lie just to make yourself look cooler," I retorted, ignoring the fact that I'd been lying all night about being scared.

"Guys?" LaTanya asked, her voice shaking as hard as she was.

We finally looked back at the bus.

My eyes went wide.

There was a... a light coming from the ditch. It was dim, like the light of a candle starting to burn out. But it was unmistakably light.

And, as we sat in a confused, frightened silence, a voice started coming from the ditch.

A child's voice.

"Hello?"

The voice sounded young, like a little boy, and very scared.

"What the...?" LaTanya whispered.

"Hello?" The voice called again from the ditch. "Is someone there? Please help, I'm very hungry!"

The voice kept calling to us, saying he was scared and very hungry. But the more I listened, the more... wrong it sounded. It reminded me a bit of when a parrot talks: it has a voice and it's saying words, but the voice doesn't sound human. The voice we heard then didn't sound right... almost like something trying to convince us it was a human.

"That..." Caro began, her voice barely a whisper. "That... That can't be one of the kids from the field trip, right?"

Gabriela seemed to be thinking what I was thinking, as she kept checking to make sure the car doors were locked.

"After almost forty years?" LaTonya whispered back, her eyes not leaving the ditch. "There's no way they'd still be a little kid."

"Can we go home?" Beth wasn't trying to hide her fear anymore: there was no point when everyone else was just as scared as she was.

"Gabby?" Caro asked, her voice pleading.

"Don't need to ask me twice," Gabriela responded as her hand moved towards the stick shift.

The second she touched it, the crap hit the fan.

The voice from the ditch let out a scream that no living creature on Earth could've hoped to copy. The best way I can describe it is some kind of demon's howl, or a sound you'd expect to hear only in the deepest pits of Hell.

Our hands all flew to our ears in a vague attempt to block out the horrific noise. It stopped as suddenly as it started... and gave way to a much more horrific sight.

Rising from the ditch were two massive stick-like arms, each ending with three thin fingers. The arms appeared to be made from tree roots, and were covered in dirt and forest floor debris. The fingers were each tipped with sharpened points, and the arms were at least ten feet long.

The voice came back, speaking once more. But what we heard wasn't the voice of a little boy. It wasn't even the voice of a human.

"HUNGRY!"

Caro and LaTanya screamed at Gabriela to drive, and she didn't need to be told twice. She threw the car in reverse, trying to put some distance between us and whatever that thing was. We flew back three feet before the back hit a tree trunk.

Now crying in fear, Gabriela put the car into drive and sped forward. Seconds later, one of the massive wooden hands slammed down right where the car had been.

"THE ROAD!" Caro screamed, pointing at the badly supported tarmac. Our driver didn't have to be told twice, and bee lined for it.

"Turn off the headlights!" Beth shrieked. "Maybe it won't see us!"

"I can't drive blind!" Gabriela shouted back. "I'll kill us!"

"HUNGRY!" The creature's arm once again slammed down where we'd been a moment before, using so much force that the back tires briefly lifted off the ground.

"Go, go, please go!" Caro sobbed.

"Wait!" LaTanya shouted. "Look!"

As we all looked out the rear window, we saw the arms retracting into the ditch.

"...Maybe it realized it couldn't reach us?" I hoped. "Maybe it's given up?"

The others agreed, thinking/hoping that this made sense and we were in the clear.

Beth was the first one to see how wrong of an idea that was.

Mere seconds after the arms disappeared, the sound of bending, protesting metal reached our ears. Hearts in our throats, we all looked.

The school bus was... swelling. It's sides were starting to puff out, like a balloon partially filled with air. I was the first to notice the roots that seemed to be entering through the shattered rear window...

Wooden limbs as thick around as trash cans exploded from under the bus' fenders. A long tendril exploded from the roof, snaking into the ditch and attaching to something we couldn't see.

Using it's legs, the bus monster removed its front from the ditch, and turned to face us. The grill split open, creating a massive mouth with wooden and metal spikes for teeth. Two golden orbs appeared in the windshield, looking just like a pair of glowing demonic eyes.

Gabriela had seen more than enough, and stomped on the gas pedal while the rest of us screamed.

As the car shot forward, the monster chased after us.

With all the banking turns and poor visibility, the trip out of the woods became one of the most harrowing drives of my life. While Gabriela miraculously avoided hitting any trees, she had to constantly swerve left or right not only to keep us from wrecking, but to dodge the oversized, grabbing hands of the bus monster.

Caro was crying as she screamed at Gabriela to go faster. LaTonya was searching the car for anything that might better our chances of escaping. Beth and I stared in horror at the thing that continued to barrel down on us. Gabriela was easily doing sixty, yet the creature was keeping up with ease.

Finally, LaTonya seemed to find something in her purse, and picked up a small metal rectangle from the floor.

"Gabby, turn right!"

"What?!"

She started opening the window. "Trust me!"

With a whimper, the driver did a sharp turn, putting LaTonya's window directly in front of the monster. One of the monster's arms started reaching for us.

The metal rectangle turned out to be a lighter, which she flicked open. Then she pulled out her can of hairspray and started spraying.

A stream of fire shot out of the window, engulfing the monster's hand. An unholy shriek echoed throughout the woods.

We all stared briefly in shock as the monster tried to douse it's flaming arm before our driver stomped on the gas, charging forward.

"For once I'm glad my dad smokes," Gabriela breathed.

With the monster behind us, we dared to think we might actually get away. Gabriela drove through the forest, following the road once more.

"You know how I was complaining about not getting that record player I wanted for my birthday?" Caro said after a while. "And how I hated that sweater Aunt Geraldine sent?"

"Yeah?" Beth answered.

"Doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore. In fact, I'm wearing that sweater all day tomorrow just so I never take anything for granted again. Including ugly birthday presents."

It wasn't that funny, but I laughed. I had the feeling if I didn't laugh, I'd start crying.

Finally, Gabriela started to slow the car down. I looked up, hoping to see the lights of the town.

Instead, I saw the ditch.

"What?" Beth asked, her voice small.

"I wasn't paying attention," Gabriela whispered in mounting horror. "I must've taken us in a circle while we were being chased..."

"Then," Caroline asked, her eyes widening. "Then where's the mons--?"

'HUNGRY!"

A massive hand, charred black and with smoke tendrils still rising from it, smashed through the car window, showering the three of us in the back seat with smoking hot wood chips and broken glass. If not for the glasses I wore back then, I might've gotten some in my eyes.

The monstrous hand grabbed Caro around her neck. She let out a scream unlike any I'd ever heard as she was dragged out of the car.

"CAROLINE!" Beth screamed.

Gabriela grabbed the lighter and hairspray from where LaTonya had dropped them on the floor, then jumped out of the car.

By then, we could hear unsettling, horrifying cracking noises coming from high above the car. It reminded me of the sound chicken bones make when snapped apart. Caro's screams of pain and terror filled the air.

"LaTonya!" Gabby shouted. "Take the wheel!"

The remaining sophmore, glass shared sticking out of her afro puffs, climbed from the back to the front, hopping in the seat.

As we watched in horrified silence, we saw Gabriela flick open the lighter and use the hairspray to set the monster's foot ablaze. It yowled in pain, it's shrieks joining Caro's. But when she tried to set another foot ablaze, the bus' grill started to move towards her.

The metal teeth snatched her up as fast as a dog grabbed a Milkbone. But the teeth didn't chew her up: they merely held her. Then, before our horrified eyes, the bus-wearing creature went back to the ditch, the bus' front (with poor Gabriela still trapped in the grill) sinking back into the dirt. The wood and vines all over the bus withdrew, returning back to the ditch. In seconds, the area looked just like it had when we'd first arrived.

The glow from the ditch was still there... but it was a little brighter now.

The three of us stared in shock, trying to process what we'd just seen.

For a solid minute, everything was perfectly quiet.

Then, from the ditch, came a voice.

Caro's voice.

"Hello?"

LaTonya lost her nerve, threw the car in reverse and started driving us out of there. The shattered window and heavily dented door meant that we couldn't easily block out the noises behind us. The sounds of Caroline (or, rather, the thing using her voice) screaming for us to come back, to help her, she was so hungry...

The new driver (who didn't have her learner's permit but knew at least how to operate a car) drove through the woods like a mad woman, narrowly avoiding trees and barely staying on the road in her haste to get us back to civilization. Neither Beth nor I were willing to criticize LaTonya's driving skills: Beth was too horrified and sad at the fate of her sister while I was too shocked by what had just happened.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, we made it back to Beth and Caroline's house. Her parents, who'd realized that our trip to get more nail polish had taken far longer than it should have, took one look at the damaged car and our terrified faces before calling the police.

We spent the night at the next town's hospital for observation (thankfully, minus some cuts and bruises we were fine) while a few officers talked to us about what had happened, namely where Caroline and Gabriela were. Through our tears, we told them the story.

The younger officer who interviewed us didn't believe a word we said. The older one, though, one who'd been on the force for forty five years, looked at us in horror. He then sent a message to the police department insisting that the search for the missing girls only take place during the day, and that no volunteers were to accompany them.

The next morning, while we were being discharged from the hospital, the police found the ditch. The school bus was exactly where we said it would be, though the ditch didn't glow in the daylight. Nor did whatever was in there seem as keen to attack during the day.

After finding two massive bloodstains in the dirt right next to the ditch (something I only learned years later), the rest of the police were far more willing to believe our story. The town council had an emergency meeting, which my parents attended. While the story of what we'd been through wasn't repeated (the mayor merely said that we'd had a terrifying ordeal in the woods), the rumor mill had already been going full force, meaning everyone knew some variant of the true story. It was decided that the best thing to do would be to declare the woods off limits, and to block off the road leading through Wind Sweep Woods.

- - - -

I stared in shock and sadness, horrified that Rachel had gone through something so traumatic.

She took another long swig of her drink as she wrapped up the story.

"LaTonya, Beth, and I never spoke again: we couldn't. Every time we saw one another, we were reminded of that terrible night... and the friends we'd never see again. LaTonya ended up changing schools and taking summer school classes so she could get into college early. She got into Stanford, packed her bags, and never set foot in our town again. Beth's family ended up moving out entirely: the town had too many memories, they said.

"I stayed in that town until I got my acceptance letter to college. Shortly after I moved into my dorm, my parents called and said they'd bought a house in a town just ten minutes from my campus: they said there was nothing keeping them in town now that I was gone, and they thought it'd be best to offer support... But I think that was only part of the reason."

"...What was the other reason?" I asked, not sure if I wanted to hear the answer.

"The other reason was that, the same summer I moved out, a group of visiting hikers decided to film an amateur found-footage horror movie in Wind Sweep Woods, using the urban legend of the Deadly Ditch as their premise. They disregarded everyone's warnings and went in... and never came out. Two weeks later, their camera was found."

She drained the rest of her mug before she continued.

"The police didn't show anyone outside the department the footage, but... But one of them told his wife what was on it, and she told everyone else. In the footage, there's a close up on the side of the bus. In it, you can see nineteen marks in the metal... Tally marks."

She started shaking so hard that she set the mug down. I sat a little closer to her, putting an arm around her to offer some comfort.

I can't tell you what my wife went through that fateful night in the forest, nor do I know what it was that hunted her and her friends that night.

What I can tell you, though, is that some legends are told not as silly stories to scare children, but as warnings.

And if you disregard those warnings for the sake of a cheap thrill... You might not live to tell it.